Titanic

by Imperator Chiashi Zane

Liar?

Rose smiled at the drawing lying in the water-bath, still being kept under until it was able to be sealed and preserved permanently. Her younger self looked out at her from eighty-four years ago, swaying and rippling , almost like it was alive. In her mind’s eye, she could still see delicate wings lightly flicking the pencil across the paper, tracing the curve of her curled mane. His blue eyes peeking at her over the top of the page. She could feel her cheeks growing hot at the memory, how it had felt lying on that divan, bare and exposed, yet at the same time, entirely comfortable with it.
Only half listening, she heard Rock start droning through the history of the stone, “Blueblood the twelfth wore a fabulous stone called the Blue Diamond of the Night, which disappeared in Seven Ninety-two, about the same time he lost everything from the neck up. The theory goes that the diamond was chopped too… Supposedly recut into the shape of a heart, where it became…” he paused for a moment, rolling the words silently over his tongue to ensure proper pronunciation, “Le Coeur de la Mer. The Heart of the Ocean. Today it would be worth more than the Hope Diamond.”
“It was a dreadfully heavy thing,” she traced her hoof through the air over the page, “I only wore it that one time.”
“You actually believe this is you Grandma?”
“Of course, it is me, dear. Wasn’t I a hot number?”
Rock blinked a couple of flashes of unwanted thoughts out of his head, “I tracked it down through insurance records… And an old claim that was settled under terms of absolute secrecy. Do you know who the stallion who made the claim was, Rose?”
“I imagine his name was Hockley.”
“Night Hockley, right. Pittsburgh Steel tycoon. For a diamond necklace his son Kale Hockley had bought in France for his fiancée… You… a week before he sailed on the Titanic. The claim was filed immediately after the survivors reached New York. The facts say the diamond must have gone down with the ship,” he turned to Fuzzy, “See the date here?”
She nodded, “April fourteen, Nine twelve.”
“If your grandmother is who she says she is, she was wearing the Heart the day Titanic sank,” he turned back to Rose, “And that makes you my best friend right now. I will happily compensate you for anything you can tell me that will lead to its recovery.”
Rose didn’t turn away from the water-bath, her voice rang out softly, “I don’t want your money Mr. Heart. I know how hard it is for ponies who care greatly for bits to give them away.”
Dive raised an eyebrow, “You don’t want anything?”
“If anything I can tell you is of any use to you, the only thing I ask is for this,” her hoof lowered to the surface of the water, “That is all.”
“Deal,” Rock’s eyes flicked over to a table piled with artifacts from the stateroom, “We recovered these from the staterooms.” Various objects mundane and valuable both, lay across the table. Her magic gently caressed a cracked tortoise-shell mirror and floated it over to her. Her yellow magic glinted off the inlay of pearls as she rotated it towards herself.
“This was mine, yes. How extraordinary! It looks the same as the last time I saw it,” As it rotated to her face, her smile shrank only slightly, “The reflection has changed a bit though.”
She lifted a slightly corroded silver and moonstone mane-tie, “My mother’s. She wanted to go back and get it. Caused quite a fuss,” her smile widened again at the memory of her always dignified mother, kicking and biting, trying to get to that little piece of metal.
A steel comb with a jade butterfly on the tar black stone handle rose into the air, spinning lightly in the air, “I always hated this thing. The butterfly made it impossible to position properly to do my own mane, so I had to have my mother do it for me. And she objected to getting a more practical one for me to use when she wasn’t around.”
As the objects settled back onto the table, Rock switched gears again, “Alright Rose, are you ready to go back to Titanic?”
__
The dark TV room showed video, recorded during the safe’s recovery dive, still uncut and raw. Images panned across all of the screens from the internal and external cameras on both submersibles and the two ROVs, Snoopy and Tank.
Dive waved at the camera-colt as they entered, “Still rolling?”
Pipsqueak nodded, “Yes.”
Rose glanced past the two co-workers, at one of the screens. It showed the disturbing clip of the bow of the ship, hauntingly covered in long, red rust strings. Her eyes went wide as she remembered how it had looked from the other side, so many decades ago. Rock took notice and tapped Dive on the shoulder, pointing to the screen with his horn.
“The bow struck the bottom like an axe, from the impact. I can show you a simulation of what we have been able to discover, over on this monitor here,” Fuzzy turned the wheelchair so Rose could see better as Dive kept talking, “We’ve put together the largest database on the Titanic here. Alright, here goes…”
“Rose might not want to see this, Dive.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m curious. Go ahead,” she prompted the yellow Pegasus with a gentle push on his hoof with her magic.
The animatin starts, and Dive follows it with a blow-by-blow narration, “She hits the iceberg on the starboard side and it sort of bumps along…Punches holes like morse code. Dit Dit Dit, down her side. Now she’s flooding in the forward compartments. She was meant to float with four bulkheads breached. This breached five. Then water starts spilling over the tops of the bulkheads, going aft. As the bow comes down, the stern climbs into the air. Slowly at first, until the stern is entirely elevated, and begins to rise faster. Twenty or thirty thousand tons. The hull can’t deal, and tears. Skritt! The keel acts as a big hinge. Now the bow swings down, and the stern falls back level. The weight of the bow is too much, and pulls the stern back to vertical before the keel finally breaks away, heading for the bottom. The stern bobs like a cork for a few more seconds before flooding and going under about 2:20 AM, two hours and forty minutes after the collision.”
The animation shows the path the bow took down to the ocean floor. Rose watches with a clinical detachment, no visible emotion.
The bow pulls away and planes almost half a mile under the ocean before it collides with the bottom at about twelve miles per hour,” the animation shows the collision without the spray of mud that no doubt was there for the real event, “The bow dug itself into the mud, nearly twenty feet in, putting the entire water-line beneath the mud, including the tear,” the animation flipped to the stern as it sank, “The stern imploded from the pressure, the air inside being expelled through any surface that couldn’t take it, landing like a big pile of scrap,” he let the animation finish, “Cool huh?”
“Thank you for your fine forensic analysis, Mr. Dive. Of course, the experience of it was somewhat less clinical,” Rose still had that unnerving flatness to her gaze as she stared at the screen.
Rock came to the rescue, “Will you share it with us?” Aged eyes flicked across the screens, showing the various views of the wreck below, The camera from Rock’s own hoof, panning over the fore-deck, past one of the davits for the life-boats, still intact.
Rose felt her eyes begin to tear up as she imagined the ghostly waltz music, the echo of a shouting officer, calling for ‘Mares and foals first’. Screaming faces in a running crowd. Pandemonium. Terror. People crying, praying, begging Celestia to save them, kneeling on the deck. Just flashes in the dark, but every view brought more back. Another monitor showed an endless, dark corridor, wooden doors long-since corroded away, gaping open like monstrous maws. A colt standing in ankle deep water, lost and alone.
She let her head fall to her hooves, and wept softly.
Fuzzy began to turn the wheelchair, “I’ll take her back to her room to get some rest.”
She wa about to push the chair out the door when Rose let out a sharp, “NO.”
Everyone flinched and every eye in the room locked on the strong-willed old mare. The sweet old lady was gone. The faded gray eyes had turned to steel in an instant. Rock held a hoof to the side, indicating that everyone was to be silent. “Tell us Rose.”
“It’s been eighty-four years…”
“Just tell us what you can.”
Her hoof rose into the air, limply, but still with an air of strength, “It’s been eighty-four years…and I can still smell the fresh paint. The china had never been used. The sheets had never been slept in. I remember the smells of wood varnish, leather polish, wood and rope. Sweat and copper,” her voice turned wistful for a moment, and Rock took the opportunity to place a small recorder at her side, starting it up with a soft whirr. “Titanic was called the ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was…”

Author's Note:

And so, our story finally begins. Thanks to everyone who has viewed and commented. Maybe I'll have more likes than dislikes by the time I post the next chapter.