- Location
- North Carolina
Against the Odds (Kantai Collection/Worm AU)
Timeline Post X
- Location
- North Carolina
7 July 1898
The former Spanish Armored Cruiser Cristóbal Colón weighed anchor and began to leave Key West, passing the American Dynamite Cruiser Vesuvius as she did so. She had been ordered to head to the newly incorporated city of Brockton Bay up in New Hampshire, more specifically to Lords Port Naval Yard for overhaul. The United States Navy had drawn up plans to rip out her current armament and install an American-manufactured armament of four 8-inch guns, ten 6-inch guns, sixteen 3-inch guns, and 18-inch torpedo tubes. The Maxim Guns she had onboard had already been removed and had been handed over to the US Army for testing at the Sandy Hook Proving Ground to see how they compared to the M1895 Machine Gun that was the current US Army and Marine Corps standard issue. The only aspect of her original armament that she would maintain would be her 37mm Pom-Pom of which two were going to be sent to the Naval Gun Factory for possible reverse engineering as the weapon offered to be a significantly better weapon than the old Gatling Guns for last-ditch defense against torpedo boats.
Her spirit was frankly confused about the whole matter - she couldn't remember the last time a ship had been captured and put into service by a hostile power. Yet the Americans seemed to be ready to treat her already as one of their own - if anything, that made her hopeful. Spain had rejected her main armament that her original builders, Italy, had outfitted her with due to being 'defective' in their own words. More than that, Spain had never replaced her main battery and then had sent her on what had been essentially a death ride. She was now, flying a new national flag and heading to a place she had never heard of before.
The former Spanish Armored Cruiser Cristóbal Colón weighed anchor and began to leave Key West, passing the American Dynamite Cruiser Vesuvius as she did so. She had been ordered to head to the newly incorporated city of Brockton Bay up in New Hampshire, more specifically to Lords Port Naval Yard for overhaul. The United States Navy had drawn up plans to rip out her current armament and install an American-manufactured armament of four 8-inch guns, ten 6-inch guns, sixteen 3-inch guns, and 18-inch torpedo tubes. The Maxim Guns she had onboard had already been removed and had been handed over to the US Army for testing at the Sandy Hook Proving Ground to see how they compared to the M1895 Machine Gun that was the current US Army and Marine Corps standard issue. The only aspect of her original armament that she would maintain would be her 37mm Pom-Pom of which two were going to be sent to the Naval Gun Factory for possible reverse engineering as the weapon offered to be a significantly better weapon than the old Gatling Guns for last-ditch defense against torpedo boats.
Her spirit was frankly confused about the whole matter - she couldn't remember the last time a ship had been captured and put into service by a hostile power. Yet the Americans seemed to be ready to treat her already as one of their own - if anything, that made her hopeful. Spain had rejected her main armament that her original builders, Italy, had outfitted her with due to being 'defective' in their own words. More than that, Spain had never replaced her main battery and then had sent her on what had been essentially a death ride. She was now, flying a new national flag and heading to a place she had never heard of before.
Whose in Charge?
The following is a transcript of a Youtube video by Royal Navy Historian Alex Docklington posted in 2012.
The CINCPACFLT debacle of 1941 - Who is in command? And where is he?
As the fires were still being fought while others were desperately trying to save their shipmates, another issue arose. The air attack not only crippled the battle force of the United States Pacific Fleet, they had, albeit indirectly, decapitated the command of the Pacific Fleet when a 37 mm shell most unhelpfully smashed into the US Navy Pacific Fleet Submarine HQ, specifically into Admiral Kimmel's office, where he and his next in command Admiral Pye were sheltering. This left command of the fleet at anchor at the hands one dazed Admiral Isaac Kidd, who must be said, did an excellent job of commanding the salvage effort which would see all but two of the fleet's battleships salvaged" his flagship, USS Arizona, and USS Oklahoma, which took so long to right that she was ordered scrapped at war's end.
Kidd was still sorting out the mess when on December 8th, Admiral Halsey came in with his taskforce, consisting of USS Enterprise and her escorts. Halsey was enraged by what he saw of the Pacific Fleet, which led him to utter his famous line about hell being full of Japanese. Halsey quickly made his job to get his aircraft carrier and their escorts loaded up with fuel, ammo and spares and get them out to sea as soon as possible. He allowed himself to be briefed by Admiral Kidd about the situation in Pearl Harbour. Kidd recalled seeing Halsey becoming increasingly infuriated as he informed Halsey how licked the Pacific Fleet was.
Kidd left the briefing to get back to the work of getting the base back to running order. At the same time, Halsey was itching to get back at the Japanese as soon as possible and he already had a target: Wake Island, which was screaming for reinforcements because the Japanese decided that Wake was part of their Great Co-Prosperity Sphere and wouldn't take no for an answer. Halsey in his haste had not realized the odd fact that Kidd briefed him on the situation and not Kimmel, but he somewhat understandably surmised that Kimmel was busy with the clean-up operation and had instructed Kidd to brief Halsey on the situation.
Kidd on the other hand made the erroneous assumption that Halsey had already been informed of Kimmel's death and was to take command of the fleet. So you can imagine his surprise when Admiral King called on December 9th, inquiring where in God's name was Kimmel and Pye; he was expecting a report of the situation from one of them and not Kidd. Kidd explained as best he could to Admiral King that neither Kimmel or Pye could give the report as both men were more a pile of flesh and bones than functional naval officers. This however gave Kidd pause; if Admiral King wasn't aware that the CINCPACFLT commander was dead, it was most certain that Halsey wasn't aware either. Any more thoughts on the matter were halted when King asked who was in command of the Pacific Fleet to which Kidd replied automatically, Admiral Halsey; to which King then asked was Halsey aware that he was the commander.
It was then that Kidd's stomach sank to the bottom of the harbour as in his shaken state, he had not told his new boss that he was in fact the boss of the fleet. Kidd immediately and as best he could ended the call with King and raced out to find Admiral Halsey; however, when he arrived at the carriers' berths, he was horrified to find an empty carrier berth and that the harbour was not as crowded as before. He contacted the Nevada if they had seen an angry carrier and escort head out to sea to which the crew of the Nevada, rather confused, said yes, they saw Enterprise and her escorts sail out early in the morning. It would not be until December 12th at the Battle of Wake Island before Halsey finally got the message that he was the new CINCPACFLT until a new replacement could be arranged. This meant, for the first time since the age of sail, a theater commander saw active battle and luckily for Halsey, his action to provide relief to Wake Island to reinforce the base ended in success as the island held against the Japanese attempts to take it.
The CINCPACFLT debacle of 1941 - Who is in command? And where is he?
As the fires were still being fought while others were desperately trying to save their shipmates, another issue arose. The air attack not only crippled the battle force of the United States Pacific Fleet, they had, albeit indirectly, decapitated the command of the Pacific Fleet when a 37 mm shell most unhelpfully smashed into the US Navy Pacific Fleet Submarine HQ, specifically into Admiral Kimmel's office, where he and his next in command Admiral Pye were sheltering. This left command of the fleet at anchor at the hands one dazed Admiral Isaac Kidd, who must be said, did an excellent job of commanding the salvage effort which would see all but two of the fleet's battleships salvaged" his flagship, USS Arizona, and USS Oklahoma, which took so long to right that she was ordered scrapped at war's end.
Kidd was still sorting out the mess when on December 8th, Admiral Halsey came in with his taskforce, consisting of USS Enterprise and her escorts. Halsey was enraged by what he saw of the Pacific Fleet, which led him to utter his famous line about hell being full of Japanese. Halsey quickly made his job to get his aircraft carrier and their escorts loaded up with fuel, ammo and spares and get them out to sea as soon as possible. He allowed himself to be briefed by Admiral Kidd about the situation in Pearl Harbour. Kidd recalled seeing Halsey becoming increasingly infuriated as he informed Halsey how licked the Pacific Fleet was.
Kidd left the briefing to get back to the work of getting the base back to running order. At the same time, Halsey was itching to get back at the Japanese as soon as possible and he already had a target: Wake Island, which was screaming for reinforcements because the Japanese decided that Wake was part of their Great Co-Prosperity Sphere and wouldn't take no for an answer. Halsey in his haste had not realized the odd fact that Kidd briefed him on the situation and not Kimmel, but he somewhat understandably surmised that Kimmel was busy with the clean-up operation and had instructed Kidd to brief Halsey on the situation.
Kidd on the other hand made the erroneous assumption that Halsey had already been informed of Kimmel's death and was to take command of the fleet. So you can imagine his surprise when Admiral King called on December 9th, inquiring where in God's name was Kimmel and Pye; he was expecting a report of the situation from one of them and not Kidd. Kidd explained as best he could to Admiral King that neither Kimmel or Pye could give the report as both men were more a pile of flesh and bones than functional naval officers. This however gave Kidd pause; if Admiral King wasn't aware that the CINCPACFLT commander was dead, it was most certain that Halsey wasn't aware either. Any more thoughts on the matter were halted when King asked who was in command of the Pacific Fleet to which Kidd replied automatically, Admiral Halsey; to which King then asked was Halsey aware that he was the commander.
It was then that Kidd's stomach sank to the bottom of the harbour as in his shaken state, he had not told his new boss that he was in fact the boss of the fleet. Kidd immediately and as best he could ended the call with King and raced out to find Admiral Halsey; however, when he arrived at the carriers' berths, he was horrified to find an empty carrier berth and that the harbour was not as crowded as before. He contacted the Nevada if they had seen an angry carrier and escort head out to sea to which the crew of the Nevada, rather confused, said yes, they saw Enterprise and her escorts sail out early in the morning. It would not be until December 12th at the Battle of Wake Island before Halsey finally got the message that he was the new CINCPACFLT until a new replacement could be arranged. This meant, for the first time since the age of sail, a theater commander saw active battle and luckily for Halsey, his action to provide relief to Wake Island to reinforce the base ended in success as the island held against the Japanese attempts to take it.
Onslaught 2.9
- Location
- North Carolina
"7 And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth." - Book of Revelations 6:7-8 King James Version.
8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth." - Book of Revelations 6:7-8 King James Version.
Major Richard Hunter
(Multiple Blue Force Indicators have gone dark! The enemy is attacking Brockton Bay!) Corsair all but shouted as the Owl's engines came online and with speed well past supersonic, the fighter raced towards the city of Brockton Bay. Blasting over the Adirondack Mountains and rapidly approaching the Green Mountains. The city of Brockton Bay was nestled up against the White Mountains and even from here, through the vast array of sensors of the Owl, Richard could see the flashes of bomb blasts blooming against the surface, the streams of tracers racing into the sky, and the curling trails of missiles.
Allied units were blinking off of his HUD as enemy bombs destroyed either the BFTs or the units they were attached to. This was carnage, the enemy had sent two bomber forces. The smaller one was indiscriminately bombing civilian population centers while the larger one was plastering Pease AFB meanwhile just to the north of Lords Port, Brockton Bay International Airport had been hit as well, and one of the above-ground fuel storage tanks had ruptured and the Jet-A was now spreading across the ground like a burning flood.
(Kei, time to missile range?) Richard grunted sharply as he resisted the urge to push the fighter into WEP which would dump Rocket-A into the exhaust in addition to normal fuel. But so fresh off an orbital hop, god knew if the frame could take the acceleration forces.
(At Mach 2.25, three minutes thirty seconds! If we can push it up to Mach 2.75, much less!) Kei snapped and Richard nodded.
(We'll remain at Mach 2.25! Tracks?) Richard decided he didn't want to push the airframe too hard, especially when they were likely about to be in a twisting, maneuvering dogfight.
(Solid tracks on twenty aircraft with no IFFs - looks like eight are hitting Brockton with the rest smashing Pease! Heads up, another heavy group, looks like about sixty aircraft with no IFFs swinging in from the south! We had aircraft dogleg in the vicinity of Boston, possibly a mix of carrier-based bombers and fighters! Another heavy group, eight fighters with IFFs, coming out of the West! The Soviets are here, I got Flankers!) Kei called and Richard cursed in surprise, how the fuck did the Soviets get Flankers this far west?
(Interrogate them immediately!) Richard snarled over the MIU. If this was a trick, then they would be in serious trouble actually as airspace was already very damn crowded. Not to mention the distinct lack of friends to help them in the face of so many enemies.
(Interrogating!) Kei snapped back and Richard waited tensely for several seconds before finally the relieved voice of his SIO came back to him via the MIU. (They're friendly! I am tagging them as such in the Battle Network.)
Richard exhaled in relief as Corsair automatically tagged the Flankers as friendly, that was good actually. This meant that he actually could very well fight this out now as now he wasn't facing impossible odds anymore. He could delegate this actually, if he set the Flankers on the enemy forces sweeping in from the south while he focused on the enemy over Brockton Bay that way they could effortlessly mop the enemy up.
(I'll inform the Flankers that they're to hit the enemy force moving in from the south, we can handle the bombers.) Richard informed Kei before keying his radio. "Attention incoming Soviet Flankers, this is Corsair, I recommend you engage enemy aircraft approaching Brockton Bay from the south!" he barked.
There was a pause before a heavily accented English voice responded. "Da, Corsair, Strigon Squadron can handle it. Good Hunting!"
"Good hunting!" Richard called back, the phrase was old, referring back to World War I.
Then he glanced at the range and said two words. "Go live."
In an instant, the Owl's powerful FCS system went from passive search to active tracking. Richard can practically taste the surprise of the drivers of those Flankers as their RWRs and LWRs begin chirping at them simultaneously. The various tracks that were on the radar almost instantly firmed up, each dot went from having a small probability circle indicating where it probably was, to having a solidified track and firing solution. It was something that Richard had come to enjoy seeing vastly, the enemy seemed to have a field that was severely fucking with radar, but lasers cut right through it.
(Multiple locks! AMRAAMs on your trigger!) Kei called out over the MIU.
"Fox Three! Fox Three!" Richard called as he pressed the trigger cleanly - the forward bay door snapped open revealing six lethal AMRAAMs which rippled away from the rotary launcher as the pneumatic system kicked them clear, and then their motors ignited as the missiles blazed away like streaking daggers. The rotary launcher then cycled to the next station and six more AMRAAMs leaped off the rails, then the doors snapped shut.
Guided via telemetry transmitted via datalinks the AMRAAMs closed on their targets which glowed brilliantly in their receivers as their radars also quested for the enemy which had no idea that they were closing in on them. The missiles kept closing at an extremely high rate of speed until they passed a certain point. The telemetry went quiet and the radars went from passive search to active tracking. They already knew where the targets were, the datalinks had provided them with a solid enough picture that even though the dots that their seekerheads could see grew fuzzy, it wasn't enough to assure a miss.
On the horizon, fireballs twinkled as the Owl closed as the missiles impacted their targeted bombers, of the dozen targeted, only two survived, judging by how they were flying. Those two aircraft were both badly damaged, they swept north, obviously trying to get away from the city. Likely to give their crews the best chance of survival for when they inevitably came down. Richard elected to ignore them and focus on the remaining aircraft as anti-aircraft fire from the vicinity of LPNY managed to down another two bombers.
To the east, his radar picked up missile launches. Four, eight, twelve, and thirty-two R-77s were in the air and screaming towards the incoming strike wave that was swinging in from the south as the Soviets engaged, ripple shooting their medium-range missiles at the enemy. But something was wrong, their missiles weren't tracking anywhere near as well as what was even considered normal in this war so far. Richard snarled as he realized that a new surprise had just been dropped on them.
Great. (Corsair!) He queried the AI.
(Already on it, Strigon Leader is not happy about it.) Corsair replied.
(Got it.) Richard responded as his fighter now closed rapidly, shrieking towards a merge. The enemy bombers were seemingly sluggish due to the sheer speed at which the AI was helping his brain process information, one thing was for certain though, he was going to need to be semi-stingy with his remaining missiles. He only had eight AIM-9Xs and six AIM-120s left and there was a shit ton of enemy fighters.
He switched to guns and brought the piper up; strangely, the bombers that the AMRAAM attack had maimed were the closest ones to him. The farther one saw him coming and began to dive for it while the other one seemingly accepted its fate. Bringing the piper up, the twin GAU-13s roared and twin cones of red tracers were spat from the Owl. The effect was devastating, everything aft of the trailing edge of the wings was blown to fragments in an apocalypse of fire, shattered chitin, and torn metal that sent the ruined remains of the bomber tumbling end over end.
The diving bomber sprayed frantic defensive fire, but the guns that could bear, couldn't track fast enough as the Owl hauled itself across the sky - the tracers falling short as one of the nacelle bays snapped open and an AIM-9X Sidewinder kicked clear. The Block III weapon's electro-optical enhanced IIR/UV seeker immediately caught the engines of the enemy bomber in its deadly gaze as its rocket motor fired, very rapidly accelerating the gleaming white spear to supersonic. Then the missile several seconds later, buried itself in the right wing and ripped the entire structure away.
Richard pulled Corsair around as the remaining enemy bombers started to scramble away for safety while over the bay proper a furball was developing. The Flankers were mixing it up with the enemy fighters and they seemed to be winning that one as there were multiple trails of fire arcing down towards the ground. The night vision systems of the Owl allowed Richard to determine who seemed to be winning that one.
Smiling grimly, he closed on the last eight bombers which were scattering now. Racing in, he closed on one of the bombers who never saw him coming until a burst from the GAU-13s demolished the tail and left wing, which was left disintegrating amidst a streak of fire.
A quick glance at the radar showed that two of the Flankers had already died, dammit. But considering that they were mixing it up with nearly thrice their numbers of enemy fighters. The thing that seemed to be keeping the remaining six Flankers alive was the fact that the enemy appeared to be actively tripping over each other and as it was, the Flankers had already downed about a dozen enemy fighters.
He pulled up, gaining altitude over the enemy bombers that were fleeing, and then dove again. He lined one up, fired a half-second burst, and ripped one bomber in half outright at the aft wing root, the bomber catastrophically broke up and plunged from the sky in flames. Thanks to his HMD, he still had enough time to fire a Sidewinder at another, the targeted bomber survived the missile hit intact but its controls locked and the plane entered a dive.
The carrier-based dive bombers started their runs on Fort Dearborn which retaliated with what weapons had survived the first day of the war. Tracers rose up to cage the bombers as they plunged towards their target as did, projected by the computer system on his HMD, the strobing red lances of light from the Fort's surviving lasers. Richard however pushed that out of his mind as he focused on the fighters, another Flanker had gone down which had resulted in a fourth bugging out, headed north, probably vectored towards NAS Bangor. Thus, electing to ignore the bombers he swung Corsair around and quickly accelerated towards the dogfight that the Flankers were now losing as the fighting was devolving into a series of twisting-turning fights. He brought up his missiles, engaged the multi-target mode, and rippled off two Sidewinders with a simple call of "Fox Two! Fox Two!"
Neither enemy fighter knew what hit it and suddenly one of the Flankers was clear to freely maneuver and it immediately arced up and raced to the aid of his wingman. The Gsh 30-1 cannon fired a very powerful shell and that weapon fired a brief burst, one of the fighters disintegrated and the other broke away, then the hunter became the hunted as the Flanker it had been pursuing rolled around and let an R-74 fly with predictable results.
The remaining four enemy fighters broke off and dove for the deck.
Then, without warning, Fort Dearborn erupted like a fiery volcano, chunks of concrete and metal flew through the air amidst a towering fiery mushroom cloud. "JESUS CHRIST!" Kei shouted, so loudly, that he was able to hear her clearly over the roar of the engines, even though she was wearing an oxygen mask.
(Corsair! What the fuck was that?!) Richard demanded as the Owl shook as the shockwave belted the aircraft.
(Magazine for Battery Two went up! Fort Dearborn is checking on Battery One, but the base commander is already fearing that the mounts are jammed!) Corsair replied and Richard swore vividly.
"Right." He keyed his radio. "All surviving Strigons, on me. Assume orbit over Brockton Bay, we're on top cover now."
Far to the south, a blinding series of flashes erupted, three minutes later, much closer and to the north another series of flashes bloomed. He recognized that was naval gunfire.
Emma Barnes
A warbling wail made the tall redhead want to duck as enemy shells from the eightieth salvo roared in and then they impacted amidst a heavy clang forward, eleven great plumes of water shot skywards. "We've been bracketed!" someone called.
"Helm, shift your rudder!" Emma called as she peered through her binoculars, trying to figure out what in the world she was facing. With a great roar, her own tens crashed out in unison hurling six shells into the sky back towards her opponent - followed immediately by the sixes that could bear. Their concussive shockwave left Emma's ears ringing loudly as the shells rose into the heavens. She needed to get illumination on that thing somehow and she wasn't going to risk using searchlights, but she wasn't in arc for the 4-inch guns yet even as her hull shifted and slewed around her main battery slowly tracking the enemy as her hull turned.
The horizon illuminated again as the guns of her enemy crashed out in unison. Whatever it was, it had a dozen guns in its main battery, but the configuration wasn't normal like hers which ruled out the British Black Prince class Large Cruisers. This meant that she was likely facing a Pendragon class Large Cruiser - which wasn't good. Those ships had been designed alongside the Royal Oak class and the N3 class and thus shared many of the features - machinery located aft with the main battery clustered around the Queen Anne's Mansion superstructure forward. They were armored similarly to the Venerable class with a full 7 inches of armor on the belt but had an inclined belt similar to the big Nelson class, thus to call them a terrifyingly tough nut to crack was a massive understatement. The fact that they had a dozen 9.2-inch Mark XII Guns and eight 4.7-inch Mark VIII Guns didn't help matters.
The shells plunged down, twelve great plumes of water from the 9.2s followed by four smaller plumes from the 4.7s. Emma gritted her teeth as her own guns responded, yes, she was zigzagging, but that's because she knew that she needed to get close. The heavy concussion of her ten-inch guns was a dull whump of sound that rattled her bones sending shells hurling into the sky. Meanwhile, her six-inch and four-inch guns were slamming out rapid-fire salvoes, hurling red tracers at the Abyssal.
She looked back on her bridge and barked an order. "Come around bearing 265, open up our A-Arc!" she barked.
"Come to bearing 265, aye!" The helmsman said and he shifted her rudder, causing her hull to shift through the surf and spray as more columns of water erupted and more enemy shells landed sharply, something went bang aft and Emma gasped.
"What in the hell was that?" she croaked.
"New hole in the forward funnel!" The talker, Mister Hutchinson called.
"Fuck me! Get the aft sixes and fours involved, or this bastard might very well tear us apart!" Emma snarled.
"Ma'am!" Hutchinson called a moment later. "Forward control top reports that there are enemy destroyers! First World War R class! About six of them!"
"Great! Get the Fletchers and Alert up here! We need them to screen us properly and someone find out what the hell that blast in the vicinity of Brockton Bay was!" Emma shouted her next set of orders as her guns retaliated with a whumping thud of noise from the heavy tens, the rapid-fire slamming of the 6-inch and 4-inch guns, however, increased in intensity as more barrels were brought into play.
This time her efforts from her main battery were rewarded with a blinding flash of a hit on the enemy, but where and what damage it possibly did, she couldn't tell. The darkness was too much to tell if she had been effective or not. But as ten splashes rose amidst fire illuminated bases and there was a heavy bang aft. One thing that she did know was that the enemy had found the range.
"Helm, open the range!" She barked as her guns roared again, the heaving whump of noise rattling her bones.
"Ma'am! Report from Admiral Holloway! That blast was the magazine for Fort Dearborn's Battery Two going up! Fort Dearborn is completely out of action!" Mister Hutchinson shouted and Emma swore viciously as she took another hit, a loud crash of noise as steel tore from the hit, causing the redhead to yelp in pain. She glanced down at the ragged red gash, she could take a beating like this, but for how long was another matter entirely.
Still, the fact that the battery had exploded was not good - as that had effectively crippled the coastal defenses of Brockton Bay as those heavy guns were the meanest things around for shore defenses.
"Goddammit! Mister Hutchinson, I want our spotters to try and spot anything beyond the enemy! I have a sinking feeling that there's a reason for the madness as to why this large cruiser is here and not bombarding Brockton Bay!" Emma snapped as three flashes erupted on the enemy ship as her guns landed heavy blows. Still, Emma was now suspecting that something about this engagement just wasn't right.
Primarily because it didn't make any sense. Something this big and powerful should be more focused on Brockton Bay instead of blocking her from getting back to the city to resume her vigil. So why were they blocking her? Unless. Unless.
"Mister Hutchinson!" she shouted, horrified. "Inform Admiral Holloway that he has a hostile landing incoming!" That was the only reason why this Pendragon class was here, it was explicitly fighting tooth and nail to prevent her from getting into a position to destroy the landing ships. But a landing of the size needed to open up another theater of operations would have been much larger than this.
That meant only one thing, this was a raid. Similar to what the Slaughterhouse 9 usually did and thus this was going to be a quick in-and-out adventure for them. Emma brought her ten power binoculars up and peered at her enemy, trying to find them. The flash of the guns in the gathering gloom was the only way that she could see them now, this would never do. She needed to illuminate that bastard.
Her fire control chiefs must have been reading her mind for starshells started bursting down range bathing the battlefield in ghostly light. A moment later, star shells burst over her hull with a series of shrieking cracks. The battle continued to rage and Emma indeed could see the destroyers that were protectively sheltering around their charge.
"Ma'am!" Mister Hutchinson called.
"What is it?" Emma shouted back as the decking shook under her feet as her main guns fired, followed immediately by the secondary and tertiary guns.
"Battleship Montana reports that they're engaging enemy ships off the coast of Rockport, it's nothing she can't handle but it will delay them," Hutchinson reported and Emma cursed loudly as another shell landed nearby and detonated with a thunderous roar of sound that hurled shrapnel and spray in all directions. A shell burst like that could only mean one thing and one thing… the enemy had switched to high explosive - which meant that things were likely going to get a lot more painful from here.
She was proven right two minutes later when a shell impacted her near the ruins of Turret III. "Son of a bitch!" Emma roared in pain, clutching her side as blood and oil squirted between her fingers as a crackling heat began spreading within her, the wound stung like a thousand knives. "Fuck! Fuck!" she mumbled, that hit had hurt worse than the thirteen-inch AP hits she had taken at the Battle of Saco Bay.
"You alright ma'am?" Someone asked.
"I am fine! That just, ow! The enemy has switched to high-explosive." Emma snapped in reply through gritted teeth as her guns slammed out their steel and fire in response - the shells arced through the air and she saw flashes for sure on target. Then the enemy's guns flashed.
Several seconds later Emma shrieked in pain as a shell slammed into the base of her aft mast, the lattice came tumbling down amid a roar of sundering steel and snapping cables, sending the immense structure tumbling into the water amidst blinding pain for the girl-who-was-also-a-ship. Her hand came up to touch her face and Emma realized that she had lost an eye entirely - it having been replaced by a ragged bloody gash from which blood cascaded down the front of her face. She realized faintly that it was likely a good thing that Taylor wasn't here to see it, another thought came to her, Mom was going to freak. On the bright side, she hadn't been knocked out immediately, but she was more dependent on more than just her own eyes which were as sharp as her optical rangefinders now given that her aft rangefinders were destroyed.
Exhaling she put more trust in her lookouts as the clash around her continued as shells kept falling and the guns kept roaring and the hits kept piling up. She was doing damage, she knew that she was, but Emma wasn't sure if she was doing enough damage fast enough to actually have a chance to win this engagement.
Mister Hutchinson called out again. "Ma'am! Report from one of the destroyers! Enemy ships on radar are entering Brockton Bay!"
Emma cursed loudly at that for there was nothing she could do about it.
The fact that Brockton Bay was under attack caused the great bureaucratic engine that was the American Armed Forces to quickly analyze the ongoing situation and react. Almost immediately, a C-17 Globemaster III that was en route to New York City loaded with Battle Flares was diverted to the city, ready to turn night into day to the city of Brockton Bay.
Right behind it came a flight of eight freshly reactivated F-105 Thunderchiefs and their escort of F-16s which had been rerouted from a sortie heading into New York City. Furthermore, an Armored Cavalry Regiment which had passed through the city heading to New York City just hours previously was ordered to turn around and haul ass back to the city - the unit was fully equipped with the new Ridgeway IIIs, M8A2 Buford Armored Gun Systems, and Stillwell Main Battle Tanks. Meanwhile, to the west, the New Hampshire State Militia ordered two formations to head to Brockton Bay - the Militia in question was like many of the State Sponsored Militias that had been created in the wake of the 1993 Militia Enhancement and Enforcement Act which effectively expanded the line about a "Well Regulated Militia" in Amendment Two of the United States Constitution and were considered supplements to the National Guard. These two formations like all State Militia Forces used a mixture of ancient and modern equipment, but their combat effectiveness was unknown, but they were fighting to defend their homes and thus would fight like bastards.
These ground forces were to reinforce the Marine Security Regiment located in Brockton Bay that was responsible for defending Lords Port Naval Yard and Pease Air Force Base, along with what was left of the Brockton Bay Parahuman Response Taskforce and Brockton Bay Police Department - plus the various capes and gangsters. The United States Armed Forces considered this battle do or die for the entirety of the United States East Coast because if the enemy managed to kill Admiral Holloway, it could effortlessly shatter what was left of the Atlantic Fleet and leave that entire coast completely undefended and at mercy of the Abyssals. This was a state of affairs that was completely unacceptable.
But this still left the matter of the ships that were forcing their way into Brockton Bay, past the guns that could fire and putting up sufficient anti-aircraft fire that the planes already on station couldn't make their attack runs out of fear of being shot down; their tracer fire illuminating the sky while faceless soldiers manned their boats and eldritch duplex drive tanks - which then began their voyage. As they reached Southshore, New Hampshire, ramps dropped causing the boats to release their deadly cargoes while the tanks roared ashore. There was no resistance to be found in that part of the city, the meager defenses of Brockton Bay having been concentrated further north fearing a strike aimed at Lords Port Naval Yard or Brockton - this meant that they advanced rapidly.
Within minutes the marina and the fishing docks were completely overrun, the surviving dock workers who had stayed behind to try and find survivors amongst the rubble were almost completely massacred - the few survivors having started running as soon as they had spotted the boats coming in. With the fishing docks secured within barely twenty minutes, the Abyss moved into the city proper.
Southshore, New Hampshire due to wind patterns hadn't been affected by gas like Lords Port and Brockton had been, the exact reason for this was rather unknown. But it had made things easier for triaging gas victims to a considerable degree - now though, the area that had been thought to be safe, very much wasn't as enemy troops and tanks began to run riot through the streets - killing almost everyone in their path. Ironically, the ones killed by the Abyss, it would turn out were the lucky ones.
A young girl hid in an alley as the method grinding of tracks echoed nearby while boots thumped against concrete and pavement. If she could just get her hands on a gun, she could shoot her way to safety. She crouched, ready to spring as a squad approached. They moved into sight properly covering each other, she adjusted her aim and sprang, her hands tightening upon the surprisingly hot barrel, but she held on and tried to yank the weapon away. The soldier had much better leverage however thanks to the rifle and proceeded to use the weapon to violently hurl her to the ground, something in her chest creaking alarmingly as she landed.
Gasping for breath, the girl tried to roll onto her back so she could then start running only for a boot to place itself upon the small of her back. She looked up into the faceless soldier, down the barrel of the rifle, but before she could try anything else, a grip like iron grabbed each of her arms and she was hauled up to her feet so violently that she feared that her arms were going to be dislocated. Then she looked over her shoulder as another of the faceless soldiers pulled out irons and chains that were painfully clamped around her wrists. A hand then planted itself between her shoulders, she stumbled and with tears leaking from her eyes, allowed herself to be frog-marched in the direction from which the faceless soldiers had come as she prayed for her brother to save her.
Elsewhere in Southshore, another woman on oxygen lay in bed when she suddenly heard gunshots and screaming. She cautiously moved her head towards the tent entrance. When suddenly a group of faceless soldiers charged in and snapped out orders in words that were wrong and grated on her ears. She felt nothing but fear as she pulled her mask off and put her hands on her head. Walking out of the tent revealed a massacre, at least twenty members of the local Yakuza lay dead along with the capes Cricket and Krieg along with at least that many of the faceless soldiers. Thus under armed guard, she, along with dozens of others, was shepherded to the rear and all she could think about was how this wasn't good.
Kid Win
High above Southshore, a drone hovered, its anti-gravity drives humming softly. Its multifunction sensors grabbed 8k images of the butchery and frantic holding actions in the city as the Brockton Bay Yakuza along with a few scattered capes were pushed slowly back by the armed assault. It wasn't good, the Yakuza were fighting like bastards but the limited numbers of anti-tank rockets were telling, but what was telling was the trail of devastation that Oni Lee was leaving in his wake. Whether he went, whole squads of enemy infantry died to grenades, knives, and the revolver that he carried.
Kid Win glowered at the tablet screen as he watched the 'battle' unfold. Caught flat-footed and unable to quickly move troops because of damage to infrastructure. They were mobilizing but the big question right now is would they be able to arrive in time or would everyone in Southshore be massacred? He tightened his grip and then looked up, Armsmaster was furiously directing the response and he flicked through several screens on his tablet until he got to the battle plan screen.
It was already coming together - the Marines and PRT were going to move into a blocking position to prevent the enemy from swinging north toward LPNY. They would then skirmish with the enemy until the ACR, the 25th out of Maine, arrived from the South along with two formations from the New Hampshire State Militia, the 5th and 21st New Hampshire State Rifles. Then airstrikes and cruise missiles would come in and at the same time, they would start their advance. It was a classic four-layer envelopment attack. In which the first layer was ground forces, the second layer was artillery, the third layer was air strikes using iron bombs, and the fourth layer was cruise missiles launched by ships in the Gulf of Maine.
Well, Kid Win thought as he saw the battle plan, at least Southshore will be open to widespread urban renewal later. This sort of plan was likely going to do damage of some kind to over sixty percent of the buildings in Southshore. But all he could think about was as he looked at the force dispositions and he realized that this was going to be bloody.
"Kid Win! Come on!" Rune said and Kid Win looked up, Rune was standing in front of him, wearing body armor judging by how her cloak looked, secured to her back was a quiver filled with long rods. She moved nervously, Kid Win noted that the pistol, a revolver of some kind, sat snugly in a holster.
"Coming, hey, do you know how to use that thing?" Kid Win asked as he grabbed his recently built full-face helmet and slapped it on.
"The revolver?" Rune asked nervously and Kid Win nodded in response. "No, not really. I've gone through familiarization courses, Armsmaster was a taskmaster on that, but beyond that." she trailed off and Kid Win grunted, was it only the 4th of January? It didn't feel like it.
"So I guess it's your OS weapon then?" Kid Win asked as he placed his hoverboard on the ground and activated it, the device hummed softly and rose about a half meter in the air.
"OS Weapon?" Rune asked as she stooped and drew something with her fingers in the sidewalk slab she was standing on, with an unholy roar of noise, the slab came free and started to hover in the air.
"Oh shit weapon, basically something happened to you and you lost your primary weapon and you have a bad guy that you need to shoot or stab right now. Armsmaster carries a bastard sword as his OS weapon. I have had my regular laser pistols for mine ever since I built this thing a day and a half ago." Kid Win said as with a hiss, the butt of a rifle appeared over his shoulder and Kid Win unslung a laser rifle, the main lens glimmered in the low ambient light that was available.
"Yeah, you could say that," Rune said in a worried tone.
"Hey, we got this Tammi." Kid Win said he had seen the tail end of Rune's breakdown yesterday and like Gallant had unmasked.
"Thanks, Chris," Rune replied and she took a deep breath. "Any idea what we're doing?"
"According to Armsmaster's plan, the two of us are to check the line of probable advance towards the bridges that cross the Piscataqua River and if the enemy isn't using those, we're to try and find where they actually are." Kid Win said and Rune grunted.
"Merchant Territory at least around the first bridge, on Archer's Street. Who the fuck knows how Skidmark and his crew will react," Rune snarled and Kid Win exhaled, that was the fucking truth, the Merchants didn't abide by any of the Unwritten Rules. It had long since put the Merchants on the shit lists of just about everyone, but the problem was that they had a tinker who specialized in making fuck off powerful vehicles.
"Hey, if we're lucky, they were stoned out of their minds when the gas dropped and thus, they're dead." Kid Win said and Rune huffed out a laugh at that.
"Good, fuck'em." The villainess grunted out firmly and her concrete slab rose higher and higher into the sky, Kid Win engaged his hoverboard and did the same thing.
"How high do you want to go up?" Kid Win called.
"Five stories should get us high enough that we're relatively hard to spot in the darkness. Thank Scion for the blackout order." Rune said and her slab began to level off.
"Ain't that the truth, I have to ask though, why aren't we checking the Lord's Street Bridge? The enemy would be fools not to use that." Kid Win said and Rune groaned.
"That's because of the petroleum fire from that complex. The wind is blowing that smoke, so anyone who tries to cross it will probably choke and die from the fumes." Rune explained and Kid Win nodded, that made as much sense as anything.
"Let's head to that bridge and do some recon." Kid Win said and he brought his board through a fast turn, the light from the rampaging inferno that was the former petroleum complex caused a slight glow in his armor as he turned towards the east. The flashes of gunfire outside the harbor and the low, heavy, whumping thundercracks of the cannons was a steady drumbeat that contrasted sharply with the roar of the flames and the steady crackle of gunfire. It was something that was damn unnerving, but as they flew Kid Win couldn't help but think about how if he tuned out the gunfire that this could be Brockton Bay after a Lung Rampage through the outskirts of Empire 88 or Lavere Crime Family territory. It was oddly, despite the insanity - oddly - normal for Brockton Bay.
Normal. He could work with that actually as finally some part of this horrible week seemed to finally be making sense. He could already in his mind's eye replace Rune with Aegis and while it hurt, thinking of him. It made the sense of normalcy seem out of place, Carlos and Dennis were dead and they wouldn't be coming back and yet - the fact that things did feel at least semi-normal put him at ease. Before them, a yawning chasm with black water ran through it, the mighty river that flowed through the heart of Brockton Bay like a pounding heart.
The Archer's Street Bridge wasn't the massively impressive steel and concrete through-arch bridge that the Lord's Street Bridge was, it was a more traditional box-sectional highway bridge with six wide lanes. Kid Win decided to follow the bridge and he raced over it, Rune in hot pursuit. From there, they started to proscribe a circle that checked the main roads that approached the bridge. Meanwhile, Purity's blazing form shone like a star to the east, tracer fire caging her - in response, she fired and a stream of white light lanced down and an explosion erupted.
Wow, if it weren't for the dull roar of naval guns and the fact that he could see ships in the vicinity of Southshore that reeked of hatred and evil. He really could believe that this was just a regular day in Brockton Bay and thus he turned his gaze away from the coast and looked down at the streets. A lot of them were filled with people, just regular people, running for their lives to get away from the monsters that were coming in from the east - interspersed amongst them however, holding the street corners, were people of the Brockton Yakuza, informally known as the ABB, and they were uniformly armed - and not with only pistols. But she was seeing a lot of submachine guns and even full-blown assault rifles, he cataloged their weapons using the sensors in his armor. Mostly things like Uzis and Erma MP66s for submachine guns but there are quite a few AR-10s and AR-15s with a couple scattered Klashinkovs.
Rune broke into his train of thought. "I must admit, I keep on expecting Oni Lee to appear and chase me off," she said numbly as they completed another sweep.
Kid Win couldn't help it, he laughed at that. "Yeah, same here. But I can't help but wonder where he is."
"Given our luck? He's probably fucked off somewhere." Rune grumbled and Kid Win snorted.
"Yeah, that would be typical of our luck so far." Kid Win said and there was a snort from the Empire 88 Cape.
"True, I, what's that?" Rune said pointing and Kid Win followed her gaze. Shapes were moving through the streets with purpose, covering a massive hulking thing that was slowly and methodically advancing.
"No idea!" Kid Win said his helmet didn't have the best night vision system, mostly because the damn thing had been a rush job to get himself something that was fully CBRN rated, and as such, secondary systems had suffered. Most notably the night vision system, it wasn't that much better than Gen I Night Vision, decent enough for navigation purposes, but not so much for fighting. Rune appeared to have a more advanced set of night vision goggles that she had acquired from somewhere.
"I am going to investigate," Rune said and she descended, Kid Win readied his newly made laser rifle as he assumed overwatch for her as she descended.
A line of blinding green and white tracers erupted, streaking into the heavens. Rune rose frantically, shouting about how it was the enemy.
From the hulking monstrosity, flame and smoke belched from a protruding tube followed by sound, Rune's cement slab disintegrated and she fell the equal of several stories to the ground below. It wasn't the smoothest of landings, in fact, judging by how she hit the ground, Rune had probably clipped something with her foot. "RUNE!" Kid Win yelled and he dove, his laser rifle firing - streaks of red light spearing into the midst of the enemy as illuminated by his HUD.
The tank, which was the only thing it could be, opened fire with what could only be a heavy machine gun. The rapid fire slam slam slam of its voice and the deadly tracers it spat caused Kid Win to steepen his dive as he bolted towards the deck. But he wasn't fast enough for his hoverboard to jerk and started whining ominously while on his HUD, alarms and alerts flashed. Shit, no! He thought as a scattering of rifle fire came his way now and he tried to evade, but his board was just too badly damaged. Bullets thunked into it and smoke billowed while through his feet, he felt heat bloom.
Swearing, he dove off the board, three seconds later it detonated with a heavy thunderclap that shattered windows and set off about fifty car alarms. His landing was a sloppy tumble that if Shadow Stalker had seen it, would have given him grief for it as she was probably the best gymnast/acrobat on the team - even though it wasn't saying much - she had still arguably gotten them into better shape than ever before. Gunfire cracked, he brought his laser rifle up and fired several times, this time something screamed and fell.
The tank fired again, the shot landed semi-wide, and the concussion from the shell exploding hurled him to the ground while shrapnel pinged off his armor. He came up to a kneeling position and fired his laser rifle methodically - but the slapdash vision systems worked against him here as the flash from the beams, though very brief, was nearly blinding. Despite that though, he was still rewarded with several sibilant shrieks of agony as the beams made contact.
Another shell roared from the barrel of the tank and though it missed, the supersonic roar of noise from its passage was enough to toss him to the ground again as machine gun fire began ranging on him. Blinding tracers of red, green, and white caged him and he scrambled towards cover, a stone stairway that led into one of the buildings. Despite that as he ran, he stumbled twice as something slammed into him and the tank's next shell almost sent him sprawling.
He slid into cover and opened fire again with his rifle, keeping an eye on the shot count left in the current energy cell as he did so until suddenly his HUD went dark. Two seconds later it switched to conventional light mode and Kid Win cursed at the top of his voice at his helmet. The night vision system had just been burnt out by the pulses of light from his laser rifle, goddammit!
He keyed his radio so a shout wouldn't be heard over the roar of gunfire. "Rune, status!"
A low groan of pain answered him. "I think my right foot and ankle are busted. And if I move, I am as good as dead."
Well, shit. He keyed his radio as another shell landed nearby, the shockwave and shrapnel staggering him, he couldn't believe that he was honestly about to say what he had to say. "Purity! I need you here right now! Rune's down and I can't get to her!"
"On my way!" She said as the heavy machine gun roared and the rounds began shredding his cover.
"Move your glowing backside!" He snapped, and an instant later the staircase exploded. The roar of sound was unexpected, the masonry flying in all directions even less, the pain though - that was the least welcome thing. Kid Win couldn't help it, he screamed as agony lanced through his right arm as the plating buckled and caved, shrapnel and pieces of stone piercing the padding underneath to reach the delicate flesh beyond.
Then he was on his back, gasping and clutching his right arm with his left hand, blood was leaking and oozing out from the rents in the armor plate and the padding felt soaked. That told him it was bad, really bad. There was a flash of white light near the bottom of his vision followed by an explosion and then chunks of burning metal went flying through his field of view. Next thing he knew, Purity was above him, propping him up in order to get a better grip on him. "What about Rune?" he gasped.
"You're in far worse shape than she is! I know Rune, she can handle herself!" Purity responded and Kid Win tried to fight out of her grip, but the mousy woman was much stronger than she appeared, the fact that he was down an arm didn't really help as Purity merely tightened her grip.
Then she took off.
Purity was one of the fastest known fliers on Earth Bet, the list of fliers who were faster than her when she was even partially charged was short. When she was fully charged, it was shorter still. Kid Win knew this from how fast she could appear, outright nuke something, then vanish before any of the other fliers in Brockton Bay could get a bead on her - let alone actually get in position to start fighting her. To call it infuriating was an understatement.
However, knowing that Purity was one of the fastest fliers on Earth Bet and actually experiencing it? Those were two completely different things. The Legend Package leaped into the air, accelerating so hard and fast that the bottom dropped out of his stomach as she soared into the air, the wind rushing through his ears. Within seconds, the place that they had taken off from was at least ten stories below them, and then Purity rolled onto her back and she proceeded to fly backward, like she was a lifeguard helping a drowning man to the edge of a pool - only instead of water, the air was beneath them and the ground was over a hundred feet below them. Within a matter of seconds, the river was then below them, followed by the city of Brockton.
Descending now, they were at one of the triage centers. "Medic! I need a medic over here!" he heard Purity shout.
Running feet followed by "Jesus Fuck! Get him in the hospital, proper to look at that arm."
Then he was placed on a bed, and a mousy woman was helping him lay down, Kayden's concerned face was the last thing he saw before blackness swallowed her face and he was cast into unconsciousness.
The Longest Raid
The Longest Raid
An Account of the First B-35 Albatross Mission of WW2
By
Jacktank10
Nov 25th, 1943
Hickam Field, Hawaii
An Account of the First B-35 Albatross Mission of WW2
By
Jacktank10
Nov 25th, 1943
Hickam Field, Hawaii
In the early morning, rising from the morning mist covering Hickam Field, a unique group of 30 aircraft, best described by some locals who witnessed the takeoff as a flying triangle, lifted off. After a year of rigorous training, 450 of the Army Air Force's most experienced airmen embarked on what some consider the most audacious missions in aviation history. Their determination to bomb Tokyo and then land the bombers on Midway Atoll, their future home airfield, was unwavering. They would have to fly for almost 36 hours, navigating the open ocean with razor-thin fuel margins. The only plane in the world capable of this feat of range and endurance was the B-35 Albatross. Each Albatross embarked with a crew of 15, ready to face the challenges ahead. The two flight teams, composed of six crew members each, would operate the aircraft in shifts of eight hours on and off by hot bunking six beds in the central cabin with the three gunners rigging hammocks up in spare space to rest. The group would fly together in a box formation at an altitude of 40000 feet, the maximum service ceiling to give the group's navigators the best shot at a clear view of the stars. The planes were under strict radio silence and had to communicate with small signal lamps located in the navigator bubble.
Mission time 8 Hours
Lead Bomber Arrowhead, somewhere west of Hawaii
Lead Bomber Arrowhead, somewhere west of Hawaii
Colonel John Henebry addressed his aircraft over the intercom. "Okay, boys, we are eight hours in and commencing our first crew change. Before that, however, it's time for dinner, and my lovely copilot, Jack, here, will serve everyone from the meal cart. Your menu tonight includes ham sandwiches, pineapple cubes, and cheese that I managed to liberate from the quartermaster back at Hickman. My aircraft will only serve the finest cuisine on this Hawaii Express to Tokyo. George, can you signal the rest of the squadron to commence meal service and crew change? After that, work with Sam to update the flight group on our newest navigational information. I want to make sure we're still on target."
Mission Time 18 Hours
Lead Bomber Arrowhead, somewhere east of Japan
Lead Bomber Arrowhead, somewhere east of Japan
George spoke up. "Good news, John. As best as they can tell, Broadhead managed to fix its engine trouble and does not need to divert to Midway. The engineer on board managed to get to the inner port engine and fix the problem. It looked like an issue with the fuel intakes, but lucky for Broadhead, the backups are working fine." John replied, "That's great, George. Signal Broadhead and tell him that engineer Smith, I believe that's his name, will get a medal out of this once we return home."
Mission Time 22 hours
Approaching Tokyo
Approaching Tokyo
John told his bombardier, Smith, "I'm relinquishing control of the aircraft; guide us in nice and steady Smith. George, signal the flight, and we are starting our run."
At approximately 0800 on the morning of November 26, local Tokyo time, 30 B-35s released a payload of 2000 lb, 1000 lb, and incendiary bombs from approximately 40000 feet. Analysis after the war would conclude that B-35 and later B-29 raids had horrendous accuracy. However, the wooden construction method of building favored by the Japanese would come to haunt their nation. This first raid managed to saturate an area of approximately 3 miles of Eastern Tokyo with almost random waves of fires and bomb damage. A firestorm started, only quenched by luck when a rainstorm rolled in. This first firestorm would herald dark days ahead as the B-35 raids would saturate the cities throughout Japan with almost random bombing raids, causing immense damage to civilian and military infrastructure.
Japanese early warning and patrols failed to detect the incoming raid. Similarly, Japanese intelligence was unaware of the B-35 program, range, and flight ceiling. It would take until late 1944 for Japan to have a fighter that could reliably reach the B-35's flight ceiling.
Mission time 30 Hours
Western Pacific 6 Hours from Midway
Western Pacific 6 Hours from Midway
Colonel Henebry looked nervously at his fuel indicator. Thinking to himself, we have about 8 hours of fuel left. He called out to George to do a formation fuel check. After a few minutes of rapid signaling, George shouted back, "We have confirmation all fuel levels remain green if Sam's calculations are right on where we are positioned. Sam also wanted me to mention that we should start to pick up Midway and Robalo's LORAN signals in the next 2 hours."
Mission Time 36 hours
Henderson Field, Midway
Henderson Field, Midway
In the early morning of November 27, Midway lit up its runway as 30 large flying-wing aircraft lumbered out of the darkness. After landing, the aircraft got rolled into specially prepared hardened aircraft hangers designed specifically for them. The after-action report noted that the bombers had between 30 and 10 minutes of fuel left.
This raid would hold the record for the longest bomber raid ever performed by the US Air Force, with the record only being broken during the Triarchy-Israeli War of the 1990s. Navigating by the stars, the 30 aircraft flew across the largest ocean in the world to hit a single city and were off target by only around 10 miles. They then managed to fly back over the great abyss of water and successfully found Midway. Even in 2011, this would be considered the finest manual navigation job ever.
Following this effort, the squadron would average five or six long-range raids of various strategic targets in Japan every month for the rest of the war, with the frequency of the raids increasing every few months. The squadron would only lose 15 aircraft to combat. The B-35 proved to be an incredible challenge to intercept, with the Japanese Air Force only managing three intercepts of B-35 bomber formations for the duration of the war.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Well there's my suspension of disbelief broken.
(Midway's not nearly big enough.)
A B-35 has the following dimensions.
- Length: 53 ft 1 in (16.18 m)
- Wingspan: 172 ft 0 in (52.43 m)
- Height: 20 ft 3.5 in (6.185 m)
Last edited:
Onslaught 2.10
- Location
- North Carolina
AN: Should all go well, the Onslaught Arc has at least three and probably four chapters left. After that, there will be only one more arc left in Blood Week before things finally calm down - though who knows how many arcs the next segment will be.
Rune
Rune tried to reload her Smith and Wesson 625 as half a dozen faceless soldiers rushed her. Empty bullet casings clattered to the pavement while she fumbled for a new speed loader. She could escape if she could kill the next few before they reached her. The new speed loader came free and she was about to load it when a rifle boomed, almost immediately followed by a deafeningly loud thwack that zipped past her ear. Both the revolver and speed loader fell to the pavement while her hands rushed to protect her ears.
That was her mistake.
A soldier lunged for her and its cool, clammy hand clamped around her wrist. She screamed and thrashed, her free hand aiming for joints that she could reach which were the knees and ankles. One of the soldiers yelped and let her go, only for a boot to bury itself in her stomach. She exhaled explosively, feeling her ribs creak ominously as the soldiers grabbed her while she screamed and thrashed, trying to get out of their grip desperately. But her assailants were larger and stronger than her, the fact that one stomped hard on her hands and the bones underneath let out a crackling pop amid an explosion of pain that caused stars to dance in her eyes didn't help.
Next thing she knew, she was being roughly and violently hauled to her feet while a pair of cold irons went around her wrists and closed with an ominous click click click like it was the prophecy of her doom. A clammy hand planted it between her shoulders while a rough, inhuman voice snarled: "Satrt wlaknig."
Fiery pain lit up her nerves as she shambled, her broken foot and likely thoroughly dislocated ankle protesting as she was forced to walk on her broken bones. Her teeth gritted as she tried to avoid screaming, she was well aware of the rifle at her back and thus she walked, unable to take a break lest she get shot. They walked for who knows how long before they came to the shoreline. Dozens of people under armed guard were being herded towards boats. Someone fell to their knees in pain, faceless soldiers hauled them out of line and a single gunshot echoed off the buildings.
Rune shuddered at that as she was guided down a dock towards where the landing craft and other vessels were waiting. In the distance, ships of malice sat seemingly at anchor. She was forced down into the boat and so were other people, until the boat seemed to be packed beyond capacity. The engine grumbled and it pulled away from the dock and then spun, before heading towards those ships. Unease settled in Rune's stomach as the boat grew closer, the malice that oozed off the ships grew stronger and stronger like a stubborn miasma that would waft off roadkill that had been baking in the sun for a couple of days.
There wasn't a davit crane to carry the boat up to the deck, Rune looked up in horror at the cargo nets and ladders that were draped over the side. Her foot was already in very severe pain. This was going to be a painful adventure - she grasped one of the ladders and started to climb. Each step was an exercise in unrivaled agony that caused stars to dance and glitter in her field of vision and still, grunting and snarling in pain, she climbed the unstable ladder. She heard a scream below her followed by a heavy thud and looked down.
She wished that she hadn't. Someone had fallen off one of the cargo nets and taken three or four people with them as gravity's harsh mistress sent them hurtling back into the boat that had carried them here. Their bodies lay broken in the bay where she had been not so long ago, blood pooling under the bodies. Faceless soldiers picked up the corpses and without a sound, pitched them overboard - or at least, she thought they were all corpses. One very clearly tried to put up a struggle before she too was thrown over the side, vanishing into the dark waters with a spall of white. Bile rose in her throat at the sight of that, just…just cruel and callous, a blatant disregard for human life. She swallowed it down and looked up, she was maybe halfway up the ladder, and her eyes widened at the creature pointing a pistol at her.
She began to resume her climb, panting and snarling as she did so until finally, she gained the deck and tumbled to it thanks to her broken foot and dislocated ankle. The deck was made of tarnished, semi-rotten wood that bowed under her weight but by some miracle didn't break. She looked up at the creature that stood at about her height, with arms that were amalgams of flippers and human arms that ended in lobster-like claws - but the more she looked at it, the more she realized how off the creature was. The torso was far too narrow, with thin spindly legs that were too long and thick and intimidating arms that looked a little short - the six inwardly slanted triangular eyes of the creature glowered at her, they were windows into the soul and despite having no mouth, Rune realized that this thing would be screaming otherwise. Held in its claw was a pistol, which clicked ominously.
"Give me a minute! Give me a minute! My foot is broken!" she cried out weakly as she slowly rose to her feet. The hulking thing of a crew member thought that she was going to slow, for one of its crusher claws clamped around her arm. She cried out painfully as she was hauled up by her arm to her feet, a shriek of pain leaving her lips as her weight settled on her broken foot and dislocated ankle. She looked at the thing again as the pistol was shoved into her back and was well aware of the cold circle being pressed into her skin.
"Satrt wlaknig," came the response, the words weren't so much spoken as vibrated into existence. She hobbled to a hatch and stared in horror at the steepness of the ladder she had to descend. She looked at the soldier and silently asked the question. "Dcesned," it growled at her and Rune gulped nervously and slowly, ever so slowly, descended into the bowels of the ship. Something gnawed at her but by some miracle, she managed to keep her footing until she was a single step up. Instead of a nasty fall that likely would have exacerbated her injuries if not rendered her completely immobile, Rune was confident she had only managed to take what little pride she had left and shoot it in the back of the head.
Thus slowly and painfully picking herself up, she began walking again until she came down to another ladder, and holding onto the guard rails for support she descended. This time she managed to keep her footing on the way down, but as she walked to the third set of stairs, there was a crash behind her followed by someone screaming in pain. The sound was horrible, good god was it horrible.
A bolt cycled.
There was a gunshot.
The pained screams ended.
Wails of terror began.
Rune tightened her cloak around her and hobbled on, trying to ignore the screams and the inhuman alien shouts that grated her ears. She reached another ladder, it too was guarded and they gestured down it. Grimacing, Rune began descending again. This ladder was steeper and it descended into pure umbra. She could barely see where she was going and struggled to find the ladder's rungs. With each step deeper, the air grew thinner and hotter, the roar of whatever powered this beast became louder, and the gentle movement of the ship became far more pronounced. She lost her balance. She plunged into the darkness landing on cold steel, landing with a crack that sent an explosion of agony lancing across her chest and up her right leg, a glance back into the darkness told her what had probably happened. Her kneecap was busted, she didn't know if it was broken or if it was merely dislocated, throbbing agony skittered across her leg, the bruises already forming. She tried to stand only for her right leg to explode into pain, it felt like the limb was on fire. She crumpled, her screams echoing like she was in a massive steel echo chamber while something scratched across her mind that sounded like cruel mocking laughter.
Gasping for breath as the pain receded somewhat, she heard something ignite and a red comet went arcing end over end into wherever she was. It illuminated the staircase which revealed just how steep and high it was, that was at least two stories without a landing. She was probably damn lucky to have not killed herself - which was a bonus in her books. She shuddered as that horrific sound scratched across her mind again, almost as if the thing she was on was alive and it found that she considered herself lucky that she survived her fall to be amusing. But the sight of people coming down, she shuffled out of the way, fiery pain licking up her right side as she shuffled over to the edge, each movement was exhausting, the thin air sapping her strength.
People piled in, first dozens and then quite possibly hundreds, the air grew thinner and hotter. People moaned and a few shouted that this was inhumane. Laughter was the only answer, along with the echoing cli-clack of a machine gun being primed followed by the echoing bang of the hatchway that let so many people in closing. As Rune tried to make herself comfortable, she realized with horror and sickening dread at what she was on and it chilled her to her core. She thus did something that she hadn't done in ages, she prayed.
Montana
An enormous construct of metal powered through the surface as plumes of spray erupted close by, the thumping roar of the British 16-inch/45-caliber Mark I guns rolling over her. She was meant for this, she could take this sort of fire.
The salvo buzzer rang.
A dozen American 16-inch/50-caliber Mark 7 naval guns roared, followed by the thumping rumble of their voice briefly drowning out the rapid-fire slamming of the ten 5in/54 caliber guns that could bear on target - the result was that over 32,000 pounds of metal howled through the air while the concussive blast from the guns cratered the water. Her immense hull however kept on going, the recoil force from that many guns not affecting her in the slightest.
Meanwhile, the heavy slams of the eight-inch guns all echoed around her lofting glowing shells up. Montana couldn't help but feel like whoever was commanding this battle had sent this battleship, two cruisers, and about four destroyers to their deaths, all in the name of delaying her from arriving in Brockton Bay. It was brutal and in many ways, it was smart if callous. But it was fucking annoying, she needed to get to Brockton Bay as fast as humanly possible and this fucking Royal Oak class was refusing to die.
Annoying.
The horizon flashed and more shells howled in from that damn Royal Oak class. They were based on the Nelson class that had been authorized for construction after Jutland and they retained the all-forward main battery of that class, but instead of mounting the secondary guns in casemates, they had their 6-inch guns in eight twin turrets with four to a side plus eight 4.7-inch guns. Furthermore, they were quite heavily armored, particularly for the period where they had been designed and built, with their protection equal to that of the Nelsons.
The one that she was facing however, seemed to be in an as-built configuration. The primary difference between the Nelson class and the Royal Oak class was that the former had a casemate secondary battery and a tripod mast - while the latter had a turreted secondary battery and a Queen Anne's Mansion superstructure. Regardless, Montana knew that she could beat this thing, she outclassed it in every way. But the reason it was here was obvious, it was delaying her.
On the horizon, smaller flashes stuttered and Montana nodded, she was scoring hits - the horizon flashed again as the enemy returned fire - but from what she could tell thanks to her radar, the enemy was still afloat. The shells howled in and Montana grunted as a 16-inch shell plowed into her armored belt and bounced off - she could take that sort of punishment.
Salvo Buzzer.
The guns crashed out their wrath - spray from her bow wave snapping out of the way of the concussive force of her guns. She quickly looked at her accompanying heavy cruisers, Quincy and Fall River. The other two cruisers seemed to be in decent condition all things considered despite the gunfight. She didn't know what they were facing, but judging by the splashes that were landing around them, heavy cruisers. That was nothing that they couldn't take and they could handle the punishment being mettled out as well.
The horizon pulsed again.
Montana found that she was steadily finding the rhythm of the fight - yes, it was a night action, but her radars and combat information center provided her with sufficient situational awareness that she figured it would be extremely difficult for her to lose control of the night action as had occurred during Callaghan's Folly, Savo Island, and some of the battles in the South China Sea. More importantly, however, the numbers of each side weren't too large either - which was definitely helping in making sure that she stayed in control of the fight.
The shells howled in and the spray from 16-inch, 6-inch, and 4.7-inch shells cascaded down on her hull as her armor effortlessly defeated two 16-inch shells. With a heaving crash, her own guns crashed out a salvo in response. All the while as this happened, however, Montana was well aware that the minutes were ticking by. Each minute wasted here was another minute that the enemy would have to ravage Southshore.
Three hits.
The horizon pulsed with fire and light.
Salvo buzzer.
Her guns roared.
Enemy shells roared in and this time, the blizzard of steel had far better aim. Montana snarled in pain as a shell plunged through her shell plating, speared her armored deck, bounced off, and proceeded to destroy a kitchen. While another shell found the front of Turret II and bounced right off the turret face, the black corrupted projectile pinwheeled through the air as it detonated. Montana ignored the reports that flowed in, her turrets and guns were fine.
Two hits.
Montana couldn't help but feel helpless as she continued dropping super-heavy shells onto her opponent. For she was helpless to provide aid to Brockton Bay. It was something that she absolutely hated, she was grinding her opponent into dust and yet the enemy was succeeding in its objective to keep her from helping. This was infuriating, she was doing what she meant to do and what she had never gotten the chance to do during World War II, and yet the enemy was succeeding in its objective.
Montana couldn't help but wonder if she should close more. The range was currently something like 28,000 yards. The enemy's fire was horribly inaccurate, any hits were more scored by luck than any actual aiming. Whereas she could reliably score hits at this range thanks to her radar gun fire control systems. This was madness, the enemy was suicidal, it couldn't defeat her, and she held all of the advantages except for maybe speed, and yet its presence here, to die as slowly as possible told her otherwise.
Salvo Buzzer.
Her guns roared.
The horizon pulsed, the shells screamed in, landing in a bracket, and the rumble of the guns washed over her in the span of maybe forty-five seconds.
Her salvo buzzer rang twenty seconds later and her guns spat fire and noise as her battle continued.
Romeo "Uber" Nash
Uber was thankful that Armsmaster had looked over the suits of CMC Armor that Leet had made prior to Blood Week breaking out. The man had seemed impressed by the power armor, but he had completely rewritten the software, to call the code amazingly efficient now was understating things. The capabilities of his armor's sensor suite and the other nine were impressive. But he couldn't help but feel nervous, in a way that went beyond the Pre-Villain jitters. This was something more. Something deeper. It was a primal fear that he couldn't quite shake no matter how much he tried to do so and thus his hands shook almost imperceptibly.
He looked over at where Velocity and Grue were - the minor villain had been following the hero around like almost a lost puppy. He thought it was strange, but the man was now seemingly wearing armor under his leather jacket judging by how he was moving. What was even more disconcerting was the SMG he held almost casually in his hands, the man looked grim - but the way that Grue was shifting his weight told Uber that like him the man was nervous. By comparison, Velocity was still, almost like a mountain made out of iron - it was disconcerting, Velocity was acting as if he had gone through things that were worse than this. This was absurd as frankly the only comparison that Uber could think about was that this was going to be, was that to an Endbringer Battle and what could be worse than fighting Endbringers?
As he thought about what could be worse than the Endbringers, only one group came to mind, the Slaughterhouse 9 - their raids had a terrifying reputation - quick and deadly affairs. Sure there were some copycats but almost nothing else could compare. As he looked around, Uber couldn't help but notice how other capes were nervous or skittish many of the PRT Troopers and surviving members of BBPD were the same, visibly nervous about what they would do.
Chirp. Uber looked at his HUD - one of the minions was querying him with point-to-point intersuit communications. He accepted and opened the link and Rhett's voice greeted his ears. "How are you holding up?" he asked, his voice crisp and clear - but there was an undercurrent to it.
"Not good man, the internet is a mess, but the combat footage that I am seeing? It reminds me of Call of Duty." Uber said stiffly and Rhett grunted.
"Don't watch that shit, man. We're about to deal with our own onslaught of shit and trust me, this isn't going to be pretty." Rhett said and Uber remembered that the man was cagey about his past.
"How can you tell? Ever since this started it's been like you're a different person." Uber demanded, he missed his quirky friend and Rhett gave the impression that he was grinning.
"Oh I am the same old notable maniac you know that I am. It's just that there's no such thing as an ex-Marine." Rhett said and Uber blinked in surprise.
"Wait, you served in the Marines?" Uber said and Rhett nodded.
"I did, the Gulf War, now that was a very nasty conflict," Rhett said and Uber cringed at that. Far away in the distance from the city of Southshore, Uber was aware of the incessant rattling of rifles. This staccato noise was never-ending and reminded him all too much about how everything had changed dramatically over the past few days. It was more than just the burning of the Petroleum Complex or the rumble of naval guns in the distance. The sound of those weapons discharging did more to rattle the video gamer than anything else that had occurred.
"Do you think we can win here?" Uber asked the former Marine and the man's voice turned hard.
"We must, we have to. This is make or break for the Eastern Seaboard." Rhett said resolutely and under his helmet, Uber paled. That was news that he really could have done without, to put it bluntly. Frankly, though, it was also a surprise to hear that things were that drastic and that apparently, it was hold Brockton Bay or lose the eastern seaboard.
"Why?" Uber asked, stunned.
"Because I heard from Armsmaster that Admiral Holloway is CINCLANTFLT," Rhett said and Uber frowned.
"What does Sink, Lan, and Fleet have to do with anything?" Uber asked and Rhett facepalmed. "What?" he continued, seriously.
"CINCLANTFLT means Commander-in-Chief Atlantic Fleet, to put it simply Holloway is coordinating every single American ship from here to Europe and the Caribbean," Rhett explained and under his helmet, Uber paled.
"Shit."
"Exactly."
Leet's voice cut across the room, sounding triumphant. "MULTIPLAYER, SQUAD UP!"
Uber and Rhett stood up along with the others as Leet strolled into the room, Armsmaster right behind him, following them was a PRT employee pushing a cart with enormous C-14 Impaler rifles on it. Uber eagerly walked forward and scooped up the enormous weapon, its weight was somehow reassuring. The jitters were still there, but having the Impaler made him feel safer already. The magazines that were on the cart and which he added to the pouches on his belt. As he watched, Rhett accepted something from Armsmaster.
He looked at the nine other members of Multiplayer, two other Capes - Leet and Circus - plus seven close buddies who they always played with online. Uber knew that they had his back during multiplayer games, he just hoped that they had his back. But, as he looked at the other members of Multiplayer as they accepted their weapons and ammunition. They exchanged looks and smiles through their open dust shields - they had their weapons and Uber realized that they would have his back. The jitters were still there but things were honestly looking up in his opinion. He knew that his buddies would have his back and thus he would have their back.
"Armsmaster, time until reinforcements arrive?" Rhett asked.
"The militia units are twenty minutes out, the 25th ACR is forty-five minutes out." The Protectorate leader replied.
"How well are we holding?" Jessica, another minion, asked.
"We're holding, but we're not winning either. However, we can definitely hold until our reinforcements arrive." Armsmaster replied and Uber's heart sank. They weren't winning, they were merely holding, this sucked. It was comparable to some games of Battlefield that he had played where things were annoyingly even, you couldn't advance worth shit but neither could the opposing team. Stalemate, that's what this was. But then again, what could suits of power armor do to stalemates? What could having several thousand friendlies arrive do to stalemates? He smiled again as he figured it out, that sort of stuff smashed stalemates flat.
"So what's the goal of the enemy raid here? If it's to sow panic and confusion, it's failed there, all it's done is got me very damn angry." Jessica said and a chorus of agreements swept through the room.
Armsmaster suddenly looked uneasy, as if he had seen something from the drone footage. That immediately set Uber on edge because if something could make Armsmaster uneasy, then that was definitely something to be concerned about. He looked around at how the others were and he could tell that they were worried as well. It was amazing, Uber couldn't help but note cynically, how with just one man being uneasy, it was affecting the whole room. To call it disconcerting was an understatement.
"Armsie, what's going on?" Rhett asked and Uber's eyes about popped out of his skull.
"RHETT! Are you fucking insane!?" Uber hissed as surprisingly a nervous chuckle rippled through the crowd of their "reserve" forces.
Rhett had the audacity to laugh. "I am a jarhead, Uber, being insane comes with the territory." his statement caused a few more chuckles to ripple through the crowd and it caused Armsmaster to relax. There was still tension in the air, but it wasn't as bad as it had been.
"True enough, and I learned the hard way that prank wars could almost get out of hand if Piggot ever got involved, she was Corps too." Velocity said to more laughter.
"Anyways, to get things back on track," Armsmaster began, and the humor that the former Marine and the hero had nurtured withered and died. "The enemy has been shooting civilians who try to run along with active combatants for the most part in clear defiance of the Geneva and Hague Protocols regarding civilians. Furthermore some civilians, along with Rune were seen by drones being loaded into boats and taken to enemy ships."
Rhett snarled angrily, memories of a deployment to Africa running through his mind. "It's a motherfucking slave raid!" he snarled. Uber looked around as the room seemed to boil with raw fury.
Leet spoke up, his voice shaking with honest-to-god righteous anger. "My armour is contempt, my shield is disgust, my sword is hatred. In the Emperor's name." he finished and Uber, for once in his life couldn't help but realize just how accurate the response to that was. What surprised him, even more, was how the responding chorus went beyond just Multiplayer and involved who knows how many of their reserves. "LET NONE SURVIVE!"
"They said that Brockton Bay was make or break for the Northeast. They were more right than they knew actually; if the Abyss had realized that Brockton Bay was the GHQ for the Atlantic Fleet, they would have hit it a lot harder than they did in their little raid and if we failed to hold, not only would have hundreds of thousands had died in the city of Brockton Bay before the US Army arrived in strength to drive the enemy out. But the Atlantic Fleet would have been decapitated again and given the myriad of battles that were ongoing at that time and what Admiral Holloway was managing, it likely would have seen the Atlantic Fleet effectively shattered with the survivors being scattered to the four winds, then the Abyss could have burned down the Atlantic Seaboard at their leisure." - Chief Warrant Officer Chris "Kid Win" Rodriguez
Rune
Rune tried to reload her Smith and Wesson 625 as half a dozen faceless soldiers rushed her. Empty bullet casings clattered to the pavement while she fumbled for a new speed loader. She could escape if she could kill the next few before they reached her. The new speed loader came free and she was about to load it when a rifle boomed, almost immediately followed by a deafeningly loud thwack that zipped past her ear. Both the revolver and speed loader fell to the pavement while her hands rushed to protect her ears.
That was her mistake.
A soldier lunged for her and its cool, clammy hand clamped around her wrist. She screamed and thrashed, her free hand aiming for joints that she could reach which were the knees and ankles. One of the soldiers yelped and let her go, only for a boot to bury itself in her stomach. She exhaled explosively, feeling her ribs creak ominously as the soldiers grabbed her while she screamed and thrashed, trying to get out of their grip desperately. But her assailants were larger and stronger than her, the fact that one stomped hard on her hands and the bones underneath let out a crackling pop amid an explosion of pain that caused stars to dance in her eyes didn't help.
Next thing she knew, she was being roughly and violently hauled to her feet while a pair of cold irons went around her wrists and closed with an ominous click click click like it was the prophecy of her doom. A clammy hand planted it between her shoulders while a rough, inhuman voice snarled: "Satrt wlaknig."
Fiery pain lit up her nerves as she shambled, her broken foot and likely thoroughly dislocated ankle protesting as she was forced to walk on her broken bones. Her teeth gritted as she tried to avoid screaming, she was well aware of the rifle at her back and thus she walked, unable to take a break lest she get shot. They walked for who knows how long before they came to the shoreline. Dozens of people under armed guard were being herded towards boats. Someone fell to their knees in pain, faceless soldiers hauled them out of line and a single gunshot echoed off the buildings.
Rune shuddered at that as she was guided down a dock towards where the landing craft and other vessels were waiting. In the distance, ships of malice sat seemingly at anchor. She was forced down into the boat and so were other people, until the boat seemed to be packed beyond capacity. The engine grumbled and it pulled away from the dock and then spun, before heading towards those ships. Unease settled in Rune's stomach as the boat grew closer, the malice that oozed off the ships grew stronger and stronger like a stubborn miasma that would waft off roadkill that had been baking in the sun for a couple of days.
There wasn't a davit crane to carry the boat up to the deck, Rune looked up in horror at the cargo nets and ladders that were draped over the side. Her foot was already in very severe pain. This was going to be a painful adventure - she grasped one of the ladders and started to climb. Each step was an exercise in unrivaled agony that caused stars to dance and glitter in her field of vision and still, grunting and snarling in pain, she climbed the unstable ladder. She heard a scream below her followed by a heavy thud and looked down.
She wished that she hadn't. Someone had fallen off one of the cargo nets and taken three or four people with them as gravity's harsh mistress sent them hurtling back into the boat that had carried them here. Their bodies lay broken in the bay where she had been not so long ago, blood pooling under the bodies. Faceless soldiers picked up the corpses and without a sound, pitched them overboard - or at least, she thought they were all corpses. One very clearly tried to put up a struggle before she too was thrown over the side, vanishing into the dark waters with a spall of white. Bile rose in her throat at the sight of that, just…just cruel and callous, a blatant disregard for human life. She swallowed it down and looked up, she was maybe halfway up the ladder, and her eyes widened at the creature pointing a pistol at her.
She began to resume her climb, panting and snarling as she did so until finally, she gained the deck and tumbled to it thanks to her broken foot and dislocated ankle. The deck was made of tarnished, semi-rotten wood that bowed under her weight but by some miracle didn't break. She looked up at the creature that stood at about her height, with arms that were amalgams of flippers and human arms that ended in lobster-like claws - but the more she looked at it, the more she realized how off the creature was. The torso was far too narrow, with thin spindly legs that were too long and thick and intimidating arms that looked a little short - the six inwardly slanted triangular eyes of the creature glowered at her, they were windows into the soul and despite having no mouth, Rune realized that this thing would be screaming otherwise. Held in its claw was a pistol, which clicked ominously.
"Give me a minute! Give me a minute! My foot is broken!" she cried out weakly as she slowly rose to her feet. The hulking thing of a crew member thought that she was going to slow, for one of its crusher claws clamped around her arm. She cried out painfully as she was hauled up by her arm to her feet, a shriek of pain leaving her lips as her weight settled on her broken foot and dislocated ankle. She looked at the thing again as the pistol was shoved into her back and was well aware of the cold circle being pressed into her skin.
"Satrt wlaknig," came the response, the words weren't so much spoken as vibrated into existence. She hobbled to a hatch and stared in horror at the steepness of the ladder she had to descend. She looked at the soldier and silently asked the question. "Dcesned," it growled at her and Rune gulped nervously and slowly, ever so slowly, descended into the bowels of the ship. Something gnawed at her but by some miracle, she managed to keep her footing until she was a single step up. Instead of a nasty fall that likely would have exacerbated her injuries if not rendered her completely immobile, Rune was confident she had only managed to take what little pride she had left and shoot it in the back of the head.
Thus slowly and painfully picking herself up, she began walking again until she came down to another ladder, and holding onto the guard rails for support she descended. This time she managed to keep her footing on the way down, but as she walked to the third set of stairs, there was a crash behind her followed by someone screaming in pain. The sound was horrible, good god was it horrible.
A bolt cycled.
There was a gunshot.
The pained screams ended.
Wails of terror began.
Rune tightened her cloak around her and hobbled on, trying to ignore the screams and the inhuman alien shouts that grated her ears. She reached another ladder, it too was guarded and they gestured down it. Grimacing, Rune began descending again. This ladder was steeper and it descended into pure umbra. She could barely see where she was going and struggled to find the ladder's rungs. With each step deeper, the air grew thinner and hotter, the roar of whatever powered this beast became louder, and the gentle movement of the ship became far more pronounced. She lost her balance. She plunged into the darkness landing on cold steel, landing with a crack that sent an explosion of agony lancing across her chest and up her right leg, a glance back into the darkness told her what had probably happened. Her kneecap was busted, she didn't know if it was broken or if it was merely dislocated, throbbing agony skittered across her leg, the bruises already forming. She tried to stand only for her right leg to explode into pain, it felt like the limb was on fire. She crumpled, her screams echoing like she was in a massive steel echo chamber while something scratched across her mind that sounded like cruel mocking laughter.
Gasping for breath as the pain receded somewhat, she heard something ignite and a red comet went arcing end over end into wherever she was. It illuminated the staircase which revealed just how steep and high it was, that was at least two stories without a landing. She was probably damn lucky to have not killed herself - which was a bonus in her books. She shuddered as that horrific sound scratched across her mind again, almost as if the thing she was on was alive and it found that she considered herself lucky that she survived her fall to be amusing. But the sight of people coming down, she shuffled out of the way, fiery pain licking up her right side as she shuffled over to the edge, each movement was exhausting, the thin air sapping her strength.
People piled in, first dozens and then quite possibly hundreds, the air grew thinner and hotter. People moaned and a few shouted that this was inhumane. Laughter was the only answer, along with the echoing cli-clack of a machine gun being primed followed by the echoing bang of the hatchway that let so many people in closing. As Rune tried to make herself comfortable, she realized with horror and sickening dread at what she was on and it chilled her to her core. She thus did something that she hadn't done in ages, she prayed.
Montana
An enormous construct of metal powered through the surface as plumes of spray erupted close by, the thumping roar of the British 16-inch/45-caliber Mark I guns rolling over her. She was meant for this, she could take this sort of fire.
The salvo buzzer rang.
A dozen American 16-inch/50-caliber Mark 7 naval guns roared, followed by the thumping rumble of their voice briefly drowning out the rapid-fire slamming of the ten 5in/54 caliber guns that could bear on target - the result was that over 32,000 pounds of metal howled through the air while the concussive blast from the guns cratered the water. Her immense hull however kept on going, the recoil force from that many guns not affecting her in the slightest.
Meanwhile, the heavy slams of the eight-inch guns all echoed around her lofting glowing shells up. Montana couldn't help but feel like whoever was commanding this battle had sent this battleship, two cruisers, and about four destroyers to their deaths, all in the name of delaying her from arriving in Brockton Bay. It was brutal and in many ways, it was smart if callous. But it was fucking annoying, she needed to get to Brockton Bay as fast as humanly possible and this fucking Royal Oak class was refusing to die.
Annoying.
The horizon flashed and more shells howled in from that damn Royal Oak class. They were based on the Nelson class that had been authorized for construction after Jutland and they retained the all-forward main battery of that class, but instead of mounting the secondary guns in casemates, they had their 6-inch guns in eight twin turrets with four to a side plus eight 4.7-inch guns. Furthermore, they were quite heavily armored, particularly for the period where they had been designed and built, with their protection equal to that of the Nelsons.
The one that she was facing however, seemed to be in an as-built configuration. The primary difference between the Nelson class and the Royal Oak class was that the former had a casemate secondary battery and a tripod mast - while the latter had a turreted secondary battery and a Queen Anne's Mansion superstructure. Regardless, Montana knew that she could beat this thing, she outclassed it in every way. But the reason it was here was obvious, it was delaying her.
On the horizon, smaller flashes stuttered and Montana nodded, she was scoring hits - the horizon flashed again as the enemy returned fire - but from what she could tell thanks to her radar, the enemy was still afloat. The shells howled in and Montana grunted as a 16-inch shell plowed into her armored belt and bounced off - she could take that sort of punishment.
Salvo Buzzer.
The guns crashed out their wrath - spray from her bow wave snapping out of the way of the concussive force of her guns. She quickly looked at her accompanying heavy cruisers, Quincy and Fall River. The other two cruisers seemed to be in decent condition all things considered despite the gunfight. She didn't know what they were facing, but judging by the splashes that were landing around them, heavy cruisers. That was nothing that they couldn't take and they could handle the punishment being mettled out as well.
The horizon pulsed again.
Montana found that she was steadily finding the rhythm of the fight - yes, it was a night action, but her radars and combat information center provided her with sufficient situational awareness that she figured it would be extremely difficult for her to lose control of the night action as had occurred during Callaghan's Folly, Savo Island, and some of the battles in the South China Sea. More importantly, however, the numbers of each side weren't too large either - which was definitely helping in making sure that she stayed in control of the fight.
The shells howled in and the spray from 16-inch, 6-inch, and 4.7-inch shells cascaded down on her hull as her armor effortlessly defeated two 16-inch shells. With a heaving crash, her own guns crashed out a salvo in response. All the while as this happened, however, Montana was well aware that the minutes were ticking by. Each minute wasted here was another minute that the enemy would have to ravage Southshore.
Three hits.
The horizon pulsed with fire and light.
Salvo buzzer.
Her guns roared.
Enemy shells roared in and this time, the blizzard of steel had far better aim. Montana snarled in pain as a shell plunged through her shell plating, speared her armored deck, bounced off, and proceeded to destroy a kitchen. While another shell found the front of Turret II and bounced right off the turret face, the black corrupted projectile pinwheeled through the air as it detonated. Montana ignored the reports that flowed in, her turrets and guns were fine.
Two hits.
Montana couldn't help but feel helpless as she continued dropping super-heavy shells onto her opponent. For she was helpless to provide aid to Brockton Bay. It was something that she absolutely hated, she was grinding her opponent into dust and yet the enemy was succeeding in its objective to keep her from helping. This was infuriating, she was doing what she meant to do and what she had never gotten the chance to do during World War II, and yet the enemy was succeeding in its objective.
Montana couldn't help but wonder if she should close more. The range was currently something like 28,000 yards. The enemy's fire was horribly inaccurate, any hits were more scored by luck than any actual aiming. Whereas she could reliably score hits at this range thanks to her radar gun fire control systems. This was madness, the enemy was suicidal, it couldn't defeat her, and she held all of the advantages except for maybe speed, and yet its presence here, to die as slowly as possible told her otherwise.
Salvo Buzzer.
Her guns roared.
The horizon pulsed, the shells screamed in, landing in a bracket, and the rumble of the guns washed over her in the span of maybe forty-five seconds.
Her salvo buzzer rang twenty seconds later and her guns spat fire and noise as her battle continued.
Romeo "Uber" Nash
Uber was thankful that Armsmaster had looked over the suits of CMC Armor that Leet had made prior to Blood Week breaking out. The man had seemed impressed by the power armor, but he had completely rewritten the software, to call the code amazingly efficient now was understating things. The capabilities of his armor's sensor suite and the other nine were impressive. But he couldn't help but feel nervous, in a way that went beyond the Pre-Villain jitters. This was something more. Something deeper. It was a primal fear that he couldn't quite shake no matter how much he tried to do so and thus his hands shook almost imperceptibly.
He looked over at where Velocity and Grue were - the minor villain had been following the hero around like almost a lost puppy. He thought it was strange, but the man was now seemingly wearing armor under his leather jacket judging by how he was moving. What was even more disconcerting was the SMG he held almost casually in his hands, the man looked grim - but the way that Grue was shifting his weight told Uber that like him the man was nervous. By comparison, Velocity was still, almost like a mountain made out of iron - it was disconcerting, Velocity was acting as if he had gone through things that were worse than this. This was absurd as frankly the only comparison that Uber could think about was that this was going to be, was that to an Endbringer Battle and what could be worse than fighting Endbringers?
As he thought about what could be worse than the Endbringers, only one group came to mind, the Slaughterhouse 9 - their raids had a terrifying reputation - quick and deadly affairs. Sure there were some copycats but almost nothing else could compare. As he looked around, Uber couldn't help but notice how other capes were nervous or skittish many of the PRT Troopers and surviving members of BBPD were the same, visibly nervous about what they would do.
Chirp. Uber looked at his HUD - one of the minions was querying him with point-to-point intersuit communications. He accepted and opened the link and Rhett's voice greeted his ears. "How are you holding up?" he asked, his voice crisp and clear - but there was an undercurrent to it.
"Not good man, the internet is a mess, but the combat footage that I am seeing? It reminds me of Call of Duty." Uber said stiffly and Rhett grunted.
"Don't watch that shit, man. We're about to deal with our own onslaught of shit and trust me, this isn't going to be pretty." Rhett said and Uber remembered that the man was cagey about his past.
"How can you tell? Ever since this started it's been like you're a different person." Uber demanded, he missed his quirky friend and Rhett gave the impression that he was grinning.
"Oh I am the same old notable maniac you know that I am. It's just that there's no such thing as an ex-Marine." Rhett said and Uber blinked in surprise.
"Wait, you served in the Marines?" Uber said and Rhett nodded.
"I did, the Gulf War, now that was a very nasty conflict," Rhett said and Uber cringed at that. Far away in the distance from the city of Southshore, Uber was aware of the incessant rattling of rifles. This staccato noise was never-ending and reminded him all too much about how everything had changed dramatically over the past few days. It was more than just the burning of the Petroleum Complex or the rumble of naval guns in the distance. The sound of those weapons discharging did more to rattle the video gamer than anything else that had occurred.
"Do you think we can win here?" Uber asked the former Marine and the man's voice turned hard.
"We must, we have to. This is make or break for the Eastern Seaboard." Rhett said resolutely and under his helmet, Uber paled. That was news that he really could have done without, to put it bluntly. Frankly, though, it was also a surprise to hear that things were that drastic and that apparently, it was hold Brockton Bay or lose the eastern seaboard.
"Why?" Uber asked, stunned.
"Because I heard from Armsmaster that Admiral Holloway is CINCLANTFLT," Rhett said and Uber frowned.
"What does Sink, Lan, and Fleet have to do with anything?" Uber asked and Rhett facepalmed. "What?" he continued, seriously.
"CINCLANTFLT means Commander-in-Chief Atlantic Fleet, to put it simply Holloway is coordinating every single American ship from here to Europe and the Caribbean," Rhett explained and under his helmet, Uber paled.
"Shit."
"Exactly."
Leet's voice cut across the room, sounding triumphant. "MULTIPLAYER, SQUAD UP!"
Uber and Rhett stood up along with the others as Leet strolled into the room, Armsmaster right behind him, following them was a PRT employee pushing a cart with enormous C-14 Impaler rifles on it. Uber eagerly walked forward and scooped up the enormous weapon, its weight was somehow reassuring. The jitters were still there, but having the Impaler made him feel safer already. The magazines that were on the cart and which he added to the pouches on his belt. As he watched, Rhett accepted something from Armsmaster.
He looked at the nine other members of Multiplayer, two other Capes - Leet and Circus - plus seven close buddies who they always played with online. Uber knew that they had his back during multiplayer games, he just hoped that they had his back. But, as he looked at the other members of Multiplayer as they accepted their weapons and ammunition. They exchanged looks and smiles through their open dust shields - they had their weapons and Uber realized that they would have his back. The jitters were still there but things were honestly looking up in his opinion. He knew that his buddies would have his back and thus he would have their back.
"Armsmaster, time until reinforcements arrive?" Rhett asked.
"The militia units are twenty minutes out, the 25th ACR is forty-five minutes out." The Protectorate leader replied.
"How well are we holding?" Jessica, another minion, asked.
"We're holding, but we're not winning either. However, we can definitely hold until our reinforcements arrive." Armsmaster replied and Uber's heart sank. They weren't winning, they were merely holding, this sucked. It was comparable to some games of Battlefield that he had played where things were annoyingly even, you couldn't advance worth shit but neither could the opposing team. Stalemate, that's what this was. But then again, what could suits of power armor do to stalemates? What could having several thousand friendlies arrive do to stalemates? He smiled again as he figured it out, that sort of stuff smashed stalemates flat.
"So what's the goal of the enemy raid here? If it's to sow panic and confusion, it's failed there, all it's done is got me very damn angry." Jessica said and a chorus of agreements swept through the room.
Armsmaster suddenly looked uneasy, as if he had seen something from the drone footage. That immediately set Uber on edge because if something could make Armsmaster uneasy, then that was definitely something to be concerned about. He looked around at how the others were and he could tell that they were worried as well. It was amazing, Uber couldn't help but note cynically, how with just one man being uneasy, it was affecting the whole room. To call it disconcerting was an understatement.
"Armsie, what's going on?" Rhett asked and Uber's eyes about popped out of his skull.
"RHETT! Are you fucking insane!?" Uber hissed as surprisingly a nervous chuckle rippled through the crowd of their "reserve" forces.
Rhett had the audacity to laugh. "I am a jarhead, Uber, being insane comes with the territory." his statement caused a few more chuckles to ripple through the crowd and it caused Armsmaster to relax. There was still tension in the air, but it wasn't as bad as it had been.
"True enough, and I learned the hard way that prank wars could almost get out of hand if Piggot ever got involved, she was Corps too." Velocity said to more laughter.
"Anyways, to get things back on track," Armsmaster began, and the humor that the former Marine and the hero had nurtured withered and died. "The enemy has been shooting civilians who try to run along with active combatants for the most part in clear defiance of the Geneva and Hague Protocols regarding civilians. Furthermore some civilians, along with Rune were seen by drones being loaded into boats and taken to enemy ships."
Rhett snarled angrily, memories of a deployment to Africa running through his mind. "It's a motherfucking slave raid!" he snarled. Uber looked around as the room seemed to boil with raw fury.
Leet spoke up, his voice shaking with honest-to-god righteous anger. "My armour is contempt, my shield is disgust, my sword is hatred. In the Emperor's name." he finished and Uber, for once in his life couldn't help but realize just how accurate the response to that was. What surprised him, even more, was how the responding chorus went beyond just Multiplayer and involved who knows how many of their reserves. "LET NONE SURVIVE!"
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Fury and 14s
Sandy River DL
(Verified Destroyer Leader)
- Location
- Lake Michigan
- Pronouns
- Her/She
The new year, Jasmine Tanaka thought, was not off to a good start.
First, she'd been blown up and had to dig herself out of the ruins of her family's apartment. Then, she'd been gassed with fucking phosgene by what had to be some sort of warship off the coast. And now, after having finally found an evacuation point, she'd been kidnapped by demonic soldiers, stuffed into a cramped pinnace with a bunch of other captives, and finally dumped into a dark and dank hold aboard a world war vintage destroyer that positively reeked of unsettled grudges and hatred.
She idly wondered if this was how it'd feel to visit her family's former homeland after Khonsu buried it under three meters of ash?
Not a great place to be in regardless, especially not when her wounds from earlier had been reopened and her lungs felt like lead. Probably plasma leaking out of the abused organs. Not good at all.
She was no medical expert - the kami only knew how she passed bio -, but she was pretty sure that she wasn't going to make it much longer without proper medical attention.
Attention that the enemy, whoever they were, clearly weren't going to give her.
And the fact that she was going to die in the hold of what she was beginning to suspect was a fucking slave ship because of a different one of Man's inhumanities... it burned worse than her lungs.
Jasmine wasn't sure how long it was after that thought crossed her mind when her vision began to fade as her breaths became shallower and shallower. But at the same time, she could feel something beyond her slow and painful death. It felt like... turbines?
-
Out.
She had to get out. It was too small here, but she could feel the open ocean close-by. If she could just...
A fist smashed through the thin steel of the bulkhead next her and a casual motion tore the black metal asunder as 280,000 horsepower surged through her extended limb.
A second blow opened a large enough gap that she could just about reach the hull plating. There was also a structural rib visible, and if she grabbed that... lashing out with one foot, she kicked with enough force to knock out an entire hull plate with crash. At the same time, the heavy steel beam she'd braced against snapped under the strain.
It was then that she noticed a sound other than the squeal of abused metal and the thrum of a ship in motion. Screaming. Faint, weak, and hoarse, but still audible.
Oh.
Oh fuck.
She'd forgotten about the other captives!
Before she could do anything else though, a large wave crashed through the hole she'd opened in the side and the destroyer lurched and then twisted.
Grabbing the closest people to her, a redheaded middle schooler and a dusky-skinned girl around nine, Jasmine hauled them out of the water and pulled them close. Then another wave struck and the battered destroyer snapped.
As the vessel came apart around them and began foundering, the Japanese girl did her level best to hold the younger girls even closer to herself in a desperate effort to not lose them to the frigid sea. Then suddenly, they were not longer in her arms, but stumbling on her deck. Around her great slabs of gray metal materialized, forming two massive quadruple turrets set into a hull-like bulk bristling with her lesser guns along her left side. The vast bulk felt both weightless and like a part of her that had until that moment been missing.
It was... exhilarating...
At the same time, she could feel her crew rushing the nine-year-old below to her sickbay while the ginger girl remained rooted to the deck where she'd landed next to Turret I, gaping at the unfamiliar ship she'd just found herself aboard.
"What the fuck is this?" The middle-schooler's voice was little more than a whisper, but Jasmine could hear it as clearly as if she were standing right next to her. "Bullshit. Pure, utter, bullshit. There was supposed to be an Endbringer attack, but then we got hit by some sort of naval strike and then kidnapped by demon soldiers and hauled off to who-knows-where and now I'm on a fucking battleship after being grabbed by a girl who's Brute enough to rip open a cruiser like it was tin foil?!"
That voice and potty mouth seemed familiar. She'd definitely heard it before, but where? She wanted to say Battlefront: Titan, but wasn't sure...
Then Jasmine heard/saw/felt another of the hostile ships, another destroyer, open fire on her. Before she could do more than turn to look, a wave of... something washed over her and the girl on her deck was casting a shimmering mirage-like field across the intervening ocean. Four-inch shells froze mid-air, and torpedoes stilled half-way out of their tubes. The enemy vessel locked up as if it were nothing more than a detailed model.
Jasmine didn't hesitate for more than a heartbeat as the realization struck. Turbines roared louder than even that akuma Lung and the battlecruiser-girl Cyane surged forward as her full power began accelerating her towards 37 knots.
She couldn't save anyone else who had been taken. She couldn't even fight without killing more than she already had done by accident.
She could save those she had aboard though, and she would. Her doctors would have to be enough to keep the younger alive until the girl could be brought to a hospital. They had to be.
And the redhead on her deck? She seemed fine for now. Even if she seemed rather rattled and was muttering something about her brother.
As she began picking up speed, Jasmine focused her attention on the middle schooler and directed her voice to reach her.
"There's a hatch on the underside of the turret. Get inside and find a seat. I don't think you'd enjoy being on deck for much longer!"
The girl practically jumped out of her skin, but ran for the superfiring mount and scrambled inside.
"I'll say it again. This is bullshit," exclaimed the redhead as she hauled herself into the cramped interior. "I have powers now? And I froze a ship. That has got to be the most insane power ever!"
A petty officer sitting at the range-finder laughed. "You think that's crazy kiddo? I got a visit from Admiral King himself in Fiddler's Green about this here posting. Admiral King! And I'm a mere CPO whose sea-sickness was bad enough I could never go to sea!"
"Admiral… King?" she asked. "Who's he? Name's sounding vaguely familiar…"
"Only the CNO who tore BuOrd such a new one for their fuck-ups that the entire bureau ceased to exist!" was the reply.
"So…" the girl said slowly, "he was an angry admiral who destroyed part of his own organization?"
That got another laugh. "No, he was the Angry Admiral, who built BuWeaps."
Then the red-haired man leaned over to get a look at the girl. "Say, you rather resemble my little sister. The name 'Clara Jameson' ring a bell?"
"That's my grandmother's name before she married Grandpa!" she exclaimed. "But if she's your sister… that'd make you Great Uncle Sean. Which is impossible, as he died…"
"In 1948 when a Banshee fighter crashed on take-off and slammed into my office?" the CPO gave her a wry grin. "Yeah. Wasn't fun, I can assure you of that. So, can I know my grandniece's name?"
The girl eyed him for a moment, assessing him. "Dorothy. Dorothy Peters."
"So she actually married her school sweetheart? Good for her," he then shook his head. "We can get to know each other properly later. I need to get back to my station, I can't stay off long when we're at Zebra."
Just then, a piercing whistle resounded through the turret and a voice called "General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands man your battle stations," followed by a clanging electric bell.
Sean groaned. "Definitely putting off that chat. We've got something inbound and that means we're likely not going to be hearing ourselves think, let alone being able to talk. He then rummaged through a pocket and pulled out a couple of cotton wads, which he passed to Dorothy.
"Here, get these in your ears. Unless you want to lose your hearing, that is."
The girl obediently stuffed the cotton into her ears and then hunkered down in a narrow space as the 2400-ton quadruple mount began its ponderous traversal to port.
Dorothy could hear muted orders being called, men confirming angles and statuses. From her position, she could even see into the forward part of the turret through a small window. On the other side was a complex mass of machinery surrounding what she knew had to be one of the gigantic guns the ship-that-was-also-a-girl carried.
"Battleship sighted, bearing 330, range 32000. Load AP!"
At that call, the great block of steel split, a wedge of metal rising as an arm slid it upwards, revealing an opening within. A yellow-banded black object almost as large as Dorothy herself rolled into a concave tray, before being thrown forwards by a colossal ram, which then cycled twice more, this time forcing brass canisters as wide as dinner plates into what the girl now realized must be the gun's breach and the wedge locked back into its starting position.
Then a buzzer rang, and the turret shook.
Thunder reverberated within Dorothy's bones as the massive gun in front of her hurled itself backwards. The breach slid open again, disgorging two smoking cylinders of blacked brass, only for them to be replaced by another shell and set of cartridges.
Again, the turret was filled with the roar of naval artillery. Again, the breach opened to release the spent cases and accept new ordinance. This time though, only a single piece of brass arrived. Curses barely audible to the young teen filled the air and she could swear she could see wisps of blue drifting through the cramped space. Three of the four shell hoists and two powder hoists had jammed.
Meanwhile, Jasmine snarled as reports of the jams came to her. The first salvo had been perfect, landing seven of the eight fourteen-inch heavy shells directly atop the limping battleship bearing the same flag as the destroyers that she'd just escaped. The second, however, merely added to the spray the target was already receiving. Salvo three, what of it had actually fired, hadn't even managed that.
In the distance, six fireballs bloomed as the twisted battleship responded to the battlecruiser. Cursing harder, Jasmine threw her three rudders hard over to starboard to evade. Massive plumes of water erupted a hundred yards away, a clear sign of just what she was facing.
She needed her guns operational again fast or else she and her precious cargo were doomed. Her armor was good, but she knew she couldn't survive repeated sixteen-inch hits. And even at full power, she wouldn't be able to open the range in time to escape. Turret One roared, three shells lancing out and throwing up two columns of spray. The third struck home on what she was beginning to think might be a fast battleship of some sort.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then four bright flashes lit up the enemy, three from the muzzles of the guns, and one much larger one immediately ahead in the lower turret. The bow lurched downward as a jet of hellish flame shot upward from it. She'd scored a major hit, possibly even a fatal one!
Then the battleship heeled over in a turn to unshadow her aft mounts, slowing in the process. Good and bad. On the one hand, the enemy was no longer closing at thirty knots. On the other, now she was facing nine sixteen-inch/50s instead of six.
"Oh come on!" Jasmine groaned. "Why couldn't that have set off the fucking magazine!?"
She still couldn't get out of range fast enough to not get her stern shot off.
There was only one thing Cyane could think of at this point that might let her escape. "Load HC!" She called. If she could destroy the primary rangefinders, she had a chance.
As she made another sharp turn to evade the incoming fire, she grinned as both turrets reported the jams cleared. The moment she had a firing solution again, she'd take the shot. And keep doing so until that abomination's superstructure was demolished. It was the only way she could actually get the enemy off her tail.
Carefully adjusting her rudders for a better angle, the battlecruiser watched her foe intently. Almost... almost...
"Shoot!"
Eight 1500 lb shells arced across the 23000 yards separating the two ships. Eight shells bearing 120 lbs of Explosive D each slammed into the black mass of steel amidships of the target. Seventeen fireballs erupted along the hulking form of the battleship.
Jasmine smirked smugly as the forward tower of her enemy began to crumple in on itself, spewing smoke and flame. A good hit.
"Right, Engineering? I need overload power for five minutes! We're de-assing the area at best possible speed!"
Disregarding the scattered columns of spray from the last inbound salvo, the battlecruiser heeled over in a sharp turn away and her boilers hummed eerily as they were pushed to their maximum rated temperature. Turbines were spun up to their limits, and the stern sank as the four screws clawed at the ocean like a demon. Cyane was gasping for breath, straining to reach the highest speed possible for a ship her size.
37 knots.
37.1.
37.3.
37.5.
A strange sensation began building in her chest, as if her heart was being shaken loose, even though the organ was no longer present. It wasn't pain, not as any understood it. No, it was the feeling of pressing against an absolute. A ship of 33,000 tons should not be moving as fast as she was. Jasmine didn't care.
She hit 38 knots, turbines howling like a Category 5 hurricane.
With overwhelming power surging through her, Cyane dove into the gathering mists, ensuring her breakaway's success. She could double back and head for the coast again once she was sure she was clear.
First, she'd been blown up and had to dig herself out of the ruins of her family's apartment. Then, she'd been gassed with fucking phosgene by what had to be some sort of warship off the coast. And now, after having finally found an evacuation point, she'd been kidnapped by demonic soldiers, stuffed into a cramped pinnace with a bunch of other captives, and finally dumped into a dark and dank hold aboard a world war vintage destroyer that positively reeked of unsettled grudges and hatred.
She idly wondered if this was how it'd feel to visit her family's former homeland after Khonsu buried it under three meters of ash?
Not a great place to be in regardless, especially not when her wounds from earlier had been reopened and her lungs felt like lead. Probably plasma leaking out of the abused organs. Not good at all.
She was no medical expert - the kami only knew how she passed bio -, but she was pretty sure that she wasn't going to make it much longer without proper medical attention.
Attention that the enemy, whoever they were, clearly weren't going to give her.
And the fact that she was going to die in the hold of what she was beginning to suspect was a fucking slave ship because of a different one of Man's inhumanities... it burned worse than her lungs.
Jasmine wasn't sure how long it was after that thought crossed her mind when her vision began to fade as her breaths became shallower and shallower. But at the same time, she could feel something beyond her slow and painful death. It felt like... turbines?
-
Out.
She had to get out. It was too small here, but she could feel the open ocean close-by. If she could just...
A fist smashed through the thin steel of the bulkhead next her and a casual motion tore the black metal asunder as 280,000 horsepower surged through her extended limb.
A second blow opened a large enough gap that she could just about reach the hull plating. There was also a structural rib visible, and if she grabbed that... lashing out with one foot, she kicked with enough force to knock out an entire hull plate with crash. At the same time, the heavy steel beam she'd braced against snapped under the strain.
It was then that she noticed a sound other than the squeal of abused metal and the thrum of a ship in motion. Screaming. Faint, weak, and hoarse, but still audible.
Oh.
Oh fuck.
She'd forgotten about the other captives!
Before she could do anything else though, a large wave crashed through the hole she'd opened in the side and the destroyer lurched and then twisted.
Grabbing the closest people to her, a redheaded middle schooler and a dusky-skinned girl around nine, Jasmine hauled them out of the water and pulled them close. Then another wave struck and the battered destroyer snapped.
As the vessel came apart around them and began foundering, the Japanese girl did her level best to hold the younger girls even closer to herself in a desperate effort to not lose them to the frigid sea. Then suddenly, they were not longer in her arms, but stumbling on her deck. Around her great slabs of gray metal materialized, forming two massive quadruple turrets set into a hull-like bulk bristling with her lesser guns along her left side. The vast bulk felt both weightless and like a part of her that had until that moment been missing.
It was... exhilarating...
At the same time, she could feel her crew rushing the nine-year-old below to her sickbay while the ginger girl remained rooted to the deck where she'd landed next to Turret I, gaping at the unfamiliar ship she'd just found herself aboard.
"What the fuck is this?" The middle-schooler's voice was little more than a whisper, but Jasmine could hear it as clearly as if she were standing right next to her. "Bullshit. Pure, utter, bullshit. There was supposed to be an Endbringer attack, but then we got hit by some sort of naval strike and then kidnapped by demon soldiers and hauled off to who-knows-where and now I'm on a fucking battleship after being grabbed by a girl who's Brute enough to rip open a cruiser like it was tin foil?!"
That voice and potty mouth seemed familiar. She'd definitely heard it before, but where? She wanted to say Battlefront: Titan, but wasn't sure...
Then Jasmine heard/saw/felt another of the hostile ships, another destroyer, open fire on her. Before she could do more than turn to look, a wave of... something washed over her and the girl on her deck was casting a shimmering mirage-like field across the intervening ocean. Four-inch shells froze mid-air, and torpedoes stilled half-way out of their tubes. The enemy vessel locked up as if it were nothing more than a detailed model.
Jasmine didn't hesitate for more than a heartbeat as the realization struck. Turbines roared louder than even that akuma Lung and the battlecruiser-girl Cyane surged forward as her full power began accelerating her towards 37 knots.
She couldn't save anyone else who had been taken. She couldn't even fight without killing more than she already had done by accident.
She could save those she had aboard though, and she would. Her doctors would have to be enough to keep the younger alive until the girl could be brought to a hospital. They had to be.
And the redhead on her deck? She seemed fine for now. Even if she seemed rather rattled and was muttering something about her brother.
As she began picking up speed, Jasmine focused her attention on the middle schooler and directed her voice to reach her.
"There's a hatch on the underside of the turret. Get inside and find a seat. I don't think you'd enjoy being on deck for much longer!"
The girl practically jumped out of her skin, but ran for the superfiring mount and scrambled inside.
"I'll say it again. This is bullshit," exclaimed the redhead as she hauled herself into the cramped interior. "I have powers now? And I froze a ship. That has got to be the most insane power ever!"
A petty officer sitting at the range-finder laughed. "You think that's crazy kiddo? I got a visit from Admiral King himself in Fiddler's Green about this here posting. Admiral King! And I'm a mere CPO whose sea-sickness was bad enough I could never go to sea!"
"Admiral… King?" she asked. "Who's he? Name's sounding vaguely familiar…"
"Only the CNO who tore BuOrd such a new one for their fuck-ups that the entire bureau ceased to exist!" was the reply.
"So…" the girl said slowly, "he was an angry admiral who destroyed part of his own organization?"
That got another laugh. "No, he was the Angry Admiral, who built BuWeaps."
Then the red-haired man leaned over to get a look at the girl. "Say, you rather resemble my little sister. The name 'Clara Jameson' ring a bell?"
"That's my grandmother's name before she married Grandpa!" she exclaimed. "But if she's your sister… that'd make you Great Uncle Sean. Which is impossible, as he died…"
"In 1948 when a Banshee fighter crashed on take-off and slammed into my office?" the CPO gave her a wry grin. "Yeah. Wasn't fun, I can assure you of that. So, can I know my grandniece's name?"
The girl eyed him for a moment, assessing him. "Dorothy. Dorothy Peters."
"So she actually married her school sweetheart? Good for her," he then shook his head. "We can get to know each other properly later. I need to get back to my station, I can't stay off long when we're at Zebra."
Just then, a piercing whistle resounded through the turret and a voice called "General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands man your battle stations," followed by a clanging electric bell.
Sean groaned. "Definitely putting off that chat. We've got something inbound and that means we're likely not going to be hearing ourselves think, let alone being able to talk. He then rummaged through a pocket and pulled out a couple of cotton wads, which he passed to Dorothy.
"Here, get these in your ears. Unless you want to lose your hearing, that is."
The girl obediently stuffed the cotton into her ears and then hunkered down in a narrow space as the 2400-ton quadruple mount began its ponderous traversal to port.
Dorothy could hear muted orders being called, men confirming angles and statuses. From her position, she could even see into the forward part of the turret through a small window. On the other side was a complex mass of machinery surrounding what she knew had to be one of the gigantic guns the ship-that-was-also-a-girl carried.
"Battleship sighted, bearing 330, range 32000. Load AP!"
At that call, the great block of steel split, a wedge of metal rising as an arm slid it upwards, revealing an opening within. A yellow-banded black object almost as large as Dorothy herself rolled into a concave tray, before being thrown forwards by a colossal ram, which then cycled twice more, this time forcing brass canisters as wide as dinner plates into what the girl now realized must be the gun's breach and the wedge locked back into its starting position.
Then a buzzer rang, and the turret shook.
Thunder reverberated within Dorothy's bones as the massive gun in front of her hurled itself backwards. The breach slid open again, disgorging two smoking cylinders of blacked brass, only for them to be replaced by another shell and set of cartridges.
Again, the turret was filled with the roar of naval artillery. Again, the breach opened to release the spent cases and accept new ordinance. This time though, only a single piece of brass arrived. Curses barely audible to the young teen filled the air and she could swear she could see wisps of blue drifting through the cramped space. Three of the four shell hoists and two powder hoists had jammed.
Meanwhile, Jasmine snarled as reports of the jams came to her. The first salvo had been perfect, landing seven of the eight fourteen-inch heavy shells directly atop the limping battleship bearing the same flag as the destroyers that she'd just escaped. The second, however, merely added to the spray the target was already receiving. Salvo three, what of it had actually fired, hadn't even managed that.
In the distance, six fireballs bloomed as the twisted battleship responded to the battlecruiser. Cursing harder, Jasmine threw her three rudders hard over to starboard to evade. Massive plumes of water erupted a hundred yards away, a clear sign of just what she was facing.
She needed her guns operational again fast or else she and her precious cargo were doomed. Her armor was good, but she knew she couldn't survive repeated sixteen-inch hits. And even at full power, she wouldn't be able to open the range in time to escape. Turret One roared, three shells lancing out and throwing up two columns of spray. The third struck home on what she was beginning to think might be a fast battleship of some sort.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then four bright flashes lit up the enemy, three from the muzzles of the guns, and one much larger one immediately ahead in the lower turret. The bow lurched downward as a jet of hellish flame shot upward from it. She'd scored a major hit, possibly even a fatal one!
Then the battleship heeled over in a turn to unshadow her aft mounts, slowing in the process. Good and bad. On the one hand, the enemy was no longer closing at thirty knots. On the other, now she was facing nine sixteen-inch/50s instead of six.
"Oh come on!" Jasmine groaned. "Why couldn't that have set off the fucking magazine!?"
She still couldn't get out of range fast enough to not get her stern shot off.
There was only one thing Cyane could think of at this point that might let her escape. "Load HC!" She called. If she could destroy the primary rangefinders, she had a chance.
As she made another sharp turn to evade the incoming fire, she grinned as both turrets reported the jams cleared. The moment she had a firing solution again, she'd take the shot. And keep doing so until that abomination's superstructure was demolished. It was the only way she could actually get the enemy off her tail.
Carefully adjusting her rudders for a better angle, the battlecruiser watched her foe intently. Almost... almost...
"Shoot!"
Eight 1500 lb shells arced across the 23000 yards separating the two ships. Eight shells bearing 120 lbs of Explosive D each slammed into the black mass of steel amidships of the target. Seventeen fireballs erupted along the hulking form of the battleship.
Jasmine smirked smugly as the forward tower of her enemy began to crumple in on itself, spewing smoke and flame. A good hit.
"Right, Engineering? I need overload power for five minutes! We're de-assing the area at best possible speed!"
Disregarding the scattered columns of spray from the last inbound salvo, the battlecruiser heeled over in a sharp turn away and her boilers hummed eerily as they were pushed to their maximum rated temperature. Turbines were spun up to their limits, and the stern sank as the four screws clawed at the ocean like a demon. Cyane was gasping for breath, straining to reach the highest speed possible for a ship her size.
37 knots.
37.1.
37.3.
37.5.
A strange sensation began building in her chest, as if her heart was being shaken loose, even though the organ was no longer present. It wasn't pain, not as any understood it. No, it was the feeling of pressing against an absolute. A ship of 33,000 tons should not be moving as fast as she was. Jasmine didn't care.
She hit 38 knots, turbines howling like a Category 5 hurricane.
With overwhelming power surging through her, Cyane dove into the gathering mists, ensuring her breakaway's success. She could double back and head for the coast again once she was sure she was clear.
In any clime or place
In any clime or place
Los Angeles International Airport, Tom Brady International Terminal
January 2nd, 2011
"Shift right! Shift right!" a Marine barked as he and his compatriots engaged the infantry assault coming up from Runway 25R, past the still burning 747.
"TANK!" another shouted, pointing to a mockery of what appears to be a Japanese medium tank from the Second World War came into view from across the runways.
"Long, hit with your AT!" a lieutenant hollered to fellow Marines in a neighboring gate area.
"Roger! Hernandez, you're up!" a lance corporal barked to her fireteam.
"Engaging!" Hernandez replied as he rose from cover with his AT-4 primed. "Backblast clear!"
Soon the terminal was briefly deafened by the blast of the rocket launcher while dust and debris was kicked up, followed by the invader's tank erupting into a ball of fire and scrap iron.
"Fucking nice one, Jose!" a Marine cheered.
"Don't celebrate now boys, we've still got a battle to fight!" the corporal barked.
"Who the hell are we even fighting?" a private asked.
"No idea, but from what we heard so far, LA isn't the only one being invaded," another commented.
"We worry about that later, right now we need to prevent them from advancing any farther."
Just then a squad of LAPD SWAT came up to the marine platoon.
"What's the news?" the lieutenant turned to the police officers.
"These bastards haven't broken past I-405, but by god they are trying. I got officers reporting a major assault at the I-105 interchange, that's where most of these bastards' tanks are located." the SWAT sergeant announced.
"They really want to take the city that badly?" a corporal quipped before she turned to re-engage the invaders with her M1.
"Zip it, Locke," a sergeant snapped, "I got eyes on an APC on the perimeter."
However, it wasn't long after the APC showed up on the fence, it got hit by a rocket, the sergeant glanced over to see it was from Lance Corporal Yolei Long's fireteam.
"Good job Yolo!" A marine cheered.
"So what brings your lot here?" the lieutenant asked the LAPD officers.
"LAX staff told us that they heard that at least two planes on the tarmac still had passengers in them, we need you to cover us so we can extract them."
"How the hell are there still people in the planes?" a Marine asked in surprise.
"Hey, get off the cops' back Joe, with the whole city going to shit, I ain't surprised some people got missed." a sergeant commented.
"Alright, what planes do you need to check?" the lieutenant asked.
"We want to check out the Pan Am Jumbo Jet and the Cathay Airlines Airbus, those two here," the LAPD officer pointed to the two planes that were on the taxiway, near the Tom Brady Terminal
"Alright, we'll cover your team, get going." the lieutenant said.
"Thank you." the LAPD SWAT commander nodded, "Alright, let's get going, boys."
Soon the LAPD SWAT team left to head to the deck to check the planes on the tarmac. The Marines continued to provide covering fire especially as the invaders were still attacking, mostly infantry, with the occasional armoured support which were quickly dispatched.
"Yolo, ammo count!" the lieutenant enquired as he knew that Yolei's fireteam had fired quite a few rockets by now.
"Got two missiles left, nearly out of Carl Gustav rounds!" Yolei hollered back.
"Go get resupplied, we don't know how much more armour they got ready for us!"
"Roger!" Yolei replied, "Yaomomo! Pharaoh! You're on, get more ammo! Fast!"
"Hai! Let's go Malek!" a Marine corporal got up, followed by a Marine private.
"Don't get lost, you two!" a Marine joked.
"Shut up, Booker!" the corporal snapped back.
"Get moving, Momo," the private replied and the two Marines head out to get more ammo.
"It looks like they're nearly done searching the Pan Am Jumbo." a Marine pointed to the Boeing laying on her belly on the pockmarked tarmac, the SWAT team plus LAX Police formed a perimeter between the Pan Am and the terminal building.
The next plane, the Cathay Airbus was in a rather precarious position as it was nose up thanks to the Airbus still attached to the jet bridge on the western terminal building. There is another group of police officers boarding the plane.
"Contact south! More grunts coming through the fence!" a Marine hollered.
"Take them out! Cover the LAPD officers!" the lieutenant barked, the Marines didn't need any more encouragement as they shifted fire to provide covering fire for the LAPD and passengers being evacuated. Yolei was commanding her fireteam who like the rest of the platoon were shooting at the invaders, it was when something caught the attention of the corner of her eye, she turned and what she saw, made her heart skip a beat, it was an invader tank who had flanked around the far side of the burning jumbo jet, to now be aiming its cannon at her gate waiting area.
"TAKE COVER!" Yolei hollered before her fireteam was engulfed in smoke.
"JESUS FUCK!" a Marine screamed when the building rocked from the impact.
"Oh shit! That was Yolei's fireteam!" another pointed out.
"Fuck! There goes our heavy weapons team!" the platoon sergeant cursed.
"McGaffe! Go and check on them!" the lieutenant ordered.
"Aye-aye lieutenant!" McGaffe said as he got up to move to the gate waiting area where he found the fireteam dazed however when he turned to a pillar, he saw a terrible sight, there was Lance Corporal Yolei Xiu Long leaning against the wall, well what's left of her, as a good chunk of her was just gone, her right arm, shoulder and her right upper torso were just gone with her head leaning unnaturally into the empty spot, her eyes already lifeless. Her uniform and gear were also charred from the impact. He didn't need to guess what happened to her rifle. He took his eyes off the dead lance corporal to turn to the rest of the fireteam, minus the two off on resupply, they looked dazed but generally uninjured at first glance but one of the private did seem to be bleeding where he shouldn't be.
"Anyone wounded?" McGaffe asked.
"I am, sergeant…" a marine groaned.
"Alright, let's get you to the aid station." McGaffe said. As he was about to do so, another shot flew into the terminal building, causing it to shake.
"Shit, that tank's still out there." a PFC swore.
"Worry about it later, help me get your buddy to the aid station." McGaffe barked.
"Got it, sarge." the PFC replied.
"Alright, tell Yamomo, when she comes back, she's in charge." McGaffe ordered.
"Aye-aye, sarge" the first private replied. The rest of the marines continued to fight, trying to button the hostile tank. Then they heard a strange noise, an engine running at full tilt, then suddenly it came to a stop before what sounded like bazookas going off. A marine leaned over and he did a double take as he couldn't believe what he saw on the tarmac.
"Fucking hell, Ontos! We got fucking Ontos for fire support" the marine shouted.
"You're shitting me!" a corporal exclaimed. Several marines glanced over, to see three M50 Ontos in their olive green, followed by more soldiers moving up alongside the tank destroyers. Soon more rumbling was heard, and these sounded heavier, it soon became apparent what beasts were making that rumbling
"Pattons! We got M60s!" another Marine hollered. Two M60 Pattons rolled up on the opposite side on the beached whale that was the Pan Am jet, their forest camouflage creating a striking contrast with the urban environment that surrounded them. They were quick in laying into the enemy. The lieutenant of the platoon of Marines sighed in relief as now he knew his soldiers were making out of this battle. He still internally frowned thinking of his losses so far.
"Hey Lieutenant," a marine broke the lieutenant's musing.
"What is it, Private?" the lieutenant asked. He noticed that private and other marines were looking at something.
"Do you see that?" the Marine pointed west. The lieutenant turned in the direction and he saw an incredible sight. The usually calm Pacific Ocean appeared to churn and bubble as if boiling. The scene was so strange that everyone seemed to pause to watch the bizarre occurrence.
"What the hell is going on?" a marine uttered.
"Did some gas pipeline get damaged?" another asked.
"Hey, you seeing this?!"
The marines looked over their ledge, to look at the open hatch of the nearest M60 tank where the tank commander was sticking out from and he was looking up at the Marines.
"Yeah, we're seeing it too…" the lieutenant replied.
"Hey look! Something's coming out of the water!" a marine barked. All who heard the marine immediately looked back out to the Pacific to see what looked like steam coming off the surface as the water bulged as if trying to keep whatever beneath it from emerging but it soon lost the battle as soon the bulging water collapsed as shapes began to rise out the sea. No one could tell what they were until someone recognized the shapes.
"Are those ships?" a private asked. The marines on the terminal looked at the shapes and could see what the private was pointing out, from masts piercing out of the water to the superstructure of the various ships with water cascading off their sides. After what seemed like an eternity, the soldiers saw six gray behemoths standing proud in the water.
"What the hell are those?" a lance corporal wondered. The lieutenant and the tank commander looked through their binoculars to get a better look at the new ships. All the while the other soldiers eyed the invaders who also seemed perplexed by the new arrivals.
"You think they're friendly?" a marine asked. As if the ships heard the marine's comment, the turrets on the ships further out to sea moved with a mechanical grace not commonly seen besides on the Iowas and occasionally the Montanas whenever they got moved for maintenance and inspection. However, the direction of the guns gave the marines concern.
"Wait… where are those guns aiming at?" another pointed out. The watching soldiers soon found out as the ships guns flashed in their deadly brilliance and soon the area south Runway 25R erupted in fire and smoke.
"Holy shit! Talk about a gift from God," a private cheered. His compatriots hollered and shouted their appreciation. Then they noticed that the ship closest to the shore was quite busy as the defenders of LAX saw cranes moving and boats being lowered. Soon it became apparent what exactly was happening as those boats came closer to the beach and what surprised the marines was the type of boats they were.
"Wait? Are those Higgins boats?" another pointed out to sea to the bobbing boats approaching the beach.
"Holy shit, they're fucking Higgins boats! And they've got LVTs with them!" a corporal shouted. The marines watched in amazement until the attackers reminded them they were still in battle. The lieutenant glanced between the battle and the approaching landing crafts. He was concerned as if they were friendly or not, but seeing that the parent ship was firing at his current enemy reassured him.
"They're dropping their ramps!" a marine barked. The defenders and attackers all seemed to stop fighting to glance at the landing crafts beached themselves, their ramps crashing down after a slight delay followed by soldiers, tanks, and vehicles racing out of the landing crafts. The defenders felt despair as the new forces began racing towards the airport, but as they entered, the tanks and armoured cars swung their turrets towards the attackers and opened fire. This was quickly followed by a cacophony of rifle and machine gun fire as the accompanying soldiers joined in the fight, sowing chaos into the invader's ranks. It seemed they had believed these newcomers to be their allies.
"HELL YEAH! About damn time we got some help!" a Marine shouted.
"Give them hell!" Momo shouted as she fired her rifle.
However some of the invaders regained their composure. As one of the invaders raise a dirtied and shredded flag before shouting a battle cry, it was followed by the other invaders, who suddenly seemed energized by the battle cry and the flag as well.
"Shit! They're charging us!" a Marine shouted.
"SHOOT! SHOOT!" Another shouted.
"Don't let them pass, Marines!" The Marine lieutenant rallied his men. The marines poured murderous fire into the charging enemy, supported by the tanks, vehicles and the new reinforcements from the sea.
After what seemed like an eternity, the charge was halted and soon calls for ceasefires were heard across the airport. The Marines finally decided to come down to greet their reinforcements but many froze when they laid eyes on the soldiers, especially those who were in the terminal. The new soldiers looked rather pale, but not sickly, and yet they still looked off. Stranger still, their uniforms were straight out of the Second World War.
"Oh hey there, that was a close one, wasn't it?" A nearby WW2 Marine commented.
"Y-Yeah…" the Marine lieutenant replied.
"You alright? You're looking rather nervous," the WW2 Marine asked, "You are wondering about who we are aren't you?"
"Yeah, why are you dressed in relics from WW2?" a PFC asked. The Lieutenant glared at the private.
"Oh! That's easy bud," the old dressed marine laughed. "That's because we are Marines of that beauty of a ship, USS Parris Island."
The airport defenders looked up to see the ship in question sailing gently closer to the shore. Meanwhile out to sea, the other ships held position. Now that the battle had quieted down, the defenders realized that their support was not from modern warships but ships they had seen from pictures from the Second World War.
"Wait, USS Parris Island?" the Marine Lieutenant asked, "Wasn't she scrapped 40 years ago?"
"Well, the same could be said of the ships out there. And yet, there they are," the old Marine pointed out to the ships.
"So, what brought you back?" the Marine Lieutenant asked.
"Well, this is our country isn't it?" the old Marine asked back, "Got to defend it."
Los Angeles International Airport, Tom Brady International Terminal
January 2nd, 2011
"Shift right! Shift right!" a Marine barked as he and his compatriots engaged the infantry assault coming up from Runway 25R, past the still burning 747.
"TANK!" another shouted, pointing to a mockery of what appears to be a Japanese medium tank from the Second World War came into view from across the runways.
"Long, hit with your AT!" a lieutenant hollered to fellow Marines in a neighboring gate area.
"Roger! Hernandez, you're up!" a lance corporal barked to her fireteam.
"Engaging!" Hernandez replied as he rose from cover with his AT-4 primed. "Backblast clear!"
Soon the terminal was briefly deafened by the blast of the rocket launcher while dust and debris was kicked up, followed by the invader's tank erupting into a ball of fire and scrap iron.
"Fucking nice one, Jose!" a Marine cheered.
"Don't celebrate now boys, we've still got a battle to fight!" the corporal barked.
"Who the hell are we even fighting?" a private asked.
"No idea, but from what we heard so far, LA isn't the only one being invaded," another commented.
"We worry about that later, right now we need to prevent them from advancing any farther."
Just then a squad of LAPD SWAT came up to the marine platoon.
"What's the news?" the lieutenant turned to the police officers.
"These bastards haven't broken past I-405, but by god they are trying. I got officers reporting a major assault at the I-105 interchange, that's where most of these bastards' tanks are located." the SWAT sergeant announced.
"They really want to take the city that badly?" a corporal quipped before she turned to re-engage the invaders with her M1.
"Zip it, Locke," a sergeant snapped, "I got eyes on an APC on the perimeter."
However, it wasn't long after the APC showed up on the fence, it got hit by a rocket, the sergeant glanced over to see it was from Lance Corporal Yolei Long's fireteam.
"Good job Yolo!" A marine cheered.
"So what brings your lot here?" the lieutenant asked the LAPD officers.
"LAX staff told us that they heard that at least two planes on the tarmac still had passengers in them, we need you to cover us so we can extract them."
"How the hell are there still people in the planes?" a Marine asked in surprise.
"Hey, get off the cops' back Joe, with the whole city going to shit, I ain't surprised some people got missed." a sergeant commented.
"Alright, what planes do you need to check?" the lieutenant asked.
"We want to check out the Pan Am Jumbo Jet and the Cathay Airlines Airbus, those two here," the LAPD officer pointed to the two planes that were on the taxiway, near the Tom Brady Terminal
"Alright, we'll cover your team, get going." the lieutenant said.
"Thank you." the LAPD SWAT commander nodded, "Alright, let's get going, boys."
Soon the LAPD SWAT team left to head to the deck to check the planes on the tarmac. The Marines continued to provide covering fire especially as the invaders were still attacking, mostly infantry, with the occasional armoured support which were quickly dispatched.
"Yolo, ammo count!" the lieutenant enquired as he knew that Yolei's fireteam had fired quite a few rockets by now.
"Got two missiles left, nearly out of Carl Gustav rounds!" Yolei hollered back.
"Go get resupplied, we don't know how much more armour they got ready for us!"
"Roger!" Yolei replied, "Yaomomo! Pharaoh! You're on, get more ammo! Fast!"
"Hai! Let's go Malek!" a Marine corporal got up, followed by a Marine private.
"Don't get lost, you two!" a Marine joked.
"Shut up, Booker!" the corporal snapped back.
"Get moving, Momo," the private replied and the two Marines head out to get more ammo.
"It looks like they're nearly done searching the Pan Am Jumbo." a Marine pointed to the Boeing laying on her belly on the pockmarked tarmac, the SWAT team plus LAX Police formed a perimeter between the Pan Am and the terminal building.
The next plane, the Cathay Airbus was in a rather precarious position as it was nose up thanks to the Airbus still attached to the jet bridge on the western terminal building. There is another group of police officers boarding the plane.
"Contact south! More grunts coming through the fence!" a Marine hollered.
"Take them out! Cover the LAPD officers!" the lieutenant barked, the Marines didn't need any more encouragement as they shifted fire to provide covering fire for the LAPD and passengers being evacuated. Yolei was commanding her fireteam who like the rest of the platoon were shooting at the invaders, it was when something caught the attention of the corner of her eye, she turned and what she saw, made her heart skip a beat, it was an invader tank who had flanked around the far side of the burning jumbo jet, to now be aiming its cannon at her gate waiting area.
"TAKE COVER!" Yolei hollered before her fireteam was engulfed in smoke.
"JESUS FUCK!" a Marine screamed when the building rocked from the impact.
"Oh shit! That was Yolei's fireteam!" another pointed out.
"Fuck! There goes our heavy weapons team!" the platoon sergeant cursed.
"McGaffe! Go and check on them!" the lieutenant ordered.
"Aye-aye lieutenant!" McGaffe said as he got up to move to the gate waiting area where he found the fireteam dazed however when he turned to a pillar, he saw a terrible sight, there was Lance Corporal Yolei Xiu Long leaning against the wall, well what's left of her, as a good chunk of her was just gone, her right arm, shoulder and her right upper torso were just gone with her head leaning unnaturally into the empty spot, her eyes already lifeless. Her uniform and gear were also charred from the impact. He didn't need to guess what happened to her rifle. He took his eyes off the dead lance corporal to turn to the rest of the fireteam, minus the two off on resupply, they looked dazed but generally uninjured at first glance but one of the private did seem to be bleeding where he shouldn't be.
"Anyone wounded?" McGaffe asked.
"I am, sergeant…" a marine groaned.
"Alright, let's get you to the aid station." McGaffe said. As he was about to do so, another shot flew into the terminal building, causing it to shake.
"Shit, that tank's still out there." a PFC swore.
"Worry about it later, help me get your buddy to the aid station." McGaffe barked.
"Got it, sarge." the PFC replied.
"Alright, tell Yamomo, when she comes back, she's in charge." McGaffe ordered.
"Aye-aye, sarge" the first private replied. The rest of the marines continued to fight, trying to button the hostile tank. Then they heard a strange noise, an engine running at full tilt, then suddenly it came to a stop before what sounded like bazookas going off. A marine leaned over and he did a double take as he couldn't believe what he saw on the tarmac.
"Fucking hell, Ontos! We got fucking Ontos for fire support" the marine shouted.
"You're shitting me!" a corporal exclaimed. Several marines glanced over, to see three M50 Ontos in their olive green, followed by more soldiers moving up alongside the tank destroyers. Soon more rumbling was heard, and these sounded heavier, it soon became apparent what beasts were making that rumbling
"Pattons! We got M60s!" another Marine hollered. Two M60 Pattons rolled up on the opposite side on the beached whale that was the Pan Am jet, their forest camouflage creating a striking contrast with the urban environment that surrounded them. They were quick in laying into the enemy. The lieutenant of the platoon of Marines sighed in relief as now he knew his soldiers were making out of this battle. He still internally frowned thinking of his losses so far.
"Hey Lieutenant," a marine broke the lieutenant's musing.
"What is it, Private?" the lieutenant asked. He noticed that private and other marines were looking at something.
"Do you see that?" the Marine pointed west. The lieutenant turned in the direction and he saw an incredible sight. The usually calm Pacific Ocean appeared to churn and bubble as if boiling. The scene was so strange that everyone seemed to pause to watch the bizarre occurrence.
"What the hell is going on?" a marine uttered.
"Did some gas pipeline get damaged?" another asked.
"Hey, you seeing this?!"
The marines looked over their ledge, to look at the open hatch of the nearest M60 tank where the tank commander was sticking out from and he was looking up at the Marines.
"Yeah, we're seeing it too…" the lieutenant replied.
"Hey look! Something's coming out of the water!" a marine barked. All who heard the marine immediately looked back out to the Pacific to see what looked like steam coming off the surface as the water bulged as if trying to keep whatever beneath it from emerging but it soon lost the battle as soon the bulging water collapsed as shapes began to rise out the sea. No one could tell what they were until someone recognized the shapes.
"Are those ships?" a private asked. The marines on the terminal looked at the shapes and could see what the private was pointing out, from masts piercing out of the water to the superstructure of the various ships with water cascading off their sides. After what seemed like an eternity, the soldiers saw six gray behemoths standing proud in the water.
"What the hell are those?" a lance corporal wondered. The lieutenant and the tank commander looked through their binoculars to get a better look at the new ships. All the while the other soldiers eyed the invaders who also seemed perplexed by the new arrivals.
"You think they're friendly?" a marine asked. As if the ships heard the marine's comment, the turrets on the ships further out to sea moved with a mechanical grace not commonly seen besides on the Iowas and occasionally the Montanas whenever they got moved for maintenance and inspection. However, the direction of the guns gave the marines concern.
"Wait… where are those guns aiming at?" another pointed out. The watching soldiers soon found out as the ships guns flashed in their deadly brilliance and soon the area south Runway 25R erupted in fire and smoke.
"Holy shit! Talk about a gift from God," a private cheered. His compatriots hollered and shouted their appreciation. Then they noticed that the ship closest to the shore was quite busy as the defenders of LAX saw cranes moving and boats being lowered. Soon it became apparent what exactly was happening as those boats came closer to the beach and what surprised the marines was the type of boats they were.
"Wait? Are those Higgins boats?" another pointed out to sea to the bobbing boats approaching the beach.
"Holy shit, they're fucking Higgins boats! And they've got LVTs with them!" a corporal shouted. The marines watched in amazement until the attackers reminded them they were still in battle. The lieutenant glanced between the battle and the approaching landing crafts. He was concerned as if they were friendly or not, but seeing that the parent ship was firing at his current enemy reassured him.
"They're dropping their ramps!" a marine barked. The defenders and attackers all seemed to stop fighting to glance at the landing crafts beached themselves, their ramps crashing down after a slight delay followed by soldiers, tanks, and vehicles racing out of the landing crafts. The defenders felt despair as the new forces began racing towards the airport, but as they entered, the tanks and armoured cars swung their turrets towards the attackers and opened fire. This was quickly followed by a cacophony of rifle and machine gun fire as the accompanying soldiers joined in the fight, sowing chaos into the invader's ranks. It seemed they had believed these newcomers to be their allies.
"HELL YEAH! About damn time we got some help!" a Marine shouted.
"Give them hell!" Momo shouted as she fired her rifle.
However some of the invaders regained their composure. As one of the invaders raise a dirtied and shredded flag before shouting a battle cry, it was followed by the other invaders, who suddenly seemed energized by the battle cry and the flag as well.
"Shit! They're charging us!" a Marine shouted.
"SHOOT! SHOOT!" Another shouted.
"Don't let them pass, Marines!" The Marine lieutenant rallied his men. The marines poured murderous fire into the charging enemy, supported by the tanks, vehicles and the new reinforcements from the sea.
After what seemed like an eternity, the charge was halted and soon calls for ceasefires were heard across the airport. The Marines finally decided to come down to greet their reinforcements but many froze when they laid eyes on the soldiers, especially those who were in the terminal. The new soldiers looked rather pale, but not sickly, and yet they still looked off. Stranger still, their uniforms were straight out of the Second World War.
"Oh hey there, that was a close one, wasn't it?" A nearby WW2 Marine commented.
"Y-Yeah…" the Marine lieutenant replied.
"You alright? You're looking rather nervous," the WW2 Marine asked, "You are wondering about who we are aren't you?"
"Yeah, why are you dressed in relics from WW2?" a PFC asked. The Lieutenant glared at the private.
"Oh! That's easy bud," the old dressed marine laughed. "That's because we are Marines of that beauty of a ship, USS Parris Island."
The airport defenders looked up to see the ship in question sailing gently closer to the shore. Meanwhile out to sea, the other ships held position. Now that the battle had quieted down, the defenders realized that their support was not from modern warships but ships they had seen from pictures from the Second World War.
"Wait, USS Parris Island?" the Marine Lieutenant asked, "Wasn't she scrapped 40 years ago?"
"Well, the same could be said of the ships out there. And yet, there they are," the old Marine pointed out to the ships.
"So, what brought you back?" the Marine Lieutenant asked.
"Well, this is our country isn't it?" the old Marine asked back, "Got to defend it."
PhoebusArtemis
Just a random factfinder.
- Location
- I'll never tell...
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Nicely done!
Happy new year all; here's to hoping it'll be better than this last one.
Happy new year all; here's to hoping it'll be better than this last one.
A New Hope
A New Hope
Author Jacktank10Special thanks to the Discord Team for helping with editing and revising.
Blood Week Day 5 (January 5th, 2011)
A portal appeared atop the Mountain of Bønntuva, and out stepped the Archivist, a powerful mage and keeper of ancient knowledge. She was clad in an elegant garment made from exquisite grey cloth with runic patterns that were woven throughout. In one hand, she held a long wooden staff encased in iron and inscribed with magical sigils and runes; in the other, a large and thick tome. After observing the area for a moment, she nodded, cast a small stealth spell, and from the portal emerged a giant mech suit that a fan of Warhammer would recognize as similar to a Telemon Pattern Heavy Dreadnought. This was Bulwark, a formidable warrior and the Archivist's trusted ally, armed for war. She made a slight movement of a hand, and an anamorphic book popped into existence. She then presented a small bag to Bulwark. From the bag, Bulwark pulled five large metallic tubes. After planting the tubes firmly in the ground, he hit a button on his suit wrist. There was a large puff of smoke from each tube as large drones popped out, and their wings swung out, locking in place. The drones then flew off in various directions. From Bulwark's upper right chest plate, a slight covering popped off, exposing a small glass circle, and from it, a beam shot out toward the ground, creating an expanding 3d hologram of the surrounding environment.
After about 20 minutes, Bulwark spoke up. "Your scrying was accurate, even with the demon's interference. Those bastards are doing terrible things to the people of the area and their prisoners. I confirm a processing camp in Tromsø's former downtown and harbor area. From my scans, it looks like the demons are mass-converting people into abominations. I haven't seen anything like this in my studies."
The Archivist replied, "In some of the oldest records, I have seen references to what they are doing, which is anathema. The records are incomplete, so I am unaware of how to fix them, but I will dedicate my time to hunting for answers after this battle. However, that camp must be dealt with." Her calm demeanor and extensive knowledge reassured Bulwark that they were in capable hands.
Bulwark, looking at her, nodded and then continued. "Our primary target, Olavsvern, took some damage, it looks like, and the demons are digging it out. It seems the base personnel managed to detonate some scuttling charges before being overwhelmed. Outside of that, it looks like the demons have been adding fortifications through all the approaches to the town, both in Sweden's direction and at the sea entrances. From the radio traffic, I can see that there appear to be about five full divisions of demon ground forces in the area. A Cruiser Princess, Four cruisers, 12 destroyers, 20 light craft, and four submarines are currently docked in the harbor. Around Olavsvern, there is another cruiser, what looks like some kind of construction ship, and two more destroyers. It also looks like they are prepping some sort of summoning circle around the remnants of the Tirpitz's wreck at Kåfjord. I'm adding that to the targeting plans. We don't need a second and much stronger demon princess appearing. So, Archivist, I need you to create some gates at these locations from my depositories: Alpha, Omega, Epsilon, Omicron, Zeta, Beta, and Tau. I also need some tunnel fighters, so add a gate to my special storehouse zero."
The Archivist looked surprised. "Are you sure you want to deploy many warforged and magitech war machines? That's almost three whole divisions, to use modern vernacular."
Bulwark solemnly replied, "The Harbinger no longer wants us to hide. Today, we show the world what we can do. We are sworn to defend the earth from dangerous extraplanar and planar threats."
Archivist nodded and started meticulously preparing the battlefield while Bulwark sent orders to his warforged. Archivist nodded and started meticulously preparing the battlefield while Bulwark sent orders to his warforged. The Archivist gestured to her floating bag, and out from it began to flow dozens of scrolls. The Archivist started drawing large sigils and circles around her using her staff as she chanted arcane words of power. The world around her began to thrum with power, and the Demons in the surrounding region started to notice something was going on. The Princess in Tromsø began to panic and looked in their general direction. Before they could react, large ice walls shot from the water, blocking Tromsø from the sea and isolating the demonic forces within as an unnatural ice storm formed around the Tromsø region, isolating the area from any demonic reinforcements and blocking the demons from calling reinforcements. When all this was finished, the circles the Archivist had prepared clicked into place with a solid thump. That should last 18 hours before the Demons can break the spells plenty of time. She then started grabbing the scrolls, opening them, and speaking their contents out loud in an ancient tongue. As each scroll disintegrated, spells were launched into the Abyssal forces as holes ripped in the sky, and blazing orbs of radiant fire plummeted to the ground, destroying key demonic fortifications, wounding and sinking various ships, and throwing the Abyssal forces into chaos. The Archivist then asked Bulwark if he was ready, and he responded yes. Then the Archivist pulled more scrolls from the air around her and spoke more phrases, causing large gates to open in various places in the surrounding region, and out of those gates marched, walked, and rolled thousands of warforged, various walkers, and heavy equipment.
The Cruiser Princess, wounded as she was in the initial bombardment, started to rally her troops and surviving ships, and they opened fire on and moved to engage Bulwark's forces as the first battles began to take place. Bulwark's artillery walkers then opened fire with beams of blazing light, which arced up into the air, and wherever they landed, abyssal ships and units died. After shredding the Princess's remaining ships, they turned to hit the Abyssal units further out. Bulwark troops kitted out with magical laser weapons, runic battle axes, and runic armor and started cutting through the numerically superior Abyssal units. As the battle unfolded below them, Bulwark pulled a sizable greatsword from a bag on his belt and spoke a prayer. The sword did not appear to come from this earth; made from a strange metal, it glowed with power as a low hum filled the air. "The Demon princess is mine, Archivist." Provide overwatch and use your spells to assist my troops when they need help. They will let you know where your power is most helpful." With that, Bulwark Jumped, launching himself into the air, and with a warcry, he landed at the front of one of his armored companies, pushing towards the Tromso Bridge. He let out a warcry that could be heard for miles. He started charging down the hills, smashing into the main Abyssal fortifications around the bridge and cutting a massive hole in the Abyssal lines for his troops to exploit.
At this point, more portals opened up around the prisoner camps as additional warforged appeared, some painted white with large red crosses. The white warforged started administering spot medical care, leading the surviving prisoners through the portals. The other warforged moved out from the camps to wreak havoc on any abyssal troops and monsters trying to organize a counterattack towards Bulwark, who, at this point, just crossed the bridge, getting ever closer to the Princess, leaving an ever-growing path of broken and destroyed abyssal monsters, troops, and equipment.
As the Princess was distracted by the massive amount of death and destruction around her inside Olavsvern, the surviving American troops, and base personnel hiding behind some quickly assembled barricades were waiting anxiously as the sounds of drilling and hammering were getting ever closer to them. Behind them sat a stockpile of nuclear weapons in various rooms. One of the nuclear warheads currently sat a few feet behind them and had its panels open as two technicians were desperately trying to find a way to bypass the command codes, which were lost when the commander and his first officer died in the first few minutes of the attack. The survivors intended to detonate the nuke and deny the stockpile to the enemy. However, the technicians were having no luck. Just as the noises started to get loud enough that a breach was intimate, the drilling and digging suddenly stopped. All the Americans could hear was the sounds of rapid gunshots, metal clashing on metal. And the dead silence. A small portal then appeared, and a white canister fell through. Before they could react, bright lights and gas filled the room, sending them into unconsciousness.
By this point, Bulwark had reached the badly wounded Princess. As she desperately backed up from him, she had some of her other ship girls in various states of distress fire point blank at him. His shield, lit with arcane energy, deflected the shots with a mighty dong, and he proceeded to dispatch each one. His sword cut through their corrupted nature as easily as a hot knife through butter. The Princess desperately tried to resummon them but couldn't find their malformed souls. As she tried to back up, blocked by some rubble, she asked Bulwark what he had done; Bulwark responded, "Like all demonic creatures, when slain by any relic with enough holy or religious power, their demonic nature and soul are destroyed, ending them permanently. Sometimes, a significantly powerful demon is strong enough for its essence to be reformed and survive the ordeal, but that's not the case for most. Let's see if you are strong enough to come back from this, shall we:" With that, he executed the Princess with a single strike to her malformed heart and then proceeded to slice her head clean off. An unearthly scream of pure pain emerged from her corpse as holy light ate her to the bone.
Bulwark huffed, "It looks like you were not strong enough," pulling out a cloth and wiping the ichor from his sword. The battle was over as the Archivist bombarded any surviving ships with arcane radiant force and spells, paying special attention to the activity around the wreck of the Tirpitz, destroying the few remaining Abyssal units in the area. The remaining land units that survived then went feral without their commander, hunted to the last by the Bulwark's many warforged creations. Bulwark then pulled some small runic USB sticks from his armor and looked at where the Archivist would be. He spoke unto the wind, "Let's provide the mortals hope." A small portal then opened, vacuuming the USB sticks up.
Meanwhile, a large portal opened across the globe at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. Before anyone could react, pallets of nuclear weapons and the unconscious bodies of the surviving base personnel suddenly appeared. When the security forces finally approached the nuclear weapons and the people, they discovered a small note that read, "The demons of the deep sought these weapons of destruction. We could not let that come to pass. Therefore, we felt it was our duty to return these to you. Best regards, The Five."
As the soldiers examined the envelope for anything else, a few USB sticks fell out. Following exhaustive security checks, the runic USB sticks were found to contain footage of the battle in Tromsø, including the utter destruction of a princess. Within hours, this footage was leaked and spread, reigniting hope among the people of the world.
Last edited:
Fury and 14s Part II
Sandy River DL
(Verified Destroyer Leader)
- Location
- Lake Michigan
- Pronouns
- Her/She
Previous installment
"Are you sure we haven't gotten lost?" Dorothy asked, looking over to Jasmine. "Because I don't think it should be taking this long to reach Philadelphia."
The shipgirl stared out into the fog-shrouded seas for a long moment before giving her response "Dead reckoning isn't great, but with the compass not working, it's all we've got."
Her warm brown eyes flicked to the erratically spinning needle of the device in question. "Besides, my crew've been keeping track of the Gulf Stream, so we can't that lost."
"Ma'am!" called one of the ensigns on watch. "The fog's starting to thin out. We'll be able to check our bearings in a few minutes."
Jasmine nodded to him. "Good. Thanks for the update." Then, turning to Dorothy, she added "Worst comes to worst, we're somewhere off the coast of Labrador and can just head straight home to Brockton."
The redhead gave her companion/ride a look that carried within it an entire paragraph of how little she believed the older girl.
"Right, sure. And Armsmaster will be waiting for us at the pier with cake. We're properly lost, I can feel it."
"Oh come on brat, what's with the lack of trust?"
Before Dorothy could respond to that, the fog parted to reveal a clear night sky, dimly lit by a sliver of moon. One sailor rushed out with a sextant and began his work. "Approximate location is forty-one degrees north... five minutes. Thirty-one degrees, forty minutes west. That puts us about a hundred miles north of Corvo Island, in the Azores."
Both girls stared at the man for a long moment, before Dorothy's head slowly began turning to direct a glare at the girl she was beginning to think of as something approximating a big sister. "Off the coast of Canada you said..."
"I... how the fuck...?" Jasmine stammered. "This doesn't make sense!"
Her navigation officer coughed. "Uh, ma'am? Our charts and temperature records are from 1940. Depending on just how things have changed in the past seventy years, even the best navigator could get lost. And with this damn magic fog, even the slightest error could result - and seem to have - in heading in the opposite direction of what was intended."
The shipgirl stared at him for a long moment, before she began cursing in three languages. Several members of the bridge crew promptly pulled out notepads and started jotting things down.
Before she could build up too much momentum though, a voice called "Radar contact, bearing 090! Large return, surface. Range, five thousand."
Instantly focusing, Jasmine stated "Sound General Quarters and stand-by for full speed. I want guns on it now."
Then, from the mist a shape, a ship was taking form. Dorothy's voice came out barely audible through the sounding alarm. "What is that? It's like... a beast made of steel..."
Cyane's eyes locked onto the hulking gray vessel that was still emerging from the fogbank to the north. "Battleship Bismarck. Pride of Germany, and briefly flagship of the Kriegsmarine. If she's hostile, there's nothing I can do to stop her from sinking us at this point. She's too close..."
"Ma'am!" called a lookout, "She's flying the Imperial naval ensign, not the Nazi one!"
Almost immediately after, a feminine voice amplified by loud hailer carried through the air "American warship, this is the German ship Bismarck! Please identify yourself."
Grabbing one of her own stock of megaphones and stepping out onto the bridge wing, the battlecruiser shouted back "This is USS Cyane CC-10! State your intentions!"
"Evading or destroying my evil twin!" was the reply.
"Well, she might have a bit of Rodney in her too," Bismarck added after a moment's thought. "I did take several fifteen-inch shell hits during our encounter."
As Jasmine silenced the alarms, she began running through what she remembered of the relevant ships. While she had a longstanding interest in history, her focus hadn't been on the war that had driven her grandparents from Hiroshima Prefecture. Even so, she knew more than a bit about naval warfare in the 20th Century. "Do you think we have enough of a lead to reach land before she gets into range? I can't stand up to that kind of firepower for long."
"Before the fog rolled in and cut off the radio, I heard reports of attacks along the entire Atlantic coast. The Azores are likely fallen, not defensible. While we might make landfall in Iberia, it might be throwing ourselves into enemy land forces. I was heading towards Gibraltar when I saw you, we should be able to get through together. French territory would be best from there, as the Mediterranean is more easily contested by the defenders."
The German battleship then sighed. "We best hurry, the Nazi Bitch will certainly catch us if we tarry longer."
"Great plan," Jasmine replied. "Best economic speed then?"
"Nineteen knots for me," Bismarck stated. "And I would guess that is well within your ability."
"Aye, it is. In fact, I'd almost call that a leisurely stroll," snarked the battlecruiser. "Twenty-one is my maximum economical."
"Excellent. Now follow me please, I've got the bearing we need and I'm not sure we'd be able to find each other again if we get separated in this."
With that, the statuesque blonde turned on her heel and began plowing through the waves towards the east.
"Jas, you're drooling."
Jasmine's eyes locked onto Dorothy with a glare. "Am not, and besides, I'm not the one
staring at her legs."
"But it wasn't her legs I was trying to get a - hey!"
The battlecruiser shot the younger girl an amused look and ruffled her hair. "Perv."
"Blame my brother for that," the redhead groused. "Some of his 'special magazines' that the 'rents didn't know about kept winding up in my stuff. I'm not even sure if I'm into girls or not."
Turning her attention outwards, the willowy Japanese-American girl picked her pace slightly to bring herself alongside her new German companion.
"So, what is the state of Germany these days?" Bismarck asked hesitantly. "I know the war was lost, that madman could hardly have won if that drivel he wrote was anything to go by. Is my home… did Germany at least survive?"
Jasmine left the question hanging for a moment as she wracked her memory. "Well, they lost some land, but it otherwise came out fairly whole for a country that picked a fight with the whole world. These days they're struggling with a group of neo-Nazi capes calling themselves 'Gessellshaft' or something like that who've made a few attempts to depose Kaiserin Victoria …"
Her cliffnotes update was cut off by a high-pitched noise readily recognized by any teenage girl as an excited squeal.
"The British let the Kaiser return?!" Bismarck exclaimed in a voice normally found in fourteen-year-olds whose crush asked them out. "That… that is very good to hear. I am confident that means Germany is on a better path then, even if that lunatic corporal still has a following."
A thoughtful look then crossed her face. "If it's not rude, how did a Japanese woman come to be an American warship?"
Jasmine shuddered. "I'm pretty sure I died. How that translates into becoming some sort of kantai musume, I haven't a clue, but the last thing I recall from before changing was dying of phosgene exposure." Ignoring the other woman's flinch, she continued "As for why American, it might potentially just be because I'm a third generation immigrant. My grandparents came over after the war, not wanting to remain in a devastated nation. Especially not when they lived not far from Hiroshima, which was basically a symbol of how far Japan had fallen in their eyes."
Bismarck flinched again. "Don't tell me Japan had sunk to the level Germany had…"
"No, or at least not like that. The city was destroyed by a bombing raid. One plane, carrying a nuclear weapon. Neither liked talking about that day, just that there was a bright flash like a second sun, followed by a colossal bang, and a cloud resembling a tree or mushroom on the horizon."
"That…" The battleship blinked a few times. "That's impossible. There's no way a weapon like that could be carried by an aircraft."
"Not particularly," Jasmine replied. "A person's body weight in Uranium was all it took, with the right set up. Most of it went unused, but what was consumed in the reaction… was equivalent to fifteen thousand tons of TNT. It took one of the biggest bombers the US had to carry just one, and it had to be modified to do so, but it was enough."
Brushing a loose lock of hair aside, the young woman sighed softly. "In some ways at least. The weapon worked, but it was too powerful. No one could believe it, even with the destruction being confirmed rapidly. The second though… That was enough for Emperor Showa. He ordered a full and unconditional surrender as soon as He got word of it. Some… utter bakas tried to oppose His will… but they were stopped before they could lead Japan into extinction out of stubborn pride."
"Oh." The battleship looked like she was having difficulty wrapping her mind around the idea.
-
The first sign that the enemy had found them was plumes of spray erupting around Bismarck. First a set of four splashes identified as from fifteen-inch shells, then another four from thirty-eight-centimeter ones, followed by the ocean being pounded into an even denser fog around the pair of capital ships. Jasmine flinched as a twenty-eight-centimeter projectile bounced off her conning tower with a booming clang.
"Get me a bearing of some sort on that incoming fire!" She yelled at a crewman sitting at one of the stations. "We can estimate the range off of the arc of fire, and drop our reply on them that way!"
A moment later she was biting back a scream of pain as what had to have been a twenty-inch shell plowed through her bow. "And someone hail Bismarck! We need to get the fuck out of here yesterday!"
Even as she was shouting orders, her two massive main battery turrets were traversing to face the incoming fire, as were her portside secondaries. Normal fire control methods would be all but useless with the sea being pounded like the fields at Verdun and the unnatural fog blocking radar, but she hoped her armament of automatic guns would compensate for her near-blind response. That, and loading her six-inch guns with AAC instead of the normal mix of high explosive and armor piercing. Hard to get accurate fire out when you're lacking in rangefinders and spotting equipment. She might even have starshells added to the mix, for the added effect of potentially setting the enemy on fire.
Bismarck's guns roared their reply first, accompanied by a string of German curses as the battleship began venting her fury. A massive explosion followed, far too soon to have been from the outgoing fire. Jasmine frowned slightly at that. Was that friendly fire, or an accident? Or had a friendly ship happened to have stumbled across them?
A moment later a call came up from the CIC voicetube. "Submarine detected! Bearing Zero-Zero-Five, eighteen-thousand yards!"
"I have sonar? Since when did I have that?" She wondered as her helmsman began evasive maneuvers.
Her captain gave her a sheepish look. "Sorry ma'am, the hydrophone system had several faults and I believe it was still being calibrated. Seems that it's operational now though."
"High speed screws, torpedoes in the water. Range constant, bearing zero-zero-five."
Eight fourteen-inch guns erupted along with eight six-inch weapons, sending a hail of fire in the direction of the enemy, which just so happened to be where the sub and torpedo launches were. Now that she was paying attention to it, Jasmine could hear the turmoil in the water around her, and track the progress of the two torpedoes towards one of the ships firing on her and Bismarck. That meant the probable U-boat was most likely friendly and she could cease evading.
Her hydrophone operator swore and yanked off the headset just in time before the torpedoes hit, and a colossal explosion tore the supernatural fog away as the targeted ship's magazine detonated. There was no identifying what little remained of the ship through the roiling cloud of smoke and flame as the sundered hulk began slipping beneath the waves, nothing was left that could hope to tell even its origins.
The abomination that was unveiled by the sundering, on the other hand, was all too clear. In complete defiance of the art of naval architecture, the great black beast had superfiring pairs of two-gun mountings of two visibly different designs, on a hull that looked like someone had tried to combine the designs of both Bismarck and Rodney into a single vessel without the faintest idea what they were doing. Possibly while drunk. And atop the monstrous ship's mast flew a very distinctive red banner. A red field with a white circle containing a pair of jagged intersecting lines.
"Are you sure we haven't gotten lost?" Dorothy asked, looking over to Jasmine. "Because I don't think it should be taking this long to reach Philadelphia."
The shipgirl stared out into the fog-shrouded seas for a long moment before giving her response "Dead reckoning isn't great, but with the compass not working, it's all we've got."
Her warm brown eyes flicked to the erratically spinning needle of the device in question. "Besides, my crew've been keeping track of the Gulf Stream, so we can't that lost."
"Ma'am!" called one of the ensigns on watch. "The fog's starting to thin out. We'll be able to check our bearings in a few minutes."
Jasmine nodded to him. "Good. Thanks for the update." Then, turning to Dorothy, she added "Worst comes to worst, we're somewhere off the coast of Labrador and can just head straight home to Brockton."
The redhead gave her companion/ride a look that carried within it an entire paragraph of how little she believed the older girl.
"Right, sure. And Armsmaster will be waiting for us at the pier with cake. We're properly lost, I can feel it."
"Oh come on brat, what's with the lack of trust?"
Before Dorothy could respond to that, the fog parted to reveal a clear night sky, dimly lit by a sliver of moon. One sailor rushed out with a sextant and began his work. "Approximate location is forty-one degrees north... five minutes. Thirty-one degrees, forty minutes west. That puts us about a hundred miles north of Corvo Island, in the Azores."
Both girls stared at the man for a long moment, before Dorothy's head slowly began turning to direct a glare at the girl she was beginning to think of as something approximating a big sister. "Off the coast of Canada you said..."
"I... how the fuck...?" Jasmine stammered. "This doesn't make sense!"
Her navigation officer coughed. "Uh, ma'am? Our charts and temperature records are from 1940. Depending on just how things have changed in the past seventy years, even the best navigator could get lost. And with this damn magic fog, even the slightest error could result - and seem to have - in heading in the opposite direction of what was intended."
The shipgirl stared at him for a long moment, before she began cursing in three languages. Several members of the bridge crew promptly pulled out notepads and started jotting things down.
Before she could build up too much momentum though, a voice called "Radar contact, bearing 090! Large return, surface. Range, five thousand."
Instantly focusing, Jasmine stated "Sound General Quarters and stand-by for full speed. I want guns on it now."
Then, from the mist a shape, a ship was taking form. Dorothy's voice came out barely audible through the sounding alarm. "What is that? It's like... a beast made of steel..."
Cyane's eyes locked onto the hulking gray vessel that was still emerging from the fogbank to the north. "Battleship Bismarck. Pride of Germany, and briefly flagship of the Kriegsmarine. If she's hostile, there's nothing I can do to stop her from sinking us at this point. She's too close..."
"Ma'am!" called a lookout, "She's flying the Imperial naval ensign, not the Nazi one!"
Almost immediately after, a feminine voice amplified by loud hailer carried through the air "American warship, this is the German ship Bismarck! Please identify yourself."
Grabbing one of her own stock of megaphones and stepping out onto the bridge wing, the battlecruiser shouted back "This is USS Cyane CC-10! State your intentions!"
"Evading or destroying my evil twin!" was the reply.
"Well, she might have a bit of Rodney in her too," Bismarck added after a moment's thought. "I did take several fifteen-inch shell hits during our encounter."
As Jasmine silenced the alarms, she began running through what she remembered of the relevant ships. While she had a longstanding interest in history, her focus hadn't been on the war that had driven her grandparents from Hiroshima Prefecture. Even so, she knew more than a bit about naval warfare in the 20th Century. "Do you think we have enough of a lead to reach land before she gets into range? I can't stand up to that kind of firepower for long."
"Before the fog rolled in and cut off the radio, I heard reports of attacks along the entire Atlantic coast. The Azores are likely fallen, not defensible. While we might make landfall in Iberia, it might be throwing ourselves into enemy land forces. I was heading towards Gibraltar when I saw you, we should be able to get through together. French territory would be best from there, as the Mediterranean is more easily contested by the defenders."
The German battleship then sighed. "We best hurry, the Nazi Bitch will certainly catch us if we tarry longer."
"Great plan," Jasmine replied. "Best economic speed then?"
"Nineteen knots for me," Bismarck stated. "And I would guess that is well within your ability."
"Aye, it is. In fact, I'd almost call that a leisurely stroll," snarked the battlecruiser. "Twenty-one is my maximum economical."
"Excellent. Now follow me please, I've got the bearing we need and I'm not sure we'd be able to find each other again if we get separated in this."
With that, the statuesque blonde turned on her heel and began plowing through the waves towards the east.
"Jas, you're drooling."
Jasmine's eyes locked onto Dorothy with a glare. "Am not, and besides, I'm not the one
staring at her legs."
"But it wasn't her legs I was trying to get a - hey!"
The battlecruiser shot the younger girl an amused look and ruffled her hair. "Perv."
"Blame my brother for that," the redhead groused. "Some of his 'special magazines' that the 'rents didn't know about kept winding up in my stuff. I'm not even sure if I'm into girls or not."
Turning her attention outwards, the willowy Japanese-American girl picked her pace slightly to bring herself alongside her new German companion.
"So, what is the state of Germany these days?" Bismarck asked hesitantly. "I know the war was lost, that madman could hardly have won if that drivel he wrote was anything to go by. Is my home… did Germany at least survive?"
Jasmine left the question hanging for a moment as she wracked her memory. "Well, they lost some land, but it otherwise came out fairly whole for a country that picked a fight with the whole world. These days they're struggling with a group of neo-Nazi capes calling themselves 'Gessellshaft' or something like that who've made a few attempts to depose Kaiserin Victoria …"
Her cliffnotes update was cut off by a high-pitched noise readily recognized by any teenage girl as an excited squeal.
"The British let the Kaiser return?!" Bismarck exclaimed in a voice normally found in fourteen-year-olds whose crush asked them out. "That… that is very good to hear. I am confident that means Germany is on a better path then, even if that lunatic corporal still has a following."
A thoughtful look then crossed her face. "If it's not rude, how did a Japanese woman come to be an American warship?"
Jasmine shuddered. "I'm pretty sure I died. How that translates into becoming some sort of kantai musume, I haven't a clue, but the last thing I recall from before changing was dying of phosgene exposure." Ignoring the other woman's flinch, she continued "As for why American, it might potentially just be because I'm a third generation immigrant. My grandparents came over after the war, not wanting to remain in a devastated nation. Especially not when they lived not far from Hiroshima, which was basically a symbol of how far Japan had fallen in their eyes."
Bismarck flinched again. "Don't tell me Japan had sunk to the level Germany had…"
"No, or at least not like that. The city was destroyed by a bombing raid. One plane, carrying a nuclear weapon. Neither liked talking about that day, just that there was a bright flash like a second sun, followed by a colossal bang, and a cloud resembling a tree or mushroom on the horizon."
"That…" The battleship blinked a few times. "That's impossible. There's no way a weapon like that could be carried by an aircraft."
"Not particularly," Jasmine replied. "A person's body weight in Uranium was all it took, with the right set up. Most of it went unused, but what was consumed in the reaction… was equivalent to fifteen thousand tons of TNT. It took one of the biggest bombers the US had to carry just one, and it had to be modified to do so, but it was enough."
Brushing a loose lock of hair aside, the young woman sighed softly. "In some ways at least. The weapon worked, but it was too powerful. No one could believe it, even with the destruction being confirmed rapidly. The second though… That was enough for Emperor Showa. He ordered a full and unconditional surrender as soon as He got word of it. Some… utter bakas tried to oppose His will… but they were stopped before they could lead Japan into extinction out of stubborn pride."
"Oh." The battleship looked like she was having difficulty wrapping her mind around the idea.
-
The first sign that the enemy had found them was plumes of spray erupting around Bismarck. First a set of four splashes identified as from fifteen-inch shells, then another four from thirty-eight-centimeter ones, followed by the ocean being pounded into an even denser fog around the pair of capital ships. Jasmine flinched as a twenty-eight-centimeter projectile bounced off her conning tower with a booming clang.
"Get me a bearing of some sort on that incoming fire!" She yelled at a crewman sitting at one of the stations. "We can estimate the range off of the arc of fire, and drop our reply on them that way!"
A moment later she was biting back a scream of pain as what had to have been a twenty-inch shell plowed through her bow. "And someone hail Bismarck! We need to get the fuck out of here yesterday!"
Even as she was shouting orders, her two massive main battery turrets were traversing to face the incoming fire, as were her portside secondaries. Normal fire control methods would be all but useless with the sea being pounded like the fields at Verdun and the unnatural fog blocking radar, but she hoped her armament of automatic guns would compensate for her near-blind response. That, and loading her six-inch guns with AAC instead of the normal mix of high explosive and armor piercing. Hard to get accurate fire out when you're lacking in rangefinders and spotting equipment. She might even have starshells added to the mix, for the added effect of potentially setting the enemy on fire.
Bismarck's guns roared their reply first, accompanied by a string of German curses as the battleship began venting her fury. A massive explosion followed, far too soon to have been from the outgoing fire. Jasmine frowned slightly at that. Was that friendly fire, or an accident? Or had a friendly ship happened to have stumbled across them?
A moment later a call came up from the CIC voicetube. "Submarine detected! Bearing Zero-Zero-Five, eighteen-thousand yards!"
"I have sonar? Since when did I have that?" She wondered as her helmsman began evasive maneuvers.
Her captain gave her a sheepish look. "Sorry ma'am, the hydrophone system had several faults and I believe it was still being calibrated. Seems that it's operational now though."
"High speed screws, torpedoes in the water. Range constant, bearing zero-zero-five."
Eight fourteen-inch guns erupted along with eight six-inch weapons, sending a hail of fire in the direction of the enemy, which just so happened to be where the sub and torpedo launches were. Now that she was paying attention to it, Jasmine could hear the turmoil in the water around her, and track the progress of the two torpedoes towards one of the ships firing on her and Bismarck. That meant the probable U-boat was most likely friendly and she could cease evading.
Her hydrophone operator swore and yanked off the headset just in time before the torpedoes hit, and a colossal explosion tore the supernatural fog away as the targeted ship's magazine detonated. There was no identifying what little remained of the ship through the roiling cloud of smoke and flame as the sundered hulk began slipping beneath the waves, nothing was left that could hope to tell even its origins.
The abomination that was unveiled by the sundering, on the other hand, was all too clear. In complete defiance of the art of naval architecture, the great black beast had superfiring pairs of two-gun mountings of two visibly different designs, on a hull that looked like someone had tried to combine the designs of both Bismarck and Rodney into a single vessel without the faintest idea what they were doing. Possibly while drunk. And atop the monstrous ship's mast flew a very distinctive red banner. A red field with a white circle containing a pair of jagged intersecting lines.
M5 Stilwell, America's Steel Behemoth
Following is a transcript of a video by a Youtuber called "The Fat Electrician" posted in December of 2024 on the American HBT M5 Stilwell.
The Fat Electrician (TFE): Even if America doesn't create something, Uncle Sam will find a way to make the best version.
The Fat Electrician Intro: Quackbang Animation
TFE: Today we're talking about America's answer to the Soviet Heavy Battle Tank T-99, ladies and gentlemen, the M5 Stilwell Heavy Battle Tank, aka "The Big One". What's a Heavy Battle Tank you may ask?
Let me explain, a Heavy Battle Tank or HBT is the Main Battle Tank's bigger, heavier, meaner brother. They were designed to take hits and dish it right back, usually when they are breaking a bad guy's supposedly impenetrable fortification lines. Unfortunately, HBTs isn't an American concept as the Soviets were the first to come up with the Heavy Battle Tank concept when they rolled out the T-84 Heavy Battle Tank during the 1985 Victory Parade. This made Uncle Sam go "What the fuck is that?" and "Why the fuck don't I have that?"
So Uncle Sam decided to crank out their own and in 1989, out came the M5 Stilwell Heavy Battle Tank or we could go over its various nicknames, "Vinegar Joe", "The Flipping Vinegar Barrel" or my personal favorite, the "Stumper". Now you are probably asking why have a heavy tank in the modern day? Aren't missiles and bombs going to blow these tanks the fuck up? Yeah if these were your granddaddy's Tiger tank back from World War 2. Nah, not these beasts, these HBTs were built to withstand anything the enemy can throw at it. I have read reports of a M5 Stilwell during Desert Storm getting hit with RPG and ATGM fire and all it did was scratch the paintwork. I have seen one take a hit from a 6 inch shell and shrug it off. That armour is classified but I am willing to bet it has Patriotism and Freedom under those armour panels.
And that's just the armour, this thing can give back as hard as it gets, it has a 140 mm cannon that can turn a bad guy into red mist out to 3.4 miles or 7.1 miles if the tank goes into indirect fire mode. During the Abyssal War at the battle of Maicao, Colombia, Stilwells using their highly accurate long range fire managed to shred an entire Abyssal armored corps over a 24 hour period. It is still to this day one of the most one-sided tank-on-tank battles in history and that's why we refer to it now as the Great Colombian Shooting Gallery. You know what allowed them to fire that accurately the M5 has a radar gun sight installed to aim their guns. Yeah, the Stilwell's gun is so big that the Army has to borrow the Navy's targeting system just to make the gun even more accurate. That's before you look at what shells the gun can fire, we have an armor piercing round that makes a bad guy tank scrap with a good hit. Then there is HE or High Explosive which as it says on the tin, it is a shell you use for anything not a tank. Then there is my personal favorite, the M1029 Canister Shell, a shell that has 1800 tungsten balls which, let me check my notes, is fucking alot. Yeah US Grunts love shotguns so much we found a way to turn our tank into a giant boom stick. There won't be anything left after one of these shells gets shot at you. Your new pronouns will be, was and were. You would be so aerodynamic, planes get jealous.
Next is the speed, the Stilwell has an "official" top speed of 40 miles an hour on road and 20 miles off road. That's before the engineers at the motorpool work their magic because I have seen one of these fucking things zoom past at nearly 50 miles an hour. Can you imagine how fucking terrifying to peak out of your little bad guy fortification to see this thing racing up towards you like it's fucking NASCAR, shit is about to go down. During the Battle of New York City, one M5 Stilwell was clocked going 55 miles an hour. Let me repeat that again, a 90 plus ton tank was clocked going as fast as most cars go on the freeway, it's insane!
But! That's not the most interesting part of the M5 Stilwell, remember that diagram I showed you the internals of the Stilwell? Notice where the engine is? In the front right so that means the back is empty, right? Wrong! That space is where you can have between four and seven armed grunts that can be deployed to support the tank. And that's not all, that rear compartment is modular, meaning you can swap the passenger section for maybe more fuel tanks, or storage for stuff or a command module. Yeah the back of that tank is so big, you could fit a command staff in there and still have space for some morning coffee.
TFE: (Being the comment section) The Soviet T-99 Heavy Battle Tank is much better than the Stilwell and the Imperial Chinese Heavy Battle tank has two cannons. TWO!
TFE: Okay, what makes the T-99 HBT better? The bigger gun? The Soviet 152 mm cannon isn't that better than the Stilwell's gun, from reports during the Abyssal War, the T-99 had a worse accuracy than the M5 with an average accuracy of seventy-five percent compared to the M5's ninety-six percent of accuracy. And don't get me started on the CUI propaganda machine, from little we know, the Golden Dragon's accuracy is even worse with estimates being fifty two percent. Then there is the numbers game. The Soviets like to show off the T-99 as their primer HBT but we know sixty percent of the heavy tank battalions made of the older T-84 HBTs. The Golden Dragon is worse as far as we know they only have fifty tanks. And how many Stilwells do we have? Over one thousand of these war machines. The only other Heavy Battle Tank built in big enough numbers is the British Matilda III at seven hundred and fifty.
So in conclusion, if you want to beat America with something new, better not because America will make their own version which is much better and build more of them. Thank you for watching, quack bang out.
The Fat Electrician (TFE): Even if America doesn't create something, Uncle Sam will find a way to make the best version.
The Fat Electrician Intro: Quackbang Animation
TFE: Today we're talking about America's answer to the Soviet Heavy Battle Tank T-99, ladies and gentlemen, the M5 Stilwell Heavy Battle Tank, aka "The Big One". What's a Heavy Battle Tank you may ask?
Let me explain, a Heavy Battle Tank or HBT is the Main Battle Tank's bigger, heavier, meaner brother. They were designed to take hits and dish it right back, usually when they are breaking a bad guy's supposedly impenetrable fortification lines. Unfortunately, HBTs isn't an American concept as the Soviets were the first to come up with the Heavy Battle Tank concept when they rolled out the T-84 Heavy Battle Tank during the 1985 Victory Parade. This made Uncle Sam go "What the fuck is that?" and "Why the fuck don't I have that?"
So Uncle Sam decided to crank out their own and in 1989, out came the M5 Stilwell Heavy Battle Tank or we could go over its various nicknames, "Vinegar Joe", "The Flipping Vinegar Barrel" or my personal favorite, the "Stumper". Now you are probably asking why have a heavy tank in the modern day? Aren't missiles and bombs going to blow these tanks the fuck up? Yeah if these were your granddaddy's Tiger tank back from World War 2. Nah, not these beasts, these HBTs were built to withstand anything the enemy can throw at it. I have read reports of a M5 Stilwell during Desert Storm getting hit with RPG and ATGM fire and all it did was scratch the paintwork. I have seen one take a hit from a 6 inch shell and shrug it off. That armour is classified but I am willing to bet it has Patriotism and Freedom under those armour panels.
And that's just the armour, this thing can give back as hard as it gets, it has a 140 mm cannon that can turn a bad guy into red mist out to 3.4 miles or 7.1 miles if the tank goes into indirect fire mode. During the Abyssal War at the battle of Maicao, Colombia, Stilwells using their highly accurate long range fire managed to shred an entire Abyssal armored corps over a 24 hour period. It is still to this day one of the most one-sided tank-on-tank battles in history and that's why we refer to it now as the Great Colombian Shooting Gallery. You know what allowed them to fire that accurately the M5 has a radar gun sight installed to aim their guns. Yeah, the Stilwell's gun is so big that the Army has to borrow the Navy's targeting system just to make the gun even more accurate. That's before you look at what shells the gun can fire, we have an armor piercing round that makes a bad guy tank scrap with a good hit. Then there is HE or High Explosive which as it says on the tin, it is a shell you use for anything not a tank. Then there is my personal favorite, the M1029 Canister Shell, a shell that has 1800 tungsten balls which, let me check my notes, is fucking alot. Yeah US Grunts love shotguns so much we found a way to turn our tank into a giant boom stick. There won't be anything left after one of these shells gets shot at you. Your new pronouns will be, was and were. You would be so aerodynamic, planes get jealous.
Next is the speed, the Stilwell has an "official" top speed of 40 miles an hour on road and 20 miles off road. That's before the engineers at the motorpool work their magic because I have seen one of these fucking things zoom past at nearly 50 miles an hour. Can you imagine how fucking terrifying to peak out of your little bad guy fortification to see this thing racing up towards you like it's fucking NASCAR, shit is about to go down. During the Battle of New York City, one M5 Stilwell was clocked going 55 miles an hour. Let me repeat that again, a 90 plus ton tank was clocked going as fast as most cars go on the freeway, it's insane!
But! That's not the most interesting part of the M5 Stilwell, remember that diagram I showed you the internals of the Stilwell? Notice where the engine is? In the front right so that means the back is empty, right? Wrong! That space is where you can have between four and seven armed grunts that can be deployed to support the tank. And that's not all, that rear compartment is modular, meaning you can swap the passenger section for maybe more fuel tanks, or storage for stuff or a command module. Yeah the back of that tank is so big, you could fit a command staff in there and still have space for some morning coffee.
TFE: (Being the comment section) The Soviet T-99 Heavy Battle Tank is much better than the Stilwell and the Imperial Chinese Heavy Battle tank has two cannons. TWO!
TFE: Okay, what makes the T-99 HBT better? The bigger gun? The Soviet 152 mm cannon isn't that better than the Stilwell's gun, from reports during the Abyssal War, the T-99 had a worse accuracy than the M5 with an average accuracy of seventy-five percent compared to the M5's ninety-six percent of accuracy. And don't get me started on the CUI propaganda machine, from little we know, the Golden Dragon's accuracy is even worse with estimates being fifty two percent. Then there is the numbers game. The Soviets like to show off the T-99 as their primer HBT but we know sixty percent of the heavy tank battalions made of the older T-84 HBTs. The Golden Dragon is worse as far as we know they only have fifty tanks. And how many Stilwells do we have? Over one thousand of these war machines. The only other Heavy Battle Tank built in big enough numbers is the British Matilda III at seven hundred and fifty.
So in conclusion, if you want to beat America with something new, better not because America will make their own version which is much better and build more of them. Thank you for watching, quack bang out.
These are the Voyages of the NA-23 Frank Maxwell Andrews
Chapter 1: The Hunt has Begun
Moving slowly through the early morning skies to the east of Long Island, a behemoth flew. Painted on its nose was NA-23 Frank Maxwell Andrews, the lone example of an aircraft very different from her 29 sisters. This was the NM-48 Starbase; she carried the only airborne attacker squadron in the Air Force. Armed with 33 A-11 Reapers, she was rapidly launching her entire complement of aircraft. Her mission was to hunt the target-rich environment of the eastern seaboard like a slow and ponderous killer whale. The current target was an inbound Abyssal ammunition and troop convoy on the way to New York. Slated to arrive before the rag-tag remnants of the Atlantic Fleet could sortie from Brockton Bay, this convoy represented an existential threat to the defenders of NY.
The NA-23 was a massive engineering marvel, even more so than her sisters, the Starlifters. For one, she was a bit bigger. While the part commonality existed, she was a one-off design modification. The intent behind the design was to escort her sisters and provide an asymmetrical launch platform for strike missions against Soviet or CUI naval and land assets. When you dig into it, Franky had three of the Modular Nuclear Power and Propulsion Modules (Aviation) compared to her sisters' two. You may ask why because of an experimental system borrowed from a NASA program for independent off-planet rocket fuel production. Yes, Franky can make aviation gas. Well, technically, it is a derivative derived from methane. She did this by capturing and filtering air, then running that through machines. While Franky can run out of gas, she can always retreat and wait a day or two to refill her internal tanks. This enabled her to operate completely independently of any conventional refueling systems. Her only limit to endurance besides food was ammunition.
This independent operation led to the development of new tactics best equated to the classic hit-and-run tactics. Frank would skim the sea and surprise enemy formations with onboard missile stores and aircraft. Franky proved to be technically complex, and while working correctly during Blood Week, she took a long time to get there, hence her nickname, Cranky Franky. The other issue that led to her size increasing over that of her sisters was the addition of more crew and mechanical infrastructure. Frank has almost three times the crew of her sisters, which unfortunately compacted her crew living quarters and led to some cases of hot bunking, which led to something airmen love called the Frank Stank. Even with the onboard showers and washing facilities, Franky tended to smell after a 3 to 6-month airborne deployment.
Now, we will discuss more of her launch systems and aircraft handling. She had three main hangar decks. The largest was her launch and receiving deck located on the bottom of the aircraft. In the back were three large floor doors from which a gantry-mounted hook boom would deploy. A pilot would approach Franky from behind and use a special grabber on the top of the airframe to lock the hook. Landing operations were done under a laser com interlink between Frank and the plane. Once hooked, the aircraft is pulled up inside the plane. The plane can then move between decks using a ceiling-mounting omnidirectional plane carry system. At the front of this deck were the two launch tubes. In essence, the world's largest torpedo tube, the plane with wings folded, would be inserted into a launch sled within the tube. The sled would then accelerate with an audible thrum using an early version of the electromagnetic launch system found on the Ford-class aircraft carriers to fling the plane out the front at a downward angle. Once exited, the plane's wings would unfold, and the aircraft could fly into formation. The pilots loved this system due to the intense experience of the thrum and launch, the fact you could feel it in your bones, and the sheer wildness of deploying wings while in the air. Many in the Air Force would nickname those pilots as the sled jockeys. The weapons officers in the plane with them were less amused.
In addition to the forward launch tubes, Franky had wing-mounted hard points. These hard points were for ready-to-fly and armed aircraft to be stowed for rapid deployment. This hard point operated similarly to the main rear landing hatches. However, when pulled up and locked in place, an air-locking fabric tube would drop down to enclose the cockpit so the crew could use it to egress. Pilots lovingly called this the death tunnel since it's probably the most terrifying thing any of them has to do. The fabric was semi-transparent. Even through the ear production, you could hear the sheer volume of the air rushing over the tube as a shrill and terrifying whistle. So pilots and weapons officers could get a good view while climbing out of the planes. They could then use some tram sleds in the wings to get to the crew area from their planes. Returning to the aircraft's main body, the second hanger deck is mainly for rearming and light maintenance. This was also where the ready rooms for the pilots and weapons officers were. They had windows overlooking the deck so they could watch the hustle and bustle as little carts and crew ran to and fro as planes got armed, refueled, and worked on by the maintenance crews. You could feel the energy here and smell the unique mix of methane, JP-8, gun oil, sweat, and a mix of metallic orders. Even with significant ventilation, the second-floor bay could be rather stuffy at the best of times.
The third and final flight deck was the long-term maintenance facility, machine shops, and spare part storage. The aircraft would come here for regular teardowns, tune-ups, and replacements. Franky could even make more common parts on board to help limit the need to land early from a mission due to aircraft attrition. Lovingly described as the Aircraft Medical Bay, it was a sterile environment with a separate air system. The facility was kept meticulously clean to prevent defects in the manufactured parts or any contamination of the planes under repair and experiments being conducted. This deck forward in the nose was also home to the labs where weapons research, manufacturing, and modification could occur. This was added a few years after commissioning due to the amount of experimental weapons programs running onboard Franky. After a long deployment, it was the only place where Franky smelled clean. So, another thing to note before we move on to the crew and gun deck is that Frank stored her ammunition for the aircraft in lockers below the first flight deck. She generally carried enough ammo for 2-3 months of high-intensity operations. She also had higher security lockers to store experimental weapons safely.
The gun and supply deck is the next deck up from the third flight deck. You would find various weapons on this deck, such as cruise missiles, air-to-air missiles, and even torpedoes and launchers for those systems. They also had some ammo lockers up here for easy access to feed the weapon launchers. The rest of the deck was taken up entirely by supplies of various kinds. It was a very crowded and maze-like deck. The major would use it as a laser tag maze and for other events during mandatory rec times on board. One of the most popular was the Officer vs. Crew laser tag event held at least once per deployment. It always got heavily competitive.
Above this was the crew deck. The crew situation was challenging but comfortable on board. Each pilot and their weapons officer got a quad room shared with another aircraft crew. The three captains, major, and doctor on board got solo rooms. The rest of the officers got doubles. The enlisted crew got six bunk rooms and had to share beds with another person. So, while not a traditional hot bunk, they still had to share a bed. This deck also housed the CIC, where the Major oversaw aircraft and flight operations. This room was rather tight and gloomy, only lit by red lights. It was surrounded on four sides by walls of instruments, whiteboards, and plotting boards. The crew would all face their stations, with the Major in the middle having a sizable smart table that could show him any relevant information. There are dangling microphones from the ceiling for the internal and external communication systems. Some other notable rooms on this deck were the secondary flight deck for emergency piloting operations, a complete medical bay, and a full kitchen and dining area. Franky, for all her faults, regularly won interservice cooking competitions. There were also a few less notable rooms, such as a movie theatre/rec room with TVs and various relaxation nooks. The rest of the rooms were for meeting spaces, storage, equipment, cabinets for air recycling, and other life support systems.
The final deck was the command hump, as some called it, at the very front of the aircraft. This hump held the flight bridge and 360-degree wrap-around windows. There were seven crew members on the flight bridge at all times. In the center, surrounded by a screen, sat the captain of the shift. In front of him were two pilots, and to his right were two engineering officers; to his left were a communications officer and a weapons officer. The captain had a spectacular view in front of the aircraft and back toward the 12 massive turboelectric turboprops and singular tail. Frank had two more turboprops than her sisters. Armor slats were available for combat operations that could be deployed with projectors built into the ceiling so you could still project the outside view while armored up. These are rarely used, but it's standard procedure while under active combat operations.
The last area worth covering is the interior decoration of the aircraft. The crew regularly redid the crew deck's colors and other interior design elements. This led to the weird and interesting interior wall and ceiling colors, for example, during the outbreak of Blood Week. The ceiling of the dining halls is painted with pink clouds and a blue sky. The Major considered it a good team-building exercise and a distraction from the length of deployment. He also encouraged nose art for his aircraft, and while the practice was rare outside of the airborne attacker squadron, all the planes on board supported extensive camo patterns and nose art. Overall, Franky, while being crowded and challenging to operate, had a very tight and friendly crew. Very few people liked to leave Franky, and she had one of the highest crew retention rates in the Air Force. It also made new billets on her hyper-competitive, and it was a notable day when an airman got her as an assignment after graduating from the Air Force Academy. Now, back to the story.
Combat Information Center NA-23 Frank Maxwell Andrews (Cranky Franky) Blood week day four.
Major Scott C. Lockwood was rapidly shouting orders as the CIC was alive with frantic energy. The distant thumps audible even in the CIC indicated each time a Reaper left one of the two forward launch tubes, and the floor of the CIC shook ever so slightly as planes deployed from the wing hardpoints. A cry of launch confirmation sang out with each deployment from an airman. After a few minutes, one of the officer's voices cut through the light chatter and shouted, "All aircraft launched, requesting a final go command." The major then pulled his mic down and spoke directly to his pilots. He said, "The operation is a go and godspeed."
He then looked back down at his digital table map, which constantly received second-by-second updates over the next half an hour, pausing occasionally to ask for new data from one of the crew members around himself. Quickly followed by something whooshing audibly onto his table screen. A fresh cup of coffee handed to him broke up the moment as he watched the table, the current position of his planes, and the approximate position of the enemy convoy slowly closing. Suddenly, the map lit up with the accurate position of the enemy fleet. The room exploded into loud chatter as information flowed rapidly between the CIC, the Flight Bridge, Pilots, and Drone operators. The tension in the room visibly increased. The handful of recon drones they set ahead found them and were painting the Abyssal ships with laser targeting pods. As the planes rapidly signaled target locks, the major smiled. He had spent the last two days with his engineers, who attached ad hoc laser targeting systems to their Experimental LRASM to counter somewhat the Abyssal ability to confuse modern missile and tracking systems. Blood, sweat, tears, and constant hours buried in meetings would bear fruit. He took this step after some other commands discovered the effectiveness of flooding the Abyssal with multiple types of sensors that could help penetrate the Abyssal anti missle bullshit. The hope is that the semi-active laser systems combined with LRASM's five other sensors and the integrated battle web will prove effective enough.
Lockwood expected some failures as he nervously chewed his lip, though for morale, he would not tell the crew. However, even with the failures, they prayed the hit percentage would be higher for the LRASM than when using older missile systems. There were starting to hear reports that Raytheon and other missile manufacturers were working on software and hardware updates for the older missiles to improve their hit chance, but those are months away. He kept looking intensively at the plot as small lines started heading away from his planes and approaching the ships. As the lines began to crawl toward the enemy ships, the CIC became deathly quiet, and only the hum and vibration of the airframe filled the room. You could even hear the distant cursing of some weapons officer moving a heavy LRASM around the deck below. The plot started lighting up with small explosions as the enemy escorts tried to down the drones and missiles. Then, the cargo ships started evading, but it was too little too late. The plot begins lighting up as tiny red Xs appear rapidly on the many abyssal targets. It felt like the universe had taken a breath, and then the cheering, whistling, and clapping began as the whole plane exploded in celebration as people learned of the attack's success. He looked up to the corner of the table, where the software engineer on board placed a small hit percentage indicator. It showed 50 percent. Lockwood smirked, "Looks like we got lucky, shows those bastards what real human ingenuity can do." He then moved around, high-fiving the crew in the CIC and congratulating them on their hard work. Once this was done, he returned to his table.
After seeing the verification that all primary targets were eliminated from the drone feed, the major lowered his mic again, congratulated the airmen, and ordered his planes and drones back to the aircraft to refuel and rearm. There was more hunting to do, and he still had enough ammunition to ruin a few more Abyssal flotillas' day. He then sent a message to the captain on the flight bridge: "John, we have done it; good job, my friend; once we pick up the Reapers and drones, let us mosey on over to target point 3. I want to see if the intelligence folks were right about that floundering enemy cruiser squadron." John chuckled, "I'm the one that should be congratulating you. Order received." Before the major turned off the mike, he could hear John congratulating the flight bridge crew and ordering them to begin recovery operations.
Chapter 1: The Hunt has Begun
Moving slowly through the early morning skies to the east of Long Island, a behemoth flew. Painted on its nose was NA-23 Frank Maxwell Andrews, the lone example of an aircraft very different from her 29 sisters. This was the NM-48 Starbase; she carried the only airborne attacker squadron in the Air Force. Armed with 33 A-11 Reapers, she was rapidly launching her entire complement of aircraft. Her mission was to hunt the target-rich environment of the eastern seaboard like a slow and ponderous killer whale. The current target was an inbound Abyssal ammunition and troop convoy on the way to New York. Slated to arrive before the rag-tag remnants of the Atlantic Fleet could sortie from Brockton Bay, this convoy represented an existential threat to the defenders of NY.
The NA-23 was a massive engineering marvel, even more so than her sisters, the Starlifters. For one, she was a bit bigger. While the part commonality existed, she was a one-off design modification. The intent behind the design was to escort her sisters and provide an asymmetrical launch platform for strike missions against Soviet or CUI naval and land assets. When you dig into it, Franky had three of the Modular Nuclear Power and Propulsion Modules (Aviation) compared to her sisters' two. You may ask why because of an experimental system borrowed from a NASA program for independent off-planet rocket fuel production. Yes, Franky can make aviation gas. Well, technically, it is a derivative derived from methane. She did this by capturing and filtering air, then running that through machines. While Franky can run out of gas, she can always retreat and wait a day or two to refill her internal tanks. This enabled her to operate completely independently of any conventional refueling systems. Her only limit to endurance besides food was ammunition.
This independent operation led to the development of new tactics best equated to the classic hit-and-run tactics. Frank would skim the sea and surprise enemy formations with onboard missile stores and aircraft. Franky proved to be technically complex, and while working correctly during Blood Week, she took a long time to get there, hence her nickname, Cranky Franky. The other issue that led to her size increasing over that of her sisters was the addition of more crew and mechanical infrastructure. Frank has almost three times the crew of her sisters, which unfortunately compacted her crew living quarters and led to some cases of hot bunking, which led to something airmen love called the Frank Stank. Even with the onboard showers and washing facilities, Franky tended to smell after a 3 to 6-month airborne deployment.
Now, we will discuss more of her launch systems and aircraft handling. She had three main hangar decks. The largest was her launch and receiving deck located on the bottom of the aircraft. In the back were three large floor doors from which a gantry-mounted hook boom would deploy. A pilot would approach Franky from behind and use a special grabber on the top of the airframe to lock the hook. Landing operations were done under a laser com interlink between Frank and the plane. Once hooked, the aircraft is pulled up inside the plane. The plane can then move between decks using a ceiling-mounting omnidirectional plane carry system. At the front of this deck were the two launch tubes. In essence, the world's largest torpedo tube, the plane with wings folded, would be inserted into a launch sled within the tube. The sled would then accelerate with an audible thrum using an early version of the electromagnetic launch system found on the Ford-class aircraft carriers to fling the plane out the front at a downward angle. Once exited, the plane's wings would unfold, and the aircraft could fly into formation. The pilots loved this system due to the intense experience of the thrum and launch, the fact you could feel it in your bones, and the sheer wildness of deploying wings while in the air. Many in the Air Force would nickname those pilots as the sled jockeys. The weapons officers in the plane with them were less amused.
In addition to the forward launch tubes, Franky had wing-mounted hard points. These hard points were for ready-to-fly and armed aircraft to be stowed for rapid deployment. This hard point operated similarly to the main rear landing hatches. However, when pulled up and locked in place, an air-locking fabric tube would drop down to enclose the cockpit so the crew could use it to egress. Pilots lovingly called this the death tunnel since it's probably the most terrifying thing any of them has to do. The fabric was semi-transparent. Even through the ear production, you could hear the sheer volume of the air rushing over the tube as a shrill and terrifying whistle. So pilots and weapons officers could get a good view while climbing out of the planes. They could then use some tram sleds in the wings to get to the crew area from their planes. Returning to the aircraft's main body, the second hanger deck is mainly for rearming and light maintenance. This was also where the ready rooms for the pilots and weapons officers were. They had windows overlooking the deck so they could watch the hustle and bustle as little carts and crew ran to and fro as planes got armed, refueled, and worked on by the maintenance crews. You could feel the energy here and smell the unique mix of methane, JP-8, gun oil, sweat, and a mix of metallic orders. Even with significant ventilation, the second-floor bay could be rather stuffy at the best of times.
The third and final flight deck was the long-term maintenance facility, machine shops, and spare part storage. The aircraft would come here for regular teardowns, tune-ups, and replacements. Franky could even make more common parts on board to help limit the need to land early from a mission due to aircraft attrition. Lovingly described as the Aircraft Medical Bay, it was a sterile environment with a separate air system. The facility was kept meticulously clean to prevent defects in the manufactured parts or any contamination of the planes under repair and experiments being conducted. This deck forward in the nose was also home to the labs where weapons research, manufacturing, and modification could occur. This was added a few years after commissioning due to the amount of experimental weapons programs running onboard Franky. After a long deployment, it was the only place where Franky smelled clean. So, another thing to note before we move on to the crew and gun deck is that Frank stored her ammunition for the aircraft in lockers below the first flight deck. She generally carried enough ammo for 2-3 months of high-intensity operations. She also had higher security lockers to store experimental weapons safely.
The gun and supply deck is the next deck up from the third flight deck. You would find various weapons on this deck, such as cruise missiles, air-to-air missiles, and even torpedoes and launchers for those systems. They also had some ammo lockers up here for easy access to feed the weapon launchers. The rest of the deck was taken up entirely by supplies of various kinds. It was a very crowded and maze-like deck. The major would use it as a laser tag maze and for other events during mandatory rec times on board. One of the most popular was the Officer vs. Crew laser tag event held at least once per deployment. It always got heavily competitive.
Above this was the crew deck. The crew situation was challenging but comfortable on board. Each pilot and their weapons officer got a quad room shared with another aircraft crew. The three captains, major, and doctor on board got solo rooms. The rest of the officers got doubles. The enlisted crew got six bunk rooms and had to share beds with another person. So, while not a traditional hot bunk, they still had to share a bed. This deck also housed the CIC, where the Major oversaw aircraft and flight operations. This room was rather tight and gloomy, only lit by red lights. It was surrounded on four sides by walls of instruments, whiteboards, and plotting boards. The crew would all face their stations, with the Major in the middle having a sizable smart table that could show him any relevant information. There are dangling microphones from the ceiling for the internal and external communication systems. Some other notable rooms on this deck were the secondary flight deck for emergency piloting operations, a complete medical bay, and a full kitchen and dining area. Franky, for all her faults, regularly won interservice cooking competitions. There were also a few less notable rooms, such as a movie theatre/rec room with TVs and various relaxation nooks. The rest of the rooms were for meeting spaces, storage, equipment, cabinets for air recycling, and other life support systems.
The final deck was the command hump, as some called it, at the very front of the aircraft. This hump held the flight bridge and 360-degree wrap-around windows. There were seven crew members on the flight bridge at all times. In the center, surrounded by a screen, sat the captain of the shift. In front of him were two pilots, and to his right were two engineering officers; to his left were a communications officer and a weapons officer. The captain had a spectacular view in front of the aircraft and back toward the 12 massive turboelectric turboprops and singular tail. Frank had two more turboprops than her sisters. Armor slats were available for combat operations that could be deployed with projectors built into the ceiling so you could still project the outside view while armored up. These are rarely used, but it's standard procedure while under active combat operations.
The last area worth covering is the interior decoration of the aircraft. The crew regularly redid the crew deck's colors and other interior design elements. This led to the weird and interesting interior wall and ceiling colors, for example, during the outbreak of Blood Week. The ceiling of the dining halls is painted with pink clouds and a blue sky. The Major considered it a good team-building exercise and a distraction from the length of deployment. He also encouraged nose art for his aircraft, and while the practice was rare outside of the airborne attacker squadron, all the planes on board supported extensive camo patterns and nose art. Overall, Franky, while being crowded and challenging to operate, had a very tight and friendly crew. Very few people liked to leave Franky, and she had one of the highest crew retention rates in the Air Force. It also made new billets on her hyper-competitive, and it was a notable day when an airman got her as an assignment after graduating from the Air Force Academy. Now, back to the story.
Combat Information Center NA-23 Frank Maxwell Andrews (Cranky Franky) Blood week day four.
Major Scott C. Lockwood was rapidly shouting orders as the CIC was alive with frantic energy. The distant thumps audible even in the CIC indicated each time a Reaper left one of the two forward launch tubes, and the floor of the CIC shook ever so slightly as planes deployed from the wing hardpoints. A cry of launch confirmation sang out with each deployment from an airman. After a few minutes, one of the officer's voices cut through the light chatter and shouted, "All aircraft launched, requesting a final go command." The major then pulled his mic down and spoke directly to his pilots. He said, "The operation is a go and godspeed."
He then looked back down at his digital table map, which constantly received second-by-second updates over the next half an hour, pausing occasionally to ask for new data from one of the crew members around himself. Quickly followed by something whooshing audibly onto his table screen. A fresh cup of coffee handed to him broke up the moment as he watched the table, the current position of his planes, and the approximate position of the enemy convoy slowly closing. Suddenly, the map lit up with the accurate position of the enemy fleet. The room exploded into loud chatter as information flowed rapidly between the CIC, the Flight Bridge, Pilots, and Drone operators. The tension in the room visibly increased. The handful of recon drones they set ahead found them and were painting the Abyssal ships with laser targeting pods. As the planes rapidly signaled target locks, the major smiled. He had spent the last two days with his engineers, who attached ad hoc laser targeting systems to their Experimental LRASM to counter somewhat the Abyssal ability to confuse modern missile and tracking systems. Blood, sweat, tears, and constant hours buried in meetings would bear fruit. He took this step after some other commands discovered the effectiveness of flooding the Abyssal with multiple types of sensors that could help penetrate the Abyssal anti missle bullshit. The hope is that the semi-active laser systems combined with LRASM's five other sensors and the integrated battle web will prove effective enough.
Lockwood expected some failures as he nervously chewed his lip, though for morale, he would not tell the crew. However, even with the failures, they prayed the hit percentage would be higher for the LRASM than when using older missile systems. There were starting to hear reports that Raytheon and other missile manufacturers were working on software and hardware updates for the older missiles to improve their hit chance, but those are months away. He kept looking intensively at the plot as small lines started heading away from his planes and approaching the ships. As the lines began to crawl toward the enemy ships, the CIC became deathly quiet, and only the hum and vibration of the airframe filled the room. You could even hear the distant cursing of some weapons officer moving a heavy LRASM around the deck below. The plot started lighting up with small explosions as the enemy escorts tried to down the drones and missiles. Then, the cargo ships started evading, but it was too little too late. The plot begins lighting up as tiny red Xs appear rapidly on the many abyssal targets. It felt like the universe had taken a breath, and then the cheering, whistling, and clapping began as the whole plane exploded in celebration as people learned of the attack's success. He looked up to the corner of the table, where the software engineer on board placed a small hit percentage indicator. It showed 50 percent. Lockwood smirked, "Looks like we got lucky, shows those bastards what real human ingenuity can do." He then moved around, high-fiving the crew in the CIC and congratulating them on their hard work. Once this was done, he returned to his table.
After seeing the verification that all primary targets were eliminated from the drone feed, the major lowered his mic again, congratulated the airmen, and ordered his planes and drones back to the aircraft to refuel and rearm. There was more hunting to do, and he still had enough ammunition to ruin a few more Abyssal flotillas' day. He then sent a message to the captain on the flight bridge: "John, we have done it; good job, my friend; once we pick up the Reapers and drones, let us mosey on over to target point 3. I want to see if the intelligence folks were right about that floundering enemy cruiser squadron." John chuckled, "I'm the one that should be congratulating you. Order received." Before the major turned off the mike, he could hear John congratulating the flight bridge crew and ordering them to begin recovery operations.