After dealing with the distribution of the spoils—both material (weapons and provisions; or rather, sending the quartermaster to inventory everything, damn bureaucracy!) and "living assets" (here, together with the XO and the skipper, we worked out who to hold, how, and most importantly, where and under what guard)—I sat down to write my reports.
What happened, where, when, under what circumstances, what decisions I made, and on what grounds.
I only straightened up when the stars were already glittering outside.
Damn it—this entire ordeal, including repelling the night assault, interrogating prisoners, and capturing the enemy base, had taken less time than writing the report about it. I was beginning to understand Misato Katsuragi. Sealing the scroll, I placed it into a tube and summoned the postal hawk.
"You'll deliver this to the Admiralty, Eastern Fleet Headquarters."
The intelligent bird gave a confirming nod, spread its wings, and quickly disappeared beyond the horizon.
Yeah… the pigeon post of our world would be smoking nervously in the corner—Fire Nation postal hawks were more like the owls from the unforgettable Harry Potter. At the very least, they were no less intelligent than those feathered couriers. The only difference was that they couldn't find people—they delivered correspondence to an address, not into someone's hands.
After a moment's thought, I took out a new scroll and began writing a second letter—this time to my father.
Unlike the dry lines of the report, here I shared my observations and conclusions: that this saboteur group could not have found us so conveniently by chance. And even more so, they could not have operated for so long—long enough to capture and dismantle two ships—without support from within our own forces.
Sealing that letter as well, I called for a second hawk—the admiral's personal courier, one he had raised practically from the egg. Like its "public" counterparts, it couldn't locate a person and flew only to a fixed address. But it could recognize Admiral Chan and deliver the letter to him personally—and to no one else.
Well then… we'll see what comes of this, and what orders return.
For the night, we would remain at anchor, posting double watches. In the morning, we'd proceed at low speed toward base. I doubted that with a depleted crew and more than two dozen prisoners aboard, we'd be ordered to continue patrol.
I made it to my bed on autopilot. It had been too intense a day—first the night attack, then the battle, then the interrogation, then hastily drafting a plan and another battle, and finally the reports.
No… enough thinking…
Tomorrow. Everything tomorrow.
Now… sleep.
***
I woke up feeling thoroughly battered, moderately exhausted, and slightly drained.
The body might be young and strong—just shy of seventeen(though by local standards and traditions, already a fully grown adult, the kind people say "it's high time you got married, young master" to) but the strain was catching up with me. And it had been less than a month since the crash course—hardly a quiet one in terms of events and exertion.
After going through the warm-up routine that my kindly Master had literally beaten into my reflexes over a year and a half—with the help of an equally kind bamboo stick—I trudged toward the galley.
Another small perk of being an officer: I didn't have to show up for meals on schedule. The cooks always kept a portion or two of hot food on the stove just in case.
Once I'd finished eating, I went to inspect the posts.
After all, a third of the crew had been lost, and some of the remaining men were assigned to guard the prisoners. The rest were enough—we still met the "minimum required crew complement for the operation of an armored cruiser" (anyone who thinks the worst bureaucrats live in the Earth Kingdom has never dealt with the Fire Nation military)—otherwise I'd be writing such a mountain of explanations after docking that it would be easier to hang myself outright—but still, better safe than sorry.
Fortunately, there were no problems.
The engineers hadn't suffered in the chaos and were diligently working their magic in the engine room. The ordinary sailors, who had borne the brunt of the losses, were forced to work extended shifts, but they didn't complain. In fact, they wore the classic expression of "bold and slightly foolish, so as not to trouble officers with excessive thought," exactly as tradition dictated.
The prisoners were guarded by the catapult crews pulled from the deck—composed of the surviving benders, reinforced by few armed sailors. As for the captured saboteurs, they were a frankly pitiful sight: naked (no one had any intention of returning the clothes requisitioned for disguise), beaten, bearing wounds of varying severity. The air in their holding area—a hastily converted storage room where all the dirt-diggers were kept (except for the benders, of course)—reeked of blood and the beginnings of rot.
My cheek twitched—memories of the interrogation surged back with renewed force.
Still, I didn't like the prisoners' condition.
Though that was my own fault. I hadn't given any orders to treat them or to spend alcohol and bandaging supplies on them, let alone anything more, and no one was going to take the initiative in a matter like that.
Even in our world, the rights of prisoners of war were often ignored outright. Here, the very concept didn't exist at all. The level of care given to a captured enemy depended solely on their value. A general, admiral, or noble might be housed in a separate house with a garden, servants, and every comfort—aside from restricted freedom of movement. But ordinary "meat" could expect, at best, a meagre meal once or twice a day—and a "mercy blow" as a rather radical form of treatment.
Maybe something of my twenty-first-century self stirred in me at that moment—or maybe it was the memory of that cramped, stifling room, with a body bolted to the table. But I simply felt sorry for these people. And pointless cruelty was… well, pointless.