“What do you mean?” Formidable asked, searching her memory for where she might have seen the cat before.
Held tightly by the scruff of his neck, the animal shot her a look of pure, unadulterated hatred.
Ulyanovsk mentally started a countdown for when the overly temperamental feline would decide to express his displeasure in the most violently articulate way possible.
“I mean the way you just teleported to the wardrobe,” the guy prompted.
To him, the whole stunt felt suspiciously similar to how Abyssal Himes used their abilities.
Even if he hadn’t detected the distinct spatial resonance that usually telegraphed an Abyssal’s reality-warping trick, he had absolutely felt the initial surge.
Mostly because ground zero was standing barely two steps away from him.
“I had to use my abilities, otherwise your pet would have closed the port—OW!” the girl yelped, her explanation cut short.
Ulyanovsk stared in surprise at the three slash marks on the black velvet of her sleeve.
They didn’t look like scratches from a small paw; they looked like a swipe from an adult tiger.
But what surprised the cruiser even more was the bright red blood welling up from the broken skin.
Running the armor schematics of the Illustrious-class carriers through his head, he compared them to his own, then looked down at his arm.
Just yesterday, this exact same four-legged fleabag had tried to punish the Soviet carrier for having the audacity to wash his food saucer.
The cat’s claws hadn’t been able to pierce his natural Kanmusu armor.
So what went wrong here?
Meanwhile, completely unprepared for such aggression from a household pet, Formidable reflexively dropped him.
Hitting the floor, Kubik let out a vicious hiss and lunged right back at the girl, suddenly remembering the blood of his wild saber-toothed ancestors.
To the British carrier’s credit, she managed to jump back before his claws sank into her chest.
Instead, the furry menace dug his hooks into her skirt, fully intending to climb it like a tree trunk.
He was stopped mid-ascent by the guy, who grabbed him firmly by the ribs.
“What is your actual problem?” Ulyanovsk grunted, yanking the cat toward himself.
…And inadvertently dragging the hem of the girl’s skirt up with him, fully exposing a pair of slender legs clad in white thigh-high stockings.
“What absolute insolence!” Formidable seethed.
“Not even Oscar behaves like this!” “I did warn you he doesn’t like being dangled by the scruff at arm’s length,” the aviation cruiser pointed out, struggling to restrain the cat to keep him from mauling the Brit.
It was a surprisingly difficult task.
The tiny ball of fur seemed to be channeling the spirit of a rabid wolverine.
“I assumed his first reaction was just from the shock,” the girl muttered, expertly freeing her skirt from the grip of the distant descendant of prehistoric apex predators.
She earned herself another scratch on the arm for her trouble, shredding her other sleeve.
“Maybe you just shouldn’t waltz into someone else’s house uninvited?” Ulyanovsk smirked, pinning the growling cat securely against his chest.
“Who’s a good boy?” he whispered, scratching the four-legged guard behind the ear.
Feeling the cruiser’s heavy hand, Kubik resorted to thrashing his tail aggressively to show his displeasure, though the volume of his growling dropped significantly.
“I was investigating a spatial anomaly that manifested on a Royal Navy military installation,” Formidable smoothed out her skirt, doing her best to pretend the scuffle had never happened.
She almost pulled it off, if not for the multiple jagged tears in her dress offering tantalizing glimpses of the white lace underneath.
“I take it the Kanmusu on your side of the wardrobe have issues with animals?” Ulyanovsk nodded toward the anomaly.
“Not at all,” the girl adjusted her dress again, making sure her underwear was out of the guy’s line of sight.
“It’s just that Oscar—Lady Bismarck’s pet—has a certain reputation among the fleet.
Though in reality, he’s just an overly playful and active cat.” “Unsinkable Sam, I presume?” “Precisely,” the Kansen nodded.
“Whereas yours…” “He’s just a cat.” The subject of discussion raised his head and shot his owner a look.
It was the exact same look Ulyanovsk usually saw on the faces of grunts right after being ordered to sweep the parade deck with a crowbar.
“Animal behavior is a fascinating subject, but it’s not the priority right now.
I propose we exchange theories on our current situation.” For emphasis, Ulyanovsk held the cat out toward the girl.
The cat hissed right on cue.
“Barbaric,” Formidable sighed, shaking her head disapprovingly.
“Such crude and unethical use of animals…” “I could tell you plenty of stories on that subject, but it would take us way off topic.” “Agreed,” the girl said, looking around the room.
“May I take a seat?” She gestured toward a wooden chair near the wardrobe.
“Be my guest,” the cruiser didn’t object.
“You could sit on the bed too, but…” he lightly tossed the cat onto the mattress for effect.
Formidable tensed, expecting another attack, but the furball just aggressively kneaded the blanket for a few seconds before curling into a tight ball, pretending to be asleep.
“Thank you, but I’ll decline the bed,” the Kansen murmured, holding her skirt as she took the wooden chair.
The chair let out a pathetic creak.
In response to the guy’s questioning look, she wordlessly handed him the rolled-up magazine.
Treating the antique Soviet relic of a chair with extreme caution, Ulyanovsk sat down on the bed opposite the girl.
“I hope it helped your investigation?” Ulyanovsk smirked, taking the magazine and tossing it aside.
Disturbed by the movement, the cat rolled over and started kicking his paws at the guy’s thigh, trying to push the intruder off his claimed territory.
“The articles were highly informative,” the Kansen didn’t take the bait.
“Unfortunately, I didn’t find the answers I was looking for.” “I guarantee you, if we knew the secret to teleportation, we’d already be field-testing it on the front lines,” the cruiser laced his fingers together, crossing one leg over the other.
“I assume Sirius briefed you on what she learned from me.” “In broad strokes,” the Kansen confirmed.
“Any ideas?” “I would like to hear your working theory first,” Formidable smiled slyly, mirroring his posture and crossing her own legs.
Not a single claw-hole in her skirt offered a view of anything indecent.
The cat behind the guy huffed in clear disappointment.
“Like I told you, the previous wardrobe with the portal was disassembled, sprinkled with holy water, and surrendered to Supply, where it will likely be scrapped to build a greenhouse at the quartermaster’s country house,” Ulyanovsk repeated.
“Nothing like this ever happened before.
This house was meant for base officers.
If it was inherently magical, it would be swarming with ‘Spooks’ and eggheads right now.” “Spooks?” she raised an eyebrow.
“Intelligence officers.
Spies,” the cruiser clarified.
“Worst-case scenario, the other side of that portal would already have a ring of main battle tanks pointing their barrels through it, flanked by mobile strategic missile launchers and a platoon of grunts.” “I can understand the tanks and soldiers, but why the missile launchers?” “How else are we going to launch satellites through a magic closet?
We can’t build rockets out of birch bark,” the guy smiled.
He didn’t regret melting his brain listening to the wildly creative BS spouted by conscripts and destroyer Kanmusu.
Sometimes it gave him great material.
“That’s utter nonsense,” the girl shook her head, casting a wary sideways glance at the wardrobe.
“Tanks?
Missile complexes?” “If there’s a hole between dimensions, humans will find a way to stretch it to fit a nuke,” Ulyanovsk assured her.
“Anyway, that’s all I’ve got on my end.” “Are you certain?” Formidable narrowed her eyes.
“Absolutely nothing strange happened?
No bizarre lights?
No pillars of energy reaching the heavens?” “Nope,” the cruiser shook his head.
“Though…” He paused dramatically.
The Kansen gripped the hem of her skirt tightly, waiting for the revelation.
The last Soviet carrier didn’t keep her waiting.
“If this was the base chaplain’s house, I wouldn’t be surprised.
But this was housing for political officers, so the paranormal presence here has historically been zero.” “A pity,” the otherworldly guest exhaled loudly.
“Another dead end…” “Do I need to smash another wardrobe?” Ulyanovsk asked.
“The quartermaster is not going to be thrilled…” “I don’t think the furniture is the root cause,” Formidable frowned, casting a deeply disapproving look at the cheap IKEA knock-off.
The Royal Navy subject clearly held a very low opinion of particleboard aesthetics.
“Then what is?” The cruiser fought the urge to wipe the disgust regarding his furniture off her face.
“If I knew that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” the girl sighed heavily.
“The only thing I can state with absolute certainty is that the temporal vectors here operate with different directional coefficients than in my world.” “Since when does time have a vector?” “How to explain this…” Formidable mused.
She mentally cursed a certain Iron Blood colleague who, despite being younger, was vastly more skilled at chronomancy.
“I am highly sensitive to the flow of time around me.
Say the world is a closed coordinate system with its own axis of time; I can, for a brief period, step out and become an external observer to it,” the Kansen carefully chose her words.
“When I used my abilities here, it felt as though I became an external observer to two separate, isolated systems simultaneously.
For some inexplicable reason, they are being forced to synchronize along two entirely different time axes in this specific point in space…” “In plain English: you know absolutely nothing either,” Ulyanovsk summarized.
“Excuse me?!” the girl flared up, jumping to her feet.
Relieved of its burden, the chair let out a pathetic crack.
“I am actually trying to analyze the problem, unlike some people!” “So far, all of this is on the level of pure guesswork.
We might as well be charting the transit of Venus across the solar disc while analyzing the moon phase in Capricorn,” the cruiser stated dryly.
“As for the time dilation, your colleague Neptune already figured that out when she kicked the door down for Sirius.” “You shouldn’t outright dismiss even the most outlandish theories,” the Kansen declared with an air of superiority, looking down at the guy.
“That borders on esoteric bullshit,” the guy waved it off, before freezing as a sudden realization hit him.
He looked down at his own hands, then at the wardrobe, and finally up at the girl standing before him with her arms crossed over her chest.
Arguing against ‘pseudoscience’ felt a bit hypocritical when they were sitting in a room with a portal to another dimension, both acting as the living spiritual manifestations of inanimate naval vessels.
“The war against the Sirens has taught us that every single variable must be considered, even the ones that seem trivial at first glance,” the girl said in a proud, lecturing tone.
“Like what?” “For example, putting up the right decorations during Christmas can significantly increase a Kansen’s raw firepower,” she answered.
Ulyanovsk almost burst out laughing.
However, Formidable’s posture and expression radiated absolute conviction, treating her statement as gospel truth.
“I’ll have to give that a shot,” the cruiser choked back a snort.
“Who knows, maybe putting some tinsel on my Granits will give them an area-of-effect damage buff on top of the shaped-charge impact…” “Believe it or don’t.
That is your choice.
I am simply telling you how it works for us,” the carrier huffed, sitting back down.
A pathetic squeak sounded, followed by a loud crack, and the chair completely disintegrated beneath her.
Formidable embarked on a very brief flight to the floor, landing squarely on her behind amidst the splintered debris.
Letting out an exhausted sigh, she hastily smoothed down her skirt.
But the guy was already treated to the sight of her white thigh-highs, attached to intricate garters, and a pair of matching lace panties.
“Not a word,” the Kansen warned in an icy, murderous tone, preempting any commentary on the disaster.
“I’ll just say the color suits you,” Ulyanovsk sighed, getting up from the bed and offering a hand to the fallen girl.
He shot a venomous glare at the cat, who had immediately hurried over to claim the warm spot Formidable left behind on the debris.
Ulyanovsk pulled the girl back to her feet.
“My thanks.” “Hmm…” Looking away from the girl, the cruiser picked up one of the broken chair legs.
“Bastards.
I should have known.” The leg featured a deep cut, sawed two-thirds of the way through and meticulously patched with modeling clay that had been color-matched to the varnish.
Seeing what the guy was holding, Formidable breathed a silent sigh of relief.
The dreaded ‘weight curse’ the malicious gossips always pinned on her had nothing to do with this.
“Pranksters,” Ulyanovsk sighed, kicking the debris to the side of the room.
“Who?” Formidable asked.
“Bored conscripts who used to be stationed here, no doubt about it.
Unfortunately, I don’t have anywhere else to offer you a seat except…” he side-eyed the bed with the black terror sleeping on it.
“I am forced to decline that offer.” She opted not to mention that sitting on a strange man’s bed was highly improper for a lady of her station.
“Knowing what that furball is capable of, I fully support your decision,” Ulyanovsk smirked.
“If I didn’t have a combat deployment hovering over me tomorrow, I’d suggest a change of scenery.
But I doubt you want to let the portal out of your sight.” “Neither do you,” Formidable smirked back.
The idea of running away from the base was incredibly tempting.
On the other side, he wouldn’t have to follow orders to shoot his own allies.
There wouldn’t be constant second-guessing of Command’s sanity as they issued shady objectives with zero context, demanding blind obedience.
All he had to do was take one step through the wood…
But no matter how easy it seemed, and no matter how positively it might alter his life, it would mean breaking his oath.
He could not betray his country, no matter how terribly it treated its creations.
Plus, he had too much unfinished business here to just drop everything.
At the very least, he had to pound some sense into his own Brass so they’d stop treating the Abyssal Fleet as mindless animals with the cognitive capacity of lower primates.
That required much stronger arguments than oral reports and written after-action reviews, which were destined for a sad and miserable fate in a shredder.
Gathering that kind of proof was hard, especially when the alien artifacts looted from slain Himes had zero effect on the admirals and scientists.
“Maybe another time,” Ulyanovsk said to her.
“For now, I can only suggest you try disassembling the connecting wardrobe from your side…” “Do you really think that is wise?” Formidable side-eyed the debated piece of furniture.
“What about base security and the threat of interdimensional invasion?” “I have Her Majesty’s royal blessing to study the anomaly,” the girl couldn’t help but smile wickedly.
Warspite’s and Wales’s reactions to items from another dimension had been worth the two days of a sleepless stakeout next to the mysterious wardrobe.
More than one magazine—the informational value of which the guy clearly didn’t comprehend—had already made its way back to her room.
The residents of this world didn’t need to know that, though.
“So I should expect guests?” Ulyanovsk asked, mentally debating whether to set up a perimeter of Marine fairies around the wardrobe.
He’d have to summon a few extra squads to establish full coverage, but that was just logistics.
On the other hand, knowing his Command, reporting the portal right now felt premature.
He still needed to test how removing one of the three Abyssal trophies would affect the portal’s stability.
“No,” Formidable put him at ease.
“Her Majesty’s orders were directed solely at me and issued under strict secrecy.” “In other words, I should expect to lose more than just a magazine?” “No Kansen of the Royal Navy would ever stoop to petty theft,” the girl shot him a dark glare.
“Proper upbringing is the hallmark of Her Majesty’s subjects.” “I’ll believe that if I don’t find my underwear missing when I get back from my deployment,” Ulyanovsk teased.
“Do not worry,” the Kansen answered with a perfectly sweet smile.
“If I happen to need a pair, I shall simply leave you one of mine.
From what I hear, men in your specific tribe highly prize such items…” “Wow, sexism much?” the cruiser mocked offense.
“It is a statement of fact based on consistent empirical observations of male behavior,” the girl explained neutrally.
“The statistics are not in your favor, unfortunately.” “If it makes you more comfortable, I could start acting like a stereotypical male in the peak of a hormonal overdrive,” Ulyanovsk offered.
“I hope that is a joke,” the Kansen sighed.
“Did I laugh?” the aviation cruiser smirked.
Both locked eyes in silence, studying one another intently.
“Not funny,” Formidable broke the silence.
“Then please spare me the dirty insinuations regarding my gender.
You can end up with a very nasty lawsuit over here for that kind of talk,” Ulyanovsk warned.
“How so?” she looked genuinely surprised.
“Didn’t Sirius tell you about the movies she watched here?” “No, she was a bit preoccupied,” Formidable frowned.
“What kind of movies?” “Historical documentaries with a strict adherence to tolerance quotas and social justice metrics,” the cruiser explained.
Seeing the absolute confusion on his guest’s face, he cautiously asked, “Do those concepts mean anything to you?” “They do, of course.
I just fail to understand what they have to do with judicial lawsuits.” “Oh, it’s a very broad and…
spicy topic.
We’ll cover it next time, alright?” Ulyanovsk smiled.
“When we both have a bit more time, assuming the portal is still working.” “Consider me intrigued,” the girl mused.
“Though, first, we really should figure out the mechanics of the anomaly that put us in this situation.” “Which we currently know absolutely nothing about…” “Except for the temporal vector theory I proposed earlier.” “Which is nothing but guesswork at this stage,” the cruiser cut her off.
“Still, it gives us a direction to look,” Formidable countered.
“Which makes things both easier, and simultaneously more complicated.” “Did you experience any visible…
side effects or phenomena when the portal opened on your end?” “No,” the girl admitted reluctantly after a pause.
“I simply checked the inside periodically.” “Yeah…
I wouldn’t have known about the wormhole in my wardrobe either if a girl hadn’t tumbled out of it.
A girl equipped with an unbelievable talent for getting tangled up in things that are mathematically impossible to get tangled in…” “That sounds like Sirius,” the Kansen sighed.
“But she clearly wasn’t the cause.” “Are you sure?” “Beyond a shadow of a doubt,” the girl nodded.
“And besides the complete lack of tactical logic in a portal opening here, I have zero arguments left to blame the Sirens.” “How dangerous are these Sirens?” Ulyanovsk felt his nerves tightening.
“Did Sirius not tell you?” Formidable raised an eyebrow in surprise.
“I’d prefer a second opinion.” “How dangerous do you think entities capable of instantaneously teleporting a massive fleet to any point in the ocean are?” the girl asked with a hard stare.
“Got it,” the cruiser noted, already mentally revising his surveillance plan for the house.
If it came down to it, Ulyanovsk had a radical fail-safe for the portal.
A couple of extra digits punched into a missile’s flight path parameters, a fractional delay in the engine sequence—and his house would be replaced by a smoldering crater.
Yes, there would be collateral damage, but extreme times called for extreme measures.
“Even so, I truly do not believe they are involved,” Formidable tried to reassure him.
“But you can’t rule it out.
So here’s the plan: we head to our respective rooms for now, and the next time we meet, we’ll sync up our findings.
Deal?” “Kicking me out already?” the girl smirked.
“Unlike you, I have a combat deployment coming up.
And I highly advise against making unannounced visits while I’m gone.
The boys from Internal Security like to drop by to toss the place occasionally, and they won’t be thrilled to find you here.” “I think I can handle a few security guards,” the Kansen stated confidently, adjusting the ribbon on her right twin-tail.
“The only thing you’ll be handling is the barrel of a tank gun, or something close to it.
Trust me, not even a Shipgirl can tank a fin-stabilized discarding sabot round made of tungsten carbide or depleted uranium at point-blank range.
You won’t enjoy the experience.” “Kansen are vastly more durable than ordinary humans,” Formidable declared proudly.
“Oh yeah?” Ulyanovsk challenged.
“Look at your arm.” He pointed to the bloody claw marks.
“And now…” Placing a hand on the sleeping Kubik, the guy aggressively ruffled the animal’s fur.
Highly offended by the blatant violation of his personal space, the cat refused to tolerate it.
With lighting speed, the black furball sank his teeth directly into the offender’s hand.
“Any questions?” he lifted his arm.
The enraged black cat dangled from it, jaws locked tight, refusing to let go.
However, unlike Formidable’s skin, the cat’s fangs completely failed to pierce the Kanmusu’s natural armor.
Though, judging by the furious growls and frantic pawing, the ball of absolute hatred was putting his entire soul into the attempt.
The girl nodded silently.
She got the point.
“Then I suggest we conclude this meeting.
I still need to iron my uniform and sew on a fresh collar liner,” Ulyanovsk gestured for her to proceed into the wardrobe.
…Completely ignoring the bloodthirsty predator still clamped onto his forearm.
“It was a pleasure to meet you,” Formidable said hastily, her eyes darting nervously toward the slitted, hate-filled yellow eyes glaring in her direction.
“How long do you plan to chew on me?” the guy asked the cat the moment the wardrobe doors closed behind the girl.
The disgruntled animal responded with a muffled growl.
Sighing, the cruiser lazily flicked his arm over the bed, sending the ball of malice flying.
Stepping over to the unpronounceable Swedish furniture that his guest had vanished into, he counted to ten and opened the doors.
“Great minds think alike,” the words slipped out of his mouth when, instead of his dress uniform, he found himself staring directly at Formidable.
“I beg your pardon?!” the girl blustered.
“Have a good one.” He started to close the doors but stopped halfway.
“Wait, Sirius said you guys were being attacked by an alien civilization?” “That is one of the prevailing theories regarding their origin,” the girl confirmed.
“You don’t happen to have a compact, jam-resistant camera with an independent power supply and audio recording capabilities, do you?” As much as Ulyanovsk hated to admit it, the way electronics fried in the close presence of Himes was heavily pushing him to build a wax-cylinder phonograph wrapped in tinfoil.
Because validating an audio or video recording captured via a Kanmusu’s onboard systems required another Kanmusu to verify it.
And the cruiser severely doubted Command would allow that.
“Not at this current moment, unfortunately,” the Kansen answered after a brief thought, pressing a finger to her lips.
“A pity.
I think we could have negotiated a fair price,” Ulyanovsk looked genuinely disappointed.
“See you around.” He shut the door.
Down on the floor, in small puffs of smoke, twenty fairies in woodland camouflage and tactical plate carriers materialized around the guy.
Black berets sat proudly on their tiny heads.
“Round-the-clock surveillance on that box while I’m gone,” the cruiser ordered quietly.
“Record any and all activity.
I’ll arrange some actual cameras later.” “Squeak!” The fairies snapped to attention, offered a crisp salute, and immediately scattered under the bed.
…To set up a forward command post.
“Meow,” Kubik purred from the bed, sounding as if he had perfectly understood his owner’s orders.
“If a stranger pops out, you have my permission to shred her into ribbons.
But don’t go too crazy, just scare ’em,” Ulyanovsk requested, holding onto a sliver of hope that the cat actually understood him.
The cat responded by enthusiastically licking his own tail.
Twenty-four hours later, the cruiser was standing near the open cargo ramp of an Ekranoplan as it glided across the smooth waters of a strait locked between two shores.
“We’ll drop you near the delta and try to gain some distance over open water,” the officer standing next to him yelled over the deafening roar of the jet engines.
“But we can’t push past the tidal wash zone.
Orders are strict: minimize risk.” “I’d prefer they stay out of the salt water anyway,” Ulyanovsk shouted back.
“Never know when a stray maw might poke its head up.” “Nah, the locals swear the big uglies are keeping their heads down this time of year.
Ready?” The officer clapped the guy on the shoulder.
“Affirmative.” “Then we’re initiating the landing sequence!
Ten minutes to drop!” the Ekranoplan1 commander shouted, heading toward the exit of the troop compartment.
The cruiser gripped the handrail tighter.
He had no idea who came up with the brilliant idea of a rolling deployment out of a high-speed Ground-Effect Vehicle.
However, when he needed to be rapidly redeployed to a different sector of the front, it made a lot of people sweat.
They needed something extremely fast—something that could deliver a highly classified asset from a remote base while avoiding detection.
Thus, the modernized descendant of Soviet engineering genius was born: the VVA-14 amphibious Ekranoplan.
Its old depth charge bays were ripped out to make room for a cramped, highly restricted transport hangar.
It couldn’t carry many Kanmusu, and its screaming jet engines ruined any chance of stealth during flight.
But it was designed for one specific purpose: to transport Ulyanovsk, with an eye toward eventually carrying one of the Kirov-class battlecruisers if they were ever summoned.
Once it reached the designated LZ, this technological marvel would splash down, and the Kanmusu strike group would stealthily disembark directly into the drop zone.
It looked flawless on paper, but in reality…
“I really hope they don’t crawl out of the delta,” Ulyanovsk whispered, feeling the hull shudder beneath his boots.
Taking off in this behemoth required heavy escort, especially during open-sea ops.
And even the cruiser himself had to spin his propellers as fast as possible to haul ass out of the drop zone through the wake turbulence.
Thankfully, Abyssals rarely clustered near the coast, and they almost never wandered into river mouths.
The moment the machine ground to a halt, Ulyanovsk vaulted out of the bay, manifesting his rigging mid-air.
The second he hit the water, his anti-air radars and sonar suites kicked up to maximum power, probing every square inch of the ocean floor.
“Clear,” he radioed the Ekranoplan.
“Good hunting, Nomad,” the pilots wished him cheerfully, pivoting the massive craft back toward the safety of the shore.
The cruiser hastily maneuvered away to avoid getting cooked by the engine exhaust.
Launching a combat air patrol just in case, he watched the groaning, straining transport roar away, before turning his gaze toward the mouth of the Yenisei Gulf.
A long, grueling journey to Novaya Zemlya lay ahead.
He needed to make a lot of noise.
Just enough to draw attention away from the real convoy crawling its way toward the Gulf of Ob.
At first I didn’t get what it was about, then I remembered that TV show about the Ekranoplan—about how that project started and got shut down because of the USSR collapse, since they stopped funding it.
Never would’ve thought the author would actually flesh out that idea and use it in action in a fanfic.