Lexington was standing a few kilometres away from the base, looking at the great blue in front of her with an absent stare. She had left a meeting between her commander and the C-in-C of the USN Shipgirl Project, barely twenty minutes earlier. Lighting up yet another cigarette she cursed Halsey for yet another time. The Guam base, part of the defensive ring around Micronesia and Marshalls, was already strained, but it did not stop the Vice Admiral from pulling out yet another destroyer division to reinforce the South Pacific area.

Ever since the combined operation with JMSDF, Abyssal attacks had been steadily becoming stronger. The already small base barely capable of covering the entire area under its protection before that, was now operationally dysfunctional.

„For goodness sake, if this continues, we'll collapse within mere weeks and pull the entire Western Pacific with us...", she mumbled to herself, reaching for another cigarette only to realize she had run out. „Oh, for fuck sake... cough I really need to stop sailing without the rig...", while smoking had very little adverse effect on Shipgirls' bodies, setting out without at least their funnels could be considered an equivalent of a human putting their mouth to the exhaust of a running truck.

Slowly calming down, Lexington laid down on the water – a position which somehow felt more natural than standing on her feet. Caressing her trusty Thompson flight deck, the only part of her equipment she never parted with, the carrier let herself drift away. She was well within the surveillance ring of the base after all.

Staring at the sky, she turned off the radio and her eyelids soon became heavy. The sound of the waves was slowly making her fall asleep, when out of nowhere a powerful explosion rocked her watery bed. Few others followed immediately, at least one too close for comfort.

Not thinking much, she jumped on her feet and immediately launched her entire combat air patrol.

„Abyssal?! Here?", she let her thoughts slip out. „Impossible, we'd have known about them for at least an hour now.", she checked her watch to make sure that she did not accidentally fall asleep and missed the alert, completely forgetting about the turned off radio.

If this is a joke, it's a really bad one, but the two squadrons of torpedo bombers approaching her in hammer and anvil formation proved that the danger was real. She immediately launched eight Helldivers and ordered them to conduct combat recon, finally remembering to turn on the radio and starting to move, slowly but steadily reaching her combat speed. Only then she realized that the communication device was conveying nothing but static. Damn, that near miss had to damage it, she thought sending some fairies to fix it.

„Now come, let's see if you can even get clo...", she stopped as she realized that her only defensive measure were the fighters.

Tch... It's just a bunch of aircraft, boys can handle it, she thought dividing her squadrons between approaching enemies. Blind without her radars however, she failed to notice the escorting fighters and her Hellcats were immediately blindsided. Hesitant about thinning her escort any further she detached another squadron and began manoeuvring to throw off enemy's aim.

The dogfight quickly turned into a stalemate with Abyssal fighters focusing solely on keeping her CAP in check. As the torpedo bombers were preparing to enter their high-speed attack modes, Lexington had no other choice but to direct all of her remaining fighters against them. Her battle-hardened squadrons had no problems dealing with unescorted attackers which started crashing down into the ocean creating somewhat spectacular explosions. However, even these elite pilots were not fast enough and a few torpedoes managed to land in the water.

Damn! They managed to aim them, she cursed to herself. The enemy was clearly more skilled than she thought. Luckily all of them came from one side, making it considerably easier to dodge. Now all that was left was making sure to not trigger the proximity fuses. She slowed down to two thirds of her maximum speed and turned into the incoming torpedoes. With her pounding heart she kept her course steady to let the explosives pass her.

Phew, that was close, she thought raising her head up again. If she could do that at over twenty knots, she would stop like a deer in the headlights. Multiple columns of smoke were raising above the island. She pressed the pedal to the metal, using flag signals to recall her fighters and hoping that the combat recon will be able to safely land on Guam.

Cough

Cough

Her body was not taking the combat too well and she rapidly lost speed. I'm fucked, she thought, but the mishap turned out a blessing in disguise as four well aimed bombs landed just a few metres in front of her. Making barely fifteen knots, she headed towards the base. However, with CAP still out of position trying to shake off the enemy fighters, the crippled carrier made for an easy target as two bombs struck her back. A burning pain was briefly alleviated by huge splashes caused by two near misses, but it was not enough to keep her on her feet.

As she collapsed to her knees only one thought filled her mind. I'm going first again, huh? So much for the glorious return. As she heavily turned on her back to face the death, she saw a barrage of explosions and a ball of fire rushing down, somewhere far away from her. As her consciousness began fading away, the last thing she noticed was a blue plushie whale strapped to a belt and a rapid pull around her arms.