Physical contact with Pillsbury
burned.
Despite this, I did not drop her.
By the time I had finished picking her up and returned to a standing position, she had curled up into a shivering, sobbing ball of terror in my arms.
Seeing (someone who appeared to be) a child panicking to such an extent awakened my maternal instincts (which I didn't know I had), which promptly went to war with my Abyssal 'kill the kanmusu' instincts.
I chose to follow my maternal instincts and began to stroke her hair comfortingly and whisper to her.
"Shhh… shhh… I'm not going to hurt you…"
After a few moments, she stopped crying. She uncurled slightly, and looked at me with an absolutely befuddled expression on her face.
Almost immediately, she recoiled in fear, partially curling back up, my appearance having reminded her that I was an Abyssal.
Fairly quickly, she seemed to realize that I wasn't going to kill her immediately, and re-uncurled a bit.
"I… have… no… desire… to… fight… anyone…," I said haltingly as I struggled to not kill Pillsbury, setting her back down on the sea. "Could… you… inform… your… friends… before… they… start… a… battle… nobody… wants…?"
"W-w-why d-do y-you th-think th-that th-the o-others w-wouldn't w-want a b-battle?" she asked, still terrified but rising to her feet.
"Battle… would... risk… convoy," I replied.
"They… are… seven… and a… half… nautical… miles… away…, at a… bearing… forty… four… degrees… east of… magnetic… north," I added, pointing.
She seemed to think about it for a bit, before turning and heading in the direction I had indicated, the pressure to kill her lessening as she did so.
I watched her for a few moments, before turning and resuming my prior westward course, still keeping track of her with my radar.
It took eight minutes for Pillsbury to reach the rest of her fleet, and she quickly found Iowa and began to talk with her. I was too far away to hear what they were talking about, but I presumed that Pillsbury was informing Iowa of her encounter with me.
Soon enough, Iowa broadcasted a warning to the rest of the fleet. "Listen up. Pillsbury's back, and she's fine, but she encountered an Abyssal battleship. Said Abyssal claimed to not want to fight, and apparently didn't try to sink Pillsbury, but we should still be cautious anyway."
Surprisingly, several of the other kanmusu began relaying Iowa's broadcast, despite the fact that the kanmusu fleet was in a very tight formation and such relaying should not be needed.
The kanmusu fleet began to rearrange themselves, shifting from an escort formation to a surface-combat formation.
Before they could complete said shift (which was significantly slowed by the apparently-garbage range of their radios), however, a kanmusu seaplane (a Japanese 'Jake' recon seaplane, according to my recognition manuals) turned towards me.
I was not surprised, as the turn was a normal part of the search pattern it was flying, which I had been tracking for the past half-hour or so.
I still decided to keep an eye on it.
Shortly thereafter, the plane came close enough to spot me (based on when it began its complicated and unnecessary evasive maneuvers, at least). Unsurprisingly, Chitose almost immediately began broadcasting. "Abyssal super-battleship Princess spotted! Range twelve thousand yards, relative bearing thirty-five degrees, speed… fifteen knots, absolute course… two hundred seventy degrees!"
My surface-search radar was informing me that the actual range was around eleven-point-four or eleven-point-five thousand yards.
She paused for a moment. "Though… I do wonder why it isn't using any of its anti-air guns. I find it hard to believe that it wouldn't be able to spot my plane at such a short range, but it's showing no sign of having noticed!"
I took that as an invitation to interject.
"Because you knowing where I am makes you more comfortable, and thus less likely to do a stupid, like trying to attack me, and allowing your plane to stay near me is a convenient way of ensuring that," I broadcasted. "Also, I'm somewhat offended by the fact that you referred to me as
it rather than
she."
Dead silence.
Iowa was the first to recover. "And just
why would attacking you be stupid?"
"You mean besides the fact that I out-displace your entire fleet
combined? Excluding the cargo ships, of course," I replied, rolling my eyes. "Or the fact that attacking me would risk the convoy that you are supposed to be protecting?"
"...Fair," Iowa eventually replied.
Pillsbury seemed to have noticed something. "But… weren't you having trouble speaking earlier?"
"Yes, because I had to focus most of my willpower on
not killing the kanmusu next to me, and now I don't have to," I replied.
Iowa sounded a bit worried. "Is that something we should be concerned about?"
"As long as you don't get too close, everything will be fine," I answered. "Smaller kanmusu will be able to get closer without problems, while larger kanmusu will have to stay farther away. For you, I'd estimate 'too close' to be around… a thousand, two thousand yards?"
"What about steel-hull ships?" one of the cruisers asked. (Pasadena, perhaps? She was definitely a Cleveland.)
"They're fine," I replied. "The… 'killing urge', for lack of a better term, only seems to apply to kanmusu. And before you ask, no, I don't know why."
"If you have an urge to kill kanmusu, then why aren't you?" Iowa asked.
She quickly clarified. "N-Not that I want you to, I'm just curious."
"Simple. I don't want to die," I said. "And I have no doubt that the US Navy is perfectly capable of sinking me if you so desire. What's more confusing to me is why so many Abyssals do go out of their way to sink kanmusu. Though I do have a theory…"
I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts. "The core question that my theory tries to answer isn't 'why do Abyssals try to sink kanmusu', but rather 'why don't kanmusu encounter non-hostile Abyssals'. The basic concept is that kanmusu have established a reputation amongst Abyssals of being merciless killers. This would have two main effects; that the Abyssals who don't want to fight kanmusu attempt to move deeper into Abyssal-held territory to avoid kanmusu, and any such Abyssals that do encounter kanmusu will attack said kanmusu, seeing it as preemptive self defense. And these points would mean that Abyssals have a reputation amongst kanmusu of being universally hostile, thus perpetuating the whole thing. But that's just a theory."
A Game Theory! I very deliberately did
not say.
"Anyways, I don't know what my clock is set to relative to UTC, and I don't know the date, so could you help me with that?" I requested.
"Hold on a moment," probably-Pasadena said. "If your theory is true, and Abyssals don't get the 'killing urge' until they are much closer than battle range, then why did Abyssals start attacking kanmusu in the first place? Why did Abyssals attack humans during Blood Week? Why do Abyssals still attack humans?"
"To answer your questions in order," I replied, "I didn't say that the 'killing urge' only
happened at close range, I said it would only be a
problem at close range. In the case of your fleet, the urge became noticeable roughly when you entered my fog and became difficult to ignore when you were about thirty nautical miles away. My best guess for why Abyssals attacked humans during Blood Week is that some Abyssals did want to end humanity (or some subset thereof), and humanity's complete lack of effective defense made their forces seem much larger than they actually were. As for why other Abyssals still attack humans, I would imagine that they've discovered that it's an effective way to lure you to them. Now, I've answered a bunch of your questions, and you have yet to answer the
one that I have asked."
"As of right…
now, it is 2113:13 UTC, September 18, 2026," Iowa said.
I checked my clock, did some simple math, and noted that it was set to roughly UTC+10:43:17. I finally had a way to figure out my longitude, though I would have to wait until local noon (roughly four hours away) to do so. I could, however, use measurements taken yesterday at noon to figure out where I was then, and use that plus my speed and heading to estimate my current longitude, which turned out to be roughly 156 degrees east.
Pasadena then spoke up, interrupting my train of thought. "...If we were to answer more of your questions, would you be willing to answer more of ours?"
I was
not going to pass up this opportunity to learn more about the state of the world. "Certainly. If we were to do the common 'answer for answer' agreement, then you would owe me another three answers."
Depending on how I defined 'question', I could probably have argued that they owed me as many as
seven answers, but I felt that being more lenient would help improve my reputation and thus reduce the risk of being attacked in the future.
After taking some time to think about it, Iowa replied. "That sounds fair. Ask your questions."
I complied. "What areas are under Abyssal control? Particularly in the Pacific and Indian oceans."
After a moment of silence, Iowa broadcasted. "Helena, you're probably the best option for answering the question."
"Okay," a Baltimore (almost certainly Helena) replied. "I don't have complete or precise knowledge, but I know that, in the Pacific, the Aleutians and almost all of the assorted islands in the south - including most of the Philippines, Micronesia, Melanesia, and southern Polynesia - are Abyssal-held. I don't have any knowledge of how things are going in the Indian Ocean, though. Sorry."
I did not believe that she actually had no knowledge - the Cruiser Information Network was a fairly common fanon element, and the Indian Ocean isn't too far from Japan - but I was willing to let it slide and move on to my second question.
On the other hand, it sounded like Hoppou was around. Which lead me to my next question.
"Are there any other known neutral or human-friendly Abyssals?"
The kanmusu did not answer immediately, but instead began broadcasting to each other in encrypted Morse.
"Well… with what you've told us about your theory as to
why Abyssals try to sink kanmusu, the Northern Princess, on Unalaska Island,
might be one, but I would have to look over the Navy's records to say for certain or to identify others," the unidentified Cleveland eventually answered.
The other four cruisers (Pasadena, Helena, an unidentified Baltimore, and an unidentified Omaha) all agreed with the conclusion fairly quickly.
Hoppou was
definitely around.
I considered going to her for resupply, but I was almost-certain that she had a major fleet (as her territory blocked a major shipping route and she still hadn't been… removed) and I didn't know how she would react to an Abyssal Princess arriving unannounced.
I still needed to decide
where to go for resupply, but I wanted to get as much information as I could before making a final decision.
I
could ask the kanmusu for suggestions, but doing so would reveal weakness on my part (namely, that I was low on supplies), so I was reluctant to do so.
The kanmusu almost-certainly had more questions they wanted to ask, which meant that I would have more opportunities to ask questions. As such, I decided to ask a largely-irrelevant question that I had been wondering about.
"If there aren't any Abyssals along your route - aside from the Northern Princess and her fleet, who, based on your answer to my previous question, are not aggressive - why does your convoy have so many kanmusu?"
There was a pause (and more encrypted communications) before Iowa answered. "First of all, our patrols aren't perfect; it's not uncommon for some Abyssals - especially submarines - to slip past and attack our convoys, so we still need to protect our convoys. Second, a bunch of us - including myself - are being redeployed to Sa - Japan, so Adm - the Admiral decided to have us travel with the convoy."
Which… made sense, and was
incredibly obvious in retrospect. It was also obvious that Iowa was not good at concealing information, which was unsurprising, given the reputation of being unsubtle that battleships had (both IRL and in fanon).
Well, I still did not owe the kanmusu any questions, but they did not owe me any more questions, so who got to ask next was an open question.
I still wanted more time to decide about my future questions, so I decided to give the kanmusu the next question (which would also give me a better reputation). "I believe that it is your turn to ask a question."
The kanmusu seemed surprised by my declaration, but quickly came up with a question. "Uh… Okay… What are your plans?"
This would take some time to answer, as I first had to come up with a plan.
I had four general goals: to resupply, to obtain escorts, to establish a base-of-operations, and to convince humanity that I wasn't hostile (ordered from most urgent to least urgent).
Focusing on the first goal, I came up with several requirements for where I could go to resupply. It had to have supplies (obviously), it had to be within my current range (again, obviously), it had to be unoccupied by humans and kanmusu (as I doubted any of the human governments would be comfortable with me being near humans without having several capital kanmusu nearby, which would be a bad idea with my 'killing urge'), and it had to be outside of Abyssal control (as I did not want to get in a fight before I could resupply).
I didn't have any solid knowledge of what locations had supplies other than the generic 'places with humans have supplies', but this conflicted with the 'no humans' requirement. I supposed that towns and cities that had been attacked during Blood Week and were still ruined
might have
some supplies, but looting (both by Abyssals and by surviving humans) made that unlikely.
It was probably still my best bet.
Checking my fuel reserves, and looking at my maps, I found only a single area that might meet my requirements: the Kuril Islands. Fortunately, this was exactly where my current course would take me.
Moving on to my next goal, I had no idea how to get escorts.
Well, I supposed that I could have my engineers use spare parts and my machine shops to construct escorts, but this would require
significant amounts of the aforementioned spare parts (and thus significant resupply), a drydock (which I did not have, but was much more reasonable to create), and significant time, in addition to resulting in tiny, low-quality escorts, so this was a last-resort option.
Even if I somehow obtained all of the equipment and raw materials required to construct actually-good escorts, I would still need to stay nearby for the several months (at
minimum) that it would take to complete them, so I probably wouldn't be able to do so until I had established a base of operations.
On that topic, I still needed to decide generally where I wanted to set up said base of operations. I didn't want to set up in the Kurils, as that would almost-certainly be too close for the Japanese and Russians to feel comfortable, which would result in a bunch of kanmusu being sent to 'evict' me.
Similarly, I didn't want to spend too much time in kanmusu-controlled waters, just to minimize the chance of being misidentified and attacked.
I also didn't want to set up in an Abyssal-held area, as that would require fighting the Abyssals that were holding the area, and I didn't want to fight before at least getting escorts, preferably a full fleet, which was almost certainly not going to happen before I set up a base.
In short, I ideally would want to set up in an area that had been recently cleared by kanmusu, but was not held by them. This situation could probably only be found in an area of active combat, which was less ideal, but probably still better than the alternative.
The nearest area that met these requirements was probably the northern Philippines, so that's where I decided to head after I resupplied in the Kurils. (I had to assume that I would resupply in the Kurils, as I didn't see any reasonable way to survive if I couldn't)
Now, I probably shouldn't travel directly from the Kurils to the Philippines, as that route would take me rather close to Japan, so I -
"Are you going to answer our question, or not? If you don't want to, that's fine, but you should let us know so we can choose a different question" Helena said, interrupting my thoughts.
"My apologies. I seem to have gotten lost in my thoughts," I answered. "My current plan is to resupply in the Kuril Islands before moving on to the Philippines - possibly via the Bonin Islands, for additional resupply - to set up a base of operations, though that might change."
"Are there Abyssals in the Kurils?" Chidoya asked, alarmed.
"Now now, it's my turn to ask a question," I chided.
Which, of course, meant that I had to come up with a question to ask. I was still undecided about asking about resupply, but that was an option. Alternatively, I could ask something to help me decide where to set up my base or what course to take to get there. Actually that would be a good question to ask…
"Are there any areas of the Pacific that I should avoid?" I asked. "Kanmusu forward bases, particularly strong or territorial Abyssal fleets, anything like that."
Somewhat unsurprisingly, there was a lot of encrypted radio traffic between the kanmusu in response to my question.
After a while, they seemed to have come to a decision. "Well, the Solomon Islands and Midway are both major Abyssal strongholds, and the Abyssals based at Unalaska and Bikini are rather territorial. Hawaii is the only forward base that we have that we're willing to tell you about at this point."
I found it rather telling that Hawaii was considered a 'forward base'.
"I think we'd like you to answer Chidoya's question," Iowa said.
"To the best of my knowledge, there are no Abyssals anywhere in the Kuril Islands," I replied.
"Then why-" Chidoya began, before (presumably) realizing that I would answer the same way I had earlier.
Well, now it was my turn to ask another question. Which meant I had to either ask the resupply question that I had been hesitating to ask, or come up with a different question.
I thought for a bit before coming up with a question. "Is there any way that I could contact you - or your navies in general - once I have set up my base of operations?"
There were a few moments of (presumably-stunned) silence from the kanmusu, before the airwaves were filled with encrypted communications. This discussion lasted for several minutes before Iowa replied to my question.
"Why would you be interested in that?" she asked, sounding skeptical.
I considered just telling her that it was my turn to ask a question, like I had to Chidoya earlier, but doing so would likely make Iowa less likely to answer my question. As such, I decided to answer honestly. "So that I can let you know what areas I've claimed, so you can avoid accidentally attacking my forces? So that I could pass you any information I feel you might be interested in? So that we could potentially coordinate joint operations?"
Unsurprisingly, there was another flurry of encrypted communications between the kanmusu.
I decided to exacerbate the situation. "And I'm not going to count that as one of your questions, so once you answer my question you can ask another."
This yielded the expected (but still entertaining) result of notably increasing the volume of encrypted communications.
After a few minutes, they seemed to have come to an agreement, and Iowa was the one to speak. "I don't know how you could, but I'll talk to the Admiral about it. Now, why are you planning on resupplying in the Kurils if there aren't any other Abyssals there?"
I didn't really want to answer this question (for the same reason that I had not asked about a better place to resupply), but I felt that I
had to.
"It's the only location that might meet my four criteria for resupply: that it has resources I can use to resupply, that it is close enough for me to get to, that it doesn't have any humans or kanmusu (as I doubt any of the human governments would be willing to let me get close without having several capital kanmusu nearby, and the 'killing urge' makes that a bad idea), and that it isn't in an area claimed by Abyssals (as I would rather not get in a fight if I don't need to, especially before I have resupplied)."
I decided to ask about resupply, now that my main reason for not doing so was no longer relevant. "On that topic, is there anywhere that might fit my criteria better?"
There was some encrypted discussion amongst the kanmusu (though not as intense as that from my previous question), and Helena was the one to answer me this time as the other kanmusu continued their encrypted conversation. "Not that we can come up with, unless you've got a
lot more fuel than your plans have implied, in which case the Falklands might be better."
There was
absolutely no way I was making it all the way to the Falklands, so Kurils it was.
The kanmusu continued their discussion for several minutes after that, before (presumably) coming to a consensus and (finally) asking me their question. "What is your name?"
"Call me Cudele," I replied. "It'll take me a bit to come up with a question for you, so don't be surprised if I'm quiet for some time."
There was a bit more discussion amongst the kanmusu, before the as-yet-unidentified Baltimore spoke "That's fine, we're having trouble coming up with questions as well."
A few minutes of silence (except for the still-continuing, still-encrypted discussion between the kanmusu), a new not-itch appeared on my senses somewhere to the south. It felt different from the not-itches produced by the kanmusu, but in a way I had a hard time putting to words. I eventually settled on referring to the new not-itch as 'cold' and the kanmusu not-itch as 'hot'.
It took me a bit to decide that it was
probably a group of Abyssals.
"Something just showed up, and I
think it's a group of Abyssals. I don't have an exact location, but I could probably guide an aircraft to it," I broadcasted. "I think it's about a hundred nautical miles to the south."
"Okay… how is this going to work?" Chidoya said. "I can spare one of my Jakes to investigate."
"Send it south, I'll give you more precise directions once it gets closer," I replied. It made sense to only send a single aircraft, keeping the rest nearby in case I turned out to be hostile.
About an hour later, after a lot of frustration (on both of our parts, mostly with how vague my directions had to be), I managed to direct Chidoya's seaplane close to the not-itch.
"It's an Abyssal battlefleet!" Chidoya yelled. "Two Tas, a Wo, three Ris, a Ne, two Tsus, a Ho, a To, three Has, three Nis, and two Ros, approaching at flank speed!"
"And my plane just got shot down," she added a moment later.
With this information, the kanmusu carriers began launching aircraft.
I recognized the Ta-class as a battleship, the Wo-class as a fleet carrier, the Ne-class as a heavy cruiser, and the Tsu-class as a… torpedo cruiser? (maybe?), but I didn't recognize any of the other names. Based on the ordering and counts of the names, I guessed that the Ri-class was a heavy cruiser, the Ni- and Ro-classes were destroyers, and the Ho, To-, and Ha-classes being some mixture of light cruisers and destroyers.
It definitely seemed like this fleet would (at least) pose a significant threat to the kanmusu convoy. Escort carriers had roughly half the capacity of fleet carriers, didn't they? So the kanmusu should be able to establish air superiority, having three escort carriers and two seaplane tenders to the Abyssals' one fleet carrier.
This, combined with the fact that the Abyssal fleet didn't know where the kanmusu convoy was, would
probably be enough to overcome being outnumbered three-to-one in capital ships?
I did not want to risk information about me (particularly my non-hostility) not getting through to the various world navies on a
probably.
On the other hand, I didn't want to piss off another Princess if I didn't need to.
In either case, I
definitely didn't want to engage the Abyssals in a gun duel, given my limited ammunition stores. Especially as, given our current courses, the Abyssals would run right into the kanmusu convoy before they reached me.
Hopefully, the lack of other things for me to do would at least mitigate my tendency to procrastinate on decisions until they are no longer relevant. I knew better than to believe that the high-stakes nature of the situation would help, given that my stress response defaulted to 'avoidance,' which in cases like this, would translate to 'think about something else', i.e. procrastinate. (Which would, of course, reduce the amount of time I had, making it
more stressful, and thus even harder to focus on).
{Aerial radar contact. Distance 75.6 nautical miles, bearing 146.2 relative}
I noted that a sizable chunk of the new contacts (which I presumed to be the Wo's aircraft) split off into a search pattern. They seemed to be primarily focusing on the direction that Chidoya's seaplane had approached from, which was (luckily) not the direction that either I or the kanmusu were in.
If I kept my radio power down, there was essentially no chance of the Abyssals knowing I had told the kanmusu about them. As such, I decided to let the kanmusu know about this event.
"Looks like the Wo is launching aircraft. From my position, 75.6 nautical miles at a relative bearing of 146.2."
"So are you going to help us?" Helena asked.
That was the exact question I was asking myself.
"...I am trying to decide," I eventually admitted.
"Well, decide quickly!" she snapped.
This did not help, as it put more stress on me, therefore making it more difficult to focus on the issue at hand.
The next thing I found to distract myself with (not that I was trying to distract myself, and after the reason I was distracting myself despite not wanting to) was adjusting my course so that the Abyssal fleet wouldn't encounter me (based on how far away Pillsbury was when she detected me).
Which gave me another thought. "Couldn't you just change course so that the Abyssals fleet won't encounter you?"
"First off, your fog is too thick and our formation is too tight for us to maneuver like that, especially with the cargo ships we've got. Secondly, we have no evidence that the Abyssals
can't see through your fog. Thirdly, the Wo's aircraft are probably searching for us right now, and we'd have to make a major course change to avoid them," Iowa replied, annoyed.
Which… made sense. Though it did open a new question… Why were they sailing in such close formation? I had previously noticed that their formation was getting tighter as they got closer to me, so I presumed it had
something to do with me.
Given how annoyed Iowa seemed, I chose not to ask at this time.
I should focus on whether or not to help the kanmusu fight the Abyssal battlefleet.
So, pros and cons:
Pros:
- Better chance of kanmusu surviving and reporting my non-hostility to their higher-ups
- Evidence to the kanmusu that I am, in fact, non-hostile
Cons:
- Expenditure of fuel and ammunition
- Risk of damage to or loss of aircraft
- Risk of injury to myself
- Risk of offending whichever Princess sent these Abyssals
Seems like there are more cons than pros, but most of the cons are just 'probably's, while all of the pros are certainties, which gives more 'weight' to the pro side. The pros are also more 'intense', giving even more 'weight' to that side. All this means that I can't just count the pros and cons, which defeats the whole purpose of this exercise.
So, next idea:
Help is left, not help is right.
Eenie meenie miny moe, catch a tiger by it's toe, if he hollers let him go, eenie meenie miny moe. My mother told me to pick the very best one, and you are not it.
Not help it is.
…But that doesn't feel right, so I'll help.
Decision made, I ordered fifty of my aircraft to be armed, fueled, and prepped for takeoff.
This was not as many as I
could sortie, but I wanted to keep some in reserve in case something happened before I could resupply. (And I still had to assume I would resupply in the Kurils, as I was dead otherwise).
One of the officers in charge of my ordnance crew asked me a question. I didn't know what my answer should be, so I decided to ask the kanmusu, letting them know that I was willing to help at the same time. "I'm willing to put up fifty aircraft to help, but I'm not sure what the split between air-superiority and dive-bombing loadouts should be."
There was some discussion amongst the kanmusu before one of the escort carriers (one of the two Casablancas, the third escort carrier being a Bogue) replied. "We should be able to handle the Wo's fighters, so just send dive bombers."
I passed this answer to my ordnance crew, and they got to it.
Soon enough, the first Flying Fish Kai was on one of my two flight decks, ready to launch.
It felt weird, almost like it was stuck in my throat, but in my left flat-tentacle-arm. (I really needed to come up with a better name for them). As such, I 'coughed', sending the dagger-like aircraft into the air.
Unfortunately, it immediately dove into the water.
Some shouting from my flight deck revealed the cause: the pilot hadn't gotten into the aircraft before I had inadvertently launched it.
When the next aircraft was ready to launch (in my other flat-tentacle-arm) only a few seconds later, I tried to resist the urge to 'cough' it up until it was ready.
I was not exactly
successful, but I tried.
Again, it dove into the water pilotless.
For the third launch, I decided to change things and have the pilot get into their plane
before it was brought up to my flight deck.
This actually worked.
It didn't work
well, as it didn't give the pilot much time to mentally prepare, but it did
work.
Over the next hour or so, I launched the other forty-nine aircraft I had said I was sending. It went… not
smoothly, (as evidenced by the fact it took over twice as long as it should have) but they all got into the air with no additional losses.
I had chosen to send my least-experienced pilots out on this mission, both so that they would gain some experience and to preserve my more-experienced pilots so that they could continue teaching.
I wasn't sure what the best course of action was, so I decided to ask the kanmusu. "I've got all my aircraft in the air. Do you have a plan for them besides just sending them in and hoping for the best?"
"Our current plan is to have your dive bombers go in after our fighters, but before our bombers. That work for you?" the same escort carrier replied.
I recognized that they were almost-certainly using my aircraft to 'shield' their own, distracting and taking out the enemy's AA guns and fighters to allow the kanmusu bombers to approach relatively unmolested.
I could see the logic of it, both from the kanmusu's perspective (use the forces you don't care about to protect the ones you do) and from an objective perspective (use the inexperienced, less-valuable forces to protect the experienced, more-valuable ones), but I still didn't like it.
However, I didn't have the knowledge or experience to come up with a better plan.
"... Fine," I replied. "Any preferences for which Abyssals I target?"
"See if you can't take out the carrier or the battleships," Iowa instructed.
"Will do," I acknowledged.
I organized my aircraft into three groups: two groups of fifteen each (told to target the battleships), and one group of twenty (told to target the carrier).
The pilots managed to get themselves into their assigned groups without any of them going out of control, needing to ditch, or needing to discard their munitions.
"I've got my aircraft ready. Are yours?" I asked.
"Ours have been ready for the past forty minutes," the Bogue replied flatly.
As she said that, I saw a chunk of the kanmusu aircraft split off from where they were circling and start heading towards the Abyssal fleet.
I sent my aircraft after them.
