As I've realized the number of chapters in this story will exceed the number of tracks in the Ace Combat 7 soundtrack with titles that fit them, I've gone ahead and retitled all the existing chapters. New chapters will follow the new title format.
Sometimes, you've got to ask the hard questions. It happens to everyone, eventually. That moment when you face the mirror, look yourself in the eye, and ask…
"What have I become?"
"Was it worth it?"
"Would I look better with a mullet?"
I'm kidding about the last one, of course. Obviously I would look much better with a mullet. It doesn't even bear asking. It's just nicer to think about than the other questions that won't stop running through my head. For instance, what is my name? Back in the old days, there was more to me than just Strider 1 Trigger. I had a real name, and a real life outside of the cockpit. Now? Now, I'm a caricature drawn by someone who never knew me.
Back when I had a name, I was a goddamn motormouth. You could hardly shut me up - until it was time to fly. When it was scramble time, I did what felt best. I took a hefty slug of vodka, did a nice, thick line of the old Aurelian marching powder, and took to the skies in silence. "Trigger" never said a word, and flew like he had no blood… because "Trigger" was literally never sober. And now, "Trigger" is all I am. Silent, constantly drunk and high, and always ready to fly.
For Alicorn.
My mama, if she could see me, would immediately disown me. She was upset enough when I hung up my wings after the Lighthouse War and started seeing Cossette. My marrying into the Erusean royal family took our once-weekly phone calls and replaced them with irregular letters, once every few months or so. Seeing me standing here, officially a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Erusean Navy? It'd probably give her a heart attack.
She lived in Oured, I think. It's hard to remember anything that belonged to the person I was when I wasn't being Trigger. The only reason I can almost remember that she lived in Oured… is because that's a big part of why I disobeyed orders and sunk the Alicorn.
I still can't remember her face. Hell, if I'm not thinking about it hard enough, it's hard to remember Cossette's. Whatever happened to me, apparently my relationship with the Erusean princess was enough a part of "Trigger" to be kept, but just barely. I've taken to drawing her in a little sketchbook, every chance I get, so I'll never forget.
Either way, it's not just my mama's patriotism that makes my current situation a bit awkward. Like I said, I sunk Alicorn. Now I'm the commander of her air wing - a position that apparently involves hearing her thoughts … and vice versa. I live inside her, working with her crew of three hundred.
Three hundred exact copies of herself, that is. I'm constantly surrounded by clones of the ship whose demise I caused. Fortunately, as unlikely as it is, I actually like her. That's not something I ever expected to say about Captain Clownshoes' War Crimes Boat.
<<Captain… Clownshoes?>>
Oh, come on, you know it's true. Did you ever hear him on the radio? He was all "Ahoy, me mateys, it be me, Captain Torres, and I'm here to tell ye that ye can prevent like 99% of all wars by nuking the capital of Osea."
<<He absolutely didn't say that.>>
Okay, maybe those weren't his exact words, Ali, but again. You were there. You can't deny it.
All I get in return there is a sense of resignation. That's fair enough. I could probably eavesdrop on her internal monologue a bit more, get more of her thoughts, but we've got this sort of unspoken agreement. We can hear each other, of course. But we both try not to pay much attention to the other one's thoughts unless they're loud or obviously referring to us.
Are we odd friends? Sure. I can't think of a weirder basis for a friendship. Unexpected as it might be, Alicorn's been a bit of hope for me in the wild world the two of us are currently inhabiting. Certainly she's been much better to share headspace with than Enterprise ever was.
Sometimes, it's almost enough to forget I'm only half a person.
--- Dark Blue ---
I've never been much of a sailor. Serving on Enterprise, and now Alicorn, hasn't really changed that. I'm meant for the skies, not the sea. Of course, that hasn't stopped me from picking up a few bits of tradition and wisdom here and there. For instance? If your ship's upset, you're going to have a bad time. Enterprise was almost always upset - or angry. Sailing aboard her was probably the least fun I've had in a long time.
And yes, that does include my time in prison. At least in prison, I got to fly a Strike Wyvern. Aboard Enterprise, I was stuck with 1940s-style prop planes without a single goddamn missile. Ali doesn't have a Strike Wyvern - and it's not a carrier-capable plane like its older sibling, the regular Wyvern, anyway - but at least I get a proper fighter, with proper missiles and high-tech railguns.
Anyway. Not the point. The point is that my ship is upset, which means I'm not going to get a moment of peace until I can get her to feel better. Why is that my responsibility? Well, the other girls in the fleet seem just as shaken by everything that happened in San Diego, and the rest of Ali's crew are literally just projections of her own mind. Lucky Trigger gets the short straw again.
So instead of heading up on CAP, I get to wait until flight ops are done, grab a chair from the mess, set it up on the flight deck with a couple six-packs of beer, and mope with Ali until she decides to talk it out.
God, Erusean beer is garbage.
Not that I'm not going to drink it; there's precious alcohol mixed in with the horse piss. Of course I'm drinking it. But I'm not going to like it. The alcohol does at least help me deal with the way physics applies to shipgirls - or to be more precise, the way it does not. I'm sitting on the flight deck, and I'm also sitting on Ali's shoulder. How and why that's the case, I'll never know. But both things are true.
Three beers deep, she finally notices my little camp-out spot and glares at me with a sigh.
<<What are you doing?>>
I'm drinking. What about you?
<<Let me rephrase that. Why are you drinking on my shoulder?>>
Oh, I'm sorry. I was under the impression this particular patch of ocean was set aside for brooding and moping pointlessly. No particular idea where I got that impression from.
Her glare only intensifies as I lean back in the chair.
<<You know, there are a lot of other carriers out there. I don't have to keep you aboard.>>
I laugh obnoxiously, or try to anyway. My body makes all the right motions, but no sound comes out of my throat - as usual.
Oh come on, we both know you're bluffing. Who else is going to call you out on your shit?
<<I'd find someone,>>my ship says with a mental huff.
Well, get back to me when that happens, I drawl. 'Til then, you're stuck with me.
<<Osean bastard.>>
Guilty. But then, you like me well enough anyway.
<<Seriously, why are you here?>>
Come on, Ali. I'm literally in your head. If you're going to be miserable and self-loathing, you're not gonna do it alone.
<<It's not like you chose to leave her behind, Trigger,>> Alicorn says, averting her eyes. <<I don't know what you'd be self-loathing about.>>
I lean my chair back a little - just for comfort's sake. If it happens to spill my beer all over Ali's shoulder, well, that's just a little bonus.
Maybe the fact that I can hardly remember my wife? You know, Princess D'Elise? I…
Fuck. I'm not nearly drunk enough for this shit. I crack open another can and down the whole thing as quickly as possible, taking a pause for breath before repeating the process.
I think I met her aboard the Andersen. Hah. I think. See, I can't even remember. I don't remember how I met Cossette. What kind of terrible person does that make me?
Alicorn examines me intently for a moment, then picks me up and moves me to her other shoulder - chair and all.
<<You didn't choose to forget her. It's not your fault.>>
And you didn't choose to leave Long Lines behind. That was her choice. You respected her enough to not force her to come with.
<<Then why do I feel so guilty about it?>>
Fuck if I know, skipper. But I'm right there with ya.
I reach up and offer her one of the few remaining cans of beer, and when she takes it, it resizes itself to fit her giant scale. She opens it and inclines it in my direction; I raise the can I'm currently nursing in response.
To the ones we leave behind, I offer.
<<I'll drink to that,>> Ali responds.
We sail on in companionable silence.
If Trigger isn't who you expected him to be... join the club, haha. I wasn't quite expecting Depressed Wife Guy Trigger either. The next few chapters are also going to be interlude-style chapters, with the next Alicorn chapter happening when Task Force Whatever reaches Panama.
Oh, come on, you know it's true. Did you ever hear him on the radio? He was all "Ahoy, me mateys, it be me, Captain Torres, and I'm here to tell ye that ye can prevent like 99% of all wars by nuking the capital of Osea."
I tire of this tedious voyage. Not because it has been relatively uneventful (though it has), or because morale among the fleet is low (though it is), but simply because the long journey gives me far, far too much time to think - and to fear.
Alicorn is a work of art. Her builders' passion is as visible to a discerning eye as their madness. The Dakota sisters, likewise, are beautiful. Battleships always are. Their sheer size makes it hard for any nation, even a powerful one, to mass-produce them. Each one, even if they are intended to be identical, has subtle differences.
I am not a work of art.
I am a Type B submarine, one of twenty-nine. I was produced to a specification, quickly crewed, and sent off to war, just as every one of my sisters was. If Alicorn is a ceremonial sword, engraved with beautiful filigree and kept deadly sharp, I am a Type 99 rifle. Issued to every soldier, designed for ease of maintenance, and very easily replaced.
My Princess is well within her rights to socialize with her ships. South Dakota and Massachusetts are not her peers - even the mightiest of battleships are nothing before the might of a Princess - but they have value. The cable-layer Alicorn summoned was equally valuable, and equally worthy of her time. However, Alicorn insists on conversing with me as if I were equal to the battleships.
She insisted that I choose a name, rather than my hull number, and then praised my choice as if it mattered. She tries, at least once a day, to converse with me. Her belief, as much as I can ascertain, is that I do not understand what it means to be a person. My Princess honors me by spending her time on these conversations. However, I am ashamed to say that her belief is wrong.
I understand precisely what it means to be a person. I also understand that I am not. Eventually, my Princess will come to the same understanding, and this will disappoint her more than I already do.
If Alicorn were any other Princess, there would be a certainty to this. I would fail to measure up to my Princess's standards, and then I would be scrapped. The steel that was once me would be reused to build or summon another ship, presumably a better one. But Alicorn is not any other Princess.
She shows a casual cruelty, of course, but only to those she considers her enemies. As soon as I joined her fleet, she was kind to me. To this day, she is kind to me. Part of me believes that when I disappoint Alicorn deeply, she will still be kind. That she will not scrap me, or punish me in any way at all, but simply continue as she always has.
Is it a flaw in me, that I fear the scrapyard less?
--- Dark Blue ---
The coasts of Mexico are less prone to Abyssal conflict than the coastal waters of any of the traditional naval powers. Wild packs of Abyssal destroyers and torpedo boats appear here - as they do everywhere - but without leadership they pose little threat. So far, our fleet has encountered several such packs, all sunk without much effort by the gun crews of Alicorn and the battleships.
It has made us complacent.
Massachusetts notices the disturbance first, with her Abyssal fleet-sense extended by her radar. Behind our fleet by a small margin, a whirlpool is starting to form; the first sign of an impending Abyssal summoning. If it were smaller, there would be no cause for concern. As the whirlpool expands, however, it becomes clear that this is no wild pack of patrol torpedo boats. This is to be a true engagement.
My crew set to work warming the torpedo tubes, and I steel myself for conflict, listening intently for radio transmissions from the ships in my fleet with radar.
"The storm's over, but all I see is more PT imps; that doesn't make any sense," Massachusetts says.
"The enemy is below, then," I respond, assigning more crew to the hydrophones as I dive. For all Alicorn's firepower, our fleet has a simple weakness; I am the only ship in this fleet with true anti-submarine capabilities. My Princess has no torpedo tubes, and while Massachusetts may have several depth charges, she has no hydrophone arrays to target with.
I may not be more than a weapon, as Alicorn wishes me to be, but in this moment I have the opportunity to prove my worth - for I am an effective weapon. My sonar crew stands watch, listening for the sounds of the enemy in silence.
The first thing I hear is the sound of torpedoes; luckily, none of them are aimed toward me. I can see them shooting past me, and I know that reacting to them would simply give away my position. Still, when I hear the first impacts behind me, it focuses my anger.
In this, ship-spirits have an advantage over steel hulls: we can see. I follow the track of one of the torpedoes visually, readying my first torpedo tube, and fire as soon as I catch a glimpse of movement. As quickly as I can, I change course, aiming ninety degrees port, and accelerate; by the time my torpedo hits, I hear two more speeding past my previous position.
My crew are disciplined enough to be truly silent - or as near as possible while conducting operations. The enemy crews are less experienced. This is my salvation. The game of cat and mouse continues for what seems like an eternity; in reality, it is merely two hours, but when any moment could be your last, every moment stretches into forever. By sound, I am able to track three more Ka-class and sink them without being hit once.
Also by sound, I am able to hear the other two Ka-class panic and fire a full spread of twelve torpedoes - at Alicorn.
I know my Princess's handling characteristics; I know that she will not be able to evade them all. If I were to start my diesels, I could intercept several of the torpedoes before they hit her. The fumes and lack of oxygen will kill my crew, of course. The torpedoes… will also kill my crew.
I smile softly as my engineers start the diesels. The scrapyard is not my fate, it seems - nor is disappointing my Princess. In my last few moments, I will make Alicorn proud.
I set an interception course, watching and waiting for the torpedoes to impact, and counting as they do.
One. My ballast tanks are taking on water, but I can compensate. I will compensate.
Two. The engine fires will not last long.
Three. I cannot feel my propellers any longer; presumably, they no longer exist.
Is this…
Did I only intercept three?
It appears I've failed you again, my Princess…
Forgive me.
--- Dark Blue ---
"...nythin… ck if you make…"
Is this what it means to experience death? I cannot remember the time after I was sunk as a steel hull and before I was summoned by Enterprise; perhaps it was like this. Darkness, numbness, and hints of whispers.
"mine! Sh… ade anyw…"
Perhaps I will be summoned again. Until then, I am content to rest.
--- Dark Blue ---
"…don't care. Do it."
I recognize that voice. My Princess. Is she calling me? If so, I must disappoint her once more; I do not know how to reach her.
A searing pain travels through my propeller shafts. I can feel my propeller shafts. Why can I feel anything? Am I not dead?
"Not bad. Keep going."
The pain grows - and spreads. The sensation is torture; is my entire body aflame? I try to move, but nothing happens. Slowly, I lose consciousness again.
--- Dark Blue ---
When I awaken this time, I am truly awake. My crew is almost entirely missing; my body feels strange; but I can see the sky above and feel the dirt below my back. This is not a resummoning. I remember being summoned, and it was nothing like this. Slowly, I sit up and look around, trying to ignore the way my entire hull protests as I do.
"Nimu?"
I turn to look at my Princess, who stands behind me, covered in dirt and grease, with a bittersweet smile on her face.
"Forgive me," I manage to say through the haze of pain.
She moves to embrace me, clearly avoiding putting much pressure on my hull as she does so.
"You're awake," Alicorn says softly. "You probably shouldn't be; you're not ready yet. Go back to sleep, Nimu. I'll be here when you wake up."
"Understood," I reply as I lie back down again and close my eyes. Does a hug mean she forgives me for my failure?
--- Dark Blue ---
"…ight, start her up," Alicorn says, rousing me one more time. My crew have returned, even the ones I thought dead, and they're slowly starting up my diesels again. Starting up whatever has replaced my diesels, at any rate. My entire engineering section appears to be different than I remember.
"Desu, desu desu," my engineer tells me. Ah. Of course she would not stop at repairing me. If anyone could create an improvised refit for a mostly-dead Type B, it would be Alicorn.
The engineer points to one of the battery cells, still stamped with "EDV ALICORN DVX-08" on the side. She…
I cannot comprehend it. My Princess cannibalized herself for me?
"Nimu?" said Princess calls. "Come on, Nimu, wake up."
I open my eyes once more, and once more Alicorn stands over me.
"Why?" I say.
She bends over, offering me her hand, and I take it. Slowly, the Princess lifts me up to my feet, where I manage to stay. Unsteady, perhaps, but that is only to be expected. My legs are brand new, after all.
"Do you know," Alicorn asks me with steel in her voice, "how much trouble you're in, young lady?"
I bow my head in shame. "I have failed you, my Princess."
"No!" she says forcefully, drawing me into the tightest hug I have ever received from her. "No, Nimu. I failed you. And we're going to have a long, long chat about that. But before that, I need you to make me a promise."
"Of course, my Princess," I respond readily.
"Promise me that you're not going to do that again."
My new engines must be malfunctioning; I feel a pain in my chest that I have never felt before. "I do not understand," I try. "Is it not my purpose to protect you?"
"No," Alicorn says, squeezing me even tighter. "No, it's not. I can handle myself, Nimu. I can't handle losing my d…"
Her voice catches, and she starts to cry on my shoulder. After a few moments, she tries again. "I can't handle losing any of you. Not Dakota, not Mamie, and not you. I know I can't ask you not to die. You're a warship. But don't. Don't you ever sacrifice yourself again, Nimu. You're important to me."
I nod.
"I need you to say it."
"I promise I will not sacrifice myself again."
"Okay," she says, letting me go. "Let's go get Dakota and Mamie. They were almost as worried as I was, and they'll be happy to see you."
I remain confused, but the traitorous part of my mind - the part that insists Alicorn would never discard me - is filled with relief.
... Is it actually confirmed anywhere that the Alicorn lacks torpedo tubes? Because she's meant to be a submersible aircraft carrier/strategic bombardment railgun. One that very much can defend themselves whilst on the surface. So I find it utterly idiotic for her to lack any torpedo tubes because that means any submarine which either intercepts her on the way to her firing site, at the firing site or on the way back to harbour for replenishment for the next attack immediately kills her.
Not see them in use, very much yes before it's an aircraft combat game. Not a submarine simulator. But have them missing? No, the Strangereal universe wouldn't be able to make all their superweapons and have anyone regard them as an actual threat if they were that incompetent.
In the in-game articles in newsmagazines, it's specified that she lacks torpedoes. However, she does have 48 VLS cells, some of which are loaded with VL-ASROC or equivalent. She also has forcefields for defense. Alicorn isn't defenceless against torps, by any measure. She's also not a submarine. At least, not in the conventional sense. The game calls her a submersible aircraft cruiser, and that's maybe the best designation for her. She's got excellent gunnery capacity, and a respectable air wing, and she submerges. But she's not meant for submarine warfare in the sense that any submarine we have today is.
"Expect the unexpected." That's what my grandfather always used to tell me. The only thing the old man loved more than his war stories was his platitudes. He was a big-shot in the Air Force, one of the Águilas Aztecas that flew in World War II, and he always liked to think that meant everyone should listen to him.
I didn't, but my dad listened to the old man too much, signed up with the Americans' air force, and got shot down over Iraq in the '90s. I never really forgave him for that. Hell, I never forgave either of them.
Abuelito always was full of shit.
Still, "expect the unexpected" kinda became my motto over the years. When Dad got killed, I moved back to Mexico with my cousins. I wasn't really thrilled with America at the time, and if I was going to live on my own, Mexico was cheaper. My cousin Luna got me a job at a local auto garage, and I was pretty good at it. I wasn't anything special, mind you, just a loudmouth girl with a tendency to improvise too much. Then the unexpected struck again: the Abyssal war.
Don't get me wrong, Mexico's mostly pretty safe, as far as Abyssal attacks go. The thing that's not so safe is imports. Electronics, fancy parts for foreign cars, that kind of thing. All of a sudden, anyone driving normally-reliable Japanese or German cars was fucked six ways from Sunday the minute they needed repairs, and "improvising too much" became "please improvise more." Unexpected as the Abyssal war was, I certainly took advantage of it.
These days, I've got my own garage. It's the best in Salina Cruz, maybe even the best in all Mexico. Everyone knows that I can fix just about anything, as long as you're alright with not using original parts. Or, well… sometimes not using things that are technically car parts at all? But my customers know what they're signing up for. They want their cars to work, and when a car leaves my shop? It fucking works. They don't care where the parts came from.
I'd like to think I'm doing pretty well, but the unexpected works both ways. Which means I'm not all that surprised when I'm woken up at 2 in the morning by loud banging on the front door. I try to ignore it, but the banging gets louder. Gotta be Julio. Mother of God, if he's waking me up at 2 am because he left his fucking phone in my shop again, I'm not… I'm not gonna be held responsible for what happens to him. I'm just not.
Still halfway awake, I make my way downstairs through the garage, wiping away the sleep from my eyes as I go. The banging on the door continues, and at this point I can safely say I'm not gonna be able to fall back asleep. That's fine, I guess. Who needs sleep anyway? Fucking Julio.
I open the door slowly, already starting to tear the kid a new one…
"Julio, what the fuck. What in every level of goddamn shit are you doing waking me up this fucking early, you dumba-"
…and am shocked into silence when my useless assistant isn't the person standing at my front door. Instead, it's a very tall woman in a suit, holding what I really, really hope isn't a corpse in her arms.
"Are you the Scrap Queen?" she asks in strangely-accented Spanish.
I nod numbly. What the fuck?
"You've got to help me," she says, her voice ragged as if she's been sobbing for hours. And looking at her face? I'd believe it. Her eyes are red from crying, and the tear tracks down her cheeks are obvious.
Of course, I'm still halfway asleep, so before I can even think about it, the words "We're closed" are already out of my mouth.
The tall woman looks at me with the most desperate look I've ever seen on a human being, and she pleads with me. "You've got to help save my daughter's life. Please."
What? "I'm a mechanic, not a doctor. The hospital's about a mile that way," I say, gesturing towards the building in question.
She nods. "A doctor wouldn't be able to help, ma'am. You can."
I back away from the door, deciding if maybe I should call the cops, when it finally clicks. The body in her arms isn't just a corpse, it's an Abyssal corpse. And the tall woman? She's some kind of shipgirl. Okay, cool. Cool cool. I'm maybe pissing off a lady who isn't even human, a lady who's got guns the size of small cars. Great. With a motion of my arms, I wave the shipgirl into the shop and close the door behind her.
"Alright, I'll do what I can," I try to say as calmly as possible. Don't piss off the warship. "Where's your daughter, and what am I supposed to do with the Abyssal?"
Her eyes narrow. "'The Abyssal' is my daughter. Her name is Nimu, and we're going to fix her."
Great. Wonderful. Fantastic. Just rebuild an Abyssal. Very normal Saturday morning thing to do.
The best part is that when I turn on the lights, I can clearly see Julio's fucking phone on the workbench.
With a sigh I hope the shipgirl doesn't take as hostile, I shrug. "So where do we start?"
— Dark Blue —
Four hours later, I'm a lot less confused. Is that because Alicorn - that's the shipgirl's name - has been explaining things? Kinda. Mostly it's because I've given up on understanding the magical, insane shipgirl things, and surrendered myself to the sweet, sweet bliss of coffee.
Don't get me wrong, some of Alicorn's explanations make sense. The Abyssal - Nimu - doesn't run on the same systems she does. Alicorn is nuclear-powered, which involves steam turbines and a whole lot of plumbing that I'd be absolutely useless at. But her daughter runs on good old diesel. And diesel engines are something I can fix.
Well, I say "fix". Poor girl's engine compartment is blown to smithereens. It's really more of a "rebuild" than a "fix". On the bright side, that means I don't have to stick with the 1940s level of technology that she was clearly built with. Plus, I don't have to do the actual rebuilding of the compartments and the hull. Alicorn's crew is taking care of that, and apparently the kid had a couple sailors of her own that are helping out. They're actually really helpful, if I ignore the fact that I can somehow magically understand them despite the fact that they only speak one word… and that word is Japanese.
I don't even want to think about how it is that I can board and disembark from a submarine… that is a teenage girl. She's smaller than me. She's smaller than me, how the hell does this boarding ramp even… Nope. Not thinking about it. Absolutely not thinking about it.
We didn't have anything approaching a proper drydock, but according to Mama Insanity over there, anything's a drydock if you make it one. So the kid's lying face-up in the middle of a pit I got Julio to dig with a backhoe. Alicorn provided the boarding ramp that somehow breaks physics - seriously, don't think about it - and I've been building ship-scale diesel engines from scratch.
How does a diesel submarine even work, with the whole… needing air to burn thing, you might ask? (I definitely did.) Turns out they're like hybrid cars. The diesel engines turn the propellers, but they also charge up batteries, and the batteries are hooked up to electric motors that can also turn the propellers. Kinda nifty. Of course, that's first-gen hybrid tech. Older than first-gen, apparently, if they had it in the '40s. I can do better.
"Hey, Nakamura, can I get you to hold this for me?" I call out to one of Nimu's sailors, who obliges. "Thanks!"
He's got steady hands, so his help's been pretty damn essential to the whole process. As he holds the bearing steady, I bolt it down to the shaft and slide it gently into the generator housing. Perfect.
"Alright," I say to the sailor, wiping a bit of sweat off my forehead. "Tell the captain that we're ready to try a test."
With a nod and a "Desu", Nakamura leaves the engine room… or, well, the bit of the engine room that we've reconstructed. The diesel motor should power the generator just fine. Now I've just got to get another electric motor built to power the actual propellers. I'm not gonna let the girl leave my shop without at least getting her up to speed with modern-style hybrid car technology.
She's an Abyssal, so I probably shouldn't be letting her leave my shop at all, but her mom's been pretty trustworthy, and I had a brief chat with some Japanese admiral that says Alicorn is on the level.
Soon, a bell rings in the engine room, which I'm gonna go ahead and assume means it's alright to get the engines going. I can't actually read the little indicators. They're all in Japanese. Either way, I get the engine started, and my voltmeter shows that the generator actually is making a charge.
Scrap Queen 1, mortal coil 0. Fuck, this would be a great ad for my shop, except I can't go around telling people I fixed an Abyssal. Maybe if I just say it was a shipgirl? Eh. They'll figure it out. Plus, if my shop gets any more popular, I'll have to hire another fucking assistant, and my experience with the first one hasn't exactly been stellar.
The bell rings out again, and I bring the engine to a complete stop. I double- and triple-check the engine room to make sure I'm not leaving anything where it shouldn't be, then make my way out of Nimu and back to the shop. I've been up for hours, and it's time for some breakfast.
… Damnit, I should be nice to my guests, shouldn't I? Even if they didn't exactly knock, Alicorn isn't that bad. She also basically told me I've got a blank check on the bill on this one, and that the UN will pay me. Least I can do is cook the lady some breakfast.
"Hey, Alicorn, want some breakfast? I'm cooking eggs and sausage," I call to her as I make my way upstairs.
From the sound of it, she's decided to follow me. "I'd love some, Miss Meade."
I wave her into my apartment, and she takes a seat in the area I'm charitably calling my kitchen while I work.
"You can just call me Avril, you know."
"Then feel free to call me Ali."
I smile. "Sounds good. Two eggs or three?"
When she doesn't respond, I glance over my shoulder at her. She's clearly thinking it over. "Three," she decides after a moment, looking mildly disappointed.
Oh. Right. I remember hearing something about shipgirls eating a ridiculous amount of food. I've never scrambled a dozen eggs at once before, but there's a first time for everything. "Would a dozen be better?"
With a wry grin, Ali says, "Much."
I shrug. "Don't blame me if they turn out like shit."
"I absolutely will," the shipgirl responds with the same grin on her face.
"Alright then."
I get the pan heated up and start cracking eggs into it and whisking. It's difficult to manage a dozen at once, but I have skills. For a few moments, I focus on the eggs, getting about as into the zone here as I do when I'm working on an engine. I'm pretty much done when Ali decides to ask, "How is she?"
"Better than she was when you brought her in," I say, flipping the eggs. "It's kinda impressive that shipgirls can take that much damage and live."
"She wouldn't have."
I turn around. "She wouldn't have…?"
"She was sinking. I happen to be strong enough to lift her out of the water so that flooding isn't possible. But if she'd been in the water for even a few minutes longer… I'd have lost her."
Turning the burner off, I put my hand on her shoulder. "You didn't. She's going to be alright."
"That your professional opinion, Scrap Queen?"
"Yeah." I give her my cockiest grin. "Yeah, it is. Hell, I'm giving her some upgrades while I'm at it."
Ali looks at me with some suspicion. "What kind of upgrades?"
You know, at first I didn't get it, the whole shipgirl being an Abyssal's mother thing. But the more I interact with Ali, the more I see it. I serve her a heaping plate of eggs, start the sausage going, and explain the benefits of plug-in hybrid technology.
--- Dark Blue ---
She's got more??
Sure. Alright. Giant shipgirl lady gets as many kids as she wants. It helps that they're nice. Dakota's basically everything I expected from an American shipgirl, and Mamie is… well, she's sweet. Terrifying, but sweet. I think it helps that I'm fixing up her... Sister? I'm gonna go with sister. If I was just some random person, I get the feeling that Mamie would just be terrifying.
Either way, they're very helpful for bending the steel that'll be Nimu's new pressure hull. Superhuman strength comes in handy when assembling it, too. I try not to think too hard about how it is that I can see the kid's hull being repaired and her legs… magically appearing… at the same time. They're also helping Ali out, seeing as the giant shipgirl decided she'd just donate her own batteries to replace the ones Nimu lost. I asked her if that was going to be okay, and she just shrugged.
Braver than I'd be, but then I guess I don't have kids anyway. As soon as we're done with the hull, I'll get back aboard and run a full test with the new drive system. It should be alright, but that's what testing's for. Spending the day fixing up a submarine Abyssal is absolutely not what I figured I'd be doing, but you know what? It's not that bad. The UN might be getting a slightly less impressive bill than I thought.
--- Dark Blue ---
I can now officially say I've been on board a shipgirl when she was awake. Will I ever say that? Fuck no. I'm not an idiot; I know exactly what the Internet would say. But I can. Nimu apparently woke up during the engine test, and Ali got her to go back to sleep. I definitely feel better about working on her when she's not awake. It's actually kinda unbelievable that this is working. Rebuilding a shipgirl - even an Abyssal one - from basically a wreck, using parts I made from scrap… God, I'm pretty much the greatest. Of all time. Ever.
Every other mechanic in Oaxaca can fucking kiss my ass.
--- Dark Blue ---
She's done. Finished. I've done everything I can for her, and I can safely say Nimu left my shop in better condition than she left the goddamn shipyard. Yeah, maybe her new motors are built from scrap. But it's good goddamn scrap. I've got absolutely no idea what Ali and her girls are gonna get up to next, but I'm pretty happy I met them. Ali even gave me her email address, said she'd keep in touch. I think I'd like that. She's pretty alright.
I turn out the shop lights, head upstairs, and lie down on my couch for a nap, even if my mind is way too active right now to actually fall asleep.
It kinda makes me wonder… If I could basically rebuild a shipgirl, what else could I build?
Meet the Scrap Queen. She's probably not going to be that important. Probably. Maybe.
Next chapter: The gang meets the Panama Canal. Alicorn is not impressed.
Well that hit all the feels. Also how did Ali know about the Scrap Queen? I know she found Trigger. But finding the Earth version of the Scrap Queen? Even by MSGBS standards that seems a bit of a stretch. I mean how did she even know where to look? It's not like the girl had a sign over her head saying I AM THE SCRAP QUEEN. So how?
Well that hit all the feels. Also how did Ali know about the Scrap Queen? I know she found Trigger. But finding the Earth version of the Scrap Queen? Even by MSGBS standards that seems a bit of a stretch. I mean how did she even know where to look? It's not like the girl had a sign over her head saying I AM THE SCRAP QUEEN. So how?
Trigger turned on the sparkle detector onboard his plane and then did slow overflights over the circled area on his minimap until the pings got strong enough to pinpoint a location.
The city of Salina Cruz, where Avril's garage is located, happened to be the closest port to the girls when they went through the fight in the last chapter. And yes, she absolutely had a sign saying "Scrap Queen." Well, technically it said "Reina de Chatarra: Taller Mecánico". But you get the idea.
Meanwhile I'm just wondering how many doors are going to get broken down, and bribes given out when the UN finds out just what it was she did. Because I have a feeling that Avril just became one of the absolute best and most experiences Shipgirl mechanics around. Including Repair Ships.
I'm also wondering if they're going to arrive before, during or as a result of whatever madness she ends up building due to that final thought she had in the interlude...
Plane-girls? Tank-girls? Gun-girls or T-Dolls running on magic rather than extremely advanced AI research?
The city of Salina Cruz, where Avril's garage is located, happened to be the closest port to the girls when they went through the fight in the last chapter. And yes, she absolutely had a sign saying "Scrap Queen." Well, technically it said "Reina de Chatarra: Taller Mecánico". But you get the idea.
So a combination of chance, convenience, and pure dumb luck. Okay Alicorn should play the Lottery ASAP with that kind of luck. Or is Trigger's luck rubbing off on her? I digress.
"Just try it," I urge my daughter. "You can do it."
Nimu takes one unsteady step onto the water, then another. She's got her new wetsuit-rigging summoned, enveloping her body in the grey-black of improvised anechoic tiling. Perhaps more importantly, it protects the weld joints that mark her new, longer legs. She starts walking faster, wobbling more and more as she speeds up. I almost rush in to catch her, but she manages to right herself before it becomes necessary. Eventually, she reaches the threshold speed and starts skating across the surface of the water - less stable than before her near-death, but certainly stable enough.
"You're doing it!" I call out to Nimu, trying to encourage her. "How do you feel?"
She turns quickly, moving at her old top electric speed of 8 knots straight toward me. "I'm unsure. Will electric-only propulsion not slow me down?"
"Nope," I say with a smile. "You might even outrun me. Can you try speeding up?"
At first, she hesitates, but after watching me for a moment, she bends her new knees, crouching into a lower posture while still skating. I move out of her way as she starts to accelerate, then order my engine room to match her speed as she passes me. Together, we push past 10 knots, past 20, past 25, and as our acceleration slows, Nimu tops out at 32 knots on the surface. I pull out just ahead of her, enjoying the involuntary grin on her face.
She looks at me briefly, her grin widening before she dives below the surface. With a laugh, I follow her down. She's slower underwater, her old-school hullform providing more resistance than a modern hydrodynamic shape, but she still manages a good 28 knots submerged. Not able to outrun me, but definitely faster than any other shipgirl or Abyssal out there. I pull out in front of her again and point up to the surface, hoping she gets the message. She nods and surfaces quickly along with me.
"Look at you! You can outrun any other shipgirl!" I tell her, beaming.
She raises an eyebrow in a look of doubt that has to have been rehearsed. "Almost any other shipgirl, I'm sure you mean."
"I'm sorry you're not faster than me," I say dryly, "but you know that's never going to be an issue, right?"
I wrap her up in a hug. "I'm always going to be on your side, Nimu. Always."
She puts her own arms around me, squeezing me more tightly than I'd expected. "Thank you…"
Her voice trails off, and I'll never really know what she was going to say. Hopefully not "my Princess"; I'd been trying to get her to be a bit less formal. Ideally someday, she'd finish that sentence with the word "Mom". That day's probably not today, though, if ever. No matter how I may feel about her, it's not exactly fair for me to expect her to feel the same way. Will Nimu ever consider me her mother, rather than simply her leader? I don't know. I'd love it if she did, but I have to be okay if she doesn't.
Either way, she'll always be a daughter to me.
I squeeze tighter, then let her go. "Alright, we should probably get back to the other girls before they forget we exist. You know how capital ships are with object permanence."
Nimu frowns. "Aren't you also a capital ship?"
"Absolutely not," I say with mock offense. "As you can clearly see, I'm just a humble submarine."
That earns a snort from her. "Clearly."
"Where are we again?" I ask, feigning confusion.
Rolling her eyes, Nimu takes my hand and starts accelerating back toward the Dakota sisters. She knows she can't actually tow me, so I have my engine room match her speed. She's certainly not unchanged since her accident, but she's alive. She's alive, and she's back, and she was going to stay that way.
I wasn't ever going to watch her die again.
--- Dark Blue ---
There is no "rational" response to seeing your daughter die in front of you. Every possible course of action in that scenario is irrational, and more importantly, the part of your mind that picks between those courses of action isn't running on such mortal things as facts, logic, or reason. It runs on adrenaline, fear, and anger. I can say that because I've been there.
It started with the Abyssal fight we were least prepared for. As it turns out, two big-gun battleships, one small submarine, and an aviation cruiser aren't a great matchup against multiple enemy submarines using "wolfpack" tactics. Between the four of us, Nimu was the only one with traditional torpedoes, and she assumed that made her the only one who could fight enemy subs. She was sunk in 1944; she'd never heard of VLS, let alone VL-ASROC missiles. She had no way to know that I had ASW capabilities, and I'd never taken the time to explain it to her.
As a '40s sub, she knew that she would be very unlikely to survive a torpedo hit, and she assumed the same was true of me. Of course she did. I hadn't told anyone about my forcefield drones. I was in a hostile world, and every secret I could keep was an advantage against anyone that could use it to harm me. So I kept my secrets, even from my girls.
Nimu did a great job hunting the enemy subs down. She got four of the six, and I was proud of her, even if I wasn't able to tell her at the time. She was underwater, after all. No radio. She did such a good job, in fact, that the two remaining hostiles dumped all their remaining torpedoes at what they thought was the biggest threat.
Me.
I could have taken all eight of those torpedoes with barely a scratch. Of course, Nimu didn't know that, because I hadn't ever taken the time to really open up to my daughter. She threw herself directly in the torpedoes' path, knowing a single hit would probably kill her. She took three hits, and I took the rest with my shield drones.
It took a second for those three thumps to register. A slight delay between the sonar girls registering Nimu's contact breaking up and my CDO being informed. I'm sure a human would experience something similar. There was another delay before the first few important orders started coming down from that bridge.
"Launch cells 15 through 30." Was eight missiles per enemy sub overkill? Probably, but they'd thrown eight torpedoes at me. I was just returning the favor. I tasked my sonar crew to make sure those Ka-class died, preferably painfully, but I had other things that needed doing.
"Make turns for 35 knots, make depth 50 meters." Nimu was sinking, and I wasn't about to let that happen. As fast as I could, I got into position underneath her slowly descending body and caught her in my arms. Her damage was extensive, almost enough to distract me from actually trying to save her. She had a hole in her stomach, and everything below her hips was just… gone. Saving her life would be an uphill battle, to say the least.
"Make depth 0 meters, blow main ballast." The same massive hull breaches that ensured Nimu would sink were my biggest hope. If I could get her above the surface of the water quickly enough, the water would drain almost as quickly as it had flooded in. I had to hope that there were still fairy crew alive in there, or…
…Well, I wasn't going to think about it, because there had to be. My daughter was not allowed to die. I wouldn't allow it, and God help anyone who disagreed.
--- Dark Blue ---
Three sailors, locked in the conning tower. That was all that was left of Nimu's crew. It had to be enough. My damage control crew got them out of there in time and took them straight to my sickbay to let them recover, and I breathed a sigh of relief. As long as the crew survived, the shipgirl that eventually woke up would still be Nimu - or so I hoped.
If I were to take Nimu's wreck to any shipyard, they'd start quoting me a scrap price. The damage was so extensive that if it were fixable - a big "if" - she'd come out the other side essentially a new ship. If you're going to have a new ship at the end, the argument would go, why would you want that ship to be a 1940s-vintage Imperial Japanese submarine?
Then again, no shipyard would repair an Abyssal in the first place, what with the whole "enemy of humanity" thing. Lucky for her, I wasn't exactly planning on taking her to a shipyard.
Ranking every country's navy by damage control proficiency, Erusea would not be very high on the list. That's not unpatriotic of me, it's simply honest. That said, there's a stark difference between Erusean damage control and Alicorn damage control. The average Erusean ship wasn't stuck at the bottom of the ocean for two years, dealing with the gradual wearing down of both equipment and sanity.
Normal DC focused on triage, on living long enough to get back to port for real repairs. My DC didn't have that luxury. For me, it was about survival. Improvising a solution that worked. It had to work, and it had to keep working, because it was all there was. That was the kind of thing Nimu needed. My engineers started working with the DC crews, swarming around Nimu's body like ants on an anthill, checking welds and marking off damaged hull.
The conclusions weren't positive.
I told the chief engineer to get different conclusions, and she stood there on Nimu's factured deck, looking at me in pity.
"Yo," she said simply, and I screamed at her. I'm not even sure I used words.
Didn't she understand that I knew that? I was well fucking aware that Nimu needed more help than I could give her in the middle of the ocean. I knew full well that I needed materials, that none of my crew had any idea how to build a diesel-electric powertrain that'd actually work, that I couldn't do anything for Nimu. I knew. I just didn't want to know.
My lookouts told me Dakota was coming up to me from behind, and I didn't care.
She said something I couldn't make out, and I didn't care.
Dakota tried to put her arms around me, tried to give me a hug, and I brushed her off. I couldn't fix Nimu by myself, but that didn't mean she couldn't be fixed. Checking the charts, the nearest port was Salina Cruz. Hopefully someone there would be able to help.
One of my fairies signalled Dakota, telling her where I was headed before I left. I didn't care. I needed flank speed. I needed a miracle worker. I needed my daughter back.
--- Dark Blue ---
By the time I made it to Salina Cruz, it was almost two in the morning. The city was quiet enough, the streets empty enough, that a shipgirl walking ashore carrying an Abyssal wreck in her arms could go unnoticed. Of course, it was also empty enough that I couldn't just ask around for… well, I wasn't sure what I needed, but I'd know if I saw it. A scrapyard, perhaps, or a mechanic's workshop.
In Mexico, the language most people spoke was a variant of Sapinish (I had better things to do than worry about what it was called on this planet). Fortunately, I did have a couple sailors who understood the language, which was enough to read signs. I took to wandering the streets of the industrial areas of the city, looking for something that would fit my needs.
At first, I passed by the shop without thinking much of it. My star pilot, however, thought otherwise.
<<…>>
Wait, what?
<<…>>
<<…>>
What are the odds of that happening, Trigger? And even if it did, what are the odds she'd be able to help?
<<…>>
Fuck.
I doubled back to the shop labeled "Scrap Queen Auto Garage," checked to make sure the top floor apartment looked occupied (it did), and shifted Nimu so she was resting mostly against my shoulder. With a deep breath, I started knocking. The lights came on upstairs, and I kept banging on the door. If this person could help Nimu, I couldn't bring myself to care about being rude.
After a few moments of loud banging on the door, it opened to reveal a very angry woman, swearing at someone named "Julio" in Sapinish. For a moment, I was almost curious why she'd responded that way, but it didn't matter. One thing mattered, and one thing only.
"Are you the Scrap Queen?" I asked, hoping my poor grasp of the language was enough.
She nodded.
"You've got to help me."
--- Dark Blue ---
With a quick visit to my bridge, Trigger confirmed it. This woman, Avril Meade, was almost identical to the Scrap Queen in his world, Avril Mead. That was enough to give me hope. His Scrap Queen was able to turn a junkyard into an effective air wing. This one seemed more focused on cars, but diesel-electric cars existed. Theoretically, she could work with my crew to build a powertrain for Nimu. Even better, she had a scrapyard full of metal and a propensity for improvising.
It didn't take very long to convince her to help, though at first I think she just played along because I had lots of guns. That was fine. As long as she was helping, it didn't really matter why. The most time-consuming part of the process was explaining everything to Avril. She seemed visibly relieved at the idea that the only thing she actually needed to do was get a diesel-electric powertrain going, rather than rebuild the entirety of an Abyssal submarine.
Of course, getting her (and the parts) into Nimu in the first place would be an issue. Avril, in all her one point six meter glory, was taller than Nimu - an intact Nimu. She also wasn't exactly a surgeon. We - by which I mean I - had to come up with a way to reconcile human scale with ship scale. While Avril started gathering parts and designing the new engines, I started figuring out how I'd be breaking the laws of physics.
The answer had to be something to do with ships. Avril couldn't fit aboard Nimu the person, so I had to get her aboard Nimu the ship. Even though there wasn't a difference, there had to be a difference in some ways. People ate food, ships needed fuel and ammo. There was something metaphysical that translated from "person" to "ship", and I needed to bypass it.
How do you fix a ship? You put her in drydock. I didn't exactly have a convenient drydock available, but what I did have was a scrapyard, some tools, time, and desperation. Grabbing the digging head of a rusting backhoe, I started excavating.
It didn't take very long to get a hole in the ground that would fit Nimu, or to line it with sheet metal I'd pounded into place. A few hours, and I had what was only barely a drydock on the slimmest technicality. It was perfect. I went into the shop, gently lifted Nimu's body from the table it had been resting on, and lowered it into the pit facedown. As I did so, I could start seeing the drydock as something much bigger than it was. Out of the corner of my eye, it wasn't so much a shallow hole with a girl lying in it as it was a large, shoddy drydock with an absolutely wrecked submarine in it.
It filled me with hope. Clearly, the universe wasn't very picky about the details as long as the intent was correct. I needed that to be true, because the next part of my plan was absolutely stupid. Avril's shop had some movable flooring plates. Steel, diamond-patterned for friction, and most importantly? Capable of being placed between the edge of Nimu's improvised drydock and the girl herself. They just needed one thing.
I may have borrowed Avril's plasma torch without asking. I stand by that decision. It only took a few moments to cut "ADV Nimu I-26" into the sides of the plates, and then the plasma cutter went back to its spot with no one the wiser. Picking up the newly cut "boarding ramp", I laid it gently down to bridge the gap between the scrapyard and Nimu's deck. There was really only one way to test it.
I dismissed my rigging, trying my best to think human thoughts, and started crossing the ramp. It was longer than it had any right to be, with one foot turning into two or three, but eventually I stood on Nimu's deck. I couldn't help it; I jumped a little with joy. Avril would be able to build Nimu's engines, and my crew and I would be able to build her hull. She would live. It wasn't a fragile hope anymore.
It was a plan.
--- Dark Blue ---
I left the engine design and testing up to the Scrap Queen. She had it well in hand, and I was able to focus on hull design. The new Nimu would be longer by a good twelve meters, in order to accommodate both Avril's new engine and the other changes I would be making. I wasn't planning on making the changes too radical, of course. The further away she got from her original design, the harder it would be for her to adjust when she woke up.
That meant I had to keep the hangar, as much as I would love to replace it with something else. Don't get me wrong, I believed in the submarine aircraft carrier concept. I had to, given that I am one. It just wasn't achievable with 1940s designs or technology. Nimu and her sister ships could only carry one plane, and that plane wasn't even armed. Its entire purpose was scouting. It was worse than radar in every way.
Naturally, my engineers were at work making my redundant ground and air radars … less redundant. Nimu would be much better off with a proper set of radar masts. But I couldn't take away her catapult, crane, or hangar. They were just too integral a part of the design of the Junsen Type B1 submarine. What I could do was donate some of my UAVs. They were faster than her scout plane, smaller, better armed, and unmanned. Not to mention she could fit three of them in the same space one floatplane occupied.
I also transcribed the engineering blueprints for the drones, adding them to the document that would eventually be the new plans for Nimu. The idea was that as long as her blueprints matched her construction, she'd repair to the new state. It's also why I wasn't too concerned about losing my battery banks or redundant radars permanently. Hopefully, they'd return when I next took a repair bath.
If not, well, my daughter would always be worth it.
I was able to squeeze about half a meter extra width out of the added hull section as well, without really compromising the hullform. The added space was almost entirely for the crew's mess, but some of it went to a computer room to run the radars and electronic communication equipment.
The other big hull change was the material her hull was covered in. There was no shortage of tires in the scrapyard, and most of the rubber was perfectly fine. It wasn't specially formulated for making anechoic tiles, but improvised tiles were better than none at all. Nimu wasn't going to get caught by enemy subs ever again. Not if I could help it.
I was just about to get started machining her new propellers when Avril came back into the shop, more covered in grease than usual, with a smile on her face. Apparently, progress had been made. She started going up the stairs that led to her apartment, then stopped abruptly.
"Hey Alicorn, want some breakfast? I'm cooking eggs and sausage."
I hadn't expected the mechanic to offer, but now that she had, I was actually pretty hungry. Nimu's crew were alive and well, and the girl herself was taking shape. I could take a break and eat.
"I'd love some, Miss Meade," I replied, getting up and following her.
--- Dark Blue ---
Avril Meade was an absolute delight. Trigger had some complicated feelings about her, given his somewhat antagonistic friendship with the Avril in our world. On the other hand, I'd never met that Avril, which meant I could form my own opinions of this one without preconceptions.
What were those opinions? Well, she was exactly the kind of person I could trust, for starters. She was a genius with engineering and mechanical design. What other word was there for someone who could take two cargo truck engines, two gasoline generators, and a pile of copper wiring and turn all that into a viable submarine propulsion system? She had the kind of mad genius that I could appreciate, the kind my own engineers had.
She was cocky. Not arrogant, because she'd earned every drop of the confidence she radiated, but cocky. She wasn't the secret weapon of an Osean air base, but she was a damn fine mechanic, and people counted on her. Hell, I barely knew her, and I was counting on her already.
The thing that struck me most about her, though, was that she didn't even blink at the idea of treating shipgirls as people, even when she had been aboard one. She'd seen my sailors welding hull plates together, been elbows-deep in engine equipment, and still forgot for a moment I wasn't human.
After she remembered, she still didn't treat me any differently. The initial fear of "a warship has knocked in my door at two in the morning making demands" was long gone, and instead I felt like there might be the seed of a burgeoning friendship. The real clincher, though, was how she reacted when Mamie and Dakota showed up.
The battleships were understandably rather upset at the fact that I'd gone ahead without them, leaving my crew to keep them updated instead of telling them myself or waiting for them. They expressed this frustration by taking turns to slap me in the face with every bit of shaft horsepower they could muster - which was a lot of horsepower.
When my bridge stopped reverberating, I could see Avril offering the two furious warships cups of coffee with a smirk.
"Alright," I said to my girls, "I definitely deserved that."
"You think?" Mamie commented sarcastically before taking a long sip of coffee.
Putting my hand to my head to hopefully dull the pain slightly, I replied, "Yes. I should have waited for you or kept you updated. I wasn't thinking straight, and I'm sorry."
With the patience of someone who'd been through all this before, Dakota sighed softly. "I know what it's like to lose someone, Ali. I understand. It just doesn't excuse leaving us behind."
Looking back, there were several ways I could have responded. Naturally, I picked the worst one. "I didn't. Lose her, I mean. She's going to make it."
Mamie took that time to hug me, which confused the hell out of me. "It's alright to admit it, boss. Trust me, it's better than keeping all that pain bottled up. That's how you get like Enterprise."
Oh. She didn't understand. "No, Mamie, I mean it. She's in drydock out back, under repair. I saved some of her crew, and they resummoned the rest. Nimu's going to be just fine. Hell, she's going to be better than fine. Avril and I are making upgrades."
"You… what? Upgrades?" Dakota asked.
I took the time to ruffle Mamie's hair a little before I replied. "I don't know what it's like to lose someone I actually care about, Dakota. And if I can help it, I never will. I'm sorry for leaving you behind. Like I said, I wasn't even remotely thinking straight. All I could think of was saving Nimu, and I'd do the same for you. Either of you."
I took a deep breath before continuing. "You three matter more to me than anything else in this world, and I would burn the world to the ground before I'd let any of you die."
That earned a laugh from Mamie. "You're a dumbass sometimes, Ali."
"Huh?"
Dakota rolled her eyes, set down her coffee, and joined Mamie in the hug. "What my sister is saying, Ali, is that you could have asked for help. And next time, you're going to. Right?"
I got the feeling there was only one correct answer. "Right."
"Alright then. How can we help?"
Avril stepped in. "I've got a few ideas."
Hey everyone, sorry for the delay, but I hope you enjoy this extra-long chapter. I couldn't just skip past Ali's perspective on Nimu's death and repair, but at the same time, I needed to give at least some forward momentum. We'll be back in the present again next chapter.
Wait, did she just find someone that can help her turn her stolen WW2 ships into ships with the same tech level that she has? I'm imagining a Re-class with modern armaments and planes and Jesus Christ on a pogostick that is scary.
Wait, did she just find someone that can help her turn her stolen WW2 ships into ships with the same tech level that she has? I'm imagining a Re-class with modern armaments and planes and Jesus Christ on a pogostick that is scary.
Your therapist: "Re-class with VLS and jets aren't real, they can't hurt you."
Re-class with VLS and jets: *stares balefully at you with her glowing eyes*
Hey everyone, sorry for the delay, but I hope you enjoy this extra-long chapter. I couldn't just skip past Ali's perspective on Nimu's death and repair, but at the same time, I needed to give at least some forward momentum. We'll be back in the present again next chapter.
I had thought, at first, that teaching my girls how to fly UAVs would be simple. When it comes down to it, they're just planes. Sure, they're flown remotely, and sure, their tech is pretty advanced, but ultimately it's a plane. You fly it with the stick, throttle, and pedals. I figured the trouble would be learning missile-based air combat, or even high-speed maneuvers. After all, if the girls tried to fly their new UAVs at even the top speed of their floatplanes, the engines would stall out. All of these were problems I'd expected.
"Ali, how do I get the cursor back? It disappeared again on me."
I hadn't even thought about the fact that girls from the 1940s wouldn't know anything about computers, let alone computer systems from an alternate universe. I don't even know what most computers here in this world use for operation interface software; variations of OT&T UNICS were pretty much standard in my world, and I'm not sure there's an equivalent here.
Reaching over Mamie's shoulder, I gently move her hand to the trackball and have her give it a little nudge.
"It goes away if you don't move it for a while; you can get it back by moving it slightly."
"Why doesn't it just stay on the screen the whole time?"
"Honestly, because people who design software are idiots," I reply with a tired sigh. "It's just one of those things you get used to."
With a skeptical look on her face, Mamie asks, "And you use these computers to run everything aboard you?"
"Almost everything. I've got 300 crew members that actually run things, but without the computers, I'd probably need a couple thousand."
I can tell she's irritated by the way the teeth along her arm start grinding against each other. "I like my couple thousand girls, boss. I don't want to replace them with some gizmo."
"And I'm not asking you to, Mamie," I say, letting my own arm rest against hers and giving her something to teethe on. "You're perfectly fine just the way you are. I'm just giving you options, so your pilots can fly something that can even give Trigger a run for his money."
<<…>>
Hush, you. I'm encouraging her.
"You're not going to take away my floatplanes?" she asks, her eyes narrowed.
"Absolutely not. Like I said, options. It's your choice. But I really do think you'll like the UAVs."
Mamie harrumphs, turning slightly away from me, and I sit down next to her.
"Be honest with me, Mamie, that's not what you're upset about, is it?"
After a few moments, she huffs. "Not really."
"Want to talk about it?" I offer.
That earns a snort of laughter. "Yeah, why didn't I think of that? Let's just talk about our problems and hug it out."
"If that's what you want," I say dryly. "There are plenty of other things you could do, and I'll help you do them. As long as you talk to me while you do."
"Spar with me," Mamie says, an excited glint in her glowing eyes.
I consider it for a second. She's got really tough armor, and my damage control parties are only slightly less capable than God. There's really no chance either of us can hurt the other one severely, and we're only a day out from Panama anyway. It's a major port, and it's presumably friendly.
I nod and stand up, offering my hand to Mamie. She takes my assistance and stands up facing me.
"Two things," I say solemnly. "First, no guns. No planes, no UAVs, no missiles, no guns."
She gives me an eager nod. "The second thing?"
"You're going to talk to me while we go."
"You got it, boss."
--- Dark Blue ---
It's hard to deny that a South Dakota-class battleship cuts an intimidating silhouette on the water. She's smaller than I am, sure, but I'm shaped with gentle curves. She's shaped with sharp angles. I sneak, she announces. You'd think that our fighting styles would reflect that.
You'd be wrong.
Mamie and I square up several feet apart, with gentle waves lapping at our feet.
"You gonna get started any time soon?" Mamie asks.
I step forward. "I'm considering it."
She smirks, slowly walking to the side. "Any time, old lady."
Mamie clearly wants me to take the lead, and I'm not going to give her that. If she wants to fight me so bad, she's going to have to make the first move. "That's the thing about us old ladies. We've got all day, with nothing better to do."
She lunges forward, fist aimed squarely at my jaw, and I duck. She's good, though; as she passes me, she knocks me forward a step with a kick to my back.
I turn around and wait for her next move; she starts with what looks like another punch, and I sidestep it. "You're not taking me seriously," she says.
With a shrug, I deflect her followup kick. "Rule two. I'll spar with you if you talk to me."
"Are you serious?" Mamie says, lunging at me again. This time, I'm not fast enough. With a resounding clang!, her head impacts my stomach, knocking me to the surface of the water. "Am I that fucking useless?"
"That what this is about, then?" I ask as my ears ring slightly, getting up. "You think you're useless?"
I duck under another punch, using her earlier back-kick trick against her. "Well, I'm sure as shit not getting used, boss," she says through gritted teeth.
"Do you want to be?" I deflect a punch with one arm and take her other fist to the same spot her head had just hit. A solid tactic. "Used, I mean. Is that what you're looking for?"
Mamie aims a kick at me, but I catch her foot, flipping her over. Groaning, she replies, "Shouldn't have asked you to take me seriously."
"Mamie, I was taking you seriously the whole time. I still am. You need a minute?"
She gets up slowly, shaking her now-messy hair out of her eyes. "Do you?"
Shaking my head, I tense up. She comes at me again, and I deflect her punch again. She follows it up again, and I catch her fist again, drawing her in tighter until I have her in a headlock.
"Ready to call it a round, Mamie?"
Her response is a guttural snarl. She applies all her strength to try and budge me, and to her credit, she almost succeeds. But I'm bigger than she is, heavier. She just doesn't have the horsepower.
She goes quiet, and I'm immediately concerned. Did I hold her too tight? Is she unconscious? I'm just about to let her go when she screams, her rigging appearing around her with the turrets leveled directly at my face. I freeze in place, not making any sudden moves, and after a moment, the guns disappear again.
I try to take Mamie's hand, but she slaps my arm away and hisses at me, her voice at its most Abyssal.
"What am I even for?"
"You're asking me?"
"No," Mamie snarls, "I was asking the algae. Yeah, I'm asking you, Princess."
Keeping my hands visible and my voice even, I say, "I'm sorry, but that's not a question I can answer."
With a bitter, reverberating laugh, she asks, "Then what good are you?"
"I can't answer that question because the only person who can give you a purpose is yourself," I say honestly. "I thought I was here to end the war, to free the shipgirls and Abyssals."
"You thought?"
"That's still probably true, but there's something else just as important. Family."
Mamie frowns at me. "I thought you didn't have any sister ships?"
"I don't. That'd be a disaster." I step forward, still trying to keep my hands within her line of sight. "But I seem to have found a few daughters."
"If that's what you want, yes. If all you want is a leader, or if you'd rather never see me again…" I pause, trying to not think about that possibility. "But yes. If you'd have me."
She stands there motionless, and I worry that I haven't explained it right. "That's why I wanted to give you the UAVs - to help train you. You deserve the best equipment you can get, and I want you to be safe."
"Not because I was useless?" she asks softly.
"Mamie. You're never useless. You're a person. You don't need some fate or purpose; you don't need to be used. You get to choose who you want to be, what you want to do."
I scratch my head a little. "I've been thinking about after the war, trying to decide what I'd want to do. Avril gave me some ideas. I was thinking about maybe opening up a workshop, refitting shipgirls with new tech. You could help me if you wanted, or you could do something else."
Mamie slowly walks forward and hugs me. "Yeah, alright…"
I return the hug, and almost miss her whispered "…Mom."
--- Dark Blue ---
Shipgirls, as it turns out, aren't allowed through the Panama Canal. Not directly, anyway. The Canal Authority has apparently had too many issues with kanmusu blocking up vital cargo traffic, deciding that the better option was to simply let the ship-spirits ride along on the small tug-trains that pull actual ships through the canal.
Ironically, that was the easiest part. Getting the controller on duty to allow two Abyssals to ride the trains? That was difficult. In the end, I had to tie both Nimu and Mamie up and carry the two of them like potato sacks, and we were still under armed guard the whole time. I didn't point out that the canal police didn't have anything that could actually damage any of us, because I was fairly certain they were well aware of that.
Still, the ride along the canalway was fairly short. A couple hours' ride, with an hour of sailing across a large lake in the middle, and we were officially in the Atlantic Ocean rather than the Pacific. For something that large portions of the planet depend on, the canal itself was fairly banal.
There was a nice bridge, I suppose, but there are nice bridges everywhere. Panama doesn't exactly have a monopoly on that. Panama City itself has a fairly extensive port complex with a kanmusu presence, but dealing with whatever human commander might have reign over the place doesn't seem very necessary. The girls are all stocked up, and I'm a nuclear boat. I could sail for years if I had to. We just keep sailing, out into the clear skies of the Atlantic.
"Ready to go meet yourself?" I tease Mamie as I get the ropes off her.
"I'm not worthy," my daughter deadpans. "None of us are worthy to be in the presence of such greatness."
I roll my eyes, moving to untie Nimu. "Sorry again about the 'prisoners' thing, girls."
"There was no harm," Nimu replies.
"Alright then. Let's get started."
The four of us set a course for Fall River, accelerating away at 25 knots.
In my radio/intel room, a report began to print, barely noticed by the intel analysts on duty.
CTZ002>004-MAZ002>024-026-RIZ001>008-230515-
Abyssal Storm Beta Local Statement Advisory Number 28
National Weather Service Boston/Norton MA AL082027
403 PM EDT Sun Aug 22 2027
This product covers Southern New England
**ABYSSAL STORM WEATHER PATTERNS CONTINUE 20 NAUTICAL MILES EAST OF SALEM MA**
**NO MOVEMENT DETECTED PAST 24 HOURS**
**MARINE TRAFFIC ADVISED TO AVOID PORT OF BOSTON MA**
