Yet Still We Sail
Part 1
"Okay everyone, listen up!" Tally Evans began, addressing the seven other TCs on her team. Despite the air of confidence she was projecting, she was nervous. She never liked leading teams, and there was something about this match that made that nervousness worse. Tally was a scout, not a team captain. "We've got an uphill battle ahead of us, but that doesn't mean it's unwinnable.
"I want the team divided into a platoon of three, and a platoon of four, while I will stay detached as a scout. Haruna and Louise, you have control of the two platoons, Haru on the four, Lou on the three. After I determine which way their team is going, Haruna, you bring your platoon in to be the anvil to Louise's hammer. If I'm still mobile, I will be joining Louise for the flanking action."
"Yes ma'am!" All seven TCs said, in an imperfect unison. It was a far cry from what Tally was used to with the leadership team, but it was also just strange to be called ma'am in the first place. That was usually Kay's role. Or Alisa's.
"Get to your tanks then! We've got a match to win, and a winning streak to break! Let's do Saunders proud!" Tally ordered, and the TCs all cheered before splitting off to their own tanks. Once they'd all left, Tally took a deep breath to calm her nerves, and followed them out of the briefing room, zeroing in on her own tank.
Izumi was one of two unique tanks on her team, the other being Louise's Ace, but while Ace was an Easy Eight, the best model of Sherman created, Tally was commanding from her much more mobile M5 Stuart. 'Zumi, as Jane liked calling her, had never felt cramped to Tally, and she felt a lot like a second home away from home.
"We all loaded up?" Tally asked her gunner as she approached the light tank.
"Loaded and ready. I even recalibrated the stabilizer," April answered, and Tally smiled at her.
"Good! Knowing me, we'll need it," Tally laughed at her self-depreciating humor, and climbed up the light tank's flank, before dropping into her TC's slot. April clambered in next to her, and judging by the rumbling of the twin Cadillac V8s, Jane was already in the driver's hull.
Tally keyed her radio as Jane brought them out of the garage. "All tanks, this is Izumi. You know the plan, you know our opponents. Don't let them get the best of us again."
The weather outside was rapidly worsening. It had been clear before Tally started her briefing, but as Tally looked up at the storm brewing over the ocean to their east, she knew it was going to be a bad one. This wasn't just going to be your ordinary autumn storm, there was something more to it... Just looking at it made her fidget uncomfortably. The rolling thunder only made it worse.
Despite her discomfort with the storm, Tally put it out of her mind as the teams took the field. Six basic M4s, an Easy Eight, and a Stuart. That was what she had to play with here, and her opponent was on a similar footing, except with even more firepower on their side. If all went well, that extra firepower would be meaningless as her team pincered the others.
That was a big if. Tally knew more than most that no plan survives contact with the enemy. Especially an enemy as skilled as this one.
"This is Wildcard. All tanks, report in," Tally announced into her radio.
"Ace of Spades, ready to roll," Louise responded, followed by the rest of her platoon, Two and Three of Spades, respectively.
"Jack of Clubs, status green," Haruna came next, with Clubs' platoon sounding off after her.
Tally fiddled with her radio for a moment, switching channels to let the judges know she was ready. "This is Black Team, all tanks ready and accounted for."
"Red team, all tanks ready," Her opponent announced moments later.
"Very good!" The head judge said cheerfully, and Tally imagined her giving the two teams a big thumbs up. "Three, two, one, begin!" A green flare shot up from the judge's tower, signalling the start of the match.
"Driver, advance," Tally ordered, rapidly switching over to her intercom. Izumi surged forward, and Tally moved to an unbuttoned position to keep an eye on her surroundings. There was a hill to the east that would give a wonderful view of the entire field, but it was also a risky position, exposed for all the world to see.
"Tally, I have a bad feeling about this," Jane said into her own intercom.
"The hill?" Tally asked her driver. While Jane was still definitely a bit weird, Tally had come to trust her driver's instincts. They were almost supernaturally good, and she knew where tanks were located even if Tally didn't. "I mean, we can go somewhere else to spot, but nowhere has as good sightlines."
"Not the hill. There's just... " Jane paused, and Tally felt a chill run down her spine. Her driver was scared. She could hear it in Jane's voice. And if Jane was scared…
"Something about today makes you feel like everything is about to go sideways?" Tally asked.
"Yeah," Jane agreed, her voice very quiet.
"Do your best to focus on the match. We can worry about things later."
"Aye ma'am."
Tally shook her head and kept scanning. The storm in the distance was closing fast, and Tally noticed a rapid fire chain of lightning bolts down low. This was… No, it wasn't important. It was just another early winter storm. She'd told Jane to worry later, and she could do the same.
Right now, the important thing was the match. As Izumi reached the crest of the hill, Tally pulled up her ever-present binoculars and set to scanning the field for their opponents. Louise in Ace was leading her platoon up the dried riverbed, while Haruna held back, waiting to react to wherever the other team was coming from…
There! Tally zeroed in on a flash of olive green moving through the brush. The red markings on the side of the M4 Sherman's turret confirmed Tally's suspicions, as well as the two tanks following it. Neither of the heavy hitters had shown their face yet, but Tally had a gut feeling she knew where they were.
"Driver, reverse, get us on the backslope. Hull down," Tally ordered, dropping her binoculars back onto their neck strap. She switched back to her radio and began issuing orders. "Clubs, we've got three M4s moving through the far western valley. Intercept them please. Spades, stay in reserve for the moment, we don't know where the rest of their team is."
"Moving to engage. Clubs, on me." Haruna announced.
"Got it, holding position," Louise said, once Haruna was off the radio. "Fighting at long range's out of the question now, it's too windy. We've got to get in close."
"Well, at least it'll even the playing field a little more," Tally mused. Louise had been right, the wind was picking up, enough to try and blow her usual over-the-shoulder braid away. So long as the pinkish-red braid didn't come around and smack her in the face, Tally didn't care right now.
Instead, Tally brought her binoculars back up and began searching again. She needn't have bothered, because a hypervelocity round streaked past her, sailing off into the air.
"Wildcard, all callsigns. I'm being engaged by 17-pdr fire!" Tally nearly shouted into her radio. She dropped down, all the way into her turret. "Driver, reverse. Get us off of the hill!"
"Got it!"
As Izumi rushed down the back of the hill, Tally took the opportunity to check her map and issue more orders. There was only one place the 17-pdr could have been to engage her like that. Only one place to get an accurate bead on her from long range, even with the wind screwing with accuracy.
"Ace, Wildcard," Tally began.
"Ace here," Louise responded a moment later.
"Take the Spades down the riverbed. She's almost certainly repositioning now, but she had to be at Hill 49. See if you can catch her before she's escaped. She'll have someone watching her back."
"Got it, we'll take 'em out. Ace out."
Tally switched back to her intercom. "Driver, take us across the field, fast as we can. Gunner, keep an eye out, but I don't think you'll be able to hit anything."
"Of course." April nodded, and Tally turned her attention to her momentarily unresponsive driver as Izumi came to an unexpected halt.
"Jane?"
"Ohno…" Jane's whisper was barely picked up by the intercom, but it was enough to cause Tally's concern for her driver and friend to spike. Whatever had Jane spooked was only getting worse, even if Tally had no idea what it was.
"Jane?" Tally asked again, more insistently.
"They're here…"
"Jane, I need you to get us moving across the field!" Tally ordered, and Jane finally seemed to snap out of her fugue.
"R-right!" Jane stuttered. Izumi lurched forward before accelerating rapidly across the open field. Tally stuck her head out of the turret and once more began to scan the area. The storm was approaching rapidly, and it was almost upon them. Once that happened… well, they just needed to clean out the whole enemy team before that hit.
"Jack of Clubs, engaging Red platoon," Haruna called. "Three M4s, no sign of Alisa or Naomi."
"Naomi's over trying to snipe me. Don't know where Alisa is… and if you're listening in on us Alisa, please stop. It's not exactly fair if you know all of our moves!" Tally replied. As expected, Alisa didn't reply. Whether or not she could actually hear them was anyone's guess, but Tally wouldn't put it past Alisa.
"Ace here. We've got Naomi, but Alisa's on our west flank. We'd like some backup, preferably soon," Louise added.
"Good work. I'm moving to engage now," Tally answered. She once again switched to intercom. "Driver, get us across the bridge, ASAP!"
Jane didn't respond, but followed her orders. The Stuart went across the sturdy wooden bridge spanning the dried up riverbed, and came up in the rear of Alisa's firing line.
"Gunner, send it!" Tally ordered.
"On the way!" April did as she did best, and fired into the nearest M4's rear at point blank. The tank shut down, and the white flag popped out of its turret waving merrily in the high winds.
Tally did her best to keep an eye out while she slammed another round of AP into the 37mm gun's breach. Alisa's M4A1 was at the end of the line, and turning to engage. "Gunner, target M4A1, end of the line!"
It was going to be a battle of reflexes, and that was something Tally was certain her gunner could win. If they both managed to miss, Tally knew she could beat Yuko's reload time. Yuko may have been the best loader at Saunders, but Izumi's 37mm was just so much easier to load.
"On the way!" April called, but Izumi jerked to a stop right before she pulled the trigger, jerking the tank downward and sending the round into the dirt in front of Alisa's tank. Thankfully, the sudden maneuver also made Alisa's shot miss.
"We need to leave, now!" Jane suddenly shouted, and Izumi accelerated like Tally had never seen before. She tried to load the next round, but the tank bounced as Jane maneuvered wildly, and Tally fumbled the shell.
It was raining now. The first few droplets landed squarely on Tally's face before the torrential downpour engulfed the whole field. As soon as Tally had a secure grip on the 37mm round, she closed the hatch above her head.
"Everyone, get inside!" Jane shouted, as if anybody outside the tank could hear her desperate cries.
Tally was about to shove the 37mm round into the gun when a sense of wrongness washed over her. She froze as panic welled up in her throat.
"Nonononono not again!" Tally cried out as she fought against her body, trying to move, trying to force the round into the gun.
Even through the protective armor of the Stuart, and the Sensha-do modifications meant to protect the crews from this sort of impact, Tally felt the whistle of a number of massive shells before they slammed into the field. Three of the M4s that had been on the firing line shooting down into Ace, including the knocked out tank, went flying. Despite being well away from the impact, Izumi still threatened to roll before Jane got control again.
Something had just sent three 30-ton tanks flying.
Something wrong.
More shells were incoming, too.
Tally dropped the round into her lap. It was suddenly the least of her problems as she scrambled for her radio. "All tanks, get inside! Now! Cancel the match!"
She didn't have an opportunity to see the results of the call. Jane was driving like she'd never driven before, deftly dodging between the rounds of incoming artillery. How they managed to get out unscathed while it seemed like everyone else was getting thrown about, Tally wasn't certain, but they made it back to the garage faster than anyone else.
There was something wrong going on here. Tally felt it in the storm that threatened to engulf all of Saunders, in the shells that were still raining down, and in the very air. Something had changed, and while a part of Tally felt like she already knew what it was, she needed to find out for certain. No half-guessed assessments this time.
"Kay, I need your Jeep," Tally said firmly as she jumped down from Izumi's turret. She'd never been that forward with her girlfriend, but this sort of situation had never happened before.
"Tally? You can't be thinking of going back out there!" Kay tried to object, but she stumbled when she caught sight of Tally rounding the tank.
"I need to know what's going on. It's something big, east of us, and wrong," Tally snarled the last word, a far cry from her usual cheerfully serious demeanor. "I'll take a radio and let you know what's going on."
Kay pulled Tally into a tight hug. "Stay safe. Please. You know where the keys are."
"Stay in your tank! Don't come out!"
Heeding the commander of the Easy-Eight, the girl of an overturned M4 gave a quick thumbs-up and quickly receded into the disabled tank, shutting the emergency escape hatch.
"Sayuri, get us outta here!" Louise Tuckerman practically shouted into her handset as she retreated into her turret, shutting the commander's hatch above her. She was already drenched by the rain, but that doesn't matter now.
"Got it!" was the panicked reply from the driver as she threw the tank into gear.
Ace lurched forward, the mighty Ford GAA roaring as the Easy-Eight turned and hastily proceeded up the river bank.
Lou heard the whistling again. Barely a moment passed before huge explosions rocked the area again, one of them landing close to where Ace had stopped at on the riverbed.
"Holy shit!" Maiko yelled as Ace rocked violently from the shockwave. "What the fuck is going on?!"
"We'll worry 'bout that later!" Lou shouted back at her gunner as the Easy-Eight finally reached the top of the river's side. Making a turn, Sayuri pointed the M4 towards the general direction of the Saunders garage and floored it.
Ace charged ahead as shells continued raining down from the sky, whistling just before they impacted the ground and blew up. Combined with evasive maneuvers, Ace was able to avoid being hit by any of them.
"This is like a warzone!" Yuki shouted just before another shell landed a bit closer to Ace than before. With a loud boom, Ace rocked violently, and her crew struggled not to stumble and fall off their seats.
"Shit!" Sayuri hissed as she barely managed to keep the Easy-Eight under control.
"Come on, come on…" Lou muttered to her tank as she continued barreling down, surely getting closer to safety.
The tank commander felt like her heart was in her mouth. And she doesn't know why.
Yes, the fact that the shells were raining down on them in the first place was already extremely worrying. But something else felt off about them. Something Louise couldn't quite put her finger on for some reason.
Why was she so frightened?
After what felt like hours charging on with the booms of explosions audible from inside, the familiar garage was now visible to Ace.
"Oh, thank god…" the driver sighed in relief.
As Ace pulled into the safety of the garage a short while later, Lou immediately noticed that Tally's Stuart had arrived way before them, apparently having been hastily stopped just a short distance ahead. The light tank was completely unmanned; the open hatches indicated that the crew of three had already dispersed. The other participating M4s, on the other hand, had not arrived yet.
The storm and explosions from outside echoed through the garage as girls scrambled around, rushing to prepare a rescue attempt for the stranded crews.
Tuckerman hoped they would be fine.
Pulling the Easy-Eight over to the side, Sayuri stopped the tank more abruptly than usual.
"You guys, help the others!" Louise instructed as she hooked her headset and handset aside, her driver shutting off the engine at the same time. "I need to find out what's going on!" she continued, turning the tank's SCR-508 radio set off.
"Wait, you're not going back, are you?" Maiko asked, concerned.
Lou paused for a moment and shrugged. "Maybe."
"I'm sorry, what?! Are you out of your goddamn mind?!" was the incredulous response as she climbed out of her hatch. "Shells are falling and exploding all over! You'll die!"
"I'll try not to!" Tuckerman responded as she hopped off Ace, landing on her feet on the concrete ground.
"No offense Boss, but you're being really damn stupid right now!" Maiko protested, scrambling out of the Easy-Eight's commander's hatch and jumping off the tank in pursuit of her commander. "Just stay here! Don't go asking for death!"
"No, there's something really wrong about this," Lou replied, stopping and turning around to look at her gunner. "I can't tell you why, but I've been feeling this sense of… dread since just before everything went to shit. And I'll be damned if I don't find out what exactly's going on."
Maiko raised an eyebrow. "We're being shelled. Of course you're going to feel some goddamn dread, everyone's feeling it right now!"
"No, this is different. It's… not that at all…" Lou's voice quietened down into a soft ponder. Though, she quickly stopped and put her hands on Maiko's shoulders.
"Trust me, Maiko, I'll be fine," she reassured. "All the things we've been through so far we came out alright; this won't be any different. You're in charge when I'm gone, so go try to help as much as you can while I go get us some news. And of course, look after Ace for me. Sounds good to you?"
The gunner remained silent for a few moments, looking at her commander concernedly. Soon enough, though, she relented, frowning and pinching the bridge of her nose. "Consider it done."
"Thanks. I won't take long, I promise."
With that, Lou turned around, starting to walk briskly away.
"Watch yourself!" the gunner shouted.
In response, the young Tuckerman stopped and turned around. Smirking, she gave a big thumbs-up, before turning back to head towards where she wanted to go.
And that place happened to be the Jeeps' parking area.
Louise intended to find one of those Jeeps that did not use a key. She expected the search to take a short while, as the team does not separate the ones with keys away from the ones that don't.
What she was not expecting, however, was finding Tally loading an SCR-300-A into the back of a Jeep.
"Tally?" she greeted in English. "You're going out to investigate?"
"Yeah," Tally said with a nod, replying in English as well. "There's just something about all this rubbing me the wrong way."
"I feel the same as well," Lou replied. "Great minds think alike, eh?"
Tally smirked. "That they do."
Tuckerman returned the smirk. "Well, where are you headed?" she continued, walking over to the passenger side of the Jeep. "Also, need any help?"
"This is just recon, but an extra set of eyes never hurts. I'm heading east, probably over to the edge of the deck," Tally said, climbing into the driver's seat.
"That I can do," the French-American girl nodded, hopping into the front passenger seat. "Shit, I should've brought my binoculars along then. Oh, whoops, forgot you dislike swearing." she realized, smiling sheepishly. "Sorry."
Tally's brow furrowed at the curse, but didn't say anything as she started the Jeep and maneuvered it out of the garage.
The rain immediately came down on the Jeep.
"Jesus fu- I mean, watch it!" Lou shouted as the redheaded girl nearly collided with another student, who had fortunately quickly jumped out of the way.
With a roar, the Willys MB barreled onto the road and, its tires slipping and skidding, turned towards the correct direction, Tally putting the pedal down to the metal.
As they barreled down the straight, empty road, the explosions continued. Being outside of the main Saunders campus now, Louise watched in horror as she realized that the other parts of the schoolship were being hit as well.
"Oh my god…"
"This is…" Tally whispered, trailing off.
"What's going on exactly?" Lou stared out at another explosion in the distance. "Why is this happening?"
"I don't know! That's why we're going to try and find out!" Tally snapped, drawing her attention away from the road.
"Right. Sorry."
Right at that moment, a shell landed in front of the Willys MB, going off with a boom.
Alarmed, Tally slammed on the brakes.
"OH, SHIIIIIIIIT!" Lou hollered as she braced herself against the dashboard.
The Jeep's tires screeched, aquaplaning across the wet road surface.
It felt like it wasn't slowing down fast enough.
The car barreled down the road…
… before stopping just right in front of a newly-formed crater.
A few moments passed, the incessant rain pouring down over the Jeep and her two occupants as they held still, still bracing for an impact.
Noticing that nothing was going on, Lou raised her head, slowly sitting up.
When the fact that they were fine finally hit the two girls, both of them sighed at the same time, extremely relieved to have avoided an explosive heap of trouble. Literally.
"W-we're alive…" Lou muttered quietly as she panted, slumping back in her seat. "You alright?"
"Y-yeah…" was the equally-relieved reply from the redhead.
The two of them sat in silence for a while more, the silence only being disrupted by the rain. The tension that had just arisen when Tally snapped was now no longer present, completely superseded by the fact that the both of them may have very well just avoided their own deaths.
"Anyway…" Lou finally broke the relative silence, sitting up. "Shall we…"
"Right, yeah…" Tally put the Jeep back into gear and carefully maneuvered around the crater.
A mere few minutes later, the Jeep finally arrived at the starboard side of the carrier. Thankfully as well; Lou felt like she was about to be sick.
"Y-you're a maniac…" she commented as she sat there, pale-faced and breathing heavily.
"I'm glad you noticed," Tally deadpanned.
"No, really, you actually suck at driving," Lou retorted, slowly recovering. "We could've legitimately died more than ten times back there."
"But we didn't. And I don't suck, you just aren't used to my particular style of driving. Most people aren't."
"If throwing paint buckets at a canvas is called art…" Tuckerman muttered under her breath as she took one last deep breath. "Alright, I'm fine now."
"Good. Now, let's have a little look-see, shall we?" Tally asked, hopping out of the Jeep and readying her binoculars.
Getting out of the Willys MB as well, Lou was muttering something about how "well" Tally would do in Lou's own Caterham Super Seven down in the Automotive Racing Club's garage. Not that she was keen to find out now, of course. Looking back down at the right side mirror, the French-American girl took the time to roughly touch up on her wet hair, specifically her fringe. Not that it was usually extremely neat in the first place, but she just wanted it to at least be close enough to her normal-ish looks. Especially how abnormal the past minutes have been.
And that was when she noticed something.
"Hey… the shelling's stopped."
Tally looked around, as if expecting another shell to land any moment. When it didn't come, she breathed a sigh of relief. "It did. I wonder what caused that…" The scout carefully approached the edge of the ship's deck and held her binoculars up to her face. A few moments later she lowered them, trembling slightly. "What the…?"
"What is it?" Lou asked as she squinted out into the distance. Of course, she could see nothing in particular, especially not in this weather.
She really was starting to regret not bringing her own pair from Ace here.
"What is it? What?" she asked again, noticing how Tally had not responded to her. The scout in question merely responded by passing Lou her binoculars.
"Thanks," was the quiet acknowledgement as Louise peered into the binoculars.
A few seconds passed.
Lou brought the binoculars down. "I'm really sorry, but I'm afraid I can't help you today," she began to apologize. "It's been a particularly stressful day and I think I'm hallucinating as a result. I just saw four World War Two-era destroyers with girls… inside them? Yeah, I'm drunk, that obviously can't be right, soo..." she muttered, shaking her head as she passed the binoculars back to the redhead.
"I see the same thing. And look beyond them," Tally said softly, not accepting the binoculars.
Raising an eyebrow, Lou brought the binoculars back up and watched beyond the four apparent destroyers.
"... What the…"
Beyond the four destroyers lay a fleet of ships. But these… these don't look like ordinary ships at all.
"What are those?" Lou pondered out loud in both awe and, for some reason, fear. "I mean, obviously, that's a Kongo-class right there, original configuration. And two Nagara-class cruisers. No, make that three. And six destroyers, all Minekazes. But they… they're not right. Like, they're pitch black. And pale white as well. But what's… what's with that aura?"
"It's all wrong…" Tally muttered. "Those… those things aren't meant to be. They can't be. I… something inside me is screaming, just because those things exist."
"It's the same with me," Louise agreed. "Those aren't ships. They're… monsters. And what the hell are those four idiots thinking?" she continued, looking back down at the four destroyer-girls. "Three Fletchers and one Allen M Sumner. And they're going to take on a Kongo, what? I mean," she shrugged, "in fairness, maybe they do stand a chance, since that Kongo's outdated. What do you think, Evans?" the French-American girl asked, slipping into a last name basis with her companion.
Before the redhead could reply, both girls heard a voice practically screaming in their heads. "Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is the USS Fletcher, engaging Abyssal forces attacking the Saunders school ship! Requesting any and all available assistance!"
Author's Note:
Hello everyone! Welcome to my newest story, this time in collaboration with 101Salocin, the ever wonderful author of Ace! You may recognize Tally from my story, Hell on Tracks, as well as Louise from Ace, but this shared universe is neither Ace nor Hell on Tracks. Don't expect everything you see here appear in one or the other, and details from the two will not have translated over perfectly. If you have not yet read either of the above, you should, because we've both put our all into writing those stories.