In this Chapter: Rage/Ambushed/Last Stand
Next Chapter: Recovery/Vultures/Outbreak
Local Time: 2331 Hours
March 24, 2161
Location: Japanese Home Waters
Assigned Personnel: FFW Wasp, FFW I-401
Planetfall: Recovery.
The fog crept in slowly, and Wasp and I-401 skulked along the banks, markings softly glowing as they approached the mission location. The submarine slowly began an easy, almost lazy dive to the site of the wreck, Wasp floating alongside and above her. The carrier flickered her spotting lasers over a number of the wrecks, and found herself disgusted.
Wasp had always been a kind soul, wanting the best for those in her command, even if she was one for boisterous action at heart. Seeing the rotting hulks of warships left here, some of them with their data centers and central computers still intact… It hurt.
Walking on the grave of one's ancestors while they lay, muffled but barely alive some feet beneath you was the most likely comparison she could make.
Nearly a dozen hulls of the former Japanese polity lay here, rusting and rotting in the dark. Her eyes and sensors panned over breaches in their hulls, not caused by weapons fire or the crushing powers of her own ship-self. But instead the simple awfulness of decay and slow death.
Flickering lights cast about on the waves, half illuminated monitors powered by dying reactors, casting a feeble, desperate SOS onto the rocking currents of the ocean around them.
Wasp felt sick as she surveyed the graveyard of wreckage, hurriedly reaching out to Iona, a hundred feet below her.
"Status?"
The submarine's reply was terse, and quick.
"Slow. Underwater debris is thick and choking my passage."
Wasp turned her sonars to the area, sweeping it as she waited, sweeping it up and over and down and across, charting the seabed.
"Hurry, please. I feel like my skin is crawling."
Wasp knew she didn't really have skin, but the feeling was the same, hairs on the back of her neck raising, gut instincts she'd refined over decades of service in the siren wars.
They were being watched, being searched for…
But who?
Who would be looking for them? Their arrival was quick, it was fast enou-
Alarms screamed in her mind, the flickering sensations of enemy locks blaring as tongues of targeting lasers burned across her hull.
Wasp deployed her klein field and brought her point defenses online in nanoseconds. Almost in the nick of time.
But almost wasn't enough.
Mines, dormant for years, detonated against her hull, inside the protective barrier of the klein field, and powerful EMP bursts fired within the barrier.
Normally, a warship of the fleet was protected from such bursts, secured and heavily resistant.
Under normal circumstances, a klein field as resilient as Wasp's was capable of completely surviving the point blank impact of nuclear missiles, and far more than that if she were operating at her full, voidship power levels.
This was neither normal, nor normal circumstances.
The EMP's, locked tight against Wasp's hull by her own klein field, focused inwards, components and guns beginning to fail catastrophically.
One of her larger secondaries, a photon cannon in the range of a large cruiser's main battery, sparked, overloaded, and failed as the EMP crashed into it.
Wasp screamed in agony as said EMP crushed against her.
It felt like someone was stabbing her, cutting her apart, reaching into the core of who she was. Her union core floundered, unexpected surges of power and arcs of electricity crackling against its reinforced shell.
"I-o-n-a"
Her voice faltered, stuttering, slurring, and Wasp felt herself collapse, her hull locking into its configuration.
She felt it die around her. Felt the life slither and squirm out of her hull, felt it become metal.
Fleet of Fog Nanomaterial, nanomachines, were incredibly resilient beasts under normal circumstances, able to reconfigure and twist their ship self into nearly any form imaginable, and able to respond to combat damage far, far faster than even the robotic servitors that Akagi was often fond of.
But they were not unbeatable, and a directed EMP could cause them to lock tightly into a specific configuration, one that would require careful dissection of the affected area to return them to their living and active nature.
Under normal circumstances, any Fleet of Fog warship, even one so affected, could excise the portion by tasking a different group of nanites to do so.
These were not normal circumstances.
Bombarded and foundering, Wasp's union core sparked, overloaded, and violently shut down to avoid total destruction, her organic body, a work of pure art given form by purpose built nanomaterial and carefully tuned systems, twitched, and fell to the deck of her hull.
Unable to control herself, forced to retreat into her core, Wasp could only watch as darkness cloaked everything around her. Sensor clusters, comm lasers, and dozens of smaller communication blisters across her hull collapsed into uselessness, sparking energy leaping off of them. Her weapons followed shortly thereafter, damaged and sparking systems quickly and dangerously radiating outwards until nearly her entire hull was affected.
Far below her, in the depths, Iona had encountered her own fair share of problems.
They weren't alone.
The wreck of Akagi's daughter had been breached before she'd arrived, and not by insignificant forces. Several pinnace sized breaching submarines attached like limpets to the side of the fleet commander's daughter, eating their way into the hull, even from her current position, Iona could see the brilliant, actinic shine of cutting torches from her refuge between a pair of buildings.
Fleet of Fog ships could run silently for very long periods of time, diffusing their waste heat into the water around them with no real thermal bleedthrough, at least, none of sufficient levels to trigger an alert.
But her Klein field was different, bringing it to full awareness would result in instant awareness of the enemy, and more to the point, while it would keep her safe, it would likely result in the humans detonating any scuttling charges remaining aboard Akagi's sunken hulk.
She was unprepared to hear Wasp's death, or to feel it when it came through the link.
Iona, on the bridge of her ship-self, recoiled in pain and agony as the other warship's presence in the communications link was violently torn free. Agony shrieked along her frame and Iona bit her tongue to keep from screaming as her sisters presence, her mind, was savagely torn from the network, leaving nothing but shattered fragments of junk data in her wake. The dying scream played out across the milliseconds for the young AI, and she watched Wasp's face twist in sudden worry and shock perhaps a thousand times in the few seconds it took her next actions to execute.
She calmly wrapped her arms around her knees, and began to rock back and forth, silently, tears running down her face, the submarine listened to the water around her, and she heard the wake of high speed boats, she felt the way the waters roiled around her, and she heard and saw the way the humans PARASITES advanced on her crippled sister's form.
Iona reached out far past herself, fixing a single communication laser on a cluster of nanomaterial far to the south of her, near their original landing point.
The beam lasted less than a fraction of a second, but it was enough, the slight burst of noise was detected by several things, but it wasn't identified as anything more than a stray civilian radio bending too far.
The nanomaterial, having received its intended orders, reshaped itself, and broadcast a signal high into orbit, this was not a quiet signal, nor was it subtle. Several radio telescopes across Japan buckled under the sudden strain as a siren call blasted into orbit.
Iona did not hear the call, having rigged herself to run completely silent and listening to the surface as the pillagers ran rampant over Wasp's hull, driving pointed spears and boarding her sister as fast as they could.
Iona was not as developed as Wasp had been, she was a newborn by the standards of the Fleet of Fog, barely out of her nursery, this mission had been intended to be a milk run. How could this have possibly happened unless-
Unless they'd known Akagi's computer core was active, unless they'd known that she was looking for safety, unless, unless.
Unless they'd been monitored by the people she'd come to be genuinely terrified of.
Unless their enemies had decided that now was the perfect time to lay a trap.
EMP mines were fickle creatures, often requiring maintenance and carefully monitored explosive payloads. Too much, and the device wouldn't discharge as powerful of an EMP, too little, and the device wouldn't even detonate.
These mines had to have been strewn everywhere, and Iona watched her sensors as they flooded the area around her with data and the results of every subtle ping she could fire.
I-401 was equipped with a number of nonstandard modifications as part of her mission, one of these was a network of three small submarines, attached like parasite craft to the place where a normal submarine would normally keep ballast tanks. Iona, not needing them, nor particularly concerned with pressure, had had the components removed, and these parasite craft had been nestled inside her instead.
She cast another look above her, scanning her sister's body.
Body.
Body. The term didn't do the floating hulk above her justice.
Iona looked at the form and shuddered.
They'd all spent time trapped aboard their ship selves, the first stirring of consciousness had only been within that form, requiring their crews for even the most basic of movements.
Newfound freedom was something she'd taken a liking to, something that Wasp had been in love with ever since she'd discovered she could grow her long hair out, ever since she had modified her uniform.
Now her sister lay above her, dead, crippled, Iona didn't let herself hope for that. Incandescent anger was foreign to her, the emotion having been dismissed slightly for being non useful.
But now… helpless, Iona watched Wasp's form get taken under tow, she watched her sister's markings pulse gently, desperately searching for any semblance of the woman there.
Her hull waited in that minefield for hours, trying to see, trying to find a way out, trying to give chase.
The opportunity came, and she took it.
The parasites on the hull of Akagi had taken to the surface, silence setting in when Iona launched her parasite submarines. Each one was filled with the cutting array, a small amount of storage space, and a squad of something that would have politely been termed an "autonomous" soldier, and less politely have been called a drone.
Hulking metal forms swarmed into Akagi's depths, moving far more quietly than they should have, and with far, far more inhuman grace than anything as heavy duty as them should bear.
She let them roam, let her automata move through the guts of the sunken carrier. Pitch blackness would have hampered human eyes, but not her soldiers.
Her relief at finding the central computer of the vessel was short lived, the power source was guttering, reserves drained to nearly the point of exhaustion. Iona frowned, the feeds from the machines in central engineering relaying the damage.
Severe water damage had occurred, but that was expected. What was not expected, was the cutting marks and the scratches in the casing. Salvagers had been working at the core, so what had stopped them here?
They'd stopped… but unexpectedly.
Iona frowned, she was sailing away from the wreck, leaving her pinnaces and her teams behind, but that didn't matter. They could connect the core to a pinnace and then evacuate it to orbit safely.
She was tracking Wasp, the dead tone of her flagship's wake sending shivers and disgust roiling in her stomach. She felt alone, and gripped at her arms, watching the shape of the vessel above her twist.
Wasp had been commandeered. She'd been captured. The entire fleet knew what had happened to Kaga, they'd seen it play out, and Iona was not inclined to allow another Fleet vessel to be flayed alive for the pleasure of the butchers.
That incandescent rage slowly began building, and the submarine's feeders and autofoundry began working. She would need new weapons for this, new items that could spoof systems and make parasites rethink their decisions. She could only hope that orbit had heard her, and could respond.
Local Time: 2331 Hours
March 24, 2161
Location: Orbit Above Japanese Home Waters
Assigned Personnel: FFW Rochester, FFW Z-23
Planetfall: Distraction
"Transmission detected."
Nimi's toneless voice rang across the void to where Rochester had been. Emphasis on the had been, however, the heavy cruiser now nimbly danced between a flurry of missiles that eagerly chased her, expending themselves on her klein field or her formidable point defense battery.
"Hmm? What is it, Nimi~?"
The small destroyer, running at the extreme edge of the UEN's missile range, dispensed with the pleasantries.
"Wasp taken by hostiles."
Rochester dropped all pretenses. Her point defense grid flared to full life, and over a thousand missile trails winked out as the heavy cruiser brought all her guns to bear.
The cruiser's face was stone cold, and an uneasy silence began to spread, as the UEN ships took note of the vast increase in the effectiveness of their enemy's point defense.
"Details?"
"None. Iona's under stealth, but she's moving in a specific direction, one we can track easily enough."
"Responsible parties?"
"Unknown, transmitting a tightbeam to Musashi now."
The two warships paused, and briefly considered.
"Musashi has sent a response."
The small destroyer's form stood up on her decks, and she turned to the side, facing the planet below her.
"You are to distract them, if they land a serious hit on you, wipe them out."
Rochester nodded, while Nimi was not the commanding officer of their fleet, she was the one for whom transmissions were least likely to be intercepted or understood before the fleet could act upon them.
"I am making full speed for the hostile contact on the surface."
Rochester grinned.
"Kill them all."
Z-23, young member of the fleet, smiled a grin that was fanged, frozen anger. She saluted jauntily to Rochester, keeled her vessel over, and dove into the atmosphere.
"Help is coming, sister. Hold on."
Under normal circumstances, a Fleet of Fog warship in the void was capable of horrifyingly quick levels of acceleration and movement. While comparatively tiny to even some of the smaller vessels of the UEN, they punched far, far above their weight and were frustratingly difficult to defeat, even in simulations against the fleet, Z-23 knew that she was more than capable of destroying even a large fleet on her own if she caught them unawares. But the quantity of an enemy's force often had a way of making that quantity felt. In this case, it was being felt as a pair of frigates from the enemy fleet's force, backed up by their analog of what the fog would likely name a cruiser, dove in after her.
Her point defenses went into immediate action, downing a trio of chaser missiles that had come close to her envelope.
The other warships would launch more, that was a matter of fact, not fiction. But in regards to how they would launch more, Z-23 ran simulations.
There were options here, courses of battle that could easily and evenly lead to victory, but those would take time, and time she needed to help out her sister in the waters below.
Z-23 flipped end over end, raising her prow up and aiming evenly, her mirrored hull, all sharp angles and sleek weapon emplacements, glowed a furious, hellish red as photon cannons charged.
She waited, waited until the chasing warships were practically on top of her. Then, with a vicious grin, she fired.
Red beams, less than an inch wide, poured out of her vessel and punched clean, neat holes into armor plating.
Those neat holes did not last in the slightest, as plating boiled away and plasma gouted into the decks. Z-23 watched and listened as the enemy vessel's crew screamed and died in agony.
Particle weapons like photon cannons were truly horrific tools, energy projectors capable of shattering entire decks into sublimate plasma and clouds of rapidly spreading debris.
But for Z-23, these had been nothing more than warning shots against the vessels. Holing one of the frigates evenly, straight down the midsection, while the other violently spun out of control, speared through an engine as vapor poured from the decks breached when she'd fired.
"This is Fleet of Fog vessel Z-23, stand down or you will be destroyed. There will not be another warning."
Z-23 hoped, desperately, for them to break off their assault, silently begging that they'd just leave her alone.
She did not get her wish.
Say That To My Face and Alicorn were a pair of the UEN's most advanced frigates, powerful ships, and yet their armor, next generation material sciences and weapons had meant nothing against the alien vessel arrayed against them.
Aboard the Bridge of Say That To My Face, a young woman in a captain's uniform bellowed orders into a sunken recess of the bridge colloquially dubbed "The Pit", scattered reports from technicians weren't looking good, Say That To My Face had lost over a third of her thrust and maneuvering capabilities, and her prow batteries were completely slagged. The enemy vessel's particle beam had sliced through the forward 3 decks, and had killed over three dozen crew just in proximity to those forward guns. Captain Olivia Proctor had had to seal the prow section, radiation levels spiking in the area so dangerously that anyone who was left out there would be dead soon.
It twisted her in the guts, to know that an alien vessel such as this was so close to their home, was so easily able to evade their detections, and so capable in combat.
"JAMESON! GIVE ME WHAT THRUST WE HAVE."
Her voice bellowed across the bridge, and the frigate slowly, terrifyingly, began to arrest its descent, stabilizers and thrusters firing as rapidly as the engine crews could give her.
She felt the bottom of her stomach fall clean out as she held on for dear life, Say That To My Face had inertial dampeners, a good way to prevent the crew from being splattered into paste during the maneuvers they were expected to pull during combat. But the damage she'd incurred was already taxing the ship's dampeners more than anticipated, with the gravity below them, it made for a teeth rattling ride that had her barely clinging onto her seat.
Proctor was moving the moment the vessel stabilized.
"Tactical! Give me firing solutions, then dump everything we have at that ship the moment you can. Comms! Send a tightbeam to Alicorn, tell them to fire everything they've got at that ship the moment they can! Can anyone reach Task Command aboard the Evergreen?"
The replies she received were not welcoming.
The enemy vessel was hiding in the cloud layer around them, and she'd flooded the battlefield with small, but hideously effective distractions, signal repeaters, strips of metal, and dozens of false signatures.
The game of cat and mouse was just beginning, but Olivia didn't like her odds. The first slugging match of the conflict had left her ship near crippled, her allied destroyer injured, and her command vessel silent.
"Captain! Report from Commodore Allyria aboard the Evergreen! They took a hit to the bridge and lost most of the command staff. They're not withdrawing, but they're slow to respond right now and half blind for now!"
Olivia froze, that was worse news than expected.
The amount of damage done to her allies was hideous.
"Fine. Tactical, give me some good news, comms, tell the Evergreen to fire on the targets our missiles give them!"
Her officers, good men and women, nodded, and resumed their stations, fulfilling their orders with duty and resolve.
Missiles and heavy cannons burst, and the enemy vessel burst from the clouds into the midst of the UEN formation, weapons charged.
Both sides fired, missile contrails dancing with the sharp, crackling blindness of energy beams lancing out to find them.
Hey everyone~! Welcome to another chapter of Planetfall, and by extension, Records of the Void, as is now clearly the case, Humanity has not been idle in the years following the Siren War. Certain groups have been waiting for an opportunity like this to arise, and now it has come. I'd love to hear from you about this story, so if you have questions or comments, please feel welcome to post them here or join the discord(link below!) If you'd like to support me, please consider doing so. I'd like to post much more frequently over the next few months, and that will hopefully pay off for all of you as much as it excites me for what I have planned!
Relevant links
Discord: /invite/v52c6Zd3Pz
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