Local Time: Unknown.
March 25, 2161
Location: Classified.
Assigned Personnel: FFW Takao, FFW Atago
Data Raid
Thomas Areimos slammed another magazine into the heavy rifle he was bracing against his shoulder, pulling the bolt back and feeling a surge of dread as it clacked home, chambering more rounds, before he leaned out of his cover and began firing again. The young man had taken a position on this research base at the behest of his mother, who had demanded her son stay away from the Frieden's front lines, and with the excuse that he was bright and had tested well, he'd gotten his wish.
He'd rolled his eyes at the time and was now praying to her that he'd get out of this alive as another one of those things crashed down the corridor at them.
The proximity alarms had been their only warning, and even then, they'd only seen something coming because neither of their opponents cared enough to be stealthy anymore.
Fog Warships.
Oracle had said they'd be coming, she'd provided precious little information, only laughing at them when they'd demanded to know details. Even pain shocks and treatments to ensure her compliance weren't working anymore. The woman had nearly been irrecoverable when she'd been found in the ruins of her home, the bullet having nearly killed her.
They'd been lucky the Russians didn't disturb the body, and only left a token guard.
She was barely conscious, but she did help, she'd helped the best scientists of a generation crack some of the more mysterious technologies behind the shipgirls.
Thomas had never been a believer, but that had been before he saw the splayed out, brain exposed form of Oracle, lips still wet with the blood that had spilled from the ruinous cavity in her skull where she'd tried to prevent her conscription.
Unfortunately for her, Kaga had been informative, and the research done on the former flagship had been telling in regards to their durability. Oracle absolutely would have died, were it not for the simple fact that her body wasn't quite willing to give up the ghost yet.
She'd been captured, and scientists had studied her partially conscious, half dead self for a generation before him, and they'd made advancements. They'd unlocked a secret that revealed something vastly dangerous to their return.
Shipgirls, the Fleet of Fog among their number, were advanced beyond what humanity of their time could understand, but they all shared a unique, biological signal. It was so faint that it was impossible to detect, normally. But with a living shipgirl, albeit one half dead, they could identify the spikes in her brain that formed from it and derive a form of "detector". That piece of technology had been turned into a rapidly expanding cloud of debris when the picket ship carrying it had been blown apart during the raid on the colony on Mars.
No one had expected the shipgirls to nuke themselves.
No one had expected them to come back.
No one except Oracle.
She'd lost hope when they'd shown her the video, her own self repairs having reawoken her to full consciousness. That was when she'd begun cooperating fully with research teams.
Her blood, bones, skin, hair, everything had catapulted material sciences forwards decades in just years of study! Thomas grimaced as a rattle of bullets and a wet cough saw another security guard falling, a cavity in his chest the size of Thomas's arm as the explosive round turned him to paste the moment it penetrated.
The man wiped at his face.
The Fog Warships had dropped all pretenses of stealth the moment they were inside of the station's maximum range. They'd then proceeded to shrug off everything the station threw at them.
Thomas remembered the way the head of security had gaped when she'd seen one of the women, reacting impossibly quickly, allowed a railgun round into her shields, just to flash them a terrifying, fang filled smile as she cut the thing into pieces, dissipating its energy and turning all of that potential damage into so much slag.
They'd not bothered returning fire until within knife fighting range, before ten beams had lanced out from the forward vessel, each one cutting a turret, launch bay, or missile pylon to pieces.
When his security officer had announced over the PA that the station was to "prepare to be boarded", it sent everyone into a panic.
Weapons covered in dust were handed into shaking hands and the inhabitants of the Chronos research station prepared for a fight none of them had been prepared for, or expected.
The first shots of the boarding action were fired by the invaders.
Naval boarding actions were almost unheard of in this day, the sheer effort involved to close to such range, as well as the dangers inherent in breaching access ports aboard naval assets rendered their training outdated and unprepared.
Each Fog cruiser circled the station, pounding and stripping away their external defenses with the precision of a surgeon and the sadism of a torturer. Darkness and red emergency lighting flickered as each explosion from outside echoed through the hull, trapping her crew aboard.
Thomas retreated from the position, heading towards the labs. Heading towards Oracle. If they could get the stealth vehicle, if they could escape, if they could just get their research and the readings they'd taken out, they'd be able to succeed, they could show something to their superiors.
Something to prove that a fog warship hadn't just swept aside all of Oracle's planning and all of her technological bounty like so much chaff!
He pushed forwards, passing by another intersection filled with the distant screams of the dead and dying.
"Oh my~"
The voice, synthesized and feminine, filled the air with a sultry giggle as it sounded from in front of him, and Thomas froze.
Turning, he was running, not looking at the machine that posed like a deity of Japan, running from the monster made flesh and carbon fibre.
"Ah ah ah~! Mistress said I should catch the researchers!"
He ducked around a corner, slamming himself into an alcove, pressing himself to the door, hearing nothing, no footsteps. He concentrated, his breathing coming in shuddering pants as he gulped oxygen.
A security team was coming his way, he just had to be quiet and wait. Just had to bear it a few more seconds…
He almost cried when their voices called out.
"Thomas, is that-"
A machine's facsimile of a woman, a fox eared and tailed woman holding an anti armor cannon the size of a tripod mounted heavy machine gun reached around the corner, and placed the barrel at his navel. He froze as it raised a finger to its lips, miming a "shhhh", before it spoke.
"Yes. Situation is FUBAR up ahead, but should be ok if you go to reinforce."
Thomas burst into tears when he heard it speak in his voice.
A few steps came closer, the squad moving, and he wanted to call out, wanted to warn them.
But a part of him was desperate enough to dream of that machine letting him live, even if it meant the deaths of everyone else.
He didn't react until it was too late, trying to shout.
"Watch ou-"
The machine flicked him in the mouth, superhuman strength and speed combining to shatter his jaw as it turned and called out.
"Naughty naughty~! Now they die screaming~!"
She moved and the security team died as she had said.
Thomas crawled away from the hallway.
A wet slap announced the smack of a dismembered arm on the floor ahead of him, he wanted to vomit, wanted to scream as the monster of metal laughed and ripped its way through the squad.
He managed to stagger to his feet, blood dripping from cragged and shattered teeth and ruined gums, bolting for the secure quarantine room they contained Oracle in.
If he could seal the doors, if he could just-
"I wondered who would be the first to reach me."
The voice was female and quiet, almost bored sounding, and Thomas gazed up at the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.
She was a jap bitch, so granted that didn't go amazingly, but even so.
Then she stood up and the tattoo blazing on her neck set the room alight in brilliant color.
The fog warship's avatar stared at him, and he fell to his knees.
"Wait wait! I can give you the command codes, I can give you the research, everything we've gotten out of Oracle! Everything! Everything on Project Trojan Horse!"
She tilted her head, and Thomas, sensing hope at last, jumped for that desperate belief.
"You need me! If I don't give my authorization the system will wipe everything out completely!"
The woman studied him, carefully, that off putting head tilt the only indication that she was paying any attention to him.
She continued, focusing slightly, before she turned, and outstretched her fingers.
"Open the quarantine facility."
He stood, scrambling over himself to do so, slapping a hand against the panel and praying the biometrics would read correctly.
The panel flashed green and the door flashed open.
Huh… he didn't remember it being so far away. Why was the door so much above him? What was that wet, cold, and numb feeling coming from beneath his neck… why couldn't he touch his arms?
"Your services were never needed, but I did wish to see just how cowardly a nazi you were."
The woman's impassioned, bored voice had gone, now it was ice cold, vacuum furious.
He never got to think another thought as a boot heel came down on his head hard.
Takao flicked her eyes up to the bloodsoaked corridor, hearing another of the mocking, laughing, "onee-sans" her sister had set loose into the base giggling as it hunted down more survivors, backed up by a squad of infantry constructs.
"Atago, are you quite finished yet?"
Her sister's image formed, slightly transparent, her teeth razor sharp barbs of light in her face as she moved through the base.
"Noooo, there's still Nazis to hunt!~"
Takao rolled her eyes.
"I've found the thing they call the "oracle"."
Her sister's ears perked up, and her tail wagged.
"Oh~!? You found her? I'm really curious to see what they offered her to make her cooperate."
"You sound certain she did so willingly."
"How else would they get tissue samples and bone biopsy's from her, a resisting subject is hard to make those work?"
"They could have drugged her?"
Atago rolled her eyes, but her gaze was no longer playful.
"Trying to think positively sis… that she just betrayed the dead, or that she came willingly and didn't even know."
Takao grimaced slightly.
"I understand."
Her sister finally perked up.
"Oh~! One of my Onee-sans found another surviving group of squads, I'm going to go play hunt the nazi, if you want to go and ask their Oracle if she needs help!"
Takao smiled, but it was strained, before she closed the link with a nod.
She turned, rolled her shoulders and raised her glaive, before striding forwards.
"I/We knew you would/will, come."
The voice was heavy, distorted, laden with pain and agony. The form, a bound woman chained to a medical table, her skull partially exposed, gazed at Takao with a lidless eye.
The half dead form of Chapayev tried for a smile.
"Hello/Greetings/Welcome/Leave… sister/friend/lover/partner."
She paused, a wet cough burbling from a ruined throat.
"Are you here/present to free/kill/murder/emancipate me?"
Takao moved around her sister, scanning her body and making careful notes of the things pasted into her comrade's flesh and bone. Black and glowing with red lines, infections of Siren and Abyssal activity pulsed and rotted the flesh around them, linked to nerve centers and the clusters.
"Yes."
The thing that had once been a woman, and had once been her sister nodded weakly, before she continued.
"Datacore must be found/extracted/destroyed. Valuable research/process/items needed."
Takao nodded, and raised her glaive, sheathing it at her side as she disabled machines keeping the bound, half dead woman alive, sustaining the abyssal machinery that ate at her even as it kept her alive. "Thank you, Chapayev, your request for final dispensation is granted. You have served with honor and distinction, and you have spent far, far too long in bondage. As ranking authority on this mission, I will grant your final request in any form I can."
The woman might have half smiled, even as Takao frantically pinged Atago, who picked up the pace, running for her location.
They were watching the twilight of a warrior. Someone who'd died to protect them, someone who'd served and been repaid only with trauma for it.
As Atago arrived, face stricken with worry, Takao leaned down to listen as Chapayev spoke her last request, her voice feeble, choked with exhaustion.
"My reincarnation, when she comes… give her a better life than I ever received."
Takao and Atago nodded as one. Takao unsheathed her glaive, and spoke simply.
"Chapayev, warship of the Fleet of Fog, I consign you to the endless rest and relief of tasks complete and battles served, and I release you from your commission."
The glaive fell, and Chapayev, her body stilling, smiled her last.
"Takao?"
"Yes Atago?"
"Permission to burn the survivors alive."
"... Granted. I will prepare to scatter the datacore."
"No. Take it to Akagi. Better she receive it and decide what to do with it."
"But-"
Takao's sister cut her off, her voice a far cry from it's playful, gentle self.
"No. We let our admiral decide, if that could save another sister, even at the expense of Chapayev's suffering… we must try."
"I- very well."
Takao stalked out of the room, the rest of the facility falling quiet as she recalled dozens of rampaging automata. Atago took a moment to close Chapayev's eyes, before her automata arrived, and the dog-eared woman ordered an honor guard and final escort for Chapayev, back to the hangars.
"Takao…"
"Yes, sister?"
"Leave a few alive. I have some knowledge of their positions and the like, as well as facilities, but I believe that it would be better to-"
"I'm killing any you don't."
Atago smiled and giggled. It was not a happy sound.
"Oh very well~ But you're telling Akagi about it."
"Fine." Takao growled over the link, before her glaive cut through the sealed blast door and she ripped it apart with her hands, screaming, cowering humans running for it.
None made it past her.