Rule by Grathryn

6007. No capturing small islands and setting them up for mines or war factories, while we appreciate the additional resources the fact that a lot of them are in enemy territory and the assaults haven't been authorised means you are doing things illegally which can get you court martialled, particularly since some of those islands belonged to allied abyssal.
6007a. Wait, who did that? – Minotaur
6007b. Guys, we've got another one. I think this one was from the abyssal side though, the unnamed carrier from Carrier Command Gaea Mission… the game that was supposed to be a new take on the original and Hostile Waters. – Zenith
6007c. What gear has she got? – Zephyr
6007d. Pretty much end game plus, though she can switch some things around like the main and secondary guns and the loadout for the six mantas and six walruses – Zenith

Kayleigh groaned as she woke, brown hair spilled over her face where she lay on her stomach. "What… happened?" she muttered, pushing herself slowly to her feet. The last she remembered… was getting thrown from a ship during a sudden storm.

No, the storm had just been a cover. Abyssals… had attacked the ship she was on.

"The island's secure, sir," the high pitched voice made her jump, scanning the area desperately for a moment before she spotted what looked like a large RC toy, a six wheeled one with some sort of gun turret.

"Good, did you get everything set up?" Another voice asked, jerking her head around to see what looked like Tom Thumb's cousin or something, or an animated action man doll.

Another Tom Thumb sized person climbed out of what she had thought was a toy car and nodded. "Yup, all set and started mining out. As long as we get a factory set up, we can use whatever comes out of there." The mini-person paused for a moment, looking up at her. "Captain, our ship didn't look like that the last I saw," they said.

There was a snort that drew Kayleigh's attention down to where another person had just dropped out of her sleeve. "Lad, you're a bit out of date. I don't know what you blokes called her, but that there," this fairy waved a pipe similar to her grandfather's at Kayleigh, "Is the shipgirl of HMS Epona."

Kayleigh blinked several times. "Uh… I… uh… I think you've got the wrong girl, I'm not a shipgirl."

"Lass," the latest fairy said, turning to her. "Take it from Captain Geary here, you're a shipgirl. Any normal human probably never would have woken up after that swim you had. Besides, there's an easy enough way to check, just launch one of your fighters. We never had many, but those we had damn did their jobs."

Blinking again, she opened her mouth and shut it a number of times, her thoughts bouncing around her mind before finally settling onto one big thing. How did she even launch a fighter?

Raising her arms to look at them, a flash attracted her attention to her left arm, which now had a flight deck covering it. Unlike the ones she had seen before, this wasn't set up like a small runway, but a series of pads. As she watched, lights started flashing from one as the cover pulled back, a stub winged craft rising out of the deck.

Moments later its large six nozzle engines rotated down and started roaring, propelling it into the sky.

"I'm a ship…" Kayleigh muttered, watching the craft shift from flying up to circling in increasingly large circles.

The older fairy nodded. "That you are, lass, HMS Epona, second ship of the Unicorn-class. Now, while I might not know precisely what's going on, we should probably start heading back to Devonport. Don't need to get into any brawls with any sea demons alone. Again," he added quietly.

The first two fairies climbed back into the vehicle, driving it to near her leg, causing Kayleigh to blink as an elevator dropped to the sand from her boot to pick it up, the whole contraption vanishing into her leg as Geary climbed onto her hand and scrambled up to her shoulder.

"This still feels so weird," Kayleigh muttered as she climbed to her feet, making her way to the water's edge. Taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly, "HMS Epona… launch!"

Stepping forwards, she felt energy gather around her, heat burning in her chest as her pulse thundered in her ears.

Her foot hit water and stayed firmly on the surface. The other foot pushed off and Kayleigh could feel water flooding through passages in her hull, shoving her forwards. The light around her coalesced, forming a light breast plate of some metal, a pair of twin 8in turrets mounted on her back as fairies swarmed out to check the materialised quad-50s and 4.5 inch guns. "First squad, launch!"

Eleven more of those strange fighters rose smoothly on the lifts of her flight deck before roaring off into the sky, circling overhead.

"Do we have to do this every time we come to an island that's not inhabited?" Kayleigh asked, watching as her planes and amphibious assault vehicles swarmed over the small island they had come to. At full size, which she could somehow control for her vehicles and troops, it would only take a couple of hours to cross for the AAVs. Unfortunately that didn't extend to keeping one of her fighters big enough that she could fly to England, and since they were all single seaters, she couldn't be flown either, since she needed to be pulling her full displacement to have them at full size.

"I mean," She continued, "I know you want a support base and all, but seriously? Not only is this slowing us down, but we'd have a support base once we get to literally any country on the planet. I'm apparently a carrier of some sort, and those planes or whatever they are, are fast enough that the last time we ran into abyssal fighters, they didn't even get a shot off."

"I have to agree with Epona, Commander, we're around Camacha now so we're around two days south of England," Geary commented from his position on her shoulder. "Besides, we already have at least half a dozen islands and even if they aren't attacked any time soon, we don't have a way of gathering the resources they produce at present."

It took a few minutes, but eventually the commander agreed, leading to Kayleigh setting off again in a mostly north-eastern direction so she could hopefully pick up the west coast of either Africa or Spain and follow it around to Britain, or a naval base to transfer there.

"So what are we looking for out here?" asked Helen as she and Robyn skated along the ocean west of Spain. The pair of them, along with several other shipgirls, had sortied out of various bases along the French, Spanish and English coastlines; unfortunately she hadn't managed to catch the full briefing.

Robyn scowled at the water around them. "There's been reports of something capturing islands coming up from somewhere around the Mid-Atlantic, maybe even southern. The Commander wants us to find out what it is, especially seeing as the route to get to all the captured islands seems to be leading towards England."

Helen arched an eyebrow at her friend. "So we're supposed to… what?" she asked. "Capture it, kill it or something else?"

"Find it, see if we can talk to it, if we can and it's friendly, great, if not, pull the hell out and let someone with more firepower know so they can sink it," Robyn replied. "Last anyone heard it had been seen around Camacha, close to Funchal, about two and a half to four days sale depending on the speed. The abyssal on the Rock of Gibraltar's obviously a bit worried given how often she got creamed most often by dumb bad luck for her."

"Incoming fighters!" called one of the other girls. "South by south west, reading… that can't be right. They're… they're reading as being over 60,000 feet and running nearly twelve hundred miles an hour!"

Both Helen and Robyn's heads snapped around at that before they checked with their own radar operators. "No abyssal craft run that high," Helen commented.

Robyn shook her head, "No, but we did have some war veterans that had that height. That's got to be either one of our Unicorns or someone's abyssalised one. Most of our jets don't roam around that often these days." Scowling, she scanned the horizon, guns moving to ready positions as the planes rocketed past overhead before swooping around for a slower, and lower, pass.

Helen watched with her, her eyes widening as the planes came around again, this time slow enough to see the markings on the undersides of their engine pods, "Holy fuck! I never thought I'd actually see those active," she breathed. "Those are bloody Darkflares…"

"Run up your ensigns, girls," Robyn called, watching the AH-030 MANTAs circling around again. "HMS Zenith to circling AH-030s, repeat HMS Zenith to circling AH-030s."

"HMS Zenith, this is Captain Stevens of the 720 NAS Hellhounds operating off of HMS Epona. It's good to see a friendly face," the fighter pilot responded, making Robyn's eyes widen.

"You okay there, Zenith?" Helen asked, noticing her friend's reaction.

Robyn nodded, swallowing. "Y-yeah, just… I'm an orphan, but I found my grandfather was in the war, you know?" She got a nod from Helen. "He was an air captain," she paused to swallow again. "Cooper Stevens, of the 720 NAS Hellhounds…" she trailed off as Helen's eyes widened briefly, "Captain Stevens… Zenith, how far away is your carrier?" she asked.

"You're about three hours from HMS Epona at current speed, Zenith," Cooper replied. "You okay there, Zenith? You sound a bit troubled."

"I-it's nothing, just… not everyday someone gets to meet their grandfather, sir, particularly when they've been on the streets for a while." Robyn replied, waving a hand at the others. "Can you relay to Epona that we're on our way to meet her? Approaching force consists of me and destroyers HMS Kempenfelt, HMS Amazon, HMS Savage and HMS Juno sortied from Devonport."

"Confirmed, Zenith, we'll relay and escort you in," Cooper said.

"Have you found the ship that's been taking islands?" Lauren's voice sounded over the flotilla's radio as they steamed back towards Devonport, the new carrier girl in tow.

"Aye, sir," Robyn replied. "The culprit is HMS Epona, second of our Unicorn-class carriers. From what she's said, she Woke up on some no name island in the Atlantic after abyssals attacked her ship. She's been working her way northwards since in an attempt to return home."

There was a pause from the other end before Sally's voice sounded. "Hey, Zenith, what's Epona's load out? I know most of us return with wartime equipment, but the Unicorns were working below designed capability."

Robyn paused for a moment. "Hold on, let me switch you over to her, since she can probably answer that better than I can." She turned to Kayleigh. "Hey, Epona, Devonport actual is on the horn, they'd like to know what your loadout is."

Kayleigh blinked, shifting as they passed through a wave. "My what?" she asked, looking confused.

"Your gear," Helen supplied. "Weapons, defences, carried craft, that sort of thing."

"O-oh…" Kayleigh frowned, chewing her lip. "I-I'm not sure, uh, Captain? Help?"

Geary frowned, holding onto Kayleigh's ear. "We can only find six each of the MANTA and WALRUS vehicles, along with two twin 8 inch naval rifles, ten twin 4.5 inch naval rifles, twenty quad-50mm anti-air guns and thirty 20mm Oerlikon AA guns." He paused for a moment, puffing his pipe. "Both eight-cell vertical launch shoots are available, but we've no ammunition, the same goes for the four turret launchers, though we can use long chains of the Oerlikon ammunition as a temporary munition source for the six gatling guns, but it'd be useful to give them something better."

Kayleigh dutifully repeated that once Robyn had given her the radio frequency.