We continued up the mountain trail, and it was a mountain trail now. Any remaining trees were short and stunted, and the undergrowth had petered off, leaving only scraggly shrubbery as far as the eye could see.
Well, that was a lie, we'd climbed so far up we could see far off into the horizon, a sea of green marking the jungle we'd come out of. It was honestly a good thing we ship-folk laughed at the idea of stamina, or we'd never have been able to keep up the pace we had at this incline.
I had vague memories of climbing a mountain once, before, there had been a sign at the top, though I couldn't remember what it said, and a... clarinet player?
I squinted, thinking harder, there had also been, an inflatable T-rex?
What the hell was even going on back then?! I shook my head, memories of a past life once again taking a back seat to this one.
The wind had picked up as we marched, and small droplets had started to sprinkle our hull on our hike. The sky was a uniform grey, except for a few spots of white to the West, where we'd come from.
Lao had taken the lead, once we'd cleared the brush and started our climb. The Vietnamese Frigate stuck close to Ky Hoa, who herself was never more than a step behind.
That may have been due to Anne following close behind them both, enjoying the slight drizzle by the look of her. The massive Cessex still scared the bejeezus out of the Minesweeper apparently. I'd noticed Anne had been sticking close to Lao lately, and that the Frigate herself had started to warm to her as well, ever since she'd saved her from that Ri back there. It was good that the big girl was trying to make friends.
Still needed to teach her not to loom so much though. If I hadn't been elbows-deep in her guts at several points, evenI would be intimidated with her leaning over her cane at me.
Diane had seemingly taken over 'prisoner duty', staying near Robin, who did her damnedest to try and avoid direct eye-contact. She wasn't shying away from her new step-sister as much, at least, so I considered that progress.
...
Man that whole situation is messed up.
Uhh, I needed a distraction, "Hey 'Tose," I called, testing the nickname, Chitose didn't respond, still conversing quietly with Hakone.
Flustering it is then.
"ChiChi!"
"Wha-" Chitose cut herself off with a deadpan frown as I started to giggle.
"Ha! You even answer to it now!" I accused teasingly.
Chitose gave me a nudge, "Oh don't even! What if I started calling you something embarrassing?" She asked.
"How do you embarrass that which has no shame?" I questioned rhetorically.
"Oh, I'm sure I could come up with something..." Chitose said, putting a hand to her chin in thought.
"I unironically wear a foam pirate hat in public," I said flatly, "Hell, I spray painted one of my SDV's like a damn parrot."
"And it's very mature of you to admit that looks ridiculous," Chitose nodded agreeably.
I scuffed my nails against the front of my dress, affecting a snobby British accent, "Of course my dear ChiChi, I am the very model of a mature and proper lady, after all," I warbled.
"You sound like an idiot, stop that," Chitose said smiling nonetheless.
"Is that what... I sound like?" Diane asked worriedly, looking at the two of us, her hands clasped in front of her breast.
"Ah! No! Diane, you sound fine!" Chitose patted the air with her hands, "you're British, you're supposed to sound like that!" she continued.
"I'm still not entirely sure what that is..."
I shrugged, "Maybe someday we'll visit England, eh? Have some blood pudding and Eel pie while we're there?" I asked.
Diane blinked, "Eel... pie?"
"An eel is a type of fish, basically like a living underwater noodle," I said.
Diane nodded, still a little mystified, "and... what is a pie?" she asked.
"A plane!" Lao shouted.
"I've never heard of that class, what are its specifications?" said Diane.
"NO YOU DAMN- PLANE! THERE!" Lao pointed off into the distance ahead of us.
Now that I was listening for it, I could hear the high pitched keen I'd come to associate with Abyssal aircraft, I checked my Radar and, sure enough, there were contacts. Though even though they were within hearing distance, I couldn't see them. They were likely too small.
The Vietnamese ships scattered, though why they bothered I couldn't see; The area around us was nothing but rocks and shrubbery for miles, if they were going to pass over the ridge ahead of us, they'd see us no matter what we did.
Still, when the pair of (comparative to my girls anyway) short Kanmusu flattened themselves on the edge of the ridgeline ahead of us, I bade my girls follow suit, before disembarking from Scooter and doing the same.
I crawled up to them as they spoke to Chitose.
"-ook like recon planes, spotters, what do you think?" Lao was asking.
Ky Hoa winced, "I dunno Abbie, you're the plane-expert here," she glanced at Chitose, "well, 'cept for you, of course, missus Chitose, what do you think?" The Minesweeper asked politely, pushing the rim of her bridge-hat's brim out of her eyes.
Chitose listened to the engines for a moment, head cocked like a dog listening to a funny sound, "Seaplane, definitely," she nodded, "that lower pitch is a dead give away, it's likely the spotter for a Cruiser or Battleship."
"There's more than one," I said, crawling up beside Chitose and startling the other Kanmusu, "M'Radar has three more further out, looks like they are flying in a search pattern," I finished, tapping my noggin.
"Searching for what? Us?" Chitose turned to Lao, "Is there anything else they would be after out here?"
Lao shrugged, thumbing at Ky Hoa, "Ky said the whole border provinces are on fire, remember? Could be anything. All that's in that direction as far asI know is an old rubber plantation, but that's been abandoned for a good long while," she finished.
"Uhh, girls?" Hakone said with a bit of dread, as she peeked over the ridgeline, "It's turning around!"
I took a look at my Radar and, sure enough, the contact had turned around, at almost a complete one-eighty towards us.
"Did it see us? How!?" Chitose asked, before seeming to freeze in-place, likely having an internal conversation with one of her fairies.
She slowly craned her neck to look behind her at her smokestacks, still merrily chuffing out a thin white trail of smoke, "Damn it," she hung her head.
I quirked a brow, "There's no way they can see that at this distance," honestly, a woodstove would put out more smoke than that!
"There's a fairy piloting that thing Georgia, to them, this?" Chitose gestured to the smoke coming from everyone's stacks, "might well make this mountaintop look like a volcano!"
"This is another one of those 'special ship-sight eyes' things, isn't it?" I asked, annoyed.
She nodded, even as Ky Hoa looked at me, confused.
"It is but a single floatplane, correct?" Diane stated more than asked, crouched down among us, "hardly a threat to a concentrated burst of AA, I'd imagine."
I opened my mouth, but surprisingly Robin, of all ships, was the one to respond, "And if it passes along our grid coordinates to whatever ship it's being flown from?" The Taru asked rhetorically, looking over the ridgeline herself, "those are the same model used by o- by Hime-Jersey's Ru-class, the Cruiser-borne spotters have a different tail-assembly," she looked back, "I don't particularly fancy coming under fire from a Ru-class Battleship's main armaments from beyond the horizon, do you?"
Diane silently conceded the point, as I furiously thought of what to do. We could shoot down the little bugger easily enough, but that would still leave the other planes, and if they locked in our coordinates, in this open ground? Our asses would be grasses...
My Captain piped up then.
...
I covered my eyes with one hand, leaning on one elbow, "...And you're telling me I could have done that at ANY point?" I growled.
...
"And I'm only being told this nö̴͇́w?" I facepalmed, hopefully, hard enough to rattle some sense into the little people running around in my head.
Robin's eyes widened as she seemingly froze in place, and the Kanmusu edged away from me slightly. I waved them back irritably, "Alright, I think we have a way to deal with those planes without getting blasted to atoms," I said, "Just switch to my frequency and turn up your transmitters to max, Chitose, launch some of your Seaplanes to intercept..."
"RSP 2, you've deviated from our search pattern, why?" the message came over the overly large radio, as the pilot of the craft grabbed the transceiver.
The pale fairy, wearing the modified uniform of a Russian aviator, got on the horn with her fellow Seaplane, "I've got visual on a massive amount of smoke Southwest, doing a flyby to see if there's anything the first sweep missed."
"Think it might be an encampment?"
"Not sure, whatever it is it's very concentrated, almost like a smokestack."
"Alright, check it out, but it's your ass if there's-CAW"
What the squadron leader said next was interrupted, the fairy letting out a small squeal of pain as what sounded like a bird cry blasted directly into her ears, "The hell is that?!" She yelled.
"CAWThis-CAWCAWLeaCAWCAWCwh-AWCAWCAWjam-CAWp-CAWCAWw!" The fairy threw off the headset, rubbing her ears.
Which was just about when she noticed the aerial contacts.
She grabbed at the transceiver again, "ThisCAW is CAWRSCAWCAWI'm get-CAW!" She threw the headphones away again, though the channel remained open, filling the cockpit with incessant cawing.
"Sir! We're being jammed!"
"What flavor?"