Chapter Nineteen: Apocalypse Now
"We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it."
-Dwight D. Eisenhower-
…
A fleet of Kanmusu would need a commanding officer that adapted quickly and could react well to innumerable bizarre situations.
Admiral Goto had been picked for the post due to his self-discipline, poise and patience. He was a well-respected veteran and deep thinker.
However that had been before he'd gotten his position.
Rear Admiral Chengli's only interaction and opinion of him stretched to include the image of a somewhat crusty, sentimental and rambling man, and dealt with the pressures of his job by daydreaming.
Chengli only had to manage a few Kanmusu, and relatively well-behaved ones at that. Even then he could badly screw it up. Admiral Goto must have it worse.
When Goto explained to the incredulous Chinese officer what he was thinking of doing, Chengli had decided not to ask what thought processes brought him to the final conclusion.
What gave Goto the idea that they could safely and rapidly launch and land a ship girl and her rigging by airlifting them separately, so that the ground troops at Okinawa could have a ship girl that could work with them more closely than any other ship girl right there? Oh, and the summoning ritual, construction of the rigging and equipment, requisition for pilots and planes needed to be completed right now, so the ship girl could reach the battles of Okinawa as it turned from stealthy pre-action to an all-out battle.
Introducing friendly forces at this stage of the preparations? With this much notice? With this much time?
The Chinese naval officer asked Goto what this had to do with him. Goto explained that the Kanmusu they were going to bring back would be a hovercraft.
How did Goto get these ideas and urgency? Chengli asked him why he was speaking to him about the arrangements when Chengli wasn't even on duty.
Well Goto explained that he wanted Chengli to fill out the paperwork.
For the purchase of the Zubr-class and permission to summon a ship girl of that class.
They would also need schematics and the engineers that had worked on this class of ship if they wanted to miniaturise the rigging as soon as possible.
Then arrangements for everything and everybody needed for the summoning of a modern ship girl.
And to divert some military transports aircraft to lift the rigging in parts.
Chengli found his face on the fast food restaurant table as he asked why he should be the one doing all this. Like, within the time constraints?
Admiral Goto said that Chengli was the only officer with actual experience filling out inter-navy paperwork since Chengli had organised similar arrangements for Izumo and Liaoning. In fact, he'd done most of the things on the list.
"But it took months to get those processed materials to the summoning room. I had weeks negotiating the Chinese navy's acquisition of Izumo. And weeks to get the engineers and planes to sort out the rigging and transportation."
"What are you waiting for then? You're wasting time you could be using."
The sheer magnitude of what Chengli had been elected to work on when he was technically not on duty. He better get some serious overtime for this.
…
The defenders at Okinawa had expected that the attacks would have to fight them in close-quarters out of fear of committing collateral damage from range.
Now they were facing an unstoppable foe in close-quarters.
Artemivsk rampaged along the coastline. She had encountered one of those strange armoured Abyssals. She hadn't had time to be briefed about them and this was her first time encountering Abyssal shielding.
The Abyssals could make some of their fighters very tough and resistant with equipments they adapted from their warships. However the fighters would be stupendously slow and arming them with warship armaments would have just slowed them down ever further.
Not for Artemisvk. She overloaded the Abyssal figure's shields with her two CIWS turrets, 5,000 rpm of 30 mm each turret. Then she loosed a barrage of rockets.
The Abyssal's shield sparked and flashed and failed to contain the damage.
As the enemy soldiers looked on, Artemisvk dashed out of the way of artillery fire and riddled another group of soldiers with holes.
A column of enemy tanks heading for Artemisvk was largely demolished by fire support from her allies. The ones that did make it through were met with a blizzard of destruction.
Sergeant Asai called to command.
"I recommend we send in everyone now."
"Roger that," said the coordinator aboard USS Avraham Lincoln.
Attack helicopters and landing craft launched from the human ships.
…
Major General Hara had cornered the escaped captives and hadn't expected their audacity.
One of them had thrown what seemed like a smoke grenade and they had taken both Tatstuta and Yuubari in the scuffle.
"General."
"What is it now?"
The soldier had appeared at the woman's side and sounded frantic.
"There is something that is releasing the hostages and eliminating our positions."
"Well can't you deal with it?" said the irritated woman, "Is it only one person?"
"Yes, but it seems our small-arms fire just bounce off and the person is going too fast to be hit by anything larger."
"I fail to see why you need to concern me."
"We think it is one of their ship girls."
The woman froze at that.
"How? What made you think that?"
"She came in from the water," explained the soldier, "She just went straight onto the beaches."
"So the humans had something like this," mused the woman, "I'll need to wrap things up here."
"General," said the soldier, "you're not thinking of taking the person head-on are you?"
"It seems the humans can get their warship armaments and speed onto the land," said the woman, "So I would be at a disadvantage."
"We could get you into your equipment."
"But I would be obliterated by the human forces as soon as I enter the water," explained the woman, "Launch some aircraft and missiles at her."
"They would be shot at as soon as they leave their protected positions."
"Well, hopefully some of them make it through," said the woman, "We need to stop this person before she stops our plans here."
…
The last reinforcements arriving to the battle scattered in all directions.
"Was that Arty just then?" asked Kirov.
"I didn't realise she could come back in this form," said Severstal.
The ship girl was now travelling up one the main roads on the island, causing havoc.
"For this time only," said Kirov, "I will wish that particular Ukrainian girl good luck."
…
"How did the humans get these things?" demanded the Major General as she stared at the reports.
"We have no idea when they had so many highly advanced ship girls," replied the soldier.
The Abyssals were not prepared for the humans to somehow miniaturise jet fighters, helicopters and cruise missiles for ship girls as well.
The situation for the Abyssals had been going so well up until now. However it seemed like they were going to have to abandon their mission.
The southern demon had no intention of dying like the aircraft carrier demon had.
"We need to withdraw for now," declared the demon, "And find a way to combat these new human innovations."
…
"Yuubari has stopped breathing again," exclaimed Akatsuki.
Hibiki began to resuscitate the light cruiser.
They had managed to escape the tunnel and hospital and had avoided the soldiers running about. They then dragged the light cruisers to another dwelling and were now trying to tend to the injured ship girls.
Samidare finished tying a bandage around Tatsuta's knife wound.
Tatsuta was actually in better condition than Yuubari, which worried the ship girls if what Kirov said about the enemy overhauling the victims would be correct.
Overhauling a ship girl meant replacing their internal systems. The Abyssals could conceivably have wrought concealed damage to Tatsuta.
"Uwa!" yelled Inazuma with distress, "When are we going to get medical attention?"
Ikazuchi returned to the group with an armful of household medical supplies.
"How's Yuubari?" asked Ikazuchi.
"She's not breathing," answered Akatsuki. Hibiki was desperately trying to breathe air into Yuubari's lungs for her.
Ikazuchi calmly laid down the supplies than sat cross-legged next to Yuubari. She just took the light cruiser's hand and prayed.
Something out there must be listening, because the light cruiser gasped for air and began breathing again.
Ikazuchi never thought that laborious wheezing could be so reassuring.
"Yuubari!"
The light cruiser just coughed and spat out a wad of blood. She didn't open her eyes. One of which had been removed.
(Cough) "Where is this?"
"Just keep staying alive, you hear that Yuubari-san?" said Inazuma.
(Cough)(Cough)(Spit) "Is this another dream?"
"No," replied Hibiki, who was now testing Yuubari's pulse, "You're awake now Yuubari."
"The others?" (Cough)
"Tatsuta's here," said Samidare.
"You're lying. You left all of them behind." An irate expression formed on Yuubari's pale face.
"She's here," Samidare guided Yuubari's hand to Tatsuta's mechanical halo.
"Ah," said the light cruiser, "So what about the others?"
"We're working on it," lied Samidare.
"Good," coughed the cruiser, "I'll go on ahead, okay?"
…
It was just after Yuubari had returned from delivering supplies to islands at night on missions that wre called the 'Tokyo Express'.
After those islands had to be abandoned by the Imperial Japanese, she received another assignment to patrols.
She found herself flooding after being hit by torpedoes. She sunk after numerous attempts to keep her afloat and tow her to port with the help from her accompanying destroyer, Samidare.
…
Yuubari didn't move again after that statement.
Samidare shook the cruiser repeatedly, but Yuubari didn't move.
A teary-faced Akatsuki pulled Samidare off Yuubari. Hibiki asked Ikazuchi to find something to cover up the cruiser's body. Inazuma just kept sitting there, looking completely overwhelmed.
Yuubari lost her fight again.
…
The battle was going favourably now as the attackers surged on to the island and overran the enemy's positions.
"We're all full on this ferry," yelled the ship master as thousands of evacuees waited for a way to get off the beach.
Evacuating a few hundred thousand civilians while in battle would require more transports than the militaries possessed. So there had been a call for volunteers to assist.
More people had volunteered than the most optimistic predictions had expected.
The Japanese were surprised at how vigorously the request had been taken up by the Asian nations. After all, they had been shown to have almost abandoned them just a few weeks ago in the Abyssal attacks last month.
But now ships of nations from India to Russia to New Zealand and more were responding to the call. Hundreds of captains of civilian vessels braved the combat to help the evacuation.
At Dunkirk during the second world war, hundreds of thousands soldiers left on the wrong side of the English Channel had been lifted by hundreds ships and boats while under harassment from the then undefeated German Luftwaffe (air force). That operation had been hastily thrown together and over eight days, hundreds of civilian craft had participated at their own peril.
And now at Okinawa, the same courage and daring was being displayed as they pulled people from the boats and water and ferried them to safety.
…
Izumo scrunched up her face as she concentrated on the missiles and jet bombers entering the air.
She was vectoring her jet fighters to intercept while she also needed to receive and rearm her flight of helicopters.
Akagi and Amagi were awed as they watched the helicopter 'destroyer'.
They had seen Izumo launch and coordinate helicopter and aircraft when she had been in steel form. But seeing her doing it now she was a ship girl was breathtaking.
Her helicopters touched down on the flight deck on her left arm. She then swiped an arrow from her quiver and launched another flight of F-2 jet fighters.
Even while managing the actions of her pilots already in the air, Izumo's concentration didn't waver. She focused on the point she wanted the jets to go and stared it down like it had committed a grave and personal crime against her.
Liaoning was managing dozens of Shenyang J-15's that were struggling to keep up as well as Izumo's F-2's. The pilots had needed to adjust to the new avionics and electronic subsystems installed on the fighters recently at the workshops at Kure.
Shenyang J-15's were cutting-edge for the Chinese, but it was difficult to interface its technologies with the other navies' equipment and methods.
The setbacks stop the pilots slaughtering the slower Abyssal fliers and the larger regular-sized jets the enemy had at their disposal.
Kirov was focussing on keeping up a steady stream of coordinates for all of her missiles. There are missiles. And there are targets. Her fire control computers were calculating trajectories, angles, flight time, atmospheric conditions, and enemies as they guided hundreds of missiles to their destinations.
Severstal had been alerted to the presence of Abyssal warships coming in.
"They have several Wa-class transport ships, sir," she reported.
"Severstal and submarine Kanmusu are to intercept," ordered Cammens.
"Permission to use MIRV nuclear ballistic missiles?" said Severstal hopefully.
"Request denied."
"It was worth a try."
…
The plans had worked well, although there had been flaws.
Those flaws including covert human strike teams releasing hostages and their ship girl captives escaping.
And now those plans were unravelling completely.
Southern Demon wondered if the Abyssals would be better off just bludgeoning the humans to death by just sending out huge Abyssal numbers to attack human strongholds.
But their orders were to wait.
Maybe they needed more time to study the humans. More time to reverse-engineer and improve their technologies and tactics.
Maybe they just needed to wait to build up forces so they could wipe the human infestation clean from this world.
Maybe they needed to wait for the moment when the organised resistance of the humans collapsed.
The demon sighed. She could only report her failure and wait for another chance to prove herself.
…
The group of special forces had reached the ship girls in Nago.
They told them they had orders to get out the captured Kanmusu.
They told them to leave Yuubari behind.
"She's dead," said the Delta Force operative, "We've got to leave right now."
"How about no," said Hibiki, "Khorosho?"
She was the only one still composed after Yuubari stopped moving.
"Look," said the operative, "We know that you've ship girls have had it difficult recently, but buddies get killed in war."
"We're not leaving her here."
"I don't believe this," said the operative and he left the room, "Fucking ship girls I swear."
"Hibiki?" said Akatsuki, "They didn't agree to bring Yuubari-san along?"
"No."
"Heads up!" shouted the operative as he entered the room again, "The enemy has those shielded Abyssal types surrounding us. The envelope is closing."
"We'll defend her then," said Hibiki, standing tall while the other destroyers were sobbing endlessly on the ground.
"You fucking serious," swore the operator, "I'm not dying here for some shitty Japanese island or ship girls."
He left and Hibiki heard him yelling to the other special forces soldiers to flee.
…
It was too late for the soldiers though.
They stumbled away from the house as the vehicles and enemy cornered the house.
They had broken out of the encirclement by taking the route with the least enemies.
The Commando-class swiped at two of the group and their twisted bodies flew several metres.
It then punched one of the operatives, pulverising his skull into a bloody mist.
The three that were left managed to escape.
The Commando-class wordlessly turned to the house and lurched towards it.
They were not after those insignificant pests. They were to retrieve the Kanmusu.
…
Artemisvk struggled up the slopes of Nago.
She suffered a huge drop in speed whenever traversing high angles or heights. She struggled to retain speed as she navigated the obstacles leading to the city.
"Where is the objective?" asked Artemisvk.
"We know some of them are in the hospital and the others have taken shelter. Check these coordinates."
"Roger that USS Abraham Lincoln."
A wall of tanks blocked up the street. She could not traverse their height.
Not with their turrets on.
She destroyed the tanks and tore off one of the tank's turret section. Then she jumped up on the tank and passed through.
She proceeded to the hospital.
…
Was the ship girl unstoppable?
Major General Hara pointed to the armoured personnel carrier arriving at the hospital.
Two stretchers holding Kanmusu were thrown in its troop compartment.
Apparently the ship girl could also knock aside road blocks. What had the humans built?
They needed to cut their losses and withdraw for now.