Chapter 5: Training Plans

It was the first time she had been aboard… well, herself for all intents and purposes, and honestly it was kind of amazing that she had seen something like a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty crew at a time running around the cramped, metal corridors that made up her interior.

Still, while she probably could have tried to figure out how to project herself onto her internal hull, why do so when her actual, physical hull was lying around?

Shaking her head at the direction her thoughts were taking, Robyn frowned, following the cramped passages through her hull until she found her bridge. Looking around the room filled only with banks of monitors and instruments, she frowned.

Now she was here, how did she find out what had been going on with her guns? Every time she had tried to target them in the recent fight had essentially ended up with her internal targeting systems responding with 'kumquat' or equally useless replies, so much unlike the fight for Devonport or saving herself from that abyssal destroyer that tried to eat her.

"Okay…" Robyn muttered, as she made her way over to one of the stations. "I think this was the station I was trying to use. It was the one that had the plot on it anyway, so why wasn't it working?"

"Because that station be for early warning, not fire control, Zenny," a voice said from behind her. "Catches more than a few kids out, that do," he continued.

Spinning around, Robyn blinked at the transparent shape of a man wearing what looked like an older version of the outfit Commander Glenn usually wore, though obviously cut for a man's figure. "What do you mean by that?" she asked, "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

"Commander Joseph Hunter of the British Royal Navy, Miss Zenith, your commander for the duration of the War," Joseph introduced himself, doffing his hat briefly. "As for what I meant, well, a ship doesn't need radar that's too much longer range than its guns to aim those guns, which would be those stations there." He pointed over at another station while Robyn gaped at him for a minute, "That and the fire directors down below."

"Y-you mean we were trying to make our guns work with the wrong systems, grandfather?" asked Robyn before groaning at his nod. "No bloody wonder we got weird responses if we were using the wrong bloody systems."

Joseph nodded before walking over to her and gently tilting her chin. "As I said before, many of your crew had similar issues… Robyn," he said, smiling at her. "You were barely a babe in arms when I last saw you, child. You've grown into a beautiful young woman, though I have to ask. Your parents are they?"

Robyn shrugged. "I… don't know," she admitted. "I spent pretty well my entire life in an orphanage, still haven't tracked down what happened to my parents." She snorted softly, shaking her head. "There's more about you and Captain Cooper Stevens than about my parents."

Patting her head, Joseph frowned slightly. "I can't say why you wound up in an orphanage, Robyn," he said, moving to sit in the command chair and gesturing for her to join him. "What little I saw before my own death, they loved you." A frown wrinkled his brow as he thought. "Something obviously happened between then and now. It's a fair drive from Boston to Plymouth."

"I was born in Boston?" Robyn asked, blinking.

"Aye, over in Lincolnshire, right enough." Joseph replied, "Your parents stopped by London on their way here to see me. I was too old and frail at the time to make a trip down, but they were supposed to bring my ashes to my girl here, to you, no idea what happened after that as my time was done by that point."

Robyn chewed her lip, frowning at the unmanned bridge. "Grandad…" she turned to face Joseph. "Is there a way you could tell me more about my parents… and show me how to control my hull?"

Joseph chuckled fondly. "Lass, I'd be happy to tell you about your parents and grandparents. Heck, you'll like as not meet your grandfather, my son, since he served aboard as well, back in the sixties or seventies." He gave her an amused look. "As for learning your hull, well, I can't claim to know everything, but if'n you press that, we might wake up those that are better suited." He winked at her as he indicated the 'general quarters' alarm.

Looking at the alarm button for a moment, Robyn arched an eyebrow at her grandfather, trying to look serious but mostly coming across as cute as she folded her arms. She managed to hold it for a few moments before she started snickering. Reaching over, she hit the button, snickering at the familiar drum beat.

She felt her turbines rev up in her chest at the sight of spectral figures running for their stations, turrets being unlocked and unblocked. Deep inside her, she could feel the shell elevators rumble to life, raising shells into her turrets.

It was something else to both see and feel a crew, her crew, scrambling for their stations and preparing for battle once more, reports being called back to their captain from those on the bridge.

Settling into her chair, Megan grimaced slightly at the ache in her muscles. While she was fit – hell she was damn well athletic compared to most girls her age – spending most of a day on training, even with different types of training, still took it out of her, particularly when she was being trained to fight things most wouldn't even see.

"Oh thank the kami," a voice sounded from the machine's speakers as Skype popped up a new conversation window. "Megan-chan, please tell me you've got some way to convince someone that they need to actually pay attention to things unless they want to be horribly killed."

Blinking, Megan looked at the window on her screen to see a Japanese girl about her age with relatively long purple tinged black hair and purple eyes. "What?" she asked. "Rei, what are you talking about?"

Rei groaned, dropping her head onto her hands. "Let's just say that the anime I keep getting teased about is actually a real thing and while Moon-san isn't too terrible for someone that's no idea how to fight, Mercury-san spent more time with her computer than watching for trouble."

Megan blinked a few times as she processed what her friend had said before it clicked. "Wait, so Sailor Moon…?" She got a nod from her friend. "What happened and are the outfits as bad as the media makes out?"

"I had hair down to my ass; you know I hate having it that long because of the kami blasted manga. Shit, I think my hair covered more than the skirt," Rei sighed, rubbing her face with her hands before turning to Megan. "As for what happened… you know the episode where Mars is officially introduced?"

"I think… wait, the dimensional bus thing, right?" Megan asked.

Rei nodded. "Dimensional bus thing," she confirmed flatly. "Ugh… now I'm going to have to buy the manga or the anime to see if anything else matches up. At least the real Usagi is actually better than what I remember of people talking about for the anime version."

"Huh, kinda surprised that the Dark Kingdom or whatever they're calling themselves are actually doing anything given the other messes about the place, but then it's either really smart or really stupid to do things while military forces are on alert for something else and nobody's said either way with them." Megan commented, frowning slightly. "Well, I don't know about the other things, but if your team mate is trying to get herself killed through lack of attention, force her into training and let her be killed there until she gets the hint."

Seeing Rei's arched eyebrow, she shrugged. "You said yourself she was more interested in her computer, right? Well, next time you meet them suggest a 'game' if everyone's okay with it and drag them to paintball or laser tag or something along those lines and see if you can get some people for another team, then focus your own efforts on supporting the people on your team that support you, let 'Mercury' handle herself if she's going to act that way and see how often she has to be 'killed' before she takes the hint."

Rei sent Megan a questioning look. "You think that will work?"

Shrugging, Megan rubbed her shoulder. "Hopefully," she said before grimacing as it twinged painfully. "Hang on; I think I need some ice." So saying, she got up to get one of the cold packs her aunt kept in the freezer. Returning a few minutes later, she settled in the chair again, placing the cold pack against her shoulder.

"What happened to you?" asked Rei, eyeing the cold pack. "You get into a fight or something?"

"Spar," Megan replied. "I know you don't get to use the computer as often as some of the others, so how much has gotten across to you about the 'honey trap' at Devonport?"

"Rika-chan filled me in on some of it when she visited the shrine a couple of weeks ago and I caught the stream Hikaru-chan did with you, your sister, Kaylie-chan, Rika-chan and the new girl," Rei replied.

Megan nodded, shifting the cold pack slightly. "You've probably got the high points then. Long story short, I caught a punch on my shoulder from Minotaur because I got distracted." She shrugged her other shoulder. "It's more annoying than anything right now, certainly not as bad as when I tackled what was apparently a destroyer water demon and broke my collar bone."

Giving her friend a flat look, Rei sighed. "Only you…" she muttered. "Seriously though, getting into fights with abyssals? I doubt I could do that even if I got everything of Mars' power and you're shrugging it off."

"I doubt Sailor Mars had even a fraction of what she should have had if she were anywhere near capable of pulling a full planet's power," Megan pointed out. "Hell, if they'd actually taken full strength into account then most of the Senshi could wreck cities with a single misaimed attack, most likely they were limited so they could avoid that but never learned how to handle the actual abilities properly on screen as it were."

Rei snorted softly. "It also made a great deal of the fact most of the youma could only really be dealt with by Sailor Moon's attacks and she usually had trouble with them. While I took down the dark general after getting powers, I didn't have too much trouble with the other youma before then."

She frowned, playing with her hair. "Heck, I think there were a few normal martial artists and a couple of military brats in the last bus, they killed the youma plenty easily with normal weapons. A normal handgun – that one your aunt showed me how to use a couple of years back – forced whoever the general was to back off before I got powers and after it was much easier to shoot the baka than play with magic."

Megan snickered as her mind came up with images for what the other Sailor Scouts and their enemies had probably had for expressions seeing that happen. "I'll bet that got a few comments," she said, grinning.

"Oh, it did," Rei agreed with a smirk on her own face. "In fact it was bad enough that the cat – who is actually called Luna by the way – broke character to start complaining. It was hilarious seeing masquerade boy looking like someone had hit him with a custard pie at seeing the idiot general leaking from bullet holes and whining about how his troops were supposed to be invincible."

Megan snorted softly, shaking her head. "I've heard that one a few times before," she muttered, "it sounds about right, and about typical honestly," she continued, frowning slightly. "That said, I'd honestly suggest giving Rika or Hikaru a yell, see if they can get you some JSDF support if there's going to be another group causing trouble in Japan."

"Just the JSDF?" asked Rei.

Shrugging, Megan shifted back in her seat. "Well, I don't know who or what else might be able to deal with their threat," she admitted. "I mean here, my dad's department in the police would help and there's probably military besides me, no idea on civilian groups." She shrugged again.

Rei frowned, chewing her lip. "That's true," she admitted. "I don't know about the military, but there're at least some religious people from what granddad said."

"If nothing else it might be worth kicking your ground and air forces out of bed anyway," Megan said. "If they aren't already, they can at least help shore up the coastal defences and provide cover to the shipgirls, and given how many manga and anime series there are that focus trouble on Japan, particularly in Tokyo…."

"You're thinking if Sailor Moon has turned out real, it's likely others will?" asked Rei, getting a nod from Megan. "Well, Luna will be pissed, but honestly that cat needs dumped in a pool of water to cool off. It's not like normal folks can't help with our threats and if others from other series show up… it might honestly be more useful to have some sort of coordination to deal with them."

"More allies are always useful," Megan commented dryly.

Rei frowned, biting her lip lightly. "Actually, maybe we should get in touch with Kaylie-chan and Nia-chan about things in the States since they have a lot if their comics and stuff are right, maybe Jolie-chan, Cara-chan and Ronja-chan as well if only because they're near you."

Nodding, Megan frowned, setting the cold pack aside and pulling up a notepad to jot ideas on. "We probably ought to look into pushing the military for a UN group or at least an international one if we don't use the UN, to coordinate across borders." She shifted slightly, cocking her head to the side. "Hmm… I wonder if I can get enough rank to actually make that a thing since I'm part of the active Royal Navy now."

"You're determined to get that group running aren't you?" Rei asked.

"Considering what's going on?" Megan asked rhetorically, one eyebrow arching. "I mean we're getting attacked by creatures from the arse end of Davy Jones' Locker, the Zulus had multiple supernatural encounters throughout their careers. Hell, Myngs sank the Flying Dutchman with Z9 Wolfgang Zenker's help in World War Two."

Rei shifted slightly. "Do we even know where the abyssals came from?"

Megan shrugged, continuing, "Sally and I have had numerous encounters ourselves, not even getting into the mess our family history is." She snorted and shook her head. "Of course Jolie's an actual Disney-style gargoyle half the time, I've got fae blood among other things and now Sailor Moon is apparently real? Fuck yes we need something to coordinate dealing with that sort of shit."

Rei frowned, but nodded slowly. "Too true… and hey, if you want my help…"

"I'll give you a yell," Megan responded with a firm nod.

Staring grimly at the target, Lauren watched as it was chewed up; the gun she had strapped to her arm emitted a ripping roar, spitting fire and metal. Releasing the trigger, she frowned, turning to the other targets in the range and opening up on them with short bursts that shredded the paper and dug deep into the backstop beyond, kicking out clouds of dust.

Letting the gun wind down, Lauren shifted, locking the safety on and unloading it to place on the pallet for transport. Giving the gun a pat, she turned to gather what was left of her targets after ensuring the range was clear, not the needed to, after the first demonstration of the weapon shortly after being sent to Devonport, she had the range to herself, or near enough. Very few wanted their ears blown out by an aircraft calibre weapon.

"You're safe to approach, Angela," she said after a few minutes.

"With all due respect, Commander," Angela responded. "I don't know if anyone would be safe while you're shooting. We can hear that gun of yours in HMS Drake and if it's as loud and powerful as it sounds from there…."

Lauren frowned. "Honestly, it doesn't affect me that badly compared to everyone else," she admitted. "That said, the only other person I've seen lift her solo was Lieutenant Scott Pritchard from my old command, and he was a werewolf… more the World of Darkness Garou type than the cursed type from a lot of movies."

"Quite," Angela replied. "In any case, Dauphin came through for us and got us around twenty tonnes of repair fluid for our initial dock set up, though it will take a few days to get here coming through the submarine's 'bootleg'." She scowled at the battered and much abused shooting range backstop. "Unfortunately getting other resources is still slow going. The Sea Lords or their supply people anyway are still refusing to shake loose any extra steel, fuel or munitions for us."

Sighing, she shook her head. "I can't say I'm surprised," Lauren said. "After all they've got a 'commander' without any rank trying to pull in supplies for a shipgirl base. Even if Commodore Shipperley is approving things on our end, presuming he's actually seeing the requests and nobody is blacklisting them before they reach his desk, he still doesn't have as much rank as an admiral for all that commodores are flag rank, they're still the lowest level and short of getting my rank increased, I doubt we'll stop having trouble for a while yet."

"So what do we do, Commander?" Angela asked. "If we can't get the supplies to keep the girls running they're not even going to get up to speed before things fall through."

Lauren frowned, moving to lean against the wall as she thought. "We're not in extreme need since we still need to at least get the girls trained enough that they can sortie with others, which is another problem in itself." Running her hand through her hair, she looked out at the range. "I'm going to need some parts myself, for a personal project, but I might know a few people that know people."

The question was whether the people she knew would be able to come through.

Watching the plumes of water kick up around a rock in the ocean, Robyn scowled. Two kilometres, not even a quarter her main battery's maximum range, and every shot had missed despite the fire control she had.

Growling, she rechecked the equations and fired another volley only to miss every shot by metres. "Oh come on! I've hit things from further away than this, why can't I hit a bloody bit of rock?"

"Maybe you should try from about one to five hundred metres first, Robyn," Sally's voice sounded from behind her, causing the blonde to turn to her sister ship. "Last time I think that we both did a fair amount of the calculations to set up for the shots and even then on each individual gun we only got like 40% accuracy at best."

Robyn sighed, running a hand through her hair. "How?" she asked. "Most of the shots hit."

Sally shrugged. "They hit, but we had a clump of targets close together so even the ones that drifted tended to drift onto another target." She frowned, moving up next to Robyn and aiming at the rock. "You're not wrong about what we should be able to do, but firing a gun as a human is different than a ship's turret and we're new at this."

Raising one arm, she fired both guns from that turret, one missing behind and kicking up a plume of water, the other skipping off the sea in front of the rock. "Yeah, I might be able to hit at this range, but probably not consistently and that's mostly due to cadet training having fairly accurate mock weapons."

Snorting, Robyn clenched her fists. "Better than me," she muttered. "What sort of shipgirl am I that I can't even shoot a target at less than a quarter my max range?"

Skating close, Sally pulled Robyn into a hug. "Knock that shit out right now, Stevens," she ordered softly. Pushing Robyn back to look her in the eye she placed a hand on the girl's cheek. "Megan can't even do as much as you to back me up right now, that's not going to make me give her up as a sister. The two of us have had one another's backs for our entire lives, and I remember the tales from my gran. Myngs and Zephyr were the leaders, yeah, but the others were always there."

She gave Robyn another short hug. "Zenith always had Zephyr's back, so did Zealous, Zebra, Zodiac, Zest and Zambesi and it wasn't just us either. Hell, you captured U-47, with your bow blown off. You saved Z3 Max Schultz after I lost some of my aft turrets to bombs saving Z1 Leberecht Maass and you were there when we ran into Eurydice among so many other things." She grinned.

Taking a breath and letting it out slowly, Robyn nodded. "Thanks, Sally, I needed that, especially with… well… this." She waved at the rock she had been using for a target.

"Oh believe me, I understand the feeling," Sally chuckled. "I ate mat so many times learning to fight, and as for shooting? To start with I couldn't hit a barn wall at twenty feet, or that's what it felt like."

Robyn blinked. "You were that bad?"

Sally nodded. "It sure felt like it, I'm better now, but…" she shrugged. "Pretty much any competent marine or soldier can easily out shoot me. Hell, probably quite a few Americans our age can as well given they're more likely to learn early. I know Kaylie's pretty much heading for sharpshooter trophies with infantry weapons, taught both Megan and me some tricks."

"Is she that good?"

"Better than I am at least," Sally shrugged, "For this? No idea how good she is honestly, as I said while a lot of the mechanics are fairly similar even with larger mass on the rounds, mapping a turret onto a human body is a bit different than a human using a rifle or even a mounted gun."

Robyn frowned and nodded slowly. "So… how do we do this?"

"Let's start at say one hundred metres and work back until we start having difficulty, then just burn our ammo until we're hitting decently or the sun's going down," suggested Sally.

Robyn nodded, frowning slightly as her turbines and hydro jets revved up, pushing her forwards at a gentle speed.

Soon enough the patch of ocean was filled with the staccato cracks of 4.5 inch naval rifle fire.

Flopping onto the couch in their lounge, Sally closed her eyes, letting her head loll back onto the backrest with a groan. Between teaching Susan and Robyn as much as she could for hand-to-hand combat – because the only others who could fight with them properly were her sister and aunt, everyone else could only show them the moves and get out of the way to avoid being caught out by sudden mass or power shifts, message running, speed trials, gunnery practice, school and everything else she was flat out exhausted.

Opening her eyes again, she glanced around the pale blue painted room before her gaze settled on the television on one wall. Maybe there would be something interesting on instead of the usual run of soaps, talent shows; reality shows (bullshit), documentaries or bad 'comedy' cartoons.

Hauling herself up, she moved to grab the controller and plug the TV in before flopping back where she had been. Rubbing one eye, Sally scrolled through the menus until she found the day's programme listing and frowned at it.

"Anything good on?" asked Megan, rubbing her hair with a towel as she entered the room, Robyn not far behind her.

"Define 'good'," Sally responded flatly, "Because I'm seeing a whole lotta nothing."

Settling on the couch next to her sister, Megan frowns at the screen. "Well anything that's watchable for a start, presuming there's anything like that."

Sally gave her sister a look before reading over the screen. "Bunch of soaps, a few 'reality TV' things and some documentaries about things I don't care about." She shrugged, flicking through a few more channels. "Game Shows, most of which are steaming crud… and one episode of DS9," she continued.

"Which episode?" asked Megan.

"Looks like one of the crossover ones with SBD, not sure which though," Sally replied.

Robyn blinked at the screen from where she had taken a seat opposite Megan before turning to the twins. "What are you two talking about?" she asked. "DS9? SBD? What are those?"

The twins shared a look before Megan shrugged. "I take it you didn't get much sci-fi in the orphanage, Robyn." Getting a head shake from the girl, Megan frowned slightly. "Okay, there's a sci-fi series, sort of a 'if things go… then in two-three hundred years we might be in this position, except it changed some of the past from the real world. The first pilot was the starship Enterprise visiting some prison planet while under the command of Christopher Pike, I think."

Sally nodded. "She's right, though the ship wasn't going to be called Enterprise until not too long before the show was produced and the pilot kinda fell flat." She shrugged. "They retried later in the sixties or seventies, dumping off the captain and his XO and replacing them with James Kirk for the cap, not sure where the rest of the bridge crew came in, but I know Spock was in the pilot and got bumped to XO with Kirk."

"That time the show took off, and I do mean took off," Megan continued. "They did several live action series with Kirk, six films and a cartoon before things went into cool down.

"Of course," Sally continued, "people had their own tales for the popular sci-fi. Some of the fanfics got published in magazines, then the 'net kicked in properly thanks to Umbra, Unicorn, Antaeus and their sisters and suddenly there were dozens of people meeting up for it, talking specs and such."

Megan frowned slightly at the TV show. "A lot of Brits, while they liked 'Enterprise', found it was a bit too American, so they broke off their own continuity which was Devonport Starbase and her defence fleet, meaning our fleet apart from using Warspite in place of Enterprise."

She shook her head, grinning wryly. "Got that involved that Roddenberry decided to let the fans have their wish when they did Next Gen and did Space Base Devonport alongside it, SBD was more militaristic, but they were supposed to be the ones that held the line near the Neutral Zone. Even then though, they still had some 'interesting' encounters."

Leaning back, Sally frowned at the screen contemplatively. "Of course then DS9 came out and it was also a space base so immediate crossover potential, like the episode screening tonight." She shrugged. "It wasn't just Star Trek though, there was this whole thing of sci-fi stuff that really kicked in from the seventies to the nineties and these guys would do that sort of thing to whatever one they were into, particularly since the 'net went public around then as well."

She shifted slightly, chewing her lip. "Star Trek really kicked it off to the point that not only was there fanfics in well-known magazines sometimes even before official books were around for the series, but they actually made a series specifically about our group."

Megan nodded along with her sister's words. "The Honorverse has it, hell, it's practically canon that the Star Kingdom of Manticore uses the British Royal Navy's ship registry for its name list so of course our names come up and what do you know, Honor Harrington had some in her various fleets at one point or another."

"Babylon 5 has at least some French, German and Italian fleets along with both a British one and a Japanese one. Space Battleship Yamato, apart from the bad rename for the American release, has a side manga that has them recover Yamato's contemporaries and turn them into space ships as well," Sally continued, frowning at the screen, chewing her lip as she thought.

"SeaQuest DSV… a lot of the outside views of the SeaQuest herself were Antaeus or her sisters with 'dressings' to make their hulls look organic. Hell, the shape for the Atlantis DSV is pretty close to Umbra and her sisters, which is kinda funny considering at one point Atlantis played SeaQuest while Unrivalled played the Atlantis DSV in the same episode," Megan pointed out. "Actually, I think they had the whole group playing various variants of the DSVs in there along with some of the nuke subs."

Sally nodded. "You've also got the World War series by Turtledove that has some stuff written by fans focusing on the Atlantic and Pacific wars and having the various ships do things." She snorted softly. "I remember one where Yukikaze, Yuudachi and Shigure were mixing it up with Johnston, Heermann and Hoel and got caught out by a Race battle squad and pulled a repeat of Samar on them, sunk a few of them as well."

Robyn blinked several times, trying to process what she had been told. "Wait… so there's that much? I mean we're that famous?" she asked.

Both twins nodded. "It probably helped that a lot of the ships were around or their namesakes were," Sally said. "I mean the whole 'Enterprise against Japan' thing the Yanks had, then one of their nuclear supercarriers got the name and there was that much of a petition for there to be a space shuttle Enterprise."

"Plus as you two said," Megan cut in, "Devonport's war fleet had over half a century of service, hell, Warspite didn't quite make that and she's pretty famous still over half a century since she got stuck on rocks heading for the scrap yard."

"The world wonders," Sally quoted. "Padding, maybe, but a lot of people remember that bit from Samar and Japan probably still has legends about those ships." She snorted softly before setting the TV to the appropriate channel for the episode of DS9. "What a lot of people don't remember is that Willie, Kimberly and Young joined in while Iowa stopped Yamato re-joining and they were just as vicious."

Megan nodded. "It wasn't just the Fletchers of Taffy 3 that were nasty in that fight. Willie rammed Nagato hard enough to knock her about and I think it was Kim or Young who forced Kongou off with a torp volley." She leaned back, watching the ships on screen for a moment. "The other two Taffies had their own stories from Samar, those that made it through."

Robyn nodded, turning to focus on the screen while Defiant found herself chased to a Federation Starbase only for a group of almost 'pre-Defiant' ships to sweep over her and attack her pursuers, the ships passing close enough that they could see the names 'USS Zenith' and 'USS Kempenfelt' on two of their hulls.

"You know," Sally commented, watching the fleet tackle the Dominion ships pursuing Defiant and hammering on them with phasers – both pulse and beam – and torpedoes. "I think there's some other fiction around as well. I think one has Janus, Jervis and/or Javelin – real world versions – wind up dumped into the Destroyermen world and going against some Nazi ships. They might cross paths with the battlecruiser Amagi and the USS Walker, but it's been a while since I read the fic."

Robyn frowned, nodding slightly. Being an orphan, she had missed a lot of what could be, even if the orphanage was one of the good ones. Still, that many stories being told about fictional versions of the ship she was and her sisters, it seemed almost unreal, even watching as Devonport Starbase's fleet, including a fictional version of both her and Sally, tore apart a Dominion strike group.