//------------------------------// // Chapter 2: Sea trails and an ambush // Story: Ponies, cannons, and war // by Fashionably Late //------------------------------// It didn’t take long to get the targets, but it did take longer to set them up at ranges in kilometers. After asking for and receiving the ranging tables for the various weapons I had aboard, I decided to set up targets at intervals of five kilometers starting at five kilometers and ending at thirty. I was surprised that my secondaries consisted of six inch guns. I always thought that five inches were the standard amongst American capital ships, but considering I was a Lexington design that might have been par for the course. What was concerning was my three inch anti-aircraft guns…all four of them. Yeah…so, in order of threat level, submarines were still threat number one. Outside of outrunning one or ramming into/shooting up one stupid enough to surface, my options were nonexistent. Threat number two was obviously going to be aircraft. One bad hit from a bomb could wipe out half of my AA and even a single torpedo hit could slow me down considerably. After that… I shuddered. The surface threat was the only one I could reliably counter whether they were ships or installations. And to do that I would need to actually hit them. Thus, gunnery practice. Aiming my guns took some time to figure out. Simply willing my guns to aim at the target saw them slowly aim at the target. Willing them to rotate faster had them do so and actually pass over the target requiring the guns to readjust. Same with willing them to elevate and depress. So I could designate targets, that was good. I could rotate the guns faster and elevate and depress them just as fast, but I couldn’t aim the damn things. That was bad. I mean, I wasn’t a bad shot from what I remember from back in highschool when I was in Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. The problem was I wasn’t looking down an iron sight, but firing from the hip essentially and I didn't have a crosshairs to rely on. And even if I did my first instinct was always to aim down sights. This wasn’t a video game. I’d have to rely on my gunners to calculate the angles and actually hit anything. Same for my casemates and AA, though I wasn’t going to be including them in the trials. They should be quick firing guns, thus they don’t need to wait for the splashes in order to hit something either dumb enough to get into my range or slow enough that they couldn’t escape. Though if they were that slow… Ok ok, I can bitch and moan all I want, but right now I need to focus and actually fire the damn things. “Ok, let’s do this.” Remembering a certain excitable Royal Navy battlecruiser I pointed my right fore hoove at the target. “Ready, aim…fire!” Click. … What? Click. … “Did I not load the guns?” [Eh, you didn’t say to load the guns.] Responded the captain sheepishly. “...just load the guns already.” I said feeling like an idiot. [Ok!] She exclaimed while ignoring my sense of self-pity. Well looks like I didn’t have to manually load the guns…just had to tell the crew to load them. Hope that didn’t become a problem down the line. As the last gun breach closed and the guns were armed, I once again aimed them at the closest target. It was a guaranteed hit, or at least I’d straddle it. I knew the range and speed and heading were a non-issue. I braced myself, keeping my knees bent to absorb the recoil while I “aimed” at the target with my right hoof. “Ready, aim…fire!” BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! An explosion of smoke, flame and cordite fumes rocked my world. Waves from the air pressure crashed against my shins. The loud, roaring crack set my ears ringing, barely drowning out the sound of my shells crashing into the sea five kilometers away creating eight colossal pillars of seawater erupting into the sky. It was…spectacular. "Holy shit…" That…that was an experience. The force, the level of violence, that resulted from firing my guns I could feel deep in my bones. That was better than sex…not that I actually had any experience with that. It almost made me forget about missing the target. The huge columns of water had dispersed, revealing the target bobbing peacefully in the water. “What the fuck?” How the heck did I miss? How could I miss? It was five kilometers in front of me. Point blank. That should have been easy. I double-checked the angles of my guns versus the ranging tables. I should have at least bracketed it at 5 kilometers. Right? …right? I looked at the target and tried to estimate the range. It didn’t look like five kilometers to me. It looked more like six kilometers. Had I messed up the distances when I'd been setting out the targets? [No you didn’t.] Sighed the deputy-captain. “What? Then what happened?” [The target drifted while we were loading the guns.] She replied matter of factly. … “...it drifted?” [Yes, the current moved the target downrange while we loaded the guns.] The captain chimed in. … …huh, don’t that beat all? I didn’t think the target would move for some reason. Probably a holdover from JROTC. Well, let's try that again. I reset. I took the range, heading and speed, compensated for the wind, and let my guns set themselves at their loading angles while my crew got to work. This time, I had’em fire split salvoes. A and B turrets fire first, X and Y turrets track the splashes, adjusting as necessary, and fire their salvo. This way I didn’t have to wait for a minute and a-half for all of my guns to load. A minute and a-half to load my guns…that was a problem. I mean, I could deal some damage sure, but that required me to actually hit the target. And without radar that meant estimating the enemy’s range and guessing where they were going to be and using your misses to make better and better guesses until you hit something. And when you have to take longer to reset for your next shots, it makes it harder for you to get your shots on target. Until I got my hands…hooves on some radar I needed to increase my rate of fire and that meant my crew would be doing a lot of drills during the day. And that did not mean that I was going to have my crew store more ammunition in the turrets than necessary or ripping off the safety doors! I was not going to go down like Queen Mary if I could help it! The rest of gunnery practice went well enough, I suppose. I only managed half the targets before I ran out of training ammo and I wasn’t going to waste actual ammo on target practice. Not when I didn’t know when my next resupply was and definitely not when I didn’t know whether or not I was in enemy territory. The sun was starting to go down and I was still no closer to finding a friendly port, land or even a friendly ship. I grew more worried as it got darker. I even thought about turning on my searchlight, but I kept them off and allowed my crew to turn on the navigational lights. I mean, despite not knowing where I was I could very well not be in enemy territory and I was just worrying, that happens a lot. In fact, I could be in friendly/neutral waters and a friendly little merchant vessel would see me and tell me where I was and lead me back to port and we would all have frosty chocolate milkshakes! Ahahahahaha…ha… Frightening thing happen in the dark~ I like the night. I mean, what’s not to like? Can’t blind yourself gazing into the moon and it’s fun looking at the stars and finding the constellations if ya can. Although I’d barely recognized Polaris, the north star, and I wasn’t seeing it, or any other star, in this overcast which had rolled in shortly after the moonrise. And something something something, all the world will love the night and pay no mind to that garish sun, however that quote goes, Shakespeare was it? But the dark? Yeah, one of the curses of a brain that never shuts up is that despite having an imagination ruined by TV, I tend to invent things that go bump in the dark that shouldn’t really be there. Or maybe it’s because of internet horror that I imagine killer animatronics hiding behind the door frame, in my closet or outside my window. But I wasn’t at home and thinking about The Joy of Creation, I was at sea thinking about being ambushed by literal ghost/zombie ships from the abyss. The fact that the worst parts of my imagination might be right just make things worse. I hate it, I hate it so much. The captain tried to comfort me, numerous times in fact. But when you saw the person trying to reassure you that everything was fine was the size of your hand/hoof and shaking like a leaf and looking like they're about to puke from the nerves? Yeah, that didn’t feel at all reassuring and was just making us feel worse. I just ignored it, or tried to, and focused on keeping my eyes and ears open for anything, any potential threat. Or hopefully a friendly merchant vessel that would point me to port. Or better yet, land, sweet sweet land. Then I could just find a patch of grass and sleep till morning. Have some berries and nuts in the morning, that would be great. BANG! Flash! I turned my head to see where the sound came from when my vision went white. I threw up my hand/hoove in front of my eyes to block out the light. Then I heard the sharp boom again. Naval cannons. My stomach dropped at the thought as shells fell around me. I was bracketed, columns of water exploding around me. Alarms began to sound in my head, announcing general quarters to the crew. My heart hammered in my chest as they rushed to their battlestations. As my vision adjusted to the light, searchlights I didn’t even know I had came on and illuminated the origin of the searchlight that was currently illuminating me. I found myself staring at a misshapen mockery of a warship. It was covered in blackened, pitted, chitinous armor plating and looked to be falling apart, yet somehow managed to not to. My heart lurched in my chest. So that's what an abyssal looked like up close, a part of me thought. That’s not an abyssal, another part of me thought. Fire back I thought. I tried to get a good firing solution as I accelerated to flank speed. My gun crews worked furiously to get my weapons loaded. Too slowly it seemed, as the enemy got off their second shot before I could return fire. Tracking the muzzle flashes, I realized quickly that there were more than one of them out there. More of my searchlights lanced out into the night as more water was kicked up around me. I let out a cry of pain as two shells hammered into my side. Damage control sprung into action, assessing the damage. It was minor, thank god. Didn't change that it hurt more than I'd like it too. My searchlights found five more of them. I was facing half a dozen Abyssals(?) and there was only one of me, and they were far too close for my liking. Still, that meant that they were in range of my secondaries, and they were a lot faster to load and fire than my main guns. “Fire at will! Shoot at whatever you can hit! Weapon's free people!” I erupted in gunfire as my secondary battery opened fire. Most of the shots missed, but the crew was already loading the guns as fast as they could. The enemy responded with more shots that stung. One that scraped the back of my knee hurt worse than the others, and I nearly stumbled. We traded shot for shot for a few minutes. I kept my face low, trying to not get shot in the face. I was getting hammered even as my secondaries were starting to score some hits. DamCon reported a fire had broken out on one of my decks, and I felt a burning sensation start to form in my left hip. One of my casemates got knocked out. The breaches on my main battery guns slammed shut, loaded and ready. I took sight of the closest target, and started trying to get a bead on it. I aimed my guns, laying them so that the shells would arc into the target. I pulled the trigger. I missed, or rather I straddled the enemy heavy cruiser. How I knew that I wasn’t sure, and I had bigger things to worry about. My crew hurriedly loaded my main battery as my secondaries furiously fired. They were scoring hits on what I could only guess was a light cruiser. Apparently not appreciating being on fire it peeled off. I staggered under the next onslaught. The burning sensation was spreading up my hip to my ribs and down my hind hoof. Another burning sensation started on my left shoulder. Another fire. DamCon was already on it, but they were getting overwhelmed as my crew kept trying to fire back at the enemy. A heavier broadside, likely from one of the heavies, knocked out two more of my secondary guns. I was losing the fight. I needed to find some way to get out of here. Gain some distance. Otherwise I'll suffer a death by a thousand cuts. But the Abyssals(?) were already matching my speed. If I turn away, they'd just follow me. I need some way to try and keep them from following after me. [We have torpedoes! Let's use them!] Shouted a fairy. “Do it! Do it now!” I shouted back. I didn’t know whether or not they would work. I just wanted them gone before they caught fire. The pair of twin torpedo tubes rotated until they were pointing in the general direction of the Abyssals before, with a series of pneumatic hisses, four torpedoes were dropped into the water. They streaked into the night, vanishing into the inky blackness of the water. I let loose one more salvo from my main guns and turned to run, secondaries still blazing as new shells were lifted up into the turrets. Only one shell managed to hit the heavy cruiser. No discernable damage. A column of water exploded in front of the heavy cruiser and the rest began turning away, rapidly changing their course. I guess my torpedoes took some time to reach em.They'd given me breathing room and broken up any accurate fire from my enemy. I booked it. The Abyssals(?), once they were clear of my torps, turned and followed after me. And to my mounting horror, four were catching up. I turned and fired back once my guns were loaded. Unfortunately, the sudden maneuvers made my shot go long and to the right by a wide margin. Once again, I cursed my slow reload rate and vowed to get some radar for myself. Even if I had to rip it off an abyssal myself. They returned fire. Their first shots missed, their aim also thrown off by the recent maneuvers, but they'd eventually walk their guns onto my position again. They had the higher rate of fire, they could afford to. If I maneuvered, I could maybe keep them from gaining an accurate shot. But that would also mean that I'd throw off my own aim, at least for my main battery. My secondaries could maybe acquire a shot, but they weren’t doing enough damage. But if I didn't… death by a thousand cuts. I decided it was better to dodge. As much as I wanted to send them back to where they came from, I didn’t want to be dragged back with them. I moved, shifting my weight around, going into hard turns and sudden reversals at random. The only guiding principle was to not get too close to the Abyssals. I returned fire with my secondaries and - whenever they were loaded - my main battery. As expected my shots tended to go wide. Even the accuracy of my secondaries had degraded considerably. But the Abyssals were having trouble too. Their shots went wide, barring a few lucky shots that bounced off my armor. Eventually, my secondaries had a repeat performance and forced another light cruiser back. My luck must have turned because my next salvo at the other heavy cruiser ended with a massive explosion erupted from the cruiser. I saw what I guessed was an eight inch gun turret flying off to the right, flames licking at the turret ring. The remaining cruisers fell silent as they turned away, abandoning its comrade which now lies motionless on the water, burning. I shut off my searchlights and sailed away, slipping away into the darkness. Before I lost sight of the cruiser my radio crackled to life. “Somebody is always watching, always.”