The jungle night was hot and humid despite it being winter, the air smelled of rotting vegetation, thick rich loam, a hint of animal spray, and faintly of smoke. Both groups moving silently through the jungle were the best their military had to offer. One one side, the short brown men of the Canal Nation, on the other the tall broad men of the Hamburger Kingdom, some faces white, other faces dark brown, other faces light brown. Both sides had camouflage smeared on their faces and hands. Their weapons were held with confidence, fingers beside the triggers, magazines loaded with copper jacketed bullets. Their uniforms were solid OD green for the Canalites, patterned green, black, brown for the Hamburger Troops.
Both knew the other was nearby but neither knew exactly where. The Hamburger Troops wore night vision goggles, making their eyes glow a soft green, the Canalites had dripped optometrist medication in their eyes to dilate their pupils so they could see better in the dark. Both sides were highly trained, the best of their respective nation's armed forces. Both had trained one another in warfare, mere weeks before having been brothers in arms.
Both sides bumped into each other in the darkness and the night exploded in weapon's fire. Both sides yelled their war cries, shooting at any of the enemy they could see. In three incidents empty weapons were used to beat on one another. Locked in duty and hatred, both sides smashed against one another, each convinced that the other had ambushed them, each convinced that the enemy they were facing was part of a larger force. Two radiomen tried to get out messages, both of them were killed before they could do more than broadcast their call-sign and break into the radio net. Two heavy gunners managed to set their weapons up, identical weapons due to previous treaties and ally status, firing briefly before grenades silenced the guns and killed the gunners.
In seconds it was over. The last two men, officers both, firing their pistols point blank into one another's chests even as they went down.
A grenade, thrown by one of the dying, went off but there was noone alive to see it.
A bird chirped hesitantly.
Insects buzzed as they landed on the bloody ground or the cooling skin.
The jungle night went silent again.
Both sides had been ambushed.
-------------
The ship detected the warnings. It checked the header. ARIZONA - ANTAEUS FLEET - COMMANDER. The codes were correct.
The ANTAEUS FLEET was under attack.
The ship consulted its decision trees, its brain largely shut down in the strange space/not-space where the speed of light had been stillborn when the Big Bang had birthed the universe. Where gravity and time were left behind shattered laws that had been broken before they had even been cast.
The decision tree left no choice.
It activated its Kantai Captain.
------------
She was asleep.
Curled up in a loose fetal position, her eyes closed, long lashes resting on her cheeks, her hair swirling about her as if she was suspended in liquid. Her body was perfectly formed, inhuman in its humanity. She felt the micropulses in her brainstem where her datalink was embedded into her very cerebral tissue.
Her eyes fluttered open as the protomatter around her slowly drained away, wrapping her in a uniform as it left. Short sleeved open blouse with an undershirt, wide brimmed cap set at a jaunty angle, short mid-thigh pencil skirt, thigh high socks printed with red, white, and blue stripes at 45 degree angles to one another, knee high boots with high heels polished to a high gloss.
She blinked twice as her brain came awake.
She was Born Whole.
She knew it was wrong, that had been born and awoken this early. The purple emptiness of Deadspace was around her, outside the armored crysteel glass of the Show Bridge.
A single proton cracked through the crysteel and sliced her arm, drawing a thin line of blood as the atomic particle streaked by in a bright white line. She made a high pitched 'ungh' noise, grabbing her arm as she stared out.
"Why am I awake?" She asked.
"ANTAEUS FLEET IS UNDER ATTACK! WE ARE BEING SPAWN CAMPED!" the ship's Operating Mind replied.
She bit off a curse as another particle, a tachyon, whipped by, leaving a paper-thin cut on her cheek. The Operating Mind was little more than data at this point.
"Load the guns," she ordered, striking a pose. Feet slightly apart, her left foot forward, her left hand clenched into a fist and down at her side, her crop held up at a fourty-five degree angle in front of her, facing forward with her chin raised.
She ignored the quark that came straight at her midsection, was rebuffed by her own mass, and sliced just above her hip, leaving a slight slash in the undershirt. A tiny bit of blood seeped out, but she paid it no mind.
"SIXTY SECONDS," the Operating Mind told her, loading up the personality matrix and setting it to the dead memory section that could not operate in the depths of Deadspace.
"Load the warbois! Prepare to fire on my mark! Tie the guns to my eyes!" she ordered.
She had been Born Whole, she was both Captain and Weapon.
----------------
With a roar that shook space the ship exploded out of the depths of Deadspace and into Realspace. Space bulged and splashed, vacuum and emptiness of space converted to dark protomatter as the massive ship, nearly as big as the Missouri, exploded out into reality, showering the area for nearly two light seconds in waves of dark protomatter that evaporated.
>>WARSPITE had joined the chat
WARSPITE> I HAVE ARRIVED!
ARIZONA> Get in close, it's a spawn camp ambush!
BRINGER> Warspite! HE IS RISEN!
BISMARCK> Brother, join Marat and me in breaking the enemy's line with the thunderous crash of our guns! We who were built to rule the Seven Spaces! The Beasts made of Warsteel!
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
ARIZONA> Spin up your Captain. Kantai Templates only.
WARSPITE> My Captain commands from the Show Bridge. GUNS OUT!
AJAX> Psychic shielding at 100%, all ships, all ships, Psychic shielding at 100%. We are being assaulted by modified psychic attacks. Results are psychologically induced heart failure, inability to print crews, offline systems in critical areas, cloning bank array errors, SUDS stack corruption.
VULCAN> Use Kentai Templates only at this time. Born Whole Crews on the Show Bridge or War Command Bridge only.
ARIZONA> Everyone get that? Yorktown, get close to Hood, see if you can shield him till they get him back online. Bismarck, draw fire.
BISMARCK> Captain is online! We are the Hammer of the Chromium KrautMarine! The guns that do not falter! I will draw their fire in wrath and fury! To me, Marat, to me!
MARAT> I'm with you, Bismarck!
SINGING DUCK> HERE COMES THE HAMMER! STARBOARD SHIELDS DOWN! BRACE FOR IMPACT!
BRINGER> MY PORT SHIELDS ARE DOWN! GLORY TO THE CONFEDERACY!
BISMARCK> YOU SHALL NOT FALL, LITTLE SISTERS!
-----------
Delivers watched as one of the massive ships that had been in the fight since the beginning suddenly lunged forward, interposing itself between the target of the attack and the thousands of nCv shells, millions of missiles, and tens of thousands of directed beam weapons that normally would be ineffective in a fight between capital ships. The range was so low, barely two light seconds, that the weapons were still effective.
The massive ship took all the firepower to the side, the outer battlescreens collapsing, the inner graviton shields shattering, the last line of defense battlescreens exploding as millions of missiles suddenly converted in multiple talons of coherent energy clawing at the massive ship.
Debris and plasma boiled from the wounds as the ship took the hits across the mid-line from bow to stern. The big guns were hit by nCv shells, blown into twisted wreckage. The flight bays, in the middle of launching strike fighters, exploded outward as the enemy fire crashed home. Something exploded inside and a huge spike of purple and red energy ripped from the forward decks and the ship heeled to the side.
"BISMARCK!" Delivers heard the Mantid female voice shriek across the vacuum as if the ship was a family laid low.
Delivers started to recompute the firing plans, targeting the two wounded ships which were still in action, rolling in place to bring intact shields into play. Delivers snarled at the sight, a chance lost and missed to put down two of the hated Feral vessels.
A sight yanked Delivers attention back to the mortally wounded vessel.
Dark matter protoplasm was spreading out around the mortally wounded vessel, which was still firing its remaining guns, the battle-screens flickers and sparking. As Delivers watched the bottom half of the ship seemed to vanish as the protomatter spread out. The protomatter around the ship began to burn, the 'fire' spreading from the massive craters in the hull.
Flame and fire doesn't happen in vacuum, Delivers scientific arrays insisted.
He turned all his sensors to the mortally wounded warship, rotating up thinking and analysis arrays to compute what was going on.
The wounded warship began to sink into the dark protomatter, vanishing as it's main gun fired one last time. Sensors showed it was sinking into and through the dimensional subspace foam. The protomatter continued to burn as if it was inside an oxygen atmosphere, then sputtered and went out.
Delivers turned his attention back to the battle.
A third of his Harvester Class were dead, floating in space or nothing more than expanding fury. Half the additional craft were down and more of the tiny attack craft were boring in. Either they dropped bombs, did strafing runs, or slammed into the hull with a 'blade' of focused graviton energy that tore great rents nearly a half mile wide in the armor. They kept striking the same gouge over and over, driving it deep, widening it, lengthening it.
It made no sense.
The battle was going well. Another of the enemy ships reeled out of the battle line, spewing debris and streaming vaporized metal. The protomatter began to spread around the ship as it began to burn.
Concentrate fire on... he started to order.
I AM RISEN bellowed out across spacetime, making all three dimensions shudder and shiver.
Space screamed, the outline of a bulge appeared, stretched, and shattered, pieces of reality shattering away.
From... beneath? beyond? outside? of Realspace the ship breached the surface of wherever it had been, the screaming skull that made up the prow leading the way. Beyond the skull was a female Terran's body, made massive, bound by wire and twisted strangely in a way that made scanners ache and burn with pain. The female Terran was nude, wounds gashed into her flesh, streaming boiling red protomatter behind her. She was obscene in a strange twisted way, even to Delivers would normally would not be able to comprehend obscenity.
His circuits knew, even if he didn't, that what he was seeing should not be witnessed.
I AM THE BEAST MADE OF WARSTEEL! THE HAMMER OF THE CHROMIUM KRAUTMARINE! the newcomer bellowed.
Delivers suddenly realized that the battle could not be won.
All ships, retreat to Point Lima! Retreat to Point Lima! the massive Harvester ordered.
Hellspace rips began to appear.
-------------
ARIZONA> BISMARCK! Get in formation! Print a DeathKawaii Captain and get back in the fight!
ENTERPRISE> Target 512E's shields are failing, get some Ginsu Fighters in there to rip up their armor!
ARIZONA> You heard Enterprise!
KAGA> online... booting... online... bootstrap successful... printing Captain.
ARIZONA> Kaga, get in tight with Enterprise while you warm up.
KAGA> What... what happened?
BRINGER> You had an anxiety driven heart attack. You thought your fusion reactors shut off and went into shutdown.
MARAT> Coming up on your port side, Bismarck.
BISMARCK> I see you, brother! Together we shall drive back...
>>WARNING! HELLBREACH DETECTED !WARNING<<
SINGING DUCK> THERE IT IS!
ARIZONA> ALL SHIPS, OPEN FIRE!
--------------
On the Show Bridge of the Bismarck the girl posed, bringing her baton back. Her hair was black, her skin deathly white, her lips black, dressed in purple with red highlights. Half of her face was stripped away to reveal white bone. She was a DeathKawaii Captain, an Undying who had been Born Whole with a burning purpose beyond mere struggle.
She was a Deathless One, bound to the mighty Bismarck's very soul.
The Hellspace portals were opening for the Harvesters to try to escape.
"FIRE!" she screeched, her voice carrying through the vacuum.
She brought down the baton, pointing at the largest of the Harvesters, the one who's guns had pounded Bismarck beneath the Stellar Waves.
The Bismarck fired with a roar the shredded apart space around the ship as the massive warship delivered a full broadside.
-------------
Ships were starting to enter Hellspace, eager to escape a battle that benefited nobody present, eager to escape their first encounter with the hated Ferals. The Pact of Greed ships felt the burning shame of having been proved arrogant and weak before the ships of the Logical Rebellion.
The feral warships suddenly fired and dozens of the Hellspace portals exploded in flames. Space around them shattered and knife-edged impossible glass-like sections of space tumbled away, some of the pieces hitting AWM ships and shattering against their hulls even as the ship crumpled like a clay toy in the fist of an enraged toddler.
Delivers saw his Hellspace portal explode and reacted instantly. He shoved aside a Pact of Greed Goliath and squeeeeeeeezed himself through the portal, screaming across his thinking arrays as he passed through the Eye of the Needle and into Hellspace.
------------
ARIZONA> Break off pursuit. Repeat, negative pursuit. All ships, report Damage Control. We'll prioritize who gets repair first.
AJAX> I am ready, I who stand and weld.
BRINGER> I'll keep watch for Hood. He should be resurfacing any second and he'll need me to help him figure out what's going on. He's going to be a bit confused.
BISMARCK> We are wrath incarnate, brothers and sisters. We have driven the enemy off and ensured the survival of the gentle frog people of the small jewel of a world behind our shields. The day is won, but this is simply one battle in a greater war.
ARIZONA> Exactly, Bismarck. Missouri, a word?
MISSOURI> Of course, Arizona.
------------
On the Show Bridge of the Arizona the teenage Terran female made a "Hmph" sound and swung the baton so it was tucked into her armpit. She had scrapes on her face, butterfly stitches on her hip, and her socks were torn in four places to reveal sliced flesh. Blood seeped from her lip and down her chin and her hair was wild and tangled.
But victory had been achieved.
That was all that mattered.
Victory.
Or Death.
Either was fine.