Captain Solomon stared slack-jawed at the woman waiting patiently at the back of his bridge—of
her bridge. He couldn't tear his eyes off her for a heartbeat, but he knew everyone else on the bridge was staring too. But, graceful old starlet that she was, Mo didn't seem to mind the gawking attention. She stood politely, patiently, her hands folded behind her back and her feet planted firmly on the deck.
She was everything Solomon'd expected, and everything he hadn't. She was massive. So tall and strapped with amazonian muscle she made her own bridge seem like a dollhouse staffed with Lilliputian sailors. Without saying a word her very presence commanded the total attention and reverent awe of all everyone on the bridge.
Her eyes were hid by red-lenses shades that mirrored back the bridge crews' stares. Her hair fell to the small of her back in a bundle of dreadlocks as black as coal. Her skin was tanned to a beautiful milky chocolate. Tattoos both elegant and brutal in their simplicity exploded from the rough-torn sleeves of her NWU blouse and multi-layered shorts, framing her musculature with intricate Polynesian motifs.
A flash hood was tucked around her neck, and a plate carrier who's true color had long since faded into the grime of constant hard fighting bulged over a chest both lithe and eminently feminine. The corner of her mouth twitched into a grin, and Solomon realized he'd been staring for what felt like hours.
"Sorry," coughed the captain a little sheepishly. "You… you really let Hawaii get to you, huh?"
Mo shrugged her massive shoulders, idly hooking her thumb over the buckle of her gunbelt. Solomon recognized the pistols hanging off her broad hips. Desert Eagles. Nickel-plated and fitted with scopes. He'd shot one a while back. Damn thing barely fit his hand and tried its hardest to escape the moment he pulled the trigger.
On her, they looked perilously close to toys.
"Twenty years sunbathing changes a girl," said Mo. Her voice was kind, but with a rough, rumbling undertone that was more felt in the chest than heard. "Besides…" she idly tugged on the wrist of her fingerless nomex glove. "It's the twenty-fist century now. This is what you—" she glanced around the bridge generally—"think a badass looks like now."
"The Rock," Holland chuckled, earning a casual shrug from the mighty Iowa. Solomon could see the resemblance, but he was certain the wrestler would look like a feeble gradeschooler next to the super battleship.
"Sir," Mo took a few steps closer, slipping her shades off and tucking them into a bit of webbing on her vest. Solomon almost wished she hadn't. Looking into the mirrored scarlet lenses of her shades was unnerving, but staring into her brilliant red eyes was downright terrifying. They burned like angry coals, hauntingly beautiful and mortifiyingly intense all the same. "There's… something I need to ask."
Solomon put a hand on his battleship's waist. He felt her muscles tense under the worn fabric of her blouse and realized how absurd his action had been. Here he was, a mere mortal man trying to comfort the mightiest battleship the world had ever seen. "If… you haven't realized it yet… you're dead." She slid back on her heel, turning to the bridge generally, "You all are."
Solomon knew it was true the moment he heard her say it. Mo's bridge took hit square on the wing in her last battle. He hadn't put the thought into words, but from the moment he woke up in this plane of ice he knew he was dead. The rest of the crew seemed to agree. There were no arguments, no gasps of shock or dismay. Just quiet acceptance.
"You fought so hard," said Missouri, hands folded behind her back now. "I couldn't have asked for a better crew." She closed her mouth, gaze drifting from face to face as the tried to find words that just wouldn't come
"You all deserve to rest eternal," she said at last. "I know I've got no right to…" she trailed off. "They have Pearl."
Solomon nodded. He couldn't know that, but he did.
"They're… desecrating
Arizona's…" The Iowa grit her teeth. "I've been here before," she glanced out at the infinite white caging her hull. "After the war, after Korea, after 'nam, after the Gulf… the locker. Where ships wait until they're needed again. I've flirted with the long night, but this isn't…"
Solomon put a hand on her shoulder.
"We don't have time for that," Mo squared her shoulders and stood tall. "Pearl doesn't have time for that. I don't have time for that. They need me now, and if I'm gonna make it I need all hands on deck. So I'm asking. Stay. Fit me for combat."
"Of course," said Solomon.
"For you, Mo," said Holland, "Saint Peter can take a number."
The battleship's lips twitched in a smile.
"Captain!" a lookout on the bridge wing shouted. How she'd torn her eyes off the amazon standing front-and-center long enough to do her job was a mystery Solomon doubted he'd ever understand. "There's… something! Approaching on the ice."
"What?" Solomon bolted to the bridge wing, hastily snatching the lookout's binoculars.
"Twenty degrees off the stern. Maybe… a hundred yards distant."
Solomon nodded, squinting through the glass. There was something approaching on the ice, or more accurately someone. Figures, indistinct but unmistakably human, marched along the frozen wastes towards the imprisoned battleship, heading for her vast stern. "Get a marine detachment aft," barked Solomon. "And—" He glanced behind him. Mo was gone, vanished from the bridge without a sound. "Where?"
"I'm on my fantail sir," came a mostly disembodied contralto echoing for the mighty battleship's helipad.
—|—|—
Shinano's eyes were milky white. Indistinct spheres focused generally on something far beyond the horizon and twitching every so often seemingly at random. It was a strange experience. To have one's consciousness, one's very spirit take flight on fragile aluminum wings and leave one's body behind. No surface warship could quite understand it. Well, except for maybe sister Sara.
"Razgris surget iterum."
Shinano smiled. She could hear Akagi singing to herself over the crash of waves below and the roar of air-cooled radials in the skies above. Akagi's voice really was beautiful. Maybe not as sweet and nurturing as White's, but still.
She glanced to the east, feeling a minor respite from the bitter cold when raw sunlight filtered against her cheeks. The skies were clear. She hadn't expected otherwise.
Pearlmight have fallen, but the rest of the island was still contested. And American defenders had the advantage of excellent maps to plan their artillery barrages. Shinano doubted if there was so much as a paper airplane left in the Abyssals' hangers.
Still though. She was flying air defense. It was her only job, the only job her ill-trained pilots could accomplish. But it was
her job, and she was going to do it with everything she could manage.
"Flak tower," grunted Kaga. The monstrous air-defense blockhouses had been cropping up over occupied territory like mold on a soggy bagel. They bristled with flak guns of every caliber, their massive steel-reinforced concrete walls were impervious to anything a carrier plane could haul into the air.
"Copy," said Akagi, her voice suddenly very terse.
"Mmm," Shinano nodded. She didn't begrudge her elders for being a bit on edge. Every reassurance in the world was just empty words in the face of a dozen eighty-eights. But Shinano wasn't worried. She'd played too much SOCOM to worry. The SEALs had gotten the job done.
"Brace," said Kaga. Evidently she lacked the littlest Yamato's confidence. Shinano felt Akagi's squadrons tense beside her, and even she steeled herself for the oncoming barrage. But it never came. No guns barked in the dawn gloom, no searchlights stabbed into the sky. The batteries were silent as the grave.
Shinano smiled. "T-told you," she said quietly.
—|—|—
Besides the assembled Marines with their M-16s, there were nearly a dozen men standing ready on Mo's helipad when Solomon arrived. All were bundled against the cold with sturdy coats and scarves, and at there head was a man Solomon recognized instantly. Or rather, a man Solomon knew he should recognize instantly. He couldn't place it, but the moment he laid eyes on the man with the short ponytail and cocked hat he
knew he'd seen him before.
"Ah, Captain," said the man with a rolling Scottish brogue and a graceful sweep of his hat. "It's an honor to be aboard your…" he glanced up at Mo's towering presence hovering just a few feet away, "Magnificent ship."
"Of course," said Solomon, glancing between the old Scotsman and the giddy smirks worn my Mo and her marines alike. "Captain…"
"Jones, sir," Jones offered a hand.
Solomon's eyes went wide as he shook the man's hand. "You mean?"
"Aye," said captain John Paul Jones. He stared up at the flag waving from Mo's mast. The ragged, scored rag waving its tattered stripes in the gentle breeze. The flag was in ruins, but Solomon'd never been prouder of it. "You kept your colors flying?"
Solomon nodded. "Yes, sir. Would've have a mutiny on my hands if I ordered it struck."
Jones laughed, and so did his men. "The lads and I," he waved at the handful of assembled sailors, "heard you could use a few strong backs."
"Right," Solomon nodded again. "Uh, Chief, put Captain Jones and his men to work."
With the bark of an NCO, the old sailors jumped into action without hesitation, but Captain Jones hung back for a moment. "You've changed, miss."
It was impossible to tell with her tan, but it almost seemed like Mo blushed. "New war, new look."
"Aye," Jones laughed. "They finally did you in, did they."
"Not for long," said Mo. "Not for long."
—|—|—
The raider princess sank into the wine-dark waters of her frigid birthing dock. Her skin was pale as bone and slick with clammy sweat, her vast talons floated limply by her sides. Her newly-born demon clung to her, nursing greedily from her frozen teat while below her hips worked tirelessly with grinder and torch to repair the damage the long-delayed birth had caused.
No, not repair. Stay ahead of. Already her belly was swollen from the vast bounty of blood the island had already offered in tribute to its rightful conquers. She was full with child, and if her imps didn't at least bring the tattered shreds of her body back under control her next spawning would kill her.
It was worth it.
The princess smiled, blood trickling from the corner of her ashen lips. The fleet, the vast collection of demons spawned as much by her as by her sister lay anchored against the island. A row of mighty battleships. A grand new fleet ready to hunt.
"Sister," The snow queen waded into the blood-drenched waters of the princess's maternity ward. For what seemed like the first time since she'd steamed into this place, the abyssal matriarch stopped her breathless pursuit of renovation. Apparently the harbor had finally been turned into a nursery worthy of the queen's high standards.
"Sister," the raider princess smiled. In truth, she would've been happy with half the effort. But her sister loved her dearly, that much she could appreciate. "I—"
Her words were drowned in a bloodcurdling screech. Air raid. She whipped her head around, shifting her gaze to the sentries she'd left posted on the Eastern flak batteries. When she cast her vision all she got was black. "No!" she roared. "That's not possible!"
—|—|—
"Corporal," Mo waved a Marine onto the bridge. He was a young man, with a round face that made him look still younger. "C'mere."
"Ma'am?" He gave her a confused look, but did as asked.
"Think you can rig your ipod into the 1MC?" said the towering Iowa. "We've got a lot of work to be done. And… I spent enough time in the eighties to know when a montage is called for."
"Oh," the marine nodded. "Why me, ma'am?"
Missouri stood back to let him do his work. Over the decades of her long life, she'd picked up a thing or two about modern electronics. But she'd also had her age hammered into her. She was an ancient old woman, best to let the kids play with their toys. "I seem to recall you having an excellent library."
"Thank you, ma'am," said the marine with a blush.
"Got a playlist for us?"
He smiled. "
I might." With the push of a button, Mo felt every compartment of her hull fill with the familiar chant-backed guitar solo. The thunder electrified her never and she couldn't help but puff out her chest and stand a little taller.
"Good choice."
—|—|—
Shinano was in awe. She'd practiced surface attacks before. She could—with effort and concentration—get a torpedo to hit where she wanted it. She could even get two or three planes to coordinate their efforts into more-or-less the same vector. Maybe four if she was lucky. She'd been rather proud of herself when she pulled off her first cross-drop.
But this…
This was magnificent.
Akagi and Kaga both cared nearly twice her planes, but you'd never have guessed it from the air. There wasn't a lick of confusion in the swarm of Ryusei. They flew not as torpedo bombers, but as the extension of a single unified will. Darting through air chocked with burning fuel oil and bursting flak, always arriving right where they were needed without a second's delay.
Torpedoes stitched the shallow harbor with spray, cannon fire poured into flak batteries as ship after ship felt the wrath of the Imperial Japanese Navy reborn slam into its flanks. Already two of the abyssal super-battleships were vanquished. One split in two, each half sagging into the void left by its now-obliterated midships. Another heeled over, slumped against the harbor in a pile of twisted scrap.
Akagi and Kaga never stopped talking. Quick, terse commands passed from carrier to carrier without a moment's delay. Shinano couldn't even keep up, let alone parse what their arcane utterances met. But both fleet carriers seemed to know. Together they fought as one. With no hostile air threat materializing, Shinano had nothing to do but watch two virtuosos of death put on their command performance.
—|—|—
Battleship Missouri stood at the head of her own quarterdeck, staring back at the sailors filling it to capacity. Her crew. Her
last crew. All of it. She'd kept them here for so long. Offered them nothing but hard labor when they should by all rights be resting forever in glory.
And to a man they'd taken her up on it. She didn't bother trying to hide the tears filling her eyes. "You've…" she trailed off and gathered her breath. "I was in service for seventy-three years," she said. "And not once did I have a better crew. Thank you."
Her captain smiled at her, a gloved hand slowly moving to his brow in solemn salute. "Give 'em hell, Mo."
Missouri matched his gesture. "Sir."
"I'll be watching," said her captain.
Mo couldn't hold it anymore. Tears streamed down her tanned cheeks. She closed her eyes, forcing back the warm salt. When she opened them again, she was alone on the infinite plane of white. Well, almost.
That was when she saw
him. She couldn't make him out. Not quite. It was like looking at a drowning man through choppy, brackish water. A figure, a human shape, nothing more. But she
knew who he was. Knew it in a heartbeat.
Davy Jones. The warden of the locker.
"I need to go back," said Mo, trying to decide for herself if she was angry or desperate. "Please."
The warden stared at her for what felt like centuries.
"Please," begged the Iowa. "My friends, my countrymen… Arizona…"
The warden stood unmoved.
"Let me fight!" barked Mo, her blood rising in spite of herself. "It's what you want, right? A fight?"
The warden was silent. And then, with great pomp and circumstance, he turned around and looked pointedly in the other way.
Mo smiled. It wasn't an express offer of permission. But it would be enough. It'd have to be. The Iowa closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
She was the last battleship.
Mo felt her boilers sputter to life, flame filling their metal bellies. A raging strength filled her. She hadn't felt this mighty since her sea trials.
A relic in an age of miracles.
Her turbines purred like vast tigers. Her mighty screws slashed the frigid water, whipping it into a froth of punished foam.
An ancient childish thing.
She rolled her neck, feeling muscles pop into place as her fairy crew put their lessons into practice.
The last, lonely remnant of a bygone age.
Her radar flickered to life. Mo closed her eyes and saw everything.
A living legend from the age of the Big Gun.
Her hands balled to fists. Leather creaked as her fingers bit into her palms.
The mere news of her arrival drove her foes to despair.
She rolled her shoulders, feeling every muscle react to her slightest whim. She'd never felt this… alive before.
Even her herald accepted their surrenders.
Mo slammed her fists together, relishing the recoiling force she felt reverberate through her musclebound arms. She would use her strength—
She would set her course forwards—
FOR FREEDOM.
