We Sail For Celestia

Dear brother,

You were absolutely right. There is not much to see.

We have been on the rails for three weeks now. Who knew it would take so damn long to cross this great land of ours? This is supposed to be the direct route! I know you have much farther to travel but I still imagine you might well arrive before we do. This train is so slow, or should I say these trains. We have had to change four times because the damn things kept breaking down, and then the gauge changes on the border with Yakyakistan. They have their own special coaches and locomotives. Then, for reasons best known to the bureaucrats, there will be yet another change in gauge back to Equestrian Standard when you enter Northwick, even though it used to be Yak territory! I am sure it makes sense to somepony somewhere.

Though it is still only mid-autumn, it is cold up here. I hope you remembered to pack that greatcoat you wore last winter when we trekked to Frigid Falls together with father. I suspect you will need it every day if you are to be part of the Northern Fleet from now on!

I saw a Yak foal at one of the stations. She was with her parents I presume, and she waved and waved as we rattled through. I wonder if it was because she had never seen a train before, or because she had never seen ponies before? Even though this land is part of Equestria now, some of these villages are so remote that I would not be surprised if it were the latter. Since we crossed into Yak territory I have not seen a single Equestrian flag, nor the standards of either the Sun or Moon, flying from any civic building (or what passes for civic buildings out here). It is desolate and vast, an empty parade of plains and hills, and one has to wonder how the Yaks managed to conquer so much of the known world all those centuries ago. It is a good job that Her Highness defeated them, for I do not think I would enjoy living like they do!

I must sign off now as I am running out of paper. I hope to get some more when we arrive so that I may write to Father and Uncle. I hope this letter finds you, and finds you well. I will put my (misguided?) trust in the Army postal system to get it to you, perhaps when you stop for fuel somewhere along the coast. Failing that, I hope to see you in Harmony Bay.

Your loving brother,

Greenshield

The train rumbled along at an agonisingly slow pace. Greenshield tucked the completed letter away in his rucksack, handing the pen back to his company officer, Fine Feather, with a nod of thanks.

"Your brother is in the Navy, isn't he?" Fine Feather questioned. The tall Pegasus mare stood next to him, swaying gently with the motion of the train, her blue coat contrasting with the white of her officers' greatcoat, a common colour for many infantry officers but not ideal for combat except in the snow. The Captain was in command of the 2nd Company, 1st Battalion, 45th Equestrian Infantry Regiment, raised in Baltimare and its surrounding towns, one of several units being moved by train to Northwick to bolster the provincial garrison.

"Yes ma'am. He's a Lieutenant on a destroyer," Greenshield replied. "They're sending him to Harmony Bay, too. I guess the Navy want to reinforce up there as well."

"Think you'll run into him?" Fine Feather asked. "We might be stationed there."

"I hope so, Captain," Greenshield smiled. "He owes me a beer."

Fine Feather chuckled. "Ah, I see. The all important beer...speaking of, I may need you and your boys to requisition some for us at the next halt. The train seems to have run out."

"We'll do our best, ma'am," Greenshield nodded. Alcoholism was common among both the troops and the officers of the Army, but it was even more widespread in the Navy, for one of Equestria's finest industries was booze of all kinds. Beer, ale, cider, whiskey, vodka, rum, gin, wine and a hundred other, regional specialties. As the old saying went, Drunkards to the fleet, dimwits to the infantry. On board ship, rum and vodka were issued to each pony each day in small quantities, a welcome break from the monotony of shipboard rations during long patrols. For the officers, there was an essentially limitless supply to be found in the ship's wardroom, where many of their number whiled away the hours off-duty with a bottle of something or other before staggering back to their bed. On land, soldiers were entitled to beer and vodka, at least when in a fortress, base or garrison. It was more difficult to provide alcohol when on campaign, and less advisable, as drunken soldiers were ineffective soldiers for the most part. But nopony among the high command had ever bothered to stamp out the common problem that had rooted itself like a compulsion among the ranks, commissioned and enlisted alike.

Fine Feather excused herself to check on the other platoons under her command. The train was long, a good fifty carriages, Greenshield had counted at the last stop. Most of them were freight wagons, box cars in which a platoon could ride in a minimum of comfort, with a bucket for a toilet and sitting or lying on the floor as best they could. There were half a dozen passenger cars at the front, just behind the two squat, throbbing diesel locomotives. Greenshield was lucky enough that his company had been shoved into one of them. Though it was a second-class carriage, by comparison with the wagons behind it was sheer luxury, with seats, an actual toilet and windows that could open without the danger of tumbling to one's death from the doors of the box cars. Luckily for the ponies traveling in such squalid conditions, it was cool and dry even in the cramped freight trucks, meaning they only needed to open the doors more than a crack when they reached a halt.

Greenshield looked out of the window. The rough leather of the seat back chafed on his neck, as it must have chafed the necks of hundreds of weary travellers over the years, though, short of a military convoy, he could not imagine why anypony would want to travel on this line. There was nothing out there. The plains and rugged hills gave way on the horizon to distant, featureless mountains. Though there was no snow yet, Greenshield could imagine it coating the landscape like a blanket, as it must surely do every winter. Wind must whistle down from the hills and in from the Great Eastern Sea, however far away that still was from their current location. In summer, the converse must have held true, scorching heat and arid landscapes with little cover. It was no wonder the Yaks had been nomadic for centuries, wandering from place to place in search of water and forage for themselves and their mounts, hardy steppe horses that were distant, though dumb, biological cousins of the ponies that would, in later years, conquer this entire region.

The trek he had spoken of in his letter to his brother had been in the cold, in the snow and in the mountains, but not like this place. That was a rich, alpine environment, down in central Equestria not far from Canterlot, with trees and mountain flowers and hares, rabbits and squirrels bounding happily across the snow-covered meadows and slopes below. This was something else, at least to his mind. This was like being on another world; perhaps it was how Princess Luna had felt upon the moon. The magnificent desolation of this distant land stretched all the way to Harmony Bay and beyond. It was quite remarkable to think this was still part of Equestria. They had been traveling for so long, day after monotonous day aboard the train, just occasional stops to stretch their legs, empty the buckets from the freight cars, and refuel and re-provision the train. Only twice in the three weeks had they slept in actual buildings, once at the large rail sheds at Oak Ridge Junction, and once in requisitioned warehouses near the track at Saltborough. The rest of the time they had rested on board, or had used their own army-issue tents to give them shelter as they waited for a fresh engine crew to arrive or for the line ahead to be cleared of another broken-down train.

Greenshield idly mused to himself, lost in silent thought as the world drifted slowly by. Each town looked the same to him, the houses and the factories, or at least they had when they were still in pony lands. Now they were rumbling through Yakyakistan and things were different. The villages, if they could really be called that, were isolated, connected to true civilization only by the rail line built by Equestrian engineers and local Yak labour. It must have been a terribly lonely existence for the locals, especially the foals, even today with the occasional mail train passing through with news of friends and other clans in neighbouring towns. Sometimes it was hours between each station, sometimes a day or more, and it would take a long time to cross the rough terrain on horseback or on foot. It was only relatively recently that the Yaks had settled into a more sedentary lifestyle with permanent settlements more akin to the Equestrian style- not forced on them by the pony conquerors, but adapted more gradually over time thanks to improvements in agricultural techniques and crop yields allowing them to wring more from the arid soil of their homeland.

Greenshield wiled away the hours, lounging in his seat, interrupted only by occasional talks with one of his soldiers or a trip down to the end of the carriage to take a leak. He wondered where Greenwood was; somewhere on the storm-wracked oceans, out there with just the elements for company. This land was grim, but at least, he reasoned, it was not the sea. Unlike his brother, Greenshield had no sea legs. He had, once, even felt queasy on the local boating lake back home in Hoofbury, the town not far from Baltimare where their father had a small estate and the two colts had grown up. The army had drawn his attention, urged on by his father, but against his wishes, Greenshield had not enrolled in the officer academy, preferring the idea of being a part of the camaraderie of the unit, not the aloof officer corps. His dream had only partly come true, for he had been selected to be a non-commissioned officer due to his good education that put him a cut above the common soldiery. That put him in a position of command, high enough to be still somewhat separated from the spirit and inclusivity that the enlisted ponies shared, yet not earning an officers' salary. In a way, it was the worst of both worlds, and part of the reason he had become so disillusioned with the whole process of serving his country. Being sent to such a distant and desolate frontier did not help, either. He wondered what the morale of the Northwick garrison was like.

No doubt he would find out soon enough. The train rumbled on into the gathering gloom of the evening. Night fell. They rested in their tents beside the track, and in the morning, they set off again. Six thousand miles from home, almost seven thousand from the capital city of Canterlot. This was a far frontier indeed, the last bastion of Equestrian power before the unremitting expanse of the Great Eastern Sea and the strange, mist-shrouded lands that lay beyond, where a half-known race waited, biding their time with steadfast calm, looking for the right moment and place to strike.

The ENS Defiant pulled slowly into the great protected harbour of Harmony Bay. The little destroyer, just three hundred feet in length, was dwarfed by the sheer size of the anchorage that spread out before it as it slipped through the outer reaches, the western headland and the small-but-tall island with no official name, but known by the locals as Fat Colt Island due to its bulbous shape, which lay at the eastern side of the narrows that led into the bay. The waters of the bay were sheltered from the worst ravages of the Great Eastern Sea's fury, which could be relentless at times with winter storms, violent gales and frigid snow squalls, depending on which way the prevailing winds were blowing.

When the Yaks of old reached the coast here, they immediately identified a perfect place for a fishing village, and despite their nomadic lifestyle at the time, one had been established by an enterprising clan who reasoned that they could both sustain themselves and also trade fish to other hungry tribes who migrated to the area as they passed through on their lonely, endless pilgrimages. The village had grown into a small town, and when Equestria had arrived upon the scene, the all conquering Army of the Sun had made the same determination as the Yaks, but with a more warlike purpose. Harmony Bay had quickly become a naval base, home to the galleons of the early Royal Equestrian Navy, which were gradually superseded by the ships-of-the-line, great three-masted square-riggers with dozens of cannons apiece, controlling the eastern sea lanes and helping to spread the word of the Princess, the golden Sun-crest of Celestia upon their sails. Upon Princess Luna's return, that had been replaced by the national flag, half-sun, half-moon, with two stylised depictions of the Princesses entwined around the central symbol. A pirate, Zebrican, Griffon or Kirin would know immediately who was chasing them down as soon as the sails crested the horizon.

That was in the past. The ships-of-the-line were no more, consigned to a couple of sail training roles in major ports. It was steel and steam that ruled the day now, the great armoured prows and rifled naval artillery guns driven through the water by powerful, throbbing turbines spun by the product of the combustion either of coal or oil. Rich seams of both existed, dotted all across Equestria, and their discovery had launched a great industrial surge some hundred and fifty years earlier, the pace of which had continued relentlessly ever since, barely slowing down and even speeding up in times of conflict, for war, as they said, was the locomotive of change.

The roadstead in front of the inner harbour was home to the ships of the Northern Fleet, the naval command responsible for the protection of the eastern and northern sea lanes, the defence of the Equestrian coastline, and anti-piracy patrols up and down the eastern side of the continent. Some vessels were out on patrol or berthed at other ports, but the bulk of the fleet was in port at Harmony Bay, chosen as the headquarters for the Northern Fleet because the harbour remained ice-free all year round. Four battleships, the brutally beautiful kings of the sea, lay anchored in mid-channel, along with two battlecruisers, their faster, slightly less well armed counterparts, and half a dozen cruisers, the backbone of any fleet, swift and lethal. In the port itself, tied up to the piers and wharves, were ten destroyers and a small assortment of ancillary vessels- patrol boats, motor torpedo boats, yard patrol craft and supply ships. Two fleet oilers provided supply for the turbines of the smaller ships, while three colliers moored at the northern end of the port would accompany the fleet on any major journey to supply coal for the boilers of the capital ships.

The Defiant passed through the open water near the anchored battleships. Her crew lined the railings, Greenwood taking his place beside the port torpedo tubes, saluting as they passed the flagship of the Northern Fleet, the Celestial Spirit. Admiral Strongbow, the well-respected commanding officer, flew his flag in the mighty warship, though he spent most of his time ashore dealing with naval matters. There was no great need for him to be aboard ship when in port; after all, it was not like the fleet was expected to go anywhere or do anything any time soon. With the exception of the occasional pirate skirmish, like the one Defiant would be reporting on, the eastern reaches were mostly calm and quiet these days.

The Defiant moved into the inner harbour where a small launch came out to them with a pilot who would guide them to an appropriate berth at one of the piers. Harmony Bay itself, the port city, was bustling by the standards of Northwick or Yakyakistan, but still had a population of no more than two hundred thousand, even with all of the military personnel taken into account. It was nestled into the landscape, like a foal among its blankets, in the shadow of half a dozen hills that surrounded it.The peninsula upon which the city lay extended both to the northwest and southeast, with Harmony Bay being almost exactly halfway along it, just thirty miles from the edge of the world, where the far tip of the peninsula dropped away vertiginously into the Great Eastern Sea.

Smoke rose from a dozen spots across the city, curling up from chimneys before being carried inland by the stiff sea breeze. Seagulls chirped and cawed, swooping and swirling overhead before diving in for any dropped crust of bread or handful of grain they could find. The tar-papered and tiled rooftops looked like those of any other coastal city, as did the rows of brick warehouses and workshops that lined most of the quayside. Farther inland lay the residential areas, wooden houses of various bright colours an attempt by the local citizens to break the monotony of the grey waters, grey skies, and dull greenish-brown landscape. In winter, there was not much grass, nor any vegetation to write home about.

Beyond the compact city lay the forts, arrayed like a string of pearls around the neck of a slender mare. They protected the city from land attack, their heavy artillery, mortars, and concrete machine-gun bunkers designed to repel any assault. The high command did not want a repeat of the Moray Peninsula farrago, where a major Equestrian naval base on Mare-Isle had been captured from the landward side by a large rebel force because its defensive guns had all been pointing out to sea with nothing but a thin line of infantry and barbed wire protecting it from the other side.

That did not mean that the port was undefended from the sea, however. As well as the guns of the fleet, a large coastal artillery emplacement dominated the skyline of Fat Colt Island. Across the mouth of the channel from it, a lighthouse on the headland guided ships in safely toward the opening and the harbour beyond. Harmony Bay was well protected from storms, and from assault, but the city and its port occupied a key strategic position, for the Northern Fleet could operate with impunity anywhere in the Great Eastern Sea, and in the northern arctic channels, and continue to dominate the region.

Pulling up alongside the quay and cutting her engines, the Defiant joined the ranks of the Northern Fleet, part of the gradual shifting of resources eastward, approved by the Princess and military high command, not because of any immediate danger, but out of an abundance of caution. There were rumours- though rumours only they were- that something bad was soon to happen.

They did not, however, remain rumours for much longer.