"...That's the situation at the moment."
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff finished, his voice grim. Silence descended upon the Situation Room, the General returning his audience's stares as he waited for questions.
...and there would be questions. The Chairman's report had been brief, skipping to the painful point of the meeting to underscore its importance while avoiding the impression of any political weaseling. Perhaps because of that, seconds passed as the National Security Council grappled with the new information.
To The President, it felt like he was witnessing a train accident. Once again, he was safe in The Situation Room, forced to watch another catastrophe unfold in painfully slow motion.
If he was lucky, he was only facing another political shitstorm. After the French Battleship Princess collapsed half of La Palma in a controlled detonation, the American East coast found it had little time to prepare for an indomitable tsunami. The President had been forced to endure several pained hours of anticipation, watching in horror as evacuations stalled and the military tried its best to prepare for the inevitable onslaught that would follow.
The resulting damage hadn't held a candle to the hastily-drawn worst case scenarios The President had been given, and the Abyssal bases between La Palma and the US had taken enough of a lashing to shatter the fragile web of alliances that kept the monsters in the region coordinated, but that had come as little comfort. Cities flooded, and then burned, as Abyssal Aircraft strafed rooftops cluttered with survivors and carpeted crowded highways with small bombs. Ports, drydocks, and industries vital to the war effort were devastated, with production on several new ships set back by months and others damaged far beyond recovery.
National Guard units that would normally assist in disaster relief instead prepared to repel invasions, bogging down in infrastructure damaged by the tidal wave and clogged with refugees. The Navy, with hardly enough shipgirls in The Atlantic to count on both hands, was forced to abandon their harbors, flushed into pitched battles with Abyssals they were never designed to fight.
All of this recorded, broadcasted, and live streamed over the internet, until the horror of the attack had been hammered into the American subconscious. No one cared that the evacuation had succeeded the government's expectations, that the Tsunami's destructive power had been tempered by a rookie demolition job on La Palma and the wall of barrier islands that protected the East Coast's ports. No one cared that the Abyssal tide that had crashed upon America's shores had almost immediately dissolved into infighting once they'd discovered the fate of their own bases, or that such an attack simply couldn't happen again.
Americans focused on the horrific video of a car-laden bridge collapsing as Abyssal Fighters riddled it with rockets. The footage of a guided missile destroyer exploding offshore, sparkling as firelight reflected off the chaff it had launched to throw off the enemy's targeting. The hundreds of images of the corpses of sailors, pilots, and civilians washing ashore months after the fighting had ended.
The news that dozens of lost museum ships had immediately returned to repel the invaders was one of the few things that kept the nation's will from breaking entirely. Slowly at first, the nation recovered, shock transforming into anger. Both at the Abyssals who'd perpetrated such an atrocity, and at the government who'd allowed it to happen.
One way or another, heads were going to roll. Pundits demanded why such a possibility hadn't been considered by the Pentagon. The Senate called a hearing as voices demanded the resignation of everyone responsible for the military failings during the La Palma attacks.
Regretfully, now, the President had been one of them. As a result, the Pentagon's top brass was gutted, a purge with the intent of replacing the old set of Admirals and Generals with new blood. Controversies from across the 2010s were brought back into the limelight as the hearings dissolved into a hysterical witch hunt, and by the time the dust had settled, the United States Navy's high command had almost been entirely replaced.
The new brand of officers were said to be exactly what the States needed: Proven warriors who'd failed to get positions in the pentagon due to a lack of political interest, acumen, or connections. In a bad science fiction novel, this would have been a great idea, purging the organization of useless bureaucrats and replacing them with officers who knew how the real world worked. Now? It had come back to bite The President in the ass.
Admiral MacKey had been one of these new commanders, a man who'd proved he could fight Abyssals in the Mediteranian and had a public disdain for 'office squabbles'. All well and good for someone in the CIC of a Supercarrier, but for someone in a volatile situation like the current one?
The image of someone ignorantly pouring water on a grease fire came to mind.
MacKay had wanted to keep the number of involved people as small as possible to limit the chance of information leaking and causing a panic. The President could almost see his point. Still, homeland security was not the Navy's job, for more reasons he could count. If news got out that they were not only half-assing the search for Cassion by limiting themselves to unqualified intelligence analysis and a fucking private detective, but they'd also done so by going around the nation's actual qualified experts?
Things wouldn't stop at a few admirals. Never mind the fact they'd called for the same thing, The Opposition would take this as a prime opportunity to oust The President, and they'd have a point. On top of that, with midterms elections only two months away...
He had few friends in his own party, but the last thing the nation needed in the war was another deadlock between the house and senate. When going had initially gotten tough, The President and The Opposition had no problem working together to get the US on war footing, but no matter how much they shook hands in public, the effects of prewar politics couldn't be ignored. He wouldn't be surprised if some of their radical elements thought him worse than the Abyssals.
On top of that, all of this was only if the loose Abyssal sat on her hands until they stumbled upon her.
If he was unlucky?
The President was a delegator. He'd never admit it, but he knew his strategic knowledge was atrophied and untempered by experience. The war, for the most part, was run by the Department of Defense, while The President focused on keeping the economy together and not giving his enemies too much to work with.
Still, the scenario was all too easy to imagine. A group of hikers in Northern Washington disappear. Then, reports of abyssal aircraft emerge in Northern Idaho. A dam is bombed by aircraft that seem to come out of nowhere, and by the time the military responds, the ghost carrier has disappeared back into the population. Terror spreads as sightings are reported in Montana, Wyoming, then Colorado. Bridges, oil refineries, power plants, it rapidly becomes clear that nowhere is safe from the Abyssal scourge anymore. Morale begins to falter as people realize the threat is no longer contained, and the economy begins to fall apart.
This monster could do more damage to the United States then That Bitch at La Palma ever dreamed of.
"You said ONI has a theory on Cassion's objective." The Secretary of Defense asked, interrupting The President's gloomy predictions. He must have been briefed by Admiral MacKey as well, as he had clearly been waiting for the news to sink in before he spoke up. "Could you expand on that?"
"Right. She's been identified as Wo-E6, nicknamed 'Cassion' by our submariners. She's a bootleg version of our latewar Long-hulled Essexes, under the service of the Jellyfish Princess until the battle of Bikini."
"Saratoga." The Director of National Intelligence supplied. A stranger wouldn't find his response unsettling, but the way his fingers drummed the table betrayed his less-than-stellar mood. "She's been attached to the JMSDF for training."
"Correct. ONI believes Cassion's objective in… infiltrating CONUS was to locate her former Princess. We don't know what she'll do if she accomplished this, though."
"Then call her back." The President suggested. "Give the Japanese another one of our Carriers so we can use her as bait."
He had to admit, he didn't have the highest opinion of these 'redeemed' shipgirls. No matter how sincere they were, and nobody knew their unnatural nature enough to be sure, they'd proven vulnerable to subversion by the Abyss once. Who could say it wouldn't happen again?
"Impossible." The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs replied. "The Japanese made it very clear they wanted Saratoga for a year if they were going to help retrieve her at Bikini. Through an operational failure, their force came into contact with the Abyssal fleet long before our task force did, so they're going to see her as a very well-earned prize." He shook his head, tabbing back through the slideshow they'd endured. "It'll be suspicious, even if they don't take it as an insult."
Damnit. How was his government so good at making everything complicated?
"Who has access to this intelligence?" The National Security Advisor asked, glancing at the icy visage of the Secretary of Homeland Security.
The Charmain, somewhat puzzled, checked the slideshow's header. "It's… annotated as CANUKUS." The General looked back at the National Security Advisor, knowing he'd only been asked a rhetorical question.
"So…" The National Security advisor continued, "…we've informed the British Admiralty, and no one has let the FBI know about this?"
"Mackay's made a huge mistake, here." The President cut off the Chairman's response. "He had his reasons, I'm sure, but nobody in this room is going to debate them. Clair."
The Secretary of Homeland Security straightened, focusing on The President.
"Yes?"
"Get a team on this." The President ordered. "I'd prefer a public manhunt, but the Admiral had a point about panic. Can you do this covertly?"
"It will be slow and difficult." She admitted. "This Abyssal doesn't have any old contacts, bank accounts, or electronics. We'll have to do this the old fashioned way, I think." She shook her head. "I'll get some good people on it, Mister President. You won't have to worry for too long."
"I hope so." The President concluded. Silence descended on the situation room again. Since no one had anything else to add, he changed the subject. The Secretary of Defense straightened as The President addressed him. "Any news on the hind crash in Alaska? I have a call with the Russian President coming up, and I want to get him the latest update on our search efforts."
Now, back to his job. Best to focus on something he had control over, while the professionals got this mess sorted out.
A bit of a short one, mostly because I didn't want to recycle a briefing. Also got it out pretty quickly because I'm not particularly worried about the characterization of the people here.
This interlude was supposed to come out before last chapter, but I delayed it due to current events. Now that the dust has settled a bit and I've finished it, it doesn't feel as controversial as I thought it would be, but I'd like to talk about that for a moment:
I tried my best to write this without injecting my own commentary on current politics. Hopefully, you didn't get any feeling of my own political views reading this, let alone the view I was trying to push them on you. I don't know about you, but whether I'm looking at media from Tom Kratman or James Cameron, I hate getting preached at, and this story isn't about contemporary politics, it's about Trinitite. Hopefully, I managed to avoid that, although I'm fairly confident that I did.
On a much brighter note, thank you to RDFox for some last minute information that I referenced here.