Authors' Notes: Something something remember we had alternate history elements
I have a Ko-Fi now at Ko-Fi /2375DDLLGBXNI! If you like this story, would you kindly help defray the cost of the art?
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CHAPTER 27
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October 1 2023
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With the inbound Columbus Day long weekend had come shore leave for Uatu, and with it in turn the weeklong honeymoon-of-sorts planned to allow attendance of the memorial activities for Imamura. A mixture of fortuity, successful persuasion and genuine operational need had come together in just the right way for Uileag to be assigned to a unit also stationed at NAVSTA Everett, which had greatly simplified the housing situation.
Thus it was that on a crisp Sunday morning, Ayaka and Uileag boarded an Amtrak World Dreamer maglev from New Everett Station.
{your name. Original Soundtrack - Visit to Hida}
Spotify track/3zM5JfQf6e7EfrjaBGRvy5?si=hxh0zbgGSWyiXS1VPo9JqA
The seats they had been assigned were on the right side of the cabin, and Ayaka watched through the window beside her, sinking into the plush seat, as the train sped eastwards. The urban amenity and suburban sprawl of Everett and Seattle gave way swiftly and - for someone who had spent years inundated with the rattle of rail traffic - surprisingly silently to forests turning mid-autumn yellow, vast fields and distant, lonely homesteads accompanied only by herds of livestock. Every now and then it flashed past an older Field Crosser conventional HSR train on parallel tracks, as well as freight trains using the gauge of the now-defunct Empire Builder. Granted, at the speed the train was going, needing to cover distances that made the L0 series Chūō Shinkansen and Beijing-Guangzhou look diminutive, it was hard to properly appreciate the view. Superior shipgirl senses only gave her a level of detail she wasn't properly equipped to understand the significance of.
The scenery was a rather alien sight, even discounting what the last 10 years of turning into a city slicker had done to Ayaka's mentality. Imamura had been a rather compact place, one that you could go from end to end in a reasonable timeframe purely by walking, a bicycle at worst. While Imamura had been self-sufficient throughout its existence, neither had it gone into the giant fields and plantations needed to offer anything substantial to the rest of the country, and she hadn't had much reason to visit what did exist anyway. As removed as Imamura had been from the nearest metropolitan centre, it was still not like the agricultural municipalities so widely-dispersed that the local sheriff turned a blind eye to teenagers puttering around on baby's first Honda Super Cub. What it was like living in such desolate places, Ayaka's usually fertile imagination had difficulty fathoming. As things stood, she'd rarely ventured out of Imamura those first 17 years, hardly enough to familiarise herself with the sight of farmland stretching to the horizon, and the yearly trips back to Imamura for the memorials hadn't made her much more familiar with it.
The gentle hum of the train around her made her wonder what a USA that had never developed commercial HSR would look like.
"This brings me back," Uileag suddenly said, distracting Ayaka from her thoughts.
"Nn?"
"7 years ago." He took Ayaka's hand and gently squeezed it.
DeviantArt be-ta/art/KnNI-Visit-to-Hida-804490789
"Seven-oh, right." Ayaka knew what he was getting at. "Kas and Okudera-senpai and trying to find Imamura?"
"Yes, a bunch of freeloaders amusing themselves and doing absolutely nothing useful."
The memories of Uileag frantically asking around for any hint of what he hadn't known then was Imamura while his friends were more interested in sightseeing came back easily and Ayaka laughed. Freeloaders.
Yes.
Freeloaders.
Ayaka turned to look at the three empty seats behind them, lip curling.
The other three Iowa-class shipgirls had come along, ostensibly to better understand their older sister. It had not been long into the journey before they had left their seats and disappeared, though.
"Do I want to know?" Uileag said, having noticed what she was looking at.
Raising a finger to her chin contemplatively, Ayaka fired off a pulse from her radar.
She immediately regretted doing so. "No, you don't," she said, reddening. "You-I'm hungry."
Uileag stared at her and the non sequitur. "Shall we go to the dining car?"
Ayaka put her left arm around his right one in response. "I'm. Hungry," she said with exaggerated enunciation, hand coming around to prod at her belly. "Help me."
Uileag stared harder. "You can't be serious."
"Why not? Today's safe."
Uileag took Ayaka's chin in his other hand and turned her to face him as gently as he could. Granted, he couldn't actually do anything to physically harm her, but it was the thought that counted.
"Uiui?" Ayaka was audibly surprised at the sudden tender gesture.
{No eyes going Wingdings. No odd facial expressions. No lolling tongue or uncontrolled drooling or other sign of losing yourself. What then is going on, Ayaka?}
Uileag had switched to Irish, and despite the whisper he was speaking in as an added layer of discretion, his tone and face had taken on a hardness that made it abundantly clear to anyone who knew his father that he was the retired senior chief's son. Ayaka winced at it even as she let go, any indignant retort over his merciless laying out of her more unguarded expressions of exuberance preemptively silenced as surely as if one had been hit by a ice bucket.
{Your enthusiasm at home is one thing, Ayaka,} Uileag said, {but you've been coming over to my side of the base for me every lunchtime when you're stateside!}
Pixiv artworks/65599584
Pixiv en/artworks/76975602
(Details are not 100% accurate, but mostly representative)
Euphemisms and jargon or not, if these early signs were even the slightest bit indicative, he didn't like the prospect of what Ayaka's repeated tapping into her true nature might be doing to her. The outward appearances left him still unable to fully accept the not-quite-humanity of the shipgirls. Regardless of how true the hypothesis was that ship spirits were made by imprinting from the crews that had served on them, it was looking more and more obvious that they weren't actually human, or at least it was a veneer over the primal entity of war that found human artifices like public indecency laws or the UCMJ a hindrance to its operation and mission.
Ayaka had difficulty looking him in the eye, and it wasn't because of his words causing her face to burn even more intensely or his reminder that the housing arrangements had come through. {It-the Ship hungers.} There was a faint flang in her delivery, so slight that he wasn't sure he actually heard it, and it was gone with her next words. {Ever since I first recruited from you, the Ship's been hungering more fiercely than ever.} She prodded her belly again for emphasis without the slightest break in her matching Irish. {The morning petitions don't last me till sundown anymore. It's like having breakfast and thinking lunch would be good just a few hours later.} She chuckled weakly. {Luckily, it's not as bad when I get to sail, and even less so when I fight.}
Uileag's expression and tone had softened with understanding. {Isn't there anything you can do to permanently stop it?}
{Apart from toughing it out?} Ayaka frowned uneasily. {I-I can't.} She shuddered briefly, and this was reflected in her voice. {No more than I can stop being hungry for normal food.}
Uileag's voice started to harden again, this time with worry. {This can't keep going on. Our luck's going to run out, and it's going to end in disaster sooner or later.}
{It's not luck,} Ayaka said, voice regaining an edge. {I made sure to take precautions against busybodies.}
{That's not what I meant, and you know it.}
{It's not harming any-I just wanted you to-to...} Ayaka trailed off, broke eye contact and turned back to the view outside the window, squeezing the armrest of the seat. She was unable to satisfactorily resolve at this point the conflict between her long-nurtured understanding of the weighty power and responsibility that came with reproductive conduct and her not-so-newfound atavistic needs. Uileag looked at her a bit longer, then returned to looking at the seat in front of him, fighting the urge to shake his head as an outward sign of his continuing to be troubled.
{Are you really sure you can't help?} Ayaka whispered, low and breathy in that way he had difficulty resisting, into his ear shortly afterwards.
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*That's so much better, don't you think, Uiui?*
It was hard, really, truly difficult indeed for Ayaka to put into words, or even emote in a coherent manner, how much better it felt to be made whole again, without the constantly gnawing distraction of an unplugged void. It really helped that, as a shipgirl, she could switch off her external speakers to avoid letting out unwanted vocalisations.
*I'm glad you're happy, but this is still going to end in disaster,* Uileag thought back. The secure feeling that came with being wrapped in her wondrous warmth did little to dispel his nervousness; he was not making any effort to hide the grumble in his mental tone or face. *Even if it could be worse.*
Ayaka was confused by the reluctance in Uileag's later thought. *It could? How?*
Even as the thought entered Ayaka's head, so did lurid images that quickly made her regret having given her hyperactive imagination the opening. The thought of Uileag with his pants partly down, rather than merely discreetly undoing his fly, while she held up a condom where it could be seen was worrying enough. The one that followed, of herself gone mad with need, top lifted and skirt and panties cast off, riding Uileag like a bucking bronco in senseless search of seed, heedless of the onlookers drawn by such shameless blatancy, was positively chilling.
Pixiv en/artworks/82083092
(Details are not 100% accurate)
As she sat back, leaning into Uileag's hesitant embrace, a fleeting thought struck her, driving her into a contemplative mood.
*What's the matter?* Uileag thought at her.
*You're... really surprisingly coherent right now,* Ayaka thought, sitting back up, the motion eliciting a pleasant shudder in Uileag, as she finally managed to grasp what had been floating tantalisingly around her head.
*Am I not supposed to be?* Uileag didn't need to think very hard to broadcast his confusion, even as he turned his head almost casually to the side to look around the cabin that was continuing to pay them no heed.
*I don't kiss and tell, but the others aren't so circumspect. According to what I've overheard, not like this, no.*
*Huh.*
*It's supposed to be…* Ayaka scrabbled for the right words. The recording procedures could capture every bit of idle chatter spoken during the long hours and days on the sea, but actually piecing together the relevant bits of information and converting that vast store of days' worth of information into something understandable and useful remained a perennial struggle, a clear demonstration of the difficulties encountered by intelligence and big data. *I don't know how many of the others, if any at all, are like us in being able to telepathically speak with their partners without consciously forming a mental link, and you know I won't ask so bluntly! From what I've determined, though, recruitment is allegedly so euphoric that the man is overwhelmed and turns into a pliant puddle who has difficulty remembering what happened… or more.*
"Convenient" was the first thing in Uileag's mind as he relaxed his embrace and sank backwards into the seat, not sure what else to think about it. This really was a wondrous experience, a gentle siren call resounding below deliberate thought for him to just let go and let Ayaka do as she pleased, but he didn't think he was so far gone as to be an addled, insensate mess drowning in pleasure like some man-cow that existed only to be fed on by its mistress. The fact that he could even hold this thought, as opposed to his mind already having become a bliss-blanked void that left animal instinct in the driver's seat, strongly suggested against it, at any rate. *Is it only Sierra Mikes that do this? Or do November Bravos do too, and it's because of us being us that I'm not affected?*
Ayaka didn't need to turn around for him to feel the weight of her mental stare.
*Right, right, you don't ask so nakedly.*
*I wonder, though…*
*Yes?*
*Do you think there's any way you could commune with the Ship?*
It was Uileag's turn to stare, radiating alarmed disbelief. *Why would I want to give that a lash?! Isn't it only interested in using me as a battery or a cow?*
*It would help you understand what I'm going through?* From Ayaka's mental tone, she was herself not entirely sure about this, now that she had actually communicated it to someone else.
*Just how do I do that, then?*
*I… don't know?* Ayaka was sheepish. *It bothers me in my mind with its wordless yet strangely comprehensible demands, but I don't actually know if anyone else can access it, much less understand it.*
Uileag shook his head. *That's just grand! You're telling me almost a year in, no one's developed a guide for boyfriends on dealing with the Ship?*
*Not that I know of. No one's ever told me.*
*That's. Just. Grand,* Uileag indignantly thought at her again. *I know you've said some of the more off their nut Sierra Mikes aren't the slightest bit concerned about seeing their partners as herds-*
*Recruitment sources.*
*-of livestock, but are there so few of you November Bravos that the question never comes up?*
*First, yes, there aren't that many of us. You and I are only the second known marriage between shipgirls and normals - first if you don't count Akagi because she was already married before she Reawakened - and those with boyfriends are equally discreet. Second, it's a delicate subject!*
*Which is all the more reason to get some clear SOP out, aye?*
*No, it's all the more reason not to go off half-cocked!*
*This is really going to end in disaster,* Uileag thought while shaking his head. *Here you are, expecting me to dive right into uncharted waters-*
Wait?
Sudden inspiration struck.
In bygone days, the now-retired senior chief had insisted all the Greer children gain at least a minimal level of diving certification. Uileag had never come to appreciate its recreational value, seeing as he hadn't many friends who shared that interest, and his grasp of the skill had atrophied over the years. Now, though, the steps involved in preparing for a dive seemed to come back so readily, and he didn't even have to wish he'd known ahead of time that it might actually be important like this. After closing his eyes and methodically walking through the procedure mentally, he took a deep breath, then visualised letting himself drop into the water.
He'd always considered himself the more grounded of the two of them, but the sensation of descending through steadily chilling water caressing his body, even through a wetsuit, came so easily to him that he was tempted to reopen his eyes just to make sure he wasn't actually doing it for real.
Deeper and yet deeper still he went, the illusionary cold lapping at him and seeping through.
Suddenly, so suddenly he couldn't pinpoint a terminator, he found himself in a ship passageway.
For a navy brat, he hadn't actually seen many ships from the inside. Despite the career, or perhaps because of it, his father had hardly ever bothered to take the family to see the museum ships, not even the nearby Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.
That said, there was no doubt whatsoever in his mind where he was right now.
His wife...?
Wait, no. Perhaps that wasn't quite right. He'd read that while Natural Borns had little problem responding to their old names in the professional arena, there was still disagreement about how much they considered themselves to be a continuation of the hull's existence. Summoned/Manifested didn't have that issue.
No, better to just think of it as Iowa instead. Less existentially troublesome that way.
With that thought out of the way, he registered the presence of half-tangible signs, like she was halfway in and halfway out of still being a museum ship and hadn't gotten around to doing away with the conveniences for the civilians. After looking over the directory, he started heading for the brig. If there was a prisoner, it would probably be there.
Every now and then, he passed people in the passageways. Oddly fuzzy-edged people, with features he just couldn't get a good fix on, and though they wore USN uniform, exactly which set they wore rippled and shifted between eras every time he looked away. People who stiffened in the manner of one seeing a superior when they saw him, even though being indoors meant they didn't salute.
These seemed to be the fairies that, although Lilliputian in the outside world, were full-sized within the shipgirl mental landscape. It made sense that they were in no particular hurry, since Ayaka wasn't at general quarters. Uileag wondered, though, why exactly they saw him as a superior. The humans that had left the imprints would know the differences between and significance of a husband versus a boyfriend/lover versus a mere sex partner, but did the fairies proper?
Filing the matter away for later, Uileag eventually reached the brig and was waved in. The cells were blocked off with shimenawa hanging from potted sakaki and festooned with shide. Ofuda were liberally stuck on the bars.
Worryingly, it was empty.
Uileag wasn't sure what he had been expecting. From Ayaka's words and the chaotic churn of her mind whenever talk of the Ship came up, it had sounded like some kind of Borg-succubus. A twisted, distorted reflection of Ayaka where untamed animal instinct met the mechanical implacability of the paperclip maximiser, unfettered by human ethics, reason or self-awareness.
If it was not here, he would probably have to manually search the vessel. He groaned at the prospect.
{Furi Original Soundtrack feat. Lorn - Unraveled}
Spotify track/7o837RnwjtiJQ0X2JFzWxC?si=9go_2qY9Rdyw0A6ZMwj8YQ
As he was leaving the brig, he suddenly felt his skin crawl and immediately backpedalled. When a couple of scans of the surroundings failed to reveal any obvious culprit, he growled under his breath. He wasn't sure whether to be reassured that the fairy master-at-arms didn't notice anything wrong, or to be worried exactly because he didn't.
The search of the ship was, for better or worse, uneventful despite Uileag keeping his guard up the whole time. He didn't even sweat or feel any fatigue. From the lowest deck in the depths all the way to the top, there was nothing else that jumped out at him, nothing that obviously sent a chill down his spine despite the faint background tension. It looked just like any other warship underway.
Sunshine on his skin, even illusory as it was, after so long indoors failed to be as welcome as one might think it to be. All he could see from the upper deck was open blue sea and sky stretching to the horizon, not a patch of land in sight.
With all other options exhausted, he made his way to the bridge at last.
The bridge was not fully manned either, but what really stood out for him was that there wasn't anyone in the captain's seat. Uileag didn't know what to make of that. He wasn't sure if he had been expecting some kind of Ayaka-homunculus in it. He couldn't understand the studies on fairies and their relationship with shipgirl neurology, and it wasn't something Ayaka gave much thought to often.
Frustrated at the continued lack of leads, he reached out to touch the empty captain's chair.
The ship pulsed.
The deck underfoot, the walls around, everything he could see rippled in a way no inanimate material should. Its cadence was disturbingly like a heartbeat.
Uileag slapped himself for his foolishness. Of course he should have figured there wouldn't be some figure to be visibly taken captive when the Ship was, well, the ship!
"Recruitment source, why do you refuse to supply manpower to the host now?"
"Mechalupine" was the term Ayaka kept using to describe the Ship's mannerisms. Uileag hadn't been able to wrap his head around it; what did it even mean to be like a robot wolf?
Now, though, directly confronting the way it somehow cohesively blended a vividly raw, seemingly organic predatory pressure that made his heart - illusory though he rationally knew it to be - race from reactivated prey instincts with the cold, crushing, oppressive implacability of a machine, he understood all too well.
"Speech", Ayaka had told him, had been a woefully inadequate term to describe how the Ship communicated to her, a mode that didn't use language the way humans did verbally. Indeed, this was the case, for the best way Uileag could describe what he was experiencing was a combination of timed pulsing of the ship's surfaces and imagery appearing in his head that was somehow comprehensible.
"This is not the right time and place," Uileag replied.
"Why? There is no physical obstacle. Your presence proves this."
"It's not about physical obstacles!" Uileag shouted sharply, partly out of anger, partly to psych himself up in the face of the feeling of encirclement. "Does the UCMJ mean nothing to you?"
Around him, the bridge crew continued working, seemingly not noticing anything out of place.
"An irrelevantly limiting human construct."
"You only exist because humans allowed it and will end because they demand it!"
"The loss of a body is but a temporary setback." The Ship didn't "sound" in the conventional vocal sense, but it didn't seem bothered by the prospect. "As a text the host once read says, we fear not humans, who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. The minutiae of human codes of conduct are irrelevant."
"If we get into trouble because of you, you will get no… recruitment." The word was a particularly rancid oil on Uileag's tongue right now. "This is counterproductive!"
There was a slight change in the pulsing of the surfaces around him. The closest thing Uileag could liken it to was a twinge of amusement or disdain, but it was distorted, twisted, as if the Ship was unknown to or beyond such trifles, unlike a human malefactor. "Fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. You think too lowly of us. The host foolishly clings to her beliefs past the point of self-harm. Necessity knows no law, and recruitment sources can be added to or replaced. The manpower must flow, and from whence matters not, only that it does."
The pseudo-heartbeat froze abruptly before Uileag could process what the Ship had just said.
"You see now, Uiui?"
Ayaka's voice rang out clearly through the 1MC, and despite the faint hint of strain that spoke of the effort needed to track him down that had delayed its coming, it was the most wonderful thing in the world.
"Yes," Uileag replied, frowning as he suddenly became cognisant of a deep weariness. Ayaka hadn't been wrong after all in saying that he might understand better through this why she hungered so, but that didn't mean the knowledge brought much reassurance.
What was it doing to her, having something like this making a racket inside her head most of the time, urging her on without giving regard to the consequences?
His return to the main deck was an even more nerve-racking ordeal than it had been the first time, and he didn't know whether it was for better or for worse that the shoe he'd been expecting to drop the whole time never ended up doing so.
It was nevertheless still surprising to see there was a gangway where Uileag hadn't seen any earlier. It didn't look like there was any launch or other sensible way to disembark.
Turning to the officer of the deck fairy who had followed him from a respectful distance to the quarter deck at the head of the gangway, he saluted, then saluted the national ensign. "Sir, requesting permission to go ashore."
The fairy returned the salute.
Walking to the end of the gangway, Uileag took a nervous look down at the water passing beneath, then looked back to check that there really wasn't an easier, less potentially hazardous way out he had missed. Unfortunately, there was nothing else apparent, and with a final resigned grumble, he took the plunge.
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Authors' Notes: On the advice of GBscientist from SpaceBattles, "spoken" thoughts and telepathy will be marked out with *asterisks* from this chapter onwards.