Re: Blood and Iron

Chapter 654: The Wolf Below

U-121 lurked beneath the waves of the Arctic Sea.

Greenland had become more than a frozen rock; it was a bridgehead.

Trade flowed like blood through its ice-choked veins, but so too did iron.

The so-called Joint-Arctic Research Outpost had sprouted steel antennae and hidden gun emplacements, a secret kept only by silence and snow.

The Allies knew it , but they could not prove it . And so, denied the pretext for war, they chose provocation.

Canadian destroyers had begun “inspections.” Harassments. Thinly veiled intimidation. But today, they’d pushed too far.

Today, the HMCS Ottawa would cross a line that could not be uncrossed.

She floated proudly in the icy dark, engines humming like a lion waiting to pounce.

Her skiff carved white scars through the still waters en route to a German civilian freighter dead in the water, its engines idled, its crew compliant.

The Ottawa’s guns were already loaded. The inspection was merely theater.

Captain Malcolm R. Weatherby stood at the helm, binoculars perched like a crown atop his nose.

“Seven generations of my family have captained His Majesty’s ships. We’ve stared down the French, the Russians, even the Yankees. But the Germans? Hah. One lucky war and suddenly they believe they rule the seas. Well… not so arrogant now, are they?”

The young ensign beside him nodded too quickly, too eagerly.

“You said it, sir. With you at the helm, these fools wouldn’t dare—”

The words died in his throat.

Weatherby blinked. The boy’s face had drained to bone-white. Mouth open, eyes wide—staring past him.

A chill colder than the Arctic wind slithered down Weatherby’s spine. He turned—

And saw it.

Not a wake. Not a ripple. A line. An illuminated streak of sea glowing ghostly green beneath the surface.

The bioluminescent plankton had awakened, disturbed by something moving far faster, and far deeper, than any torpedo should.

A silent line, snaking under the German vessel and beelining for the Ottawa.

“BRACE FOR IMPACT!” Weatherby bellowed, voice cracking with the force of command, and fear.

Too late.

The water beneath the Ottawa detonated, but not with a traditional explosion.

There was no fireball. No thunderous crack. Just a moment of absolute silence, a flicker of unnatural stillness.

Then came the implosion.

A metal scream tore through the hull as something punched into it, not a warhead, but a needle.

A drill. A projectile tipped with depleted uranium and shaped to pierce, not blast.

The hull buckled inward like paper. Steel ribs snapped. Then, within the shattered belly of the Ottawa, the second phase triggered.

A high-pressure fuel-air mist erupted into every compartment it touched, cargo hold, engine room, mess deck, crew bunks. Oxygen sensors failed. Lights dimmed.

And then—

Ignition.

The ship became a tomb of vacuum-born fire.

Not a surface blaze, but a consuming pulse, detonating from within.

A thermobaric bloom turned the Ottawa into a sealed furnace. Organs liquefied. Eyeballs boiled. Men didn’t scream; they vaporized.

The bridge exploded upward like a kicked tin can. Weatherby’s last thought wasn’t of honor, or duty, or legacy.

It was:

“What in God’s name did they hit us with…?”

A second later, he ceased to exist.

The Ottawa didn’t sink.

She was unmade.

No survivors. No black box. No hull to salvage. Only charred steel slag, and an international incident waiting to ignite.

Beneath the waves, U-121 turned silently. Its prototype torpedo bay hissed shut. A new payload locked into place.

Germany had drawn no borders.

But it had shown the world what waited beneath the ice.

The skiff rocked violently, the wave from the Ottawa’s obliteration slamming into its hull like a god’s backhand.

Spray and fire bloomed across the surface where once the proud destroyer had floated.

Now, there was only drifting debris, twisted black steel, sheets of torn decking, and a scorched lifebuoy bearing the faded letters: HMCS OTTAWA.

The six men aboard the boarding skiff stared in mute horror.

“Wh… what the fuck just happened?”

Ensign Carter’s voice cracked mid-sentence. No one answered.

Even the officer in charge, Lt. Commander Harper, a man who’d served in the Royal Canadian Navy for fifteen years, could only gawk.

There had been no torpedo trail. No periscope. No sonar ping.

One moment, the Ottawa had been their shield; the next, it had detonated from within, split like a gutted fish.

“Where’s the fire? The… there is no fire! There’s nothing left!” one of the sailors stammered, choking on cold air and disbelief.

Harper’s hands trembled on the radio handset, thumbing the call button in desperation.

“Mayday, Mayday, this is skiff Sierra-Two. Ottawa is gone! I repeat, Ottawa is gone, vessel destroyed by unknown hostile, request immediate extraction!”

But there was no answer.

Only static.

The civilian German ship bobbed passively nearby, untouched.

No weapons visible. No signs of distress.

Just the crew watched solemnly from the deck, their hands behind their backs like funeral attendants at sea.

“They knew,” Harper muttered. “They fucking knew.”

Then…

A distant, low thrum.

It wasn’t a propeller. It was a sound that didn’t belong to the era, deep, smooth, coldly mechanical.

And then it appeared through the morning mist.

A shape.

Sleek. Angular. Like a blade sliding across water.

A fast attack craft, German markings faint on the side, low-visibility gray.

But this was no WWI torpedo boat. This was a predator from a different timeline.

Harper’s eyes went wide.

“Jesus Christ…”

The vessel was shorter than a corvette. But it bristled with 76 mm naval auto cannons at the fore-and-aft positions.

It included enclosed vertical missile launchers and quad-tube torpedo bays that hissed steam like a bull pawing the ground.

There were also surface-to-air missile pods added to terminate enemy aircraft that it might encounter.

On its deck, sailors in dark-blue BDU-style uniforms moved like clockwork. The usual sailor hat replaced with aramid fiber helmets.

One stood on the bow, staring directly at the skiff.

He raised an arm.

A second fast attack craft slid out from behind the first.

Then a third.

They moved in perfect unison, flanking the skiff like wolves circling a wounded elk. No warning lights. No blaring sirens.

Just the threat.

The quiet.

And the creeping sense of being utterly outclassed.

“We’re… we’re not at war,” one sailor whispered, as if saying it aloud would save them.

“They don’t care,” Harper said hollowly.

Overhead, the mist parted, and the sight of planes flying low appeared. Their guns clearly focused on the ships below.

And something else beneath their wings.

Though propeller planes, they closed the gap more rapidly than anything the Allies had produced.

The skiff crew sat frozen.

No one moved.

No one dared.

Then a voice crackled across the VHF, not from their channel, but from an override, booming with clarity and menace.

“This is Reichskommando Arctic Fleet Command. Your vessel has violated Danish territorial waters and attacked a civilian ship. You are considered unlawful combatants.”

Harper’s blood turned to slush.

“You have sixty seconds to surrender. You will not receive a second warning.”

In the silence that followed, someone whimpered.

And then, far across the water, a periscope rose.

U-121 had surfaced.

But even that wasn’t the most terrifying thing.

The most terrifying thing was the realization dawning on each man:

This wasn’t a skirmish.

This was a trap.

And they had just triggered a war.