Kaiser Lane

by severak

Spring, 1916. The Great War has ground into a stalemate. In a desperate bid to break the dreadlock, the German Empire turns to the sea, hoping to break the Royal Navy's blockade and reopen their ports to badly needed neutral trade. And perhaps the glowing blue cubes that they've received will provide just the edge that they need... (The Battle of Jutland, with Shipgirls)

1. Chapter 1 (Hipper)

May 12, 1916

Wilhelmshaven, German Empire

The weather was perfect.

It was an idyllic spring day along the North Sea coast of Germany, not a cloud in the sky as warm, golden sunshine rained down upon the whole Jade Estuary. The unobstructed rays beautifully illuminated the whole bay, bringing with them a gentle warmth that kissed the skins of all those lucky enough to be outside. At the same time, a constant, gentle breeze blew in from the sea to make sure that the heat didn't become an overbearing one, the sunlight and the wind combining to keep each other in almost perfect balance.

Said balance was also keeping the humidity down and the worst of the bugs away, as if nature itself were going out of its way to create the best weather possible. The local wildlife was certainly rejoicing at the splendidness of the good weather: seabirds sang and cawed as they whirled and danced far above the main base of the Hochseeflotte of the Kaiserliche Marine, the gulls thoroughly enjoying the oh-so-rare day when the vast bight at the mouths of the Jade, Weser and Elbe Rivers wasn't cold, damp, dreary, or completely obscured by an ominous fog (or some moribund combination of the four). Birds of all stripes wheeled carefree through the unblemished air, not seeming to be headed anywhere in particular, not seeming to have a single worry in the world as they soared unfettered through the cloudless skies.

A similar attitude of nonchalance could be found among many of the Jade Estuary's human inhabitants. Seemingly everyone in the region, from the Bight's fishermen to its schoolchildren to its businessmen to its homekeepers, was taking things a little bit slower this day. All over Wilhelmshaven people were slowing down, were taking things at their own pace, were letting a little bit of worry out of their hearts and a little bit of burden off of their shoulders and were just taking the briefest moments in time to enjoy the little blessing that was the good spring weather. They took the time to look up at the soaring seabirds, or to feel the warmth of late spring on their skin, or to enjoy the wondrous sight of the vast waters of the Heligoland Bight shimmering in the distance, glimmering beneath the golden sun, men and women and children alike all pausing every once in a while to simply relax and take in all the natural beauty around them.

The glaring exception to such behavior could be found in the form of one Rear Admiral Franz Hipper.

As the Commanding Officer of the Hochseeflotte's First Scouting Group stepped through the gates of the Wilhelmshaven Naval Base, the middle-aged, bearded, and balding man of fifty two years and eight months spared not even a second's worth of thought for the beautiful weather or the singing seabirds, or indeed for anything at all. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky, and the gentle ocean breeze wasn't strong enough to do anything more than make some leaves rustle and the grass shift a bit, but for all the world the veteran of more than three decades at sea looked as if he was trying to stride his way into the heart of a hurricane: head down, every step quick and deliberate, overcoat pulled tight and fists clenched hard around the handles of his suitcases.

The Bavarian shopkeeper's son strode his way towards the base's main headquarters building with the force of a storm, blowing his way through the vast city-within-a-city that served as the home port of the Kaiserliche Marine like a fast-moving squall line, not slowing down for anything. Not that he particularly needed to: Hipper knew this base as well as the back of his own hand, the longtime veteran well knowing each and every step and turn that he had to make to reach his destination and making them practically without thought.

And any knots of men that might have blocked his course were parting before him like the Red Sea before Moses. Most of the men here could recognize on sight the man who had been in charge of the whole region's defenses for the past twenty-two months, after all. It would have been hard not to, with how the Empire's press loved to plaster the face of the commander of their most active (and by far most successful) naval squadron onto the front page of half the papers in the country whenever they got the slightest of excuses to.

And if the men didn't recognize him, there were the markings on the sleeves and shoulders of his uniform that designated him as a Rear Admiral, which sent men scurrying to snap smart salutes as they stepped aside to let him pass. And beyond even that there was the look of grim determination that dominated his stern, weathered features and his entire body language, all but screaming to even the most socially tactless of the sailors on base: 'Do not interrupt me.'

In consequence, the Commander of the First Scouting Group found himself making good time across the base. Hipper arrived at the headquarters building a bit ahead of what he'd been expecting, in fact, an observation that was quickly confirmed by a brief glance down at his wristwatch. Not that there was ever anything wrong with arriving somewhere early, the Rear Admiral briefly thought to himself as his fingers closed around the familiar shape of the headquarters' doorknob. After all, he would almost certainly have papers to catch up on after nearly a month and a half away.

"Admiral. You're back earlier than I thought. I was just headed out to meet you." The words hit the ears of the Commander of the First Scouting Group practically the second that he opened the door. Hipper's eyes quickly turned and scanned the corridor beyond the doorway for the source of the familiar voice, and it took him but a moment to catch sight of his Chief of Staff: there in the hallway was Senior Commander Erich Raeder, who had snapped into a textbook-correct parade ground salute the instant that he had caught sight of his superior. The crisp, spotless uniform, and chiseled, clean-shaven features of the Prussian Headmaster's son contrasted starkly with the weathered looks and traveling clothes of the man twelve years his senior as he stood at rigid attention, waiting for his superior to acknowledge him.

"I took an earlier train back," Hipper replied with a quick salute of his own. He stepped fully through the doorway as he did, the Rear Admiral already starting to stride his way down the corridor in the general direction of his office. "My leave ended yesterday, no point in delaying coming in today."

"I read your preliminary reports over breakfast this morning," the older man went on as he walked deeper into the building, hardly sparing his subordinate a glance. "Besides Admiral Boedicker running my flagship into a mine, is there anything critical to report?"

"Besides Seydlitz?" The Chief of Staff responded from his hip, having already turned on his heel to fall into step behind the Rear Admiral. The younger man started to sheaf through a few papers in his hands as he did; for a brief moment he was silent, mulling something over in his mind before he began to answer in full. "For today? Not besides Seydlitz, no."

"As I reported in my preliminaries, the orders you left were followed to the letter. All patrols and exercises that you planned were carried out; all supplies came in on schedule; all ships and men are accounted for; and all routine maintenance and cleaning work happened as planned. Admiral Scheer did have one minor operation carried out in your absence-"

"Wherein Boedicker ran my flagship into a mine," Hipper interjected, scowling slightly as he did.

"Yes sir," Raeder confirmed. "But aside from Seydlitz, most everything else is as you left it. There's been very little to break up the usual routine here. Well, besides…"

Hipper heard the footsteps behind him suddenly slow as his Chief of Staff trailed off. The older man turned to find that the younger had fallen a few steps behind him, a somewhat odd look on his face, as if he were trying to say something but couldn't find the right words with which to do so.

"Besides what, Commander?" That blunt inquiry was enough to get something out of the younger man. The Chief of Staff selected one of his papers and held it out to his superior, the odd look (of nervousness? Uncertainty?) remaining on his face as he did so.

"Direct orders from Admiral Scheer." Raeder explained as Hipper took the offered paper. "He wanted you to report to Seydlitz immediately upon your return. It's…"

The Chief of Staff trailed off again as his superior flipped the paper over in his hands, quickly reading it over. The older man's brow rose slightly as he verified its validity: the slip that he'd been handed was indeed written in the hand of the Hochseeflotte's Commander-in-Chief, and it did indeed say that Rear Admiral Franz Hipper was to report to the Battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz as soon as possible after his return to Wilhelmshaven, but…

"The initial report said that she returned to port under her own power…" Hipper mused, mostly to himself as he tried to think up an explanation for the unexpected summons. "How big was that mine she hit? Or did something else come up during the repairs?"

"No…but…" Raeder answered, that odd, uncertain and uninterpretable look still dominating his features. Hipper arched an eyebrow a little bit further at his Chief of Staff's uncharacteristic crypticness. He could tell that the younger man was withholding something from him, which was…well, for Raeder, it went beyond merely odd. The Senior Commander could be a cold man, he could be a distant man, but he had always been a quite candid man, never hesitating to speak his thoughts (and usually doing all that he could to make sure that those thoughts were heard and listened to). This sudden…wariness was decidedly unlike him, and Hipper couldn't say that there wasn't a distant alarm bell ringing somewhere in the back of his mind at Raeder's unusual behavior.

"Out with it," the Rear Admiral ordered, cutting straight to the heart of the matter. "What happened with Seydlitz, Commander?"

"It's…not really something that I can explain, sir," was Raeder's only response, his expression shifting into a more apologetic look as he gave a helpless little shrug. "You'll have to see it for yourself once you're aboard her."

A doubtful look crept across the Rear Admiral's face at that, Hipper's lips drooping slightly into a questioning frown. "Really?" The older man asked candidly, his eyes narrowing slightly. "Whatever happened, I doubt that she looks worse than she did after Dogger Bank. Unless Boedicker did far more than 'strike a mine' with her."

"Well, no, that report was accurate; it's not any sort of battle damage…and she doesn't actually look bad at all, per se…" the younger man replied slowly, his tone heavily that of someone that was unsure of every word that he was saying. "And…I don't think that it's actually happened yet, either…but…"

"But what, Commander?" Hipper lightly fumed, already growing slightly exasperated with his subordinate's evasive responses. "I have been at sea for more than thirty years, and I have seen many, many things in that time. I highly doubt that whatever happened to my Flagship is something that I haven't seen before, especially since the war started. Now, y-"

"Sir, you haven't seen this. You haven't ever seen anything even like it." Raeder interjected, his voice suddenly rising. Hipper found himself taking a half step back at his Chief of Staff's sudden outburst. The Rear Admiral might have found the younger man's display impetuous, or maybe even outright insubordinate, but for the last four years that the pair had spent working in close proximity together: four years that made it so that it was worry, not offense, that began to trickle into Hipper's mind.

It was very rare indeed that Senior Commander Erich Raeder (a man who had his own twenty years experience at sea) became unnerved enough to start shouting at a superior officer: the very best Battlecruisers that the Royal Navy had to offer raining every shell that they could down at them at Dogger Bank had only just barely managed to do it, and that had still taken them turning Seydlitz's two rear turrets into a cauldron of fire taller than the ship's smokestacks that had threatened to ignite the main magazine. There was very little that lay short of such dire circumstances that could rattle Hipper's Chief of Staff.

And yet here he was, almost looking as if he had seen a ghost. Insisting that he had seen something that he (and a man with a further decade of experience on him) had never seen anything like, and with not the slightest trace of deceit present in his eyes. Hipper found his frown deepening, concern seeping into his previously somewhat annoyed expression. Whatever his Chief of Staff had seen while he was away, whatever had happened to Seydlitz…while it might be something that the younger man claimed 'wasn't bad at all, per se', it was also clearly something huge.

"I'm…sorry, Sir," Raeder said quietly, breaking the awkward silence that had suddenly descended with another slow, apologetic shake of his head. "But that really is all that I can say." The Senior Commander raised his hands in a placating manner, sighing slightly in defeat as his shoulders arched into another helpless little shrug. "It…it really is something that has to be seen to be believed."

Hipper was silent for a moment, letting his Chief of Staff's words fully sink in. Obviously, far more than routine maintenance and patrols had been happening during his leave. Idly, the Rear Admiral flipped the paper in his hands over again, checking it over once more. It said even less than Raeder had, merely stating that Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer had ordered that Rear Admiral Franz Hipper report to the Battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz as soon as possible after he returned from his leave, and that was that. If the Commander of the First Scouting Group wanted answers…

"Well then," Hipper said, already starting back towards the door. "Let's not keep Admiral Scheer waiting, shall we?"

The two men strode towards the heart of the Wilhelmshaven Naval Base in silence, both of them keeping to their own thoughts. As he continued to mull over Raeder's cryptic remarks (and the equally cryptic summons from Admiral Scheer), Hipper took the travel time between the Headquarters building and where Seydlitz was moored to try and verify the rest of what his Chief of Staff had said.

At the surface at least, the rest of his subordinate's reports seemed to be accurate. The port indeed looked to be very much how the Rear Admiral had left it a month and a half prior. The bases' denizens looked to be holding to the same old heavily entrenched routines that they had since August of 1914, the sailors of the Kaiserliche Marine going to and fro on their usual business of training, eating or doing routine busywork aboard their ships or scurrying off to the city and its distractions when they were finished with the said tasks.

Their paces seemed no quicker than they had been before Hipper had left, their shoulders and backs no stiffer. What they spoke of hadn't changed either: they idly chattered to each other about whatever recent events had popped up in their personal lives; they discussed plans for their days off; they complained under their breaths about their officers; they looked bored out of their skulls with being stuck in the same endless routine…

No behavior out of the ordinary, in other words. Indeed, it wasn't long before Hipper began to think that the only people on the base who seemed to be on edge at all (well, more on edge than was normal for one of the German Empire's largest military bases in a time of war) were Raeder, himself (largely because of Raeder), and the scattered groups of armed men who were assigned the duty of being the bases' guards (who's job it was to be on edge). And as the pair made their way ever deeper into the base, the pattern continued to hold, the Rear Admiral still seeing no sign of whatever secretive thing had left his Chief of Staff so coy.

Hipper was greeted only by yet more of the familiar as he got closer to the harbor itself: the occasional clang of a hammer or mechanical whine of a crane from the repair yard; the distant thudthudthudthud of steam engines from the ships out in the harbor, returning from or headed out for their daily patrols and training exercises; the barked orders and whistles of officers sounding out above the increasing din, men bellowing to be heard here in the most active part of the base.

But still, none of it was in any way bizarre. Hipper certainly didn't think that there were more of any of the port's noises and sights than there had been before his departure, and the clangs and whistles and shouts and whirrs didn't seem any louder or more intense or faster or more urgent than they had been back in March. Whatever had happened with Seydlitz, whatever Raeder had been talking about that had left him so unnerved, knowledge of it didn't seem to have spread far enough to disturb the base's general population.

As the Rear Admiral found himself to be increasingly forced out of his own thoughts as the noise around him became louder and the knots of sailors around them became larger, he failed to see whatever it was that had his Chief of Staff so unnerved. There was just the base's guards, the sailors and their officers going about their normal routines, the familiar sight of dock workers headed to and from their shifts, the base's guards, the usual noises coming from the repair yards and the harbor, the regular hustle and bustle of an active military facility, said facility's guards…

Actually, there were quite a lot of armed guards out and about. Noticeably more than there had been a month and a half previously. And once Hipper had realized that fact, he was quick to notice that not all of them wore the uniform of the Kaiserliche Marine.

"What's with all the landsers?" The Rear Admiral asked his Chief of Staff as they strode past yet another group of heavily armed men who's insignia and equipment identified them as members of the Imperial German Army. "When did they get here?"

"Almost a month ago, sir," was Raeder's brisk reply, the younger man apparently quite used to the presence of the Heer. "They were sent as added security."

"Security for what?" Hipper went on, casting a dark glance back at the knot of infantrymen. "Whatever's happening with Seydlitz? If it's confined to base, surely a few battalions of marines could have done the job just as well, if not better."

"It isn't just Seydlitz, sir," Raeder replied, the cryptic look returning to his face. "And the Powers that Be didn't want there to be the slightest chance of a security leak." The younger man nodded back towards the infantrymen. "Landsers don't ask the kinds of questions that a good Navy man would ask. They don't get curious. You point them at something and they shoot it: they don't have the brains for much more than that."

Hipper found himself cracking the ghost of a smile at his Chief of Staff's comment. But then his frown deepened, his eyes narrowing. So it 'wasn't just Seydlitz,' now. And it was also now quite clearly something that Admiral Scheer quite adamantly didn't want to become open knowledge, something that he was willing to go to the Army to help him keep secret. Stranger and stranger, this subject. And still no answers.

The older man snorted, short and derisive, shaking his head as he turned away from the landsers. "Still," he fumed, redirecting his thoughts, "They are from the Heer. Those arschlöcher are already taking our steel, our recruits, our ammunition…they'll probably use this as an excuse to try and start taking our bases, too."

"Admiral Scheer agrees with you, Sir," Raeder responded, joining his superior in shaking his head in frustration. "He did protest the measure. But it wasn't his call to make."

Then who's was it? Hipper thought to himself. There weren't many men in the whole of the German Empire that could override the wishes of Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer. But he left that newest question unasked, assuming that it would be answered once he reached Seydlitz. And that moment wouldn't be all that much longer in coming: not far ahead, the Rear Admiral could see the dark shape of his Flagship's superstructure poking its way into view, the familiar gray outline of the mighty vessel's smokestacks, bridge and masts looming above the buildings and cranes of the base.

It was comforting, in a way, to see her again. At the very least, Hipper found the towering shape of more than twenty-five thousand tons of the Empire's finest Krupp steel arrayed in the distinctive shape of the finest Battlecruiser in the world to be reassuringly unchanged, especially in the face of his Chief of Staff's bizarre nervousness, his Commander-in-Chief's cryptic summons, and the unexpected presence of so many Army grunts on his base.

Not that there were many forces in the world that would be able to make Seydlitz change, Hipper mused as another ghost of a smile flickered on his lips. She had proved that at Dogger Bank. She'd proved it during the Scarborough Raid, too, and in the Gulf of Riga. Hell, she'd been proving it ever since the Rear Admiral had raised his flag on her, all the way back when he had still been in the peacetime navy. In the last twenty-two months, she'd seen him through mundane patrols, shore bombardments, daring raids, ferocious skirmishes and narrow escapes, and besides one, single, nearly disastrous moment at Dogger Bank (which was far more the fault of her designers than any wrongdoing on her part), she'd done it all in exemplary fashion, without receiving so much as a blemish (the aforementioned singular moment aside).

Which was to be expected, of course. The First Scouting Group's Flagship was, excepting her own 'descendents' in design, the greatest warship that the German Empire had ever put to sea. She was the apex of nearly twenty years of a whole nation's united efforts to become masters of the world's oceans, she was two decades of dreams, hopes and desires made manifest by the will, determination and power of the German People.

And what an apex she was. Solid steel armor thirty centimeters thick, all but impervious to anything that any enemy warship could throw at her; cannons that could drop three hundred kilogram shells onto a pinhead from eighteen kilometers away; engines that could move her along at twenty-six and a half knots (at twenty-eight if they were pushed to their absolute limits), fast enough to be to England and back in less than a day…

When Hipper had first gone to sea, back before the turn of the century, such engineering would have seemed the stuff of fairy tales. Seydlitz's mere construction, let alone having her be able to sail into action, wouldn't have even been possible. There wouldn't have been a dockyard in the whole of the vaterland that could have built her, not a port that could have housed her, not a crew that could have manned her.

The 'Navy' in those days had barely been worthy of the name: it had been an afterthought perpetually left in the shadow of the Army, so much of an afterthought in fact that its 'Admiralty' had been composed almost entirely of Generals from the Heer. And those Generals had been content to leave their fleet as a farce, left to collect dust just as it had done since the days of 1871 (when the Navy had performed so pathetically against the French that the Heer had refused to allow sailors to count their service as 'War Service' in official records).

But then the North German Confederation had become the German Empire, and the time had come for Deutschland to take its rightful Place in the Sun. The pride and honor of the nation demanded that its proud black-white-red banner fly above every corner of the world with impunity, that its wealth and commerce flow unobstructed to wherever that tricolor flew, that its power and influence could be felt all across the globe.

Only by sea could such opportunities come, could colonies be established and trade secured and sway in distant lands be won; only a mighty Navy, the likes of which had not been seen among the German peoples since the heyday of the Hanseatic League nearly four centuries prior, could tame the sea. And so it was that the German Empire had begun to build a Navy worthy of a Great World Power, a Navy that would be able to carry out all the necessary duties of weltpolitik.

And they had done just that. In the span of not even fifteen years, a nation that had started with little more than a collection of outdated old ironclads manned by foreign mercenaries and 'volunteered' merchantmen had built the greatest fleet in all of Continental Europe. Dockyards and harbors were expanded; canals had been dug and widened; technologies had been studied, tested and refined; adventurous young men had been molded into dutiful sailors; designs had been approved, funds had been acquired, resources had been gathered, and mighty warships had been built.

It had done it in spite of an adversary across the North Sea that was offended by the mere idea that someone else might try and wield the Trident as a weapon; in spite of an Army that had seen nothing more than a never ending drain on precious resources and manpower; in spite of all the petty politics of the fools and naysayers in the Reichstag who had dithered and delayed at every opportunity. What had once been the refuge of second sons and the Heer's rejects had become the pride and joy of the whole Empire, the symbol of its inexorably rising power, prestige and ambitions.

There were few countries in the world that could even build Dreadnoughts, those impeccable titans of Naval Power; in the course of the previous decade, the Empire had built, equipped and manned no less than seventeen of them, more than the Great Powers of Russia, Italy and Austria-Hungary combined possessed. Even fewer nations (only two of them in world, in fact), could even try to afford the luxury of Battlecruisers, those technological marvels of hybrid capital ships with both the firepower to challenge a Dreadnought and the speed to run down and destroy anything else afloat; the five in the First Scouting Group were more than were in the hands of every single other power in Continental Europe together.

And Seydlitz was chief among them. That was what Hipper thought of her, at least. Admittedly, he was biased: spending the overwhelming majority of twenty-two months of one's life aboard a single ship, doing everything from holding staff meetings in her conference rooms to eating in her galleys to commanding battles from her bridge to falling asleep to the sounds of her halyards flapping in the wind tended to endear one to said vessel. It tended to make said vessel into something a little bit more than simply the place where one raised their flag.

And now something had happened to her, as Hipper was starkly reminded by the sight of the armed checkpoint that cordoned the drydocks off from the rest of the base, complete with sandbags, barbed wire and a machine gun. 'Something' quite besides the reported act of Admiral Boedicker running her into a mine (which the Commander of the First Scouting Group was beginning to suspect was some sort of cover story for whatever 'Something' was). There had been security before his leave, of course, but the Rear Admiral wasn't exactly enthused to have the familiar squadrons of Marines replaced with grim-faced infantrymen staring daggers into anyone that came close.

"Senior Commander Raeder reporting with Rear Admiral Hipper," his Chief of Staff said to the landser's CO as the pair reached the checkpoint, handing a handful of papers over as he did. The Army grunt spent a short moment looking the papers over, before standing aside with a half-hearted salute and letting the Navy men past. With that, Hipper at last had a clear view of his Flagship. He wasn't exactly encouraged by what he saw.

There looked to be a complete and total lack of activity around Seydlitz, excepting a small crowd that was gathered up on the foredeck in front of turret Anton. The vessel's usual crew was astoundingly conspicuous in their absence, the lack of any men cleaning the decks or touching up the paint or doing their daily fitness routines or even simply lounging around on deck creating an ominous quiet that clung to the warship like a fog. Whatever was happening, it clearly had nothing to do with a 'mine hit', either: the men clustering near the Battlecruiser's bow were in either standard naval uniforms or were even more landsers, rather than those of the dockyard's repair workers.

"I take it that Admiral Scheer's waiting for us up there?" Hipper asked, nodding his head towards the cluster on the foredeck, fishing for some sort of information on what was going on.

"Yes Sir," was his Chief of Staff's only response, the other man already starting to ascend the gangway leading aboard the ship, leaving Hipper to follow on in curious and frustrated silence.

The journey up to the foredeck was a short one, both men knowing Seydlitz's maze of corridors and compartments well enough that they could walk through them in their sleep. Once again, Hipper was able to feel some slight relief in the familiarity of his Flagship, in her unchanged interiors and steady, immutable bulkheads. But 'slight' was the operative word in that sentence: the deadened quiet of the mighty warship's usually lively corridors did far more to unnerve the Rear Admiral than their familiar contours did to reassure him. A ship with a crew of more than eleven hundred men shouldn't have been so forebodingly silent.

Hipper's unease didn't lessen upon stepping out onto Seydlitz's deck. Despite the wide-open layout of the Flagship's foredeck, the ominous quiet that hung over the vessel left the Rear Admiral feeling even more boxed-in than he had while inside of the ship's narrow corridors. And the grim, unreadable faces of what few men were aboard (mainly yet more Army grunts, gripping their weapons as if they expected a firefight to break out any moment; the few Navy men present somehow managed to look even grimmer) only further compounded the unnerving effect.

"Admiral Hipper. Welcome back." The voice of Hipper's Commander-in-Chief was a welcome break to the deadened quiet. Its tone, weary and worn and with the same cryptic tinge that Raeder's had had, was substantially less welcome. The Rear Admiral half-smiled, half-scowled as he caught sight of his superior. It was good to see him again, certainly: if there was one man in the fleet that could trust to clear up the cryptic nonsense that he had been encountering all morning, it was Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer. His superior was not a man to beat around the bush.

But it took Hipper only a glance to note that the Vice Admiral (who, as it happened, was actually only a bit more than two weeks younger than Hipper was) looked…older, suddenly, intensively older, than when the Commander of the First Scouting Group had seen him last. The Rear Admiral was used to his superior looking older than his true age, of course: Scheer had first seriously started looking like a man in his late sixties or his seventies instead of his late fifties all the way back in January, when he had been promoted to overall command of the entire Hochseeflotte. And he'd first started wearing his uniform looser and keeping his hair and mustache and beard all a bit less meticulously trimmed another year and a half before that, just as practically everyone else in the Navy had done.

But as Hipper came closer, it only became ever more obvious that his Commander-in-Chief had lately been working himself to the bone. Reinhard Scheer might never have been the sort of man to outright obsess over spit and polish and parade ground appearances, but given his rank and responsibilities he had always at least tried to maintain appearances. He certainly never would have gone out among the men with bags under his eyes and a slump in his shoulders and a bend in his knees.

Until now, that was. And beyond that, Hipper saw a look in Scheer's eyes, a look that was all-too-similar to the one he had seen in his Chief of Staff's. It was a look that told him that the Vice Admiral had seen something recently. Something massive, something game-changing, something that he didn't quite have the right words to explain. Hipper had been just about to start asking him to try and explain, to begin asking about what the hell was going on with his Flagship, when he got his first true hint as to an answer.

The Rear Admiral felt himself instinctively straightening to full attention, muscles stiff and posture rigid as steel, when he realized just who it was that was standing next to his Commander-in-Chief. Oh, there were a few other prominent men Navy men present: Admiral Behncke, the Commander of the Third Battle Squadron, the Hochseeflotte's strongest and most modern Dreadnought formation; Admiral Boedicker, whom he would be having words with later; the snow-white, Saint Nicholas-esque beard and mustache of Henning von Holtzendorff, the Naval Chief of Staff, who held authority over even Vice Admiral Scheer.

But none of those men were who had caught Hipper's eye. Nor were they the ones that made him begin to almost involuntarily begin to snap a textbook-perfect parade ground salute, his back straightening like a ramrod and all traces of frustration and annoyance almost instantly being totally suppressed from his expression. The Rear Admiral's sudden shift might have looked strange to an outsider, considering that among the men present it was the last of the group who stood out the least: he wasn't particularly tall or particularly well built (indeed, he looked dead average on the former count and in fact somewhat frail on the latter), and at a glance the uniform he wore seemed to be not all that different from those donned by the other men around him.

But his face was unforgettable. Any German citizen would have recognized his mustachioed visage in an instant from the papers and the paintings and the postcards and the propaganda posters. And if they somehow, someway didn't, the sheer opulence of all the ceremonial medals, ribbons and tassels that had been pinned and placed all over the man's relatively standard military garb should have been able to tip them off. So would the way the man held himself, standing tall and proud atop the deck of Hipper's Flagship as if he personally owned her. It certainly tipped off the man who had served aboard the Imperial Yacht Hohenzollern for nearly three years.

"Your Majesty", Hipper breathed, his Chief of Staff's bizarre crypticness and the huge number of landsers present as 'additional security' suddenly making a substantially larger amount of sense. "I was not informed that you would be present."

The man who claimed more credit than any other for how the Kaiserliche Marine had become the greatest Navy in all of Continental Europe turned towards the Rear Admiral with a flourish that verged on theatrical, his chest proudly puffed out, his left hand resting on the pommel of the ceremonial sword on his hip and his right resting hidden behind his back. Kaiser Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern, King of Prussia and German Emperor, fixed his gaze upon the man four years his junior, his electric blue orbs holding in them a kind of manic energy as he looked Hipper over.

"Franz Hipper," the Kaiser began with a nod, an almost dramatic tinge to his tone as he stepped towards the Rear Admiral, his eyes flickering up and down as he continued to look Hipper over. "I am informed that you recently returned from medical leave."

"Yes, your grace," Hipper replied, his own tone taking on a careful neutrality as he spoke to the most powerful man in all of Germany, his superior's superior's superior. "I returned to duty just this morning."

"Hmmm…" the Kaiser hummed, still examining his Rear Admiral. "And you are fully healthy, then?"

"That is what the doctors told me, your grace," Hipper replied, treading as carefully as he could. It had been a long time since he had served aboard the Hohenzollern, but the lessons in how to act around Royalty (and in how to act around the often rather…impulsive royalty of the German Empire especially) that that yacht had taught him were not lessons easily forgotten. "My body and mind are both completely physically healthy."

"Good. Good good good," the German Emperor responded, seeming to look more through Hipper than at him. Now he took a half step back, the Kaiser grasping the Rear Admiral by the shoulders and staring him dead in the eyes, an emotion that Hipper couldn't quite identify glowing in his electric blue orbs. "I need strong, healthy men for what comes next."

"Your Majesty," was the Commander of the First Scouting Group's only reply, Hipper slowly nodding as he spoke. He managed not to pose the short phrase as a question, but only barely. All of the morning's inquiries and then some buzzed about the Rear Admiral's mind as his superior's superior's superior stared him down, but he held them in: he got the distinct feeling that the Kaiser would not appreciate a sudden barrage of questions.

In a small blessing, the German Emperor seemed to interpret Hipper's response more as 'I'm your man' than 'what the hell are you talking about'. The Kaiser nodded curtly, the shortest and smallest hints of what might have been a grin oh-so-briefly flashing across his lips as he took a half step back. Then his expression darkened once more, and when he spoke again his tone had turned as cold and hard as the waters of the North Sea.

"The reason that you were not informed of my presence is simple," Kaiser Wilhelm II began, his voice lowering to the point it was blending in with the ambient noise from the harbor and port. "It is because I have carried here with me a secret that could change the whole fate of the Empire; a secret that the mere knowledge of my presence here could unveil."

"I cannot risk the slightest chance of the English gaining the knowledge that I am about to tell you," the Kaiser rambled on, his stage-whisper taking on a tone that Hipper might have called 'conspiratorial'. "No one who is not present can ever learn of it. You are not to tell your crew. You are not to tell your relatives. You are not to tell the dock workers, or your secretary, or any civilians whatsoever, most certainly not the press! No one, not a soul, no one, not besides who is standing here now! Do you understand?"

"Yes, your grace," Hipper replied, again keeping his tone as neutral as he could. Even more questions buzzed around his mind at the sudden order (especially questions about how a visit was meant to be 'secret' when said visit involved the movement of what seemed like an entire Army Division), but again he held them in, his earlier impression that the German Emperor would not appreciate being told to cut to the chase having received significant reinforcement.

"Very good, Admiral," the Kaiser accepted, the smallest, briefest hints of a smile again flashing across his lips. Another half an instant later and the German Emperor's expression had once more gone dark, his brow arching and his lips twisting down into a scowl.

"Now, I expect that you have a full understanding of the Empire's current strategic situation," Hipper's superior's superior's superior continued, his tone dipping still lower as he did, his expression growing still darker. "I assume that you are fully aware of the Heer's recent…difficulties," the Kaiser finished, almost spitting the last word.

"Yes, your Majesty," Hipper said, his tone still kept carefully neutral lest he guess His Majesty's thoughts on the matter incorrectly. The Kaiser's judgment of his Rear Admiral's knowledge of German Grand Strategy was accurate enough, though. One of the advantages of being the commanding officer of the Hochseeflotte's Battlecruisers was the privilege of sitting at Admiral Scheer's Right Hand during strategy debriefings: it left Hipper fully party to where the Navy was expected to fit into the Empire's overall war plans.

When the Army felt like telling their maritime compatriots what they were up to, at least. The usual impression that Hipper got from the Heer was that his land-based counterparts tended to think that the Kaiserliche Marine wasn't worth the effort of keeping in the loop. Going by what the Generals said in the strategy meetings, they certainly didn't think that the Navy was worthy of doing anything but sitting around in port as a deterrent force, firmly fixed in their 'proper' role of guarding the Army's coastal flank. Or worthy of keeping properly supplied. Or properly manned. Or in charge of its own facilities.

"The Heer has reported to us that they have gone over to the defensive in most theaters," the Rear Admiral went on, hazarding a somewhat pessimistic assessment of the Heer's recent accomplishments.

"Hah!" Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern sneered, his scowl deepening. "'Gone over' to the defensive. No, my army has been driven onto the defensive. On practically every front!"

"My generals," the Kaiser growled darkly as he went on, his left hand visibly clenching around the hilt of his sword, "insist that they have the situation under control. That they are one or two more major campaigns away from bringing me total victory."

The German Emperor let out a noise that sounded halfway between a frustrated snarl and a bitter chuckle; Hipper, for his part, elected to let His Majesty keep preaching to the choir, and the Kaiser continued ranting a moment later.

"They told me that back when the war started, too," the German Emperor rambled on, the low tone of his voice dripping with only partially suppressed rage. "They said that they would bring me victory by Christmas." Another bitter, snarling chuckle. "That was the Christmas before last, Admiral!"

"And since then, what do they have to show me? Some farms in Poland? A few kilometers of dirt and mud in France? Serbia?" Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern's voice raised a level, the ire in it leaking out a bit more. "They've finally conquered Serbia; they should have been able to hand her to me the first month!"

"No. The only things they have brought me since they failed to take Paris are dead men and new failures!" The Kaiser practically raved. "Our offensives have been stopped on almost every front. In fact, we have been forced onto the defensive on almost every front! And we are stretched precariously thin on almost every front too, and none of my Generals seem to be interested in doing a damn thing about it!"

"And more than that, the Heer think that I'm a fool, that I'm not enough of a military man to understand that they are failing me!" The German Emperor barked. Hipper thought that he could see a vein pulsating in the Kaiser's forehead, and the man's left fist was clenching his sword's pommel so tightly that it was almost shaking.

"General Falkenhayn tells me that he can bleed the whole French Army to death with his new offensive at Verdun. 'Bleed them white', he says." Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern continued, his lips twisting into a contemptuous sneer. "Which is odd, because three months ago he told me that he was aiming to achieve 'the decisive breakthrough' there, sometime this spring. He doesn't seem to remember the conversation."

"Which is quite convenient for him, as he has either lost just as many men as the French have in 'bleeding them white,' has made absolutely no progress towards an actual breakthrough, or he's managed to find a way to do both at once!" Another sound halfway between a bitter chuckle and a furious growl, much louder this time. "No, Admiral, my patience with the Heer has worn quite thin," the Kaiser declared authoritatively, refixing his gaze fully on Hipper. "They have quite proved that they cannot break the stalemate that they plunged us into. So now, I turn to you."

"Yes, Your Majesty," was Hipper's only response, his back straightening itself up even further, his posture becoming even more rigid. No wonder that everyone on base seemed so uptight, if this had been their experience while Hipper had been on leave. His Majesty might have had good strategic reason to come to the Kaiserliche Marine (if somewhat hypocritical reasoning, considering that it was coming from a man surrounded by a cadre of Army-supplied bodyguards and who had made sure that squadrons of landsers had been deployed all over the Wilhelmshaven Naval Base), but…well, if Raeder's nervousness hadn't made sense with His Majesty's arrival, it did now.

"What my generals fail to grasp, but that I expect that you wholeheartedly understand, is that this war is a war with England, first and foremost," the Kaiser continued, hardly even slowing. Indeed, Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern was starting to outright pace back and forth before his Rear Admiral, the fingers on his left hand drumming on the pommel of his sword as he did. "Even if my generals weren't failing me, their eyes are too fixed on Paris and St Petersburg and Moscow. They don't understand that France and Russia are not our primary foes, and that this war will not end with their defeat."

"No, it is England that we strike against," the German Emperor went on, his voice raising again, his pacing quickening as he spoke. "It is England that encircled us. It is England that bribes and coerces nations to turn against us, and props up their armies on the continent. It is England that denies us our place in the sun and turned this war into what it is!"

"If it were just the French and the Russians, this war would be over by now! But England…oh, but England and the Royal Navy!" the Kaiser lamented, his gaze briefly flickering skyward, as if he were asking the Almighty to smite the English. Then he once more turned toward Hipper, his overbright electric blue eyes again fixing themselves on the Rear Admiral as the German Emperor stepped closer to the Commander of the First Scouting Group.

"That damned fleet of theirs, Admiral!" Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern barked, yet another bitter half-chuckle, half growl spitting out from his lips. And yet again Hipper stayed silent, the Rear Admiral deciding that it wouldn't be the best of ideas to tell his superior's superior's superior to hurry up and get to the point.

"You've read Mahan. You know that national power, true national power, comes from the sea," the German Emperor declared, his tone calming somewhat, his expression and posture softening not at all as he continued his ranting unabated. "And you know how England currently controls the sea. Their damned blockade does as much damage to the Empire in a week as the whole French Army can do in two or three months."

Hipper nodded in genuine agreement at that, his eyebrows briefly scrunching together in thought. His Majesty's point may have been delivered in a rather…dramatic fashion, but it was a good point. And a true one as well: besides the endless stream of reports that had come across his desk, the Rear Admiral had seen for himself the effects of the British blockade during his leave.

Bad Nenndorf, the little resort town in Lower Saxony where he'd been sent for rest and relaxation, was in all likelihood feeling the affects of the war far less than most of the rest of Germany. It was the kind of place where rich aristocrats with far too much money went to get away from their troubles for a little while, a playground for the wealthy specifically designed to be as insulated as possible from the rest of the nation's troubles.

But even there, in that cut off little corner of the country, hundreds of miles away from the closest battlefront, the signs that the nation had been cut off from all but the most meager forms of international trade had been impossible to miss. Simple walks through town had informed Hipper that the prices for bread and butter, for milk and meat and vegetables and every other sort of basic foodstuff, was exploding through the roof. And that was when the stores had enough stock to put on their shelves at all.

And what was on the shelves had quite clearly not been what would have been there in peacetime. The bread that was being sold was hard and tasteless; fresh fruits and ripe vegetables had become increasingly rare; even potatoes, the traditional food of the poor and downtrodden, were being supplemented with turnips and rutabagas, the traditional food of pets and livestock. And even the resort town's rich, vibrant restaurants, meant to be patronized by the aristocratic and the wealthy of Germany, had been serving meals that wouldn't have been all that out of place aboard some of the oldest, least maintained ships in the fleet. If it was getting that bad in one of the richest, most isolated towns in the Empire…

"The Royal Navy must, must, Admiral, must! Must be beaten back," the Kaiser demanded, his tone brooking no compromise as it brought Hipper back out of his own thoughts. Not that he could have stayed in his thoughts: the German Emperor was now practically screaming into Hipper's face, the two men's noses almost touching each other. It was all that the Rear Admiral could do not to flinch as his superior's superior's superior rambled on, gesturing and thrusting and practically punching the air with his left hand as he did. "As long as the English control the sea, they will be free to feed men, supplies and weapons to their lackeys on the Continent unopposed. They will tie thousands, tens of thousands of our men down on coastal defense. And they will starve our people, and our industry, while they feast on imports and bring in fresh men and materials from their colonies. And in such case…"

Kaiser Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern, King of Prussia and German Emperor finally paused then, as if the exertion of his ranting had all suddenly caught up with him at once. For a long second the most powerful man in the German Empire was silent and still, looking very much like an average-sized, somewhat frail man of sixty-two years. The old man took a step backwards, then two, his electric blue eyes seeming to dim for a moment as they briefly flickered skywards. Finally, the man in the military uniform that seemed ever so slightly too big for him sucked in a deep, steadying breath, the fingers of his left hand fiddling unsteadily with the ornate pommel of his ceremonial sword for another second before he spoke again.

"In such case, this war can only possibly be lost," the man standing before Hipper said, dread and gloom painting his tone. He said it with a look that the Rear Admiral might have called fear or despair or anguish painted across his face. Then Hipper blinked, and Kaiser Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern's expression had hardened once more, his lips twisting back into a grimace and his brow tightening. "Which is why I, why you, absolutely cannot allow such case to persist!"

"Your fellow Admirals have spent months petitioning me repeatedly to allow this fleet to act more aggressively," the German Emperor concluded, his voice regaining a portion of its pseudo-theatrical flourish, his chest puffing back out and his back straightening back up. "Soon, I will be ready to give you my permission for such operations. We will see how well the mighty Royal Navy holds up once my Navy has had its true potential unlocked."

"Your Majesty?" Those last few comments were the ones that finally managed to catch Hipper fully off guard. That…was it? That was where Kaiser Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern, King of Prussia and German Emperor's entire speech (indeed, the entire morning's events) had been leading? After all of his Chief of Staff's odd behavior, after all the added security measures and all the rampant secrecy and the strange emptiness of his flagship, after the personal presence of the most power full man in the country, Hipper superior's superior's superior's secret, the knowledge that in his own words could 'change the whole fate of the Empire', was…a change in naval strategy?

To be sure, shifting the fleet onto an outright offensive footing would be an immensely significant change. Such an aggressive strategy would be beyond almost anything that the Kaiserliche Marine had tried at any point in the past twenty-two months. For the whole of the first year and a half of the war, both Admiral Ingenohl and Admiral von Pohl (Admiral's Scheer's predecessors as Commander-in-Chief) had been utterly loath to even let the Navy out of harbor, much less actually attack anything with it. And given that such overcaution had been at least partially on the personal orders of the Kaiser, the sudden change in strategy was at least somewhat unexpected.

But the suddenness of the orders was more unexpected than the orders themselves. The Hochseeflotte taking the offensive was not some wild fantasy pulled from the deepest depths of His Majesty's mind: it was something that a noticeable portion of the fleet had been almost begging for for nearly two years. It was no secret that the Navy wanted to go out and fight: since almost the moment that the war had started, the Kaiserliche Marine had been raring for action, for the chance to prove to the British and themselves that the Royal Navy were no longer unchallenged masters of all the seas. It was the whole reason that the Hochseeflotte had been built in the first place, after all, the whole goal of the last decade and a half of warship construction and crew training and technological advancement.

Twenty-two months of coastal patrols and half-hearted raids later, and that fleet chafed and groaned and complained endlessly under its strict orders to stay almost purely on the defensive. More and more voices cried out to let the Navy carry out the purpose for which it existed, from the highest circles of the Admiralty down to the newly recruited midshipmen: most of the fleet's Admirals (including both now-Commander-in-Chief Scheer and Hipper himself) had moved into the offensive camp, and it was growing harder for the average sailor in Wilhelmshaven, who by the day grew sicker and tireder of sitting around in port waiting for something to happen, not to do the same.

The wheels were in fact already in motion: Admiral Scheer was already planning and executing 'scouting missions' that went further into hostile waters than any operation that the Navy had carried out since Dogger Bank, and had been ever since he had taken full command of the fleet five months previously. If or when the German Navy moved onto full offensive footing, it was hardly going to be a secret: if the British weren't aware of how the Hochseeflotte wanted to come out and fight at the moment, then they would almost certainly become aware of it once dozens of warships that were hundreds of feet long and weighed in excess of twenty-five thousand tons came charging out into the North Sea.

And it was hardly going to be kept secret by having the Kaiser himself come all the way up to Wilhelmshaven to personally give the order, either. If His Majesty honestly thought that taking a four hundred kilometer journey was the only way to safely deliver a message to his own officers (bringing God knows how many landsers with him as 'security')…well, if Operations Security had become lax to the point that the possibility of military messages between Berlin and Wilhelmshaven being intercepted, decoded and read by the British was anything more than a laughable hypothetical, than London was probably already reading a good half of the Fleet's personal mail, never mind orders from the Kaiser.

Assuming that the entirety of the German Empire's State Security apparatus hadn't been catastrophically compromised to the point where Sir John Jellicoe was reading Hipper's orders before Hipper did, the Rear Admiral was left with two possible reasons for his superior's superior's superior to have come all the way out to Wilhelmshaven: either (as Hipper had seen for himself more than once aboard the Hohenzollern) a wild new idea had captured His Majesty's fancy and at that first impulse he had thrown his whole heart into it…

Or Hipper was still missing something, and the Kaiser had been talking about far more than simply going on the offensive when he spoke of having the Navy's 'true potential unlocked'. That was what his gut was telling him, and a quick glance around Seydlitz's foredeck confirmed it: a quick set of looks from Admiral Scheer and Commander Raeder (and Admiral Behnke, and Admiral Boedicker, and Chief of Staff von Holtzendorff) told the Commander of the First Scouting Group in an instant to wait a little longer before interrupting (not that interrupting His Majesty was ever a good idea).

With the other Navy men telling him that there was more to the matter, Hipper quickly returned his gaze to his superior's superior's superior. In another small blessing, it seemed that His Majesty took the Rear Admiral's tone as questioning the information that he was being provided rather than as questioning the Kaiser himself, and had already resumed speaking.

"I know that this change may come as a surprise," the German Emperor started once more, his left hand already starting to thrust and gesture again. "While we easily outmatch the English man for man and ship for ship, despite my best efforts otherwise they have been able to maintain a significant numerical advantage."

"If the damn Reichstag had had enough brains to approve some actual funding…" The Kaiser fumed for a moment, then shook his head with a short growl. "In any case, offensive action at sea has proven itself an absolute necessity, given that my Army has proven itself good for nothing but maintaining stalemates. If we are to strike a blow anywhere, but especially against the damned English, then this fleet must be who strikes it."

"As for the specifics of how that blow is to be struck…" Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern rambled on, beginning to pace back and forth again as he did, "Well…"

A small sound that was almost like a laugh slipped from the German Emperor's lips. "You may have heard from good old Admiral Tirpitz," the Kaiser spoke with an almost audible eyeroll, "that…submarines are the only weapon that we possess that could launch such an offensive."

"This…'Unrestricted Warfare' of his, that he's been spending his retirement screaming in my ear about, and to the press about, and no doubt to half the men on this deck and throughout this fleet about…" the German Emperor mused, disdain practically dripping off of how words. "Bah!" he growled with a dismissive wave of his hand. "It is somewhere between utter foolhardiness and utter insanity!"

"Firing on merchantmen without warning, sinking them without any care for who's flag they fly…it's damn piracy in all but name!" Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern declared, his left fist again clenching around the pommel of her sword. "And not only is it dishonorable and cowardly, the only thing that it has accomplished, or that it is going to accomplish, is to drive neutral nations straight into England's hands!"

"They've already brought Portugal into the war. If the damn Americans become involved…" the Kaiser shook his head, his teeth gritting, a vein throbbing in his forehead. "For the love of God, the Americans almost joined the war last year, after that…that debacle with the Lusitania! And their ambassador was quite clear about how their administration would feel about any further…incidents."

"That leaves you, Admiral. You and the surface fleet." The German Emperor turned his gaze back to Hipper, ending his pacing and looking the Commander of the First Scouting Group dead in the eye. "You will be my sword in this endeavor, Franz Hipper. You will strike a blow for me that will leave the whole of England reeling."

"And you will strike it, Admiral, with this." Before Hipper's thoughts could delve into any part of what his superior's superior's superior had just said, Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern suddenly took a final, dramatic step towards the Rear Admiral, his electric blue eyes abruptly going overbright as he did. With a theatrical flourish, the Kaiser drew his right hand out from behind his back and held it out towards Hipper, presenting the younger man with…well, with something that Hipper certainly hadn't been expecting.

A faint, blue-white glow was emanating from the object grasped in the German Emperor's right hand, and Hipper found his gaze being drawn downwards to see…what, exactly? The object being presented to him at initially looked to be naught more than a little cube of blueish glass, only slightly bigger than the Kaiser's palm. At a glance, the Rear Admiral had thought that it was nothing more than some sort of decorative ornament, nothing notable at all about the little cube aside from the weak, flickering light pulsating faintly in its center.

But…no. No, this…this was clearly something more. That was a fact that made itself apparent to Hipper the instant that his eyes gave the cube more than a superficial glance. The cube's surface was, in a word, flawless. Unblemished. Perfect. There were no nicks, no scratches or dents; its edges and corners lacked any sort of seams or seals, which made the Rear Admiral think that the cube was a single, solid mass, but yet it couldn't possibly be: the dull blue-white glow that had drawn Hipper's eye was coming straight from the cube's interior, from almost it's dead center.

No solid object could have held a light like the one that Hipper was seeing, that simply floated there in the heart of the cube as if a candlelight were suspended there in some sort of liquid. But it wasn't a candlelight, or indeed any sort of flame: there was no wick, no fuse, nothing that a flame could have burned, no wire or filament that an electrical current could have been running through. The light at the cube's center was coming from…well, it didn't seem to be coming from anything.

Not only did the light come from nowhere, it was acting in a way unlike any other light that Hipper had ever seen. It somewhat reminded the Rear Admiral of what the sun might have looked like when viewed from underneath a turbulent sea: blurry and pulsating and in constant flux. There were some sort of sparks or miniature lightning bolts or flames flaring outwards from the cube's center, forming a dozen, a hundred, a thousand tiny pinpricks of light that drifted through the cube's material in lazy circles around the light in the heart, or shot outwards towards the faces of the cube like lightning bolts, or roiled across its surface in an ever-shifting pattern of white bolts and waves shooting and rolling across blue, or beamed outwards in bright rays that bent and refracted and shifted at what seemed to be complete random.

That was how the cube looked, but what grabbed Hipper, what made his muscles tense and stomach twist and his expression twist into an unsure frown was how the cube felt. Just by looking at the small, glowing object, just by laying eyes on it, the Rear Admiral could sense…something. Something that he couldn't find the right words to describe. He felt it in his gut, in his bones, in his heart. It made his skin buzz, his nerves tingle, his hairs stand up on end. It was…it was an energy. A power. A presence. Whatever that little cube in the Kaiser's hands was, it wasn't just an object. It wasn't just something.

It was…alive.

NOTES:

Heeeyyyy, guess who's back? And with the exact same story concept (but actually planned out this time)?

Comments and Reviews are always appreciated.