Schemes

January 28, 2003 - Niemec occupied Metz - Gaul Republic 

“Once again, I’m glad that we could come to such an easy agreement!”

The voice that said these words was loud and upbeat, in glaring contrast with the surrounding area.The island was covered in signs of the recent battles, shell craters covered the muddy ground, and barbed wire still stretched across the streets not immediately needed by the occupying force. The corpses of the marines and militiamen who had defended the island were piled in the burned down woods as mass graves were being dug. The ground was littered with bullet casings, rubble, and spoiled food. The houses had their doors knocked down and their windows shattered, and storefronts were empty. The only people on the streets were Niemec soldiers and military police, who were slowly clearing the roads and taking care of the post-battle matters, and the few children, many of them newly orphans, who were searching for scraps of food. The sky was filled with aircraft, and heavy clouds formed a thick blanket that almost blocked out the sun. 

In the sea around the island, a large number of destroyers and other smaller vessels were moored, along with several barracks ships and a hospital ship. The hulls of two cruisers, far larger than the other ships, were anchored side by side in the harbour. The larger of the two had a dull yellow stripe painted along both sides of her hull, and all four of her twin gun turrets were marked with the same colour. The pennant flying from her mast was not the standard red-and-black ensign of the Reichsmarine, the Reich’s surface fleet, but rather a variation on it, with the standard ensign on the upper left corner of a yellow pennant, and a multicoloured shield filling the right half. Together, the markings and pennant showed her rank as an Admiral, and the pennant identified her as Prinz Eugen, an Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruiser, and Bismarck’s right hand. 

The other cruiser was far smaller, only slightly larger than two-thirds of Eugen’s length, and looked like an antiquated relic next to the Niemec Admiral. Her ten guns were far smaller, and arrayed individually around her deck, two fore, two aft, and three on each broadside, with only a small front plate for protection. Her hull had the three green lines that signified her as a diplomat painted on each side, and her mast flew the green diplomat’s ensign. Beneath the ensign were two more flags, the first was had three horizontal stripes, red, white and blue with a gold lion in the middle, and the second was the same, except for the vertical green line on the left side of the ensign. The two flags marked her as a diplomatic ship of the Koninklijke Marine, the naval force of the Kingdom of Hollandia. 

She was Sumatra, the older of the two Java-class cruisers. She had been sent by Admiral De Ruyter to get them out of the Great Europan war, so that they could focus on finding the Builder. She and Prinz Eugen were sitting on the balcony of the Governor’s residence, sipping tea and looking out at the town beneath them. More than a hundred thousand people had lived there before the war, now, only half remained. Most of them had evacuated, but close to twenty thousand people had been killed in the battle, civilians and soldiers alike. Several thousand of them had been Hollandians who had fled there when the Hollandian island of Lux fell to the Reich. When Sumatra had retreated from Lux in October, she had sworn to return. Now, as part of the peace deal, the entire Lux Region would be annexed by the Reich. Almost thirty islands were signed away in that peace deal, as well as enough resources and money to destroy Hollandian economy. They were betting that they would get the Builder, and they were going all in.

“Sumatra?”

Eugen’s voice cut through Sumatra’s thoughts, bringing her back to the present.

“My apologies, Admiral, I must have zoned out,” she said quickly returning her focus to the woman in front of her.

Prinz Eugen was a tall, lean woman, with long platinum blonde hair that flowed down to her shoulders. It was full of small, brightly coloured clips in the shapes of cat faces, except for one that was a silver eagle, the emblem of the Reich. Her eyes were mismatched, one golden brown, the other dark gray, like a patch of sunlight coming through a layer of rain clouds. Her black and silver uniform was covered in medals, and bore the golden shoulder boards that marked her as an Admiral, each with two silver pips on it. It fit tightly over her slender frame, but Java new the reason why. Despite being a shipgirl, she had trained as a member of MSB, the Marine Stosstrupp Bataillon, one of the most feared special forces units in the world. Her body was solid muscle, and she was a master of combat, from a hand-to-hand fight all the way to a fleet battle.“What do you mean ?” She asked in an annoyed tone, “are you trying to say that I’m too boring for you?”

“No, not at all!” Sumatra was panicking. She couldn’t risk doing anything that might endanger their treaty. They had given up so much for it, and she couldn’t let her distraction betray the 25 million citizens of Hollandia. She tried to think of something to say, but nothing came to mind that would defuse the situation.

Eugen gave a small laugh, and her expression changed from that of a trained killer to that of a young woman. 

“Relax, Sumatra, I was just joking!” She leaned forward across the table, and poked Sumatra’s cheek with her finger. “Besides, you’re so cute when you’re stressed!”

Sumatra was left speechless, half from relief, half from embarrassment. Despite being one of the most dangerous people in the world, Eugen acted like a little girl most of the time. It was the scariest part about her; how quickly she could change between the two.

Still slightly embarrassed, Sumatra picked up her tea and looked down at herself. She was a few inches shorter than Eugen, and stood at 173 centimetres. Her blonde hair stopped just above her shoulders, and her eyes were bright green. She was less fit than Eugen, and her dark blue uniform fit her perfectly, her rank marked by the gold lines on her sleeve. Her bangs covered the top of her field of vision, and completely covered her eyes whenever she bent forward. She didn’t fully understand what Eugen had meant when she said that she looked cute, as she and her sister both had rather fixed expressions. They didn’t show what they were thinking on their face, so how could Eugen tell any difference in her expression?

Her sister…By now, Java would be entering Mediterranea, now safe from the Mediterranean Empire thanks to the Hollandian neutrality. She knew that theirs wasn’t the only fleet hunting the Builder, and that this treaty would strain their relationship with Oceanica. She could only hope that her sister would be alright.