Equestria 1939 - Weird World War

Equestria 1939 - Weird World War
Sunk Costs

Lt. Herbert Schultze, commander of a German U-boat, who claimed to have sunk the British freighter Firby and to have advised Winston Churchill of his action, denied Thursday night in a trans-Atlantic radio interview that he had been captured.
— St. Petersburg Times, September 30, 1939

“I pictured something a little more… seaworthy,” admitted Sherbert. “And vaguely like the Nautilus, not a cargo barge.”

There had been little shiny spy gear or secret agent passwords involved in their trip to the harbor and the Equestrian Navy’s secret submarine pen. There had been a long walk where Agent Mane had talked with her, mostly about their upbringing and education, but with some of his life stories in return. And stories was the operative word, because he could not have lived half of them without being an old stallion with a grey beard and a peg leg or two.

The metal door at the fishing boat mooring had declared “Barnacles Boat Repairs” in faded letters, with a tattered bankruptcy notice from the Third National Bank of Manehattan pasted across it, threatening legal action if any equipment inside was removed without their permission. Unlike the rusty door, the lock was lubricated and heavy, but yielded to Mane’s quick attention even without a key, and a steel grate beyond likeways proved no real obstacle to their quest.

The dirty barge floating in the dark chamber… was nothing like what Sherbert expected. There were probably a hundred just like it in the harbor and traveling up the river, utilitarian and plain with a galvanized steel frame and a tiny shelter-hut in the center. This one had an outboard Briggs and Stratton petrol engine on the rear, probably just strong enough to drive the whole contraption at less than walking speed across the placid waters of the Manehattan harbor.

“Behold, Tinkles. It’s between projects right now,” said Mane. “The main body is formed out of the ballast tanks of the U-33. They housed it in the boathouse here until somepony comes up with another hairbrained scheme. The last one was a doozy. They wanted the U-49 out in the harbor to fire a torpedo at a target, use Tinkles to capture the torpedo en route, and fake an explosion at the other end so the torpedo could be analyzed. Thankfully, sanity triumphed and the project was canceled.”

“I could never duplicate a torpedo,” said Sherbert, still looking at the barge but with a different perspective. “So the secret experimental submarine is under the barge?”

Mane nodded, picking his way carefully down the gangplank until his hooves clattered on the rust-stained teak decking. “The boathouse has an unusually deep draft and a set of waterproof doors that can be installed at the mouth when they want to make modifications to Tinkles. Just pump out the water, go to town for a few weeks with a welder, and push the barge out when you’re done. Preferably in the evening so nopony notices a dark shadow under it. She’s got a perfect record; been used a dozen or more times without a success.”

He opened the wooden trap door in the middle of the barge and peered downward into what was presumably a concealed submarine, size small. Sherbert was perfectly comfortable on the solid wood of the dock. All of her old phobias about closed spaces and drowning began to flupper upwards in the back of her mind, made worse by the way Mane looked back in her direction and waved.

“Come on. It’s safe as houses. They bolted Tinkles to the barge since they took the engines out.”

It was a good excuse, and Sherbert was more than happy to take it. “Without engines, it would be useless for our purposes. There is no need for us to explore.”

“Us?” Mane blinked several times in the dim lighting. “I was going to stay up here while you checked out whatever you needed to see.”

“I would rather stay up here while you crawled down into that… thing,” managed Sherbert. She took several short breaths before fixing him with a questioning glance. “You’re afraid of the dark?”

“Enclosed spaces,” admitted Mane reluctantly. He met her eyes and added, “You too?”

“Mother attempted to train it out of me with a small compression chamber,” said Sherbert in short, sharp words. “It failed.”

At first, it looked as if Mane was going to keep silent on the rather unpleasant foalhood memories, but eventually he asked, “How old were you?”

“Two.”

“Ah.” Then after a moment, “I understand.” After considerably longer, the grey stallion continued, “If you accompany me, I shall eschew the tradition of ladies first.”

She did.

It was not as bad as Sherbert feared, particularly with company. Admittedly, it was cramped, dark, and stuffy, but the ventilation system whirred to life in short order, a row of dim lights cast a shadowless illumination over the controls, and being where she rubbed coats up against an unrelated male of the species was… different. It was also the first time a male unicorn had not either attempted to ‘put the moves’ on her or find an excuse to abruptly leave.

One thing for absolute certain. Mane knew about Tinkles for some time, although he couched all the stories about the submarine’s journeys in third-pony terms, showing he had not actually been present for any of them.

He also knew each dial and lever, not just because they were labeled, but he had undoubtedly studied the manual already. Project Steal An Encryption Machine would have been a fair match for their transportation, but without an engine at the rear of the vessel to move it forward, there was no need to go up or down, and that eliminated the need for nearly every widget and the whole purpose of them ‘borrowing’ it for the trip. There was a fairly fearsome set of manuals stored in the tiny conning tower, but she did little but flip through several of the chapters and make a quiet comment about how she recognized the writing style before pushing the whole lump back into the cabinet.

“I fail to see the utility of this vehicle in attaining our goal,” she said. “And as a lady, I’m getting out first.”

Mane was right behind her, closing and latching the hatch with obvious relief, which she understood in absolute terms. “Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way,” he mussed while sitting on the teak flooring of the barge and catching his breath.

Sherbert gave a short huff of breath at the inherent humor of the statement. “What, do you think we should just walk up to U-49 and ask them to give us a tour?”

* * *

“Captain Goßler,” said the middle-age pony with a sharp fedora, who held a hoof out to shake. “Toll Docket here. It is goot that you made time for us on such short notice. This is my assistant, Miss Beaker. May we continue this conversation in private, sir?”

“Of course, of course,” said the captain in a comforting voice. “Away from prying eyes like it said in the note.”

Sherbert stepped from the wobbling harbor boat to the slippery steel deck of the submarine with a great deal of care, ignoring the way that Agent Mane merely scrambled up the ladder and vanished into the conning tower like a pony half his apparent age. Somehow, the spy had managed to tint his coat in a dark blue shade with white ‘frosting’ like he was far older, along with yellowing spats on each hoof and a distinct squint. Sherbert was disguised as… Well, herself with a different name and a clipboard, along with a full-length skirt embroidered in a beaker pattern.

She slipped on the ladder several times, eventually gaining the assistance of an armed German sailor for the precarious task of entering the conning tower without crashing into the interior of the control room beyond. Maneuvering in the human-designed contraption required so much concentration that she nearly forgot how frightened enclosed spaces made her, or at least until she had a moment to think about it with all four hooves on the deck.

“...seems unacceptably designed for a taller species and no way to correct without a full reconstruction effort, although unicorns might be able to compensate for most of the misplaced controls. Miss Beaker, take a note of that.”

The clipboard floated over to Sherbert in Mane’s lime-green aura, yet another part of his changing behavior that kept her off-balance. She took it, made note of his observations in Equestrian, and focused on her surroundings instead of the crushing sense of despair filling her chest at the thought of being inside a steel tube.

It provided good incentive to keep alert and silent while the captain took the faux ‘Ministry official’ on a tour of the skinny vessel, from forward torpedo room to the quiet engines and sealed batteries like he was selling some used wagon instead of responding to a ‘secret plea’ from an unnamed agency inside of the Equestrian government looking into the possibility of purchasing several German U-boats for ‘coastal defense.’ Of course that would involve training crews, provided they could find any hypothetical ponies willing to endure long periods of time inside an underwater steel tube.

Memories of her mother’s failed attempt to suppress her fears kept attempting to poke up through the blanket of duty. The idea that mere humans could spend days underwater in this steel deathtrap was unthinkable. But yet, they did. So she could too. For a time. Provided she concentrated every tiny bit of her vast mind on examining her surroundings, much as if her mother was going to quiz her on it when she returned.

It really was an accident when Sherbert tried a door that Captan Goßler had passed by on their tour, and ‘Toll Docket’ had likewise ignored while carrying on their conversation. The click of the locked door drew the captain’s attention like a lodestone, and it looked for a moment like he was going to draw his sidearm like the other two sailors in the control room.

“Miss Beaker!” he snapped. “That room is off-limits.”

“Sorry!” Sherbert cringed back and cowered, made much easier by the fear she was suppressing, and the excuse came naturally to her voice. “I gotta pee. Isn’t this the bathroom?”

“It’s the radio room, not the head,” said the captain with a scowl, although he glanced at Toll Docket who was regarding the door with considerable disdain.

“Well, I suppose if that area is as unsuitable for pony use as the rest of this facility, there’s no need to examine it. Come, Beaker. Let us be off.”

“Wait.” The captain reached into his pocket for a key, which he reluctantly used to unlock the heavy hatch to the radio room. “You can look, but do not enter.”

“Huh.” Toll leaned in and took a few disinterested glances, then took a few steps back. “Nothing of interest, and only marginally suitable for ponies. What is your opinion, Beaker?”

It felt strange to see the locked cabinet where the decoding machine was certainly stored, merely a meter or so away. If she had the time, privacy, a key to open the cabinet, and enough raw materials, she could create a copy of the machine with her special spell. Without any of those, all she could do was look around the room and make note of the way submarines utilized every single centimeter of space, even to using the curved section of hull as a place to store German flags.

“You can’t even turn around in there,” she managed as a criticism, which was more valid than she would like to admit. The only way to get two ponies in the room was if one of them curled up under the minimalist desk and the other took shallow breaths. Despite the close quarters, it was decorated in classic German style with a few tiny photographs of supposed family and a great deal of locked filing space for paperwork and maps, all labeled in exhaustive detail. Even the cabinet the encryption device was concealed inside had a tidy label and a metallic lump with a pull-pin that undoubtedly was the trigger to some sort of destruction device like a thermite grenade.

“Our radio operator is quite fit,” said Captan Goßler as he ensured there were no leftover pony parts inside before closing the door and locking it. “A great deal of engineering expertise has been used to maximize efficiency in our operations. We do not run a cruise ship, Herr Doket. Perhaps you would be wise to allow more of our vessels into your port, crewed by good German sailors.”

“If they are all as mechanically deficient as this one, we would have to build several drydocks,” responded Toll Docket with an arrogant sniff. “It has been over several months, and your mechanics have not completed the repairs which caused you to take refuge here. It allows your lecherous sailors free reign over our fair city with nothing in return. Trust is an exchange, Captan Goßler. The Reich has provided little but promises in that regard, despite Equestrian assistance in your scientific endeavors. Our government is displeased with your recent expansionist tendencies. Several vessels of a type we are unable to build ourselves would do well to assuage such deficiencies, but every scrap of German steel available has been pressed into service in this foolhardy assault upon Poland. If not for our distance from the conflict, one might think Germany would prefer to enlist us into your conflict regardless of longstanding Equestrian neutrality.”

“Never,” said the German captain with a frustrated huff and a distinct lack of sincerity, or at least that is what Sherbert could determine by close examination of his other physical cues.

She was acutely aware of other ponies’ reactions to stimuli, which was why she had never been invited back to the office poker game after only one session. It was also a reason for her frustration with Agent Mane, who had settled into his role as a fictional government executive with far too much skill. It contrasted horribly against her own stumbling around in the close quarters of the human submersible, jarred against the cool coat of Agent Mane and the starched trousers of the German captain and security guards in equal proportions. When she finally made it to open air, free of the suffocating heat of the steel culvert, she lunged awkwardly in the direction of the waiting harbor boat and managed to only hit the harbor instead.

She never had learned how to swim, but there was good incentive at the moment, and she paddled for all that she was worth until her companion made it down into the waiting boat.

“Beaker!” he chastised, lighting his horn and getting Sherbert’s nose above water. Although he did not seem strong enough to lift her entire weight, it allowed her to breathe long enough to reach the edge of the boat. At that point, the eager young pilot promptly reached down, got a good grip on her foreleg with both hands, and pulled her the rest of the way onboard.

“Careful, Mum,” the human child cautioned. “Yer not wearin’ rubbers, an’ there’s nae a grip with steel shoes on that.” He reached one hand into the harbor, fished out the clipboard she had been working on, and gave it a shake, watching the water stream off it.

“Just give it a toss and get us back to shore,” snapped Toll Docket. “It’s worthless, just like this trip.”

It was a little out of character for Agent Mane, and it made Sherbert push her own pending panic into the back of her mind, despite being soaking-wet, pinched in horribly uncomfortable places by the damp dress, and bitter at her failures. She wanted to stomp until she knocked a hole in the bottom of the chugging harborboat, but that would not be a productive use of her time or effort, so she shut up, held still, and followed Mane once they got off the boat.

“Cab,” snapped Mane once they reached the street.

“Fourteenth and Elm Slough road,” he snapped to the cab driver.

“Goodbye,” he snapped when they reached their destination and climbed down from the hansom cab.

Sherbert had found herself stuck with the task of paying for their transportation, first for the human child who drove the harbor shuttle, then the squat earth pony pulling the cab. She did not want to be left behind, but had to practically gallop to catch Mane before he went into a nearby apartment building. Once again, she found herself wanting to call out to him but restrained by the practicality of shouting at a secret agent during whatever secret thing he might be doing.

Such practicality only lasted until he reached a second-floor apartment and practically walked into the closed door with his horn lit and the lock giving little sparks.

“Mane,” she hissed under her breath. “What are you—”

The lock faded in and out, then rotated sharply and the apartment door fairly popped open from his weight.

“Gohome,” he hissed over his shoulder as he fell into the room, but Sherbert was having none of it and stayed right on his heels while he scrambled to his hooves, then darted across the small apartment and under the kitchen table. At that point, she could not follow because when she looked, there was nothing under the table but a ventilation grate, and no Mane to be seen.

* * *

Dawn found thin rays of light forcing their reluctant way through the slats of the window shades, casting Mane’s apartment in parallel lines of shadow. A faint click sounded from under the kitchen table, then nothing.

“I’m still here,” said Sherbert Lemon, bent over the kitchen table with the vial of graphite powder held in the crook of her fetlock like an earth pony. She sprinkled gently over the paper and blew, letting the dust settle into the lines of magic she had drawn, then gave a gentle push that made the paper smell of damp wax and roses.

“I thought I told you to go home,” came a rough voice from under the table that only vaguely resembled Mane’s throaty tenor. Not getting any response other than rustling paper, Agent Mane’s nose eventually poked out into the still air, followed by the rest of his head in due time. “Why am I inside a submarine?” he asked.

Sheets of paper draped up and down the apartment corridor, attached to each other with cellophane tape and stuck to the walls with tacks. On them were line drawings and sketches of pipes, gauges, valves, and the various bits and pieces that made up the innards of a Type VIIB German submarine, diagramed out with Sherbert’s exquisite attention to detail, although at a smaller scale than the real sub out in the harbor.

“It wouldn’t fit inside the apartment otherwise,” said Sherbert as an answer to Mane’s obvious question. “Quarter-scale mostly, although the head is full scale so you can still use your toilet, and a section of the aft torpedo room is scaled at half for your bedroom.”

The spy observed the sheets of paper draped across his home for a long time, then moved slowly into the kitchen and got a cup out of the cabinet.

“I made coffee,” said Sherbert.

Mane upended the percolator over his cup and waited. After a few seconds, an inky lump dropped into it.

“It may be a little strong,” she admitted before returning to her work.

A certain amount of thumping and clunking came from the kitchen, slow at first but speeding up to a reasonable pace. Sherbert refused to allow it to distract her since she was nearly done, and produced her last paper as Mane shuffled back into her view with a pair of coffee cups following him.

“Have you ever made coffee before?” he asked, putting the other cup in front of her. “No, skip that. You’re still alive, so obviously not. You don’t fill the basket. You dump out the old grounds and the cold coffee, put in a few scoops of fresh, and… Nevermind. Is there a purpose to turning my home into a Navy art show?”

“We have an uncompleted task. Since we are unable to complete it from the theoretical end, we will just have to apply our skills to completing it from the practical end.”

“I’m a spy, not a proctologist,” said Mane, sipping on his coffee. “Or a submariner. Thankfully.”

“That much is obvious, from yesterday.” Sherbert swallowed. “I’ve been working on a plan.”

Mane gave out a grunt and headed for the bathroom. After sufficient time to perform his morning ablutions, he came back into the kitchen, looking far more equine.

“Were you planning on breaking into the submarine by way of the back hatch, sneaking to the radio room, copying the machine, and retracing your steps?”

She carefully used the tape dispenser to connect two sheets of paper. “Maybe,” she admitted.

“Sleeping gas, I presume. Some sort of gadget to let you work your way through the submarine once you have gained access,” he said. “Something to unlock the radio room door, the cabinet it is stored in, disarm the thermite destruct device attached to it, perhaps with a mind-affecting device to make the sailors all forget their most memorable Equestrian experience… Did I miss anything?”

Sherbert continued to apply tape.

“You can’t teleport into the radio room, because you can’t see your destination,” he continued. “That would be the easy solution.”

“Unfortunately, submarines are made of steel, not glass.” She hesitated with a piece of cellophane tape hovering in her magic field. “How much can you make transparent with your spell?”

“What?” Mane continued to nonchalantly sip his coffee, but Sherbert was having none of that.

“You don’t use keys. You used a spell to make your apartment lock transparent,” she said. “You’re very proficient with it, although I should have noticed the way you went through the locks at the submarine storage facility. Unicorn magic normally can’t affect hidden objects like lock pins very well, but you almost did not break stride.”

“I really have no idea what you are—”

“I can’t teleport,” she continued, “but you know about it, which combined with your natural talent… As a spy, no locked door would obstruct you. Even walls. Make it transparent to see your destination, teleport to the other side, and you can browse through any documents or secret items at your leisure.”

“I still don’t see—”

“You are correct. My plan sucks, but the radio room is mostly below the waterline of the submarine, which requires you and the Equestrian submarine for a higher probability of success.”

“It won’t work,” said Mane bluntly. “Tinkles doesn’t have any engines, and even if we could tow it over to the U-49 and I could teleport inside, which I’m not saying I could, teleportation takes a lot out of me. I can’t take you with me.”

“It would take four trips then,” said Sherbert. “In, grab the machine, out, I copy it, you take the original back in, and teleport back out.”

“And I collapse and die on the spot,” said Mane.

“A noble sacrifice for Equestria,” said Sherbert.

There was a brief silence, then Mane cocked his head slightly to one side. “You made a funny.”

“Did I?”

Mane took longer to consider this time. “You’re dangerous,” he pronounced as if it were a serious accusation.

“True.” She raised one eyebrow. “Didn’t your mother warn you about mares like me?”

The moment the words left her mouth, she knew that bit of attempted humor was exactly the wrong thing to say. Mane did not obviously react, but there were enough small motions and shifts in weight to indicate he was hurt deeply by her quip. She moved to put her body between Mane and the kitchen table, sat her rump down on the floor, and quietly asked, “I said something wrong. How do I apologize?”

“Flowers,” said Mane in what seemed to be a stunned reflex. “Dinner and dancing, normally. Are you that ill-prepared to engage socially with another sapient being?”

“Chemical reactions in non-laboratory conditions are by nature erratic and unpredictable,” said Sherbert. “I normally lock myself in the lab during this time, but the task seemed important enough to… Hormones,” she added. “Skip it. I will go to my laboratory and return in a week. Goodbye.”

It was Mane’s turn to get in front of her, scrambling to reach the apartment door first and face her with a rather conflicted expression. He stood there for a time, head lowered with horn glimmering lightly, then took a single sniff.

“Oh,” he said quietly. “Hormones forced upon a rational pony. You poor thing.”

“And you,” growled Sherbert as some of those hormones triggered a response somewhere deep in her guts. “A coward, more afraid of the dark places beneath the earth than—”

“A week may be too late,” said Mane. “With everything happening in Europe, the U-49 could set sail at any time. Their engines are repaired, despite their claims. And another thing. This way.”

He turned sharply to one side and strode into the bathroom, with Sherbert following regardless of her wishes, and remaining silent as he studied her sketches of the aft torpedo room.

“There.” He pointed. “That is not a German G7a torpedo. Nor is that one. The welds are all wrong, and there are seams which seem to indicate doors.”

“Why would anybody put doors on a torpedo?” she mused.

“Unless to access what is stored inside,” said Mane. “The Royal Guard required a search of the submarine when it first took refuge in our harbor. They took particular care examining the six supply containers the Type Seven-B submarines carry below the main deck and outside the pressure hull, but found nothing suspicious. Therefore, they may have been less alert inside the hull when examining sealed tubes supposedly full of explosives and flammable fuel. Hiding weapons inside false torpedo casings would be a clever method of deflecting the inevitable search. And recently, Italian weapons have been showing up in Manehattan, carried by the wrong ponies. Criminals. Partisans. Rebels.”

“Since you know about it, most of these undesirables are undoubtedly in the pay of Celestia.”

“Not all.” Mane tapped the paper. “Spies and double-agents are thick as fleas in town representing socialists, fascists, revolutionaries, and anarchists. Until now, we had few clues as to where the weapons were coming from. If nothing else, our little stage play yielded one good thing. Other than an afternoon spent in pleasant company.”

Sherbert could not decide if she wanted to smile or scowl. She settled for a sharp retort. “You just want under my tail while I’m weakened.”

“Eh…” Natural expressions did not seem to belong on his face, but Mane had a delightful frustrated grimace. “It is… delightful to have someone to match wits against. There’s only one brilliant mare who I trust, and she lives in a golden castle on a mountain. I’ve done many things in her service, seduced others, killed. Once. She did not go with me into that steel tomb. She did not give me the courage to face my fears. She does not face the same demons that plague my nightmares.”

“And now Celestia sets us both upon the same impossible task,” continued Sherbert, “which makes you doubt in your abilities. You’ve used sex to control others, so you seek to use your familiar patterns in unfamiliar circumstances.”

“And you hesitate to fling yourself into unknown reactions,” countered Mane. “How do you expect to learn, if you do not try? And not your crazy plan. It’s impossible.”

“Impossible?” Sherbert turned away, striding into the kitchen and retrieving the manual typewriter she had been using to make notes. She walked just as briskly back to the bathroom, opened the door, and tossed it inside. “There. We’ve got a door, a device, and a dimwit. Teleport inside, retrieve the device, and go from there.”

“You’re mad.”

“I’m angry,” snapped Sherbert. “I’m an angry scientist, and this is an experiment.” She lowered her horn. “Try me. Or would you like a different kind of experiment. One involving random transformation of your liped membranes into something unpleasant.”

“You are mad.”

“Like my mother,” snapped Sherbert. “Now move!”

A section of the door became transparent, and Mane vanished in a silent burst of light. Sherbert waited for a time, then asked, “Are you injured?”

“About pissed myself,” said Mane from behind the door. “Give me a moment, scary lady.”

Once they were done, Sherbert considered her experiment a success. Her experimental subject survived, although exhausted. With sufficient materials, she was able to replicate the primary functions of the mechanical typewriter in a rather ugly but serviceable fashion, although she was also exhausted. The only thing remaining was the process of getting the Equestrian submarine to the German submarine, which still eluded her.

However, there was one pony who should know how to accomplish that task.