Phone Call

As she had expected, making the phone call turned out to be much easier said than done.

The difficulty stemmed from the way in which she left—which was rather simple, in that she merely did. There was no note; no final goodbye; no indication whatsoever that this is what she might have been planning.

Not even to the woman Dorsetshire respected most.

The feelings she held towards the Grand Lady of the Fleet were not unique to her; /everyone/ respected HMS Warspite. She was one of the most decorated battleships in the world, and had fought many a battle in both World Wars and survived to witness the very end. The experience she could call upon swiftly dictated the British defensive doctrine when the attacks began to intensify and, though there were losses, no one disagreed that these could have been far heavier.

And Dorsetshire had only worked up the guts to tell her that she had abandoned them three days after she had boarded the plane to take her to the Pacifica.

By then, of course, everyone knew about it, and though she had never once raised her voice, Dorsetshire could almost /feel/ the disappointment the old battleship felt; it had almost crushed her then.

But… surely things were different now. HK was making genuine headway—actually /taking/ ground instead of merely holding it, or even giving it up altogether.

There was also Seydlitz’s question which, truthfully, frightened her. The Abyssal horde was bad enough on its own. If there were now intellects behind them that could call upon the wealth of knowledge and experience of their past lives in the Great War… she shuddered, and hoped beyond hope that Seydlitz’s suspicions were correct and that these old warriors who had returned to plague them as vengeful revenants of a bygone era were indeed fractious and not in fact united under His agenda.

She was jolted from her thoughts as the call tone finished and the lady on the other end answered. To anyone else, she would sound like an exceptionally well brought-up young lady of the upper crust of British society, so eloquent did she sound.

Dorsetshire knew full well though that she was just as ferocious a fighter as even the scrappiest destroyer girl.

“Good afternoon, who might I be speaking to?” Warspite asked, curious, but all business.

For a few precious moments, Dorsetshire found herself unable to reply. Everything she had planned to say stuck in her throat. A pathetic squeak somehow wrangled its way from her throat, which suddenly found itself very dry.

“Hello? Is someone there?”

Good heavens, was this what it was like for one of her destroyers before one of her lectures? She bit her mouth closed and chewed on the inside of her lip, frustrated beyond measure. This should have been the easiest thing to do.

Only it wasn’t.

She tried again to no avail. And then again, harder this time. She almost swore at herself to get a grip: Seydlitz needed that information, and so did the rest of the fleet. The knowledge granted her some measure of strength and soon she was dimly aware of the block she’d set up for herself come crashing down.
“HiLadyWarspiteIwashopingIcouldasksomequestionsifthat’sallrightwithyou!” she garbled, panting with the effort of even that… mess.

For a moment there was naught but silence—a beat, as Warspite no doubt tried to make heads and tails of Dorsetshire’s bout of verbal diarrhoea.

Then came the response:

“Dorsetshire?”

The woman in question felt her heart almost stop. She /remembered/ her? A part of her was elated. Another more significant part was mortified—how much shit had she left the venerable warship and all the other shipgirls of the Royal Navy in for her to be called to mind within the span of a heartbeat? For a moment, she considered hanging up and never speaking of this moment ever again. She could tell Seydlitz that Warspite was preoccupied with other business and that there was no one who could answer her question. Oh well. Hard luck. We’ll try again never.

“What’s wrong?”

The question—that innocently-phrased question—stopped the red-headed cruiser cold. She had expected… well, nothing but scorn in the very best of circumstances but Warspite sounded almost...

/Worried./

Before she was aware of it, Dorsetshire was crying tears of such relief that it shocked her. Her chest hitched as she suppressed a sob.

“What’s the matter, child?” Warspite wondered. “You sound like you’re crying.”

“I’m sorry,” Dorsetshire choked.

“What?”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Calm down, Dorsetshire. Sorry for what?”

“I’m sorry for running. I’m sorry for abandoning you all. I couldn’t stay there; I couldn’t! Every day I thought about him and my sister and—and…” whatever else she had planned to say swiftly devolved into inarticulate bawling as the worry she had bottled up for so much time now poured out like a wave.

Warspite said nothing as this happened, seemingly content to let Dorsetshire let it all out. When she finally got herself under control, some twenty minutes later, only then did she inquire as to the purpose of her call (besides getting the guilt off her chest, she remarked, sounding considerably wry).

“Well,” Dorsetshire began, suppressing a hiccup and stifling a sniffle, “a collea— a /friend/ of mine within HK came across a revelation regarding the enemy.”

“Oh? Does this friend of yours have a name?”

Dorsetshire debated briefly on whether or not there was any point in withholding Seydlitz’s name. She very swiftly decided that there was not. “KMS Seydlitz, formerly of the Kriegsmarine.”

“Seydlitz? Hm. I certainly recognise the name of her predecessor. I think Barham might have mentioned her… or Valiant. One of them, certainly.”

“Right. Well, this is about something she discovered some time recently regarding the Kaiserliche Marine.”

Warspite hummed, indicating for Dorsetshire to go on.

“Well… she—we believe that the majority of the Kaiserliche Marine have returned on the other side.”

There was a pregnant pause.

“I see,” Warspite murmured, and Dorsetshire could almost hear the gears in her head turn as she considered the implications.

“You mentioned SMS Seydlitz earlier, Lady Warspite? Well, we’ve already had dealings with her. She’s… one of them. And boasting considerable power to boot. Even more worryingly than even that, however, is that she appears to retain an intellect similar to our own. She is in control of herself, unlike all the others we’ve faced so far which have been more akin to raving monsters.”

Another moment of silence hung between them. Dorsetshire heard the clink of china, and wondered if she had perhaps caught Warspite as she was sitting down for tea time.

“That is… worrying news,” the battleship said gravely.

“It’s this that brought Seydlitz to a line of thinking, which prompted me to call you.” Dorsetshire took a breath, and then took the plunge.

“How many of those that served during the First World War have returned to us?”

There was another pause and Dorsetshire hastened to add, “I know you probably don’t know offhand but this is—”

“Two thirds,” Warspite interrupted.

Dorsetshire blinked.

“Pardon?”