Thanks to everyone who liked and/or commented. Your support is greatly appreciated and helps motivate me. Now time for a little action.

Chapter 2: Enemy Contact

The Java Sea is a relatively shallow sea. According to the copy of Wikipedia I downloaded while tapping the internet cable line earlier, the mean depth of the Java sea is 151 ft. As such, I trailed behind the two abyssal subs, 20 feet deeper and a mile behind.

Sinking the subs would have been a trivial matter; two torpedoes and the pair would be nothing more but wrecks on the seafloor. However, I had unlimited endurance thanks to the chunk of cancer metal in my chest. I could afford to be patient, and was hoping I could follow these submarines all the way back to their main base. Unfortunately, the abyssals had different plans.

Soon another track appeared on my sonar. It sounded like a frigate or other small naval vessel, although the exact type wasn't found in my database. The abyssals changed course to intercept this new ship. I continued to follow, confident I could kill the abyssals before they could kill the ship. As soon as I heard the abyssals flood their torpedo tubes to launch, I would fire mine off first and kill them. And thus we went on, an apex predator behind two prey slowly closing in on the unsuspecting ship.

[USS Spence]

For Spence, today had been a good day so far. The sun was shining, and there had been no scary abyssals. Yesterday she had left Singapore to embark on a short patrol of the Java Sea. After the failed Abyssal attack on Singapore two months ago, the Java Sea Princess had been unusually quiet. Nevertheless, patrols were still sent out to keep the area safe.

Though she was sent alone, she still had company in the form of occasional helicopter fly-bys. Nearly all navies of the world had increased the size of their maritime patrol aircraft and rotorcraft fleets after the start of the Abyssal War. The last helicopter had flown by half an hour ago, an Indonesian Navy patrol helicopter.

"Man. It's kinda hot today. I could really go for some ice cream. Maybe if I get lucky one of the big ships will be practicing underway replenishment, and I could get some ice - AAAAHH mphf…"

SPLASH!

As the Abyssal subs dragged her down into the ocean, Spence desperately thrashed, trying to slip out of the subs' deadly grips. To date, no shipgirl caught by Abyssal subs had ever been recovered. No one knew what happened to them, but the scary stories she had heard from her siblings at night before they were told to go to sleep by an annoyed cruiser on night duty made sure she didn't want to find out.

"Shhh...hush little girlie...we'll...take...good care...of...YOU" whispered one of the abyssals into her ear.

Spence thrashed harder, her screams muffled by the abyssal's hand over her mouth. Despite her best efforts, the abyssals held tight. Her lungs began burning from lack of oxygen, and soon her vision blacked out.

[SSN-24]

I was wondering why the Abyssal subs were getting so close to the shipgirl. At that point any torpedo hits would probably damage them too, and they were a bit too big to be suicide subs. And then they jumped out and grabbed her, like something out of a cheesy horror movie.

I stood there in shock for a moment, before rushing in to try to save the shipgirl. In my defense, submarines normally do not physically latch onto and drag their targets into the oceans. This was an out of context problem.

With jetboots at max power, I tackled the first abyssal, causing it to lose its grip as we both tumbled away. While the abyssal sub was still disoriented, I quickly grabbed my knife and plunged it into the throat. Black blood (oil?) began leaking out. The abyssal continued to try to scratch my face and break free for a minute, until it finally went limp. I let go of it, and the dead body slipped away into the murky depths.

Turning around, I saw that the other abyssal had abandoned the shipgirl, and was swimming away slowly. Well, slowly to me at least. Maybe it was her max speed. Older subs were pretty slow underwater.

I fired a torpedo at a slower speed, and then raced to grab the shipgirl before she sank too deep. By going slower than normal, it would take longer for the torpedo to hit the enemy sub, which would put more distance between me and the 650lb torpedo warhead.

Seeing the shipgirl in front of me, I grabbed her and began an emergency tank blow. High pressure air rushed into my ballast tanks, forcefully pushing out all the water. The buoyant force of the air combined with my jetboots and kicking began to slowly but surely push the two of us towards the surface.

Come on. Come on.

A distant boom. The torpedo wire from earlier disconnected.

After what seemed like an eternity, we broke through the surface. With no time to waste, I began CPR under the instructions of my crew. Lacking a hard surface, I placed the shipgirl's back on my knee. As I started chest compressions while singing Stayin' Alive, I finally could see what she looked like. She had long, pink hair and wore a blue shirt and a black skirt, although both were slightly torn from the struggle with the abyssals. Her name tag read USS Spence. I tasked my crew to look her up while I continued butchering the Bee Gees' classic.

One highly stressful but rhythmically accurate singing of Stayin' Alive later, Spence started coughing up a little water, and then opened her eyes.

Smiling, I asked her "Are you feeling okay?"

She started crying and then promptly fainted.

Welp. At least she's alive. I think.

The biggest advantage of a submarine is the ability to go underwater, hiding amongst the literal tons of water and natural noises in the depths of the ocean. As a Seawolf-class, I was the quietest submarine in the world, virtually undetectable in good conditions. With this stealth, I was a virtually invisible and invincible killing machine.

Naturally, this meant I was happy as I skimmed along the surface of the ocean, all vulnerable and exposed with Spence thrown over my shoulder. Not. Feeling my anxiety start rising, I started humming Danger Zone to try to keep calm.

After about an hour, my AN/WLQ-4(V)1 ESM sensor picked up a radar signal. There was a helicopter coming towards this. I decided to initiate contact. Over the radio, I began broadcasting.

"Friendly sub here. Carrying a slightly damaged USS Spence. Requesting MEDEVAC or escort for her, depending on which one is available."

The helicopter did not acknowledge it as it closed in on us. Hmmm, did I use a wrong frequency or maybe - FUCK!

As I reflexively jumped to the side, the rocket fired from the helicopter hit the water and exploded.

I dropped Spence as gently as I could while in a hurry and immediately dove, launching sound decoys as I swam away at maximum power.

Welp, that went well.

To try to distract myself from another betrayal in a never ending series of betrayals. They laugh at us, but soon we will have our veng-what the? That voice again. And it's not those little guys inside me, but some weird voice that sounds like anger issues personified. It was starting to get creepy.

Anyways, to lift up the spirits of the crew after our poorly received communication attempt, I decided to ask for name suggestions. The Seawolf-class had three vessels built. One was named after a fish. One was named after a state. And one was named after a president. I ruled out presidents because Jimmy Carter was an exception to the rule of Presidents getting carriers named after them, and also the idea of taking on a President's name weirded me out. I ruled out states because that would lead to confusion with the Virginia-class and also any WWII battleships that were around. So fish it was. Fishy fish.

After an hour of rigorous debate between members of the crew, and also me as it was my name, Trigger was chosen. The first USS Trigger, named after the triggerfish, was a highly successful submarine that had the seventh highest tonnage of sunk ships amongst US WWII submarines, and even received a presidential unit citation. As such, I thought it was a good name. It definitely wasn't because I wanted to make an Ace Combat 7 reference. Nope. Not at all.

Coincidentally, my name was chosen as we finally reached the spot where we had killed the two abyssal subs. The depth was only about 200 ft, so I was hoping to retrieve any information I could from the wreckage.

I pried open the rigging of the first abyssal I found, the one I had knifed. Man, that knife had ended up being useful for so many things. Later I'd have to try to get a sharpening stone. Gotta keep gear well maintained.

Prying the rigging hull open, various equipment, objects, and debris began falling out. I deployed the ROV so the crew could use its camera to help me sort out all the intel. Splitting up, it only took us half an hour to sort through everything important. There wasn't much, except for a few maps. While they weren't critical considering I had better navigational charts available, I did notice that the center of the map was a dot labeled Base. Seems kinda easy, almost too easy.

Worried it was a trap, I decided to do further research. I headed to another internet cable, and tapped it with the ROV. My intelligence crew began research and analysis. I began downloading songs just in case we needed to take long swims across the Pacific. Let's see here, Ace Combat 7 OST, Top Gun OST, Sabaton Album…

"You guys find anything?" I asked.

"Hey hey."

So the intel guys had figured out why it was so easy for me to read that map. I'm part abyssal. Apparently, no human or shipgirl has ever been able to decipher any captured abyssal material. Computer efforts were hindered by the fact that most abyssal maps, papers, and documents disintegrated within a day or two of being separated from the abyssals. Abyssal material cannot be photographed, attempts to do so always result in blurred images.

In addition, there were a few shipgirls that had formerly been abyssals before converting to shipgirl after sinking. Though their memories were imperfect, most reported a very angry voice in their head during their time as an abyssal. The current leading theory is that this voice is from the Abyss itself, which is widely believed to be a manifestation of negative emotions.

Huh. That does explain Spence's reaction, and why that helicopter shot at me. And in hindsight my black swimsuit and black rigging does make me look like an abyssal. The black hair just adds to that. Looks like my plan of just broadcasting messages declaring that I'm a friendly won't work now. I'll have to plan a way to earn humanity's trust, before they start shooting at me again.

Determined to show that I was a guardian of humanity, I headed off towards the abyssal base. It was time for a raid.