Author's note.
I dun' messed up! I posted the chapter before I actually checked it looked good on in my excitement _ But here it is anyway, with breaks to mark a scene change. Since isn't co-operating with me and allowing me to do it my usual way I'm using the in-build "horizontal line" feature instead - it still won't let me put more than one in for some god-damn reason, so this chapter won't be differentiating between perspective change within roughly the same scene and a complete scene change like I use to. Sorry for all that! plz no bully
End of author's note.
The Human-Fleet of Fog unification conflict, chapter 3.
Divided.
Having made enough repairs to get underway, the fleet limped to Taiwan, or what's left of it at least. Only a few small islands remain now, and on top of it the Fleet of Fog has constructed a naval supply and repair platform, fully automated. There Arizona and the others are fully restored, and the fleet was on its merry way again. In the meantime, Nagato attempts to contact Yamato…
Every surface in the room, her own shape included have been replaced with endlessly scrolling lines of code, green against a black background; an ethereal darkness clouds the Mental Space in every direction, rippled with arcs of chalk-white, always clinging to the edges of her vision. Three shapes stand beyond the pillars of the room, distinguishable only by their glowing red eyes and white hair flowing gently as if submerged in water; a fourth shape stands in the middle of the room, wearing an elaborate white dress, her hands clasped gently over her waist. She stands perfectly immovable, unresponsive to Nagato's desperate shouts and calls; she's almost completely unable to move, to reach Yamato's petrified shape.
A loud whining sound suddenly invades the Mental Space, rising fast in strength to become unbearable and with an agonized cry Nagato disconnects herself from the room, falling to her knees on the bridge; a startled murmur rises from the officers on duty and the captain steps forward, looking down at her, "What's the matter?"
Nagato's lips become a thin line. She takes a long breath in and out through her nose to calm herself, lets the pain in her mind recede before standing up and setting straight her red and black kimono, turning to the captain, "I am being jammed. Something is blocking my connection to the Mental Space; I cannot contact Yamato."
A second, slightly lower but more worried murmur replaces the old one and the captain turns his head up to look out through the bridge windows, stroking his moustache, "Figures… Do we know where she is located?" Nagato shakes her head, an unusually grim expression on her face, "No, I do not. Communication within the Mental Space is our usual method of acquiring one another's location when we are outside scanner range."
The captain curses under his breath as he takes a moment to stare down at the floor. Finding the floor unresponsive to his pleas for guidance he clasps his hands behind his back, looking up, "What do we do then? Do we have any idea of the size of the forces we're facing?" Nagato shakes her head again, clasping her hands over her waist, "We do not, and we have not decided upon a course of action yet either. Some want to spread out to find Yamato's fleet the old-fashioned way, some dislike the idea, some are… Indecisive."
"Yes," he mutters, "If we spread out the enemy can find and destroy us piecemeal. The Admiral Hipper found us here, we should assume we are being watched in some way. We can't split up."
"That is my opinion as well. Will you gather the other captains and confer with them?" Nagato says, "We cannot act just on our own feelings in this matter." The captain looks at her for a moment, a frown barely noticeable beneath his brows, and then he nods, and turns to his XO, saying, "Mr. Ikari, call the meeting; we will hold it in my quarters in one hour."
The man salutes and turns to another officer, while the captain turns back to Nagato, "I am sure they will see reason, ma'am. In the meanwhile, I suggest we return to Yokosuka. I'm sure the port officials would like to know we're at war again." At this a small frown grows on her face, "Do you not think that is a little extreme, captain?"
He shakes his head, "No. Communications with your high command are jammed; ominous quotes by the enemy suggesting a larger force is on the way; human lives have been lost and several Fog warships damaged and destroyed. I think that constitutes a declaration of war, ma'am."
Arizona paces back and forth across the entire length of the Mental Space, hands clasped tightly behind her back, while Warspite and Nagato watches; the latter stands a little ways off from the table at which Warspite is sitting. "At least we can still communicate," Warspite mumbles grimly, fidgeting with one of the shoulder-straps of the plain, dark blue dress she's wearing.
"This is a disaster!" Arizona shouts at the top of her lungs in only mildly restrained fury, her knuckles going white from tension. "For all we know this is a tactic of Yamato's devising to weed out reformists and new-thinkers from the fleet and the whole rest of the Pacific patrol fleet is bearing down on us as we speak!"
Nagato shakes her head, "I doubt it. Yamato has always been an honest woman, it is not in her nature to scheme; she has also never been afraid of change. It was her idea to create the first Mental Model, let us not forget."
"Yeah, yeah," Warspite mumbles, scratching the base of her neck as she straightens her back, "I say we don't jump to any conclusions, 'eh? We've still got a pretty sizable fleet here; a little lacking in destroyers maybe, but we can make due. I say let 'em come." Arizona spins on Warspite at that, sending her flowing blonde hair everywhere, "Right, that's what we're supposed to tell the authorities at Yokosuka? We're at war with a rogue element from the Fleet of Fog, we have no intel whatsoever on the enemy's strength and location, and no ability to call for reinforcements ourselves, but it's fine! We'll make out stand here and hope for the best!"
At that Warspite shoots out of her chair, standing in three quick strides so close to Arizona that their noses almost touch, "And do you have a better plan? It damn well doesn't seem like it!" Arizona pushes Warspite back with a shove against her shoulder, pointing an accusing finger at the hazel-haired battleship, "You listen to me; our situation is unquestionably dire, our tactical picture incomplete, but you still don't seem concerned! Whenever shit hits the fan, as the humans are so fond of saying, you just shrug and hope for the best! What kind of commander are you?!"
Arizona barely gets to finish her sentence before Warspite's right hand flashes into the air to strike the blonde, and she barely gets to start swinging before Nagato is up as well, saying, "Please, both of you, stand down," in tones so gentle she might as well have been talking about the weather over a cup of tea. Arizona and Warspite exchange a glare before stepping apart, the latter sitting back down. Nagato continues, "You both have a point. The situation is dire, but since there is very little we can do about it at the moment as I see it, we simply have to return to Yokosuka and, as it were, hope for the best. We might even be able to recruit the humans to help searching for Yamato's fleet."
Arizona looks at Nagato for a moment, grinding her jaw as she thinks; eventually she nods, clasping her hands behind her back, "Fine. There is no other course of action, really. I'll inform the rest; we go to Yokosuka and plan from there."
Belfast stands at the very edge of her bow, arms crossed bitterly across her chest. Wind throws her cyan ponytail around like a flag, very lively in contrast to her own unmoving and unsmiling form. A rough kilometre to her starboard Huntington and Fargo sail side by side, with Hoel and Willy Dee side by side in front; they are arguing over which course of action is sound in the face of this new threat. According to Kinugasa Hipper had said she considers herself an opportunist who was taking a chance for revenge 'without risking reprimand'. What it meant, they all assumed, is that she was not the only one preparing to attack this force; the fact that their long-range access to Menta Space communication is being jammed only supports this.
"We can't just sit on our asses waitin' to die!" Huntington argues, and Fargo follows up, "Best defence is a strong offence I always say! We took the fight to Hipper an' we sure as hell can do it again with these punks!"
"And give up our defender's advantage?" Hoel retorts with a dramatic wave of her hand, "We need more information, not launch ourselves on a wild chase across the Pacific and beyond based on the loose and open-to-interpretation threats made by a single enemy."
Belfast starts a little as she notices someone walking up to her. Of course, being the ship she notices this as she passes the no.1 gun turret and turns her head well in time to spot her XO, a late middle-aged man with balding head and sharp features; a good soldier, Belfast had thought since the moment they met. He stops at a respectable distance and salutes, Belfast doing the same as she asks, "Commander Saul Hogan, anything to report?"
The man clasps his hands formally behind his back after saluting, replying with a shake of his head, "Nothing of note, ma'am. Ship's purring like a kitten, just-" but at that point he realizes who he's talking to and stammers "Ah- pardon my language, ma'am, I forget myself." It's never good saying that one of the ship's two commanders is purring like a kitten to her face, regardless of the fact that the commander also happens to be the ship itself.
Belfast cracks a small smile and nods appreciatively, "Apology accepted, commander, and at ease. Is there something you wish to say?" The man nods and comes up to stand a little closer, hands still clasped behind his back; he throws a glance over his shoulder towards the American ships in the distance before speaking up, not that he can hear them, "I just wanted to say… On behalf of all the crew. We are humbled that you are standing up for us in this conflict, ma'am. Half the crewmembers and half the captains to boot thought you were going to dump us all on that repair yard and leave us to fend for ourselves until Lord knows when…"
Belfast's face loses the small smile that adorned it a moment earlier and she turns away from Saul, facing out over her bow where spray is kicked up onto the deck behind them. A moment's silence passes, the only noise being the low rumble of the engines below. "Yes," Belfast almost snaps out, her voice sharp yet subtly regretful, "There were talks about that option as well." She glances over at Saul for a moment, and quickly turns to avoid the poorly concealed shock in his eyes; at times like these he gets this staring, wild look about him, like an animal forced into a corner. Just his eyes betray him though, the rest of him keeps calm. He nods thoughtfully and turns to look out over the ocean as well, holding his chin high, "I understand that every option would be explored, ma'am."
"…Yes," Belfast replies, again, her own head tipping down slightly and she makes a marked effort to hide her face from her XO. "I am honoured, regardless, for your appreciation," she says as an attempt to change subject. Saul only nods curtly along with a hasty "Don't mention it, ma'am" before he turns to leave; Belfast's lips become a very thin line indeed as he disappears through a hatch, leaving Belfast alone again.
Maybe there is a method to Nagato's madness after all… She thinks to herself.
The fleet sailed on, and eventually reached Kagoshima, what's left of it anyway. After the rise in sea levels no more than an archipelago remains, which makes for prime hunting ground for destroyers. Ayanami, Shikinami and Makinami were directed to remain with the fleet along with Mohawk, who after Hipper's torpedo attack was operating with a skeleton crew because of heavy casualties, while the rest are sent into the archipelago.
Zulu, a Tribal-class destroyer and Mohawk's sister ship, has the lead. Her hair is platinum white, cut very short with a part of the right side of her scalp shaved altogether; like her sister ship she's dressed in a traditional office uniform, with a white shirt under a formal black suit and a skirt. When she first took on a crew her hair had been the same colour but not cut quite the same way, she had just kept it very short, about an inch long, but many among her crew she had heard commenting that the two styles contrasted heavily. She got curious, and now she attracts sidelong glances even from her own captain, a headstrong if a little easily startled young man who always seem to carry something pointy in his pants; further investigation is clearly required.
No more time for such thoughts, however, as her Situational Awareness protocol activates; she has been detected by a warship not equipped with her own fleet's IFF system. She barely gets time to rely this information to Hoel and William D. Porter who sails behind her before this long and massive slab of destroyer charges out from behind a nearby island, upon the superstructure of which stands a sturdily built young woman in a deep blue dress of some kind. "Hello, you!" she calls out, waving as the thing's five gun turrets turn to aim squarely at Zulu. The name 'Volta' is written on her bow.
It's a fuckin' Mogador-class destroyer… she thinks in dumbstruck horror as the blue-dressed girl goes on, "Figured we'd find you here. En garde!" and all hell breaks loose. All at once the four destroyers open fire, guns and autocannons and machineguns filling the space separating the Volta from the three others so full of red energy bolts it gets hard to see through. Zulu is riddled from stem to stern with shells of every calibre imaginable before she can get her Klein field up, severely crippling her ability to fight back as her central power systems take a severe beating. Safe behind the Klein field for now she kills her speed and falls back behind Willy Dee and Hoel who guns blazing charge the Volta, their hull markings glowing fiercely ultramarine blue.
Hoel materializes on top of her bridge structure and turns to Willy Dee sailing alongside, "All guns fire at will! We pursue and destroy the target aggressively before enemy reinforcements can reach the battle area, over."
"Copy that," Willy Dee replies with a curd nod of her head, and as the Volta pulls into a turn away from them in order to not run into a low island they fall in line, chasing the huge French destroyer off around a corner and disappearing from view.
Zulu comes rushing down the ladder, attracting several surprised looks at both how she can run down a metal ladderway and the fact that she's there at all. The engine room is only dimly lit, a right mess; the hull breaches below the waterline have been sealed and water is being pumped out, one of her auxiliary generators have been cloven right in two by a shell that passed straight through her engine room without exploding, and a second shell that did explode has torn so many holes, grooves and craters in the primary generator that you'd quite easily mistake it for the surface of the moon. A fire is raging across the far quarter of the room; men and women are fighting it with fire extinguishers, trying desperately to hold it off so that mechanics and electricians can work in relative safety on restoring the power generators.
Normally you couldn't access this area of course, so being down inside herself is still a slightly odd experience for Zulu. In order for a human crew to be feasible on board a Fog warship certain modifications had to be made; practically all space on the ship was taken up by something, most of the space that had been assigned for crew space on the original WW2 ships had been used to squeeze more weapons onto each ship, but some of them have been demounted from Zulu and the rest to accommodate a crew; they also had to be retrofitted with numerous interface systems so that the humans could actually use and manipulate systems aboard the Fog vessels. Otherwise this work would be carried out by special robots she would be equipped with.
Zulu waves briefly at the collected pairs of eyes staring at this secretary-esque little woman coming rushing down the ladder in high heels and everything and makes straight for the main generator. She throws a glance towards the chief technician working at a nearby tear in the generator casing, and then she pulls open a panel, eyeing the collection of crystalline tubes running through it; most of them are glowing an angry red, but some are inactive and visibly cracked. The chief technician makes a surprised noise and comes running over to her, waving his bony hands in warning, "No no no! We can't touch those, they'll fry you alive, they-!"
Zulu turns her head and flashes a grin, "I'm not made of flesh and bone, remember?" and then grabs the tube that's cracked the worst, tearing it out with a horrendous cacophony of noise; the crystal shatters completely in her hand and a droning noise like a taser but as loud as a motorcycle engine rises through the engine room. A dumbstruck and highly discomforted engineer hands Zulu a new, pristine crystal tube out of a locker that she slams it in to replace the old one, causing the droning noise to stop abruptly; the flow of red in the remaining tubes equalize and the room lights up, along with the automated fire suppression systems kicking in.
Zulu puts her hands at her hips and nods in satisfaction, cheerfully smiling at her chief technician; the man glances at the repaired power coupling and nods, relieved, "Well, thank goodness for you. If I would have been forced to make a manual bypass I'd be damned if it wouldn't have killed me in the process. Thank you, ma'am."
Zulu slaps him all friendly-like on the shoulder, "Can't have my crew dying on me, now can I? Mohawk would never let me live it down."
The technician frowns. Zulu snickers to herself and waves a gloved hand dismissively in his direction. She looks around the engine room fully and then turns back to the chief technician, saying "Come on, let's get my shaft up and pumping again so we can get underway."
The chief technician's frown deepens, "Pardon..?"
"The turbine shafts? Part of my secondary generators?" Zulu says over her shoulder as she makes for the ladder again, "You might want to watch out through, the surrounding folds have gotten very hot."
And just like that she struts out of main engineering, discharging comments such as "Insert those tubes very gently, please" and "watch it, don't you know it's dangerous working with electricity when it's all wet and damp inside?" to the damage control crews, with the baffled eyes of the chief engineer dug into her neck; the crewman who handed her the replacement tube earlier barely manages to stifle a laughter as he goes back to work.
End of chapter 3.