18.6.2014
I received a call from Sir Sinclair from the British MI-6 almost immediately after I arrived in my office in the morning. The Abyssals have attacked the Netherlands.
At 0819 hours, according to Dutch civilian eyewitness accounts, artillery bombardments struck the town of Haarlem, just barely outside of the outskirts of the capital city of Amsterdam. The windmills of the dikes located there were targeted and destroyed, along with some 215 civilian casualties as a result of the collateral damage.
At 0825 hours, Abyssal forces were first sighted off the coast of the barrier island of Texel, essentially northwest Netherlands. They occupied the island and began shelling the Netherlands in every direction - targeting as many of the dikes as they could from the island of Texel. Not only did they target the dikes, but they also struck against all military points within their range, crippling the Netherlands' ability to counterattack. Having been informed of this, the Dutch King William Andersson contacted British Parliament to plead for help. Apparently the Dutch King only truly trusts British military power to relieve them of their sudden national crisis, which I do not blame him for.
Sir Sinclair, calling me at around 0840 hours, did so to inform me that he intended to send his contingent of ship girls, the Royal Girls, down to the Netherlands to eliminate this sudden Abyssal threat, but because he felt that he and his fellow Britons had no authority to give our German ship girls orders, he had ordered his own Admirals and commanders at Rosyth Dockyard to remain on standby, because if by calling me and discovering that I would indeed give him permission to command our girls as the situation saw fit, Sir Sinclair preferred to send them all together, as opposed to sending them in two splintered factions. The ship girls at Rosyth Dockyard were the most potent counterattack force, he said, because of how quickly they could be deployed and how quickly they could reach the Abyssals. Mobilizing their warships would simply take too long, and the few warships they did have that could redirect to the Netherlands fast enough would be powerless by themselves to do much of anything if the ship girls did not deploy.
I authorized Sir Sinclair to temporarily order our girls to follow the Royal Girls into battle, but only for this battle. I also made it very clear that should any of them die in the process, they must recover the bodies at all costs. Sir Sinclair already understood this, as it would seem, for he knew that recovering the bodies would be very important.
If he could not recover any of the bodies that were sunk in action, I swore to God that I would make his country pay. Sir Sinclair assured me that such a thing would not happen. Damn right it better not.
Shortly afterwards, as expected, every single phone in the Reichstag was ringing like the second coming of Christ was upon us. No less than twenty-six times did my office door get pushed open, kicked open, slammed open, all kinds of open by various Reichstag members and other staff in the building, including my own husband, who did so to urgently inform me of the situation developing in the Netherlands. The first few times, admittedly, I was startled - but after those few times, the whole door getting abused aspect of today's day at the office quickly got rather repetitive. By the end of the day I was considering calling in a maintenance crew to take a look at my office door to see if it requires some replacement or fixing of some kind after all the abuse it took. And putting a sign on my door that says "PLEASE DO NOT KICK OPEN THIS DOOR". I suppose it is no longer in anyone's book of manners to knock before entering, hm? What was this world even become...forget the Abyssals, how about we fix our own people first, then focus on the others...
In the meantime, I managed to meet with Heidi and ordered her to mobilize an air fleet to send to the Netherlands where the Abyssals were attacking. We, as a neighbor country of the Netherlands, needed to assist in its defense in order to maintain our political stance in the European Union; after all, our neighboring countries are rather suspicious of us because they know of our increased military budget spending that was only very recently passed, so we needed demonstrate that this increase in military spending is for the greater good of the continent. Plus, more personally, because I am one of the few amounts of people in the world who has a bit better understanding of the Abyssal threat than the general populace, I knew what this attack could imply should it go unchecked. While Heidi was busy contacting our Air Force commanders to organize an air fleet to deploy within thirty minutes, I called my husband, who was taking in volumes of calls himself because of this crisis, and asked him to call the Dutch King or the Dutch Parliament to inform them that we intended to send air forces to assist, and that we needed their permission to fly into Dutch airspace. My husband in fact was directed to speak with King Andersson himself, who hastily gave our troops permission to cross over into Dutch airspace. He cared more about protecting his nation and dealing with this threat much more than he cared about politics at the moment.
By 0915 hours, our Air Force prepared a squadron of five Panavia Tornadoes from Taktisches Luftwaffengeschwader 51 (Immelmann) to deploy, and the Army sent over seven Eurocopter Tigers from the joint NATO military operations base in Geilenkirchen, our closest possible base to the scene. I then consulted with the BfV and determined that we needed to put the entire country on alert. I contacted my regional counterparts of the entire European Union to suggest that they do the same, for this could be the beginning of a war against those Abyssal terrorists that have been rumored of in the past few weeks.
At 0930 hours, I met with Heidi and our top military generals and advisors, along with my husband and the President in order to monitor the situation as it developed. Gernot advised me that it may be time to explain to everyone just how big of a threat these Abyssal enemies are, and I agreed. Now that the Abyssals have made an attack on our continent, their threat is now realized, and making sure our country's advisors understand their threat is vital if we are to stand up to them. Our Major General insisted that we simply crush this terrorist band with ease. What could a terrorist organization possibly have that an entire air squadron of fighter jets and heavy attack helicopters could not eradicate? However, both Gernot and I ordered him to stand down. These Abyssals were capable of things we did not know, and we were not going to sacrifice perfectly good air assets and pilots in order to find out now. Besides, these Abyssals were deliberately destroying the dikes in the Netherlands, and massive flooding was imminent in the region. Already the Dutch government had given evacuation orders to its people living in the areas of the country that would be flooded - these Abyssals were not here to simply make a farce. We needed to wait until the ship girls could engage the enemy first, and then the auxiliary British warships in position to attack, along with our air squadron, could engage as well.
That was when we realized nobody else had a clue what we were talking about. Ship girls? Was this a code word for something? What were ship girls?
There was not enough time to explain everything, but luckily at 0934 hours, the ship girls deployed from Rosyth Dockyards made contact with the Abyssal forces at Texel Island. We were in direct communications with Sir Sinclair, who was in turn in communications with the crew aboard one of the British destroyers standing by to provide ranged missile support to the ship girl fleet if need be and were observing the combat. Once the Abyssals were confirmed to be retaliating back against the ship girls, Gernot ordered our air assets standing by to attack.
By noon, the battle was concluded. Our ship girls had emerged victorious, sinking or compelling the rest to retreat back up north, off Texel and into the North Sea. British UAVs that began tracking them upon their retreat currently point them to be taking refuge somewhere in the Faroe Islands before returning to base, and if I am to be informed correctly, I believe Sir Sinclair briefly mentioned a pursuit attack to flush out the vulnerable Abyssals from the Faroe Archipelago.
Thankfully, none of either the Royal Girls or our own Wunderwaffe Girls suffered any fatalities, meaning no one was killed in action. However, Sir Sinclair reported that Bismarck, having put the burden of commanding the frontal ranks of the fleet upon herself, was very close to sinking. Graf Zeppelin, our newest addition to the German ship girl fleet, proved herself the most effective carrier in the fleet while taking significant damage herself. They all safely returned to Rosyth Dockyard, with one of the nearby British destroyers picking them up from the scene of the battle to transport them back to their home port.
Afterwards, our generals demanded us to tell them what this "ship girl fleet" was all about. Their demands were made stronger by the curiosity of the President as well, who said he'd also like to know where and how both we and the British managed to acquire these young women who were capable of standing on water and fighting with large guns attached to their backs.
There was no use trying to hide it from them. Not that Gernot and I were trying to hide anything to begin with. But because this is now the first high-profile Abyssal attack on European soil, we must also reveal our "secret weapon" against them. So Gernot and I explained to them all the existence of the computerized humans who have been built to fight at sea using miniaturized versions of outdated armament technology. We spent nearly two hours explaining everything - how we received this technology from a secret American special operations team who was responsible for the patent behind the ship girls, how we had been sheltering them here in Berlin and keeping them out of the public eye for the most part, and how we had sent them to Britain for a training regimen because we had no adequate training facility with which to accommodate them.
Most of our Generals and even the President were thrilled to learn that we had a secret technology with which to deal with this looming Abyssal threat. The generals who showed their enthusiasm for this project did not specifically state this, but I suspect they were happy about the ship girls because their presence means that we can simply use them to attack the Abyssals and thus save precious men, supplies, funds, and resources that would have otherwise been poured into counter-Abyssal operations, but their reasoning is not needed, only their support. The Major General, the same general who tried to order our air assets at Texel to attack the Abyssals immediately, was the only one who voiced any real opposition, but he was quickly talked down by his fellow commissioned officers. The President advised us to once again get into contact with this American team and, because we had explained that our construction of additional ship girls were limited to their authorization, ask them for permission to build more. Gernot said that we would see what we could do.
Unfortunately, because the Abyssal attack destroyed many of the dikes in the Netherlands, much of the country is now underwater as of this entry writing. Amsterdam is completely flooded, and Lelystad is in the process of being drained wherever possible. Our western border with the Netherlands is crammed with Dutch refugees who have evacuated from their homes in the flooded regions of their country, and our border military and police are working around the clock to set up emergency shelters for them in cooperation with the Dutch police authorities to house them temporarily until all the water can be drained. However, it is not just the water that must be drained, all their homes and businesses must be rebuilt once the water is gone. How much money, time and effort must be put into that is another issue that nobody wants to deal with.