Chapter 47: They Eat HOW Much?
"Oh fuck me." Jersey smacked herself in the forehead. With her hand. A hand that was attached to an impressively toned arm, the kind usually refereed to as 'shredded' or 'jacked.' Jersey could easily pluck up a scared little Fletcher-girl with arms like these, hell, she'd been bragging to Musashi about her own build not two days ago. And yet, she'd never even considered picking up Heermann. Because she was a ship. Ships don't pick up other ships, ships tow ships.
The battleship scowled and smashed her palm into her brow with an angry grunt. She was a stupid ship. "Fuck me, I'm an idiot." She made a note in her log to find out which harebrained sailor came up with such an out-of-the-box idea and kiss him (or her, Jersey wasn't a stickler) full on the mouth. "Yo, Hoel."
"Yeah?" the little destroyer shakily looked over. Her eyes were glassy and the grime on her face only made the tear streaks that much more obvious. But there was something else too. The Taffy Spark that refused to give up, not while she was still floating—and sometimes not even then.
"C'mere, I want to test something," said Jersey. The battleship planted her feet wide on the surf, her muscular thighs tensing as she braced herself against her… hull. "C'mon," she held her arms out like a pale fleshy forklift, waiting for Hoel to hop aboard.
"What're we doing?" mumbled Hoel as she dutifully shuffled into Jersey's grasp.
"I need to see," Jersey grabbed the destroyer, cradling her legs with one arm while the other wrapped around Hoel's back, "If I can carry you little shits."
Hoel let out a surprised eep as Jersey hauled her into the air. Her already huge eyes went as big as Musashi's comically over sized tits as Jersey settled the little destroyer against her hip.
"You okay, kiddo?" asked Jersey. One arm wrapped around Hoel's hips, keeping her firmly seated in the crook of the battleship's slender waist. The other wrapped around the little destroyer's back to keep her extra secure.
"Um…" Hoel craned her neck to look over the battleship's shoulder. Her cheeks puckered as she examined her new perch like a kitten examining its newest toy. "I think so."
"Good," said Jersey, "'cause you're heavy as fuck."
"Hey!"
Jersey rolled her eyes while her engineering crews frantically scurried up and down her body. So far so good. Other than the insufficiently-padded weight of Hoel's bony—or was it steely—ass against her hip, Jersey wasn't sensing any worrisome stress on her body-that-was-also-her-hull-because-fuck-logic-in-its-pretentious-ass.
"You know it's true," she said, trying in vain to find a spot for Hoel that didn't involve jamming pointy Fletcher-ass-bones right into her hip. The little girl was heavy. Heavier than any girl her size should be. But at least she wasn't destroyer-heavy.
"I'm not that much heavier than your turret," protested Hoel. Her little arms folded in defiance as she scowled at the battleship she was suddenly at eye-level with.
"Yeah yeah, short stuff," said Jersey, slowly building up to a sedate ten knots. Adak Island was only a hundred-odd nautical miles away. As much as Jersey wanted to get Heermann to a dockyard yesterday, she'd ideally like to do it without dropping the poor girl.
"Wow…" Hoel stared down at the water gliding by below her. "Is this what being you is like?"
"Yeah," said Jersey, a tiny smile creeping onto her face at the sheer awe on Hoel's tear stained face.
"You're so slow."
The smile died. "Listen here you little shit," Jersey gave Hoel's ass a pinch, eliciting a surprised eep. The battleship ignored her and nudged her helm over into a turn. Gentle at first, then harder and harder until her twin rudders were at nearly half-deflection.
"Oooh…" Hoel screwed her eyes shut and shoved her face into Jersey's scarf. The battleship wasn't rolling as badly as she should be with this much top weight, but she was definitely rolling. "I don't like this," mumbled the destroyer.
"Fuck it," muttered Jersey. The battleship coasted to a stop and gingerly set Hoel back down on the water. She had her envelope now. Ten knots and half her rudder's deflection was all she was willing to push it. At that speed, she'd show up on the island just after dawn.
"Hey, Heermann?" the battleship said. Her voice was low and soothing, almost a motherly coo as she ever so gently pulled up alongside the mauled destroyer. Jersey felt her own tears start to well up under her gun directors, but she forced them down. Heermann needed a rock to cling to, not a weeping puddle to… fucking… sing into? Maybe? Jersey was focusing too hard to bother with coherent metaphors.
"Mmmhm?" the little girl's pained murmur was almost lost in the crash of freezing water against her hull.
"We're gonna get you home," said Jersey. The battleship dipped her arms into the freezing water, gently cradling Heermann before pulling her out of the ocean as smoothly as she could manage.
It wasn't smooth enough, the mangled girl uttered the strongest cries of pain her spent body could manage, sending a cringe up Jersey's spine.
"I know, kiddo," she whispered as she settled Heermann against crook of her waist. Bloody oil from Heermann's shredded legs oozed onto the battleship's body, slowly soaking into her shorts.
The little destroyer's cries died as Jersey finally got her settled against her chest. In its place came a tiny, pathetic moan. A half-conscious acknowledgement running the blockade of agony to break out into whatever sliver of the girl's mind was still fully conscious.
Jersey felt the other battleships form up around her, their guns a palisade of steel protecting her and her injured escort. Beyond them, Naka and the destroyers wordlessly formed into a screening force. And right beside her, the horned form of a Tenryuu-class light cruiser slowly pulled up in line abreast.
"Hey," said the sword-wielding cruiser. Her voice was low and kind, not a shred of the juvenile bombast remained.
Jersey nodded, careful that the motion didn't disturb Heermann.
"Me and the girls," Tenryuu glanced at the four special-type destroyers trailing in her wake, "We make over thirty knots. We can go ahead, make sure everything gets set up right."
"Yeah, uh," Jersey blinked back what were most certainly not tears. "Yeah, that's… good plan."
"We'll have it all ready for you," said Tenryuu. She drew a circle in the air, motioning for her kids to form up on her in line astern. "DesDiv six, move out."
The four destroyers peeled off to follow their minder, but one stayed behind for a few moments more than the rest.
"Jersey-san," she said. Her tiny voice quiet and soft as she stared up at the towering battleship, "You're a really good mommy, nanodesu."
—|—|—
Admiral Williams set his jaw, his stony face shifting ever so slightly as the muscles beneath his weatherbeaten skin pulled in harmony, leaving the scar trailing up from his lip in sharp relief. He wouldn't scowl, he couldn't. Not in front of so many young sailors all looking to him for the steady hand of leadership. He was The Admiral, a rock in the storm, a figure larger than life. But that didn't mean he didn't want to.
Managing a battle from a glorified conference room was always a frustrating experience. It was impossible to shake the feeling that you could have—should have done more to help. The experience only got worse when kanmusu were involved.
Watching a DDG full of brave men and women limp its way back to friendly waters was a heart wrenching enough experience, but at least then the human toll was hidden behind burnt metal. Williams could compartmentalize the very human casualties, shove it to the back of his mind and reduce the battered warship to an abstract piece of broken machinery.
There was no such compromises with shipgirls. They didn't just come home damaged, they came home hurting. The pain on their faces was impossible to ignore as they fought their way though the surf. Everything in the Admiral's upbringing told him little girls like the destroyers were to be protected.
It's the reason he joined the navy, to keep the world safe for little girls like Heermann to live out their lives without a thought or care in the world. Sending them into battle—and watching the results of battle writ large on their fragile little bodies—was more directly heart wrenching than the far-away pain a shattered destroyer implied.
The frustration was only intensified by his inability to even offer advice. For all his studies, Williams didn't have a fraction of the surface-warfare experience ever last one of his girls had. He was fumbling his way though the cliffs' notes while they were already finishing up their doctoral thesis. Luckily, there was one thing the Admiral could task himself with, one thing he knew better than all of them combined.
Logistics.
Naka was still transcribing the fairy damage reports into something human readable. But Williams didn't need a perfect reckoning, just a reckoning. And the Global Hawk's cameras were more than enough for that.
All six battleships were running low on shells, and they'd all suffered at least moderate damage. Judging by gash sneaking up Musashi's tanned skin, her insistence on maintaining combat speed has exacerbated her already severe torpedo damage. Akagi and Ryuujou were unharmed, but they'd lost whole chunks of their airwing.
Between repair, resupply, and aircraft reconstitution, the girls were going to have to gorge themselves.
"Yeoman," Williams glanced at a sailor sitting back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the unmoving images on his computer.
"Sir?"
"What's the population of Adak island?"
"Uh," the sailor hunched over his keyboard. His fingers flew over the keys as he called up the relevant information, "Three-twenty-six as of last year, sir."
"Shit," Williams hissed out the expletive. Less than four hundred people were going to have to feed and house seven girls who ate more than a platoon of Marines each. And that's only counting the capital ships. A destroyer's appetite might be smaller, but it was still a force to be reckoned with.
"Alright, get JBLM on the horn. We're gonna need an airlift and we're gonna need it soon."
"Sir."
Williams knit his brow, his hand coming up to cradle his chin. A C-17 would take as near as makes no difference five hours to reach Adak, Jersey'd get there in ten. Factor in an hour on each side for loading/unloading, that left him a three hour window. "Gale."
"What? Uh… sir?" The yeoman hurriedly put her stone-cold cup of soup down and jogged over to the Admiral's side. "Reporting, sir."
"Gather enough food and supplies to feed a fleet of hungry kanmusume," said the Admiral, "And get it to McChord three hours. Get anyone you need, just get it done."
To her credit, Gale didn't even gulp, she just stood a little straighter and accepted the order with the kind of stoicism only NCOs could truly produce, "Aye Aye, sir."
—|—|—
Gale's mind was racing before she'd even left the command bunker. Battleships ate by the ton when they weren't almost out of ammo and/or in desperate need of repair. Nobody had any hard data on the post-battle appetite of a super battleship like Jersey or Musashi, but Nagato and her sister could down more than a quarter million calories in one sitting if they came home badly damaged. Of course, their famously toned bellies never even hinted at such gluttony.
But for once, Gale was able to push her jealousy to the back corner of her mind where her North Carolina-class daydreams spend their time. She had a lot of hungry battleships, plus one of the SDF's infamously gluttonous fleet carriers, to feed.
For a few seconds, the sailor considered loading up the C-17s with MREs. They were nutrient-dense, packed well, and JBLM had to have plenty on hand. But she quickly rejected the idea. MRE's were filling, but they weren't that filling. It'd still take a few dozen to feed just one of the battleships, and Gale wanted to kill herself after eating just one of the fucking things.
Luckily, she had a few aces up her sleeve.
First, shipgirls weren't people. They laughed in the face of proper nutrition, all the deep-fried grease in the world wouldn't do a thing to their hearts. Probably because their hearts already ran on greasy fuel oil. Gale could forget about trying to pack something healthy. Fuck salads—the taffies probably wouldn't touch something that green anyway—, fuck fresh and healthy, the girls were getting hearty American comfort food.
Second, Kongou's skills at a kitchen were famous on both sides of the Pacific, and DesDiv six would slave away for days on end in front of a stove if they had a good reason. And Jersey'd probably offer to help on the grill as soon as she tamed her frustratingly-slender tummy. Gale didn't need to worry about cooking shit, just getting it there.
"Yo, listen up," said Gale as she smashed though the doors of the base kitchen, drawing more than a few surprised yelps from the sailors cleaning up after dinner. "I need every fucking box of mac and cheese we have."
The kitchen fell silent as a sea of confused culinary ratings turned to Gale with a uniform look of surprised uncomprehending.
"Six hungry, damaged battleships," said Gale, ticking off points on her fingers, "a fleet carrier, a light carrier and a shitload of destroyers and light cruisers are about to descend on an island of three hundred people."
The look of confusion rapidly tinted towards sheer horror.
"Yeah," said Gale. "We've got three hours to get their breakfast shipped to JBLM. Questions?"
"Ma'am," a hulking man who—at least nominally—outranked the yeoman spoke up. "What're we serving?"
"Mac and Cheese, Hamburgers," Gale ran her hands though her hair, "Stuff like that, you know. Comfort food."
"Will do, ma'am," said the chef, already moving towards the vast refrigerated storage lockers.
"Oh," Gale snapped her fingers, "Uh, for breakfast, Heermann likes eggs and toast, Hoel likes Nutella, and Johnston likes fruit loops."
Japanese Battleship Musashi scowled as she glanced down at her stomach. Or at least in the general direction of her stomach, her exceptionally—one might even say superbly—large breasts locked her view with their perfectly sculpted perky roundness. As much as she appreciated her own unbeatable figure, having such massive cannons did rather complicate the issue of inspecting oneself for damage.
The battleship could tell she'd taken damage. Her tights were all but shredded from the abyssal torpedo drops, and her insistence at running at flank speed during the battle had only exacerbated the problem. At twenty seven knots, water hit like hammers against her bulkheads, buckling them inwards on her bow
If she were any other warship, Musashi might have been worried about the loss of reserve buoyancy and the damage to her armor. But Musashi was no mere warship. She was the battleship of battleships, the greatest exemplar of the type ever to put to sea. She would not sink, could not sink.
"Miss Musashi?" Hoel looked up at the towering battleship with eyes worn red from crying. The little destroyer could have tagged along with her sleeping sister. But even Musashi wasn't convincing enough to get the destroyer to leave her charge.
"Yes?" said the battleship. She gave her sarashi a quick once-over to make sure none of the singed bandages had slipped—she wanted to tease, not flaunt—before glancing over at her escort. "How can I help you Hoel-chan?"
"Are you okay?" asked Hoel, her eyes wavering somewhere between the battleship's glasses and the Imperial seal on her collar.
"I… think so," said Musashi. She puffed up her chest as she straightened out. Her snowy hair floated in the wind as she stared off into the horizon.
Hoel didn't say a word, but Musashi couldn't say no to those eyes. "I'm… there's something going on inside my hull. I'm not sure what."
"Oh," Hoel cracked a timid, slightly forced smile. "Is it like... your boilers are trying to burn, but there's just no oil left?"
"Mmm," Musashi nodded.
"You're hungry then."
Musashi blinked, then experimentally prodded at her tightly-toned stomach. "Are you sure?" she asked. She'd been hungry before, but that… that felt like a tingling reminder in the back of her brain to get some food in soon. Not a gnawing ache in her fuel bunkers and magazines. It felt like a pack of furious gremlins were tearing apart her tanks with nothing more than rusty files and their bare fists.
"Mmhm," said Hoel, "This is you first time at sea, isn't it?"
Musashi felt her cheeks flush. "Yes," she admitted.
"That's why," said Hoel, "You've never fought this hard."
Musashi huffed. Her hands migrated to her hips as her steel-hard gaze caught Heermann bleeding into Jersey's clothing. The American battleship had tied her scarf around the the shattered girl's head to keep her warm, and her legs were dyed an inky red from Heermann's wounds.
The Japanese super battleship blinked, her chest swelling as she took in a deep breath of the freezing arctic air. She held the breath in her lungs for a moment, forcing herself to keep a calm, stoic face. "No," she said. "I haven't. I've never had a reason to before."