The Maelstrom
Bellatrix woke after too little sleep, but of course, it was always too little sleep, now. Even on the best of nights, she could remember the screams in her mind and soul. Hermione quieted them, just enough to make a night with her more bearable than one without. So, the elder witch rolled over, and hugged her lover, and was tangled into her—the bed was much too small for gestures of affection.
Her muscles were sore.
You should have slept apart. But she would have never gotten any sleep at all, then.
Bellatrix grabbed her wand from the bedstand, and pointed it at the teapot. Muttering something half incoherent, the effort still proved adequate to get it boiling.
Hermione stirred under her, reaching up and grabbing—hands, tracing, groping at her breasts. "Mmmnn, not enough time for that, pet," she laughed, shaking her head, and pressed down to plant a kiss on Hermione's lips.
"Was just trying to figure out where you were," Hermione muttered, her face covered in Bella's tangled falling hair. Some got in her mouth. "Mmff."
"Serves you right for groping me an hour before a battle," Bella continued nonetheless, laughing, and pushing herself upright to clear the way for Hermione. Her head felt like shit, but the usual energy, the intensity of anticipation, surged within her. It had not failed her yet. She got up and walked, as naked as the day she were born, to the enchanted teapot. A thick dark glass was measured out as she turned, cupping it in her hands, as Hermione padded over to get her own. In her bare feet, she could feel the rumbling of the deck below. They were running at speed.
Hermione pushed up against her, holding her own glass. It wasn't uncomfortable aboard the Ushakov, the steam heat worked just fine. So they stood there, two mostly naked witches pressed up against each other, taking a precious moment to drink tea.
The clock chimed. The end came too fucking fast. Bellatrix sat her glass down, and pecked Hermione on the cheek with a gleeful grin that she just couldn't help. "Come on, my brilliant witch. Captain Klimov and his crew will be waiting for us to work our magic." Inside, her need for vindication warred with her fear of old memories.
Azkaban, sitting there in the grip of the cruel sea. The sea was around her, she could feel it in the bones of the ship. Just like the sea was omnipresent in the hammer of the waves against the walls of Azkaban.
Azkaban, built like the prow of a demon ship facing into the worst of the prevailing winds. The massive, smooth, magically constructed tower of the main prison—the main part where Bellatrix had been held—was almost designed to take the surf, having been built on a rock outcropping which was barely above water at low tide. Near to it had been the larger proper Island, rendered Unplottable. Here, a more traditional fortress had been built centuries before, where less threatening prisoners and the limited non-Dementor staff lived. It was also where the burying ground for prisoners who died incarcerated was maintained.
Getting to spot the island out of a window of the great triangular tower had been one of the only diversions from the endless wet grey stone and pounding waves. Now, Bellatrix hastily dressed with that vision locked in her mind. Even with the rest of her body naked, she had hidden her arm, even from her lover. But on her bare right wrist remained the scar of her shackles in Azkaban.
There were too many scars to keep track of to hide them all.
Somehow, seeing them didn't make Hermione change her mind.
I'm not in Azkaban. I'm alive today. Here. Right now. What do I have? I have my wand. My daughter is safe. Two booted feet, on the deck of a warship.
My lover is standing next to me. Bellatrix glanced slowly to Hermione, who, finishing buttoning her uniform jacket, was gesturing toward the door. It was time to go.
Bellatrix hastily finished cinching her corset, her uniform jacket worn over it. Today, she would use all the protection that the dragon-skin armour could give her. She left the jacket unbuttoned. Klimov and his crew could deal. A ghost of a smile traced across her lips, and it was intensely dangerous. Who has ever needed more in all of the world than what I have right now?
Glove to skin, she took Hermione's hand, and holding hands they turned for the door and opened it. Only then, in public, they let go. Hermione fell in, military regulation, a half step behind and to the left. Their boots snapped crisply against the decking.
Crewmen going about their business came to attention and saluted as Bellatrix and Hermione marched down the corridors and up the ladders from deck to deck. To them, they were a General and a Colonel. Two death-dealing magic users.
You probably think we're monsters, but we're your monsters, Bellatrix smirked wolfishly. She understood, a bit, why Narcissa had started to play muggle politics. There was something gratifying about the gestures of respect.
They were on the bridge within a minute. Klimov saluted—he had a shadow on the parts of his face where he didn't keep a beard, now. His expression was grim, and Hermione lost all expression on her face as she saw it. From the interplay, Bellatrix immediately knew that something was wrong.
"General, Colonel," he addressed them. "Right on time, thank you. We have a developing problem."
"Go on," Bellatrix sighed. An orderly offered tea, she took the cup automatically.
"We will be at the launch position for the first salvo in thirty minutes, as planned. However, in another twelve minutes a force of forty-two attack planes is going to be hitting us. The Admiral Kornilov group is already under heavy air-sea attack by another force, and they cannot provide a CAP for us. The squadron will be relying on our air-defence missiles and," he smiled thinly, "magic."
"We'll start on the missiles immediately, and then engage the enemy from the deck when they attack," Bellatrix smiled over her cup of tea. "Swat a few down for me if you would? We'll see who gets more."
She drained the rest with a convulsive jerk of her hand, feeling the heat burn in her throat. "Let's go, Hermione. It's time."
Klimov tipped a salute to them and turned away to face his crew. "Comrades! Prepare for anti-air battle!"
Hermione barely had enough time to put down her tea—Bellatrix grinned wickedly—as the elder witch reached out and grabbed her hand. "There will be time for more later!" Abruptly, they both disapparated.
"Fuck! Bella, give me more warning!" Hermione was exclaiming as they now both stood by the first of the open missile silos on the foredeck. The ship's alarms that howled around them seemed distant and muted as the fog closed in.
Bella tossed her head back and laughed, full of joy and hope and wild delight. "You're lovely when you're flustered! Let's get to work!" Clambering down in the scaffolding, pressed close and tight—the close quarters would be intimate, if not for the shortness of the time in which they had to work. It took the two of them three minutes to complete the work—climb down, one minute and thirty seconds to complete the intricate set of six involved spells they had agreed to—climb out and move to the next missile tube with Hermione five seconds behind, her job to secure the hatches on the missiles as they left one to go on to the next, and then support Bella with three of the spells that needed two witches to complete.
They got through enchanting the nuclear warheads on three P-700 'Granit' missiles before the first of the powerful S-300F SAMs tore out of the launchers toward one of the incoming targets. A burst of light and a rapidly laid column of white smoke rising into the mist marked each one of the missiles, as several of the ships in the dispersed, anti-nuclear-attack formation began to fire. The shots from distant ships were visible as strange flickers of light through the mist.
"One more, come on, Bella, we can do it, that's all we need to hit Azkaban!" Hermione was exclaiming, urging her own.
We need to defend the ship, too, Bella thought, but the temptation was much too great. They absolutely needed to be ready to launch. And they had time. Those were long-range missiles being fired now. Together they dropped down, and worked on the last of the P-700s.
The missiles were still firing as they completed the work, but now the Osa-Ms were firing too. The enemy was coming in very close, moving supersonic to close through the missile fire, then making their final targeting approaches.
Bella leapt her lover's shoulders to the deck and steadied herself, a leather gloved hand yanking Hermione the rest of the way into the salt spray and metal. The first four missiles were ready, that was the batch aimed at Azkaban. Now the enemy was coming out. " Revelatio Hostilis, " she commanded, creating around her a set of red dots that projected to the locations of the enemy; she aimed her wand against them, and cast them in the distance, with lead, against the buzzing dots which showed her where her foes were.
Hermione was at her side, marking off of her own spell. They were united together in purpose. Some of the dots vanished… But the ability of the combat system to manage the situation was being completely overwhelmed. The enemy was coming in much too fast.
So they switched to Protego. In fact, they managed to shield the ship's bow with perfect effect. The Tornadoes coming in were each carrying two 2000lb "Paveway III" laser-guided bombs. As they tore overhead, Hermione and Bellatrix turned their attention from the fighters themselves to bouncing the bombs off quickly cast shields.
Three, four, five, seven… Of forty-two fighters that had begun the attack, only four had closed to drop their bombs on the Admiral Ushakov. The witches and wizards aboard got seven of them.
The explosion as the 2000lb semi-armour piercing bomb detonated in the starboard quarter shook Bellatrix down to her marrow. The ship seemed to lurch beneath them, as a massive red fireball rose, and the concussive blast along the deck sent electronic components, parts of missile launchers and gun mounts, flying into the air, and wrecked some of the ship's boats. Flames licked angrily and immediately up through the hole in the deck where the buckled superstructure was obscured by roiling columns of smoke. She was driven to her knees on the deck.
Hermione dragged her back to her feet. "Come on, Bella!" She was calling. "We've got to finish."
"We've got to save the ship," Bella exclaimed instead, gesturing aft to where the flames licked across the deck. The Admiral Ushakov was immense, and had extensive armour. The smoke was still coming from her funnel, she was still running at speed toward the launch point for the missiles, some of her radars were still up and tracking, some of the missile launchers and AK-630 mounts were still turning, adjusting, preparing for the potential for another attack. Crewmen were moving with purpose across the deck, hauling heavy pumps and fire-fighting hoses.
"Alright… I trust your judgement," Hermione murmured, and reached out and grabbed her hand again. "This time, ready!"
They arrived on the bridge just in time to see Captain Klimov looking through his binoculars to the west, at a huge column of smoke and flame licking high into the sky, obscuring whatever it was from. "We lost the Admiral Kharlamov, " he was noting grimly to his executive officer.
"Well, we haven't the time for that," Bellatrix snapped, ignoring the stiff expression from Hermione. It was a lot of dead muggles and probably some dead wizards sure, but they just did not have the time for regrets at the moment. "Captain Klimov, how bad is the damage?"
"The fire is spreading aft. There's a risk of a detonation in the 10cm gun magazines, so I've already ordered them flooded," he answered in a distracted voice. "General, you should have moved on to arming—enchanting, whatever—the RPK-3s. We don't have enough time."
The RPK-3s were easier to get to, but they didn't normally have the range for the attack on the Chunnel. They would have to be enchanted to make their fuel last longer—another complicated spell that they had drilled in advance.
"And the ship?!" Bellatrix answered, a small part of her admiring Klimov's calmness but mostly just tense, herself.
"The longer we stay at speed, the further aft the fire will spread. We will fight it—God help us. But for the moment we have power, we have our attack missiles, we are holding course, the flooding is minimal. So, we will hold course and speed and continue the attack. But, General, there is a second wave of fighters coming in, and we are getting close to exhausting our air-defence missiles. Between yesterday and now this attack, we have been in heavy combat. Now we will have to orbit the second launch position to wait while you finish enchanting the missiles."
"Can we launch the P-700s now?" Hermione asked tautly, flickering her eyes to Bellatrix. But they held faith, not anger, at Bella's decision to retreat back to the bridge. It made Bellatrix feel ashamed.
Klimov looked down at the deck to see about the crews removing the scaffolding. Apparently, he was satisfied. "Yes, we can, Colonel." Klimov picked up one of the internal phones; he pressed the switch for the weapons officer whose duty was surface action engagement. "Have the computers adjust the inertial trajectory for an immediate launch of the full P-700 battery, Commander. Clear the forward deck! Stand by to fire."
"Sir!" Alarms sent any sailors near the massive battery of twenty heavy anti-ship missiles clearing out of the area, just after they had finished clearing the tubes of the nuclear armed missiles. Flashing lights indicated the deck to be clear, even as the fires spread aft. The targeting computer showed the inertial course toward Azkaban. The missiles were enchanted to home terminally on magic.
It would have to be enough. With a tongue of flame behind them, the massive missile rose into the air at near to a forty-five degree angle above and ahead of the ship. The first of them. In twenty seconds they had launched three. In one minute, eight. The nuclear-tipped missiles were mixed in with the conventional missiles, so that the defences of Azkaban were less likely to take out the nuclear tipped ones. A shell game. A matter of probabilities.
Then the RPK-3s would fire, toward the Strait of Dover. But with their magical enchantments on their range, the defences in Azkaban would easily disable them if they were not taken out first. Well, they were now attacking Azkaban, with weapons that a multi-month effort had been put into making possible the destruction of Azkaban. Bellatrix bit down on her teeth until they hurt, and that just reminded her, as she clenched her jaw, how like as not she'd have broken a tooth doing that only a year before—thanks to Azkaban.
Sixteen…
"How will you prepare the RPK-3s?" Klimov turned to her brusquely. He was an experienced officer and the sight of a full ripple launch of the P-700s on his ship was not enough to distract him from the many urgent tasks around him, of which the most urgent was the launch of the enchanted RPK-3s in the next attack.
How am I going to do it, exactly? We don't have enough time.
Oh, that's obvious. Bella smiled a positively winning smile. "I'm going to use the ship's electrical grid to reach out and enchant all of the missiles at once."
Klimov stared for a moment. "I thought that was impossible."
"Not for her, Captain," Hermione looked with wonder at Bellatrix, a wonder that Bellatrix felt distinctly too kind at the moment. She hadn't actually done it yet, after all, and there was a… You're a fucking Black, and you're not going to fail.
She took her wand out. The launch of the ship's main battery had been completed. Twenty P-700 missiles were now heading at supersonic speeds toward the fortress of Azkaban. More to the point, if they were about to come under heavy air attack again, the ship no longer had a massive part of her forward section filled with vulnerable rocket fuel. And she had completed the first half of her mission.
The ship's power flickered, and flickered again. Glowing blue, energy from Bella's wand suffused into the walls. The computers' monitors overrode their normal displays with strange semi-fractal wave functions.
Klimov, turning back from giving orders to his chief damage control officer, stared at them for a moment, and whispered behind Bellatrix, to Hermione: "this could impact our ability to successfully target the incoming strike wave with the defensive missiles."
Bellatrix ignored them. She pulled out every spell of electrical magic that she had developed. She forged them all toward war. She thought of Hermione, she thought of a happy Hermione, at peace. She thought of Delphini. Damn you all, I am going to do it. There's only one way out of this war—forward.
They were all behind her, they were all counting on her. Whether or not she would be remembered as Judas or Bernadotte come again very much depended on the way she improvised her spells to do things she had never imagined as a teenager, in the heat of the moment. To turn the electronics into a magical carrier wave function to transmit the information of other spells. The magical energy left her muscles and nerves tingling with backfeed from the electrical leads. Left them both feeling it, like a mild electrical current running through their bodies...
For Hermione stepped up to her side and joined in the spells that needed both of them, sending them to all of the missiles at once. Together, they did it, holding nothing back. There was a little enchanted monitor on the bridge, made to provide Klimov with the status of the missiles, when it had been supposed they would be enchanting them all while belowdecks.
Now, it flickered to green.
"Sir, we are reading two three, repeat two three fighters entering the outer air defence envelope range!"
Bellatrix sagged back and collapsed into Hermione's arms. "It's done, Captain!" Hermione shouted. "We've got three minutes before they're in laser-guided bomb range, that's enough time, launch them all, launch them all!"
Around them, men were pulling connections to computers and electronics and shoving them back in again, checking their watches with growing nervousness and watching screens of old electronics slowly rebooting, muttering curses.
Klimov picked up the intercom again. "Weapons, commence the RPK-3 engagement." He slowly lowered the phone and looked to Hermione. "Colonel, if you and the General can still fight, we need you badly. The air defence computers are still re-starting."
Her muscles randomly sparking, Bellatrix twitched while leaning into Hermione's arms, forged so strong by the hardship of war. "Bella," she could hear her lover saying, "we need you. We need you. You've done it, we've launched the attack, but if we're going to survive, Bella, we need you! "
You just attacked Azkaban. Can't you muster enough energy to celebrate your victory? Fuck you! She screamed at herself, right up until Bella started cackling. She laughed hysterically. She gripped so hard onto Hermione's arm that her lover winced in pain, and then, seeing the resolution within her, began to drag her to the bridge wing.
The last of the modified anti-submarine missiles leapt from the launchers. Fourteen in all, travelling south, counting that Azkaban would not be there to stop them when it counted, laden with magic—and nukes. Hermione dragged her out onto the bridge wing. It had started raining, but it was doing nothing against the growing fires aft.
Fire… Fire.
"We don't have enough time to whittle their numbers, Bella, what can we do?" Hermione was crying out in agitation as she readied a Protego.
Fire.
Bellatrix cast a quick electrical detection spell. She could feel the power of the re-started radars, brought back on-line too late for the engagement envelope of the long-range S-300F missiles. The Osa missiles were firing, but one of the two launchers had been disabled by the first bomb hit. It was not nearly enough. The AK-630s were getting ready to fire, at point-blank, to try and shoot down the bombs out of the sky. The rest of the fleet was firing every last missile they had left with all the desperate intensity the weapons officers and missile-men could manage.
They had no air cover…
But that means there's nobody in the way.
No preparation, no complex spells. Bellatrix had just been channelling magic through electricity in wires. Now she channelled magic through electricity in the air—radar waves. No time for targeted spells. She pulled herself up from another spasm and smiled at Hermione, at her lover at the end of her rope. Don't worry, pet.
She straightened up and snapped her wand-hand through the motion, with only a small variation.
But an absolutely critical one.
"Fiendfyre Elektra!"
Using the radar waves as a carrier wave function, she projected a casting of Fiendfyre through the air, with the magic, living fire spreading everywhere there was the carrier wave—which meant everywhere in a rising cone around the ship. It singed the masts of the other ships. The sheer heat of the sheer intensity of the flame made the flags on the tops of some spontaneously combust as a wall of flame spread over them.
Bellatrix could feel her skin sunburning under the intensity of the flame above them, like it was a nuclear blast. The incoming laser-guided bombs vanished into secondary detonations in mid-air in the sky above. A few flashes on the wave-front of the fire marked the immolation of a dozen of the attacking jets.
Hermione's mouth formed into a perfect, silent "O" of shock for a moment. And then, as Bellatrix, like she were in an out-of-body experience, felt herself dropping down to the deck, Hermione turned, pounded across the deck for the door to the bridge, screaming as loudly as she could in Russian. "TURN THE RADARS OFF TURN THEM ALL OFF RIGHT NOW! KLIMOV! TURN THEM OFF TURN THEM OFF FOR THE LOVE OF GOD TURN THEM OFF!"
Bellatrix dropped down to the deck. Her muscles were shaking, she thought she might be seizing. It didn't matter, she was laughing too even if her muscles were spasming uncontrollably. "Good mudpet!" she stuttered, losing it, forgetting to be nice, forgetting to not use slurs—did it really matter right now—cackling as she collapsed into a ball, even in agony, not caring that she was in agony.
"Which one!?" some of the radar techs were shouting.
Hermione didn't know, but she did know her lover, and Bella grinned as she heard the words. "THE STRONGEST!"
Klimov flung himself against the console for the Voshkod MR-800 and directly pulled the power bus, regardless of the shutdown procedure.
The carrier wave collapsed, and the Fiendfyre above them abruptly vanished in a last roiling puff of smoke, just before the return waves curled back into the battlecruiser below.
Bellatrix curled into herself on the bridge wing, cackling and cackling. "See me now, Voldemort, you have nothing on this!"
Then one of the remaining Tornadoes, coming in late and with a pilot just skilled enough to avoid being stalled out and flung into the sea by the massive thermal shockwave in the atmosphere ahead of his aeroplane, swung back in on an attack line against the Ushakov, plainly visible in the North Sea below from the ugly column of black smoke that she was trailing from her fires aft.
Like many a man who fought for the Morsmordre, he no doubt had a family at home to keep safe from the retribution of Voldemort's secret agents. And he no doubt knew, too, that the only sure way to give them a future was to do his duty to the last bitter end. So, together with his weapons officer, they 'pickled' their bombs.
Bellatrix reached through her spasms, with her golden, enchanted left arm—grabbed the wand from her twitching right hand. " Protego! " she hissed through clenched teeth. The golden arm had no muscles to spasm, the motion was true.
One of the bombs ricocheted violently away from the ship, spinning back through the atmosphere like a top.
The second clipped the edge of the shield, but the tiny control computer in the laser seeker head was undamaged. The weapons officer in the back of the Tornado applied a last minute full correction to the guidance system. It was not enough to hit the ship full on…
...The bomb slammed into the water, again the starboard quarter was targeted, now right aft. For a moment, it seemed like a miss… And then it skipped into the side of the stern, and a huge column of white water rose into the air from the skip-hit, and the hull buckled up and surged up in a mass of twisted metal and quickly extinguished flames along the waterline.
Hermione reached her side, grabbed her, and started to drag her in. "Come on Bella, you've done enough, you've done enough, you've saved us," she was crying as she dragged Bellatrix inside. But Bella had a terrible bad feeling about it all. A terrible bad feeling.
The younger witch had just dragged her inside when it happened. They could feel magic filling their bodies. They could feel it from end to end. Even the muggles turned and looked, shifted uncomfortably, grew tense. Klimov, receiving the damage control report from the latest hit, froze in place.
For a brief and unsteady, sickening moment, they could all feel the ship pushed up under them, accelerating upwards, so that they were forced into the deck. It felt like a rocket or an aeroplane taking off, but almost straight up, and seemed to come from nothing. The sea around them boiled unnaturally.
A massive pulsating magical energy field of green and black colours flickered and rose in the sky above, and then, reflected like from a funhouse mirror within, a massively enlarged mushroom cloud towered in the sky.
"My God…" Klimov muttered, and softly, and more terrifying for being soft.
"Pet," Bellatrix cried, not caring that they were in public now, not now. "What in Merlin's name is going on?"
Hermione pressed herself to the bridge windows ahead and looked at the terrible sight rising into the sky, for Bella's sake, the older woman still collapsed on the deck of the ship. "I think… I think, Bella… We just got Azkaban."
The helmsman turned toward Klimov. "Captain, she's still not answering the helm! We're turning through two hundred degrees and continuing to circle to starboard. I can't hold course."
"What is that in the distance?" Hermione murmured. "It's a white line on the horizon."
Klimov seemed remarkably composed, as only a professional long-service man could. But after he lifted his binoculars and looked out, he just shook his head a single time and muttered. "It shouldn't have done that… No nuclear weapon that should be that powerful."
"Pet?" Bella asked again, trying to muster the strength to drag herself up.
"Captain Klimov?" Hermione asked a second time, now, her voice rising and more panic leaching in.
"That's a tidal wave. And she won't answer the helm. That last bomb hit jammed the rudder. We're turning broadside on."
As he finished speaking, Hermione raised her wand just in time, to shield them—and the bridge, and the bridge windows—from a staggering, magically enhanced nuclear blast shockwave, which tore across the whole length of the distance from Azkaban to the Ushakov and slammed into the superstructure and hull with the power to send them heeling further to starboard, the inclinometer reaching fifteen degrees list before she steadied out and began to return to an even keel, men sent flying and falling, radar aerials ripped off the masts and sent tumbling into the furious churning sea below, a damage control party torn from the decks and flung with terrible force into the sea to instantly drown.
And the wave was getting closer.
On the Mitrofan Moskalenko, Narcissa had made haste up to the deck with the others wizards and witches. They could feel the horrifying intensity of the magical energy coursing through their bodies. Even at their great distance of hundreds of nautical miles, they could see the black and green energies rising into the sky.
Around them, the sea was frothing. Under the deck, the ship rose, with a kind of terrible force from below. The sea around them seemed to rise. They could see the mushroom cloud of the nuclear weapon which, Narcissa could only imagine, had destroyed the enchanted fortress of Azkaban and all the Dementors within.
Tonks cast a spell ahead of them which, to their horror, revealed a welling power—an enchanted shockwave in the air.
Narcissa amplified her voice. "Captain, turn into the shockwave! "
"Helm a port!" The massive amphib began to swing, other ships in the formation following her.
Larissa and Draco stepped up together with a dual series of interlocking shields. They cut the wave in two, parting it around the ship, and with a shaking, a roaring, and the painful popping of their ears, it passed over them, leaving them unharmed.
But the Mitrofan Moskalenko was three hundred and fifty nautical miles from Azkaban. Narcissa felt her hard go cold and horrified. The Admiral Ushakov should be only one hundred nautical miles from Azkaban at the time of the attack. Less than two hundred kilometres.
Narcissa jogged into the bridge, her robes whipping and flowing around her. "Captain, Captain, do we have a situation report from anyone ahead of us?"
"Trying, Madame Malfoy," he shot her a brief look. The electronics were almost completely disabled, and only the satcom link to one of the temporary communications satellites they had managed to launch just for this mission was still active. Everything relying on local transmission—everything trying to punch through this magical field in any direction except straight up—was dead.
"Is there anything?" He demanded again, while Tonks followed her aunt inside.
"...Headquarters has managed to establish a link with a Tu-22M bomber from the 185th GvBAP, Sir!"
"Can we get the satcom data-link for the Prime Minister?"
"Trying now, Sir!"
One of the display screens in the copious communications gear aboard the amphibious command ship resolved into a fuzzy, almost washed out vision of static. But Narcissa could still see something, Tonks could still see something, that seemed impossible. "Where are they, is that part of Britain?" She hissed in horror, a looming horror of what she might have just done. The land was wiped bare, an immense expanse of hills and valleys marked by silt and sand and mud.
"No, Madame Malfoy, it's…" The Captain looked at one of the data-readouts, he was listening to the crew of the bomber. There was a woman pilot, her voice calm but in that way you could tell her pulse was higher than it had ever been before. Narcissa could imagine the clammy skin, just from the tone of that voice. It was of a woman who had seen her own death pass before her, and by some feat of luck and courage, had recovered her bomber from a flat spin at an altitude of barely a hundred metres.
A woman who with her crew were seeing something unfathomable, completely impossible.
Something that was terrifying Tonks and Narcissa, too.
Land.
"...That's the middle of the North Sea," the ship's Captain finally fitfully finished the sentence.
"Massive tsunami…" Narcissa could hear the broken, stressed words of the bomber pilot. They made her go pale, again. She remembered Luna last night. She remembered where her sister was.
"That's enough, thank you!" Narcissa had the almost ridiculous presence of mind to utter, as she grabbed Tonks' hand and half-dragged her niece with her back down from the bridge. "Luna, Luna Lovegood!"
Luna was staring intently to the south.
"LUNA LOVEGOOD?"
She turned, and had a smile on her face. "Madame Malfoy. Isn't it marvelous? Magic sank it, and magic has raised it."
"Miss Lovegood, what in Brigantia's name do you damned well mean!?"
"The muggle scientists call it Doggerland," she said, unperturbed. "Don't worry, it's just what the Storegga took from us, that's all, not the whole thing… The land of our ancestresses, Madame Malfoy."
Tonks went as white as a sheet.
"Why hasn't Draco left yet?" Luna abruptly asked urgently.
Narcissa cursed vilely under her breath as she had nearly never done before in her life. "Draco, you are needed on the Ushakov !"
Her son froze in place, looking forward over the rail, his face a rictus of fear at the sky beyond, at what had just overtaken them. "What if she's already gone, mother, what if the ship is already gone? I could apparate to a wreck underwater…"
"Luna knows, now for the sake of our family, GO!"
Larissa stepped up to Draco's side and grabbed his hand. "I'll go with you, Draco. Come on. Let's go."
Draco swore softly and raised his wand. With a crack, they disapparated together.
Narcissa looked to the south, in a fear and wonder that was entirely too common at that moment. In a war that blended magic and technology, magic had just reminded the world of its power, its unpredictability, its wonder.
But with her heart feeling like it was sinking to the deck, the ship upon which she stood pitching around wildly from the churning sea, all Narcissa could feel was fear for her elder sister's life, somewhere in the heart of the maelstrom, with a tsunami coming on.
Some notes on the battle.
The first is that, of course, we should not expect that of the first wave of forty-two Tornadoes, that anything like the whole number was shot down. Only a small number would have been-though witches on ships certainly makes the attack far more punishing than it otherwise would be. Rather, somewhere more than five (since one of the escorting destroyers was lost) Tornadoes successfully executed attacks in the first wave. In fact, most of the second wave was likely comprised of Tornadoes from the first wave which had failed to line up for successful attack runs, but had enough fuel to reprise the attack. Unfortunately for the Morsmordre, most were subsequently lost to Bella's terrifying improvisation.
It was assumed here that magical enchantments to the missiles themselves, rather than the warheads, would render them vulnerable to interception and detection by Azkaban. So it was first necessary to destroy Azkaban, then the RPK-3s with their nuclear depth charges could be launched on the attack against the Chunnel. In the story, the attack plan goes through several iterations-that is normal.
The Storegga Slide was, of course, the final destruction of Doggerland, which was once the land bridge across the North Sea between Britain and the mainland. But, by the time it took place, Doggerland was already an island; so there is no reprise of a land bridge. This will be covered more in the next chapter, but, I was very interested in representing truly powerful magic, of ancient lineage-which Bellatrix here inadvertently unleashed.
The reader may wonder if a single bomb hit would be a serious matter for a ship of this size; however, a 2000lb (912kg) laser-guided bomb of the modern type is not a trivial matter. By the time of the second hit, the damage could be serious indeed, especially when she was required to continue steaming at high speed (30kts), which tends to fan the flames. In fact, almost no ship in the modern world would be able to remain combat effective after taking one such hit, as the Ushakov did here.
Yes, I use female pronouns to refer to ships. This is an old English nautical convention, and I am writing in English. So, that's the way it is.
You may wonder why Captain Klimov is so concerned about being broadside on to the wave, and why the amphibs acted with such alacrity to respond by turning their bows to the wave. However, imagine simply that, for example, a pencil is much longer than it is wide. If you press on it along its entire length with a constant force (the pressure of a wave), the force applied to the ship is much greater than if you press on the width of the bow (the point of the pencil) alone. This simple principle explains why it's necessary for a ship to keep her bows to the weather in a storm or when facing a tidal wave..
