Chương 1170: Day One Thousand One Hundred And Sixty-Eight

Dear Diary, So weird, what's been happening over the past couple Days. Weird in so many ways, too. I mean, from one perspective, nothing weird is happening. Not really.

Eight of me have been sitting on my asses on my Altars, one occasionally multiple of me has been with our girls, three of me have been watching over my more Mortal partners, another multiple of me have been helping Marie around the house and Academy, and another set of me have been aboard the Black Dragon, both helping power her boilers and standing on the mast as she flies along at what I objectively know are just fast highway speeds, but seem both faster and slower.

Faster because at her core she's still a fuckin' Iowa Class Battleship, and while she and her sisters are 'fast battleships', 'fast' meant thirty-five knots. Which, if I remember my conversions correctly, was like forty miles an hour. Given the kind of damage a thousand pound car can do at those speeds, the idea of just short of eighty thousand tons of armored steel hitting something at that speed doesn't bear thinking on.

Officially, according to Saffron and Swanson, the Black Dragon can double an Iowa's speed when she's airborne. Then again, officially the top speed of an Iowa class was thirty two knots until BB-62 decided to cut loose. I'm not sure the Heroes in the regular crew could keep up the speed we were doing, but they don't have to.

Also, while the Black Dragon's surface speed was limited by her boilers and screws, from what I've come to realize most of her flight systems, including the vast bulk of the propulsion, are pure Mana constructs. Which means as long as I don't melt the conduits, the more Mana I put in, the faster she can go. Which means my Black Dragon has got to be pulling at least eighty knots. Maybe a hundred miles an hour. Something like that.

Fast enough that if I were Mortal, standing on the mast might be highly discommended if I didn't want my skin flayed off by wind and sea spray, because we're generally flying low enough to kick up a little spray with the wind of our passage. Yeah, we've got a bit of a bow wave even though we're not touching the water. But it still feels slow, because we've mostly been flying over open ocean.

While the Tentacles can play silly buggers with Cold Iron and Portals, getting through even as they're collapsing them, and the rest of the fleet can just hop through those same portals as needed, the Black Dragon has to go the long way. Even at a hundred miles an hour, that's a day and a half each way. I'm not sure what I expected when she hit the docks at Calverton, because despite everything Calverton apparently has the deepest reserves of Cold Iron in the world, but a NASCAR quality pit stop was not it.

If it took an hour to get everything off the docks and onto the deck of the Black Dragon, I'd be surprised. Of course that meant that for the first leg of the return voyage, we weren't hitting that deceptively fast airborne speed, because the crew, mostly Troll Marines, were moving stuff that had been set right on the deck. Not like the folks on the docks didn't use the loading hatches when they could, but the clear directive had been for speed, to get the stuff aboard where it could be stowed in flight.

We still weren't getting back to the Channel, to the Tentacles, until right before the Equinox. Which meant I had a completely irrational yet important need to wrap this up fast, because for once I'd remembered my anniversary; even planned some stuff out and made reservations and shit. Yes, I know that is a terrible reason to change operational tempo.

No, I did not give the orders to hurry, so I'm not gonna cry big tears about it being given, but I am gonna pour on the Mana to get my big Black Dragon back on the line. Also, she is a girl, so I absolutely am not going to give in to my inner Tomoko and slap a pair of fake phalluses under her. Because she is the Biggest Blackest Dragon. Hey, I own my awful sense of humor, and tell it no now and then, but I still have to acknowledge it or I'm gonna bust something holding it in.

My ladies are pushing themselves a little as well. Each of them has one of them aboard their Tentacle alongside whatever else they're doing. For Siobhan, that's mostly just watching the Infirmary and nursing Aoibh, but the Sneaking has been doing a lot of the fleet Portal transport, so the her aboard has been doing a shit ton of Shaping.

Marie is doing her normal Ultimate Housewife thing at the Homestead, keeping the Academy running like she always does, while the her aboard the Worshipping is mostly curled up in the crow's nest, ostensibly not napping. Tallulah has continued to hold Court on the daily along with keeping the Training front and center in the southern blockade, because she's coordinating contact with our Pirates. This story has been stolen from Royal Road.

If you read it on Amazon, please report it She pulled me in to talk with them today. Well, Saffron and I both, along with Admirals Swanson and Pesce, the former stepped across to the Training's big stern castle conference room by yours truly. John was the only of the Captains to meet with us.

"Redbeard and Anne have remained closer in, trying to catch more of the bitch's dupes unawares." He shook his head.

"Neither of them listen to me."

"How do you mean?" Saffron jumped on that. He sighed.

"She knows we're here. I think she's trying to lure one or both of them to a point she can counter-ambush them." He shrugged.

"Stupid of her, arrogant, but nobody's perfect, and the sea herself is fickle." Saffron nodded.

"Shaping can mitigate that somewhat, but I understand." He looked at her sharply.

"You've Mages who can Shape on the high seas?" She just chuckled.

"I thought you'd realized. Not everything we do is Divine intervention. There's a reason Phileo was able to protect her shipping." He sucked his teeth.

"I always respected your Sailors." She nodded.

"As you should. They're professionals. But your people," she shrugged.

"They're better. But Phileo has always been pragmatic. All four of The Alliance's original Cities were." John just took a deep breath.

"Might want to arrange for some training with Anne then."

"She Shapes?" He shrugged.

"I think so. At any rate, the two of them have picked off most everything in the Channel, but..."

"But?"

"We could possibly take any one of the three small ports on the mainland. They're protected by forts, but after freeing those we've freed, we'd have their ships outnumbered. But there are three of them, and if she knows we're here, she'll have everyone else headed our way soon. If they're not already."

"How long do we have?" Swanson asked. John just shrugged.

"A day, maybe two. If she can coordinate, those three smaller fleets will come out then. If not, we'll face one fleet three to four times our size, then three equal to us." Tallulah said, "best to assume she can do so. She knows enough Scrying and Messaging to do so."

"So... We're outnumbered six, possibly seven to one?" Yeah, I had a need to contribute. John nodded again.

"Looks to be the size of it." Saffron nodded, then turned to Admiral Pesce.

"Can you keep them bottled here until the Black Dragon returns?" He did not look sanguine about that, but squared his shoulders.

"The Tentacles will hold." Then he turned back to John.

"Can you convince the other two to break off and rendezvous with our Tentacles? We can batter them from range, let your ships take those who make it through." John nodded.

"Sounds good." The meeting kinda broke down into detail work after that, mostly Admiral Pesce talking with Tallulah, although he kept glancing at Swanson for confirmation on stuff. I guess he's good with organization, and won't back down from fighting, but fleet combat was outside his wheelhouse.

Saffron has, of course, been working the Grand Council, coordinating the fleet movements with Admiral Swanson, working with Ophelia Orange to organize her volunteer fleet into something other than a massive gaggle of ships, helping run the Seeking, and generally being in charge of everything. All my other ladies have been keeping their Temples running and managing their Tentacles as well.

I think Furtim Cauda has been working with the Trolls aboard the Black Dragon, prepping them for the kind of Marine warfare that normally would take SEALS or some shit like that, but when the Marines are seven foot tall regenerating horrors that can breathe underwater and have centuries of experience in coordinated formation fighting, that opens up options. Of course those of me on my Altars were the ones that felt the rest of everything the most. The intermittent pull of Mana from my tentacles.

The ladies all more or less constantly chatting and coordinating. I'm pretty sure I didn't actually fall asleep, but all of them but Furtim and Marie did last night. They kept up the organizing efforts in my Maw. Boardroom table and fancy projections and shit. The power of dreams, I guess. I wasn't asleep, but at some point last night kinda drifted into that half dreaming state where I could feel them there. See them, hear them. Taste them.

Not long before sunset today, each of me sitting on my Altars felt a body slip in behind me. Everything from Saffron slipping arms and legs around me in Camden Yards to Furtim Cauda pulling me into her lap in Troll Home. So weird, but all of them simultaneously held me and Worshipped me, and the sight of them there with me amplified the Worship from my congregations. Nothing like a 'fever pitch' or anything, just... My Worshippers know how I feel about my ladies. Know how I feel about them, too.

Seeing them there with me, holding me, must have flipped some kind of switch. Weird, I've never been at a Revel where I didn't take part before. Because I didn't, not really. Still, kinda fun to watch.