Attack on Titan Fanfiction – Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Chapter 1

In a Flash

Paradian Royal Navy Fleet  Admiral Jean Kirschtein stood on the deck of the battleship HMS Erwin Smith, arms crossed over his chest, looking out into the deceptively peaceful ocean. Soon the waters will be swarming with ships and boats carrying journalists and investigators the world over. In the meantime, it was pretty quiet, except for the ubiquitous seagulls overhead. It was a strange atmosphere, after the chaotic pace of events these last twenty four hours. The atrocity of what had happened rushed in on him and threatened to overwhelm him. He shut his eyes, willing his ragged breathing to calm down. The worst was over. 

No, it was just the beginning. How could that have even happened? Why was he in the wrong place at the wrong time, becoming the unwilling eyewitness to what must be one of the greatest war crimes in naval history? 

He didn’t want to believe it was a mere stroke of bad luck that put him there at that moment in history. Something good had to come out of this outright disaster. Think, Jean, think. 

He remembered exactly what happened, twenty four hours ago. His battleship was patrolling off the northwestern coast of the island on a foggy, dreary morning when they spotted a giant ocean liner, RMS Aniastulia. It flew no flag to indicate it was a neutral ship but every sea dog knew the cruiser was from Paradis’ neighboring country in the north, Noblain.

“What’s a cruise liner doing off the Strait of Zurten? Doesn’t she know she’s heading towards a war zone?” Jean mused to his first lieutenant, Darren Vogel, as he followed the Aniastulia’s movements with the scope. 

“Shall we signal, sir?” Vogel asked. Jean gave the go ahead. But the ocean liner had no response to their signal or radio transmission. Clearly the HMS Erwin Smith was being willfully ignored. A technical malfunction, perhaps? He wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.

“Cruiser starboard bow ahoy!” yelled out the quartermaster, Frank Schäfer, his binoculars trained to one side of the cruise ship. 

“What is it?” Jean shouted back.

“Sighting in heavy fog, sir. Two points off the starboard bow, in the fog bank. Less than a mile distant.”

Jean peered through the glass. He stared at the telltale ripple on the water and had a sick feeling at the pit of his stomach. What the fuck. Goddamn fog. Was he seeing things? No. He decided to trust his instincts. “Outgoing fish! Warn the cruiser! Beat to quarters!” he shouted.

Immediately Vogel complied, “Signal the ship–torpedo red alert! We shall beat to quarters! Hands to your stations! Move! Jump to it, boys!” 

And then a few minutes later, just like that, all hell broke loose. Jean trained the scope less than half a nautical mile away from the cruise liner to see a Cistiduan military submarine surface then send a torpedo straight toward the Aniastulia, the deadly missile streaking at nearly forty knots towards the giant passenger ship. Jean and his crew watched in open-mouthed horror as the torpedo penetrated the ship’s starboard bow, just beneath the wheelhouse, leaving a hole the size of a small house. The ship immediately started to list and put on water. A hundred tonnes per second, Jean thought grimly. He was about to order a rescue when less than a minute later another explosion occurred, far more violent than the first, tearing apart the ship’s upper foredecks. Whole sections of ship metal were thrown into the air. What the fuck, just what the fucking blazes.

“Commence rescue operations, Mr Vogel,” Jean  immediately ordered his crew to mobilize, as well as contact the other ships in their fleet to launch a rescue mission. 

Jean looked through the scope to see the ocean liner’s passengers panicking on the gangways, losing their balance, toppling into the waters. Their captain must have ordered them to abandon ship already, but only a small portion of their lifeboats were intact. 

“Mr Schäfer, run up the colours,” Jean ordered. 

HMS Erwin Smith hoisted the flag and raced to the scene. 

“Coast Guard has responded, sir. Be here in approximately 1-2-0,” reported Jean’s aide-de-camp, Corey Feldman. 

“Strike the bell! Launch the boats! Lower away!” Vogel shouted amidst the intensified bustling on the ship as she pulled up close to the sinking Aniastulia.

Like all their Paradian battleships the HMS Erwin Smith was undermanned, so Jean got to work on the nitty gritty. His crew consisted of three veterans including himself and the rest fresh young faces straight out of the naval academy. “Bauer, Klein, Hofman, Lange, work on the emergency rudder pulley…Kramer, Sommer, pump back to control…Bergmann, keep blowing the whistle, hold communications with the engine room…,” he barked orders as they maneuvered the lifeboats. “Okay, boys. Now pull. Come on, draw…we need to give hard…”

It was only after it was over that Jean realized he had just orchestrated one of the largest rescue missions on their side of the world. Of the 1,748 passengers and crew on board the Aniastulia, the Paradian Royal Navy and Coast Guard along with Paradian fishing vessels from the nearby villages rescued 682, many of them survivors who clung to the wreckage waiting for help to arrive.

Some of those who didn’t make it were killed on impact in the second blast, while many drowned or died of hypothermia. Then there were the young children who could not survive floating on the frosty waters for more than half an hour; they quickly died of hypothermia. It was a miracle a Paradian ship was nearby that day, because a shipwrecked healthy adult could only survive for a few hours buoyed on the freezing sea water. The second blast had gutted the Aniastulia and she sank in less than twenty minutes. 

Jean’s head was throbbing as he stood just outside the battleship’s bridge, every muscle in his body aching as their ship sailed back to their naval base in the northwestern part of the island. 

His mind was racing. Why was this cruise liner with so many passengers sent to the bottom? How could she have sunk in less than twenty minutes?  Why did a Cistiduan submarine attack a passenger ship? Granted, Cistidu was at war with Noblain. But you don’t shoot at innocent ships. Or at least, that was what the international Cruiser Rules demanded. Cistidu was a nation to the west of Paradis and Jean was acquainted with their Navy chief, Admiral Ludwig Möller. Why would Cistidu so blatantly violate convention?

As for Noblain, a nation to the northwest of Paradis, Jean also knew their Navy head, Admiral Nicholas Gainsborough. He had been Jean’s mentor, a legendary admiral whom he respected and admired. Why did he let one of their passenger ships, a famous and gigantic one at that, sail through a known war zone? These two men were naval combat veterans and weren’t stupid in the least. 

What the hell’s going on, Jean wondered. But no one gave him an answer. All he could hear was the mournful howling of the sea winds, all he could see was the pitch black darkness of the ocean staring back at him without mercy. His sixth sense told him that something horrific was going on and he was caught in the crossfire.

“Here, admiral, it’s cold out,” someone’s voice broke his reverie, someone was handing him a thick, soft scarf the color of the turquoise sea on a clear and sunny day. It was a gift from Mikasa on his birthday last year. He’d taken it off during the rescue operation and his loyal aide, Feldman, had found it. Of course. He seemed to have a knack for finding stuff and knew exactly when to give them back to their owner. 

Jean took the scarf and gave him a small smile, “Thanks, Corey. Casualty report?” 

Feldman briefed him. And then, “Admiral, Captain Albrecht has something urgent, regarding objective ‘N-L’. Our listening posts picked up traffic between Gainsborough’s flag commander and the Aniastulia, pretty heavy traffic volume an hour before the torpedoing. There were references to object ‘N-L’ and also ‘SE-4’. I think we’ve identified ‘N-L’. It’s the Aniastulia mission,” Feldman said, before muttering under his breath, “whatever that ‘mission’ is…”

Staring at the intercept report, Jean suddenly groaned. “Remember the intercept from last month, when the Noblainian reconnaissance pilot radioed his base that he spotted ‘SE-4’? We assumed it had to do with Cistidu U-boats. But now I see we’re wrong about that. He was speaking of us. They called us ‘ES’ in Noblain.”

“What’s ‘ES’ mean?”

“Eldian scum.”

“Oh.”

Jean continued, “SE-4 is our Battle Group 1. They like to reverse the numbers, you see.  A for Z, 1 for 10 and so on. They know we have four BGs. It kept on saying here to avoid SE-4. They weren’t expecting us and didn’t want any eye witnesses to what was about to happen.”

Feldman caught on. “They thought we wouldn’t be in that position until three or four hours later. But since our freshwater condenser broke down you ordered us to cut the exercise short and return to port. It caught them off guard.” 

“If SE-4 were a U-boat the Aniastulia wouldn’t have sailed straight into her range because they’d been warned earlier to avoid it,” Jean said. “A warning like that should have been transmitted in the clear, so that the cruise liner can get every word. The fact it was encoded means something else.”

This time it was Feldman’s turn to groan. “But it doesn’t make any sense, admiral. Why would Noblain deliberately put its own passenger ship in the line of fire?”

“I don’t know, honestly. I’ve a bad feeling we’re better off not knowing.”

“What do we do next, sir?”

“We mitigate the situation. Have this intercept coded before transmitting to fleet headquarters. Update me on Noblain activity off the Coast of Belspar. That Gainsborough lackey Barrington might order their northwestern force to strike the Sentia Isles as a means of diversion. Gainsborough will want me cleaning up that mess in hopes that I’ll forget all about this one. Get Hastings on the line. He must prepare his merchant marines for rapid evacuation upon order.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” Feldman responded, preparing to go back to work.

“You holding up okay, Corey?” Jean’s voice floated toward him, a note of concern in it. 

Feldman glanced back and managed a grin. “Yes, sir, putting my rusty medic skills to good use.”

“And the boys?”

“They’re alright, sir. Spooked by all the dead frozen bodies everywhere, I reckon. Baptism of ice for them, as we sailors from the north like to say.”

Jean nodded. “Well done today, Corey.” 

“Thank you, sir,” Feldman replied before ducking into the combat information room. Their ship was filled with bodies both living and lifeless; the entire crew was completely tuckered out. He wondered if he had to ask the paramedics waiting at the port to bring in the stretchers for the crew as well because–once the fatigue sets in–they may no longer be ambulatory. 

Wrapping the scarf around his neck, Jean took out a silver locket from underneath his shirt and opened it. It had a picture of him and Mikasa on their wedding day, cheek to cheek, both of them smiling so widely their eyes sparkled like diamonds, their faces about to crack from the abundance of joy they felt that day. The locket and necklace from which it hung were gifts from Mikasa on their first wedding anniversary. There was an inscription at the front: M♥J

I’m sorry, baby, Jean thought. Seems like your husband’s knight-in-shining-armour moment has put Paradis in deep, deep shit.

Paradis had staunchly maintained its neutrality throughout the continental war, but now Jean feared they’d be embroiled in it, before eventually being forced to take sides. And he’ll be the one to have to make the unwanted, unwelcome, despicable decision.

Thank you so much for reading! Please take a moment to share a thought or two in the comment section below. Your comments give me life and are a real source of encouragement. xoxo, hana

Next – Chapter 2: Like a Broken Record

Back to Intro & Chapter Index

References

Bénédicte Delfaut (Director). (2017). The Sinking of the Lusitania [Documentary Film]. France, CPB Films.
Peter Weir (Director). (2003). Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World [Drama Film]. United States, 20th Century Fox/Miramax Films/Universal Pictures/ Samuel Goldwyn Films.

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