Character doc time! This is gonna focus on the civil war, particularly battleships (including an old but gold ship using a familiar Kansen face in addition to the OC's) considering that writing out the destroyer list would probably turn Talos' wrist into a smoking ruin.
Again, American Civil War ship whereabouts are up in the air. Vote now in the comments, or something.
There's an old man called the Mississippi,
That's the old man I'd like to be!
What does he care if the world's got troubles?
What does he care if the land ain't free?
It was a funny thing, that Arkansas could feel more trapped under an open sky than under a thousand tons of stone. Maybe it was the lack of personality behind it. The stone meant no offense by its placement, it simply was. In a few places, it wasn't. Water had done its work and carved out caves into the heart of the earth, or human hands had carved out tremendous mines. Perhaps there was some intent to the shape of a mine, but the earth simply sat there. It had these things inflicted upon it, and any enterprising spelunker chose to go in because they wanted to.
Getting stuck in a cave was, frankly, a you problem. The earth didn't owe you one damned thing. Sometimes, a cave might feel like it was made for you – in those cases where human hands hadn't done work to allow easy passage – but if it suddenly narrowed down to the breadth of a baseball, then that was it. Whatever secrets sat beyond were inaccessible.
There was something to a cave without any meddling. Cathedral Caverns was certainly impressive, with an entrance nearly as tall as her draft and wider than her beam, but it was all set up for a tour, and the guides clung to her like barnacles…. There was a certain majesty to a massive cavern, times when a hundred-foot-tall cave sounded just perfect, but there was more to caving than what you could do while walking between guard rails, or even what you could while standing on your own two feet.
There was something about a cave that was hard to get to. She knew it was risky, she knew you should always do it as part of a team, but there was something almost seductive about plumbing the earth's depths. Crawling and squirming to reach some hidden crevice seen by a choice few people, and then settling down for a moment of perfect, almost indescribable silence. Maybe the lack of any intent behind it made it better. What tremendous fortune that they found such a cave! How many secrets were hidden under miles of stone, private and intimate, not even hooked up to the surface?
A cave might wrap around you tightly, constraining your freedom in the urgent, physical sense, but it also cut you off from the surface. Turn off your flashlight, and you were suddenly plunged into perfect darkness. No light creeping in from under a door, no moonlight, not even any stars to see by. Nothing. Your eyes would try to adapt, but there wasn't the smallest speck of light for them to seize upon.
She had heard about Floyd Collins dying. She had been told that story many times, actually, when most everyone in her life was trying to get her to pick a safer hobby. But she always returned to the good earth. It was easier to stay above, she knew. Simpler. Just pick something normal. Socialize. Cook. Box. Do charity work. Play music. Ride horses. Ride people.
And yet, she found herself seduced by the caves, by that welcoming darkness that had no designed space for her, but just so happened to have room. Maybe that was it. There wasn't some little niche perfectly designed for her. She wasn't lodged into some role that didn't fit her. She moved into the depths because she wanted to, not because some admiral told her to.
They weren't letting her go into the caves anymore, because there was a war going on. Getting her time in the caverns had always required a bit of negotiating, but once they were fighting, she had no chances at all. Sail this way, fight her, train them, send her cubes to Baton Rouge.
Sometimes, in that brief period between the manifestation of the cube and turning it over to her admirals, she'd search for some hidden nook in the ship. She could never quite manage to find the perfect spot, one that was both silent (or nearly silent) and dark. The stars were beautiful, but there were none in a cave. The engine would rumble, drowning out anything as meager as trickling water and echoing footsteps. Regardless, she'd try to find some quiet spot where she could be alone with it.
She almost wanted to bring a cube down there. Wrap it tight in cloth, enough to hide it completely, and then drag it through the worst cave she could find. Nudge it through one of those tunnels that pushed your shoulders together and wear her kneepads down to rags finding some dark recess that maybe a dozen people had ever really seen.
And then she would turn off her flashlight and unwrap the cube. She'd marvel at the way the blue light danced, she'd analyze it without any distractions. It wasn't quite bioluminescence, but it was as close as she could possibly get to it. She'd be alone with her, inside the womb of the earth.
Perhaps she'd get even luckier, and there'd be a hole. Something she could peek through, to make sure there was space on the other side, but something she couldn't get through. It should be just large enough for a hand.
And then she'd put one cube where no one could ever find it.
Ol' man river, that ol' man river,
He must know somethin', but don't say nothin',
He just keeps rollin',
He just keeps rollin' along…
Constitution was helped slightly by it being a long-established habit of hers. Well, people were already hesitant to question shipgirls unless they were off doing something egregious - they had a lot of leeway, because they still weren't perfectly understood, more than a decade after their arrival in the States - but Constitution had been scribbling in her notebooks since day one, practically. All dated and tidily sorted, too.
She hadn't ended up where she wanted. Well, most of them hadn't. None of them had wanted a civil war, at least at the start, but feelings grew more heated and camps were formed. Perhaps 'camps' was a strong word for it. Clique felt more appropriate when it came to scale. A lot of girls simply wanted out of that complication (or were too young to get involved in such serious matters) and were dragged in by other means. Sibling relations, occasionally, but they were also subject to officers and crews. The men argued with more ardor than the ships, considering they weren't sitting in the lap of luxury no matter how things went down.
Once one ship had fled – Tennessee, fleeing Hawaii like Cain – others began to follow, Pennsylvania and Arizona leaving for the Syndicates to counterweight Tennessee, Lexington bringing Saratoga along with her to the Pacific States. And perhaps this was where Constitution failed. She and her crew delayed, and Panama's National Police moved to close the canal. She was stuck on the Pacific side, essentially forced into the Pacific States Navy just by practicality. Her sisters… Ranger and Constellation were part of the second wave that followed Tennessee to the Union State, and United States was under… well, the United States. That name, whether applied to the ship or to the nation, seemed a bit ill-fitting in times such as these, but all they could do was work to redress that.
A shipgirl's incredible mind for cryptography and numbers proved both a blessing and a curse for Constitution. A blessing because she could write in code with incredible ease, a curse because almost every woman around her had a mind like a team of trained computers and almost superhuman pattern recognition.
They weren't bad girls, mind. They sortied rarely, but when they did, Constitution was close to certain she'd be getting home again. Despite their different looks, Lexington and Saratoga were her sisters. She'd protect them, they'd protect her, and they all drove each other to succeed… they just happened to be wrong about the way the ship of state needed to be steered.
"Well, why aren't you all furious about the violations of your namesake document, Constitution?" You might ask. It was a fair point. Before… the war, she had always been a bit of stickler. A worrier about precedent and her sister's health and a million other things. She worried about the way human settlement hurt the Hawaiian wildlife, she worried about the looming threat of the Japanese over the Pacific.
Those things hadn't stopped, mind. Fishing and forestry had reached a fever pitch in Hawaii because of the war, the governor scrambling to accept refugees while also looking after the people he already had. The isles bled money as they fought to prevent starvation, Japan was looking on with obvious interest, and the mainland wasn't looking ready to save them anytime soon.
Those things still mattered. Her sister's wellbeing still mattered. Lexington had something like tunnel vision, almost entirely focused on the 'restoration' of the republic, even if it meant her health suffered. The healthy form that had filled out her military uniform grew leaner and bonier as she forgot to eat or passed her food off to Saratoga, not helped by the constant emotional fatigue of plastering on a smile to reassure both a nation and her sister.
(It didn't reassure Constitution, not when she knew the cost.)
It had to stop. The war, but also the chaos that led up to it. The Constitution was an important document – seminal, even – but it could never be forgotten that it was fundamentally a piece of paper written to fulfill a goal. A more perfect union…
If this war proved anything, it was that the union wasn't perfect. Domestic tranquility and the general welfare had to be worked towards, iterated towards. To paraphrase a document she hadn't been named after: if a government failed in its capacity to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it was the right of the people to overthrow it and create a system more likely to effect their safety and prosperity.
That was probably the same justification the Syndicalists and Longists used. She was aware enough to recognize that. Still, the point stood: no institution or ideology was inherently sacred.
Anyone who chose the sanctity of a piece of paper (or a series of them in a manifesto) over the well-being of a nation was truly mad.
He don't plant tater, he don't plant cotton,
And them that plant 'em, is soon forgotten,
But old man river, he just keeps rollin' along!
Idaho woke up to darkness. Good. If she woke up late, she'd really be in a spot.
Well, Idaho didn't mind the thought too terribly – she didn't care much for the stigma around the whole messy matter – but it was a two-person operation, and she was smart enough to know that the backlash would hit him a lot harder than it hit her. Anyone getting handsy with the shipgirls would have hell to pay, especially…
Someone like her William. He was… what the folk song might call cotton-eyed, she supposed. Not because he was moonshine-blind or anything like that, but rather the shocking contrast between the whites of his eyes and the rest of him. (There was a reason he was only a mess attendant, and wouldn't advance beyond that role.)
Back in her early days, she served alongside ships that still had to be coaled, the old-fashioned way. They had their own sort of cotton-eyed men after, but thankfully, it wasn't permanent. (Both the dust, and running on coal. That unfortunate fate was mostly saved for cargo steamers.) Despite the rumors about her, she wasn't quite desperate enough to bed a man covered head to toe in dust.
The rumors… well, she supposed they made a certain sort of sense. Idaho didn't do coy. She wanted what she wanted, and if anyone took issue with that, they could take issue with her fourteen inches. For some reason, she made a lot of men insecure. They felt like they had regain control of the ship (of her). Even those exceedingly generous, incredibly accepting souls who could recognize her as an equal partner in the operation of her own ship still saw her as a woman.
For the most part, her officers were gentlemen. She supposed them opening doors and all those other little courtesies were nice, but they tended, as a rule, to be wildly uncomfortable if she started acting flirty. Other than it just being quite entertaining to watch them stutter and look for a way to extricate them from the situation, it was occasionally useful as a tool to spook them a bit.
Don't get it twisted, though. Sex and all the stigma around it weren't just some tool she used to prod her officers. She did, occasionally, but quite honestly, she just liked sex. It was fun. Despite the way she acted, it was also something she could control. The other ancient coping mechanism her comrades preferred, booze… wasn't really workable for her, at least not now. She wasn't intolerant, she didn't think – no headaches, no sickness, no vivid flush – but she was a terrible lightweight.
Urgh, she was sounding like a killjoy, wasn't she? There were times she enjoyed being drunk, she just had to mind when she drank. Admittedly, Idaho wasn't the sort of girl that came to mind when you thought moderation – Constitution seemed the sort, all health checks and balances – but she understood the idea. Not everybody lived (or loved) at her pace, and that was understandable.
Speaking of, William was stirring. Maybe she could… help him?
He… ah, got up. Heh. "Idaho?" He mumbled.
"Good morning, William." She had always liked his eyes. Compared to hers, they were plain, normal brown, but they were expressive. They had seen a different world, or something almost like it: civilian life.
"How long do we have?" He asked, fumbling for his clothes in the dark. She passed him his pants (did the redness of her eyes come along with night vision? She didn't know what his eyes saw) and then reached for her own clothes.
Her eyes traced the muscles of his back as he stood up. From what he had told her, he built those up in a series of short-term jobs. That muscle was his livelihood before the war, although that livelihood was a meager one, hopping from one uncertain stream of income to another.
Last hired, first fired, with swarms of unemployed white workers jockeying for the same jobs…. It was a rough time, even after the oh-so-tolerant unions (and many others, admittedly) gave a lot of Mexican labor a one-way ticket over the border.
In contrast to William's long string of odd jobs, she had the one, unless she decided to make a break for it. Shipgirl, with exciting possibilities of advancement into a Bulin or a corpse!
Urgh. She embraced him from behind and whispered into his ear: "Tonight?"
"Really?" He whispered back. "You know I can't…"
"A girl can dream, can't she?" Her grip loosened and he began to walk away before she gave him a little nip on the back of the neck.
"Behave." She wouldn't, but she liked that he tried to ask. The first few boys she had relationships with couldn't say a word against her.
And yes, William wasn't her first. She did consider herself a one man sort of girl, the one man in question just… varied. No tragic backstory there or anything – lucky her – just relationships coming to a close. A farmer's son, one of the boys who served the officers… she didn't particularly mind, as long as they had a good time together.
(She could probably give decent relationship advice to her fellow shipgirls… well, assuming they considered her a good teacher regarding those sorts of things. They could all stand to get a bit more familiar with their crew, and not just in the sense that a boy might give Lexington something to focus on other than war war war. Well, war war war and her sister. Did Saratoga…?)
Hopefully, this thing with William would last for a while. She couldn't put a date on a while… months? Years? Eventually, he'd age in a way she wouldn't, as long as she had the ship. That… made her hesitant. That was the big issue for her. She didn't give a damn about California miscegenation laws, but marrying anyone, regardless of race, seemed like it would only result in tragedy for her. But if her ship was doomed eventually, then surely, she'd want to stop hopping…
William was long gone, trying to sneak back into his room. She couldn't go track him down now.
It was too late to go back to sleep, so she walked up to the deck and squinted into the dark. "Hmmph. What's Constitution up to at this hour?"
I get weary and sick of trying,
I'm tired of living, and scared of dying,
But ol' man river, he just keeps rollin' along!
At times, Florida almost thought she remembered Veracruz. If so, it would have been some deep memory, held in the steel of her keel instead of the gray matter bouncing around in her skull. She didn't have the hull anymore, though…
She supposed that both she and America had fallen far since the occupation of Veracruz. Twenty-two years ago they were meddling in the Mexican Revolution, stopping a German arms shipment… and now they were receiving boats full of Mausers and praying that the Mexicans didn't kick the door in to enforce Syndicalism from the south. She wasn't master of her own ship… and she had a sinking feeling America was no longer the master of her own destiny.
For what little it was worth, the gun at her hip was American-made. M1911. It occurred to her that both she and the gun had found their way to the Union State, despite circumstances. Hell, her steel and its steel were shaped… what, less than a hundred and fifty miles apart? Hartford and New York… now separated by an armed border.
(This probably interfered with interstate commerce, thinking on it.)
Back to the gun, there had been some talks of adding a little something special for the set produced for shipgirls. Something in the wood of the handle, maybe? It hadn't panned out. The government seemed to teeter between wooing them and almost resenting the fact that they required room and board. During the Depression especially, incredible luxury was off the table for them. Florida didn't really mind that, but unfortunately the government wasn't hands off, either. Underpaid and overworked with nowhere else to go…
She wondered if Utah had to do much number crunching up in New England. They were in the same boat – or lack thereof – but New England wasn't really involved in the fighting. Maybe she had to do more… or maybe they were keeping her ready. Canada and New England were obviously antsy, so maybe they weren't keeping her sister locked up as a computer. Hopefully, she was working with other ships. That was the logical thing to do.
Ideally, a bulin should be cooperating with her ship of choice. At the very least, they needed to tolerate each other, otherwise the whole exercise was pointless, but it got better if they… meshed. That seemed like the right word. She extended beyond the one hundred and fifty or so pounds of meat and bone that composed her body. The way she dreamt, she was almost certain some part of her lingered in the ship itself.
The thought of some portion of her being recycled into a toaster or rifle barrel… Well, she supposed that something similar would eventually happen to the form she had now. Pushing up daisies, and all that. Or maybe she'd be turned into crabmeat. That seemed a bit likelier.
Ahem. Returning to the subject of bulins… she extended beyond herself. So did Tennessee. It was hard to put it into words, but there was something there she could sense. Tennessee didn't end at that tanned skin or a hull covered in aged paint. Whatever it was – energy that the scientists tried to detect, or the spirit Utah talked about, or some mystery completely unknown to them – it hung around both Tennessees, dense and thick. Florida's… Florida's was there, but it was overwhelmed by Tennessee's, almost subsumed.
The process didn't feel scary, but maybe that was because she and Tennessee were agreeable. She let herself get swept up in Tennessee's willingness to fight, her wholehearted belief in the righteousness of the Union State (something that Florida would admit to not really buying), and just supported her as best she could. In the beginning, they struggled a lot. Both of them were used to taking on the whole problem of firing on their lonesome, so they'd stumble over each other, doing the same math twice.
In time, they got better. Two minds at work, hopping through problems at something like twice the pace. Admittedly, it wasn't perfect, because Tennessee was the one who had to actually turn those numbers into movement. At least, she had to where it mattered. Florida had some control, but it was sluggish and imprecise, not useful for the fine fire control shipgirls were prized for.
After that… it took ages. Miserable ration dinners eaten with Tennessee, battles survived together, long evenings spent smoking cigarettes and discussing the sorry state of the Union. Florida taking over more minor duties, slowly forgetting what her original ship felt like as she worked to ensure that Tennessee would perform as well as possible. Florida couldn't say how Tennessee felt about the matter because she wasn't big on the whole sharing feelings thing, but there were moments when she genuinely couldn't imagine her life without Tennessee in it. Like yeah, maybe she could marry someone – Tennessee's officers liked her – but she'd still want to live near Tennessee, you know?
(In all likelihood, it would be her following Tennessee. She had more prospects than Florida did. She had her head screwed on straight in the midst of all this insanity. She guided the ship along her course, Florida made sure the little things operated smoothly.)
And then they really reached their apex, Florida thought. She wasn't sure how two separate people could work together more efficiently while remaining two separate persons. Her thoughts bled over into Tennessee's and vice versa, data flowed between them, a thousand times more efficiently than radio or telegraph. Florida was ever so slightly better at trigonometry than Tennessee, so she'd handle that part of the math, while Tenn had a better instinctual understanding of some particulars of calculus…
There were times when wanted to switch into that magical state when they weren't sailing. It was indescribable. It was closeness unlike anything she had ever felt before, intimacy to shame what few flings she had. A sense of almost perfect rightness: no worries about politics, the end of the war, neither right nor wrong. There was nothing but what Tennessee needed from her. That was her holy mission, if divinity existed there. It was her life's goal, if she even had a life of her own.
Sometimes, she wondered what would happen if a shell hit too close and sent a spray of shrapnel at her. Red flowers of blood would spring from her body, flowers like those that gave her namesake state its name all those centuries ago, and then…
Florida thought she might melt into Tennessee entirely.
There were times when that idea seemed terrifying… but sometimes it almost felt hopeful. Relief from everything.
Let me go 'way from the Mississippi,
Let me go 'way from the rich man boss,
(Let me go 'way from the white man boss,)
Show me that stream called the river Jordan,
That's the ol' stream that I long to cross.
Utah had ended up about as far from her namesake state as you could get while still being in the mainland United States. Well, could you even call it the United States anymore if they were accepting Canadian suzerainty? There was some irony in New England alone finding herself under the control of old England…
Well, she supposed that Smith was right. Their nation was rent, from center to circumference, with strife and intrigue and sectionalism. America wasn't a perfect state – she certainly knew that – and since it wasn't… well, perhaps they would be lucky enough to see the day when it was broken into pieces and consumed by that kingdom that would never be destroyed. Or perhaps they wouldn't, and they would have to deal with the mess they made for themselves.
(She supposed that the 'broken into pieces' part had been accomplished, but she couldn't really say that any of the states vying for control of the country were truly right. She supposed that was the silver lining of their little Canadian Captivity: they weren't involved in the bloodshed that was tearing up most of the United States. Refugees poured in, hoping for peace but almost inherently sparking conflict.)
Really, though, the situation was bizarre. The big thing was probably how cube-rich Canada was. Sure, America had enough to give cubes to gals like Utah in the first place, but they ended up with more hulls than ships. Contrast Canada, who boasted some of the most seasoned, drilled shipgirls on the planet, but who could only pile cubes up in heaps because of their wanting industry.
In another switch-up, Canada was suddenly the larger partner in any deals, at least until America got her act together. Utah certainly wasn't a fan of the way their monarchy suddenly had sway in American affairs… New England had been hijacked by a king whose end goals were retaking Britain and protecting his power, nothing more. He wasn't their friend, and his interest was never and would never be the creation of a republic where virtue and justice could thrive.
But she supposed that they just had to live with it. Suffer it well and wait for a chance to set things right. In the meantime, she was being shuffled from ship to ship, sometimes even helping out cruisers. Fortunately, she didn't have to leave her big gun origins to work on torpedoes – she had some, sure, but command was smart enough not to waste her on it back in the day– but playing support for some tittering maid in a dress that seemed to stick to her? No thanks.
Thankfully, the patrols she was sent on didn't last too long, and she had a fair amount of leeway when she was back onshore. They were especially generous on Sundays, which gave Utah enough time to make her way to a meetinghouse. From what she heard, the wards and branches in the region had grown a bit – people found God in times like these – and it was a bit disappointing, despite all the good folks she had met. At times, it felt like their branches were cut off from the root.
She had heard rumors that there was a great pageant planned at Hill Cumorah, and Mormons would have come from all around for that, but the plans fell apart with the civil war. How would it even work? Would the Reds let a whole procession of Mormons through their turf for a brief stay in upstate New York?
Sadly, a trip to Cumorah was too long for the government to allow, not with everyone so jumpy about conflict with the Reds. She didn't even have the vague hope of battle damage giving her a few free weeks to enjoy herself. Still, even if she couldn't visit, she hoped things were going well up there. The Church had bought the land back in the day, but the civil war was doing a number on land and property claims.
Would they ever reach a meaningful solution? If one of the competing states did come to rule over all of America, would they treat the people well? Of course, she wanted them to protect Mormons and their religion, but that shouldn't be the only end goal of the government. Every politician in this damned country could stand to learn a bit of nuance…
For what little it was worth, upstate New York was beautiful. If there was any part of the country where it seemed likely to meet an angel… it would probably be in the shade of those mountains. (And not just because of historical precedent.) There was more to the state than her bustling city – the one suffering from hunger pangs and horrific rationing – and Utah was glad she got the chance to see it.
Now was probably a good time to do her prayers. The nation certainly needed it… she hoped her sisters didn't, but she prayed for them anyway. And yes, she liked to think she had sisters, plural. Of course, she loved Florida in a special way, and of course, she missed her… but she had always considered Arkansas and New York and Texas and all the others her sisters. Not because of anything as basic as shared service in Veracruz, but because they were all siblings, at the end of the day.
Some part of her wondered if this war was inevitable, the necessary fate of a secular state… the rest of her just wished it would stop.
Don't look up and don't look down,
You don't dare make the big boss frown,
(You don't dast make the white boss frown,)
Bend your knees, an' bow your head,
An' pull that rope until you're dead.
West Virginia lived up to her namesake, even when the state itself failed to live up to its own precedent. They had betrayed the sacred trust of the union and thrown their lot in with the traitors, and West Virginia hadn't. (Even if it was so incredibly tempting at times.)
The federal position… wasn't great. Sure, MacArthur had a block of officers that supported him in addition to the capital proper, but cohesion in the navy had evaporated and considerable portions of federal land were only attached to the capital by a narrow thread of land being pinched from both sides. They were in the unenviable position of having important assets on both sides of the corridor…
Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if the federal plan to abandon the east coast and hunker down in Denver had gone through. Sure, MacArthur had led an able defense of the capitol, but the defense might have been weaker with Congress all shuttled off to Denver. What would she had done then? Twiddle her thumbs until the separatists came in? Would she have turned tail and fled for Gitmo?
(Maybe she would have faced an even bigger problem than finding a dock somewhere: what was she to do with herself without a commander? If left on her lonesome, where would she point her guns?)
There was no use in speculating about what didn't happen, though. She had found a place waiting for her on the East Coast, and it had been nothing but work since then. When she was lucky, she was going on missions to project American power – true American power – in hopes of convincing the world that America was still a real country with a real navy that could conduct real trade. (Please, please trade with us.)
The other part of her job was number crunching. Almost all Federal shipgirls had spent at least some of their time helping with cryptography. The Federal government boasted, as far as they knew, the broadest-reaching network of spies and sympathizers in the nation, because they were the nation. Not intensely local like the Pacific States or New England, and not swallowed up in some sort of ideological zealotry like the other two. Unfortunately, that meant a massive, ram-shackle apparatus that processed reports from every sort of spy you could imagine, using every sort of hardware they could imagine. Thankfully, they didn't force shipgirls to waste their time fiddling with Jefferson disks.
Even if you didn't find yourself code-breaking or making, the government always had a use for computers. A shipgirl was essentially a walking ballistics computer, not that West Virginia had ever been summoned inland for work with artillery.
West Virginia was occasionally struck with the strangest sensation that she was both working incredibly hard and not doing anything at all. Part of that was silly. She was obviously doing valuable work. Shipments came in from Algeria and some parts of Canada, they went to the people and sometimes back to her own kitchens. She had faced down Tennessee. That certainly wasn't nothing.
But it all felt like it was on the periphery. If some miracle disabled every single non federal ship tomorrow, would they win? Well, the Syndicates might choke without their foreign supply and lucre coming in, and it would certainly hurt the Pacific States and the Union State, but it wouldn't put them out of the fight. Maybe that was the nature of naval warfare…
However, she couldn't help but feel that she was a mere bystander in the battle for America's soul. What good was her strength now? She couldn't exactly carry her guns to Tennessee and start bombarding the houses of Longist sympathizers, could she? Wars were certainly won by the movement of materiel over the sea, and purses were filled that same way…
America the ideal wasn't built by ships. It was, in part, a constitution they had flagrantly disregarded. It was also a hope for personal freedom… that was being delayed. It was free speech, slightly abridged. Whatever America came out of this mess… it would be put into place by military police on street corners. It would be enforced by soldiers who were 'lesser' than shipgirls.
Speaking of… It was about time she got some guitar practice in. It had been weeks since she had gotten a reasonable spot of free time, and she knew she would be terribly rusty. Still, she liked the thought of an audience. She had a special appreciation for those little tunes she played to herself, rambling improvisation that didn't have to go anywhere, tumbling through notes without any real direction, but music was also something to be shared.
(Sometimes, it was shared over radio waves. The Syndicalists loved their jazz, when they weren't screeching in your ear about class struggle.)
She certainly wasn't going to play for the officers, if that's what you were wondering. Sure, she would work with them because that was her duty, but the thought of it seemed… awkward. Their relationship was one of… well, not quite superior and inferior, but coworkers of some variety who tolerated each other. She wasn't always impressed by the strategies they thought up, or those impossible demands from MacArthur's circle that they accepted without question or complaint, at least until it was time to shift the blame.
Maybe… the boys working in her mess. They were invariably polite and timely – a point in their favor, although that had probably been beaten into them by the rest of the military – and they kept her fed. They deserved some sort of appreciation for that, didn't they?
(She wouldn't say that keeping them alive was an appropriate repayment. Maybe it should have been a simple matter of tit for tat. They fed her, she protected them. Simple. Easy. Almost mathematical.
As noted above, she wasn't a particular fan of cold, non-combat mathematics. She may not know what her strength was best directed towards, but she grew increasingly certain that it wasn't something she could let her officers dictate to her forever. She didn't just protect her crew because they kept her alive and kept her ship operating. She protected them because…?)
There's an old man called the Mississippi
That's the old man I don't like to be!
What does he care if the world's got troubles?
What does he care if the land ain't free?
But I keeps laughin' instead of cryin'
I must keep fightin' until I'm dyin'
And ol' man river, he just keeps rollin' along!
Their schedule was a little tight, but they all got home by Christmas. (And wasn't that a tragic, loaded phrase? America had learned what the Europeans did, even if it took a while.) Arizona – sorry, Pennsylvania – had gulped down several days' worth of liquified coal to do it, but they had sent several convoy-hunting fleets running with their tails between their legs.
All that exertion earned them several convoys of much-needed food and supplies. All the industrial might of the Steel Belt didn't mean much if they couldn't keep the workers fed, and those supplies would make weathering winter easier. It wasn't abundance, certainly, but it was some relief for the beleaguered defenders of labor in the West. The forces of reactionary capital had surrounded them like a besieging army, but hopes were high for a breakout…
(Canada and Mexico were staying out of the understanding that either joining would essentially mark the start of open season on America. It would be disastrous for stability in the region… and might give Japan funny ideas. But how long could Canada wait, when a revolutionary storm brewed on the Great Lakes?)
Rumors said that the French were planning to send over tanks with crew, in hopes of testing their designs in live combat, but that seemed like it would be a concern for next year. Something else occupied her mind: Christmas. This wasn't the first one she'd spend in her home city – a Brooklyn girl and proud of it! – but it felt more important. This was her first wartime Christmas that she was alive to experience, and her heart ached for New York.
They produced every sort of weapon you could think of for the war, and the war produced orphans, cripples, and refugees in turn. It didn't seem like a fair trade… It was important to remember that as stressful as the fighting might be, shipgirls didn't receive anywhere near the worst of war. The soldiers on the front line, the militiamen pressed into it, and the civilians suffered war, paying the heavy price so a choice few could cover themselves in glory.
As General Butler put it: war was a racket. As Syndicalists – as decent human beings – they had a duty to not get too into it, to think it something worth pursuing for its own sake. It was an unfortunate tool they would use to enforce revolution, and the minute they let it be anything more it would consume them.
Fortunately, she was bulin to one of the battleships that understood that best. 'Pennsylvania' despised this war even before she had lost her sister, and that dogged determination to be kind and decent in the middle of all of this… New York respected it. She wasn't so morally confused as to view Pennsylvania as some sort of moral anchor, but she liked to think they were similar.
They could stand to be a bit more similar, actually. New York had been, for a while, something like 'head' of the pre-standard battleships. That leadership had fallen apart with the Union – Texas had vanished to God knows where – and the standards were equally divided among the various factions competing for America… but a lot of the cruisers and destroyers looked to Pennsylvania.
She found Pennsylvania up on her deck, looking at the city. It was a disturbing sight, considering how there was almost no light beyond what was needed to get everyone secure in port. Perhaps this precaution was a bit much, especially on Christmas Eve, but they were still cleaning up after a Union State raid. Because of course, it would be the Longists who'd try it.
(Well, the Longists, with a little help from long-range German bombers. The imperialists didn't need to make their messages subtle, the terror and threat of violence was the point.)
"I can't wait to see her all lit up again." New York said.
Pennsylvania didn't answer immediately. The darkness made it harder to spot those little details that set her apart from her sister. "What are the kids like?"
"The kids? They're sweet, but it feels like you never have enough time for all of them." And that was in a normal year.
"I think… when this is over, I'd like to adopt one. No. Several."
"Really?" Well, the idea made sense, but the idea of going as far as actually adopting hadn't so much as crossed New York's mind. It wasn't that she didn't adore the kids… it was more that she had never considered herself someone who could be a normal mother. A leader, a big sister, sure, but a mother? "Is there…"
"What?"
"A man you're interested in?" Stupid question. Why would she assume that Pennsylvania would only want to do this sort of thing because she was in a romantic relationship?
There was a long moment of silence. A bit too long. Was she…? "I can't say."
"You can't…?" New York connected the dots and started laughing. "You're fraternizing?"
"I plead the fifth," Pennsylvania answered.
Well, that was some happy news for Christmas. New York hadn't suspected at all, which was probably good for their prospects long term… "I think that adoption idea really is swell, Pensy."
"We'll see how it goes," Pennsylvania answered. "In the meantime, I was thinking about rapprochement."
"Rapprochement?"
"If we win, we'll want to recruit their shipgirls, won't we?"
"We'd like to," New York said.
The musical Showboat came out the tail end of 27. That might be cutting it a bit close, but it's a powerful song. I've quoted most of the lines, including the alternate verses Paul Robeson sung later in his career which might really be crossing the line when it comes to my usual 'the work needs to have existed at the time' policy. Still, they're good enough that I had to include them. The only set of lyrics missing, afaik, is this:
Colored folks (or darkies, or another word I won't type out here) work on the Mississippi,
Colored folks work while the white folk play,
Pullin' those boats from de dawn to sunset,
Gittin' no rest till de judgement day.
A lot of lyrics on the internet seem to use a slightly different style, d's in place of th's, different spelling, etc. I'm not entirely sure if I'm 'correct' in correcting those to slightly more readable versions (were the originals intentionally stereotypical in an offensive way?). Also, I believe dast is a shortening of darest but I'm not sure.
Anyway, look up Robeson's performance of Old Man River. (Not Bing Crosby's. Great singer, but he sings an uptempo version that doesn't have Robeson's gravity, imo.) Man's got pipes like you wouldn't believe. Fascinating historical figure, too: supported the Republicans during Spanish civil war, civil rights guy, really lived a little and got in trouble with the HUAC… Also a solid football player as well.
(Other interesting research was the Mormonism stuff. Hope I got it right, but also kind of shocked by Orson Scott Card's involvement. I loved Ender's Game as a kid and read some of his other stuff, including something that is, in hindsight, blindingly similar to Mormon history. He also rewrote the Hill Cumorah pageant script, apparently. OTL pageant started 37, stopped for ww2, and continued to 2020.)
During the Florida section I accidentally typed Tennesseed. I just thought you should be aware of that.