Legends

Chapter 48~ Dreams and a Hurricane

In Sasebo, New Jersey was finishing up on some much-delayed paperwork. As much as the battleship struggled with modern technology, she took an odd sense of comfort in the mundane and old school. Even though her hand hurt from all the writing she was doing, New Jersey pressed on. Goto had told her she had been lax in the details of her last major report, and she was determined to get it right this time.

The current issue of her writings: the convoy she had been ordered to escort had vanished. She'd called Williams as soon as the merchant ships failed to meet their scheduled rendezvous window. Satellites hadn't seen them either. The brass feared the worst and ordered a scout party backed by full surveillance. It was beyond New Jersey's paygrade to understand how some modern equipment picked up Abyssals just fine on their scopes and some saw nothing but static. The fact was that Abyssals had been sighted. Two large fleets in fact. One heading for the Aleutians and the other for the American West Coast. The southern fleet was skirting the edge of a massive hurricane which currently prevented New Jersey from steaming after them. She could only hope that the Taffies, who had gone back to the mainland a few days prior for some much-needed downtime, would intercept. Even as her heart screamed against the idea. Once again, those crazy murderballs would be thrown into the Lion's Pit and she was out of position to help.

Granted however, there was someone who could help. It took New Jersey only five minutes this time to open the right app, find the right number and dial it. She was getting better. It rang twice before a soft voice answered. "Wash here."

"Wash, it's Jersey."

"Jersey! Good to hear from you." Washington as always was chipper. It was as though she never knew any other state although New Jersey knew that wasn't the case. She'd been a mess after she'd rammed Indiana.

"We've got a situation developing." New Jersey said.

"Williams has filled me in. What do you need?" That was classic Washington, ready to pitch in and help. Her clueless act was usually just that, an act. New Jersey knew she could be very clever when she wanted to be.

"There's a hurricane blocking me in here. I know you're on light duty but if there's any way you can protect the Taffies..."

"They'll be so protected, Johnson will fucking beg me to go back to you because you'll be easier on them!" For all her ethereal beauty, ladylike manners, and impeccable speech, Washington was still a battleship and when she felt like reminding the world of that, one knew she was serious.

New Jersey sighed in relief. "Thanks Wash." She told her cousin. "Give 'em hell!"

"I won't go that easy on them." Wash hung up, leaving New Jersey slightly worried but not nearly as worried as she had been a few minutes previously.

.....................................

Dreams, Titanic decided long ago, were the bane of her existence. She'd had them at varying intervals since her emergence as a kanmusu. Usually, they tended to be optimistic, hopeful things. Fantasies that were bittersweet because she knew they'd never come true. Having both her sisters back was impossible now with one of them an Abyssal. Other times her dreams were of That Night. She'd always wake right at the appropriate time in a cold sweat and be unable to fall back asleep. They were rarer now than they used to be thankfully. Where once, she'd have them every night until she was too exhausted to dream, so far she'd only had it once since getting Normandie into her bed. The French liner had been woken by her cries and Titanic spent the remaining long hours of the night wrapped in her protective embrace. Somehow, she made the cold darkness almost bearable.

But then there were the nights where Titanic dreamed a very different sort of dream. She had not put much stock into them until the Abyssals started wreaking havoc. But it was only with New Jersey's return and her words describing the immense field of ice that Titanic struggled to recall any detail she had previously seen. The Iowa's long tenure in the Locker was a boon to those struggling to understand the existence of shipgirls. How they appeared. How the Abyssals appeared. And what could be done to stop them.

The Locker did not appear in Titanic's dreams this night. But its warden did. Lutjens, his back to Titanic as the liner moved away from him. His words were muffled, and she could not hear what he was saying even though she knew it was important. Images flashed before her eyes of events she herself had witnessed over her many years and ones she had only heard about. A shipyard that she vaguely recalled from her memories but so surrounded by a haze of darkness that she couldn't bear to look at it. A destroyer fighting desperately against the Abyssals only to be shelled into oblivion as soon as the last of her lifeboats were safely away. Titanic shuddered even as she admired her defiant spirit. And an attack so devastating there were no words to describe the scope of its tragedy. Titanic could only stare and cry herself as she watched a young warrant officer collapse in grief.

The liner woke with the sunrise and a cold chill worked its way down her spine, not unlike that of the iceberg that had killed her so long ago. And she knew, with absolute certainty even though she didn't understand how she did, that what she had just seen was the future.