//------------------------------//
// Ship Sinking 
// Story: Titanic 
// by Imperator Chiashi Zane 
//------------------------------//

Captain Smith scowled at the papers floating before him and Mr. Shipsmith as the two moved down the corridor, tailed by Carved Wood, “Can you shore up?”
Carved Wood tapped the paper with a wooden stylus, “Not if those pumps can’t get ahead.”
They passed Rose and Jack, going deeper into the ship, Shipsmith poking at the page himself, “If we start up the pumps here, and here, and run hoses over the bulkhead, we could…No, it still wouldn’t be enough.”
Jack turned to Rose, “It’s bad.”
“We have to tell mother, and Kale.”
“Now it’s worse,” he really didn’t want to speak to either of the stuffy nobles right now.
“Come with me, Jack.  I jump, you jump…Right?”
He nodded, “Right.”
__
Kale looked at his servant, Lovejoy, standing at the door, dripping water from his coat-tails onto the deck, “What happened to you?”
“Hold sprung a leak.  They were not down there.  I suspect to see them soon.”
“Excellent.  Look, The Master-at-Arms is on his way here right now.  I told him the Heart had been stolen, and I thought I knew who did it.”
Lovejoy’s face gave away nothing.  He knew from the context that the diamond was still safe, somewhere, probably on Kale’s body.  Sure enough, Kale floated the stone out and placed it in Lovejoy’s hoof.  At the questioning eyebrow, Kale pointed at the crumbled note still sitting on the desk, “Put it in the boy’s pocket when they enter.  I will have him arrested and locked up for the rest of the cruise.”
Lovejoy was about to point out how much shorter the cruise had become, but even he had to acknowledge that Kale was going above and beyond for what was a perfectly normal behavior for noble mares.  Letting Kale suffer the effects of his own idiocy would free him from the service of the blasted moron.  “Yes, Sir.”
__
Jack and Rose reached the suite and stopped at the door.  Lovejoy was sitting on the bench outside the suite, ever-present scowl softened slightly, and coat-tails sitting in puddles of salt-water, “We’ve been looking for you miss.”
As the two passed him, Rose nodded, and sighed.  Neither saw Lovejoy tucking the diamond into Jack’s overcoat pocket.
Kale and Truth sat on two of the chairs in the sitting room, with the Master-at-arms standing between them.  Truth coughed as Jack entered behind Rose.
“Something serious has happened,” Rose spoke quickly, and assuredly.
Kale nodded solemnly, “That’s right.  Two things quite dear to me have disappeared this evening.  Now that one is back,” he looked to Jack, “I have a pretty good idea where to find the other,” he pointed at Jack, “Search him.”
The Master-at-Arms stepped up to Jack, “Coat off, mate.”  The stallion was just going through the motions, he didn’t think the colt was guilty.  At first.  Seeing the leathery wings, he tensed, and began running a magic scan over Jack, muzzle to tail.
“This is horseshit.”
“Kale, you can’t be serious!  We’re in the middle of an emergency and you…”  Rose was cut off by the stallion making beeps with his mouth and pointing at the coat in Lovejoy’s hooves.  He took the coat and scanned it again, before pulling the stone out of the pocket.
“Is this it?”
Rose stared in shock.  Jack turned to look, and saw the stone, his own face dropping.
Kale nodded, “That’s it.”
“Alright then.  Now, don’t make a fuss,” he began clamping hoof-cuffs on Jack, before tying the Thestral’s wings down with a length of rope.
“Don’t you believe it, Rose!  Don’t!”
Rose looked at Jack, then at Kale, “He couldn’t have.”
“Of course he could.  Easy enough for a professional.  He memorized the combination when you opened the safe.”
Rose thought back to when she had caught Jack’s eyes in the mirror.  He had been behind her, but… “I was with him the whole time.”
Kale leaned in and whispered into her ear, voice colder than the air outside, “Maybe he did it while you were putting your clothes back on.”
“They put it in my pocket!”
Lovejoy held up the coat, “It’s not even your coat, son,” the tag inside had labelling on it, “Property of A.L. Ryeson.”
“That was reported stolen today,” the Master-at-Arms snugged the rope down around Jack’s ribs.
Jack coughed, “I was going to return it!  Rose!”
Rose backed away, confused.  She knew he couldn’t have done it, but at the same time, could he have?  She had changed in the bedroom, leaving him with the safe for almost five minutes.  She turned her head away, looking at the wall as Jack was dragged away.
“Rose, don’t listen to them…I didn’t do this!  You know I didn’t!  You know me!”
Devastated by the sudden overturning in her perspective, she began to tear up, “DO I!  DID I EVER!”  Her mother moved over and lay a hoof over her shoulder, waving the stallions away.  A napkin made its way out of the older mare’s bag and wrapped around Rose’s spittle covered muzzle as she continued to cry and scream at Jack.
“Why do we ever believe stallions?”
__
Shipsmith burst into the forward mail hold, stopping at the rail as he saw the mail sacks floating.  Mail-ponies frantically splashed around, trying to corral the floating bags to the stairs.  Lights beneath the water were still illuminating the room, an eerie glow that made him sick to his stomach.  His hoof moved down the steps and stopped as his shoe splashed into the icy water.  Before him was that very, very expensive carriage, submerged to the fenders already.  Turning, sadly, he started back up.
Captain Smith looked down at the stallions, “Don’t stay too long.  Save what you can carry in one trip, nothing more!”
__
Trotting back to the bridge, Smith at his side, the designer unrolled one of the floating papers, a side cross-section of the bulkheads.  “Water is up to here in the aft, to here in the bow.  That puts us at an inclination of this.”  His pencil and notebook floated alongside the cross-section as he scribbled into it, “That puts us at here.”
The three stallions re-entered the bridge, and Shipsmith slapped the paper down on the wheel-house table, half-ignoring Bright Island as the Unicorn pushed up behind him.
“When can we get underway, do you think?”  Again, speaking words that didn’t mean what the voice meant.
“Water fourteen feet above the keel in ten minutes…In the forepeak…In all three forward holds…Boiler room six.”
“Alright.”  Smith was as passive as he was able to be.  Island, on the other hand, was jumpy.
He poked the map, “But that’s only four, right?  We can float with four flooded?”
Shipsmith grabbed the unicorn’s head with his hoof and pulled him closer, “Five.  She can stay afloat with the first four, or any other three.  Not five.  Never with five.  As she goes down by the head, the water will spill over the tops of the bulkheads…at E deck…from one to the next, back and back.  There’s no stopping it.”
“The pumps?”
That everpresent notebook slammed onto the table, pages spread open to show a series of numbers un-readable to anyone not in the engineering crew, “The pumps buy us time, yes.  Hoses and some clever work with the aft pumps, sure.  We can buy us a few extra minutes.  But only a few.  From this moment on, no matter what we do, Titanic will founder.”
“But,” Island butted it, and Shipsmith seriously considered bashing the rich Unicorn’s muzzle into the table until it stopped talking, “This ship cannot sink!”
Instead, the designer and builder of the ship sighed, “She is made of iron, Sir.  I assure you, she can.  And she will.  It is a mathematical certainty.”
Smith winced, feeling the punch of the knowledge deep inside him, “How much time?”
“An hour.  Two.  Maybe more if we can keep the bulkheads up…”
“And how many aboard, Mr. Merdock?”
“Two thousand two hundred souls aboard, Sir.”  He looked down at the paper on the table, “We…”
Not a word was spoken for a long minute, then Smith turned to Island, “Well, Mr. Island, you got your headline.”
__
Shipsmith stormed down the length of the boat deck, watching impatiently as stallions of all ranks scurried to uncover the boats and get them in position.  Steam howled out of the funnels above, and he stuffed his ears with the familiar buzz of his own magic to muffle the sounds.  Speaking was nearly impossible over the shriek, and the officers couldn’t keep the crewponies in order.  One pair of particularly bright stallions were struggled with a davit, trying to get it in position.  He moved up close, howling over the steam venting, “Turn it to the right!  Pull the falls taut before you unchock!  Have you never had a boat drill?”
“No sir!  Not with these new davits!”
He scowled and grabbed the tackle for the falls in his hooves, “Move it!”
Several passengers started moving up on deck, woken by the noise, and wondering what was going on.
__
Voices and knocking echoed down the corridor, and Truth stood up, “I had better go dress.  Must look good, no matter what happens.”
Truth left the room, leaving Rose, Lovejoy, and Kale in a small circle.  Kale moved closer to Rose, and gently gripped her jaw in his magic.  A cold expression crossed his face as his hoof crossed the space between them and collided with her face, “It is a little slut, isn’t it?  I smell him…”  Rose flinched back, prepared for a second hit that didn’t come, turning her bruised muzzle away from him, “Look at me, you little…”
A loud knock on the door interrupted him, and Kale waved Lovejoy to the door.  As it opened, a steward poked his head in, “Sirs, Miss, I have been told to ask you to please put on your life-belt and come up to the boat deck.
“Get out.  We’re busy.”
Still, the steward moved into the room, ignoring the cold glares from both stallions as he pulled the white harnesses down from the top of the dresser, “I am truly sorry about the inconvenience, Mr. Hockley, but it’s the Captain’s orders.  Please dress warmly, it’s quite cold tonight.”  He handed one of the vests to Rose, mistaking her fearful expression for the wrong source, “Not to worry, miss.  I’m sure it’s just a precaution.”
“This is ridiculous.  Get out!”
__
First Class stewards made sure to not create panic, in their courtesy and politeness managing to convey no sense of danger whatsoever.
__
A pounding woke Mr. Cartmell, a third class stallion travelling with his daughter.  He opened the door and looked out to see a steward pounding on doors, yelling, “Oi!  Everybody up!  Life-belts on!  Let’s go!”
Puzzled, the stallion turned back to the inside of his room and switched on the light, “Cora, honey, get your jacket.  You can go back to bed in a few minutes, but they want us up on deck now.”  He lifted the still half asleep filly in one hoof, and rooted around on the floor until he found her coat and boots.  She giggled tiredly as he dressed her, then almost fell asleep again as he pulled on his own boots and jacket.  He settled her atop his shoulders, head snugly between his ears, and donned his hat, letting it shut out the light for his tired little filly as he started up the corridor to the stairs.
__
“CQD, sir?”  Jack Frequency stared at the Captain.
Smith nodded, “Yes, that’s right.  The distress call.  CQD.  Tell whoever responds that we are going down by the head and need immediate assistance.”  The stallion hurried out, having more to do.
“Blimey.”
“Maybe we ought to try that new distress call.  SOS,” Sparks smiled, “May be our only chance to use it.”
Jack nodded, laughed, and started tapping the key.  The first ever SOS.  Dit Dit Dit, Da Da Da, Dit Dit Dit…Over and over.