Key for today's chapter:

All non-Prinz Tegetthoffs: OC

Novara: Nimi/Z23

Saida: Z2

Helgoland: Z1

Whatever grievances your rulers' pride

And grasping avarice may yet inflict,

Bear them in patience—soon a change may come.

Another emperor may mount the throne.

But Austria's once, and you are hers forever.

It wasn't much. A simple table with eight seats total, three each on the longer sides and two seats at the end. That was sufficient for a group of seven, although it raised an obvious question: who would sit at the head? Or the foot, from a certain perspective…

Whether you chose to think of it as head or foot, somebody would have to take it. If the Admiral was here, Novara would have let him take the head, where he could dictate their seating in the same way he controlled their order in battle. That would simplify the matter greatly, but Horthy was absent, so they had to handle the seating themselves.

It felt strange to say that the Tegetthoffs were their juniors, considering that they all had a head over Novara and her siblings, but you couldn't argue with the truth, and the truth was that Nimi was the first of their number. Personally, Novara preferred the thought of being primus inter pares more than some great leader – an idea not helped by their insolently rectangular table – but she took the seat before Szent or Unitis could get any funny ideas.

They were eating surprisingly well tonight: goulash with pork and mashed potatoes on the side. Well, it was more likely to be a melange of potatoes and turnips than the pure stuff, but it was nice, even with a slice of butter as thin as a fillér coin. She wondered if that was a fitting comparison, or if the dairy was actually Cisleithanian. Whether it was Austrian or not, the pork that accompanied it was almost certainly Hungarian.

As soon as everyone had lowered themselves into their seats, Helgoland was at it, diving into the goulash with gusto. It felt like half of it disappeared before Unitis even finished stirring her stew and potatoes together, and Novara made to chastise her… once she had finished her own bite of goulash.

"Slow down, Helgo. You'll choke."

Helgo did stop shoveling her food into her mouth, fortunately, and even more fortunately she spent the next few moments chewing before washing it down with a glass of water. All that just to scoff: "I'm fine, Vara."

"Now that you've slowed down, you are."

"Mhmm." She rolled her eyes, but it seemed like she went at it a little slower. Or maybe Novara just threw off Helgoland's momentum. She kept on going at the goulash, barely sparing a glance at the mashed potatoes.

Unitis scooped up a mix of potatoes and goulash with a grin while Szent picked at two well-delineated piles: a bit of potato, a bit of goulash, back round to the potato again… she could spot them in her peripherals, even when she looked down at her own food. She tried not to stare at them too intensely.

(It was hard to imagine herself chiding the Tegetthoffs, and not just because they all shared flawless table manners. News about their counterparts in Germany was hard to come by, but she had heard the battleships ruled the roost up there, with their light forces taking a more subordinate role. Was that just seniority, or was it the simple result of a disparity in power and influence?)

She wondered if things would grow more complex when their numbers grew. She wouldn't go so far as to say if instead of when – unless perhaps they lost the war, in which case they'd have larger concerns – but that when might be a long time in coming, considering their current role as cube producers for the Germans.

"Are you not hungry, Vara?" Helgoland asked, her voice half concerned and half giddy at the thought of spare food.

"I was just lost in thought for a minute there," Novara said, shaking her head and grabbing a bite of goulash. Had there been more paprika the last time they had been served goulash? She thought the taste a little weaker…

"Really?" Prinz Eugen asked, her eyebrow raising as she leaned towards the head of the table. Saida leaned as well, although that was more to avoid being nearly flush against Eugen. "Is something troubling you, Vara?"

It didn't sound the same when Prinz said it…. After a bite of 'potatoes' where she could really taste the turnips, she answered: "I just thought it unfortunate that we're sending so many of our cubes to Germany."

Novara was of the belief that transparency in her dealings, whether with her comrades or her superiors, was ideal. Dishonestly led to complications, even if it was required, to some extent, in warfare. Dupe your enemies, but be honest with your allies. Simple, easy. But looking at the Tegetthoffs's expressions, she thought that maybe a fib would have been a better answer.

Their ire wasn't directed at her, but the frowns that had suddenly spread across the table didn't seem a good sign. "Damn piefkes," Szent spat.

"You wouldn't be alive if not for those… piefkes," Novara said.

"You haven't met them," Viribus Unitis said. She was right, Novara hadn't. While all of them were being worked hard, the Tegetthoffs had actually met with their German counterparts for discussion. There was a quiet understanding that the Tegetthoffs… needed what help they could get when it came to running a battleship. Practice was good, but the last thing those girls needed was time to grow into bad habits.

(A thought occurred to her that good habits and bad hardware were rather like new wine and old wineskins… but they could only do the best they could with what they had.)

"Be glad for that, Novara," Tegetthoff chuckled. "Terrible bores, all of them."

"Well, all of them is a bit strong," Szent said. "I just hope the Prussians haven't made the rest of their lot quite that dreary."

"Urgh. The thought of my cubes going to a fussy little marmeladinger…" Prinz shook her head and, fittingly enough, went for an extra slice of butter for her potatoes. Novara wondered if the German shipgirls were as unfortunate as their boys in their trenches, or if they got butter instead of marmalade.

"But for the grace of God, we might all be German." Unitis smirked.

Or rather, their cubes could have been. None of them could say what would happen if a different cube had been used on their ships at a different time. Would they persevere, completely unchanged with no differences despite donors, or were they contained in the cube, in part? None of them knew.

"Wouldn't you get to do more if you were German?" Helgoland asked. "Fighting the Tommies sounds better than just sitting on our asses in the Adriatic."

Novara didn't think the German situation was quite as nice as Helgoland described – she didn't envy the thought of a battle with the British in the North Sea – but they all wanted to see the Otranto Barrage sent to the bottom. Pestering their jailers was a very different thing than a breakout, and eventually, it stopped being gratifying and got frustrating.

"Just because it's boring doesn't mean it's not dangerous," Saida noted. Novara wondered if that was all they'd get from her for the night.

"Perhaps the end of this war will free us from our tribute payments to Germany as well," Szent said.

"That'd mean less cubes though, wouldn't it?" Tegetthoff asked.

"But wouldn't it be better to use a few as we please then lose them all in abundance?" Unitis fired back.

"What do you think, Vara?" Eugen turned to the head of the table with a grin. "Do our German benefactors ask too much of us?"

"I… do feel we owe them a debt," Novara started. " And they do ask much, but for good reason. Things would be much simpler if we cut Britain off."

Unitis smiled ruefully. "Well put, but it doesn't make the taste of it any less bitter."

"Maybe they should just be honest about it and tuck us under a Supreme Command." Szent was still holding her fork, but she had been so swept in the conversation that she wasn't eating. For now, the fork hand stayed calm, no jabbing about. "Hell, why don't they just bring down Scheer's cap and make us bow to it?"

"Because he'd be wanting for a hat, I'd think." Eugen remarked.

"You know what I mean." Szent scowled.

"Our Admirals aren't Gessler, sister." Tegetthoff said.

"They certainly feel that way. They take and take–"

Novara tried to cut her off. She had some sort of responsibility as head of the table, right? "They're doing the best they can, given the circumstances…"

"We're being treated like accessories, and you just want to accept that?"

Novara fell silent. It wasn't… a completely inaccurate descriptor. The only reason they lived was because the Germans thought they'd recoup what was invested in them. In both cubes and lessons learned in battle they had repaid their donors, but still they sat on the sidelines, risking life and limb for a foreign power.

Thinking of William Tell wasn't totally absurd – a far-away Emperor imposing his rules on a people who longed to live for themselves – but it felt a bit… off. Considering that the man sitting on a throne in Vienna was of the same blood as the Emperor who had sent Gessler as a reeve. Allegedly. (The reeve and Tell and apple shooting bit, not the Habsburg bit.)

No else answered Szent either, and she sat back in her seat, satisfied. "See? We all recognize the problem. We're just not willing to do something about it!"

"And what do you suggest, dear sister? A crossbow bolt for our dear admiral?" There was an undertone in Eugen's voice that made Novara gulp. She was lackadaisical about many things, but her respect for Horthy was a notable exception.

"No, but we need to stand up for ourselves more. Even to Horthy." Szent said, giving orders from the far end of the table. (Helgoland was scraping remnants of her meal off her bowl, while the rest of the table, Novara included, were caught up in the discussion.)

"If you can't recognize when someone is on your side, maybe you really are a lost cause." Eugen shot back.

Szent snorted. "I won't take that kind of talk from a woman who spends half her time paying obeisance to Admiral Horthy's pole."

Helgoland, who had been in the middle of taking a sip of water, proceeded to spray it across the table, but a misting of water wasn't sufficient to cool Eugen's temper after that comment. Without a word, Saida left her seat, and Novara felt tempted to follow.

Epigraph is from Friedrich Schiller's very own Tell Play (or Tellspiel). Piefke and marmeladinger are both Austrian phrases to refer to Prussians.

The intent here was mainly to show the germ of the nationalist issues that might eventually tear the Austrian navy apart, while also showing them with something of a common enemy in the paternalistic Germans, who play the role of the Habsburgs/Geller in the classic Tell tale. Of course, that's a comparison several of the girls aren't comfortable with, etc. This is a tiny bit shorter than usual, but it just felt too weird seeing my most recent five fics without kaiser lane there.