Chapter 7: Across the Pacific
It's the same shit day-in, day-out. The destroyers did their patrol runs, the heavy cruisers were on stand-by to repel any recon raids, and the capital ships were ready to mobilize at a moment's notice. In the meantime the off-duty personnel fashioned lawn chairs from whatever spare material was at hand. Who could resist a day at the beach? A tenuous existence, but an acceptable one. Many would kill to be based on a tropical pacific island.
Many were killed defending said island, to no avail.
Palau fell in the second wave of the invasion. The first wave razed the coastlines of the Americas and brought the Philippines firmly under Abyssal control. The remaining forces in the Pacific formed a defensive network, named the Rim of Fire. Palau was supposed to have been the key to the counter-offensive. A combined south-east Asian fleet sortieing from Palau was to act as a decoy to draw the abyssal fleet into battle to be destroyed by the US 7th Fleet and the JMSDF before swinging east towards America.
If only it were that easy.
The second wave severed the tenuous link between Australia and the rest of Eurasia a year later. It was launched on the eve of the offensive's execution. For a month fortress Palau stood, the forces cut off from supply lines and communications sporadic trying to break out back to the safety of Australia. What little radio signals were received painted a sordid picture as the fleet became increasingly battered and desperate. "RSS Independence picking up survivors from KRI Usman-Harun, insufficient fuel to reach Darwin, will fight to the last man, remember us" was the last transmission that got through, but as far as it was known, the transmission was the only thing that went through the blockade.
Of all the things to think about off-duty, Escort Water Princess 73 was wondering why this crossed her mind. She arose from the birthing pools off Vancouver long after the subjugation of the Americas and the fall of Palau. Knowledge of history before her "birth" was innate to her, from the story of her people, a parallel race that long sought parity with humans, to first contact just east of Florida in December 1945. To put bluntly, that failed spectacularly with navy sending in bombers, which were cleanly shot down. Secret negotiations continued over decades, but with ties souring her kind made an ultimatum: Secede certain portions of coastline and there will be no bloodshed. Or else.
The humans did not accept the terms, but what wasn't expected was them using a nuke to deliver the message. With their hand forced, her kind amassed an army to take the Americas – take out the biggest guy first, as those humans say.
These memories ended a few months after the fall of Palau when she was born. Everything she knew past that point came from her keeping up to date with intelligence reports, ranging from possible human counterattacks to eavesdropping on human civilian broadcasts.
The term "Shipgirl" started appearing 5 years ago on human comms, and soon after they were seen in combat. Finally the humans had a weapon that could take them on on even terms. No one she knew had the slightest idea how the humans had come up with these beings.
She sat in meditation. A piece of trivia floated up from the recesses of her mind. Humans considered her race to have been sent by higher beings to purge man of his sins, or that is what the civilian chatter said. None of this is true, however, according to her current knowledge.
But what was true are defeats suffered at the hands of these shipgirls. They appeared in time to repel landings on the British Isles, and with the relatively recent destruction of the birthing pools off Norway and Singapore the humans are actually regaining ground. As to how far they will go, she does not know, as those locations were merely peninsulas connected to larger unconquered landmasses. Surely the Pacific is a wide enough gap, or is it?
Her mind continued to wander as the sun slowly crept lower and lower on the horizon. Her own air group was scrambled to intercept a reconnaissance flight a few days ago, without success. The incursion was just one of many over the last few weeks. The humans were up to something, something big. Thoughts danced in her head. What are shipgirls? Where did they come from? And why do they seem so like herself. Was there a third sentient race on this planet that allied themselves with the humans? Were they created by the humans from studying captured specimens? Or is there something supernatural about them?
She stopped the train of thought right there. God. Deities. Higher beings. She was thinking like the humans, like the enemy, like the barbarians that spat on a perfectly reasonable request for peace and quarter. How alike are they, and can there really be peace between the two races? She hoped honestly that she would still be alive to see that day. But for now she was content with pondering these questions in this brief moment of respite, watching the sun slowly dip into the ocean on this idyllic beach, knowing that war is always just beyond the distant horizon.