CompassJimbo
Where’s Your North?
- Location
- The former Rubber Capital of the World
Hopefully @Trace Coburn is working on it.
Kant-O-Celle Quest [a Kantai Collection game, transcribed from 4chan]
- Thread starter Trace Coburn
- Start date
Avalanche
Atypical Netizen
- Location
- Australia
Are you on mobile or something? Just CTRL+F planefriend's trip. It's not hard to follow the imageboard format honestly.
- Location
- United States, EST
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Er... Generally, yeah, I am. Mostly 'cause I can get almost the same sort of web-browsing preformance with greater flexibility of where I sit. The somewhat downsized battery size is also good for reminding me when I've been online for far too long and ought to take a break.
Edit: Mind you, I certainly could get on a proper computer and browse the things. It's just not something that would normally even occur to me to do.
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Avalanche
Atypical Netizen
- Location
- Australia
Ah well that explains it. It's pretty hard to follow someone on 4chan on mobile. No ctrl+f function.
- Location
- United States, EST
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So it seems.
Dirtnap
Kanmusu Affecionado
Not sure what mobile browser you use but most of them should have a 'find on page' option under their respective menus. With chrome (or habit) you can just hold down on PF's trip and copy it then paste it in.
- Location
- United States, EST
- Pronouns
- He/Him
...I use Safari? It's the default option, and I have been repeatedly given hard lessons (one just now, actually) that me trying to get clever past the default options is a great way to break things that I like unbroken.
Dirtnap
Kanmusu Affecionado
Right so I commissioned our very own @Krekian to show everyone just how Sammy got to the Bonin Islands anyways.
I'll post it here because as soon as the next thread goes up, I'll be posting it there too.
(Akagi didn't even notice, the fatass.)
direct link if you want to see it in 1500x1500
I'll post it here because as soon as the next thread goes up, I'll be posting it there too.
(Akagi didn't even notice, the fatass.)
direct link if you want to see it in 1500x1500
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Nicholas
No longer teaching battlethings on a battleship
- Location
- Ashore again
- Pronouns
- He/Him
To be honest, though I would love Hornet and Northampton together...I can't help but feel that PF will not make it that easy. Remember what Settle said to Hornet in the library?
Settle's rant worked to convince Hornet of her own value at the cost of blaming those that left her at Santa Cruz. When all the Anons immediately started shipping Hornet and Northampton at the end of the thread, remember how PF's response was deliberately vague, lukewarm at best?
planefriend is a QM who thrives on building expectations, only to blast them between the eyes. And given how the mass-expectation of the thread is for Hornet to throw herself at Northampton, it makes me worry that Hornet will go full tsun and call Northampton a coward for abandoning her to save himself at Santa Cruz.
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Session #26 pt.1
Trace Coburn
BattleTech Starfighter Analyst
- Location
- NDBBM, New Zealand
TWITTER: twitter.com/planefriend
ARCHIVE: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Kant-O-Celle Quest
The smooth glassy waves of the Pacific blur into a flat plane as you hurtle low towards the smoking dot on the horizon. You focus on the towering columns of smoke rising from the little pork-chop shaped dot of black ash and weather-scoured volcanic rock, searching for your target - *there.* The long, trim shape of a runway hewn into the unyielding rock. Puffs of black smoke begin to blossom around you as you begin to wave through the air at five-hundred plus knots, fifty feet off the deck. The sky in front of you seems to vanish in a hail of glowing beads of light; light AA hurling a storm of lead in your direction as heavier guns; 37 and 40mm spear heavenward on shafts of smoke contrails.
Visual contact is lost for a second as you pitch up violently, riding the rocket motor up to a a thousand feet in a few seconds – and then Iwo Jima appears below you, a nightmarish cloud of flak bursts and tracers reaching out for you – too slow, too slow as you plummet for the target at incredible velocity, the junction of a taxiway and the runway growing larger-
- and freezing a moment before impact.
You glance askance at Goto, who's wielding the remote at the secondary viewscreen. He presses a button and the recorded video rewinds swiftly. There's obsidian in his eyes, now you hadn't seen before; hard and sharp – and a sickly pallor to his face. But his mouth is set in a hard line, and his expression radiates intense focus.
He presses a button, and the video freezes, then begins stepping forward, frame-by-frame. Then it stops. "There. Lower-right corner."
You peer. "A... humanoid? Shooting at the missile?"
"No," Hate says from the corner of the room. "Look to its left – that's muzzle flash. Probably an LMG..." he steps forward and points at an almost invisible line of stringy blobs. "I've seen LMG tracers on FLIR often enough to know. The one facing the camera is an infantryman de-assing the area – probably a peeling withdrawal."
"There's people still alive on that rock?" you breathe.
"JSDF keeps a four-hundred man garrison there," Goto replies. "They couldn't hold the base, but there's plenty of places to hide on that miserable rock."
"How the hell are the Abyssals performing air ops if they-"
"Shit," Hate cuts you off, "we had Army P-51s flying close air missions from Iwo's airfield before we finished taking that rock." A beat. "Not that the Marines needed them, but they wanted to help, so, you know."
"Settle," Hornet's terse voice cuts in. "My SBD's just found the surface group."
"Onscreen," you say.
Goto and Hate both look at you.
"ON. SCREEN," you enunciate clearly, and this time the fucking voice-recognition software processes it properly and increments the secondary display screen, piping you a feed from a Global Hawk flying out of Kaneda. The image jitters and jumps a bit – the Hawk is "close," but at those magnification levels it's still like peering through a straw – but you get a pretty amazing view of the SBDs nonetheless after Hornet relays a few position/altitude corrections to the operators.
"Helldivers," Shoukaku whispers.
"Enemy bearing?" you ask.
"Zero-One-Four."
The drone operator dutifully pans the camera over and for the first time you get a good look at the enemy surface action group; little dots sprawled across the ocean. The camera begins singling out ships and going to even higher magnification; giving you brief, shaky glimpses of their bow-on silhouettes.
"At least six cruisers," you mutter. "Heavy or light, I can't tell."
"Looks like... three destroyer divisions. Twelve or fifteen, unless I'm counting subchasers by accident," Goto adds.
"Admiral, my bombers are reporting enemy fighter escort over the fleet!" Hornet says sharply. "Twin-engined, on an intercept course!"
[ ] Order the strike to pick targets now attack and exfiltrate at best speed by flight (units of four.)
[ ] Order the strike to focus on a few big boys, even if it takes them longer to find, form up and attack them.
[X] Order the strike to pick targets now attack and exfiltrate at best speed by flight (units of four.)
You flick your eyes at your watch and hiss – the laws of Time and Space are knocking again, and you're cutting it awfully fine. "Tell them to pick out the closest targets and nail them."
The strike force – eleven SBDs and four Hellcats – split off in groups of four and three, angling for the most attractive target in their area. The Hellcats swing towards the incoming twin-engined machines; a horrific grisly grin shining out of a black carapace sandwiched between two segmented thorax-like nacelles. The incoming heavy fighters break off their attack run when the Hellcats give them a good squirt or two at long range; and then the fighters push over into dives at the closest escorts below them. They're some of the deckload of fighters you ordered Hornet to spot before dawn; when they were launched to clear the deck for a hasty launch of her SBDs she sent a few along as escorts, so they retained the light bombload you'd ordered slung. The "pilots" enter brief, steep attacks against the abyssal escort screen, throwing up towering columns of spray around the destroyers nimbly weaving through them – one of them with the old curved hull of a "torpedo boat destroyer" and another sporting the archaic four-stack design of an interwar destroyer, replete with the usual abyssal nightmare garnish.
Another monitor flicks into life as the drone operator gets his second long-range camera locked on (the fact that Global Hawks *have* two of them is presumably something you Didn't Need To Know.) You hear the faint sound of Shoukaku's odd footwear scraping across the tight-weave carpet; a sound you unconsciously associate with a man subtly stiffening his posture when someone Important walks into a room. You don't need to look to know she's thrumming with tension as the shaky camera feed shows the eleven SBDs motoring towards their targets, three flights singling out ships from the escort screen. They roll into their attacks, peeling out of formation in hard turns and turning inverted as they enter their dives to keep eyes on the target throughout the attack. Shoukaku cease to breathe as they pop their dive brakes. They seem to be moving in slow-motion, the attack stretching impossibly long; the small dark silhouettes vivid against the cornflower blue sky, with no background to give their velocity reference. You count ten, twenty, thirty seconds -
- and the sea seems to jump into the narrow field of view from nowhere, causing Shoukaku to gasp. The bombs swing out on yokes that sling the bombs clear of the SBDs propeller arcs as the bombers pull out at the last second, the heavy, sturdy planes pulling out of their dives within a few hundred feet of the ocean. Columns of spray explode around the abyssal warships -
"GOD!" Shoukaku cries as the view vanishes in a horrible, blinding flash. The screen fuzzes as the operator disables the FLIR enhancement filter; and the image snaps into awful clarity; a fireball climbing for the sky.
"Right through the forward magazine," Hate murmurs. Another two blinding explosions obliterate the view, and when they clear the ancient pseudo-ironclad is gone, and the four-stacker is now a three-stacker, her remaining chimneys bent and battered and afire stem-to-stern from flaming oil hurled on her by her expired mate. The SBDs motor away at wavetop height. The heavy fighters come thundering in to harass them, but the unburdened Hellcats are already zipping their way.
Except for one. The other drone cam is swishing back and forth trying to follow the maneuvering machine with its narrow field-of-view as it sheds its 12,000 feet of altitude in a tight downward spiral. The camera finally stops moving as the fighter levels out around 3,000 feet and plummets into a near-vertical dive, pulling out just over the waves as it races towards a destroyer turning away hard, hurling tracers and flak bursts into the air. The Hellcat's nose jerks up sharply and her bombs fly free for a few long seconds before they hit the calm water and glance off like stones, bouncing three, four, five times before they slam into the tin can's thin sides and detonate with terrible force. The pilot aimed for the stern and hit; you see the tiny dot of something on what looks a lot like a depth-charge thrower turn into a nimbus of light before entire stern vanishes in an explosion.
"Better than nothing," you murmur. You make a silent plea to whatever God there may be that you'll have mobile decks and planes enough in two hours to make this initial swipe meaningless, but you know full well it might not work out that way.
"Kaga. Akagi," Goto groans into his headset. "Status."
"Admiral!?" Akagi replies. "Admiral, are you ok-"
"Second strike is almost ready for launch," Kaga replies calmly. "We're turning south into the wind in a few minutes."
"Ah." He flicks his eyes over the multitude of screens currently displaying your battle group – the go-pro cams on the plane guard destroyers, the top-down feed from an MQ-8 hovering over the group and the camera feed from the TV gun directors mounted high on Fitzgerald and Mustin's superstructures. He squints at Hornet, and fumbles blearily with his remote till the view is enhanced, showing the rest of the arrows with dark navy-blue fletching stuffed in her quiver, ready to be fired. "Sending a strike too, uhh?"
"T-those are for CAP," Shoukaku tells him.
Goto turns his bleary eyes to you – and then closes them for a moment. "Uh."
"Someone had to make a call," you tell him. "I made it."
He looks ready to snap at you – and then he clamps up into a thin-lipped grimace of resignation. "Yeah. I know."
"You feeling good enough to help me out?"
Kongou almost leaps at you from her position hovering by Goto's side, her warm brown eyes riveting you with a panicked, desperate plea – and then she glances at Goto, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. You know what she's thinking – she wants nothing more than to get him out of this awful room, this awful everything- but without her trusted teitoku at the helm, she fears for her sister's lives.
Goto seems to feel much the same. He turns his hard dark eyes to the tactical screens, flicking his gaze over his units, his kanmusu, his girls – and then sighs. "I... I've been compromised. If you give me command again, I – what if they – no telling what they *did* to me-"
[ ] Shut up and nut up, Goto – I need you, and so do they.
[ ] He's right – if the abyssals got into his head, they could throw the whole battle with one planted mental suggestion.
[ ] Ask him to make the choice. You're nowhere near qualified enough to qualify or disqualify yourself as the commander in charge of an op like this.
[X] Shut up and nut up, Goto – I need you, and so do they.
Goto's been a central figure in your brief time at Yokosuka, but you haven't really thought about *him* much, busy as you were rushing from one crisis to the next. Offically your job here was to be the Nominal American in charge of the Nominal American Shipgirl Presence, and devote yourself to managing their needs, keeping them from Turning To The Dark Side and handling the paperwork associated therewith. It's Goto's show and always has been – you figured he gave you command of the skirmish where Naka got hurt because Arizona was the heavy hitter in that one, and you did well enough that he let you keep the reigns when the hostile battleships revealed themselves. Had you made a call he didn't like you were sure he would've relieved you immediately.
You were wrong. Even today, before that damned phone call, he was discussing strategic and tactical options with you, bouncing ideas between you like a ping-pong ball. He's been treating you like an equal, and you were simply too strung-out (and perhaps flat-out unsophisticated-salty-dawg-can't-learn-Brass-tricks stupid) to realize the implications. You get nervous and self-conscious when Admiral Thomas walks into the room, but you never really looked at Goto for what he is – a man commanding a fleet at least as large and powerful as 7th fleet itself.
High commanders maneuver sterile little force icons on big maps just like the one glowing on the wall of the CIC. It's easy to rationalize hundreds or thousands of sailors as pawns in the larger game, men who signed up for the job and knew the risks. At worst he might personally know a few of the skippers on each boat from prior service. But Goto has a face and a voice to put with each little blue dot – many of the most vulnerable and expendable are the youngest and most innocent, children in every sense – and he's been doing it for sixteen fucking months.
Early in the morning, in this shadowed CIC, you suddenly realize why Kongou idolizes him so much. They all should. And it tells you exactly what you need to know. You look into Goto's eyes and speak firmly.
"They got into my head, once," you tell him. "Didn't even talk – just... just looked at me. And I knew. I *knew* them for what they were, some... some evil, fucking *evil* thing, by instinct."
"... and?" he asks in the silence.
"And then I stood up and I fought the bastards with everything I had."
Goto sighs, and for a moment you see the load resting on the man. Kongou slips up behind him and wraps her arms around his middle, burying her face against his neck as she hugs him tightly. The lithe Admiral seems to swell with authority, his spine stiffening as he slowly shrugs off Kongou's affections with sheer Authority.
"God *damn* it Kongou, I'm *working.*"
Kongou's expression brightens like a flashbulb; a brilliant flash of smile and joy that dims as she remembers the atmosphere. "Y-yes," she says. "C-c-offee for teitoku!" She dashes off in pursuit.
"Uh," Goto says, sagging as soon as she's left the room. "Okay, sit-rep please?"
"I've had them steaming east to stagger the enemy attacks," you tell him. "The hostile carrier strike should hit us in about -" you check your watch - "forty minutes. Kaga and Akagi should have their second strikes off the decks in about five."
"What's with the SBDs?"
"Hornet can warm up planes on her flight deck-"
He raises an eyebrow.
You shrug and plow on "-so she was able to get most of a squadron of 'em up in time to hit the hostile surface group and get back here just before the first wave hits."
"So-"
"Rest of them will go up when they turn into the wind to launch Akagi and Kaga's strikes. We'll keep the fighters stacked at altitude against dive bombers and let the SBDs go gunning for any torpedo bombers."
He process that, thinking intently. "I can see it working."
"In about thirty minutes," you affirm with false confidence.
"Iwo?"
"We were just doing BDA when you came around and stole the remote. Pretty sure the runways are fucked, but we-"
"-don't know how fast abyssals can fix things and they probably launched a ton of shit before the missiles got there and we're fucked anyways," Goto finishes.
"We've got our own land-based air moving now," you offer. "The timing is gonna be tricky, but we should have help for the CAP."
He sighs and rubs his eyes. "Nothing to do now-"
"-but wait," you finish. You fucking hate it, but you know he's right. You turn your eyes back to the sterile blue tactical plot, and let your imagination run wild trying to guess what kind of horrors are whistling through the air towards your girls at this very moment. You feel the cold chill of dread that Shoukaku did minutes ago – somewhere overhead, plummeting towards you, is an Iron Fist.
And all you can do is wait for it to land.
[ ] Meanwhile, 225nm away from the CVs and 400 feet down....
[ ] Meanwhile, 600 feet below the CVs, er, feet....
[ ] Meanwhile, three hundred nautical miles north and 35,000 feet up...
Squadron badge of Marine Fighter-Attack Squadron 242, the "Bats". The motto means "Death from the darkness."
[X] Meanwhile, three hundred nautical miles north and 35,000 feet up...
"Bat One-One calling Goalie – buddy spike," you say with annoyance.
"Solid copy," comes the slightly raspy voice of the Navy geek. "Just had to verify. What's your ETA?"
"Ten minutes, give or take."
"Step on it, Bat – we've got a gaggle inbound."
You resist the urge to bite through your oxygen mask. "The hell you mean a *gaggle?*" The Arleigh-Burke he's sitting in has enough radar wattage to fry a flock of birds out of the air if it wants to – at closer ranges, not even abyssal fuckery can fool it.
"I mean there's too many of them to discriminate," the operator tells you curtly. "*Over.*"
"Well, fuck," you say in the privacy of your own cockpit, then key your mic. "Bat flight – military power and loosen up."
Your ship leaps under your hand as you give her the gas, accelerating out of the cruise band and up to combat speeds. The seven other F-18 Hornets of Bat Flight drift into a looser formation; paring off into elements as they prepare for imminent combat. You flick your eyes towards the fuel gauge and squeeze your throttle lever nervously – even with tanker support and every trick in the book, your Hornets are really pushing their range to reach the Bonin islands with anything like decent combat time. You're coming in about as slick as you possibly can – six Sidewinders and the gun, with the three drop tanks left in the Pacific a few miles back. The Super Hornet might have better legs, but if you have to mix it up in a knife-fight, there's nothing better than the original article. And against abyssals, there's one simple rule for ensuring a kill: "Yes – closer still!"
Your first inkling of the battle ahead is the cloud of smoke over the horizon; the work of many heavy anti-aircraft guns thundering away into the blue. As you draw closer your radar begins to pick up intermittent contacts that hop and dance on the scope before vanishing. Switching to single-target-track manages to hold them for a little longer. Abruptly one of the tracks firms up solidly. Four seconds later it vanishes. The Burkes are going to work.
"Bat flight incoming from the North!" you broadcast, not eager to see what an "NBE's" cute little outfit guns can do to your Hornet – a few of the chairforce planes at Yokota had holes in them from "friendly" fire during the raid on Yokosuka that looked alarmingly large. "Try not to shoot us, huh?"
"Bat flight!" an unfamiliar female voice replies. "I have intruders in the weeds inbound at bearing zero-fo-war-two, range three miles! Intercept them!"
"Number?" you ask, but receive no reply – the mysterious air controller is already issuing new orders to another flight of CAP birds.
>Go for a High-Low bounce out of the sun – the only good abyssal is a dead abyssal.
>Hit the deck and take them head-on – the best defense against torpedo bombers is to blow apart their formation.
Transcriber's footnote: demetrious seems to have missed the fact that VMFA(AW)-242 operates the F/A-18D — a two-seat version of the Hornet set up for electronic warfare and defence-suppression, running a pilot and an EWO. Of course, they were on an air-to-air tasking, so the aviators may have chosen to leave their back-seaters behind....
Session #26 pt.2
Trace Coburn
BattleTech Starfighter Analyst
- Location
- NDBBM, New Zealand
>Hit the deck and take them head-on – the best defense against torpedo bombers is to blow apart their formation.
Three miles – six thousand yards. Air-dropped torpedoes can go about two. Even with the incredible speed of your Hornets the window of opportunity for a good clobbering has already past. What you CAN do is blow their formation apart before they drop.
You push into a dive, Bat Flight following in good loose formation; the best Marine pilots in the Pacific, your handpicked golden boys. As you scream out of the heavens from 35,000 feet you see the battle unfolding below you; your eyes following the billowing contrails of missiles climbing from the two Burke's to find their terminus in bright flashes amongst gaggles of black dots; the swarming armies of the Enemy. From high altitude the vast size difference between the "ship-girls" and actual steel hulls is merely the difference between a small grey dot sprouting thin contrails and an empty space that fountains tracers and flak shells. The thing you're concerned about, however, are all full-sized: the NBE's CAP fighters; prowling and growling in 1:1 scale. You see an element of Hellcats flash by as you dive straight through the staggered high defenders; but you've no time for the unreality of the situation. Far below a full squadron or so of something is plodding towards the bandits -
- "fuck I have'em at eleven-thirty low," your wingman comments dourly, and for a second you agree with his summation. The inbound gaggle is *massive,* too many planes to count during your high-speed dive. Two squadrons, at least. And that's just *your* part of the fight – you're descending into the kind of battle you read about in fascinated wonder as a child, the epic tales of gargantuan conflicts involving hundreds of aircraft and thousands of lives. Not until now, in the cockpit of your plummeting fighter, did you realize how distant those battle seemed, like Arthurian legend of old. In that age planes were ten times cheaper, expended more as ammo than assets, and from the ranks of hundreds of plodding line pilots emerged a few spectacular heroes who strode among legions and slew all opposed them.
Into this titanic clusterfuck you are diving – two flights, eight Marines, the end product of the modern age where quality trumps quantity. You're diving into another age, one that's forcing you to play by its rules with powers beyond comprehension. You're probably helpless to change the outcome.
Probably.
You pull out of your dive over the waves, booking close to 700 knots without touching the afterburner and your precious fuel supply, the gaggle of abyssals only heartbeats away from you. Without time or space for a front-aspect shot you simply switch to guns and stomp the rudder, brushing the trigger as the reticule flies past a black dot banking hard to evade. Then you're through; past their screen, behind the escort fighters and already punching the afterburner to scream upwards, grabbing altitude for your next attack. With g-forces keeping your turnip nailed to the headrest you can't check the effectiveness of your move, but you know the attack has been scattered to hell and gone, their defensive firepower compromised with that big cloud of SBDs seconds away from contact. You take the Bats to fifteen-thousand feet before letting off the afterburner and leveling out inverted, surveying the battle through your canopy as you hang in the straps. Below you see the destroyers turning hard, the unseen dots of shipgirls clearly visible by the massive ship-sized wakes they trail. The SBDs hit the formation of abyssal torpedo bombers like two brick walls in a sumo match; tracers flying everywhere as they break into a mad, lethal wavetop melee. The radio is utter chaos ruled by the iron tones of That Voice, tersely directing fighters to various bearings.
"Level bombers!" a young girl's voice cries out fearfully. "Look! LOOK!"
"Bandits, two-o-clock!" someone in your flight cries, and you snap your eyes about to see twenty-odd planes closing on you. Flak bursts are already puffing up around them. A quick 360 scan reveals Hellcats motoring towards them, but most of them are tangled up in a furball on the other side of the battle.
"Dive-bombers!" that voice says again, the tone finally cracking. "Engage them, somebody SHOOT them!"
You roll your Hornet upright and shove her into afterburner, the throaty, hungry growl of a Sidedwinder already filling your ears as their escorts angle towards you.
[ ] Meanwhile, fifteen-thousand, six-hundred feet below...
[ ] Meanwhile, 225 nautical miles away and 400 feet deep...
[X] Meanwhile, fifteen-thousand, six-hundred feet below...
(Namely, aboard SSN-793, USS Oregon)
"Splashes -"
Silence.
"Ten-"
A pause.
"Fifteen... tw- ah, high-speed screws." The sonarman looks at you. "Air-dropped torpedoes."
"So it's happening," you say flatly. Six hundred feet above your head, two Burke's and a fleet of reincarnated warships are fighting for their lives; turning hard to dodge spreads of incoming fish. "About fucking time. Take us up."
The deck of SSN Oregon begins tilts slightly as she begins to creep upwards; if you can call 35 knots "creeping." ASW escort is all fine and good for a carrier strike group on a Sunday cruise across the Atlantic, but a battle group maneuvering at combat speed isn't so easy to keep up with.
"Passing thermal layer," the sonarman intones as the depth needle brushes 300 feet.
"It's going to be a whore to hear anything in the surface duct with that shit going on," your XO complains, glaring at the steel roof like the battle above has offended him personally.
"Yeah. It just became the best place to make thirty-five knots submerged."
He shrugs. Your XO is a strange duck; he bitches incessantly about everything, as if he considers himself a professional Devil's Advocate. You're your own fucking devil's advocate so his complaints are always parried, but he's always game to try.
If he wasn't terribly clever from time to time you'd blow him out the fucking escape hatch yourself.
He contents himself by squinting at the display screens with the most current plot guesstimates for the surface fleet, a small army of sonar operators and a supercomputer laboring to update them second by second. The helmsman is keeping Oregon under the fleet as best as possible, but as the battle up there develops the battle group will disperse, the escort screen will fall apart -
- and whatever's lurking out there in the deep will slide in to take its shot. That's what you'd do, anyways.
[ ] Move to the outside of the screen – put the battle noise in your baffles so you can hear incoming goblins (subsurface contacts) as they approach the battle – or as you approach them, at this speed. You've got the noise of a fleet to hide against, but you're listening for someone or something waiting for the battle group to steer in its direction, they won't be going fast – you'll need all the help you can get to find them.
[ ] Camp right underneath the fleet and hide in the noise – at thirty-odd knots you need all the goddamn help you can get to hide your signature. If they're perfectly positioned to ambush you you'll never fucking hear them with a 30-knot slipstream over your hydrophones anyways – more likely they're gunning it submerged or even surfaced, trying to get in range of the predicted course track for a shot. You can't miss an old diesel boat gunning it if you were moving at *sixty* knots.
[ ] Haul ass ahead of the battle group while the battle's covering your noise a bit, then drift and see what you can sniff out. The abyssals aren't expecting a sub and your bearing won't diverge from the visible surface ships unless they're positioned abeam enough that they're either too late to take a shot or already have.
[X] Haul ass ahead of the battle group while the battle's covering your noise a bit, then drift and see what you can sniff out. The abyssals aren't expecting a sub and your bearing won't diverge from the visible surface ships unless they're positioned abeam enough that they're either too late to take a shot or already have.
"Helm, step on it," you instruct. "Get us outside of the escort screen."
When a Virgina-class wants to move, it *moves.* The 688s were fast motherfuckers in their own right, but the next-gen propulsion system of the Virginias are terrifying to behold – even when you hit 40 knots, you're making less noise than the warships above...
… girls. You suppose they're girls, or NBEs or whatever bullshit acronym the Department of the Navy is pedaling now. All you know is, they sound like warships on the hydrophones, so as far as you're concerned, their ships. They certainly maneuver like ships; taking up as much space to turn as any carrier would. Your sub pulls two miles ahead of the battle group without any trouble, the little blue dot of your boat marching steadily away from the cluster of dots with growing "uncertainty" circles forming around them; the growing distance and their desperate maneuvers already confusing your carefully assembled plots.
The man on the engine telegraph is watching you like a hawk as you pull further and further from the battle. You finally nod and he chops power to a crawl; your boat slowing to a mere five knots quickly. You resist the urge to pace the cramped space of your boat's nerve center as you wait for the sonarmen to catch a whisper of the enemy – it doesn't look good in front of the crew, after all. Patience is the greatest virtue for any attack skipper...
... but you can't shake the itch on the back of your neck. They're *here.* That sour bastard can gripe all he wants, but you *know* they're here.
As for vice-versa, well...
"Helm, dip us under the layer."
The XO squints at you, but when he sees you tense he shuts his mouth and just taps his watch. You haven't been "drifting" for even three minutes yet.
"He's approaching aircraft carriers," you mutter. "Don't know if he knows about MADs but he knows aircraft can spot him shallow."
"Him?" the XO says, voice dripping with dubiousness.
You bite off a "fuck YOU" and turn away from him. You both reach out automatically to catch a handhold as the boat tilts at a 25 degree angle, your crewmen giving her a nice steep angle on the planes to get you deeper, faster, with the meager five knots headway. You hate this yo-yo shit, but towed arrays don't tolerate being dragged around at thirty knots very well, so it's all hull hydrophones for now.
You hate playing fair, but you can't complain about babysitting carriers. You couldn't ask for better bait.
"I got something..." your lead sonarman says tersely.
The entire CIC holds its breath for a three-count.
"Biologics."
The XO exhales in a huff. "They won't be down here. Search planes aren't looking during a fucking air attack, he'll be up there using his periscope to follow the convoy track."
"Great place to catch a stray torpedo from a missed bomb-run," you murmur. "Or catch one up the ass when your own side's torpedo plane goes in the drink and the fish swims away, happy and free."
"Do they even WORK like that-"
You snap around and give your XO a look that could've made Khrushchev drop his shoe. "Stop. Right now."
Your XO swallows – but doesn't waver. "They. Are. Not. *People,*" he says quietly. "They're not worried about keeping their boat intact, like you are."
"Then what the hell DO they want!?" you hiss, knowing you shouldn't be having this chat in front of the crew, but so fucking strung out and fed-up that you're willing to risk it, just in case he gives you an excuse not to confine him to new quarters in the escape trunk.
His cold, watery gray eyes bore into you. "To kill."
"Contact," the head sonarman whispers.
You snap about, tense and eager – but he says nothing more.
"... well?"
He shakes his head. "No sound yet."
"Then what the-"
"The whales," he says tersely. "They're talking about something."
You and the XO share a Look. He catches it and glares at you both. "Some of us went to a real school," he bites back. "They're alerting. Like birds in a-" he sighs, clearly giving up on you both, and returning to his phones.
Come to think, you'd like to blow the sound department out the escape hatch some days, too. At least you're not alone on that one.
"There!" he says suddenly. "Low-speed screws..." he seems to squint. "No machinery noise. Just screws. No cavitation..."
"... no machinery noise?"
He shakes his head. "There's certainly *something,* but I wouldn't call it a machine... range, maybe four miles?" He slams a fist into his leg. "Somewhere ahead of us, but the fucking whales keep singing over him, they're in the same area-"
Which puts them ahead of the convoy track, somewhere.
"Heading, speed?" the XO demands.
He shakes his head. "Need time for a bearing-rate analysis. Never heard this noise before, and he's not in any warbooks, eh?"
You check the tactical plot. Eight thousand yards ahead of you – say sixteen to twenty ahead of the battle group bearing down him him. And just under the layer. Your gut says he's making max speed at depth to reach an attack point, hiding from any escort screen under the layer till he's close.
The itch on the back of your neck is getting worse; possibly prodded by the watery gray eyes of your asshole XO. Your sonars are better than whale ears; so why were they whining before you heard a whisper?
[ ] He cut speed long enough to verify the battle group track with his sonars, then started motoring again – he's out for blood and he doesn't intend to miss a firing window. The whales heard him while he was sprinting, we slipped under the layer and into the Deep Sound Channel while he was drifting.
[ ] He's doing exactly what we're doing – sprint and drift, checking his six. We passed the layer while he was listening. He might even know we're here already.
The History of CA-25, USS Salt Lake City - The Legends of Ol' Swayback Maru
Trace Coburn
BattleTech Starfighter Analyst
- Location
- NDBBM, New Zealand
On the other hand, Northhampton was basically the sole reason there is still a US-IJN armada left to go back to Yokosuka, Hornet included
Northhampton is gonna spend the rest of the week pounding on so much shipsluts sterns, Batlead and Harder gonna have to start taking notes
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Dirtnap
Kanmusu Affecionado
Iiii don't think she will. Northampton towed her as long as they could, the fact that Halsey ordered her scuttled has nothing to do with Northampton. If the torpedo had hit anywhere other than where it did Hornet would have still been repairable.
Nicholas
No longer teaching battlethings on a battleship
- Location
- Ashore again
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I agree, and I really do hope you're right...but I've still got a sinking (heh) feeling that planefriend won't make the reunion between Hornet and Northampton so cordial.
Trace Coburn
BattleTech Starfighter Analyst
- Location
- NDBBM, New Zealand
Transcriber's note: if you care to look up-thread, you'll see that the earlier 'placeholder' post has now been filled with posts from Thread #46 that held stories of CA-25, USS Salt Lake City, AKA "Swayback Maru". Read it, and behold how awesome that bawdy, battered, beautiful, brawling bitch truly was.
Session #27 pt.1
Trace Coburn
BattleTech Starfighter Analyst
- Location
- NDBBM, New Zealand
TWITTER: twitter.com/planefriend
ARCHIVE: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Kant-O-Celle Quest
(Archivist's note: despite what demetrious said at the end of Session #26, we're starting off with SS-257, USS Harder.)
As the pings rapidly increase in frequency, their damning ring echoing off your hull and into the depths, you suppress the urge to scream.
They've found you *again.*
The damned pulses buzz and tingle as they hit your skin, unpleasant and invasive. He's clearly got your position, so you've got nothing to lose...
*ping!*
Seven-hundred yards behind you.
The steady, relentless sound of his screws chewing the water grow and grow in your ears as the sharp cold pings increase in tempo, nailing down your position in the deeps. You kick your feet faster, resisting the tiny screaming voice deep in your heart that begs you to hit flank speed and turn for all you're worth. To present your broadside to his active sonar would ensure he can't miss, and there's still a chance he'll miss.
A small chance, but a chance.
You ping again – five-hundred yards.
He's more above you than behind you now; you can hear the distinctive purr of a high-power steam turbine through your baffles. He's picking up speed now, but not too much – he doesn't want to deafen himself till the last possible second. The pings are coming so fast now that you can hardly feel anything else but that damned accelerating ringing in your ears like the doppler-shifting scream of incoming ordinance -
- wait -
- WAIT -
Screws accelerating, turbine screaming into high-gear-
-NOW!
Bubbles boil up behind you as you punch flank speed, heeling hard to port. From directly above you hear the *KAWHAM KAWHAM!* of a Y-gun firing; the sharp reports slapping the water as they hurl depth charges far out abeam of your attacker to create a pattern to catch you. That makes him Nasty Irritating Prick #2 - #1 has *two* of the damned things. You look upwards, unable to see the ashcans sinking towards you, but perfectly capable of imagining them as they sink. You're at six knots now, coming up on seven, and turning far, far too slow.
*KRUMPH!*
*KRUMP!*
*KRUMPH!*
The fantail charges begin detonating behind you. Timing it from when you heard the first splash, you know you'll turn clear of them before they reach you, but the side-thrown ones, they will be right on top of you. You brace for the blast, halting your turn and praying that you've managed to thread the narrow needle between his fantail and the throw of the Y-gun-
*KWHAM!*
A pressure wave slams into your belly, lifting you a few inches and making you rock slightly. Alarm bolts through your system like a cold lightning bolt; it was *damn* close but went off a good fifty feet too deep. The layer overhead must be playing hell with their depth ranging.
You turn hard once more to present your bow to the retreating destroyer, giving his sonar the smallest possible target as you drop speed to ahead one-third – as much to husband your strength as to keep the sound down. If you run out of battery before they run out of charges, its all over. The last attack was the closest yet – if the charge had been twenty yards closer, the depth wouldn't have mattered – but you've survived, again.
And that's when you hear playmate #1's pings behind you as he finishes his turn and comes towards your location, pinging steadily and inevitably.
[ ] We have to go deeper.
[ ] That does it. That fucking *does* it. Time to put some blood in the water.
[X] That does it. That fucking *does* it. Time to put some blood in the water.
The propaganda films during the war always lingered on this part – the tense, fearful wait for the depth charges to sink; the blasts buffeting the little model submarine in the tank of water maneuvered by prop-handlers. The long hunt, the never-ending bombardment is what defines the submarine war in the minds of the public – then and now, as your internet roaming discovered. When the escorts crowd in above you, every evasive maneuver seems to be futile and you can't seem to shake the dogs prowling the surface above, the answer is always the same -
Run quieter.
Go deeper.
They are the brave ones – the skippers with nerves of steel, listening to the destroyers making their runs every few minutes for hours and even days on end, plodding along at a safe, silent two knots while their attackers scream in at flank to bombard and bombard and bombard. *They* are the unshakable and fearless, the men who'd dive well below their test-depth, listening to the steel hull creak and groan under ever-increasing strain, knowing every *second* that the boat might slip past her crush depth and implode, killing everyone aboard before they know what hit them. Men like these defined the Silent Service; iron wills and steel nerves. Your peers, your icons – it is by their example that you could, and should escape this lethal trap.
You stare down into the dark, cold abyss of the Pacific; the breeding ground of the abyssals, the grave of countless thousands. You're a hundred feet past your test depth already – and to survive you might have to dive a hundred more, knowing death could come at any second, and that Na- nobody would know what claimed you, or how. The sound of the second escort's screws are coming in fast as his fellow circles around at flank to line up another run – if you're going to move, you've got to do it now. But when you squeeze your trembling hands tight and try to summon the resolve to take the plunge, all you can hear is the fast, steady beat of the destroyer's pistons overhead as the motherfucker motors in as casual as can please to hammer you again.
Your skin flushes with heat as the last thin thread of patience snaps, your eyes turning upwards to the distant glow of the surface. Someone's diving into that abyss today – and it sure as hell won't be you.
It's time to send these assholes home.
You kick into flank, spreading your hands wide, twenty-five degree incline to climb out of the depths at a noisy nine knots. You come up to one-hundred-thirty feet and level off as NIP #1 breaks the thousand-yard circle, already accelerating, pinging you madly. He's as excited as a yippy dog to find you shallow, too shallow to sidestep depth charges before they reach you. You strain your ears to find his fellow, already behind him and to one side, ready to start his own run to pin you down as his fellow circles for yet another god damned depth-charging. You pop your tube doors early, and ping NIP #1 to nail down his range perfectly – running silent can go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. Numbers fly through your head as you plot out potential shots, speeds and angles, time and space as the escort barrels in at flank, eager to nail you before you dive again.
He needn't worry about that.
The pings come faster and faster till NIP #1 is too close above to catch you in his cone – you're already climbing at nine knots when his charges begin splashing in the water. This time you *do* see them, trailing faint bubbles as they sink right at you; one even glancing off your side... and continuing to sink past you, detonating harmlessly below at your prior depth. Your periscope is rising, reaching full extension right as you level the planes at fifty-five feet.
"Heeeeeere's HARDER!" you scream into the water as the shark-shaped abyssal hoves into view, plainly visible through the sheets of water shedding from the glass. He's hardly seven-hundred yards distant and already committed to a hard port turn.
"Dodge this, motherfucker," you hiss; shoving your palm out before you. An explosion of compressed air thunders through the water from your hand, and from the end of it emerges a Mark 14, screaming away at 46 knots. Five more follow, thunderous explosions smacking your eardrums with satisfying reports as the water rushes into reoccupy the voids; your fish screaming towards the destroyer's broadside in a tight, lethal spread. You flip on your back and whip your periscope 180 degrees to the rear, the cross-hairs lining up on NIP #2's bow. He's got you dead to rights on active and you're making more noise than a brass band using a buffalo's ballsack as a base drum – which is just the way you want it. He's taking to the side a bit, not quite done with his circle. You watch him for instant eternity, gauging his will, his aggressiveness.
"Do it, faggot," you hiss. "C'MON, PUSSY! I'M RIGHT HERE, COME AND GET ME!"
The abyssal hears you, and turns bow-on to barrel in at flank. Eldritch red flames are streaming from his eyes in a thirty-seven knot wind, spray – or saliva – dripping from the awful, toothed maw. A cannon muzzle emerges from its gaping mouth and thunders with purple flame; you see the brief blur of a shell whistle past your periscope and slam into the water just in front of you. He's committed to the attack; intending to ram.
"Yes," you hiss. He's at 900 yards and closing fast on your stern, leaving you only four fish to use. Standard procedure is one down the throat, one to each side, one in reserve. But you smell something cagier about this asshole, and so as he passes 800 yards you fire one fish right down the throat. He knows *exactly* where you are and sees the blast and bubbles as your fish screams into the Pacific; prompting him to put the rudder hard over starboard to dodge -
- you're already turning hard to starboard as well, swinging your feet to port to increase the angle-off-bow as much as possible. You hold the turn for two horrifyingly-long seconds before ripple-firing your last three fish off to his right. They scream into the water, swimming straight for a hundred-fifteen yards before their gyros take over, turning them hard left to angle at the destroyer who's committed to his turn. You've turned a down-the-throat shot at a narrow, quick-dodging target into a high-angle broadside attack, and now all his turn has done is buy your fish room to arm. The abyssal is turning for all he's worth, his ship leaning slightly as he slams his right screw into reverse, one of your fish is tracking right for his side, a hundred yards from a high-angle oblique impact, just the kind the Mark-14 likes.
You grin savagely. "SMILE, YOU SONOFABITCH!"
[ ] Switch to Settle.
[ ] Switch to the F-18.
[X] Switch to Settle.
The wall of the CIC is a tapestry of mayhem and death; bright flashes of light bathing the dark room in a kaleidoscope of horror.
"SBDs, hit the low bombers!" Hornet snaps, and as one her massive dive-bomber compliment, all thirty-six of them, wheel away from her decks and enter shallow dives to intercept the cloud of abyssal torpedo bombers closing on Kaga's broadside from the north-east. Each flight drifts into a loose finger-four formation; singling out a target to maximize the power of their two .50 caliber cowling guns and present any fighters trying to swing onto their tail with a combined defense. Hornet's SBDs knocked down some torpedo bombers at Santa Cruz, and with twice the number on the defense now, your hopes are high for good results.
"Dive-bombers, bearing three-three-zero, high!" Shiranui's cool tone reports.
"I see'em!" Sammy declares. She's wielding a five-inch gun in each hand, like an old-west gunslinger. "COME AT ME, IF YA THINK YER HARD ENOUGH!"
You and Goto both tense, fear tightening your muscles. Dive bombers are the biggest threat, by far, and a good twenty-five with fighter escort are closing on your task force, fast. Sammy's go-pro feed shows Hornet studying the sky, her dark eyes sizing up the newest inbound wave intently.
"Flight three, four, five, six, seven, hit those dive-bombers! One, two, hang back over me and prepare to intercept any leakers!"
"She's good," Goto whispers.
"She was the first ship ever equipped with a CIC," you reply. "And she learned lessons in her early battles that'd form the basis of CAP direction for the US Navy in every battle and war since."
"We made the right call?" he says hopefully, but you both know it might still count for nothing.
The SBDs hit the wall of torpedo bombers like a ton of bricks; sending four abyssals spiraling into the water, black carapaces shattered by .50 caliber slugs. Their escorting fighters set upon them immediately, but in groups of four the SBDs rear guns cannot be ignored. Some of them bob and weave, taking quick shots as they keep ahead of the rear gun's hungry muzzles, but the sturdy dive bombers shrug off the damage as they turn hard to saddle up on the hostile torpedo planes. Two fifty calibers isn't much, but the heavy slugs carry well; the bright staccato flashes of AP-I smashing into the abyssal's tails making your heart sing. A hostile fighter tries to saddle up on an SBD for a long hosing-down, but the awful, toothed grin disintegrates under a hail of lead from their rear gunners and sinks, smoking, towards the waves. The abyssal torpedo planes spread out their formation even more – they'll have to give it up soon anyways to launch a properly distributed spread of fish at Kaga. You flip to Shiranui's camera; watching Kaga draw her bow back send a shotai of Zeroes into the air; freshly refueled and rearmed – her only contribution to the CAP. They turn hard and roar into the attack.
"P-P-P-P-P-PLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANES-" Willie is screaming. Her go-pro is looking upwards (and vibrating more than it ought,) showing the dark navy dots of Hornet's Hellcats slamming into the dive-bombers. The fighters surge forward to engage, letting some of them slip through the stream. They're heartbeats away from their pushover point when another flight of Hornet's fighters and one of Akagi's Zeroes charges into them, blowing their formation apart like a hawk diving into a flock of sparrows.
"More dive bombers, above us!" Akagi shouts, "Bearing, bearing right, to the RIGHT! Kaga, fire up! UP!"
"Copy," she replies, her voice vibrating like a tense steel cable as the diminutive guns on her shoulders swivel away from the incoming torpedo planes and begin thundering at the new arrivals."
"Flights One and Two, get them, GET them!" Hornet cries, but Two is already chopping down the leakers from the first gaggle. There's too many of them, too god-damned many of them, two whole carrierloads hitting at once. They must've launched their entire compliments in one damned deck-cycle, and now, despite holding back as much as you can, you're being overwhelmed.
"Bat Four, Fox Two!"
"Bat Seven, Fox Two!"
"Bat Eight, guns guns guns-"
"-guns guns from three-"
Someone cries out as the Marine F-18s scream through the second squadron of dive bombers that circled to the south before attacking; their ugly misshapen forms vanishing in plumes of flame and debris as their tight, lethal formation is blown apart. But it's too late to destroy any more – they reach their pushover point and come screaming out of the sky in steep dives, targeting your ships.
"Akagi, hard starboard!" Goto screams – Kaga can't steer into Hornet to her right and the torpedo bombers are approaching from her left. Hornet could follow Akagi, however.
[ ] Order Hornet to heel over hard to starboard; dodge the incoming ordnance.
[ ] Say nothing; you can't afford to scatter the close escorts providing her AA coverage now!
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Session #27 pt.2
Trace Coburn
BattleTech Starfighter Analyst
- Location
- NDBBM, New Zealand
[X] Say nothing; you can't afford to scatter the close escorts providing her AA coverage now!
Heeling hard over is the only option for Akagi, with her weak AA armament – but Hornet is nestled safely in the middle of the formation, surrounded by every heavy cruiser kanmusu you've got, and her own formidable armament besides. Maneuvering now will just scatter their firepower and spoil their fire-control solutions.
All you can do is hold your breath and pray as the abyssal torpedo bombers plummet towards your ships, drawing beads on your precious girls. You watch those lethal little dots hurtling downwards on a dozen screens, every ship, every girl turning their eyes and guns on them in a last, desperate attempt to deflect the iron fist.
The sky above the formation center rips apart as Maya, Takao, Tone and Chikuma all cut loose with their five-inch batteries, hurling a shield of smoke and shrapnel into the air over Hornet's head. The dive bombers scream into it – and *through,* chased by the flaming wrecks of their companions, but still coming in fast, the dark narrow silhouettes of F-18s hard on their tails as the Marines dive into their own flak without hesitation.
A strange sorrow rips through your heart, as if you're watching yourself watching the screen; a helpless observer screaming and shaking the fence barring you from the execution chamber where your charges await their fate.
The very air around Hornet seems to catch alight as her 20mm guns open up; her own complement almost outnumbering the light AA of her four escorts combined. They are the last ditch, the hail-mary in the last few heartbeats before impact. She IS putting her rudder over hard now, another last-breath attempt. Shoukaku screams – one one screen a trio of dive-bombers is seconds away from release, heading right for Akagi.
And then everything happens very, very fast.
Towering columns of spray obliterate Hornet's go-pro feed, and you hear the awful sound of her scream as a near miss staves in her side with its submerged shockwave. She reels, leaning into her desperate last-second turn and looks up in time to see an abyssal peeling away, its bomb a lethal round dot as it hurtles straight towards her -
- the go-pro goes flying, a brief glimpse of water its last transmission. You scramble for the other feeds, terror surging through your veins, hoping, praying that the afterimage in your retinas was accurate. The next feed is Sammy's, and there you see the snarled black cloud just above Hornet, her face slashed and bleeding from the shrapnel of the five-inch shell that just obliterated the bomb and bomber.
"THREE-SIXTY-FUCKING-NOSCOPE-WILLY-HOLY-SHIT-" Sammy is screaming. You slam your fist into the rickety card table serving as your desk, screaming despite yourself, "YES, YES YES" when Hornet vanishes in the ugly yellow-orange plume of a direct hit.
[ ] She's fine. She's tougher than they know.
[ ] It's not lethal but she HAS to keep fighting.
[ ] You need to know what happened to her and you need to know NOW. Prompt damage control is key!
[X] You need to know what happened to her and you need to know NOW. Prompt damage control is key!
"HORNET!" you snarl into your headset. "Sitrep, now! BDA! What happened, girl?"
Shoukaku is sobbing something in Japanese behind you as two plumes of water appear off Akagi's side. Goto's saying something, everyone's saying something everyone's making somuchfuckingNOISE-
"Hornet, sitrep, Hornet, talk, come in, earth-to-fucking-HORNET, TALK TO ME, WHAT IS YOUR STATUS, HORNET-"
"Skipper-" someone grabs your arm firmly. A flash of white-hot rage bursts in your eyes and you hear someone hitting the floor a distance behind you.
"FUCKBU-oooph!" another impact.
"HORNET, GOD DAMN YOU-"
She hoves out of the cloud of spray and smoke and fire, wounded but standing and-
- another bomb -
- you rip your headset off and hurl it at the screen as your vision blurs *red.*
[ ] Men should die for their ships – not the other way around.
[ ] Captains go down with their ship... but you're an Admiral, now.
THIS VOTE HAS NO TACTICAL OR STRATEGIC EFFECT. VOTE THE WAY YOU FEEL.
[X] Men should die for their ships – not the other way around.
(Archivist's note: aaaaand then the dirty bastard took the PoV over to Bat One-One anyway.)
- blurs *red* as you shove the stick forward, jinking under the searching tracers of the bomber's rear guns as it finally reaches its initial point and pushes over for the terminal dive. The computer screeches about G-warnings as you snap the Hornet up and over through a single steep yo-yo, rolling out with your nose pointed straight down. Finessing the pedals to pick out your target amongst the flak bursts and fellow F-18s chasing the foe, you shout in wordless triumph as the little trembling circle of the AIM-9s caged seeker finds its target, the snarling hungry growl of tone mingling with the roar of the rocket motor as your last Sidewinder leaps off the rail, twitching only twice before slamming into the strange thruster ports on the thing's rear. You slam the throttle forward, afterburner igniting behind you with a WHOOM! as you scream out of the sky, closing for guns on another diving bandit. You see their target; the eerie wake trailing a ship-sized nothing near Fitzgerald, the Burke without the hangar. Even as you watch missiles come screaming out of her foreward VLS, climbing straight at you on pillars of smoke and flame, lances hurling heavenward.
You roll your ship over and dive right into it.
A vic of bombers below you are almost at release altitude when an SM-2 detonates right in their midst, the continuous-rod warhead blowing their tails clean off, sending their foreward halves wobbling into the ocean like badminton birdies shorn of their tails. You tear your eyes away from the ship below and focus on your target, the small green band growing around your gun reticule as the range closes. The airframe vibrates as the M61 cuts loose -
WHAM
- and then you're yanking the throttle back hard, holding your breath and squeezing your diaphragm tight to keep the blood in your heandinyourfuckinghead fast tofastthat'showbillywentinupUPUP UP U P -
- reality fades back in above the waves; your screens showing yellow – hydro leak, secondaries fine, tail radar screaming -
FUCK
[ ] Hit afterburner, drag towards friendlies.
[ ] Let's tango, motherfucker.
[X] Hit afterburner, drag towards friendlies.
Stick foreward and right rudder in a fast jink, using the yaw to increase roll rate to enter a hard guns-defense turn as quickly as possible, tracers flashing past to port. Pulling up, engine thundering away at military power and over the top in a hard defensive barrel roll as you acquire the abyssal fighter through your canopy, nosing up as he follows you into the rolling scissors. You corkscrew through the air with him for three revolutions before slamming the throttle forward into afterburner on your way down from the fourth, breaking hard and thundering away in the general direction of the fleet. You aim for Fitzgerald, praying they can put a Sea Sparrow down the abyssal's throats. You keep your head on a swivel, sashaying and jinking as slightly as possible as they spew tracers at you, keeping your Hornet unloaded for speed as much as you can. You snap your head 'round to check the other side and almost scream as the round snout of a radial engine flashes past your face and screams overhead. You rubberneck in time to see it merge with your pursuer – and his pal. The graceful, wide wings of a Zero are silhouetted against the sky as it pulls up into a hard vertical reversal, one abyssal following and the wingmonster circling around hard to the left.
The Zero reaches apex and pulls back hard, bringing his nose on-target a few degrees earlier than the abyssal. The cannons roar and chips of enamel and chitin go flying as the hostile disintegrates under 20mm shells. The Zero comes over the top, seeming to float as it slowly picks up speed in the dive towards the deck. You see him rolling left-right-left as much as possible to check his six past his wings, but the wingmonster anticipated his move and circled about to come screaming in on the deck right under the diving Zero's belly, with plenty of smash to match velocities when he pulls out. He's just drawing a bead when you give him a squirt from twelve hundred yards; the glowing tracers missing miserably, but forcing him into a guns-defense and spoiling his shot. Thundering past his beam at five-hundred knots, you eyeball for your new friend -
- and find him already turning towards you, approaching your wing. He's still distant, but through the oil-flecked canopy you see a humanoid figure snaking his arm about. You waggle your wings to confirm and turn towards his tail, beginning a defensive weave.
The remaining attack craft should be bugging out, but the abyssal fighters want to FIGHT – and the whole escort of that second bomber gaggle seems to have latched onto your sorry ass. You keep weaving with the Zero, flicking your nose over, taking half-second squirts at the little pinpricks trying to climb up his ass and then weaving back into a guns-defense turn as they slide in to take potshots at you. They're not stupid either, and they've got the altitude – one will dip in for a go and while you're reacting to him his buddy will dip in from the side, trying to sneak in a shot under your blindside, your belly. The Zero pilot keeps with you for what seems like forever. You swat an abyssal off his tail, the incredible rate-of-fire of a modern gatling gun teaching the abyssal what a snap-shot can do, and the Zero manages another with the incredible throw-weight of his cannons. But after that it's just dip and nibble and threaten, neither of you having the ammo for much more.
Until the abyssals squander their altitude, that is.
Dogfighting an F-18 is a mistake few people live to make twice. You begin a flat scissors with the two on your tail; your Zero buddy snapping into a steep climb as you do so. You keep the reversals just hard enough to keep ahead of their probing tracers, and when they're almost in-synch and saddled up you snap the stick into the back-right corner and slam your rudder. The right wing stalls and your Hornet enters a violent right-hand horizontal spin, a snap-roll a mere few hundred feet over the water. The horrible hissing sibilance of abyssal engines screeches past and you cancel the roll as sharply as possible, standing on the rudder to slew your reticule over a foe barely a hundred yards distant. Blue fire flares from his thruster ports as he pours it on, trusting his acceleration, but it's too late – the GAU-61 belches a tongue of fire and the abyssal's tail vanishes in a cloud of shattered carapace, diving into the waves venting blue fire.
His pal snaps into a steep climb, rolling inverted at the top. You and the abyssal lock eyes, and you know you're fucked – low, slow, completely out of energy to counter with an upward turn. He comes in at you, his nose pulling for a full-planform shot from above as you desperately work the rudder and stick to jink without stalling -
- and the Zero calmly dips in and smokes him, the gentle curving arcs of cannon shells intercepting himbefore he can pick up any acceleration in the dive.
"-Bat leader, are you there, Bat, I-"
"Right side of formation," you reply, "paired up with a Zero!"
"Afuckingwhatnow-"
"-just like that movie-"
"I'm okay!" you cry triumphantly. "God, god we CLOBBERED those bastards!"
The exhilaration of the victor sings through your blood and drips down your legs -
- you look down at the fine coating of blood sprayed around the floor and seeping through your knee-board, and then you notice the jagged hole in your canopy.
[ ] To Harder.
[ ] To Settle.
[X] To Settle.
Goto's talking.
Let him talk. Let him shout, let him scream – the dice have been cast, and all you can do now is weep as they come up snakes. Hornet reels out of the smoke, wounded, staggered, but intact – for now. Some of the Hellcats Hornet vectored her Hellcats into dove early to escape the violent mauling; they leveled out around five-thousand feet and are slanting towards Kaga now. Glide-bombing sacrifices the accuracy and safety of dive-bombing and even the meager advantage of hugging the deck, but it's the least susceptible to hard evasive, like the one Kaga's making now. Shiranui is blasting away with everything she's got, augmenting Kaga's decent AA suite, but the abyssals bore in relentlessly. You see Goto thrum like a plucked string when one of them connects, an armor-piercing bomb smashing into Kaga's side and bowling her over. Another one strikes her, detonating under her foot and sending her stumbling and tripping to face-plant in a wave with a grunt, her speed slackening considerably even as the remaining torpedo bombers release their payload, some of them burning, some still being savaged by the dogged SBDs. You watch one of the Dauntlesses run its prop into an abyssal's tail, then sink towards the waves for a desperate ditching attempt.
"They're making their run," you hear Naka breathe in tones of whispered prayer. You turn to the next feed; from a Global Hawk that accompanied the Japanese CV's first strike force. They're in visual range of the abyssal fleet; a vast, sprawling thing; lethal little black dots around the distinctive rectangles of two flight decks, their foaming wakes revealing their recent hard turns. You look around, but Kaga's massive squadron of 27 Kates is still at five-thousand feet, splitting into two groups with three fighters escort each to catch the enemy in a hammer-and-anvil attack.
"What the fuck?" Goto asks, snatching up his remote and adjusting the drone's camera himself – focusing on six little white dots zipping over the waves. "What the fuck are they doing!? Tell them to break off, god dammit, tell them TELL THEM!"
"What? Who?" Akagi is asking, but Goto's already diving for a phone. "Get me Chichijima's seaplane base, get them now, NOW!" he screams at someone.
The distinctive shapes of six US-1 flying boats are zipping low over the water towards the massive abyssal fleet. As you watch, they single out a cruiser-sized ironclad on the edge of the escort screen and spread out to have their go; peeling away as their fish hit the water and start running. They're already turning for home when the abyssal fighter cover screams down into them, guns blazing.
"DAMMIT!" Goto screams, smashing the phone against the desk before kicking it over. "IDIOTS! FUCKING BAKAS-" he thunders along in frenzied Japanese, almost beside himself with impotent rage.
The fighters savaging the US-1s finish hacking up their victims, a few of them struggling away burning, another one with one engine out, and turn towards Kaga's oversized Kate squadron. The three Zeroes leap ahead and latch onto an abyssal each, doing their damndest to draw the rest onto them, but the abyssals are hardly deterred, boring in on the slow-moving green dragons relentlessly, climbing hard to meet them.
The second group of Kates is motoring away to their own attack perch a fair distance away, with no abyssal CAP harrying them – it seems they truly went all-in on their assault; holding back a handful of defenders. The sky, however, is so thick with flak that its truly terrifying to behold; the sea alight with the fire of abyssal AA barrels. It's so thick that you lose sight of the fleet entirely sometimes. No crude barrier barrage, this – the dark puffs track the poor aircraft relentlessly, green-winged planes sagging, burning and breaking apart as the shrapnel finds them. One of them drops out of formation, streaming oil from a shattered engine and arrows straight at the nearest ship in the escort screen, intending to make use of its torpedo. Japanese torpedo doctrine was simple – press the attack as close as possible, and guarantee a hit.
As the savaged first group tangles with the persistent fighters, you see something shaped like white balls come sprinting off the fore of the abyssal carriers – fighters launching. Two, for, six – they leap into the air and turn hard to dive right into the Kate's teeth at the last possible second.
The Kates do something you'd never heard of before – from five-thousand feet, they *dive,* plummeting right past the abyssal fighters before they can draw a bead, using the speed to dash over the final stretch. They loose their fish from a thousand yards, a dense spread, and turn sharply to meet the angry fighters, desperately attempting to form up defensive groups as the AA continues to rip them apart. Goto pans the camera over to find the first detachment already bugging out, having loosed their fish from slightly longer range.
A flash – a gout – an explosion, on the edge of the task force. All eyes dart to it in time to see another violent blast right after the first; whatever was left of the small ships raining down from altitude into a sea sprayed with burning oil.
"Who the hell got them?" Naka asks, but she's ignored as all eyes watch Akagi's two chutai of dive-bombers begin their run. They dive faster than the SBDs did, at a shallower angle, but they concentrate their attack properly, pulling out low over the water as their bombs detonate around the flat-top ignored by the torpedo planes. You hear yourself shouting in excitement with the others as the bright flash of fire blossoms on the carrier's deck, then another, and another. Goto is hammering the table with his fist, cheering like a madman, and you hear someone laughing dark and terrible nearby -
- you catch Naka's expression, and tone down as you realize its you. The hot, sick surge of wicked glee doesn't leave, however, one thought rolling around your head – there's more where that came from, you bastards.
The strike force leaves, unmolested by fighters but badly thinned out by the incredible AA fire; the nimble Vals doing their best to shoo bandits off the B5Ns tails. Goto cheers anew when the first abyssal flat-top shudders under the hammer-blow of a torpedo, the gout of water towering over the enemy and raining down on the slick, rounded beetle-like back of the massive wrongness trying to scuttle away from the searching bubble trails of your fish.
You did it. You really did it, at last, you NAILED the sons-of-bitches, both decks, out of action!
That's about when Kaga is torpedoed.
[ ] SS-257
[ ] SSN-793
Session #27 pt.3
Trace Coburn
BattleTech Starfighter Analyst
- Location
- NDBBM, New Zealand
[X] SSN-793
"Target on steady bearing," the lead sonarman says, his eyes staring intently at nothing as he fiddles with the tuning controls of his hydrophones; tweaking the filters and enhancing the frequencies he wants. "Still motoring along under the layer."
You look back at the tactical plot, and the fuzzy blue lines of strong active pings almost atop of your goblin – it looks like that Shuffle character running this op spread some destroyers out forward in an ASW screen. Smart. As you suspected, that's what the fucker is hiding from, which means you can sprint and drift towards him just above the layer and nip below to ram a Mark 48 up his shaft galleries. The USS Oregon tremors faintly with the raw power of a nuclear-reactor driven propulsion system as she accelerates through the depths -
- "aand I lost him," the sonarman gripes. They always hate it when they can't hear their whalefarts, but you don't want to launch at this range; he'll hear the screws screaming in and go quiet as a mouse, and you don't know his position or depth well enough to find him with a torpedo swimming a search pattern.
"Explosions on the surface," the sonarman mutters. "Bombs, I think."
You take a note of it and turn your eyes back to the tac-plot, thinking like the abyssal. He's slipping under the escort screen as you speak; those old ships don't have towed arrays to peek below the layer and he knows it. Soon he'll be in their baffles, and he'll risk coming above the layer to get a good sonar bearing on the incoming task force. Then he'll come to periscope depth and find his target – the carriers – and get set up for a run on them when they charge into range. When the air attack up there abates they'll change course, either turning into the wind for flight ops or turning towards the hostile task-force to shorten their own aircraft's return leg, and he'll have to be watching when they change headings if he wants to catch them.
When he sticks his head above the layer, you'll be waiting there to fucking chop it off.
"Torpedoes?" your troublesome XO asks. He hasn't said anything since that little bon-mott about Abysasals Wanting To Kill; apparently out of glaringly fucking obvious facts for the day.
"Still running," he says. "Bearing two-one-five, pretty faint, but a lot of them..."
"Let me know when they stop," he says dourly.
"There's an air attack going on up th-"
"I read the fucking briefing too, *skipper,*" he snarls at you with so much heat you actually take a step back. His slate grey eyes cut into you, and with a start your realize they were never watery – just shifty.
He's afraid.
"... explosion on the surface," the sonarman says. "Bearing, uh, back there." He waves in the general direction of the baffles.
"Fast screws?" the XO demands, and this time you don't interrupt.
"Fading... dropping out? End of their run." He listens. "Three more..."
The XO leans in, a strange expression on his face.
"... two..."
His jaw quivers as he clenches it tight.
"One left."
You check your watch and mark the second hand.
"... still there."
"... still there."
The sonarman's spine stiffens suddenly. "Torpedo accelerating, it's HERE!"
[ ] MEEP MEEP MOTHERFUCKERS
[ ] Make like David Copperfield and make this fucker *vanish.*
[X] MEEP MEEP MOTHERFUCKERS
"HELM," you shout, "MAKE THIS BITCH *MOVE!*"
And move she does. The Oregon seems to lurch beneath your feet as her variable-torque AC motors seize the water and SHOVE, accelerating with incredible speed. The helmsman turns your tail to the incoming torpedo as the Oregon runs for her life – and by god, can this boat *run.* The 688s were rated for 33 knots, safe – you could do 35 for hours, if you weren't afraid of shitting the CE's wrench set the next day, and 37 for minutes at a time... until the windings melted, that is.
Your brand-new Virginia can almost break 40 without a sweat – and right now she's doing her damndest to set the new record.
"Who's fucking shooting at us!?" you demand.
"They want to kill," the XO reminds you. "They'll take the closest shot they've got, and right now that's us!"
The shooter must've slipped past the ASW screen before his buddy, and he popped into the surface duct just in time to hear you go rushing past at flank. He waited till he was between you and the surface force before launching, counting on the sound concealing his torpedo – and it worked. It fucking worked. You got suckered, and good...
... but it's not over till its over – and the Virginia can run fast. "Take us into the layer!" The middle of the layer is a chaotic and heterogeneous zone; pockets of warm and cool water mixing ensure a varied and unreliable performance from any sonar. If you can get into it before the torpedo gets close, you stand a much better chance of shaking it. Everyone in the CIC grabs a handhold as your boat tilts alarmingly, thundering towards the depths at speed. You eject a bubble decoy as you enter the layer, hoping the torpedo will track for it, but it spurns it and begins a series of S-turns through the layer, hunting for you.
[ ] Defensive.
[ ] Offensive.
[ ] Offensive.
INSPIRED BY DISCUSSION: The best defence is a good (counter)offence.
With a homing torpedo snaking towards you the only option is to pour on the coal and keep your boat thundering through the layer at top speed. Unfortunately your hull is boring a nice hole through the water, mixing the warm and cold pockets in the layer uniformly enough to give the pursuing torpedo an even easier time hearing you.
"A knuckle!?" your XO asks.
"Not yet!"
"What the hell are you waiting for!?"
"NOT. YET!"
"Fish going active!" the sonarman says, the lethal little red icon on the tac-map starting to flash as it pings away.
"Knuckle, now!" you snap, and the helmsman complies, wrenching his wheel back and forth violently; slapping the rudder around to kick up a turbulent pocket of water that reflects active sonar well; almost like chaff for a submarine. "Fire tube 1 down the return bearing of that son-of-a-bitch!"
"Aye," the weapons officer replies with relief, and a second later the boat shudders as a Mark-48 torpedo comes charging out of the tube and executes a hard turn to swim back towards your attacker.
"Hard to starboard, launch a decoy, angle negative twenty on the planes," you instruct. The Oregon heels sideways in the water as she dives down through the layer. You watch the depth gauge needle sink towards the bottom of the layer, then calmly say "all stop."
The XO looks liable to jump out of his skin, but he holds his tongue.
Somewhere far, far too fucking close, the torpedo detonates, the sound ringing through the hull.
"Hit the decoy," the sonarman whispers in terror. "Actually heard the clink-"
"Weaps, active on the fish and start a pattern, middle of the layer."
The XO opens his mouth, then stops, a look almost approaching curiosity coming over his face. You both know the hostile sub is nowhere near this close – but you're not looking for the archer.
Just the arrow.
"Hard returns on something small, a-"
"Detonate-"
"But sir-"
"DETONATE!"
The sound of your Mark 48s massive warhead detonating is close enough to make the hull ring faintly. You wait, almost bobbing on the balls of your feet until the sonarman picks up the second hostile fish.
"That snookered it," he says. "I don't know what its chasing but it thinks we're about thirty degrees to port of where we are."
A torpedo explosion makes one hell of a knuckle, it swamps out passive hydrophones, and – most importantly – it'll definitely get New Jersey's attention. And with a second abyssal boat out there, you need their attention urgently.
"Now what?" the XO asks. It's a good question – you've managed to get below the layer, using the torpedo detonation to conceal your heading change and exactly where you left the deep sound channel. Whoever shot at you is a smart motherfucker; you have no doubt he was down here before you, waiting for you to come charging through the layer at flank in an attempt to shake his fish, giving him a great opportunity to mark your location and close for another kill.
"He's not close," you tell the XO. "That fish was still swimming a search pattern when it went active."
"So?"
"So he reached the end of his wire and cut it, let it fly autonomous. I think his second shot tracked for our fish – isn't easy to tell one shrouded propulsor from another, not in the layer, if that cocksucker even knows what they are – he may even think he killed us."
"I wouldn't count on it," the XO says darkly.
"Me, neither."
"We know the attack bearing-"
"Maybe, if he was smart he launched it thirty degrees and five hundred yards to one side before vectoring it in-"
"Close enough for a Seahawk," the XO points out. "Lets pop a message buoy, let Mustin know where these fuckers are so they can shit some Mark 46s on 'em."
You grin at the XO. "Good idea, but we won't need it to find this asshole."
He glares at you with those hard slate eyes. "Don't forget the Leveling Effect," he reminds you sharply. "Just because it's old doesn't mean it's as noisy as it should be – or as deaf. As it just demonstrated."
You smirk at him – somebody just shot at you, and that fucking pisses you off. But the angrier you get, the calmer you feel. Your ice-cold tone seems to slice the air when you reply. "Yeah, I know. We don't know how old that motherfucker out there is, or what he's packing – we don't know if we've gotta dodge a Cutie or a fucking ASROC – but it works both ways. He doesn't know what we can do. He fucked up."
The XO raises his eyebrow.
"He's hiding against the background noise of the task force and the battle, right? Running quiet?"
"And?"
"We're in a Virginia."
For the first time since you met the miserable motherfucker, the XO smiles.
Trace Coburn
BattleTech Starfighter Analyst
- Location
- NDBBM, New Zealand
And for the record, the third installment of "BB-61", from the end of Thread #49, has been added to its respective post as well.
CompassJimbo
Where’s Your North?
- Location
- The former Rubber Capital of the World
I can't wait for tomorrow night.
Greek Fire
One of these days, I'll actually start writing.
- Location
- The Earth Sphere
So, when did they get Northampton?
CompassJimbo
Where’s Your North?
- Location
- The former Rubber Capital of the World
Last thread.
Greek Fire
One of these days, I'll actually start writing.
- Location
- The Earth Sphere
Well. I'm officially lost.