>>6129468You take a deep breath. Not even twelve full hours into the first day of your life, you already have the feeling this is likely to be the longest day of your life too, even if you should live another fifty years.
“… Why don’t you start by telling me how on Earth these Abyssal things got to Ohio and Stennis.” Both were ships you knew - not as people as you now knew Long Beach and Bainbridge, admittedly, but the blow is still personal. “Tell me how they’re managing to hold the world hostage with 1940s technology. And how the hell it is we don’t have enough ships to reoccupy the Marshall Islands or Wake after a year and a half.”
“Oh, they got us the same way we got hit last time. You know. Massive peacetime ambush,” Raleigh says. “We’re not sure what exactly happened to the Ohio, but it looks like she was caught in shallow water. The Stennis and her group were tied up in Rome. A flotilla of heavy cruisers sailed right on up easy as you please one black foggy night and blasted just about every ship in the whole damn harbour to hell and back. It’s honestly a miracle they didn’t pen the Stennis’ reactor cores ‘cause they got damn near everything else.”
“Well, shit… isn’t that suicide, though? Don’t they know what modern weapons do to old ships?”
“They don’t care. Most of their ships are expendable, especially the smaller ones, subs and PT boats and the like. As far as they’re concerned, a few boats for a supertanker is a mighty fine trade, a warship of any kind, even better.
“Despite looking like ships, Abyssals are monsters. And despite looking like old ships, their technology isn’t really 1940s. You’ve seen the screaming already, for example. But it’s the submarines that’re the biggest problem, it should come as no surprise - they might not be fast or packing long-range torpedoes, but without machinery noise they’re silent as the grave even when they’re snorkelling, so long as they aren’t trying to get anywhere in a hurry. The drones and workers - those are the ones what look like wrecks fresh off the bottom - they basically are ships, but the soldiers can shapeshift the same way we can-”
“Wait wait wait, I’m sorry, what? Did you just say we can shapeshift?”
Raleigh’s head tilts in confusion. “Haven’t you gotten big yet?”
“Um, no? What’s that supposed to mean? Can I turn into a full-sized ship?”
“Not quite. Observe.” Raleigh walks a little ways away to an empty patch of floor, and then, to your astonishment, starts to grow taller. Within seconds she stands as almost as high as the ceiling, easily over 50 feet. Half an ocean away, your jaw is hanging open so wide it’s taking on water, but the humans in the hangar are only looking on with mild interest. Apparently this is commonplace to them.
“We can just… do that?” you ask, once Raleigh is back to normal.
