"First Sea Lord." the flunkie handed the message to the man who was second only to God in the eyes of the Senior Service. "From the First Lord, apparently this one is from Number Ten."

Fleet Admiral Sir Dudley Pound accepted the message, his eyes flicking over the operations room showing what little could be decrypted of the fighting in Norway from the scattered flow of communications and reports getting through. German destroyers in Narvik, the Oslofjord's defences putting a German cruiser on the bottom, one of the Polish submarines sinking a German troopship. Now a Churchill Special. It was all too much. He glanced down at it, reading through it once, then a second time as he seemed to swell up in indignation and fury.

"Necessary sacrifices! Does Churchill not bloody realise those are my men and my ships he's talking about? Do we even have anything we can use to get the French out of Narvik, especially given that the German Fallschirmjägers are occupying the town itself?" he erupted.

"I am sure that the First Lord has measured the risks against his political reputation." one of his staff officers enunciated darkly. "Much like when he sent us to Gallipoli."

"Options please, Gentlemen." Pound sighed, suddenly sounding very tired, every bit and more of his nearly sixty-three years.

"The closest ship we have is Vengeance. She's been cruising the Iceland-Lofoten line to prevent an Atlantic breakout by the Kriegsmarine, we can pull her off that, though we'll be risking another Rawalpindi if they do."

"Poor bloody Kennedy. His son Ludovic's with Tartar, barely missed seeing his father's ship go down in flames." muttered another officer.

Seeing the conversation about to diverge from the matter at hand, Pound forestalled any unnecessary commentary with a raised hand, bringing immediate silence.

"Who commands Vengeance?" he asked. It was a big gamble he was considering, and at least he ought to know the name and character of the man with whom he might well be entrusting a military-diplomatic hot potato.

"Captain Potter – Sir Harry Potter, of Zeebrugge and Kronstadt fame. A firebrand by all repute sir, ruthless and capable, but he has rather been in disfavour with Whitehall, the Establishment and particularly the Foreign Office after putting a torpedo into the Cervera off Santander three years ago. He was only called back to the colours from some backwater posting after Munich, even if as a command Vengeance is a bit of an old orphan of naval design."

A few long seconds, as Pound tapped a finger on the table. It would take until the weekend to muster a battlegroup with heavy firepower and escorts to go and reduce the Kriegsmarine entrenchment at Narvik. A gamble though would be to throw the old superheavy cruiser and her maverick, firebrand captain at the problem, and trust in surprise, firepower and Lady Fortuna…

"Reginald, my dictation, if you would. I want this signal to be transmitted to Potter, Captain Commanding, HMS Vengeance, without delay." he decided.

-x-

With a double-breasted greatcoat so dark a blue as to be all but black snapping at the top of his seaboots as they echoed off the well-worn steel deck, the officer made a striking figure, four rings of gold braid on the epaulettes at his shoulders, his dark peaked cap worn, over equally dark hair – though flecked with grey – at a faintly piratical angle, casting a faint shadow over eyes like chips of green ice.

"Captain on the bridge!" barked the seasoned Chief Petty Officer at the door to the compass flat as he stepped out into the frigid blast of Arctic wind, disdaining to react to the freezing sea wind that washed over the big cruiser's superstructure. The bridge crew, led by the First Office, serving as Officer of the Watch, all turned to face him as he was announced, snapping to attention.

"Thank you Chief." he offered a sharp nod to the NCO, then to his officers. "Gentlemen. At ease." turning to the Officer of the Watch. "Number One?"

"Captain Potter. We received a Flash Signal which came in for you on the Teleprinter, directly from the Admiralty." the First Officer proffered a hand-scrawled scrap of paper from the signals office. "I took the liberty of having it decrypted for you."

Harry affixed his First Officer with a sharp look, held a long moment, then a brief nod. Technically a breach of security, but initiative was useful, and in this case could save precious time. Besides, he didn't want any officers on his ship who didn't have the backbone necessary to fight the war under his command. Any that couldn't stand up, decide on a course of action and defend it under scrutiny were so much flotsam.

From Admiralty. To H.J. Potter, Capt. HMS VENGEANCE.

Immediate, Most Urgent.

Proceed to Ofotfjorden (NARVIK) at highest speed.

French Naval Attaché to be extracted on completion of sabotage of port.

All means are to your discretion.

German forces estimated maximum 10 destroyers, possibly damaged, ammunition and fuel critical.

Frequencies and Encryption for communication with Entente allies to follow in 30 minutes.

Codename CARRHAE.

"Well, some classics-reading bastard in Whitehall has a sense of humour. Either we sail into a wasteland and get shot to pieces or we are victorious and come home to be executed for being successful." he growled in irritation, stuffing the scrap of paper into a pocket and walking over to the map table, sheltered under canvas with a lamp lit over it. "Navigator, set us a course for Værøya?" he carefully enunciated the unfamiliar name.

"Yes sir." thin tracing paper, chinagraph pencil, protractor and ruler were laid out in neat order as the navigating officer set about his task.

"I want us to clear the island to the south in open waters, then we'll make our run up the Vestfjord." he strode over to the front of the compass flat, reflexively picking up a pair of binoculars to scan the sea before the ship, clear as it was of any friend of foe. Not that he feared much the Germans could bring to bear – the only threat they could offer to Vengeance were U-Boats or their battlecruisers. "No bloody support, we'll have to shoot our way in and out. How in God's name we're supposed to pick up the bloody French in the middle of it. Cutters I suppose, given I landed our seaplane in exchange for a pair of Swordfish."

At least he was confident in his ship. She wasn't young, having been in the Senior Service nearly as long as he had, but despite ageing boilers and turbines, Vengeance was a potent warship, one that had nearly caused a number of upsets in Washington, Geneva and London in the disarmament conferences. Her tonnage approached twenty-thousand tons on an average day, and her weight of fire was above that of any cruiser at sea, her main battery of eight 9.2-inch Mark XII guns offering over three thousand pounds of shells in every broadside. Old and occasionally erratic as her eighteen oil-fired boilers and turbines could be, she was still capable of outrunning all but the fastest battlecruisers. In a straight fight, the superheavy cruiser could gun down anything up to a heavy cruiser, and outrun anything that she couldn't match. That, however, did not account for sailing into a narrow fjord strewn with razor-sharp rocks and infested with torpedo-equipped German destroyers.

Now, what on God's cold, ice-strewn rocky frozen hellscape were the French doing in Narvik?

-x-

"Merde!" Fleur cursed, desperately steadying her breathing, as the last mortar shells fell amongst her comrades, aware of the ever-ticking clock as the lorry rumbled up the road towards their position, a Norwegian coal merchant's prize possession now defaced with Iron Crosses and loaded to the gunnels with elite German paratroopers, lavishly equipped with automatic weapons.

The naval attaché was face-down in a snowdrift, having been thrown there by a the blast of a falling mortar shell as she had dived into the sparse shelter of a fallen fir tree, setting up her firing position amongst the branches, still living and still covered in dark fragrant dark green needles.

The old Short Magazine Lee-Enfield in her grasp tracked the moving lorry through flurries of snow which obscured the view in the crosshairs of her four-magnification scope. Slowly, her right hand squeezed around the rifle, and most critically the trigger. A custom piece she had personally modified for hunting trips in peacetime, now she was using it in a way she'd never expected when posted to a menial role in the French Embassy in Oslo.

With a hollow baritone bark and the slightest of recoil that a rifle of its size could produce, the first shot was fired, the round hardly ruffled the foliage she was sat in, the Maxim Silencer doing its job to reduce the volume of the shot. A Gascon girl, she'd learnt to shoot Wild Boar in the foothills of the Pyrénées, and frankly this was no difficult shot by those standards. The constant path described by the road for the lorry, in conditions no worse than the Pyrénées could produce – ignoring the bone-deep chill. The bullet smashed a small hole no bigger than a finger through the windscreen glass and struck the driver, leaving him dead at the wheel before he had even comprehended the impact.

"TIRER!"

Norwegian riflemen opened fire, no more than a scratch platoon equipped with nineteenth-century rifles, but it was enough to riddle the truck with bullets before it had even rolled to a halt, beginning to smoke as it nosed down into a snow-filled ditch. A brave soul, perhaps a miner given what he was carrying, ran out into the open under the scything fire of a German Spandau to throw a lit bundle of dynamite into the wreck, but fell no more than a few steps across, fire from a German sub-machine gun stitching across the snowy road and the charging grenadier.

The bolt cycled and a fresh round ready in the chamber, Fleur fired into the wreck the moment that a fresh muzzle-flash illuminated the Fallschirmjäger responsible, silencing him with a single shot. The wintery cold seemed to deepen beyond merely leeching into her flesh and bone, the fact that she'd killed another man not just for the first time, but for the second time also, passing with the barest note.

"That's for my uncles, and for every orphan of Verdun." she muttered to herself as the last sporadic rifle fire died down, the dynamite blast blasting the wreck onto its side. The Norwegians slowly pulled themselves out of snowdrifts, ditches and from behind trees, cautiously poking around the site of the brief firefight, leaving Fleur to climb out of her natural hide, feeding two rounds into her rifle's magazine and pocketing the spent brass.

"Capitaine." one of the few French speaking Norwegians greeted Fleur, willingly ignoring the fact that technically she had no right to the coat and insignia of the Fusiliers Marins that had been procured from the stores of the French embassy when it was discovered she was the only person who had been as far north as Narvik before the war.

That was when she realised why she was being looked at. The attaché lay still in the snow, stained red and still steaming, blood pooling under his body from the ghastly slash through his thigh. Shrapnel. A fragment of a mortar shell was a far less discerning enemy than a sniper behind a scope, but had just as much lethal potential.

"Capitaine." the Norwegian repeated. Fleur looked at him, realising for the first time that, despite being a reservist Lieutenant, that he was a pink-cheeked boy of no more than twenty, and that his eyes were full of fear and panic. The rest were no better, they needed leadership.

"Merde." she hissed between ice-chapped lips, slinging her rifle and looking into the blizzard in the direction of Narvik. "Niels. Pack the radio, get our truck up here. We're leaving. Where can we find a fishing boat to requisition?"

"Capitaine… what about Narvik?" the young officer asked, bewildered. "What about our mission?"

"Niels. The Eidsvold and the Norge are gone, you told me so yourself. We've got one truck of demolition charges, one radio, twenty-five able bodies, and I'm not a soldier." Fleur bit back. "Now, answer my question."

"Bøstrand, Capitaine, if we have any luck."

Fleur gritted her teeth. Luck had been in short supply throughout this whole ill-judged fiasco, leaving her, a diplomatic functionary and occasional adventurer stranded in the middle of a warzone commanding a platoon of reservists, most of whom spoke little or no French, aside from their own tongue, English being their second language.

"Then we should get moving before they send more fucking paratroopers after us. That mortar team is still out there somewhere." she ordered, then nodded at the fallen officer. "Get his body loaded too. I'm not leaving any information for the Germans to pick over. Bring your man too, we'll see if any of the locals can offer him a decent burial."

She looked away from Narvik, back towards the coast road and the western horizon. Towards the hope of salvation from this cold, German-infested hell.

"Maybe we'll get some luck. The last signal from Paris was that they were sending support to extract us from Narvik, we'll just have to try and get the radio up and running so we can bring the timetable up."

-x-

"Sir. Fresh signal came through on the frequency Admiral Forbes forwarded to us from Brest." a voice knocked Harry out of his reverie, staring out onto the cold waters of the Arctic. He glanced over to see a young signalman clutching a scrap of paper from the signals office, nearly vibrating with nerves. "Decoded and translated sir."

Harry blinked, thinking for a moment that he had seen a ghost, only to rouse himself, standing up from the hard wooden seat on its metal frame. "Good lad." he acknowledged. "Read it."

"Uh, yes sir. Narvik Mission to Allied Warship. Operation abandoned, unfeasible, engaged and sustained casualties. Withdrawing west toward Efjorden, intend to requisition civilian vessel, trawler or similar. Kriegsmarine surface force present, ten destroyers, six to ten auxiliaries. Requesting all possible support."

Harry sighed deeply, rifling through his pockets for a pipe, already tamped with sweet Turkish tobacco and a box of matches. Lighting one match on the coarse, roughly applied paintwork of the bulwark of the bridge, he shaded the bowl of the pipe with one hand, and patiently stoked the tobacco until it smouldered in the wan wintery sun. Taking a satisfied puff, he threw the match over the side, imagining he could hear the hiss of it extinguishing in the frigid water below.

"Well, what do you make of it?" he asked.

"Me sir?!" the poor signalman flinched.

"Yes, you Midshipman Creevey. How long have you been in the navy anyway?"

"I've been with Vengeance since I left Dartmouth in January. Nearly two years I suppose sir."

"Three months." Harry huffed, a touch of humour audible in his voice. "Dartmouth hardly counts. Well, answer the question, Mister Creevey, what do you make of it?"

"I, uh, they obviously want to get out of there." the Midshipman flinched again at the snort from his commanding officer. "They've not mentioned the Norwegian battleships we thought were at Narvik-"

"Bloody things are half-size pre-dreadnoughts at best, if the Germans have a full destroyer flotilla there, then you can bet they've been sent to the bottom. Poor bastards." interrupted Harry, then waved for the Midshipman to go on.

"So, no friendly naval forces, I reckon sir that we can bet that the Germans have got hold of the town and the iron ore terminal. That would be why the French are up there anyway, there's nothing else worth doing there. They're trying to get out, with or without support." Creevey continued. "If they're clever they'll get a trawler and play the civilian card if they encounter the Germans. We're dependant on further communications with them if we're going to directly support them. Otherwise, some sort of spoiling attack to draw the Germans away from harassing escaping fishing boats?"

"The latter is an aggressive option, though a risky one with enclosed waters, outnumbered and the enemy having torpedoes, whereas we have none." Harry noted, then added as he saw the midshipman looking down at his toecaps, "It's not a bad option. It's one to be weighed, a classic Nelsonic option. Break the enemy's line, raking broadsides port and starboard. However, this is not the era when the Defiance could engage two enemy men-of-war right after ramming a third."

"Yes sir." Creevey nodded, then swallowed before gesturing to the map table. "May I?"

Harry nodded sharply. The words 'and make it good' weren't spoken, but were heard all the same.

"I think they've going to need the devil's own luck to pull this one off sir, if they don't find a ship, there are few paths back east, most lead to captivity or, less likely, to the Swedish border and internment, and from the Efjorden, there only paths west lead to choke points that the Germans will be watching now they know the French are out there." Creevey concluded. "If the French get their fishing boat, they'll still need the luck of the devil, either they'll have to pass the mouth of the Narvik Fjord at north of Baroya, or try and run the gauntlet of rocks between the Esfjord and the… Tysfjord?" he stuttered over the pronunciation. "I wouldn't try my luck with either, the former will be picketed with German warships, the latter looks horrifying to try and more than likely to rip the bottom out of any ship."

Another puff of pearlescent smoke from the captain, accompanying a pensive look on his face.

"Quite right. SIGNALS!"

A clattering of boots on steep steel stairs and the signals officer appeared from the enclosed bridge below, bracing himself against the wind.

"Captain?"

"Mr. Creevey, do you need him?"

"I can find more Midshipmen sir. Are we throwing him over the side already?" a faint smile twitched on the lips of both officers.

"No. I'm having him transferred to the bridge staff. Mr. Creevey, your new battle station is right next to me." Harry concluded.

"Sir?!"

"There's a lad. Captain's staff is a prestigious position, keep up the good work and he might not even have you turning the anchor windlass for exercise." the signals officer remarked. "Go and get your kit, Number One will see you over your new duties."

"Dismissed." added Harry, waiting for retreating footsteps to diminish until only the thrumming of turbines was to be heard. "He's a good lad. Like his brother was."

"Captain?" that comment met a raised eyebrow.

"The affair off Santander. Young Dennis wasn't even out of school then, his brother Colin had joined up, all wide eyed and amazed to see the world beyond the world of a milkman. He shouldn't have even been there, but the entire family saved and scraped to send him to naval college." Harry's voice dropped into an angry growl. "He was a boy bubbling with aspirations, aspirations that saw him near sliced in half by shrapnel from a Spanish shell ricocheting off the sea. It was a bloody waste of life, all for the game of brinkmanship. That's why I saw fit to try and put the Almirante Cervera on the bottom."

"Bloody waste." nodded the signals officer. "How did they afford to send a second son to Dartmouth?"

A long silence followed, one that the signals officer believed wasn't going to lead to an answer. Then finally, his captain, not even looking at him, but instead leaning on the bridge rail, arms crossed and staring out over the sea, glowing pipe in one hand, broke the silence with a few short sentences.

"I paid for him. The scholarship. Every penny. It was the least I could do. I wasn't even able to do my duty as captain and christen the lad's nephew when his brother's widow… well, I had been sent to Halifax by then." a long pause. "You may go. Navs! How long until we pass Værøya?"

"About two hours at present speed. We can make thirty-one knots if-" the Navigating Officer began, consulting his stopwatch and calculations of speed, time and distance, only to be interrupted.

"Hold to twenty-eight. I'm not risking an engineering casualty and wasting our precious supply of fuel for a few knots." Harry cut across him, pocket watch snapping open in his hand. "Besides, it's not long gone sixteen-thirty, I want to hit Narvik no earlier than twenty-hundred hours and be out by zero-four hundred. If we run her up to full ahead, we can clear in and out from Barøya lighthouse to Narvik itself, an hour each, leaving six hours fighting time. More, I estimate, than we'll want or need."

"Sir."

-x-

"Niels?" Fleur asked, nervously clutching her rifle and trying to hide her fear as the diesel engine beneath the trawler's deck grumbled awkwardly, a sound which she reckoned she could hear echoing off the mountains over the fjord. "Anything?" she asked hopefully.

"Nothing Capitaine. I am sorry, the radio's still dead." she sighed at the answer, the thing had packed up after being bumped over a rough track along the rocky shoreline, but she'd hoped they'd be able to patch a repair. "We got the receiver working briefly though. There was this. Broadcast every fifteen minutes on our frequency." he handed over a hand-scribbled bit of paper, the format on it completely unintelligible.

"No. Do not apologise, it was not your fault and nobody here can say you have done anything less than the utmost, not just with the radio but ever since you joined up with us." Fleur sighed, and, drawing on her brief time as a cypher clerk in the embassy in Warsaw before the war, set about decoding the scrambled transmission.

Fortunately the one-time pads carried by the late Naval Attaché had survived his demise, and the transmission had been preceded in the clear with a serial number which designated which of the one-time pads she had to use to decrypt it. It was a slow, laborious process, but one nearly invulnerable to cracking if you didn't have the complex substitution key necessary.

Narvik Mission, requesting further transmissions STOP If no further transmissions received, we will assault German concentrations in Narvikfjord and attempt to make rendezvous STOP Time on target 2000 to 2100 STOP We shall sink, burn, destroy and make a Gomorrah of the Kriegsmarine STOP God Save the King and God be with us STOP HJ POTTER STOP HMS VENGEANCE STOP

A low, long sigh. They had no way of transmitting back to the British warship – for what else could it be with a name like HMS Vengeance, and that raised the question, where the hell was the Marine National? However, the last communication from the British was pretty ironclad in its intent. To ride in on the tide like a Drakkar of the days of the Norse going a-viking and to lay waste to their enemy in an explicitly biblical fashion. The irony of the British carrying out such an attack in Norway was far from lost on her.

"We've got big help on the way boys." she grinned, leaning out of the pilothouse to the handful of Frenchmen who had accompanied the mission, along with their Norwegian helpers. "The British are sending help, and it's big help by the sound of it, called the Vengeance. They'll attack the Germans to clear our way out of here, to open waters, where we can await the arrival of the fleet!"

A ragged cheer erupted from the deck, quickly shushed by the few career NCOs in the party. There was hope on the horizon that their futures didn't involve being held captive – or worse treated as Francs Tireurs – by the Germans. Fleur even allowed herself a faint smile as she once more read the signal, as pitiful a lifeline as the thin scrip felt in her hand, it was still a lifeline, and one that resounded with her. Something about that paper, illuminated only by the oncoming twilight of the Arctic winter night, decrypted as it was in her own familiar hand, which echoed with the personality of the one from whom it had originated.

The steadfastness to commit to supporting them, the aggressiveness needed to decide that the support should come in the form of smashing the German warships at anchor, the touch of the famed classical education the Royal Navy and the British Establishment so prided themselves on. The finality in the last sentence before the 'signature'. Above all else, 'Gomorrah'. The good captain believed that he was the Sword of God, to bring about death and ruin amidst sulphur and flames… Was this one of the wolf-bred sons of Drake, Nelson and Blake, once the terrors of Europe, now unleashed in this age of iron?

Fleur regarded the scrap of paper again. It was her own handwriting, but the words nearly smouldered on the page with the force of the person behind it. Perhaps, if all went well, she might get the chance to meet them?

She eventually crumpled it up and shoved it in a pocket, ruthlessly tamping down on the hopeless romanticisms. They had no place in this day and age.

-x-

"Anything?" not all that far away, the conversation between Fleur and the Norwegian Lieutenant was being repeated in terse terms on the bridge of the British man-of-war.

"Nothing Captain."

"Very well. Mister Creevey, see that the log reads…" Harry checked his pocket watch. "...that at nineteen-fifty-three local time, that HMS Vengeance passed south of the Rotvær Reef, and that Captain Potter committed to Option Gomorrah. Nav, I want us to hold to the north shore, no point drawing the Germans onto our French allies. Number One, bring us to revolutions for three-one knots, cleared for action."

"Come about, one point to port."

"Aye sir. Make revolutions for three-one knots." the First Officer barked down the voice pipe to the telegraph station below, the ringing of a bell announcing the transmission of the order to the stokers and engineers deep within the big cruiser's hull.

Vengeance's crew had already been brought to battle stations, all the watertight doors and hatches sealed, damage control parties mustered and the ship's heavy guns loaded with high explosive shells, each weighing just short of a hundred and eighty kilograms. The sea, whipped into a harsh chop, split around the cruiser's bow as if it were a sword, the man-of-war riding the rising tide like a steel-hewn chariot for Poseidon. Barely a wisp of smoke rose from her boilers and furnaces to the peak of her funnels, every drop of oil going to the production of steam for her turbines.

"Guns!" barked Harry, getting an acknowledgement from the gunnery officer who was bent over the chart table with the navigating officer. "Open the party with the forward battery, then broadsides to starboard, then independent control fore and aft?"

"It would seem sane sir, particularly if we are engaging multiple targets with the main battery." the gunnery officer agreed. "Semi-armour piercing for the four-inchers?"

"At your discretion." Harry allowed. "Anything on hydrophones?"

A few moments of conferring down the voice-pipes to different parts of the ship followed.

"Screws of indeterminate type, indeterminate location. Range fairly long though. Our speed and the report of our own propellers and propulsion makes it impossible to get any more accuracy." was the report.

"Very well." Harry stared out into the Arctic twilight, cursing as he noticed the coastline starting to fade into the haze. "If this becomes full fog, it'll be the death of us."

"SIR!" the call in what could best be described as a 'hushed' shout came from one of the powerful sets of binoculars set on tripods riveted onto the bridge deck for the watch crew.

"Mister Creevey!" Harry strode over.

"Wake, zero-three-two!" the Midshipman reported as his captain elbowed him out of the way, staring down into the rubber goggles around the eyepiece of the binoculars. It took Harry a few moments to pick up what he had seen.

"That's not the right wake for a destroyer, or I'm a Hun. They reported auxiliaries, what's the betting this is one. Hold speed and course, we'll clear them to port. Searchlights and guns stand ready! Guns, I want starshells on my word!"

Before the last acknowledgement had died down, a searchlight snapped on, out in the fjord, lazily drifting back and forth. More than one breath hitched in the throats of those on the bridge as it played over the silver-flecked waters, but then, relief. It snapped onto the silhouette at the head of the wake on their starboard bow. Then a series of lamp flashes were exchanged, the signals officer leaning over the side of the bridge, frantically scribbling the challenge and response in his notebook.

"Ah, the picket reveals himself." Harry murmured in satisfaction. "Guns?"

"Captain?"

"At your leisure, illuminate, main battery on the picket and secondary battery on the auxiliary." he 'invited' the gunnery officer, an 'invitation' received with a barely concealed grin of relish.

"Yes sir." he snatched up the ship's telephone, already having a connection to the transmitting station deep within the ship. "Guns ranged. Main battery, salvos to starboard bearing zero-four-two. Secondary battery, designate target two, fire as she bears. Stand by… SHOOT!"

Down in the transmitting station, the chief gunner glanced briefly at the Admiralty Fire Control Table, having examined every input closely, he hardly hesitated before pulling the trigger. A circuit closed, electrical charges going to a platinum wire set in the inner face of the breech of each of the ship's heavy artillery, igniting the silk-bagged charges behind the shell. In barely more than an instant, delayed just long enough for two distinct salvoes from each turret, the first broadside crashed out.

The Arctic twilight was suddenly rent by a sea of fire as within a split second, the eight 9.2-inch guns erupted in a wall of flames and gunsmoke, hurling each thirty ton cannon back in its cradle a full two feet with the recoil. As the hydraulics ran the guns back out and a blast of high-pressure air blasted any remaining embers out, men were busy bringing fresh shells and charges through the passages from the deep magazines.

"Over!" came the report to the bridge.

Harry resolved to give his gunnery officer a much-needed bollocking for that one. Point-blank range and they'd bloody missed. Worse, he'd ordered starshells, and the bloody fool hadn't bothered, too excited to get straight to blowing things up. Instead he settled for barking an order for starshells, followed quickly by the sharp BANG of first one, then a second 4-inch gun firing skyward, a reddish light blossoming under the heavens.

Out of the darkness the sharp prow of a German destroyer resolved itself, charging across the stern of the blundering merchantman, already swinging to starboard to engage with her torpedo tubes and to clear astern of Vengeance. Every second seemed like an eternity as the destroyer picked up more and more speed, Harry preparing to give the order turn away from the German, to bear north towards the Tjeldsundet strait and buy some breathing room. Then came the call from below.

"Guns ready."

"SHOOT!"

The harsh barks of the 4-inch guns, having already hit the auxiliary twice and now hammering out rounds towards the oncoming destroyer, were drowned out entirely by the thunderous roar of the main battery's 9.2-inch guns. The impact on the German ship was devastating, eight shells landing around her bow, nearly short of her. Two of them ripped clean through her starboard bow plating, another carrying away one of the forward gun mounts, before a blast ripped the entire forward structure ahead of the bridge from the rest of the ship. A horrific eruption from the for'ard magazine cut the ship in half, followed by a graunching, grinding and an awful low groan as the destroyer ran down her own bow, the rest of the ship still making over thirty knots as she pitched down into the dark water, her propellers thrashing as they drove her under, the stern disappearing within a minute, leaving only oil and flotsam behind.

A half-salvo of 9.2 was all that was needed to dispatch the auxiliary, her port side ripped open to the sea by 4-inch shellfire, at least one heavy shell from the main battery smashed into the former merchantman as an eruption of steam from her funnel announced the destruction of her boilers. Hit a few more times with the cruiser's secondary battery, her pumps out of action and flooding badly, she rolled over on her port beam, her keel awash as she vanished into the night in Vengeance's wake.

-x-

At first, Fleur thought the sound to be thunder, echoing down the narrows south of Tjeldøya, but for the sky being clear – if one discounted the increasing haze building on the fjord. Then a second rumble reverberated down the fjord, neither being greeted by a flash of lightning. She glanced skywards to be greeted by the Arctic twilight, a rich blue with a band of coppery gold on the horizon ahead of the fishing boat. Not a cloud to be seen.

"C'est la cavellerie!" the oldest of the Frenchmen whispered to her, a man who had fought in the Great War and knew the sound of heavy artillery firing in the distance. "Les Britanniques arrivent!"

"Tu es certain?"

"Oui Capitaine."

Whispering, cries of relief and discussion immediately broke out on deck and in the hold, packed with fishing crates and rifle-toting Norwegian reservists. Only the sharp rebukes of their NCOs silenced them, restoring quiet to the vessel, much to Fleur's relief as she climbed into the wheelhouse from where she'd been stood on the starboard bow by one of the ship's small derricks.

"Hold the southern shore. I want to be ready to shelter in the Vargfjorden, the inlet at Porsøy or at Hamnesstranda at the slightest notice." she ordered the weathered Norwegian fisherman at the diminutive ship's equally small wheel. He was a veteran of fishing in the rough Arctic waters Vestfjorden and a Norwegian patriot who'd volunteered to slip them out of the Ofotjord with a sort of grim glee at the prospect of defying the enemy who had invaded his country.

"We're not going to join up with the British warship?" Niels asked, her de-facto second-in-command peering from over the chart table with an expression of dismay. "They can't be far, we meet them and transfer across, we'll be able to head out to sea without the rest of the Germans knowing anything."

A contemptuous scoff came from the old fisherman. "And what do you think, boy, that the British will do on seeing us trying to intercept them? I have no wish to see my girl under an English warship's keel, or sent to the bottom of the fjord by a salvo from their guns."

"Hold the southern shore. It will also make it less likely that those German destroyers at Ballangen find us if they move to intercept the Royal Navy, and do you want to bet with absolute certainty that the Germans don't have coast watchers or haven't heard by radio from whatever it was that the Vengeance gunned down a minute ago?" Fleur met his look with an even stare. She then let out a long breath – he was just a hot-headed boy who hadn't learned to think through the consequences that followed from actions. "If the British make it back out intact, we'll try to meet with them, if they don't, we put in somewhere in the Lofotens and go to ground until we can safely get out on an ocean-going merchantman."

Fleur didn't know it, but she was absolutely correct. A German team had landed at the incomplete Korshamn Fort in advance of the arrival of the German destroyers nearly twenty-four hours earlier, and had radioed Kommodore Bonte, the commanding officer of the German Destroyer Squadron, at Narvik with the report of multiple explosions ringing out from down the Ofotfjord. The response wasn't particularly quick, or the French mission would have been at risk of being run down by the response force, but after the picket, Zerstörer-17 failed to respond to repeated radio calls, the German Kommodore dispatched Zerstörer-2 and Zerstörer-11 from the bay at Ballangen. He was completely unaware that Fleur and her team had slipped up the coast road and across the forests behind the very same village at the foot of the bay, taking advantage of the forestry industry leaving passable trucks for their battered lorry.

As the little Norwegian fishing boat puttered down the Ofotfjord, heading towards the mouth at Barøya and the open seaway of the Vestfjorden, making not quite ten knots and keeping as close to the shore as possible, two fast German destroyers dug their sterns into the cold waters, between them four propellers and a hundred-and-forty thousand horsepower driving them to a speed of just over forty miles-per-hour as they swept the narrows, searching for the oncoming foe.

Within the hour, Fleur had good reason to order the fisherman to bring his boat into a bay opposite the mouth of the Ramsundet Strait.

-x-

The German destroyers weren't having a good day. They had failed to spot Vengeance as they approached her, the sea-stained superheavy cruiser well in the shade of the steep shore of Tjeldøya. That was when, suddenly, a blast rocked the fjord. Unknown to both parties in the impending battle, the wreck of the capsized auxiliary had blown itself to smithereens, a fire set by Vengeance's 4-inch guns in the bunkers heating an adjacent bulkhead until it was red hot. The flooding hadn't reached either compartment, leaving barrels of aviation fuel, shells and the warheads for dismantled torpedoes without the protection of seawater as the temperature in the hold reached critical levels.

Every eye on Z2 and Z11 was drawn to the pillar of flames and the black mushroom cloud to the west, the captains of the German ships drawing them into a tight battle formation and swinging in a northerly arc to sweep down towards the source of the explosion. That was when Vengeance came into play.

Steaming at high speed eastwards up the Ofotfjord, her bridge crew had spotted the two German destroyers and stood ready to open fire when the German auxiliary blew up. With a closing speed of approximately seventy-six miles per hour on nearly parallel courses a few thousand yards apart, it would be what a rather older Rear Admiral Sir Dennis Creevey (Royal Navy, Retired) would describe as 'the damned oddest drive-by-shooting I'd ever heard of' when he was interviewed thirty years later on television.

It began with a simple 'question' on the bridge of the Royal Navy cruiser.

"Number One, I feel like we're improperly dressed for the occasion." Harry remarked. "Battle ensign?"

"Aye sir!" the response was given with relish, the call for the battle ensign going down to the deck below.

Every eye was drawn as a White Ensign, fully fifty feet across and twenty-five feet tall was hoisted up the halyard. The stiff wind blowing down the fjord against the cruiser steaming east then caught the huge battle ensign, spreading it to its full size, billowing with the wind as, bearing her colours like her forefathers had for centuries, the cruiser steamed into battle.

Laying the main battery on the lead German destroyer, the moment that a salvo of starshells from the 4-inch guns blossomed in the sky ahead of the two Zerstörers on their port side, illuminating them as if backlit by spotlights, Vengeance's captain gave the nod. Where he'd been waiting for Harry's order from the moment the phrase 'guns ready' had been spoken, the Gunnery Officer barked the word.

"SHOOT!"

Once again at a range little over point-blank by naval standards, Vengeance's gunnery told heavily against the lead ship, Z2, one near miss scouring her deck clear with shrapnel while another clipped her bow, caving in the hull plating as it punched through and only detonated on the far side of the ship. In the wake of the first broadside of 9.2-inch, her broadside of eight 4-inch guns began hammering out shells at a rate of a hundred a minute

It was an impressive display, but one largely with more enthusiasm than accuracy as Harry reflected, watching the engagement with binoculars glued to his eyes. Mouthing the seconds going past as he awaited the moment to choose whether to turn away or not, he tracked the German destroyers as they turned in echelon to starboard. Then the gunnery bell rang, and night was once more day as flames billowed from the muzzles of Vengeance's heavy guns.

This time there was a clear direct hit on Z2, her stern erupting into fire, smoke and fragments as she took a high-explosive shell into her depth charge rack. She immediately lost way, settling by the rent in her hull caused by the detonation, Z11 sweeping by the starboard side of the wrecked Zerstörer. On the bridge of Vengeance, Harry allowed himself a grim smile, the main battery guns already swinging around as they crossed the bow of the German destroyer.

Though it presented them with only a narrow profile to shoot at a closing target, it also meant that the cruiser could bring a weight of fire to bear against the German ship with only two guns able to bear. One German shell smacked into the cruiser's armoured belt, six inches of steel plenty to defeat the round, and another ricocheted off the deck and vanished into the fjord on the port side. Meanwhile, with Vengeance holding her course, Z11 was forced to turn in to starboard to follow, her speed advantage no more than four or five knots before she started taking on water from several medium-calibre hits.

Unknown to Harry, Z11 had expended every torpedo she had loaded the previous night in the attack on the Norwegian ships in Narvik, and hadn't had time to reload after refuelling, her spare 'fish' still stowed when the order to investigate had come from Kommodore Bonte. Of the pair dispatched, Z2 had been the one still armed with torpedoes, and she was now wallowing on the tide amidst a pyre of black smoke, helpless to intervene as Z11 took hit after hit and fell behind, down by the bow, burning heavily amidships and with her superstructure riddled through with shellfire and fragments.

This left Vengeance unmolested on her mission of fire and terror, the Germans with a destroyer sunk, two more damaged sufficiently to be unlikely to ever sail again, another pair at Narvik refuelling, one alongside with engine trouble and only four remaining in a condition to fight, three running on fumes.

It wouldn't be enough. Barely twenty minutes after the Action off Tjeldøya, the first salvo of 9.2-inch splashed down harmlessly in the mouth of the Beisfjorden where the anchorage of Narvik's port was. It was all the warning the crews of the many merchant ships anchored there were allowed as they suddenly found their once-peaceful anchorage now amidst the roiling maelstrom of a sea battle. Salvo after salvo of British shells rained down around them, the German destroyers frantically casting off from the quaysides, Z18 and Z19 already with fires blazing on the deck as the hoses from the tanker they'd been refuelling from were slashed open by Vengeance's shellfire, red hot fragments of metal setting the fuel alight as it spewed over the destroyers, and over the tanker itself.

Despite the quick response of the competent commander of the German detachment in the Herjangsfjord, he could do nothing to swing the weight of the battle to his side – one of his destroyers, Z12, was running on half her power thanks to boiler problems, and the other two, Z9 and Z13 were moored, bow-in alongside a pier three quarters of the way up the fjord. By the time his ships had reversed out of their anchorage and steamed back towards Narvik, the port was under the shadow of a pillar of black smoke, the four destroyers there were in their death-throes, shattered wrecks aflame or awash, lit by the hellish light as Vengeance circled the port, reducing the coal storage bunkers, the derricks, the railway yard and the infrastructure related to the transfer of ore to ruins, her shells setting all aflame. Every merchantman, now long-since abandoned, was given a few rounds of 4-inch to encourage them to the bottom.

The arrival of the three surviving German destroyers was met with a barrage of shellfire, Vengeance a malevolent shadow cast in the pyre from the burning German tanker and the coal bunkers ashore, her guns booming out hate and fury as they turned on the trio of enemy ships limping into battle with their lamed member slowing the whole group.

Z9 and Z13 attacked with torpedoes, an attack that might have succeeded had Z12 been able to contribute, not instead limping several thousand yards astern of her squadron. Manoeuvring with both the rudder and her screws, Vengeance turned aggressively with the German destroyers, their one chance to bring down the giant instead ending up running up the beach at Ankenes. With the cruiser's course now cutting them off from retreat deeper into the fjords, all that was left for them after that was to try and escape towards the sea or to die bravely.

Z9 and Z13 tried the former, and Z12 the latter, the lame destroyer attempting a lone torpedo attack, which resulted in nothing more than being pounded into a wreck by a British cannonade, sent to the bottom not long after as one of her torpedo batteries took a direct hit and blew up, cutting the ship in half. Then Vengeance turned west in pursuit, Z9 and Z13 straining their engines to escape certain destruction, hoping that their speed would allow them to outrun Vengeance, despite having both taken a thorough beating at the hands of the British cruiser's guns, and that Z13 barely had enough fuel to make the Ofotfjord's mouth, let alone escaping to open waters. Returning to Germany wasn't even on the list of possibilities.

-x-

"Gomorrah." Niels whispered shakily, crossing himself twice.

Much as she disliked her subordinates being so shaken while they were still trying to escape, Fleur couldn't truly bring herself to blame him. The fog and snowy squalls, rolling in off the mountains and up from the great Vestfjorden, glowed a malevolent orange, even with the headland at Kjelde blocking their sight of Narvik, the haze in the fjord reflected the pyre set aflame by Vengeance.

The drama of the Action off Tjeldøya had been one thing, seeing from their distant sheltered bay the furious exchange of naval artillery between the British cruiser and the two German destroyers, but to see Narvik burning was quite another. It looked like the British wanted to render the port unusable until they could retake the town, to deny the Germans any supplies there, any ships they could commandeer and to deny them the critical iron ore railway.

A massive frontal assault from the sea was such a blunt instrument, compared with the French effort, and it tasted bitter to Fleur that the British could succeed where the carefully-planned scheme sent from Paris was a resounding failure. C'est la guerre didn't begin to cover it.

Her jangled nerves weren't improved by the sound of naval artillery fire further up the fjord, coming ever closer. She'd chosen not to venture any further westwards, expecting that the two heavily damaged destroyers left adrift would bring the British cruiser back to deliver the killing blow, but it sounded as if there was still resistance.

The truth of the matter was that it was less 'resistance' and more Vengeance running down the German destroyers. Theoretical speed began to matter less when you were shipping water through hulls riddled by shellfire, which meant that they were barely opening the range with the cruiser, which harried them down the Ofotfjord. Any time they tried to lunge for one of the branches off the main fjord, be it towards the Bay of Bogen or the Vargfjord, the bow of the cruiser turned into them, beginning to cut the corner of their turn. For the senior surviving officer, it was deeply frustrating as he had hoped to hole up in a narrow fjord, reload his torpedoes and hunker down in the hope of either carrying out an ambush or just being left alone.

Fleur once again got a front-row seat to a naval battle, this time at even closer range. She could hear the frantic blare of the klaxon on one of the destroyers left adrift as their comrades approached, and heard the crash of the British heavy artillery, followed by the ripping-calico roar of the shells as they flew down the fjord. She witnessed Vengeance sailing through a sea set aflame with the oil spilling from the shattered hulk of Z9, passing between the bow and the stern of the German destroyer, cut in half by her overstressed boilers taking a direct hit from a British shell.

The smell was one she would never forget, of everything burning on Z11, the ship left adrift before the attack on Narvik, smashed by a salvo of shells, the fires that had raged on her an hour earlier now stoked with fresh material. The sight of Z2 finally sinking into the depths of the fjord, her shattered stern raked with three full broadsides from Vengeance as she crossed astern, committing three-hundred souls to the deep was another thing that would never leave her.

Was the twenty-seven thousand dead in a day in August 1914 truly terrible when in less than two hours, it was likely that over three thousand Germans had faced their fate at the end of the British cruiser's guns? How many could have survived the icy waters? Fleur's mouth thinned into a bitter set. One of those twenty-seven thousand was her grandfather, leaving a widowed wife soon to lose in battle two of her three sons. Let the British make a fresh Gomorrah of Germany.

Finally the battle came to an end, Z13's stubborn refusal to sink seeming only to enrage the giant, which closed, raking the German ship with everything from point-blank salvos from the 9.2-inch guns down to the dull thud-thud-thud-thud-thud of the quadruple 'Pom-Pom' autocannon reaching out with scything ropes of tracer until finally, the destroyer rolled over on her port beam, bow down and her screws slowly turning above the water as her stern rose.

Then the searchlight snapped on, fixed on the fishing boat.

"Recognition signals!" Fleur barked.

-x-

"-to the bottom of the sea, rather than to see her in the hands of a German." Fleur heard the gruff voice of their Norwegian fisherman announce as she became the last person to depart the boat, climbing up the steep sides of the British cruiser on the rope scrambling net. "Besides, she was one of yours in the last war. Royal Navy, White Ensign and all."

"Mister Creevey!" a voice barked. "Fetch me a White Ensign from the flag store. I'll be damned if I don't recommission her myself before we consign her to the deep."

Fleur, finally climbing over Vengeance's rail, collapsed against a bulkhead, barely managing to unsling her rifle and prop it up next to her before sinking to the deck. Sudden relief that they had escaped to the safety of a British warship left her legs shaking, and a reminder of the cold that cut to the bone, something she'd desperately tried to ignore for the last day.

"Capitaine!"

"Miss, are you all right?"

"Who's she?"

The burble of voices was cut straight through as if struck by a sword.

"CLEAR THE DECK! CAPTAIN COMING THROUGH."

Fleur looked up with reddened eyes, exhausted by strain of staring out in the queer half-light of an Arctic night to see the captain whose signal had so caught her attention only a few hours ago. Dressed in the typical uniform of a Royal Navy officer, he struck a sparse figure, clad in dark clothes all over, from his double-breasted greatcoat to his seaboots and his peaked cap, only broken by the tarnished gold glinting at his shoulders and on the brim of his cap, the gleaming golden hilt of a sword in a scabbard with golden fittings over black leather, a smattering of silver in otherwise dark hair, and the green eyes, a stare that she felt cut through to the soul. Yet, she did not find herself feeling uncomfortable under it, but there could be no doubt as to the intensity.

"Capitaine Potter, I presume." Fleur managed a half smile.

"Indeed, Miss..?" the low baritone somehow fit the man.

"Delacour. Special Clerk to the Naval Attaché." she decided not to mention that her duties revolved around cyphers, sensitive material and strategic plans.

"Is he-" began the Englishman.

"No. Killed by a mortar shell. He's on the boat." she gestured to the fishing boat secured to Vengeance's broadside. "All his documents were recovered with him."

"Very well. If there is no objection, then I'll request the Padre do the necessary."

"Thank you. One of the Norwegians also…"

He gave her a short nod.

"Number One, assign someone to see Miss Delacour to the Flag Staff quarters." he ordered

"Non, I will at least remain to see…"

Another short nod as a man wearing an odd combination of naval uniform and clerical collar arrived with a bible as two Royal Navy ratings descended onto the fishing boat's deck, and shortly after a White Ensign bloomed at the masthead. Then, with them back aboard, Vengeance withdrew, pulling away to starboard. The service was brief, the words of the Our Father followed by the names of the Naval Attaché and the fallen Norwegian reservist. Then captain stepped forward and raised his hand.

"Gun One, Load, Semi-Armour Piercing!"

Nearby a 4-inch shell was retrieved from the ready use locker, and with more ceremony that during battle, passed from one sailor to another, the brass cartridge glinting in the Arctic twilight. It was slammed into the breech with a closed fist, the breech block rising to close the back of the gun.

"Gun One, READY!" the call came.

Then, with solemn tone, Captain Potter delivered the last words of the Burial at Sea.

"We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body when the sea shall give up her dead and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ."

"AMEN." chorused the crew lining the rails.

"Gun One. SHOOT!"

The 4-inch gun barked out, the report echoing off the shores of the fjord as the spent, smoking cartridge was ejected from the back of the gun. Fleur at first thought they had missed, the plume of water erupting short of the fishing boat. Then, slightly down by the bow, the fishing boat slowly began to sink, the White Ensign flying at her masthead as she settled in the water, going down on an even keel.

She began to vanish from sight, the hull soon swallowed by the dark waters as a thrum built through Vengeance's hull, her turbines picking up and her screws churning the water until finally, as the fishing boat was swallowed by the night astern of them, only the wheelhouse, derricks and mast remained above the waters of the fjord, lapping across the deck.

With the adrenaline which had sustained her through the hours of fear and anger, Fleur found herself utterly exhausted, sagging against the rail where she'd managed to stand for the consignment. A strong arm steadied her, and she looked up to see Captain Potter next to her. He was a stern looking man, but, to her eyes, not unprepossessing. Perhaps her tastes had become more cosmopolitan, but she'd never encountered his like in Gascony.

"...about those quarters, Capitaine?" she asked.

"I'll see you to them myself." he offered a wry smile.