Garuda Ground Operations Command - M.S.V., C.L. - ‘Breathless Chaplain’ -

[Light Cruiser]

Anigredes Class

Lacking true bluewater ports, the Anigredes class light cruiser is the largest vessel able to be produced within the confines of the world tree lake.

With a length of 185 meters and a maximum theoretical speed of 32 knots, this vessel serves as the primary combat class ship for the world tree armada. It is outfitted with an array of weapons.

An Anigredes class light cruiser typically carries a complement of up to 1,000 active seamen.

ARMAMENT

* 12 x 152mm cannons

* 12 x 102mm cannons

* 16 x 40mm anti-aircraft positions

* 6 x 13mm quad AA machine guns

* 6 x 533mm torpedo tubes

* Mark II depth charges (130kg Torpex charge)

* 1 x Long distance rocket array

The waves of the black ocean crest and hammer against the body of the twelve-thousand-ton light cruiser as it cuts through the waters, a strange light shining from all directions, as in this place there is neither sun nor moon. The spirit world is illuminated by auroral glows that ebb and flow from the air all around them in many soft colors that feel deeply out of place as they cascade over the twelve black powder and oil-smeared six-inch guns of the ship, still pointed toward the shoreline like bowmen at the ready.

Close to a thousand sailors run back and forth between stations, rearming and maintaining the ship and its stations. The motorized sea vessel ‘Breathless Chaplain’ is the gleaming spearhead of the survivor’s offensive counter-operation into the spirit-world. Acting as both the central command post away from the world tree city as well as forward artillery for coastal engagements, the light cruiser. This steel ship towers over any old wooden and sail-propelled ships that this other world might have once known in days long since past. It is the largest of three such ships, which had been produced through an intensive steel harvesting effort that required the day-in-and-out focus of metal transmuting alchemists and the world-tree mines. Like hands failing to climb out of a grave, salty, brackish water runs down the enchanted steel, imbued with the innate magic of the world tree’s roots, which carries deeply unusual properties that make it significantly more resilient and light.

A medical vessel, as well as a supply ship, accompany it through the tether back to the mortal world from which they come. These two vessels are smaller in both armament and crew, serving specialty roles to support ground operations more directly than the command vessel.

“Admiral on deck!” shouts a woman’s voice. The sound of waxed boots striking against the corrugated metal floors comes to ear as a man walks into the bridge of the ship, looking around at the sailors who have risen from their posts. Lifting a hand halfway as he walks, he beckons for them to sit back down and return to their work as he walks in toward a bolted-down metal table in the center of the space. A team of elves and fairies are frantically scrambling around it, working with clay and stacks of hastily drawn maps delivered in by flying teams of fairy-scouts who are flowing back onto a dedicated landing area on the bow of the ship, carrying journals with them.

They’re creating a replica map of the region using the scout’s information and compiling it together into a clay model of the shoreline and the lands beyond it. The floating islands in the distance proved to be an unexpected logistical issue, but one of the cartographers found an easy solution to the matter — that is, hanging some lumps of clay from string suspended from the piping above their heads. It is a technical safety hazard, perhaps. But it’s not one worth worrying about.

The admiral of the fleet, Ankarman, steps toward the table and looks around at the collection. He’s a human man, old but steady, who has spent his prior life as a fisherman and trawler over a large family operation since his childhood. This alone made him the most qualified candidate to lead the armada, even if it is more than a stone’s throw away from the current scale of his position. His blue wool and cotton blend uniform coat sits tightly against his chest, the straight, stiff shoulders of the material’s padding giving him a dignified and strong frame. His face is hidden by a peppered beard that he tugs at in discomfort, still not having gotten used to it. Just like his hair behind his widow’s peaks, it has lost its raven color with age. He hates having a beard. His wife hated him having one too. He always preferred to be clean-shaven, but the military’s grooming team suggested that he grow it out in preparation for his new role in order to create a look of authority and wisdom for the crew.

“Admiral, the ground operation was a success,” reports an elven woman, her dying-autumn-golden-hair tied back in a skull clenchingly tight bun on the back of her head that looks like it’s pulling the skin of her creased forehead back so firmly that she couldn’t blink if she wanted to. It rests below a tilted mouse-gray cap. She’s the ground operations commander.

Ankerman looks at the clay model map. Small game figurines are dotted across the area, marking the positions of the different battalions.

“We’ve already taken unacceptable casualties,” says Ankerman, his eyes looking at a stack of overturned game-pieces set to the side, being held by a somber looking woman with antlers who is putting them together. “Your Grace.” He nods to the caretaker of the worldtree, who spares him a somber smile and nod.

“Admiral.”

Admiral Ankerman looks back at the ground coordinator. “What the hell happened on that beach?”

“We made a miscalculation,” says the head of engineering operations, a dwarven man. “The beach sand was much softer than we were expecting. Even after being modified, the light tanks didn’t stand a chance. They got stuck straight off the ramps,” he explains, shaking his head. “I take full responsibility.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Without armor, it was a slaughterhouse,” says the elven ground operations commander. “We made it, somehow. But it was messy,” she says, her voice as tightly strung as her hair. “Medical is taking in hundreds of them now. They’re on full duty.”

“The dead?” asks the world tree caretaker. “How many?”

“Hundreds,” replies the elf. “These are unacceptable losses!” she barks. “We needed every single damn one of those men,” snaps the ground commander, her eyes looking at the engineering lead. She tsks, looking at the game pieces. “We’ll cremate them here to save time.”

“No,” replies a firm voice. The elf looks at the dryad, who had just spoken a single, commanding word her way. The dryad — the last of her kind — has short, black, straight hair that has a way of staying clean despite the hygienic challenges presented to all of them out here. Her regrown antlers are long and profound, like the branches of a deep-forest oak, and are deeply unsuited to navigating the tight corridors of a metal ship. She has to walk sideways when going through doorways, which does destroy her graceful appearance a little bit. But the social affordance is made to her not only because of that but also because of the significant roundness visible on her belly. From soldier to civilian, everyone loves the world tree caretaker like a mother. She’s a god to most of them. Garuda is sure that half of the army would lay down their lives for Caretaker alone if she asked them to, and that’s not speaking of her husband and the hero of the war-effort, Pilot. He’s just a man, but even he has close to deistic status.

Garuda dreads the day one of them suffers misfortune on the battlefield. They’re the linchpins in the whole operation. If either of them dies, everything is over.

“Please bring the dead back home,” asks Caretaker in a firm, sad voice. “They deserve to return to the ground that created them.”

“Respectfully, your Grace,” starts Garuda. “It’s a waste of resources and time,” she explains coldly. “It’ll take the logistics team a full day to bring back that many bodies. We can just give them an ocean burial instead.”

This is deeply offensive to the caretaker. Admiral Ankarman can see it in her eyes. The thought of dumping their dead in a foreign ocean, full of who only know what, is unsavory. His hand rubs his beard, tugging on it. Together with his soulful eyes, it makes him look like he is deep in thought, but the truth is that his face is just itchy.

“Cremate them here,” orders the admiral after a moment of tense silence. His word is law. While the caretaker has social dominance and most would listen to her over him if it came down to it, just because of that, by strict military order, he is the one in charge of this entire operation. Her displeasure is made clear, not by a harsh gaze but by eyes that look almost like he had just hurt her personally. “But send the ashes back home.”

That should please everyone.

“Affirmative,” replies Garuda.

“…Thank you, Admiral,” says the dryad, sounding relieved.

Ackerman waves them off, moving the topic on as he looks at the map that is becoming more detailed and expansive by the minute as the cartographers keep up their live construction of it as new information floods in. Stacks of papers grow like towers as they mold and model clay formations, hardening it with low application of fire magic. Sometimes changes need to be made and pieces are broken off and reformed. Hills turn to castles, and forests turn to lakes.

The terrain of the spirit world is confusing. It doesn’t make any sense. Rivers flow not from mountains but out of hills — the water pushing against gravity. Mountains sit, covered not in snow and ice but in sand. Islands float in mid-air, with what appear to be infinite chasms below them, as if parts of the world just stopped in mid-creation, leaving only eternal emptiness at the edges of meadows and hills. It has all the pieces of a world, but they’re all wrong and jumbled. It looks like an artist’s testing canvas after they bought new paint and brushes. It’s more like a series of practice efforts at world-making, rather than a coherent world in and of itself. The land is like the pieces of many games — of different boards — all floating together into one collection. They all have the connection of being part of some game, but each stems from different rules and design.

And there, in the heart of it all, is their target. The enemy's core headquarters. No fairy’s eyes or reconnaissance plane has ever seen it. They only know of its existence through the use of extensive scrying magic — the kind that used to be beyond forbidden in the old way of doing things.

The cartographers stack clay together, creating a cylinder — an inverted, blindingly white tower that is larger than anything he’s ever heard of. It floats adrift, dangling down over the spirit world from one of the many flying islands like an executioner’s ready blade dangling over a bowed neck.

This is where they assume Tango Prime is located. It’s the main target of this operation. Their objective is to reach it, to destroy it and Tango Prime once and for all, so that humanity can finally return to days of peace and hope. No matter what, they cannot leave the spirit world before they’ve reached this goal. If they don’t, it’s over. This is the only way to stop the invasions against the mortal world once and for all.

“We have a long way to go,” says Admiral Ankerman, looking at the map as the cartographers hastily find a hack-job way to extend the table using sheet metal that they weld to the floor with magic as the map expands out over the edges of the surface. Ankerman points at a node on the way, just past the shoreline. “We need to secure the area. Destroy this monster nest and create a ground operations center,” he instructs.

“Admiral.”

“And modify those damn tanks,” barks Ankerman at the engineering lead. “If this happens again, I’ll throw you into the ocean myself!” he warns.

“Sir!” salutes the man.

A plane buzzes overhead, making its way to the landing barge in pursuit of the others. The engine shakes the sheet metal of the cruiser as it passes for a brief moment. Admiral Ankerman looks at the caretaker, nodding to her.

Setting down the pieces into a box, she makes her way out of the deck as they disperse, going to greet her other half.

Admiral Ankerman stands back upright and straight, holding his hands behind his back as he makes his way forward to the bridge. All of this logistics and planning is exhausting. He’s used to telling a few fishing ships where to go and what to do if they encounter a sea serpent or a hydra out on open waters, but this is on a new scale.

“Admiral,” calls a voice from next to him. A station operator, wearing a bulky black headset, looks his way. “Movement on the screen. Distant, but following us.”

Ankerman watches the blip on the glassy screen. The sonar screams out into the waters below the ship, the audio waves reflecting back when they hit something with the correct material properties. “Still?” he asks.

This thing has been there since the first second they arrived here.

The operator nods. “Keep an eye on it. Keep depth charges ready.”

“Sir!” replies the operator, passing the order along through the radio to the armaments station.

Admiral Ankerman stares out through the window of the bridge, watching as they crest past a black wave. “Navigator. Plot us to marker beta.”

“Sir!”

“Full speed,” orders Ankerman, feeling the world fly below him as his ship cuts through the waters. “Tell the others to catch up to us when they’re ready.”

“Sir, these are uncharted waters,” remarks a seaman. “Is it wise to break formation?”

Ackerman stands there, tugging lightly on his beard in a stroking motion that gives him a rather complex aura of maturity and knowledge. “We’re the ones charting these waters, son,” he replies. “Keep those guns loaded.”

“Sir!”

Ackerman watches the forward cannons on the ship’s bow adjust their angles, turning in all directions around them at once so that no matter where something comes from, one gun will be ready to fire at the very least.

Gods know they’ll need them.

A massive, black shadow streaks past the ship, just below the surface of the ocean.