Nimbus Child I: Games of War

Chapter 13

Sonne had brought news for the Great Combined Fleet, leading to another, although more relaxed, big conference with pretty much everyone being physically there or listening in per call.

"Pluto picked up a graviton signal", Sonne explained, while said communications ship nodded along from Montana's lap, "we assume that it is the signal of a sentoku based on the signals of our own sentoku units, but as you all know, comparing our signals with that of graviton units is challenging."

They overlapped to a certain amount since all of them had union cores and were "Fog" to a certain amount, but individual signals were individual signals for a reason.

"So we have a Fog here now?", Sovetskaya Gruziya asked excitedly, "finally."

"Why did you say it that creepily?", Strasbourg tucked the battleship back into her seat.

The Fog eventually appearing here was not too big of a surprise since this was the Afterlife for the exact same world and the Fleet of Fog were (surprise surprise) ships.

There was a certain amount of knowledge of the world of the living that dripped into this Afterlife, so they had info about... a few certain events that had led to the sinking of a few Fog ships – so in short: it had been only a matter of time.

"Sonne, how active is the signal?", asked Eritrea.

"Not very active", Sonne said, leaning back in her seat and sipping from a glass of whiskey, "she detected the signal once, barely long enough to pinpoint its location."

"She's not active, then?"

"It doesn't appear so", she swirled her glass, looking as if she hoped the alcohol would actually work on her, "while she was there she didn't move. I would assume that the graviton reaction stemmed from her body being reconstructed and then disappeared once that was finished."

Tirpitz was slumping in her seat as well, head leaning on her sister's shoulder and legs stretched out: "So we gonna... get her... or what?"

Sonne was silent for a bit, then said: "You have my blessing, just bring her to the Research Department when you do."

"So who is going!?", Sovetskaya Gruziya jumped up again and had to be pressed back into her seat once more by Strasbourg.

"Why are you so excited about that!?", she grumbled to herself, Dunkerque watching them with a neutral expression on her scarred face.

The fast battleship addressed the flagships sitting in the first row: "Who will retrieve her?"

"We will!", Montana declared, general happy nature amplified by Pluto's presence.

Bismarck jumped in to keep misunderstandings from happening: "All in due time and not all of us. We spoke about this matter in private beforehand and have decided that one half of us flagships goes, while the rest stays here", her eyes flitted across the crowd as best as she could from the current position, before she angled her head to the front again, "the reasoning for that is simply our flagship equipment. If the Fog ship turned out to be aggressive, we could at least defend ourselves."

Logical, logical, Sovetskaya Gruziya slumped in defeat nonetheless.

Dunkerque ignored that elegantly: "When will that be?"

"When none of us are on patrol duty", Bougainville answered her ship, "ergo in two weeks' time."

That seemed to satisfy her to a certain amount, but Bougainville still saw something in the brunette's eye that made her add something else: "We'll announce who exactly will go once we've decided on that."