2 January 2026
Several hundred kilometers from Mistaken Point, Newfoundland
Northern Atlantic
Speed is armor. This is the dictum of John "Jackie" Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, former First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy, father of the battlecruiser breed.
The Lady subscribes to this dictum. Speed is armor, indeed. For she has no actual armor to speak of.
Speed is life. No speed, no armor, no life.
But she is not one of 'Fisher's Follies'. She is not a battlecruiser. She is fast, the fastest of her kind. She can serve during times of war, and her capabilities are unique and most welcome. But she is not a surface combatant.
She is a thoroughbred conceived with the objective of snaring and holding a much-coveted speed record during a time of plenty when countries put their national pride on shipping line. She has few counterparts left in the world, and those younger monarchs are nowhere near her equal in the most important category of
speed.
All her true peers are gone. Fire consumed some of them, sometimes at sea, oftentimes at anchor, the victims of accidental mishandling and deliberate abuse. Others were lost during their voyages, claimed by icebergs and weather and hostile aircraft and commerce raiders and submarines. Still others were left to rust in peace, wind and wave and warm sunlight wearing down their tired hulls into red dust that scatter across the sky and sea.
But most of them had been torn open and torn apart until nothing remained of their physical bodies save a few choice trinkets to commemorate their careers and passing and memories.
More than once she came close to that fate. But she persevered and was thus preserved, passing through many different hands, until her current owners acquired her, spruced her up for a different duty, and re-launched her as the flagship of their luxury fleet.
From her new home port of Baltimore, Maryland, she embarks on regular cruises to the remote Arctic, where her two thousand passengers can enjoy the vivid vista of a winter wonderland, a whimsical world of cloudless skies under the sway of the midnight sun, a place of polar nights colored by the northern dawn, a wilderness full of life that finds ways to survive and thrive in this beautiful bleakness.
It is easy work. She putters along at an excruciatingly slow speed of twenty knots so that the nature-starved eyes and urbanized minds of her darling passengers can better drink in the remote seascape and the frolicking wildlife. But this sedate stride is still faster and more preferable to the decades of immobility at Pier 82 on the Delaware River. Then, she was unused and uneasy; now, she enjoys this brisk walking pace.
She is the last of her breed. And the thing about being the last of anything is that, sooner or later, all that is left of your kind is…
nothing.
She shivers. During her exile she has known dejection and despair and dullness. But the emotion that seizes her today is different.
She is afraid. She fears for her lives and that of the thousands of people aboard her hull. She is terrified of failing her duty, her purpose of conveying her passengers to their distant destination safe and sound laden with new stories to tell their friends and families.
And she does not know why.
Galvanized by dread, she takes in the inputs of her myriad senses. Her commercial radar set scans the many square miles of open sea ahead and around her. Her sonar picks up a pod of dolphins and schools of fish. She peers through the lenses of the CCTVs in her halls and the telescopes on her decks.
There is nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing.
And that is the worst. Nothing is the scariest thing.
Something is
wrong. She suspects that something that
should not be was eyeing her, following her,
stalking her.
Something is
hunting her.
x-x-x
It is only by chance that a young boy, one of the numerous passengers aboard her black-and-white hull, decides to use one of her 'eyes', a stalk-mounted tower viewers on the lip of her promenade deck. The child is tiny, so a tall, salt-and-pepper-haired man gently picks him up and lifts him so that his eyes can look through the paired eyepieces. He squints for a good few seconds before calling out to his helper.
"Uncle! Uncle! There's lotsa boats there!"
His kindly stepfather has organized and paid for the trip for a chance to bond with his new wife's only child from her previous marriage. He accedes to his stepson's wish and takes a look for himself, just in time to glimpse the first flashes of light from the distant shapes.
The Lady has already seen all she needed to know. She cannot dodge on her own; she relies upon her crew to steer her hull.
She can, however, brace for impact.
'Look out, everyone!'
Seconds later, the sky shrieks like tearing canvas, and shellfire tear up the sea several hundred yards behind her stern.
Icy fear sluices through her passengers. They have heard of the modern-day pirates that plague the seas in search of plunder and profit. But they have never known
guerre de course,
Handelskrieg, the pursuit and destruction of merchant shipping. Commerce raiding.
Their screams could have been mistaken for the incoming shells. They scramble for the scant cover afforded by the furnishings of the decks or stampede indoors in the mistaken notion that concealment is cover, shoving aside or even trampling anything –or anyone- who was in their way.
Aboard her broad bridge, the officers who comprise the brain of her steel body enter overdrive. The permanently mounted marine VHF radio fills the international calling & distress channel with strident calls for emergency assistance. The same is done using the satellite communications set, one of the new Inmarsat geostationary satellites conveying the urgency of the situation to the Canadian Coast Guard station at St. John's.
The Coast Guard radioman promises to kick this up to the Royal Canadian Navy. He urged them to remain calm. But he could not assure them of protection. Even if the entire CCG were somehow able to gather their entire strength, they did not have a prayer of defeating this squadron sinister.
And she is not the only ship that has come under attack. The radio room has picked up many other distress calls. And two of them are RCN warships: HMCS
St. John, an old but upgraded
Halifax class guided missile frigate, and HMCS
Haida, the lead ship of the new
Haida class frigates, pride of the Canadian Navy.
There is no help coming. She has only herself to rely on.
"Unknown warships, please cease fire!" This is the plaintive plea of her radio operator, who deviates from protocol out of desperation. "We are a civilian ship! Please stop firing on us!"
The only response garnered by her groveling is a cruel continuation of the cannonade, inaccurate shellfire chasing after the swift ship.
One of her crewmen, a photographer, turns out to be a big fan of warships. He puts his hobby and his binoculars to good use now, taking up a position at the stern of their ship with powerful binoculars and instructing the captain over the walkie-talkie about the identity of their pursuers.
"There are four ships following us. They're about nine, maybe ten kilometers distant, and they're spread out to cover a lot of sea space. The lead ship is a
C-class destroyer, Royal Navy, World War Two. Behind her is a
four-piper destroyer, one of the many destroyers built by the Americans during and after the First World War. I can't tell either a
Caldwell,
Wickes, or
Clemson. The big one is a
Hawkins class heavy cruiser, Royal Navy, Interwar era. And the last one is a
St. Laurent class destroyer escort, a 1950s ship of the Royal Canadian Navy. At least I think it is from this angle. It might be the related
Restigouche,
Mackenzie, or
Annapolis classes."
There is no joy in the nervous swallow of the photographer, given how the constant thunder of distant guns are followed great white gouts of water that straddle the speeding ship.
"Cap, they shouldn't be there," the young man whimpers. "They look wrong, they have the wrong color, they
move wrong, they're no smoke coming from their funnels, and
none of them should be there because they were all sunk or scrapped many years ago…"
Her Captain has loved her all his life. A native of The City of Brotherly Love, he grew up within walking distance of her hull, walked all the way to visit her every single day. He became a mariner, joined the company, rose through the ranks to become a captain, and threw his heart and body and mind into her repairs. And he did this all for the slim chance to fly his flag from her deck and be with her.
This is his dream come true. There is no other ship he wishes to command.
And now someone is trying to take her away from him.
His magnificent mustache bristles. He will not take this challenge lying down.
"It seems Davy Jones wants a new addition to his locker. What's their speed?" he asks his local expert.
"The
C-class is the fastest. She can make thirty-six knots. The four-piper can hit thirty-five, the cruiser can make thirty one, and the
St. Laurent tops out at twenty eight and a half. But that's if they hold to their historical speeds-"
That's all the Captain needs to hear. That is what he
wants to hear.
Davy Boy wants his ship? He should have sent faster bully boys.
"Pilot," the Captain orders through telegraph. "Flank speed."
His assured composure inspires his crew to hold themselves to his measure. The ship pilot at the old-fashioned engine order replies with snappy fervor.
"Aye, aye, Captain. Flank speed!"
And he pulls the handle of the chadburn one, two, three times. Its counterpart in the separated engine rooms rings thrice in response. Three flank bells; a 'cavitate bell' command. Naval parlance to step on the gas and put the pedal to the metal.
The Captain murmurs beneath his breath. It's meant for himself and one other, who cannot reply but whom he is sure can hear him.
"Fly, Big U. Show us the meaning of
haste."
She breaks into a broad smile. He cannot see her; he does not know she is there. But he believes his words reach her. He believes she can comprehend his request, his order.
He believes in her.
'Yes, my Captain!'
And she will not fail him.
Under the close watch of her engineers, her eight refurbished boilers rise to their maximum pressure and temperature, and her quartet of turbines spin her four mighty propeller shafts into whirlwinds of steel that whip the water left in her wake into a white froth.
Her forty-seven thousand tons surges through the uncharacteristically calm Atlantic waters. Her sudden acceleration causes many of her unsteady passengers and unprepared crew to yelp and flail for purchase and even fall down. But the shock and outrage are quickly replaced with awe as they feel the immense power coursing through her hull.
There's a reason she retained the esteemed Blue Riband throughout her long retirement, a trophy that she continues to hold for the foreseeable future. For her steam turbines are the most powerful set ever installed aboard a merchant marine vessel, capable of generating 240,000 shaft horsepower, power equal to that of a
Forrestal class super carrier, a power-to-weight ratio second to none in the merchant marine and exceeding that of many purpose-built pureblooded warships.
Her fleet mates and successors were built in peaceful times with kind intentions and lavish luxury first and foremost in their design. Worlds unto their own, floating pockets of paradises, these maritime fatted calves are already being slaughtered by the ravenous wolves of the waves in a worldwide massacre, as the life-giving seas transformed into churning abattoirs of shattered ships and stranded survivors.
But she is not like them. She was repurposed to serve
alongside them, inasmuch as a retired racehorse can amicably share her grazing ground with a herd of placid Friesian milk cows. But she is not a
cruise liner.
No. She is an
ocean liner. The bearer of thousands of passengers across the Atlantic in comfort
and speed. Expected to render wartime service as a fast & heavy troop transport of the mightiest navy in the history of humankind during the Cold War that had engulfed the world.
She presided over the end of her kind. Surviving the merciless culling, she endured the many lean years that followed the fall of her type until she finally received a new guise, fitted into a new role, and enjoyed this new lease on life.
But she remains the same old queen of the trans-Atlantic line. And she has no equal.
So what if her 'successors' like the current crop of Cunard
Queens –
Mary 2,
Victoria, and
Elizabeth, and the restored
Elizabeth 2– are newer and more luxurious? So what if the cruise liners like her fleet mate
Carnival Vista are bigger and more famous and more popular?
SS
United States is
faster. The fastest ocean liner in the world. Faster than the fools chasing after her.
But she's not faster than the shells dropping all around her fleet form.
"What's the best range of their guns?" the Captain asks the photographer over the walkie-talkie. "Start from the fastest ship to the slowest."
"The
C-class has four 4.7 inch QF Mark IX or XII guns. Those can reach sixteen kilometers. The 4" guns on the
Clemson –I think it's a
Clemson, the four-pipers are practically the same- have about the same range. The
Hawkins, the cruiser, has seven BL 7.5 inch Mk VI guns with a range of 19 kilometers. And the
St. Laurent has 3" AA guns with a fifteen kilometer range."
The Captain bends his brilliant mind to the computations that would determine their fates in the next few minutes and hours.
United States normally cruises at thirty to thirty five knots. Her sizable fuel bunkers lets her keep that speed for 19,000 kilometers barring mechanical breakdowns.
Her true speed was coyly concealed for the longest time. But it was finally revealed to be 38.2 knots with a clean hull. Converted into kilometers, that's roughly 70.7 kilometers per hour.
That gave her an advantage of two knots over the
C-class, three point two over the American four-piper, seven point two over the cruiser, and ten knots over the
St. Laurent. Assuming, that is, that their pursuers adhere to the same speed as their historical equivalents.
They'll find out soon enough. The current distance between the hare and the hounds is ten kilometers. The Captain expects
United States to pull out of range of the
C-class's guns within… one hour, thirty seven minutes minimum. For the
Caldwell/
Wickes/
Clemson, one hour and four minutes. Forty-one minutes for the
Hawkins. Fifteen minutes for the
St. Laurent.
"Does that Cold War ship have missiles?" he asks.
"The
St. Laurent? No, but it has torpedoes and a helicopter."
That's not good. Not good at all. Big U can't outrun aircraft, even if they were just helicopters. And while she can survive a torpedo or two, damage below her waterline would slow her down, taking away her biggest and only advantage.
"Do you see any helicopter?"
"No, Cap. Not so far."
"Keep an eye out for it. What kind of torpedoes are we looking at?"
"…Either Mark 43s or 44s. ASWs. Twenty-one and thirty-knots."
No threat, then, even if they had already been launched.
"Carry on."
The Captain trusts his experienced crews to keep their passengers from panicking. Right now he must fight his ship, even if she doesn't have a single gun aboard.
In fifteen minutes,
United States bulls her way out of the threat range of the
St. Laurent's light 3" guns. Half an hour later, the
Hawkins quits firing as the cruiser drops out of effective range for its heavy guns. The
Clemson soon retires as well. Only the
C-class is left. Another forty minutes and that last destroyer will be a non-issue.
And yet the photographer grows more frantic.
"This doesn't make sense," he blurts out. "They shouldn't be able to sustain those rates of fire. And they should be scoring more hits than this! But they didn't hit us once! Are they toying with us?"
"They're
herding us," the Captain tells him.
He has been studying their progress with a cold eye. When this chase began,
United States had been several hundred miles east/southeast of Newfoundland. The Captain's first response had been to turn his ship northwest and set a course for
St. Johns, the capital of the Canadian province. Worse came to worse, he would gladly beach
United States ashore at the first opportunity and evacuate his passengers.
He loved her like a wife, but he and his ship both knew who came first.
'I understand, my Captain. I would do the same.'
But plunging gunfire had cut the ocean liner off from the safety of Newfoundland. The Big U's evasive maneuvers kept her alive, but also drew her away from land and back towards the open sea.
"There," warns the Captain.
All other eyes on the bridge turn to the sturdy prow of
United States, which is smashing through increasing numbers of drift ice and deceptively calm waters.
In the foggy distance, great white hulks loom, taller and broader and far more massive than any ship that ever put to sea, silent and deadly.
The photographer gulps. "An ice field?" he fears.
"Just like the
Titanic," the pilot growls.
Was it merely days ago that
United States had passed over the location where the tragic White Star liner was reported to have gone under? The Captain recalls making the announcement over the PA.
The crew rang The Lady's ship's bells, held religious services and agnostic vigils, lit candles, and dropped commemorative wreathes from the stern. The ship's theater featured several theatrical films about the
Titanic: The eponymous
Titanic of 1953, the highly-acclaimed 1958 movie
A Night To Remember, and the humorous
The Unsinkable Molly Brown of 1964. Shipboard TV also aired the
2012 mini-series (the Captain vetoed its contemporary
Blood and Steel because of the numerous inaccuracies made for the sake of drama) and
Titanic-inspired songs played over Big U Radio, the
United States' official radio station.
The irony. Oh, the irony…
"Take us into that field," the Captain orders the pilot.
"Beg your pardon, Cap?"
"We can use the icebergs as cover."
"But you said they want us to go in there," the photographer gasps.
"We'll oblige them, but we're not going in blind. We know something's waiting for us there, but we'll beat them to the punch."
The attackers didn't sink them, yes, but the threat was implied and used to coerce them. An iceberg could sink them, but they could prepare for it.
x-x-x
The moment they enter the ice field, the
C-class breaks off, its mission apparently accomplished.
The crew of the
United States are nervous but ready. The pilot reluctantly reduces speed to a cautious twenty knots. He charts a narrow course through the perilous field of ice, advised by binocular-equipped lookouts and the operators of the radar and sonar sets. These worthy technicians busy themselves with their scopes; they blame themselves for failing to detect the attackers, though the photographer admits it was possible the enemy was using some sort of stealth measure that defeated their civilian sensor suites.
The fearful passengers have been coaxed back into their cabins, the injured are being treated, and the few dead –those who had been trampled during the initial mad rush to safety plus a geriatric who had suffered a heart attack– have been moved out of sight.
Once they clear this ice field, the Captain intends to sprint all the way to Newfoundland, stopping for nothing until
United States comes across a military ship or aircraft that can protect her.
Not half an hour has passed when
the song starts playing for the first time.
It issues from every speaker aboard the
United States – the public address system, the portable units, the radios and mobiles and cell phones. It is even picked up by the sonar man despite his bulky headset. When it repeats, it prompts everyone to look for the source of the melody.
For the first time since this chase began, the Captain's cool composure betrays him. "
Songe d'Automne," he murmurs.
The
Dream of Autumn. Composed by
Archibald Joyce, it is a 1908 waltz that brought its creator to prominence during his time. Inspired by the season of autumn, it is a song of the Fall.
It is believed by some to be the last song played aboard one of the most infamous denizen of this sea.
Beside him, The Lady covers her face with her hands and begins to weep like a stone angel of olden times. She knows what is coming for them. She does not want to face it.
"Stay alert!" This the Captain fairly bellows. "Something is coming!"
The men and women of his command are shaken out of the reverie induced by dreams of the fall. They hurriedly turn back to the tasks at hand, but the damage is done.
"I see something!"
It's one of the lookouts on the starboard side of the
United States. He's glimpsed something coming out of the thick fog several kilometers to starboard, something that escaped the radar just like their attackers from earlier.
"Saints preserve us," blurts that clean-shaven boy. "It's her!"
Everyone immediately knows what he means. But they look, anyway, moths drawn to the flame that will be their destruction.
It is different;
It has changed. Like their pursuers,
It wears midnight now,
Its entire hull lustrous dusk and not a single lamp alight across
Its length. No smoke streams from
Its four rakish funnels, as a different kind of fire now burns within the furnaces of
Its twenty-nine boilers.
And yet
Its silhouette remains unmistakable.
It could be considered a sister of their grand Lady, for they shared the same purpose, though in truth and in previous life
It had hewed more closely towards pleasurable comfort while
United States devoted herself to glorious breathtaking speed.
It is still beautiful.
They had all seen
It many times before. In print articles, upon the pages of encyclopedias, on the screens of television and movie theaters and computers. And now the thousands of souls aboard
United States get to set their eyes upon a ship that was lost eleven decades ago.
The most famous Royal Mail Ship that ever put to sea. One of the greatest tragedies of maritime history. Lost to the master-less ocean that constantly overruns the globe, the graveyard sea which has now chosen to give up its dead.
T̴͙ͅhe̖̮ ̨͙͕U͇̭̼͇̭̣n̰s͔͇̪ͅiņ̩͖̱ͅk̡͈̥̪ab̜̗̞̠̬͖l͓e̼̘̤͍ ̛̳̲̫̱̠̺̪Ś̮͇̝h̠̩͉͎̬̩̪i̡̝̠͔̮̝p͓̳͕̩͕
"Titanic," the Captain whispers.
'Miss Titanic…'
As if scenting their fear and finding it like bloody chum in the water,
It bolts forward, quickly attaining
Its full speed. And though slower than
Its prey, within the confines of the ice field
Its loping twenty four knots will be more than enough to drive
Its forty-eight thousand ton bulk into the amidships of the similarly-sized
United States to snap the latter in half.
'Everyone! We have to move!'
Again the crew of the
United States freezes at their stations, transfixed by the sight of their imminent death.
'Move! Please move!'
Even the Captain hesitates, his heart caught in a cold clamp that squeezes the strength and life out of that critical muscle.
'Captain!'
With a sudden roar of rage, propelled by invisible hands and silent plea, the Captain strides towards the helm, shoves the frozen pilot aside, and seizes the steering wheel.
United States heels hard to starboard. She turns her bow onto the incoming
Titanic for a game of chicken that might very well end in a mutually-destructive head-on collision.
"Captain!" But the pilot dares not challenge the thunderous-looking officer.
"She'll make it! I know she will!"
'I will!'
He has no time to calculate the odds. But he trusts his instincts and he has absolute faith in his Lady.
She might not be a warship, but she is a fighter like no other. She has survived the harsh Atlantic seas. She soldiered through the years of neglect. She will better this foe. She is better than any other ship in the world.
"Brace for impact!" the Captain yells, a warning repeated by the radioman in the nick of time.
SS
United States and RMS
Titanic do not smash into each other bow-on. But they
grind past each other at a combined closure rate of more than fifty knots.
'Argh!'
The Lady cries out in pain as a hull most hideous flays layers of painted plating from her sleek starboard side. In return she claws at her assailant, stripping a long swathe of unnatural skin from that opposing flank as payment for her own injury, and her foe screeches in return, much to her cold satisfaction.
'You skank!'
Inside her hull, crew and passengers scream alongside the two unlikely combatants raking at each other, the cacophony of Behemoth and Leviathan clashing together hammering at the membranes of their eardrums.
As the bridges of the
United States and the
Titanic pass by, the Captain takes a chance, takes his eyes off the sea ahead and the wheel within his hands to take a quick look at the hated enemy.
There is a girl atop the bridge of the other liner.
She kneels upon the roof of the command structure. Chains bind her in place and force her into a slouching position. Her head his bowed, her mane a mop-like mess of soggy red strands.
She is singing. Praying.
A hymn so similar to that
Songe d'Automne that it might have been mistaken for the other song.
'Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down,
Darkness be over me, my rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I'd be nearer, my God, to Thee-'
"Nearer, my God, to Thee! Nearer to thee!"
The Captain finds himself singing the chorus of her hymn. He is not a good singer, but his emotions fill his serenade.
"There let the way appear steps unto heav'n; All that Thou sendest me in mercy giv'n; Angels to beckon me nearer, my God, to Thee-"
And the girl hears him.
'Nearer, my God, to Thee! Nearer to Thee!'
She hears them.
Her unhappy head turns like a turret to track them. Her face is pallid. Her weary eyelids peel open, and her exposed eyes glitter like green lagoons.
Despite her captivity, in spite of her torment, she is still beautiful.
The girl runs her green-eyed gaze across the Captain's face. She turns her attention upon the spirit beside him, The Lady who is clutching her bleeding right side. Blood drips from her eyes. Her throat contorts and her wrinkled lips slowly work.
'RUN.'
With a final scream of agony, SS
United States tears free of RMS
Titanic's cold clutches.
"Damage report!" the Captain orders. "Find out what kind of damage we took!"
The
United States is tough, tougher than the
Titanic, tougher than the typical merchant ship. Built according to the exacting specifications of the US Navy of the Fifties, her heavily compartmentalized hull & redundant engine rooms allows her to continue running at high speed despite heavy damage. But her crew are not trained damage control specialists, and it will take them a while to inspect her bulkheads and compartments for dangerous leaks.
At the stern, the photographer is keeping a nervous eye on the
Titanic. "She's diving, Captain," he reports incredulously. "She's diving like a God-damned submarine."
That comes as a relief to the Captain. The
Titanic is slower than his Lady by eighteen and a half knots. Going under would slow Her down even more since her hull isn't designed for underwater travel.
That… that iceberg titan must have been hurt by their collision. It is diving to protect itself.
"Keep an eye out for it!" The Captain turns to the pilot, whom he had forcefully displaced in the heat of the moment. "Sorry about that," he apologizes to the chagrined younger officer.
"It's all right, Captain," sighs the man. "I froze up. If you hadn't taken over when you did…"
"Water under the bridge. Can you handle the helm now?"
"Actually, Sir, maybe you should take over her for a while? She seems to like you more."
The startled Lady immediately looks to her undecided Captain with a hopeful blush.
"All right," he concedes before placing his hands upon her wheel.
Had they not been imperiled, she would have sounded her horns in joy. She settles for a star-bright smile.
'Don't worry, my Captain. I won't let it catch us.'
x-x-x
The next hour is relatively uneventful.
United States picks her way through the treacherous ice field. The iceberg titan does not resurface, the damage to Big U's appears to be superficial, and the Captain makes the most of this rare opportunity to drive his Lady.
The light is fading when SS
United States limps out of the ice field. Crew and passengers cheer at the sight of the open sea. Even the Captain allows himself a smile.
His Lady knows better.
'Captain… I'm sorry… They were waiting for us...'
And then the Atlantic heaves as if it is nauseated, and the sonar goes mad as ungainly forms force their way through water, and one, two, three, four black shapes, familiar forms, breach the darkening sea, water spilling off their decks.
"That's not fair," cries the photographer as what appears to be the squadron from earlier, the
Hawkins heavy cruiser and its trio of destroyers, start their unnatural engines.
"So there's more than one of each of them," whispers the Captain. There is no way their pursuers could have caught up with them, even factoring in the delay caused by their encounter with
Titanic.
"What do we do, Captain?"
"Head straight into them. Full speed ahead."
He is no maritime military man. But he does know that turning
United States away from her attackers means going broadside to their guns. And this behavior cinches his suspicion that the
Titanic is waiting for them to reenter the ice field for Round Two.
Whereas if
United States charged them head on, her profile would be minimized and any round that hits will be absorbed by the forward part of the hull.
And if worse comes to worse, he can take a leaf from the
Titanic's playbook. He will ram them.
He is a dead man. He has led his crew to their doom. He has thrown away the lives of his passengers.
He has failed his ship. His lovely Lady.
Every man, woman, and child aboard this ship is dead. All that remains now is to sell their lost lives as dear as possible.
"I'm sorry, my Lady," whispers the Captain. "I'm sorry."
'There's nothing to apologize for, Captain. We did our best. But sometimes, our best is not enough.'
Man and spirit stand side by side in this, their final few minutes together in this unfair world.
x=x=x
Side Story
CAGE OF ICE
x=x=x
And then The Lady stiffens, and the Captain blinks in astonishment as geysers of yellow fire and icy water erupt around and upon their blockaders.
"SS
United States." The confident voice of the young woman radioing them is clear despite the background thunder of naval artillery. "This is HMCS Canada. Please proceed at best speed out of this battle zone. My flotilla will cover your egress."
The Captain is sure that the Royal Canadian Navy does not have a warship named
Canada. But he does not question this sudden turn of good fortune. He steers
United States clear of the growing melee.
"Understood, HMCS Canada," he replies. "And thank you for coming in when you did."
"It is my pleasure,
United States."
He lets out the breath he'd been holding. They have somehow survived. His Lady is safe for the moment.
There is still enough light for binoculars. Their rescuers turn out to be closer than expected, their position given away by the bright flashes of their guns. And they turned out to be-
"Girls… they're girls…"
'We are saved...'
The Captain cannot help but laugh, but it is of relief. The Lady hugs him. He does not feel her weight, but he feels her love, and that makes his smile all the more wider.
Miracles do happen at sea.
x-x-x
The impossible quartet coming to the aid of the threatened shipping skim across the choppy waters of the Atlantic at thirty knots, the best speed of their leader, who has traded in two knots of her swift but thin-skinned half-sisters' vaunted speed for a proper armored belt and better-protected magazines.
"Cressy, Sadie, Rusty, please clear a path for me," she orders. "I shall personally deal with their flagship."
"Roger!"
The three younger girls dash forward. Every few seconds they smash 4.5" and 4.7" shells into the superstructures of their opposite numbers, and they nimbly dance out of the way of enemy counter-fire before launching spreads of 21" torpedoes.
"I grow in
virtue-"
"-and in this sign we
conquer!"
"Thus:
Follow the light!"
They fight ferociously without fear for their rear is secure. Their frigate cousins and the cute little corvettes are currently prosecuting a pair of underwater contacts, utterly relentless in pounding the submarines with depth charges and Hedgehogs and Squids.
"Watch me well, Lieutenant Commander Roos. I won't fail you."
"CHOO-CHOO, CHUMPS! IT'S TRAIN-BUSTER TIME!"
"Oh, did I hit just you like a comet? Right in your rusty guts?"
As the reincarnated destroyers HMCS Crescent (R16), HMCS Crusader (R20), and HMCS Restigouche (H00) ravage their opposite numbers, their leader, a young woman with wind-whipped mane of wheat hair, stalks toward her chosen opponent with airy relish, ignoring the shell splashes around her.
"So," she murmurs as she confronts this sickening counterfeit. "You fancy yourself to be my older cousin Raleigh?"
For all that she loved her older cousins, the
Hawkins class had set the bar for Maximum Treaty Cruiser rather low. Whereas she and her sister are arguably the most powerful members of their large family.
Conceived in 1928 by the Royal Navy to serve the needs of Britannia, she and her sister almost ended up stillborn due to a new administration discarding her design as a token of support for a disarmament. But they were taken in by two of the Dominions of the global Empire, nations that needed them to protect their waters from the growing threats. They went their own separate ways, her sister sailing to the sunny Pacific while she remained within the subarctic Atlantic, and eventually they met again shortly before the War ended.
"But I've caught you in the act, you see…"
She served as the flagship of her navy for the longest time, and until the arrival of the
Ruler class escort carriers she remained the most powerful surface combatant of the fleet. She fought with utmost gallantry in World War Two and the Korean War. But as the Iron Curtain rose across the world, her tired old hull was retired and scrapped by another thankless new government that desired to cut costs by abandoning the ancient ties to the Royal Navy and reducing her to scrap.
"And do you not know what happens when you toy with the frail heart of a maiden?"
But she bore no ill will towards her people, and while her governments often frustrated her, they were part of the democratic tradition that she upheld with devoted love.
Now her country needs her again. Canada calls upon her favored child once more.
And she has answered. She is here.
"Shall I teach you what happens when you play with fire?"
She smiles like the sun: Blindingly bright, blazingly hot.
And Her Majesty's Canadian Ship Canada, name ship and lead ship of the
Canada class heavy cruisers of the Royal Canadian Navy and Royal New Zealand Navy, flash fires the Abyssal warship as if it is Jutland all over again.
