It’s war out there, darling.

It didn’t much matter that the Alliance were badly outnumbered on the map.

Battle didn’t take place on maps, only out in uncertain reality.

If they could generate this little pocket of advantage and exploit it, concentrating all of their fire on Jaeger, who steamed ahead to take the brunt of it and thundered back with her deck guns…

Then it didn’t matter if there was ‘only’ three destroyers.

In that moment, Kotone’s forces were entirely two inexperienced, fearful girls literally days old. Now thrust into mortal combat with their fellow ships at the demand of distant, uncaring nobles.

Fortuna and Sunder pushed engines as hard as they could, superheating their insides to the point where humanoid crews would have been cooked alive in white-hot metal compartments. Circling around to close the range.

The Alliance destroyers knew they had a chance to inflict damage, and they brought their nimble turrets to bear with bracing broadsides. It was like they were back in the age of sail, when ships came alongside and blasted away.

A contest of endurance and will as much as black-powder firepower.

The savage offensive rent steel, and cooked off fires and explosive ordinance.

From the command ship, only bright, distant flashes were visible. No more deadly than dancing thunder, or the twinkle of Kotone’s sightseeing camera earlier.

The enemy got so close, missing was more difficult than hitting.

Yet when confronted in such a personal way, the newly-born and uncertain Imperial destroyers accomplished it. They churned up the seas all around the enemy. Their shots went wide, and in panic they unloaded salvo after salvo into the drink.

Their foe did not suffer such disadvantage, and their shots told well.

They concentrated all cannon fire on Jaeger, tearing a considerable chunk of her hull out in one tremendous explosion.

Obviously, they’d hit one of the magazines... launching the rear turret straight into the dark cloudy sky on a gout of angry oranges and reds.

Ace of Spades retaliated with her rearward cannon, landing a more direct hit against her opponents and forcing them to pull off, lest they collide.

Only to swoop back in at high speed for another attack run.

Jaeger said nothing; neither a call for reinforcements, nor a damage report.

That would have been a worse sign, if she wasn’t already mute and refused to speak. Or maybe she couldn’t. Regardless, Ace of Spades called in the damage report for her, though Kotone could trace the skywards path, and plunge back down, of that turret.

“Blue, pick a target and focus her down,” Kotone panicked into the radio. “Uh, maybe if they feel the sting, they’ll finally start running away.”

It was worth a shot, given their immediate, brutal reaction to taking losses.

Maybe, even if they hated the Empire, they hated the thought of losing another of their sisters even more. Truthfully, if they just turned tail and ran right at that moment, Kotone would have happily let them sail off into the sunset.

Their quarry had escaped, and not even an enemy deserved to die pointlessly.

Yet it was fear that kept them going; having seen what the artillery cruiser in the back could do, the Alliance destroyers feared taking more of those salvos all the way back out, when even a single of the heavy shells could wipe them out.

‘At least this way, we’re taking one of you with us’, huh?

Intervention slowly, painfully made up the distance as the minutes passed, because the destroyers were going in great loping loops, making little distance and focusing most of their engine power on evasive actions. Which became ever more necessary, as one of the Alliance ships switched to just trying to ram.

Twice, a blue steel prow slipped just port or aft of the wounded, limping Jaeger, who slid aside much as one would dodge a particularly hefty bullet.

No, that’s not bravery.

There was something particularly sick about watching someone attack with suicidal, reckless abandon. Kotone resolved deep in her heart that she would never forgive anyone who fought without regard for their own safety.

Even the arrival of Fortuna and Sunder did nothing to dissuade the attackers; they didn’t respond to taunts over the radio, nor a fusillade of shells coming in on the flanks.

“Come on!” Sunder hollered over an open channel. “Turn and face me!”

Outnumbered, the Alliance ships just kept firing, and trying to ram, glancing off Jaeger and ripping up steel filings from the side armor in a whining roar that was audible clear back at the flagship.

Winding strips of Jaeger, fire-forged steel, fell off into the sea like pencil shavings.

“Knock it off, you savages!” Fortuna taunted as well, though her attempt was drowned out by a far stronger noise. “If you want somebody to pick on, then by all means-”

It was a deafening boom nobody could afford to ignore.

Seeing one of their friends go up like a fireworks barge, splitting in half down the center line, and watching both parts of her sink down to the inky, cold depths of the ocean had only made the Alliance destroyers ferocious in their desperation.

Watching it happen again had a different result.

This time, direct fire from Intervention’s forward batteries skipped across the water, blasted through a particularly high wave, punching holes clean through without slowing down… and then doing the same to a second enemy ship.

Only one shell got caught in the dense machinery central to the destroyer’s internals, tangled in so many layers of metal it couldn’t punch cleanly through. Which was the most damaging result, far above the dramatic explosions in the sea on the other side of the ship.

When that one shell burst, the enemy ship was ripped apart from the inside.Fire belched from every open hatch and window, and the bridge was blown out in a rampaging tornado of debris, shrapnel, and licking flames.

The futility of struggle hit the final two all at once, and in moments, the horizontal black-white-blue bars of their Alliance standards were run down.

The universal symbol of surrender.

Much to the annoyance of Intervention, already turning to present her aft turret.

Kotone let out the biggest sigh in her life, as she looked over and saw Jaeger, still more or less floating.

In the eerie, deathly silence of post-battle, a speck of a humanoid coming out on deck to wave helped Kotone’s feeble human mind click into proper perspective, as she marveled again at how massive even ‘light’ warships really were up close.

“Operation complete, Admiral,” Intervention huffed. “The rescue of a capital ship, however useless, and more importantly… a pair of intact Alliance destroyers, taken under arms. Quite a coup.”

Maybe enough to put this squadron back on the map.