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[Commander, Enterprise]
452/CAAC
The Commander closed his eyes and kept them shut for a couple of seconds, trying to center his thoughts. Aside from someone coughing quietly or flipped a couple of papers from time to time, the room he was in was eerily quiet. No talking, no one walking. To be honest, he had imagined the pace quite differently. More active and full of duty, not only dry paper and old people sitting around all day. Though that was likely how the administration all over the globe seemed to look like.
Enterprise sat at his side, her eyes focused on the laptop in front of her. Blue light was shining upon her face, as she scrolled through various files. In some way the light made her look much older than she really was as it showed wrinkles in her skin which weren’t really there. In moments such as these her true age seemed to break through her skin, showing everyone just how many decades she had seen already. Decades behind the helm of her ship and the computer screens had taken their toll even more than the years she had spent at war. While she looked like a woman in late twenties/early thirties, she was almost a hundred and ten years old biologically.
He wondered if he looked similar when doing the administrative duties of the Victory. Screen flickering images across his face, mind running in overdrive… whilst his shipgirls risked their life on the ocean. The speaker at the head end of the desk laid down the papers in his hands, clearing his throat. Instantly he, Enterprise and everyone else in the room stopped what they were doing and looked at him.
“Now, Commander, how come that you search for a hearing now? Normally these hearings aren’t done on the fly, nor are they intended for simple damage reports. So, it surprises me that you have chosen to require our assistance.”, the speaker said with a drawling voice, a sign of his age. The Commander swallowed and tried to calm himself down before answering.
“Sir, I have chosen to call for this hearing as I think that the United States are underestimating the danger we are currently in and are unable to provide us with proper equipment and funding to achieve our task. Especially the last couple of events have shown that despite our high numbers, the Azur Lane is nearly ineffective when it comes to surprise attacks.” he reported, choosing his words carefully.
It was the first time that he spoke in front of the Congress, or the high speakers in general. As a simple officer he had done a couple of reports for high-ranking men within the Navy, but never before he had been heard by the congress. What he said was true though. The most recent report of the engineering department onboard the Victory was alerting.
“The United States have given the Azur Lane full coverage of their Navy and an entire aircraft carrier as well as continuous funding. I seriously doubt that there can be more support than currently. Also, how hard can it be to patrol the ocean?” an old man next to the speaker argued, shaking his head.
“Excuse me sir, but I think that neither of you knows what is going out there on the open ocean. Whereas you can sit back in your offices once this meeting is over, we will return to the Victory where waves are likely high once more. And many of us have been aboard that ship for the past two years straight.” Enterprise retorted, deciding to intervene, causing a woman next to the speaker to chuckle. She was just as old as him.
“You are part of the Navy, waves are to be expected.” she said smugly, causing a few laughs in the assistance. The Commander shook his head with determination.
“That is not what we mean! We are facing forces out there we cannot simply handle like we have done so far. The most recent appearance of the Ironblood submarine showed us how little we are prepared for, we were lucky that warships of other nations were present, warships with weaponry which worked despite the flux of the anomaly jamming our systems. It also showed how incapable shipgirls are if they are not prepared properly. And how little we can achieve with the current funding.”
“When you were chosen as the leader of the Azur Lane, we gave the responsibility for the shipgirls into your command. If anyone is to blame for not preparing the units, it’s only you. No one else will do your job for you.” the woman argued back.
“The Commander has done everything admirably, he even ruled over the acting Admiral of that time in order to salvage the situation. But our capabilities are limited by the equipment and personnel. Personnel and material which you, the Congress, is still refusing to send.” a man next to Enterprise retorted with a deep voice. His naval uniform bore the insignias of Admiral. The Chief of Naval Operations. He had been willing to support the Commander and Enterprise after their reports convinced him of the gravity of the situation. He knew very well how stubborn Congress could be at some times. Enterprise frowned. She could feel a distinct quiet rage in his voice.
“We gave you an entire aircraft carrier and three submarines. Was that not enough?”
“It was enough, up until a year ago. When we received the Victory she was in an already poor shape. The hull, which was more than two inches at commissioning had degraded down to 1.5 by the time the Azur Lane - back then SRPA - took her into service. The rough weather, lack of maintenance and bad condition of the hull resulted in a loss of further 0.2 inches in thickness which is considerable.”
“Not only that, but we have lost almost three knots in top speed because of marine life growing on the hull. We also had to patch up several leaks in the recent weeks. They were caused by large patches of rust and structural disrepair which grew up since the last two years. Right now, the aircraft carrier which is the only operational base of the Azur Lane currently is in such a bad state that I was forced to reroute the entire Task Force several dozen miles away from the anomaly to lessen the stress on the hull. In short: the Victory once was a serviceable ship. Now it is in dire need of a large-scale overhaul.” the Commander argued, recalling some numbers from his memory.
“We do not have the clearance to allow you to lay into dock, that falls into the jurisdiction of the Navy.”
“For laying in the dock we need funds. Funds which we don’t have. Currently we are spending all of our available funds into buying wisdom cubes from over a dozen different nations, hoping that we can keep up with our demands currently. With our current plans we will run dry of supplies within the next month, this excludes cubes needed for healing of injuries.”
“Perhaps then the healing has to be done by medical professionals and not your team?”
“Miss Speaker, you have to understand that without the use of Cubes we would have had several serious injuries by now, several of them perhaps fatal. I like to believe that John Paul Jones would have looked much better than now if she had been treated by us right away. Sadly, we didn’t have the capacity to take her on at the moment the submarine struck us. Our blanket of units was too thin.” Enterprise argued, starting to lose patience. She hated Congress - she had plenty of time to witness how they worked so far and inefficiency was their motto.
“Rear Admiral Enterprise, we know that the incident regarding the John Paul Jones was a training accident and couldn’t have been foreseen. And seeing how poorly she performed during the action it has been evident that the United States will reconsider their allocating of funding towards the Azur Lane and the current shipgirl programme.” the speaker hummed, causing the Commander to look down, clenching his fists. ‘For fuck’s sake.’ he thought. These old farts didn’t understand what happened on the ocean. Truly amazing - and concerning - how out of touch they were with reality. With quick looks he could see that Enterprise and the CNO felt the same way. Congress was unwilling to give the Azur Lane more money and manpower, they simply saw them as an expense. They did not see the lives which were at stake, just like with the conflict in Eastern Europe.
“With the damage John Paul Jones sustained, it's clear that our shipgirl program is..." the speaker began once more, but the CNO raised his hands. He had enough of the nonsense going on around him.
"The question here is why the fuck am I looking at a bunch of mummies debating whether we should get more funding or not." he growled, his voice getting louder every word he spat.
"Moderate your words, CNO." the speaker said "We looked at her medical report. We are concerned that..."
"Not only no, but fuck no.” the CNO growled, cutting him off. “I don't give a shit about your opinion. We designed those ships to take hits. Shipgirl John Paul Jones knew what she had signed for and you want to throw her away along with Sampson and Momsen."
Enterprise and the Commander watched in disbelief their superior completely snap at the retirement home known as Congress. Before the meeting, she had told him a few stories about the CNO, how he was able to keep his cool no matter what - his call sign was in fact ‘Frost’. But here, it seems he had suddenly turned into a volcano.
"That incident with the Ironblood sub was just a fucking sideshow. The portal is still there, which means more will be pouring in, along with their own shipgirls or Sirens. And you want to retire our shipgirls because you're thinking about money. The fact that Lieutenant John Paul Jones had to go to Azur Lane to receive treatment shows that not a single fucking thing was learned. Meanwhile every other nation is making giant steps. Germany has three shipgirls coupled. The Brits two. And France one. Japan is planning to couple every fucking single ship they have in their fleet! Meanwhile, Russia and China have recently expressed their desire to have two classes of ships coupled - Gorshkov frigates and Type-52D destroyers. Why do you think they want them? To grow flowers? Open your eyes, we are falling behind! No check that, we fell behind the moment the Germans designed that implant! And you are sitting there gobbling flies and yawning at the ravens, playing your usual little game. Not just on our backs, but along with every other shipgirl and sailor on the Victory."
The Commander felt like he had been hit in the stomach. The CNO was the highest ranking man in the entire building and still he had to moderate his words. But here, he had decided to throw away every convention through the window. With his rant over, his superior calmly gathered his papers, put his cap on, then walked away, not even bothering to listen to what the speakers would reply. The Congress fell quiet, flabbergasted. If that was because of the shock of what just had happened, or simple disbelief was unknown. For over a minute nobody said anything. Only when everyone had regained some composure did the speakers muted their microphones, beginning to discuss with each other. For several minutes the room echoed with voices and whispers until one Congressman unmuted his microphone again.
"Commander, perhaps we underestimated your current situation. Though you have to consider our current capabilities, we are still willing to help you. For that we allow you to bring the Victory to drydock without official command. You are free to use any ship from the Reserve Fleet to accommodate your girls until the ship has been serviced." the speaker said, making the Commander’s eyebrows shoot up. What a simple reality check could achieve…
“I have a couple more requests as well.”
“And that would be?”
“We need a base to operate off. A ship with welldeck and ability to take on and launch a high number of helicopters. Would we be able to recall any unit we like from the Reserve Fleet?
“You are.” the speaker replied, prompting Enterprise to jump in. She had knowledge about the Reserve Fleet and the ships within it. Having seen nearly every unit on the ocean and in service had brought her more experience than any fleet commander had.
“The Peleliu, the Cleveland and the Whidbey Island are currently in reserve. I would like to assess their condition."
“That should be no problem. To release them into active service a lot of paperwork has to be done, especially from the side of the Azur Lane. Once that has been achieved, additional funding and support of the reserve fleet should be possible.”