Always Advancing
A Girls und Panzer fanfic
Part XXXIX: United We Stand
by Civilis
The first tank to fall as the main battle moved to Oarai proper was the last tank to enter the city, the JagdPanther in Maho's northern battle group.
Its commander had not been paying too much attention to her surroundings. The four tanks ahead of her were more than capable of looking for trouble. There was no other way an enemy could get to her without getting past them until she reached the next intersection. Therefore, the squat green Semovente that pulled in behind her, having been concealed in a garage hidden behind a painted cloth, took her by surprise.
Carpaccio's gunner took careful aim, and fired the 105mm gun on the Semovente into the back of the JagdPanther at close range, knocking it out.
Ahead, the two JagdPanzers, just reaching an intersection, scattered at the report of an enemy tank behind them. The one that went left quickly found an obstacle, an armored wall that pulled out from a side street and blocked its path. It fired, but the shot bounced off the side of the Churchill VII.
From atop Bulldog's turret, where she sat drinking her tea, Darjeeling calmly watched as Assam fired into the JagdPanzer, knocking it out. "Have you heard this saying?" the St. Gloriana commander said with some satisfaction as she watched the white flag pop up, "No trait is more justified than revenge in the right time and place.
In the stands, where the ambush played out on one of the screens, the more alert members of the audience blinked in confusion, especially the St. Gloriana students. There, on the screen, was a blonde, red coated commander, calmly drinking her tea as Bulldog pulled forward to get a shot at the two Panthers that had been ahead of the JagdPanzers.
Meanwhile, just getting off of a truck that had driven her back from her wrecked Churchill VII, was the blonde, red coated St. Gloriana commander that had been knocked out earlier in the match.
"Geez," said Arisa, walking along beside her, "Darjeeling finally pulls a sneaky trick, and it's nothing more than a hair cut?"
"It's not one of your vulgar tricks," said Rukuriri, as she patted her dyed hair. "I had been meaning to try a different hairstyle. This way, we got something else out of it."
Rukuriri had been surprised that Darjeeling had agreed with her proposal.
"But… you despise that girl from West Kureouji, the one that does herself up like you," Rukuriri had said.
"That girl makes herself look like me because she thinks it makes her a lady. She couldn't be more wrong. You, on the other hand, are a lady, no matter what you look like. I'm flattered you'd volunteer yourself as a decoy," Darjeeling had replied.
She'd gotten a wig ahead of time. Then, the night before the match, she had paid a late night visit to Akiyama Barbers. It had taken some time for Yukari's father to create a reasonable facsimile of Darjeeling's hairstyle, dyed with the plentiful Saunders blonde hair dye. Still, it had worked. She would have it restyled to something original and let it go back to her natural color after the match, but today she would wear it with pride.
"So, basically, I was the only one of our commanders to get knocked out," Arisa said.
The Alliance had known that Nishizumi tactical doctrine called for going after the most valuable enemy assets, such as the flag in a flag match. Three commanders would have been too tempting to pass up, especially because the fourth school, Pravda, had demonstrated it could act without a commander. So that's what they put in front of Kuromorimine's initial wedge, or it least that's what it looked like.
"Hey!' said Anchovy, as she pulled an apron on. She had volunteered to help with the tables at the Anzio food trucks now that she was out of the battle.
"Yes, I know you are Anzio's Duce or whatever," said Arisa, dismissively. "Still, we both know the real value of your tank was your radio operator, Saori. That's why we added the radios to the CV-33 and moved her there, next to her fellow cook."
The radio idea had been Katyusha's, in a way.
"Is there some place we could put that Anzio radio operator some place where she's most likely to survive?" Arisa had asked the strategists and commanders during one of the planning meetings, held in comfort in St. Gloriana's team office. "I can add radios just about anywhere. I think the Churchills are our most survivable tanks."
She reached back for her soda without looking, and accidentally knocked over the small Pravda tactician, who was pouting because the St. Gloriana team was unwilling to cut down an antique table so she could see easier.
"Sorry, didn't see you there, short stuff…" Arisa half-heartedly apologized.
"Nobody pays attention to Katyusha," she pouted. After a second, she stopped and grinned. "Rather than a big target, we should hide Saori somewhere Kuromorimine won't look for her at all."
"There aren't much tanks that are small and survivable," Assam countered. "Armor usually comes with size. Besides, in most tanks she'd take the place of a necessary crew member."
Yukari picked up the smaller girl and tried to put her one her shoulders, as Nonna did in the other timeline. Despite her strength from months of loading, the smaller girl was a little too heavy and imbalanced on her shoulders, and they both toppled over on the floor, which fortunately was thickly carpeted.
The two Pravda commanders were quickly over to help their fallen strategist. "Fortunately, Yukari managed not to hurt you, " Nonna said, glaring at the Saunders student. "Let me try." She picked Katyusha up and put her on her own shoulders.
"Hey, what about me?" Yukari said from the floor. "It's not like I'm one of those… oh." She stopped, mid sentence. "You know how Pepperoni's CV-33 was so hard to knock out despite it's poor armor?"
"Yeah, but it's useless. It's unarmed…" Arisa stopped in mid-thought as well, and put on her sneaky grin. "Which means that Kuromorimine is going to know they can win without knocking it out, so they might just ignore it entirely, especially if it keeps running away. And the Semovente 75/18 Anzio is bringing is almost totally useless anyways."
"Hey!" yelled Duce Anchovy. "Saori is my radio operator! She's an important part of Anzio's team!"
"She's a vital part of this operation. She's the best radio operator in high school Sensha-Do, and she knows Oarai," Yukari patiently explained.
"You're right," Anchovy admitted, deflated. "You just better return Saori, unharmed."
"Count on it!"
The Kuromorimine crews were veterans, and had been expecitng an ambush, if not one so well executed, so they recovered quickly. Rather than retreat, they took the Nishizumi school tactics to heart and chose to regroup and attack rather than break off and attempt to traverse Oarai to meet up with Miho's battlegroup.
"I'm engaging two Panthers at the intersection of route 2 and Yokoso," radioed Darjeeling calmly. "I lost track of the other JagdPanzer IV." A shot from one of the powerful cannons on the Panthers bounced off the angled front hull of the Churchill as Assam fired back.
"They seem to be rather annoyed with us," Pekoe added as she slammed another shell into the breach.
"Better us than the rest of the group," Darjeeling replied. "Though Hana's going to be annoyed when she sees what they've done to the flowers in that poor park."
The Panther's next shot missed as the tank shook from a hit from Carpaccio's Siemovente 105/25, which had joined Darjeeling in the intersection.
"I found the PanzerJager IV!" came Rosehip's excited voice on the radio. "She's trying to get around your flank! Have you heard this saying, 'you can run, but you can't run as fast as I can'?"
"I don't think that's a real saying, " Darjeeling sighed.
"I think the Panthers are realizing that this isn't a fight they can win," said Assam, as she fired again. "This is somewhat of a stalemate. They're smart and not giving me an opportunity to hit anything other than their front, and we're doing the same. They'll likely disengage soon."
Pekoe loaded another shell, and Assam fired again. "… and there they go," the strategist said, with some satisfaction."
"Well, follow them… cautiously," Darjeeling ordered her driver. "I hope Kay's group is having more luck."
Miho's battlegroup had been wary of an ambush even before word of the attack on the other group had filtered in. Still, it represented the bulk of Kuromorimine's remaining forces.
"We're just passing the Maus," reported the commander of one of the PanzerJager IVs at the front of the group. "I don't see anything on the side streets, but it's hard with all this smoke and dust."
"Nothing hiding behind the fish market or on the docks, either," reported the other PanzerJager IV's commander.
Miho had the two smaller tank destroyers in the lead, as they were both faster than the heavy tanks and tank destroyers that made up the bulk of her group and more expendable if it came down to a firefight. Behind them, the heavier PanzerJager, the JagdPanther, Elefant and the JagdTiger, followed along, waiting for the lead scouts to flush out a target. Behind them, Tiger 217 and the surviving Konigstiger watched the sides of the formation. Two Panthers served as rearguard, their commanders alert for an attack from the rear.
Tiger 217 passed the wrecked SU-100 and approached the Maus. Ahead, the JagdPanther disappeared into the veil of smoke that surrounded the giant tank.
"Follow Route 2 around the cape and back toward the river," ordered Miho. "If they don't attack, we'll rejoin Maho's group. Right flank, keep an eye on the hotel and shrine."
There was an awful lot of smoke around the wrecked Maus, mixed in with dust and particles from the damage done to the surrounding houses north of the road and the shops south of the road by stray rounds fired during the attack on the Maus.
As Tiger 217 passed the Maus, Miho caught sight of something unusual. She could barely make out a smoke marker sputtering In the gutter, a few meters from the Maus, as if it had been tossed there. The smoke cloud was an obvious ambush location, but where was the ambush? The Panthers hadn't reported anything, and the front scouts hadn't reported anything. The side street was clear.
She turned to look across the back deck of the Maus at the Konigstiger at the other side, and found herself looking up at a grinning face, almost concealed by the smoke.
Before Miho could act or even figure out what was wrong, things got very loud very quickly. "She spotted us!" yelled Noriko into her radio.
Akebi brushed aside her long blonde hair, and took careful aim. The M5 Stuart's turret and aiming mechanism were different than the Type 89's, but she had adjusted quickly in training. Unfortunately, the choice of practical targets was limited; they had been hoping to get the Panthers into the kill zone before springing the ambush. At this range, the 37mm round from the Stuart was just enough to penetrate the JagdPanther's vulnerable rear armor and trigger a white flag.
The surprise cannon report at point blank range followed by the loss of the tank destroyer shocked the entire Kuromorimine group. Despite being wary of an ambush, they had just lost a well-protected tank from the middle of their formation, and, despite the shock and surprise, reacted as trained by checking their assigned sectors to identify where the shot came from. Miho was the only one with eyes on the culprit, and she had another problem to worry about.
Shinobu gunned the M5 Stuart, perched on the back deck of the Maus. It had been easier to board the massive tank this time because the knocked-out tank hadn't put up any resistance aside from some heavily muffled complaints, and the CV-33 had been a more useful ramp than the Hetzer had been.
They had positoned the Stuart sideways to make a clean getaway down one of the side streets, a task which was aided by the lucky presence of a convenient ramp to assist in getting down from the Maus in the form of Tiger 217.
Miho reflexively ducked in the turret as the Stuart passed over her head in its escape.
The crunch of the Stuart's impact on the pavement managed to alert the rest of the Kuromorimine crews as to the location of the culprit. Both Panthers turned to give chase, and the two JagdPanzer IVs at the front of the formation headed up side streets to cut the light tank off before it could escape.
"I think both the Panthers are after us," Taeko radioed Saori. "They might try to encircle us, but we'll still try to get at least one of them into the second ambush."
"Roger, Swan," Saori replied. "Canary, give them a minute to pull away, and then you're up."
"Yes, mother…" Yuuki groaned with mock sarcasm in the M3 Lee. She relayed the order to Azusa in the cupola.
Two minutes after the destruction of her group's JagdPanther, Miho managed to pull herself together and back into the cupola of Tiger 217 just as the back end of the second Panther disappeared down one of the side streets in pursuit of the fleeing Stuart that had driven over her tank. The three tanks in her group that had not joined in the pursuit were forming a loose circle around the Tiger for protection.
She activated the microphone on her radio, and ordered the three to accompany her along their original course along route 2 to cut off the Stuart's possible escape routes.
There were a pair of metallic clangs from the front of the JagdTiger. "Enemy front! One M3 Lee, down Route 2 at the curve by the Cape!" came the ID call over the radio. The Elefant was in the best position to fire, but by the time it fired, the tank had backed around the curve. Miho ordered the pursuit, again watching for potential ambushes, although the four tanks that had headed down the side streets should give them some advance warning of any ambushes.
Still, there was the uneasy feeling that the battle was slipping out of her ability to control. And yet, somehow, it seemed strangely familiar.
"This is certainly one of the best matches I've seen in years!" the head of the Sensha-Do Federation cheerfully exclaimed as he sat down in his seat in the VIP section, arms loaded with food and drink.
Nearby, the heads of the Nishizumi and Shimada families both remained fixated on one of the screens. Nishizumi Shiho's sternly impassive face was normal for her, but it was odd to see the same expression on the normally sociable and outgoing Chiyo Shimada.
"Would either of you care for a drink? I got both tea and grape juice." The Federation head extended the tray towards the pair.
Without turning, Chiyo groped for a cup, managing to grab one without knocking it over. She handed it to Shiho, then grabbed another one for herself.
Once he had settled in to his seat, it was easy to see what had the pair so invested. While most of the Sensha-Do fields had been taken for training matches, few of the matches had been expecting an audience, so the Federation had been able to reserve three of the large railroad-mounted screens for the match. The one in the middle showed the overall situation and count of surviving tanks. The one on the left showed a helicopter-eye view of the battle in the city. The two heads were focused on the screen on the right, which showed a helicopter eye view of the last battle outside the city, where a Tiger I and a Panzer IV went at each other with gusto amidst the houses and shops on the outskirts of the city.
As they watched, the brown Panzer IV fired down a narrow street at the yellow Tiger, then moved away before the Tiger could shoot.
"Can you tell what is going on?" Renta Tsuji asked the balding man, as he snatched the last drink from the tray.
"While I'm merely a fan, and not an expert like these two, I think I have a good idea. The Alliance is merely demonstrating the weakness in Kuromorimine's tactics," the head replied. "It's a lot harder to mass your forces in urban terrain."
"There is nothing weak about my family style," growled Shiho, though she remained fixated on the right screen. "Anyone can inflict casualties from ambush. Still, our crews are better trained, and will give us the edge in the end."
"Is that why you're paying so much attention to Maho's fight?" Renta asked.
"Yes, because that is what proper Sensha-Do looks like," Shiho snapped back.
"Proper Nishizumi Sensha-Do, at any rate," Chiyo added calmly. "I never thought I'd see someone taking on a Nishizumi Tiger with a Panzer IV and holding their own, but that mystery crew is very good. And, admittedly, Maho is, as usual, incredibly competent. Almost as good as Alice."
If there was a barb in there directed at Shiho's family, the woman ignored it. "About the only thing they're not doing right is… and the Panzer IV's commander is finally opening the hatch, like a proper commander," she said with some satisfaction.
On the screen, the Panzer IV had put a block of houses between it and Maho's Tiger 212 in a move to circle around the slower heavy Panzer. A girl in a white and green Oarai uniform had taken the opportunity to pull herself up in the hatch for a better view. A light blue and gray floppy hat pulled over her head concealed her face and hair from the cameras.
The Panzer IV rounded the corner at speed. Rather than stop, it kept forward, which caused the shot from Tiger 212 to narrowly miss the turret. The Panzer IV's commander didn't flinch, but her hand could be seen at her throat microphone, shouting orders to her crew. The tank jerked to a crash halt, fired a glancing shot into the Tiger, then jerked back into motion before the Tiger's next shot clipped the back of the hull Schurzen, knocking a piece off but otherwise not harming the tank.
"Is that a Keizoku hat?" Chiyo asked. "That doesn't seem like Mika's style, but you never know with Keizoku. Still, they seem to have studied how Maho fights. I'll make sure Alice studies this engagement… may come in handy next year."
"I still don't see why this part of the battle is so important," Renta griped. "Your crews are getting hammered in the city itself,"
Shiho finally turned on the bureaucrat, angrily. "I'm not doing this for your stupid pride. This is Sensha-Do. My daughters will not fail to do their utmost."
"It's 12 to 12," Chiyo piped in, almost cheerfully.
Next: Always Advancing XLV: The Steel Trap
Author's Notes: Sorry for the delay in posting; Three chapters remain in this battle, one of which is written. Then some post-battle clean up, and the story is finished.
