36 hours later.
At the bridge deck of the Morzh Class Submarine, Admiral Vasily yawned after seeping a cup of coffee as he watched his men working on the station with their eyes peeled on the monitor.
They have been following the troopships inbound to Shanghai port since the time they have gotten the orders from the Central Command. A lot of time passed and they still didn't give the order to shoot.
Until there was a shout from one of the men monitoring the sonar.
"Sir! We are picking up acoustic noise from bearing two seven zero and a distance of eight hundred meters. Based on the frequency, it's a ship."
"Are there any commercial ships coming to our location?" the man sitting behind the sonar operator asked as he leaned to the side to take a good lock on his monitor.
"Put it on speaker, I want to hear what type of ship we are dealing with here," Vasili ordered the sonar operator. With a press of a button, a sound reverberated in the bridge deck and everyone paused what they were doing and listened to the sound produced by the speaker.
Vasili closed his eyes, analyzing the sound coming out from the speaker as well as looking into his memories of sounds he memorized to match the sound they are hearing right now to the ones he had memorized.
*Tududugtududugtududugtududug.
The more he listened to the sound, the more the image got clearer in his head. And from that, he can now tell that the sound belonged to a propeller of a certain warship that entered the Yellow Sea five months ago.
The Type-1928C destroyers of the Deutschland Empire.
His eyes snapped open and turned around, facing the sonar operator.
"You, look into your file and look for the Type-1928C destroyers. See if it matches the acoustic signatures."
"Aye aye captain," the sonar operator spurred his hands into action, pulling out a drawer and grabbing a file inside.
He quickly opened the file and searched for the ship Vasili asked him to find. Ten seconds later, he found the ship and its acoustic signature printed on the paper. He looked up at the monitor and back to the file. His eyes widened in revelation.
"Captain! The acoustic signatures in the file match the acoustic signals that we are receiving!" the sonar operator reported.
"Now this makes sense. I have been wondering why they were not moving from their position, they were just waiting for someone to escort them to the Port of Shanghai. They really waited a long time because those Deutschland destroyers were docked in the port of Tianjin. How could I miss this?"
"Once they link up with the troopships, they'll continue their voyage to the Port of Shanghai," the sonar operator said.
"I know," Vasili agreed. "The Deutschland Empire took the threat from the Hanese very seriously, thinking that there is a submarine nearby that will sink their troopships should they continue further. We need instructions from the Central Command. Take us to the communication depth—"
"Captain! I'm getting other acoustic signals from the same bearing and distance. It turns out there's two of them, not one," the sonar operator reported.
"Got it, take us to the communication depth and see if our instructions will change. Our order was to take out the troopships once they reached 250 nautical miles off the coast of Shanghai."
The Morzh-Class Submarines tilted upward as they ascended near the surface of the water. A tether from the radio antenna located on top of the ship protruded upwards to the water's surface.
Once it was on the surface, the radio transmitter started blinking, establishing communication with the Central Command through nearby Ruthenian relay stations.
"Overlord, this is Admiral Vasili, commanding officer of the Morzh-Class Submarines. We have detected two Type-1928C destroyers belonging to the Deutschland Empire, do you confirm?"
"This is Overlord, yes we are aware that the Deutschland Empire has tasked their destroyers to escort the troopships bound to Port of Shanghai."
"Copy, does our rules of engagement change?" Vasili asked.
"Negative, you are not to destroy the destroyers, prioritize the troopships. Should it come to an inevitable circumstance where the destroyers present danger to your men and your ship, it's your discretion."
"Copy that, thank you for the information, Admiral Vasili out."
The radio transmission ended and Vasili returned the radio back to its cradle that is mounted on the wall before glancing at his crew with a determined look.
"The instructions from the Central Command have a few additions. We are not authorized to fire at the Deutschland destroyers if and only if they detected us and opened fire on us," Vasili relayed the orders to his men. "What's the current position of the three troopships right now?"
"Uhm…captain, they are increasing speed and heading towards the Port of Shanghai. Based on the path taken by the destroyers, they will meet each other 260 nautical miles off the coast of Port of Shanghai."
"Good," Vasili nodded in satisfaction and looked at his wristwatch. "We will sink the troopships in the middle of the night. Specifically, in 1900 hours. The time now is 1700 hours, one hour until sunset. We will use the veil of the night as our cover, lessening the chances of the destroyers finding us. Though I highly doubt they'll even find us with their current sonar technology," Vasili let out a short chuckle.
"We shouldn't underestimate our enemy, captain," one of his men said. The crews of the submarine are close enough to give advice to one another, as they are a team who must work together to fulfill their assigned missions.
"You're right about that, but considering the technological gap between our navy to theirs, I'm just stating the obvious."
***
Two hours later, despite the warnings from the Hanese, the Deutschland troopships ignored them and went on to their mission, to land the troops on the Port of Shanghai to take it over.
The Port of Shanghai as of right now is a port without its defense as the military of the government has something to prioritize over one of their many ports.
It was seven o'clock in the evening and the only source of light is the navigational lights from the destroyers and the troopships.
The moonlight was blocked by the thick clouds hanging above, making it hard for any surface warships to detect enemy submarines, if there is one, in the distance. But even if that's the case, the Deutschland destroyers are equipped with mortars that can fire flares that will illuminate the surrounding area for a short duration.
Not only that, crewmembers of the destroyers have their eyes peeled from every corner, looking out of the vast blackness of the horizon using binoculars.
Meanwhile, in the Morzh-Class submarines, they don't have a problem finding the exact position of the troopship. Even if they are traveling in close formation, they can still differentiate who is who according to their acoustic signals. The acoustic signals will be fed to the navigational module of the torpedo so that it will only chase the intended target.
"Captain! They just crossed the line."
"Torpedo is armed and flooded, waiting for your orders, Captain."
"The Hanese warned them and the Deutschland and Britannia ignored them, so I think they are ready for the consequences of ignoring warnings. Fire torpedo one and two."
"Firing torpedoes one and two, aye captain!" the weapons officer repeated his words before pushing a button that will release the torpedoes.
