Voyages

“Listen here, you overgrown pigeon.” The burnt orange dragon growled out as he took a chunk of the meaty drumstick he had been holding with his teeth. He glared at the Griffoness sitting across from him at the table. “That engine is my pride and joy. Ain’t a thing wrong with it, and I’ll wallop you if you say otherwise.”

Currently, all of the senior officers from the March With Pride were sat in one of the many dining halls that dotted the former palace of Celestia and Luna in Canterlot. The long wooden table was filled with delicacies from each of the creatures’ homeland as one last meal before their five year trek.

Vent, the irritable dragon, was currently arguing with Ganymede over some of the ship specifications. Particularly, the safety of using the engine. After Vent’s little challenge to the Griffoness, Ganymede didn’t look all that impressed.

If Cloud Breaker had a thing for Griffons, he would say that Ganymede was actually quite pretty. Soft aqua plumage, brilliant blue eyes, and fur as black as night on her back half. The way she carried herself did not hurt either, she walked, talked, and generally acted like someone who knew that they had both the mind and body to backup anything she put forward.

A good First Officer.

“I am not saying there is anything wrong with the engine, Lieutenant.” Her voice matched her overall demeanor, cool and smooth. She didn’t sound angry, like most griffons would be after being called a pigeon. “I am simply putting forth a concern considering how it operates. What if we encounter an area of the world devoid of mana?”

“Pah!” Vent waved a pudgy claw at Ganymede. That was the only response he gave to the concerned Officer across from him.

“You see, Commander.” Now it was Lieutenant Jetsam, the ocean blue seapony, who chimed in. “The Leyline Drive developed by Lieutenant Vent and Princess Twilight Sparkle accounted for that.” His voice was fast, off the cuff. No word was measured before it was birthed into the world from his beak. “The ship actually takes in more mana than it can possibly use to power the engine. Some of it goes to power the various...y’know...things around the ship. The rest go into these tanks where it’s stored in case of an encounter you described, which by the way is highly improbable. The atmosphere of the planet seems to be saturated with more mana than we could use in a million lifetimes, and considering that mana is always redistributed back into the environment after use, we don’t have anything to worry about.”

“Thank you…” Cloud Breaker interrupted the awkward silence on the other side of Jetsam’s rambling. “...Lieutenant Jetsam. Very informative.” He cleared his throat and put on his best smile. “He is right though, this ship was built by the best and the brightest, including our own Lieutenant Vent here. Even if we do encounter something unexpected, I have no doubt that we will be able to overcome it as a crew.”

“Captain.” Bulwark spoke up, his voice deep and booming. The minotaur put down his eating utensils and looked to the pegasus at the head of the table. “Permission to speak freely?” Cloud Breaker nodded at the Chief of Security and motioned at him with a hoof to continue. “Do you actually believe in the stuff you say? You don’t even know us that well yet, but you are putting a lot of belief into our abilities.”

“It’s the Equestrian mindset, I suppose.” Cloud Breaker leaned back in his seat. “I’m not putting belief into your abilities, I’m putting my belief into you. I believe that when presented with problems, each and every one of you will tackle them the best you can. I believe that each of you joined this mission for the same reason as myself, so I have to believe in you like I would myself.”

“Very noble, Captain.” Doctor Zebansi interjected. Her smile, seemingly ever present, was now directed at him. “That mindset most likely helped you during the Escallion Depths incident, didn’t it?”

There was a murmur amongst the crew at the mention. Cloud Breaker felt his polite smile falter, but he recovered it the best he could. Now every eye was set on him, waiting for his response or reaction.

“It was where the attitude was forged, Doctor.” Was all he managed to get out as the corners of his smile tugged downwards. “You don’t get out of something like that without learning a thing or two. But that is why we all are here, right? Because we all learned something about the darkness hidden beneath the surface of every creature? We have seen it, confronted it, even fought it.” Some creatures around the table, like Ganymede and Bulwark, had their eyes fill with pride. Others, like Jetsam and Vent, looked down in shame and avoided eye contact. “We know how to handle it. We know what it is like when harmony has temporarily left a place. So we all understand why we must spread it and the ideals of friendship.”

There was a heavy silence as he let his words sink in. He didn’t mean to be a downer, but he had to try to reinforce their mission and position while he could before they departed. This conversation, while not planned, was necessary.

“I propose a toast!” Mandible, the colorful Changeling counselor, stood and raised a glass in his magic. “To the coming adventure!” Cloud Breaker stood as well and raised his glass to the middle of the table. One by one, each of his crew stood and did the same.

“Cheers.” The call came from them all at once. Each took a deep drink from their glasses, small smiles crossing the features of every creature at the table.

“What in The Maker’s name are the Escallion Depths?” Vent belched as he placed his food back on his plate, a small plume of fire coming from his mouth in the process. The Captain was hoping not to get into this, but he supposed if someone didn’t know, they had every right to.

“The Escallion Depths are a geographic anomaly located in the middle of the Badlands.” Jetsam started, closing his eyes as he recalled the information. “First discovered by the Thestral explorer, Escallion, about thirty years ago. It’s a chasm that spans twenty-five miles of the Badlands. The current depth is unknown as no one has ever reached the bottom. Escallion himself went missing delving as deep as he could. Only one group has ever returned from a depth greater than a mile and a half. They were the survivors of the vessel ‘Deep Pulse’, piloted by her captain Air Cutter.” Once the seapony reopened his eyes, he found that everyone at the table was staring at him. “What?”

“You talk too much.” Bulwark mumbled as the eyes returned to the Captain.

“I was First Officer aboard the Deep Pulse.” Cloud Breaker started off his story, doing his best not to meet the eyes of his crew. “We were helping King Thorax locate a rogue group of Changelings using the Deep Pulse’s advanced instruments in the Badlands. As we approached the Escallion Depths, we picked up something...odd.” Cloud fought with his memories as he struggled to remember some of the finer details. “A magical signature that hadn’t been recorded in decades: the beacon from Escallion’s ship. Also some sort of garbled transmission.”

Cloud Breaker stopped and took a drink from the glass in front of him, a delicious and bold red wine provided by Princess Twilight herself. It did good to steady his nerves as he thought back.

“The Captain, against my advice, took us down into the depths. The Deep Pulse was resilient, tough. It withstood a magic cascade point blank when it was first commissioned, he thought it could handle what the Depths could throw at us.” The Captain closed his eyes and sighed.

“What was down there, Sir?” Mandible’s soft voice was the one who spoke first.

“I don’t know.” Cloud Breaker was going to be honest with his crew. “To this day, I have no clue what it was. Some kind of creature or force. We registered it on sensors before we felt it, but not quick enough to get out,. I remember every sensor and meter going haywire first, magic was being pulled out of the ship. Straight from the engine. Then, when it was empty, straight from us. Unicorns losing the use of their horns, pegasi falling from the air as their wings stopped working, earth ponies collapsing as their strength failed them. Then the fighting started.” If he closed his eyes and really thought about it, he could still hear the brawl that encompassed the entire ship. “Harmony, friendship? It abandoned us down there. It was chased away with our magic and our senses. We became animals as the ship fell deeper and deeper into the Celestia-forsaken pit. Me and a few dozen of my crewmates snapped out of it somehow, and we escaped. The Deep Pulse, her captain, and a hundred ponies were left down there.”

“See.” Ganymede spoke softly, looking at Vent across the table. “That sort of thing has happened before, it drained the ship. Without a balloon, if something like that happens we would just crash. What’s to say we won’t run into something like that?”

“Yeah, well we’ll be sure to avoid any pits that venture too close to Tartarus, now won’t we?” Vent laughed raucously as he smacked the seapony next to him on the back. “Plus, we got more than a few eggheads with us.”

“Hehe. Yes, I suppose we do.” Jetsam chuckled nervously, casting an anxious glance at the dragon next to him.

“That’s why you choose this crew.” Mandible spoke once again, studying Cloud Breaker intently. “Everyone here has felt that, the same as you. They all know hopelessness, they all know what it feels like when Harmony is absent.” The Changeling was just as good at reading emotions as his file had implied, it seemed.

“And yet, they’re still here.” The Captain finished. “Each of you have seen dark times, situations that cost lives. You have each been to the bottom of your own Escallion Depths, and you are all still here. You yearn to see those days fade away, not just here or in your homelands, but beyond. You all believe in this mission, the same as myself. That is why you are here.”

Cloud Breaker was not known for speeches, in fact he was more known for his contemplative silences that spoke more than his words ever could, or at least that’s what he liked to think. But part of being a Captain was having these moments that could inspire, and taking charge of those moments.

“Tomorrow, we set off. Five years away from home, five years away from everything we’ve ever known and into the great unknown.” He stood once again, looking into the eyes of each of his Officers. “Tomorrow, we begin an adventure of untold dangers and unknowable adventures. Tomorrow, we will begin this mission to discover new creatures and lands and spread our message of harmony, resolving conflicts where we can and planting the seeds of a brighter future.”

The stallion raised his glass once again, and raised it high. “To harmony, to the future, and to the March With Pride.”

The rest of the table stood and echoed his sentiment with cheer as they raised their glasses and took hearty drinks of their wine. This was a fine crew, and Cloud knew they would do great things out there.