[center][h3]Strategist
Harbor - East Side of Miyama[/h3][/center]
[@Paradox Witch]

Strategist nodded quietly at both Carly's initial glee that the pair would get along well ([i]'We'll see soon enough,'[/i] the Admiral of the Fleet mulled to herself), then to her Master's request to establish a mental 'uplink'. Clearing her head while the flames on the distant horizon licked higher into the night sky, she stepped up to and stopped a pace before the girl, yellow irises glaring down as the Strategist reached out to Carly and took the Magus' wrist with a gloved hand. Bands of energy briefly 'jumped' between the newly-established 'connection', flooding Carly's mind with a battering of jumbled memories.

[center][i]"The Royal Navy should be the most powerful in the world, Prime Minister. We depend on it for trade protection, defending our Empire and its Dominions, and enforcing the rule of law. But all we have left are rusting hulks and designs that will quickly go out-of-date if we do not adapt; who will know when our Trafalgur will come for us, if we are unprepared?"[/i]

[i]"Mr Fisher, will you kindly stop shaking your fist so close to my face?"[/i][/center]

Eventually, a clear series of memory-flashes could finally be made out: a young Midshipman sitting arms-crossed aboard the deck of a small ironclad, sullenly looking towards the 'camera'. A proud Captain, clad in a formal, epauletted jacket and bedecked with a bar of medals, posing before the cameras at rest in his seat, while a journalist eagerly asked the officer questions. A world-weary Admiral of the Fleet staring down at a newspaper, its headline obscure but the front page's image clear enough to make out the body of a finely-dressed, blood-splattered man and woman being dragged out from a bullet-riddled automobile.

Against the background of these premonitions flashed a series of blueprints that - if Carly was able to catch glimpses of them - outlined a series of ship designs; unfamiliar names like [i]"HMS Invincible"[/i], [i]"HMS Renown"[/i], [i]"HMS Queen Mary"[/i], [i]"HMS Orion"[/i] and, perhaps most glaring of all to a Master was the name scrawled at the bottom of one particular blueprint: [i]"HMS Dreadnought"[/i].

[center][i]"Tensions between the Empire and Imperial Germany are running high. If we do not increase our production of warships and turnout of qualified crews and officers, the Kaiser will take his chances with the Royal Navy - his ambitions and reign will depend on it. He'll have to widen the canal at Kiel to get his new warships out into the North Sea and to confront us. Make no mistake, my Lords of the Admiralty: war within Europe will come by October of 1914."[/i][/center]

The image shifted, 'tearing' at the edges as though a camera's film-roll was disintegrating, before a more frightful series of images flashed through Carly's mind. A steady line of steel warships, gun turrets belching smoke and fire against the backdrop of a smog-covered setting sun. A darkened deck lit by flames and fire, incinerating young seamen in the flash-flame's path as they helplessly tried to scramble through a hatchway. Ships violently detonating in choppy seas and men cast into open oceans, floundering for help that, all too often, never came or came too late to save all of them.

[center][i]"We have no choice, Winston; it's everything or nothing. If we commit everything, the Empire might survive, thanks to the bulwark of ships and men we will gain. If we commit nothing, we stand to risk losing everything - Empire, allies, resources and men, women and children. Which will it be?"[/i][/center]

Abruptly, Strategist yanked her hand back from the Magus, severing the link between them as she gasped for breath. It appeared that the experience had worn at the Servant, but was it due to the strain of the effort that had been needed, or something else?