The Millionaire Suite was designed to be as luxurious as possible, opulent in the extreme. Two bedrooms, a bathroom, a sitting room, and a large wardrobe, as well as a small side room for servants, and a private promenade outside. The same deck Rose now stood on, watching the shore depart. A waiter stood at her side, levitating a bottle of orange juice, which he was pouring into a wine-flute Rose held in her own magic. She didn’t want to go back inside. Numerous paintings covered the walls, unknown artists, unappreciated artists, expensive artists, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to get out of there. Eventually, though Kale called her back inside to the sitting room.
“Those mud puddles were certainly a waste of money.”
Rose glanced at the indicated image, a cubist style painting, hideous and repulsive to look at, but the best way to make Kale leave her alone for the rest of the trip was to disagree with him. Maybe he would even break off the engagement, “You’re wrong, Kale. They’re fascinating. Like in a dream. There’s truth without logic. What was his name again…?”
Kale peered through his glasses at the lower corner, “Picasso. He’ll never amount to a thing. At least they were cheap.”
A porter rolled a safe in on a small cart, pushing it up to Kale, “Where do you want your safe Sir?”
Kale dismissively waved to the shared wardrobe, “Put it in the wardrobe in there.”
Rose walked into the bedroom and inhaled the scent of the new room as the porter walked out, towing the cart behind him. Truly Marvelous, her personal servant, was already in the room, hanging some of Rose’s dresses in the wardrobe, through the side door.
She smiled at Rose, “It all smells so new. Like it was built just for us. I mean…Just think, tonight, when I crawl into my bed, between those sheets, I’ll be the first…”
Kale stepped into the doorway behind Rose, one hoof cradling her back, and glancing to his side at her, “And when I crawl between the sheets tonight, I’ll still be the first.”
Trudy blushed and stepped back from the couple, “Excuse me, Miss, Sir,” she slipped out the door into the wardrobe, bypassing the two in the main doorway.
Kale smiled and pulled Rose tighter to him, possessively, rather than intimacy. Rose tried not to shudder. “The first and only. Forever.” Now, Rose shuddered at the thought, pulling away from him slightly.
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Titanic sat at the edge of yet another dock, ramps out to bring in the passengers from Prance and Germaney. The tugboats sat at its shoulders, looking like tiny rowboats beneath the shining lights of a thousand portholes. The lights of the harbor itself completed a postcard image, one that was, in fact, taken by a Pegasus photographer by the name of Deft Feather. He would become very popular in the years to follow, as his photographs would be some of the last taken of the ship for eighty-four years.
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In the first-class reception room, a number of prominent passengers filed in, pursued by porters and servants carrying their luggage. A broad-shouldered mare in an even wider feathered hat walked up with heavy saddlebags on her back, glancing back at a spindly Unicorn porter, “Well, I wasn’t about to wait all day for you sonny. Take ‘em the rest of the way if you think you can manage.
At Cherbourg a mare aboard named Mossy Brown. History would call her the Unsinkable Mossy Brown. Her husband had struck gold someplace out west, and she was what mother called ‘New Money’. At forty-five years old, she was a tough-talking straight-shooter who dressed in the same finery as her peers, but would never really be one of them.
Mossy Brown huffed as she handed her saddlebags off. As an Earth Pony, she was very much capable of carrying her own bags, and in truth would have preferred to do so. But she had an image to uphold, a role she had to fit into, and behaviors to display. It was uncomfortable, but it was necessary for her latest position as the wife of a multi-millionaire.
She trotted calmly up to the counter and pulled a quill pen with a well chewed feather out of her coat, using it to sign in on the sheet with her name on it. A quick shake of her head to put the scribble on the page, and she glanced over at the colt, who was still struggling to carry the bags. For a few moments she debated letting him struggle with the sacks of expensive jewelry her husband had bought for her, but in the end, she took pity on him and bit the belt, flipping it up onto her back like it weighed nothing, despite the clatter of stone-on-stone and gold-on-silver from within. “Come, colt. Show me the way to my room, and I’ll make sure you are rewarded.”
The gangly youth started down the hall, striding tall, and navigating the hallways with a practiced ease, checking that his tail was still there, ensuring he would still receive his tip. As they reached her room, he nimbly opened the lock with his master-key, “Right in here, milady.”
She smiled and walked past him, letting the bags slide onto the floor with a soft clatter before reaching into one of them with her muzzle. Grabbing at something, she pulled her head back and walked over to the colt. She moved her head over his, cautious of the sharp horn as she moved a thick silver chain around his skull and gently released the clasp from her mouth. The unicorn looked down at the chain, specifically at the pocket-compass on the low end, “Now go get yourself some rest. Maybe at some point you’ll figure it out.”
She shuffled out of her coat as the colt departed, and closed the door.
The next afternoon we made our final stop, and we were steaming west from the coast of Ireland, with nothing ahead of us but ocean.
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The ship glowed in the light of the setting sun. Jack and Honor leaned on the beautifully curved railing, looking down at the sea below. Eighteen meters down to the ocean, the knife-like prow cut through the surface like a knife, throwing up waves on either side like two sheets of glass.
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Up on the bridge, the captain, Wind Smith, turned from the binnacle at the front and looked to First Officer Merdock. “Take her to sea Merdock. Let her stretch her legs.”
Merdock gripped the engine telegraph lever in his magic and shoved it forward to ALL AHEAD FULL.
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Down in the vast engine compartment, a bell rang loudly. The paired telegraph displayed the order with a red arrow. Chief Engineer Chiming Bell, a grease stained Earth pony, looked at the telegraph, “ALL AHEAD FULL!” He kicked the telegraph handle to the matching position, and the arrow on the bridge moved to match it.
On the catwalk overhead, Tom Shipsmith, a silver maned white Unicorn, watched carefully. He had been at the forefront of the design for the lovely vessel, and wanted to make certain everything ran smoothly. Below him, Engineers, Greasers, and relay messengers darted about, adjusting knobs and valves. Towering overhead on either side were the twin engines. Four stories tall, their three meter connecting rods surged up and down, turning crankshafts thicker than a carriage. The engines thundered all around like the foot-falls of angry giants.
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The boiler rooms echoed with the calls of runners, trained Pegasi and Griffons zipping back and forth, keeping the cadence of the stokers. Ponies of all shapes and breed, indistinguishable through layers of coal dust and sweat, chanted.
The coal was slack and full of slate
And that's what beat the four to eight.
The eight to twelve were all good stal’n
But they were beat by half past ten.
The twelve to four did their best
But they were beat like all the rest.
In Moscow streets the blood runs deep -
The 12 to 4 can't get no sleep!
Muscles rippled in the light of safety lamps and furnace fires, looking like demons from Tartarus.
Many dozens of meters behind, the enormous bronze screws churned the water, foaming at the edge as they propelled the iron juggernaut through the waves. Smoke belched from the funnels. At the bow, the water flared higher up the bow.
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Standing atop the bow, Jack rose, wind ripping through his mane.
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Captain Smith steped out onto the wing beside the bridge, standing upright with his fore-hooves balanced on the mist-slicked rail, a patriarch of the sea, watching his domain tear through the waves.
“Captain, Twenty-one knots, Sir.”
“She’s got a bone in her teeth now, eh Mr. Merdock,” the captain gently plucked a mug of hot coffee from a sea-foam green Pegasus, Fifth Officer Swing Lowe, contentedly watching the waves of white ocean water hurled out from the knife-edge bow cutting into the sea. The ultimate expression of his power as Captain. An invulnerable leviathan, towering above the sea.
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Jack urged Honor to lean over the railing, watching as a pair of dolphins appeared, skipping and darting in the water ahead of the ship, riding its massive wake. It was beautiful, pushing themselves to their limits, just for the sheer fun of it. Jack’s face split open in a smile, and he launched himself into the air, flapping his wings as hard as he could, shooting ahead of the ship for a few moments before climbing and spreading his wings. A perfect glide brought him into a fore-hooves first landing on the deck, just behind Fierce Honor. “It’s magnificent isn’t it?”
Honor turned and looked back at Jack, “I can see the Statue of Liberty already,” a matching grin split his face, “Very small of course…” The two held their grins for as long as they could manage before dropping to the deck, curling up as laughter wracked their bodies.
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“She is the largest moving object ever made by the hooves of ponies in all of recorded history,” a glance upward, “With the sole exception of Celestia’s heavenly bodies above,” Bright Island, managing director of the White Star Line of ships, spoke to an array of ponies, “and our master shipbuilder, Sir Tom Shipsmith here, designed her from the keel up. Shipsmith flinched away from the sudden attention, in part intending the attention to be directed towards one of the other ponies at the table. Kale, Truth, Rose, Mossy, or even back to Island. The sights even, as beautiful as they were from the palm-court, sitting in the sun shining through tall arched windows.
“Well, I may have knocked her together, but it was really Mr. Island’s idea. He envisioned a steamer so grand in scale and so luxurious in its appointments, that its supremacy would never be challenged. And here she is,” his hoof crashed to the table, far harder than any would have expected of the dignified Unicorn, “Willed into solid reality.”
Mossy Brown looked at him a bit strangely for a second before speaking her mind, “Why do you stallions always call ships ‘she’? Is it because you think half the mares around have big sterns and should be weighed in tonnage?” Everyone laughed roughly, “Just another example of stallions setting the rules their way.”
A waiter arrived to take their orders, and as they worked their way around the table, Rose slid a long cigarette holder out of her dress and set a small white tube in the end, lighting it carefully.
“You know I don’t like when you do that Rose,” Truth looked disapprovingly at the younger mare.
Kale rolled his eyes and grabbed the cigarette in a bubble of magic, “She knows,” the sphere slammed closed, crushing the cigarette out of existence. He turned to the waiter, who had made his way around the table, “We’ll both have the lamb. Rare, with a little mint sauce,” a glance at Rose after the waiter left, “You like lamb, don’t you, sweetpea?”
“You gonna cut her meat for her too there, Kale?” Mossy seemed disappointed for a reason Kale couldn’t fathom, at least not in the time before she started speaking again, “Hey, Island, who came up with the name Titanic, anyway? Was it you, Sir?”
“Yes, actually,” Island smiled, puffing himself up in his chair, “I wanted to convey sheer size. Size means stability, luxury, and Safety…”
Rose cut him off, “Do you know of a doctor Freud? His ideas about the male preoccupation with size might be of particular interest to you Mr. Island.”
Shipsmith choked at that, jerking away from the table as he tried to clear his throat so he could laugh properly, without the piece of bread that had made residence in his air pipe.
“Sweet Celestia, Rose, What’s gotten into…”
Rose snapped up from her chair, setting the wine glass she had been levitating down a fair amount harder than she probably meant to, “Excuse me,” she stormed off.
“I do apologize,” Truth tried to cover up the entire incident.
Mossy was having none of that, “She’s a pistol Kale. You sure you can handle her?”
Feigning unconcern, Kale focused carefully on the words he was going to say, “Well, I may have to start minding what she reads from now on.”