It's only fifteen minutes to twelve, and already you have:
1. Made an adorable destroyer ship-girl cry.
2. Made four other adorable destroyer ship-girls cry.
3. Stripped yourself of your most reliable assistant to deal with the above situation.
4. Yelled at your other most reliable assistant because she was dumb and she deserved it.
5. Found out that your pet Lance Corporal will soon be PMS'ing like a guy who's been tied up so he can just barely touch a shore leave pass with his tongue, but can't properly lick it.
And now, NOW, you have someone on the phone telling you that-
"- he walked right through several layers of security and got clean across the goddamn base in a business suit without being challenged," Wainwright says glumly. "And then into the goddamn base infirmary. A US Navy base. Yokosuka, no less. Hours after a major air raid, even."
"That should be fucking impossible," you point out.
"It should," Wainwright says. "But remember - we're hosting a lot more of the JSDF here than we used to. Administratively, as well as support services - for regular vessels as well as the girls. Higher tempo of repair work and such; all due to the war."
"... so?"
"You don't know? The yaks have more pull with the Japanese government than you might know. It's not like organized crime stateside, no Godfather bullshit. It's part of the culture over here. Hell of a lot of yak tatoos on the people TEPCO hired to clean up their plant-"
"TEPCO?"
"Fukushima power plant owners."
"... aaand they were up to their elbows in special deals and shady shit with the larger Japanese government-"
"Exactly." A sigh. "I've been trying to contact you or Goto since this happened last night. I think I slept. I'm not sure." His voice is ragged and his tongue sounds thickened with exhaustion - he's not lying. "We've got an MP on Naka's door now but if that guy could get in here -"
"Wainwright, I'm on my way. Just lie down and go to sleep."
"After we talk."
"I'll ask Naka-"
"Ooooh, hooo hooooo noooo," he says, managing to smother a weary laugh. "No fucking way you're listening to more nuttery from that kid. She's gonna downplay it hard, you know that."
"We'll see about that. Now get some fucking sleep. That's an order. You still follow those, right?" You press the terminate call button, kind of wishing you still had a physical handset you could slam down.
Fuck, you ARE old. And angry. But mostly old.
In no mood for waiting, you exploit the privileges of rank and commandeer a ride; making some poor rating sweat bullets as you breathe down his neck till he drops you off at the infirmary, roaring away in his jeep before you can change your mind. You limp up to Naka's room, but when you get there the door is wide open, there's no guard and Naka is most obviously not in attendence.
>Wait for her. She's probably on a walk or something.
>Nip down to the nurse's station and commander the PA - you're in no goddamn mood for this bullshit.
>DEFCON 1 AWHOOOGA AWHOOGA SHIPSLUT KIDNAPPED
>Wait for her. She's probably on a walk or something.
Considering what *just* happened, Naka... nipping off on her own rather irritates you. You presume her MP is with her, and while you appreciate his executing his duty properly, you feel a demonstration of the seriousness of the situation is required. Slipping into the room, you ease yourself into the attached bathroom and lean against the wall, selecting the biggest bath-towel available as your weapon. While you wait, you fish your phone out of your pocket and check your e-mail. All you find is one from the Lance Corporal titled "Re: Stanley."
You click on it.
"whatever loser western cartoons are for fucking babies too long didn't watch"
You snort. Big surprise there. As you're slipping your phone away, it buzzes discreetly.
"Yo."
"Who is this?"
"SS-257."
You type back quickly. "You learn phones fasr"
"Faster than you it seems"
"Fuck you sailor"
"get in line sir. Anyways I got the box what is this this shit"
You grin. "books"
"WOW THANK YOU SIR I HAD NO IDEA WHAT THEY WERE I WENT TO LINE UP A MAST HEIGHT BUT THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE MASTS THAT MAKES IT SO EASY AND HERE I WAS WORRIED BECUASE IT WASN'T EVEN IN MY RECOGNITION MANUAL YOU HELP SO MUCH"
"Anytime, Harder."
"no f u what is this"
You snicker quietly. "my books. shipped from home. lots of really good analysis books, history stuff. admiral's bookshelf tier. good shit, you should read them"
"yeah this one is totally history the mouse and the motorcycle what the fuck is this shit"
"I liked it when i was a kid and we have destroyers who might like it read to them OKAY"
"the only thing they are gonna hear from me is high speed screws"
"followed by a loud clunk"
"literally fuck you"
You bite your lip as your fingers fly across the little touchscreen. "that's pretty gay bro"
"do i even sound remotely happy right now"
"a little light in the loafers if you get my drift. excess positive buoyancy you know"
"where do you even get that"
"dude we all saw those posters"
"really settle really surface navy posters dudes naked slinging big five inch shells and I'm the homo?"
"but those sub posters were a step above bro"
"cite your sources or forever begone"
"harder did you ever infiltrate a harbor"
"yeah why"
"how about a river"
"if you make a de nile joke I will fuck your face"
"THE PROSECUTION RESTS"
"oh my god die in an outhouse thanks"
You hear a shuffling sound from outside and quickly pocket your phone so the buzzing doesn't you away. Listening carefully, you peer through the crack 'twixt door and jamb till you see the back of Naka's head - and then you fling the door wide on well-oiled hinges.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA MAIWAUFU!" you scream, hurling the towel at Naka. To her credit, she twirls on one heel without a peep of surprise, but she loses her poise when the bathtowel covers her. Swinging away wildly, she stumbles backwards to buy time and manages to trip over a stool; stumbling and plopping square on her fanny. She rips the towel off in a huff, sees you, and hurls it at you. You let it wumph into your face and drape over your shoulders with quiet cane-wielding dignity.
"Real funny, asshole," Naka mutters.
You wait expectantly for a few seconds, then toss the towel off. "Where's your guard?"
"He was told to leave. I don't know why. Goto asked the same thing and got very pissed off when I told him." She shrugs. "So, what brings you to visit the fleet's idol Naka-chan?"
"Just the slight matter of an organized crime related thug getting his ass kicked after sneaking across a heavily-guarded military base and into your room."
"Oh, really." She crosses her arms and pouts at you, cocking her head ever-so-slightly. It's so practiced that you have to admire it. "And why did you decide to scare me?"
"I originally had a point to make about security, but honestly, it was pretty funny."
She cracks a smile at last, a sly, begrudging one - the Real Naka, who is struggling to stand, but can't. "Help, please?"
Leaning your cane against her bedrails, you step over, stoop and scoop her up in both arms. There's no aspect of a 'ship' to her at all; she's just a girl right now, and barely eighty pounds of girl at that. She's still got her arms crossed over her slight chest, and she's giving you a coy look.
"Not a word," she says primly.
"Not even one tonnage joke?"
"Not even one."
"I was going to say you're light."
"Put me down or I'll punch *your* lights out."
You lay her in her bed gently, catching the suppressed sigh of relief as she stretches out in the bed. "Do I look like Jintsuu?"
"I try." You pull up the guest chair again and plop into it. "So, Naka, just what the fuck was a yak doing in here? What did he say? What did he want?"
Naka tucks her hands under her head, closes her eyes and quirks her mouth. "He wanted me to join his studio as their newest idol."
"... really."
"How much do you know about the idol industry, Settle?"
"Aside from it getting popular on the West Coast recently? Not much."
"Well... some studios are good. But some of them exploit their girls as much as possible. Control their lives every waking moment of the day. And I guess some people say there's a revolving door between it and the softcore porn industry. Which the Yakuza have plenty of fingers in, as you can imagine."
You frown. "And you do this idol shtick knowing all this...?"
"Goto pulled me aside when I first started. Gave me the low-down on what to expect," she tells you.
"And you told him..."
"That having every aspect of your life controlled by an uncaring semi-criminal entity that's likely to whore you out as to look at you is something a military man must be familiar with," she replies. "He wasn't amused. He told me I was far more valuable than any pop starlet of the week..." she smiles slightly, then sighs. "Of course, that was... over a year ago."
>What difference does a year make?
>The military isn't anything like that - or at least, it shouldn't be.
>Well, that does sound like the military life, all right - may as well go whole hog and get the cute uniform, eh?
>What difference does a year make?
You pick up on that right away. "What difference does a year make?"
"Well, besides being one of the first few ships they had at all," Naka says, "back then Goto was... he was a lot more like you."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You know - professional. Like you're supposed to be. He was really by the book though; way more than you. And earnest." She smiles sadly. "He had to let that go pretty quick... too many girls pouring in, too fast, and all of them kind of quirky in their own way. I guess I didn't help a lot with that."
"... Goto?" you say. "By the book? Serious? GOTO!?"
"A girl like Kongou will take a toll on a man," she giggles. "Back then he really didn't approve of a resurrected shipgirl being treated as trite entertainment by smelly otakus. I pointed out that I never really needed to talk to them. I mean I'm not even as popular as a girl that doesn't even exist."
"Anime?"
"No, like, an actual idol that does concerts, but she doesn't exist. They call them Vocaloids. Computer-generated voice synthesizers with cute girl art made to go with them." She shakes her head, looking a little sad. "But my point is, I don't have to interact with them, or even leave the base. Unlike-" she picks up a remote from the tray table next to her, and points it at-
-one entire wall lights up; a truly massive LCD TV set near the bed lighting up with a local news channel. As the anchor voices over in rapid-fire Japanese, you watch yourself choking round-boy half to death with your cane on a shaky cell-phone cam.
"-you," Naka finishes smugly.
"That was Shoukaku's doing and bite me," you intone levelly -
- but she just giggles again. "Rumor is she's been talking you up around base."
"... what?"
"Yep."
You know that asking what she's been saying about you will constitute giving Naka a victory, so you must not, even though you want to - and she knows that, too. "You're very good at changing the topic."
"Well, you asked."
"So this Yakuza requests you join his studio, and you-"
"Turned him down very politely and firmly-"
"So how do we get from that to you breaking-"
"Accidentally-"
"Accidentally breaking his goddamn leg?"
Naka turns her face to you, staring at you seriously through the side-bars of the bed. "He threatened to hurt someone I care about. Willie was there - he even threatened her."
You process that for all of two seconds - and then you chuckle. "Wow."
"Yeah." She smiles brightly. "It was so scary, I just panicked, and manifested my ship-form, and you know how clumsy idols can be~"
Your phone buzzes again, causing Naka to hoist an eyebrow. "Who's that?"
"Probably Harder," you tell her. "I just gave him a load of my books to read, and he was a little... confused."
"Just a *little?*" Naka frowns. "He's been bothering my destroyers all over base. Even if he doesn't say anything, he just... watches them."
".... watches them?"
"And if they look at him too long, he just makes this motion like he's adjusting a dial. Someone asked I-19 what it meant and she said it looks like entering data into a TDC." She grumps. "Ikazuchi nearly had a breakdown over it, and as long as I'm in this shitty place, I can't do anything about it."
"You want me to talk to him about it? Lay down the law?"
She shakes her head. "I can handle him well enough-"
"Yeah, I've seen how you do that."
She winks at you. "Got that right. But every time he'll say something like, 'I'm going to blow your bulkheads clean out your side' and I'll be like 'sure you can handle me without detonating prematurely, sugar?' and he turns three shades of red and just... fades into the background like he's going deep again to seethe quietly to the hum of the bilge-pumps."
"... poetic."
"Thank you. But I can't get him to stick around long enough for a real conversation. Could you help me out with that? If I don't set things straight with him soon..."
"I'll take care of it."
"Thanks, Admiral."
"No problem." You lean back in your chair. "We'll have you a new bodyguard before I leave here. You said Goto heard about this already?"
"Apparently. He was here not five minutes before you were. He's upstairs now talking to the Yakuza; they gave him his own room."
>Sounds like Goto's got that handled - you can go over it with him later. For now, you really need to track down Arizona and Willie - make sure they're okay and all.
>That sounds like a conversation you'd like to hear. Best get up there.
>Anything you want to say to/ask Naka before you leave? (Write-in.)
WRITE-IN: Soo, since Goto has the bases covered and we don't know [Japanese] anyway, how about we work that secretary thingy?
The temptation to stroll upstairs and quietly watch Goto as he puts some poor Yakuza fuck's feet to the coals is terribly, terribly tempting. But out there, somewhere, is a traumatized Willie in the company of a big-sister battleship - and the girl tends to get nervous with her torpedoes in that situation. Besides; you're starting to appreciate that you need to pick up more of Goto's load, not the other way around - you two should really divide your efforts if you're both going to stay sane.
Speaking of divided labor - "Naka."
"Something else, Admiral?"
"Yeah. Since everyone's after me to get a secretary ship - and I know I've got a pile of paperwork on my desk that I haven't looked at since I got here - I have... caved."
Naka smirks. "It's Shoukaku, isn't it."
You scowl at her. "What makes you say that?"
"Aside from the fact that you're on the evening news defending her like a knight in a dark dress shirt?" she says smugly. "Or the way she's walking around base tittering when anyone asks her about and talking about what a gentleman you are? There's the fact that she's sweet and has a way of dealing with people like... like Harder without ever quite confronting them. She's got the disposition for it."
You nod. "That'd make her a logical choice."
"Of course."
"My secretary ship is you."
"... um," she says, a stunned look on her face. "Uh. Okay. Point goes to you on that one.... *why!?*"
"Because you already deal with Harder quite well on your own, you handled an unexpected situation with that Yakuza asshole with decisiveness and aplomb, you're probably going crazy in this goddamned hospital, huge TV aside, and most importantly, it's just temporary until you get better, at which point I can make a permanent assignment."
She smiles. "You clever bastard."
"Annapolis-trained shitkicker, honey." You tip your hat to her dramatically. "... by the way, where the hell did the TV come from?"
"Oh that?" She smiles. "So I was... uh, bored, and I was looking through some base records Goto's assistant lent me..." she pauses. "Shit."
"Yep. Secretary materiel."
"... anyway," she says, blushing slightly, "I noticed that not a single requisition request any of the girls have made has ever been turned down. Which is odd for a military. So I asked around..." she shrugs. "It seems they're so worried about us going abyssal that they won't turn down anything - anything we want to do, anything we want, period... so, yeah, we all have 80-inch LCD TVs now." She smiles. "I have an entire crate of shutter shades in my room. No reason - I just wanted them to know I could."
You walk out of the base hospital feeling much, much better about the whole day. You've managed to dodge the goddamned secretary bullet, and gained a girl with a nose for acquisitions in the process.
Now you just have to make goddamned sure she and Hate never, ever fucking compare notes. Ever. You haven't confirmed your hunch about that missing lower, but that's only because the surety would burden your heart with dread. With Naka on his side, what that loco bastard could manage does not bear imagining.
You're just reaching for your phone when it begins to ring, the opening strains of "yakkity sax" filling the sterile-smelling hospital corridor. You answer. "Settle here."
"A-admiral?"
"Hey, Willie. Where you at?"
"T-the p-park with the old sh-ship."
"I'm on my way."
"A-admiral-"
"I'll be right there kid, we can talk about it then."
"... kay."
The memorial park that borders the museum berth of the old IJN Mikasa is very close to the base hospital; just a short limp away. It seems that Arizona had to chase the kid clear around the peninsula that forms Yokosuka naval base before calming her down, but god bless her, she did.
The park is well-treed, well-maintained and generally a tremendous relief from the heat of noonday. You tread carefully, listening carefully for the sounds of a destroyer sniffling into someone's jacket. After a few minutes searching, you find the tell-tale signature, and slowly hone in on it, not wanting to spook poor Willie into another flight. They seem to be behind a bush... and Willie seems to be... panting.
What?
Creeping up even slower, you see a Corgi, tail wagging madly, panting happily as someone pets him slowly and firmly. Someone... who looks a lot like the back of the Lance Corporal, his head scanning every direction in front of him warily, his back to the bush.
Well.
Well well well.
>"STANLEY!"
>Eaaaase away. Let's save this one for later.
>Back up a bit and call him on the phone - he needs to meet up with Willie, after all!
>Eaaaase away. Let's save this one for later.
You snigger to yourself. If they throw a party for his Silver Star, you know what'll be on the projector in the O-club. Oh yes. You stealthily make your exfil, covered by the Corgi's happy panting, and manage to slip up to the pier near Mikasa's boarding ramp. You see Arizona right away, her white hat catching the sun nicely. She's sitting on a bench, looking out over the water, Willie slumped against her side. The riot helmet is on the ground behind the bench, discarded.
Arizona nods at you slightly in greeting as you circle the bench to approach from the front. Willie is asleep against Arizona's side, her arms wrapped over her chest.
"Is she over it?" you ask quietly.
Arizona shakes her head a little while making a see-saw motion with her free hand; the arm not wrapped around Willie's slender shoulders.
"That good, huh?"
A nod and the slightest of shrugs.
You sit down on Willie's other side, studying her. Asleep like this, without that constant darting of nervous eyes or quiet hand-wringing she's prone to, she's rather cute. She looks like someone's young daughter in a costume. Not a warship of whom much must be asked.
"She try to outrun you?"
Arizona smiles and nods. She makes a few quick motions in the air with her hand.
"Cornered her in the curve of the coast, eh? Heh."
In a minute you'll have to wake Willie up and find a way to apologize for hurling Desdiv 6 at her. Find a way to point out that they're far from perfect themselves, as they demonstrated scarcely two hours ago. But until then it's nice to sit here, looking out over the beautiful noonday sun glistening in the waters of the bay.
40440470 (demetrious) -
I'm calling the thread for today because I'm fucking tired and out of planned content already, which is strange because it usually takes me twice as long as it should to get half the distance I wanted to .
On the plus side that means the ground work has been laid for STUFF next thread and I do mean stuff holy SHIT.
Willie Dee, once the Navy's most lackluster destroyers and now... well, the Navy's most lackluster destroyer is snoozing away peacefully, slumped against Arizona's side. The sun is starting to grow hot on your brow; the concrete pier of the Mikasa memorial park reflecting the summer heat and threatening to bake all three of you crispy. It's time to wake her up.
After a few abortive starts, you manage to mimic the long wheee-ooooooh of a bosun's whistle. Willie Dee starts as she wakes, looking around through lidded eyes as she clutches Arizona's jacket defensively.
"Whuuu?"
"Hey, kiddo."
She looks up at you and jerks back so fast her hat brim falls over her face from sheer inertia. "W-W-WHAAAA!"
"Willie-"
"I'M SORRRRYYYY" she wails, yanking her hat down over her face and pressing it there. "SOWWWWYYYYYYYYYYyyyyyy~" comes her voice through the crumpled felt.
This... isn't going well. You need an angle, something to get her talking, or at least calmed down.
>Y'know, I had a destroyer like you once...
>Shh! Do you hear that!? SHADOWRUNS
>Willie, have you ever been aboard the Mikasa yet? Is... that a thing you girls can even do, or is it like, uh, Arizona's looking at me funny so lets just drop that ANYWAY wanna see the museum?
>Willie, have you ever been aboard the Mikasa yet? Is... that a thing you girls can even do, or is it like, uh, Arizona's looking at me funny so lets just drop that ANYWAY wanna see the museum?
"Hey!" you say brightly, leaning over and lifting the brim of her cap. "Have you ever been on the Mikasa over there?"
"Whwhaaaa!?" she quavers, her voice failing her entirely.
"The big battleship? No?"
"Haauuu~" she quavers helplessly, her voice failing entirely.
"Well come on, then, lets check it out!" you say enthusiastically, taking her hand and tugging on it till she reluctantly slips off the bench and follows you, still gripping Arizona's jacket with her other hand.
The IJN Mikasa is beautifully preserved; her somber grey paint still vibrant and fresh-looking under the summer sun. You lead Willie and Arizona over the wide brick plaza and around a large decorative fountain, a statue of Admiral Togo serving as its centerpiece. Willie stares up in childish wonder at the old-fashioned masts of the old predreadnaught; complete with cross-spars and enclosed fighting tops.
"It's... big," she says softly. "I... I forgot how *big*..." Her eyes are wide as she scans the side of the ancient battlewagon, taking in the fearsome array of six-inch casemate-mounted guns along the broadside. Coaxing her up the stairway, you exchange a polite nod with the JSDF marine standing guard at the top of the stairs - given its location on the water and (now that you think about it) likely issues with more vocal nationalists, the park's visiting hours have been rather curtailed to facilitate a much heavier guard on the place - but rank hath privileges, and you're not adverse to pulling some for Willie's sake.
Willie comes to a dead halt on the rear deck, underneath a large sun awning set up to protect visitors. She stares up at the main guns of the aft turret, big twelve-inch barrels barely fitting under the awning.
You see her start to shiver. "I-is that w-w-hat the m-m-monsters l-looked like?" She glances down at the deckplates like they might bite her.
>Relax, kiddo. Mikasa hasn't woken up desire every member of the JSDF smoking peace pipes and doing war-dances on her quarterdeck - I think the ol gal is content to sleep.
>Yes, this massive, imposing battleship is very similar to the even more dangerous one that Arizona here blew out of the goddamn water, mmhmm.
>... not really, Willie. They look like old ships, sometimes, but there's something off about them - some awful quality that only they possess. When you see it, you'll react like you're stomping on a bug - reflexive disgust.
>Relax, kiddo. Mikasa hasn't woken up desire every member of the JSDF smoking peace pipes and doing war-dances on her quarterdeck - I think the ol gal is content to sleep.
You consider pointing out that the slender brunette Willie is clinging to is the same battleship that blew a superior dreadnaught out of the water and sent another packing just last week - but Arizona is always so quiet and demure that you suspect singing her praises would just embarass her. So you settle for slipping your hand under Willie's hat and ruffling her hair affectionately. "Relax, kiddo," you reassure her. "Mikasa's the first one they tried to summon, you know? The JSDF came up here and arrested a whole gaggle of clowns trying ouiji boards and every other damn thing and packed them off in a paddy wagon for being disruptive..." you lean over and lower your voice, "and according to the scuttlebutt that got e-mailed around after, they just picked up the candles and ouiji boards and tried again with their own people!"
Willie blinks.
"They've tried everything. EVERYTHING," you reassure her. "But she just sits here, prim and pretty. And I can't blame her. She gave her all. I think the old gal is entitled to her retirement."
Willie seems to calm down at that, and regains some of her curiosity. Soon she's scampering through companionways and even shouting into voice tubes. At one point you sneak up behind her and make a sound like someone's shouting back, which sends her squealing into Arizona's arms and earns you a Look Of Disapproval as the battleship calms her younger charge with headpats.
The interior of the old warship seems to hold a special fascination for Willie - and since you've got a star on your hat and two precious warships in tow, the watchful museum staff that shadow you let you have the run of the ship, occasionally stepping into unlock a chain here and there. Willie stares at the breeches of the main guns and the magazines beneath with wide, somber eyes, but she gets downright excited at the most innocuous thing of all - the crew spaces.
"There's so much ROOM!" she says, running around the main mess with her arms stretched out.
You look around the room and exchange a look with Arizona.
"... really?"
"Yeah!" she says enthusiastically. "Sailors must have loved it here! My crew was always packed in like sardines. They never even had elbow room at the tables." She scampers off into the next room with you and Arizona trotting close behind. "Look! Look!"
You look. "It's the head," you observe flatly.
"No, look - separate toilet seats!"
"... is that... special?"
"My heads only had a row of seats," she explains, "and a trough underneath with water running down the length of it constantly. It emptied at the end. So the guy at the top would sometimes light toilet paper on fire and singe every butt on the way down." She wrinkles her mouth and crosses her arms. "They were silly..."
You laugh. "Yeah, that sounds like sailors, all right."
Willie looks down at the deckplates, scuffing the toe of one shoe against it. "I wish they'd made me a battleship."
"Why?"
She murmurs and fidgets.
"Why, Willie?"
"I'd... I'd have firepower and enough room for my crew and they wouldn't get all angry at someone's elbow being in their ear and calling each other gaylords and holding pilots hostage for ice cream from the carriers cuz they'd have their own machine and-"
>Firepower? Christ alive kid, don't you know WHY your class was so overcrowded?
>If you think your crew didn't love you, you're wrong. Dead wrong.
>I was the captain of a destroyer, Willie. I know destroyers. I think you're a damn good one - and I'll tell you why!
"Firepower!?" you interject abruptly, making Willie flinch and flatten herself against the bulkhead.
"I'msorr-"
"Don't you even remember why the Fletcher class was so overcrowded!?"
She blinks. "Uh... we were... bad?"
You snort so loudly Arizona seems to think you might've injured yourself. "Kid, they bolted light AA onto every open space on the Fletchers that'd take one, and then they staggered 'em with extra ratings to man them all. And that's on top of a design that was already five-hundred tons more torpedoes, guns and depth-charges than any preceding destroyer class carried."
"... oh," Willie says in a small voice.
"And for all that - what's your top speed?"
"... th-thirty-eight k-knots-"
Even Arizona's eyebrow rises at this, and you chuckle. "Kid, my old ship is one of the best in the world and she could make thirty-five with a stiff tailwind. Maybe. And you did that on STEAM. Have you ever seen Shimikazi around?"
She blushes furiously for some reason, looking down at the deckplates again, and nods.
"She's supposed to be a super destroyer. Super fast. You know where she tops out?"
".... n-no-"
"Forty. And she was a one-off prototype who displaces five-hundred tons more than your class does - and you can damn near catch her. The Fletcher class were something else, Willie - state of the art warships. You're the most modern destroyer in our entire fleet of shipgirls, don't you see?"
She pulls her hat off and clutches it to her chest like a shield, tears starting to brim in the corners of her eyes. "B-b-but I screwed everything up!" she wails, squeezing her eyes shut against the tears. "It d-d-doesn't m-m-matter it j-just means I didn't have any EXCUUUUUUUUMMMFFF!"
Her eyes pop open to find Corporal Hate's rough mitt clamped firmly over her mouth. He squats down to stare Willie eye-to-eye.
"I'm tired of listening to you bitch," he says quietly, "so let's get one thing straight. Can you count?"
She stares at him, shivering a little. Arizona frowns and steps forward, but you pause her with a glance - if you can't get through to her, maybe Hate can.
"Can. You. Count?"
Willie nods, too scared to remember what she was just crying about.
"When you sank," Hate says cruelly, "how many of your men died?"
She blinks.
"How many?"
Shakily, she holds up a thumb and forefinger in a "zero" sign.
"HALLE-FUCKING-LUJAH!" Hate exclaims, releasing her mouth. She goes dashing for Arizona's side, shivering so fast you fear she might enter redshift. "Every man who served on you went home to their families and got to live out their damned lives because you took an underwater blast that should've snapped your keel and kept floating for hours," Hate grumps at her. "What the fuck more could they ask for?" He advances on them both - Arizona stands firm, but Willie just tries to slide behind Arizona as much as possible. "You want to be a battleship? You want to be HER?" He stands eye-to-eye with Arizona, meeting her firm, assured gaze. "Arizona? Why don't you tell Willie what you'd give to trade places?"
Arizona's calm countenance doesn't tremble, but you all hear the sharp, quick intake of breath. Hate backs off, turning and making a show of stomping away like he doesn't notice or care, but you're not quick enough on the uptake to follow suit. You're still there when Arizona just closes her eyes, a single tear escaping the dam and trickling down one delicate cheek.
"A-Arizona? Arizona?" Willie asks, tugging on the bigger girl's sleeve. From the miserable expression on her face, you can tell understands. Willie manifested at Pearl herself; she sailed right past that somber white monument on her way to the dock - not before ramming it and damaging it badly enough to close it for a few weeks, then bumping up against the pier while whispering ever-quieter sorries, but still. She wraps her arms around Arizona's middle and hugs her, not knowing what else to do. The battleship rubs Willie's hair affectionately while you stand there like a fucking moron, trying to blend into the deckplates.
Until Arizona reaches out slowly, deliberately with one elegant arm and sucks you into the group hug, that is.
A few minutes later your little group emerges into the sunlight, a strange feeling of lightness in your breast. Willie seems especially changed, gripping your sleeve in one hand and Arizona's in the other, as if afraid you'll both vanish if she lets you go. She even manages to maintain her grip while you descend the boarding stairs.
At the bottom, you damn near run into Arizona's back when she halts abruptly. Over her shoulder, you can see an unwelcome sight - Desdiv 6 approaching in a gaggle as they cling to a bigger, taller girl like lichen. Tenryuu is trying to herd them around the fountain, but they're more intent on trying to push her in, all of them giggling like fiends. They don't have a chance in hell of managing it, of course, but Tenryuu's got her hands full.
At last she manages to catch one under each arm. With one still dangling off her back, she just charges the straggler and herds her, screaming merrily, towards the covered staircase where your little group is hanging out.
Desdiv 6 comes to a screeching halt when they see Willie, their faces melting with guilt. But Tenryuu is the one that worries you - she freezes like a deer in the headlights. You watch her transform from Mother Hen to Totally Hard Assed Bitch in about one-point-five seconds, the hardening of her expression as she shifts gears plainly visible.
"Y-you!" she says, shaking off the purple-haired destroyer from her back. "You made these girls cry! And your own, too. What the hell were you thinking!?"
"I didn't mean to upset them-"
"I don't give a fffig about your intentions," she says, catching herself just in time. "An Admiral is supposed to know better than that!"
"Hey, relax," you plead. "I just wanted Willie to see that these girls aren't so different than she is." Tenryuu raises an eyebrow, so you elaborate. "They can't cook lunch together without getting into an argument, I wager, but nobody questions their performance in the field-"
"Are you calling my squadron incompetent?" Tenryuu asks softly, her voice like silk whispering over steel.
You feel Arizona's small hand resting between your shoulderblades - a simple pat to remind you that she's here, if you need her.
>They'll never respect you if you're afraid to face them directly - especially Miss Samurai here. You can handle a kendo duel - and more importantly, you're starting to get really, really tired of this bullshit. It's time for them to grow up and act like they're military members in a war, and that starts with little things, like not threatening your superior officers every other day.
>Tenryuu needs to learn that threatening to draw your weapon only works if you're carrying the biggest stick in the Pacific, and she most assuredly is not. Let Arizona handle this one.
>Tenryuu's a good girl, but she's woefully incapable of out-of-the-box thinking... and you have a good idea what Hate was up to, lurking around this area. Take this chance to... expand her horizons.
40727233 (demetrious) -
>>40727081
NEW THREAD HERE
>Tenryuu's a good girl, but she's woefully incapable of out-of-the-box thinking... and you have a good idea what Hate was up to, lurking around this area. Take this chance to... expand her horizons.
You slide your hands into your pockets and just lean back a little bit, favoring Tenryuu with your best Dad Frown. You know, intellectually, that Tenryuu is a product of her age; an Imperial Japanese Navy that considered corporal punishment a magic balm capable of improving men just by beating the shit out of them. You know this is a kind of prison-rules situation, where you need to kick her ass one way or the other to establish dominance.
In short, it's the exact kind of horseshit you have never, ever had any patience for. You've little respect for the cult-of-personality some skippers seek to cultivate; the legend of The Old Man that supposedly holds a crew together. Your own opinion is that people need confidence in their own abilities to perform well in combat, not blind faith in yours - and in your first and last battle, your crew proved you right. You've had some hotheaded moments as of late, but they were simply the result of defending your underlings or mandated by the contingencies of the situation. Absent those pressures, you find yourself incredibly disinclined to play Who's Katana Is Longer.
"Tenryuu," you say dourly. "Do you really want to do this?"
"Want to?" she sniggers, licking her lips with what you think is a little too much flair. "Do I want to make you eat your words, you cavalier yankee? Maybe I do."
"Tenryuuuuu," you admonish her, wagging one finger. "If you don't calm down, I'm going to have to use my juju."
She blinks. "Your what."
"My juju," you explain. "I will grow angry, and use my Magic."
She blinks - then her expression hardens again, even worse than before. "You think I'm some sort of idiot?"
"You think I'm joking?" you say, meeting her glare. "This is your last warning, Tenryuu. Calm down, and take your hand off that sword-hilt."
She takes another step forward, and you can feel Arizona twitch as she barely arrests a draw. Tenryuu sticks her face right up in yours. "Or what, you fucking mouthy cripple?"
Arizona's hand clenches into a fist so swiftly it bunches up the back of your shirt with it. You can feel her vibrating like a plucked guitar string, but true to form your girl is as disciplined and steadfast as always.
You meet Tenryuu's cold stare with a small smile. "Aha," you say with an air of discovery. "Your kenjutsu is strong. But can you do *THIS!?*"
You snap your finger, and all hell breaks loose.
The air is demolished in a cacophony of sound unlike anything you've ever before experienced - shrieks, sirens, whistles, whizbangs, the works. The biggest shriek is coming from Tenryuu and her posse of destroyers as winged black shapes go swooping and flapping around them in a blind panic; a cloud of - a cloud of fucking BATS blasting across the brick plaza like a bomb - no, it IS a bomb, judging from the ring of a fading blast in your ears and the smoke. Firecrackers are going off, a flashbang detonates somwhere, the plaza is already wreathed in clouds of smoke and you have just enough time to marvel at Hate's efficiency before Arizona's flattened you to the bricks, shielding you with her body as she throws her gun up and out, looking for a target.
Ikazuchi and Inazuma are climbing all over Tenryuu as she shrieks with such high-pitched intensity you think for a moment that she's been wounded - a bat has managed to get caught under her skirt and she's losing her fucking mind over it. Hibiki spots Akatsuki spinning in one long-haired whirl of terror and neatly tackles her to the ground, both of them landing in the fountain with a splash.
For her part, Tenryuu manages to get her sword drawn and spins around looking for a target, Ikazuchi and Inazuma's ankles flying out in an arc as she twirls. Hibiki and Akatsuki emerge from the fountain, outfits summoned and soaking wet to boot.
And then, quite obligingly, a target presents itself. Emerging through the thick swirls of white smoke now choking the plaza comes an apparition of true horror.
Give me an Abyssal any day.
Barney.
Willie is staring at the awful purple visage advancing through the smoke when Hate pops up from the narrow gap between Mikasa's side and the pier, crosses the space to the destroyer in two great leaps and slams a bucket down over her head.
"OHMYFUCKINGGODWILLIESHOOTSHOOOTSHOOTORWE'REALLGONNADIE" he screams at the top of his voice, flinging a string of firecrackers at her feet.
The effect is electrical. Willie leaps so high into the air you think Hate might have flung her, a shrill scream reverberating around the bucket to emerge with a shiny, tinny tone on it. She goes flailing across the courtyard, her outfit already summoned, driven onward by the lash of sheer blind terror. Right about then every one of the shipgirls opens fire - save for Arizona, who just drops her revolver and clamps her small hands over your ears as every girl present opens up with everything they've got - you even see a few blue practice torpedoes clunk to earth and go sliding across the bricks as one of DesDiv 6 falls back on instinct. There's a lot of screaming and crying and utter batshit panic, and then, at last, it tapers off. You dare to look up when Arizona uncovers your ears.
The sea breeze has already blown most of the smoke away, revealing the nature of the chaos. All around you, small black bats are staggering about the hot bricks, some of them mewling unhappily before toppling over, fast asleep. On close inspection they seem to have a little cylinder glued to their backs, itself attached to a tiny skullcap of sorts. Most of them are splattered with blue paint. Lying to one side is a cardboard cutout of Steve Buscemi, supported by a wooden stick taped to a remote-controlled car of some sort. Another such car seems to sport the base of a large plastic Barney statue, and both of them are liberally splattered with blue paint.
"... w-whwhwhwhwwhwhaaaat!?" Tenryuu says shakily. She's gripping her sword in both hands, staring at the two contraptions like they might suddenly lunge at her again. Her feet are wide in a proper swordfighting stance, but she's pressed her knees together, lest another bat find its way in.
You survey the scene. Admiral Togo has been painted tye-dye; orange, yellow, purple and red paint splattering the statue all over - even Tenryuu has a blot of orange decorating one of her metallic "horns" that hover near her temple in defiance of all logic.
"... you girls still have your practice ammo loaded?"
"... yes?" One of them volunteers.
"Okay, call out your colors," you instruct as Arizona slides off your back and helps you up, handing you your cane.
"Purple," Hibiki says.
"Yellow!" Ikazuchi confirms.
"R-red," Inazuma chimes in warily.
Tenryuu touches the back of her head and frowns at the blot of paint on her fingertips.
"... orange," Akatsuki admits very quietly.
Tenryuu surveys the scene one more time, baffled. "Who the fuck had blue?"
You savor the long, awkward silence as everyone moves through the process of elimination and slowly swivels their heads to stare at Willie. She's standing over the topped Steve Buscemi cutout, her turret shaking in her hands as if she's working up the nerve to give it one last double-tap, just in case. She eventually feels the heat of five pairs of eyes on her and looks up.
"What?" she asks.
Five pairs of eyes stare at her in utter astonishment. She looks down at the ground, the groggy blue-splattered bats, the tye-dye statue and realization slowly dawns.
"H-h-haaaaaaaaaa......"
And then she quite promptly faints.
You pick up Willie's limp form and cart her away bridal-style with Arizona escorting you. Tenryuu and DesDiv 6 just stare at her the entire time, slack-jawed. You glance back to spot Hate peering over the edge of the pier, just his nose and hands visible like some Kilroy from hell. He pops up long enough to give you a truly magical, batshit-insane grin, before slipping below the pier again.
Carting Willie back to your borrowed vehicle, you place her in the back and slide behind the steering wheel. Arizona takes the passenger seat. She hooks her thumbs together, makes a flapping motion with her hands, and then gives you a quizzical look.
"Well... I'm not sure, but I can guess," you tell her as you start the vehicle and head for the dorms. "You notice the funny little objects they were wearing?"
She nods.
"They've been wiring bugs up with microchips that can control their brains with electrical impulses for years. More recently they've been working on more advanced stuff - I've heard bats mentioned once or twice. Mammals, you know? Pioneering non-invasive stuff, nothing that hurts them."
Arizona nods sagely - and then shrugs, swinging her upturned palms to indicate the entire base. Here!?
"Here," you reply sagely. "You know the little roads you see going up onto the hills everywhere?" You point at the thirty-foot high sheer cliff face that the road you're currently on was cut through. "A lot of those are research facilities working on all sorts of spooky shit like that."
Another baffled gesture.
"How'd Hate get them?"
A nod.
"Probably bribed them with donuts.
A stare.
"No, seriously, nerds fucking love donuts. I sent some to my CIC every now and then and they worshiped me like a God."
A dubious look.
"We'll see what you say after you've tasted a proper donut."
You drop Willie off in her room, then hover by the door as Arizona takes the time to tuck her in - she's always seeing things you seem to miss, you notice. You're just walking out the door again when your cell phone rings.
"Settle."
"Hey, Settle. You know where Arizona is?"
You look over at Arizona's inquisitive expression. "She's right next to me, why?"
"Can you come to the administration building? We've got a new toy for her."
>... what aren't you telling me?
>Give me ten minutes, we're bringing donuts.
>Give me ten minutes, we're bringing donuts.
You stroll into the designated conference room a short while later, bearing a huge box stuffed full of donuts. Arizona is munching appreciatively on an apple cruller you recommended to her, handling it gingerly in two fingers - she seems to have been slightly embarrassed by the attention, but to hell with it; she deserves donuts. Goto looks up and waves you in casually as you enter.
"What's that?"
"Donuts."
Goto springs up from his seat like he's spring-loaded. "GET THAT SHIT OUT OF HERE!"
You both freeze - Arizona in mid-bite.
"Excuse me?"
"DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTS!" someone yodels a heartbeat before the door bursts open before Kongou's unstoppable exuberance. She covers the distance 'twixt door and conference table in three strides and LEAPS airborne, hitting the polished wooden surface on her belly and sliding all the way to your end of the room, coming to a halt just before you. Still in her belly-slide pose, she daintily flips up the box lid and plucks out a donut.
"Thank you, Admiral Settle," she says politely, then takes another one in the other hand; a long creme-filled thing. She wiggles her butt to squinch around, aiming back down the table. "Arizona-san, could you give me a boost?"
Arizona finally finishes her aborted bite and reaches out to oblige, shoving against Kongou's feet to send her sliding back down the table. She doesn't bother braking this time; letting her head bump into Goto's chest.
"Donut time, teitoku~" she says sweetly, popping a chocolate-sprinkle donut into his mouth when he opens it to complain, then sliiiiding the long creme-filled one into her own maw in a manner most salacious. Goto just gives you a hateful stare over Kongou's bare shoulder, and you just shrug, pointing at Arizona defensively. Yours is fine. How the hell are you supposed to KNOW!?
You and Arizona take seats near Goto's end of the table as Kongou demolishes her donut, tiring of the innuendo, and starts helping Goto eat his, tracing her fingers down his stubbled cheek while she tries to steal bites off the other end of the pastry. Arizona reaches out, gently takes Kongou's ankle and reels her in without further ado, Kongou stretching her arm to keep her fingers on Goto's face for as long as possible. Once Kongou is seated, Goto adjusts his tie, swallows his donut and begins to-
Ding!
"Aha!" Kongou says, springing out of her chair before Arizona can attempt interception. "Teatime, teiktoku~" She dashes towards an electric kettle chiming on the countertop behind you and fairly trots over to Goto with a cup of hot tea. As soon as her back's turned, he mouths "miller time," tosses the tea into a nearby potted plant and refills it with a flask that appears from his pocket.
"So!" you say brightly, trying to pre-empt Kongou's next outburst. "What fascinating new toy have you acquired?"
"Radar," he says hastily as Kongou opens her mouth to take the shot. "Radar sets. We have goddamned radar sets."
You blink. "Radar?"
Kongou looks confused. "But don't you have ones better than we ever had on planes that fly by themselves? And cameras on space stations that fly overhead all the time, and stuff?"
"Kind of," Goto replies. "As you've no doubt noted, however, whatever... phenomena brought back the abyssals - and you girls - is not really physical in nature-"
"I'm *very* physical, tei-"
"-but rather conceptual," Goto rolls on, iron in his voice. "So your - and their - weapon systems perform as effectively as you'd expect them to have performed in their prime." He nods at you. "And, thank Christ, it works both ways; so at least we're on even footing." He produces a manilla folder and slides out a few copies of a chart you've seen before. Kongou barely glances at it, but Arizona picks it up and studies it carefully - she hasn't been briefed on it yet. It's a detailed chart of the estimated effect of what's been termed the "leveling effect;" and the severity of its implementation along with little notes on the side marking significant engagements where it was especially notable.
"The narrower the technological and chronological gap between combatants," Goto summarizes, "the less pronounced the effect is. So Kongou here slugs away like she did in the actual war, post-modernization, and not as she did in nineteen-eleve-"
"ADMIRAL!" Kongou gasps in horror.
"What?"
"D-d-don't tell everyone a lady's age!"
"Oops," Goto says with as much insincerity as he can possibly cram into that one word. "So, anyway, people have been kicking around the idea of upgrading our shipgirls equipment, if we can."
"Ooh," Kongou says, all ears again. She plops her face into her hands and stares goggly-eyed at Goto. "What kind of neat stuff can they do!?"
"Well, we have two options," Goto says carefully. "We can try... well... taking your equipment off after you've summoned it, and upgrading it the old-fashioned way. With shipwrights and mechanics."
Kongou blinks. "But... wouldn't it be like working on a model?"
"That was the main objection," Goto replies. "Nobody could really accept that it would just... work like that. But after that incident with the twelve-inch shell Settle pulled out of Arizona... expanding..." he shrugs. "It's not the first time we've seen the Scale Effect, but that was the first confirmed instance of it happening after the originating ship was completely destroyed."
"You're sure that was from BB-3?" you ask.
"Yeah. The intel gnomes have been going over all the footage for the past week to make double-damned sure. The ship that fired that shell was dead when you pulled it out of Arizona, here, and it still-" he makes an expanding motion with his hands. "So, we think it'll work."
"So they want to weld on an AN/SPY-1 to these girls?" you ask.
Goto shakes his head. "Given everything we've seen, something modern just won't work - and even if it did, the Leveling Effect will render it moot, anyway. People are scared they'll reject it, like a surgery patient rejecting graft tissue or something-"
"Woah, enough detail," you say as Arizona chokes on her second doughnut. "Got it. But what about just... giving them things to wear?"
"Eh?"
"Like the go-pro cams you had them wearing last time," you point out. "Those worked fine. We can do plenty with solid-state these days, I'm sure we can cram something useful into a wearable format."
"Well, yeah," Goto admits. "That's the other option." He reaches under the table and opens up a metal case. "Settle, c'mere, look at these."
You join Goto at the head of the table, leaning over to study the contents of the box as he tilts the lid to shield it from Kongou's hungry eyes. You and him both exchange a Look.. then you look back at your girls. Kongou is about ready to crawl over the table to get a look, while Arizona is studying her doughnut a little too casually.
"Would you like to tr-"
"DESS DESS DESS!" Kongou exclaims with excitement. Arizona nods slowly as she polishes off a second cruller.
"Right," Goto says. "Go stand with your backs against the wall over there, and close your eyes."
They do as requested, Arizona striding over silently as Kongou fairly bounces past her - quite literally, as her outfit doesn't seem to include a bra. You and Goto take the radar sets out of the box and walk to your girls. Arizona fidgets a bit as she hears you approach, eyes still dutifully closed.
"Don't worry, it won't bite you," you tell her. She bites her lip, blushing slightly, and nods. She still quivers a bit when you slip the headset over her temples, but calms down quickly once the new equipment fails to zap her or anything. You recall that radar was pretty new in 1941, and everyone had different reactions to it - from Arizona's trepidation to Kongou's blithe fascination.
You and Goto step back and admire your handiwork.
"You can open your eyes now," you tell them.
They open their eyes cautiously - Kongou's face wondrous and expectant, and Arizona looking almost bored. They instantly turn and look at each other, staring at the spindly rabbit-ear antennas they are now wearing.
You can hear Goto trying to contain his laughter almost as much as you are.
>Of course they are. Go outside and see if you can pick things up. Tell us how far away you get returns, that kind of thing!
>Nah, you haven't turned them on yet. You need to transform, first! Then we can run down to the docks and do some initial sea trials.
>Just let us get some pictures first in case we break them during testing - the engineers will be pissed if we don't document before-and-after.
>Just let us get some pictures first in case we break them during testing - the engineers will be pissed if we don't document before-and-after.
"We don't know yet," Goto says. "They're just prototypes."
"Yeah, we need to take before-and-after pictures before we turn them on," you add as you and Goto hastily dig out your smartphones.
"P-pictures?" Kongou says dubiously, looking at the ridiculous rabbit-ear antennas. The one Arizona is wearing is visibly dented - you wonder what junkyard Goto found them in. You line up your camera on the two. Kongou just shrugs and strikes a cute pose, v-fingers near one eye like you saw Naka do. Arizona adopts parade-rest, gazing into your eyes steadily as she waits for the flash. Your shutters click... and click and click as you and Goto both struggle to take a steady shot while you're trying to swallow your giggles.
"O-okay, that should do it," you inform them.
Kongou instantly closes her eyes and starts wandering around, putting her new "unit" to the test. Arizona comes to hover near your elbow, peering at your smartphone curiously.
"Want to see?"
She nods. You bring up the photo in the gallery. She stares at thoughtfully for long seconds, then frowns slightly, reaching up to touch her hair.
"Okay, girls," Goto announces. "Let's try these on next." From the box he produces a second pair of headsets - these with proper-looking radar aerials, a real pair of miniaturized radars. They look vaguely like the Bridgemaster sets often mounted on private yachts for navigation and short-range surface search, but you know these probably began life as the terminal-guidance seeker in a missile.
"Oh, neat!" Kongou says, dashing over and presenting herself to have it donned. Arizona just squints at the new sets, plucks the antenna off her head, and pouts at you. You bite your lip to suppress the giggle and fail miserably as Arizona pouts harder, forcing you to stifle it in your sleeve.
"And here's yours, Arizona," Goto says. She reaches out and takes it from him before donning it herself.
"IT'S WORKING!" Kongou says with rapture a second or two after donning it. "It's - I - I don't even know-" Arizona's eyes simply widen as she presses the small "on" switch. It must be like gaining a sixth sense, you figure, as if you'd suddenly developed telepathy.
*Without* having to eat a floating eyeball, no less. Fuck those things.
"Shall we test them?"
"DESS!" Kongou proclaims. "Turn off the lights and lets have us a night battle!" She crumples up a stray sheet of notebook paper and cocks her arm back, ready.
>Sure, flip off the lights, see what the resolution is, if they can pick out tables and stuff. You think that's the milimeter-wave radar from the AGM-114L; so it ought to be pretty good at that.
>Not so fast - let's just go outside and see what the max range is on these things. They'll want them for surface and air search primarily; it doesn't do them much good if it doesn't have any range.
>Other?
>Not so fast - let's just go outside and see what the max range is on these things. They'll want them for surface and air search primarily; it doesn't do them much good if it doesn't have any range.
WRITE-IN: >Test the radars for resistance to ECM
"Outside," you insist, and you see Goto sag with relief. "You gals will be using these for air and surface search; doesn't do you much good if they're no good at range."
"What is the range?" Kongou asks.
"I think those are the radars from the Hellfire-L missile, so-"
"Good guess," Goto confirms. "The missiles goes about eight-thousand yards."
"That's not very far," Konogu says with a pout. "That's almost visual range on most nights."
"That's for firing against tanks," you tell her. "The radar can actually discern the outline of the vehicle. It can almost certainly pick up aircraft and surface ships further out; but we'll have to test it."
"NO TIME TO WASTE THEN!" Kongou exclaims. She dashes out of the room, Goto close behind. You follow, pausing in the doorway to look back at Arizona. "Coming?"
She looks up as if startled, hand in her pocket.
"You don't have to hide the donuts, hon, I bought them for you," you joke, and she smiles that slight smile of hers before following you outside. Kongou is already standing in the middle of the sidewalk, rotating like a weather-vane, fingergun extended and eyes closed.
"AND THAT... IS A MAYPOLE!"
"A fucking lamp-post, you b-"
"AND THAT... IS A-"
"flagp-"
"*MAY POLE!*"
Goto slides a hateful look at you, and mouths "sugar" before slicing his finger across his throat, his ire clear. You decide it's time to save the poor bastard - and yourself. Kongou's exuberant voice is starting to make your head ache with every exultation as the morning's painkillers wear off. Searching for an idea, you recall the Hellfire-L has a home-on-jam mode.
"Hey, Kongou. Can that radar pick up transmissions? Look up at that thing!" you point.
Kongou looks up at the tall microwave-comm tower on the base's tallest hill. "OHMYGODICANSEETHEBEAMS!" she squeals. "Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!"
"How far does it work?" you wonder.
"Let's try it!" Kongou says. "Arizona-san, shout back to me as long as you can hear me!" She runs fifty yards down the sidewalk, then twirls back to face you. "ARIZONA, CAN YOU HEAR ME?"
Arizona gives Kongou the thumbs-up. Kongou sprints another fifty odd yards away, then twirls. "CAAAN YOOOOU HEEEAAAAR MEEEE NOOOOOOOOOW?" You can't help but appreciate Kongou's remarkable volume - she's got a set of pipes on her all right, and a nice voice to boot. With some training she might be a great opera singer.
Arizona gives another thumbs up. Kongou dashes even further away, almost in another zip code at this point. "CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOU HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAR MEEEEEEEEEEEE NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW?"
Arizona just flashes another game thumbs-up. Kongou's optics can apparently pick out the gesture, because she turns and runs even further till she's completely lost to sight. You hear her yelling faintly in the distance, but Arizona just turns and gives you a searching look, as if asking for confirmation that this is, in fact, happening. You shrug.
Goto turns to you, mouth opening to speak - and then promptly closes it again, staring past you. Following his eyes, you turn to see...
... pink. A hot-pink humanoid figure stalking down the sidewalk towards you, every single inch of him aside from the whites of his eyes a brilliant, hot, fluorescent pink. Even his shoelaces did not escape unscathed; they're trailing a thin wispy line of pink paint on the concrete behind him. The only thing on him that isn't fabulous is the somber black slide of the M9 pistol gripped in one hand.
".... Harder?" you breathe.
He nods at you as he strolls on by. "Skipper."
>SLOW YER ROLL SAILOR
>Harder? Where, exactly, are you going with that?
>No need for the gun, sailor; it's not 1940 anymore. People aren't going to blame you.
>No need for the gun, sailor; it's not 1940 anymore. People aren't going to blame you.
>Harder? Where, exactly, are you going with that?
"Harder! Don't do it!" you cry out.
"Do what?" he asks entirely too casually.
"You don't need to kill yourself!"
Harder stops dead in his tracks, then turns around to stare at you. "Uh, what."
"It's okay, sailor," you say softly. "It's not 1940 anymore. Society has changed."
Harder blinks. "I don't follow."
"Nobody will judge you."
"No jury will convict me," he says darkly, "but I expect some judging, all right."
"Homosexuals are accepted now."
Harder stares at you for one long, incredibly awkward moment.
"Yeah," he says flatly. "That's funny. That's super funny. Ha. Ha. Gay submarines. Cuz they're seamen, in a long hard tube, right." He taps the gun against his thigh. "This thing holds fifteen rounds, skipper. Fif-teen."
"Aw, Harder, you wouldn't shoot me, would you?"
"... you're right," he says. "These bullets are already spoken for. I'll swing by afterward and beat you with it a bit." He spins on his heel to stalk away, but you block him with your cane.
"I am *super interested* in the story behind this."
Harder looks up at you and fixes you with the coldest, most unamused glare you have ever suffered. You actually rock back on your heels; the disdain an almost physical force.
You raise a finger. "Doorframe trick."
The stare.
"... Naka."
The *stare.*
"... all fifteen?"
He produces a spare magazine from his pocket and wiggles it.
"... gee, don't you think that's kind of dr-"
... I'm not sure I can blame him for being irked.
"Enough fucking around," he says, his voice cold. "I've tried rocks-and-shoals enough times. Quick, simple, a few black eyes and byegones are bygones. But every time I call her out, she makes some fucking wisecrack about where I wanna jam my torpedo. And now - this shit." He shakes his head. "We'll see how funny she thinks THIS is."
You nod understandingly.
Then you snatch the pistol out of Harder's hand by the barrel and smash the butt into his fucking jaw.
"For. Fucks. SAKE," he groans, lurching to his feet as you pop the magazine and check the chamber - it's loaded with rubber bullets. "I'm crazy, not an assho-"
"I'm not so sure about that," you snap, handing the pistol to Arizona. "Harder, this shit is getting out of hand."
"Respectfully sir, what the FUCK do you want me to do? I'm a fucking United States warship and I'm in a fucking Sunday School picnic with bitches in BONNETS! I don't know how to handle this any more than YOU do!"
"You think I don't know how to handle a woman?"
Harder sliiiides his eyes over to Arizona, then back to you. "Crazy. Cra-zy. Not stupid."
"Well, it seems you are learning," you mutter. "Harder, you are to meet Naka in a neutral location of her choosing, and then you are going to sit down and fucking TALK to her in a normal tone of voice, without threatening her, without challenging her to a d-d-duel and without being a little shit, do you understand?"
"Adm-"
"Do I need to clarify just how fucking much that is an order, sailor?"
He glowers at you. "I. AM. *PINK.*"
You sigh. He... kind of makes a good point, there.
>To be fair, you had it fucking coming, Harder.
>Look at it this way - she finally rose to your challenge, in her own way. You never stick around long enough to talk, so she had to resort to the language you understand.
>This isn't about Naka and you damn well know it, Harder.
>Other?
In case you hadn't guessed, it's a reference to a classic movie. You really should watch it, it's HYSTERICAL.
>Look at it this way - she finally rose to your challenge, in her own way. You never stick around long enough to talk, so she had to resort to the language you understand.
"What did you expect?" you ask. "You called her out enough times, she replied."
"With a fucking BOOBY TRAP? After making stupid wisecracks every other time? She's *fucking* with me," Harder says with heat, and you can't deny that he's somewhat correct. "And if she was here she'd make some sass about 'boobies' because she never, EVER misses a chance to mock me!"
You sigh and pinch the bridge of your nose. Your headache is back in force, a terrible, throbbing ache. You fish around in your pocket for that little pill container you carry. "You're pissed because she's acting like a human being?"
"A human tramp is still a tramp."
"Harder, have you ever actually considered her sexu-"
"Would you like one Fuck with your No, or two?" he replies instantly. "She's a backstabbing Jap, that's all there is to it."
"For fucks sake, Harder, why the hell WOULD she take you up on a straight fight? She's sure she'd lose."
Harder blinks.
"She was damn near killed by a torpedo hit not a week ago, and you're fucking famous for hunting the hunter. You told her to her face, she's just a big, slow destroyer to you. She KNOWS she's just a big, slow destroyer. What do you think she'd do if you finally cornered her and forced her into your fucking rocks-and-shoals?"
Harder blinks; momentarily turning completely pink as the whites of his eyes vanish. "Uh..."
"Me? I think she'd stand there and let you punch her lights out, just to get you off her case."
"No way a Jap wo-"
"Yes, *way,*" you retort. "I just told you, she has a realistic idea of her abilities. For a Japanese warship from the nineteen-fucking-forties, that's something special. She ain't gonna shout 'gomenesai' and start dumping ash-cans against Hit'Em Again Harder."
Harder stares at you. "Why the fuck not?"
"That's for you to figure out. Now, go wash yourself off and get ready - I want you two meeting before the day's out, you understand me?"
"Yes, sir," he says, plainly pissed off.
"Salute, shitbird."
Harder snaps to attention and salutes crisply, almost managing to flick some pink paint on your uniform. You resist the urge to smirk. "Oh, you little - get the fuck out of here, Harder."
Harder gets.
You finally find your little wooden pill case and slide the top off the box, dumping out three Alieve and dry-swallowing them. Fuck the dosage limit. Arizona is looking at you sympathetically.
"Those two are going to either fuck, or fucking murder each other," you mutter to Arizona, faintly embarrassed by your invective but too frazzled to care.
"Settle-" Goto interjects.
"Relax, I took his gun-"
"No!" he snaps. You look back to him - his phone's pressed against his ear. "Inside, now!"
Arizona's revolver appears in her hand as if conjured.
"What, an air raid?" you ask.
"Get to the command room - Tone and Chikuma are under air attack!"
40731708 (demetrious) - THAT'S A WRAP FOR TONIGHT! We'll resume on Wednesday unless something utterly explodes, but even if I have to make a trip I should be able to run a thread from my grandmother's place upstate, too.
You burst into the base's command center like a hurricane, almost bowling over an ensign in a hurry somewhere. The main display screens are already focused on an area of open ocean north of the Ogasawara archipelago. A big plotting map shows the locations your scouting group. USS Fitzgerald is about 30 nautical miles behind USS Mustin; and Mustin has Tone 30 miles north and Chikuma about 30 miles south. Naka is already in the command center, a pile of manilla folders lying forgotten in her lap as she cranks her wheelchair closer to the main screen, her face drawn. Glancing at the next screen over you can see a visual feed zooming in even as you watch; the high-resolution from a Keyhole bird. To the side is a slightly fuzzier feed at a steeper slant-angle; probably a Global Hawk out of Guam still motoring towards station at best time. The keyhole bird's resolution is good enough to pick out the black silhouettes of abyssal torpedo bombers angling straight for Tone, a full squadron at least. They're barely twenty miles distant, by the eyeball, and they're already diving for the deck to begin their long attack runs.
"Fuck," Goto snaps. "Why didn't they spot them sooner?" You both know damn well why, but you feel the same - a bitter frustration boiling in your breast, forced to watch this drama play out with damn little you can do from four hundred odd nautical miles distant.
Arizona is by your elbow, her eyes riveted on the screens with an awful, flat look in her eyes. You belatedly recall that Naka was sunk by air attack too, trying to escape the massacre at Truk.
>Get them out of here. This might not end well.
>Call Goto's CVs in too, if you can. They're gonna want to see this.
>Call Goto's CVs in too, if you can. They're gonna want to see this.
A wicked, vindictive smirk cuts across your face as you take in the disposition of forces - you can already see how this is gonna go down, and you can think of some people you want here to see it. First you call Hornet; and get a rather hesitant reply after several rings - she probably thinks you're mad at her, or something. You ring Shoukaku next and get a rather flirty reply before you tell her to haul ass to the command center with anyone nearby. She replies with crisp military professionalism and signs off the call without hitting the "end" button; so you can hear her rousting Kaga and Akagi and a third, younger voice with a kind of drawl to it. Old habits, etc.
You turn back to the screen, where Tone is turning her (rather impressive) stern to the oncoming planes, building steam as fast as possible. Two destroyer girls you can't recognize from the keyhole feed are already firing their main batteries at long range; the flak puffing up depressingly far from the sea-skimming abyssal torpedo bombers. They've got a good distance yet to go for a good launch; the 12-ship squadron is splitting into two groups of six, swinging north and south to catch Tone in a deadly pincer. The screen below it shows a visual side-by-side with computerized track; the Global Hawk's long-range recon camera trying to correct the jitter from uncertain radar returns emanating from the abyssal aircraft to the south; homing in on Chikuma. They seem to be dive-bombers, because they're keeping their altitude as they home in on Chikuma from about thirty miles out.
The CVs must have been in the building, because they show up within a minute or two, bursting into the room in full battle-dress, but absent their bows. Akagi and Kaga trot in first, followed by Shoukaku and Zuikaku - with two girls you don't recognize. One of them you'll wager is Hiryuu, but the shorter one with what looks like a metallic ball-cap is unrecognizable.
"Are they launching interceptors?" Goto demands.
A technician turns away from his laptop in one corner. "They're scrambling F-18s from Kaneda and Guam and the USAF is mobilizing Strike Eagles from the mainland, but-"
"They're not going to get there in time," you answer. "The airforce is like the cavalry - always showing up right after they're no longer needed."
"Why are they so far apart?" Akagi says, her voice torn. "Aren't those human ships the AA ships?" She turns to you, open panic in her eyes. Shoukaku is just watching the torpedo bombers close in on Tone, her hands clasped tightly over her mouth, eyes horrified. Kaga's face is drawn and pale; her hands trembling in fists pressed against her thighs.
"Goto gave them escorts," she all but hisses. "If there's only one or two waves, they'll be fine. Repulse dodged more torpedoes than that, remember?"
"It was a pincer attack that got Repulse," Naka chimes in softly. She's tapping a pencil against a notepad in her lap. With a sudden burst of energy, she picks up the pad and scribbles furiously in it, noting something down - before almost hurling it into her lap and turning her eyes back to the screen. You see her slight chest stop moving for a moment as she holds her breath, and turn your eyes back to the screen to see a second squadron of aircraft closing on Tone - they seem to be fighters, or perhaps dive-bombers; you can't see under their wings from the keyhole's feed. Even stalwart Arizona is reacting; you watch her body stiffen as the torpedo bombers slowly claw into position; unmolested by air attack or significant AA fire.
"... Goto?" you ask quietly.
"Mm?"
"How many joint ops have the girls done with the JSDF?"
"Almost none," he replies. "Our first concern was asset preservation, and when we got a critical mass of kanmasu we regulated the JSDF to convoy escort and the Sea of Japan to keep it that way. Why?"
You grin.
>Comfort Naka - the girl's about to get a demonstration of the backup she'll be fighting future battles with.
>Comfort Shoukaku and Akagi - they're both sweet girls, and it hurts to see them getting worked up like this.
>Comfort Arizona - she's the one with the greatest trauma related to air attack, after all, even if it wasn't when she was underway.
>This is a great chance to win five bucks off Kaga, and make a point at the same time.
Inspired-by-discussion addition: >Girls, hold on to your butts.
>This is a great chance to win five bucks off Kaga, and make a point at the same time.
>Girls, hold on to your butts.
You slide your eyes over to Kaga, who's standing statue-still and graven faced as she watches the screens, probably thinking she's watching the murder of her comrades developing in real-time, probably blaming you for putting the American AA ships too far away to help, safely out of harm's way, and hating the world for keeping her away from the battle where her aircraft could have helped.
It's the perfect setup, delivered into your lap by happy circumstance and a bit of ignorance and failure to catch up with the 21st century on their parts.
"Hey, Kaga," you call out conversationally. "Wanna make five bucks?"
Her head swivels to bear on you like a main-gun turret, and her eyes are as empty and loaded with awful promise as the cold dark muzzles of 16-inch rifles.
"That's like five-hundred yen," you add helpfully.
You see her arms start to vibrate slightly as she presses her fists deeper into her thighs.
"I bet you five bucks none of those bombers are going to make it to their release point," you say glibly.
"If they don't, it'll be no thanks to the US Navy," she says coldly.
"And your ships won't splash a single one," you add with a grin.
She gives you a hate-filled glare. "This is a very bad time to mock me, yankee."
"Do I look like a joking man?" you return, your voice plunging into the negative degrees so fast it takes her back a bit. "Do I look like a fucking comedian? Watch the fucking screens, Kaga." You clap your hand on Arizona's slender shoulder, making her yip in surprise. You give her a gentle squeeze of reassurance as you pick up a command remote off a table and redirect two of the visual feeds to USS Fitzgerald and USS Mustin. "Girls, get ready for a Southern Fairy tale."
".... what?" the girl with the metallic ball-cap asks.
You grin. "Y'all ain't gonna believe this shit."
"'Permission to exist within my airspace'? HAHAHAHAHA-DENIED!"
That's about when the Arleigh-Burke's unleash hell. The ships almost vanish from view as they begin ripple-firing interceptors; the thick white plumes of missile contrails engulfing their bows as they pop off weapons from both VLS racks; fore and aft. You fiddle with the command remote and bring up PIP windows focusing on a few selected missiles; the datalink from the ships has tagged their birds, so you choose a pair of SM-6s. The Global Hawk's long slantwise angle is the most dramatic; showing the missile's booster discarding as it lofts up, angling for 80,000 feet. The resolution on the Hawk's camera is so good that you can actually see the faint plume of vapor blown out of the air when the missile shatters the sound barrier. Altitude and speed readouts from the datalink telemetry feed are scrolling down the side of the screen.
"Are those numbers *right?*" breathes Akagi.
Kaga, however, is not so impressed. "They need terminal guidance. Tone doesn't have those kinds of radars and the planes are over-the-horizon from the yankee destroyers..." she shakes her head. You raise an eyebrow - it seems that she has done some reading, after all.
At least about the JSDFs systems, that is.
"You want mercy? Ask God. I'd suggest speaking loudly and quickly."
The torpedo planes have reached their attack points; about 45 degrees off Tone's bow, and are arrowing in at military power, about 150 feet off the deck. They're about 20,000 yards away, but you doubt they'll release till they're within 1000 yards or shorter - fly close, press the attack, surely strike, as IJN torpedo aviators used to say. The SM-6s come screaming in from 80,000 feet like lighting bolts from a wrathful god; tweaking their trajectories as the WSOs on the destroyers vector the weapons towards the kill-box based on real-time visuals from the Keyhole and Global Hawk. Tone has just opened up with her main batteries, flinging massive plumes of water high into the air in an effort to knock the torpedo bombers out of the air with columns of spray when the missiles arrive.
One second there's six torpedo bombers making their run, and then there's just a cloud of fire, sea-spray, aluminum debris, flecks of black chitin and, impossibly, one lone torpedo flying free, liberated from its aircraft. It tumbles end-for-end and breaks up when it slaps into the waves. The other group has a few seconds warning to begin evasives, but with the combined closing speed of the missiles it does them little good. One torpedo bomber survives the explosions; its toothy, grinning "face" turning north to beat a hasty retreat.
It lasts about four seconds before a late-coming missile aimed at where the southern formation had been screams over Tone's head at 3,000 feet and homes in on the lone survivor. A few seconds later there's a flash, and then just one more cloud of debris.
The dive-bombers closing on Chikuma have a little more warning; they see the contrails coming and aren't tied to a vulnerable low-altitude run. They break off their approach to begin jinking wildly, many of them diving steeply. A wave of SM-2 missiles comes screaming in, contrails diverging as they pick out individual targets. The combined radar PIP lights up brilliantly as Mustin begins illuminating targets for Fitzgerald's missiles; the powerful narrow-beam terminal-intercept sets lighting up the bandits with so much energy they may as well be glowing - not even the strange, ethereal interference that helps protect abyssal craft is much good against that. Contacts begin winking out along with interceptors. A few SM-2s scream past their targets or detonate just outside the guaranteed kill-zone; the surviving dive-bombers hurtling for the deck before turning away to retreat.
Complete and utter silence reigns as the destroyers loose a few more SM-6s at the squadron of fighters tailing the now-dead torpedo bombers; the abyssals have hit the deck to avoid direct intercepts, but the SM-6s can find their own way, especially with the Global Hawk updating their data-links.
"Skippers, SITREP," you hear the calm voice of 7th fleet commander over the command radio circuit - probably sitting a short distance away in the CIC of his carrier, at the docks. You turn town the volume and sliiiide your eyes towards a very quiet, very stunned Kaga.
"I believe you owe me five bucks," you snigger.
>Confer with Goto, first - how the hell did they get the first attack?
>Contact the shipgirls under your command, first - this might not be over yet.
>Confer with the CVs - you need to see who's ready to sortie. The area of the attack is only about a day's sail away, if they make twenty knots. The sooner you get them out there, the better. Every minute counts.
>Contact the shipgirls under your command, first - this might not be over yet.
You pick up a headset and slip it on. You cut your eyes at Goto, who nods, giving you permission to take default command over his girls. "Tone, Chikuma, status?"
"Chikuma here, I'm okay."
"W-W-WHAT THE HELL W-W-AS THAT!?" Tone's horrified voice breaks in.
"Yeah..." Kaga breathes. "What..?"
"That was a big can of American ass-kicking," you tell them. Akagi makes a soft whimpering noise, and Shoukaku looks like she just had a religious experience, her hands pressed together in front of her face, eyes wide with amazement.
"Tone, Chikuma - who do you have in the air right now? Your planes aren't on my screens."
"Scout plane two and four," Chikuma replies. "We're keeping two up and two being serviced with one in reserve."
"I have one and three," Tone replies. "No reports as of yet."
"Launch everything you got;" you instruct. "They're in your area. And tighten up your formation with the Arleigh-Burke's, and keep your speed at full or flank for now - you're probably being tracked by subs."
Goto gives you a raised eyebrow as the girls give uncertain affirmatives. "They just received an air attack, but they didn't spot any scouts," you point out. "The Burke's should have picked them, up, at least."
"Doesn't mean they did," Goto points out as he slips a headset on. "You know how that works. And a single scout plane isn't easy to spot."
"Damn little cloud cover today, though. And those planes came straight-in; doesn't look like they were diverging from a search pattern, does it?" You shrug. "Besides, if there's any abyssal subs in the AO they'll be vectoring in on them as we speak.
"Point," Goto says quietly, then focuses on the girl to your side. "Uh, is she-"
You notice Arizona seems to be... not breathing, still. You take your hand off her left shoulder (you'd been using her as support without thinking about it) and pick your cane up again. "Arizona, it's over, kiddo."
She takes a deep breath and nods ever-so-slightly, keeping her face fixed on the screen. You're glad she got to see that - the Arleigh-Burkes are the equivalent of a dedicated AA ship of old, but they have much, much further reach... at the cost of money and magazine capacity, that is.
"Good god," baseball-hat girl says. "If your missiles can do THAT, what do you need US for?"
"That... those missiles..." Shoukaku breathes.
"... hunted. those. bombers. down," Kaga finishes, her voice flat with shock.
Akagi turns to you. "How - I - if - why do you even need us...?"
"The missiles they fired at the dive-bombers?" Goto interjects. "They're SM-2s."
"I've seen those fired before," Akagi replies. "But, that *far*?"
"Those are the SM-2ERs," Goto says, shaking his head. "We were using up our stocks of the old shorter-range stuff before. What you just saw costs 400,000 dollars."
"But they wiped them out!" Akagi exclaims. "My own squadrons can't manage-"
"Each."
Akagi blinks. "W-what."
Kaga turns her attention to Goto. "Why haven't I seen those... those self-seeking ones before?"
"The SM-6s?" you interject. "The ones that hunted them down?"
"Yes."
"The ones that can fly a hundred miles, find its target destroyed, and fly a search pattern till it finds some other unlucky son of a bitch to kill?"
"Yes."
"They're expensive," Goto replies for you. "The JSDF couldn't afford many *before* the war, and now the US is hogging most of the production." You give him a Look. "Rightfully so, they're covering two oceans don't look at me like that," he says, waving his hand at you.
"Expensive?" Shoukaku asks. "How expensive?"
You and Goto look at each other. "Was it five?"
"Four...?"
You both produce your smartphones.
"Four-and-a-half," you declare a half-second before he does.
The girls go dead-silent as the blood seems to drain from Kaga's face completely. She turns and slowly stumbles out of the room. You wait till she's cleared the room before you let the laughter take over - your head screams with pain every time you guffaw, but it is SO worth it. Every time Kaga's expression surfaces in your memory you just start laughing harder, leaning heavily on your cane, tears trickling from your eyes as your thundering headache punishes you for the mirth.
"Admiral Settle-" you look up to see Naka tapping away on her (own?) smartphone, a frown on her face. "It says the US Military budget is about a trillion dollars a year-" a wave of disbelieving gasps goes through the room "-so if you built a ton of those things, couldn't you... win?"
"Absolutely," you reply glibly. "Our forces are superior when massed, so all we need to do issssssssss-" you pan to Goto, who cuts in smoothly with "-draw them into a DECISIVE BATTLE!"
Even Shoukaku gives you both a lidded-eyed look at that one, and Akagi pouts a bit. "And even then," you point out, "the factories can only make so much. Our defense contractors are churning them out by the bushel-basket, but sixteen months isn't enough time to seriously increase production. Before the war we didn't actually have enough missiles to fill every ship to capacity, period. Shit, some of our CAPs are flying with fucking *gun pods,* now."
"... oh," Naka says, looking thoughtful. "Well, at least they're safe..."
>Order some coffee, stay here - you want to see if Chikuma and Tone's scouts find the enemy, now that you have a rough vector for them and more birds in the air.
>Get some lunch and lie down for a bit - this headache is only getting worse and you're going to be busy tonight - and tomorrow.
>Step into a conference room with Goto to hammer out who's going with the task force - you're not sure if Hornet her Japanese brethren are ready for joint ops yet.
>Step into a conference room with Goto to hammer out who's going with the task force - you're not sure if Hornet her Japanese brethren are ready for joint ops yet.
You're sorely tempted to get some grub, lie down and quietly die for a few hours - your headache is just getting worse. Or failing that, just grab some joe and keep silent vigil by the screens in the command center - you've done that enough times half-dead on the bridge of your old ship, much less with a headache. But you know damn well that if you do either, it'll fall to Goto to assemble the task-force, and though you don't doubt he'll do a good job, you've got your own horses to back.
Hornet has drifted into the room - you suspect she was hanging back till Kaga left - and is now studying the instant-replays with interest as Naka manhandle's Goto's command remote to make the big LCD displays do her bidding. You tap Goto on the shoulder and jerk your thumb towards the door to an adjacent conference room, then grab Hornet by her slender wrist.
"W-what?" she tries to object. You stalk off across the room, dragging the confused girl behind you. "A-admiral, what are you-"
"Conference," you say.
"B-but-!"
"CONFERENCE!" you declare, and haul her into the side-room. It's much smaller than most conference rooms; it's not quite on-par with an embassy's "bubble," a room surrounded by a water-filled bulkhead and various shields to foil any surveillance tech on earth... but it's not far from, either. You flop into a chair with a groan as Goto leans against one wall. Hornet stands at the other end of the table, hands clasped before her and eyes downcast.
She probably thinks she's in for another tongue-lashing.
This amuses you.
>Let Goto go first with his recommendations - you'd like to see what he thinks about Hornet sortieing with his carriers at this time.
>Jump right in - you want Hornet on this next sortie, period.
>Other?
>Let Goto go first with his recommendations - you'd like to see what he thinks about Hornet sortieing with his carriers at this time.
Slumping over the table, you hide your eyes from the light in your hand and wave vaguely at Goto, prompting him to speak. You know full well that you want Hornet on this next op, but Goto's in charge of 9/10ths of this force, he's been doing it longer than you and he knows much better how well Kaga et al will mesh with Hornet operationally - and given recent tensions, that's no inconsiderable problem. He takes the cue, and looks up at Hornet.
"Hornet," he says, "I want you on this next operation."
You hear Hornet stutter, and even you look up to squint at him - it wasn't what you were expecting him to say, honestly. He gives you a funny look, turns it to Hornet, and then back to you.
"What?"
"You w-want me-"
"-want her-"
"Yes?"
"Why?" you and Hornet both ask.
Goto stares at you, his eyes seeming to pop out of his head as he gives you a Stare. You hold up one palm in surrender, the other still supporting your forehead. "Ay, ay," you say defensively as you squint out of one eye. "Just didn't think you'd see it my way."
"What way!?" Hornet demands, sounding a bit peeved now.
Goto gives you both the disbelieving look again. "What, does she really-"
"Really."
"... but she was fucking THERE-"
"I KNOW!" you exclaim, then grunt in regret. "Ow."
"... okay," Goto says with a shrug. "I want Hornet because my girls suck the big one at managing CAP fighters."
Hornet blinks.
"Are you shitting me?" Goto says in disbelief. "You. Were. THERE-"
"I WAS!" Hornet snaps. "Half my air group ended in the damn water, the other half on an island and the rest were killed by the Japanese CAP!"
Goto stares. "Hasn't anyone talked to you about this?" He glances at you, and you shake your head along with a little shrug - the Standard Spiel is very, very light on any contextual data; the theory being that it's best not to go a-gambling lest someone poke the wrong wound and wind up with a new abyssal ripping their spine out... and you have no idea what Hornet's independent reading has yielded. Goto sighs and presses on, like a high school teacher faced with a kid who can't do basic arithmetic. "The Kido Butai got hosed by all those piecemeal torpedo attacks - including your VT-8."
Hornet just stares at him.
"They were nigh-constant, so all four decks were launching and recovering combat air patrol from the first attack till the moment Yorktown's dive bombers fucked them," Goto says bluntly. "They never really had a chance, because their doctrine was shit. After that they changed things to dedicate one deck to handling CAP while the other three spotted strikes. 'Course we never had much of a chance to do that afterwards, since most of our carriers were at the bottom - so even Shoukaku and Zuikaku don't have much practice at it, and Cardiv 1 and 2 haven't had much time to practice. Half the JSDF is in dock being maintained at any given time - it's just the nature of the beast. You girls can maintain insanely superior operational tempos, and with the JSDF being as small as it is, we really didn't have a choice." He thrusts a finger at Hornet. "Yeah, you were sunk when your air groups were still green as hell, but they were fucking fearless and fought like lions - and they got off the fucking deck in time to make a difference. And I need a deck dedicated to CAP. You're it."
You turn your head to give Hornet a one-eyed look and a smug little "I-told-you-so" smirk. She's clutching her balled-up fists against her chest and blushing faintly, though her complexion and the dark room make it hard to be sure.
Rising unsteadily, you mumble to Goto that you're gonna ask Arizona to see you to your room - the pain is almost unbearable, and you've got the heavy-duty morphine-based shit in your room, intended for your leg that can knock it down. He bids you farewell and asks you to send in his carriers for more hammering-out of details. You nod vaguely and stumble back into the command center.
"-was only $270,000 in 1941, you see-"
"Naka-chan, that's still SIX planes! SIX! PLANES!"
"Well, yes, but-"
"SIX!"
"LAUNCH!" a silky voice snarls, like an elaborate, embroidered ribbon fraying at the edges. "BLAST YOU, NUMBER FOUR, NOT *AGAIN!*"
"Tone-san, do you need help?"
"I need a new damned cata- don't you sass me, you little beast! I'll swat you! Like a fly! You... you... you *double peasant!*"
"Tone-san, you're on the radio!"
The pain in your skull seems to be redoubling by the second. You can make out the dim outline of Arizona across the room and head for her, but within moments you've lost sight of your trusted companion. The multitude of voices in the room seem to swirl together; the dim glow of the big LCDs blurring and fuzzing into a confusing mass of shadows everywhere.
You hear a shout, then a scream; stampeding feet as you plummet towards the dark carpet. Somewhere very distant you feel/hear a THUMP, but you're still falling... falling towards a vast, dark expanse of water far, far below.
The setting sun's long rays glow golden in the glassy water of the West Basin, the oppressive heat of day already fading to a comfortable warmth. You lean against the railing, clutching your travel mug in both hands, but you needn't have bothered – you seem to be gliding away from the dock on skates. The harbor tugs are handling you with the same easygoing care that seems to suffuse the still evening air. You close your eyes for a second and enjoy the calm; the distant, sonorous moan of a freighter's horn; the muted, halfhearted cries of wheeling gulls – the rare few minutes when one of the world's busiest ports seems to pause and breathe.
"Skipper."
You glance aside to find Hate joining you at the rail. "Want a refill?"
You pop the lid off your travel mug and let the Lance Corporal top it off from the carafe he's carrying. "The galley boys still trying to put a stop to this shit?"
Hate gives you that small smile unique to supremely smug Marines. "They gave me my own, actually."
"Ha!" you snort. "Taking third watch with me?"
"Hell yes," he growls as he slurps at the carafe crudely. "I wouldn't miss this for the world."
You hear the harbor pilot's voice from the wheelhouse, and the tugs let off their throttles, letting the tow-lines go slack before your crew casts them off. The deck of the Higgins vibrates very slightly as the gas turbines begin to purr, gliding her towards the harbor's exit. Hate rests his carafe against the rail to free a hand for his binoculars.
DDG-76, USS Higgins, getting a helpful nudge on her way out to sea.
"Skipper," he says, passing the glasses to you. You apply your eyes, your privileged position high on the ship letting you gaze over the rooftops on the mole. The surface of San Pedro bay is a dazzling, shimmer of flaming orange light, but on the smooth surface you can just make out -
"Well, well."
"Yeah," Hate says. "Like I said. Ain't gonna miss this for nuthin."
"Shall we?" you gesture at the door leading off the wing and onto the bridge proper.
"Visibility is better from here, Skipper," Hate says straight-faced, and you find yourself unable to deny his logic. You lean against the railing again and take a deep breath as the Higgins glides towards the exit channel at a sedate four knots.
"Happy to be going out again?" Hate asks.
You open your mouth to reply – then pause, tapping your mug on the rail to make some noise. "Always," you reply with a smile that doesn't reach your eyes. "Harder for the paperwork to find me... usually."
Hate sips at his carafe again, glancing back at the bay. You lean over the railing a bit, studying the white lids of Higgin's forward 29-cell VLS. A moment passes in companionable silence as your ship slips alongside the mole at fast walking speed, the purring props barely disturbing the glimmering waters.
"Think they'll work?"
You almost drop the damn mug. "What?"
"The LRASMs," Hate replies, applying the optics to his face again.
You glance back at the VLS doors, freshly loaded with the latest greatest firecrackers not two days ago. "Oh. They'll work." You tap your mug on the railing again, and give in with a sigh. "You ever get some just-in-country FNG start talkin bout how bad he wants to frag a haji? What'd you think of him?"
Hate's eyebrow quirks underneath the binocular's eyepiece before he responds. "Every time he opened his mouth we shit down his throat till he couldn't squeeze a word out. Why?"
You just snigger and return to staring at the VLS doors, hands cupping your cooling mug. Hate drops his optics again and sliiiides his pupils to the corner of his eyes to study you.
"They're still talking about promoting you, aren't they?"
You click your mug on the rail again, a little too sharply. Hot coffee splashes out and a drop sears your finger. "Dammit – uh, yeah."
"When?"
You kick the deck with your toe, leaning further over the rail. "They laid this girl's keel in 1990. She's getting along, you know. And my Holy Nation says there might be a flag slot opening up in a few years."
"Just when everything's going to hell," Hate observes.
"Yeah."
You both keep the peace for a few minutes more, and you even drink some of your damn coffee. You can hear Hate thinking; a reluctant, rusty sound of just-woken entropy flaking off. Before he can finish, the Higgins rounds the mole and turns for the main channel, giving you both a good look at the twenty-foot launch lying in wait for you to starboard, just barely outside the restricted passage. Their banners and signs are already deployed. You borrow Hate's optics and read the signs from three hundred yards distant.
"Uranium?" You lower the glasses and glance at Hate quizzically.
"Depleted uranium," Hate says. "New warheads have some penetrator-rod bundle... thing in'em. I dunno."
As you pass even with the fire-boat station, muted voices begin to reach you over the water; the banners and signs on the launch beginning to jiggle and jostle exuberantly. You sliiide your eyes towards Hate, who's already slipping the tablet out of his pocket. He flips the cover up with exaggerated flair, and gives you a sly look.
"I dunno," you say thoughtfully. "They wouldn't be stupid enough to do anything here, would they?" You nod at the not-too-distant shape of a Coast Guard cutter prowling near the breakwater.
"They never do," Hate replies. "They just shadow you to the AO and start shit there."
"Hmmm," you muse as the Higgins approaches the launch; which is, if you remember the chart right, *awfully* close to nosing into the protected channel. "Can't have that... but, still." Now the tranquil air is disrupted by the faint strain of music being blasted out of speakers being pushed past their limit for maximum volume; the tortured measures wailing across the water.
"... what the fuck is that?" you ask.
"Green Day, sir," Hate replies with unmitigated disgust.
"Right, *that* does it," you mutter. "Let'em have it."
Capt. Settle: "There's only so much of these assholes a man can take."
With a truly predatory grin, Hate hovers his finger over the tablet. "And let slip... the dogs of war," he sniggers, before tapping the screen.
The evening solitude is shredded by the bright screams of outboard engines coming up fast from the rear. Six small rigid inflatable boats come screaming past the Higgins, three to a side, kicking up towers of spray behind them as they tear past. You see a panicked flailing aboard the launch as the boats fall upon it like a wolfpack on a three-legged cat.
"AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!" Hate screams across the water as the boats smash their rubber nose-bumpers into the launches side and begin hustling it away like team of bouncers. "FLY, MY PRETTIES! FLY!" He taps his screen again and the robotic boats change programs, taking turns ramming the launch away from the channel before roaring away and soaking the decks with propeller spray as they circle around for another go. The self-driving drones swarm the hapless launch until the pilot manages to gun it. It flees for the breakwater, the hand-lettered GREENPEACE banner drifting lazily into the water behind it as the robotic RIGs pursue, driving and nipping at its heels as they herd it safely away.
"I fucking *love* these things," Hate says with rapture.
Remote-controlled RIGs like these are being used to enforce a perimeter around USN ships and facilities.
You turn sideways and lean against the rail as the Higgins putters down the channel towards the gap in the breakwater, heading for deep water. Terminal Island is strangely empty-looking in the failing rays of the Californian sun. The major drydock and shipyard that cranked out so many Liberty Ships during The War now lies empty and desolate of the Chinese freighters that usually crowd its piers in the modern era – the most serious indicator yet of the rising tensions. The commercial anchorages are better populated; men moving about their decks as they secure for the night. You glance towards the mouth of the main channel as Higgins clears the breakwater, wondering idly if there'll be a museum berth for an Arleigh-Burke one of these days...
"Oh fuck me," you mutter, whipping Hate's optics off his neck and pressing them to your eyes. Sure enough, you're looking at the high green prow of the MV Arctic Sunrise. You don't know what they're planning – Greenpeace has been squigglier than usual the last couple years – and you really don't care to find out, not on this deployment. "Hate," you say as you point. "Take your team over there and inspect those assholes. And take your time, please."
"SO IT SHALL BE WRITTEN," Hate declares dramatically, completely failing to keep a shit-eating grin off his face – not that he was trying very hard. "SO IT SHALL BE DONE." He double-times off the wing, and a moment later you hear the intercom calling the VBSS team to the rear boat deck. You sigh, drain your mug and finally stroll onto the bridge. The XO looking at the Greenpeace icebreaker with his own binoculars. "Captain on the bridge," he says lackadaisically. "Finally."
"Meh," you say, waving away the smell of his shitty opinions.
"We waiting?" the pilot asks.
"Hell no," you reply. "Take us straight out, they'll catch up once those clowns are too far behind to catch up."
"Want me to step on it, Captain?"
LCpl. Hate and his VBSS: "LICENCE. REGISTRATION. LOGBOOK. EVERY-FUCKING-THING ELSE. PLEASE."
"No need," you say, imagining the fuming on the bridge of the Greenpeace boat as the Higgins sedately slides out of reach, into the sunset. Poetry. Besides, cutting Hate's playtime short would be... unproductive.
You take your seat, the old pleather creaking under your ass as you settle in. You've spent a lot of time in this chair, staring out these weather-beaten windows. The thought of leaving it for the last time – leaving the sea – doesn't sit well with you. You know every creak and groan of Higgins, every quirk and foible. When you wake in the middle of the night, you can tell what she's doing just by her sound; what speed she's making by the vibration in the deck; how sharp she's turning by the groaning of her structure; even the sea condition from how it drums against her steel sides. Your old boat lasted longer than she was intended, but the new generation of surface combatants are finally arriving, and for a Flight I destroyer... the breakers are in sight. And you know that the museum berth will go to Arleigh-Burke, the name ship of her class – not old worn-out Higgins.
But until then – she's yours, and you are hers.
Dusk is dying before you; a last sliver of the sun resting on the horizon. The thin, wispy cloud deck has been set ablaze by the day's last light; the shimmering waters mirroring their brilliant orange glow. As the sky and sea seem to melt together; only the sun's bright blazing ribbon of radiance stretching into the horizon is distinct. Down that golden path the Higgins sails, heading out past the drab silhouetted bulks of freighters sailing into port.
The magic minute is soon over, the orange radiance fading as the sun finally slips below the waves. The clouds turn pink, then purple as darkness claims dominion.
"Captain. Boarding team's on the phone."
You start slightly, your reverie broken, and reach for your bridge phone. "Patch him through."
Capt. Settle: "Spent a lot of time in this chair. Sometimes asleep."
It WAS a beautiful evening...
Hate's voice sounds even smugger than you thought possible. "Skipper," he says. "Seems there's a problem with their logs. We're going over it, but their handwriting is horrible."
"Shame, isn't it?" you smirk into the phone. "They don't even teach kids cursive anymore."
"Sure is. We'll catch up with you in a bit, skipper."
"Roger that. Over and out." You hang up the phone with a discreet click, and turn back to the ocean, turning your eyes towards the sky. The darkness spreading through sea and sky has gained a grainy texture, snarled and coarse with clouds. The full moon, so crisp in the cornflower blue Californian skies a few hours ago is nowhere to be found.
Your eyes flick towards the electronic display over the windows; a brief synopsis of wind, (none,) sea state (flat) and mercury (1020.21 milibars.) Red sky at night, et cetera. A vague sense of duty itches at the back of your brain, making you grope guiltily for your clipboard, but something keeps your eyes glued to the window. Darkness is full upon the sea; too closely upon dusk's heels. The water ripples like rumpled velvet under a steady breeze that slices in through an open vent window somewhere, clean and sharp. The minute squeak behind you; a slight change in the deckplate's thrum as the helmsman adjusts his wheel and tweaks the throttle to fend off the waves.
You spin your chair around – you remember the morning's weather forecast just damn fine. "Nav, anything on your scope?"
The navigation officer is glaring at his screens like they're a lying wife, eyes twitching suspiciously between weather radar, satellite feeds and the surface scope. "No, sir."
You open your mouth to express doubt, and you hear your ears pop. Your eyes flick back to the barometer-
... and then everything changed.
"The fuck?" your XO summarizes eloquently. Your boots are clanking over the deck before you realize you've left your chair, spooking the bridge watch as you slam the hatch open. He salutes warily as you stand in the growing sea breeze – *all* sea breeze; Higgins isn't making enough headway for a foamy wake. You're forced to snatch at your cap by a strong crossbreeze that buffets you and tugs at your uniform; a wild wind that throws faint spray in your face as it dashes waves against Higgin's bow.
You check your watch, noting the scant minutes since Higgins slipped her mooring.
This literally can't be happening, and yet – it is. You glance out to sea again, where minutes earlier you gazed into a serene sunset. The last fading light is enough to silhouette a tall column of cloud rising rapidly for the stratosphere, roiling overhead into a ceiling on the sky. That itch behind your brain leaps to your neck and runs down your spine, your cap damn near lifting off your head as your close-cropped hair stands on end. You bolt back into the bridge.
"XO!" you shout, making him jerk as he tears his eyes away from the windows.
"Sir?"
"Take the conn. Now." You sling yourself into the skipper's chair, queasiness fluttering around your stomach as the harbor pilot trades with your usual helmsman, exchanging formalities with the XO.
"Sir, VBSS on-"
"Tell him I want his ass back on the boat, double time," you say, cutting the radioman off. Hate's a vet; he can smell funny air fine, but you doubt he knows – hell, you don't know, either. The sea's supposed to rush out before a tsunami hits, but not always, not everywhere – but the birds, the bees, everything knows it, senses it smells it before it rolls in, a tension, a tightness in the air – but the barometer is still falling, your ears popping.
You're the first to see it.
what is this I don't even
Wispy blue radiance rising, tail chasing it upwards as it winds and wends into nothingness; a sinuous blue flame crawling like cloud-lightning. Your head turns to track it as Higgins swings through her turn, and -
"The fuck," your XO breathes as he catches sight of the blue-white light snapping and leaping just under the water's surface with electrical hysteria; crawling wider in an oval just off the bow some indeterminate distance out. It draws every eye and optic like moths to flame; ethereal and spellbinding. The radiance brightened as it spread; the choppy waves catching fire as more wisps of licking electric flame leap heavenward. Backlit by the blue ghostlights rising from the black sea a silhouette is seen, a void against the luminance. Your eye seeks the familiar shapes of ships; your spinning thoughts left out-of-gear till you've something tangible to mesh them with. You stare at it uncomprehendingly, searching the sea for *more,* the rest of it, when two bright winks of blue flicker into being. They rivet your eyes; condensed and intense, wispy blue flame rising from them like smoking coals of light. The tremors of the optics blur any details into mere suggestions of shape glimpsed in the afterimage... but for the bright nuclei of the cerulean embers.
You stare into those motes, enraptured, optics fixed to your eyes firmer than Odysseus lashed to his mast. As you gaze into the dark abyss it completes a circuit somewhere deep in your soul; the place that *knows* without asking, believes without seeing and fears without doubting. The ancestral Id which compelled your ancestors to sacrifice to their gods before trusting their tiny boats to the dark and fathomless Sea – eternal and unchanged within you. You shiver, awestruck and cowed as the abyss stares into you.
And then those blue motes *blink.*
THIS IS NO SHIT, SAILORS — MOVE YOUR ASSES!
The spell snaps with a flash of pure terror as you seize control once more, hurling the optics away from you. "GENERAL QUARTERS! SOUND GENERAL QUARTERS!" You scream at the pilot station, ignoring protocol - "EOT TO FLANK, HELM COME LEFT TO 090!"
Every man on the bridge stares at you for a long, terrible second, rattled out of their reverie by your cries. The bosun recovers first; leaping to the 1MC and snatching the mic off the hook. "General Quarters, General Quarters! All hands man your battle-stations!"
The deckplates of Higgins thrum awake; the vibrations of hundreds of feet rushing through narrow passages, heavy hatches being slammed shut and her own gas-turbines snarling up to full power giving her very steel a living pulse.
"Jesus-" the XO breathes; hands gripping his binoculars white-knuckled. Applying your own you find those eyes they're EYES once more; their auroral luminance fading into the inky pool of the Pacific. But behind them the gloom is coalescing into a void in the water; a sharp absence upon which the waves crash.
] More-or-less how Skunk-01 would have looked if built by human hands.
High above, a star-shell ignites – probably from the coastie. Hot orange light shimmers across the waves but the coal-black carapace of the silhouette seems to soak up the luminance hungrily. Its smooth inward-sweeping sides yield to a towering mass of skeletal masts and ghostly billowing sails barely glimpsed through the haze of black smoke billowing from the stack amidships. Gun ports along its broadside open to present cannon muzzles. Its somewhere between the floating castles of old and the sleek modern lethality; a gothic beast of smoke and sail and wrought-iron.
And it's coming right at you.
Your snatch up your phone before it can ring; the TAOs steady voice on the line. "Five contacts due South, range six-thousand, coming straight in at ten knots! One - battleship!?, two destroyers and three gunboats by the RCS. Recommend heading two-seven-zero-"
The bugling center battery of the ironclad flashes; flames lancing down her sides as she fires dead ahead. The echoing concussions of her guns chase the supersonic scream of shells across the water, but they sail clean over Higgins without effect. The sea blazes alight with muzzle flashes and bass thunder as the mystery flotilla opens up in earnest; all of it sailing overhead without harm.
"Sir," - the TAO - "shellfire, shooting high-"
You look left in time to see the fuel tanks near the mouth of the main channel go up; a colossal fireball climbing into the sky over Los Angeles. Burning oil comes raining down across the port and San Pedro as shells continue to plunge into storefronts and freighters and piers; an indiscriminate massacre at maximum range.
As the sound of the blast rattles the bridge-windows of Higgins, something closes with a gentle 'click' in your mind. You stab the 21MC, sending your voice bellowing throughout the command decks.
The 5-inch mount's heavy KAWHAM! thumps through the bridge before you've finished shouting; a bright flash blossoming on the ironclad heartbeats later.
"No effect on target, no effect on target!" a lookout is yelling into his phone. The Mark 45 slings high-explosive shells; the Navy never figured on having to shoot through 14-inch iron plates again. But it does have an effect – the hulking ironclad's bow swings eastward, billowing shrouds climbing towards their spars as she rigs for combat sail. The gun KAWHAMs again, the blast bounding off her iron sides without effect.
The rumbling roar of a rocket engine igniting sounds aft as Higgins hurls a Harpoon from her crisscrossed tubes, the bright flame lancing into the night sky before plunging straight for the ironclad, barely beyond minimum range. You watch it just miss the deck; detonating against the stack. The 488 pound warhead blasts the nightmare's rigging asunder; timbers and flaming ropes arcing away from the stricken vessel; her stack shattered. An eerie, keening note underlies the flat sound of the detonation as it races over the water, like a stifled scream. The ghost ship's gunports flash with staccato thunder; a line of reports marching down her beam; and you duck instinctively as the shells come screaming in, the shots falling just short, giant plumes of water so close the starboard bridge watch shies away from the railing.
"The fuck!?" you demand of your phone, linked to the CIC's main circuit.
"No track!" comes the reply. "Returns are hopping like frogs!"
... an ancient beast of destruction, wrought of smoke and iron and fire...
("Water Oni", by Side34 on DeviantArt)
The forward VLS hatches pop open and SM-2s come rippling out, blinding your forward view in pillars of flame and smoke as the igniting rockets rattle the bridge windows; angling towards the ironclad before the weapons officer brings them hurtling down on command guidance like flung meteors. A few miss just abeam, but elation surges through you as two plunge clean through the deck before detonating; the blasts flinging flaming shreds of decking through the air. The 5-incher KAWHAMs! again and this time the bright flash of detonation leaves a jagged scar in the smooth armor; the gunner's switched to time-delay fuzes. The spent casing flies out of the breech ejector and clangs against the deck at almost the same instant a ten-inch shell punches clean through Higgins bow; smashing through the deck at a shallow angle and blowing out the other side in a cloud of shredded chain links. It detonates a few feet left of the exit wound; the hardened glass before you crazing as it catches a chunk of twisted shrapnel.
"He's firing AP," the bosun says.
"Make your heading two-twenty-five, hard-over!" the XO demands. The helmsman swings the wheel against the stops and Higgins heels over, sending everyone flailing for handholds as your warship demonstrates the power of her gas-turbines and sleek destroyer hull. The ironclad hoves into sight before you; the bright flames engulfing her rigging making her hard to miss.
"Keep us AWAY from the son-of-a-bitch!" you demand, but your XO just chops his hand through the air sharply.
"SIR, LET ME DO MY JOB, SIR!"
In the distance you see muzzle-flashes from the ironclad's waterline. The XO's jaw tightens as he waits, silently counting the seconds till towering columns of spray erupt to port; drenching the deck and sending a tremor through the hull.
"Eight," the XO whispers. "Slow. Old guns. He's at long range!" He keeps you on that heading for long seconds, stray splashes from the ironclad's secondaries dotting the dark water as the five-incher keeps slamming away, bright winks of light sparking on the foe's sides as shells connect. Presently its broadside lights up again; flat thunder of cannon shot booming across the ocean with death following close behind.
"HARD PORT!" the XO demands, and Higgins heels over sharply; a salvo straddling where you would've been a few seconds later. He keeps her in the turn for a while before ordering rudder amidships; keeping oblique angles to the enemy. From somewhere aft you hear rocket engines igniting as Higgins tosses four Sea Sparrows over her shoulder at the ancient battleship. They angle downwards, achieving good track and slamming one after another into the target.
"You have a solution!?" you demand into the phone. "Harpoons?"
"No," the TAO replies. "We're illuminating with the main radar - we got that fucker lit up like a Christmas tree!" Higgins shudders as another tube's worth of Sparrows scream into the air. "Aiming for his gunports-"
Your XO keeps chasing salvos, always presenting obliques to the enemy as the CIC flings a steady stream of missiles and shells at the ironclad; steering Sparrows with pencil-thin beams of radio energy, the missiles twitching spasmodically like kittens chasing a laser pointer; angling towards the muzzle flashes of the battleship's main batteries. The SM-2s need no help; blasting into the dark sky on pillars of smoke and flame before hurtling down, their terminal IR sensors homing on the flaming ruins of the ironclad's rigging. You watch through your binoculars as Higgins gives her everything she's got; but your missiles are SAMs, and their tiny warheads just aren't doing enough damage. The ironclad sails along like the ghostly fireships of maritime legend; dancing flames of the burning rigging mirrored in the water below, with the ghostly iron carapace barley visible between them.
The ghost ship jitters and vanishes as something smashes into Higgins and knocks her right out from under you. Struggling upright, you look at the XO, who's still standing, feet braced wide like a boxer.
"Near miss off the bow," he explains. "He finally switched to HE. Don't have to worry about raking fire now." He orders another course change; and you see Higgin's bow move to point directly at the enemy; the distant blob of fire obscured by the regular muzzle-flash of your forward gun.
"Katie, we're not doing enough damage!" you yell into your phone.
"I know, I know! The LRASMs can filter out ECM but we've got no preprogrammed profile i-"
An awful sound shreds the air like God's buzzsaw growling -
- something hits the starboard side of the bridge like a rubber mallet, a diffuse KWHAM! that kicks in your eardrums. Everyone staggers for a moment as their ringing ears slowly return to normal.
"Katie, what the fuck?"
"Hail Mary, full of grace...." A Mk.15 Phalanx CIWS in action.
"CIWS just nailed a shell."
"What."
"CIWS just nailed a shell," she says again, voice brittle, the victorious whooping of the CIWS operator audible in the background.
"Skipper," another voice cuts in, "those destroyers are flanking east and west, western contact is closing at twenty-five knots."
"Katie?"
"Must be a short sumbitch, RCS is nothing;" she replies. "Recommend the gun-"
"Do it!"
Desperation screams through your nerves as another SM-2 leaps from the VLS - Higgins only carries so many missiles; and your luck against those huge shells can't hold much longer. You'd been sailing to join 7th fleet as an auxiliary picket; your cells are stuffed with Sparrows and SM-2s - but even that can only last so long.
The ironclad's secondary batteries have fallen silent at last shattered by shellfire or torn to shreds by shrapnel from airbursting Sparrows. Replacing it is a hail of shellfire from left and right; the destroyers that flanked you. The XO keeps Higgins chasing salvos, weaving and darting through the towering columns of spray the ironclad's big guns kick up, but no matter how he turns at least one enemy has a wide-aspect shot on you. You hear the CIC staff cursing as auxiliary sensors are knocked out by a shell detonating in Higgins mast; infrared imagers, short-range surface radar-
"Sir," the bosun says from behind you. "We just took a shell in the forward engine room!"
"Damage?"
"Can't tell - a fire started; they pulled everyone out and hit the HALON."
Before you can reply a heavy shell detonates against the forecastle; just below and forward of the bridge. You hear the shouts in the CIC as the blast buffets them. Higgins is armored against blast and fragmentation; kevlar/steel armor layered over her vitals and the CIC, but she was never meant to take a beating like this, trapped in a triangle of guns.
Semper Paratus, motherfuckers! The Coasties get into the fight.
"New contact west!" the TAO snarls into your ear, his control slipping. "Returns are solid, though-"
The port lookout *screams,* "YES YES YES YES GET'M GET THAT MOTHERFUCKER GET HIM-" You pick up your glasses to find the low, curved hull of an old ironclad monitor, scuttling through the waves like some armored prehistoric horror returned from hell. It's circled by the foaming wake of the coast guard cutter; sailing circles at it as it slams 3-inch shells into its iron sides from point-blank range. The monitor's twin turrets are helpless, turning too slowly to track the brisk-moving cutter. Sparks fly up and down the sides; bright tracers leaping and bouncing high into the dark night as the cutter's fantail 20mm CIWS rakes it with tugsten-tipped AP rounds.
"Contact two engaged in close action with USS Sherman! Contact three is breaking off!" the TAO cries jubilantly. "The gun got the son-of-a-bitch, he's burning!"
Another salvo of ten-inch haymakers lands nearby, bracketing Higgins - but the CIWS nails one of them; shrapnel rattling off the window and forecastle as it detonates fifty yards forwards of the bow.
"Skip-" your radio shack on the horn - "I've got Edwards AFB on the line - they're vectoring Strike Eagles they had doing night maneuvers! ETA, fifteen minutes!"
Fifteen minutes is a lifetime. But Higgins is dodging, your crew's learned how to draw blood and you even have help. You might just last a lifetime.
You might just win.
"SONAR CONTACT, HIGH-SPEED SCREWS BEARING 227!"
"HARD PORT!" the XO screams. Alarms sound throughout the ship as the helmsman puts her hard over once more and the EOT slams port throttle to emergency back. Higgins digs into the waves as she heels over sharply. You watch the digital compass above your chair rotate with dizzying speed.
"Sonar?" you demand.
"Going active... fifteen hundred yards!"
Every asshole on the bridge tenses for the sledgehammer shock that will signal a torpedo snapping Higgins keel.
"Eight-hundred!"
Someone is praying, low and intense -"hallowed be thy name-"
"KAWHAM!"
"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done-"
"on earth as it is in heaven-"
"KAWHAM!"
"Four hundred!"
The XO says nothing, still standing braced wide, hands balled into white-knuckled fists as he seems to will the ship to turn tighter.
"ONE-HUNDRED-"
You brace, your entire body cringing in expectation of the blast -
".... One-hundred fifty close astern starboard! Two hundred! Clean miss, clean miss!"
You turn to the XO, a wild whoop of success on your lips, and that's when everything goes dark.
You wake up against a console, blood dripping down your face. There's a buzzing in your ear, and the XO is kneeling in front of you, snapping his fingers. His lips are moving, but you can't make anything out.
"Can't hear you." Glancing over his shoulder, you see the window in front of your captain's chair has been crazed and pocked by shrapnel - and as you feel the side of your head, you discover a few small bits embedded firmly in your skull.
... strange. Just sunk in there firmly, like they belong - like horns.
"Skipper?" the voice comes through a long tunnel with a bad synth distort added, like the Jefferson Starships. "Skipper, you here?"
You grab his shoulder and let him heave you upright. "S-status," you slur.
"We took a salvo," the XO says grimly. "Fire in the foreward berthing spaces. Sonar's out, too."
You pick up your phone, your link to CIC. "Report."
"Phalanx is down, remote fifty-cals and Bushmaster out of action," the steady voice of the TAO replies. "Flooding in the rear shaft gallery, one might be bent. Direct hit to rear DC locker."
The XO calls out another evasive maneuver, but you don't even flinch this time as heavy shells fall just shy of the ship.
You're not doing enough damage. The old Harpoons can't properly track that... thing, if it's moving. And its only a matter of time before your ship is shot out from under you, or a shell nails the VLS magazine.
Just after nightfall, trapped between nightmares from demenses unknown and the burning ruins of Long Beach harbor, you have to make a decision. Squeezing your phone, you speak into the CIC circut.
"Can you make the Mark 46s do a straight run?"
"A bearing-only-launch, yeah-"
"From the ASROC?"
"No. They've got a gyroscope, not a compass."
"Fuck. Get the tubes ready, then," you order. "We're making a torpedo run."
The XO stares at you. "With *what!?*"
"Whatever we've got," you tell him grimly.
"They've got 100 pound warheads," the XO says dubiously. "What are they gonna do?"
"Shear his fucking screws, that's what," you reply. "Get us as close as you can!"
Higgins' Mk.45 five-inch gun-turret in action.
The XO studies you for a heartbeat; fear in his eyes - then they harden over, a strange, bright luster coming into them. "Aye, Captain," he breathes, and turns back to the shattered bridge windows again, studying the burning ocean before commanding the helm again. Usually you'd be commanding from the CIC, watching the battle unfold on the plotting screen, but with radar unreliable and the visual ranges involved, the bridge is better. The CIC is the best protected place on the ship, of course - but admirals of old remained here, by their windows and wheel rather than hide in the armored citadel of the conning tower. Deep in the bowels of the ship, the CIC protects the men who can keep her fighting. Your job is to make the best decisions you can, while those decisions can still change anything.
Higgins swings her burning, holed bow southward and holds course, accelerating towards her tormentor. Even with the battle damage, your destroyer is pushing past 30 knots. You soon lose sight of the dueling monitor and coastie cutter as Higgins thunders straight down the throat of the battlewagon's guns, a 3,000 yard run to your launch point.
"Switch the five-inch to WP marker," you order. The forward gun has finally fallen silent as the crew strains to reload the ready magazine, groping their way through smoke-choked compartments in emergency respirators as the fire eats towards the magazine. Every muscle in your body tenses as the ironclad fires again, and again, shells screaming past you as the helmsman jinks the ship; the ironclad unable to handle the rapid closure rate. Soon, though, you'll be in his flat trajectories, and then he can't possibly miss.
USCGC Sherman's OTO-Melara 76mm in action.
The XO orders another sharp evasive maneuver to escape the high-climbing flare marking your position. The five-inch opens fire again; a cloud of flaming phosphorus blossoming in air just over a torpedo destroyer. It plows through it, unconcerned; no crew visible on its exposed deck; black smoke pouring from its stack. It heaves to port, aiming in front of Higgins, preparing to loose its fish -
- and then it explodes; bow and stern climbing upwards as it folds in half down the middle and vanishes in flames. The clean white shape of the Sherman appears from behind, cutting through the wakes of the torpedo boats as her sides light up with gunfire; 40mm, .50 cal, small arms; even the tiny bright pops of grenades, fired and flung. The boats scatter, the slow staccato cracks of their hand-cranked Nordenfelt guns returning fire. The Sherman circles through the boats once and is in the middle of a high-rate turn when the ironclad, with a clear shot at last, puts a carronade shell into her forward hull.
The 76mm gun heaves and lurches as its ammo hoist is torn from underneath it; but miraculously the magazine survives. You stare helplessly as Sherman begins sinking by the bow, her keel snapped. She turns sharply, still answering the helm; a fantail of water kicking up from the elevated screws as the pilot overrevs her for everything she's got. A streak of light screams over the water and smashes through her forecastle from fore to stern; kindling fires throughout her superstructure - incendiary shot; rolled out of the monitor's boiler furnaces before loading into the cannons.
Burning, broken and sinking, USS Sherman picks her target and accelerates; cutting across your bow.
An early torpedo-boat, of the type mimicked by the smaller Skunks.
The torpedo ram changes course too late, barely beginning her turn before the cutter bears down on her. The forward gun is impossibly still firing; the gun crew still loading the ready ammunition instead of escaping. Burning men leap for the embrace of the dark waters as Sherman's superstructure goes up like a pyre; the glass of the bridge windows shattering and blowing outward from a pressure wave as something amidships detonates. Her narrow, clean bow smashes into the curved, low hull of the ironclad at twenty-five knots; powerful gas-turbine engines driving the doomed ship up and over its foe. Thousands of tons of steel and iron crumple against each other, twisting and squealing with violence audible from hundreds of yards distant. The collision was almost head-on, leaving the twisted vessels nearly motionless -
- and the low-profile torpedo ram with the massive, flat-sided hull of Sherman atop her. You stare at the entwined ships, a silent scream racing through your soul as you watch men still racing down her decks, leaping from the ship, seeking escape -
- but Sherman's pilot has given you a chance, a chance you don't dare discard.
You press your phone against your ear forcefully, its shattered plastic edges cutting your hand. "Alpha strike," you instruct. "Alpha strike. Empty the cells!"
Target destroyed.
The foreward VLS erupts; SM-2s and Sea Sparrows thundering heavenward on pillars of smoke and flame; a curtain that blinds you to the carnage outside - until they come down again and again and again; slamming into the ruins of Sherman relentlessly, detonating her foreward magazine against the torpedo ram's narrow bow. The coast guard cutter and her crew are obliterated in a hail of missiles, and still they come down; blowing craters in the ghost ship's decking; clouds of burning wooden splinters filling the air before more and more come slamming into the wounds; the light warheads hammering deeper and deeper with every blow until one reaches the torpedo magazine.
"Contact three, eliminated," the TAO says, his voice hollow.
Higgins charges past the flaming pyres at flank speed; her way clear to the ironclad.
The bright phosphorus flame is subsiding from the huge battlewagon's sides as your destroyer heels sharp to the left. After a heartbeat, you hear the FWHAAA-HISSS! of Mark 46s hitting the water from the rear triple-tube launcher. The ironclad is hardly 3,000 yards distant now and his fire is horrifically close, but his shells are now flying high, one exploding in your stacks just aft. You've got seconds till he finds the range again, and then - then, your ship will be blown into little pieces. The XO heaves to, unshadowing the port-side launchers and they fire too; the tiny anti-submarine torpedoes with their miniscule warheads streaking away through the dark water. With her rigging shredded and stack blown off the ironclad is slow, so you might - might - just have a chance.
In olden days you'd have a stopwatch to track the time. You raise your wrist to find your own watch stopped a nasty-looking piece of shrapnel. The TAO's voice rasps through your damaged phone, counting down the seconds to expected impact.
It doesn't look like much through your fifty-power optics - but with the long, empty muzzles of the battleship's central battery tracking you, you realize just how long it is. Without sonar, all you can do is watch the dark, blurry waterline of the enemy - and pray.
A blast -
- a gout!
Two, three, four gouts of water spouting from the bastards aft end!
Cheering erupts on the bridge as the ironclad begins to visibly slow, it's screws blasted off her shafts along with her rudder.
"Unshadow the Harpoons," you order, "and let's MURDER that cocksucker!"
"Aye! Helm, hard to p-"
This time, you wake up in Hell.
Half the bridge is nothing but shredded metal and torn flesh splattered around the interior; shreds of fabric tangled with chunks of meat. An arm here, a finely shredded console there - a twisted jigsaw puzzle of the world you know. Looking up, you see stars - a ragged hole in the starboard side of the bridge's roof. Where the bridge wing should be, only a twisted metal catwalk that ends in thin air.
You grab the nearest console with numb hands and try to hoist yourself up, but your right leg won't work; dangling limp. You look down and find a shard of twisted metal the size of your palm sunk deep into your thigh. It burns like hell, like a red-hot poker, searing your leg - but it's not bleeding. You look for your XO, but you can't find him, unless he's - he's one of the -
- he's busy, you decide. You crawl deeper into the bridge, finding the pilot slumped against the rear wall, mouth twitching, glassy-eyed. Pushing him aside you drag yourself up against the pilot's console. You find your optics around your neck, still intact by some miracle, and press them to your eyes, trying to orient yourself. You don't realize Higgins is still turning till Long Beach appears in front of you, the bay well-lit by the towering orange flames from the shattered fuel facility. The dark shapes of torpedo destroyers are scuttling through puddles of burning oil floating on the surface; the hulking humpacked silhouette of the monitor amongst them. As they move in to shell the city, you see something massive slipping out of the main channel; sleek lines half-glimpsed against the billowing pyre of flames behind it. Before you can process it your eyes snag on motion; a rigid inflatable go-fast skipping through the water, outboard engines chased by a rooster-tail of spray as the pintle-mounted gun twinkles. You've hardly spotted it when a cannonball detonates almost underneath it; the boat flipping backwards through the air as tiny bodes tumble and cartwheel into the water.
"Haaa," you wheeze through the numbness in your mind - then shove it away, groping for your purpose through the haze. Turning. Turning. Muscles screaming in chord with a tired, weary part of your hind-brain that just wants to lie down and sleep, you crank the wheel the opposite direction, bringing Higgins broadside once again. The ignition of rocket motors roars loudly from aft as the TAO takes the shot; the remaining three starboard Harpoons thundering out of their tubes and angling for the stationary ironclad. They sway to and fro, seeking the center-mass of shifting returns, but at this range against a stationary target they cannot possibly fail. The titanic blasts of the huge warheads races across the water and slaps against Higgin's side.
No quarter asked nor given: the Skunk monitor closes to finish off Higgins.
The 21MC is making noise. You stagger towards it, careening into the bulkhead next to it and stabbing the button. "I'm... here," you say lamely.
"Skipper?" The TAO.
"BDA?"
"The lookouts are dead," he replies flatly, "and we lost the director optics when the bridge was hit - but she's still firing on us." As if to underscore the point, the ship bucks and leaps underneath you.
"You..." your forehead clangs off the bulkhead forcefully, the pain bringing you back into focus. "Fuck, fuck, what just happened!"
A pause. "Torpedo in the forward engine room. They're dogging the hatches. Turbines are fucked."
"Prepare port tubes," you order, and crawl back to the pilot station to turn the wheel. You lose your grip and slip to the floor, feeling Higgins buck and shudder beneath you as shells continue to pound her - and then the remaining four Harpoons plunging into the ironclad with titanic blasts. The few LSRAMs in your foreward VLS are modified cruise missiles; almost like little planes with pop-out wings. They take time and space to deploy and stabilize and track; at least nine or ten miles of space - but the humble old missile-shaped Harpoon has no such problems. But they have the newest warhead; the explosive-driven AP penetration rod bundles buried in a heavy fragmentation jacket; and you know that huge armored bitch isn't going down for the count until you use them. If it wasn't for the Harpoon's pop-up attack, their massive warheads would have been spent impotently on the beast's iron hide - they were never meant to penetrate armor like that. In time, the fire will eat downwards from the ironclad's shattered upper decks, find her coal bunkers and her powder magazines and finish her.
But you don't have time. Higgins doesn't have time. Long Beach and Los Angeles doesn't have time. And somewhere between you and the shore, the monitor and its massive carronades is still waiting, untouched.
"... for hate's sake, I spit my last round at thee..." Higgins ripples off her remaining Harpoons.
You put the wheel over and cut behind the burning ironclad's stern from a few hundred yards, the five-incher still slamming away with whatever ammo it has left, the brittle iron plates cracking under the HE blasts as your gunners aim for optics and gun ports. The battleship is listing badly to port, perhaps from your torpedoes; her lethal primary battery's snout is aimed too high to threaten Higgins as you cut behind it, using the smoke and flames to shield yourself from the monitor's searching eyes. You steer north-east, hoping to beach Higgins Huntington Beach - you've no idea how many times she was holed, and you can't risk your ship and everyone on her on guesses.
From the dark Pacific to the south comes distant flashes - and then the scream of shells, ragged salvos landing wide on either side.
As the ringing in your head slowly subsides, you realize that the Eagles aren't going to get here in time. Your XO is dead, splattered across the deck besides you. Hate... Hate is dead. And Higgins will follow soon.
The directors might be out, but your spotting glasses and the intercom still work - you can give CIC one last lookout. If you can light up something with the 5-inchers Willy Pete, the LRASM's terminal infrared guidance should be able to track for that, no problem. It should give the crew time to get away.
The Port of Long Beach lights up with a brilliant flash, and a roaring report that blasts over the water like thunder; thrice as loud and long as the old ironclads main battery. You look towards the port, expecting to see another freighter in flames and sinking - but instead you only see the briefest flash of gunfire; the barest glimpse of a sillouete - and now you hear the low, sibilant whistle of a very big fucking shell moving very fast.
The flaming wreck of the ironclad is blown clean through, the thick armored hide which resisted so much punishment caving before some titanic force. A third report sounds from the beach and it's blown asunder; the shell sucking flames into a powder magazine.
You press your binoculars to your eyes. Backlit by the burning city you can see something massive moving towards the breakwater passage, the snouts of mighty guns visible over a long, clean flush-deck design. You're still trying to process how it got past you, why it fired on its fellow (confusion, fog of war in the general melee!?) when a hostile star-shell ignites high over the bay.
Cutting through the burning water and past the shattered freighters is the USS Iowa, her snapped mooring lines still trailing in the water beside her.
And she is pissed off.
FOR THE HONOUR OF THE FLEET!
It devolves into a haze after that; just flashes; impressions as brief as the glimpses of Iowa as her muzzle flashes lit her up - backlit in one second, a hulking, vengeful silhouette, then revealed in the fire and thunder of her guns as she engages targets on both sides, secondary batteries slamming away at the torpedo boats as they try to close with her. You remember the flames eating towards your position as you dragged somebody for the door; somebody who would they were already dead they never pleaded with you to kill them, the burns hurt too much, leave them be; the shudder through Higgins hull as the CIC touched off the LRASMs and (as they told you later, oh so much later,) vectored them towards the burning decks of ships scoured by Iowa. The odd moment of perfectly-recalled clarity as you stared across the water at Iowa, exiting the breakwater not a few hundred yards distant; firing from Y turret; Y turret, that was shattered and should never speak again, but spoke, and spoke and spoke, unstoppable and alone as she took on the vast dark Sea - and won.
The explosions that tore Higgins; the screams, the voices calling for you as fire-suited men reached out to pluck you from the flames. The thunder of salvation; the sternum-shaking roar of Strike Eagles on full afterburner screaming overhead; skipping iron bombs across the water; the throaty ripping roar of 20mm guns, and then just the thunder, thunder thunder as they made dry runs to draw fire and guide Iowa's fire, as if she needed guidance.
Smoke.
Fire.
Death.
The glowing blue coals of something....
something...
something....
... very
a n g r y
The first thing you notice is the beeping. It's persistent, and steady, and rather annoying. There's a slight breeze and it feels chilly on your skin - you've been sweating?
Cranking your eyes open, you find a shadowed ceiling; the boring white squares typical to every office building everywhere. A vague memory swims through your mind of being amongst ships andsmokeandfire girls, shipgirls, the command room, the dim glow of the monitors...
... but there are none. Just a small, claustrophobic room. A white curtain hiding a sterile white-sheeted bed from the world. And something, some*one* breathing slowly and quietly, and why the hell is your hand tingling?
You groan with exertion as you force yourself up a little on one elbow - your head feels like it weighs a million goddamned tons. You try to raise your tingly hand, see what cut off the blood flow, but it's trapped by something soft and warm and firm -
- glancing down the bedspread, you find a shock of short red hair, mussed and frazzled by a long day underneath a tight hat; the rich red locks spread free across the white bedclothes. She's shed her jacket; and from the gentle, steady rise and fall of her slender torso you guess that she fell asleep while kneeling by your bedside and keeled right over to fall asleep in your lap. She's still got your hand clasped in both of hers, fingers entwined so tightly you can't recover it.
You fall back onto the pillow and sigh with relief, the memory - the nightmare - of LA still screaming through your head. The steady beeping is slowing in pace - you glance to the side and watch your heart-rate slowing in realtime as you adjust to Arizona's presence.
Thank god. Thank god for shipgirls.
>Let her sleep.
>Wake her up.
>Wake her up.
With your free hand you brush some of Arizona's rubescent locks away from her face. Her delicate cheeks are still tear-stained; but her features are blissfully relaxed in slumber; none of the resolute eyes and stiff jaw she usually faces the world with. You want to let her sleep - god knows she deserves it, standing vigil by your bedside like this - but you imagine her waking up to find you asleep again and not knowing anything happened. You imagine her being led away, reluctantly, by Hornet, or Naka, or someone else, only to come rushing back feeling guilty when you wake ten minutes later as she's finally getting something to eat.
And maybe, just maybe you don't want to be alone in this cold, sterile hospital room with your memories nipping at your heels.
"Arizona?" you say softly, shaking her hand, then tapping it on her head. "Arizona!"
She murmurs and stirs, then pulls your hand back in, clutching it close like a safety blanket.
"WAKE UP, KID!" you exclaim, a surge of desperation racing through your veins. You purse your lips and try to emulate the whee-oooh of a boatswain's whistle, the first part of a traditional call to general quarters. That alarm is enough to bring any sailor from dead asleep to wide awake and screaming within seconds; and Arizona is hardly an exception - she jerks and starts instantly, blinking blearily and looking around for the problem.
"Arizona!"
She gasps as her eyes clear with recognition - and then she's in your arms, burying her sobs in your chest, arms wrapped tightly 'round your middle. You stroke her hair with one hand, falling back onto your pillow and sighing with relief.
Arizona understands, you think. Memories.
Fucking memories.
40812473 (demetrious) -
>>40812286
Specifically, [the Abyssal force at Los Angeles was] one ironclad ocean-going battleship (modeled on the French Redoubtable,) one dual-turreted Monitor (the picture anon posted as a guess is fairly representative of the type) and the torpedo boats were actually "torpedo destroyers," the forerunner of the ship that would later evolve into the proper destroyer; and the prototype concept of the torpedo boat itself (when diesel engines became a thing they'd prove much more successfulhttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4c/HMS_Havock_(1893).jpg
The torpedo ram was, well, a torpedo ram: Torpedo ram - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
HMS Polyphemus and USS Intrepid are fairly representative of the type. Not many were built and they were never used in war before being scrapped ignominiously. They were destroyer-sized or bigger; built very low and armed with torpedoes plus a heavy underwater ram.
Story's done for tonight, but does anyone else have questions or whatnot?
40812707 (demetrious) -
>>40812694
>So are all of the museum ship girls essentially haunted now? Is their visage walking the corridors, and scaring park rangers who want to get a good look at their rear quarters to death?
As a direct result of the Iowa Incident, every museum ship is closed - even the fucking ore freighter museum in Michigan. Everyone's terrified of what would happen if one was woken up and it wasn't friendly.
Transcriber's footnote: for the record, the term 'Skunk' that I used above is USN jargon for an 'unknown' contact. Since the Battle of LA was amongst the first recorded engagements with the Abyssals, no-one had any other name for them, and I thought the captions should reflect that.
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Session #20 pt.2C - Hate's Coda of the Battle of LA
Cpl. Hate: "It would be you askin', wouldn't it?"
So. You want to know what the fuck happened in LA, huh? The whole nine, everything I committed to the record that's now so classified I'm not even allowed to fucking look at it?
You want to know where me and the skipper got our scars?
I can't tell you the skipper's end of it, you get that right? I wasn't aboard the Higgins for her fight. I can tell you what I saw, but keep in mind I spent most of the skipper's fight, the real fight, aboard a RIG shooting at fifty plus knots through four and five foot seas. I didn't get to see much, is what I'm fucking saying here.
But fine. I'm in a talkative mood. Go get the rum from the cabinet over there and grab a seat. It's a bit of a fucking story.
Normally, I wouldn't tell anyone this, but I'll make an exception for you. Pour me a shot of that.
Captain Settle had- what do you mean what the fuck do I mean Captain. Of fucking course he was still a captain back then, what, you fucking think they just park one-stars on busted-ass flight I Arleigh Burkes? Please. Now stop interrupting and fucking listen, I'm not going to repeat myself.
I suppose I owe those stupid greenpeace fuckers a little bit. They really didn't fucking like the depleted uranium long-rod perpetrators in the new LRASMs the Higgins had loaded. The stupid fucks had caused nothing but problems up to that point, chaining themselves across the gates of the base, trying to fucking 'infiltrate' the post to spray-paint the Higgins, all kinds of retarded fucking shit. I had fun with the last one, hear the stupid asshole tried to drum up a court case against me and my team for 'brutality', dropped 'em when he heard he could be detained on terrorism charges.
The dipshits parked a fucking twenty foot launch there near the channel. I'm gonna fucking assume they were too busy getting an eco-boner or whatever the fuck they call it to actually read their charts. They were inside the channel, though they fucking argued that they weren't later. Not like anyone fucking cared later anyway. Captain Settle more-or-less ordered me to deploy the robotic interceptors. Not really my fucking job, shoulda fallen to the watch officer, but hey, I fucking get around. 'Sides, he and I had an understanding. Have an understanding. Whatever.
I loved those little fuckers. I suppose I shoulda seen it coming, ya know, that I'd get 'command' of those fuzzy little dipshits after I had as much experience as I did with the 'bots, but what the fuck you gonna do, you know?
Anyway, I'd have let 'em go, but then the faggots crossed a line. The chanting I can fucking stand, the banners, what the fuck ever, ya know? But then, then the fuckers decided to start blasting green day. Like I said, over the fucking line there. I mean, real fuckin talk right now? You leave me alone, I'll usually leave you the fuck alone. But there's some fucking shit I cannot abide, and that's one of those things. It's a fucking affront, ya know?
Cpl. Hate: "[TREE-HUGGER] BULLSHIT. Also I think they ate a 10 inch shell at some point. I may have fucking laughed."
So after the skipper and I fucking had a laugh at the dipshit's expense while my interceptors damn near capsized their dumb asses, we got an unwelcome little shock when we caught sight of the queer-ass Arctic sunrise. I mean, for fucking real, who the fuck paints rainbows and shit all over their fucking shit? Who thinks that's a good idea?
Not that the retarded fuckers had been full of good ideas the last couple years. No one really knows what the fuck set them off, and it doesn't really fucking matter. Point is, they weren't exactly known for not doing completely retarded fucking shit whenever they got the chance, and doing something like harassing a US Navy destroyer would be right the fuck up their alley.
Anyway, it's not like she was bad news. The Arctic Sunrise was a forty year old icebreaker, one they'd used to piss off whalers and shit for years. The Russians impounded it after the eco-shitbags got a little big for their britches and tried to board an oil rig or something. She'd been impounded a little over a year, and when they got her back, they went right back to pissing everyone off with her.
Personally, I'd have loved if the captain had ordered us to fuckin man general quarters and put a LRASM or two into her. But I guess his fuckin answer was almost as fun. He ordered me to, and I'm fuckin paraphrasing here, board them and search them. Search them real good.
Sometimes, man, the dude speaks my language.
He and I had been up on a bridge wing when he gave me the order to 'board and search'. We both knew that that was bullshit, it was board and irritate the unholy living fuck out of. It was strongly fucking hinted that I probably ought to find something 'amiss' in their logs so I could call the coasties in, too, let them in on the fucking fun. We'd seen them out there lurking, that bigassed cutter they had standing out in the water of the bay, just inside the breakwater. Probably there just for something like that, it wasn't any secret the greenpeace shitlers were getting belligerently fucking stupid of late.
Got a death glare from the ship's exec when I had to cut back through the bridge. Dude was old navy, and I think didn't much fucking appreciate me. I ain't gonna shit talk the dead, but me and him didn't always get along.
I tapped the girl sitting there at some watch station or other to summon my VBSS team to the boat deck. Julie, her name was. Me and her had a thing. And yeah, it was MY fuckin VBSS team. The corps was just as short handed then as it is now, maybe even more shorthanded, and I had the training and combat experience, and after Ramadi, sticking me on a VBSS team on a burke headed into the pacific probably seemed like a great way to get me out of sight and keep me from causing problems. I've never been noted for having a great attitude.
Gimme a refill over here, wouldya? 'Preciate it.
Anywa- No. Had is the fuckin key word there. She bought her farm when the Higgins went in. Stop fuckin interrupting. And don't ask about Ramadi. You want to know, go fuckin look the shit up. They've written a couple books. I won't stop you.
We had a four man team. On the small side, but we weren't expected to really be doing a damn thing, and some cocksucker somewhere decided the Higgins needed a VBSS team for a deployment in the pacific. Don't fucking ask me, I don't fucking know. I had team lead, Bronski, a corporal, he was my #2 dude. Had his shit wired down tight. Probably still has, last I heard he was running the team. Besides me and him, there was Johnston and Garcia.
I met up with 'em on the boat deck, Bronski'd thought to bring my shit up with him. Shit like that was why he and I got along so fucking well, dude could fucking use his brain. He'd done some time in the sandbox too, but he was up north, not really part of the whole bag of shit that went down along the corridor. Garcia and Johnston were both new, they'd just been assigned to teams. Kind of a shit assignment, but hey, it's a good taste of what to expect, am I fucking right?
I gave them the skinny while I got my shit on. Simple shit, really, really, ass-simple shit that even Johnston grabbed onto pretty quickly. Go over there, make nuisances of ourselves. Check their log book, see if we couldn't find a reason to call the coasties in, let them have more fun. Ideally we could do this long enough to make it so the stupid shitbags couldn't fucking try and tail the Higgins.
The four of us mount up, along with some rating coming along to drive the RIG. Who the fuck named it a RIG anyway? Sure it's a go-fast boat, and no, I'm not making that name up, it's a fucking thing. But really, it's a fucking rigid hulled inflatable boat, except it's got tweaked engines and it's streamlined as hell. But some fucking queer decided to call it a RIG because of reasons. Probably some jackass at the pentagon that drove fighters off a carrier or fucking something and thought it had to have a 'more badass' name. Whatever, doesn't fucking matter.
Point being, we were mounted up and on the way in less than five fucking minutes. I was still getting my IOTV seated just right when we hit the water and the rating gunned it. Fucker damn near sent me ass over elbows, I wasn't fucking ready for that.
So we go charging straight at the Arctic fag or whatever the fuck, while someone back on the Higgins tells them to stand by to receive us. Only reason I know that happened is because it's fucking supposed to.
So we come up alongside them and I'm pissed off because at this point I'm eyeballing the nice big helipad and wishing we were on something that actually carried choppers most of the time, not the Higgins, cos apparently, fucking, they designed her with a pad, but no fucking hangar. Fucking geniuses, am I right? Anyfuck, we pull alongside and they toss down a ladder, which, everything fucking considered, is pretty nice of them.
I go up second, just behind Garcia. He's talking with an older-looking dude with this gaggle of teens and young adults behind him. Fucking college kids, ya know? Look, here's a fucking tip. Want to change the world? Get fucking rich or go into fucking politics. Want to make a difference in somebody's life, go into public fucking service. Want to feel fucking good about yourself? Become a loudmouth hippie. Trust me, they don't do shit 'cept maybe piss some people off and then feel good about themselves. But this ain't about them.
I'll give them this, they're pretty well fucking drilled. Their captain handled the visit like an old pro, which, given what the fuck he was captain of, he probably was. Handled himself well, no screaming or hysterics or theatrics or anything.
Some of his 'crew' seemed to disagree, especially when I called up the log and started going over it from the fucking beginning. Funny thing about that, it takes time, especially on a forty year old fucking icebreaker. I could practically feel the captain's frustration while the Higgins glided past, all serene and shit, out into the sunset.
Something about that sunset bothered me, but I didn't fucking know what and squelched it.
It took me a fair few fucking minutes to find what I was after, but you always can. It depends on how much of an asshole you want to be, and given the green day earlier in the channel, I wasn't real inclined towards being nice. "Huh." I said to the captain. "Looks like some of your log isn't jiving with other parts."
"What?" He asked, sounding absolutely shocked.
"Right here." I said, pointing. "Bahrain, right around '08?"
"We were never in Bahrain." He shot back. "My logs are in perfect order."
I shrugged. "Looks like fucking Bahrain to me. Maybe Bermuda, I don't know. Handwriting in this thing is shit. I'm going to have to call over the coast guard and let them sort this out, I have a ship to catch." I said to him. He looked like he was about to blow his fucking stack, but ended up just sighing and deflating. I had Bronski get on the horn with coasties while I fired a report off to the skipper.
I'd just gotten off the horn with the skipper when it hit me.
No, not the thing that gave me these scars. What did I say about interrupting? We'll get to that part anyway, now shut up.
You're a vet, right? Early part of the war, in the south pacific? You've seen combat, then. Maybe not my flavor of it, in the dust and the mud and the sand, but I can respect another vet. Hell, that's why I'm telling you this anyway. 'Cos, maybe, unlike everyone else who's ever wanted my side of it, maybe you'll understand. But you know the feeling when you fucking know when shit's going to pop off, you can fucking FEEL it, like every fucking cell of your body going to general fucking quarters? You probably do with your- Nevermind. Yeah, I know about them. Don't ask how, I'll tell you later. Anyway.
This time that fucking feeling of just sheer fucking WRONG slammed into me like a runaway fucking train. Like a goddamned dumpster full of bricks with a bunch of RATO bottles attached to it. Shit damn near staggered me. It was enough that everyone else felt it too. See, weather had been clear, was supposed to fucking stay clear. Nothing on anyone's radar for miles, the storms way out over the Pacific were losing steam, falling apart.
What? RATO. Rocket assisted take off. They designed it in the fifties or sixties I guess. I dunno, look it up.
But it was clear as motherfucking day, the squall line on the Arctic Bullshit's nav radar. The captain, the greenpeace captain, I mean, not Settle, had the sense to look at it. Fucking, sundown had come too quick, way, way too quick, and the moon was hidden behind clouds. We'd have had to boogie to make the Higgins at that point, if it was even fucking safe to try. None of us wanted to be on a fucking light craft in the middle of an open ocean squall. Honestly, at that point, we'd have probably headed back to the cutter coming alongside and tried to catch a ride on a helo or something. RIGs don't do well in storms, you know?
But it wasn't the fucking storm or the barometer in fucking freefall that got me. It wasn't the sudden wind or the light bullshit rain that started dusting the deck. It wasn't the fact that my fucking ears started popping with the pressure loss, like this was a fucking HALO or something. It was the fire in the motherfucking sky.
Don't look at me like that. It was blue-white fucking fire. Like goddamned... I don't even fucking know. Like lightning, but... rounder. Fucking, I don't know what to call it. Nobody else does either, so what the fuck ever. Not many people have seen it anyway, since the best anyone can fucking guess is it only happens when the bitches manifest for the first time from... where the fuck ever. Point being, the shit weirded me out bad, and I already had the mother of all fucking bad feelings playing hopscotch on my fucking spine.
I looked over at Bronski. "Get the skipper on the horn. Now." I said to him, not really daring to take my eyes off the fire in the sky. What the fuck was it, ya know?
He kept staring, but nodded, commandeering the Arctic deathtrap's radio to do it. The skipper, ours, I mean, fucking Settle, was a lot more blunt and to the point. He wanted us back aboard muy fucking pronto. Right the fuck now.
"Wave the fucking coasties off!" I shouted at Garcia- he was closest to the port side, where the cutter was coming alongside already, ready to 'visit, board, search, and seize'. Yeah, pissing off some ecobastards didn't seem so fucking important now. He didn't argue, just repeated my command down. Felt weird, telling a coast guard boat, one that had a skipper no doubt several ranks above me, to get the fuck out.
I guess it was just a fucking sign about how bad shit was about to get that he did it without question, their VBSS team still on deck as the cutter, gods fucking keep her and everyone on her, punched it, her CODAG audible even over everything else as she went straight to flank. We heard her shit blaring as she went to general quarters.
It's fucking important here to note that that cutter, she wasn't a warship, not like the Higgins. She wasn't ever fucking meant to tangle with another surface combatant, her only weapons of note were a single automatic deck gun, a little fucking seventy six mike mike peashooter that wasn't enough to threaten anything except the occasional drug runner, and a pair of CWIS. That was fucking it.
The Higgins was coming about, we could fucking see her when the cutter put up a flare. Her turret, the one lone deck gun, was swiveling to engage-
And man, the shit it was about to engage. Black, old. The shit out of nightmares. I'd fucking know, I have my fair share.
What got me was how old we were talking. This fucking thing had broadsides. BROADSIDES for Christ's sake! Her sides curved up into tall masts- fucking... halfway between a fucking wooden ship of the line and a modern girl, I guess. I've learned, since then, that she was probably in that weird transitional phase of iron hulled broadside battleships, the ones they had around the turn of the century, maybe a bit earlier. Shit that, by rights, shouldn't have been fucking sailing in out of a flash squall like that, and certainly not with her fucking guns run out like they were.
We all stood there for a fucking second, awestruck by the sight of this ship. She fucking leaked fucking bad juju like a goddamn sieve though, like when everybody cleared off the street before they hit us in the sandbox. Well, and like I just fucking said, the guns run out were a dead fucking giveaway.
Fucking... sorry. Wrong fucking story.
Point is, you could tell she wasn't there for a friendly fucking chat on old times just by looking at her.
She broke that fucking spell by firing. From where we were the flash of her broadside lighting up hit us before the sound of her cannon firing and the shells thundering overhead. They were on a long, low trajectory, probably out at the hairiest limit of their range, and that with a damn good fucking gun crew. Her fire was joined by the rest of her little flotilla, fucking, escorts and shit. Pretty small, eight fucking ships give or take, counting those fucking torpedo ships as proper ships and not escorts.
But if you fucking think about it, we didn't have but one- the Higgins. I mean, I know the cutter was there, shit, but she wasn't a warship. I already fucking told you that.
Those first shots, they hit the tank farm there near the mouth of the channel, sent the whole thing up. That was the one that kinda clued everyone in that this shit was for real, motherfuckers were shooting at them. The fireball it sent up looked like someone set off a baby nuke in there, couple million tons of fuel and shit all going up. I guess the fires it set off in there and elsewhere when the debris started coming down damn near overwhelmed the LAFD, and the ones inside the tank farm, those burned for weeks after the battle.
We were mounting up in the RIG when the Higgins started to hit back, her deck gun engaging that lead ship. Her deck gun was a five incher, one twenty seven mil, nothing big, but still a damn sight better than the popgun the cutter had.
It wasn't shit against that thing coming in from the Pacific. We could see the flash of the high-ex shell detonating against it's armor. See, funny fucking thing about ships, back in the day, they had fucking armor. Not the Kevlar-and-aluminum spall lining if you're lucky shit we have now, but honest to god armor plate, iron, later on steel, shit designed to take a beating and keep fighting.
I guess you knew that though, huh? Yeah, sorry. Pour me another. Thanks.
Normally, this wouldn't have been shit, a bad joke, at best. Old ships like that, they don't have the range or the speed to really tangle with a modern ship, their armor's good, sure, but the rest of the ship doesn't have a fucking prayer. In tight like this though, they could have done some hurt, even if they were just fucking normal human crewed ships. Fact is, the Higgins was designed not to get hit in the first place, she'd traded her armor long ago for sensors, missiles, long range guns, and speed.
We dropped into the RIG and the rating looked about like he was ready to puke. No special warfare surface combatant whatever the fuck, this kid, just some rating from the Higgins. Shit, normally we say, ya know, he knew what the fuck he was getting into when he signed the papers, and sure, fucking, combat at sea, yeah. He knew he'd be getting into that when he enlisted, but against this? Against those things?
Fuck sake, man. I was having second thoughts, and back then I really didn't give much of a fuck.
Don't look at me like that, yes I mean back then. There are a bunch more things I give a fuck about now, I really didn't back then. I wasn't gonna pull the trigger on myself, but I wasn't real concerned with being able to make it outta the shit I got into. Yeah, it's a bad fucking quality in a guy who leads from the front, don't fucking tell me. I know.
"What do we do?" This kid asked, and like I said, he didn't sound that great. Like he wanted to hide under a rock. Meanwhile, I was having visions of these things just chugging right up the channel, broadsides slinging all kinds of kill in both directions.
Yeah, I know. I'm a grumpy bastard. I've seen a lot of shit and don't give much of a fuck. But I'm still a fucking marine, it's still my fucking job to put myself between home and war's desolation or some such poetic shit from some dude I can't fucking remember. Point fucking being, if we didn't engage, a lotta people were gonna get real fucked up, and it didn't look like help was on the fucking way anytime fucking soon.
"Garcia, get on the forty" I responded to the kid- it was a good enough answer. Like fuck we weren't going to get ourselves stuck in. No idea how much good a mark nineteen would do, but fuck, it was something. And if we could sweep a deck, we could make a landing, and I didn't give a fuck about the ships, I knew we'd fuck up some old-timey sailing fags easy. We had the weapons, we had the training, we had the ammo, and we were ready to fucking rock.
All that aside, what other option did we have? We're marines, we weren't about to run, and even if we were- where would we have gone? That RIG wasn't suitable for the open ocean for long, especially not in a squall, and it's not like we had nav gear or supplies. If we'd headed back inland, yeah, maybe we'd have been able to get clear of their killzone, and maybe not. No way of knowing, no way to get out. For completely practical reasons, we had to fight.
Anyway, all we had to do was get aboard.
Given the squall that was moving in, I didn't rate our chances real fucking high of pulling even that off. But fuck it, if we were going down, we were going down swinging, ya know? Fuck, couldn't let the navy or the coasties get all the attention any fucking way.
"Fucking punch it!" I yelled., and the rating did it. One thing I learned, fucking, an order, any order, is better than nothing, direction is better than fucking chaos. And if you jump out front, people are gonna follow.
I outlined my plan as our driver fucking redlined the engines and the RIG took off after the cutter. We weren't going to try and link back up with the Higgins. There was no fucking point to it, we were superfluous aboard the destroyer, fucking, a weapon unused. We were gonna try and board and knock out one of the trailing ships, one of the smaller ones.
This was not a good fucking plan. It was a good ten-fifteen thousand yard run, in a squall, across open water, in the middle of a gunfight between old ships of the line, a missile destroyer, and a coastguard cutter. And here we were, five swingin dicks in an open-hull inflatable with two fuckoff big motors and a pintle mounted forty mil up front, and we were gonna get stuck in?
Yeah, fucking sure.
But like I fucking said, any plan is better than nothing, and we had a plan. Shit, we hadn't even stopped to fucking consider all the shit I just told you. We were all like fuck yeah, we're gonna fuck these assholes up, show them what the fuck happens when you fuck with the US of fucking A!
I'll admit, it was kinda fucking stupid, now that I'm looking back on it. Don't agree with that.
So we're barreling across the water like a bareassed chimp with it's fucking hair on fire, going into the biggest shitstorm I'd seen since Ramadi. I was real glad for my haji rag. I'd picked it up in the sandbox, wore it all the time since then. It's fucking handy, you know? In this case it kept the fifty plus knot spray from sandblasting my fucking face.
We were scooting past the cutter and one of those brave sonsabitches came out on their bridge wing and fucking saluted. Johnston returned it, stood the fuck up on the RIG to do it. If we'da hit a wave wrong, he'da been thrown clear outta the damn thing and spent the battle ducking shells that missed.
To be fucking fair, it's not like that's not what he probably ended up doing any fucking way.
I think that was the second that it fucking hit me just how fucked we were if the Higgins couldn't do it. The crew of that cutter, they fucking knew, they fucking KNEW that we were fucked. They knew it, and that fucking salute was one group of dead men walking acknowledging another group of 'em.
We were still a couple thousand yards out when we heard a Harpoon come roaring out of one of the Higgin's cans. We all watched the flare of it's rocket against the night- I think Garcia said a prayer.
I fucking remember feeling my gut drop through my boots when it hit high up on the stack. five fucking hundred pounds of HE, all of it wasted against fucking cloth and rope.
I'll give it to the skipper, he wasn't willing to call it fucking quits just yet. The deck gun started barking again, and this time they started doing damage. Not fucking much, mind, the Higgins was never designed for a gunfight like that.
'Course, that's when they landed the first hit on her. Far up, on her prow. Round blew clean through the Higgins, exploded on the far side. I guess our badguys had expected to find armor on her. Good thing they hadn't, if she'd have been armored, that round would have detonated inside and done a lot more damage than just trashing the chain locker.
Shit started in real earnest then. The bitches started shifting to catch the Higgins in a pincer while she started punching back with her VLS cells. We were still too far the fuck away to do a damn thing, but we were closing in quick. I guess they didn't notice us.
As we closed in, we started being able to see, actually see, what the fuck we were fighting. Old ships, old, old ships. One of them looked like a fucking monitor. Yeah, THAT kind of monitor. One of the later-war models, this one had a pair of turrets, but it was still the cheese box on a raft bullshit the first one of her kind was.
Two cheese boxes. Whatever.
So the Higgins is stuck in a slugging match with a ship built to fucking win slugging matches against other ships built to do the same fucking thing, and she sure as fuck ain't. Mismatched to all hell. Still, she was slinging everything she had out at 'em, and we heard her CWIS engaging shit too- caught sight of a couple fireballs in the air. Guess they figured out how to shoot down incoming shells with it. Good on 'em.
Still, it didn't take a fucking genius off war to see the Higgins, for all her crazing around, was fucked. They had her in a pincer. We'd had to swing off wide of the main battlezone when one of the little ships, little pre-destroyer destroyers, took a fucking interest in us and started lobbing shells en mass our way. Say what you want about it, but getting real fucking dead right there wouldn't have done us a damn bit of good.
We swing back in as the coasties engaged, using the cutter to screen us from those fucking destroyers. They got in tight and hard with that monitor and started kidney punching the bitch, her deck gun down at maximum depression. From that angle, in that close, even that little peashooter seventy six did damage. Not a lot, but at that point anything was better than something.
Problem was, the Higgins was taking hits. Had been taking hits. I don't know what the skipper was thinking, I don't know what he ordered. But you could feel the change in plans. All of a fucking sudden the Higgins looked like it said 'alright. I might be fucked but if I'm fucked I'm taking the biggest one of you cunts with me.'
She lined up and started barreling straight for the big one. Had to be a torpedo run, that's the only fucking thing I can think. Like the skipper was suddenly overcome by the spirits of Taffy fucking three or something. Her deck gun started firing Willie Pete all over-
What the fuck do you mean who's taffy three? I guess that was after you- yeah. Ok, fair enough. The battle off Samar. Last stand of the tin can sailors. Sammy B, that was her fight. You get her in the right mood, she might tell you about it sometime. Her and a couple of her sister ships, a handful of destroyers, and some escort carriers against one of the most powerful surface action groups ever put together. And they won.
What, you think we invented the bullshit last stand at LA? Fucking please. Hell, your fights in the south pacific taught us a couple things about being tenacious as fuck too. Never say die, right?
Problem fucking was, from where we were sitting, we could see those shitassed destroyers lining up in parallel to the Higgins. They'd been designed to do the exact same thing the skipper was trying, and if they pulled it at the same time, the skipper would have to break off, lose his chance, and by the looks of things, he didn't have many chances to take. Maybe just the one.
Now I don't know if I've made it clear to you just how much I respect the crew of that fucking cutter. Ever last one of those fuckers was a fucking hero for the shit they pulled here. She was caught in the same bullshit situation we were, if you think about it. They were inside the bay when the traitor bitches manifested and hulled up, even if they'd wanted to, there was no way for them to get away. I guess they could have beached and made a run for it, but-
Well, I already told you what we thought of that idea.
She saw what was up, and broke off, using her guns to take those destroyers under fire.
Remember what I said earlier? about how that fucking popgun wasn't shit against a proper warship? Funny thing about those early fucking destroyers. They really weren't proper warships. Not like we think of today, not like the Higgins. Not even like Willie D. They were torpedo delivery systems, way light on armor and high on speed for their fucking day. Almost no guns to speak of, really, couple six pounders, something like that, and that's it.
Kinda a lot like a drug runner would be.
The coasties engaged the whole little swarm of them, seventy six blasting, guys out on deck with M14s and shit popping away. They threw everything they could at 'em.
Meantime, we'd shifted our targets- we wanted that fucking monitor. All we had to do was get in close.
We'd shifted like that because the monitor wasn't paying attention to us. No one was. Problem was, she was fucking paying attention to the cutter. I told you her name, right?
No? She was the Sherman. I mean, everyone knows it by now, she's damn near a shrine, but yeah. The Sherman.
That Monitor fired one broadside. Like, four fucking guns, ancient ones, civil-war era shit.
I think at that point her skipper knew how fucked he was. She was on fire, only offensive system gone, and locked in a fight that gave all the odds to the badguys. He had two options left, at that fucking point. Bug out, try and save what was left of his crew and his ship and leave the Higgins out there alone, or keep fucking swinging.
I don't know what was going on aboard that cutter. I don't know what was left of her crew, I don't know what kinda damage she'd taken in the fight, other than that one hit. I didn't know then, and right now, nobody else does either. That kinda ranks them right the fuck up there for what they did.
So the Sherman, on fucking fire, already at flank, heels over in a hard, hard turn and SLAMS right into the fucking torpedo ram, locking both ships together. You ever hear one of those bitches scream? I have. I did that night. I still do sometimes. Shit wakes me up.
Anyfuck, The Sherman slammed into that fucking ram and stopped her damn near dead in her tracks. Let the fire start spreading over her deck, while what crew could abandon ship were bailing off that cutter as fast as they could. Some of 'em went over the side on fire, or without life jackets. Maybe they knew what was coming.
Fast as you could fucking blink, the Higgins opens the fuck up. Captain must have ordered an alpha. Every cell she had opened up and it was like.
Shit I don't even know. It was like the wrath of god made fucking manifest.
They hit like the wrath of fucking god, too. Any god, take your fucking pick. Pro fucking tip, those bitches explode when their magazines go up, just like you'd fucking think they do. The ram and the cutter went up like a fucking orgy of fire, damn near capsized us and we were a couple thousand yards away and shielded from the worst of it by the monitor. I felt a flash of pity for the poor fuckers that had just abandoned the cutter, that blast had to have killed some of them. One hundred sixty seven coasties on that ship. I think something like thirty survived.
There was a third scream as the first missiles hit. Pain and fear, I guess. The ram knew she was fucked when they started coming down. Even without the cutter locked against her hull, even with the dinky ass charge in those missiles, there was no surviving a hit like that. It got cut off midway through when they both went up, hurling flaming wreckage all over the damn place. Couple pieces of plate from one or other of the ships came down near enough they'd looked like they were going to hit us. Couple of them did hit the monitor, but she kept chugging on, her armor more than enough to handle a couple pieces of debris.
She'd turned inbound to the harbor. Shit, why not? The Higgins was screwed anyway, and if she engaged the harbor now, it reduced the chance another warship would show up to fight her, right? Made sense. We'd turned to intercept, but it'd take a couple minutes; we had to dodge some potshots from those fucking destroyers, first. She'd be inside the harbor by the time we reached her.
The Higgins was still plowing hell for leather at the big one, slewing to one side and letting her torpedoes go, just like in an old school straight-line torpedo run. They musta hit- that weird fucking screaming happened again, just like when the torpedo ram went up. The skipper started a turn to get his other tubes into play.
And that's about the time three things happened. We got in range of the nineteen and Garcia opened up as the Monitor turned her turrets to engage us. At that point we were deeply fucking committed, and we knew we were fucked. We'd been chasing this thing back up into the bay the whole time after she hit the Sherman, she'd been firing on everything she could reach. The whole fight had been shifting back this way, and we'd been inside the breakwater for a minute. The captain's duel to the death was just outside the breakwater, and those torpedo destroyers were coming around for another go. Shit was bleak.
We got hit right as we got turned to heading to come up on the monitor. Shell hit in front of us, traveled below us, and went off. Blasted us right out of the fucking water. Garcia musta held onto the nineteen on the way back down, I could hear it thunking out rounds the entire time.
I didn't know it then, but that's when the Higgins took a shot to the bridge. That's the one that tuned Julie out. She was twenty four. Doesn't matter now, I know, but it hurt when I found out, ya know?
Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. I guess you do. My bust.
I got thrown up into the channel, must have cleared a good few hundred yards in the air. came down hard, knocked me silly. I only just barely held onto my rifle.
What do you mean I shoulda let go of it. Look, you ain't a fucking marine, you wouldn't fucking get it.
So I'm in the channel, underwater, trying to re-orient my fucking self, when I feel this... SHAPE thundering past me like it's got rockets in it's ass. It felt like someone took a fucking mountain, said "You float now, motherfucker" and sent it on it's way down the channel. A piece of line it was trailing behind it hit one of my hands, I grabbed it by instinct.
Best decision I made all damn day. At least I thought so at that point.
So I'm in the water, running out of breath, being dragged who knows the fuck where by who knows the fuck what. So what does my dumb ass do? Let go of the line?
Noooooo! I start climbing!
Like a lot of shit I did that night, looking back on it, it's fucking stupid. There was no telling what it was. I mean, yeah, I knew it was going to be a fucking ship, and a big one at that, but odds were, it was just a freighter. I'd have had a better chance in the water.
So I climb up and the first thing I see when I break the water is this navy-grey hull towering up over me. That was a good sign. She was probably a warship, someone else moving to engage. Maybe the Higgins had a chance of making it out if one of her sister ships was joining in the fight. We knew these things could die, now. We had a shot.
Problem was that hull was fucking tall! Whatever she was, she was no petite little girl. At least a cruiser. I don't think I really realized till I actually flopped over on the deck and rolled under the chain.
We don't use wood decks anymore. Haven't in years. Actually, I think she might have been one of the last classes to really have a wood deck.
So I lay there for a second, head still swimming. I was concussed, disoriented, and I'd sucked in a good bit of salt water, but I was still breathing, and you know how it is. Even hurt, you know how to fight.
So I managed to get to my feet. I'd been aboard long enough to learn that trailing lines like that is a real good way to get your props all fucked up and jammed. Part of me was sitting there wondering how damn fast they'd moved to get her fired up and untied from her mooring there. By now I'd figured out I was aboard Iowa. I just... hadn't really realized yet.
I pulled this mooring line up and- yeah.
She'd not been untied. She'd fucking snapped her lines.
I stood there for a second like a dumbass, staring at the end of this line all fucked up like it was. I mean, these things were high-test mooring lines, something like fifty, fifty five thousand pound test. These things should not just break. But here this fucking thing was, the end all fucked up, snapped through.
I- Look, ok. Iowa was a fucking museum ship. She'd had a turret explosion in her Y turret back in the eighties, they just sealed it up and never repaired it. Her guns were demilled, I'm not even sure there was still fuel oil in her bunkers. Part of me knew that, I mean, I fucking knew that, but I wasn't thinking about it for shit. All I guess I knew was I was on a battleship, arguably THE battleship, of the U.S. Navy and there was no way I was letting it, er, letting HER, fucking, sorry, go to war without at least one fighting man aboard. But right then, I was zoned out, just staring at this fucking line like what the fuck.
Not really sure what brought me back into it. Maybe it was something landing close by, a round from that fucking monitor, maybe. Maybe it was the sounds of the Iowa going into it. She wasn't a quiet, dainty little fucking girl. She was a battleship, the biggest, meanest, deadliest and sexiest surface combatant an American shipyard ever put out.
Shit, come to that, maybe it was her, you know? I hadn't quite clued into that there as something weird about her yet- sure, her decks were empty, but there was no way she had anything other than the most skeleton of fucking crews aboard. I hadn't really thought of how they'd have gotten her steam up, or what they'd do with a whole lot of display ammo and demilled guns.
Hell, I hadn't even noticed that all those removed forty and twenty mil guns were back and swiveling out to the ready. Didn't see that her launch boxes were gone, or that all her five inch emplacements were still there. Too focused on where I knew I needed to be.
What's that? Oh. Out on the prow. She's got a pair of single mount twenty mil guns. Light AA stuff, good for shooting down planes and chasing small craft off. That's where I needed to be. I don't... I still don't really know how I knew that. I just did. She needed me out there, WANTED me out there. So that's where I went.
I didn't think about how all those guns were moving of their own accord, loading ammo from thin air. How I was the only person on deck. I suppose if I had, I might have stopped to think that I was aboard an uncrewed, old ship. You know. Just like the ones that had been tearing us up.
I'm really, really glad that wasn't the case.
I ran past the aft most starboard five inch turret on the way forward, noting the EGA there. By tradition, you know, the shipboard marines manned that position at general quarters. I would have, but fuck, it was just me. I'm good, but no way can I fill in for a whole gun crew, you know? Still, it hit me. Here was this pride of the navy going back to war... and all she had aboard was one lone marine lance corporal, an orphan kinda, without a unit anymore. Hell, it looked like I wouldn't even have a ship pretty soon, the Higgins, last I'd seen her, was in a bad way.
So- yeah. It was just me and the Iowa, at that point. I'm not sure what was happening with the Higgins, and I've never asked the skipper. I've read the official reports, of course, that she was still fighting with her deck gun and the missiles she had left, but against that ironclad?
Forget it. No chance.
I made it to the prow twenty mil about the same time the Iowa cleared the channel. You ever see someone realize they're completely screwed? Like they've been picking on someone, and that someone's monster of a big sibling shows up and ruins them forever?
That's the impression I got from the Monitor when the Iowa swept out into the bay. She'd been out there, merrily putting cannon fire into everything in reach, freighters, tankers, warships still lashed to the pier, everything. The Iowa went charging into the bay like an avenging angel.
Assuming you allow for your avenging angels to weigh fifty seven thousand tons, have a foot thick armored belt, and nine of the most powerful guns ever mated to a warship. Her fore turrets, the big sixteen inch guns, were already swiveling to engage.
Remember what I said about the wrath of god, earlier? Gods love her, the Higgins had firepower. the VLS on her carried enough explosives to wreck a carrier's air wing, with plenty left over for her escorts or whatever else the skipper wanted to put missiles into. We'd used them for years, shooting cruise missiles into the desert, and even recently, loading those fucking LRASMs into her tubes to combat other surface ships.
But that saying, it's just... fucking... Inadequate for the pure, unadulterated fucking wrath that nine sixteen inch, fifty caliber guns puts into a target. That close, she couldn't miss. Hell, her main battery was practically at maximum depression just to acquire the target, let alone fire on it.
One salvo. That's all it took, just one salvo that damn near blew out my eardrums. The monitor didn't even have time to scream, the shells just turned her to dinner plate sized chunks. Iowa swept past the debris field like that wasn't anything- she was just getting warmed up. I didn't look to close at the sinking wreck. I've seen bodies before, I don't care to look at them for fun, ya know?
She hauled ass out of the bay, already coming around to get her big guns broadside on to that Ironclad. With the monitor gone, and the torpedo ram claimed by the Sherman, it was just that big bitch and the Higgins still fighting.
Well, not fighting, not really. The Higgins had blown her load with the alpha strike, and with her cells empty, and even the little antisubmarine torpedoes gone, all she really had was the deck gun, and that wasn't worth a shit. But she was still swinging, there was still life in her, and I guess Iowa saw that when she came about. Me, I was watching those little fucking torpedo destroyers lining up out there just in the squall line. I knew what they were gonna do.
Problem was, Iowa knows she's hot shit. She knows how armored she is, how deadly and every ounce of how badass she is. She knows she's the best killer put afloat by man's hands, and doesn't give a shit about any lesser ships. Well, and she wanted to save the Higgins, I think. We'd bought her the time to figure herself out, to break away from her mooring and go back to war.
Those little torpedo ships? In the scheme of things, yeah, they were a danger, a deadly one, but they didn't rate her concern right now. She had to break out into the open ocean and get that Ironclad, the one that was taking the Higgins apart with broadsides. She didn't have the time to handle a swarm of destroyers, no matter how easy her five inch battery could have done it.
And they knew it.
They started forming up for a hasty run way out, across her prow. You know what crossing the T is, right?
Well, it looked like they wanted to do that with torpedoes. They weren't that fast, but they were fast enough, and there were a bunch of the little bastards. Iowa's secondary battery, the twin mounted dual-purpose five inch guns, like Willie has, only ten of them on each side, didn't have good angles on that kind of attack, even with the piss poor range of old torps like that.
The twenty mil didn't have the reach, and Iowa's main guns weren't fast enough to track something like that. Instead, she sent six shells at the ironclad, still tangling with the Higgins. I was glad to see she was still in the fight, but gods, she was a fucking wreck. Even from as far out as we were, I could see she'd taken hits. Lots of bad ones. There was a fire and she was listing pretty bad. I was amazed she was still in it, to be fucking honest. Didn't know the skipper didn't have her anymore, and the CIC was calling the shots.
Didn't know Juile had bought her farm. Kinda glad I didn't learn about that until later. She'd have understood everything that happened down the road, I think, ya know, between me and Iowa.
Alls I saw was this Ironclad break away from the Higgins while the Iowa flung abuse at her, not caring about those damned little destroyers beyond a couple shells she sent their way. Range was too long for the twenty mil, and Iowa wasn't paying enough attention to the small fry to send more than a couple five inch rounds at them as they lined up and made their run.
Each of them had, shit, I don't know. Three, four torps? They launched them in a spread that'd intersect on Iowa's bow and trash everything forward of her conning tower, I was damn sure of it. Seemed like there were a lot more fish in the water than just the fifteen or twenty that they should have been able to launch, but I guess that was just excitement making me miscount.
Iowa, like I said, just didn't seem give a shit. She was fixated on something else; Namely, saving the Higgins. She wanted the ironclad gone, dead or run off, as soon as possible. Every time her fore turrets spoke, it was like someone punched me in the chest, and my ears rung, peltors or no. If I hadn't had tinnitus already. She'd bracketed it with her first two salvos, one punching in just forward of it, the second falling just short.
I figured, you know, the hell with it. I'd stay where I was, that was my fucking job right then. That twenty mil and me, we were all that stood between Iowa and a few thousand pounds of explosive. I wasn't real eager to test her torpedo protection, and I'm sure she wasn't either. We got lucky that the idiots had ripple fired their fish, so they were coming at us in a nice, neat, diagonal line, their wakes bubbling white even in the storm. They'd just opened up on me with their own deck mounts, trying to get me off the gun. I guess we're all glad their fire control considered a one percent hit rate acceptable, cos most of their shit missed clean. A couple rounds hit Iowa, but her armor didn't even bother laughing at the hits. She'd been meant to take far, far worse than a couple six pound shells.
I was drawing bead on them just as Iowa heeled over hard on her rudder, slewing off to port. It wasn't an evasion attempt- not at all.
She'd suckered them in. She wanted them to commit to the run before she turned and they didn't have the maneuver room to get away. Her five inch guns opened up in a furious broadside, their rate of fire making their barrels glow red in the night. She busted her sustained ROF easy, you could almost hear the rain boiling away as it hit the guns.
Problem was, instead of taking a bad hit, now she was set up to take a lethal hit. It wasn't hard to see what she was planning on. She knew I was up there, and that my gun had a good sweep of the torps in the water. I think I talked to her then. Something like "Alright, that's how you want to play this, I got your back."
Pretty sure she heard me.
I engaged them as soon as it looked like they were in range of the twenty. I wasn't going to do any damage to the destroyers, and they were getting fucked up by Iowa's secondary turrets, two of them riddled and sinking, a third, the lead ship, eating a half dozen shells as I watched, her aft quarter getting chewed apart, her rear gun mount knocked out. She went up when a shell found her magazine.
I had to ignore them for the fish. Thank fuck there were old type, straight line running, slower than their modern counterparts. Bigger though. A lot fucking bigger. These had been meant to kill ships of the line. Ships like Iowa. Granted, it wasn't quite the heroic fucking target I'd wanted, but same as always, I'd do what I had to, you know?
Of fucking course you know. Sorry, that was stupid of me.
It took me a minute to learn how to bust the fish. You have to give them lead, yeah, but it's weird because your rounds get fucked up when they hit the water. Guess I should be glad the little fuckers weren't more advanced, couldn't run deeper. If there had been, I couldn't have done shit. Took me a bit to learn how to kill the torpedoes, how many shells, where to put 'em, that kind of thing.
Time I really, honestly, didn't fucking have.
Remember how I was out over the prow? The torps had been coming right for me, before she'd come about to get her guns on the destroyers. Now, they'd have been hitting in a staggered line all down her port side, but the last couple were still way, way too close to me. Fight or die, it really was that simple.
What do you mean I could have run? Maybe, maybe I could have gotten far enough back from the prow that when they hit I'd have been fine, but then what? Stand there with my thumb up my ass on a ship I just let take a crippling blow? Abandon her, let her face her fate alone while I swam back to shore like a coward? After she pulled me out of the water and was trying to save the Higgins?
Never gonna happen. Besides, I'd already told her I'd watch her back, and you never renege on a promise like that. Never. Better to die.
The warheads those fish had wasn't the most stable, and the twenty mil shells I was shooting at 'em didn't help. I was racing against time to kill the last ones when Iowa dropped her guns on a straight shot into the Ironclad and cut loose. Six sixteen inch shells went screaming over my head while their blast punched me in the chest hard enough it felt like it cracked a few ribs.
Turns out it broke them and did some pretty severe internal damage too. S'allright, she and I are square on that. Besides. She wasn't trying to kill me, and all in all, I've been hurt worse.
It also knocked me off the gun for a second and blew out my eardrums. Yeah, got lucky I wasn't deaf forever after that one. I'd had to struggle to keep one hand on the grips. You're supposed to have a strap so you can lean way back into the gun, but do you think I'd had fucking time to get it on? shit, my M14 was still slung, I hadn't even blown off my IOTV when I'd hit the water.
Kinda glad I didn't, now that I think about it.
It took me a second to get enough air back into my lungs to get back on the gun. That fucking hurt. Shooting hurt more, sending recoil through my guts. I didn't know how badly fucked up I was, adrenaline is a hell of a drug, but the pain that made it through meant it was bad. Like I said, it wasn't the worst I've ever been hurt, I knew injury pretty well by that point. I figured if it hurt that bad, my insides were pulped, and I had a couple minutes at best.
What? Oh, yeah. I guess you wouldn't understand. It's kinda like a bomb sending shockwaves through your hull and damaging internal spaces. Sorta. Maybe you ougghta ask Wainright or Crab, assuming you can ever get Crab to, you know, act like a person and not a strung out arc welder with an angle grinder and a coke addiction.
Anyway, I didn't have any time left, those last couple fish were right on top of us. I got the second to last, then hit the last right as it hit Iowa.
I'm pretty sure it didn't actually hit her, but it was close. Close enough that it sent shrapnel up and into my ass, threw me off the gun. I bounced off one of the forty mil emplacements, ended up half in and half out of the tub. Probably lucky I only broke a couple more bones in it, and I figured the one punctured lung was a bonus.
After all, could have been both my fucking airbags, then I'd have been in real trouble.
I managed to flop myself back down into the actual tub, trying to get some protection for myself from the blast pressure of Iowa's main guns. I honestly don't know why it hadn't killed me, I still don't. By rights, it should have. I didn't see much after that, though I know she started slewing to starboard, bringing herself broadside onto something else coming in from the pacific. I know I heard her secondary mounts open up again, no idea on what though. Seemed like I laid there for a long, long time.
It was seven minutes, give or take. Maybe a hair less. Felt like I was bleeding from everywhere. I took a piece here, that's what gave me this scar, and a buncha little shit in along my jawline. Another piece went through my neck here, missed my carotid by about an nth of an inch. I'd have bled out if it'd nicked it, regardless of what she'd have wanted.
It's not lying to say I'd have died fucking happy. The sky had started to clear up as the pain crept up on me with the adrenaline wearing off. Everything fucking hurt, I won't lie. But the fucked up part was, I think I knew I was on the way out, and all I could think about was the sky. The stars were pretty blurry, but with the ship blacked out, there were just so damn many of them.
Not a bad way to make it to Valhalla. I was kinda fading in and out when she found me.
I guess 'found' me isn't the right fucking term. I was on her, she knew exactly where her one marine was. She said she 'felt' me there while I was bleeding out. Blood, she said, was different from salt water. Felt different on her deck.
I only found out about that later, though, when I'd spent a day or two in her sickbay. Before that, I was wondering where this girl came from, why she was dressed like that, and what she was talking about. I had no idea what she was on about, blood feeling different than water on her deck. I guess you'd have known what she was fucking talking about better sooner than I did, huh?
Oh. Yeah. Fuck, sorry. Didn't mean it like that.
So I'm swimming in and out of semi-consciousness when this goddess appears over me and starts crying and begging me not to die. She had to have been a Valkyrie, I'd decided. Had to be. They're the choosers of the slain, you know? Die in battle, go to Valhalla, escorted by one of Odin's handmaidens. That's the way it works. But I thought it weird that she had on that weird costume of hers, her hair was dark, not blonde like we've always seen, and she wasn't armored or anything. Just a girl, you know? One who was crying, at that.
Pretty weird behavior for a Valkyrie. Said she didn't want to lose her only friend. I thought that was weird- I'd never seen this girl before and I'm pretty the choosers of the slain don't have friends like that. I think I laughed. That fucking hurt pretty bad. Nobody ever said anything about getting a Valkyrie that didn't want you to die, you know?
So she asks if I can move. I didn't think so, but figured I'd try. Managed to get to my feet. That hurt worse than laughing did. She told me to lean on her on the way down to sick bay, and that I didn't look like any sailor she'd ever seen. I managed to snarl a response enough that she apologized and said I didn't look like any Marine she'd ever seen, either. I told her she didn't look like any Valkyrie I'd ever seen. Since when did they wear costumes based on old-time navy uniforms? Since never, that's since when. Short little blue skirt, thigh-highs with lace across the top, garter straps... yeah, no, didn't look like I expected a chooser of the slain to look.
She introduced herself, saying she wasn't choosing any of her 'crew' to die, and I blacked out. I blame my wounds. Guess she was stronger than she looked, she must have carried me.
I came to in a rack in her sickbay. She was still there with me, said she'd done the best she could with what she knew, but that she wasn't a doctor, and didn't remember first aid all that well, just what the park rangers had learned. Basic stuff, certainly not combat treatment of extensive internal injuries and the shrapnel wounds. But she'd made sure I wasn't going to bleed out, and had anchored off Terminal Island. She was broadcasting in Morse, old navy phonetic for injured on board, but it had been a day or two.
I wasn't surprised it'd been so long. LA must have taken a beating, and there had to have been plenty of people that'd seen her snap her mooring lines and go charging into the fucking bay like that. Probably no one wanted to get near her, even though if she'd have been on the other side, LA would have been wrecked by now. Fucking stupid, but that's how people were, I guess. Scared.
Heh. I say that like I fucking wasn't, but that first day, I kinda was, I won't fucking lie. Being a person, that was a new fucking thing for her, and all she had to help sort it out was a broken marine. It's amazing she didn't change sides on us then and there, ya know? Fuck, in her place I might have.
She'd rigged me for an IV, even though the drip looked like she'd taken five or six tries to find a vein. Arm hurt like hell, I'll tell you that much. Course, everything else hurt a lot too. Didn't have much in the way of food, she said, just vending machine shit. I'd had some energy bars in my vest, we ended up splitting those. She didn't much care for them, but we were both pretty fucking hungry. What was weird, though, was that she never left the sickbay. Slept in a rack near mine, stayed up most of the day just talking to me. Occasionally, she'd bail to find us something to eat, but never for long. And never real successfully either. We got lucky that, when the shooting had started, she'd been able to 'convince' the civilians to get the fuck off, like, right the fuck now. Some of the tour guides had food locked up, it had survived her... transition, I guess we could call it. Yeah. We lived on their lunches and snacks and shit for a couple days. Two or three, I guess.
She and I talked a long, long time before help showed up in the form of a boarding team from Pendleton. They were scared, jumpy. Weren't expecting to find me there, I'll tell you that fucking much. Talked long enough to confirm I was who I said I was, let their doc come aboard and take a look at me. Turns out there was a full sized team standing by, waiting to come aboard to 'secure' the ship. Their CO had been in OCS when Ramadi went down, and had the good sense to fucking listen to me. She was on our side, wanted to be on our side, but... she wanted time. That was good enough for him. They pulled me off the ship and double timed it the fuck outta there. Left my rifle and vest in the sickbay. Faggots.
By that point, fucking, the news was breaking this was all over the globe, ya know? You showed up a couple days later, while I was still in the hospital, being treated for everything. Glad you did, too. Looked dicey there for a while, fucking, we didn't have enough ships in the right places to defend our own coast, let alone assist our allies, you know?
What? Fucking, no, I won't tell you what we talked about about, that's a whole 'nother story, and besides, it's fucking private. If she decides to join us, ask her.
They never saw her. Er, I mean, they never fucking saw her body? I guess? It's hard to miss her hull, but they didn't see the girl I did. That make sense? Anyway, She stepped out when we heard the boots coming down the corridor, and didn't step back in. Wasn't quite ready to do this whole thing yet, and I agreed with her then. Still do now. We've got the luxury of time, we still have a navy worth a shit. The Japs don't, you know? It ain't like it used to be for them.
Don't give me that fucking look. I know how much everyone's waiting for her to show up, she does too. We both know how much she could do out here, just like I fucking said, she's the biggest, baddest warship ever put to sea. And she knows it too. But she ain't ready yet. She's going to take time to adjust, she never really dealt with... everything that you and your sisters did. Maybe some things you and your sisters never had to worry about too, if you catch my meaning.
Of course, we could try to call her out early. Shit, I probably could with a day and a visit to her hull. It's still there, you know, anchored off terminal island. Wouldn't be hard, really. But then there's the worry that we'd have an unstable Iowa running around here, and neither of us want that, do we? Besides. Till the army finishes reinstalling the fucking shore batteries and recommissioning all those fucking forts, she's the best LA has. Shit, she's all LA fucking has. Can't leave the port undefended, right?
Didn't think so. I mean, I don't think that shit's gonna be a problem. Iowa is a fucking warrior, just like the rest of us. She knows her duty. But that new body of hers, it throws her off, ya know? Being able to interact with people like this, it's new to her.
Right. Yeah, that was fucking stupid, sorry. Of course you know.
So, yeah. That was my battle of LA. a whole lot of doing nothing, then a whole lot of getting beat up by my own ship and shooting at some torpedoes. Nothing fucking heroic about it at all, I don't fucking care what they say about it. You want heroes, look at the crew of the Sherman, or the skipper. Me and Iowa just did our jobs. That's it.
Anyway, go ahead and finish off that bottle. Shit, take it with you. You've got that fucking look like you're about to go picking at wounds that don't need it, you'll fucking want it.
Her eyes snap open. Her body convulses on the deck.
She coughs, her chest heaving as she gasps her first breath, her second. Everything feels heavy; movement feels wrong. She knows she was not meant to move like this, but she also knows that she must move.
She tries to rise and learns that she has feet, attached to long and shapely legs. Fingers connected to hands, connected to arms. Clothes ridiculous in appearance, yet somehow real to the touch. Her first laugh, tentative and filled with worry, echoes off the walls and machinery.
'I know this place.'
This is one of four boiler rooms — one of *her* four boiler rooms. Everything around her is illuminated as though she is the source of that light, but it is rapidly fading. It is suddenly dark, too dark.
She tries to stand, her legs wobbling as she finds her balance. The light returns. She marvels at her ability to walk, at the feeling of her hands brushing against anything and everything in reach. Everything around her is *changing*: to how they had been for decades, not how they just were — how they should be. How she remembers it best. Paint peels back to reveal a new coat underneath, fresh warning labels on equipment. Warped railings straighten.
'I know who stood here.'
She sees old friends: her crew scrambling around her, through her, as though she is not present. Some acknowledge her with knowing smiles. They understand, somehow.
She misses them all terribly. She wishes they were here.
Men did their jobs aboard this ship — aboard her — long before she earned peace. She remembers every single sailor who ever served aboard her, their names and their faces. She remembers conversations about loves, about families and friends. About home.
She understands home. It is where she is right now.
There is a rumbling in the air, faint, reverberating through the hull and bulkheads. Her ears buzz with something electric—and not.
'I know these sounds.'
Air raid sirens in the distance. Another rumble. The world sways and tilts beneath her feet. Balance comes natural, even as another shock — much closer — rocks the boiler room. Lights flicker, but stay lit.
'I know this smell.'
Oil. It's a pleasant smell, one she hasn't enjoyed in too long. The stench permeates everything. It tells her that she is ready. She does not know what for, but she knows that She Is Needed. Her country, her world, needs BB-61. USS Iowa must sail.
A torch, burning brightly, hovers next to the woman, the shade holding it nodding and smiling warmly at her. Instinct bids her to take it from her engineer. A chorus of tiny, excited voices fills her ears as she plunges the torch into the nearest boiler, and the whole ship shudders. Behind her, the other boiler hisses to life. Gauges that have not moved in decades rattle, needles moving towards acceptable levels. She feels a hand slap down on her shoulder, an old chief flashing a thumbs-up before disappearing through the bulkhead.
'Eight boilers hot, ma'am.'
The ship's heart beats once more, and Iowa's heart beats with it.
-
Everything is new and different and amazing.
Iowa runs down the corridors of herself, shades of old crew flashing in the corners of her vision. The air brushing against her skin brings back memories of being at sail, but there is no chilling spray of water across her deck—and she feels grateful for that.
Her dress flutters around her thighs with each step, her high-heeled shoes (hers!) clatter against the metal floors. Her heart pounds, her lungs burn with each breath. With every clack of her heels to the deck, her ship transforms. Ancient anti-aircraft weapons — long replaced by modern forms of hate — flash back into place, as though they'd never been removed.
Each porthole she passes, Iowa looks to the outside world, trying to see more, to understand why she is here. She catches a glimpse of her reflection in the glass, her skin pale, eyes dark. The dress is a deep, uniform blue. The thigh-highs that itch like nothing she has experienced are white. Her hair is long, black, and shimmers in the ambient light with every step. She cannot help but smile. Somehow, this is right. She knows it is, deep in the same place that knows that she is here for a good reason.
An explosion flashes through the portholes. The ship lists to one side, then the other. Iowa stumbles, arms pinwheeling as she fights to maintain balance. A shade catches her as she falls, helping her upright. The crewman nods and points silently down the corridor. He points towards the bridge, to Where She Needs To Be.
He vanishes without a word, and something deep within her chest hurts. Something warm burns its way to the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill down her cheeks. She blinks the blurriness away and runs as though her life depends on it.
Her crew had run through these same corridors, just as she does now. People who had relied on the power of her guns, the strength of her hull, had scrambled for their very lives just like this. It had been an understanding she has longed for since she first cut through the seas.
The spirits of men who served and protected her, just as she protected them, run with her, past her. One by one, they reach their stations—and vanish.
The USS Iowa continues its transformation, decks and bulkheads rippling in her wake.
-
Excitement and wonder have become grief.
She has seen Hell on Earth, been the cause for it personally. But that was the past. She had fought for, and had earned peace. Her life had become one of vigilance, with just sparks of anger scattered among memories of long cruises with no war, no fighting. She sailed until her people did not need her, left her to slowly but surely rust.
Her final duty was that of a monument in memory of the GIs of the Army, the men of the Marine Corps, and the sailors of the Navy that BB-61 had stood watch over: a reminder of something the common person should not be subjected to. She slept content of her life, her service. Someday, she simply would no longer be. For her, that was acceptable.
And while she slept, a silent and impotent guardian to millions, Hell had come from the Abyss and visited its wrath on the innocent.
She is wide-eyed, standing on her deck, for the first time truly exposed to the elements as a person. For the first time, she is crying.
'Why?'
Smoke and flame rise from Los Angeles. Gouts of mud and concrete rise from coastal neighborhoods. The sounds of cannon fire echoes a second later, punctuating the horror.
The dock behind the Iowa erupts into flame, the blast-wave disintegrating structures hundreds of feet around the epicenter. Her home is being reduced to rubble. The people who worked there, who maintained her, are gone.
She smells oil burning, smells blood—and the explosions only continue. She sees freighters — SHIPS THAT CANNOT FIGHT — broken, dead, dying. She sees men and women floating in the water, clinging to anything that can keep them afloat. Others cling to nothing, lifeless bodies guided by the currents.
She hears screaming in every direction, and she remembers: the roar of anti-aircraft batteries, planes with a hated symbol painted on their wings diving at her sisters, prayers from her crew.
'WHY?'
She whirls on the deck, facing a sea that burns, seeing for the first time a storm That Should Not Exist. Voices are calling contacts. Her eyes, burning with blue flame focus on one.
DDG-76. USS Higgins.
Once, she must have been beautiful. Now she is mauled, facing down death. Iowa marvels at the small size of the vessel, comparing it to the blackened monsters bearing down upon it. A woman, shining in brilliant light, stands at her prow, arms outstretched towards the enemy. Splashes bracket the destroyer and she is gone, water washing over the twisted forward deck. The bridge is torn wide open, flames licking out of the mangled tower.
The Higgins lists badly to port, five-inch gun barking helplessly against the ironclad beast. Streaks of fire leap from tubes, from undamaged cells in the decks.
Iowa has seen ships die, but not like this.
The destroyer shakes, water and fire shooting up from the hull aft of its tower — torpedo strike. There is a long, mournful wail, drowned out by another fusillade. Higgins shudders once more, another group of missiles shrouding the ship in gray smoke. Robbed of her voice, only Higgins' weapons speak for her, and soon even that will be silenced. Her gun continues to fire, a rhythmic thump rolling over the waves, answered by high pitched CLANGS and whistles as the shells bounce useless off the ironclad's hull. She will die, and die knowing that she failed to protect so many, despite giving everything she had.
The tears stop, and Iowa feels another familiar emotion take hold.
'No more.'
-
Every captain she has ever known awaits on her bridge, standing at silent attention.
She staggers past towards the nearest man, the one she remembers with the most clarity. He vanishes with a salute. One by one, they salute and fade to nothing as she passes them by, until only Her First stands resolutely at the center of the bridge, his back facing her.
'Captain...'
The older man spins on his heel with military precision, snapping off a perfect salute. There is a plaque mounted on the bulkhead directly behind him, just below the observation windows.
OUR LIBERTIES WE PRIZE, OUR RIGHTS WE WILL MAINTAIN
His mouth moves, but Iowa hears no words. It is enough, she understands.
'This ship is mine.'
The spirit nods wistfully at the woman, motioning her to step closer. She feels an arm wrap around her shoulders as she obeys her Captain. His other hand sweeps towards the sea before Iowa, and then he, like all the others, is gone. She knows she will never again see them all like this.
The battleship lurches forward. Stressed metal groans, followed by a high pitched whine, a SNAP. Iowa is free of her moorings, surging forward from the dock. She feels the propellers spinning in the water, feels the ship shift beneath her feet as engines claw towards their limits.
And then she is distracted.
-
Iowa can 'see' the man clinging to one of her broken moorings. It's as though she is hovering next to him, watching him gamely struggle to climb onto her deck. She hears his gasps for air and his curses as his hands cut themselves on the line, his feet kicking helplessly against her hull.
She reaches out to him, for his shirt collar, wanting to help him. She cannot touch him, but the thought is apparently enough. He climbs faster, grunting and shouting incoherently each time he pulls himself further up the line. One of his hands claw firmly onto a railing the moment it is within reach, and after several short hisses, he bellows and yanks himself firmly aboard.
She knows he is a marine before seeing the Eagle, Globe and Anchor, before seeing U.S. MARINES stenciled across a patch on his chest; the haircut is more than enough to identify him. He is clearly exhausted, waterlogged, and extremely pissed off. Even as he lays on the wooden deck, trying to catch his breath, his eyes are open, scanning in all directions, looking for something to take the fight to.
Iowa remembers men like him. They served aboard her and she protected them, either within her hull or with her weapons from afar.
'Get up, Lance Corporal.'
He doesn't hear her words, but he staggers to his feet anyway, dumbly staring at the mooring partly wrapped around his right leg and then at the impossible sight around him. The Marine stumbles back several steps, almost tripping over the wire, mouth agape as he tries to pull the rest of the line out of the water.
That isn't where she needs him.
The Marine drops the line to her deck. Unconsciously guided by the shade of an old Gunner's Mate, cursing every time his hurt foot comes down on the wooden planks, he half-runs, half-limps to the lone twenty-millimeter anti-aircraft battery at Iowa's prow.
She has a crew of one Marine now. It will be all she needs.
-
Iowa stands alone on her own bridge, arms crossed, ignorant to the azure fire that burns around her.
Before her the Higgins burns. Surrounded, beaten down. Men and women aboard her are dying, if not already dead. Around her, people have died, while she had lain silent. Perhaps she cannot save them all, but she can avenge them. She knows she can.
She glares at the nearest of the monsters: the Monitor floating lazily among burning corpses of defenseless ships and people, its guns spitting at anything in reach. She hears the almost melodic hum of her two forward batteries shifting into place as they follow her gaze. The Y turret is on target faster than the other, as though it is more eager to do what it was built to do, after years of being unable to do anything at all.
She remembers this anger. She remembers how it was given purpose. One hand sweeps across the black sea just beyond the breakwater, across every nightmarish hull that plagues HER SEA, and her mouth opens to speak for the first time.
"Wipe these bastards from my sight."
Six sixteen inch shells explode from Iowa's forward batteries, wreathing her bow in fire and smoke. The Monitor seems to buckle in on itself, coming to a dead halt in the water. Iowa can see the face of her enemy, a slip of a woman standing red-eyed on her own deck, mouth opened in a silent scream. And then she and the Monitor are gone, fiery pieces of oily black debris skipping off the roiling waters, a massive funeral pyre of water and fire marking her final resting place.
Despite herself, Iowa smiles; this is what she was meant for.
-
The Ironclad is next.
Iowa bears down upon it, sweeping past the battered Higgins. For a brief moment, she sees the ghostly woman on the destroyer's prow, looking up at Iowa with amazement, with relief. She knows there are more of the black ships in the water, but they are not her concern. Her sister and her crew need Iowa. They need the Ironclad to sink if they are to survive. There is nothing else in the world but the churning sea, the Iowa, and the Ironclad.
"Look at me," Iowa snarls.
Her forward batteries roar once more, augmented by the secondaries she brings into play. The salvo sails just wide of the Ironclad; the beast comes about with impossible speed, forgetting the Higgins. Iowa's hands ball into fists.
"LOOK AT ME."
A scream, inhuman and high-pitched, sounds from the Ironclad. It is a scream of terror, of recognition. It knows it cannot win, cannot survive. It knows what comes for it.
Voices in her head ring in alarm: torpedoes in the water.
She remembers the destroyers, turning her gaze upon them as a triplet of starshells pop in the skies overhead, scattering them like cockroaches under the illumination. Her starboard five-inch batteries engage them in afterthought, shells chopping through the waves and their hulls, barrels glowing hot as they fire again and again and again.
Iowa grits her teeth, ignoring the fire she feels building all along her right side, a searing pain. She looks upon the Ironclad once more, her forward batteries shaking the whole ship as they unleash Hell. Her heart pounds as she watches the shells fall short. The gun-ports on the Ironclad flash in mocking defiance, its own shells splashing uselessly far from Iowa.
The Ironclad must sink.
There is nothing else that matters, nowhere she can turn to escape. The torpedoes are too close: no amount of will can force her hull out of harm's way.
She hears a familiar roar in the distance. She knows this sound, knows that it belongs to fighter jets of her country. Too far out to save her from the torpedoes, or the Higgins from the Ironclad, but close enough that even if she is gone, they might be able to save Los Angeles from further damage.
The Ironclad MUST SINK.
Through the forest of her forward batteries adjusting onto their target, she can see the Marine on his guns turning onto the incoming torpedoes. She hears him speak throughout the din of battle.
"Alright, that's how you want to play this, I got your back."
Somehow, Iowa knew he would understand.
-
Iowa watches herself as she continues to close in on the Ironclad thousands of yards distant, watches the Marine as he swivels the turret to engage the closest torpedo. Long seconds pass, tracers fizzling into the water just above the deadly lance—
The explosion is enough to make even Iowa turn away, a column of water rising high into the night sky, followed by a second, a third. The Marine keeps shooting, tracing fire over to a fourth torpedo.
The Ironclad is now little more than a distraction. The Marine and his fight for both their lives is her focus. A third salvo from her forward batteries clips the Ironclad's stern, a fire glowing behind the gun-ports trained on the Iowa. The pressure wave from the gunfire almost throws him off of the gun, but he tenaciously holds on, firing and screaming obscenities until his voice grows hoarse.
Five, six, seven torpedoes down. They are close enough that Iowa can feel the detonations through her hull, through her body.
The Marines remains at his post even as Iowa's guns deliver more fire onto the Ironclad. Hot shell casings spill around him, onto him. She turns the ship into the torpedoes, giving him a better angle, allowing him to claim three more. Water engulfs him and for a terrifying moment he is gone. The gun stops firing.
He reappears, still screaming, steam rising from the gun barrels as he resumes firing. Eleven, twelve down.
"It's enough," she calls to him.
The Marine doesn't think so.
"Run!"
He refuses.
The detonations are ever closer than before, close enough that Iowa 'hurts' when a shock-wave rattles her hull. Only two left, far too close.
"Don't do this."
She is pressed against the glass of her bridge, watching her newest and only crewman die. Before she could even speak with him, understand who he is, what motivates him, he will be gone. Like everyone else she failed to protect today. He is throwing his life away for her and neither understands why this has to be.
One torpedo left — it's going to hit. One survivable hit, a hit she can fight through easily.
"You didn't have to," she sobs, finger nails scratching the glass.
The Marine stays on the gun until he manages to hit the last torpedo less than fifty feet from her bow. He is flung from his seat and Iowa screams as his body ragdolls through the air, coming back down against one of her forty millimeter emplacements. He tumbles to her deck lifeless, out of her sight.
She feels his blood on her decks, feels his pulse fade to nothing.
The glass of the bridge shatters all around her, bouncing off her exposed skin like stones thrown at armor plate.
She sees only red.
-
Starshells illuminate the whole bay, clearly defining the Ironclad and Iowa. The last two major combatants. Soon, there will be only one.
A horrific buzz tears through the night, streams of tracers leading back to a pair of F-15Es flying dangerously low over the violent sea, waves licking at them as they strafe the Ironclad. Bombs fall away from their hard-points and skip off the water into the Ironclad's side. She hears panicked radio chatter from the pilots, from what remains of the Higgins, witness to the spectacle of The Grey Ghost closing the gap on her enemy. Close enough that even the Ironclad could hurt her, if it was allowed the opportunity.
Iowa's guns center one last time on their target.
'Sink.'
The salvo of sixteen-inch shells rips the Ironclad wide open, half of the ship's armaments gone in an instant. Iowa's five inch guns dig deep beyond the cavernous wound, angry flames spewing out from the endless black within the hull.
'SINK.'
Thirty seconds later, the six guns of the forward batteries speak, almost tearing the stern completely away from the rest of the beast. Lightshafts break through the storm swirling above and envelop the stricken ship, as though the world itself is guiding Iowa's wrath.
"SINK!"
The smoke from the shots partially obscure the Ironclad as it breaks in half, a column of fire rising into the sky and a banshee's wail sounding from within. The halves point upwards and within seconds begin slipping under the waves.
Iowa fires again, and again, and again, until there is nothing her guns can hit. She sails through the floating remains, through the flames, pieces of black iron and wood splintering against her hull. Turning towards the Pacific, Iowa brings her primary batteries to bear on something only she can see, coming to a stop at the center of the bay.
Behind her, Higgins limps to port, Los Angeles burns. Around her, sailors fight to stay afloat, to save who they can. Iowa stands guard, guns aimed at the abyssal Pacific. She waits for dawn.
feelthyHornet said:
Okay guys, that's it for part 1! I'll be updating my usual pastebin with BB-61 pt.1 in a moment for easier reading. I'm hoping to have part 2 of this up... soonish. I've got a lot of writing to work on at this point!
Iowa sits on her bridge, her face buried against her knees.
She had a crew. Even if it was for a short while, even if it was just one Marine, it had been enough. It had been proof that people like him still existed. And now she has none.
Strike Eagles loiter overhead, unsure of what to think of the now-living museum ship. Destroyers surround her, sisters to the Higgins, attempting repeatedly to hail her. Hailing the USS Iowa, demanding to know who is in command, what they intend.
Nobody approaches. Nobody attempts to board. The voices she heard when she'd first awakened are gone. Her one crewman is gone.
She is utterly alone.
She is not worried about rest, not right now. She just wants answers, like the uncertain voices crackling over the radio. She wants to know why she awakened to all of this, why it could not have been sooner.
Most importantly, she wants to know why that Marine gave his life for her.
She can still feel him on her deck, unmoving, his blood pooling across the wooden planks. Men have died aboard her before, but this feels intensely personal. She relives his final moments in snapshots, far clearer than any life or death she can remember before his: manning the gun, defying the concussion from her two forward main batteries as they eviscerate the Ironclad, ignoring her pleas to save himself. She still sees his eyes tracking the final torpedo, the 20mm gun spitting tracers into the water, his expression frozen in one last roar of defiance. His body flung through the air, into a Bofors battery before falling out of sight.
It would have been if he'd simply vanished like all the other ghosts of her past.
This death hurts her more so than any other, and a part of her feels as though she is disrespecting those who'd served aboard her before him. Iowa has been commanded by men to take lives, has seen men serving aboard her die. She is a weapon of war, those things are part of who and what she is. Every sailor Iowa has known sacrificed for her in some way; this shouldn't feel any different, yet it is.
But the Marine... it is more personal than the forty-seven in her Y turret, the marines she'd seen carried onto medical evacuation ships from islands throughout the Pacific. She had compelled him to take on his responsibility. She wanted him on that gun, and he never questioned her. She knows that he could not. She knows with certainty that he died for her, spared her hull in exchange for his body: her final connection to decades of service—to who and what she truly is. For the first time, Iowa has ordered one of her own crew to fight and die.
That, she can't understand.
'How does any Captain deal with this?'
Iowa's head snaps up from her knees, and she angrily wipes at her face. She must go see him and pay her respects.
-
The sight of the broken Marine is almost too much.
She collapses to her knees next to his body, shoulders shaking uncontrollably as she tries to hold back the fierce sobs wracking her. It only grows worse every time she tries to look at him. Every apology she rehearsed is forgotten.
She could save a city, save a sister warship in distress, scores of freighters, but she couldn't save the one person who had fought alongside her.
She is a failure.
She reaches for him, hands stopping just short of his chest. Blood seeps into her dress, stains her white thigh-highs scarlet. She cannot find his name anywhere on him, the patches torn away during the battle. His dog tags, the last possible source of information about him, are scratched and scarred by passing shrapnel—the same that are embedded all throughout his body. She only knows that he was a Marine, a Lance Corporal.
Despite his horrible wounds, his expression is one of peace. He knew what was going to happen, and chose to stay on the gun to spare Iowa from feeling the full effect of even a single torpedo. She wonders what compelled the man to do what he did, what compelled anyone to give their life in service to a higher cause. He could have been the first person to answer that, if he'd lived.
It takes a very long time before Iowa calms down. She forces herself to stop the tears, tells herself it resolves nothing. She thinks of all the other men and women who died during the fighting, and thinks of the Pacific, the unnatural storms she saw fading over the horizon at the end of the battle.
Iowa will need to fight again.
She stares at her Unknown Marine, steeling herself for what must come next. He deserves a proper burial.
"I'm sorry," she finally manages to say. "Thank you, Lance Corporal."
Her hands dig under the Marine to lift him from the deck, and that is when his eyes flutter open and meet hers.
-
"Valkyrie—" he whispers, eyes widening in time with Iowa's, "you're a Valkyrie..."
They stare at one another, unsure of what more to say or do.
Then he struggles in her arms. She can barely feel it; he's too weak from blood loss, from fighting. She does feel his heart beating, hard and rapid, his panicked breathing.
She makes a sound she herself can't understand and pulls away as though her hands are on fire. His body slumps back to the deck, and he actually cries out in pain.
"What... the... fuck?" he asks, eyes squeezed shut.
Iowa makes another sound, language forgotten, blinking at the Marine as he weakly reaches out with one hand. Fingers brush against the side of her face. She feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, feels her own heart raging for a path out of her own chest.
His eyes open and his expression changes. It is as though he has seen her again for the very first time.
"Y-You're..." Iowa manages to say before her voice catches.
His hand falls onto one of her knees. He tries to sit up, clearly unable to, but that isn't enough to stop him from trying. His breath is laced with a terrible wheezing sound, wheezing that dissolves into violent coughing. Red mist sprays from his lips.
"I'm dead," he groans.
She is crying harder than ever. She can't stop, and doesn't understand why she is crying when she is so happy. She holds onto him for a long while, her personal and very-much-alive piece of flotsam in a storm of emotions.
"No, y-you're not dead," she says.
"Huh." The Marine finally stops trying to sit up, his eyes rolling back as his head returns to the deck.
"You can't die on me," she says quickly, giving his shoulders a shake as she straddles over him. He doesn't respond. "You're... you're all I have right now, don't—"
Lazily, his eyes open once more. He starts to laugh, his voice rattling and wheezing until he begins coughing once more. He settles down, tearing up from the pain.
"Not like any fuckin' Valkyrie I've read about."
"N-not like any Marine I've seen."
They exchange another long stare. She finds herself smiling, despite everything.
"I'm..." the Lance Corporal points weakly to himself. "I'm all you have?"
"I don't hear them anymore," she sniffles. "Th-they're all gone. Somewhere. You're all the crew I have left on this ship."
"Weird..." The Marine chuckles. "Fuckin' weird."
"How do you think I feel? I d-don't even know if I'm s-supposed to be here!" She sobs and laughs with him. "C-Can you stand?"
"Tryin'... gimme a hand willya?"
She has to help him sit up, but that is enough to get him moving. He needs to lean against her to stay on his feet. He tries to brace himself with an arm around her waist, but even then his legs can barely support his weight. Strength is bleeding out of him through his wounds. She tries to carry him—the moment she does she can feel him resisting, and that is enough to convince her. The man wants to at least try to walk.
"I've got you," she tries to assure him, even as her voice wavers, "w-we're just taking a walk to..."
"Valhalla?" he asks quietly.
"... To sick-bay. I'm not choosing you to die. Not just yet, okay?" She tries to smile.
The Marine grumbles something to the effect of disappointment. The Ship squeezes him in the hopes of keeping him conscious.
"So. Who are you again?"
"I'm..." She pauses to draw in a breath. "I'm BB-61, USS Iowa. You saved me."
"Stop." The Marine manages to get her to stop walking by dragging his feet on the deck, pulling on the collar of her dress. He pulls himself up to her height, his bloodshot eyes drilling into hers, a gurgling growl sounding in his throat. "Sayitagain."
"I'm BB-61, USS Iowa."
"Th'fuckyousay."
"It's weird for me too," she admits.
He maintains his glare for a moment longer before his hands fall limp at his sides.
"I saved you?" He sounds incredulous.
"You did."
He shrugs at that, and immediately passes out.
-
The Marine weighs nothing, yet weighs more than any burden she can imagine. She wants to move slowly, to keep him from shifting so much in her arms. The sight of his blood soaking through his and her clothes urges her to move faster. She finds herself almost cursing her own design: there are so many pipes, railings, and hatchways her precious cargo can be accidentally bumped against; too many ladders she feels she almost drops him down. She tries to remember how the ship transformed around her after awakening, to remember if there was something she had done that was special. She wills the bulkheads around her to change, to make the path less difficult on the Marine, but nothing changes.
It is an agonizingly long walk to sick-bay.
She pushes her way through one final hatch, and is happy to discover that the medical ward is exactly how she remembers it being. She sets the Marine down as gently as possible on an empty bed and sets about scrambling to find the supplies he needs, trying not to look at the blood pooling rapidly beneath him on the mattress.
Memories of medics and nurses hurriedly making their way from patient to patient guide her. Everything she needs is exactly where it should be. Iowa is not confident about her skills as a doctor, but what she remembers from her crews is more than enough. Enough that she remembers to double-check his dog tags for his blood type. Enough to help her set up an IV after a several botched attempts, with profuse apologies after each mistake. He never responds, but she wants to believe he understands.
Opening his uniform shirt to dress his wounds is a different story.
She has seen injured, dying, and dead men before today. She remembers it all in a way only a ship of war like her could. This Lance Corporal should have died, spared only by luck or the will of something higher.
The shrapnel she has to leave in place. She does not trust her hands at all to even begin attempting to remove it all. It takes a full roll of medical tape and far more gauze than strictly necessary, but she is reasonably certain he will not bleed out.
He does not wake, does not stir even the slightest as she tends to his wounds.
She discovers, very quickly, that she is hungry. The sensation of a growling empty stomach is alien to Iowa, but she understands the moment she feels it. She knows there is food in refrigerators, in automated snack vendors, the last vestiges of her time as a floating museum.
But her Marine sleeps, and she does not want to leave him. If something happens, if he manages to wake up, she wants to be there for him. At least until help for him arrives. She moves her battleship to Terminal Island, assuming that her allies, if any, would find some comfort that the Iowa has placed herself in easy reach.
She calls for help via Morse code and signal flags flying from a mast atop her superstructure. She considers trying to use the radio, but in the end decides against it. She is unsure people would understand hearing her voice, or seeing her personally. As is, she knows she is being watched. Armed men have established a perimeter around her chosen anchorage, and at least two ships like the Higgins routinely patrol nearby. No one has tried to board the Iowa. She can't blame them, but she does worry for the Marine.
There is so much Iowa wants to know: about the world around her, about the America she knew and the America that is. If she is all alone, or if there are others like her, others like the monsters she put on the bottom of the bay.
She prays for her Marine, for the people she could not save. It is a simple act, but it gives her some comfort, some hope. She understands why her crews would pray.
He sleeps, and she watches over him the entire time, never once leaving his side.
-
"My head hurts..."
She is somewhere between sleep and consciousness, remembering battles fought and the souls of her crew, when she hears him groan. She's on her feet with a start, almost knocking over her seat, and stares expectantly at the Marine.
"You're still here?" he yawns, appraising Iowa with lidded eyes.
She brushes past the chair and wraps her arms around the surprised Marine. "Yeah, I'm still here."
"How 'bout that." He returns the hug cautiously, lightly patting her on the back. "You're real."
"Uh huh," she sniffles. "A-Are you hungry?"
"How long have I been out?"
"Two days. I've been here the whole time—"
"Fuckin—TWO DAYS?" The Marine sputters, and immediately tries to sit up. His eyes widen as he sucks down a breath of air, whimpering in pain as he falls back against the bed.
"Don't move you stupid jarhead!" Iowa wails. "Don't you even remember what you just went through?"
"My boat—" he gasps, "gotta get back to the Higgins—"
"You can't go ANYWHERE right now!"
"I got friends on that—"
"Higgins is as safe as she can be now." Iowa's expression hardens somewhat. "I made sure of it."
"Fucking—COME ON WOMAN! You can't just fuckin' keep me here like this!"
Silence rules the sick-bay after his outburst. Iowa remains calm, almost serene as she stares the Marine down. Anger fades from his eyes. His body relaxes.
"I'm sorry," he says, suddenly apologetic. "Fuck, I'm sorry. You just... you just got here and I'm—"
"You need better care than what I can provide." Her hands press against his shoulders as she tries to keep him in place. "I've called for help. Hopefully you won't have to wait long, okay?"
"I saw her, man. Higgins was in a bad way..." He looks away from Iowa just as the first hints of tears squeeze out from the corners of his eyes. "Y'know I dunno where any of my boys are, I'm the only one you fished out—f-fuckin' monsters—"
"I sunk every last one of those things." Iowa speaks firmly, proudly. "And I have you to thank for making it possible."
"Yeah," he snorts, nodding to himself as though remembering everything that happened. "Yeah, we fuckin' showed those bastards, didn't we?" He looks back at her, blinking rapidly. "A-And saved the Hig, right?"
"We saved her." Iowa leans closer to the Marine, her hands still on his shoulders. He's shivering from pain, from blood loss, but he stops trying to struggle against her restraint. Slowly, he allows himself to relax against his pillows.
"I promise. Nothing more will happen to the Higgins, to every ship in this bay, the port, the city. You have my word. This will never be allowed to happen again. I *won't* allow it."
"Alright, alright..." he nods again, turning away from Iowa. "Good to go, fuckin' good to go."
He doesn't believe her, she can tell that much, but he is trying.
-
"You're hungry," the Marine mumbles absently. It's the first thing he has said in an hour.
Iowa's stomach is noticeably growling louder than before. The alien sensation is accompanied by actual pain. Her hands are shaking as she tries to replace his IV bag.
"I guess I am." She finally manages to hang the bag correctly on a hook, and clasps her hands together, trying to stop the shakes. It doesn't work. "Ah... is it supposed to hurt?"
"Howzat?"
"To be hungry?" She shivers more, and another grumble issues from her gut. "I don't like it."
"It can..." The Marine tries to adjust himself in bed to get a better look at the woman. "Got anything to eat on this thing?"
"Yes," she replies distantly, 'seeing' the old vending machines abandoned by panicked tour guides and takers alike during her awakening.
The Marine begins to sit up yet again, pain rippling through his body and earning himself a sharp look from Iowa. He settles back against the bed, shivering.
"I was... thinkin' I could help us get—"
"I can get it!" Iowa insists, almost too loudly. The Marine rolls his eyes, but that is the extent of his protests. After making certain that he won't run away, or at least try to, she sprints for the sick-bay's exit.
She looks back at him one last time before she slips back into her own corridors, and catches him grinning.
-----------
BB-61, Part 3
---
The vending machine confuses Iowa.
It certainly wasn't standard issue from when she first went to sail, yet somehow it survived her hull's transition from its 'floating museum' state. There were a half dozen such machines all along her deck, near important entrances tourists would have passed through.
She remembers how people used the things. She remembers, only hours before 'awakening', a father lifting his daughter up so she could insert money into the coin slot. After an awkward pat-down of herself, she finds no convenient pockets on her dress containing money of any sort.
And so Iowa stares through her reflection on the glass standing between her and the food she and her Marine both need, her stomach still growling away.
Candy bars of all kinds are on display. Some of the names are familiar, most are not. She's not sure what to think of Corn Nuts, Funyuns, and the dozen other snacks on display. Near the bottom of the machine she can see bottles of water, green bottles called MTN DEW, and something else that glows bright red and is labeled "G" with a lightning bolt struck through the sole letter.
There is a sweet smell coming from the machine, clashing with the scents of saltwater, oil, and fire in the air. Another gurgle issues from her stomach, and she finds herself licking her lips.
She still doesn't understand why she has been born again in a woman's body, but she gets the impression that she could probably survive without food for a lot longer than a normal person could, much less a person as injured as her crewman.
Bracing her hands on either side of the machine, she squats slightly, grunts, and lifts it off the deck effortlessly. The wooden planks at her feet groan in protest for a second before splintering. She begins to walk towards the nearest hatch, the lights in the machine dying out the moment it is unplugged, wood crunching under her feet with each step.
She can't see where she's going, but she doesn't really need to.
This doesn't stop her from mashing her face into the glass of the vending machine when it fails to fit through the hatch, forcing a surprised yelp out of her.
Setting the machine down next to entryway, she frowns at the still out of reach snacks, hands pressing firmly against the glass.
"Well, it's for my crew," she says, balling her hands into fists and taking a step back.
After a short hiss of breath, Iowa's first punch goes through the entire vending machine, almost folding it in half around her right arm. Glass, metal, and cheap junk food explode in almost every direction, bouncing off her clothes and skin harmlessly.
"Oops..." Iowa mutters under her breath.
She withdraws her arm from the destroyed machine, shaking bits of it from her hand as she assesses the damage. Her cheeks feel warm, but she doesn't entirely understand why.
Surprisingly, much of the food and drink has survived Iowa's strike. She decides to not tell the Marine exactly how she acquired sustenance; somehow it seems like he wouldn't understand just how mean a right she was packing.
Using a bag that conveniently appeared next to the destroyed vendor, she gathers everything that looks remotely intact. She hopes this will last until help arrives.
She also hopes she can be gentler with the next vending machine.
-
The moment she pushes her way into the sick-bay with her haul, the Marine reaches quickly for a weapon that is nowhere near him by reflex. He sighs shakily when he identifies her.
"Old habits."
"You moved to a different bed by yourself..." she purses her lips, concern welling up in her eyes. "You should have waited, I could have helped you—"
"Had to, it's a little... wet."
"I—" There's a lump in her throat as she glances at the bed. The sheets are soaked almost completely through in a deep red stain, and she has to turn away from it. "I brought us something to eat..." She opens the bag to show off her 'catch'.
"Thanks," he mumbles, reaching into the bag and coming up with Snickers, a Glazed Sweet Roll, and one of the water bottles.
"I'm not sure this is any good for you right now—"
"Hey I'll eat a fuckin' ship right now, you're a life saverrrrrbnrbremmmf—" His voice becomes unintelligible as his teeth rip through the wrapper of the Snickers, stuffing the candy bar in his mouth with a huge grin on his face. "Ommmmmmmmmmfuuug im foh umgweee rai naoh!"
Iowa finds herself laughing as he tries to work through the candy bar, bits of chocolate on the corners of his lips. His chewing is loud, crumbs spill from his mouth, but she can't find it in herself to blame him.
"Urghuhwagaha," he grunts, pointing at her and motioning for the bag, all while clawing at the cap of his water bottle to unscrew it. He downs half of it in a single pull, still chewing at what remains of the Snickers. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaah... feels like ages since I had this stuff..." He points at Iowa again. "You. Eat something."
With his orders given, the Marine finishes off the rest of the water, and then sets about mauling his way through the sweet roll's wrapper, spitting out bits of plastic before cramming the roll into his mouth. He manages to grin sheepishly at her. Somehow, that is endlessly amusing to Iowa. She laughs until he tears off a part of the roll and offers it to her.
"Thowwy abow thif, ree uggiun umgwee," the Marine vocalizes. "Uhm, you wamf fom off mai?"
"N-no, I couldn't deprive you."
"Fuu uhrfelf." The Marine shrugs and proceeds to stuff the rest of the roll in his mouth.
Iowa reaches into the bag to find her own sweet roll, and tries to read the contents on the wrapper; other than 'honey' and 'flour', the listed ingredients only confuse her to the point where she decides that she doesn't care.
"Uhm, here I go, I guess..."
The wrapper is surprisingly slippery in her fingers. It takes several tries before she can sink her nails through the plastic and free the bread from its imprisonment. She studies the roll closely, inspecting the syrup-glazed golden brown surface. After giving it a sniff, she looks to her crewman in hopes of receiving advice.
None is given. He's too busy with a bag of Gardetto's.
She sighs, and measures up the roll once more. Her first bite is small, carefully measured.
She can't even begin to describe the taste. There isn't a point of reference for her to work from. She can't liken it to taking on fuel oil or supplies; it's nothing like setting sail from port. All she knows is that she can't stop from grinning as she chews on the snack, and she understands why her Marine seems to enjoy the simple act of eating so much.
"Like it?" he asks.
Iowa nods her head, not wanting to speak for fear of the bread spilling out of her mouth.
"Wait'll you try some *real* food."
Iowa doesn't know how to respond to that, so she doesn't try. She spends the next ten minutes slowly picking away at the sweet roll, trying to savor the taste and the smell of every bite. At first she doesn't notice the Marine watching her eat, or the smile his cracked lips slowly reveal.
When she does notice, just as she pops the last bit of the roll into her mouth, she smiles back.
"So." The Marine says, quickly looking away and picking at his teeth with a dirtied fingernail. "Uh, let's... let's try this again. You're Iowa."
"Yes."
"THE Iowa."
"BB-61, USS Iowa."
"Fuckin' hell..."
"You can just call me Iowa, if that's easier."
"You can call me Hate."
"That's a name?"
"'Swhat they call me on the Higgins."
"Hmm..." She tilts her head to the side, running the name through her mind several times. "Lance Corporal Hate."
"Iowa. Pleasure's mine, ma'am."
-
Their meal ends an hour later. Wrappers litter the floor of the sickbay, and something inside of Iowa insist that she really should police all the garbage for the sake of being properly sanitary, but she doesn't want to move. She prefers sitting on the bed next to the Marine, oblivious to how he carefully positioned himself to be able to lie comfortably on the mattress while avoiding physical contact with her.
They hadn't spoken much once they really got started with the food. He was too hungry to maintain any real conversation. For Iowa, everything was too new; it all distracted her in some way. The only thing in the bag that she tried and didn't find overwhelmingly flavorful was the bottled water, and even that has some sort of quality to it that she liked.
Her gut no longer growls or hurts quite like it did before. She's not sure how to describe that either, but she knows she doesn't feel like eating any more.
Hate snores next to her, catching some badly needed rest. His contented expression as he sleeps makes her incapable of voicing any concerns. She's afraid to disturb him.
She's not afraid to lean over him in order to get a better look at his wounds. Her hair spills over her shoulders, brushing against the Marine's body lightly before she pulls it away. Her eyes wander along his chest, wincing in sympathy for the Marine when she sees the shrapnel still stuck in place throughout his body. She knows enough that it's all going to have to come out sooner rather than later, but doesn't want to be the one to bring that up.
She wishes they talked more during... lunch, she decided it was.
Iowa still hears 'reports' from various stations about the disposition of the forces surrounding her, occasional visions of those destroyers loosening or tightening their perimeter around her. Jets continued to make their regular orbits overhead, as they had since her awakening. Voices shout for her attention on loudspeakers every now and then, but she still can't bring herself to answer them.
"What should I do, Marine?"
Hate doesn't respond. Her head hangs tiredly towards his, and she fights the urge to yawn.
She desperately needs rest, but she fights the very real urge to succumb to her growing weakness. It feels like she would somehow be abandoning her post, her Marine, and all the people she knows will need her if those monsters reappear.
Her mind and her heart are screaming for her to keep her eyes open, to not give in. It's not enough. She can feel her strength failing, a sensation she finds almost terrifying.
"Can't sleep," she growls to herself, trying to summon the energy she'd first awakened with. "Not yet, not until I know he's—"
"'Sup?" Hate's eyes snap open as he tries to sit up again, and Iowa immediately retreats, startled by his sudden movement. She nearly falls off the bed as she scrambles back, yelping in surprise.
"You look like you wanna ask somethin'."
"I just wanted to make sure you're okay." She grimaces at her own words. If not for the IVs and the drip feed of pain killers, he would be very far from okay. "R-relatively speaking..."
"Still tickin', I don't hurt any worse than I've hurt before." He finally gets himself upright, resting his back against the bulkhead while crimson spreads across the bandages over his chest. "Dun worry about it, nurse, I'm—ow—good to go."
"If you say so..." She sighs shakily. A yawn follows, and she almost collapses against the mattress.
"You haven't gotten any sleep," he observes. "Not since you fought, huh?"
"I couldn't... you were in such bad shape—" her voice catches. "It wasn't going to happen."
"How about this," Hate proposes. "I take the next watch; you go rack out for a bit."
"R-rack out—" Iowa shakes her head wildly. "No! You still need help, you need me to watch over you!" She points to a place beyond her bulkheads. "Your people have no idea what just hit them, they don't even know about me! I have to be ready—"
"You're not helping anyone if you fall asleep on 'em." Hate points to a nearby bed, one not covered with his blood. "Get some rest."
"But you'll be—"
"Right here the whole time. It'll be fine, just fuckin' go already!" He points to the bed again.
Reluctantly, Iowa drags herself to her new resting place, feeling utterly worthless. Sleep was never an issue when she was a warship. Now it is apparently more important than anything.
What is worse is knowing how right Hate is. She totters on her feet, struggles to even keep her head held high, trying to meet Hate's eyes with her own.
"Okay..."
It takes two attempts to actually climb onto the bed. It's too small for her, her feet hang over the side easily, but it is surprisingly soft. Minutes after lying down, with her head sinking into the pillow, it's also incredibly warm.
It's so nice, she almost forgets about the world just outside of her hull, about the people that may need her in a moment's notice. Almost.
The bed feels as though it is swallowing her up. Darkness shrouds the edges of her vision even as she tries to look for Hate, tries to make sure that he's still close by.
"Hate?" she calls out, shivering through another yawn.
"Mmm?"
"...Do you know if there are...others like me?"
"Would be nice, but I think yer one of a kind though."
"Don't go anywhere," she says. "If...if you need me, just wake me up..."
"Sleep, Iowa."
"Not...not for too long..."
Her voice fails her, and soon after her body grows impossibly heavy. Hate is little more than a dark mass sitting on the bed next to hers. The world falls out from underneath, and she sinks deeper into darkness unlike anything she can remember.
And then there is nothing.
-
Iowa stands on her own bow as she sinks.
Turret Two leaks smoke from every seam, its three guns all aimed at wrong angles, at nothing. Turret One is broken wide open, angry fires roaring deep beneath cavernous, jagged wounds in its armor. The bridge burns, the entire superstructure engulfed in smoke that billows into a stormy night sky. Rain boils off her deck, off the surging surface of the water. She lists badly to starboard, threatening to capsize as water floods through her mauled hull.
To port, the Higgins slides beneath the waves in two distinct halves, dragging the shattered remains of her crew to the bottom. Oil, blood, debris, and chunks of meat swirl to the surface, a marker to her passing.
Los Angeles burns. The harbor burns. Everything that can burn, does.
Black ships dominate the bay, the Ironclad, the Monitors, the torpedo destroyers. They are joined by dozens, hundreds of dark shapes steaming over the horizon. Most she doesn't recognize, but there are those she does.
The silhouettes of New Jersey, Missouri, and Wisconsin are all like hers.
Her sisters fire and fire and fire, and she cries for them to stop. When they finally relent, nothing on the coast remains. The air is filled with the screams of the dying, the banshee howls of the victors.
Iowa is the last ship that stands between the Abyss and whatever remains untouched by its wrath, and she is broken. She can do nothing. She has no crew. No Marine is there to rescue her.
The surrounding sea churns, a maelstrom rising around Iowa, black tendrils ripping apart the once proud battleship as they wash over and through it. She is pinned to deck as the bow points into the night, unable to move as two motes of azure flame *blink* down at her.
She feels something caress her face, feels something soft moving against her ears as she is dragged through her hull into the sea. Water fills her lungs. She tries to resist, tries to claw her way to the surface, but her body refuses to listen. She is surrounded by the Abyss.
The eyes in the sky blink once more.
"You..." a voice whispers, forcing her head to turn to the right.
The woman's skin is pale, her expression lifeless save for her eyes. Two hot coals that burn brighter as Iowa is forced to look into them. She almost passes for human, save for the horns that twist outward from her forehead, her cat-like irises. Hands wander where they shouldn't, claws slicing past her belly. Heat squeezes around Iowa's body, squeezes until her spine issues a series of muffled pops. She falls limp, unable to resist, utterly transfixed by this woman's eyes.
The Abyss opens her mouth, and it is nothing but teeth.
"YOU SHOULD HAVE REMAINED ASLEEP."
The teeth fall upon Iowa's neck, pressure builds around her head, claws digging into her skull.
Now, she is allowed to scream.
-
Iowa sits up gasping for breath, fresh tears running hot down her cheeks.
Her body shakes with lingering terror, with anger, the bed creaking under her shifting weight. She pats herself down, checking to see if she still has arms and legs. Her hands move to her neck, her heart pounding harder even as she finds the skin unmarred.
No blood anywhere, nothing is missing, yet she still *feels* where her back had been shattered, where her neck had been slashed. Where the fingers tore through her hair, into her head. She still hears her own last, strangled screams, air exploding out of her lungs as water rushed to fill them. Everything about her body is the way she remembers it before—
"Hate?" She calls out to her Marine, wiping her face dry with her fists. "Hate, please tell me you're still with me!"
He doesn't reply, and she begins to climb out of the bed to start looking for him when a hand falls on her shoulder. It's surprisingly firm, keeping her in place.
"I'm here, Iowa."
He looks worse off than before, apparently completely drained by the short walk from his bed to hers. But he is on his feet, at her side, concerned for her.
"You didn't—" She sniffles. "You shouldn't have gotten up..."
"You were begging something to stop. Screamin', really."
"...How long was I gone?"
"Dunno. Ended up sleeping too, tried not to, really."
"So..." Iowa collapses back onto her pillow. "So I woke you, didn't I?"
Hate doesn't immediately respond, as though he's carefully considering his next choice of words. That's enough for Iowa to roll to one side to avoid looking at him.
"Musta been pretty bad," he says after the long silence. He gingerly takes a seat next to her, grunting painfully as he collapses onto the bed.
"I'm sorry," she sniffles, curling up on the bed, her face buried in her knees as she tries to give Hate more space. "I'm really sorry."
"Can't always stop yer brain from cooking up some mean shit," Hate says tiredly. "I know."
"S-so this is normal for people?"
"More than you'd think."
For a long while, there is only the sound of their breathing, the distant hum of Iowa's boilers reverberating through the hull. She tries to forget the teeth sinking into her flesh, tries to forget her sisters bombarding the city they should have defended. She knows those things didn't happen. The knowledge brings no comfort.
She hugs her legs tighter to her chest, shivering in place on the bed. Her Marine stays at her side, never abandoning his post.
----
The next time Iowa awakens, she doesn't remember ever falling asleep.
Something soft weighs gently down upon her, following the contours of her body. Her eyes flutter open, and she discovers the dark green blanket, a protective shield to the outside world wrapping around her. In some places soft, in others rough, clinging to her clothes and bare skin, the blanket feels like warmth given form. Here, it feels like the nightmares can't reach her. She is safe.
Hate is a blur, still sitting next to her ripping open a bag of Chex Mix.
"Mmmf..." She groans, settling under the blanket further. Static pops under the blanket as she shifts around for more comfort.
"You looked cold," he grunts, stuffing a handful of food into his mouth, loud crunching filling the air.
"How long—"
"Three hours, maybe." A smile is evident in his voice. "You were quiet this time."
She's reminded of her failure to carry the snack dispenser through the corridor, her face awash with heat.
He pushes off the bed without looking back at Iowa, limping over to his own waiting mattress and groaning with every step. The stand his IV bag hangs from clatters behind him unsteadily, the wheels uneven to the deck and in desperate need of grease to stop the high-pitched squealing. It takes even more of his strength to stop himself from just falling face first onto his pillows. Iowa wraps herself up in the blanket tightly, watching him try to settle in.
"Fuckin' shitgoddamn," he growls before finally letting himself just relax. "How're we feeling?"
"Better," she admits this carefully, as though this might somehow offend her battered Marine. "I'm not feeling so weak anymore..."
"Good to hear."
Iowa climbs out of her bed to move to her Marine's side, instinctively checking the arm the IV bag is jabbed into, then the bag itself.
"You switched it out on your own?"
"Couldn't wake you, had to."
"Sorry..." Iowa's eyes wander along the length of his body, stopping at his chest. One her slender fingers brush lightly against a piece of shrapnel sticking out near his sternum. "We're... going to have to do something about the sharp stuff soon, aren't we?"
"Seems that way," he grunts. "You a doctor too?"
"I remember... things, but—" She shakes her head. "I don't know how to explain it."
"Huh..." They exchange another long stare, studying one another.
"I don't hear them anymore," Iowa mumbles. "When... When I woke up, in the boiler room, I heard everyone. My old crews right to the last man, manning every station at once, of every rank, in every role. Everywhere I went, I could hear them all. Lighting my fires, loading my shells... Now there's just you." Her vision grows blurry, her voice tinged with fear. "I didn't know what was going on at first, didn't understand until I saw them, saw the Higgins, saw everything was burning—"
She is yanked out of her rambling thoughts by Hate, grasping onto one of her wrists with surprising strength. He starts to speak, but no words come out of his mouth.
"A-anyway, the voices are all gone, mostly gone. Sometimes I... hear things. Updates on target disposition, radio messages, damage control updates..." Her voice drops into monotone, the sheen of her eyes vanishing. "DDG-111 USS Spruance, DDG-100 USS Kidd, currently on station three miles east of current position, two high-speed fixed wing craft designated Thumper Fight current altitude angels five bearing—" She shakes her head rapidly.
Hate stares at Iowa like she's grown a third arm, pushing himself slightly away from her.
"So that's a thing."
"Yeah... We're, um, surrounded." She smiles sadly at Hate. "I've scared a lot of people, haven't I?"
"Probably, yeah."
It hurts to hear him say that.
"Ah—"
"Don't take it personal, we don't even know what the fuck to call all of this..." He gestures to the sick bay all around him. "I mean, what do we even call you?"
"I'm okay with Iowa," she suggests, surprised by the question. "You know, the name I was christened with—"
"I mean, you, the person-ship-thing."
"Well, I was called The Big Stick back in—"
"You're not a stick, way too curvy." Hate grins at that. Heat flushes over Iowa's face once more. "Look, I'm trying to—fuck—I mean WHAT you are, not who you are—" His eyes widen. "I got it."
"Got it? Got what?"
"Shiplady," Hate says, pointing at her chest. "Boom."
"Shiplady? Really?"
"Well, you're a ship, and you're a lady. Shiplady." Hate's grin only grows wider. "One of a kind, like I said."
"One of a kind," Iowa repeats, bitterness tinging her voice. "How about that..."
-
Her hands have become the most fascinating things in the world as she sits next to her ailing Marine. She makes fists, watching the joints of her fingers grow pale as the skin stretches around bone. She feels her knuckles pop, then lets her hands relax, moving each finger individually. The creases in her palms make her think of sea charts.
With a wave of these hands, her batteries had swept across the sea. With a thought, fire erupted from every barrel pointed at the enemy again and again, until her sixteen inch rifles glowed red hot, the muscles in her arms burning in sympathy. Her body tensed with pain, quaked with fear as torpedoes detonated closer and closer to her hull.
Before 'awakening', her hands had been her gun batteries, radar her eyes and ears, her screws and her boilers her legs. Now those things feel alien and unreal, separate from who she actually is, nothing like the body she now possesses.
Her crewman is at her side, but Iowa feels alone.
-
"Hey!" Hate snaps his fingers, getting her attention. The sound startles her, she looks up with a bewildered expression.
"Wha—"
"Don't be fuckin' emo," Hate snorts. Iowa glares. He shrugs and digs into his bag of Chex Mix once more, chewing purposefully and obnoxiously as loud as he can manage. "Besides, it's not like we know that—"
There's a flash of movement from her arms and the bag of Chex Mix is suddenly in her possession.
Hate blinks at her, and then reaches behind himself, slowly producing a second bag from beneath his pillow. Smugness visibly radiates off of him as he calmly opens the bag, never letting his eyes leave Iowa's—and that's when another flash of movement starts and ends with the new bag in Iowa's possession, exchanged for the old one. The Smug noticeably falters, and Iowa grins in victory, popping some of the mix into her mouth.
"Like I was saying—" Hate clears his throat, "it's not like we know fer sure you're the only one."
"You think so?"
"Call it a hunch." He leans back against his pillows. "We fucking needed a miracle, and you showed up. Can't be all there is. Can't be."
"I don't feel like a miracle..." she mumbles.
"What *do* you feel like?"
-
For all the truly impossible things that have happened, her very existence, the appearance of ships hostile to anything human, and her single-handed destruction of them all, 'miracle' is not how Iowa can describe herself. A miracle might have spared Los Angeles, the Higgins, and so many more from the black ships' wrath.
Simply thinking about the word only brings back the visions. A city in flames, the dead in the waters around her. The final shriek from the monitor, just as it vanished from sight in a flash of light and ball of flame.
Iowa is not a miracle; she is a ship that was activated to fight, nothing more or less. That her body is different, that she can command her hull with a wave of her hand to deliver judgement upon her foes chances nothing. That she has hands at all chances nothing. Her harbor was attacked, her 'crew' responded to the attack, and she surged from her moorings to meet the enemy head-on.
Iowa is not a miracle; she is a woman who does not understand who and what she is. She does not know what she is truly capable of, why she even possesses the body she does. Things like taste and touch are as alien to her as the ship she somehow knows so intimately, that she controls with mere thoughts and gestures.
She does not see how she can be both. She must choose, wisely and soon.
She hopes that her Marine is right, at least about her.
-
"Worried," Iowa finally answers. "Very, very worried."
"Makes two of us—"
"You called me a miracle, but I just can't see it. I see a ship. I see a girl. There are things I know, but I've never experienced like this them before, so how can I know them? Like this—" She stands up abruptly, pacing next to the bed. "I can walk. Walk! Like you! Like anyone else!" Her arms flap for emphasis. "It's completely natural, like breathing, like eating, things I've only ever observed I know how to do like I've always known how! I have a body, it feels like I've always had one, I know things about it like I've read them from a book, like I've always BEEN a woman, but I KNOW that isn't true because I woke up two days ago and the world was on fire all around my ship!"
"I remember everything about myself—my old self. Every single day of it, the battles I fought, the battles I watched from afar. I remember the people who served aboard me, how some of them never got to see their homes again. I can remember conversations they had, about families, friends, loves. The prayers they said before battle, before sleep. I remember a flash, a fire, and forty seven souls who perished in it, a battery that would never fire again. I can remember wishing I could have done more for every single sailor, every last Marine I fought in defense of, but I know that can't be right because I KNOW I was just a ship, I said nothing, I thought nothing, so how can I be so certain that I actually—"
"Stop," Hate growls. "Fuckin'—okay, look, track with me here: Who are you?"
"I'm—I'm BB-61, USS Iowa—"
"Nice to meet you Iowa." Hate reaches out to take one of her hands, giving it a vigorous shake. "I'm Lance Corporal Hate, United States Marine Corps. Thanks fer fishin' my fuckin' ass out of the water. Thanks for saving my ship." He tries to scowl at her, but his heart isn't feeling it. He manages a frown. "That's all that matters right now—"
"Aren't you going to ask me why you took on that gun?" She is shouting now, unable to understand how cavalier he is about her. "Doesn't that bother you? Doesn't that frighten you?"
Hate seems to freeze in place as he remembers. She can see it in his eyes as they dart about, his mouth moving in silence as he retraces his steps.
"You put me there," he says. "That's what you're gonna say."
"I did," she confirms. "I wanted you on that gun, and you went there. And you nearly died because of it."
She watches Hate carefully, taking a step away from his bed, waiting for the anger to set in. Waiting for a look of outrage, a punch she would barely feel. Something.
Something that wasn't him suddenly bursting into howling laughter. She tries to get him to stop, worried about the blood seeping through the bandages on his chest as he continues to laugh, but he pays that or her no mind. Only after he descends from laughter into a coughing fit does he eventually settle down.
"Well," he snickers. "I guess you asked nicely enough."
"You can't just brush aside—"
"Sure I fucking can." He starts to tick off points on one hand. "I fucking woke up half-dead next to a woman on the deck of a ship that shouldn't fucking be combat capable, after firing guns it shouldn't fucking have after you used brain lasers to make me do it, at fucking torpedoes that shouldn't have ever been launched at it, while said ship was firing its sixteen inch guns, and we ended up saving the day for it."
"But—"
"Now, either this is a good fucking thing, or I'm dead and dreaming, or you're still a boat and dreaming. Whaddya want from me?"
"To tell me why you stayed on the gun when I wanted you off of it."
Hate remains silent, and Iowa learns what fear truly looks like on the man.
-
She has always known it, from a detached perspective. She remembers the tension among her crews before every battle. She remembers Leyte Gulf, the enemy just within range of her guns, only to be denied her combat as word passed that her sister ships off Samar faced imminent destruction, the Marine beachheads exposed. Things her task force should have been in place to defend, lives that were being lost.
She remembers the Katori, standing against two of the most powerful warships in the US Navy, and sinking in thirteen short minutes. She remembers the shots the broke her. She remembers the wails from her surviving crew as Iowa and New Jersey steamed past. She knows fear, knows what it means to be the cause of it.
This is different. This is personal. She sees the fear in her Marine's face, how the irises of his eyes widen, how the stubble on his face bristles from his skin. How his eyebrows raise, his breath catches, the stink of it filling the air. It reminds her of the snacks they shared, the blood he'd spilled on her deck. He leans back as she draws closer, silently demanding his answer.
Here, less than foot away from Iowa, the Marine shows more fear than he'd displayed as the torpedoes closed in.
-
"Why do you want to die, Lance Corporal?"
Hate maintains his silence; his eyes plea for Iowa to follow his example.
"I begged for you to run. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you didn't hear it. But I begged you. I would have been fine, Hate. You'd done enough."
She leans closer to him still, and she can see his pulse quicken, hear it a portion of his neck throbbing madly. Her long black hair spills down the sides of her head, gliding against his body. With a frown of disappointment she backs off, and Hate relaxes, slumping against the bulkhead with an audible sigh of relief.
"I would have survived," Iowa says, pacing once more next to his bed. "I know I would have, and so did you. Am I wrong?"
"I'm a Marine," Hate begins, the first snarling hints of true anger directed at Iowa. "You know what we fucking do, when shit starts flying—" his voice raises to a shout, "we fucking catch!"
"Answer my question, Marine!" Iowa shouts back, his service branch a curse on her lips. "What kept you on that gun?"
"Why's it so fucking important to you?"
-
Now it is Iowa's turn to wallow in silence.
She sits back down on Hate's bed, once more enamored by the sight of her very own hands moving just the way she wants them to. She kicks her legs out idly, feels the muscles under her skin at work. She breathes in deeply, and a cool sensation fills her chest. Her dress, somehow cleansed of all the blood, plays across her skin, as smooth and soft as it was the day she first opened her eyes.
These small things feel like miracles to her.
A ship, to her, is engineering. Skillful engineering, an understanding of how things *work* that culminates in a design meant for a specific purpose. In her case, she was to be the ultimate warship ever to set sail. She was meant to fight.
All the marvels of engineering resulting in her creation could not have worked without a crew. Without people, she could have done nothing. She simply would not exist. For her, these people are the miracle. Working as a team, they in turn made *her* work, and simply by being she protected them.
From the moment she had awakened, she wanted to speak to someone, anyone, about herself, about her ship. She wanted so badly to learn, to understand how any of this was possible. The shades told her nothing she didn't already understand by instinct, they told her nothing about people.
The attack had run off all her maintainers and curators, her visitors spirited away, hopefully alive and safe. The voices were gone. All she had was knowledge and experience she'd been born with, a battle brewing just outside her own dock. She was her own crew.
And along comes this Marine.
-
Hate realizes that he has said something wrong. He reaches out to Iowa, but his hand stops just short of her right arm. He settles for pounding that hand against his head.
"I'm just worried for you," Iowa whispers, looking down at her knees.
"You got other things to—"
"Stop," she snaps. "Don't tell me I have other things to worry about. Right now, my concern is my crew."
"One dude who manned a *gun*—"
"—stopped torpedoes from striking MY hull—" she looks over her shoulder at Hate, "and you're asking why it's important to ME?" She turns fully to face him, crawling closer.
"I did what anyone else would've done—"
"You put me before yourself," She rests a hand on one of his shoulders, giving him a gentle shake. "It has been a long time since anyone has done that for me."
Hate has nowhere to retreat to as Iowa draws closer. He is effectively pinned in place, transfixed by Iowa's serene expression, her calm tone of voice. She smiles, flashing perfect whites at the stunned Marine, and then turns her attention to the bandages wrapped around his body.
"These need to be changed."
"Do they really?" he asks, hoping she's wrong.
-
"You know, my first battle with a hostile vessel was against the IJN Katori and her escorts." She speaks conversationally, trying to keep the Marine calm as she begins loosening his bandages.
"Y-yeah?" Hate shivers, trying and failing to maintain an air of indifference.
"Uh-huh. She didn't stand a chance, wasn't ready for me or my sister. I can't even remember if they managed to scratch me. After that, well, the second World War was a lot of shore bombardment, a lot of anti-aircraft work for me."
Hate suddenly hisses as Iowa continues to pull at his bandages, his skin sticking to the moistened gauze. Iowa stops, looking up at him intently. He grits his teeth and nods for her to continue.
"It's not like the danger wasn't there, its war. I understand that—" She has to lean in closer to reach around behind Hate. Her hand follows the curves of his ribcage, fingers trailing towards the center of his back, still pulling his bandages free. "I was spared a lot of what my brothers and sisters at arms had to go through. I guess I was lucky, and my crew was spared."
"Luck," Hate mumbles quietly, sitting upright, allowing Iowa to reach behind him with her left hand and reach the loosened cloth bundled in her other hand.
"Physics and tactics aren't luck, Hate. Luck didn't matter to Turret Two. Those men didn't have a chance, or a choice. Physics chose for them—"Hate grimaces in obvious discomfort. "Sorry about that..."
"Morphine—" Hate growls through his teeth, hands clawing at the bedsheets. Iowa shakes her head; he's already had a dose, if he's still hurting there isn't much more she can do except to stop, and she can't. Silence rules the air for the next few minutes, punctuated by the occasional gasp or snarl of pain from Hate as she picks away the scraps of bandage that have stuck to one of the larger pieces of shrapnel and skin.
Eventually, Iowa succeeds in removing all the bandages. Infection hasn't set in, but the need for proper surgery is apparent. She could easily rip out the largest piece of shrapnel, but she is certain that Hate wouldn't survive it.
The Marine's head lolls forward, and for the first time he sees the extent of the damage.
"Wow. I feel as terrible as I look."
"I, ah..." Iowa bites her lower lip. "I'm going to need to disinfect this."
"Fuck's sake..."
-
Finding basins for warm water was simple. The moment she thought to look for them, she walked a mere dozen steps away from Hate and found a pair, filled to the brim, steam rising slowly from their rippling surfaces. Six towels were stacked next to each basin. Next to one of the basins is a bottle of yellowish anti-septic, still three quarters full, explaining the water's discoloration.
Carrying what she needs back to Hate, she begins soaking the first towel. She wrings out some of the excess before approaching him. She appraises him with pursed lips, shaking her head sadly.
"You're a real mess, Lance Corporal."
"It...was worth it, I'd do it again—" He winces the moment the towel makes contact with his skin, near the largest of his wounds.
She has known Hate for little more than three days, and she knows that this is not sarcasm.
She does not understand.
-
They soon learn that a number of his ribs are indeed cracked in the worst way possible, when she begins pressing a washcloth around a jagged piece of her own hull embedded in his side. That is when he finally does scream. That is when she sees real tears in his eyes. He tells her later that it wasn't her fault, she couldn't have known. To Iowa, knowing that with her own hands she caused this man undue suffering is horrifying.
He writhes at her touch, bites back cries of pain. Curses of increasing length and color are shouted at the roof of the sick-bay as her clumsy efforts to wash away the dried blood move closer to the worst of his wounds.
All she can think of is a day in April of 1989, and the screams that echoed through her hull then. Nearly four and a half decades after the most destructive war mankind had ever waged, she experienced the things her brothers and sisters at sea had suffered through. Like she'd said to Hate before, it was physics. The conditions needed to facilitate the event were met, and so it happened.
She'd seen the dead and dying from afar, on occasion they were brought on board. Until that day in April, it had never been HER people. It had always been another ship, another crew. A shoreline far away, an island, an enemy-occupied port.
Seventy three years after the end of World War II, she stood on her own bridge and watched Lance Corporal Hate choose to make the ultimate sacrifice for her. Nobody in her crews had ever been forced to make that choice quite like he had.
-
"Again?" she asks, her voice brittle.
"It was you, the Grey Fucking Ghost, the Big Fucking Stick... or me, the Marine. Big gun versus little gun. Made sense then, makes sense now." With trembling hands, he pushes the towel away, trying his best to ignore the utterly crestfallen look she gives him. "God, Iowa, *you've* done enough."
Iowa lets the towel drop to the floor.
"It was that simple for you?"
"Of course it was." Hate's response is without hesitation, full of cruel confidence. "I'm not worth a battleship. I'm not worth a cruiser, a frigate, a tank, a whole squad of—"
"You don't have to be worth any of those things, Hate."
"Worth isn't the point! The point is a city filled with millions of people, dozens, hundreds of vessels, that only YOU could have—"
"I think I understand what your problem is."
Hate flares up, a portion of his strength returning as he forces himself to sit up straight, a sharp intake of breath more reminiscent of a cobra seconds before striking—But his response is smothered before it can even begin, venomous, well-chosen words stuffed back into the darker corners of his mind.
Iowa lunges onto the bed, straddling his legs, hands slamming into the bulkhead on either side of his head as she leans in dangerously close to the Marine, the corners of his mouth twitching as the woman's eyes bore into his.
"You compared yourself to a weapon, Lance Corporal," Iowa says heatedly, pounding the wall for emphasis. "You are the furthest thing from it. You are just a man."
She waits for his response, waits for him to react. She waits for the fear to return to his face, for the surprise at how fast she moved on him. She waits for him to squirm, to try to force her away.
He does nothing, save swallow loudly. She has his attention.
"A weapon doesn't get to make the choice on how it gets used, or why. It doesn't get to consider the consequences of its actions. It doesn't get to decide who lives, and who dies. It doesn't get to explain why. A weapon works because a person makes it work."
With a sigh, she sits at his side, allowing Hate to lean on her shoulder for support. For his part, Hate remains silent, staring straight ahead.
"I know what being a weapon is like, Hate. You don't want that, not really. You can't make any decisions at all. You only do what others make you do. It's not at all like following orders from a superior officer, not even close." She drapes an arm carefully over Hate's shoulder, trying to avoid upsetting the wounds on his neck while pulling him tighter against herself.
"Before that battle, I'd never had any say in what I did, where I went, what I turned my guns against." Iowa shivers, remembering the things she saw the moment she made it to her own deck. "I made mistakes... I was angry at everything, angry at myself. I let them line up that torpedo spread, I bored in on targets without thinking about my surroundings..."
"Yeah..." Hate finally manages to speak, his chuckling a hollow rattle. "Yeah you did screw up. You needed me."
"I needed you to save me, I didn't need you to die for me." Gently, she pulls Hate closer to her, forcing him to look at her. "I think you've been lying to me, Lance Corporal."
"That's what you think, huh?"
"You said that you chose to do what you did for good reasons, but I saw the look on your face just before you caught that last torpedo. You weren't thinking about the Higgins. You weren't thinking about your squad mates. You weren't thinking about me. You weren't thinking about the city. You didn't look worried about anything at all."
His lips move, but the only sound is the sickly moist wheezing from his punctured lung.
"Was it easy?" She asks, her voice raw with emotion.
"Very." The reply is without hesitation, his tone cold and unsentimental; his eyes are anything but.
"Why?"
"I don't know."
-
It is only right that Marines go to retrieve a Marine.
That it is four days after The Battle of Los Angeles means nothing. The USS Iowa returned to Terminal Island on her own power, with nary a hint of crew running the ship. Her guns were now trained out over the Pacific's horizon, searching for the black ships.
The Morse code signals she emits say there is a Marine aboard, alive but in critical condition. They will get him back, regardless of the risk.
The United States hadn't been the only country to suffer from the surprise attacks. Reports were still coming in of attacks on port cities and coastal areas around the world, some attacks on going simply because there was nothing in place that could stop the attackers. In the worst cases, the military response had been crushed outright.
The enemy had not limited itself to stationary targets. Commercial shipping and military targets were finding new homes at the bottom of the world's oceans. The slaughter was indiscriminate, and oftentimes thorough. The Abyssals, as they were now being called, did not take prisoners.
They come from the sea, on occasion preceded by unseasonable, violent weather. Sometimes they come from beneath the waves, giving them their name. However they decide to appear, it always ends with many, many dead. Panic grips the sealanes. Any nation with a coastline finds itself on the defensive. Nobody knows what provoked the attacks, what crews the ships rising from the depths.
However, buried deep within days of bad news, there is the story of the USS Iowa breaking its own moorings to punish the Abyssals that struck her port city. Nothing else is confirmed, but it is becoming apparent that she is not alone. Around the world, something, someone, is helping humanity fight back.
The ride from the USS Kidd is remarkable in how unremarkable it actually is. The approach to the Target Vessel is smooth, the sea unnaturally calm around it for hundreds of yards. They are the point of the stick poking at the hornet's nest. More are set to follow. This does little to reassure the VBSS team assigned the dubious task.
Drone boats are sent in ahead of the Marines, a test to see if and how the target would react. The swarm circles close to the vessel before turning on it as one, making for its hull. In response, every gun that could have pointed anywhere near the drones found an angle away from them. When one of the drones suffers a temporary loss of signal and brushes against the target's hull, a rope ladder tosses itself off the side of the warship, dangling in excited greeting.
"What the fuck." A sergeant observes.
The drone buzzes off as soon as control is restored. The ladder droops sadly towards the water, hoping the drone changes its mind. Someone on the VBSS boat laughs.
-
"Were you happy with your 'final' decision?" Iowa asks.
Hate only nods, his eyes squeezed shut. She finds it impossible stop her arms from wrapping around him, pulling him into a hug that she knows he desperately needs, and he trembles in her embrace. Weakly he tries to return her gesture, one arm looping around her back, hand clenching onto her right shoulder for dear life.
"It would be easier," he speaks with effort, "if you'd just... stop asking about it."
"Okay." She nods jerkily, tightening the hug for a brief moment before releasing him. Hate exhales with relief, and something else. Everything in her mind wants to keep pressing. She wants to know what drove her Marine to be what he is.
As the man collapses back against the bulkhead, she knows that today is not when she will get those answers.
-
The USS Iowa stands tall in the still waters where she has taken anchor. This would have made boarding from the sea difficult had there been any amount of chop, and if the rope ladders hanging over the side of the ship actually acted like rope ladders. They are as stiff and unyielding as steel, barely shifting under the weight of each man as he makes his way onto Iowa's deck.
Discipline and training bids each man to take up a defensive position as soon as they leave the ladder, scanning for hostiles, M4 SOPMODs at the ready.
They are the only people they can see on the ship, fortunate as there's little cover available that allows good sightlines on probable threats. The deck shows the effect of main battery fire, wooden planks scored black by flash burns. Gunpowder smoke still hangs in the air, shell casings near the anti-aircraft emplacements jingle as a light breeze passes.
"LT, I see something near Turret Two," a Corporal calls out. He sounds as scared as everyone else actually feels, but he's the first to vocalize it. It is and isn't appreciated. Rising as one, the VBSS team briskly moves in pairs to the LCPLs discovery.
Blood, lots of blood. The biggest stain is on the deck proper, the pool still wet at its center. There are signs that someone once lay atop it, someone else had knelt next to them. More signs of dragging, with two pairs of bloody footprints leaving the pool. One set of prints disappears as they reach an open hatch leading deeper into the ship.
The team follows the footsteps until they find the vending machine next to an open hatch, folded on itself, stripped almost entirely bare of anything it once contained.
"So where the fuck is this guy supposed to be, and can we get him out of here before whatever did this finds us?" The Corporal asks once more.
"Oh my God, shut the fuck up Price."
-
Hate clears his throat, looking over at the woman still at his side. He remembers vividly how Iowa felt, pressed against him as she was. Soft in the right places. Warm, almost too warm. The pain wracking his body seemed to melt away in that moment. Despite everything, it had been years since he'd felt so comfortable around anyone or anything.
He wonders if she knew what she'd done.
Words have failed them both. They haven't spoken since the awkwardness happened, keeping their jumbled thoughts to themselves. As he'd begged/asked, she stopped trying to pry into what made him tick, what made him decide. There were things she didn't deserve to have dumped on her. Things that somehow, she made it easy for him to want do just that.
Neither is bored, or at the very least they have done well to hide this from one another. Hate has found the largest piece of shrapnel in his chest to be of great interest: He is certain that it is shaped like North Carolina. Iowa has taken to inspecting... herself. She makes fists, occasionally flexes an arm, and tries to hide a smile when her biceps firm up. She idly kicks her legs out over the side of the bed, sometimes quickly, other times slowly; she wants to watch how they work.
Sometimes, they catch the other watching them; their eyes almost meet, and they quickly find something else to pay attention to.
Hate isn't an idiot. He knows that he has hurt her, in some way that she isn't letting on. She wouldn't be the first woman he has done this to.
Somehow it feels worse than the others.
He is happy with the silence, he thinks. This is fine. It gives him time to think about how he can apologize later, if there is a—
"So..." He begins. "Nice guns."
"Uh huh." She grins up at him openly now. "Well, I am the nameship of the Iowa-class. It's only fitting, right?"
"Yeah." He looks down, considering his next words carefully. Iowa leans closer in anticipation, and for a moment he wonders if she can read his thoughts.
"So hey, fuckin'—Alright, I'm pretty bad at this but—"
Iowa sits up with a surprised, high-pitched yelp, her eyes wide but focused away from Hate. She scratches at the side of her neck lightly, then checks the hand that did the scratching.
"They came for you," she whispers with disbelief, shivering as she scratches at her dress just above her breasts. Her eyes brim with tears. "They're here. They're here for you." She grabs his hands happily. "They heard me! They listened!"
"...Huh."
-
The blood leaves a trail that is easy to follow, made easier by every possible light that could also lead the way shining brighter than any others. Even if they hadn't spent hours poring over old construction diagrams of the Iowa, it seems that someone would have told them where to go.
The team isn't taking any chances, however. As helpful as the ship wants to be, it is unsettling that whenever a man tries to look down a corridor that isn't the designated path to check corners, the lights in that direction abruptly turn off.
As such, the Marines move slowly, their guns pointing at shadows every step of the way. Nobody is happy to be here.
-
The second hug is more forceful, but joyous. Hate pats Iowa's back numbly, not quite believing the timing.
"You're going to make it," she says. "You're going to be okay."
"Yeah..."
Iowa almost leaps off the bed, landing with what could be considered practiced ease on her high heels. She's focused on the port-side entrance to the sickbay. That is where the rescue team is coming from, heavy footfalls echoing from the corridor. They had minutes, maybe.
"What are you going to do, Iowa?"
She whirls back to him, and again at the door.
"Who do I report to? The Admiral of the Navy? The President?"
Hate shrugs unhelpfully. Where does the living personification of a battleship fall in the chain of command? He remembers how upset she'd been when the subject of being the only one of her kind came up. He wonders if she even should make her presence known.
"Maybe there are more gir—shipladies like you," he offers. He hopes it's true.
She ventures a step closer to the door. The boots sound closer now.
"I don't know what I should do," she says plaintively.
"What if... this is enough for now?"
-
The Lieutenant in the lead hisses, holding up his hand in a fist. The whole team stops, hugging one side of the passage, guns at the ready. The Sergeant at his back pats the officer on the back, motioning that he should take the lead in the formation. The butterbar shakes his head slowly.
'What do you hear?' the Sergeant mouths.
"A woman, I think?" The El Tee whispers back.
-
"What if," Hate says slowly, "you take some time to figure out what you want to do?"
"I'm a battleship, I know what I'm supposed to do!" Still facing the door, Iowa steps back from it, back towards her lone crewman.
"I don't think you're just a battleship."
"Shiplady, right..." She takes another step back to him.
"For one, battleships don't look quite like you do. You're not quite as... boxy."
When she turns back on him, she is blushing again, but she is also smiling.
"Figure things out, hmmm..." She makes her way over to Hate, leaning close to him once more. "I suppose there is a lot of history I need to catch up on."
"Well it's been like, what—"
"Don't mention my age."
"I wasn't going to, I was just gonna say—"
"A lot of things to figure out." One of her hands pats him gently on the side of the face, scratching against three days of unshaven stubble. "Like your real name, for one. Hate is not a very good nickname."
"Didn't get to choose it, ma'am."
"We'll come up with something better."
She walks away from her Marine, one foot in front of the other as she makes for the exit opposite to the one the rescuers are approaching. He watches every step she takes, still feeling where her hand had been seconds before. The blue dress swirls in her wake, hips swaying with every step, heels clacking against the metal floor.
And when she looks back at Hate, she knows she has his undivided attention.
She likes that.
"Technically since I outrank you, Marine, I can issue you some orders can't I? You are my crewman, after all."
"Technically, yeah," his voice thick with annoyance, mostly acted. "I guess you can issue some fu—"
"I'm glad you agree." She calls back lingering at the door she intends to escape through. "I'm going to... figure things out, like you said, protect this city in the meantime. As for you..." One foot is out of the door, one still in the sickbay. "You're ordered to stay alive until I see you again. So I can help you."
When the Marines breach the sickbay, they find Lance Corporal Hate saying his name at the door opposite to theirs, reaching for someone who is long gone.
-
She stands alone on the bridge of her Self, watching the rescuers depart. She watches them take Hate away.
He's being questioned, again and again by his fellow Marines. She doesn't know what is being said, their tiny boat is too far away from her to listen in, but she can see them with perfect clarity. He nods, shakes his head, or yells angrily at the medic tending to him. He's going to be alright.
Through it all, he never stops looking back at the USS Iowa. Looking back at her. And she stays on the bridge, watching him until he disappears into the USS Kidd. She takes a breath she didn't know she was holding back, and sighs with relief.
Just as she turns to leave, she spots lights flashing from the Kidd and her sister, the Spruance. The lights continue flashing for a minute, then repeat:
Smiling, Iowa turns her back to her two sisters, her own search lights flashing back a response. As she reaches one of the hatches leading off the bridge, she finds a blue parasol leaning against the heavy door. It's a perfect match for her dress. She wonders where it has been this whole time.
Los Angeles spreads out all around Terminal Island, and the afternoon sun still hangs overhead. She'll need this where she's going.
Lying in a hard hospital bed, with Arizona sleeping soundly on your chest (all cried out and, judging from the circles around her eyes, exhausted after a late-night vigil,) you contemplate your options. Some kind soul left you your watch; turning your wrist over you discover that it's 0430. You sigh quietly - you've been kicking a tin can down Memory Lane while there's a combat sortie to plan. Christ.
But, for all that, you're awake, you're alive, and there's abyssals on the rampage out there.
>Call Goto. Yes, it's only 0430, but if you've read him right he might not've been to bed yet; handling both your workloads. No time like the present.
>Call Goto's staff, get his secretary on the horn. The poor bastard's probably grabbing the few hours of sleep he'll get out of the next thirty-six; and that's what secretaries are for.
>Call your own secretary to get a sitrep, first - if you've got to wake someone up, it may as well be someone with enough rapport to not hate you too much for it.
>Call Hate - he's your best friend, when you get right down to it, and here you are being very not-dead after an apparent scare.
>Press the nurse call button, let the doctors know you are not a vegetable, all evidence to the contrary, and badger them for an extra blanket for Arizona. No sense in putting the cart before the horse, imminent combat be damned.
>Call your own secretary to get a sitrep, first - if you've got to wake someone up, it may as well be someone with enough rapport to not hate you too much for it.
>Press the nurse call button, let the doctors know you are not a vegetable, all evidence to the contrary, and badger them for an extra blanket for Arizona. No sense in putting the cart before the horse, imminent combat be damned.
The first thing you do is reach out and press the nurse call button; a little blinking red LED informing you that Help Is On The Way. Your responsibilities loom large, but your deep desire to understand *what the fuck just happened* is slightly larger. You're downright afraid to go feeling around your body, but do so anyway - discovering a large fluffy gauze bandage on the upper-right side of your dome.
Probably means they shaved your hair, too. Oh well, you're used to wearing a cover everywhere anyways, you can get away with it indoors. Maybe you'll even stick your hands in your pockets. Yep, that star is going straight to your head. The transformation into Flag-Rank-Fucker is well underway, if not complete. Hell, you're even in bed with a beautiful underling.
You rub Arizona's hair affectionately, and find the energy to chuckle. Once upon a time, that would've been a serious concern. But after seeing how much baggage the "kanmasu" carry, how displaced out of time they are, even understanding how deep and powerful the undertow of awful memories can be - the thought of those gulfs being bridged by mere lust is laughable. You've got to cling to each other as tightly as possible just to keep semi-sane, really - maybe that's why Kongou is always driving Goto up the wall. And, come to think, maybe he likes being driven, just a little bit - it's so much easier than dealing with the darkness welling from within these girls.
You think back to the date with Shoukaku - how stunned you were when she showed up in casual dress, looking for all the world like an ordinary young woman (aside from that shimmering quicksilver hair, enchanting, haunting,) and how quickly the facade of normality had slipped; as she found entire sections of "her" city obliterated during the War; her sudden pathetic eagerness to know if humanity viewed her as a person or as a disposable machine.
Fraternization is small-fry compared to *that.*
The door latch works with a quiet click-clack, and you hear the nurse arriving, her sensible shoes click-clacking across the tiled floor. The privacy curtain is tugged aside gently, and you find yourself staring at your nurse.
Who is Shoukaku.
In a nurse uniform.
A very, very flattering pale-pink nurse uniform that ends halfway down her thigh, where the tight white stockings take over. The clipboard she clutches against her chest does little to hide how the tight starched fabric accentuates her impressive bust, and as always that shimmering silver waist-length hair is impossible to ignore, especially with the little pink cap on her head setting it off so nicely. Her warm, affectionate smile seems to slide right off her face as she gets a good look at you.
You and Arizona, who is still fast asleep on your chest, her arms wrapped possessively around your middle; rich red locks tumbling across your tear-damped shirt.
Suddenly, fraternization seems like a big deal again.
>Can I get a blanket for her, please?
>... okay, you first.
>... what the actual fu-
>I CAN EXPLAIN
>write-in?
40867176 (demetrious) -
REFINING VOTES:
>>40866923
>"I didn't make it, did I."
and
>>40866904
>"I think it's a battleship thing, honestly. Less chatty than Kongou, too.
40867199 (demetrious) -
>>40867176
RE-VOTE FOR ONE OF THESE TWO
WRITE-IN: "I think it's a battleship thing, honestly. Less chatty than Kongou, too.
"Must be a battleship thing," you say matter-of-factly. "Less chatty than Kongou, too."
Shoukaku blinks. "*Thing,*" she says, her tone locked and loaded.
"Well, maybe just a flagship thing," you clarify, stroking Arizona's hair and tucking her loose bangs back behind her ears, making her look presentable again. "Akagi doesn't seem to fit the pattern, but still. They want their admirals, for some reason."
"She seems to have found hers," Shoukaku says softly - maybe even sadly. "She seems quite fond of you... she wouldn't leave your side for anything, no matter how much we cajoled." Shoukaku smiles at you, and it hurts you to see how hard it is for her to lift her expression to it. "She trust-"
"No," you cut her off abruptly. "No, Shoukaku, it's not like that."
She tilts her head, and deliberately scans you and Arizona from head to foot. "It doesn't look like that fr-"
"Issac C. Kidd," you cut her off. "You ever hear about him?"
She blinks. "Who?"
"Rear Admiral. My own rank. They named a class of destroyers and an Arleigh-Burke after him. Won the Medal of Honor. Died on Arizona's bridge during the attack on Pearl."
Shoukaku's face pales. "O-oh. I, uh-"
"They found his Annapolis class ring fused to the rear wall of her bridge, afterwards."
"I'm s-sorry-"
"You remember what we talked about? On our date? About Arizona, and me?"
She nods. "You already left one ship in a dry-dock, and you don't intend to leave another."
"Right. She just feels the same way." You cover your eyes, rubbing your temples as an excuse to hide your tears. The roughness in your voice - well, you're thirsty and sick, aren't you? "That's all it is, Shoukaku. We've all got our regrets, and that one's hers."
"... I'll fetch her a blanket," Shoukaku says, her voice gentle with sympathy. With that, she slips out, heading for a linen closet. Searching the room, you find your cell phone and a few other personal affects laid on the small table to your side. You flip through the menu, find Naka's contact number, and call.
The disgustingly sugary tunes of some old ear-worm you vaguely remember begin chiming tinnily from one corner of the room.
"Aaaaah, drat."
Your cane is leaning against the table. Snatching it up, you sweep the privacy curtain all the way open with the tip to find Naka reclining in the adjustable guest chair and blinking sleepily. A pair of earphones are resting around her neck, cord leading to a CD player on her thigh. And, of course, she's got a nurse uniform on.
"It would seem the tables haaaAAAAAAVEEEE TUuuuhhhrned, wuh," she says through a long yawn and stretch, "Misther Bhond."
"How long have you been awake?" you demand.
"Since Shoukaku came in. I was hoping it wouldn't stick, but then you called."
"Hmm. I don't suppose you know what the HELL happened to me in the command room, Nurse Naka?"
"You had shrapnel moving in your brain," she says bluntly.
You feel the gauze on your skull gingerly. "Fuck. How bad?"
"No more brain damage than you came in with," she says brightly. "Gave you some drug cocktail to reduce bleeding and put you through an emery - uh, Em Ar Eye - and just yanked it out with a tiny cut and a little robot with a magnet."
You wince at the word 'yank.' "Your bedside manner needs some work, you know that?"
"It stops you from asking and puts you off-guard, letting me steer the conversation." She yawns, trying to cover her mouth primly but running out of strength halfway there.
"So Shoukaku raided your agencies costume department or something?"
She grins at you sleepily. "Other way around. She found where they keep the spare staff uniforms and I had her scare me one up, too."
You give her a lidded-eyed look. "Kick a man when he's down, eh?"
"Just trying to get him back up," she says, giving you a wink and an impish grin, no less bright for her weariness. "But no, Shoukaku did that entirely for your benefit."
"Uhm," you say, glancing at the floor. You're not quite sure how to answer that, so you return the serve. "So who are *you* benefiting?"
She gives you a lazy, smoky, wicked smile. "Harder's meeting me later today, per your orders."
"Kid," you say with naked admiration, "next time I hear someone hand-wringing over ship-girls emphasizing with humanity, I'm giving them your business card."
Naka doesn't grin at this - she simply bites one knuckle as she regards you with dark, serious eyes. "Yeah... I spent a lot of time learning. How to read people, and... and stuff. I was amazed at how much talking people do without, uh, talking." Her usual frolicsome flair is absent. "So you pick up on words unspoken..."
"..." you reply.
You watch her struggle with her phrasing for a few seconds before she rolls her weary eyes upwards with a sigh. "Okay. Her?" She points at Arizona. "She is all-" she makes a circle with thumb and forefinger, and starts thrusting her other index finger through it, rapidly intensifying the speed faster and faster till her dainty little hands collapse together in a mismash of flailing fingers that slowly expand into a jazz-hands finish.
You lock eyes with the petite, hollow-eyed light cruiser, and see nothing but exhausted, flat frankness.
>... that doesn't make any sense. She's an American Battleship, not a damn schoolgirl with a crush because some has-been cripple halfassed a job best left to professionals. This isn't your damn chinese cartoons, as they say in the vernacular. Get *real.*
>... please elaborate on your fascinating theorem, Dr. Naka, as evidenced by your keen and careful observations.
>Don't even talk about that. I couldn't possibly - nobody could. She's - she's holy ground, Naka. Literally. I don't even want to think about it.
>... please elaborate on your fascinating theorem, Dr. Naka, as evidenced by your keen and careful observations.
"I do not believe you," you say with prim precision.
Naka blinks.
"My theory," you say, touching your chest with a flourish of your hand. "Shipgirl with terrible trauma from her past latches onto the closest one-star admiral in an attempt to make up for past regrets and failings. Ooooooooor, YOUR theory-" you flip a fingergun level with Naka - "soul of America's most beloved and mourned battleship falls in love with a crippled old has-been because he half-assed a procedure best left to professionals. I'm sorry, but that's some Chinese cartoon tier bullshit, Naka. Gonna have to pitch me better logic than that."
Naka tilts her head forward and squeezes it slowly in her hands, breathing shallowly. "Logic," she moans. "Boys and their god damned logic."
"Sorry, I left my Ouija board at..." you sigh.
"Do I even have to say anything there?"
"Nope," you concede. "Talking with a literal ship spirit and still-"
"Open mouth, insert foot."
"Yeeap."
Naka smiles through her tiredness - somehow you two always find the right wavelength in a conversation, no matter what. "Well for your information, oh great and logical Admiral, I don't even bother with that can of worms. I just know what I see."
You do, too - Arizona's a quiet, dutiful girl with unshakable poise and courage, eyes always steadfast on her duty. "And what do you see?"
"Well... earlier, in the command room? When you were hanging onto her shoulder, and kind of leaning on her?"
You peer at her. "Weren't you watching the battle?"
"Yeah, but my *ears* still work. She didn't take a single breath while you were touching her."
"That's...."
True, your memory reports. You didn't really think about it at the time, but-
"Conversations with multiple people, she only ever looks at you," Naka continues. "When you say something to her and turn away, she just keeps looking at you, waiting for you to turn back. When you're not there and someone mentions your name, she looks up like she just heard her own. When she overhears someone talking bad about you, she tenses up like a wound spring." Naka says this all matter-of-factly; and you know her well enough by now not to doubt her honesty. "Haven't you noticed anything like that? Anything at all?"
Well... when you put the radar set on h- "none of that is contradictory," you insist. "If she's fixated on me because she's trying to make up for Kidd - fuck, she *is* fixated on me." You squeeze your eyes shut and drag a clawed hand through your mussed hair. "Aw, *hell*."
"Admiral Settle," Naka says seriously, "I think that's your own demons talking, not hers."
"The hell you say?"
"I heard what you said to Shoukaku," she says, her voice low and sympathetic. "About not losing another ship. Don't you think you're projecting?"
>What the fuck would you know about it?
>Too far, shitbird. You don't know the half of it.
>How do you think I understand it so well, kid?
>How do you think I understand it so well, kid?
You snicker. "How do you think I understand it so well, kid?"
She blinks, her mouth falling open as she stares at you.
"Like that whole Shell Incident. I couldn't help myself." The visions of LA flash through your mind again, vivid and awful once again after that goddamned coma-induced dream. "I don't think she can, either. Me, Hate - we both lost people in that battle. And then we had to watch the military and the media make us poster boys to boost morale because we were one of the few success stories of that whole godawful first month, and -" you sigh. "Arizona sailed right by her own memorial on the way to her old berth. She dropped anchor on the other side of it. She sat there next to her own goddamn corpse, with a thousand of her boys still IN it. And she didn't shy away from it, because that was her *assigned berth,* Naka. No matter how much she wanted to turn and run away from it."
Naka sits up in her guest chair, staring at the floor. "You can't get away from it, though. No matter where you go. It happened, and it was your fault." Her voice is so sepulchral and hollow that it chills you. She draws up her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around her skinny legs. "So all you have left is... duty."
You remain silent, because there's nothing left to say. Naka understands just as well as you do, it seems. She hides her face against her knees, and shortly you see her shaking slightly, as if she's sobbing, but used to keeping it silent. You pick up your cane, intending to slide the privacy curtain shut out of respect for her, but before you can poke the thin white barrier back with your awkward whacks, you see her peek at Arizona - and in those dark, wet eyes is nothing but seething envy.
>Go back to sleep - none of you are in any condition to get any work done tonight. Not after that.
>Like the girl said - all you have is duty. Get her working, get both your minds back on track.
>Go back to sleep - none of you are in any condition to get any work done tonight. Not after that.
Shoukaku returns shortly with the blanket, only to have you shake your head and point at Naka. She pokes Naka a few times, but the girl refuses to unfold, so Shoukaku simply flicks it into the air and drapes it right over her whole body, head included, with feminine flair. By the time she's returned with another blanket for Arizona, Naka's rolled onto her side and fallen asleep again, knees still hugged to her chest. Shoukaku helps you try to pry Arizona off and give her one side of the bed, but she just gimps up her face in her sleep and ratchets her arms a few notches tighter around your chest. At last Shoukaku just lays the blanket over her and gently slips off her shoes.
"Can I get you anything?" Shoukaku asks as you tuck the blanket snugly around Arizona's neck.
"Nah," you reply with a yawn. "God, I can barely keep my eyes open."
"Anesthesia is till wearing off," she points out. "I'll see you tomorrow, admiral." She closes the door behind her gently, and you finally let yourself drift off to sleep.
The next morning you wake up bright and early at 0723 hours by sheer force of habit. Your right leg is tingling and numb because of Arizona's kneecap pressing down in the wrong spot, which does nothing to dampen the familiar morning agony in your upper right thigh. You need the head, your head wound is itching like mad and Arizona's drooling on your chest, still fast asleep and not inclined to move.
In short, things are almost back to the warm, familiar embrace of SNAFU. You snag your cell phone off the side table and dial up Goto's cellular. It rings several times, which lets you know instantly that something's off - you can't recall Goto ever taking longer than three rings to answer.
At last the line picks up. "Ah, hello?" It's a sweet, feminine voice you don't recognize.
"BREAKFAST IN BED TEITOKU~"
That one, on the other hand, you *do.*
"I take it Admiral Goto is unavailable," you reply flatly.
"He's... out," the voice replies. From the background you hear scraping and thumping sounds, and Kongou's bright voice promising Goto that 'love is going to find him.'
"... out, huh?"
"The window," the new voice confirms under her breath. "Can I take a message?"
"You're his secretary, right?"
"Yes, sir!" she replies cheerfully. "You can count on me!"
"In that case, could you come to the base infirmary, room 22A? I need some help from somebody that won't spread rumors."
"Ah, I'm sorry, Admiral Goto is going to need my help cleaning up after Kongou-"
You know exactly why she's dissembling, but you really do need discreet help. Preferably with a crowbar.
>Let her off the hook and call Hate. If you know him, he'll be too busy squinting away a hangover to rib you much over it, and besides, you've got two arrows in your quiver - won't hurt to let him have one.
>You really don't have time for this cloak-and-wazikashi bullshit - nobody cares that you're Ho~te~ru, get over here already!
>Other?
>You really don't have time for this cloak-and-wazikashi bullshit - nobody cares that you're Ho~te~ru, get over here already!
"Oh god," you moan - you're already desperate to choke down your first stiff painkiller of the day and you're not even out of bed yet. And after that dream that miserable damned nightmare rising from the murky memories to swallow you again you want to get back to Your Duty so bad it almost hurts more than your leg.
Almost.
"No, you do not need to help Goto," you groan. "Nobody can help Goto. She's got his scent."
"Ah, I'm sorry, I have to go," the voice replies, "Admiral Goto is running for it and I need to keep-"
"EXCEPT YOU CAN'T," you snap, not yelling so much as Speaking In Capital Letters, a skill unique to caffeine-deprived skippers worldwide. "BECAUSE KONGOU MAKES THIRTY KNOTS AND YOU MAKE TWENTY-SEVEN."
"Bu-b-bu-t I'm not even a sh-"
"Yes, you are."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," she replies primly, regaining her composure.
"Oh my god I do NOT have time for this cloak-and-wazikashi bullshit," you groan. "It's been seventy blooming years! We know who you are. We ALL know who you are."
"Y-you have n-"
"Your main battery's shells come in two varieties - AP with the terminal ballistics of a brick and gigantic fireworks to amuse attacking dive-bombers. You suck fuel faster than a destroyer with a flat bow, you have padogas atop your padogas to support your primary rangefinder, you're so wide people can play badminton on your rear aviation deck and your picture's in the dictionary underneath 'hotel'!"
A kind of quiet choking sound is coming from the other end of the line which evokes images of fish gasping for air out of water.
"H-h-how-"
"It is a cipher," you say mysteriously, "wrapped in an Enigma. Now get over here quick because I need somebody who knows how to keep NEW secrets and you're probably the only breathing soul on a naval base who understands the value of said discretion because Reasons!"
"O-okay?" she says, unsettled, and hangs up.
You spend the intervening time trying to reach Naka's chair with your cane to poke her awake. When you finally make contact she just mewls like a cat and rolls away from you, wrapping the big blanket around her an extra layer deep, so she looks like a cocoon-girl. Like a miniature Yamato-class in a graving dock, who will emerge as a poorly-designed carrier come Fall. Just as you're searching for a good lightweight projectile, Yamato herself arrives. Or rather, a tall, oddly-lumpy trench-coat arrives, complete with a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses. Completing the display is the pretty peach-colored parasol she's cradling gingerly in the crook of one arm, hovering over the whole ensemble like a neon sign begging for attention.
You and the Trenchcoat lock gazes for a long, awkward moment.
"Precautions," she says, and closes the door, then locks it. "Who's in the blanket?"
"Naka."
"She... I think she knows, but-"
"Just wrap my belt around her and slide her in the closet."
"I'll take my chances," Yamato replies, fumbling with the buttons on the trenchcoat, and finally manages to pull it off. You take a moment to appreciate the bulbousness of her bow as she wrestles with the floppy hat, which has become entangled in the jutting "wings" of her fire-control directors. Her long locks have been pulled back in a ponytail that accentuates every movement of her head; waist-length hair swishing about animatedly as she moves. Finally tugging the hat free, she thinks to remove the dark sunglasses, which are doing her no favors in a room with dark lights and closed blinds. When she finally gets a good look at you - and Arizona - she starts blushing pink, her hands pressing the floppy hat against her mouth.
"Um..."
"Admiral Ryan Settle, United States Navy," you offer, extending your hand. "Glad to meet you. Wish I was more composed, but, uh, I kind of almost died yesterday."
Yamato leans forward to gingerly take your hand and shake it, one hand still hiding her face behind the hat. "Ahnoooo..." she says.
"I don't know what that means," you reply. "Maybe if you used English?"
"Why... do you have a girl... sleeping on your b-"
"Why does Goto have a glorified battle-cruiser trying to cross his T?"
"Because- uh- *oh.*"
"Something like that, yeah. Could you pry her loose? She doesn't want to let go."
Yamato creeps closer with small, chary steps till she can slip both arms underneath Arizona's elbows. With firm, steady pressure she manages to break her death-grip on your middle and gently lay her to one side of the bed, allowing you to roll out the other. You're just creeping around the end of the bed when Arizona starts groping blindly for her lost pillow. Much like an Exocet, having missed the original mark she begins a pattern search for the next valid target return, IFF be damned.
You're alerted to the crisis when Yamato squeaks in alarm. Pausing halfway through pulling your pants on, you glance over to find Yamato's arm firmly in Arizona's grip.
"Uhh," she stammers. "Help?"
>Substitution!
>Lubrication!
>Rorschach.png
40873809 (demetrious) -
>>40873268
>TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG FROM ANON ACTION COM TG INFO COMINCH CTF SEVENTY-SEVEN X WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TQUEST MASTER planefriend RR THE WORLD WONDERS
I laughed way too hard at this. This last update took forever and I have no idea why, drove me up the wall. I'm going to call it a night after the next update because we have TWO writeups to post as consolation prizes.
On the plus side I'll have a lot more time to polish content before Wednesday, and Wednesday is going to be a lot of SHIT BLOWING UP, so, yeah!
"Uh," you say intelligently as you contemplate your options. "Have you ever seen Indiana Jones?"
"W-who?" Yamato says. "I haaaAAAAAEEEEELLLLPPPPP-" she starts stammering as Arizona begins to reel her in, locking elbow behind elbow to pull the bigger girl down into the bed.
"I'm coming!" you reply, advancing on Naka, who's still wrapped up snugly and as dead to the world as she can manage. You slip your arms under her and lift the compact little package - easy enough to do, she can't weigh ninety pounds soaking wet - and cart her over to the bed.
"On three," you say.
"On three, what!?" Yamato exclaims.
"One."
"Wait, g-go on th-three or three and THEN go!?"
"Two."
"C-c-can't you brief me properly fi-"
"THREE!" you exclaim, balancing Naka in the crook of one arm long enough to pinch Yamato's well-shaped rear. She emits a pitch somewhere north of a jammed steam whistle, leaping backwards so violently that she describes a short ballistic arc. So swiftly does she de-ass the area that Arizona's arms are still hovering in air where her captive used to be, allowing you to sling Naka into her waiting embrace without hesitation. Arizona engulfs the new victim without hesitation. Naka murmurs sleepily, then goes silent.
You take a moment to pull the covers over them both again - they're both dead to the world on account of staying up to watch you.
"Y-y-y-y-yyyyyyyyaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-"
You turn to find Yamato with her back pressed against a closet, her face a shade or two pinker than her little parasol.
Its 0745, you've got your pants half-on, half-off, a gorgeous brunette with a great figure is doing her best to turn the metaphorical comparison of Japanese beauty with cherry blossoms into a literal one and your leg and head and fucking everything hurt hurt HURTS.
Also, you have a few hours to plan a major carrier battle that might significantly effect the battle for the Pacific. It's going to be One Of Those Days.
As Yamato continues to turn a lovely shade of pink, face hidden behind her hands, the door opens to reveal a rumpled, harried Wainwright tapping a clipboard against one thigh and carrying a five-foot long breaker bar over his left shoulder.
"Naaah....." his voice trails off as he takes in the scene. "I. Uh. I'm interrupting-" he stops halfway through turning to leave and swivels back to face you, his hand flexing on the breaker bar. "Wait, where the hell is Naka?"
"Uhm," you begin.
"What the hell are you doing with all these girls?" Wainwright demands, tapping the breaker bar against his shoulder as he catches sight of Yamato's pastel panic.
>You're a doctor-type person kinda-sorta sometimes, right? Do I have permission to, uh, get the hell out of bed and go do things?
>Do you have the authority to scare up a Vicodin or something? My everything is fucking killing me right now.
>I'LL BE DAMNED IF I KNOW, BUDDY!
>write-in?
>You're a doctor-type person kinda-sorta sometimes, right? Do I have permission to, uh, get the hell out of bed and go do things?
>Do you have the authority to scare up a Vicodin or something? My everything is fucking killing me right now.
You stare blearily at Wainwright, trying to process the oil-stained jeans combined with the half-buttoned dress shirt. "Uh. You. Wainwright."
He glowers. "Very good. Now where the hell is my patient?"
You jerk your thumb at the bed, where Arizona is clinging tightly to the little blanketed bundle that is Naka. Wainwright studies the fuzzy cocoon before turning a quizzical look upon you.
"Long story," you say fuzzily. "Listen, you think-"
"And who's Miss Cardiac Arrest here?" he says, tilting his head at Yamato, who seems to be in the process of smothering herself as you fumble to buckle your pants.
"Uh, that's kind of class-"
The hefty breaker bar comes down on the padded seat of the guest chair hard enough to make it bounce.
"-AMATO MISS YAMATO HOLD FIRE CHILL OUT Jee-sus," you snap back. "Just don't tell anyone or Yamato - I mean Goto will - I-" you grab your head in both hands and take a deep, stabilizing breath, trying not to cry. "Wainwright, my leg and head and everything is hurting like a motherfucker so if they let you into the medication cabinet, I'm begging you, *get me something.*"
He does a decent impression of a fish for a few seconds - and then sighs, sagging as he does so. "Yeah, sure. Just... wait here."
You manage to get most of your underclothes on by the time he gets back - uniform slacks and undershirt. Your uniform jacket is so rumpled and dirty that you can't bear to put it on. Wainwright returns in a few minutes with two pills and a plastic cup. "Here," he says, dumping the pills into your hand. He's opening the door to the bathroom before you can call out a warning. He's met with a truly rousing shriek of terror followed by something impacting the door with Toyota-tier impetus, sending him reeling within an ace of being knocked on his ass.
He blinks. "Uh-"
"N-N-NEVER W-W-W-ALK IN ON A L-L-LADY!" Yamato stammers through the door.
"Uh... all due respect, lady, you're fully dressed and-"
"TH-THATS NOT THE P-P-POOOINT!"
You just pop the big pills in your mouth and manage to dry-swallow them painfully down your parched throat, wincing as the huge oblong bastards gouge their way down your gullet. Wainwright turns a sidelong glance at you, pointing to the door and mouthing 'really?'
You shrug and shake your head, deciding to change the topic to something more fathomable. "Uh, what's with the breaker bar?"
"Classified," he sniffs.
"Ship-girl maintenance?" You raise an eyebrow. "Fixing a tire? Gonna change her oil, too?"
"You're the one using your dipstick, from the looks of it," Wainwright shoots back with a glare.
You snort, massaging your head as you wait for the painkillers to kick in. "A little protective, are we?"
"Says the guy who almost got his arms pulled off and beaten to death with 'em becu-"
"THANK, YOU, MARINE," you say, pauses loaded with sarcasm. "But seriously, just what the hell does Naka have that you're gonna crank with that thing?"
Wainwright opens his mouth - then bites his lip. "That was low," he mutters as he relaxes his grip and lets a thousand great penis jokes fly away untold.
"I've got my own marine to practice on," you explain. "So what's with it?"
He smirks at you. "Admiral, you're the first one with the balls to ask." He seems amused by this. "It's not a breaker bar. It's a sleepy stick. Lay it up someone's head, they take a nap." He pulls up his untucked shirt to reveal the blued butt of an M9 in a crossdraw holster tucked against his belly. "Maybe a long nap."
You squint at him. "Still worried?"
"As you should be," he retorts. "Naka keeps giving her bodyguard the goddamned slip, and once she's discharged it'll be damn near impossible."
"How close *is* she to being discharged?"
"Eh," he says, waggling his hand up and down in midair. "It's not like her keel was broken, but she was basically gutted damn near to the waterline where those torpedoes blew. She can walk around okay - even thinks she's hiding the pain, little shitbird - and she doesn't technically need a hospital bed anymore, but I'm keeping her here for observation. Make sure her bandages are changed regularly, so she doesn't get an infection or anything."
You lean back in the guest chair, enjoying its abundant comfyness. "How long will she be in ordinary, you think?"
His expression takes a set like concrete. "Four to five weeks, I should think. They heal fast, but she needs a *lot* of structural reinforcement."
You give him a long, searching stare, just long enough to convey that you think he's lying to your face, then nod slowly. "You're the expert," you state, and leave it at that. "Now, uh-" you tap your head. "How long am *I* in ordinary?"
Wainwright shrugs helplessly. "I was a medic, Admiral. This brain surgery shit is beyond me. Why don't we see your doctor?"
"Lead on."
Wainwright leads you at a considerately slow gait to the office of your surgeon, who sits you down and calls you a raving fucking moron for not seeking immediate medical attention when you first started to suffer headaches. You think about your little constellation of orbiting headache-inducers, starting with Hate and ending with Hate, for he is the alpha and omega of Pains In Your Skull, and snicker. This does not endear the doctor to you. He explains that the surgery was thankfully simple and quick, as such things go, but until the little capillaries in your brain heal up you need to take it easy, cut down on the caffeine and above all, keep your blood pressure down.
This last bit inspires a giggle that starts a landslide. Wainwright helps you limp out of the room as you wail with laughter, pursued by the Dark Terrible Stare of the Physician Scorned. He helps you as far as the guest lobby before pausing.
"I ought to get back up there," he says apologetically, clearly not wanting to leave Naka unguarded for too long. "Think you'll be okay?"
"I'll bully a Sergeant into giving me a ride," you tell him.
"Call someone," he says. "The doc wasn't kidding when he said you need an escort; you might not be steady on your feet for a day or two. And if you keel over a-"
"I'll press my fucking life-alert button so the nice big lads in the white coats will come and fix my fucking hip," you say, shoving him good-naturedly. "Get the fuck out of here, Marine."
Wainwright snorts, and gets. You hobble into the lobby to find none other than Corporal Hate asleep in one of those awful little guest chairs, head lolling against the wall behind him, fast asleep. He's wearing only an OD green tank top, his uniform shirt covering Hornet, who's lying with her body across four chairs, head pillowed on Hate's lap.
You turn and look out the glass doors of the base hospital to see thirty-odd corgis sitting and staring at Hate woefully, their sad, soulful eyes begging for breakfast. Once you open that door the horde will be unleashed, and your quiet escape spoiled. Best to take the bull by the horns.
>Wake up Hate and have him accompany you - you've got a battle to plan, and what you need more than anything is a man who can keep the shipgirls off you - or Goto - long enough to accomplish that. Send Hornet upstairs to nudge poor Arizona awake and help corral Naka for Wainwright.
>Wake Hornet up and have her accompany you - you owe her an apology for blowing up on her yesterday, and she's going to be part of the carrier task force anyways. Inform Hate that there's a barricaded gunwoman in an upstairs bathroom that requires dynamic Marine techniques to coax out.
>Page Shoukaku, see if she's still in the hospital. She doesn't seem to be a bundle of Repressed Issues or Smoldering Wrath and Arizona's earned the right to sleep in today.
>Page Shoukaku, see if she's still in the hospital. She doesn't seem to be a bundle of Repressed Issues or Smoldering Wrath and Arizona's earned the right to sleep in today.
>Wake Hornet up and have her accompany you - you owe her an apology for blowing up on her yesterday, and she's going to be part of the carrier task force anyways. Inform Hate that there's a barricaded gunwoman in an upstairs bathroom that requires dynamic Marine techniques to coax out.
You study the dreamland duo for a moment, thinking through your options in terms of what combination of psychotic marine and traumatized shipgirl is least likely to impede your duties as a United States Naval Officer today, and realize with a start that this is Goto's life. This is Goto's *existence.* Except he's not stuck with two devoted, sweet, self-blaming girls counterbalanced by Wee Willie Fuckup and Death Rides A DE. He has all that and more, plus Kongou, who alone throws the whole equation into a cocked hat.
Sixteen MONTHS of that shit. Christ.
No matter who gets stuck with Settle Support for the day, you can't walk out of here without letting these two know you're all right; not after they slept in the hospital lobby for your sake. You lean over and poke Hornet's cheek gently. She murmurs in her sleep and shuffles a little further under Hate's shirt, protecting herself from the dry chill of the AC vent overhead.
You snap your fingers over her face. "Up! Upsie-Daisy! Wake up! Reveille!" You even whistle reveille to no avail. "Way hay and up she rises! CHICKEN ARISE! C'MON!"
Hornet finally opens her eyes and blinks blearily. "Ahdmiral?"
"It's almost 0800 honey, time to wake up and smell the WAAA!" you yelp as Hornet fairly *pops* off the chairs; her whole body seeming to flex and jump airborne like a piece of flexed spring steel being released. Before you know what's happening, she's hugging you fiercely. You hear your spine pop as she squeezes several nasty kinks out of it just by gripping you - you start to worry when your heels lift off the floor.
She lets up the pressure a little bit, but keeps her arms cinched around you. "Are you okay?" she whispers.
"Doc says so, at least."
"Good," she says. Hornet's all lean, toned muscle; her slender figure just makes her seem tougher; like a sword blade that will bend rather than break. She rests her forehead atop your shoulder, holding you tightly. A wave of dizziness strikes you, forcing you to lean against her as you pat her back awkwardly.
"Hornet," you begin, "I owe you an apology-"
She cuts you off by kissing you on the cheek.
"-about, the, day other, before in that I, uh."
"I've got a lot to say too," Hornet says, leaning back to look you in the eyes, her expression solemn and intense. "And..." she dispells her half-formed words with a subtle shake of her head. "Thank you. *Thank you,* Admiral. I've been waiting all night to say thank you." She turns and ever-so-gently lowers you into a chair as the room seems to wobble and spin a bit. "We can talk about it after the operation." You try to look up at her, but twitch your head and blink as her face seems to swim around in front of your eyes. You feel her small brown hand massaging your scalp affectionately, and for a minute you almost forget about your headache. "Is Arizona still upstairs?"
You make a sound that might've been an affirmative. "Ah doo belieeev dem viccerdinz are kikkin ihn," you say woozily.
"Just rest here," Hornet says. "I'll find a nurse. And I'll see to Arizona... and Hate, for that matter."
You shake your head. "Jess, could you hep me outshide... Goto's... expecting me-"
"Admiral, if you were meant to pull all that weight alone, you would've been born a harbor tug." She gives you one last pat and skips away to the desk, and a moment later you hear them paging for a nurse.
Before you can steal a little more rack-time, Corporal Hate slumps against you, his arm falling across your shoulders companionably. "Aaaaaaaay skippa."
"Hate," you say, seizing your senses a little more firmly with an effort of will. "You... are drunk."
"Cuzzah YOU," he says, tapping your skull with his as aggressively as he can. "Inna dish hoshpital. Fhukkin hate hoshpitals."
"Yeah," you mutter. You spent plenty of time in one - and Hate, as well. "They suck."
"The fhukkin... like... ish bullshit, yunno. Like dair ah'em and dakkadakka poppop watchin deez muddafuggaz drop and, aaay valhalla 'ere I cum muffafuggas. Cuz. dats howIroll. yeah." he says, pausing to focus his thoughts and polish his erudite diction. "But thenyoush indis place that SMELLLLLLLLS LIIIIIIIIKE SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT," he yodels, thrusting an Angry Finger at the reception desk, "ahand it HUURTS and HURTS so fuhkkin much, so, so fhukin muh and you're like, lemme, jes, finish me, you know, but pussyfuckerbitchtitFUUUUUUUUUUUCKING QUAAAAAACKS," he thunders at the ceiling, flapping his free arm to illustrate, "WON'T FUKKKIN SAK UP'N DO IT-" he smashes his head into the wall behind him so hard that you hear the plasterboard crunch. "Buh yuhknow, what shaves you?"
"A razor?"
"That's shutpid, ur sthupid, y'listen here nigger," he slurs into your ear companionably. "Ish dis tosh, so soft, all tiny and ghentl'n'shit, n, askin you, telln you, you die'n'me I dump youinnasheet with PUSSY written on it don't you, don't you go nowhere muffafugga, ur mine, dun you leave me alone, you're the... only one now..." he wiggles his head side-to-side like he's sifting the thoughts through a bullshit strainer. "Ish... ish errythin... y'know?"
"I do," you say.
"LYIN, LIKE, A ruuuuuuuuuuuuug ya dumb shit," he opines, and passes out again.
Shoukaku comes to your rescue a little later, patiently explaining that the drugs they've pumped you full of to keep your blood pressure low combined with your lack of liquid intake has dropped your blood pressure a little too low. She keeps this chat up so effectively that you haven't noticed she's slipped an IV needle into your arm until after she's administered one to Hate as well. She leaves and returns with an entire carafe of coffee liberated from the staff break room and proceeds to feed it to Hate, who imbibes it in small sips while staring brazenly at her chest. You're just starting to feel steady again when Hornet comes back down the hallway.
"How are dey?" you manage.
"Arizona's brushing Naka's hair," Hornet says.
You snort. "How she taking that?"
"She doesn't have a choice - Arizona won't let her get away." She smiles, looking tremendously amused. "But I still can't get Yamato out of the bathroom."
"... Yamato?" Shoukaku says, giving you a look that even her wondrous social warmth can't blunt.
"Yeah... to get that girl out, we're gonna need a door-breaching team-"
Hate snatches the carafe from Shoukaku's hands and tips it bottom-up. Everyone in the room, even the receptionist, watch in mute amazement as Hate chugs 3/4ths of a pot in one go, steam rising from his nostrils. He sets it aside and stands with exaggerated care, then gropes around for his cover. He perches the battered hat on his head, pushing it back and forth with both hands as he struggles to verify it's on straight before he notices the ceiling overhead and tosses it over his shoulder with disgust.
"HOOORNIT!" Hate chops his knife-hand through the air straight out before him. "MUSH!"
Shoukaku watches with a blank expression of wonder as Hornet leads him upstairs. "Where... where did you find him?"
"The pound," you reply honestly.
Shoukaku helps you outside and flags down an unfortunate seaman to drive you both to your apartment, where she waits politely in the main room while you blunder through a hasty toilet. You emerge looking shipshape again - if nothing else, Annapolis teaches you how to clean yourself up perfectly while half-dead and a quarter-conscious. You toss the empty IV bag in the trash and shake some food into the fishbowl. The creature within seems to give you a narrow-eyed look before it deigns to eat, as if scolding you for neglecting it so long. Your "volunteer" driver ferries you to the administration building and roars off in his motor-pool jeep before you can change your mind and further disrupt his day.
"Admiral, do you mind if I ask you something?" Shoukaku says as she escorts you up the walk. She's keeping her hand on the inside of your elbow, letting you hobble unassisted, but ready to catch you if needed.
"Shoot."
"Do you live... frugally?"
"Hell no," you snort. "Just haven't had time to unpack. I've got boxes and boxes of shit down at the post office waiting for me to pick 'em up."
"Oh," Shoukaku says thoughtfully. "It... has been a rather fast introduction, hasn't it?"
"No sh-oot-"
"You can say shit, Admiral," Shoukaku giggles. "It sure has been a right crock of it dumped in you in your first week, you know?"
>You've got a few moments to ask her something in the relative privacy of the halls before you reach the CIC for the days planning.
>Ask Shoukaku about the other CVs - are you on solid-enough ground with them that it won't endanger the operation?
>Ask Shoukaku about Goto - was his first weeks like this?
>Ask Shoukaku about the other CVs - are you on solid-enough ground with them that it won't endanger the operation?
"Yeah, almost like there's a war on," you reply noncommittally. "Now can I ask you something?"
"My three sizes?"
You huff at her. "Flirt."
"I aim to please, Admiral."
"Is Kaga backed up some, now?"
"Backed... up?" Shoukaku blinks. "Oh! Like they mean in those cowboy movies the girls-"
"Yeah, you know. Not acting like I'm walking scum every time I'm in the room."
Shoukaku pats your shoulder. "She's really not that bad at all, she's just... falling back on what she knows."
"But she won't give me trouble?"
"Hardly. After that demonstration yesterday, she takes you seriously, at least."
"And Hornet?"
"Hornet showed her up and highlighted just what got her, Akagi and Hiryuu killed at Midway," Shoukaku says quietly, pulling you closer by your elbow to speak into your ear. "She learned her lesson, all right, but she can't openly admit it. She can't admit it to herself, I think. She was the Pride of Japan once, and she still carries that on her shoulders. She... she tries to carry us all, sometimes." Shoukaku looks down at the hallway floor, pensive. "Sometimes I wonder if she's not trying to fool herself with that... that air of superiority. Like the high-class have; this Essence that you're born with, so innate to you that you can't possibly lose it."
"That sounds like the kind of aura easily punctured," you murmur.
"Yes, you understand."
"So what about that thing that starts with "M" and ends with "IDWA-"
Shoukaku elbows you just enough to jostle the name out of your mouth. "That's my point!" she hisses. Heeding her wisdom, you button up before entering the CIC.
The room is mostly deserted of the usual operations staff; the main wall display showing a huge overhead map of the Pacific; little icons all over highlighting bases, ships and probable enemy operating areas. There's more of the latter on the map than you're comfortable with.
Staring up at the screen with tired eyes are Goto and Admiral Robert L. Thomas, commander of 7th fleet. Goto's holding a smoldering cigarette in his mouth that he seems to have forgotten about, and Thomas is tossing a half-empty bottle of Pepsi between his hands.
"Defend everywhere, be strong nowhere," Thomas says wearily. "Or... some Sun Tzu shit like that. Pardon my French."
"Mmm," Goto concurs, staring up at the map.
"You'd think they'd want to cover Singapore and Indonesia," Thomas sighs. "Fits their party line perfectly. Just Defending Regional Security," he mutters, the air quotes apparent in his tone.
"They've got enough patrol boats to cover their own coast," Goto replies thoughtfully. "All their bluewater stuff is tied up with convoys-"
"-and they need the convoys desperately, and their littoral shit doesn't have the legs, and air attacks will massacre them and nobody down there's got airpower and even if they did Singapore's government won't have them."
"And Borneo and Sumatra would sooner give birth to porcupines on fire than host the JSDF," Goto says.
Thomas glances askance at him.
"What?" Goto says with a shrug. "It's true."
You slip out of Shoukaku's grasp and cough politely to attract their attention. They turn around, and you salute crisply as you're able.
Thomas's Pepsi bounces off his opposite hand and rolls across the floor, forgotten. Goto's cigarette falls out of his mouth. They both turn to look at each other, than turn back to you. You try to nudge your hat down with your saluting hand to cover your rising eyebrows - what's with them?
"Settle," Thomas says first. "What the hell are you doing on your feet?"
"Saluting, sir."
Thomas blinks, than returns your salute quickly. As soon as your hand lowers, he repeats his question. "What are you doing ambulatory?"
"Reporting for duty," you reply slowly, half-expecting a trick question to pop out of the dim corners.
"Didn't they cut into your head?" Goto asks bluntly.
"The naval surgeon said I'm good to go, as long as I don't do any jumping jacks," you reply.
Goto and Thomas share a quick look of surprise, then they both seem to shrug without moving. "Well, take a seat, Settle, and I'll give you the sitrep," Thomas says, shuffling through some papers on the central table and fishing out a manilla folder. "Take a gander."
You gander. The document is a sitrep on 7ths fleet ready and operational status, and it's a tale of woe - worn-out ships, ships badly in need of refit and repair and several ships still trucking with patched over battle damage months old. The flagship herself, USS Ronald Reagan, is in good enough shape, but her air wing is depleted from losses and constant operations since the war began, and the bill has finally come due.
"Well," you say flatly.
"Exactly," Thomas sighs. "The kanmasu are going to have to carry this one, I'm afraid."
"That's why we've got them," Goto replies.
"So what's the strike force looking like?" you ask.
"That's what we could use your opinion on," Goto replies. He slides over a legal pad filled with scrawling. The first notes compare and contrast CARDIV 1 and 5. Kaga and Akagi are considered the best at launching uniform strikes that can hit the enemy with "maximum inertia and concentration of force," and to navigate the best - which means you can risk extreme-range strikes with more impunity. On the other hand, Shoukaku and Zuikaku are much more practiced in effective CAP doctrine the Japanese developed after Midway.
Under a line labeled "sea control/follow-up/supplemental scouting" is two lines - "SUBS" and "SURFACE GROUP" with a big question mark after them. Lastly is a lot of scribbling under "ASW cover," where the choices seem to boil down to Ryujo, the light carrier with the funny hat you met in here yesterday, or two names that you're unfamiliar with - "Oregon" and "New Jersey."
You flick your eyes up at Goto for clarification.
"Assuming the carrier battle goes our way, we'll want to move in and mop up stragglers trying to motor out of airstrike range before the next morning. I think a light surface action group could do it - we've got plenty of heavy cruisers chomping at the bit and even some destroyers in shape to sortie, all the damn littoral patrols be damned. Our girls excel at night action; they'd crush them."
"We need to hold something back for sudden attacks elsewhere," Thomas counters, "and the subs have even less to do than the cruisers, right now. Without a supply line to attack... or even abyssals in-transit - if they *do* transit - the subs are pretty much useless. You don't send diesel boats charging to the rescue if there's an attack somewhere; you send cruisers. Against an abyssal carrier group, though - especially with the hulls we've got available - I think they could manage Nautilus redux; a major pain in the ass for the enemy."
"Well, if you're just picking off survivors after a successful air battle-"
"-a fast surface force is better," Thomas finishes for Goto. "But the subs can harass them during the daylight action... which brings me to the next issue. You said something about smelling subs in the area yesterday, Settle?"
"Yes sir."
"You have a good nose," Thomas says. "Any way you dice it, they know we're coming, and I think they're laying for us. They'll have subs. And that could cause all sorts of damn mayhem for us."
You think of Midway - USS Nautilus's endless, dogged attacks that perchance led some of Yorktown's bombers to the Japanese fleet. I-168 sealing Yorktown's fate as she was on the brink of being saved. Even Mogami's collision which sealed Mikuma's fate; emergency evasives after a submarine was spotted in the dark.
In short, a massive wrench in the works.
"I'm pulling for Ryujo," Goto says. "An entire deck just for ASW patrols."
"The only good news for 7th fleet is on that sheet of paper," Thomas counters. "Two brand-spanking-new Virgina-class SSNs. Bring those with us and they'll devour any hostile subs that come sniffing around the carriers."
You frown at the legal pad, thinking furiously, then glancing back up at the map and all those populated island chains you're responsible for defending. Whatever you send after those carriers won't be available to respond to any other attack - but you need to dispatch a proper force that can deal with the unexpected.
>(vote for one from each category.)
>Send Cardiv 1.
>Send Cardiv 5
>Send the Light Surface Group for the anti-surface complement.
>Send your ship-girls (and ship-boy) submarines for the anti-surface complement.
>Send Ryujo for the ASW complement.
>Send the two fast-attack subs as the ASW complement.
