1 May 1943

If she overloaded the magic engines to 150% and skipped breakfast, Jean Fluckey could hold the Liberion Striker unit currently rumbling away under her about eight feet into the air. It was small potatoes to an aircraft, but her Striker was not an aircraft. Her Gato-class Submersible Striker, designation SS-220, was a 'Ground Effect Vehicle' when it was above water. That meant that it generated lift by pushing air against the ground. To truly fly you had to be able to generate enough lift by pushing air against air, and that ability had been traded away in order to operate underwater. As it happened, she had skipped breakfast and when she ran the engines hot enough to burn, a couple precious feet were then added to her hover. It became squirrelly to control at that height, so she quickly scanned the horizon before lowering herself. The height helped with scouting. Her Gato was heavier than most Sub Strikers, but her engines made up for it.

Once she was about a foot off of the surface, she cut the engines and splashed down into the ocean. She adjusted the ballast tank on her Striker until she was just barely buoyant. The seas were quiet and the overcast sky stretched out to the unmarked horizon until it kissed the ocean. She dunked her head in the cool water and let it flow through her straight copper-colored hair. Even though she hadn't gotten much sun lately in her patrol area, her face and body was still a mess of freckles. She'd won a contest once on their number, when she was six.

To an ordinary person the water was so cold as to be lethal. The water was about 7 degrees Centigrade, but aside from her Striker she wore only a blue and white one-piece swimsuit. She was an average girl in most other ways and had turned 15 in October.

Jean was a Nereid, the name given to a witch who used a Submersible Striker. It had only been three years since the Neuroi Atlantic Colony had announced its existence in what humanity had dubbed the Drumbeat Incident. Defeating the Colony outright was not a possibility, since it was located in a crushing abyss thousands of feet below the surface of the ocean. Her life and the lives of the other Nereids had been a whirlwind since that day, but with a little bit of luck they had managed to keep the Atlantic Colony at bay and keep the flow of goods going into Europe.

Karlsland in particular had been at the forefront of Nereid technology and doctrine, a fact you could expect to hear if you so much as asked one of them for the time. To boot: once that was over with, you wouldn't even get the time. Jean would like to say she avoided them, but she would never get the chance to do that because they avoided her first and they were a lot better at it. Snubbing people just didn't come natural to Liberions, nor did thinking of others as inferior. Karlsland Nereids treated interactions with the other nations with the same attitude as someone who had to reach into a latrine to retrieve a wallet. Jean resented it especially, because she would have matched herself against any of them. The areas they operated in were rich with easy targets, and while, yes, they were the best, they were not the best by nearly the margin they thought.

Jean might've turned her thoughts to fresh strategies, or some other way to knock them down a peg, but she had other more important things to consider. When any three or more Nereids worked together it was known as a wolfpack, a tactic invented (of course) and perfected (debatable) by the Karlsland navy. Jean wasn't too proud to admit that they knew their stuff, and had taken much of their advice. As a result her wolfpack had been doing very well, thank you. Or it had been.

The quiet vastness she was floating in created an acute sense of loneliness in her, and a pang of awareness that her packmates were supposed to have rendezvoused here two hours ago to be picked up by a tender. Neither of these vital events had taken place. Operating in a wolfpack isn't like operating in a flying squadron. Sometimes you lost sight of your packmates for hours, simply trusting that they would do what was necessary. Karlsland doctrine used radio all the time, but Jean had seen Neuroi scatter when she broke radio silence. They were listening. The question was how well.

She changed the ballast on her Striker to lower herself into the water. It was possible they were approaching underwater, having judged the surface to be too dangerous for some reason unknown to her. There was no need to send out a ping. She closed her eyes and listened for the telltale sound of screws churning through the water, or else the clickers they used to send simple messages. She wasn't going to send one out, since she wasn't sure what was going on. As soon as she turned her attention to it, she became aware of the turning propellers of a full sized submarine. Her familiar was a dolphin, so she had no difficulty identifying the bearing and range of an approaching Type IXD-no, it wasn't an IXD. There was something different about it which made it more streamlined. From the whoosh of the screws it was running quiet on battery power at about 5 knots, and it was virtually on top of her.

She opened her eyes and, through the ever present haze of the photic zone, saw the dark mass creep into her world. She'd been so preoccupied with watching for the sub tender and her packmates that she'd let it sneak up on her. Worse-it was a Type XIV, a 'milk cow', which was a Type IXD that had been stripped of its weapons and converted into a sort of stealthy sub tender for hot zones. Karlslanders used them when they operated close to the Neuroi Colony. They needed more tenders in general, since their Strikers paid for high performance with low endurance.

Karlslanders. That was the last thing she needed right now. Having no other option, she hailed it using her handheld clicker. It seemed unlikely to run across a milk cow in the middle of the ocean, so it must be here to pick her up. If the sub tender had some kind of ordinary problem, Liberion would have had time to arrange an alternate. It smacked of a last-minute solution. As to why it was silent running, that really worried her. If there was something up there, or down here, to be afraid of, she hadn't perceived it. But they had.

The blast of the main ballast tanks blowing startled her to the extent that she switched the drive to mana battery source and initiated a powered ascent. Water cascaded off of her as she burst out of it, and switched to ground-effect when her propellers cleared the water. A lurch signaled the RPMs shooting way up, enough to hover. The transition from water to ground-effect tended to trip up new Nereids, but it was second nature to her by then. It took another minute for the shallow running milk cow to surface, but eventually she cleared the water. There were a series of six circular hatches were the deck gun would have been. She made for the conning tower, figuring they wanted her out of her Striker as soon as possible so they could dive before whatever they were so touchy about caught up with them.

Jean was therefore surprised when she saw one of the heavy hatches slowly pivot open. Fifteen seconds passed, which under the circumstances was starting to feel like a very long time, and there was a high roar of engine noise from inside the elevator shaft.

A girl running a Type VIIB Striker burst out of the portal leading into the depths of the sub. She was a strawberry blonde Karlslander with a lush mane of long wavy hair, and came out so fast she exceeded the ground effect zone, even for a Type VIIB, and used her momentum to arc over to where Jean was idling. She gunned the engines briefly when she got close to the water so as not to drop into the ocean with the extra momentum. Her lighter Striker responded with a touch of acceleration and deftly settled the girl in handshake distance. Jean tried, and failed, not to look impressed by the precision of the maneuver. Jumping out of ground effect was what normally preceded a crash dive-a high speed face-first marriage with the sea. To jump out of GE and then land exactly where you wanted to took talent. Not that Jean couldn't do exactly the same thing, even with the handicap of a heavier Striker. She just chose not to!

Annoyingly, in addition to being a fine submariner, the Karlslander was also exceptionally beautiful in a dreamy, doll-like way, and her swimsuit was a little more bulbous in the right places. She was a couple inches shorter than Jean's own 5'6'' and her Striker was also shorter in length. In Jean's experience with Karlslanders, if they were shorter than you, they just flew a bit higher until that wasn't the case. Trying to one up them in this respect was a recipe for comedy. Or it would be if Karlslanders ever laughed. From the looks of it the girl had compensated for the shorter Striker she was using, rather than assuming a superior position, and then extended a hand to Jean. Her eyes were a deep blue, full of intelligence and oddly gentle for her kind. Jean let out a sniff, realizing she had inadvertently reversed the roles Karlslanders and Liberions usually assumed on meeting each other. This time she was the stick in the mud, the one with all the baggage. The shame of this thought crept up on her and made her blush, and then, the act of blushing made her blush more. It was a negative feedback loop.

"Eva Schultze." the girl said with a barely concealed smile, and Jean took her hand and gave it a shake. It was firm yet uncompetitive. She took another look at the girl's uniform-her one piece suit bore the colors of Karlsland, in a muted way.

"I'm-" Jean started.

"Lt. Jean Fluckey. 'Lucky' Fluckey, yes?" the girl said, a gentle raise of her eyebrows to denote a polite amount of uncertainty. Even though she was sure. Karlslanders never embroidered their sentiments like that. Maybe the girl was a Gallian transfer.

"How did you know my name?"

"All the Karlsland Nereids know your name. We were issued a special bulletin on your action off Gallia."

Jean puffed herself up a bit and put her hands on her hips, smiling with the sort of self-aware smugness that her fellow Liberions would understand was an invitation to insult her, in order to maintain the sense of equality between them. Eva paused for a moment and smiled serenely, taking it in.

"As an example of what not to do." Eva said. Jean couldn't help but smile widely-a Karlslander who understood Liberions? With effort she managed to quash the burgeoning feeling of warmth in her chest. Eva was just another Nereid. She would be dead soon, or else Jean would be dead soon. Just like that her face went stony and she cleared her throat. It wasn't like it meant anything. She had just been alone for a while. Eva remained pleasant and open, and leaned in curiously to ask, with only her body language, whether she'd offended.

"Sorry. My packmates are missing." Jean assured her, "I'm just not in a good mood."

She tried to shut everything about them out of her just then, but a thought still leaked through: Briskie had made a roast and potatoes for Easter, and spoke of her desire to become a good cook. Sometimes it didn't matter if you kept someone at arms length-their humanity would permeate through you. She finally steadied herself with the thought that they could still be alive.

"If you don't mind my asking, why did you do it? In Gallia. You're the only Nereid to engage a land-based Neuroi."

Jean scratched her nose and reflected on how to answer this.

"I ran out of targets."

Eva closed her eyes and exhaled, and drifted a couple inches away from Jean. It was a gentle admonishment, the gentlest she'd ever gotten from her type. The girl was a Karlslander after all-bound up with rules and doctrines. Nereids were not to engage land Neuroi because Nereids were an asset to be expended in a specific way. The supply of witches with aquatic familiars being significantly less than otherwise, it was foolish to engage a Neuroi on land. There were other people who did that, better equipped and more easily replaced.

"If we're going to work together, I need to be able to trust that you won't do anything rash. You were slowly building a reputation for it even before the Gallia incident." Eva said.

"Dollface," Jean said, "You're awfully picky for someone with no options in sight. If you want to go to a dance, I'll certainly take you. If you don't, I could trouble you and the milk cow for a ride."

Eva smiled and raised her eyebrows at being called out like that, evidently finding it charming. There was something aristocratic about her, Jean decided.

"Where's your weapon?" Eva said, looking over Jean. Her torpedoes were long gone, and she'd tossed the Oerlikon after she ran through the ammo. She pulled out the LS Navy Utility Knife, Mk1 from an integrated sheathe in one of her Striker legs. Or as it was more popularly known: a Ka-Bar. Underwater encounters with Neuroi came down to melee range fairly often. Supercavitating bullets could travel a short distance and they had been developed for the Oerlikon, but by the time you were close enough to use them you might as well just stab the thing. Since they performed more poorly above water, Jean kept her ammo load conventional.

"That won't do."

"It won't? What if I told you I had two of them?" Jean said, tapping the other leg and pulling out the second knife. A backup, in case the first broke. Or the person who designed the Striker designed one leg, mirrored it, and went golfing. Eva narrowed her eyes, at least understanding it was a joke.

"...we'll get you a Flak 38." she said. Jean thought of the weapon as the inferior of the Oerlikon 20mm she was used to, but it was decidedly superior to a knife. The Gallians, Romangnas, and Fusos often harbored romantic notions of melee combat. Jean had none of these. She thought of herself on borrowed time from the moment she heard the report of the last bullet leaving the chamber.

"So what's the trouble?"

"Do you know anything of what's going on? Can't you use magic?" Eva said, seeming incredulous. Though it was unsaid, the specific type of magic Eva was referring to was the radio variety. Knowledge of it was de-rigeur for Nereids. It was one of the reasons training one was expensive. Jean shook her head.

"I can do it, but Liberion magic in that area has a little flaw. Even if I'm just receiving, I can be direction-found. It's called a superheterodyne beat. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I don't receive without good cause. They say they're going to fix it before my next patrol, but you know how that is. They're always saying things."

Eva took in a great breath through her nostrils. This was the part where 99% of Karlslanders would rail on about how Liberions were morons who couldn't engineer their way out of a grocery bag. Eva didn't. In fact, she seemed relieved.

"That's why you're still alive."

"Come again?"

"The current idea is that the Neuroi have developed a new kind of high speed direction-finding. Not even short messages are safe anymore. What's worse is that this ability is part of a new class of Neuroi, a hunter-killer, which specifically pursues Nereids. When you started your patrol three days ago, there were 36 of us on station."

"And now?"

"20."