Re: Blood and Iron - Chapter 774: The Terror of the Seas
Chapter 774: The Terror of the Seas
The cruiser SMS Holtzendorff cut through the western Pacific like a prowling god of old, silent, disciplined, and hungry.
No searchlights and no radio chatter, only the soft hum of the gas-turbine engines beneath the deck and the steady rotation of the phased-array radar scanning the dark horizon.
Kapitan zur See Reinhardt stood on the bridge, hands clasped behind him, eyes fixed on the tactical screen before him.
A constellation of blue icons, German assets, held position across a vast grid. And three hundred kilometers to the east, a single red mass crawled westward at nine knots.
The American convoy.
Reinforcements, fuel, ammunition, medicine, radio parts, and wishful thinking wrapped in steel hulls. A lifeline steaming toward the Philippines.
Reinhardt saw something else.
Targets.
“EMCON remains absolute,” he ordered quietly. “No active broadcasts unless I authorize it.”
“Aye, Kapitan.”
Behind him, Executive Officer Weiss watched the display with calm detachment. “Eleven merchantmen. Two destroyers. Three escort ships. A replenishment oiler.”
Reinhardt nodded. “Pattern consistent with Roosevelt’s desperation. They rush ships without coordination. An empire bleeding out usually does.”
Weiss didn’t smile, but there was satisfaction in his tone. “Our wolfpack is in position. Kobold and Niflheim report torpedoes ready.”
“Very well.”
Holtzendorff’s CIC lived in a constant low light, blue illumination washing over sailors who spoke in calm, clipped phrases.
This was not the Kaiserliche Marine. No… this was the polished steel of Bruno’s reformed navy, a force bred for global dominance, for precise annihilation rather than messy brawls.
Reinhardt lifted the receiver linking him to the submarine Wolfpack.
“U-Captain Holm,” he said. “Status?”
A low voice answered, smooth as oil and twice as cold.
“Silent running. Contact bearing steady. Depth sixty meters. The Americans do not know we exist.”
“On my mark,” Reinhardt said, “you will cripple their escorts. Fire the thermobaric torpedoes only when the destroyers commit to counterattack.”
“Acknowledged.”
These were the same torpedoes that were used to sink the Canadian convoy outside the seas of Greenland a year before the war officially began.
A terrifying weapon designed to pierce the hulls of enemy vessels before detonating a thermobaric sequence, which caused the targeted ship to implode rather than explode.
It was a nightmare for American sailors, and had garnered a fearsome reputation for its use thus far during the war
Reinhardt hung up and turned to Weiss.
“Bring the Holtzendorff to battle speed. Keep us behind the low cloud cover. We strike at standoff range.”
“Yes, Kapitan.”
—
The sea was black glass. The moon, a faint blade behind clouds.
Holtzendorff’s missile hatches opened with hydraulic precision, panels lifting to expose the long, predatory cylinders inside were anti-ship missiles, the pride of Bruno’s naval arm.
Supersonic, sea-skimming, and guided by radar, GPS, and heat. A single well-placed hit could sink an American battleship. With a whole V-cell full of such weapons, the convoy was about to become a feast for the depths.
“VLS tubes one through eight,” the gunnery officer reported. “Locked onto priority targets.”
A soft chime. The radar officer glanced up.
“Convoy has not altered course. They are blind.”
“Of course they are,” Reinhardt murmured. “Their radar horizon is a coffin. Their doctrine is outdated. They have forgotten what a competent enemy looks like.”
Weiss spoke the quiet truth of Bruno’s navy.
“Americans expect warning. A chance to brace. But we do not give warning.”
Reinhardt nodded. “No… we give consequences.”
“Kapitan,” the comms officer whispered. “Submarines report enemy sonar sweeps. Ineffective.”
A faint grin touched Reinhardt’s mouth.
Good.
“Relay to U-121, and U-132: Proceed.”
—
Aboard the U-121, a hunter-killer submarine, the engine ran silent while the hull creaked with the old, familiar agony of pressure.
In the control room, red light washed over faces carved from discipline. Captain Holm watched the convoy above on his passive sonar. Mechanical hearts beating. Props thrumming.
He waited until the American destroyer nearest him turned its bow just three degrees, but enough.
“Mark,” Holm whispered.
The torpedo crew moved like ghosts.
Tubes were flooded, and doors opened.
“Fire one.”
The torpedo launched silently, leaving no familiar wake.
“Fire two.”
Holm leaned back, exhaling.
He hesitated for a few seconds… just long enough for a dramatic pause.
Or perhaps a sadistic sense of dread that followed the shattering of hope and dreams.
“Fire three….’
The third torpedo fired after the other two were already beyond the halfway mark to their targets.
Skimming through the sea like a knife in the dark. The Americans had no idea what was headed for them, and Holm knew it… the corner of his lips curled into a haughty sneer as he watched the activity on the screen in front of him.
“Now let the Americans notice.”
—
Aboard the American vessel, a sonar operator with the surname Jacobs frowned into his headset.
“…uh… Chief? I… I think I’m getting something.”
Chief Rawley leaned in. “Bearing?”
Jacobs swallowed. “I… I can’t get a ping, sir. It’s not sending anything back. It’s like something’s moving, but… we didn’t get a launch signature.”
Rawley stiffened.
“That’s impossible. You don’t just get…”
A distant, muffled whump came from starboard.
Rawley’s face drained of color.
“Sound general—”
The world turned white.
—
Reinhardt watched calmly as two red icons winked off the board.
Two American destroyers.
Gone.
No distress call. No SOS. No counterattack.
Just deletion.
Weiss exhaled. “Holm reports successful internal detonations. Achieved complete structural failure.”
“Good.” Reinhardt motioned to the gunnery officer. “Begin the surface strike. Launch the missiles.”
Eight missiles rose in perfect unison, boosters igniting with sharp, contained fury. Each missile pitched, corrected, then dove low, skimming just above the black sea.
No trails, no broadcast, only speed.
On radar, they looked like faint ghosts, barely detectable, never predictable.
“Time to impact: one minute, forty seconds,” the radar officer announced.
Reinhardt nodded.
“Prepare the second volley.”
—
Aboard the freighter Maebelle Grace the lookout blinked, confused.
“Sir… do you… do you see that light?”
Captain Harlow lifted his binoculars.
A faint shimmer on the horizon… then another… then eight.
They were small. Wrong-colored. Moving too fast.
His throat tightened.
“Oh god—”
—
The display updated with sudden brutality.
One by one, the merchant vessels flashed red and vanished as the missiles tore through their hulls at Mach 2, igniting fuel, shattering decks, vaporizing crews.
Reinhardt gazed at the aftermath of their attack and turned away from the nearest window. Gazing back at his crew, he spoke softly, conveying his orders as he did so.
“The submarines will handle the stragglers,” Reinhardt added. “As for our next target, we will erase the oiler.”
He leaned over the comms console.
“Target the replenishment oiler. Two missiles. Saturation strike.”
“Aye, Kapitan. Tubes primed.”
—
Aboard the USS Granger, Replenishment Oiler, the commanding officer covered in soot, staggered across the deck.
“Launch lifeboats! Get everyone—”
He never finished.
Two supersonic falcons of steel slammed into the oiler’s midsection, ripping it open like paper. A fireball taller than a cathedral erupted skyward, showering burning fuel across the sea.
The shockwave swept the lifeboats off the water, and then the flames reached the fuel bays. The ship vanished into a blinding sphere of incandescent white.
—
Back aboard the Holtzendorff the flash reflected faintly off the bridge windows. Reinhardt blinked once. No more.
“Weiss. Status?”
“Twelve enemy ships destroyed. Survivors negligible.”
“And our assets?”
“No damage. Submarines are now hunting for debris and intelligence, and recovery teams are standing by.”
Reinhardt nodded once, a gesture of completion.
“Maintain silence. Alter course five degrees west. Clean exit.”
Weiss hesitated. “Should we notify Berlin?”
Reinhardt’s gaze hardened.
“Berlin will know by morning. The Reichsmarschall’s satellites see everything.”
He tapped the tactical screen. The convoy, the entire red mass, was now gone.
“This was not a battle,” he said quietly. “This was a reminder.”
Weiss understood it was a reminder to America, and to the rest of the world, that Germany did not contest the world’s seas.
It owned them.
Reinhardt exited the CIC and stood alone on the observation deck. His hands rested on the rail as the warship carved its way through the vast darkness.
Behind him lay the death of a convoy, and ahead of him lay an ocean uncontested.
He breathed in the salt air, the diesel, and the faint tang of ozone from the missile launchers.
Even during the Great War, the German nation had never possessed such unrivaled naval might. The British, the Americans, and the entire world combined now could not stop Germany from claiming the waves as their own.
And Bruno von Zehntner had given Germany the tools to conquer them.
Reinhardt closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again.
“Onward,” he whispered.
The Holtzendorff obeyed.
Cutting silently through the night toward the next target.
—
Aboard the U-121 hunter-killer Submarine Captain Holm surfaced briefly, the cool night spray hitting his face.
On the horizon, fires still burned, drifting in scattered fragments across the water. Charred planks. A lifebuoy. A single glowing scrap of a ship’s name.
Holm turned away.
“Dive,” he ordered. “We leave no signature.”
The boat slid beneath the waves, vanishing into the deep like a predator returning to its den.
The sea swallowed the last American scream.
