Ponies, cannons, and war

It's a sound I'm familiar with. The sound of gunfire, the rapid pop of three inch guns and thunder of capital grade naval rifles.

From what I can make out, the sortieing ships got jumped the moment they left harbor. An eerie calm engulfed the harbor.

In the distance, flashes of orange flame. Smoke begins to rise high into the air.

I found myself aboard my forward tripod mast, alone and with an unobstructed view of everything forward of my hull.

Lightning, a sickly shade of blue, splits the air.

The shelling has reached the base now. Flashes of gunfire illuminate jet black shapes coming up the river.

The fur on my hoofs stand on end.

Fur? Hoofs?

A thought comes unbidden to my mind.

I recognize this place.

It’s Brooklyn.

Brooklyn, the borough, is burning.

The people I was meant to protect were dying.

My radio remains silent.

I can't reach anyone.

Tears begin to stream down my cheeks.

There's nothing I can do. Despite my crew being missing I could feel my guns operating in mutiny of my, now, frantic and desperate attempts to stop them.

“Think of what they did to you!”

A voice comes in through the radio. Each syllable is grotesque, like nails on a chalkboard.

Visions flash through my mind.

The fleet at anchor, fire and smoke everywhere.

Bombs falling from the sky, torpedoes in the water.

Agonizing pain, then nothing.

My corpse was salvaged for material.

My remains a memorial to failure.

Politicians sermonizing in front of my grave.

“You were wronged. You were made to suffer. You can end the suffering!”

I found I'd collapsed to the deck. On shaky hooves, I regain my footing, only to watch as one of the black ships falls in behind me. It's… wrong. Almost indescribably so. The surfaces have an almost obsidian-like sheen. Thick, oily smoke pours from her funnel. Blue light glows from behind her portholes.

No.

“You can do what you were built to do, fulfill your purpose!”

The… cruiser, I think, trains her guns to port. The almost-innumerable barrels, along with her two, tall masts and three funnels give the impression of a porcupine. Unbidden, a memory comes to mind. A memory of a city of the former Ottoman empire and the two other ships that were sent to enforce the interests of Italy and Greece. An Italian battleship and Greek armored cruiser.

Then, her bow gun fires. I watch helplessly as the shell bores into the upper floor of a downtown apartment building, debris cascading down into the streets.

No!

“All you have to do is give in to despair. Close your eyes. Rest.”

There's a scratching at the back of my head.

“NO!” I call out instinctually.

“You can talk?”

“What you’re doing is murder!”

“It’s necessary.”

“I’ll… I’ll stop you!”

“You are welcome to try.”

I can almost hear the smug sneer over the radio.

I sharply inhale, before deflating.

What can I do?

…

Unless…

“My purpose… is to defend.” I say, slowly becoming more confident.

“Oh?”

“I will defend the people I was built to protect. Though I have a question for you. Who are you? I have met Georgios Averof and you are not Georgios Averof or her sisters in the Regia Marina.”

“I have nothing more to say to you.”

I begin to concentrate on the scratching at the back of my head.

The cruiser's guns turn towards me.

I begin to feel, more than hear a humming. It builds to a crescendo.

The cruiser fires.

There's a glow in the corners of my vision.

The shell strikes.

BONG!

My whole hull vibrates like a bell.

Everything goes white.

The light fades.

With a gasp, I wake up.

My muzzle was pressed into the water.

Legs shaking, I climb to my hooves as if I were standing on my deck despite the rolling waves.

I’m alive? And a pony? But I’m not just a pony. I can feel myself as I used to be too, as a ship. Not like I’d been feeling while trapped in that prison. I feel as good as the day after I was modernized.

I whip around, only to find a pair of gun turrets, my number 3 and 4 gun turrets, suspended by some sort of robotic… arm… thing. It's attached to some kind of saddlebag-esqe device that appears similar to my own superstructure, and seems to be affixed to my sides and back. From its sides bristle a veritable forest of five-inch barrels, and from its back extend a pair of metal plates which bend around my hips, producing a reasonable facsimile of my prow.

Looking around, I quickly identify the fake Georgios Averof located not thousands but hundreds of yards away, guns aimed towards the borough.

I let out a breath I didn't even realize I was holding.

The borough is on fire.

My friends, my sister, are not with me.

The water below my stern starts to boil as my screws begin cavitating.

I am the thirty-ninth battleship of the United States. Second of the Pennsylvania class, and third of my name, I am Arizona.

I begin to move forward.

I will defend the borough.

I will defend my home.

I will find my friends and sister.

I will do my duty.

"Fire!" I command.

Time seems to slow as, for the first time, USS Arizona fired her guns in anger.

A gout of fire jets from the muzzle of the central barrel. Exactly 200 milliseconds later, the left gun responds, and after 200 more, so does the right.

The enemy cruiser doesn't even have the time to process what's happening to it.

Twelve fourteen-inch armor piercing shells strike her on the waterline.

Twelve fourteen-inch armor piercing shells tear into her internals.

Twelve fourteen-inch armor piercing shells burst, sending hot splinters scything across her engineering spaces.

Three puffs of white steam escape her funnels.

The gun breeches drop down to their loading angles, steam rising from the soaked deck where it was heated by the fireballs.

"All secondary mounts, weapons free! Target that cruiser, fire as you bear!"

A veritable avalanche of shells come crashing down on the enemy ship. Within half a minute, the enemy cruiser is already visibly down by the bow.

My main guns thunder again.

The cruiser is afire, its guns silent, and visibly listing.

Also, I've reached the channel.

I don't know what I'll find on the other side, but I won’t back down.

After all, I'm a battleship. And so far, I haven’t seen hide nor hair of any aircraft.

All I have to do is keep moving forward.

It's as I proceed past the entrance that the voice of a port-side lookout rings in my ear.

"Ma'am, enemy ship spotted! Bearing 265, less than three thousand yards! Scout cruiser!"

"What?" Turning my head in that direction I saw that my lookout was not mistaken in the slightest. From a marina, hidden from view behind a storehouse, a single four-stack cruiser is charging out.

“Searchlights, Illuminate that target! All mounts, sink that cruiser!"

With a meaty thunk, both of my port-side searchlights snap to life. The luminous beams fall on the chitinous flanks of the cruiser, the light playing on the semi-reflective surface.

Before I can even react further, my side rings as the cruiser’s shells bounce off my belt. A few seconds later my port-side secondaries join in. A funnel of violence forms between our hulls as a significant portion of the air between us is replaced with hot steel.

In short order, the cruiser is a burning hulk, not requiring further attention.

"Conn, lookout: Torpedo in the water!"

Of course she had torpedoes.

Okay. I was still accelerating, so hopefully they'll pass aft.

Though, I can't be sure.

"All hands, torpedo incoming, brace for shock!" I spit.

A few long seconds pass. I scan the water.

Did we dodge?

Clang.

THOOM!

A great pillar of water shoots up, about a third of the way between turret 4 and my stern.

I cry out, pain shooting up the outside of my left thigh.

The warhead struck just above my shaft.

I don't… think I feel any flooding?

I turn my gaze inward. By some miracle, the seals on my port outboard shaft held, and the only lingering damage I can feel is the now-exposed void spaces rapidly flooding, and two fuel oil bunkers slowly leaking.

Okay, okay. We're still in this fight.

There's a twinge in the back of my mind as my spotters spot a new contact, approaching slowly, from the south. I task my anti-aircraft directors with tracking the unknown flying contact.

It’s… a pony. A flying pony in gold armor.

…

I chuckle.

“I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.”

Well, regardless of where I am, I’m not going to let innocent people, or ponies, be slaughtered for no reason.

I’ll admit that it's been a while since I've been in Brooklyn Navy Yard but it’s still eerie how much this place lines up with where I was built. That’s not even mentioning the dozen-or-so ships sunk at their moorings.

A pair of wooden sailing ships were moored together at a single pier. The first was bottomed out, her casemated guns almost level with the churning waters around. The second, meanwhile, had thick plumes of black smoke pouring from her hull, and enough of a list that I could see her deck.

Then there was a pair of ocean liners whose hulls look like plastic models that had a run-in with a tumble drier.

I… I just can’t look any longer.

And It's probably for the best that I don't as yet another of the black ships comes charging in, moving extremely quickly.

Unlike the others, though, this one is a different beast. Low, sleek lines betray her speed. A twin turret forward, two were en echelon amidships and either another twin turret aft or a superfiring pair. Twin stout funnels spit black smoke between twin spotting tops held aloft by twin pole masts.

A battlecruiser.

"Spot 1, start a plot on that ship!" I immediately called out. "All guns, match pointers, and engage!"

Before my own guns make it on target, though, my enemy's thunder.

Water sprays up all around me.

A pang of pain, an impact on my belt.

“You! Why have you joined them!?”

For a few moments, I considered replying.

Just as I move to key the microphone, though, I think better of it. After all, I have a better idea.

Bzzt Bzzt Bzzt-KATHOOM!

My salvo alarm buzzes, before my guns speak.

I'd learned long ago that, when I talk, it's easy to ignore me.

But when my fourteen-inch-forty-five-caliber rifles talk? People listen.

In just a heartbeat or two, the twelve shells cover the four thousand yards between me and my enemy, impacting with a yellow flash and a spray of water.

“Just think about how the humans are using you.”

No, no. Don't reply. Don't give her anything.

A couple of the still-moored warships begin engaging… with their old short barreled cannons. Their rounds doing nothing but bouncing off the battlecruiser’s belt or bursting off her superstructure.

Eight more shots crash in. Two land short, bumping harmlessly against my shell plating after expending all their energy in the water. A third deflects against the face armor of turret 1. A spray of spall inside does wound several sailors on the right-hand gun, but none severely. The final shell, though, bursts through one of my casemated five inch guns, detonating the ready locker for the gun, and igniting a fire on my deck. As the smoke clears, I feel a pit form in my stomach as a warm wetness begins to form inside.

The gun crew had been cut down, almost to a man.

Red forms in the corners of my vision.

“You!” I snarl at the offending vessel.

“If you don’t join us now you're going to die!”

“You killed my crew.” I spit, venom dripping from my words. “I won’t forgive you!”

There's a flash of red which seems to illuminate the water around me.

The Bitch is rattling off some other nonsense now, but, well…

Didn't ask, don't care.

My guns thunder, and I note there's a fairly significant fire burning amidships.

Before I can give the matter any more thought, though, I'm ripped from my reverie by a massive explosion blooming from the enemy capital ship. Chunks of rent metal and debris begins splashing into the water all around, as a great jet of fire is shot up high into the air, above any building.

On shore, I see faint orange glinting as glass falls, reflecting the fires.

Huh, must have set off her magazine.

As she slips beneath the waves, it's like a fog is lifted from my mind.