Mega 1987: Honestly, I don't know... I think klein's fields don't work very good with unknown (magical) energy.
A lost Nuffians: Yes, but she's always cutie why precise it? :)
Ultima-Owner: Yes, but not off-limit, character-wise. Let's take, Twice. He's amoral. He couldn't give any moral advice... he's no more moral than the Moon Cell. But drake... she's immoral. It's not that she doesn't understand... but... Drake says it: "I'm a businesswoman" She chooses to ignore morel for better profits. In fate Extra, some of the remarks she makes to Shinji show that she is perfectly conscious of being a villain (chaotic evil!). That said, she is not immune to "the Hakuno effect". I didn't invent the fact that Drake really likes Hakuno.
Akasha Bloodriver: Drake is the most powerful admiral/captain in the Throne of the Heroes. The "quest of the lost bra" epic super production!?
Saberfang Orcalodon: My English is poor. I write like I can, not really like I want.
Gold crown dragon: Sorry? I don't understand, can you explain more?
Author Note: I'm not very good in English; it's my first fanfic in this language. Translate from French to English cost me lot of time and the result is NOT perfect. After three chapter of emotional writing a change of tone... The warships will go
exchange blows; Hakuno and Drake, for six ships of the Fog. A first fight that some would consider desperate.
Sea of fire
Brest (France) war port of Ile Longue.
The command room dominated the Brest harbour, two operators were behind radar consoles. While, standing behind them, stood an officer. He wore the epaulettes of a capitaine de frégate, and watched with concern the spots that appeared intermittently on the monitors. The last sailor present, a maître principal talking on the phone. Hanging up, he turned to his supervisor.
- Commander, the gendarmerie confirms it. The inhabitants of the Conquet are currently witnessing a naval fight southwest of the island of Ouessant.
- All right, maître Principal, warn the amiral Le Bihan.
- At your command.
The capitaine de frégate picked up his own phone and dialed a number.
- Lieutenant Beika, prepare one of our stealth drones for an exit...
Four ships of the fog cruise the Atlantic Ocean, near Ouessant, two La Melpomène-class torpedoes and two Vaulequin-class destroyers. The torpedo-boats firing at the cannon, advancing towards their opponent, while the destroyers maneuvered to find a firing solution for their torpedoes. Following the Fog's standard tactics, they surrounded themselves with smoke to obstruct their opponent's vision. This was, moreover, the reason why these ships were called "The Fog Fleet", the humans almost never saw them clearly.
Sitting in the command chair, Hakuno Kishinami focused on arming the MN Surcouf. Francis Drake stood at the helm, laughing at their opponents' efforts to touch them.
- Never underestimate a Rider Class Servant.
The Voyager of the Storm skill (rank A+) of Francis Drake is a talent to sail anything recognized as ship. Plus, it's also a blend of both Charisma and Millitary Tactic in sea warfare. This, effectively make her one of the most dangerous admiral in the Throne of the Heroes.
Two sheaves of water rose near the Surcouf who had just been brutally fired. Until then, not a single blow had struck and, while rapidly moving the submersible out to the high seas, Drake maneuvers had prevented the destroyers from lining up to fire their torpedoes.
Thanks to the telepathic link Master-Servant, the pirate woman and the young Spiriton-Hacker were perfectly coordinated. In fact...
Hakuno Kishinami shook her head firmly, engaging the 203mm pieces. Two green rays came out of the turret. It wasn't laser beam, but plasma accelerated at near light speed. One of the torpedoes-boats was hit... exactly where the young Master had aimed, at the stern, where the anti-submarine grenades were stored... a particularly vulnerable point! Without Klein's field, nothing could stop the attack.
The stern of the ship vanished in an impressive explosion. The wreckage, reduced to the one-third front, was sunk into the waves amidst burning debris.
- Yahoo! Gotcha!
Drake seemed quite excited; she turned to Hakuno with pride!
- Your first naval victory, girlie. But this is just the beginning, there's no better teacher than me when it comes to learning naval tactics... Yeah! This is not my first "Invincible Armada".
The young hacker replied with a clumsy smile, that of someone who was still learning how to show emotion.
It was so easy.
The fight reminded him of the second encounter with Julius B. Harway, in the Seventh Chimerical Sea. Having refused to die, Julius had hacked the Moon Cell to prevent its erasure. He even managed to keep his Servant Li Shuwen - normally Assassin-class - by turning him into a Berserker.
However, Li Shuwen kept the attack pattern he used during their previous fight... applying it with the lack of subtlety typical of the Berserkers. As a result, the Servant was completely dominated by the Hakuno-Archer duo. He simply could not touch the Servant of the Bow.
The ships on the Fog looked like Berserkers. And for their misfortune, Hakuno knew all the tactics of the Fog. Well... she becomes a submarine of war... She was still having trouble getting used to it, because it seemed unreal... But the fact was that she had a recently updated Fog's database. So she could predict the least of their motion.
After that, her experience played.
"If you can't fend, dodge. If you can't dodge, fend. If you can neither dodge nor block, create loopholes in your defense to channel your opponent. If he sees the chance to touch you, he won't resist. With the right timing, for the price of a slight injury, you will be able to counter-attack and beat your opponent to death "had tirelessly rebuked Archer during their practice sessions in the arena.
An almost suicidal fighting style, but one that allowed Archer to fight far more powerful Servants than he did. Copied by Hakuno, it was very effective against the Fog's ships. They were smart enough to discern a flaw in her defense, but not smart enough to realize it was a fake.
The torpedo-boat had just calculated a firing solution to hit the MN Surcouf. The submarine was going to expose itself to the next bank transfer. With the precision of a calculator, the ship's core alpha fired two shells towards the submersible, at a time that offered mathematically the highest chances of success.
The Surcouf's Klein's field, hit by two 100 mm projectiles, appeared in the form of a semi-sphere consisting of panels of translucent energy. The impact coloured this shield with a green-violet iridescent that illuminated the night.
Shield 85 %
Hakuno tensed her hands on her chest, seeing the resistance of the shield diminish on one of the virtual windows that opened and closed around her. The Klein's fields were very effective against energy weapons... less against material projectiles from which they could only redirect some of the kinetic energy. The rest accumulated in the shield, gradually leading it to overload.
However, the Master's response had been simultaneous. The 203 mm double turret had thrown two beams of green light right onto the torpedo bridge. A plasma explosion dismantled it. Deprived of his "brain" the warship began to drift, in prey to a violent fire.
- And two! Very good, for a first time, Master.
Hakuno replied with a faint smile. Her eyes drifted towards the radar screen. The two destroyers were still advancing towards her, as were the cruisers... Fortunately, the larger ships were still too far away to intervene in the battle other than by firing missiles.
In fact...
While Kishinami's face remained neutral, her hands tightened on the edge of his skirt, nervously twisting the fabric.
On the tactical display, the two Vaulequin-class destroyers were now surrounded by triangular icons that were multiplying. Red circles enclosed them.
Missiles!
After the torpedo-boats were sunked, the destroyers had just changed their tactics. No more subtleties, they used brute force to saturate her defenses.
The night was lit up with brutal glows that reflected across the ocean for miles around. First, the flashes of missiles leaving their cells in the VLS launchers of the destroyers. They swept the ships over the water before the guided projectiles moved offshore. Next, the scarlet features of the Air Defence lasers of the Surcouf tracking and shooting down missiles that Fog ships kept sending her.
The amiral Le Bihan stared with amazement at the fight projected on the main screen of the command center.
- What's going on? Why are the Fog ships fighting each other?
With the blockade that the Fog fleet imposed on the various continents, the destruction of communications satellites and the interference of long-range radios, getting news of what was happening on the other side of the world had become difficult. However, there was a rumor that a submarine of the Fog in Asia had rebelled against the supreme flagship Yamato.
With the war between the European Union and the Russian Federation, it was impossible to obtain more precise information.
It was aggravating to see that humans were fighting each other while the Fog was killing them slowly but... the people of Western Europe were starving. Without the import of oil, used in fertilizers or as fuel for agricultural machinery, food production per hectare was no longer sufficient. Especially since the Fog destroyed, mercilessly, both fishing and commercial vessels.
Global warming had also drowned coastal cities, forcing people to take refuge in the interior... further increasing chaos and overpopulation in spared areas. Only positive consequence, Siberia had become a new El Dorado. The retreat of the polar zones had transformed previously uninhabited areas into vast arable land. Similarly, considerable mineral resources could now be exploited.
But, the Russians had been unable to provide enough food to the Europeans. In truth, even if the EU politicians claimed that Russia had been outrageously favored by the changes imposed by the ecological catastrophe and the attacks of the Fog, they were only populist fads. The Russians were suffering too. Massive immigration from China, millions of hungry individuals, had plunged the Russian Federation into a deep economic slump conducive to the mafia.
And, of course, the Europeans had exploited the situation without remorse to get revenge for the "injustice" that had been done to them. That hollow words concealed only very badly a desperate lust.
The present catastrophe brought out the lowest instincts of humanity. We were fighting to survive, without dignity, without honor, amid the ruins of a civilization that plunged ever more into barbarism. The riots of hunger broke out every day in all the cities of the continent, while the Great European War exhausted the resources needed to fight the Fog.
However, what really killed the humans was despair. Most Europeans were now convinced that the Fog was invincible and that it was necessary to deal with it to save what could still be.
A series of violent explosions brought the attention of amiral Le Bihan to the screen. A missile burst launched by the Fog ships had just been erased...
Leaning on its own screen, the capitaine de frégate ben Ali sat up.
- The Surcouf has just fired several missiles in the middle of those of the destroyers and detonated them by friendly reaction. I... oh.
On the main monitor, the drone zoomed on several objects that had just stopped over the destroyers. They looked like tubes with, at the top end, a graviton motor that kept them in the air. The bottom was... a lightning transmitter!
- Fog's air mines.
Piles of lightning burst from the tubes, giving rise to a skein of electric arcs on the metal structures of the two Vaulequin-class destroyers.
- How the Surcouf has managed to deceive the anti-aircraft defenses of the Fog ships?!
Ben Ali leaned over his console, rewinding and then idling the recording of the scene.
- Oh... I see. Amiral, the missile blast probably blinded the sensors of the Fog ships for a few seconds. The mines were shipped so that they would pass right at that time.
On the main monitor, the destroyers were on fire and adrift, but the commander of the Surcouf took no risks, finishing the ships with several plasma shots. At the stern, the amiral Le Bihan saw the hangar open and launch a seaplane that immediately took off. The reconnaissance aircraft was likely dispatched to locate the last vessels.
- Suffren Class Light Cruiser and Heavy Cruiser Algérie just launched a round of missiles.
The hands of Le Bihan clenched on the armrests of his chair. For some reason, he wished the victory of the Surcouf and the arrival of the duet worried him.
- The Surcouf is going down!
The admiral approved the decision of the unknown commander. A submarine was more comfortable under the water to fight, it was even surprising that it remained on the surface until then.
While Algérie seemed always confident in victory, Colbert was discovering a very human emotion that she had never experienced before... fear! The Surcouf had just eliminated four ships from the Fog within minutes. Of course, they were only light vessels, devoid of Mental Models or Klein's field. Even humans sometimes managed to destroy one. But they had never lost four at the same time. Never!
Worse, the Surcouf had faced his opponents on the surface, without even resorting to her Gravitonnic cannon or her Corrosives torpedoes! Despite the superiority of the heavy cruiser MN Algérie in terms of tonnage, armor and firepower, despite the help his own Suffren-class light cruiser could bring to her flagship, Colbert felt completely dominated by the enemy.
As the submarine disappeared under the waves, it disappeared from its radar screen. The missiles she had just launched exploded at the last displayed coordinates, but without relieving the Mental Model. Obviously, they had little effect.
In the middle of the round of virtual screens that formed several rings around her, Colbert selected the sonar. But... the four ships of the Fog that the Surcouf had sunk generated large cavitations' noises that easily covered all the propulsion noises that the submarine - in stealth mode- could generate. There's no way of knowing where Hakuno Kishinami was!
- Algérie! Let's launch all our remaining missiles!
The odalisque has risen on its cushion layer.
- Yes, let's get it over with, this... Kishinami bothers me.
In the night, all the VLS cells of the two ships opened to release salvoes of guided projectiles that jumped to the sky before falling like meteors. A spectacle worthy of Wagner's "Twilight of the Gods".
The explosions lifted the ocean in fluorescent sheaves. Colbert had programmed a saturation shot to cover the entire area where the Surcouf. Yet, once again, the rebel submersible appeared to have escaped without major damage.
Since the water was incompressible, the shock waves must have seriously damaged the enemy.
- But how does she do that?
Colbert rubbed his hair energetically, screaming with exasperation. But Algérie showed her something even more disturbing. The Surcouf reconnaissance seaplane was turning away. Covered with radar-absorbing materials, it was difficult to distinguish. But, its thrusters left a recognizable thermal signal.
So Kishinami was watching them while they didn't even know where their enemy was. Very reassuring!
Colbert kept his eyes on the sonar screen, listening to the various noises received from the receivers. Unfortunately, the fighting had caused them to drift near an area of strong ocean currents. A true warm river that crosses the colder waters of the Atlantic Now, the interface between the current and the ocean formed a real mirror on which the waves of the sonar ricocheted. A well-known phenomenon for the sonar operators.
If the Surcouf was in that current, it could trace it back to them without their sensors even being able to detect it.
The idea of being fully visible while the enemy was lurking nearby, invisible, only reinforced the beginning of panic that threatened to overwhelm Colbert. On the map of the region, she showed Algérie a new road, at 120°, to get away from the current... and retreat.
Suddenly, a "ping" appeared on the sonar screen. The ship's propulsion characteristics corresponded to those of the Surcouf. The submarine had just left the currents that had masked it to walk straight towards them. An astonishing direct tactic!
Drawing on their reserves of nanomaterials, Colbert and Algérie manufactured new missiles, before opening the fire of their multiple cannons, alternating between lasers, plasmics and shells. Despite clumsy evasive maneuvers, the Surcouf was hit and disappeared from the screens... without generating an explosion signaling its destruction.
It's was not the Surcouf but a nanomaterial decoy.
A new "ping" appeared.
In all, the two cruisers of the Fog had destroyed three lures. Each appeared closer to them, coming from a different direction. To face each false pretense, Colbert and Algérie had been forced to alter their course and to maneuver, besides delaying them; they had been forced to remain close to the current which masked their enemy.
Colbert retained a shout of anger when he discovered three identical sound signatures that had suddenly appeared, cutting their way!
Triangles germinated around the submarine and the two decoys. The Surcouf fired torpedoes and missiles.
Reading: presence of Thanatonium confirmed!
Kishinami had just launched Corrosives torpedoes!
Colbert and Algérie fought back with all they had, firing laser missiles and firing their own projectiles to hit torpedoes. The missiles had a propulsion system that did not require oxygen, and they even operated underwater. Unfortunately, Kishinami had deployed decoys and jammers among the torpedoes, and many of the missiles were lost in the distance.
The Corrosives torpedoes hit the Fog's two cruisers. Spheres of pure darkness, haloed with purple fulgurances, were born in the night. While MN Colbert and MN Algeria saw their Klein's field struggling to redirect the energy that overloaded them, the Surcouf continued to fire missiles and torpedoes. Everything was going too fast for a human to simultaneously follow all the threats that were attacking them, but the Mental Models were able to track down and destroy the multiple projectiles that threatened their defenses.
Colbert smiled when he saw that the mini-black holes threatening to engulf the cruisers were collapsing. They had repelled the assault! It was...
Reading: presence of Thanatonium confirmed!
Two new Corrosive torpedoes had just been fired behind them! Colbert's eyes grew in terror and surprise... that was not possible! The Surcouf was in front of them! All of her sensors moved towards the stern as she tried desperately to reorient her defensive network to counter this new threat.
That's when she saw him... the reconnaissance float plane. She had completely forgotten it because it was an unarmed craft but... given its position, given the trajectory of the torpedoes... it was he who had just attacked them!
Kishinami had modified the seaplane to become a torpedo plane! Despite her panic and her ship exploding around her, Colbert suddenly understood why she had just lost.
The imagination.
While the Fog ships had based their tactics on the supposedly complete information they had from the Surcouf, Kishinami had not hesitated to change the parameters of the fight. It took a lot of courage to use the Surcouf - the ship she was on- as a decoy. However, thus, Hakuno Kishinami had held attention long enough to hit them in a totally unpredictable manner.
The Colbert's stern had already disappeared into the black hole and its command turret was now deformed like a can of soda that was crushed with a punch.
I don't want to die!
Terrified, Colbert looked at her personal Klein's field, which fluctuated. The attraction pinned her on the bridge and her resistance weakened. Around her, shielding plates tore from their support to plunge into the abyss. MN Colbert, her true body, was dying. Yet, her whole being cried out for help. Someone, anyone, come and save her, the Mental Model!
For years, Colbert had killed humans without feeling anything. Those were her orders, and she carried them out. With the discovery of the fear of death, a multitude of emotions and feelings overwhelmed her... she discovered empathy, regret, grief. How many of the humans she killed died feeling the same terror, the same desire to live at any price?
Maybe I deserve what I get.
A veritable cannonball ripped the Mental Model from the Colbert bridge. Arms surrounded her, while her klein's field which collapsed merged with that of Algérie. Her superior had come to save her at the risk of her own life.
Algérie landed on a floor of sudden energy materialized on the surface of the waves and stood without letting go her friend. Then, they turned to discover an apocalyptic spectacle.
The black holes generated by the Corrosive torpedoes had just collapsed on themselves. The MN Colbert, practically cut in half, had just exploded, sending in all directions flaming debris. As for Algérie, she was hardly better ... it quickly sank by the stern, while a chain reaction dismantled her superstructures.
The fire lit up the ocean for miles around, while a shower of silver dust - nanomaterials- fell on the waves.
