Inside a two and a half meter sphere, three large ponies sat in a pile. All around them, consoles crammed with equipment illuminated their faces. The pilot, Anatole, a massive Russian , hunched over the controls, his massive Russian head resting between his hooves. “Ах, под сосною, под зеленою, Спать положите вы меня! Ай-люли, люли, ай-люли, люли, Спать положите вы меня.,” his voice rang out softly in the sphere.
Beside him, drooling on the CO2 scrubber, sat a thin brown unicorn with a gray mane hanging over his eyes. Rock Heart was his name, and this was going to be his eighth salvage operation, with seven ships already found under his name. He stirred quietly, ear flicking at the familiar Russian singing.
Lying across both of them was a red maned yellow Pegasus named Steep Dive. He had both wings stretched out as far as they would go, the tips of his broad wingspan curling underneath both of the other ponies in the sphere. Sitting on the console in front of him was a pile of blue paper, the schematics of the Titanic.
With a flick of his hoof, Anatole adjusted the balance of the submersible, re-centering the balance as it approached the ground below.
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The submersible, from outside a short cylinder, dipped down and touched the soft mud with a gentle kiss that threw up small clouds of debris.
Inside, Rock lurched awake, almost kicking Steep Dive in the muzzle, “Wha!”
“We are here,” Anatole stopped singing and started peering through the tiny port-hole at the front, only occasionally glancing at his array of sensors.
Off to one side sat a second submersible, a large, brilliantly visible red ‘2’ painted on the otherwise white surface.
“Mir one to Mir two, how was the drop?” Rock smiled as he waited for the return signal, crawling through the water. Even as close as they were, radio-waves were slow underwater, and had to be boosted in power, so they really only could speak if they were within arm’s reach.
“Long. Time to search. Meet back in four hours?”
“Affirmative,” Rock nodded to himself, making a note.
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Five minutes later, the submersible, Mir one, buzzed along, Anatole peering through the port-hole as Dive watched the sonar and the mud through his own port-hole. “A little to port, I see it. Eighteen meters. Fifteen. Thirteen. Slow down, we’re almost there.”
“I don’t see it.”
The floodlights suddenly stopped illuminating mud, instead crawling up a towering plane of rusting metal. Anatole threw the thrusters into reverse, the force knocking Rock over onto his side.
“There she is.”
The submarine began to rise off the mud, lights climbing up the massive panel. As it reached the top, the submersible started crawling along the railing, until it came to a point at the bow. Anatole turned Mir one and backed away, revealing the knife edge of the ship, illuminated by the powerful floodlights. Below, just barely visible in the light of the submersible, the bow sank into the mud, pushing it aside like black waves, bringing images to the three’s minds of how the magnificent vessel must have looked eighty-four years ago. It was beautiful, and intact, except for the moss-like growths of rust hanging from every metal surface.
Rock brushed a hoof across his eye, wiping away a tear, “It still gets me, right here,” he tapped his chest.
Anatole smiled, “Is just guilt. For stealing from the dead.”
Rock picked up a camera from a small shelf near the top and switched it on, turning it towards himself, “Thanks, Brother, Work with me here.”
He smiled at the camera, checking his reflection in the lens before pressing the record button, “It still gets me every time… to see this sad ruin of a great ship. Just sitting here, rusting away, where she landed at two thirty in the morning, April fifteenth, Nine-Twelve of the reign of Celestia, after a long fall from the world above.”
Anatole rolled his eyes, “Драма есть кровать куин-сайз.”
Dive shook his head, “Boss, you’re full of shit.”
Anatole started the submarine forward again, letting Rock aim the camera through the porthole beside him, across the immense forecastle, anchor chains still laid out in two neat rows, bronze windlasses gleaming through the rust.
Mir two was just barely visible creeping along the side, around the massive anchor. “Geez, it’s like a bug,” Dive pointed at the eight meter submersible as it crept past the railing and dove out of sight.
“Here we are again, on the deck of the Titanic, three kilometers down. Four hundred and twenty-two kilograms per square centimeter. Enough to crush this sub like an ant under a freight train if the hull fails. These windows are twenty centimeters thick, and if they go, it’s sayonara in two microseconds.”
The submersible settled gently onto the top of the boat-house, pointing Rock, and the camera at the officers quarters.
Rock smiled, “Right, now let’s get to work,” he set the camera down and switched it off, pulling the tape out and sliding it into a recorder set into the panel above him.
Dive nodded and stuck his head into a pair of goggles with screens mounted on them before wrapping his wingtips around a pair of joysticks and settling into a seated position, using Anatole’s back as a chair.
“Alright Snoopy, see what you see,” Dive pushed forward on both sticks.
Rock tapped the record button, watching as the light turned red, “Recording.”
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Snoopy, a bright red boxy device, puttered out from a wire cage in the belly of the submersible, towing a green tether behind it. Two cameras transmitted images to Steep Dive, but only one was actually being recorded. Slowly it crawled up to the edge of a large cavity, the Grand Staircase, or where it used to be. Dive counted off the decks as it descended, and pushed forward into the First Class Reception Room. Dive breathed a soft, “Beautiful…” as the cameras swept across ornately carved woodwork, somehow still not eaten by parasites. The elegant lines were only broken up by the trails of rust hanging from every metal surface, blurring the image into a vast underwater grotto before it melted back into the floating mansion it was.
A piano, mashed against a wall, yet still apparently intact. Snoopy moved closer, and with a touch that wouldn’t even ruffle a feather, Dive pressed a gripper against the nearest key. The ivory disintegrated under the touch, and Dive swore.
He turned Snoopy away from the piano and moved away, dexterously ducking under a chandelier that gleamed in the floodlights, lit up once again. Along the floor, a bottle of champagne, still sealed with wax; a few plates, some still intact; a high-heeled shoe; a porcelain doll-head. Snoopy dipped down and very gently grabbed the bottle by the neck, lifting it from the sediment. Three ponies held their breath as Dive placed the bottle gently in the carrying rack beneath the boxy ROV. It didn’t break, and all three let out deep sighs.
The next hallway stretched out, much more intact than the last, some doors even still hanging on their hinges, ornate moulding, a lamp sconce, hints of the grandeur. Stopping to glance down at the schematics in his lap, Dive ran a hoof along the lines before turning his attention back to the ROV, “I’m at the door. Stateroom B-fifty-two. The door is still intact,” his voice dropped low enough that the microphone couldn’t pick it up, “Sweet Celestia, let the door be unlocked.”
The gripped gently touched the brass knob, knocking off a string of rust that dissipated into floating dust. The knob, amazingly, was still intact. The door, not so much. As soon as he twisted the knob, the heavy brass structure tore loose and fell, almost dragging the ROV down with it as it carved a path through the rotten wood door and hit the deck with a gooey clang. “Guess not, Sorry.” He pushed the claw into the door and swept it across, cutting the rotten wood before climbing to cleave a vertical groove, then another horizontal one removed a chunk of wood-rot that rather amusingly stayed in shape as it was pushed out of the door, at least for a few moments before it too disintegrated into dust.
Dive gritted his teeth as the ROV jerked, “Something’s got me. Gotta back out and try again.”
The ROV backed slowly out of the hole, and followed back along the hallway until he saw the problem. The tether had become entangled on the chandelier. The gripper gently pinched the line and pulled it off the hooked brass, careful not to snag it on any rusted sharp edges. Pulling the line down to the deck, he paid it out slowly, ensuring that there were no knots. Finally, he was able to continue, and ran back to the stateroom. “I’m good,” he glanced at Rock, who pushed the record button again as the ROV poked back into the room. A quick glance showed that the cable was still loose as he crept into the sitting room.
“I’m in the sitting room, heading towards Bedroom B fifty-two.”
“Stay off the floor. Don’t really feel like seeing how far through there Snoopy can get before clogging.”
“Aye, Aye Bossman,” Dive saluted with his free hoof as he pushed Snoopy past the antique fireplace. There were still logs in it, probably as moldy as the door. On the opposite side, the cameras panned over a divan and a writing desk. A quick check of the floor showed that an ink-pot had overturned on the deck, though any stains it might have made rotted away with the carpet.
The door to the bedroom was narrower, and the sides of Snoopy’s casing brushed against it, tearing out chunks of wood that burst into dust and rust, “Crossing the room. Check out the bed,” he pointed the cameras at the canopy bed. It was huge, but that wasn’t the part he was pointing out. Tiny bubbles escaped from the edge of the flattened mattress, and Dive moved towards it, wary of the bubbles disrupting his flight path as he pressed the gripper through them. “Boss, can you run a check on the bubbles from here?”
The unicorn pressed his horn against the side of the sphere and focused, sending out a tendril of energy through the magically sensitive structure cable in the middle of the tether, routing through the many hundreds of meters of line, until he felt the ROV. Pushing his senses through that narrow band of energy was slightly more difficult, but it wasn’t the first time he had done something like this. He waved Dive closer to the bubbles, the cameras’ view filling with the blue-green glow of Unicorn magic as he poked at the bubbles. One exploded, then the entire mattress all of a sudden collapsed and a storm of bubbles roared up to the ceiling. Rock lurched back, banging his head on the instruments above him, “Oww…Bucking Clouds!”
Both of his teammates stared at him for a long moment, expecting an explanation, “It was filled with cloud magic. Damn mattress was a cloud sack. I burst the bubble, let out the magic.”
Dive smiled, “Sounds about right. Records said the First Class used cloud mattresses for added comfort,” he continued moving forward, over the bed, and up to the wardrobe against the wall. Carefully, he lifted a lamp out of the way, setting it aside. The ancient oil-lamp was probably useless now, so it could wait till later. The gripper closed around the wardrobe door, “If this doesn’t open, I’m just gonna rip it off.”
A quick affirmative from Rock gave him the go-ahead, and he tugged back. The door moved reluctantly, and bent, but didn’t disintegrate like the other doors. Probably a thicker material. Shifting his position, Dive pointed the cameras down, keeping a light on the settling dust as it revealed a black object. “Is that?”
“You see what I see?”
The glow of the light from the display lit up Rock’s broad smile, “Payday colts, Payday.”
The small steel safe sat there, glowing in the light from Snoopy’s back, beautifully intact.