14th May 1941.
Warning sirens sound all over Scapa Flow as the HMS Sheffield comes in far too fast. It crashes into the docks and breaks its own bow. Edinburgh looks on in horror, "Oh my God! Sheffy!" She races onto the ship and to the bridge. There she sees an exhausted and pale Sheffield. She's lost a lot of blood from the gaping hole in her shoulder and from her ruptured right eye. Her right arm is limp and useless. She seems to have passed out some time after pointing it towards the base and put it on full throttle. She picks her up and bolts towards the medical facilities, past all the concerned Royal Kansen and dropping ingots of gold out of her maid uniform.
Luckily, a certain visitor from the Eagle Union had been temporarily sent over to teach the Royal Kansen how to medically treat each other. Edinburgh practically kicks down the door to her office and shouts, "Miss Vestal! Sheffy is dying!"
Vestal's head shoots up and her eyes rest on the state of Sheffield. She stands and points to an operating room. "In there! Quick!"
As Edinburgh carries Sheffield, she tries to speak but can only manage a few words, "Edin… burgh… I'm not… dying…"
Edinburgh lays Sheffield down on an operating table and says, "Shh… it's alright, Sheffy… you'll be fine now…"
Vestal says, "Edinburgh."
"Yes, Miss Vestal?" Her attention turns to the repair ship.
"Calm down. She's not dying, I've already stabilised her. She just needs rest and surgery." Vestal deadpans.
"Oh… right…" Edinburgh slows her frantic breathing. "…sorry…"
Vestal puts her hand on Edinburgh's shoulder. "Look… I admire how much you care for your sister, but I have to insist you wait outside and let me work, alright?"
Edinburgh bows, "Of course… um… just… get better soon, Sheffy…" she turns and leaves, and Sheffield rolls her good eye before falling asleep from Vestal's anaesthetics.
Vestal looks over Sheffield's injuries and is impressed at her resilience. Her right eye has been severely damaged by a shard of glass that is still in there like the other shards in her face. Her right shoulder will need work but seems to already be very slowly healing itself thanks to her Kansen body. "I'd better take these shards out before she heals around them…" she gets to work.
QE races over as soon as she hears of what's happened. She's let in and looks around. She sees Royal Oak, still In a coma and on life support from the fatal attack she sustained when U-47 got inside the harbour two years ago, then she sees her faithful spy maid still unconscious but with bandages over her right eye and right shoulder and her arm in a sling. She can still breathe properly so she doesn't need a mask. "My infiltration expert… nobody had ever caught her before… I'm going to have her transferred to Gibraltar with Force H until she fully recovers."
Warspite, who never leaves her side, clenches her fists, "…We can't let this go unanswered, Your Majesty. We must find and sink whoever did this. I bet it was that bloody Scharnhorst, you know? She's always been a brutal fighter."
They both pause when they hear Sheffield mumble. They listen closer and she says, "It… was… Bismarck…."
They both look at each other, wondering how a relatively new Battleship was able to catch their most experienced stealth agent. Warspite suggests, "Perhaps we should give Hood and Wales some more backup?" As QE looks at her injured stealth maid.
Sheffield opens her good eye. She looks at them and says, "Your Majesty… her mission…"
QE listens close, "Bismarck's mission? What is it?"
Sheffield says. "Operation Rhein…übung… her… and Prinz Eugen… Norway… Denmark Strait…" she tries to continue but the exhaustion comes back and knocks her out.
QE looks at Warspite and says, "Just Bismarck and Prinz Eugen? There's no time to get anyone else ready… Ark Royal and Force H are about a week away from Bismarck's intended destination…"
Warspite looks at Sheffield. "Then… we can only hope they manage to defeat her and that smug bitch?"
QE looks down, worried. She says, "I'm afraid so… George, Rodney and the others will have to start getting ready to help them, but it may take a couple of days or so, and Bismarck is heading out tomorrow. The only two Kansen available are Norfolk and Suffolk. They're already patrolling the coast of Iceland and perhaps they can shadow her…"
Warspite looks at her, "Well, can't we just hold off sending Hood and Wales?"
QE shakes her head. "No. We cannot further endanger the supply convoys to and from the Eagle Union. We're about to start having to ration tea, for goodness' sake. Plus, if we don't get her now, we may never find her amongst the sea fog of the North Atlantic, even with the County-classes chasing her, and by then she may be guarded by Wolfpacks. If we are to intercept her, it must be at the Denmark Strait…"
"I see… but we should ask the Commander…" Warspite concedes.
"No, Warspite, they're my girls. I don't need her approval." QE claims.
They suddenly hear Sheffield mumble while barely conscious, "Rigging…." They both look at her and get closer.
QE says, "Sheffield? What was that?"
Sheffield repeats herself as clear as she can, "Riggings… they don't know how… to deploy… riggings…" then falls asleep again as the pain in her shoulder starts to flair up.
QE and Warspite look at each other and run to tell the Commander.
"YOU LET A ROYAL NAVY CRUISER INFILTRATE AND ESCAPE THIS PORT!?" Admiral Günther Lütjens shouts at Bismarck. He had heard about what had happened in the dockyard and had raced down to see the chaos that Sheffield had left it in. A crowd of the other Ironblood Kansen has formed around the both of them.
Bismarck stands her ground and calmly states, "Sir, the intruder controlled her ship remotely to blow up the building to get herself out, then somehow summoned it to her, allowing her to use her turrets as miniaturised versions to get past the coastal defences. I had no idea us Kansen can do that so I had no way to stop her. I can only assume that's how she managed to sneak in without her ship."
Her Admiral yells, "If you had just killed her where she stood, we would still have a functioning command building and this embarrassment wouldn't have happened, now would it!?"
Bismarck wasn't having it. She steps up to him and shouts back, "Sir! With respect, by your orders we are required to capture any intruder for interrogation! If I had killed her, we would still have no answers, and now that we know we can do what she did, we just have to figure out how! If we can, we can turn the tide against them!"
Her Admiral, now realising what she had said earlier asks, "Wait… what did she do, exactly?"
Bismarck answers, "She was somehow able to shrink her ship down and wear parts of it so she could use her guns like firearms, allowing her to sneak in her entire ship."
Lütjens steps back and thinks about it. "Very well, Bismarck, but they'll know about the mission now, so you will depart earlier than planned, but Tirpitz, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau still won't be available to help, so get ready for any ambushes, understood?"
"Jawohl, Herr Admiral." Bismarck salutes. Lütjens just walks off shaking his head, wondering how he will explain this incident to his Führer. U-556 gently holds Bismarck's hand and looks up at her. She smiles and looks back at her supportive little friend and says, "What's wrong, Parzival?"
"I wanted to go with you, but I've been given a commerce-raid mission of my own as well…" U-556 says sadly.
The Battleship says, "Well, then. Let's make it a game. Whoever sinks the most ships wins. The prize is the loser has to do whatever the winner wants for the next day."
That makes U-556' eyes shine with excitement, "You're on, Lord Bismarck! I'm gonna get a head start!" She darts off to get her sub ready for her mission.
Bismarck looks over at the mouth of the port, remembering Sheffield's rigging. "How did she do it…? Surely we should be able to as well…" She would go to her on-board lab, but she has preparations to make. She's just thankful that Sheffield didn't seem to get the chance to sabotage her ship. She walks off, having impressed her comrades by not backing down to Lütjens, much to Graf Zeppelin's approval.
Vestal enters Sheffield's recovery room. "How are you feeling?"
Sheffield, now fully awake again, looks at her. "Like I've been impaled by a flagpole after having my face smashed through a glass table." She deadpans.
Vestal shakes her head, "Well, I can't say I can blame you for that. Let's have a look." She carefully removes Sheffield's blood-soaked bandages on her shoulder and eye. Sheffield winces as Vestal carefully wipes away any blood and sees the wounds are healing. She shines a small light into Sheffield's injured eye, "Your advanced healing is working well. The repairs on your ship seem to be helping, but your eye doesn't seem to be getting better. That's probably because the eye is far more complicated. It may just need more time. What's promising is that your eye is still there, just ruptured." She replaces the bloodied bandages with new ones. "At least the gaping hole in your shoulder is gone. Your muscles and tendons have fixed themselves, too. You just need to wait for your skin to grow back."
Sheffield asks, "How much longer must I wait here until I can go after that Nazi bitch?"
Vestal says, "I don't think Elizabe—"
"You will refer to her as Her Majesty." Sheffield deadpans.
Vestal sighs. She's never really understood this strange role play the Royal Navy does, pretending QE is the actual Queen of England. It's not like they pretend King George V is her namesake or Hood is hers. She just chalks it up to cultural differences. She corrects herself, "I don't think Her Majesty will allow you to go after Bismarck after this, Sheffield. Besides, by the time you're fully healed, she might've been sunk already, and I'll be damned if I have another patient try to fight when they're currently not fit for combat. I have enough of that with a certain Carrier back home. Now, let's try to get your arm working again…"