>>6129464For a long minute, you’re glad they can’t see your face. “Thank you,” you say at length. Until it was lifted, you hadn’t realised just what a burden your isolation had become, but now the weight is gone from your shoulders and you feel as if you could fly away already.
Wells deflates somewhat as the moment passes, and the weariness of a man with a great burden of his own sets in again. For the first time, you notice the dark circles under his eyes, faint against his brown skin but clearly present. “I’m sure you have no end of questions. Raleigh here will give you a more thorough briefing, but the short answer is that things are not going well in the wide world. Worse than most people realise. The Abyssals caught us all with our pants down last February; we got off lighter than most that day, but that still meant the Ohio, Santa Fe, Princeton, Cole, and Halsey all lost, and we nearly lost the Stennis and most of her escorts, too. The bastards sank several smaller navies to a hull in those first hours. We’ve made progress, but even so, it’s all we can do to keep the grain and oil flowing.”
“Jesus, it sounds like 1942 all over again.”
Wells winces. “You’re not far off. The situation was more stable back when the Abyssals mostly had 1940s capabilities, but these last few months we’ve encountered more and more with fast jets guided weapons. Three more modern shipgirls could go a long way towards keeping the sea lanes open.”
“Even just us three? How common are shipgirls?”
“There are about a hundred in our service now. More are turning up all the time. The Brits have more, and Japanese have three times that number. But of those commissioned after 1945? None. Though a few like the Iowas and Providence have postwar modifications. As it is most of our girls are back in CONUS undergoing training and modernisation trials and will be for the foreseeable future. The few ready for deployment are either here or off in Iceland - that’s what CSG-16 is, actually, the Navy’s first formation centred on shipgirls, or it will be one day. Anyhow, you can imagine why your appearance today has made such a splash.”
“Oh dear. Stars of the show already, are we?”
“Well, it’s not just the three of you. Before an hour ago, no one even *imagined* post-war ships could come back. But now? Now we know they can.” The Admiral gives a brief, weary smile, then glances at his phone, the buzzing of which he’s been studiously ignoring for the last several minutes. “We’ll talk again soon, Enterprise. I have a campaign to plan. Good luck; you’ll need it out there.”
“Thank you again, Admiral. Uh… I know you can’t see me but swear I’m saluting right now.”
This earns the smallest of laughs from the man. He smiles again, then nods, and turns and makes for the door, eyes glued to his phone.
