Rosyth Dockyard, Firth of Forth

29 January, 2004

The sideparty in their crisp dark blue uniforms was marred by the black-and-green flash of the Morsmordre. Still, it was necessary to represent their service to the Dark Lord, even if the colours didn't exactly match, the patches standing out against the background of dirty snow against the blue of the Firth and the grey of the ship's hull behind them.

They stood alongside the aircraft carrier Inflexible, the largest in Voldemort's Navy. She had a very fine hull, 293.5 metres long. Her overhanging flight deck thrust her out longer, from the tips of the steam catapults to the landing approach lights aft, near the end of the angled deck. Her single massive funnel was separated from the bridge tower, which was situated forward, and made her look a bit like the 1920s vintage American Lexington and Saratoga.

A subtle hint of her origin was in the metal bulges which extended out from the regular hull, curving but still somewhat awkward additions, starting above the water-line and descending below it; painted black to contrast the grey of the hull, until they met the red below the waterline. The hangar and flight deck were built up off of them, and the elevators hung over them. Like a battleship converted to an aircraft carrier—or the unfinished Italian Aquila.

In fact, the trim, dusky-skinned, handsome man who stood before the ship knew well that she was quite risky to take as his flagship. Certainly, the VLS cells loaded with Aster 15 would provide some anti-air cover, and if they failed, the six Goalkeepers were a last ditch. Her hull was stronger than a normal merchant, too, and sure, the bulges added some protection against torpedoes—marginally. He acknowledged the salutes, then, and stepped aboard, up the gangway, made slick with melted snow.

The man appeared perfectly calm; but most of Voldemort's Lieutenants would have felt justly wary at going to sea with their flagship being the converted ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2. The British shipbuilding industry might be the most intact in the world after the nuclear exchanges, but it was still a ruin through economic forces and the decline of the Empire and the fleet. The Dark Lord's brave new world did not need ocean liners—Muggles did not need luxuries, and why would a Wizard ever take such a thing—but it did certainly need warships, to carry the fight to the wizards and muggles too stupid to give in to his ambition. When refitted with diesel-electric propulsion in the late 1980s, she had made 34 kts on trials. That was enough to justify her conversion.

The hangar and deck were packed with navalised Typhoons for air defence—sixteen of them—but it was a force of an equal number of elderly Blackburn Buccaneers which served the attack role. Stripped of modern electronics, they had been enchanted to make them more or less stealth aircraft—more than making up for their old bones, even if it had been done out of simple necessity due to delays in fielding the fully capable F3 ground-attack version of the Rafale-M by the Morsmordre. As he made his way up to the bridge, the man shook his head. He had quickly become familiar with the full panoply of muggle technology. There were the ironically named "Merlin" helicopters on the deck, six in total for S&R and ASW, and American E-2s too, even though they were almost too big for the elevators, but four of them had been wedged on anyway. The men, of course, had her fully dressed, lining the rails.

"M'Lord," the Captain greeted him as he reached the bridge.

Blaise Zabini smiled assiduously, betraying no smirk on his face. "Captain Palliser." There was none of that 'may you live forever' rot in the Navy.

"When will Admiral Lowe arrive, M'lord?"

"Tomorrow, two hours before we sail," Blaise answered with a mild shrug. "Is she ready for inspection? I will do it myself."

"Of course, M'lord." They saluted, and Captain Arthur Palliser fell in alongside the new commander of Voldemort's Navy.

The Inflexible 's Captain was responsible for the actions of three thousand and five hundred muggles assigned to this single ship. With them were ten wizards. And ten wizards living on a cramped ship with three thousand and five hundred muggles was not precisely a choice assignment. They were all Half-Bloods, except for the ones that were outright Mudbloods with Certificates of Purification.

Some had been shocked that Blaise had sought out the appointment, but others knew better. They could see a man who understood the importance of the Main Chance. While the situation was unpleasant, demonstrating himself as an effective commander in this position would put him in the highest circles of the regime, and Blaise Zabini was nothing if not a skilled social climber.

They showed him his cabinet first. The furniture was beautiful old mahogany, there were paintings of past naval engagements in it, a sitting couch, wooden end-tables, a fine four-poster bed. The ceiling also had visible pipes running across it, labelled according to their function. She had lost much from the days she had been the last Trans-Atlantic Liner.

Then there were the inspections, the tours, the speeches by experienced men who were made nervous by the presence of the trim and handsome Slytherin Wizard—a man who could have them put to death in a heartbeat, despite his youth. Still, the First Sea Lord—that was a title which was retained, even if the application was mangled, under Voldemort's regime—gave no appearance of cruelty, or indeed caring about the muggles enough to be cruel toward them. Captain Palliser gradually seemed to grow more comfortable around him, thinking that, in the course of getting his ticket punched by commanding the fleet, he might be a half-decent man as far as the recent commanders had gone. He had been quick to dismiss the men to their regular duties, too.

It all seemed relatively normal, even positive, until they returned to the Lord's quarters. Blaise turned toward Captain Palliser, and asked, still with that diffident tone in his voice, "is she ready for a sortie?"

"Yes. Four hours notice to get underway, M'Lord."

"Good," Blaise chuckled. "Get your sleep while you can, Captain." With that, he shut the steel hatch in Captain Palliser's face—not like the man minded much. Wizards had treated him rather worse before.

But it was an enigma right up until, nine hours later, they received an emergency order to sail.


East of Kalmar, Sweden

29 January, 2004

The metaphorical equivalent of the Queen Elizabeth 2 converted into an aircraft carrier was currently 760 nautical miles away making steering way through the heavy pack ice south west of the Swedish island of Gotland. Named the Admiral Kornilov after the hero of the Crimean War, she was smaller than her cousin in the Red Banner Northern Fleet, but unlike the Admiral Kuznetsov, relied on KN-3 nuclear reactors for propulsion; in fact, she used the parts and materials of the engineering plant for the sixth cruiser of Projekt 1144 " Orlan" which had been scrapped at St. Petersburg several years before the war began, supplemented by some additional components and the catapults meant to be installed in the carrier Ulyanovsk which had been cancelled with the fall of the Union.

In short, she had been thrown together out of the bits and pieces of several naval projects, in a desperate state of urgency to create a new warship. She would have been finished as a member of the class of Projekt 1144 if they'd had the electronics; they didn't, so she was a carrier instead, packed with Mig-29Ks.

Following in her wake was a crisp line of destroyers, mostly of Projekt 956 Sarych (there was also a sole Projekt 1155.1 Fregat which had been towed away unfinished from the Yantar yards at Kaliningrad to Helsinki before the Oblast had fallen to Voldemort's troops, and later completed by the Finns for the Russian Navy), but a few 956EMs originally meant for the Chinese. Those, in a note of pride for Hermione, hoisted the White Ensign, and made use of the remaining naval crews from the Morsmordre's Black Sea Fleet who had not been needed to crew the HMS Galatea. As usual, the Russians should have liked to crew them on their own, but trained men were too useful to pass up.

Of course, it was too godawful cold to stay there looking at the ships for long. And the real star of the show at the moment was ahead of them, anyway. The 50 let Pobedy, the nuclear powered icebreaker "50 Years Since Victory" was leading the way, with the other icebreakers of the Baltic Fleet around them, providing support, keeping the pack ice away from the lines of warships.

The grey sky was omnipresent above, but that was better than the perfect white-out that would exist if the clouds were to clear. A harsh wind ripped down across the bridge wing of the Admiral Kornilov, seeming to slice through the greatcoat and the uniform and the two layers of long underwear under the uniform that Hermione was wearing. The horizon seemed to disappear in a dizzying mirage of ice stretching toward infinity until it met with the clouds above.

The massive icebreaker was their secret weapon. It was ramming its way through the thick ice of the Baltic in a January kissed by nuclear winter, not stopping for anything, no need to back-and-ram as the lesser icebreakers might. Their course would take them to the north of the Danish island of Bornholm, screened from the European mainland and Voldemort's forces, as much as they could be.

Once, in retreat during the First World War against the threat of seizure by the Germans, the Red Fleet had fallen back from Tallinn to Helsingfors—modern Helsinki—and then to Petrograd through the ice, in the Ice Cruise of the Baltic Fleet.

Now they were on another ice cruise—but it was an offensive, not a retreat. After turning to the west north of Bornholm, they would make for the Oresund.

Then the Kattegat.

Then the Skagerrak.

Admiral Kornilov's destination was the ice-free port of Stavanger on the southwest Norwegian coast, and with her, the whole of the Baltic Fleet.

They were breaking out.

A slight figure who seemed bundled in five layers emerged from the protection of the enclosed bridge, and visibly winced as the savage wind across the ice caught her, high on the tower of the carrier. Her black hair was caught by the wind, and whipped out behind her.

Hermione grinned.

Bellatrix hated the sea after Azkaban. But between her sister's plan and Hermione's insistence at accompanying the fleet, the outcome had been preordained. Instead of taking the train to Stavanger, Bella had decided to risk the danger of the breakout, and come along.

"This, Granger, is too. Damned. Cold." She muttered when she got close enough for her voice to carry over the wind. But there was a glint in her eyes. There was danger and chaos ahead, and for all that had changed, Bellatrix Black lived for such hours.

There was a laugh from the younger woman, leaning against the rail. "You're loving every minute of it."

"Except the cold part."

"You've got at least ten warming charms on yourself."

"I should have used twenty."


The North Sea

30 January, 2004

Palliser strained to look through the unending clouds of gloom on the horizon. There was a good chop, with the weather holding a steady AM, or Arctic Maritime wind, which had dropped the barometer to 29 inches. The wind had picked up to 25 knots, the temperature from the north wind blowing across the decks dropping toward -10F. Ice was building up on the bows and the decks and the tower of the Inflexible quite badly. For all that, it was only a Beaufort 6, and her flight deck was high enough that he was confident that if they turned two points to port to put her bow to the wind, he could cat his Typhoons off the deck. But they were kept below to keep them from icing, and if the wind hit a Beaufort 7, his only defence would be his missiles and his escorts.

And his mages.

For all of that, he was less concerned about the weather than about the command situation. Admiral Lowe had been left behind by the urgency to set sail, which meant that the new Lord of the Admiralty, whose experience with the sea he had no real idea of, was in personal command.

Through the grey and the whipping of the wind, the clouds cleared enough for him to see the Ark Royal. She had not be renamed, and the ship he had served as a First Officer on was struggling more than the Inflexible, but she was, indeed, holding formation, as they ploughed at 20kts to the east out of the Firth. The operations of the brand new Kestrels on her decks, though, would be badly impacted.

Satisfied that she was not being pounded too hard with the beam sea, Palliser turned back inside to the enclosed bridge to take his tea and go to the chart room, leaving his greatcoat on a hook. He was surprised to see that Lord Zabini was already there.

"M'lord Zabini."

"Captain. I was reviewing the situation," he answered mildly, and gestured to the maps. "If you'd care to summarise it."

"Of course, M'lord." He put the steaming mug of tea down. "So, you, of course, gave the orders, so I don't need to…"

"Quite, no need to summarise that."

"The Northern Fleet is now located at 73 North, 28 degrees, 15 minutes east," Palliser said simply. "Or was about twenty minutes ago, steaming due west at twenty-five knots. Astute read them as two carriers, three battlecruisers, eleven destroyers. But she was caught in a box by three Akulas and had to evade before she could position for a shot."

Blaise Zabini at least knew how to read a nautical chart. "Due north from North Cape and now moving west, Captain?"

"Yes, M'lord. About the same waters my grandfather helped sink the Scharnhorst in." He did not comment on the relative difference in circumstances between himself and his grandfather. No man still leaving after six years of Voldemort would.

"Is that so? Hmm." He studied the map for a moment. "If you were going to break out into the Atlantic from the North Cape, where would you go?"

"Oh, the Denmark Strait, M'lord. There'd be no other way." He looked longingly at his tea for a moment.

Blaise registered faint bemusement. "Go ahead, Captain. Stay awake."

"Thank you, M'lord." He took a gulp and then stared at the chart again, and hazarded his opinion. After all, his new commander would either listen, or the situation would get bad fast. "I don't think they're trying to break out to the Atlantic, M'lord. I think they're headed to the Trondheim Fjord."

"Explain."

"It's an ice-free, deep water harbour, much closer to our territories. It was the ideal position for a fleet-in-being during WWII; that's where the Tirpitz became the ghost of the fjords, M'lord, the ship that wing after wing of bombers kept trying to sink, until finally it was managed, after years of eating up resources well in excess of what she was really worth. Both of the Northern Fleet's carriers and all three battlecruisers, with eleven destroyers? That's the entire fleet. They would be opening the northern coast to attack if it was lost, and I don't think they're planning on a breakout with that many ships, because they don't have enough underway replenishment assets to support any kind of major operations with them. Trondheim, though? I remember the intelligence reports, the Russkies have put three regiments of Flankers there in the past four months. That's enough to provide air cover to a fleet at anchor, even if the initial assessment had been that they were to provide an active escort to bomber raids on Britain. And without satellites, who knows how many SAM regiments they've positioned in the area. As many as they think is necessary, I suspect. With the railway across Sweden from Sundsvall, they can bring in supplies from Russia proper at will. I think they're executing a strategic repositioning of the fleet to a new permanent base nearer to the area of operations."

"Hmm. How far for them, and for us?" The lights flicked off Zabini's dark robes, the chart room sharp with a dry heat threatening sweat under the massive layers that Palliser was wearing.

"They're six hundred and fifty nautical miles out from Trondheim, approximately," Palliser answered after marking it off on the map. "We're six hundred. We can force them to a surface action with the escorts, if we have to; we'd be badly outgunned, however. I don't want to put our destroyers into the range of the SS-N-19s on their Kirovs. But I'm much more confident of our ability to strike them with the Buccaneers. If we turn due north now, we'll pass near the Shetlands, so we can get support from the R-" He paused. "From the Air Force. Once we turn due north, we'll be able to get aeroplanes off the deck, and the weather should ease within the next twelve hours.

"Very good then, make it happen, Captain."

"Thank you, M'lord. By your leave?"

"Of course."

Palliser smiled faintly, and began to turn away to head onto the bridge and order the fleet to Course Zero-Zero-Zero. Due north.

But then his commander's words brought him to a halt for a moment, until both men grinned faintly at each other, despite the gulf of culture and power between them.

"It really ought to still be the Royal Air Force, shouldn't it, Captain?"

"Your Grace, Duchess Narcissa, welcome to Norway."

"My thanks, Your Highness," Narcissa acknowledged to Prince Haakon. The sharply cold wind on the tarmac at the airfield on Vigra swept across them both. Larissa followed Narcissa out of the aeroplane.

"Lady Larissa Naryshkina, of the Naryshkin family of Boyars," Narcissa introduced, though Larissa came to attention—being in uniform—and offered the Prince, in the uniform of a Rear Admiral of the Royal Norwegian Navy, a sharp salute. The Wizarding Naryshkin appellation of 'Princely' was self-styled to their closeness to the old Imperial family, and here in western Europe it would not be proper to push the matter.

"Lady Larissa," the Norwegian Prince offered to the non-Royal Russian Witch. Behind them, the engines of the IL-62M they had arrived in screamed to keep her warm. Officers assigned to rotations back in Russia would soon board and depart, if the weather held. A few trucks were clearing the taxiways of freshly fallen snow.

Then a third woman joined them, watching the children, her eyes sharp, her appearance as composed as possible. She had to be, because she had finally given in, and accepted the reality of the fact that she had been drawn into this most dangerous game that her sister was playing.

"And my sister, Lady Andromeda Black Tonks, with my niece Lady Delphini, and my nephew, Theodore." Lady Delphini. Of course, it was perfectly true; Bellatrix was the head of the House Black, and Delphini was her heir. Properly, they were ranked with Earls.

With the greetings complete, they made haste into the waiting room of the airport, which was now converted to a military airfield for a regiment of Russian Su-27s. It was kept hot, for the operational crews now filling it (And coordinated with the battalion of S-400 missiles now posted around the Gjosund), and there was Russian tea available.

"How is your father, Your Highness?" Narcissa asked politely as they took tea inside, with Norwegian pepperkakes, which were a more than adequate accompaniment which certainly delighted the children.

"He rallies, with deep faith in God, and confidence in our ultimate victory," Prince Haakon answered after a moment's pause. "But he is also comfortable."

"He has liberated the whole of his country," Narcissa answered, trying to be gentle, since the Prince's words spoke the truth eloquently enough. "Few men may claim so much in this hour of tribulation. He deserves to be comfortable, after that."

"Thank you, Duchess Narcissa." He paused for a moment, with his own tea. "You intend to duplicate the affair, do you not?"

Narcissa looked around them for a moment, and smiled regally. "Well, we'll talk about it when we reach Ålesund."

"Of course, Your Grace."

An hour later, they were there, and in one of the fine Art Nouveau hotels from the Kaiser Wilhelm's rebuilding of the city, as a gift to the Norwegian people, after the great fire of January 1904, a little more than exactly 100 years before. He had vacationed near the city, and so had contributed to its reconstruction. Afterwards, he had continued his tradition of summer vacations in the Norwegian fjords nearby—right up until the fateful summer of 1914. The German Empire had fallen, but the Art Nouveau buildings remained, and with them, the street named "Keiser Wilhelms gate" that the hotel fronted.

Here, with the Norwegian Royal House providing the accommodations, some real Scandinavian coffee had been obtained. While they drank it, a folk singers' group presented a set of traditional songs, including the 18 th century poem Zinklars Vise, a great patriotic tune about Scottish mercenaries travelling overland to Sweden who were annihilated in the Norwegian mountains in 1612, and the much more lighthearted Dronning Ellisiv, about Harald Hardrada's Russian wife. Narcissa was no friend to the memory of Harald Hardrada, but Larissa appreciated it, and such were the vagaries of fate, that enemies and bad endings of ancestors, were today the stories of triumph of allies, who fought wand to wand with you.

After they were dismissed, and a Norwegian Ministry Witch swept the room for bugs and spells, Prince Haakon looked seriously to Duchess Narcissa, who simply nodded, and did not wait for some preamble to explain the situation. "Your are correct, Your Highness. We are preparing to regain Britain. We have men in the right places, who are laying the final plans now. In a few months, the entire situation will be together, and the spring will, if fate is with us, place our forces on Britain's strand."

Haakon raised his glass in a salute. "I wish you as much fortune as we had, then, Your Grace. We have not yet received a briefly on the final plan, which I assume is in some months?"

"Yes. For the moment, all that is happening is the breakout of the fleet."

"To the Trondheimsfjorden?"

"Oh, well, the Northern Fleet is going there," Narcissa laughed. "But I'm talking about the Baltic Fleet. My apologies, Your Highness, but this had to be kept secret until the operation was well underway, and it is only now, in person, that I can tell you. The preparations were carefully concealed, but we are ready to support two fleets, one at the Trondheim Fjord, and one at Stavanger."

"Then, let me call for wine, Duchess Narcissa, so we may drink confusion to our enemies." What he didn't add was that the Baltic Fleet might well need it.


The Kattegat,

31 January 2004.

It was due east of Frederikshavn on the northern part of the Jutland, at the narrowest point of the Kattegat, athwarts the island of Læsø, that the game was up. The fleet, under strict radio and electronics emissions silence, had bid farewell to the 50 Let Pobedy and the other icebreakers, which had turned back toward Copenhagen. The Kattegat was still open water in late January, though the fringes of land had frozen, and the ice was spreading, in the aftereffects of the nuclear war; by the end of February, even all the shores and fjords of the Skagerrak would be frozen, and the ice would stretch from Skagen to Gothenburg.

They had chosen the date of the breakout to make it seem impossible, but to not quite be really impossible. And that was badly needed now, as Hermione looked to the west, from an aircraft carrier—hideously vulnerable to enemy gunfire when in confined water—that was speeding to the northwest. It was Læsø that was the problem. Even with experienced Swedish pilots guiding the fleet, the easternmost ship in the combined force could stand only 39km from the island of Læsø, which was easy range for the Morsmordre 155mm field cannon stationed on the island to support the garrison.

When her magnification spell clearly showed the men running to the guns across the packed snow, she knew that the game was up. She picked up the headset and activated the intercom from the bridge wing to the bridge. "Admiral Vershinin, we are about to come under attack from Læsø."

"Councilor Granger, this is Admiral Vershinin. I have General Black with me. Shall we break radio silence?"

"I recommend it. They will begin firing in another few minutes. Go to quarters and prepare all the witches. And signal the Second Bomber Aviation Regiment—we will need support."

"Understood. Stand by to shield the fleet to your best ability, Councilor. I have rung bells for twenty-nine knots, and we are going to action stations."

Deep in the hull, the nuclear reactors saw their control rods rise. Saturated steam from the nuclear plant was superheated through the secondary diesel firing boilers, and the governors on the turbines were released. The screws turned faster through the bitterly cold waters of the Kattegat, and Hermione, even through her thick gloves, could feel the shudder in the hull as the revolutions on the screws rapidly increased—causing cavitation—transmitted right up to the bridge wing railings.

With a shrug, she turned back toward the west. A rippling of a dozen flashes signaled that the field cannon on Læsø were firing. She raised her wand to the sky and cast a broad-effect Protego. Four other wizards and witches on the carrier joined her in expanding its reach and strength.

And then there was a sixth wand. With a bright laugh only a half-step removed from her cackle, Bellatrix joined her.

The First Battle of the North Sea had begun.

Only a very select group of people, clustered on the bridge wing of the Admiral Kornilov, knew that Narcissa had rigged the deck in advance.


Notes:

1. "First Sea Lord" is a traditional title of the ranking Admiral in charge of naval operations in the UK. But here, it's been appropriated so that the Sea Lords are wizards, and the regular Admirals are muggles serving under them.

2. Information on the various projects of Russian ships are available on Wikipedia - but in segments from a Russian or allied POV, I use the Russian Project numbers, and in Western segments, I use the NATO code names and class names. So for example, Projekt 1144 Orlan is the Kirov-class in the West.

3. Yes, I did seriously have the QE2 ocean liner converted into an aircraft carrier. I may ultimately succeed in getting one of my ship nerd friends to draw a picture of this.