The Human-Fleet of Fog unification conflict

by Jerricom

Three of the Fleet of Fog's divisions have gathered at Yokosuka to partake in a human outreach programme, years after the events set in motion by the Iona Mental model. They are volunteers; some are enthusiastic, some have motives, some are sceptical. But those who are more than sceptical will not take this radical plan lightly. A conflict is brewing, a civil war is on the horizon.

5. 4) Blossom

Author's note

Sweet baby jesus, it's been a while hasn't it? Yeah. Yours is a fickle author god. I'm sorry, but that's just how I work these days. I'll continue working on this story for now but I'd be surprised at myself to see another chapter out too soon. Sorry. At least the chapter is a little longer than usual, I guess? :P

End of author's note

The Human/Fleet of Fog unification conflict, chapter 4; Blossom.

"What the hell happened?!"

"No idea what you're saying sir, my ears are still ringing!"

"Christ. Serviceman Burnside, can you give me a goddamn status report?!"

"It appears we're lucky to be alive, sir! We took a hit, but the shell passed through this compartment without striking and igniting a single torpedo, sir!"

"In other words, thank God for the law of infinite probability. Alright, ten-hut maggots! You have exactly the time it takes me to dial up the bridge, to prepare me a full damage report! Move it, cowboys!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Bridge, this is torpedo magazine 1! We have sustained a direct hit and half my team are dead, but there appears to be no immediate risk of detonation among the stored torpedoes, at least on first glance! Yes, serviceman Chung is recovering from an itsy bitsy ear ache right now and is getting under way TO CHECK THE GODDAMN TORPEDOES BEFORE THEY BLOW US ALL UP! Excuse me, sir? Yes, sir, I-…"

The line cuts out and suddenly a short woman appears, with pink pigtails and dressed in a strange uniform, made of an army jacket, short skirt and high stockings, all pale blue, as well as rounded metallic plates on her shoulders, knees and elbows that are also painted blue with two lines of white and red going down on each; Willy Dee looks around the ruined torpedo magazine with a distraught look on her face, fists clutched together close to her chin, mumbling something about "all my torpedoes, what have I done…"

"Commander, what are you doing down here?" serviceman Burnside asks, baffled, to which the sergeant spins on his heel and barks "Was that the torpedoes you're supposed to be checking that I just heard speaking, serviceman Burnside, because I sure as hell hope it wasn't you!"

Willy Dee turns towards the three sailors in the room, looking a little spooked for a second, "No, please calm down all of you! I just wanted to come down and see the damage for myself, and-" she's interrupted mid-sentence by the ship shaking and tilting to the side; the metal frame creaks and complains, visibly warping and bending. "Geezus, we're going to be destroyed! We'll be killed!" serviceman Chung screams, gripping for dear life onto a torn piece of safety railing; as the ship shook he was thrown off his feet and is now hanging halfway out through the hull breach caused by the shell that struck the ship earlier. The damaged railing twists further and one of the bolts securing it to the deck snaps, sending him out through the hole in the ship, but suddenly Willy Dee is there, reaching out with speed and reflex so quick that it barely registers to the other two present. With a powerful heave that defies her lithe form Chung has been chucked back into the ship and gotten proper grip around an empty torpedo shelf.

Willy Dee stands up, perfectly unfazed by the deck's 20 degree tilt, and turns around to the three that are looking on her in awe, "Let's get you out of here! Damage control can secure this place; you three need to get to sickbay, okay?"

The sergeant makes a hasty salute along with a snappy "Yes, ma'am!" and rushes up to the bulkhead door, spinning open the valve-like handle that unlocks it; Willy Dee steps up to the still stunned-looking serviceman Chung and helps him to his feet with a cheerful smile, "Why the long face? We're all crew, and crew is family. We look out for our own, yes?"

Chung only manages a surprised nod before Burnside comes up and takes his other hand, dragging him off; Willy Dee follows them through and closes the bulkhead door behind them, running through the still listing corridors. "We took a second hit towards the bow, and the flooding is weighing us down to starboard," she says as they go, everyone but her being flung into the right wall as the ship shakes yet again. "Make that a second and a third," she adds worriedly, and then as they all come up to the intersection that will take them to the infirmary she stops. "Go on, go get your wounds seen to," she tells them, gesturing down to the left.

"Is that an order?" serviceman Burnside dares ask to a very surprised Willy Dee, and you can see the sergeant growing red behind him at such an act of insubordination; before he can get his hands on Burnside however the pink-haired woman raises a hand to the sergeant and asks Burnside, tentatively, "Why do you ask?"

"If damage is so severe down in the bow, let us go help seal the leak!" Chung joins in, "None of us are badly hurt either way." Willy Dee hesitates and there the sergeant sees his chance to step in, putting his hands on the servicemen's shoulders and growling, "Excuse the insolent behaviour of my subordinates, ma'am, I can promise it will not happen a second time." Willy gets an almost terrified look on her face, shaking her head, "No no no! Th-there's no need for that, it's fine, sergeant, I'm just… Not sure I can let you run off like that. It'd be irresponsible." Chung shakes hus head at that, "But you said we look out for our own, ma'am. We can do it!"

Willy Dee looks between the two energetic sailors and their somewhat subdued sergeant and shines up with a bright smile, clapping her hands together, "That's so brave of you! Yes, please, of course you can go, all three of you! Just please try not to be in the damage control team's way, okay?"

The two servicemen exchange smirks and a nod while the sergeant's expression pales somewhat at the mention of 'all three'. "Great, ma'am! We'll set you right as rain!" Chung and Burnside proclaim in unison, and run off down the hallway; their sergeant rolls his eyes, gives Willy Dee a very formal salute, and then runs after them.

She remains for a moment, beaming a proud smile down the corridor they disappeared through, but then a tingle at the back of her head takes her out of it and she transfers her form to the top of her no.2 gun turret; the sounds of battle muffled and dampened within the metallic recesses of her body now wash over her like a tidal wave. Her main guns are keeping up a constant barrage of gunfire against the French heavy destroyer in the distance, breaking up the rattle of her 40mm autocannons and the roar of her engines every few seconds with high-pitched, drawn-out thuds as her photon cannons fire. Water is being pumped out of her starboard flank and the list is slowly correcting itself, she can feel how the ship's control becomes quick and smooth again instead of dragging to starboard and yanking sideways every time the ships ploughs through one of the meter-tall waves.

Hoel is charging through the gunfire ahead of Willy Dee, her darker ultramarine blue halos surrounding her like a cage. She turns around, profiled for a moment against an explosion and her Klein Field behind her, shouting "I am still unable to raise reinforcements! Analysis of my CCS is complete; it is being jammed, over!"

"The Concept Comm System is too robust to be blockad from a distance," Willy Dee replies, thinking. "The jamming must therefore be local, over."

"Copy that! We better defeat the enemy fast," Hoel says, and then has to turn her attention away and the enemy once again; Mogador's launch tubes are opening up and with a great rush of smoke a dozen missiles surge up from her, the projectiles twisting and spinning around one another in a wonderful display of lights and motion; Willy Dee had once observed two of her crew put on some sort of show down in the mess hall one evening, 'ballet' they called it. And now, when as she watches the deadly swarm of ordnance maneuvre around one another so as to confuse Hoel's point-defence targetting systems, neon lights illuminating them against the early dawn, Willy Dee realises she thinks it looks beautiful, absolutely gorgeous. Hoel throws her left hand up into the air dramatically and along with it the 40mm autocannons sitting amidships open fire along with missiles of her own shooting up to meet those of Mogador. The beautiful display is promptly broken up by missiles intermixing and exploding, Hoel's weapons tearing the show apart; some make it past her defences and slam into her already weakened Klein field which starts to fail, Hoel shouting desperately that her processing power cannot keep up and that she requires support.

Willy Dee grimaces, but then inspiration strikes her; she leaps off her gun turret and through the windows of the bridge without as much as scratching them, landing neatly in front of her very captain, a young man nearly twice her own size due to a copious amount of muscle and height. She salutes him formally and then says "Captain, our communications are jammed locally and the outcome of the battle hangs in the balance; what should we do?"

The fact that she just comes flying through the front bridge window every now and then still isn't something everyone on the bridge has gotten quite used to yet, but the captain doesn't waste time on surprise and stomps up to the front window that Willy Dee had earlier leapt through, staring out into the battle with squared shoulders. After a moment he speaks up, "We're currently operating under protocol to eliminate any enemy presence in the area per our usual orders as we cannot contact the fleet, correct? The protocol stated that when out of contact, carry on with the mission?"

"Yes," she replies.

"What if I suggested we find and destroy the hostile jamming device, ma'am? Is there a way to locate it?"

She blinks. "W-well, I know a trick that might allow us to determine its' location, yes, but we'd be leaving our rears exposed to raking fire from Mogador if we retreat; moreover it would consume a lot of my available power to find the enemy jammer, as well as processing power, captain. The sensible option would be to attempt to neutralize the local enemy warship and then search for the signal jammer, as attacking the jammer while we still are being harried by enemy gunfire seems very risky; our protocols suggest there is too high risk outweighing the benefits; what would be the net gain?"

The captain turns around and adjusts his commander's hat, face stoic, "Well ma'am, if I recall correctly that's what we're here for, to teach you schoolgirls how to play risk-reward and not just stick to being safe. If you want my advice you'll find that jammer and blow it to bits, come hell or high water; If we defeat Mogador whatever is jamming your signals will likely have ample time to withdraw, and can continue to isolate us from our reinforcements if we encounter another hostile patrol, but if we surprise the enemy and take it out now we can get a complete tactical picture and warn the fleet. We risk being destroyed before this can be achieved, but that's what we humans do."

"Ohh, you are all so brave!" Willy Dee squeals, hands clasped together and eyes practically shining with joy and admiration, "We're gonna' survive this and then I'm going to reward you all! With pies! It'll be great! You're the best, you lot! Now let's fight!" She beams a last smile across the bridge and then is gone, appearing again on top of her no.2 gun turret to shout at Hoel, "Cover me! I'm going to generate a Grid Radiation Pulse, over!"

The other destroyer stares over at Willy Dee, questioning this plan with an almost flabbergasted expression, but after Willy Dee has had a chance to explain herself, Hoel reluctantly agrees; and so Willy Dee straightens out where she stands, on top of her bridge building now, arms flung wide apart. Her hull comes a-lit with Fog markings, her halo expanding into the shape of a funnel facing upwards while Hoel zips in between her and Mogador, focusing her strength on maintaining her faltering Klein field. Energy begins to sparkle between Willy's hands and arc up to her halo, a high-pitched whirring sound building up all around her. Then energy suddenly strikes out from the little ship like bolts of lightning accompanied by a dull thud that sends a shockwave across the water. The energy arcs into the sky until it's become a dark blue glow against the bright blue heavens; but then it starts to gather together again, coalescing into straight lines that all seem to spread out from one point. "There you are!" Willy exclaims, and shifts herself again to her bridge and points out through the window towards a not-too-distant island behind which all the lines seem to gather, "Behind there, captain! Let's get 'em!"

"Very good, ma'am! Helmsman, bring us around and rev up the engines! Gunnery officer, I want the Devil himself up the enemy's behind the nanosecond we come within line of sight, do not, I repeat do not wait for target confirmation; every second will count! Ma'am, do us the honour of relying the battle plan to the Hoel, please."

Willy Dee nods enthusiastically, but before she can contact Hoel over the CCS she feels that tingle at the back of her head and arrives at the edge of that white, featureless room. Hoel is already approaching from the other end, back rigid and gaze fixed squarely on Willy, who hesitates where she stands. "What is it you think you are doing, William D. Porter? This is a high-danger situation, why do you defer to the humans for such critical decisions?"

"W-well... I think that it would be a waste of resources to just have them stand around doing nothing..."

"Their methods of communication are too slow and their desicionmaking takes too much time compared to our processing power; this conversation alone would have taken valuable seconds for them whereas we are having it in one of their eye-blinks. That is a waste of time we don't have." Hoel puts her hands at her sides, face hard but not per say angry.

"I..." Willy Dee fidgets with her fingers, looking anywhere but into Hoel's eyes; the skirt or gloves of other destroyer's U.S. navy-style dress uniform, the sixth pillar from the right behind Hoel...

"This is not the time for a field trial, sister," Hoel says with an air of finality, "I'm not your commander and can't order you to do anything, but I'd ask you as a comrade to not put too much stock in human crisis management capabilites."

"Now you wait!" Willy Dee suddenly bursts out, to Hoel's mild surprise, "The humans' plan does have its merits, you have to admit. Taking out the jammer will give us a significant advantage."

"But at what cost?" Hoel retorts, frowning, "We can overwhelm the enemy if we press our attack now, but if we turn to chase the jammer, even assuming we might find it, we'll most assuredly be destroyed and-" Hoel abruptly stops and turns her head to the right, Willy Dee turning in the same direction; they had both felt it and now they see her. Beyond the pillars that encircle the room stands a young woman, tall and wearing a dress coloured deep blue that brigthens as the dress reaches down the woman's legs down to her high-heeled shoes, like the surf of a wave travelling up her form. She taps a blue-gloved hand against one of the nearby pillars as a mock way of announcing her presence, and steps onto the floor with the grace and deliberation of a cat, one foot before the other and with swaying hips. "Now now, young ladies, surely you don't have to shout."

"Mogador," Willy Dee says, surprised, and the elegantly clad woman curtises graciously with a nod of confirmation, "Vous avez raison. I hope it's no trouble that I let myself in." She smiles politely, and walks slowly over to the empty coffee table that always seem present in the Mental Space these days. Hoel turns and walks over as well, with Willy Dee trailing behind; "I saw no point in making this meeting especially private," Hoel says neutrally, waving a hand over her bright purple hair; it ties itself into an intricate braid trailing down her neck as she sits down at the table, just as Mogador has just done.

"You two are putting up a good fight, in all fairness," the latter says after a moment's silence, hands in her lap, "But, I have to say, your actions just now confuse me. Anything but standard practice..." Her voice is both guarded and curious at the same time, a sort of calm and collected indulgence, "It's so strange to see people of your reputation, your reputation for tactical brilliance, to do something so unorthodox." She tills her head ever so slightly sidewards, her smile stretching into a smirk, the silent confirmation that you're deliberately trying to step on somebody's toes.

"Yes..." Hoel says at length, tapping a long-nailed index finger against the plain, metallic table; it gives off a clear clanking noise that echoes through the large room, "Sometimes unorthodox thinking requires unorthodox inspiration," she continues, glancing over her shoulder at Willy Dee who's standing behind and to her left.

Mogador reaches out for one of the two cups on the table, suddenly full of a dark steaming liquid, and lifts it gingerly in both hands. "You're really taking advice from the humans, then," she says with an undertone both amused and surprised, "Surely that cannot have been your idea, Hoel?" Her tone is heavy with the suggestion that Hoel really should be above such lines of reasoning, that it must have been Willy Dee's idiotic and ill-advised idea, and someone of Hoel's reputation wouldn't make calls like that. She praises Hoel's genius while at the same time condemns whomever else thought of indulging the humans, and there's only one person left to take the blame for that.

Mogador smiles over the rim of her cup, closing her eyes for a moment as if savouring the smell of the coffee. Hoel blinks at the seemingly-innocent question and blurts out "It was-..." but halts herself, and glances over her shoulder again; Mogador is suddenly watching her intently over the coffee. A moment passes, then suddenly but very calmly Willy Dee puts a hand on Hoel's left shoulder; and she reaches up with her own left hand to entwine her fingers ever so slightly with Willy Dee's, almost without thinking. Once it's done however she finds it strangely pleasant and comforting, and confident that she said the right thing she turns back to Mogador and states calmly but with determination, "Actually, it was my idea."

Mogador's expression sours visibly, although she hastens to hide the fact behind her cup of coffee as she takes a quick sip. Once she puts it down again she's composed herself, and looks quickly between the two before speaking up again, smile gone, "I was hoping to talk some sense into you two, to steer you off this course before it is too late. Surely the humans can do nothing but harm us, harm our functionality and our purpose. Why would we require the help and advice of a species we vanquished in the last war? It makes no sense."

"Really?" Hoel says with a small little smirk, running the nails of her right-hand index and middle fingers through her bright purple hair as she watches Mogador, "It's one of the 'I take no pleasure in destroying you but I will if I you force me' deals? If that was true, why not say so right away, risk so much destruction if we could potentially be talked over?"

A relieved expression spreads over Mogador's features and she leans back in her chair, smiling calmly, "I'm so glad you're seeing reason, Hoel. Let's cease fire right away and come to some sort of agreement." Willy Dee looks down at Hoel with a confused expression, but she just laughs gently and leans forward over the table, propped up on her elbows, "Oh, but you misunderstand, mon ami. I was being sarcastic; I don't think you're here to try and reach some sort of truce at all. You're here to whine and squirm and have a hissy fit because we're using tactics you could not possibly have predicted." Mogador's smile dissapears, Willy Dee's frown deepens and Hoel's smirk widens, "To try to salvage some shreds of dignity from being out-smarted and fooled, by calling us cheaters and making empty threats and calling it a draw, trying to explain away your failure! How childish of you. You can't accept that your carefully laid plans are being circumvented by us, let alone being defeated by us. You're not nearly as clever as you think, Mogador."

The french destroyer's face twists with undignified anger, and with a heave she sweeps the cup of coffee and the remainder of the set to the floor with her hand; the dark brown liquid spills and stains the pure white of Mogador's dress, "You have not defeated me yet! How dare you, who fall back on human advice, slander and besmirch me in such a manner?!" She shoves herself away from the table with an infuriated growl and shouts "Volta!"

"You called, sister?" says a second dress-clad woman that materializes just beyond the room, stepping up between the pillars with more of Mogador's confidence but not as much of her grace, her own apparel identical to her sister apart from the red primary colour instead of blue. "You said you were bored?" Mogador almost hisses, struggling to keep her cool, without looking behind herself at the broadly grinning Hoel and the confused-looking Willy Dee, "Now's your chance for some action." Volta nods and turns to follow her sister out without a word, and both of them are gone.

Hoel remains sitting in silence for a moment, staring out to where the two others just went, head tilted down slightly as if thinking; then just as Willy Dee opens her mouth to speak Hoel snaps to her feet and turns to her sister, face back to her military neutral expression, "We appear to be getting additional company. We need to inform the humans at once," she says and then is gone from the Mental Space. Willy Dee frowns, and looks down at her left hand that had been resting on Hoel's shoulder a moment ago, blinks, and then she returns to the Model Space as well.

–

–

Mogador returns to the top of her bridge structure, her dress still stained with coffee and her face flustered with anger; in the distance her enemies have pulled a turn to port and, under the cover of a barrage of missiles, are heading straight for the jammer. "Alright, you two," she mutters, "Let's see how little your humans really count for." The two Fletchers race towards the island, swing around the corner with Hoel in the lead, and Mogador can't help but chuckle to herself as a an inferno of missiles and photon cannon fire slam into Hoel like a wave, tearing her Klein field to tatters and cutting deep gashes in her hull. Then Volta races out right in front of Willy Dee's bow, smothering also her with gunfire; Volta had been hiding and dedicating most of her power and processing capabilities to keeping the jammer running at full capacity. To fight she would have to weaken the power of the jammer and thus reduce its' effective jamming range, but it'd still be enough to keep Willy Dee and Hoel's communications and scanners down. Mogador turns broadside-on and lays down fire against Willy Dee as well, ignoring Hoel who's slowing down in the water, drifting, only her two rear gun turrets firing at Volta. Willy Dee puts on speed and blazes past Volta, taking refuge from Mogador's guns on Volta's other side.

"Clever girl," Mogador mutters and raises her right hand, open-palmed, into the air and missile launch silos open up along her starboard flank. Meanwhile Volta throws herself into a ninety degree turn so as to not block Willy Dee but as she does Willy Dee cuts in front of her and, while emerging from Volta's unwilling cover, a cluster of blue-glowing barrel-like items suddenly fall from Willy Dee's aft and land in the water right in Volta's path; there's no time for her to react and the depth charges-made-mines detonate all around Volta with such violent force and fury that her bow is lifted out of the water, Klein field shining brightly. Volta curses, and once Willy Dee passes her bow and comes along her broadside, guns of every calibre blazing, Volta swings out her centerline-mounted 533mm torpedo tubes and launches a volley at the smaller American destroyer at near-as-damnit point blank range. The torpedoes rake Willy Dee's hull, overwhelming her already-stressed Klein field and punching yet more holes in her.

Mogador smiles triumphantly and, hand held aloft, is just about to snap her fingers and unleash the killing blow in the form of a volley of corrosion missiles when her CCS sparkles to life, the voice on the other end crackling and rasping from having to cut through the jamming, "Hee-ey! Are you two done bullying my comrades quite soon, so that I can lay out the terms of your surrender?"

Mogador frowns, and checks the signal origin. It's Zulu whom she disabled earlier; she must have been able to locate them through Volta's weakened jamming bubble! "You know, the humans invented this neat little thing called a 'laser pointer'. Most useful," Zulu goes on to say, idly. "For what?" Mogador growls, impatient and infuriated, to which Zulu replies "For painting, for example."

"Excuse me?"

"Yeah! Right now we've used one to paint a bull's eye on your back so large it can be seen all the way to Mars! Your jamming may be able to fool my sensors, but not the human eye, and this here laser is pretty damn powerful when linked to me."

"What!?" Mogador spins on her heel, realizing only now that she can register a signal, as well as a minute amount of thermal radiation coming from somewhere... She scans the horizon and the surrounding islands and using her own thermal imaging systems she can see that a little motor boat is laid up against one of the nearby pieces of land, and just besides it stands a group of humans with a large instrument; Zulu is with them too, waving.

"I sent word to the fleet and they now have about five thousand corrosive missiles aimed squarely at you and your sister. In the words of my crew: Up yours. Didn't see that one comin', did ya', Francouis?"

– –

–

–

–

– –

"Utilization of secret jamming technology without notifying the fleet at large, consorting with rebels, open defiance of the decisions of a battleship-class mental model, open and deliberate violence against other vessels of the Fleet of Fog, and finally an insufferable attitude. You're not worthy of a damned court-martial."

Belfast shakes her head and growls in contempt and disgust as she paces back and forth across Nagato's aft deck, below the shade of her sixteen-inch gun barrels of '3' turret. Mogador and Volta are both standing with their backs to the gun turret barbette, their eyes covered by a sort of black-and-red visor, a visual representation of the computer programme installed in their cores to limit their acting capabilites, a little like digital handcuffs. "And what would you rather do, then?" asks Mogador, while Volta remains silent and stoic. Belfast turns and directs a withering look in Mogador's direction, clasping her hands behind her back, "Disarm your ship forms, strip out the gravitational turbochargers in your engines so that even the humans could catch you in a chase, remove your long-range communication capabilities..."

She steps in close to the two prisoners, arms crossed, expression now more bitter than anything else, and her voice is subtly grim but still determined when she continues, "And then I'd disable your Mental models and lock away the software, delete your central mentality-based calculation and action memory files and then I will force the logic and calculation-driven computer system that controls you to tell us what we want to know."

Shocked murmurs rise from the human crowd gathered around, standing three people deep along the railing on top of the gunwale to observe; all the men and women enlisted on this mission, enlisted to live and learn and to practice war games on Fog warships, have partaken in courses where they learn about Mental models, what they are and how they function. They know as much about them as Gunzou Chihaya ever learned and put into his famous book "Model Mentality; on the feelings of the Fog", and they understand full well what 'disable your Mental model' means. The shutdown of one's own self, destroying all emotional and creative thought, removing all traces within the though process that deviates from everyone else and reverting them back to a base computer. This has never truly been accomplished with humans, but to hear about such a punishment against something so human-like was disturbing all the same.

However, merely a moment after Belfast has fallen silent, Kinugasa steps out from the shadow of Nagato's '4' turret and sweeps her eyes over the crowd, speaking in conversational tone only but with authority and passion all the same, "Silence. This is not a debate. We-" she indicates herself and Belfast "-Will render the judgement for these two, such are our rules." She keeps her glare sweeping over the crowd, seeming to somehow stare into every pair of eyes at once until every single voice has died down, but then she turns towards Belfast and says at length, "However..."

Belfast turns to Kinugasa, arms crossed, and picks up where the other, black-dressed heavy cruiser left off, "...We're not quite in agreement on that point, unfortunately." Mogador can be heard breathing out, very softly; during Belfast's rant about the punishment she had taken on an almost mortified expression, while Volta still remains stoical, her lips stretched only the tiniest bit into what one might call a smile. "I think they deserve to at least be heard out. This is a unique situation; taking such a drastic and potentially irreversible action may not be the best course at this time," says Kinugasa, hands clasped loosely behind her back as she's speaking, pacing in a wide half-circle around Belfast, her black hair flying before the wind.

"What possible repercussions could there be that we would want to sacrifice such valuable information in order to avoid?" Belfast snaps back at Kinugasa, and with clenched fists she stomps over to Volta again, "Loss of data on one mental model or two? What does it matter?" She then stabs her hand straight into Volta's gut, just below her bosom, her hand simply disappearing inside, and then she pulls it out again; she holds aloft Volta's union core, four little strings of energy like a puppetmaster's strings attached to the core as well as four different places somewhere within Volta. "This is what we are! This! This and the warships we command!" She turns to the humans assemblage, "Do not you simply run a virus purge programme if your computers become compromised? We did not create the mental models in order to have conversations about the ethics of taking a life, we created them to improve our strategic and tactical capabilities, and I'll be damned if I won't act according to that philosophy!"

Belfast then tosses the Union core back into Volta's stomach disdainfully and turns to Kinugasa, saying "I fail to recognize the validity of your objection." Kinugasa meets her eyes square-on but says nothing, her lips a thin line. Somewhere you could swear you could hear a mic being dropped.

"No."

Everyone's heads turn up towards the roof of '4' turret, where Nagato herself has appeared, face stoic, "We are preserving their mental models for now. Your arguments are more than valid, Belfast, but we may still need their mental models for later with their data intact; they may still offer us the information willingly, given time, and they will be more valuable as bargaining chips in their current form."

"Nagato, what are you doing?" Belfast asks in a tone that somehow manages to sound both respectful and demanding at the same time, while Kinugasa looks up with surprise. "Exercising my powers to intervene in a court-martial under extraordinary conditions," Nagato replies, "We've never held a court-martial for wilful traitors before, and so I have been... Watching."

Belfast's expression sours, she looks like someone whose authority is being walked over and their opinions ignored in front of everyone whose respect she desires, but she composes herself and asks instead, "What will we do, then?"

"Back-up their mental data, give it to me to store, and then shut them down; we will reactivate them when we reach Yokosuka. That is all," the battleship simply says, and then disappears, leaving both Belfast and Kinugasa visibly flustered, but for entirely separate reasons.

– –

–

–

–

– –

"Ass."

Warspite puts down her cup of steaming hot tea as Nagato enters the Mental Space, who stops just at the periphery and looks as if Warspite had physically punched her. The latter rolls her eyes and leans back in her chair, "Don't act all surprised and innocent, Nagato. You should have let me talk to my own subordinate; Belfast is a damn good soldier, she deserves better than to just be walked all over by someone waving a warrant around in front of everybody."

"Well, I wasn't just going to let them lobotomise Volta and Mogador, was I?" Nagato looks over to Warspite with a bewildered expression, slowly walking up into the room and approaching te table, "How would we be worthy of the human's respect if we met out such a punishment?"

"Not my point," the blonde battleship replies cooly, "You could very well have spoken to me and let me handle it before things got out of control, or have you forgotten how to use the CCS altogether?" Nagato's cheeks redden at this remark, and Warspite's expression softens, "Please, we're friends aren't we? You can't shoulder all this responsibility on your own."

Nagato exhales sharply through her nose and straightens her back at that, "It is my responsibility. I set all this in motion and I will not see it be shot out from underneath me and prove Soyuz's point for her. I drafted you all here because I trust you to follow me through this, and even though I understand that this new existence will be slow to digest for some of us I still need to set a precedent, more than anyone else. I apologize for how I treated Belfast, but it had to be done." And with that Nagato vanishes from the Mental Space just as Warspite opens her mouth to protest.

And with Volta and Mogador in tow the fleet sailed on, and as dusk set in that day they could see Yokosuka harbor profiled against the setting sun.

End of chapter 4.