>PART ONE_

>Aboard USS Sampson, US Navy Destroyer, somewhere in the North Atlantic._

Captain Robert Drake frowned as he surveyed the endless Atlantic swells. The gloomy gray sky hung above. He raised his binoculars and zeroed in on a particularly auspicious bit of spray off in the distance.

Doesn't look like anything... he thought after a few moments.

He glanced over the other various escort ships shepherding the transatlantic supply convoy through the treacherous seas, a collection of US Navy Destroyers and Destroyer Escorts, and some Royal Navy Destroyers and Corvettes. None of them were signaling danger.

He picked up an intercom phone and keyed navigation.

"ASDICS, are you seeing any potential contacts?"

"Negative, sir. Nothing on hydrophones." Came the succinct reply.

Captain Drake frowned. He knew there were U-boats shadowing the convoy, stalking them like a wolf, waiting for one of the herd to fall behind or for night to fall.

The blasted things always attacked at night, using the cover of darkness to slip past the escort screen and sink their teeth into the vulnerable cargo vessels that he and his were charged with protecting.

Captain Drake had heard the rumors. Listened to the stories. The horrific tales recounted by survivors. The sudden, warning-less explosions; broken keels, mangled steel, crippled ships, fires, ammunition explosions. The few that made it off the doomed ships in time were met with freezing water, burning oil slicks, and follow-up attacks.

The lucky ones, that is.

Drake averted his gaze up towards the featureless Grey sky. Dusk was coming.

He was nervous.

He wouldn't let it show, as much for the sake of his crew and convoy he was protecting as for his own.

"Sir?" An ensign approached him and stood at attention.

"At ease, what is it?"

"Meteorology just picked up a storm forming directly ahead of us, sir. At our current heading, it will hit us in about 5 hours, sir."

Sure enough, a wind picked up and swept over the bow of the small Destroyer, and the white-capped swells grew slightly.

"You are only telling me about this now?"

"Uh, yes sir. We only just picked it up on RADAR, sir." The ensign slightly shifted uncomfortably.

Captain Drake turned and looked out over the Destroyer's bow and narrowed his eyes at the opaque horizon, which stubbornly failed to clear under the force of his glare.

"Will it be bad?" He asked the ensign.

"They don't think so sir," he responded. "The techs said they can't see very far into the storm, but from what we can see they're pretty sure that the convoy can take it, sir."

Drake considered the situation. On one hand, steaming headlong into an hitherto unseen and unusual storm seemed a fool's game, but on the other...

"Such a squall would throw off any U-boats following us, wouldn't it?" He mused.

The ensign perked up, "Why, yes sir, it should!"

Captain Drake wasn't particularly known for taking risks. When opportunities presented themselves, he had always found himself partial to the less risky option. That was how he got placed as the acting CO of an escort group. The options were straightforward, at least. Either face the relatively unknown potential danger of the opaque storm or face another night of potential U-boat attacks.

"Signal the other escorts and the supply ships to maintain course; we're sailing through that storm."

"Yes sir!"

***

>Somewhere in the Kingdom of the Sea._

Storms were quite the fascinating event, when you spent the majority of your time underwater.

At least that was what Cuttlefish thought, as he deftly paddled through the deep blue waters. Lit an interesting array of colors by the setting sun.

While he personally wasn't very affected by the occasional passing of a storm, he was rather interested in what they left behind. The random debris left floating on the surface or strewn about the seafloor. Some of them are familiar to where he lived, other stuff seemingly coming from far-away places.

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What could he say? It just seemed cool to him.

It was an interest that was at least partially reciprocated in his two friends, the siblings Oyster and Clam, who were following closely behind him.

["How much longer are we just going to swim around out here? We have a scroll-report for school due soon and should probably go work on it...] Oyster signed in the language of luminescent flashes and talon gestures that SeaWings used for communicating underwater, Aquatic.

["Oh, come on!"] Clam quickly responded, ["That's not due for like three days! You can't seriously want to work on it now!"]

["It's better than just swimming around in circles out here, looking for driftwood."] Oyster retorted, ["Also because Mother and teacher said that it's bad to procrastinate, so we should to go back."]

["Swimming around in circles out here is better than working on a scroll report!"] Came Clam's reply. ["Right, Cuttlefish?"]

["Maybe Oyster can go back to get a head start on the report, if she wants."] Cuttlefish mediated.

Oyster grimaced slightly at that. ["Maybe, but it would be awkward to be the only dragonet around the enclave, while the adults are all busy and only the hatchlings for company."]

Cuttlefish couldn't disagree. At the small SeaWing enclave they lived at, the current trio were the only dragonets their age around. Which made it rather boring and lonely when only one of them was present at any one time.

["Maybe we can keep looking around for a couple more minutes, then we can go back to work on the report together."] Cuttlefish said.

["Hey! What's that over there!?"] Clam suddenly signal-shouted.

Oyster and Cuttlefish both glanced suspiciously at him, expecting him to just be trying to change the subject away from schoolwork. But they both followed his gaze to see that he had indeed seen something; a rather large shadow, floating at the surface.

["... Is it a whale?"] Oyster said with the visual inflection indicating a question after a moment.

["Maybe? It doesn't appear to be moving..."] Cuttlefish responded with his luminescent scales slowly dimming corresponding to a statement trailing off.

["Is it dead?"] Clam asked.

["Maybe, hang on. I'm going to get a closer look..."] Cuttlefish gave the siblings a sign to hold back as he cautiously swam closer, eyeing the strange shape closely.

The thing did look kind of like a whale, at least in general shape, but it was much bigger than any whale Cuttlefish had seen or heard of. And it was on the surface for some reason, which lent credence to Clam's theory of it being dead. But didn't whales and other sea mammals sink when they died?

As Cuttlefish swam closer, he realized that he could see other similar shapes in the distance- barely visible through the dim water. and if he thought about it, some of the farther away ones seemed to be wider and fatter than the closer ones. On top of that, they all seemed to be facing, and moving he realized, in the same direction...

What in the great currents...? He thought.

But before he could contemplate the collection of strange creatures much further; one of the sleeker ones, Cuttlefish noted, broke off from the sparse pod and turned... Towards them.

Now Cuttlefish and the two siblings really held still, as the strange whale-thing hovered near over them, almost as if it were waiting. The size disparity between the three dragonets and the strange creature now menacingly apparent.

However, the closer proximity of the huge creature gave Cuttlefish a better look at it. He could see that aside from the general rounded shape of the creature's underbelly, it did not actually have that much in common with an actual whale.

For starters, the front of the creature tapered off to a kind of wedge shape, kind of like a fish but... not.

The creature also did not have any kind of pectoral fins to speak of, like you might see on any kind of fish or whale, but it did have two short fin-things that ran along the length of it. Similar to his own frill that ran down his neck, back and tail, and likely served a similar purpose, he thought.

Perhaps most strangely of all, however, was the rear end of the thing. It did not seem to have any tail fins to speak of, but it did have a cloud of bubbles coming from the back of the creature. And Cuttlefish swore that he could almost see a... spinning thing? At the front of the bubble trail. He could also now see a small vertical fin-looking thing just behind the bubble trail.

After the silent stand-off persisted for a few minutes, none of the dragonets willing to move or flash even a bit to break the equilibrium of stillness, the creature turned back to the pod of other creatures and moved off, staying on the surface all the while. All of the creatures promptly sped up a little and continued on their way.

The three dragonets floated in stunned silence for a little while, trying to contemplate what exactly they had witnessed.

["...What... what was that?"] Oyster eventually broke the stillness, her luminescent scales subdued in brightness.

["I don't know."] Cuttlefish answered.

["Was it a sea monster?"] Clam asked, looking pale.

I don't know...

***

>Captain Robert Drake's personal log._

~

All convoy and accompanying escorts made it through the storm without major damage, it appears. No vessels were lost, and nothing was damaged to the point of putting any ships in immediate jeopardy. (Which I am grateful for)

However, there are a few matters that are pressing, which seem to be a collective malfunction of many navigational and other electronic equipment. For instance, the ship's magnetic compasses appear to be off.

Even more concerning, the master and various auxiliary gyrocompasses appear to have suddenly lost their calibration.

On top of that, communications report having lost seemingly all background radio traffic, which is odd.

While unusual this could hypothetically be chalked up to the malfunctioning of one ship's systems due to faulty manufacturing quality or just bad luck, but other ships are reporting similar issues.

Techs are speculating that electromagnetic interference from the storm, which did have a heck of a lot of lightning for any typhoon I've seen, is likely to blame for the malfunctions. I'm not a scientist in that field, so I'll leave it up to the egg heads to speculate.

We are not going to break radio silence any time soon to find out what is going on with the lack of radio noise, in case any U-boats or Kondors are nearby.

In the meantime, the convoy was on a course for the British Isles before we entered that storm, so we should be able to just maintain heading and eventually reach our destination even with navigational equipment gone haywire.

I don't want my men to panic.

***

Action Report:

Royal Navy Castle-Class Corvette broke formation, presumably interrogating ASDICS contact, radio silence maintained.

Royal Navy Corvette signaled potential underwater contact, interrogating.

Royal Navy Corvette signaled Negative contact, rejoined formation, no depth charge attacks launched.

Radio silence was maintained.

***

After-Action Report

One of the Royal Navy Corvettes, HMS Lancaster Castle, broke formation suddenly, later confirmed to have been investigating a SONAR contact.

The vessel maintained radio silence as she maneuvered, and did not signal what she was doing.

After approaching the position of the supposed contact, the vessel signaled that it was indeed interrogating a potential submarine contact.

However, the Lancaster Castle's crew later reported that the contact was fuzzy and "strange," and quickly disappeared.

No other vessels reported any such vessels.

The false contact has been chalked up to be a malfunction similar to the ones plaguing the radio and navigational instruments.

Great, another important piece of tech that we need going haywire, how could this get better?

~