EN: In case you can't tell, this is a flashback...
Chapter 82: The First Thirty-Six
"Captain on the bridge!"
Captain Goto managed a tired nod of acknowledgement before lurching for a bulkhead as the deck fell out from under him. He was a good sailor, he'd rode his ship—the battered old Guided Missile destroyer Kongo though plenty of storms.
But he'd never taken her though a storm quite as furious as this, especially not in the usually-calm summer waters of the East China sea. Kongo was a good ship—old as dirt and twice as cranky—but good, and even she was struggling with the surf.
Goto felt her lurch under his boots. Her bow cleared a wave crest so thoroughly her sonar array kissed the air, then she put her stern in the sky and crashed down into the trough like a diving submarine.
Spray crashed against the bridge windows—not the bow, the actual windows—drenching every inch of the ship that wasn't already thoroughly soaked by the howling driven rain.
"Ah, hell." Goto tediously made his way across the bucking destroyer to his seat. "XO, report."
Commander Matsuda didn't move from where he'd wedge himself against the bulkhead. Goto didn't blame him, just walking was exhausting in this damn storm. "Engineering says we're good up to twenty-six knots, but requests we keep it below twelve, at least until we clear this storm."
Goto scowled. Kongo was a good ship, but she was still a destroyer. There was only so much damage she could take and still keep fighting. "Shouldn't be a problem." He glanced over his shoulder at the bridge wing, though the darkness at where he knew Kongo's half-sister was floundering though the waves. "I don't think Ashigara can even make twelve knots."
"Latest report says eleven," said Matsuda without a hint of emotion in his voice. There wasn't any grim bile, just exhaustion.
"Damn," Goto clenched at his armrests as Kongo plowed though another towering wave.
Less than two days ago, he'd left Sasebo with three guided missile destroyers for a peacetime freedom-of-navigation exercise. A little show-of-presence after three months of the worst shipping losses the China seas had seen in decades.
Then the United States lost four of its supercarriers in three hours, and Goto'd lostChokai to a fleet pre-dreadnoughts and armored cruisers. He would've lost Ashigara too if that storm hadn't cropped up close enough for the two destroyers to sprint for.
It was funny, he'd toured the Mikasa a dozen times. For all her great history, Goto couldn't help but find the little warship a bit comical. She was tiny, short and pump next to the lean grace of his destroyer.
But brawling against the pre-dreadnoughts at a scant few hundred yards had instilled a healthy respect for the old coal-fume spewing warships. Not just respect, fear. Goto wasn't a superstitious man, but when he caught sight of those ships with his binoculars—ships that steadfastly refused to show up on radar as anything more than fleeting specters—he knew he was looking on the face of something evil.
Their guns spewed hate, their stacks belched gritty black smoke, and even the sea seemed to roil with fury at their presence. And every so often, he'd catch a glimpse of… thingsmanning the rails. Shadowy figures darting from point to point like animated shadows.
"TAO," Goto cradled the intercom like a lifeline as his destroyer smashed though another wave, "Anything on scope?"
"No sir," came the supernaturally tense reply. "I can barely even tell Ashigara's there."
Goto scowled. Radar was Kongo's one big trump card against those monsters. Her armor was nonexistent purely because her radar let her find and kill targets beyond any gun's range, let her intercept any weapons hurled her direction. In a knife-fight, those old relics held every advantage.
"Sir, do we have an ETA on those reinforcements yet?"
"Not yet," Goto lied.
He knew exactly when his battered division was getting reinforced. When hell froze was shot to hell and back, but she could still make over twenty knots. She still had most of her harpoons, and her VLS cells were stuffed with SM-2s. That meant she was in better shape than just about anyone else in the fleet. She was on her own for now, time so see how well she stacked up to her namesake.
"Understood, sir."
"Keep those sets hot," said Goto. If his luck—yes, he called getting his ship half shot-out from under him luck. At least he still had the other half—held, he'd be back in Sasebo by daybreak. At least under cover of night he could hide from those damn hell-ships.
"Sir," Matsuda's exhausted calm cut though the bridge, "Message from Ashigara. Her bulkheads are failing faster then they can weld them up. She's not gonna make it to Sasebo."
Goto let out a gutterl grunt of frustration at whatever god was watching. "Can she make Nagasaki?"
Matsuda relayed the message, then waited for reply. "Yes."
"Helm," Goto put his gaze back to the churning ocean, "Make course for Nagasaki. XO, haveAshigara make best speed, we'll follow behind." He thought for a second, then added, "And alert the coast guard, we might need them."
A chorus of affirmatives echoed back at him. Nagasaki was so close he could almost taste it. Even at eleven knots, even in this storm, they should make land inside of two hours.
—|—|—
One hour, twenty-one minutes later, all hell broke loose.
Nagasaki was so close the city lights glowed like a beacon though the howling storm's fury. Ashigara was so far down by the bow her bridge was practicably awash in the pounding waves, but she was still limping along at a steady ten knots. Kongo trailed a few hundred yards behind, her lookouts—all the way up to her captain—squinting into the gloom for any sight of the hell ships chasing them.
But if spotting a ship at night is hard, spotting a ship at night in a storm is almost impossible. Nobody noticed the pre-dreadnoughts until they were less than a thousand yards away.
The foul ship's sides erupted in fire. Cannon after cannon spoke from their casemates, blowing her rain-soaked hull dry and carving deep craters in the waves.
Goto didn't hear himself give the order, but he knew he must have. Kongo scraped up every scrap of power her aging engines could produce and bolted for the splashes.
"XO!" Goto felt the old destroyer's power roar under his feet. He swept his eyes through the dark rainstorm, searching for some hint of the monsters hiding within. "Get me theAshigara!"
"Sir!" Matsuda barked over the thunder of gunfire. Even this far away, the sound of secondary batteries firing was almost deafening. The thunder of gunfire mixed with the crash of waves against steel and the roar ofKongo's engines to form a cacophony Goto hadn't heard—hadn't even imagined—before.
He was knife-fighting a destroyer against battleships at night, and chasing salvos like his life depended on it. It was 1942 all over again.
"You're go!" barked Matsuda.
"Ashigara," Goto didn't waste a second, "This is Kongo-actual. Set your missiles to bearing-only, we'll light them up for you."
"Ashigara acknowledges."
"OOD, I want our spotlights manned and searching," Goto thumbed the intercom over to the 42MC. "TAO!"
"TAO here."
"Set our missiles to bearing-only and watch your cameras. You'll only have a few seconds to aquire so shoot fast."
A brief pause, then an assured, "TAO, aye!"
Goto slammed the intercom back into its cradle. The deck lurched under his feet as Kongodug her rudders into the water and threw herself into a hard turn.
Searchlight beams clawed back the night, frantically searching the howling storm for a solid location for the muzzle flashes damming Goto's destroyers with their thunder.
"There!" Goto's voice was all but lost in the bark of a Harpoon roaring out of its tube. Missiles from Ashigara joined it mid-way, skimming over the surface like a very fast torpedo.
Kongo's shot went wide, hurtling off into the storm with all the precision its inertial guidance system could produce. Ashigara's blow struck home.
The missile crashed against something steel and solid, erupting with a pathetically weak blossom of orange flame before the howling rain quenched the fire.
A few of the pre-dreadnought's guns were silenced, but it wasn't enough. Harpoons were never built for this. They lacked the warhead or the fusing to punch though hardened steel armor, and acquiring a target in this storm was almost impossible.
Kongo was only alive because the demon ships had as much trouble targeting her as she did them. But every pulse with her searchlights was a beacon giving her exact position. And the demons had far, far more guns than she did.
Ashigara had escaped notice. The momentary flame of her missiles rocket motors reflecting against her hull wasn't enough to draw the pre-dreadnoughts' ire, but it almost didn't matter. The destroyer was fighting hard, but even Goto could see she was floundering.
The demons weren't shooting at her, they weren't wasting their ammo. There wasn't a chance she'd make it to shore, her crew would die with land in sight.
In the confusion and gloom, Goto swore he saw an armor cruiser break off from the pack and slowly, almost lazily sidle up to Ashigara. Its armor laughed at the paltry five-inch gun barrage the crippled destroyer lashed out with. Its stacks belched coal-black smoke as it set up for a killing blow.
"Sir, look!"
Goto's jaw dropped. A quartet of Coast Guard Hida-class patrol boats fought their way though waves as tall as they were, struggling to close the distance to the woundedAshigara. The little white ships bounced though the waves like toys in a tidal wave, clawing tooth and nail for every inch of ocean.
But claw they did. The little white coasties fought their way though the surf like lions, forcing—almost demanding the waves bow to their wills.
But one of them was leading the pack. It surged ahead of the others, its little forty-millimeter pop gun barking in pint-sized defiance. Splashes from six- and three-inch guns erupted all around it, drowning its little white hull in surf.
But still it charged on, its gun barking like a man posessed.
"He's drawing their fire," breathed Goto. "Helm! Bring us around!"
"Helm, aye!"
Kongo heeled into a turn, her screwed churning the water to a frothy white.
Goto didn't know who was captaining that lone patrol boat. He never found out, nobody did. In the confusion of the battle, nobody was ever able to find out who gave the order. Who was the first one to join that suicidal charge in the desperate hope that maybe, just maybe others might live. But whoever he is, there's a monument to him in Nagasaki. A great pillar of marble and brass dedicated to the Hero of the Sumo-Nada sea.
Everyone knows what happened because of that charge.
For the briefest fraction of an instant, the Eastern Horizon turned from darkest night to brilliant midsummer day. A split-second later, the thundering concussion of naval rifles boomed across the ocean. Shells arced though the air, leaving traces in the howling rain as they arced down to bracket their targets.
"What the hell?" Goto whipped around, trying to spot the new arrival to the battle.
One of his searchlight operators must've had the same idea. A beam of light skipped over the ocean and briefly—ever so briefly—caught a shape. A giant, looming shape closing the distance from behind him.
Before the searchlight could require, the shape revealed itself. Fire belched from its sides as gun after casemated gun barked a furious invocation against the demon ships. Searchlight beams shone from platforms built up around what had to be smokestacks, scanning the churning ocean for their targets.
Goto gasped. He know that silhouette. He'd only seen it for the briefest fraction of a second, but those lines were burned into his retinas like he'd stared at them for an eternity.
When his own searchlight lit the ship up, it only confirmed what he already knew.
Twin superfiring turrets mounting gigantic rifles, a flared bow rising high off the ocean like a castle, and a pagoda mast looming over the battlefield. That was a battleship, aKongo.
"Douse that light!" barked Goto. He knew, somehow he knew that ship was on their side.
Moments after the searchlight went off, the Kongo illuminated herself. The flash from her rifles painted her in stunning relief, and the Rising Sun battle flag flying from her highest yardarm shone like the dawn.
The ocean cratered with the muzzle concussion, punching a sphere a hundred yards around free of rain. Goto heard a cheer roar though Kongo's bridge as the destroyer's namesake let her fury be known.
The battleship, the freaking Battleship steamed though waves that tossed destroyers and pre-dreads around like toys. Her guns were steady as rocks, her aim true and her fury unwavering.
Not every shell found its mark—in this weather, in this dark, Goto was amazed as many hit as did—but when they hit… good god did they hit. Fourteen inch shells slammed though armor that'd laughed at Harpoons and five-inch fire like tissue paper.
Every solid hit was marked by a titanic explosion as shrapnel and splinters tore up the pre-dreadnoughts innards and tore vast holes in their hulls.
In a matter of minutes, the demon ships had gone from lazily executing helpless foes torunning for their lives.
"Sir," For the first time in two days, Matsuda sounded genuine happy, "Ashigara reports she's got the flooding under control, thanks to the coasties."
Another cheer roared over Kongo's bridge, and Goto couldn't help himself from joining in.
"Okay," Goto planted his feet on the deck and swung his gaze to the fleeing demons, "Let's finish this fight!"
"I don't think we need to," said Matsuda. "Look."
While the battleship had been the center of attention, she wasn't the only ship fighting on Japan's side. Four, maybe five, more shapes darted though the waves. Sleek shapes, low to the water and pointed like sea-going knives. Destroyers hunting their prey.
And then a second battleship made its presence known. Another Kongo steaming a thousand yards north of the first. The second in a deadly pair closing the net around the frantically fleeing demons.
Goto couldn't tear his eyes from the battle, it was textbook. Poetry in steel and fire. These ships… these impossible ships tore the demons apart with torpedo and shell. By daybreak the only thing left were a few scraps of burning jetsam.
That morning, the destroyer Kongo limped triumphantly into port, shaded by the towering pagodas of the battleships Kongo and Kirishima, and escorted by the valiant destroyers Akatsuki, Inazuma, Ikazuchi, and Hibiki and their flagship Tenryuu.
For the first time in decades, Sasebo anchorage witnessed the towering pagodas of battleships watching over it.
Mankind had its first victory.