The Cyrene Fleet
Free Ship Cyrene
Type of Vessel: Motor Torpedo Boat Tender
Size: 5100 GRT, 11,000 long tons (loaded), 410 ft long, 60 ft beam, 22.5 ft draft
Speed: 14 knots
Complement: rated 289; current complement 200
Armament: 1 Mark 12 5”38 caliber gun; 6 twin 40 mm guns; 24 single 20 mm guns
Support ships 8-12 armed PT boats (copies of the Elco 80-foot model).
Affiliation: currently, the Fukien Coastal Self-Defense Council (the name changes every few months)
Officially, the USS Cyrene was seized by mutineers prior to the armistice with Japan. What records exist of the mutiny also officially show that the mutineers were originally listed as ‘missing in action’ prior to 1945, and who conveniently disappeared after the Cyrene was delivered to an anonymous consortium based out of the breakaway Chinese province of Fukien. The current crew complement are mostly American, all honorably discharged – and most of them were on the Cyrene, just before they unaccountably were transferred out immediately before the aforementioned mutiny.
There are only four people with access to and knowledge of the Cyrene file, and all four feel that this constructed backstory was unnecessarily complex. The point is that the Free Ship Cyrene is the ostensibly independent flagship of a fleet of privateering commerce raiders. The vessels it services (and under its command) are increasingly locally-made copies of 80 foot Elco PT boats, and have proved adept in capturing civilian ships, raiding isolated Japanese outposts, or inserting material and men into remote locations for various shadowy organizations – all without any official link to American forces in the Pacific.
None of this fools the IJN, although the fiction means that the Japanese are forced to classify the Cyrene and her crews as ‘pirates,’ to be hanged or simply sunk on sight. This means that the Cyrene fleet operates mostly in the triangle formed by the Philippines, New Guinea, and the Marianas. From there, the Cyrene can direct operations either west to the South Asian Sea, or east to harass Japanese resupply of Ponape and the Marshall Islands. And then there’s all those contracts the ship keeps getting to patrol up near something called “Monster Island”…
The crew of the Cyrene and its PT boats are best described as freebooters or filibusters: none of them object in the slightest to furthering Allied interests in the Pacific, but they are equally adamant about doing well by doing good. They won’t commit treason, and are disciplined enough to avoid committing atrocities just for fun; but it can be a hard life in the South Pacific. You can’t always take prisoners. Or keep the ones you have. Or be too dainty about how you further those Allied interests.
In other words, it’s not necessarily true that the Cyrene fleet will find itself on the same side as, say, a group of adventurers with a strong moral code. Particularly if it involves something that is independent of Allied interests in the Pacific – like, say, a treasure map. Freebooters love treasure maps; it’s practically free money. All you have to do is go there… first.
Some day I am going to play The Day After Ragnarok. Someday. *le sigh*