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Kant-O-Celle Quest [a Kantai Collection game, transcribed from 4chan]

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Dirtnap said:
It's highly implied that the US went back to Fallujah. Because if he's been in the Corps for 20+ years and was a Lance Corporal (E-3) when the story started (Battle of LA) then the Corp changed their policies. Current policy is 6 years to pick up E-4, 8 to pick up E-5. If you can't make the rank in that time, you get discharged.
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I thought I'd heard there was a limit to make higher rate. What if he made Corporal and was busted back (but was otherwise an exceptional Marine/combat hero)?

I'm sure DoD changed that policy when the Abyssals decimated the Navy, as well as calling for ex-sailors and ex-marines* to re-up. But that was too recent to explain Hate.

_______________
*I know--no such thing as an ex-marine. What do you call yourselves?
 
And remember, "Marine(s)" is spelled with a capital M. They're just as picky about it as @wdango is about capitalizing the "w".
 
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Session #29 pt.1
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    "Hornet," says Goto, "is dead in the water."

    "A particularly unsuitable choice of words," you snap in reply, choosing to glare at the tactical map rather than your associate.

    "You're sure it wasn't a submarine?" Shoukaku asks for the third time, wringing her skirt nervously in both hands. "They often-"

    "We just got a message bouy from New Jersey – they're pinning down at least one sub, and Mustin and Oregon just tag-teamed another one," you reassure her. You nod at the camera displays on the massive 60-inch flatscreen TVs wallpapering the CIC and pull your (somewhat dented) headset away from your ear so she can hear.

    "-I GOT SEVEN HEDGEHOG PROJECTAHS,, ABOUT EIGHT, K-GUN THROWAHS, FIFTEEN MARK-15S, TWO FIVE INCHAS, THE SHITS NEVEAH END YOU CAN'T *TOUCH* MAH RICHES, EVEN IF YUH HAD TYPE 21'S AND DEM TYPE 93 BITCHAS-"

    Shoukaku blinks.

    "We've got a professional on the job," you assure her, pointing at the feed from Mustin's gun director, which is zoomed in on Sammy B as her K-guns fling a new pattern of depth charges wide and high.

    "-I TOTE GUNS I MAKE TORPEDO RUNS-"

    "... what else do they have?" she asks warily.


    "Choppers," you tell her. "Like the anti-sub patrols you knew, but they've got hydrophones they can dip in the water on a long cable, they can drop independant sonar bouys that are radio-linked, and they can even drop homing torpedoes."

    "How long can they stay up?"

    "A few hours. Mustin's helipad took a bomb hit in that last attack, but they're patching the deck up as we speak. They've been refueling and turning them around on Fitzgerald's helipad. She doesn't have a hangar or spare munitions, but she's got an avgas tank and refueling lines."

    "Oh." She looks mollified – somewhat. "What about Hornet, can we-"

    "Shoukaku," Goto interjects, "I-"

    "S-sorry, Admiral," she says, bowing and backing away in one motion. "I shouldn't be b-bothering you right no-"

    "*Stay, dammit,*" he growls gruffly. "Shoukaku, I've read every history book I can lay my grubby mitts on and I still don't know half of what you do about carrier ops cira 1943, okay?"

    She nods, and waits.

    "Kaga can make about ten knots; twelve if she really pushes it. Can she still launch fighters?"


    "Yes," Shoukaku replies firmly. "Most fighters can make a takeoff from a stationary deck..."

    "I hear a big butt coming," Goto says.

    Every eye twitches towards the right side of the room for a second.

    "Too easy," Hate mutters. "Gimme a challenge."

    "*But,*" Shoukaku says, "you need almost a full deck run to do it, and, uh-" she points at Shiranui's display, which has Kaga in it. She's pouting a bit as she picks at the scorched edges of a shell-hole in her shirt.

    Goto looks blankly at her, and then back to Shoukaku. "Uh."

    "You don't-? Right," she says hurriedly. "She's just like Akagi, at the moment." Akagi's deck is visible from one of Fitzgerald's feeds; a camera set up on the starboard bridge wing. The massive carrier's wooden flight deck is absolutely crammed with aircraft; a motley assortment of refugees from all three carriers. "There's no room."

    "Hangar deck?"

    "We'd have to stow Hornet's dive-bombers," Shoukaku says. "Our own dive-bombers barely fit with folding wingtips. Your yankee ones don't fold at all. I don't even think we could get our own below – you get them to the elevator. Kaga's deck is nice and wide-"

    "I heard that," Kaga's voice growls in your ear, but you decide not to mention it.

    "-room to shuffle them around, but-" Shoukaku shakes her head. "It's far too crowded, we – we just can't do it!"


    "Just shove some of the damn things overboard," you point out sharply. "Whatever we can't use-"

    "We did that," Goto says darkly. "Why do you think Shoukaku is cooling her rudders here instead of in the fight? Which was *my* call, by the way," he adds hastily, patting Shoukaku on the shoulder.

    "Dammit, you can shove the SBDs overboard," you point out. "American air groups weren't organic to their, uh, Shoukau what are you the is heystopthat-"

    Shoukaku just hugs your arm closer, doing a fairly good job of pressing it between her breasts, which her flowing, silken outfit does little to restrain. "We're all pretty organic now, Admiral."

    You look to Goto for help, but he just gives you that look particular to men millimeters shy of a grin you'd be entitled to slap him for.

    "Even if we did," Shoukaku continues, "we lost almost half our own planes to the anti-aircraft fire, and I don't even know if... if we *can* re-arm yankee planes. We've never tried before."


    You rub your head – no more strange headaches, not after that nasty little steel hitchhiker was removed, but you're expecting an old-fashioned stress-induced one any minute now. "What if we push half of those deck-parked SBDs on Akagi into the drink? Bombs are bombs; they're not as complex as torpedoes. Could she re-arm them and launch?"

    Shoukaku bites her lip and rests her head on your shoulder with a sigh. "I don't know, Admiral."

    "We could toss some of the SBDs and turn around her D3As," Goto offers.

    "We've half of what we had, and only a handful landed on Akagi," you point out. "She had to stop recovery ops when her deck filled up. Kaga had more room."

    "I heard that, too," Kaga says flatly, rubbing her thumb over a dent in her armored chestplate.

    "Five or six dive-bombers are better than nothing," Goto points out. He sighs, and checks his watch. "Well, they're your planes. Better make up your mind – we've got two hours till that surface force arrives."

    You look up at the tactical display again, and the ominous red dot of the abyssal surface force drawing closer. With Hornet stationary, you're going to have to make a fight of it right here.

    And the odds are far more even than you'd like.

    [ ] Ditch the SBDs, spot the D3As. Hornet's going to be in ordinary for a while anyways, but Akagi's turnaround time is limited solely by her aircraft supply; she's yet to take a hit, a few dive bombers are better than nothing, and it's guaranteed to work.
    [ ] Ditch the D3As, take a gamble on re-arming the SBDs. A handful of bombers isn't going to cut it, and a lot more than an extra week or two on Akagi's turnaround time hangs in the balance – like Hornet's life.
    [ ] Just get Akagi and Hornet out of here – you've got two of the most terrifying rape machines ever to dive the inky depths on-call, to say nothing of two Arleigh-Burkes and four heavy cruiser-girls. You're got plenty of batters, if the abyssals are willing to pitch.


    [X] Ditch the SBDs, spot the D3As. Hornet's going to be in ordinary for a while anyways, but Akagi's turnaround time is limited solely by her aircraft supply; she's yet to take a hit, a few dive bombers are better than nothing, and it's guaranteed to work.

    "Think those Seahawks could sling-load planes between decks?"

    You shake your head. Higgins was a Flight I boat just like Fitzgerald; Harpoons but no hangars. You did have a helipad, however, meant for borrowing choppers from carriers, and you worked flight ops with them more than once on ASW exercises. "Sling-loading is an art and a science, they'd need the equipment, even if they have it and are trained in it and don't need to remove anything from the choppers to do it, well-" you shrug. "That kind of thing takes hours. I've seen them do it with pallets for UNREP ops, but each load is a damn dicey thing and they take their time."

    Goto frowns, expecting the answer but disappointed anyway. "Doctrine."

    You nod. Every aspect of operating the massive and complex machinery of war in a cohesive and organized fashion relies on relentless practice to the point of muscle memory. There's all sorts of things you *can* do, but only what you've practiced doing has a chance in hell of surviving the vagaries of war and Mister Fucking Murphy. Sling-loading WWII-era fighters – or jury-rigging 250kg bombs onto 500 pound bomb racks – is something none of your shipgirls have done, and with a hostile surface fleet bearing down on you, now's a lousy time to try.

    You sigh. "Push the SBD's overboard, have Akagi spin up anything she's got left, with whatever munitions she's got left."

    Goto raises an eyebrow.

    "Doctrine," you say.


    Goto gets to work working out the details with Kaga, trying to find the most time-efficient way to get armed planes off her deck while saving as many SBDs as possible. Damage reports from the rest of the fleet are minimal; aside from a few lost bombers that took potshots at your destroyer screen or cruisers, every attack focused on the carriers, as they should've.

    "Hornet, how is it coming along?"

    "Why ask me?" she asks primly. Hornet's arms are crossed tightly over her modest bust as she stares out to sea, the light wind brushing her long dark hair in gentle waves past her shoulders. She'd be a stoic beauty in profile if not for the faint blush visible even through her dusky skin.

    "Guess I don't have the Admiral's... touch," a man's voice drifts over Hornet's mic, and you hear Hate sniggering rudely in the background, not bothering to hide it. Hornet just grumps up and clamps down, trying to ignore the small cluster of mechanics crowding each other for space by her flat, toned belly. They're crowding the gunwales of Mustin's whaleboat, which has been lashed to Hornet's lower leg for stability.

    "We've got her pretty well patched," one of them says. "We can't pump out the water till we restore boiler pressure, though."

    "What's stopping that?"

    Hornet sniffs and tilts her chin an inch higher, studiously ignoring the workers.

    "Her boiler stacks," another one says on his own radio, tapping Hornet's abdomen near her belly button. "Don't ask me how it frikkin works, just-" he shrugs. "Without a draft the fire won't keep going, or some shit like that. Christ, they never trained me to work on steam... could we just take her under tow?"


    "What could you make, towing her with Mustin?"

    "Eeh. If she was a Yorktown-"

    "I AM a Yorktown-!"

    "Five knots?"

    You and Goto both sigh – another answer you'd expected, but aren't happy to hear. That won't do you much good against cruisers and destroyers approaching at thirty-plus.

    "We're going to have to slug it out," you say.

    "Yeah."

    "Well, what do we have?" you ask.

    What you have turns out to be more than you expected. The Burkes reserved twenty percent of their Tomahawks, and carried 40 into battle (most of their magazines were devoted to SM-2s to cover the fleet, of course,) leaving them with eight of the new Block-IV weapons, which are anti-ship capable. The capability had been rushed to IOC in 2015 as a stopgap till the LRASM was developed. To think everyone was worried about the Chinese, then. The Virginias have their Mark-48s, of course, but encounters between SSNs and abyssal surface assets have been rare in the extreme; and never an attack group tackling a task force. They carry twelve Tomahawks in their VLS system, however, which is more weight-of-fire with standoff advantage to use. Fitzgerald has her eight Harpoons, as well – modified and improved from the ones you were forced to use in LA; reworked and reprogrammed to utilize lessons from your battle and subsequent engagements. They should track fairly reliably.


    Which is good, because the Burke's are far to fragile to shellfire to let them too close to this scrap.

    "Well, that's it for our side," you summarize. "Can't tell you much more about the subs, unfortunately, but that's everything I know about Burke's. How's the shipgirl front?"

    "Not good," Goto says, "but not bad, either. If we could fight them at night, it's exactly the kind of scrap these girls were built and trained for." He stares at the tactical map impassively, thinking. "A lot of our firepower is in their torpedoes, and they just don't work half as well in daylight. Enemies still can't see a Long Lance coming, but they sure as hell know when they've been fired. They're best at close range, too, and without cover of darkness those girls are going to get chewed up fast if they close too tightly."

    "The cruisers?"

    "That's the good news," Goto says. "Takao and Maya are two of the best gun cruisers ever put afloat. Five-inch thick belt, four-inch bulkheads and *ten* main-battery twenty-centimeter guns. Heaviest broadside we could ask for from a cruiser. And sixteen damn torpedoes – they ought to hit *something* with that."

    Naka makes a dubious sound behind you, but remains quiet.

    "What about the reece cruisers?" you ask.

    "Less armor but still better than average, eight guns, twelve torpedoes, standard fare. Solid."

    "How about the enemy?"


    "I vectored a few of Chikuma's planes to have a look at them on the way back," Goto says. "They're doing that fucking smokescreen trick again, but I asked the chairforce boys to bring down the Global Hawk to forty-five thousand or so. They had a grand time shooting at it while Chikuma's planes snuck in and took a peek. It looks like seven cruisers and about ten destroyers, at least."

    "Cruisers? What kind?"

    He shrugs. "Visual ID was sketchy back when we used it on *normal* ships. Between the era differences and all that freaky abyssal body horror shit? How the hell should I fucking know?" Goto take a half-step back, as if trying to withdraw from his own words. "Well... you know what I mean."

    You sure do – it's been a long damn morning, and you've got a square-off at high-noon approaching. "So we're at parity, at least."

    "Yeah." Goto sneers and glares back at the tactical display. "I hate fair fights."

    "I hear you."

    "So, who's commanding what? I've got a Fletcher and a DE left in this fight, and that's it." Fitzgerald and Mustin are technically under Goto's command, having been attached to his task force – and your authority is implicitly (though not explicitly) limited to hulls of the shipgirl type.


    "I take the cruisers, you take the destroyers?"

    "Bean to your Ender, huh?"

    "NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRD-"

    "Fuck you," you and Goto snap at Hate, and turn back to the matter at hand – how to play the battle. Your options are pretty simple – line up at standoff range and rely on gun superiority to force them from the field, or push in close for a strong torpedo attack.

    "Our best torpedo delivery vehicle is those destroyers," you mutter. "And any way you dice it, ours will intercept their run or they'll intercept our run."

    "We've got the Burke's for that," he points out. "They're light on anti-ship missiles, but the SM-2s and Sparrows in surface-to-surface mode are the most accurate damn guided weapons we've ever used on abyssals, especially with the Aegis-system radars. Little warheads don't do much on heavy units, but they sure nail destroyers fine."

    "Their ASM missiles are working a lot better now," you counter, "and they're the perfect complement to your heavy gun line."

    ​
    Pro tip: NEVER make a comment like this about a twenty-five-thousand-ton fleet carrier. Especially not while you're within her murdering range.
    (Archivist's note: particular praise goes out to the anon who drew this, and in barely six hours!)​

    "True," Goto says, nodding. "And we can fire the Long Lances around twenty-thousand yards, force them to tack away and keep distance if they try to close too much. But..." he sighs, and looks back at the screen. Hornet seems to be strangling a mechanic with her bowstring while his alleged comrades laugh at him gleefully. "She's blood in the water, Settle. I have a feeling the bastards are going to rush us one way or another – they only need one good spread at range, and they know it. If we're going for close action, I'd rather do it on our terms than theirs."

    You look at the screens yourself – at Willie Dee, who's trying to swat away a live depth-charge flung into her by Sammy's K-gun. By some perverse and dark magics, she's only managing to juggle it as Sammy laughs like a lunatic.

    When destroyers go into close action in broad daylight, they can do great things.

    And they usually pay for it with their lives.

    [ ] Close action, torpedo attack.
    [ ] Stand-off, gun-line superiority.


    [X] Stand-off, gun-line superiority.

    The next two hours pass in a blur.

    The fleet is a hive of activity as every ship, human or kanmusu, braces for the coming clash. Mustin lands and rearms her Seahawks, the choppers gingerly playing touch-and-go till they're sure they can trust the hastily-patched deck. As the Burke passes by Hornet, sailing a slow, wide circle around its charge, you notice the Seahawks are sporting four-packs of Hellfire missiles on their sides, and wild-looking Marines are familiarizing with a rotary-mag grenade launcher, launching HE rounds at a killer tomato target towed in the ship's wake. It seems Mustin's skipper intends to make a stand for Hornet.

    Dark blue TBFs return one by one, their throaty roars diminishing to insect-like little buzzes as they approach Hornet and line up for landing; Hornet's returning scouting force. Takao and Maya are both holding a diminutive floatplane in one palm, tinkering with them using small screwdrivers – you see Maya frown, lick her thumb and rub the windscreen of hers firmly – while Chikuma and Tone recover their long-range scouts launched before daylight. Tone seems to be having a particularly hard time of it, standing there with arms crossed while a tiny green biplane flies laps around her head.


    "I *said* I'm sorry," she says, not sounding very sorry. "But – 'ten surface units?' Really? Do you never learn? That's not a scouting report, that's a – a fortune cookie!" The plane does a curt little split-S and buzzes towards Fitzgerald with an air of offended dignity.

    Naka is sporting a headset, her pencil quickly wearing towards a nub as she scratches and scribbles furiously in her dogeared legal pad; taking down munition and fuel reports from every destroyer in the task force; acting much like your XO would've aboard a ship. You asked her to check in with the subs, first. She spent a few minutes on the radio, curtly informed you that none of them were in contact; neither steel, shipgirl or shipboy, and went back to her work.

    Goto's busy on his own headset, conferring with the Burke's skippers as he outlines how he'd like them to deploy, what targets to prioritize and what their weapon release authorization is – what to shoot at what, and how many. With the limited magazines of a modern missile ship, prioritizing is key.

    Meanwhile, you're trying to wrangle your destroyers.

    Earlier you rallied them into two divisions; Yuudachi, Shigure, Yukikaze and Hayashimo into Division One, and Wille Dee, Fubuki, Shiranui and Sammy B into division Two; assignments Goto approved, looking impressed. Shigure leads the veterans of Division One, and Shiranui leads the relative newbies of Division Two. Sammy B is your ace in the hole, a mad wildcat of a fighter unafraid to launch the kind of insanely aggressive attack that can rob an enemy advance of momentum when it counts the most – combined with Shiranui's almost supernatural poise, you think they should be okay.


    Meanwhile more conventional assets are in motion. You get a phone call from a sleep-deprived Admiral Thomas, informing you that the tanker support forming the air-bridge to the Bonin islands came under "abyssal SAM attack." The escorting F-18s responded by descending to the surface and strafing the hell out of a surface contact which "either sank, or crash-dived." Nonetheless, the enemy was driven off and the JSDF is scrambling to rearm their F-2s with iron bombs and drop tanks. Whether they'll be in time depends on how long the battle lasts.

    "Admiral." Something taps your shoulder. You glance over... then down, where Naka is looking up at you, waving the legal pad. "They've all got enough five-inch shells for a good scrap, it looks like. A few of them caught bomb splinters from near-misses during the air attacks, but aside from that they're all good to go."

    "Thanks," you say, and take the legal pad from her, setting it on the card table by your side (nothing but the best for the pride of the US Fucking Navy, you think.)

    Naka looks down and turns away again, her pencil already circling vaguely over paper she no longer has. She stares into space for a few bleary-eyed seconds before starting, realizing your eyes are still on her.

    "I'll do autographs, but there's a waiting list and you must provide your own Polaroid," she says a little too smoothly.

    "Out with it," you say.

    "You want me to p-"

    "Cheap shot, no points," you say flatly.

    She looks – looks *up* at you thoughtfully... then leans over ever-so-slightly, her eyes going to Goto, who's trying to carry on a conversation with Mustin's skipper while walking a slow circle to avoid Kongou's creeping encroachment of personal space.

    "How much do you know about torpedo attacks?" she asks.


    You open your mouth-

    "Cheap shots!" she retorts.

    - and sigh. "The basics. Hammer-and-anvil from forty-five degree angles is the best way to do it, if you can't close to close range. Launch as many torpedoes, make your spread so dense they can't possibly escape unscathed. Closer is better. The usual."

    She nods. "A few more things, then. Goto won't hold his fish very long – as long as they're on-deck they're a disaster waiting to happen." She smiles bitterly. "As I can attest. They'll probably square off in a battle-line, steaming line-abreast, and when they're committed to a course, he'll launch."

    "And they'll either have to steam away or steam closer to dodge them, reducing their gun power by half," you conclude.

    "Yeah. But that's when you'd want to fire at them from the sides; torpedoes at both right angles. Damned if you sink, damned if you float."

    You wonder at her phrasing for a weary moment. "Good idea. Anything else?"

    "Wait for them to commit," she says. "Rapid angle-change ruins your solutions pretty awful. When you see your shot, take it quick – it takes time to reform a line. Launch as a division, or not at all. Torpedoes are as much about denying the enemy space and time as they are about killing them."

    You nod, thinking that over – again, space and time. "Thanks."


    She shrugs. "Just textbook stuff. I guess it seems archaic to you-"

    "No," you say. "No, not as much as you might think." You clap a hand on her shoulder, a little surprised at how small – and slumped – it feels under your hand. "You should get some rest."

    "I'm fine," she insists. "If I'm not here, I'll go nuts."

    "If you're here," Hate mutters from the corner, "you already are."

    ---

    One of Mustin's Seahawks makes the first sighting twenty minutes shy of noon – columns of smoke over the horizon. The screws of your combat force churn to life as they steam west; Goto's cruisers in the center, with Division One and Two on the flanks, lined up side-by-side in columns. The abyssals skirted the edge of Chichi-Jima's shallows to reach you at best speed, coming in fast from the West.

    You flinch as a missile thunders out of Fitzgerald's forward VLS and screams away towards the horizon, lofting in a high, gentle arc as it races towards the kill-box.

    "Splash One," the skipper reports a minute later, sounding satisfied. "Must be a floatplane or some damn thing; it was moving pretty slow."

    The Seahawks approach cautiously, skimming the waves; popping up to flip their surface-search radars on to grab quick glimpses of the hostile taskforce and confirm their plot track. Soon they send back the first solid reports of the enemy's composition – a center force of seven heavy-looking cruisers, with a screening line of lighter escorts about ten thousand yards in front of them; a good position to lay smoke or to charge in for preliminary torpedo attacks. The heavies are already laying smoke; ready to turn around and lose themselves in their tails if need be. The sea is glassy-smooth, and the noonday sun high overhead has baked away any cloud cover.

    It's the perfect day for a gunnery duel.


    Goto turns his cruiser column south early, forming up in a battle line; the naval equivalent of squaring off with your fists in the air. The abyssals maintain formation, steaming directly for the center of Goto's force. You see a drop of sweat trickle down Goto's face as he watches the yardage tick down to 35,000, than 32,000. At 31 he finally speaks:

    "Division Three, flank speed!"

    Takao, Maya, Chikuma and Tone pour it on, pushing from twenty towards their max of thirty-three or so. Goto doesn't want to steam too far south; lest he give the abyssals a straight run at Hornet miles back, but being caught slow when the shells start flying isn't an option.

    He orders his cruisers to open fire at 30,000 yards – at half-rate, just to start dialing in the range. With the high closure rate, narrow aspect and long range, he doesn't expect any hits – "but it'd be nice to get lucky for once," he mutters darkly. Takao and Maya launch their short-ranged scoutplanes – armed with light bombs. The Global Hawk over your task force is zooming in on the battle below, and Naka is watching intensely, reporting fall-of-shot to the cruisers by the dye packets with individual colors assigned to each warship. The planes set up an orbit a respectful distance away – flying over the ten destroyers screening the force would be suicidal, and Akagi's dive-bombers are coming any minute now to add mass to an attack.


    "Range," Takao says firmly. "Twenty-nine thousand yards, enemy closing at thirty-point-five knots, bearing dead-on. FIRE!"

    The four cruisers cut loose – and you're forced to admit it's impressive. The water to their sides dishes out for a good fifty yards; the blast massively larger than the tiny little guns mounted on their shoulders – but you can actually see the vapor trails of the massive eight-inch shells screaming through the air towards the abyssals, landing just ahead of their bows. The second and third salvos strike just behind. They start straddling by the fourth and fifth, their shellfire dead-on, but the range – and related dispersal – just too great to reliably score. The ten destroyer at twenty-thousand yards are close enough to see, now – a motley assortment of four-stackers, three-stackers, flush-deckers, raised-prows – through the satin-like sheen on their rough, pitted hulls, it's hard to determine what they once were.

    The bows of the abyssal cruisers turn to the side, just enough to unshadow their rear turrets. They open fire as they tack towards your allies, their gunfire no better than yours, but their forces in no great hurry. The destroyers are still closing, about seventeen-thousand distant now.

    "Settle," Goto says. "They're going for torpedoes. Chase those fuckers off!"

    Fifteen-thousand yards is about the max distance for a "normal" torpedo; Long Lances excepted. Goto wants to save his for the main body; his chance to constrain their space or spoil their timing. The cruiser's secondary batteries can just about reach fifteen-thousand, but realistically they won't hit small destroyers under ten.

    [ ] There's no helping it. Attack from north and south en-masse and drive them off.
    [ ] Bring Division One down from the north flank and launch their Long-Lances on an intercept angle for the hostile line; it should pass through the destroyers and force them to break off.
    [ ] Send Division Two in close enough to harass and complicate things, but don't commit your destroyers to the middle just yet.

    41922659 (demetrious) -
    also calling votes new thread SOON.PNG etc.
    shits about to get heavy in heah
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  • Threadmarks
    • Session #29 pt.2
  • Threadmarks

    • [X] Send Division Two in close enough to harass and complicate things, but don't commit your destroyers to the middle just yet.

    For a few seconds you seriously consider launching your torpedoes at the destroyers. It's not a waste per-se; as Naka said, torpedoes are as much about denial as about killing. You recall something about Yamato steaming away from the battle for twenty minutes at Samar, obliged to present the narrowest aspect to an incoming spread. But the torpedoes are your only weapon that can really hurt those cruisers, you're outnumbered, and if you fuck up the defense of Hornet falls to Fitzgerald and Mustin – and real people will die because of your blunder.

    You remember that first battle, at LA – the flashes of gunfire from further in the darkness. The first battle as an Admiral, with BB-3 and BB-4 rearing out of the stormy sea to catch you unawares. And earlier this very damned morning; Iwo Jima occupied and turned against you, a hostile surface fleet in spitting distance. You've never had a battle with the abyssals that didn't involve deception and trickery. As obvious as their bloodlust is, they seem to hate a fair fight as much as Goto does.

    "Division Two," you call out, "About-face. Sammy, lead them past the closest destroyer and let'em have it. Division One, get a few thousand yards west of the battle line and maintain heading south."


    "YEEEEAAAAAAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO," Sammy whoops like a "red injun," to use Hornet's description (delivered with a little sniff of superiority, for some reason,) and turns so fast that her feet seem to skid in the water, kicking up a little bow wave as she heels over. The other three follow suit a little slower, the nimble destroyers turning so fast they go charging through their own wakes. Sammy is now in the lead, racing along several knots faster than she ought, by rights. She closes the range rapidly with the hostile destroyers, tacking westward, Fubuki, Willie and Shiranui following close behind.

    The abyssal destroyers, racing east-south-east at the center of your line in a column, see the danger – if they turn south and form a line, you'll be crossing their T, and if they maintain course you can simply pick them apart piecemeal, from bottom to top. The closest destroyer; a four-stacker belching ugly, flame-speckled smoke turns northward and runs for help as its closest four fellows scramble to form a line to meet you. The other five maintain course, unable to join their compatriots for fear of being pounced upon by Division One. It's not exactly divide-and-conquer, but it's something.

    Sammy's the first to fire, around ten-thousand yards. Slinging a five-incher in each hand like a gunslinger, she starts thundering away as fast as possible, kicking up splashes in the wake of the hastily-fleeing four-stacker. Willie opens up soon after, her hands jittering as she tries to level her gun and aim through the sight, just like you saw at the range. Shiranui sails up past Fubuki, gently nudging the dark-haired girl aside and wraps an arm across Willie's chest, covering her eyes with the other. Thus blinded, Willie fires blind – and her shells start marching straight up the four-stacker's wake. Their fellows come in straight, their bow guns hurling a weak reply to Division Two's broadside.


    "The fuck are *they* doing?* Goto says, frowning at the eldritch escorts. "Doesn't make any sense."

    "Eh?"

    "I'd have turned the top five north, bottom five south," he says quickly, with quick slashes of a laser pointer, "into lines, loosed my fish broadside at max range and-" the laser pointer sweeps south-south-west, "formed two lines covering each other's flank to shoot my way back to the cruisers. The fuck are they doing?"

    "Getting their asses kicked," you opine. Sammy turns sharply to starboard, turning back to the west, away from the enemy cruisers. Only destroyers can reverse a line this swiftly. The other three follow her through the curve, pouring fire at the abyssals who are only now swinging their broadsides to bear – and they're already catching the worst of focused fire from some of the most modern destroyers in your fleet. One modernish-looking, high-prowed abyssal takes a shell to the foremast, showering the rear of its foredeck barbette with shrapnel. The gun stops firing, turning lazily on its pedestal as the vessel maneuvers, its theoretical crew apparently out of action. The four-stacker takes a shell in the third smokestack, its speed slackening slightly as a result. Sammy's angling for the enemy when Shiranui countermands her - "reverse order!"

    Sammy obeys with a wild cackle, seeming to sail backwards as she punches shells over her wake, every shot punctuated by a thrust of her gun-hand. "C'MERE, YA PUSSIES, IF YAH THINK YER HARD ENOUGH!" Shiranui in the lead once more, she tacks her line away from the now-formed destroyer division, rapidly pulling out of the short effective range of destroyers; presenting an unfavorable torpedo target at the same time.


    Five-inch shells begin splashing around the abyssals still charging line-abreast as the cruisers open up with their secondary batteries at fifteen-thousand yards. The cruisers are large, stable gun platforms, but their primary rangefinders are tied up flinging shells at the opposing battle-line, and the range is extreme – the swift destroyers are unperturbed by the fusillade. Division One's veteran destroyers, four thousand yards closer as a screen, is a different story. Closing with the tail-end of their battle line, the small girls are bracketing the enemy quickly; making up for their inaccuracy with sheer volume of fire. The abyssals reply with their bow guns for a minute or two, then turn line-abreast around nine-thousand yards. You zoom the Global Hawk's feed in with your remote and are unsurprised to see the twisted, pointed shapes of abyssal torpedoes flying from their midship decks and splashing into the water.

    "Division One, Column Turn!" you order, snapping your fingers at Naka, who's already ahead of you, a stopwatch in her hand. You scowl at the display – you've only moments to make your choice.

    [ ] Turn away under smoke – with their fish spent the threat to your battle line is, too.
    [ ] Turn towards them and keep the pressure on – five versus five, but yours are veterans, good shots.
    [ ] Keep steaming in a line for a little bit longer; keep those broadsides on them as long as possible, hope for a knockout. Even torpedoes take time to travel, and destroyers turn very, very fast.


    [X] Turn away under smoke – with their fish spent the threat to your battle line is, too.

    "Division One, turn away under smoke!" you instruct. They wheel about in hard emergency turns, thick smoke already billowing from their "stacks" as they open the range fast. The hostile destroyers turn line-astern, hoping to reverse positions and catch your line bow-on with their broadsides, but you're already out of easy range and pulling away fast, their tardy shells splashing in your wakes as the abyssals struggle to find the fast-changing range.

    "Two minutes," Naka calls shortly. "The torps should be past by now."

    "Give it another thirty seconds, and we'll turn," you say. "Just in case they're slow-running Whiteheads, or something."

    Meanwhile the cruisers have been continuing their long-range gun duel with the abyssals. Picking up "your" remote, (the one with the masking tape some wit scrawled "Settle's Hook" upon,) you focus one of the Hawk's cameras tightly on each ship in the line. They are undoubtedly cruisers – you see why Tone's #4 seaplane felt so jilted at her harsh reception. Two of them sport the distinctive four-stack design common to World War One and antebellum designs, and the fighting-tops/crossed-spar masts that lingered from the age of sail. The archaic holdovers impact their sleek, lethal looks not a bit; their black, mottled hulls glide through the water like oiled iron. They sport the fore-aft two-main-battery designs of pre-dreadnaught battleships, but their very high, sleek sides are unmarred by the usual bristling array of quick-firing light guns. They could be anything from light cruisers to armored cruisers.


    "Naka-"

    "Analysts are already on it," she says distantly, her eyes focused on the screen and a phone clamped between shoulder and ear as she scribbles furiously.

    "Attagirl."

    The abyssal destroyers go scampering back to their charges, forming up two lines, just like Goto said they would. They begin laying smoke to screen their charges as the abyssal line angles in steeper, closing the distance a bit faster. Goto radios in fire-control corrections from the Global Hawk, and each girl's floatplanes climb steeply for altitude to ensure they can see over the drifting haze and continue calling in fire. Blind-fire with spotter aid isn't very good, however, and the abyssals are able to close rather rapidly – probably trying to rush through a plunging-fire vulnerability zone. Older ships would suffer that from thirty-thousand to twenty-thousand, and they're around twenty-five thousand yards distant.

    You zoom the camera out after your detailed inspection – and frown.

    "Why is their line staggered like that?" you ask.


    "What now?" Goto says distractedly. He seems to be willing each shell towards the hostile cruisers, as if he could guide the shots by psychic pressure into a hostile deck.

    "They're not perfectly in-line," you point out. "Each ship is about a hundred yards closer to us than the one in front of it."

    "Because they came in laying smoke," Goto points out. "This way they can keep a smokescreen up without blinding anyone behind them."

    You zoom the camera out a bit more. The light wind is still blowing from the south, slowly dispersing the thick, tar-like fumes of the abyssal fleet into an ugly greyish blob to their northwest, hugging the surface closely.

    "Why are they taking their time?" you say, suspicious.

    "They've got the numbers advantage, so they're counting on gunline superiority," Goto says. "I'm banking on fire-control. Looks like they're tired of missing, though. Maybe I can start full-rate fire soon." He cuts a glance at you. "Think you can take your girls over there and stir up some shit?"

    [ ] Straight down the gullet – time for our own torpedo attempt.
    [ ] They're up to something, and I don't like it. Let's feel around the edges a bit, try to shake it out of them.
    [ ] The time isn't right yet. Just wait – they're coming to us.

    41924344 -
    >>41924316
    ackbar.jpg

    41924365 -
    >>41924316
    "Nobody move! I think they're fucking with us."
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    [X] They're up to something, and I don't like it. Let's feel around the edges a bit, try to shake it out of them.

    Someone clever once said that the aim of strategy is dislocation, and even though he was right you can't remember his name because he was an army clown. As the abyssal battle line straightens out and sails due south, still in their slightly staggered line, you order Division One to lag back a bit. Division Two can rapidly reach the center, sailing north at flank while the cruisers steam south at speed, if you really need to. You have the feeling you're being drawn south, out of position, so something or someone you haven't seen yet can make an end-run around you and launch a spread at Hornet. Fitzgerald and Mustin are waiting for them there, of course – with the range of their missiles, they needn't steam along to keep in range.

    Still.

    Something's off.

    The destroyer smoke screen fades as the two battle lines finally square off, nineteen-thousand yards apart and closing slowly.

    "Division Three," Goto says eagerly, "Commence full-rate main-battery fire!"




    Takao, Maya, Chikuma and Tone open up with their guns, a thundering broadside screaming into the air every fifteen seconds. The abyssals respond in kind. Towering columns of spray begin climbing high into the air as both sides find the range firmly and bracket each other.

    Now it comes down to accuracy – of the rangefinders, the guns, the pattern dispersion. Armor, damage control, quality of design. Rate of fire – weight of fire. It's a slugfest pure and simple – but with the light armor of cruisers, fast-firing eight-inchers and dozens of torpedoes in play, it's nothing like a battleship duel.

    It's simply sudden death.

    Maya's the first one hit.

    "Belt de-capped and detonated it!" she calls. "Trashed the floatplane hanger, its empty."

    It's Chikuma who draws first blood, planting a twenty-centimeter shell in the bow of an opposing cruiser. The AP shell punches clean through before detonating on the other side, leaving a hole big enough to see daylight through. The wound isn't serious, however, and the ship keeps firing for all its worth.


    "Now!" Goto calls. Mustin and Fitzgerald's decks are kindled aglow with the righteous fury of rocket motors igniting, ripple-firing Tomahawks into the sky. They climb swiftly, slowly tilting over to arrow towards the battle. The missiles scream over your four cruisers, skimming the waves as they close on the abyssals. The dark ships sides light up with muzzle flashes as their AA guns open up, a hail of tracers and flak puffs seeking the incoming warheads, but most of the weapons win through. The Burke's focused their fire on the three trailing ships. The AA fire splashes two, three, four missiles, finding their targets with uncanny accuracy that makes you grit your teeth – leveling effect, leveling effect! The first few come screaming in, pulling up hard for a terminal dive through the thin deck armor - and overshoot the target, smashing harmlessly into the water just starboard, sending towering columns of spray into the thick, choking smoke.


    The remainder sink lower, responding to the digital leashes held by the Burke's weapon officers. Zig-zagging sideways, their thin little wings flexing through the maneuvers, the Tomahawks smash into the high, slick sides of their targets and vanish in blasts of cataclysmic force. Torpedo impacts are terrible things to behold; thunderous blasts of fire and water that send columns of spray a hundred feet high – but they've got nothing on a cruise missile. Each struck cruiser vanishes behind a wall of fire, engulfed by fireballs that blossom in the water and roll upwards towards the sky; the thick, vile smoke itself blasted away by their force. As the blinding moment fades twisted pieces of shrapnel come raining down to churn the water with tiny splashes. The victims rock slowly to starboard, revealing their smashed-in sides where the missiles smashed deep holes in their armor, the interiors already glowing cherry-red with fire. Two of them begin listing to starboard, counter-flooding to keep the awful wounds near the waterline above the waves. Their stacks shattered and shorn by the titanic blasts, they soon drop behind the formation, unable to keep steam up enough for flank speed. The third, tail-end Charlie, slows to a complete halt, the single awful hole in its side belching fire and soot. It slowly settles on an even keel; but the desperate counterflooding isn't enough – it begins to list to port. Cold water rushes into its flaming bowels, and the warship vanishes in a horrific explosion that sends shockwaves racing through the calm Pacific waters as the white-hot boiler detonates. The bow and stern fold up slightly before it capsizes and vanishes beneath the waves.

    "Eat *shit,*" Goto snarls in satisfaction. "Girls – torpedoes, NOW!"


    One by one, Long Lance torpedoes sail out of their tubes and arc gracefully into the water. The only hint of their true size is the faint widening of the rapidly-diminishing bubble trail as their compressed-air starter engines taper off and the pure oxygen propulsion kicks in. The scattered splashes of five-inch shells are kicking up around Division Three, now – you realize that Goto dare not keep the volatile Long Lances on deck under fifteen-thousand yards, lest the saturating fire of secondary battery shells find their mark.

    "Division Two – Now!" you order. Your novices wheel around at a slight angle, led by Shiranui, and fire. The Mark 15s that Willie and Sammy are dropping in the water are at the extreme limits of their range, but the enemy doesn't know that – and they're closing, besides.

    With the odds evened in mere heartbeats and hot fish in the water, things are finally looking up.

    You grit your teeth and wait – this is always, *always* where things go to hell.

    41925426 (demetrious) -
    WRITING NEXT PART, THINGS GET WORSE
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    The first hint thing are going sideways is when Tone heels out of formation. "S-steering is out," she says, struggling to keep her voice calm. "I'll be with you shortly, just let me-"

    "Rear steering po-"

    "COMPOSE MYSELF!" she cuts you off hastily. "I'ts not polite to talk about -AH!" She lurches visibly, pulling herself up with difficulty. "Direct hit to my midships magazine."

    "Emerge-"

    "I am already handling the-"

    "Flood your-"

    "I do not *flood!*" she says with disgust, her haughty tone quivering and brittle. "It's handled!"

    "Tone-class has the thinner belts," Goto mutters to you, hand over his mic. "To be expected."

    "And the turret barrette? And the magazine?"

    "Lucky shot," Goto says. "Like that!" He points at the screen where one of the opposing cruiser's portsides is being torn open; a fire burning merrily where a secondary gun mount used to be. You click to the rearmost surviving ship still in the battle line just as one of Maya's patterns comes screaming in on a nice flat trajectory; two shells striking simultaneously. One hit smashes inot the bridge, blowing the bridge wing into a cloud of lethal steel splinters – you see a wink of brass as an engine telegraph or gyrocompass goes sailing out the other side, blown clear of its mounts. In the same heartbeat a second shell lands square on B turret, ricocheting before exploding directly above the ship. A cloud of smoke envelops it, but the abyssal steams clear with the turret unmarred and firing.


    "Penetration of Y turret," Takao reports calmly. You realize you don't know which turret that *is-* her clas carries no less than five main-battery double-turrets. You switch feeds to Maya in time to see an eight-inch shell smash into her belt and detonate – but when the smoke clears, the belt armor is rent, but not penetrated; the wink of dull metal within the wound hinting at buckled, but not broken bulkheads. She seems to sway for a few seconds, having trouble keeping her balance. Spreading her legs wider for stability, she takes a deep breath and takes a bead.

    "AAAH!"

    "Tone!? TONE!?" The smooth-spoken girl is cringing, clutching one shoulder, where one of her double turrets is sitting askew, guns at odd angles.

    "I'm okay!" she says.

    "Hold on," Goto whispers. "Hold on, dammit. The torpedoes are going..." He's tapping an old, old pocketwatch against his palm, counting the ticks rather than looking at it. The remaining four enemy cruisers are burning in several spots and their secondary batteries are beginning to fall silent as the steady rain of Goto's heavy broadsides keep falling – but the eight-inch Japanese shells are just bouncing off their double turrets. One of them is listing, slowing as it counter-floods to keep the keel even enough for gunnery, but it's still firing, main battery undiminished. Three of the four have taken main belt penetrations, and they're clearly feeling the effects – but they are still fucking *firing!*


    The Burke's evened the odds, and the kanmusu's heavy broadsides have extracted a toll – but in the next few minutes of fighting, Chikuma's secondary batteries are knocked out completely and Takao loses another turret, bringing her down to six operational guns. The range has slowly closed to tirteen-thousand yards and both sides are connecting regularly despite the mounting battle damage. You note the new tail-end Charlie seems to be firing slower, more deliberately – every discharge of its dual turrets reliably straddling, if not connecting quite as often. With the bridge blown asunder and its masts shattered by bouncing five-inch detonations, its rangefinders should be smashed.

    It's all down to the torpedoes now, and as the clock ticks down to impact time, you all hold your breath.


    The abyssal battle-line turns towards you slowly, glowing blue eyes presumably watching the severed baby-hands of their own stopwatches. They have underestimated the speed of Long Lances, however, and one of them is caught in the side while still turning. The cruiser rocks precariously, and begins to list swiftly - but does not explode. The rear turret ceases fire and its speed drops precipitously, but it keeps coming in relentlessly, forward guns speaking.

    "Cancel battle-line targeting," Goto orders. "Focus on the tailing vessel!"

    His girls obey instantly, shifting their diminished firepower to the trailing vessel. At these short ranges, the risk of mistaking another's shell splashes for their own are nonexistant – trajectories are so flat that the splashes are lost in the damned haze the burning ships are still belching from their stacks. The hail of eight-inch and five-inch shells seems to churn the water around the tailing ship white; its superstructure shudders and rocks with each punishing blow.

    "God damn you," Takao snarls, her hard-won composure completely gone. "DIE!" Her six remaining guns speak, and she lays the pattern perfectly amidships. You grin savagely as a shell smashes into the main structure and shatters it, the heavily-armored conning tower emerging from the smoke alone, shorn of the light bridge structure and catwalks once layered over it. It looks like she gave the abyssal a buzz-cut.

    It responds by putting a shell straight through Chikuma. She slackens, staggering and clutching her middle.


    "Chikuma? What was it?"

    "B-boiler," she gasps. "It's- it's burning – it's hot – it *hurts*-"

    A wild cheer goes up in your earphones from Division Two – even Willie is giggling. You look over to see the tailing ship's bow vanishing in a tower of spray – one of their torpedoes has scored as well. The cruiser's bow emerges from the mist almost unrecognizable; mangled and torn, but even as it settles slightly by the bow the god-damned thing continues to bore in, unstoppable.

    Goto licks his lips, clearly upset – but with the fight going this way, the decision is inevitable. He can delay no longer.

    "Division Three ... column turn. Retreat east at best speed."

    As the four battered cruisers turn to escape towards Hornet and the waiting Burkes, the abyssals spring the surprise you've been grimly waiting for. Charging through the line of wounded, slowing cruisers comes the low, sleek shape of four light cruisers, smoke streaming from their quadruple stacks as they close at flank to chop down the fleeing girls. Your cruisers are still making a good twenty-five, at worst - they've got a long chase ahead of them. But the battle is now headed for Hornet, stationary and helpless.

    [ ] Play for time. You've got a surprise of your own.
    [ ] Little girls, ATTACK!
    [ ] A bomb or three will slow those fuckers down!

    41926478 (demetrious) -
    VOTES CALLED
    New thread soon. Maybe one or two more updates before THE BIG MOTHERFUCKING FINISH

    41927257 (demetrious) -
    NEW FUCKING THREAD GOING UP SOON
    MAKE SURE YOU ARE SITTING THE FUCK DOWN

    41927307 (demetrious) -
    NEW THREAD: >>41927292
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  • Threadmarks
    • Session #29 pt.3
  • Threadmarks

    • [X] Play for time. You've got a surprise of your own.

    Your wounded force steams east, defanged, battered, and harried by fresh, fast enemy units. Half of the hostile destroyers have joined the light cruisers, the ones with spent torpedo tubes circling their wounded, slowed cruisers protectively. There's naught but fifteen nautical miles between you and Hornet; where the SSNs still prowl unseen, keeping that last damned sub pinned down. Goto is dragging his force to the only mutual support he's got left – the circling, prowling floatplanes, Akagki's scant handful of Vals, Fitzgerald's eight Harpoons and the uncertain presence of the Virginia-class sub's torpedoes.

    Goto turns to you. "Attack them?" It's a question, not an order – he's appealing for your opinion.

    "Now we preserve mass," you tell him. "The further we run, the more we space them out. Turn around and take them piecemeal."

    "We don't have far to run," he points out.

    "Those light units won't last long -"

    "Our girls are also light-"

    "WE DON'T HAVE A CHOICE!" you roar, slashing your hand through the air and ending the discussion. An awful, hollow silence spreads through the shoddy CIC as the unspoken question hangs in the air.

    You turn back to the CIC, placing your back to all eyes, and wait for the battle to resume.

    Division One and Two coalesce and join together, seven destroyers and one batfuck-crazy sub-chaser. With Hornet and her attendant damage-control team barely twenty-thousand yards distant, you turn the destroyers as one and charge them into the light abyssal force.

    "Settle," Naka says at your elbow, her voice thin. "Settle, this isn't going to work."


    The light cruisers charge in, heedless of the scattered shellfire of Division Three's secondary batteries – they smell blood, and their torpedo tubes are hungry for a cruiser kill. Your destroyers open fire, rushing past the ten-thousand yard mark, their gun barrels beginning to smoke as they heat up with continuous fire.

    You think Naka might be right – but you don't have a choice.




    Yuudachi is the first to break formation, swinging around sharply and unleashing her torpedoes at the closest abyssal CL in a wide spread. They break formation immediately, every ship fending for himself, and the mad melee begins. Two destroyers angle for Fubuki, aiming to pass her on either side and rake her flanks, but Willie Dee scrambles to her side, holding her turret in both trembling hands. She's not trying to use the turret-mounted rangefinder – instead, she just holds the gun out before her like a talisman, and screams -

    "LEAVE US ALOOOOONE!"

    Her salvo straddles an abyssal's bow so closely that it breaks off, hull plates buckled by the near hits. Willie tries to close ranks with Yuudachi but one of the CLs notices her from six-thousand yards and unleashes its guns, six-inch shells tearing into Willie's unarmored flesh with awful effect. Clothes afire, she stumbles and falls, screaming in agony.

    "FUCK WITH BALLS YOUR OWN SIZE, YOU UGLY FLUSH-DECKED FLOOZIE!" With a cry of high-pitched rage Sammy cuts across the CL's bow, firing her five-inchers for all they're worth from point-blank range. The long, low hull fades like windblown smoke on water, and as the sea foams beneath its feet where the Pacific reclaims the displacement the abyssal comes sailing forward to meet her. Sammy just ducks under the next broadside, six-inch shells skipping off the ocean behind her harmlessly, and pops up roaring as best a small pigtailed girl can. Her chest seems to be afire with light guns; 20mm and 40mm raking the abyssal girl's face, slashing her cheeks and eyes, blinding her with sheets of shimmering bluish blood. Sammy turns hard and -


    "SAMMY, DON'T-" Naka screams, but nothing can stop the collision that smashes both girls to the wavetops. Sammy climbs atop her stunned foe, ripping her empty triple-torpedo launcher off one thigh as she wraps a hand in the CL's hair, flowing and waving in the waves like seaweed.

    "STAY AWAY FROM MY CARRIER, YOU *CUUUUUUNT!*" Sammy screams as she brings the tubes down.

    You scan through the various camera feeds swiftly, trying desperately to gain some sense of the fight, sort and order the chaos, reach out and fingerfuck time and space one more time, but there's nothing to be done. Hayashimo is caught between a brace of destroyers, circling her as they pump shells into her. Her batteries are mostly silenced, and fire is raging in the long, silky black hair that seems to perpetually cover one eye.

    "Do you believe me now, Kongou?" she says softly as she tries to train her torpedo tubes. She's too close to the enemy; the abyssal girl just pulls hard right and lets them pass ahead, raking Hayashimo with light AA batteries now. "There was never hope-"


    A smoking missile comes arcing through the air, aiming right for one of Hayashimo's tormentors.

    "You were saying!?" you blurt out with joy.

    The rocket hits the water just shy of the abyssal's stern in a ballistic arc, having completely failed to track.

    "Y-you were ssay-" the destroyer girl's voice breaks off into wet, wounded coughs.

    The abyssal before her grins, pointed shark-teeth gleaming as she strides towards you, the eerie blue radiance of her eyes jiggling and streaking about as Hayashimo's go-pro vibrates. She reaches out to grip her throat -

    - and trips, stumbles and falls flat on her ass. She lifts her heels out of the water, staring at the small, but precise blast damage.

    "HAYASHIMO, HONEY – DUCK!"


    She tumbles to her knees as Mustin's fore VLS belches missiles, the bright nimbus of rocket motors soaring away from her like angry fireflies as SM-2s come lancing down at the now-stationary destroyer. It looks up at the incoming missiles, those blank, blue eyes seeming to fix their glow on you, right through the Global Hawk's feed before the falling missiles blow her apart.

    "Settle you have to get them out of there. You have to get them out of there," Naka says, her tone as cold and brittle as ice. "Settle-"

    "The only way out is through," you reply, the words clinking hollow in your chest. One of the CLs breaks free of a close melee with Yukikaze and Shigure, steaming fast for the cruisers. They focus their fire on it, but as soon as it begins evasive action they shift fire to answer Fubuki's desperate cry. You see Shiranui staring at the mangled remains of her left foot, her usual inscrutable expression now simply blank, confused, totally oblivious to the shells still landing around her. A Harpoon comes screaming in, its victim unseen from that camera feed aside from the blast that rocks it. A lone destroyer breaks free, already in its "humanoid" form, so you see the awful, wicked grin on its face as it lines up its tubes on the crippled destroyer and vanishes in a nimbus of light.

    You blink, reaching for the remote to switch visual filters on the Global Hawk's camera when the fireball collapses enough to be distinguished as such on the narrow-view feed; the fireball and blast of water finally separating into their component parts from a single, perfect white-out.

    The submarines have arrived.


    Fitzgerald is the first to take return fire, a CL singling it out for a baptism by 6-inch barrage. The skipper turns his boat head-on, a move that puts the forecastle – and his bridge and own skin – before the rest of the ship as a shield against the HE shells, his single gun barking, lobbing air-burst WP shells to blind and burn the enemy gun crews from their positions. The flaming clouds of phosphorus are blown outwards as the CL re-manifests, its four-thousand ton bulk breathing into existence as if it never left. Mustin begins chasing salvos; dashing towards the large-caliber splashes of the cruiser missing its bow, still powering in at a crawl.

    You're not doing enough damage.

    You just aren't doing enough damage.

    "Skipper."

    Hornet.

    "Skipper. This has to stop."


    "Hornet, we're not having this conversation a-"

    "I remember," she says. "But you didn't leave me." You can see her tears on the camera feed, her own go-pro rocking as she wipes them away, but her voice is steady and pure. "I always thought, if I'd done more... maybe I would've been worth fighting for. I didn't realize how much I *had* done. Thank yo-"

    "NO GODDAMN EULOGIES, WE'RE IN A FUCKING FIGHT!" you snap, feeling your voice rising and not giving a damn.

    "Settle, those girls are dying," she says simply, and you hear Naka gasping, as if she can't breathe. "You have to end this. *Go.*"

    [ ] It should have been me, you bastard. It should always have been me, on the bridge, on the water. What God would condone this? What God lets those *bastards* cheat his own laws? Where is my place in all the world, if not on the bridge of a warship? This is what my flesh and soul were made and molded for, and here I stand as they make a second sacrifice – how dare you? How DARE you?
    [ ] This is bullshit, this is fucking BULLSHIT, I've pulled everything together perfectly; seen through their smokescreens, felt their pulse, HEARD THEIR STINKING, SLITHERING VOICES and won through. How do they manage to win despite all that? How can God condone this, unleashing these monsters, letting them cheat the immutable laws of time and space so as to undo all our work? How dare they – how dare HE!? Damn them – DAMN THEM TO HELL!


    [X] It should have been me, you bastard. It should always have been me, on the bridge, on the water. What God would condone this? What God lets those *bastards* cheat his own laws? Where is my place in all the world, if not on the bridge of a warship? This is what my flesh and soul were made and molded for, and here I stand as they make a second sacrifice – how dare you? How DARE you?

    As your own impotence dawns on you, your fraying focus finally gives way to the pressure of emotions boiling towards bursting.

    You've been lied to.

    Betrayed.

    *Cheated.*

    What kind of God worth the name would go through this fucking charade, this elaborate balancing act, abyssals here, shipgirls there, continuing the fucking SHAM of a just and balanced world where reason and logic and will mattered? Is this truly your God, who let his beloved son get nailed to a fucking STICK before he'd forgive man the sin of daring to reach for the apple forbidden only by the tyrant's command? Is his miserable, childish fucking jealousy so great he can't have any man triumph through his own means, his own mind? So be it, if blood is all that will sate him – you are the sacrifice. You trained your whole life for it, labored and cultivated that useless fucking *mind*, you laid the yoke of education and the shackles of unquestioning servitude upon your own flesh, dressed yourself in white clothes and mounted to the altar willingly. It was your job, your role, and here you stand, hundreds of miles away as those who have already paid the price once are forced to suffer again.


    "Cheats," you hiss, fists collapsing into little dense knots of rage and strain at your side. "Cheats. *Cheats.*" Only a man, a monster, nay, a beast could condone this – only a cosmic disease could make his own creation struggle for survival in a game of his devising, and then let the other side cheat. Occupying Iwo Jima overnight, positioning the carriers just right for a simultaneous strike, sneaking a massive surface task-force in almost under your nose just in case the rest wasn't enough – time and space? Time and fucking *space!?* They've been cheating them since day fucking one, since they first rose out of the depths a stone's throw from the Higgins to begin their slaughter. And even now, the perversity continues.

    You should be there. You should be THERE, between the reapers and the weak, waiting for the blow. You shudder from head to toe as the sheer *enormity* of it hits you at last, finally surging past the barriers and deflections and half-truths you penned it up with for sixteen long months. You should be there, right now. You *deserve* to be there. The room turns red, your pulse hammering in your ears, pain seeming to close in on your existence as your rational mind slips and slides towards the precipice, borne along by blood-slick rage. Your consciousness collapses upon that one thought till its the entire fucking universe, all that ever was or will be. You claw at the fabric of reality itself, trying to move the world with your raw will as the lever – as sure and inviolate as gravity and electromagnetism itself, you are owed.


    YOU

    ARE

    THERE

    *RIGHT FUCKING NOW!*

    It all ends with a click.

    One click, deep and organic and *right,* like your spine snapping into place when you stretch your back. You drift through your own head, suddenly aimless and off-balance, like a stool was just pulled out from under your consciousness. There's lights, and colors, and people shaking you, and -

    - you focus on the screen.

    It *looks* like the click *felt-* the exact right time, the exact right place; erupting from the still waters like the tsunami caused by tectonic plates snapping back to their proper position. Water cascades from the high superstructure, sheeting down the sides of gunhouses, waterfalls pouring from the fore and aft decks to slip over the sides past the seaplane catapult towers.




    It is a heavy cruiser, fresh, undamaged, at point-blank range -

    - and lighting up stem-to-stern with muzzle flashes and smoke.

    The full brunt of the nine-gun battery is unleashed on the closest light cruiser first; the bow-wave of its sudden surfacing still washing over the abyssal's feet when it simply disintegrates; the eight-inch shells finding the fore and aft magazines at once. You're vaguely aware of Willie sobbing, kneeling on the water's surface, trying to lift a bleeding and battered Fubuki from the depths as abyssal destroyers close in. You barely see the Mark-48 as it streaks in; more a blur of impossibly fast motion than a bubble trail. The abyssal destroyer hears it coming and tries to run, but the torpedo overtakes it in seconds, reducing the monster to a big white cloud of spray and atomized oil. Mustin is side-by-side with a burning CL, raking it with fire from its CIWS system as two men maneuver a 25mm Bushmaster's barrel with their bare, burning hands, keeping the mount trained and firing despite loss of power. Hayashimo is floating on her back, long pretty hair floating in the water about her head like a halo as her own oil burns ferociously, her personal funeral pyre. The destroyer that was savaging her is turning in hard circles, arm swinging around painfully as it screeches some inhuman sibilance, but the Seahawk is circling it faster than its guns can train; the door gunner raking her sides and face and body, searching for an ammo locker or depth charge rack.


    The cruisers have formed their battle line and are following Goto's last order, focusing their regular, steady broadsides on the approaching cruiser. It's torn and mangled bow kicks up an ugly, mottled froth before it, shouldering its way roughly through the water. You watch mutely as the eight-inch guns of four heavy cruisers slam into its belt and turrets and bounce off, leaving gouges and dents, but no telling damage. The ghost ship sits motionless, its stacks cold – no steam, and no time to build it. As the abyssal cruiser – the flagship – swings clumsily to starboard, you all understand what is about to ensue.

    Sheer, brutal force.


    The new cruiser's triple turrets train to starboard as the abyssal cuts speed, the smashed bow slowing it to a quick halt. From six-thousand yards, it fires first, the same slow, deliberate turret-by-turret walking salvo. The first shell punches clean through the ghost ship's superstructure, a second smashing through the belt like it wasn't there, holing a cold boiler. Confident in its armor, it wants only for a good,steady shot.

    Until the ghost ship begins ripping it apart.

    You see the water froth at the stern as the abyssal tries to get underway again, eight-inch shells punching neat round holes in its belt armor. You begin counting to yourself between salvos – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine -

    - the cruiser's guns thunder again, the big ship barely rocking as it unleashes another simultaneous salvo. Every ten seconds – six salvos a minute, double the speed any gun that size should shoot. When a shell strikes its midships turret a universal cry rings through the room when you see the guns fly askew, the turret turning aimlessly as its traverse motors die – penetration! Her screw cavitation dies off as the fire in her guts finds her shaft galleries, seizing her bearings tight and ending any slim chance of escape. There is only the next salvo, the awful mutual slaughter – kill or be killed. With their shells ripping into each other's guts without regard for armor, victory belongs to the one slinging the most steel – and the cruiser taking your part is slinging twice as fast.

    And then, without further ado, the abyssal cruiser simply explodes.


    Goto stares at the screen, mouth hanging open, his orders and attempts to seize the situation completely forgotten. A flash of moving white draws your eye to D3As flying away low over the deck, leaving the listing, burning wreck of another heavy cruiser behind them, its forward battery turret askew and smoking. The massive, unpeopled hull of the new cruiser is settling in the water as the latecomers arrive, the missile-damaged cruisers pulling into optimal range, swinging slowly to port to present their intact sides and unshadow their full firepower.

    "Does anyone have any torpedoes left?" you hear Shiranui asking. "Anyone?" You spot her, mangled leg trailing an oily wake behind her as she limps along on one screw. The new cruiser is already sinking, the brief five-minute exchange having ripped its pristine form open from bow to stern. The midships catapults jolt, sending their navy-blue seaplanes leaping into the sky in a cloud of black smoke. They wheel about and buzz over Sammy's head, who's trying to limp behind the smoke pall of Hayashimo's burning oil slick for cover from the eight-inch shells seeking her range.


    Finding the culprit, they buzz in on the deck, replying to the tracers of AA fire by firing their own foreward guns, waggling the rudder to spray the decks and suppress the phantom gunners. One makes a broadside run, depositing its tiny bomb against the hull with a dull CLANG, popping up hard to clear the mangled superstructure before zipping away low and fast. The delayed fuze detonates a second or two later, the cruiser lurching as its hull is breached below the waterline. The second one circles around to the bow and make a run down the centerline, suicidally low and slow. The cruiser elevates its main battery at the last second and fires; the titanic muzzle blast smashing the hapless floatplane upwards like a huge invisible swat. Undeterred, it putters along and neatly lays its bomb on the A turret roof. The blast dishes in the thin armor, binding the main post and disabling the traverse.

    "We're not doing enough damage!" Shiranui says, the only one still trying to contain the situation – perhaps the only one uninformed enough to think it can be done. "Doesn't anyone have any torpedoes left?"

    A scant thousand yards astern of the ripped-up cruiser, the sea boils and bursts, the cold, sleek black hull of a submarine exploding from the depths as it blows its ballast.

    "All out, honey," a tired voice replies. "But maybe this will do." Hatches along her spine pop open, and Tomahawks climb for the skies on long, graceful contrails...

    ... and then they come back down.


    Orders are given, some of them by you. Your lips move by muscle memory, tired captain subroutines twitching and flexing in your mind like muscle memory as you and Goto organize the triage. Hayashimo lies motionless on the water as Willie hoses her down; some of the water even getting on the target occasionally. She's not holed below the waterline, but her upper body is so badly wounded that she can hardly steer herself; effectively blind. Shiranui leans against the hull of Fitzgerald as a man dangling over the side on a line, feet braced against the hull, works on her mangled foot. She stares at the battered cruiser as the torch goes to work, looking thoughtful.

    Shigure and Yuudachi are carrying Fubuki's mangled body between them, the brown-haired girl suspended between her comrades with chains, their buoyancy the only thing keeping her afloat. But she's not burning... and for now, she's not sinking. The cruisers are standing together to one side, staring at their savior and whispering to each other, wide-eyed.

    Everyone takes a deep breath – shipgirls and humans alike – and holds it as Fitzgerald's whaleboat motors over towards the savaged cruiser. It's already rising, revealing a pristine, watertight hull as it pumps ballast overboard to lighten its load – aside from this, there are no signs of life, no signals, nothing.


    "Uh, skipper-" you begin.

    "If we don't do it now the intel weenies will lock her up so tight we'll never, ever, EVER have her hull see the light of day again," the Fitzgerald's captain snaps. "You ought to know better than anyone, Settle. It's now or never."

    "... I was just going to say, be casual," you finish.

    "... oh."

    "Yeah. They're pretty laid-back."

    He jerks his thumb at Sammy, who's leaning against Takao for support as a boatload of mechanics attend to the grievous holes in her tiny torso, angle grinders and welders flaring bright as they try to keep their power tools clear of the inflatable hull. Her forehead is a bloody mess, but when she catches the men looking she turns her mirror-shaded glance to them and shoots them a big V sign, complete with maniacal cackle that can be heard across the water.

    "Outliers," you insist. "Just get on the goddamn boat, tough guy!"

    He snorts, reaches for the rope ladder, and grabs a big handful of air.

    "duh hell," he says thickly, staring like a cow at a new fence at vast nothing where the heavy cruiser once sat.

    The Fitzgerald's XO breaks the silence with the question on everyone's tongue, pointing at someone off-frame. "Hey, sailor!? What's your name?"

    Everyone in the CIC leans forward with eager curiosity as the Fitzgerald's liberated bridge-wing camera is panned by the watch ensign towards the new shipgirl.

    "What," Goto says.

    "Who?" you add, your mouth hanging open like a fainting goat caught halfway through its cud.

    "Hell-o~" Naka breathes.

    The tired-looking young man in the navy-blue peacoat rubs his permastubble, cracks his neck with a satisfied groan, and tilts the bottom of his coffee cup up, up, up, before lowering it sadly. "Well, that cleared my sinuses," he says, shaking his head about quickly as if dispelling the cobwebs. "Say, Mac, think you could spare some fresh joe?"

    ​
    CA-26, USS Northampton (art by pixel-anon)​

    41928975 (demetrious) -
    >>41928936
    >Shit for a second there I went half retard and though Settle raged himself into a ship and fused with higgins and teleported to the battle himself.
    For a half-second I considered doing that, having settle rageport to Northampton's bridge as he appeared.
    But there are some things even my gossamer-thin dignity won't stretch for.

    41929050 (demetrious) -
    >>41929037
    >So, is it over? Can I go to bed now?
    YES, THANK GOD, I AM SO FUCKING SORRY BUT GOD I HAD TO FINISH
    YOU ARE FREEEEEE
    till wednesday

    41929203 (demetrious) -
    >>41929080
    >I just realized the Destroyers are going to stalk Northampton around base. This is gonna be fun.
    He probably doesn't like destroyers overmuch... all things considered.
    Before I go superloopy and lose all coherence - dunno when the next thread will be; I have to pack up all my shit, and my computer, drive up north, etc. We do have interbutts up there tho. But so nobody's left calling BULLSHIT when they read this in the archives: everything in this battle was researched, tested, and moderately horseshit-free.
    The Hard Taco [AN: Takao] class were very well armored for cruisers, with a five-inch belt over the important bits (Northampton has a three-inch thick belt.) But for some bizarre, lunatic fucking reason they had poor protection on their turrets; which most ships worth a damn armor THICKER than the thickest part of the belt: wikipedia gives an implausible 25mm (maybe the turret roof) and the classic intel chart gives 3'', which is, again, rather less than its own belt: http://www.coatneyhistory.com/Atago.htm tl;dr even in simulations they tend to shed turrets quickly; probably even more likely in real life given how many of them there are and the... unusual arrangement of superfiring turrets makes for tall barbettes that are hard to sufficiently armor on a ship that was already topheavy as hell.
    And then there's the matter of the guns.

    41929252 (demetrious) -
    The big bad cruiser that was bouncing Mayo and Taco's 20cm shells at 9,000 yards was the HMS Queen Mary, a ship which might have a few anger issues to work out and a serious boner for crushing cruisers LIKE SHE WAS *SUPPOSED* TO DO BUT NOOOO but I digress. Queen Mary had a 9-inch belt at the thickest point, and 9-inches on her turret faces *and* barbettes (secondary guns shields.)
    Mayo and Takao pack these: http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNJAP_8-50_3ns.htm
    Northampton packs these: http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_8-55_mk9.htm
    Note the range/pen tables. Also note:
    >Note: At the Battle of the Java Sea in February 1942, USS Houston (CA-30) was able to maintain a ROF of 5 - 6 rounds per minute during the early part of the battle, possibly through the use of "cue-balling" techniques.
    tl;dr the unholy fucking asswhooping I just wrote was a real thing, not just "and then he wins because drama."
    Not entirely.
    Kind of.
    Somewhat.
    Well, he popped up at close range and SHUT UP

    41929321 (demetrious) -
    >>41929273
    >>HMS Queen Mary
    >As in, the Battlecruiser?
    The very same. Japanese guns pen 7.5 inches at 10,000 yards. The US 8-inchers pen 10 inches at the same range.
    >>41929275
    >Hey, what would the OTHER choice have resulted in? The "This is BULLSHIT" pick, what would that have done?
    Same ultimate result in the battle. The choice was all about Settle - the second choice would have been his rage at realizing that the abyssals 2spoopy bullshit would fuck him every time, strategy be damned, and that it was THEIR turn to get lucky with the "suddenly, from nowhere, a ship arrives" trick. If Hamp hadn't popped up 10,000 yards from Queen Mary, he'd have been fucked. But he did. And sadly for Queen Mary, something was bloody wrong with her.
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  • Threadmarks
    • Trace Coburn said:
    "All out, honey," a tired voice replies. "But maybe this will do." Hatches along her spine pop open, and Tomahawks climb for the skies on long, graceful contrails...

    ... and then they come back down.
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    Is this mixing genders, who I think this might be or just confusing? It seems theres an additional additional boat/sub other than Northampton
     
    Aldon said:
    Is this mixing genders, who I think this might be or just confusing? It seems theres an additional additional boat/sub other than Northampton
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    If I recall properly, it's one of the SSNs surfacing and firing off its missiles.

    Edit: Yeah, it's stated right before the quote in the text.

    Edit2: Independence Day references for great victory, by the way.
     
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    Willie opens up soon after, her hands jittering as she tries to level her gun and aim through the sight, just like you saw at the range. Shiranui sails up past Fubuki, gently nudging the dark-haired girl aside and wraps an arm across Willie's chest, covering her eyes with the other. Thus blinded, Willie fires blind – and her shells start marching straight up the four-stacker's wake.
    Click to expand...
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    And here Wille is shown to shoot better blind (not relying on rangefinders).
    Willie Dee scrambles to her side, holding her turret in both trembling hands. She's not trying to use the turret-mounted rangefinder – instead, she just holds the gun out before her like a talisman, and screams -

    "LEAVE US ALOOOOONE!"

    Her salvo straddles an abyssal's bow so closely that it breaks off, hull plates buckled by the near hits.
    Click to expand...
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    Willie proves herself

    Sammy climbs atop her stunned foe, ripping her empty triple-torpedo launcher off one thigh as she wraps a hand in the CL's hair, flowing and waving in the waves like seaweed.
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    Sammy is still best DestroyerGirl!

    that was a good session
     
    I'll be honest...when Shirainui wrapped her arms around Willie my mind demanded that someone make art of it in the most shoujo yuri style possible with a heavily blushing Willie and a smirking Nuinui.
     
    reality deviant said:
    And here Wille is shown to shoot better blind (not relying on rangefinders).
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    That's because USN DDs packed the Mk1 fire control computer. It linked with their radar and allowed them to fire much more accurately. They did have optical rangefinders, but only as back ups. Thus she fights better when relying on her equipment.

    IJN DDs had much better optical rangefinders but with the way their fire control worked (They had similar FC computers but they weren't linked to the guns and rarely carried radar equipment for many of the boats), they were less accurate.

    Also Settle is a shipboy magnet. First Harder and now Northampton.
     
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