Jack of Harts

Kings Bay was the home of America’s old Atlantic ballistic submarine force for some decades after the Second Great Depression. All of them were retired due to expensive maintenance or lost due to equipment failures as time went by, though Georgia has never released the records. Georgia does not even have the records, and Kings Bay keeps them on air-gapped servers behind cybernetic systems who consider it their mission in life to keep anybody from accessing them. Nobody outside Kings Bay’s senior leadership knows when exactly the last of the old ballistic submarines were retired, because boats of the same name continued to operate. They replaced the old Boomers with much smaller submarines that were far cheaper and easier to operate, and eventually expanded the numbers of the fleet. Each sub had far less magazine space than the older Boomers, but the missiles they had were smaller and could still reach anywhere on the globe. They could no longer kill all of America’s enemies ten times over by the end of the century, but Georgia had far more limited resources than the America that built those old Boomers. What they built was sufficient to their needs.

The Kings Bay ballistic submarine crews made it their mission to make certain another of their number was never sunk again, either by enemies or friends. Especially friends. Because a boat with the firepower to end Civilization as we know it has few true friends in the end. They redoubled their efforts to become holes in the ocean, only coming out of the darkness when they felt the times were right. Holes in the ocean that nobody ever saw required a little theater when it came time to ask for funding after all. So they developed a tradition of hunting other submarines. Or as retired crewmembers explained it, waiting for some unlucky bastard to pass their hiding place and using remote drones to lock them up with full sonar pings. Followed by an announcement, thanking them for taking part in this scheduled test of the Georgian Navy’s targeting systems. The Boomers never revealed themselves during these “scheduled tests,” and quickly scooted away to another hiding place after each one, but they made certain nobody ever forgot they were out there, watching, waiting, and ready to strike at any time. You may guess this earned them few new friends, and a great many people who believed the Georgian Navy was insane. They were not entirely wrong.

The ballistic missile submarine crews from Kings Bay became far more distrustful of strangers after the USS Georgia was sunk. Their screening procedures became far more intensive, and they held themselves further apart from the other American military services. They overhauled their training systems and followed more vigorous policies when it came to removing people from the boats for what was once considered minor reasons. Anyone or anything could be a threat to them after all. So it was only prudent to remove as many threats as possible to reduce the chances of Bad Things happening. And they became even more determined to disappear into the oceans whenever they deployed. Decades of lax policies were trimmed and they became the wraiths of the oceans once more, keeping away from both their foes and their friends. Assuming they had any friends of course.