There was a frozen moment as the horn blew off to our right, the noise piercing in the silence, raising my hackles.

Then it suddenly wasn't so silent anymore.

Fire ripped into our surroundings, and I dove to the ground, yanking a shocked Lao down with me as gunfire echoed from the fog around us.

Whoever it was, they must not have had good visibility, as they weren't particularly accurate. Still, bullets cracked the bullet-proof-

The windshield shattered.

-bullet-resistant glass of the truck behind me. Ky Hoa started screaming as Robin scrambled to get off the back of the truck.

A rocket whizzed by, causing a vapor trail in the heavy mist, before impacting the cabin.

*Boom-Craaatch!*

The truck went up in flames, as the pavement shattered under it.

I finally got my wits about me again. I got up into a stoop, crouch-running over to the burning wreck as Chitose did the same from where she had been standing on the opposite side.

Lao blinked at the wreck in shock, "Ky! Sentry!" She turned, snarling, as I saw her light guns swivel into place. Her four Oerlikon 20mm guns opening fire in a wide, sweeping cone as tracers bit through the tall grass.

You know? I'd never actually appreciated the lighter guns on us ship-folk, 20mm guns were no joke, but they always seemed to fade into the background unless sky-cancer was present.

Enemy fire slackened in that area briefly, before focusing on the Frigate. Whatever they were firing, it wasn't particularly effective, many rounds simply sparked off the girl, while others seemed to merely leave pinpricks that ruffled her clothes and little else.

Lao simply yelled in anger as she fired her twin 5" DP's, causing a pair of violent explosions as they smacked into whatever was shooting at us.

I heard more than felt when an errant (or well-aimed?) bullet sparked off my right ear, ricocheting off my thick hull plating. It hadn't even bent the lobe, though I'm sure if it had managed to pierce it would have given me an interesting excuse to wear an earring.

While Lao continued giving us covering fire I ripped off the smoking door of the truck, no longer particularly worried about damaging the hunk of burning metal, and found Ky.

She had her hands over her head, screaming her merry guts out, she'd sunk through the truck's floor in her panic, and a large hole had been punched through the drive-shaft. Technically, she was now sitting on the ground. The truck seat was on fire, and smoke was filling the cabin, As I quickly crawled in I saw the door opposite me rip off as well, Chitose quickly peering in.

There was no time for fancy instructions "Get out and around, shoot! I got her!" I barked, and the Japanese woman nodded quickly, swiftly ducking out of sight as she moved around to where Lao was standing.

I pulled out of the cabin as well, quickly looking back to check Robin.

The Tu-class was sprawled on the ground, a large crater in the pavement surrounding her as she hesitantly started looking up from where she'd fallen off the back.

Good enough.

I punched through the metal body of the truck, before latching onto the vehicle's more solid frame, then, with as good a grip as I could get, I raised my arms to the sky, lifting the truck clear over my head using my stupid gorilla-strength. The metal creaked and groaned from being lifted at such a sharp angle, but the frame, ruined as it was, held together.

Ky Hoa looked up, interrupted from her panic as the vehicle lifted off of her. I turned around, to where I guessed the most fire was coming from.

"Rrrreeea̷̞͊gh!" I whipped the flaming transport truck at them.

The vehicle cartwheeled off into the mist, flames giving it the impression of a comet as I looked over at my fleet, "Move up and lay down suppressive fire!"

The ships, still mostly recovering from the sudden, if mostly ineffectual assault, complied. Anne stood stock-still, even while her turrets weaved around her, scanning, when she noticed a tracer, one of the 8" Naval artillery turrets whipped around like a viper, tracked it back, and fired off a full 3-gun salvo.

Diane had helped Robin up, before opening fire from her own main guns. If half the country didn't know we were here by now, they were deaf.

Robin hesitated to fire, before once again settling for her secondaries. Looks like she still believed some spare powder in her main guns' barrels would actually do something other than mess up her aim.

"Robin!" I yelled, running over as the former Ta-class looked at me, "You know those bags won't actually do anything, right?" I asked.

She looked confused, "But, you said that my guns would explode if I used them?!"

"I FRIGGEN LIED!" I yelled, "They'll just screw up your aim a bit, go ham!"

Robin looked down at her turrets, mounted on her back and peeking out from underneath her white cape, blinking her purple eyes, probably in slight confusion at the turn of phrase, she looked back up.

Another salvo of 15" gunfire was added to the fusillade. Robin seeming to actually explode from the bags of powder she'd had stuffed down her barrel. But when the fireball cleared, she was still whole, the explosion simply being flash over substance, as her first shots careened wildly off course from where she'd probably meant them to go.

The gunfire was practically non-existent to our East now, as we'd probably flung enough Naval-grade artillery at firefight-range to level a small town. But scattered shots were starting to come in from all sides.

We'd been surrounded, and while I wasn't too worried about the comparatively small-caliber firearms, whoever these assholes were might have artillery support.

"We have to get moving!" I yelled over the din, "Before they key-in our position for anything heavy!"

Seemingly right on cue, my head was almost taken off.

A quartet of high-velocity shells flew in from our East, cutting through the rain and leaving small vapor trails behind them. Whoever it was, they only missed me due to my height, my fancy foam pirate hat flipping off of my head as the shell's passed close enough for the air pressure to whip my hair forward.

Things had just gone from dangerous to deadly.

The rounds exploded somewhere to our west, as Hakone and Anne returned fire with their secondaries, the 6" and 5" DP guns making their own vapor trails. They clearly didn't hit the enemy ship, as another quartet of shells careened into us, one of them actually almost nailing Diane, whose cape now sported a rather large hole as she spun around.

Sitting here waiting to get shot was getting us nowhere.

"I'll hunt down that ship!" I radioed, scooping up my hat and stowing it as I continued, "Start moving off the road, once it's dead we'll finish off what's left of the gribblies, just keep moving!"

The fleet obeyed, moving off to the East, where most of the fire had slackened off.

I sprinted West, my Rigging following me as I kept low, as another salvo from our mystery-ship gave me a direct path to it.

...

First contact was not the Abyssal, but several armed men. Pausing only for a moment as I ran out of the mist, they opened fire on me. One of them seemed to be holding a radio.

Oh, they were calling me in, nuts to that. I sprinted faster.

Small-arms sparked off of my hull as I closed the distance, and as I got close I realized, these things were human in the same way I was a Kanmusu.

That is to say, not.

I could tell you how grotesque they looked, how their shriveled skin made them look like swamp-mummies, or the crooked Abyssal teeth poking out of their collars, or the pale blue glow that seemed to poke out of different spots.

But I was almost on top of them, and I'm not about the detail a face I'm about to un-detail.

I simply sprinted through the first one, as he tried to bayonet me. The knife bouncing off my hull without purchase as his lower body seemingly exploded from the force of my body-check. The corpse's upper body cartwheeled over me, scraps of flesh glowing brightly for a moment, before disappearing, leaving the tattered rags he'd been wearing to fall limply to the sodden ground.

The rest continued firing, simply stepping back from me, I pounced at the one carrying the radio as my Rigging caught up with me, descending on another three with mouths opened disconcertingly wide.

The swamp-zombie dropped his radio, moving to block my wild swing with his gun, but the knife in my hand simply cut through the rusted Garand as though it was not even there, the shriek of shorn metal the only indicator I'd even hit anything.

With the gun blocking me parted, I thrust upwards. The tooth-knife (I really need a proper name for it) sank into the thing's gut, bursting out of its lower back, quickly followed by my arm up to the shoulder, having punched a hole in behind the stab wound.

I needed to remember not to put all my weight behind my swings.

I fell forwards, left unbalanced when the man I'd stabbed expired, collapsing in a heap of empty clothes. I turned the stumble into a roll, coming up again as one of the zombies made to grapple with me.

This, obviously, was a mistake.

I put my head down and lunged forward, grabbing him by his booted ankle. Getting a good grip, and ignoring the scrabbling as he clawed at my face, I slapped him into the ground like a looney toons cartoon.

*crak!* Once, *Crak* twice, *CRAK* thrice!

On the third thump, all I held was an empty boot. I looked at it for a second, before wrinkling my nose in disgust at the moldy smell.

I threw it over my shoulder.

The three soldiers left were already gone, the Wondertwin's and Scooter having torn them apart with their comparatively strong jaws. I patted Scooters 'head' as I passed, "Good girl," I muttered, before looking back to where the shells were coming from.

I quickly started to lope forward at a more sedate pace as another salvo rang out, targeting my girls. Hopefully, it was as accurate as the shots that had preceded it. I entered the tall grass, where the trails led from. It looked cultivated, though bedraggled, like they'd set up in some farmer's abandoned fields. There was a layer of water underneath. I jumped in, and it came up over my head.

Perfect.

Scooter floated in after me, and I jockeyed myself into the cockpit underwater, laying low in my seat as I disappeared into the comparatively shallow water completely.

Hopefully, the girls could keep themselves safe for a few minutes. I'd messed up with the first group, just rushing in blindly. But for the Abyssal I'd have to be more careful.

Sneaking up on a warship was a delicate process, after all.