Alaskan Vigil
Chapter 1: A Frontierswoman
Ellen's head ached softly due to the numb roar of the twin propeller engines of the aircraft. She had been trying for what seemed like an eternity to find some sleep on the long flight to the remote Aleutian Islands. She was so jealous of her sister back in San Francisco.
"Cheer up, Sis! You're a Rear Admiral now! You're going to be commanding some of those shipgirls. Even I have friends who would kill for the chance at command!"
"It's in motherfucking Alaska. Nowhereville, Alaska."
"Oh, come on. All I get to do is enjoy the warm, golden sunshine of California, and all the luxuries of living in a major city. You get to command powerful shipgirls right on the frontier! Where's your American frontier spirit, sis?"
Ellen looked at her sister, and wanted to punch her big fat grin. She chose to retort with a low groan.
Ellen felt something soft and warm fall onto her shoulders. She looked back to her left to see her brother putting a heavy coat onto her. "You'll be needing this, Frontierswoman. If I had the time, I'd buy you a fur hat to complete the look."
Ellen chose to groan at him too, but also held the coat tight. It was warmer that what she had already packed.
As she tried to sleep through the propellers for the thousandth time, the voice of the pilot came through the plane.
"Nearing Unalaska Naval Base. Prepare for landing."
What a stupid name
XXX
Ellen stepped out of the plane into a blast of cold air. She would have grasped her coat tighter to her, but her hands were already busy shielding her ears from the barrage of sound coming from the propeller. After she had stepped a few feet from the plane she looked up and saw a large figure standing nearby. She started walking towards this woman, while looking around at her surroundings. She saw a tiny control tower a short distance away, maybe about three stories tall, a large bay, and she could see the small settlements of the town of Unalaska some distance away. Now that she had made her way further from the propellers, she was able to relax her posture, and looked again at the woman she was walking to.
The woman gave a brief salute before introducing herself. "Battleship 38, Pennsylvania. At your service, Rear Admiral Rhodes."
That was fast. She was expecting to be greeted by one of the human staff, and taken to the office building to meet the shipgirls. Normally they weren't allowed off of the base and let loose around civilian areas. She made a note to herself to look into this later. She gave a brief salute as well before introducing herself in kind, "Rear Admiral Ellen Rhodes, good to meet you."
XXX
The battleship drove her to the office building on the base with one of the base's jeeps. She seemed to be a quiet woman, which Ellen appreciated. Ellen wasn't a very gregarious person either. If the navy wasn't in a wartime state, she probably would have had a much harder time navigating peacetime officer politics, but fortunately for Ellen the navy was willing to overlook her lacking sociability in favor of her performance.
After she was assigned to Unalaska, she had made some initial judgments of what she might expect from the shipgirls. The Pennsylvania and the heavy cruisers were heavily involved with the early parts of the war, fighting hard on the front line. When Hawaii was first lost to the Abyssals, and America forced to fall back, the three ships were part of the evacuation escort fleets. They were also part of the "Core Four", the four main fleets tasked with an offensive-defensive strategy written by Admiral Johnson, meaning they were there for both Hawaii's fall and recovery. Ellen couldn't even begin to imagine how many Abyssals those three ships had sunk. As newer, stronger shipgirls started to be constructed in California, older and exhausted ships were being rotated to the flanks of the US' defensive perimeter. America couldn't afford to pull them back home for rest, so being stationed here in Alaska was the best they could do.
What Ellen was warned of was the possibility that the older ships like Pennsylvania would form cliques that would divide them from newer ships. One of her duties here was to force intermingling between newer and older ships, so that the newer ships could get better experience. If Pennsylvania's quiet demeanor was the norm, than this might be difficult.
Pennsylvania entered the small naval base. The 'base' was mainly a collection of one and two story wooden buildings. On the water's edge there were a few concrete piers, of which three vessels were moored. One small tanker and one small cargo ship, which were in the process of being unloaded, as well as the USS Porter, an old Arleigh Burke class destroyer, to be used as a mobile command base and occasionally as a way to transport large amounts of shipgirls while conserving fuel. There was also a small concrete inlet of shallow water that the shipgirls often used for training. By the piers was the tallest building in the base, the factory, with a pair of small truck cranes to maneuver resources around the harbor. Further into the base were the administration building, where Ellen would be working, the cafeteria, and a recreation center for the girls. The dormitories and the warehouse were furthest from the water, probably to protect them from naval bombardment. The dormitories were housed in a single, long, two story building. It was probably the most robust building in the base, build with reinforced concrete to protect any sleeping girls in case of a surprise night bombardment. Ellen was told that an emergency concrete bunker was housed under the dormitories, which she wanted to see herself. The entire base was surrounded by a double line of barbed wire, with a single entrance guarded by a concrete guardhouse.
XXX
Ellen settled into the leather Admiral's chair. It was a little too big, and she hoped she didn't look ridiculous in it. If she did, then Pennsylvania's impenetrable face did not show it.
"As the secretary ship of the late Admiral Perry, I've already filled out most of your paperwork. I've left what remains on your desk. Until you choose your secretary ship, I will take that role. I assume that you will want to interview the ships under your command?"
"Thank you. Yes. I've compiled an order of the interviews." Ellen opened the binder delivered to her desk and took out a sheet of paper. She took a pen from the desk and pulled out the first sheet of paperwork. Perhaps she could start with some small talk as she worked through her paperwork. "So, what was it that happened to Admiral Perry?" Fuck. Why did she say that out loud? She wanted to bash her head into this new desk for her dreadful conversational skills.
"He was killed aboard the destroyer USS Higgins during our latest operation to probe the Abyssals' northern positions." The battleship replied with a straight face, seemingly unfazed by Ellen's immediate launch into the morbid topic.
Ellen abandoned her hopes of opening conversation with the battleship and began to silently fill out paperwork.
