The Battle of Julaho is infamous for a reason, and famous for still more.
It is famous for its unprecedented nature: two fully modern navies at the height of their power colliding while in use of cutting-edge and untested military technology, every move and countermove spontaneous and fresh. It is famous for the sheer brilliance on display: despite being surrounded by unknowns, both admirals acted with astonishing speed and grace in adapting to their enemy’s capabilities.
It is infamous for its casualty count. If only one side or the other had displayed less technical skill or aptitude for destruction, a great deal of lives could have been saved. Incompetence would, perhaps, have been a humane thing that day.
***
“ENEMY CONTACT.”
Shorri sat bolt upright in defiance of eight months of learned habit and six months of training, slamming her forehead directly into the unyielding and immovable object that was a bulkhead. She saw six stars and seven seagulls and one giant swear, which she immediately let out of her mouth.
“Language!” called Munzu from below her, already up and at them and halfway out the door, and for a moment Shorri wondered if she could get away with reporting that as deliberate sloth in the line of duty but it was too evil and too late besides and she was too busy running to think of much else.
Where the FUCK had they come from?
***
The engagement of the two armadas off the Julaho Hailbanks of the qkkrA glacial rift was not the first step in the battle; rather, it was the beginning of the end. Days of careful cat-and-mouse planning, stalking, and silence had concluded in this: the moment where each admiral could no longer avoid enemy contact nor improve their own positioning. There was no shock to be had: only grim anticipation.
***
Where the FUCK had they come from? One minute jzzA had been asleep at her post, gently nodding alongside her anti-flycraft gun, then she’d been nearly eyeball-to-eyeball with an enemy captain taking the air atop her ship’s carapace, mouth as wide open and foolish as her own.
If she’d been a little quicker on the trigger this engagement might have started very favourably. But the hatchway was right there and the other woman was a bit quicker on the uptake than she was and the opportunity slid away to the land of regrets, daydreams, and other such ephemeral and timewasting nonsense.
So instead jzzA slammed her palm on the local alert siren while screaming her head off, and soon she had plenty of company with the same opinions that she did. Then she held down the trigger on her gun until she remembered to take the safety off.
***
The Quyalmarian armada that day was the Third Exploratory Fleet under the command of Admiral Ulcafuge, destined to blockade and strangle qkkrA’s crevasse-port. It consisted of three Catastrophe-class dreadtertles, a flank guard of seven Snarler slipserpents, and the admiral’s flagshark: the Insinuation.
Against them was the freshly-formed kkrrU Home Guard, whose last ship had been carved free only six days prior. Fourteen clasheR bergie bits and four grindeR growlers; commanded by Admiral crrA atop the englaciator tindeR.
The opening volleys were exploratory, calculated affairs, designed to probe the strengths and weaknesses of the unknown. Each shot was placed with scientific precision.
***
“ALL HANDS FIRE” came roaring out of Xerxes’s synthesized meganerves, passed directly through Shorri’s skull, reverberated against the polished oriachulum bracing of the dreadtertle’s bones, and echoed back again twice as loudly.
“Huh?” she said.
Munzu kicked her.
“Oh!” Shorri said, and somewhere in the middle of that she realized she was holding down the trigger on their main cannon, which was making angry metallic noises as it overheated on an empty chamber. “FUCK!”
“LANGUAGE,” screamed Munzu into her ear.
“SHUT UP.”
***
Advantage so often goes not to the side with the newest technology – in fact, more often than not it’s turned against them. Teething problems can prove fatal when presented with as tough a nut to crack as a determined foe. Yet the firing solutions of the Home Guard, barely-tested as they were, theoretical as they had been until scant months ago, performed flawlessly under pressure. For once, the laboratory conditions had foreseen the battlefield’s demands almost exactly.
***
jzzA was not religious or sacrilegious in any particular measure – the product of a friendly household – but she swore to and against any ghost that was listening that if she lived through this she would personally hand them the pulsing kidneys of the profoundly stupid fatherfucker that had designed her anti-flycraft gun. The idiotic thing was incapable of aiming at any point lower than the fimbulice railing it was mounted to, and when it was mounted on the hull of a vessel of tindeR’s stature… well.
WELL.
If it wasn’t sitting atop the highest point of the enemy’s hulls, she wasn’t hitting it. Their flags were in ribbons now under the hail of her fire. What a wondrous job she was doing.
***
By the conclusion of the battle’s first hour, both armadas had fully grasped the other’s strength – the impassive brittle barricades offered by the fimbulice-forged surfaces of the Home Guard; the nigh-instantaneous maneuverability offered by the intravenous ichor booster-shots mounted against the main veins of the Third Exploratory Fleet’s livevessels. In mere minutes gut and raw intellect had comprehended not only the form of the enemy but their innovations, formed a counter-stratagem, and passed it down the chain of command. The engagement had ceased to surprise: now it was simply a matter of innovative, destructive mathematics.
***
“IS THAT THEM?” asked Shorri.
“FUCK IF I KNOW,” said Munzu, probably. Shorri’s ability to read lips was as badly battered by the main cannon as her hearing had been; all those vibrations turned everything into a badly-shot film.
Not as badly-shot as they were. Fuck, she wished she knew if they were even aiming at the enemy. It could just be an iceberg. She hoped it was the enemy; this would be the most embarrassing way to get court-martialed ever. ‘Your Justice, I was sincere in my belief that the chunk of meandering ice was in fact an actively-firing kkrrU ship of war; I spent over an hour attempting to destroy it based upon this very reasonable judgement, and I defy anyone else to claim they would have done differently.’ If she were lucky her execution could make it into the history books.
“FIRE,” she said anyways. She’d always wanted to be famous, might as well be for this as for anything else.
***
If an act of mass death can be called a masterstroke, the firing trajectory plotted by the fourth gun deck crew of the dreadtertle Xerxes was surely one. The blood-heated missile struck the invincible sides of the tindeR at an angle so perfect that it avoided the fate of all its sisters and failed to shatter. Instead, it slid along the main hull, careened through the reinforced battledoors of the bridge, and had shed just enough of its momentum that when it reached the far wall of the command hub it shattered rather than penetrating.
The resulting shrapnel led to the instantaneous death or mortal wounding of all staff present. But Admiral crrA, despite being perforated by boiling metal, was cool as her vessel itself. As the ship’s cryonic maintenance system began to crack itself apart around her, forcing the dissolution of the fimbulice core that held the beleaguered tindeR together, she offered up her final, crucial orders.
One can only imagine the heights to which her career would have ascended should she have survived the battle; as it was, it remains her singular and shining achievement. Many would have killed for such.
***
jzzA wasn’t sure where she was meant to be anymore since her anti-flycraft gun had melted to the rails, but she was sure where she WASN’T meant to be and on a deck that was awash in blood and steam wasn’t it. She was just trying to find new orders, that’s right. A radio or something. An officer! The bridge had both of those, and it was heavily armoured and that was a nice coincidence.
As she stumbled inside, she realized that she probably should’ve unlocked the door. Which hadn’t been shut, come to think of it. Or there at all. And oh, oh, oh that was a lot of blood and bits and she was throwing up frantically, bracing herself on the mutilated remains of what had probably been at one point the admiral’s command desk. The air was too thick here; it was filled with dripping and squishing and harsh static and oh ghosts.
“Ghosts,” she wheezed. “Ghosts ghosts ghosts. Fire and fuck and low hells take them.”
Then she resumed vomiting.
***
A lesser commander would never have thought to deploy the prototype ‘ghost’ flash-freeze tactical cryonic system at such a dangerous moment. The technology was overbuilt beyond even tindeR’s specifications; requiring a deft touch to manage without risking severe damage even on a tranquil sea with all hands working carefully. Admiral crrA’s final command risked causing irreversible damage to the close-packed formation of the Home Guard, if it worked at all – much of the englaciator’s core systems team was already dead, killed by the fire of the Xerxes.
Nevertheless, impossible though it was, it was done.
***
It took a moment for Shorri to understand what had happened, and why Xerxes had halted so abruptly that she’d only remained upright by her death-grip on her fire controls. The answer came out of the corner of her vision.
When she’d last pulled the trigger, the Insinuation had been breaching towards an enemy growler over the shattered remnants of its sister-ship; the flagshark’s jaws wide and its dental batteries jerking forwards to open fire.
As the smoke cleared, she saw that it was still mid-breach. And was going to remain as such indefinitely.
All around them, around Xerxes, around the entirety of the Third Exploratory Fleet, the surface of the sea – down to every wave and ripple – had been flashed into unyielding fimbulice.
“Fuck,” said Shorri, in a voice she was astonished she could hear in the sudden silence before the hailshot struck the cannon battery next to them.
***
Even in that moment, the battle could have swung either way. Superweapons or no; casualties or no; everything still hinged on one irreplaceable thing: the nerves and will of the sailors of both armadas. They fought in the face of death and disfigurement with no thought to their own lives, only for the greater good of their nations and loved ones. No quarter was asked for until there was no other option, and although the toll from such bravery was terrible, no life spent so valiantly can be considered truly wasted.
***
jzzA realized she was still alive, and was appalled despite herself.
Surely the shrapnel of the bridge had impaled her.
Surely the disintegration of the tindeR’s solidity under her feet had trapped her.
Surely the violent internal explosion that had turned the ocean solid had vaporized her.
Surely the force that had launched the dismembered corpse of the bridge into the air and into the side of a half-burning dreadtertle had crushed her.
But there jzzA was. All four limbs. Probably her head, too. Standing even, swaying, lurching, tripping and rolling and flailing her way upright until she was on the deck of a strange ship facing strange faces surrounded by flaming wreckage and warm air and her pistol was in her hands.
She dropped it.
“I surrender completely,” she said.
***
The victory was a credit to both sides, but the weight of it fell to the kkrrU Home Guard. They had lost an expensive experimental weapon, an englaciator-class flagship, and one of the bravest and most cunning minds to ever travel the waves, but they had won the battle and captured or annihilated the entirety of the Quyalmarian Third Exploratory Fleet. Though not a single soul survived the death of the tindeR, let it never be said that a single one of them will be forgotten: by their nation, by their enemies, by history.
***
“Who won?” asked jzzA. The towel was too small, which she supposed matched the people. Then she saw Shorri pull one over herself shivering and realized no they were just very sad and inadequate towels. It was strangely disappointing to see your enemy so shoddy.
“Right now?” asked Munzu. “I think you did.”
“I mean the battle.”
“Oh, the enemy. I think. We’re surrendering shortly.”
“Fuck. I’m dead meat.”
“What? Why?”
“Do you know what the penalty for surrendering in the midst of an ongoing battle is in the navy?” asked jzzA.
“No,” said Munzu.
“Imagine yours then double it.”
“Oh,” said Munzu.
“Ouch,” added Shorri, who was now mostly dry and offering her sad, inadequate, now-damp towel to jzzA.
“I already have one, thank you.”
“It takes two to get anything done. Trust me.”
She did.
“So,” she said at long last, once the idea had finally grown large enough to escape her skull, “what will you do with me?”
“Why would we do anything with you?” asked Munzu. “You’re our good pal, the third and final survivor from all of gun deck four.”
“Who’s going to ask otherwise?” added Shorri. “Some dip from the bridge? They don’t exactly know our faces.”
“And it’s not like they’re going to be in position to order anything, soon as this is all over.”
This all made considerable sense.
“Maybe I could try being jzAz,” she mused. “I’ve always wondered how that’d feel.”
The look Munzu and Shorri exchanged was universal.
“No?”
“Try ‘Jasz,’” Munzu said.
“Please,” Shorri said.
“For the love of god please.”
“I’m beginning to regret surrendering. I think winners don’t have to deal with this sort of thing.”
“You knew what you were getting into when you signed on, sailor,” said Shorri. “Welcome to the navy.”