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CHAPTER 25

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After the rigmarole of paperwork was over and done with, newlyweds and guests alike proceeded to the hotel with the rented ballroom for the lunch reception. Uileag changed to his dress whites, while Ayaka went with an elaborately-designed light blue kimono.

{Ayachi, how does that still look good on you?} Hitomi asked, surprised and a little envious, at the sight of Ayaka having returned to the old folded twin braids.

{Nn? What's wrong with that?} Ayaka asked, confused. She hadn't been paying full attention to their talk, preoccupied ever since the ceremony's conclusion by an inexplicable feeling that she was on the precipice of something important she couldn't grasp.

{I'm sure if you let your hair grow, you could go back to the braids too,} Morrie said helpfully.

{Hmph.}

{You might even look good in them!}

{... flattery will get you nowhere,} Hitomi said, but the pink tint her cheeks had gained was putting the lie to any distaste in her voice.

Ichiyo and Mr Greer had spared no expense; the feast was, even after accounting for shipgirl appetites, sumptuous. A steady stream of speeches, toasts and performances soon blurred together, not helped by ample alcoholic lubrication.

One encounter did stick out, though.

Ms Yukino was seated at one of the tables beside Mr Teruzuki. She was clad in a sleeveless dress the colour of red wine and not looking her 37 years, he in a shirt and grey waistcoat skirting the formality requirements.

{Yukino-sensei!} Ayaka shouted cheerfully. As a teacher of Japanese literature, Japanese had naturally been the medium of instruction.

{Congratulations, Godai-san, Greer-san,} Ms Yukino said. Pointing, she added, {You remember Atago-kun, I hope?}

{Of course, of course!}

Maya's older two sisters hadn't been invited, but Ayaka had seen how she had gotten her hands on a portable hologram projector, linked it to her phone, and brought both it and Teruzuki over, that she might take a photo of the man with both his namesakes. Even after the explanation, his visage had been still one of unvarnished confusion.

{Congrats, Godai-san, Greer-san.}

{Don't say it like that,} Uileag said, embarrassed by the formality. {I'm only one year your junior, aren't I?}

{Remember when you taught us about kataware doki?} Ayaka had pressed on to ask over the two husbands. {Did you know this was going to happen back then?}

The stunned look on Ms Yukino's face as she belatedly connected the dots was something that someone with a more twisted sense of humour might have delighted in.

DeviantArt be-ta/art/KnNI-Awkward-Questions-799174583

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Mr Greer discreetly stepped out of the ballroom partway through the proceedings. Even with all the networking he'd had to contend with on the way to and past making chief, the festivities had been getting stifling. There had been an odd energy to the proceedings that had discomfited him, even if he'd never show it.

He stopped short at the sight of RADM Adams in the lobby outside, looking deep in thought. There were guards forming a loose outer picket line and a shipgirl - the "secretary ship", he vaguely remembered the term was - on close escort.

{Battlestar Galactica Original Soundtrack - The Shape of Things to Come}

YouTube watch?v=x8zsE5zdlsQ

He had been barely a few seconds out the door before the secretary ship whirled on him, snapping sharply like a turret unerringly guided by fire control radar - which she might literally be - and he was struck by a scouring pressure like he was being scanned from head to toe.

It wasn't much of a glare by NCO standards, and it didn't help that it was coming from a beautiful, shapely young woman, dressed in a fine gown that wouldn't have looked out of place in a high-class establishment with exclusive clientele, yet it felt like his innermost being was being scrutinised. As normal as she looked from the outside, instincts cultivated by decades on the seas and more than a few pitched battles insisted there was something off, something primal that raised the hackles of the atavism that still feared the predators of the wild, as if there was a Terminator or some other inhuman thing beneath a skinsuit that didn't fit quite right.

He had spent enough time on the sharp end not to flinch, and it hadn't been the first shipgirl he'd been on the receiving end of an inquisition from either. Nevertheless, he couldn't help wondering nevertheless if this was how junior personnel felt being on the wrong end of him.

The thinking mind that kept its head when all about him were losing theirs wondered too why he had never gotten this vibe from his new daughter-in-law. Was it that he had known her before she had come into her power? Was it that she had been born human in the first place, and that nature conferred something the Summoned lacked? Or was there something else to it? He didn't have enough information to come to a conclusion.

Then the moment passed, as did the terrible feeling, and he felt bad for taking it so poorly. The secretary ship's expression… "softened" wasn't quite the right term, because it implied a level of warmth and familiarity that wasn't present, but it downshifted from actively evaluating whether he was a potential threat to the neutrality of a MP recognising an expected VIP as she moved to speak to Adams.

"Senior Chief!" Adams said warmly after turning to face him, extending a hand that Greer shook firmly and introducing the secretary ship. "Congratulations on your son's wedding, going from serving on one Big Stick to becoming father-in-law of another. This… shinzen kekkon shiki was something new."

"Thank you, Sir. Should you be leaving Captain Tai unsupervised like this at San Diego, though, after what happened the last time you were indisposed?"

"I've taken extra precautions after that. You needn't worry."

They shared a laugh now, but while they may not have known each other as long as CAPT Tai had Adams - few people had that honor - there were enough years of mutual familiarity to let Greer catch the fleeting flash of pain on Adams's face, the subconscious rubbing of the wedding ring. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there for Lucinda's funeral," he said, now sombre.

"No," Adams said with a shake of his head, minute twitches on his face the only sign of the myriad emotions mulling beneath the surface. "You had your son to look after, yourself."

Lucinda, Adams's ex-wife, had been one of the civilian casualties of the Week of Blood. It had not been much of a secret that she had not been suited to the stresses of being a navy wife and that that had been the main source of their terminal marital problems.

"True."

Greer had never been much for introspection, but the month of vigil at Uileag's hospital bed had given him too much time to think, and he had wondered inconclusively why Siobhan had stayed where Mrs Adams had not.

"He's made a remarkable recovery."

Uileag was no musician, to play an instrument, but his passion for the King of Pop had not waned in the 10 years since, and he and the more active of his friends had performed a routine the man himself would have applauded.

"After nine months, three of which were spent on home convalescence, he'd better."

"One of which was spent in a coma, you told me. Not all of us were so fortunate."

"Yes, Sir," Greer said, chastened. He scanned the surroundings, which he still thought more plush than he was comfortable with. "How has the lieutenant been?"

"Jamie? He still hardly speaks with me." There was a slight ragged note to Adams's tone, prompted by the talk of his older son. "Even at Lucinda's funeral, he said little more than that his mother had been going to remarry."

"Two years. Almost three." Greer fought back a wince even as he glanced back in the ballroom's direction. That was a horrible timing to learn something so earthshaking. "Even at our frostiest, Uileag's never given me the cold shoulder for that long."

"Losing Tobias hurt us both in ways that are hard for those lacking similar experience to understand." Adams paused, and when he spoke again, the edge to his voice that had been inadvertently forming was gone, dutifully suppressed. "I hope you never become able to."

Greer frowned at the reminder. The death of Adams's younger son Tobias Z during what should have been routine peacetime flight ops two years ago had come as a shock.

When he refocused on his former superior, it was to the sight of Adams looking like he had bitten into a surprise lemon, struggling with his thoughts and words.

"He said little when I tried to catch him alone after the funeral, but he said enough."

"You know, all the things that you talked to me about the last time we were together at the previous funeral, they still ring in my ears after two years."

"Good!" Jamie L Adams shouted in response to his father's words. Looking away briefly, he schooled his features with visible effort, and in a more controlled tone, he now said, "Good, because-because you know what? They were meant to."

"I told now-Lieutenant Commander Godai five months ago she had a choice how she wanted to serve, but what you've told me before about your boy's reluctance now reminds me of something Jamie said back then."

Jamie scoffed. "'A man isn't a man until he wears the wings of a naval aviator.' Doesn't that sound at all familiar to you?" There was unvarnished pain in his voice.

"Sir?" Greer wasn't sure he liked where this was going.

"Lay off with the 'sirs', Senior Chief."

Greer stared, uncomprehending.

"You're not in the navy anymore, and even if Navy Personnel Command got around to finding somewhere to bring you back into, it isn't going to be under me. You're not NAVENSCIWARCOM's type. After all we've been through, including the Novacek incident, Jeff is acceptable; Husk if you must."

Greer grunted, having difficulty articulating his discomfort at the combination of this informality and the reminder of that event even after all the years of having left the service. "Only if you call me Diarmuid… Husk." The moniker was alien on his tongue, and he couldn't help the reflexive licking of teeth. "Not Dia, though. Not even the missus calls me that."

"Deal." Adams's expression quickly regained a cloudy complexion. "No, I told Jamie that wasn't fair, but he wouldn't be deterred. Harsh words were said, many of them, but one thing remains particularly clear."

"He was only doing it for you."

"Even with everything that setting NAVENSCIWARCOM's strategic direction and overseeing the constructs demands that Paul and his staff can't handle, there still has been enough downtime for me to mull over what he said. Was I…" the words took obvious effort to say, "wrong? Old folks like us, are we so determined to shape our legacy using our children that we're trying to squeeze square pegs in round holes, force them where they don't belong?" Adams's eyes, still alight with pain, flicked over to the secretary ship. "The same goes for Natural Borns."

Greer looked again towards the ballroom doors, unsure what to think. They really were well-fitted; not a sound from within could be heard. He turned back in time to see that Adams had also been doing the same, and couldn't help feeling concerned. "Has Ayaka been giving problems?"

"No, quite the opposite." Adams shook his head. "Razor says Glider has had only good things to say, and in fact thinks the lieutenant commander isn't giving herself enough credit. Much as I appreciate what Katie can do, I'd rather have a dozen who are more capable than they believe themselves to be over a dozen mavericks, though even that's preferable to the abomination in Jane's."

Greer did not snort. Whatever age had done to Adams's current preferences, the things he had pulled off during his earlier years in the service were as belief-beggaring now as they had been then, and his taking brash LTJG Samo under his wing had come as no surprise to any who knew him. Greer had no insight into how NAVENSCIWARCOM's leadership had been selected, but he suspected it was this fair mix of firm and flexible that had gotten Adams chosen to be the command's deputy.

Adams's face turned conflicted now. "Except for her reckless sympathies regarding Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Delano."

"William D Porter?"

"Yes."

Greer made no attempt to hide his contemptuous snort this time. DD-579 had been infamous enough as a figure of FUBAR the last time around. Even without actively tapping into the petty officer grapevine - something he considered himself above doing - he hadn't been able to avoid hearing about how Willie D was as much of a screwup this time too. "That boy of mine really imparted to her all the wrong lessons."

Preoccupied by his disdain and disappointment, Greer didn't notice the complicated look Adams shot him.

"I've never been comfortable deploying the younger-looking shipgirls," Adams said when Greer remained silent for a while. "Even one is too many. Sierra Mikes that look like teens or even kids are bad enough, but most of them are off enough in their mannerisms that anything more than a casual glance or a static photo makes it obvious they're not children. November Bravos don't have that luxury. When they insist on going into combat despite our letting them do otherwise, I cannot help asking myself: Are they serving because they genuinely believe in it, or are the instincts of what they once were and truly are driving them onward, like a 1MC that won't stop sounding in their heads, drowning out any dissenting voices?" His already-troubled expression darkened further. "Mankind couldn't even have 40 years of peace since we Ended at great cost the Terror that wanted the world, following but shortly Yamata… no, not even half that, and this time we can't even do the fighting but must leave it to the children."

Greer grimaced. Few and fortunate were those, regardless of rank or service or nation, that had gotten away from the Terror with unbowed head and spotless hands. That said, he thought Adams was being overly pessimistic.

His thoughts must have inadvertently shown on his face, for Adams next said, "Early breakthroughs like the Skyrangers, rider modifications and fabricators have their uses, I won't deny, but the things that would allow us to use our logistical capabilities to prosecute this war properly instead of leaving the shipgirls to do the majority of the work, we still lack. Even now, months in, Tomas still has far too much on his hands heading up Iteration."

The name was vaguely familiar, but not familiar enough; it took a while for Greer to recall who Adams might have been talking about. "Rear Admiral (Lower Half) Markson?"

"The same."

"A good man." The chief engineer turned engineering duty officer was forward-thinking enough to know how best to explore the new frontier that was hypertech, yet had his feet planted firmly enough on the ground to keep the kookier specialists in line.

"Even so, his hands are tied by how little we still understand about enlightened science," Adams said, a little frustration entering his voice now. "Abyssal low observable functionality remains stubbornly beyond our ability to defeat, beyond what size alone should be able to confer, even though every last shipgirl we've studied tells us the practices of knowing and unveiling are among the meanest of enlightened procedures, such that only those completely incapable of wielding the relevant Spheres are unable to enact them.

"The matter of foci only makes things worse. Would a standardised method of enacting procedures have been too much to ask for? Shipgirls, even those with no other talent for using Prime, have an innate understanding of the application of Or Energy that lets them learn from each other despite their different methods. We do not, even if some hypothesise that Eureka moments are unconscious tapping into the same. It all makes me feel like in a different time, I would have been the old man yelling at clouds."

"Now you're just yelling at the cloud," Greer said lightly, partly in an attempt to hide discomfort at his unfamiliarity with this brave new world of warfare.

Adams shot his former subordinate a cutting "don't you dad joke me" stare, though this one didn't get a very chastened look in response.

Calling the way Adams's lips curved upwards next a smile was probably being charitable. "I know the younger officers joke that the term 'enlightened science' is a gloss to mollify the Pentagon, but in a twisted way, it makes more sense to call magic as it is. The term demonstrates obviously that the power of the supernal is outside context and can therefore do what mundane technology cannot. 1940s technology, on the other hand, we know very well what it should be capable of. You've heard of Essex?"

Not well, Greer had to admit - and Ayaka didn't exactly share much about what her operations entailed with him - though it had been hard to miss the towering carrier despite her laconic nature. All the more so after she had come forward to perform on, of all things, a recorder while her eagle served as vocalist.

"She does all her battlespace modeling and projection entirely with onboard systems, yet both in lab testing and reconstruction from field data, she consistently outperforms the latest predictive algorithms running on equipment 80 years her junior. Consider too that the 16"/45 shouldn't be able to match an Oerlikon for ROF, much less do so without melting into slag. Whether the term is 'Artillery Spotting' or 'EX Barrage' or 'Siege Mode' or something else, and whether it is 'true' enlightened science or merely an 'extraordinary talent', the fact remains that the shipgirls never got the memo.

"If only we could figure out how all this is being accomplished, we could make great strides. As matters stand, I suspect what we have won't be enough. I'd be very surprised if the abyssals don't have spare capacity they're working up themselves."

"How do you come to that conclusion, si-Husk?" Greer couldn't suppress his confusion.

"Tell me, Diarmuid: Where were we nine months after the last time a war started with an attack on Pearl?"

Where were we? Greer's initial thought was that no, neither of them had been born yet. Then he thought again, secretly glad he had spent some time in his retirement going through the history books. "In September 1942, the majority of the Clevelands had not been commissioned, and the majority of the Baltimores, Essexes and Independences had not even been launched." His eyebrows twitched as the implications sunk in. "You think the abyssals have something similar going on?"

Adams nodded. "For a foe that apparently originates from the supernal, we have not seen the extradimensional entities deploy any assets demonstrating similar flexibility to the shipgirls. This is highly suspicious. The analysts suspect anything with such capabilities, Jotnar as we have codenamed them, is being held in reserve for still-unknown reason."

"How certain are you of that?" Greer was still dubious. "All I've seen, admittedly from the limited access I now have, shows the abyssals do little more than uncreatively advance until a target is in range and then attack, secure the area and move on."

Adams shook his head. "The Soviets in World War II and the Chinese in Korea fought with a similarly relentless disregard for losses, but to dismiss them as brutes only capable of human wave attacks was and still is a common amateur error. For all the abyssals' usual indiscriminate brutality, every now and then we get hints that there is intelligence beneath." He turned to the secretary ship, who turned to meet his gaze without needing to be called. "Activate the Babel field."

The shipgirl pulled out some gizmo and flicked a switch on it. Greer smelt a whiff of ozone, felt his teeth on edge momentarily from the anti-snooping device.

"Did you hear about the attack on Whiteman AFB?" Adams asked once that was done.

"Whiteman?!" Greer's voice lowered to an incredulous hiss despite the extant precautions. "That's in Missouri, a thousand miles from the nearest coast!"

"Exactly, but explosions forensically determined to match those created by World War II bombs happened at the same time as the attacks on our other naval bases. It was fortuitous that more than usual of the B-2 fleet was off base at the time, because those present were all either destroyed or unaccountable for afterwards."

Greer looked flabbergasted, both at the explanation and the implications. "If this really was due to abyssal attack, why did they not use… are they not using this method more? The ability to strike with impunity in a way that apparently cuts out the naval delivery platform is a massive gamechanger."

"We do not know with certainty why this hypothetical Exarch capable of attacking from the supernal has held back on this capability subsequently." Adams did not bother to keep how the matter vexed him off his face or out of his voice. "What we do know, though, is that with what's at stake, assuming that the abyssals have shown their entire hand is a hard six I'd rather not roll."

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Authors' Notes: Our continued thanks to now-FC Error for his continued help with characterisation of Adams' progenitor.