Fractures

Feb 20th, 2003 - Diego Garcia - Southern Expanse

0837

Death.

Hasegawa Kenji could feel it in the air.

It came from all around them, carried by the wind and the waves.

And behind them, it felt as though the island itself responded, its dead forests and poisoned waters rippling with some unholy something.

A fleet had limped over the horizon, desperately firing everything it had behind it, its ships flying three different flags. Not long after, their pursuers had followed, four monolithic battleships with large towers and smokestacks mounted between their four massive turrets, surrounded by a fleet of escort vessels.

The Niemec Reich's task force hid themselves behind the three ships of the Free Fleet, but it seemed as if the combined force of Oceanic, Gaul, and Hollandian ships had no intention of picking a fight with a second foe.

Around them, a fleet of three hundred ships from Yamato and Westaria had gathered, from destroyers to aircraft carriers, with everything in between. It was a formidable force, and not only because of its composition. 

Myōkō's three sisters, Nachi, Haguro, and Ashigara, formed the center of the vanguard, right in front of Fusō, who had been an old friend and commander of Kongō, Ise, and Hyūga, the three battleships that Fuji had killed at Yokosuka.

Leading this combined fleet, flying the ensign of a flagship, was Des Moines, Salem's older sister. Yamoto and Westaria had sent the right shipgirls to get under the Free Fleet's skin, and they were doing their job. Neither Myōkō nor Salem were willing to fire on their own sister's, something that Hasegawa understood. 

It looked like if the combined fleet tried hard enough, they could even sink Fuji and bring Hasegawa back to Tokyo. 

"Why so glum, Admiral?"

Despite the situation, Fuji still seemed relaxed. The two of them were standing on one of the upper observation decks of Fuji's superstructure, looking out as the fleets of six nations slowly crept towards them.

Hasegawa opened his mouth to respond, but his words were torn away as a dark mass flew past him, followed by a wave of sound and force, knocking him to his feet.

***

Frunze had taken a shot at the battleship.

In the middle of their battle with Oceanica, Gaul, and Hollandia, Frunze had fired on the most powerful battleship in the world. 

Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya couldn't understand why, unless it was the Komissar's orders. She knew that their objective here was on that ship, but even against their unstoppable fleet, that battleship could still do significant damage.

For almost a century, the Komissar had guided the Union, but now, Otyabrskaya had to ask herself: was the Komissar really acting with the Union's best interests?

***

Des Moines watched as Fuji raised her guns and levelled them at the Communist fleet. The shell had come so close to her superstructure that it was a miracle that the Builder hadn't been killed. 

Fuji was a battleship beyond anything else in the world, and even the unsinkable fleet of the Communist Union would struggle to match her in a firefight. Des Moines just couldn't understand why they were attacking everyone in sight.

"Des Moines!"

She turned around to see a young woman running up to her. She looked just like Salem, the same lean body, shoulder-length hair, but she wasn't. Her hair didn't have the blue highlights that Salem had loved, and she moved with a confidence that Salem never had.

This was Newport News, their younger sister, and one of the Westarian heavy cruisers assigned to Mikasa's task force. All of the command ships of the three task force had gathered in one spot for better coordination, to plan for the battle ahead. 

"What is it, Newport?"

"Unknown fleet bearing down on us from our rear!"

"What!?" 

The three task forces had covered a wide area in their approach to Diego Garcia. There was no way for anything to have slipped through their net, which meant that this fleet had been behind them for a long time without them realizing.

"Do we have ID on any of them?"

Newport News shook her head. "They appear to be of Niemec design, but the Niemec fleet is ahead of us. Also, they're being led by a Yamato destroyer."

***

It was exhilarating.

It had been so long since she had felt such excitement.

She stood on her prow, barely noticing the spray whipped up by the wind. She could see as the ships ahead of her, both Yamato and Westarian, scrambled in a panic to face this unknown fleet coming up behind them.

"It's almost time." Heavy words, spoken with such joy, to no one in particular, to the whole world.

"Well then," a voice began from behind her, slowly growing closer, cold and hard like a glacier, "what's the plan, Yukikaze?"

Yukikaze responded without looking back.

"All that you have to do," she said, a smile spreading across her face, "is sink as many Westarian ships as you can. That should be fine, right, Tirpitz?"

The woman behind her nodded, the silver crest on her black cap reflecting the morning sun. 

"That won't be a problem."

***

Relieved of your duties

Java couldn't get De Ruyter's words out of her head. When Java hadn't broken out of the formation, De Ruyter had fired a warning shot over her bow.

She was fleeing now, towards that battleship that they had come to hunt.

She didn't know why. Was it so that, on her deathbed, she could at least say that despite everything that they had lost, they had still managed to make it to their objective. Was it because the battleship seemed to be protecting the Reich's fleet?

There was no reason to it, just an instinct, telling her to go towards that battleship.

She looked back, at her sister, her commander, her comrades, her friends, as they were overrun by the Communists. They made a valiant stand, managing to sink several more destroyers, inspiring some of the fleeing Gual and Oceanic ships to join them in their struggle, but it was no use. Even if not for the almost immortal quality of the Communist fleet, they were still outnumbered. It wouldn't be long before there was nothing left of the once-proud Koninklijke Marine.

She watched as a shell flew from one of the four battleships, and watched it fly right past the superstructure of her destination. The battleship aimed its guns at the Communists, but didn't fire any shells. 

Her radio crackled to life, emitting a crackle of static that almost gave her a heart attack. A radio like this couldn't be encrypted, making it useless in a battlefield like this unless you wanted everyone to hear it. 

"Hello, shipgirls of the Koninklijke Marine, the Marine Nationale, the Royal Navy, the Reichsmarine, the Imperial Yamato Navy, the Westarian Navy, and the rogue ships of Hasegawa Kenji's fleet."

The first thing that Java noticed was the voice. It was male. Men were almost never in command positions in the battlefield, due to their inability to control hulls. The second thing was that it didn't mention the Communist Union's Red Navy in its list of all of the fleets present, which meant that this message had to be coming from them. 

"I am Marcus Schumer, the Builder who created the Singularity, and the Komissar of the Red Navy."

Java couldn't understand.

The Singularity had been created a century ago, and no one could survive that long, unless they were a shipgirl, and aside from that, its creator had died in the Reich only a few years after its creation.

The Red Navy was also extremely small for the only navy in the world with a Builder to reinforce their ranks for a hundred years.

It did explain, however, how the Red Navy's ships were almost impossible to sink. They had a Builder in the middle of their fleet constantly repairing them all. Which meant, if someone could just figure out where he was and take him out, they might have a chance of beating the communists after all. 

"I demand the surrender of the rogue Builder, Hasegawa Kenji, and the super-battleship Fuji. I also must make clear that I will require all of the fleets gathered here to remain where they are, as it will save me the trouble of having to hunt you down."

The message ended, and the radio turned off. 

Java stared ahead, dumbstruck. She couldn't fully wrap her head around it. Even if they had a Builder, the Communists couldn't possible beat the hundreds of ships gathered here.

Then, she heard it, a fanfare of cannon fire, as the sky exploded into smoke and shells everywhere she looked.

***

Mikasa had been trying to figure out why Yukikaze, who was supposed to be in Tokyo, was here at Diego Garcia, and leading a fleet of Niemec ships. Then, the radio message from Marcus had come. Even after all this time, she still recognized his voice. That was what made it so hard to believe that all this was true; that the kind man who had brought a century of peace was now making an enemy of the whole world.

There was a pause, after his message ended. It was the silence of hundreds of shipgirls processing the earth-shattering knowledge they had just gained.

The pause was cut short by gunfire. It wasn't just from the Communists. Yukikaze and the Niemec fleet behind her, including a battleship, began to fire at the Westarian ships. As Mikasa looked around, she saw that her comrades, ships of the Yamato Empire, were also firing on the Westarians, and even on other Yamato ships. 

She heard the buzz of aircraft engines, and watched as dive bombers, marked with Akagi's colours, began to charge towards Fusō. 

That was when it hit her. All of the Yamato ships that had begun to fire on their own allies were either members of Musashi's faction, like Yukikaze, who had done her dirty work before, or members of the carrier faction that supported her, like Akagi.

This was some kind of civil war, orchestrated by Marcus Schumer, and involving ships of not only the Yamato Empire, but also the Niemec Reich and the Communist Union. 

But at most, there were maybe a hundred ships fighting Westaria and the Yamato loyalists, and another fifty sinking the Hollandians. They were still massively outnumbered, and up against a super-battleship like Fuji. 

She heard a massive explosion the made the sky shake. Coming up from behind the Red Navy's fleet were five battleships, each of them almost, if not as large, as Fuji.

Maybe he wasn't as outmatched as she had believed.