A/N: Well, this is it. We're fully caught up! This is the last of the chapters I've written already, and as I said before I'm off doing family stuff till next week. Thanks for liking my little story so far!
It seems I confused a lot of you with the "Oh-nee" bit last chapter; sorry about that. A couple of you seemed to get it though, which made me feel better. After the story's finished I'll try to go back and rewrite that part to make it less confusing, but until I do you're welcome to PM me and I'll explain what's going on. Now with that out of the way, on with the show!
Disclaimer: I own neither Halo nor Kantai Collection.
"This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can."
-LCdr. Ernest E. Evans, USS Johnston (DD-557), 25 October 1944.
"We are making a torpedo run. The outcome is doubtful, but we will do our duty."
-LCdr. Robert W. Copeland, USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413), 25 October 1944.
"Slipspace ruptures detected."
The sound of a klaxon forced Harvest to open her eyes. What she saw, however, startled her. She had closed her eyes last in her room back in Yokosuka, but she upon waking up, she found herself on a bridge.
No, not any bridge. Her bridge. And the figures around it were her crew.
"Got one!" Cheers echoed across the small space as one of the purple blotches sheared in half. She could see her crew tense as a beam shot back from the large Covenant ship.
A blossoming light, a scream echoing across the void; all that was left of UNSC Guinevere.
Her skipper stared at the tactical plot, watching the two remaining Paris heavies line up behind the lone cruiser, preparing for a charge all knew to end in certain death. "We need to go in. There's not enough numbers otherwise."
Ice flowed down the frigate's spine. She opened her mouth, screaming at her crew, at her captain. "Don't follow them! It's certain death! Run away! Run away!" They couldn't hear her. Why couldn't they hear her?!
Her executive officer knew it was certain death as well. She didn't scream or curse or panic; she just nodded. The admiral on the Pillar of Autumn reacted the same way. Men and women, more than aware that this day would likely be their last, determined only to take the enemy with them into oblivion.
Harvest still screamed, still cursed, still panicked. She didn't want to die; she had hardly even lived. She started shaking as she felt her engines fire beneath her feet, propelling her out of formation with the transports and towards the Covenant ships. She ran to her captain, beating his chest with her fists, pleading with him. "I don't want to die!" the frigate sobbed. "Please! I don't want to die!"
Oblivious to her protestations, unfeeling of her fists, her skipper reached for the intercom. "This is the captain. Covenant ships have jumped after us. They aim to destroy the evacuation vessels, and kill millions of civilian refugees." He took a deep breath and continued, "Mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. Siblings, friends, and lovers. We are all that stands between them and the Covenant. We shall not let them through."
Harvest felt the thoughts of her crew harden and knew she was doomed. As she sagged to the floor of her own bridge in despair, a small, traitorous part of her brain pointed out: You knew it would end like this.
It was true. Somewhere deep inside, she did know that someday, somehow, she would meet her end charging the Covenant trying to protect civilians. Her skipper had made it plain from the moment he took command. "This is a ship of mercy," he had said. "Wherever we are needed, whatever task we must do, I intend to save as many human lives as possible, no matter what it takes. Ours will be an often thankless task, and it will not be a glorious one. But it is necessary, and those we save, whether civilian or soldier, will remember us for it. The shield may not be as famous as the sword, but that does not make it any less important."
It was a speech that confused her when she first heard it, though learning his past explained it to the frigate. Harvest's executive officer had been similarly minded; her father served on a support ship, and she knew even though he was not in the thick of the fight, he was still just as vital to the fighting on the ground as any fleet warship.
She had often found her XO reading that short letter in quiet times. "The United Nations Space Command deeply regrets to inform you that your father is missing following the disappearance of his ship, UNSC Spirit of Fire…"
"They're firing torpedoes!"
"Ready RCS thrusters! Dodge out of their way!"
Harvest tightened her fists. She opened her eyes, blinking away the tears as she watched her hull charge the Covenant ships. The blue glow of plasma torpedoes stood out against the black backdrop of space. "I don't want to die…"
"Harvest…"
An agonized scream as UNSC Balaclava disappeared in a series of blue-tinted explosions.
"Plasma buildup! Energy projector!"
"Fire bottom thrusters! Take us above him!"
"I don't want to die."
"Harvest?"
A pained cry as Pillar of Autumn's port side boiled away.
"Fire Archer pods one through ten on my mark. Mark!"
"Archers away!"
"I don't want to die!"
"Harvest!"
"MAC ready!"
"Fire!"
"BUT I CAN"T LET YOU LIVE!"
"HARVEST, WAKE UP!"
Tenryuu's shoulder hurt. She had been trying for the past hour to force her way into Harvest's room, to no avail. Upon realizing she was out of her league she had sent her destroyers to fetch help, but that left her standing outside the door, through which she could clearly hear the poor frigate in hysterics. No wonder she kept trying to force it.
"Don't follow them! It's certain death!" echoed through the splintered frame. "Run away! Run away!"
"Come on, you fucking door," Tenryuu snarled. Gritting her teeth, she prepared to ram herself into the door yet again. Shoulder be damned, she couldn't just to stand by and listen to this. "Let me in!"
The cruiser smashed into the frame at full speed, breaking the door off its hinges, but it still stood firm. Harvest had barricaded herself in her room after landing from the Marianas battle. She should have guessed the frigate had blocked the door with something.
"Tenryuu-san!" At Inazuma's call, Tenryuu turned around, coming face-to-chest with the battleship Kongou. Panting from the exertion, Tenryuu extracated herself from the door, trying to catch her breath enough to tell the battleship what was happening.
Before she could say a word, however, Harvest's voice came clear through the gap in the door frame. "I don't want to die! Please! I don't want to die!"
Kongou's eyes narrowed. Some might look at Kongou's antics and think the battleship to be an airhead, but Tenryuu knew that the mind in the eccentric ship's head was as sharp as Nagato's. Determination on her face, she turned to Tenryuu and nodded.
"Ready?"
"Dess!" The tuft of hair on her head inexplicably oriented itself towards the entrance to the frigate's room.
At Tenryuu's count, the two ships charged. The entranceway splintered under the assault, the cruiser's eyes barely catching sight of what looked like a large projectile as it flew from its blocking position towards the back of the room. Ignoring the protestations of her aching body, Tenryuu flew to Harvest's side.
The frigate was obviously engrossed in a nightmare. Tumbled in her sheets and blanket, Harvest was covered in sweat, her body pale as her dreams assailed her. "I don't want to die…"
Tenryuu placed a hand on her arm. "Harvest…"
To her surprise, the frigate's hands tightened into fists. "I don't want to die," she said, sounding more determined than frightened.
"Harvest?" Tenryuu had a moment of fear; this little girl, after all, had crushed a battleship oni beneath her. She didn't want to know what might happen to her if Harvest started thrashing around.
Just as she feared, the frigate started to struggle. "I don't want to die!" she yelled.
Kongou dashed over to help, but together the two ships were barely able to keep the girl under control. "Harvest!"
And then the frigate snarled something that sent worry racing down the cruiser's spine. "BUT I CAN'T LET YOU LIVE!"
"HARVEST!" Tenryuu cried, "WAKE UP!"
The little starship's eyes shot wide open. Though her struggling stopped instantly, her head whirled around. "Where? Where am I?"
"Yokosuka, dess."
"The Covenant?"
"Still here. Nagato's in a planning meeting now. She wants you there as soon as you can, but first I think you need to—"
"No," Harvest cut her off, sounding surprisingly determined for someone in the grips of a nightmare moments earlier. "The Covenant are here now; time is not our friend." She stood up and brushed her clothes down as best she could. "Thanks for helping me," she said to the Japanese warships, "but I am all that stands between this planet and the Covenant." She looked up at Tenryuu and Kongou, and with a firm smile continued, "And I will not let them through." She turned and was gone.
Tenryuu stared out the door for a couple more moments, before suddenly becoming aware of just how sore her body was from earlier. As she hissed in pain, she glanced out of the corner of her eye, and noticed what looked like a large shell embedded in the far wall of the room, an inscription 'MAC MISRIAH ARMORY' visible on its side.
Tenryuu groaned. "Guess we should try to move that, right Kongou?" she asked, starting when she realized the battleship was no longer at her side. Her head whirled back towards the front of the room, just in time to catch sight of the sleeve of Kongou's shrine maiden dress as she skipped out the hole where the door used to be.
Inazuma poked her head inside the room, looking wide-eyed at the mess before settling on the far wall. "Tenryuu-san? Should we try to move—"
"Nope!" Tenryuu answered quickly, walking (painfully) over to retrieve her destroyers. "Not my problem." She winced. "I really need a bath, though. Wanna come along?" Her children nodded mutely, and they (gingerly, in one case) made their way towards the repair docks.
Though she understood the necessity of it, Nagato never really cared for meetings, especially when they started taking up more and more of her time when she became secretary ship. That said, if she ever made a list of the worst meetings she ever had to attend, this would firmly rank as number one.
"It wouldn't work," the Chinese admiral grumbled. "It's succeeded in destroying an old, unresponsive satellite in low or decaying orbit. But taking on a beast like this, who can maneuver out of the way and shoot down missiles coming at it?" He shook his head. "No chance."
"Okay," not-Inazuma growled out, "if there's no ground-based weapon that can take it on, that means nukes. Lots of nukes. Do you at least have those?"
Every single person on screen got a very constipated look on their face when the figure brought those up, and Nagato suspected she probably looked much the same. The American admiral took a deep breath and let it out. "The short answer is yes, we do, but we have no delivery system to take it into orbit."
Not-Inazuma raised a critical eyebrow. "Your nuclear missiles don't arc through space?"
Nagato felt the warmth leech out of her body as the Russian admiral spoke up. "They do, but their guidance systems are programmed for stationary targets on the ground. You'd be asking us to fire them off in the hopes that their arcs would intersect with the ship's position in our orbit. Even if it took the brunt of most of them—assuming it didn't just move out of the way, which it would—the sheer number of missiles falling back down to Earth coupled with the detonations in the upper atmosphere would result in a nuclear winter out of the worst fears from the Cold War. We'd be damning ourselves for the slim possibility of taking them with us."
"It seems like the only chance we've got from what you've told me thus far," Not-Inazuma shot back. Protests exploded over the line as Nagato stumbled to the back wall and sank into a chair.
"Are you out of your damn mind?" Saratoga ground out, her hands gripping the table hard enough to splinter it. "You'd sacrifice our entire planet just for a chance, an unlikely one at that? You may not have noticed but this isn't your future; this is the only planet we have!"
Not-Inazuma's avatar disappeared, replaced with a blue and green sphere. "Harvest. Population approximately three million." The sphere's color changed to a dark orange, with several golden rings visible. "The same, after five years of fighting, showing the effects of a partial glassing."
A series of spheres followed, showing bright and vibrant planets reduced to barren husks. Finally Nagato could stand it no more. "Alright, enough! So either we kill ourselves and maybe take them with us or sit and let them do the work for us, is that what you're saying?"
Not-Inazuma returned. "What I'm saying is that if we're doomed anyway, we might as well take the bastards with us! But all that is contingent on us not finding another way to take that cruiser down." The figure smirked without humor. "Just providing motivation to find a way, that's all."
Hood spoke up after a short silence. "If they can do all this, as you've proved, and if they intend to do all this, as you've claimed, then why haven't they done so yet? That ship has been in orbit for a week, now. Why haven't they done all the horrible things you claim they do?"
"Because there's still one thing they're worried enough about to stay their hand."
"And what would that be, if we really are as powerless as you assert?" the battlecruiser continued sharply.
"Me," a voice said, causing the attention of the room and on screen to shift to the open door in the back of the conference room. Harvest's clothes were a mess, but determination schooled her face. "The fact that I'm here is the one reason Earth isn't glassed yet."
"You must be the spaceship girl I've heard so much about," the French admiral said. When Harvest nodded, she continued, "If they're so scared of you, why don't you go destroy them?"
"Because she's only one ship," Not-Inazuma said. "The only times Fleet was victorious over the Covenant in a straight-up fight was with a three-to-one numbers advantage, and even then only with seventy-five percent losses. If Harvest flies up there and challenges them outright, she'll be killed almost immediately. And then nothing will stand in their way."
"If they have such a superiority, why don't they glass us anyway?" Bismarck asked.
"A Covenant ship has to descend into atmosphere and lower its shields to glass a planet," Harvest replied.
"And then you could ambush them and destroy them in atmosphere," Enterprise cut in. Harvest nodded. "So we need to lure them down."
"They already are coming down, though," the British admiral pointed out. "They fired it on Saipan, didn't they? Same with the Falklands, and several other places."
"That's only coming down for a few moments, and they go right back upstairs afterwards," Harvest returned. "They're trying to lure me out. As soon I fire up my main engines, they'll know where I am."
"Then how come they don't know where you are now?"
"I'm not in my ship form. As long as I don't activate my equipment, my weapons, or my main thrusters, I'm just another human to their sensors."
"Your main thrusters…what about your RCS?" Not-Inazuma asked. "Can you just carry your equipment without activating it?"
Nagato blinked at the question. "Technically, yes. Any kanmusu can move about without activating their rigging. We used that trick early in the war to ambush some Abyssal patrols, disguising battleships as destroyers and the like. It worked rather well before they caught on to it. Why do you ask? What do you have in mind?"
Instead of answering the battleship, it turned to the UNSC kanmusu. "Harvest, you haven't fired off your Shiva, have you?"
Harvest's brow furrowed. "No, I never had the chance." Her eyes suddenly widened. "You can't actually be thinking that, can you?"
Not-Inazuma smiled. "Good news, everyone! We can officially move 'nuclear murder-suicide' to Plan 'B'. I've got an idea…"