Count Tirpitz did not stare at the slipway because he had never seen a submarine before.
He stared because he had—and this was not that.
Germany already possessed a U-boat. U-1, launched years ago, commissioned in 1906—built to teach the Navy what it could about submerged machinery, cramped steel, and the uncomfortable truth that the sea had more layers than admirals liked to admit.
But U-1 had been an experiment.
A coastal creature.
Slow. Short-legged. A thing meant to lurk near home waters, to test equipment and doctrine and nerves—nothing more. Even the great naval powers treated submarines like tricks: weapons of small nations, useful for ambushes, unsuited for real war between fleets.
And inside the German Navy, that prejudice had hardened into habit.
The more battleships Germany laid down, the more everyone forgot the little steel fish. The Admiralty thought in dreadnoughts and battlecruisers now—steel cathedrals, visible, loud, decisive. Submarines were whispered about in technical committees and then politely ignored when the real budgets were discussed.
Tirpitz had been guilty of the same.
Had Oskar not been standing beside him—calm, smug, entirely too pleased with himself—Tirpitz might have dismissed the whole thing with a wave of his hand.
Instead, he found himself silent.
Because Oskar had earned the right to be listened to.
The Crown Prince had pushed the fleet forward more in a few years than most ministers managed in a lifetime. He had been wrong about some things, certainly—but when Oskar called something a secret weapon, it was rarely a joke.
Tirpitz let his eyes travel over the hull again.
Longer than U-1. Cleaner lines. A shape that looked less like a novelty and more like a predator. Even sitting still, it carried intent.
Oskar watched him, then finally spoke, voice light with satisfaction.
"My man Tirpitz," he said, "yes. Your eyes do not deceive you."
He gestured at the slipway.
"The secret weapon is a submarine."
Tirpitz's moustache twitched.
"A submarine," he repeated, as if tasting the word for hidden poison.
Oskar didn't flinch.
"But not a toy," he added. "Not a coastal experiment like U-1. This one is built for real combat."
He stepped closer to the hull, palm brushing the steel like a man greeting a loyal animal.
"If Germany possesses a true submarine force," Oskar said quietly, "it will give us surprises the British cannot easily answer."
Tirpitz frowned, still unwilling to surrender his instincts.
It was, undeniably, different. Larger. Sleeker. Almost… elegant. Compared to this, U-1 really did resemble a crude first attempt—an ugly duckling beside a hunting bird.
What Tirpitz did not know—and what Oskar did not volunteer out loud—was how little "new invention" this truly required.
Oskar had not discovered some miraculous principle.
He had remembered shapes.
Forms that had already proven themselves in another era, another war. He had simply dragged that memory backward through time and forced German industry to catch up.
Sometimes genius was not creation.
Sometimes it was theft—from the future.
Oskar turned slightly.
"My man," he called, "Herr Holland. Please."
An older man stepped forward from the shadows near the slipway—compact, stern, with the posture of someone who had spent his life arguing with skeptics and refusing to lose.
John Philip Holland.
The name was known in naval circles even here—spoken with grudging respect by engineers and with irritation by traditionalists. The Irishman had built one of the first submarines in the world that could be taken seriously as a weapon, not a novelty.
Tirpitz's eyes narrowed.
"You persuaded him to come here," he said, half accusation, half disbelief.
Oskar's smile sharpened.
"I asked," he said. "And I offered him something worth more than money."
Holland's expression didn't soften, but there was fire behind his eyes when he spoke.
"I'm here because I like the idea of Britain learning humility," the old man said, his accent rough as stone.
It wasn't only pride that had brought him.
He was Irish. And the Irish understood empires the way wolves understood traps.
Oskar had promised him that if Germany ever broke Britain's back in a future war, Germany would support Irish independence. He had also offered Holland's family a path into Germany—work, residence, the long process toward citizenship—something solid, not merely words.
In Holland's world, words without leverage were nothing.
So he had come.
And because Oskar had come with impossible insight and the full weight of German industry behind him, Holland now stood before the Imperial Navy's minister ready to introduce a submarine that was—quietly, dangerously—ahead of its time.
Holland placed a hand on the steel hull.
"This boat," he said, looking Tirpitz in the eye, "is not built to hide near the coast."
He tapped the metal once, like knocking on a door.
"It's built to go hunting."
Tirpitz stared at the slipway again in silent wonder.
"Yes, Your Highness," Holland said briskly, already moving. "But if we're going to talk about her properly—come. You need to see her from the inside."
He didn't wait for permission.
He led them along the slipway with the restless pacing of a man who had spent his life arguing with admirals who didn't like what the future looked like. Workers stepped aside. The Eternal Guard shadowed the party like silent statues. Tirpitz followed with stiff dignity, as if the very act of approaching a submarine lowered the tone of the shipyard.
Up close, the hull was… wrong in the way all new weapons were wrong.
No proud silhouette. No towering guns. No obvious place to stand and feel heroic. Just steel that promised to vanish.
Holland rapped his knuckles against the plating.
"U-1 was a lesson," he said, with barely concealed contempt. "A coastal curiosity. This—" he gestured toward the sleek body, "—this is a boat you can take to war."
Oskar watched Tirpitz's eyes track the lines. The minister was trying not to be impressed.
Trying, and failing.
Holland pointed to the markings near the bow, his voice sharpening with pride.
"His Highness named her the U-100 class," he said. "Prototype—yes. But functional. Sea-worthy. And built with the assumption that you intend to use her beyond your own shoreline."
He climbed first, as if daring them to keep up, and dropped through the hatch with practiced ease.
The air inside hit like a slap—oil, metal, confined human breath. The passageway was narrow enough that Tirpitz's shoulders almost brushed both sides. The boat did not welcome important men. It tolerated them.
Holland turned, eyes bright.
"She displaces a few hundred tons," he said, tapping the bulkhead. "Forty-two meters long. Built to be carried by the sea, not dragged through it."
He gestured toward the engine section.
"Diesel engines for the surface," he said. "Electric below. You run on air when you have it, and on silence when you don't."
He spoke quickly, as if afraid someone might interrupt him with ignorance.
"Surface speed—thirteen knots under good conditions," Holland continued. "Submerged speed—seven, when you're pushing her. You're not racing battleships underwater. You're positioning. Waiting. Striking."
Tirpitz grunted, already unimpressed by speed.
So Holland hit him where it mattered.
"Range," he said. "That's the difference. She can travel thousands of miles on the surface without needing to cling to the coast like a frightened child."
Oskar could see Tirpitz's posture shift.
That was the first crack in his bias.
Holland moved forward again, touching metal like it was alive.
"Depth," he said. "A hundred meters. Deep enough that most men will panic before the boat does."
He stopped at the forward section.
"And the teeth."
He pointed.
"Three torpedo tubes," he said. "Two forward. One aft. And storage for more." His grin turned sharp. "Enough to kill more than one target before you have to go home."
Then, as if it were an afterthought, Holland nodded toward the gun mount.
"And a deck gun," he added. "Seventy-five millimeters. Not for battleships. For merchantmen. For finishing work without wasting torpedoes."
Tirpitz stared in the cramped half-light.
He didn't like it.
Not aesthetically. Not morally. Not emotionally.
And yet he could not deny what his mind was doing—calculating. Mapping. Seeing routes.
Oskar let the silence sit for a moment.
Then he spoke, voice mild, as if he were discussing rail schedules rather than strangling an empire.
"With that range," Oskar said, "the eastern Atlantic becomes accessible." He glanced at Tirpitz. "Even the American coast, in time—if we choose."
Tirpitz's eyes narrowed.
Oskar continued, calmly, because calm made monstrous ideas feel reasonable.
"If war comes, Britain survives on sea lanes," he said. "Food. Coal. Cotton. Rubber. Everything that keeps an island empire alive." His expression didn't change. "A fleet fights battles. But supply lines decide whether a nation can endure a war long enough to win it."
He let that sink in.
"If we build hundreds of these," Oskar said, "we don't need to 'outnumber' the Royal Navy in battleships. We need to make their shipping bleed. We need to make insurance impossible. We need to make the Atlantic… dangerous." He paused, then added with faint cruelty, "And yes—when tea becomes scarce in London, the panic will be immediate."
Tirpitz inhaled slowly.
He had always preferred honorable, visible war. Men lined in steel. Fleets meeting like dueling knights.
This was not that.
This was a knife in the dark.
And yet Tirpitz was not a fool. He knew what blockades did. He knew what hunger did.
At last he spoke.
"Your Highness," he said carefully, "the submarine is… excellent. But surface warships remain the guarantee of victory. Control requires presence."
Oskar nodded, as if Tirpitz had just confirmed the point rather than opposed it.
"Of course," he said. "Submarines are not control weapons. They don't hold sea lanes." He looked at the bulkheads around them. "They break things. They weaken. They force mistakes."
He met Tirpitz's gaze in the cramped steel womb.
"Our surface fleet exists to control," Oskar said. "Our submarines exist to destroy—transport, morale, confidence. And when the time comes…" his voice lowered slightly, "they exist to strike the enemy fleet when it isn't expecting to be touched."
Tirpitz's mouth tightened. "And how do you intend to 'fully unleash' this force?"
Oskar smiled.
Holland watched him like a man watching someone open a cage.
"I call it Wolfpack," Oskar said.
Tirpitz's brows rose slightly.
Oskar spoke evenly, as if describing a hunting technique rather than mass death.
"Not one submarine stalking alone," he said. "Several. A dozen, if necessary. They spread along the likely route of a convoy or fleet." He traced an invisible line on the map in his head. "They report sightings. They converge. And when the target is trapped—"
He stopped, letting the idea form in the air.
"They strike from multiple angles at once," Oskar finished. "Confusion. Panic. Evasion impossible. If it happens at night…" He shrugged lightly. "So much the better."
For a moment Tirpitz didn't speak.
Then a cold shiver went through him—not fear for himself, but the instinctive realization of what it would feel like to be on the receiving end.
A convoy. Darkness. Then water erupting. Explosions without visible enemy. A fleet dying without being allowed to duel.
It was vicious.
Effective.
And utterly modern.
Tirpitz exhaled.
Slowly.
He looked around the steel corridor again, and for the first time his expression was not dismissal.
It was calculation.
"Your Highness," he said quietly, "this… is potential."
Oskar's smile returned.
"That," he said, "is exactly what I promised."
---
In the days that followed, Count Tirpitz returned to the Admiralty.
There were meetings. Arguments. Calculations scratched onto paper and erased again. Traditionalists protested. Pragmatists listened. And in the end, numbers—cold, unavoidable numbers—won.
The decision was made quietly.
An initial order for fifty U-100–class submarines.
Enough to test doctrine. Enough to train crews. Enough to make Britain nervous without announcing the fact to the world. And with the provision already written into the plan—if improved variants proved themselves, another fifty would follow.
One hundred submarines.
Not a fleet meant to be admired.
A fleet meant to haunt.
Oskar on the other hand did not return to Potsdam.
Instead, he remained at German Works shipyard, disappearing into the yards with John Holland and Brutus, arguing over diagrams, tolerances, engines, crew fatigue, torpedo reliability—everything that could go wrong before it ever went right.
Brutus, already a giant of a man even before the shipyard consumed him, looked increasingly feral under the workload. Between German Works and Pump World, he moved like something halfway between engineer and prehistoric beast—hair unkempt, clothes permanently stained, muscles corded and brutal from lifting steel and iron as if they were gym weights.
Oskar looked little better.
Sleeves rolled up. Uniform discarded for work clothes. Hair pulled back carelessly. Hands blackened with grease and chalk, leaning over drafting tables one moment and climbing steel ladders the next. To an outsider, he might have looked less like a crown prince and more like a man who had wandered out of a myth—some iron-age warlord obsessed with machines.
It suited him.
Here, the future wasn't spoken.
It was forged.
Oskar checked the time and felt the familiar pull toward the next unfinished thing.
A smile crept across his face—sharp, satisfied, almost boyish.
"Alright," he said. "Let's go see some planes."