Chapter 68
Battle of the Solomon Sea, II
Soaring high above the cloud cover lazily drifting away below him, Kojiro Takeda stared out the windshield of his fighter. The radial engine of his
Reisen was a comforting roar in his ears. Familiar vibrations in his seat spoke of a healthy plane and the kind of freedom he had been sorely missing for some time now. He hardly even cared that this freedom was paid for by going into combat. If anything, he equally craved the rush of battle. He had not flown in true combat since the attack on Pearl Harbor, and deep down, he was eagerly anticipating testing his skills against the Americans. All reports indicated they had taken in lessons from China and, in spite of their lack of experience, proven to be quite challenging foes indeed.
The kind of challenge that any true fighter pilot craved with all his being. Strafing defenseless targets was hardly worth it, compared to testing yourself against the enemy at his very best. Nothing else could match it. Putting your very being into dueling with your enemy in the modern equivalent of samurai matching blades.
He almost
hoped the Americans were as good as they were claimed to be. An image of a P-40 over a burning harbor entering his mind, for the briefest of moments.
"Carriers sighted. Two Lexingtons and one smaller carrier. Not a Yorktown." The flight leader's voice echoed in his ears, as Takeda craned his head to see far below.
Little more than smudges to him, he could see the American fleet in the distance. Even from this high up and far away, the distinctive silhouette of the American equivalent to
Akagi was easily visible. The other one was something more of a mystery.
A smaller carrier and not a Yorktown. I thought they only had the two. Hmm. Not my target, though. Not now.
The bombers could handle the carriers. Takeda's duty was to open a hole for the slow Aichi and Nakajima birds. And if he wasn't greatly mistaken, he could see the rising form of American fighters around the smudges of their ships. A thin smile crossed his lips. "Let's see how good the Wildcat is."
Takeda winged his
Reisen over, diving on the Americans with the rest of his flight. To their credit, the Americans did not hesitate at all to do the same. Their stubby little fighters clawed for altitude to meet the diving Japanese, glints of sunlight reflecting from their canopies. Soon joined by the glint of shell casings, as the Americans unleashed their machine guns. Takeda clicked his tongue and snapped his fighter into a tight roll. Bullets whizzed by harmlessly, as he returned his sight to an American fighter drifting in front of him.
His own smaller guns, alongside the twenty-millimeter cannon in his fighter's wings, barked. Flashes sparked along the Wildcat's fuselage, a few cannon shell punching through the wings as well. A grim smile crossed his lips as the American began smoking, before his diving fighter zoomed past.
One. I doubt that will stop him, though. Not from what I've heard.
Indeed, when he pulled the stick and began to climb again, he saw the smoking fighter stumble into formation with another American, seemingly still perfectly capable of flight.
Shaking his head to clear the errant thoughts, Takeda flew back into the fight. A fight quickly devolving into a free for all as American and Japanese fighters spun and dove across the sky. Takeda's head was on a swivel, trying to keep track of wildly turning planes, looking for a target to hit. He dismissed his initial target right away. The American was leaving the fight and chasing him was a waste of time. Instead, he locked his eyes on an isolated Wildcat, flying directly ahead of him.
Hm. Seemed like an easy target. Perhaps the Americans weren't as experienced as they seemed.
Radial engine roaring in his ears, Takeda pushed the throttle forward and pulled behind the American. His eyes narrowed behind his goggles as he leaned forward in anticipation. Just a little more. Just a little closer, and the seemingly unsuspecting American pilot would be in perfect range for a burst of machine gun and cannon fire. Takeda's grip began to tighten, his guns ready to fire...when the sixth sense of any experienced fighter pilot
screamed at him to move.
He didn't hesitate.
His
Reisen spun away without firing, as the 'unsuspecting' Wildcat began to turn away. That wasn't what made him move. The moment he had flung his plane to the side, tracers from American fifty-caliber machine guns flew over his canopy. One sparked off his wing, though it didn't hit anything important before he was out of the line of fire. Takeda's head snaped back, eyes glaring at another American, zooming past him without trying to get on his tail.
Smart, as a Wildcat could never turn with a well-flown
Reisen. But how had he gotten in position to fire in the first place? Takeda hadn't seen him...
what?
Now that he looked, he could see the scene repeating. One of his comrades flaming as he slammed into the sea. A Wildcat, also flaming, but with a wingman pulling up alongside. In the distance further away, a pair of American fighters flew in long circles towards each other. They were...
baiting them!
They can't outturn us, so they do not even bother trying. We're eager to shoot them down, so they bait us to do so and then turn to give their wingman a firing angle. Takeda felt a grudging respect for that, even as he pulled around and returned to the fight. "So this is how they play to their strengths, is it? Shall we see how well they can do it when I know what's coming?"
He winged back into the engagement, this time picking a target that he was certain was alone. The American pulled into a dive as soon as Takeda pulled behind him, though the Japanese pilot remained firmly on the American's tail. At least, until the Wildcat began to pull ahead, the heavier weight of the American plane giving it an advantage in a diving fight. So be it.
Takeda didn't wait for a perfect angle, firing the moment the American began to pull out of his dive. Sparks flew along the frame of the Wildcat as it
shuddered in place. With a slight smirk, Takeda watched as his shells perforated the cockpit, the Wildcat spinning out of control before slamming into the waves. A confirmed kill. Now, to rejoin the fight and see if he could get another. He only barely noticed, out of the corner of his eye, flak opening up around one of the big American carriers as a bomber formation zeroed in on her. A large portion of the Japanese strike force, in fact.
It was, however, not his mission. So, he paid it no further mind, as he entered back into the trail of flame and smoke that was the raging dogfight over the American formation.
Aboard USS
Lexington, men ran from station to station, carrying ammunition for guns and preparing planes for launching. Their beloved old ship lurching to the side, as she began a turn into the incoming Japanese attack to provide a smaller target for the enemy. Her many, many guns blasting away at the attackers, while her fighters dueled with the Japanese. It was chaos. A controlled kind of chaos, yes, but chaos nonetheless. A scene repeated on each of her escorts, turning to stay in protective formation around their charge, while also avoiding attacks from smaller flights of Japanese planes.
Lexington was far and away the primary target, however. And Lexington knew that, as she paced on her bridge.
"You're remarkably calm," Captain Sherman looked at the woman, inbetween barking out orders for sharp turns.
The silver-haired woman smiled back, though it was a grim sort of affair, "If I'm acting calm, it's because
someone has to. So, Captain, do you think we'll get out of this in one piece?"
"Hard to port, now!" Sherman's answer was shouting another order to the crew, as he lowered binoculars he had put on to observe the incoming bombers. His sharp eyes shifted to Lex, for a moment, before back to the enemy. "We've purged the fuel lines and secured the generators. That's about as prepared as we can be for what you warned us about, Lex." He smiled back, though it was about as lacking in emotion as Lex's own had been. "Nothing more for it than to do our best."
As he shouted out to turn to starboard, Lex shook her head.
I could only warn you about that because the Admiral told me. He also told me when I was due to die. I've outlived my other self a fair bit by now. She blew out a sigh and shook her head, long silver locks cascading all around. Her arms wrapped around her chest, uniform hugging tight, as she allowed herself to show a little of the feeling she couldn't shake.
I never asked to know when I would die. It's so...unreal. I don't know how Sara deals with constant exposure to it.
Letting her arms fall to her side, Lex squared her shoulders and pushed that aside. There was a time for that and there was a time to be Lady Lex, the lady of battle she liked to believe herself to be. That time was now. Leaving Captain Sherman to his duties, Lexington strode right out of her bridge and jumped down to her flight deck, shifting and turning as fast as her hull could manage.
Sometimes it was convenient that she couldn't be hurt by something like that, so long as she was on her own hull.
"Come on, men, give 'em hell!" Lex shouted out, her deep voice carrying as she ran up and down her flight deck. A prim and proper lady would never do that. A lady of war gave no care for that, as her weary crew cheered every time she ran past a gun gallery. "Don't let up for even a second, you hear me?! I don't want a single scratch on my paint!"
One of her marines, rushing ammunition to a 20mm position, snorted under his deep pants of exertion, "Always the lady. Don't want a chipped nail, am I right?"
Lex's entirely mature response was to flip him the bird. The marine chuckled and continued on his way, as Lex did much the same. She only stumbled, a little, when a Zero broke off from the melee above to zoom down and strafe her gun crews. A few little scratches ran along her arms, leaking red into her white uniform. Her teeth gritted against the pain as she shook her head. It was nothing. Nothing compared to the screaming men down in the gun positions, screams trailing off in favor of pained moans or endless silence.
"Watch out! We've got Kates coming in now!" One of her crew shouted, a shout taken up by others as the cannon began to turn to bear on the incoming bombers. "Bastards are trying to put some fish into us! Let 'em have it!"
Turning to look, Lex glared at the incoming Japanese bombers. She dearly wished, in that moment, for direct control of her hull. Of her engines and guns. Because as she began to ponderously turn and her guns began to chatter away at the enemy, she knew it wasn't going to be enough. She willed her hull to turn faster. Captain Sherman was the best ship handler she'd ever had, she knew he could dodge anything, given enough time.
There wasn't enough time. Because she could turn her head and see dive bombers coming in from the other side. For whatever godforsaken reason, the Japanese had decided to make her their primary target.
'You died at Coral Sea. The Japanese hit you harder than Yorktown.'
'What killed me? Did they hit me with a dozen fish or something?'
'...your own fuel killed you. Your generators sparked and set off fumes. I'm sorry.'
Hah. That's how it was, then, wasn't it?
Lexington did nothing more than run to the strafed gun position. She was instantly on one of the mounts, herself, instinctively aware of how to use it. Part of her hull. It was all part of her hull, be it new or old. She had
no issues at all using this. And use it she did, firing away at the incoming bombers. She was vindictively pleased when one of them went down in flames from her tracers. Even more so when her clever,
clever, skipper began to turn her again.
She knew that it was already too late.
Even as she continued to fire away with single-minded determination, the Japanese let loose their fish. The torpedoes, the bane of so many ships in the time the Admiral had come from, surging straight and true. In spite of everything going against them, from her size to her painfully slow turning, Lexington managed to dodge most of the torpedoes. Most. Not all. Three torpedoes slammed into her side in rapid succession. Soon enough joined by bombs from the dive bombers, already peeling away, albeit with several trailing flames as they fell from the sky.
Lex couldn't even tell how many bombs had hit. The moment the torpedoes had slammed into her, she had fell to the ground. Her legs exploding in fiery pain as she slumped into the bloody grave of her gunners.
Oh. That's what it feels...like...
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-
When her blue eyes opened up, Lex found herself propped against a pillow. A pillow leaning conspicuously to the side, as her entire body did.
"So, you're awake now."
Captain Sherman's tired voice was above her, as Lex tilted her head to look at him. She didn't miss how his cover was gone. Or how his hair was scorched. His smile was tinged with a bit of melancholy too, as he stood above her. His entire body angled slightly in the manner of a man maintaining footing on an uneven surface.
Not that she needed to look at him to confirm that. Past the fog of pain in her legs and side, Lex could feel the cold of water entering her hull. It was hard to describe. Like ice pouring through her veins, ever so slowly creeping up from the wounds in her legs. Displacing the warm blood and replacing it was a deadened feeling. She could feel as her generators labored to keep whatever power they had left and--ah. She twitched and sucked in a labored breath as one shorted out, deep below her in the depths of her hull.
"I kind of wish I wasn't." Lex gave the best cheeky smirk she could at her Captain, who simply raised an eyebrow at her.
"Not the time for jokes, I should think," Captain Sherman rubbed at his brow, his eyes looking away from Lex and towards where the inexorable waters of the Solomon Sea drew ever closer to her hull. "Damage control did all they could, but it wasn't enough. Your engineer guesses we have maybe ten minutes before the flooding gets too severe to stop and then..."
Lex stared up at him, all hints of joviality out of her face, "And then I die, yes."
"You---" Sherman shook his head and sighed deeply. "Always 'going with the flow' as that madman on
Saratoga called it. "I dearly wish I could be this calm in the face of my own death."
It took more energy than she'd readily admit, but Lex was able to work her arms enough to prop herself on her bottom. She very intentionally avoided looking at the mess of her legs, as she instead looked at her Captain. He didn't understand. She honestly thought that Admiral Thompson didn't even understand. He was from the future and knew the ships as they truly were, certainly, but he was still only a man. And for as much as the ships acted human when they talked with others, they were still warships. They were still weapons crafted to serve.
Serve she had. To the best of her ability. If she regretted anything, it was leaving her sister behind. Only seeing such a short combat life.
"I'm a warship, Captain. First and foremost." Lex sighed and tilted her head further, looking up at the sky. No planes fought above them. She almost wondered how long it had been since that attack before she woke up. "This is part of my life. Dying in battle is a better fate than the scrapper's torch, I can tell you that much."
Sherman looked at her, before nodding, "That much I can understand. I'd rather die on my feet than wasting away in a bed."
"Then we understand each other," Lex smiled dimly, before it faded with a wince as she felt
something break loose, deep in her hull. Captain Sherman reached a hand out, though Lex just waved it away. "No, no, that's part of it too. You need to be leaving anyway. I really
don't have much time left."
It looked as if he wanted to dispute the point. Perhaps some spark of chivalry rearing its head and demanding he take the 'poor woman' away to safety. As if Lex could so easily leave her hull. She didn't have the slightest idea how Utah had done it, and right now, it didn't really matter to her. She knew Admiral Thompson could bring her back. This wasn't...really dying. It was going into a deep slumber, but one that she could be woken from at any time.
Or so she told herself.
More importantly, she glared at her Captain as best she could, as tremors began to wrack her lean frame, "Captain, I may be crippled, but I can and
will toss you off this ship if I have to. No going down with me!"
Captain Sherman managed the barest hint of a smile, "I wasn't planning on it. I will, however, be the last one off. You won't change my mind on that, dear."
Lex stared at him, before huffing out a sigh. "I'm a Lady, Captain. As the lady of the ship, I do insist that you leave now. It would be polite, yes?"
And putting actions to words, Lex forced herself to her feet. Her cold, so very cold, feet. She could fee the water approaching her boilers now. This would be the last thing she did in this life, and she knew it very well. She still managed, on shaky feet, to reach out and tug Captain Sherman. Even weakened as she was, her strength far surpassed his own. And he didn't even really try to fight her anyway. Lex pulled her Captain to the nearest boat, all too close to her gradually tilting deck.
Looks like I won't be going down 'like a lady' this time, after all.
"Hey, you down there!" Lex called out, her wobbly voice still carrying just as well as it had during the battle. Heads snapped up to her, as she lowered Captain Sherman towards the boat. "Get this fool away from here, will you?"
Her Captain looked at her, one last time, as the arms of sailors reached out for him. It was still a decent drop, though not so far that he would be injured by it. He wasn't worried about that.
"You had better come back, Lex. You hear me?" His voice was filled with determination.
Lex could only smile and nod, "I intend on it."
And like that, he fell away. She heard the splash of him landing beside the boat, as the sailors pulled him from the water and pulled away from her hull. Lex let out a shaky breath and fell back down, all her energy falling with her. Her blue eyes stared up at the sky, as the equally blue waters of the Solomon Sea began to encroach ever more. Her hull was reaching the tipping point of capsizing and she could feel her body sliding towards the edge of her deck. Not that it would have far to go, at this point.
She could only stare, as she felt fires spreading with the water.
"So. This is how it ends. Well, I hope you take good care of my successor, Sara."
When the last word left her mouth, Lexington felt the fires reach her magazines. The last thing she saw were Dauntlesses, painted with Sara's markings, winging overhead.
Then she saw nothing more.
Admiral Thompson turned away from the blinding explosion in the distance. Even as far away as Sara was, for her own safety, it was felt on her bridge. Felt and heard. A dull roar and a plume of fire and smoke marking the end of a dear friend. USS
Lexington's broken form, shattered by the detonation of her main magazine, slipped faster beneath the waves.
"I did so much and it still wasn't enough." He whispered to himself, as an arm wrapped tightly- painfully so -around his own.
Fire and smoke were a familiar feeling, at this point, as
Saratoga also burned. Those fires, sparked by a pair of bombs that had impacted her forward flight deck, were gradually being put out. She was in no danger, though she was also going to have to steam backwards to recover and launch aircraft. It was a minor slap on the wrist compared to what had happened to her sister. Thompson didn't know if it was fate or just plain bad luck.
He wasn't sure it mattered, either.
"Lex..." Sara was holding one hand to her mouth, tears rolling from green eyes. Her other arm was wrapped around Thompson's arm. "After everything...she still..."
Thompson put his own hand on Sara's shoulder, giving it a soft squeeze, "I'm sorry, Sara. I had hoped...I never wanted you to have to see that. I thought we could keep Lex safe. I thought
I could keep her safe, but---"
He was only slightly surprised when she looked up at him with a sharp glare, "That wasn't your fault."
"Maybe, but I'll still feel like it was." Thompson gave her a wry smile, before letting it be replaced by a pensive expression. "So, we're down Lex and you'll need to head back to port. Wasp is the only one that didn't take any damage."
He could gave whoever was in charge on the Japanese side- Nagumo? Ozawa? Yamamoto himself? -that much. They had clearly ordered strikes on the biggest targets, though Wasp could claim an airwing that was quite potent all on her own. Or perhaps they simply hadn't known Wasp was there. She was a relatively recent addition, on his own request...
May-have-beens weren't important, in that moment, though.
"We're going to hit them back, aren't we?" Sara asked, her voice taking on a low and dangerous tone. A tone that Thompson had never heard from
this Sara. From the one he had known in the future, yes, but even then not to this extent. "They're not going to get away with this. Not if I can help it."
He could see the barely-controlled fury beneath her green gaze. Thompson could feel in the tight grip of her arm just how much Sara was holding herself back from trying to take a leap off her deck to sail off on her own. She had confided in him, once.
'Lex and I were supposed to have four other sisters, you know.'
'Yeah, I know. Constellation, Ranger, Constitution and United States, right?'
'Yes. And not a day goes by where I don't regret that I never got to meet any of them. It's why Lex and I are so close. I...for the longest time, other than Mama Langley, I didn't have anyone else.'
And now, as the smoke continued to rise on the horizon, that sister was gone. Right before her eyes. Thompson dearly wished he could have spared her of that. Even the Sara he had known was far apart from what had happened to
her Lex. Halfway across the world and unable to see what happened or do anything about it. She hadn't even seen Yorktown before that carrier had been sunk, in turn, at Midway. Everything she knew about Lex's final moments was second-hand until they had both returned.
Not so, here. Here she had to watch it happen and know that she wasn't able to save her sister.
He could only begin to imagine how that was hurting her.
"I'm going to route all of our planes towards the sighting reports." Thompson gave her a small, sad, smile. A scouting report that came too late. Most of the remaining Japanese fleet carriers, sailing in the distance.
"Good." Sara's vindictive voice would need to be addressed later.
He could understand, a little, her anger. He felt a bit of it himself. Yet he would need to remind her that, in the end, they weren't always fated to be enemies with Japan. They would need the Japanese ships. If not now, then in the future. But for this moment...he wasn't even going to try and make that point to her. Because, for this moment, Saratoga needed to grieve. And if focusing her energies on the enemy they faced right now, the enemy that had taken her only sister from her, was how she grieved?
He wouldn't stop her. He couldn't stop her.
AN: Right, there's that. Muse hasn't been particularly cooperative lately, though clearly, we have something here now. It's an admittedly belated update, but hopefully still good. Part of the difficulty was figuring out the thing with Lex. We had planned that a long time ago.
It wouldn't be even remotely realistic if the Allies never suffered losses just because Thompson has (increasingly less useful) foreknowledge.
The other difficulty was, as ever, the fact we don't find battles our strong suit. Give us character moments any day >.>
In any event, we sincerely hope the next chapter takes less time. It'll wrap up this little battle mini-arc and then we can move on from there. Probably one or two more in the Pacific, at most after next chapter, then back to Schreiber. Which is going to be fun.
