Day One Thousand One Hundred And Seventy

Dear Diary,

Something I've realized about self-examination, and I think it may go for other kinds of pondering as well. It's addictive.

I use that particular adjective because sometimes, some Days, I'm not really even in the mood to ponder, but I still get a kind of urge. Almost like an itch.

Fortunately today somebody's provided me with a fuckin' scratching post.

So right at sunset yesterday, with the Faerie Queen's fleet headed right toward the smallest of our formations, the one blocking her escape into the North Sea, that bitch summoned up first a whole assed wall of fog behind both our northern and southern formations, then a fuckin' fleet that flipped what amounted to near parity in overall numbers back to us being outnumbered again.

Still amuses and amazes me how fast I can count. Even with the numbers maybe obscured by crowding and fog, we'd gone from parity in ships to almost two to one odds against us. The launches... Frankly I think I kept underestimating them, because none of them had what I thought of as 'anti-shipping' weapons. At most they'd have a big ballista, but most of them were just longboats designed to close and board. What with not having to cross the Atlantic, she had about five times as many of those, but given that six of ours had Jotnar and Trolls, I wasn't concerned about that particular disparity.

But that whole 'twice as many ships' did not make me happy, nor did the fact that all of hers were warships. Purpose built or altered, where the bulk of our fleet were armed merchantmen.

"Dammit."

Tallulah looked down at me. My long tall Sidhe Lady isn't as tall as Marie, but she still be tall. "What's wrong?"

I shook my head. "I didn't want to just kill them all, but with this numbers disparity I don't think we've got a choice."

You realize the two of you are still projecting? my Kitten thought at me, her own image, projected above her section of the fleet, putting her hands on her hips.

I smirked at her, snugging Tallulah to me as I did, the motion projected into the sky above our fleet. No, really?

For her part, Faerie Queen Leanan scoffed, her image relaying that to us. "Here I thought with this one's scars, you'd picked for intelligence rather than appearance this time. I guess he's... Aggressive?" She shook her head. "Stupid Mortals, always thinking they can win against the Sidhe in fair contests."

I just smiled my biggest, smarmiest smile at her, played a little bit of surreptitious un-projected tentacle grab ass with Tallulah and Saffron both, then said, "yeah. That's why sparring aside, I never fight fair. Admiral Pesce?"

I'd been a little worried about the Admiral's ability to handle this kind of mass Naval engagement. Joseph Pesce's a solid guy, and I've never regretted promoting him to Commodore in charge of our supply fleet, even though it was kind of a spur of the moment thing, but commanding a whole assed fleet in battle was a skill set he'd never really had to work up prior to this.

He picked up his cue beautifully though. A single bolt trailed sparks as it angled up and toward the oncoming Pirates. Right at the zenith of its flight, it exploded into a man made star, and four more bolts flew into the sky parallel to it, one from each of the other Tentacles on the north line.

Aboard his flagship, Redbeard paced, snarling at me. "Why are we waiting? Why are your ships lined up like that? The Queen's lead elements are going to hit them amidships and send your precious great beasts to the bottom!"

I shook my head, reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder. He might not have been happy, but he'd seen enough of me to avoid lashing out. "Trust, Red. You've got one of the best seats in the house." I nodded at the Sidhe Cutters that flanked us to the north. "I'd be more worried about those over there. Our supporting fleet is in the Tentacles' line of fire if the Sidhe ever get off their asses and come at us."

He snorted. "We've fought Sidhe before. Cold Iron will do for them."

I shook my head. "If you say so." The other four bolts reached the apex of their flight. "Show's starting."

He followed my gaze to the oncoming Pirate fleet. The other four flares burst, the sudden near daylight exposing how their 'line' had broken into jagged teeth as individual ships rushed forward to be the first to engage. Or maybe the first to ram us.

Instead they were the first targets of the Tentacles' first volley.

The absolute wall of sound, even dampened as it was by the Tentacles themselves, washed over where I stood with one hand on Red's shoulder. "Tethys' left tit..." I think he'd meant to shout, but that profanity slipped out of his mouth almost like the sword nearly slipped out of his hand. I squeezed his shoulder, and he firmed up his grip and resolve before looking at me. "I'm glad we chose not to fight you."

There's a reason why, from the beginning of the 'golden age of sail' to the introduction of modern turrets and aircraft, 'crossing the enemy's T' was considered the ultimate fuck you maneuver. Shit, even well into late World War Two, that shit was still solid. Because older ships didn't have missile launchers or turrets, they had broadsides. Which meant if all your ships' sides were pointed at the enemy, you could bring all your guns to bear, while they could only fire 'chase guns'; stuff mounted on the fore or stern castles.

I'd really hoped to avoid this, but nobody'd come up with a way to deliver a canister of Cold Iron dust from a canon in a way that dispersed it without igniting it. Which meant fighting the Pirates the old fashioned way. Well, the lethal way, since we weren't doing the 'rush in to a general melee' the way our enemies looked to prefer.

I'm also pretty sure Pesce used all of the experimental rounds we'd given his five Tentacles before the Black Dragon left on her supply run. That wasn't enough to load a full broadside per Tentacle, but in one instant twenty of the Queen's ships became flaming pyres of wreckage, foundering as their sails and rudders burned. Another twenty didn't burn, didn't so much founder as disappear, because while not igniting the contents of a shell was beyond our current technology, doing so deliberately was pretty fuckin' easy, and the shells fired by our Tentacles might have been sorta primitive, but a fifty pound explosive shell turned the ships in the first wave into kindling. The launches that had managed to get into that front line just... Just fuckin' disappeared.

The thing about anything like a cavalry charge, and the wave of ships headed toward us kinda qualified, is that the bigger the individual things charging, the more inertia they have. When it comes to hammering a charge home against an enemy, that's an advantage. When it comes to stopping a charge, it becomes a problem.

Of course, when the ones charging are the ones who needed to stop the charge, that made it their problem.

As I watched, both from the deck of the Training and aboard Red's flagship, the Faerie Queen's fleet plowed forward. For every ship length they gained, they lost more ships. But the bulk of their ships couldn't really maneuver. They were a mass of wood and flesh driven forward by the wind, shoved at us inexorably by their own mass. Meanwhile the guns on our Tentacles cycled at a rate that might be embarrassing for a veteran crew aboard an Iowa class, but at one round every six seconds, they were still erasing eight ships per Tentacle with... I couldn't call it metronomic regularity. Not really. Mostly because with eight guns per ship, and very little ability to aim those guns away from perpendicular to the ship itself, they'd switched from volley fire to firing as the guns had a target.

As they fired round after round, I couldn't help myself. Maybe I didn't want to. The eighteen twelve overture played out over the Channel.

The Queen's ships crowded into the supposed 'safe channels' between the firing arcs of the Tentacles' guns, turning themselves from a close packed fleet to a single massive farrago. Which is when they learned that 'very little' was not the same as 'none', and a tiny shift in the anchor chains shifted where 'perpendicular' pointed.

Red found his voice as the enemy made it to about the halfway point to our line, surviving mostly due to the wreckage the wooden island pushed in front of it.

"I thought you'd be more active here."

I sighed, shook my head. "I... I maybe could take on that whole fleet. Okay, if all I wanted was all of them dead, I could do that. Pull them all to the bottom with my tentacles. Split myself a thousand ways and hop through neutralizing people."

"You knocked out the ones on that launch."

I nodded. "I did. I Blended, Co-Located, hit them all before they really knew what was going on. Against any thirty non-Heroes? I might as well be fighting Children." I sighed, shook my head. "Just like fighting toddlers, I can be... Gentle."

He snorted. "Gentle?"

"Yeah. Gentle. For a kinda rough value of gentle, but one that leaves everybody alive and able to be Healed."

"So... Why not?" He nodded towards the farrago oozing toward us.

"Too many of me and I start getting feedback. Start getting sloppy. I keep it up too long and even I get tired, especially if I'm holding back, being careful to hit each target just hard enough to take them out of the fight." I shook my head again. "If we'd had parity in numbers, I would have done just that to those guys, but," I nodded toward where the Cutters had started drifting forward, never quite leaving the fog bank that rolled unnaturally toward us. "Those guys might have Bane Sidhe. Might have Mages. Probably do have folks who could pick me out and make me fight harder." I schooled my features to something other than the sadness I felt at fighting folks who'd been coerced into the battle. "Which I absolutely will do if it looks like we need it. But right now...?"

He head tilted. "Right now?"

I smiled at him, nodded up toward the projected image of Tallulah and I, arms around each other, watching her rival's ships get hammered.

"Remember," the me in the sky announced. "Any of you who are unarmed and not standing when we board are safe."

"Do not listen to this bitch!" Leanan shrieked. "Push forward! Their ships burn as well as ours! Forward to victory!" After a second, she looked north and said, "take them from behind! You will be the hammer to our anvil!"

Red blinked, then said, "she's not wrong about those fires."

I laughed, then announced, "yeah, about that," before my tentacles dropped a massive Create Water above each of the burning wrecks being pushed toward our Tentacles. "Admiral?"

With that, the Tentacles fired one more volley, and at the closer range shots were turning one ship into a giant shotgun shell spraying huge shivered timbers across the ships behind them. Then they let loose of one anchor each, which between the wind and current had them turning their bows north as they pulled the other anchor up.

Retrieving things from the ocean floor wasn't a big challenge for our side.

Redbeard's ships led the volunteers from Rich Man's Port, Norfolk, and Calverton as they threaded between the retreating Tentacles. Well, not so much 'retreating' as 'moving to face the incoming Cutters'.

I maybe hadn't told him the whole truth. I mean, I really didn't think I could take out the whole fleet by myself without some casualties. Some fatalities. And if I did that, started just knocking out whole crews, Leanan might have some kind of Sidhe whammy lined up to stop me. It's not like I could carry a Cold Iron trinket to drop around the neck of every Sailor in the fleet.

But I could hop from ship to ship, Blended to a fare-thee-well, and tag whoever looked to be in charge with the mother of all Lullabies. 

One of me was close enough to hear Redbeard, right before his flagship rammed the leading edge of the farrago, use some kind of PA Spell to announce, "flats and clubs where you can, lads! One bit for each capture, courtesy of the Alliance!"

Dafuq?

A moment later Saffron whispered into my brain. That... I suppose if he assumes each of them will sign on with us, there's a clause in the recruitment contract that provides a small finder's fee for new mercenaries.

I sighed, then laughed. I guess I'm okay with anything that makes this less bloody.

From across the battlefield, her projected image smiled at me. So merciful.

Hey, not their fault they've been mind controlled.Had their Agency stripped away. I sighed. If those fuckin' Sidhe Cutters hadn't shown up, we could end this right now.

I felt my Kitten's reply, but before she could think it at me, a strange multipartite voice filled our brains. One I recognized immediately. Would you give the Sidhe mercy?

Yeah, Sister. Can you help us out?

Can they swim?

I laughed, then shouted through the projected image, "Yo! Sidhe Sailors! If you can't swim, grab something that floats!"

Both banks of fog, not to mention the faintly phosphorescent Sidhe Cutters within, were lit by a pulsating rainbow from below the ocean's surface. To the north of us, first one ship, then two more, then dozens stopped, jerked, and cracked as they were pulled under the waves by tentacle after tentacle.

Some of them are fighting back.

"Yo! Sidhe Sailors! Go limp and the Kraken will deposit you on shore. Fight and they'll feed you to the Hunters!"

To the South, where the Sidhe Cutters had been advancing on the two Tentacles arrayed to stop them, Leviathan rose. I'm not sure how 'non-lethal' a kaiju lobster can be, honestly. But any Sidhe who saw her rise and didn't fuck the fuck off right then might well have qualified for 'too stupid to live'.

Back aboard the Training, I shook my head and clucked my tongue. "Leanan? You still there?"

She'd been staring southward, mouth gaping as she watched Leviathan systematically grabbing Sidhe Cutters and slicing them in half. Mostly the short way. Mostly. She turned to look at me, absolutely livid. "I will have you, you bitch! I will have you and your little Mortal too!"

I sighed. Kissed Tallulah on the forehead. "Time for you and the other Fae to go below, T."

I'll see to Translocating them away, she thought as she dashed for the forecastle, dropping out of the projection.

I turned to Leanan, shook my head, and said, "good bye, Leanan."

She jerked like she'd been slapped, looking up toward where I'd simultaneously made the announcement from the Black Dragon's PA system. I think the first depth charge went off right in her projection's mouth. Hard to tell with the whole illusion shattering and dissipating when the charge blew, scattering two tons of Cold Iron powder across the Faerie Queen's fleet.

We couldn't get Cold Iron powder to disperse from cannon-launched shells without igniting. Low powered depth charges worked just fine.