Saturday, April 5th, 2014.
The pieces of this motherfucking puzzle are starting to fall into place. I'll say this right now: my life can end sometime within the next three weeks.
Saturday - the weekend. But it's not the weekend for me. Ever since I got up, I've been busy today, making arrangements, preparations...
So let's sort everything out, shall we.
HQ sent me a huge email containing confidential documents, military papers, satellite image photos, letters, forwarded letters and other such correspondence, equipment transfer invoices, and military personnel files. Problem was, they didn't bother explaining anything to me. Literally, it's like they dumped a whole bunch of PDF's and threw them at my virtual face and told me to figure this shit out on my own. Well, unfortunately for them, I'm quite used to this kind of treatment already from my time as a pencil-pushing officer in the Navy. I quite pride myself upon the fact that I can figure things out and deduce stuff on my own.
And deduce I did. Well, eventually, when Ooyodo, Hatsuharu, and Yamato came along (not all at the time same, just one by one) and stopped by my office to see why I hadn't left my room for breakfast or lunch. Once I explained to them the task that was presented before me, they all insisted that they be of use to me, so I employed them organizing the papers and helping me read the more difficult and obscure kanji that I'm still having trouble dealing with since they're either military terms or kanji not often used in daily speaking. And since I'd already notified the fleet of this upcoming event, the contents of these files came as no surprise to them, thankfully.
In addition, I got a call through the old phone that sits on the corner of my desk that, like the naval base's PA system, was never used before by HQ themselves. Masakawa was the one on the line, and while Ooyodo, Hatsuharu, and Yamato continued on with their organization work, I talked to Masakawa about the contents of the email HQ had sent me and the details regarding this upcoming joint-service mission between the Moebius Four Platoon, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force, and the JSFG of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force.
So after about five hours of paper handling, phone calling, typing, writing, organizing, compiling, working with the three ship girls, telling Yuudachi to get out of the office so that she wouldn't bother me asking me to come play with her, petting Batsubyou and Chika before having Akebono barge in to call me Shitty Admiral and steal away her cat, and feeding Toyoda some dog treats and watching him lick my shin, I finally completed about a fifteen page report on this upcoming mission. And now, I'm going to condense those fifteen pages into less than three or four or so journal pages. There ought to be a name for this kind of power - unfortunately, my own little chuunibyou stage has come and gone, and I'm far too old to think of some kind of badass name for my power. I'll just call it being a menial office worker.
Here's the summary:
Next Monday, the Okinawa Naval District (our home base) is to receive not fifteen, but twenty new ship girls who are serving on the mainland, bound for military transfer here so they can finally carry out their duties as ship girls. Masakawa explained that the reasoning behind such an influx of reinforcements was because this mission was expected to be the mission to "end" the war against the Abyssals, and that the faster I could make it happen, the better, and the government and the JMSDF are willing to invest a large number of ship girls towards achieving this end. But that's not the entire story - this'll be explained later on.
With this comes the military profiles - the roster profiles of five of the ship girls already selected to be transferred to Okinawa. They are as follows:
Destroyer Naganami,
Submarine I-58,
Heavy Cruiser Kumano,
Seaplane Tender Akitsushima,
Carrier Taihou.
The rest are to be revealed once selection continues. I don't know why they couldn't just choose the ship girls first and then send all the data to me at once, but whatever. Maybe they'll send the rest tomorrow, but I have a deep suspicion that they won't even send me all of their profiles beforehand like this, so it'll just be a complete lottery once they do arrive on Monday.
Then, starting from next Monday when the reinforcements arrive, I'm tasked with the objective of training this newly enlarged fleet. I have orders to send the fleet on sorties every single day, even on the weekends, to acclimate the new ship girls as quickly as possible to battle conditions and fighting conditions, since they're as green as can be and have never fought in an actual combat scenario before. This will continue for a little over two weeks until April 23rd, a Wednesday. The day of the scheduled joint-operations naval assault, blacklisted as "Operation Rising Sun".
Apparently the name of this op is supposed to signify the return of the powerful Japanese Navy in the JMSDF, as this is the first time in which the JMSDF will be dispatching a significant number of warships for the intended purpose of neutralizing an external threat in a naval battle. I have my own theories on who came up with the op name...
This op is the reason why we're receiving reinforcements, and why I'm tasked with the objective of training them.
Talking further on about this op, the JMSDF is confirmed to be sending in fourteen ships. The Navy is not fucking around. This is a huge portion of their navy that they're dedicating to one battle that's supposed to end this war by itself. Why they're sending this many ships with us for this op when it comes will be explained in just a bit. They did provide the names of the ships that'll be coming with us, though.
JMSDF Souryuu,
JMSDF Unryuu,
JMSDF Michishio,
JMSDF Hyuuga,
JMSDF Ise,
JMSDF Atago,
JMSDF Ashigara,
JMSDF Hatakaze,
JMSDF Shimakaze,
JMSDF Murasame,
JMSDF Harusame,
JMSDF Yuudachi,
JMSDF Samidare.
But here's the biggest twist in this op: I'm going to be a direct part of it. Carrier Strike Group 10, my former carrier unit that I eventually commanded in the last year before my transfer here to Okinawa, is taking part in this op as well. The JMSDF talked with the US Navy for permission to request assistance from the American Seventh Fleet, which is a large part of the US's Pacific Fleet of its Navy, and because I'd be familiar with my own carrier unit, Carrier Strike Group 10 was selected to come to Okinawa on the day of the op to pick me up. The reasoning behind this is that by now, I'm the only naval commander in the world who knows how the ship girls work and fight. By being there at the site of the battle, I'll be able to communicate in real time with the Moebius Four fleet from my flagship, the U.S.S. George Washington, and together with Carrier Strike Group 10 plus the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, the JMSDF and the Moebius Four Platoon will attack Dog Five.
Also included were several American navy correspondence and intelligence papers that indicated that my flagship, the U.S.S. George Washington, is due for temporary decommission so that the Navy can prepare her for her due mid-life refueling and overhaul starting in 2016. Basically, this means that Operation Rising Sun will be my former flagship's last active-duty mission until she reenters service sometime in 2021, when her overhauling becomes complete. The new Carrier Strike Group 10 flagship is to be the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman, which, to be honest, was supposed to be the flagship of Carrier Strike Group 10 back since 2004, but Harry S. Truman had to undergo lots of refitting and repairs when it was discovered that she had too many design flaws and a faulty construction stage. But now that she's back in service, after this op, the U.S.S. George Washington will transfer me to another American ship that will take me back to Okinawa, and she'll head on to the West Coast to be decomm'd.
I'll miss my flagship.
The purpose of Operation Rising Sun is to attack the main headquarters of the Abyssals at Sector B, Dog Five. The reason why Seal Team Six told me not to sortie my fleet yesterday was because they had sent in some of their members on an underwater espionage mission to investigate Dog Five at HQ's request. If the fleet had sortied yesterday, their cover would've been blown, and those guys would've probably not made it out. They found out that Dog Five is no ordinary island: a deep-sea tower is being built from the surface of the ocean all the way down to the ocean floor. I don't know how they figured out that something was going on below the island itself, but this tower is being built by deep-sea Abyssal construction specimens around the clock. The generators, reactors, and other equipment and buildings on the island's surface is an entire energy grid providing the main source of power that fuels the construction of this tower and powers it up. And judging by the frequencies that the tower is giving off because of the machinery that's going into it, Seal Team Six has determined that most likely, the purpose of this tower is to connect itself to the ocean floor and lodge itself into the plate of the Earth's crust itself. From there, we don't know what exactly this tower will do, but Seal Team Six and HQ have determined that there are two likely results that'll come from the tower's completion. Either this tower will latch itself onto the ocean floor and lodge into the plate of the Earth's crust itself and perhaps rip a hole into it or eve form a new fault line and cause a massive tsunami in the process that'll hit Japan and other countries in Southeast Asia, or it may even extend all the way down to the Earth's core and do something even worse. After all, Abyssal technology seems to be hyper advanced, so even something like building a tower down to the Earth's core isn't out of the picture. What was that one movie where humans sent a ship down to the Earth's core to fix the world from going to shit? Or did they go to the Sun? I don't remember.
Point is, the Japanese government isn't going to just twiddle their thumbs around this time. They want swift and brutal termination of this threat, and that's why Operation Rising Sun is now in the works.
The most basic premise of how the op will go is this: we move in, the modern warship destroyers will launch long-range ballistic missiles like the AEGIS and other such missile systems to Dog Five and flatten the place completely. So destroying Dog Five isn't the hard part. The hard part is when the Abyssals come out in full force to retaliate, and since we destroyed their central command hub, they will go all out. Or that's what we think will happen. This plan is not yet set in stone, so it's liable to change in the near future.
Now here's Seal Team Six's take on all of this:
"We got your compiled report on Operation Rising Sun. Nice work - you'll be a great office worker once you retire from Navy service.
So far, it looks like you've understood everything that's been going on. But you only know half the story. Here's the other half you might wanna know.
The reason why they're having your carrier strike group participating in this fight is because they want a legit reason to kill you. The right-wingers in the Diet managed to convince the Ministry of Defense and the rest of the government in Tokyo that having the Commander of the Moebius Four Platoon will lead to certain victory because you will be there commanding the girls. They've used a lot of military hoo-rah lingo and nationalistic sentiments to help secure your participation there. And this wasn't provided in the shit they sent you, but the JMSDF plans to have Carrier Strike Group 10 lead their own ships in, meaning that you and the American ships will be at the vanguard. The US Navy also wants it this way 'cause the Navy brass still likes to stroke their own dicks and egos 'cause 'Murica, fuck yeah. They don't know that the right-wingers in the Diet are doing this specifically because they want to get rid of you. They're hoping that the Abyssals will recognize your ship as the flagship and attack your carrier and kill you in the process.
You can still decide whether or not you want to hang out in the front lines when the op comes. But don't ask us to try to sway the Diet's opinion on this matter. We've tried already, in fact. But the extreme right-wingers have too much of a firm grip over the Diet - they're not changing their minds.
By the way, we'll be going to deliver Shigure tomorrow morning."
Conveniently, Big didn't answer my question about how Akebono's internal augmentation Slayer works.
I spent the rest of the day thinking. I completely skipped dinner, too lost in my thoughts, staring off into the distance while leaning back casually in my office chair in the growing dark.
Yuudachi snuck into my office with Toyoda and asked me if I could play with her. I was about to say no and tell her to leave me alone in my office, but I changed my mind and told her to come sit with me on the couch, and there I massaged Yuudachi's head and stroked her blonde hair while Toyoda curled up on my other side and napped. Yuudachi nearly instantly fell asleep with her head on my lap, but I didn't notice until thirty minutes in.
Lots of conflicting emotions, lots of swirling, nebulous thoughts.
The feeling of my fingers running through Yuudachi's hair is still on my fingertips. I kinda want to pet her again before going to sleep.