We Sail For Celestia

At a quarter past ten, Blueblood's steward-midshippony brought a cup of coffee to the bridge for the Admiral. The cup rattled in its saucer as the young stallion carried it; not because of nerves, but because the Chevaline was shaking beneath his feet as its turrets roared, hurling their big shells across the water. The range with the Kirin dreadnaughts was down to twelve thousand yards as the two lines of ships ran on a parallel course. Upon reaching the bridge, the midship-pony, Silver Tree, could see them through the bridge windows, whose glass had been removed in preparation for battle to avoid turning each pane into a thousand tiny bullets in the event of a nearby explosion. He could smell the sea air gushing in, and he could almost smell the Admiral's fear.

Blueblood's eyes were glued to his binoculars so that the bridge crew would not be able to see the growing panic in them. While the battle had begun with a fine blow against the Kirin, when Green Haze's battlecruisers had forced through their screen, sunk two cruisers and one battleship, the situation was far more finely poised than that initial success would suggest. Green Haze, after raking the other two Kirin battleships with fire and damaging them both, had been forced to turn tail and run, caught between a rapidly approaching Kirin destroyer flotilla that his own damaged destroyer escorts had been unable to repel, and the five Kirin battlecruisers who had looped around to the rear of the fleet's main line and passed astern of their own battleships. Separated from the rest of the fleet, Green Haze had urgently signalled for more destroyers to be sent to his aid so he could unleash another torpedo attack on the incoming Kirin battlecruisers, but the Equestrian flotillas were already engaged in flank screening to keep the Kirin destroyers away from Blueblood's capital ships.

Green Haze had actually gone against the rule that he had just seen observed a short time earlier, for when the Kirin destroyers had lunged forward, he had actually turned his battlecruisers toward them. It had worked, catching the smaller ships by surprise and forcing many of their torpedoes to be launched prematurely or not at all. Green Haze's ships conducted a lightning attack, secondary batteries roaring, pulverising three Kirin destroyers before the rest made emergency turns and fled for safety behind their own battlecruisers. To stay and duke it out with capital ships was a death sentence for any smaller craft. Their armour and armament simply could not hope to compete. After that success, however, nothing had gone the way of the ponies.

Green Haze had withdrawn behind his battered destroyer screen, reforming with Blueblood's battleships as per the Admiral's orders, flashed from signal lamps. Bringing up the rear, the three battlecruisers passed the Avenger, heavily damaged and listing to starboard, with flames licking across her quarterdeck. As the trio of ships raced through the water, the crew of the Avenger, assembling on deck to abandon ship, gave a hearty cheer, waving caps and flags, somepony holding the Equestrian ensign aloft, tightly gripped in his hands. The ship's band, gathered on the foredeck, struck up the national anthem. They received no reply from the battlecruisers, whose crews were far too busy to respond, except for a single signal, flashed by lamp from the bridge of Green Haze's flagship.

Good luck. Celestia protects.

Kirin shells began to fall around the battlecruisers, plumes of water rising into the air. Blueblood's ships were outnumbered; despite their kills, Green Haze's charge had not managed to change the balance of power significantly. The Kirin still had far more capital ships, and they were the ships that really mattered. They were the ships that would win the battle, barring some spectacularly successful torpedo attack from destroyers.

Or from a submarine.

A flag rose to the top of the main signal halyard aboard the Chevaline.

Torpedo sighted.

The flagship began to haul itself around to port. The ships in line behind her interpreted that as a turn away from the torpedo, as was usual procedure. But turning to starboard would have brought the battleship closer to the Kirin, in range of secondary guns, and Blueblood had ordered a turn toward the torpedo, which had seemingly come from nowhere. Its track of tell-tale bubbles had been spotted by a lookout, then confirmed by a second. It had originated from a patch of empty ocean, and that meant it could only have one source.

"Fire two!"

A pulse of compressed air rattled the IKV Formata as the second torpedo raced from its tube. Cherry Cascade, eyes glued to the periscope, watched the ponderous bulk of the Equestrian flagship heel over toward them; unexpected, but not necessarily unwelcome. The Equestrian destroyers with their hydrophones were, for the most part, a fair distance away, though no doubt some would begin hurrying to their location at any moment. Having shadowed the Home Fleet ever since her engagement just after the hurricane, the Formata was nearing the limit of her endurance, with her diesel fuel and food supplies both running low. Another day or two and Cherry Cascade would have had to call it quits and turn for home, but the ponies had met the Kirin fleet at just the right moment.

Sneaking through a gap in the destroyer screen when the Equestrian escorts were repositioning at the start of the battle, the Kirin submarine had been waiting for the right moment to strike. Now, with the Equestrian battleships engaged and the Kirin ships which lay beyond being past the maximum range of her torpedoes, Cascade had decided the moment had come. She could fire without danger of striking her own ships, and she had a clear shot at the Equestrian flagship. What better moment could there be?

"Fire three, fire four!" she ordered. The crew complied, sending two more torpedoes on their way from the bow tubes. The second battleship in line was steaming onward, either oblivious to the danger or confused by something. Perhaps the flagship had ordered it to maintain its heading? Either way, it was steaming right toward the tracks of her four torpedoes. Cascade barked an order for all four tubes to be reloaded, and kept her eyes on the prize. The flagship was coming about hard; some eagle-eyed bastard had spotted the first torpedo and immediately signalled the bridge. But the second ship in line, if her simple calculations were correct...unless they made a sharp turn in the next five or six seconds...

They didn't. The second ship kept charging on, heavy guns blazing, hurling shells at the Kirin fleet. Verdant Vision, the hydrophoneer, had identified it as one of the Princess-Class just from its prop noise, and that meant it had to be the Luna, the only vessel of that class assigned to the Home Fleet. Cascade could see signal flags flying from the mast of the flagship, though she couldn't identify them through the clouds of gunsmoke and the spray from Kirin near-misses. Perhaps the Luna was having similar problems reading the signals? It could explain why the ship was not following its leader. Whatever the reason, she was happy about it. Any second now...

A loud, dull roar echoed through the submarine as the first torpedo struck. Cherry Cascade saw a towering plume of water rise above the deck of the Luna, which immediately began to heel over to port. A second boom followed, and a second tower of spray that washed over the battleship. A few more seconds would pass before the third and fourth torpedoes arrived, and time was precious.

"All astern one third. Make ready tubes one through four," she ordered. There were more battleships to target, and still time in which to do so- though not as much time as she would have liked.

"New contacts! Bearing zero-six-zero degrees," Verdant Vision called, though how he could distinguish incoming ships from the creaking and groaning of the heavily damaged battleship amazed his captain, even after so long on patrol. "Fast turn rate...destroyers, ma'am, at least three. Range is about fifteen thousand yards."

"Where did those bastards come from?" Cascade growled. She swung the periscope around and, sure enough, Verdant Vision was absolutely right. There were three destroyers looming out of the grey swell, having come out from behind the line of battleships somewhere. They were off to starboard of the submarine, near the smoking hulk that lay at the rear of the main Equestrian line of battle, blasted and buffeted by heavy Kirin shells. Beyond them she could see a trio of much larger ships, too; the Equestrian battlecruisers, going hell for leather to catch up to their flagship and get into formation. Oh, to have a clear shot at them, too!

But that was fanciful. The Formata only had enough torpedoes left for one more volley, unless she wanted to turn and bare her backside to the enemy to use her stern tubes as well. Best save that for an emergency, Cascade thought to herself. They would get one more shot at a battleship. The flagship, alas, was prow-on to them, presenting a minimal target. But as the third torpedo tore into the Luna's flank and the fourth missed astern, Cascade knew she had a chance at striking the third ship in line.

"Tubes one through four loaded!" someone sang out from for'ard.

"Helm, maintain course. All stop," she ordered, waiting for the opportune moment.

"Fire one, fire two!"

Again the submarine vibrated with the violent expulsion of air from her forward tubes as two more torpedoes left the vessel, streaking through the water. The Equestrian battleship was making emergency maneouvers to try and avoid a collision with the Luna, which was directly ahead of her in the line of battle, but would that help her?

No it would not, Cascade saw with a grim smile. The ship was turning to port, in order to pass to Luna's left and not impede the firing of the damaged ship's guns. That would put the third vessel in line to be struck by the torpedoes that had just been fired, or, if it managed to escape, the Luna would be hit instead. Either way, the fish would not be wasted. She took a sip of water from a flask at her hip before returning her eyes to the viewfinder.

"Range on those destroyers, phones?" she asked.

"Thirteen thousand yards," Verdant Vision replied.

"Alright. Engine room, all ahead two thirds. Helm, turn to port and steer heading three-three-zero," the captain ordered. No time to waste on seeing what happened to the battleships. The destroyers were getting closer, and ideally the submarine would be nowhere near where they might be expecting to find her by the time they arrived. The flagship had evidently relayed news of the Formata's presence to them, since she had been the only ship which had seemed to react to the first salvo of torpedoes, and...

"New contacts! Bearing two-niner-zero, range eighteen thousand yards. Light screws, fast turn count, more destroyers off our port quarter, captain."

Shit.

Part of the flank screen must be coming around too, closing in on their location. It was a pincer movement, almost like it had been planned all along. But it couldn't have been, or else the battleships would have reacted much more rapidly to the torpedo threat. No, they had definitely achieved surprise alright, but somehow, the destroyer escorts had been alerted to their presence. Now it was a dangerous race against the incoming ships, which had a much higher top speed on the surface than the submarine did below the waves, propelled by her electric batteries. Even if she surfaced to use her diesel motors, she would still be much slower than the destroyers who were now in pursuit of the hidden threat, their hydrophones pinging the water. Verdant Vision could hear them, shrill and piercing notes in his headset, reporting the issue matter-of-factly to his captain.

"Steer heading two-one-zero degrees. All ahead full," Cascade ordered. The batteries thrummed with silent energy, the prop churning the water behind the submarine as they began to drive to the west, hoping to get sufficiently far away to escape the closing net before one group of destroyers or the other managed to get in between them and the open sea. As they turned, one of their torpedoes struck the third battleship in line, while another, missing this new target, hit the already battered Luna. They had certainly done their job, and now it was time to run like hell. Heading east would take them under their own fleet, which might sound like safety. But the Formata was not operating under the direct control of the Kirin High Admiral in command; rather, she was an independent vessel who had been dispatched on patrol. The Kirin ships would not necessarily expect a friendly submarine to be in the area, and they had already reported encounters with Equestrian subs that had been trying to interdict their supply lines. Chances were high that the Formata[,/i] even if it escaped the Equestrian destroyer screens, would end up bombarded by depth charges from her own comrades if she headed east.

No, it had to be west. The destroyers in pursuit would not dare go too far from the fleet without explicit orders. Their first duty in a fleet action was to protect the capital ships, not to go gallivanting off like dogs chasing a hare. But if they could intercept the submarine while it was still in the area, that was a different matter.

"Make depth one hundred," Cascade ordered in a low voice. "Rig for silent running. Tubes three and four and both stern tubes are to stand by."

The crew scrambled to obey, as quietly as possible. They donned cushioned slippers over their feet to muffle their footsteps, stowed all loose tools away, spoke only in whispers. During the attack there had been necessary noises like the torpedo tube hatches being opened and closed, but that had been alright. There had been no destroyers in the vicinity. Now there were. Through the metal hull, Cherry Cascade began to hear the rhythmic beat of the destroyers' propellers as they closed in, the sound which Verdant Vision had been listening to for ten minutes over his headset. Hydrophoneers on board the surface ships would be listening, too, and a trained operator could easily detect the sounds made by a submarine, even one running 'silent'. It would only be a matter of time until they were being directly hunted down. if they weren't already. The destroyers were much faster than the Formata. Even the older models had a top speed of four times that of the submarine's maximum underwater velocity, while the newer classes of destroyer could outpace her five times over.

"Make depth one hundred fifty," Cascade whispered to the diving officer. "All ahead one third."

The submarine pitched downward and descended into the depths, smoothly, gently, sweeping the water aside with its pointed prow.

"Depth one-fifty."

"All stop," Cascade muttered in a hushed tone. The slight hum of the electric motors died away, as did the noise of the boat's propeller. All they could hear now was the whop-whop-whop of a destroyer's prop blades cutting through the sea above them. Verdant Vision gestured to the captain, held up two fingers, pointed upward. Two destroyers, not just one. The others were still closing in, or perhaps circling the area to cut off any escape routes, surrounding the submarine like a police squad swarming the house of a murder suspect.

Whop-whop-whop.

Whop-whop-whop.

The pitch of the sound changed. The destroyer was heading away from them. Cascade realised she had been tensing every muscle in her body, and let her shoulders relax a little. Her throat was dry, but she dared not reach for her water flask in case it made a sound. The nervous faces of the crew peered out of the semi-darkness like frightened kittens. This was the first time during their entire weeks-long patrol that they had been in any danger. The second destroyer closed in, its engines rattling, propellers swishing. It too passed overhead.

Verdant Vision tapped her urgently on the backside, the only part of his captain he could easily reach. "Depth charges!" he hissed through gritted teeth.

"All hands, brace...!" Cascade raised her voice loudly enough for everykirin in the control room to hear. They quickly relayed the signal to other compartments. Cascade's shoulders were tense once more. She kept a firm grip on the edge of the chart table with one hand and resisted the urge to look upward. It was instinctive, but she would see nothing but the metal of the pressure hull- the thin, oh so very thin metal.

The submarine suddenly shook and groaned. Lights flickered. A depth charge had exploded; not a near miss, perhaps fifty feet above them and slightly astern. But destroyers never dropped a single charge. They dropped them in patterns, in strings, rolling the metal drums from the fantail and into the water as the ship drove forward, trying to bracket the target. If the first depth charge missed, maybe the second, or the third, or the fourth would strike close enough to do damage.

More sudden shocks rocket the boat, more violently with each explosion. Cascade held onto the chart table as the deck beneath her swayed. It reminded her of the fair, the funhouse ride she had been to many times as a foal, where the walkway would rock back and forth and side to side as giggling Kirin children tried to navigate their way across it. There was no laughing now, though, just grim and half-panicky faces. Young Kirin who had never been under attack before. None of them had. This patrol by the Formata and her two distant sisters, wherever they were right now, was the first combat deployment of submarines in the Kirin Navy's history. It had been a successful one for Cascade and her crew, sinking one battleship and one oiler, and probably getting a second battleship just minutes earlier, as well as damaging a third. Now they could only hope it would not be a patrol cut violently short.

The destroyer's propellers and engine noise receded away, but another source of danger was approaching fast from astern; a second escort was sweeping in to parallel the course of the first, a hundred yards or so to the south of the leading ship, and that would bring them right over the submarine.

"All ahead two thirds, steer heading three-one-zero!" Cascade hissed. They would have to risk it. If they stayed where they were, the depth charges would come raining down right on top of them, like the shells which had been falling incessantly on Harmony Bay's defences for weeks. They had no thick concrete to protect them, just a painfully wafer-thin metal hull. Moving would make noise, but staying still would be even worse, especially if the Equestrian ships had their depth reading. The deeper the charges detonated, the closer they were to the submarine, the more damage they would do.

The Formata swung away to the north, her propeller cutting the water, a sound audible to a trained hydrophoneer, though probably not over the sound of his own ship's engines. That was why the destroyers were operating as a pair; the first ship, which had already passed overhead, was now sitting idle, her engines gently humming instead of rattling and throbbing, props softly swishing the seas instead of churning it up into a frothing wake. just enough to keep it under way, enough to be able to open the taps and move swiftly again if a torpedo were to suddenly break the surface, but quiet enough for their hydrophones to hear.

And hear they did. Evidently the two ships were communicating, either by radio or by signal lamps or flags, for the second destroyer suddenly changed course too, tracking the submarine and matching its turn toward the north. With that knowledge relayed to her by Verdant Vision, Cascade ordered an immediate turn back to port, back to their original westerly heading, hoping to throw off the destroyer. But the depth charges were already tumbling from their racks.

The first few exploded astern, and they were more accurate than the first destroyer's attempts had been. They were rippling out their concussive blasts through the water at a lower depth, too, adjusting for the sounds picked up by the hydrophones that allowed the pair of ships to roughly, but fairly accurately, guess the submarine's depth below the surface, and set their charges accordingly.

The destroyer passed overhead, moving faster than the submarine could ever hope to achieve, even at its reduced depth-charging speed. There was no outrunning it, and soon it became clear there was no outmaneuvering what was to come, either. The second ship completed its run and the first destroyer came back into play, on a reverse course this time, tracking the submarine through directions from its partner in crime, who had now adopted the listening role. Their second pass was much deeper, much closer, and much costlier.

The Formata rattled like a barn door in a gale. The lights flickered repeatedly, a strobing symphony of half-glimpsed faces creased with panic and stained with grease and dirt. A hard-working crew who could now do nothing but sit and wait and pray. Worse was to come. A near-miss shook the boat and filthy coolant water burst forth from a damaged seal in the machine room. Another shock shattered the lights in the forward torpedo room. A steam pipe split and scalded three Kirin, and then, disaster.

The deck heaved beneath Cascade's feet almost as if they had run aground. An almighty bang and a sound like someone crumpling flat a can of beans. Loud cries and a sudden darkness as the lights fused, then a few seconds of bright, flaring fire, then darkness again. The blood-red emergency illumination flicked back on after a second or two, but the unmistakable sound of flowing water could be heard from somewhere astern.

"Flood alarm, flood alarm!" someone shouted, all noise discipline suddenly gone. "Flooding in the battery compartment!"

Shit.

"Seal that fucking hatch!" Cascade called. A leak anywhere on the boat was bad, but in the battery room, it could be catastrophic. If seawater came into contact with the lead-acid batteries, it would produce clouds of choking chlorine gas, a byproduct of the chemical reaction that would result, and one of the ever-present deep-seated fears of submariners, along with fire and flood. Now the Formata was assailed by every one of these adversaries.

Kirin scrambled through the gloom, flashlight beams sweeping through the darkened compartments. The gushing roar of seawater could be clearly heard, drowning out the sounds of the destroyer's propellers overhead. It had done its job. The submarine was crippled, filling with water, losing power and facing the risk of asphyxiation. Captain Cascade gripped the periscope housing for balance as her crew desperately stumbled in the darkness. The emergency lighting was holding for now, in the control room at least. But the battery compartment was practically pitch black. Flashlight beams hardly seemed to penetrate the murk, like a thick winter fog. The first two Kirin to enter came stumbling back out, coughing and choking.

They shut the hatch, dogging it tight and spinning the locking wheel. But the two Kirin who had entered had been trying to reach the other hatch, wading through the chilly waters. The water and the gas might not have been flowing into the control room, but they were still flooding aft, into the engine room, the aft officers' quarters, and finally into the stern torpedo room. There was no response from that compartment. Nokirin was coming for'ard from there to close the other hatch and seal the battery room completely. They could tell even without visual confirmation, because the inclinometer in the control room was registering a steady change in the submarine's orientation. The bow was rising, the stern was falling. The rear half of the Formata was flooding, filling with water, becoming less buoyant with each passing second. The hatches had to be left open, even in combat, because the crew frequently had to move between stations rapidly. Sometimes they even had to gather at a particular spot to help lower or raise the bow as quickly as possible, to help with an emergency dive or to free the submarine with a kind of rocking motion if it became wedged on the seabed. But if the boat began to flood, they had to be quickly sealed. If the submarine became too negatively buoyant, filled with too much water, it might never rise again.

"Emergency surface!" Cascade ordered, keeping her voice as steady and level as she could under the circumstances. "Blow all tanks, fore and aft!"

The Kirin crew sprang to it, spinning wheels and opening valves. Compressed air was released into the ballast tanks, forcing the seawater within them out under pressure, great bubbling plumes of white froth filling the space around the submarine. It worked. They still had enough buoyancy- just. The Formata rocked and swayed, climbing. The depth gauge spun like a roulette wheel as they climbed, Kirin leaning forward like they were walking into a hurricane gale, trying to counteract the tilt of the submarine's deck. They were tail-heavy, but they were rising.

On the fire-swept surface, lookouts pointed and raised the alarm as a large patch of foamy white water began churning, springing from nowhere. It was near the last known contact point with the submarine. Guns were rapidly spun about on the dogged destroyers, hunting their quarry. The Formata crested the waves like a cork popping from a champagne bottle, her bow rising high into the overcast sky. It hung there for a momentary eternity, like a whale putting on a display for a nearby boat and their crew. Then it plunged back into the water and the rest of the submarine came into view, settling on the surface, ravaged and pockmarked by damage from the depth charges, water pouring in great rivulets from her gunwales and coaming. Hatches sprang open, and several Kirin appeared on deck. Shots from the destroyers, now converging on the submarine, threw up columns of water near her, but from her conning tower came a flag. A universal flag. The white flag of surrender.

The gunfire ceased, but as the Kirin crew began to clamber out onto the deck, something altogether more dangerous was coming right for them.

"Heavy screws, cap! Battleship, coming right for us!" Verdant Vision cried down below in the control room. In the cacophonous tumult of the depth-charging and the emergency surfacing operation, he had been unable to get clear readings on anything that wasn't directly above the submarine, and now that the hydrophoneer could hear again, it was too late.

"Get that flag up!" Cherry shouted up the conning tower's ladder. It was already up.

Kirin on deck waved their arms desperately as the mountainous steel prow cut a sharp track through the water. The Chevaline, in the process of completing its wide and lazy turn to port in order to first avoid the torpedoes and then rejoin its own battle line, was bearing down on the Formata. On her bridge, Blueblood's attention was drawn to the submarine ahead. His first response had been temporary panic, before the lookouts shouted that the Kirin boat was flying the flag of surrender. Asked for his order, Blueblood had suddenly felt a rush of anger. He peered out through the port-side windows at the burning wreck of the Luna. He issued his order, merely two words.

"Ram her."

With her turbines whining and props churning, at full flank speed, the Chevaline closed the gap on the stricken submarine with surprising rapidity. Some of the Kirin on deck jumped overboard in desperation. A couple ran for the deck gun in an even more futile gesture, only to find it had been half ripped away by the depth charges. The battleship's bow towered over the submarine like a mobile mountain. Cherry Cascade saw it coming through the periscope. She could do nothing. Her two loaded bow tubes were facing the wrong way, and the aft torpedo room, well...it was either flooded with water, or with toxic gas. If she dived, the Formata would never surface again. All they could do was take their chances. She gave the order to abandon ship, but there was hardly any time left.

The bow of the Chevaline sliced through the thin hull of the submarine like a surgical scalpel. Water flooded into the control room. Cherry Cascade flung herself to the deck as the grinding squeal of metal on metal filled her ears and made her head ring like a bell. All other sound was drowned out by the cacophony, until it was replaced by the gushing roar of water. She felt it splatter across her, water so cold it felt like fire, like the hot blood of one of her fellow crew was spraying onto her from some arterial wound. But it was the opposite of a dangerous bleed; the water was rushing in, not out. Already it was up to her knees as she steadied herself and regained her feet. The red lighting of the control room had been replaced by the gunmetal grey hull of the Equestrian battleship towering above her, and the steel-grey of the water all around her. Her eyes narrowed reflexively, not used to the sudden brightness. The control room, what was left of it, was filling up. She was practically floating already. Her boat was dead, and so was its crew unless they abandoned it in very short order.

Out, get out.

The artificial mountain passed by above, and as she peered up through the salt spray, Cherry Cascade felt a sudden moment of panic replacing her practised, experienced calm, maintained for the most part even through the depth-charging. It wasn't the bow of the ship she had to be worried about any longer. It was the stern.

She scrambled for the conning tower ladder, instinct taking over again, but there was no ladder. It had been torn away, perhaps still stuck to the prow of the battleship. She could hear them now, the thwomp-thwomp-thwomp of the huge propellers, driving the mighty behemoth through the sea. They would slice into the submarine at any moment, tear her completely in half, turn any unfortunate Kirin who got in the way into mincemeat. She had to get out, swim for dear life...or was it too late for that?

She lunged for the torn-open side of the submarine, trying to clamber free, but the ragged metal was as sharp as knives and simply tore into her palms. She ignored the pain, adrenaline coursing through her veins, but the boat lurched beneath her, pulled to the side by something, briefly caught on the anti-torpedo bulge or the anchor or some other protuberance of the battleship, and she lost her grip. The waters carried her for'ard, sucking her down beneath the surface. She banged against the hull, the chart table, something sharp and metallic. Underwater, the deep and resonant beating of the propellers was almost deafening. The captain was still inside her sinking submarine, and she knew she was dead.

"FInally, some good news!" Admiral Blueblood exclaimed triumphantly, as though sinking the single enemy submarine would win them the battle and the war. Having ripped the Formata in twain, the Chevaline had completed its turn with the other battleships following, the ones that could, at least. The Luna and the Avenger were already dead in the water. Blueblood was down to only three operational battleships already, and the Sol Invictus had been struck near the bow by one of the submarine's torpedoes. It did not impede her gunnery, but it did reduce her top speed, as only a patchwork effort could be made to stop up the hole in the hull, and going too fast would risk the sea bursting in and flooding some of the lower decks.

Blueblood ordered all ships to regroup, following his looping turn away to the west. This would buy them some time and breathing space as the Kirin turned to pursue. Then, it was hoped, once his destroyers, cruisers and battlecruisers were all together and in their proper formation again, they would stand a better chance of scrounging something approaching a victory from the dangerous and undergunned position they were in. Only now did Blueblood remember the cup of coffee his steward had brought to him some three-quarters of an hour earlier. It was stone cold as he sipped it. He strode to the open air of the bridge wing and poured it away in disgust. At that precise moment, he heard a cry from the other side of the bridge, the starboard side, facing the enemy.

"Smoke! Smoke on the horizon!"

Blueblood stormed back onto the bridge. "Smoke? Where? Which horizon, damn you?" he demanded.

"East nor'east, sir," the starboard lookout called. "Beyond the Kirin fleet."

"From Harmony Bay...yes! It's Strongbow!" Blueblood shouted, almost giggling like a schoolfilly in delight. "Finally, finally..." The fear seemed to drain from him, as if a valve had been opened somewhere. That elation lasted less than ten minutes. As the Home Fleet maneouvered, the distant smoke drew nearer, until the source of it began to reveal itself to the Pegasi observers bravely sent aloft during the slight lull in gunfire. Funnels and masts, yes, but there were no Equestrian pennants flying from them. Only the umber and white flags of the Kirin Empire.

Another half hour passed while the Kirin ships closed in upon their prey. The Kirin admiral had summoned reinforcements from somewhere, or perhaps they had been ordered there by their empress. Either way, the Equestrian observers had reported that the enemy would be getting at least five additional capital ships and half a dozen destroyers, plus a handful of cruisers. Whoever was in command seemed determined to utterly crush the Home Fleet, not just see it off and stop it from reaching Harmony Bay.

To the dismay of the bridge crew of the flagship, this news seemed to completely break Blueblood's will. Flag-Captain Champagne Crown watched on in a mixture of horror and anger as his admiral simply wandered away from his post. Crown sent the admiral's young steward after him, but Blueblood locked himself in his cabin. The steward pounded upon the hatch, but to no avail. He returned to the bridge and the concerned face of the Flag-Captain. With every passing moment, the enemy was closing in, and now they had been reinforced, more than replacing the losses they had suffered. Green Haze's charge had been the most successful period of the battle for the ponies so far, but replicating it would be tricky, if not impossible. Without a leader, the Equestrian fleet would soon slide into disarray. As soon as it became time to issue fresh orders, to turn the fleet, to change its formation...

Champagne Crown hurried down to Blueblood's cabin. He rapped his fist upon the hatch and called out. "Sir. Am I to take it that you are no longer in command of this fleet?"

No reply.

"Sir? As your Flag-Captain, I must inform you that if you do not reply, I will have no choice but to signal the Sol Invictus and transfer command of this fleet to Vice-Admiral Moonshot. If I recall your words correctly, sir, you said that you would not hand over command to her unless you were on the brink of death...that frigid bitch, I believe you called her."

The hatch opened. Blueblood had been crying, hardly something becoming of an Admiral in the midst of battle. "Thank you, Captain...just gathering my thoughts, that is all..." he responded. "I am still in command. Signal the fleet."

"What signal should I send, sir?" Crown asked, feeling great pity for his Admiral, despite his abandonment of his post, however temporary that might be. "Should I signal the retreat?"

"You probably should," Blueblood replied. "But you will not. Signal the fleet to make a turn to the north. Perhaps if we can get around them, we can make a run for Harmony Bay, get into range of the shore defences. Blast our way through their guard ships, save the city. We can be heroes still, Captain."

"Perhaps, sir," Crown nodded, but he shared the obvious pessimism he could hear in his Admiral's words. His voice, normally loud and bombastic, was quieter, almost cowed into a different timbre altogether by the enormity of their situation. "If the Sun and Moon are willing."

"And if they are not," Blueblood added softly, "we can be martyrs instead."