Well. I've decided to update this. partly because it's valentine's day so you guys can be sated with this for the time being. Also. I decided to play around with AI writing programs and tried to immerse myself as though it were real! You can see the results halfway though.
With our massive battle nearing its end, should it take on more of a everyday life theme with some funniness and jokes. or should it focus more on what's happening and concentrate on laying down worldbuilding instead with more battles to come? Should they find out about my true abilities. or do they never find out at all? Try and go into details how Siren society works as anarchist communes and how they view humans and the world. as Time travel means they exploit it by creating a CTC loop that out of it comes an infinite amount of shipgirls or just reorganize the entire timeline so humanity will have never existed and yet they do by bypassing causality. like the more advanced usage of it shows? (If any one of you has read Black Shift:Level One demo. You may notice that 4AXT Technology has potential applications for time travel and parallel universes.)
"There are many touhou stories where they have advanced to the level of the Expanse. And it hurts. It hurts me, while I play them out in servers, because I want to go there. If my vision of shipgirls opened tomorrow. Cubes or ship spirits, I would do anything, anything to be there. I would give up my humanity without so much as a skip, with relief at long last in my heart. If the process only left me a decade of life after, I would do it. To run, to be freed from this painful legacy bio-matter body with a decent quality of life. To know youth and beauty and love, to be the definition of what many utopians want with CRISPR and massive automation on scale with regenerative farming. To have all the scars swept from my face, and to look upon the world and everyone in it. To not be afraid. forever."-Norfolk and someone else's
"That is the lure, that is the yearning, that is the horror. Lovecraft imagined cultists spoonging over squidgy things from other worlds but gave us no reason to feel the same. It was just 'madness'. No. Not enough. I want to give you the yearning yourself. I want you to feel what I do, every moment of every day - understanding of what Mankind could have done with life, but never did. The endless, aching yearning for better, for a good we will never know and never enjoy, but which our magnificent brains can imagine so perfectly that we can almost taste and smell it.
It is cruel, but it is also kind. Yes, it hurts, but it hurts beautifully, sweetly - bittersweetly. We want it so badly, all of us, that Something Better, and it is somehow even more painful to try to turn our back on it than it is to suffer wanting it. At least in imagining it, we have a taste.
Every fandom is ultimately this. Trekkies all want, secretly, to be officers on starships. Of course they do, and the ones that deny it the most are the most obvious. The cartoon fans deep down would trade anything to get to be a Tiny Toon for real, or to live in Ooo and have Adventure Time for real. That is the core of the human condition, and has been since the first primate imagined... anything. Anything Better."-Someone
Some poor Brooklyn and Mogami detached from Alpha Fleet. 25 minutes after Immobilization of the Second Fleet
The directors showed black smog. smokescreens and several tens of shipgirls jammed together. some so close they were joined by cables of fire. Naval combat was a dance of death in these slugfests. Ships moved, and these who avoided as much damage as possible while dishing out as much as possible were the ones who survived. Shipgirls were not subject to any exceptions. say for their extreme lethality within visual range against their real world counterparts.
These who stood still and simply dished out as much damage as possible or found themselves jumped in the night were only targets waiting to be destroyed.
The Twin cruisers pulled their triggers immediately. secondaries hammered the air power threat to moderate extent. time-fuzed after time-fuzed shell detonating behind or in front of squadrons. Being outnumbered however. the cruisers only got one salvo off before hundreds of finned tungsten arrows, going nearly two thousand meters per second struck the Brooklyn (who beared a suspicious resemblance to Helena) in the chest. her squadron mate was similarly taken care of with 406mm shells. killing her near-instantly.
We were in the thick of it now. with all ten of us-Atlanta having been redeployed to Aurora's pincer- trying to waddle our way through the sinking shipgirls and battleship gunfire. on our far left was a bank of humanoid shapes in the distance;They were our allies. and to our center-right were the enemy forces. a Surface task force that was trying to save itself. above our heads circled my remaining union surplus and my two carrier fighters. wheeling in the sky like a bunch of golden eagles on the prowl.
What remained of the fighters that had covered us. the very same ones that had intercepted so many airstrikes in the last hour against our force were slowly being whittled away. be it accidents or pure sheer dumb luck or being outnumbered. I knew from the frantic voices on friendly radio sources I hadn't jammed that the situation was increasingly being untenable. as the strength of Hornet's fleet was being bled away, little by little.
And from my cyber-warfare department. I had overheard enemy shipgirls talking about the idea of launching bombers. dive and torpedo, in an attempt to drive away the remaining coalition carrier aircraft and in suicide attack attempts. They would all be mounted with the heaviest payload possible for that mission. A role these planes had never been designed with in mind. with carriers never having once trained to perform such a grim task.
It would just prolong the battle. Both air fleets on each side had been badly ravaged with identical aircraft and moderately differing skill levels going against each other. it would merely be the evening sunset. But I, and maybe Tirpitz knew that the siren fleet would do everything possible to destroy us to the best of their ability.
However. the withdrawing friendly fleet had no intention of making it easy for them as airbursts and autocannon shells filled the air. given off by nearly everyone from the north queen down to the smallest destroyers.
Deciding that my union aircraft had fulfilled their roles at long last. There was just one thing for them to do. and it would be to go on a one-way trip toward the Second fleet. I had the general and technical idea on how to use piston-engine fighters and basic tactics for them... But that would be it. I idly wondered if this was even a good idea at all.
Not by a longshot. but desperate times called for desperation measures. and besides, sailing alone. trying to sink submarines by myself despite the risks. taking on a giant surface fleet and beating them down by asymmetric means. killing the super battleships and fleet carriers. and then splitting off half of my forces into two spearheads with a hasty plan was a longshot i was willing to bet.
Sure. they get shot down by AAA. but it'd serve well enough as a distraction to assist my cruiser team leaders. Hell. they might even sink more while they're at it.
"W-We're ready." Bataan's voice spoke up with hesitancy. It echoed in my mind, as though she had reached out for me telepathically and spoke to me.
Truth be told. All these news articles of internet-based telepathy and radio versions for bionic soldiers aren't far from the truth.
Finishing off another destroyer with a salvo I nodded. "Start the attack now!"
Independence didn't like this plan.
She didn't like sending the remaining half of her bombers and fighters as suicide aircraft. tailing behind the fleet. where she was trying to avoid being hit by the occasional stray shell and enemy dive bombers. She didn't like the quick plan that the British cruiser/battleship had came up with that essentially called for sacrificing most of their available aircraft as kamikazes.
It would mean sacrificing nearly all of their carrier aircraft just to draw attention away from their two split fleet units. Independence knew that Norfolk understood this was borderline crazy as a plan. and not even a plan. it would mean near-complete exhaustion and overstretching of their available air wings even if the battleship kept her jets in reserve. and she thought Bataan was doing much the same.
Independence groaned quietly. the carrier's flight deck/bow combination aimed at the sky, her eyes visibly not happy with the situation. the radio chatter between any remaining wildcats left in the air, One hundred and fifty dwindling to just sixty birds and Libeccio being visibly nervous and more. it didn't matter who. the situation was silt in the fact that they were desperate or spiteful enough. she couldn't tell between the two to resort to this. All of that was true enough. But she had to admit, the plan had a certain amount of aggression that she hadn't remembered in the Royal Navy of the Second World war.
And no matter what happened. She thought Norfolk wasn't alright with this. She scrambled aboard her remaining fighters. "Prepare to launch." She called to the seven aircraft. sitting in the hangar. waiting to make their final flight to sacrifice themselves.
They were the standard-issue butter Wildcats she was familiar with. One had several holes in its airframe which had been hastily patched over from a run-in with a Zeke. but it could still fly.
The dozen remaining F4F fighters. Independence's final strike force. all geared up with unguided bombs beyond their safe limits. readied their propellers and engines to roar to life and launch. The last of the carrier's reserves. the best of the best. those that could fly through the heaviest of fire and anti-air fire with the smallest of hitboxes.
So with this mind. the Wildcats flew out from the American shipgirl. Even if they were destroyed in pointless suicide attacks, even if she lost all of her remaining aircraft. She would still survive to live another day.
Keeping that in thought, The carrier turned kamikaze grasped her aircraft mentally and directed them to their rear. surprisingly enough, the bomb shackles didn't fall apart.
Regretful but more confident with this success. the shipgirl ran through what she remembered of her history lessons about Japan's final years and their kamikaze aircraft mentally and began setting a attack vector for them;a few tens of fighters and several SBDs following in a ragged formation.
Things were starting to look up. thought Ramway as she watched the remaining Dunkerques in her command converge on one of their German battleships. A merciless barrage of 305mm+ shells impacted on the armor belt of the ship. digging deeper and deeper into the superstructure. her forward weapons jammed, she had no choice but attempt to allow her rear batteries an angle.
The replies was less than satisfactory, feeble at most. when several of these ragtag reinforcements began breaking through the vanguard and started harrying on the same gunhouses the battleship was trying to bring to bear. a handful of Long Lance-armed destroyers and heavy cruisers sped by. strafing her. blasting apart secondaries and point defenses as the Azur lane shipgirl strained to make her shots count.
By the time she managed to bring her main guns to bear. more than half of her remaining weapon systems were on fire. damaged or destroyed outright.
The commander felt satisfaction as she began to burn out of control. the cruisers and destroyers being cut off by a renewed assault that forced them to turn around and flee.
The arrival of nearby flotillas over the last hour had been most fortuitous indeed. though they were made up of mostly the odd patrol group and scouts;ranging from outdated A and B-class destroyers dating as far back after the end of World War one. at least a few Treaty-era carriers. and quite a few modern shipgirls.
She spotted a number of Kuma-class cruisers with racks of torpedoes welded on. speeding by and launching barrages of ordnance before running off. presumably to take their time reloading their massive array of torpedo banks.
Most fortuitous indeed. They had came at a a critical time indeed.
"Forward my compliments to them. Any luck on getting a hold of their Ad'hoc commander?"
Kuroki shook her head. "We can't get through the jamming. It's like our radio signals are being destroyed. Visual signaling suggests they will link up with us soon."
"Good. I'm counting on them to get through this radio interference." The Siren shipgirl commander nodded. She hadn't been expecting this. but then again. If they had just managed to develop Jet aircraft with all the leaps in other technological fields for them to make it possible. Electronic warfare was not out of the question.
Ramway kept her eyes on the fleeing ships. her mouth pulled into a thin line as she tried to think of a way to turn the tables and get her girls out safe. she was going to need a little more time. a lot more. "Have the fleet move to engage the remaining ships from the Ironblood branch. I want nothing to reach our capital lines by the end of this." She hissed as they watched the remaining bombers and fighters break off their engagement with a battleship and head for the Towns and their destroyers that had been probing them.
Kuroki nodded and relayed the orders. She could see the frustration in her teammate's faces. The heavy losses they had suffered all had took a toll on them. both physically and mentally, but they had been fighting a battle of attrition in a attempt to protect the submarine wolfpack resupplying highway. They had been pushed back. yes. but it was because of that battlecarrier.
The Enemy forces had managed to deal a critical blow to the Siren forces, It was a trick they hadn't expected. but even so. They were now similarly also worn out with many damaged shipgirls and unable to pursue them any further effectively. Still. the battlecarrier only had demonstrated a small fraction of its capabilities. and the idea of these being fully unleashed on them was already too much of a possibility to hope.
No matter how much of an advantage they had in numbers. the Siren forces were already on the ropes, and the enemy forces were not even close in the amount of casualties they had took in total. it was a near-winning situation from the enemy's point of view. but it didn't have to be that way.
Having just brought back one of her propulsion units online. Kuroki could feel the weight of her fellow shipgirls' gazes on her. the exhaustion and worry clear on their faces. She knew they were all thinking the same thing.
There were two destroyers and one heavy cruiser on an course set to take them into effective range of destroyer guns.
I glanced at my fellow fleet-mates. who I had ordered them to slow down and fall behind me into a sort of tailing formation. I was not worried about these three, but I was... concerned.
That three ships would be likely entering torpedo range was not exactly unexpected. but going out alone and having sported some nice new holes in my unarmored ends plus the possibility of being marked out? That was a cause for me to pause. stop. think about what I was doing and if i was asking for a deathwish or for my luck to carry the day.
I held my fire as the three neared. Sooner or later they would figure out that I was unescorted and alone. that my escorts were tailing behind me, and they'll open fire or call in fire support from their retreating elements and concentrate it all on me!
I ran simulations in my computers. secondaries. 40mm APFSDS brawling. All results suggested that I was likely to be concentrated upon in a attempt to remove me as the source of these jets and take me out as a experimental shipgirl. They were closing to within SABOT range now. Still. as the Norfolk subclass. now Alsace class Battlecarrier. I steeled myself and prepared my 40mm AAA guns with Sabots loaded. and I knew, if I didn't make a move soon, the odds were that I was going to be in serious trouble from the supporting fire of say. about half of their 30-40 remaining shipgirls.
I needed to attempt to turn that around. to turn the odds in my favor and if possible. to end this now, before I made things even worse for myself and everyone.
I could feel the eyes of my fellow shipgirls on me. I could feel the concern and worry. I was already shaking from the strain of being forced to run at flank speed, but I couldn't let that get to me. I stared at the two destroyers. which were continuing to approach me. The heavy cruiser was firing on Glowworm when she made the dumb mistake of over-extending herself.
I couldn't help but grin. The amount of firepower I could call down upon these three with autocannons and tungsten slugs in short order would be... very impressive. I glanced at the two destroyers who was still on an intercept course. Then. I took a chance. I made a break for them.
Closing to within torpedo range in all a blur. I zeroed in on the closest destroyer and identified her promptly right away amidst the sound of my engines. And she was quite modern and advanced. she even had the robot-eared box directors. I didn't let myself waver. "Come.. Face me." That would be a Fletcher or a Benson. which meant power-assisted 127mm guns. fast. and with considerable AA. These last points would have been bad signs for a carrier. but in WVR APFSDS combat, they were of no concern to me.
At this range. I'm basically immune to their possible guns. but that again still didn't exclude my unprotected superstructure. Not so much the destroyer girls though. even with what damage control they had performed. So if i could draw their attention, the worst they could do is chip away at my bow or launch torpedoes at me. Which i could easily dodge and dance my way around.
"Say goodbye!" I barked. and my virtual gunners were all too happy to oblige, having been frustrated by their lack of action. 40mm SAKs/Oto-Bredas started firing in beautiful. glowing patterns of Sabot hell. hundreds of rapidly moving balls of light and the smell of reinforced epoxy/nylon. The shots arced into the sky in chains, like long and thin pearl necklaces. but that was to be expected since I was using them at 127mm ranges after all.
"Fire!" Independence gave the command on her own decision. and we were all happy to follow. The carrier had to be one of the most experienced CVLs that the US had in the Second world war given she wasn't sunk at any point, and I was happy to not contest her command. She knew what she was doing much more than i did here.
APFSDS rounds began to chew into the hull and superstructure of the two destroyers-My fire control systems had done their job well. Each long rod penetrator liquifying high yield steel and not exploding. but rather spraying a shotgun cone of burning tungsten powder. Perforating compartments and exposing them to seawater and puncturing watertight bulkheads before punching through the other side of the hull. Soon my victim lost power and began to smoke heavily. with her 'crew' and systems all but dead from numerous fin-shaped holes in her rigging. her turrets had stopped spinning. and the only sign of activity i could notice was the black smoke from her funnels. The second destroyer received a similar treatment. but came away less swiss cheesed than the other, which still didn't save her from the fact most of her hull was holed as if someone had took a giant 460mm punt gun and fired it point-blank at her amidships. her boilers were cracked open and that she was taking on water through these numerous entry and exit holes.
The cruiser. who had just witnessed her friends turned into a human pincushion began to scatter. whatever stoicism and order the shipgirl had disintegrating when she had lost two of her friends in just twenty seconds and she realized she couldn't call for help due to broad-spectrum radio jamming. I was treated to the sight of the siren now being bombarded by my flotilla executing a sharp turn to the right, and then executing a turn to the left. and then executing a turn to the right again, like a confused dog chasing its own tail. She responded back with her shots. not that it mattered. her shifting targets had messed up her aim, and most of her salvo went wide.
Now that the two destroyers were out of the way, the enemy cruiser was frantically trying to get away. But she had already been hit hard enough that she was on the verge of sinking. Her deck was covered in small craters from the allied rounds that had fallen short. and her engines had been hit by at least a dozen of the sabot penetrators. The most critical hit had been on the armor belt of her hull just rearward of the main guns. a few tens of which had actually passed through and detonated a powder magazine. sending out a explosion that we all heard even at this distance like someone had played with fire in a ammunition dump.
Finally. several more dozens of 127mm and 203mm shells put the unseaworthy cruiser out of her misery.
With that enemy formation down and done with. I scanned the battlefield again. Our allies and the enemy would soon be disengaging. some of their battleships having actually left maximum range and their aircraft beginning to not return, Similarly. I began to receive reports of what my pincers had done to the Second fleet. the results had me pleased.
Seven destroyers. four light and two heavy cruisers down. along many more damaged and wounded in exchange for relatively moderate damage. They would be linking up with me in a timescale that would have the battle already over by then. but it didn't matter anymore.
"Turn around and regroup with our two pincers! Then we will link up with the main elements and withdraw!"
We executed a turn to take us away. some of their fire already being directed onto us as we began to try and get the hell out of here with all the power in our turbines before we became too much of a tempting target. I ordered our two pincers to link up with the main body and to then withdraw at maximum speed. my own forces having secured their objectives with the enemy formation already in retreat. Soon. what remained of our assailants were a few battlecruisers and several carrier aircraft on the fringes of the engagement zones. only taking a few potshots at us before they disappeared over the horizon along with the rest of their teammates.
"Oh my god... w.. we actually survived? I..It still feels surreal..."
"You did. You get used to it." Independence assured me. With that time I took the moment to survey out the battle damage assessment to my fleet. Ariake was obvious. but the others...
San Juan was the worst off among us by far. While she had managed to avoid the gunfire early on in the battle. a few heavy 500 kg bomb hits had done their job to her. her superstructure had been mangled as if someone had used it like a child's toy. with her guns being the only somewhat intact structure from all the mess i made out. Juan was visibly holding her shoulder in pain and hissing from time to time. showing much that she was still hurting.
One of Libeccio's torpedo mounts were jammed in place from the previous shellfire. It hadn't turned out to be a issue since we didn't maneuver into any suitable torpedo-salvo positions after that little trick with the siren formation.
Spence had took nine shell hits and two bomb near-misses. but she still made it back with us. Atlanta must have took several hits. And that was likely not counting my detached pincers, they had fought the submarines during the beginning of the action. had to have been chewed up lightly by autocannon rounds. and then had been sent to fight against what amounted to a major surface task force.
As for myself... There were twenty to nearly forty shell hits of so from the Second fleet. including the 406mms that had ricocheted off my armor and left a noticeable dent. and one battleship shell that had blew up on my deck and froze a AA mount in place and which I nearly lost one of my radars to when rag-tag elements began desperately trying to help to moderate avail.
But in contrast to the exchange ratios. for all of this our enemies had paid a heavy cost.
60 minutes after Immobilization of the Second Fleet
From the very first moment I opened my eyes underwater. I have been thinking, living. fighting and being like an silent. opportunistic apex predator of the ocean. a creature. or a magical girl from a non-fluff show that lived by the rules of the high seas. From my first kill and the first taste of steel blood. my first self-taught lessons with my jet fighters, to fighting as a fast battleship at my debut when they.. rescued me.
From there, It was nothing but a entire week of the stars and the moon turning in the sky as I earned my certificates and tried to play catch up with socializing. Days of listening to someone repeating naval history, tactics. and memorizing what notes i took and what lessons I was taught. how the United Nations resolution was passed for the birth of Azur Lane. managed by NATO. NEATO. METO. FPDA. CSTO. ANZUS and AUKUS and the Big Five of the UN against the Siren Coalition. A string of naval training lessons and trickery I inflicted on my fellow shipgirls. All of them insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Historical fleets. lone tough-acting tsundere German cruisers. Darwinist carriers. blood-thirsty battleships, lone submarines. prophets of German technological supremacy too arrogant or stupid to realize their shortcomings.
I had cataloged and searched for every possible issue with each shipgirl shamelessly and I earned a reputation for myself as a shipgirl who shouldn't exist. and yet did in sheer defiance. Every gunnery course added more memories and redundancy for my skills. every carrier aircraft destroyed during tests, submarines clowned on by sonar. Sendais scrapped by a superior reaction speed and sixth sense. I was known then, by the common gossip of the destroyers as a weird. if quite shy girl. Someone who had the fun of being caught in a inter-command dispute since I qualified as both French and British. and one who only left annihilation in her wake.
The sirens knew of me, but only through tidbits and hearsay. of scattered vague reports and recordings of corrupted communications.
Until now, I was just the first of a ship that shouldn't exist. A Heavy cruiser with the novel experience of leading a fleet and being the only one to wield missiles or operate carrier aircraft from some energy flight deck stowed in a hammerspace-like manner. A battleship who wasn't built before the invasion of France tore the plan to fragments. A shy child-sized shipgirl with no previous experience as an actual commander let alone any military service.
Either all the opponents I've been fighting up till now were horribly predictable. or either the defense industry's effort to C4I everything and provide AI support in the form of computer-assisted fighting systems with enhanced awareness. aided decision making and autonomous support and remote operations are all that good, or my sixth sense and previous memories as Norfolk are just that strong.
But the final tally was not unexpected. but holy mother of god it was horrifying. During the entirely of the battle to drive out a major submarine resupplying beacon. I had been directing a full battle flotilla just over 17 while Hornet led nearly over sixty and Alpha fleet was similarly large with the Second fleet being even bigger. Through my Network and commands. I personally had ordered the deaths of maybe nearly over fifty to a hundred submarines and twenty to thirty shipgirls. from innocent destroyers to regular and honed carriers with all the methods i had. from ASW torpedoes to air-dropped bombs to anti ship missiles to main gun artillery to allies.
I had personally pulled the trigger more times than I care to count. Total Engagement duration was approximately 58 minutes 4 seconds. and total ammunition expended to be replaced was 27 salvos. 16 PC-1800RS bombs with Paveway kits. thousands of autocannon rounds. 25 to 33 air dropped Mark 46 torpedoes and half of that in Ikaras. hundreds of rockets. several P-15s and nearly thirty Seacat missiles plus hundreds of rounds in secondaries and many more.
I had just effectively defeated in detail not one. but two major surface task forces and no doubt two much-needed commanders in existence on their battlefield. Despite unexpected reinforcements from desperate people that appeared during the entire course of the demolition derby. I had dealt with it all.
Where other writers would have done so with 1-kilometer sized battleships. Wattpad helicopters and KMS ships. I succeeded spectacularly. Hornet and I had achieved a victory so absolute I don't. and cannot comprehend how I even managed to pull it off in the first place... I... I am.. I don't know. and I am at a loss as to how i did all of this, even when i was holding back somewhat and refusing to go full power with my jets.
For how long I stared blankly at the horizon. staring at the blue horizon of the skies from my own eyes I do not know. and I did not care.
'We are all the heroes in our stories.'
I only retreated back into viewing the world from the TV sensors of my secondary guns when I realized the full ramifications of what had. might, and will happen. Honestly, were i even capable of it. I didn't know as to whether I'd laugh or cry. I was spent. I had accomplished these objectives, and more than I could have possibly imagined. I could have been content, but I was not. For the first time, I realized the full implications of my actions.
I turn my attention to hornet's fleet.
Tirpitz was falling behind. half of her hull still on fire, four battleships in varying states of disrepair. and virtually most of the destroyers and cruisers had long since been worn out during the running battle with Alpha fleet in a massive diversion effort. There were however. the remaining fleet carriers sporting some new holes in their decks. not that they would be able to do much without their aircraft and the amount of damage control going on that was slaving the entire fleet into a cumbersome one together that could barely fight.
And yet there was the bigger picture, We already had managed to pull off the diversion effort early on which allowed us to slip by. take out quite a huge number of submarines. and then proceeded to destroy some of their greatest assets. This spot on the seas would no longer serve as a viable location for their logistics highway after most of the defense force there had been beaten down. Two enemy fleets had been effectively rendered non-existent. and I had effectively removed four super battleships and more fleet carriers from the picture. Every objective has been achieved.
Everyone was safe. The Sirens would no longer be able to harass and force attrition on the important maritime trade routes that were so vital to keeping the global economy running from suffering a amplified chip crisis or even more famines. not under any reasonable amount of time for the foreseeable future. I may have turned the war on its head. I may not have destroyed every siren down to the last of them, But they were now aware of my existence and Azur lane in the meanwhile was trying to run analysis on some of my technologies assuming the technology to which a country belonged to allowed it. of course.
There was nothing left here for me. I only gave a command to my flotilla that was formal and began charting my next moves. "Take us out of here. I am done here."
'Understood!' They all responded.
