Between the betrayal of their allies and the overwhelming size of the human-aligned fleet, The Crossroads Fleet was doomed. The Wo-class CFS Trinitite only survived through luck, making her the last member of her fleet, with one possible exception. With no allies, a baffling mystery, and nothing...
So I know there's already a thread on the JotB Princess in our Abyssal Conflict subforum, but that one's focused on what her appearance means. I want to compile everything we know about who she is into a seperate thread. I'll start with what we know so far:
She isn't actually a princess, probably.
She's probably an American/European design, although that doesn't narrow things down much.
She's a capital ship, at least. Far larger (I'm talking about height/weight) then any submarine. This is the really confusing part, because a battleship is probably the last thing you want on an infiltration mission.
What did I miss?
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dark_republic
Nov 21, 2022 #2
Don't forget that it has a name, apparently. The fed who was watching it called the abyssal 'Trinitite.'
Damn, I didn't even know abyssals had names.
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LongBeachCGN9
Nov 21, 2022 #3
Quote: dark_republic said:
| Don't forget that it has a name, apparently. The fed who was watching it called the abyssal 'Trinitite.'
Yeah, that name is really important. Normally, I'd expect something sea-themed, like 'Leviathan,' but Trinitite isn't anything like that. It's a glass-like crystal formed by sand, fused together by a nuclear blast.
What abyssal princess would even know about that? The only one I can think of is whomever was in charge of Bikini, but OSINT on them is spotty and it seems like we managed to kill her for good anyways.
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Montauk
Nov 21, 2022 #26
Quote: Constellation-1017 Said:
| the same 'shipgirls are princesses' bs as always
Jesus christ, not this conspiracy shit again. For the last time, just because we don't know what abyssal princesses are doesn't mean shipgirls are secret abyssals. In fact, we have proof, now, of what a secret abyssal is like, and it's not a shipgirl.
Honestly, mods should start banning this nonsense, along with those stupid 'abyssal nuke' posts we keep getting.
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AliveArcher022
Nov 21, 2022 #27
Speaking of conspiracies, anyone remember that grainy video of that battle in washington a few weeks back?
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LongBeachCGN9
Nov 21, 2022 #28
Quote: AliveArcher022 Said:
| that grainy video
What the hell? You're saying that she's been in the US for months now?
Also, I can't really tell what ship's firing at what, but I think that's a point in the 'Wo' column.
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ValhallenEarthshaker89
Nov 22, 2022 #29
I'm absolutely certian she is a Wo. Her Valkyries fleet is carrier-centric, and when I argued that carriers were obsolete, she bristled quite a bit.
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EighthAce
Nov 22, 2022 #30
Quote: ValhallenEarthshaker89 Said:
| when I argued that carriers were obsolete, she bristled quite a bit.
You've talked with her? What was she like? Was that 'Alex' really her boyfriend?
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Constellation-1017
Nov 22, 2022 #31
How do we know you aren't Alex? How do we know you aren't Trinitite?
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ValhallenEarthshaker89
Nov 23, 2022 #36
I don't know if she was dating anyone, I just played a couple of 40k and VoR games with her.
Everyone in the store liked her, although how she looked probably played into it. She was really polite, and a pretty good sport. Showed no quarter on the tabletop, though she wouldn't play games where her abyssals' objective was to bomb a city or attack 'innocent' targets. Her excuse was that, as a 'refugee,' she liked the power that came from controlling her supossed tormentors, but now that I know the truth I'm not sure how to read into it.
Her fleet composition was this:
Two Wo-class (Essex-base & Lexington)
He-class light cruiser (Cleveland)
I-class destroyers
She was talking about adding a heavy cruiser, but I never saw it
Also… she knows about this fourm. Hello, Trinitite, sorry I called you obsolete.
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dark_republic
Nov 23, 2022 #37
Quote: ValhallenEarthshaker89 Said:
| Also… she knows about this fourm.
Holy shit, we're compromised.
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- - -
By the time JS Genkai had pulled into her homeport, the sun had been set for several hours. The grand, impossibly dense dome of stars one only ever fully saw on the ocean was obscured by clouds. The dark cieling above them was barely visible, Maizuru's lights dampened to hinder the navigation efforts of the Eastern Airfield Princess's flying fortresses. Visibility fell further as the Genkai was tied to the pier, fat flakes of snow appearing in the head of the rare lamp to scatter its light and settle into the quarter-inch blanket forming on the deck.
Upon the deck of the unarmed training ship, Saratoga stood, watching the deck division toil in the dim lighting to extend the gangplank onto the pier. She was wearing the standard issue black fleece over her mottled camoflage uniform, her regulation-flaunting hair tucked into the neck of the outer garment. The eight-point cap had been replaced with a cayote-brown baseball cap, 7th Fleet's regelia emblazoned across it's front.
Word from her friends in the rest of the Navy was that most commands were authorizing shipgirls to wear their own customized 'command caps' in the instances where they were in standard issue uniforms. Her sister had already mailed the carrier her own 'USS SARATOGA CV-3' cap, complete with scrambled eggs on the bill and a white-embroidered 'E' on the side, but she wouldn't be able to wear it until she was officially back, and at that point she would be spending most of her time in the 'uniform' that came with her rigging anyways.
The fact that her existance was still classified was why she was aboard the Genkai in the first place. Every other ship in their fleet had already gone ashore, dissipearing into a ramen shop just outside of the base. Several of her students had wanted to wait for her, but after their days-long excercise it hadn't taken much prodding to convince them to go on ahead. Her Japanese had gotten a lot better since her arrival, meaning spending the last leg of their voyage with the JS Genkai's tight-nit crew hadn't been unpleasant in the slightest, but it also meant that, once she bid her goodbyes and disembarked from the training ship, she was practically alone.
As she walked, the fresh, thin layer of snow muffled her footsteps. There wasn't any wind. At this hour, activity even on base was kept to a minimum, and as she walked the lapping of waves grew increasingly quiet. Saratoga was surrounded by darkness, and moving in almost total silence.
At times like these, one's thoughts tended to wander.
Their first destination was where memories were the freshest- today's excercise. After bidding goodbye to Hiyou and Unryu, she'd been flown back to Maizuru, where Admiral Hirano suprised her with an abrupt sortie: without Katori's aid, collect the fleet of novice carriers and escorts, and sortie them to rondevous with a joint Chinese-South Korean battlegroup escorting freighters out of The Sea of Japan for a photo op.
She wasn't too happy with her preformance, but things had gone well regardless. Intercepting the joint task force had been disturbingly easy, their speed constrained by the slow, fuel-efficent bulk carriers they were guarding. From there, Saratoga had split off from the rest of the fleet with a scatter of escorts. She aparrently wasn't ready for the press yet, after all.
Sensing an opprotunity, she'd launched her air wing, setting them on the convoy after getting permission from its commander. The impromptu set of air defense drills went well… on paper. By now, all of her students were catching on to the limited number of tricks she could pull with her lumbering biplanes, so her air wing was 'killed' several times over as it approached the convoy. The only real training value, she suspected, came in coordinating a defense with the modern PLAN and South Korean vessels.
After the photo op was finished and they'd split with their allies, Saratoga had intended to split the fleet again, then pit her students against each other, but then Kasagi spotted a periscope and the training ended. Saratoga didn't know the ultimate fate of the abyssal submarine, but they'd hunted it well into the night.
The silence pervading the base was interrupted by a long, deep sigh from the carrier. Scuttlebutt among the cruisers wasn't always reliable, but the rumors she picked up on were saying that, assuming the abyssals advance on Australia could be suficcently blunted, the next princess targeted for… rescue might be joining her little training program. At the minimum, that would be months from now. Would she have better aircraft by then? She was still in the dark about how that whole process worked, besides the fact that one of the returned repair ships woukd need a spot in their busy schedules to help with a refit. Were they actually, spiritually required, or were they just the only ones technically proficcent in the required skills? Would Akashi here in Japan suffice, or would Saratoga need to book a flight back to the US?
Back to the US…
The agreement that freed her meant she was attached to the JMSDF for a year. The intention on the Japanese side clearly wasn't to seperate Saratoga from her friends. She was free to take leave back in the states, had been given help in establishing regular contact with her friends back home, and had been treated with the hospitality Japan was famous for.
…However.
The other consideration that had come to light, long after the deal had been made, was poisoning the entire arangement. After the year was over, she would return to her own Navy, but if Trinitite was still in the states, things became less clear.
She could get extended here, transfered to seventh fleet propper, or heaven forbid the sixth. None of those were assignments she would object to (except a posting in Naples. The Med was too crowded for an unarmored carrier like herself), but the hidden reasoning behind such a decision was something she certianly did. The risk of Trinitite finding her colored every decision that was made about her life, from her assignment to who she could arrange a refit with to even keeping her identity a secret.
All of these precautions were understandable, but as the weeks went on, her memories of the Jellyfish Princess became clearer, and more days passed without a violent incident, they started to feel more and more… unnessicary. Saratoga supossed that it was possible the Wo-class could corupt her back into Jellyfish, but they'd seen nothing suppourting any kind of corruptive ability, and nothing the abyssal could say would reverse the fact that the Essex class had survived the politically motivated cries that they were obsolete. There was the fear that the Wo-class would try killing her, she guessed, but if she had any kind of guard when they met it shouldn't be too much of an issue. Besides, Saratoga knew Trinitite would at least try to talk to her first.
At least, she thought she would. The Wo-class had gone from holding humans as nothing more than the enemy to saving one's life in less than a month, and it had been more than two since she made landfall on the olympic pinensula. An extreme situation like the one Trinitite had found herself in forced a person to change. The longer time dragged on, the less confident Saratoga could be about how Trinitite would act.
That meant the sooner it got resolved, the better, but…
The prospect of facing the the wayward carrier was still terrifying. Saratoga still didn't really know what to say. How could she tell Trinitite that Jellyfish hadn't ever truely loved her? Yes, she'd never lead with that statement, but like those impossibly large whirlpools in legends any honest conversation would be inexorably pulled towards that terrible truth.
Beyond that, what would the Navy do to her if they did catch her? Once, the idea of her being kept away would be good enough for Saratoga, but now that she understood the wo-class more, the fate they had planned for her- if they had a plan- was starting to feel really important to her.
Saratoga abruptly realized the resturant was in front of her, its glass facade dimmed by reams of blackout curtians. With the wall of windows hidden and the sign above the entrance dark the building appeared dead, and the carrier almost cruised past it, lost in her musing. As she watched, however, a family exited, alowing light to spill out of the resturant and causing the fresh snow blanketing the lot and surrounding cars to glow. The light faded as the door swung shut, then grew again as Saratoga let herself in.
Compared to the cold, silent night outside, the ramen joint was warm, inviting, and vibrant. The kitchen in the back was humming with activity, despite the hour: Saratoga had called the resturant before they'd departed, letting them know to expect a lot of work some time tonight. They'd warned her that with rationing as it was they probably wouldn't have enough food to feed the entire fleet with so little warning, but they must have figured something out, as employees continued to toil back in the kitchen.
It was no wonder. Instead of the modest fleet Saratoga had warned them about, almost all of Admiral Hirano's off-duty ships were here. Destroyers clustered around the main bar, chattering in japanese a little too rapid for the american to follow. The cruiser Abukuma shared a booth with some submarines Saratoga didn't recognize, the ships's meals dissapearing relatively slowly as they all focused on one phone. Finally, her students were evenly split between two booths, exitedly chatting with each other as the corpses of dozens of once-full bowls lay vanquished on the tables.
Saratoga's first thought was to run for the store's restroom and get changed out of her stiff NWUs, but she dismissed it. At the very least, she could say 'hi' to the other carriers in the fleet, first.
"...and now she is forced to choose between her love and her mission!" Amagi's voice overcame the general din of the resturant first, the triple-decked conversion unusually passionate as she looked at her phone. "Isn't it romantic?"
"It's stupid." Katsuragi bit back. "They don't feel love, or pity, or remorse. Zuikaku said as much, and she knows more about them then anyone!" The carrier's black hair shifted as she pointed her chopsticks at her opposite. "You've just been reading too many light novels!"
Zuikaku… were they talking about abyssals? Had some particularly contravertial piece of media been released or something? The idea of an abyssal getting into a romantic relationship was disturbing, but to Saratoga it was for different reasons then most.
The converted battlecruiser was unphased by her comrade's accusation, her smile only dissapearing to allow her to scoop in another pinch of noodles.
The third carrier at the table, the shy Taiho, said something else, but her words failed to clear the jovial racket of the surrounding conversations. Her rangefinders were the rirst to catch Saratoga, however, and her next words found the strength to reach the aproaching american.
"Oh, Sarah!" She greeted, a question forming in the smile she flashed her. "Did you hear about Trinitite?"
The noise of the busy resturant suddenly faded. The lights almost semed to wink out, and the warm air wafting from the kitchen suddenly became a biting chill.
"About what."
- - -
Admiral Hirano sighed, looking up from the stack of paperwork that had just fallen onto her desk.
"You saw the video, huh?"
Saratoga stood before her, uncharactaristicly rigid as she stood at attention. There was no protocol bidding the aircraft carrier to do so, just as she had no reason to wear her immacculiately-maintained kacki navy service uniform, instead of the more comfortable work uniform she was normally forced to wear.
"Yes, ma'am." She replied, her voice taking more after the clipped dicipline of Katori, rather then the casual american's normal tone. "I understand I haven't given the customary warning, and that this will cause a disruption in the training schedule, but this is an emergency."
The admiral looked back down at the papers in front of her. A JMSDF leave application, stacked neatly atop a US Navy leave chit. Printed tickets, showcasing a flight plan from ITM to HND to LAX to SEA to CLS, all at an exorbitant price and scheduled less than four hours from now. Hotel reservations in the small, now-infamous town for one week, and a much less convoluted flight plan for the journey back. All of this had been waiting for her as she stepped into the office in the pre-dawn morning, half an hour before her first appointment.
"A… family emergency?" She probed, remembering Lieutennant Commander Murray's report. Saratoga flinched, but quickly returned to her diciplined stoicism.
"I… don't know, ma'am." She replied. "That's why I have to go."
"Your superiors won't approve." Hirano warned, even though she already knew it would be fruitless.
"You're my superior, Admiral." Saratoga stated. "There are no standing orders keeping me from the states. If you're worried about the abyssal, I can say that Chehallis is the least likely place for her to be."
The Admiral hummed noncommitally, looking back to the haistily-assembled documents before her. With Hiyou and Unryu joining the rest of the fleet, the Maizuru Naval District had been getting a lot of attention from up high, not all of it positive. There were a few people above her that had glanced at her fleet's order-of-battle, saw the big number next to her carriers, and no doubt thought those capital ships could be of more use elsewhere, lack of training or no.
There were talks of… lending the majority of the carriers under her to Yokosuka and Kure, if only for a few months.
Worst of all, Hirano was having trouble arguing against it. After the victory at Bikini, where the Midway Princess had failed to corral her allies into a desicive battle against the joint task force, there had been a relative lull in the fighting across the pacific. People were still dying by the hundreds in New Ginuea, China, and all across southeast asia, but the threat of a massed abyssal offensive after the corruption of Port Moresby was diluded for a month or two.
The Americans, desperate to capitalize on the initiative gained in the Bikini operation, had pressed their luck with an assault on Oahu, a gamble that had paid off but cost them several of their precious capital ships. The Japanese had used the lull to consolidate their position, using Saratoga to train up their rookie carrier force while their veterans conducted routine patrols or raids on the closest abyssal installations.
Judging by underwater sonar contacts, reports from special forces, and satalite tracking of weather phonomena movement, the abyssals were using the lull, too. The pecking order had been re-established, fleets from across the Pacific and Indian ocean were rallying, and a new objective had been set: Australia. They weren't certian specifically where on the contenent they planned to strike, unopposed they had the forces to scour the entire coast, and that meant more forces were required to guard against attacks from the east or the west.
Now, it was looking like Japan would be flying the shipgirl component of the Kaijo Ensei-gun down to Australia, poaching whomever they could from her training squadron to shore up the home islands' defenses until the situation down south could be resolved. She needed Saratoga to assess which girls were sufficcently experienced to go into combat verses those who'd still be a liability to any fleet they were in… but she did have Katori.
Besides, the Americans acted like the Trinitite issue was just their problem, but it was obvious that the ramifications of this were international. Already, she'd heard of several violent incidents between refugees and natives on almost every contenent. The Wo-class' appearance had been spun a hundred different ways worldwide, while the DIH was scrambling to present plans drafted hardly a week ago to the prime minister. Just walking during this morning's run, she'd overheard several conversations on the 'Fast Food Princess,' and had been asked her opinion on the subject twice on her way into the office.
If Saratoga could help guide this mess to a better outcome, then Hirano- no, all of humanity- needed her there. There might be some bitching from the US over allowing the abyssal's target to get so close, but she could handle it.
"I have an appointment with the captain of the Atago in four minutes." The admiral clipped. "Write a rough list of every carrier who's combat-capable in this fleet, put it in my inbox, then you'll be free to go."
The carrier's dicipline faltered as she seemed to relax, a nervous smile spilling across her normally-serine features.
"Thank you very much, Ma'am!" She bowed, then glanced for the door. "I won't bother you any longer, then!"
"Just don't hurt the kid, Sara." The Admiral warned, not serious, but not entirely joking, either. Even Saratoga didn't understand her feelings about the Wo-class, so while the admiral trusted her not to do something stupid…
The thin smile she recieved from the American didn't help with her worries.
"Why, admiral!" She exclaimed. "I'll do no such thing!"
Another chapter! Still gonna have a lot of spelling mistakes, and for that I apologize. Once I've got a more stable living situation I'll be going back and correcting everything using the comments Y'all have provided. Next chapter's probably going to have the same problem, but after that things should return to their standard quality. Thank you all in your patience for dealing with so many spelling errors.
Anyways, chapter! Not 100% happy with the forum segment, but I also didn't want to make it overly long, so that's why it was sorta cut up like that. Please let me know your opinions on the execution there.
"Little did the Admiral know the kid Sara was promising not to hurt was Alex. She was just going to make sure he was good enough for her daughter, that's all!"
I liked the spread of viewpoints of reactions. The forum section was concise but got its point across. Also unfortunate for the refugees now getting paranoid people after them, but sadly realistic.
I liked the spread of viewpoints of reactions. The forum section was concise but got its point across. Also unfortunate for the refugees now getting paranoid people after them, but sadly realistic.
So... I've felt vaguely like there was something missing from this story, and I finally realized what it is.
It feels like... and let me be clear I'm talking narrative logic here, not saying it's a failure of in-story logic. It feels like the Abyssal side should somehow be involved in the action and doing something.
It's all been the human/shipgirl side and Trinitite. If somehow one of the Abyssals became aware of what was going on and tried to react it would inject more urgency to the situation. Maybe they see the news broadcasts and go, "Wait, we can just send in infiltrators? Hot damn, maybe we should do that. Let's kill Trinitite so that we can Raise her and have her brief us on how to do infiltration missions."
Or something like that, where the Shipgirl side doesn't just have all the time in the world to corral Trinitite because the Abyssal side is also moving.
Or something like that, where the Shipgirl side doesn't just have all the time in the world to corral Trinitite because the Abyssal side is also moving.
Trinitite was once an aircraft carrier, the backbone of the Crossroads Fleet, in charge of a dozen of warships she could confide in and rely on. How long had it been since she'd had water under her keel? Was she even still watertight? The constant pain she was feeling wasn't just in her her head. Strained and degraded by the fires that had ravaged her, her crew had noticed several decks were starting to sag… well under her hangar. Even now damage control parties were working to shore up the damage, but it was a temporary solution. Without a major overhaul… she would eventually die.
But there it is, slowly but surely she's falling apart, like someone with a terminal disease (albeit one that could be handled if she had proper medical access... which she doesn't).
The North Sea wasn't known for its tranquility, but winter storms had whipped the seas into a rough state even for these infamous waters. Under such conditions, it would normally be folly to attempt to board a vessel, but these were extraordinary circumstances.
"Tshk." The battleship grunted, pain flashing from dozens of wounds across her hull. Her Atlantic bow made easy work of the waves around her, but like a vengeful hook from Poseidon the wave would part to claw at the ragged gashes in her side. Rain was scarce at the moment, but the spray of each broken wave sent a cascade of water over her prow, scattering among her holed superstructure and irritating the fresh scars that stretched from her bloody blonde hair to her bruised chin.
A particularly large wave flowed over her deck, slamming against her jammed Anton turret and forcing a sharp inhale. It crashed over her superstructure, and for a moment the battleship worried of a new short in her hastily-repaired wiring, but no catastrophic grounding revealed itself. Broken up by the rest of her bulk, the wave settled as spray on her burnt-out fantail, providing a mixture of pain and cool relief to the fire-ravaged seaplane hangar.
In short, Bismark felt amazing.
Yes, she had taken severe damage, multiple penetrating hits from the enemy convoy's battleship and more then one torpedo hit from the escorting destroyers, but those abyssals- along with half of those transports they'd been escorting- were on the bottom of the ocean, and she wasn't. She'd done her duty, denying the Northern Anchorage Princess vital war material, in the process buying all of Europe, and by extension the fatherland, a little more breathing space. It wasn't much, but her people needed all that they could get.
Back home, meat was a luxury. Even with the breadbaskets of Ukraine and Russia being relatively insulated from abyssal influence, they were straining to maintain their world-feeding harvests with the severing of fertilizer supply chains. On top of that, with the abyssals firmly closing the Mediteranian, getting grain to everyone in Europe, the Middle East, and the remnants of civilization clinging to the northern edge of Africa had become expensive and unreliable. Semiconductors, that magical material that allowed for all the modern wonders Bismark had witnessed after her purification, were in short supply, the vital flow from Formosa violently throttled to a trickle, the dutch being unable to keep up with the increase in demand, and the required raw materials forced to make the arduious journey across the Atlantic from mines in South Carolina, of all places. As a result, the German battleship was slowly watching the continent slide backwards in time as military and vital industry hogged what little supply of the wonder material there was.
Supplies from the Americas were unreliable, and with both the Mediterranean and Indian ocean shut to merchant shipping, Asian goods had to brave the Pacific before they could reach the precarious point American shipping found itself in. Europe was being choked, desperately grasping at claws that were closing around the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and North Sea…
…but it wasn't quite dying. Not yet.
She grimaced as another wave broke over her bow and washed across her battered deck. Her NATO task force, headed by Sharnhorst and herself, had accomplished their mission, justifying the immense expenditure in resources they needed to remain operational.
The European Water Princess would have loved it. It had been a textbook raid, hitting and fading into this storm before aircraft from the Abyssal Sparrowhawk Princess and Converted Cruiser Princess could arrive. By the time weather had cleared, they'd be under the protective umbrella of a british carrier group and airbases in Iceland.
Of course, now the battle was for a greater purpose, not some selfish dream of swashbuckling across the seas, terrorizing shipping that thousands of lives depended upon… because it was there. Bismark's dark reflection and her fleet hadn't had as much blood on their hands as Zuikaku's, but every time the battleship returned home the knock-on effects of old self's work were obvious. The European Water Princess hadn't hated humanity- at least, Bismark couldn't relate to that feeling of overwhelming, all-consuming hatred some other former princesses had talked about- but her only care had been to fulfill her purpose as a surface raider, and in pursuing that purpose she'd been just as damaging as those rage-filled fleets that bombed cities and depopulated islands.
The abyss was clever like that. It had twisted Biamark's soul just enough for her to forget her duty, to abandon humanity so she could fulfill the purpose the Germany had built her for.
Another wave slammed into her, agitating her torpedo damage. A storm like this had sunk her abyssal self a year or so ago, the waves tearing at her wounds until too much gave way and she sank, returning to the cheers of her underlings a month later, but she wasn't in much danger of sinking here.
The reason why was sailing in parallel with her, one hundred meters to her starboard and cautiously closing.
Mien Schiff 3 was once a cruise liner, her elegant lines apparent even after being mutteled by a new haze-gray paint job and her luxurious decks marred by bolted-on anti-aircraft guns. Lacking amphibious assault ships or other suitable candidates for a shipgirl tender, the German Navy had conscripted her into the developing role.
She wasn't rated for anything like the damage military vessels could take, despite refits, but she was fast and could carry supplies and repair facilities for a fleet of shipgirls, so she was still suited, perhaps overqualified, for her new niche.
The distance between the two ships slowly shrank, the damaged battleship and steel-hulled vessel coordinating with signal lamps as they drew closer. Bismark's radio remained silent; even if emission control wasn't a concern, her antenna had been shot away in the recent battle. Finally, they were close enough for her to hear the whistle of a sailor aboard the tender, then the pop of a rifle as the shot line was fired to her deck.
In this sea state, they weren't taking any chances with a collision, so the sailor aboard had fired from his maximum range. Bismark watched the weighted rope soar up and away from her, before the immense winds caught it and the line soared towards the battleship. For several long moments, it seemed that the lead would miss and they'd have to try again… before it landed on her deck with a thud and a quick-moving deckhand had it. In a moment, the battleship had the line in her hands, clutching the line and bringing it in until the attached life preserver reached her. Wordlessly, she donned it, checked to make sure the knot attaching the preserver to the line was solid, wrapped the rope around her arm to make sure she was secure, then banished her rigging.
No shipgirl liked this part. The waves around her, already large even to the capital ship, seemed to grow by an order of magnitude in an instant. No longer buoyed by her natural form, the battleship's legs plunged into the biting black water, the feeling of abruptly sinking only abated by the life preserver she desperately clung to. As the line went taught and she drew closer to the Mien Schiff 3, each titanic wave became a test of survival, her preserver dragging her up mountains of water, then doing nothing for her in the sickening fall into each trough. The ocean, her natural home, had become completely alien, a hostile environment that constantly threatened to swallow her up and send her back to the abyss.
She was hauled out of the water in less than a minute, but by the time her feet were on the liner's deck it had felt like hours had passed. As soon as her feet touched a solid surface, the battleship was standing, the exhaustion permeating every frame of her hull carefully hidden under her air of practiced discipline. As her legs regained their strength, she spent the moments smoothing her soaked uniform and returning the life preserver to the sailors who'd lifted her aboard, and when she started to walk it was with a dignified limp, rather then the dreary trudging that would feel natural after her eventful day.
The first hatch inside swung open easily, revealing a sailor who'd been reaching for its handle. The human's eyes widened in shock, his pancho shifting as he darted out of Bismark's way.
"Oh, apologies ma'am." He smiled, pressing himself against the side of the passageway to give the battleship room.
For an instant, the battleship took a moment to scrutinize the sailor's face. His gaze might have wandered when he'd first seen her, but his eyes were definitely focused on hers. His smile… seemed genuine, but Bismark couldn't say she was an expert at reading faces like that.
"Thank you." She replied, giving the sailor a curt nod as she limped inside. In a way, she'd prefer the professional respect due a superior officer, or even some sort of false cheeriness as they simply tolerated her. That would make sense, but this casual easiness… it was perplexing.
Modern Germans should hate her.
In her previous life, she'd unquestioningly served the Nazis. Now she regretted it, sure (even ignoring the genocide and… optomistic forigen policy, they had been grossly inefficent, corrupt, and short-sighted), but that didn't change what she'd done. When given a second chance, she'd done worse, falling for a fantasy of adventure on the high seas to the detriment of everyone in europe. Now, it could be argued that she was a threat to the strong democracy that reigned over the fatherland. Yes, she held Germany's current masters in much higher regard to their last ones, but they had no reason to trust her when she said that. Even her namesake, while well-respected by many foreigners, was viewed with ire in her new fatherland.
Yet she was, apparently, a hero. There had been a handful of humans who seemed to view her as she'd expected, but they were rare even if she accounted for the navy trying to shield her from criticism. It would be one thing if they were glad to take anyone they could get, but no, people seemed to be ecstatic to get Bismark, the terror of the seas!
Would they act the same to her sister had she been rescued first? What about a defecting regular abyssal?
The battleship's sigh echoed down the passageway as fragments of memory returned to the battleship.
Come, knights of steel and courage! Today we show the enemy that the sun has not yet set on the surface raider!
The doomed fleet's cheers reverberated in Bismark's memories as she continued her unsteady trek towards the wardroom. The popular interpretation of abyssals- that they were ruthless, unfeeling machines in the shape of a human- never made sense to Bismark, but she'd never debated it. The other three restored princesses seemed to agree on that conclusion, and she didn't trust her own fragmented memories enough to go against them. However, a few weeks ago, she'd been handed a printed report from the Americans, marked for her eyes only.
It had been… disturbing. Bismark didn't know Saratoga beyond some academic interest in her abandoned plans as a battlecruiser, so she couldn't glean any additional insight beyond what had been written in the report. She'd asked Prinz Eugen about the carrier, but she hadn't been able to piece her friend's tragic testimony into a good profile of the Jellyfish Princess's fleet… and one ship in particular.
She didn't know what the American saw in the ships she'd commanded while under that dark sway. Zuikaku saw monsters, machines of war that knew only discipline and hatred. For the rest, the battleship wasn't sure, but when she peered into her own shards of dark memory, she saw nothing of the sort.
I got one, Princess! For ships so large, they go down pretty quick, don't they?
I can't keep up… my engineroom is gone… you'll remember me, won't you Princess?
You said this would be our last battle. It's- it's been an honor…
The young, caught up in the sweet-sounding music of charlatins and lead to their doom. It was a sight the former nazi recognized far too well. The Kriegsmarine hadn't taken to the zealotry as hard as other parts of the german government, bit she'd seen it in plenty of her sailors… as well as herself.
She couldn't save her old fleet. They'd sailed into oblivion with their princess at Santa Cruz. Those that The Abyss had thought to bring back were scattered across the seas, serving new masters and probably unable to recognize her. There was nothing Bismark could do for them, except limit the damage they were seeking to do. With Trinitite, however?
Bismark couldn't gleam much from the clinical report she'd been given, but it was clear there was opprotunity here. The Wo-class was isolated from the poisonous words of her superiors, and open-minded enough to be rapidly adapting to the society she'd hidden in. If any abyssal could be rescued from the indoctination their princess had inflicted on them, it would be her.
Of course, Bismark couldn't do anything about it, save for put a good word in when she submitted her opinion to the americans. She was dutybound to stay out here, protecting her home, and had to keep the abyssal's existance secret out of respect for her allies. She felt like she had to do something, that this was a fleating opprotunity that might not appear again… but she simply wasn't in a position to influence it.
She just had to trust the americans were handling it well.
The ship's wardroom had once been a luxury resturant, obvious to even the most casual observer. A stage sat unused on one end of the compartment. The bulkheads were highlighted by plates of white-painted steel, the armor replacing what had once been large windows. Each wood table was wider and further from it's compatriots then they were on any warship, the heavy wooden chairs completely alien to the shipboard environment.
Even with her rigging stowed, Bismark's accumulated damage tore at the edges of her conciousness, flairing with every step as she approached the out-of-place food line. She needed to get repairs, but she'd used a lot of supplies in the last battle, and she'd be damned if she went into the baths hungry.
There weren't any other shipgirls in the wardroom. Those who'd also been damaged had had plenty of time to eat and make for the repair baths while Bismark and the liner carefully maneuvered in these dismal conditions. Those who were unharmed remained at sea, loosely screening the liner as the raiding fleet struggled towards British air cover. Human occupants were sparse as well, the violently-pitching deck supressing the appetite of many a fresh officer.
Thus, the battleship found herself at an empty table, her hand resting on her tray to keep the bucking deck from carrying it away from her. The only decoration was a basket of condiments in the center, the taped-down cage housing several bright-colored bottles… and a stapled sheif of paper.
With the entire fleet under strict emissions control- the general concensus was that the abyssals had terrible electronic warfare capability, but it was improving- their only source to the world outside were these newspapers, transmitted onboard with other essential communications and printed in the hundreds to deceminate among the crew. Normally, between her damage and gnawing hunger Bismark wouldn't pay it too much attention, but her rangefinders caught on the front headline.
Abyssal Disguised as Human Discovered in USA
Her meal forgotten for a moment, Bismark plucked the newspaper from the bottles it had been wedged between, and started reading.
Hmmm… aparently, the Wo-class had found a second job, after her failed attempt as a construction worker. She'd gotten a lot better at hiding in human society, becoming a regular at a local hobby shop and apparently getting into some sort of relationship, but stress was starting to get to her, and she eventually revealed herself in public after loosing patience with a customer.
Of course, the article hadn't worded it like that, but using the report and her own expierence as a refrence she'd been able to translate the sensationalist panic into something she hoped would be more accuriate. If there hadn't been personell from the government on scene, who knows how much worse things could have been!
Even now, things weren't looking good for Trinitite. The Americans were very touchy when it came to their homeland, which was fair, but there was a very real danger the public outcry could panic the abyssal, pushing the best chance they had for rescuing a mainline abyssal away or worse, into a violent situation. If this article was anything to go by, attitudes weren't much better in the fatherland, where the prospect of disguised abyssals upsetting an already precarious situation had incited a wave of terror.
However, there was an opprotunity, here.
Before this, there was nothing she could do for the abyssal. Now, however, the lost girl was world news, public enough that not commenting on her would be strange. Everyone would want to know shipgirls' opinions on the new face of the enemy, and since most shipgirls didn't like too much time in the spotlight, anyone who made a public statement would have no problem finding an audience.
To add to that, as much as she hated the 'king of the seas' title, it had weight, real power in the minds of the people. Obviously, the former Kriegsmarine battleship had done her best to avoid politics, but that didn't undo the legend propagandists on both sides of the war had constructed around her. If she spoke, no matter what she said, no matter how unpopular her words were…
…some people would listen.
To say publically suppourting an abyssal would be terrible for her reputation would be an understatement, but most of it had been won in a fluke shot, anyways. Some would grow more suspicious of her professed democratic leanings. Those in the know might wonder if her purification had been as thourgh as they'd thought, while some of the other former princesses would have… strong oppinions on her sudden sympathy.
That was a burden she'd just have to bear.
Pain flaired in her legs as she stood, picking up her now-empty tray. As Bismark made her way towards the skullury, the sounds a past pife echoed over the low hum of conversation. The jubilant cheers, defiant screams, and dying wimpers of her other self's fleet following her towards the ship's on-board repair baths. She'd need work for several weeks, at least, and it might be some time before Mine Schiff 3 had returned safe harbor to get her transfered to real repair facilities.
That meant the former abyssal princess had time to prepare a statement, and think about how to deliver it.
It was possible the Wo-class was just a monster, and the shattered memories if a dead fleet were tainted by the abyssal princess's insanity. It was possible that the Jellyfish princess had been so cruel to her ships that Trinitite was irrevocablly broken, and the danger to society the newspaper seemed to think she was. In those cases, however, Bismark putting a good word in wouldn't dissuade enough people to really jepordize the job of hunting or watching the abyssal.
Trinitite was alone, with every possible ally she had either sunk or… 'corrupted,' if Bismark tried to look at the situation from the Wo's perspective. Her statement would hopefully generate enough of a public disruption to reach the abyssal. If she learned that a shipgirl, one of her kind's natural enemies, was willing to give her a chance, then perhaps she could avoid the fate the European Water Princess's ships did, as another victim of the abyss.
This was supossed to be part one of the second-to-last interlude before the final arc starts proper, but both parts of that interlude are over 3k words and are tonally different enough that they probably diserve to be posted alone.
So... Bismark. Perhaps this interlude would be better as a sidestory, but the plan was for it to be as short as all the other 'media reaction' segments, and this is the only former princess we haven't been able to get a look at. Hopefully, this shead some good insight on how the abyss operates as a whole, as well as give a bit of context of the war's effects beyond the very sheltered Pacific Northwest.
'Yall should be getting plenty of sidestories during the third arc, anyways.
Got Google Docs spellchecker to work for part of this chapter, despite the terrible internet. I'm still not sure how to get it to work consistantly, and Gdocs spellcheck is still one of the worse spellcheckers I've seen, but it's better then the nothing I was working with. Will be investigating a more permenant solution that works offline, as well as going back and correcting all the recent chapters, next port call I get. Hope you enjoyed the chapter, and I hope you enjoy the holiday season!
Back home, meat was a luxury. Even with the breadbaskets of Ukraine and Russia being relatively insulated from abyssal influence, they were straining to maintain their world-feeding harvests with the severing of fertilizer supply chains. On top of that, with the abyssals firmly closing the Mediteranian, getting grain to everyone in Europe, the Middle East, and the remnants of civilization clinging to the northern edge of Africa had become expensive and unreliable. Semiconductors, that magical material that allowed for all the modern wonders Bismark had witnessed after her purification, were in short supply, the vital flow from Formosa violently throttled to a trickle, the dutch being unable to keep up with the increase in demand, and the required raw materials forced to make the arduious journey across the Atlantic from mines in South Carolina, of all places. As a result, the German battleship was slowly watching the continent slide backwards in time as military and vital industry hogged what little supply of the wonder material there was.
The abyss was clever like that. It had twisted Biamark's soul just enough for her to forget her duty, to abandon humanity so she could fulfill the purpose the Germany had built her for.
Not sure if this should be 'so she could fulfill the purpose the Abyss had built her for' or 'so she would forget the purpose that Germany had built her for.' Either would make sense in this context. Also, "Bismark's ".
The first hatch inside swung open easily, revealing a sailor who'd been reaching for its handle. The human's eyes widened in shock, his pancho shifting as he darted out of Bismark's way.
'Poncho', unless this is a word I'm unfamiliar with.
In her previous life, she'd unquestioningly served the Nazis. Now she regretted it, sure (even ignoring the genocide and…optomistic forigen policy, they had been grosslyinefficent, corrupt, and short-sighted), but that didn't change what she'd done.
Bismark couldn't gleam much from the clinical report she'd been given, but it was clear there was opprotunity here. The Wo-class was isolated from the poisonous words of her superiors, and open-minded enough to be rapidly adapting to the society she'd hidden in. If any abyssal could be rescued from the indoctination their princess had inflicted on them, it would be her.
Of course, Bismark couldn't do anything about it, save for put a good word in when she submitted her opinion to the americans. She was dutybound to stay out here, protecting her home, and had to keep the abyssal's existance secret out of respect for her allies. She felt like she had to do something, that this was a fleating opprotunity that might not appear again… but she simply wasn't in a position to influence it.
She just had to trust the americans were handling it well.
The ship's wardroom had once been a luxury resturant,
Even with her rigging stowed, Bismark's accumulated damage tore at the edges of herconciousness, flairing with every step as she approached the out-of-place food line. She needed to get repairs, but she'd used a lot of supplies in the last battle, and she'd be damned if she went into the baths hungry.
There weren't any other shipgirls in the wardroom. Those who'd also been damaged had had plenty of time to eat and make for the repair baths while Bismark and the liner carefully maneuvered in these dismal conditions. Those who were unharmed remained at sea, loosely screening the liner as the raiding fleet struggled towards British air cover. Human occupants were sparse as well, the violently-pitching deck supressing the appetite of many a fresh officer.
With the entire fleet under strict emissions control- the general concensus was that the abyssals had terrible electronic warfare capability, but it was improving- their only source to the world outside were these newspapers, transmitted onboard with other essential communications and printed in the hundreds to deceminate among the crew. Normally, between her damage and gnawing hunger Bismark wouldn't pay it too much attention, but her rangefinders caught on the front headline.
Of course, the article hadn't worded it like that, but using the report and her own expierence as a refrence she'd been able to translate the sensationalist panic into something she hoped would be more accuriate. If there hadn't been personellfrom the government on scene, who knows how much worse things could have been!
To say publically suppourting an abyssal would be terrible for her reputation would be an understatement, but most of it had been won in a fluke shot, anyways. Some would grow more suspicious of her professed democratic leanings. Those in the know might wonder if her purification had been asthourgh as they'd thought, while some of the other former princesses would have… strongoppinions on her sudden sympathy.
That was a burden she'd just have to bear.
Painflairedin her legs as she stood, picking up her now-empty tray. As Bismark made her way towards the skullury, the sounds a pastpifeechoed over the low hum of conversation. The jubilant cheers, defiant screams, and dying wimpersof her other self's fleet following her towards the ship's on-board repair baths. She'd need work for several weeks, at least, and it might be some time before Mine Schiff 3 had returned safe harbor to get hertransfered to real repair facilities.
That meant the former abyssal princess had time to prepare a statement, and think about how to deliver it.
It was possible the Wo-class was just a monster, and the shattered memories if a dead fleet were tainted by the abyssal princess's insanity. It was possible that the Jellyfish princess had been so cruel to her ships that Trinitite was irrevocablly broken, and the danger to society the newspaper seemed to think she was. In those cases, however, Bismark putting a good word in wouldn't dissuade enough people to really jepordize the job of hunting or watching the abyssal.
('publicly' is most correct, although I've seen 'publically' often enough that it could be argued as an optional spelling), 'supporting', 'thorough', 'opinions', 'flared', 'scullery', not sure what 'pife' is, 'whimpers', 'transferred', 'irrevocably', and 'jeopardize/jeopardise'.
Not sure if this should be 'so she could fulfill the purpose the Abyss had built her for' or 'so she would forget the purpose that Germany had built her for.' Either would make sense in this context. Also, "Bismark's ".
The original wording "so she could fulfill the purpose the Germany had built her for" is correct. She was built to be a surface raider, to terrorize the seas. The Abyss twisted her soul so she would be willing to fulfill that role for it.
The original wording "so she could fulfill the purpose the Germany had built her for" is correct. She was built to be a surface raider, to terrorize the seas. The Abyss twisted her soul so she would be willing to fulfill that role for it.
Ignorant of the disaster that had unfolded on the ground, mother nature had banished the normally ubiquitous Washington clouds. The cool fall breeze was observed by an overly-cheery sun. Amber leaves caught the light of the distant star, flecks of color skittering across the pavement the light cruiser was walking on.
Nashville wasn't pacing. She just needed some fresh air.
Ever since Murray's call last night, things had gotten progressively worse for the cruiser. First, a night on the town had been interrupted. Annoying, but failure in her romantic escapades was normally her fault, so she could pretend the interuption meant she was making progress. The fact that they'd finally found Trinitite was initially worth it, if it wasn't for the double-punch that had come with her breakdown and the revelation that it might have been averted if the self-absorbed… civilian had done her job properly!
Reading the contents of that fuckup's report had been Nashville's job for several hours now, after getting relieved from trailing the abyssal by a team of marine force recon this morning. Where they came from, she wasn't certain, but she guessed it meant they would be getting a lot more help now.
As a garnish atop the shit sandwich, when she finally had the opportunity to confront the Wo-class, she'd been denied! Even once they'd followed the monster safely into the woods and far from any squishy civilians, Murray had commanded that she maintain a distance. If she wasn't supposed to face the abyssal, then why the hell was she even here?
She glanced to her right, realizing that her wandering had taken her to the back of a familiar Stryker command vehicle.
Murray's meeting with CMDR NORAD was supposed to have ended fourty-five minutes ago. While the rest of the team had relocated their base of operations to the hotel Goulding had picked out, the Spook had been given use of the national guard vehicle's secure communications equipment so he could debrief his boss. That, or recieve a dressing down from his superiors, or figure out what they were going to do now that they'd become front page news.
The events unfolding inside that desert-tan box were probably all three, and then some. This whole mess wasn't the worst case, yet, but it was still the political disaster she'd expected. Trinitite was everywhere: news, radio, internet, thousands of voices asking how The Navy- how Nashville had allowed the Wo-class to get ashore. They didn't know the light cruiser's name yet, but they would, eventually. The shame she was going to bring her class burned in her gut. Brooklyn had already called from Sidney, offering all the words of reassurance Nashville had expected, but after the call was over the facts of the matter hadn't changed.
The worst, however, were those who were sympathetic to the monster. She hadn't had time to look too deeply into what the pundits were saying, but while she was sure they were a small minority in a country scarred by the losses of Pearl and La Palma, they were clearly some going against the grain to support the Wo.
Most were joking, of course. Plenty of the men on Murray's team had called the abyssal 'based' for chewing out the self-absorbed customer, but they couldn't all be joking. Add the fact that all they had to go off of was the video, and not the previous events that had Murray and Shangri-La optimistic, and…
Jesus, what kind of charisma did the sea monster have that she didn't? Trinitite even had a boyfriend!
The light cruiser huffed, unable to ignore the fact that an eldritch murder machine had better luck with romance then she did. Sure, she'd cheated, with the disguise and all, but she'd still beaten Nashville in the game of love! It was so infuriating!
A click from behind her, almost lost in the whistle of the fall wind, drew her attention. She turned to see Murray emerge from the stryker, holding the door for the enlisted specialist who'd been waiting outside. The light cruiser's wandering had put a decent distance between herself and the communications vehicle, but it quickly shrunk as she reversed her course.
Even after all this time, she still wasn't sure what to think of the intelligence officer. Maybe he took his 'spook' persona too seriously, but the way he always seemed to hide behind that carefully-neutral expression created a distance that still made it hard to read him. On one hand, he was somewhat awkward, in a fashion that felt more intentional than borne from a lack of interaction. Nashville would have hated to have had him as a captain back in her steel-hulled days, between that careful distance and more then a few failures of judgment on his part. He should have known Katie would screw them over, right?
On the other… he had been instrumental in reverse-engineering Zuikaku's transformation from a princess, and had at least partial credit in all the redemptions that had been performed since then. Yes, he should have pushed harder to get domestic intelligence services on the issue, but hindsight was cheap. The man acted distant, but kept an open mind and had accepted plenty of suggestions from her and other members of the team. Nashville didn't think he was fit to captain a ship, but it wasn't like he'd been trained as a SWO. He'd been trained to run a small team in an office, and he did that pretty well considering their impossible task. His talks with his team were amicable, and he'd gotten his command to do what they could, despite their limited resources. Beyond that, Nashville was pretty sure a lot of his questions about what Boise and Phoenix had been like were more than just small talk. If his next goal was the Tyrant Cruiser Princess, Nashville's opinion on the spook would be definitely settled, but like all things these days, she just wasn't sure.
"Ah, Nashville." Murray greeted her, his walk towards the hotel stopping as he swung around to meet her. "Did you get any sleep?"
"None." The light cruiser reported. "I don't plan on getting any for a few more days, either."
The intelligence officer nodded, used to shipgirl phisiology by now.
"Do you still have a commission?" She asked, and the intelligence officer nodded, unconcerned.
"Yes." Murray confirmed, gesturing back to the hotel. "Apparently, Katie's stunt earned me some minor celebrity, and they don't like the optics of reassigning me. Once the inquiries are done and all the fallout's settled, we'll see where we are, but until then I'm still in command of the navy side of this operation."
That was good enough… wait.
"The navy side?" Nashville echoed, falling into step with her commander as they walked towards the hotel.
"Yes." Murray confirmed, seemingly unbothered by the loss of power. "The reins are being handed over to the FBI. Who exactly, I'm not sure yet, but we'll be in an advisory role from here on."
"You don't seem too broken up about losing your command." The light cruiser noted, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice. Why wouldn't this be a navy operation? Sure, they hadn't done the best job so far, but Trinitite was an abyssal! Abyssals were their responsibility, right?
"I'm waiting to see what the FBI's plans are." Murray admitted. "However…"
Nashville waited for Murray to finish, but the only noise between the two was the whistling wind as they approached the hotel.
"'However' what?" The light Cruiser queried, unwilling to let the slip go.
"Hmm, this might not be a good time, Nashville, but…" he trailed off, his thoughts shuffling in his head before he spoke again. "There's a good chance there won't get a fight with Trinitite, now. You'll probably be held in reserve for months without any real prospect of combat."
Months more of this limbo? As terrible as the events at the Jack in the Box were, the cruiser had hoped they'd bring things closer to an end. As far as Nashville knew, while drones had lost Trinitite they still had a solid trail, with the special forces following her having to slow down several times to avoid detection by the abyssal.
"Now, I can't guarantee anything, but would you like to be transferred out?"
"...what?"
Transferred out? As in, sent back to the proper navy? Part of her longed to be a light cruiser again, to stand alongside her sisters in defending humanity against the abyssal threat, but there was still an abyssal threat here, as well! Sure, someone would probably take her place if she transferred out, but something about just leaving didn't seem right with her.
"I'll give you time to think about it." Murray was holding the door open for her. "I can't guarantee anything either, but…"
"I understand." Nashville sheepishly slipped through the open door, holding the next one open for the lieutenant commander.
Their civilian 'advisors' were waiting for them in the conference room, with one exception. Katie was nowhere to be seen. It was obvious she wasn't supossed to be here, anymore. The vindictive part of Nashville wanted to check on the investigation into her conduct, but she was still too busy for that, and didn't kniw who to contact anyways. There was supposed to be an hour between when everyone had finished meeting their bosses and this one, so they could compile their notes, but whatever had happened inside that stryker had eaten away all that useful time.
"I'm sorry I'm late." Murray said as he entered- he wasn't.
"No, you're fine." Goulding reassured, but his smile was thinner than normal. "You hear the news?"
"I did." The Spook answered. Nashville quietly took a seat next to him as they both sat down. "Is the FBI sending someone new to take over, or do I already know my new boss?"
"That'll be me." Agent Ferguson asserted, his thin lips cast in an ambiguous expression that rested between professional neutrality and smug satisfaction. Nashville had to suppress a curse. She'd been critical of Murray's leadership skills, but while her opinion on her comrade in the navy remained undecided her thoughts on the fat agent were very clear. A shortcoming of Murray's wasn't that he was blind to office politics, per say, but that he seemed to ignore it. Ferguson had the opposite problem. Nobody hated Goulding, and while Peters was snippy and short-tempered Nashville never doubted he had his priorities straight.
Ferguson's first thought when he'd heard about Trinitite had been consternation over the fact that the FBI hadn't been notified about something unrelated, that had nothing to do with them. He'd probably been chosen over Peters because he'd secretly been arranging to take over ever since he'd joined the team, and had said the right words to the right people before the latest incident gave him the opportunity to move.
"Congratulations." Murray acknowledged, giving his usurper a courteous nod. "What's your plan, then?"
"Well, in order to salvage this disaster, decisive action is required." Furgeson stated, brushing his combover back over his head as he talked. "We need to apprehend Trinitite as soon as possible before she can slip away from us again or panic can spread out of control."
…what? He'd said something reasonable?
"Er- didn't you want to monitor her?" Nashville asked, unable to keep her confusion to herself.
"That was in case she got contacted by some larger abyssal spy network." The FBI agent explained. "Now, she's a burned contact. Too public, so the best case is to pick her up as soon as possible."
"Respectfully, sir, I disagree-"
"Of course you do, Brad." Furgeson cut the lieutennant commander's voice off. "However, given your judgment in hiring Katie, forgive me for asking you to limit your advice to military matters."
Nashville felt herself bristle at the civilian's dismissal, despite the fact that she liked his idea. Murray was advocating for months of limbo, where the only real difference from before the incident being they were reliably tracking her, while the civilian was trying to finally get this over with, but she hesitated. The spook was a lot of things, but stupid wasn't one of them. The familiar feeling that she was missing something very important returned to Nashville.
Murray, of course, said nothing in response to the provocation, his normal stoic mask holding.
"Well, Lieutenant Commander," Ferguson spoke again, "What forces do we have to apprehend the abyssal."
Murray sighed, eyes focusing on each person in the room before he spoke.
"As far as our order of battle…" His gaze settled on her. "...we have Nashville."
There was a brief pause.
"...that's it?" Agent Peters asked. "What about special forces? Aircraft? The national guard?"
"We need her alive." Murray explained. "I can't guarantee that with IEDs, artillery, or an airstrike. That means we need a shipgirl to restrain her if she isn't cooperative."
"That's insane!" Peters interjected. "No offense, Nashville, but Trinitite has the horsepower advantage and a melee weapon in her rigging."
"I've been taking judo classes." Nashville supplied.
"That's great, Nashville." Furgeson dismissed, and once again the light cruiser bristled. Who was he to patronize her like that? "Murray, after all that's happened, why the hell aren't we getting more warships?"
Murray paused, looking around the conference room for a second.
"Is this room secure?"
Nashville blinked at the question. Back in her time, plenty of hotels served as command centers, hosting all kinds of confidential discussions, but she supposed times had changed somewhat.
"It's clean." Ferguson supplied, "My people have scrubbed it."
Nobody in the room missed the subtle emphasis on 'my people.'
"Alright. I'll have to give you all a more… accurate picture on the state of the war." The Lieutennant Commander started, leveling a neutral stare at Ferguson. "What do you all know about summoning?"
"It's how we get new shipgirls, or ones that have sunk before." Goulding supplied, his voice carrying a tone of concern.
Murray nodded.
"It's a… procedure that's incredibly time and resource intensive. The specifics aren't my field of expertise, but what's important is that the methods used in performing it are unique to the location you're in. The Japanese have perfected it in all five of their naval districts, each able to call a ship in just over a week. The British have likewise built a solid array of five summoning chambers. The French and Italians each have three, Germany, Russia, and Canada have two, and there's a few others scattered about."
Nashville adjusted herself in her seat, focusing on Ferguson. She had already guessed the bomb Murray was planning on dropping.
"We have two."
There was a moment of silence as the civilians in the room processed that the United States of America, the world's sole superpower and holding a proud tradition of industrial might, was in the same league as Russia and Canada when it came to 'industrial' capacity.
"We have a lot more shipgirls than Russia or Canada, though." Agent Peters noted.
"Three factors contribute to that." Murray answered, his chair scraping against the cheap carpet as he stood. "One: ours have been active for longer. Two: we used to have another, in Pearl Harbor, before the abyssals corrupted it. Three: several destroyed museum ships have returned in a process independent from traditional summoning, inflating our numbers."
He'd started to pace, walking towards the head of the table where an unused projector sat.
"From what I've heard, DARPA thinks they're nearing a breakthrough at Bremerton, and we may be able to get the one at Hawaii working again, but for now shipgirls are a very precious resource."
"So…" Fergeson started, the frustration in his voice obvious. "...the Navy doesn't think Trinitite is important enough to warrant more than a light cruiser?"
"Trinitite is important." Murray allowed. "Very important, but she hasn't killed anyone since landfall, and won't in the near future."
"Can you guarantee that?" Peters probed.
"No, but compare that to our other duties:" The spook deflected. "We've just taken back Hawaii, but Pearl's facilities will take months to repair. Until then, the forces we have to defend the state need to be mostly shipgirl. Nobody's willing to strip forces from the east coast, especially since it looks like the Atlantic abyssals might be looking to repair the damaged relationships caused by the La Palma tsunami. Finally, there's the south pacific."
He paused for a moment, compiling hundreds of thousands of square miles of contested waters into a few sentences.
"The abyssals' next target is Australia. By corrupting Port Moresby, they've effectively closed the Torres Strait, splitting our forces into three: an indian ocean fleet, a pacific ocean fleet, and the forces we need to defend other south pacific islands and supply lines to The Americas. The abyssals can concentrate their forces in any of these theaters, while our steel hulls have to take the long way around the south of the continent to re enforce any conflict. Since we can airlift shipgirls, they're in high demand there, too."
"In case you're wondering," he added, "that's where Shangri-La has been deployed. According to my superiors, capturing the Wo-class isn't worth the risk to any of these theaters. If it wasn't for the two abyssal pilots we captured, then they'd be poaching Nashville from us, too."
The Light cruiser grimaced. She'd been briefed on all this before, but seeing it so succinctly laid out framed it in a new, ominous light. Still, were they that convinced that Trinitite wasn't a relative threat?
Her focus shifted from Goulding's concern, to the serine fury on Ferguson's visage, to the stoic intelligence officer. Murray might be in severe hot water with the brass, but he was still their number one expert on Trinitite, and abyssalsas a whole. All of the reasons he'd presented were fair, sure, but it couldn't be a coincidence that the team lost capital shipgirl support the moment the Navy no longer had control of the operation.
A fresh memory returned to her, of Murray's warning that she may never actually face Trinitite, along with his offer to get her transferred out. What kind of conversation had occurred inside that stryker?
"So… they're willing to let the very public abyssal run wild?" Ferguson asked, his obvious anger mostly subdued.
"We're still tracking her, sir." Murray defended.
"Of course." The FBI agent dismissed. "Mister Murray, do we have any kind of time table for when we can receive support?"
"From Australia?" Murray asked. "Could be weeks, could be months. They tell me Pearl could start supporting DDGs, Frigates, and Patrol aircraft within the month, but I'm skeptical about those claims. Regardless, the South Pacific will probably remain the Navy's priority for some time."
"You have another idea to bring her in?" Agent Peters asked. A pen the blond agent had removed from his suit idly spun in his hands as he stared at Nashville's commander.
"Yes." The enigmatic spook replied. "A public offer of amnesty."
"What?"
Nashville's exclamation wasn't alone. Her shock was mirrored on every face at the table, with the exclusion of the man who'd proposed the ridiculous idea.
"That's impossible!" Ferguson sputtered. "You want to let her go?"
"Of course not." Murray denied, although Nashville couldn't see how that was any different. "It'll have to be conditional, of course."
"That's not the point." Goulding replied. The normally cheery man's voice was hard, his disapproval carved into the marshall's features. "It isn't our job to determine her fate. That's something for the judicial system."
"She's an enemy combatant." Murray countered. "The last member, and de-facto leader, of a hostile political entity. Our social contract is completely alien to her. This is a diplomatic issue first, and a legal one second."
"I don't see your argument, there." Goulding countered, his brow catching the light as it furrowed. "Yes, she was in uniform when she robbed that department store, but she definitely understood what she was doing forging that fraudulent identit-"
"Yes, we'll make sure to bring a team of lawyers on after we've briefed the NSA." Peters interjected, staring uninpressed at Murray. "Your idea's stupid because we don't have authority to do that, and anyone who does wouldn't survive the public backlash. Haven't you looked at the news? Any social media?"
"You have a point." Murray admitted. "However, what matters is that we can't capture her, we can't hold her, and we certainly can't put her in a courthouse without some shred of goodwill. There's none of that, right now. All we've promised her is death, or a fate worse than death."
"Worse than death?" Nashville asked. She didn't remember any of them talking about that.
"We can't spare the ships to watch her indefinitely." Murray replied. "That means we'd have to cripple her if we didn't trust her to stay in one place."
Crippling her… despite herself, the light cruiser cringed at the thought. Trinitite was many things, but did any warship deserve to have her guns spiked, her boilers dismantled and her screws torn out? There was no guarantee she'd be willing to help Nashville with Phoenix, but reducing her to a ruined hulk would completely sink that possibility.
Still… amnesty was more than a little extreme. Trinitite was a killer. Nashville knew the abyssal's combat record better than most of her logs, now, and knew the lower bound of her kills. Pilots, submariners, Murray's and her own comrades had died by her hands. Yes, that was war, but there had to be at least some accounting for that.
Besides, Nashville and the Wo-class still had unfinished business.
"Mister Murray." Ferguson spoke, standing himself. "You understand I'll be speaking with my superiors about this." The fact that they'd be speaking to his masters went unsaid.
"Yes sir." Murray replied, dutifully sliding back into his chair.
Ferguson must have been waiting for something more than that, but as a moment of silence loomed over the conference room, he spoke up again.
"In that case, we'll have to ensure we have 24/7 surveillance on the Abyssal." Furgeson admitted, the large agent sitting himself. "How do we prevent her from outrunning our trackers like she did at Olympic?"
From there, the meeting's topic shifted to matters of covertly following the abyssal. Nashville tried to follow along, she really did, but her thoughts continued to drift back to what Murray had said. Not only had they lost Shangri-La, but almost all their military support, at the time they needed it the most.
Yes, all those reasons Murray had given were valid, but he'd offered to get Nashville transferred out. The grim solemness he'd used to deliver the news to his new masters didn't match with how he'd addressed her before the meeting. Selfishly sabotaging the project now that he was no longer in control didn't sound like him to Nashville, but…
Just what had he said to Admiral MacKey in the back of that stryker, and why?
Have another chapter! You can see why I decided to seperate this one from the last.
One of the challenges of this chapter was having to more-or-less re-introduce the rest of the hunting team, since they got overshadowed by Katie and haven't really been able to do anything for an arc. That I kind of have to do so is a bit of a planning failure in my part, but hopefully it worked well enough. Hope you enjoyed!
I wouldn't think Murray would need higher authorization to offer the standard terms of surrender as though Trinitite were a human combatant. The identity fraud is a potential issue, but, umm...
Did whoever drafted those forms even think to require an attestation of humanity?
Let's be honest: the information that she could potentially provide on Abyssals - not necessary movements, etc but insight into thought processes, etc that you can't really get from ex-Princess shipgirls - is more valuable than using the identity fraud threat in any capacity. That's water under the bridge.
Also, I wonder if the offer to transfer Nashville was because he found out Sara was inbound from Japan (and didn't bother sharing that detail with his new boss).
He'd had several other meetings with Lieutenant Commander Murray over the course of the week, along with representatives of the local police and too many three-letter agencies for him to keep track of. He wasn't going to work, of course. He'd emailed a letter of resignation when he'd had the time, hoping to try a few shifts next week so he wasn't completely abandoning his job, but the point was moot anyway since they were closed for renovations.
Of course, employment issues were among the least of his worries. The press were insufferable. If the CPD hadn't dedicated some men to keep them- and some less savory folks- away from the Martin-Campos family's property then Alex was sure they'd have suffered a break in by now. Someone had found his personal and school emails, and both were getting flooded with offers for an interview. He'd wanted to delete them, to tighten his filters so he wouldn't have to bother with the deluge of vultures, but his mother had disagreed.
Sarah was public enemy number one, at the moment. She was hated less than butchers like Bin Laden and the French Battleship Princess, sure, but still the hysteria around Sarah was whipping up a national panic unlike anything Alex had seen before. He didn't pay much attention to the news before, but the 'Jack in the Box Princess' was everywhere he looked. Even his friends had sent a couple of the sillier memes they'd found to him, so even his normal discord wasn't a refuge.
The reaction was very excessive for someone who broke a countertop, yelled at a karen, then burst into tears and ran out of the building. With all such overreactions, a blowback was inevitable. Alex doubted it would be large, Sarah was an abyssal, after all, but it would be their best chance to get their side of the story out, and it actually getting heard.
The hope, then, had been that the Thanksgiving feast would provide some refuge from the madness that was tearing apart Chehalis. They'd left for the Grandparents' earlier than they'd planned, notifying the police watching them at the last moment as their car slipped out hours before sunrise thanksgiving morning. Alex wasn't sure if the cover of darkness would be enough to keep press- or worse- off their back, but as dark, twisting mountain passes slowly gave way to wide, lightly-tilled farmland of Eastern Washington, it didn't seem like they had any kind of tail.
Not that I'd notice, Alex thought. How long had that Murray guy been watching us before everything happened?
The Martin farmhouse sat at the end of a long, forested drive, a half-acre property surrounded by corporate farmland Alex's grandparents had sold off when they'd retired. Mary's car wasn't there, yet. The plan had been for Alex's sister to come over the day before, meet Sarah, and spend a pleasant night with the family before driving to the grandparent's house together, but she'd texted to cancel those plans hours after Sarah became national news. She'd said she'd arrive later in the day.
Edward and Ruth Martin were getting on in years, and their age had started to show long ago, but they still ran out to greet them. They wrapped his parents in an embrace as they disembarked, his grandmother's first words to Alex wringing in his head as she hugged him too.
"I'm so glad you're safe!"
Thankfully, they'd refrained from any questions over breakfast, the topic of conversation hovering around chores, football and mutual acquaintances Alex didn't actually know. Despite the pleasant conversation, delicious, home-baked breakfast, and familiar atmosphere, there was an underlying tension here that Alex had never felt before.
A week ago, Alex's Grandparents had been ecstatic about meeting his new girlfriend. In a phone call, they'd been excitedly discussing how much extra food they'd be buying to account for her large appetite. Now, they were acting like Sarah had never been mentioned… at least, they were around him.
Alex had just finished peeling and slicing potatoes, slipping out of the kitchen so he'd no longer be in his mom or grandmother's way. He'd been just about to exit the dining room when his grandfather's words overcame the blanket of noise provided by the televison's commercials.
"…and I don't blame you. Y'all were victims of Trinitite as much as anyone…"
Alex backed away from the living room, thinking better to wait at the table. He wasn't all that interested in professional football anyways, and out here his grandmother wouldn't have to yell in case she needed any more help in the kitchen.
By the time his sister arrived, the food was mostly ready, the smoker out back cradling the much-anticipated Turkey and ham roast. The card game his dad had coaxed everyone into was forgotten as Mary was let in, nervously checking the room before returning anyone's greetings. She was smarter then he was, she couldn't think they'd smuggled Sarah in here, did she?
Then again, Alex's entire life didn't make much sense to him. A little bit of irrational fear was excusable, he guessed, but still…
The moment everyone had been dreading arrived during the meal. The food was great, academically speaking. Moist turkey, sweet glazed ham, rich scalloped potatoes, surprisingly tasty stuffing, melt-in-your-mouth croissants, and grandmother's bacon green bean recipe Mom was still trying to figure out the secret to, but despite the love put into the room the wonderful tapestry of flavor and texture had a new, empty feeling to it. Conversation sparked and died periodically, several minutes of silence dominating the room as everyone in the family enjoyed their meal. After another long span of silence, his grandmother finally spoke.
"Well." she started, placing her silverware on her fine china plate with a clink of finality. "I suppose it's time we all said something we were thankful for."
The announcement lacked a bit of the confidence that normally came with it, as if it was being said for tradition's sake, rather than in the spirit of the holiday. She looked to her left, where Alex's dad was sitting.
"I'm- uh, thankful for my loving family, a stable pay, and two wonderful children." He stuttered, but the smile he was giving at the end of the pronouncement didn't seem forced.
"I'm… thankful for all of the opportunities we've been given." His mother had hesitated, but her proclamation gained momentum and ended with firm conviction.
Alex was next in line at the table. He opened his mouth, ready to say his normal line about food and family…
…no words came. While he was here, sharing an amazing meal with his family, someone else was trapped in the wilderness. The girl he'd loved, who he'd promised a seat at this table, was now a pariah, forced to miss perhaps the only chance she'd ever get to experience a proper holiday.
"I…" He finally started, hoping that the act of talking would spur the words he knew he needed to say into being, but several more seconds passed in silence. Yes, he had plenty to be thankful for, but how could he when the 'monster' everyone else at the table was happy to avoid was suffering like that? Worst of all, Alex knew his sister and grandparents would have loved Sarah, before she'd been outed as Trinitite!
"...I'm sorry." Alex finally admitted, head hanging in shame.
"It's fine." His Grandmother hastily reassured him. "You've been through a lot."
"...Thanks."
"Alex." His Grandfather's voice drew his eyes away from the table, his voice warm but firm. "I know a lot of strangers have said some nasty things about you, but please remember that this will come to pass. People will lose interest and move on eventually, but until then, you have us. Nobody here at the table thinks any less of you for falling for that thing's disguise. Everyone did."
The words of comfort were a hammer to Alex, and he was forced to avert his gaze. Seemingly realizing his attempts to raise the spirits of his grandson were having the opposite effect, he continued.
"At least you can say you learned something, right?"
"Can't trust a pretty face." His sister added.
Alex was completely unprepared for the flare of anger his sister's snide remark had ignited.
"That's not-" Alex stopped himself as he realized where he was, but it was too late. Anger gave way to panic when he looked back up to see everyone's eyes on him.
His plan had been to accept the caring thought behind his family's words, and try to ignore how unfair they were being to Sarah. It was Thanksgiving, after all. Enough dinners across the country were probably being ruined by political arguments already, and he didn't want to add to the number by arguing with his family about Sarah, but…
If you don't take a stand here, a part of him asked, where will you?
"Well…" he started, careful to keep his voice respectful. This didn't have to turn into a confrontation, if he worded his objections right. "...Sarah never took advantage of us."
Damnit, that didn't come out right! Alex knew even Trinitite would argue that statement, but he had to argue against the implication behind everyone's polite reassurances.
"She lied to you to get food and shelter." His sister deadpanned.
"It's more complicated than that!"
"I'm sure it is."
"Mary." His Mother's voice interrupted the bickering siblings. "She refused our help multiple times until she could help us in return." Paloma's eyes drifted to his grandfather's stony visage. "She didn't lie to get anything from us, she lied because she was afraid for her life!"
"What?" His grandfather interjected, his voice raising. "Paloma, this is a demon we're talking about! What's a lie compared to all the people she's killed?"
"You don't know if Sarah killed anyone!" Alex's mother countered sharply.
"Singapore." His grandfather growled. "Vietnam. Thailand, New Guinea, Indonesia, the Philippines, China, Hawaii! Can you guarantee she wasn't a part of any of that?"
"You don't know if she was a part of that!" Paloma shouted. Alex and his sister were both silent, by now, unable to get a word into the argument that had escalated much faster then Alex had expected. "She's a child soldier, Greg, what's wrong with giving her a chance-"
"She's a warship, and you know damn well a child wouldn't be able to handle something that complicated!" Grandfather shouted, pointing across the table. "Two different eye colors means that she's a veteran, too. Don't you know that Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light?"
"What happened to 'innocent until proven guilty?'"
"It's proven to be an abyssal!"
"Both of you, please!"
Silence asserted itself as Grandmother's shout terminated the conversation. The woman's appalled gaze trailed between the belligerents, eventually settling on Alex's grandfather.
"It's Thanksgiving!" She continued, once everyone's attention was on her. "I understand recent events have everyone on edge, but we all worked hard to get this meal together. Enjoy what we have right now, and table the Trinitite issue! That's what this holiday is about, isn't it?"
For a moment, there was no response, the two belligerents sharing a moment of eye contact, before his grandfather released a heavy sigh and eased back into his seat.
"I'm thankful that all of you are safe." He admitted, grabbing his fork and stabbing his scalloped potatoes.
Alex had never seen 'Grandpa Greg' like this before. The man was a salt-of-the earth kind of guy, kind, if a little stubborn. He would have appreciated Trinitite's self-reliant attitude and willingness to please… if he hadn't initially known she was an abyssal. Mary, his sister, felt similarly out of character. Sure, she had a sharp wit, but that sarcasm normally wasn't wielded with so much malice. Clearly, she'd been shaken by the news, much more than she was letting on.
The argument was over, but the holiday had been spoiled. Conversations between everyone, even those who hadn't gotten involved in the argument like his father, became even more clipped and hesitant, as if everyone had discovered themselves in a verbal minefield. No more arguments occurred, but with everyone making a point to avoid the topic, the hole in the table, and the unusual amount of leftovers they had to manage afterwards only served to make Sarah's absence only feel more painful.
There's next year's Thanksgiving, the foolish part of him supplied, inciting a wave of pain and grief in Alex. The idea that the abyssal would ever be able to prove that she was more than a monster to Alex's extended family had far too many problems with it.
To start with, they'd both have to survive 2023. In that, he wasn't nearly as confident as he probably should have been.
This was supposed to be part one of the last interlude, which is why there's no media reaction bit tacked onto it, but the conversation between Alex and Saratoga is putting up a hell of a fight. At least I'm back in Burgerland now, so spelling shouldn't be much of an issue anymore, and after I've found a place to live writing should come fairly quickly... once I've planned out the next arc.
On the topic of this interlude itself, I feel like I've been writing far too many hate sinks, lately. That was in my mind as I was writing this scene, I tried very hard to avoid any painting them as strawman bigots while writing them here. As a strong believer in death of the author, I hope talking about that didn't skew anyone's perception or anything either.
Next chapter will be the last interlude before the next arc, I promise. I already cut a conversation out of that one to make sure I can get back to Trinitite's POV in a reasonable timeframe anyways.
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