We Sail For Celestia

Greenshield gripped his rifle tightly, like a foal clutching at his teddy bear or blanket, for that was what it represented. A symbol of safety, however illusory that may have been in reality. To be sure, nothing else was going to keep him safe out there.

The first wave had moved out at eight in the morning exactly, the officers having synchronised their watches beforehand. They had started at a steady walk, or as steady as they could achieve in the fairly deep, settled snow. There was silence at first, nothing from the Kirin lines, no retaliatory artillery fire. The khaki-clad soldiers stood out against the white, but they were walking unmolested across the open ground. At first, anyway.

Once the infantry reached some undetermined point, so far as Greenshield could see it at least, the Kirin suddenly burst into deadly life. Starshells fired from mortars and flare-guns illuminated the landscape in brilliant, terrifying relief and brightness. Rifles and machine guns opened up, and tore into the ponies, who tumbled like bowling pins, screaming and clawing at bullet wounds. Mortar fire began to fall from the sky, throwing up columns of snow and dirt. The first wave had scattered, diving into shell holes created by their own artillery or crouching behind small rocks and boulders to gain what little cover they could. The officers exhorted them onward, blowing their whistles in a futile gesture, like a hoofball referee who had lost control of the game. At least half a dozen officers died inside the first minute of gunfire, easy targets for the Kirin even though, perversely, they blended into the terrain far more successfully than their soldiers thanks to their white greatcoats. Magic shields protected some, at least from direct gunfire, but when the Kirin artillery began to strike from far behind their line, it proved too much for even that otherworldly protection. Not many unicorns possessed magic strong enough to shrug off explosions. That kind of power was more the domain of the Alicorns, and there were no Alicorns on the battlefield. Not anymore, not since days long passed when Celestia and Luna would lead armies to war.

The first wave slowed down, and came to a halt entirely when they reached the Kirin's barbed wire. It was unbroken; the artillery fire was supposed to have blasted holes in it, coupled with sabotage parties creeping out in the dead of night, but the bright moon had precluded any safe wire-cutting, and the light field guns and mountain howitzers that comprised the bulk of the Equestrian artillery had not been powerful enough to blow the wire open. That meant it was down to unlucky ponies, selected to be part of the engineering and wire-cutting teams. Magic could slice through the metal, long explosive tubes, inevitably nicknamed 'sausages' by the soldiers, could blow a clear path. But not from a distance; they had to get right up close, and that meant they were right in the line of fire of the Kirin machine guns.

Greenshield watched on from the woods with a dry mouth and horror in his heart. He couldn't see every last little detail, but he didn't want to. He could see enough. The green and khaki-clad figures sprawled in the snow, the flicker of tracer fire, the fountains of dirt and snow and smoke from every shell and mortar round. He suddenly felt a great pang of pity for the Kirin who had been charging uphill into the maw of his team's machine gun back at the Yakfrost.

"Second wave, make ready!" Major Opal Blitz shouted from somewhere nearby. The cold, pushed to the back of Greenshield's mind by the slaughter unfolding ahead of him, suddenly returned and enveloped his chest in an icy grip. He looked round at the rest of his team. He had no words to say to them, nothing inspiring, no great speech, praising their noble goals. Instead he just settled for a simple nod as the best way to mask his own fear.

"Company ready!" Captain Fine Feather cried, sabre in hand, revolver hanging from its lanyard at her side, her whistle poised between her lips. The grim faces of ponies who had just watched their friends walk to their deaths gazed out to the low horizon, across the killing fields, the gates of Tartarus swinging open to welcome them. Final whispered prayers to Celestia were muttered, pendants and lockets adorned with her likeness were kissed for good luck.

"Fix bayonets!" Major Blitz ordered. Greenshield slipped his from its sheath and affixed it to the end of his rifle with shaky hands. The glint of steel caught the early morning light as it filtered through the trees. Then the whistles were blowing, all the way down the line. Major Blitz blew his, then Captain Feather blew hers, and then they were moving, moving, out through the edge of the wood, from the snow-spattered dirt to the ankle-deep drifts, crunching under their boots. For a brief and bizarre moment it was almost serene, and reminded Greenshield of being back home with his brother and father, many years ago, when the snows came regular as clockwork each winter, just in time for Hearth's Warming, and they would travel to the mountains to enjoy the scenery and the festive atmosphere. Crisp footprints in the snow, a family. Warmth, despite the cold.

Then the moment passed, and a shot ripped through the smoke ahead and raised a small puff of snow from the ground, and he was back in the cauldron of death. They passed the first few bodies, the unlucky ponies who were struck in the opening volley of Kirin gunfire, lying motionless in the snow, warm blood gently steaming as it pooled around them. There were more, sprawled in the shell craters, clutching blasted stumps that used to be limbs, whimpering in fear, soaked in blood and piss and mud.

Greenshield stumbled over some hidden tree root or stone beneath the snow, dropping to one knee, and that brief moment of providence saved his life. The whip-crack of a bullet echoed in his ears as it whizzed over his head. There was the shortest, faintest of cries, and he glanced back in time to see Easy Peeler, the machine gunner, swaying slightly, rocked by an invisible breeze, as blood poured down his neck from a coin-sized hole in his throat. The gun slipped from his shoulder and tumbled into the snow, and then the stallion went down beside it.

"Stretcher bearer! Stretcher bearer!" Greenshield shouted, clawing his way back through the snow. He knew it was the wrong thing to do; the doctrine and all his training said keep moving forward. It said to ignore the fallen, precisely because the stretcher bearers would be coming up behind to take care of them. Stopping in one place made you a target, and now with their Sergeant otherwise occupied the whole machine gun section would be leaderless, like a ship with a damaged rudder, until he got moving again.

But he didn't care. Easy Peeler was one of his, under his command. He was responsible for him. Maybe it was fear, looking for any excuse to stop himself from going forward into the maelstrom, or maybe it truly was compassion. Greenshield did not know for sure. In any case, his effort was futile, for a fragment of the bullet had sliced through Easy Peeler's jugular, and blood was spurting across the pristine snow with every beat his heart took. Greenshield tried pointlessly to stem the flow, his gloves soaked through with blood in moments as Easy Peeler's panicked, terrified eyes looked up at him, steadily becoming more and more glazed with distance as his death approached.

More ponies charged past them, and then someone was shouting at him, asking for orders. His orders.

Shit and blast it all! he moaned mentally to himself. Easy Peeler was dead, or would be momentarily, but the battle was not over. His unit were crouching low in desperation, waiting for him. Somepony picked up the machine gun, and Greenshield slipped back into the mechanical monotony of his training as easily as he had fallen out of it. Together, the Sergeant and his surviving troops rose once more, and strode toward the smoke.

The Home Fleet performed a surprisingly smart turn to the north, drawing the Kirin ships in pursuit. The Kirin admiral, sensing the ploy, had a portion of the armada swing the other way, looping back on themselves to head east and cut off the Equestrians from Harmony Bay. Blueblood, returning to the bridge of the Chevaline to a sea of averted eyes and rather nervous faces, ordered flank speed, summoning up every last pound of pressure that the boilers and turbines could produce, every last knot that the propellers could drive them to. It was not enough. The Kirin had the head-start; they were farther east when the Home Fleet made its turn. Ahead of them lay half a dozen battleships, strongly supported by cruisers and escorts. The rest of the enemy was now coming up behind. They were sandwiched between the two halves of the Kirin fleet.

The brief respite as the Home Fleet had surged through the frigid waters had given time for a much-needed break for the crews. At noon, lunch had been brought around for those who had the appetite among the blood and cordite. Bread, cheese, tinned stew and potatoes and a tot of vodka for everypony, all eaten with dirty hands, the vodka glasses clutched in trembling fingers. Some captains took the initiative and made it two tots of vodka for their crews.

At a little before one in the afternoon, the first flashes erupted from the barrels of the Kirin turrets as the mighty battleships turned to meet their foe once more. Their shots fell short of the Equestrians, but the range was shrinking with each passing second. Admiral Blueblood had no choice. His gambit had been seen by the enemy; not a particularly brilliant strategy, but short of turning and fleeing ignominiously back to Manehattan, there was little else that the Home Fleet could do except drive for Harmony Bay and try to break through the Kirin.

In echelon formation, the trio of Equestrian battleships and their battlecruiser counterparts began to return the Kirin fire. Lunch, it seemed, had given a boost to their gun crews, for they were more accurate than they had been earlier in the battle. The Chevaline's fire director, high atop the armoured masthead and above the acrid smoke of the funnels, could clearly see the shells from her fore-turrets lifting plumes of water just a few dozen yards away from their target, a big hulking battleship adorned with Kirin pennants. Shoals of destroyers filled the gap in between the two lines of capital ships, trying to fend off their opposing number and get in close to launch an opportunistic torpedo attack.

Blueblood, his nerves steadied with a few shots of vodka, knew that they had little time to force a breakthrough. The rest of the Kirin fleet were behind them, nipping at their heels like a pack of hunting dogs, and once they came within range, the Home Fleet would be under attack from both ahead and astern, and then they would be in real trouble. The Kirin had the advantage in numbers and firepower. The Home Fleet was already down two battleships. They could not afford to lose any more.

The first blow of this second phase of battle was struck almost out of the blue. An Equestrian destroyer, the Emerald, simply exploded as it closed in on the Kirin line, struck by a heavy shell that tore into its magazine. A casualty of happenstance, most likely, for the Kirin gunners would not have been focusing their fire on the small ships. Wrong place, wrong time, like somepony crossing the road without looking both ways and being run down by a tram. The Chevaline's gunners, meanwhile, were finally getting their act together. Shells struck the Kirin battleship that lay in her sights, doing at least superficial damage if nothing else. The flagship's fire director made notes in his book and relayed the signal via radio to the bridge and the gun crews down below. They fired again, and again, and now that they were on target, their aim scarcely wavered. The big guns thundered, the smoke carried away astern by the wind. The fire director peered through his binoculars. Shards of metal and wood were erupting from the site of each strike as the Kirin ship reeled under the hammer blows. One of her fore-turrets slumped listlessly, barrels depressed and useless like the heads of exhausted donkeys.

A loud roar like the passage of an express train made the fire director tear his eyes away from the binoculars. A huge plume of water burst forth from the sea as though a great monster from the deep was rearing its head. It almost reached the height of his perch atop the mainmast. Then something hot washed over the back of his neck, and he turned just as the mast began to sway, slamming him against the armoured wall. There was that roar again, loud and bloodthirsty and overwhelming. Smoke and sparks belched from the Chevaline's flank. They had been hit, somewhere abaft the beam. The fire director tried his radio but it was dead; shrapnel had cut the wires that snaked down the mast to the deck below. But the wires were inside the mast. Did that mean the mast itself was damaged, in danger of collapse?

He opened the hatch and peered down the ladder. Smoke from the Chevaline's own guns obscured his view. He wasn't meant to be looking in this direction. His job was to look outward, not down. But with no radio, how could he be of any use to the gun crews? Maybe he could patch the wires up. He had a rudimentary knowledge of electrics and wiring, after all, as part of his job. He lowered himself through the hatch and floated beside the mast, his wings beating a steady rhythm. The structure looked to be mostly intact, no serious flaws or major damage. Perhaps the radio had been damaged by the concussion from the blast, then. If that was the case, he'd need a new set, a replacement.

The next salvo from the Kirin battleship was just as accurate. Several shells missed by mere feet, while several more struck home. One bounced from the roof of the B turret before exploding. A thousand tiny knives were hurled in all directions by the detonation of the shell, shrapnel slicing through anything that was not armoured, including the body of the fire director, who tumbled lifelessly to the deck below. Another shell smashed one of the Chevaline's secondary turrets, killing its entire crew in a heartbeat.

Elsewhere along the line, the Royal Oak and the Sol Invictus were duelling with two battleships apiece. Green Haze's battlecruisers were firing in support, but the threat of Kirin torpedoes kept them from racing ahead to try and force a gap through which the rest of the Home Fleet could pour. Instead, the Equestrian ships broke upon the Kirin like a wave upon the shore, but like that same wave they then had no choice but to slink back out to sea, stuck at a distance while the rest of the Kirin came up from behind. To push through would be to run the gauntlet of a hundred torpedo tubes and the fire of dozens of guns both big and small. At best, it would ravage the fleet. At worst, it would annihilate them.

Blueblood, once again, dithered. He watched as the fleet obeyed his latest order and turned to the south to expose their full broadsides to the enemy in the hope that it might make a difference. But, perversely and frustratingly, the smoke from the funnels of their own escorts was now hampering the view of the capital ships, blotting out the sight of the enemy behind palls of grey. Once more, the temporary boost in accuracy seemed to wear off, like some potion coming to the end of its useful life. Shells were going wide of the mark again, not helped in the Chevaline's case by the failure of her fire-control system. Every moment they spent failing to break through was another moment wasted, as the bulk of the Kirin fleet closed the gap from astern.

"Sir, signal from the Sol Invictus. They are requesting new orders," Champagne Crown informed his admiral. "How should we reply?"

"Tell them..." Blueblood paused, eyeing his own hands as though they were covered in blood. "Tell them, and the fleet, that we press on. Reform the line. Inform the Third Division they are to take the lead. We continue south for five minutes, then swing to the east and drive right through the enemy."

"That is a...risky proposition, sir," Crown pointed out.

"So is remaining where we are," Blueblood replied. "We cannot go back, we can only go forward. Yes, only forward. Just like the infantry, eh Captain? No retreat, not one step backward."

"I wouldn't know, sir," Crown replied. "I've been a navy stallion for my entire service. Should I send that signal, sir?"

"Yes, Captain," Blueblood nodded, giving him a pat on the shoulder. "Make sure the whole fleet knows."

Reforming, with the Third Division's battlecruisers in the van, the Home Fleet turned east again. The guns flashed and the shells screamed. To clear the way, every Equestrian destroyer and light cruiser unleashed a volley of torpedoes during the turn, hoping to force the Kirin to scatter and take evasive manoeuvres. It was partially successful; one Kirin battleship was struck twice and began to go down fast, while a Kirin cruiser and two destroyers were also dealt fatal blows. Vitally, the disruption also prevented the Kirin from retaliating with a full-scale torpedo attack of their own.

A few destroyers, however, did get their fish in the water, and the unfortunate Duke of Baltimare had a hole blown in her hull despite her best efforts at evasion. The venerable battlecruiser slewed to the side, but her guns kept firing, knocking out both forward turrets of one Kirin battleship. Kirin destroyers moved in to finish her off, but a screen of Equestrian escorts blocked them. At short range, however, they in turn were easy prey to the secondary batteries of the battleships, which pounded three Equestrian destroyers into burning hulks.

The Fearless, Green Haze's flagship, sliced through the water, leading the charge, her accurate gunfire putting the rest of the fleet to shame as she tore through two Kirin cruisers. A battleship loomed ahead of her, but she kept on, lashing out left and right with her secondary batteries and engaging the mighty Kirin warship with her main guns. Twelve-inch shells crashed into the Fearless, but she returned the favour, and one of the Kirin turrets exploded in a huge gout of flame.

Blueblood watched the carnage from the bridge of the Chevaline. His earlier fear had ebbed away to the back of his consciousness thanks to the fortifying qualities of the vodka he had consumed, and happily, it looked for a few minutes like they might force the breakthrough they needed and be able to charge east. The battlecruisers, now backed up by Blueblood's battleships, stormed through the gap in the enemy line, flanked by screens of destroyers and peppered with gunfire. It was like sailing through a hailstorm, but with every ball of ice replaced by a screaming shell. Here, a light cruiser burst into flames. There, a Kirin destroyer was practically torn in half by a broadside from the Triumph.

A shell struck the superstructure of the Chevaline, several feet below the bridge. Blueblood felt the plates buckle beneath him, and he stumbled against the helmspony, as though he were far more drunk than he really was. Smoke billowed up outside, obscuring their forward view. Somepony shouted for the firefighting parties to get to work. Shrapnel from a near miss pattered against the exterior of the ship. Suddenly they were sailing through a gateway of waterspouts, one on each side, thrown up by shells.

Champagne Crown kept one hand on the chart table to steady himself, and the other wrapped around a pair of binoculars, snapping his view back and forth, port and starboard. There was so much to look at. If they had been carrying an official photographer or war artist, why, he would have hardly known where to begin! Almost every angle would create a heroic portrait, an epic backdrop, a tale of true glory. This was the charge of the Home Fleet, to be writ large in the annals of history! The rugged (and drunk) admiral, leading his brave (and poorly trained) crews into the teeth of the (more numerous and accurate) Kirin guns, to save the besieged city of Harmony Bay! An exploit worthy of immortalisation in song, provided the rough details and dirty truths were airbrushed out of the historical record, of course. That, certainly, would be how the admiral would demand it. Crown knew his superior well; his arrogance, not merely a character flaw but a defining trait. His stubbornness, both admirable and pitiable.

Like their leader, the Home Fleet refused to back down or retreat. They stormed ahead into the Kirin fire, like the infantry swarming across no-pony's land toward the enemy trenches. Heavy fire raked them from stem to stern, but it worked. The Kirin battleship that lay in their path was suddenly shrouded in a huge cloud of steam. A direct hit; an armour-piercing shell had punched all the way down to one of her boilers, which had burst violently.

The range had closed to just a little over three thousand yards, short by naval standards, a product of the Equestrian charge straight through the enemy line. That meant that every battery in the fleet could open up, but it also meant every Kirin gun could, too. Their battleships inflicted a heavy toll on the Home Fleet as they tore through on their run east. They made it, but there was not a ship among them that did not carry some kind of battle damage. Several vessels were holed by torpedoes, others had damage to their steering gear or engines. The seas ahead were clear, but behind them lay the entire Kirin fleet, and now, they were faster. The Equestrian escorts could not plough ahead at top speed without leaving the capital ships behind. The capital ships were slower than the hungry Kirin destroyers and cruisers. With battle damage, they were slower than their Kirin counterparts, too. The Home Fleet had a brief head-start while the Kirin regrouped, and then the chase began anew.

The rest of the short afternoon passed busily for the crews of the Home Fleet. There was a lot of damage to try and repair, casualties to treat, debris to be cleared. The work continued into the rapidly-falling darkness. The fleet went dark at Blueblood's order, in the slim hope of losing their pursuers in the gloom, but the weather did not cooperate. There was a bright, stark moon overhead; no sea fog rose, though a brisk wind chilled the watchkeepers to the bone. The Kirin ships were like wraiths, silvery shadows briefly visible for a mere moment, then gone with the rising and falling of the waves. They kept a wary distance; did they too have a lot of damage to repair, or were they incapable of fighting at night?

Blueblood asked his Flag-Captain that question, and Champagne Crown had to bite his tongue to keep from rebuking his admiral. Of course they can fight at night, sir. That's how they hit Harmony Bay. How soon some of us forget.

They proved the point a little after midnight, when two of their battlecruisers opened fire at a range of twelve thousand yards. Though it was harder to see targets at night, it was not impossible, especially with prismatic viewfinders and a good moon. That meant it was not impossible to hit them, either, as one Equestrian destroyer found to its cost, struck bodily by a salvo of twelve-inch shells that wrecked her torpedo launchers, killed half her bridge crew and set a fire raging through the lower decks.

The tailchase continued for the next few hours, with every Kirin battlecruiser nosing ahead of the rest of their fleet and trying to pick off the Equestrian rearguard, one by one. The Sol Invictus and the Duke of Baltimare, their speed limited by their jury-rigged temporary bulkheads covering the holes caused by the Kirin torpedoes, were running a few crucial knots slower than the other capital ships in the Home Fleet, and they were the most tempting targets for the Kirin gunners. To help protect them, Blueblood ordered half a dozen destroyers to break off in tight turns and conduct a torpedo attack on the Kirin battlecruisers. But the enemy was ready for them, and manoeuvred swiftly, avoiding harm.

A short while later, the first shells rained down around the Duke of Baltimare. The battlecruiser was struck several times over the course of the next twenty minutes, pounded by three Kirin ships, concentrating their fire. The Duke of Baltimare's aft turrets replied as best they could, but it was inevitable now. The more the Kirin gunners fired, the more accurate they became, getting the range of their target and keeping it in their viewfinders. Deck plating buckled, the rudder was smashed, steam pipes split open. The Equestrian battlecruiser slowed even more, and Blueblood ordered the fleet to abandon it. As it drifted astern and its escorts fled, the Duke of Baltimare continued firing, duelling with a trio of Kirin battlecruisers while the rest of the Kirin fleet now raced by at flank speed to catch up to the Equestrians.

The valiant Duke died like its ancient namesake, a noblepony who had stood his ground with a brave hundred lancers at the battle of Bellhaven centuries earlier. Her guns flashed in the darkness, the spreading fires licking across her decks as the Kirin pounded her superstructure into ruin, killing her captain and most of her officers. One of the Kirin battlecruisers suffered a similar loss when a shell smashed into her bridge and tore her captain's head clean off with a burst of shrapnel, but it made no difference to the outcome of the unequal fight. The grand old Duke slipped beneath the waves at a little before four in the morning, taking her entire crew with her.

The rest of the Equestrian fleet drove onward, but the Kirin were moving in now, spurred on by their nocturnal success. They were closing for the kill.