A Matter of Honor Chapter 22, an azur lane/碧蓝航线 fanfic

Part Twenty-Two – Sink or Swim

I dropped one of my three boxes of stuff into the new suite that the half-pint insisted I move into with Illustrious. She had been pleased with how our relationship had been advancing, and felt that it made more sense for us to co-habitat. I mean, she did have a point; we were more or less doing that already, just going back and forth between my quarters and hers all the time over the last several months, and to be honest, I was thankful for the distractions from the impending visit from the Crown and my likely scrapping. Now though, we had our own living space, kitchenette, lavatory, and a spare empty room to go along with the one we had chosen to acquire a new, larger bed for. I had to admit, the new sleeping room was bigger than my entire quarters back at Midway; This suite was easily four times it's entire size.

I did a quick look around the living space that was a combination of the dining area and relaxing area, and saw that out of the eight boxes in here, all but one of them had come from her room. I began to wonder just how she had managed to cram all of this stuff into her quarters. My attention is snapped to the doorway as she asks, "Can you help me with this?"

What I see is Illustrious with an ornate looking desk. As I take one end, she smiles at me and says, "We need to take this to our room… it's the base for my vanity."

Right! I almost didn't recognize it without the mirror on top of it…

Once we got everything into place, she sits on one side of the bed, flopping backward on it while I do the same from the other side. In unison, we both let out a sigh, and she says, "That was a lot of work…"

I smile at her and ask, "Do you want a back rub?"

She grins at me and rolls to her belly, pulling her shirt up to give me easy access to her skin as she says, "You know me, I always want one."

I start to work on her lower back, listening to the little sounds she makes as I rub and work the muscles. Once I reach the middle of her back she lets out a deep sigh before saying, "Has her Majesty been pressuring you for details?"

"Details for what?" I ask while I rub on either side of her spine.

Her body shudders under me as I work up her spine before she answers, "On a wedding."

I try to keep my surprise under control while I keep working her back as she continues, "I said that it was too soon for us to be discussing that, that we needed time to get used to the idea of living together first."

I felt relief at hearing her say that, and I started moving to work on her shoulders as I say, "I'm not against the idea… but…"

She rolls under me to face me as she reaches up to hold my hands, "I know, you're worried about the impending visit."

I nod my head, and she squeezes my hands before adding, "And I know that you'd want to avoid committing to something you might not be able to commit to; It's one of the things I love about you, you do everything you can to keep your word."

I bend over enough to kiss her with a smile before I say, "I love you, too."

Once the kiss breaks, she smiles up at me and says, "I like the idea by the way, and I'll admit I've got a stack of bridal magazines… I was honestly surprised to see how much some of those dresses and weddings cost!"

I laugh and lean back, pulling her into a sitting position before I suggest, "If the visit doesn't result in me being sent for scrap, maybe we can get the Crown or Azur Lane to foot the bill."

She has a sad look on her face for a moment, before she says, "Stop talking like that, they're not going to send you for scrap, you are too valuable… besides, like hell I'd let them do that to you."

I do my best to give her a confident smile, and she nods before she adds, "Good try, but give it another go with a bit more effort."

There is no helping it, I start to laugh and she says, "Come on, let's go find something to eat, I'm too exhausted to cook tonight."

XXXX

Much later in the evening, I'm sitting in our living space on the default couch, looking at the TV, when I feel something soft and heavy on my head, and I hear Illustrious say with a sigh, "I'm going to head to bed, don't stay up too late, okay?"

I smile and reach up to pat her cheek, "I'll be along soon, just want to catch the end of this movie."

The weight lifts off of my head and I watch as she heads into our bedroom… man, that feels strange to me, our bedroom. I sigh and lean my head back against the couch, before I lift my phone to check the date, and see that it was just a couple of days at the latest before the fleet would arrive. I swallow hard, I was doing my best to keep my word to Illustrious and not dwell on the darker thoughts I'd been having regarding the impending visit.

I was just about to drop my phone down when it made a trilling noise, I tilt my head to the side to read the message and I let out a breath, I'm a little irritated to see that I'm going to be sent out on a night patrol at the last moment; Apparently, I was going to be filling in for the half-pint who had somehow managed to wiggle out of this.

Pushing myself off of the couch and turning off the TV, I head to the bedroom, and as I open the door I can see that the on-suite lavatory light is on, "Illustrious, do you have a sec?"

She comes out of the lavatory in an oversized t-shirt, her hair unbound and what little makeup she wore was already off, her head tilted to the side as she asked, "What's up?"

I sigh before handing her my phone. I watch as she reads the message and her shoulders slump before she says, "Well… I guess you can't do anything about this. But I was looking forward to our first together in this place."

After I slip my phone into a pocket, I place my hands on her hips before I say, "We'll just have to postpone it a night."

She snuggles in close with sigh, her hands sliding under my own and up to grip my shoulders as she says, "Be extra careful, nighttime patrols are the worst."

I kiss the top of her head as I confirm to her, "I will. Love you."

She turns her head to look up at me, smiling as she says, "Love you too, I'll see you in the morning then… I'll be waiting at the docks."

I give her another squeeze and say, "Looking forward to it."

XXXX

Sitting on my bridge, I look at the clock. It was almost oh-three-hundred, and our patrol should be starting to turn back in an hour. Still, at least I had some company that seemed competent, Z23 and Helena were out front screening for me, I think I know why the half-pint wiggled out of this, she would've forced them to go no faster than ten knots, and if they did she'd whine at them the entire time. At least with me, I told them that I could push thirty knots and that I would be happy for them to set the pace at anything under that.

To my surprise, they had suggested cruising at around twenty knots; I think they were surprised that I was open to cruising along at that speed, I wasn't sure if they really thought I'd be fine with it. Still, that was close to four hours ago now, we had covered the Western and Northern approaches around the base, and all that remained was the Eastern and Southern quadrants; I wondered if we were going to run across the fleet that was transporting the representative of the Crown on this patrol…

XXX

I lean back in my captain's chair and sip the coffee that I had in my travel mug, before I turn my attention to my radar display. I wasn't as good with it as I knew Helena is with hers, but I'm decent enough. On the display I can see the indicators for Z23 and Helena a few hundred meters between them. I take a deep breath and listen to my hydrophones; I can pick up the screws of Z23, Helena, my own… and several others, but it was hard to make out the numbers and who it was. My eyes snapped open and I looked in the direction of the ships, focused my radar targeting systems out to the maximum range of approximately fifty kilometers, but I saw nothing…

I access my radio and call to my escorts, "Z23 and Helena, have you two picked up the approaching ships?"

Z23 was the first to call back "Ja, they are approximately sixty kilometers away, heading in our direction. I expect us to intercept them in approximately two hours."

"I can't see them yet… sorry." Said Helena. So that tells me her radar can see out as far as my own at best.

"It's not your fault Helena, I can't see them yet either…" I say back, before adding, "Make sure you have shells loaded on the off chance they are not friendly."

I feel the rush as I load shells, this time I'm going to load AP rounds. If I'm going to fire, I'll be doing to from so far away that it'll be plunging fire… as the shells finish loading, I angle my X and Y turrets as far forward as I can while adjusting my approach angle so that I should be able to get all four turrets on target. Now I just had to wait...

I moved to stand close to the windows; my eyes closed so that I could 'see' with my radar, searching the sector I knew they would be showing up in approximately ten minutes… I felt so nervous right now.

I take a breath to center myself just as the first one shows up, fifty kilometers off my starboard bow, and I hear Helena over the radio, "I've got one, at fifty kilometers bearing 137!"

I nod to myself, right where I see it too. Well, that tells me how good her radar is, then. After a moment I call back, "I'll swing out and get all four turrets on it, Z23, get as close as you feel comfortable while we try to establish contact."

I let out a slow breath, I still had ten kilometers before they were within the range of my weapons; what surprised me is that they seemed to be going at a decent enough clip but they were making no effort to try and mask their approach. I tried to focus on the lead ship, it looked to be a destroyer class, newer than the J-types had in port. Not long after that, a pair of light cruisers showed up, again newer ones that looked similar to Swiftsure, but slightly different…

Just as the lead destroyer crossed into the range of my weapons, the largest contact appeared, just behind the cruisers. As I started to focus on it, Helena called out, "Battleship spotted!"

Moments after she said that, I heard an Irish accented feminine voice over the radio, "HMS Dominion to patrol fleet, respond!"

So, this was Dominion… my sister… Sovereign's sister.

How did I want to handle this? I sigh and hang my head, there is no escaping this; I need to face this head-on. I take a deep breath to center myself as I radio back, "HMS Dominion, HMS Thunderer, we've been expecting you."

I move and sit back in my chair, unloading my guns, and waiting. It took a while before I heard that voice again asking, "Can you hold your position, we would like to come aboard."

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly before replying, "Holding position."

XXXX

I watched them pick up the pace, pushing it up to thirty knots, which left me with almost two hours to worry about what was going to be my fate. I tried to be as productive as I could with my time, getting the wardroom ready; if I was going to make my case, that would be the place to do it. I had already sent Helena and Z23 back to port to try and get everyone ready. Once everything was ready, I moved to my port quarter and just waited.

As Dominion started to get closer, I moved to amidships on my port side. I rubbed my hands together, and I knew it wouldn't be long now. As the bow moved passed me, I folded my hands behind my back, taking another breath and letting it out slowly, just as her hull came to a stop alongside mine...and that was when I saw her.

Her uniform was so similar to the one that Conqueror wore, but this one was much more ornate, clearly a dress uniform. Her frame was so similar to Conqueror's as well, not top-heavy, but not slender, her hair was short, just enough to brush the top of her shoulder, straight and fire engine-red, her red eyes landed on me and went wide as she said in an Irish accent, "I was expecting a Kansen, not a human."

I shook my head before I corrected her, "I am Kansen."

Her head went up and down before she gave me a sideways glance and said, "Bullocks, Kansen are always female."

Again I shook my head, "You are welcome to look at my MSD."

My attention is snapped to behind her, and I feel my stomach drop when I hear a voice that I had heard on the radio and the TV as a kid say, "We intend to."

I felt my chest starting to get tight; exiting Dominion's hull was a tall, slender man in his early fifties. He was in the ceremonial dress uniform of the Royal Navy, and I swallowed hard before I bowed and said, "By your will, Your Majesty."

Dominion extended her boarding gantry over, shortly before they both crossed on to me, I started to lead them to my bridge when the King asks, "Tell me, those turrets, what size are they? They look larger than those of the Conqueror class."

I stiffen a little before answering, "Eighteen-inch by forty-seven calibers, they were developed for the Georgia-class battleships of the Eagle Union, Your Majesty."

"And the effective range?" he asks me, I take a moment to look over my shoulder to see that he had stopped walking towards my bridge and was moving towards my B turret.

"Approximately forty kilometers with a dispersion of fewer than two hundred meters at that range…" I tell him, I was trying to avoid sounding too proud of myself.

He makes a noise that is neither a clear indication of surprise or disappointment before he turns and heads back up towards my bridge.

Once the three of us get up there, I stand back as they go to my MSD and start to go through the screen, inspecting every aspect of me without saying anything. That was, until they got to the screen with my serial number, and the King asked, "Have you ever fired your guns?"

I stiffen up again and say, "Six times Your Majesty. Once at a transport, once at shore installations, and the remaining times during target practice, though I found that uninteresting since I tended not to miss my targets."

"And how effective did they prove to be?" he asked me.

"Highly. My AP shells seem to be able to punch through even the most aggressively angled and armored cruisers. My HE shells seem to be highly powerful as well." I answered, I was really feeling self-conscious.

My attention turned to another part of my bridge, I could see Dominion on her phone with someone, she seemed agitated, I could see she was making hand gestures. After a few moments, the King said, "I would hear how you came into being, Thunderer."

"Of course, Your Majesty. I've prepared the wardroom…" I start to say before he shakes his head and says to me, "No, I will hear it here and now."

"Yes, Your Majesty." I say, taking a deep breath and telling him, everything. Everything from my graduation from the Academy, the strange sequence of events that sent me down to the Midway Base, finding out who my mother is, meeting my mother, being abducted by my father, being tortured, mind-wiped, integrated into my hull, being sent to kill my own mother, killing my father, dying, being resurrected as a kansen for this ship, becoming a prize for the factions on the base, being forced into a relationship with Illustrious, meeting my sister Conqueror, falling in love with Illustrious, learning about Sovereign, and finally my worry about being headed for the scrap yard.

During my tale (and argument) that I should be allowed to live, Dominion had turned to listen, leaning against the helmsman's station, folding her arms under her bust. The King had sat in the captain's chair, giving me no indication of what he was thinking. I was worried, I felt so nervous…

I watched as he rotated the chair around to look at Dominion and he asked her, "Well?"

"I confirmed with Conqueror, it's the same stuff he told her…" she paused to look at me, rolling her red eyes before she said, "This is from her, by the way."

I tilted my head to the side as she pushed off and gave me an awkward embrace before moving back to her position. The king sighed and pinched his brow before saying, "That wasn't what we were asking, Dominion…"

She shrugged and stated as she turned to look at her own hull, "I don't understand why you're asking me, Your Majesty…"

"Because he's your sibling, what do you think, Dominion?" he says while taking his fingers from the bridge of his nose.

Again, Dominion shrugs before saying, "I don't know him well enough."

He sighs again and fixes me with a hard look before he says, "While it was painful to hear your story, and we sympathize, we truly do. You represent both an uncomfortably inconvenient truth and a significant investment by the Crown. We are glad to have found out what happened to those resources, yet we are unsure what to do with you. Since the revelation to the civilian population of the Kansen a few years ago, they have started to raise ethical questions, questions if treating them as weapons is the correct way to do things. Thankfully till now, the Crown had no idea that they could reproduce naturally with a human, this fact provided us with cover to deliberate."

He pauses before standing and walking to the window, I watch as he places a hand on the small of Dominion's back before he continues, "We do recognize that developing feelings of emotional attachment to a kansen is possible, that it is possible to see them as more than what they were developed to be… Yet now, by the very fact that you are a male kansen, it raises the question if offspring can be produced naturally from a pairing of kansen to kansen."

It wasn't lost on me that Dominion didn't react to the touch negatively, if anything, by the way her shoulders moved, it was almost as if she welcomed the touch. I watch as he subtly moves his hand from her back to touch her hand quickly, and an easy to miss gesture that suggests a familiarity that shouldn't be there unless they were very familiar with each other. Just as quickly as it happened, he let go, turning to face me, his face still impossible to read and he continued to speak, "This gives weight to reasons to keep you around… But you were not planned for and you are a significant expense for the Crown, one that during peacetime is hard to justify."

I gulp, this is it, I tell myself, I'm headed to the scrap yard.

"We will reserve judgment on your existence until we have finished our inspection of the fleet." He says.

Well, that was ambiguous…

"Your Majesty, if I may ask a question of the Crown?" I ask.

He nods an affirmative, I take a deep breath to center myself and I ask, "I understand that my hull was meant for someone else, would it be possible for my hull to be given to her if I am to be sent for scrap?"

For a split second, I see something in his eyes before it's covered up again and he says, "You are referring to Sovereign. That will not be necessary; the Crown has already paid to have her hull laid down again, at a shipyard under better security… We do not want another event like what gave rise to you."

He pauses again and asks me, "Tell us something, how close are we from the port?"

I blink a few times before I answer, "We're approximately sixty kilometers from port"

He nods and turns to Dominion, before he touches her hand again and says, "Then we shall have approximately three hours before we get there."

That was when I saw it, a very tiny smile at the edges of Dominion's lips at the contact and it hit home, they were in a relationship with each other, I had heard that the Queen had died during the last war… I wonder if once Dominion went online they started to work closely with one another. I escort the two of them to the gantry way and watch as they cross onto her hull, hand in hand. I guess that this is something that only would happen if they thought that they were protected from observation, less scandal racked the Crown.

XXXX

Three hours on the nose and we were approaching the dock, I had offered my berth to Dominion and moved to anchor just offshore. Thankfully Dominion had allowed me to ride to the berth on her hull and I stood on her bow out of habit, what surprised me was when she came up to me, folding her arms under her bust as she said with her Irish accent, "Well, get it off yer chest."

I look down at the water as we get closer to the dock and I ask, "Do you love him?"

Her cheeks go bright red, almost as red as her hair and eyes and she fidgets before saying, "Aye… but it is complicated."

I nod, leaning on the railing before I say to her, "If there is one thing I've learned over this last year and a half, complicated doesn't even begin to explain things."

Dominion starts to laugh as she leans over to match my stance as the dock comes into view and we both spot a woman in a white dress with a large white hat standing right where the gantry will come down. Dominion gives me a sideways look and asks, "Is that Illustrious?"

I nod my head as I say, "Aye, she is."

"I wonder if she'll float with those…" says Dominion, tilting her head to the side.

I laugh, hard, before I say, "Well, they do float…"

XXXX

A/N: Chapter 22 done! I know, I know… massive time skip, but it was about the only way I could think to move this story towards the ending in a reasonable time frame. As it stands this is going to be my longest story by a large margin as it is! Also, a big thank you to Commander Ash for being willing to take on the monumental task of proofing my work, it really does help having a second set of eyes go over everything.