The signal lamp was a bulky, stubby tube with a pistol grip on the bottom. Even click of the trigger opened the shutters, exposing the lights inside. It was heavy enough that you leaned it against the railing to use it, running the cable up and over your shoulder. You entertained a brief fantasy that it was so some of weapon from speculative fiction, a heat ray that would melt the Caspian destroyer to molten scrap.
Alas, you didn't possess Aresian technology, merely a quick wit. You blinked out a message which, hopefully, would upset some of the fragile egos on the other boats. Caspian enlisted crew were all men, as were most of the officers, and if you'd learned anything in the last five years, it was that it didn't take much to get military men riled up.
NICE BOAT. MAYBE IF THE CZAR SPENT LESS ON HIS PALACES, IT COULD OUTRUN A LITTLE SUBMARINE.
You switched back to your binoculars and watched, amused as a crewman explained to some bearded officer what had just been transmitted. Aha, a little angry foot stomp and some yelling at their own signal crew. Their light was on a little pole and looked a lot more comfortable to use: everything on a submarine was cramped and awful.
You watched the message blink out with increasing confusion. The man to your right was writing it down for the logs, and he didn't understand it either.
"Hey, captain, any idea what a '
sodomite' is?" you asked quizzically. That was one of those fancy vocabulary words that you couldn't remember from any of your foreign language lessons.
"Nah, not a clue." Kenshin said, pulling his binoculars down. "Lost in translation?" The messages were being sent and received in Albian, which was the generally accepted international language of the sea, owing to the Albians having twice as many ships as everyone else.
You shrugged and pointed the lamp back. Given that you didn't actually understand their last insult (it had the cadence of one, at least), they hadn't given you much to work with. You remembered something from
The Right To Well Being about the Czar's armies being mostly peasants ("serfs" specifically) being pressed into service, to the point where you actually needed to have a degree of social class to be able to join as a volunteer. Hence all the mutinies they kept having. That was something to work with.
Did the Czar really drag you off your farms to trade insults in somebody else's waters? You're going to get captured or sunk to feed your officer's egos! Maybe think about who your real enemies are!
Addressing the crew instead of the officers seemed like an excellent idea, what with all the sailors clustered on the edge of the railing watching the exchange, those that understood Albian relaying the messages to the others. There was sudden action from the officers in their black coats as they realized the subversive nature of the message, yelling at one another, waving arms, trying to force the sailors off the deck. One of them fired a pistol into the air, and after a few minutes most of them were gone.
You doubted any of the enlisted sailors cared what some Aki signal light said, but the
officers were deathly afraid of that kind of subversive talk.
"That's a bit much, don't you think, Arisukawa?" Kenshin asked. Of course, he couldn't see the end of the lamp over the side of the boat, and your mitten muffled the click of the trigger, but you were speaking the signals out loud as you sent them for the log. "You're not joining the UCL, are you?" he added, trying not to sound too amused.
"No, of course not. Just something I read in a book some Caspian wrote," you replied with a smile.
The Caspian ship started turning away and picking up speed, clearly making a run for it, and I-02 followed.
"Give me all head full on the diesels," Kenshin yelled down into the hatch. A few moments later, the diesel engines roared and clouds of almost blue smoke rising from the back of the boat as it surged onward through the icey swells. You exchanged a few more messages, this time with the officer who had pulled the enlisted signaller off his post. At this point your messages had pretty much devolved into juvenile shouting on both sides, as interpreted through signal lamp: this would be an interesting log to read.
"Sorry, I missed that last bit." Kenshin said.
"Calling Her Imperial Majesty a whore, sir." The log-keeper said, completely business-like.
"Ah." He said. "They're running low on wit as well as coal."
You were starting to get rather close to one of the islands at this point, as demarcated by the fog rolling in, common in the area. You could barely make out the shape of the Caspian ship in the mist, and mostly just the little blinking light disparaging Akitsukuni manhood and making various insinuations about the Prime Minister.
Kenshin was now feeding you inspiration, as your well of class-based material had run dry, and his suggestions were all gloriously crude and always got a response blinking back within the minute. To be honest, at this point it was almost a navigation aid: as long as you kept them talking, you couldn't lose them in the fog.
You were just about to send a message commenting on the Crown Prince's various deficiencies as a man when one of the other sailors, one of the ones tasked with looking opposite of the chase, stopped laughing long enough to cry out.
"Ship close! 90 degrees to starboard, closing-"
Whatever he said next was drowned out by the foghorn of the
Ishizuchi, the heavy cruiser you were awaiting, as it barreled out of the fog at full speed like a great, mobile white castle, bristling with guns and flags, and black smoke pouring from its funnels.
"HARD TO STARBOARD!" Kenshin bellowed down the hatch and you felt the submarine lurch as it desperately tried to turn itself to let the cruiser scrape by and you felt yourself jammed against the railing of the conning tower. You had to hold tight to your signal lamp, but it didn't seem to be any use. You felt it slip from your mittened hands and you watched it tumble past the railing in slow motion before it was jerked to a stop by its cable and then swung against the steel of the tower.
You felt a rising panic, heart in your throat as the massive ship hurtled towards you, looking as large as Mount Fuyu. A little figure on the prow was screaming something inaudible and waving his arms in desperation, and their ship turned as well to try and dodge your submarine.
The two ships came close enough that you swore you could have reached out and touched the whitewashed hull.
---
Command was not impressed.
To be clear, they marvelled at the speed of the I-02 and its role in delaying the destroyer. Unfortunately, a log full of subversive language and an over-eager captain who almost got his boat ran over by his own fleet were things that tended to be frowned upon in your business. You understood that Kenshin spent about two hours in the office of Admiral Fushimi getting dressed down for it.
You also spent a tense few minutes in the office of a Tokkeitai officer, explaining the origin of the references and trying your best to convince them that you'd read subversive literature for the purposes of undermining the Caspians. They didn't buy it, but also didn't have anything else to pin you on, so you were let go.
Besides, the idea of an Imperial princess being a secret Anarchist was so laughable that the Tokkeitai commander at your interview had burst out laughing when he'd had to ask you if you belonged to any "militant Anarchist, Communist, or other anti-Imperial groups." The junior officers, though, were dead serious, and you remembered Kenshin's warnings about the Purity Club's influence in the secret police with a certain dread.
The sentence handed down was relatively light, though, especially as I-02 was something of a darling of the media. ("CASPIAN TREACHERY! ROGUE DESTROYER ENTERS SACRED WATERS! A GRAVE INSULT TO OUR EMPRESS!???" was the lurid headline, as you recalled.) The officers and crew were to take the boat in to participate in fleet exercises. Submarines, it was thought, might well serve as excellent scouts for the main battlefleet, and once battle was joined could slip past pickets to sink large warships out of reach of conventional torpedo cruisers.
The result was day after grueling day of coordinating with the dozens of other ships in the Northern fleet. You soon knew them all by name, and even started getting an idea for the dispositions of their captains.
The Northern Fleet consisted of six battleships, the flagship being the beautiful and imposing
Mochizuki, 9 armoured cruisers in three squadrons of three (Red, Gold, and Blue squadrons to signallers), and 14 destroyers in three squadrons of their own (Green, Grey, and the reinforced Blade squadron), plus an ever-shifting swarm of tenders, torpedo boats, and so forth. It worked closely with a series of independent squadrons of light torpedo cruisers, patrol destroyers, an "auxiliary unit" with the
Hachinosu and it's brand new sister ship (now once again carrying torpedo boats, a new sort now reinforced for northern waters) and three squadrons of older coastal submarines.
Your I-02, which outweighed all of the other submarines by half again or more, was the envy of the smaller boat's crews, though they were also uncommonly proud of her and her new duties with the fleet. You were quickly learning that the submariners considered themselves a class apart from normal sailors and had a tough sort of elan born from the fatalism associated with going under the water in a steel tube. The unreliability of the smaller submarines was terrifying, with a half-dozen boats having been lost to simple errors, mechanical failures, or random chance since they entered service. They were building copies of the I-02 now, and they couldn't reach the water fast enough to replace those death traps.
Not that the I-02 was perfectly safe. Your first real scare occurred during a mock ambush action, stalking obsolete steamships through choppy waters. A pipe burst in the torpedo room, the result of a valve being over-tightened during the tube flooding process, filling the bow torpedo room with a foot of water. It took half an hour to struggle to the surface without risking more damage, and three more to actually drain the room and struggle back to dock under the watchful eyes of a pair of friendly destroyers. There was a brief fear that the sub would need to be abandoned at first, as the sheer pressure coming out of the pipe was such that damage control couldn't get close until the sub surfaced and the ballast tank it was connected to finally drained.
Fortunately, it wasn't necessary. The boat was, however, ordered back to Tokei for more complete repairs and so that the engineers could pick over the accident with a fine toothed comb to make sure that it wouldn't happen again. You were going back under your own power, but closely watched by a tender in case anything went wrong and under strict orders to stay on the surface and at no more than a third speed.
---
You'd learned a few rules for surviving aboard the submarine. For instance, to spend as little time looking aft down the hall as possible, though that was more to avoid general unpleasantness. Other rules were more pressing, and chief among them was not to go past the control room unless you absolutely had to. Moving through the crew quarters was somewhat unpleasant (the men who were overly deferential were nearly as bad as the ones who weren't deferential at all), but there was also the logistics lockers and the engineer room, the territory of your two unpleasant suitors. You did everything you could to avoid them, and that meant only going back when strictly necessary.
Unfortunately, today it was strictly necessary. The little standard-issue tin of 21 silphium resin pills was empty, which means you had to go to the medical section and get more. You, obviously, had absolutely no intent whatsoever of testing their contraceptive qualities, but you were required by regulation to take them, and besides, they did an admirable job of fending off your monthly visitor, most of the time. Well worth the occasional nausea that accompanied the little things.
You steeled yourself and headed down the hall to the medical locker. It would only take a second to dig them up from the back and sign them out, and you hopefully wouldn't have to talk to Lieutenant Hayashi at all. Still, you paused at the hatch to peer around the corner and make sure.
Lieutenant Kehara was there too, and he was doing the same. It took you a second to connect the dots: he took the pills too, and you'd both started new tins when you came on-board, meaning he'd run out at the same time as you. Best not to mention such a thing to him, though.
"Lieutenant." He greeted gruffly. You nodded in acknowledgement and peeked around the edge of the hatch. Fuck, there was Hayashi, sitting at the little logistics desk, reading a ledger. You pulled back and pressed against the bulkhead with a sigh. This was going to
suck.
"What your problem?" Akio asked. You frowned.
"Lieutenant Hayashi. He stares at me, it's creepy as hell." You explained. "He had the nerve to leave me a love note on the first day. On my
bed."
"What a fucking rat." Akio spat. "No wonder he ended up in logistics. Um, no offense." Referencing your posting on the
Okinami.
You stood in awkward silenced for a moment (Kwon saluted you eagerly as he passed by).
"I just don't want anyone to see me." Akio said finally.
You nodded in understanding. "Maybe we can distract him?"
"No good, I tried that last time. I don't think he'd leave his seat on-duty if the boat started sinking."
"Okay, let's just both go at the same time." You said. "Fast. I'll grab both tins, and you cover me if he approaches."
He thought on that a moment. "Solid. Let's go."
This plan was much better executed than previous ones. You both tore towards the locker at just above walking pace, and Akio set up a perimeter while you threw it open and started shuffling past the bandages and bottles of medicinal rum. They were, of course, way at the back in a little pile. Your hand grasped and found the edge of a tin, and you pulled two of them back, grabbed the clipboard, and signed both your name and Akio's as fast as you could, then shoved the locker shut.
You spared a glance back. Hayashi had looked up, but Akio shot him a glare and his eyes fell right back onto his ledger.
The two of you quickly pressed on out of the locker room, through the control room in an orderly fashion, and back to the officer's quarters, keeping a dignified composure about you.
"Well done, Lieutenant." You congratulated.
"You as well, Lieutenant." Akio returned, and there was the hint of a smile there. "Though, uh…"
"Oh, right." You handed him his tin quickly, and he stuffed it into one of the oversized pockets of his work overalls. "Thanks."
He turned to reenter his room, and you yours, but he stopped a moment before the door closed.
"Hey Arisukawa, um… I'm sorry I treated you so poorly. At our first posting. It was immature of me." He said. His face was screwed up so tight from the sheer effort of saying those words you thought he might have a heart attack. "Um… so, sorry."
The door slammed shut, and you closed your own. An apology. That was a nice change.
---
You were in Tokei when the news came. You were actually at a noodle shop near the harbor, eating lunch when someone had come scrambling in, yelling about how there was a war on and waving a newspaper. It took you a few moments to find one and then understand what was going on, and you seized the nearest paper (A copy of the
Tokei Financial Observer) from a nearby table, it's previous occupant having run out suddenly.
There had been an altercation in Gallia. There was some sort of airplane race or something (you vaguely remembered a headline about it for some reason), and Akitsukuni had won, with Gallia taking second place and Caspia third. That boorish Caspian prince had tried taken offense to the Akitsukuni pilot and the Gallian pilot, both women, sharing a dance together, and was moving to menace them when an Akitsukuni army officer moved to defuse the situation. This had resulted in the prince drawing his dress sword, wailing on the man, and losing a hand for his troubles, because Akitsukuni officers carried live steel, even to fancy Europan parties.
That, it had been decided, was apparently enough to have a war. So you would have a war.
The moment you were finished reading the story, you were on your feet and moving. Not sure where to, yet. I-02 still wasn't in the water. You didn't know where you would report except there. You were running anyway, moving through the rapidly filling streets. People were shouting and yelling the news to one another as the special printings of the papers arrived, grabbing them by the bundle off the back of trucks and wagons and spreading them around, a sort of jubilant, terrified, frantic panic.
It was in the flash of this realization that you knew you had something to do. You paid for your lunch and hurried outside to the street to try and hail a cab. Before long, you were speeding towards Horonai University and its dormitories, determined that your mission be completed.
When you reached the dorm building (you had memorized the address from all of the letters) you shoved coins into the driver's hand, thanked him, and took the steps of the brick, Western style building two at a time and hurried into the front hall. There was a rush of people going the other way, a press of bodies you had to fight past in the halls. You realized that these students were young men rushing to recruiting offices.
A severe looking woman at a little reception windows stared at you as you burst in with your boots and uniform. To her credit, she didn't treat you as any different to any other oddity she might experience.
"May I help you?" You tried to straighten yourself out, then replied hurriedly.
"Aiko--er, apologies, Kishimoto Aiko. She lives here, yes? Which room is her's? I won't take long, I promise." You babbled the words out. The woman stared at you for the barest of moments, then pointed towards the neatly printed directory next to her window. You bowed deeply.
"Thank you!" Then you hurtled up the stairs as fast as your legs could take you. Second floor. This was it. And you were out a little out of breath, but that wasn't important. Sprinting down the hall, you skidded to a stop in front of the door. Dormitory 218. You hesitated in front of the door for a long, long moment, not sure that you could do this. Or if you should.
You might be dead in a week, you idiot, a little voice in your head said.
Go for it. You reached out and rapped your knuckles against the door. A few moments later, it was hauled open by Aiko. Her hair was a frazzled mess and she had a pencil behind her ear. She was dressed in a simple house robe, the sort of thing you wore at home when you weren't expecting to go out or to have company. There was a moment of confusion before recognition dawned on her face.
"Haruna! What are you doing here? I--
"Did you see the news?" You said, half in a panic.
"No, I just woke up. Sorry, I was… there's a test, I've been…" Aiko stifled a yawn. "Um. Do you want to come in? It's not past curfew so we can have guests in our rooms. I can go down to the kitchen and make tea?"
"Hey, Aiko, who's that?" A voice called from around the corner.
"Your roommate?" You asked. Aiko laughed.
"Nooo. Ah, um. She's a study buddy. Don't worry about it." Your cheeks flushed and so did hers. She turned her head. "Uh. It's… it's Haruna."
"Oh spirits, the princ-" There was a crash as somebody went tripping over something, and a bespectacled girl came into view in a tangle of long hair. She pulled herself to her feet and bowed as best she could, looking unsteady.
"Hello, I'm Konomi, please don't mind me, ma'am, your highness, um, ma'am." She stumbled. Both over her words and the hem of her kimono as she seemed to be trying to wiggle past both you and Aiko to the hallway. You let her pass, and she practically ran into the wall in her eagerness to escape.
"Uh, let me know how it goes, Aiko! And, uh--see you in class tomorrow?" She said and then vanished up the stairs presumably to her own room. Somewhere.
"I hope she makes it up the stairs alright." You said.
"Yeah. I worry about her." Aiko said, shaking her head sadly.
"You're, uh, close?"
"We're friends." Aiko said firmly. "Close friends."
"... Close like us?"
"Not..not that close. No one else is," she said quietly. "But. Close." She crossed her fingers as if to demonstrate. Ah. You coughed.
"Nothing wrong with that," you said hurriedly. Wait. You were here for a reason. "Anyway, you haven't heard the news?"
You handed her the newspaper sheet you had bundled up tightly in your hand. She uncrumpled it and read the headline, her eyes widening.
"Oh spirits, they're actually…"
"It's happening, yes. And, Aiko. I--" You were normally so sure of your words. "Aiko, I don't want to go to war with any regrets. And if I didn't…" You hesitated again. "If I didn't tell you the depth of my feelings, really, truly, in person then I would have many, many regrets." You bowed to her as deeply as you could while still standing.
"Aiko, I don't want us just to be friends any longer. I want to put my heart in your care. So that no matter what happens, I can truly say I have lived with no regrets."
You held the bow as long as you could, through the deafening silence. Eventually, though, you looked up to see Aiko, standing shocked, tears of (what you hoped was) joy welling in her eyes.
"Okay." Was all she managed. Definitely joy.
-----
You allowed herself one hour in her presence, before reporting back to base.
What an hour it was.
---
The I-02 was back in the water the next morning. The inspection by engineers had been canceled and repairs had been done through the night to make sure she was fighting fit. Then you steamed out of Tokei harbor and headed north at your top cruising speed to make for the fleet. There was a desperate, excited buzz throughout the boat--everyone wanted to be back with the fleet before the big decisive battle. It was hard
not to feel excited, even with your prior experiences. You were going to be doing what you were trained to do (what you were
born to do) and face the enemy in battle. This was it. What you had been waiting and preparing for your whole life.
When the I-02 steamed into the main anchorage and the fleet was still there, you swore the boat sighed collectively in relief. It was strange. The bright white battleships were all repainted a dull gray color that blended into the sea and horizon. Bright fittings were gone and everything on the decks that wasn't necessary for the ship to function seemed to have been stripped away. Now, more than ever, they seemed like massive steel castles to you.
There was still one concession. On the back of the looming command tower of the
Mochizuki there was a massive, vertical blue banner, white characters slashed through it.
THE BLADE THAT DEALS DEATH IS THE SWORD THAT GUARDS LIVES
In other words, we go into battle to safeguard our home. Better some anonymous patch of sea than Tokei harbour. Better their deaths than ours, better our deaths than our family's.
The signals room (closet, really) was abuzz. You had thought at first that you wouldn't have enough work to do in your position, but now you couldn't keep up. Every ship in the fleet was radioing one another at frantic pace, demanding orders, supplies, last-minute transfers. The Southern fleet was coming north. Squadrons were being reorganized. The radios buzzed and squawked a constant patter of words and Vail code.
Then, a voice came over the radios, and everything else fell silent. Admiral Fushimi Tsuginori, commander of the Northern fleet, delivered a simple speech. Do your duty, win the war, die with dignity. In sequence, every ship in the fleet acknowledged these orders, and it was an honour to get on the radio and do the same, add your voice to the dozens sounding off.
Then came the orders. The fleet was moving out. There was a thousand things to do at sea for victory to be assured. What would I-02 be doing?
[ ] Shadowing Red Squadron in deep patrols up the coast towards Port Georgia. (Straight into battle.)
[ ] Travel north to attack stragglers steaming back to rally with the Caspian fleet. (Tense, lone wolf action.)
[ ] Lead a pack of coastal subs to raid smaller Caspian ports and lay mines. (Useful and daring, if without glory.)
[ ] Escort the Type 14 mother submarine I-05 and her minisubs scouting Port Georgia. (spying and codebreaking.)
