You decided to take a few moments to look through this officer's cabin. If she was the first officer then maybe there's something important here. You started to rummage through the small desk and its drawers. You couldn't really read Caspian, of course, but anything that looked official got folded up and stuffed into the breast pocket of your coat. Among the papers, you found a Gallian novel, much like the one you'd gotten from your New Year's fling. This one, though, seemed to feature the heroine becoming entangled with some New Allegheny outlaw with a mustache and a dashing air that would put Kenshin to shame.
You were pretty desperate for reading material, but… it was about a boy. Ugh. You stuffed it in a pocket anyway.
You started ruffling through the rest of the office, looking through the uniforms in the locker. You were a little jealous that she got to wear her skirts all the time apparently, and hers had pockets. Appropriate for the cold, she also had a few pairs of leggings and other layers that, when you checked, were fur-lined on the inside! Excited, you held them up to examine the fit and found that even if they did fit your hips and waist (they didn't), they were definitely at least 8 or 10 centimeters too long in the leg. UGH.
Just your luck.
From the corridor, you heard Kwon's voice.
"Find anything, ma'am?"
You quickly slipped some paper-wrapped gingerbread you found in her desk drawer into your cartridge belt. There was also an orange. That went in your pocket. The westerners always broke out their best sweets for Christmas.
"Nothing really. Start searching the other officer's rooms, take anything written down with you. And make sure you check their pockets!" You instructed.
Finally, at the bottom of her locker, you came up with a small bound book. You flipped it open and looked through. Maybe some kind of journal or diary? You thumbed quickly through the pages of scratchy, blocky characters and tea-stains. Inside you found a slim bundle of envelopes that had been attentively tied together with a ribbon. Letters from home, maybe? Part of you felt a touch guilty about potentially taking someone's treasured connection to home like some common thief, but the part of you that was curious immediately justified it by saying that there might be important intelligence in here! And so the journal and letters went into your pocket, too.
You took one last quick look over everything you found. A nice silk scarf (that's yours now), a little makeup kit at the cramped sink in the corner (not your complexion), wonderful looking heavy boots (not your size) and one of those fancy new folding pocket cameras that might have important intelligence on the film… and was hard to find at home. Thank the Spirits that your winter coat had huge pockets.
You stepped back out into the corridor and you could hear voices from the bridge and the sound of someone(s) rustling through the captain's cabin. Akio's voice echoed down the corridor.
"Petty Officer, fire off a blue flare if you please. I'm sure the captain is rather anxious." A trio of sailors tromped past you a moment later, rifles slung, and you heard the distinctive thump-whoosh-crackle of a flare gun firing a few moments later as you stepped back onto the bridge, where Akio was leaning casually against the chart table doing his best to look like he had charge of the situation. The giant, fuzzy Caspian hat embracing the entirety of his head was difficult to ignore. There was also the cap of a bottle sticking out of one pocket. Apparently he had availed himself of the officer's mess in the brief time you'd been searching.
"What's the situation, Arisukawa?" He asked as you made your appearance. After a while, the formality in a submarine seemed to get sanded and smoothed away a little. It was a necessity in your cramped little world.
"First, that hat looks absurd on you. Second, it seems all the officer's quarters are abandoned. No sign of anyone and they must have left in a hurry, since they left almost everything where it was. I found a bunch of papers in the first officer's quarters. No idea what they say, of course. Kwon and Murakami are searching the others--" As you spoke, Murakami clambered onto the bridge and saluted you both, though he had to take a moment to compose himself and not burst out laughing when he saw Akio.
"Sir, ma'am. No logs left in the captain's quarters. There was a safe there that must have contained other papers as well, but it was completely cleaned out. The captain, or whoever ordered the crew off, did a good job of making sure they didn't leave anything valuable behind in terms of material. There was some paperwork on the desk--" He held out a stack of folders, "--but from what I can see it's mostly day-to-day stuff. A few reports from subordinate officers, nothing super interesting, but we might be able to find a few tidbits if we go over it later."
"Good job," you said. "I'm going to take Kwon and go below to check some other spaces. Anything else up here we need to worry about?"
Akio shook his head.
"The lifeboats all seem to be missing--or at least, several of them, so they must have abandoned ship before getting stuck. Which makes that whole intercepted radio transmission even stranger. Also this hat is extremely warm so I'm willing to look undignified to not have frozen ears."
"Of course." You nodded sagely, trying not to smile.
"Captain'll probably send a few more bodies over to look things over now that it's all clear. I'll stay here to keep an eye on things and so everyone knows where to find one of us," Akio nodded. "Be careful."
As you turned to leave the bridge, one of your other sailors (Ota, in fact) came into the bridge at a dead run and skidded to a stop.
"Sir, ma'am! We found a body!"
-----
The body was on one of the tables in the crew's dining room, wrapped in sheets taken from someone's bed. It was like an icebox in here, and thankfully the body wasn't terribly old yet, but it still wasn't exactly pleasant. The man was dressed in an enlisted sailor's uniform and had had a pair of coins placed over his eyes. The cause of death was fairly straight forward--someone had shot him three times in the chest. But what did you know? You weren't... some death-investigating person. Detective.
"Huh." Akio said.
"Huh." You also said.
"That guy got shot," said Ota, around a mouth full of biscuits he had found in the galley.
"Any other bodies?" Akio asked. Ota shrugged. "Alright, so… that's spooky."
"Why is he still here? You figure they woulda… I dunno, dumped him over the side or whatever. Do they do that?"
"Nah, they bury 'em. Maybe they were waiting to get to land?"
"And what, just leaving the body in the mess?"
"Maybe they don't want his ghost to haunt them--"
Akio put up a hand to stop the pointless chatter. "Look, this is pointless. This isn't our problem. Let's check the galley."
The quantity of black tea in the kitchen was astounding--you guessed they drank it exclusively, since there wasn't a single coffee bean anywhere. The variety of tinned food was also pretty intense. On board the I-02, you got mostly tinned fish and some potted meat and lots and LOTS of pickled vegetables to supplement the rice and millet that were the mainstay of your diet. Here they seemed to have everything. You could only identify some of it, mostly from the pictures on the labels. Tinned tomatoes, pickled onions, canned beets, tinned pork and beef, canned sardines (mmm), canned peas and other vegetables of every kind. They had an oven next to which there was still day or two old bread sitting in racks waiting to be served to a crew that wasn't there any longer. They got fresh bread! On top of that, there were a couple netbags stuffed full of lemons and limes, too! They must not have been at sea terribly long. Or maybe they'd resupplied recently.
"Shame we can't take this with us." You remarked off-hand.
"Are you kidding? We're stuffing our pockets before we leave." Akio said. "Nishida found some backpacks… I hope the captain sends some more folks over. Actually… fuck. Arisukawa, take two men and sound the ship. I want to make sure she isn't taking on water while we sit here twiddling our thumbs. I want to have a lot of time to pick this place clean."
You grabbed Kwon and Murakami, andy you give the galley a last look over before you left. So much deliciousness.
"This ship is the best thing that's ever happened to us." You said.
---
"This ship is the worst thing that's ever happened to us."
"Quiet!"
The upper decks of the ship, still lit through portholes and open doors, were roomy and cozy compared to your life in the submarine, but belowdecks was a different story. There was no power, so you were reliant on dim electric torches which blinked any time you swung them around or knocked them against anything. Occasionally, one would flicker out and you would have to smack it to get the light working again.
The worst part was, down here, it was warm. The closer you got to the engine room, the warmer it got. You'd unbuttoned your coat, and you really wished you had somewhere to put it.
Kwon was leading the group through, pushing open doors with his revolver in one hand and torch in the other. You gathered around another door and wiped the sweat from your brow.
"Where are we now?" You asked.
"I think this is near the prow." Kwon said uncertainty.
"Okay, we're almost done. The stairs will just be around the corner." If they weren't, you just backtrack.
Kwon unlatched the door, pushed, and immediately backed up.
"That's a bomb. Those are bombs." He stammered, in between some pretty spicy multilingual profanity.
Sure enough, lined up against the side of the ship were three steel cylinders, like large coffee tins, each topped with detonators. Wires ran out of each one, and you followed them with your flashlight to… a second body. And a third. And a lot of blood.
"What the f-fuck." Murakami stammered.
"Yeah." You echoed. One of the bodies was missing his lower jaw, which was one of the most disgusting things you'd ever seen. The other had a hatchet buried in his chest.
You made your way over, pulled one of the bodies off the detonator, and checked it. Primed, but not set. These two must have been tasked with it and… had a disagreement.
"Kwon, will I kill us all if I pull out these wires?" You asked.
"No, Lieutenant. it'll just prevent the bombs going off." He said. You nodded, and pulled them out.
"Okay. Let's check the engine room."
---
The engine rooms were, like most on coal-powered vessels, dark and oppressive spaces, covered in soot. It was incredibly hot, and it looked like somebody was still shovelling coal down here until very recently. There was also a curious smell about the place.
"What is that?" You asked. Kwon started poking through the furnaces, looking around. "Impurity in the coal?"
"I shoveled coal on my first posting. Never smelled anything like that." He said. He started pulling open the furnaces one by one. About half were cold. Then he pulled one open and simply stopped.
"Oh. Lieutenant, I found it." He said, deadpan.
You and Murakami came over to look, Murakami threw up pretty much immediately. You came close to doing the same.
There was a body in the furnace, half turned to ash amid the smoldering coals. From what little was left of the clothing, a sailor of some kind.
"Okay, close that up, quickly please." You said, and Kwon swung the door shut. The image stuck in your head, though.
Nothing here made sense. If they had abandoned ship before, why the bodies? Why the scuttling charges? Was there a mutiny? If so, why so little evidence of a struggle? You spotted an officer's cap lying nearby, almost missing it with all the coal dust. That didn't bear thinking about.
"Well, the ship's not going to sink. Let's be done here." You said, and made a rapid exit.
---
You debriefed Akio up in the blessed cold of the bridge, where another squad of sailors had arrived. Akio had had the body in the galley moved somewhere less obtrusive, then sent a party down to the kitchen to make off with whatever supplies they could. The whole thing still puzzled you. Missing lifeboats, missing crew, multiple dead bodies and scuttling charges that no one had armed.
Of course, since nobody knew how to use the Caspian charges, and nobody really wanted to work around the bodies unless they had to, Akio had new charges laid at the back of the boat.
You were halfway back across the ice, waiting for the detonation, when the pieces came together in your head. There had been a mutiny… just a small one. Some issue, possibly something wrong with the boilers or her steering or something, had prompted the majority of the crew to abandon ship, as far as you could make out. Among the skeleton crew left behind to man the vessel there had been some sort of argument or difference of opinion, possibly about the necessity of scuttling the ship. Maybe something more personal. Maybe something political.
As the party turned to watch the plumes of water as the scuttling charges went off and the ship started slipping backward beneath the ice, freed now by the charges, you started to feel a little like you'd done your enemy's work for him.
Oh well. You had a backpack full of (mostly) fresh bread, an orange, and a bundle of foreign letters to pore over for intelligence. It wasn't for nothing.
---
Your rudimentary Caspian needed a lot of work, it turned out. While you were able to decipher their alphabet to some degree, you still weren't what someone might call literate and so you had resorted to laboriously copying out one word at a time from the journal and then checking against your dictionary in your spare time. Not that you had a lot of that, right now. There were reports (aka, rumors) that there was a major supply convoy heading down out of the North-East passage sometime soon and you were supposed to be on top of that. As in, torpedoing some of them maybe.
You had been steaming on the surface for some time when look-outs had spotted the smudge of smoke on the horizon and your course had altered to plow through the frigid seas, waves carrying growlers and small chunks of ice over the deck. As you closed in, the northern night came on quickly as it always did and the boat crept closer until at last Kenshin ordered the sleek form of the submarine beneath the waves and you went to your station, hovering over Kwon at his station.
You equipped yourself with the secondary pair of headphones for the hydrophone and listened, trying to focus on picking out the engine noise. You still weren't good at this, though somehow Kwon could tell you exactly what ship he was listening to and how far away it was. Him and his crazy ears. You could feel the boat slowing, moving itself into position abreast of the oncoming convoy. You strained your ears and you could hear it now, the whirring, chugging sound of the dull merchant ships as they plowed through the seas. Dimly, you heard Kenshin giving more orders as the boat reached pericope depth and you tried to block out other distractions.
You frowned, straining your ears, then looked to Kwon almost at the same time he looked at you. There was something else there behind the heavy, dull noise of the merchant ships. It was hard to make out.
"Something fast," Kwon murmured.
He reached out and slowly, slowly pulled the directional knob. The sound got loud, and you felt the hair stand up on the back of your neck.
"Sir! New contact bearing 1-8-5 degrees! They're behind us! Closing fast!" Kwon shouted before you had a chance to process. Behind you, you could hear Kenshin swinging the periscope around and then heard him yell in shock.
"DIVE! EMERGENCY DIVE!" Before anyone could react you felt a the whole ship shudder and an ear-splitting sound of metal shearing through metal reverberated through the ship. You whirled around to look into the control room and Kenshin had stumbled back from the periscope column which had been shoved back at an angle that it probably wasn't supposed to have. He clutched his forehead, trying to staunch the flow of blood from where he had cut himself or split the skin open on the surface of the periscope.
A moment later, possibly in the same moment, there was a menacing creaking sound and the periscope viewfinder shattered outwards in a spray of water and sharp shards of glass.
"Belay that! Ascend! Surface the boat!" Kenshin said, staggering away. "I need a patch on that periscope now." The destroyer, you saw, must have run right over the periscope and sheered the top away, exposing the inside of the delicate tube structure to the water, which had flooded the apparatus almost immediately. Until that leak was properly secured, staying under might damage the submarine even further.
"Warrant officer Abe to the control room!" Takamitsu was shouting orders, calling for your medical officer to come take a look at Kenshin. Everything was happening so quickly.
Kenshin sank down against the deck, the blood dripping steadily across his leather jacket not slowing. Takamitsu looked around, wild-eyed, pointing sailors to new positions.
"Kehara, load tubes one and two! If we don't sink that destroyer we're done!" He looked at you, cast his eyes around the control room as though looking for anyone else, then steadied himself.
"Arisukawa, man the deck gun! Go!"
Without thinking, you started clambering up the ladder into the conning tower, the clatter of boots right behind you. The moment you heard the telltale sound of the top of the sub breaching surface, you unlocked and pushed open the hatch, frigid saltwater raining down on you. You hadn't taken the time to grab your waterproof slicker and you were instantly soaked to the skin. You scrambled down the outside of the tower towards the gun and glanced back to see that the gun crew was following you as Takamitsu hauled himself out onto the bridge.
Ahead, just ahead, maybe just two hundred meters away, the enemy destroyer was coming about, turrets swiveling, men scrambling towards their own weapons. They were even less prepared than you, they hadn't even known you were there until they hit you. You scanned the vessel. Small, four guns--maybe 105mm or 120mm, if you had to guess. A machine gun post just forward of amidships. Tall bridge structure.
Your own gun was familiar, a 100mm deck gun that could be found on light Akitsukuni vessels of all kinds and which you were familiar with from your academy days. The gun crew was already scrambling into position, removing the plug and cover from the gun and setting the gunsight in place, dropping the first shell into the loading hopper. With a brief start, you realized that the Petty Officer shouting orders was Ota and he gave you a smile, confident and maybe hiding his own nerves, before he was back to all business.
You had fifteen seconds, maybe twenty before they might have their wits about them and bring their guns to bear on you. The gun-crew needed orders. This was your moment, Haruna.
Assign priority in a plan: first, second, and third. There will be a voting moratorium of two hours.
[ ] Knock out their main guns.
[ ] Hit the machine-gun post.
[ ] Go for the bridge.
[ ] Smash their rudder.
[ ] Write In
