For the angel of death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd;
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
Slowly, the steeping tea darkened the water, diffusing out from the tea bag. It was native, possibly even picked less than a hundred miles from their location… the exact specifics of the administration and its economy escaped her. They probably even escaped the Governor and his staff, who inherited the French colonial apparatus and tried their best not to fiddle with it.
It was like some engine that they fueled while not really understanding how it worked. They fed it talent, ammunition, and men, and by some obscure means the colony produced rice and rubber and tea. They profited from it – Lord, did they profit from it – but they didn't really know how it worked. (Well, it extracted these things from the natives and some settlers, Weser understood that. She figured it was not a tidy, peaceful business, unfortunately.)
Not that Weser took tea. She preferred coffee and set the tea to steep as a courtesy. Considering that Java coffee was available, it wasn't much of a choice at all. That was a particular blessing of working so closely with the Dutch in the defense of the East Indies. Not that the Dutch were happy about it. They wanted to be home, considering that the fire of Syndicalist revolution had spread to the Low Countries…
"Morning, Weser!" Magdeburg grinned at her far too brightly, for this time of day. Where the other girls had caffeine, Magdeburg's drug of choice was… life itself, Weser supposed. She had enough energy without coffee.
"Good morning, Magdeburg. Do you want a roll?"
"Toss it here!"
Weser picked up a roll – soft, warm, fresh cooked by a native servant – and wondered if she really should be putting it at risk. The mainland was back on rationing… Magdeburg waved her hand expectantly. A nice, slow underhand throw that Weser nearly fell out of her chair to catch.
"Apologies."
"It's no biggie," Magdeburg laughed.
"I'm not throwing you the butter dish," Weser warned.
"I could catch it." Magdeburg stood up, breaking the roll open with her hands and smearing the insides with butter and preserves.
"There's such a thing as unnecessary risk."
There were essentially two large German fleets, each with their own major preoccupation. The fleet at home seemed… stuck in the past. They built up heavy warships for a confrontation with Britain, in hopes of a big battle that could win naval superiority. The admirals at home were probably planning a battle to cripple the British fleet and prevent a blockade right now… It didn't take a scholar of history to see how the situation echoed the Great War, what with the France-Italy-Britain alliance against Germany.
In contrast, there was Ostasia and the war expected out here. Germany had more than Tsingtao now. She had a large modern navy tailor-made as a counter to Japan… one that didn't quite reach numerical parity, even with the Dutch supplementing them.
(Negotiations with the Entente regarding Asiatic defense had collapsed. Australasia had much to lose if Japan grew stronger, but the officers of the Entente all remembered who owned Singapore before Germany. There was practically a whole caste of disaffected civil servants and military men who had lost… well, something nearing everything when the British empire collapsed.)
This wasn't the comfortable, familiar theater of the North Sea, the battle they had 'won' once already. They'd have to make up for numbers with new, untested strategy. Weser was a living, breathing example of the heterodox thought that had a chance to flourish in Ostasia. Her entire existence was a subject of debate in Wilhelmshaven – her teacher, Graf Zeppelin, was the 'proper sort of carrier' up there – but here, she could be something. Had to be something, for the sake of her officers and comrades.
The Japanese had been getting increasingly aggressive recently, trying to make up for their inaction immediately after the outbreak of the American Civil War. Well, inaction might have been a strong word. There was definite, radical desire for action, but it only led to infighting in the streets of Tokyo instead of on Luzon. Zuikaku saved the day, bought the Philippines time, and sent the reputation of the army and Kaga alike through the floor. A near coup attempt in the capital was a national embarrassment, something that couldn't be resolved by conquering some petty warlord in China. (Especially when the army was so questionable as a body.) Still, they couldn't let the matter rest.
Japan had already gotten fresh a few months afterward, sending observers to the Philippines to ensure a 'proper beginning to Filipino democracy'. Syndicalist parties had crashed and burned in elections – not that Germany was crying over that – and Filipino shipping underwent frequent checks, especially when it was going to China.
Already, Japan had 'cooperated' with German East Asia to throttle the movement of goods into leftist governments in Yunnan and Guangxi – again, something Germany didn't mind, at least until it seemed like the Japanese were imposing it on them – and no one thought Japan would gain a gentler hand with time. Really, it was just a matter of waiting. They had probably started drafting their own ultimatum the moment fighting began in Alsace.
"I know a guy who can get us booze for half that price!" Magdeburg proclaimed.
"Oh, is it moonshine? Contraband?" Elbe asked, a nefarious grin spreading across her face as she sat, perched, on the arm of a chair.
"Yeah."
"Wha-? Really?" Elbe nearly slipped into the seat proper.
"Yeah, really. That's why it's cheap." Magdeburg said.
"But- you can't just do that!"
"Yeah, I can. I give money to the guy, and he gives me booze. Easy as that."
"But there's a monopoly. They're not supposed to be doing…" Elbe trailed off, realizing that her bad girl image was dying (again). "It's… uh, a silly old French law, anyway! Who cares?"
"This isn't the sort of drink that would make us blind, is it?" Weser asked. The Admiralty gave them quite a bit of leeway, but blinding themselves with moonshine would probably be a bridge too far. Someone would be made to pay, (human) heads would roll. And that wasn't even mentioning the opium situation…
(Weser was aware enough to realize she had an incredibly advantaged position as a shipgirl. All of them escaped the nastiness of land fighting and lived like officers, but she was even luckier than the older shipgirls, who had actually fought in a war. Phantom pains or actual grievous injuries sustained from shrapnel… or just picking the habit up from one of the many men who were still caught up in opium years after the Great War.)
"He's not that bad. I promise we'll all have a hell of a time!"
Not that bad, huh? Well, Weser supposed that a distilling operation that didn't hurt people was one of the least offensive ways that someone could break colonial law. She had seen photographs of… French crackdowns? German crackdowns? It melted together, but Vietnamese heads separated from bodies stayed the same.
There were times when she wondered if the empire needed morphine just so her administrators could sleep at night.
The sun climbed over the horizon, a warm orange-red that made Weser think of seethingly hot metal. She had been little more than metal once, hadn't she? They had pulled her from the earth, given her shape, and then sent her off to this far-flung station. All that for her to gaze upon an Asiatic sunrise because she had awakened at a completely unreasonable hour.
She didn't think she had enough last night to impact her sleep. It certainly seemed like Magdeburg and Elbe had more than her, but maybe they just handled it better? If she was less tolerant of alcohol than most others, then that was something she needed to know and plan around in her own life.
Hopefully, Elbe would wake up without a hangover. Weser felt fine – more than fine, really – and she was anxious to do some training. It was about all they could do, admittedly, but doing it was a little better than sitting around and waiting with no purpose in mind.
In the distance, faintly, she could see little boats moving around in the water, little dots moving from one mysterious destination to another. Obviously, they weren't going to let civilian boats – especially those commanded by Vietnamese people of questionable loyalty – too close to the shipgirls. She wouldn't say they lived a world apart, though, considering all the grief they got from Germany.
A lot of them didn't even seem to have engines, as far as she could tell. Had Germany improved their lives much at all? Perhaps they claimed a civilizing mission, but it was a civilization so utterly resistible as to provoke men to take up arms against it.
She wondered if Graf was doing alright. Hopefully, she'd be sleeping right now. It was… five hours earlier in Berlin? A thoroughly indecent time for anyone to be up, especially for a scouting-oriented carrier like Zeppy. What was she supposed to spot at a time like this? The stars on the sea?
Night missions were another one of those curious problems they worked on during their drills. (And it was data Wilhelmshaven was glad to have, for once.) Launch when it's dark, land when it's dark, fly some portion of the mission while it was dark… all were possible, although they certainly weren't easy. Carrier shipgirls made the problem a bit easier because they had a feel for where the plane was in relation to the carrier, but even then finding a moving target was a real trick.
The absolute dream would be some sort of small radar package on a plane, but that seemed… unlikely, especially with their separation from the homeland and its developed electronics industry. Who knew, maybe the demands of the war in the Atlantic would give Germany the air-to-surface radar of her dreams, maybe even on a single-engine aircraft, but getting her hands on it was a different matter entirely.
Perhaps integration with shipborne and land-based radar was a bit more feasible. This seemed like the sort of big problem that Derfflinger would have liked to chew on…
Faintly, ever so faintly, she heard the sound of engines in the distance. A motorboat, perhaps? No, it sounded like… it sounded like one of her air wings in flight. Except that she and her comrades hadn't launched any planes.
She turned to the sea – because where else would it be coming from – and squinted into the sun. It had shed its red for a whiter color, pure and undefiled… the blood red was left to the men on the ground, she supposed. For a moment, she thought she saw a set of silhouettes, like a flock of birds in flight.
Simultaneously, she ran for the dorms and started making as much of a racket on her ship as she possibly could. Doors slamming, Morse code signals coming from anything that could make noise, a few token fighters being willed into position.
Magdeburg felt awful. She could have sworn she didn't drink enough booze to start feeling like this, but her pounding head didn't seem to care about that. "Ugh…."
"Good morning, Magdeburg."
"Weser," Magdeburg groaned. "What…?"
"There was an attack. A Japanese attack."
"No ultimatum? Really?" That was what everybody was expecting, honestly. They'd make some ridiculous demand that would see Ostasia's 'sovereignty' stripped away, Germany would refuse, and then war. Well, maybe Japan just wanted to skip the middle step so they might have the element of surprise.
"None," Weser confirmed. "The Japanese are already heading for Hanoi and the Carolines."
"Jesus," Magdeburg muttered. "But who did…?" Magdeburg figured they'd have big portions of their fleets with the invasion forces, especially Hanoi. The thought of bombarding the coast didn't sound too bad, Magdeburg thought…
"Japanese carriers."
"Holy shit. Just carriers?"
"Just carriers," Weser confirmed. "I'm sorry. I saw them, but I didn't warn everyone in time…"
"You did better than me," Magdeburg grinned and tried to reach up to pat Weser's shoulder. Keyword being tried. "Oww…"
"You shouldn't move."
"Why do you get to move around, then?"
Weser was silent for a moment. "I got lucky." Her frown was understandable. If Madgeburg had to go out, it better be in a fight where she was giving her all! Drawing the short stick and getting injured… well, who was to say her stick was short?
"Who…?"
"Baden's ship might be recoverable, but she's on bulin duty in the meantime. Furst's rudder is ruined, and Yorck…" Weser trailed off.
What a shitty hand they got dealt, huh? Bismarck and Baden would have to wait ages for repairs, and Yorck… well, she supposed the ersatz part of the name was true. Training was certainly a poor substitute for war, and… now Weser was pulling a handkerchief from her pocket with a concerned expression on her face.
Urgh, it was like she woke up in a whole different world from yesterday. Speaking of… "How's Elbe?"
Weser was silent for a moment. "Bad."
Magdeburg tried to stay silent. She really did, but a chuckle slipped out despite herself. Weser's gaze turned to her, and she made a vague attempt to explain herself.
"Cause, you know… she always wants to be bad…?"
Weser was silent for a moment, and then her lips curved up ever so slightly. Maybe a half of a chuckle escaped. Nah, a quarter managed to seep out before Weser covered her face with one of her hands, shoulders shaking minutely.
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride:
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
The symbolism is intended to link the angel of death that destroyed a mighty army to the winged bringers of death that would redefine modern naval warfare. The irony of using the Destruction of Sennacherib (from Byron's Hebrew Melodies) to frame the destruction of the Germans/Dutch by the Japanese doesn't escape me:
"And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!"
I watched Drachinifel's video on night carrier actions I hope yall are proud of me
I originally wrote this with the thought that they were based in Saigon, hence the alcohol monopoly comments. I suppose it could have been extended down to Singapore and Malaya in an attempt to staunch the financial bleeding after Black Monday, or whenever.
This takes a few notes/vague inspiration from Cyclic's Hipper stuff. I had a vague idea for a fic with some Heart of Darkness notes, focusing on the obscure, mysterious machinery of the German government in Vietnam.