You've been placed in command of the signals section for the submarine, which is somewhat of a relief. You had almost expected to be given the logistics again. Not that you weren't good at logistics, mind, but it would have meant getting shoved into an appropriately "feminine" career track again Maybe they were starting to realize that you had skills beyond mathematics and neat handwriting.
You report aboard to Kenshin with a grin and a sharp salute. He's looking very, very pleased with himself when you see him standing on the conning tower.
"She's a beauty, isn't she?" he says with real affection for the freshly painted boat as it sits at the pier in Tokei. A soft grey hull and bright white around the conning tower.
"She's something," is your reply.
The boat which you remember from the long voyage back home is much the same. The labels and dials and so forth have all been replaced by ones in the local language, though, and there's been some other work done. The old New Alleghanian 3-inch deck gun aft of the tower has been replaced by an Akitsukuni 100mm gun. There's a brand new state of the art radio with an extendable mast that will let you receive and transmit messages over vast distances. And most importantly, the aft torpedo tube is gone.
Someone, somewhere, at the Admiralty really loves naval mines. Loves them so much that they want every small craft to be capable of laying them. The I-02 is no different, it seems. The aft torpedo tube has been replaced with a specialized sort of lock that can fit two naval mines and then release them both at the same time, which is actually pretty ingenious if you say so yourself. Unfortunately the aft torpedo room has been crammed with mines, which is kind of terrifying. Somehow they've squeezed eight mines into a space that fit two or three torpedoes before. All of them are secured in racks of course, and would need to be armed, but it's still an awful lot of explosives to just haul around.
You spend time familiarizing yourself with the hydrophone. You'd done some work with one on your minisub before and this one operates on basically the same principle. You won't be operating yourself unless something is really wrong, but you want to be able to understand it--it's basically like a giant ear trumpet for the sub and lets you hear where enemy ships are. It takes practice and skill, though, to pick out an enemy vessel just by her engine noises especially when there are multiple ships in the area. Much of the time it sounds like muddled noise to you, but your hydrophone technician, the familiar Seaman First Class Kwon, reassures you that he's quite good at this.
You also have charge of the codebooks, which are kept under lock and key in a safe in the radio room (which is more of a radio closet off of the control deck). Only you, the XO, and the captain have the keys to it and there's some pride in knowing that you have been given a position of particular trust and responsibility.
Located in that locker is a lighter, and you were to keep another one on your person at all times. These were the only ones permitted on the boat, just in case there was a gas leak. If the boat was in danger of being captured or abandoned, it was up to you to burn the books
In the torpedo room, there was also a familiar face. Seaman First Class Ota was now
Petty Officer First Class Ota after Kenshin had commended his initiative and zeal in punching one of the conspirators in the teeth with his brass knuckles, though you assumed that Kenshin had used politer language than that. Unsurprisingly, the promotion had gone directly to his head, and the aura of smugness around him was cloying up the whole front third of the boat. Fortunately, his technical knowledge of the torpedoes was unmatched, possibly in the whole Navy at this point, so it didn't seem to actually be a problem yet.
One surprise was the torpedo officer. Junior Lieutenant Kehara Akio from your first posting had turned up here to run the torpedo room. Apparently he'd been pushing hard for a posting where he could see some action and had finally gotten what he wanted, so he was in chipper spirits. During shakedown there were daily tests of the deck gun (they wanted to make sure it was sufficiently waterproof) and he was never happier than when the gun was firing and sending a horrible clatter through the entire tub. There was also a significant decrease in jabs from him about your gender: Hideaki said he had mellowed out a lot in his letters (and he had been perfectly friendly at the wedding), but you were still grateful that you had something closer to an old friend than another nuisance.
Speaking of nuisances…
The other two officers on board were the logistics officer, Junior Lieutenant Hayashi Natsuo, and the engineering officer, Lieutenant Yagi Masamichi. They'd seemed fine in the wardroom when you'd first met: Yagi was charming and cheerful, quick with a joke and fast friends with Kenshin within moments of meeting him, while Hayashi was quiet, reserved, a bit shy really, but he had a good reputation. Apparently he'd served in the engine room of a destroyer that had caught fire during a shakedown cruise, and had been instrumental in putting it out and saving lives.
Unfortunately, the problems had started soon after. You'd gone down to the engineering room at one point for some minor task, and Lieutenant Yagi had cornered you in the back of the room and started trying to lay on the charm, which included such wonderful advances as "Surely you don't want to be in the Navy forever" and "It's going to be a long, lonely voyage…". You'd quickly vacated the area, though for a few minutes it had looked like one of his sailors was blocking your way out. You'd resolved if you ever strayed to the back of the boat again, you were finding an excuse to take Kwon along.
Not two hours after this incident, you'd returned to your cabin to find an 'anonymous' confession written in the tight, neat characters of Junior Lieutenant Hayashi. You were too tired to bother throwing it out, and there was no room in the cabin to do so, so you just threw it into a corner and collapsed onto your mattress. Unfortunately, the next day you had to go do the logistics lockers to get a second set of work clothes, and the whole time he was staring at you, trying to read your face.
Urgh.
Life on the sub was surreal. The only natural light was let in through the conning tower hatch, which was kept open 24 hours a day. The air was stuffy, and got worse the farther you strayed from the control room. The boat had a notable thermal gradient: the rear of the boat where the engines were was too hot, sweltering, while the front end where you slept was too cold. This created a constant draft down the hall, which was at least somewhat refreshing.
Nobody wore their uniforms once the ship got underway, as the place was simply too filthy and there was no chance to wash anything. Instead, everyone, officers and enlisted alike, wore the same grey and brown work clothes. Kenshin had bought himself a black leather jacket with his rank on it, because of course he had, and it was resistant enough to grime that you wanted one yourself. It even matched his winter uniform hat, which he had taken to wearing at all times at a jaunty angle. The man was perfectly suited for submarining and captaincy alike, and the men loved him.
The worst part was the smell. The whole boat was awash in diesel fumes at all times, even when the engines were quiet and the boat was running on batteries. On top of that, there was the crew themselves. In the corner of the officer's quarters there was a "shower", which was little more than a small partition with a showerhead on a hose, which would give you a few minutes of cold seawater. The enlisted men had one as well in the crew quarters, though with just a thin curtain instead. Not surprising anyone, the curtain had been ripped away by roughhousing sailors within three days, and soon after all sense of privacy had simply evaporated among the crew. When you were in the control room, you tried to limit your glances aft, because it usually got you an eyeful. You saw more men's dicks per week then you had ever wanted to see in your life and it was no one's fault except the limitations of a tiny, tiny boat.
It became standard practice to simply surface the boat and let sailors on the deck with buckets to bathe there, since it was easier than making them all wait in line and had the added benefit of giving them some fresh air and sunlight. It also meant that, even when you were on watch in the conning tower scanning the horizon, you could keep your binoculars raised high enough to avoid any unsightly things.
You had the smallest effective section on the boat in the signals team, six sailors. Three hydrophone operators and three radio technicians so that there could be at least one of them on watch at all times. During the day between 8AM and 8PM, watches were on a strange 'two hours on, four hours off' scheduled that changed to three on and six off between 8PM and 8AM. Aside from the section you commanded, the ship was organized into three twelve-man 'watches' plus four sailors who were considered too important in other duties and did not stand traditional watches (the cook and his assistant, and the warrant officer who counted as your doctor and his assistant). Like the men, the six officers on board split the day into watches and some days you only saw people in passing except for your fellow watchstanders. Kenshin kept his own hours, which were frankly insane and didn't really seem to make a lot of sense. His ability to not seem tired no matter how long he was on duty, even when you told him (privately) that he should really keep to the watch schedule for his own health and sanity, was kind of disturbing.
"You let me worry about that." He'd say, and smile, and you'd drop it. He was an easy man to trust.
The crew had taken a few months to acclimatize to the technically and physically demanding work of the submarine, practicing dives and maneuvers. This was as much for the officers overseeing you as for the crew: submarines were brand new and yet untested in warfare, and there were dozens of theories about what they'd be good at. The two schools of thought were that submarines would work best hunting enemy shipping and making opportunity attacks, or that they ought to be used as part of fleet action, disrupting enemy formations in pitched battle. You knew that everything you did was being watched by a bunch of old men who were at much at a loss about the role of these boats as you were.
Kenshin, for his part, was strongly on the side of the opportunity attack. He was quite convinced that the subs would work best alone as hunters. You thought he maybe thought that because it was more dramatic and made him look cooler.
While the boat had a strict policy against receiving mail when at sea, you fortunately were putting in every week or so during trials to deliver reports. You'd been stationed up at the northern isles, because tensions with Caspia were reaching something of an all-time high. You'd heard that things in their country were bad, with people starving in the streets and peasants being shot down by conscripts when they refused to hand over their taxes.
You couldn't help but think about that book you'd read, and how the author had grown up there, in a rural manor right next to some of the poorest farmers on earth. She'd said that war was an outlet, an escape valve that the rich and powerful used to direct the anger of the exploited. Judging by the saber-rattling that was happening, the back and forth calls about the proper rulers of the northern isles and the patrols marching to and fro in Joseon, you think she may have had a point.
Your first real action came in late September. The I-02 had set out for a patrol between the two northernmost islands, a long sweep keeping an eye out for Caspian intruders. They'd been getting more and more daring: a fast cruiser tweaked the nose of pickets just two weeks ago, sailing just outside their range and leading them on a merry chase before putting on full power and vanishing over the horizon. It had been more than a little embarrassing.
You were up on the conning tower with Kenshin, scanning with your binoculars. This was something of a coveted job, seeing as it got you outside in the sun, and Kenshin liked to refer to it as 'his office'. Whenever there was a problem, "come speak to me in my office" was code for "let's scan the horizon and shoot the shit."
"She's thinking of quitting outright, and I honestly can't blame her." Kenshin said.
"She should stick it out a little longer if she can, until she gets another job. If she quits, that's all her next employer will see when she applies to them." You said.
"I dunno Haruna, she sounds like she's having a really tough time. Like, worse than usual. There's this new engineer she… wait, um, Haruna, bearing 140-ish?"
You checked the compass open on the railing, oriented yourself, and lifted your binoculars again.
"You see that little… I think that's smoke?" Kenshin said. "Or maybe a smudge on the lense…"
You found it eventually, a tiny little grey smear on the hazy horizon.
"No, I see it too. That's a ship. Anything in the area today?"
"Maybe it's the
Jintsū?" Kenshin mused. "I think she's supposed to be farther south though. Want to take a look?"
You yelled some instructions down the hatch, and the boat started turning to close the distance. A significant advantage of the little ship was that the diesel fumes were heavy and kept low against the water. Combined with the low profile, it meant you were invisible at distances where other ships were obvious, even without submerging.
"That's Caspian." You said.
"You sure?"
"Its hull is black and everything above that is gold. It's Caspian." You repeated. You thought you could even see the little red band around the top of the hull.
"Well, fuck. They're not supposed to be out here." Kenshin said simply, understatement of the year.
You tracked the boat a little while longer, until it was clear. It was one of the Caspian long-range torpedo destroyers, heading for Akitsukuni waters at top speed. A provocation of some kind, maybe trying to bait Akitsukuni into firing the first shots, maybe just to test the reaction times of their foes.
Kenshin ordered a dive not long after: you were right along their course, in perfect position to intercept. You huddled next to the hydrophone station where Kwon was expertly tracking its progress, while the captain kept an eye on it with the periscope. You noticed him stifling a yawn as he came over to your station.
"Lieutenant, do we have orders?"
"Northern command wants us to intercept as best we can. They're moving a few cruisers over, but anything we can do to slow him down would be appreciated."
Kenshin called over Akio and the XO, Lieutenant Kanbayashi, and a quick meeting was held.
"Alright, what do you think we should do about this guy?" Kenshin asked. "Can we contact them?"
"Not by wireless. It'd be better to use the signal lamp if we want to talk."
"Fuck it. Let's blow them up." Akio chimed in immediately, rubbing his hands together with a grin. "They won't know what hit them. Literally, we might even have plausible deniability."
"What, they ran their engines so hard that a torpedo hit them?" Kanbayashi said. He was a small man with a respectable little beard and an equally respectable scar on the side of his face he had apparently gotten, not in battle, but in an auto accident. "I think a warning shot is more appropriate. We surface near them and put some rounds past their bow. Signal them with the lamp."
"I wonder if we even need to do that." Kenshin said. "Maybe just surfacing near them and stalking them might get them to change course or something. Keep our intentions vague, keep them guessing and maneuvering until the cruiser get here. We can keep up if they don't open the throttle all the way, and it is probably probably safest not to provoke them. We have no armour and one gun with a cork in it."
"With respect, Captain, I don't think now is the time for caution. We want to act decisively. We have to let these barbarians know whose waters they're trespassing in." Akio said. "But I do agree that if we do get any kind of aggressive, it should be with surprise. I don't want to get in a slugging match with a ship with five times our guns. What's to stop them from blowing us out of the water while we dick around with some flashing lights?"
"The state of peace between our nations?" Kanbayashi sniped.
"The state of peace they are
disturbing?" Akio responded shortly.
"Alright boys, settle down." Kenshin said. "Arisugawa, you've been quiet. What do you think?"
[ ] Support blowing them up.
[ ] Support contacting them and putting a shot across her bow.
[ ] Support stalking them.
[ ] Write In
)
