CHAPTER 2 - The Boarding Parties


Within minutes after the word to get ready, the tankery teams were on their way to the giant tank shed. The air outside was chilling, as cold moisture began to settle on the girls' faces. The sky above was overcast, if not darker than usual for the daytime. The thick grey clouds in the sky have blocked out the sun to where it was totally hidden in the sky. On the ground, the water from the rain felt freezing under the shoes of the students as they treaded across the campus. There even appeared to be small balls of white hail on the ground as well, covering parts of the nearby field and turning it into a hazard zone. When she looked up into the sky, Erika was treated to a small white particle that landed on her nose.

The particle was powdery and felt crunchy under her fingers, "Snow." she said to herself.

She turned to Maho who was nearby and asked her if she had seen snow falling on the ground. She shook her head and kept walking on. By the time that they've gone across campus to the garages, some of the colder girls were in a slightly sour mood. Shiho approached the giant double doors and unlocked them with a specialized key. The doors flung open and a flash of warm air whooshed outward towards everyone.

"Listen up, you have five minutes to prepare yourselves before we board the other vessel." Shiho announced.

"Excuse me but could you tell us what school vessel that we are boarding?"

"You will find out when you board it." the woman clarified again, "Now, not all of your tanks will be boarding. I will choose myself the eight crews that are going aboard, the others must stay here till school gets out.

The Panzerkraft team began to form into their groups. While preparing her tank and giving orders to her crew, Maho noticed the new girl that she was talking to earlier observing the tank lineup. Feeling somewhat responsible, she walked over to the student.

"I never thought that you guys had such a huge arsenal of tanks?" the girl said in awe.

"Yeah, and our crews are some of the best in the country as well." Maho added.

"That must feel great, to know that you guys will always have a high ranking tankery team."

"It sort of does." Maho said without trying to have a boastful tone.

"Anyways, I haven't told you my name yet, haven't I?" the girl asked.

"I believe you haven't."

"Right, my name is Tammy, Tammy Matsumoto."

"Maho Nishizumi."

"That's right! I remember watching you on television. You are a great commander for your team and you always have lead them to victory."

"With the exception of last year." Maho suddenly said.

"Well, there's always next year." Tammy smiled.

Both of the girls realized that Shiho was right behind them.

"Maho, are you ready for deployment?" she asked sternly.

"Yes I am. However, Tammy Matsumoto here doesn't have a crew or a tank assigned to her, though."

Shiho looked at Tammy straight in the eye, which caused the new girl to slightly shiver. It seemed that the feeling that she was being introduced to a person high in leadership always made her nervous. Tammy waited for a response from the Instructor.

"Tell me, Tammy. Are you new to our team?"

"Yes, Miss." she said shyly.

"Hmm... Very well, you may ride along with Nishizumi Maho and her crewmates here until you are assigned a permanent role in our class." Shiho concluded before walking away.

Tammy let out a sigh of relief, "Is she always strict like that?" she whispered.

"You'll get use to it overtime. Don't worry yourself too much about it."

A few minutes later, all the crews were in their vehicles and ready to depart. Lining up in a single file, Shiho chose which vehicles that will roll onto Seawide Justice Girls Academy.

"The following eight vehicles will be boarding: The Tiger I, the Tiger II, the Jagdpanther, the Panzer III, these two Panthers and these two Jagdpanzer IV's."

Half of the girls in the garage groaned when they heard the response. The other eight teams that were chosen were all glad to get some sort of freedom away from the class. Pretty soon after, the tankery teams followed Shiho as she was escorted via car to the vessels connecting platform. Since there was no land port in miles, they used this platform to latch onto another school ship and gain access to it. When the two platforms finished connecting to each other, the vehicles proceeded onto the Seawide Justice school carrier.

Along the way, the girls looked out towards the ocean. The first thing that many of them noticed were the large chunks of ice that were floating on the surface of the water and the mass of giant glaciers in the far distance. A light layer of snow was coming down from the dark cloudy daytime sky above.

"Where in the world are we?" Erika asked over the radio in amazement.

"Somewhere north." chimed in a girl from one of the Panther crews.

Maho joined in, "Too far north. The storm must of blown us away from the mainland and up more into the Northern Pacific."

"Don't say that, Kommandant. We can't be up that far north." insisted Jagdpanther-Chan.

Maho didn't reply back. By then, the tanks were halfway across the platform crossing.

"Where were we really going in the first place?" Tammy asked to Maho from inside the Tiger.

"Well, our ship was planning on stopping at a vessel resupply port in Kushiro in the Hokkaido Prefecture, but it appears that the typhoon has blown us father north than we anticipated. Now, we are stuck here with a faulty mechanical failure and another school ship."

"This all sounds strange, don't you think?"

"Absolutely. Plus, it's quite cold out here and I'm not so enthusiastic about it."

While traveling on the side piece of the Seawide Justice carrier, Maho noticed some pretty weird things. The railing on the side of the ship had appeared to have rusted off its hinges and pieces of the iron walls were partially loose, to expose old machinery that was located on the sides. The teams followed Shiho's transport into an upward tunnel, in which everyone turned on their lights when traveling through. All over the walls, cobwebs and rust patches had formed and the road below was torn up and bumpy from years without maintenance.

"Man, this place kinda creepy." echoed the voice of the Panzer III commander through the tunnel.

The upward tunnel finally ended as the tanks entered the very top deck of the enormous carrier. Though it was slightly bigger than Ooarai's, it still looked like a miniature toy compared to Kuromorimines Graf Zeppelin. The city was covered in snow and sleet, with most of the houses and tall buildings that have begun to fall apart. A street pole was knocked over and lying in the middle of an intersection as Black Forest approach it and at the end of the street was a tall roadblock fence, that blocked the road ahead from letting cars pass through it. Old signs and banners written in Japanese were on buildings, telling people not to enter them or to stay out of them.

Finally, Shiho stopped the vehicle that she was in and told the tanks behind her to halt. All the teams stopped in the middle of a roundabout street and exited from their vehicles, getting a better glimpse at the environment around them. The Sensha-do Instructor came forth with a few other girls in the vehicle that she was riding in.

"The vessel that your standing on belonged to a school that is no longer functional. The reason why your here is find out if there is any kind of help that could support our problem back on Kuromorimine."

"You want us to go look for someone that could help us?" one of the girls curiously asked.

"Correct, but I'm going to lay out a few regulations before you wander off. First, if your team is driving in the tank and you want to explore on foot, park the vehicle nearby and don't wander too far away from it. Second, don't go into any places that look hazardous or have objects that could hurt you. This includes any rooms with things broken in it or shattered."

The girls all felt like they were getting a safety lesson from a strict teacher on the first day of school, yet as annoyed as some were, they let their instructor talk anyways.

"Lastly, if you come in some sort of contact with an unknown individual on your search, escort them politely to your teams tank and ride them back here. I will register any newcomers that are found by you. Very well, you are free to search with these rules in mind."

When the girls were sent out, Erika joined up with Maho's Tiger with her Tiger II, "Let me ask you something, Kommandant? The Instructor just told us that we are free to go on his ship wherever we please, right?"

"Did you even listen to her, because it sounds like you didn't." Maho ordered her team to drive until they wanted to check out something, "This apparently is a search. If we were free to go where we pleased, then she wouldn't have given us all those rules."

"What do you think happened here?" Tammy wondered.

"Not sure." Maho replied, "Looks like a derelict if you as me."

Erika gave her a confused look, "A what?"

"A Ghost Ship. The school vessel got abandoned by it's population, everyone deserted it, and probably just left it behind for some kind of reason. I know the Japanese government doesn't talk much about them but I know that there are some out there."

Tammy joined in, "What do you think happened to all the people then?"

"Probably evacuated long ago or..." the Commander's voice trailed off for a moment as she looked up into the cold dark sky, "Or some other reason...Who knows?"

The Vice-Captain rolled her eyes to the response, "So let me get this straight. We're exploring a decelent school ship and looking for people that could have been left behind, is that right Kommandant?"

"Sounds about right." said one of Erika's crew members.

"This has our Instructors name written all over it."

Back at the roundabout, Shiho came over to the group of four girls that rode along with her.

"The reason why you are all here is to search for something else. You all are intelligent young women that know a great deal about machinery, so the Head-Mistress has instructed me to tell you the parts that the carrier needs to get mechanical movement again."

Shiho reached into the car they were in and brought out a folded map, "This map shows the exact location of where the parts we need are located at. Just follow the direct path from start to finish and should no problem looking for what you need to collect."

"Yes ma'am." the girls answered back.

"We all have approximately three hours on this vessel to complete our tasks, so you should have no trouble on time. When you have acquired the parts that we need, return immediately back here. Please don't get separated from each other or wander off all by yourselves. I don't need to tell you that this ship is old and could be very dangerous. The last thing I need is to send out a search party to go look for a search party, do you understand?"

The girls agreed and began on their way. Meanwhile, Maho, Erika and both of their crews stopped in front of the Seawide Justice Girls Academy campus. The front buildings were blackened, as it looked like the building had caught on fire a long time ago. The brick outline of the buildings design was missing a few bricks from it, showing the open holes of where the brick was inserted during construction. Most of the windows were missing glass or were completely barren. Driving further into the campus, the teams noticed that one of the buildings' walls were missing a huge chunk of concrete, exposing two floors of classrooms that were stably in place.

"Wow, this place looks wrecked. Should we investigate, Maho-san?"

"Fine but stay close." she instructed.

The two German steel vehicles parked right next to each other on the walkway.

"You coming along?" Erika asked her team.

"No way! It's cold out there and its warmer in here." said the Tiger II's driver.

Erika grunted as she closed the top hatch as she exited. The ground was almost covered in snow that was coming down from above. Maho, her and Tammy all started to walk into one of the school buildings. The hallway was empty, excepted the lockers on the sides of the hall that were either opened or missing a door. When Tammy took a step forward into the hall, a large patch of dust rose from her step.

"This place is filthy as all can be." she commented.

"This whole bloody campus looks like it's been abandoned for years."

"Lets see if we can find more around here." Maho said coming into the hall.

The three began to search in each classroom, going up stairs to different floors and investigating its surroundings. Each room seemed the same to them and none of the rooms contained any forms of life. After going down another hallway, Tammy heard a noise coming from a huge pitch black room.

"Do you hear that?" Tammy whispered.

The sound was a sort of static noise that was mixed with the sound of heavy breathing. It was coming from a corner in the dark room. Tammy took a step forward inside to see if she could identify what was making the noise.

"See anything in there?" Maho whispered as she widened her eyes to adjust to the gloomy darkness.

"I can't see a thing, I'm as blind as a bat without a light."

Looking around for something useful, Maho found a random road flare on the floor next to her feet.

"What a coincidence, a Roadside Signal Flare. Wonder what that's doing in a school building?"

After undoing the cap, she sparked it up and offered it to Tammy. The new girl threw the flare into the corner of the room where the sound was coming from. There was nothing there, except a plastic black roller chair sitting in the corner. Still hearing the sound, Tammy wondered closer to where the sound was the loudest, but there wasn't a soul in sight. Picking up the flare, the girl began to wonder back over to the other two.

"I couldn't find anything in there."

"Don't worry about it then." Erika said rubbing her arms, "It's cold and I want to move on."

"Very well." Maho turned back to Tammy, who still was holding the lit flare, "Dispose of that when we get outside."

As the three walked down the hall, the noise became louder in Tammy's ears. Suddenly, she fell down and hit the floor hard. Erika and Maho turned back to see that their apprentice had fallen.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah. It felt like someone pushed me though."

"Maybe it's the wind? It's beginning to pick up." Erika guessed.

The girl got back to her feet, "Forget it, lets just get out of here." Tammy said catching up.

She took one last look at the room entrance behind her before going down the stairs. The group came back to their two tanks and the other crew members all began to ask what they saw up there. Then, the two Commanders told their crews to start up the tanks again to leave.

"Should we go look in the tank garage, Kommandant?" asked Maho's Driver.

"Sure, we've still got two hours on our hands." replied the Commander to her team.

The tanks continued onwards towards the edge of campus, where they found a big tank garage. A large banner with the words: "KEEP OUT!" was hanging over the doors. Erika saw that the twin iron doors were secured by a huge padlock between them.

"How are we going to get that open?"

"We have a spare shell down here, Kommandant. We could use that." suggested the Tiger I Loader."

"Go ahead and use it."

The Gunner peered through the gunner scope and fired the shell into the padlock. The giant piece of iron fell to the ground with a heavy thud and the crew from the Tiger II helped open the doors. Inside, there was a large piece of the garage that was darkened and another part that was lit. In the middle, the roof above had collapsed and blocked the way for vehicles to drive down the main path. A humongous patch of overcast light was coming through the hole. The teams got out of the tanks and began looking through the Tank Hangar.

All that was visible to the girls were the empty shells of three Panzer IV's tanks lying to the sideline and an unfinished KV-1 hull without treads to their left. The rest of the vehicles in the garage were covered up by green tarps. The sight of the place was eerie and quiet, say for the sound of the wind howling in the distance. The distinct smell of oil was in the air.

One of the crew members broke the silence, "Well, this is boring as all could be."

Erika glared at the girl who quickly began to stop talking.

"Lets go then, there's nothing we can do here." spoke another crew member.

"Anywhere else you girls want to look at before I make my choice of destination?" Maho offered.

Tammy was somewhat baffled by the fact that Maho always spoke with a broad sophisticated selection of words. The crew said nothing.

"Then lets meet up with a few of the other teams and see if they found anything."

"Wait!" Tammy suddenly blurted out, "I apologize but could we investigate the forest portion of the ship? There might be something interesting we could find there?"

"That's okay for me. You girls disagree to the idea?" Maho asked.

"Nope." replied the Tiger I's driver.

"Alright then, lets roll out."

As the tanks prepared to take off, Erika called to Maho over the roaring of the tank motors, "We are going to check out the rest of the campus, you want to come?!"

"No thanks, we're going to check out someplace else!" she called back to Erika."

Erika only saluted before telling her team to move. As the Tiger I began heading towards the hills and wooded area, Tammy thought that she saw a girl scowling at her from one of the windows in the distant school buildings, but she thought of it otherwise. The snow above, was starting to come down a little faster as the heavy tank entered the frost covered woods.