I was watching The Last Ship the other day and that inspired me to pick this up again. We'll see how far it goes this time?

The Final Voyage
2: Are we at war?

Like the rest of the ship, the bridge of the Missouri was a dizzying mix of modern, outdated, and truly archaic technology. Supposedly, it had been rebuilt from the ground up in the 2020s, yet some 1940s vintage technology remained. Clunky mechanical controls sat beside modern holographic ones. The crew manning their stations, too, were an eclectic mix of UNAS Joint Defence Command personnel, Alliance servicepersons, and civilian volunteers.

Captain Dennis Lacroix, UNAS JDC, was out of his element. This was his last assignment, a largely ceremonial one to cap off a successful but not distinguished career. Before taking command of the Missouri, he had served on cutters, keeping the waves safe. Warship combat was foreign to him. The smart thing to do, he reasoned, was to evacuate the ship, find a shelter and wait it out. But a small voice in the back of his head told him to do something else entirely.

"Separate all lines, cut the anchor. Thrusters ahead full." The helmsman, a veteran of the First Contact War, carried out the order without question. Small electric thruster units, literally bolted onto the hull, came to life, trying to push the huge grey battleship slowly through the water. The ship shuddered, but refused to move.

"Sir, shore control not responding. Docking arms will not retract," an Ensign told the captain.

"Jettison them!" he ordered.

"Sir, what are-"

"Ensign, we need to get underway. Get those arms disengaged one way or another!"

"Yes, sir." That galvanized her into action. She picked up a century-old sound-powered phone. "Control, bridge. Blow the docking arms... I know, just do it!"

Muffled booms could be heard from the bridge, but the sixty thousand ton battleship didn't shudder in the slightest when explosive bolts severed the docking arms connecting it to shore. The lights flickered as ship service power was switched from the now disconnected shore mains to turbogenerators and auxiliary diesels. The old ship lurched as she began making headway.

Captain Lacroix grabbed a large phone from its receptacle on the wall. His omni-tool would have been just as functional, but they used the old phones for show and it had become a force of habit. "Main control, bridge. Tel, I need speed! How are my engines?"

"Four boilers operational, captain," an accented voice replied. "One more that we just lit off raising steam and one more almost online. I can give you full speed on two shafts and half speed on one more in one minute."

"Make it so. Everything we've got." The engineer worked quickly, opening valves that admitted steam to the battleship's massive turbines. The machinery may have been hopelessly outdated and horrifically inefficient, but it was well maintained and produced just as much power as it did when it was built. Grey smoke poured from the Missouri's stacks and the ship lurched noticeably as two of its four huge brass propellers spun up to speed.

"Are we at battle stations?" the first officer asked, bolting onto the bridge.

"Yes, Lieutenant Commander, we are. As of thirty seconds ago, this ship is at war." He had no idea if that was strictly true, but didn't care. "Get down to the secondary conn."

"Sir, you can't be serious!" he argued. "The emergency channels are saying this is it. We should evacuate-"

"I know what this is. We're not evacuating," the Captain said firmly. "You have your orders, del Rio."

"Understood, sir." The XO replied reluctantly before leaving the bridge.

"Captain, we're going to hit the Arizona memorial!" the helmsman warned.

"Oh, shit." There was a sickening crunch as the massive battleship, now making several knots, smashed the lightly built structure into a crumpled mess.

"Are we at war, sir?" the Ensign asked nervously.

Captain Lacroix stepped toward the front of the bridge, surveying Pearl Harbor through the thick aluminosilicate windows. The sky was darkening with dark shapes, and a few explosions were visible in the sky. Shepard was right after all, the crazy bitch. "I'm afraid so."

"Jim, watch our guests," Emily said to a shell-shocked volunteer. "I need to get to the plotting room."

"What's happening, Lieutenant?" the turian asked.

"I don't know, but I'm gonna find out!" she shouted back before jumping through a hatch and descending down a steep staircase, nearly knocking over a confused bosun on her way down. She crossed over from the port side of the ship to the starboard side before dashing down the narrow corridor toward her destination.

"Move, move, move!" Emily swerved around a trio of maintenance crew, smacking her shoulder loudly against a protruding valve. She turned another corner and stepped through another worn hatch into the plotting room.

The plotting room, like the rest of the ship, was a truly schizophrenic mix of technology. It was dominated by the ancient Mark 8 Rangekeeper, which was surrounded by more modern technology. One bulkhead was covered with synchros. Directly across from it was one covered in holographic control stations. A 1980s vintage radar console sat beside one from the 2020s. Only about half the equipment was actually manned.

"What the hell is going on?" Emily shouted.

"We're under attack," a technician told her, voice wavering. "Could be... could be the Reapers."

"Holy shit." Emily could scarcely believe it. The battleship hadn't been truly fought in over two hundred years. It hadn't seen a real general quarters call in the past century. She began barking orders. "Bring SPY and Cyclops online. Spool up the Mark 76, fire control on manual. SDS to automatic. Give me a status on weapons system on this ship. And someone figure out where the hell the rest of the fire control party is!"

The harbour was not particularly crowded, but it was quickly becoming chaos as every boat either tried to make it back to land or out of the danger zone. The first hostile forces were beginning to descend on the city, and a dozen small flying objects began ripping through a cruise ship sitting on the other side of the harbour. A pair of sleek trimarans with Coast Guard markings pulled up beside the battleship.

"Battleship Missouri, this is the Coast Guard cutter Oahu," a nervous voice buzzed over the radio. "We have hostiles inbound from orbit. They say they're the Reapers. Recommend you evacuate to shelters immediately."

"Negative, Oahu," Captain Lacroix replied. "It's too late for that now. We have civilians aboard and intend to find shelter at sea."

"Okay, Missouri, we'll try to escort you out," the cutter replied. "Be advised we have... things- I don't know how to describe them- inbound. We have GARDIAN lasers, that's it. Will try to, uh, intercept."

"Copy, Oahu. Just do the best you can."

"Will do."

"What are we dealing with?" the Captain asked, mostly to himself. He picked up a pair of binoculars and trained them out the window. After zooming in, he could recognize what they were going up against. Oculus. Small orb-like drones with nasty lasers, no doubt only the first wave. He could see a more organic-looking Reaper descending in the distance, but guessed it was on the other side of the island and hopefully not within range.

"They're heading right for us!" the Ensign shouted as they began turning toward the battleship and her escorts.

In a way, the Missouri's age had worked for it. The unintelligent Reaper drones confused the ancient warship with a particularly noisy floating hulk, a less attractive target even than a cruise ship or fishing trawler. The patrol vessels opened fire with their GARDIAN lasers and the Oculi responded in kind. Red beams cut through the atmosphere and burned through thin metal. The patrol vessels were designed to combat smugglers, and they were no match for the nimble swarm of Oculi.

Their escorts were still floating and firing back, but that wouldn't last. The Captain picked up the intercom. "Plotting, bridge. Do we have weapons?"

"Five-inch mounts one, two, and four ready to fire," Lieutenant Parsons replied. "Point-defence systems on standby."

"Open fire! Everything you've got!"

On Captain Lacroix's order, the secondary battery opened up, rippling off five-inch proximity shells in a distinctive bang-clink-bang-clink rhythm. Some of them almost found their marks, exploding next to the alien machines but doing little more than knocking them about.

The five-inch guns were not the Missouri's only anti-air armament. Small remote weapons stations mounted with machine guns filled the air with hypersonic chips of metal. Missiles exploded from SeaRAM and Impactor SAM launchers, veering wildly off course as soon as the Oculi brought their ECM online. The four Sea GARDIAN mounts, state of the art in 2100, were more successful. One of them was able to lock on and turn its target into slag. Finally, two-century-old Phalanx CIWS mounts roared to life, contributing more noise than effect. One walked its fire behind an Oculus before locking onto a burning harbor crane and spraying it uselessly with 20mm rounds. The other spun up, sputtered, ejected six casings' worth of mangled brass, and seized.

A deafening clang reverberated through the ship as one of the drones slammed into the solid armour of the battleship, trying to punch through it like the comparatively lighter alloys of a frigate. It was quickly destroyed by a tungsten slug fired from the remaining cutter. Seconds later, another Oculus cut the ship in half, its eezo core detonating and spraying the battleship with fragments. It swung around and headed for the battleship, only for a lucky five-inch shell to swat it out of the air.

Dropships were beginning to land, with the Reaper abominations taking to the streets. In the harbor, the cruise ship exploded and sank. Wreckage from dozens of ships mixed with thousands of corpses. A few desperate survivors struggled to shore, only to be cut down on land. The battle had only begun, but the Missouri was fast leaving it. Now making seventeen knots, the battleship quickly left its home behind.