Chapter 8: “Proportional Response”
======================================================================
Chapter 8: "Proportional Response"
I wake up in a bed, an actual warm bed for once! You won't believe how good that feels after almost a month of sleeping on a barely padded cave floor. I do, apparently, need sleep… but the specifics are a bit weird. I can handle long periods without sleep but my level of "awareness" depends partially on whether the bridge is crewed and how badly the crew is sleep deprived.
When Gage goes to bed I feel like I'm on the day after an all-nighter and I become noticeably less attentive and slower with my thoughts until he gets back into the CIC. I haven't tested how long I can go on like this, but the moment he's back in my head I am up to my full potential again. Maybe if I had more crew with actual shifts I could be awake permanently.
Yet, it seems that I can sleep and there is some benefit to it. If I actually slept enough then I maintain my attention regardless of whether Gage is on deck or not. This is how I managed to get the 42 hour march done and then was coherent enough for combat. I slept immediately before I set off and Gage slept "in transit", even if pretty badly due to the stress. The captain can also operate most of my systems even if I'm asleep so we end up doing shifts so that at least one of us is awake at all times.
I sit up on the bed, stretch and head out to the bathroom. I haven't needed the "porcelain throne" since becoming a ship, but I prefer taking daily showers. Probably due to the lack of infrastructure on the island, the hotel had its own well, electric pump and both an electric and solar heater which means running hot water! I even found a few towels and unopened shampoo bottles in the storage shack!
That was refreshing and luckily a shower doesn't count for "flooding" risk when water gets in the eyes or mouth. I get out, dry my hair with a hairdryer built into the wall and absent- mindedly make my hair. Wait, how did I do that, exactly? I've never had long hair before and I've never even seen how a bun is made. Apparently, you start with a ponytail and then wrap it around itself in a certain way before folding it in somehow to avoid needing a pin. The head rigging is technically a hairpin, but I don't keep it summoned all the time.
I expected that my hair would end up "fixed" the moment I summoned my rigging, kind of like with magical girl transformations. A quick test shows that it is exactly how it works, but I also just know how to do my hair… and how to put on a bra correctly from the first try.
This is convenient, I guess, but mostly terrifying. That is not just muscle memory, that's a skill. This means that the information was added directly into my head without me noticing. As in, my mind was significantly altered without my consent. Was it only additive or are there things that were changed or removed?
Am I taking this so well because I'm being low emotional as usual or was my mind changed to be more accepting of my circumstances? Would I miss my family or general social interaction more if my mind wasn't changed? Would I freeze or panic instead of fighting if I was the old me? Do I now like different things? Would I consider some things that I used to enjoy as boring or unappealing now? Am I now more or less of a people person than I was? What if I now feel attracted to different people than I used to? Well, while I definitely preferred women I was so low libido before that I might've been practically an ace, so the question is more like if I can now get significantly attracted to anyone at all, but potayto-potahto.
Would that even matter post- change anyway? Maybe not being "me" is a bit more literal than I initially intended. Can I even be considered as the same person that I was before? Am I a guy turned into a ship or am I a near "blank slate" shipgirl given memories of a guy? Maybe even both? I could be a new entity made from a fusion of two minds.
I guess that from a certain perspective a month ago was my first birthday, the first day of a completely new being. I will try to recover "old me's" stuff if I can, but if it turns out that he never existed or is still around then… it is a literal new start for me, I'm Epsi "for real" now. I don't think that I should even inform anyone of my past, it would only cause confusion and potentially disdain.
I push these thoughts out of my head, splash my face with cold water and head out to get dressed and cook something for breakfast. The fridge was empty, but the island had quite a few fruit plants both wild and abandoned while the kitchen still had salt and spices in shakers. The result ended up a bit experimental, but edible and even arguably tasty. Let's just hope that I get recovered quickly, I miss the food that I'm used to and roasted coconut flesh would get old pretty fast.
As I haven't been attacked immediately I had the time to start setting everything up. I made a short trip to the other island to recover the leftover units that maintained the AWACS Manta. After that I distributed marine corgis and vehicles loaded with AA all across Pitcairn. I have no doubt in my head that I'd get attacked eventually, if not after killing the Wo then after starting the broadcasts. Hidden CIWS and AA missile launchers all across the island should hopefully handle a wave or two of bombers. Can't afford to let this island also burn down if I am to stay here long term.
The resource haul from the battle was substantial, but primarily consisted of scrap steel. Destroyers, cruisers and PT boats were destroyed in the water and, while I managed to recover them, some of the materials were ruined by rapid corrosion. Rusted iron is still iron, but my refineries are pretty slow with converting it to usable state. What could be easily salvaged was processed as a priority while the rest was left for later when I got the time.
A similar situation occurred with the battleship. It is no longer accurate to call this salvaging as it was more like processing metal ore. Fire and blast damage was so extensive that all possible wiring melted and fused with the bulkheads. The steel was "intact", but high temperatures caused deformation, buckling and unpredictable embrittlement which meant that it had to be processed more thoroughly before use. Essentially, the only "intact" thing that I could take from her was the 254 to 305 mm armor belt made entirely from abyss corrupted metal.
Wo's situation was much better, the fire damage occurred on the flight deck and her internal systems were mostly intact. I could recover a lot of unspent munitions for her various guns and a significant quantity of fuel in the form of both avgas and oil. Her aircraft and their maintenance components were primarily made of aluminum which is required for me to create aerial drones.
I'm uncomfortable with this, I'd be "salvaging" people. Well, at the very least they looked close enough to a human that I am getting second thoughts on processing them down for materials. What's worse is that Wo was most likely a shipgirl as well. I found the "USS Bunker Hill" plaque in addition to a few damaged documents on the bridge. They were burnt and near unreadable, but they mentioned her as one of the "Essex class" carriers. Taking her supplies is one thing, but rendering her down for metal and wiring feels almost like cannibalism.
The issue is, she has the metal and equipment that would require the least processing to use and I have no idea how much time I have. I'd be breaking her down and materials would be sent to the printers, but I'm not putting her flesh in my mouth, so it shouldn't count as cannibalism, right? It is more like… disassembling a mechanoid in Rimworld… or something.
Ok, fine, it is just an excuse. This is objectively wrong, but I don't really have a choice here. This was a person and I'm taking her apart and turning her into building supplies. I might get fucking tried in Hague for that, but the alternative is that I won't live long enough for anyone to find me otherwise. I still reserve the right to not watch as the Wo is reduced to metallic components by swarms of tiny robot dogs.
Besides the abyssal ships there was some spare metal on the island as well. Locals used aluminum hulled boats, lots of quad bikes with engines made from higher grade steels and they also had a significant quantity of corrugated metal plates in the buildings. All in all, I now had enough aluminum for three more Mantas or eight Albatrosses. I picked the "more Mantas" option primarily to abuse their flight ceiling advantage against the abbies.
Magical sparkly shipgirl bullshit allows me to somewhat compensate for the missing trace materials and superalloys with more of the "primary" material, but it is limited by type of production. I have basically six kinds of non-interchangeable resources that I need to function:
Specifically, I can replace "all" of the secondary material requirements for anything that I can make with these six in the correct proportion. It doesn't matter if I salvaged Torpex from torpedoes or nitro-gunpowder from machineguns, it just magically turns into the chemicals needed to make rocket propellant for missiles. A Bear tank is also agnostic to what steel it is made of, be it from engine blocks, battleship armor or metal roof tiles. It just magically ends up with the type designated in blueprints and also gets some metallo-ceramic armor tiles "on the house".
The main concerns are inefficiencies and "quality" of materials. Rebar and corrugated metal sheets don't provide as much "usable" metal equivalent as engine blocks or uncorrupted ship structural elements. I tried outright eating metallic components, but all that happens is that they end up in the same refinery hoppers as where the drones deposit their salvage, making it pointless.
To replace electronics in a tank with more steel I'd need to almost double the steel's material requirements. Manta's jet engines cost like a Manta and a half in aluminum if I don't have any nickel-chromium superalloys left. Yes, the material is lost in violation of all laws of conservation, the result masses less than the ingredients. Lacking processors and wiring does anything from more than tripling the price to making it impossible to produce at all, but I had a significant supply of the former and in the worst case I can just eat a shitton of sand and wait for a month or two for new CPUs to be produced.
My overall supply situation was decent, I've spent only a couple hundred shells total which would need replacement but they are on a backburner at the very edge of the production queue. I've also spent over half of my laser guided surface attack missiles to kill that BB. They are cheaper than cruise missiles, but they'd still take up to half a week to replace. With limited utility against larger ships they are not a priority either.
The main priority after the radio tower components are the three mantas followed by the total overhaul of my land forces. I have a lot of steel, a lot of it is unrefined and it is still not enough to set up my own HQ and resource production. But it is more than enough to fill up my land unit stores. I have 30 "slots" for "useful" land units and 40 spots locked for infantry haulers. I currently have 10 Seal light vehicles, 5 Walruses and a Bear tank in addition to my infantry complement being only half of maximum.
Out of those 30 slots I want 5 Bear tanks, 10 Mule logistic vehicles and the remaining 15 being Walruses. Seals are kind of useless, they are cheaper on materials and slightly faster in water but they are slower on land and have less engine power, next to no armor and a significantly smaller fuel tank. The production order says that I'd need two and a half months for all of this. Logistic vehicles come first and once the slots start filling up I'll start scrapping the seals for walruses. Pretty sure that's not what "seal clubbing" means, but the Captain found it amusing.
My plan is the following: I am deconstructing Wo entirely while cruisers and destroyers are broken up into larger segments. Uncorrupted and unrusted materials are taken out as a priority. Afterwards, I produce components for a stationary generator and the radio tower. The generator goes into the Christian's Cave to protect it from shelling while the radio tower is placed directly on top of the cave as it is the highest point of the island.
The remaining unprocessed materials would also be hauled into the cave and processed as time allows. Luckily, the production and the recycling machines are separate so I'm not compromising too much here. Two Mules would be printed as priority to haul fuel and ammunition from me to the AA drones without having them return "home" daily. Afterwards I'll focus on making Mantas while I'd be slowly chipping at the mountain of steel wreckage.
The radio tower was not too hard to make, the most complicated system is just the weather- proofed radio transceiver which is a relatively small box compared to the rest of it. The structure itself needed a significant quantity of copper wiring and steel components. Most of them didn't even need to be printed as they were cut out directly from the uncorrupted structural elements of abyssal ships.
A mere week after the battle it was completed. Strangely, the tower (and the generator) wasn't scaled down like my drones, components upsized to "normal" the moment they were placed and yet my tiny construction bots had no issue moving, welding and riveting steel beams thousands of times their size and working hundreds of meters in the air. My head literally hurts from thinking about how that should work, but apparently from their perspective everything looks fine and properly sized so I just sigh, fuel the generator in the cave and turn the thing on.
I transmit unencrypted audio in a certain range of frequencies picked from the list of the ones most used and avoiding frequencies used by the abbies. Even if I can't decipher what I'm receiving I can still detect where I'm getting more transmissions and which ones might contain more data. I could just broadband it, but this should be plenty noticeable and I don't want to cause too much interference.
The message was compiled by captain Gage, it is as "official" as it gets. We agreed that while I'm not technically drafted or enlisted I would still be allowed to present myself as an officer/ship of UEC. He would advise me on how to act and he would take full responsibility for me if UEC actually exists here. Gage would also make a document with me as a civilian specialist that he has full authority to hire.
The specifics are finicky, but the logic is the following: Gage is technically not in the UEC military anymore, he was dishonorably discharged for insubordination but then it was changed to honorable discharge years later when it turned out that his hunch to not bomb a potential makeshift hospital was proven to be correct. As such, he's not a Commander in the UEC navy, he's a Commander in Draziw Group PMC. Captain is his role btw, not rank.
On paper I'd be hired by Draziw Group PMC and Commander Gage can give me the rank up to equivalent to him. Draziw PMC is hired by the UEC government for the Horus Overwatch Program and apparently that legally applies the duties and privileges of the UEC military to me as the program is operated under the UEC directly rather than just the corpos. They are more literal "soldiers for hire" than commonly expected from mercenaries.
Weirdly capitalistic for a society formed from fighting "the rich", but I won't question it for now… Basically I don't need to make an oath, but the legal system would act as if I made an oath and got enlisted for as long as I'm hired… and I could just resign or renegotiate once we get saved. I won't be getting any veteran benefits from this, but I don't care about that and I guess this… works for now. At least that would differentiate me from civilian transmissions.
I've seen multiple high altitude flybys of unknown drones both before and after I started transmitting. First I tried to run into a clearing and wave at them, but they never responded and I eventually stopped reacting quite as enthusiastically. I don't feel… [betrayed]… as they are most likely flying autonomously and there's no one behind the wheel to respond. This does mean that human civilization is still standing, so I'm hopeful for a quick rescue.
No one has yet responded to my transmission… except the Princess. With a fleet. Honestly, she'd be inept if she didn't, I was blasting an unencrypted message with the content of "I'm a stranded kanmusu, please save me or tell me where to go" rephrased to sound official. She'd likely send the fleet even if I didn't transmit considering the whole Wo situation.
First movements started about a week after the battle when a slightly tattered fleet of abyssal ships landed on her island. It is likely that the response was delayed because she didn't have any spare ships and she struck the moment they had a chance to refuel and repair.
A fleet was formed around a Re- class flagship, a horrifying creature vaguely resembling a child in a hoodie with a massive white tail. The escorts were two light carriers that looked like Wo- hats fused to a baby's body, four light cruisers that looked like a helmeted head on two arms with huge gun turrets on shoulders, two heavy cruisers that looked like thin women with a single horn and guns sitting on two tentacles growing out of their backs at waist level, and eighteen fishy destroyers… although these ones are slightly more whale- shaped.
I don't like Re, I don't like how she looks at my loitering drones maniacally with that repulsive (ba dum tss) smile. I don't like how these ships are also commonly portrayed as crazy and powerful. She would reach me in mere 14 hours but she'd probably be in strike range way before that. I have a choice to make here. If I sink her far away or above a deep spot then I won't be able to recover materials, but if I let her get close she could torch the island and wreck the transmitter.
I could hide and ambush her with cruise missiles, but it is likely that she'd start bombing the island from range. I could also shoot down all of her aircraft, but there's a chance that she would prefer to retreat instead of getting closer. I can't really afford to let her bomb the radio tower so I'll have to bank on her being aggressive. Re are supposed to be crazy, so it would make sense for her to rush, right?
I ordered my aircraft to load up for the anti-ship roles. The four mantas would be loaded with two 1000 and two 2000 kg laser guided bombs each which is a quarter of my aircraft bomb supply. They are so heavily loaded that I'll actually have to use the launch catapults for once. The plan is that they can fly above ww2 AA and precision strike from beyond the effective range. When out of munitions they'd provide the guidance for the hammerhead cruise missiles.
This might be overkill, my Hammerhead missiles carry 450 kg of explosives and the torpedoes that I've recovered carry around 300-350 kg of Torpex and can probably oneshot a destroyer. Then again, I'm facing a Re which is basically a fusion of multiple capital ships. That's not just an assumption, the drone camera glitches and shows three different ships overlaid and clipped into each other when I switch between modes. All two ton bombs would go straight at her, smaller bombs would go at escort carriers and maybe heavy cruisers while others should hopefully panic and flee without their flagship.
For air defense I'm filling up my three remaining Albatrosses with four AA missiles each and I'll leave them loitering over the island. If they launch bombers they'd get eaten by missiles both from the ground and from the air. If Re tries to start with fighters then I'll bait them over the AA walruses. I'd prefer to equip them with autocannons and save on missiles, but both me and Gage would be needed to coordinate the manta strikes and I straight up don't trust the drone AI to dogfight in an intelligent manner.
Well, Re's fleet is 65 km and they are launching the aircraft. The spot is a bit deep but not too bad. Time to show her who's the boss of this island…
_________________________________________
Perspective: Sydney, HMAS Waterhen naval base briefing room
Presenter: "Three weeks ago on February 14th one of our reconnaissance drones took the following images of Pitcairn island."
The slide shows an aerial view of the island and then switches to a zoomed in image of a spot on the south- eastern edge of the landmass. There are three white, gray and black pixelated blobs surrounded by much less pixelated devastation. Slides continue to change to show the difference in time
Presenter: "We believe that the minor abyssal garrison on the island was taken out by another abyssal actor. As you can see from the comparisons between photos, the signatures of the elite Wo and Ta class cease moving while the new signature continues moving across the island and engaging lighter surface elements. By the level of digital distortion and secondary evidence we initially suspected that the new entity is either in a Demon or Princess category."
Presenter: "The entity has significantly reduced their digital distortion effect through unknown means, but it was insufficient to take a coherent image. During and after the battle we observed cruiser equivalent naval artillery, incendiary aerial bombs, signs of land vehicles, turboprop aircraft and flying wing jet aircraft with reduced radar cross section. ONI has decided to temporarily name her Pitcairn Princess."
The slide shifts again, now displaying an aerial photo of a radio tower on the northernmost peak of the island. A laser pointer circles around the image of the tower.
Presenter: "Within just a week of appearance, the Pitcairn Princess has completed the first structure on the island. It is a large radio transmitter which projects a prerecorded message on a loop. The message claims that 'ACC Epsilon' of the 'Coalition navy' is stranded without functional navigation tools and requests extraction or navigational information to reach an allied port. No ships with that name have ever been built and no organization or alliance known as UEC exists in our records."
Presenter: "ONI calls this behavior 'Siren Song' and it refers to any coherent abyssal transmissions directed externally rather than between abyssal ships. The most well known examples of this are the taunting of shipgirls, allied naval forces and civilians during combat, transmissions from delusional abyssals who believe that WW2 hasn't ended to their wartime home ports, and the territorial displays of the Northern Princess."
Presenter: "There have been at least four cases when abyssals attempted to utilize that behavior as lures. Some princesses have transmitted false SOS signals, surrenders and truces, but each time they attacked the moment personnel reached their effective engagement ranges. We believe that Pitcairn Princess is either attempting to attract prey or is delusional and attempting to contact a home port that doesn't exist. Responding to her would merely direct her raids at us."
The slide changes to a satellite image of the ocean surface with multiple pixelated blobs leaving wakes behind them.
Presenter: "Our biggest concern and the reason for this discussion occurred today when the Polynesian Battleship Princess dispatched a sizable battlegroup against the Pitcairn Princess. By matching distortion signature similarities, secondary evidence and post- event data, the fleet consisted of a Re-class, two light carriers, half a dozen cruisers and up to twenty destroyers."
Presenter: "At 18:10 the fleet approached within 65 kilometers from the island and started deploying aircraft. The Pitcairn Princess responded immediately by launching four of her 'stealth jets' while leaving three of the propeller-based aircraft in reserve. Jet aircraft completely avoided contact with the Re's fighters through altitude advantage and attacked the battlegroup directly. Re's bombers and fighters focused on reaching the island but were wiped out in seconds by previously undetected defensive installations."
Next slide shows the abyssal formation partially obscured by smoke coming from the burning flagship.
Presenter: "This is Re… taken out entirely with only three high altitude bombing runs. Based on the size of the explosions, these are likely bombs in multiple ton range. Here we can see one of the heavy cruisers attempting to rally the remaining forces, but what followed were five confirmed missile launches. Two hit the intact Nu- class light carrier and three hit the second flagship and the forces started dispersing and retreating which allowed us to narrow down the more precise composition. Pitcairn Princess wins via effectively decapitating the fleet by sinking only four ships."
Presenter: "Now, stealth jets, AA seekers and cruise missiles would already be unprecedented when every shipgirl and abyssal operates with at best late WW2 tech… if we hadn't encountered the Modern Carrier Princess three months prior. We initially suspected the MCP to be the Russian Kuznetsov carrier which was lost with all hands during the Blood Week, but the analysis suggests that the weapons and aircraft utilized by the Pitcairn Princess have near identical performance to the MCP. As Kuznetsov's two sister ships are still active steel hulls in PLAN, the theory is no longer considered accurate."
Presenter: "The biggest threat is the MCP's capability to rapidly build up defenses and capture multiple islands at once. Most Princesses maintain a single base with at most a few outposts on the closest islands, along internal shipping routes or as resupply points for raiders. Modern Carrier Princess has already built and entrenched three bases since she has been detected and is expanding for more. The quantity of modern coastal defenses that she builds makes it prohibitively expensive to dislodge her islands without significant modern ship support."
Presenter: "If Pitcairn Princess is similar, we can't afford to let her entrench and start spreading. We believe that her setup is progressing slower due to material shortage as she hasn't invaded and defeated an established princess, unlike the MCP. However, once she sets up she'd be in a convenient striking range for most of Australia's East Coast and the shipping lanes with New Zealand and South America would be in danger."
Presenter: "While we can perform long range bombing of the island, history has proven this to be inefficient against princesses and it might provoke her to entrench faster. The only way to guarantee success is to support the operation with a Kanmusu strike team. In just over a month, we will be receiving the USN Kanmusu Corp detachment initially reserved for a probing strike against the New Battleship Princess, but I propose that we should instead deal with the Pitcairn situation first…"
_________________________________________
Chapter 8: "Proportional Response"
I wake up in a bed, an actual warm bed for once! You won't believe how good that feels after almost a month of sleeping on a barely padded cave floor. I do, apparently, need sleep… but the specifics are a bit weird. I can handle long periods without sleep but my level of "awareness" depends partially on whether the bridge is crewed and how badly the crew is sleep deprived.
When Gage goes to bed I feel like I'm on the day after an all-nighter and I become noticeably less attentive and slower with my thoughts until he gets back into the CIC. I haven't tested how long I can go on like this, but the moment he's back in my head I am up to my full potential again. Maybe if I had more crew with actual shifts I could be awake permanently.
Yet, it seems that I can sleep and there is some benefit to it. If I actually slept enough then I maintain my attention regardless of whether Gage is on deck or not. This is how I managed to get the 42 hour march done and then was coherent enough for combat. I slept immediately before I set off and Gage slept "in transit", even if pretty badly due to the stress. The captain can also operate most of my systems even if I'm asleep so we end up doing shifts so that at least one of us is awake at all times.
I sit up on the bed, stretch and head out to the bathroom. I haven't needed the "porcelain throne" since becoming a ship, but I prefer taking daily showers. Probably due to the lack of infrastructure on the island, the hotel had its own well, electric pump and both an electric and solar heater which means running hot water! I even found a few towels and unopened shampoo bottles in the storage shack!
That was refreshing and luckily a shower doesn't count for "flooding" risk when water gets in the eyes or mouth. I get out, dry my hair with a hairdryer built into the wall and absent- mindedly make my hair. Wait, how did I do that, exactly? I've never had long hair before and I've never even seen how a bun is made. Apparently, you start with a ponytail and then wrap it around itself in a certain way before folding it in somehow to avoid needing a pin. The head rigging is technically a hairpin, but I don't keep it summoned all the time.
I expected that my hair would end up "fixed" the moment I summoned my rigging, kind of like with magical girl transformations. A quick test shows that it is exactly how it works, but I also just know how to do my hair… and how to put on a bra correctly from the first try.
This is convenient, I guess, but mostly terrifying. That is not just muscle memory, that's a skill. This means that the information was added directly into my head without me noticing. As in, my mind was significantly altered without my consent. Was it only additive or are there things that were changed or removed?
Am I taking this so well because I'm being low emotional as usual or was my mind changed to be more accepting of my circumstances? Would I miss my family or general social interaction more if my mind wasn't changed? Would I freeze or panic instead of fighting if I was the old me? Do I now like different things? Would I consider some things that I used to enjoy as boring or unappealing now? Am I now more or less of a people person than I was? What if I now feel attracted to different people than I used to? Well, while I definitely preferred women I was so low libido before that I might've been practically an ace, so the question is more like if I can now get significantly attracted to anyone at all, but potayto-potahto.
Would that even matter post- change anyway? Maybe not being "me" is a bit more literal than I initially intended. Can I even be considered as the same person that I was before? Am I a guy turned into a ship or am I a near "blank slate" shipgirl given memories of a guy? Maybe even both? I could be a new entity made from a fusion of two minds.
I guess that from a certain perspective a month ago was my first birthday, the first day of a completely new being. I will try to recover "old me's" stuff if I can, but if it turns out that he never existed or is still around then… it is a literal new start for me, I'm Epsi "for real" now. I don't think that I should even inform anyone of my past, it would only cause confusion and potentially disdain.
I push these thoughts out of my head, splash my face with cold water and head out to get dressed and cook something for breakfast. The fridge was empty, but the island had quite a few fruit plants both wild and abandoned while the kitchen still had salt and spices in shakers. The result ended up a bit experimental, but edible and even arguably tasty. Let's just hope that I get recovered quickly, I miss the food that I'm used to and roasted coconut flesh would get old pretty fast.
As I haven't been attacked immediately I had the time to start setting everything up. I made a short trip to the other island to recover the leftover units that maintained the AWACS Manta. After that I distributed marine corgis and vehicles loaded with AA all across Pitcairn. I have no doubt in my head that I'd get attacked eventually, if not after killing the Wo then after starting the broadcasts. Hidden CIWS and AA missile launchers all across the island should hopefully handle a wave or two of bombers. Can't afford to let this island also burn down if I am to stay here long term.
The resource haul from the battle was substantial, but primarily consisted of scrap steel. Destroyers, cruisers and PT boats were destroyed in the water and, while I managed to recover them, some of the materials were ruined by rapid corrosion. Rusted iron is still iron, but my refineries are pretty slow with converting it to usable state. What could be easily salvaged was processed as a priority while the rest was left for later when I got the time.
A similar situation occurred with the battleship. It is no longer accurate to call this salvaging as it was more like processing metal ore. Fire and blast damage was so extensive that all possible wiring melted and fused with the bulkheads. The steel was "intact", but high temperatures caused deformation, buckling and unpredictable embrittlement which meant that it had to be processed more thoroughly before use. Essentially, the only "intact" thing that I could take from her was the 254 to 305 mm armor belt made entirely from abyss corrupted metal.
Wo's situation was much better, the fire damage occurred on the flight deck and her internal systems were mostly intact. I could recover a lot of unspent munitions for her various guns and a significant quantity of fuel in the form of both avgas and oil. Her aircraft and their maintenance components were primarily made of aluminum which is required for me to create aerial drones.
I'm uncomfortable with this, I'd be "salvaging" people. Well, at the very least they looked close enough to a human that I am getting second thoughts on processing them down for materials. What's worse is that Wo was most likely a shipgirl as well. I found the "USS Bunker Hill" plaque in addition to a few damaged documents on the bridge. They were burnt and near unreadable, but they mentioned her as one of the "Essex class" carriers. Taking her supplies is one thing, but rendering her down for metal and wiring feels almost like cannibalism.
The issue is, she has the metal and equipment that would require the least processing to use and I have no idea how much time I have. I'd be breaking her down and materials would be sent to the printers, but I'm not putting her flesh in my mouth, so it shouldn't count as cannibalism, right? It is more like… disassembling a mechanoid in Rimworld… or something.
Ok, fine, it is just an excuse. This is objectively wrong, but I don't really have a choice here. This was a person and I'm taking her apart and turning her into building supplies. I might get fucking tried in Hague for that, but the alternative is that I won't live long enough for anyone to find me otherwise. I still reserve the right to not watch as the Wo is reduced to metallic components by swarms of tiny robot dogs.
Besides the abyssal ships there was some spare metal on the island as well. Locals used aluminum hulled boats, lots of quad bikes with engines made from higher grade steels and they also had a significant quantity of corrugated metal plates in the buildings. All in all, I now had enough aluminum for three more Mantas or eight Albatrosses. I picked the "more Mantas" option primarily to abuse their flight ceiling advantage against the abbies.
Magical sparkly shipgirl bullshit allows me to somewhat compensate for the missing trace materials and superalloys with more of the "primary" material, but it is limited by type of production. I have basically six kinds of non-interchangeable resources that I need to function:
- Fuel to run my drones, emergency power generation and production of polymers
- Explosives that I need to print ammunition for my guns and drones
- Steel which I need for damage control, to print and maintain land vehicles and produce bots
- Aluminum that is used for all aerial units
- Pure silicon monocrystals and copper for electronics and CPUs needed for every drone, guided weapon and some of my critical internal system maintenance and repair
- Uranium, plutonium or thorium for fuel rods and nukes, but I won't run out of those in a while and I can't process nuclear fuels directly. I'll need a separate refinery and breeder reactors
Specifically, I can replace "all" of the secondary material requirements for anything that I can make with these six in the correct proportion. It doesn't matter if I salvaged Torpex from torpedoes or nitro-gunpowder from machineguns, it just magically turns into the chemicals needed to make rocket propellant for missiles. A Bear tank is also agnostic to what steel it is made of, be it from engine blocks, battleship armor or metal roof tiles. It just magically ends up with the type designated in blueprints and also gets some metallo-ceramic armor tiles "on the house".
The main concerns are inefficiencies and "quality" of materials. Rebar and corrugated metal sheets don't provide as much "usable" metal equivalent as engine blocks or uncorrupted ship structural elements. I tried outright eating metallic components, but all that happens is that they end up in the same refinery hoppers as where the drones deposit their salvage, making it pointless.
To replace electronics in a tank with more steel I'd need to almost double the steel's material requirements. Manta's jet engines cost like a Manta and a half in aluminum if I don't have any nickel-chromium superalloys left. Yes, the material is lost in violation of all laws of conservation, the result masses less than the ingredients. Lacking processors and wiring does anything from more than tripling the price to making it impossible to produce at all, but I had a significant supply of the former and in the worst case I can just eat a shitton of sand and wait for a month or two for new CPUs to be produced.
My overall supply situation was decent, I've spent only a couple hundred shells total which would need replacement but they are on a backburner at the very edge of the production queue. I've also spent over half of my laser guided surface attack missiles to kill that BB. They are cheaper than cruise missiles, but they'd still take up to half a week to replace. With limited utility against larger ships they are not a priority either.
The main priority after the radio tower components are the three mantas followed by the total overhaul of my land forces. I have a lot of steel, a lot of it is unrefined and it is still not enough to set up my own HQ and resource production. But it is more than enough to fill up my land unit stores. I have 30 "slots" for "useful" land units and 40 spots locked for infantry haulers. I currently have 10 Seal light vehicles, 5 Walruses and a Bear tank in addition to my infantry complement being only half of maximum.
Out of those 30 slots I want 5 Bear tanks, 10 Mule logistic vehicles and the remaining 15 being Walruses. Seals are kind of useless, they are cheaper on materials and slightly faster in water but they are slower on land and have less engine power, next to no armor and a significantly smaller fuel tank. The production order says that I'd need two and a half months for all of this. Logistic vehicles come first and once the slots start filling up I'll start scrapping the seals for walruses. Pretty sure that's not what "seal clubbing" means, but the Captain found it amusing.
My plan is the following: I am deconstructing Wo entirely while cruisers and destroyers are broken up into larger segments. Uncorrupted and unrusted materials are taken out as a priority. Afterwards, I produce components for a stationary generator and the radio tower. The generator goes into the Christian's Cave to protect it from shelling while the radio tower is placed directly on top of the cave as it is the highest point of the island.
The remaining unprocessed materials would also be hauled into the cave and processed as time allows. Luckily, the production and the recycling machines are separate so I'm not compromising too much here. Two Mules would be printed as priority to haul fuel and ammunition from me to the AA drones without having them return "home" daily. Afterwards I'll focus on making Mantas while I'd be slowly chipping at the mountain of steel wreckage.
The radio tower was not too hard to make, the most complicated system is just the weather- proofed radio transceiver which is a relatively small box compared to the rest of it. The structure itself needed a significant quantity of copper wiring and steel components. Most of them didn't even need to be printed as they were cut out directly from the uncorrupted structural elements of abyssal ships.
A mere week after the battle it was completed. Strangely, the tower (and the generator) wasn't scaled down like my drones, components upsized to "normal" the moment they were placed and yet my tiny construction bots had no issue moving, welding and riveting steel beams thousands of times their size and working hundreds of meters in the air. My head literally hurts from thinking about how that should work, but apparently from their perspective everything looks fine and properly sized so I just sigh, fuel the generator in the cave and turn the thing on.
I transmit unencrypted audio in a certain range of frequencies picked from the list of the ones most used and avoiding frequencies used by the abbies. Even if I can't decipher what I'm receiving I can still detect where I'm getting more transmissions and which ones might contain more data. I could just broadband it, but this should be plenty noticeable and I don't want to cause too much interference.
The message was compiled by captain Gage, it is as "official" as it gets. We agreed that while I'm not technically drafted or enlisted I would still be allowed to present myself as an officer/ship of UEC. He would advise me on how to act and he would take full responsibility for me if UEC actually exists here. Gage would also make a document with me as a civilian specialist that he has full authority to hire.
The specifics are finicky, but the logic is the following: Gage is technically not in the UEC military anymore, he was dishonorably discharged for insubordination but then it was changed to honorable discharge years later when it turned out that his hunch to not bomb a potential makeshift hospital was proven to be correct. As such, he's not a Commander in the UEC navy, he's a Commander in Draziw Group PMC. Captain is his role btw, not rank.
On paper I'd be hired by Draziw Group PMC and Commander Gage can give me the rank up to equivalent to him. Draziw PMC is hired by the UEC government for the Horus Overwatch Program and apparently that legally applies the duties and privileges of the UEC military to me as the program is operated under the UEC directly rather than just the corpos. They are more literal "soldiers for hire" than commonly expected from mercenaries.
Weirdly capitalistic for a society formed from fighting "the rich", but I won't question it for now… Basically I don't need to make an oath, but the legal system would act as if I made an oath and got enlisted for as long as I'm hired… and I could just resign or renegotiate once we get saved. I won't be getting any veteran benefits from this, but I don't care about that and I guess this… works for now. At least that would differentiate me from civilian transmissions.
I've seen multiple high altitude flybys of unknown drones both before and after I started transmitting. First I tried to run into a clearing and wave at them, but they never responded and I eventually stopped reacting quite as enthusiastically. I don't feel… [betrayed]… as they are most likely flying autonomously and there's no one behind the wheel to respond. This does mean that human civilization is still standing, so I'm hopeful for a quick rescue.
No one has yet responded to my transmission… except the Princess. With a fleet. Honestly, she'd be inept if she didn't, I was blasting an unencrypted message with the content of "I'm a stranded kanmusu, please save me or tell me where to go" rephrased to sound official. She'd likely send the fleet even if I didn't transmit considering the whole Wo situation.
First movements started about a week after the battle when a slightly tattered fleet of abyssal ships landed on her island. It is likely that the response was delayed because she didn't have any spare ships and she struck the moment they had a chance to refuel and repair.
A fleet was formed around a Re- class flagship, a horrifying creature vaguely resembling a child in a hoodie with a massive white tail. The escorts were two light carriers that looked like Wo- hats fused to a baby's body, four light cruisers that looked like a helmeted head on two arms with huge gun turrets on shoulders, two heavy cruisers that looked like thin women with a single horn and guns sitting on two tentacles growing out of their backs at waist level, and eighteen fishy destroyers… although these ones are slightly more whale- shaped.
I don't like Re, I don't like how she looks at my loitering drones maniacally with that repulsive (ba dum tss) smile. I don't like how these ships are also commonly portrayed as crazy and powerful. She would reach me in mere 14 hours but she'd probably be in strike range way before that. I have a choice to make here. If I sink her far away or above a deep spot then I won't be able to recover materials, but if I let her get close she could torch the island and wreck the transmitter.
I could hide and ambush her with cruise missiles, but it is likely that she'd start bombing the island from range. I could also shoot down all of her aircraft, but there's a chance that she would prefer to retreat instead of getting closer. I can't really afford to let her bomb the radio tower so I'll have to bank on her being aggressive. Re are supposed to be crazy, so it would make sense for her to rush, right?
I ordered my aircraft to load up for the anti-ship roles. The four mantas would be loaded with two 1000 and two 2000 kg laser guided bombs each which is a quarter of my aircraft bomb supply. They are so heavily loaded that I'll actually have to use the launch catapults for once. The plan is that they can fly above ww2 AA and precision strike from beyond the effective range. When out of munitions they'd provide the guidance for the hammerhead cruise missiles.
This might be overkill, my Hammerhead missiles carry 450 kg of explosives and the torpedoes that I've recovered carry around 300-350 kg of Torpex and can probably oneshot a destroyer. Then again, I'm facing a Re which is basically a fusion of multiple capital ships. That's not just an assumption, the drone camera glitches and shows three different ships overlaid and clipped into each other when I switch between modes. All two ton bombs would go straight at her, smaller bombs would go at escort carriers and maybe heavy cruisers while others should hopefully panic and flee without their flagship.
For air defense I'm filling up my three remaining Albatrosses with four AA missiles each and I'll leave them loitering over the island. If they launch bombers they'd get eaten by missiles both from the ground and from the air. If Re tries to start with fighters then I'll bait them over the AA walruses. I'd prefer to equip them with autocannons and save on missiles, but both me and Gage would be needed to coordinate the manta strikes and I straight up don't trust the drone AI to dogfight in an intelligent manner.
Well, Re's fleet is 65 km and they are launching the aircraft. The spot is a bit deep but not too bad. Time to show her who's the boss of this island…
_________________________________________
Perspective: Sydney, HMAS Waterhen naval base briefing room
Presenter: "Three weeks ago on February 14th one of our reconnaissance drones took the following images of Pitcairn island."
The slide shows an aerial view of the island and then switches to a zoomed in image of a spot on the south- eastern edge of the landmass. There are three white, gray and black pixelated blobs surrounded by much less pixelated devastation. Slides continue to change to show the difference in time
Presenter: "We believe that the minor abyssal garrison on the island was taken out by another abyssal actor. As you can see from the comparisons between photos, the signatures of the elite Wo and Ta class cease moving while the new signature continues moving across the island and engaging lighter surface elements. By the level of digital distortion and secondary evidence we initially suspected that the new entity is either in a Demon or Princess category."
Presenter: "The entity has significantly reduced their digital distortion effect through unknown means, but it was insufficient to take a coherent image. During and after the battle we observed cruiser equivalent naval artillery, incendiary aerial bombs, signs of land vehicles, turboprop aircraft and flying wing jet aircraft with reduced radar cross section. ONI has decided to temporarily name her Pitcairn Princess."
The slide shifts again, now displaying an aerial photo of a radio tower on the northernmost peak of the island. A laser pointer circles around the image of the tower.
Presenter: "Within just a week of appearance, the Pitcairn Princess has completed the first structure on the island. It is a large radio transmitter which projects a prerecorded message on a loop. The message claims that 'ACC Epsilon' of the 'Coalition navy' is stranded without functional navigation tools and requests extraction or navigational information to reach an allied port. No ships with that name have ever been built and no organization or alliance known as UEC exists in our records."
Presenter: "ONI calls this behavior 'Siren Song' and it refers to any coherent abyssal transmissions directed externally rather than between abyssal ships. The most well known examples of this are the taunting of shipgirls, allied naval forces and civilians during combat, transmissions from delusional abyssals who believe that WW2 hasn't ended to their wartime home ports, and the territorial displays of the Northern Princess."
Presenter: "There have been at least four cases when abyssals attempted to utilize that behavior as lures. Some princesses have transmitted false SOS signals, surrenders and truces, but each time they attacked the moment personnel reached their effective engagement ranges. We believe that Pitcairn Princess is either attempting to attract prey or is delusional and attempting to contact a home port that doesn't exist. Responding to her would merely direct her raids at us."
The slide changes to a satellite image of the ocean surface with multiple pixelated blobs leaving wakes behind them.
Presenter: "Our biggest concern and the reason for this discussion occurred today when the Polynesian Battleship Princess dispatched a sizable battlegroup against the Pitcairn Princess. By matching distortion signature similarities, secondary evidence and post- event data, the fleet consisted of a Re-class, two light carriers, half a dozen cruisers and up to twenty destroyers."
Presenter: "At 18:10 the fleet approached within 65 kilometers from the island and started deploying aircraft. The Pitcairn Princess responded immediately by launching four of her 'stealth jets' while leaving three of the propeller-based aircraft in reserve. Jet aircraft completely avoided contact with the Re's fighters through altitude advantage and attacked the battlegroup directly. Re's bombers and fighters focused on reaching the island but were wiped out in seconds by previously undetected defensive installations."
Next slide shows the abyssal formation partially obscured by smoke coming from the burning flagship.
Presenter: "This is Re… taken out entirely with only three high altitude bombing runs. Based on the size of the explosions, these are likely bombs in multiple ton range. Here we can see one of the heavy cruisers attempting to rally the remaining forces, but what followed were five confirmed missile launches. Two hit the intact Nu- class light carrier and three hit the second flagship and the forces started dispersing and retreating which allowed us to narrow down the more precise composition. Pitcairn Princess wins via effectively decapitating the fleet by sinking only four ships."
Presenter: "Now, stealth jets, AA seekers and cruise missiles would already be unprecedented when every shipgirl and abyssal operates with at best late WW2 tech… if we hadn't encountered the Modern Carrier Princess three months prior. We initially suspected the MCP to be the Russian Kuznetsov carrier which was lost with all hands during the Blood Week, but the analysis suggests that the weapons and aircraft utilized by the Pitcairn Princess have near identical performance to the MCP. As Kuznetsov's two sister ships are still active steel hulls in PLAN, the theory is no longer considered accurate."
Presenter: "The biggest threat is the MCP's capability to rapidly build up defenses and capture multiple islands at once. Most Princesses maintain a single base with at most a few outposts on the closest islands, along internal shipping routes or as resupply points for raiders. Modern Carrier Princess has already built and entrenched three bases since she has been detected and is expanding for more. The quantity of modern coastal defenses that she builds makes it prohibitively expensive to dislodge her islands without significant modern ship support."
Presenter: "If Pitcairn Princess is similar, we can't afford to let her entrench and start spreading. We believe that her setup is progressing slower due to material shortage as she hasn't invaded and defeated an established princess, unlike the MCP. However, once she sets up she'd be in a convenient striking range for most of Australia's East Coast and the shipping lanes with New Zealand and South America would be in danger."
Presenter: "While we can perform long range bombing of the island, history has proven this to be inefficient against princesses and it might provoke her to entrench faster. The only way to guarantee success is to support the operation with a Kanmusu strike team. In just over a month, we will be receiving the USN Kanmusu Corp detachment initially reserved for a probing strike against the New Battleship Princess, but I propose that we should instead deal with the Pitcairn situation first…"
_________________________________________
Last edited:
