Untamed

Chapter 4 - Blizzard

The first three full days at sea were filled with non-stop training and drills.

Day one was basic ship handling, navigation, safety lectures, general life at sea punctuated by general quarters drills, fire drills, damage control drills, and even a rescue and recovery drill.

Day two was more practical exercises of the previous day's activities followed by gunnery and torpedo exercises.

The first shots of the main guns were as exciting as Faith and Dani had anticipated in port.

Each turret fired individually before they fired together in a broadside. Turret I went first, firing its two sixteen-inch guns at a target in the distance. The guns roared as they fired a split-second apart.

On the bridge, the shock was immense. Everything seemed to shake as the guns spat smoke and flame. Jess and Nicole stared in awe. Dani squealed with delight. Faith seemed extremely satisfied. Bailey felt like the pressure wave would knock her over. She could feel the shock in her chest.

Turrets II, III, and IV took their turns and the feeling of awe persisted on the bridge. It took Faith several moments to regain her sense and issue her order to fire a broadside.

All eight guns of Colorado's main battery thundered. Eight shells were sent downrange at almost twice the speed of sound.

No one on the bridge cared about what the result was. All they cared about was the significant emotional event they had just experienced. The silent sense of awe that Jess and Nicole had felt was now shared by all of them.

Bailey no longer felt the shock of the guns in her chest, but in her very being. Her head flashed with a fleeting pain and her teeth felt like they were rattling her skull.

Gunnery continued for several hours until the feeling had started to wear off. Even then, everyone was smiling by the time torpedo practice began.

At the end of the day, Bailey was starting to understand the skill of her crewmates. Nicole had actually shown interest for the first time and was not only at full attention during the entire torpedo exercise, but she had also performed excellently. Faith had also shown a high level of skill in directing her gun crews. Both the torpedo and gun crews would have a lot of catching up to do if they were to perform at the level of their respective chiefs.

Day three had begun with a near-obligatory general quarters drill. Loewer and the instructor staff had gone so far as to set out gunnery targets overnight; the drill turned into a brief gunnery exercise that ended at very close range. Nicole had pestered Dani to allow her to launch torpedoes at the target barges, but Dani insisted that the scenario was meant to specifically be a gun exercise.

"Torps are cool and all, and they'd get the job done in a single shot, but we have to get the gun crews used to going straight from GQ into firing," Dani had explained.

Nicole was somewhat annoyed for the rest of the morning.

The rest of the day was practicing with other ships. In the first activity, California had played the role of a flagship, while Colorado, Maryland, and Nevada had been following her. For the first hour, only the Naval Academy students on Maryland were able to hold anything close to a proper formation. Another two hours of maneuvers resulted in the ship's navigators finally being able to translate their skill at handling their ships alone to handling them in a reasonable formation.

At one point, Colorado had been the subject of an intercept drill by the destroyer Hoel and the Japanese exchange destroyer Fubuki. Not even Instructor Loewer had known about the mock attack run, and Colorado briefly descended into chaos before Bailey ordered flank speed and Dani had the ship turned to starboard. It looked like the destroyers would succeed in their surprise interception until a splash appeared on Fubuki's side. Nicole's starboard torpedo crew had managed a perfect hit on the destroyer with a warhead-less training torpedo.