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The Dead Zone (PoE, war)

(no cover art)

Captain Dusk and his crew have an important mission ahead of them. With no modern electronics, navigation, or communication, it won't be easy. They must pull together in order to survive the Dead Zone.

Author note: I think this would have been a fairly unique idea: the idea of high-tech ships forced to do battle the old fashioned way, with line of sight weapons, dead-reckoning navigation, and nobody to call for help. I was planning to also explore the idea of one pony in charge of so many and being their ultimate leader. With the radios down, he can't call to ask for advice. It's a terrible burden. Captain Dusk isn't confident in himself, but slowly grows to learn that he has to be, because his crew look up to him. At the end of the story, I was planning a giant battle. Dusk knows the stakes, and knows that he will have to answer for the orders he gives. He says, "Fight her 'till she sinks." Then cut to black. The story of how the ship turned out is not important, it's the personal journey Dusk went on to get there. Over the course of the story, he and his entire crew bond and will support each other, even in the face of possible death. Oh, and TMS Honor was to be a Zumwalt-class bought from the Americans. I set the story in the future so we could see what the US Navy's currently most advanced ship would have aged to.

2046
Guam

The twisted metal and wreckage of what had once been a submarine was tied to the pier. It was a miracle that it still floated, really.

Dusk turned away from the damaged vessel. Even if the sub wasn’t part of the Equestrian Navy, he still didn’t like seeing such destruction. It reminded him too much of his own ship.

While Dusk wasn’t a very political stallion, he knew that the war with China had been a long time in coming. He also knew that the war had mostly been instigated at the behest of the United States. Equestria, as a participating member of the UN, had become involved.

The dimensional doorway technology to connect the pony world to the human one was now more than fifty years old. The two sapient species had learned to live together. Both had needed to make adjustments, but the relationship was mostly good.

And then war came along. The Princesses had recognized that people were more experienced at it and sought to improve the readiness of their own forces. That involved the purchase of advanced weapons and combined training with human forces. Ponies had been present in at least an observation role in every conflict from Afghanistan all the way up to the present.

That still didn’t mean Equestria had the best military in both worlds. Dusk swung his gaze across the pier to where his ship was tied up. Their Majesties’ Ship Honor was an antique, built in the 2010’s for the US Navy and retrofitted for Equestrian service. The Princesses simply could not justify to their citizens the spending of trillions on weapons. However, it would have to do. Honor was next ship scheduled to deploy.

Dusk walked up the gangway to the quarterdeck, saluting the ship’s ensign and the officer of the deck. The pony saluted back. “Welcome aboard, Captain.”

Nodding to the sailor, Dusk continued up to the bridge. Other crew members greeted him in passing. He was not a difficult stallion to recognize. Much of his coloring had been inherited from his mother, Twilight Sparkle. His mane and tail were cut short in a military style. The abbreviated uniform he wore was good for the warm weather in Guam. The matching cap on Dusk’s head had a hole in the brim for his horn. The embroidery on the front of the cap spelled out TMS Honor, BBG-100.

The designation was an unusual one. In the human military, the ship had been classified as a destroyer. However, Honor was the largest surface combatant in the Equestrian navy. There was a certain amount of national pride in calling it a battleship. Dusk himself felt more than a little affection for the ship. Despite its age and hand-me-down status from the Americans, it was still his.

When he’d been picked for command, some ponies muttered about the political connections of his family but few could argue his qualifications. Dusk had never seen combat before, but had shown such mastery of everything else in his career that most assumed he would take to warfare with equal aplomb.

When Dusk arrived on the bridge, preparations were already underway to get the ship out to sea. The crew were well trained and knew their jobs. Their orders to sail would arrive soon. Dusk already knew where they were going; northwest, to the Philippine Sea.

China had spent decades building defenses. While an invasion of the mainland was probably not in the plans for allied strategists, they still had to defeat the Chinese military forces wherever they were found.

A system of electronic jamming and noise had been set up deep in China’s interior where it was difficult to find and destroy. The signals it produced were a nuisance most of the time, but they created a zone of interference in the Philippine Sea where all the signals from the various places were focused and built on each other. It created a virtual black hole for electronics. Nothing worked there; radar, radios, and even GPS were blocked. It had been nicknamed the dead zone.

The zone worked both ways. Chinese warships suffered under the same blanket of silence. However, shipping through the area could pass by virtually unmolested. It was a safe haven for the cargo vessels traveling between China and territories it had taken over. That was cargo China needed to survive, and so ships like Honor had to venture into the dead zone in order to find them.

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