Bassac river, Kaoh Thum docks, Cambodia.

With Georgia's fleet:

We were away by ten, having cleared out of the hostel we'd been staying at, due to Chitose, I heard Lao wasn't getting the damage deposit back, but that was expected when you plow through a door like the friggen juggernaut.

We'd gone back to the Command junk, where my Rigging happily float-danced around me, poor things, they'd been stuck either in the river underwater or floating around the boats. Hakone practically shivered as she screwed on the connecting hoses to her arm-Rigging, lifting her hair up to access the port in the back of her head.

"Hhhhhmmmn, finally! It was a really weird feeling going without my Rigging for so long!"

"Well, its a part of you, that's no real surprise," I replied.

Dianne stepped towards the junk warily, "Are you certain it's quite alright for me to... Step aboard? I can't possibly see this ship being capable of taking my weight."

Anne stepped forward, taking the Fast Battleship by the hand, "I̸t̵s̴ ̷n̴o̸ ̸p̵r̷o̷b̸l̵e̷m̷,̵ ̶j̴u̶s̵t̴ ̸s̸u̶p̷p̸r̸e̶s̷s̴ ̴y̶o̶u̵r̵ ̷d̷i̸s̵p̶l̸a̸c̶e̷m̶e̵n̵t̴ ̸l̸i̴k̴e̸ ̷y̴o̷u̷'̸v̶e̷ ̸b̵e̸e̶n̴ ̶d̷o̵i̴n̷g̶ ̶o̴n̵ ̴l̴a̶n̶d̶,̴ ̵I̴'̵l̴l̴ ̵w̸a̸l̴k̶ ̷y̴o̶u̴ ̸t̴h̸r̴o̷u̸g̷h̴ ̷i̵t̷."

It was nice to see the two getting along, Anne's worry about being replaced by a 'newface' was gone, it seemed.

I turned to Lao as she clicked her own Rigging onto her outer thighs with a small huff of pleasure, "So, how long do you figure we'll stay at Gnome-pen before we move on?"

"Gnome pen? what the fuck are you... Oh, yeah you mean Phnom Penh."

"That's what I said."

"...Anyway, yeah, we won't be staying longer than a day. The main objective is to check in with command in Hanoi, you and Chitose will probably want to call that Japanese Admiral of yours. To let them know that you are still alive and kicking."

Chitose, who had been hitching-on her floatplane launchers, gasped, before cupping her cheeks with both hands, "Ahh! Oh no! Keiko probably called us as we were leaving Xuyen! Who knows what she was last told!"

I gestured for her to calm down with a small giggle, "C'mon Cheeto, we'll be in the capital by the end of the day, you can call up your Admiral then and everything will get smoothed over. You stress too much!"

I climbed into Scooter as Chitose seemed to calm down, before she started pouting at me, "I'm not a Cheeto! Just because you called me that drunk once doesn't mean I'll let you keep getting away with calling me that!"

"Well, now I have to keep doing it," I said with a grin.

"Don't make me give you another atomic-noogie." Chitose stepped threateningly towards me.

I quickly scooted out of reach on my hover-chair of awesomeness, "Hey! I'M the nuclear vessel here, not you!"

"Exactly!"

It was honestly amazing, how long the unbroken string of buildings stretched on for. We'd started off up the Bassac river from Kaoh Thum, and over the past sixty-two kilometers, aside from the occasional orchards, there hadn't been a single break in the lines of houses crowded along the waterfront.

"Cambodia sure has a lot of river towns, huh?"

Lao looked over from where she was cruising beside Chitose, "Over twenty million people live in this country, and rivers have made for good highways ever since humans were able to bash together rafts. It's really not surprising the most heavily settled areas are along the riverbanks."

Chitose choose that moment to pipe in, "So you said that you've been here before, right?"

"Yeah, a pretty big portion of the Royal Cambodian Navy's officer corps received their training in the Vietnam Naval Academy in Nha Trang, well, back when it was still human-held anyway. I was brought to a couple of seminars in the capital to share some experiences and generally be a show-pony to the Cambodian brass, their Admiral, Tea Vinh, was a nice enough guy."

"I'm just surprised they have a Navy at all at this point, honestly," Chitose said.

Lao let out a short bark of laughter, "Ha! To be honest, in any other country, they'd basically be the coastguard. I was a coastguard cutter myself back in the early fifties, patrolled the coast near Virginia for pretty close to twenty-two years! But anyway, yeah, they have about two hundred or so motorized canoes and a handful of soviet PT boats, brown-water ships mostly, you'd get a kick out of the Turya's, they have hydrofoils, loudest things you'll ever hear."

We talked for a bit longer, before setting back into a comfortable silence, cruising on the water next to the emptied ferries operated by Lao's men. Eventually, we came around the final bend in the river, and the City of Phnom Penh came into view.

"Wooow." Hakone breathed out next to me, and with a start, I remembered this was probably the biggest place we'd ever been to. Well, intact and populated, anyway.

"Yeah, it's a pretty big place, huh?"

She looked at me, "How many humans do you think live here?"

I watched congested traffic move sluggishly across one of the bridges nearby. "A lot."

A trio of warships came downriver, respectably sized as far as actual steel ships went, I could see the 30 and 40 mm cannons sticking out of their bows, these must have been some of the patrol boats Lao had mentioned.

"They don't look like they have hydrofoils..."

Lao answered the unasked question, "Those aren't the Turya's, we'd have heard them from a ways-off if they were. Those are two Stenya's, and the single Shershen-class Vietnam donated back in 98'."

The ships stopped a respectable distance from us, and hailed us on a general frequency, what proceeded was an avalanche of gibberish that went over my head as the initial Khmer-sounding words quickly changed to Vietnamese-sounding words, I assumed to make Lao more comfortable speaking to them. The Shershen started to approach again, and a white-suited officer came out onto the bow, along with a couple of armed marines who I could see were struggling not to react to me and my fleet's presence.

He called out to Lao, and the two quickly started to speak. I quickly came under the impression that the two knew each other, and was proven correct when Lao turned to the rest of us.

"This is Commodore Pheakdei Bon, he said that he and his ships will guide our vessels into dock. I was talking to him over the phone when I was arranging things the day before yesterday, and he'll be officially taking the craft off our hands as part of payment for dealing with the refugees we have coming up through the roadways."

I crossed my arms, the sudden movement drawing the Marine's sharp gazes, "Seems like you didn't have to try very hard to convince them."

"Its part of an ongoing political agreement, this sort of thing has happened before with Thailand and Malasia, so there's a precedent. Besides, Pheakdei and I were introduced before, back when I was meeting with his Admiral. I already explained your... Well, you."

The Commodore put both hands together against his chest and gave a small bow, before speaking in Vietnamese.

Lao translated, "He said; Welcome to Phnom Penh. He said a lot more flowery words after that, but basically? It boils down to 'don't break anything, we're watching you, you crazy demon boat'."

I was fairly certain the 'crazy demon boat' part wasn't an exact translation.