Reich Marshal of the Belkan Reich

RM Vol 4: War – Chapter 42: Case Yellow (Day 13 – Gone in 60 seconds)

What are the things that can happen in a single minute?

Though the question seems simpler at first glance, one will be surprised at how hard it is to come up with a confident answer. It's a thing that rarely, if ever, comes up in a normal conversation. Mundane people will find it hard to answer it confidently while the smarter among them struggle to pick an answer among the myriad of choices.

A lot can occur in a single minute, truly. An apple can be finished in 60 seconds. A couple is tying the knot somewhere across the globe. Your heart pumps 1.5 gallons of blood. Gaia is struck by 6000 lightning bolts. You can perform CPR on a patient, or you can tuck your sister into bed successfully in a similar timeframe... Many, many things occur and can be done in 60 seconds. Yet, most people are content with wasting that one minute away. They do not stop to wonder about the cost of that 60-second timespan, but instead always wonder about the future that is both near and far. This is why some people are unable to answer a question that is so mundane. They don't grasp the potential and the ramifications of that singular minute in their life. Magic can happen in 60 seconds, miracle appears in a minute. Your life may change by sheer luck after you take ten, deep breaths. That is the potential blessed to you by Time, now don't go and squander it. Still...

ONI released a statistic, denoting 1,8 people die every second in this tumultuous world of ours. That is 110 deaths on average in a minute. Rounding up the numbers, you'll have around 158,686 deaths per day, and this is due to natural causes, not war. If we are to include wartime casualties, that number will be skewed, growing either astronomically or nebulous. At this point, it's become easier to count the survivors than the deaths.

On the morning of the 13th day of Case Yellow, circumstances have made it so that even the Belkan Reich will have a hard time confirming just how many lives will be lost in under a minute, much less the rest of the day. After all, there are just so many targets to choose from, so many things to blow up.

One may even say that their Erusean counterparts have brought too many, having filled the pond around Dunkirk with nothing but steel. The Kingdom of Erusea seems mightily confident that nothing, nothing will be able to blast away this corridor of men and machines. The Erusean King has decreed that the Erusean Expeditionary Force is to be escorted out of harm's way. They're, after all, the only ones with fighting experience worth a damn in the Royal Army. So it has to be said that the Grand Fleet is more than just duty-bound to see through the EEF's safe evacuation. They won't budge or flinch until the decree is carried out successfully...

Easier said than done.

By now, the observers in the known would have guessed that the Eruseans have willingly sailed right into a trap. A trap so large and so ambitious that it can only be executed when there exists a major technological disparity between the factions and the trapper can literally throw money at every problem in the way. To ensure maximum devastation is inflicted upon the Grand Fleet and to demoralize the EEF, the first 60 seconds are dubbed the 'Golden Minute' by the planners of the Belkan military. In the Golden minute, an absolute, all-encompassing Alpha Strike is to be unleashed, amounting to hundreds of ordinances in the air in that timeframe.

The Royal Navy has been spouting about their supposed numerical and quality superiority, right? Well, the Belkans beg to differ.

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When a JSOW somehow finds itself penetrating the roof of HMS Vanguard's A-turret, Admiral Addison has ducked down in the protected confined of the flagship's conning tower. In an adrenaline-inflicted bullet time, Addison idly thinks to himself that.

'Well, I'll be damn, if only I was this fastback in basics. That has to be a bomb or a shell, right? Dark as it may be, there's no way in Hell I would miss the fact that something just punted the roof of that turret. Still to penetrate the armor so clean... It's either the thing flew so fast and heavy or the shipbuilders skimmed on materials... Again! Bloody Hell! Please be a dud! Please be a dud! Please be a dud!'

The JSOW is, in fact, not a dud, as evidenced by the titanic explosion that quakes the entire flagship. Thanks to his enhanced brain activity in a moment of peril, Addison can marvel at the situation.

'Geez Louise... Metals are bending. Glasses are flying. On days like this, even I feel like I am floating. Yup, that must have been a magazine detonation. If I poke my head up, maybe I can even see A-turret lifting off by a flash fire... Or it could be the B-turret? Shame to be the guys below deck but I don't think I will make it out alive myself, even if I am in the armored conning tower instead of the bridge.'

Addison's bad premonition is confirmed when a Belkan GBU-500 comes down one of the two smokestacks of the Vanguard, finally coming to a stop and exploding in the ship's engineering. The destruction of the engine room worsens the situation, with the fire spread from the ship's fore magazine to nearly the rest of the vessel below deck. The Damage Control Party isn't even mobilized when they're soundly defeated by the influx of flame barking at their face. Addison shares a glance with his XO who is lucky enough to escape most of the blast. The man is still clearly in a worse state than Addison, however, as his upper body is littered with cuts.

'Are we fucked, sir?'

The XO seems to convey that with his gaze. Addison nods at this.

'Yes. Yes, we are.'

'... Fuck.'

'At least we're still ali-'

One by one, three Exoscar missiles slam into the critically damaged Vanguard. The ship groans and buckles highly unpleasantly as one missile obliterates C and D-turrets. The last two spread the damages all across the ship, with one destroying the rear tower while another blasts a gaping hole on the port side where the 133 mm secondary guns are installed. Not stopping there, a 533 mm torpedo, launched by Grand Admiral Karl Donitz's U-boat itself, detonates right under the keel of the Vanguard, thus breaking it splendidly in half. Already severely weakened by five heavy ordinances dumped in less than 15 seconds, the Vanguard is starting to buckle under its own weight after the torpedo hit. Before the structural integrity can collapse completely, thus bringing down the steel tower on their heads, Addison jumps to his feet.

'Me and my bloody big brain!'

The Admiral of the Grand Fleet swiftly hoists up his XO while screaming for the rest of the bridge crew to start the evacuation effort. When the flagship starts listing and sailors start dumping lifeboats and themselves into the cold Atlantic water, Addison and his XO make for an observation porch, only to rest their eyes on the perhaps the most hopeless, and crushing images they have ever seen.

All around them, the sky is lit crimson, not because dawn is approaching but due to the fires that befell the entire Grand Fleet.

Up above, a PBY Catalina is shot down by an Irys missile, its wing, and engine snapped off before the whole plane plummetting into the Atlantic sea. A maneuvering F-class destroyer is struck by a torpedo exploding beneath its keel, snapping the whole thing in half as sailors bail for their lives. HMS Curlew, a light cruiser relic from the Great War, has something fast and bright slamming into its side. The force of the explosion is nearly enough to tip the boat over before it rightens itself, only to start sinking to a gaping hole in its starboard side. HMS Nelson, much like her unfortunate sister, is also up in flame with all three of her main gun turrets destroyed. The namesake of the Nelson-class of battleship is sinking head first, while her two brand new sisters aren't faring any better.

A stupendously large explosion bathes the sinking Vanguard in its shockwave and audio storm. Addison turns, only to be awestruck at the ship that used to be HMS Yukon, a subclass of the King George V-class of battleship, armed with triple 381 mm gun turrets instead of 356 mm guns. Yet, the new design hasn't even faced the enemy once and it's already gone in a big flash, seemingly due to all of its magazines exploding at the same time.

'Good Lord in Heaven... What sorts of monstrosity has we awaken...?'

Though it's unseen by Addison at the time, the Grand Fleet's submersible forces are also not having a good time. Though they can somewhat pick up the incoming torpedoes to warrant an active evasive maneuver, the cumbersome Grampus-class submarines can't dodge something that is literally coming right at them. Much too slow and lacking in any meaningful countermeasure, the Erusean submarines are easy prey for the homing capability of Belkan torpedoes and VL-ASROC. Just one hit from any of them and that Royal Navy submarine will find itself sinking into the abyss, forgotten by the world for years to come. A fate most unfortunate for any sailor out at sea, no?

Yet, this morning will only get more and more bloodier as the seconds tick by.

-Grand Fleet combat status:

• Crippled.

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