The helicopter, Seahawk alpha-one-two, approached the destroyer’s aft deck. Buckled tightly into his seat, Shining Armor looked down through the window, wondering how the helo pilot was supposed to hit such a small, moving target. The stallion did not enjoy helicopters, and liked ships even less. There was a reason he’d signed up for a military force that stayed on the ground.
The seas were reasonably calm, however, and the landing was smooth. A sailor slid the door open and helped Shining to get out. The three ponies with him followed behind. Once the passengers had disembarked, the helo lifted off and headed back towards Japan.
Inside the hangar bay, the destroyer’s own embarked helicopter sat idle. Shining and the other ponies stripped off their flight gear and were greeted by an officer from the ship.
“Martin,” the man said, extending a closed fist.
Shining gave him a hoof bump. “Good to meet you. What’s the situation?”
“Well sir, it’s been a tense couple of hours.” The man gave Shining a rundown of everything that had happened. There were a few interesting details that the pony hadn’t heard before, but he was disappointed to discover that the crew of Cushing didn’t really know what they were up against. The stallion could see the frustration written on Martin’s tired face.
“Can I talk to the men who were on the team that boarded?” asked Shining.
Martin’s expression darkened. “The three that are left.”
None of those that had been injured were serious enough to need medical evacuation. Michaels had cracked his head on the deck. Nakamura’s nose had been bloodied by a hoof to the face. Philips had a scratch on his arm where a bullet had ricocheted off the plate in his ballistic vest. They were all shaken, but very much alive.
“Never seen anything like it, sir,” muttered Petty Officer Third Class Michaels as the medical corpsman assigned to Cushing checked the bandage on his head.
“Tell me how it happened,” said Shining.
“After we boarded, we went for standard procedure. We call it the ‘take us to your leader’ conversation. A guy said he was in charge, so we asked to see their paperwork. When we don’t have another reason to come aboard, that’s what we use,” explained Michaels.
Shining nodded. “Go on.”
“I’m not sure how it happened. The one guy pulled out a gun. I think he shot Chief Dunbar. One of the ponies hit me with some kind of spell. It didn’t do anything but knock me down.” Michaels grimaced at the ache in his head. The painkillers the corpsman had given him were beginning to wear off.
The pony interrogated Michaels and the other two men a little while longer, but could discover nothing new. Frustrated, he decided to visit the Combat Information Center and see if any of the electronics aboard the ship had picked up anything of value.
Shining was just stepping into the compartment when a voice on the address system echoed through the ship. “Commander Delgado to Signals.”
Perfect. He wanted to talk to the ship’s captain anyway. An Equestrian Army Lieutenant Colonel was equivalent rank to a US Navy Commander, so they would be on even terms.
Delgado came in and stood behind the radio man. “What have you got?”
The enlisted signalman turned, his face pale. “Sir, this just happened a minute ago…”
The man pressed play on a recording. Cushing, this is Seahawk alpha-one-two. Someone just took a shot at us.”
“Any identification on the shooter?”
“Negative. Wait, there it is! That’s got to be magic. The surface of the ocean is bare. Do ponies have invisibility?”
“Are you in danger, alpha-one-two? Hello?”
There was no reply.
Another man came rushing up. “Sir, we just picked up a helicopter emergency beacon. The Seahawk probably went down.”
Delgado’s jaw tightened, but his voice remained remarkably calm. “That’s where we’ll find our disappearing boat.”
The CO grabbed the intercom and ordered the helmsman to come to a new course. The destroyer’s engines changed pitch as they accelerated to maximum speed.
★
Smith walked up to the unicorn standing on deck. The two of them gazed out at the wreckage of a helicopter slowly sinking beneath the waves.
“Did you do that?” the man asked.
“It wasn’t hard,” the pony said proudly. “Just a simple spell. Turns out people don’t fly so well when they’re stunned.”
Truthfully, it hadn’t been very easy at all. He’d been lucky to hit a moving target from so far way. He didn’t need to tell Mr. Smith, that though. The stallion was surprised when he felt something cold and metal press against the back of his head.
Smith said, “And now they know where we are, you idiot.”
The gun thundered and the unicorn’s brains splattered all over the deck. Smith stepped back, leaving the limp body where it was. It was wasteful to kill a pony when they still needed so much magic, but perhaps this example would encourage the others to stay in line.
Smith stowed the gun and went back down to the cargo hold. Star Show looked up from his preparations to restart the spell. “Did you take care of him? You know we need as many unicorns as we can get.”
“Well, the extra sacrifice should make up for that.” Smith nodded down the passageway to where the prisoner was being kept.
Star shrugged. “We’d better get started then. Pull the cloakers off duty and have them come down here. We should have opened up enough distance on that ship to give us plenty of time.”
Over the next few minutes, the spell-casting unicorns assembled in the hold. They carefully took their places and began to power up the spell once more. Smith went over to the small wooden box sitting on the table and opened it. The dagger inside was old, but at least it wasn’t as corroded as the fishing boat. Smith did not know where it came from, and did not care. He’d tested the edge by splitting a hair, and that was good enough for him.
Leaving the knife where it was for the moment, he turned to Nolan. “Go get the foal.”
The other man hurried away. Smith walked towards the locked storage compartment where they were keeping the sailor. He put his hand on the doorknob but stopped as Nolan called him. “Mr. Smith! She’s gone!”
“How the hell do you loose a filly? She was chained, wasn’t she?” Smith walked slowly towards Nolan. The other man almost literally quivered in fear.
“Uh, yeah. We had a guard posted, too.” Nolan gulped. “He’s also gone.”
“Search the ship,” snapped Smith. “They can’t have gone far.”
★
Shining felt that he was getting nowhere. The sailors were doing everything they could to find the mysterious fishing boat, but until that happened none of them would learn anything more. Earlier, a P-3 Orion had even flown over. The patrol plane was equipped with a magnetic anomaly detector for sensing changes caused in the earth’s magnetic field by large chunks of metal. Perhaps that could see through the boat’s invisibility. The stallion had been told that it wasn’t a very long range instrument, however, and the plane would have to unknowingly fly very close to the vessel to detect it.
With the helicopter missing, and no scheduled flight arriving to pick him up, Shining and his team would be spending a while on the ship. Delgado was understandably reluctant to send the destroyer's helo up. The four ponies had were passing the time in the small area of the CIC which they'd been given as workspace.
“Ridiculous,” murmured Giga Watt. The unicorn was especially good at working with and detecting energy. He was currently examining a declassified diagram of Cushing’s electrical grid.
“Itching to rewire it?” inquired Lemon Slice, a pegasus mare. She had spent most of her working years in some capacity to the Equestrian government, starting out in law enforcement and working her way into diplomatic relations. Shining considered her an excellent secretary.
The fourth pony, Bedrock, was an enlisted aide to Shining Armor. The solider was capable, fit, and didn’t say much.
“Sir!” shouted one of the ship’s radar technicians. “New surface contact, almost dead ahead. The range is twenty eight miles. It’s like they just appeared out of nowhere!”
“Target speed?” requested Delgado.
“Stationary, sir!”
Martin, the Strike Officer, was about to suggest weapons choice, but Sampson beat him to it. “Sir, are we going to use Harpoons?”
A few of the anti-ship missiles would certainly do a number on the fishing boat. Delgado, however, shook his head. “Do you have any idea what that contact is?”
Sampson opened his mouth to suggest the obvious answer, but thought better of it.
“For all we know, it could be a submarine that just surfaced,” muttered the Commander. “I know how everyone feels about getting back at them, but we have to have positive target confirmation.”
Clearing his throat, Delgado ordered, “Adjust course to best close with the contact. Visually confirm its identity before doing anything else.”
“Aye, sir,” answered the helmsman. “Sir, at this speed, we should cover about one mile every two minutes.”
“Sir, what if it does turn out to be that boat?” asked Martin.
Delgado looked at him. “Sink it.”
★
The two ponies and the man guarding Bryant didn’t give him much slack. He wasn’t bound, but the three of them watched the sailor like hawks. They’d nearly jumped him when he scratched his nose.
It was be impossible to do anything under their watchful stare. Bryant just had to be ready to act on any opportunity. It wasn’t long before one came along.
A muffled bang, probably a gunshot, came from somewhere overhead. Bryant’s captors all looked up instinctively. About halfway through the glance, all three of them realized it was a foolish move.
Bryant twisted on the deck, kicking his leg up. The sailor’s steel-toed boot collided with the unicorn’s face. Pushing up, the man grabbed the earth pony by the ears and dragged him forward, smashing the pony’s sensitive nose against the top of his skull in a crushing headbutt.
When captured, Bryant had not been informed that he was a prisoner of war. He doubted the mixed crew of people and ponies were working for any nation. There were certain rules that had to be followed in organized combat. Guards can’t kill prisoners, and prisoners can’t murder guards.
This was obviously not a prisoner of war situation, and the fight was definitely two-sided. The man grabbed for his gun. Bryant kicked the stunned unicorn into his path and they both fell to the deck.
The earth pony was shaking his head in pain. While the other two were down, Bryant hit the underside of the pony’s chin with the heel of his hand. The stallion must have had a glass jaw, because he dropped like dead weight.
Bryant turned around and froze, surprised and horrified at the sight of so much blood. The man had fallen on the unicorn’s horn. The gun lay near his limp fingers. The stallion was trying to struggle out from under the dead man's weight, unable to cry out because his face and jaw were pressed to the deck.
The sailor picked up the gun and whacked the pony on the temple with the butt. The stallion went limp. Working quickly, he stripped the man’s jacket and used it to blindfold and gag the unicorn. His belt and trousers went to bind the pony’s hooves.
Turning around, Bryant noticed the earth pony wasn’t breathing. While he had been working on the unicorn, the stallion had drowned in the blood running from his nose.
Bryant suddenly felt sick. Two dead, and all it had cost him was an ache from the headbutt. On the other hand, he’d seen a boat full of his shipmates shot and blasted with magic. Well, the score was a little more even now.
It occurred to him that no other guards had come to check on suspicious noises. Could he be so lucky? Flesh-to-flesh strikes weren’t very loud, and it wasn’t like the old fishing boat had zero ambient noise to mask them.
Bryant gulped. Either way, he had a finite amount of time. He could either wait until they came for him, or take matters into his own hands. He checked the gun. It was a Beretta, similar to the Navy-issued ones. There were fifteen cartridges in the magazine and one in the chamber. He flicked the safety off and pulled back the hammer.
The door opened easily to a deserted passageway. Bryant stood for a second, feeling the motion of the boat against the waves. As an experienced sailor, he was able to figure out his orientation with the vessel, although not which deck or where, exactly.
He couldn’t stay standing there, though. Bryant began walking quickly and quietly in the direction he thought he might find a way to go up to the next deck. His ears picked up a set of mixed steps, both hooves and boots, coming his way. He ducked into the first door that presented itself.
It was hard to say who was more surprised; Bryant, or the man guarding a young pony. The sailor recovered first, putting his finger to his lips as he pointed the gun.
The compartment might have once been a laundry room. The equipment was long gone. A pegasus filly with a steel collar around her neck was chained to the bulkhead. The pony stared at Bryant with wide eyes. Her scarlet coat was stained with dirt. Just in case, he gave her the hush gesture, too.
“Do you have the keys?” whispered Bryant, gesturing to the padlock securing the collar. The man nodded.
“Open it, then. Slowly, carefully.” The guard complied, still a little stunned at becoming a prisoner himself. Once the little filly was free, she quickly stepped over behind Bryant. He didn’t know how she instinctively realized that he wasn’t going to hurt her, but was grateful.
“Are you okay, kid?” he asked.
“I…I think so.” Her voice sounded terrified. Bryant understood. All it would take to get them both killed was a little bad luck.
“Turn around,” he ordered the guard. “Go through that door.”
The man twisted the knob. There was no way of telling what might be out there. Bryant braced himself, gun ready.