BridgeWorld

[993AB Day 190]
"I don't understand," Lieutenant Cyst said, closing the report the male unicorn had just read. "This wasn't forwarded up to Command? Why?"

"No, sir. It wasn't," the unicorn Sergeant End Right responded. "Lieutenant Fester didn't consider the matter important enough to warrant bothering the upper echelons when nothing could be found from the search."

"She probably didn't consider the report to be complete and didn't want to leave an open case on the books to possibly mar her record with an incident being just a collection of unsubstantiated rumors," Cyst muttered.

"Sir! It was hardly 'unsubstantiated'!" End Right protested. "Over eighteen sailors on seven ships, including my patrol boat, witnessed the incident! Something came out of that—explosion! We searched the Harbor for days!"

"And found nothing other than a couple of skeletons of ponies who had died years before," Cyst countered. "Even if something had come through, it most likely died due to whatever teleport mishap that sent it here, or it died on impact with the water."

"Or it could've been some sort of water-breathing creature that swam off, sir!" End Right pressed.

"In which case, it's most likely long gone by now," Cyst said scowling. "Even if it does eventually show up somewhere else, it's been well over a year-and-a-half already and probably won't ever be connected to this incident.

"No, she was correct to close this case and file it away," Cyst concluded, shaking his head. "Besides, forwarding this up now would just make her look bad." End Right just couldn't believe his ears at hearing the rejection.

So, politics are going to rule this matter and keep it buried? Okay, there's one last tactic that might work with him… he thought.

"But wouldn't fixing somepony else's mistake make you look good, sir?" End Right ventured. Cyst's head snapped up after he had concluded the matter closed, and the dilation of his pupils told End Right he was seriously considering it. Very seriously considering…. End Right held his breath with hope.

"No," Cyst nearly shouted, suddenly shaking his head. "No, it wouldn't do well for my career to be seen as a back-stabber. No, file it away, Sergeant. The case was closed last year."

"Aye, aye, sir," End Right replied, dejected. After saluting him, he took the folder and made his way to the archives.

The file room was typical with walls lined with filing cabinets and several rows of free-standing cabinets clustered together in what would otherwise have been a large open area of the spacious room to make a number of orderly, yet compact, aisles. But there was also a long table with several chairs along the wall next to the door he entered, with a substantial amount of supplies for making new case files should the need ever arise.

End Right paused, even as the drawer to which the case file he carried was in visible sight from where he stood, and he was quite ready to do as he was told and put the file back to bed forever and be done with a matter that had eaten at his gut nonstop for over 636 days and get back to his routine job as if it never happened.

Instead, he quietly closed the door behind him and moved over to the desk and set the case file of the incident in Baltimare Harbor down on the table, as he got a fresh case file folder laid out. Sitting at the chair, he began making a copy of the folder in question. Only after he was finished duplicating the notes from that folder did he get up and put the original back into the filing cabinet drawer to which it belonged. Then, grimly, he went back to the table, got another fresh case file folder and began making a few notes about his previous and current supervisors….