Lightning tore the sky apart.
For a fleeting instant, the Atlantic was revealed in its full, terrible scale—waves rising like the walls of cities, vast black mountains of water lifting entire warships into the air before casting them down again into churning valleys of foam and darkness. Wind howled across the surface, rain slashing sideways, and in that chaos of storm and sea, four British dreadnoughts drove westward at full power.
Or what passed for full power now.
Their engines strained, boilers pushed beyond safety, yet the sea itself denied them speed. What should have been twenty-one knots had been reduced to sixteen, perhaps less when the waves struck hardest, their great hulls fighting not just the enemy behind them—but the ocean itself.
At the head of the line, HMS Iron Duke cut forward through the storm, her bow vanishing again and again beneath walls of water. Behind her came HMS Marlborough, then HMS Benbow, and finally, farthest astern, struggling to hold formation, was HMS Emperor of India.
They ran.
But they could not escape.
Because behind them, through storm and darkness, the Germans came.
Three shapes, vast and implacable, cutting through the sea with a steadiness that defied the chaos around them. Though even they had been slowed by the storm, reduced to twenty knots or little more, it was enough. More than enough.
They were closing.
And with every passing minute, the distance shrank.
Far to the south, Vice Admiral David Beatty fled with what remained of his shattered command, five battered battlecruisers dragging themselves away from annihilation. Behind him, the six German raiders turned north, their purpose complete, their course now set to rejoin their fleet.
And as they drove through the storm, they saw it, not merely lightning and thunder, but fire.
Bright flashes of gunfire on the horizon, heavy and rhythmic.
On the bridge of HMS Iron Duke, John Jellicoe did not stand.
He sat.
The chair beneath him might as well have been carved from stone, for he had not moved in some time, his gloved hands resting upon the arms, his gaze fixed somewhere beyond the shattered glass and raging sea, as though he were still searching for an answer that refused to come.
This was not how it was meant to be.
They had come here to end it.
To crush the German raiding fleet, to destroy the six battlecruisers that had for over a month ravaged British trade, sunk hundreds of ships, and brought whispers—dangerous whispers—of vulnerability to an island empire that had never known such doubt.
It was supposed to be a decisive battle, a necessary one.
Instead, they had been broken, outmaneuvered, humiliated and now, hunted.
His jaw tightened faintly.
Six battlecruisers.
That was what they had expected.
Six ships that intelligence, and Vice Admiral Beatty had described as dangerous, yes—but still battlecruisers, still within the known bounds of naval warfare.
But what followed them now was something else entirely.
He had seen them—only in flashes, only when lightning split the sky and revealed their shapes for a single, blinding instant, but it had been enough.
Three ships, larger than battlecruisers, faster than dreadnoughts, moving with a certainty that defied everything he understood. And armed—God help them—armed with guns he had never seen before. Triple-mounted, massive, unnatural, like something dragged not from another navy, but from another age.
"Three hundred and eighty millimeters…" he murmured under his breath, the words barely audible.
Impossible.
And yet, they were here.
Far astern, aboard SMS Derfflinger, Admiral Reinhard Scheer stood unmoving as the storm broke around him, his gaze fixed upon the fleeing British line.
There was no urgency in him.
No doubt.
Only calculation.
"Forward turrets," he said calmly. "Range, twenty-six thousand meters. Fire when ready."
Deep within the ship, the great machinery of war answered.
Steel shifted.
Hydraulics groaned.
Three barrels, each the length of a small house, rose together toward the storm-dark sky, their elevation adjusted with precise, deliberate motion. Below them, men moved in a world of heat and iron, guiding shells into place—each one weighing close to a ton, each one a weapon not merely of destruction, but of certainty.
Eight hundred kilograms of steel and explosive, driven by velocity and by design.
Driven by a future that had no place in this war.
And then—
They fired.
The detonation was not a sound, but a force.
A violent, concussive blast that rolled across the ship and out into the storm as all three guns spoke at once, flame erupting from their muzzles in blinding flashes that tore through the darkness.
The shells rose.
Not as objects, but as something almost unnatural.
Three massive shapes, climbing through wind and rain, their trajectories cutting high into the sky, so high that for a moment they seemed to vanish into the storm itself. Lightning flashed around them, illuminating their passage in brief, terrible glimpses as they arced across the distance.
Twenty-six kilometers of open sea.
Bridged in silence.
On HMS Emperor of India, no one saw them coming.
For the men aboard, there was only the storm—the roar of wind, the crash of water, the endless rise and fall of the ship beneath their feet as it fought to stay alive against the Atlantic itself.
Then the sky answered.
Three shells descended out of the storm.
Two fell wide.
They struck the sea on either side of the ship with such force that the ocean itself seemed to detonate, towering columns of water erupting upward like shattered cliffs, cascading down across the deck in a blinding storm of spray and foam.
But the third found its mark.
The shell came down at a steep angle, screaming through rain and wind—a mass of steel nearly a ton in weight, falling like a runaway locomotive dropped from the heavens. It struck the stern just beneath the rearmost turret, and for a fraction of a second, the armor resisted.
Then it broke utterly.
Steel split open with a violent shriek, the shell punching through as though the ship itself had been made of tin. It did not slow at all but drove inward with impossible force, a solid hammer of metal tearing through compartments, bulkheads, and everything in between.
Men in its path were not killed in any ordinary sense.
They were obliterated.
Reduced in an instant to red vapor and fragments, their bodies unmade by the sheer violence of the impact, turned into something closer to mist than flesh, smeared across steel walls by a force the human body had no means to resist. Others further along the path were caught in the pressure wave that followed—bones shattered, organs ruptured, bodies flung apart as the shell passed through like a train ripping through a crowded station without ever slowing.
It reached deep into the heart of the ship.
And then detonated.
The explosion did not burst outward into open air. It expanded inward, violently, a sudden release of pressure and fire contained within steel walls that could not give fast enough. The result was catastrophic. The confined space amplified everything—the heat, the force, the destruction—until it became something beyond an explosion, something closer to the ship being torn apart from the inside.
Bulkheads folded.
Decks split.
Machinery was ripped free and hurled through compartments like debris in a storm, steel beams bending and snapping as if they were made of soft metal. Fire surged through passageways, following the blast as it tore through the stern, ripping open everything in its path.
Above, the deck buckled upward in a violent shudder.
Below, the interior ceased to exist as anything recognizable.
From the outside, the effect was immediate.
The stern of Emperor of India erupted.
Flame burst outward beneath the rear turret in a violent bloom, followed by a column of smoke and shattered debris that tore upward into the storm. The entire rear section of the ship seemed to twist unnaturally, the structure collapsing inward as the explosion severed the vital shafts and connections that drove her propellers.
Her motion died at once.
The great ship shuddered, then slowed.
Then stopped dead in the water, and the sea came for her.
Waves crashed against her crippled hull, forcing water through the ruptured stern in unstoppable torrents. Compartments flooded one after another, the weight of it dragging her backward, her bow rising slightly as the stern sank deeper, the entire ship beginning to list under the mounting imbalance.
She was no longer a warship.
She was a wreck.
On the bridge of HMS Iron Duke, the signal came through.
"Sir… signal from HMS Emperor of India…"
The officer's voice faltered, just enough to betray what the words themselves had not yet fully said.
"Critical damage. Propulsion lost. Severe flooding… she's dead in the water, sir."
Silence followed.
Lightning cracked across the sky, flooding the bridge in stark white light. For a single instant, every face was revealed and at the center of it, Jellicoe sat unmoving, the glare carving deep lines into his expression before darkness swallowed it again.
He did not speak for a moment as the weight of it settled upon him, not as shock, not as panic, but as understanding.
They could not outrun them.
They could not fight them.
And now, they were being taken apart.
His hand tightened slowly around the arm of the chair, the leather creaking faintly beneath his grip.
Then he drew in a breath.
And when he spoke, his voice carried cleanly through the bridge.
"Signal the fleet… break formation."
The officer nearest him froze for half a heartbeat, as though the words had not fully settled.
Jellicoe did not look at him.
"Independent action," he continued, his voice steady now, stripped of everything but command. "Full speed ahead and scatter the formation. Each ship is to make for safer seas, maybe then one of us just might make it."
"Aye… aye, sir!"
The order went out at once, flashing through signal lamps and carried through wireless bursts, passed from bridge to bridge in fragments of light and code that cut through the storm like desperate prayers.
And the line broke.
For a time, it almost seemed as though the sea itself hesitated, as if even the storm could not quite believe what it was witnessing. The great formation that had once advanced with certainty now scattered, each ship turning away from the others, each captain left to his own fate beneath a sky that gave no mercy.
Ahead, HMS Iron Duke held her course, driving westward through the weakening wall of storm, her bow cutting through the waves as she pressed toward the fading horizon. Behind her, HMS Marlborough began to turn, slowly at first as her massive hull resisted the motion, then more decisively as she angled to starboard, engines straining as she clawed for distance.
To port, HMS Benbow turned as well—but not fully.
Not cleanly.
There was hesitation there, a lingering presence where there should have been none, her movement slower, heavier, as though something held her in place.
A signal lamp flickered through the rain.
"Sir… message from Benbow…"
Jellicoe's eyes lifted, though his body remained still.
The signal officer swallowed.
"They report… they will not leave HMS Emperor of India, sir. They are turning to engage, to cover her, and our retreat while they can."
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then, more quietly—
"Captain Hubert Brand sends his regards, sir… He says, It has been our honor."
The words lingered on the bridge heavily for a fleeting moment.
Jellicoe's gaze remained fixed somewhere beyond the bridge, beyond the storm, towards the distance where the storm seemed to be showing signs of breaking.
"…Godspeed," he said at last.
And that was all.
The Germans did not hesitate.
Their line broke as well, but where the British scattered in desperation, the Germans moved with purpose. SMS Derfflinger held her course, driving straight through the thinning storm toward the fleeing flagship, while to either side SMS Lützow and SMS Hindenburg peeled outward in widening arcs, their speed carrying them into position, their guns already turning, already aligning to pick off targets.
Time passed.
Measured not in minutes, but in flashes.
Heading Northwest away from the battle, HMS Marlborough ran, her engines screaming as she fought both storm and fate, her great hull rising and crashing through the waves as she tried to reach the breaking edge of the weather. For a moment—just a moment—it seemed possible. The clouds ahead were thinning, the light growing stronger, the violence of the sea beginning, ever so slightly, to ease.
Then the guns spoke again. There was but a flash behind them, and a small pause.
And then the sea itself erupted.
The impact came without warning, a violent detonation that tore through Marlborough's midsection in a burst of white fire and steel. The explosion did not simply damage her—it consumed her, ripping through decks and compartments in a cascading collapse of structure and force. For an instant the entire ship seemed to lift from the water, her form breaking apart within the rising column of smoke and flame.
Then she was gone, not sinking or burning, just gone in a flash.
Only the echo of the blast and the boiling sea remained where she had been.
Far behind, Emperor of India followed.
Already crippled, already drowning, she took another blow deep into her shattered stern. The explosion that followed fed upon everything that remained—fire, pressure, destruction tearing through what little structure still held. The rear of the ship collapsed inward, and the sea rushed in without resistance.
She sank backward.
Slowly at first, almost gently, her stern pulled under as her bow rose, exposed against the storm for a fleeting moment like a final, silent protest.
Then she slipped beneath and was swallowed whole by the sea.
Further away to the south, it's protector HMS Benbow fought.
She did not run.
She stayed.
Her guns roared through the storm, each salvo lighting the darkness as she tried to close the distance to the enemy. Her shells fell short, lost in distance and sea, but still she fired, again and again, as though defiance alone might hold back what was coming.
It did not.
The answer came in full.
A German salvo struck her cleanly, then another, then more, each impact tearing into her side with brutal precision. Fire spread across her decks, smoke rising thick and black as her forward section vanished in flame. Her guns fell silent one by one, the ship shuddering violently as water forced its way inside.
Still she held.
Still she burned.
Until at last the signal came.
"Sir… HMS Benbow reports they are abandoning ship."
Jellicoe closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, he said nothing.
There was nothing left to say that would change what was happening.
Ahead of them, the storm was beginning to break. The dense wall of cloud thinned, the rain easing as pale light pushed through in slow, widening bands. Sunlight spilled across the water in uneven streaks, turning the surface from black to steel-grey, then to something almost calm. The waves still rose high, but they no longer broke with the same violence, their fury spent.
For the first time in nearly an hour, the horizon lay open. And just up ahead, over the horizon was Canada.
If there was anything left that could help them, then it was the fleet of Canada, that would hopefully be there.
Jellicoe fixed his gaze on that distant light, holding it as if it were something solid, something that might still be reached.
If they could just make it a little further.
If they could just, but that thought was quickly cut off, by a flash.
It came without warning.
A blinding white burst off the starboard side, so close it swallowed everything in an instant. The shell struck beside the bridge, punching into the superstructure before detonating with brutal force.
The following explosion tore through steel and glass in a single, violent instant. The bridge seemed to collapse inward as the windows disintegrated, shards driven like shrapnel across the compartment while the blast slammed through with crushing force. Fire and smoke followed immediately, pouring into the shattered space as the air itself buckled under the pressure.
Jellicoe was ripped from his chair and thrown across the deck.
He struck hard, the impact driving the breath from his lungs as his body slid against wet steel. For a moment there was no sense of direction, no up or down, only motion and force as the world spun violently around him. Sound collapsed into a dull, distant ringing, voices reduced to muffled echoes somewhere far beyond reach.
He tried to push himself up, to grasp hold of something solid, but nothing held. The bridge swayed and twisted, shapes breaking apart into light and shadow as blood ran down from his brow into his eyes.
Through the shattered frame of the bridge, beyond the rising smoke, he caught a final glimpse of open water—sunlight breaking through where the storm had begun to clear.
Then it vanished.
Darkness closed in, time lost meaning.
For a moment he felt as if he was drifting, he knew not how much time passed, but then, slowly awareness returned.
Voices first, faint and distorted, as though carried through water.
"Sir…!"
"Admiral, can you hear me—?"
Light followed, harsh and blinding, forcing his eyes open in short, painful bursts. Shapes leaned over him, hands gripping his shoulders, pulling him upright as the world struggled to come back into focus.
"Sir, stay with us—!"
Jellicoe blinked, the ringing in his ears pulsing like a heartbeat as air rushed back into his lungs in a sharp, involuntary breath.
"What… happened?"
The words barely formed, but they were enough.
"He's awake—!"
"Thank God—!"
Hands moved quickly, binding his head, pressing cloth against the wound as blood continued to seep down his temple. The men around him were speaking rapidly now, but the words came slowly, piece by piece, as his senses returned.
He pushed himself up despite their protests.
The bridge came into view.
Shattered.
The storm was gone.
In its place, sunlight poured through the broken structure, harsh and unforgiving, illuminating the damage in full. Smoke drifted upward from below, thick and dark, carrying the smell of burning metal and oil. Somewhere aft, fire still raged, the glow of it visible through the broken lines of the ship.
Men were moving everywhere—running, shouting, hauling equipment—no longer a controlled crew but a ship in crisis.
"…Status," Jellicoe forced out.
The nearest officer hesitated, then answered.
"Severe damage aft, sir. We've lost propulsion. Steering is compromised… the stern's taken multiple hits."
Another officer stepped forward, urgency cutting through the confusion.
"The Germans have stopped, sir. Ten kilometers astern. They've got their guns trained on us."
Jellicoe turned slightly, trying to orient himself.
"They're not firing?"
"No, sir," came the reply. "They're holding position."
Then, faintly, carried across the water and through the broken hull, a voice reached them, a mechanical distorted voice that was unmistakable German.
Demanding surrender.
The words repeated, echoing across the sea.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then the tension broke.
"We have to scuttle her," one officer said, stepping forward, his voice tight but controlled. "Sir, the charges are ready. If we don't, they'll take the ship intact."
"No," another cut in immediately. "We still have the forward turrets. If they come closer, we can engage."
"Engage?" the first snapped. "We can't even turn the ship—what are you planning to hit?"
"We're not handing her over without a fight!"
"And you'll get everyone killed for nothing!"
The argument rose quickly, sharp and desperate, both men turning back toward Jellicoe as the pressure mounted.
"Sir, we need orders."
"Admiral, we can't delay."
He heard them clearly, but didn't know what to say.
Outside at the same time, the ship was struggling to survive.
The stern burned openly, flames clawing upward through twisted steel as damage control teams fought to contain it. Men worked in choking smoke, hauling hoses and forcing water across the fire, their movements frantic but disciplined as they battled both flame and flooding.
Sections of the ship had already been sealed. Heavy watertight doors were closed, isolating compartments where fire or water had taken hold, turning parts of the ship into trapped, silent spaces left behind in the effort to keep the rest afloat.
The aft turrets sagged where they stood, twisted out of alignment, their structures broken open and pouring smoke into the open air. No one lingered near them longer than necessary. Every man aboard knew what lay beneath those blackened housings—cordite, heat, and the very real chance that the next shock would turn the entire stern into a single, catastrophic blast.
Behind the drifting wall of smoke, beyond what the British could see, the German ships held their position.
Their guns remained trained in silence upon the British ship.
And across the now calming sea, the amplified voice carried again and again, cold and mechanical as it echoed over the water, "Abandon your ship British men! You have nowhere to run! You have lost! Surrender!"
But even as the message repeated, the real move had already begun.
Low in the water, three small craft cut across the surface at speed. Their engines roared as they slammed through the waves, closing the distance in minutes, riding the last swell of the dying storm.
Each carried a squad of twelve men clad in dark Prussian blue, their forms heavy with equipment, their faces hidden behind black masks and dark lenses that reflected the firelight but revealed nothing beneath.
They did not slow.
They drove straight into the smoke.
Grappling hooks struck first, iron biting into the shattered stern as lines snapped taut. Without hesitation, the men began to climb, their movements practiced and efficient, boots finding purchase on twisted steel as they pulled themselves up into the burning wreck.
And from there, they emerged from the smoke one by one.
The British sailors focused on fighting the fire and smoke didn't understand, they struggled to comprehend what it was that they were seeing.
The figures were human in shape, but there was no visible skin, and their faces were gone, replaced by dark glass and breathing apparatus that gave off a faint mechanical rasp. They did not shout. Did not hesitate. They simply advanced.
One sailor stepped back, dropping the hose in his hands.
"What the hell is that…?"
Another turned, eyes widening as realization hit.
"—Germans!"
"BOARDERS—!"
"RUN—!"
Panic broke instantly. Men abandoned their posts, stumbling back from something they could not comprehend, something that did not behave like any boarding party they had ever imagined. They ran, shouting warnings, moving down below the deck to grab weapons that suddenly felt useless in their hands.
The German marines moved through them without pause.
Two squads spread across the deck, driving the sailors inward, forcing them back into the ship. Another moved directly toward the superstructure, weapons raised, covering angles with precise, controlled motion.
Within less than a minute, the stern deck was theirs.
Two men were left to hold the access point to the superstructure, rifles trained, while the rest of the squad pressed forward into the interior.
Their objective was not the ship itself, but the command up above.
Inside, the fighting became close and brutal.
Narrow stairwells and corridors filled with smoke and echoing gunfire as British sailors tried to form resistance. Orders were shouted, overlapping and confused, as men fired down passageways they could barely see.
"Dont let them through—!"
"Hold till the last, for king and country—!"
The answer came fast and controlled.
Shots cracked in short bursts, each one placed, each one deliberate. A grenade rolled down a passage before anyone could react.
"Grenade!"
The explosion filled the confined space, throwing bodies against steel walls and tearing apart what little resistance had formed.
The marines did not slow.
They moved upward in tight formation, clearing each level with methodical precision, leaving two men behind at every stairwell to seal the ship behind them. Gunfire echoed briefly, then died just as quickly, replaced by the steady advance of boots on steel.
Above them, the bridge.
At first, the sounds reached it only as distant disturbances—muffled cracks of gunfire, the dull thump of explosions somewhere deep within the hull, voices raised in confusion rather than command.
Then someone saw it.
One of the signalmen leaned toward the shattered edge of the bridge, peering down through the drifting smoke toward the stern. At first, he frowned, as if his eyes refused to make sense of what they were seeing.
"…Sir…?"
Others followed his gaze.
There was movement down there.
Not the chaotic motion of damage control parties or fleeing sailors—but something controlled. Ordered. Figures moving through the smoke where no one should have been.
"…What is that…?" someone whispered.
Jellicoe turned, still unsteady, his head pounding as he stepped toward the broken frame of the bridge. He looked down, trying to force clarity out of the shifting haze below.
For a brief moment, he saw them.
Dark shapes.
"…No…" he said quietly, more to himself than to anyone else. "No, that's not—"
The steel door burst open behind him.
Two sailors stumbled in, half-falling across the threshold, their uniforms blackened with blood, their faces pale and drawn with something deeper than fear.
"They're on board—!"
"Germans—inside the ship—!"
The words hit the bridge like a physical blow.
For a moment, no one moved.
Because what were they to do, the bridge of HMS Iron Duke was not a grand hall but a cramped, armored command space—steel walls, shattered glass frames, charts pinned and half torn from their mounts, instruments rattling with the ship's movement, and one main steel door leading to the bridge from down below.
Jellicoe turned sharply, his expression tightening.
"That's impossible," he said, his voice cutting cleanly through the confusion, firm despite the blood still running down his face. "You do not board a dreadnought in open sea. Not like this. It cannot be done—"
He stopped.
Because even as he said it, he could feel that something had already gone wrong.
Badly wrong.
Around him, the officers reacted at last. Training took over where reason faltered. Hands moved quickly, pulling open small, hidden compartments built into the bulkheads—locked boxes meant for emergencies. Revolvers and pistols were drawn out, cold steel pressed into shaking hands.
"Arm yourselves, there can't be many of them!"
"Defensive positions—!"
The men moved, forming instinctive lines of defense within the narrow space, some turning toward the door, others covering the shattered windows as if expecting something to come through them instead.
Jellicoe stood among them, steadying himself against the steel frame, his eyes fixed on the entrance.
Then the door moved.
A slow, deliberate push to open it, just slightly, letting a narrow gap appear between the steel and its frame.
And then, something small rolled through.
It struck the deck with a dull metallic tap and came to rest near the center of the bridge.
No one recognized the small metallic object.
No one understood what it was.
One officer frowned, stepping half a pace backwards, then the world went white.
The flash was absolute.
A blinding eruption of light that erased everything in an instant, cutting through vision, burning into the eyes so completely that even darkness could not follow. It was accompanied by a concussive crack that seemed to come from inside the skull itself, a violent shock that shattered all sense of direction.
Men cried out.
Some collapsed where they stood.
Others staggered, clutching at their faces, weapons slipping from their hands as their vision dissolved into searing afterimages and ringing silence.
For a few seconds no one could see or hear.
And in that moment of blindness the door opened fully.
They came through fast.
Dark figures, one after another, filling the doorway with controlled violence, rifles already raised. Their movements were precise, almost mechanical, spreading across the bridge in practiced arcs, covering every angle before anyone could recover.
"DOWN—! DOWN—NOW—!"
"DON'T MOVE—!"
The commands came sharp and harsh, the accents thick, but the meaning unmistakable.
One officer tried to raise his pistol.
He was shot before he could fire.
The crack of the rifle echoed through the confined space, the man thrown backward into the bulkhead before collapsing to the deck.
Another tried to move as well, but was quickly met with another shot.
Then the rest froze.
Hands rose instinctively, survival overriding everything else.
Jellicoe forced himself upright, his vision still swimming, ears ringing as he steadied himself against the shattered frame of the bridge. His gaze locked onto the figures now surrounding them—tall, heavily equipped, their faces hidden behind dark lenses and breathing masks that gave nothing away.
"Who are you?" he demanded, his voice strained but carrying. "What is the meaning of this? You dare fire on officers of His Majesty's Navy?"
One of them stepped forward.
Larger than the rest.
He studied Jellicoe for a moment, head tilting slightly behind the mask.
"You," he said, his English rough but clear. "Are you the commander here? What is your name? What do you do on this ship?"
Jellicoe straightened despite the blood on his face, drawing what remained of his composure around him like armor.
"I am Admiral Sir John Jellicoe," he said. "And you will conduct yourself according to the laws of war. My crew and I are to be treated with—"
He never finished.
The blow came fast.
The rifle butt struck him across the side of the head with brutal force, snapping his words away as the world dropped out beneath him. He felt the impact more than heard it, a sudden collapse of balance as the deck surged upward and everything went dark again.
Hands grabbed him almost immediately.
He was lifted, slung over a shoulder as though he weighed nothing, his body carried toward the door without hesitation.
Behind them, the bridge remained frozen—men on their knees, hands raised, weapons scattered uselessly across the floor.
Below, the ship was still burning and slowly begining to sink.
For Jellicoe, he just felt cold air strike his face, then wind and the salt of the sea.
Then came the roar of an engine.
For a moment, consciousness flickered back.
He was no longer on steel, but something that moved—rising and falling sharply beneath him. He lay on his back now, the sky above him clear and painfully bright, the storm gone as though it had never been.
The boat surged forward across the water.
Behind him, HMS Iron Duke burned.
Men were jumping from her decks, small figures against the vast hull as she listed, her stern low, the sea already claiming her from within. Smoke rose in thick columns, drifting upward into the clear sky as the great ship slowed, settled and slowly sank.
Jellicoe tried to focus.
Tried to hold the image, but it slipped.
The light faded, and darkness took him once more.