Local Time: 0300 Hours
March 23, 2161
Location: Classified.
Classified.
Assigned Personnel: Agent Berlin, Agent Texas
"Is this confirmed?"
"Straight from the cameras and scanning equipment of the Akagi."
"Brilliant."
"Sarcasm, Ma'am?"
A woman who did not exist smiled over her cup of black coffee at a man who also did not exist.
"Of course."
"Well done. As always."
A sigh crossed the table, high in orbit above Earth proper, the woman who did not exist, looked out the viewport into the black, star filled sky.
"Apparently the US didn't clean up their mess."
"Really pointing the finger at us?"
"Berlin you're not American."
"And you're not German, but such is the role we both have to play."
"Fine. Appears they've gotten an upgrade, no?"
"We were idiotic to not trust those Friedens talking about strange ruins and bizarre calls in the night."
The woman stood up and moved to the screen, studying the layout of the FFW Musashi. The dark hull of the vessel glowing with her red highlights and the eye sobbing blood emblazoned on the foredeck.
"What do you make of it?"
The man stood up, casting a look about him before angling his eyes to the screen.
"High caliber cannons, and that new hull… as if she's mirrored top and bottom. 3 more turrets, and a similar complement of secondaries."
His companion nodded.
"No real visible launch silos or cells, but she's hovering there with zero visible engines beyond those glowing thrusters at her back. And, Captain of the Akagi reported that over a thousand individual weapons signals had locked to her hull, in vulnerable places when they almost had their pissing match."
The woman paused for a moment, chewing on her lip.
"Then the barrage."
The man nodded, more images and stills, pillars of rock and martian rust rising into the air.
"Powerful. Easily exceeding nuclear weapons in our arsenals."
"And Akagi's main gun?"
"Sure, if they got lucky. But I doubt it, mostly because of this."
A frame of the image enlarged and shifted, showing a rippling field of black hexagons folding over the frame of the battleship.
"Defensive measures, right? What did Akagi's sensors say?"
The woman answered his question.
"Better question, why show it to us? They do not view us as allies, correct?"
The man frowned, turning his side to his compatriot briefly.
"No. This display she does at the beginning? That showboating from her turret? All hostile intent, and the turrets rotating in sync, she showed us she was armed, and showed us she was intending hostile actions, but she didn't start them."
"No… I'm not exactly sure why. We didn't exactly give the best showing."
"What, after the CIA assassinated Enterprise on US soil? No, say it ain't so."
Berlin flashed Texas a comfortable, and angry glare.
"Not. Our. Fault. She was in the running for a presidential campaign, and was a shoe in for governor. The hatred headed for the awakened had to be maintained."
"Oh we're in agreement, the resulting fallout could have sparked another global conflict. Frankly the fact the cabal pulled it off still astounds me."
"Scrapping dozens, bringing a few choice ones into the fold in some cases… how many actually joined up?"
Berlin ticked off her hands.
"Tex signed back on as a secret service agent, a position she holds to this day, Bismarck retired, and I believe owns a farm in the highlands of Germany's largest restoration zone."
Agent Texas whistled approvingly.
"My god, that's a pretty little parcel of land. How'd she wrangle that deal?"
Berlin shot Texas a glare that would have leveled a building.
"Germany didn't forget how she saved their capital single handedly, or how she put the country ahead of the king, led the evacuations of Bremerhaven and Kiel… she was the most honored awakened of the entire war."
"So… they ignore the fact she could bring down the entire government, give her a farm and let her fuck off and live with her faggot girlfriend?"
"Yes. Actually. Something the US should have learned far quicker than they did."
The man sat back down, turning to face Berlin slightly, he grinned at her.
"You know, they really trained you well, I was hoping that would get a reaction out of you."
The woman's eyes flashed and glared, and she stalked towards Texas, her hands snaking out and her accent coming in full as she slammed a hand down on the table.
"You are not someone who actually believes that drivel. I have seen the photograph on your desk. That man, his husband. You have nothing against them."
She grimaced.
"I, on the other hand, was raised in a family that actually cared for ensuring my lifestyle choices would never become so… disgusting as to pretend I was a bastard just to get a kick out of the newbie."
Texas smirked at her.
"You were telling me about the others who joined?"
Berlin nodded, ticking down her fingers further.
"No Japanese ships, no Americans beyond Texas. Chapayev spit on her commission and shot herself when they tried to convince her to stay."
"They really hated you all, didn't they?"
The woman raised an eyebrow angrily.
"As if it mattered in the end. Looks like they're back, and with the kind of technology that would end this war in days."
Texas sighed, and looked to age 10 years in a second.
"I hate this job."
Berlin's response was said in a simper that set Texas' hackles on edge.
"That is why, Hackett, that you're the one who's been assigned to negotiate, and convince her to assimilate back to Earth's control. It's also why I'll be sitting in orbit with a MAC gun pointed at her."
The man flipped her the bird, and stood from the table.
"Guess I'd better start packing. When does the transport leave?"
Berlin smirked.
"A week from now. You'll be briefed en route, assuming any further information comes to light."
The man pushed past her, pausing at the door of the room.
"I'd say it's been an honor, Ma'am, but frankly I hope you burn in hell. For your beliefs and your actions."
The woman who did not exist officially, simply smiled, staring out the window.
"I understand, and for what it's worth, I am sorry that it had to be you. Would you like the truth as to why you were chosen?"
The man snarled something under his breath, and then left, the door slamming shut behind him.
Berlin shrugged, and extended her senses out through the walls of the craft, waiting for the crotchety, angry diplomat to reach his quarters before she flexed her body and dispersed into the craft herself. FLEETCOM liked a chameleon, and while Texas would have done a fine job as a diplomat on his own, she could make him spiteful and hostile, and want to do an even better job, perhaps even recommending that the group take Mars.
With that established, the Friedens and Koslovists would collectively lose their shit, go to war, and lose hard.
Or the government of Earth would learn that sometimes you couldn't just bull over everyone, and it might advance enough of a cause to get them unified.
Either way, Berlin would have accomplished her mission.
That was all that mattered.
A private signal, manifested from the button in the center of her stomach at a specific, patterned touch, sent a small, polite signal to the single occupancy hangar, and small shuttle contained within.
Berlin moved through the halls of the station like a ghost, nodding briefly to the guards clad in black, bearing a single white pyramid as a symbol on each of their chests.
She boarded the shuttle, and felt the engines kick on as it took to the skies.
She didn't agree with this course of action, and she had a call to make.
"Please inform the President I can take his call now."
Local Time: 0300 Hours
March 23, 2161
Location: Above the South Pole of Mars
Assigned Personnel: FFW Z23, FFW Wasp, FFW Rochester, FFW I-401
Search and Recovery 11E2
Four silhouettes resolved themselves into women, exiting the canyon leading to the sepulcher. The tallest among them, the cruiser "Rochester" or just Roche, smiled slightly at the scene of scrambling chaos from UEG Marines as they dug in, called down prefab structures, and set up a perimeter that very nicely pretended to not be a perimeter. They even had white picket fences around the command bunker!
"You know, they're trying really hard, I hear they're scrambling a diplomat to Mars to meet with Akagi-nee."
I-401 turned her head slightly as she spoke, her lips barely moving. The submarine, part of Fleet Intelligence, wasn't quite used to her human form yet, especially because the autonomic nervous system, the one that controlled breathing, involuntary movements, and the like. Was no longer present. Akagi's warships no longer required such things. The adjustment period was… not exactly pleasant, and these four had not been chosen so much as had been the only ones to not need counseling and careful help from their sisters in arms.
"Iona, no need to posture, relax."
The girl formed a small "mou" with her lips, and froze for a moment, becoming a shifting grey mass that eventually reformed, albeit slightly less… human. Now tendrils of nanomaterial branched off of her form. Her eyes didn't reflect full light, and the small girl relaxed at the urging of the leader of their group.
Wasp stood tall and proud at the center of the formation, her steel gaze flaring out across the UEG's encampment. Those eyes had given many people pause before they'd approached her in her last life, and she kept them even after finding out the tricks her new body could do.
Beneath the martian soil, trillions of nanomachines, composing the hulls of the four women, rumbled and moved through rock, excavating cavernous bays on a tremendous scale.
Wasp spoke without turning to face the others of her small task force.
"Ok, briefing."
All four women sat in the martian rust, and, for a brief moment, they blinked, and found themselves elsewhere.
"Akagi prefers a small gazebo, but I find a firing range to be a better choice for a briefing."
Wasp stood at said range, holding a massive rifle in her hands, with which she gestured to targets spread downrange. All of them human approximations, accurate to anatomy.
"Objective is to upgrade and meet with those of us left, in all or any forms they may take. But it's secondary to Musashi's objective, which is to rescue and extract Akagi's daughter."
The firing range screen displayed a large, open image, a sunken carrier, her deck some 30 feet beneath the waters. Wasp pointed her rifle, squeezed once, and a fifty caliber armor piercing round sunk into a neat hole near the frontal deck of the carrier.
"That's our entry, the bridge has shifted too much to be useful, and the dry areas within are going to be running out fast. There's no reason to be gentle, the hull is slated for scrapping, and Akagi's daughter doesn't care. She's every bit as self sacrificing as dear old mom is, woke up her mom, but was willing to die down there in the cold and the dark. There's very little tech that we have that's guaranteed to work, but at the very least this is a salvage op, and we're bringing her core back for Akagi."
Rochester nodded gently, drawing a rather large shotgun from the wall, loading a drum magazine, and chambering a round.
"Expected resistance?"
Wasp nodded once.
"Japanese naval assets will move on our hulls the moment we arrive, but we've got a bit of a delay for that."
She gestured, and a part of the firing range faded away, revealing a board with a technical drawing.
"This is a fog machine, just… on a much larger, and much denser scale. I'll be installing it myself, and this mission will be a trial run for its full unveiling in the fleet for naval ops."
She pointed once more.
"We'll make planetfall in the middle of the ocean and travel submerged to the rendezvous points with our other vessels, once we make contact and upgrade or consign them, we'll move to the salvage site, breach and get her out."
"Has she chosen a name?"
"She has elected to postpone it until she arrives safely."
I-401 picked up a pistol so comically large it would blow her hands off from the recoil alone, were they not made of nanomaterial.
"Iona- you sure you can handle the recoil on that?"
The final member of their group, the destroyer Z23, was a quiet, professional woman in a formal, stretched tight uniform, with an armored coat that covered her thin, athletic frame.
"You are one to talk. You tried to use your turrets like shotguns."
Iona's calm monotone hit clean home, and the German destroyer flinched slightly, a gentle pink flush covering her cheeks.
"You know the effect is ruined because I know you're doing that on purpose."
The girl stamped her foot once, indignant anger breaking out onto her face.
"I set up an autonomic nervous system for myself the moment I could! It is very much not on purpose!"
Rochester broke out into laughter, unable to stifle it anymore, and even Wasp had to hide her wide smile behind one hand.
"Does she know?"
Rochester whispered to Wasp, and the light carrier shook her head gently. The denial only strengthened the carrier's laughter, and Z23, boiling red, stamped her foot once as Wasp gently retook control of the briefing with a clap of her hands.
"Right, ladies, and children, are our objectives clear?"
Three nodding heads answered her back, and with a thought, Wasp dismissed the mental space and finished with an automatic response of herself, a stretch and pop of her back.
No sound kind of made the experience, or rather the attempt a little unfun.
"I-401, you'll be the first to launch, and you have clearance. Musashi will join us onsite when the patrol fleet has their riggings established. 23, Roche, now's the chance to speak if you're having issues with your rigging."
No further words were spoken.
Iona's engines kicked on with a subtle, if notable hum, and the small, sleek submarine rolled out of the narrow, and tight bay. Roughly constructed to fit her, it was a quick and dirty launch mechanism, only enough to get her into the air and clear of the bay, while providing a casual hiding of true capabilities. Akagi's orders were to make certain that the nanomaterial remained as secret as possible, for as long as possible.
As the submarine girl rose into the air, a brief, careful twitch sent her rolling to the side as Musashi came around the mountain, her much larger form obscuring Iona as the submarine rolled, flipped up her bow, then shot for the atmosphere.
Wasp tilted her head to one side as chatter came from her comms.
"Mm, they've noticed her, well, I suppose their sensors are indeed better than expected. 23, are you ready for launch?"
The German woman nodded once, and at a nod from Wasp, she and Rochester took to the skies, hulls bursting from the same bay, one by one, that Iona had emerged from.
"Flagship, we're clear, heading for lower Martian orbit, will rendezvous with you there."
Wasp smiled, her own bay wasn't quite finished, with the dimensions of her decks being what they were, it was far less easy to carve an aircraft carrier sized hole into the earth. Not to mention she didn't have the mirrored outfitting that Rochester and Z23 were using. Meaning no dual elevators and no dual secondaries, and no dual engines for ease of escaping the atmosphere.
She sighed and rolled her neck, missing her old body, missing the cracks and slight aches of joints. She'd been so used to them, that their absence now felt bizarre to her.
With them gone, she wondered, abjectly, how much of her was "human" anymore. Certainly, the shipgirls had never been exact matches for humans, even their DNA was structurally different in unique areas, not that they were replicable ones by human hands.
Wasp clenched a fist, marveling at the smoothness and feeling, the nanomaterial replicated the body perfectly… just without the things that made all humans know they were aging, no aches, no pains.
A slight ping chimed in her ear, and the woman cast her eyes skywards, another advantage of nanomaterial, her eyes did not need to physically see the presence of her fleet to know and acknowledge their presence.
Instead, little blue boxes illuminated her fleet, and dozens of smaller boxes illuminated the engines and electronic signatures of missile fire and projectiles.
Had her fleet engaged with an enemy?
"Rochester. Report."
Her voice broadcast up, and a moment later, she got a slightly out of breath response.
"Sorry Wasp, got jumped by a bunch of these Friedens the moment Iona and Z23 broke orbit, they're no selling the enemy projectiles. But we can't break towards Earth yet, and we aren't leaving without you with us for command and coordination."
Wasp frowned and pinched the bridge of her nose, before she started manifesting her hull, with the bay finally having just barely enough clearance to accommodate her hull's bulk and frame.
Within moments, she was kicking on engines and feeling a subtle pressure flood off of her as her hull, all 20000 tons of her hull manifested in the bay, kicking on engines and pushing up and out, into the atmosphere. She was nowhere near as fast as her compatriots with their mirrored construction and engines were, but she made up for it in her value as a distracting presence.
Wasp was massive, and while Rochester had been large, she wasn't as big as Wasp was, the UEG Akagi, flipped onto her ventral side, tracking Wasp as she flew up and towards orbit. Several of her fighters flew alongside Wasp as they went, although they broke off as the sky turned black.