In Human Skin

by Akemi Homura-san

In January, a.t.b. 2010, Empress Marianne vi Britannia, Knight of Two and His Majesty's favoured consort, was assassinated at her residence in the Imperial Villa at Aries. But for Justine and Juliette vi Britannia, her daughters, this proves to be a blessing in disguise... Surrounded by old foes and sheltered by new and unexpected allies, their tale heralds the dawn of a new era.

5. Aces High

Area Seven, Midway Atoll, August, a.t.b. 2010

Having heard and learned of the vast, complex nature of war, Justine believed, rather foolishly, that she had prepared herself for the reality of the situation; yet nothing could have prepared her for what it was like to bear witness to such a gargantuan undertaking firsthand.

The Second Pacific War began with a brazen, audacious stratagem, a two-pronged attack across the expanse of the Pacific Ocean organised by Rear Admirals Mittermeyer and Reuenthal, who were staff officers of the Britannian Royal Navy's Office of Strategic Affairs, under High Admiral Oberstein. The Fourth, Seventh, and Tenth Battle Fleets would gather at the Pearl Harbour naval base, so the plan went, and engage in the South Pacific, while the Nineteenth, Twenty-Third, and Thirty-First Fleets launched into Japanese waters from the Britannian base at Midway Atoll. As was apparently the way of things in Britannia, the Britannian Royal Air Force caught wind of all of this and formed it into a joint operation, sending entire wings of fighters, bombers, and aircraft carrier groups from the bases in Cambodia, Britannian Indochina, and Port Victoria in Area Two's Britannian Columbia. To see it laid out in the war rooms, the stratagem looked like a vast Britannian wave, the many limbs of a kraken out of myth stretching across the sea to encircle the Empire of Japan.

Cornelia was assigned to the creatively-named Midway Task Force to oversee the loading and subsequent deployment of the new Glasgows, and so Justine took it upon herself to learn very quickly how to stay out of the way of the hurried, almost fevered preparations for what was to come that seemed to consume all the main vistas and throughways of the island and the ships resupplying there. So far, she had successfully taught herself how to continuously avoid playing the part of the perpetually underfoot princess of the realm, and it helped that Midway was such a beautiful place all on its own.

Having spent almost her entire life amidst the cultivated beauty and manmade splendour of the villa at Aries and the nearby Pendragon, the almost impossibly pristine natural beauty of the island was nearly painful to gaze upon, with its white sands, its verdant foliage, the clarity of its blue skies, and the odd hues of the azure expanse which surrounded them on all sides. For her first excursion beyond Britannian borders, it was in itself almost a humbling experience to bear witness to, a breathtaking sensory bouquet to which no photograph could ever do justice. The crashing of waves and strong gusts of cool wind that brought with it the calls of sea birds formed a fascinating contrast with the clamour of logistics at the base behind her—the percussive drone of engines, the squealing of protesting hinges, the sharp clashes of metal on metal, the shouts of one man to another as they worked against the clock to load the strange tungsten-clad machines of war, knelt over themselves but sharing in their bulky profiles a resemblance to the stature of a man, onto the ships that would bear them hence.

"So this is war, then," she remarked, not bothering to turn to look at faithful Jeremiah to check if he had heard her, if he knew she had been addressing him, albeit idly. "I must admit, I had not expected this—though, of course, I suppose I have no right idea of what I did expect."

"I was nineteen years old when I was deployed to the front in the Indochinese War, your highness, two years after I graduated from Imperial Colchester. I received a Britannian Medal of Valour at the end of it all, and that got me my post in the Royal Guard a few months after that," said Jeremiah. "And I recall having much the same impression. If I had to describe it, the war was a long period of tense waiting, punctuated by brief, brilliant flashes of carnage. Lady Marianne saved my life in that war, in fact. The Knight of Six and then Two, and yet I think only Ser Bismarck was deadlier on the battlefield—if not for her timely intervention during the Battle of Bombay, I daresay I and many other good men and women would have perished that day. She won many hearts that way, or so I'm told. The peers of the realm may not have cared for her in the slightest, but to the career soldiers? Commanders, infantrymen, staff officers, engineers, mechanics, field medics—she was a hero to all of us. A living legend. You will have quite the large pair of shoes to fill, your highness, coming into our ranks in the wake of her death; and they may resent you, for the fact that they will believe that you intend to coast upon the laurels she earned."

Justine nodded. "Good. I was rather hoping I would have to earn their loyalty. It means their allegiance doesn't come cheaply."

A quick glance in Jeremiah's direction revealed the small smile that graced his handsome face. "Her Highness Princess Cornelia will be your greatest hurdle in that arena, then. She has a reputation for being no-nonsense and shockingly meritocratic for a royal. Many look to her as the proper successor of Marianne the Flash even now. This invasion will be a great turning point for her and her career, and she is well-poised to catapult herself into the same vaulted halls of legend and battlefield myth in which your late mother once walked."

Justine considered this for a moment, staring out at the vast expanse of ocean beyond the island, two thousand miles they would have to cross in order to face the Imperial Japanese Army on its home soil; and then she turned on her heel, looking to where Cornelia moved amongst her fellow officers, her subordinates, her regiment, having no overarching command quite yet, but having to organise the particulars of the onboarding by virtue of her status as a princess of the realm. She looked harried, her brow furrowed, her purple-painted lips twisted in displeasure, and perhaps Justine felt a trifle as though Cornelia's talents were wasted. Her sister was passable at sums, but thought in terms entirely too straightforward to deal with the multiple, ever-changing variables of logistical concerns. "Jeremiah. How long do we have to load this all onto the ships for transport? I'm afraid I was not made privy to those sorts of granular details."

"Thirty-six hours, your highness, before we fall behind schedule, although the Office of Strategic Affairs did note that any time we could shave off of that total would be welcome," said Jeremiah, and Justine thanked the stars that soldiers were so wont to gossip amongst their own. She suspected this would not be the last time she thanked that particular reality, either.

"We've been here for nine of those hours already. I wish to know how many tons of ordinance, hardware, and materiel still need to be loaded. If my sister's star is rising, well, I think Juliette would agree that it would be a good idea to start racking up favours," Justine remarked. "But perhaps it would not do to have you gathering such information in my stead. There is something to be said for the concept that one cannot be a competent commander of men unless they understand what it is to be a grunt, after all."

Jeremiah nodded, his gold-hazel eyes flicking from one end of the compound to the other as both of them looked upon the base; then they sparked, as though his mind had seized upon a thing. "Your highness, do you trust me?"

"With my life, Jeremiah. I would not suffer you to be near me otherwise," Justine replied, her head tilting in a distinctly avian fashion as her brow cocked quizzically. "I had thought you knew the answer to such an obvious question."

Jeremiah shook his head, his stature alight with a peculiar form of animation Justine had heretofore never seen of the man. "You trust me, your highness, that much I know. But I am not asking if you place your trust in my person. I am asking if you place your trust in my judgement, specifically of people."

Justine stilled, and then sighed with a rueful twist of her lips. "Well, I suppose I must."

Jeremiah favoured her with a thankful grin. "My thanks, your highness. I shan't fail you. Please, follow me. There is someone to whom I would like to introduce you."

Justine nodded, and as Jeremiah strode away, every step sure of its purpose, Justine was at his flank. "I take it this is another of the aforementioned 'many other good men and women' who survived the Battle of Bombay by virtue of the late Knight of Two's 'timely intervention?' A friend from that tour of duty, perhaps?"

"Just so, your highness," Jeremiah affirmed.

"Ha! Why, my dear Jeremiah," Justine began mirthfully, chuckling into the back of her hand. "I daresay a fair few of our friend Taliesin's turns of phrase have begun to rub off on you. Perhaps he and I ought to have words about him corrupting my pure-hearted and gallant knight."

Jeremiah's smile flashed into a quick, pained grimace. "Very funny, your highness."

"I thought it was quite droll, myself," Justine agreed, purposefully ignoring his sarcasm. Yet, for the sake of her unofficial knight's dignity, she made an effort to stifle her teasing and her laughter, focusing once more straight ahead to note that their destination seemed to be a person. A young woman, tall, slender, and lean, her uniform marking her as army personnel, while her posture was a near-mirror of Jeremiah's disciplined bearing. Of particular note was her long, steel-grey hair in spite of her apparent youth, pulled back into a severe-looking ponytail, and her dusky complexion; and when she turned to receive their approach, her gorgeous Britannian features set in a sternly professional mien, the piercing eyes that widened in surprise were a very bright shade of green, so bright they bordered on yellow.

"Jeremiah Gottwald…!" she cried, astonished.

"Villetta Nu," Jeremiah greeted, and it was akin to a sigh of joy. "It's been far too long. How's your family? And what's this, warrant officer? You were a corporal when last I saw you. You're moving up in the world."

"I don't know what to be more shocked by: the fact that you're here, or the fact that you remembered my name," said Warrant Officer Villetta Nu, adjusting the collar of her uniform as she shifted her weight on her feet. A commoner, judging by her low rank—highborn were almost automatically commissioned officers as a matter of course, and even the most impoverished members of the gentry would feel humiliated at their child beginning from the ranks even by direst necessity.

Jeremiah, to his credit, seemed perturbed, almost offended, for she knew the man well enough by this point to be certain it was the offhand insinuation that he might have forgotten the woman on account of her low birth that provoked his offence. "I would never forget the name of a friend. You were a good and capable soldier, Villetta. There is not one person I would sooner trust to have guarding my back."

Villetta smiled, and it was a wry twist of her lips that Justine supposed must be something of a rare sight. She crossed her arms under her ample chest and let her smile subside into a smirk. "'Not one person?' Not even Kewell?"

"No contest," Jeremiah affirmed, his own expression every bit as engaged with the spirit of the banter. "And that is only mostly to do with the fact that he once managed to miss the broad side of a barn using a twelve-gauge."

"Ha! I knew that insufferable blue-blood had terrible aim," Villetta chuckled, and it was a low, throaty sound, just this side of sultry. Her attention switched from Jeremiah to Justine in an instant, and being under her gaze was an interesting experience, like how she imagined it might feel to sense the stare of a sharpshooter. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend, Jerry? She doesn't look like you, so she can't be your sister. Some distant cousin, perhaps?"

Jeremiah stiffened, suddenly consumed with the appearance of anything that wasn't the two of them. "Um… Well…"

Justine laughed, the feeling of it a catharsis, and she decided to take pity on him.

This time.

"Would that things could be so simple, but alas, it is not to be so," Justine began, and the warrant officer's silver brow furrowed in something approaching confusion. "I believe you met my mother once, Warrant Officer Nu. Perhaps you even owe her something of a debt, if my sense of things is correct. I'm well aware that the resemblance is far more pronounced in my sister's countenance, but, well, it would be an awful shame if all the trouble she went to in order to emphasise our similarities was from the beginning a doomed enterprise. Wouldn't you agree, Jerry?"

"Forgive me my impertinence in saying this, but you can be incorrigible sometimes, your highness," sighed Jeremiah.

"It is forgiven," Justine replied, watching for Villetta Nu's reaction surreptitiously, out of the corner of her eye. "Juliette counselled me to attempt some form of departure from my normal sense of decorum. Something about being more 'sociable.' It is only to be expected that I would not be particularly proficient with its intricacies and nuances."

"Wait…" Villetta interjected. "You're…a princess of the realm?"

"Correct," said Justine, turning to face the non-commissioned officer again. "Justine vi Britannia, Fourth Princess of the Realm, at your service. I'd bow, but…"

"It'd be taken as a sarcastic gesture, right?"

"Most apologetically, yes," Justine affirmed. "Nevertheless, any friend of Jeremiah's is a friend of mine, so…"

"A bit early to say that, your highness. You've yet to meet Kewell Soresi," Villetta jested. Justine was impressed; someone who was able to recover from such an upset so quickly might well one day prove to be quite the capable officer.

"Well, from the glowing terms with which you both speak about the man, I'm sure that making his acquaintance will be an…experience to remember," said Justine.

"Wait, it just clicked for me. You're Marianne the Flash's kid, yeah?" asked Villetta.

"One of two, yes," answered Justine. "Though, to be incredibly frank, the idea that my image might be a mirror of hers is tiresome enough that I'd prefer to avoid the comparison, if it's all the same. Now, according to the good margrave here, you are the person to talk to if I wish to begin acquainting myself with this process of loading the Glasgows. I would appreciate it if you would be so kind as to brief me on the advancement of the task, or failing that, point me in the direction of another who would be in possession of such knowledge."

"Officially, that's the purview of the base commander's adjutant, First Lieutenant Falstaff Waldstein, nephew of the Knight of One," said Villetta. "However, while Lord Waldstein is…a very disciplined man, devoted to his duty, he's hopeless with any sort of quantitative reasoning more complex than sums, which makes of him something of a poor quartermaster; so, I suppose you could say that, in an unofficial capacity, that duty falls rather squarely upon my shoulders."

"So, pay deference to Lord Waldstein when asked, but ask you in all other circumstances, I suppose is the functional procedure around these parts?" Justine clarified. "That is just as well. The duties of a base commander's adjutant are already too broadly cast to properly stomach the intricacies of administration in any event, I would imagine."

Villetta gave a rueful smile. "That's the long and the short of it, yes."

"Very well, then. Warrant Officer Nu," Justine began, assuming a softer form of the same posture and bearing that so effectively established her right to rule, and the duty of the world and all within it to devote themselves to the execution of her will. The soldier straightened herself at the sight and the sound of it, but it was not Justine's intent to cow or to dominate, but rather to embody a sort of expertise that was worthy of trust. She may be as of yet unbloodied in terms of her ability to command a battlefield, but this was a task she considered to be firmly within the scope and ken of her faculties. "I shan't insult your intelligence by assuming you have forgotten or are otherwise unaware of the schedule of this operation. My sense is that my royal sister's lack of quantitative reasoning, as you so eloquently put it, has hindered her ability to manage this task she has been given. Now, I hold no rank and have no clout with the armed forces whatsoever, my own merit being thoroughly untested in the eyes of all and sundry, but I daresay one need not be a decorated war hero to aid in administrative tasks. And since you have been handling the duties of a quartermaster here, I should like to work together in facilitating the completion of this part, to ensure this phase of the stratagem is not a point of failure for the entire war effort."

Villetta eyed Justine with a fair bit of reservation. Then she looked up at Jeremiah. "You know your royal charge, Jeremiah. Care to vouch for her highness?"

Justine prepared to swallow some inane sense of vain indignation at being spoken over, but much to her surprise, no such impulse managed to rise up within her. She supposed it was only to be expected; Villetta Nu trusted her war buddy in Jeremiah, not an errant member of a line that produced far, far more idiots and mediocre dullards with delusions of grandeur than it did brilliance worthy of that grandeur. Perhaps that was not Jeremiah's failing, that he did not know of this new obstacle placed into her path, of the great rambling mass of the royal line, raised to think themselves conquerors and yet incapable of arranging the conquest of a blade of grass; and whatever achievements afforded them engineered by sole virtue of the mettle of all the skilled officers and unsung heroes of those otherwise-doomed endeavours.

"Her Excellency the Prime Minister, Her Royal Highness Princess Friederike, offered to release me from my bonds, and to ask whatever boon of her I deemed fitting," said Jeremiah, clasping his fist to his heart. "I asked only that I might further defend the sisters vi Britannia, and Princess Justine has only ever managed to blow past my every expectation. I am grateful every day that I had the wisdom to continue into her service, Villetta."

The other woman's green eyes widened. "Well then. If you said you'd have laid down your life for her, I'd have known you were full of shit, Jerry. You're not one to speak with any eloquence in favour of causes you don't believe in, so sure. Your highness, shall we begin?"

Justine gave Villetta a cryptic smile, and nodded. "Let us be about it, then."

---

At twenty-four years of service and counting to the armed forces of Britannia, and to his fellow pilots in the Royal Air Force specifically, Captain Andreas Darlton believed he could honestly say that he had given his life to his country. Though he was technically an ace, with twenty-three confirmed kills in the air, he wasn't like the young hotshots who would come onto base, get into a plane, and catapult themselves into 'legend' status within the space of a few years at most with at least a dozen aircraft downed in pitched dogfights. He wasn't an ace the way they were, daring and bold and headstrong, and he had seen more of those sorts go down in smoking, burning wrecks, young men who had tried their luck one too many times, than he cared to even consider remembering.

No, Andreas Darlton was no genius pilot, with hot blood and a hotter end, but he prided himself on being solid, consistent, and reliable. He had never gone off the handle with the scent of promised glory in his nose, not even during that almost decade-long period when his career stalled, stuck at warrant officer because to go further into the ranks of commissioned officers would require him to be ennobled and inducted into the ranks of high birth; he was noted to have an uncanny ability to put those passions behind him, to focus on the mission, and to do only what he needed to do in order to guarantee success. This was how he had lived to his fortieth year, in a profession where those few enlisted airmen who survived to reach their twenty-fourth year were considered octogenarians. It was this famed reputation, of being capable and cool-headed, if not exceptional, that had convinced Christopher, Earl Blair, the colonel under whose command he remained at least nominally, to recommend him for service as a core part of the aerial defence of the Midway Task Force.

For a few of his adopted sons, the oldest of the bunch, this was their first mission, and so Darlton took it upon himself to 'chaperone' as many of the reconnaissance flights as he could without his equipment or faculties suffering. The Royal Air Force had furnished Darlton and his complement with Lockheed F-24 Sparrowhawks for this task, which were state-of-the-art stealth fighters designed to both establish and maintain air superiority, and, not wanting to risk the lives of his fellow airmen any more than was absolutely necessary, the reconnaissance teams worked in triads by his order, splitting up to cover as much ocean as possible in a broad net that could keep them aware of any approaching seacraft.

"Father," the voice of one of his two wingmen called in his ear over comms. His call-sign made him wince a bit, but it was one he had been given for how tight a watch he kept over all the new pilots, and so it had stuck; the fact that the wingman who had spoken was indeed one of his older wards, a fine lad by the name of William, son of his first long-dead war buddy, wasn't really germane to the situation. "This is all well and good for surface craft, but what about submersibles?"

"Not our job, Potshot," Darlton replied after a moment. "We'll just have to trust that the measures the Royal Navy took will suffice."

Father, Potshot, Four-Eye—all call-signs derived from embarrassing stories, mortifying qualities, or both, as was the way of things in the military; and of their number, it was Four-Eye, perhaps ironically, who was the best spotter. Thus, when his voice came crackling over the comm unit, the other two devoted their full attention to his words—or at least, as much of it as they could while still keeping their planes in the air. "Think I caught something. Ten o'clock, about eight knots ahead. Looks like a cruiser."

Darlton's head shot to the left, squinting as he tried to peer through the clear day with the sun glittering off of the immaculate blue of the waters below, in search of the ship that his other adopted son, James, had managed to catch a glimpse of. A small patch of dull grey against bright and brilliant blue, that's all he needed… Just a single glimpse…

He caught it. There, just as James had said.

"Call it into base immediately," Darlton instructed, his heart surging to a brisk canter in his chest, slamming against his ribs. He had to keep his sons safe, and that just became a lot more difficult. "Where there's one, there will be more. You can count on that. Eyes on the skies! They'll have airborne support coming our way any minute now."

To their credit, his sons leapt to obey immediately, their planes shifting into a cautiously defensive formation a lot faster than some veteran pilots would have done. Potshot opened the channel back to the Midway base, as his attention was the least in-demand between the three of them. "Forward Home, this is Callsign Potshot, Recon Group Charlie. Enemy cruiser spotted, six knots ahead and closing. Standby to receive telemetry from the onboard computer. Transmitting coordinates…now!"

"Roger that, Potshot. Receiving your data now," replied the controller from the base. "Recon Group Charlie, you will be cleared to return to base in approximately one minute, forty-five seconds. All hail Britannia."

Darlton swore under his breath, but opened his own voice channel all the same. "This is Callsign Father, with Recon Group Charlie. Orders acknowledged. All hail Britannia."

The silence that followed the cutting of the feed was tense, but Darlton refused to call it sepulchral, not even within the bounds of his own mind.

James was the first to shatter the quiet. "What happens now?"

"The good news is that we're armed. We have the same ordinance load as a full sortie," Darlton sighed ruefully. "The bad news is that there's three of us, and we'll be stuck out here for the full one hundred and five seconds. We're only three aircraft, after all. We won't be getting any support coming our way until we're at least halfway home. So we're on our own. It's on us to beat the odds and get back in one piece."

"Those odds just got a lot worse," William said urgently.

Before Darlton could ask what William meant, a flash of silver from above sliced through the air in front of them, and the unmistakable percussive hail of gunfire followed in their wake as the Japanese Sumeragi Type-0 jet fighters screamed through the air. Darlton counted four in the initial pass, and only quick thinking jerked his hands to throw his plane into an aileron roll, narrowly avoiding the ordinance thrown his way. Midway through his tumble, he managed to bark out, "Defensive split! Now!"

Once more to their credit, neither William nor James so much as hesitated, each peeling off in separate directions; yet two of the Zeros split off to follow William, marking him as the higher priority target, while James and Darlton himself received one each.

"Damn it! Four-Eye, lose your tail and get your ass back to base!" Darlton barked again.

"What about Potshot?!"

"I'll take care of Potshot! Just get out of here! If I fail, one of us needs to stay alive and get that data back to base!"

"…Understood, Father. Over and out."

Darlton breathed a sigh of relief as James peeled off properly. The boy was competent behind controls, and though he was unblooded, Darlton had every confidence that he was good enough to make it back in one piece. But now comes the hard part.

The Zero was off his tail, doing his best to line up a shot, so Darlton broke hard, his plane sweeping in a swift, harsh clip across the other plane's flight path. He snarled a curse as the other plane gained altitude in a twisting climb, and he already knew the barrel roll had cost him an easy method of disengaging, but with time running short and William's danger mounting, the old veteran pilot jolted into an improvised wingover, the high Gs indicative of a younger, more aggressive airman's method of flight, and as he shot up, he eclipsed the other fighter's barrel roll, pushing his thrusters as much as he could as he descended into a textbook-perfect hit and split, aiming his guns mercilessly for the cockpit. If these foreigners expected mercy in war, that was no concern of his, especially as it pertained to the endangerment of his sons.

The long hail of bullets ripped through the reinforced ballistic plexiglas of the cockpit of the other plane, a protective hood meant to guard against shrapnel, debris, and glancing shots, not a direct assault. Shearing off from the now-unmanned plane, he pulled up out of the headlong dive and banked hard to blast off after William.

His ox-like heart pounded in his chest as they came into view, two fighters doing their best to corner one of his boys and shoot him out of the sky, with dear William managing to avoid death by what looked to be the skin of his teeth. The boy was bloody lucky to have survived as long as he did, and Darlton intended to keep it that way. Now was when every fraction of an instant was a roll of the dice, a game of chance between Life and Death, where each miniscule, heart-hammering instant mattered. This in mind, he put his plane into a short climb, and then he carefully, meticulously took aim, downing one of the two pursuers in a hail of gunfire, its fuel tanks igniting with a concussive blast of an explosion that shot the burning, smoking wreck to a watery grave, but not before the other one split off into an Immelmann turn in an effort to nullify Darlton's altitude advantage. Thankfully, William picked up on the sudden lack of pressure from behind quite adroitly, and he made sure to mirror the rising turn, opening fire on the other plane himself. Now, together, almost as if choreographed, both Darlton and William swept their planes into a hybrid sandwich-rolling scissors manoeuvre, peppering the Japanese plane with ordinance while keeping each other out of the line of fire.

Eventually, the Japanese pilot's skill couldn't keep up with their coordination, and so the airman bailed out of the plane with his parachute; a moment later, the damage hit something in the fuel line that was incredibly volatile—most likely the very resource Britannia was fighting this war to gain control of, given the archipelago had far and away the largest and purest deposits of sakuradite the world over—and both men could only watch as a hunk of shrapnel about as big as the torso of a man sheared through the descending airman, nearly splitting him in two from shoulder to hip. It was the greatest mercy, Darlton mused, that that kind of injury at least killed a man before he could feel the pain of it.

"Potshot. How's the data transmission?"

"We've got five seconds. Four. Three…" his son responded over the comm, and then his professional mien erupted into jubilation. "Transmission complete!"

There were moments in war, and in life, when the curtain of a sane and sensible reality was torn away to reveal the writhing mass of chaos underneath it all. In those moments, disaster struck suddenly, unceremoniously, and in a vibrant flash, the world was forever changed. There was no warning, no greater justice, no cosmic balance or divine guiding hand to any of it, and the greatest of precautions that were once counted upon to forestall death could become the means by which one's doom was sealed.

As a fireball bloomed in the space where his son once flew, reminding him of the time he had seen accelerated footage of a lotus blooming as a child, Darlton was once more reminded of these immutable truths.

"WILLIAM—!"

Darlton forgot himself, lurching forward in his seat, against equipment that really ought not to have been so suddenly compressed, and it took him a brief moment that stretched on to eternity to realise that the voice that had called his son's name in such horror was his own.

Then, as if taunting him, the black smoke and the white clouds split apart to reveal the barrels of a massive cannon, and Darlton's eyes widened to behold the horrific obscenity of the ship upon which those cannons were mounted. A monstrous, savage thing, possessed of a lethal beauty and malignant elegance, grey and dull and titanic, it was escorted by a fleet of other ships, dwarfing even the greatest among them.

A dreadnought…!

Then the ship's massive guns, large enough to punch a hole in some of the toughest armour he could think of, and yet looking no more powerful than an anti-aircraft battery when held against the vessel's awful size, began to turn towards him…

---

If Her Royal Highness Colonel Cornelia li Britannia, Third Princess of the Realm, could be said to possess a fatal flaw, then of the ones of which she was aware, she would say that it was that she fundamentally and severely lacked imagination. It wasn't aphantasia or anything of that nature, and nor was it some fundamental lack of ability to discern what the consequences of the acts she and others performed would be; but it was something she had known since the first time her sister Friederike met her and evaluated her skills with chess. Even now, she could recall the peculiar arch of her older sister's neck and the expression on her face, equal parts bemused and disappointed, when Friede looked up from the ashes of the defeat she had handed Cornelia, and she said, in that clear, elegant voice: "You don't seem to be very imaginative, dear sister."

As the years passed, and with the birth of Justine, Friede's observation had at last begun to make a terrible sort of sense. The Second and Fourth Princesses had forged an early sort of kinship through their mutual brilliance, and to hear them speak with one another was to invite a headache for Cornelia, for they unfolded between themselves a sort of shared vision, a space of rare genius in which the two expressed affection through adversarial rivalry and mutual distrust. She was not like them, could not conceive of the world as a vast web of connected and woven, tangled and snarled threads, and the ideas they often bantered about raised a sense of deep dread within her concerning a great many things. Cornelia was a quick and capable woman, but her thoughts were linear, and they were straightforward; this was, she surmised, what Friede called a 'lack of imagination.'

Yet, though Cornelia was straightforward, often brushing up against the more dire fault of a monomaniacal focus, she was hardly stupid; she noticed rather quickly when the task to which she had been assigned, of arranging for the fourth-generation Knightmare Frames to be loaded onto the ships that would carry them onto the battlefield, was beginning to slip from her grasp. And while her instinct was to lunge for the thread of it once more, to pull the rope of this burden back into her control, she was mature enough and sufficiently conscious of her faults to know that she was in over her head, that her logistical skills were unequal to the duty with which she had been entrusted, and so was content to step back slightly and monitor the situation instead of pursuing impulsive action.

Gradually, the rate of the task's completion began to accelerate, as whoever had begun to take control of the operation expanded their influence to other portions of the job, and so she was relatively free and near to the airfield when one of the fighters sent out to do reconnaissance on the surrounding area made a sloppy but successful landing upon the runway, and out of the cockpit clambered one of Darlton's boys, a green lad by the name of James. He looked harried, adjusting his spectacles and smoothing back his auburn hair with a shaking hand, his handsome features twisted in anxiety.

Cornelia might not have been good with logistics, but this she could do.

"James!" she called out, striding toward the boy who was tripping over himself in his haste to get to her. He was all of seventeen, only one year older than the minimum age to enlist; she herself had been sixteen when she signed up, and she was struck with an odd flash of sympathy for an age when she, too, was as unprepared as he for the stresses of her career. The boy was frazzled, and she doubted she'd get much worthwhile information out of him while he was so obviously on-edge. She closed the distance to him, conscious of Guilford at her flank, and placed her hands on the boy's shoulders. "James Darlton. It's me. Princess Cornelia. I'm going to need you to take a few deep breaths, and calm yourself. You're no use to anyone like this."

"Y-your highness…!" the boy gasped, panting heavily, and she could imagine he could hear his heart hammering against his ribs. "Father… William… We were out on patrol, and then we made contact with the enemy. Four planes. Father told me to get away while he went to help Liam, said that at least one of us needed to survive to get back. I don't know if they made it…"

"In the case of Corporal William Darlton, Callsign 'Potshot,' as I assume you mean, he survived long enough to transmit his coordinates back to Control here at base," Justine said from behind them all, and Guilford and Cornelia both whirled around on their heels to face the young Fourth Princess, flanked on one side by Jeremiah, Margrave Gottwald, and on the other by an odd young woman Cornelia didn't recognise, an uncommonly beautiful sort with silver hair and dark skin. She was dressed in army fatigues, and her rank insignia proudly proclaimed her to hold the rank of warrant officer. A commoner, then. "However, attempts to make contact with either him or Captain Andreas Darlton, Callsign 'Father', have proven unsuccessful. Given his combat record, it is likely that your father and your brother ran afoul of something with far more firepower than an aeroplane can hope to withstand. We can only hope they return in one piece. But Cornelia, this means that enemy contacts are inbound to Midway. You are needed in the war room to organise a defence of the base and its assets."

Cornelia felt her thoughts spiral out of control, and it was a struggle to gather each piece of her shattered composure to yield a complete whole once again, let alone to grapple with the abundance of information with which she had just been bludgeoned. In the midst of it all was her younger sister, the source of so much strife in her personal affairs as of late, and not for the first time, she recognised that it felt as though the sister she knew had been stolen away and replaced in the aftermath of Empress Marianne's death, that a changeling doll of mud now stood in the place where the sister she knew ought to have occupied.

Justine had never been the most emotive of children, of course, but before, it was the result of a gloomy and brooding disposition, through which her thoughts peeked to be read with relative ease. Now, it was an entirely different matter; it wasn't even a mask like the sort that Friede so obviously wore, switching them out with such startling frequency that one could never be quite certain if it was her true face. With Justine, it was quite the opposite: the cold, assured regality of her bearing, the menacing serenity of her imperturbably calm expression, the swelling magnetism and insidious intoxication of her presence—there was a certainty in Cornelia's heart that she was looking now upon the real Justine, that there was no mask behind which her true face could be hidden because this was her true face. And the evident, obvious veracity of it made it so much more unsettling than Friede's slithering lies and docile veneers could ever hope to be.

"My job here is to arrange the loading process…" she protested, the pieces snapping into place at last to reveal the one path forward she needed.

Looking Cornelia in the eye, rich amethyst to calm indigo, Justine smirked; and though it was but a wry twist of her lips, it was more than sharp enough to draw blood. "Come now, Nelly. You have to have realised by now. It's not as though mathematics requires rank or any amount of combat experience. And isn't delegation an essential skill for any commanding officer? Let me handle the loading. You go into the war room and make sure we don't all die in a hail of artillery shells, why don't you? I doubt His Majesty would care one whit, but I for one would hate to have either of us return home in body bags, after all."

Cornelia drew herself up, because while Justine was correct, she was still the one who, of the two of them, had actual military authority; yet, was rectifying this small, subtle breach in the chain of command truly worth the degree to which she would sabotage not only herself, but also the war effort?

To the Third Princess, the answer to this was obvious: a resounding 'no.'

"Margrave Jeremiah," Cornelia began, and then her eyes swept over her surprisingly tall younger sister's head to settle upon the lowborn woman expectantly. "And…"

The dark-skinned NCO snapped to attention and gave Cornelia a sharp salute. "Warrant Officer Villetta Nu, your highness."

"Warrant Officer Nu, then. I entrust the safety of my sister to you both," she said with a curt nod. "Be sure to see that that trust is not betrayed."

"Yes, your highness," replied Villetta Nu, giving Cornelia a full bow, while Jeremiah only gave a half-bow. Technically not improper, given that House Gottwald was equal in status to any ducal line in Britannia, but still a liberty most of them did not care to take. She wasn't worried, however; Friede had mentioned at one point that apparently Margrave Jeremiah's loyalty to their sister was all but absolute, and two things one could always count on to be true regarding Her Excellency the Prime Minister was that she was an excellent judge of character, and that she cared for Justine's safety—in her way.

Cornelia's hand slipped down to her hip, her fingers wrapping, slow but firm, about the elegant hilt of her gunsabre, and the feel of the late Empress Marianne's gift to her brought a great sense of calm in spite of the proceedings. "Then I shall be off."

No sooner had those words left her mouth than did the whine of another Sparrowhawk, as distinct as it was telltale, cut through the air, causing all six of them to turn their focus to the sky, and then to the landing strip, as the singed plane came down for a landing that, while even more hurried than James's, was nonetheless smoother—the sign of an experienced pilot. Darlton had survived, then, but where was his other wingman, his other son? William, she recalled James had called him.

The bottle-nosed aircraft slid to a stop, and almost before its motion had fully arrested, the lid of the cockpit came off, her old friend and mentor leaping from it, his flight suit worn and dishevelled. The broad, imposing man made a beeline for her with all the swiftness of his long, powerful strides, but for all his composure, his eyes revealed that he was just as unsettled as his recovered son. "William's dead. We're in trouble. The enemy is inbound at great speed, and they come with a dreadnought."

"Yamato-class battleship Musashi. Yes, I expected as much," Justine sighed. "Which can only mean that the Pearl Harbour Task Force is about to face the sister ship to the Musashi, the battleship Yamato itself. There will be no reinforcements coming our way for a good while."

Cornelia froze, and turned to her sister. "How do you know that?"

Justine gave her a dismissive wave. "The answer is irrelevant. You need to know what you're going up against. The Yamato and the Musashi are, without exaggeration or hyperbole, the two largest, most heavily-armed machines of war ever built. They were made to be unable to be beaten in naval combat, virtually invincible, and the existence of sakuradite has no doubt gone a great way towards realising that dream. However, it is likely that the Japanese admiralty will have let their hubris rule their decision-making, and aside from perhaps a single fleet's escort, the Musashi will be unsupported, and its nature as a force multiplier will be expected to win them the battle. So rejoice! You'll have more than proven yourself once you melt their wings of wax."

"With talk like that, you're clearly unprepared for the realities of battle," said Cornelia.

"Perhaps, perhaps not. But I would have you consider this: while the legions of Rome were all but invincible on land, the Carthaginians attacked at sea, where the Romans could not hope to compete. Instead of attempting to match Carthaginian ship-building and naval tactics, the military minds of the then-republic elected to base their tactics around changing the nature of the field, from a naval battle where they could not prevail, to a land battle where they were strongest. They won the First Punic War, and eventually they razed Carthage until not even ashes remained of their vanquished foe," Justine espoused. She then winked at Cornelia slyly. "Fascinating tale, is it not?"

Cornelia opened her mouth to reply, but the words died in her throat as a young soldier approached them at a brisk jog. Skidding to a stop, he saluted Cornelia, and then turned to face Justine instead. "A message from Commodore Mecklinger. The Twenty-Third Fleet is at capacity. We are beginning the loading process for the Nineteenth, and they have been notified with their orders to come into dock."

"Excellent. Thank you, Private Hildebrandt. Give my regards to Commodore Mecklinger on behalf of Her Royal Highness Princess Cornelia," Justine replied without hesitation. "You and the rest of your garrison have made exceptional time in accomplishing this."

"Thank you, your highness, your highness," said the young man, his gangly frame a clear sign of his youth. He probably was too young to even be able to grow a full beard even if it wasn't forbidden by regulations. "I will be sure to do so."

The soldier swept away with that acknowledgement, jogging back to his work. Justine turned to Cornelia again. "That's two fleets ready by now. We'll deal with the Nineteenth. You have the Twenty-Third and the Thirty-First at your disposal, should you need them. Best of luck, and may the auspices and favour of the Goddess of War be with you."

Cornelia let out an unpleasant sound, able to recognise the impossibility of the position despite her frustration with it. She nodded to Justine, begrudgingly accepting the well-wishes, and then turned to the two airmen who had made it back intact. "James. Andreas. My deepest condolences on the subject of William's death. Go and take a rest."

"Your highness, with respect," said the eldest Darlton, his great hand clenching into a fist like a brick. "I would accompany you to the war room, and then on the sortie. I… William was a fine lad, and had a bright future. I would see him given a proper send-off. If indeed this is the Musashi, and a great portion of the Empire of Japan's naval might, both militarily and with respect to morale, I would aid in seeing it done away with."

Cornelia's first instinct was to insist on her friend's recuperation, but she understood the need for vengeance all too well, the need to do something with one's destructive feelings. She was denied that same satisfaction in the wake of Empress Marianne's death earlier that year, ever since the Emperor ordered the investigation closed after the funeral. She would not see her great and reliable friend so denied. So instead, she shifted her stance, doing her best to assemble her composure and her military training about her to give off the air of a commander. "Darlton. How familiar are you with the control scheme of a fourth-generation Knightmare Frame?"

"That's army business, your highness, as you well know," Darlton began, a thick eyebrow raised towards the line of his light brown hair. "However, in light of my association with you, Earl Blair arranged for me to have a few dozen hours' worth of practice piloting one, so I daresay I'm passably competent."

"Good," Cornelia nodded. "Your sons can fly, but I want you on the ground at my side."

"You have a plan, then, your highness?"

Cornelia coloured slightly, doing her level best to look anywhere but where Justine was still standing. Loath as she was to admit it, her younger sister's historical observation had taken root inside of her mind, and had germinated into the beginnings of a strategy. "I just might."

---

All her life, Villetta Nu had existed at the indulgence of the peerage of Britannia—such was the lot of those of common birth. Her father was a tradesman, an artisan of the highest order, who had carved out for himself a tidy living with his expertise in woodworking, and he had made his home in the thick, lush forests north of the Mojave, near the border to Area Two. Her mother harboured shattered dreams of musicianship, and possessed no small amount of skill; it was said that her father had proposed not with a ring, but with an immaculate violin, the equal of any lofty Stradivarius, and she had grown up surrounded by the tales of their romance. It had seemed fairy-tale, almost, her father a swarthy, earnest sort of man, her mother the source of Villetta's willowy beauty, and like any fairy tale, it was too good to be true.

The day of her sixteenth birthday, Villetta had been made privy to a central detail of the whole affair, marring the idyllic perfection she had been told of during her youth. That day, she ran to go enlist with the military, so incensed was she, not with her parents as she thought at the time, but rather with the situation as a whole, and she had learned quickly to bite back the sudden contemptuous hatred for the highborn that central detail had kindled within her. She had had to bite it back on many occasions, in fact, for the nobility as a whole were indeed many times more vile than she had given them credit for in many ways.

This was not the case when it came to Jeremiah Gottwald.

In the aftermath of the Indochinese War, Villetta returned home for the first time in two years, an older, more world-weary, and perhaps wiser woman, to make amends. Her father was not a young man, and yet with how he had sprung up from his chair to embrace her… She was glad to be on good terms with both of her parents, now, and glad that they were happy together, but life went on, and the road she had chosen to travel with her life split far away from theirs. A hefty portion of her pay went back towards them, to help them out as the dexterity upon which her father had built his livelihood began to deteriorate under the weight of his years; and in her own case, having met a peer who worked to be worthy of the power he was born into, she began to learn how to spot others. They were by no means the majority, not even close, but neither were they wholly a myth.

Justine vi Britannia, the daughter of the idol of all common and career soldiers, by all means ought not to have been the same sort of blue blood that Jeremiah was, and indeed she was not; yet, she seemed to see no need to look down on Villetta or her fellows for their low birth, which was almost unheard of in a member of the Imperial Family, and her obvious brilliance was in many ways uncanny. There was an aura around her, an aura of expectation—as if she could look at you and know your capability, as if she could draw the desire to live up to one's potential out of them. Working with her was easy, and though Villetta had worked with enough highborn brats to know that leadership was far from a simple matter, she made it seem as though it was the most effortless thing in the world. From what small amount of time Villetta had had to get to know the Fourth Princess, she would be lying if she said she couldn't see what Jeremiah had seen in the girl to make him wish to bend his knee. It was like the world twisted around Princess Justine, and one could stand alongside her and be swelled up with the heady feeling of being part of this thing that was so much greater than themselves, like a spark in the air that invigorated the soul.

She knew that it was not simply she and Jeremiah who felt it, either; she watched as the princess won over the garrison through word and deed, aiding where she could and always quick to observe her own fallibility, thus correcting course. She seemed in many ways almost too good to be true.

Though, she had to admit, there was a certain delight in the novelty of looking on as the highest of the highborn, a princess of the realm, sat and ate in the mess hall amongst all the other garrison troops. And there was also a certain surreality in Villetta herself suddenly being the one sat apart from her fellow soldiers, eating at a table a ways away from the rowdy bunch who were stationed at Midway in order to catch up with a man who she would not hesitate to name as her most memorable friend. She looked on for a few moments longer as the princess broke the ice with a show of legerdemain, demonstrating remarkable dexterity in the process with a deck of playing cards one of the men had produced. "You know, for a bodyguard, you seem awfully okay with letting her mix in with 'the rabble.'"

Jerry shrugged, though there was a tension in his shoulders that betrayed his anxiety. "It wasn't as though I was given much of a choice in the matter. And her logic in giving the order was indeed sound."

Villetta tore her gaze away from the fascinating diorama and towards the teal-haired man. "And what logic is that?"

"She said that she could never hope to be a good commander if she didn't understand the nature of what it is to be a grunt, that she should get to know the sort of people she might one day be ordering to fight and die for her," Jerry explained, steepling his hands over his mouth as his plate of pulled pork, sauerkraut, and beans lay untouched. "And it is not as though Princess Justine is entirely helpless. I trust in her ability to keep herself safe until I can get to her, should anyone attempt anything untoward."

"And why would anyone attempt anything 'untoward', as you say?" Villetta asked, and it wasn't a trap. She knew Jerry, and unlike many noblemen, he wouldn't assume that just because a soldier was of low birth, they were some uncouth subhuman savage, little better than the Numbers.

Her old friend sighed. "This will come as no shock, but the late Empress Marianne was not the sort of woman who had many friends, and the nature of her existence made enemies out of many courtiers long before they had the chance to come to understand her person. Yet, her two daughters were virtually untouchable on account of the strength of her position. Now that she's gone, there's a high degree of likelihood that one of the other One Hundred and Eight Imperial Consorts' families will attempt to eliminate her, so as to advance the prospects of their claimant to the throne."

"I thought that sort of outright backstabbing was forbidden by imperial edict ever since the end of the Emblem of Blood," Villetta remarked, taken somewhat aback.

"There was…an incident at court, something that transpired relatively soon after Empress Marianne's death," Jeremiah replied, choosing his words carefully. Villetta understood; it was rare that a noble of such standing as he would risk more than a slap on the wrist for sedition by way of lèse-majesté, but it was by no means an impossibility, especially with the panoptical shadow of the Office of Secret Intelligence hanging over all of them constantly. "It was made clear then that the high esteem and favouritism Empress Marianne had enjoyed would not be inherited by her children. I am, as it happens, the only one officially assigned to guard them, and as I said, that was by the patronage of the Prime Minister. There are, as a result, many who see in the Emperor's disfavour an opportunity to skirt the edict and eliminate the vi Britannia line."

"And you have reason to believe that an agent of one of these families might be here, and on orders to attempt an assassination?" Villetta asked, her voice rising in slight alarm despite her best efforts to maintain her composure.

"Here and now specifically? No, not at all," said Jeremiah, and he sighed, picking up the metal fork and wolfing down a few bites. He took the time spent chewing to consider his next words, and Villetta took advantage of the break to eat quickly as well. The army wasn't exactly the best place for one to develop their table manners, after all. "But I would argue that the stakes of my possible failure to keep her alive are too high to allow myself to be wrong about that, so a certain level of consistent vigilance is the wisest course, as I see it."

Villetta nodded her understanding as she did her best to finish without running the risk of accidentally swallowing something she shouldn't in the process. Yet, she did not have much to add to a conversation regarding a situation to which she was not privy, and so she elected to take the topic and adjust it into more familiar territory. She took a long look over her shoulder to watch the telltale shifting of her fellow soldiers before speaking. "Well, regardless of that, she seems like she's doing pretty well with the soldiers. Looks like they're about to start up a game over there—probably blackjack, seeing as we don't have any poker chips on hand."

Jeremiah grimaced. "Ugh. Blackjack. I swear, if I never again play another round of that blasted game, it will still be far too soon…"

Villetta fixed her old friend with a bemused expression. "You don't like blackjack? Since when?"

"Since I taught it to her highness," Jeremiah replied, his expression as if he had just bit into something he hadn't expected to be sour. "She's an unholy terror with it. I daresay she'll wind up winning half the garrison's pay by the time she's folded if they're foolish enough to bet money."

"Nah, we don't screw around with anyone's pay here," Villetta assured him. "We're out here in Area Seven, right smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. If one of us is miserable enough, it wouldn't be difficult for that person to start making the whole base miserable. So instead, we use ordinance as currency whenever there's gambling going on. Bullets."

"Bullets, you say?"

"Yeah, bullets. In ascending values from 9mm rounds all the way up to .50 calibre," she explained. "We actually have a system where you can redeem your winnings for a specific type of ammunition, if you find yourself in need of it. That way, we don't have sharpshooters dealing themselves out of rounds."

"Well then, Warrant Officer Nu," Jeremiah began, leaning back in his chair, away from his now-empty plate. "I dearly hope you're prepared to hand out half the garrison's supply of .308 rounds."

"That's a very specific calibre," she noted. "Why?"

"Because her highness over there…" And here he nodded over to Princess Justine, who seemed to be playing the crowd she had attracted around herself and her opponent. "…brought her preferred weapon with her, and it takes .308 rounds. She wouldn't requisition ordinance, as she'd see that as leveraging her position as royalty to the detriment of the soldiery and the war effort, but if bullets are the winnings here? That's quite the different tale you've started telling."

"Are you sure about that? Card games are some of the only entertainment we get all the way out here, and the guys have gotten pretty good at them in the interim," asked Villetta, a brow quirked upwards incredulously. "I somehow doubt they'll go down so easily."

No sooner had those words left her mouth than did a cheer go up at the table behind her, and she turned once more in time to see the soldier who was Princess Justine's opponent hang his head in defeat, in record time. She could even pick out bits of the chatter from the uproar. "She managed to pull five cards in a row without busting! Even hit the full twenty-one! Amazing!"

She turned her head back to Jeremiah's smirk, 'I told you so' written into every bit of his smug, self-satisfied expression.

Villetta raised a hand and pointed a single finger in his direction. "Shut. Up. Not a word."

But he didn't have to say anything at all. And what was worse? They both knew it.

---

Cornelia li Britannia had been younger than her sister Justine was now when she last saw the living legend of Marianne the Flash, Knight of Two, in action. If she asked Odysseus, of the Emperor's children the firstborn, and thus nominally the Crown Prince, she was sure he could recall the days before the coming of the young empress, when Charles zi Britannia's victory was by no means a sure thing. She had heard him speak of it, in his rare moments of honesty, when his harmless mask fell away to leave behind an uncommonly wise man who was well aware of the fact and nature of his own inferiority—she could recall her eldest sibling speaking of those tense, uncertain days, when the fates of all those who threw in their lot with the young, orphaned claimant hung in the balance every day. In some of his rare black moods, he would speak of the sorts of things he was taught at a young age, like how to properly administer himself poison in the event that their father failed, so that a fate worse than death could not befall him or his lady mother—a lesson he learned before he could read by his reckoning.

Marianne Lamperouge, a commoner whose inauspicious family line could be traced to a poor provincial town nestled in the French countryside, had changed all of that. A firebrand and a terror on the battlefield at a younger age than Cornelia was now, as Ser Bismarck Waldstein was his right hand since time immemorial, so was she known as the Emperor's left hand long before she became his favoured consort. The young would-be emperor's trump card, it was said that she had taken the lives of no less than twenty of the forty-three pretenders, and stormed into the Imperial Palace at Pendragon to dump their severed heads at his feet. The Ganymede, which was a symbol synonymous with her, was the only third-generation Knightmare Frame, and though Odysseus's testimony attributed the vast majority of the services she rendered unto their father to have been performed in the shadows, Marianne the Flash's display in the battle that ended the Emblem of Blood once and for all had stuck in a young Princess Cornelia's impressionable mind, a seed that blossomed into a sanguine flower of a bloody dream.

As Cornelia stood before the rows and rows of fourth-generation Knightmare Frames, the first ever to reach mass production, she found herself wondering if the sense of awe that welled up within her at the sight of them was the same that the former Knight of Six had felt when first she laid eyes upon the Ashfords' vaunted engine of war. But whether the resonance she felt, that connection between her mentor and her that spanned the gap between past and present, was at all an indicator of something greater or a mere phantasm of the mind was, at the moment, irrelevant.

She had a job to do.

I've made it at last, Lady Marianne, she could not help but think, and within the private halls of her mind, it felt remarkably like a prayer. I wonder if you're proud of me, wherever you are. I… I hope so…

"Just got a message from the bridge. We're entering the staging area, within reach of the Musashi's long-range guns," Darlton said to her, and she knew he felt it, too—this odd sensation of sanctity brought to this hangar, the legend of Marianne the Flash settling upon them as surely as the aegis and favour of any god of war. To speak at all felt like disrupting this sacred place, and so they felt the need to do so with care, if at all. "We're cleared to suit up, your highness."

"In case I should be forced to falter in my duty…" Guilford added, clearly wrestling with his misgivings, but not so much that he'd throw sense to the wind and question her, "…stay safe, your highness. Or at least alive. Please."

Cornelia nodded mutely, and then cleared her throat to be better heard: "Mount up!"

The hangar bay rushed to activity, soldiers zipping up their 'normal suits' as they raced for the stirrup winches that would lift them to the level of the cockpit blocks, and Cornelia took this as her cue to adjust her own normal suit and step forward, placing her foot in the stirrup and letting the winch drag her up to the block on the back of the kneeling Glasgow. She slid from the winch with practised ease and into the utilitarian seat, triggering the mechanism that engaged the hydraulic system that saw her glide into the cockpit proper, and the controls.

Palming the key, which corresponded to this unit's USB port, she slipped it into the space appropriate, and had no success; she bit back a curse, flipped the key over, and then pressed it in once more, this time yielding results as the machine's terminal blinked and flashed to life. She let the start-up screen play itself out, and then, when prompted, she entered her passcode, mouthing it under her breath in an attempt to firm up her memory of it: "O-E-4-8-W-C-7-2… Success…!"

A thunderous boom sounded all around her, and it felt as though the ship pitched back and forth laboriously, like a great bloated beast. Must have been a shell that went off in the water nearby, no doubt… She reached out and took firm hold of the control yokes, and with the muscle memory of over one hundred hours of simulations brought the machine up out of its rest position of kneeling.

The servomotors gave a compliant squeal as the Knightmare Frame stood, and a pair of dull thuds accompanied her toggling the buttons on the yokes to deploy the landspinners folded at the side of the Glasgow's legs. Looking over the interface, she was pleased to see that she was fully-equipped, with a fresh energy filler and a decent amount of ordinance for her assault rifle. She remembered being told about the trouble that the Ashford Foundation had gone to in order to build a firearm of sufficient firepower to take on armoured vehicles, with weight and recoil being prohibitive factors—and she remembered the experimental Gauss rifle that the Ganymede was eventually deployed with. This assault rifle was derived from that very rifle, and the only means of ingenuity that Stonehenge Industries added to the project, just like with the Knightmare Frame itself, was the standardisation of its construction for ease of production on an industrial scale.

Engaging her factsphere sensors, she was able to see around herself that the other pilots had managed to get their machines up and running as well. Pleased with this, she opened a group channel for the other pilots to join, and as they did, she settled her breathing and steeled herself. "Greetings, gentlemen. Darlton, any word on when we'll be making contact?"

Silence greeted her as Darlton checked with the bridge of the ship they were on, the HMS Invincible, one of the three dreadnought-type battleships (the Indomitable and Imperator) in the Royal Navy, and the flagship of the Twenty-Ninth Battle Fleet. Moments later, his voice came through. "We'll be within engagement range in approximately two minutes, your highness."

"Alright," she replied, using the moment to take a deep breath. "Gentlemen, what we are about to embark upon will change the face of warfare forever. We will bring into being a golden age for the Empire with our actions this day. Our enemy is the Japanese dreadnought Musashi. It is a foe beyond the strength of our armour to outlast, and beyond the power of our guns to sink. By all conventional doctrine, we are heading directly into a resounding defeat. But the Glasgow is no conventional machine, bound by doctrine or the existing balance of power. Nay, it exists to upset that balance! As the great Roman Republic laid the great fleets of Carthage to waste and flame, so too shall we! The plan is simple: our ships will close the distance to the Musashi, and we will use our slash harkens to bridge the distance, board the ship, and lay all of it to waste with sudden and overwhelming force. Understood?!"

The soldiers around her demonstrated their training as they cried out in one unified swell: "Yes, your highness!"

"Very good, gentlemen. All hail Britannia!"

"All hail Britannia!"

"Deploying now, princess," Guilford remarked, and silence fell as the deck of the warship slid open, and the hangar floor began to rise on a mechanised elevator. The day had begun clear and beautiful, but as they rose and the light and the din of the world above filtered through them, great clouds of smoke mired the sun in a murky haze, and the screech of fighter planes cut across those gloomy plumes, engaged in their savage and deadly aerial dance. Cornelia felt her eyes widen despite herself as she at last beheld the obscene size of the vessel the Empire of Japan sent against them, and though naval tactics were relatively far removed from her areas of expertise, she knew assured naval defeat when she laid eyes upon it. The Invincible listed once again with a fitful pitch, and Cornelia scrambled to adjust, as did the others, but it was enough to see that many heavy cruisers and destroyers lay scattered and destroyed, aircraft carriers and battleships looking to be in little better state, and only the more heavily-armoured vessels, within which the other Glasgows were berthed, remained battle-ready, thanks in no small part to the sacrifices of the sailors and officers of those wrecked ships. The plan was to have them run interference to protect the ships carrying Knightmare Frames, to martyr themselves if necessary, and now the evidence of that bloody price was all around, anywhere one cared to look.

They had paid it all the same. It was up to Cornelia to ensure that their sacrifice was not in vain.

"Move out!"

Cornelia blocked it all out. The mission was all that mattered—and more than that, she had to stay alive to see it done. Charging her landspinners, she headed the charge towards the edge of the deck, the gel-filled rubber tires screeching on the metal surface as the others followed her. Taking point, she accelerated up the makeshift ramp the sailors had erected on deck and embraced the sense of almost nauseating weightlessness that came part and parcel with being airborne in something incapable of flight. It was almost surreal, like something out of a film, apart and removed from the gritty reality of warfare that she and so many others were so used to. It was…liberating, in a sense, and she felt as though her fingers were grasping, albeit clumsily, at the very same mythic splendour she had always associated with Empress Marianne.

At the crest of her leap, she slammed the trigger for the Glasgow's slash harkens, and was gratified to register them anchoring to the gunmetal grey deck of the Musashi. Carefully, she shortened the line, curtailing her arc into one that brought her to land with a harsh jolt upon the deck itself, successfully completing the boarding action. Around her, other Glasgows swarmed the enemy ship, deployed from the other ships that were preserved for this purpose, and without a moment's hesitation and heralded by a heady battle-cry, she and the others shunted themselves across the surface, bringing their assault rifles to bear and opening fire.

Cannons. Anti-aircraft batteries. Heavy artillery. Point defence. Sensor arrays. One after another, their electromagnetically-accelerated rounds tore through the armour of parts far too difficult for a ship to accurately hit from afar and far too dangerous for a nimble plane to attempt a strafing run on, let alone for a bomber to drop its payload. Bodies of soldiers were caught under the treads of the landspinners, with over seven tonnes of charging tungsten more than enough to shred their meaty bodies to a fine paste that splattered wetly across the dull legs of the Glasgows like a fresh coat of paint. Along the massive deck, they thoroughly shredded all the Musashi's vaunted offensive capabilities, cutting a gory swath through its manpower, before finally turning their armaments upon the bridge itself and tearing through the tower. A few had even thought to bring Knightmare-sized rocket launchers, and working together, they brought one of the two greatest naval vessels of all time to an unceremonious end.

Heady on the adrenaline of the moment, Cornelia pushed onwards, and with a feral cry, she burst off of the deck itself, and launched her slash harkens to once again pull herself to another nearby enemy battleship; caught up as she was in the thrill of battle, the wave followed her, splitting up and leaping from capital ship to capital ship, rendering the force the Imperial Japanese Navy sent up against them into little more than a procession of derelicts. Drunk on victory, Cornelia delighted in the speed and agility of the machine, feeling closer to her idol than ever before. Was this how Marianne the Flash felt? Was this the joy she experienced? Was this the reason she lived for?!

It was almost a disappointment when she came to a screeching halt at the deck of her last battleship, and looked out to see that there were no more vessels for her to down. Her breathing was laboured, her lungs worn, her limbs almost too sore to move, but there was something like an electric current that sparked beneath her skin and urged her onward, flashes of spiking heat that set her soul ablaze—she should not be this exhausted after a mere few minutes of fighting, should she?

She glanced at the clock on her interface, and started. "One hour…"

"Your highness," came Darlton's gruff, firm, yet amiable voice. "Our mission is complete here. Crews are being sent from the surviving ships to gather survivors and mop things up. We're being asked to return to berth."

"Where is…where is Guilford…?" she asked, and speaking required a shocking amount of effort.

"Ser Gilbert is coordinating with Rear Admiral Wainwright. I volunteered to speak with you instead of him, seeing as I have significantly more experience than he at dealing with green lads coming down off of adrenaline rushes," Darlton explained. "And while I would hardly call you green in general, your highness, I think we're all a little green with these machines."

"Why am I…so tired…?" she asked, and it was as though her jaw screamed at her with the energy she was forcing the worn muscle to expend, her throat as if she had swallowed a fistful of nails and a decanter of fine glass shards.

"You did well, Princess, but you need rest," the older man replied. "These things take a greater physical toll than I think most of us expected. Let Guilford and I handle what remains."

Cornelia slumped against her seat, a weak smile forming on her face. "Whatever would I do without you?"

"You and Guilford would manage well enough without me, I think."

She could hear the wry jest in his tone, and was glad not to have to correct him.

"Mission accomplished?"

"Yes, your highness. Mission accomplished."

"Then let's head back to base."

She could hear Darlton's brief nod, even if she couldn't see it. "Agreed."

Lady Marianne… Cornelia thought as she gripped the yokes once more in tired hands and began to pilot the Glasgow back to the approaching mass of the Invincible. I've grown closer to you now. But I can grow closer still.

She whispered it like a prayer to the silent sky. "Please, watch over me…"

---

The first battle of the Second Pacific War was a victory for Britannia, albeit at great cost; but the blow to Japan's military might and morale that was dealt with the destruction of both the Yamato and the Musashi was enough to consider the victory to be decisive. Pearl Harbour had sent word, as had Midway Atoll, to the Royal Naval Office of Strategic Affairs, and though the casualties and the cost in materiel was by no means insignificant, the joint chiefs of staff at High Command made sure to note that the vast majority of the new military hardware with which they sought to sweep the field had survived the engagement, as had those with the expertise to operate the Knightmare Frames. Guilford made it a point to inform Cornelia of all of this as soon as she awoke, several hours after the battle proper had concluded, and it was with a muted sense of satisfaction that she awaited their return to the base at Midway, in hopes that Justine really had held to her word and completed the loading process ahead of schedule.

The sun had long since set, and night had almost entirely closed in over the Pacific, when the battered remains of the Twenty-Ninth and Thirty-First Battle Fleets cruised into port; as she was the one responsible for the single minor at base, who was a princess of the realm besides, Cornelia was on one of the first boats to ferry them back to the island. At her side, Guilford and Darlton disembarked, and she spared the eldest of her friends a glance, hoping with all her heart that he felt they had laid his son's spirit to rest. Yet it did not take long for a sense of oddity to set in, she lamented, when she looked around to see that it was a bit of a skeleton crew that was still gathered to receive them.

"Your highness," greeted a fledgeling staff officer, given his rank of second lieutenant. He bowed to her, as was proper for her higher station, and so too did his companions, a mix of men and women who belonged to a smattering of ranks. Far from a proper procession.

Cornelia shook her head, and sighed. She didn't have the energy, the inclination, or even the temperament to let this sort of thing get under her skin. She wasn't Guinevere. "At ease. We return victorious from battle. Where is your commanding officer? And where is my sister?"

The second lieutenant coloured quite precipitously, and the rest of the entourage suddenly looked as though they'd rather be anywhere else. Cornelia felt an ugly surge of concerned alarm rise up in her chest, but the harmless-looking man did not care to dally with his words—a good trait for someone in a position tasked with most often being the bearer of bad news. "Commodore Mecklinger and Her Royal Highness Princess Justine are currently occupied, your highness. We finished the loading process fairly early and notified High Command; then, when news of your victory reached us, your royal sister suggested that we celebrate with a bit of a display. Most of the base is gathered in or near the fencing area of the base gymnasium, where her highness and my lord Commodore Mecklinger agreed to have a few bouts."

Cornelia sighed again, though it was now more of a huff, too worn at the moment to even begin to contemplate the implications of that. She needed a good night's sleep, but before that, she needed to see about her sister's tomfoolery. Some chaperone she'd turned out to be. "Can you bring us to them? Second Lieutenant…?"

"Frederick, your highness, of House Hieronymus. Baron," said the man with a courtier's bow—such was the nature of aristocratic introduction. He then waved his hand out over the other officers gathered there. "My fellows will see to the arrangements of berthing and quartering. You may follow me, your highness, if you would be so kind, and I'll show you the way."

Cornelia nodded her acquiescence, and Guilford came up alongside her, his appearance, which was usually pristine, dishevelled with evidence of stress and exertion. Darlton, too, came forth, though his hardened, strong features did not lend themselves to exhaustion being written upon them with nearly as much clarity. "Darlton, if you'd like to check up on your sons…"

"I've said my piece to them. Each will mourn William in their own way, and I don't wish to intrude upon the sanctity of their grief, if it's all the same, your highness," replied Darlton. "I wish to see your sister properly besides. I've heard a great deal about Princess Justine purely by virtue of proximity, and I'm curious to see if she's anywhere near as formidable as her betrothed, I must admit, having only really caught fleeting glimpses so far."

Cornelia let a wry smirk twist her painted lips, and without further ado, waved both of the most important men in her life forwards. Second Lieutenant Frederick, Baron Heironymus, was gracious enough to wait patiently for them, a harmless-looking fellow with a reedy build and green eyes, glasses with half-moon lenses perched upon the bridge of his prominent nose, which was by far the most remarkable feature of his otherwise plain face, framed with weak, fine, pale blond hair. He was not particularly tall, either, and were there many people of more significant height milling about, Cornelia would have a slight worry of losing the man, but as it was, he led them with quick steps into a building off of the main compound, down a brief flight of stairs, and up to the threshold of an open bulkhead door, through which the princess could hear the dull roar of collective muttering.

The staff officer stepped aside, and Cornelia, Darlton, and Guilford stepped into the large room, gaining entry with only minor difficulty through the press of soldiers watching the ring in the centre with rapt attention. In that centre, two figures garbed from head to toe in white fencing gear, with wire mesh masks firmly on, circled each other, one possessed of a middling height for his age and sex, and the other, while tall for her age, was not remarkably so; in the hand of each was a sabre, and the tension between them was so incredibly thick that Cornelia would have fancied that it could be cut with a knife, were she not too emotionally exhausted to be fanciful at the moment. Still, there was an undeniable allure to the scene, the very same kind of David and Goliath scenario that might dominate a recounting of the event. Spotting a head of teal hair next to one of silver up ahead, she shouldered her way through the crowd as politely as she could to draw up beside them, namely he who was meant to be her sister's minder. "Margrave Gottwald."

"Your highness," replied Jeremiah, his greeting courteous but brief. He lifted his off hand in greeting, a long bag not unlike the sort used to store golf clubs held in his grasp with the hilts of two similar-seeming swords protruding from it.

"Care to explain to me what is going on?"

"I daresay the good Baron Heironymus may have you appraised already, princess," said the would-be knight. "However, if your preference is for a more intimate recounting: the contest is best of three. There is a round for each sword: the foil, the sabre, and the epée. The colonel was able to claim victory with the foil, and so Princess Justine must defeat him with both sabre and epée if she should wish to claim victory overall. First to five per round, as is tournament standard. Commodore Mecklinger is at three, while Princess Justine is at two."

There was a point where even Cornelia, stubborn as she was, had no choice but to accept that the events that were unfolding before her eyes were her reality. This, she supposed, was it, for there was no objection in her voice or her gorge when she asked, "And by what deficit did Justine lose the foil round?"

"Two points, your highness, but that's hardly surprising," said Jeremiah. "Of the three, it is the one she historically favours the least."

"You've been seeing to her training, then?" Cornelia inquired.

"Who else? His Majesty would not approve her highness's inheritance, or even that she be under Her Excellency the Prime Minister's official protection. There were no tutors to be found," he explained. "When Princess Justine decided she wished to attend Ad Victoriam for her schooling, I considered it my solemn duty to see her sufficiently physically adept to that end. I can say with pride that she has been an apt and attentive student."

Cornelia nodded, but before she could say another word, she caught Commodore Mecklinger stepping forth to attack, his larger size and strength lending him greater speed than she knew Justine to be capable of. Yet, with a clattering clash of metal, Mecklinger's sabre went wide, and the point of the younger princess's own sword tapped at the gorget section of his mask.

"Point to her highness! 3-3!" called the silver-haired commoner woman—Warrant Officer Villetta Nu, she recalled was her name.

Mecklinger stepped away, and Justine followed suit, recovering her form and coming en garde once again.

"Her highness has been committing to interdisciplinary studies as well," said Jeremiah, a fond smirk on his face at some memory or another. "That parrying technique is something she's still refining, actually, but she's getting much better with using it against superior opponents. It's something physics-related, but I must confess, I can't follow her explanation for the life of me."

"Ready?" called Villetta, stepping forth and raising an arm. She looked to the colonel, and then the princess, and swung it down. "Begin!"

The two began their predatory circling of one another once again, but this time, it was Justine herself who broke the stalemate, slashing first for his kidney, which he parried, but when he went to riposte, Justine's own parry threw him off-balance once again, and for the second time in a row, Justine took the point, her sword tapping lightly at the top of his head.

"Point to her highness! 3-4!"

"If her swordsmanship's at such a level, then how did she wind up with a deficit in the first place?" Cornelia asked, every bit as bewildered as Commodore Mecklinger likely felt.

"What you saw was the first time her highness has used it so far," replied Jeremiah, his voice lowered for her benefit. "She has taken the colonel's measure now, however. More than that, he's shaken; I would be surprised if she didn't prevail at this point."

"Ready? Begin!"

Once again, Justine initiated her attack, but Commodore Mecklinger changed his strategy, not pursuing the riposte after parrying any one of the princess's flurry of attacks. Justine, unsatisfied, advanced, and so too did Mecklinger retreat.

"And what happens should Mecklinger refuse to attack?" asked Cornelia.

Jeremiah shrugged. "One does not win a bout by remaining on the defensive. Eventually, he will have to attack if only to save himself; as it stands, eventually he'll let one through, if only by accident."

As Cornelia looked on, Mecklinger's body language changed in an instant, and he moved to capitalise on an opening Justine had left in her defence. Yet, the point was denied him as the opening closed, revealed to have been not an opening at all, but rather a bait to attack. Justine brought her sword up in a flash and parried Mecklinger's weapon again, his arm going wide; yet, in a rush of motion, he hurried ungainly to recover, bringing his sabre down on hers mid-riposte with a harsh, deafening clang!

Justine tilted her sword, and his sabre ran down the length of her own, the tip of hers cresting and whipping down with savage speed upon his shoulder, making her first to five.

"Her highness is victorious! 3-5!" Villetta called, raising her arm as the tense, enraptured group of soldiers burst into cheers.

Justine stepped away from the colonel, wrenching off her fencing mask in a cascade of tied-back raven hair, glistening with sweat that made her ivory skin seem luminous in the base's artificial light. She took a sweeping, operatic bow, replete with a dramatic flourish at the end, and it was perhaps a testament to how well she had managed to ingratiate herself with the garrison that this grandiose gesture only further stoked their excitement. Though Cornelia had to admit to herself that the motion looked significantly more fitting coming from Justine, who made it look surprisingly natural, than from Clovis, for whom such things were very obviously affectations. It was performed with such effortless grace that Cornelia concluded Justine must have found other uses for her interdisciplinary studies, as Gottwald named them.

"Her highness and the lord colonel each have a single win! This next bout will decide the final victor," Villetta announced. "This final bout will be fought with the epée. Seconds?"

"That's my cue," Jeremiah remarked conspiratorially; then he drew away from her to step forth and take Justine's sabre, presenting her in turn with an epée out of the bag. Justine made the exchange swiftly, as another officer, presumably Mecklinger's adjutant, helped him do the same. Seamlessly, Gottwald stepped back into line with Villetta, and while the adjutant withdrew with a somewhat lesser degree of elegance, the fact remained that both Mecklinger and Justine were at last prepared for the final round of their little contest.

"Bow!"

Justine and the colonel gave matching low bows from the waist, Mecklinger a tall, stately man with well-kept, if on the longer side, dark brown hair and eyes, a neatly trimmed moustache atop his upper lip as if to compensate for his comparatively weak brow, and as they rose, both of them sealed their faces anew behind the stiff, dark wire mesh of their fencing masks. As one, they slipped into engarde, but Mecklinger looked less confident with the epée in his hand than he had with the sabre.

"Begin!"

"And how did this begin?" Cornelia found herself asking, though she also found that she did not care as much about the answer as she might have a few months prior. For a brief moment, she considered that perhaps Euphemia's growing apart from her was but the early stages of what Justine had done for months now, unabated, and for perhaps the first time, she felt an odd sense of dreadful certainty that the chasm that now lay between them, Marianne's daughter and herself, was one that she would never again successfully cross.

"Her highness expressed a desire not to shirk her physical training regimen even though we're abroad, and in the process of fulfilling this desire using the base's facilities, the garrison troops quickly began to spectate," he explained, his golden-hued eyes watching the developing exchange closely enough that he looked as though he was about to begin miming what he saw. "Mecklinger caught word, and discussed with her highness a special event to raise morale in the wake of the loading process's conclusion. And so this was born."

A sharp clash rang out, followed in short order by a muted grunt, and the Third Princess turned to see that Justine had claimed the very first point in this last bout. As before, the warrant officer's voice announced, "Point to her highness! 0-1!"

"I've decided to retire for the night, Margrave Gottwald," Cornelia sighed, feeling all of her limbs as one begin to bend and sag with the strain of the day's exertions. "I'm sure the news of who won will be no secret come morning. We're sailing out at dawn. Make sure my sister is ready, would you?"

"Of course, your highness," Gottwald replied with a short, impromptu bow. He gave her a small, polite smile and waved her off. "Rest well."

Cornelia certainly hoped she would.

She had her doubts, though.