Hook Point Navy Base
Northern Coast of the Great Bay
March 23, 2014
Senior Field Officer Rose Alarieléte looked over her things, making sure the dress uniform paraphernalia were laid out.
She'd gotten a call from a bemused-sounding staffer telling her to expect a personal visit from a general-ranking Air Force officer. And no more. She was going to need to have words with the base personnel about that tomorrow...
A turbofan whine pierced the windowpane of her new quarters as Rose finished fastening up her dress uniform collar; the appointed time was soon and she wanted to be ready. Glancing out the window, Rose saw a Chariot fighter fly in, slow and hover down onto one of the landing pads over on the other side of the base. She'd just got done unpacking her last box before dressing for the meeting, and binoculars were to hand; on a whim she snatched them up- a gift from her grandmother- and took a look at the scene.
Nothing remarkable about the fighter; she couldn't make out the squadron badge from this distance. She was no great expert on aviation, carrier or otherwise, but she
thought the big cylinders at the wingtips were spare fuel tanks. A pair of almost-certainly-missiles hung near the fuselage. Ground crew ran out to check up on the supersonic light fighter, and Rose put her binoculars away.
Absently, she moved to the mirror, adjusting her ribbons and her sparse collection of badges and medals to lay properly. She tugged at the bottom of the uniform coat to settle it. With a single nod of satisfaction, she added came the cap, and a smile bloomed under her pale freckled cheeks for a moment.
Senior Field Officer… who would have thought? fluttered through the Valewoman’s mind as she brushed an errant wisp of hair into place under the cap. A moment of pondering whether or not to wear her dress sword followed; she decided against it. This wasn’t a formal reception, and she had almost as poor luck keeping the scabbard from knocking into things as her head, even if her quarters, quite thankfully, weren’t nearly as cramped as a submarine.
There was a brisk
knock-knock at the door; Rose crossed the room and answered. When she saw the almost-tall, redheaded woman at the door in Air Force service dress, with the epaulets of a Junior General, it was all she could do to keep her jaw from dropping.
She'd expected an Air Force general. Strictly speaking, one stood before her- provincial defense force ranks counted. But that stature and hair, that long, slim nose and those faint wrinkles around the eyes- when Rose was a girl that would have meant the queen, and now it meant...
Rose had
not expected Her Royal Highness Sumi Tayamatra, twelfth of that name, heir to the crown of the Dawn Mists Semi-Autonomous Region.
Yeowoman instincts took over as she sank to one knee. Her family, and the entirety of the Vales, were three generations out of feudalism in theory, and one to zero generations in practice. "Your Royal Highness! This-"
The princess laughed and slid hands under Rose's shoulders to help her up, as Tayamatras had been doing to Alarielétes who'd acted much the same for thirty generations. Princess Sumi let the laugh shade over smoothly into the comfortable burble of the language of the Vales, so different from that of the men over the mountains. "We're in uniform, so we must be officers of Umeria first- and our ranks aren't
that far apart, and congratulations on your promotion, 'Rose.' You're doing well."
The change in the princess' tone at her adopted name was a cheerful, bemused lilt-
does she know my birth name, or remember? Filing a change of name to something Umerians would be comfortable with when she applied to the Naval Academy had... seemed like a good idea at the time. Probably had been, careerwise. She really did think of herself as 'Rose' now, more often than not; the change had been twenty-one years and two daughters ago, after all.
Feeling tongue-tied before royalty, Rose willed her mouth to move. "Th- thank you, Your Royal Highness; please do come in, they didn't tell me you were coming, what do you wish of me?"
Princess Sumi smiled again. "Well, I
did need another flight to fill my hours for this year. Even if I could get an exemption from the rules for Chariot training to be rated fit to fly them, it would hardly do to neglect practice at arms."
Face still, and hoping for the princess’s sake that she took her practice seriously-
She’s a Tayamatra, surely she must…, Rose came up with the polite response. “As you say, your highness. You are welcome in my quarters, of course; I have the samovar set up so we can have fayalin shortly if you like.”
The motions of the tea-making were reassuringly normal and down-to-Earth, compared to the experience of having a princess drop in. After the momentary busying-herself of making sure the fayalin would come out right, she turned to her royal guest, smiling and dipping her head as she asked “And if I may, Your Royal Highness, how was your journey?”
Princess Sumi smiled and tossed her head, a royal tic that had been in the family long enough to be described on fading parchments. “Had an interesting flight out here. Some storms blew up faster than the weather service expected, and getting over them was exciting. Ah well, better than that time in ‘06 that the engine quit on me. Had to fly home on the lift jets; lucky it wasn’t more than half an hour’s trip...”
Rose’s eyes shot fully open, imagining a finicky, unstable fighter jet, main engine out, skating across the sky on the downward force of her lift-thrusters. The Chariot would be skidding through the air of a hog on ice… at several hundred kilometers an hour.
It’d be like… like… flying a helicopter, only the sky hates the idea of sharing space with it MORE!
She shivered. “I have to say, Your Highness, I cannot ever see myself doing such a thing. Experiencing such a thing would certainly make me think twice about flying again, but we Alarielétes are not known for our fearless ferocity, after all.”
"I know, I know, by blood your Line aren't warriors… Although. Although.” The princess smiled slowly. “Everything I've ever heard of underwater-war makes it sound like a battle of cleverness and patience, and..." she laughed. "Come to that, my House has been losing their occasional games of Nine Ladies Sparring against our steel-witches for a long time now. You'll do splendidly."
“I will note that Nine Ladies Sparring only has
two dimensions to worry of, Your Royal Highness, but I shall not dare contradict a princess.” Rose replied with a soft smile crossing her face.
Princess Sumi’s mouth quivered, then a faint snort escaped her… then the laughter took over for a few long seconds before she recovered. “Fair. I shall see about getting a three-dimensional board, then.”
“If you wish the board of metal, I could make it myself, Your Highness. It’s been rather too long since I’ve singed my fingers...”
“Ah, but I’d like it to be
waiting when you next return, so that I can ambush you with it!” She grinned.
“You seem to know many of the skills of underwater-war already, My Princess.” Rose replied with an honest smile spreading across her face.
Princess Sumi laughed again. “If nothing else they do have machine-shops on submarines; perhaps we can surprise each other. Though I have to ask, how
do you handle being set over so many men?”
“Well, Your Highness, I’d like to think I have a healthy imagination to escape the situation when I must, I keep very tight control over myself… and I have the patience and social judo that comes from teenaged daughters.”
“Sounds about right. At home we’ve always been able to keep them outnumbered in the Territorial force- only ever specialists, and they’re not so bad when they’re outnumbered. Good to know you’ve found a way to get by the problem; I think it’s stopping most of our girls from getting promoted very far when they join the Umerian forces.”
“...You know, I imagine it
would. I expect I had to impress a lot of people I didn’t even know about to get this far, and it’s a real trial sometimes. Still, patience helps more than anything else.”
They have reasons, after all, for acting the way they do, even if they’re often hormonally stupid ones.
The princess tapped her cheek absently. “Which- almost reminds me of something, a
précis my mother passed on to me about two months back… ah. Didn’t you almost wind up swords crossed against an Orion submarine this summer?”
“I wouldn’t say it was that close, Your Highness.” Rose sniffed. “The Orion boat provoked us rather sharply and gave us a terrible startle, and we didn’t take the bait. Captain Bear told me he
almost turned around to lash them across the head with the towed sonar array, but he did have the judgment to think better of it.”
“Did you counsel against it?”
“I was in the next compartment over, actually, but… he
did say imagining the look on my face helped him get over that first surge of boarishness.”
The princess smiled. “Good. Sensible, maybe more sensible than I would have been. You and him both. And…
keep being sensible. I hope the Navy men do too. It’s strange to hear a Tayamatra say it, I’m sure, but the peace is good for us at home, you know that. The Umerians have been spending more on the metalworks with the, what do they call it, peace dividend. And just in the past couple of years, the new-” she blinked for a moment- “what's the word,
datacenters are starting to get into a healthy trot; cheap electricity is good for them and it means we’re finally getting some girls who understand thinking machines.”
“
That,” Rose said feelingly, “is very much good news, ma’am.” She thought about how much more computerized the Navy had become in the past ten and fifteen years- not that it hadn’t relied on calculating machinery before that, but now it was everywhere, all digital, all the time. When she stepped out of the academy there was far, far less of that. “If you don’t mind my saying so, I think computers-” she used the Umerian word- “can do a lot for us, and skipping ahead to embrace them will help us catch up to the rest of the world.”
The shorter woman scowled. "They surely can, and I’m glad they won’t turn into
another surprise... First we thought we understood rifles. Men pulled out grenades and revolvers, and we were twenty years setting things halfway to rights. Grandmother made sure we'd get the hang of small arms, then we found out about steel-chariots and sky-chariots and electricity... and by the time we got the hang of
that we were having to pay in hearths and family groves for the dams and roads we'd need. This feeling rides the back of my neck, that atomics have at least as much power to create, perhaps to destroy, as any other art of man... and
We-" she almost spat out the royal plural- "
are tired of surprises."
Rose remained silent, thinking of the possibly-present GAV bugs. Inwardly she was nodding- all perfectly true, perfectly understandable... But she could tell that Princess Sumi was not finished.
Not to Rose's surprise, the princess gathered herself and continued, starting to smile again. "And so, since We are to have an advisory committee on atomic energy, and since you are the
only woman of the Vales to command an atomic warship to date, whenever you're pensioned off... We will be waiting for you to teach us what you've learned. Just like your great-aunts did with the truck operators, or your great-grandmother with the art of gunsmithing."
The Navy woman blinked, feeling if anything more honored than she had at being given
Broadsword a week ago. “I... I would be honored, Your Royal Highness… I do not know quite what Umeria will ask of me as yet. Certainly I am not expecting to… well, we shall see, Your Royal Highness, but I shall be honored to advise the Royal family in such matters as I am needed.” Rose thought to herself,
I hope that sounded right…
The princess nodded. "Very well... oh, by the way, Kieliah-” she had a moment of startlement at the princess’ use of her birth-name, “I visited your Line's greathouse the day before I left, and your girls- the younger, actually- asked me to bring you this." She brought out a small paper-wrapped irregular object and handed it across to Rose, who gingerly opened it, feeling the heft of the thing, and seeing a small gleam, pulled the rest of the paper and foam away, and it...
It looked… actually rather a lot like a submarine. Oh, the hull was more like an old Rhenisch U-boat than the streamlined teardrops of the modern atomics, but
definitely a submarine, as worked in sheet metal by a thirteen year old who had never seen one. A thirteen year old girl whose sheet-metal work was coming on
very nicely… suddenly, it was hard to see clearly. She wiped her eyes as Princess Sumi’s voice sounded gently by her ear.
“I know it is a day early, but happy birthday, my loyal steel-witch."
The princess took Rose’s hand in hers, then, and squeezed it firmly. “You have done well, Vale-sister, and do us proud amongst the Umerians. Now, I fear I have to fly to Eastport before sundown. They have a far-too-full schedule for me, full of men chattering at me about various things… fare well with Our best wishes in your new command.”