The Wolfpack Appears
"For the past month we have demanded of the South an apology and reparations for the sinking of the fourth-rate ship of the line Iliad."
"Yet the South has offered no apology of any kind. Worse, they have had the gall to demand compensation for repairs to their own vessel, the RMS Stella Marine."
"Therefore, the Eastern Grand Ducal House, the Eastern Royal Navy, and the Eastern Merchants' Guild Alliance hereby declare that a state of war exists with the South as of the thirtieth day of May in the Imperial Year 1026."
"All seas north of the seventeenth parallel shall be regarded as a war zone. Any vessel that attempts to evade inspection by our ships may be attacked by the legions of undersea monsters under our command."
After a thousand years of dominion over the empire's seas, the East had cast down its gauntlet.
A declaration of war from the Eastern Navy—masters of undersea monsters hundreds of meters long—should have sent the people of the South trembling in fear. It did not.
Southern citizens had already learned that Kyle Leopold never started anything without thorough preparation. That faith held firm. The industrialists, too, possessed more than a little knowledge of the new weapons the South had been quietly assembling.
The previous winter, agents of the Intelligence Bureau had come calling on the great industrial houses.
"I am Ann, from the Intelligence Department."
A name so common it might have belonged to anyone on the street—exactly the sort of alias preferred by the Bureau's black operatives.
Having abandoned their former renown as Aura users, they had become the South's shadows; their true names were classified. That alone made the industrialists hesitate to accept the sealed files.
"What is this?"
"It is Classified Level One. I cannot tell you precisely what it contains. Even I do not know the contents of this file."
"...Hah. So Lord Kyle has handed us another grave task."
They had seen this pattern before. Lord Kyle had once parceled out classified component designs to the South's leading military contractors, optical firms, steelmakers, precision-engineering houses, and magic-engineering concerns.
At first they had no idea what they were building, yet they obeyed—orders were orders, and the pay was excellent. What emerged from those scattered designs was the Dreadnought.
They knew perfectly well what role the Dreadnought had played in the western conflict. This new commission, they guessed, would be something similar.
"The contents of this Classified Level One file must never be disclosed to anyone—not even family. Share them only with personnel indispensable to the design work."
"Understood."
"Should this information leak, and should His Grace the Grand Duke learn of it, he would be... most displeased."
The displeasure of Grand Duke Kyle Leopold of the South. No industrialist needed that explained. Ever since Kyle had appeared like a comet, bringing labor standards in his wake, every enterprise in the South had worn his collar.
"We will never disclose it. I stake my company's reputation on that promise."
"Excellent. His Grace has stated that if we prevail against the East, he will see to it that the appropriate shares are distributed."
Even so, the firms accepted the offer for a simple reason: designing a special warship class always became a company's proudest career achievement.
The houses that had taken part in building the Dreadnought had afterward enjoyed a tremendous boom—far more than mere additional subsidies from Kyle Leopold. The title "builder of the strongest battleship afloat" made a portfolio that opened every door.
So the industrialists returned home in excitement and opened the designs.
"Heavens..."
Without exception, they gasped. The blueprints they held were fragments of a weapons system no one had ever imagined possible: a periscope, an oxygen generator powered by batteries, a hull capable of withstanding the crushing pressure of the deep, and the torpedo.
The drawings were separate, yet even a single sheet made the intent unmistakable. They were developing a ship that could sail beneath the sea.
"So the Intelligence Bureau and the Design Bureau have been hiding something like this all along."
If they were ready to distribute the designs to private firms, development was already complete. Kyle Leopold had already set his mind on humanity's dominion over the depths—a technology the industrialists had never dared even dream of.
No matter how much capital they poured out, they could never match the world's finest engineers, men who had gathered for the sheer love of research.
"...As always, the things the Design Bureau and Intelligence Bureau keep under wraps are extraordinary."
"They have a century of accumulated technology behind them."
"Is that so? Well then—we had best give this everything we have."
The industrialists steeled themselves and began preparing production lines. In the year that followed, dozens of submarines rolled out of the yards. More than ten new destroyers joined the fleet as well. Battleships, however, were not laid down.
Naval warfare would center on combat against the undersea monsters; the Dreadnought, pioneering vessel of a new class, still had its share of imperfections—as first-of-class ships always do. They had already gained sufficient operational experience with capital ships.
The empire's surface forces were not so formidable that a three-battleship force was required. And to face foreign powers that already understood a measure of Southern technology, the South itself had to take one more step forward.
"Further battleship construction will be postponed. We wait until gun technology improves and we can build larger hulls."
Once the eastern conflict ended, he intended to try something larger than 305 mm guns. In his previous life he had been a true ship-obsessive; 305 mm had never quite satisfied him. Yes—after the eastern conflict. First things first.
"Lucilla, is the submarine fleet ready?"
"Yes, Your Grace. Over the past half-year they have accumulated ample operational experience, and the main force's grasp of Wolfpack tactics is judged more than sufficient."
"Good. Then we can begin."
He turned to her.
"Convene the Assembly. They have declared war; it is only proper that we answer."
This time there was no need for a grand oration. The previous conflict had been a total-war event that demanded longer working hours under the banner of national emergency.
Now the people had already tasted victory once, and the labor-hour regime had settled into place. Explaining the justice of the war would be enough.
May the thirty-first.
Standing at the rostrum of the hastily convened Assembly, I cleared my throat once and began.
"Honored members of the Assembly. I am Kyle Leopold, Grand Duke of the South. Yesterday the Eastern Grand Ducal House, the Eastern Royal Navy, and the Eastern Merchants' Guild declared war upon us. The pretext they offer is the collision between the RMS Stella Marine and the fourth-rate ship of the line Iliad."
Sailing vessels that rely on canvas are vulnerable in storms. Under imperial military regulations, any warship of fourth-rate or below is forbidden to put to sea in such weather.
The RMS Stella Marine, by contrast, was a thirty-thousand-ton passenger liner—one of the most advanced ships of the age, capable of sailing in any conditions. If blame were to be assigned, the fault lay one hundred times out of one hundred with the East.
"Yet our passenger liner, the RMS Stella Marine, did everything in her power under those circumstances. Even in the extremes of foul weather she launched lifeboats to rescue Eastern sailors, and our own Southern crew suffered no small number of injuries in the process."
Even then our ship had done its utmost. And they dared to cast the blame on us? I myself could not claim my hands were entirely clean in every matter, but on this collision I stood on the clean side. That was why I could speak without hesitation.
"The root cause of this affair is the East's maritime control. Their arrogant obstruction of free passage is a clear violation of imperial law—an unreasonable and underhanded measure aimed squarely at Southern enterprise."
This, I told them, was the East's crime. And now those same men had the shamelessness to issue a declaration of war. I would not stand idle and watch.
"Like the Count of Sarcen in days past, the East seeks to steal the fruits of Southern blood and sweat. If we yield on this matter, next time they will demand something larger still."
I deliberately dredged up the past. By invoking the affair of the Count of Sarcen—who had tried to extort our merchants—I underscored how unjust the Eastern blockade truly was. Capitalists who had been forced to pay transit tolls for three years still shuddered at the mere mention of Sarcen.
"The South is no longer so weak that it must bow to such unreasonable pressure."
"We possess the greatest fleet in the world, and our forces have already completed preparations for a new weapons system capable of confronting the East's undersea monsters."
A light allusion to the submarine force soothed the quiet anxiety among the deputies. "I cannot speak of it, yet a solution exists."
Coming from ordinary lips it would have been empty bluster; coming from the man who had secretly developed the Dreadnought and reduced Sarcen Fortress to rubble, the words carried a different weight. Even those deputies who had looked doubtful until that moment nodded in acceptance.
"Therefore, if the Easterners desire war, I will gladly meet them in war. Just as the arrogant Count of Sarcen was forced to his knees, just as the incompetent Charles Raymonds met his downfall, so shall they kneel before the South!"
My final shout rang through the Assembly hall. The moment the voice that had filled the grand chamber faded, a thunder of applause erupted from the deputies.
At six o'clock on the afternoon of May the thirty-first, ten submarines slipped from Southern harbors. Their mission: to hunt the great undersea monsters of the East that prowled the waters near Southern territorial seas.
The wolfpack had come to the sea.