Prologue
Deadlight
January 7th, 1946
Captain Alistair Dagobert stood at the bow of his
ship, the HMS Lightbringer, which was
a Ruler-class escort carrier that had been built in the United States by the
Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation and lend-leased to England’s Royal
Navy. It was a big ship, being 492 feet and 3 inches long and complemented by a
crew of 646 men. With a maximum speed of 17 knots (around 20 mph), the ship
also boasted a 260 feet by 62 feet hangar (located below the flight deck), two
large aircraft lifts, an aircraft catapult and nine arrestor wires. In terms of
weaponry, there were two 4 inch Dual Purpose guns in single mounts, twenty 20
mm Oerlikon anti-aircraft cannons in single mounts, and 16 40 mm Bofors
anti-aircraft guns in twin mounts. All in all, 24 aircraft were located aboard
the ship, primarily Vought F4U Corsairs and Hawker Sea Hurricane fighters,
along with a few Fairey Swordfishes. It was a ship that was ready for battle,
but now that World War II had ended it was serving a far different purpose: it was
conducting an escort mission in the Southern Pacific Ocean.
The name of the mission was
Operation Deadlight, which was the codename for the scuttling of the U-boats
that had been surrendered to the Allies following the surrender of Germany on
May 7th, 1945. Operation Deadlight was being carried out by the
Royal Navy, who were currently using assorted ships from their fleet to tow the
captured U-boats to an area 100 miles to northwest of Ireland, an area that had
been designated with the codename XX. There, the U-boats were sunk. The first
scuttling had taken place in November of 1945, with a second scheduled for Feb.
11th, 1946. Recent top secret documents discovered by the Allies
upon raiding Hitler’s bunker in Berlin had led some to suspect that the Germans
had an experimental U-boat somewhere in the South Pacific: at the coordinates 47°9′S 126°43′W, to be precise. Because Captain Dagobert’s ship had been the closest to those
coordinates, he had received orders from Andrew Cunningham, First Sea Lord of
the Royal Navy, to investigate the rumor. If they did manage to discover such a
U-boat, their orders were to salvage any experimental technology that might be
found in the sub, then tow it back to area XX so that it could be included in
the next scuttling.
Captain Dagobert, who was 48 years
of age, rested his callused hands on the railing that circled the bow of the HMS Lightbringer, gazing out at the
horizon with a languid expression on his weather-beaten, mustachioed face. Not
that there was all that much to see out there that mild afternoon: just the
light blue of the cloudless sky divided in a straight horizontal line by the
dark blue of the ocean. They were scheduled to arrive at their destination
sometime quite soon. Captain Dagobert was aware that they were approaching the
Pacific Pole of Inaccessibility (also known as Point Nemo), which was the place
in the ocean that was farthest away from land. If they kept heading south past
that point, Captain Dagobert knew that they would reach the shores of
Antarctica, the South Pole. He doubted it would have to come to that though,
although Captain Dagobert was kind of curious to see what the South Pole was
like: staring out at the unchanging water world before him, he daydreamed about
what it would be like to get his hands on a penguin. He could take the penguin
back home to his son Avery, which would no doubt delight the 11 year-old boy,
whose favorite book of all-time was Richard and Florence Atwater’s Mr. Popper’s Penguins, which had been
published in 1938.
A moment later Captain Dagobert
heard footsteps coming from behind him. He turned to see Lt. Martin Snodgrass
approaching him. “Good afternoon, Captain,” Lt. Snodgrass said. He was a
younger man, with a handsome face and somewhat delicate features, with just a
wisp of a mustache above his upper lip. “Got some news to report.”
“Afternoon, Lt. Snodgrass,” Captain
Dagobert said as he took out his pipe and began to fill it with tobacco.
“What’s the sitrep?"
“Just wanted to let you know that
sonar has picked up on that U-boat we’ve been looking for,” Lt. Snodgrass said.
“We should be on top of it in a few minutes. What are your orders?”
“Come now, Lt. Snodgrass, you know
the drill: form a boarding party and take a raft out there to investigate,”
Captain Dagobert said as he lit up his pipe. “Look for survivors, secure any
charts or codebooks you come across, disarm the detonation charges. Should be a
doddle.”
“Permission to speak bluntly,
Captain Dagobert?” Lt. Snodgrass asked, his feet shifting.
“Go ahead,” Captain Dagobert nodded
as he puffed away on his pipe, which had been a gift from his father, who had
fought the Germans in the first World War.
“Why in bloody hell are we on this
mission, anyway?” Lt. Snodgrass griped as he took out a yellow box of V
cigarettes (which had been manufactured in India). “The squareheads got their
arses handed to ‘em, the Yanks nuked Tojoland a few months back… I guess what
I’m trying to say, Captain, is that the war’s over yet here we are in the
middle of soddin’ nowhere, when we should be back in Merry Old England getting
well poogled.”
“It’s just bad luck, nothing more
than that,” Captain Dagobert shrugged. “When the orders came down from Lord
Cunningham it just so happened that we were closest to the sub’s last known
coordinates. But no one said life was fair.”
“What’s so important about this
bloody sub anyway?” Lt. Snodgrass asked.
“The Allies didn’t even know it
existed until they found some documents in the Führer’s bunker,” Captain Dagobert said. “I
guess it’s supposed to be some sort of experimental sub, like the U-25II: a
Type XXI U-boat, it would seem. We’re supposed to check it out, see if there’s
any technology on it worth salvaging, then tow it to the scuttling site. That’s
literally all I’ve been told, Lieutenant.”
“Sounds like a load of guff if you
ask me,” Lt. Snodgrass said glumly as he took a long drag on his cigarette.
“Pecker up, Lt. Snodgrass!’ Captain
Dagobert explained. “This sub probably isn’t worth a crumpet, but it’ll at
least get you off this glorified tin can for a few hours.”
“Maybe we’ll be able to salvage some
decent rations,” Lt. Snodgrass mused as he flicked his cigarette over the side
of the ship. He watched the cigarette land into the water, where a pufferfish
promptly wrapped its mouth around the tip and began smoking it himself. “See if
those krauts have any japper grog that we can liberate. Ah, to be back home in
London in front of a roaring fire, enjoying a big plate of airships and clouds.
I’m sick of Cookie Dewhurst’s spoiled goldfish and demon vino. SFA, let’s just
get this bloody done with.”
“Now you’re using your loaf,
Lieutenant! The sooner we can get this U-boat situation cleared up, the quicker
we can get back home,” Captain Dagobert said. “Now get cracking!”
“Aye aye, Captain,” Lt. Snodgrass
said, giving him a fey salute before walking off. As Captain Dagobert watched
him go, he thought to himself, Lt.
Snodgrass is a decent bloke, but a bit of a soft number. Didn’t I catch him
reading a collection of Oscar Wilde fairy tales last month?
Thirty minutes later, Lt. Snodgrass
and the other seven members of the boarding party were aboard an inflatable
assault boat that was headed in the direction of the U-boat, which was not
submerged but surfaced. As they got closer to it, Lt. Snodgrass could see that
it didn’t look all that much different from some of the other U-boats he had
seen during the war, being cigar-shaped in dimensions and gunmetal-gray in
color. The hull of the U-boat looked a little scuffed up, but other than that
it still seemed seaworthy. The boarding party’s boat pulled up to the side of
the U-boat and, one by one, they climbed onto the ship’s deck. The eight Brits
scaled to the top of the conning tower and gathered around the hatch that led
into the ship’s control room.
“Right, let’s get this over with,”
Lt. Snodgrass said, pulling out his handgun, an Enfield No. 2 Mk I 38/200
calibre revolver. He opened the hatch and peered down the ladder. To his
surprise, the inside of the U-boat appeared to be illuminated, so the ship’s
electricity was obviously still working. “Oi!” he called down into the ship’s
control room. “This is Lt. Snodgrass of the Royal Navy! We’ve boarded your
vessel! If anyone’s down there, I want to see you with your hands above your
heads!”
No
answer. After a few minutes of silence, Lt. Snodgrass nodded his head and said,
“Right, they had their chance to surrender. Let’s go, men.”
The
boarding party began climbing down the ladder, and a minute later they all
stood in the U-boats control room. It was a bit larger than most of the other
submarine control rooms that Lt. Snodgrass had been in, though in some ways it
looked no different: he saw the ship’s controls, the valves used to control the
flooding and venting of the tubes, the navigator’s chart table, the bilge
pumps, the two periscope shafts (these were located in the center of the room),
and other assorted mechanical devices. But the boarding party didn’t pay any
attention to all of this.
Instead,
they gazed at the five corpses resting on the metal floor of the control room.
The corpses were all German, four men and one woman, and each of them was
wearing a robe, with each robe being a different color: the five colors were
black, red, blue, yellow, and white. The corpses had been laid in the center of
a symbol that had been drawn onto the floor of the control room with red chalk,
the symbol being a giant upside-down pentagram.
“What
the bloody hell is this?” Lt. Snodgrass said, gazing down at the dead bodies.
“Some kind of necromancer pajama party?"
“Lt.
Snodgrass, their eyes!” cried out one member of the boarding party, a burly
bald fellow named Eugene, and he quickly did the Sign of the Cross. Lt.
Snodgrass stooped down to get a better look at the faces of the dead bodies,
and to his shock and horror, he saw that their eyes were… gone. In their place
there were instead small pools of utter darkness, but a bubbling and seething
darkness: little black bubbles were floating out from their eye sockets, which
seemed to have become tiny witch cauldrons.
Meanwhile,
one of the other boarding party members, Willy Dickson, was examining a book
that rested on the floor next to one of the corpses. He picked the book up and
began to flip through it. The book was very old, and although Willy was fluent
in many languages (including German, which was the main reason why Lt. Snodgrass
had selected him as one of the members of the boarding party), the book
appeared to be written in a language he had never seen before.
“Lt.
Snodgrass! This kraut’s still alive!” called out another member of the boarding
party, who was kneeling next to the man dressed in the white robe.
Lt.
Snodgrass walked over to the man and crouched down as well. It was true: the
German in the white robe was still alive, though barely, and he was whispering
words in German, the same phrase over and over again: “Hüte dich vor dem Beta-Sequenz! Hüte dich vor dem Beta-Sequenz!”
“Willy!
Get your arse over here! Help me translate what this squarehead’s saying!” Lt.
Snodgrass called out.
Willy
placed the book down on the navigator’s chart table and walked over to the
dying German. He bent down and listened carefully to what the Nazi was gasping
out. Then he frowned, faced Lt. Snodgrass, and said, “Lt. Snodgrass, it sounds
like what he’s saying is, ‘Beware the Beta Sequence!’”
“What
the hell is the Beta Sequence?” Lt. Snodgrass asked.
A
second later the Nazi died.
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