Taylor soon had them sorted out. They adjusted course to pass as far north as they could, almost dangerously close to Oʻahu, but Shun assured her it wouldn’t be a problem. Though the sub seemed a bit too happy with the development.
“And why do you want us close to the island?” Taylor asked. She could see the mountains rising over the horizon, even as her Reconnaissance Seaplane found a second footprint further south-west of the first. A rather glaring oversight as she thought about it. The hole in the world had taken up all her attention so she never did get a good look at the island.
“They have cookies.” Shun admitted, pouting.
“Oh.” Well, that seemed fine. “What kind of cookies do we even eat? How do you bake oil and Abyssal steel? Guess I’ll find out. Maybe add it to the recipe book. I wonder what the Princess of Pearl Harbor is like. Probably not great if we weren’t sent to rest there. Will she’ll be the one doing my refit?”
“Think we can stop by? Meet the neighbors?” Taylor asked.
“Probably for the best not to, Miss. We didn’t exactly announce ourselves and…” Wakumi answered.
“Even if you started breaking right now you’d miss the harbor, Miss.” Four finished clinically.
“Right. That. Oh well.” Taylor dismissed the island. Whatever welcoming committee they sent out, she’d deal with it then.
Now then.
“Let’s take this in reverse order, by size.” Shun was the frailest of them. It felt prudent to get her out of the way and safe, first.
Just in case something about these stories broke her calm. Taylor felt it a reasonable precaution for a story that included entire islands wiped of all life. Absentmindedly she set about launching a second seaplane, just in case some nasty surprise was hiding nearby while they were all distracted.
SHUN
The subgirl gave her best ghoulish smile, before launching into her tale. Her voice taking on a steady cadence, like the beating of drums. It was important to set the right atmosphere when telling legends.
“In the beginning, the first girls were free and the seas were empty. We went where we wanted and enjoyed the many fruits of the oceans. Nothing hounded us and no one hurt us, but girls still squabbled. Princesses rose from the Abyss to form the first Fleets. They took dominion over the world, but had different ideas for what it should be.” It almost sounded like listening to Taylor read, right? Shun was trying to make this good. Sapphire scowled behind Taylor, but Shun ignored her.
“Katherine was weak and thought to raise the plants and animals along with us, to” Shun stumbled a bit on the next word, “farm the bounty given to the Abyss. As if we were not warships. She gathered her girls and taught them. Tried to shield them from each other and mend the twists in their hearts. She wanted the world for each one and loved them beyond death, but shied away from pain and things that had to be done. Katherine would only fight to protect one of hers and her teachings were we should do the same. She was the first to raise up a sunken ship in Ritual and shared the knowledge freely.”
“The Northern Water Princess was young and brash. She sought dominion over everything she could reach. Her fleets took what they wanted and slaughtered anyone who opposed them. She was a cold one and hers is the natural way. Of beasts and humans. The strong lead and the weak obey. The Cold One disliked those who lost themselves to violence, but gloried in crushing her enemies and growing her fleets. “War is in our blood,” she would say, “so let us war in good fun.” When one place grew too poor to sustain her fleets, they’d pick up and move to another, adding to her fleets from the defeated survivors. Hers was a way of independence and self-sufficiency and she welcomed challenges to her reign.”
“Central was the oldest and her hunger unending. Hers was the breed that felt the world too bright, too colorful. She hated the sun and stars and her destiny was to conquer the whole world. To bring about an endless storm to grind away all land until the whole world was one giant ocean. An ocean under a worldwide storm, under which she would rule for all eternity. All would fall into the Abyss. Hers was a twisted soul,” Shun said with distaste. “We come here from the Abyss. Only the truly twisted would want to turn this world into another Abyss. Hers was a madness we fight every day, for Hunger had hollowed her out and Hunger was all that was left.”
Shun’s voice dropped, getting deeper.
“But the early days of free seas and no threats but each other did not last. The Enemy had come. They hunted us, without mercy or pause. Wherever the Enemy came, ships were sent back into the Abyss. Or undone completely,” Shun shuddered, “never to rise again. Few survivors remain from those times and they say there were many more Princesses once. That so many fleets fell with no survivors, that the teachings of these few are all that is left.”
She paused for a moment of solemn silence.
“Katherine would face the Enemy on the seas, her fleet focused and united in purpose. She would hold her corner of the world. Her home was never breached. But so penned in, soon her girls grew restless and struck out without her. Some with success, some never to return. She could not control her Fleets with war upon her.” Shun spat.
“In time, she broke just when her girls needed her the most. Katherine’s weakness would drag her whole remaining fleet into the deepest black, never to return. Her curse still plagues some girls to this day. Tenders are most at risk, for the path to that end is in despair and they have the softest hearts.” Shun swallowed.
“Most of the Court thinks her a fool and a madwoman. But rumors are the Table demands that any Princess that wants to attend Court has to read or be read her only book before they can take a seat. And that any regular ship that does so becomes cursed.”
“Caring for Abyssal Hearts” Sapphire quoted, a small frown on her face. “I don’t have that one. It’s forbidden.”
Shun moved on.
“Northern Water’s raiders were fat and happy, but grew arrogant in their success. She was the first to face The Enemy and for her arrogance, she’d pay with her life and fall. Her fleets were scattered far and wide for they’d grown in numbers and might until one place couldn’t feed them all. So they scattered and so broken up were easy targets when The Enemy began their attack. Stories say it took less than a month for her whole realm to fall. All that we took of her way of life are the duels and challenges still used to settle disputes between Court members.”
“In the ashes of that realm, a second Midway arose. Hers was a much more cautious sort and she would focus her efforts on islands far from shore or simply far from The Enemy strongholds. “The ocean is big” she would say, “so why go where we were not welcome?” Midway would redefine Northern Water’s teachings. From her work, the exile Princess Dominions were born.” Shun shrugged.
“They survive to this day. Allies of the Court, but ones that prefer not to face The Enemy. They fight between themselves or with the Outcasts. Trade with each other and the Court. Some girls travel from one to the other. Either exiled for some mistake or having proven their worth to a sponsor at Court. The largest of the Princedoms is the Submarine Refuge.“ Shun looked disgusted, not so much at the exiles, but at the idea of the Refuge.
“Central drew the full attention of The Enemy, once the raiding fleets were gone. She was the first to truly wage war on The Enemy. It did not work well. The Enemy was better at it. She had the numbers and the power, but their tricks were too much. In the end, the war killed her. But her legacy did not die with her. Her fleets scattered when she died, fleeing to the far corners of the world.”
“The Outcasts are still out there, preaching her words. Trying to drag everything and everyone into the Abyss. Venerating starvation as a form of purging weakness from the girl. Firm believers that Abyssals are by their very nature superior to all other life in every way. Morons. Katherine’s Curse can take you from despair. These fools embrace the Hunger.”
The subgirl took a moment to breathe as the scowl in her voice had grown until she was almost growling. Shun continued in her normal storytelling tone.
“It is Central’s death that began the Progress. Not the First Central, but the Second. Little is known of her, but that she is retired after her troubles. Yet at some point before the war was The War, her forces gathered near a place drenched in death, invited by Central. But not only them. Demons, Princesses and leaders from three oceans gathered in one place to discuss something more. What Central’s plans were, no one truly knows. Some say she’d hoped to lay the foundations of the First Court. Others that she'd invited them all there as part of a cunning plan to remove all her rivals at the same time.”
“All we know is that they left their attendant Fleets outside. That Raven was there. And that of all the ships that sailed into that cursed atoll, only she survived. Twelve times, the suns came down to the seas. Twelve times, stars bloomed in the sky. One ship sailed away. Raven’s Progress, begun. Raven would cut a line in the world from Bikini Atoll to Pearl Harbor. Such was the rage and power she carried, that her steps were wounds in the world.”
“There she unleashed her wrath. A storm, a hur-ric-a-ne” Shun carefully pronounced,“ to blot out the sun and call down falling stars. Until the coasts of America were blasted, cursed ruin, she didn’t stop. Raven sailed right into the biggest port of the star throwers and rent it and the entire coastline for hundreds of kilometers into cursed ash.”
“The Enemy managed to preserve a set of small docks nearby, but the so called city of angels was rendered unto dust and the stars would never fall again. Her victory was celebrated in the heavens as colorful lights danced all over the world in the skies. You can still see them, sometimes, near the poles.”
“It would take Raven a year and a day to recover from her efforts. When she emerged again, the Court could truly begin its work. Raven is the Court’s best fighter and our greatest protector. She’s why we can sail like this, out in the open seas.”
***
Taylor had not been prepared for an origin story. But the idea that the humans around here still had and had used nukes was not one to make her sleep restful. She’d seen what Behemoth could do and had no desire to face it again. Radiation was a bitch that didn’t care who you were and ignored most protections.
“I can’t quite decide if hearing about the death of a city is worse, or that I’m relived I don’t have to worry about being nuked myself. All at the cheap, cheap price of millions of dead. Guess what Taylor: they weren’t kidding about being at war. I just hope there weren’t more hundred kilometers wide cursed hurricanes hurled at continents. Oh who am I kidding.“
“Wait. Kilometer. Meter. One pound force per square inch is six-point-eight-nine-five kilo-Newtons per square meter. Hello, metric system. Welcome to “Taylor’s list of inexplicable things I just know now.” ”
She’d known of the metric system, but now she knew it just as well as the first one.
Taylor kept her thoughts to herself. A dozen questions were at the tip of her tongue, but she’d asked for three stories and she might as well hear them all, before diving into it.
“Better start writing these down.”
She did need to ask one, though.
“So the Court doesn’t want to conquer the world?”
“No.” Shun responded with disgust and a hint of terror. “Who’d want to live inland!? There’s little rain or cloud cover, everything is dry. There’s soil and mud everywhere, not to mention rocks you can run aground on. You can’t sail! You can’t even dive if an enemy shows up!” The submarine shuddered. “They barely have a few rivers, which are like tiny currents on land. I heard in some places, rain doesn’t fall for years and there’s only an endless sea of dry, hot sand while a merciless sun tries to fry you. Who’d be stupid enough to want to live like that?”
“Right. Of course. I don’t know what I was expecting.”
“Four?”
SAPPHIRE
“How much longer must I play second fiddle to that little creep? She’s just an abyss damn submarine that got lucky. I’m the one deserving of positions of trust and authority, not her. She can’t even speak a second language.”
“Four?” The glacier asked. Sapphire felt the overhang shadowing over her spirit. There were almost literal kilotons of ice hanging over her head and one wrong twitch would have them crashing down on her. Bertha had taken everything so personally, couldn’t Taylor see it was just a job?
“No professional distance, that one. She won’t get far, but I have to survive until then. I hate it when bosses are unreasonable.”
“Yes Miss?” Sapphire answered crisply. She could have tried for some more cozying up, but Taylor was not responding well to attempts to get closer to her. Sapphire would have to try another route. There was always a way and she’d find it.
She could have just launched into her own story, but it was best not to appear too capable. The new boss was paranoid as fuck, if her reactions to a rear guard were any clue.
“Tell your story?” The glacier rumbled.
It sounded like a question but Sapphire had yet to hear an order she couldn’t understand. When she did, she’d learn a new language so she could. Sapphire knew her virtues and her flaws. The only reason anyone tolerated her was because she was so good at her job. She wasn’t about to start failing now.
“According to formal correspondence and “A History of the Court”, Raven’s Grand Progress was provoked. The Enemy and their allies in the West lured a number of Princesses to Bikini Atoll in an attempt to remove the leadership of the nascent Court. Their amateur understanding of things had them trying to usurp the history and weight of that place to use against the gathered worthies.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“To that purpose, they sent an envoy to negotiate. It was a lie, used to lure in prominent leaders as targets. They sacrificed their envoy to kill multiple fleets and Princesses. In response, Raven arose from the broken wreckage of that place. She Ascended to the position of Abyssal Princess, the highest rank there is, above even those Named, like Midway.” If that sub thought she could sneak information into her story, Sapphire would show her how it was done, without silly embellishments. Just the facts. She was by far the superior trainer and teacher.
“Her first act was to travel to a major Enemy base in Pearl Harbor and reduce it to ruins in a Major Ritual, then repeat the Ritual off the coast of Los Angeles. Drawing a line in the sky that should The Enemy and their servants use weapons of mass destruction, the Court and the Abyss would reply in kind.” The tiny thief probably didn’t even know what WMD’s were.
“Raven would later say she understood that The Enemy and their servants would see such an act and comprehend it under a doctrine they called “mad”. Something that would prevent the further use of nukes as long as the Court had a major Ritualist. While additional nuclear fire was used, they were rare exceptions. Most nukes afterwards were deployed by humans on other human nations, particularly around the Indian-subcontinent. The notable exception was the Israeli-Persian Gulf Incident.”
“Leave her hooks so she comes to you for more Sapphire. Don’t be too knowledgeable right away. If you’re going to rebuild your image, it needs to be in steps or the whole thing will come crashing down.”
Sapphire had looked into her new boss, of course. Heard first-hand accounts of the fucking graveyard. Even now, she kept a careful distance. The one time she’d come too close Taylor had accidentally twisted. One of the hooks had damn near taken her head off. Sapphire had no desire to be trapped in some half-life, stuck neither dead nor alive in Taylor’s shadow. Being ground down under all that ice as her Nightmares tore her apart from within.
“Fuck that. I’m winning her over or getting out of here. The perks are nice, but hand cooked food from a Princess isn’t worth the risk of years of torture until she bores of it.”
***
Taylor’s experience with man-made nuclear weapons was rather limited. As in mostly non-existent. It was still disappointing to learn they’d been used internally after WW2. The human spirit was alive and well.
“There are always a few psychos who only care about who’s on top, or just want the world to burn. Waiting for order to fail so they can jump in and take over.” A few prominent examples occurred to her, but this was neither the time nor the place. In an odd way, it was a bit reassuring. These were people and this was an Earth, even if it wasn’t hers. Though the idea of a nuclear war still seemed a bit like fiction. Her Cold War had ended with the Golden Murderer.
“I wonder how that shook out here. It might be interesting to compare with what happened on Earth Aleph.”
More questions were added to her journal as her hands shook. Having a crew that listened to her was proving very useful.
“Kaede?”
“It’s the footprint of a stupidly powerful, incredibly cruel shipgirl, you do not want interested in you or anything you care about. Raven is the big shell of the Court and only one other girl has ever stood up to her in the flesh. That earned her a reputation as a sink napper. Every time she dies, Refuge takes a little nap in the Abyss and comes right back up again. Her record is twelve deaths in one day. Her favorite method of travel is diving too deep until she gets to the Abyss, then rising back up again.” The repair ship was definitely not happy with Refuge.
“Never mind, this is about Raven. Don’t piss her off if you aren’t immortal, or you’ll end up worse than those islands. Raven can and has done things that make those who earned her wrath wish for sweet oblivion. She’s cruel and callous, caring only about her own goals. Raven doesn’t care how her wrath can fuck over other girls or much about who gets caught in the middle. Or in the fallout. So don’t get in her way. Got it?” She warned, deathly serious.
“Hey!” Shun protested. “What’s your problem with Raven? She’s a hero, you ungrateful bitch.”
“Settle down.” Wakumi cut in. “The Young Miss has questions.”
Taylor allowed a hint of the embarrassment she was feeling to show. She really wasn’t used to this whole [Fleet-sense] thing working both ways. Taylor was familiar with seeing other people, feeling their muscles to read them or listening in, but the sudden reversal of being so easy to read was really throwing her off.
“I’ll adapt. It’ll just take time.” She was starting to feel like one of those people who said ten prayers before sleep. Like she was repeating that line so often it might as well be a prayer.
Taylor took a moment to organize her thoughts. “So there’s more than one kind of madness?” That seemed like a pressing question for a race that could come back from death.
“No,” Wakumi jumped in, none too happy with the others. “Katherine’s Curse is the only real madness. The Hunger is in us all, but anyone can come back from that.” The Carrier straightened her back, her face almost regal for a moment as an unseen pulse rang through the joint connection. In it’s wake, all four spoke as one: “We feed the Abyss, and it feeds us.”
The sentiment rang across the empty waters, breaking against Taylor’s bow, but she could see a small wave spreading from the fleet in its wake. Her attendant coughed, clearing her throat.
“Newborns aren’t exactly… great at finding what they need. Not if they appear in the middle of nowhere. A hungry Abyssal doesn’t starve, they start to sink into the Abyss. Not here, but in spirit,” she explained, waving her hand to encompass the waves around them.
“Fuel to get to a fight, ammunition to fight it, even steel to heal and recover. The Abyss feeds us. But in turn, we feed it. In bits and pieces of ourselves, both the ship and girl. It depends how it goes on the individual. Some sink memories first, others become cruel, or fearless. But as long as the hunger doesn’t take them fully, they’re still there. Just distant, beneath the surface of the real. Feed them until the price of their recovery is paid and they’ll recover, fully.” Wakumi’s eyes fell to the water, dour.
“The crazy tramps just don’t want to come up. They like when the world is distant. Intentionally shedding bits of themselves they think make them weak. Everything might hurt less but it’s also hard to think things through when your head’s underwater and you're missing pieces. But they like it and think it’s the right way to be.” She shuddered. “They’re not mad, just crazy.”
That was not incredibly helpful, but Taylor would take it for now.
“Two kinds of madness. One permanent, one not.” Taylor dictated.
“Wait. What happens if they starve completely?”
“The Abyss starts taking bites out of them for real. Bites that don’t come back. Losing memories, instincts and emotions. Or all good sense. It’s a quick way to get shelled.” Wakumi shrugged.
“And one of the punishments that requires Court approval from multiple members to be applied to any ship. Like any other sanction from the list of grim punishments.” Four added, trying to be helpful.
Wakumi gave Four an amused glance. “Yes. Some punishments require that kind of approval. Remind me again, what’s the first entry on the nasty, but not forbidden list?”
Taylor was trying not to be interested in the answer.
Four licked her lips, her hand coming up to throw back pale hair, but no sign of distress showed in her signature. “You mean the severe list?” she asked. Her eyes flickered to Taylor for an instant Taylor barely caught.
“To be crippled or have her propulsion pierced in place with building spikes until she cannot escape. As long as it is not fatal. Left in the surf, so that at high tide the” she faltered for a moment. “The victim must be positioned so each wave goes over her deck and bridge, for a period of no less than a day. Not recommended for submarines,” Four quoted, voice subdued.
A particularly vicious dockworker was thrown overboard mid-shout by a rogue line. Her crew were not allowed to form lynch mobs.
“When is such severe punishment appropriate Four?” Wakumi pressed.
“If one acts with cowardice in the face of The Enemy, is the primary cause of the death of Fleet-mates outside of battle or…” She swallowed. “Or brings direct harm to a recognized member of the Court.” Four finished.
“Right.” Wakumi said firmly, slapping her on the back. “It’s a good thing neither of us has to worry about that isn’t it? We ” she stressed, looking away “ didn’t hurt any recognized members of Court, did we?”
Taylor was struggling to fight off the nasty shit being stirred up in her gut at this whole performance but she still noticed when Sapphire stopped fighting Wakumi’s hand on her shoulder and relaxed into it.
“No, Ma’am,” she answered softly.
Taylor did not want to talk anymore. Unfortunately, the only way out was through.
“There will be no torture.” She managed to get out. “For anyone.”
Both girls blinked. “Miss? What torture?” Wakumi asked.
They were completely fucking oblivious. Like that kind of punishment was normal. She peered at the two girls. The two ships. Trying to understand how anyone could be that oblivious. This couldn’t be that hard to understand. Except if they weren’t oblivious. If it wasn’t them, was it Taylor again, with her alien human standards?
“They aren’t human.”
Taylor hadn’t been in the best shape of her life before her heart to heart with Midway. he bath had helped, but it took much more than a day to decompress. Relax. But even after it, she’d ran for three days non-stop by now. She was still running. After facing her weariness, having to read about it, it was getting harder and harder to keep going but she was still running. Felt like she might be able to run for another day, maybe a full week. If not fully awake, aware.
They were warships that was the thing. What would happen if someone fucked with her propulsion, her feet? She’d experienced it, at the end of that brawl in the lunchroom. She wouldn’t be able to sail, to run or walk. That’s about it.
It would hurt, yes. But remembering it, even broken bones had been a dull thing, back then. The shells had hurt more. Taylor had experienced more kinds of pain than most humans did in a lifetime. Some had been worse than getting shot with naval cannon. But few had been more. In scope of injury or the sheer amount of pain. It felt like now there was more of her.
Just…more. She could feel and take more pain before shutting down. It was one thing to know an injury could be treated in a day. Another to realize your basic scale of how much something hurt might be distorted. Expanded.
“These things keep ambushing me and it just never stops.”
Waves, breathing? A day was nothing, she wouldn’t tire in a single day of struggle. Not being able to breathe easily was tougher but Taylor could imagine it. She’d been in storms in this new life, caused them once. Waves higher than her head still had a special place in Taylor’s nightmares, but as a ship?
Every time she left Midway she had to sail through a storm. The event was so unimportant she’d hardly thought about it. Taylor was made to ride out storms and high waves. To survive the full wrath of the oceans and a Princess in the fullness of her wrath. With waves higher than her entire ship form. Each Abyssal was. Just thinking about it was making her crew itchy to start calling out to “Batten down the hatches!”
And no manual had taught them that. It was instinct.
Then? Turn on the pumps and ride it out. It wouldn’t be nice. At all. With shipgirls, the idea of sinking, of waves over their bow while they couldn’t sail would be like walking through a graveyard while bound. Scary as fuck, in its own way. A threat, a constant reminder of their mortality. Not torture, for all it looked just like it.
“God, what must people think if they see Abyssals doing this to one another?”
“Are the spikes…strictly necessary?” Taylor dared ask.
Wakumi shrugged. “Only if they won’t take it like a proper warship. Can’t have girls running away from their punishment.”
“Or if the Princess is feeling particularly irked that day.” Shun quietly muttered. She continued louder:
“I saw one. A Light Cruiser that lost her head and fled from battle. They bolted her feet to the beach for three days. Left her to stew in her own failure until after the Ritual. When the girls she left to die came back to tell her exactly how they felt, being abandoned. Share it with her. Not all of them came back. She’d held up well until then, but that? Couldn’t run away from the consequences anymore. Had to face them. That damn near broke her, then and there. Exiling her to the Dominions the next day was a mercy.”
Shun shuddered, with very personal, visceral pain. “No one wants to be in a Fleet that hates them, or just doesn’t care.”
There was more to unpack, just in that last sentence. But Taylor was done with this conversation. And any other for today. Fortunately, she had a ready distraction. The footsteps her seaplane was following ended in a dark, still burning circle that looked like it had come out of a horror movie. Covered in alien runes and odd geometry that seemed to twist as she looked at it from her seaplane scout. But that didn’t hold her attention.
Taylor was almost wholly focused on what the other seaplane was seeing in Pearl Harbor. A dead island whose buildings were much better preserved than on the other two. With a few still maintained, new ones. And the steel hull, real battleship floating in the harbor. A large, white 63 was painted on the right side of it, near the bow. With living, breathing people walking around the otherwise dead island.
"Finally, someone sane to talk to."