Chapter Nine: Letting the Carrier out of the Bag

"Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip."

-Winston S. Churchill-

Rear Admiral Xian Chengli could only call the President.

"We didn't need the contingency plans."

He hung up.

He wasn't a real soldier. When the Chinese troops engaged the intruders he'd only had those inedible military food packets close by.

So he'd thrown the MRE's into the crossfire.

To have done anything else would have been too suspicious.

The President of China steepled his hands together.

He never expected the enemy to have gone so far to cover up their tracks.

"Sir. The nuclear yield weapons are on the move per your instructions. When do you want them armed?"

"Sir," said another of his attendants, "The press are here. When do you plan to air the conference?"

"Soon."

He couldn't wait much longer though. The curtain should have been closing on this show a while ago.

Boris Corschkov and his team had tried to summon back the ship spirits with no success.

He'd told his friend that he'd be updated on their progress. But so far nothing had materialised.

Something at the back of his mind told him he was missing something very simple.

There were mounds of bauxite, steel, fuel, ammunition, vodka and even a copy of Boney M's "Rasputin".

Beep.

One of the engineers looked at the update from his phone.

"Who tells the Japanese Navy what to do?" came the audio.

"Who tells the Japanese Navy what to do?".

From her position in the larger carrier's vice-like embrace, Kaga looked over at the very conspicuous man from who'd been throwing food at her before. In his hands were clutched one of those new communication gadgets from this era.

They'd taken out all possible forms of long-range communication. It had been a thorough job. They were supposed to keep this sneaky anyway.

Those devices weren't even good at communicating much anyway, Kaga mused. She remembered Yubari had said that they were better for looking up the internet or social media.

Oh.

They hadn't taken out the internet.

The Wo-class Standard Carrier had been tasked with destroying the miscreants.

She'd ordered a withdrawal when the presence of two of the most criminal existed had made been themselves felt.

Annoyingly, for almost the entire day and night, there had been flying contacts just on the extreme edges of her radar.

Boris read over the news updates now coming in concerning the events at Dalian base.

"Modern Japanese destroyer makes a stand against Imperialist aggression"

"How Japan turned tragedy to their advantage."

"Geopolitical fallout expected to boil over into-"

They'd been so stupid.

They were out of time.

He'd turned and beckoned over one of his aides.

Issuing the order to set off man-made suns was not nearly as dramatic as in the movies.

It was time to reveal his hand and hope it was enough.

He walked into the conference room filled to the brim of the press.

It looked like many of them were now receiving the news.

Many countries looked down on China for government-controlled news, propaganda and their crackdown on political perspectives.

But just this once, or maybe again sometime, the unleashed emotion of the people would bring about victory.

He walked up to the podium even as their various gadgets filled up with updates.

"Ladies and Gentlemen.

When the earlier events of today transpired, we could never have guessed at the tragedy that would befall us.

The heroism continuously displayed by those tasked with defending the civilians as the country-wide evacuation of the Korean Peninsula takes place is not restricted to no single nation.

Every nation who shared even the smallest shreds of duty and sympathy for troubles close and far, have banded together, throwing away their greed, pride and selfishness, in the name of global cooperation.

However there is one nation that didn't share in our sorrow."

Japan had thought its royal flush would let it get away with its shit. Now all the desperation and frustration and negativity would be channelled in their general direction.

The press would force-feed Japan its own shit and film it live.

All he had to do was let their fear and the facts line up.

Wo-class Standard Carrier detected thousands of new contacts approaching in a completely new direction.

The contacts that had shadowed them all along now began to accelerate, closing in to engage when they hadn't before.

"…

When they've strenuously kept the secrets to summoning the spiritual. We feared the worst, but hoped for the best.

Fitting warships into humanoid form, allowing humanity to take the enemy head-on.

Perhaps there was an uncanny comparisons between these new ship girls and Abyssals, as they had the same advantages.

You've all heard that none of these ship girls had engaged the Abyssals. Initially we thought that it was the Abyssals not attacking them on first sight, as they usually and was very uncharacteristic of them. But they we believe that such a large number could only have bypassed the patrols set by Japan and slipped into the East China Sea, because they didn't attack the Abyssals.

They proceeded through the territorial waters of Japan.

You've all heard that Japan remains untouched. How can this be so when the lay right in the armada's path?

It was they had made no intention of stopping them and sat tight as the rest of us burned.

We now have reason to suspect that Japan has created the Abyssals themselves.

China has observed anomalies between the Abyssals and what Japan apparently developed in response.

If that wasn't enough, look at the composition of the militarisation program that Japan has set up. All of the ships that had allowed Japan to rise to power and commit genocide?

What does this say about the nation we've entrusted with this much power?"

So much bluffing, but every word, phrase and implication would be published and be deemed official fact.

One of the pilots from the apparently "missing" Chinese air divisions opened up a communications channel with the North Korean squadrons.

These North Korean squadrons had had accurate positions and strength of the Abyssals since the beginning. There had been no casualty reports from them all day because they're been nothing to report. Their purpose in this battle had been determined from the very start.

Dropping all manners of torpedoes and ASM into the Abyssal closed formation of warships that had been deemed impossible to approach without receiving enough flak and shells you could physically walk on it, the combined thousands of Chinese and North Korean aircraft wiped out the problem that had plagued them all day like it had been rehearsed.

The Aircraft Carrier Demon and whatever was left socialised nicely enough in the company of the several dozen "low-yield" "tactical" nukes.

The President of the People's Republic of China left the conference room in mass hysteria.

As if to reiterate the bombshells he'd just dropped, the news that the Chinese and North Korean air force had completely obliterated the problem with nuclear ordnance had just arrived. Almost as if it had been timed.

Why did they have to fight by the Abyssals' rules when these two nations had achieved nuclear power after all?

Japan had gotten arrogant when they'd developed ship girl technology. But nothing rubbed the saltshaker into their wounds when China had used nuclear weapons to save the day and restore stability to the world.

The loss of carrier battle group in the earliest phase of the conflict had been seen as an opportunity by the President.

While sending out the necessary orders, they had been caught off guard by the United Nation's call for military cooperation.

So they'd had to apparently lose contact with many of air divisions and inferred that the losses of the Chinese were horrendous by association with the damage being dealt to South Korea who had lost almost all that remained of their depleted force.

The North Koreans had played the crucial part in the final strike, but also throughout, having tracked the locations of each the Abyssal fleets using modified long-endurance aircraft, they'd given the opportunities to other nations to spectacularly fail and humiliate themselves in their attempt to take on the Abyssals.

They'd planned for Japan to get caught in the mess too, maybe hurt the reputation of their navy and ship girls, but as luck would have it, a far better opportunity had arisen as the Japanese would learnt of the existence of China's naval personnel program and reacted as they did.

This is where the timing of all the elements had to come together.

It had nearly been messed up. The President had thought that the Japanese discovered China's naval personnel program when Liaoning and Izumo shown themselves the open. He'd estimated the times on that fact.

That wasn't how the Japanese caught a bit of the truth. With Dalian's communications still in need of repairs, shortly after the Abyssals had withdrawn from Dalian, it had been the emails between headquarters and Dalian that had thrown flags all over Japan's databases.

The President of the People's Republic of China wanted a spectacular finale and he'd got it.

In regards to the Japan's ship girl program, the Japanese fleet was now the target of a South Korean-led investigation citing more formal regulation and the need for openness.

With the worsening situation looking to be unresolved, China's nuclear weapons program spoke for itself and ended much of the threat.

As for having a naval personnel program, the only one who'd identified itself on the media was obviously a Japanese ship. Liaoning hadn't identified herself, so they'd managed to pass her off as a result of Japan's program as well.

Officially, these ships had joined the Chinese navy citing unsatisfactory conditions in Japan.

"Ah, so you'd just needed to find the relics of the Soviet Union's nuclear submarine fleet."

"The piles of nuclear material weren't enough," Boris said, "Shipboard nuclear reactors are extremely complicated and variable in materials. So we took a few of them back with us."

"What did Kirov say?"

"She said it was typical of the unappreciative Russian Federation to leave useful parts lying around, and very short-sighted as we don't have a fleet budget approaching the Soviets."

"Who do you want to have next?"

"The rest of the Kirov sisters of course."

"Are you going to bring back your carrier?"

"The resources needed for summoning is huge. We won't have anything left."

"Do you think the price was the real reason Japan only brought back their older ships."

"Maybe it was cheaper. Isn't your carrier the same class as ours?"

"Are you suggesting that we should bring her back?"

"Well why not? I hope your well, because I've been hearing strange things about the Chinese military lately."

"No cause for worry. I promise. We're not called the Sleeping Tiger for nothing.

"Liaoning. Izumo. Please take a seat."

The two ship girls had been thoroughly confused when the Japanese fleet sent to stealthily destroy them had retreated from all the attention.

The evidence of the attack had been uploaded using the lightning fast military internet.

Didn't take long before Japan had reversed its orders far too little, far too late.

Rear Admiral Xian Chengli always hated messes of the political kind.

They were generally more complicated than the shooty kind.

Political messes always involved having to remember who said what, why they said it, what did they really mean, what should have been said, when it should it be said, how it should be said and more.

Thankfully the President had been up to the task of directing them and keeping them focussed.

"Japan's military inspection spans all the Japanese ship girls and we've covered ourselves by saying that you're both Japanese, temporarily seconded to the Chinese. So that means that both of you will have to attend."

"But they know I'm not actually Japanese Navy," Liaoning said sharply.

"Both of our nations have had to make… certain concessions with each other. We've passed you off as summoned by the Japanese to the press. We were considering a false identity, but that's really stretching it."

"When do we leave?" asked Izumo, who wasn't sure uncertain to be excited or not to be returning home.

"As soon UN sends a ship to pick you both up. We'll tell you."

They had finally solved the issue of supplying their ship girl program.

He'd never imagined that unassuming Chinese emails would be this vital.

It had described the rebirth of the JS Izumo. She hadn't needed crippling amounts of resources for the initial summoning. Her spirit had returned on its own, and she'd only needed a much smaller than expected supply when she'd taken possession of a human body, her running costs basically, to be brought back to strength.

A mass of tubes led into the slowly dying girl strapped to the gurney.

Together they gradually upped the dosage of poison, condemning her to a very slow death.

After all they were curious to know the exact moment the human mind left.

...

They could just circumvent the costs for a summoning ritual. The only cost as far as they could tell, was just one human life.