"Action stations. Action stations. Action stations. All hands to action stations." With those words the subdued moan of the ship's klaxon began to pulse rhythmically through the ship. Mis midshipwoman Elaria Pell jolted awake on her bunk, she felt a moment of panic before her training kicked in. Then she began running off of the instincts beaten into her at the Merriweather-Smith Naval Institute for the Education of Aspiring Young Gentlewomen. She rolled out of bed and pulled on her uniform jacket while rushing for the door out of the midshipwomen's berth, just managing to dodge a head-on collision with one of her fellows Mis Mellowight. Ignoring the muffled cursing from the still half asleep woman, Elaria scrambled to get as close to her duty station as possible, only remembering why there was such a rush as she reached the forward port side ladder to the deck above. The action stations crash ascent maneuver. Sure enough, one minute after the first call for action stations, the tenor of the klaxon deepened and the first lieutenant's voice could be heard throughout the ship once again. "All hands brace for crash ascent. All hands brace for crash ascent." Elaria quickly hugged the ladder and braced her legs, Knowing she wouldn't have time to do anything else. Moments later she felt the VS Juxtaposition surge beneath her, seemingly doubling Elaria's weight as the spritely warship dropped ballast and rapidly increased the pressure in its lift tanks for an emergency climb to the fourth layer. She knew that airplanes would be unable to attack the ship properly provided it reached thin enough air. Then they'd just have to worry about other warships.
After a long minute of feeling the pull of the depths trying to tear her from the ladder, Elaria suddenly felt her stomach lurching in the other direction as her weight fell away for a moment. Nearly losing her grip on the ladder as It suddenly seemed to try and drop out from under her, Elaria took a moment to settle her nerves before resuming her climb. Tuning out the first lieutenant's voice as it called the all clear and directed crew to resume clearing for action, It only took Elaria another minute to reach her assigned position at the forward most damage control station, just as the klaxon went quiet.
Other than the extremely basic training she'd received from the Institute, Elaria knew almost none of the skills demanded by service in the fleet. Fortunately this was expected, many poor young women fresh from charitable schools just like her's joined the navy hoping to make something of themselves. This meant that Elaria's place aboard ship had come to resemble an especially rigorous continuation of her time at school. Though the stern, yet kindly, brothers of the nearby monastery who'd been her schoolmasters had been replaced with a loud, foul mouthed petty officer. Technically Elaria outranked the woman, but she'd been told by the captain herself that if she ever heard of Elaria trying to pull rank, she'd regret being born. The far more experienced petty officer was, as per tradition, supposed to ride herd on any midshipwomen assigned to her station, and ensure they learned the ins and outs of life in the service.
Elaria had been aboard ship for just a shade over a week, long enough that she knew when to get out of the way and went to brace for maneuver, but not so long that she still didn't occasionally get turned around in some of the more remote parts of the ship. Captain Marlowe had a well-deserved reputation as a good captain to serve under and had already run the crew through two emergency drills before they were out of sight of port. Luckily for Elaria this meant that she reached Petty Officer Leigh's damage control station quickly enough to only receive a mild "Took you long enough Miz." before Leigh tasked Elaria with triple checking their inventory of damage control equipment and parts.
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Up until now, though it was a bit boring, Elaria hadn't minded her post in forward damage control, when the ship was cleared for action it was just Elaria, petty officer Leigh, and half a dozen crewomen. In the nearly dozen drills she'd gotten to participate in so far, Elaria had always looked forward to the simulated damage reports flooding in and being tasked to help 'repair' each problem as rapidly and effectively as possible. Already Elaria had started picking up a lot about how exactly many of the hundreds of different little parts of the ship worked. Despite her grudging attitude, p.o. Leigh had already pulled Elaria aside, just the day before, to tell her that if she kept up learning our duties as she had been so far, then in four weeks Leigh would recommend to the Captain that Elaria could be rotated to the next duty station to continue learning more.
Elaria was still working her way through the equipment checklist the second time when the ship's speaking tubes popped and a chime rang out. "All hands, all hands, this is the captain." There was a heavy pause before the captain's clipped authoritative voice dropped to a more solemn register. "We just received word on the long range wireless that an attack from the Maelstrom Republic may be in progress. If this is true then I expect we'll be in action within hours. Many of you have served under me for years, some of you have only been with me for days, regardless I know that when the time comes for you to do your duty, I'll have reason to be proud of every last one of you." With those sobering words of encouragement the captain signed off, leaving everyone in the forward damage control compartment looking at one another with wide eyes.
Elaria was stunned, she'd heard some of the older women around town talking about some dispute or other with the Republic, but she'd never been one to pay too much attention to that sort of thing before, so she hadn't realized things were this bad. Suddenly being in damage control didn't seem like such a lark. Down in the bowels of the ship, Elaria wouldn't have any idea what was going on outside the ship until, either the Captain saw fit to inform the crew, or it blew itself into the ship near her post and she was called to go repair it.
Leigh didn't give them time to work up a case of nerves. She clapped her hands, the sharp report drawing the eyes of Elaria and the crewomen. "All right ladies, Miz Elaria, you heard the captain, we've got lots of work to do, I want every piece of gear and every part inspected, If you find even the slightest issue or a single missing roll of tape, report it to me and we'll fix everything we find until this station is in sharp enough shape for inspection by the fleet admiral." Elaria knew they had already run multiple checks on everything, and that their damage control section was as well supplied as any. But, as the minutes turned into hours, she was grateful for the distraction provided by the painstaking task. It was hard to let her thoughts wander towards what a battle might bring when her head was filled with inspection checklists and parts inventories. From time to time Leigh would even interrupt Elaria's work to quiz her on how to respond to different emergencies, or what repairs to prioritize in different situations.
It was in the middle of one of these impromptu quizzing sessions that the sound of a sharp falling tone followed by a wooden clack and a susurration of beads warned everyone to brace for an abrupt maneuver down and to port. A second later the ship lurched as it dropped down rapidly while slightly more ponderously swinging its nose to port. This was followed by the pop of the speaking tubes being opened as the captain announced "All hands. Make ready to receive fire."
