Sierra Armored Academy Deck – September 14

It was a motley assortment of girls who eventually walked down the gangplank to come aboard the Academy ship. A mechanic, a girl with thick glasses and decorative white cat ears, and what seemed to be cosplayers for Erwin Rommel and Julius Caesar were among them. Then again, Jeremiah reminded himself, there were some… unique individuals that populated his own teams. Hidaka bowed her head. "Welcome, ladies, to Sierra Armored Academy. If you would follow me, we can begin the tour."

The grey-brown-haired girl next to Miho practically bounced and jittered as she walked among the group. In response to his questioning glance, Ōarai's captain merely shrugged. "Yukari likes tanks."

From the way she was acting, "like" was far too mild a word to describe her visible anticipation, but the Commander schooled his thoughts, considering that he wasn't much different aside from being able to hide his feelings better, and reasserted his professionalism. He led the way to the secondary elevator. On the way, a thought occurred to him. "By the way, as we approached, I heard rumors of some battle involving you lot and a team from a university. What was that about?"

It was the redhead with twin-tails who answered. "The guy in charge of the School Ships wanted to shut Ōarai down, but we worked out a deal that, if we could beat a university team, he wouldn't. We won."

He gave an approving grunt. Defeating opponents with years more experience spoke volumes for Miho's natural expertise and that of her team in the sport. Once everyone had mounted the elevator, he activated the lift and the group descended into the bowels of the ship.

"Stay close to us, girls. It's easy to get lost down here. Especially if you get side-tracked." This last one Hidaka directed at Yukari, who was already looking starry-eyed as her gaze swept over the thirty or so tanks in the hangar.

Realizing she was being addressed, she rubbed a hand through her hair, nervously chuckling. "Right. Sorry."

With a chuckle of his own, Jeremiah waved his hand. "This way." As they walked, he lectured while Hidaka translated. "Our Academy ship was rescued by Howard Hughes, himself, in December of 1945 as a piece of aviation history. When he remarried in 1956, his wife, who had been introduced to tanks by Audie Murphy, convinced Howard to enter Saratoga into the nascent school ship program and to fund its transformation into an armored forces academy. That is where we received a number of our tanks; they are vintage chassis retired after World War II that Hughes bought up and donated to the academy before they could be sent to scrapyards."

When Captain Saegusa finished translating, he realized that she had trailed off at the end. He turned around and saw that, once again, Yukari was the culprit: She looked one factoid away from drooling. A girl with close-cropped black hair tapped Yukari on the shoulder. "Akiyama, pull yourself together." Then she leaned in and whispered something he couldn't quite hear, though he was sure the word "embarrassing" was a part of it.

At that, Yukari slumped in place. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Let's continue."

The rest of the way, the only sounds from the group were their footsteps and Yukari's excited muttering about the tanks she was seeing. That was until they passed the Academy's biggest tank. One of the visibly youngest of Ōarai's commanders audibly shuddered as she looked up at the muzzle of its cannon. "That's a scary big gun. Worse than the 12.8."

Jeremiah stopped and suppressed the grin that threatened to break out across his face before turning around. "That is because that gun is a one five five millimeter. Roughly a quarter again the diameter of the 12.8cm cannon your school's M3 crew faced down in the finals."

Miho's head whipped from the tank to him. "155mm? What tank uses that?"

Yukari beat him to the punch, looking back and forth between Jeremiah and the tank and muttering, "No way. You guys have a T30?!"

This time, the smirk broke through as he nodded. "Yes, we do."

"Whose is it?"

His smirk weakened at the use of the word "it," but broadened again as he answered, "She's mine, so you won't be unfortunate enough to be in her sights tomorrow."

The Erwin Rommel cosplayer tilted her head. "I'm a little confused. What's a T30?"

"The T30 Heavy Tank was one of the prototypes the U.S. Army devised as a response to the appearance of Tiger IIs, Ferdinands, and Jagdtigers in the Nazi arsenal after D-Day. Unfortunately, they couldn't be brought to the battlefield quickly enough to be used against any of the Axis powers, so the chassis ended up simply being test-beds for later concepts. A real pity." He sighed and waved them forward to the cargo elevator.

A girl wearing a volleyball uniform spoke up. "Wait, the T30 wasn't ready by the end of the War? I thought that the deadline for designs that could be used in Sensha-do was August 15, 1945."

Jeremiah resumed walking as he answered. "The rules for the American League are a little different. As long as the schematics for the vehicle were conceived during the War and a prototype was constructed by 1950, it'll be allowed. The folks in charge determined that the five-year difference wasn't enough to have a game-breaking effect on the matches." When they arrived, the elevator was coming down back from the deck to receive the first tanks for delivery. Assembled at the base of the elevator were six armored fighting vehicles, SAA's maintenance crew doing final checks. "Hey Joe, are they ready?"

Tech Sergeant Josephine Callahan, head of the maintenance staff and pulling double-duty as Hidaka's driver, waved back. "Yep, they are."

As she climbed down a ladder set against the turret of the tallest and heaviest of the vehicles to be used in this match, Jeremiah heard the girl with the cat ears say, in English, "O. M. G. A real-life Mutant-6."

Sierra's commander whirled around. "The only people who call the M6A2E1 that are World of SPGs players. You play?"

She nodded. "I'm Nekota, but I go by Nekonyaa in-game."

He started laughing, slowly at first, but then it built into a full guffaw; Hidaka held a hand over her mouth to stop herself from doing the same. Upon seeing the girl look a little disheartened or even offended and her teammates grow angry, he held up a hand. "We are not laughing at you, far from it. It is just, some of my team and I, including Hidaka, battled you and your platoon last night, and I had jokingly posited what it might be like if your platoon were a tank crew after you slaughtered my platoon-mate's M6 Heavy."

"Oh! You must have been AllardLiao117, right? You weren't bad."

"Gee, thanks."

"No, I mean it. You managed to outplay and knock out my driver, Momoga; few here can."

That left things in an awkward silence that was broken by Yukari clearing her throat. "I've heard of the M6, before, but not that particular variant. What is it?"

Jeremiah was grateful for the change of subject. "You want to field this, Hidaka, or shall I?"

She waved him on. "By all means. You're the tank expert."

He cleared his throat. "Remember when I said that the T30 was one of the prototypes meant to counter the German heavy tanks and tank destroyers? Well, another model was the T29, mounting a 105mm T5E1 gun. As a proof-of-concept and stopgap measure, two M6 heavy tank chassis were mated to prototype T29 turrets, with plans to add additional armor to the front of the tanks to make them proof against the larger Nazi guns. These were the M6A2E1 Heavy Tanks. The difference between our tank and the concept vehicles is that ours mounts the planned 191 millimeters of frontal hull armor, rather than the unmodified hulls used in the concepts due to General Eisenhower rejecting the design because of transportation concerns. She weighs 77 tons, well beyond what any then-extant ground transport vehicle could handle."

Yukari had wandered further down the line before stopping in front of the Sherman. Her gaze tilted up…and up and up. "Is…Is that a Calliope Multiple Rocket Launcher? Are those even legal?"

"Good eye, Miss Akiyama. That is, indeed, a T34 Calliope attachment, specifically the -E1 variant that has launch tubes for 64 M8 4.5-inch Rockets. And we checked, they are Sensha-do legal. She'll be serving as our artillery support for the match, so watch the skies."

There wasn't much more to see and talk about, as the remaining vehicles, the M26 Pershing; M24 Chaffee; and two M36 Jacksons with armored roof kits, weren't anything truly special. Hidaka clapped her hands and said, "Well, that ends our tour. Any questions?"

Yukari's hand went up. "When I looked at the Jacksons, they seemed to have irregular hulls."

Jeremiah was beginning to see a kindred spirit, for good and ill, in the young Miss Akiyama. "That is an extremely good eye for detail you have. But, yes, our M36s use -E2 sub-variant hulls rather than standard M4A3 hulls. As a sub-variant, they are allowed, and we thought the extra armor worth the loss of mobility."

Miho raised her hand. "You said earlier that your team wouldn't be using the T30 in our match tomorrow because you commanded it. Why is that?"

He smiled. "I won't be taking the field because this is a Sensha-do match." He shrugged. "It wouldn't be Sensha-do if boys got involved. Hidaka, Samantha, Sharon, Isabella, Margaret, and Sarah are the commanders for our all-girl teams. All our other teams have at least one guy on them."

"Huh. That makes sense." Then she chuckled. "Good thing Saori isn't here to hear that." At Jeremiah's quizzical look, she added, "The orange-haired girl who was with me. She desperately wants a boyfriend."

"Ah."

The redhead was next, and she unnecessarily added standing on tip-toe to make sure she was noticed. "I don't actually have a question about the tanks, but I did wonder if you'd like to join us for dinner, get to know each other better."

"Um… uh." He looked away, trying to think of the best way to formulate his reply, but Hidaka beat him to the punch.

"We'd love to," she said in Japanese. He glared at her betrayal, and she glared back and continued in English, "Oh, come off it. I'll go with them and make sure they cook something you can stomach." She glanced back at the redhead and returned to Japanese. "That's assuming you guys are cooking fresh, right? Not just taking something out of a package?"

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it."

Miho nodded. "Yeah. The President's a great cook!"

That caught Jeremiah's ear. "Wait. 'President?' As in, Student Council President?" The Japanese girls nodded. "Then, why isn't she your CO?"

The President shrugged. "When we started the Sensha-do program back up, Miho here was the only one with experience, so we put her in charge. Her excellent ability to lead and compassion ensured that she stayed there."

Ōarai's captain blushed at the praise. "Th-thanks."

The girl with the black bob haircut cleared her throat. "So, what's the problem you might have with our food?"

He returned a level gaze. "Let's just say that I have a very limited palate–"

Captain Saegusa interrupted him. "–And I know every part of it. Don't worry, Commander. You'll like what's served to you."

Seeing that he wasn't going to win this argument, he sighed. "Alright. Just let me know where and what time."


The dining hall in Ōarai Girls' High School was packed, with all the members of Ōarai's eight Sensha-do teams and the committed six Sierra Armored Academy teams sitting at the various tables, a grand total of 62 teenagers and young adults. The rest of the Sierra cadets were out and about in Ōarai's two towns: the original, land-based town and the one that had grown up on the school ship; they were guided by 97 of the 100 members of the Japanese school's so-called "Disciplinary Committee," who oddly shared a rather uniform appearance and skill-set, all able to speak English. Two of the Committee's remaining three members were those who were Sensha-do practitioners and, thus, in the dining hall.

It was into this maelstrom of people and conversation that Commander Jeremiah Maxson walked, escorted by the leader of the Disciplinary Committee, one Midoriko Sono; their arrival brought the total of persons in the room to 64. As the girl walked over to her teammates, his eyes roved over the crowd, searching for his teams. His hopes of subtly joining them were dashed when Hidaka raised her hand and waved. "Hey, Commander! Over here, I saved you a spot!"

He sighed as dozens of pairs of eyes turned toward him. Swallowing his discomfort of so many strangers paying attention to him, he walked over to the open bench space his second patted. The table seemed to be occupied by her team, the President's team, and Miho's team. It was also smack-dab in the middle of the room. When he sat down, he opened his mouth to grumble at Hidaka, but then he saw the food in front of him. "Is… is this fried chicken?"

"This dish is called 'torikatsu,' but essentially yes."

Jeremiah looked back at his food and blinked for some seconds, and then shifted his gaze to Ōarai's Student Council President, bowing his head. "I thank you, ma'am, for your consideration."

She waved him off. "It's nothing." She raised her voice. "Now, everyone."

He reached into his mind and recalled the lessons Hidaka had drilled into him on Japanese etiquette in time to join her and the Ōarai students in saying, "Itadakimasu." He heard a couple of the girls stifle giggles at his American mispronunciation of the phrase, with a short "e" sound instead of the first "a," but Hidaka had long given up on getting him to get it completely right.

They all ate in relative silence, the exceptions being how the other American cadets groused at the need to use chopsticks (which they were terrible at) to eat their food; Jeremiah made a mental note to thank Hidaka later for teaching him the proper way. As the meal began to wind down, various conversations started. Ahead, Jeremiah heard Margaret espousing the virtues and excitement of Warhammer 40,000 to Nekota and her team, who were retaliating with Valkyria Chronicles. Behind and to his left, the Anime Club was discussing favored viewing material with Ōarai's youngest student team, a group of six he realized were first-year students, and he noted some of Hidaka's crew looking longingly at that table; not surprising, considering that they were the Film Club. Finally, Samantha's team were swapping suggestions for historical literature with the historical cosplayers.

As his mind started to drift from the multiple information inputs, Yukari spoke up. "So, what got you into Sensha-do?"

Grateful for something to focus on, he replied, "Well, I'm an Army brat on both sides and a Navy grand-brat on my mom's side, so military service is beginning to run in the blood."

Saori tilted her head. "'Army brat?'"

"It's an American term that means one or both of your parents served in the Army."

"Ah."

"And I'm utterly useless for any other military position. I'm not fit enough for infantry, and I get ill in a plane or helicopter. So, tanks it is. You?"

"Oh!" Yukari's eyes widened when his response had been translated. "Well, I've been fascinated with tanks my whole life. When Ōarai restarted its program and opened it up to anyone who wanted to, I couldn't pass up the chance."

Miho nodded. "She helped us when we were looking for the tanks that had been scattered around the school when Ōarai had given up Sensha-do twenty years ago. Our team found the 38(t)."

Hidaka spoke up then. "I'd wondered about that. I had heard that Ōarai's 38(t) was a Panzer, not a Jagdpanzer. How'd you get one?"

The President fielded that one. "It was a Panzer, but we bought a Hetzer mod kit just before the finals."

"A 'mod kit?' I didn't even know those existed." She turned to Jeremiah, but he beat her to the punch.

"No. We won't be modifying our Stuarts to Scotts or our Lees to Priests. Our T18s and already-modified M40s and M43s perform the same task and don't need special waivers and additional modifications. Nor will we be converting our Shermans to Fireflies or Lees to Rams; the logistics would be horrible."

She grumbled, but returned to her food. "Spoilsport."

"'Priest?'" Miho mumbled. "Do you mean M7 Priest?"

He nodded, and Yukari sat up straight. "You use artillery in your battles?"

Another nod. "Of course. As military cadets, we have to get used to being able to call on the services of artillery in the field."

He did not miss the collective shudder run through the Ōarai girls. "Sorry. It's just, the University team was allowed to bring a Mörser-Karl into our match against them."

Jeremiah winced as he remembered the specifics of such a weapon. "You have my sympathies. Siege mortars aren't allowed in any of the American leagues. Any artillery used is limited to 203mm." Even a blind man could read the remaining unease in their expressions, so he changed the subject. "But look at us, having gotten off track. We were discussing how we each got into Sensha-do, weren't we? Let's continue."

The conversation and meal continued for another hour, after which the students of the two schools bid each other goodnight and made their way to their home quarters for the night's rest. The leaders remained awake for some time; there was still a battle to plan.


AUTHOR'S NOTE: For those of you who play World of Tanks on the NA servers, that is my real in-game username. Hold onto your butts, dear readers, for the tanks will roll out next chapter.