Dec 11th.
Thanks to
@Armoury for the beta!
---
I remember shouting, I remember screaming. I remember men dying all around me and crying out to god and family. Men begged for release, people with more burns than flesh. Men so utterly ruined I couldn't tell where the dead ended and the living began. I lost count of the amount of times I blacked out. I would awaken in pain, panicked and confused as doctors and nurses either applied bandages or pulled them off of me. I was never awake for more than a few seconds at a time, and each time the scenes in the hospital only got worse. Then, one day.
I awoke.
My eyes slowly open, and the first thing that hit my senses was the strong smell of disinfectant and… petroleum. Then, a stabbing pain in my arm causes me to suck in a breath and my head to jerk to the side. There, to my right was a nurse dressed in the usual frock. She looks… tired, very tired as she wraps a bandage around my…
My…
Stump.
I stare at it,
Where my right hand had been only recently, was now a bandaged, flat stump.
…
Well.
…
I'll deal with that later.
"Good morning," I say to the nurse, "am I dead?"
The nurse starts, her head jerking up to look at me in surprise before… she runs off and out of sight. The curtains around my hospital bed prevented me from seeing anymore than that. I smile, I can't help it. "I didn't think I was
that ugly."
I lift the bandaged stump, staring at it. It was a clean cut, and I didn't even remember getting the wound. But then, adrenaline. I follow the bandage down, more bandages were there, all over my side. Pushing my elbows down slowly, I begin to press myself u-
No, right. Don't sit up. Bad idea. I settle back down with a groan of pain, my vision flashing as my back makes its opinion of that
known.
"Eager are we?" a voice asks.
Two new figures were standing at the end of the bed. One is… a doctor, the 'uniform' gave him away. As did the bags under his eyes and the fact he hadn't visibly shaved in days. The other man is…
"You're alive, Kidd?" I ask, staring at the admiral.
He had his arm in a sling but was the same old bastard as always.
"Despite the Siren's and the Jap's best attempts, yes." Kidd replies.
"Move your feet for me." The doctor says, interrupting us.
I look down my body towards the feet, both were… heavily bandaged. But with effort they bend and flex.
"Good," the doctor says with a sigh of relief. "We'll have you out of here in a week."
Then… he's gone as soon as he arrived. Already moving onto the next patient as Kidd watches him leave. A frown briefly crosses the admiral's features before he shakes his head. "The man hasn't slept more than six hours in four days."
"Doesn't sound healthy for a doctor."
"He hasn't had a choice," Kidd replies quietly. Then he walks forward, moving to stand just beside me on the bed. He looks down at me, saying nothing for several moments. "It's bad out there Stevens."
"Cassin?" I ask, hoping.
"She's fine," Kidd says with a small smile. "She's getting fixed up in drydock, kept asking about you and trying to sneak off." Then the smile drops, and the admiral suddenly looks very stoic, a very… practiced, form of stoic. "We're estimating several thousand casualties, with over half that killed in action. And that's just the navy, we've lost plenty of Marines and civilians as well. With a chunk of those Marines dying defending against a naval landing."
"They
invaded?"
"Sirens attempted a naval landing along with a small amount of Japanese troops in Haleiwa, landed nearly right on top of the USS Lafayette, she managed to fight them off after several hours but… she's in drydock now."
"And the fleet?" I ask.
Isaac closes his eyes and hands me a scrap of paper from his pocket. "Top secret, but you'll need to know."
I stare at the paper, eyes scanning briefly down the list of cruisers and destroyers as well before looking up at the admiral. "What's even left of the capital ships?"
"In Hawaii? Not much," Kidd replies, before grabbing the paper back and looking at it himself. "With Vestal sunk we've got Medusa putting in overtime to see what she can do. Bridgeport has been brought back into service as well to work on it."
My head hits the pillow. "So, we're at war then?"
Kidd nods. "Japan, three days ago. Germany declared war soon after… they hit New York the same time the Japs hit Pearl. No real ship casualties, just civilians."
"Yonkers?" I ask, thinking of home.
"Untouched," Kidd reassures me. "In any case, the staff back in Washington is scrambling to put a plan together, and that's what I've come to talk to you about."
I stare at him, saying nothing as he pulls two boxes from his pocket. He places them on a small table near the bed and flips both of them open. One contains a purple heart, the other contains… the NC and a pair of single gold stars.
"We need you back out there as soon as possible, Admiral Stevens. Any past hesitance on the part of this government is off, we have started full scale shipping to England and the fleet is being prepared at both ends of the country.
"... I hate to break this to you Admiral, but I'm missing a hand."
"And we lost a full half of our flag staff in a day," Kidd replies. "The Naval Office has chosen to overlook your disability," the Admiral then smiles. "While I'm glad to see you aren't letting it bother you too much, you can function without the hand Stevens."
"I'm still waking up to be honest with you," I reply. "Give me some time, I'll start screaming about the unfairness of it all."
"So be it, but are you able?"
I stare at the boxes, then look to the Admiral. "Just point me to my ship."
Kidd smiles. "Well, we haven't told Cassin yet, but you're getting a new flagship, we lost too many flight officers and you have the training we need. We're giving you a carrier command with Cassin in the task group."
"She's going to be furious."
"She's going to have to deal with it," Kidd then produces a piece of paper from his pocket, and hands it forward. It's an order slip, commanding me to report to my new station as soon as physically able. The ship is the-
---
Vote for you new ship, you will be serving in an Aircraft Carrier Taskgroup, but will be heading your own Task Force.
[] [USS Bunker Hill]
The newest ship of the Essex class. A quiet girl with a lot of firepower, her knowledge of the world was so lacking she was nearly alien.
[] [USS Leviathan]
A converted German Liner of the first World War, she carried nearly as many planes as the Essex did, and her manners around the fleet were legendary. Though she apparently had some… quirks of her own.
[] [USS Enterprise]
A Yorktown class aircraft carrier, an older model, but proud. The shipgirl was famously rather taciturn.
docs.google.com
