Two
Redheart had been fresh from Nursing School in the Summer of 996. She’d graduated with honours from the University of Canterlot’s Helping Heart Nursing School. She’d even been in the top 10 per cent of her class. That was unheard of for an earth pony like her.
Those in the medical field were all almost exclusively unicorns, or, so they had been traditionally. In practise, this was becoming less and less true with each passing day.
Surgeons were exclusively unicorns, because the need for a greater amount of dexterity than other fields, but now, there were plenty of doctors and nurses in other fields that were members of the other races.
Redheart had always been proud of her accomplishments, and with getting a job at Doctor Nightly’s clinic in Ponyville. Ponyville was her home, it might have been an unassuming little hamlet before Twilight Sparkle the trouble magnet showed up and ruined that, but in the Summer of 996, it was the perfectly quaint little town that Redheart loved.
Of course, with that in mind, it left the clinic with very little that actually needed doing. Oh sure, the foals would get their normal bumps and bruises, and the occasional cold. Hell, the most serious thing to ever happen was the time that Alley Way had broken her leg and spent a whole summer in bed while it healed.
Now, of course, that boredom from a lack of anything serious happening was what had gotten Redheart into trouble. Her overwhelming desire to help those in need was exactly what Dieter was looking to exploit. The International Brigades were desperate for recruits at that point, and someone as young, and stupid, and idealistic as she had been being just the kind of person that Dieter needed to find. There wasn’t anything inherently malicious about it, but the hispà ponies in Espanya were desperate. They needed them, and that was that.
That was how she had found herself at the Port of Fillydelphia, her nose buried deep in the map of the port as she attempted to navigate herself to the proper berth.
Berth sixteen, she had to find her way to berth sixteen. Waiting there should be a ship that would take them across the Eastern Ocean to Espanya. A ship called a Destroyer, she remembered Dieter saying.
The Jaime so it was to be called.
Redheart looked up from her map, and ran headlong into another pony. She cursed herself for not paying better attention. She dropped the map, and the wind caught it, sending it flying. She looked back at it, frowning as it went over the edge of the dock, only to stop in mid-air as a ruby red telekinetic field enveloped it. The map folded itself back up, and floated its way back over to Redheart. She grabbed it, turning her eyes forward to the pony she had run into.
The mare before her was a unicorn, her coat in this light looked to be bright white, but as Redheart looked closer, she determined it was actually quite a pale yellow. The palest it could be and might as well have been white to the average observer, with her mane a two tone electric blue and turquoise, done up with a spikey look. She looked at Redheart with the dumbest grin on her face, and bright ruby red eyes. ‘Drop something did you?’ she asked as she let the map go from her telekinetic grip.
‘Ah, thank you miss—?’ Redheart began to say.
‘Vinyl Scratch,’ the mare said simply, offering a hoof to shake. Redheart took it and shook back.
Had she known how much trouble this mare was later going to get her into, she might not have accepted it, or worse, pushed her into the bay.
‘A pleasure to meet you,’ Redheart said with a smile. ‘You wouldn’t by chance happen to know where berth sixteen is, do you?’
Vinyl Scratch merely grinned at her. Redheart would later come to learn that this grin could never mean anything good. Which was unfortunate, because this was very much Vinyl Scratch’s default look. ‘As a matter of fact, I do. I’m on my way there right now.’
Redheart looked surprised, taken aback by her response. She had not thought she was going to actually run into another volunteer. Dieter had explained that the Espanya needed help, and that had brought the attention of quite a number of ponies, but when he explained exactly what was going on, it turned most of them off. Equestrians, by nature, abhorred violence. Dieter had only gotten Redheart to agree when he suggested that she could be put to work as a medic. (Which, at the time, he had failed to mention, would mean that she was in the thick of violence, and would have to inflict some violence of her own if it meant staying alive.)
‘You?’ Redheart asked. The look of surprise on her face more than evident. The mare couldn’t be any older than twenty.
Vinyl chuckled and nodded her head. ‘Me. Surprised?’ she asked.
Redheart nodded her head, though it was clear that Vinyl’s question had been rhetorical. The look of surprise on her face couldn’t have been anything less than obvious. ‘I didn’t expect anyone would have been able to get over the violent aspect of what we’re being asked to do.’
‘Eh, I think you’d be surprised of what a pony can do when they’re given the proper motivation,’ Vinyl said with a grin.
That should have been a red flag. Vinyl had said it so casually; it had gone over Redheart’s head at that point. She was a trained nurse, top of her class at the college of nursing. She should have had some warning for just how unstable Vinyl Scratch was. She wouldn’t have figured it out properly though, until much, much later.
The two eventually made their way to berth sixteen. Vinyl had expertly lead the way to the berth.
The Jaime had not quite been what Redheart had been expecting of a ship.
The Jaime was roughly a hundred metres long, and was built of riveted steel. This surprised Redheart, every ship she had ever seen, air or sea, and been timbered. Usually driven by sail, or large paddle wheels. The Jaime had neither. Redheart would later learn much about their transportation.
The Jaime was a ship of the Churruca y Elorza-class, so she had been told, and was exactly one hundred and ten metres long, exactly three metres and thirty centimetres tall, and three metres and thirty centimetres wide. Apparently, such precision had been lauded at the ship’s time of construction. Or so, at least it was, according to the one crew member Redheart had meet who happened to speak Equestrian, and was, apparently, well-armed for a ship of her size, with five single mounted 12 centimetre guns, and two centre mounted 53.3-centimetre torpedo tubes with triple mounts, and could do a maximum of 67 kilometres an hour.
Though at her standard cruising speed, 26 kilometres an hour, which they would be making their crossing at, they were looking at an eight-day trip across the Eastern Ocean. She would certainly be getting to know everyone pretty well. Some were pleasant, some she preferred to stay away from.
And then there was Vinyl Scratch. Of whom, Redheart determined to be absolutely insane by the end of their first day at sea.