The Bikini Situation

it's something of an old sailor's tale from the Pacific, most of the time the only people who know these stories are the the Hakka, Tanka, and Hoklo boat people of Southeast Asia, mercenaries and subvsersives of the Python Patrol, and the fleet intelligence communities of the Eurasian Alliance (Submarine Fleet) PacRim Coalition (Micronesia Fleet Arm), and the Atlantic Federation (Space Intelligence). The Bikini situation is the name given to the Hekatonkheire that infested the wreckage of dozens of warships sunk during the Petroleum Era atomic testing program at Bikini Atoll.

The Ship of the Damned

The Bikini Situation surrounds a massive trimaran conglomeration of ship pieces. Nicknamed Cerberus, Leviathan, Frankenship, and Maelstrom, the ship is quite large and incredibly dangerous. The main hull of the hekatonkheire is the wreckage of the Japanese battleship Nagato, and the outrigger hulls are composed of the American battleship Arkansas, and the German cruise Prinz Eugen. Most of the 'creature' is underwater, and has an organic form similar to that of a whale shark, but trails tentacles almost a mile long, behind it. It is suspected that the creature uses the resurfaced hulks as it's swim bladder, so that it only has to expend energy to propel itself through the water via it's large tail. The creature has grown dozens of braces between the ships, effectively welding them together into a single structure. Likewise, their superstructures have grown, encrusted with both centuries of marine growth and it own infestation.

Attempts have been made by all three powers to destroy the mega-hekatonkheire, and thus far, all have failed. The Eurasian Alliance sent a submarine squadron to destroy it, but of the three subs, only one returned, it with heavy damage. One submarine was destroyed, consumed and assimilated into the monster, another defected and seemingly joined it's side. It was the defector submarine that damaged the third before it could escape. The Atlantic Federation attempted bombardment with energy beams from low orbit, but the ship quickly boosted into a higher orbit as it's psi-detectors started going off the charts. The Federation, rather than lose an expensive warship decided to just monitor the situation from that point on. The Pacific Rim Coalition dispatched the Tengu Squadron to engage and destroy the ship, and to their credit, did cause a good deal of damage to it, before the entire conglomeration dove underwater. Out of range of their weapons, the squadron circled the area for days hunting the creature before assuming it had sunk due to heavy damage. The surprise attack from it damaged a pair of destroyers, and cost the squadron three surface ships, two supply vessels and a scientific vessel.

Known Abilities

The ship can reach a maximum observed surface speed of 55 knots, and its underwater speed is unknown, but assumed to be higher. It's depth rating is unknown.

Acid Cannons - the main guns of the warships still work, but rather than firing shells, they are used as tubes for projecting a corrosive digestive acid. The older blend of steel used in the guns and armor is resistant to this, but the newer Cosmic Era alloys have proven vulnerable to it. A spray of this acid can eat through ferrocermic and ferroaluminum armors quickly. Industrial and plasteel armors can actually catch fire and boil because of chemical reactions with the acid spray. The acid cannons are accurate to approximately 3 kilometers.

Flesh-devourers - taking the place of flak cannons, flesh-devourers are beetle like insects that constantly swarm around the hulk. Anything that flies too close to the hulk is harassed by these insectoids. They are little danger to metallic armors, but can foul sensors, clog air intakes, and can chew through reflexokinetic fabric armors, and in time, will find their way into anything not spacetight. Once inside, these fist sized beetles can quickly multiply, foul food supplies, ruin water storage, and inflict serious injury and death on crewmen unprepared for these tough aggressive insects.

Spore Launchers - like obscene puff ball mushrooms, the upper sections of the hulks are festooned with fleshy tubes, reminiscent of flaccid penises, that when threatened swell, and then start lobbing meter wide gooey spheres at was has come too close. These spore spheres are highly adhesive, and if not immediately removed start growing out into a thick white biomass carpet. This can compromise aerodynamics, through off balance, and quickly spread inside a ship. If humans are exposed to the spores they are rapidly infected by them, becoming first highly agitated as sight is lost, then the other senses fail, until they are little more than a goo covered basal nerve wandering around feeling for something to eat or infect. Once the host collapses, their corpse will sprout a new flesh tube, a new spore launcher, just a good deal smaller than the original.

Venomids - Appearing like a hybrid of a doughy maggot crossed with a wingless wasp, venomids find their way into ships that approach the hulk. They have a nasty bite, are tough enough to survive being stomped or shot, and have hypodermic abdomens that let them pump up to a liter of venom into anything foolish enough to get close. The venom is a corrosive neurotoxin that causes both paralysis as well as turning the sting site into a soup filled abscess the size of a basketball. If the resultant liqufication of flesh and organs is rapidly fatal to the victim, they can survive long enough to see the venomids start using the pus hole in their torso as a soup line.

Defenses

Aside from being able to dive and resurface as it sees fit, the creature has a number of parapsychic defensive abilities.

Psionic Shroud - mimicking the function of shroud technology, the hekatonkhiere can make itself and the area around it invisible/opaque to electronic surveillance. This has made non-optical tracking of the hulk near impossible.

Psionic Sensors - the hekatonkheire has psionic abilities that verge on precognizance. Plans and missions launched to find and destroy it ultimately fail because it can simply be aware that it is being sought out. The most effective attacks against the hekatonkheire have been incidental or accidental in nature, ala scouting missions in force where surprised recon fighters dropped their ordnance against it and fled.

Psionic Mind-Control - the hekatonkheire is quite old and biologically sophisticated. It can focus it's psionic ability on a ship and brainrape the entire crew into serving it, as an aquatic alien god. Because of this, it frequently has a flotilla of slaved ships that follow it around. If it becomes hungry it simply eats one of it's own ships, and it's crew. These enthralled ships and their crews are more than willing to go and hunt others to bring back to it, and have become something of a problem in Micronesia. They can arrive at a lone atoll, swarm ashore, and take the entire populace, indeed the entire biomass of the island, back to the sea, to feed their hungry god.

The White Admiral

The hekatonkheire has a herald, one who speaks for it, and it is the White Admiral. The White Admiral has the appearance and memories of Captain David Ogden Peters. Captain Peters, deceased in the Battle of Guadalcanal over 3 centuries in the past, appears human, but in a faux naval tunic that is actually made of the same bioplasm that the hekatonkheire is composed of. There are structures that resemble epaulets, and medals, but it is all the same monochrome ghastly pale flesh. Most of this is documented, as Peters will communicate with other ships via a psionic channel. This is usually through a 'Mindworm' attack that turns a crewman into a mouthpiece for Peters. After being used thusly, the human in question is usually left in a vegetative state. Thankfully, this probing can be shielded against, and if Peters has already turned a crewman into a receiver, it will generally keep using that one crewman.

There has been a single serious attempt on Peters, with a team of Nipponese Kunoichi assassins being sent in a shrouded ship. The target wasn't made known to any member of the team, or the crew of the INS Ibukikaze. The kanmusu ship had it's instructions parceled out into 13 modules, so that even the ship didn't know where it was going until it was there. The planners worked through a network of deception, with different departments planning the mission without known the target, or if it was a drill or not, so that the fleet could work around the entity's seeming ESP. To their credit, the mission succeeded in taking the hekatonkheire by surprise, but the team failed to disable the monster or kill it's herald.

The White Admiral is powerful, manifesting parapsychic powers including a sort of internalized phase barrier. It deflected our projectile and beam weapons, and even blunted our shaped charges. The only thing that disrupted the barrier was using our own parapsychic abilities against it. We damaged the barrier, and even blew a large chunk out of the Admiral's head. His hat, it was part of his body, and the ragged flaps bled, the hat was bleeding because he wasn't wearing clothes, his clothes are made of his actual flesh. We lost half of the team to a psionic attack, the rest were either eliminated so they couldn't join the monster, or were lost in the water. The hull isn't solid. There are mouths and tendrils everywhere. Those who jumped into the water to escape were all eaten. All of them.

The Dark Tide

One of the strange phenomena that surround the monster is the appearance of dark tides. During these events, the water itself takes on a darker color, and appears like a completely different ocean surging into the Pacific. Typically it is darker in color, as much as 30 degrees colder, and is completely lifeless. Sea life will flee from a dark tide.

Dark Tides also affect the tsukalocity of a region, which will alter the performance of arcanotech devices, as well as parapsychic abilities. Ships will experience an uptick of performance, and things like energy weapons will not act in their normal fashion. The enhanced range and power can be problematic as the computers and targeting systems are generally not as affected by this change, and are calibrated for normal operations. Accordingly, the accuracy of such weapons is decreased as the targeting systems will be aiming short by accident. Weapons that are not arcane in nature, or those that use iron sights or alternate targeting systems are not affected.