Hello, Akebono here. I'm doing a favor for Aoba by reporting on the situation on base.
Now, I'm not as active on duty as I used to be, so I have plenty of free time. Back then, the admiral would order us around all the time, and he would make many, many mistakes. What an idiot he was.
I mean, he hasn't changed much. He's still very much idiotic, but he's better at hiding it. Also, he's a lot less energetic nowadays, and he only bothers with actively managing the base every once in a while. What a garbage way of shying away from your responsibilities.
You know, the first time I came on base, the admiral physically recoiled after I greeted him. Maybe calling him "shitty" as a first impression wasn't a good call... but I need to stand up to him and show his faults! He still did induct me on base with the usual fanfare, so I have to stick it to him that he has guts.
(Wait, I'm supposed to be writing about the operation of the base, right? All I've been doing is talking about the shitty admiral! Argh, I'll have to delete this. Wait, no, Aoba could probably dig up some dirt with this information. I'll leave it in.)
In terms of base operations, we have a pretty strict hierarchy here. At the top, of course, is the damned admiral. Below him are some confidants that were appointed by the navy to assist him in day-to-day operations. The idea is to lift the burden of the low-level operations so he can focus on the harder aspects of running a naval base. Stuff like expeditions, nutrition, and morale management is left to the lower officers.
Then we come to us, the kanmusu. We're kind of separated into two groups: actively serving and on standby. Actively serving members are ones that are actively selected to build experience or are skilled enough in battle to be placed in compositions consistently. Think Yuudachi, Shigure, and Jintsuu. Then you have the rest of us, who are placed on "standby." This really just means we pick up the slack of the paperwork that the actively serving side leaves behind, and nothing much else. Granted, we still need to keep in shape and everything to make sure we are still battle-worthy, but besides that, nothing is required of us. We spend so much time together that, even though nobody in my traditional destroyer division still is on base, we've grown quite close. Who knew that Murasame would be so sweet?
As a result, we who are on standby can spend our time however we wish. There's the bookish nerds who study in their free time, the athletic ones who exercise and run drills, and the lazy ones who do nothing productive. I'm sure Aoba already knows which category I fall into, but I should say that since I can be relieved of my duty at any time, I make it a point to keep up with my studies so I can enter the local school system without any hiccups.... enter the local school system without any hiccups.
(Ugh, why do I keep on getting sidetracked?)
Anyway, there are three exciting things that a shipgirl can do while stationed here: help in expeditions, participate in fleet exercises, and the real deal, sortieing into enemy waters.
Expeditions I've touched on. The two main goals of expeditions are to explore new areas and gather resources. The resource management team is extremely calculated as to what lineup to use for each expedition. The expedition groups are directed by a comms manager, which is very often Ooyodo, or a navy technician. We kanmusume always use Japanese, but the admiral uses English, so somebody needs to translate on the fly. It used to be Kongou's job, but her broken ability to translate was so atrocious that she was replaced by Saratoga as quickly as possible. (I bet that Bongou's jealous as ever...) However, the lower officers usually manage expeditions, and since they're locals, there's no need for a translator. It's smoother that way anyway. It also allows the officers to rotate through shifts while managing overnight expeditions. You see, us kanmusume don't require too much sleep: 4 to 6 hours is usually sufficient. Even though we're mostly human, that machine part of us adds a great deal of sturdiness. We can still operate in expeditions while the admiral has to sleep. How weak.
The next activity is fleet exercises. Participating in exercises is extremely helpful for gaining battle experience in the safety of home waters. To start an exercise, we are all given some funny-looking goggles that project images on the back. We're told that these are "VR headsets," whatever that means. Also, our actual weapons are swapped with imitations. With this equipment, we move out to the waters right in front of the harbor and find our formation. Once the admiral gives the go-ahead, simulated kanmusume are projected to our headsets, and we battle. Of course, we don't take actual damage, but it's simulated in our headsets when we should pull out after taking too much damage. As long as the admiral does his job with selecting the correct equipment for us, that shouldn't be an issue. Makes me wonder why we don't project mock enemies instead, so we can battle with the real thing. Probably some bs answer like "in case the enemies invade our home waters during exercises, we know they're real."
The last is sorties. This is what we train for, gather resources for, plan for. The real deal. It's so important that, to date, the admiral has personally seen off each time a fleet has left for a sortie. I have no idea why, but I guess he just wants to ogle us a little before sending us to the battlefield.
Communications are handled similarly to expeditions except that the admiral almost always takes the helm. Even though sortied fleets are mostly autonomous (thanks to training, and you know, thinking), there are still some calls that the admiral needs to take. Not like we can make decisions by ourselves or anything.
When it's very hectic, sometimes more than one fleet sorties, and the command center goes absolutely nuts. Especially when one fleet leaves to support another.
I've accidentally slipped into the command room during the large-scale operation we just had. It was... scary seeing the shitty admiral like that. He had such a piercing glare, eyes sharp like a razor. It seemed as if he was running the battles through his head and determining how to proceed. Man, it's really rare to see him doing his job like that now, right?
In terms of what we kanmusume do in enemy waters, we advance and stay alert. We have been given an objective, and we will not fail. Take out the enemy with pinpoint precision and retreat with minimal losses. That is if everything goes according to plan. It almost always doesn't, though, thanks to enemy fleets, the weather, naughty fairies, you name it.
Oh, by the way, did I mention that the admiral isn't full-time? He only considers this job as a part-time one while he prepares for higher education. Really shows how shitty this admiral can be, not putting us first and caring about himself more than others.
At the moment, the base is rather quiet. There's no real operations going on at the moment. It's just expeditions going in and out as well as the daily exercises. We're limited to 5 every 12 hours by the higher-ups for some reason. Fools, we could train so much quicker if we could do more than that.
Well, that's it for now! I'm just going to observe an exercise now commentated live by Katori. As a training cruiser, she adds some great insight into every battle, and we all learn a great deal from her. You know, Aoba, you might get a little kick from watching things like this, too.
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