Monday, March 10th, 2014.
Today's the start of the night ops. The girls wanted me to put a name for this operation so that they'd have a name to use to refer to these missions to differentiate them from their usual daytime ones, so I've just called this Operation Blackout. I guess it sounds cool, I'm pretty bad at naming stuff.
Today, I let everyone sleep in until well after lunch. In fact, I pretty much ordered everyone to sleep in last night. As strange as an order it might be, it's a lot better than having the fleet wake up as usual and already be up for however many hours until the night battle tonight. Yeah, I know the ship girls technically don't need as much sleep as normal humans do, but I'm eliminating any possibility for a failure here.
That, and I should also mention that Houshou's my bodyguard for tonight whenever the fleet'll be away for Operation Blackout missions like tonight. Won't be every night, but she'll be here.
It almost reminds me of my high school days whenever Mom walked into my room asking me what the hell I've been doing sitting in front of my computer for the last six hours. Those were the days, man. I'd sometimes crack jokes at her because she was convinced I'd never grow up to be anything special and always tried guilt-tripping me. I guess I have the last laugh now, now that I'm in the most classified and top-secret position in the United States military, besides Seal Team Six, so even though I'm a lower rank than my parents, technically they're the ones who need to salute me.
But back on track now.
As usual, at 1000 hours, Seal Team Six's usual MV-22B Osprey landed at the Six Pack, and this time Big came along with two new fellows, whom he introduced as Deimos and Sanford. After a few quick handshakes, Big handed me a slightly bigger weapons crate of augmentations, saying that there were a lot of new augmentations inside. I informed him that I actually had three ship girls who all wanted to be upgraded, and Big just laughed and said that they'd managed to scrounge up enough resources to pull off two. I decided to bite the bullet and send Suzuya and Wakaba, Suzuya since she's a heavy cruiser and it'll be more cost-efficient to upgrade a heavy cruiser, and Wakaba as an early launch day present, I guess. So I called the two of them out, and they boarded the heli.
While they were getting on board, Big informed me as a side-note that Jenna (Kuubo-Hime) knew Japanese and English because she'd been pre-programmed to know the languages at her construction. It also appears that she can learn languages within a matter of days. Lauren's been teaching her Korean, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Spanish - sometimes, all at the same time. Big mentioned that it's almost as if she has a child-like mind frame, that her mind's stuck in a child-like development stage perpetually. It's not to say that her behavior and mentality are childlike, just that her brain's capable of learning things frighteningly quickly, almost like how a computer would download transferring files.
Before leaving, Big had Sanford hand me another weapons crate, this time the size of a medium-sized briefcase. He informed me to open it in my office and to put it away in a safe location, and that I may need it for "self-defense". I knew immediately what he meant by that when he said it.
Since Ooyodo was sleeping in on my orders, I handled the paperwork and whatnot on my own. My arms were still sore from the barbeque on Saturday night, but that's fine, it's nowhere near as bad as it was during the first few days after my arms got popped out. More satellite photos indicated that Abyssal forces have been heavily patrolling the outer Sector B perimeters, something they haven't done before. They're super paranoid about an imminent attack by the fleet - too bad they're only now finding out when we're attacking.
After morning paperwork and lunch, I opened the weapons case of augmentations and checked them out.
Five new augmentations, and oh boy, do they sound strong.
The first one's called Overclock. A simple passive augmentation that's like the Automated Reloader augmentation in that all it is is just a simple program and lines of code that optimizes the ship girls' systems. But where it differentiates itself is what it optimizes: Overclock passively optimizes the user's reactions and reflexes by 50%. I want to make it clear that this's different from reducing reaction time by 50% - I know there's a mathematical way for me to prove this, but it's a bit complicated, and I hate math. But anyway - at first, I didn't think that would be too important. Like, okay, yeah, sure, having better reactions will definitely save you from an incoming torpedo or two, but these are ship girls we're talking about. Their brains are essentially main processing units. In fact, they are. So how much better would their reactions really become if they're supposed to be really good already? But after speaking with some of the ship girls during a late lunch, t turns out that many hits that they take in battle are because they didn't react to an incoming shell or torpedo in time because they're too busy focusing on immediate threats around them. So Overclock may prove to be a seriously valuable augmentation here, just like the Automated Reloader. We'll just have to wait and see. Oh, and since they were easy to produce, we got two of them.
The second one's called the Atalantian Reactor Booster. I guessed correctly what this one's all about: since Atalanta's a heroine in Greek mythology famous for her unrivaled racing speed, it only makes sense that the Atalantian Reactor Booster passively increases the user's movement speed - cruising speed, stealth-cruising speed (the speed at which they can sail while staying as quiet as possible on radar), and maximum speed by 20%. It also increases their stamina by 20%, and by stamina, it's referring to two things: first, the ship girls' overall endurance, the common endurance we all know that allows you to keep running for longer during a 5K, for example, and second, the ship girls' tolerance to damage. Both of these are improved by 20%, whatever that means. So basically, it's like a passive painkiller that reduces the pain from sustained attacks so that the user can keep fighting for longer. It's not like the Mjolnir Cell Reinforcement where it physically bolsters the cells in the ship girls' bodies, let's be clear, but the point is, it's designed to keep the girls on the move faster and for longer.
The third one's called the Cell Reactor Booster, and I'm a bit confused as to why they couldn't just add the effects of this onto the previous augmentation. The Cell Reactor Booster passively decreases cell-boost cooldown by 20% and increases fuel efficiency by 10%. To explain, the cells in the ship girls' bodies are special in that the girls can cause them to quickly produce an excess volume of energy so great that it'll actually boost them in any direction up to five meters, depending on how much energy they want their cells to burst out. This is useful, as you'd imagine, for dodging incoming shells and torpedoes that they need to dodge and can't just sail away from normally to get away. Their cells can allow up to two of these boosts in quick succession before they have to stop and let their cells recharge, and even if they tried to force themselves, they can't boost a third time without pausing for at least five seconds first. They can even boost themselves up into the air off the water a good height, but since that requires so much energy that it eats up their second boost, it's not a recommended tactic in combat for the girls. A four second cooldown between boosts is pretty significant in combat scenarios where every second matters. The fuel efficiency part is pretty straightforward, it just means they need less fuel overall to get somewhere. I'm just confused as to why these effects had to be separated from the Atalantian Reactor Booster augmentation. These effects all seem like they belong in the same category or something.
The fourth one's called the Long Range Scanners, and boy, I think this'll be the MVP augmentation. The Long Range Scanners increases three things: it increases reconnaissance airplane line of sight and radar range, the user's personal sensor range, and the user's physical eyesight by 1000%. And no, I didn't fuck up that number. All possible elements of scouting are increased tenfold by these Long-Range Scanners. That's a real eye-opener right there. With this, there should be no possible excuse for the fleet to get caught off-guard by any stealth squadron or ambush - at least, not while it's active. That's one of the two downsides to this vastly overpowered augmentation: it's not passive, sadly. The user needs to activate it in order to enjoy its benefits, but silver lining's that it does last for a full six hundred seconds, or ten minutes, and only has a cooldown of three-hundred seconds, or five minutes, so technically speaking, that's a pretty good active-to-cooldown ratio. The other disadvantage is that only carriers can equip them, either light carriers or standard carriers. Girls who can launch seaplanes, like Kiso, don't apply since they're not dedicated carriers, though it would be totally badass if they could.
The fifth and last one's called the External Cloaking Field. Well, I don't think I need to explain this one, to be honest. According to its description, Seal Team Six used Murakumo's feedback on the Waterfall Shield to diversify their force-field technology and developed a personal Cloaking field that renders the user invisible, and it pulls this off by rendering any particle within the field that isn't a water particle or stuff you'd find on the ground normally unable to reflect light. And since a object needs to reflect light in order to be seen, whatever's inside the field will simply be unable to be seen. Science 101, I suppose. An obvious stealth augmentation, and while the user can activate it for up to thirty minutes and stay Cloaked the entire time, the cooldown time is so long that it's better off considering this augmentation a one-time use thing. It takes twelve hours to charge it back fully. So clearly, once the juice runs out, whoever's using this won't have much of a hope to use it again. And while the user'll be completely invisible, the description warns that other people will still see motion blurs if they pay attention. The motion blurs are an unavoidable after-effect of how the Cloaking field interacts with the environment around it as the user moves around, especially at high speeds. In addition, if for whatever reason the Abyssals have thermal imaging technology or soundwave-detection (better known as echolocation) technology, the user will still show up, since Cloaking only affects light particles and nothing else. In fact, the enemies may even be able to still sense the user while Cloaked if the user draws too close as well. Lots of traps with this one, but still a ridiculously powerful one, but it needs to be used properly.
They also included two upgraded versions of the Targeting Jammer and the Psionic Scrambler.
The Targeting Jammer Mk. II can now target and jam up to ten torpedoes in its active mode and has its jamming range increased out to 1000 meters, so it looks like Seal Team Six really paid attention to Ooi's feedback. In addition, they optimized its duration so that it lasts for one extra minute and needs only stay on cooldown for one hundred and eighty seconds - or three minutes, half the cooldown time as before. Ooi definitely ought to be happy with this.
The Psionic Scrambler Mk. II, now that Seal Team Six knows how Kuubo-Hime communicates with other Abyssals, now properly works on all types of Abyssal vessels. In addition, if the user gets close enough to any Abyssal, the Psionic Scrambler's interference field will be so strong and annoying to the Abyssal that it'll compel them to get away as fast as possible, so it'll be forced to stop whatever it's doing to retreat. It also renders the user impossible to be aimed properly at by any Abyssal, too.
We also got an extra copy of the Automated Reloader Mk. II to top it all off.
So now, after some reorganization and swapping of augmentations, my roster looks something like...
(DD) Murakumo (External Cloaking Field)
(DD) Sazanami (Cell Reactor Booster)
(DD) Samidare
(DD) Inazuma (Automated Reloader)
(DD) Fubuki (Atalantian Reactor Booster)
(DD) Akebono (Psionic Scrambler Mk. II)
(DD) Wakaba (Away for Kai)
(DD) Hatsuharu
(DD) Kiyoshimo (Overclock)
(SS) I-168 Kai (Silencer)
(SS) I-401
(CL) Kitakami Kai (Weapon Pre-Igniter)
(CL) Ooi Kai (Targeting Jammer)
(CL) Akashi (Mjolnir Cell Reinforcement)
(CL) Ooyodo (Automated Reloader)
(CL) Yahagi (Silencer)
(CL) Kiso Kai (Golden Eye/Crackshot)
(CA) Takao (Automated Reloader)
(CA) Atago (Automated Reloader)
(CA) Suzuya (Away for Kai)
(BB-X) Kirishima (Automated Reloader)
(BB-X) Hiei (Automated Reloader Mk. II)
(BB) Yamato (Automated Reloader Mk. II)
(CVL) Shouhou (Mjolnir Cell Reinforcement)
(CVL) Houshou
(CVN) Souryuu (Mjolnir Cell Reinforcement)
(CVN) Akagi (Long-Range Scanners)
I swear this's starting to feel like some sort of RPG.
But with this set-up, I deployed the fleet at 2000 hours after dinner. Their mission is to assault, subdue, and investigate Able Four, Baker Two, and Baker Three in any order and capture anything suspicious or any new personnel they hadn't seen before if they can.
The rest is up to them.
After deploying them, I went back to my office before preparing for bed to see what Big had given me in that briefcase. I opened it up, and to my surprise, it was a gun. The DRD Paratus-18 "Suitcase Gun", it's called. I used to be an ordinary grunt lieutenant in my early military years, fighting out there in the Middle East alongside the Marines, the Rangers, any famous regular US Army regiment or task force, but in all my years I haven't seen a gun quite like this one. An eighteen-inch rifle firing 7.62x51mm NATO whose parts can be stuck in a briefcase and put together by hand with no freakin' annoying allen keys? Sign me up. I guess I didn't need to make a holster for my handgun after all. Seal Team Six sure is hooking me up fatty-style.
Now let's hope that my fleet comes back in one piece.