"Commander, try to rein it in a little. We've got guests—you'll give them the wrong idea about your…quirks."
Alaska and Blücher bobbed their heads so fast it was almost comical.
This base is terrifying, they both thought. Do all shipgirls turn like this once they have a commander? Sharing one spoon? Just thinking about it made their skin crawl.
Hikaru ignored their looks, fed Tirpitz a spoonful of hot congee, and asked, "Where's the HQ Chief? Haven't seen her."
That name brought a twinge of embarrassment. Before dawn, when Hikaru had been jolted awake and half-asleep, he'd shoved the cigar he'd already taken a drag from between the HQ Chief's lips—and even pinched her cheek.
If Bismarck hadn't been standing right there, the HQ Chief might've stuffed him into a gun barrel and fired him out. It was a serious breach of decorum—well worth a beating.
She hadn't shown up at breakfast. Had she packed up and left in a huff? But with the Abyssals blocking the north, where could she even go?
Speak of the devil: the door banged open and the HQ Chief strode in, sweeping aside bowls and chopsticks to slap a telegram down on the table in front of Hikaru.
"Priority dispatch!"
Hikaru sighed—he hadn't even had a full bite yet. Still, to keep the peace (and atone for that awkward scene before dawn), he obediently picked up the telegram.
This time it was already decoded: a thick sheaf.
"No wonder you skipped breakfast—you've been glued to the wire room?"
"Obviously." She arched an eyebrow. "Got anything to eat? I'll take a bite."
Repulse hurried a steaming bowl over; the HQ Chief downed it in a few noisy gulps, patted her stomach, and shoved the bowl out again. "Good stuff. Another, thanks, Repulse."
From the look of her, the news had to be good.
And it was—page after page of victories.
Strictly speaking, last night the Eastern Sea theater had hovered on the brink. In hindsight, once the situation came into focus, Fleet HQ broke into a cold sweat.
Right after Hikaru's Tirpitz and Lexington crushed the Southern Sea's Abyssal Barbarossa force, the Eastern Sea commanders—Abyssal Akagi & Kaga, Abyssal Taihou, and the rest—laid a trap for Gorou, the Fleet Admiral.
They had four million Abyssals in hand, total air and sea dominance—able to drive south into the Southern theater, west to threaten the heartland, north to clamp down on the Nation's throat.
Then their massed host scattered like smoke. Three of the four million vanished; a single million held the First Island Chain, under one lone flagship—Abyssal Ryuujou.
Which made for one hell of a lure.
Even if four million Abyssals had been sitting on that chain—fortresses, airfields, the lot—The Nation would have had to act for the safety of the inner seas. With just a million there, under Ryuujou, it looked even more like a fat, roast bird begging to be carved.
Not because a million Abyssals are easy prey, but because the First Island Chain had to be taken back, and sooner was safer than later—before the enemy dug in deeper.
When Ryuujou then launched full-spectrum raids westward, The military had no choice. They had to strike, and they had to strike now.
But the highest-level operational plans had already been leaked—spoon-fed to the Abyssals by a young staff aide who'd long since been turned.
Both sides set snares for the other; only, one side now saw every card the country held.
The seven-phase interception, the "Ten-Sided Ambush," the plan to bait and kill Ryuujou—had been impossible from the start.
The Abyssal answer was to use it—launch every carrier plane massed off the Home Isles for a single night-strike, then sweep south, crushing the entire naval power in the Eastern Sea.
They'd accounted for almost everything…except one man.
Gorou.
Two centuries on his shoulders or not, and breath forever threatening to fail in his chest or not, a Fleet Admiral like that isn't someone you overlook.
Of everyone involved, only Gorou knew the true skeleton of the seven-phase plan—the real inner lines of the Ten-Sided Ambush.
He paid with tens of thousands of shipgirls' lives to invite the Abyssals into his urn.
And then, the urn slammed shut.
Gorou encircled the encirclers—Abyssal Akagi & Kaga, the Shoukaku sisters, Taihou, and Ryuujou—and cut them all down over the Eastern Sea.
[End of Chapter]
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