GATE: the clash of the titans V2

by Qun Nguyn1

Mostly AUs. A Gate has opened in Tokyo by a Roman-esque Empire, familiar scenario with familiar faces but the people marched through the Gate is from a vastly more powerful magic world. The stage is set. Earth Alliance vs The Holy Empire. Science vs Magic. The power of the thousand sun vs The Beast of the Apocalypse. Let the clash of Titans begin. Let the worlds have War.

9. Chapter 9: Britannia Rules The Waves

Chapter 9 : Britannia Rules The Waves

---

Mt. Axade, Commonwealth of Hashemite, Southern Lemuria, Falmart

Boasting a height of 4000m above sea level, the sacred mountain of Mt. Axade is the tallest mountain in the Commonwealth of Hashemite. Set up near the top of the mountain is a search radar. The enemy fleet was heading straight for them about 300km west of their position was already being tracked due to their link with the Royal Navy. A relay device, a command vehicle, 40 missile launcher vehicles, and 40 ammunition trucks have already been set up at the side of the mountain.

Black-uniformed men patrolled the command vehicle, accompanied by a pair of suited individuals. One wore a piece with dark stripes and a red tie, while the other wore a white dress shirt under a standard black piece. Flanked by two armed guards on either side, the men inspected the trucks with great interest.

The Dong-Feng 21K (CSS-5 Mod-6) Anti-ship missile… After being launched, the guided missile follows a pre-programmed course, like a sewing needle drawing a mountain on cloth, and emerges out on the ocean surface. Its range of 1,500 kilometers allows its user to lay waste to any ship out in the ocean. A very troublesome weapon for any attacker, like those who have come to attack Poseidon Naval Base, it can unleash its barrage of missiles anywhere as long as the enemy has still not secured a beachhead several hundred kilometers inland. With the overwhelming power held by the surface-to-surface missile regiment, they can easily drive back the outnumbered enemy ship.

"We've had no issues with the machinery so far," the black suited man explained. "We're ready to launch on your signal, Mister Varoufakis."

The other man fiddled with his umbrella, slowly twisting it. Scarcely able to contain his excitement, he gave his companion a nod, "Very well, Mister Zhang. Let's begin with the DF-21K hypersonic missile."

The enemy fleet has 40 dragon carriers. They would makes for good target practice. Heh.

"Let's fire just 8 shot for starters. Let see what these bastards can do… Launch as soon as you're ready. Ah, right. After some time, fire another 8, then repeat the process. They can't shoot them down anyways so let's just make them shit their pants."

"Yes, sir!"

With malicious intent written on his face, Zhang Huangyan ruthlessly gave the order to fire.

"Fire!"

Eight DF-21K hypersonic surface-to-ship guided missiles were launched from the mountainside of the sacred mountain, Mt. Axade.

Using a tablet receiving data from a drone, they monitored the progress of the missile test.

After being accelerated to the mesosphere by its rocket booster, the guided missile switched to its scramjet engine. Following its pre-programmed course, it emerged onto the open sea.

The DF-21K surface-to-ship guided missile pushed forward to its target as it skimmed the surface of the ocean at mach 10.

Eight hypersonic missiles zoomed past flying S-400 SAMs and falling dragons, seamlessly breaching the Empire' defenses as they slammed into 8 enemy dragon carriers. With characteristic white explosions, the carriers were sentenced to watery deaths. Chaos reigned as nearby ships and their crews were damaged by shrapnel, heat, and expanding pressure waves. Because of their huge size, the dragon carriers weren't completely obliterated and instead began to sink slowly, flooding in the gaping holes left by the missiles.

Shocked with the results, Varoufakis' mouth dropped. "No wonder Senator Wyden bought so much China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation stock…" he muttered.

120km from Port of Dammam, Persae Gulf

Captain Williams was not, despite the size of the waterspouts erupting around HMS Birmingham, overly worried about the large-calibre shellfire coming from the west. So far all they'd done was blow a smart hole clean through his aft funnel, blow away the anchor chain and windlasses and rake the British railgun cruiser with shrapnel.

Admittedly, the fact that his whaleboat had been blown to splinters and a fire set on the boat deck was tiresome, but it was soon extinguished and he could go back to blowing holes in whichever damn fool was shooting at his ship.

The ship's FCS calculated the enemy ship's relative speed, the flight speed of the shell, trajectory, and predicted the point of impact, then made adjustments to the gun barrel's angle and positioning pointing up into the sky and With metronome regularity, nine-gun salvos thundered out. They'd raked the enemy ship by ship at a distance of more than 150km, forcing them to manoeuvre to avoid their upperworks being trashed by Birmingham's hypersonic 155mm shellfire, and in the case of one, rather more had happened. They'd picked off the rearmost ship of the enemy formation, hammering her with broadside after broadside until the blip had vanished off the radar screens after an immense explosion erupted which was visible for miles.

However, of greater and more immediate concern to him was the fact that three large destroyer-sized contacts had detached from the main force and were making 170 knots.

So he ordered a touch of starboard helm to draw away from the enemy line-of-battle, the pursuing warships forced into a stern-chase, line astern to each-other. A periodic zig-zag allowed Birmingham to fire all three railgun turrets, albeit at a reduced rate of fire, the salvos were entirely concentrated on the lead ship. Under radar direction, each three-gun salvo was bringing on average one 155mm HEAP shell down on the first ship in line.

Finally the lead ship staggered under two successive hits from a single salvo, the first 155 HEAP shell slamming into the base of the foremast and bringing it crashing down into the sea on the port side, causing her to start to turn to port, the second plunging straight through the deck armour into the engine room before detonating against the starboard turbine casing.

As soon as the result of their gunnery became clear, the enemy ship veering off to starboard, Williams brought HMS Birmingham about to port. The enemy's second ship in line swung to starboard, masked from the British railgun cruiser by the crippled wreck.

-x-

Admiral Hipper had given the order to cease fire in order to conserve their precious 105mm magic shells as the pursuit by his ships drove HMS Birmingham out of effective range. They'd exchanged measured salvos for nearly two hours before the enemy ship slowed enough to allow his ships of the line to go into action.

During those two hours, he had only been able hear the steady reports and stare at his ship gunflashes and the explosions as each of his battleships was briefly hammered with enemy shellfire, before finally, at the rear of his line. The 130-gun ship-of-line HDES Kolburg took a HEAT shell straight into her mine racks and blew up, her remains foundering stern-first in minutes.

Then, his remaining 130-gun ship-of-line charged in line astern, the British railgun cruiser opening the range, but once again, Hipper could only watch as the HDES Strassburg took a beating at the hands of the British railgun cruiser, hit repeatedly before she could take no more, accumulating enough damage that she fell out of line, barely under control. The two, as yet untouched 130-gun ships-of-line, HDES Graudanz and Stralsund split as they steered to avoid the cripple, allowing the British railgun cruiser to turn on them with murderous accuracy and demolish them in turn.

The British railgun cruiser picked HDES Graudanz as the first recipient of her attentions, steered into turn, her guns crashing out broadsides every twelve or fifteen seconds, a rain of 155mm HEAT shellfire complemented by their devastating accuracy even at the distance of more than 177km. It was as he saw this ruination being dealt that Hipper made the harsh decision to write off his 130-gun ships-of-line.

Signalling for the 130-gun ships-of-line to try and break off, either with him or into the night and back to friendly ports, the bow of his flagship, the 150-gun ships-of-line HDES Seydlitz, swung west, followed by his 100-gun ships-of-line and the large armoured 140-gun ships-of-line HDES Blücher. If he could not salvage the engagement with the much faster HMS Birmingham, he could take advantage of the battle.

It was work of a few minutes to slip away into the darkness, his plan to trail his coat down the east coast of Persae, then cut across the rear of the 77th Persae Sea Fleet to cover his withdrawal from the British battlecruisers which were out there, somewhere, lurking. First though, he had to signal to Admiral Ingenoh before the craven retreated with the full force of Empire's III Battle Group. A quick consultation of the ship's chart brought him to the realisation that a new target was possible after the run to the north. A turn south-west and they could pass north of the Empire minefields and make for the Tyne.

What he did not know, and could not know, was that there was a fast, radar-equipped ship that had split off from Vian's fast squadron, and was now prowling in the darkness astern of him. HMS Manxman. If he had known, perhaps he would have abandoned his mission, but now his 150-gun ships-of-line were Vian's prey. Out in the darkness, the bows of two mighty men-of-war swung back onto a westerly heading.

-x-

The death of the 130-gun ship-of-line HDES Graudanz proved an extended affair, HMS Birmingham raking her bow, blowing away her entire forward battery of AA ballistas, her bridge smashed by shellfire. The British cruiser then came about, broadside on to the 130-gun ship-of-line, pouring six and four-inch HEAT shellfire into her flanks, dismounting more of the smaller ship's guns, reducing her boat deck to an inferno of sailcloth, shattered timber, paint and oil. Finally Captain Williams chose to close into torpedo range, putting a single supercavitating torpedo into her, breaking her back and sending her to the bottom of the sea.

HDES Stralsund's demise was a far swifter affair by comparison. By steering starboard, passing south of the crippled Strassburg, her captain blundered into the heavy railgun cruisers HMS London and Gambia. On high alert since the terse signals from HMS Birmingham at the beginning of the action, they had picked up a signals exchange they could barely believe. All the same, they'd picked up four railgun destroyers and blown one of the 100-gun ship-of-line to pieces. Not wanting to leave too much of the glory for Birmingham and her hard-bitten captain, the two big cruisers churned up terrific bow waves as they thundered into the battle, the destroyer captains keeping their ships astern as ordered, riding the big cruisers' wakes.

The heavy railgun cruisers took the ship-of-line Stralsund under fire with a certain degree professional enthusiasm, gun crews feeding the endless appetite of the guns for destruction. The 130-gun ship-of-line was reduced to a wreck, hammered by shellfire over a quarter-of-an-hour of radar-guided gunnery practice. Rapid shelling with eight, six and four-inch guns toppled her three masts, blowing away the flimsy gunshields, setting the ship's deck well aflame from midships to her quarterdeck. Her entire bridge was wiped out by the blast from an eight-inch HEAP round from HMS London. Finally, the tormented wreck was put out of her misery, hit in the fore and aft magazines successively, cutting her into three pieces.

The last 130-gun ship-of-line to find the bottom was the HDES Strassburg, the wreck adrift without power, she was discovered by modern British destroyers sweeping for survivors. One unfortunate gun crew spotted a British warship which closed to investigate, and fired off four or five rounds from their single gun before being raked with high-explosive shells, then cut in half by a supercavitating torpedo from the destroyer HMS Barfleur.

-x-

"Sir... Sir? Philip!"

Vice-Admiral Vian snapped bolt upright in the uncomfortable chair on HMS Vanguard's bridge. He reflected to his disquiet that the years were beginning to weigh on him.

"My apologies William." he grumbled, running a hand across his eyes. He hadn't slept since before dawn the day before. Captain Agnew just nodded, he'd been there too, driven to fatigue-induced sleep.

"Sir. HMS London and Gambia have rejoined astern, I've moved them up to support HMS Nigeria and Manxman in case Hipper decides to try a battle turn on us. We've also got the destroyers HMS Lynx, Hardy, Ambuscade and Shark."

"Keep them back, Hipper's guns would tear them to pieces for little hope at damage in return." Vian sighed, sliding out of the admiral's chair, picking up his binoculars. "Anything from signals?"

"Heavy Manacomsys, but not sustained jamming. We can avoid it anyway, changing frequencies. We think it's two way - both Hipper and Von Ingenoh. He's started steering a course towards the port at Middlesborough."

"We can assume that they are cooperating. Good. Hipper wants to do some damage to our port, and then expects to link up, either to withdraw under the cover of massed guns, or to draw us into their fire." Vian allowed himself a grim smile.

"I'd hate to disappoint our illustrious counterparts in the Imperial Navy. I think now is the time to begin drawing up astern on Hipper. A touch to starboard, I want to drive him out of range of our coast."

The relevant orders went out, first the clatter of the Aldis lamp, then a pause as the other ships flashed back their acknowledgement, followed by a simple short burst of flashes. Execute. The ever-present thrum of the turbines deep beneath the battleship's deck began to build, and her bow swung a few degrees to the west, putting Hipper on the port bow.

"Sir." the signals officer approached the captain and the admiral. "Duke of York sir, her cruisers shadowing Von Ingenoh report that a large number of ships have split off from the main force, making 200 knots, 50 knots over the rest. We think they're the Third Battle Group."

It took a moment for Vian to recall the order of battle that they'd put together. "How long before they come upon Warrender?" he asked.

"Not until Warrender's committed against Hipper."

The question, to sink them now, or sink them later?

"Signal HMS Duke of York. The Third Battle Group is fair game. Get them out from under Von Ingenoh's guns and sink them."

-x-

Rear-Admiral Cunninghame Graham was presented with something of a dilemma. His four battleships could smash the enemy 30 ships-of-line to pieces with little difficulty, but as yet, the heavy roar of his fourteen-inch AGS guns had not sounded, and thus, Von Ingenoh was entirely unaware of his existence. He liked it that way, there was no use scaring the 77th Persae Sea Fleet off at this point in the game.

Instead, he looked to his cruisers, all five of which were County-class heavies, as his three six-inch railgun cruisers were shadowing the 77th Persae Sea Fleet. Signal lamps flashed across the squadron, and three of the large men-of-war slipped their leashes, sterns digging in as thrumming turbines drove them forward.

They were followed by a flotilla of fast large fleet destroyers, HMS Ashanti, Eskimo, Nubian, Tartar, Jervis, Javelin, Kelvin and Kimberley which broke off from the screen and joined the heavy cruisers.

Battle would commence after two hours of steaming to close with the III Battle Group. Formed up into a loose column, the 5 flotilla closed in to 150,000 yards under cover of the morning haze before the Empire lookouts brought their guns to bear.

The range had fallen to 140,000 yards by the time a firing solution had been produced at the first 24 and 21cm salvoes were roaring out. At the rapidly-closing range, firing against small, manoeuvring targets. The Empire gunnery failed to even wet the decks of their pursuers. The 150-gun ship-of-line accompanying the III Battle Group, HDES Rostock, swung out of line, steaming to intercept them, engaging the lead destroyer with her forward pair of triple 10.5cm guns.

The British destroyers, sweeping in across the starboard quarter of the III Battle Group at 70 knots, returned the favour, their guns barking as they hammered out broadsides. On his flagship's bridge, Admiral Rebeur Paschwitz cursed as the battle slipped behind the arcs of the forward guns of his armoured ship-of-line, and the four masts of Rostock blinded them for minutes. Steering aggressively, he turned his ships north, bringing them broadsides with the enemy ships, ones he took to be either large destroyers or small scout cruisers.

By the time he had brought his ships about, HDES Rostock was in a bad way. Though the shell-splashes were less a forest, more a shrubbery, her hull was surrounded by them, and black smoke rose from her foredeck, and her firing fell away, not steering to broadside the British warships with her remaining guns, even as more HEAT shells fell on her.

Finally, the British armoured cruisers opened fire with their hypervelocity 24, 21 and 15cm railguns, more in hope than anything. Certainly the British destroyers quickly swung around, putting the badly beaten HDES Rostock between them and her bigger compatriots.

However, they had succeeded in putting the Empires in an unfortunate position, as Rebeur Paschwitz realised when the ship he'd chosen to hoist his flag upon, HDES Roon, came under a terrific bombardment from the north. The magic rangefinders on his leading ship-of-line could barely spot the enemy warships, and do nothing to respond at the range.

Soon even observing them became impossible as the first eight-inch HEAP shell wiped out the bridge, with it the unfortunate command staff who had yet to retreat to the conning tower with their admiral, and the blast roared through the spotting top.

In the perfect tactical position, HMS Kent, Berwick, and Cumberland savaged HDES Roon, quickly finding the range, each ship firing a broadside at ten-second intervals. Her forward guns, still out of range, were quickly fouled and put out of action as her deck was torn up by a shell through the chainlocker. For five minutes she was so beleaguered, her bridge crew having been wiped out in the first minute of the engagement.

Once command was brought to the ship and she answered the helm, a critical mistake was made. She swung out of line, her bow turning to starboard as they sought to unmask her aft battery, finally in range. Yet, the flatter ballistic arcs of the three British cruisers allowed them to perforate her armoured belt easily, and her sloped armour where it was thinner.

Worse, her new course put her head-on with the destroyer flotilla, which was circling the doomed HDES Rostock like Indians around a circle of wagons, except here there was just one wagon, being shelled from every direction, only breaking off to evade the shell-splashes from the secondary gun batteries of the HDES Roon and Prinz Heinrich.

It was to the Empire ship-of-line's credit that she did not die easily, but every shot that passed her muzzles harmlessly was returned from dozens of British guns, her fire doing little more than superficial damage in seeking to hit the fast-turning destroyers.

Soon the fire of the Empire ship-of-line slackened, the inadequacy of the gun magic shields was ably demonstrated as shrapnel from the blasts of high-explosive armor-piercing shells swept the decks, taking many homunculus gunner off their feet.

When the course of the HDES Roon was noted, and the attached Empire ships-of-line finally fought their way clear to engage the British destroyers, the order went out, to sink the Rostock and withdraw. Pulling the flotilla together on the far side of their prey from the oncoming armoured ships-of-line, they closed in, the blatter of Bofor rocket launchers joining the bark of the destroyer's hypervelocity railguns. There was little return fire, and soon, Rostock rolled over, towering spouts of water from a pair of VA-111 Shkval supercavitating torpedoes announcing her death.

-x-

Suddenly, black smoke roared fromthe deck of the ship-of-line Roon followed by a cloud of blue smoke as shells sliced into her engine rooms. Rapidly losing way, the beleaguered armoured ship-of-line was still being watched from the destroyers through the smoke and spray from the destruction of the HDES Rostock. The captain of the destroyer flotilla saw what was happening and took a gamble.

Spreading out en echelon port, his destroyers sprang out of the smoke, tearing across the shell-tossed waters, heading for the Empire armoured ships-of-line. Spotted quickly enough, their foe, wallowing like a drunken duck, slowly tried to turn north again, clumsily coming around to port to bear the starboard secondary battery on the destroyers - the port side battery largely silenced, riddled with eight-inch HEAP shellfire.

The same HMS Tribal which had dispatched the HDES Rostock with a pair of VA-111 Shkval supercavitating torpedoes surged out of the formation of destroyers as the other seven turned away from the Empire guns, hammering out rapid broadsides, masking their comrade's approach, obscuring her from Roon's gunners, though it quickly became apparent that of her secondary guns, only the upper two batteries could fire as the ship leaned into the turn.

As first one, then the second upper 15cm guns were shelled into submission, all that the destroyer had to do was silence the 8.8cm guns, two pairs of which fired on her from midships and astern. Bearing in, forward guns blazing, her anti-aircraft guns chattering away, walking their fire up and down the decks of the Empire ship-of-line. Then, well within the necessary range, she spun away, decoy smoke masking her from any retaliation as her remaining pair of supercavitating torpedoes ate up the distance to the target.

One torpedo exploded high on the turning ship's side, caving in much of her flank and exposing the secondary battery to the seas. The other fish struck further astern, striking under her quarterdeck, severing two propellers from their shafts and shattering the seals, the blast jamming the rudder hard over, tightening the turn to port, a turn from which HDES Roon would never emerge, the sea pouring into her gutted starboard side, her list rapidly deepening as her crew frantically abandoned ship, pouring down her side and leaping from her deck as she foundered.

-x-

Fished out of the water by a boat, shellshocked and staring distantly across the burning deck of his last ship, Rebeur Paschwitz could only reflect sadly on the fact that all the might of the 77th Persae Sea Fleet was not more than half-an-hour from bringing his ships under the protection of their guns. He could only believe - no matter that some fool boy with a measuring tape insisted that the shell-holes were from Britain's 19cm guns - that his ship-of-line had fallen victim to the attentions of some of numerous battlecruisers of the British Grand Fleet.

HDES Prinz Heinrich surged on, battered yet defiant despite the blazes lit on deck, the toppled masts and the charnel houses made of her batteries, but he could see the men bobbing in the water amidst the flotsam from what had been his flagship, and astern, he could see nothing but the disturbed water and the pall of smoke where the ship-of-line Rostock had been.

He had seen her magazine touched off by a supercavitating torpedo, lit up like the Royal Palace on a cold winter's night, with light pouring from every hatch and hole, followed by a terrible smoke, before she sank like a stone in a millpond. It was little consolation to him that the loss of his squadron would be in battle, rather than the ignominious loss of the HDES Yorck and the Friedrich Carl.

Around him, his ship disintegrated. Where the venerable HDES Prinz Heinrich was strong, the British HEAT shells tore through, smashing their way into the ship and blowing holes into her steel, and where she was weak, the blasts simply tossed away timber, steel, glass, even whole guns were thrown aside. She no longer answered the helm, and he could not tell where the fault lay, so torn up were her voice pipes that he could not tell whether her wheelhouse still existed, or whether the mechanisms and machines that joined the ship's wheel to the rudder still served.

He could only close his eyes and await the inevitable.

In all the furore, none of the Empire ships had noticed that their frantic work at the radar sets was being jammed by massed emissions on the same frequencies by the radar sets on all the British warships. The 77th Persae Sea Fleet had, at a stroke, been largely blinded, yet remained unaware.

-x-

"Time gentlemen?" Vian decided to break the nervous silence on Vanguard's bridge.

"Oh-nine-forty, sir." one of the younger officers announced, sliding up his sleeve to reveal an American-style wristwatch.

"Good. Signal Captain Brooke, Renown may take firing position off my port quarter. Captain Agnew, prepare to fight your ship."

"Aye sir. Guns, how long to 200,000 yards?"

"Rangekeepers have the Blücher at 212,000 yards, and we're closing them down 800 yards a minute captain."

"Ten o'clock, mid-morning tea and a sea battle, that'll look good in the ship's log." Agnew commented wryly.

Vian raised one bushy eyebrow. "Make mine a coffee. This day has a way yet to go."

A steward was hastily summoned, and as he departed to supply the bridge with the lubricant necessary for the smooth command of the fleet and the ship, a signal lamp was flashing out orders to the battlecruiser which had slipped out from behind Vanguard.

'BOTH TO ENGAGE REARMOST OF ENEMY LINE. FIRE INTERVALS. ON MY MARK.'

On his bridge, Captain Basil Brooke bared his teeth in a grim smile. Even if this was another age, he regarded the imminent seal-clubbing as well-deserved vengeance for the loss the Empires had heaped on him, sending two of his ships to the bottom, and with them ninety of his men in the Rumbling.

-x-

The silence was made all the more stark by the ticking of a dozen assorted timepieces. Every man seemed to be staring down at their clock face, be it on a chain or a strap. Even Vice-Admiral Vian was lightly toying with a scarred gold-cased pocket watch. As the last minute before ten ticked down, Captain Agnew broke the silence.

"Guns?" he called sharply.

"Main battery ready, and we can bear the port for'ard secondaries." 'Guns' replied.

"Range holding steady, matching speed." the navigator called.

"Very well, at your leisure, fire as they bear."

"Fire as they bear aye."

The gunnery officer snatched up the phone from the housing he'd been standing by, winding it briefly. The rotator switch had the director control tower selected, as it had been for hours.

"Guns. Control. Stand by. Stand by..." the moment seemed endless to those one the man-of-war's bridge. "Shoot!" he barked.

For the very first time, HMS Vanguard's massive Advanced Gun System main guns roared to life in anger. First the No.1 gun in A-turret and the No.2 gun in B turret fired in unison, billowing sheets of smoke over the bow, then within a fraction of a second, they were followed by the No.2 in A-turret and the No.1 in B turret. The crash and thunder of the salvos were indescribable as, in the gunhouses, the hundred-ton guns were flung four feet back in their cradles, the entire ship reverberating to the shockwave from firing.

The steady countdown from the transmitting station below began, and had got to the ten second call when a signalman called out from the port side of the bridge.

"Lamp signal. RENOWN FIRING!"

The call up the voice pipe from below of "Impact now!" was nearly drowned out by the thunder of the battlecruiser's guns coming to life, her sleek bow and the shadow of her stern were, for a few long heartbeats, all that could be seen as her hull was veiled in smoke and flame from her muzzles.

To the disappointment of Vanguard's bridge crew, the fall of shot was long by a hundred yards, but it was to be expected.

Her first salvo shook the ship-of-line Blücher, four waterspouts as high as cathedrals towering over the suddenly-diminutive warship. Then, as Vanguard's crew began to get a handle on their equipment, drawing the fall of shot back with the next salvo, the armoured ship-of-line shook as the first of HMS Renown's 15-inch hypervelocity shells plunged into her stern. The impact could hardly have been more critical, save had it struck the magazines, as the nearly-two thousand pound round punched through the armoured ship-of-line's deck and barely slowed before it struck the heavy casing of the starboard triple-expansion engine, and detonated.

As the hail of shrapnel tore through the engine room, flame burst from a dozen different places, torn pipes and shattered engine casings, at a pressure in excess of 200 pounds per square inch and 200 Celsius. The combination quickly denuded the space of any living being, and the ship of around 50 knots, her starboard propeller slowing to only the speed caused by the sea passing through it. Then, realising that the ship was beginning to drift to starboard, the order came down from the bridge for power to the port screw to be reduced as a touch of left rudder was applied to bring the lamed armoured cruiser back in line.

Nonetheless, the two working aft turrets were brought to bear, and soon the order to fire went out. It was to some consternation aboard Vanguard that the Empire return-fire landed within two thousand yards of her, and a terse order to 'shut those bloody guns up' went out. By this point, HMS Renown had landed another hit at a shallow angle into one of the fuel bunkers, blowing it open to the sea, and the new battleship's guns were finding the range, ranging with HEAP.

The first hit was one of those HEAP rounds, landing at the foot of the forward mast, the blast fractured the starboard support of the foremast, blowing the mast over, sweeping the boat deck with burning shrapnel and dumping the smashed starboard derrick on the for'ard port turret. The racket of HMS Vanguard's 5.25-inch port for'ard secondary railgun battery joined the thunder of the heavy naval guns, four guns bearing on the enemy ship, each spitting out a shell every ten seconds, the regular bark coming every two-and-a-half seconds.

The shell rain only intensified as, in combination to the 15-inch salvos arriving every thirty seconds and the constant twenty-four-shell-a-minute hail of 5.25-inch shells, HMS London joined the fight, also firing four-gun salvos, timed at thirty-second intervals and so the fall of shot was halfway between that of HMS Renown and Vanguard.

-x-

Admiral Hipper could hardly bear to look astern. The HDES Blücher had managed to make a handful of signals, none of which were encouraging. A third of her propulsion was simply gone, a third more was suffocated by the collapse of her first mast, her main battery either couldn't bear or was destroyed. Damage control was overwhelmed and flooding was unrepairable in multiple compartments, and could only be isolated, not pumped out. Black smoke poured from furnace-like blazes in the fuel bunkers and the British fire hardly slackened.

He wondered if it was the right decision, if he was letting his heart, his honour, rule a mind which urged him to make a cold decision, and not for the first time that day, to pull away and hope he could break away from British pursuers. This time, at least, he could say that he had the promise of the protection of Von Ingenoh's massed squadrons, if he could just shake off the battlecruisers astern.

His heart refused him, his honour and Empire demanded something more than escape.

"I want a slight turn to starboard, to draw them off HDES Blücher, then we'll sweep around to port and form line of battle. Beat them off towards their own coast, recover Blücher or take her crew off and scuttle her."

He had seen the murderous effect of the long range British gunnery, but now he would force them to chase him, then swing around, close with them like a pugilist, and slam into them, where his numbers counted, and all the while, he'd be heading for the 77th Persae Sea Fleet.

-x-

The fact that the 40 ships-of-line of I Battle Group were beginning to open up to a good 160 knots, and creeping higher, was noticed swiftly by HMS Vanguard's radar team. Vian made the call to work the entire fleet up to 62 knots in pursuit. Reeling in the lamed HMS Blücher, now limping along at ten knots, at a rate that they would overhaul her in half-an-hour, noting that the armoured ships-of-line's starboard secondary battery was burnt out, and her main battery guns were unusable, Vian ordered his three cruisers, HMS London, Nigeria and Gambia to cover the destroyers HMS Lynx, Hardy, Ambuscade and Shark in a torpedo attack.

It was a decision to divest himself of what was, in truth, a liability, and to make use of their limited capabilities on an occasion where they wouldn't be made mincemeat of.

In the meantime, fire was ceased against the armoured ships-of-line, the guns temporarily silenced as tactical decisions were made. The new course Hipper had laid was charted, and Vian stared at it. He knew he'd been trying to shepherd the Empires away from the coast, but to do so now... he decided a different course, and a different course of action.

"He wants to corner us against our coast does he? We can cross his port quarter if we steer to west, broadside to starboard, and mark down another of his ships given a bit of luck. He'll have to turn back west or be cut off from Empire by any course but right down the coast past the Humber and The Wash."

Once more, the two capital ships swung to port, their guns trained to starboard, both laid on the last Empire ship in line, The Iron Dog. In the lull as the two fleets manoeuvred, a quick inventory was done of Vanguard's magazines. Two rounds of HEAP per gun were left, and eighty-three of APC for the for'ard main battery, and three-hundred rounds per gun in the for'ard port secondary battery.

Then, as the broadside arcs opened, first HMS Vanguard, then Renown fired their first full broadsides of the battle.

-x-

Hipper was disappointed to see the British capital ships turn into his intended course, and swiftly realised the danger as his last ship in line, Derfflinger, came under fire, hit twice in the first two minutes of shooting. However, the range-keepers assured him the British ships were closing, a hundred-and-fifty metres a minute. The range had already dropped to under 155,000 metres. He snapped out the order. Form battleline port.

His ships, one-by-one, turned their bows west, and bringing their broadsides against their foe.

-x-

The status of Vice-Admiral Vian as a fighting sailor was never in any doubt, but the litany of curses that spilled from his lips was, nonetheless, extra confirmation. He'd realised that he'd been so fixated with treating Hipper like a target, rather than a reactive, and indeed proactive enemy, that he'd forgotten that the man had risen to the command he held not through timidity or incompetence. Striding across the bridge, he nearly ran over the camera crew who were feeding film to the two massive cameras recording the battle.

Vanguard shook with the double-concussion of two four-gun salvos inside a second, for a moment his gaze obscured before it cleared, allowing him to see through his binoculars the four battlecruisers in line astern elevating their guns to bear on his ships.

"Range?!" he snapped.

"Sixteen-twenty five-fifty, relatively steady." came the response.

"Hold the turn! If he wants us to veer off, leaving him the Blücher, he'll not get that satisfaction. Captain Agnew! If you would kindly keep us on a course to engage with broadsides. You may open or close the range at your discretion." Vian's mouth tightened to a thin line.

"Navigator! Set a course one point off that of Hipper and signal it to Renown. That'll open up the range by three-thousand yards in the next quarter of an hour." Agnew ordered before turning to the gunnery officer. "Guns! I want to split fire. Leave Derfflinger for Renown, forward battery to take Seydlitz at the head of the line under fire, aft to bear on Moltke. All secondary batteries that can, to target the one in between - Von der Tann. Port guns to fire on Blücher!"

"Sir?" it was, perhaps, forgivable to query the order. Splitting your fire was usually not a good idea as it lessened the number of shells aimed at a single target and complicated fire control. In this case though, Agnew weighed trusting the superiority of the British guns and gunnery against being outnumbered 20-to-1 if he left one of the Empire ships-of-line unengaged.

"Do as you are told sir!" snarled Vian. He would not see his Flag Captain questioned on choosing to take his guns to as much of the Empire line-of-battle as he could.

-x-

Admiral Hipper allowed himself a faint smile of satisfaction. It wasn't an ambush like Admiral Togo had dealt to the Russlands nearly a century earlier, but he'd bought his ships a fighting chance at a victory. The six-gun British battlecruiser was locked in a long-range brawl with Derfflinger, the Eisenhund now a eighty-gun gun ships-of-line due to 40 guns being irrevocably jammed - that would be yard time.

It was frustrating to see though that the British ship wasn't holding line of battle but weaving to frustrate the Empire ship-of-line's rangefinders, and certainly seemed to be getting the better of the fight, as yet untouched by his own fire, he could see the newest of his ships-of-line shaking under the hammer-blows of the British guns.

The bigger eight-gun battlecruiser though, that was proving a thorny foe to tackle. She had chosen to exchange main battery shells with both his flagship and Moltke, while taking Von der Tann under fire with medium-calibre secondary guns. Usually, he would judge this a mistake by the captain, but her shells were telling, striking both ships with depressing regularity. He could see smoke billowing on her port side too, presumably taking his armoured cruiser under fire.

"How many Goddamn guns does they have!" Von Egidy bit out.

"Not as many as you'd think." Hipper frowned, counting the puffs of smoke from the enemy warship. "They have bigger guns and firing faster though. Captain, do we have any more speed, we need to clear ahead of them if we are to have any hope of reaching Blücher."

Certainly the shells were having an effect, Von der Tann had multiple fires on deck, and he could hear ammunition cooking off, her unprotected 8.8cm mounts a liability in the fight. The other British battlecruiser was doing the same to Derfflinger, a hail of smaller calibre shells interspersed with the regular thunder of the big guns. Hipper clenched his hands around his binoculars, throwing a scowl at the spotting top above, for the British were quick to find the range, and hold it. Meanwhile, his guns were still working ladders to range on the enemy, his flagship firing ten-gun broadsides, even though the blast across the deck from Turret Bruno was shaking the ship and springing rivets, blowing away fittings and encasing the ship in clouds of gunsmoke.

It was through the smoke that Hipper finally reacquired Blücher and at once he knew she was lost, under fire from the lead British battlecruiser's port guns, being pounded by three unfamiliar large armoured or protected cruisers, her guns almost completely silent. Then four small specks on the swirling shell-churned waters charged her. He could only watch as the destroyers closed to what seemed like bowshot range, then the waterspouts from torpedo-impacts worked up and down her flanks. A small mercy it was that, at that, the British ships ceased fire and, as the armoured ships-of-line rolled over on her starboard beam, one of them hoisted the internationally-recognised flag for life-saving.

Glancing across the bridge to his starboard side where his torpedo-ships-of-line sheltered, now numbering 161 after one of them had taken a freak hit from the British battlecruisers - a shot that had fallen long and had nearly cut the diminutive warship in half – Hipper wondered, when to commit them? As his ship shuddered under the hammer-blows of the British capital ships, he wondered if he should have committed his ships beyond Heligoland in the first place.

He would have held that view even more strongly, had he known that, as the clock ticked past 10:45 and the battle raged around him, that ahead of him lay even more British warships.

-x-

Captain Williams took just a brief moment to admire the scene. His Birmingham was once more cemented in her place on the flank of the battle fleet, scouting for the enemy. It still seemed like something out of a dream, or a painting of days gone by. Alongside lay battlecruiser Lion, then the Queen Mary, a ship long regarded in the fleet as a martyr of British sea power, followed by the barely-commissioned Tiger, which he regarded as likely to be a liability in a fight.

The lucky New Zealand had been left with Warrender, to join up later. He hoped her luck would hold true. Certainly, while he'd seen her making a good 63 knots, more than an old copy of Jane's Fighting Ships suggested was possible, suggesting that her engineers were flogging the living daylights out of her machinery.

Then, half-an-hour after, on orders from Jellicoe, Beatty and Birmingham had been detached from Warrender's force on orders from Jellicoe, a call came up to the bridge.

"Contact on radar! It's bloody Hipper again!"

-x-

"Sir, she's signalling! Empire ships-of-line green oh-one-five, range two hundred thousand, speed 120 knots."

"Navigator! How long until we're in range?" demanded Beatty.

"Twelve minutes sir!"

"Very good, I want a signal prepared to the effect of; that at Eleven-Forty on the sixteenth of April, 2030, the First Battlecruiser Squadron made contact with and engaged the forces of the Empire's 77th Persae Sea Fleet in battle." he instructed to all a sundry.

"Hold transmitting it until visual range."

-x-

"Ships ahoy!" the report from the highest manned position of Vanguard's mast came down the voice pipes to the bridge. "Fighting tops! It's Admiral Beatty!"

Below the lookout's perch, the call was more or less redundant, as a stream of constant updates had been arriving from the radar operators to the officers on the bridge. Vian himself had watched over their shoulders as for half an hour, the radar screens had been showing the battlecruiser squadron steaming towards them. Yet, it was heartening to those high up in the ship's superstructure to swing their binoculars across the horizon, to pause and watch as one-after-another, four fighting tops emerged over the horizon.

"How's the man going to deploy?" Vian frowned down at one of the radar screens in the operations room in the back of the bridge. He absently ran a hand across his eyes, the bone-deep tiredness a constant reminder that he was past his fifty-first birthday, and not as young as he wished.

"Beatty sir? His current course brings him across our bows from port." a pair of parallel lines crossed the plot to show both Vian and Hipper's courses, and another one to show that of Beatty's battlecruisers.

"Sir! One of their ships is-" a call went up from one of the radar operators, but was cut off by a signaller.

"Birmingham signalling. She's engaging Hipper's light forces!"

"Signal my regards to Captain Williams for guiding our allies in." Vian nodded to the signalman before heading out onto the bridge, putting out a hand to steady himself as Vanguard's eight guns bellowed out another broadside. "Captain Agnew! Report!"

The smell of gunsmoke was thick in the air, but heavier still was the scent of heavy bunker oil, and a blackish haze lay on the sea, slowly drifting and mixing with the residue of each broadside.

"Sir. We've taken minor damage. One shell through the forepeak, one skipped off the surface and smashed a cutter before going over the side, two detonated on the belt. Half-a-dozen wounded by shrapnel." Agnew reported. "I had HMS Trafalgar cover us with a smokescreen when their shooting got a touch to hot for my liking, and opened the range a touch. Their shooting's not been half as accurate since, we think HDES Seydlitz lost her main gun battery rangefinders. I've moved our aft battery to bring HDES Von der Tann under fire. HMS Renown's engaging HDES Moltke."

"And HDES Derfflinger?" Vian's binoculars swept the Empire line, but he could not fix the fourth Empire ships-of-line, lost somewhere in the haze from the pyre of HDES Von der Tann, ablaze from a hail of 5.25-inch HEAP shells. "I saw her track on the radar, she wasn't making the speed she should be."

"She fell behind, Renown got her propulsion somewhere. Hipper decided not to hang around."

"Good, our light units can have her."

-x-

Commander Reginald St. Pierre Parry took the report of how much fuel his diminutive HMS Lynx had in the bunkers in good humour - enough to loiter around and cause a bit more trouble for their Empire colleagues, he commented to the engineer. The fact that all his four-ship flotilla's torpedoes were gone, spent on HDES Blücher, that was a bit more of a concern. Nonetheless, he made the decision to 'miss', in the haze of gunsmoke and burning diesel, the signal ordering him to disengage from one of the big cruisers.

There was no doubt that the ships he was sailing in consort to were against the Empires, but nonetheless they were odd. Parry reckoned that he'd recognise nearly any ship in the fleet, but the only response to a signal asking the eight-gun fast cruiser what had happened to the HMS London, the battleship, was a curt 'form line astern' and 'follow me'. Now that the cruisers had steamed off west at high speed, he was content to shadow them at a distance.

It was while doing so, amidst a cloud of fire-and-gun smoke that his four destroyers came across something far bigger than the four of them put together. Listing to port, a pall of smoke lying thick above her, her guns silent, blackened and buckled, decks torn like the waves of a storm-tossed sea, the ships-of-line HDES Derfflinger seemed like a derelict.

A prize.

"Break out the arms locker. Every man except for the communicators and engineers, and those manning the forward four-inch to take arms. I want this signal hoisted!"

-x-

Piling in from the north, at the head of the four vessels which formed the detached half of Vian's eight-ship destroyer flotilla, the captain of Saintes stared through his screen. He'd been signalled to deal with a straggler from Hipper's squadron - and wasn't that a waking dream - only to find 4 small destroyers were already ahead of him.

"I thought those bloody liabilities were sent home." the captain frowned.

"Apparently they didn't like being treated like errant schoolchildren." his Number One suggested wryly.

"What the devil are they doing now?" he briefly lowered his binoculars, wiping some seaspray off his face before bringing the glasses back up, refocusing, trying to read the signals flying from the lead destroyer's halyards.

"I think they mean to board the HDES Derfflinger!" the signals officer joined them.

The utterances from the captain that followed that revelation were thoroughly unrepeatable, but a quick plan of action was drawn up. No officer was willing to risk the precious commodity of the lives of the destroyer flotilla's men in a foolhardy gamble like boarding HDES Derfflinger. All the same, if their commonwealth comrades were committed to following Nelson's traditions, they were unwilling to leave them without any support.

So the half-flotilla split into pairs. Two ships fell in behind the half-flotilla, preparing to employ every gun, anti-aircraft cannon and more than a few .50 BMG machine-guns dug out of the arms lockers to suppress the Empire crew. The Derfflinger's casemates were carefully examined, SAP rounds prepared in the loading trays to make sure the Empire 15cm guns in their burnt-out mounts stayed silent.

The other two destroyers cut off to port, working their engines up to full chat, preparing to cut across the wallowing battlecruiser's path. Their task was to support the fire against the 130-gun ships-of-line from the other side for as long as possible while keeping the Empire torpedo-ships-of-line off HMS Lynx and her three consorts.

-x-

Admiral Beatty was grinning. His bridge crew had never seen the almost feral expression on their commander's face, but for once he couldn't keep his composure. How could he? The signal had gone out on HMS Lion's signal lamps, flashed over and over again. P-Pudding. L-London. V-Vinegar. Then the response had come from the head of the northern line, D-Duff. R-Robert. B-Butter. Just as the big cruiser had informed him the recognition code would be. That meant that the southern line was Hipper's ship. This was the moment he knew he'd been born for, to lead the fleet of the British Commonwealth into battle against the foe, and here that foe was, served up on a platter.

He glanced over at the big cruiser. Her forward railguns were elevated to an extreme angle, firing in pairs. For a moment he gritted his teeth, wishing that it was his flagship which had the means of accurately bringing her guns to bear at such range. Rather he had to sit and wait as the range counters ticked down.

A request from his captain to make the turn to open his aft arcs was denied swiftly. They would close the range far faster on a course at an acute angle to Hipper. Finally, at one hundred seventy thousand, five-hundred yards, he gave the nod. Flag signals were hoisted, and with guns trained to starboard, HMS Lion at long last began her turn to port.

"SHIPS! THE FLEET IS HERE!"

For a moment, Hipper's heart sang. This was the moment, at the cost of HDES Blücher sunk, and HDES Derfflinger left behind, unable to make even enough speed to be thrown at the British guns, he'd managed to lead the British ships onto Von Ingenoh's guns. Then it all came crashing down.

"British battlecruisers! Three ships! Lion class!"

Hipper's heart sank into his boots. He was now outnumbered five-to-three, and his ships were horrifically battered, kept sailing only by the grace of the Emperor. HDES Von der Tann was a wreck, everything above the armoured deck had been perforated with medium-calibre HEAT shells, her port casemates were methodically shot out and fires burned in multiple places, the damage control teams shot down before they could suppress the inferno. Now the lead British battlecruiser was taking her under fire with four guns.

His flagship HDES Seydlitz had sustained a good many hits, two of her turrets out of action, Tears of the Wind God damage and encroaching flooding, while HDES Moltke had received much the same level of attention, only now receiving the sole attentions of the British six-gun battlecruiser.

"It's Beatty." he acknowledged to the bridge crew, scanning the horizon with his magic binoculars.

The first shell splashes from the lead HMS Lion were wildly off, but as the next two minutes ticked by, they came ever-closer, first finding Seydlitz's course, then gradually drawing closer. A detached part of him wondered do Princess Pina, and the Royals of the Empire, care when they sacrificed thousands of their loyal subjects just to test the enemies strength. Another part of him was frantically trying to see a way out of the trap as his flagship took two hits in rapid succession, one from ahead and one from port.

"Signal a general torpedo attack! Battle U-turn starboard!"

His ships were lost, but he could at least fall on the coast once more, throwing his squadron of torpedo-ships-of-line at the nearer pair of 130-gun ships-of-line. They could try and find HDES Derfflinger and scuttle her if necessary. Hipper felt a resolve fill him, he would take his warship on one last glorious charge, do the greatest amount of damage to the foe, before, like a raging bear, they were brought down.

Then HDES Moltke blew up.

Shuddering under the impact of the murderously-accurate shooting of the six-gun battlecruiser, the inevitable happened. A shell struck her forward turret, striking the flash protection before detonating. The guns were being reloaded, and as a consequence there were four propellant charges in the gunroom, the silk bags of two of them, and the brass cases of the other two proved no protection from white-hot shell splinters.

The resulting conflagration from the detonation of the British shell and the burning propellant sought out the path of least resistance - down the hoists into the magazine, the flash protection in the turret utterly destroyed. For miles around, the horrific sight could be seen of a pillar of fire blasting the turret roof off, reaching hundreds of feet up. Then, even as the fire compromised the hull and the first detonation in the shell handling room began, another hit registered. The 15-inch HEAP round penetrated straight through the belt and detonated in the magazine of the wing turret.

Two blasts in quick succession tore through the ship, her shattered wreck rolling over to port, bow down, and within a minute, all that could be seen were her screws and her stern as she went down.

Worse still, the blasts had torn away all the rigging from her remaining two consorts, and the signal for a torpedo attack would never be hoisted.

By this time, HMS Lion, Tiger and Queen Mary were all shooting at HDES Seydlitz. To the frustration of the radar operators of HMS Birmingham, their lack of battle practice was producing some problems, such as failing to fire at intervals to give them a clearer picture of the shell splashes.

Nonetheless, they had rapidly gained the range, and small adjustments were made as necessary. However, the heavy work had already been done, and even as the two 15-inch capital ships slacked their fire, taking turns to pummel HDES Von der Tann and subject the scattered Empire torpedo-ships-of-line to a murderous barrage of 5.25 and 4.5-inch HEIAP shells, HDES Seydlitz took hit after hit from Beatty's ships. Steadily the battle between sea and ship turned to the sea, the flooding taking hold beyond the ability of the crew to fight.

Vian chose this moment to throw in his four attached destroyers, cutting across HDES Von der Tann's stern, one of them veering off to put a pair of supercavitating torpedoes into the limping warship before rejoining her three consorts, picking off the Empire torpedo-ships-of-line at a range beyond the effective fire of their guns.

They were joined by HMS London, Gambia, Nigeria and even Manxman, which had sat out the battle so long as the bigger Empire guns were a threat, occasionally popping out of hazes and smoke to fire a radar-guided barrage at Hipper's ships before using her immense speed to dive for cover.

Finally, the signal went out, and besides finishing off the murder of the Empire torpedo-ships-of-line , the shooting ceased, allowing the crews of the two remaining battlecruisers to abandon ship safely, and for ship's boats to be launched to pick up survivors.

The crews of HDES Seydlitz, Von der Tann and some of the torpedo-ships-of-line would have better fortune than those of Moltke. Despite horrific casualties from the British shellfire, half of the non-homunculus crew would be fished out of the water by burly sailors, swiftly blindfolded and brought onboard the ships, where they would be bundled into any space that could be spared. The other half were amphibian origin demi-humans so they would swim back to shore. An empty cabin was found for the comfort of one Admiral Franz Hipper, lately commanding officer of the former I Battle Group.

Of the crew of HDES Moltke, numbering over 100 men and 400 homunculus, only a handful officers remained to be rescued.

-x-

"Shoot!"

Just one of HMS Saintes' railguns sounded, a sharp crack as the HEAT shell whistled over the friendly destroyers. The round punched through the lightly armoured door at the foot of HDES Derfflinger's superstructure, a small blast blowing it open.

"Switch target. Standby. Shoot!"

It wasn't glorious work, in fact it felt like playing darts with a sniper's rifle, but methodically blowing apart anywhere that the Empire crew could be lying in wait would save the lives of their commonwealth colleagues. On the other side of the warship, the blatter of a Bofors could be heard, one of the other destroyers strafing the deck as Lynx, Hardy, Ambuscade and Shark made fast alongside.

Finisterre, her captain judging the other ships had the matter in hand, made fast to two of the small destroyers, her guns still trained on the battlecruiser's deck, but with two parties mustered, lowering crates of grenades and sub-machine guns into the hands of the commonwealth crews.

As the battles raged to the east, and the destroyers left in haste, the work of getting Derfflinger into the hands of the British Commonwealth went on. With the extra weapons and the enemy artillery completely silent, the last gun crews were stripped from the four destroyers, leaving only a skeleton crew of engineers. On the other side, battle-wearied and with many wounded. Resistance was anaemic and rapidly overcome, one attempt to scuttle was prevented by a few bursts of gunfire, another by the fact that the seacocks they were trying to open had been fused closed by a brief inferno during the battle with Renown.

By mid-afternoon, the Empire ship-of-line slowly began to turn west, underway at a handful of knots, a bizarre sight with two destroyers pulling hawsers from her bow, and two more pushing fenders at her stern.

At her masthead flew a White Ensign.

However, the puzzled men of the 4th Destroyer Flotilla had to put up with one of the rooms being off limits. Ten men from Saintes, including armed guards with .75 caliber boltguns had come aboard, and seized the communication room.

Steady was the Manacomsys key, tapping out signals. Hipper's ship-of-line rode once more, 'having broken the British jamming'. Soon they would deliver their prey to Von Ingenoh. Freshly repaired radio aerials and a radio set from Saintes kept feeding Vanguard the flow of information which came across the Manacomsys from the 77th Persae Sea Fleet.

-x-

Finishing off Hipper's the torpedo-ships-of-line could only be described as a mopping up operation. Their doctrine was to use concentrated force, backed up by 130-gun ship-of-line and 150-gun capital ships, to break through enemy screens to deliver massive damage using their six 50cm G6 Torpedo Tubes. However, they had no 130-gun ship or 150-gun ship to give them heavier artillery support than their own guns could offer, their chain of command had been fragmented - in one case, literally - and the British warships refused to be pinned in place, manoeuvring beyond the 90,000 yard range of their magic torpedo batteries.

Each torpedo-ships-of-line was marked down in turn, the multiple 4 and 4.5-inch HEAP shells slamming into them, with fire, flooding or wrecked machinery serving them up as target practice for the main guns of the cruisers. The diminutive gunboats could not survive under the attentions of the 8 and 6-inch guns of the railgun cruisers, and by the time their fruitless charges were spent, only a handful were still underway, seaworthy enough to run for it, gradually opening the range on the British cruisers, losing a few along the way.

Then HMS Manxman broke out, her stern churning up the sea and her bow wave plumed up the ship's straight stem as she pursued at 80 knots. Her gunners, well oiled after a few hours of practice, brought the remaining few torpedo-ships-of-line down, savaging them with rapid fire, leaving two to fall into the jaws of her fellow cruisers, while finishing off the others herself.

-x-

Vian closed his eyes, resting them for a minute as he heard Agnew taking the status report from the magazines. It made for somewhat grim listening, Vanguard having spent main battery shells on three of the four Empire 150-gun ship and the armoured 130-gun ship Blücher. Fortunately, the 5.25-inch Advanced Gun System (AGS) guns still had shells to spare.

"I don't know how much support we can offer Warrender, Philip." Agnew murmured after dismissing the young midshipman who'd been tasked with collecting the shell counts from the magazines.

"We'll offer it all the same." Vian responded curtly.

"Aye, we will." the captain acknowledged the unspoken rebuke. "Beatty's coming up ahead."

"Get him turned around William, that battle squadron will need every gun with what's bearing down on them." Vian glanced at his watch. "Is the Second still heading west?"

"One of Angus's screening cruisers has been keeping tabs on them. A touch over 80 knots bearing west. The 77th Persae Sea Fleet is behind them, but only making 100 knots, and behind by an hour's steaming at Warrender's speed."

"Sunset, and nightfall?"

"Fifteen-forty and six o'clock."

"Good. I do not want any engagement with Von Ingenoh before sixteen-hundred hours. I'm not going to let him shoot at us silhouetted by the sunset, and I like our odds better if the Empires are blinded by nightfall, and we can illuminate them for our commonwealth colleagues with star shells under radar."

"Four hours then." nodded Agnew.

"We'll cut them up piecemeal in the night and put the strength of the Empire navy and their bloody 'risk fleet' on the bottom." Vian concluded with a grim smile as he levered himself out of the uncomfortable admiral's chair, his aches a reminder of his years. "In the meantime, gather up our cruisers, our destroyers, and make sure we don't have that fool Parry hanging on our sterns. Fall in with Beatty, but make sure that Warrender is heading west until at least fourteen-forty-five. In the meantime, I'll be in my cabin."

"Aye sir."

-x-

With the cloak of darkness well and truly descended upon the fleet, Vian rejoined the bridge, not for the first time since Hipper's squadron had been destroyed. His ability to get a brief snatch of sleep here and there were tested as unfamiliar subordinates from different nations tried to find each-other's measure, and that of their ships and men.

Fortunately, Von Ingenoh was far from the equal of the man who now resided under guard in a spare officer's cabin, where Hipper had given him a few testing moments, the only thing that had his staff worried was when the 77th Persae Sea Fleet had sailed past the flotsam which was the wreckage of Admiral Rebeur-Paschwitz's III Battle Group, slowing to carry out a search.

Fortunately, signals intercepts from the Empire ships included multiple references to HDES U-9, Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue. For the intelligence officer on Vian's staff, the conclusion reached by the Empires was fairly obvious. The search had also delayed the Empires, the cautious Von Ingenoh having no wish to dilute his forces any further, he slowed the entire fleet to a crawl, and, just that once, Vian wished he had a submarine at hand, to punish that mistake.

However, it put the Empire fleet behind the schedule on Vanguard's plot, coming under their guns a bit after 1700 hours. The plan for the first stage of the battle was adjusted for the observed deployments - or rather lack of them - and with a nod, the dance began.

-x-

From the bridge of his flagship, the HMS Lion, Admiral David Beatty scanned the sea off his starboard bow, the faint wake and the one muffled lamp glowing red giving away the presence of his consort, the HMS Birmingham. Behind him lay the other battlecruisers of his squadron, en echelon port, interspersed with the odd turreted armoured cruisers that he was fighting alongside. Though he still intended in having the whole story out when they returned to port, after dealing with Hipper, he trusted they'd get the job done.

The formation meant that the railgun cruisers could signal with small hand lamps from their port sides without being seen by the Empire's spy bird, as somewhere out there, tracked by the odd radio rangefinders on the cruisers, lay Von Ingenoh's vanguard. His leading unit, the 50-ship IV Battle Group with their light ship-of-line was Beatty's prey, though only two of which he regarded as truly worth the effort it would take to sink them.

Nonetheless, it was his job to use his heavy guns on the Empire scouting ships while his consorts kept their attendant destroyer flotilla clear - some of the 480 Empire torpedo-ships-of-line left after Hipper's 15 flotillas had been blown to pieces, and another 5 flotilla lost in the demise of III Battle Group.

With the supreme discipline of a man convinced that he is second – or perhaps third after the King – to God, Beatty avoided allowing his impatience to show, finally rewarded by a lamp flash, a pinprick in the night. Rough bearings, to have the guns laid on before illumination. He listened as the figures were passed down, as the battlecruiser's turrets swung around.

Battle in the Persae Sea resumed with the sharp report of HMS Birmingham's four-inch railguns, repeated in sequence as she laid a barrage of fire which blossomed into a curtain of light to bathe the Empire cruisers in. However, before the first starshell blossomed, all four ships-of-line; HMS Birmingham, London, Nigeria and Gambia fired their broadsides in rapid succession.

In the moment that they were revealed in a pall of eerie light, Beatty focused his binoculars on the lead Empire warship, only to see it crumple in on itself amidst a fireball as four full broadsides ploughed shells straight into it.

Final adjustments to the guns were made, HMS Tiger already walking the fire of her secondary battery of six-inch railguns towards one of the four Empire heavy ships-of-line. Without waiting for orders, each of his battlecruisers opened fire, none of them producing more than water damage with the first salvo, but on the third, her gunlaying directed from one of the heavy ships-of-line, HMS New Zealand blew open one of her opponent's fuel bunkers, setting it aflame.

Her gunners getting into the rhythm of it, she'd produced as second hit by the time the HMS Lion managed to strike her opponent. The Empire group began to turn away, one of their number unable to make it with her steering shot out by a six-inch HEAP shell from HMS Tiger, whose main battery had yet to make a mark. Admiral Beatty refused to let his prey make a run for it, urging faster shooting as he scanned the enemy line with his binoculars.

Then, after getting two hits in under five minutes HMS Queen Mary matched her consorts, blowing a heavy ships-of-line to pieces with her third hit, direct into the magazine. HMS New Zealand began hitting her target regularly, the one-hundred-thousand yard range well within their gunnery department's abilities, only ceasing fire as their target began to founder, listing heavily to starboard.

Finally HMS Lion stopped her prey, a pillar of fire, steam and black, unburnt coal billowing up a funnel, before subjecting her to a barrage of 13.5-inch hypervelocity shellfire. Tiger's terrible marksmanship was only made up for by the battering her faster-firing six-inch shells gave their target until four quick salvos from her eight-gun consort finished that one off, blowing off her ram bow and leaving her foundering, down by the head.

Despite it going against his instincts to engage the enemy more closely, Beatty gave the order to turn away to port, to the north, as the sleek shapes of the Empire torpedo-ships-of-line darted around the edge of the illumination. Already his consorts were picking them off, not even bothering with any more star shells, seemingly firing blindly into the darkness, the blossoms of fire and steel putting lie to this.

David Beatty admitted to himself that he'd give his back teeth for one of those new rangefinding sets.

-x-

By lamplight aboard the HDES Friedrich der Grosse, High Admiral Von Ingenoh reviewed the evidence. Beyond a stream of reports by Manacomsys from HDES Derfflinger, there was neither sight nor sound of Hipper. The IV Battle Group's demise had been unexpectedly brutal, but from the reports of one of the torpedo-ships-of-line which had escaped from that fight, it seemed they'd been mauled by Beatty's squadron.

"He was spotted heading east, parallel to ärungsgruppe." he decided. "I want to form line-of-battle. Get me those minefield maps! We'll pin him in place with Funke's, encircle with the rest. This is it!"

-x-

Vian could hardly believe it as the 77th Persae Sea Fleet resolved itself, the Empire fleet forming a westerly-headed line, their first squadron well within range, blind in the dark, and then, each ship turned north. It wasn't quite a 'crossing the T' with the Empire warships turning onto a course parallel to the line he and Warrender had formed, but it was close enough for his purposes. He ordered a signal be sent to HMS Birmingham, who would be leading Beatty's battlecruisers out, to the effect of 'independent action'. He trusted that the dogged Welshman commanding her would find their way clear and sink his teeth into the Empires again.

Another signal to Cunninghame Graham, who had moved his whole force up behind the Empire III Squadron. The Scottish baron would have his part in this battle at last.

At last, Vian turned to Agnew, who called for illuminations to be readied. The captain, knowing the competence of his gunnery officer stepped back. Only his admiral was close enough to hear the words that he murmured.

"And the Death ride begins, Götterdämmerung beckons, the Valkyrie mass."

"I'll have to add that to my memoirs." Vian noted, then turned to the gunnery officer, who nodded and gave the order.

"SHOOT!"

-x-

Captain Williams looked up from the plot where he and his officers were discussing their options when the hatch door was nearly taken off its hinges by an over-enthusiastic young officer, the radio-specialist who had come up with what could be a major solution to communications between the British ships and their commonwealth counterparts.

"Sir, we've done it!" the young officer nearly panted out, thrusting a folded piece of paper at Williams. "We've managed to direct wire a transmitter and receiver for the Number 46 radio we transferred to over to Beatty into the telephone exchange."

"Have you signalled HMS London, Nigeria and Gambia?" Williams glanced down at the numbers on the scrap of paper, largely meaningless to him.

"Yes sir. They've got the same setup, the first column are their frequencies, the second column of numbers are for HMS Lion, Queen Mary, Tiger and New Zealand." grinned the young man.

Under the eyes of his officers, Captain Williams deliberately made his way to the phone, and lifted it.

"Get me Admiral Beatty."

-x-

The three radiomen fiddled frantically with their set, carefully tuning it under the dark stare of Beatty, leaning with his back to the ramparts of Lion's bridge, his presence looming even at ten paces. Finally the crackling was reduced, and the communications cleared. Then, at long last;

"Beatty to Williams."

Offered the handset, Beatty momentarily examined it, and with one long finger, depressed the 'press to send' button on the radio itself.

"Williams to Beatty."

There was a long pause, as if the person on the other end wasn't sure what to say beyond the curt introductions.

"Good work on Ingenoh's warships, but he knows where we are. I've got him on the plot deployed in line, east-to-west, and he's turned north in line. His first and last squadrons, 80 and 60 ships respectively, are making about 150 knots."

Certainly his heavy 130-gun ship-of-line, Beatty thought. Heavy ships bristling with guns that even he would think twice about getting into a melee with.

"What about the middle of his line?"

"Barely 120 knots."

"We've got the lowest point of the Tyne minefields not far off to our north. He wants to pin us in place and sweep us up then?"

"We think so."

"Then his slow squadron ?"

"80 ships, none of them bigger than 100 gun."

"His Second Battle Squadron. Get me a course to cut across the bows of the first 40 ships of the squadron, astern of the last 40. We slip through the weakest part of the Empire fleet, and break out to the east, where his 130-gun ship-of-line are least in number." Beatty proposed.

"...it's got potential, even 80-strong in line astern they'd only match your squadron gun-for-gun."

"They're slow, weak in armour and in arm, if you can accurately illuminate them-"

"We can."

-x-

"Well. It's a plan, and more than I've got." Williams admitted to his gunnery officer as they moved back to the plot, overlaid on a map which was tacked on the back. "Navs, if we cross them, no closer than one hundred-thousand yards of the bow of the number four ship, cut in on a parallel closing course, trust to our guns to clear a way through, then one hundred-thousand yards astern of the Empire fleet, turn back east."

"Aye sir, I'll get that plotted and prepare a turn."

"Signaller! Draft a signal of my intentions for HMS London, Nigeria and Gambia. Get a copy off to HMS Duke of York and Vanguard. Guns, ready to engage to starboard." he paused a moment. "And someone see if you can extend that bloody radio onto the bridge. I'm not spending the whole night in here."

Content with the preparations in hand, he swept out onto the bridge, refastening his bridgecoat to keep out the cold chill of that winter evening. Only moments later, having set the eight-ship squadron on a new course, bearing south-east, a young signaller joined the bridge crew, with responses from the fleet.

"Sir, Admirals Vian and Cunninghame Graham are preparing to engage the head and tail of the Empire line." the runner from the radio room announced. "Admiral Vian sends his regards to you and Beatty, and that he'll pin down the Empire 130-gun ship-of-line long enough for you to break out."

Only ten minutes later, the whole squadron closing on the Empire line, a good way astern of them, there came at once the rumbles of gunfire, then as pinpricks of light hung in the heavens, starshells illuminating the enemy, the horizon lit with flashes of many muzzles, followed by the massed thunder of those railguns. Then ahead, brief flashes of light and rolling thunder announced more guns opening fire. The gunnery officer swept his gaze from off the starboard quarter to the portside ahead, at the sight of the fresh battle, and murmured something he remembered hearing many years before.

"The dragon came raging, attacked once again, terror-fire flashing."

Yet, there was little time for HMS Beowulf, as the whole eight-ship squadron closed with the Empire fleet, ranging with radar and making the final dispositions for their own battle.

"He obviously hasn't studied his Livy." commented Birmingham's Number One as the report came of Von Ingenoh sending his destroyers to respond to each attack, to the tail and the head of the line of the 77th Persae Sea Fleet. "He's not just making his centre look weak. He is making it weak."

"Perhaps when this is over, you can take fish Ingenoh out of the water yourself, dry him off and take him to Oxford to teach him your bloody classics." Williams shared a half smile with his Number One, deliberately emphasising his Glamorgan accent.

-x-

Two 140-gun ships-of-line at the head of the Empire line, HDES Ostfriesland and Helgoland, while in theory should only have had one exposed to fire from a 'crossing the T', but their offset to the British line meant that, in reality, they were staggered enough to expose both of them to the terrifying weight of fire from Warrender's 1st Battle Squadron. The first twenty minutes of the battle saw them suffer terribly, both ships being hit in the first and only salvo from the two British 15-inch capital ships, but then Warrender's First Division, the battleship King George V, Ajax and Centurion concentrated on HDES Ostfriesland, while the Second Division under Robert Arbuthnot, HMS Orion, Monarch and Conquerer opened fire on HDES Helgoland.

Though not half as practised as the duo of Beatty and Williams, six of the destroyers of Vian's attached eight-ship flotilla attached themselves to the six battleships, using their advanced fire-control radar to spot the fall of shot, and signal corrections back to Warrender's ships. Combined with continuous, inescapable illumination from the British ships, the Empires had far the worse of the encounter, each having the attention of three 13.5-inch guns at a range of no more than sixty miles.

Return fire was enthusiastic, though the HDES Ostfriesland had lost a turret to a fifteen-inch shell in the first exchange, and shortly after HDES Helgoland found her forward turret unable to bear and her forward port wing turret jammed after the mast collapsed onto the guns, blown over by a British HEAP shell. However, enthusiasm didn't translate to any degree of effectiveness. The Empires had no starshells, and the range of their searchlights was well short of having any effect on the British ships.

They could only fire blindly at the gunflashes.

In five minutes, both Empire battleships were burning, clear targets even without the illumination of the starshells. In ten minutes, both had been hit around fifteen times. Frantic manoeuvring by the wallowing ships-of-line failed to escape the terrific bombardment, and in twenty minutes, men poured into the warm Persae Sea, the same water that now lapped at the decks of their ships.

Half an hour into the battle, both 140-gun ships-of-line were nothing more than wreckage and upturned keels.

-x-

Angus Cunninghame Graham decided on a different approach to Vian. While he still had some forty heavy guns available to him, he was also aware that he had a good weight of cruisers. With the terrific din miles to his west, he brought his battleships into position to engage the 77th Persae Sea Fleet with broadsides, but brought up two of his heavy cruisers, Suffolk and Sussex, neither of which had been engaged with III Battle Squadron. The captains of both ships had been champing at the bit, and Cunninghame Graham decided to indulge them.

Slipping his battleships in ahead of the Empire line, pushing somewhat deeper than he would usually have been comfortable with, he positioned the two detached heavy cruisers off his port quarter, HMS Suffolk matched with König Albert and HMS Sussex with Grosser Kurfürst.

Closing under cover of darkness, the heavy cruisers caught the Empire 130-gun ships-of-line steaming in straight lines, without any deviation to speed or course. Cutting their speed to no more than an 'idle', allowing the Empire battleships to come ever closer. Radar ranging allowed an accurate solution to be produced, and a moment later each launched a pair of supercavitating torpedoes before turning away into the darkness, another pair ready to launch.

They wouldn't need them. Grosser Kurfürst was struck twice in quick succession, the 410 knot VA-111 Shkval each delivering an eight-hundred pound warhead straight into the 140-gun battleship, gutting her.

Suffolk only managed one hit despite the close range, but unlike the centreline-turreted Kurfürst, König Albert had a wing turret, with a magazine close to the ship's side. The torpedo's depth setting at twenty-five feet brought it into the hull adjacent to the magazine, but just below. With water below and crumpled steel above, when the warhead went off, it transmitted the detonation straight up into the powder room.

With both battleships completely gutted, rolling over on their port beams, Cunninghame Graham gave the order to fire. Neither he nor Vian had a sufficiently detailed order of battle to realise that the III Battle Squadron didn't have 60 ships, only 57, and with two sinking and his four battleships engaging the remaining 55, it was the 77th Persae Sea Fleet's flagship, the 160-gun ships-of-line Friedrich der Grosse, his flagship, HMS Duke of York, was engaged with.

-x-

Even as the Friedrich der Grosse was rocked by the first hit from Cunninghame Graham's flagship, HMS Duke of York, Admiral Von Ingenoh was acting. For once he moved decisively, his command at risk and the Princess's wrath looming, with a handful of signals, he threw 20 flotillas of torpedo-ships-of-line west against the Royal Navy gunline, hoping to force what could only be heavy battleship- possibly two squadrons worth of them - off his I Battle Squadron. The ships firing on his, which were tentatively identified as Beatty's battlecruisers, equally are to be driven off by his torpedo-ships-of-line, with a flotilla crossing under the guns and another looping around to the east to get behind them.

The strung-out nature of the position of the 77th Persae Sea Fleet was obvious to Von Ingenoh. His maritime Cannae was slipping from his grasp. With his entire fleet in line, but that line turned north, Beatty has sprung a trap on him, crossing the T ahead of his III Battle Squadron.

How to turn the tables and remake the bear trap around the British battlecruisers?

For Admiral Von Ingenoh, disengaging in the west seemed like the best idea. The order went out by signal lamp in the darkness, every ship to make an eight-point turn to starboard. His intention, to cut back east, then turn III Battle Squadron north, cut the British battlecruisers off again and deal with them.

In a near-miracle of staff work, the plan is drawn up, signalled, received and then the order to execute signalled and received. It would prove unfortunate for the 77th Persae Sea Fleet that they would chose to re-engage, rather than cut and run. It would also prove unfortunate that Von Ingenoh believed he had the positions of the enemy squadrons, when Beatty's 1st Battlecruiser Squadron and Williams's hastily assembled cruiser squadron were still loose inside his encirclement.

With their forward profiles marred by repeat hits from Cunninghame Graham's battleships, III Battle Squadron turned east, making fifty knots. The four British battleships, still on a westerly course making fifty-five knots turn slightly north as the Empire destroyers lunge out of the line-of-battle, and within ten minutes, III Battle Squadron finds itself no longer taking hits from the Duke of York battlegroup.

A destroyer melee develops instead, the fleet destroyers attached to Cunnginghame Graham's battlegroup slip in from behind their larger brethren. Gunners eager to get in their blows fed shells to the guns, the harsh bark of their guns joining the hail of rapid-fire under radar guidance aimed at the Empire destroyers. Like pikes before cavalry, the fire of the battleships and the destroyers broke the charge of the torpedo-ships-of-line , who withdraw reform in the darkness and charge again, and again.

A few dozens Kriegsschiffmord magic torpedoes are loosed in hope and frustration. Weighing around 500 kilograms with 5 meters in length and a diameter of 50 centimeters; the Kriegsschiffmord magic torpedo carried an 180-kilogram warhead and could travel more than 300 knots; if hit, it could without doubt sink most British ships.

Unfortunately, the Royal Navy ships carefully remaining out of range.

Between the charges came long lulls, in one of which, Cunninghame Graham set about examining his position, watching Von Ingenoh's squadron circling around to the north-east, but unlike the Empire admiral, he did not need the eyes of his lookouts to see the battle, and the battered III Battle Squadron was no longer of concern to him.

-x-

Admiral Scheer's II Battle Squadron came under sudden attack, without warning from his lookouts. Light blossomed in the night sky, blindingly bright and eerie in the gloom. A moment later the darkness on the horizon was torn apart with gunflashes to the north, momentarily illuminating the silhouette of at least one Lion-class battlecruiser. The rearmost pair of ships in his squadron, Schleswig-Holstein and Schlesien of the 77th Persae Sea Fleet's IV Abteilung were hammered with broadsides from four capital ships, and rapidly accumulated damage from the murderously accurate lighter naval artillery fire of an unknown number of other ships.

The squadron's woes didn't end there, with HDES Deutschland blowing up after receiving a torpedo hit from the south, another passing astern of her. Then the lead ship of IV Abteilung, HDES Hannover, having narrowly avoided that second supercavitating torpedo, was ripped into with shellfire from enemy ships to the south, the first six-inch HEAP shell blowing apart an open gun mount after only two straddles, one of twelve shells and another of nine.

Out in the darkness, the captains of HMS Belfast and Swiftsure set about their task of cutting the Empire 100-gun ship-of-line to pieces with considerable professional enthusiasm.

-x-

With his eyes on the plot, Vian quietly admitted to himself that Warrender's choice to pull his warships west under the Empire torpedo-ships-of-line onslaught was the right one. It went against his more aggressive instincts, but it had preserved the British squadrons from any torpedo hits save a freak hit by a dud which ran into the armoured cruiser Antrim. Reducing the closing speed of the Empire light forces to about 102 knots had allowed Vanguard, Renown and the eight Battle-class railgun destroyers to ravage the leading Empire torpedo-ships-of-line, sometimes three or four shells enough to leave them sinking.

A burning torpedo-ships-of-line, or worse a single starshell gave the massed secondary batteries of Warrender's battleships target practice, which in truth they needed as the volume of shells by no means matched the accuracy, but the quantity and the loss in the first assault of their leadership seemed enough, after several more attacks were mounted, to break the aggressive stance of the Empire flotillas.

However, by the time they slunk back towards I Battle Squadron's 60 ships-of-line, their strength is heavily depleted, half their strength sunk, and more being dispatched into the deep by Vian's destroyers.

In the lull that followed, observations from the radar were conveyed by signal lamp to Warrender's flagship, one of the two HMS King George Vs fighting on the watery battlefield that night. The 77th Persae Sea Fleet's turn to the east being noted, Warrender signalled for a turn east to follow, his battle squadron now over one hundred-thousand yards north of the Empire line. Working up to full speed, they had a two-knot advantage on I Battle Squadron, which would soon have to slow or run down the rear of Scheer's 100-gun ships-of-line.

-x-

Detached from the long, dull watch they had kept on the 77th Persae Sea Fleet, Superb steamed north, still keeping an eye on the radar screens showing III Battle Squadron as another force was sighted on the edge of the radar. Closing at full ahead, with the sensors measuring the range until the new arrivals were within signal lamp range, at which point the cruiser's Aldis lamp clattered out a two letter signal over and over at regular intervals.

'JJ'

After two minutes of signalling, a laser lamp winked out of the darkness with the response.

'PV'

On the bridge of Iron Duke, Admiral John Jellicoe allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction as he listened to one of his staff signallers reading the report from the new arrival as a constant string of signal flashes crossed the water. Hipper was done for. Von Ingenoh's group was trapped. The 77th Persae Sea Fleet was doomed.

-x-

Darkness was sundered by an unnatural dawn just beyond the Empire III Battle Squadron as night sky was torn like a blade through a curtain as the first starshells from HMS Superb blossomed in the heavens, drifting slowly earthwards. Forewarned by signal lamp from the radar-equipped cruiser, Jellicoe's battleships already had their main batteries turned out to starboard, armour-piercing shells loaded and the crews standing ready at their posts.

At the rear of the Empire squadron, Friedrich der Grosse, the flagship of the 77th Persae Sea Fleet, was matched by the 1st Division of the 4th Battle Squadron, the superdreadnought Benbow, the dreadnought Temeraire, Bellerophon, and Agincourt. The next ship in line, the HDES Kaiserin, had to contend with the three ships of the 2nd Division, her sister Emperor of India, the superdreadnought Erin, the father of the modern railgun battleship, HMS Dreadnought herself, joined by the superdreadnought Iron Duke, Jellicoe's flagship.

The 1st Battlesquadron's 1st Division, composed of the superdreadnought Malborough and the dreadnoughts Collingwood, Colossus and Hercules had HDES Kaiser under their guns. III Battle Squadron's flagship, Prinzregent Luitpold perhaps had the weakest part of the fleet against her, the four dreadnoughts of the the 1st Battlesquadron's 2nd Division, HMS St. Vincent, Neptune, Vanguard and Superb. However, Funke's flagship was by far the worst beaten of the Empire battleships, having been hit by Howe's 14-inch ASG guns, as well as having been shelled extensively by HMS Suffolk and Sussex in the aftermath of the torpedo attack on the rear of III Battle Squadron.

It was actually the cruiser-minelayer HMS Ariadne which opened the action, her pair of forward-mounted superfiring twin 4-inch quick-firing railguns hammering out a fifteen-second burst of twenty HEAT rounds, all high explosive at Von Ingenoh's 160-gun flagship before swinging out of formation, every horsepower available thrown down her shafts to avoid any reprisal from the Empire guns. The light cruiser HMS Superb followed her attack, firing off three rapid broadsides in twenty seconds at the 150-gun ship-of-line Kaiser with her main battery, while she shot off thirty rounds from the six of her 4-inch secondary guns which would bear on Kaiserin before ceasing fire and ducking into Iron Duke's lee.

The shellbursts from the two British ships, combined with the starshells allowed the 1st and 4th Battle Squadrons to open fire with broadsides out of the dark, firing with remarkable accuracy. The first hits came from HMS Temeraire, long regarded as twice as effective gun-for-gun than the average in the fleet. On her fourth and fifth broadsides of eight guns, she planted a pair of shells into the Empire flagship, Friedrich der Grosse, one striking at the waterline for'ard, punching through the seven-inch belt and the inch-and-a-half torpedo bulkhead before detonating, blowing open a good section of her bow to the sea.

The 160-gun ship-of-line immediately lost way, collecting the next hit on the side of the starboard wing turret, still not turned out, the British shell partially penetrating the armour before detonating prematurely, resulting in horrific spalling as red-hot shrapnel broke off the inside of the plate, setting off the silk-bagged charges, and in turn the brass-cased propellant. Below, the crew flooded the magazine, but not before the flames had consumed a number of charges in the feed from the magazine to the guns, and denied what lay below by the onrush of seawater, the flames burst upward, ripping off the turret roof, the pillar of fire a beacon to every British gunner.

Another flash tore through the watery battlefield, not unlike a ship blowing up as HMS Agincourt opened fire with broadsides, a sheet of flame enveloping the battleship from stem to stern. Freshly commissioned and with a disparate crew of Royal Yachtsmen and minor petty criminals, her gunnery was nothing to be impressed with, nonetheless in five minutes she and HMS Temeraire had added three hits to HDES Friedrich der Grosse's woes.

However, it was the bigger guns of Benbow that did the greater extent of the damage at this point. Despite an ongoing civil war on board between VADM 4BS Gamble and a young officer on his staff, one Lieutenant Commander Bertram Ramsay, the latter's ruthless mentality had percolated through the crew, her gunnery if unexceptional was nonetheless rapid and a touch above the average in the fleet, and it began to tell. Even the Empire crew could tell, a party detached from the conning tower to secure all the papers, documents and codebooks and convey them to the ship's furnaces, while another party was charged with the Admiral's person.

Ahead of Von Ingenoh, HDES Kaiserin had entered her death-throes with the concerted efforts of three full superdreadnoughts and HMS Dreadnought herself. All the British battleships were firing in disciplined intervals after an acerbic signal from Iron Duke regarding effective gunnery, some thirty-eight heavy guns ranged on her broadside. While the rearmost pair of battleships produced no miracles of gunnery, they nonetheless contributed eagerly to the destruction wrought by Jellicoe's flagship and Emperor of India, whose performance could be partially credited on being flagship to a highly technically-minded admiral who drove the captain and crew. The end for the Empire ship-of-line came as her pumps were knocked out, her firemain shattered and water lapping in through shellholes in her starboard broadside, the flooding overcoming her.

Return fire from the Empire ships was light, Funke's ship-of-line Prinzregent Luitpold giving the 1st Battlesquadron's 2nd Division the worst of it, firing at the gunflashes. Neither side of that brawl was really gaining the upper hand until the other Superb appeared out of the darkness, putting three torpedoes in the water. The Empire ship-of-line spotted them at the last moment and turned away, heeling badly, only to collect one fish under her stern, detonating in the midst of her screws and rudder. The detonation caused her quarterdeck to erupt upwards, the stern itself sagging downwards as the ship lost way. Gradually foundering by the bow, the crew began to abandon ship, her tormentors switching their fire to Kaiser.

With two of the Empire heavy ship-of-line foundering from overwhelming flooding, the remaining pair withered under the murderous bombardment of the sixteen British dreadnoughts, even if at times it devolved into firing into the general area of the shell splashes, it was enough to do the job. Blazing, listing, battered, the Friedrich der Grosse and Kaiser suffered the torrent of shells for ten minutes before Jellicoe gave the order to cease fire. The flagship's crew managed to set scuttling charges before abandoning ship, though it seemed unnecessary as Kaiser capsized less than ten mile away.

Casualties would prove heavy, among the number lost to the sea would be Admiral Von Ingenoh himself.

-x-

Scheer's command of 70 ships-of-line, formerly 71 before Deutschland ate a torpedo, is dying like III Battle Squadron. His neat line-of-battle reduced to a wallowing melee of ships, under a concerted attack from what the lookouts believed to be some eight battlecruisers and nine or ten large cruisers. Like bear-baiters they carefully remain beyond the range of his guns. One by one his ships are maimed or destroyed, their guns silenced, their hulls rent open to the sea. Even the armour around their magazines is not proof against the enemy guns. He watches one of his ships simply vanish in a pyre, a shell directly landing in the magazine, and others with propellant deflagrations caused by turrets or casemates being penetrated.

He realises it's all over when the eastern horizon becomes a sea of fire. The British Grand Fleet has arrived. All he can do is watch his command die bravely. His two divisions split apart when the flagship of his second division capsizes, joining the rearmost of his own division, Deutschland, on the bottom.

Four British battlecruisers were momentarily silhouetted as they lunged through the Empire line, savaging Lothringen and Pommern in passing, the former's magazine going up in a deflagration that melted through the ship's keel, the latter more lucky, her bow blown off by one of Beatty's battlecruisers firing a torpedo into her.

When all was said and done, Scheer, deeply melancholy after witnessing the wholesale destruction of his squadron was picked up by a light cruiser from the Grand Fleet which found much of his crew bobbing in the ship's boats and clustered on the upturned keel of what had been his flagship. He could only watch as the Grand Fleet's dreadnoughts, joined to their battlecruisers at last, thundered past, and as they joined the growing gun-battle to the west, he knew that the battleships of I Battle Squadron were meeting their fate.

"It is the end." he would be recorded as saying.

It is over.

-x-

Scheer was right. By the time his squadron had been sent to the bottom, HDES Nassau was joining them, simply overwhelmed by the massed firepower of Warrender's superdreadnoughts. The 2nd Battle Squadron after beating off the Empire torpedo-ships-of-line had come onto a easterly course north of the Empire fleet, crashing through the seas, pushing their engines to catch up with the withdrawing I Battle Squadron. Then Nassau's battle-damaged port engine, pushed beyond what was safe, catastrophically dismantled itself, the hapless battleship veering to port and straight into the British squadron, which shot her to pieces within ten minutes.

The 50 remaining ships were trapped between Jellicoe to the south, having taken a course more or less parallel to the battered I Battle Squadron, Cunninghame Graham who swung across their line of withdrawal to the east, Warrender on a pursuing course parallel to the north, and Beatty's battlecruisers which raced ahead of the British Grand Fleet and swung across the Empire sterns. With the kessel complete, it was a case of simply holding it closed against the frantic efforts of remaining Empire torpedo-ships-of-line and the five Empire heavy-ships-of-line.

Scattered around the envelopment, Vian's cruisers once more enthusiastically took up the work of suppressing the Empire gunners and spotting positions, wiping out anything and anyone outside the armour while the battleships did the heavy lifting of actually sinking them. Even Vanguard and Renown contributed a goodly number of salvos, the attitude being 'no point bringing more than a few shells back unfired'. A grand total of two-hundred and forty capital-ship guns were brought to bear across three-hundred and sixty degrees of horizon, the Empire ships illuminated at first with star shells, then by the fires that burned in their rent hulls.

By midnight's passing, the British squadrons would be withdrawing to Scapa Naval Base, and the Empire Navy's presence in the Persae Gulf reduced to Admiral Konig's 100-gun squadron, which was under repair after being grounded and rammed, Admiral Markgraf and Kronprinz's 120-gun squadrons which were working up prior to joining the 78th Persae Sea Fleet, Admiral Lützow's 140-gun squadron which was fitting out and hadn't even begun sea trials, forty 150-gun ships-of-line and ten 160-gun ships-of-line of the new squadron of Admiral Hindenburg, which had yet to even be launched.

The final insult would be the 'appearance' of a squadron of Vian's cruisers off Heligoland in the morning hours of the 17th, having been running down Empire torpedo-ships-of-line through the night, took the opportunity to pick off a number of 'known' gun positions, magazines and barracks, engaging in some counter-battery fire with the use of their radar sets before withdrawing at high speed into the warm spring dawn.

Poseidon Naval Base, Persae Gulf, Southern Lemuria

Vice Admiral Alexander Hood of the British Royal Navy watched intently as the X-12 atomic locomotive hauling the Super Yamato-class Guided-Missile Battleship - the Shinano from the GATE ended its journey at the Dammam Port. From his vantage point atop a newly built administration and operation building to the north of the destroyed city, Hood gazed passionately as the locomotive ground to a halt.

"Truly unbelievable!"

The 95,000-ton steel monster was then moved using a complex system of air bags and steel rollers into a prepared floating dry dock nearby - a dock that didn't exist just a week ago. Vice Admiral Hood was in awe, only the Chinese could build a dry dock that fast.

Hood had lost track of the trains that had come and gone bearing warships. This was just a small part of a gigantic fleet that would soon roaming across the seven sea. With more than 100,000 ships, if you count the amphibious assault ships, this would be the Greatest Fleet this world had ever seen. A blanket of steel weighing more than a billion tons, stretching to infinity.

With a force like that, there was no way they could lose to anyone.

Look no further, right at this moment, there are a few hundred magic ships-of-the-line attacking this base. These magic ship were pretty damn powerful, even surpassing modern cruiser in speed. As expected of the famed conquerors of the world, that fleet would probably make the 20th century British Empire quake in their boots. But for a 21st century navy, two escort flotillas should be sufficient to send the obsolete fleet that dared to challenge them to Davy Jones' locker.

While a magic ship-of-the-line can travel 3 times faster and have a comperable maximum range of attack to a modern railgun cruiser, its fire-control system is shit. That means if the ship move at high speed, it can't hit anything and if it move slower, the railgun cruiser will hit it a hundred times before it can return fire.

"What is the score of the Birmingham, sir?" Commodore Henry Cole asked with a strong Manchester accent. Henry is a native-born Manchester, and like everyone in the UK, he loves to bet.

Raising two fingers, Vice Admiral Alexander Hood smiled and said. "20 enemy ships so far."

"Hahaha...I guess tonight we will have free beer!"

Unfortunately for both of them and everyone else in the base, there wouldn't be any victory party that night. Only pain and suffering, for those who survive that is.

Unnoticed by most of the people on the base, a flock of strange birds suddenly exploded right above their heads. Each of those birds had about 400 g of Quiet Night in their stomachs for a total of 142 kg, enough to seriously contaminate an area of 150 square kilometers.

As a nerve agent, Quiet Night gas belong to the class of organophosphate acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. These chemical compounds inhibit the enzyme acetylcholinesterase, preventing the normal breakdown of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Acetylcholine concentrations then increase at neuromuscular junctions to cause involuntary contraction of all skeletal muscles (cholinergic crisis).

This then leads to respiratory and cardiac arrest (as the victim's heart and diaphragm muscles no longer function normally) and finally death from heart failure or suffocation as copious fluid secretions fill the victim's lungs.

Since Vice Admiral Alexander Hood and Commodore Henry Cole were directly below the explosion when it happened, they wouldn't even feel a thing before passing out for good. At that level of exposure, their nervous system were paralysed before it could transmit pain signal.