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Fast battleship Iowa of the United States Navy grunted as she broke into a slow starboard turn, allowing her aft turret to fire on the abyssal fleet ahead of her. A quick glance over her shoulder showed that her sister Mo was staying with her.
The two Iowa's had been staying in Japan along with their escorts after they brought a supply convoy there and were waiting for the return convoy to set sail when the Japanese admiral put out an all hands scramble order. His submarines had found a massive abyssal strike force enroute to Tokyo, initial estimates had put the enemy forces at nearly 60 ships of various types, as well as being accompanied by a princess. A quick message to her superiors had Iowa's taskforce sortieing along with the Japanese battleline.
She had just fired off another salvo from her main batteries when a call came from some of the destroyers in their screen.
"Contact!" "Something big just appeared on hydrophones!" "It's right beneath us, heading for the surface."
The veteran battleship was about to shout an order when the sea off her port bow
erupted and for a split second, a massive black shape could be seen breaching from the water, before splashing down and vanishing, revealing what could only be a subgirl.
The fleet could only stare in shock as panels and hatches popped open all over the girl's rigging, revealing a dozen small turrets and two larger ones, when a call went over the radio.
"Alicorn-class Submersible Aircraft Cruiser, Pegasus. ENGAGING!"
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Welp, I'm a submarine now…
Lemme rephrase that.
Usually when I wake up, I wake up in two stages. Firstly, I regain consciousness, remaining in a light sleep state for a while, then I wake up. So, when I 'woke up' this time, I immediately realised something was wrong, like for the fact that I was subconsciously holding my breath and not suffering from oxygen deprivation. The pressure on my skin and the subtle swaying probably gave it away.
I opened my eyes and… yep, I'm underwater and not drowning. Looking around, my mental breath caught when I saw my rigging out of the corner of my eye, which possessed some
very familiar curves.
'Alicorn!? I'm Matias Torres' ship?'
However, something niggled at the back of my mind, '
No, I'm not the Alicorn, I'm an Alicorn-Class, Alicorn was my big… sister…'
That certainly explained it, Only one Alicorn-class sub was reportedly built, but I was built in secret by the Eruseans after they acquired the Alicorn from the Yuktobanians, although I was never finished in time to participate in the lighthouse war and was scrapped soon after.
That sorted, I turned and examined myself. My rigging was remarkably subdued considering the amount of power I could bring to bear, simply consisting of my two auxiliary hulls attached to a cradle on my hips. I could feel my hangar bay strapped across the small of my back although it was currently sealed, and I noticed something slung diagonally across my back, probably some sort of weapon, judging by the strap.
At this point I decide to get underway, as sitting still was hardly doing me anything.
Helm, Ahead slow. I couldn't help but smile as I felt power being routed from my reactors into the auxiliary hulls and my propulsion systems, and slowly beginning to crawl through the water.
A quick request for a status report from my crew showed that all systems were in the green, and I felt a shark-like grin spread across my face as I jammed my throttles to flank. My motors whined as they pushed all two hundred and twenty thousand kilowatts of power through each shaft, smoothly accelerating my eight hundred and ten thousand ton ass up to full speed, and let me tell you, doing 42 knots, 70 metres down is an experience.
'Alright, I'm going to have to get used to being a sub, we'll start with…'
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After an hour and a half of experimenting, I finally had a good enough idea of what I was doing. I could surface and dive well enough now, and I even surfaced completely and did a little weapons practice, deploying and retracting mounts as well as engaging target locks and deploying drones.
Right now, I'm cruising at periscope depth, heading NNE, as when I had extended my navigation antenna to try and get a location from any GPS satellites in range, and what I got threw me for a loop. The coordinates that the satellites relayed put me, according to my lackluster knowledge of coordinates, somewhere northeast of the Philippines.
My nav systems on the other hand, which were loaded with Strangereal's maps, had me sailing
through Erusea.
'Yeah nah, I'm pretty sure on regular earth.'
After grumbling for a few minutes, I had set course for the general area that
should be Japan. Given what I know about these situations, it's probably my best bet.
I had just finished a radar sweep when a thought a occurred to me.
"Hey Captain?"
"Oi?"
"Do I have a name?"
"Oi… Oi."
"I see, I need a name then. Any ideas?"
What followed was a ten-minute discussion with the rest of my bridge crew about potential names. I
hmmed as I ran my 'avatars' finger down the list they produced. My eyes alighted on one that stood out.
"Pegasus, I like that."
"Oi?" Of course she wanted to know why.
"It's simple really, Alicorn was named after the Latin term for 'winged unicorn'. Pegasus was a winged horse who was the offspring of Poseidon. I'd say it fits."
"Oi Oi"
The captain saluted me as the crew updated the relevant information in my data-banks. I guess I'm the Pegasus now.
Not even five minutes later, my phased radar mast detected multiple surface contacts at the edge of its detection range. Quickly coming to a decision, I broached the surface long enough to fire off a trio of SLUAVs from the launch cells either side of my superstructure before diving deep.
As my drones flew towards the contacts, I reviewed my combat inventory. My ammunition stores were at capacity, both for my deck guns, defences, and aircraft ordinance. I had a full load of combat SLUAVs and I even carried Barrier drones, those would come in handy.
On the topic of aircraft, my hanger was stuffed to capacity with planes. It appeared that I had three flights of both Flankers and Hornets as well as… what's this…?
Holy Balls, I have an
Ace squadron. It's a flight of four Strike Wyverns known as Stormfront Squadron, Magnet, Scout, Summit and Rooster. I couldn't help but giggle manically at the fact that these four little guys have basically
doubled my air group's effectiveness due to how skilled they are.
Oh hey, my drones had arrived.
My vision shifted as I looked through the lead drone and took in the fleet before me.
Scratch that, make it two fleets.
The first fleet was obviously made of Kanmusu, I could recognise a handful of the girls as they danced across the ocean. They had two battle-groups acting as a barricade, I could see the towering forms of Nagato and Mutsu at the core of each group. Behind them was a carrier group, I could see some notable faces such as Akagi and Kaga at the core as well as, was that Fubuki? Well damn. And finally, darting around in front was a mobile group composed of… I
think that's Iowa, yep that's Iowa and Mo, aand… a quartet of Kongou…'s yes, four Kongous.
The drone's radar warning receivers briefly flashed as a handful of the Fletchers in Iowa's group glanced in their direction.
But all their attention was on their targets.
Abyssals
LOTS of Abyssals
Fucking hell, why did it have to be Abyssals, those things were both physically and spiritually disgusting.
RIGHT! It's eldritch monstrosity squashing time.
Descending below the thermocline, admittedly to hide the sound of my slightly noisy impellers. I navigated right beneath Iowa's taskforce using my drones and sonar.
As a good man once said, If you're gonna make an entrance, go as big as humanly possible, and I'm a
really big sub.
I sounded general quarters long enough for my crew to be ready for combat and initiated a high-speed ascent to the surface. My bow broke the water in a brilliant spray of seawater, directly in front of the stunned task group.
As I crashed back into the water, I drew myself into a standing position, my rigging automatically adjusting itself to my new orientation. I drew in a deep breath as weapons systems across my hull activated, uncovered AA and deck emplacements rose into firing positions and began to seek targets. My CIC was working overtime designating the targets that were flowing in from my vast sensor suites, a sea of green flooded my vision.
As my elevators descended to begin retrieving aircraft, my battle-net indicated several
swarms of abyssal aircraft headed straight for me.
All I could do was smirk.
My voice rang out across the airwaves as the enemy crossed engagement range. "Alicorn-class Submersible Aircraft Cruiser, Pegasus. ENGAGING!"
'Open fire.'
I
erupted.
The sky was filled with lead and missiles as my AAA unloaded in earnest. My two rail-guns were no slouches either, alternating between filling the nearest ships with hypersonic HE shells and blowing chunks out of the enemy swarm of aircraft with AAC rounds to the tune of 80 rounds per minute. VLS tubes spewed AAMs and AShMs like clockwork, slamming into ships and planes alike, delivering devastating shaped charge warheads.
My drone hatches had opened in the midst of the firestorm that is me, spitting out most of my SLUAV compliment and even a handful of barrier drones, should I need them later.
Turning slightly towards the centre of the eldritch fleet, I unslung the rifle that was strapped across my back. The weapon looked like someone had strapped a pair of railguns side-by-side and welded a flight deck across the top. Makes sense, I have electromagnetic catapults. Using my left hand, I retrieved a magazine from my hangar bay. A glance at the sigil painted on the side of the small box told me that Stormfront squadron was raring to go.
I slapped the magazine into the mag-well on the side of the rifle and racked it. I felt a tingle go up my spine as I felt both catapults being locked in. As both planes prepared for take-off, I sighted down the length of the deck…
"Stormfront 1, Stormfront 2, Launch!"
…and pulled the trigger.
Both barrels barked as a pair of slugs left them at roughly twice the speed of sound. Suddenly, both rounds were engulfed in blue lightning for a second, and when the light dissipated, a pair of X-02S' powered away at full afterburner, their wings and control surfaces folded.
Racking the rifle again and the other two aces left my deck to join their comrades in the fur-ball, although Rooster was carrying anti-ship missiles and had diverted to deliver them to an unlucky bastard.
Mechanically I launched four of my six remaining squadrons, the planes either flying into a defensive pattern around me, of flying off to join the rapidly diminishing fire-fight in the sky.
I turned my head when I picked up the faint noise of something splashing into the sea off my port side, followed by the faint scream of beating propellers.
Torpedoes! Although they had to drop at max range due to the absurd amount AA fire I was putting out.
As they approached, I weighed my options, I could either crash dive or crash stop, letting them harmlessly glide by. I then remembered my load-out and mentally grinned.
As the torpedoes approached me, I sent the commands and the four barrier drones I had launched swarmed to my port side, each one flying close enough to the surface to clip their shields into the water. The translucent green bubbles appearing just in time to catch the explosive fish before they hit me.
The ocean heaved as 700-ish kilos of high explosive torpedoes met my APS drones at 40 knots…
…My drones won.
I returned the drones to their orbits and launched another group to bolster my defences.
It was at that this point that a bloodcurdling scream echoed across the water, and weirdly, I somehow knew that it was aimed at me…
"Well shit…"
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yes, I know that a ship painted black is terrible for SAR... shut up, I paint my ships how I want
