One of the Commanders even chuckled. "If every Abyssal flagship were as clueless as Ryuujou, we'd have pushed into their main base and taken the seven seas already!"
Laughter rolled across the surface. The situation was plain: the Abyssal Ryuujou couldn't even run anymore.
The commanders had it in the bag.
At bottom, Ryuujou was just too weak.
This so-called First Island Chain host barely topped a million, and among named Abyssal flagships there was only Ryuujou.
A joke, really—and to think the commanders had been so tense.
Praised or not, light of mood or not, Takeyama still frowned.
Yes, Abyssal flagships have flaws; Ryuujou was reckless. But was she really such a fool as to blunder straight into a trap?
And Gorou's new aide—was there truly nothing off about?
Which reminded him—where was Gorou?
He might be a low rank commander compared with his superiors, but his bait mission was a sealed compartment of the wider operation; he didn't know where overall commander Gorou had gone.
Heizou answered, "He went to witness the kill with his own eyes—won't be at ease otherwise. With this, taking the First Island Chain is a done deal. He can finally breathe."
Takeyama stiffened. "What about Lady Indiana? Is she with him?"
He faltered Heizou with the urgency of his tone. Another captain answered instead, offhand.
"She and that new aide were sent out to coordinate detachments. I was originally assigned to the eighth prong of the Ambush; she canceled it and redeployed me here, with my unit retasked. She's probably on another front now."
It didn't strike him as odd. In a campaign to decide a continent's fate, you used the people you trusted most; radios weren't something to rely on completely. Since the destroyer Inazuma went down, Gorou had only Indiana to lean on. They'd quarreled of late, sure, but a marriage ship is still a wife—someone close.
They took it in stride; Takeyama slapped his thigh, stamping his foot in alarm.
"We're wrong—dead wrong!" he cried. "The Abyssals' target is Gorou!"
"At last, we get to this part. Putting on a show like this is such a hassle; let's not do it again. Not satisfying."
The mantis-shrimp rig unfurled, revealing Ryuujou at the center, rubbing bleary eyes.
She took two minutes to clear her head, glanced at the lightless sea, then shouted to the sky:
"Akagi, Kaga, Zuikaku, Shoukaku, Taiho— if you don't move now, I'm going home!"
In the night, a low, thunderlike murmur rolled over from the north like a spreading cloudbank.
On the sea, Heizou and the others felt dread seize their hearts. He snapped his head north and bellowed, "Flares! As bright as you can make them!"
Nearby ships slammed flares skyward; a thousand white streaks tore the night and burst into ten thousand blooms of light.
Heaven and sea turned white.
Within that white, a mass of black clouds spread from the north, blotting out the sky.
It called to mind the verse: black clouds cover the sea, and the sea seems to congeal.
Suddenly, the commander who answered takeyama before felt the freeze in his marrow. He stammered, "There are... over five million Abyssal carrier planes on a night raid!"
Carrier aircraft range from palm-sized to the mass of a hawk, and move with little sound; even the Abyssals' junk squadrons are ghostly. Unless you're a Stuka built to scream on the dive, air action leaves hardly a trace.
They'd ridden the night down from the Home Islands, prioritizing stealth above all.
But five million planes—however slight the air's perturbation—together, in resonance, sounded like thunder.
Marshal Heizou's face went bloodless. He had just enough breath for a scream: "Air defense! Air defense! All units—AIR DEFENSE!"
Too late.
[End of Chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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