Not Another Speedwriting Fic

by Admiral Biscuit

PVCF Iron Author 2023

Ship’s Log
1600 hours 24 days after Midsummer Moon
Vessel secure at dock

Ship’s Log
1630 hours 24 days after Midsummer Moon
Finished with engines

---

Chief Engineer Bright Star’s ears perked as the engine room telegraph jangled. He instinctively moved towards the repeater as the signal rang out a second time, the harsh noise of the bell cutting through the cacophony of the engine rooms.

A young hoof silenced it, rang out the reply to the bridge--he sighed. All the young cadets, he hadn’t even bothered to learn their names. What was the point?

“Chief?”

He turned his head. Second Engineer Peppermint Barque dropped her satchel on the scarred deckboards, and as he turned he saw the concern on her face, just for a fleeting moment before her face hardened, her body stiffened, and she instinctively saluted.

“At ease.” The Chief’s desk was clear of all but the Engineering log, the ship’s journal . . . the Captain thought that the Ship’s Log up on the bridge was the important one, but while that kept their course and weather, the commands from on high, their journal, kept in the bowels of the ship, tracked the operations of her, the hidden side nopony ever saw.

Page after page, a third of them in his own hoof-writing . . . no more. Today’s logbook entry was the last. Everything he now did was for the last time.

He closed his eyes, let his nose and ears take in the familiar smells, the familiar sounds, to save them just a little longer in his memory.

And then he pulled the key off his belt and gave it to now-Chief Engineer Peppermint Barque.

There was nothing more to say, so he didn’t. Bright Star hesitated at the entry of the engine room, watched her bow her head as she wrote in the journal book for the start of watch . . . he’d trained her well.

---

Bright Star had been hired onto the Diamond Rose the day her hull had slipped into the water for the first time. He’d started out as a wiper--basically a gopher in the engine room--and worked his way up and up, watching ponies come and go, and yet he remained. As the years went by, he could barely remember a before-time: it was always the ship.

He had little interest in the ports of call. Occasionally he’d leave the ship and pick up a few trinkets to send to his nieces and nephews, but for the most part he preferred to remain aboard, to stand his watches in the engine room.

No more.

Now he was retired. It was official the minute that he had relinquished his command and his key to Peppermint Barque, and what remained was him getting his belongings off the ship and onto land.

There wasn’t much. A few trinkets for the grand-nephews and -neices back home, some of his tools, some clothes--it all fit onto one rucksack.

The chief’s engineer’s quarters weren’t exactly luxurious. Maybe twice as big as the rest of the engine crew got. He didn’t have to hot-bunk if he didn’t want to, he had a writing desk, and now it was all Peppermint Barque’s. By the end of her watch, he’d be gone, nothing but a memory.

He sighed, looked out his porthole and down at the dock. The gangway had been run out, rigged--he watched the Executive Officer make her way onto the dock to discuss the loading with the Dockmaster.

Bright Star considered, just for an instant, going up to the bridge and saying his goodbyes to the captain. But he wasn’t a sentimental pony. His watch was over, and it was time to go.

---

The gangway took out some of the rocking of the ship, since one end was anchored on dry land.

He looked down, over the edge, even though he knew not to. There was a moment of vertigo, a thrill of fear as he pondered the between-space, the not-ship and not-land, the oily dirty water, clogged with garbage.

Every time before, he was thinking about when he’d return to the ship, but now? Now it was done. His watch was finished, and that was that.

---

Bright Star wasn’t a sentimental pony, but he couldn’t let the ship go. The Diamond Rose had been his home forever.

One last look, the ship tied in the dock . . . he never liked the way she looked when she was tied up. She was meant to be in the ocean, her engine running at a comfortable pace, her screw beating behind, settled into the water at a good draft, not the ungainly shallow draft so many harbors required. Extra steam required to pump the tanks, to respond to commands from the bridge, and then when they got into port they had to remember to switch over the pumps--

A frown crossed his muzzle as he studied the wisp of smoke drifting out the stack. It was heavy and greasy and he shook his head. He hadn’t even been gone for an hour and they were overfilling the boilers.

And then a brief lull on the dock. Even the seagulls wheeling overhead were silent--or maybe they weren’t and Bright Star was just that attuned to the ship.

Old instincts took over. He dropped his rucksack and charged back to his ship, shoving a pony off the gangway as he went by.

The main entry to the engine room was along the B-deck and around aft, but he knew a shortcut. Everypony in the engine room did. He raced around the decks, his hooves echoing in the empty space, welcoming him back home.

Peppermint Barque still hadn’t gotten the hang of sliding down access ladders. That was one of the many things he couldn’t teach; she’d figure it out or she wouldn’t.

One more passageway, and there was a remote valve bank that Peppermint might have overlooked.

He yanked the hatch open and touched the back of a hoof on one of the pipes. Blazing hot, the cooling water wasn’t circulating at all. He should--

He could hear the boiler straining at its seams. It was now or never time. He grabbed the wheel and started turning, all the pressure and flow gauges in his head.

The pipe was knocking, steam pocket building up in what should have been the fresh-water supply. They’d block the supply, they shouldn’t be there.

The inlet! Some of the floating debris in the harbor must be blocking the pipe.

Bright Star knew how to fix that the proper way. A bank of valves in the engine room could be turned to backflow the water, to push away any obstructions, but there just wasn’t time. He knew a shortcut, one that would save the ship and save the boiler, one that would save the entire crew in the engine room--and if he’d been quicker, it could have saved him, too.

But he hadn’t been.

As long as the engine kept running, the bilge pumps would, too.

Bright Star reached up and opened a valve that he never should have opened while the engine was running, listened to the flow of water and steam as it rushed the wrong way through the pipe, and then he spun a second valve wheel shut. Down below, he still had time. He slid down the ladder, gracefully dismounting in the lower ballast tank. He knew every inch of the ship, and he knew where the scupper was.

He could hear the suction from the engine and feel as it tried to pull water in from the tank, but there wasn’t enough in it.

Yet.

The scupper valve was only meant to be opened in drydock, certainly not while the ship was at dock. He wrestled it open wide, nodding in satisfaction as the blast of water knocked him off his hooves. It slammed him against the steel wall of the tank, the pressure of the water echoing in the confined space.

His ears were trained, and as the water rose, he heard the cooling pumps pick up this new supply of water.

It was the last thing he heard.

---

Chief Engineer Peppermint Barque stood rooted to the dock as a nearly-finished ship slid into the water. It heeled over, recovered, and then bobbed in the channel, as if awaiting its orders.

Those would come, in time. Once it was fitted out . . . once he was fitted out.

She placed Chief Engineer Bright Star’s cap on her head, then picked up the champagne bottle. It was time to christen the new ship, and who better to name it after?

Author's Note:

Since PVCF 2023 had a writer's track, we also had an Iron Author. I don't remember who won (it was announced during closing ceremonies, and it was a name I wasn't super familiar with).

The prompts were Legacy, The Space Between, Journal, and Injury; you only had to use three of the prompts.

Comments

[ROBCakeran53]

Very nice.

[Admiral Biscuit]

11766227
Thank you I think I could probably spend some time and make it into a better story, which I might do some day.

[FanOfMostEverything]

You always do great work with navy ponies, be they sea or space. This was especially poignant. And there’s something wonderfully appropriate about an Iron Author story about racing against the clock. Thank you for this.