We Sail For Celestia

"Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is the ENS Fillydelphia. We have been torpedoed!"

Admiral Blueblood, finally back in his command chair aboard the Chevaline's bridge after a night of ignominious nausea in his cabin, reacted with an alarmed intake of breath to the relayed radio signal, patched through from the radio room to the bridge.

"Torpedoes! I knew it...we were right to be cautious, Captain!" he addressed Champagne Crown. "The confounded storm caused this. If the fleet had still been together..." Crown knew better than to point out the obvious fact that it had been Blueblood who had ordered the fleet into the hurricane in the first place. "Are they certain? Certain they did not hit a mine?" Blueblood demanded to know. The radio operator questioned his panicked companion at the other end of the line.

"Negative! We have been torpedoed. At least two strikes, possibly three, I don't know...by Celestia, we're going down fast...mayday, mayday, mayday! Our position is two-six-eight-eight, three-four-one-six. Please, help us!"

"Should we change course, Admiral?" the helmspony sang out.

"Of course not!" Blueblood replied. "Do use whatever little common sense you have. Find out from the Fillydelphia. Was it a torpedo boat, a submarine, a destroyer? What was it? Did they see anything? Any contacts?"

"No sir. They reported being struck out of the blue," Crown replied. "I suspect it must have been a submarine."

"Damn them! Damn those Kirin!" Blueblood snarled. "Dispatch three destroyers to that area. Have them search for the submarine, and if they have time, rescue any survivors from the Fillydelphia."

"Aye, sir..." Crown replied. "And the rest of the fleet?"

"Continue on to the rendezvous point," Blueblood ordered. He had selected a set of coordinates some miles to the east as a point for the fleet to regroup after the storm had torn their formation apart overnight. There, they would gather in mutual safety, but for now many of the ships, battleships and battlecruisers included, were on their own or with only a modicum of escort. The danger of attack was very real, and had just taken shape in physical form for all to see. Suddenly Blueblood's insistence upon light and radio discipline did not seem quite so onerous and authoritarian. If the Fillydelphia could succumb out of the blue, so could any of them, including the flagship, though the Chevaline was at least being escorted by a cruiser and one destroyer, outfitted with hydrophones to hopefully detect any submerged threats and counter them.

"Mayday, this is the Fillydelphia. We are abandoning ship. Celestia protects, but please help us. Fillydelphia out..."

So that was it, then. The Fillydelphia was sinking, succumbing to the waves and the predations of the Kirin. Would they be the only ones, the unlucky victims of a chance encounter?

"Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is the ENSS Provider! We are under attack by an enemy submarine!"

Another shockwave ran across the bridge. The Provider was one of the fleet oilers, a vital asset. They had already lost one of the colliers overnight thanks to the storm; now they were to potentially lose more of their lifeblood here? That was unacceptable. Unacceptable.

The Provider was, from their radio last contact report, in the same vicinity as the Fillydelphia. This was confirmed a moment later when her radio operator relayed updated coordinates, showing they were within the same grid square on the broad, featureless map of this part of the ocean. That was, perversely, good news, for it meant that they had almost certainly been attacked by the same submarine as the battleship. The strength of the Kirin Navy's submarine arm was not known, but it was not believed to be any larger than half a dozen boats at the most. At least they now knew where one of them was likely to be located. Blueblood ordered two hydrophone-equipped corvettes to the scene to support the destroyers he had already sent. They would hunt this hidden menace down and crush her like a tin can. That, at least, was the hope.

"New contacts! Bearing two-seven-zero and two-eight-zero," Verdant Vision hissed, drawing the attention of his captain. Cherry Cascade was still sweat-soaked,, but a little more jubilant than she had been half an hour earlier. The enemy battleship had gone down like a broken tree limb tumbling over a waterfall, disappearing beneath the waves within three minutes, by her stopwatch-count, taking some five hundred or so ponies with her to a dark, invisible grave. The oiler, on the other hand, was still afloat even fifteen minutes later, blazing merrily like a Hearth's Warming bonfire so beloved of the followers of Celestia.

Not wanting to waste a torpedo on a ship that could not fight back unless she absolutely had to, Cascade had given the orders for a gun action, where the submarine would surface alongside the target vessel and threaten her with her deck gun, giving the crew time to abandon ship and take to the lifeboats before opening fire. It was a tactic which the Kirin Navy had developed in anticipation of a potential war against Equestria, for it was Equestria that had the world's largest fleet of merchant vessels- freighters, fast steam packets, grain carriers, chemical tankers, even a few of the old clippers that traded, historically, between the Kirin Empire and Equestrian waters. Though this oiler carried military markings and, judging by its name, was an auxiliary ship supporting the fleet, one of the pair of tankers that the Kirin's spies in Manehattan had reported accompanying the departing vessels, Cascade decided to be lenient. Under the terms of formal international maritime law, any military vessel, auxiliary vessel, coastguard or coastal protection vessel, except for clearly marked hospital ships, would be fair game to an adversary, and she had every right to simply blow the tanker out of the water as she had done with the battleship. Even merchant vessels that flew the flag of a belligerent nation were considered acceptable targets, but the Kirin had developed their tactics to avoid unnecessary civilian bloodshed. They were not savages, despite their mysterious reputation and the sudden, unprovoked attack they had unleashed upon Northwick and Yakyakistan provinces.

The Formata had surfaced several hundred yards from the tanker and, using a loudspeaker from the top of the conning tower, Cascade had called to her captain for his surrender. With no weapons on board except a few rifles, the Provider's captain had quickly realised he had no option but to surrender. With the rest of his crew, he took to the lifeboats and floated with the tide, helpless to stop the submarine from carrying out its mission. Once the crew were clear, the deck gun blazed into life and put several rounds into the tanker until she was well alight, her flammable cargo happily igniting. Once that was done, the gun crew began to seal the gun against the underwater elements, ready for diving. That was when the hydrophones picked up something.

"All compartments, bridge. Diving stations, diving stations!" Cascade ordered over the internal circuit. "All compartments rig for diving stations."

The crew sprang into life, another well-oiled and well-practised technique, though now being used in perilous conditions for the first time. The gun crew rushed their task to completion, sealing the gun against the waters, while internal hatches were secured and Kirin rushed to their stations.

"Target identification?" Cascade questioned.

"Light screws, fast turn-rate..." Verdant Vision mused. "Destroyer on bearing two-seven-zero and I think two more on two-eight-zero, ma'am. Maybe three in total."

"Then it's time for us to leave," Cascade replied. "All hands ready for diving?" she asked her executive officer, who nodded.

"All compartments report ready! Bridge cleared. The boat is ready for diving, captain."

"Dive, dive, dive!" Cascade ordered. The diving officer pulled the handle to flood the ballast tanks, venting out the air that kept the submarine buoyant and filling them with seawater instead from external vents. The long nose of the submarine slipped beneath the water in a flurry of bubbles, then the deck gun was awash, and finally the stern and conning tower, disappearing beneath the foaming sea.

Soon came the destroyers, whose impending arrival had alarmed the Kirin, steaming at flank speed toward the column of smoke from the burning tanker. They would find and rescue the crew of the Provider, but of the mighty battleship Fillydelphia and her six hundred crew, there was no sign. Nor was there any indication of the whereabouts of the submarine which had sunk her. As abruptly as she had burst onto the scene, the Formata was gone, silently slipping away beneath the waves, perhaps to return to her base and rearm, or perhaps in search of more prey.

The temperature inside Fort V had improved a little, for the competing weather fronts that swirled on high in the atmosphere had battled each other to a kind of stalemate. The freezing winds and snow from the mountains had been moderated by a sudden switch to an oceanic blast of wet, but slightly warmer air. Torrential rain had turned the landscape outside into a swamp, thick mud and flooded shell craters. Rain washed in through every opening, every gun mantlet, every firing port, every observation dome, meaning many rooms and corridors were full of puddles where the water gathered, deprived of proper drainage by the concrete floors and inadequate wastewater grilles. All of the snow which had come earlier in the week now just added to the deluge, melted by the rain and the slightly warmer temperatures. It was a thoroughly miserable place to be, and there was no end in sight, for when the rain stopped, the Kirin would likely come.

Lieutenants Greenwood and Tracer spent quiet night-time hours wishing for a return to their bunks aboard the Defiant, for at least there they could be warm and dry, unless on deck watch. Here in Fort V, Greenwood relived much of the deprivation and discomfort of his time in the infantry, though at least then his actual active service had been in warm, desert conditions, miserable in their own way but perhaps not so pervasively uncomfortable- at least in the desert, it cooled down at night. Here in Northwick in winter, it never warmed up.

Two days and two miserable, chilly nights later, the rain had finally stopped, though that merely meant the puddles and miniature lakes it had formed were slowly set to become stagnant. The fort's own supply of fresh water was contained in a large tank, but could be added to with collected rainwater, provided there were enough purification tablets remaining to add to it. There had been experiments in the past with trying to purify dirty water with magic, but after the ponies taking part had been hospitalised with gastrointestinal parasites, it was decided that magic was not enough, and science would have to ride to the rescue in the future.

The Kirin guns had been relatively quiet during the downpours, content to keep their powder dry and wait out the worst of it, though there had been some sporadic shelling during the evenings when conditions had improved. Now, however, with the rain abating and the skies a little less leaden, they began once more to pound the fortress-line. Several weeks of firing had left the Kirin artillery with little to destroy outside of the forts themselves. The barbed wire entanglements had been mostly cut to ribbons, the outer trenches broken and smashed, shattered wood and torn sandbags. If the Kirin came, they would be reoccupied immediately by the defenders, but there was not much left to occupy in truth, so thorough a job had the Kirin gunners made of their work. Repair details had been out each night, even in the pouring rain, to try and fix up what they could, but filling a few sandbags with sloppy mud and relaying some barbed wire just so it could be blown apart in the next morning's dawn barrage did very little to improve the strength of the fortifications.

After one more night of shelling, and one impressively long and heavy dawn bombardment, including a dozen shells from the enormous siege cannon, the Kirin came at last.

Rising from their trenches beyond the shattered treeline, which had been pulverised by Equestrian artillery, the Kirin poured forward. Heavy machine guns opened fire in support, both from their trenches and atop the two low hills they had captured weeks before and had been using as observation posts for their artillery. The Equestrians rushed out to their trench positions, only to be caught in a mortar barrage, inflicting a few casualties and denting morale. But they took their places, and they opened fire.

With the Kirin now actively assaulting the fortress, Greenwood's guns could now be called into action in support. Their firing ports were opened, thick metal shutters being pulled aside and the guns rolled out on their runners, like on board the galleons of old. Heavy shells with high-explosive and shrapnel warheads were loaded, with only small powder charges behind them- they would be firing at relatively close range, nothing like the thousands of yards the guns could hurl their payloads when firing out on the open water.

The naval cannons were already aimed, pre-sighted on specific points to be fired over open sights like field guns, ranges taken from ranging marks, sticks planted in the ground at certain distances so that artillery and machine guns could be zeroed in and know exactly how far away the enemy was at any given time. As the Kirin slogged through the thick mud, already under artillery and machine gun fire, they added their own power to the onslaught. Greenwood ordered his section of guns to fire, and they bucked and roared, hurling shells at the advancing infantry. Designed to pound medium-size, unarmoured hostile warships into submission, the high-explosive shells made short work of unprotected soldiers, shrapnel tearing through their bodies, their innards pulverised by the shockwave of each blast. Bodies tumbled into the mud, trampled underfoot by the squads behind them as the Kirin's relentless push continued.

To Greenwood, watching through the viewing periscope and firing apertures of the gallery inside Fort V, it could scarcely be described as war. It was simply slaughter, the endless bloodlust of conflict being slowly satiated by body after body, death after death, drinking in the fluids and the souls of the fallen. The Kirin, despite their artillery bombardment, had little chance, for the defences around the fort were still too strong. The ponies occupied the trenches even though they had been half-smashed to oblivion, denying the Kirin their use for shelter. Instead the attackers were caught in no-ponies-land, a morass of mud and half-melted snow, pinned down in shell holes, bleeding out into the quagmire. They were unable to break through, and, under such withering fire, unable to easily retreat either. Fort V was not going to fall so easily, despite day after day of preparatory bombardment from the Kirin artillery.

Elsewhere along the line, however, they were having more success. Fort U, to the north of Fort V, had been heavily pounded by artillery, identified as a potential weak link in the Equestrian line. The fort was close to the storm-wracked cliffs at the northern edge of the peninsula, and the dangers of subsidence and undermining from the ceaseless action of the sea meant that less substantial underground works had been constructed there. Fort U was both less able to withstand a prolonged siege and also less able to repulse a direct attack. As a result of the problems with its construction, it had a smaller garrison, fewer guns, and less supplies in its store-rooms. The Kirin had thus directed the majority of their strength toward it, and rapidly achieved a breakthrough. While Fort V and Fort W were resisting and the Kirin infantry there were going through the meat grinder, their compatriots to the north managed to take the outer works of Fort U by storm, severing its connection with the rest of the line and, by the end of the day, with Fort X, several miles to its rear. The Kirin quickly surrounded the fortress and pushed several regiments through the gap in the line, into the open ground between the two rows of forts. Lacking strong reserves, the Equestrians under General Wild Willow could only mount a small counter-attack, not enough to drive the Kirin back and leaving them in possession of the land all around Fort U.

This setback took time to be relayed to the other forts Greenwood and the others at Fort V did not learn of it until the following morning, by which time the Kirin had consolidated their position and begun assaulting Fort U directly, trying to clear it out so they could take control of its guns and turn them to their own use. Meanwhile, through the night, Kirin troops had been pouring through the gap they had torn in the frontline and advancing south. By the end of the following day, Fort W and Fort V were both surrounded, cut off from the city and the second line of defences to their rear. Wild Willow's attempts to plug the gap had been futile, even with heavy artillery support from the rear forts. She and her subordinates had been taken by surprise at the speed of the Kirin breakthrough, and with a sensible streak the General was unwilling to risk too many of her inexperienced troops- from a hodge-podge of units and services, including the Border Guards and the local militia- in a full assault to retake the surrounded forts. If the counter-attack failed it would leave the rear line of fortresses stripped of much of their garrison and the city itself denuded of its protection. Losing one line of forts was a problem. Losing them both would have been a disaster.

So, a day after repelling the first Kirin attack, the defenders of Fort V found themselves cut off from support, connected only to Fort W to their south by meandering trenchworks but isolated from support or relief from the city. The fort had not fallen, and the defenders were in good heart, but the Kirin would be determined that their morale would crack as sure as the concrete shell that protected them. With the guns of Fort U in their hands, they turned them south, adding their newly acquired firepower to their existing bombardment, including the heavy siege gun that lay beyond the hills, all of which now focused on Fort V as the next target. It would be a long, and loud, night ahead.