"O Lord, Thy light has shined in our darkness,

Thy love has claimed us each as Thy own,

Thy hands have opened the way to Zion,

Meeting our needs with treasure from Thy throne,

How great our Lord, Thy grace all-sufficient,

Thy boundless love, its depth cannot e're be known…"

To put it mildly, the 1920s were a difficult time. The fall of Britain and France to the forces of Syndicalism and the resulting damage to the American economy had almost dragged Japan down with them. Skyrocketing tariffs meant Japan was looking inside her sphere for trade and commerce.

Mineral reserves in Transamur were tapped aggressively, especially deposits of strategic tin and gold, more than enough to back their currency. It was a meager living, especially considering that they were cut off from Russia proper by the flow of the Amur River. There were some sympathizers on the far side of the Amur, who would occasionally sneak their goods over the river or through the Fengtian territory, but the Transamur was still an intensely local state.

In Russia proper, they were dismissed as a pet of the Japanese, a peripheral society to be snuffed when convenient. Nothing more than fear of the Japanese kept Kolchak's government from collapsing under their onslaught. For what little it was worth, they did have naval dominance in the region; perhaps that gave them a minor advantage in that they could lock down the Amur and patrol it to prevent any crossings…

Kolchak was very interested in seeing their naval power turned into something that could let them handle the Russians, but there wasn't much they could really do. Well, for somebody like Pallada, there wasn't much she could do. She couldn't exactly kilometers inland, could she?

In contrast, there was the recently renamed Amur, previously Bayan. Well, previously Bayan previously Aso previously Bayan again. They had both been graciously returned to the Transamur government by the Japanese, who also provided cubes. Whatever the nationalists said, the Japanese had inarguably colored the shipgirls; Aso in particular had benefited from the Japanese, in more ways than picking up a bit of mine laying experience.

"Let songs of praise resound in thy dwelling,

Let all the world Thy new mercies know–"

Regrettably, the magnificent singing stopped as Amur turned and greeted Pallada. "Oh, hello. Don't you worry, the borscht is almost done!"

"I wasn't lured here by the smell of borscht." Well, she smelled the cooking from quite a ways away, but that wasn't why she decided to stop by.

"Oh, then you've finally decided to try to learn cooking?"

"No. Just felt like a chat, is all."

"Well, I'm glad you came to see me, but you're not leaving without a hearty meal, you understand me?" Was the term momma bear technically appropriate?

"You're impounding me?"

"Something like that," she smiled, and Pallada could understand why so many men on base were chasing that grin. Amur was unbelievably kind, a stellar cook, a remarkable singer… They liked to think that was all Russian. Or All-Russian, Pallada supposed. Har har.

But as surely as Russia sat on the Amur's banks, so did the Japanese-aligned Fengtian Government, and pretending their 'friend' across the sea hadn't played some part in Amur's creation was madness. It was Japan who provided her, Japan who redirected cranes and catapults, Japan who turned a middling cruiser into a carrier. A meager one, nothing like those beasts Japan produced now, but a carrier for Transamur, all their own.

That was why Kolchak loved her (well, loved her as a military man loved a weapon, he had a wife). Amur's planes could reach further up her river than their ships could, and her correspondence with her full-grown Japanese counterparts was forming the backbone of the new Russian naval strategy.

"Are you feeling vodka, Amur?"

"Ah… perhaps a little dram."

"A dram's a unit, you can't have a little dram. It'd be like asking for a little liter." Pallada reached for the bottles anyway. Well, a dram in the medical sense was too small to have any sort of fun…

"Heh," Amur chuckled a bit, "but you understand what I meant, don't you?"

"Yes." She poured out a couple of small portions as Amur worked her magic. Rye, sausage, eggs… it really looked like she was working on a treat, even if it lacked the famous red color other types of borscht had. They weren't lacking for beets on this side of the Amur (or even this side of the Urals) but a bit of diversity in cooking never hurt.

"Thank you kindly, Palla."

"Sure," Palla smiled, "but it looks like your hands are full. Maybe I could sneak over and…"

"Not while I'm cooking!" Amur giggled.

"I'd need to drink to do a quarter of the cooking you do."

"Then you just haven't learned how to have fun with it!" Amur chirped, pulling some strange, inscrutable cooking implement from a drawer before bumping said drawer shut with her hip.

"Maybe." Pallada sat down and pulled out a file for her nails. During Pallada's brief service, she had accidentally scratched up a lot of people, some of whom didn't even deserve it. Amur certainly didn't deserve it, that was certain.

Amur cracked open a can of food and Pallada froze. "Don't you dare."

"But you'll like it, I promise."

"Don't put your gross anchovies anywhere near my borscht, woman."

"Maybe I'll make you eat them if you're going to use that sort of tone, young lady."

"I'm one year your senior, Amur. Or should I say Bayan?"

"But that doesn't mean you can't be mothered," Amur cooed.

"I'd rather die."

"I'd treat you well, I promise."

"You aren't treating me well now?"

"With you by my side, Pallada, I can strive to be better!" Amur made an extravagant gesture and nearly knocked over a pot. "Eep!"

"Need a hand?" Pallada set her file down and stood up as Amur scrambled to contain the problem before it could become a mess.

"Fine, fine!" Amur waved her away, pulling a few loose strands of hair away from her face before getting back to cooking. It was a lovely red color, and most of it was free of her hat… for a moment, Pallada considered taking off her own, but decided against it. Not now.

"You think anybody else might join us?" Pallada asked.

"Hmm… my officers were busy, and of course Admiral Kolchak is too involved in politics…" Amur frowned. "He needs to take a break!"

Pallada had heard murmurings– nothing concrete, of course– that the good Admiral should take a permanent break. He strived for years to restore Russia. Proper Russia, freed from German influence. At the very least, she supposed they had that: what there was on this side of the Amur, very little of it was German. His goal was unambiguous, completely impossible to miss, almost like a mountain. Impossible to avoid and almost impossible to surmount. He was howling at the man and the rest of them were stuck listening to his keening.

Kolchak had pride and 'honor' enough to refuse to lie down, to see what future the Republic of the Transamur might have outside of Russia. If the British in Canada and the French in Algiers were indulging in flights of fancy, Kolchak's own flight could take him to the moon and back again. He lived in a fantasy, where simple, unambiguous groups like Jews were responsible for Russia's problems.

(He was a fan of a book called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was insanity. As lacking in leadership skills as Kolchak was, couldn't he recognize the inherent problems in keeping a shadowy scheme like the one described running? The man could barely keep his coalition during the civil war together, how in God's name did he think a widespread ethnic group could move as one cohesive unit?)

Still, Pallada could understand why Amur had a fondness for him. He had played no small part in her remodeling, making her her, and his circumstances were even similar in a way. After the surrender of Port Arthur, he had been a Japanese prisoner who was eventually returned to the homeland. Amur swore up and down that he loved the Russian people and that he just couldn't always put it into words…

She supposed that was the sort of deep insight into his character that you got when you were the admiral's favorite.

… Okay, that sounded a little jealous. Pallada wasn't, mostly because she didn't have the same rosy view of the admiral that Amur did.

"Ah, Pallada? Are you alright? You were lost in thought there."

"Yes, sorry. I was just… thinking that if it's just the two of us, it's more borscht for me."

"Well, I'm setting aside a portion for Gromky, but the rest is yours."

"Wonderful. Do you have any lunch plans for next training mission?" If it wasn't such a spectacular waste of military talent, Amur would have made an excellent housewife. Packing lunches for everyone before they set out… Pallada didn't even think it was something inherent to carriers, from what she heard of Japan. Some of them were real swaggering, self-confident types. The thought that Amur had chosen to be that way…

(Well, maybe she hadn't, perhaps it was some inherent part of her character, as much a part of her as her deck or lifts, but Pallada was lucky to have such an amicable comrade either way.)

"I was considering something with Japanese inspiration."

"Really?" Pallada asked, intrigued. "What were you thinking?"

"Our Japanese friends–" the ones who lavished attention on Amur and even operated some of her finer systems, "–have these charming little things called onigiri. I was going to try something with pickled beets…"

"Can't you do something with a bit more meat?"

"You're incorrigible." She chuckled.

"I'm hungry."

Thankfully, her plea would not go unanswered for long: the meal was nearly finished. After a few final touches, Amur picked up the previously poured portion of vodka, drank it, and let out a mighty sigh of satisfaction before laying Pallada's portion out before her. "And here, some borscht for your hard work earlier."

"Hard work? It was barely seventy milliliters." She supposed resisting the temptation to drink it before Amur could was a minor trial.

"Perhaps I could give you seventy millimeters of borscht, then."

"No thanks!" She pulled the bowl a little closer to her.

Amur laughed.

It was fitting that Amur favored Gromky. Well, part of it was that the Transamur had only received the three cubes, so there were only so many shipgirls to lavish attention on, but Gromky was like Amur in her idealism and love of her countrymen, and unlike her in age. At times, Amur's caring instincts were genuinely needed…

(Gromky was sweet though. "Ah, that's perfect! Thank you, Amur! I swear, one day I'll help you just as much!")

As much as Amur loved her crew and Gromky, Pallada liked to think they shared something special. They were both older than Gromky, more familiar with the ways of the world, and they shared a particularly special bond because of their time in Japanese service.

It was something to be obscured, even as the shipgirls, with all their quirks, grew into normal life. They were on the radio or in propaganda prints, papers traced their forays across grander, richer countries than tiny Transamur.

But it was exactly that popularity that kept Amur and Pallada restrained. People had brains; they would notice trends and draw conclusions that seemed logical from said trends. It came in various different forms: a notable tendency towards Catholic religiosity in National France, more 'native-looking' complexions in British ships named after exotic dominions, and in Japan's case… animal features. The cause was unknown. Perhaps some deeper connection to nature because they still held onto a nature religion, or perhaps some peculiarity of Japanese thought.

Nobody could answer that question, but anyone who looked under Amur's hat would find the ears of an Amur tiger, just as surely as Pallada's own hat hid the ears of a Hokkaido wolf. Admittedly, there wasn't much difference between a Siberian wolf and a Hokkaido one, but she knew the difference in her heart of hearts, and a difference like that didn't really matter. The obvious conclusion to draw was that they were deeply influenced by Japan. It made sense, considering their captivity there, but it would also be terribly embarrassing if 'Japan's lapdog' was seen using ships that looked exceedingly Japanese, by the standards of shipgirls.

So they had to hide. Had to wear hats everywhere, had to live regimented, controlled lives everywhere that wasn't a private dorm. And why? Stupid, idiotic pride. It wasn't the worst thing that had happened because of egotists in the government, but it was a deliberate offense against Amur and Pallada.

You could argue that there was a line somewhere, where you crossed over from being longsuffering to being a pushover. She wasn't quite sure where Amur sat in comparison to that line… but it wasn't like Pallada had much room to talk either. She was angry in her mind, sure, but did she ever put it into action? She was in the same boat, har de har, except she wasn't as nurturing and caring as Amur.

"Are you alright, Pallada? You look troubled." Exactly that sort of thing, Pallada thought.

"I'm fine."

"Don't be shy, Palla. We're here for each other." There was no one else in the world who shared the exactly same burden. Amur sat down and patted her lap. "How would you like to listen to me sing for a bit? I know you like that, and you've been working so hard…"

With her sisters Diana and Aurora so far away, the closest she had was Amur. But that comparison was an offense against Amur; she was wonderful in her own way and didn't deserve to be haunted by ships she knew nothing of. Perhaps that was fitting: as a Russian carrier, she was incomparable.

(Her original name, Bayan, was taken from The Lay of Igor's Campaign, and it referred to some simple bard. Perhaps it was fitting, considering her singing voice, but at times she wondered if there was half-forgotten goddess, buried in antiquity, who was associated with the flow of the Amur. She wouldn't have been Greek, of course not, but even some strange Altaic goddess would be a goddess, comparable to Diana and Aurora and Pallas Athene.)

Pallada laid down in Amur's lap and listened as she sang. Despite having the beat of a working song, slow and steady, it was still soothing. Amur could make anything soothing, really.

"Yo, heave ho!

Yo, heave ho!

Once more, once again, still once more!

Oh, you, Volga, mother river,

Mighty stream so deep and wide…"

I used a slightly modified version of How Glorious is Our Lord in Zion, changing out 'windows of Heaven' for 'the way to Zion'. I thought the change was appropriate.

If the hints weren't obvious, Amur is Volga.