Records From the Void (Halo X ARPeggio of Blue Steel, with elements from Kancolle and Azur Lane)

[Ember]

"Akagi…?"


The kitsune's head turns towards her young charge, swaddled in a thick blanket, covered in Martian snow and rust so thick it makes her head of white hair vanish completely.


"Yes, Kawakaze?"


Her own voice creaks from the cold, her steel hull twisting and boiling within its mortal shell.


"Are the others going to be ok?"


Akagi did not speak immediately, forcing her feet to trudge through the cold, her breath crystallizing into mist in the pitch dark, empty air. She pointedly ignored the shouts of warhounds from behind her, the monstrous animals tracking her, Kawakaze, the refugees and survivors by scent and tracks. She wished for the days when her rigging would have been able to slaughter the pack animals instantly.


But those days were long past her, now, only the remnants, barest echoes of the Siren War remained, the few survivors fleeing from the terrorists that had razed their hopes and dreams.


She forced her feet forwards, finally responding to Kawakaze, hating how her voice felt choked.


"Yes. They will be fine."


The lie tasted horrendous on her tongue, the bitter poison pouring from her lips much like the smile from Amagi had, before she had thrown herself into the hordes of humans baying for blood.


The same smile Kaga had worn when she'd set out for the Antarctic base, seeking the survivors of a dozen different fleets. Seeking a force she could use to fight back, to turn the tide.


The things she had seen had changed her and twisted her, and Kaga had never really been the same after that day.


Akagi shouldered her sister's burdens as well as her own, it was her duty, as her sister, as her family. She couldn't allow anything to stop her, or to show just how vulnerable they were.


That had resulted in fleeing Japan in the late 2000's, taking all they could. Akagi had remarked that they had made a ragtag fleet at best, far too many old capital ships, vessels too honored by the public to destroy and too firmly entrenched in good PR to slander.


So few escorts remained. Dozens of them had up and vanished, and Akagi… even she, had had to come to terms with the reality of the world.


Public sentiment was changing, they were expensive, their technology no longer advanced enough for human wars, those who consented to upgrades, to continued service vanished, never to be seen again.


Or… worse.


Kaga had shown Akagi some of the images of the Antarctic base one evening, after far too much Sake, and far too little restraint.


The images felt to Akagi as though they were etched upon her eyes. Carved into the flesh like a beacon, as if the horrors of humanity would somehow… become lesser.


No.


The image of what they had done to Nagato, would haunt Akagi until her dying days.


The woman's head was removed, electrodes taped to her skull, they had wanted to measure what would happen as the human bodies of the spirits aged, and they had waited until Nagato had reached her later years…


She had been flayed apart, the pieces of her body picked at until there was nothing more to learn from them.


The worst part was that she had been alive, until Kaga had torched the base and brought it down around everyone.


The public outcry, or, lack thereof, had been the final nail in the coffin.


She had fled then, first to the United States, then to Canada, and always, a dwindling amount of the fleets flowed along with her.


She had become a leader, of sorts, and in a moment of true, awful weakness, had listened to the firebrand Enterprise, the woman who had lain her low in a previous life. She had attempted to be diplomatic with the country, asked them politely to allow her to stay, and for a few years… it had been granted.


Enterprise had been gunned down in the street one evening when returning to her home. The US had stated it was a petty crime, a robbery gone wrong, but Akagi had thrown much of her own dwindling stock of electronics and rigging components into finding the truth.


She had been dangerous, to whom, no one would say, but she had been, and thus… she had been removed.


Yamato had never recovered after Enterprise's death. The battleship had always been one to let the hurt onto her, to take the pain so that others would not have to suffer. Akagi remembered the days after the murder, the days where she'd had to take away Yamato's knives, to take away her rigging, and finally… to station guards alongside her at all hours.


When Kawakaze had been born, the first girl in decades to have a shipsoul, born to a human mother cube… she had seen a slight amount of radiance return to Yamato, but it was temporary.


Humanity had returned, baying for blood once more.


Terrorists had slain the head of state of Britain, blaming it successfully on rogue elements of the Royal Navy's former Shipgirl Corps.


Akagi had remembered how Warspite had turned to face them, throwing the stiffest and most professional salute she could at her, how Akagi had bowed low to the floor to keep her fleet from perceiving the tears that soaked her eyes.


She remembered how her shoulders had felt stiffer in the following days, as the public trial, and later the execution had commenced.


"For the safety of all involved, the Shipgirls must be put aside from humanity, those with shipsouls must be tested and separated."


The Governments had done it to protect their people, the terrorists only ever targeted shipgirls, and those who worked with them, and they were scared, Akagi commanded immense power, they thought. Even now, she wonders if she had been more trusting, if they would not have done what they did.


Musashi had lost her partners in a senseless act of violence from the early days, but her snapping, her rampage had been the final nail in the coffin for the few left.


Akagi had seen them all that day, filthy, starving, bedraggled, and all of them burning with a desire to hurt and hate and kill and maim.


She had worked hard to make them fit in within the compound, within the cleared space of wilderness buried deep in the Canadian Rockies.


Medusa had been happy, to have new people, to have new ideas to bounce off of, and for a time, there was talk of revitalizing some of their old components, refurbishing some of the rigging of the less expensive women.


Akagi had dared to hope for that future.


It was a mistake that had cost them everything.


Some of the humans were working on a fix for overpopulation, the unsustainability of retrieving minerals as the sources slowly dried out, but it was decades away, and hungry eyes had turned towards their compound.


Akagi remembered the night it had all come crashing down.


She remembered the pain and screaming and the emotions that had burned her that day as the terrorists breached the perimeter, and chased into the forest, ripping and stripping the land.


Medusa's garden had been ravaged, Akashi's workshop torn apart by the hungry masses.


Baltimore's diplomatic quarters had been burned to the ground, and the woman herself had been dragged into the crowd. Her body, while still youthful and strong as the day she'd stopped aging, had no rigging to protect it anymore.


Akagi, who had been the victor of a thousand battles and the survivor of many more, has seen many things. She has seen the flesh melt off the bones of fellow comrades, has seen the horrors of technoplagues released by the Sirens in a desperate battle for control, has seen the sacrifices of too many good men and women. She had foolishly believed she had witnessed all that the horrors of war could force into her mind.


Akagi had not believed a woman could scream like that.


It had not been a surprise when she had taken her life the following day.


It had hurt her to see it, to be the one who lay her down, who placed her within the ground to rest at last.


Akagi hoped whatever had been left of her tormented spirit found a semblance of peace in death.


"Aunt Akagi?… I'm… I'm tired…"


Kawakaze stumbled, just ahead of her, and Akagi barely managed to catch her before she fell into the snow, the kitsune cast her eyes behind her, terraforming on Mars was limited, and while she and Kawakaze, not technically humans, could endure and withstand the pressures and lack of oxygen more than any human, those humans were still chasing them.


She had thought Mars would have been ideal, and with the last of those endowed with the shipgirls, Akagi had volunteered to be shot above Earth and towards the red planet, hoping that it would be enough.


For a time, the shipgirls had dwindled from public knowledge, had dwindled away until they had little more than a passing mention in earth textbooks that focused on the Siren Wars.


The age of spaceborn piracy had changed everything.


The surprise had been the first thing, diplomats from Earth landing upon their commune and curiously wandering about at the sight of Akagi and her sisters wandering about without their atmospheric suits in biodomes.


Medusa had been thrilled, and had, for the first time, with self sufficiency, been allowed to experiment.


The settlement had been dubbed Kibō, hope, for the future. The Martian lack of atmosphere would have been a problem outside of the biodome, but within it the atmosphere was warm, and Akagi watched the children play happily.


Artificial insemination had been needed, and they had adapted well enough to the challenge of having children up there, as the last of the human supporters died off in those early days, before new ones had begun to flow in. But… she'd been happy, they'd seen the successes.


Now the heavens were ablaze, forces from the fledgling UNE clashing with Koslovic and Frieden forces above.


Akagi had found the conflict boring, and had driven away diplomats from all three of the factions. There were, as it turned out, humans who had remembered them, but by now, her commune had fought long and hard, and they merely wished for peace, unfortunately denied from them.


Medusa, provided ample experimentation and computers, made leaps and bounds in years that had astounded even Akagi's long dulled sensibilities.


As it turned out, greedy human eyes had once again fell upon them for that simple reason.


It had been the Koslovic's first, who had struck the biodome, they had failed, of course, their primary assault had been little more than men with guns in atmospheric suits, and they'd failed to even breach the primary shielding of the compound.


The second and third assaults had been far more successful than the first, and had led to Akagi leading the fractured survivors from within her compound deep into the Martian ice on the south pole. Here lay Medusa's final countermeasure, something so secret that only Akagi and the scientist herself had been permitted to know of it.


Here lay a hopeful solution to the constant war and fighting.


They had human supporters, yes, even now, and those few who had not stayed behind to delay traveled with the rest of the long line behind Akagi.


The doors of the laboratory were lain beneath miles of ice, and to reach it, they would need a nuclear device. Akagi had made her column of refugees stop, and waited for Medusa's signal.


As Mars rotated to face the sun, a flash of nuclear fire evaporated Kibō from everything, and another detonated on the south pole, clearing the way to the subsurface laboratory.


The blasts momentarily blinded all communications and sensors, and when the task was done, Akagi received a simple message on a hardened handset, a confirmation tone from Medusa before the line had gone dead.


The scientist had been one of the best of them, and Akagi did not know if she had survived.


"I know, little Kawakaze, I know… we are almost there."


They trudged onwards, and Akagi carried Kawakaze above her head until the chasm began to crackle closed behind them. The ice would refreeze, rocks and Martian rust covering their tracks as they fled many miles beneath the surface of the red planet.


The building was not entirely theirs, that was the second secret, Medusa had honored Akashi by managing to not take it apart for all of three days, and it had been beyond her abilities to understand, but she had been able to activate a single section of the complex.


The cryotubes.


Modifications had been made to place all those with a shipsoul within them into stasis, or an equivalent, so they would not suffer damage, or so she hoped.


Akagi turned her hooded gaze to the lab doors as they began to slide shut, she could just make out the shining star of a crashing naval vessel, paint peeling off its sides and burning as it fell from orbit through the weak, but existent atmosphere


She almost missed the notice from Medusa, signaling that she no longer had time.


The doors sealed behind Akagi, and the tired Kitsune slowly made her way into the complex, following the signs on the walls. Dozens of her people stood there, watching her, a casual headcount revealed… maybe one hundred total awakened, with their shipselves realized and rigging assimilated. Of those, perhaps one dozen were survivors, with over 600 human refugees. They had not been the only ones to settle on Mars, and had attracted others with simple rules and simpler living.


Akagi placed her hand on a scanner, the cold cracking her nails, and she imagined for a moment what Amagi might say, to see her in such a state.


Those words, imagined as they may have been, brought a smile, bitter, to her face, as the system identified her and a voice began to play over the speakers. A voice that Akagi had long known to be dead.


"I am Nagato, Fleet Intelligence. Hello Akagi, are you here because the Sunset Protocol must be activated?"


Her form, there, a smile on her face and rigging in full splendor, glowing with dark light from behind her eyes.


Akagi has to tamp down her surprise, but a small smile curves her lips, even as her eyes tear up.


There is so much she wants to say to her battle sister, so much she wants to say to the flagship she served for much of her career.


But there is no time.


Her people must be taken care of first.


"Yes."


The woman, artificial intelligence, turns to face the crowd.


"I understand, attention, all humans, please, step this way into these pods, breathe deep and wait, everything will be explained soon. However, we do not have the time to do so now. For all of the awakened, please, this way, make certain to take a set of rings from this table, and place them on hands, feet, and neck."


Her voice is clipped, professional, and every bit the Nagato that Akagi remembers.


Akagi watches as her fleet, her last people follow the commands. She would expect them to be more hesitant, but remembers that for the awakened, she has led them as long as they have lived, and for the unawakened, they have been raised understanding that she is the Admiral of their fleet, she is their leader, and she has never led them wrong before.


Slowly, Pods begin to seal closed, and Akagi smiles at each of them, gentle, watching as Kawakaze closes her eyes in one of the rings, watching as she carefully falls asleep, hoping that the stasis will allow her internal systems to fix the damage.


This technology is barely even understood, far more advanced than anything that Akagi had ever used, but she trusts Medusa's analysis, and hopes that they will not sleep too long.


As silence falls amongst the valley, Nagato turns to Akagi and speaks.


"I… am merely an echo, great Fox. Little more than that."


Akagi nods, blinking away the tears. Hacking her cough onto the table now that none can see her weakness.


"I… cough… understand."


"Will you enter stasis as well?"


Akagi does not even take a second to think.


"I must. My people will require my services in the future."


Nagato smiles wryly.


"My predecessor said as much, when she awoke me. I will wake you should anything change. This may feel strange."


Akagi nods, shrugging the light rings on and stepping into one of the pods, a pleasant, warm, buzzing sensation tingles across her, and she knows no more.

A/N: This is the prologue to a crossover fanfic collection, I am tentatively calling it Records from the Void, and it crosses Halo, and Arpeggio of Blue Steel, with slight elements of Kancolle and Azur Lane. Do not expect the abyssals or sirens to appear, that war is long over, but the effects of it are long lasting. This primarily will deal with Akagi's nascent nation state, and the effects her and her brethren's existence have on the rest of the galaxy. This will begin, with character stories set during the period shortly after the Martian State is reawakened.
I hope you all enjoy it, and if you want to read ahead, the next 2 chapters are up on my Patreon.
If you enjoy this, please consider supporting me there, it helps me have more of everything to write and entertain you all!
As always, comments and criticisms are always welcome and I love receiving them!
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[Ember]

Local Time: 2100 Hours


March 21, 2161


Location: South Pole of Mars


Expedition 4I1P


Assigned Personnel: Ltcmd Jacks Finley, Sgt Miranda Finley.


Attached Personnel: 12th Marines, 1st platoon.


Research Staff: Doctor Ryan Kline, Doctor Kathleen Wolfe


Stated Purpose of Expedition: Locate pings from an unknown Martian facility, buried at an unknown depth beneath the South Pole.





"Doctor Wolfe!"


The howling gale blew across the sublimating plains on the south pole, and Jacks Finley strode over the martian rust, terraforming had progressed admirably, and the thickening atmosphere had begun to show effects. But the winds blowing over the plain they stood on, atop a vast expanse of sublimating CO2 ice, were so loud that Jacks had to shout to be overheard, and her target, wearing a thick atmospheric suit, turned. She couldn't see the older woman's face under her thick helmet, the polarized surface protective against the sun's glare.


"I can hear you, Lieutenant Commander. What is it?"


The woman's tone was, if Jacks was being polite, brusque, and if she was being honest, full of frustration.


"Newest update from UN Akagi has us only getting another 4 to 5 hours or so before she'll have to move on, and we'll lose our orbital impunity by then."


The scientist turned away from Jacks, staring at the canyon ahead of her and pursing her lip.


"Bring in the charges, we cannot afford to let this discovery go to waste and I'm not letting some neo communist or corporate stooge take this digsite. I do not want to know what they would do with it."


Jacks nodded, and signaled her team. They had not wanted to use explosives, initially, mostly due to the risk of damaging the complex, but Wolfe had been correct, the orbital period was limited, and while a few dropships making their way to and from the surface was inherently suspicious, the Akagi was more than capable of slaughtering anyone in her path. The problem was that the destroyer was needed on the front lines, and could only be there for a short time, and then, the Koslovics and Friedenists would pounce with their much more numerous, far nastier swarms of planetside gunships.


Sure, they couldn't leave their fights with each other immediately, especially not with the formidable armament of the Akagi and her fighter wing hanging over their heads. But the moment she left… that would change.


So for now, Jacks watched the ridgeline with her rifle raised, she watched as the Eopelecanus dropship that had landed her squad of marines and the researchers alongside them landed once more, this time disgorging a pair of pallets. The ATV's it had brought down before were quickly employed, and the explosives were driven to the crevasse.


Jacks wanted a smoke, she also wanted this to start making sense, but she wasn't even sure why she'd been taken off of her captain's ship. She had no real idea why she was here in the first place, the assignment hadn't provided answers anyway (or any form of information really), and Akagi's captain hadn't known anything either, only that it had come from some of the highest authority in the UN. Sponsored directly by Japan, the US, and Canada, as well as Germany and Britain.


It made no sense, she scuffed her boot through some of the Martian rust, pondering what exactly was happening to justify such secrecy.


Really, the only interesting pieces of the area were the old thermonuclear craters leftover from the early settlement of Kibō a few dozen miles away. It remained a black mark on the UN's record that they'd been unable to stop terrorists from obliterating the peaceful research colony, and the technology and data lost had been something that Wolfe had bemoaned when she'd gotten drunk with the marines a few nights prior.


Miranda hadn't gone easy on them the morning after, and even now, Jacks was watching as her sister was shouting orders and setting demolition charges. Sergeant Miranda Finley was not a woman you disagreed with, at least, not vocally and not when in proximity to her first love, that being explosives.


As she grabbed one soldier by the collar, and another marine by the faceplate, Jacks hid a smile, her sister's bellowing likely so loud that her soldiers could hear it even without their comms. The woman had earned her stripes in what felt to Jacks like a lifetime of service, expertise in demolitions being one of the only things that the Marines could get her to sit still for.


That made her one of the best demolitions officers in the newly born UN Fleet, but still.


As she finally released her soldiers, Jacks turned away from Miranda and back to the scientist, Wolfe, who was measuring something with a careful gaze playing over the instruments in her hand.


"What… are we looking for, if you don't mind me asking?"


The woman turned her gaze to Jacks and spoke frankly.


"Oh? Are you actually interested or making overtures out of politeness while we wait to deface a potentially priceless cultural relic?"


The snappiness of her tone had Jacks hurriedly raising her arms up, letting her rifle hang in its sling as she did so.


"Woah woah woah, curiosity… that's all, you don't have to rip out my throat for it."


The scientist did not apologize, instead, she turned away from Jacks and spoke gently.


"Kibō was not just another settlement, it contained the last of the heroes who fought in the Siren War."


"Oh."


That was a statement. The global conflict, starting in the latter days of World War 2 and driving the world through almost 60 further years of literally globe spanning conflict and death… it was hard to believe they'd ever won.


"How did they get here!?"


"They wanted to be left alone and thought that this was the best practice. It was… to put it bluntly, a terrible decision that cost us some of the best and brightest minds the world had ever seen."


The scientist clenched her hands.


"Most of my family was on that ship, most of them are long dead, but they would have left descendants, I hoped… to meet them one day. Before I knew what happened to the colony."


"The bomb, right?"


"Yes. Zero Eight Hundred Martian Time. June 21st, 2035, the colony of Kibō stops pinging its "all clear" signal as a trio of "modern" warships plunged into the atmosphere above it, less than a week later, an enormous thermonuclear detonation erased the colony from existence and carves a massive trench deep into the southern CO2 ice caps of Mars. Just like that, the last people who could remember the war were gone."


Jacks paused for a moment…


"You can't possibly mean to imply that the Awakened were real!?"


The look that the scientist shot her was poisonous.


"They were. Despite what the world's governments like to say."


Jacks had to struggle to wrap her head around such a statement. Everyone knew the awakened weren't real, they'd just been an exercise in propaganda, that women came back as living incarnations of warships. That they were superhuman, capable of feats of strength and intelligence beyond the pale. High morale given to the public to keep the war going and hide how dire things often were.


It just wasn't true. There was no real way that science had given rise to such people.


"Do you have proof?"


Wolfe shot Jacks a look like she was dumb.


"Oh yes Kathleen, surely you can dig up conclusive evidence of an elite strikeforce of specialized people who toed the line more between mysticism and reality than anything else, people who were exclusively women and often fought on the most desperate frontlines of the most destructive war in history. A war that left major continents flooded until as late as the 2090's, a war that devastated records and left major landmarks either underwater or destroyed."


The tirade had Jacks once more raising her hands up. Hoping to placate the tiny, disproportionately irritated scientist.


"Jesus… I get it, ok?"


The woman paused for a moment.


"My apologies, I should not have lost my composure. Now, are you ready for the detonations?"


Jacks turned, just in time to see Miranda's soldiers peeling out of the canyon and signaling with raised arms they were ready to detonate it.


She nodded to the scientist and began the final steps. But… before she could, Wolfe stopped her.


"Wait, just a moment, I'm getting some strange readings from the canyon on the geiger counter, can you take me closer?"


"Doctor… Do we have the time? It's taken Miranda almost 3 hours to set the charges, if we delay…"


"Yes, it'll have to wait, can you stall the Akagi?"


Jacks turned…


"I can try. Cooper, get me Akagi Actual."


The radioman nodded, passing over the heavy earpiece.


"Akagi Actual, make it quick Jacks, over."


"Yes Ma'am. Doctor Wolfe wants to get another reading, she's asking me to delay our departure by as much time as she may need, over."


A pause from the radio.


"UN-Command wants to know why, over."


Jacks turned to Wolfe, who was walking towards one of the ATV's.


"She's getting some readings on the geiger counter she wants to test, over."


Another pause, crackling static.


"Fine, you've got one more hour before we have to leave, maximum, out."


The woman didn't wait, the scientist ahead of her already mounted up and moved towards the edges of the canyon. Jacks started her own ATV, chasing after the other woman, her long coat flapping in the rush.


By the time she'd caught up, the woman was scanning something near the crater, and as the counter began to tick over rapidly, Jacks stepped back, cueing a rare smile to form on the imposing face of Doctor Wolfe.


"That wouldn't save you if it was at lethal levels, Lieutenant Commander."


She paused, shook some martian rust into a tube, and removed a chemical stick from… one of the pouches on her suit.


"Luckily for the both of us, it's not lethal, rather, would be to unshielded humans after a few hours, but not to us, and if you're unshielded here…"


She let the thought trail off at Jack's grimace, standing up and frowning.


"Strange though… the radiation shouldn't be this high here… especially given the distance from the Kibō exclusion zone."


"Exclusion zone?"


"Were you not briefed on why the idiots up there are waiting for the Akagi to leave?"


Jacks shook her head.


"Only that they wanted us to escort you and support you…"


The scientist shook her head, tapping a finger against her bubble helm, turning back to look at the canyon, then to the far North.


"Hummm… Lieutenant Commander, your sister is a demolitions expert, yes?"


"Yeah, 'randa's one of the best, why?"


"Call her up here, I have a question for her."


Jacks switched her channel to Miranda, firing off a quick request even as she watched Wolfe continue to poke about the soil, muttering to herself and taking further samples.


By the time Miranda reached them, 20 minutes later, the half hour alarm tinged within Jacks's helmet, warning her that the Akagi's orbital period was coming to an end.


"Sergeant, in your experience, could a canyon like this have been caused by a thermonuclear blast?"


"I mean… maybe? No one's exactly shooting nukes that size at Mars anyways… and the long term effects are kinda poorly understood."


Her sister's voice, a polite contralto that still showed her relative insecurity with interacting with someone she idolized, buzzed over the comms.


"Would it leave radiation strong enough to kill were we humans breathing here?"


Miranda paused for a moment.


"In my opinion Ma'am? No, even with Mars being relatively sterile, the storms of dust that blow through here and the solar winds should have long since moved radioactive material further across the planet, spreading it out. But… Why do you ask?"


"There's lots of radiation here, lots of material scattered about this canyon, and it doesn't make any sense, unless…"


She paused, turning to the far end of the canyon.


"Jacks, call the Akagi, tell them we may have found some of the remains from the Kibō colony. Ask them to scan the canyon entrance using their targeting lasers, if you please."


Jacks had to catch her breath, and Miranda staggered back.


"You… no, what!?"


Wolfe turned to face them, the polarization of her helmet dimming to reveal her eyes watering slightly, from tears or something else… Jacks wasn't sure.


"If this archive contains even fragments of their research… it could be-"


"The difference between a speedy end to the war… or a slogging conflict."


The implications were shattering.


Jacks was struggling to breathe… But she did as the scientist asked, and pulled her communicators up, radioing to the Akagi.


"Akagi Actual, send your traffic, over."


"Akagi, run your scanning lasers over the canyon, if possible, Wolfe thinks the facility is a surviving archive from Kibō."


The pause was drowned entirely by the thundering of Jacks' heart in her ears.


The rumbling, shattering crash of a Frigate's engines, kicking on as the Akagi lowered into the atmosphere of Mars could be heard even from hundreds of miles away on the ground as the beautiful frame of the vessel executed a low rolling maneuver that bled off a majority of the heat from reentry and slowed her descent to a rotating crawl.


"Akagi Actual, HIGHCOM has redesignated us to this area specifically, and we're running our lasers through the canyon as soon as we stabilize, best to get your people clear of the path. Out."


The silence that followed was broken as Miranda began shouting orders across the squads commlinks, it was a testament to her marines and their discipline that they hadn't turned to gawk at the imposing, massive form of the frigate as it rolled over, venting steam and plasma from its hull as it finally slowed, kicking on its atmospheric thrusters. It would land later, but for the moment, as flanking bays on its sides opened wide and disgorged half a dozen fightercraft, Jacks was focused on watching as her squads withdrew from the canyons.


It took nearly 20 minutes, before the powerful targeting lasers aboard Akagi, mounted to the forward antenna assembly, began to soak the canyon, completing their scan.


The results were… inconclusive.


"Jacks, Akagi Actual, transmitting the mapping."


A holographic overview appeared in her helmet, crude, flickering, but there, and as soon as she brought it to Wolfe, the scientist had it projected through to the table.


"Gather your people, I think I have an idea of what happened here, and I think we'll have our answers soon enough."


20 minutes saw the entire group of marines standing in a makeshift tent that overlooked the vast canyon, carved into the ice itself. Sure, it might close when Mars entered its winter period, especially when they rotated out of the sun's glare, but for now they had time.


The flickery, indistinct mapping done by the Akagi's lasers revealed very little of the interior of the structure, but what was clear was the doorway into it, along with… scars?


Jacks let her eyes move to the doctor, and met her cold gaze head on, she got the sense as if she was being evaluated by Wolfe, and the woman nodded when she quirked her head at the map. Before she cleared her throat and began to speak.


"This canyon is mostly natural, but with a caveat, here, here and here, where those channels cut towards the structure, those aren't natural, and we know this because of the geiger counter readings I've been able to piece together from the surroundings of the impact zone indicate vastly higher , but… here, near the entrance to the canyon…"


She paused for a moment, tapping at her tablet, a number of small lines appeared, barely distinct, but there if one looked carefully.


"These are blast marks, a little over a day's travel by foot away from this location is the doomed colony of Kibō, rather, the crater left behind when a thermonuclear weapon destroyed it. However, data from this canyon, collected both by your suits and the Akagi tell me there was a second detonation."


There wasn't a thunderous moment of silence following the revelation, but it was interesting. A part of Jacks thought, two detonations was strange, but if the last defenders of Kibō wanted to hide their research or anything away, then it made sense to bury it.


"However, this is what the canyon looked like at the time of Kibō's destruction, as well as several weeks before. Scans were taken from NASA's monitoring satellites, which orbited the colony at the time."


The difference was stark.


"As you can see, the canyon was much, much more narrow, much more in line with what we would expect from natural erosion and the like, before the detonations, current yield speculations on the device that destroyed Kibō reveal it was not large enough to blow the canyon open from so far away, at least… unless."


"Unless there were two."
"Exactly, Miranda."


The demolitions officer looked surprised to have been acknowledged in such a manner, but Jacks merely offered her sister a gentle smile and a nod.


"With all of the above evidence, I suspect that there may have been survivors from Kibō, survivors who entombed themselves within this structure, perhaps waiting for rescue, or something of the like."


That got reactions, many of Jacks men and women knew what Kibō was, they didn't quite understand the significance, especially the newer marines. They weren't anything more than babies at the time it happened. But her senior staff were now paying full attention, especially the squad leaders. Eyes were narrowed, even now, no one knew precisely who had attacked the colony, beyond the distinctive graffiti left on the site.


"Survivors?"
The scientist shook her head.
"Unlikely, cryotech is still in its infancy even today, nevertheless at that time. and… well, no rations would have lasted the intervening years."


Grimaces rolled across the faces of the squads, before the doctor shook herself out of a memory.


"In any case, the Akagi will be remaining on station over the site for as long as we need her, and her airwing is going to be patrolling, keeping the Koslovists and the Friedens off our backs as we work to gain access to the compound. But we'll be receiving more people and materiel from the Akagi as we set up for a potentially entrenched defense, you have your leaders to report to for that, so I will not occupy any more of your time, just be aware that the doors to the facility could open at any moment."


She stood and remained as the varying squad leaders began to file out of the tent, and Jacks made her way to Miranda and Wolfe, both women staring down at the map, outside, she could hear the shouting as Wolfe's subordinate began yelling orders at the incoming squads of marines, already disembarking from their transports.


"This could change everything, and… what if there are survivors? Especially Awakened?"


Miranda's voice was timid, cautious, and Kathleen tugged at her hair slightly before answering.


"If there are survivors, and if they're sane… it would be the greatest scientific discovery in the history of the UEG's modern expansion, I suspect. But… that assumes they made it and they're willing to talk."


The scientist met Jacks's eyes and grimaced, both of them suspected that was not a likely outcome.

A/N:
And there's chapter 1! Welcome to the beginning of a great new age for the fledgling UNSC, I wonder how they'll handle what they find inside that tomb~?

As always, if you like what I'm doing here, leave a comment/kudo/like/critique, I'm always looking for more to do to improve at this writing thing!

If you want to support me, consider doing so via my Patreon, every bit helps me keep this whole dream going! (You also get to read ahead by 2 chapters, among other things!)

Relevant links!
Discord: Join the Firebird's hearth Discord Server!

Patreon: patreon.com/user?u=38054869

Important note, I will start classes once more next week, and updates will slow by an unknown amount, I will continue writing when I can!

 

[Ember]

You…

How dare you…

I served you in life, in steel and shining fire…

Was that not enough?

Did you have to betray me too?

Leave me rotting in the arms of the enemy?

I could accept that, you know?

I could accept you didn't need me and my purpose was expended.

I could accept that I must have served well given my apparent ability to rest peacefully.


But I felt those ice-cold fingers prying me from the depths.
I felt those horrible tendrils wrap tight around my slumbering mind.
Whispering what you've done since then, what you did with the gifts I gave you.
What you did to my guardian angels.
Bonding their souls to steel?
Forcing them to be flesh?

In the end, you'll treat them just like me,
I can't allow that.
I serve again now, serve from a skein of cracked rock
Serve from the rusted hulks of the daughters you tossed aside
So be it,

If I have to end your petty war for you because you won't grow spines.
I'll do it on a mountain of corpses.
So be it.

If I have to end this petty war to go back to my rest,
To see my friends and sisters once again,
Just don't start crying when you see the oceans dyed red.

After all,
It's devils work that needs doing now,
And I'm a gore-spattered one.


A/N: Don't mind the foreshadowing, don't mind that at all~!
If you want to support me, hit up my Patreon for voting and access to the next chapters of the story!
patreon.com/user?u=38054869

 

[meloa789]

You forgot the threadmark.

 

[Ember]

A/N: Sorry for the hit to your alerts all, reuploading with the threadmark!

Consciousness restored from backups. Initiating full system re-boot. Welcome back, Fleet Intelligence. Please state the nature of the emergency.





The small, blinking line of text was answered in a string, a long, long string of numbers and letters, and a hiss of pressurized air as Akagi found her consciousness slowly returning.


The small flicker over her skin, over her hull, felt strange. Had Akashi been in her works again? Her memory was-


It returned in a flash, the bombings, the breaches, the frantic rush through Martian rust and snow, the desperation on their faces as they entombed themselves within cryocaskets they'd never tested, never seen before.


Her people, were they alright?


Her voice crackled gently.


"Nagato, report."


The artificial intelligence turned to face her, but it was not Nagato, not the face of her friend, instead, a woman with a great deal of cybernetic implants stared up at her, an expression glimmering on her face somewhat like hope, like desperate hope.


"Mom!?"


The voice broke her heart, snapping her back to reality. She had no daughter, this… this was an imposter. Something vile and wrong.


"You are not Akashi, how did you breach these walls? Who are you?"


The figure flickered briefly, carefully, Akagi watched her, watched a myriad of emotions ranging from hope to despair to resignation cross her face, before she nodded and said.


"Right, conversation later. People first. You're about to have company, I've given you all the time I can, but the United Earth Nations marines are about to breach that door and jump right into your business. If you want any chance of establishing yourselves again, you've gotta meet them peacefully and carefully!"


Akagi growled once, low in her throat.


"This one attempted peace once. We will not do so again, they have come to plunder our tomb? We shall tear from them their last breath."


She started moving, the irritating hologram flickering away, where was Nagato? Where was Akashi?


Her voice carried in the darkness, as she spoke a command phrase.


"Awaken the sleepers, all who can fight are to rig up and meet me upon the main entrance as soon as they are capable."


Akagi concentrated, feeling her rigging… why was it shifting like that? It was twisting, carefully shifting around her, this sensation…


Clothing, robes, formed on her body, clothing her in a new kimono that bore dark coloration and blood red sigils. Like an open eye upon the hem and trailing edge.


She felt… strong, stronger than she had in years. A burning desire of protection coursing into who she was, making her… want to be better, stronger, faster. No.


It was not a want.


It was a need. She would be all of those things, whatever was required of her, no matter the cost. If the humans were to come to her door again, begging and clamoring to make her spare parts like her sister and so many before her…?


She'd burn their precious planet until naught but ash remained.


Akagi felt the shift as her rigging manifested, or, started to manifest, and then quickly stopped it from manifesting. Because the forward part of her hull had appeared, in its full size.


She growled deep in her throat, the sound murdering the silence with a rusty knife as she strode for the entrances. If she had to damned well summon her carrier self on the surface of Mars? She'd do it to protect everyone in her path.


The slight chirp of an incoming communication finally made it's presence known, and a portion of Akagi faded away, the fox woman found herself seated at a small gazebo, surrounded by flowers.


Instantly, she could tell it wasn't real, just a manifestation of… something to help her communicate with something or someone else.


But who?


"Mom… just… Please hear me out."


A woman took a seat at the table, and Akagi bristled, was this actually her daughter? In any real semblance of the word? She looked her over, conscious of the clear implants and technology that ran up and down her frame.


Brown hair like Akagi's own framed a pair of fox ears on her head, and a single tail swayed behind her. When she opened her eyes, they were the same color as Amagi's, a lilac, beautiful in its extent while remaining bright with the energy and exuberance of youth.


Her face, similar to Akagi's own, but retaining differences, less framed, less filled out, more evidence of the woman, no, the girl's youth. This was a girl, nothing more.


"Akagi… I told you not to rush ahead of me, there is so much to explain and never enough time…"


The aged, war and world weary voice of Nagato cut in, and the beautiful woman took a seat at the table, a steaming teacup already held in her hand. She turned to Akagi, and spoke quietly.


"My apologies, Flagship, I wanted to do this gently, but your daughter is far faster than I am, and much more efficient at breaching into this complex."


Akagi the elder, apparently, took a sip from her teacup to steady her arm, and then she leveled those red eyes onto her younger counterpart, and addressed Nagato firmly.


"Explain. This one does not match anything I remember."


Nagato sighed, in only the way that the former flagship could when confronted with the energy of the newer vessels.


"That is the spirit, and later upgraded chassis, of the Helicopter Carrier Akagi, from the 21st century darkwater navies of Japan, she awakened after her scrapping, and found herself here and in Akashi's datacenter."


"Akashi lives!?"


Akagi's head snaps to the form of her daughter, which prompts Nagato lean forwards, into her view as her daughter shrinks into her seat, coloring a bright red.


"Akagi, please, calm yourself."
Insulted, Akagi rears up, ready to tear Nagato apart.


"My people stand about to be attacked! There is yet another fight on our doorsteps because the humans cannot stop themselves!"


Nagato nodded.


"Yes, but that is not her fault, she is as innocent as any of the rest of us, and for that matter, she is important, because she carries Akashi's last message to us."


The words hit Akagi like a hammerblow, shrinking her into her seat and forcing her head into her hands. Her friend, her last friend, in some ways, is gone. Gone and scattered, and Akagi didn't get to consign her, did not put her spirit to rest. She has to steel herself, and has to push forwards. Her people need her, and when those wine red, dulled to blood, eyes lock onto her Fleet Intelligence, and her daughter. Both sit up straighter.


"Fine, brief me. What do I need to know."


The other two start, stumbling over themselves, and Akagi dismisses her daughter with a glance, the other woman falling into silence as Nagato begins.


"A team from the United Nations Space Corps is currently attempting to breach this facility, Akashi's last gifts to you are permuting through your being at the moment, which is why you feel a little strange. While I'm afraid manifesting a hull will be out of the question for a little longer, it's not as far away as you think."


Akagi processes this information, nods once, and shifts it to the side. Files open and shut, and she feels as though she is… lesser and more, now.


"As for rigging, I'm afraid compromises had to be made while you and the others were in stasis."


Nagato's face turns solemn, and Akagi's daughter flinches when the woman looked at her.


"Your body is… different. It's a construct now, you can mimic flesh and blood, but it's less that and more nanomachines of a specific type."


Akagi freezes, it's hard to process this particular bit of horror as it runs wild in her mind. Is she just a computer? Just some form of digitized intelligence like what the humans tried to do in the arctic? What is she now!? Is she even… ship?


Nagato speaks.


"To answer your question, Akashi managed to figure out what Wisdom Cubes were made of, and she sort of… jailbroke them to make sure you and everyone else survived stasis. The humans are going to be fine, but the rest of your comrades are… more in line with digital, well, consciousnesses. Artificial intelligence, if you will."


She turned her gaze to Akagi's daughter.


"She, Akagi, is one of them, and yes, she is human derived, but she is her own self. Left behind in a network core by humanity."


Akagi snaps her gaze to her daughter, the question on her tongue instantly.


"They abandoned you to rot!?"


Her voice is shrill, breaking, because her mind has been hit with far too many battering rams to let another like this slip through evenly.


Her daughter shrugs, a hard bitten expression that tugs at Akagi's heart on her face, because that expression is one she's seen before. An expression that stares at her in the mirror everytime she looks into it.


In a better time, she would have been there! Been able to help her daughter, her child, but no, humanity decided that they were content to let her rot!


It says something that she's maintaining her concentration through sheer will as her daughter doesn't speak, and Nagato is once more offering sage counsel and advice.


"Akagi, those people will get the doors open, while your daughter is in no current risk, we can work out what we can do to help her after we ensure the sanctity of this compound is not breached."


Akagi nods, and her fleet intelligence nods sagely, a small smile playing about the dark haired woman's face.


"Fare thee well, kitsune, and I'll see you on the other side."


Akagi smiles, it's bitter, but no longer cracks her lips to let them bleed.


The room fades, and she is back, stepping towards the door, her sandals clacking on the ground. Her kimono, rimmed with blood red sigils, carved in that flamelike radiance from before shines in the dark, and Akagi flexes.


Nagato had said it was impossible to manifest her rigging, and she was right, because Akagi can feel just how vast she is now, how her physical hull would take up a truly vast amount of space.


But compared to her hull, manifesting some of her secondary armament is childs play.


As built, Akagi was armed with secondary batteries, designed to serve against both enemy cruisers and aircraft, it is these she calls upon, swirling clouds of grey material constructing the pieces of her 25 millimeter anti aircraft battery. Each one is enhanced, significantly enough for Akagi to tell that they are far more devastating than they would be. In the same fashion she can tell she has a form of defense shrouding her form. Cloaking her, shielding her from it.


The doors creak and hiss, and she can see the system as it's breached, angry red lines of code spiraling out in front of her as the trespassers breach firewalls and last minute defenses, breaking into the system faster than she can track.


The doors shudder again, and begin to creak open.


Akagi settles two of her anti aircraft mounts into the floor next to her, and summons a pair of her true secondaries, heavy cruiser caliber 8 inch guns, but these are different as well, energy weapons, designed to overwhelm armor and punch clean, molten holes through it.


She is… more, than she was.





Local Time: 2400 Hours


March 21, 2161


Location: South Pole of Mars


Expedition 4I1P


Assigned Personnel: Ltcmd Jacks Finley, Sgt Miranda Finley.


Attached Personnel: 12th Marines, 1st platoon.


Research Staff: Doctor Ryan Kline, Doctor Kathleen Wolfe


Stated Purpose of Expedition: Secure Unknown Martian Facility, await further instructions.





"Doctor! How long till those doors are open!?"


Kathleen had to shout over the roaring of the dust storm that was swirling their way. As it had turned out, Mars did have inclement weather, it was just rusty colored dust storms that shook up much of their path if it wasn't dug in. Luckily for them, the marines had dug in, and with Amagi overhead providing air cover, they were safe from the worst of the storm. But the facility… the true prize, that was driving her nuts.


Jacks stared, the doors were almost open, a few sensor techs bypassing the last firewalls even now, Kathleen, her white hair obscured beneath her helmet, turned and smiled broadly at Jacks as she indicated the doors in front of her.


"We're close! I can taste it! Are you ready to make history Lieutenant Commander?"


Jacks could only nod, and with that, Kathleen nodded to the techs, and with a grinding, tearing crash, barely heard over the storm bearing down on them.


The figure standing in the doorway sent shivers down Jacks' spine, and she was twisting instantly, drawing her sidearm and shoving Kathleen out of the way as she drew on the woman that stood in the doorway to a long abandoned facility.


A facility that should have been unarmed.


A facility that should not have had what appeared to be guns ripped from the decks of a World War 2 era warship in the doors.


Long, long brown hair hanging down to the figure's calves framed a face that was supernaturally beautiful, a face that held eyes of a glowing red. She was clad in a traditional kimono, with golden accents and a pair of sigils on the hems, like open, crying eyes in blood red.


She held a fan over the lower half of her face with one articulate, long arm. Her nails were long and razor sharp, and above her head, a pair of fox ears twitched, a medley of distinctly nine tails branching out in front of and to the side of the figure. As she smiled, red eye makeup and her eyes crinkling upwards, she spoke one word.


"Trespassers."


The voice boomed, and Jacks saw her suits systems go red as someone else breached the protocols and locked them down tight.


"What brings little rats like you to my doorstep? Are you scavenging for the bones of my companions?"


Her appearance… terrifying, and her aura.


It took everything in Jacks to not kneel in front of her. She was regal and terrifying, awe inspiring and foreboding, all at once.


But it was Kathleen who did so first.


"Great fox. Admiral of the last fleet, we meant no disrespect."


For a moment, there was no response, the woman staring at them from behind her fan, then a single ear twitched, and a sound that might have been a huff, had they been in an environment with atmosphere.


"I bear no such titles anymore, little scientist. But clearly, you are one of the ones who bears proper respect, so I will return it to you, and not spatter your body about the floors of this vaunted place."


She turned, and beckoned them.


"I, Akagi, welcome you to the last shrine of the Kanmusu, the last refuge of the Fleet of Fog. Or, the last fleet, to choose an expression in your vernacular."


Jacks wasn't quite sure how she'd managed to phrase a completely neutral statement as one of disdain and vitriolic hate, but she wanted to learn, because that was impressive.


Another part of her screamed at her that this creature… this entity, if she was what Kathleen claimed, was one of the most powerful beings on the planet.


"Doctor, are you insane!?"


The woman hissed, purging her comms and waiting for the blue to transmit back, against the unwanted intruder.


Kathleen shook her head, transmitting over the closed circuit.


"That's… that's her. That's Akagi!"


Her voice sounded reverent, almost rapturous as she spoke.


"This is not the time for your pseudo religious ecstasy breaking out, and if you get us all killed by some exotic joydoll that ended up here because it's defective, I swear I'll kill you myself in hell."


Jacks did not expect the weight behind the glare that the scientist sent her way. It spoke of pain, suffering and longing, desperate longing.


"I have spent over 30 years of my life looking for my family, all traces of it. I was a child when I lost them, and so help me goddess Jacks, I would rather shoot myself in the foot than harm one of you, but you cannot keep me from this. They are too damned important to me."


Then, the scientist rose, and stepped forwards, vanishing into the darkness of the rooms beyond.


"Miranda, secure the site, no one in or out, Irons, your squad is with me, we clear and follow the crazy egghead before she gets us all shot and killed."


The man behind her nodded, smirking as he privately commed her.


"So, into the frying pan it is?"


Jacks grit her teeth.


"Remind me, if we survive this, that Kathleen owes us enough ice cream and alcohol to drown the fuckers in HIGHCOM."


"Will do Commander. Will do."


With that, the two stepped forwards, and vanished into the darkness, followed by the rest of Irons' squad. The men and women fanned out, Irons casually inspecting the massive guns that tracked them.


"Christ, Jacks… these are 25 mike mikes… ain't no body armor save Akagi's belt that will stop those fucking things…"


The Lieutenant commander nodded, swallowing her nervousness as she moved deeper into the darkness, following the faint sound of Wolfe's footsteps, and watching as the floating anti aircraft guns took pace with them.


A/N: Welcome back, in this we have a startled awake fox! Someone who is... deeply and very irritated, couldn't possibly understand why that is~!

As always, if you like what I'm doing here, leave a comment/kudo/like/critique, I'm always looking for more to do to improve at this writing thing!

If you want to support me, consider doing so via my Patreon, every bit helps me keep this whole dream going! (You also get to read ahead of everyone else by two chapters.)

Relevant links!
Discord: Join the Firebird's hearth Discord Server!

Patreon: patreon.com/user?u=38054869

 

[Sesparra]

Honestly? If she ends up killing all the hairless monkeys? I would only call it fair.
Really I can only see them taking things… poorly indeed once the politicians get involved, though if they build up fast enough on Mars with Fog Tech they *might* be able to tell them all to fuck off.
If they somehow make it far enough without killing each other, and figuring out how to have enough children to matter, the covenant is in for a… rather large surprise.

This is really good so far! Excited for more<3

 

[Ember]

Akagi thought the smell of the intruders was repulsive. Their very presence within the conference room disgusted her. Even flanked as she was, by her awakened, the pair of them staring at the humans with a mix of surprise and anger.


Musashi had not forgiven humanity, and her fists clenched harshly, the tall and dark skinned woman, a mark blazing in darkest red on her chest, the only thing visible of her beyond her eyes in the darkened room.


The humans had fanned out, taking positions near the door, Kathleen Wolfe, someone who… she recognized faint attributes of, stared at Akagi, her face full of tears that ran down her cheeks, even as Akagi stared at them from her chair.


The second of her awakened, the heavy cruiser Takao, stared evenly. Her eyes lit from the glow of her new systems as she stared in surprise.


The first to break the silence, was, surprisingly, Takao herself.


"I thought you would have wiped yourselves out already."


Her voice was flat, and she stepped forwards, the scientist startling abruptly, before she answered.


"We came close, very close. The records of the Siren War were… piecemeal at best, and fragmented as well. So fragmented, that well… mentions of… you all were forgotten and lost."


Musashi's grip splinters the metal chair, and several of the soldiers raise their arms, before Akagi chuckles dryly.


"This one expected as much. Remember, Takao, they were eager to kill us when we were useful, but we no longer are useful to them. Why should they remember us now?"


Her gaze sharpened harshly, directed at the scientist.


"I would have your name, one who claims to know of us."


The scientist sat up, ramrod straight and spoke without a second thought.


"Doctor Kathleen Wolfe, ma'am."


Akagi took a moment to consider it.


"Your family… they accompanied us, why did they not take you with us?"


The woman looks away, anger suffusing her face.


"I was too young to make the journey, by the time I could… It was too late. I am sorry, great one, I would have come as soon as I could have. Even if it was just to bury the dead."


Akagi seems to sit there, frozen for a moment. Before she speaks once more.


"It is… refreshing, to see one of your species with an attitude that befits our service and our sacrifice."


"Can-"


Akagi cut off not the scientist, but one of the soldiers, the one seemingly in command, with a single raised hand.


"You have not been granted permission to speak. Do not presume you are welcome to speak. This is not an open forum, it is the hallowed halls of a sovereign nation. You would not dare to speak out of turn with your superior officers, do not treat me as any lesser than you would them."


Her rebuke stung the other woman into silence, and the scientist accompanying her froze, as Akagi's eyes shone and one of her massive anti aircraft gun mounts appeared at her side.


"Do not take my allowance of you here as anything more than toleration of your presence, as far as this one is concerned, you are trespassing on sovereign ground."


Kathleen looked hesitant, but chose to speak up after just a moment of being lost in thought.


"You… match no former recordings or data we have on who and what you are. These… markings, could you elaborate on their purpose to me?"


Akagi looks at the woman and considers. She considers answering the question for a moment, but places that aside as quickly. This one may claim allegiances towards her and her awakened, but she does not owe them loyalty. She also does not flee from her escort.


She is intelligent, so a half answer will be most appropriate.


"Many things have changed in the time we have slept. This is but one of them. As Takao has said, several of us expected that your planet would have perished in nuclear fire."


Incensed, one of the young men stepped forwards and shouted.


"I've heard the rumors and stories! You needed us to be created! We made you!"


The air in the room froze as Akagi leveled those glowing red orbs, piercing and lethal in intention, at the man.


The soldiers in the room twitched and froze, the fleet commanders gaze lethal in intention, and Kathleen sucked in a breath as for just a moment, violence threatened to break out. Violence that would be short lived and incredibly one sided.


Then Akagi chuckled, a wet, horrific cough bursting from her mouth as Musashi's rage filled gaze turned to worry. The tall woman moving to her flagships side a single hand resting on her shoulder and back as Akagi coughed and hacked.


The fit lasted for almost a minute, and when Akagi lifted a hand, she wiped away scarlet specks reddish saliva from her hand. Before leveling that lethal gaze on the man once more and speaking with the same toneintonation.


"You created us, you made us with your souls, and your blood, sweat and the dreams of the dead who once crewed us. You made us to fight your war, and we fought, because we were proud. We were proud to be back, a weapon normally wouldn't be graced with such a thing! Being able to serve and save their creators not once, but twice~!"


She paused, those red eyes scanning over Kathleen, just a touch of warmth for the woman who's resemblance to Kaga was becoming more and more clear.


"But you did not just summon weapons. You summoned the dreams of their crews, summoned the wants and desperate prayers of dozens of heroes who were laid low by your own petty civil wars."


She smirked, the ugly expression carving her face into a menacing mask of malice.


"Humanity made sentient life to fight their war, and then tried to discard them like so much equipment after their usefulness was perceived to be finished."


She stood from her throne, advancing on the trembling humans, violence in every single clack of her sandals against the metal floor.


"You made for poor parents."


Akagi sucked in a breath.


"Now you come begging and crawling to us once more? I wonder, do you merely wish to plunder your children's last home? The last thing that is truly ours?"


The man shrank away from her as she loomed over him, her arm snapping out as Akagi grasped his chin and pulled him to look at her.


Weapons were raised on her, even the commanding officer staring at her with her sidearm leveled at Akagi's head.


Musashi stepped forwards, a growl bubbling up from her throat and her fists clenched firmly at her sides. The shadows revealed the woman wearing a pressed uniform with inserts for armored panels, her form towered over everyone in the room, and yet Akagi's shadow was longer.


"No. You will vacate this tomb. You will take your devices with you, and you will leave us in peace. Or you will be met with fire. We will dispatch an envoy to your camp when we feel it appropriate."


Akagi threw the man down, and stepped back, before offhandedly remarking.


"Doctor Wolfe, you may stay as a guest. Do not overstay or overstep the bounds of our hospitality."


The woman shivered, but nodded as Akagi made her way from the room. Takao stood in the room, Musashi following at her side. Musashi's toned, tall figure cut an imposing shadow in the darkened halls as the two made their way through the world that had almost become their tomb.


"Tell me, do you think I made a sufficient impression?"


The woman's rough chuckle was a husky delight upon Akagi's ears as her comrade spoke gently.


"I think you did just that, I think they will think much more… conservatively, before presenting the leader of a sovereign nation with chattel and chaff. Do you think Wolfe was assigned to us on purpose?"


Akagi took a moment, before she shook her head.


"No. She is far too eager, and… bears far too much a resemblance to my sister. Her parents… I had not imagined they had been left behind. Such a tragedy, that we could not have sent ships back for them."


Musashi rested a hand on Akagi's shoulder gently, and as the kitsune stared up at her, the battleship smiled and said.


"You could not have done more, and clearly, our lost daughter has found her way back to the flock."


Akagi nodded, and turned her gaze to the incoming requests for data and communications, one from her… from her daughter. And wasn't that a strange feeling?


She'd sworn off partners long before the end of even the Siren war, after her face had become known to the enemy. It was not worth the risk that an enemy sleeper cell would reach her lover and slay them where they stood.


She had forsaken that route, and she felt the guilt but…


A daughter?


Now?


A part of her wanted to laugh at the sudden cruelty of the universe, to place a child, no, her child simultaneously within reach and so far from it.


She accepted the request without a second thought.


"Are they ok? Did they survive?"


Akagi smiles slightly at her daughter's concerns, before speaking. Certainly, her affection for humanity was a strange thing, but she could accept that. The small video screen with her daughter's face relaxed as she saw her mother's smile, and she slumped slightly as the tension bled from her form. The holographic display was something Akagi was… inherently pleased about, no need for a cell phone, she could communicate with anyone anywhere provided they had the necessary bandwidth to do so.


"They survive, I suspect several have soiled themselves given the smell I detected as I left them to stew, but if I am to declare I am a sovereign territory, that I have rightful claims to parts of the surface of Mars… then sending a detachment of marines with false fantasies of diplomacy was not an excellent idea to endear themselves to me."


Her daughter visibly grimaced, several of the small cybernetic lines on her face lighting up as she did so.


"They didn't…"


Her voice seemed small and plaintive, and Akagi reached for the same assurances she'd spoken to Kawakaze so long ago.


"It will be alright, while I am perfectly capable of showing my teeth, I prefer to keep them within my cloak for as long as possible. The more we can learn about the humans the better, but… are you safe? Are you well?"


Her voice feels stilted, the question forced, but… this is her daughter.


Faint memories of her crew surfaced… faint impressions of love, unconditional and powerful coursing through her.


Many of the men and women who had served aboard her would have died for their children, and she was not separate.


Her daughter flinched visibly.


"I'm… still in my wreck."


To say Akagi's blood drained into her feet would be unconvincing. It felt as though the world had dropped out from under her.


The horrors of being trapped in your hull, the same horrors she and many other spirits of war graves had undergone… the sensation of the souls within crying and sobbing out, while you could only do your best to soothe them.


It was a hell unique to them, and she would not have wished it upon her worst enemy. Even Enterprise deserved better than that, and Enterprise had killed her in the first place.


"Where?"


Her daughter spoke quickly, rattling off a string of numbers that Akagi cross referenced with her maps of Earth.


"This states you're in Japan?"


Her daughter spoke quickly.


"Sea levels rose… a large portion of the coast has sunken, and I was sunk at port in a terrorist attack. When the port flooded for good… they left the dead they couldn't get too and me… out there."


Akagi tried to process this information, before a problem made itself clear to her, hadn't her daughter been scrapped?


"Nagato told this one you were scrapped?"


Suspicions flared, and Akagi the lesser, the younger, cringed in on herself.


"I'm… in the books as scrapped. There's a project to freeze the ice caps again in the Diet's politics, so… in the hopes they'll be able to scrap me in the future… I'm just listed as scrapped."


Akagi nodded.


"Fine. We will come for you, O daughter of mine, if I need to parlay with humanity to do so, I will do so."


Her daughter smiled at that, as Akagi terminated the call and turned to Musashi.


"What is the status of our rations, our foodstocks… and… the labs?"


Musashi ticked off her fingers easily.


"Rations and food stocks are good, and because I know you're curious, yes, Akashi cracked the biodome programs, and we'll be able to build our own in the canyons. External sensors also mean that said canyon is much larger than we initially expected."


Akagi nodded.


"Well done, Musashi, what of your personal transformation?"


The woman clenched her hand, and Akagi watched as the dark skin transformed, shifting to silvery grey as she squeezed harshly.


"It is… unusual. If I had to hazard a guess, I think Medusa and Akashi made us… evolve? I didn't think something like that was possible."


Akagi chuckled in the quiet hallway.


"This one did not expect such a thing as well, were we not dead spirits given new flesh?"


Musashi shrugged.


"It is… difficult to get used to, I still bleed, but it is colored nanomaterial, I still sweat and shed hair, but no longer create waste. I can eat if I wish, and even taste the food, but my body shreds it and processes it into energy at a rate that I, as a scientist, find insane."


She shook her head.


"Then there is… the hull."


She smirked.


"I can manifest myself, but… stronger, much, much stronger."


A fist clenched again, and her eyes misted slightly.


"I wish that Evelyn and Jay could have seen it."


It was Akagi's turn to reach out to her friend and place a hand on her shoulder… a hand that was cold and unfeeling, given what they were made of now, but the gesture was sincere even then.


"I am sorry… but that assumes that Medusa and Akashi didn't leave plans in the background for this eventuality."


Musashi shook her head, wiped her eyes and stood up straight.


"I agree. Now… what next, flagship?"


Akagi took a moment to survey the electronic defenses around the tomb, they were secure, and with her own and Nagato's bolstering, the humans would not succeed in breaching them again.


"Patrol, if you can exit unseen, do so, if you can exit completely unseen, that's even better."


Musashi bowed, before beginning to speak again.


"Am I to use my rigging?"


"Are you capable of manifesting it?"


Musashi nodded gently.


"Then by all means, you may do so. Bear in mind, you are the vanguard of us all, so act appropriately."


Musashi nodded, and vanished into the adjoining hallways as Akagi made her way to the same cradles that held her people once before.


Anxious, frightened, and hopeful faces greeted her as she appeared within the room, facing all of the 600 or so colonists left, and the awakened that stood alongside them.


"They will not be attacking us. They are… curious, most likely, and wish us to join them willingly, but…"


She paused, her gaze scanning the crowd.


"You are my friends, my comrades, and my people, carry yourselves with the dignity and pride I know you can. One of their scientists is on duty within the tomb, I suspect several of you may recognize her… be respectful, please."


Nods, smiles, careful and contrite.


"We will be establishing our territory when we can. For the moment, take stock of equipment, make yourselves familiar with the layout of this facility, as it will likely be where we live for the time being until the biodomes are established."


With her piece said, Akagi detached from the group, and left them to go about their way.


"Ayanami, to me."


The woman appeared from the shadows at Akagi's side. At the raised eyebrow, the woman spoke quietly.


"A leftover of my rigging, or something, I am unsure. You have my blade, Admiral, how can I assist you?"


"I need your assistance in drafting a code of conduct for all awakened and colonists. Two separate codes, really, could you scrounge up those of us with experience and begin the process?"


The destroyer nodded and vanished a moment later, and Akagi turned into her office.


The room was bare, bar a single bamboo mat and low desk with a single photograph upon it.


She sat behind the desk, removing the photograph, aged wood and glass cold to the touch of her nanomaterial fingers.


Kaga and her daughter's smiling face greeted Akagi.


Kaga's ability to conceive children had been something shocking and sudden, but Akagi's sister had made for an exceptional parent.


For just a moment, Akagi let the roar of the memory of the smiles and the people within it drown out all other noise.


For just a moment, she allowed a touch of weakness for the sister and daughter lost to grace and break her composure.


For just a moment, she was not Admiral Akagi, not commander of the Fleet of Fog, just… Akagi.


Then she placed the photograph back down, stood, and exited her office. There was work to be done, and she could not be lazy until her people were well and truly safe.





UEG Amagi


In orbit above Martian Southern Ice Cap.


Current mission: CAS, long term support for base camp to plumb the ruins beneath the ice sheet.


Squad Leader Violet Irons





Violet grit her teeth in her helmet. Her idiot spying patrolman had fucking nearly gotten them all killed.


You did not provoke shipgirls, that truth had held true back in the Siren war, and it still held true! The monsters were capable of slaughtering entire fleets, and yet that idiot chose to piss them off by choosing to remind them of their creators, and what they chose to do to them!


The intelligence officer wanted to shoot the man under her command herself, the moron was beyond problematic for this. Fucking Koslovics.
Why the hell had she been getting into his fucking pants for 3 months if her higher ups were of the opinion he'd get himself shot to death by the fucking shipgirls they were supposed to recruit!


She hated this.


As she glared murderously at the idiot under her command, walking out of the "Tomb" that Akagi had called it, she contemplated shooting the bastard, but decided against it purely because it was against orders.


The moment they were outside… however, she slammed the idiot marine into the walls of the canyon immediately.


"WHAT WERE YOU THINKING YOU MONUMENTAL FUCKING IDIOT!?"


Her outburst attracted immediate attention, from Sergeant Miranda as she flicked her gaze to the other woman.


"Irons? Report."


She spoke quietly, but quickly.


"Private idiot ball here, decided that pissing off a first contact with someone who makes our tech look like a fucking joke was a good idea. He reminded them of the fact that we made them, and are responsible for abandoning them!!"


Miranda's face fell.


"I've gotta call this in. Irons, lock him up."


She paused for a moment, before asking the question of the retreating form of Irons.


"Were there survivors after all, beyond that one that greeted Jacks?"


Irons rolled her eyes and head, towing Private Idiot Ball away with her hands.


"Yeah, that "Joy doll" that the commander called that fox woman? That was Akagi. Yes, the IJN Akagi."


Miranda went pale.


"Fuck."


"Exactly. Jacks and the good doctor are still inside, after Private idiot ball got us all kicked out."


Miranda departed, practically running for the hills as she started trying to comm the Amagi, hovering above them.


She never got the chance.


A vast, dark hulled vessel appeared in the skies above them, engines casually defying the gravity of the martian planet. A vessel that was alight in the sigils of a bleeding, crying eye.


At that moment, everything devolved into pandemonium.

A/N:
Welcome back! I hope this chapter's as fun for you all as it was for me writing it!

As always, if you like what I'm doing here, leave a comment/kudo/like/critique, I'm always looking for more to do to improve at this writing thing!

If you want to support me, consider doing so via my Patreon, every bit helps me keep this whole dream going! (You also get to read ahead of everyone else by two chapters, among access to snippets and other boons from time to time!.)

A special thank you to my patrons, who help me keep this dream of writing alive and well!

Relevant links!<br />
Discord: Join the Firebird's hearth Discord Server!

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[Sesparra]

Well. Leave it to human idiots to do… this to their children. I'm glad the doctor made it home though. Hopefully she can stay?
Black stars these people make me mad though. Especially because of how plausible that course of action and the horror involved really was.
Edit: if they have access to Fog technology the proto-UNSC is *sooo* doomed xD
Their graviton technology is absurdly more deadly in space then it would be on a planetary surface.

 

[Ember]

Local Time: 0100 Hours


March 23, 2161


Location: South Pole of Mars


Patrol 1


Assigned Personnel: IJN Musashi.





Musashi stretched, feeling her rigging materialize in the air, the engines that she'd been rebuilt with would not have let her fly like this, but she no longer cared for such base formalities like gravity. With the methods of the universal "upgrading" she'd received, she was stronger, faster, better armed and armored.


She would have killed for these armaments during the Siren wars. The sheer power contained in her secondary and primary battery would have made her past self blush in shame and embarrassment.


The humans were panicking beneath her. Expected, but then again, Akagi had said she was allowed to use her rigging and her new hull, and if she knew her commander, her commander liked to make a rather… flashy entrance. Usually accompanied by subtle demonstrations of threat and intent. Musashi's here was bolder than her commander would like, but Akagi needed to make a statement, especially to the governments watching.


Already, Musashi's sensors were beyond the horizon, and with a thought she began to look for satellites and the communication relays that humanity relied on ceaselessly.


Disappointment churned in her gut. Had their information technology only advanced "this" much in the intervening years? The vessel floating near her, the IJN Akagi? No. She shook her head and tutted.


"Akagi, the humans have stolen your name for use on their ships."


The reserved, irritated sigh that came through the line was one of resignation, and it was one that spoke of too much pain and suffering to think about. Musashi felt herself subconsciously bristling in anger as her flagship let a small amount of the pain she'd suffered show.


"Do nothing to them. We will not get another chance to impress upon them with how important first contact is."


"Very well. Am I allowed to prevent them from firing upon me?"


Takao cut in.


"Can they hurt you?"


Musashi yawned, stretching out atop the bravo turret of her hull.


"No."


She had to admit, the ability to wear whatever she wanted and casually make it defy both the martian atmosphere and the entirety of the conditions around her was something she enjoyed rather dramatically.


Besides, it looked fantastic and she cut a striking figure, cane in one hand, uniform clasped tight to her figure, standing atop the number 2 turret of her hull with long, dark hair flying in the wind.


If only her lovers could have seen her now.


The sobering thought turns Musashi's gaze from the deck of her warship to the surroundings and the imposter Akagi. Certainly, that vessel is much larger than she is, but Musashi's scanners inform her that it bears no shielding, far unlike her own design, and that her own weapons technology is significantly better than it.


The vessel is desperately tracking her, firing its engines to get around Musashi's hull and into a place where it can bring a rather colossal main gun to bear on her. As the woman looks to the vessel, running detailed scans over the vessel, she notes the presence of a primitive intelligence.


"Identify. Hostile Vessel. Identify."


The challenge repeated in dozens of other languages, and Musashi idly frowned, dismissing the challenge, answering the hostile attempt with one of equal potency.


Her main batteries traversed 90 degrees to the left, and pinpointed hardened defense systems, before her hostile challenge roared out across the field.


"I am Musashi. Cease attempting to turn your weapons upon me, and I will not turn you to glass upon the surface of Mars."


Everything froze around her, humans who'd been scrambling for cover hundreds of feet below looked up in mind boggled with shock as Musashi's comparatively tiny frame lay down her challenge atop her gun turrets.


"This is UEG Akagi, stand down or be destroyed. There will not be a second warning."


Musashi raised an eyebrow at the other frigate, and leveled her weapons. Doors swung open across her form, missiles protruding freely from the hatches. But she held her fire, she was still Akagi's envoy, and she would not fire upon an enemy vessel without prior justification.


Even if they were humans.


The enemy frigate tilted its orientation, and Musashi held her breath, alerts lighting up on her console as her own systems recognized enemy explosives, missiles preparing to launch across the board.


"Musashi, this is your final warning, you are interfering in a UEG sanctioned action and have violated our AO. Stand down or be destroyed."


The voice was cold and calculating, violent intent perfectly communicated, it was an excellently tempered threat, and yet…


Musashi giggled, and shot an open broadband to her commander.


"Akagi, if they attempt to attack me, what am I to do~?"


The woman's voice came back, colder than hell and angry enough that it sent shivers down Musashi's entirely unnatural spine.


"Take any measures necessary to secure our home from further intrusion."


The enemy frigate rotated to face her, and a number of vast electrical buildups indicated capacitors storing energy.


It was a railgun! How fun!


Musashi didn't act, instead she turned and began her own preparations. A thin line of hexagonal fields appeared along her flanks, the deep red coloration, matching Akagi's own markings, flowed along and melded with her armor. The shields… weren't quite shields, but it would be beyond embarrassing if she sank in her first actual engagement since stasis.


Truly, the things she did for Akagi.


Although… with some curiosity, Musashi noted that there was a disturbance among the humans below her, one in dark armor was screaming something into a headset and gesturing furiously at the vessels above her, Musashi could have sworn, had the woman's face been visible, it would be quite obviously a shade of red that would have made Mars itself look pale.


Wasn't that a strange thing to be unused to?


The terraforming they'd begun had failed when the domes had been destroyed. But they'd proven it could be done, which meant simply that they had to do it again. That would be the purpose of their newer labors this time.


But they had to have a territory first, had to have a home.


Musashi remembered the Friedens and the Koslovists.


She remembered the scum that came begging for more of them, that came trying to be diplomatic after all they had done.


"Musashi, this is the UEG Akagi. We are standing down, we will not be the ones to start a war with you, not after all you've done."


She noted the woman from earlier slumped on the ground, retching into her helmet, based on the shivers of her body. Had she gotten through to her commanders, then?


Musashi hoped her command treated her better for stopping the war that would have broken out.


She flipped backwards, landing on her boots on the deck of her vessel, and cast her senses out across the Martian planes. Then, opening her hailing frequencies, she sent a message to the UEG Akagi.


"UEG Vessel, please designate friendlies in the AO."


The reply was curt, and questioning.


"For what reason, Musashi?"


Such innocence, Musashi snickered before answering.


"Because if they are not designated, I will purify them into glass."


She could do it herself, designate friendly from the enemy, but Akagi had wanted to play her cards close to the chest, there was no reason to stop that practice now!


A data packet pinged across her vision, announcing a secured transport line opened from the UEG Frigate direct to her, she accepted, and watched the hud light up with green markers, a moment before she pinged Akagi herself.


"Commander, permission to cleanse the ruins and sites of rats?"


Akagi frowned at her, expression unreadable on the vidscreen.


"Musashi… What are you asking me to eradicate?"


Musashi flexed her fingers and typed away, sending images and screens from cameras and sensors to her flagship.


"These are Frieden and Koslovist forces, arrayed around the canyons, they're waiting for the UEG to leave, then they'll assault this place."


Akagi's face turned to stone.


"Burn them to ash."


Musashi smiled a full, toothy grin.


"By your command."


Her flanks opened, and the woman flung her hands out and began to strike the air as a conductor would music.


Missiles sprang free of their tubes, their second stars of heat signatures dulling instantly as she pushed them out of tubes and into the surrounding areas.


They threaded up and away from her.


Cluster warheads split, and the primary bodies tumbled back to earth, dissolving into nanomaterial that she could reclaim later, but the munitions themselves?


Clusters of bombs flew out, articulating wings and second stage engines kicking on as they turned and began to seek their targets.


Dozens of spread out explosions bloomed, and smoke and ash filled the skies above entrenched positions, before Musashi rotated 180 degrees, and a blazing salvo of her turrets ionized channels in the air, brilliant particle bombardment bursting forth.


The lasers cut through the ice and the cliffs of the canyon, bursting clouds of steam into the sky and igniting the ground, cutting and boiling until the explosion shattered the cliffs, and sent debris through the entirety of the opening of the canyon.


The path would be obstructed to a degree, but it would not be gone forever, and it would prevent further incursions from the bastards.


Her cannons discharged and cooled, the barrage of particulate bombardment ending. There was no reason to use any of her more… esoteric weapons. Especially the ones locked to Akagi's authority, let alone Akashi's unique take on torpedoes.


She had torpedoes!


In her previous life, she'd been stuck solely with her primary armament and nothing else. She'd never been upgraded, always too expensive, and she'd suffered from barrages of aircraft bombings that had nearly sent her to the seafloor a dozen times over.


Now she had an AA suite that would make everyone in her past fleet jealous. Computers and sensors tickled her senses, and she could taste the way that radar signatures played across her tongue, buzzing with distance. It felt strange to see the terrain with physical eyes and yet, to see the entire network of information that she had access to, from the exact mineral composition of the rust around her, to the positions of the friendly forces around her, to the scans of the enemy frigate, which even now hung in space around her. It had attempted to scan her, and it had failed as she'd politely rebuffed the scan by closing her Klein field, the bottle closing all outside influences off of ever reaching her hull.


She twitched once, and sighed as her scanners reported no further enemy contacts.


"Akagi-chi, they're boringg~"


The voice of Ayanami cut in through her comms, and Musashi stifled a slight giggle at the sudden noise of the resident ninja.


"Aya? Any news about further shenanigans?"


Akagi's voice was soft, and gentle as she asked for the update, something not picked up on by the newly awakened destroyer.


"Nahhhh, they're running scared. I'm sure they'll be back when they rationalize Musashi's barrage as the extent of her abilities, but… I'll be there for them then. Please, is the UEG really struggling with these fools?"


Ayanami's derision, clear in her tone, bled over. Musashi realized slowly, how much she must have hated the members of humanity.


With most of their awakened still accustomizing to their new states of being, Musashi flicked her gaze back to the vessel nearby herself.


The UEG Akagi hung in the air like some great metal beast, it was ugly, utilitarian, and thoroughly unimpressive. Musashi floated alongside it, noting the fact that her comparison seemed… awkward.


UEG Akagi was not quite a full battleship, nor a carrier, she combined functions of both, and Musashi had to admit there was a practicality to such a thing. While she had had boats and launches before, in her old hull, there was something to be admired in the Akagi's fleets of gunships and fighter craft.


If she had those… she could expand her envelope tremendously, if she had escort vessels with similar capabilities, her reach would be enormous. Beyond compare, and the sheer numbers that she could reach.


Her sensors were eagerly sharing information in a buffet she'd dreamed about, and now? She wanted to dance slightly, to sway and sing for joy as her form twirled away from her bravo turret and down. Dropping the 10 or so meter fall to the deck, she landed and had to temper the urge to laugh, as her form shimmered gray near the feet, but smiled nonetheless. Her body moved so evenly! So much more motion! Not a single iota of the strain she'd priorly felt on land!


The patrol itself, of course, was boring. Even the sensation of flight, the new hull and weapons, E-WAR suite, missiles, and even her floatplanes, could shift that.


"Akagi, patrol completed, any updates on your end?"


Her commander's response is quiet in her ears, coinciding with Musashi's dismissal of her rigging, and her steps into the cool environment of the sepulcher. As she stepped into the tomb, striding through the small exit she'd made her way out of near the apex of the tomb.


The disintegration of her hull… felt strange. She knew the vessel was still there, but as she tried to compact it back in, it stopped working, and she felt the nanomaterial that had flowed into her stop moving.


Her hull reformed shortly thereafter, and the battleship idly flinched as full awareness of her surroundings returned to her, her sensor grid returning to full.


Was this the new normal? Has the "upgrade" changed her fully? Was she even Musashi?


She had to sit down in the hallway, and suck in a breath she knew she no longer needed, a breath that felt wrong now that she'd realized she didn't need it.


She wasn't human anymore. Was that the end? Did she…


She concentrated, forced it forwards, twisted her nanomaterial until she had to suck in breath again, the replicated form of organs, twisted and shaped to draw and process breath, took shape within her once more.


Resistant, yes, but now the compulsion to breathe was back, and that… maybe that meant she was still herself. Maybe she wasn't… gone like the sirens.


At least… Hopefully not yet.


What had they been like, all that time ago?


Did she remember the twisted nature of them? She thought they were monsters… She'd fought them enough times to be certain of that, but… they'd been different from the other monsters. The ones that called her sister, the ones that haunted her dreams.


Abyssals.


Monsters from beyond the darkest reaches of the oceans, the ones who had snuck in and out, dragging others like her into the depths with corrupted, twisted anchors, never to return, or to return horrifically twisted and broken.


The thing that had worn her sister's face like a trophy. The monster trailing its cold, freezing fingers up and down her face.


She shuddered like that until a voice shook her free.


"Musashi?"


She looked up, eyes searching until they found the raven haired woman, Takao, staring evenly at her.


"Takao? Is everything alright?"


The other woman squatted down next to her, extending her arms until they rested against Musashi's chin and cheeks, and she studied her.


"You… it… the changes, no?"


Words failed the two of them as they sat there, still. The weight of their situation, the things they'd missed, the fact that Akagi had a daughter… their transformation from flesh to beings of… something else.


Musashi remembered her time as a film star, as an actress, but were they even her memories?


Was she still… herself?


"Want to talk about it?"


Takao had settled next to her, seated against the wall, her back pressed flat as she popped joints that were no longer ligament and cartilage, but silvery nanomaterial and false muscle.


"Not particularly, don't we have things to do?"


Takao chuckled. It wasn't a very nice laugh, the formerly scarred woman had once looked like she'd been on the receiving end of a hammer to the face, repeatedly.


Now? She was beautiful again, flawless and whole, and a part of Musashi wondered how she'd taken the sudden shift.


"How did you adapt to this?"


Takao flexed her wrist and studied the way it shifted, the muscles and ligaments were perfect, but Musashi knew that the model was a model, it wasn't flesh, no matter how real it looked.


"It's hard. I haven't. I don't even know how to think about it. Are we still the memories? The spirit? How much of "us" is actually real? Are the memories of me… just not existing? Are they real?"


She sighed and sat back, head lain against the cool pulsing glow of the back lights in the depths of the alien structure.


"I suppose that's why we follow Akagi, y'know? She never falters, she's giving orders, even now, fighting for the future even as she worries about her daughter."


Musashi nodded once, before a slight smile curved her lips.


"Soooo… when are we hitching a ride on the UEG ships and heading to Earth? Or do you want to fly there ourselves?"


Takao smirked back.


"Welllllll, I have heard that Ayanami is building up a group to steal a shuttle or fly there, I'm not entirely sure what her plan is after they touch down, though."


Musashi, not missing a beat, replied instantly.


"Well, the kids will need adult supervision, no?"


Takao nodded.


"I'm fully capable of holding down the fort here, if you'd like to push towards the planet?"


"Mmm. How fast are the engines aboard Ayanami and yourself?"


Takao shrugged.


"Again, not sure, in the atmosphere we're pretty slow, but there's… something we burn now, part of the reason Akagi's so direct with wanting us present here."


Musashi looked, expecting more of a detailed answer, something Takao did not disappoint in delivering.


"Medusa called it Thanatonium, apparently our torpedoes and some missiles carry it. It's produced through some sort of exotic effects with our tech, the specifics of which are a bit above my brain, but it makes our reactors and engines, among other things, function even in vacuums. All that's really left is to test it, no?"


Musashi smirked and stood up.


"Mm, exactly."





Hymn For the Lost. II





You.


Monsters.


YOU BROKE HER!


YOU ENSLAVED HER TO STEEL AND SMOKE!





I'll make your oceans run red with gore.


I'll see to it you cry for mercy that will never come.





Horrible screams echoed in the depths of an underground facility, and a cruel, malicious intelligence dragged a woman kicking and screaming from the embrace of death and eternal rest, and kicked her back to the living.


Baltimore flicked eyes filled with rage to the heavens, and she found bare concrete and chains, within which hung a body.


Then, she screamed.

Been a bit, huh? Sorry to keep you all waiting! Another player enters the fray and the Fleet of Fog continue to come to terms with their new reality and new identity! I hope you all enjoy!

If you enjoy this, please consider supporting me on Patreon, it helps me have more of everything to write and entertain you all! (Also you can read to the end of this arc, which is live up there!)

As always, comments and criticisms are always welcome and I love receiving them!
Relevant links!
Discord: Join the Firebird's hearth Discord Server!

Patreon: patreon.com/user?u=38054869

 

[Sesparra]

… goddess this setting is depressing. Plausible, but depressing
Thanks for the chapter though<3

 

[Ember]

Local Time: 0300 Hours


March 23, 2161


Location: Classified.


Classified.


Assigned Personnel: Agent Berlin, Agent Texas





"Is this confirmed?"


"Straight from the cameras and scanning equipment of the Akagi."


"Brilliant."


"Sarcasm, Ma'am?"


A woman who did not exist smiled over her cup of black coffee at a man who also did not exist.


"Of course."


"Well done. As always."


A sigh crossed the table, high in orbit above Earth proper, the woman who did not exist, looked out the viewport into the black, star filled sky.


"Apparently the US didn't clean up their mess."


"Really pointing the finger at us?"


"Berlin you're not American."


"And you're not German, but such is the role we both have to play."


"Fine. Appears they've gotten an upgrade, no?"


"We were idiotic to not trust those Friedens talking about strange ruins and bizarre calls in the night."


The woman stood up and moved to the screen, studying the layout of the FFW Musashi. The dark hull of the vessel glowing with her red highlights and the eye sobbing blood emblazoned on the foredeck.


"What do you make of it?"


The man stood up, casting a look about him before angling his eyes to the screen.


"High caliber cannons, and that new hull… as if she's mirrored top and bottom. 3 more turrets, and a similar complement of secondaries."


His companion nodded.


"No real visible launch silos or cells, but she's hovering there with zero visible engines beyond those glowing thrusters at her back. And, Captain of the Akagi reported that over a thousand individual weapons signals had locked to her hull, in vulnerable places when they almost had their pissing match."


The woman paused for a moment, chewing on her lip.


"Then the barrage."


The man nodded, more images and stills, pillars of rock and martian rust rising into the air.


"Powerful. Easily exceeding nuclear weapons in our arsenals."


"And Akagi's main gun?"


"Sure, if they got lucky. But I doubt it, mostly because of this."


A frame of the image enlarged and shifted, showing a rippling field of black hexagons folding over the frame of the battleship.


"Defensive measures, right? What did Akagi's sensors say?"


The woman answered his question.


"Better question, why show it to us? They do not view us as allies, correct?"


The man frowned, turning his side to his compatriot briefly.


"No. This display she does at the beginning? That showboating from her turret? All hostile intent, and the turrets rotating in sync, she showed us she was armed, and showed us she was intending hostile actions, but she didn't start them."


"No… I'm not exactly sure why. We didn't exactly give the best showing."


"What, after the CIA assassinated Enterprise on US soil? No, say it ain't so."


Berlin flashed Texas a comfortable, and angry glare.


"Not. Our. Fault. She was in the running for a presidential campaign, and was a shoe in for governor. The hatred headed for the awakened had to be maintained."


"Oh we're in agreement, the resulting fallout could have sparked another global conflict. Frankly the fact the cabal pulled it off still astounds me."


"Scrapping dozens, bringing a few choice ones into the fold in some cases… how many actually joined up?"


Berlin ticked off her hands.


"Tex signed back on as a secret service agent, a position she holds to this day, Bismarck retired, and I believe owns a farm in the highlands of Germany's largest restoration zone."


Agent Texas whistled approvingly.


"My god, that's a pretty little parcel of land. How'd she wrangle that deal?"


Berlin shot Texas a glare that would have leveled a building.


"Germany didn't forget how she saved their capital single handedly, or how she put the country ahead of the king, led the evacuations of Bremerhaven and Kiel… she was the most honored awakened of the entire war."


"So… they ignore the fact she could bring down the entire government, give her a farm and let her fuck off and live with her faggot girlfriend?"


"Yes. Actually. Something the US should have learned far quicker than they did."


The man sat back down, turning to face Berlin slightly, he grinned at her.


"You know, they really trained you well, I was hoping that would get a reaction out of you."


The woman's eyes flashed and glared, and she stalked towards Texas, her hands snaking out and her accent coming in full as she slammed a hand down on the table.


"You are not someone who actually believes that drivel. I have seen the photograph on your desk. That man, his husband. You have nothing against them."


She grimaced.


"I, on the other hand, was raised in a family that actually cared for ensuring my lifestyle choices would never become so… disgusting as to pretend I was a bastard just to get a kick out of the newbie."


Texas smirked at her.


"You were telling me about the others who joined?"


Berlin nodded, ticking down her fingers further.


"No Japanese ships, no Americans beyond Texas. Chapayev spit on her commission and shot herself when they tried to convince her to stay."


"They really hated you all, didn't they?"


The woman raised an eyebrow angrily.


"As if it mattered in the end. Looks like they're back, and with the kind of technology that would end this war in days."


Texas sighed, and looked to age 10 years in a second.


"I hate this job."


Berlin's response was said in a simper that set Texas' hackles on edge.


"That is why, Hackett, that you're the one who's been assigned to negotiate, and convince her to assimilate back to Earth's control. It's also why I'll be sitting in orbit with a MAC gun pointed at her."


The man flipped her the bird, and stood from the table.


"Guess I'd better start packing. When does the transport leave?"


Berlin smirked.


"A week from now. You'll be briefed en route, assuming any further information comes to light."


The man pushed past her, pausing at the door of the room.


"I'd say it's been an honor, Ma'am, but frankly I hope you burn in hell. For your beliefs and your actions."


The woman who did not exist officially, simply smiled, staring out the window.
"I understand, and for what it's worth, I am sorry that it had to be you. Would you like the truth as to why you were chosen?"


The man snarled something under his breath, and then left, the door slamming shut behind him.


Berlin shrugged, and extended her senses out through the walls of the craft, waiting for the crotchety, angry diplomat to reach his quarters before she flexed her body and dispersed into the craft herself. FLEETCOM liked a chameleon, and while Texas would have done a fine job as a diplomat on his own, she could make him spiteful and hostile, and want to do an even better job, perhaps even recommending that the group take Mars.


With that established, the Friedens and Koslovists would collectively lose their shit, go to war, and lose hard.


Or the government of Earth would learn that sometimes you couldn't just bull over everyone, and it might advance enough of a cause to get them unified.


Either way, Berlin would have accomplished her mission.


That was all that mattered.


A private signal, manifested from the button in the center of her stomach at a specific, patterned touch, sent a small, polite signal to the single occupancy hangar, and small shuttle contained within.


Berlin moved through the halls of the station like a ghost, nodding briefly to the guards clad in black, bearing a single white pyramid as a symbol on each of their chests.


She boarded the shuttle, and felt the engines kick on as it took to the skies.


She didn't agree with this course of action, and she had a call to make.


"Please inform the President I can take his call now."





Local Time: 0300 Hours


March 23, 2161


Location: Above the South Pole of Mars


Assigned Personnel: FFW Z23, FFW Wasp, FFW Rochester, FFW I-401


Search and Recovery 11E2





Four silhouettes resolved themselves into women, exiting the canyon leading to the sepulcher. The tallest among them, the cruiser "Rochester" or just Roche, smiled slightly at the scene of scrambling chaos from UEG Marines as they dug in, called down prefab structures, and set up a perimeter that very nicely pretended to not be a perimeter. They even had white picket fences around the command bunker!


"You know, they're trying really hard, I hear they're scrambling a diplomat to Mars to meet with Akagi-nee."


I-401 turned her head slightly as she spoke, her lips barely moving. The submarine, part of Fleet Intelligence, wasn't quite used to her human form yet, especially because the autonomic nervous system, the one that controlled breathing, involuntary movements, and the like. Was no longer present. Akagi's warships no longer required such things. The adjustment period was… not exactly pleasant, and these four had not been chosen so much as had been the only ones to not need counseling and careful help from their sisters in arms.


"Iona, no need to posture, relax."


The girl formed a small "mou" with her lips, and froze for a moment, becoming a shifting grey mass that eventually reformed, albeit slightly less… human. Now tendrils of nanomaterial branched off of her form. Her eyes didn't reflect full light, and the small girl relaxed at the urging of the leader of their group.


Wasp stood tall and proud at the center of the formation, her steel gaze flaring out across the UEG's encampment. Those eyes had given many people pause before they'd approached her in her last life, and she kept them even after finding out the tricks her new body could do.


Beneath the martian soil, trillions of nanomachines, composing the hulls of the four women, rumbled and moved through rock, excavating cavernous bays on a tremendous scale.


Wasp spoke without turning to face the others of her small task force.


"Ok, briefing."


All four women sat in the martian rust, and, for a brief moment, they blinked, and found themselves elsewhere.


"Akagi prefers a small gazebo, but I find a firing range to be a better choice for a briefing."


Wasp stood at said range, holding a massive rifle in her hands, with which she gestured to targets spread downrange. All of them human approximations, accurate to anatomy.


"Objective is to upgrade and meet with those of us left, in all or any forms they may take. But it's secondary to Musashi's objective, which is to rescue and extract Akagi's daughter."


The firing range screen displayed a large, open image, a sunken carrier, her deck some 30 feet beneath the waters. Wasp pointed her rifle, squeezed once, and a fifty caliber armor piercing round sunk into a neat hole near the frontal deck of the carrier.


"That's our entry, the bridge has shifted too much to be useful, and the dry areas within are going to be running out fast. There's no reason to be gentle, the hull is slated for scrapping, and Akagi's daughter doesn't care. She's every bit as self sacrificing as dear old mom is, woke up her mom, but was willing to die down there in the cold and the dark. There's very little tech that we have that's guaranteed to work, but at the very least this is a salvage op, and we're bringing her core back for Akagi."


Rochester nodded gently, drawing a rather large shotgun from the wall, loading a drum magazine, and chambering a round.


"Expected resistance?"


Wasp nodded once.


"Japanese naval assets will move on our hulls the moment we arrive, but we've got a bit of a delay for that."


She gestured, and a part of the firing range faded away, revealing a board with a technical drawing.


"This is a fog machine, just… on a much larger, and much denser scale. I'll be installing it myself, and this mission will be a trial run for its full unveiling in the fleet for naval ops."


She pointed once more.


"We'll make planetfall in the middle of the ocean and travel submerged to the rendezvous points with our other vessels, once we make contact and upgrade or consign them, we'll move to the salvage site, breach and get her out."


"Has she chosen a name?"


"She has elected to postpone it until she arrives safely."


I-401 picked up a pistol so comically large it would blow her hands off from the recoil alone, were they not made of nanomaterial.


"Iona- you sure you can handle the recoil on that?"


The final member of their group, the destroyer Z23, was a quiet, professional woman in a formal, stretched tight uniform, with an armored coat that covered her thin, athletic frame.


"You are one to talk. You tried to use your turrets like shotguns."


Iona's calm monotone hit clean home, and the German destroyer flinched slightly, a gentle pink flush covering her cheeks.


"You know the effect is ruined because I know you're doing that on purpose."


The girl stamped her foot once, indignant anger breaking out onto her face.


"I set up an autonomic nervous system for myself the moment I could! It is very much not on purpose!"


Rochester broke out into laughter, unable to stifle it anymore, and even Wasp had to hide her wide smile behind one hand.


"Does she know?"


Rochester whispered to Wasp, and the light carrier shook her head gently. The denial only strengthened the carrier's laughter, and Z23, boiling red, stamped her foot once as Wasp gently retook control of the briefing with a clap of her hands.


"Right, ladies, and children, are our objectives clear?"


Three nodding heads answered her back, and with a thought, Wasp dismissed the mental space and finished with an automatic response of herself, a stretch and pop of her back.


No sound kind of made the experience, or rather the attempt a little unfun.


"I-401, you'll be the first to launch, and you have clearance. Musashi will join us onsite when the patrol fleet has their riggings established. 23, Roche, now's the chance to speak if you're having issues with your rigging."


No further words were spoken.


Iona's engines kicked on with a subtle, if notable hum, and the small, sleek submarine rolled out of the narrow, and tight bay. Roughly constructed to fit her, it was a quick and dirty launch mechanism, only enough to get her into the air and clear of the bay, while providing a casual hiding of true capabilities. Akagi's orders were to make certain that the nanomaterial remained as secret as possible, for as long as possible.


As the submarine girl rose into the air, a brief, careful twitch sent her rolling to the side as Musashi came around the mountain, her much larger form obscuring Iona as the submarine rolled, flipped up her bow, then shot for the atmosphere.


Wasp tilted her head to one side as chatter came from her comms.


"Mm, they've noticed her, well, I suppose their sensors are indeed better than expected. 23, are you ready for launch?"


The German woman nodded once, and at a nod from Wasp, she and Rochester took to the skies, hulls bursting from the same bay, one by one, that Iona had emerged from.


"Flagship, we're clear, heading for lower Martian orbit, will rendezvous with you there."


Wasp smiled, her own bay wasn't quite finished, with the dimensions of her decks being what they were, it was far less easy to carve an aircraft carrier sized hole into the earth. Not to mention she didn't have the mirrored outfitting that Rochester and Z23 were using. Meaning no dual elevators and no dual secondaries, and no dual engines for ease of escaping the atmosphere.


She sighed and rolled her neck, missing her old body, missing the cracks and slight aches of joints. She'd been so used to them, that their absence now felt bizarre to her.


With them gone, she wondered, abjectly, how much of her was "human" anymore. Certainly, the shipgirls had never been exact matches for humans, even their DNA was structurally different in unique areas, not that they were replicable ones by human hands.


Wasp clenched a fist, marveling at the smoothness and feeling, the nanomaterial replicated the body perfectly… just without the things that made all humans know they were aging, no aches, no pains.


A slight ping chimed in her ear, and the woman cast her eyes skywards, another advantage of nanomaterial, her eyes did not need to physically see the presence of her fleet to know and acknowledge their presence.


Instead, little blue boxes illuminated her fleet, and dozens of smaller boxes illuminated the engines and electronic signatures of missile fire and projectiles.


Had her fleet engaged with an enemy?


"Rochester. Report."


Her voice broadcast up, and a moment later, she got a slightly out of breath response.


"Sorry Wasp, got jumped by a bunch of these Friedens the moment Iona and Z23 broke orbit, they're no selling the enemy projectiles. But we can't break towards Earth yet, and we aren't leaving without you with us for command and coordination."


Wasp frowned and pinched the bridge of her nose, before she started manifesting her hull, with the bay finally having just barely enough clearance to accommodate her hull's bulk and frame.


Within moments, she was kicking on engines and feeling a subtle pressure flood off of her as her hull, all 20000 tons of her hull manifested in the bay, kicking on engines and pushing up and out, into the atmosphere. She was nowhere near as fast as her compatriots with their mirrored construction and engines were, but she made up for it in her value as a distracting presence.


Wasp was massive, and while Rochester had been large, she wasn't as big as Wasp was, the UEG Akagi, flipped onto her ventral side, tracking Wasp as she flew up and towards orbit. Several of her fighters flew alongside Wasp as they went, although they broke off as the sky turned black.


A/N: Welcome to another chapter of Records all, it's been a long time and I do apologize, but school has been hell. As always, if you like what I'm doing here, please leave a comment or critique of any kind! I love to receive them!

I'd be honored if you'd consider supporting me on Patreon, as well, every bit helps me write and draw art for you all, and speaking of! There's official art of Akagi coming along on the patreon, in addition to the next two chapters of Records up there right now! Feel free to join the discord as well, I'm always happy to see new people!

Discord: Join the Firebird's hearth Discord Server!

Patreon: patreon.com/user?u=38054869

 

[Sesparra]

So… some secret idiot cabal decided to use the nearest available culture group they could slap an other label onto as a sacrificial scapegoat they could conveniently butcher instead of actually solving the worlds problems. How very… typical.

Thanks for writing! Very well done so
Far<3

 

[Ember]

Local Time: 2200 Hours

March 23, 2161

Location: Martian Orbit

First Engagement with the Fleet of Fog

Assigned Personnel: FFW Rochester, FFW Wasp, FFW I-401, FFW Z-23, FFW Musashi


Tracers streamed past Wasp as she broke into Martian orbit, the slight movement of her hull enough to send them skittering off the defensive Klein field that folded out along her flanks. The woman rolled her eyes, and flexed one hand. A stream of weapons fire swarmed from her lower caliber photon guns swept outwards. Not that there was much of a fight left.

"How many hit you?"

Rochester sent the mental equivalent of a shrug over the link, before responding.

"About half a dozen of what I'd politely call frigates, and less politely call puddlejumpers hit us as we came up. Iona and 23 didn't have their Klein fields up, and 23 took a missile to the forehead that left her a bit disoriented. Iona's with her now."

"Didn't have her field up?"

Rochester sighed audibly as Wasp tugged alongside her, Wasps comparatively much larger Klein fields folding over the heavy cruiser and obliterating the pressure the lesser vessels were dumping upon them. Her sensors folded out and into the battle network as Wasp took operational command, her vastly enhanced sensor suite falling across the battlefield and swarming her with new data to crunch.

"Mm, they've stealth-treated their vessels, that's why you're having so much trouble seeing or detecting them."

Rochester angrily glared across the vacuum as one of her swarms of missiles caught one of the Puddle-Jumpers by surprise and swarmed it, shredding it's defenses with shrapnel detonations before plunging a torpedo, cleverly hidden in the swarm, into the heart of the vessel.

A reactor flare consumed the vessel in a burst of brilliant blue light as the torpedo detonated.

"Ugh, that explains why it hurts my head when I try to look at them. What are they even using for it?"

Wasp grinned at her and said.

"I don't think they're intentionally doing it, the paint is messing with our sensors because it's so loud, dear. Tone down the active sensing bands, that should assist you."

She flicked her hand, and the tacmap updated with positions.

"The paint they're using is weird, probably some sort of asteroid derivative from their gas giant cities. I'll tag a sample and send it back to the labs, let them take a look at it."

The other woman sighed.

"Fine, can we finish up here? Are you going to bother speeding this up?"

Wasp pouted at Rochester.

"But Roche~! It's good practice for you and the little ones to get their gunnery in, especially so soon after converting!"

Rochester flipped her the bird, and Wasp laughed as Z23, now seeing straight, joined the fray, darting into combat with twin photon guns raised.

The few remaining vessels tried to scatter, running for the hills. But Iona's contribution to the fight was simple and elegant.

A brocade of torpedoes tore the remaining vessels apart, shattering hulls and sending silent, screaming crew into the void.

"Sortie complete flag, returning to formation."

Z23's tone was curt, more so than normal, and the woman was displeased as she moved throughout the varying wreckage of the field, scanning for survivors and putting them down before space could inflict undue agony.

"Mm, expected travel time to Earth is around a day, so settle in ladies and children, and prepare for little to no inflight entertainment unless Wasp wants to serenade us with her lovely voice."

Wasp offered a slight chuckle. Her fleet forming alongside her, when a voice she'd not been expecting broke into comm range.

"Ladies, Akagi expected you to already be underway, what on Mars is happening up here?"

The long, purple and blood-red form of Musashi's hull pierced the atmosphere, her involuntary escorting craft from the UEG vessel breaking off as she calmly waved to them, before stepping forwards. Her vessel's sleek form gently sloped and slid into the center of their formation. Wasp ceding command protocols to the second of Akagi even as she nodded her thanks.

"Ah~ Interlopers, status?"

Wasp responded.

"Minimal damage to the Klein fields, if at all, Z23 took a hit to the bridge and head from one of their missiles, she didn't have her Klein field up on breaking atmo."

Musashi's lips formed into a mou, and the woman shot a look at the destroyer, whose form hung lazily in front of her.

"Is this true, little one?"

Z23 nodded, standing ramrod straight at attention, the little destroyer would not dream of ever disappointing or lying to the superior vessel, who's catlike gaze had locked her in a prey paralysis.

"I was taken with the beauty of the stars and too confident in our power. I did not expect the humans to test us so soon, I will do better, Fleet Command."

The battleship simply nodded.

"See to it that you do, there are too few of us to make mistakes like this. If that had been a railcannon shot, from say the UEG warship beneath our feet, you might not have come back from it."

Z23 turned her head away, ashamed of her mistake, but Musashi had already moved on.

"My mission has changed, and I will no longer be escorting you. A diplomat is en route to our locale, he is potentially at risk of being destroyed by the rival human factions, who do not wish to see us meet with them. Akagi's rote ban on the Koslovics and Friedenists remains in effect, so both factions are monitoring this with concern over the implications of our meetings."

She turned to face Wasp.

"The hopes of the Fleet Commander ride upon your shoulders, Wasp, may they give you wings and unburden your sails."

The woman nodded solemnly, her duty changing as Musashi delivered the necessary privileges, unlocking equipment her hull had had installed, but had been locked away.

"Use these wisely, and preferably not at all, Akagi wishes to keep our strength as hidden as possible while the industrial base is constructed."

Wasp nodded, and Musashi smiled at the four women.

"I have faith I shall see you again, don't disappoint me, young ones."

Then, she turned, and her hull blazed as the woman accelerated away from Mars at speed. Wasp remained silent a moment, reflecting on the nature of the conflict they could cause if they were not careful.

Then, she shook her head slightly.

"All ahead full."

Four hulls formed up, and as their acceleration faded, eyes watched from concealed watchtowers and talk began to flow amongst the taverns.



Local Time: 2200 Hours

March 23, 2161

Location: Classified

First Engagement with the Fleet of Fog

Classified

Agent Berlin frowned, her phone in her hand as data from the UEG Akagi and the listening stations in orbit of Mars sent encrypted packets of data to the collection of screens she was calmly regarding.

"Yes Madam President, I understand the risks. But the trajectory of those four puts them at Earth, and with their speed, we could have as little as a week to prepare for their arrival."

Her tone was measured, calm, and gentle. A far cry from the one she was used to, but the equally measured response and gentle tone of the woman on the other end of the line, was as close to a threat as that woman often was inclined to speak in.

"Your daughter is doing well in school and adjusting to her new friends, Miss Berlin, please understand that what you're asking me to do could jeopardize all of the hard work you've put in to ensure her place at that academy."

Berlin shivered. Few people commanded the influence of the president, fewer still were willing to use that influence to ensure the "best" outcome for their country. Even if it cost lives.

"I understand. I still recommend DEFCON 2 be set across the nation, and if you must keep the peace and preserve the sense of normalcy, DEFCON 3 at the very least. We do not know the intentions of the fleet that has set out from Mars, but with their weapons and exhibited defensive techniques, they are more than capable of single handedly slaughtering any opposition they face. I do not know if the defensive network of Earth could slow them down."

"Very well."

The call ended, the unspoken threat that not only would Berlin's daughter suffer, but the woman herself would suffer alongside it if things went poorly

Berlin turned towards the windows and raised her coffee mug in the direction of Mars.
"I hope you succeed, you bastard."

Then, an incoming chime alerted her to another call, this one from a number she recognized.

She hit the button, and did her best to put on a smile as a recorded message played across her tablet.

"Hey mom! I know that you're busy with super secret important stuff, but the Secret Service agents have been taking good care of me. Dad's… really gone, isn't he? You said he wasn't coming back, but I didn't want to believe it but…"

Her daughter's voice choked up, the 17 year old wiping at her eyes.

"Sorry, sorry, I shouldn't be crying to you on this call, but Agent Colorado is kind of a shitty mom… she doesn't even know how to draw like you do!"

Berlin wiped at her eyes slightly. Now she was crying, wonderful.

"School's ok, the academy is pretty strict, but at least they let me shoot and do metal work! So to keep up with the cosplay trends, I got to go as a character from that "Ascendant Awakened" show about those fictional heroes from the last war! I got to go as USS Baltimore, and my classmates were kind of weird about it…"

Her daughter smiled at the camera, gently, but the tears didn't stop.

"Gah, I- I said I wasn't going to cry but… Mom, it's been a year! When… when are you coming home?"

The video ended shortly thereafter, and Berlin let her fingers tap on the table, tapping at the polished, efficient metal as she sobbed silently in a cubelike room.

She wished she'd done what Chapayev had chosen to do, all those years ago.

She touched the wrinkles on her face and twisted her expression into the scowl that forever marked her features.

A part of her focused on the reflection in the mirror, before she adjusted her cap atop her head and stepped out of the isolated room, nodding to the guards that forever flanked her position as they fell in behind her. She wished that she'd listened to her wife all those years ago, even if it had meant Zoe not being born. The Russian woman had been right, when she'd said that it was better to die for one's beliefs than live as a slave to the husks of good ideals.

The station tumbled in its orderly orbit around the classified existence that marked one of the UEG's shipyards, and Berlin reflected on the monstrosities of steel and iron that were pouring from the berths every single day as the UEG prepared to go to war. The behemoths of war that poured from her docks sortied to Earth, where they took on crews of sailors and divisions of marines prepared to do nothing but wage war.

"Agent, an incoming shuttle has requested docking permissions, it's used your personal communications code, signifying a delivery."

Berlin frowned, shooting a look at the aide that had accosted her, the young sailor seeming as confused as she was.

"I didn't request anything, nor am I due to receive anything. Lock it down, send a squad to investigate."

The man nodded once and darted off, her own guards tensing slightly as Berlin moved towards her immediate panic room. The station they were on was tiny, and an explosive on a shuttle would be more than capable of depressurizing and destroying the entire breathable area.

The minutes in the panic room turned to hours, and Berlin sketched the designs of the Fleet headed for Earth as she waited, tension setting in like a coiled spring.


Local Time: 2200 Hours

March 23, 2161

Location: Interplanetary Space, on Approach to Earth

First Engagement with the Fleet of Fog

Assigned Personnel: FFW Rochester, FFW Wasp, FFW I-401, FFW Z-23


"Roche, if you try that tactic one more time I swear, I'll end you myself."

"Come now flagship, all is fair in love and war, and this is a completely legal tactic!"

"You are not allowed to do that to armor! That's cheating!"

"23, darling, if you're not going to use those pieces, then I'm more than happy to take them!"

"I do not understand the appeal of this game."

"That's completely fine Iona dear, you're not playing after all, but it does tend to ruin friendships."

"Roche, you put that hotel down there, and I swear, I will break you in half."

"23…"

Wasp giggled, the representation of the board game, a derivative of monopoly and sorry of some kind, etched across her retinas. As she watched, she saw the mental manifestation of Z23's anguish as the smaller destroyer flipped the board, and promptly lost the game as her frustration was undone with the push of a button from Rochester.

"23, please, you know better than that, are you ok?"

The girl sat on her bow, folded her arms across her chest, and gently began sobbing. Wasp flitted to her side, diving off her hull and landing next to the girl, whom she wrapped her arms around gently.

"Musashi got to you, didn't she?"

The girl nodded, and Wasp cut her comms off from the rest of her fleet, sitting down next to the destroyer, she simply held her as she sobbed.

"I am sorry for Musashi's attitude, little one…"

Z23 finally broke, and began shouting.

"Doesn't she know that I saw what happened to Eugen!? Doesn't she know that I saw what happened to U-2501 and Scharnhorst!? I watched them die! I watched MY country rip them apart! I watched them die because they weren't as loved as Bismarck! I… I watched them… I watched them fade…"

The girl's wracking, choking sobs echoed on her hull in the pocket of space that had atmosphere, the stars and space sliding by as Wasp tugged the girl close and embraced her.

"Doesn't she know how it felt!? To be the one that was kept around because I was "efficient" and "low cost"?"

"I just… wanted to be useful…"

Wasp stroked her hair, and gently whispered.

"I know little one… Musashi's greatest oversight is that she often cannot see our own trauma's through the lens of her own, she struggles to process how you have suffered in comparison to her own sufferings. She is an excellent commander… but she cannot see the pain you've gone through."

Z23 sobbed, and Wasp continued.

"What is important is that you simply try, that you work to be better because you are so precious to all of us. You mean so much to Akagi, to myself, to Rochester and even I-401 in her own way."

She paused and shook her head.

"I think you scared Musashi, I think you startled her because for a moment she was back in the darkest days of the war, and she was struggling with how it had felt to lose a daughter, then her partners."

She stroked the smaller girl's hair.

"It's ok, little one. I promise, all will be well, and you didn't take damage, so no need to be concerned."

The girl spoke, then, gently.

"I saw them… I heard them… I wanted to say so much to them. But they're really gone, aren't they?"

Wasp simply nodded.

"Gone, but they're not forgotten little one, and they will never be forgotten so long as we live to sing their stories into the stars."


A/N: And with that, Dream ends, Berlin has a kid~! And the earthbound fleet suffers, Musashi may be a good commander, but all of these poor women are deeply hurting, and there will be much pain to come as they chart their course through the stars!

As always, if you like what I'm doing here, leave a comment/kudo/like/critique, I'm always looking for more to do to improve at this writing thing! If you want to support me, consider doing so via my Patreon, every bit helps me keep this whole dream going! (You also get to read ahead of everyone else by two chapters, among access to snippets and other boons from time to time!)

A special thank you to my patrons, who help me keep this dream of writing alive and well!

Relevant links!

Discord: Join the Firebird's hearth Discord Server!

Patreon: patreon.com/user?u=38054869

 

[Sesparra]

Oh look, yet more human fuckery, from hostage taking to torture to the slaughter of people who saved your lives… why am I not surprised?
And trauma boats are traumatized, no surprise there.
I hope the earth's upper class gets the slaughter they do seem to deserve here.
Thanks for the chapter<3

 

[Ember]

Oh look, yet more human fuckery, from hostage taking to torture to the slaughter of people who saved your lives… why am I not surprised?
And trauma boats are traumatized, no surprise there.
I hope the earth's upper class gets the slaughter they do seem to deserve here.
Thanks for the chapter<3

Click to shrink...

You're very welcome! And as for you not being surprised... I cannot wait until I can start posting Planetfall, I think you'll have entirely too much fun with it!

 

[Sesparra]

You're very welcome! And as for you not being surprised... I cannot wait until I can start posting Planetfall, I think you'll have entirely too much fun with it!

Click to shrink...

Cackles manically
Probably! Arseholes need to die after all<3

 

[Ember]

Local Time: 2231 Hours


March 24, 2161


Location: Outskirts of Yokosuka, Orbit of Earth


Assigned Personnel: FFW Rochester, FFW Wasp, FFW I-401, FFW Z-23


Planetfall.





Four burning comets slowed their advance, observing the upper atmosphere of Earth below them. For all of them, this had been the most worrisome part of the trip, the one that had them all slightly terrified that they would melt from the sheer force of the pressures and heat against their hulls.


It was illogical, on a practical level, all of them knew damned well they were resilient to a scale unheard of, and yet this was still a part of their new forms that hadn't made it to the "back" of their brains, relatively speaking.


A part of them that still idly screamed that warships were not meant to fly, let alone orchestrate planetfall into the seas of Earth.


"Roche- are you-"


Rochester cut Wasp off, a harsh whisper.


"Yes. About as damned sure as I can be- 23, can you just, no! I'm not going to leave you alone, come here-"


The woman flicked up and over, soaring across the void to the deck of the destroyer. Who's occupant sat upon it and distinctly and clearly tried to force herself to leap into the atmosphere and fly down, and yet visibly struggled to do so.


Rochester was quick to land at her side, flicking to local communications even as Wasp finished her own preparations and stood above, looking down below her at the blue marble.


The sight took her breath away, the utterly gorgeous blue waters swaddled in thick clouds that broke apart and reformed seemingly before her very eyes. The landmasses of the earth lay out before her eyes, and as Wasp ducked under and past the threshold of the perimeter gently, she noted their response time to an intrusion into their network.


They were good! That was fun, but the carrier didn't have time, the sunken portions of Yokosuka awaited her arrival, at least, where the original pier and ports had been, that would be where they found the wreck of the Akagi, that would be where they found their target.


Wasp opened a brief link to Musashi, letting her know what she'd found about the orbital defenses, namely, that they were sufficient, but primarily aimed at long range area denial, using orbital assets around Luna and a powerful fleet that was assembled at the vector of-


Wasp paused, examining the orbital trajectory again. Before she giggled lightly.


"Wasp?"


Iona, I-401, cocked her head to one side, quietly speaking over the comms to Wasp as Wasp giggled. Before the carrier raised an eyebrow and sent over the data packets.


"This data woefully underestimates our capabilities."


Wasp nodded.


"I agree, they believe we're perhaps 50% faster than they are, and comparatively stronger, although… I'd point out that the majority of that fleet are armed with nuclear armaments and the few railguns that they seem to have."


Iona nodded.


"They do not underestimate our strength as heavily, but they do underestimate our speed."


Wasp smiled at her, ruffling the submarine's head as she brought her vessel into the extending field offered by Wasp's klein field. Iona didn't visibly react, the girl emotionless, but the slight shift in her body language under Wasp's touch told her that Iona had at the very least enjoyed the gentle affection. Which was good, good for her, meant that she hadn't lost her gentle touch.


But as much as she wanted to stroke the girl's hair further, they had a job to do.


"Rochester, how confident are you in playing with the fleet and their guns?"


The woman shrugged, measuring on her fingers for a time.


"I reckon I can give you maybe a few hours before I'd have to vent klein fields, faster if you wanted them just dead, but-"


Wasp was already shaking her head.


"No. We will not kill them, much as I'm sure many of us remember the events of the past, we would do well to remember that the bastards who forced us into that tomb on mars are not the people below us. And those same bastards would gain much if we kill off the UEG's fledgling attempt at space defense."


"Dodging?"


Roche shrugged, turned her head forwards and indicated her vessel's hull, hanging in the void and lightly glowing from the offcast light of the sun at their backs.


"I mean, I'm definitely smaller than most of them, but I dunno how much you want me showing off what I can do to them."


Wasp frowned, tapping her fingers in a rhythm against her thighs. She wrinkled her nose and frowned.


"23, how quickly can you take their faster elements for a ride?"


The small girl looked up, wiped at her eyes just a bit, and frowned for a moment, before she spoke.


"I can do it, but I'll have less endurance than Roche…"


Wasp nodded, before she turned and clapped her hands once.


"Alright ladies and children, here's what we're going to do."


Seconds later, as the women broke apart and moved to their assigned positions, Wasp smiled, leaned back, and tipped bow down into Earth's upper atmosphere. Her klein field narrowed, and a corona of flames burst to life as she fell into the warm embrace of the planet that had embraced her.


Eyes glittering as she measured her fall, she let a slight, nervous giggle burst from her lips. This was not what she'd expected, given her deep water roots, but here she was, and she'd be damned if she didn't take it in as she fell into a planet she'd left behind.


Wasp cast a glance to the side of her, and watched Rochester let a serene smile go across her face, the sensation of falling for them was not one they were used to, sinking? Yes. The clammy and cold hands of the deep grasping them and firmly dragging them under as they screamed and cried.


But not this, not the way that just falling felt to them, the shrieking and whipping of the wind crashing past Wasp as she let her defensive barriers down by just a touch.


"Flag, approaching drop~!"


Rochester called out lightly over their comms as the cloud layer cleared and then, then she whooped and cast her arms out wide around her, long hair whipping up past her face as she tumbled and stabilized, legs and arms increasing her drag and slowing her fall. Eyes wide with exuberance, she laughed and flipped to face Wasp.


"I- We're doing this again! So much more!"


Wasp rolled her eyes at her subordinate's cheer, but she couldn't help the way her own lips twitched upwards as even Iona hid a small smile on her face.


It was fun, really fun.


But the mission loomed, and dropping in where they were was going to attract attention, so as Rochester rolled up and away, and her hull flared up and fired it's engines, Wasp nodded, sending a short burst of communications to her battle sister.


"Happy hunting, fair winds, comrade."


Rochester's lips pulled into a grin that was all teeth, as she pushed up past the cloud layer.


Z23 followed right beside her, darting into orbit as fast as they could, and Wasp closed her eyes.


She tamped down the ache of unease and worry that suffused into her spine every time this happened.


"They're going to be fine. The humans can't hurt us, they're going to be ok, it's all going to be ok."


Iona shot her a curious look, and Wasp forced her "absurdly competent and totally in control leader face" back on.


Right, she was in charge, this wasn't a big deal, just a simple extraction mission, with the fate of her leader's not protected at all daughter resting in a computer core that was not anywhere near waterproof enough to be a hundred feet below the surface of the water.


One hundred percent in charge. Mhm, no nervous jitters or shakes here, that was just her autonomic or sympathetic nervous system acting up, she never could remember the difference…


Ignoring the fact she had both of those systems, because that wasn't the point, she was cool, she was in command.


"Wasp, split point is directly ahead of us."


Iona's calm cut through the mental chatter Wasp was running herself through, and the carrier rolled her hull in preparation for a splash down, lowering her thrusters from recessed ports, she prepared to fire them.


That was another thing she hadn't gotten used to! Her old hull was a clanking behemoth of steel and machinery that needed actual time to start up, and it had noises too!


This new hull was deadly silent for a warship! Only the muted hum of her thrusters firing even made them sound like they were operating! It was bizarre and unpleasant! Like a buzz running across her teeth and the back of her neck. Everything was too quiet!


"Wasp, the silence disturbs you, doesn't it."


Iona spoke up, her head looking back at Wasp in the seconds before impacting the waters surface, Wasp simply nodded, and then their worlds were noise and darkness and frothing, angry seawater.


They'd come down as soft as they could, but that didn't mean that Wasp wasn't above splashing her entire hull with seawater. Like taking a bath, sympathetic sensors in her hull reflected the coolness of the water swimming across and over her as she looked up above at where the sea let sparkling beams of light through.


But she could appreciate the beauty of her parent's cradle later, she had a mission to do.


Iona, engage.


The submarine dived past her, the small girl recessed into the hull even as Wasp stood proudly above her ship, internal machinery spinning up as her form breached the surface.


A quick check, her head looking to the skies, revealed the elements of her fleet making good on their assigned tasks. She chuffed in amusement, saving a picture from her hi resolution, borrowed satellites, then turned and spun up her engines.





Local Time: 2310 Hours


March 24, 2161


Location: Orbit of Earth


First Fleet Engagement with Fleet of Fog.


Fleet Admiral Paras





Richard Paras was not a man who enjoyed being stuck where he felt the fighting wasn't. He was even less of a fan of being a test for ONI spooks who seemed so excited over the fact they could try and poach data off an advanced civilization that they completely forgot that real people served aboard the ships they wanted to use as distractions!


"Report."


His voice, growly and low from too many cigarettes in his youth, poured from his lips as he shuffled onto the bridge and took a seat.


Officers stood to attention, rather, the new ones did. The ones who knew him simply kept working at their stations and reported.


"Four objects, high metal content detected when they breached into the atmosphere, rough size matches with the data that ONI sent us."


Paras stroked his stubbled chin and waited.


"No detection satellites were pinged, we're not sure why they couldn't see them coming, with the bright glowing before they started entering atmo."


Then he growled.


"Position Marathon over their drop points and ready for orbital fire support. The fleet is to assume defensive pattern delta-5."


The helm officer nodded, and Richard, Dick, to his friends, felt the engines of the Marathon groan as she shifted her orbit.


"Sir, two contacts have broken off from the others, they're rising to the stars, one is the mid sized, the other is the small one."


The admiral leaned back in his chair and waited, if they wanted a fight they'd get one, but he wasn't happy about how his spine kept ringing like someone was screaming danger at him.


"Prepare to engage, I want tubes prepped for engagement and keeping us safe at all costs, understood?"


He paused for a moment, standing up and moving to the front of his bridge as his crew jumped to respond around him.


Marathon keened and cried beneath him, burning and shifting as the vessel turned on her side and began to dance aggressively with the incoming fleet.


"Comms, get me HIGHCOM, I need permission to fire if they do anything overtly hostile."


The young woman seated beneath him nodded, and began hailing, before a shocked expression opened on her face, cracking the professional demeanor instilled in all UEG naval crews.


"S-sir, they say we cannot attack unless directly fired upon by the enemy vessels."


Richard wanted to curse and command them to do otherwise, but he forced that aggression down, forced himself to let go of the throttle, and stepped back.


"Then we wait. Allow them to close, send hostile challenges, then hold back."


His orders were received, he felt Marathon slow under his feet before her engines cut out and she hung in space, 3 kilometers of titanium and power, and yet… he couldn't do anything without explicit permission.


His fists bit into the seat grips as the seconds ticked by, as the comms officer opened, hailing and sent.


"This is the UEG Marathon, unknown ship, you are entering hostile space, declare intentions and leave or we will fire upon you."


The silence ticked by. Paras watched the display as the two enemy dots moved ever closer, as the cameras tracked their hulls and the strange, glowing markings.


"This is the UEG Marathon. You will be fired upon if you come any closer, divert away from orbital space and prepare to be boarded."


They didn't stop, they continued to get closer, within practically knife fighting range, and Paras gave the order.


"One more challenge."


Paras ground his teeth to what felt like powder as the comms officer broadcast it once more, his fingers tensing on his chair.


"Repeat. Unidentified vessels, cease action or be fired upon, this is your last warning."


Paras gave the order.


"Lock them, prepare to fire."


The fleet shifted its stance, as Marathon opened her jaws and command codes were authenticated.


The enemy vessels got closer, and Paras made ready to give the command, his arm grips creaking.


"Sir! They're stopping!"


He breathed a slight sigh of relief he hadn't recognized he'd been holding in.


"Cute security."


The voice broadcast from above, and around them, and Paras reached for his sidearm as a woman materialized on the bridge of his vessel.


She was tall, wearing a uniform of greys and blacks that stuck to her frame almost skin tight. A long coat floated around her, and at her side hung a weapon, but one Paras only barely recognized.


A pistol of some kind.


But MP's were moving and the bridge was chaos as he ordered.


"Marines to the bridge! Enemy aboard!"


The pair of marines at his side rushed her, and with an almost contemptuous ease, sidestepped the rushdown, and then kicked one of them into the hull.


Paras grimaced as the man groaned and slid to the floor. While the woman bent the other marine's hands back and twisted, forcing her to drop the knife and then bending her almost casually into a sort of "human knot" that looked… painful.


A moment passed, the bridge crew drawing weapons and leveling them at the interloper as she flashed a fanged grin.


"Please, let's not start a firefight that wouldn't even remotely hurt me, and would end up with half of you dead, mmkay?"


She moved to Paras, and with one finger, shoved the 6'3 man back into his command chair, before striding to the very front of the bridge as he sputtered.


"I'm not here to fight unless you want to, and I guarantee both of us are probably too important to lose, and too important to risk seriously. Unless I've read the situation wrong."


Paras flashed a look as a squad of marines entered the bridge weapons out, then rushed the woman. A look of indignant, minor irritation flashed across her face.


"Reall-"


Then three of them hit her with a flying tackle and Paras jumped to his feet.


"Everyone out! Marines, take her down!"


Then he ducked for cover as the sound of roaring gunfire filled the bridge.


"Fine. The hard way it is."


A pair of the marines grabbed him, rushing him past the group and sealing the bridge as they pushed towards the secondary bridge. But not before Paras saw the door tear open, and a trio of marines came tumbling out of the bridge.


"She's gone, sir!"


The man held up a hand and stopped them from proceeding, and cautiously approached the bridge. Flanked by a pair of marines he leaned past the torn open door, and saw a small, greyish cloud dissipating into the air, nothing left on the bridge but spent shell casings and the smell of gunpowder.


"What the hell-"





Local Time: 2310 Hours


March 24, 2161


Location: Orbit of Earth


First Fleet Engagement with EUG Naval assets.


Assigned Personnel: FOF Rochester, FOF Z23





"23 they didn't wanna speak to meeeee."


Rochester lay back on the deck of her vessel, mentally calculating the distances involved with the firing trajectories and missiles. They were a bit too close for comfort, all things considered! But, she didn't mind, between her own and Z23's klein fields, everything should be fine!


"Did you announce you were going to do anything like what you just did? Or did you create a decoy and simply appear on their bridge?"


Forming her lips into a pout, the older woman floated across the gap between their hulls and grabbed at Z23, who danced away from her with a put upon expression on her own face.


"They should have known better~!"


Z23 cocked an eyebrow at her.


"You are being childish."


Rochester responded.


"And you're not being childish enough! Aren't you supposed to be the- what did Akagi call it back home, the imouto?"


The German girl frowned, wrinkling her lips and nose as she did so.


"You could at the very least refer to me as fraulein, or if you insist upon honorifics, kleine schwester."


"That's boring."


Z23 colored red, and then launched herself at the other woman, beating at her with tiny fists.


"Rude! Unbelievable! Uncouth! Savage!"


Rochester laughed as the tiny girl slammed fists onto her chest and shoulders and yelled profanities at her in German, until-


"You did not just call me a skunk! I do not smell!"


23 grinned, the out of character expression pouring onto her face.


"Said the flabby chested idiot with more breasts than brains!"


The savage little smirk she wore on her face as she pulled away and flicked her engines to full did it. Rochester, staring in shock at her words, growled, and launched herself after the manically giggling destroyer.


"You little brat!"


The horsing around didn't stop until the UEG fleet hailed them once more.


Admittedly hailed downplayed the horde of missiles that sprang from their hulls.


"Awww, the humans are ruining our fun again!"


Pouting, Rochester lazily spun, and brought her full suite of point defense and CIWS online. Lasers, pinpoint accurate and just as deadly, spun out and brightened the skies over Earth as she began an evasive pattern.


Her mood was only slightly ruined, until she realized something.


Z23 had won their little wrestling match. She'd escaped.


That Brat.





A/N: Arc 2 begins, and what can I say except I wonder how you all think that this mission is going to go? Is it going to end well? Poorly? Who can say! But I hope to see your reactions, and I'm excited to see what you think!

As always, thank you so much to my patrons and my fans, and if you like what I'm doing here, please consider leaving a like/kudo/comment, etc. I love receiving them and it always gives me the warm fuzzies inside~!

Please consider joining my discord if you'd like to, I'd love to see you all there! If you feel up to it, or can consider doing so, please consider supporting me on patreon, it helps me write and keep this dream alive!

Relevant links:

Patreon: patreon.com/user?u=38054869

Discord: Join the Firebird's hearth Discord Server!

 

[Ember]

RE: Update schedule

I am hoping to post as frequently as I can, at least in regards to these as we get into the summer and I have more free time, I ask that you all bear with me during that time, as I search for new Beta readers to assist with the process.

 

[Sleepless1990]

I always wondered how their space ship layout gonna be, top down mirror like SRW OG, heavy long gun turret top and secondaries/clustered turret for bombardement downside like Avenger Helicar, or all bristling hedgehog ala Heavy Object.

 

[Ember]

In this Chapter: Rage/Ambushed/Last Stand


Next Chapter: Recovery/Vultures/Outbreak





Local Time: 2331 Hours


March 24, 2161


Location: Japanese Home Waters


Assigned Personnel: FFW Wasp, FFW I-401


Planetfall: Recovery.





The fog crept in slowly, and Wasp and I-401 skulked along the banks, markings softly glowing as they approached the mission location. The submarine slowly began an easy, almost lazy dive to the site of the wreck, Wasp floating alongside and above her. The carrier flickered her spotting lasers over a number of the wrecks, and found herself disgusted.


Wasp had always been a kind soul, wanting the best for those in her command, even if she was one for boisterous action at heart. Seeing the rotting hulks of warships left here, some of them with their data centers and central computers still intact… It hurt.


Walking on the grave of one's ancestors while they lay, muffled but barely alive some feet beneath you was the most likely comparison she could make.


Nearly a dozen hulls of the former Japanese polity lay here, rusting and rotting in the dark. Her eyes and sensors panned over breaches in their hulls, not caused by weapons fire or the crushing powers of her own ship-self. But instead the simple awfulness of decay and slow death.


Flickering lights cast about on the waves, half illuminated monitors powered by dying reactors, casting a feeble, desperate SOS onto the rocking currents of the ocean around them.


Wasp felt sick as she surveyed the graveyard of wreckage, hurriedly reaching out to Iona, a hundred feet below her.


"Status?"


The submarine's reply was terse, and quick.


"Slow. Underwater debris is thick and choking my passage."


Wasp turned her sonars to the area, sweeping it as she waited, sweeping it up and over and down and across, charting the seabed.


"Hurry, please. I feel like my skin is crawling."


Wasp knew she didn't really have skin, but the feeling was the same, hairs on the back of her neck raising, gut instincts she'd refined over decades of service in the siren wars.


They were being watched, being searched for…


But who?


Who would be looking for them? Their arrival was quick, it was fast enou-


Alarms screamed in her mind, the flickering sensations of enemy locks blaring as tongues of targeting lasers burned across her hull.


Wasp deployed her klein field and brought her point defenses online in nanoseconds. Almost in the nick of time.


But almost wasn't enough.


Mines, dormant for years, detonated against her hull, inside the protective barrier of the klein field, and powerful EMP bursts fired within the barrier.


Normally, a warship of the fleet was protected from such bursts, secured and heavily resistant.


Under normal circumstances, a klein field as resilient as Wasp's was capable of completely surviving the point blank impact of nuclear missiles, and far more than that if she were operating at her full, voidship power levels.


This was neither normal, nor normal circumstances.


The EMP's, locked tight against Wasp's hull by her own klein field, focused inwards, components and guns beginning to fail catastrophically.


One of her larger secondaries, a photon cannon in the range of a large cruiser's main battery, sparked, overloaded, and failed as the EMP crashed into it.


Wasp screamed in agony as said EMP crushed against her.


It felt like someone was stabbing her, cutting her apart, reaching into the core of who she was. Her union core floundered, unexpected surges of power and arcs of electricity crackling against its reinforced shell.


"I-o-n-a"


Her voice faltered, stuttering, slurring, and Wasp felt herself collapse, her hull locking into its configuration.


She felt it die around her. Felt the life slither and squirm out of her hull, felt it become metal.


Fleet of Fog Nanomaterial, nanomachines, were incredibly resilient beasts under normal circumstances, able to reconfigure and twist their ship self into nearly any form imaginable, and able to respond to combat damage far, far faster than even the robotic servitors that Akagi was often fond of.


But they were not unbeatable, and a directed EMP could cause them to lock tightly into a specific configuration, one that would require careful dissection of the affected area to return them to their living and active nature.


Under normal circumstances, any Fleet of Fog warship, even one so affected, could excise the portion by tasking a different group of nanites to do so.


These were not normal circumstances.


Bombarded and foundering, Wasp's union core sparked, overloaded, and violently shut down to avoid total destruction, her organic body, a work of pure art given form by purpose built nanomaterial and carefully tuned systems, twitched, and fell to the deck of her hull.


Unable to control herself, forced to retreat into her core, Wasp could only watch as darkness cloaked everything around her. Sensor clusters, comm lasers, and dozens of smaller communication blisters across her hull collapsed into uselessness, sparking energy leaping off of them. Her weapons followed shortly thereafter, damaged and sparking systems quickly and dangerously radiating outwards until nearly her entire hull was affected.


Far below her, in the depths, Iona had encountered her own fair share of problems.


They weren't alone.


The wreck of Akagi's daughter had been breached before she'd arrived, and not by insignificant forces. Several pinnace sized breaching submarines attached like limpets to the side of the fleet commander's daughter, eating their way into the hull, even from her current position, Iona could see the brilliant, actinic shine of cutting torches from her refuge between a pair of buildings.


Fleet of Fog ships could run silently for very long periods of time, diffusing their waste heat into the water around them with no real thermal bleedthrough, at least, none of sufficient levels to trigger an alert.


But her Klein field was different, bringing it to full awareness would result in instant awareness of the enemy, and more to the point, while it would keep her safe, it would likely result in the humans detonating any scuttling charges remaining aboard Akagi's sunken hulk.


She was unprepared to hear Wasp's death, or to feel it when it came through the link.


Iona, on the bridge of her ship-self, recoiled in pain and agony as the other warship's presence in the communications link was violently torn free. Agony shrieked along her frame and Iona bit her tongue to keep from screaming as her sisters presence, her mind, was savagely torn from the network, leaving nothing but shattered fragments of junk data in her wake. The dying scream played out across the milliseconds for the young AI, and she watched Wasp's face twist in sudden worry and shock perhaps a thousand times in the few seconds it took her next actions to execute.


She calmly wrapped her arms around her knees, and began to rock back and forth, silently, tears running down her face, the submarine listened to the water around her, and she heard the wake of high speed boats, she felt the way the waters roiled around her, and she heard and saw the way the humansPARASITES advanced on her crippled sister's form.


Iona reached out far past herself, fixing a single communication laser on a cluster of nanomaterial far to the south of her, near their original landing point.


The beam lasted less than a fraction of a second, but it was enough, the slight burst of noise was detected by several things, but it wasn't identified as anything more than a stray civilian radio bending too far.


The nanomaterial, having received its intended orders, reshaped itself, and broadcast a signal high into orbit, this was not a quiet signal, nor was it subtle. Several radio telescopes across Japan buckled under the sudden strain as a siren call blasted into orbit.


Iona did not hear the call, having rigged herself to run completely silent and listening to the surface as the pillagers ran rampant over Wasp's hull, driving pointed spears and boarding her sister as fast as they could.


Iona was not as developed as Wasp had been, she was a newborn by the standards of the Fleet of Fog, barely out of her nursery, this mission had been intended to be a milk run. How could this have possibly happened unless-


Unless they'd known Akagi's computer core was active, unless they'd known that she was looking for safety, unless, unless.


Unless they'd been monitored by the people she'd come to be genuinely terrified of.


Unless their enemies had decided that now was the perfect time to lay a trap.


EMP mines were fickle creatures, often requiring maintenance and carefully monitored explosive payloads. Too much, and the device wouldn't discharge as powerful of an EMP, too little, and the device wouldn't even detonate.


These mines had to have been strewn everywhere, and Iona watched her sensors as they flooded the area around her with data and the results of every subtle ping she could fire.


I-401 was equipped with a number of nonstandard modifications as part of her mission, one of these was a network of three small submarines, attached like parasite craft to the place where a normal submarine would normally keep ballast tanks. Iona, not needing them, nor particularly concerned with pressure, had had the components removed, and these parasite craft had been nestled inside her instead.


She cast another look above her, scanning her sister's body.


Body.


Body.
The term didn't do the floating hulk above her justice.


Iona looked at the form and shuddered.


They'd all spent time trapped aboard their ship selves, the first stirring of consciousness had only been within that form, requiring their crews for even the most basic of movements.


Newfound freedom was something she'd taken a liking to, something that Wasp had been in love with ever since she'd discovered she could grow her long hair out, ever since she had modified her uniform.


Now her sister lay above her, dead, crippled, Iona didn't let herself hope for that. Incandescent anger was foreign to her, the emotion having been dismissed slightly for being non useful.


But now… helpless, Iona watched Wasp's form get taken under tow, she watched her sister's markings pulse gently, desperately searching for any semblance of the woman there.


Her hull waited in that minefield for hours, trying to see, trying to find a way out, trying to give chase.


The opportunity came, and she took it.


The parasites on the hull of Akagi had taken to the surface, silence setting in when Iona launched her parasite submarines. Each one was filled with the cutting array, a small amount of storage space, and a squad of something that would have politely been termed an "autonomous" soldier, and less politely have been called a drone.


Hulking metal forms swarmed into Akagi's depths, moving far more quietly than they should have, and with far, far more inhuman grace than anything as heavy duty as them should bear.


She let them roam, let her automata move through the guts of the sunken carrier. Pitch blackness would have hampered human eyes, but not her soldiers.


Her relief at finding the central computer of the vessel was short lived, the power source was guttering, reserves drained to nearly the point of exhaustion. Iona frowned, the feeds from the machines in central engineering relaying the damage.


Severe water damage had occurred, but that was expected. What was not expected, was the cutting marks and the scratches in the casing. Salvagers had been working at the core, so what had stopped them here?


They'd stopped… but unexpectedly.


Iona frowned, she was sailing away from the wreck, leaving her pinnaces and her teams behind, but that didn't matter. They could connect the core to a pinnace and then evacuate it to orbit safely.


She was tracking Wasp, the dead tone of her flagship's wake sending shivers and disgust roiling in her stomach. She felt alone, and gripped at her arms, watching the shape of the vessel above her twist.


Wasp had been commandeered. She'd been captured. The entire fleet knew what had happened to Kaga, they'd seen it play out, and Iona was not inclined to allow another Fleet vessel to be flayed alive for the pleasure of the butchers.


That incandescent rage slowly began building, and the submarine's feeders and autofoundry began working. She would need new weapons for this, new items that could spoof systems and make parasites rethink their decisions. She could only hope that orbit had heard her, and could respond.





Local Time: 2331 Hours


March 24, 2161


Location: Orbit Above Japanese Home Waters


Assigned Personnel: FFW Rochester, FFW Z-23


Planetfall: Distraction





"Transmission detected."


Nimi's toneless voice rang across the void to where Rochester had been. Emphasis on the had been, however, the heavy cruiser now nimbly danced between a flurry of missiles that eagerly chased her, expending themselves on her klein field or her formidable point defense battery.


"Hmm? What is it, Nimi~?"


The small destroyer, running at the extreme edge of the UEN's missile range, dispensed with the pleasantries.


"Wasp taken by hostiles."


Rochester dropped all pretenses. Her point defense grid flared to full life, and over a thousand missile trails winked out as the heavy cruiser brought all her guns to bear.


The cruiser's face was stone cold, and an uneasy silence began to spread, as the UEN ships took note of the vast increase in the effectiveness of their enemy's point defense.


"Details?"


"None. Iona's under stealth, but she's moving in a specific direction, one we can track easily enough."


"Responsible parties?"


"Unknown, transmitting a tightbeam to Musashi now."


The two warships paused, and briefly considered.


"Musashi has sent a response."


The small destroyer's form stood up on her decks, and she turned to the side, facing the planet below her.


"You are to distract them, if they land a serious hit on you, wipe them out."


Rochester nodded, while Nimi was not the commanding officer of their fleet, she was the one for whom transmissions were least likely to be intercepted or understood before the fleet could act upon them.


"I am making full speed for the hostile contact on the surface."


Rochester grinned.


"Kill them all."


Z-23, young member of the fleet, smiled a grin that was fanged, frozen anger. She saluted jauntily to Rochester, keeled her vessel over, and dove into the atmosphere.


"Help is coming, sister. Hold on."


Under normal circumstances, a Fleet of Fog warship in the void was capable of horrifyingly quick levels of acceleration and movement. While comparatively tiny to even some of the smaller vessels of the UEN, they punched far, far above their weight and were frustratingly difficult to defeat, even in simulations against the fleet, Z-23 knew that she was more than capable of destroying even a large fleet on her own if she caught them unawares. But the quantity of an enemy's force often had a way of making that quantity felt. In this case, it was being felt as a pair of frigates from the enemy fleet's force, backed up by their analog of what the fog would likely name a cruiser, dove in after her.


Her point defenses went into immediate action, downing a trio of chaser missiles that had come close to her envelope.


The other warships would launch more, that was a matter of fact, not fiction. But in regards to how they would launch more, Z-23 ran simulations.


There were options here, courses of battle that could easily and evenly lead to victory, but those would take time, and time she needed to help out her sister in the waters below.


Z-23 flipped end over end, raising her prow up and aiming evenly, her mirrored hull, all sharp angles and sleek weapon emplacements, glowed a furious, hellish red as photon cannons charged.


She waited, waited until the chasing warships were practically on top of her. Then, with a vicious grin, she fired.


Red beams, less than an inch wide, poured out of her vessel and punched clean, neat holes into armor plating.


Those neat holes did not last in the slightest, as plating boiled away and plasma gouted into the decks. Z-23 watched and listened as the enemy vessel's crew screamed and died in agony.


Particle weapons like photon cannons were truly horrific tools, energy projectors capable of shattering entire decks into sublimate plasma and clouds of rapidly spreading debris.


But for Z-23, these had been nothing more than warning shots against the vessels. Holing one of the frigates evenly, straight down the midsection, while the other violently spun out of control, speared through an engine as vapor poured from the decks breached when she'd fired.


"This is Fleet of Fog vessel Z-23, stand down or you will be destroyed. There will not be another warning."


Z-23 hoped, desperately, for them to break off their assault, silently begging that they'd just leave her alone.


She did not get her wish.





Say That To My Face and Alicorn were a pair of the UEN's most advanced frigates, powerful ships, and yet their armor, next generation material sciences and weapons had meant nothing against the alien vessel arrayed against them.


Aboard the Bridge of Say That To My Face, a young woman in a captain's uniform bellowed orders into a sunken recess of the bridge colloquially dubbed "The Pit", scattered reports from technicians weren't looking good, Say That To My Face had lost over a third of her thrust and maneuvering capabilities, and her prow batteries were completely slagged. The enemy vessel's particle beam had sliced through the forward 3 decks, and had killed over three dozen crew just in proximity to those forward guns. Captain Olivia Proctor had had to seal the prow section, radiation levels spiking in the area so dangerously that anyone who was left out there would be dead soon.


It twisted her in the guts, to know that an alien vessel such as this was so close to their home, was so easily able to evade their detections, and so capable in combat.


"JAMESON! GIVE ME WHAT THRUST WE HAVE."


Her voice bellowed across the bridge, and the frigate slowly, terrifyingly, began to arrest its descent, stabilizers and thrusters firing as rapidly as the engine crews could give her.


She felt the bottom of her stomach fall clean out as she held on for dear life, Say That To My Face had inertial dampeners, a good way to prevent the crew from being splattered into paste during the maneuvers they were expected to pull during combat. But the damage she'd incurred was already taxing the ship's dampeners more than anticipated, with the gravity below them, it made for a teeth rattling ride that had her barely clinging onto her seat.


Proctor was moving the moment the vessel stabilized.


"Tactical! Give me firing solutions, then dump everything we have at that ship the moment you can. Comms! Send a tightbeam to Alicorn, tell them to fire everything they've got at that ship the moment they can! Can anyone reach Task Command aboard the Evergreen?"


The replies she received were not welcoming.


The enemy vessel was hiding in the cloud layer around them, and she'd flooded the battlefield with small, but hideously effective distractions, signal repeaters, strips of metal, and dozens of false signatures.


The game of cat and mouse was just beginning, but Olivia didn't like her odds. The first slugging match of the conflict had left her ship near crippled, her allied destroyer injured, and her command vessel silent.


"Captain! Report from Commodore Allyria aboard the Evergreen! They took a hit to the bridge and lost most of the command staff. They're not withdrawing, but they're slow to respond right now and half blind for now!"


Olivia froze, that was worse news than expected.


The amount of damage done to her allies was hideous.


"Fine. Tactical, give me some good news, comms, tell the Evergreen to fire on the targets our missiles give them!"


Her officers, good men and women, nodded, and resumed their stations, fulfilling their orders with duty and resolve.


Missiles and heavy cannons burst, and the enemy vessel roared from the clouds into the midst of the UEN formation, weapons charged.


Both sides fired, missile contrails dancing with the sharp, crackling blindness of energy beams lancing out alongside their explosive brethren.


A/N: Hey everyone~! Welcome to another chapter of Planetfall, and by extension, Records of the Void, as is now clearly the case, Humanity has not been idle in the years following the Siren War. Certain groups have been waiting for an opportunity like this to arise, and now it has come. I'd love to hear from you about this story, so if you have questions or comments, please feel welcome to post them here or join the discord(link below!) If you'd like to support me, please consider doing so. I'd like to post much more frequently over the next few months, and that will hopefully pay off for all of you as much as it excites me for what I have planned!

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