Chronicles of Two Powers

Chapter 27 - The Jester and the King

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Across the endless ocean, the waves swayed around the sinking metal hull. The ringing of bells as the battleship began to turn starboard. The sky was limitless, the ocean empty and never-ending. Nearby warships halted their further movement. Sailors from the capital battleship, sagging to its starboard, began to turn over. They were horrified by what they were seeing.

Did everything they could.

Destroyers and cruisers. And the other battleship. The crew began to huddle around rescuing the flagship's crew as the screams among the sailors and the hurling sharks began to appear from a distance. Life jackets dropped around as many looked around the sky...

"Shit—!" Someone shouted. "I didn't see or hear any aircraft nearby! "

Nothing above the clouds, nothing from the radars. Their direction is gazing towards their pride of the navy. Said that those same guns would have made the sacred kingdom fear and tremble, sinking at their very eye.

"Tell Southern Command—Commandant Flashwalker has been sunk."

Standing immobile on the bridge, the Vice Admiral held his eyes on the JSS Commandant G. Flashwalker as it slipped beneath the waves, firing along its superstructure before vanishing one by one as the sea claimed her. A warship that once dominated the horizon now became nothing but twisted steel and oil-slicked water.

He turned sharply toward his staff officers.

"As the senior flag officer present, I am taking command," he said without any nonsense. "We are disengaging and withdrawing in the direction of Cyax. All units are to embark on search and rescue operations straight away, then withdraw to Friendly waters. We shall not press our luck any further."

"Aye, sir," chorused the answers.

The vice admiral faced the sea once more, his jaw tight. Another Jylon Republic capital ship lost. without warning, without contact. No radar signature. No acoustic alert. Nothing.

His mind was racing.

A submarine? Doubtful. Even the most advanced craft could have been detected at this distance. And the attack, whatever it was, had been accurate, lethal, and instantaneous. Too clean. Too purposeful.

Whatever the Sacred Kingdom had, it had made their early warning systems meaningless.

Meanwhile, on Cyax's mainland, the Marines and the army were already engaged in fierce fighting. The losses being incurred by the fleet only served to increase this sense of dread that was spreading among the troops. The domination of the seas, which had once been so taken for granted, was slipping away.

In the first weeks of the war, the enemy had barely taken any casualties. Defeat followed defeat, each one driving the same grim truth deeper into his mind: this had been a lost cause from the very start. Now the death toll had finally reached them: over a hundred thousand dead.

And now there were rumours of peace talks.

The thought hollowed him out. A disheartening realisation settled in that all he'd fought for, every lost ship and buried sailor, may mean nothing more than bargaining chips across a table.

The vice admiral's fists were clenched so tight his knuckles ached.

This war was changing, and not in their favor. Every passing day, they lose ground, lose what they believed was theirs by right. The anger burns hot in his chest, seething and directionless, but one thing is clear to him now. The nature of the war had changed so quickly.