Tactical withdrawal, and a stowaway...

Face to face with a representative of an enemy whose terrifying reputation had cast a shadow over one's entire life. This was previsely the kind of thing many went into the Navy to avoid - and McKnight had always considered it a fringe benefit herself. This was all like a nightmare, one she should wake up from any moment.

And yet. The Stadti naval commando didn't disappear, nor was Drew transported back to her bed. While the lieutenant commander stood there uselessly, another two of the men who she'd been entrusted to command recieved stab wounds. One of them let out a piercing, almost feminine shriek, and with that a panicked rush away from the guns began in earnest.

A gunshot rang out as a sentry atop one of the smokestacks fired a .45 naval pistol. Unfortunately, sailors weren't well trained marksmen... even when they weren't half-blind and all-panicked. A whole armory of rifles, grenades and more was down in the armory - which, as far as Drew was concerned, may as well have been on another continent.

At last she did the only thing she could think of - Drew turned and ran towards the hatch leading inside the superstructure. A scornful, haughty laugh followed her.

Fearfully, she looked back over her shoulder... And, seeing that the wetsuited woman wasn't chasing after her, another chilling thought struck Drew as she remembered the sinking battleship. There were likely explosives clamped to the Sidney Story 's hull at this very moment, and if so, the only reason this diver would have climbed aboard is if she desperately needed a method to escape the blast and the undertow of a sinking ship after her mini-sub got wrecked by the depth charges. How had the diver herself survived, anyway...?

That was a question for later. Summoning up all her courage, Drew winced and edged out of the darkness of the hall she'd fled into, back onto the blood-stained deck. The Stadti witch was was no longer in sight, and a couple of the sailors who'd been on deck were trying their best to stanch the blood flowing from the three among their number who'd suffered knife wounds.

A sudden realization struck LtCmdr. McKnight - the same intelligence that had gotten her promoted several times so quickly connected the dots. "Secure the lifeboats!!!" she shrieked in her high-pitched voice so loudly that it carried over half the ship. "Don't launch them! Guard them! Use... grab some wrenches or whatever the hell is layin' around and defend 'em, cuz your lives are counting on it!!"

To their credit, even novice sailors would snap to by reflex when an order was given sharply enough... even by a young woman. Shouting along the order, every burly seaman above decks snatched up the nearest heavy, blunt object they could find. A couple of enterprising fellows even used a toolkit to dis-mount one of the .30 caliber machineguns that were supposed to be guarding the sides (fat lot of good they'd done this time) and point it towards a couple of the lifeboats. These were a very cheaply-made, older model of lifeboat - they didn't even have rocket engines, and would be worthless in the face of a true atomic attack. But they'd be perfect for a saboteur, having lost her mini-sub, to commandeer in order to get back to their mothership. That's why the diver had climbed aboard - not out of blind bloodlust. Trying to swim all the way back to whatever sub had dropped her off would be futile... if the undertow of a sinking destroyer didn't get her, the cold waters of the Atlantic would, especially since her suit was clearly ripped and would have had the insulating layer compromised. The only hope for making a long jaunt in those icy waters was with one's body pressed close against the life-giving heat of a thrumming diesel engine.

A tense few minutes of relative silence passed once the watches were in place. The lights inside the destroyer's superstructure still weren't coming back on, and the searchlights wouldn't come on either. Was that a side-effect of the atomic blast? Drew cursed the fact that she'd been too distracted to take notes in a few of her lectures back when she'd been an officer candidate when some horny admiral had called her away to a private room for a quick fuck.

A hand clasped around Drew's shoulder in the dark - without thinking, she let out a piercing shriek. By the time her eyes focused on the shadowy figure in the dark hallway with her, there was a dribble of urine running down the front of her underwear.

"Shh, shhh, it's alright." a reassuringly-male voice came to her. As Drew's eyes focus she saw that it was Yang, the navigator. "Please, forgive me for startling you. But you need to get to the bridge immediately and inform the captain of this!"

Drew's instinct, like so many, was to immediately submit when given an authoritative command by a man. But just as she was halfway through nodding and turning, she gulped and shook her head. "No, sir! There's an intruder aboard the ship!"

"What?!" Yang's eyes widened gravely. Drew continued breathlessly; "...and, and, I believe that there are mines planted on the ship's hull! We have to make sure that that diver doesn't escape. She-"

Yang cut her off, his voice twisting in horror. "Mines? On the hull?! That's... you have to get to Captain Masterson and have the crew prepare for damage control immediately! And to signal that cruiser behind us in the convoy - they might have been targeted too!"

"...Commander," Drew said after a pause, looking into his eyes intensely, "you are the superior officer here... I can supervise the lifeboats and get a signal across. You should go to the captain..."

"No." he said firmly, and stripped his shirt off. Drew blinked in the darkness and a blush colored her cheeks. "C-commander... I mean, I'd be perfectly happy to take care of your physical needs, you're very handsome, but-"

"No!" Yang barked at her. "You go to the captain. There's no time to get to one of the dive suits, but I was a silver medalist on the academy swim team. If there is an explosive down there, I'll get it off." his pants came down next, leaving him standing there in nothing but his skivvies.

That was enough to knock Drew's thoughts out of their groove for a moment. It was a few seconds until she'd recovered from the distracting sexiness enough to form a coherent objection. "Wait, no! That too dangerous! And besides, how would you even see anything down there? All of the searchlights are out!"

"Flares," Yang shouted to her as he was sprinting away towards the exterior and the ship's railing, showing off his tight, muscular buttocks flexing with every stride. "There are emergency flares in boxes by the AA guns! Throw some down onto the water's surface, it shall have to be good enough!" With that, he did a graceful swan-dive over the railing's side and plunged into the water, leaving Lt.Cmdr McKnight staring slack-jawed at what was either a display of insane bravery or sheer desperation. Perhaps a bit of both.

Going out onto the deck herself and making sure that all of the lifeboats were still in place, Drew hurriedly climbed up into one of the unoccupied gunners' nests and broke open one of the boxes Yang had mentioned. She really should have known that already, she thought with a pang of shame. But there was no time to worry about that now - not hesitating a moment longer, she struck one of them to life, nearly singing her eyebrows by igniting the stick of phosphorus too close to her face. Flinching at the blinding light, she hurled it over the side near where Yang had dove in.

Desperately trying to compose a message in Morse code in her head, Drew scurried over to another highly-placed AA nest on the superstructure, so she'd be visible to the cruiser that had been steaming along behind her destroyer. Striking the second flare to life, she held it up high for attention and began rapidly moving her free hand back and forth in front of it, so that anyone watching from the deck of the cruiser would see the white-hot light strobe in the letters of a message. 'ATTACK BY DIVERS STOP. WATCH THE SIDES STOP.'

Drew kept sending that message until the heat became unbearable in her hand. Passing along the task to one of the sailors running around like chickens with their heads cut off (and not entirely sure the panicked fellow understood what he was supposed to be doing or even knew Morse well enough to do it), the lieutenant-commander made her way back inside the ship, trying to think of the fastest route to the bridge... but before she'd cleared more than one dark, confusing hallway, she heard and felt a distant explosion from somewhere far below the water's surface. An icy hand of fear gripped her spine -her worst-case-scenario had just been confirmed, and she could only hope that the explosive charge hadn't been firmly clamped against their hull when it had gone off. And that that poor, brave navigator was somehow alright.

Still, orders were orders - she kept going towards the bridge. Drew even shouted at a couple of crewmen she passed who were asking which way to the lifeboats, telling them to get back to their stations until and unless the captain gave the order to abandon ship.

Before she reached the bridge, Captain Masterson found her, and forcefully demanded her subordinate's attention by grabbing her from behind around the chest with that monstrous prosthetic arm. "McKnight!!" the Captain's voice shrilled at her in a mechanical shriek. "What the fuck are you doing down here? Get back up on deck! I need eyes on the horizon to tell me what the hell is going on out there! Why didn't you use the pneumatic communication system, you stupid girl? That's what it's for!"

"Captain!" Drew gasped, out of breath. "That is - I thought - let me give you my situation report...!"

Luciella Moretti, 2nd lieutenant in the 13th Flottiglia Mezzi d'Assalto , was feeling quite good, crawling calmly through the cramped, pitch-black maintenance corridors of the American warship. It was a good day. True, she was alone and surrounded by several hundred of the enemy on a ship, and by her estimation she'd already missed her rendezvous with the submersible battleship that had deployed her squadron of high-speed minisubs. And since the ship wasn't taking on water by now, clearly the limpet mine she'd planted had been disarmed, or hadn't done fatal damage as it was intended, at least. Ensign Benvolio, the other diver assigned to this destroyer (which had presented itself as a target of opportunity along with the U.S.S. Kentucky, was dead when he was caught too close to those bursting depth charges.

Luciella herself had barely survived; she'd been knocked **** by the blast, and her crippled minisub had carried her right into the ship's propeller - she had awoken just in time to duck to the side, but the spinning propeller had taken out her air tank in the process, forcing her to try and come aboard. That had been difficult, bordering on impossible... until the idiot Yankees had thrown her a rope and pulled her up. Between that and the fact that she'd gotten to personally give three Yankee pigs a taste of Berlinstadt steel, up close and personal, before having to flee to hiding, Luciella still managed to smile as she inched her way forward and considered her next move.

She, along with the rest of her unit, were, after all, living weapons of the very finest make and model. Everything about them was precision engineered for underwater and shipboard combat; lung capacity, pressure tolerance, nitrogen narcosis resistance, and, of course, her perfectly toned legs. One-on-one, a non-enhanced opponent - even a man fifty pounds or more heavier and with commensurately greater muscle - was nothing but clumsy prey in close combat one of the latest generation of Berlinstadt's Kampfschwimmers. Those of the Mediterranean Fleet were considered the most elite of them all.

And one way or another, Luciella had complete confidence that she would finish the job and bring about this warship's demise single-handed, return to the Stadt and be decorated richly for her initiative. So many on her way here had considered her little more than meat for the men of the maritime commando units to amuse themselves with between missions. It had taken one of her fellow lieutenants suffering an "unfortunate training accident" for Luciella to get the chance to take part in this strike.

But, she knew that a dozen mangy dogs can kill a lioness - and the Americans would be on full alert, with armed patrols watching every corridor. Soon, they would repair the damage done to their electrical systems by the radio-pulse of the new model of enhanced atomic shell's detonation. She needed to find a place that was safe to rest and recover. Waiting for them to drop their guard would require patience... she might need food and other necessities. Of course she'd been fully schooled in American English, but that would do little good against alerted naval sentries...

As Luciella sprinted from one maintenance corridor to another, she stopped in mid-stride upon 'seeing' (with her sonar-like hearing) an unoccupied bunkroom. Women's quarters, as luck would have it. She ran her tongue over her full, sensual lips and ran both hands down over her voluptuous figure in anticipation. This was a possibility... just launched like this, these Yankees wouldn't know every crew member by sight. Would the outfits worn by these ill-bred American whores even fit a goddess like her? It couldn't hurt to try - this shredded wetsuit wasn't doing her any good anyway.

Might this way be a bit more dangerous than just lurking in the dark shadows of the ship, she thought? Perhaps, perhaps... but it would be so much more fun. And she would dearly love to find the man responsible for dropping those depth charges and congratulate him for coming so close to beating her, before she killed him. And if she could get access to a radio long enough to send out an encoded signal for rendezvous... well, perhaps she could arrange for this ugly Yankee ship's final destruction and her own rescue at the same time.

Yes, this was a good day.