In a spare, private birthing, the crate had been left next to a wide map reading desk. Map reading desks come complete with the giant magnifying lens with built in illuminator for navigators to plot fine details into ornately drawn topographical charts. Ke pulled the chair in close and reached for the first book in the pile, “3-JAN-44”, and examined the outside. It was a fabric bound book with some sort of lacquering treatment that gave it an old gleam in the flooding light from the map table, stitching buried under the shine. The date had been painstakingly picked out of the lacquer and filled in with white grease pencil. As old books went, it was a kind of work of art from makeshift efforts. Resting the book down, Ke drew in a long breath and winced from taking a sip of coffee that served no purpose than to deliver caffeine, she felt the warmth make its way down and she opened the captains log.
Janruary 3, 1944
Kaptain Sajer
U-5918, Brunhilde
We’ve departed from the fatherland on Operation Wormwood, the crew is eager to get down to business but we have to navigate the blockades first. The scientists that have been placed aboard tell us the engines are completely silent and that the oxygen recyclers aren’t just some fabricated prototypes but true miracles of Germania engineering. Most of the men aren’t so convinced, I am not yet one of them. We will have to play our cards close to the chest on the way past the Allies, it would be just our luck to run into a mine or destroyer so closely out of the gate. Hochberg has the boys running through the paces and Kessler is working closely with the science team to maintain the Kettle. This entire program relies on several pinheads as fulcrums and I am deeply concerned that any one mistake will tumble this house of toothpicks. We’ve enough provisions for five of these missions, the crew for one mission, and the fervor and esprit-de-corps to power the Kettle to the moon. The only thing we’re missing is a map of where those damned Allied destroyers and mines are.
Ke skimmed down through more passages. The ship had lurked for nearly two and a half weeks just to clear the English Channel, forced to remain on radio silence for fear of discovery and never surfacing once, Sajer remarked how effective the oxygen recyclers were and how even close calls with destroyers floating overhead were becoming common place. Brunhilde moved so quietly that the ships on the surface carried on as though there were nothing below but fish and foam. It wasn’t until she reached February 17, 1944 that a passage took her attention.
Kaptain Sajer February 17, 1944 U-5918 Brunhilde
We had our first close call today. After a month without seeing the sun or the surface a few of the boys began to grow stir crazy and wished to stretch their legs under the light of day. As we had cleared the majority of shipping and were safely near Greenland’s neutral waters we decided to have a morale day and let the boys fool about on the deck before we had to breach the North American wolf-traps. When we surfaced and took in fresh air the Kettle briefly overheated and our two or three hour event turned into a nearly twelve-hour distress call. The scientists seemed perplexed why the machine would misbehave, the oxygen recyclers went offline, and every hatch that went to the surface had to open to let Brunhilde air out. It was a bit of a mess, but nothing a little calisthenics on the deck couldn’t cure and Hochberg was quick to whip up the boys into a sweat, even in this arctic wind. I’m not sure where the man hides his energy, I suppose all the Schwabians keep energy reserves in those beards. He is old enough to be some of their fathers and yet he was able to wrestled down three of the boys.
We think it may have been a high altitude reconnaissance plane that spotted us, too high for its droning engines to be heard. The lookout cried out, pointing at the horizon at the approaching destroyers, three of the wolf hunters bearing down on us. Our pants were thoroughly round our ankles and it took all the energy of Hochberg and Kessler to rouse the science crew and the lads into moving fast enough to drag Brunhilde beneath the deep. The chief scientist, Burton, pressed us to activate the gyroscope. We had neglected to test it on schedule due to how long it took to escape the Allied nets in the channels and the risk of activating it and ending upside-down in the deep seemed enormous. But then again, the risk of being blasted apart and every hope and dream of the fatherland sinking with us was quite real. We gave the go ahead and the science team hurried off to prepare.
Our depth was probably close to thirty meters; our maps and proximity to shorelines were not trustworthy to bring us deeper. The Destroyers were right atop us and would catch us in ten to twenty minutes. Hochberg had every spare body he could find rush to the bow of the ship to help drag us down by the nose. It may have been the help we needed to sink under the drink before the Sword Fish past overhead. The clattering of the gyroscope was merciless and I wished for all the world that we had tested it beforehand, we would have tamped cotton wads in our ears. The science team assured me that everything was in order.
“Who Dares, Wins”
I ordered a hard to south turn, the kind of maneuver that would roll and snap a hull or throw a crew against the bulkheads, a suicidal play, but what choice was left? The destroyers could be heard dropping their depth charges and the poor lad at the listening station was crossing his chest as he counted the splashes. The helmsman requested a clarification of the order, a proper thing to do given the circumstances that it would normally be a death sentence, but Kessler reached past him and turned the wheel for us all. There wasn’t a single man in the room that didn’t reach for something to steady himself. We all expected to be flung about like beads in a Spanish rattler, but nothing. Nothing. The science team had to be hushed by everyone as we could hear them trying to cheer, the Kettle suddenly spat to life, and clean cool air flooded into the cabins. Burton reassured me that all of the technology required each other in the same way a crew needs every hand to work. The destroyers high above could not have fathomed why their prey would suddenly be so quiet or how we could have made such a hair pin turn under their noses.
Hochberg led the lads in singing and merriment later in the evening, one hundred meters of safe and soundless sea blanketed over us.
Ke leaned back and explained everything she could to Perry and Akin. Akin shrugged gently and spoke first, “gyros are used to steady things, perhaps they had a second internal hull that allowed the ship to take impossible turns?”
Perry interjected, “The soviets tried that nonsense during the Cold War with their subs, it always failed.”
“Yes, that true,” replied Akin, “but they were designed by captured German scientists. It’s easy to say your idea doesn’t work in practice when you don’t like your client.”
“They sabotaged their own works to hinder the Soviets?” Asked Ke
“That would make sense, the majority of devout Nazi’s hated communists and slavs much more than they pretended to hate jews,” explained Akin
“You seem to know a lot about Nazi’s, commander.” Perry said, a forced inquisitive eyebrow arched high.
“I suppose I should, my grand father was captured from the Bismark and came to America after the war. We’ve had salt water in our blood for centuries.” Akin said, looking straight ahead.
“Why don’t you speak German, sir?” Ke said, her tone flat as she returned to reading.
Akin paused for a long while, recalling his grandfathers hidden pride at having been on the greatest battleship ever designed. Remembering how in his grandfathers dying days how he had mistaken Akin for a British Naval officer in his Coast Guard academy uniform. How his grandfather immediately began to speak German again, thinking he was back in a POW camp in England. Akin’s mother explained how his grandfather had been a proud German but never cared about politics, but the shame of history was unavoidable. His father had raised him to remember what mistakes looked like but never to carry the faults of the father. As Akin stared at the pages Ke scanned through he tried to fathom what kind of drive those men must have, hidden away under the ocean for so long, still sailing toward North America.