Unwelcome Guests

[Anonymous]

It was said that criminals always revisited the site of their crime in a foolish attempt at coping with what they had done. It were perhaps these emotions, among others, that the captain felt upon decoding the instructions that ordered him back. Back into the Long Sea.

The younger man at his side gave him an inquisitive look. The older one handed him the printout, never averting his eyes.

“Back, then.”

“Back.”

The senior seafarer harrumphed.

“The men won’t be happy...”

“No, they won’t. I am not.

However. Engellex expects every man to do his duty didn’t become a legendary phrase by being born of idle lamentations. Make the preparations, turn her around. Four knots, tow arrays below the layer.”

 

[Anonymous]

The tabulations were about to be finished by one of the younger officers on deck. Shift rotations had been on a tougher schedule in the past few days, with crew free time cut to accommodate for the more rapid cycling of men into active duty stations. The captain needed the sharpest of minds to man the guns in times of high tension, so to speak. Even then, the young man was visibly struggling with sleep deprivation.

“We’ve received a new low frequency transmission during the last circle, captain. Decoding has been completed.”

The younger man spun around in his chair with the most energetic appearance he could muster and handed his notes to the captain who had appeared behind him.

It took the captain a few moments to go over the message, then he nodded to himself and disposed of the decrypted message by throwing it into the document shredder. That night, the submarine left the Long Sea and began journeying up the continental shelf along the coast, tracing the shoreline of Serenierre and beyond.

 

[Anonymous]

Once the submarine had cleared the Long Sea and had moved a sufficient distance up north, it steered on a slightly westbound course, away from the typical “sea highways” used by merchant vessels. For what they were about to do, discretion was essential.

The captain had kept silent about it, but in truth the last transmission he had received would not take the crew all the way to Scania. Where they were located was rather sufficient for the secret appendix that had been handed to him by his subordinate, a secret he had been keen to destroy the evidence of immediately after he had processed the information within.

Ark after ark of majestic smoke rose from the waves beneath as the firing solutions that had been entered into the computer by a surprised crew translated into cruise missile after cruise missile gently rising from the waves to begin the many hundreds of miles journey up a zigzag course that would lead them to targets within collapsing Burgundy.

24 missiles were fired in total: 17 into Pillau and the surrounding areas under the control of the Burgundian revolutionaries, targeting power plants, ammunition warehouses, radar sites as well as the institutions of provisional power - buildings known to host the ministries and proclaimed organs of state as well as Chairman Lierre’s private quarters. The rest of the missiles in the second wave targeted those areas of besieged Ouistreham already under Republican control - bridges, troop encampments, stationary artillery positions.

As silence descended upon the waves once more, the submarine and her crew snuck away towards the dark depths of the Thaumantic.

@Neustria
@Burgundian People's Republic

 

[Elben]

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