They were soon skimming over the ocean surface at full speed in ground effect. Jean's packmates had heretofore all been Gato-class like herself, so she was for the first time becoming acquainted with the differences between her Striker and a Karlsland Type VIIB. While in some ways they were exactly as anticipated, the experience of it was different. The design speed of a Gato in GE was 210 knots. Jean had clocked 235 knots once in an extremely desperate circumstance, an event she could not relate to anyone else without their classing it as a fisherman's story. Eva's Sub Striker by contrast was full throttle, supercharger engaged, at a stately 180 knots. Maintaining station abreast of her at this lower speed was requiring more concentrated effort than she wanted to admit. Eva seemed to notice this, but didn't comment on it.
"I'm keeping this. It's mine now." Jean called to her new temporary packmate, holding up the Flak 38 2cm triumphantly. It would make a fine showing back at her pen. Eva took a deep breath and exhibited a degree of self control that Jean had not yet seen in her kind.
"It is not yours. It belongs to the military of Karlsland."
"You're the military of Karlsland. Are you going to take it from me?"
"Of course. After we've defeated the enemy. You know, someone worked hard to make that gun-one of my countrymen. Now the Neuroi are eating all the metal in our mines. I'll see to it that he didn't labor with his precious material so a Liberion could hang a prize on a mantle."
"Oh," Jean said, wrinkling her nose up and feeling like a real heel, "You're serious."
Eva nodded at her with an amiable smile. Shamed thusly, Jean no longer wanted the weapon, but she did sort of want to get beaten up by a Karlslander over such a trivial issue. What a story that would make. She probably wouldn't hurt a person like Eva, but she'd put up enough resistance to make a tussle of it.
"Liberion is an untouched land of wealth. I know you don't understand." Eva said.
"Hey, don't go making assumptions. Dollars don't grow on trees."
"Evidently Oerlikons do. I've never tossed a weapon, no matter how burdensome it became to me. In Orussia they say that some men have to wait for the one in front of them to fall to retrieve theirs."
Jean cleared her throat and prepared to defend herself.
"My patrols are longer."
"I know. Gato Striker endurance is significant, and your patrol areas are larger. But the one you just did was three days-that's not so bad. I've done that many times. And yet." Eva gestured to Jean's borrowed gun.
"...you get used to tossing them." Jean said, and looked away in her shame, which was accented by the fact that she'd been upbraided for that very thing by her own commanders. Even for a Liberion, she was cavalier about materiel. A searing indictment. She was startled by Eva's comforting hand on her shoulder. When she met the Karlslander's blue eyes, they were soft and reassuring.
"You're not a bad person, Jean. We come from different circumstances." Eva said, and receded back into her station a few feet away. The place on Jean's shoulder where she put her hand had a lingering burning to it. She hadn't been touched for days. "I'm saying this so you can understand how important your convoys are. If the Neuroi take the upper hand here, in the Atlantic... it's all lost. Our workmen will not have tools. Our soldiers will not have arms. My people will starve without food and die without medicine."
Jean clutched the weapon against her chest and stared ahead. Occasionally her dreary world of boredom and violence was pierced by a message from the realm of the living. As these missives had before, it would echo in her head for a time, and then mercifully fade. That was for the best too. When people said things like that, it made her want to live too much. If she wanted to live too much she wouldn't be able to do what was necessary.
"Eva, how long have you been a Nereid?" Jean asked. It couldn't be long.
"Since Drumbeat." Eva said. Longer than herself, by nearly a year. Vanishingly few Nereids had been trained as of Drumbeat. Jean's arc was more typical: she joined because of Drumbeat. That meant Eva was in the vanguard, and her senior.
"How many-"
"158."
An Ace. A bonafide Karlsland Ace! No petty 'low 100' Ace, either. Jean looked over to Eva in shock. The girl wore a proud smile. Jean had met a couple of the fabled Deep Aces of Karlsland before, but she never-not in a thousand years-would have pegged Eva for one. She thought she'd seen the girl's name before, but the cognitive dissonance was too great to make the connection.
"90, here." Jean said, unaccountably insecure about it. Karlsland called anyone over 100 an Ace, and by this measure they had more Aces among their own Nereids than from any other nations combined, by a factor of two or three. Little wonder they considered themselves the best. Liberion didn't use the Ace system, since it would be demoralizing in the waters they operated in. Other nations had it even worse with their own hunting grounds, and weren't able to even get close. Jean still wanted a hundred, more than anything. Karlsland would put other Nereids on their Aces of the Deep list for reference purposes, even though no medals were awarded. She wanted on that list even though, by Liberion standards, she was already in rare air. Even though she was not, on the whole, impressed with the Karlsland Aces-possibly excepting the one she'd just met. Outside their cloud cuckoo land over the Colony and ahead of the convoys, it took a load of creativity to even get close to 100.
"89." Eva amended. Karlsland had a record of her accomplishments, and summarily struck the ill gotten Land Neuroi from the record. Jean grumbled, becoming accustomed to the ways Eva was and wasn't a typical Karlslander. She was every bit the stickler they all were, she just wasn't mean about it.
"10, 11. What's the difference?" she muttered.
"One." Eva returned immediately, her eyebrows up with feigned innocence. A little jest against her own national stereotype as a people who took things literally.
"Dollface, we better focus on the task ahead." Jean said. It was not because Jean wanted to focus on the mission that she said this-although that was the prudent thing to do, so of course Eva would assent. The reason she said it was because Eva had already assumed, in her brief time in Jean's experience, the throne of Hope. She was the Ace with bright eyes, the proof that not all Nereids gave up their humanity. Hope was dangerous. The only thing left was to keep her from taking the throne of Love, which was the most dangerous thing of all. To have one's hopes dashed-Jean could endure that. No more.
"Alright. My nickname, if you insist on one, is Vaddi."
"Oh yeah? What's that mean?"
Eva's eyes only twinkled as she left the question unanswered, and performed a little aileron roll in GE in lieu of an answer. After this interlude she faced her eyes forward and assumed the stern visage of Karlsland, as if she were born to it. Which she was. Jean respected someone who could ignore her. Ignoring people had a lot going for it. She liked the sound of the name enough to use it. Since Eva's attention was fixed forward, Jean took it upon herself to focus attention rearward.
Eva's backside was a perfect gem, just as she'd anticipated. A bombshell. Jean bit her tongue, hotly jealous, and heroically resisted an overpowering desire to slap an open palm down on the poor girl's left cheek. The only thing preventing her from this was the fact that Eva seemed to regard the situation as somewhat urgent and Jean didn't want to get on her bad side. Although... she'd seen the girl from both sides, now, and she didn't have a bad side. When Jean looked up she saw Eva looking over her shoulder, a look of annoyance on her face.
"Vaddi," Jean said, and the nickname caused Eva's annoyance to melt away, "Are we going after one of those Hunter-Killers?"
Eva returned her eyes forward and gestured for the Liberion to catch up with her.
"We'll be joining the defense of ONS.5. When I brought the milk cow down I was-I was hoping there would be more of you." Eva said, a note of regret in her voice.
"When Clark and 'Briskie make it back to the milk cow, I'm sure they'll hurry up to join us. Sometimes Briskie has trouble with her engines. Clark was pretty good at fixing things like that, so they were always close. They'll be along." Jean said. She and Eva exchanged a long, blank look. Eva eventually gave her a nod. They flew on in silence for a while. Soon Convoy ONS.5 climbed into view, a line of ants crawling across the horizon, some of them spouting columns of black smoke that Jean had spotted even before they were in view. All was not well.
"We're both Lieutenants, Vaddi. If there is going to be trouble, one of us has to take command of this impromptu joint wolfpack."
"Naturally-" Eva started, a statement that was obviously going to end with 'that would be me.' Jean cut her off.
"We'll play rock, paper, scissors for it." Jean said, balling her fist and looking at Eva, "On three. One, two, three!"
A bewildered Eva took up the challenge and threw scissors. This was easily beaten by Jean's almighty rock. Karlslanders had an aggressive reputation, so they were natural rock throwers. Eva, however, knew this, and was smart, and would anticipate that Jean would try to counter a Karlslander opening. Jean had taken her by surprise and forced a quick throw so she wouldn't engage in any second-level thinking, during which she might realize that Jean would probably understand that Eva would attempt to subvert a natural Karlslander opening. And so on, until the outcome was chaotic again.
"Oh, that is the worst junk. I am not subordinating myself to a crazy Liberion over a match of rock paper scissors." Eva intoned. Jean suspected this was the harshest way she could phrase this opinion.
"You played, didn't you?"
"You surprised me!"
"Okay." Jean said, "I'll compromise. Best two out of three."
An unsure Eva took up the challenge as the convoy quickly rose into view, to which she cast the occasional nervous glance. Jean easily won the rematch, and Eva began to throw continuously out of frustration. Jean did not lose a single throw until the 9th, and she won the 10th. Eva gave up at 12, leaving the record: 11 to 12. Eva looked positively shell shocked at the outcome.
"Mein gott! Isn't it a random game? Did you use magic? How did you do that?"
"I'll answer your questions in order: no, no, and finally: I'm not telling."
Rock paper scissors was a competitive sport at her pen, and their mastery of the simple game had revealed rich veins of strategy which pivoted on understanding the human element. Jean had learned that people and Neuroi were not random creatures. They had behaviors that could be exploited. The purity of the game revealed that to her, in the way a scientific experiment strips away everything but what you're looking for. The practice made her wolfpacks more effective, since, in addition to leading to the vital realization Jean had made, it put them in the mind that thinking strategically was something anyone could do. It wasn't just for admirals and grandmasters.
Eva clearly wasn't ready to fall in line over a such a dumb demonstration of RPS prowess, but that wasn't the point of the matter. The point that needed getting across was that she wasn't an idiot. That had been done. Jean rolled in closer.
"Vaddi, if we danced, wouldn't you give me the lead?"
"Yes, because you're taller, and... I don't see what that has to do with anything."
"Darf ich bitten?" Jean said, hoping she got it right. Loosely: Shall we dance? Eva's long pause made her nervous-either she was thinking about it, or Jean had mangled the simple phrase to the extent it was misunderstood.
"...Alright." Eva said, finally.
Even Jean was paying the convoy her full attention now, hoping to spot the source of the trouble. It might very well be invisible yet. The individual classes of the ships and their number were now becoming apparent to her.
"So what's your deal?" she yelled to Eva, who looked confused. This was the standard Liberion way of inquiring into the abilities of a new packmate. Some Nereids were 'missing' some vital feature and had to be handled specially, and others could contrariwise perform amazing feats. "Your magic!"
"Ah, that. I can see through underwater haze, in addition to the normal things. You?" she said simply, as if it were not amazing. It explained a lot about her status as a super-Ace.
"Just the basics here." Jean said in kind. Nothing to be ashamed of there. When it came to surviving the cruel sea, the 'basics' were extensive.
Nereids were similar to Night Witches in their need to use military spellcraft. They needed to be able to send and receive radio signals-these abilities could be taught. They had other abilities which typically rode in on their familiar, like being able to function for hours underwater without surfacing or the ability to reckon the location of objects with careful hearing. Jean was part of the rank-and-file who couldn't do anything really special.
"What about your incredible luck?" Eva says, referring to Jean's nickname, 'Lucky' Fluckey, "Maybe your power alters the laws of probability in your favor."
"Can magic do something like that?" Jean said, dubious.
"How would I know?"
"Karlslanders know everything. That's what I've heard."-this said with a lopsided grin towards Eva, who returned a sidelong glance for the trouble. "Do you know if any macs or broomsticks are going to be with us?"
"I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you're saying. Maybe my Britannian is rusty."
Jean didn't know how to tell Eva that her Britannian, which she'd obviously learned in Britannia, was probably better than Jean's own. So she didn't. She did, however, reiterate in Standard Britannian that she wanted to know if Eva knew if there were any Strike Witches ("broomsticks") operating from Merchant Aircraft Carriers in the area. Broomstick had a dual connotation in Liberion circles which she didn't have time to relate to Eva. Originally it had simply been a derogatory epithet that applied to all Strike Witches, the glamorous doyennes of the Neuroi War with whom the Nereids had an uneasy relationship. They thought the Strike Witches were, on the whole, stuck-up glory hounds. The Strike Witches thought of the Nereids as an underhanded lot of low character. As is often the case in interservice rivalries, both sides had something of a point amid the exaggerations.
Lately, though, the Nereids had been forced to admit that some of them were the good ones: the Strike Witches who operated from Merchant Aircraft Carriers had by and large the same lot the Nereids did in life. They were in the same boat, sometimes quite literally.
"There are no merchant carriers-it's a low priority convoy. They might have an expendable hurricane." Eva said. Regardless of their particular Striker, "Expendable Hurricane" was another grim nickname for the Witches who got catapulted off of certain merchant ships for the purposes of a token defense.
Jean scanned the horizon carefully-not a thing in sight.
"Time to put those baby blue eyes of yours to the test. Dive dive dive!" she called to Eva. The Karlslander nodded without a word of objection and vaulted up into the air in a graceful arc, hitting the surface of a small swell and smacking into it with a white splash. The harsh impact sound elicited a wince of sympathy from Jean. The crash dive maneuver, which would be instant death to a normal person, was still extremely painful. Like getting clapped on both cheeks by a heavyweight boxer. Eva had disappeared below the waves, slicing into the deep like a knife. Jean could still see her dark shape skimming below the waves. Their underwater speed was generally slightly less than half, or about 80 knots in Eva's case. Blistering for an underwater craft. Jean cut her speed to something more reasonable and performed a similar action, and still felt a little bit like she'd just been decked by Neptune. Easily her least favorite thing about the job, next to taking shots from Neuroi.
She switched to battery power, enjoying the peaceful hum compared to the cacophonous magic engine. Eva caught up with her shortly-they stuck close enough to the surface to see the little ridges the wind etched into the larger waves. There was plenty to say at the moment, and would be plenty to say in the near future, but the water silenced them both. They had two ways of carrying on a dialog from there. They could send the most basic of commands with a high-lo clicker, which used a special compact morse language that had been dubbed ticktock. At visual range sign language was the preferred medium. Since both languages were constructed and had such a limited vocabulary, Eva was spared the opaque Liberionisms that sprinkled Jean's speech.
"Two Neuroi of type Manta-class. Five kilometers away at 40 degrees. One Nereid of Type B1." Eva's blistering speed with sign turned Jean's head, but fortunately she caught all of it and was spared the embarrassment of asking for a repetition. It was probably some kind of little test-there was no way she did it that fast all the time. Junior packmates would never get it. Jean didn't know what a 'Type B1' Striker was, either, since she'd never encountered one, but it was enough for her to know that it was friendly.
"Affirmative. Descend to 90m, course 0 degrees at best speed. Await my signal!" Jean signed back, to Eva's confusion, and blew the ballast tanks on her Striker before she could sign back any objections. Jean burst through the water surface and switched off battery for a sprint into attack position, a time she used to make a few simple calculations. Nothing too brainy-time, velocity, distance. She got a little wrapped up in it and almost smacked into a wave-flying in GE required concentration. She got into the position she wanted and saw, unfortunately, the wake bubbles of a Neuroi torpedo speeding towards one of the cargo ships. A few bursts of the Flak 2cm proved ineffective from above the surface.
Cursing to herself, she grabbed hold of her Ka-Bar and performed the hated full-speed crash dive, which would probably net her a couple of black eyes. She flooded the tanks and intercepted the torpedo, a dumb weapon which simply churned away when she latched onto it. The red and black device was much too large to get her arms around, but had a few places for her to grab. It was powered by an engine which took in water in the front and spat it out the back. Jean had a simple expedient for dealing with them, which was to take her knife and drive it into the ballast tank. A hiss of bubbles indicated that she'd succeeded at this, and then she consigned the thing to the deep with a little shove from the top. It would sink and pass under the ship's hull.
Her schedule for her little plan was all messed up now-which happened frequently. The only problem was that she was mated with a Karlslander, who, in addition to not being familiar with Jean's way of doing things, hailed from a people who took plans very seriously. She spun around and maxed out her poor little battery drive, listening for the Nereid who was in the Type B1 Striker. On finding her she got on an intercept course and churned over at best speed.
What Jean saw from the back appeared to be one of the largest Nereids she'd ever seen, operating one of the largest Strikers she'd ever seen. There in the haze was a tall and fully developed woman in a dark blue swimsuit with an odd cut to it. Rather than arcing up around the thighs like normal, it continued straight, giving the impression of someone who had draped a skintight, identically colored shirt over their suit. The voluptuous girl had luxuriously long black hair and was conspicuously gifted in the way that made her breasts visible even from the back. The biggest shock came when she turned around to look at Jean and gave a bright smile, revealing herself as a Fuso. She'd never met a Fuso with quite so much... everything. Her countershading, the odd tanlines that every Nereid got when their familiars manifested, was darker than normal. Maybe a killer whale familiar, which Jean had seen a handful of times. Jean and Eva's countershading, which were respectively that of spotted and striped dolphins, was not nearly as pronounced a variation of pale and tan.
Jean gave her a simple command in sign, there being absolutely no time to explain anything or make introductions. She also repeated it in ticktock afterwards.
"Charge! Attack! Use Everything!" Jean said, a command to which the Fuso responded with a wild smile and a doubling-up of V-signs.
They split up to bracket the incoming enemies, while keeping each other in sight distance. The Neuroi Mantas, which were enormous and looked exactly as one would expect, loomed into view and each fired off a brace of supercavitating explosive rounds which screamed through the water at the pair of them. They were much faster and smaller than the torpedoes used against the convoy, operating on a similar principle to a shotgun. Once you got close enough, they could hit you. Jean could count on one hand the number of Nereids who had survived a second salvo from this weapon. There was no avoiding them, and both Jean and the Fuso girl were pounded by a few shattering explosions, whose force had a depressing way of arcing around a magic shield as it transmitted through the water and battering the one behind it, even if perfectly blocked. The Fuso brought the Hammer part of the attack, and her Striker loosed a couple of torpedoes that were bigger and faster than anything Jean had ever seen from a Western Nereid. Unfortunately, she herself had no Anvil to complement the attack with, since her last true resupply was days ago. The Mantas turned into them, and it looked like it would be an easy matter for them to thread between them. Jean was starting to feel her plans becoming unglued-a feeling she'd had before.
The Fuso girl had elan to spare, however, and didn't seem to be at all put off by Jean's failure to hold up her end of the attack. She allowed the Mantas to think they had dodged the issue, and then the girl raised a hand and gestured at each of them in turn. The torpedoes changed course and impacted into the pair, twin explosions that pushed against Jean twice in the span of a half second. Torpedo guiding magic! The Mantas shrieked, and perhaps weren't even aware of it when Eva emerged undetected from the depths below and was allowed all the time she needed to carefully line up two salvos on each of them. Four of Eva's fish swam up from the deep and drove themselves into the menaces, which dissolved as they sank into the inky black.