From : Brigadier General Hans von Zettour
To : Colonel Eric von Lergen
Subject : Division Y recall
Date : November 30th, 1925
Colonel,
As we discussed prior to your departure for the Southern Continent, the preparations for Operation Ragnarök are completed. It is time for you and the assets of Division Y deployed alongside the Southern Expedition to return to the Fatherland in order to take part in the first phase of the offensive.
Return to Galberj at once. The ship Irene and her escorts will await you there to carry your forces up the Francois coast so that you can link up with the rest of Operation Ragnarök's elements. Then, you will receive further orders.
Before the end of the year, these troublesome Albish shall be crushed once and for all, and the Empire's future shall be secured.
For the Fatherland.
From : Colonel Eric von Lergen
To : Brigadier General Hans von Zettour
Subject : Orders received
Date : December 3rd, 1925
General,
We have embarked aboard the Irene and are about to depart Galberj. We are expected to cross the Strait of Jabaltariq out of the Inner Sea in five days, and will link with Operation Ragnarök within the following week, barring unexpected weather.
For the Fatherland.
"New intelligence from Ultra indicates that the Imperials have a new plan in the works to end the war, codename 'Operation Ragnarök'. As part of it, Lergen and the Division Y contingent on the Southern Continent are returning home by sea : they will cross the Jabaltariq Strait and go up the Francois coast to meet up with the rest of the Operation's forces. Mister John has confirmed that the aerial mages of the Imperial expedition are still with Romel, so it will be just Lergen and Division Y's personnel onboard.
This is our chance to take Lergen out along with a huge chunk of Division Y's assets. His little display with the Nameless City's gateway has inadvertently told us that modern firepower can overcome even the power of Elder magic, and there are few things with more firepower than the guns on the Royal Navy's ships.
The super mage who took down the Heresiarch has to be relying on some Wunderwaffe spell, so the Kemetian wards should hold him at bay. To be honest, if they don't, then the war is already lost. Merlin tells me he has enough students able to deploy them for this, though they'll require mage support to properly protect something the size of a ship in the middle of the ocean (something about flowing water disrupting the energies of the ritual drawing on the relic's power). Fortunately, there is an old trick in the Royal Wizard's archives that allows them to draw on the mana reserves of other mages, and Merlin had figured out how to integrate it into the Kemetian ward ritual.
Admittedly, now that I've time to sleep on it, Merlin's theory about Colonel Lergen being an immortal wizard seeking to rule the Empire from the shadows sounds a bit less plausible than it did at our last meeting. However, even without that consideration, this is too big an opportunity to miss. The Imperials are aware of our Kemetian wards, so we've to assume this Operation Ragnarök involves some sort of counter, whether it's overpowering the relic or, I don't know, lifting up the bottom of the sea to create a land bridge for the Imperial Army."
Private communication between Agravain and Kay, members of Albion's Round Table, December 4th, 1925.
"Vice Admiral Cook,
We have uncovered intelligence suggesting the Imperials are pulling their Wunderwaffen out of the Southern Continent as part of a grand operation against Albion itself. Due to operational constraints, they will be moving at sea with a limited escort.
This is an unprecedented chance to land a blow against the Empire and show the world that they aren't as invincible as they pretend to be.
Your squadron is to move to the west of the Jabaltariq Strait and prepare for ambush as best as you think possible, and to destroy this convoy, with full priority being given to the transport ship Irene.
Do not, under any circumstances, engage the Imperial convoy during night-time. In addition, the mages who delivered this letter to you have been trained in the latest Albish magic, meant to counter the Imperial Wunderwaffen : make sure that they are prepared to enact it before moving to engage.
Do not attempt to seize the vessels or their contents, and if you end up taking prisoners, be extremely cautious. Should one Colonel Eric von Lergen be among the captives, it would be better for all of Europa if he were to have an unfortunate and tragic accident while being rescued.
Destroy this letter once you have confirmed your orders.
For King and Kingdom."
Letter from the Admiralty of the Allied Kingdom to Vice Admiral Sebastian Cook, commanding officer of the Home Fleet's Second Squadron, delivered on December 5th, 1925.
December 9th, 1925 – West of the Jabaltariq Strait
Surrounded by water and the noise of engines, Lieutenant Krause carefully adjusted the last of the magnetic discs he had been given in place on the hull of the Albish ship.
Each of the twenty discs he had carried in the waterproof bag attached to his back had been assembled in the workshops of Castle Schwartzstein. About the length of a human hand, they were made of two parts : a metallic chassis with a magnetic charge to fix the whole to an enemy target, and a delicately carved discus of hardened clay, on which were inscribed sigils that made Krause's eyes itch when he looked at them in his human form. The discus was covered in reinforced glass to prevent accidentally damaging it, though Krause still had to be exceedingly careful.
Fortunately, the Major had made him train for this at length in the lake near the Castle, using dummy disks and hulls, until he could perform the manoeuvre to her satisfaction. This wasn't exactly what he had in mind when he had imagined his first deployment as the first of the Echo-type Werwölfe, but if everything worked as it should, then his actions would make a far greater impact on the war than if he had climbed aboard the ship and started killing everyone he came across.
With the last disc in place, he had marked all seven of the Allied Kingdom's ships, using more markers on the largest vessels just to be sure. Adjusting his position underwater, he let loose a series of brief sonar pulses in the direction where his instincts told him the closest of his kindred was located, signalling the success of the this part of Operation Enigma. The other Echo would then relay the message to the next one in line, who would then transmit it to the one waiting near the submarine that had brought them to this part of the ocean, who would telepathically transmit the confirmation to Lieutenant Grantz, standing in human form next to the Major.
It was somewhat convoluted, and certainly couldn't be used for detailed messages, but this method would ensure the Albish didn't have any warning. Even if they picked up his sonar pulses, they would think them the doing of some aquatic life-form, not realizing it actually heralded their doom.
Krause was tempted to stay here, to watch the glorious plan he had been briefed on unfold with his own eyes, and perhaps to add his teeth to the carnage to come. But his discipline as an Imperial soldier was stronger than his bloodlust, so he started making his way back to the submarine. At least he could enjoy the swim : being in the open ocean was a lot different from the lake that was the only place available at the castle for him to indulge in the impulses that accompanied his new nature.
Not that he would ever complain about those, of course. He would have accepted a lot worse in exchange for the healing of the injuries he'd taken on the Western Front as a common grunt.
As he made his way back, a wave of something he couldn't describe washed over him. Glancing back, he saw rifts tear reality apart underneath the Kingdom's fleet, and from these rifts emerged things that resembled an octopus' tentacles in the same way Krause's own form resembled a shark.
Even the symbiont, the part of him that hadn't always been there, was made nervous by the sight. It wasn't like being near Major Degurechaff : her presence always filled Krause with a sense of respect that reminded him of witnessing one of the Empire's big artillery guns at rest – such awesome power, waiting to be unleashed on the enemies of the Fatherland. This, on the other hand, reminded him of the days he had spent cowering the trenches as enemy artillery rained down death upon them, praying that he wouldn't die this day to a God who must surely have turned away from the Rhine in disgust.
He had thought he'd left behind such fears when he had survived the Rite of Union and become the first Echo-type Werwolf, but it appeared the Major had yet again been right : there was always something left to fear.
December 9th, 1925 – West of the Jabaltariq Strait – Bridge of the Second Squadron's flagship, battleship Mighty Hood
To look upon Vice Admiral Sebastian Cook, you would never have guessed at the worry that had been gnawing at him since he had received his new orders from the Admiralty. He looked every bit the picture of the typical flag officer of the Royal Navy, prim and proper and completely in control. It was an image that he worked hard to project, as befitted someone given such a prestigious command as his.
The Second Squadron of the Home Fleet was a powerful force. Apart from Mighty Hood, his flagship and one of, if not the greatest ship of the Royal Navy, there was the carrier Ark Royale and the cruiser Yliastral as capital ships, accompanied by the destroyers Bermuda, Lewis, Victor and Vincent. With such vessels and their capable crews under his command, there was no conventional naval force that Cook feared to face, let alone those of a second-rate naval power like the Empire. To deal with a single transport ship and its three escorts, dispatching the Second Squadron was grossly overkill.
Except, of course, that the transport ship in question carried the leader of the infamous Imperial Army's Division Y, along with God alone knew what Wunderwaffen. And if there was one thing the Empire had made clear since the destruction of the Dacian Army, it was that the Wunderwaffen made a mockery of conventional wisdom in warfare.
"The naval mages just confirmed they've sighted the enemy convoy," reported one of the officers on the bridge of Mighty Hood. "Three frigates as escort and one transport ship, as expected."
"Good," he replied. "How long before they're in range of our guns ?"
"Ten minutes, sir."
"Put the gun crews on alert, then, and tell the mages to keep their distances and prepare to relay coordinates for long-range bombardment."
Cook's plan was to use the superior firepower of the Mighty Hood to send the entire convoy to the depths from afar, long before the escorts could retaliate, and only approach once all four ships had been sunk. He wasn't comfortable about the part of his orders that told him to execute the Imperial colonel supposedly on board the Irene, but hopefully he would die before the problem presented itself.
"Magical activity detected !" another officer suddenly shouted. "It's … it's coming for underneath us ?!"
"What ?!"
The deck shook under Cook's feet as the Mighty Hood responded to the sudden motion of the sea, and he caught himself on a railing to avoid failing. By random happenstance, this put him in the perfect position to look out through the viewport and see several towering things emerge from the water around the Ark Royale.
Even from this distance, the sheer size of the things meant that Cook could make out far more detail than he was comfortable with. Black and purple scales, the color of starless night and bruised skin. Rows of enormous yellow eyes with 8-shaped pupils. Suckers that must be larger than a man, and mouths filled with too many teeth.
It took several seconds before his brain managed to overcome the sheer size and horror of the things and realize that those were tentacles of some sort, and by the time he'd come to that realization the towers of monstrous flesh had closed around the Ark Royale and broken it to pieces, its structure ravaged by several explosions as its machinery was pulverized by the destruction around it.
There was a beat of complete, horrified silence on the bridge, broken only by the sounds of destruction and the distant screams of the Ark Royale's unfortunate crew. Then Cook's officer training and survival instincts kicked in, and he shouted :
"Contact the mages in the hold ! Tell them to deploy the wards, now ! Relay that order to all remaining ships !"
Inside the hull, a storage chamber had been cleared for the use of the mages who had delivered his orders. Arranging it had been a headache and a half (there was never enough space available on a military ship), but as a golden sphere expanded to surround the Mighty Hood, Cook was grateful they had made the effort. His gratefulness redoubled when the tentacles that had dragged the Ark to the depths re-emerged around his flagship and slammed against the shimmering golden sphere, before recoiling, sizzling at the contact, filling the air with an overpowering stench that made the Vice Admiral gag.
"It's working," whispered someone. "Thank God …"
"Continue our advance !" Cook ordered. "The Imperials' Wunderwaffe may have failed to take us all out, but I intend to avenge Ark Royale !"
"Yes, sir !" came the reply, and the Mighty Hood resumed her advance, although at a diminished speed, her engines struggling against the tentacles pressing on her shields. Cook wasn't sure how the physics of the whole thing worked, but it seemed that even with the wards protecting the ship, the Imperial Wunderwaffe could still slow them down.
He prepared to order the rest of the squadron to break formation and advance ahead of the Mighty Hood, but before he could speak, another alarmed cry rose up :
"Magical signatures approaching ! They are – God, they are going so fast !"
"How many ?" he barked.
"I … three, sir ! They are going too fast for our naval mages to intercept !"
Just three ? What could three mages accomplish against an entire squadron of the Royal Navy ?
Moments later, spells Cook didn't recognize bombarded the ward, making it shudder, but it held fast. That was strange : he hadn't been told the wards could block spells in addition to Wunderwaffen. Surely the Imperials hadn't found a way to make mage-portable superweapons ?
"The enemy mages have made it through the envelope !"
"Brace for impact !" Cook shouted, steadying himself for the ship to shake as the Imperial mages fired explosive formulas, but nothing happened. A second later, a slight tremor ran through the vessel's superstructure.
"What's happening ? Where are they ?" he asked.
"They are … they are inside, sir !" replied the man at the magic detector, sounding as surprised as Cook felt. "They have boarded us !"
Boarding ?! In this day and age ?!
Wait, Cook realized. Aerial mages were still a relatively new addition the armed forces. In the Navy, they were mostly used for reconnaissance and to provide fire support akin to bombing planes. But now that he thought about it, the tactic made sense. Aerial mages were incredibly lethal in close quarters, and the insides of a modern ship were very enclosed indeed.
And their target was obvious, Cook realized, feeling as if a cold hand was tightening around his heart.
"Recall all the naval mages we have ! Tell them to protect the mages casting the shield ! We cannot afford to have their work interrupted !"
It was the correct decision, the only decision, but it was too late. Panicked reports from the crew painted a grim picture of the three Imperial mages tearing through them in close-quarters, going straight for the ritual chamber. They must be able to detect the mana emanating from it, and while the plans of the Mighty Hood weren't public there were maps on the walls to help guide the sailors (and it wasn't as if the interior walls of the ship could do much to stop a determined aerial mage).
The moment the ward around Mighty Hood collapsed, the Imperial mages took off again. Cook saw them split up on the magic detector's screen, each of them moving fast, so fast, as they flew toward the other ships of his command. Then he didn't have time to look, as the tentacles that had been held at bay by the ward returned with a vengeance.
Quickly, Cook made a calculation. It had taken less than five minutes for the Imperial mages to disable the Mighty Hood's arcane protections. Assuming it took them as much time for every ship in his squadron – perhaps more, if they knew what was coming – then there was still a way to salvage this.
"All ships, advance !" he ordered. "Take down the Irene at any cost ! This is our only chance to stop their Wunderwaffe !"
It was a gamble. For all he knew, the tentacles wouldn't go away with the sinking of the Irene, and he might instead end up unleashing this horror upon the seas with no one to control it. But it was the only thing he could do. Besides, it wasn't as if the beast was invincible. The Vice Admiral could see that they were hurting it : vast chunks of slimy flesh were being blasted off by canon fire and firearms, sending offal into the churning waters. But while a few tentacles were too damaged to continue and vanished underwater, there were too many of them, and those successes were too few.
He wanted to tell his crew to abandon ship, but all that would accomplish would be getting them in the water with that thing. Seconds later, the entire ceiling of the bridge was ripped off, and one of the tentacles loomed over them, before suddenly descending.
With his teeth bared in a defiant smile, Vice Admiral Sebastian Cook drew his ceremonial saber and pistol, and prepared to die with all the dignity expected of an officer of His Majesty's Royal Navy.
"This is Yliastral to anyone listening ! The entire second squadron is lost ! Mighty Hood has sunk, Cook is dead ! The Imps have killed the mages and the wards are down ! They have called the Kraken from the depths – OH GOD ! AAAAARGH –"
Last radio transmission from the Yliastral, received by the Londinium Admiralty on December 9th, 1925.
December 9th, 1925 – West of the Jabaltariq Strait – Imperial Submarine U-152
I stood atop the U-152 as it held its position at the surface and watched the end of the Royal Navy's squadron. We were too far from the action for much to be visible, but thanks to the side-effects of Kosmosblut, I could still sense the energies of what we had unleashed against the Kingdom's fleet. Combined with the radio transmissions I was listening to, I had a pretty clear picture of the situation.
The last Albish ship floating was the destroyer Vincent, and it was rapidly taking water from multiple hull breaches. Her captain had been the one to broadcast his surrender as the last commanding officer left in the Royal Navy squadron.
Between the moment I had given the order to dismiss Projekt J right after receiving that transmission and the disappearance of the last tentacle, over five minutes had passed. I couldn't know how many more people had died during that interval, but I knew the number wouldn't be small. Legally, I was in the clear – we were at war, and I had moved to stop hostile action the moment they had announced their surrender – but the whole thing still left a foul taste in my mouth. Or maybe that was the magical emanations of Projekt J messing with my senses.
The Irene's escorts were moving in toward the wreckage of the Royal Navy fleet in order to rescue the survivors, as demanded by the laws of war and sea. The fact that they had tried to kill each other moments ago yet were now pushing their engines to reach them as fast as possible in order to aid them was yet another testament to the absurdity and illogical nature of warfare. Although in this case, there were more practical reasons for intervening : every sailor of the Allied Kingdom we took prisoner was one more bargaining piece in our dealings with Albion, and one less source of intel the Kingdom could use once their own rescue arrived.
Of the thousands of sailors who had crewed the seven Albish ships, only a fraction had survived, so there should be enough space aboard the escorts to keep them, if barely. They would be off-loaded at the first captured Francois port that came into view, once the convoy was past the Ispagna coastline. Colonel Lergen and all the assets of Division Y aboard the convoy would also disembark there, making the rest of their trip using the railroad. It was unlikely the John Bulls would try a naval attack again after what had happened this time, but not impossible.
I nodded to myself, satisfied that this, the most important and risky phase of Operation Enigma, had gone off without a hitch, and turned to look at my companions still standing atop the submarine.
The team of occultists that had activated Projekt J were being carried down into the submarine to recover from their efforts, while the platform we had constructed atop the submarine's structure so that they would have enough space was being dismantled, the pieces carried back inside.
Lieutenants Krause and Grantz stood at my side. Grantz was here because he was acting as Visha's temporary replacement as my bodyguard and assistant (as well as relaying the telepathic messages of the Echoes to me), Krause because he had wanted to watch the result of his work and I hadn't wanted to risk him slipping back into the water to get a closer look if I refused.
I addressed the last member of my small retinue, who was wearing the uniform of an Imperial aerial mage :
"It looks like there'll be no need for us to sortie today. Let's go back inside, Zerayah."
"Yes, madam !" the coal-skinned mage replied with a somewhat-sloppy salute, her words still heavily accented but perfectly understandable. Her language lessons were going well, I was pleased to see.
Zerayah had been among the Nazzadi who had witnessed my fight against Akhar-Zegog. She had been the leader of her tribe at the time, despite looking like she was barely in her twenties if that (although I guessed I couldn't exactly comment on that given my own apparent age) and as a result was one of my most fervent supporters among the Nazzadi (although it must be said that all of them were still embarrassingly grateful for the somewhat sparse accommodations I'd arranged for them in Castle Schwartzstein). Zerayah had taken to flying with admirable swiftness, ending up leader of the flight of Nazzadi mages who had met my standards in time for Operation Enigma.
She was also, not to put too fine a point on it, absolutely gorgeous, with her her flaming red hair and black skin making her look very good in her military uniform. Since we had come aboard, the sailors had been sneaking glances at her almost continuously, and I was certain it wasn't just because of her exotic coloring. Everyone had stayed professional, though, as they damn well ought to be as part of the Imperial warmachine.
If Zerayah felt any disappointment at not seeing action, she hid it well. But then, considering why I had brought her and her flight along with me, that only made sense. The only way they would have seen combat would have been if something had gone catastrophically wrong with Projekt J, after all.
One of the things we had discovered once we'd started to overcome the language barrier was that, to the Nazzadi, human life was incredibly precious. They were all used to fighting the various beasts that had lurked in their ruined homeworld, but inter-tribes conflict had been all but extinct, due to them spending generations on the cusp of extinction. The few disagreements that couldn't be resolved amicably had instead been taken care of through ritual combat that always – always – ended before anyone was hurt too badly.
As a result, they had an incredibly powerful cultural taboo against taking another's life. You might think that the same was true in Europa, but that was far from the case : in this nationalism-infested era, everyone was taught more or less from childhood that killing the enemies of your country was a good and even glorious thing. Simple human nature meant that it still took a lot of training before most soldiers were actually able to pull the trigger on another human being, but the cultural pressure was actually on the side of the killing, since not being willing to kill the enemy was perceived as moral cowardice.
Hell, the Nazzadi language didn't even have a word for 'war'. Several of them had gone through a mental breakdown when they had been told about the Great War the Empire was fighting and had finally internalized what they were being told. To these people, who had lived all their lives in the rubble of an apocalypse, us being willing to kill each other in such grotesque numbers for concepts like country or honor was madness. It would probably take years before they could begin to understand the motives behind the Great War.
I was self-aware enough to know that, as Director of Division Y, I had done many morally questionable things. But I had to draw the line at teaching the last remnants of a lost civilization that looked up to me as some kind of savior figure that murder was okay. I didn't know what scared me the most : that my influence on them wouldn't be strong enough to get them to overcome their taboo and they would revolt, or that it would be, and the last shred of innocence of the Nazzadi people would be destroyed by my hands. I wasn't sentimental, but I refused to be a hypocrite, and such a thing would end my ability to ever consider myself a peace-loving individual again.
Fortunately, that reticence didn't extend to anything that clearly wasn't human, so the Nazzadi mages could still be deployed as security for Castle Schwartzstein against rogue experiments. And if the situation in Kemet repeated itself and more ancient monsters were let loose, the Nazzadi would be more than willing to help prevent a repeat from what had happened to Nazza-Duhni. Which was why I had brought Zerayah and her team with me : in case Projekt J went out of control, I wanted to have options that didn't involve using the vial of Kosmosblut I carried with me.
Of course, I didn't need Kosmosblut to be able to fight : I'd had plenty of time to practice with my walking stick, and I was confident there wasn't another mage on the planet who could match me. But with my right forearm covered and my eyes kept hidden by thick glasses, I was constantly aware that, while I had kept my sanity, my body had still paid the price of my use of powers beyond mortal ken. That was why I hadn't joined Weiss, Neumann and König in their attack on the Albish fleet. If the occultists had lost control of Projekt J and the Nazzadi had been deployed, I would have flown alongside them to cut down that tentacled horror down to size and send it scrambling back to whatever dimension we'd dragged it out of.
As we made our way back inside the U-152, I let my mind drift back to just what we'd just accomplished and how many different things had come together to make it possible. Projekt J, [Jörmungandr], had only become practical to use with the discovery of the Echo-type Werwölfe. Without them to put the calling sigils in place, we would have been forced to either rely on the handful of Untoten still capable of operating over running water or unleash the Projekt without any clear targets, which would have been incredibly dangerous given that we needed to be close for the summoning ritual to work.
Given what the Projekt looked like, I had considered calling it Projekt C, [Cthulhu], but nobody would have understood the reference. If there was a Lovecraft analogue in this world, he hadn't published his stories yet (and even if he did, I vaguely remembered his work hadn't really taken off until long after his death). Come to think of it, if such a man existed, I wondered how the existence of magic in general and the Wunderwaffen in particular would affect his writing. That would be something to look into, once this stupid war was over.
Back to the subject at hand, we had confirmed that the Kemetian wards could block the Mythos spells loaded in the D-24, and even prevented the computation orb from functioning at all while within their area of effect. To be sure the same thing wouldn't happen to Weiss, and as funny as the mental image of him going through the ward only to be stopped dead in his tracks when his right arm hit the shield, his new replacement arm wasn't made from the same material as the previous one but mundane metal instead. It wasn't as responsive, and Professor Gehrman had grumbled about working with inferior materials, but I had managed to convince him it was necessary, and Weiss had known better than to complain. In any case, he would switch to a proper replacement once we were back home.
Unfortunately for the Albish, I had anticipated that possibility, and made sure each of the mages I had brought with me was equipped with another computation orb : the D-25. Another derivative of Projekt D, the D-25 was the result of our efforts to create a dual-core orb that didn't rely on the Mythos arcanotech that had gone into building the Denkmaschine. After confirming the D-24 was being blocked by the Kemetian wards, Weiss and the others had switched to the D-25 and had gone straight through the wards to take out the Kingdom's mages responsible for keeping them up. Just like I had hoped when I had ordered the production of a set of D-25s for every mage involved in this operation, the Kemetian wards hadn't affected them at all.
Sending three mages against an entire squadron might have looked reckless, and it was. But even without the Mythos spells loaded in the second core, the D-25 was an incredible improvement on standard Imperial computation orbs, let alone the inferior stuff the Albish mages were using. And the enemy ships had been badly shaken by the sight of Projekt J, all their attention understandably focused on the monstrous tentacles trying to pierce through their golden shields, meaning there had been little anti-air fire aimed their way. Even then, it had been a close thing, and the three of them had come back exhausted and injured, barely able to land before collapsing and being carried to the submarine's infirmary, where we'd managed to get a medical mage to help with the operation despite how rare and valuable those were.
After today's field testing, I was confident Brigadier General Zettour would ask that we share the design with the real orb manufacturers of the Imperial Army – once we had finished the rest of Operation Enigma and there wasn't any chance of the Allied Kingdom intercepting it, of course. Unlike the rest of Division Y's creations, the D-25 could be produced outside of the Division without risking a Mythos outbreak.
Still, even without the Mythos element, using a dual-core orb was very different from using a single-core one. I'd managed it without too much effort, probably thank to still having the adaptable brain of a child, but it had taken considerable training before those three had gotten the hang of it. It was possible the Empire wouldn't be able to spare the time to re-train its mages into the use of the new device, no matter how much more effective it was. Perhaps once the war was over ? At least the lengthier training required to use a dual-core orb to its full potential would help convince the Empire that a fully-professional army was the way to go, rather than the conscript-relying one we had right now.
Inside the U-152, I went back to my cabin, which was as cramped as everything ever was on a submarine, where space was at a premium. To make space for the additional personnel and materiel we had brought with us, the U-152 had been stripped of all its usual complement of torpedoes, meaning the submarine had been essentially defenceless during the journey – well, except for the mages, Werwölfe, and me being aboard … alright, it hadn't been defenceless at all. Still, I was glad nobody had tried to kill us while we made our way from the northern port where we'd embarked to the west of Jabaltariq.
During our trip, I had taken the opportunity to familiarize myself with the submarine technology available to the Empire. To be blunt, it wasn't great. Apart from only being able to submerge for limited periods of time, the weapons of our submarine fleet were frankly appalling, much to the sailors' frustrations. Once I had managed to get him talking, Captain von Schraft had ranted about the torpedoes' failure to properly detonate, and cursed the scientists who had built them and who continued to insist they worked perfectly fine during lab tests, somehow blaming the soldiers for failing to recreate their exact testing conditions on the battlefield.
I had been shocked to hear it. That, at least, was one issue we didn't have in Division Y : I had forced it through the thick skulls of the madmen under my command that practicality was paramount when developing new Projekte or applications of existing ones, second only to reliability. It might diminish the amount of wholesale destruction we were able to inflict, but that was a problem that could be overcome with proper application of the tools at our disposal – and Division Y had plenty of wonderful tools, with more being added regularly as our work continued.
We had been lucky enough to get three new Echoes during our last performance of the Rite of Union, on the three nights of the full moon at the end of October. Resource constraints had forced us to skip the prior full moon at the start of that month, and again in November (once every two full moons seemed to be the way things would go in the future, unless our supply of rare reagents was improved). This time, forty-nine candidates had survived : apart from the Echoes, we had twenty Phantom-types, seventeen Mirage-types, three Shadow-types, a pair of Spectres, another Whisper (proving Captain Uger wouldn't be the only one), and no less than three new manifestations.
The Nightmare-type lived up to its name, I was forced to admit. Taller than most other Werwölfe, he didn't have a head, instead having an uneven distribution of eyes on his upper torso, between two enormous shoulders that could split open to fire streams of crimson energy bullets like a heavy-caliber machine-gun, which could be focused into a single, all-consuming beam of pure destruction, leading to the type's classification as a Heavy Weapons Werwolf. In addition, his too-long arms ended in vicious talons, and his palms could split open to reveal tentacles capable of incredible crushing force. All in all, the Nightmare-type would be the uncontested scariest variant of all Werwölfe, if not for the other two new types that had been discovered in the latest round of Rites of Union.
The Efreet-type could be summed up in one word, and that word was 'fire'. This variant of Werwolf looked like a lava golem that left burning footprint wherever he walked and set anything he touched on fire. He could breath metal-melting fire, had two enormous fists that could pummel through concrete and tank armor with equal ease, and the ability to summon a supernatural rain of burning meteors on his immediate surroundings. The Efreet-type would never see action in any kind of mission requiring stealth, but I couldn't imagine there were many armed forces on the planet that would be willing to stand their ground before his advance.
And then there was the Widow-type, which I was reasonably certain would have ended up with another name entirely if its sole representative at the moment hadn't ended up being one of the few women who were part of Projekt W. For all its claims of egalitarianism, the Empire's military was still predominantly male, with the sole exception being the mage corps. The violent nature of mage combat meant that it was rare for one of them to end up with the kind of injuries that qualified for selection in Projekt W : either they were patched up by medical mages as a priority, or they were dead. But this one had managed to survive with truly horrific injuries : before Projekt W, I was sure she would have been quietly killed in the hospital to end her suffering. Instead, Corporal Karla Vogt had been restored with the new ability to transform into a frankly terrifying spider-like horror.
The Widow's body was covered in a black, shining carapace, with little tufts of hair at the joints and two enormous, pupiless eyes set in a face straight out of an arachnophobe's nightmares. Unique among the Werwölfe, the Widow could alter her shape further after transforming, growing an additional pair of long, thin legs that tripled her movement speed. Her upper limbs were spinnerets that could fire webbing with enough strength to punch through armor, and could then be used to entrap almost anything. The strength of that webbing reminded me of a certain friendly neighbourhood comic book hero of my old world, although I doubted Marvel had ever published anything like the Widow.
Then there was the Widow's bite, which injected a disorienting toxin that, combined with the webbing, made the Widow uniquely suited for capture operations. Her ultimate attack, tested on animals, involved trapping a victim into a shell of webbing that either incapacitated them in moments or dissolved their body completely, letting the Widow feed on their liquefied remnants (which Corporal Vogt didn't seem to find off-putting at all, leading me to believe the mental alterations of this particular type were more pronounced than most).
All in all, these three new types of Werwölfe promised to be very useful, each in their own way. Still, I was hoping we wouldn't need to deploy any of them in this war.
In the grand scheme of things, the loss of a single naval squadron wasn't that big of a blow to the Allied Kingdom. Their navy had dozens more vessels, even if they also had a lot more of the world's waters to cover in order to maintain their oversea empire.
But the Mighty Hood was something of a symbol to the Royal Navy. She had been the greatest warship of the Royal Navy, and arguably the most powerful vessel to ever sail the waves in this world. Now it was a wreck rapidly sinking to the bottom of the ocean, a grave for hundreds of sailors, waiting for future explorers to come plunder it for historical relics.
Until now, the Allied Kingdom's government had been able to claim that its navy ruled the waves. There was no way for the Imperial Navy to break through the naval defenses surrounding Albion, and our Wunderwaffen had been thwarted by the Kemetian ward.
This was the goal of Operation Enigma, as designed by Brigadier General Zettour. Using Colonel Lergen and the elements of Division Y aboard the Irene as bait, we had inflicted an utterly one-sided defeat on the Royal Navy.
The Allied Kingdom wouldn't know exactly what had happened to its squadron, of course. It was possible that the Albish had detected the U-152's presence and reported it back to their headquarters before they sunk, but all that would mean was that, in the eyes of their Admiralty, a transport ship, three escorts and a submarine had utterly destroyed an entire squadron. They might also know that their wards had worked, but had been disabled by our own, superior mages.
Hopefully, they would see the implications for the rest of their Home Fleet. Making more discs to draw the attention of Projekt J was relatively easy, and while the actual ritual was taxing the occultists would recover with a few days of rest. Getting the discs into place without the benefit of having drawn the enemy into a trap would be harder – the Echoes could swim fast and for prolonged periods of time, but even they would struggle to catch up to a warship, and the ocean was vast – but far from impossible if Division Y worked in tandem with the Empire's submarine fleet.
The John Bulls couldn't defeat us on land; they couldn't defeat us at sea; and their infiltration of our communications would soon end. Unless they wanted their Commonwealth to be reduced to one city permanently covered by a magic dome, they had no choice but to come at the negotiation table and end this stupid war once and for all.
At least, that was the hope of Zettour and Central Command. I couldn't help but think that surely Being X wouldn't let us get away with it so easily.
AN : And here, after Osfjord, the Rhine, and the Southern Continent, we have this timeline's equivalent of the sinking of the Second Squadron of the Royal Navy. In canon, this happens in volume 9 after being teased in the Andrew's sections early on, off the coast of Dakar. Obviously there is no Wunderwaffen involved there ... although come to think of it, I suppose Schugel's inventions might qualify for that name.
Jabaltariq is, of course, Not!Gibraltar. I came up with the alternative name after reading the Wikipedia page for the region.
I initially planned to have the Nazzadi take a more active part in the battle, essentially playing the part of Weiss, Neumann and König, but then I realized that given how few of them were left on their homeworld, it was likely none of them had ever killed someone before, leading to the whole taboo aspect being elaborated on. And yes, I'm aware that most depictions of post-apocalyptic society show a callous disregard for human life being prevalent. But I don't believe in that interpretation of human nature, because evil is a bad surviving strategy in the long term. No doubt there were Nazzadi willing to kill others in the immediate aftermath of their civilization's collapse, but by the time Tanya found them, generations later, that sort of attitude had completely died down. Is that naive of me ? Maybe, but it's my story, so there. And don't worry, the Nazzadi will definitely see action one way or another before this story ends ... in fact, if things go as I've planned (which is far from guaranteed given how this story has gone so far) it should happen very soon.
Also, readers of my other stories might have recognized the name of Zerayah. I promise you its use here doesn't mean anything sinister. Whether you believe me or not is up to you.
As Tanya mentioned, this victory is more important for what it represents than what it accomplished (although such one-sided destruction isn't anything to be scoffed at, and the surviving Albish sailors certainly won't ever forget it). If you are annoyed that the Empire seems to be constantly fighting with a hand tied behind its back, remember that hand isn't a hand so much as it is a nest of tentacles summoned from the Outer Dark that suck out the souls of the enemies of the Reich under an eldritch sky. Zettour very much doesn't want to escalate if he can at all help it, so the goal of Operation Enigma is to show the Allied Kingdom that there is no possible way for them to win so that they'll sue for peace and everyone can go home (once the Empire has secured some sizable concessions from the Kingdom, of course, because come on).
Unfortunately, he doesn't know about the Round Table's theory concerning Lergen, and Operation Enigma certainly won't do anything to dispel the image of the good Colonel as a sorcerous mastermind. Next chapter will be mostly about the next steps of Operation Enigma and the fallout of Projekt J's deployment.
To clarify, the D-25 is basically the Type-97 Elenium Computation Orb from canon, except instead of using the holy relic of the Type-95 as inspiration the engineers used the D-24, which is anything but holy. Using a dual-core orb effectively is definitely harder than a single-core one in canon, and if you think I made the trio who used them overpowered, please remember how devastatingly powerful the 203rd is in canon, especially during its first deployments.
Also, after several requests, I relented and added the rarer Tager types to the gacha, resulting in the results you see here. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but after messing up with the dates earlier, I've decided that Division Y can only perform the sized-up Rite of Union once every two full moons. Here are the updated drop rates :
Common (Mirage, Phantom) : 80%
Specialist (Echo, Shadow, Spectre, Whisper) : 17%
Exceptional (Nightmare, Vampire) : 2%
Rare (Efreet, Widow) : 1%
Still no Vampire, I know. I was pretty glad with the three Echoes Tanya pulled, though : it certainly helped for this chapter.
That's all for now. As usual, I look forward to your thoughts and suggestions for this story.
Zahariel out.