We Sail For Celestia

The snow came early, earlier than the meteorologists had predicted. First in gentle swirling flurries, then steadily falling as the clouds grew darker. The wind picked up too, shaking the few surviving trees. Fresh earth churned up by the bombardment was soon coated in pristine white, as were the broken bodies of the fallen.

Greenshield lay just below the crest of a rise in the ground. Perhaps it was a snow drift piled up, or perhaps it was a line of rock covered over by a billion flakes. He neither knew nor cared. It was so cold he cared little for anything. through the swirling snow, his reddened, dry eyes could just about see Captain Fine Feather, the company commander. She lay face down in the snow, as still as midnight save for her thick greatcoat flapping in the wind. One hand still clutched her sabre in a death-grip, the other outstretched, fingers curled and stiff. She no longer had any legs.

Somepony else lay dead beside him, but he didn’t know who. He couldn’t tell; the dead pony had no face, just a bloody, frozen hole. Strewn across the snowfield, he could see several dozen black shapeless masses. They could be bodies or lumps of exposed rock, he couldn’t tell that either, though he certainly had a hunch.

The attack had failed, so far as he knew. His wave, the second wave, had pushed forward almost to the Kirin wire, but had been caught in the open by a mixture of shrapnel and high-explosive shells. He could only assume the third wave had met a similar fate. Greenshield himself had been knocked to the ground by a blast. Either the concussion from the explosion or striking his head upon a rock had seen him pass out for Celestia knows how long. Once he awoke, the rest of his section were gone. He didn’t know where. Thinking their Sergeant dead or incapacitated, they had presumably continued the advance, through the smoke and haze.

While he had been unconscious, the weather front had moved in. the wind whipped across the frozen wastes, bringing a deep and biting chill to the air. Every breath stung the lungs. He had no idea what the temperature was but he could tell from the tenderness of his exposed flesh that it was dangerously low. Touching a hand to his forehead, Greenshield could feel the congealed blood from the gash where he had fallen, the wound now clotted and flecked with snow. The cold was growing so intense that he couldn’t feel the throbbing pain in his head that he should have felt. Instead he was feeling numb.

He knew he had to get back to the relative safety of the Equestrian lines, where tents and campfires would offer at least some protection from the arctic blast and driving snow, but it was hard to translate that knowledge into action. His limbs felt stubborn, as though they were resisting him. His legs twitched as he tried to stand; his elbow slipped in the snow as he tried to prop himself up. Eventually he managed to rise to his knees, slouching against the wind. The snowflakes blew against his frozen face, half blinding him as he tried to blink them away. He began to shuffle forward, inch by inch, hardly seeming to make any progress.

Captain Fine Feather’s corpse was half covered by drifting snow, but Greenshield managed to reach her. He fumbled at her greatcoat. It was thick and fur-lined, and would help against the bitter chill, if he could only get it off of her stiff body. He tugged and yanked on the garment, but it was trapped under her body, and he didn’t have the strength to roll her over, so numb were his limbs. Her stern but handsome face was flecked with snow and blood, perhaps her own or perhaps not. Greenshield could not retrieve her coat, but he did pull a scarf from her neck and manage to drape it around his neck. But it was not enough. Not nearly enough.

After resting for a few moments in the chill gaze of the wind, Greenshield staggered to his feet. He turned away from the ridgeline they had been assaulting, and began the agonizing journey back to friendly lines and some semblance of safety. He knew it was his only chance of survival in the teeth of the blizzard.

But every step was an effort. His boots felt leaden, the snow felt like treacle. He was weak; his legs shook like an old arthritic stallion, and he fell more than once, dropping to his knees or falling face first into the snow with a grunt of exhaustion. He knew all he had to do was to keep walking and he would reach the treeline where they had waited for the assault to begin, but his body was yearning to simply rest, even though he knew it would be fatal.

Just another few yards.

They’ll be there, the rest of the unit. The Major will pat me on the back, give me some vodka. The medics will patch me up.

Just another few yards.

After a small eternity, Greenshield stopped and looked around. This wasn’t right. He had been stumbling through the drifts for long enough that he must have reached the treeline by now. The assault force had not advanced that far before he was knocked out. What little of the terrain he could see through the blowing snow did not look familiar, not that he expected it to. Even in clear air, everything had looked the same, just endless stretches of forest and snow.

Am I going the wrong way?

He could no longer see the bodies of his unit, the treeline, or the ridge. All identifying features seemed to have been wiped from reality, as though an artist, dissatisfied with his composition, had wiped away most of his painting to start afresh from a blank canvas. Greenshield turned back, or thought he did, retracing his footsteps, dark marks in the snow where he had already trod, at least for a while. Then came a momentary distraction, a cracking sound that may have been a bullet or a snapping branch, and when he looked down again his tracks had disappeared and he could not find them again.

Even in his cold-addled brain, panic, a dull throbbing panic, was beginning to set in. He kept on walking but each step he took required more and more effort from his sapping reserve of strength. He looked to the skies in despair, seeking Celestia’s guiding light or Luna’s glittering wisdom, but all he saw was more snow, billions of snowflakes filling the air. Dropping to his knees, Greenshield scrabbled forward, seeking the faintest glow of salvation through the darkness, but there was nothing there.

“Please...!” he whimpered, barely hearing his own voice over the whistling of the wind. “Celestia, please...guide me...” he begged with chattering teeth. It was still daylight, but the clouds and the snow were so thick that it may as well have been late evening, a deep winter darkness all around. The sun had vanished. All he knew was the bitter cold. His exposed face, formerly stinging from the chill, now felt numb. Each step though the deeply packed snow seemed slower than the last, each breath an expenditure of more and more precious and dwindling energy.

Where were the Equestrian lines? Hell, where were the Kirin lines? Even capture had to be preferable to this blind wandering with no goal in sight. Everything looked the same out here in the snowfield, just an endless expanse of identical white-capped trees and a sea of drifts for him to wade through. He no longer knew which way he was walking, how long he had been walking, what he was looking for. Had he walked through the Equestrian positions without noticing? Was he behind Kirin lines? Had he been walking parallel to both the entire time? The swirling blizzard and identical treescapes were impressively disorienting, like some kind of psychological magic spell was being used to ensnare and trick his frozen mind. Carrying on was hopeless, he decided. He could wander for hours and disappear in the vastness of the steppe. No, he would stop. He would settle down and wait for rescue. That was the only sensible option, his cold-addled brain told him.

Somepony will find me.

Spotting a little crevice in the shadow of a large boulder which had prevented the snow from building up quite so high, he stopped to rest, his back to the chill bare stone, wrapping his arms around himself, curling up against the winter's air. Yes, this would have to suffice. A little shelter was better than nothing, wasn't it? He no longer felt quite so cold, anyway. In fact he was sure he was warming up. His hands and feet felt a lot better than they had done when he was wandering through the forest. Yes, this was better. It was almost like being at home by father's hearth, with the logs crackling upon the fire.

Ah, no wonder it feels warm suddenly...!

Looking up, a shadow seemed to come over him. It was a pony, tall and regal, like a statue, bathed in a brilliant light, mighty wings outstretched. Yes, Celestia had finally heard his prayers!

The radiant princess smiled benevolently, her divine countenance holding a warmth like that of a mother for her foal. She held out one elegant hand and beckoned to him.

"This way, my child..."

"Your Highness...you came..." Greenshield had heard tales of miraculous rescues, when Celestia or Luna answered some desperate plea from a dying soldier, a drowning sailor, a trapped miner or the like. He had always dismissed such things as the fevered hallucinations of a panicked mind, yet here she was, in all her resplendent beauty, a golden beacon for him to follow through the forest to salvation. Summoning his strength, he rose to his feet and staggered toward the princess. "Take me home! Take me home..." he begged. 'Let me see father...let me see my brother again..."

Yet each step seemed to bring him closer to divine grace. She was always out of reach, no matter how hard he strove to get to her, as though she were merely an artefact of some visual defect, a scratch on his cornea that remained constantly in the same place. Her appearance had given him hope, but now his legs were growing weak again. He could not reach her. He dropped to his knees in wordless obeisance, a silent prayer for her aid. Yet now her face, so beautiful, regal and elegant, was blank, just a canvas of plain skin concealing her features. Her eyes, deeply entrancing, were gone. Even as he watched, he could see he was no longer looking at the princess. She was morphing, changing, shimmering and shifting as though seen in stop-motion through the endless barrage of snowflakes pelting him. Now it was somepony else.

"Brother...!" Greenshield cried, using the last of his strength. Greenwood, his elder sibling, stood before him, proud and martial in his navy uniform. He looked just like he had done the last time the two had seen each other, in the dockyard at Baltimare. It seemed a lifetime ago now, after so long in the frigid north, in battle, fighting for survival.

"We will meet again soon," Greenwood spoke, his words ringing and echoing in his brother's ears. 'I promise."

"Yes..." Greenshield sighed as he slumped forward, face down in the snow. "Soon..."

Dawn, when it came, was late out at sea. The ragged Equestrian sailors had to wait for their breakfast, because the cooking fires of the galleys had been doused hours ago as part of battle preparations. A few hard-tack biscuits passed around and a few swigs of unpleasantly warm water, the only water of such temperature to be found anywhere for a hundred miles of frigid ocean, had to suffice.

In the engine rooms, rugged earth pony stokers toiled like mad things, sweating and heaving the coal into the boilers while the engineers tried to wring every last fraction of a knot they could possibly get from the ship's propulsion system. It could all count; every tiny bit of extra power could make a huge difference.

In the turrets, restless gun crews sat nervously playing with icons of Celestia or sun-moon medallions. Clad in their dark blue overalls and white anti-flash hoods, they looked less like ponies and more like spacemares from some speculative science-fiction novella. They would be in action again soon, though in some cases the few remaining rounds in the ready-racks were all they had left. The magazines were dwindling, the fleet having been in action for most of the previous day.

On the bridges, anxious captains peered through binoculars over windswept whitecaps. They were still there, the entire Kirin fleet, smoke belching from their funnels. Any moment now, they would come into range again, and this would see an end to the fighting one way or another.

In the Admiral's cabin, Blueblood took a steadying tot of vodka, despite the early hour and lack of sleep, and wearily made his way through the companionways to the bridge, passing sullen and stone-faced junior officers on the way. The quick report he received from his flag-captain was equally bleak, but there was nothing else to be done except surrender, and, for a pony as stubborn as Blueblood, that was anathema.

The lead Kirin battlecruiser opened fire at a little after eight-thirty, a single shell whistling down a hundred yards astern of the Royal Oak, the sternmost battleship in the Equestrian formation. Another round landed considerably closer, and then shells began to rain down as every Kirin capital ship let fly with their fore-turrets. At Blueblood's order, half a dozen Equestrian destroyers began hard turns and fired off a volley of torpedoes in response. Several other escorts were unable to comply, having expended all of their underwater ordnance already.

Meanwhile the Kirin escort vessels fanned out and moved away, leaving only a few cruisers guarding the main battle line, knowing the Equestrian fleet could not, or would not, turn to engage them. Their destination, Harmony Bay, was obvious. The Equestrian Admiral, it seemed certain, was running scared, praying to reach the protection of the naval base's big coastal guns that might offer respite for his beleaguered fleet. Yet without a miracle that seemed an impossible task. Their ships were slowed by damage, pursued by a superior Kirin fleet who could pick them off almost at leisure. If they turned to fight, they would surely die, yet if they kept on running, they would just die tired.

Blueblood chose to keep running, even as shells began to accurately fall around his ships. One unlucky destroyer took a mighty twelve-inch shell to her boiler room and disappeared behind a gigantic volcano of steam. The Royal Oak received a glancing blow to her stern turret, concussing almost every crewpony within as the metal shook like a giant bell. The Chevaline, with her deputy fire director taking over the role of her dead superior up in the observation mast, managed to score a strike on the bow of one of the Kirin battlecruisers, but it hardly seemed to matter. The big ship just kept ploughing forward through the waves, wreathed in smoke every thirty seconds as her fore-turrets opened fire.

The Chevaline herself was not immune to return fire. A heavy shell striking the port quarter turned one of her lifeboats into matchwood and tore away one of the anti-air guns, mercifully unmanned at the time since the wingless Kirin had no option to carry out an aerial boarding operation the way Pegasi or Griffons might. Another shell blew a hole in the superstructure just aft of the radio room, badly wounding the radio operator who lost most of his right arm when shrapnel tore through the bulkhead.

The Kirin destroyers steamed ahead of the Equestrians, kept at a distance by gunfire from their own escorts, but the pony vessels were helpless to prevent the Kirin from reaching firing positions in the path of the Home Fleet. A full volley of torpedoes, almost a hundred in all, began to race toward the straggling line of capital ships, half from the north and half from the south, to keep the rest of the Kirin fleet, which lay to the west, out of the firing line. Blueblood, once more beset by panic, ordered evasive manoeuvres. The big ships began to turn, some one way, some the other, lookouts straining desperately to see the tell-tale trail of bubbles that marked an incoming torpedo. With so many fish in the water, it would be very difficult to avoid them all, and what was potentially even worse, turning to evade broke the Equestrian formation completely. The fleet started to fragment, moving in all directions, some speeding up, some slowing down in their efforts to avoid the torpedoes.

The move was mostly successful, with dozens of torpedoes harmlessly sailing by in between the Equestrian ships, but the Royal Oak was struck just abaft the beam and holed below the waterline, while one of the cruisers practically had her bottom torn out and sank with frightening rapidity. The Equestrian ships had lost all momentum, the Kirin were closing in for the kill, and Blueblood's capital ships were now mostly lying broadside to their enemy, presenting a bigger target for the accurate Kirin gunnery. The pursuers began to turn to bring their full firepower to bear.

Blueblood's earlier panic had given way to a weary resignation, the depressed state of a broken stallion who knew it was all over. As the Kirin ships began to fire their full broadsides, Blueblood simply wandered off from the bridge without even a word. Champagne Crown hurried to his cabin, banging on the door and pleading with his Admiral, who had locked himself in.

"Sir! The fight is not yet over. We need your orders, sir!" he begged. "What are your orders? Please, Admiral..."

"There are no orders!" Blueblood moaned, vodka bottle in one hand and his service revolver in the other as he sat slumped upon his bed. "What orders do you want? I can give you nothing but death!"

"Then order us to die, Admiral!" Crown replied desperately, as the ship rocked from another hit, then rocked and groaned again as her own batteries returned fire. "For the Sun we will gladly give our lives, but we cannot just...just...fade away!"

"Why not?" Blueblood muttered. "Better to fade away than to be a laughing stock! The glorious Home Fleet and its magnificent journey! Its heroic charge, the brave stallions and mares riding to the rescue of Harmony Bay...it's all just a lie, Captain! All a lie, and all perpetuated by me.' He took a deep swig of vodka. "I told them. I told the Princess, I told Strongbow and the rest of his boys, I told the world that we were coming. And then what? We came, we saw, and we fucking failed!"

Crown pressed a palm against the door. He did not know what he could say to make the Admiral snap out of his fugue. Last time, the day before, the threat of Vice-Admiral Moonshot taking over his command had been enough, so Crown tried again.

"Am I to understand sir that you are no longer in command of the fleet?" he asked. "Should I signal the Sol Invictus to take over?"

There was a long, drawn-out pause, then the clink of glass. "Yes," Blueblood finally replied. "Tell Moonshot she has command."

"Yes, sir," Crown replied with a heavy sigh, partly of relief and partly of sympathy. With Blueblood in his current state, he was no use to the fleet at all, liable to either make a terrible decision or no decision at all, which could be even worse. At least Moonshot was more stable, no doubt standing firm on her bridge even now and wondering what the hell was going on aboard the flagship. Her taking command, however, was not likely to significantly change the prospects of the fleet. After all, they were still outnumbered and outgunned, a long way from Harmony Bay, and unable to outrun their pursuers, and now the fleet's formation had practically fallen apart. Even a competent officer could only do so much when dealt a bad hand to start with.

Crown was reluctant to leave Blueblood alone in his cabin, but his duties lay elsewhere. He was still the Captain of the Chevaline, and unless they were ordered to surrender by their new fleet commander, the crew of the battleship still had their duties to perform. He headed back up to the bridge, leaving Blueblood locked in with his memories, cringing every time the ship's batteries fired and the whole vessel groaned and creaked from the vibrations.

A message was quickly relayed to the Sol Invictus, which became the new flagship. Vice-Admiral Moonshot raised her colours to the masthead and took command of what remained of the one-proud Home Fleet. Her first order was the same as Blueblood's last; continue eastward at flank speed, or as near to it as the battered flotilla could maintain. There was little alternative.

An hour after Blueblood had ignominiously relinquished command and locked himself in his cabin, the Home Fleet's situation had become even more precarious. Though the transfer of command had inspired some new hope among the captains of the fleet, and Moonshot had succeeded in corralling the fleet fairly quickly and getting them back on course, the Royal Oak, holed and limping, had been left behind, and her captain had struck her colours and surrendered in order to save his crew from drowning. With the white flag flying from her mast, the battleship had been evacuated by two Kirin destroyers, who kept their triple-barrelled torpedo tubes trained upon her at all times, ready to finish the job in case of any trickery.

The surviving ships were slowly succumbing to the punishing pace of the pursuit. None of the capital ships had all of their main batteries operational after steady and accurate Kirin fire. One of the destroyers suffered a complete shear of the overburdened propshaft and found herself dead in the water and also forced to fly the white flag. Casualties were mounting, including on the Chevaline where a Kirin shell had plunged down through the armoured deck and detonated below, wiping out half a dozen compartments and fifty ponies in the process. Successfully reaching Harmony Bay seemed increasingly unlikely.

Vice-Admiral Moonshot ordered the Sol Invictus's radio room to put out continuous calls for assistance, but the atmospheric conditions were poor and she could not even tell if the messages were getting through. They were certainly getting no reply. Another hour passed, then another. One of the Equestrian cruisers took a direct hit to her aft turret and a blinding fireball blazed spectacularly against the leaden sky. The Kirin made no effort to close the gap, content to sit at range and allow their more accurate gunnery to slowly whittle down the Equestrian fleet. It was a long way to Harmony Bay, after all, and the cover of the shore batteries. The Kirin had all the time in the world.

"Ma'am! Smoke on the horizon, bearing zero-one-zero. Dead ahead of us!"

Moonshot's tired eyes took to her binoculars once more, only this time looking forward instead of astern. There was indeed smoke, pallid grey, difficult to distinguish against the similar sky. More ships. The Kirin had called in another squadron from somewhere to trap the Home Fleet and end the pursuit once and for all. They had broken through the Kirin once. They would not be able to do so again, not in their current state. Surrender of the entire fleet was not an option, for the honour of the entire navy would be irreparably tarnished for centuries by such a humiliation. There was no third course to take.

"Ma'am! Masts on the horizon," the Pegasi lookout floating above the ship relayed down to the bridge via radio headset and a long trailing wire. "At least half a dozen."

"Do you see flags?" Moonshot asked wearily. The Kirin ensign would be flapping proudly in the breeze, no doubt.

"Yes ma'am...yes! Admiral! They're ours!" the Pegasus cried jubilantly.

"Are you sure...?" Moonshot strained her eyes to peer through her binoculars, still only seeing the wash of smoke against the tattered backdrop of cloud, but from high above the ship, there was no mistaking the flags that were fluttering from the mastheads of the incoming vessels.

"Yes ma'am! I see the Sun, and the Moon," the mare shouted ecstatically. "It's the Northern Fleet!"

Moonshot's grimace slowly but surely turned into a steadfast grin of determination. "Strongbow you old bastard. What the hell took you so long...?"