Trinitite had to admit, boarding the fishing trawler and gazing at its inner workings had piqued her curiosity. She knew what one was, of course, as the one she had boarded matched the one in her identification charts pretty well, but she wasn't at all sure how it worked. The Crossroads Fleet did plenty of fishing, but when Trinitite wasn't asking the subs to bring a little extra up with them, her method usually involved finding where all the sea birds were feeding and dropping a depth charge on them. By the time she had cruised to the target location, the birds that survived the explosion had enjoyed their meal and moved on, leaving plenty of food floating there for her to enjoy.
However, while this trawler seemed to have a fairly sophisticated sonar system, the Wo-class carrier couldn't find a depth charge launcher anywhere on the ship. How could they get fish in their nets when they were still swimming around?
So, when the human watching the sonar called out a large school of fish, Trinity got a little excited.
When the sailor cut herself off and spun to face Trinitite, the carrier was… confused, to say the least. They had just found a school of fish, and instead of doing anything everyone on the bridge was sitting there, staring at either her or the girl on the sonar.
"Well?"
Every moment she spent around humans, they got stranger.
At her word, the bridge sprung into action. Their Captain started issuing orders over the intercom and the Trawler sprung to life. Guided by her curiosity, the Wo-class Abyssal found herself leaving the bridge of the trawler behind and wondering the main deck. The large net in the center of the ship had been lowered, with the sailors at its controls. Trinity wasn't sure about that: Even with a net that big, wouldn't the fish just swim out of the way? Curiosity peaked, the Wo class found a comfortable spot on the deck, wrapping her cape around her as she watched the working sailors.
Eventually, the motors on the deck activated, and the net was slowly drug aboard. As the massive contraption rose, Trinitite stood, walking next to one of the waiting sailors. Swiping at fish with a net seemed awfully hit-and-miss, no matter how big it was, but the human next to her seemed oddly confident.
Then the first fish actually showed itself, and the Carrier's boiler pressure skyrocketed.
"What- how?" The carrier sputtered, incredulous. Engines wined as the net, practically bursting with fish, hauled itself upon the trawler's deck. It was far more than twice the most fish she'd ever seen at once, a school of all kinds of that filled the deck and rose to her waist. As the fishermen advanced on the ocean's bounty, Trinitite numbly followed them, in awe of the feast in front of her.
The sailors undid the net and fish started pouring through the grate below, and Trinitite found herself reaching into the mass of sea life. Plucking out one she hadn't seen before and taking a few steps away from the working fishermen, the Carrier admired her catch. This one comfortably filled both hands, its gold scaling interrupted by regular black stripes. Intrigued, the Abyssal dug in. It had been a while since she'd eaten.
The fish did not disappoint. Its taste was a bit more mild than she was used to, but the way its juices flowed when her teeth shredded it was delightful. Taking another bite, Trinitite yanked the fish away from her face, enjoying the feeling of the flesh as it tore and rended away. Sucking the meat dangling from her lips in, she enjoyed the feeling of the fish melting in her mouth, before finally swallowing her meal. The Abyssal smacked her lips, wiping the blood from her face and savoring the flavor that still lingered. It had been a far too long since she'd been able to properly enjoy a fish.
Huh. All the fishermen who had previously been working on the net were staring at her, the whites of their eyes standing out from their bulky coats and bushy beards.
What, had they never eaten a fish before?
A glare sent them back to their work, and Trinitite walked forward for some privacy. How were you supposed to eat a fish, then?
As machinery hummed belowdecks, Trinitite attempted to enjoy her meal. She had plotted a course she was fairly confident in, and so far The Captain seemed to be following it. Once they got there… She needed more information. Perhaps asking around would be the best option, but to put it bluntly she doubted she'd get a straight answer from them.
Her meal finished, Trinitite stood, throwing what remained of the fish's carcass over the side. She wouldn't be able to trust their information, but there might be a sliver of truth in what they said. Trinitite turned, making her way back to the bridge-
Something in the corner of her eye caught her attention. The abyssal stopped, walking to the edge of the railing and staring at the object peeking out from over the horizon. A huge antenna array, situated atop an angular grey superstructure. Massive, although she remembered it was supposedly 'just' a destroyer. Probably the same class of ship that knocked her out of the battle for Bikini.
Trinitite sighed, leaning back against the trawler's superstructure. Well, this was never going to be easy, was it?
"You doing alright?"
USS Nashville groaned, leveling a glare at the spook across from her. If she'd known her first sortie as a woman would end in her getting into one of these… things, she would have 'accidentally' stripped a turbine during the battle of Bikini. Nobody would have blamed her: this mission was her first after her recommissioning, and it had been considered an unofficial shakedown. Then, she wouldn't be strapped hundreds of feet above the sea, desperately trying to hold her guts in while the contraption tried to vibrate itself apart. How did carriers deal so well with air travel? How did humans? Who thought helicopters were a good idea, let alone this hybrid abomination that was hurling them away from the carrier group?
Hell, "forgetting" to dodge some of the fire from the Midway Princess's high-altitude bombers was didn't sound so bad anymore. The thought of spending more time with Honolulu and Brooklyn aboard the Tripoli as she underwent repairs taunted her. Alas, they'd passed outside the Abyssal's strike range just before she'd been 'volunteered' for this little fun ride, meaning she was stuck in here.
A transport aircraft meant to seat 34 people.
With one other person.
Why did it still feel too small?
"I see." The lieutenant replied, leaning back into his seat. She'd only known the man for a few hours and the Light Cruiser already hated him. In her three months as a woman, she'd been on the receiving end of plenty of glares, smiles, ogglings, and sympathetic looks. The spy was completely unreadable. No respect for a warship that could paste him in a heartbeat, no humor from watching her suffer, no pity for the proverbial fish-out-of-water, just a flat poker face.
The smug bastard could have been thinking anything, but Nashville wasn't feeling particularly charitable.
"Remind me." She spat out, trying to distract herself from the mutiny in her gut. "Why am I in this thing?"
"A Seahawk is too slow," The Lieutenant said, looking up from a laptop he'd unfolded. That wasn't allowed, right? "Nothing faster than an Osprey can land on the Benfold."
That wasn't what Nashville meant, and Murray knew it. Nashville sent the ONI officer another glare, and returned to enduring the ride in silence.
"Looks like we've got a new report from the Benfold." The man nodded, suddenly breaking the silence. "Our Eldritch friend is letting The Pacific Lilly do her job, it seems."
"That's polite." Nashville said. There were implications there, but she'd rather mull over them when her head didn't feel like an overloaded boiler. "Week's salary says their stock's poisoned now."
"No deal." Murray replied, his flat expression marred by the ghost of a smile. Well, he wasn't a robot, at least. "We don't know if she's left the entire crew untouched or if what we're seeing is the only survivors. We don't know if there's an actual hostage situation here, or if this abyssal's just hitchhiking." He paused, closing his laptop. "If they're trying to infiltrate us, a submarine would do a lot better. If they were trying to take prisoners, they wouldn't be sailing back to the US. If they were trying to defect-"
"Defect?" Nashville choked. Abyssals were hate machines that did nothing but kill and burn. Such an idea… it was ridiculous!
"At this point, Nash, we're grasping at straws." The spook shook his head. "If they were, though, they'd be more open with their radio than they are. I think we can rule that out."
"We aren't on nickname terms, Lieutenant." Nashville scolded, before leaning back in her harness.
"Noted." Lieutenant murray nodded, looking up at the roof of the aircraft. "Unless they thought someone was listening and feared reprisal…"
A silence settled between the Lieutenant and Light Cruiser, filled by the hum of distant rotors. As her gut churned, Nashville realized the problem had diverted her attention, at least somewhat.
"Maybe they don't have a plan." Nashville piped up, desperate to ignore the fact that she, a warship, was flying.
"Hmm?" Lieutenant Murray responded, permission to let Nashville think aloud.
"All of this…" The Light Cruiser mulled, her thoughts continuing to drift to her violently shaking seat. "It's sloppy, you know? Maybe this Abyssal had a plan, but it's already blown up in her face and she's improvising."
"...so when we get there, getting an irrational response might be more likely than something calculated and logical."
"Yeah," she replied, brushing a lock of brown hair out of her eyes "like a cornered animal."
Conversation stalled after that, but the pair had plenty to think about. The idea of a 'cruiser'- but spotting Abyssals with radar was a crapshoot, so it could be anything- suddenly lashing out at them with crazed desperation wasn't something she was looking forwards to dealing with.
"We're the only backup DESRON 1 is getting, right?"
"That's correct." Murray replied, lips pursing. "But it's only part of DESRON 1. The Benfold and three of the Farragut sisters."
"Shit." Nashville replied. "That's it?" This thing was barreling towards the mainland and the largest navy in the world couldn't spare a single capital ship?
"We're trying to keep this quiet until we know what's going on." The Lieutenant replied. "An Abyssal just jumped a ship without killing everyone on it. The more people that know about the Pacific Lilly, the bigger chance we have of someone jumping to a wrong conclusion and screwing all of this up."
"An enemy vessel is heading directly for the mainland..." Nashville replied slowly. "...and when the shooting starts, all that stands in their way is going to be light cruiser and four destroyers."
"Even if it's a Re-class, it'll be knife-fighting with three 's a volley of…" Lieutenant Murray paused. "12 torpedoes at once, plus whatever Benfold can get off before she's mulched."
"And that's where you'll be." Nashville finished the Murray's thought. The Lieutenant might be one of the plan's supporters, but he was perhaps in greater danger than Nashville would be. "These early-war Mark 14's?"
"I hope not." He replied, cracking his laptop back open. "We'll have to ask them."
The pair continued hashing out details, forming contingencies and recommendations for the scenario ahead. The practice didn't entirely take Nashville's mind off the sickness flying induced in the light cruiser, but at this point this wasn't her intention: worrying about the road ahead was distracting enough.
When I first started writing this fic, I set a rule for myself: No OC ships. Well, that rule died quickly, and here's why: My plan was to find a historically interesting ship, then go to AL, The Pacific, Warship Girls, or Victory Bells designs where there wasn't a KC one. The problem is even among 5 sources, coverage of the US navy is actually pretty spotty and there are a lot of designs I just don't like.
Still, reading up on the Brooklyn sisters meant that I had to use them. Nashville is original, but I figure she follows the same design philosophy as the Brooklyn sisters in AL (although I'm pretending their rigging looks a bit more like a ship or something we see in KC). Why go for them specifically? Because they actually seem pretty interesting, especially one of them who's got a really sad "fall from grace" history. A guaranteed Antagonist of the family, if you will.