(Image courtesy of "perfectshade" on Fanfiction.net.)
After three snippets in the Kantai...
After three snippets in the Kantai...
For Earth...And Her Colonies (KC/Halo)
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Part 1: First Contact
Nicholas
No longer teaching battlethings on a battleship
- Location
- Ashore again
- Pronouns
- He/Him
(Image courtesy of "perfectshade" on Fanfiction.net.)
After three snippets in the Kantai Collection Fanfic Ideas and Recs page, I've been informed I should make a thread! Comments/ideas/suggestions/etc welcome. Thanks for reading!
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"Oh, man, what the hell?"
The first sensation the girl experienced was confusion. How had she wound up lying on an ocean? As she dragged herself to her feet (noting the fact that, yes, she was standing on water, something she assured herself was impossible,) the girl noticed her equipment was scarred in several places. She wracked her brain, trying to remember what she was doing last.
"Oh right, I was in a knife-range fight with a fucking cruiser. 'Cause that's something we Stalwart's were definitely designed to do." She shook her head. "At least those civvies got away…"
She rubbed her arm, then shook herself out of it. God only knew how, but she was still alive, and that meant she still had her duty. "All stations, check in."
Reports flowed into her bridge, few of them any good. Archer pods and even the point-defense guns were completely depleted; she'd need a complete resupply once she reported back to the Fleet. The one Longsword she was assigned was gone, probably left back where she charged those Covie ships.
A ping to Engineering on the status of her Slipspace drive was answered by the kind of laughter one makes when they're trying not to cry. She decided to let the crew there be for a little while.
Checking around the bridge revealed further bad news. Navigation was completely thrown for a loop; their last known position was deep space, where they had jumped in compliance with the Cole Protocol. Now they were deep inside a planetary gravity well whose atmosphere was right in the habitable zone, but all comm. checks found no traffic on UNSC channels, and calls on any UNSC network went unanswered.
"So let me see if I have this straight. We don't know our location, and because we don't know our location relative to any known star, we can't determine our own location, or how far we are from home." An affirmative; the girl sighed. "Is there anything we do know?"
Surprisingly, short-ranged sensors replied in the affirmative: an unknown contact not too far away. The girl's eyes narrowed. "Still nothing on UNSC hails?" A negative. "Anything matching Covenant configuration?"
After some study, the sensor operator replied no. Nothing matched Covenant, UNSC, or even Insurrectionist. "So…what, a possible first contact?" An affirmative.
"Well," the girl sighed, "let's give it a try, I guess." Who knows? Maybe they would like to be friends.
---
Maybe they'll want to be friends, part of the girl's mind incredulously repeated a short time later. Boy, am I stupid!
"Yipe!" she called out, dodging to the side to avoid enemy fire as she tried to get away. The unknown contact—some girl/snake combination and a host of others—hadn't so much taken one look at her and opened fire. She had approached cautiously, MAC spinning, but as she saw the enemy fire she was forced to choose: shoot and hope she could weather the damage, or dump the MAC charge back into thrusters and dodge for her life.
Eight months of hard-earned experience fighting the Covenant led her to dodge instinctually. The first few ships that encountered the Covenant over Harvest probably believed in their Titanium-A armor plating, but over twenty years of war has shown the complete inability of UNSC armor to stand up to plasma fire. With no Archers or even point-defense guns, her only hope was to gain enough distance to spin up her MAC—and even then, experience fighting the Covenant proved that even a MAC shot was far from a sure thing.
A small part of her brain idly noted the enemy's use of projectile weaponry, and posited that her armor might indeed stand up to it. But that one part was immediately countered by a very recent memory of a Paris heavy catching a plasma torpedo on the nose, explosions cascading back until they reached and detonated the reactor. The girl decided it just wasn't worth the risk to be wrong.
But that still left the problem of trying to outrun snakegirl and her friends, who remained doggedly on her tail. She needed help—anything to distract the hostile so she could reengage.
"Open comms," she muttered, "no encryption. There's gotta be someone out there…" Her fairy immediately balked—for all they know, the Covenant or an Innie might respond; what then? "Then we're dead," the girl growled, "but we're dead anyway if no one comes to help. I'll take the chance."
The fairy still glared, but opened the comm. channel anyway. UNSC frigates were no strangers to choosing between the bad and the worse option.
"Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is UNSC frigate four-one-three light. Am being pursued by unidentified hostile. Armaments depleted, navigation inoperable. Requesting assistance. Message repeats. Mayday, mayday, mayday…"
---
Destroyer Division Six and their two babysitting cruisers were barely a quarter of their way through their resource expedition when the radio rooms of the six ships registered a repeating message coming from the East. Though the transmission was not in a language any of the ships spoke, Tenryuu and the others didn't need to speak English to understand the gist of the message.
It was a cry for help.
Tenryuu set her jaw in frustration, her hand absently perching itself on her sword. Even after the best efforts of the Kanmusu of Japan, most of the Pacific remained deep in Abyssal territory. Even Kanmusu ventured into the Pacific only in force—a lesson enforced when the destroyer Kisaragi was caught on her own and sunk. A few months ago several Kanmusu fleets were dispatched to strike Abyssal forces on the island of Midway, but Tenryuu knew from Nagato that the Midway plan was never intended to secure the Western Pacific: rather, it was a piece of strategic deception, aiming to force the Abyssals to focus west against further Japanese incursion and allow the Americans a window of opportunity to storm and re-secure the Hawaiian Islands, the major center of Abyssal threat in the Eastern Pacific.
Even though the plans had succeeded, Tenryuu knew it had been a close-run thing. CarDivs 1 and 2 had needed weeks of repair, and even with their huge fleets the Americans were fighting tooth and nail to keep the supply train between the mainland and Pearl Harbor open. Despite the victory, the latest large supply run from the United States was still having to take the long southern roundabout, leapfrogging from South America to Australia to the British contingent in Singapore and up to Japan. There was no prospect of further offensive Kanmusu action in the near future.
And if Abyssal territory was dangerous to Kanmusu, it was far worse for conventional ships. Tenryuu shook her head, wondering what idiot had thought it a good idea to venture so deep into the Pacific. Those were dead men, without question.
"Tenryuu-san!" A shout broke Tenryuu out of her grim thoughts, and she looked down at Inazuma's earnest expression. "We have to help them!"
Tenryuu broke into a small smile—Inazuma, ever compassionate, always wanting to help others—but as she looked back up her lips formed back into a frown. She tried to let her kids down easy. "We have our orders, Inazuma. The Admiral is expecting us to succeed. We can't just go charging off and forget our mission."
"But we have to try!" Ikazuchi insisted. "We are Kanmusu of Japan! It's our duty to help! The Admiral will understand!"
"We're not even sure where this ship is, let alone whether we can get there in time," Tenryuu countered regretfully. She was confident in her abilities, but she really had no inclination to charge off deep into enemy territory when it was doubtful they'd even be in time to recover the remains of the crew.
"Actually," Tatsuta spoke up, her radio range-finding working full-bore, "they don't seem too far away—an hour's sailing or so."
"Yeah! Hear that, Tenryuu? We're in range; that means we have to help!" Akatsuki now spoke her piece, and a glance at Hibiki told Tenryuu all she needed to know about the last destroyer's thoughts on the subject.
Tenryuu sighed, glanced at Tatsuta, and then looked up with fire back in her voice. "You're right. We won't just leave them to die! Come on, girls, we've got to get there as fast as we can!"
---
These people really don't know when to quit! the girl thought. She'd lost track of how long this chase had been going on, nor did she have any idea where she was going. For all she knew, snakegirl was leading her into a bunch of her friends. What would she do then?
Overload the reactor, she decided grimly. Give snakebitch a hug of a few megatons, and take them with me.
"Mayday, mayday, mayday," the girl started her message yet again, when suddenly her tactical officer screamed that more projectiles were coming from ahead.
Damnit, this is it then, was all the girl had time to think, before the shells screamed over her head and landed amongst snakebitch and co.
In that moment of confusion, the girl watched as six figures charged past her to engage the enemy, none of which were on any recognition chart in her database.
Still, best not waste the opportunity. The girl swung around, unslinging the weapon on her back and flipping the switch on the side. Instantly her momentum plummeted as her reactor's power flowed from her thrusters into her Magnetic Accelerator Cannon, as the readout on the back of the weapon showed a percentage, rising far too slowly for the girl's liking.
The Stalwart and Charon-class light frigates were the smallest UNSC ships able to mount MACs, but though that meant their reactor was capable of generating enough power to fire a MAC, it was far too small to do so effectively, or in concert with other systems like thrusters. A UNSC light frigate could be speedy and maneuverable, and it could charge and fire a MAC. What it could not do was both at the same time.
Noting the percentage and the rate of increase, the girl calculated it would take over two minutes to build up to full charge. In combat, where ten seconds is an eternity, two full minutes might as well be the next century or so.
Still, there was nothing else she could do, so the girl resigned herself to looking at the battle, where, she noted with some amusement, snakebitch was tangling with someone wielding, of all things, a sword.
---
Tenryuu stared at the scene in front of them. A Kanmusu Tenryuu had never seen before was being chased by not only a flotilla of destroyers, not only a heavy cruiser accompanied by said destroyers, but a goddamn Re-class battleship.
Oh, we're so gonna die.
"Take the destroyers and the cruiser! I'll keep the Re-class busy!" Tenryuu shouted, as all six girls opened fire, startling the unknown Kanmusu and scattering the Abyssals.
Gotta hold on to my torpedoes and make them count, Tenryuu thought. It's all I got that will damage that battleship. She glanced at the odd-looking gun the strange girl was carrying. Hopefully she can help me out!
Yelling at the top of her lungs, Tenryuu swung her sword, but the battleship dodged out of the way faster than a battleship had any right to move. She swung and swung and swung, but never connected. Tenryuu glanced at the unknown Kanmusu, hoping to see her coming to her aid. But though the girl had unslung her weapon, she was just standing there and looking on, as though deciding whether she should intervene or keep running and leave Tenryuu to her fate. A little fucking help would be greatly appreciated, you know!
Unfortunately Tenryuu's distraction cost her; she barely had enough time to dodge a return strike from the Re-class' snake, and then she was on the defensive. Dodging strike after strike, Tenryuu noticed the Re-class barely moving, content to watch with a slasher smile on its face as the snake did the dirty work. This thing is toying with me!
Tenryuu whirled around another snake attack and loosed her torpedoes. The Re-class' eyes went wide as she tried to dodge, but with only partial success. Doubled over in pain, she snarled as she looked up to see Tenryuu charging again with her sword, and opened fire with her batteries. Now it was Tenryuu's turn to frantically dodge, but one shell hit her directly through her stomach, bending her over and forcing the pair to disengage.
By the Emperor and Amaterasu that hurt, Tenryuu thought, as she and the Re-class circled each other. The Re-class suddenly charged, and though Tenryuu leapt out of the way in time she realized she was not as fast as she needed to be. The midships hit may have been a through-and-through, but clearly something had been messed up in engineering.
She dodged the Re-class' next strike, and the one after that, but the third one connected with her chest, sending Tenryuu flat on her back. She tried to stand back up, but clenched her eyes and her teeth when the attempt led her entire right side to explode in agony. Opening her eyes, she froze, taking in the Re-class standing directly above her. As the slasher smile slowly made its way back on to the Re-class' face, Tenryuu slowly inched her left hand closer to her sword, trying for one last attack.
The Re-class noticed her move, however, and the snarl suddenly returned in full force, and it reached its hand back. Fear, anger, and rage raced through Tenryuu's system, finally settling on almost a peace as she came to terms with the fact that she was about to die.
Better me than any of my girls, Tenryuu thought, slowly closing her visible eye. You better take good care of them, Tatsuta.
---
The girl known to the UNSC bureaucracy as light frigate four-one-three found herself rather impressed at the sword skills shown by the eyepatch-wearing girl facing off against snakebitch. She smiled at the sword attacks keeping it off balance, and she cheered internally as she used snakebitch's laziness against her, launching a close-range explosive attack. But she winced at the hits eyepatch took, and as snakebitch loomed over her, the girl realized she was out of time.
She glanced at the charge on her MAC. Eighty-seven percent. It'll have to do. She shouldered the weapon, and taking notes from her compliment of ODST's and Marines, aimed at snakebitch's center mass.
Here goes everything, she thought. Please, let this be enough to get snakebitch's attention away from that ship!
She squeezed the trigger.
---
*POW!*
Tenryuu's eye shot open at one of the loudest noises she had ever heard, coupled with what felt like a punch to the gut. But instead of beholding her own demise, she found herself staring dumbstruck at what was apparently once the hips and legs of a Re-class battleship, the upper half of its torso simply gone. Glancing slightly to the right, she beheld the Re-class' snake tail, also simply staring dumbstruck at where the upper half of its master was just a second before.
Thinking quickly, Tenryuu snatched up her sword in her left hand, sheer adrenaline blasting through the pain as she drove the sword through the snake's head, putting it down. She noticed what looked like a slight smoke trail from where the Re-class's chest once was. Turning, she followed the smoke trail back to the gun of the strange Kanmusu, who seemed just as dumbfounded at the result of its work as everyone else was.
"Shit," Tenryuu called, drawing the Kanmusu's attention down to her. "Why didn't you use that sooner?"
"Tenryuu-san! What was that?" Tatsuta and the DesDiv Six destroyers sailed up, taking in the unknown Kanmusu, her odd weapon, and the rapidly sinking half of a Re-class battleship, before finally refocusing on Tenryuu herself, and her condition. "Tenryuu-san! Are you alright?" Inazuma asked.
"I've been better," Tenryuu admitted as Tatsuta lifted her up and supported her on her shoulder. "We should probably head back to port. I don't think I can make it through the expedition." The fact that Tenryuu was advocating heading back rather than boasting she could continue onward told the destroyer girls more than anything else how serious their minder was hurt. Suddenly, Tenryuu raised her head. "Hey, new girl," she called to the strange Kanmusu, "What's your name?"
The Kanmusu suddenly snapped to attention in a salute closer to the British-style ones Kongou sometimes did than the straight up-and-down arm like the Japanese did. Tenryuu couldn't follow most of what the girl said, other than her name was apparently "Yoo-Enn-Ess-See Hah-Vest," followed by what sounded like numbers.
"Yeah, I didn't really catch much of that, sorry," Tenryuu ground out. The adrenaline was starting to wear off, which meant that the pain was coming back. She'd start to really feel it soon. "I don't know how much you can understand me, but we're heading back to port. You're free to join us; it's up to you."
Yoo-Enn-Ess-See Hah-Vest apparently could get the gist of it. She nodded, and together the seven Kanmusu began the slow journey back to Yokosuka.
-The weapon wielded by our light frigate is based on the mini-MAC weapon introduced in Halo 4. The smoke/condensation trail is based off the Halo sniper rifle. I don't know for certain if the mini-MAC also has that effect, but I liked the image and kept it.
-I'm not actually certain if the 'frigate can maneuver OR fire' is true to the lore, so I might get tagged because 'some awesome maneuver pulled by etcentera' proves me wrong. But I wanted to keep the UNSC ship from being laughably overpowered in spite of a half-millennia time difference, and the shoot-OR-scoot seems like a disadvantage that they would have. (The UNSC has smaller craft, just without MACs; my assumption is the reason is that the (L)FFG's reactor just barely puts out enough power to shoot the damn thing, and that any smaller simply lacks the power.)
-Someone pointed out to me when I floated the idea last that Titanium-A armor plating should mean our frigate can just laugh off puny shellfire, which is true, but I figure that a long war against an enemy whose weapons treat armor like paper-mache would instill an overwhelming instinct to DODGE!
-I'm not actually certain if the 'frigate can maneuver OR fire' is true to the lore, so I might get tagged because 'some awesome maneuver pulled by etcentera' proves me wrong. But I wanted to keep the UNSC ship from being laughably overpowered in spite of a half-millennia time difference, and the shoot-OR-scoot seems like a disadvantage that they would have. (The UNSC has smaller craft, just without MACs; my assumption is the reason is that the (L)FFG's reactor just barely puts out enough power to shoot the damn thing, and that any smaller simply lacks the power.)
-Someone pointed out to me when I floated the idea last that Titanium-A armor plating should mean our frigate can just laugh off puny shellfire, which is true, but I figure that a long war against an enemy whose weapons treat armor like paper-mache would instill an overwhelming instinct to DODGE!
Edited for typos: 17 April 2016.
Last edited:
Part 2: Time Warp
Nicholas
No longer teaching battlethings on a battleship
- Location
- Ashore again
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The waiting is always the hardest part, reflected the battleship Nagato as she stood on the pier of Yokosuka. It had been over an hour since she received Tatsuta's message that their expedition had diverted to rescue a kanmusu under fire and were returning to base with Tenryuu in desperate need of repair. She'd occupied herself with some of the endless paperwork on her desk, but with the expedition due back at any moment she, her sister Mutsu, and her assistant Ooyodo had come down to the pier to see how bad the situation was.
She heard Mutsu giggle, and realized she had been tapping her foot on the pier. Nagato sighed. She supposed she should have been used to waiting like this—she certainly did a lot of it as secretary ship—but it never got easier.
Mutsu's giggles abruptly halted; Nagato looked up, and sucked air in between her teeth. Tenryuu looked bad, and the naked concern on Tatsuta's face for her sister only underscored how serious the situation was.
"Mutsu," Nagato muttered. Her sister needed no further instruction. She hopped into the bay to go relieve Tatsuta of her burden. As DesDiv Six watched the pair head towards the docks, Nagato tried to reassure them. "Don't worry; we'll patch her up. She'll be just fine." The destroyers, concern writ large on their faces, nodded as one; Tatsuta's smirk said Of course she will, but her eyes betrayed her relief.
"Is anyone else hurt?" Nagato asked. To her relief, even though Tatsuta sported a couple bruises and the destroyers looked roughed up, the rest of the expedition shook their heads. Banged up, but not enough to impede a mission, Nagato's mind translated. She sighed. "As much as I hate to do this after the fight you guys must have had, we really do need those supplies. I have to send you back out on your expedition." God, she hated the pouting looks destroyers could give!
"That said," she continued, "I really do have to commend you on your work out there. You've rescued a kanmusu in enemy territory, at great risk to yourselves, and returned home. Rest assured, the Admiral will know about your good work. I know you're all concerned for Tenryuu, but trust me when I say that the fact she made it to port means she'll be alright. I'll make sure there will be treats waiting for you when you get back, and you can share them with Tenryuu later today." The smiles and grins on the destroyers' faces never failed to warm Nagato's heart. They saluted and headed back out to sea once again.
Nagato then turned to the newcomer. "Welcome to Yokosuka, I am the battleship Nagato, secretary ship of this base."
The newcomer didn't seem like she understood what Nagato said, but did realize that it was a greeting. She came to attention. "UNSC Harvest. Eff-eff-gee-elle four-one-three."
Nagato raised an eyebrow, and switched from Japanese to English. "Welcome to Yokosuka, UNSC Harvest." She repeated her introduction, then continued, "I'm afraid there are a couple matters I must see to, and I'm sure you require some replenishment. Light cruiser Ooyodo here will show you to the cafeteria, and we can debrief you afterward. Sound good?"
Harvest nodded and thanked Nagato, before she and Ooyodo headed towards the cafeteria. Nagato watched them walk off with a questioning look on her face. As secretary ship, she was more aware of the situation in the rest of the world than most kanmusu at Yokosuka, but she had never heard of a country designation 'UNSC'. The fact that she spoke English coupled with her possession of both a name and a numeric code pointed to an American ship, but she had no idea what an American ship not part of the relief convoy would be doing so far west.
The alpha-numeric code "FFGL" also threw her off. She knew the code "FFG", having coordinated with guided missile frigates of both the USN and the JMSDF, and mused perhaps that the designation was actually "FFG(L)", but no navy she knew of divided frigates into 'light' and 'heavy' categories.
And if her designation was "FFG(L)" that raised even more questions. No navy had raised a kanmusu whose original hull had been laid after the end of 1945. Though some navies had kanmusu whose ships had served into the second half of the Twentieth Century—many of the American carriers, for example—they had all returned with their World War Two loadouts, and to the best of Nagato's knowledge there had been little success upgrading them beyond that. A guided missile kanmusu would be a huge boon…and yet this one had seemingly been just left to die in the wastes of the Pacific.
Nagato sighed. She supposed she could always call Saratoga and ask her some questions later, but for now she had work to do. The American relief convoy will finally arrive in a couple days, and she still had to debrief Tenryuu. She could speculate on the newcomer another time.
---
UNSC Harvest felt her mouth water. So much food! All recently cooked, a welcome break from shipboard rations!
"Here you go," her minder said. Harvest searched her databanks for a cruiser named Ooyodo and came up empty, but Harvest readily admitted she was far from knowing every ship in the UNSC Navy, or every base for that matter. Even as she started to eat, she realized she'd never heard of a UNSC base named Yokosuka. Pausing briefly (partially to allow her quartermaster a moment to sort the supplies out before stuffing in more) she looked up.
"Ooyodo—is it alright if I call you that?" Receiving a nod, she continued, "I hope you don't mind me asking, but…where am I?"
Ooyodo seemed confused. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," she paused and took another bite. "I've never heard of a base named 'Yokosuka.' Where are we? What theater of the war?"
Ooyodo blinked. Slowly, she said, "Yokosuka is the major Japanese naval base for kanmusu. It represents the main base in the north-west Pacific." She glanced askance at Harvest wolfing down her meal and continued, "It's rather rare that a kanmusu doesn't know about Yokosuka."
"I've never heard the term 'kanmusu' either."
Ooyodo raised an eyebrow. "Well…you're recently returned, so I guess that's understandable. I'll arrange an orientation package for you." Harvest nodded in thanks, then Ooyodo asked, "Where are you from?"
"Reach," Harvest said automatically, then winced. ONI never looked kindly on sailors talking about how badly the war was going; 'loose lips spread panic' or something of the sort. "I mean I was constructed at Reach. As to where I was based," she paused for a moment, considering her answer. "Jericho Theater, Perseus Arm." She took another bite.
Ooyodo gave a skeptical look. "Forgive me, but I'm not familiar with those places. What's Reach?"
Harvest blinked. Maybe she could understand someone not knowing about Jericho, but…"You've never heard of Reach?" When Ooyodo shook her head, Harvest scoffed. "How can you have never heard of Reach? What backwards planet is this?"
Ooyodo's brow furrowed. She responded levelly, "Earth."
Everything in Harvest's mind came to a screeching halt. "Earth?" A nod. "And you've never heard of Reach." Another nod. Harvest leaned back and looked up, as though she could see through the roof to the sky. "The war's not going well at all, is it?" she asked despondently.
Ooyodo considered her own words carefully. "Large parts of the planet are…contested, I'll admit, but we're making progress."
Harvest nodded slowly, then inhaled the rest of the food on her plate. As Ooyodo's eyebrows rose, she checked in with her quartermaster. She'd need to be really restocked if she was to make a difference.
But her ping to her quartermaster on the status of her rearmament was depressing: one Archer.
You mean all that food only restocked one Archer pod? she asked incredulously.
No, her fairy responded. Not one Archer pod. One Archer. Most of what she took on was far too lean to effectively make the material for anti-ship missiles. One Archer was all that they could squeeze out of it.
Harvest looked back up at Ooyodo. "Not to intrude, but is it possible I can have more?"
Ooyodo's eyebrows rose higher. "That's the usual meal for destroyers at our base. You should be fully restocked."
"It's very light," Harvest replied. "Is there something denser? It would make resupplying much more efficient for me."
"Denser?"
"As dense as you can."
---
Feeling like she made a decent enough dent in her paper work, and having dispatched Mutsu into town to fetch treats for DesDiv Six, Nagato made her way into the docks. She winced at the sight of the cruiser sitting in the healing waters there. "Tenryuu," she said in greeting.
"Hey, secretary ship," Tenryuu responded. "What can I do for you?"
"Just came to check up on you," the battleship replied. "I'm sorry, but I had to send your sister and the girls back out on their expedition run. I promised them a treat when they returned though," she amended quickly. Tenryuu nodded. "How are you feeling?"
"Like shit," the cruiser responded bluntly. "My starboard side's pretty well trashed; I'm keeping that arm as still as possible. I don't suppose you can spend a bucket on me?" Nagato shook her head ruefully. "Yeah, didn't think so. But I guess that's what I get for crossing swords with a Re-class."
"What." Nagato's reaction was harsher than she intended, and she regretted the wince she saw on Tenryuu's face. "What happened?"
"That girl was being chased by some destroyers, a heavy cruiser, and a Re-class. I sent Tatsuta and the girls to wreck the cruiser and destroyers while I kept the battleship busy. Got some good hits in on it too, but then it nailed me pretty good."
"And the girls came and saved you?"
"No. That new girl did." She looked up at Nagato. "Secretary ship, that gun the girl carries. It one-shotted a Re-class. It blew her in half. Everything from the waist up; not shot off, just gone."
Nagato, for once, was speechless.
"It didn't sound like a normal cannon either," Tenryuu continued. "Not a 'thud' but a big 'pow'; I felt like I was punched in the gut when it went off, and there was smoke or some contrail from the gun to the target. I've never seen anything like that."
"…I think I have," Nagato muttered. Looking up at Tenryuu she continued, "Early in the Abyssal war, when we kanmusu would still sortie alongside conventional ships. The Americans had some ships with a strange main cannon—a railgun, I think they called it. I remember that contrail and that noise very clearly. But those ships were very few in number, and because the gun was so devastating the Abyssals singled those ships out first. I don't think any of them survived."
"You think the Americans managed to summon one of them as a kanmusu?" Tenryuu read her thoughts.
"Maybe. The ones I remember were very large, but the Americans persisted in calling them destroyers. And though I don't quite recognize the designation, I'm pretty sure the girl introduced herself as a guided missile frigate. But that doesn't explain why you found her in the middle of the Pacific."
"Maybe they got overconfident? Sent her off on her own, thinking she could make it through without trouble?"
"That's not what I mean. The Americans are fighting tooth and nail to secure Hawaii, and we've still got to recover and reorganize from the Midway strikes. Why would they send an incredibly powerful ship to a front unlikely to see any major fighting in the near future when they've got a pressing need for her right on their doorstep?"
Any further musing was cut off when Nagato picked up an urgent radio message from Ooyodo. "Secretary ship, I need you at the mess."
"Cruiser Ooyodo, what is the situation?"
"Well-…Ah-…" Nagato's brow furrowed. Such behavior was very unlike her assistant cruiser. And then came a statement Nagato never expected to hear Ooyodo say:
"Look, you'll see when you get here."
---
When Nagato arrived at the mess, she understood how Ooyodo, of all people, could be speechless.
Empty plates abounded, as the newcomer wolfed down a meal Akagi would be proud of. Oh, God, not another heavy eater! Don't they know that we're having supply problems enough already? She stormed up to the table.
"Enough! Don't you know how tight supplies are? Aren't you fueled enough already?"
"I never needed refueling," Harvest shot back, much to Ooyodo's consternation. "I need rearming. If the war's already come to Earth, I need every bit of ammunition I can get."
Nagato seized Harvest by the arm and bodily yanked her out of the seat, hauling her across the cafeteria and not stopping until the duo were outside. As Ooyodo walked to join them, Nagato leaned close to the overeater and summoned her sternest expression. "You were fully fueled and ate all that anyway? Are you out of your mind? You are not the only ship on this base!"
"I'm the only one here now, and the Covenant are landing! She said much of the planet has already been overrun!" Harvest gestured to Ooyodo, who stared openly at a destroyer who dared to talk back to secretary battleship Nagato. "Earth—Earth—is under attack and you want to conserve supplies? We might have a week at most until we're through! Once they find what they're looking for they'll just glass the place; this isn't a time for hoarding; this is a time for throwing everything you have at them and getting in as many licks as we can!"
"We'll only have a week if you eat all the food on this base and leave nothing for everyone else! We've been at war for five years and have held our own, thank you very much, and we did so through very careful rationing and management of supplies!"
"What the hell do you mean five years? My namesake was over twenty years ago!"
Nagato took a deep breath. "The Abyssals appeared on Earth five years ago, and the kanmusu and navies of the world have been fighting ever since. Times have been tough, but we've made some real progress in the last few months, which will all go to naught if you deprive an entire naval base worth of kanmusu of supplies!"
This at last seemed to have gotten through to the newcomer, but rather than shamed she only seemed confused. "Ooyodo, what year is it?"
What the hell kind of question is that? Nagato thought, and a shared glance told her Ooyodo thought the exact same thing. "Uh…, twenty twenty-five."
The newcomer stared. "Twenty twenty-five? As in two-zero-two-five?"
"Yes…?"
UNSC Harvest looked wide-eyed from Ooyodo, to Nagato, and back to Ooyodo, before her eyes rolled back in her head as she collapsed in a dead faint.
Edited for typos: 17 April 2016.
She heard Mutsu giggle, and realized she had been tapping her foot on the pier. Nagato sighed. She supposed she should have been used to waiting like this—she certainly did a lot of it as secretary ship—but it never got easier.
Mutsu's giggles abruptly halted; Nagato looked up, and sucked air in between her teeth. Tenryuu looked bad, and the naked concern on Tatsuta's face for her sister only underscored how serious the situation was.
"Mutsu," Nagato muttered. Her sister needed no further instruction. She hopped into the bay to go relieve Tatsuta of her burden. As DesDiv Six watched the pair head towards the docks, Nagato tried to reassure them. "Don't worry; we'll patch her up. She'll be just fine." The destroyers, concern writ large on their faces, nodded as one; Tatsuta's smirk said Of course she will, but her eyes betrayed her relief.
"Is anyone else hurt?" Nagato asked. To her relief, even though Tatsuta sported a couple bruises and the destroyers looked roughed up, the rest of the expedition shook their heads. Banged up, but not enough to impede a mission, Nagato's mind translated. She sighed. "As much as I hate to do this after the fight you guys must have had, we really do need those supplies. I have to send you back out on your expedition." God, she hated the pouting looks destroyers could give!
"That said," she continued, "I really do have to commend you on your work out there. You've rescued a kanmusu in enemy territory, at great risk to yourselves, and returned home. Rest assured, the Admiral will know about your good work. I know you're all concerned for Tenryuu, but trust me when I say that the fact she made it to port means she'll be alright. I'll make sure there will be treats waiting for you when you get back, and you can share them with Tenryuu later today." The smiles and grins on the destroyers' faces never failed to warm Nagato's heart. They saluted and headed back out to sea once again.
Nagato then turned to the newcomer. "Welcome to Yokosuka, I am the battleship Nagato, secretary ship of this base."
The newcomer didn't seem like she understood what Nagato said, but did realize that it was a greeting. She came to attention. "UNSC Harvest. Eff-eff-gee-elle four-one-three."
Nagato raised an eyebrow, and switched from Japanese to English. "Welcome to Yokosuka, UNSC Harvest." She repeated her introduction, then continued, "I'm afraid there are a couple matters I must see to, and I'm sure you require some replenishment. Light cruiser Ooyodo here will show you to the cafeteria, and we can debrief you afterward. Sound good?"
Harvest nodded and thanked Nagato, before she and Ooyodo headed towards the cafeteria. Nagato watched them walk off with a questioning look on her face. As secretary ship, she was more aware of the situation in the rest of the world than most kanmusu at Yokosuka, but she had never heard of a country designation 'UNSC'. The fact that she spoke English coupled with her possession of both a name and a numeric code pointed to an American ship, but she had no idea what an American ship not part of the relief convoy would be doing so far west.
The alpha-numeric code "FFGL" also threw her off. She knew the code "FFG", having coordinated with guided missile frigates of both the USN and the JMSDF, and mused perhaps that the designation was actually "FFG(L)", but no navy she knew of divided frigates into 'light' and 'heavy' categories.
And if her designation was "FFG(L)" that raised even more questions. No navy had raised a kanmusu whose original hull had been laid after the end of 1945. Though some navies had kanmusu whose ships had served into the second half of the Twentieth Century—many of the American carriers, for example—they had all returned with their World War Two loadouts, and to the best of Nagato's knowledge there had been little success upgrading them beyond that. A guided missile kanmusu would be a huge boon…and yet this one had seemingly been just left to die in the wastes of the Pacific.
Nagato sighed. She supposed she could always call Saratoga and ask her some questions later, but for now she had work to do. The American relief convoy will finally arrive in a couple days, and she still had to debrief Tenryuu. She could speculate on the newcomer another time.
---
UNSC Harvest felt her mouth water. So much food! All recently cooked, a welcome break from shipboard rations!
"Here you go," her minder said. Harvest searched her databanks for a cruiser named Ooyodo and came up empty, but Harvest readily admitted she was far from knowing every ship in the UNSC Navy, or every base for that matter. Even as she started to eat, she realized she'd never heard of a UNSC base named Yokosuka. Pausing briefly (partially to allow her quartermaster a moment to sort the supplies out before stuffing in more) she looked up.
"Ooyodo—is it alright if I call you that?" Receiving a nod, she continued, "I hope you don't mind me asking, but…where am I?"
Ooyodo seemed confused. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," she paused and took another bite. "I've never heard of a base named 'Yokosuka.' Where are we? What theater of the war?"
Ooyodo blinked. Slowly, she said, "Yokosuka is the major Japanese naval base for kanmusu. It represents the main base in the north-west Pacific." She glanced askance at Harvest wolfing down her meal and continued, "It's rather rare that a kanmusu doesn't know about Yokosuka."
"I've never heard the term 'kanmusu' either."
Ooyodo raised an eyebrow. "Well…you're recently returned, so I guess that's understandable. I'll arrange an orientation package for you." Harvest nodded in thanks, then Ooyodo asked, "Where are you from?"
"Reach," Harvest said automatically, then winced. ONI never looked kindly on sailors talking about how badly the war was going; 'loose lips spread panic' or something of the sort. "I mean I was constructed at Reach. As to where I was based," she paused for a moment, considering her answer. "Jericho Theater, Perseus Arm." She took another bite.
Ooyodo gave a skeptical look. "Forgive me, but I'm not familiar with those places. What's Reach?"
Harvest blinked. Maybe she could understand someone not knowing about Jericho, but…"You've never heard of Reach?" When Ooyodo shook her head, Harvest scoffed. "How can you have never heard of Reach? What backwards planet is this?"
Ooyodo's brow furrowed. She responded levelly, "Earth."
Everything in Harvest's mind came to a screeching halt. "Earth?" A nod. "And you've never heard of Reach." Another nod. Harvest leaned back and looked up, as though she could see through the roof to the sky. "The war's not going well at all, is it?" she asked despondently.
Ooyodo considered her own words carefully. "Large parts of the planet are…contested, I'll admit, but we're making progress."
Harvest nodded slowly, then inhaled the rest of the food on her plate. As Ooyodo's eyebrows rose, she checked in with her quartermaster. She'd need to be really restocked if she was to make a difference.
But her ping to her quartermaster on the status of her rearmament was depressing: one Archer.
You mean all that food only restocked one Archer pod? she asked incredulously.
No, her fairy responded. Not one Archer pod. One Archer. Most of what she took on was far too lean to effectively make the material for anti-ship missiles. One Archer was all that they could squeeze out of it.
Harvest looked back up at Ooyodo. "Not to intrude, but is it possible I can have more?"
Ooyodo's eyebrows rose higher. "That's the usual meal for destroyers at our base. You should be fully restocked."
"It's very light," Harvest replied. "Is there something denser? It would make resupplying much more efficient for me."
"Denser?"
"As dense as you can."
---
Feeling like she made a decent enough dent in her paper work, and having dispatched Mutsu into town to fetch treats for DesDiv Six, Nagato made her way into the docks. She winced at the sight of the cruiser sitting in the healing waters there. "Tenryuu," she said in greeting.
"Hey, secretary ship," Tenryuu responded. "What can I do for you?"
"Just came to check up on you," the battleship replied. "I'm sorry, but I had to send your sister and the girls back out on their expedition run. I promised them a treat when they returned though," she amended quickly. Tenryuu nodded. "How are you feeling?"
"Like shit," the cruiser responded bluntly. "My starboard side's pretty well trashed; I'm keeping that arm as still as possible. I don't suppose you can spend a bucket on me?" Nagato shook her head ruefully. "Yeah, didn't think so. But I guess that's what I get for crossing swords with a Re-class."
"What." Nagato's reaction was harsher than she intended, and she regretted the wince she saw on Tenryuu's face. "What happened?"
"That girl was being chased by some destroyers, a heavy cruiser, and a Re-class. I sent Tatsuta and the girls to wreck the cruiser and destroyers while I kept the battleship busy. Got some good hits in on it too, but then it nailed me pretty good."
"And the girls came and saved you?"
"No. That new girl did." She looked up at Nagato. "Secretary ship, that gun the girl carries. It one-shotted a Re-class. It blew her in half. Everything from the waist up; not shot off, just gone."
Nagato, for once, was speechless.
"It didn't sound like a normal cannon either," Tenryuu continued. "Not a 'thud' but a big 'pow'; I felt like I was punched in the gut when it went off, and there was smoke or some contrail from the gun to the target. I've never seen anything like that."
"…I think I have," Nagato muttered. Looking up at Tenryuu she continued, "Early in the Abyssal war, when we kanmusu would still sortie alongside conventional ships. The Americans had some ships with a strange main cannon—a railgun, I think they called it. I remember that contrail and that noise very clearly. But those ships were very few in number, and because the gun was so devastating the Abyssals singled those ships out first. I don't think any of them survived."
"You think the Americans managed to summon one of them as a kanmusu?" Tenryuu read her thoughts.
"Maybe. The ones I remember were very large, but the Americans persisted in calling them destroyers. And though I don't quite recognize the designation, I'm pretty sure the girl introduced herself as a guided missile frigate. But that doesn't explain why you found her in the middle of the Pacific."
"Maybe they got overconfident? Sent her off on her own, thinking she could make it through without trouble?"
"That's not what I mean. The Americans are fighting tooth and nail to secure Hawaii, and we've still got to recover and reorganize from the Midway strikes. Why would they send an incredibly powerful ship to a front unlikely to see any major fighting in the near future when they've got a pressing need for her right on their doorstep?"
Any further musing was cut off when Nagato picked up an urgent radio message from Ooyodo. "Secretary ship, I need you at the mess."
"Cruiser Ooyodo, what is the situation?"
"Well-…Ah-…" Nagato's brow furrowed. Such behavior was very unlike her assistant cruiser. And then came a statement Nagato never expected to hear Ooyodo say:
"Look, you'll see when you get here."
---
When Nagato arrived at the mess, she understood how Ooyodo, of all people, could be speechless.
Empty plates abounded, as the newcomer wolfed down a meal Akagi would be proud of. Oh, God, not another heavy eater! Don't they know that we're having supply problems enough already? She stormed up to the table.
"Enough! Don't you know how tight supplies are? Aren't you fueled enough already?"
"I never needed refueling," Harvest shot back, much to Ooyodo's consternation. "I need rearming. If the war's already come to Earth, I need every bit of ammunition I can get."
Nagato seized Harvest by the arm and bodily yanked her out of the seat, hauling her across the cafeteria and not stopping until the duo were outside. As Ooyodo walked to join them, Nagato leaned close to the overeater and summoned her sternest expression. "You were fully fueled and ate all that anyway? Are you out of your mind? You are not the only ship on this base!"
"I'm the only one here now, and the Covenant are landing! She said much of the planet has already been overrun!" Harvest gestured to Ooyodo, who stared openly at a destroyer who dared to talk back to secretary battleship Nagato. "Earth—Earth—is under attack and you want to conserve supplies? We might have a week at most until we're through! Once they find what they're looking for they'll just glass the place; this isn't a time for hoarding; this is a time for throwing everything you have at them and getting in as many licks as we can!"
"We'll only have a week if you eat all the food on this base and leave nothing for everyone else! We've been at war for five years and have held our own, thank you very much, and we did so through very careful rationing and management of supplies!"
"What the hell do you mean five years? My namesake was over twenty years ago!"
Nagato took a deep breath. "The Abyssals appeared on Earth five years ago, and the kanmusu and navies of the world have been fighting ever since. Times have been tough, but we've made some real progress in the last few months, which will all go to naught if you deprive an entire naval base worth of kanmusu of supplies!"
This at last seemed to have gotten through to the newcomer, but rather than shamed she only seemed confused. "Ooyodo, what year is it?"
What the hell kind of question is that? Nagato thought, and a shared glance told her Ooyodo thought the exact same thing. "Uh…, twenty twenty-five."
The newcomer stared. "Twenty twenty-five? As in two-zero-two-five?"
"Yes…?"
UNSC Harvest looked wide-eyed from Ooyodo, to Nagato, and back to Ooyodo, before her eyes rolled back in her head as she collapsed in a dead faint.
-I realize some of this is retreading the previous part, but I like situations where the reader knows something the character doesn't, and nothing kills a crossover for me like someone taking the news that they're in a different universe or 500 years in the past with the same level of reaction as learning their shoe is untied. I figure news like that merits less "Yes, and?" and more "OH GOD WHAT??" That said, I don't like them to keep that reaction for too long; they'll try to comprehend and deal with it etc., but nothing kills my immersion more than someone taking the news they has traveled through time and space with just "ho hum."
Edited for typos: 17 April 2016.
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Part 3: Down to Earth
Nicholas
No longer teaching battlethings on a battleship
- Location
- Ashore again
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Battleship Nagato sighed as she sank into her chair. So glad the Admiral let me get a comfortable one, she thought, though she did momentarily regret not having one of those "massage chairs" she'd seen online. She could probably make good use of one after today.
She and Ooyodo had tried to remove Harvest's equipment after she went out cold, but found it surprisingly heavy. Additionally, it wasn't separated for ease-of-maintenance into propulsion, armament, and C&C like, oh, say, the equipment of every single other kanmusu in the freaking world. Ooyodo had to finally summon Akashi from the workshop; she was able to separate girl from equipment, but then had to go back to the workshop to get a cart to carry the stuff, it being far too heavy to carry back.
Nagato could have spent some time wondering how a frigate could carry a load that felt too heavy for two cruisers and a battleship, but with Harvest still unavailable for questioning she decided she'd rather let people with far more rank than her (like the Admiral, the lazy bum) worry about that. She'd report it to him whenever he deigned to show his face next and let him deal with it.
Setting Harvest on a couch outside her office (and covering her with a blanket; she wasn't heartless!) and returning to her paperwork Nagato felt the day go by rather fast. She would have missed DesDiv Six's reunion with Tenryuu had Mutsu not stuck her head in and let her know. (Let Mutsu tease her all she wants; Nagato would never want to miss the joy on those…cute faces…The joy; that's what she went for. The joy! The joy!)
Returning to her office she found Harvest still asleep, but murmuring and fidgeting. Nagato felt her face fall. She was no stranger to nightmares—few kanmusu were—but it still saddened her that someone so small would seem so troubled. She pulled up the blanket and tucked in around the small ship, who seemed to calm down a bit and snuggle in.
Feeling her cheeks heat slightly, Nagato stepped back into her office, remembering something she wanted to do since Harvest had arrived earlier that day. She glanced at the clock, calculating the seventeen-hour time difference between Yokosuka, Japan and San Diego, California. Once she calculated she would not, in fact, be waking her friend at some ungodly hour in the morning, she picked up the phone and dialed one of her closest friends.
"Saratoga," the other end of the line said brusquely. Nagato grinned; anytime someone called the Yokosuka office Nagato went through a whole process: "Kanmusu Base Yokosuka, Secretary Ship Nagato speaking." The Admiral had ordered her to do so: such a greeting was informative he said. It made clear who you were and what position you held, and allowed the caller to address you properly. When Nagato finally found out Saratoga's number, she had been surprised by the abrupt way Saratoga answered her office phone. It took her a couple months to work up the courage to ask why Saratoga answered her phone that way, and the sheer Americanness of it always made Nagato smile. "If you're intending to call this line, you know damn well who I am," Sara had said, "and if you don't know who I am, you damn sure shouldn't be calling me."
"Sara, it's Nagato. Hope I didn't wake you?"
"Nagato! No, it's past reveille, but boy, are you up late. Are you okay?" Nagato felt her chest warm at the sympathy in the American carriers' voice. Nagato was incredibly grateful the Admiral overlooked the long, frequent late-night talks between the Japanese battleship and the American carrier, particularly as her own nightmares kept her awake. Truly, no therapy Nagato could think of helped as much as those midnight chats across the Pacific. She was relieved the Abyssals were never able to cut that connection; she didn't know what she would have done had she needed her friend and not been able to contact her.
But that wasn't why Nagato was calling this night. "I'm doing fine, thank you. I've actually got a couple questions for you. Is this line secure?"
"As secure as it will ever be," Saratoga responded with a chuckle that masked the guard in her voice. A question like that always meant something serious. "What's up?"
"Have you managed to summon any new kanmusu lately?"
"We're always summoning new ship girls. Enterprise is out in the courtyard drilling a new class of escort carriers as we speak, in fact."
"I mean any new, new kanmusu. Post war, like those ships with the strange guns early in the war?"
"Ha! Getting her hands on a Zumwalt's railgun would probably be South Dakota's wet dream. No, no joy getting anything postwar. Hell, Boeing and Northrop-Grumman are driving themselves nuts trying to shrink jets down to size."
"I see." Nagato paused. "Forgive the topic shift, but can you think of anything for the acronym 'UNSC'?"
"Uh…" Nagato could hear Saratoga typing on her computer; she had done the same thing and come up with nothing. "Pff…I dunno. The UN Security Council, maybe? Why do you ask?"
"Just wondering—"
"Bullshit." Nagato smiled ruefully, here was the part of Saratoga that had busted past the barriers and forced Nagato to talk about Crossroads no matter how much she didn't want to. "You're not staying up to midnight just wondering about nothing. C'mon Nagato, what's up?"
"We found a kanmusu in the Abyssal territory," she said slowly. "Her ship prefix is UNSC, and according to one of my subordinates carried what I'm pretty sure is a railgun. Just wanted to ask if you knew anything about it."
"Sorry to disappoint, but I'm sure if we did have anything to do with it SoDak wouldn't stop bragging about it." There was a pause. "If...if you do find out whose ship girl it is, it would be…appreciated if you could let us know. I know a few someones who will never let me hear the end of it if they find out someone has toys like that and we don't."
I'm asking this not as your friend Saratoga but as a representative of the United States Navy. Someone listening in on the call might miss the shift in tone, or assume that the "someones" Saratoga complained about meant South Dakota and the other eager kanmusu working at the tech shop, but Nagato caught on and knew better. After a moment considering what she wanted to say, she replied, "I'll see what I can do. Most of my attention in the next couple days is going to be preparing for the relief convoy. They've had a long trek round the Pacific; maybe they'll want to rest a little bit before heading back."
Japan will not actively aid you, but I won't impede the United States investigating on its own. Saratoga could read between the lines, too. "I'm sure they'd appreciate that, Nagato, thank you. Is there anything else? The damned paperwork fairy went and blessed my desk overnight…" Get off the line. I need to make some calls.
Nagato made sure her yawn went through the line. "No, that's about it, Sara. Enjoy your paperwork; I'm off to bed." Friends regardless?
A chuckle floated back from America. "I'll do my best. Sleep well, Nagato. Take care." Of course. She hung up.
Nagato sighed. Both Saratoga and her were high-ranking kanmusu, so she really wasn't all that surprised that politics intruded on their conversation, but Nagato still hated it when it did. She supposed that at the very least Saratoga never let politics come in between their friendship, so that was something to be grateful for. Even so, she missed the happy feeling she always had ending one of her carefree discussions with the American carrier. She got up from her desk, laid down on the futon she'd laid out in the corner of the office, and was almost immediately asleep.
---
Harvest knew she was a ship, and while she was a ship she knew some of her crew had nightmares. Therefore she knew what nightmares were intellectually, but that never prepared her for experiencing them.
COMFLT PRIORITY-9: Covenant fleet is assuming glassing formation. All frigates are to cease groundside operations immediately, collect what personnel they can, and proceed upstairs. Shivas are authorized by code Whitcomb Seven-Bravo-Niner-Delta.
It had been a small colony. Harvest couldn't even remember the name. She'd diverted there as soon as HIGHCOM received the alert that Covenant had entered the system.
Fleet, transport ship Harmony. Evacuation proceeding apace but we need more time to-
Fleet's bought all the time it can. Five minutes until Covenant close the orbital envelope. You have three minutes to get upstairs, Harmony.
It had been a month since Harvest had glided out of the frigate yards orbiting Reach. Three weeks since she'd received her AI. Two weeks since her crew had come aboard. Her skipper's first mission. Her first mission.
It couldn't end like this.
Fleet, this is patrol Golf-Eight. Requesting extraction.
All available assets are committed to evacuating civilians, Golf-Eight. I'm sorry.
Understood, Fleet. Get as many out as you can.
Harvest hovered above one of the main evacuation points, shuttling as many people as she could. She remembered how stuffed her hanger was. Civilians, Marines, ODSTs, Army, all crammed together. They'd even pushed some Pelicans out of the hanger to make room for more to come in.
So many people, but not enough. Never enough.
Evacuation at Twenty percent; requesting additional Pelicans!
There's no more room! We can't take any more!
This is EVAC point Delta; there's no transport here! We've got thousands of civvies needing a ride out!
All callsigns, the orbital envelope is closed. I repeat, the orbital envelope is closed. If you're not out of atmosphere in the next thirty seconds, the Covenant won't let you out!
The cry, the wail of everyone still on the ground as Harvest ignited her engines and raced skyward! How was it possible that even as she left the atmosphere she could still hear the cry of everyone she left behind?
You can't just leave us!
All Pelicans away. Orbital command out.
I don't want to die!
Large Covenant vessel overhead; I can see the projector charging up. Tell them we did not go quietly into the night. Golf-Eight, over and out.
Anybody! Please! Help!
Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash sh'mei raba…
AUTOMATED MESSAGE: Warning: External temperature at 15,000 degrees. Deploying disaster beacon.
"Shut it off."
She remembered how she froze; how everyone on the bridge froze.
"Skipper?"
"Shut off comms."
Slowly the screams decreased in volume. Softer and softer, before turning silent with a final *click*.
"We've done what we could. Take us into slipspace, random vector."
"It's not enough."
"It never is."
Even as she heard her drive spin up, even as the bright ring of slipspace tugged at her eyes, Harvest couldn't tear her eyes away from the planet. A green and brown jewel. A jewel on which angry red lines blossomed like scars. All unnervingly silent as she slid into slipspace. Running away, away, falling—
Wait. Falling?
"Oof!" Picking herself off the floor, Harvest realized she had slid off a couch. Untangling herself from a blanket, she noticed the light peeking through a door. Creeping towards the door, she was rewarded with a glimpse of Nagato sitting at a desk, working at what appeared to be an early terminal station.
Deciding to leave the battleship be, Harvest snuck away through a different door, through which she could smell salt air. She blinked in surprise. When did it turn dark?
"Must've been out a while," she murmured to herself, walking across a short path and setting herself down on a small ledge overlooking the bay.
Twenty twenty-five. It's 2025. Five hundred years before the Covenant attack Harvest. Harvest shook her head, imagining the possibilities. She could warn them, tell everyone about the Covenant. Give humanity time to prepare! Make sure the Covenant found Harvest not a vulnerable colony world but a fortress bristling with Super MACs! Maybe that'll make them think twice—
Harvest suddenly stopped, the logical AI-driven side of her brain coming back into full effect. So what if she told everyone about the Covenant—it was five hundred years in the future. They'd just think "oh, plenty of time" and forget about it. Or worse, what if they did take that into mind and build Super MACs everywhere? Before the Covenant (and even during the Covenant, to an extent), the major threat to the UNSC had been colonial insurrection. Just a few Super MACs could deny approach to a planet for a while; what if one or several was taken over? The insurrection had seen hard fighting on the ground; capturing a Super MAC would make the Innies a danger in space, too.
Harvest frowned to herself, wondering just where this knowledge came from. A ping to her AI revealed it was just as clueless as she was, and none of her crew had enlisted before the Covenant, but somehow Harvest found herself with memories…bloody terrorism, brutal repression, something about kidnapping children…
I'll ponder that another time, she thought, pushing those memories aside. She leaned back, looking up into the sky, watching the stars. She smiled. I wonder if any of them are familiar.
---
If someone were to ask USS Yorktown where she was, she might sluggishly reply, "Bumfuck, Pacific." Of course, she—or at least, her navigator—really did know her location exactly, but she'd have to work a bit to avoid giving the snarky answer.
What seemed like ages but in fact was about a month ago, she and her task group had started out from Los Angeles escorting a convoy carrying this, that, and all the other stuff to Japan. Initially little sis had volunteered to escort the convoy, but then the Navy had started summoning scores of escort carriers after Hawaii had been seized. Like pulling an ace out of a fighter squadron to teach flight school during the war, Enterprise had been pulled from convoy duty to teach, and so Yorktown was the lucky one to go to Japan.
"I'm living vicariously through you," Enterprise had said when she saw the convoy off. "Don't fuck up."
Faking a gong noise as best she could, Yorktown clapped her hands together and bowed low. Enterprise snorted. Standing up again, Yorktown said loudly, "I shall make you proud, Little E!" Enterprise's deep blush coupled with the intense whispers from some of the late-war and escort carriers in Enterprise's class made Yorktown grin. "See you later, sis," Yorktown said, embracing her sister. "I'll let you know when I get there."
"Take care," Enterprise said, returning it. The entire way out of the bay Yorktown had a Cheshire grin on her face, drawing some odd looks from the cruisers and destroyer in her escort group, but a scream of horror and pure, unadulterated rage echoing from the pier made Yorktown break down laughing. One of the trainees must've actually had the gall to call her "Little E", she thought happily. Not even God can save you after pulling a stunt that stupid, but I sure do appreciate it!
Yorktown appreciated that memory quite often in the month since; traveling very slow with the same few ships tended to exhaust the novelty very quickly. Sure they'd met up with ship girls from Australia, Britain, and now China on her trek round the Pacific, but they'd always be so focused on "super-serious convoy making super-serious trek to Japan" that they'd be all business. Sure Yorktown knew this stuff was important, but she didn't see why the others couldn't do their job and have a little fun doing it.
Hammann pulled up alongside. "Oi, Skippy, Sara wants to talk to you." Yorktown smiled as she took the phone. Other navies were often astonished at the sheer informality permitted by American ship girls, but it took different forms. Early war carriers were extremely informal with each other, and longtime escorts were often given great leeway by those they had escorted. Yorkten (as Yorktown had nicknamed her Essex-class replacement) would never dream of calling Enterprise "Little E", and Yorktown would come down hard on almost any destroyer other than Hammann shortening "Skipper" to "Skippy".
Thus Yorktown ignored the looks shared by some of the Chinese ship girls when she picked up the phone and said, "Hey, Sara, have your surfing lessons paid off yet?"
"Funny, Yorktown," Saratoga replied. The fact that Saratoga called her "Yorktown" rather than "York" (or, after she'd had a few that one time, "Yorky") said this wasn't a social call. "Listen, Nagato is going to put you and your girls up for a few days to catch some rest."
"I'm sure they'll be glad to hear the news," Yorktown said, both knowing they would be staying a bit anyway while all the cargo was unloaded. "Anything else you need me to do while I'm there?"
"The Japanese say they've found a new ship girl out in the Abyssal territories." Found? "We want you to look on her a bit. She goes by the name 'UNSC Harvest'…"
Edited for typos: 17 April 2016.
She and Ooyodo had tried to remove Harvest's equipment after she went out cold, but found it surprisingly heavy. Additionally, it wasn't separated for ease-of-maintenance into propulsion, armament, and C&C like, oh, say, the equipment of every single other kanmusu in the freaking world. Ooyodo had to finally summon Akashi from the workshop; she was able to separate girl from equipment, but then had to go back to the workshop to get a cart to carry the stuff, it being far too heavy to carry back.
Nagato could have spent some time wondering how a frigate could carry a load that felt too heavy for two cruisers and a battleship, but with Harvest still unavailable for questioning she decided she'd rather let people with far more rank than her (like the Admiral, the lazy bum) worry about that. She'd report it to him whenever he deigned to show his face next and let him deal with it.
Setting Harvest on a couch outside her office (and covering her with a blanket; she wasn't heartless!) and returning to her paperwork Nagato felt the day go by rather fast. She would have missed DesDiv Six's reunion with Tenryuu had Mutsu not stuck her head in and let her know. (Let Mutsu tease her all she wants; Nagato would never want to miss the joy on those…cute faces…The joy; that's what she went for. The joy! The joy!)
Returning to her office she found Harvest still asleep, but murmuring and fidgeting. Nagato felt her face fall. She was no stranger to nightmares—few kanmusu were—but it still saddened her that someone so small would seem so troubled. She pulled up the blanket and tucked in around the small ship, who seemed to calm down a bit and snuggle in.
Feeling her cheeks heat slightly, Nagato stepped back into her office, remembering something she wanted to do since Harvest had arrived earlier that day. She glanced at the clock, calculating the seventeen-hour time difference between Yokosuka, Japan and San Diego, California. Once she calculated she would not, in fact, be waking her friend at some ungodly hour in the morning, she picked up the phone and dialed one of her closest friends.
"Saratoga," the other end of the line said brusquely. Nagato grinned; anytime someone called the Yokosuka office Nagato went through a whole process: "Kanmusu Base Yokosuka, Secretary Ship Nagato speaking." The Admiral had ordered her to do so: such a greeting was informative he said. It made clear who you were and what position you held, and allowed the caller to address you properly. When Nagato finally found out Saratoga's number, she had been surprised by the abrupt way Saratoga answered her office phone. It took her a couple months to work up the courage to ask why Saratoga answered her phone that way, and the sheer Americanness of it always made Nagato smile. "If you're intending to call this line, you know damn well who I am," Sara had said, "and if you don't know who I am, you damn sure shouldn't be calling me."
"Sara, it's Nagato. Hope I didn't wake you?"
"Nagato! No, it's past reveille, but boy, are you up late. Are you okay?" Nagato felt her chest warm at the sympathy in the American carriers' voice. Nagato was incredibly grateful the Admiral overlooked the long, frequent late-night talks between the Japanese battleship and the American carrier, particularly as her own nightmares kept her awake. Truly, no therapy Nagato could think of helped as much as those midnight chats across the Pacific. She was relieved the Abyssals were never able to cut that connection; she didn't know what she would have done had she needed her friend and not been able to contact her.
But that wasn't why Nagato was calling this night. "I'm doing fine, thank you. I've actually got a couple questions for you. Is this line secure?"
"As secure as it will ever be," Saratoga responded with a chuckle that masked the guard in her voice. A question like that always meant something serious. "What's up?"
"Have you managed to summon any new kanmusu lately?"
"We're always summoning new ship girls. Enterprise is out in the courtyard drilling a new class of escort carriers as we speak, in fact."
"I mean any new, new kanmusu. Post war, like those ships with the strange guns early in the war?"
"Ha! Getting her hands on a Zumwalt's railgun would probably be South Dakota's wet dream. No, no joy getting anything postwar. Hell, Boeing and Northrop-Grumman are driving themselves nuts trying to shrink jets down to size."
"I see." Nagato paused. "Forgive the topic shift, but can you think of anything for the acronym 'UNSC'?"
"Uh…" Nagato could hear Saratoga typing on her computer; she had done the same thing and come up with nothing. "Pff…I dunno. The UN Security Council, maybe? Why do you ask?"
"Just wondering—"
"Bullshit." Nagato smiled ruefully, here was the part of Saratoga that had busted past the barriers and forced Nagato to talk about Crossroads no matter how much she didn't want to. "You're not staying up to midnight just wondering about nothing. C'mon Nagato, what's up?"
"We found a kanmusu in the Abyssal territory," she said slowly. "Her ship prefix is UNSC, and according to one of my subordinates carried what I'm pretty sure is a railgun. Just wanted to ask if you knew anything about it."
"Sorry to disappoint, but I'm sure if we did have anything to do with it SoDak wouldn't stop bragging about it." There was a pause. "If...if you do find out whose ship girl it is, it would be…appreciated if you could let us know. I know a few someones who will never let me hear the end of it if they find out someone has toys like that and we don't."
I'm asking this not as your friend Saratoga but as a representative of the United States Navy. Someone listening in on the call might miss the shift in tone, or assume that the "someones" Saratoga complained about meant South Dakota and the other eager kanmusu working at the tech shop, but Nagato caught on and knew better. After a moment considering what she wanted to say, she replied, "I'll see what I can do. Most of my attention in the next couple days is going to be preparing for the relief convoy. They've had a long trek round the Pacific; maybe they'll want to rest a little bit before heading back."
Japan will not actively aid you, but I won't impede the United States investigating on its own. Saratoga could read between the lines, too. "I'm sure they'd appreciate that, Nagato, thank you. Is there anything else? The damned paperwork fairy went and blessed my desk overnight…" Get off the line. I need to make some calls.
Nagato made sure her yawn went through the line. "No, that's about it, Sara. Enjoy your paperwork; I'm off to bed." Friends regardless?
A chuckle floated back from America. "I'll do my best. Sleep well, Nagato. Take care." Of course. She hung up.
Nagato sighed. Both Saratoga and her were high-ranking kanmusu, so she really wasn't all that surprised that politics intruded on their conversation, but Nagato still hated it when it did. She supposed that at the very least Saratoga never let politics come in between their friendship, so that was something to be grateful for. Even so, she missed the happy feeling she always had ending one of her carefree discussions with the American carrier. She got up from her desk, laid down on the futon she'd laid out in the corner of the office, and was almost immediately asleep.
---
Harvest knew she was a ship, and while she was a ship she knew some of her crew had nightmares. Therefore she knew what nightmares were intellectually, but that never prepared her for experiencing them.
COMFLT PRIORITY-9: Covenant fleet is assuming glassing formation. All frigates are to cease groundside operations immediately, collect what personnel they can, and proceed upstairs. Shivas are authorized by code Whitcomb Seven-Bravo-Niner-Delta.
It had been a small colony. Harvest couldn't even remember the name. She'd diverted there as soon as HIGHCOM received the alert that Covenant had entered the system.
Fleet, transport ship Harmony. Evacuation proceeding apace but we need more time to-
Fleet's bought all the time it can. Five minutes until Covenant close the orbital envelope. You have three minutes to get upstairs, Harmony.
It had been a month since Harvest had glided out of the frigate yards orbiting Reach. Three weeks since she'd received her AI. Two weeks since her crew had come aboard. Her skipper's first mission. Her first mission.
It couldn't end like this.
Fleet, this is patrol Golf-Eight. Requesting extraction.
All available assets are committed to evacuating civilians, Golf-Eight. I'm sorry.
Understood, Fleet. Get as many out as you can.
Harvest hovered above one of the main evacuation points, shuttling as many people as she could. She remembered how stuffed her hanger was. Civilians, Marines, ODSTs, Army, all crammed together. They'd even pushed some Pelicans out of the hanger to make room for more to come in.
So many people, but not enough. Never enough.
Evacuation at Twenty percent; requesting additional Pelicans!
There's no more room! We can't take any more!
This is EVAC point Delta; there's no transport here! We've got thousands of civvies needing a ride out!
All callsigns, the orbital envelope is closed. I repeat, the orbital envelope is closed. If you're not out of atmosphere in the next thirty seconds, the Covenant won't let you out!
The cry, the wail of everyone still on the ground as Harvest ignited her engines and raced skyward! How was it possible that even as she left the atmosphere she could still hear the cry of everyone she left behind?
You can't just leave us!
All Pelicans away. Orbital command out.
I don't want to die!
Large Covenant vessel overhead; I can see the projector charging up. Tell them we did not go quietly into the night. Golf-Eight, over and out.
Anybody! Please! Help!
Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash sh'mei raba…
AUTOMATED MESSAGE: Warning: External temperature at 15,000 degrees. Deploying disaster beacon.
"Shut it off."
She remembered how she froze; how everyone on the bridge froze.
"Skipper?"
"Shut off comms."
Slowly the screams decreased in volume. Softer and softer, before turning silent with a final *click*.
"We've done what we could. Take us into slipspace, random vector."
"It's not enough."
"It never is."
Even as she heard her drive spin up, even as the bright ring of slipspace tugged at her eyes, Harvest couldn't tear her eyes away from the planet. A green and brown jewel. A jewel on which angry red lines blossomed like scars. All unnervingly silent as she slid into slipspace. Running away, away, falling—
Wait. Falling?
"Oof!" Picking herself off the floor, Harvest realized she had slid off a couch. Untangling herself from a blanket, she noticed the light peeking through a door. Creeping towards the door, she was rewarded with a glimpse of Nagato sitting at a desk, working at what appeared to be an early terminal station.
Deciding to leave the battleship be, Harvest snuck away through a different door, through which she could smell salt air. She blinked in surprise. When did it turn dark?
"Must've been out a while," she murmured to herself, walking across a short path and setting herself down on a small ledge overlooking the bay.
Twenty twenty-five. It's 2025. Five hundred years before the Covenant attack Harvest. Harvest shook her head, imagining the possibilities. She could warn them, tell everyone about the Covenant. Give humanity time to prepare! Make sure the Covenant found Harvest not a vulnerable colony world but a fortress bristling with Super MACs! Maybe that'll make them think twice—
Harvest suddenly stopped, the logical AI-driven side of her brain coming back into full effect. So what if she told everyone about the Covenant—it was five hundred years in the future. They'd just think "oh, plenty of time" and forget about it. Or worse, what if they did take that into mind and build Super MACs everywhere? Before the Covenant (and even during the Covenant, to an extent), the major threat to the UNSC had been colonial insurrection. Just a few Super MACs could deny approach to a planet for a while; what if one or several was taken over? The insurrection had seen hard fighting on the ground; capturing a Super MAC would make the Innies a danger in space, too.
Harvest frowned to herself, wondering just where this knowledge came from. A ping to her AI revealed it was just as clueless as she was, and none of her crew had enlisted before the Covenant, but somehow Harvest found herself with memories…bloody terrorism, brutal repression, something about kidnapping children…
I'll ponder that another time, she thought, pushing those memories aside. She leaned back, looking up into the sky, watching the stars. She smiled. I wonder if any of them are familiar.
---
If someone were to ask USS Yorktown where she was, she might sluggishly reply, "Bumfuck, Pacific." Of course, she—or at least, her navigator—really did know her location exactly, but she'd have to work a bit to avoid giving the snarky answer.
What seemed like ages but in fact was about a month ago, she and her task group had started out from Los Angeles escorting a convoy carrying this, that, and all the other stuff to Japan. Initially little sis had volunteered to escort the convoy, but then the Navy had started summoning scores of escort carriers after Hawaii had been seized. Like pulling an ace out of a fighter squadron to teach flight school during the war, Enterprise had been pulled from convoy duty to teach, and so Yorktown was the lucky one to go to Japan.
"I'm living vicariously through you," Enterprise had said when she saw the convoy off. "Don't fuck up."
Faking a gong noise as best she could, Yorktown clapped her hands together and bowed low. Enterprise snorted. Standing up again, Yorktown said loudly, "I shall make you proud, Little E!" Enterprise's deep blush coupled with the intense whispers from some of the late-war and escort carriers in Enterprise's class made Yorktown grin. "See you later, sis," Yorktown said, embracing her sister. "I'll let you know when I get there."
"Take care," Enterprise said, returning it. The entire way out of the bay Yorktown had a Cheshire grin on her face, drawing some odd looks from the cruisers and destroyer in her escort group, but a scream of horror and pure, unadulterated rage echoing from the pier made Yorktown break down laughing. One of the trainees must've actually had the gall to call her "Little E", she thought happily. Not even God can save you after pulling a stunt that stupid, but I sure do appreciate it!
Yorktown appreciated that memory quite often in the month since; traveling very slow with the same few ships tended to exhaust the novelty very quickly. Sure they'd met up with ship girls from Australia, Britain, and now China on her trek round the Pacific, but they'd always be so focused on "super-serious convoy making super-serious trek to Japan" that they'd be all business. Sure Yorktown knew this stuff was important, but she didn't see why the others couldn't do their job and have a little fun doing it.
Hammann pulled up alongside. "Oi, Skippy, Sara wants to talk to you." Yorktown smiled as she took the phone. Other navies were often astonished at the sheer informality permitted by American ship girls, but it took different forms. Early war carriers were extremely informal with each other, and longtime escorts were often given great leeway by those they had escorted. Yorkten (as Yorktown had nicknamed her Essex-class replacement) would never dream of calling Enterprise "Little E", and Yorktown would come down hard on almost any destroyer other than Hammann shortening "Skipper" to "Skippy".
Thus Yorktown ignored the looks shared by some of the Chinese ship girls when she picked up the phone and said, "Hey, Sara, have your surfing lessons paid off yet?"
"Funny, Yorktown," Saratoga replied. The fact that Saratoga called her "Yorktown" rather than "York" (or, after she'd had a few that one time, "Yorky") said this wasn't a social call. "Listen, Nagato is going to put you and your girls up for a few days to catch some rest."
"I'm sure they'll be glad to hear the news," Yorktown said, both knowing they would be staying a bit anyway while all the cargo was unloaded. "Anything else you need me to do while I'm there?"
"The Japanese say they've found a new ship girl out in the Abyssal territories." Found? "We want you to look on her a bit. She goes by the name 'UNSC Harvest'…"
-Apologies for the lack of action, but everything I wrote fiction-wise before has always been action scenes, and I'm kind of enjoying the change of pace to get to know the characters more. Lemme know if it's starting to drag a bit and I'll see what I can do.
-As I said above, I've never been that good at characterization, so I'm not sure if Yorktown comes off well.
-I'm not sure if it came across, but I'm trying to imply that Harvest knows a bit too much about the Insurrection for a frigate born in the middle of the Covenant war. Exactly how is spoilery. (I'd make a wordplay joke like the one linked, but I can't find a "spoiler"-"ONI" combination that does it justice.)
-As I said above, I've never been that good at characterization, so I'm not sure if Yorktown comes off well.
-I'm not sure if it came across, but I'm trying to imply that Harvest knows a bit too much about the Insurrection for a frigate born in the middle of the Covenant war. Exactly how is spoilery. (I'd make a wordplay joke like the one linked, but I can't find a "spoiler"-"ONI" combination that does it justice.)
Edited for typos: 17 April 2016.
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Good job now the Question is are you going to add post war warships now that reach is here.
If so keep the numbers down with almost insane resource cost.
More HALO ships I would say please don't it is more interesting this way and slice of life scenes interspersed with combat is good.
Too much Combat is all show no tell it doesn't give us character growth people in combat aren't like how they are out of it.
If so keep the numbers down with almost insane resource cost.
More HALO ships I would say please don't it is more interesting this way and slice of life scenes interspersed with combat is good.
Too much Combat is all show no tell it doesn't give us character growth people in combat aren't like how they are out of it.
Nicholas
No longer teaching battlethings on a battleship
- Location
- Ashore again
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm not planning on adding more blatantly OP ships...or at least too many more.
Harvest looks about destroyer-size, which is one of the reasons Nagato is so confused. In terms of what class Harvest was as a ship, she was/is a Stalwart class light frigate.
Put bluntly as tiny as she is she could break Nagato over her knee in a fist fight.
- Location
- united states
This looks interesting. I think I will watch this. I do have one question, can Harvest escape our gravity well?
Theadmarks requested, or at least an index.
Theadmarks requested, or at least an index.
ShineUCrazyStar
Grossly Incandescent
- Location
- Being the Sun
Man, only one archer missile per standard dinner? Then again Archer missiles were designed to be used against human starships with titanium-A armor plating measured in meters of thickness.
DonutAttack
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- The factory of pastries
Pretty Interesting! Going on my watched list, too. It was the really nice title that got me.
Nicholas
No longer teaching battlethings on a battleship
- Location
- Ashore again
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Threadmarks added! (Though I suck at coming up with names for chapters)
She can more or less (her last battle before arriving here was a doozy), but there's nowhere else to go. Humanity hasn't expanded into space yet, and her slipspace drive is pretty shot anyway.
She can more or less (her last battle before arriving here was a doozy), but there's nowhere else to go. Humanity hasn't expanded into space yet, and her slipspace drive is pretty shot anyway.
Mechanis
Confirmed Extremely Screwed
- Location
- Absconding with Alacrity
I think the implication was "Can Harvest get the Ultimate High Ground (IE, Orbit) where even the biggest, baddest abyssal can't do shit to her while she's perfectly capable of doing unto them."
because then all the Kanmasu have to do is carry target painters and watch as MAC shots smash Abyssals like plastic toys. Ortillery makes most surface combatants (especially naval forces- not like there's a whole lot to collateral damage in the middle of the fucking ocean) kinda-sorta irrelevant.
because then all the Kanmasu have to do is carry target painters and watch as MAC shots smash Abyssals like plastic toys. Ortillery makes most surface combatants (especially naval forces- not like there's a whole lot to collateral damage in the middle of the fucking ocean) kinda-sorta irrelevant.
Nicholas
No longer teaching battlethings on a battleship
- Location
- Ashore again
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In that case probably not. A starship from 500 years in the future that can one-shot a Re-class battleship is overpowered enough. Sorry to disappoint anyone who came for 'God-tier UNSC raking kills and ship-bitches', but this isn't a stompfic.
Though a scene like that would, admittedly, be awesome.
Though a scene like that would, admittedly, be awesome.
- Location
- Seattle, Washington, USA
It doesn't need to specifically be a stompfic for Abyssals to get stomped. Even with a non-MAC ship, just pushing large rocks out the cargo bay would stomp surface ships.
You've basically come up with a scenario where you've substituted an M1 Abrams for David and Goliath still has just a bronze sword. Goliath has a problem, as do you if you want it not to be a stomp.
- Location
- United States
Ooh, promising.
- Collateral damage. The most obvious one, but there is absolutely no way that firing a multi-kiloton range kinetic weapon at anything on a planetary surface is safe. A swift bit of research tells me that the standard UNSC MAC throws 600 ton slugs at 30 K/s, for a rough yield of 64.53 kilotons of TNT. For reference, that is roughly 3-4 times the yield of the Little Boy/Fat Man atomic bombs the IJN shipgirls are familiar with, and a little over half the yield of a single warhead from a relatively modern nuclear ICBM (which are generally MIRV units that carry as many as twelve warheads). It is not clear to what level shipgirl space magic applies, but even firing a weapon like that in atmosphere is unsafe. MAC rounds aren't totally equivalent to explosive warheads, their energy yield is released differently, but it is still a significant hazard and just being near a round passing through atmosphere would probably turn a human being into paste from the shockwave of travel.
Her nuclear arsenal, if ever replenished, would be several orders of magnitude more destructive (HAVOK Tactical Nuclear Warheads have a listed yield of 30 megatons, Shiva-class ship warheads can thus be extrapolated to have a higher yield), and we do not have any solid information on the destructiveness of Archer missiles (beyond that they are anti-ship missiles designed to punch through multiple meters of hull armor). Outside her main weapons, there may be issues with safe lift-off or maneuvering, engines rated for interstellar travel aren't really designed to be safe for anything in their drive wake or thrust cone.
- Fuel or resource cost. We know that UNSC Frigates are capable of entering atmosphere and operating, but there's no way it's efficient or easy. The UNSC does not (I believe?) have large scale anti-gravity although evidence seems to indicate they have enough for internal ship gravity. This means that lifting off and hanging around in atmo requires constant fuel use and attention to avoid just dropping out of the sky. It may well be too expensive to support, especially since Harvest can only resupply ground-side, which means she has to burn resources to get up, and then also safely back down. We have already seen how costly basic munitions replenishment is, and while Harvest does not use "normal" fuel like surface naval units, I cannot imagine her supply costs being any cheaper when she's converting her intake into things like deuterium to run her fusion plant, or thousands of tons of ferric tungsten to replace expended MAC rounds. This issue could be partially circumvented by putting Harvest up in orbit and having her stay there for a length of time, days or weeks, but this has its own issues addressed below.
- Psychological issues. While not likely, it is possible that Harvest will have issues engaging in orbital bombardment of a human planet, possibly as a result of having seen too many colonies glassed. I do not think this is terribly likely, as Frigates are apparently commonly used as combat landing ships and planetary support, Stalwart-class especially research would indicate, and it's fairly likely she has already had to bombard Covenant targets on contested planets. This may also apply to the isolation of any orbital duty, particularly if it is prolonged.
- Targeting issues. UNSC Frigates aren't really designed to pick out and engage human sized targets from orbit, and local humanity may not have an effective means of painting targets for orbital fire. Then too, unlike actual human-equivalent combatants, Abyssals are roughly as durable as their equivalent naval vessel, which renders a lot of any splash damage or area-effect ineffective. Not totally, obviously, but likely enough to make anything short of a near-miss or grazing hit unable to kill heavier combatants.
- Other secondary effects. I've already mentioned collateral damage from lift-off, but there is also reentry heat (which could roast anyone who stands next to her for minutes afterward), political concerns, or something else that may not have occurred to me.
Combined or separate, these would prevent any orbital curbstomping from being a regular occurrence, while leaving it as a very expensive possibility. Quite frankly, I do not believe Harvest even really needs that level of firepower. Archer missiles and her strikecraft complement alone are horrific to consider when applied to Abyssals. UNSC Frigates had a standard load of 1200 Archers, and if I recall correctly the Charon-class Frigates carried several Longsword squadrons. While nominally interceptors it would not be hard to rearm Longswords for surface attack, and Pelicans can be configured in a heavy gunship role as well. Ignoring all that, her 50mm secondary gun batteries are liable to do horrible things to cruiser weight or lighter surface naval vessels.
And even unarmed, research suggests Harvest has ~60cm/24in of battle plate, which gives her thicker armor than any shipgirl short of Yamato or Musashi's turret plating. And that without considering how much more resilient Titanium-A battle plate is compared to the hardened steel of 1900s naval armor.
There are a few dodges for this particular problem that won't invalidate the fact that, as a interstellar warship, Harvest should otherwise be capable of this.
- Collateral damage. The most obvious one, but there is absolutely no way that firing a multi-kiloton range kinetic weapon at anything on a planetary surface is safe. A swift bit of research tells me that the standard UNSC MAC throws 600 ton slugs at 30 K/s, for a rough yield of 64.53 kilotons of TNT. For reference, that is roughly 3-4 times the yield of the Little Boy/Fat Man atomic bombs the IJN shipgirls are familiar with, and a little over half the yield of a single warhead from a relatively modern nuclear ICBM (which are generally MIRV units that carry as many as twelve warheads). It is not clear to what level shipgirl space magic applies, but even firing a weapon like that in atmosphere is unsafe. MAC rounds aren't totally equivalent to explosive warheads, their energy yield is released differently, but it is still a significant hazard and just being near a round passing through atmosphere would probably turn a human being into paste from the shockwave of travel.
Her nuclear arsenal, if ever replenished, would be several orders of magnitude more destructive (HAVOK Tactical Nuclear Warheads have a listed yield of 30 megatons, Shiva-class ship warheads can thus be extrapolated to have a higher yield), and we do not have any solid information on the destructiveness of Archer missiles (beyond that they are anti-ship missiles designed to punch through multiple meters of hull armor). Outside her main weapons, there may be issues with safe lift-off or maneuvering, engines rated for interstellar travel aren't really designed to be safe for anything in their drive wake or thrust cone.
- Fuel or resource cost. We know that UNSC Frigates are capable of entering atmosphere and operating, but there's no way it's efficient or easy. The UNSC does not (I believe?) have large scale anti-gravity although evidence seems to indicate they have enough for internal ship gravity. This means that lifting off and hanging around in atmo requires constant fuel use and attention to avoid just dropping out of the sky. It may well be too expensive to support, especially since Harvest can only resupply ground-side, which means she has to burn resources to get up, and then also safely back down. We have already seen how costly basic munitions replenishment is, and while Harvest does not use "normal" fuel like surface naval units, I cannot imagine her supply costs being any cheaper when she's converting her intake into things like deuterium to run her fusion plant, or thousands of tons of ferric tungsten to replace expended MAC rounds. This issue could be partially circumvented by putting Harvest up in orbit and having her stay there for a length of time, days or weeks, but this has its own issues addressed below.
- Psychological issues. While not likely, it is possible that Harvest will have issues engaging in orbital bombardment of a human planet, possibly as a result of having seen too many colonies glassed. I do not think this is terribly likely, as Frigates are apparently commonly used as combat landing ships and planetary support, Stalwart-class especially research would indicate, and it's fairly likely she has already had to bombard Covenant targets on contested planets. This may also apply to the isolation of any orbital duty, particularly if it is prolonged.
- Targeting issues. UNSC Frigates aren't really designed to pick out and engage human sized targets from orbit, and local humanity may not have an effective means of painting targets for orbital fire. Then too, unlike actual human-equivalent combatants, Abyssals are roughly as durable as their equivalent naval vessel, which renders a lot of any splash damage or area-effect ineffective. Not totally, obviously, but likely enough to make anything short of a near-miss or grazing hit unable to kill heavier combatants.
- Other secondary effects. I've already mentioned collateral damage from lift-off, but there is also reentry heat (which could roast anyone who stands next to her for minutes afterward), political concerns, or something else that may not have occurred to me.
Combined or separate, these would prevent any orbital curbstomping from being a regular occurrence, while leaving it as a very expensive possibility. Quite frankly, I do not believe Harvest even really needs that level of firepower. Archer missiles and her strikecraft complement alone are horrific to consider when applied to Abyssals. UNSC Frigates had a standard load of 1200 Archers, and if I recall correctly the Charon-class Frigates carried several Longsword squadrons. While nominally interceptors it would not be hard to rearm Longswords for surface attack, and Pelicans can be configured in a heavy gunship role as well. Ignoring all that, her 50mm secondary gun batteries are liable to do horrible things to cruiser weight or lighter surface naval vessels.
And even unarmed, research suggests Harvest has ~60cm/24in of battle plate, which gives her thicker armor than any shipgirl short of Yamato or Musashi's turret plating. And that without considering how much more resilient Titanium-A battle plate is compared to the hardened steel of 1900s naval armor.
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Mechanis
Confirmed Extremely Screwed
- Location
- Absconding with Alacrity
yeah, pretty much what Gind said. Harvest is just so much more powerful and advanced than anything the Abyssals have, she's built on a totally different paradigm. Harvest is twice the size of a fucking Iowa Class, and she can fly. and she carries nukes.
and the MAC, of course.
right now, she's running on empty and suffering major OCP shock, but pre-Dreadnought surface warships are basically just fancy target buoys.
and the MAC, of course.
right now, she's running on empty and suffering major OCP shock, but pre-Dreadnought surface warships are basically just fancy target buoys.
Kolar
Is Not A Robot
I've only read part 1 and two so far, but Harvest comes across as being dense as a neutron star.
She acts a lot like she is new to this whole Kanmusu thing, but she doesn't question her new form at all.
Like, why is she on the water? She wasn't built as a wet navy ship. She doesn't question the fact that she isn't sinking like a fucking stone, or try get air-born at all.
She doesn't pick up the massive amount of communications Earth should be putting out at all? Fat chance.
She doesn't have Japanese in her databanks? I find that unlikely, but would be willing to accept it if it was explained at all.
1. She isn't being sent a new updated registry, (or requested one).
2. None of these ships are giving any kind of IFF.
3. Non of the ships are using UNSC communications protocols, or seem to have systems at all as far as her own would be able to tell beyond radio.
4. OMG they are Intys!
There are so many reasons she should get a clue before she did.
She acts a lot like she is new to this whole Kanmusu thing, but she doesn't question her new form at all.
Like, why is she on the water? She wasn't built as a wet navy ship. She doesn't question the fact that she isn't sinking like a fucking stone, or try get air-born at all.
She doesn't pick up the massive amount of communications Earth should be putting out at all? Fat chance.
She doesn't have Japanese in her databanks? I find that unlikely, but would be willing to accept it if it was explained at all.
That is more than a little hard to believe. Maybe she would think that for new ships and she hasn't gotten the update yet, but well,
1. She isn't being sent a new updated registry, (or requested one).
2. None of these ships are giving any kind of IFF.
3. Non of the ships are using UNSC communications protocols, or seem to have systems at all as far as her own would be able to tell beyond radio.
4. OMG they are Intys!
There are so many reasons she should get a clue before she did.
- Location
- Seattle, Washington, USA
This in particular.
If you see a destroyer avatar standing next to a battleship avatar, they both look the same size to other girls, but they can tell at a glance that one is a destroyer and one is a battleship. If a human saw them, that human might not necessarily be aware he is looking at a shipgirl at all. Sure, a human can tell the SHIPS apart by size quite easily, but the shipgirls don't look at the hull, they see the avatar unless they look deeper.
It's like those sticky name badges people wear at conventions that say "Hi, My Name Is BLANK". Some girls wear a tag that says "destroyer", some have "battleship", etc.
Harvest is a light frigate by UNSC standards, and since she self-identifies that way, another shipgirl looking at her will see a frigate. Even though a human looking at Harvest will see one of the biggest warships to ever sail the seven seas. But the shipgirls see a FRIGATE. So her appetite is bizarrely huge and her firepower is inexplicable.
Harvest sees herself as a girl standing on water, running around on water, etc. Which is why I think it would be amusing to have another shipgirl watching the first time Harvest leaves the water -- what would it look like? Would she sprout wings, or just go up, up and away like Supergirl?
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CV12Hornet
Riter.
- Location
- Tacoma, Washington
Nah, she needs to flap her arms like some sort of demented bird.
- Location
- United States
There may be something else to address here as well, regarding how Harvest appears to everyone else.
The UNSC has a different set of ship classifications, and ship roles that don't really match up to WWII classification schemes, or even modern day ones really. The lightest UNSC ship combatant, outside specialist hulls, is the Corvette, a warship we don't have much information on. We do know that these Corvettes serve a fast-attack or stealth role, in the Mako-class and Prowler Stealth Corvette. Given that both of these Corvette classes are ~160m-280m long, half the size of the next smallest warship (the Stalwart-class Frigate), it's not unreasonable to assume that Corvettes lack a MAC armament and rely on missile pods and lighter gun turrets. This makes them roughly equivalent to the role modern day missile destroyers fill, or in the case of prowlers something closer to attack subs (not entirely accurate, as Prowlers are the next best thing to unarmed short of nuclear mines). In WWII terms they're closer to Destroyers, fragile, fast combatants that can punch above their weight while their heavy ordnance lasts. They are also one of the lightest FTL capable UNSC ships.
UNSC Frigates are the next step up, at ~478m-575m in length, ~124m-199m in width, and a depth of over 100m. This makes them more than twice the size, at minimum, of a corvette and several orders of magnitude larger than the Yamato-class battleships in every dimension. They are, in fact, very nearly two-thirds as wide as a Yamato is long, and mass significantly more than a fully-loaded Yamato's 73,000 tons of displacement. I would not be at all surprised to find that they are three or four times the mass, meaning that even a Stalwart-class Frigate(L) could run over a Yamato like a parking lot speed bump. Frigates are multi-role combatants, serving as escorts to Cruisers or Carriers, and can fit any niche necessary in a UNSC fleet. UNSC Frigates have no direct equivalent because no WWII or modern warship combines the role of fleet escort, landing ship, light carrier, troop transport, and fast-attack ship. They don't really have a close modern equivalent, although guided missile destroyers or other Aegis vessels are the closest equivalent, and in WWII term are closest to the light or heavy cruisers who were the workhorses of their respective fleets.
UNSC Destroyers are similar to Frigates, almost exactly the same size, but they drop all of a Frigate's multi-role capability for armor that is more than twice as thick or heavier, a second MAC cannon, and an oversized Archer loadout. Destroyers seem to have, like all UNSC Warships, carried a Marine and/or ODST complement and the dropships necessary to deploy them, but was not otherwise built for planetary engagements. Destroyers were almost pure fleet combatants, and reinforced Destroyer flotillas were the closest UNSC equivalent to Covenent Frigate squadrons. Again, there is no modern day equivalent as modern navies no longer include gun-heavy combatants, but the nearest WWII equivalent is probably the various battlecruiser classes and some heavy cruisers. UNSC Destroyers had a heavy main gun armament but were only a few meters larger than Frigates.
UNSC Cruisers were the heaviest frontline ships available, around three times the size of Frigates and Destroyers with the current service Marathon-class measuring just shy of 1200m. They carried troops, attack craft squadrons, and mounted a MAC and missile armament at least the size of a Destroyers as well as an armor belt of ~2m of Titanium-A. They were the heaviest fleet combatants and served as flagships and fleet lynchpins. They lack a modern equivalent again, although the never-built Iowa BBGs would definitely match them. In WWII terms the are closest to Battleships or Aviation Battleships.
I won't really cover Carriers here, as they are the sole class that is somewhat constant across all classifications, as well as something we lack information on. UNSC Supercarriers, however, were mainline combatants in their own right and sported ten meters of battle plate and all the armament of a Marathon-class Cruiser or more, coming in at over three kilometers of length.
Mechanis
Confirmed Extremely Screwed
- Location
- Absconding with Alacrity
yeah, I'm really waiting for the jawdrops when the other Kanmasu fins out Harvest is literally the single largest kanmasu in existence, out-massing and out-sizing even the biggest battleships.
I imagine they'll have sudden understanding as to why she eats so much once the fact that she's just shy of five hundred meters long and easily as wide and tall as a battleship comes out. not to mention the high-explosive guided missiles, nuclear weapons!*, and her troop compliment (Scorpion tanks, gunships, warhogs, drop pods, the works,) and the part where she can freaking fly.
even if she can't break orbit, she's still perfectly capable of hovering at 40,000 feet and playing 'exploding watermelons' with Abyssals because, again, pre-dreadnought surface warships are basically just fancy, expensive target buoys.
*please note that all of the Kanmasu are equipped circa WWII. that means none of them have the "FUCK YOU!" button that is the 'N' in 'NBC.' Harvest?
M4093 Hyperion Nuclear Delivery System
(She's got three tubes for the things, no telling how many reloads she can carry)
(Abyssal Base? What Abyssal base! that's an irradiated crater, moron!)
I imagine they'll have sudden understanding as to why she eats so much once the fact that she's just shy of five hundred meters long and easily as wide and tall as a battleship comes out. not to mention the high-explosive guided missiles, nuclear weapons!*, and her troop compliment (Scorpion tanks, gunships, warhogs, drop pods, the works,) and the part where she can freaking fly.
even if she can't break orbit, she's still perfectly capable of hovering at 40,000 feet and playing 'exploding watermelons' with Abyssals because, again, pre-dreadnought surface warships are basically just fancy, expensive target buoys.
*please note that all of the Kanmasu are equipped circa WWII. that means none of them have the "FUCK YOU!" button that is the 'N' in 'NBC.' Harvest?
M4093 Hyperion Nuclear Delivery System
(She's got three tubes for the things, no telling how many reloads she can carry)
(Abyssal Base? What Abyssal base! that's an irradiated crater, moron!)
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