Wednesday, January 29th, 2014.
Vital information arrived this morning from HQ regarding Sector B, so I'll lay them out here so that the context of the mission today can be understood.
The Japanese government has recently received permission to use some of our American orbital military satellites to position themselves over Sector B and directly track and analyze enemy movement patterns and squadron compositions, so using this info we know that there exist four types of destroyers, tentatively called the I-Class, the Ro-Class, the Ha-Class, and the Ni-Class. They're the most commonly seen enemies so far, always traveling in tight squads of five or more. They're almost always the escort vessels for the other Abyssal ships that I'll mention later. By the way that the report from HQ described them, they basically seem to be like zombies: individually, they won't be a problem for our ship girls, but let them do enough damage or don't take them seriously enough and they'll quickly start to dismantle you like a pack of piranhas. Because I've always had a bit of a geek streak in me, I think the enemy destroyers look hella cool; they remind me of the aliens in AvP, but with their own unique twist in design that I can appreciate from an aesthetic standpoint.
We also know about four currently known types of Abyssal light cruisers, tentatively called the Ho-Class, He-Class, To-Class, and Tsu-Class. While our destroyer girls can probably take them on in a head-on fight, these light cruisers appear to always be escorted by at least three or four Abyssal destroyers, judging by the aerial surveillance photos. Again, probably not the most dangerous Abyssals, but I'm sure they can rip the ship girls a new one if they're able to.
Now, this is what worries me a bit: we also have confirmation about a special type of Abyssal light cruiser: the Chi-Class. It seems that the Chi-Class is what's known as a torpedo cruiser. The girls here have yet to encounter this one, so I wonder how they'll fare against the Chi-Class. They probably don't have live combat experience battling a Chi-Class, so they'll have to be careful around this one. I think Kitakami and Ooi were also called torpedo light cruisers or something along those lines when I read their profiles, but they sure don't have any torpedoes on them right now. They could probably carry them though, if we're sent the proper equipment, but that's something to worry about for another day.
For the Abyssal Heavy Cruisers, we know about the Ri-Class and the Ne-Class. According to the government report, it appears tha the Ne-Class is a very recent Abyssal model that they've never reported seeing before - but just exactly how "recent" that is, we'll probably never know. Government classification bullshit, probably. Heavy cruisers are no flippin' joke, so the girls'll have to be careful around these ones.
The Wo-Class standard aircraft carrier's the one we've known about for a long time now, since she's been causing problems for our reconnaissance missions, both for my fleet and for separate government recon missions. The one we didn't know about was the Abyssal light aircraft carrier, the Nu-Class. Seems like the Abyssals haven't been keen on revealing him (or her) just yet. Or I don't know, who knows what they're trying to do.
The battleships we've also had our eyes on for a while now: the Ru-Class, the Ta-Class, and the Re-Class. We've managed to find out why the Re-Class is so goddamn dangerous: she's not just any battleship, she's an aviation battleship. There's one satellite photo HQ sent me of the Re-Class, and while the image is slightly blurry from the sheer distance that the satellite took the picture, it's pretty clear that she's able to launch those strange little Abyssal planes from that weird monster tail of hers. I think she's doing that to scout out our squadrons first, know exactly where they're coming in from, and choose a good place to fire the most damaging first strike possible. That's probably how she nearly tore Samidare in half...
Finally, the submarines: the Ka-Class, the Yo-Class, and the So-Class. The only reason why I consider the Abyssal submarines to be a threat to us right now's because we don't have our own solid submarine squadron to counteract their submarine superiority, since we only really have Imuya.
I asked Ooyodo, my secretary ship, why the Abyssal ship types were named like this, and she said that the naming convention for the enemy Abyssals followed what's called the Iroha, a medieval Japanese poem. Well, I guess I shouldn't question the government for just simply following tradition, but it is a bit odd to call the enemy ships by hiragana letters. Not my choice, though.
I called everyone into my office and dissected the information from the report for them. The satellite montage photos basically revealed standard scout patterns of the destroyer and light cruiser/destroyer squadrons, so now we know where the best places to infiltrate Sector B waters are. The Abyssal capital ships and heavy cruisers don't seem to move about too often, with the exception of Re-Class, who just seems to wander with a randomness I've only seen the likes of from watching Twitch Plays Pokemon or something ridiculously RNG-based like it. All we know are the places where she'll least likely end up being, so I guess we can work with that for the time being.
So with all this new battle intel, I assigned today as strictly a training day for the sake of tomorrow's mission:
A capture mission.
It's not my idea this time; instead, it's straight orders from HQ. They want a live Abyssal specimen - any one of 'em will do. Since using modern military assets is too clunky to get the job done, HQ's relying on us to carry out this mission. Even if it's just one random Abyssal destroyer, they won't care, they'll take anything we can get our hands on.
I personally highly disagree with this mission.
There is no reason to endanger the lives of the girls of my fleet for the retarded expressed purpose of capturing a live Abyssal. At the very least, in my opinion, HQ should wait until we've made some headway against the Abyssals, gained enough information about them through enough time of having the ship girls combat them and figure out how they fight so that they know how to deal with all of them. But ordering them on a capture mission this early, when they only have limited intel on enemy attack patterns and tendencies at best, is, needless to say, an extreme risk - both extremely dangerous, and extremely unnecessary. Why they want a live specimen so early baffles the fuck out of me...but enough of this.
I made my opinions on the mission very clear. I told them that because of this, the risk of some of the girls returning to base critically wounded would be much higher than I'm comfortable with. I made sure all the girls knew that I said this before I sent them out to train for tomorrow's mission.
Afterwards, Akashi, Ooyodo, Mamiya, Irako, and I made some progress in the docks while everyone else trained. Other than that, there's really nothing else much to write.
Tonight, I get to go to sleep after finishing this entry knowing that tomorrow, I could be sending a couple of my ship girls to their deaths.
If any of them do sink or die, I'm gonna fly over to HQ and find the rat bastard who gave the order to send my fleet on a capture mission and gouge his eyeballs out.
