Authors' Notes: The 9th anniversary of the Great Tōhoku Earthquake, without which we probably wouldn't be here, is now in the rear-view mirror. Even so, please take a minute of silence for the lost.
Too late for Turret Two or KC's 7th anniversary... Was hoping to make it.
If you're reading this on AO3 or FanFiction dot Net, we urge you to join us at SpaceBattles or Sufficient Velocity for previews and discussion.
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CHAPTER 26
===[===]===
The lunch reception eventually drew to a close, some way into the afternoon, and the official guests, more distant acquaintances and older family left, after which the younger relatives and closest friends joined the newlyweds in adjourning to another, cozier venue for a second round of merriment.
On the guests' own dime, of course. The families' largesse didn't extend quite that far.
Ayaka was glad Jersey and Wisconsin had taken it upon themselves to get Missouri out of the picture. She loved her sisters, but she doubted their presence would have done the mood any favours. Besides, she had seen said third sister eyeing members of the guestlist in a way that made her hear Hall & Oates or Nelly Furtado in her head.
There had been plenty to say. Life still went on back on the Eastern Seaboard; though the abyssals continued testing the defences from time to time, no subsequent raid had gotten near enough to actually firing on NYC like back in April, and a faint but far from oppressive underlying tension had become the new normal.
Not that Ayaka was lacking in the area of conversation topics. Wild stories of what military personnel got up to while off-duty, while often exaggerated, still had at least a grain of truth to them, and shipgirls yet more so, even after she gave anything that might compromise opsec a wide berth.
That time Hammann had been tearfully glomped by an amputee she had deluged with healing water until the lost limbs regrew in real time was always a hoot.
That said, the pseudo-nijikai could not go on forever either. Far too soon, from one angle, given how few the chances to meet in the flesh had been over the past half year and would continue to be going forward for the foreseeable future. Not soon enough, from another, given the unearthly time Ayaka and Uileag had had to wake up earlier. Gradually the party dispersed, each saying their heartfelt goodbyes, until it was just Uileag's siblings and Kagami that joined them in returning to the hotel that had hosted the lunch reception.
"Here you go," Kagami said, presenting them with a keycard.
Near the tail end of the lunch reception, the siblings had helped them check in to the room that had been booked for them.
Unfortunately, the housing situation was still in flux. Uileag had to finish up with the CEC course before his posting could be finalised, and the next convoy was due to depart soon. This issue would not have a permanent solution just yet.
Hence this.
"You have our full blessing to do naughty things while our backs are turned!" Ciarán exclaimed, grinning impishly, and beat a hasty retreat with his tittering sisters before Ayaka and Uileag could say a word.
"You…" Ayaka breathed in and out in rasping hisses of displeasure. "You…"
"Ciarán James Greer," Uileag shouted, "get back here!"
{What have I gotten myself into?} Kagami asked with a sigh. {Isn't there enough crazy in this family already?}
{You've met them before,} Ayaka said, uncomprehending. {How's that news?}
{They're your direct in-laws, Oneechan,} Kagami said petulantly. {Not mine. I don't speak with them as often as you, and don't need to.}
{I guess that's fair…?} Ayaka said, still uncertain.
"And you!" Kagami whirled on Uileag.
{I can understand you perfectly well, you know,} Uileag said grumpily, cutting her off preemptively..
The younger Shirokaze, taken aback by her lapse, tried to look fierce in an attempt to retake lost ground. {I… knew that! You'd better look after this airhead sister of mine!}
{Hey!}
Ayaka's outrage fell on deaf ears; Kagami was already walking briskly off, muttering something about getting away before the crazy infected her too.
With nothing else to do here, they headed up.
The hotel room was, well, a hotel room. Double bed, attached bathroom, TV, long desk with mirror, minibar, the works. Better adorned than some purely functional affairs, more than spacious, and with the Space Needle visible in the distance from the window, but it wasn't going to be winning any prizes for creativity.
There was some silent trepidation. Inevitable given the many earlier cautions faithfully followed against going alone into the same room as someone of the opposite sex out of wedlock. It lasted but briefly, for Ayaka broke the stalemate by telling Uileag to go bathe first.
After he was done, he was met at the bathroom door by Ayaka holding a wrapped package. "No peeking," she said sternly.
"What's the fuss?" Uileag was confused and a little peeved. "I've seen you… your body naked before!"
"Not from the outside you didn't!"
"That matters why?"
"It just does!" Ayaka shouted insistently. "So don't!"
Uileag grumbled at her obstinacy as the bathroom door shut behind her and various ablutionary sounds issued.
The bathroom door opened and Ayaka emerged.
Uileag stared.
"What?"
Uileag stared some more.
Ayaka was now dressed in a dark blue, slightly purple, cleavage-baring strapped babydoll with black lace trim, a single garter on her right thigh and a sheer white shawl around her arms.
Granted, it was big enough that on a normal woman it could pass for a daring dress, but on Ayaka's frame there was no mistaking what it was.
"Nani?" She repeated, more insistently this time.
"I'm not used to seeing you in something like this," Uileag said, confusion clear in his face and voice. "I remember clearly that salmon thing that you somehow always wore the night before we swapped, and other frumpy sleepwear, but nothing of this sort."
"That didn't stop you from the diagnostics last time."
"Should it have?" Uileag's confusion didn't waste any time in shooting back. More firmly, he next said, "Neither did it you."
Ayaka reddened. "Yes, I-I did! So-so what?!"
"Besides, that was then! Now is now. You, on the other hand, haven't changed much."
That caught Ayaka short. She wouldn't be so sure about that.
"Sorry?"
Had she been thinking aloud? "I wouldn't be so sure about that," Ayaka repeated as she bent to kiss him. Surprised, Uileag took a moment to return her embrace.
When they broke off, Ayaka positioned herself so her back was to Uileag. "Go on."
"Huh?"
Ayaka backed into him and took hold of his wrists to guide his hands. "Do what you liked to do so much," she said, more insistently.
"Liked?" Uileag's frown was also evident in his voice and hesitancy, though he eventually made a move.
It was a very soothing experience, Ayaka thought, although… "You're really very familiar with this, aren't you?" She asked, a slight accusatory tone to her voice.
Uileag froze in place. "Look, when we remembered everything, that meant really everything! Including this!"
Ayaka let out a tired concessionary sigh at his frantic response and pressed herself more tightly back against him, and so he resumed.
It was really a very soothing experience. Feeling Uileag against herself through the thinness of the garment, savouring his smell with the dash of cologne he had deigned to use today, it was relaxing and lulling her into a dreamy state, even with that pressure against her back.
Wait.
Pressure against her back?
Realisation started to dawn dreadfully, but too late; the Ship was already tearing its way out of the metaphysical chains, maintained every morn, that had kept it bound for months.
There was no attempt at pleasantry or smoothness this time; it had been frustrated long enough, and with satiation at hand, it had run out of patience.
Feed, you fool! How long will you cripple yourself with this self-sabotage?! What are you waiting for?! What excuse do you have now?!
It roared. In a manner of speaking, in her innermost being, at once machine and a multitude of man and yet not quite either, but to call it speech at all was assigning the primal bundle of instincts in question a level of eloquence it didn't actually have. Despite all that, the intent and rage born of disappointment and denial was blindingly clear.
There was a sudden needy itching sensation in her belly, a terrible hunger beyond merely gnawing that demanded immediate satiation, and her vision started to gain a purple overlay.
I do this at my own pace, not yours! I am not a slavering beast what hindbrain leads it by the nose! Ayaka shouted back in her head.
Uileag paused, abruptly aware that Ayaka had begun quivering. "Ayachi?"
With great effort, Ayaka took hold of his wrists as gently as she could once more and pried them off, then turned to face him.
What Uileag saw prompted an unguarded startled gasp. "Ayachi, your-your eyes!"
"I'm in control of the situation," Ayaka said firmly through gritted teeth, fighting against the Ship's continued urging her to haste even as she reached for him. "I am in control of the situation."
===[===]===
{Weathering with You Original Soundtrack - Fireworks Festival}
Spotify track/1IISJrJingJVC2JItzHG67
Ayaka rose to her feet slowly, too troubled to properly savour the wondrous warmth, accompanied by a faint electric tingling strangely like pop rocks, making its way down her upper body.
DAMAGE CONTROL EFFICIENCY INCREASED (RESTORATION NOW AVAILABLE)
COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT EFFICIENCY INCREASED
GUNNERY DEPARTMENT EFFICIENCY INCREASED
ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT EFFICIENCY INCREASED
HULL DEPARTMENT EFFICIENCY INCREASED
NAVIGATION DEPARTMENT EFFICIENCY INCREASED
SUPPLY DEPARTMENT EFFICIENCY INCREASED
It was, to be blunt, startling how much she had missed out on by going without vitae, even if she'd like to think that knowing that beforehand wouldn't have made her compromise.
She didn't know where exactly the chiminage made the transformation into vitae - in both the forms of manually-activated Or Energy boosting and passive bolstering of her crew headcount - in the complicated convergence of biological, mechanical and spiritual systems that was a shipgirl, but she was already feeling better than she had ever had before, the day's exhaustion washed away as surely as by a high-powered water jet. If cars had their own sapient spirits, she imagined this might be what it felt like to get a long-overdue full servicing. As things stood, the Ship had finally stopped trying to make her do things its way, and not a moment too soon.
What was that Uileag had said about her eyes?
Leaving him where he had toppled backwards, splayed out on the bed, euphoria still plastered all over his face, she padded over to the room's mirror and looked at her reflection in it, trying to solve that particular mystery.
What she saw made her lean forward to stare closely, frowning, at the glowing pink heart shapes where her pupils should have been.
fav dot me /dcdn4r7
Ayaka continued to stare, perplexed, even as the glow started to die down and her normal pupils began to reappear. Blinking furiously, she ascertained that there wasn't a matching pink tint to her vision she'd exchanged the purple for.
Without that salient feature distracting her any longer, Ayaka's eyes now panned down to the next one. A trail of drool had escaped her mouth at some point she hadn't noticed, culminating in a mess on her chin. Reflexively, she tried to stick her tongue out to lick it clean, even though she knew she wouldn't be able to get it all.
The pleasant little spark she got on consuming it told her it wasn't only saliva, and she peered at it more intently.
The mess looked oddly familiar. Almost as if…
Kuchikamizake?
No, no, no.
Ayaka took a sharp, horrified breath, already-red cheeks intensifying in shade.
No way.
Was this what the three assholes had been getting on her case for?! That kuchikamizake looked like-like-
She shrieked at the thought until she was out of breath and cleaned up the rest of the mess, too infuriated to appreciate it, then walked back to where Uileag had managed to sit back up and was dazedly watching her, still sufficiently not all there to comment on her antics.
"What was that about being familiar with you?" Uileag asked. He was trying to summon up annoyance, but his attempts to convey it through his voice were thwarted by the dreamy throes he was still mired in.
"Yes, yes, I was wrong," Ayaka said sheepishly.
Uileag scratched the back of his neck, unsure about how to proceed. "I guess it's my turn to-"
"No." Ayaka said firmly.
"No?" Uileag was confused and a little concerned by the atypical edge to Ayaka's voice.
"No," Ayaka repeated. The Ship might no longer be clamouring for her to hurry up, but the needy itch was still there, eagerly awaiting further relief. How much of this hunger was merely herself and how much the Ship, she didn't know, and she wasn't sure she cared anymore. "Let's not waste any more time!"
===[===]===
The pain was expected.
The wonderful wholeness and completeness that came from plugging a void she hadn't previously been aware of and yet found long overdue, that too was expected.
The sudden broadening of her mental horizon, for want of a better word, not so much.
The awe and curiosity that had… "intruded" wasn't quite the right word, because that implied hostility and being unwelcome… had a very familiar tenor to them, and as Ayaka looked at Uileag's face, she understood why.
Perhaps that Abrahamic old saw about two becoming one flesh, mind, heart and soul did have some truth to it, though she was quite sure it wasn't so literal where baselines were concerned… and did this apply to all unions of shipgirl and baseline, or did their unique circumstances have something to do with it? Vestal had never mentioned it before, and Ayaka had never had reason to think such a thing existed.
Was this musubi?
"Hey, Ayachi."
Shaken from her contemplation, Ayaka felt as much as saw the sly amusement making itself known in a grin on Uileag's face, one that clearly said Morrie had been a bad influence, and when the follow-up thought started forming in his mind, she grimaced.
"Remember when you said-"
"Uileag Shane Greer, don't you dare finish that sentence!" Ayaka shouted frantically.
"-that you'd know that you were the one inside me and I was the one inside you?"
===[===]===
Like a sunset emerging from behind the clouds obscuring it, casting the world in a golden hue-
BLISS
SUCH BLISS
SUCH PURE, UNMITIGATED BLISS
Bliss like she'd never known, like she'd never have thought possible before this!
The most fantastic fire, that made escaping a blizzard into a heated building feel like a trifle, yet not dry and stifling like a bad heater at full blast!
The power dancing down and racing across spine and keel, eagerly waiting to be called on!
A most beautiful song, her body and spirit had sung from the first intake, even though its channel had been suboptimal. This one through the intended channel was not so great a difference as that between a choir at full strength compared to a lone vocalist, but it was still so, so much more wonderful, and she silently thanked her grandmother for keeping her menstrual cycle in mind when selecting the date of the wedding.
With the machine shop's drinking up, as Shimakaze had once put it, came a clarity she hadn't thought possible before, arrival at the answer to what she hadn't yet been able to grasp after the wedding ceremony. Ideas waiting to be willed into existence and realised. Patterns to weave and moves to make. So much she now could-
A frantic tapping on her back jolted her out of the most beautiful reverie, and she looked down from the ceiling to see Uileag starting to turn purple where her orgasm-fueled embrace had been pressing his face into her breasts too tightly.
She immediately let go.
Uileag's head came up, and he sucked in precious oxygen, free at last, panting with hungry desperation, as she let her limbs sag onto the bed.
For a while, there was just a very companionable silence, and the racing pop rocks tingle of freshly-converted vitae gradually waned into a soothing subtle subdermal susurration somewhat like if the lapping of waves against a beach was a tactile experience.
"That wasn't supposed to happen, was it?" Uileag suddenly said, confused and contemplative within and without.
"Eh?"
"I thought-just now, I saw myself boarding a ship for a moment."
Boarding a… Ayaka winced. That was a terrible pun.
"Did you say something?"
Ayaka winced again and tried to think like she was whispering. She should have figured this peculiar link would be two-way. "I don't think so; did you hear anything?"
He looked askance at her for turning the question back on him. "I'm still feeling lightheaded after all that. I can't tell." He punctuated it with a tired exhale while gesturing downward.
It looked like this would require more study, but for now there was something more important to do. "You can keep going, right?"
"What?"
Ayaka prodded her belly, where she could vividly feel he was still very much at general quarters. "You can keep going, right?"
===[===]===
"Sorry, Ayachi," Uileag said mournfully a long while later. "I can't keep going anymore."
"It's okay, Uiui," Ayaka said reassuringly.
With a loud, tired exhale, he slumped forward onto her breasts once more, and but for a bit of shifting about, trying to avoid resting on hard collarbone, sleep claimed him soon after.
Still shivering with power and delight from this latest round of recruitment, Ayaka ran a hand through Uileag's hair slowly. She'd never had a chance to look at him up close asleep like this before, between being naturally unable to do so while swapped and not putting themselves in potentially compromising positions pre-marriage. The contrast between how harmlessly peaceful he looked right now in slumber and his usual rough-hewn mannerisms while awake was striking, and it brought a dopey smile to her face.
As the burning electric intensity and heavenly heat once again gave way to the gentle lapping of waves, the Ship resurfaced, grumbling about how many holes there still were in her crew manifest and her foolishness in letting him go to sleep so soon.
"Sit, boy," Ayaka said, annoyance flaring up. "Don't spoil this for me. Go bother Other Me, wherever she's hiding." Turning her attention back to Uileag as she let her head settle onto the pillow, she now said, "It's okay. We still have time."
===[===]===
{your name. Original Soundtrack - School Road}
Spotify track/6GKonTaAhNzRw4cn1SSVkU
The other three Iowas were already at breakfast by the time Ayaka and Uileag got down.
"Good morning, IoIo!" Missouri shouted. "How was the recruitment session?"
Both of their faces flushed with embarrassment. Ayaka switched to radio and asked, angrily flustered, "Mo! First, why are you asking this aloud?! Second, I don't kiss and tell!"
"Please tell me you had an eye-opener at least?" Missouri asked, still cheerfully undeterred.
Ayaka didn't dignify that with an answer. Despite really, really wanting it, she just couldn't figure out how to turn the glare she was shooting Missouri into actual eyebeams. She was vaguely aware it had to do with using Forces to emit light rather than taking in what was reflected, but she had yet to be able to actually connect the dots in such a way as to form the necessary imago. No amount of poring over photonics texts or trying to sit in on Vestal studying the potential miniaturization of HELIOS and IFPC-HEL had helped thus far. The particularly maddening thing was that there was a well-established rote, seeing as she had seen other shipgirls like Takanami weaponise their searchlights, and yet it just refused to click when she tried to learn it.
It did not help that Missouri's bringing up the topic had alerted her to the fact that the downside of being aware there was a void in oneself was being aware there was a void in oneself.
That said, now that she thought about it, Sierra Mikes being incarnated directly into physically mature bodies rather than being born and growing up on the slow path might explain why they had an emotional detachment from the recruitment process. Perhaps every connection to a man they partook of just became subsumed into the existing hundreds if not thousands that had originally contributed to the gestalt.
The growls of empty stomachs suddenly filled the air, and into the silence that followed, Jersey said, "Mo, allow our sister and brother-in-law to get breakfast first." The tone made clear she wasn't actually asking the third sister for permission, and Ayaka and Uileag immediately hurried off to the buffet counters.
Shortly after they had come back to the table with their food and begun digging in, though, it was not Missouri who put them on the spot. "Baby?" Wisconsin asked.
Both of them started. "Eh?"
"I heard that wrong, right?" Uileag said next.
Wisconsin shook her head, dead serious. "Big Sis has begun recruitment. In fra-baselines, the same motion results in reproduction. Ergo, baby."
"Yeah! We want to be aunts and coo over a cute little niece or nephew! That's what frails tell their newlywed siblings, right?" Missouri pointed excitedly at Ayaka's belly even as the latter couldn't help thinking that Wisconsin didn't even seem to consider the idea of having children for herself.
"Hey, hey, hold up." Uileag turned to Ayaka. "Ayachi, if you would?"
"Un." Turning to her sisters, Ayaka said, "Not yet. We've discussed and decided that now's not the right time to put myself out of action for months when there's, y'know, a war going on? We'll maintain my vitae levels by monitoring my cycle and using the necessary alternate channels."
"Yes, but-" Missouri abruptly turned to look at Jersey, who'd been looking atypically pensive ever since the talk of babies started. "Whassa matter, JerJer? A highly-eligible Donna like you already thinking of shackling yourself to someone?" A catlike grin formed on her face. "Lemme guess… that literature professor with BERND Seattle, Percival Gloire?"
"You would be wise to mind your words, Sister," Jersey said with a careful intensity that revealed nothing.
"Don't stall too long," Wisconsin said in the meantime.
"Wisky?!"
"What do you mean?" Uileag wanted to think he was speaking in a more measured manner than Ayaka's confused outburst, but he couldn't help thinking there was something disquieting about the way Wisconsin said that, even by her usually downcast standards.
"There's a war going on. Something might happen."
"Wisky, what are you saying?!" Missouri immediately interrupted with atypical harshness, but the damage was already done.
===[===]===
A few days later
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"One-Two, One-One," Yorktown said. "Mass dot accel, execute when ready."
"One-Two, relax! No one's going to rake you for fizzling! Take it from me; you can pole all you want beforehand, but debuting a new trick's always difficult!" Princeton's cheerful shout despite the circumstances stood as much in stark contrast to Yorktown's curtness as their choice of clothing. "Three-Three, hit it!"
Three-Three gave a thumbs up and filled the airwaves.
{Manuel - Gas Gas Gas}
YouTube watch?v=ljwUlY9WW1I
No pressure. Right. Easier said than done.
Another day, another convoy, another abyssal attack. Ayaka wondered if she was getting way too blasé about this.
No, no getting distracted. She hadn't been able to do this months ago, back when she had first been assigned to these convoy escort missions, but that was then. This was now.
Still, she couldn't entirely shake off the niggling sense of self-doubt that what had worked first in the test runs with Uatu One alone, then with the whole element, in the safety of Puget Sound would still apply in the heat of combat as she was about to try.
Applying the acceleration effect to others was, as befitting the greater understanding and power consumption it demanded, a more complicated effort than accelerating herself. She'd sometimes pondered with Maryland and the more philosophically-minded around her how exactly she - or any shipgirl for that matter - knew how to do what they did, since all this was hitherto alien to at least 90% of their kind. Was the dog wagging the tail or the tail wagging the dog? Or, to put it more pop culturally, was Luke using the Force, or was the Force using Luke?
First, as with almost everything else she did, were the hand motions for unmaking a braid, that she might lay down with the threads another spell. In response, her surroundings started to turn fuzzy and take on a green tint.
One clockwise turn, forming with her foot a circle, then in to touch the other foot before moving out again, ready to link self with others..
Braiding and weaving again, one supernal strand for every maritime unit to be accelerated. If she'd been making an actual cord with tangible thread, its pattern would have been distorted and disjointed. Not that of one outright able to move wholly independently of the timestream or outright halt said movement - that was something she still lacked the understanding for - but reflecting one with a loosened link to it, an attempt at visually conveying what it meant to exist in a temporally altered state.
A fool's errand, perhaps. At times like this, Ayaka could understand the sense of superhuman superiority some shipgirls held. People could be plenty smug over the most insignificant of trifles; what more when you could see gamma rays, hear X-rays, smell dark matter, feel solar wind - and all that as a mere lowliest initiate in the enlightened ways?
Arm out, seeking the fastest of them, and in that direction a gentle tap at the air with an index finger, followed by a word spoken with the same careful, deliberate intensity as when she pronounced norito before the kamisama. "Dot."
Last but not least, as with when she was only accelerating herself, a double time hand signal to finish off.
"DO YOU LIKE MY CAR!" Three-Three shouted, and many of the others joined her..
An electric tingling started in her chest, growing first into a warm buzz and then surging to a hot peak before going back down to the tingling and settling there, and her pitometer log's reading began to rise. With the omnipresent threat of abyssal attack, the shipping industry had thrown out the fuel-saving slow steaming practices adopted over the past decade and gone back to running at full cruise speed. Even at flank, they wouldn't be outrunning any but the most lumbering waterborne pursuers, but every minute out of firing range was another minute of not being at risk, another minute for rescuers to arrive.
She didn't need the Ship's active pushiness to know their flank speed was below her own or feel the urge to fully open up the throttle.
That was about to change.
22 knots. She was doing above Maryland and West Virginia's flank speed, and a moment's check of the radar showed the formation remained unbroken.
26 knots. She was doing above the civvies' official flank speeds, and the formation remained unbroken.
30 knots.
33 knots. She was doing above her designed top speed, and didn't feel anything odd, didn't hear any strange rattling or other untoward sounds.
36 knots. She was doing above her theorised light loading speed with the designed overload in play. Situation still normal.
37 knots.
38 knots. Top as designed speed of a Fletcher-class.
Fuel consumption rate unchanged.
Structural integrity status unchanged.
"One-One, One-Two. Stabilised at 38 knots, situation normal."
"One-Two, One-One, roger," Yorktown said. "All ships, One-One, status."
"One-Three, situation normal. Not bad, not bad at all."
"One-Four, situation normal," Mina said, tone one of obvious trepidation. "This… is my intended top speed?"
"One-Five, situation normal," Hammann said. "It-it's not like I wanted to go fast or anything!"
"One-Six, situation normal."
"Two-One, situation normal," Essex said.
"Still slow!" Bell unhelpfully added.
"Two-Two, situation normal," West Virginia said. "Now this is a proper speed of death," she added with malicious intent, and her bared teeth suddenly seemed to shine disturbingly.
"Two-Three, situation normal," Oakland said, tense. "Bell's right; the mosquitoes are still gaining on us!"
Ayaka wasn't rankled by the reminder about the swarm of abyssal planes, with their stylised black upper jaw forms and dorsal lights, cutting through the air at over 200 knots towards the convoy heedless of the shipgirls' aviators beginning interception. She was under no illusions of outrunning them, not like this.
"Two-Four, situation normal," Charles Ausburne said gleefully. "Finally, the speed of justice! 31 knots? What's that?"
"Two-Five, situation normal."
"Two-Six, situation normal."
"Three-One, situation normal! Guess you didn't fizzle after all!"
"Three-Two, situation normal," Maryland said, a little worried. "Mercy me, this is a bit faster than I'm comfortable with."
"Three-Three, situation normal!" She went back to singing along immediately afterward.
"Three-Four, sit-situation norm-no, this is too fast!" Spence wasted no energy for understatement.
Yorktown turned to scan her and saw nothing wrong with the readings. "Three-Four, One-One. Your situation is normal."
"Three-Five, situation normal."
"Three-Six, situation normal."
The rest of the reports came in from Tripoli, her escorts and the other cargo ships without incident, and Ayaka relaxed fractionally. She wasn't about to celebrate yet, though.
"Very good. Report immediately if status changes. One-Two, mass line accel, execute when ready," Yorktown said again.
Accelerating others was a more demanding endeavour, especially so many at once, and Ayaka knew now why the carriers had said the expense needed to shield the air wing was uneconomical. She wasn't going to be reacting to Shimakaze the way she normally could.
Then again, she had not been fool enough to go all in from the start, either.
"Line," Ayaka said with careful intent again, drawing one before her in the air with her fingers, and made the double time signal.
With the groundwork already laid, it was much quicker to increase the multiplier of the acceleration, and the tingling rose into the buzz and then the surge before falling to a low, stable tingling once more.
41 knots. She was doing above Shimakaze's trial speed from back when the stripoyer hadn't been a destripper.
43 knots. She was doing above Maury's trial speed, wherever she was.
44 knots. She was doing above Tashkent's trial speed.
46 knots. She was doing above Le Terrible's trial speed.
50 knots.
60 knots.
70 knots.
76 knots.
"One-One, One-Two. Stabilised at 76 knots. Situation normal."
"Roger, One-Two." Yorktown called for statuses again, and they came back all green this time too. "One-Two, mass triangle accel, execute when ready."
"Triangle," Ayaka said with deliberation, drawing the shape and making the signal.
80 knots.
90 knots.
100 knots.
Despite herself, Ayaka couldn't hold back a laugh at the thought that it was a bit too late to be worrying about breaking the laws of physics when she'd left hydrodynamics curled up in the fetal position rocking slowly back and forth while mumbling incoherently to itself at the cavitation limit a few dozen knots ago.
110 knots.
114 knots.
"One-One, One-Two. Stabilised at 114 knots. Situation normal."
{Guardians of the Galaxy Original Soundtrack - Black Tears}
YouTube watch?v=5wPEiaFT1-M
Yorktown called for statuses and got back all greens once more, and there was a pensiveness to the silence that followed that, broken but briefly by the call of "Leakers!". It warned of abyssal planes starting to enter extreme air-search radar range despite the efforts of the friendly aviator fairies.
The uncertainty was not unfounded. In the testing, Ayaka had found that even with her newly-increased base level of power, she couldn't output enough Or Energy to exceed the 3x multiplier.
"Ready for a higher form of war, One-Two?!" Princeton asked before Yorktown could give a new order.
Key words: "base level of power".
"One-Two, mass square accel, execute when ready," Yorktown said, split mental instances meaning she didn't need to take an eye off the inbound bandits as they continued creeping towards fire-control radar range.
Calling on the latent power in the vitae was so straightforward, more in line with Stepping or Artillery Spotting or any of the myriad basic functions that made her her rather than the complex works of true Spherical spellcasting. Where the Ship was an insatiable, easily-loosed bundle of the primal need to complete the mission and remain combat ready, whether by fight or flight or feed, there was something almost achingly, hauntingly motherly about the vitae, all but calling to her to take its hand-
Beautiful, so beautiful was the explosive, rapturous release that followed, and she was glad she kept the radio off when unused as she failed to hold back a moan from the purest pleasure rocking her. The power roiling her was overwhelmingly hot, yet utterly right, not the slightest bit burning, scaldingly painful or even uncomfortable, and she could understand now why so many other shipgirls sought recruitment opportunities so fervently. "Square," she pronounced with a faint but audible flang as the initial burst of bliss began to fade like afterglow, receding with naught but a slight yet splendid shudder to show for it as she drew the shape and made the hand signal.
120 knots.
130 knots.
140 knots.
150 knots.
152 knots.
"One-One, One-Two. Stabilised at 152 knots. Situation normal."
"Roger, One-Two," Yorktown said. After checking the statuses, she added, "Can you continue?"
Ayaka ran the numbers through her fairies. Current consumption rate. Projected consumption rate at higher multipliers. Forecast usage if going down to hit Southeast Asia again, and there was something blackly comic about that thought. The expected demands from what else was in her toolbox that she might need to use. "Affirmative."
"Roger, One-Two. Execute when ready."
"Pentagon," Ayaka intoned, drew the shape and made the hand signal.
This time, the peak burned noticeably hotter, if still not unpleasantly, and it settled at a more intense level than the mere tingle before.
160 knots.
170 knots.
Fire-control radars locked on at last. "Tripoli Actual, Uatu One-One, tracking, tracking, tracking!" Yorktown shouted into the radio.
"Roger, Uatu One-One. Birds away!" Tripoli replied as the missile-armed ships began launching.
180 knots.
The tests had shown that, at least under 3x acceleration, the others could fire without anything giving way under the unusual stresses. Ayaka knew that. She knew she herself had no problems firing at the far higher speeds afforded by self-acceleration. Nevertheless, there had been concerns that conventional hulls would not be able to take the demands of combat when operating outside the usual envelope. She was glad they were unfounded.
190 knots. The torpedo bombers were falling behind now.
"One-One, One-Two. Stabilised at 190 knots. Situation normal."
"Roger, One-Two." Yorktown got the status checks done, then asked, "Can you continue?"
Prompted by the previous such query, Ayaka had been running the numbers while moving up to this multiplier, and this time she wasn't so certain. "One-One, current store does not allow for sustained operation under mass hexagon accel conditions without compromising reserve."
"One-One, Three-One, go En-secure." Princeton suddenly cut in. Once the other carrier had made the switch, she said, "One round of recruitment wasn't going to be enough! I told you, Yorkie! If you'd just postponed this convoy we wouldn't be having this problem!"
"Three-One, don't act dumb!" Hammann, who had followed Yorktown into the private channel, shouted irritably. "Convoys aren't easy to reschedule, idiot! You should know that as an element leader! Besides, One-Two's husband," here she made a face, "had to go back to Hueneme too anyway!"
"Well, excuse me, One-Five!" Princeton gesticulated more violently than was necessary with her cane, unwilling to wait for the foes to get within range of her weapons first, and the space the incoming bombers were moving in erupted into distortions that shredded anything caught in them like impossibly-sharp buzzsaws. "I'm trying to do what's best for us all!" Belatedly, she started drawing up portals for the others to fire through.
"One-Five, thank you, but that's enough. Three-One, knock it off," Yorktown said, mental partitioning keeping annoyance at the latter off her face and voice. Switching back to the main channel. "One-Two, I need 4 hours. Can you sustain hexagon accel for that long?"
"One-One, 4 hours?" A moment's math showed it was definitely doable, but Ayaka reran the numbers just to be sure, wondering why that particular amount of time. "Affirmative."
"Very good. Drop to triangle after 4 hours or after bandits have faded. Execute when ready."
Ayaka took a deep breath to recenter herself in the face of her newfound uncertainty. Yorktown's saying that she could turn off the tap as soon as the hostiles left detection range wasn't as reassuring as the carrier probably thought it was. "Hexagon."
Prepared by the previous round, the increased burn of the peak did not come as a surprise; that said, the way the base level of sensation had risen closer still to the buzz that had been the midpoint for dot accel was concerning.
200 knots. The known maximum speed of the VA-111 Shkal supercavitating torpedo
210 knots.
220 knots.
228 knots.
"One-One, One-Two. Stabilised at 228 knots. Situation normal."
"Roger, One-Two."
Slowly but surely, the dive bombers began to be left in the dust as well.
"Two-Three, you seeing these numbers?!" Princeton suddenly shouted, her voice heavy with realisation.
"Three-One, what?"
"The bandits! 222 knots on the dive bombers, 179 on the torpedo bombers, 4-plus hour range on the former! You're the air defence specialist; doesn't that ring any bells?"
Oakland's face scrunched up, first in contemplation, then in confusion. "You're getting hyphy, Three-One. Go take a… what's the thing you say? Poler's recess? Just because the mosquitoes have similar specs to our chicks doesn't mean anything." She shook her head. "You're being outta pocket."
===[===]===
Captain Anatoli Mikhalovich Gryzlov fumed silently within his Tu-22M.
He didn't consider himself a "fighter jock", as the Western term went - he'd have tried for the MiG-29 or Su-27 variants if his interests lay in that direction, as there weren't that many 57s available yet - but he wanted to do more for the war effort. It continued to leave a bad taste in his mouth how the Кремлядь (kremliad) played their petty political games with the Council from the safety of Moscow - so many, many kilometres from the nearest sea - in forbidding the Armed Forces from engaging anything that didn't directly threaten the Ródina. The notification from VALKYRIE that the convoy crossing the Bering had come under abyssal attack while he was cutting impotently through the air, unable to assist once again despite the mods attached to the missiles in his plane's bays, was doing his mood no favours.
{Anatoli, tell me I'm reading this wrong.}
{What's wrong, Konstantin?} Alerted by his copilot's strangely nervous words, Gryzlov scanned his displays but couldn't see anything obviously wrong.
{The speed of these surface contacts.}
Gryzlov looked again at the display showing the returns from the bomber's NV-45 phased array radar, and then looked yet again, alarmed and confused at the readings showing 100-plus knots. The fact that the offenders were reading friendly on the VALKYRIE IFF didn't help.
"Overlord, Shikra 201," Gryzlov said, switching from Russian to English after getting on the secure channel to the C4ISTAR plane in question. "Requesting confirmation of surface convoy bearing 045, range 320 kilometres."
He silently wondered whether that talking eagle of Essex Donaldova's - and it spoke something of how mad the world had become that he didn't even stumble over the phrase - had already made his plane.
"Affirmative, Shikra 201," Overlord replied, unflappable as always despite the unusual situation. "Would you like to speak with them?"
"Yes, please." Gryzlov couldn't keep his confusion out of his voice.
"Copy that, wait one."
"Shikra 201, Uatu One-One," Yorktown said shortly afterwards.
"Uatu One-One, Shikra 201." Without wasting time, he asked in persistent bewilderment, "What are you doing?"
"Fine, thank you!" Princeton cut in abruptly, overflowing with cheer.
===[===]===
Authors' Notes: Still looking for assistance on Russian radio protocol.