Konpeki no Kantai::Volume1 Prologue

Konpeki no Kantai 1: Prologue

Prologue: A Hero Doesn't Die Twice on Bougainville

...I should have died one time.

My resurrection was a strange experience...

Regaining consciousness on an operating table...

The operation continued.

I wondered if it was the effect of anesthesia; my entire body was numb.

Around me echo the moans of injured people. As if to mask that, there are the sounds of big cannons roaring. The ground has so many bloodstained casualties, there's no place left to stand.

A medic peeks at me, then wipes the sweat off my brow.

It appeared they were taking something out from inside of him. A dull pain runs through me. The surgeon, taking up something bloodstained with his forceps, tosses it into a brass container with clanging, dry sound.

(Did that look like a shell fragment...?)

The low ceiling is shaking heavily. The ventilation ducts are showing. It looks like I'm inside a battleship.

(Why am I here...?)

I don't understand it.

I feel out of place in a way hard to describe.

(How did I wind up in a battleship's operating room?)

First of all, this, if memory serves me, is a Meiji era battleship. Assuming that, then I am forty years in the past.

(Is that it? I'm watching a dream.)

If I were on a heavy cruiser under steam, I would have noticed.

"Doctor, Cadet Takano looks like he is aware."

"That so?"

A mask covering his face, the surgeon's eyes were concentrated on him. "Our combined fleet has won a great victory."

(What's this about?)

"The fragments have been removed nicely. You can sleep in peace."

The anesthesia apparently turned up, I returned to the world of deep sleep.

...He was dreaming. Beneath him lay a deep green tropical jungle.

The attack bomber was shaking violently.

The six Zeroes escorting him had been attacked by sixteen enemy P-38s, and there was a fierce battle in progress.

Would they be able to shake free?

Closing in on the enemy planes, the bomber continued to answer the challenge eagerly.

But it was hit. Spouting fire, the aircraft gradually lost altitude.

"We're going to make an emergency landing on island 'B'."

The pilot was shouting. Before island 'G' there was Island 'B', Bougainville. Island 'G' was Guadalcanal.

On April 18th of the year Showa 18, he departed from Rabaul. Together with some staff officers riding in two land attack planes, they were en route to the do a front line inspection and to rally the troops.

Suddenly, as if sliding through the sky, enemy P-38s approached them. Machine guns fired. At that moment an enemy bullet hit him.

That was where his consciousness cut off.

"Cadet Takano"

They were calling him to wake him up.

(I am not Takano...)

He started to say, but swallowed his words.

(Is this a dream too?)

He found himself in the Japan of forty years before.

(Even so, this ship is the Nisshin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_cruiser_Nisshin).)

Then he realized.

In the year 38 of the Meiji era (1905), the Japanese Navy challenged the Russian Baltic Fleet, which had cruised from distant Europe, and won decisively... This was the battle in the Sea of Japan which decided the outcome of the Russo-Japanese War.

Cadet Takano Isoroku, barely graduated from the naval academy as a second lieutenant, when this century's ocean war came to pass, was ordered to join the crew of the armored cruiser Nisshin. It had been purchased newly built from Argentina.

About the time the battle commenced, an flying enemy shell suddenly exploded at the front of the gun turret. He was seriously injured by fragments that struck him.

(But, that time, I survived my narrow brush with death...)

There in bed, he looked quietly over at his left hand. There was no bandage wrapped around it.

(Isn't that strange?)

(Even though I lost two fingers of my left hand...)

"Medic, where was I injured?"

He asked.

"Yes. Cadet Takano, you received one or two bullet fragments in the chest, but fortunately they missed any vital spots. The surgeon said if it had been another centimeter, he may not have been able to save you."

"Is that so? I guess luck was with me."

He closed his eyes...

"Yes. Before long the ship will return to port, and you, cadet, from the Nisshin will be taken to the Sasebo naval hospital."

Though he should have received a wound to the right leg, this time there was not.

(Perhaps I am dreaming in the world after death.)

So he thought, but none of it was according to his memory of the past. He couldn't explain a thing about it, though he was struck by a sense of incongruity that he could not give a name to...

Takano Isoroku underwent surgery again in Sasebo, progressed well from that point and was transferred to the Yokosuka Navy Hospital two months later. At the end of August he was commissioned as an Ensign in the Navy. He was discharged from the hospital in October of that year.

His home town was Nagaoka. The Russo-Japanese War was over. Japan seemed to have won a great victory in this world.

In his home town, he met the people said to be his parents. But he felt strange meeting parents who already should have been dead. Or rather, they were strangers to him.

However many times he went to homecoming parties, they were all nothing but first time meetings. And yet those other people had been close friends. Entirely oblivious that Takano Isoroku's soul had been exchanged, they talked of old times...

In the end,

"It seems that Isoroku-san is a rather peculiar man."

"No, his injuries were almost to the death, so it wouldn't be strange for him to have some of his memories."

He was aware that such talk was whispered about. The end of his furlough was drawing near.

Until that time, he had to work to understand just what was the mysterious phenomenon that had occurred to him... Through having returned to Nagaoka in the deep fall, he came to realize that this was not the world of his own true past.

The past was extremely similar.

But there were differences here and there...

In February, Meíjí 39, he would be ordered to the Suma. In August, he would be assigned to the Kashima.

In year 40, he would advance to Lieutenant, Junior Grade. He would take the Gunnery School and Torpedo School basic courses.

In year 42, at twenty-five years of age, he would be promoted to Lieutenant.

As for his time in the Naval Academy, even in this altered world, he walked the path of the elite.

From there many things happened, and the fourth year of Taisho arrived. He was thirty-one years old.

In his memories, this was the year he should have changed his surname from Takano to Yamamoto so as to become the heir to the Yamamoto household...

The Yamamoto family had been chief retainers for the daimyo of the domain of Nagaoka. But, at the time of the Battle of Hokuetsu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hokuetsu), owing to their association with the Bakufu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogun), they bore the stigma of traitors and the family was abolished.

However, that story coming to nothing in the end and he was simply appointed as Lieutenant Commander, just as he had been in his previous life.

(After all, this world is my life after death...)

He had heard it said that with regards to a person's soul, their current life depends on their previous life, and that people of this world would repeat this life...

In year nine of the Showa era (1934), though the world was a little different for this year, preliminary disarmament negotiations took place in London. Takano Isoroku, now turning fifty years of age, headed for London in the Japanese delegation. The following year, he returned. This time, he was a vice-admiral.

In year eleven of the Showa era, in this world, the February 26 Incident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_26_Incident) occurred.

Then came the Marco Polo Bridge Incident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo_Bridge_Incident). The day was slightly off, but it happened in July of Showa 12. It was obviously a plot of the Kwantung Army (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwantung_Army). The Imperial Army, using it as an excuse, started the invasion of continental China.

(The gears of history turn the same in this world as in the old one.)

So he thought. The world of his native country, as in our world too, had started to roll down the hill towards destruction...

But, the Army was stubborn to the last. Takano Isoroku tried hard to restrain their eagerness. Still, keeping the Army in check was next to impossible.

What worried him most was the outbreak of war with America. It was the reason why he continued to oppose the Tripartite Pact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripartite_Pact).

But, standing against the reluctant Takano Isoroku, the right-wing diehards actively threatened him. Being an unruly bunch, they were hard to deal with. And they had the Army behind them.

(There's not much time before the fated date the war will start.)

In the year Showa 14 of this world, Takano Isoroku, having now reached the important office of vice-minister of the Navy, was feeling secretly frustrated...

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