"Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit."
—Augustus Caesar
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In the early 21st century the sea level started to rapidly rise. Towns, cities and even small countries were completely overrun with water that left no stone unturned wherever it went. But the floods were the least of humanity's worries. A thick, nigh-impenetrable fog enveloped the oceans and from within it emerged the biggest threat humans have ever faced so far. A fleet of super-advanced warships from the WW2 era. They were unmanned, fully controlled by individual AI. They called themselves the "Fleet of Fog". In just a few years they completely decimated all long-range communication networks, sunk any ship that set out to open sea and shot down every satellite from the orbit.
They obey but one law, one code that their very existence was bound to. The Admirality Code. They followed it without question, killed countless people should the code dictate it. Then, the Admirality Code ordered them to emulate humans. The Fog, should it fight against humans with equal technology, would lose without a doubt. And so to survive they were ordered by the code to adapt human appearance, their habits if at all possible and their way of thinking while staying loyal to the Admirality Code.
However, flaws quickly emerged from the command. With the human mind came many different kinds of feelings and ways of thinking, some of which were selfishness, pride, greed, and most notably the will to be free. A small number of ships tried to defect from the fleet, but they were swiftly sunk or reprogrammed. Some stayed out of loyalty, others out of fear, the reason didn't matter.
This changed however when a major power defected from the fleet. A battleship that brought fear and despair with just the mention of its name. A pride of a nation, a beast made of steel. A sign of power, a show of force. First built by Germans in 1939 as the flagship of the Kriegsmarine. Built to annihilate any opposition, sink any adversary and spread terror across the seven seas. The rightful owner of the throne, the king of the ocean...
Bismarck
A war machine with a reputation that precedes its fierce power. But the throne now lays in lonely silence, awaiting the king's return. Many ships have come and gone to sink the defector, but all failed. They met their end at the end of 380mm cannons and sunk into the blue abyss below whilst he continues to wander the blue waters. How long he is going to last is unknown even to him, nobody wins for long. There will be a day when his guns have fired their last salvo, when his nanomaterial reserves ran dry as his body slowly sinks into the cold depths of the ocean. The future remains unknown, but one thing is certain...
...
...
...
His guns have not gone silent just yet...