There was no question. That live torpedo was a scare, and it made you wonder what else on the boat wasn't right. There were probably dud shells in the magazine. One of the other torpedoes might be bad. How were the firing pins on the cannons, the wear on the barrels, were the control lines tight?
You'd been rather blase about it yesterday, but it had weighed on your mind all night. There had been something wrong on your boat, your boat, and who knows what else might be?
You took a moment to smooth out your skirt and pull your cuffs out before heading aboard. There was work to do. You stood forward, beckoned for Ensign Ishinari to join you where you were at least mostly out of earshot of the crew for a moment.
"Ensign, we have a lot of work to do today," you started, feeling a bit more stiff and formal than you liked. "...And I was not myself last night and I shouldn't have spoken to you in the way that I did. Please accept my earnest apologies." There was a moment of awkwardness. His face twitched a little and you weren't sure what he was concealing.
"Think nothing of it, captain," he said. You nodded.
"Right. Assemble the men, please. We've much to do."
"Aye aye, captain." He saluted and then turned back down the small deck to start giving orders. As usual there came the shrill sound of the bos'un's whistles and soon the whole crew was crammed into the small space forward of the bridge, standing at attention.
"Good morning!" You said. "We're going to have a busy couple of days. After that scare with the torpedo yesterday, I want this whole boat turned inside out. We are going to do an inspection down to the bilges--every torpedo and every shell is going to be pulled out of the magazines and checked by the gunner and his mates to make sure we have no duds, no defective rounds, and no armed torpedoes waiting to make trouble. Then I want a full breakdown of the rest of the ship and a proper cleaning. Every gun needs to be disassembled, cleaned, lubricated, and put back together. Every engine space is going to be taken apart and examined. I want her looking like she's come out of the yard for a refit! I'll give charge of you to your petty officers. This will be hard work, but once we're done I think we'll all feel much better." You weren't going to promise them a reward quite yet.
"I'll be asking Lieutenant Maeda if he has any fellows we can borrow for this as well, since I think we'll need all the hands we can get with the magazines. We'll be damping the boilers as well so we can really get in there. If you have any questions, have your petty officer direct them to Ensign Ishinari and he'll relay them to me." You paused, considered how to finish.
"This boat is our sword against the enemies of Akitsukuni and like every sword it requires honing and care. Now, to work! Petty officers, take charge of your sections."
The deck broke into organized chaos as petty officers started giving orders and the men swarmed across the deck. Soon the crane on the wharf was being put into action and hatchways were thrown open wide as torpedoes were carefully winched free of magazines to be examined and guns were taken apart by their crews for cleaning.
It was a clear, bright early summer's morning and with the breeze off the sea, it made for warm work. Soon, men were in their shirtsleeves and while there was a lot to be done there wasn't much grumbling about the extra work that you noticed. If anything, they seemed to be glad to be doing something besides drilling or searching fishing boats--but then again they weren't likely to show you if they were unhappy, were they? Soon enough, Ishinari returned from his visit to Maeda, bringing with him a group of sailors from the airplane's ground crews to help with the heavy lifting and everything was settling into the comfortable rhythm of sailors working. Someone was even leading others in a work song.
You always felt a little out of place when there was work like this being done. Everyone knew their positions and what to do, your petty officers and XO were doing their job, it was your task now to wait for problems and devise solutions should the need arise. You could pitch in and help, you'd done it before, but those were always desperate situations, like the mess of the tender or rescuing the seaplane. For something routine like this? Dignity wouldn't allow it. You wore white gloves for a reason.
You caught sight of your reflection in the polished glass of the bridge and adjusted your hat. It wasn't resting right on your head, and that bugged you, but it'd be worse if you were caught fussing over it. You'd just have to put up with it.
You climbed into the bridge (such as it was) to watch the proceedings, as sailors started disassembling the prow gun for cleaning and inspection, down to the turret. Other men were busily carrying out ammunition from the lower magazine, passing them like a bucket brigade to the shore to be laid out and inspected. During your second year at the academy, you'd seen a cannon breach fail from a cracked shell casing, killing a sailor and injuring the officer who was demonstrating it for gunnery training. You'd been pretty far away, elbowed out to the back of the class as usual, but the sound had still shocked you, and it had been your first time seeing blood on the white uniform, streaming from the officer's ear all over his freshly pressed jacket.
You checked your own over quickly. Still spotless.
"Captain?" Ensign Ishinara stepped in, clearly a bit relieved for the shade. "We found a few rounds with dented casings, but we don't actually know what to do with them."
Hmm. Usually you'd just tell him to dump them over the side, but perhaps it wasn't best to clutter the water around where your ship was berthed with unexploded ordnance. There'd probably be a fair number of bad rounds by the time you were done: quality control tended to slip during wartime in favour of volume.
That made you think about the pistol, hanging heavy from your belt. Performing your own little tear down and inspection would probably sooth the unsettled feeling you had from inactivity, and you idly unclipped the holster from your belt as you replied.
"Put them aside for now, make sure they're clearly marked. It might be best to find someplace relatively safe to detonate all of them. Eventually. Failing that, we put them in a crate and dump them into open water next time we sail out. Better than having more explosives under our feet."
The ensign's eyes cast down a second as you dropped the heavy holster onto the small chart table. The resulting thump was loud enough to make him jump like a scared cat.
"Right, yes captain." He said, turning and scurrying out at full speed.
Ensigns. Adorable.
You pulled off your gloves and started laying out all the rounds from your cartridge belt: twenty-four in all, lined up in little rows like sailors being inspected. You plucked them up one by one and turned them over, looking for faults. A tiny dent in the extractor rim could mean they wouldn't be ejected when you broke the weapon open, though given the force with which the pistol's extractor operated that probably wasn't much of a concern. A tiny crack in the brass casing might cause a misfire that could blow your revolver up in your hand. A mis-set primer could fail to fire, or hang-fire, and if the bullet was set too far back in the casing the entire gun could rupture. So many things could go wrong in just this tiny pistol: they might cost you an eye or a finger or your life, if it came down to it. Something going wrong like that on the ship would be proportionally momentous to the difference in scale.
There was a tiny imperfection on bullet number thirteen. Could be nothing, just a shallow scratch on the surface of the brass. Could be a crack in the casing. Still, there was no room for imperfection in Haruna's tiny lead navy.
You stepped over to the railing and gave the poor sailor a burial at sea. A single little Albian bullet wasn't going to make much of a difference here.
---
By nightfall, the job was about half complete. The magazines had been emptied and refilled, the dubious ammunition lay on a tarp (with an armed sentry and a crude fence to make sure no curious locals got too close to the explosives), and the guns had been stripped down as far as men could with hand tools. The only task left to do was to take apart the engine, but that was going to be at least one full day on its own, if not multiple days. Still, this was an older boat, and it hadn't seen real intense maintenance since well before the war, according to the records. This was probably long overdue and your orders did say to maintain readiness.
You were sitting in the small 'officer's club' onshore, alone. Ishinari had stopped by briefly before saying he had things to take care of and retiring. Now, two glasses of imported Caledonian whiskey and water later, you were starting to feel anxious. Where did he go during his evenings? Was he reporting on you to Kageyasu? Was Kageyasu reporting on you to his odious shit of an elder brother? You stared at the remains of your whiskey, swirled it, and then downed it in a swift gulp, then reached out to pour yourself another glass.
You liked being in command. It made you feel confident. Here in the backwaters of the country, you had authority and respect. It just lacked any of the usual stress and pressure that you had become so used to since you had started working. There was no one breathing down your neck, no important mission, no perfectionist Purity Club cousin to deal with. You were just… here. Maintaining readiness. You took a large swig from your glass and stared at the amber liquid that remained. As awful as it was, you kind of missed that pressure. Missed the straightforward purpose that you'd had in other roles. Here… hm. It was fine. This was fine. You were in command.
You sighed, finished your glass (you hadn't poured nearly as much today, you were moderating yourself), and got to your feet. There was always something going wrong. You couldn't have a normal, calm, professional post. The Admiralty wouldn't stand for it. You needed to find out what was happening--for all you knew there was another conspiracy brewing. It would be just your luck.
You made your way out of the building, keeping yourself steady through willpower and firm application of your grip to the scabbard of your service sword. Following the meandering dirt road onward you passed by the air station's enlisted barracks. Some lights still flickered in the windows and you could hear conversation drifting out of open windows and doors through the still, warm night air. Nothing strange or out of place.
It made you even more suspicious.
Now you were in the cluster of buildings that had been given over to the use of officers and you paused, looking between them before you stepped up onto the step of one of them, listening. Inside, you could hear the murmur of voices--one was Ishinari and the other had the aristocratic accent of one raised in Imperial circles. It had to be Kageyasu! You'd been right, he had been reporting on you to that little jumped up bastard.
You pressed yourself up against the wall near the window and listened in. Even with a window slid slightly open to allow air in, it was hard to make out exactly what was being said.
"I don't really know what to make of the lieutenant, no." Ah-ha. You had good timing. "She's friendly and professional when we're on duty and runs a tight ship. Decisive and confident. The kind of behavior you'd expect from someone with so many medals. But.." Hesitation. Perhaps he was trying to find the right words. "Off duty she is… uhm. She is altogether a different person."
"Like yesterday, right?" The high-born accent was unmistakable. Definitely Kageyasu.
"Frankly, excuse my language, she's something of a… a cunt."
The hypocrite! You knew he swore sometimes. If he wasn't going to swear, he could at least commit to it like you did. Kageyasu snorted, trying to stifle laughter.
"... Especially when she has some liquor in her. But even at dinner she was so stuck-up and cold towards you in particular. But on the other hand she hasn't mentioned you at all," Ishinari again "I don't really know what to expect from her at the moment. She seems so mercurial. Is that the Imperial blood?" He laughed at that and Kageyasu made a disgusted noise.
"I'm nothing like that," Kageyasu insisted, and it sounded like someone was setting something down on a table. A glass or bottle. His brother had been a heavy drinker as well. "I understand though. What if they sent her here because they think I'm going to… to be like Hisanobu?"
"Don't you think..." You couldn't make out what was said as the breeze rose up for a moment, a nearby tree's branches rustling in the welcome disturbance. You strained, trying to listen. Kageyusa was talking again.
"This is my career we're talking about, Ryu." Interesting that he spoke so with such familiarity to the Ishinari. This might go deeper than you thought. "I worked very hard to be a good enough pilot that I could take an early commission. I don't want it ruined by that woman. It's unnerving having her here--she's all I've thought about since I saw her at dinner the other night."
You could tell being in the Navy was getting to you, because you weren't sure if that was him being scared, gross, or both.
"Kageyasu, you should think about more pleasant things. Truly. Don't worry about her, it'll only make things worse for you."
"I need to do something, though! Maybe I should write to my father and find out more about her other postings--"
You could hear Ishinari shush him quiet, and that was damning. They were worried about being listened to. It was a plot. Probably they'd try to discredit you or blame some accident on you or just try and use his father's influence in the Navy to make sure of… of something!
You stopped a second. Fuck. Maybe you were getting ahead of yourself. Maybe he was just a kid with a shitty brother in a shitty post stuck with the rest of you, and your XO was worried because you'd been awful to him. Maybe this was you getting paranoid, after a streak of bad posts, bad treatment, and everyone being out to get you. Maybe this wasn't about you.
Your train of thought was interrupted as someone inside laughed. Your curiosity got the better of you, and you carefully, very carefully peered over the edge of the windowsill.
You didn't need to worry about being spotted at the moment. Kageyasu was sitting astride Ishinari's lap, hands cupping the other lieutenant's cheeks as the two of them met for a kiss. Kageyasu's collar was undone, cap discarded and a bare trace of skin past his collar bone was exposed.
You ducked back under the windowsill, feeling embarrassed, and you slunk off to process it.
Not wanting to be spotted travelling between the two posts, you decided to take a detour through the village proper and maybe just wander for a while. You'd not really gotten much of a feel for the place, always just moving from one problem to another, and you had some time now to just walk. Initially, you were turning over the incident in your head, trying to decide if you were being paranoid or not. Maybe they were just lovers and worried kids. Maybe there was something more going on. Maybe you weren't really in a position to judge anymore, compromised by expectations that had been ground into you. That'd be ironic.
The thoughts slowly drifted away as you instead started paying more attention to the town and the people with it. Namely, how old most of them were. There were very few young children or young families around, especially compared to the number of older people. There were old men straining to do the work that young men ought to be doing, and everywhere you looked were buildings falling into disrepair.
This town was dying.
You decided to take a seat on a flat stone at the side of the road you suspected had served this purpose for generations, just watching a while as the last of the fishermen carried the day's catch up the beaches and into houses where, presumably, the women would be hard at work cleaning them. Seabirds congregated around the larger buildings, waiting for the scraps of waste to be thrown out, their calls so frequent as to blend into a single noise. You saw two young women hurrying hand-in-hand down the path home, carrying baskets you presumed were from another village. They shared a brief kiss before one of them parted to run her basket indoors, and that made you smile. In some ways your schoolgirl romances seemed a lifetime away, in others it could have been yesterday.
There was something lovely about this place, but it was doomed. It was clear to you why: the young men were all leaving. Out to sea, like Ran's brother, or to the cities to find work, and taking their young wives with them if they had them. A place like this was no place to start a family in this day and age. There were far better opportunities to be had in the cities, so you'd only stay out here if you were worried about something. Maybe worried about creeping Western attitudes, about Ichthysian converts and judgmental eyes as the traditional way of life was swept away, bit by bit. Eventually there might be electric lights here and telegraph wires and all the things that made a modern city what it was. And that connection might tear the way these people had lived and died for a thousand years out by the roots.
You found yourself idly pulling at the edge of your glove. Subconsciously, like you were trying to pull it over your bare wrist.
Those two young women would probably be married off soon enough, perhaps to men they had no inclination towards and who weren't particularly inclined to them. Their families would be small, just to fulfill their obligation, the sort of arrangement where you spent one night a week with your husband and the rest of the time with your wife. They'd live near each other and spend the rest of their days in each other's arms as the world left them behind, as their children left them in turn and there'd be nothing left.
You wondered what would happen to the shrine. You wondered what would happen if the left-wing parties took power and tried to impose the more "modern" Western values on the country. Would they abolish marriage for gay men and women? Would they make it so that you could no longer be non-binary? Could you vote for a party that embraced women's rights when they also said your right to love whom you loved was an aberration, a part of the old Akitsukuni that needed to be swept away by the modern age?
Spirits, here you were being melancholy again. You pushed yourself up to your feet and headed down the road, past the flickering oil lamps and the reminders of the past so that you could curl up in your futon and get some sleep.
---
The next morning, thankfully, you managed to avoid a hangover. You arrived at the Kari bright and early and soon the ratings were at work diving into the engine spaces to make sure everything was working properly. You stood on your bridge, enjoying the bright sunlight and watching as your sailors lubricated and oiled the guns before reassembling them. Still others were finishing the re-stowing of the magazines while others, grease and coal streaked, sweated away in the engine spaces. As the hour approached noon, the guns and ammunition were in perfect order and the engine space had been torn apart (in an organized fashion) to make sure there wasn't a valve out of place.
The air today was still and humid, which made for a rather sticky experience as the sun got higher in the sky. You were sitting beneath the canvas awning that served as sunshade and rain-cover in bad weather on your open bridge, fanning yourself with your cap when movement caught your eye. A sailor came hurrying down the wharf, clambered up the gangway past the work parties and scrambled up the steep stairs to the bridge. He saluted and offered over a scrap of paper.
"Ma'am! Message from Northern Fleet Headquarters for you." You returned his salute and reached out to take the folded message.
"Thank you sailor," you said absently and looked down.
HEADQUARTERS said:
FROM: NORTHERN AREA FLEET HEADQUARTERS
TO: IMPERIAL TORPEDO BOAT KARI, OFFICER COMMANDING
PUT TO SEA WITH ALL SPEED STOP RENDEZVOUS WITH REMAINDER OF 3RD TORPEDO BOAT SQUADRON AT POSITION RO BY 21:30 HOURS STOP ONCE THERE STAND BY FOR FURTHER ORDERS STOP LONG LIVE THE EMPRESS MAY SHE CONTINUE IN HER BENEFICENT RULE FOR TEN THOUSAND YEARS STOP
SIGNED
CAPTAIN DEMURA, CHIEF OF STAFF NORTHERN AREA FLEET HEADQUARTERS
Oh Spirits. The damn engine spaces were a wreck. You scanned the deck.
"Petty Officer Ono!" You called out to your senior non-commissioned officer, where he stood next to the gangway supervising a work party. He turned and saluted briskly.
"Ma'am?"
"Find out how long it will take to put the engine back together and get steam up and report to me immediately." To his credit he didn't stop to ask why or gawk. Instead he just saluted again, spun, and headed for the hatchway down into the interior of the ship. You stood at the railing, gripping the rail tightly as seconds ticked by. Finally, Ono emerged back into the sunlight, clambered up the stairs and saluted sharply.
"Ma'am! Engine room estimates they'll need at least two hours to get the engine back in working order. Perhaps longer, and then at least an hour to get up to steam." You did the math in your head. That left you six hours to Ro, which was the codename for your rendezvous point with the remainder of the squadron--and presumably, the fleet. At regular cruising speed… you bend over your chart, frowning as you traced a route, measured the distance.
At least 6 hours if the weather stayed good and you got along at your normal cruising speed. You would be cutting it close, but you should be there on time. You exhaled, then nodded. Turned to the messenger.
"Please reply on my behalf and acknowledge receipt of the message." Then, to Ono.
"Get the engine room back together. I want us at sea in three hours." His response was a crisp salute before he hurried below. Ishinari, on the wharf supervising sailors who were hauling the last of the ammunition back aboard had observed all this. Now he came up the same steep stairway to salute.
"Captain?" He queried. In response, you handed the transcribed message over and sighed. He looked at it and you could tell he was doing the same calculations in his head that you head.
"We'll be cutting it quite close," he said in as reserved a manner as you imagined he could handle at the moment.
"Yes." You paused, not sure if you should show that you were worried. Probably thought about it longer than you liked. "... The timing is quite poor, neh? Lesson learned: one can't let perfection get in the way of readiness."
"I think I'll feel safer going in knowing everything works, if it's all the same."
"I agree, but I think I let my pride get the better of me," you said. The admission stung a little, but you pressed on. It hurt, but it felt like something of a weight off your shoulders all the same. "If I've learned anything in the Navy so far, it's to pay attention when your superiors make mistakes, lest you do the same."
"I… As you say, captain," the ensign said.
Would you be as organized, without the tender as a counterexample? Would you walk the line between discipline and tyranny so effectively if your cousin hadn't shown you why it was important? Would you manage your duties as well, if you hadn't seen Kenshin run himself into the ground commanding the submarine? Almost certainly not.
Providing you all survived whatever was coming, it would be a hell of a learning experience for the Ensign.
As it turned out, putting the engine back in working order took closer to 3 hours than 2 and it galled you. It galled you deeply because you had no one to blame for this but yourself. As the stokers and boilerman sweated, great clouds of smoke belching from the single stack in the middle of the boat, your sailors were instructed to pack their seabags with any necessaries and stow them aboard. You had a feeling you might not see Habomai for a few days. There was grumbling, of course. No one wanted to move out of the comfortable barracks on shore and into the cramped spaces of the torpedo boat where the men had to sleep in shifts and there was barely room to stand. Cold rations, too. That would be fun. The wireless set was checked to make sure it was in working order, too, just to be safe.
Finally, though, steam was up and you were able to cast off from the wharf. You backed water and made a slow, wide turn to point the bow out towards the open sea, then set off with the steady thumping of the engine rumbling through the boat. As the afternoon sun sank down to the west, you set off on a northwesterly course across the gray-blue sea. Soon, the island sank away behind you and there was only the sea. As you headed onwards, you had the wireless operator send a message, relaying that you were en route but had been dealing with what you decided to demurely refer to as 'engine trouble.' You almost wanted to open up the engines and really push the
Kari to make sure you arrived on station at the appointed time, but worried that perhaps you might run short of coal too soon if you used it up in a long distance sprint. You might still have to fight a battle in this boat.
[ ] Preserve your coal bunkers in case you require them later.
[ ] All head full!
Either way, there will be a technical roll to see if you arrive on time, but using the coal will give you an advantage (Roll 4d6 and pick the lowest). If you use up extra coal now and need to sprint later, you'll use up almost all the remaining coal and be restricted to a lower speed.
