You stood in front of the assembled sailors, hands resting on the hilt of your sword, scabbarded tip between your feet as you took a slightly wider stance. You glared at them all, doing your best to affect the merciless glower that you remembered from your Academy instructors along with calling up all the imperious energy of your ancestors.
You had in front of you around fifty-odd sailors, 8 men to each of the quick-firing 37 millimeter guns for for firing, gun laying, commanding, ammo carrying and so forth. Besides them, you also had various others such as the cook, quartermaster and other logistic personnel (each gun had its own cart and horses for those carts, to which still other men had been assigned) and so on. None of them looked happy to be here, but that might because in early spring, the Joseon frontier was bitterly cold.
"Sailors." You paused. "No, I won't call you sailors because what I've seen and heard today is absolutely disgusting. More the sort of thing I expect from a pack of Cathayan monkeys than proud sailors of the Imperial Akitsukuni Navy. Disrespecting your officers. Filthy living conditions--" unmade beds and personal items out of lockers was filthy in this navy. "--rusty rifles, tarnished buttons, unshaven men, ill cared for moustaches, lubberly uniforms. All of it a disappointment both to me and to the Empress." You paused for a moment to gather your thoughts.
"I am your new commanding officer. I am not a member of the Women's Naval Auxiliary, though even if I were your behavior so far has been disgraceful." You glared at the hapless sentry for emphasis.
"I am Junior Lieutenant Arisukawa Haruna and you are my unfortunate responsibility for as long as the Empress sees fit. I can see I have quite a bit of work to do before I can knock you all into proper ship shape. Make no mistake, just because we're on land doesn't mean you stop being sailors. "
"Now, to correct these lapses in discipline and in judgement, there will be two new orders going forward. One: Petty Officer Second Class Kwon, your new ranking petty officer, will be leading you in calisthenics and physical fitness training every morning until I see the improvement I want to see from all of you. As long as one man lags behind all of you will work. Is that understood?" You waited until you got a ragged chorus of 'Yes ma'am' from the sailors two or three times, then continued.
"Second: I will be inspecting you every day from now on until I see that improvement. I expect things to be ship-shape in every respect. Uniforms. Grooming. Weapons. Comportment. Attentiveness to duty. As long as you struggle to maintain the basic standards of the Navy, you will be inspected. Every time you fail an inspection, there will be extra duties, extra training, and extra exercise. I want to be able to see myself in the barrels of those guns." You lifted your sword to point towards one of the gun pits. "Now get out of my sight, I don't want to look at you filthy excuses for sailors any longer. PETTY OFFICER KWON! Take charge of the men."
You spun on your heel and marched back towards your quarters, being very careful not to look back over your shoulder. To do so would suggest you were unsure of being obeyed and that would betray weakness which you could not afford. Behind you, you heard Kwon shouting at the men, adding his own much more colorful barrage of disappointment before he dismissed them and ordered them to get to work making this damn place as ship-shape as possible.
As soon as you were inside your little house, you headed into your quarters where you had stowed your seabag and slumped down to sit on the edge of the bed. It was strange. This was the most space you had had to yourself at any posting. It was a small bedroom, sure, but you could stand and not touch the walls, you had a proper bed and not a bunk. There was a side table with a mirror and a washing basin (though you suspected that you would have to go outside to answer calls of nature) and there was even a small, empty bookshelf and a personal desk here along with a small wardrobe. It was positively luxurious by your standards so far. You also had a desk out in the main room for important Navy business.
Your first independent command and it wasn't even on the sea. After taking a moment to yourself, you stepped back out into the main room to look over your accomodations a bit more clearly. There was a field telephone on your desk, presumably connecting you with higher headquarters and you had all the office supplies and forms you could ever want, apparently.
You spent the rest of the day examining your little command. The guns were themselves familiar 37mm rapid-fire guns on special mountings that allowed to point upwards at up to 90 degrees so they could shoot at aircraft. You supposed that was why the Navy was here minding them. The Army hadn't had any to use.
There was another house, where the quartermaster and all of his personnel, including the cooks, lived and worked. The field kitchen was there as well and it was a relief to know that the Navy was doing its best to supply you with decent food at least. There was also a barn that had been appropriated for the various horses required for your command. You had honestly never expected to see so many horses in a navy command, but here you were! Twenty-four of them to pull supply wagons, limbers, and the guns themselves. Hell, two of the men in each gun section were farriers who were specifically there to mind the horses. How they found farriers in the navy, you really had no idea.
The next few days were interesting. Kwon worked the men to the bone with exercise and every flaw you found in your many (many) inspections meant more exercise. At last, a week after you had been there, they were meeting your expectations. Better than that, they didn't seem inclined to do anything but obey your orders as quickly as possible. None of them forgot to salute, either.
You also finally found time to sit down and read some of the mail that was catching up to you and spent hours looking over Aiko's letter and composing a reply to tell her that you were well and things were fine, really. You weren't in any danger whatsoever. One thing that struck you was the mentions of her friend, Konomi. The girl with the spectacles, you recalled. She spent a lot of time with Aiko, it seemed. Which made sense, you supposed. You needed people to study with. Friends to lean on.
As you read over the details of an excursion in Tokei's beautiful spring weather, you had to suppress a pang of jealousy. It was normal, you supposed, for people to find others to help them when those they cared for were so far away and for so long. It was… the nature of things. You were gone. Aiko, of course, had emotional and physical needs that you couldn't meet while you were here, far from her side.
Still, thinking of someone else in her arms made your heart ache a little. But that was the way things went, wasn't it? As long as it wasn't something that you had to confront directly, there was no reason to kick that particular hornet's nest. It would only end up hurting everyone involved.
The was an electric buzz from the telephone that jerked you out of your melancholy.
"Battery six." You answered.
"Friendly flight coming in from the east, four birds. Watch your targets." The telephone operator on the other side said.
"Watch your fire."
"Acknowledged." You put down the receiver and glanced out the window. Outside, Kwon was basically chasing the forty sailors in the battery into laps around the guns. You stepped out and gave him a nod, and you filled him in when he came over, so the men wouldn't scramble for the guns when your guests were overhead. Not they probably would, the ill-disciplined idiots.
A few minutes later, a low drone filled the skies as four little planes buzzed over. They had two sets of wings set at a stagger from one another with a little tail at the back, and they seemed to crawl across the sky in slow motion. You had a ship's rangefighting scope set up on a tripod in the middle of the battery, and you strode over to give it a try. Adjusting the knob at the top to 1200, you peered through and got a double-image of the aircraft. Twisting it out farther made it worse, so you cranked it the other way until the double images overlapped and then checked. 900 meters. Your briefing document said that was more or less average for modern aircraft in combat.
You stared at the four little planes, just able to make out the shifting dots of the pilots and observers. It must be terrifying, that far up in a canvas bucket. You were never more grateful to be in the Navy: you'd never have to climb into one of those blasted things.
---
Later that week you were crawling out of bed early in the morning when the field telephone buzzed. You sleepily put your ear to the receiver.
"Battery six."
"This is Observer Nine-One, two enemy birds coming directly overhead my position towards Suijin. Altitude was 1100." The observer on the other end sounded very young, like a teen whose voice was still cracking.
Well, you were awake now.
"Acknowledged." You put down the receiver, called for Kwon to ready the guns, and pulled your boots on. By the time you were outside, men were scrambling out of their quarters to man their guns as petty officers shouted orders and ammunition was loaded in preparation for your new visitors. You scanned the sky to the northeast, trying to pick out the planes. Around you, various gun commanders and spotters were doing the same. The first to pick up the enemy would give their bearing and position and then you could start doing the real work.
You weren't the first to spot them regrettably. It was one of the farriers from the quartermaster's section who was also a spotter and general fetch-and-carrier during this kind of action.
"Enemy in sight. Two birds, bearing…" There was a moment of hesitation in his young voice. "28 degrees, North-north-east." Instantly every pair of binoculars was on that section of the sky and you could see the dots now. Still too far for you to hear their engines but you had them. You turned to your range finder and captured the pair of planes in the viewfinder to adjust. They were at just about 1200 meters now--they might be flying higher to avoid your shells?
"Altitude, 1200 meters. Speed… 54 knots." The guns were sighted with a simple aperture sight. You weren't the one doing the shooting, though. You waited and soon you could hear the buzz of the engines, growing louder and louder as the planes altered course slightly. They might not know where your guns were--yet. As the range closed, you raised a hand, then dropped it sharply.
Full Success
"Fire!" All four guns began to let out their rattling thudding reports as shells were hurled skywards. They were contact fused, but every three or four shells had been made tracers and now you could watch as streaks of bright blue shot into the sky, bracketing the aircraft in a hail of gunfire. A moment later you could hear the dull boom of the heavier guns further back and your tracers were joined by puffy smears of brown smoke as shells began to burst in the air.
The ground shook from the reports and a haze of cordite smoke settled in. Your tracers were far, far behind the targets: the gunners weren't giving nearly enough lead.
"Adjust, dammit! You're undershooting!" You yelled, and the petty officers repeated. Guns started cranking around faster to try and chase down the enemy planes, but the shells fell short. They were hard targets, but this was atrocious.
Frustrated, you jumped down into one of the nearby pits and took a look down the gunsight yourself, and the problem was made clear. The aperture was too small: when you tried to lead the target, you ceased being able to actually use the sight.
You ordered the gunners to stop using the sights and try just to walk their fire, but by that point it was too little, too late. The tracers whipped much closer than before, you thought one may even have passed through a wing, but the two little planes buzzed up and away undeterred, sweeping their flight around the town a couple kilometers to your rear as the heavier guns banged away in what seemed like an equally futile effort to thwart their progress. As the planes passed beyond your position you, you started hearing a curious sound, like rain pattering through leaves. As it came down around your position, you realized it was the shrapnel from the heavy guns, and you ducked into the edge of one of the pits as it did. The metal pattered off the gun carriages and splattered in the mud, and there was a yelp as one of the gunners was struck in the head.
An hour later, you were in your little room in the shack, sweeping metal fragments off your desk and setting out to write a report. Your conclusion was simple and damning: the sights on the guns did not allow sufficient lead to be made on the target without losing sight of them. You'd ordered them removed from the guns for now: the gunners would be aiming by tracer fire and sighting naturally down the barrel until a solution was devised. You also pointed out that there might be a need for head protection for your crew, considering that whenever enemy planes flew over your position, you'd be in for a rain of shrapnel. Your injured man had been evacuated earlier with a fractured skull.
The response to your second complain came sooner than the first. Within a few days, an army wagon arrived with a load of helmets that were supposedly being adopted by the army's frontline soldiers. They were strange, conical things made of steel that reminded you of the illustrations of Warring States footmen, and they were uncomfortable, but the men all seemed to take to them almost instantly. They wore them whenever you drilled on guns and`fa usually even on sentry duty too.
Apparently they were something of a precious resource, and your battery getting priority was probably because the Navy had far fewer men at the front. The Army troops were apparently fighting over them in the trenches, with only the men in the farthest forward lines getting them and having to trade them to one another when they rotated.
You were relieved to find out the officers were getting a slightly different model of the helmet that was rounded and lighter, and were overjoyed to find it hanging on your door a few days later. It looked sort of like a flattened turtle shell and it had a bellflower seal on the back in white, and putting it on felt… significant. The helmets were being based on old medieval ones (why fix what wasn't broken?) and you had ancestors who had worn something almost exactly like this while leading troops into battle. What would they think, seeing you here?
Over the next few weeks, you had a few more chances to take some shots at aircraft. At one point something (you think it might have been one of the little control flaps on the back) came off one of the planes, but you didn't know if that was you or not. Still, you were getting closer. The men were clearly resentful of you and Kwon, but the increasing frequency of action (and the occasional overshooting shell splashing close to the guns) kept things to a low mutter. You tapered off the physical training eventually before the men started injuring themselves, but inspections stayed constant. You weren't going to give them an inch.
---
The first complaint was addressed in early April when a small wagon arrived, accompanied by a rider in a dark purple and black uniform you immediately identified as a Dyskelandic Army officer (the helmet with the absurd little spike atop helped). She dismounted smoothly and strode up to you, riding crop in one hand and her other hand already out to shake. She had a chest full of medals and wore another around her neck, some sort of cross decorated with swords and jewels. Then… you went a little weak in the knees as she closed and you realized you had to look up to look her in the face.
Oh no.
You exchanged the customary awkward half-handshake half-bow that typically ensued whenever Westerners and your people greeted one another, and you found yourself falling naturally back to the refined Dyskelandic your tutors had spent the better part of a decade pressing into your brain.
"
Welcome to Battery Six…" You checked her shoulder board and wracked your brain trying to remember the meaning of the symbols… "
Captainess?"
'Hauptfrau.' Gendered languages were a nightmare.
She laughed, a deep and resonant sound, clapping you uncomfortably on the shoulder. Their enthusiasm for physical contact was another of those awkward things.
"
I'm afraid you've misread. No matter, our rank badges have changed in the last few years. Integrating the damned Marcovarians, of course! My name is Major Einsenmenger." The name was familiar from your briefing. Major Nora Einsenmenger was the woman who essentially invented the first anti-air gun carriages, though originally to shoot down airships.
"
A pleasure to meet you. Junior Lieutenant Haruna Arisukawa."
"
Oh, I know who you are. The princess! Marvelous, marvelous, good to see your country finally listening to the most important piece of advice we've been trying to press into you." She started striding for the guns, signalling to the men tending her wagon to start unloading.
"
I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't follow." You said curiously.
"
Adding some feminine energy to the institution, of course! How anything gets done around here is beyond me." She said.
"
I've been here for two years, and in that time I have talked to maybe a half-a-dozen women. Excellent conversation, though of course I don't speak a world of the language."
You were good enough at picking up innuendo to get her meaning there. Focus, Haruna. You followed after her towards the guns, doing your best to ignore the gawking sailors who were apparently amazed to see a foreigner of any kind here.
"
I appreciate the support. It hasn't been easy," you said, not quite sure how else to respond to this seeming force of nature that had descended on your battery.
"
Of course. We ladies have to stick together, don't we?" She winked at that in a way that was far too obvious in showing her intention.
"
Really, men are so crude and uptight and stoic. No, what you Aki types needed was some proper feminine radiance. Which you absolutely have in spades, my dear lieutenant. I mean, you lot have an Empress. Really, should let her run things more directly, but I understand. Boys will be boys, won't they?" She laughed and you desperately hoped your face wasn't turning bright red.
The gun, as it happened to be, was Gun Number 2 and it was sitting brightly shined, clean, and waiting for action. As she approached it, she swatted her riding crop into one gloved hand, grinning like a madwoman.
Why did that give you
feelings?
"
This is one of the guns, then? Pretty standard, I suppose. At least your lot haven't made a dog's breakfast out of the gun," she said with a little laugh, then looked at the petty officer who had hurried over when he'd realized he'd had officers coming to look at his gun.
"
THIS--" Einsenmenger gestured, speaking loudly. And slowly. As if that would help her get her point across even though it was likely the man didn't speak a word of her language. "
--you… Uh. NOT HIT PLANE?" You sighed, then translated.
"She wants to know if you've had any luck hitting anything with it. And don't worry, she's not Caspian." The petty officer looked skeptical, but answered you promptly.
"Yes ma'am. The sights make it very difficult to lead air targets enough. They move too quickly, you see." The sailor eyed the tall foreigner (she was taller than most of your sailors, too. Spirits.) with something akin to uncertainty. Or maybe just the usual Akitsukuni distrust of Westerners.
"
He says that the current sights aren't any good. Airplanes move too quickly to lead properly, they run outside the sight aperture."
"
Of course. If you were shooting an airship, it wouldn't likely be a problem. Bloody great targets, those. But if you're shooting at airplanes, I think even Dysch soldiers--er sailors, sorry love--would have problems." She tapped her chin, then waved towards the men who had accompanied her.
"
You read my report?"
"
I did! Very insightful. Gave me some excellent ideas for a an improved sight, so you'll be glad to know I've brought you a present…"
The crates on the back of the wagon were cracked open, revealing two pieces of hastily-cut metal. The first was a simple metal bar, bent in the center, while the second was a complex circular piece that looked like a spiderweb made of stiff wire. As her men bustled about showing yours how to affix them to their guns, she smiled and continued.
"
Anyway, I just wanted to thank you personally for your report. I only had a translation, of course, but it actually contained some useful information instead of the brief little snippets in all the others. Gave me something to go on in fixing our little problem. I really must be gone, but if you ever get a chance to get out of this dreary little pit and to the rear lines, it looks like I'm going to be at General Horikoshi's office for the duration. Official observer for Her Majesty the Kaiserin and all that. What fun."
Then she was done and riding off back down the lines, leaving you feeling distinctly… something. You spent that evening venting your passions in a particularly lurid letter to Aiko that you barely managed to keep within the realm of propriety.
You didn't mention the major.
---
You didn't have much of a chance to see the new sight in action over the next few days, unfortunately. There was some action happening farther west that had the attention of all the planes, so mostly you just needed to keep the guns maintained and discipline up. It was starting to get difficult: the troops were getting restless, and it wasn't hard to guess why.
In short, the battery was being commanded by a woman and a Joseon national, and the sailors were painfully aware of it.
You were insulated from the worst of it by your station: acting against an officer could be a death sentence in some parts of the IAN, and you were still royalty. So the bulk of their resentment fell on Kwon, who had fairly limited leeway to deal with it. This was his first time being the ranking NCO in at a post, and he was doing his best, but the familiar fear that had clung to the man when you first met him, when he couldn't understand a word of what his comrades were saying, was starting to creep back in. For one thing, you could hear every night as he pulled his bed in front of the door of the shack, just in case. It was always back by morning, so you couldn't say anything, but you didn't blame him either. The other petty officer --Kudo-- had vacated the little room once Kwon had arrived. You weren't sure where he was staying, honestly, but you hadn't wanted to have to make it your business.
He was starting to get stricter than even you had wanted him to be. You watched him slap a man across the face for having his collar unbuttoned when he came in to report the completion of a maintenance detail. Another received a blow that practically knocked the man to the floor for muttering a mild complaint about an order in Kwon's hearing.
He wasn't any easier on his countrywoman. When Min-Seo had spilled tea while serving you one morning, he had yelled at her in loud, angry Joseon and Akitsukuni that was impossible for anyone to miss, considering that Kudo was here working on paperwork at the time. You had been worried for a moment that he might even strike her, too, but he stopped short of physically accosting her for her perceived slight.
Considering Kwon was supposed to be helping you protect Min-Seo, you pulled him aside soon after and, out of sight of the battery, gave him an earful. You'd never been more furious with him. You'd never had a cause to be furious with him before. He'd always been cheerful before, polite and smiling and… not like this.
Diplomacy - Success!
"Kwon, what was that with Min-Seo? It was just a little tea on the table. It happens all the time at home."
"Just correcting her, ma'am." He said, eyes keeping his eyes somewhere on the horizon just over your shoulder, the way practically any enlisted man did when getting dressed down by an officer. "She should be more careful when serving an officer."
"It didn't sound that way." You said. His choice of epithets in Joseon had been… intense. "She needs to be able to trust you if I'm not here."
He looked away. "The men are talking… I'm the senior petty officer. I can't have favorites. Especially not Joseon favorites. They'll think we're on the same side."
"... Petty Officer, we are on the same side." His wording confused you for a moment. The colonial arrangement with Joseon was… hardly ideal, but in this case you felt it was inarguable that Akitsukuni and Joseon were aligned against Caspia. No matter how bad being the suzerain of the Akitsukuni Empire might be, you had a feeling that the Caspians would treat people here even worse.
He just stared at you for a long moment. "Begging the lieutenant's indulgence, ma'am, I'm not sure the men see it that way."
You nodded. "I think I see what you mean."
The next day during inspections, you made a point of revoking Kwon's pass to the little town a few kilometers down the road. There wasn't much there, but soldiers and sailors could get drunk on cheap Joseon made soju or have a hot bath. There was also an official Army brothel with workers brought over from the homeland specifically to serve the 'needs' of the men, and multiple less official local facilities somehow still operating against regulation that had probably sprung up within days of the arrival of the front lines. Some of the sailors from other aircraft destruction units had gotten into punch ups with soldiers there over access to the "Army's" women and it was really just a mess. The Army's military police, the Kenpeitai, were inclined to take their comrade's side in such altercations and so you'd given strict orders that no one was allowed to get into any fights.
(There was a part of you that really wanted to revoke all that passes indefinitely: you'd heard rumours about what the reserve divisions billeted in the cities behind the lines were involved in, and how little the military police cared, but doing so would likely turn the men against you and degrade discipline just as you'd gotten the battery in some kind of order.)
"Petty Officer Second Class Kwon has mistreated one of our local workers." You said loudly, making sure everyone heard you. There were other locals, mostly men, who lived near the battery that had been pressed into helping to fetch and carry all sorts of things. "I will not permit that sort of behavior in this unit and not by sailors of our proud and honorable Imperial Akitsukuni Navy. Maybe the footsloggers can get away with that sort of thing, but we're sailors and I hold you to the highest standards possible. You know that by now." You rested your hands on the hilt of your sword as it rested, tip down, between your spread feet.
"No one, not even my senior petty officers, are exempt from this expectation. Conduct yourselves properly! If I hear of anymore of this sort of thing, I won't just stop at revoking passes!"
Hopefully, that would see to that. Camaraderie of the accused was a powerful thing.
---
There was a certain energy around the lines, a nervous build-up. Everyone could feel it. Something huge was coming, though what nobody could be certain. The trucks and wagons that streamed past on the road nearest the battery became a near constant stream, and it looked like reserve regiments were being moved up. At the lines, the constant low rumble of artillery intensified over the hills: it felt like the whole war was being fought was a distant and intense thunderstorm, like the rainy season down south.
The tension was starting to get to your men, the unbearable knowledge that something was coming without any idea what it might be or how it would affect them. Everyone was short and irritable, and your Petty Officers broke up more than one fight between the men, one of which put a man in the hospital after his head struck a gun barrel. Orders came down from above that passes were cancelled and that the battery was to be ready to move, so the carriages were laid out and one side of the pits were turned into a ramp. Just in case.
It was in this environment that your latest headache unfolded, in the form of Petty Officer Kudo interrupting your inspection of one of the pieces in the battery. He was dragging Min-Seo along by the arm: she was crying and begging, not that any of them could understand.
"Ma'am, I caught our little sneak here. She's been stealing. Spent shells from the guns, maybe to sell the brass or something else. You never know with these little monkeys."
It was an absurd charge, one you wanted to simply dismiss. Brass was worthless to your military. In theory the shells might be reused, but in practice they were simply left in a pile after exercises and action and replaced with fresh ones from crates. Nobody was going to load spent shells on a ship and send them back to Akitsukuni to be reloaded.
But the men were staring. The penalty for stealing from the Akitsukuni military was simple and straightforward. You were empowered with legal jurisdiction here at the front, too. As a commander of a Naval shore installation (technically) you held the same authority as a captain did over her ship and your word, at least within your unit, was law. Sentencing and carrying out punishments, even ones like this, was up to you.
You'd heard some of the other officers joke, when the legalities were explained, that it was the only reason officers carried swords anymore. They'd smiled and laughed about it.
[ ] Dismiss the whole charade. There's a war to fight, we haven't time for this. (Hard diplomacy check)
[ ] Punish Min-Seo, but not to the full extent of the law. On ships, stealing is punished by flogging. (Diplomacy check.)
[ ] You know the law, and so did she. There is no choice.
There will be consequences in unit discipline if you pass the check or not. The roll will determine how bad they will be.
