Chapter 10: Lost daughters
9 p.m. It is late to still be working in the cafeteria, but Hosho needed to finish cleaning up after the last diners. Her fairies were already helping her move the tables back while she sat down to take a break and eat some curry she had set aside for herself.
It was a while since Hosho was part of a battlefleet. She was one of the first to be reborn, and like her historical counterpart the first aircraft carrier of the shipgirl corps. She was instrumental in the formation of the carrier doctrine, and from her came the most skilled fairy aces of the fleet. However with the arrival of the fleet carriers she was soon relegated to the screening forces, and as the ranks of light carriers swelled her combat sorties became fewer and further between.
Yet she made it a point to awake with the main strike force and be at the docks every time they sortied. She always prayed for their safe return, and until now her prayers have always been answered.
As she ate she thought about the upcoming operation. She was privy to the reason behind OrdBat decisions, being the motherly figure of the base and most of the shipgirl corps. Thinking about it always unsettled her. "The historical route", so to speak. The mirror of the terrible war that saw her carrier daughters and aircrew sons perish fruitlessly while she sat in harbour. The same war in which she lived to see the bitter end, her final act being the repatriation of POWs before facing an unceremonious end at the scrappers.
Why couldn't she go down honourably, she wondered. Why would she have to suffer seeing her daughters cast off, not knowing if they will return. She felt the knot in her gut tightening, at the same time trying to swallow the food in her mouth, finding herself unable to.
It was easier to cope with the despair in the beginning. But after her role as a training vessel was fulfilled she got assigned to this forward base, the same one the First Carrier Division was manning. The nightmares began. She found herself jolting awake in the middle of the night, shouting the names of Akagi and Kaga, tears streaming down her face.
But she kept it to herself, for the first few months at least. When the current admiral arrived and brought an open-door policy with him she finally had the chance to open up. He listened and understood where she was coming from, and suggested she find an outlet for her feelings. Something that would stop her dwelling on negative feelings by giving something else to focus on.
She decided to cook for the fleet, to welcome the battlefleet home with a hearty meal. It was therapeutic for her. A distraction during the day and the hope that the meal would not go uneaten. And on top of that the morale at the base improved markedly, and with it performance in battle. High Command was forced to look the other way when the admiral asked for more budget for upgrades to living facilities, food, and other small comforts. And similar practices were started in other bases, going so much as to bring back non-combatants like Mamiya and Irako to prepare the food there.
In a way, Hosho started something. She knew she should feel proud, and yet, there was always that emptiness. The war was still grinding on, her daughters were still sailing out, they were still getting hurt. With every victory High Command would address the fleet, announcing the end was near but in reality peace seemed further and further away.
Again the order of battle thrust its way into her consciousness. Why Leyte? Why the engagement that had the bulk of the remaining fleet sail off and return a shell of its former self, without anything to show? Maybe this was how the wheels of fate turned. Warships of decades past brought back to be absolved from sin; the purging of the Abyssal scourge mirroring historical engagements; the enemy they face taking up corrupted forms of themselves.
She felt something warm on her cheek. She put the bowl down – her appetite was gone anyway. She wanted to be on the front, not for the thrill of the fight, not to be the one to protect her daughters (she knew she would be hopelessly outclassed in any case), but to live up to her status of a warship, and should it be the case, to claim her place in Valhalla with her friends and family, something her former self was unable to do.