Chapter 2: Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Chapter 2: Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

CHAPTER 2

MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE

Beneath a thick, gloomy, clouded sky was the black, leaden surface of the sea. Jagged ebony rocks littered the reef-filled coast as the melancholic roar of the ocean blotted out the cries of the seabirds. In the distance, one could see the wreckage of battleships stacked together in heaps as they lined the panorama.

“…I guess that’s the sea,” Shin said, looking away from his first view of the ocean.

“No, ’tis not! Not like this!” Frederica raised her voice, stamping her feet in protest.

I want to see the sea.

Whenever that thought crossed her mind, Frederica imagined a blue, sparkling sea beneath a bright, sunny sky, or white shores full of coral remains. Sea spray reflecting the sunlight and palm trees, beautiful flowers surrounded by the cheerful chirping of gulls.

The sea being black wasn’t due only to the dark clouds, incidentally. It was because of the rocks and sand at the ocean’s bottom, which meant that even in fine weather, the seawater here would still be black. It would always be black. And since the water’s temperature was freezing year-round, they couldn’t swim in it, either.

“And what is this rotten smell in the air?! What is the meaning of this…this stench…?!”

“Isn’t it supposed to smell like salt? I don’t really know, though.”

He’d read something to that effect at one point, but he wasn’t actually sure. Even if he did run into the scent of the salty sea, he wouldn’t recognize it.

“…Ugh. Finally, we are at sea, but I know not what to do…!”

Frederica spoke with tears in her eyes as she glared reproachfully at a wave loudly crashing against the rocks. She felt as if her expectations had been thoroughly dashed, and she had nowhere to let out those pent-up emotions.

“Are you satisfied with this?!” she asked Shin angrily. “Did you not tell Vladilena that you wished to show her the sea?! To see it alongside her?! Surely, this is not the sea you imagined!”

“I’ll admit this wasn’t exactly what I was expecting…,” Shin said, then turned to look at someone standing in the distance.

They still hadn’t spoken since.

“But Lena seems happy with this either way.”

Looking ahead, he could see Lena struck speechless, her pale face beaming as she watched the waves rise and fall. Appreciating her reaction through a sidelong glance, Shin couldn’t help but crack a smile himself.

“You two… You truly are…”

From far away, they could hear a “song”—like the blowing of a thin, silvery flute, riding gently along the waves.

“That ‘singing’ from earlier was from one of the largest specimens. The cry of a fifty-meter class, just like this girl . Hearing it isn’t unusual in the Fleet Countries, but you’re quite lucky to catch it on your first day here.”

They stood in the lobby of a military base, which was originally a museum attached to the naval university. It was requisitioned at the start of the war and converted into a base.

Standing in the center of the lobby was one jovial officer, wearing an indigo-navy uniform with crimson lining. He had a beautiful tattoo of a firebird spreading its wings etched onto his face. It extended from his forehead, ran along the edge of his left eye, and traveled all the way down to his cheekbone.

His serene voice rang out sonorously in the salty sea breeze. His skin was tanned, and his bright-brown hair seemed like it was faded by sunlight. He had a Jade’s faint-green eyes, which were probably his natural-born color.

And yet the Strike Package’s eyes weren’t fixed on him. Their attention was arrested by the large object suspended imposingly—though perhaps a bit less so by how cramped it looked—from the navicular ceiling.

It was a massive skeleton of a beast, far too large to exist on land in modern times.

“Hunting this girl is our Orphan Fleet’s proudest accomplishment—or so I’d like to say, but she died of natural causes and drifted ashore. They also caught a lot of fish and ate them with oil when they picked her up. A pretty good day for them, all in all. The scholars really struggled to get the skeleton packed and preserved, though.”

Its long spine extended like a thousand-year-old tree, resembling a dragon in shape, carrying with it a rib cage wide enough for a person to reasonably live in. It had a long neck, which was connected to a jagged skull.

Even when reduced to a skeleton, its sheer size and majesty was overwhelming. Shin thought he’d seen a similar creature’s skeleton once before. It was long before he had been sent to the internment camp, in some museum. A sample of a large creature, whose bones he had once mistaken for a dragon’s…

“We loaned her to the Republic of San Magnolia’s royal museum before the war, so some of you may have seen her before. If you have, don’t be shy and raise your hands. Come now!”

Apparently, it wasn’t just similar. It was the very same skeleton. Shin held his tongue, however, and no one else raised their hand. The museum in question was in Liberté et Égalité, which had a predominantly Celena population. The majority of the people present in this room were Eighty-Six, and their families wouldn’t go there.

The Orphan Fleet officer looked amazed.

“My, that’s strange… The little ones are usually more excited to see it. Oh well. Anyway, her name is Nicole. Feel free to call her Nikki, though. Even a leviathan isn’t as scary when it’s just a skeleton like this, right?”

This creature was called a leviathan. A belligerent marine animal that reigned supreme in the deep, dark seas—especially the open seas around the continent’s shores—since before recorded history. To be exact, it was a species of such hostile marine creatures.

Even as humankind spread throughout the continent, the leviathans remained the supreme rulers of the ocean, refusing to vacate their watery throne by impeding voyages out to sea. That remained true to this day, when humans came in steel crafts loaded with weapons. Any weapon and platform produced by humankind were a target for the leviathans’ ire.

That was why humankind couldn’t use any waters that were beyond the coastal areas. All sea trade and transport routes, the operation of fishing boats, and the deployment of military vessels were limited to a small area of water near the shores.

The sea wasn’t the world of humanity. Humankind couldn’t leave the continent. And only one country saw that fact as unacceptable—and deemed it unacceptable still.

“So, with that said, I will be working alongside you this time. Captain of the Stella Maris, the flagship of the Regicide integrated navy’s Orphan Fleet. Call me Ishmael Ahab. You can feel free to call me Captain Ishmael, Colonel Ishmael, or Uncle Ishmael. Not Captain Ahab, though. That’s what we called my late old man…the fleet commander.”

And that zone was the Strike Package’s next dispatch site, the Regicide Fleet Countries. A cluster of countries borne from a fleet of battleships that sought to conquer the seas and exterminate the leviathans.

In the past, seafaring tribes existed across the shores of the continent. The last eleven of those tribes formed the eleven Fleet Countries, which developed the only fleet in the continent capable of taking to the open seas, with a flagship built to oppose the leviathans.

Shin and the Strike Package had gathered in this hall to receive the outline of the coming operation from him. Behind him stood a slightly older woman, who parted her lips. She was also perfectly clad in an indigo-navy uniform and had a red tattoo in the shape of scales over her dark skin.

“It’s about time you wrap up your little chat, Brother . The Strike Package’s members might leave if you don’t hurry.”

“Oh, sorry, sorry. I just thought we should introduce good old Nikki first… Ah, this composed beauty right here is my younger sister and deputy, Lieutenant Esther. You can feel free to call her Estie… Oops.”

Lieutenant Esther glared at him wordlessly, which made him duck his head.

A young officer of mixed L’asile and Orienta heritage with a peony tattoo carried in a white board, setting it behind them and leaving wordlessly.

“All right, let’s give you the outline, then. Our open-sea fleet will ferry you over to the Mirage Spire base, so you guys are to take over the fortress and destroy the Morpho. That is all.”

“…”

A strained…or rather exasperated silence settled over the Eighty-Six. As if they were wondering if this man was really in the position to command anyone. Lena chimed in to supplement his explanation.

“The Mirage Spire is located near the open sea, which borders the leviathan’s territory. Neither the Federacy nor the United Kingdom have vessels capable of sailing through these waters. As such, the Strike Package will be relying on the supercarrier and its fleet for ferrying and protection over the sea.”

With the supercarrier as its crux, the open-sea fleet was a convoy of long-distance cruisers weighing ten thousand tonnes, six-thousand-tonne anti-leviathan vessels, scout vessels optimized for tracking the leviathans’ movements, as well as supply ships.

Before the Legion War, each of the eleven Fleet Countries had a fleet of their own, and those eleven fleets populated the northern seas. Since the start of the war, those fleets were employed for the sake of defending the land, with many of them sunk and each fleet only having a few ships remaining…

Hence the integrated fleet , Shin thought as he recalled Ishmael’s introduction. None of the eleven fleets had enough remaining ships to operate on its own, and so they gathered their ships together, forming a large integrated fleet: the Orphan Fleet.

Lieutenant Esther continued, using magnets to attach the operation map to the white board. At the bottom of the map was the coastline of the Fleet Countries. At the center was a red dot marking their objective. The majority of the map was colored blue, though, symbolizing the sea.

“The Orphan Fleet will handle your trip to the objective and back, and it’ll also create a diversion. The Morpho is currently estimated to have a range of four hundred kilometers. By comparison, the Orphan Fleet’s maximal cruising speed is thirty knots.”

“When converted to ground units of measurements, it comes to…fifty kilometers per hour.”

“Huh. That’s slow.”

“Who just said that?! I’ll beat you silly. Do you have any idea how many tonnes the supercarrier weighs? We’re talking five digits here. Don’t expect it to go as fast as your little daddy-longlegs Feldreß when it doesn’t even weigh ten tonnes.”

“Brother, I understand how you feel, but we need to move things along. Please back down,” Lieutenant Esther said.

“Second Lieutenant Oriya, that was out of line,” Lena chided Rito.

“Sorry.”

Seeing Ishmael and Rito both fall silent, Esther paused as if to recall what she was going to say and then continued:

“…Yes, so maximal speed of thirty knots. In other words, it would take us seven hours to breach the Morpho’s bombardment range in a straight line and reach the Mirage Spire base. As we do, two of the integrated navy’s general fleets will set sail beforehand to draw the Morpho’s fire from us and attempt to approach the Mirage Spire.”

Esther placed a transparent cover over the map and began writing on it. Two lines from the shore to the Mirage Spire—likely at the shortest distance from their home port. She then took a different colored pen, drawing a line from the Orphan Fleet’s home base to the north and then changing directions to the southeast, heading for the Mirage Spire.

“Before the diversion begins, we will stealthily set sail. We’ll sail north along the edge of the bombardment range, docking at the Flightfeather archipelago. After the enemy begins engaging the diversion fleet, we’ll enter the bombardment range while hiding within the storm. In other words, we will be waiting for the storm to come and begin the operation as soon as it does.”

“Incidentally, the Legion aren’t capable of naval combat, so we won’t have to worry about fighting any other Legion except for the Morpho…,” Ishmael added. “Or at least, the Orphan Fleet hasn’t detected any naval Legion types over the last decade of fighting.”

Esther nodded.

“As unfortunate as it is, our country is a small one. We believe that rather than trying to create effective weapons against us in the north, the Legion decided to sink their resources into developing effective methods for combating the Federacy and the United Kingdom.”

“The sad reality of things is that even without producing any naval units, they’re still giving us enough trouble as it is.”

“…”

This was a joke that left foreigners like the Strike Package at a loss for how to respond. That was probably why there weren’t any naval Legion types, however… Shin cocked his head slightly and raised a question.

“But…there are a few small Legion groups out at sea. Based on how they’re moving, I’m guessing they’re patrol groups. What about them?”

“Mm? Oh… I see. You’re the one the rumors were about.”

Ishmael gazed at Shin in puzzlement for a moment, before nodding in realization. Apparently, he’d heard of Shin’s ability.

“Those aren’t naval units; they’re mother ships for launching advance recon units. The Morpho needs them to accurately shoot at any approaching vessels. I’m sure you know this already, but the Rabe can’t remain airborne over the sea.”

Lena turned to face Shin in surprise, but he simply nodded. The reason for that was unclear, but there weren’t any Rabe units over the sea. The Morpho was a long-distance cannon without anything to guide it. Its accuracy wasn’t high.

This wasn’t like the large-scale offensive, where it was firing salvos at large, clear, and fixed targets that couldn’t evade its shots, like bases and fortresses. This time, it was up against moving targets on the large, vast sea. If it was going to hit any small ships without a Rabe to assist it, it would need advance recon units.

“The diversion fleet will handle distracting and sinking those recon-unit ships, as well, so you don’t need to worry about them. You’ve got nothing to worry about to begin with; the supercarrier isn’t going to sink, no matter what.”

Maybe Ishmael decided there was no point explaining marine maneuvers to child soldiers who had never experienced naval combat. Maybe it was some kind of pride, as if to say naval combat was the Orphan Fleet’s field and they should just leave it to them. He even skimmed over the topic of their transportation on the way to the base and smiled cheerily.

“The Orphan Fleet is very grateful to have you here, Eighty-Six. And that’s why…we swear it on the Stella Maris’s name: We will return the Strike Package to safety, no matter the cost.”

The requisitioned university’s dorms served as the Strike Package’s barracks for the duration of the mission. Its corridors’ floors were lined with tile mosaics in an ancient design typical to the far south.

Theo wandered through these corridors alone after the lights went out. He ran into Rito, who left what looked like an office with a bundle of thin paper booklets under his arm.

“…What are you doing here?”

“Ah, Second Lieutenant Rikka.”

Perhaps Rito had grown taller, because Theo got the impression that his eyes were closer to his than they were a few months ago.

“Well, you see, I figured they might have a few more left over, so I came in to ask, and they did. I thought that even if they’re not useful now, they’ll be good for when the war ends,” Rito said, speaking quickly. “They said they’ll be recruiting from outside the country, too.”

“…Rito, I get that it was my fault for asking you out of nowhere, but could you sort out your thoughts before you talk instead of saying things as soon as they come to mind?”

“Ah, yes, sir. I’ve been hearing that a lot recently. Er… The university here has a senior high school attached to it. These are study materials for it. I figured I’d take them back to the base’s study room so the people who didn’t come here could read them, too.”

Rito’s face then lit up.

“But did you see that?! The leviathan! That thing’s amazing! It’s like a real monster!”

Theo recalled that Rito was one of the younger Processors. When some of the bigwigs gave them comics or movies or cartoons, he would watch them religiously. Monster films were some of his favorites, apparently.

Theo thought it was heartwarming. And honestly, he and a lot of the older Processors did like that kind of entertainment, too, given that they hadn’t had access to anything like it since they were little children.

“So you want to work in something that involves the leviathans? After the war ends.”

“I just thought it might be cool. It sounds fun.”

“You’ve really started thinking about all sorts of things, haven’t you?”

“All sorts of things” included wanting to dig up fossils in the Alliance and wanting to invent a flying bike.

“Ah, yeah. I mean, I…” He trailed off, as if in thought. “First Lieutenant Rikka, do you know Ludmila? One of the Sirins. Tall, with red hair?”

“…Yeah.”

Tall, with red hair…

Come now, everyone. By all means.

It was like a chilling presentation of the end that awaited the Eighty-Six. They were different from the Sirins. They knew that. But it felt like, just like the Sirins, their deaths might go unrewarded.

“What about Ludmila?”

“During the Dragon Fang Mountain operation, I was in the same squad as her. At the time, I was still scared of the Sirins, but then she started talking to me.”

It occurred to Theo that Rito really did stop being terrified of the Sirins at some point.

“She told me to be happy. To live as I want. And I…I think I realized. The Sirins, they…they were just worried about us in their own way.”

The glow of the old light bulbs lit up his golden eyes. Agate eyes, like those of a thoughtful, innocent animal.

“They were concerned for us. In the Eighty-Sixth Sector, they told us to die, but things are different here. The Federacy wants us to study, and that’s a chore, but that’s only because they’re trying to tell us to live however we want, right? So we can do anything we’d like and go wherever we want.”

Go wherever you want. See whatever you wish. Do whatever you’d like. Once the war ends. Or even if it doesn’t end, and you leave the army. That’s…

“That’s something we can wish for. In the Eighty-Sixth Sector, all we had was pride. We had nothing else, and we didn’t want anything else. But now it’s different… I understand that, so I want to wish for all sorts of things.”

All the things he couldn’t wish for in the Eighty-Sixth Sector. The many things he was deprived of.

Theo listened to his words, dumbfounded. He’d thought Rito had grown taller, but it wasn’t just that. At some point, he’d become capable of thinking and saying these kinds of things.

Rito was…trying to leave the Eighty-Sixth Sector.

And that left Theo dumbfounded. He was happy that Shin had learned to wish for the future. He saw Raiden and Anju were trying to move on, too, and he was pleased with that as well. But it wasn’t just them. It was Rito, too. And there were probably so many of them going through the same thing. Theo just didn’t notice.