Author Notes:
I feel giddy writing the new OBOM chapter and I'm not afraid to admit it.
As per usual, do enjoy the newest chapter, and don't forget to check out the soon-to-end Monthly Recruitment Drive for that newcomer discount if you're able!
Finally, I hope you all will have a great, coming weekend!
https://www.patreon.com/Heartbreak117
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https://discord.gg/cVZxJ29ruh
https://www.webnovel.com/book/reich-marshal-of-the-belkan-reich_23809095505377305
https://www.webnovel.com/book/in-the-grimdark-sector-with-a-system_31596105108346205
https://www.webnovel.com/book/my-soul.-occupied-body---please-the-other-me...!_35377211308783905
https://www.scribblehub.com/series/2271569/reich-marshal-of-the-belkan-reich/
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The White Pearl speeds across the cold swells of Southern Arcadia, cresting over the waves with a never-before-seen haste. Other than the wakes it left behind, red tracers can be seen flying rearward incessantly as Reizen man the sole M2HB machine gun, mounted on the Pearl's aft. All for good reason, of course, as should we falter on the speed and firepower department even for a moment, the White Pearl, and we along with it, will become fish food.
Quite literally so.
The heavy machine gun manages to force the thing that is chasing us into a nosedive beneath the waves.
"Sapientia really screwed us over this time!" I shout from my position in the pilot house, my words reaching Reizen's ears as the M2 clicks on empty.
"That thing probably strayed from its hunting ground or something!" Reizen shouts back as she works to remove the empty ammo box. "We still need this empty can?" She asks.
With me paying very good attention to our current heading and sonar reading, I don't see Reizen gesturing with the empty ammo box. I reply anyway. "I don't care, just toss it overboard and reload the gun! I need you on the tower ASAP!"
"On it!"
Reizen then proceeds as instructed, throwing the empty can into the sea with one smooth swing of her arm before running to a waterproof storage by the side of the boat. Opening its latch, Reizen pulls out a full can containing a 100-round belt for the light fifty. Placing the full ammo box on the side tray of the gun mount, Reizen proceeds to pull out the ammo belt.
In a situation where reloading the M2HB is done under pressure and influenced by an unstable platform, the traditional method of: lift the feed cover, pick the claw up, pull the bolt back a bit, place the rounds, push the claw back down, make sure it grabs the round, then close the feed tray cover, and then charge the handle... Well, it's a bit messy, and Reizen risks the feed tray cover smacking down on your fingers because of the White Pearl's bobbing. As such, Reizen utilizes a technique called speed loading, something that I once taught her due to my richer experience with the weapon platform that seemingly never dies.
Reizen lines the rounds in the belt up to the M2's ammunition feedway, pushing the first few empty links, the 'female links', past the M2's spring teeth. Noted that she doesn't open the feed tray cover at all. Loading this way, however, the links won't match up with the feed claw groove as per standard operating procedure, but this is inconsequential. Reizen only needs to make sure the round matches up with the feed opening. Afterward, Reizen racks the charging handle on the right side of the machine gun once, twice, then thrice. With each rack, a bit of the ammo belt disappears into the machine gun. On the third rack, an empty link of the belt comes flying out of the machine gun's right side, and that means the gun is good to go, armed and dangerous.
Coincidentally, and contrary to popular belief, the M2HB ejects its empty casing downward instead of the right or left side.
Once Reizen engages the safety on the M2HB, she immediately turns and dashes to the ladder leading up the tower. With but a brief exertion, Reizen propels herself upward before rushing to the secondary control station in the tower's cabin. Reizen then shouts down at me while looking at the compass heading and sonar screen.
"Umbra, I'm taking control!"
"Go for it!" I shout my reply, taking my hands off the dashboard. "Keep me posted on that thing's depth!"
"Roger!"
I remove myself from the pilot chair and run out of the pilot house. I move past the M2 machine gun Reizen just used and reloaded, still with its barrel slightly smoking in the cold Southern air, and reach the aft weapon rail that has been resting in disuse ever since its conception. That rail is meant for mine and depth charge deployment, and considering the hunting pattern of the very, very big fish we're fighting against, this is one of our best weapons at dealing it some meaningful damage.
I crouch down at the railing near the strip of rail where a toolbox sits. I bring out from it a depth-setting wrench before opening the System Inventory, and bring out two depth charges onto the aft deck of the White Pearl. The explosives look like bombs encased with reinforced frames and bolted onto wheeled carriages. Since I don't want the depth charges to run amok, I put them on their sides. I move to a depth charge, lift its locking pin, and hover the depth-setting wrench over a dial.
"Reizen! What's the reported depth?!" I shout my question, knowing that thing is already so close to us.
"50 meters and rising fast! It's catching up to us!" Come the replies of my partner.
"Just gun it!" I say, as I use the wrench to turn the dial to match an arrow with the target depth before locking it in place. I then move to repeat the same process on the second depth charge.
Afterward, I move to righten the first depth charge before aligning it with the rail, shouting.
"Steady course! We need to draw it closer to us in a straight line!" Although the command is quite unnecessary since we have been running in a straight line more than turning around on a dime, it's still a case of better safe than sorry.
"On it!" Reizen obliges the instruction neatly, maintaining a good grip on the White Pearl's robust propulsion system.
And with that, I start pushing the first depth charge, on its wheeled carriage, off the rail and overboard. A big, wep plop can be heard as I then rush to deploy the second explosive, repeating the process at an even faster pace.
"Depth?!"
"40 meters and still rising!"
Hearing the reply, I mutter as I feel cold sweat dripping down my back despite the chill air around me. "I swear to Viola, Sapientia, I will kick your pretty ass if this doesn't work..."
A brief moment later, one column of displaced water appears behind the White Pearl, soon followed by another. The two depth charges have exploded one by one, things that have enough juice in them to crack open submarines in proximity. I can only hope they do meaningful damage to something that looks straight out of an underwater man-eater horror show.
Reizen turns sideways, saying to me. "The whole sonar screen is acting on the fritz! I hope you just drop a bomb back there!"
"I dropped two depth charges off the back! Keep me posted on whether or not that thing is still moving!" I look at her and shout my reply.
However, Reizen is quick to point a warning finger behind me. Her elevated position on the tower grants her the sighting of the yet-to-be-vanquished aquatic threat.
"It's surfacing!"
I turn, panning my gaze at the rising sea level behind our boat, only this time, it isn't due to any underwater explosion whatsoever.
"Oh, come on!" I nearly spout some more flowery words as I come face to face with the bloody thing that has been chasing us for the better part of half an hour.
With water cascading off its humongous form that is nearly three times the size of the White Pearl in width and more than five times the size in length, I am looking at something that is masquerading as an otherworld Greenland Right Whale. A specimen so massive that it would no doubt cause some fishy scientists to go bonkers over it, if not for its disturbing mouth that opens and reveals rows upon rows of large, jagged, grinding teeth. People with a certain type of phobia will sooner kill themselves than see the inside of this monster whale, and that ain't a joke.
"Talk to me, Aurea." I say, noting how the front and upper portion of the whale's body are cracked and punctured from tanking the two depth charges and the plethora of armor-piercing ammo. Yet, I see remarkably little else like blood or fleshy bits. "That ridiculous whale has external armor? The hell does it need the extra plating for?!"
[P-Probably to protect itself against a dragon?] Aurea shakily answers, and I can imagine her pale face when she warns. [W-Wait! It's trying to pull us into its mouth!]
"Damn right it is..." I answer before communicating with Reizen, as the monster whale proceeds to gulp down the seawater like a vortex, trying to pull the boat into its mouth as it's somehow catching up to us. From the depths of its belly, I can hear a loud grumble.
Either it's the whale's belly sounding its hunger bell, or it's furious that I dent its not-very-immaculate appearance, and maybe even causing some internal trauma from the depth charges, if the hits even register that much on the whale. "Reizen, can't we go any faster?!"
"We're already breaking 40 knots! What in the world is propelling that thing!?"
"I don't know, but it's trying to gulp us alive!" I say, as I hear and see the tell-tale of the Angel Break firing its beam.
Reizen has had enough of being chased and is wielding the Tactical Artefact with one hand while her other maintains contact with the helm. The three beams melt the skeletal armor of the monster whale, but it's hard to see if they manage to pierce through it all. The whale doesn't even seem to mind its slightly heated exterior, so I guess that burst did nothing more than cosmetic damage. If anything, I reckon the two depth charges dealt more harm to it than the M2 and Angel Break combined.
"Alright," I speak aloud as I pull some sea mines out from the Inventory. "You want to suck us?"
I arm the naval explosive one by one. As the distance between the White Pearl and the monster whale shrinks precariously, as Reizen continues to pepper the aquatic beast with the Angel Break, shooting at the noticeable cracks and holes in an attempt to melt through the armor and into the flesh, I stack the mines onto the rail in a column of four. With some force, I push them all off the tracks, letting them fall into and float on the water. Due to the monster whale's gulping down anything and everything without a care in the world, I get to see the four mines on their little floaties being swallowed into the teeth-filled, seemingly bottomless maw.
I then flip the monster whale a middle finger.
"Suck on that, fuckface." Crude? Yes. But is it cathartic? Also yes.
It doesn't beat that feeling when the timers on those mines run out, and explosions rip through the monster whale's much more vulnerable inner organs in quick succession, however. The monster whale, almost immediately, stops in its tracks with black smoke spewing out of its gaping maw. It screams painfully, shaking the water around it as it thrashes on instinct, curling inward and on its side.
"By Yggdrasil..." Reizen comments aloud, exhaling a tense breath while she's at it. "I think you blasted open its belly."
Now that she says that, I note how a patch of ocean around the whale's crippled form is much darker in tone compared to the rest. And the way the whale is curling up with its three sets of large fins, trying to cover its underside, lends credence to Reizen's words.
"Ease us back to half speed, Reizen, and bring us around for a broadside with that thing." I sigh as well; my nerves relax for a bit now that we aren't being chased by something that defies physics as we know it.
Really, you will have nightmares if something the size of a submarine can chase you at 40 knots while submerged.
I don't even know what sorts of trickeries lie hidden in those sets of fins for a whale to achieve that ludicrous speed. Aurea doesn't know as well, considering it's an unrecorded species in the books she has managed to read so far. The limited information we do know about it comes from the map Sapientia gave us, and even then, it only contained the usual warning to stay off its usual hunting ground.
And we did stay well beyond its hunting ground, three islands plus fifty nautical miles away from it, in fact.
"Understood, turning her around right now. What do you intend to do, Umbra?"
"Finish the fight." I say as I walk back into the pilot house, my bodysuit wet with salt water from my brief time on the deck. "Keep your eyes peeled for sonar and radar contact, Reizen. I don't want a surprise like that thing popping up anytime soon.
"Roger."
Once inside the pilot house, I sit back in the chair. However, I do not take possession of the White Pearl, not yet. I instead seize command of the Millennium turret at the bow of the Pearl. Manipulating the control interface, I turn the Millennium turret swiftly to the side, its 35 mm autocannon leveled against the monster whale that is struggling to stay afloat with its irrecoverable wounds.
As hypocritical as it may sound, what I am gonna do next will be an act of mercy to it.
"But then again, you were asking for it." I mutter as I slowly depress the trigger. "You could have cut your losses when the depth charges hit, or even before that."
BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM
The iconic reports of the Oerlikon-made autocannon can be heard on repeat as a pleasant vibration travels up my spine. Shells of 35 mm Semi-Armor-Piercing High-Explosive Incendiary with Tracer soon hit the crippled form of the monster whale. Since the White Pearl is still on the move, some shots, other than hitting the exposed underbelly, also hit the armor of the whale. However, unlike the Angel Break, the armor is unable to withstand the 35 mm shell, even though they are Semi-Armor-Piercing at the end of the day. And, thanks to the contained explosive and incendiary charges in the shells, the new wounds on the whale come with booms and smokes, overwhelming the astounding resilience of the beast at last and putting it out of misery.
With a final wail, the monster whale sinks beneath the murky water, its body nearly breaking into two halves due to the accumulating wounds and its sheer body weight crushing itself apart.
Gently, I remove my hands from the fire control console, my back and head resting limply against my chair.
Sighing as I feel Reizen pilots the White Pearl to reach cruising speed once more and away from the battlezone, I make a weak comment.
"Sapientia, this better be an unforeseen migration, else I will really kick your ass."
"Huhm? Did you just call for me, Umbra?"
"... Fuck."