Wednesday, February 12th, 2014.
Excited, excited. You might already know why.
After lunch, I got the entire fleet gathered together for today's mission. As everyone anticipated, today's mission was an assault mission: I was going to send the entire fleet (not including Mamiya, Irako, Houshou, Akashi, and Ooyodo) over to Sector B, and for today's mission, I authorized the use of Observe and Conquer.
Let me explain this, since I don't think I've ever mentioned this portion of my fleet command at all. This is an unusual set of naval commands, or "Protocols", that I've been instructed to give to this particular fleet if I want them to behave a particular way in combat, because it really only works well with this kind of fleet, a fleet full of ship girls. All of them are pretty intuitive, there's nothing mind-blowing about them, but some of them, depending on how I interpret their meaning, are...interesting. And not in the good sense.
"Observe and Scout": Usually reserved for scout missions and perimeter patrol missions. The ship girls have this protocol followed by default whenever I send them on such missions, but I might issue them this protocol anyway to emphasize the fact that I strictly wanted them to scout, not to engage in direct attacks if they didn't have to, especially if I know there're some girls who might be a bit trigger happy.
"Observe and Pursue": This is for missions in which I feel letting the more aggressive ship girls chase down the enemies they see is a good idea. The ship girls don't have to pursue, but they have the freedom to do so, should they choose. It's a more aggressive twist on the previous, but it still restrains the fleet from going all-out, and it's also kind of like a capture mission, because the ship girls can capture enemies but not have it as their primary objective. Unlike that other time...
"Observe and Conquer": Now this is way different. Basically, I'm telling the fleet, scout out the indicated area of operations (AO), and if you think you can move in and conquer that AO, do it with decisiveness and impunity. This is the protocol for an assault mission, because basically, here, I'm telling the ship girls to take no prisoners. Kill everything and everyone that moves and that isn't on your side. A calculated and dangerous assault tactic - the only downside to this protocol is that now, with this kind of a fleet, there really might be absolutely nothing that is left behind. And seeing my fleet's eagerness to get some sweet revenge for their last failed mission, I'm pretty sure they're going to rip everyone they get their hands on apart. It also sounds a lot like a certain real time strategy game...
"Search and Destroy": Everyone knows what this one's all about. I give the fleet a priority target, and the fleet moves in and eliminates it. Easy 'n simple as that. No fluff, no beating around the bush, just find what I want you to kill, kill it, and come back to base, mission accomplished. Swift, simple, and brutal.
"Search and Rescue": This was what I used for the last capture mission. Like Search and Destroy, I give the fleet a priority target, but instead of killing it, they "rescue" it. Obviously the meaning of "rescue" changes with the context of the mission - in the last capture mission, capturing an enemy Abyssal vessel was their primary objective. But I can also use this protocol to instruct the fleet to rescue and escort friendly military vessels caught out at Sector B waters. You can see why I mentioned earlier that sometimes, these protocols can be flexible in their meanings, and after all, since I'm the commanding officer here, I'm at liberty to interpret what the meanings of the protocols are at my own pleasure.
"Terminate": Well...this might be the most intuitive one of them all. This's when I just want the fleet to go in killing everything and not giving a fuck.
"At Any Cost": This is Operation Ten-Go all over again. Get the job done, or die trying. I'm never going to use this one.
There are other Protocols, and I can even make up my own protocols to fit the situation at hand. It's not like I'm only limited to using these.
At 1430 hours, I launched the fleet. They're to capture a particular island that military satellites have located along the northern waters of Sector B recently, tentatively called "Able One", and it appears that it's a pretty major base for the Abyssals, since there seems to be lots of enemy fleet movement surrounding and situated at that particular island. As planned, Yamato was the designated flagship.
One note about the nomenclature, I've noticed that they're using the old World War II naming scheme for callsigns - Able, Baker, so on. Nowadays, you always hear "Alpha One" or "Bravo Four", you know, using those Greek letters or whatever. I guess they're just keeping character with this one.
After they left, it was really quiet at base. Eerily quiet. The past week or so has been a forced vacation, after all, so it's not like the ship girls were going anywhere necessarily. Still, it's nice to be relatively alone in the base. And to think that I'd felt lonely when I first came here, here I am appreciating the rare solitude that I have from sending the fleet on a sortie.
But everything I did while the fleet was away - doing medbay maintenance with Akashi, cleaning up the mess halls and Shinsengumi with Mamiya, Irako, Error, and Houshou, afternoon paperwork, cleaning the bathhouse - were boring. The interesting stuff is what the fleet brought back.
They returned at 2350 hours, just before midnight. The fleet had used the information that they'd gathered from the last capture mission pertaining to enemy squadron movement, fleet positioning, and weapons to completely outmaneuver the Abyssal fleet that was defending Able One - a giant silver lining that had gone unnoticed because the miserable condition of the fleet immediately following that capture mission pretty much eclipsed the huge amount of enemy intel that the survivors managed to compile. Therefore, with the air force that Akagi, Souryuu, and Shouhou provided to keep enemy recon planes at bay, the fleet was able to completely decimate the enemy fleet and shell the enemy naval yards, docks, manufacturing plants, and other infrastructure there. Only Murakumo, Akebono, Wakaba, Kitakami, Yahagi, and Suzuya returned moderately damaged, and everyone else got away with either light damage or unscathed. Those with moderate damage only became damaged so because either they were part of the vanguard squadron that Yamato sent out first or just wanted to shoot shit, as with the case of Akebono and Suzuya.
Kitakami paid her dues back somewhat to Ooi as she defended Ooi when the latter got caught launching her torpedoes by a pack of I-Class destroyers and fended them off with the help of Kiso. Sisters to the end, all over again.
Needless to say, I was super proud of the fleet. We really needed a victory like this.
But wait! That's not all!
The fleet managed to capture not just one, not just two, but three destroyers when they shelled the enemy infrastructure to hell, since they forced the enemy Abyssal vessels docked there to try and flee and intercepted a few of them, disabling them and immediately returning to base with them in tow.
An I-Class, a Ha-Class, and a Ro-Class.
We're keeping them in the medbay for now. We don't know very much at all about Abyssal anatomy, but apparently even these weird destroyers can walk on land. They have legs that remind me of turtle legs that they only use to toddle around on land for, and Akashi treated them wherever she could...but obviously we didn't know what else to do other than just bandage their injuries. We're not even too sure if bandages are the correct thing to use to treat their wounds.
Yamato, Takao, and Atago and I inspected the Abyssal destroyers in the medbay. Unlike the ship girls, they can't use their ship guns on land - hell, they can't even deploy them. The destroyers have retractable cannons inside their mouths, but it seems like they can't actually point them out at anything while on land, unless they're tricking us. I-Class had green eyes, but Ha-Class and Ro-Class had red eyes. I feel like their eye colors are significant somehow, but as of right now we don't know.
I had Akashi lock up the medbay so that we could ensure that they don't try to escape. They don't seem to be able to be nimble on land at all, though, but you never know. I emailed Seal Team 6 about our acquisition of three enemy Abyssal destroyers, and I nearly got an instant reply back.
"Understood. We will be sending an extraction helicopter in thirty mikes, and it will arrive at 0800 hours local time."
For some reason, I feel like whoever wrote that last email was different from the person who wrote Seal Team 6's last few emails.
That being said, I have to go to sleep since it's already about 0200 hours in the morning and I gotta get up early to meet that chopper and see those Abyssal vessels off.
Wait, assuming that they're sending a chopper in from America, how the hell can a helicopter get here in only eight hours?