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.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

    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.