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[Keep with the Convoy]
Thanks to @Armoury for the beta!
—
"Keep with the convoy, keep between our destroyers and the outside of the formation."
"Admiral, are you ordering me to move further into the formation?"
I nod my head, looking out towards the flames bursting from the USS Honolulu.
"
Coward."
I don't spare her a glance, focused instead on the water around us. It was a dark night, it was a cloudy night, it was a damn good night for a hunter, and now those flames were silhouetting targets around the Honolulu. "I'm not jeopardizing the crew by separating from the fleet at night. Our pilots have no experience with night fighting, let alone night submarine hunting. Send up the Helicopter as a spotter and aid."
Leviathan is probably glaring at me now, and perhaps at another time I could find the effort to care. Right now I had a capital ship to protect. Then the buzz of activity continues, and such thoughts are forgotten. The carrier swings to port, pulling deeper into formation. The Hughes veers off, clearing the way for us as we pull in, and all around, the night sky was lit by green and red flares. Some warning, some spotting, and the sound of gunfire rippling out was omnipresent. Destroyers dash away from the fleet, chasing ghosts picked up on sonar, while cruisers move to block for the larger capital ships. The convoy, despite its size however, didn't have many. And I am feeling a bit like a sitting duck, before my attention is pulled to a loud
whine coming from the deck. The helicopter is taking off, its rotors pummel the deck with force before it lifts off into the air.
*BANG*
For one, terrified moment I believe the helicopter collided with the bridge as the entire vessel shook. But as a white flash envelops the bridge, I witness Honolulu
bursting with force. Her aft turret rocketing into the air as her stern separates from the ship. Fire illuminates the dark, the chaos. Men are leaping off of her, some aflame, their bodies hit the water and as they do, the water bursts into flame as well. I don't see the shipgirl, I don't see Honolulu. But I watch for a moment more, helpless, as the ship starts to tilt
upwards, the stern taking on water and dragging her slowly down into the depths.
There is nothing I can do about it. Not in this hulking behemoth.
"Sir, the Hughes!"
My head turns to port, where I see the USS Hughes careening wildly to starboard, horns blaring, her bow heading straight towards us. She is racing a torpedo, trying to turn out of the way of it, and as a consequence…
"Leviathan, take over!"
The ship
lurches underneath my feet. I watch as the girl, a short little thing with a baseball cap on the bow of the Hughes, looks out towards us. I couldn't make out her expression, not from here, not in the dark. But I can see her stumble back, suddenly panicked as she passes a good ten yards past the side of the Leviathan. Signal horns fill the night as a cruiser is forced to swing out of
our way as we carve through the fleet.
Giving a shipgirl complete command of the vessel, is like giving a teenager their first car. They tended to focus on what was happening to them instead of what was going on
around them, but they can pull some impressive moves while they do it. Then I hear it, the crackle of the radioset, the radioman yelps, tossing off his talker helmet as it sparks and flames. "Guten abend Americans, this is U-2549, I hope you are having a lovely welcome to the Caribbean!" a female, heavily accented, German voice comes out of the radio sets around the bridge, followed by a mocking laugh.
"Bastards." Leviathan hisses.
"Can we locate that radio signal?" I ask, looking to my XO Sebastian.
"I…" Sebastian begins, then pauses, looking overwhelmed.
"Yes or no Captain."
"Admiral," Leviathan says. "I'm picking it up from five different headings at once, it makes no sense."
I close my eyes for a few moments, then open them again slowly. We are passing by the Honolulu now, awash with flame and shouting men. "Keep up with the convoy, inform me immediately if the rescue-helicopter spots anything, Leviathan, keep control of the vessel. I want everyone not immediately doing anything to be watching for torpedoes in the water."
Distantly I could see the USS Cassin, pulling away from the convoy to chase something in the dark, and silently to myself, I begin to pray.
—
The odd sound of the helicopter's dual rotors fill the air as it lowers itself down onto the flightdeck, once it gets to be about five feet above up, Leviathan physically grabs it. Helping pull the ungainly craft down onto the deck. I watch in fascination as the rotors begin to slow, and the side door opens as the pilot stumbles out onto the deck, he doesn't make it far. His knees hit the deck first, then his hands, and the man rolls over onto his back, panting and exhausted. It was the fourth time he had landed for fuel since the previous evening, and it was the first time he had been out of the helicopter since he first took off.
Morning sunlight illuminates the fleet, and I glance down at the cup of coffee in my hand.
I don't recall asking for it, nor being given it. It appears to have materialized in my hand as a gift from God in my moment of need. I sip it, looking over the fleet. It tastes about as awful as the fleet looks at the moment. Smoke rose in the air from several ships, and by some small miracle we aren't one of them. The Honolulu was completely gone, the survivors from her being taken to a nearby cruiser. While several other ships had gotten licked, the Vinciennes had taken a torpedo near her bow and was doing her best to keep up on my starboard side, while the USS Hughes was currently being towed by the USS Miscott after having apparently rammed a submarine dead on.
The convoy had been attacked in the early evening, the Germans had been laying in wait off Fortress Panama. They caught the convoy
completely by surprise, and based on the estimates at the moment, they have at most lost a single submarine. It is, frankly, a miracle that only one ship went down. I take another sip of the coffee, then look towards Sebastian. The man looks frazzled, and the woman standing just to his left didn't look much better. Leviathan is wide-eyed, her gaze shifting from spot to spot on the ocean. It was likely her first time seeing actual combat, not a sudden attack like Pearl, but an actual engagement, and it had been on and off for a good twelve hours. I didn't feel the need to comment on it, instead, I simply set the cup down.
"Sebastian, get some breakfast and some rest, you did fine." The man looks at me, but doesn't move. Then, after some time, he nods, regaining some dignity as an officer, then makes his way off of the bridge. Besides him, and Leviathan, the bridge was understaffed. The radioman I had only a few hours ago was now in sickbay, his eardrums having ruptured from the burst of radio-traffic courtesy of the attacking submarines. Leviathan, I note, was shivering where she stood, and I think it over for a moment before I pick up the cup again and walk over.
She doesn't acknowledge my presence, though in her case, it's less out of the usual hatred and more because she isn't acknowledging much of
anything at the moment. To that end, I press the hot cup against the side of her face. She doesn't yelp, or scream, or do anything of the sort. Shipgirls are immune to such quaint human things like 'temperature', but it
did startle her enough to look my way.
"Drink it, it'll make you feel better."
Leviathan stares at me in silence for several long moments, then takes the cup from me. I watch her drink it in silence, then, "are you alright, Leviathan?"
Leviathan closes her eyes, her golden eyeliner flashing in the morning light. "I am… fine," the shipgirl lies. She opens them again a few seconds later, staring at me. "You don't seem bothered Admiral."
"It's all very exciting and busy, isn't it?" I ask, casting my gaze down to the flight deck where the maintenance crews are already hard at work on the helicopter. "Have someone summon the flight officer, I'll have new orders for him."
"Aye Admiral," Leviathan replies instinctively.
"I take things as they come, and worry about things I can worry about. Right now, I care about getting us to our territorial waters so we can be escorted all the way to Norfolk." I sigh, then look back to the carrier, she was staring at me now, what those eyes say however, I can't tell. "You'll get used to it," I offer plaintively.
A few minutes pass in silence between us, then LC Ernst Schreiber walks into the bridge, the man is already in his full flight uniform, and he takes but a moment to glance around before quickly stepping over to you. "Admiral, you asked for me?"
"Yes, and you know what I'm going to ask as well."
"I'll start writing up a night flight regimen."
"Good man," I reply with a small smile. "That's all."
Ernst then leaves as quickly as he arrived, and I turn my gaze from the fleet and the sunrise fully, to look about the exhausted bridge crew, then finally Leviathan once more. "Get some rest, we'll summon you if we need to."
A familiar glint appears in her eyes, and a familiar clip enters her tone. "I'm fine."
"I'm glad to hear it, go be fine in your quarters. Admiral's Orders."
"Have I made an
error?" Leviathan challenges.
"No, but you're wound up like a spring about to burst," I reply. "I look after the ship, the crew, and
you. Take some rest Leviathan, if something's wrong you'll be the first to know." I lean back against the bridge window, smiling at her. "Weather's clear until tomorrow night, and they aren't going to try again during the day. Get some rest."
"And you Admiral?" Leviathan asks, her voice sounding genuinely curious.
"Soon enough."
Leviathan stares at me in silence once more, then nods almost minutely. "Aye sir."
Then she's gone, leaving me alone on the bridge with nothing but the other mere humans. I stare at the spot she vacated for several long seconds, then retrieve the cup of coffee. It would be another hour for me, at least, then… well.
I never have had much luck sleeping during the day.
—
The quarters, or, more accurately, the 'suite' that was your sea-cabin was far less grand than your port-quarters. Which was a lot like saying Buckingham Palace was less majestic than Versailles. It was still far too plush for my liking. But then, I didn't exactly have the time to redecorate either. I found myself sitting on the edge of the bed, looking over a small document that had been handed to me, in truth, there were two. One was a list of losses during the night, which remained, thankfully, still just Honolulu… even if I would rather not lose any cruisers at all. Beyond that, the Hughes would be sailing into Tampa for repairs instead of following along, and the Navy was dispatching a force from South Florida to escort us the rest of the way in.
My eyes move to the other piece of paper, coming along is one of the ships of my new task group, meant to join Leviathan and Cassin, along with some others yet to be decided, on our trip to the Strait of Gibraltar.
It's the-
—
The next ship to join the task group, and like Cassin and Leviathan, one Anderson will be in direct command of. There will be several of these votes coming up. In other news, good work dodging that… very bad tactical decision.
[] [USS New York]
Battleship. The lead ship of her namesake class, famed for, unlike most of the capital ships, not giving much a damn about decorum. The stories of the brawls with her sisters are legendary around the fleet. The ship itself is a modernized dreadnought, slow, ungainly, but packing quite a lot of firepower with good armor as well.
[] [USS Saratoga]
Battlecruiser. Known for being a bit of a giant energetic wrecking ball. There are battle-fiends, and then there is Saratoga. She always seemed like she was trying to prove herself when you had sailed with her in the past. The ship itself is one of the few Battlecruisers the US has, a mix between the firepower of a battleship but the armor and speed of a cruiser. A jack of all trades, master of none.
[] [USS Boise]
Light Cruiser. From what you understand she had a reputation for being rather shy, you had never worked with her in the past. The ship itself was of the Brooklyn Class, a very reliable group. Though some difficulties may be had, her sister, Honolulu, just exploded the previous night.
[] [USS Ingraham]
Destroyer.
The 'mad scientist' of the Allen M Sumners, famed for tinkering with her own Wisdom Cube to… interesting effects. She was known as mainly a recluse otherwise, rarely interacting with anyone. The ship itself was one of the most modern destroyers the navy had, with better guns, tech, and maneuverability. Cassin will be thrilled.
