We came to a halt about an hour later, looking at the structure that stretched across the smaller river we'd been traversing. I cruised up to Chitose.
"Pretty big dam huh?"
She turned to face me, "Ah, looks like we'll have to come ashore and walk around it, Lao?" The Frigate looked over, "what's this dam even for anyway?"
"It's a hydro plant, honestly? I forgot it was even here."
"How do you forget a damn dam?" I said incredulously.
Lao started cruising towards the shore, "I know you got your act and everything, but that was bad Georgia, like, really, really, bad."
I looked to Chitose as we cruised after the Frigate, she simply shrugged, "not your best, I'll admit."
I harrumphed, crossing my arms, "Well,I think I'm funny."
...
We made landfall shortly after, the lake had muddy dark clay making up the embankments here, so we were able to step out of the water easily enough. Well, the others did, I just sat in my hoverchair like a complete boss. Ahh, what was that cartoon? The one with the glowing balls, and the guy with the spikes on his head? He had a hoverchair...
While I tried to remember the name of a Japanese cartoon from decades and another life ago, Lao turned to us, a map in her hands, "There's a split in the river here, we'll be headed North, so the next confluence we come upon, take a left, got it?" We nodded as we traipsed through the underbrush.
"Pardon, but what is a confluence?" Diane asked.
Oh! I knew this one! "It's basically where two rivers meet to make one," I said, preening at my superior knowledge... well, not that that was saying much when Diane is just a few days old. BUT STILL! Take your victories where you can, right?
Ta-01 risked a look around the tree she was hiding behind, the underbrush was thick, fortunately, so she didn't have to worry about hiding the plethora of guns mounted under her cape.
The Trio of human craft, the same patrol boats from before, steamed past them, unaware.
"Where's the rest of the enemy vessels?" One of the Ri's asked, 01 had managed to wrangle two of them into this insane escapade, along with a Ne, a pair of Tsu's and-
"Why the hell are we even hiding? They are just patrol boats!"
And the Ru, not that she'd really been given the choice to have her here.
"And you want to... what? Shoot them? Here? When we KNOW they were escorting Kanmusu around, Kanmusu that we don't have the exact location of any more? Are you insane?"
"Bitch I sailed under Jersey for four years, I know fucking insanity. This? This is just plain cowardice." 08 spat, quietly, for all her bluster. Unwilling to give their position away early by shouting.
"It's prudent," Ta-01 said, practically whispering herself, "If we destroy the human escorts, the enemy fleet will know we're here, and might get a proper alpha strike off on us. Or do you WANT to catch a missile with your stupid face?"
And that was the great fear, wasn't it? No one knew where that monstrous volley of missiles had come from, the only guesses originating from the Himes themselves. Scuttlebutt had it that the enemy had a modern warship, like Kitty Hawk-Hime, though no-one had any idea what it could be. Jersey-Hime had not deigned to outline just what ships carried such weapons in detail, though there had been mutters that one of her sisters or a Destroyer of all things could have been involved.
Personally, Ta-01 thought it was the submarine, though it sounded silly it was big enough, and from the few Kilo-class subs they'd scrapped early on, submarines had come a long way since the era most Himes were from. Had they not been steel hulls they'd have likely been quite the hindrance.
"I for one am enjoying myself!" The Re said, hiding in a bush as her tail peeked out from behind her, leafy branches sticking out of its maw, "It's like that game 'search and destroy' some of the ships play! Except when you're found, you actually explode!"
Ta-01 took the safe bet and didn't respond, watching as the human patrol craft finally turned the bend out of sight, "Alright, we are clear, gogo!"
The small fleet quickly re-launched themselves, headed down the river as quickly as they could while keeping the emissions from their stacks low. They carried on like this for a half-hour, before coming to a major obstacle.
"The hell is this thing? Doesn't look like a normal bridge to me." The Ne said.
"I can see the water churning in the gaps, looks like turbines, must be a dam." 01 said, "humans use them to generate power.
"Well, I don't see the enemy ships, they must have gone around."
"Well? What are we waiting for?!" 08 said, cruising towards the dam.
"Wait! What the hell are you doing?!" Ta-01 yelled.
She was answered by a rude gesture as the Ru came near the turbines, "Sure would be a shame if the human nests around here lost power wouldn't it?"
She cruised into one of the dam's intakes, before bringing her left arm's Rigging down on the churning machinery.
The turbine crumpled almost immediately, struggling against the Ru's armor for a brief moment before its emergency cutoffs kicked in, alarms started blaring up above, and shouting could be heard coming from one of the buildings.
"You god-damn neanderthal!" Ta-01 turned to the other ships, "come on! Get through the opening before the humans can investigate!"
The fleet cruised through the intake 08 had stopped as quickly as possible, getting churned foam stuck to their waterlines as they came out on the other side.
"Oooh! So sudsy!" The Re said, scooping up a handful of foam as they steamed away full-bore. Human utility vehicles had just started to pull onto the dam as the Abyssal's left visual range.
01 furiously smacked the Ru's arm, clanging against her armor as she hissed, "The hell is wrong with you?"
08 grinned, "Just makin' a hole." Her grin morphed into a scowl, "I'm gettin' tired of all this pussyfooting around, Ta, we're here to fight ships, not sneak around like damn submarines."
"And what if they alerted the army? We'd have them swarming us within-"
"The Cambodians ain't got shit!" 08 interrupted, "All their firepower is concentrated on the Mekong down south, near the border. Anything they'd be able to redeploy fast enough to catch us wouldn't even scratch our paint, and anything that could, they wouldn't be able to hit us with anyway."
"And the Kanmusu?" 01 asked.
"Are who we're goin' after anyway!" 08 yelled, "I ain't gonna be scared of a few screening vessels and a single turncoat! And the submarine? PFF! just step on a beach and her torps are fucked!"
"She might be the one with the Cruise missiles!"
"Then we shoot her first!" The Ru shrugged her shoulders, her massive Rigging shifting in response, "Regardless, we'll be catching up to em' soon. They weren't all that far ahead of us, and they probably lost time goin' around that dam back there."
The Aviation Battleship next to them giggled, throwing her arms up excitably, "Yay! You hear that Mr. Slithers!?" The Re turned to her tail, who 'looked' back. "Ta-Tartines await!"
The fleet sailed on in silence for a moment, "I didn't ask before," 01 started, "but, what is a Tartine?"
"It's a fancy sandwich!" the comparatively small girl said happily, grinning widely, "I've always wondered if Battleships taste different based on class! Cruisers do."
The Ri cruising next to her suddenly decided to pick up speed, coincidentally putting Ru-08 between her and the Re.
"I... see." 01 said awkwardly.
...
The Abyssal fleet carried on for a few more miles before they were faced with yet another difficulty.
Ta-01 looked at the fork in the river as the Ru cruised up to her.
"Well glorious leader? Which way are we goin'?"
"We might have to send out another pair of scout planes," 01 turned to one of the Ri's, "send out a pair of flying fish, one in each direction. Have them stay low in the canopy, same as before. Try not to be seen."
The Ri nodded, getting her 'fish ready, soon they were away, flying so close to the treetops that they rustled the leaves in their wake.
The Abyssals drifted closer to shore before mooring themselves in place. All they could really do now was wait.
With Chitose:
We were making good time, cruising past small islets in the middle of the river, the trees here were healthy, vibrant green leaves swaying in the breeze, a far better sight than the sorry excuse for vegetation further down on the main channel. When we'd first come into the Mekong.
"Dragonball Z!" Georgia said suddenly, smacking a fist into her open palm, startling Anne and Hakone, who'd been cruising next to her.
"What?" I said, looking over at the Abyssal Submarine, goodness, I was really getting used to that, wasn't I? Honestly, between Hakone, Anne, and Diane, I was getting far too used to being in the company of Abyssal ships.
"That's the cartoon with the guy in the hoverchair! Dragonball Z! Man, I've been struggling to remember that for the past thirty minutes!" Georgia said.
"That's an Anime, isn't it?" I asked, slightly unsure. I generally wasn't all that savvy when it came to the cartoons, I'd sunk far before its popularity in Japan, and had been quite preoccupied since. I'd caught a few episodes from different series when the Destroyers had been watching them, but without context, they all sort of blurred together.
"Yeah! The main evil guy, Freezer or something, had a kick-arse hoverchair!"
"And... what brought this up?" I honestly dreaded the day I was able to understand the Subs thought process.
Georgia quirked a brow, before gently knocking on her Rigging, "Cause I have a kick-arse hoverchair?"
"I thought you called it your 'mobility scooter'?" I said.
Georgia pouted, "Hey! I thought I told you already Cheeto, no displacement shaming!" Oh god again with that-
"Grrr! I'm not Cheeto!" Kami-knew if that got around the base back home I'd never be rid of that nickname.
Georgia made to say something, but was (fortunately) interrupted by Lao, "It's Frieza, not Freezer, and how the hell do you know about that, anyway? Abyssals don't watch TV, let alone re-runs from the early '90s." We all looked at the Frigate, "What? I watched the retro channel, sue me."
Georgia just shrugged, looking slightly shifty, then again she usually had that look for some reason or another. "Well ya see, the thing is- HEY LOOK A DISTRACTION!" she pointed behind us.
Her ships looked, because of course they would, while me and Lao continued looking at the Submarine, unimpressed by the obviou-
"Hey! Uhm, girls? There a recon plane following us." Hakone said uncertainly, looking at me, "It's not one of mine."
I whipped around to look, and sure enough, barely visible for a brief second as it skimmed across the canopy, was an Abyssal recon plane. It must have been skimming the treetops to avoid our Radar.
Lao turned to Georgia, a serious look on her face.
"Damn, you're good, I'd have never seen that if you hadn't pointed it out."
She turned to address the rest of us, "Chitose, chase off that recon plane, it's probably already radioed-in our location, but no reason to let it think its welcome to keep shadowing us! Once your planes are away we need to double-time it, people! Once we make landfall downriver we'll be a lot harder to detect, but until then we're sitting ducks if whoever spotted us decides to send a few squadrons of bombers after us!"
Georgia, in the meantime, had raised her hand, index finger pointing at the sky as she opened her mouth to say something.
She paused, then dropped the hand again, closing her mouth with a perplexed expression on her face.