Castles of Steel - Lesbians Good, Imperialism Bad

You resisted the initial urge to simply dash out a response of some kind. What kind, you weren't sure yet, but something.

You'd been so stupid about this.

You tried to imagine your mother's voice, the lecture you'd get about this. Not judgement, but instruction. The straightforward lessons she'd give, where neither your feelings nor hers mattered one bit.

Lesson One: You were an Imperial Princess. There were rules. You had an obligation to your family and society to not become entangled with the lower classes. With the subjects.

You knew that. Aiko had to know that, too. Aiko was too low in social standing to even be a respectable mistress. It wasn't just your reputation on the line, either. This was your whole family. You were already pushing at some many boundaries… it wouldn't be the first time a cadet branch was struck from the family tree, reduced to nothing, over something as stupid as a romance.

You couldn't keep this going. It wasn't fair to you and, more importantly, it wasn't fair to her. You were dangling a fantasy in front of her she could never have.

But, then your mother would sigh, drink her tea slowly, hiding her expression from you as the disappointment washed over your face. Then she'd set it down and speak again.

Lesson Two: Rules are not absolutes.

When you were fourteen and you first said, seriously and not as a joke, that you wanted to be a Naval officer like your cousins, you wanted to wear black and white and stand on the bridge of mighty warships, yout mother had told you the same thing. No… but then again....

You were royalty. What's the point of being in charge of everything if you have to follow all the rules all the time? Your mother had explained to you, in great detail, all the reasons you couldn't, elaborated on her every objection and concern, interrogated you for hours over weeks and months.

But then, she'd given you advice. Who to talk to, where to go, what letters to write and how to phrase them. How to dress and wear your hair to look respectable, yet ready. She arranged audiences and dinner parties where you would just happen to be brought into contact with everyone you needed.

And now here you are, in your cabin on a warship, in a uniform they had to design to accomodate you. Captain of a cutting-edge submarine, winning the respect and trust of your crews.

One rule broken. What's one more?

You took up your pen again. You were Lieutenant Arisugawa Haruna, Imperial Princess. Nothing would stand between you and your dreams.

And by the spirits, you dreamed of her.

First things first, you needed to reassure her that everything is going to be okay, and more than that, you needed to let her know your intentions, without scaring her off hers had changed. You were sure, when you first met, that she would have thrown herself at you, but that was just… youthful idolization. To take advantage of such a thing was far beneight you. But now, she knew you better, she had a future ahead of her, education lined up in the capital.

You spent the next couple of days whenever you weren't on duty bent over your desk composing and recomposing the letter. Your waste paper basket was full of drafts that were either too blatant or too subtle or that just plain sounded like something from a bad novel. That Gallian trash you'd been reading must be getting to you.

You needed her to understand what this was. You needed her to understand you'd be willing to take whatever answer she gave. You needed her to understand what she meant to you. You had thousands of characters to express your feelings and none of them seemed to fit.

Your pen rested in a little dot on the bottom of the page, ink pooling as you thought. Then you remembered, and it all fell into place.

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By early April the Hachinosu had been ordered back into Shimazu for a brief refit. You weren't given leave this visit and you were privately a little grateful for it. You weren't sure that you were ready to see Aiko in person yet, or she you. It made things feel too real and tenuous. The letters at least let you keep the fiction of distance. While you were in Shimazu, you were surprised to have all of the miniature submarines offloaded and instead of the usual load of torpedoes, the ship's fuel reserves were filled with diesel oil.

There were rumors that something was afoot and that only seemed to be confirmed when the ship steamed out of the harbor a week after you arrived, this time in company with one of your nation's protected cruisers, the Kaiyo. Speculation only increased as instead of turning north or west towards Cathay or Joseon, the Hachinosu turned east, out into the vastness of the Auroric Ocean. Only when you were several days clear of port, did the captain reveal what has happening: your tender was being sent across the sea to pick up a new submarine from the yards of San Cristobal in New Allegheny. It was a special prototype--at least that's what Hisanobu said.

Reading between the lines, "special prototype" was probably something that had been built for the Federal Navy and then someone had decided they didn't need it, so it had been shopped around to whoever wanted to buy it. The Imperial Akitsukuni Navy had been in need of a long range submarine for years now: the Type-Whatever mothership sub still wasn't ready, and by the time it was it would probably be too obsolete to invest in others of her class. Getting one from a foreign yard to study was probably the next best option. And they had a ship with experienced submariners which could nurse the thing back home with a skeleton crew and an escort. Fun times.

Midway between home and New Allegheny, you paused in the Kingdom of Katuroa to take on more coal. It was a beautiful place with brilliant sandy beaches and shockingly clear blue water, along with swaying tropical trees and fields of pineapple and sugarcane. There was a fairly large population of Akitsukuni emigres here, many of them working as fishers and farmers. Kenshin mentioned that he had a distant cousin who lived here and worked in the sugarcane export business or something like that, so going ashore you could find 'Little Akitsukuni' and almost felt like you were back home, though the community here tended to pepper their language with native words and bits of Albian slang, which gave them away as being a bit divorced from the motherland.

Fresh pineapples were a hugely popular souvenir. Only the canned type was commonly available back home and the fresh ones were absurdly cheap here so it seemed like every sailor who went ashore brought one back aboard, except for the quartermaster who brought dozens if not hundreds.

The islands were also very conscious of their potential for extracting the money of passing sailors, and had some lovely distractions lined up for anyone willing to spend on it. Some of the lower officers took advantage by commissioning some sort of giant night-time party on the beach the night before the ships were to leave: there would be music, booze, pretty young people in various states of undress, and an entire pig being roasted on an open flame. After some of the hardest months of your life (physically, intellectually, and emotionally), you were ready to let loose a little.

You'd just dropped off some papers at the pursers and were heading back out when you passed the door to the captain's quarters. The ship was quite nearly deserted: everyone was ashore making a fool of themselves. Not even the captain's stewards seemed present. As you passed, you heard voices: your cousin and another, somebody you thought might be Commander Arakaki, executive officer of the Kaiyo.

"I'm just saying, it's a perfect chance. Guns flow like water over there, and there are plenty of places to store such things on a ship like this! I found a storeroom the other day I didn't even know about!"

"I'm just saying, this could go bad in a lot of ways. They didn't want these in the hands of our militia for a reason…"

"Come now, man! That was all small politics. Don't you own that, what was it, a cannery or something? Say the next election goes south and the communists take to the streets, like in Otrusia. Wouldn't you rather have those things in the hands of people who are actually willing to do something about it, protect your factories from those animals? Besides, you have a wife a new son to think about, too, don't you?"

You slunk by the door quietly. Kenshin was waiting for you at the hatch: if you waited too long, he might come looking for you and give away your position. The longer you linger, the more likely it is you get caught.

Then again… the longer you linger, the more likely it is they'll spill everything.