Another five minutes passed before a splash covered the fourth ship in the enemy formation, a He-class cruiser. When the geyser subsided, the Abyssal was engulfed in flames and quickly fell out of formation. With the enemy visibly more interested in reaching the battleship-class than fighting, at least one hit was certain, but Shigure let out a sigh of disappointment.
"All ships, firing solutions…", Choukai made a short pause. "All guns, fire!"
The air was filled with fire, smoke and roar of guns. The first salvo scored some near misses, but also brought enemy's attention to the shipgirls. The response was, however, ineffective, as Choukai immediately ordered evasive maneuvers. The firefight kept going with damage on the Abyssal fleet rapidly ramping up, while the six shipgirls were relatively untouched, save for some AA platforms on Maya and Choukai, who were taking the brunt of enemy fire.
"Loosen the formation! Prepare to pick up the objective! Sendai, Yuudachi, Shigure, close quarters!", the flagship ordered and the fleet was divided.
Providing covering fire two heavy cruisers and Teruzuki kept steaming towards the battleship-class girl. At the same time, Sendai's team was having a time of their lives breaking up remains of the Abyssal task force in a point-blank engagement. Hara was insistent on his girls developing some sort of martial art that they could utilize in such situations. Coldly received at first, it came in handy more often than not. The one-sided rampage quickly ended and the three, covered in oily Abyssal blood, set a course to rejoin the others.
"The hell?!", Maya shouted as a high-explosive shell landed on the AA platform mounted on her left arm. She quickly took it off and threw it away. Munitions explosion right on her arm was the last thing she wanted. Or so she thought before turning in direction from which the shell came.
"Choukai! Multiple enemies to the port! Ne-class heavy cruisers and Nu-class light carriers spotted!"
"All guns to port… fire!", the flagship ordered in her usual, calm voice.
The first salvo was extremely successful, disabling one light carrier and outright sinking a destroyer. Magazine detonation most probably. Choukai fist pumped.
"Maya-san, multiple targets on the air radar, contact in 10 seconds!", Teruzuki shouted.
"Somebody has a death wish. Come, you bastards!", Maya shouted right as thirty enemy dive bombers left the cloud cover. Traces and explosions filled the sky above the fleet, taking out all but three aircraft. These, however, fell prey to Choukai's rocket launchers.
"Yay! These new fire control systems are the best!", Teruzuki shouted, high fiving Maya as they switched positions. She then unstrapped her Choujuusenchihou-kun turrets, which jumped into the water and started circling around the fleet providing air cover when needed.
Sendai's team rejoined the main body at this very point, and Choukai ordered to loosen the formation once again, with Teruzuki in the middle. As the battle went on they were methodically moving forward, but enemies seemed to have no end and the damage, however small, was beginning to ramp up. Just a moment ago one of Sendai's guns was disabled and Maya was slowly running out of AA guns. Constant bomb runs and strafes, also took a toll on the electronics and some armaments. Sendai's radar was busted and Shigure had to ditch her depth charges. Something had to change.
Suddenly, an enemy destroyer jumped out of the water, right in front of Choukai and fired a single shell at her. At point-blank range, it managed to take out the search light and damage the main rangefinder. In response, it was immediately taken down by Maya's well aimed salvo.
"Oi, Choukai! You alright?!"
"I'm fine! I can still fight!", the flagship answered, wiping the blood from her cheek.
Losing focus due to Choukai's injury, Maya let a few dive bombers get past her barrage. Only blind luck saved Shigure from taking any damage. The lucky destroyer lost her balance, clumsily leaping forward, causing the bombs to miss. Choukai wasn't as lucky, and enemy fighter strafed her radar array, effectively disabling all of her fire control systems.
"Where the fuck is our air support?! We should have been out of here thirty minutes ago, but we can barely move forward without air superiority. Damn headless Crane! Pride of the navy my ass!", Maya let out her frustrations. "Are we breaking the radio silence?"
"Not yet, Maya."
As if being overrun wasn't enough, yet another enemy formation showed up on Yuudachi's radar.
"Multiple enemies ahead! Ri-class nearing on the target, poi!", Yuudachi shouted.
"Fleet! Change course, 90° to the starboard!"
"Hyaa! Damn them, now they've done it!", Sendai's back was hit with an HE shell, filling the air with smell of melting skin. In response, the cruiser rushed the enemy formation. All enemy guns focused on her, buying the task force some time to commit to a complicated maneuver of sequence turn. Sendai managed to get right under the enemy noses without as much as a scratch and launched a salvo of her remaining eight torpedoes, before turning back and joining the formation. All her fish found their mark, a perfect show of marksmanship! Two Nu-class carriers were disabled and on fire, screeching like a parrot with a throat cancer. In addition, one Ne-class and two Ri-class heavy cruisers were sent to the bottom.
"All guns, covering fire for the battleship-class!", Choukai ordered before Sendai could rejoin the fleet.
However, despite the time bought by Sendai, the salvo was rushed and it barely bracketed the enemy formation. Choukai was keeping her cool, however Yuudachi lost her temper, seeing the enemies nearing on their objective and rushed out of the formation.
"Yuudachi, charging in, poi!"
"Choukai, she should be able to handle herself, let's focus on the enemy at hand, or we'll get surrounded!", Maya shouted, seeing her sister trying to stop the destroyer, and an order was given to change course 100° to the port.
Yuudachi reached their target right in time to stop the enemy Ri-class from bashing in the skull of the freshly emerged shipgirl.
"Poooooooooooooooi!", she shouted while charging the enemy. Putting all the momentum into it, she punched the cruiser with her hand-held turret and opened fire. Headless corpse subsided into water and quickly disappeared, leaving black oil stains on the surface.
"Oooh, toys are breaking too fast these days, poi… Now, c'mon, we have to get outta here, poi.", she addressed the stupefied, confused and stark-naked battleship-class.
With no reaction whatsoever, she reached out her hand.
"Can you stand, poi? Oh! My name's Yuu…", but she couldn't finish as a large caliber shell severed her hand off and sent her flying. Shigure seeing her sister critically damaged, has completely lost it and without a word charged the enemy.