Tuesday, March 11th, 2014.
The fleet arrived at around 0850 hours this morning. I went out to meet them, since breakfast time's already passed.
Samidare is KIA.
She's literally our only severe casualty, and she ended up dead.
At least they towed her body back...what's left of it.
No one else suffered more than moderate damage, either. I don't know whether that should piss me off or not.
Either way, after seeing what's left of Samidare, I really don't feel like doing anything today. I've seen lots of men die. I've seen good buddies I've made friends with in my military career blow up inches away from my face, their limbs and blood and bone flying every which way and dying in the myriad of horrible deaths that war can bring.
But it's a bit different seeing the remains of a teenage girl, especially one you've kind of grown to like.
But through all the death, horror, and suffering, everyone still needs to pick themselves up and what's left of their comrades and muscle on, for a soldier's duty is never over.
That includes me.
Yamato, the flagship, submitted the post-action mission report shortly after lunch. Most everyone in the fleet, if they weren't injured, was tired. And most definitely everyone was incredibly demoralized by a fatality within the fleet. I called off training and other usual daily duties for the day because of it.
The fleet, upon reaching Able Four and Baker Two, initiated long-range land bombardment and destroyed the facilities there. The Abyssals clearly didn't expect a dedicated night battle, so they had almost no patrols protecting the first two sites. Indeed, upon investigation, Able Four and Baker Two were specialized manufacturing facilities. Upon walking ashore, the scouting destroyers found the burning remains of a potential new Abyssal lifeform, in both locations. This means that whatever was being developed at Able Four and Baker Two, the fleet has successfully sabotaged and destroyed. It would've been preferable if these new Abyssal lifeforms were captured, but there's no need to pressure the fleet now that we have Kuubo-Hime in custody for the Seal Team Six guys.
Baker Three was where shit hit the fan.
Hard.
By the time the fleet arrived at Baker Three, the Abyssals had already communicated among themselves that the fleet was attacking, so they set up defensive lines around Baker Three, anticipating the fleet's move there. Until now, the fleet's mission was a cakewalk. They just tore through any resistance they encountered. The carriers provided full intel on everything - even though they can't launch offensive planes, they can still launch recon planes, and with Akagi's Long Range Scanners, there was literally nothing that went unnoticed.
The problem was that the fleet didn't expect the Abyssal lifeform that was being manufactured at Baker Three to actually be deployed against them.
So when Akagi picked up this new Abyssal lifeform's signature, she didn't realize what it was at first, so she sent in the forward destroyers just as usual. Baker Three's defense lines weren't anything difficult, so they didn't think anything would go wrong.
Turns out that this new Abyssal lifeform locked weapons onto Samidare first and unloaded everything onto her without warning.
Samidare didn't stand a chance. Her entire lower body got blown off from the stomach down. Not the belly - the actual stomach organ, let's not confuse the two. Whatever was left got horribly burned, and her right arm was blown off too, just because, I suppose, and all the skin and muscles on her left basically got melted right off, leaving only the bone that survived the heat of the shots she got slaughtered with.
I suppose most tragically for me, personally, was that her long hair got burnt to a crisp. Akashi had to cut it off when they came back, since it's just a mass of charred black shit. No one wanted to see that. Not even me, and I doubt Samidare herself either.
After Samidare got murdered without a second thought, the fleet recovered her body and fought on. This new Abyssal lifeform consolidated the remaining Abyssal forces around herself and repelled the fleet's onslaught. But whatever she is, she's utterly ridiculous. She withstood the fleet's entire power by herself for somewhere damn near six hours until she finally succumbed to the power and was destroyed.
I've sent the photos and report to HQ, and to Seal Team Six with a request for an immediate Kai upgrade for Samidare.
I know that these ship girls can be repaired back from death and restarted.
But does that make their death any less tragic?
Probably just a little bit. At least I know that they have the chance to come back so long as their bodies are kept intact. Specifically, their brains, which is their main processing units. That's a relief, right?
But it still fucking sucks.
Especially because it's Samidare.
Inazuma, Fubuki, and Sazanami are the most heavily affected by Samidare's death. Murakumo, too, I could tell, but she refused to show it. They were all in silent, tired tears when they came back to base in the morning. They couldn't bear to stay in the medbay for long when Samidare's remains got brought in so Akashi could clean up the body, and for good reason. When I came in to see what was left of her, it was pretty horrible. Like I mentioned before, I'm used to seeing gut-wrenching wounds like this on the bodies of grown men and women, not on young girls. Maybe it's just me who thinks that it's somehow more tragic if a child or a teenager gets wounds like these. I suppose I'm not as indiscriminate as I thought.
I spent a good amount of time after returning to my office from seeing what was left of Samidare in the medbay thinking about the night op.
Was it because of a fatal mistake in my planning for Operation Blackout? Or was it simply unavoidable by the fleet? Certainly one can argue that I should've factored the Abyssal lifeforms into account, because we already know that they're much more powerful than the standard and average Abyssal vessel, as Kuubo-Hime - Jenna, I mean - has already demonstrated. But given the pattern of Able Four and Baker Two, the fleet could have never known that the Abyssal lifeform at Baker Three would be participating in the battle as well. Perhaps Akagi could have alerted the fleet earlier at the strange presence of the new Abyssal, since in the post-action mission report, Yamato did mention that Akagi recalled knowing that the new Abyssal's signature was much stronger than the others. But I'm hesitant to blame Akagi, since even if she did alert the fleet, there'd been a high chance that the forward destroyers would've simply disregarded the warning and charged ahead regardless. In the end, I don't know. The fault for Samidare's death is unclear. Not that I'd want to figure out this blame-game anyway.
Samidare's dead, and that's all that matters, unfortunately.
Shortly after, at around 1300 hours, I got a visit from Inazuma in my office. Most everyone else was already asleep at this point, but Inazuma entered my office. I could tell she was extremely distraught, too depressed and shaken by what happened to Samidare to be able to go to sleep.
It's one of those moments where only soldiers, people who've seen unspeakable horrors of war, genocide, and other kinds of bloody conflict will understand. You see enough people die in horrible ways, you'll start being able to tell who's just seen someone die, like a goddamned sixth sense that tells you everything you don't wanna know.
So I sat Inazuma down on my couch and put her in my arms, and she did nothing but just cried silently until she finally fell asleep at around 1400 hours. Inazuma was arguably the closest to Samidare, and given her gentle nature, it's understandable that Inazuma's the most shaken by all this.
She woke up at 1430 hours, though, barely asleep for half an hour, screaming bloody fucking murder. She screamed Samidare's name as she woke up, so I had to rush over to her to calm her down. Houshou, who was nearby, ran into the room to see what was going on, and I explained the situation to her. Once she calmed down enough to talk, Inazuma explained that she had been the closest to Samidare during last night's battle at Baker Three, and that when Samidare got struck by the new Abyssal's weapons, she'd seen Samidare get obliterated. She couldn't go to sleep because of what she'd seen. Symptoms of PTSD. Inazuma clung to me like a baby, shivering like she's got a cold and all and not blinking. At all.
At this rate, even Inazuma's a casualty. Just not one that we need in a body bag.
So I stayed with her until she could finally manage to fall into another uneasy sleep again, and I carried her back to her dorm at 1720 hours.
Seeing Inazuma like that makes me have flashbacks to my younger self. Back when I was just a wee lil' lad - my middle school days. I remember being emotionally unstable back then. Not crazy, not hyperactive, but just not knowing what my emotional ranges were. I remember going through a single depression that probably is the reason why I'm always such a pessimistic and usually glass-half-empty kinda guy. Those days were rough. And it didn't help that my parents weren't exactly model parents, either. They're in the military, they don't have time for dealing with fucking puberty problems with their kid. Psh. Who's got the time for that anymore nowadays, right? On the worst days, I would lie in my bed, under the covers, shivering like I was sick even if I wasn't. The confessions of a middle-school boy going through puberty. Corny, yeah, but doesn't change the fact that I still think that particular period in my life was pretty dogshit.
Just before dinnertime, I got an email from Seal Team Six.
"We're sorry to hear that Samidare went down. We'll come to pick up the body asap once our Osprey's done undergoing some upgrades.
Since government reports on the new Abyssal lifeform's going to come to you tomorrow, we'll just fill you in on this now, courtesy of Jenna.
According to Jenna, she knows who this new Abyssal is. We've translated her name to mean 'Battleship Symbiotic Princess', or something weird like that, don't ask. Jenna told us that Abyssals like her and this Battleship Symbiotic Princess are called 'Bosses'. Yeah, I'm not kidding. Someone over there in the Abyssal fleet has some terrible naming schemes. But that's not the point - when Bosses like them are killed, they can be constructed again. It seems like for whatever reason, the Abyssals wanna refrain from making two of the same Boss, kinda like we wanna avoid making two of the same ship girl if we can help it. But since your fleet destroyed that first Battleship Symbiotic Princess, you'll probably have to deal with another. Including those Bosses they eliminated at Alpha Four and Baker Two.
Jenna says she only knows about Battleship Symbiotic Princess for some reason. She doesn't know about anyone else. How convenient is that, huh.
For some good news, we're almost done with Suzuya's Kai, waiting on more resources for Wakaba's."
After dinner, I wandered into the medbay and sat next to Samidare's corpse. Akashi had put a blanket over the body, so I pulled it over so I could see her face.
I wonder how long ago it was that Samidare slept next to me on my couch in my office?
However long that was, the pleasant smell that was on Samidare isn't there anymore, that's for sure.
For some reason, that fact alone made me sadder than anything else. I dunno...I suppose I can be melancholy whenever I wanna be.
No one was in a talking mood at dinner. Everyone knew Samidare - she was an outgoing, cheerful girl. No one hated her - it's literally impossible to hate someone like Samidare. She's good friends with everyone, including Akebono. The fact that she's gone is pretty fucking apparent in the mess hall.
Going to sleep now. Shoulders are hurting again, and Samidare's death is heavy on my mind. Gotta sleep to clear my head somewhat.
I'll get over this. I always do.
I suppose a better question now is how many more times I'll just "get over it" before I've had enough.