Chapter 51: Frozen Sea

Jersey stood in the middle of a vast frozen sea. It wasn't like anything she'd ever experienced. The sea wasn't just cold, it was frozen. Waves ground to a halt in the middle of their swells. Droplets of spray glistened in the air like frozen jewels. Even the air seemed to crack and shatter around her.

The battleship winced as she took a breath. The air was cold. So cold it bit into her throat like a million tiny knives. She felt the moisture in her throat leeching out with each breath of the frigid, bone-dry air. Her boilers were roaring away at maximum pressure, but she still felt the cold tear at every shred of exposed skin. It penetrated though her layers of clothing like a million tiny knives.

"What?" the battleship had to pant to get the word out. Her lips were chapped and raw from the cold, and her breath flashed to a glittery cloud of ice the moment it left her mouth. Literally. Jersey heard the cracking music of ice popping into place. The cloud shattered like glass when she put her fist though it.

"Fuck." The word was all Jersey could think of as she looked around. She buried her hands under her arms, desperately trying to warm them as she looked around for something… anything to get her bearings with.

There wasn't a thing. The sky was a uniform midnight blue. There wasn't a star, wasn't even a single cloud disturbing the unnervingly-smooth blue shroud. She couldn't even see the sun, the sky just… glowed.

The surface was no more inviting. An ocean of ice extended around her as far as her stunningly acute eyesight could reach. Ice. Nothing but a sea of pool-table flat ice.

Even her compass betrayed her. It'd show a bearing as steady as a rock one second, then wildly spin to a totally different heading the next. There was no pattern, no sequence the big battleship could determine. It didn't even match with what she'd been trained to expect near the poles. It just didn't work.

Jersey let out a roar and hurled the useless chuck of brass into the icy surface. It landed with a pathetic tink and skittered a few yards along the glittering ice before coming to a halt on its side.

"Fuuuuuuck," Jersey collapsed against the ice. Her nose was bright red from the cold, and she could feel her fingers starting to go numb as she cradled her head in her hands. She couldn't survive like this, not for any length of time. When night fell, she'd freeze to death before sunup.

If there even was a night in this impossible place.

The battleship shivered and buried her nose in her scarf. Time to think… she was an American. She could figure her way out of a problem. What was that line from that movie? 'Failure is not an option'? Well it fucking well wasn't. Her friends needed her. Her nation needed her.

And she had one last trick up her sleeve. "Hey," Jersey's voice was shaky and halting as she struggled to bite down the freezing air. "Can those things land on ice?"

The tiny figure of her Kingfisher pilot clambered up onto the Battleship's chest. Her thick fur-lined coat turning her already-indistinct silhouette into a tiny furry blob huddling in the relative warmth between Jersey's puffer vest and her breast. The pilot's tiny figures darkened in thought, then she issued a minuscule nod to her battleship.

"Okay," Jersey rubbed her hands together to stave off frostbite as best she could. "Start…" the battleship glanced around. The ice extended around her for miles without so much as a hint of a landmark. "That way." Jersey jabbed her fist in a random direction.

Her faerie offered a tiny salute before scurrying down the battleship's deck towards her aircraft catapults. Her radar might be state of the art, but even it was limited to the horizon. Her floatplanes could see further than she ever could. They'd cover more ground in an hour than she would in a day. It wasn't much… but it was something.

Almost five hours later, Jersey collapsed. Her planes had given her a new perspective alright. The ice field didn't stop. Eight hundred miles in every direction, and nothing but uniform white. It didn't even… it didn't even curve away at the horizon like it should.

It was fucking flat. Football field flat. Ryuujou flat. Fucking Bonneville salt flats flat. It was the infinite fucking plane of uniform goddamn density. And she was stuck in the middle.

"Fuuuuck," The battleship could only wispier into the frigid air. It was as still and silent as the grave, but it was so cold it scoured her lungs raw. That was it. Her last trick and it failed. Jersey kicked at the ice with all the strength she could muster. She was a battleship. She was very very good at what she could do.

But her skills were terrible limited. She couldn't hunt submarines, she couldn't-

Wait. Jersey rubbed loose ice shards from her brow, her gaze punching though the air like canon shells.

Someone was watching her.

He was too far to make out, but he was definitely there. Her radar confirmed it. A single contact in the sea of nothing, just under six nautical miles out.

"Hey!" Jersey bellowed at the top of her raw lungs. "HEY!"

The figure stood in the still air, an unmoving blot of black in against the infinite white.

Jersey gritted her teeth and exploded into a sprint. Her shoes slammed against the ice like jackhammers as she built up to her thirty-five knot flank. She could see him, he was there. He was right there.

The battleship panted as freezing air tore at her lungs. Each breath was like gulping down ground glass, but she forced herself to move. She had a plan, she had a direction… her lifeline might be perilously thin, but it was enough. It had to be.

"HEY!" Jersey waved at the figure as she sprinted. The figure didn't react. He didn't even move. Jersey was running flat out, but her rangefinder still placed him thirty-five thousand eight hundred and fourteen feet out. Exactly. No matter how hard she ran, the distance didn't change.

"HEY YOU FUCK!" Jersey boomed at the top of her lungs. She strained for every last shred of steam she could scrounge. Maybe if she could make thirty-six knots… Maybe if she could-

Her toe caught on a frozen swell, sending the battleship hurtling face-first across the ice. Her momentum carried her a good hundred yards while her face carved a gouge in the featureless ice.

"Owww…." Jersey let out a tiny moan as she slowly worked her face out of the crater it'd dug for itself. She could feel blood flash-freezing as it oozed out of the dozen minor scrapes her little accident had earned her as she wiped the snow out of her face.

Then she saw it.

"Oh….. shiiiiii-"

—|—|—

"-iiit!" Jersey's eyes snapped open like the breach blocks of her mark seven rifles. Her turbines were roaring a million revolutions a minute, and she could feel her fingers quiver as adrenaline flooded her system. But she was right where she should be: sleeping in a gently burbling hot tub with three sleeping destroyers—and one tiny destroyer escort—cuddling around her.

Heermann had prime position. Her little head was perfectly cradled between the battleship's breasts. Her body rested on Jersey's tummy, and her stumpy legs hung off her side. The destroyer's stern wasn't repaired. It wasn't even close. But Heermann wasn't bleeding any more, and her tiny face looked tranquil and calm. She'd fallen asleep, she hadn't passed out from exhaustion and pain.

Hoel, Johnston, and Sammy were all tied off alongside Jersey in the cramped little hot tub. All three of them were still in their sopping wet uniforms, and they'd all somehow found a way to keep at least one arm on their battered friend.

Jersey smiled. Her girls were content. It wasn't… they deserved so much more. But it was enough, at least for now. That left just one more pressing issue. The whole… fucking… mind fuck with the ice.

Jersey scowled. It must've been a dream. Shipgirls can dream now, apparently. She'd consider that fucking weird if her whole… experience on the ice hadn't given her a brand new appreciation for what the word really meant.

She made a note in her log to ask… someone about it later, but quickly scribbled it out again. It was just a fucking dream. People have those all the time, and even if they can remember anything, a fucking dream isn't a prophecy.

Then again… she should probably at least let Crowning know. He'd nerd the fuck out over some shit like that. Probably tell her that she's got some fucking repressed sexual desire for ice. Or maybe winter? Old Man Winter, maybe? Fuck it. This spiritual bullshit was creepy.

Jersey was just about to hunker back to sleep when a loud roar rumbled out from deep in her machinery spaces. Right. Food… she needed food. Her fuel bunkers needed topping off, and her magazines were all but expended.

The pain in her belly didn't quite compare to the ravenous, all consuming hunger she'd felt after bring the convoy into Japan, but it was close. Actually, no. Fuck that. This was worse. Jersey could feel her quartermasters planning their mutiny if she wasn't resupplied. Soon.

Jersey bit her lip as her stomach did somersaults around the cramped confines of her slender waist. She was starving, and the lingering smell of cooking bacon wafting though the air didn't do a thing to sate her furious appetite. But… she had a wounded taffy using her as a bed. And she'd be damned if she-

"Hey, mama." Heermann offered Jersey a sleepy smile and slowly inched forwards to nuzzle her flagship in the neck. "'s mornin."

Jersey felt her blood run cold. "Hey… kiddo," she ran her hand down the little girl's back. "I- fuck, I didn't wake you did I?"

"'sokay," purred Heermann. Her sleepy slur was somehow even sweeter than the genuine smile on her face as she lazily rolled into the water. "I felt your tummy go weeee."

"You did, didn't you." Jersey frowned and shot her tummy a displeased look. If she ever figured out how to drag parts of her anatomy to a Captain's Mast, that would be the first to go.

"Go get food," Heermann stared up at Jersey with those big destroyer eyes.

"You sure?" said Jersey as her belly let out another grumpy rumble, "I won't leave you, kiddo."

"Goo…. shooo…" Heermann lazily waved her hand though the sweet-smelling water. "Eat your vegta- vegga- vegetables, mama."

Jersey smiled. "Sure thing, kiddo." The big battleship leaned over to plant a quick kiss on Heermann's forehead before extricating herself from the hot tub. At least with all four taffies clinging to one another in an adorable little raft it was easy to sneak under them without disturbing them too much.

The battleship carefully pulled herself up out of the water. Her clothes dried almost instantly as they breached the waterline, but the sticky bloodstains on her legs and shirt remained. She'd… she'd have to see if there was anything her size she could borrow… "You sure you don't want me to stay, kiddo?"

"Mmhm," mumbled Heermann.

"Okay." Jersey gently ruffled the little girl's hair before ducking out around the jury-rigged privacy screens. And almost face-planting into another girl.

"Shit." Jersey staggered back at the last second, "Sorry." She blinked, sizing up the girl she'd nearly plowed over.

She was a carrier, the flat-topped hull told her that much. But she wasn't Ryuujou, her deck was about the only part of her that wasn't curvy as all hell. Even the lacquered black armor over her breasts only accented the round-faced girl's topweight. It made sense, though. If this was who Jersey thought she was, she had two stacked hangers.

"Akagi, right?" asked the battleship.

"Mmhm," the carrier nodded with a tiny hint of a smile on that sweet face of hers. "I brought something for your girls." She nodded to the tray in her hands.

Three unopened boxes of fruit loops, a mountain of fried eggs, another slightly square-er mountain of toast, and a full jar of Nutella were all somehow crammed onto the little plastic tray. There was even enough room leftover for three glasses and a bottle of milk.

"Yeah, um…" Jersey scratched at the back of her neck. Why the hell hadn't she thought of that? A rumble from her stomach reminded her quite succinctly. She was hungry as fuck. "Yeah, they're still asleep. Just leave it by the tub."

"Of course," said Akagi with the closest approximation of a bow she could manage while still carrying her tray.

"Hey, uh," Jersey shoved her hands into the pockets of her shorts. "Akagi?"

"Yes?" The carrier gently set the tray down and, after a quick re-arrangement to make sure the girls could reach everything easily, turned to face Jersey.

"I'm hungry as fuck," The battleship glanced down at her belly, "The hell's chow at?"

Akagi's face beamed with a friendly smile, "Right this way."