"It's a beautiful evening, isn't it?" Sendai smiled into the setting sun, her cheeks all but glowing in the warm purple-orange dusk. Her long silk scarf billowed behind her as the wind raced across the shimmering sapphire waters of the south pacific.
"Don't say it," A few hundred yards ahead of her, Maya had to fight down a scowl.
Sendai ignored her friend. "A cool breeze, nice warm water," she sighed, her chest puffing out as she took a deep breath of the sweet winter air.
"If you say it, I'll hurt you."
"And not even a cloud in the sky!" Sendai tossed the streaming end of her scarf around her neck with a sly grin.
"Sendai –"
"The perfect weather," Sendai giggled.
"Dammit, Sendai, no."
"For –"
"Don't say it!"
"Yasen!" Sendai threw her fist out with a flourish, her other arm holding an imaginary katana behind her.
Maya shot the light cruiser a look that could sink a battleship. Her sea-green tank-top showed off the sinewy muscle of her arms, and at the moment, all that sinew was tensed and ready for combat. "I will hurt you," she drawled.
Sendai rolled her eyes, "Like you would, you big softy."
"I hate you so fucking much," said Maya. "If I was in a room with you, Hitler, and Stalin, do you know what I'd do?"
"Shoot me twice?" asked Sendai. "I watched The Office too you know."
"No," said Maya. "No, no, no, no…see, I'd shoot each of them twice. Then I'd shove the still hot –" The cruiser abruptly stopped, like her voice had slammed into a brick wall.
"What?" Sendai noticed the change in her friend's demeanor, and instantly dropped the teasing act. Her posture stiffened, then relaxed again into a tightly coiled ready stance.
"E13A," was Maya's only response. The lion's share of her attention was focused on her little reconnaissance floatplane, with only enough to keep formation with the flotilla of freighters under her protection remaining on the surface. "We're being shadowed."
"Shadowed?" said Sendai with guarded cautiousness. "Or –"
"Scratch that," said Maya. "They're going fast. Running us down."
"Shit," Sendai cursed under her breath. "What? What's the fleet?"
"Bismarck," said Maya with utter certainty. She didn't know how she knew, but there wasn't a shred of doubt in her mind as her crew cleared for action. "And…two Scharns."
"Shiiiiiiiiiiiit," Sendai hissed. "That's what…thirty knots?"
"Maybe if we run for Pearl…" Maya's voice was as distant as her gaze.
"At thirty knots they'll still catch us," said Sendai. "We'd need…another day, day and a half just to get under their air umbrella."
For a moment, the heavy cruiser was silent. Then she stiffened her spine, held her chin high, and straightened the knot on her neckerchief. "Sendai," her voice sounded calm, but Sendai knew the Takao well enough to pick out the faint notes of strain holding it all together, "If we extend towards Pearl at flank, we can delay engagement until after sundown."
Sendai nodded. "Yeah…guess we could." She blinked. "Wait, you're not –"
"I am," said Maya. "You said it was perfect weather."
"Not against that," said Sendai. "Three battleships…"
"Can we do it?"
Sendai thought for a moment, then hung her head. "We have to."
"Mmm." Maya nodded. "Murakumo," she barked for the lead destroyer of the little escort division steaming along with the freighters.
"Hai!"
"You're in command of the supply fleet." Maya's voice was clipped and precise as she relayed orders to the stunned destroyer. "When darkness falls, try and shake them in the dark. Sendai and I will hold the Abyssals in place for your escape."
"But –"
"Once you've disengaged, make for Pearl at best possible speed and do not, under any circumstances, double-back for us," Maya fixed the destroyer in her stare. "Do you understand?"
"But –" Murakumo was frozen in place by the cruiser's glare. "What about you and Sendai?"
"We'll…" Maya trailed off. "We'll link up with you."
"Oh," Murakumo's voice was quiet and subdued. "H-hai, Maya-Sama."
"Sendai," Maya glanced at her friend. "Are you in the mood for a night battle?"
Sendai put on a smile. "With you, Maya-sama, any day."
—|—|—
Hood woke with a gasp. Her throat was dry as gravel, her lungs only barely managing to haul meager scraps of air down her shaking windpipe. Her skin was slick with frozen sweat, and her bedding was so drenched she thought for a moment she was adrift in the icy waters of Scapa Flow.
The battlecruiser pulled herself upright as best she could. Her lithe body was quivering with adrenaline, and it was all she could manage to run her shaking fingers through her sweat-slick hair. It was her nightmare again. The same one she'd had for months. The same one she'd had every time she drifted from consciousness for more than a few moments.
Bismarck looming out of the fog, leveling those mighty fifteens squarely at her defenseless hulk. A thunder of cordite…and then nothing. Only this time it was so more vivid then the last. She saw every detail of the ship that haunted her dreams. She saw the rifling on those mighty guns, saw the waves crashing over every plate and seam on the battleship's hull, even saw her Teutonic features shift with a few silent words a moment before the guns roared.
Hood squeezed her eyes closed and hugged her slim legs against her chest. She knew it wasn't real, she knew it was just a dream. But it still shattered her to her core. She hated it. She was the pride of the Navy, the first of Her Majesty's warships to return. She should be stronger than this, yet here she was. Quivering in her bed a nervous wreck.
It just wouldn't do. Hood forced herself to stand. The floor was cold under her bare feet, and Hood let her self believe the chill was bracing. She peeled off the nightgown glued to her sinewy body with clammy sweat and stepped into the shower.
"It's not real," she murmured as cold water poured down her back. "It's just a dream…it's not real." At first, the mantra was shaken and quiet. But with each repetition, the battle cruiser built strength. But try as she might, she couldn't shake the lingering worry gnawing at the back of her mind.
Bismarck…or…some shadow of Bismarck was out there. Hood knew it in her ancient bones. But she also knew how impossible that was. She was a proper warship of Her Majesty's Navy, and she was putting stock on superstitions? Still, she wouldn't be able to sleep until she put this to rest.
Hood dried herself off and changed into her uniform. The buttons on her blouse took longer than she would have liked, her fingers were still shaking like she'd just come out of a freezer. Try as she could, Hood couldn't force her appendages to lay still.
"Damn," Hood cursed under her breath and buried her hands in her pockets to at least hide her shame. She doubted anyone would notice. The only sailors still up at this hour were those manning the base CIC, and it was so cold nobody would look twice at her if she kept her hands in her pockets.
Still it was proper unsightly and…
Hood blinked. She'd opened the door like she'd planned. But instead of seeing the quiet streets of the base after hours, she was confronted with the worried visage of her Admiral.
"Admiral, I…"
"Hood." His voice was kind, his eyes as gentle as they were tense. And then she knew.
"No," Hood's voice was barely above a whisper. "No, that's…no."
—|—|—
With a breathless gasp, the Snow Queen sank into the frigid wine-dark water of her birthing dock. She was far from a stranger to the pain of feeling her demonic spawn clawing and tearing free from the icy confinement of her womb, but this had been a particularly agonizing delivery.
The pain had been excruciating, but also exhilarating. Her muscles shivered with exhaustion, and every time a bloodstained iceberg touched her bone-white skin a bolt of pleasure roared up her spine.
She had eyes, once. Now a crown of twisted, blackened metal burst from her skull, its fine tendrils weaving through hammered-silver hair. But out of habit, she turned her eyeless face the demon crawling up from her bleeding womb and smiled.
There was only one. One perfect specimen out of a litter half a dozen. Her swollen belly had been home to them all once, but one by one the weaker fell before the might of the stronger. The queen had felt every battle of the furious war waged within her belly. She'd sensed every skirmish with unmitigated bliss as the weak within her were defeated and devoured by the strong.
Her lips twisted into a smile at the eyeless thing clawing past her still-distended middle. A gaping, bloody maw tore across flesh still stained with oily placenta, and a crown of blackened metal tore through jet-black air. A crown not nearly as impressive as the Snow Queens', but a crown none the less.
"Mmm," The queen stroked her monstrous talon down her spawn's shivering back. Its spine was riddled with long, twisted blades. Its limbs were entombed in talons smaller, but no less monstrous than those of its mother, and its claws tore into her flesh as it clawed towards her icy breast.
The queen gently helped her newborn on its way, her mind drifting on a cloud of excruciating bliss. Already the demon was massive, and it would grow to enormity suckling at her icy teat. "You will be great."
The demon was too ravenous to give even the faintest hint of a reply. Breath by laborious breath it hauled itself along its mother's massive body, until at last its razor teeth tore into the Queen's breast. Blood and milk poured through its crooked teeth and joined the gallons of blood and oil dyeing the birthing water black.
But before the Queen could truly enjoy the experience, a scuff of polished leather by her side drew her attention. Her faceless attendants with their blood-spattered lab coats and thick rubber gauntlets stood aside as an officer snapped to attention.
"Yes?" The Snow Queen turned her eyeless face in his direction, idly supporting her demon at her teat all the while. His report was through, but concise and almost sterile in its blandness. That didn't matter of course. He communicated the essence well enough, and it was the essence that filled the Queen with such joy she completely forgot the demon on her breast.
Her elder sister, the valiant warship whose death – honorable or not – came far too soon – had met her foe. A hapless convoy caught far away from any who could help. At last, her sister would know the thrill and ecstasy of the hunt.
"Keep me informed," said the queen with undisguised glee. "I want every detail of my sister's hunt."
—|—|—
Maya was soaked to the bone and drenched with sweat. She shivered from the frigid rain squall she hid in while deep within her engineers toiled in the unlivable heat of her overloaded boiler rooms. She squinted into the gloom, barely able to pick out her own bow in the wind-driven rain. Sweat stung at her eyes, and she wiped her brow with the back of her hand.
The squall had been a lucky one. German radar – and thus, she hoped, the loathsome mockeries the Abyssal fleet carried – was blinded by rain. Even if her pursuers bothered to heat up their sets – which knowing what she did about Kriegsmarine doctrine, Maya doubted – the squall would keep her hidden.
It was a gamble of course, Maya's radar could pierce the driven rain, but she didn't dare flick it on. Her foes might not carry effective radar, but they had warning receivers. She couldn't take the risk, even a rough bearing would let her foes saturate the area with their vast layered batteries. This would be a battle of optics and skill. Not a technical display of military equipment, but a dance.
Her last dance.
Maya smiled, tasting burnt copper and charred blood with each breath. Her surging boilers were slowly killing her, but that didn't matter. She fully intended to die before the added wear and tear became an issue.
She glanced at her watch. The Abyssal fleet had been bearing down at flank, zig-zagging only enough to throw off any hopes of making a long-range torpedo shot. The Abyssal flagship might only be a reflection of Bismarck, but she must've picked up a healthy respect for torpedoes from her namesake.
Any second now the Abyssal fleet would blunder into her hastily-constructed trap. Twice already she'd almost sprung her ploy when something wandered into her rain-ruined vision, only to realize it was just an iceberg. What exactly icebergs were doing in the thoroughly subtropical Pacific was a question Maya didn't want to contemplate.
The cruiser fished her phone from her pocket and got as far as unlocking it before she thought better. There wasn't any evidence that Abyssals could crack the data-burst radios kanmusu-issue phones used, but Maya couldn't bring herself to risk it. When the battle started…she'd know.
Sendai was lying in wait just outside the squall, staring into the gloomy horizon for any hint of the Abyssals' Teutonic silhouette no doubt. The light cruiser was smaller and her superstructure was sleeker than Maya's monolithic tower. And at almost a third the weight, Sendai was far quicker on her feet than Maya. It there was anyone who could dodge salvos, it was the neon ninja.
"YASAEN!" Sendai's voice roared over the waves and even through the howling rain Maya saw her slim friend tear for flank as fast as her screws could manage. Tinny pops from her distant five-point-fives rolled over the waves as Sendai tore into the distant – and currently invisible – forms of the Abyssal fleet.
Maya wasted no time building up speed. Her turbines roared and her screws bit into the frigid water and churned it white. Her stern fell as her bow pierced the waves and drenched her with a curtain of salty spray.
Leaving the squall behind, it only took Maya a moment to get her bearings. Sendai was darting through the waves, frantically bouncing between towering splashes like a safety-orange pinball. Her guns chattered puny challenges to the thundering concussions of her monstrous foes. Every so often, her searchlights would catch a glimpse of one of the massive warships. But the next instant a frantic evasion would send the beam shining off into nothing.
Maya grit her teeth and squinted into the night. She wanted nothing more than to dive into the fight with her friend, but she couldn't risk it. Not with her precious and volatile oxygen torpedoes aboard. Sendai was quick on her feet, she could dodge shots the fifteen-thousand-ton Takao could never dream of.
"HA, HA, HA!" Sendai howled with laughter as spray from near misses drenched her scarf. "I'M RIGHT HERE!"
Maya, meanwhile, had slipped to within a few thousand yards of the roaring battleship fleet. Close enough to make out distinct shapes, not just blobs in the dark. The Abyssals were stabbing at the dark with their own spotlights, scouring frantically for the light-footed cruiser. But their attention was focused solely on the highly-visible ninja, letting Maya draw a bead in peace.
Ka-Ka-Ka-THOOM! Maya's ten twenty-centimeter guns barked in unison, hurling high-explosive on an almost perfectly-flat trajectory into the Abyssal fleet. There were more misses than hits from her hasty barrage, but a handful of shells slammed home against Abyssal superstructure, mauling precious searchlights and lookouts.
Almost as one, the three battleships turned their ire towards Maya. Secondary batteries that had until lay idle roared with hate, churning the water around her into a boiling mass of splashes and splinters. Frag from a near miss tore at her face, and Maya threw her rudder hard over and fired a hasty salvo of oxygen torpedoes.
Meanwhile, Sendai used the brief reprieve Maya's sudden appearance had bought her to line up her own salvo. Long oxygen-fueled torpedoes leapt from her tubes and tore into the frigid water.
Some sixth sense, or maybe it was just a healthy respect for the dangers of torpedoes in low-visibility conditions, alerted the Abyssals. The flagship and one of the smaller battleships peeled off, parting ways and spoiling Maya's already tenuous solution. Most of her fish went wide, but she heard two titanic explosions and glanced back to check.
Hits to the bow, outside the citadel. Not enough to enough to stop the Abyssal warship, but at least enough to slow them down. A whoop of glee roared through Maya's parched throat. She might've bought the convoy some time after all.
Sendai had no such luck, her spread was smaller and aimed even more hastily than Maya's. Her fish sailed harmlessly into the vast emptiness, and her maneuvers were far too erratic to risk a reload.
Maya threw her rudder over and reversed course. The two undamaged battleships were detaching from the third, leaving it to handle Maya and Sendai alone. Against one wounded ship…Maya thought she might have a chance, but letting the other to go free was unacceptable.
Her searchlights stabbed into the black frantically probing for a target as her blowers roared in her ears. Splashes drenched her already soaking uniform as guns of every caliber whipped the sea into a froth. She swung her lights towards the muzzle flash and ripped off a full broadside.
Shells arced through the air in every direction as five ships fought a brutal melee. Even Maya's twenty-five millimeters got into the action as she poured fire into every fleeting glimpse she got of her foes. Torpedoes splashed into the furious water, but most sailed wide of targets only barely glimpsed.
Then, a bloodcurdling shriek pierced the air. Sendai had been hit amidships. She was ablaze. Instantly, what seemed like every gun the Abyssals possessed swung her direction, peppering the burning cruiser like a beacon. In heartbeats, Sendai was burning from stem to stern, her hull low by the bow from countless holes.
Maya blinked, but before she could react a fifteen-inch shell slammed into her bow. The massive round muscled its way past her armored bulkheads like they were made of tissue paper and nearly tore her bow off. The blow knocked every bit of breath from the cruiser's lungs, she couldn't even scream as thousands of gallons of frigid saltwater poured through her rent hull and smashed against her battered bulkheads.
Her speed drooped like a rock and her bow dug into the ocean. Her torpedoes were shadowed and with her energy hemorrhaging she'd never get her bow around before her foe's next salvo. Maya felt her world go silent as her searchlights picked out the Abyssal warships. She was staring down the barrel of four massive fifteens.
"YAAASEEENNN!" Sendai howled at the top of her scorched lungs, steaming with everything she had up the middle. Maya's shadowed hull was all but lost in the brilliant pyre of Sendai's burning hull, giving the heavy cruiser precious time to get her hull around. Moments later, Sendai threw her rudder over, angling for the middle of the fleet.
It was just enough light to give Maya a solution. Her launchers roared and torpedoes erupted into the frigid waters. One crashed into an iceberg short of her target, but the other seven ran hot straight and true.
Before they could find their mark, a furious volley of fifteen-, eleven-, and six-inch shells tore into Maya's hull. The smaller shells tore into her superstructure, drenching her soaking clothes in blood. The bigger found her magazine, touching off what ammo she had left and cracking her already battered hull apart at the keel.
—|—|—
Uploader's Note: I imagine most of you read the author's note on Belated Battleships (once hosted by ObsessedNuker) saying he had stopped uploading. I imagine that this was brought in because of me reHosting this. YES, I did get permission from theJumper on the SV forums. Any questions past that, I am happy to answer.
Check out my own kantai story too, if you don't mind. I feel it's evil of me to leave the story at this, but oh well ;)