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“What did you do to her?” asks Estonia.
The battleship Estonia had worked on so hard has all but limped into the drydock at Reval. Russia had warned him that she wasn’t as beautiful as when she began, but this is insane - her hull is breached in multiple places, dented in hundreds of others, and some of the more important cables have snapped.
Russia smiles weakly. “She has had a few mishaps,” he admits.
“A few - mishaps?! She’s been butchered! And you didn’t even get out of the Baltic sea!” Estonia is aghast. This great battleship - a beautiful vessel, state of the art, top of the line, blueprints from France - had been put together in the Baltic Yards at St Petersburg. Estonia had been there, of course - helping to rivet the steel panels of the hull, painstakingly adjusting the nuts and bolts in the steam engine, installing the boilers and waste gas funnels, testing the bearings on the propellers - he had had a hand in much of its construction, even if he didn’t necessarily agree with the design and pointed out some of the flaws.
Estonia finds now that many of his objections have been ignored; the secondary armament is fully underwash in the water. She’s so top-heavy she could be Ukraine’s shiply counterpart! What protection does this give against enemy shells?
Estonia considers it and supposes that he could lighten the load on the belt armour significantly by removing a few of the safety panels. Not for nothing did Russia conscript a goodly part of his men and at least Russia knew when to seek some decent expertise. Some of the time, that is!
“How did this even happen,” Estonia mutters. He grabs a toolkit and gets to work.
It is a mostly rhetorical question - there are a number of ways it could have happened and Estonia doesn’t even want to know half of them - but Russia misunderstands as usual and provides him with an answer anyway.
“We were overweight,” complains Russia.
“Mm-hmm. I believe an I told you so is in order,” he retorts. He scales a ladder to the belt armour, a wrench in hand. His belt is connected to a set of pulleys which acts as a harness albeit a pretty poor one. He clamps a hook to a steel rod on the ship itself. Unless this ship is truly godawfully made - and he knows it isn’t - it’ll hold his weight, which he hasn’t much of. With a few graceful movements on the ship itself, he leaves the safety of the ladder and flattens his body upon the side to scale the last few feet, spider-climbing the battleship to her waterline.
“Yes, but as much as fifteen hundred tons?”
“This part isn’t necessary,” Estonia offers, isolating a portion of the hull with a gun turret. Nice guns, but the mounting he suspects is mostly showy and less functional. “Did you take out the anchor chain to be able to include this?”
“I did no such thing! And France says that is the latest innovation!”
France has had a few of his ships sink in recent times for being too heavy. Estonia thinks the anchor would have been more prudent. “Tell me you have the ability to account for recoil, at least.” When Russia doesn’t reply Estonia turns around to find Russia’s facial expression guilty and bashful. Of course it doesn’t account for recoil.
“And anyway!” Russia continues to complain, “We ran aground. Not long after we left Libau.”
It’s Liepaja, thinks Estonia, if the Latvian newspaper of that city is to be understood. “Ah yes. How is Latvia?”
“He’s well! I asked if he wanted to come on the ship and some men came but he said he had other things to do.” Estonia, facing the ship and not Russia, grins. Smart boy, that Latvia. “I am thinking of sending him to the frontlines!” Estonia stops grinning. “Anyway, one of the escorting cruisers lost its anchor chain so we gave her ours while we were still waiting to refloat. And then the destroyer accidentally rammed us.”
This is starting to sound like a bad joke. “Who is manning these ships? Clowns?”
“The Second Pacific Squadron,” says Russia.
Pacific Squadron, thinks Estonia. Pacific squadron that leaves from the Baltic. This plan of Russia’s - to sail to the front of war with Japan around Europe, Africa and Asia - is completely mad, like Russia himself. “Some of these men have never even sailed before, have they?” Estonia asks. “And those that have, I’ll bet you their knowledge is completely obsolete!”
“They are a bit inexperienced, it’s true.”
“They’d have better luck going north,” he grumbles. North, through the ice!
Russia is silent a moment, and then speaks again. “We could, ah. We could benefit from help, perhaps, someone who has experience?”
Estonia turns around. Russia is looking hopefully up at him, big purple eyes, a shy smile and his hands clasped together in pleading.
“Ohhh, no.” Estonia is too familiar with that look. “Once, I was a sailor,” he explains. “And I was a pirate. That’s not terribly useful to you.”
“But you still understand it! And look, you are good at repairs, she is - almost brand new!”
“Russia,” he says flatly. “I am not going on this voyage. No matter how interesting you make it seem.”
“Hmm,” replies Russia.
Estonia works in silence for a few moments and manages to replace an entire hull panel - gouged out and dented and structurally too dangerous to sail as far as Russia plans - before Russia speaks again.
“I could make you,” he decides. “I could make you come with me.”
Estonia pauses. His blood runs cold in his veins and he drops his wrench. It hits the wood of the dock below with a loud thunk.
“Is that not how conscription works? It is! I could make you do it.”
Estonia loosens the cables that tie him to the ship and swings his weight back to the top step of the ladder. Once he has reached it, he unclasps his makeshift harness and descends.
He walks up to Russia, not speaking, and when he reaches him he very quietly but insistently says, “The fact that I do not want to go, so badly that I am being disobedient when normally, I allow you to push me around - don’t I? don’t I allow you? yes! - this should tell you something.”
“But -”
“No. Your tsar is already poorly mismanaging my people elsewhere in the east. Don’t make me sail around the world, too.”
Russia glowers. “I don’t like how you talk back to me,” he says.
“Yes, well, you should have thought of that before the Baltic Germans wrote me such a nice poem,” Estonia says darkly. “Which, by the way features a passage about a voyage to the ends of the earth. And I seem to recall one character tells the rest of the crew many times not to do it. Sound familiar?”
“I haven’t read it,” Russia sniffs.
Of course not! Because Russia can’t read. Estonia rolls his eyes.
A moment passes in a silence that grows steadily cooler. Estonia looks up at Russia, who has ceased smiling.
“I said that aloud, didn’t I,” Estonia realises.
Russia is very angry now. He is wearing his unhappy smile, the one that really does not look like a smile at all. “You talk back far too much, little one.” His hands are clasped but his knuckles are white with rage.
“I’m sorry,” Estonia lies, his lips thin and tight. He does not look at Russia. If he’s lucky, maybe he can fast-talk his way out of this. “I did not mean that. I am simply… worried.”
“Worried for me?” Russia seems placated, so Estonia will go with it.
“Yes,” he says, and it’s a lie too, but gradually it becomes truth. “Look,” he sighs, “if there’s - if there’s something I know about from my time on the seas, it’s that drowning is one of the worst deaths. Really. I would take anything else over drowning.” Russia could snap his neck where they both stand and that would be preferable.
Russia smiles. “But we can’t die!”
“No,” says Estonia. “But your men can. And many will.” He hands Russia the wrench. “You’re sending them a long ways, that’s hard enough. And if I hear correctly the songs they sing of the battles we’re fighting, then they haven’t anything to look forward to when they land. God save their souls,” he says.
Russia departs the morning after - thankfully, without him - and Estonia sets in to wait for the bad news to come home.