Holy Land

Coral Frond told his story at least a dozen times. The Chain Islands had never been threatened by changelings, and the sailors were more curious than suspicious. Over the next few days Gingersnap stayed close to him as much as his duties would permit, but Coral Frond was also more pleasant to be around. With no secrets left, not even to himself, he became confident overnight. He drilled his marines mercilessly, and trained alongside them. With the richer diet on the Nephthys he had become sturdier.

The fleet grew bigger as well. Some of the islands were less than a day apart, so that some nights the sailors could spend on shore. Even the smallest settlements offered a few ships for the cause. There were small interceptors, gunships, carriers, and after two weeks they had dozens of ships of the line. Of these the Wayward Son was the greatest, leading the rest like a mother hen and herself led by swifter vessels.

One evening when the fleet was anchored around a rocky island almost devoid of trees Moonlight emerged on deck near the end of the first watch. She disappeared to the stern and leaned over the gunwale. The watch, consisting of Gingersnap and four other ponies huddled around a lantern, thought nothing of it at first. Their conversation about tropical beaches ceased, however, when their Captain appeared on the roof of the deckhouse. At the peak of the slightly-slanted roof she stopped and raised her horn. From it a single purple orb rose slowly, growing brighter until it was past the tip of the mast, and then quickly shot into the sky. For a full minute the image of the final burst of fire overhead was burned into Gingersnap’s eyes, while thunder rolled over the water.

Minutes passed, then an alarmed cry was heard from one of the smaller ships. A wildly-swaying light was brought to the edge of that ship. Others followed. Curious, the watch of the Nephthys lowered their own lantern and recoiled in alarm.

Though all sailors knew the frightening depth of the ocean, most never saw it. They doled out anchor chains and sounding lines, kilometres at a time in the case of the latter, but it usually sank out of view into some unknown and unknowable abyss. Few would hesitate to lean over the gunwale to retrieve a snagged line, and few would dare do the same if they were atop some hypothetical tower from which all of Canterlot Castle looked like a pin’s head.

The water beneath them had become clear. All the bait fish and plankton had scattered, all their waste cleared away. Lanterns penetrated a hundred metres if not more, and their cones of light were filled with horrors previously unknown to those born to the air.

A gigantic purple tentacle ran beneath the Nephthys, dotted with barnacles the size of a pony’s head. The head of the creature was somewhere past the ship’s bow, with at least four unblinking eyes. Dead eyes of iridescent silver and gold stared up at Gingersnap from even greater depths. These he recognized from the mutiny on the Spectre that seemed a lifetime ago. Deeper still were masses half-corporeal, their outlines fading into the water. All were herded by sea ponies, many thousands darting between the giants.

“Tomorrow we sail for the Snow Queen,” Moonlight said after climbing down to the deck. “The Children of the Night are here, and we are out of time.”

She did not say anything more and went back inside. Gingersnap exchanged solemn nods with the rest of the watch. When they were relieved at midnight they found the crew quarters lit up with lanterns. Many left their bunk at least once that night to gawk at the eerie scene beneath them.

At dusk the topmast of the Snow Queen appeared on the horizon. Morning Breeze squinted through his spyglass, but Yellow Jack was not on that masthead.

His jacket carried wardings against teleportation spells, as did the bodysuit he wore under it. Each sigil was embroidered with a single continuous strand of gold or silver. In terms of efficacy this was second only to carving the marks into his skin. His gauntlets were brand new, leather with bamboo slats and fingers that folded backwards when not in use. “Shooting gloves,” Moondancer had called them, and almost all the ponies were wearing at least one.

In numbers and size of individual ships the pirates were dwarfed by the Kelp Town fleet. An interceptor by the design of the Children of the Night was as big as an Equestrian Navy destroyer, and much more agile. Morning Breeze had always favored those ships; even the Falconeye had been adapted from a blueprint secretly obtained from Kelp Town. As it was he stayed onboard the Infidel. He had always mistrusted the Children of the Night, and discovering his ancestry only made it worse. They were too efficient a force, each one of them too well-equipped. While most Equestrian Navy ships had locked armories to prevent mutiny, the Children of the Night made no practical distinction between marines and sailors. Even their cadets carried at least a knife and a pistol, and at any time there were at least a dozen repeaters on deck. Theirs were the only ships that gave chase to pirates on sight.

Flags flashed across the decks of the many ships: permission to engage?

Morning Breeze nodded to his own officer, a griffin with grey feathers and a frayed beak. The Snow Queen had passed the westernmost reach of the Chain Islands in the early afternoon. Only six days separated Jack from the first of Equestria’s islands.

Bright lamps were lit across the fleet as darkness fell, and parabolic reflectors directed their beams towards the Snow Queen. The first mortars were fired at 1900 hours, the first round of shells being bright sounding flares. The gigantic ship was impossible to miss, but the shells all disintegrated in fireballs well above her masts.

“Keep hitting him,” Morning Breeze hissed to each sailor as he made his round of the deck, scowling occasionally at the Snow Queen under the spotlights. “Fire all the shells. As fast as you can.”

Hornpipe watched the Snow Queen from the bowsprit, having transformed into a three-headed abomination. The middle head bore his usual bearded face, except the beard and mane were caked in whale blood (he had sworn off pony blood some thirty years ago). The other two had burlap skin stretched tight over a frame and were tattooed with swirls and runes and stripes like zebra's. Zebra unicorn heads, if there was such a thing, and in his youth Hornpipe had bragged that he had killed the last two in existence. The rest of his body was marked similarly using whale blood mixed with pitch and perhaps coriander. Steam rose from his bare shoulders.

“Brace for impact!” He bellowed suddenly, as darkness fell over the deck and the last of six hundred shells left the barrel. For a moment Morning Breeze heard only the ringing in his ears. Turning around quickly, he saw the fleet, his fleet, in the distance. Each ship was encased in a flickering magic bubble. He hoped they all had one. The echoes of the previous volley had not faded when shells were flying again.

Yellow Jack’s power was not infinite, and Hornpipe’s dark witchcraft would baffle him for a time. At the bow two ponies had thrown a heavy cloak over Hornpipe and were lowering him to the deck. They did not dare touch the rusted yoke with its two smouldering heads.

They worked in the dark now, without so much as a whisper though the explosions overhead would have drowned out anything. The Snow Queen blocked out a full half of the sky, and from their angle there was no telling which side was the bow. Morning Breeze strapped on his rifle and patted the knife and pistol under his jacket. Then he joined the line of marines that covered almost the entire length of the deck. Only a skeleton crew remained to trim the sails and place the oversized fenders, and even fewer would be left to guard the ship.

The Snow Queen’s deck was nearly fifty metres overhead, too far to throw a boarding hook and beyond the reach of most unicorns. The members of the crew capable of flight hugged the hull all the way up, fastening the hooks without boarding or even peeking over the gunwale. Two to a pony, they half-lifted the rest of the crew onto the deck. Finally the crates were pulled up using ropes: half a tonne each of ammunition and dynamite.

Had they not sailed onboard the Snow Queen in the past the crew would have gawked for much longer. The deck did not feel like a large ship but a small island. Looking across an eighty metre beam, there was no sign of the ocean on the other side. Many of the big steel umbrellas had been knocked over by the first assault, providing valuable cover for gunners. Four ponies could stand comfortable in the deep shadow beneath one of these crumpled structures.

Morning Breeze and his ten marines picked up their share of magazines and grabbed fistfuls of loose ammunition for good measure. They were not a boarding party but an expeditionary force without the option of swift retreat. Each team had a mission, and would not reunite until extraction.

Their point of entry was a deckhouse where the watch would usually take its breaks. The deck was arrayed with over a hundred minor points of entry, but most were too exposed. An officer at the wheel could simply look down to see nine tenth of his entire realm. The oversized hangar doors under the five-storey aftcastle, behind which the ship’s heaviest cannons would normally be housed, were technically invisible. These however opened slowly and noisily. All that remained then were three smaller deckhouses with doors faced the bow.

Moring Breeze’s squad ran between the sparse points of cover towards the stern. Yellow Jack was visible to them as a blinding white beacon atop the aftcastle, the floodlights that were his eyes pointed for the moment towards the fleet.

They had nearly reached their destination when a pillar of fire erupted from adjacent the port side of the Snow Queen. The wind in its wake sent splinters flying across the deck and ripped away ten feet of gunwale nearest the explosion. Morning Breeze grunted under his breath as a five-inch sliver embedded itself into his chest along with many smaller projectiles. The pony next to him lost a piece of his left ear, but all remained silent.

Duchess Spring and her crew of five were no more.

Yellow Jack had gone dark. Overhead dozens of bright shells were raining down, and an observer from any point on the Snow Queen would have sworn that they were all coming straight at him.

The team now proceeded with greater caution and new urgency. In a few seconds the entire deck would be set ablaze. The gunners under the umbrellas would be spared the worst of it, but Morning Breeze’s group were completely exposed.

The deck house was a mess of greasy ropes and assorted tools. They all clambered inside, Morning Breeze picking up the rear. In the last seconds as the first shell struck the deck he looked to the aftcastle one last time with dark-trained eyes. Though he was not expecting to see jack the sight of his abandoned post still filled him with dread.

The deckhouse rattled from the bombardment. Everything that had been kept off the ground by any means fell. In the darkness they dug through the pile until a trap door was found, and one by one dropped down into a ship built to transport an army.