>>6131913“We *have* to do that. You’re gonna want to figure it out real damn quick - we can cheat a lot of things, but not the horizon, and anyway heavy seas and small size do not mix.”
“Oh, yeah, wow, that sounds bad, I’ll get right on it.”
“Best do. There’s no real trick to it, you just gotta want it and it’ll happen. Don’t get big on land cause you’ll wreck shit or hurt yourself or both, don’t get small at sea unless you’re trying to take a swim to dodge an attack or something, and make sure to dismiss your rigging when you’re small if you don’t want your radars getting soaked. As I was saying though, the Abyssal soldiers can get small too, not as small as us and usually shaped like whales or krakens or whatnot, but that makes them real stealthy on radar and sonar both. It can also give them some unusual capabilities, having flukes instead of screws.”
“Is that why the submarine I’m hunting looks like a whale?”
“For example. And unlike the others, the soldiers are clever - they make plans and use all sorts of deception and decoys, and don’t tangle with warships unless they’re damn sure of victory and escape afterwards.”
“If these soldiers can swim and disappear from radar, is there even a difference between their surface combatants and submarines?”
“Yes - dive depth and dive time. Surface ship soldiers only have a couple minutes’ air and can’t get more’n a few feet down.”
“So, can Abyssals teleport, then?”
“Teleport- what? No, if they could do that we wouldn’t stand a chance. We do know they manifest out of the aether, that’s been seen on film a few times, but they sail around like normal - relatively speaking - once they’re out and about.”
“Can you show me what that manifesting looks like? Is there any way to predict it beforehand?”
“I can do you one better.” Raleigh taps a few times on her tablet. A video begins on the flatscreen, slightly shaky cell phone footage of what looks like the waters of Pearl Harbor’s North Channel on a cloudy day. There’s a patch of flickering haze over the water a little ways off the strand, like a small cloud of translucent butterflies. There’s a faint breath of wind, and the fluttering leaves are carried away into nothing, leaving behind- Raleigh. In her giant form, weapons out, eyes wide open and looking every bit as confused as you had felt this morning. “I turned up right back in my old slip,” the old cruiser says, a hint of a bitter edge to her voice. “Even after Missouri’s charge on Day One, if it hadn’t been for Arizona coming back that morning, I probably would have caused a real panic. She was the fifth back, you should know, after the four Iowas. Sailed right up to her memorial and asked for a new assigned berth.”
