"Welcome Home."

        Under the Sea, Unknown Location, Orbis

An old man sits in a chair, a fresh cup of tea beside him. Out of all the things they made sure they could replant, they forgot the tea. For the past 5 years they have had to squeeze all they could out of their bags of tea. Running out would cause a panic. The old, slowly blinding man was reading a book as best he could with many people scattering around the room. After all, it was the submarine’s bridge. It was bound to be busy. After only a short while the old man had already finished his cup while pouring the rest of the tea in the kettle into a separate one. He put his book away, rolled out of the bridge and to a bedroom not far away from it. He knocked carefully on the door. A lithe Japanese woman opens the door, “Hai, Minister Atlas?” “I have brought you tea, my dear.” Atlas presents the cup he just brought with him to the young woman. “Thank you, I’m guessing it’s strained even more than last time? The tea has been getting… iffy lately.” She accepts the tea and sips it a little. “We’re doing the best we can out here. I’m terribly sorry if it is not to your liking.” She laughs, “As far as I’m concerned, I’m lucky you even considered sparing me, so I can’t complain.” “Some may consider our practices unethical but our morals are in the right place. May I enter?” She nods. “Can you teach me more Greek, perhaps? I would like to talk to the crew more often and with better accuracy rather then repeating their words back at them.” Atlas chuckles. “Of course we can.”
    After a bit of Greek talking and teaching, the woman is shakily saying hello to Atlas in Greek, with a thick Japanese accent. “The pronunciation leaves a bit to be desired but you will eventually get the hang of it, I’m sure.” She chuckles, “So, what’s your family like? I’ve never asked in these meetings we’ve had.” “If I knew I would tell you. My child hasn’t talked to me since her mother… departed to a better world.” She clucks her tongue, “My cousin was killed by Nukeyans and my parents died in the Antimatter Bombing of Edo, not to mention I’m pretty sure my best friend has been put in a Maximum Security prison.” “Ah, friends. I haven’t heard from mine in a while. I do sincerely hope they are faring alright… It’s so hard to get any signal in this thing…”  She laughs, “At least you’re not a traitor to your country because of a bad case of culture shock, no?” “Maybe not. I dare to believe my position is a very special one. This ship we are inside at this moment is the last piece of my country remaining in this world.” She sighs, “That it may be.” “Well, Miss Kinoshita, what would you like to do most if we ever were to return back to land?” “Get a nice bottle of Sake.” Atlas laughs. “We unfortunately did not think of alcohol on this ship. I miss the flavour of a good Greek wine.” Kinoshita kicks her legs as she spins in an office chair, “When was the last time we got any good news?” “Seven years ago when remnant forces established full control over Malta. Since then it’s only been downhill.” “Didn’t some of my nation’s forces shoot down an entire squadron of aircraft?” “I’m afraid I don’t remember that.” Atlas sighs. “It appears I really am getting too old.” Kinoshita stretches, “You think JI still exists?” “I would be surprised if not.” She sighs, “Did you have any good Japanese friends?” “I used to be friends with the old prime minister. Otherwise, I had a lot of friends in their supernatural forces division.” Kinoshita looks worried for him, “Your health has been declining.”  “I know, I know. The doctors keep telling me to stop working so much.” Kinoshita sighs, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say we should find a hospital, but we both know there’s no friendly ports for us.” “The bane of being rejected.” “I say we should try to find out some world news.” “Surfacing could spill our immediate and untimely demise. We are basically an unmarked, armed military vessel on nobody’s registry. We’d be dead within seconds of detection.” General Quarters is sounded across the sub, as they detect another underwater vessel. A knock on the door sounds. “Captain, potentially hostile in the area. We need you on the bridge.” “Well, I guess that ends our conversation here.” Atlas is briefed on the situation, a large submarine is scanning the ocean around it with active radar, almost as if it’s looking for the wreckage of another sub. “Just keep still. If it detects us, you know what to do.” Ping A radar wave bounces off the submarine. “That’ll do it. Activate countermeasures.” “Sir, the ship is attempting to hail us, should we still pop countermeasures?” “Just launch the torpedoes.” The torpedoes are launched (How many? A swarm of armour miniature piercing torpedoes, about 20 of them.), 20 of them heading for the other sub, which reacted quickly, dropping high-quality decoys and launching something similar, but not torpedoes. The remnant soldiers quickly realise that they are anti-torpedo projectiles, bringing the torpedo count down from 20 to around 5, which decoys then go into action, making more subs seem on the radar, confusing the torpedoes. The other sub escapes but makes no attempt at fighting back. “Sir, the unknown sub has left.” “Relocate to a different part of the sea. Next time, turn those bloody generators off and keep to the bottom of the ocean when you detect something.” Kinoshita walks into the bridge, escorted by a couple of guards. “Can I look at the data of that submarine?” “Not much to see, we didn’t take any detailed scans since SOMEONE-” Atlas glances to the electric specialist who turns pale, “got us detected right away but feel free to see if you can find anything useful.” Kinoshita looks at the scans curiously, “Seems like a boomer, its steering seems a little janky.” Atlas looks at her confused. “Apologies, a boomer is slang for a ballistic missile submarine, a famous example would be JI-104 or the Ohio class from pre-Balkanization America, so we just tangled with a sub that has a large enough nuclear arsenal on it to level a nation and a half.” “The outside world is more hostile than I first thought then.” “If anything I’d think we interrupted a patrol of theirs if everything we got in the short amount of time says otherwise.” “Either way, we have overstayed our welcome. Time to move.” The sub goes into action, going at a steady but stealthy 5 knots. Kinoshita continues to look at the recordings of the sub. “Are those anti-torpedo projectiles?” “You said it’s a nuclear-capable submarine. Makes sense it has countermeasures, just as we do.” “These ones seem more, I don’t know, capable? Sophisticated? They took out 15 torpedoes.  I’m not sure about anything, but we should be very careful.”