A/N: Thanks for all the well-wishes. Thanks also for Fanfiction having preloaded chapters I can publish from my phone.
Disclaimer: I still own neither Halo nor Kantai Collection.
Here's a place I didn't think I'd see again so soon, Nagato thought as she sailed eastward past Wake Island. Less than a year ago, Nagato's admiral had accepted the Americans' request to draw the Abyssals' attention eastward, in preparation for the American operation to retake the Hawaiian Islands, abandoned in the first year of the Abyssal War. They had passed by Wake on the way to strike their ultimate target, Midway, but had not returned since. Now, they were headed back to Midway, this time for good.
Most ship girl operations before the Midway/Hawaii plan had been defensive in nature, such as the desperate and bloody battles that enabled the United States Navy to—barely—hold on to the Panama Canal. The few offensive operations had been aimed at securing supply routes or clearing bottlenecks, such as the dual operation the Europeans conducted against Abyssal bases at Malta and Suez. Even the two years of heavy fighting by Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and up the coast of East Asia had been equal parts keeping a supply lane open as it had been saving lives.
The diversion operation the Japanese and American admirals came up with had been an incredible gamble. It called for Japanese forces to push deep into enemy territory, and for American forces to attack a heavily fortified Abyssal base, whose forces had rampaged up and down the American west coast for years. It was a plan that Nagato knew all too well could easily have gone horribly wrong; the Abyssals had to focus on the Americans long enough for the Japanese to get into position, and the Abyssals had to turn their attention to the Japanese quickly enough for the Americans to strike. If the Abyssals responded too quickly, they could easily have surrounded the force of damaged kanmusu and destroyed it; if they did not fall for the trick, the Americans would have run full-force into a wall.
Thankfully, Nagato thought as she glanced at the island, her worst fears had not come to pass. Though Japan's kanmusu had returned heavily damaged, that they returned at all was a victory. And though the Americans faced months of desperate fighting to maintain their hold, the fact that they remained in control of the Hawaiian Islands was a victory as well. Still, it had not come without cost. Nagato did not know how much the Americans had suffered, but she did remember the destroyer she had lost in these waters: Kisaragi, so young and full of hope, had been caught on her own by an Abyssal aircraft after the strike against Wake had been completed. Kisaragi had been hit and killed…in almost exactly the same way the ship Kisaragi had been sunk at the start of the war.
Nagato frowned. Sometimes the battleship was convinced they were in some sort of purgatory for their past lives, or that fate just seemed to enjoy kicking them in the face. The Japanese had attacked Wake Island shortly after their strike on Pearl Harbor, expecting a quick and easy victory. Instead, American shore guns had waited until the Japanese destroyers closed to bombard the island before opening fire, heavily damaging Yubari and sinking Hayate; shortly afterward, American planes (which the Japanese weren't expecting) dropped a bomb on the stern of the destroyer Kisaragi, which detonated her depth charges to fatal effect. Japan wound up having to divert CarDiv Two to the island before they could capture it.
Nagato glanced to her side, and noticed Enterprise also shaking her head at the island. Discussing the island, Nagato had been surprised when Enterprise mentioned the reason why Japan didn't know of the American planes: they had only arrived days before. At the end of November the Marine fighters had embarked aboard USS Enterprise, which ferried them to Wake Island just in time for the battle. Due back in Pearl Harbor the morning of December 7, bad weather made it impossible to refuel, delaying Enterprise by several hours…and ensuring that the Japanese attack had not caught the carrier in the harbor channel. It was with good reason that Enterprise was considered a lucky ship.
The radio crackling in Nagato's ear brought the battleship out of her musings. "Got some bad news for you. You know those orbital guns? I see some of them turned sideways."
Nagato grimaced. This was a complication they did not need. Japanese kanmusu tended to favor battleships and getting within line-of-sight of their target. Carriers could strike beyond visual range, but that led to a different problem: Kyudo, the Japanese art of the bow, required intense concentration—ill suited to keeping an eye out to dodge massive shells arching over the horizon. "Can you take some of them out?" the battleship responded.
"I'll do what I can," Harvest replied. "But I can't promise it'll destroy enough of them. And they've got a lot of those guns pointed my way, too. Stilettos on the way."
Nagato nodded and switched channels to her fleet. "Change of plans: the Abyssals know we're coming, and they've turned some of those orbital guns into shore batteries. We're going to have to batter those down before we can get into shelling range. I want the carriers to spread out and start launching; you'll have to clear our way in. Additionally, I want the battleships to spread out amongst the carriers and watch out for incoming fire. If you see one heading towards one of the carriers you're protecting, get the carrier out of the way by any means necessary."
Nagato knew the carriers wouldn't like that. Kyudo was an art, after all; interrupting it was one of the rudest acts one could perform. But better that than one of the carriers catching it on the nose… On that thought, Nagato keyed her mike again. "In addition, all ships are to avoid getting hit, even if they have to break formation to dodge out of the way. The Abyssals made these guns to try to take Harvest down. I don't want to find out what will happen if one of them scores a hit on any of you. Understood?"
A chorus of acknowledgements sounded over her radio as Nagato made her way towards her own group of carriers. As she loaded her musket, Yorktown glanced over at Nagato with disbelief on her face. "Would they honestly sit there and take a hit they can see coming rather than move out of the way?"
"Japan," Hornet responded before Nagato could open her mouth, as though the one word would explain everything.
Nagato sighed. Some cultural quirks really did not translate very well. After a couple attempts, the battleship just settled for, "I'd rather just tell them and not take the chance." Yorktown still spared her a quizzical look, before the three carriers leveled their arms and fired. As the blue planes flew into the horizon, Nagato sighed again. This was going to be a long day.
God-almighty-damn these assholes are stubborn, Harvest thought to herself. This place may have not had a massive surface fleet like that one in the Carolines she had hit a week ago, but Midway made up for that with enough ground defenses to stymie any assault.
"Quantity is a quality of its own," was a phrase Harvest had heard back in the Covenant War, usually in discussions of frigate tactics for fleet battles, but the Abyssals seemed to have taken that lesson to heart. The two islands that made up Midway Atoll were covered in those gigantic guns, most of them aimed skywards but a significant amount of them aimed horizontally towards the fleet. Harvest was thankful none of them seemed to score any hits yet, but there was always the line of thought that you're bound to hit something if you shoot enough.
Of course, the same line of thought could be extended to shooting at her, and the Abyssals had enough guns that they were certainly trying their best. Harvest released bundle after bundle of Stilettos, but it seemed no matter how many targets she took out, many, many more remained.
Oh, fuck this, the frigate thought as yet more shots flew past her. She keyed her comms. "Nagato, Harvest. Requesting permission for MAC strikes."
"Harvest, repeat your last?"
"Requesting permission for MAC strikes on Midway Island."
"I thought you said don't use your main cannon on an orbital strike."
"I don't, or at least I prefer not to. But I'm burning through Stilettos pretty fast here. At this point just MACing it and getting it over with looks like the better option."
"Excuse me, Nagato. Harvest, what effect would such a strike have on the islands? We would prefer them to stick around; Midway is a rather strategic base for any number of things." Harvest cursed to herself. She'd forgotten that the tightbeam sets she handed out were all set to the same channel, so that she could talk to every commander at once on large operations. It was also, she suspected, a political move so that no one could make secret plans with the spaceship to the detriment of anyone else. But that meant that anyone who had a tightbeam set could monitor what was happening in the battle, including Saratoga back in San Diego. And given the fact that Midway was an American base before the Abyssal War, the Americans would have a vested interest in keeping it intact for their own use later.
"At this point, it's honestly looking like it'll either be lots of tiny craters or a few large craters," Harvest grumbled, resisting the urge to spit out "your choice". Once again, the little frigate found herself cursing politics. Yeah, this stuff was important and all, especially with the end of the Abyssal War finally in sight, but she honestly couldn't bring herself to think further ahead than the next mission.
After all, where she came from, the future was something humanity tried not to think too much about.
"Saratoga?" Nagato asked.
"Stand by," the carrier responded. Harvest sighed. She twisted out of the way of a couple Abyssal shells without conscious thought. From her observations, it didn't seem like there was too much resistance waiting on the island itself; the problem was just getting close enough to—
Harvest's eyes suddenly widened, before her lips spread as an evil, evil plan popped into her head. Suddenly very grateful she had stopped by Pearl Harbor to pick them up (not to mention thinking to restore their rides), she keyed her tightbeam. "Nagato and Saratoga, Harvest. Belay my last. I have a better idea; can your carriers provide support? I'm going to need to reposition after I drop them off."
Nagato seemed taken aback, but replied in the affirmative. Harvest's grin widened as tiny cheers reverberated through her hull. This was going to be fun.
The Abyssal gunners gave off a feeling approximating pride as the demon ship above released a last wave of those darts before moving away. Their fire may not have been accurate, but at last pure numbers seemed to have driven the enemy away. The darts it released were unfortunate, but as long as the ship that spawned them was gone, whatever darts it may have released were mere nuisances.
The gunners' reactions might have been a bit different had they known that the darts weren't more Stilettos at all. Thirty-six small black pods dropped towards the battle raging above Midway Island, their occupants utterly unconcerned as their pod exteriors glowed white hot.
Someone back in their universe once noted a phenomenon they called "LGOO's", or "Little Groups of ODSTs". Boiling down to small groups of well-trained and well-armed humans, lacking serious adult supervision, and remembering their directives to kill anyone who wasn't them, the phenomenon when properly executed was the bane of Insurrectionist and Covenant alike.
It also garnered those who brought said phenomenon to fruition a reputation of being absolutely fucking insane. Though meant as an insult, the troopers wore the epithet with pride. After all, no one sane would possibly wish to be ejected out of a perfectly good spacecraft, fall and pray the coating holds so you won't be roasted alive, smash into the ground at speeds capable of breaking building materials, and then after all that jump out and fight. But those "special" enough to do it wouldn't have it any other way.
And so, as they dropped towards the island of the shadow of death, they feared no evil, for no evil on Earth was crazier than they. Feeling the pop of their drag chutes, thirty-six small black-clad figures cheered and happily sang the song of doom.
The figure lifted itself back off the ground, a hand coming up to try to sooth its aching head in sympathy. "Wo…" it moaned; what happened? The last thing it remembered, it was directing its craft to fend off those of the surfacers, before it felt a terrific pain in its head and collapsed to the ground.
"Wo?" The figure blinked in confusion, feeling a gouge in its hat. It looked around, and saw a small crater, in which a tiny black object sat. "Wo," it finally decided, connecting the path between whatever-it-was' impact on her head and its resting place on the ground.
"Wo." The figure was confused. It knew this was not one of the darts the demon ship liked to drop. She had seen those, but this looked different. "Wo!" it suddenly exclaimed in surprise, as part of the black object shot away with a bang. The figure watched something—or someone—leap out of the object and look up at it, before ducking back inside.
"Wo?" The figure blinked, totally at a loss. It leaned over to take a closer look, as whatever it was looked back up at it, and hoisted what the figure thought looked like a pair of straws stuck together. The figure's brow furrowed, and with some pout in its voice said, "Wo."
And then it ate a rocket to the face.
Nagato tried to paste a smile on her face, though she was sure it came out more nervous than she wished. Just twenty minutes after Harvest's call the volume of fire directed their way had decreased dramatically, and by the time an hour had passed the fire had stopped altogether. Now as the kanmusu finally approached Midway Island an hour and a half later, they were shocked at the scene.
The island was covered in carnage, and though much of it bore the telltale signs of aerial bombing or the craters of Harvest's strikes, most of it was simply unrecognizable. As the battleship made her way into the lagoon, she finally spotted the only clue on the islands.
There on the beach of Sand Island were several small black-clad figures, supporting what looked like the hat of a Wo-class carrier. The figures tromped back and forth, calling out a tempo of "Hell, Hell, Hell, Hell, Hell!" The display seemed to cause much amusement from their fellows.
"What…the hell…" Mutsu muttered next to her, as the figures moved the hat round and round. Nagato just shook her head, feeling just as befuddled as her sister.
One of the figures suddenly pointed at the approaching kanmusu, and shouted out, "Hell!" Immediately the display was abandoned, as the black-clad figures rushed down to the beach and lined up in formation, only to start when they noticed one was missing. They looked back at the hat, which seemed to be moving, realizing that in the rush to abandon the display one of the figures had been left under the hat. "Hell! Hell hell!" the lead figure yelled, and several of them rushed to free their comrade before they all ran back into position, forming five perfect lines of seven, the leader standing aside the first line. "Hell!" it called, and the thirty-six figures all stood at attention.
Nagato was tired enough to feel the gears in her brain slowly turn over, trying to make sense of it all. "Nagato-san?" The question made the battleship just pitch it all over the side and think about something else, in this case the destroyer who had pulled up alongside and spoken up. "What…what's going on?" Fubuki asked quietly.
Nagato glanced back at the figures, still in a perfect parade formation, her mouth opening and closing a couple times as it tried to make words. "Fubuki," she finally forced out, "are you sure you want to know?"
The destroyer blinked. "Nagato-san…"
"I'm being serious. Are you honestly sure that you want to know?"
Fubuki looked from Nagato, to the fairies, and back again, before she finally shook her head.
"Yeah," Nagato said. "I'm not sure I want to know either." She turned around and started making her way back out of the lagoon, peaceful again at last after over five years of war.