Setting The Stage
The pale blue mare stared at the racks of brass tubes sitting along the east wall of Purse Strings' warehouse. Lieutenant Lulamoon's purple eyes narrowed in irate contemplation of the unmounted swivel guns, one forehoof tapping in a classic tell of ill humor. She looked back up at Purse, and he fought the urge to make some unmasculine sound, fixed in place by her gimlet stare.
"What foal has been messing with these falconets? They look like they've been stored in a scrapyard."
"They do not!" Purse replied, stung. "They're perfectly well-cleaned and have been kept dry and out of the weather!"
"If anypony has reamed the bores of any of these weapons in the last five years, then Trixie is a breezie's uncle. It looks like someone just went after them with brass polish and ignored the workings. The vents are full of gunk, and where are the gunlocks?"
"Uh… gunlocks. That's the trigger thing, right? We don't have any for these. There's a box over there with the triggers for the carronades."
"What do you mean, you don't have any gunlocks for these things? How do you fire them?"
"I don't know, Lieutenant Lulamoon. This isn't my ship. My old one, they had different deck weapons, and we only fired them off on the Princess's Birthday and the Summer Sun. Big iron things as long as your rear leg, with separate chambers you loaded with the shot and powder into the back of the cannon."
"Marekillers? You had marekillers? That would be better than these idiot showpieces-" the mare stopped dead, a stricken look on her face.
Purse Strings waited for a second. Then a minute. Then...
"Lieutenant? Lieutenant Lulamoon, hello, are you in there?"
The mare shook herself, and then muttered something about her father and forgiveness. Purse felt that burn of embarrassment he usually got from accidentally walking into the head while another colt was taking a piss, and tried not to think about it.
"Right," snapped the artillery mare. "Show is the goal, must remember that. Right. And as I look closer at these things, they might not even take gunlocks. These might be old enough to take linstocks, Celestia save us all. Are there any polearms in storage, maybe long-shafted, but given how small these falconets are, might be about the length of a boarding axe, with posts and rings for holding slow-matches?"
"Oh, yeah, those things. The cords with 'em were kind of rotted, though, I threw most of 'em out and ordered some more. Over here, in the repair supplies. Didn't know what else to do with them."
Purse showed the artillerymare the dozen or so coils he'd found with what he'd assumed were, as she said, boarding axes. The boarding axes were stored with the other engineering tools and close defense weaponry. Mostly short-handled boarding spears.
"Bah, you're right, those fuses were marginal. You say you've got more on order?"
Purse Strings nodded. "Yeah, should be coming later today or tomorrow. Local order, no sweat. Only noticed it after someone else complained about out of date supplies in another department, and I combed through all the perishables."
The mare nodded in return, agreeably. "But these are definitely linstocks," she continued, looking thoughtful. "I don't know… it isn't as if I've ever done much with old-style linstocks. Just the once, in school. Barely enough to go through the steps, slowly. Hrm." She lifted up one of the axe-like devices in her purple horn-glow, examining its shaft and various sharpened protuberances.
"See this here?" She pointed to the nasty-looking spike on the bottom of the axe. "Vent or touchhole reamers. Neat little tool, really. If you were a cave-mare, and had never heard of snaphaunces or miquelets, and couldn't figure out how to assemble a proper gunlock." She sat back on her haunches.
"What the buck is a linstock, Lieutenant?" asked Purse.
"It's a linstock!"
Purse looked dumb, and hoped she'd explain.
"Gah! See this? That is where the slow match is held. You light it up, let it burn. This here is the touchhole reamer. It? Reams. What? The touchhole. Or the vent. The idea is that you shove a bag of powder down the barrel muzzle-first, ram it down firm, shove a bag of projectiles after it-"
"Not a bullet?"
"Nah, these things are too big for simple slugs. Usually a ball or two, and a bunch of buck. Easier to bag 'em up, and let it act like a big shotgun. Anyways. You use the reamer to punch down the touchhole, cut open the powder-bag, and hey presto! You've got a primed piece. Then you just turn your linstock around on its axis, and shove the lit slowmatch into the touchhole. And le BOOM! The piece is fired.
"Yeah, you see. Stupid. You can see why they got replaced with gunlocks, right? Pain in my flank." The artillery mare looked pensively at the linstock held in her magic.
"Well, shit. Those bitches will take Tartarus's own time to clean up and get working. It might be easier to just mount our supply of rocket-mortars on the decks, and hope for shock and awe to do the job that buck and ball couldn't possibly. Not with these silly props.
"Come on, let's see what the ship itself looks like," she barked, and trotted for the exit, the half-forgotten linstock, sharp and ominous, bobbing along beside her, captured in her glittering unicorn magic.
The pintles on the ship's upper decks were, if anything, worse than the brass falconets. The latter had at least been well-polished and carefully detailed, everywhere a pony could look to see on the outside. Even if the insides were full of old polish and impacted dust and verdigris.
The pintle mounts, on the other hand, had been freshly painted-over, and even under the fresh paint, the ball bearings were frozen in their fittings.
"No, this won't do. I'm going to need a lot of hooves if we want there to be bright shiny falconets mounted where the crowds can see them," Trixie said, as grandly as she could muster.
The scrawny yellow colt with the gold tooth looked askance at Trixie's broad gesture. "I thought you said you were gonna mount something else? Something about rockets or mortars?"
"Yes, definitely! Trixie had had more ambitious ideas for the rocket system, but in a pinch we can always use the boring, wildly inaccurate Soarin' patent designs. Which were so obviously the product of a featherbrained pegasus with no idea of how to control propellant or the basic principles of rocketry that- well, never mind all that. They will suffice for launching devices well away from the ship proper, and standard issue fused bombs should do the rest of the work for us."
"Uh," the colt said, with a look of apprehension on his face, "That doesn't sound especially safe. And this ship is pretty well-stocked and the refitting has fixed a lot of problems, but even the best-designed ships aren't exactly-"
"Oh, do be still. Trixie isn't an amateur. Her rocket mortars won't set our own ship on fire. Trixie knows a thing or two about radii of fire and minimum safe distance fusing!"
Trixie stopped to consider.
"But Trixie has to admit that her new gun ensigns aren't nearly well-trained enough to operate said systems without - no, best not involve them at all, for the time being. Clearly Trixie will have to operate the ship-side of the operation."
"Yeah…" drawled the Manehattanite colt. "About that. Nopony's been talking to me, aside from a note from Ping to show you around and start 'preparations'. What is going on, exactly?"
"What, you expect Trixie to be in the know? Trixie is many things, but a social butterfly is not one of them. Ask that lunatic Heartstrings."
"You knew enough to show up at my warehouse this morning, didn't you? What do you think you're doing here?"
"Oh, Trixie is getting the ship ready to be boarded and seized by the squadron. We're going to steal this floating heap of ill-designed civilian mockery of a proper warship, and turn it into the regiment's headquarters!"
The colt stared at Trixie as if she had two horns.
"Uh, you all know you paid for this hulk, right?" he said, slowly, as you would to a moron.
"Of course we did! Good bits, as Trixie understands these things!" Trixie did not, in fact, understand these things, but it helped to not be seen as an utter fool in front of the help.
"Who steals their own ship?" he asked, still over-patient and insulting in his affect.
"Ponies who want to re-name a ship that was clearly, once upon a time, named by the previous owner's precocious four-year-old daughter, of course! We can hardly go off to the Undiscovered East in something called the HRHS Daddy Longlegs. It's a matter of morale!"
"And they're worried about the naval superstitions, of course, yeah, I remember those arguments. I don't see how this nonsense addresses that."
"Is it acceptable for a warring nation to capture an enemy ship, and re-christen it in their own service?"
"Yeah, happens all the time. With surface ships. Defeated airships tend to be too torn up and battered or blown up to be returned to service except as scrap."
"And the superstitions are all surface sailors' myths and legends, are they not?"
"Yeah. Also, the superstitions are mostly about the goddess Amphitrite and her court. Sea goddess."
"Well, then. First off, the boggarts who enforce these silly rules, in the primitive sailors' imagination, might not even notice if we pull this off in the air, if the ship never lays keel in the jealous ocean's chill waters. And secondly, by seizing the ship by force majeure, we do a proper end-run around this 'Ledger of the Deep' nonsense. Who cares what it says in the depths, if we're never anywhere near it?"
"Why not just go with that, and forget this - what is it you're doing, exactly?"
"The squadron's going to form up, and we'll launch the ship, and the aerial ponies will drop out of the sun, or from a cloudbank, or something else properly flashy and dramatic and piratical, and storm the decks! It should be great good fun, Trixie is sure of it. She has a feel for these things, you know. It's in the blood."
"Riiight. Why are you here doin' this, and not that big griffon, or somepony else? You're just… what exactly again?"
"Trixie is the lieutenant of the regimental battery, of course. And somepony has to organize a proper defense of the ship, or else it'll all just be a mockery!"
"As opposed to the dog and pony show you're currently planning?"
"Exactly!"
"Riiight. Where're you guys planning on this stormin' of the Daddy Longlegs?"
"Oh, somewhere well within view of the city, of course. Can't leave dear old equinicidal Trottingham without a proper send-off. Why do you ask?"
"Thinkin' about goin' into partnership with a pony I know, maybe set up bleachers in the sun, sell tickets."
"Really! What a lovely idea! I could change up the charges in the shells…" Trixie thought about the possibilities of smoke and sparklers and thumpers and proper firework charges and...
"What is it, now?" Purse asked, snapping a hoof in front of her face.
"Oh, just remembering a show I once saw my father… not important. What were we talking about? Pyrotechnics, showponyship, and an audience, right!"
"Riiight. So this still sounds like it'll be kinda violent."
"You can't conduct a full live-fire exercise without a certain amount of danger!" Trixie knew the dangers! That was why she was here, to limit the exposures!
"You know this is likely to hurt a lot of ponies and griffons, right?"
How insulting! Well, she'd just have to show this rat-faced colt how good Trixie could be!
"Look, I didn't mean anything about - hey, what's your preference for the ship's name?"
"What?" Trixie said, confused by the left turn.
"The new name, we're going through all of this to rename our poor unfatherly Daddy. Me, I've been thinking over something like 'The Movable Feast', or maybe 'The Glittering Orgy'!" The damned colt waggled his eyebrows at Trixie, and she thought seriously about clotting him across the muzzle with the side of her linstock.
His eyes widened, and he backed up out of swinging range. "Chill, chill, just a bad joke. But seriously. Something nice and festive, is my choice. Cornucopia, that's the ticket. The endless provider of jollification and good provender!"
Trixie snorted at the hopeless sleazebag. "That would make you the procurer of said provender?"
"There you've got it. What's your moniker for the new girl? New fittings, new weapons, new names! Come on, where's your bits on the table? Give us a name!"
Trixie rocked her head to the side, thinking. What would she bring into the world, if she had all the bits in that world, and all the freedom in it. Something to make her father proud, something to bring a smile to his face. That one theater he'd never been able to play, before it burned down.
"The Golden Globe!" Trixie declared, with a properly theatrical flourish, in memory of her flashy father.
The skinny stallion looked confused. "I don't get it. What does it mean?"
"What it means is Mystery! The inscrutability of the Sphinx! The puzzlement of the ages! The splendour and terror of the sublime!"
"You're not going to tell me, are you?"
"You're damn right I'm not. What is a mare but mystery?" That was enough of that, time for a new subject! "Right! OK, next, show me these carronades, Trixie suspects they'll be as dire as the rest of the equipment on this bucket of clouds and ill intentions, but she should see it for herself. Then we're collecting my mechanics and oh… I'm thinking at least a full platoon of ready hooves. We have a lot of messes to fix, here, and some new ones to make before the doomed Daddy Longlegs is ready to be taken like a bridegroom on his wedding day!"
Giles looked across the cloud crowded with griffons and bat-ponies checking their equipment and their training weapons. His lance was posted next to the bat-pony platoon of his pink phantasm, who was in her own training-gear right next to him, looking over her blunted javelins with an intent expression.
"Fish Eye!" Giles blurted out, thinking of her expression when she'd showed up at the bloody scene of his last exploit. "How're the thestrals treating you?"
"What? Oh, hey, Giles, how are ya? Like a princess, it's great! You ought to find a bat mare to play batmare for! Or bat-tom, I guess. Sorry, we're getting ready to take off here, the target ship will be here soon. Did you want something?"
Did he want something? "Yeah!" Giles squeaked out, confused by his own impulses. "What did you put in the hat for the name?"
"The ship's name? Oh ho! Wasn't that a corker! The major knows how to make life in the guards a barrel of monkeymares! Yeah, I had a buncha ideas. There's traditional ship names, like Following Seas, or the Black Flag, or the Barque Royal, or something in the adjective line, like Glorious or Impervious. But I always thought that was begging for trouble, hanging something ambitious on a ship. Better something sweet and homelike, like Arcadia or Fiddler's Green, or-"
"What's that last one? Why Fiddler's-"
"Fiddler's Green? It's an afterlife for sailors. All those fishergriffs lost to wave or wind or terrible storms, the stories say that after the worst of ends, a safe harbor named Fiddler's Green awaits, full of calm and sweet waters, plenty of fish, and all your loved ones in their due time. But me, I like the sound of Safe Harbor. Less gloomy, all that death and loss. Better for a ship to be the safety itself, rather than the consolation from the lack of it, you know?"
"So, you put down…?"
"Safe Harbor, of course! What about you?"
"I haven't turned in my slip, yet."
"You better hurry! There's not much more time."
"Eye!" bellowed a batpony behind Giles' pink perplexity. "Get a wing on, the target's coming round!"
"See you afterwards, Giles!" Fish Eye chirped, flying off after her platoon ensign and her platoon.
Giles thought about it, as he triple-checked his griffons' gear and readiness.
A place for the lost… Fiddler's Green.
He knew what he was putting down on his paper. He'd have to make sure his corporal triple-checked Giles' spelling. His talon-writing wasn't nearly as good as his reading...
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Ooh, some very interesting Trixie history. I'm sure this show will do her father proud.
And I can't help but notice how often Amphitrite has come up in the past several chapters. I'm sure it's nothing.
Well, Trixie is certainly passionate about her cannons. As for the name, with this lot, I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up as the Go Fuck Yourself or something.
Not a ship name, but a regimental motto I feel like they would respect. "Morituri Nolumus Mori." Roughly translated: We who are about to die don't want to.
The more I hear about how derelict the equipment and cannons are, the more I worry they will cause trouble the moment they really need it. They are going on an expedition with what amount to barely a quarter of the prep time required for such endeavor. There will consequences down the line.
Or Gilda and Gleaming will pull it off by the seat of their non-existant pants in their typical fashion.
And they are stealing their own ship in order to rename it?!
That's such an hair pulling scheme. That's soooo like them. Can't wait to see the mock battle and the renaming of the ship. Hope they have champagne to do it properly.
awwww. fiddler's green is one of my favorite tragically hip songs! its just gotta win!
9950254
Hey!
They have at least six line platoons. Plus the battery. Batteries always have more ponies than you expect. Especially when you consider that the drayhorses draw their pay just like the rest of the gunners.
9950054
Trust me, If Amphitrite ends up actually being one of the crew members one board, no one is going to bat an eye in the comments section, at all.
And then Trixie makes it the first missile carrier in equestrian history. I wonder how enemy ships will deal with direct fire rockets when she manages to get them properly working.
Lemme guess...it was Hawk Eye! In the medical department! With the boxes of out-of-date painkillers!
She would, seeing she should be a traveling showpony right about now if this wasn't an acknowledged AU.
Yup. All the right things to make for a happy Trixie.
I see Purse still hasn't gotten laid yet.
9950112
That does seem about their speed all right.
9950402
Either that, or go on to help pioneer an Equestrian space program after this is all over, which was what jumped to my mind. Making that airship into a missile carrier does probably seem more likely in retrospect, though.
So why does an eight year old ship have like 30 year old muzzle loaded artillery?
9950843
Equestrian weaponry is pretty far out on the schizo end of the schizotech spectrum. Also, this is a converted civilian hauler, and those are close-in anti-personnel weapons. Popguns for sending off Somali-style pirates in little skiffs. Which, despite our romantic notions of swashbucklers in frigates like the Queen Anne's Revenge, has historically and in most places, been a business of indifferently armed loons in ketches, pinnaces, smaller sloops, and assorted flotsam and jetsam.
Trixie's enthusiasm aside, 'marekillers' (known in this world as 'murderers' and a half dozen other equally evocative names) are actually not much better than the primitive-sounding falconets. Breechloaders in the premodern era could be pretty hinky, and marekillers featured prepared chambers which could be slotted into the barrels along with the firing mechanisms, assuming you mated the two parts properly and the detonation didn't flash back in your face from a poor seal.
9950864
Which, despite our romantic notions of swashbucklers in frigates like the Queen Anne's Revenge, has historically and in most places, been a business of indifferently armed loons in ketches, pinnaces, smaller sloops, and assorted flotsam and jetsam.
... Now you made me imagine the Crystal Guards boat being attacked by Equestria equivalent of either Sky pirate Jack Sparrow and his Black Pearl or the Kakamora from Moana.
9950864
Huh. I blame Trixie for misleading me on where the state of Artillery was in the EUP. I had a post-American Civil War sense of breech loading, though to be fair part of that was my ignorance of breech loading cannons before they'd figured out the whole propellant and she'll in one piece thing
9952080
The gonnes are probably flintlocks, given Gilda's description of her fumbling usage of one, and that chapter about training and testing of gonnes and anti-gonne magic in Good Trooper Gilda.
And the main guns on the ship - intended for anti-ship and distance fire - are carronades, with proper gunlocks, as described in the text - flint-struck triggers fired by lanyard. The thing about Equestrian technology is that it's incredibly scattershot, and erratic.
Take canon Pinkie Pie's party cannons. They're muzzle-loaders, and lanyard-triggered. It's not at all clear what they're made of, but Pinkie can carry one around by her lonesome, and trigger them at a distance, en masse. As one of my editors has pointed out in the past, pony chemistry is freakishly advanced given the retrograde nature of much of their mechanical technology, and almost certainly have lots of clever explosives and chemical supplies, given what we see of Trixie's fireworks displays, which are quite modern.
The primary reason we don't see much in the way of musketry prior to the arming of the griffon rebels in the Isles, is that pony ergonomics don't mix well with individual infantry-portable firearms. The various pintle-mounted small arms discussed above are natural exceptions, because they're not so much hand-weapons, as they are tiny cannons.
9950291
Wait... how big *is* this airship? Six line platoons + an artillery battery + command... that's a lot of bodies to be stowed. Depending on where in time and place you're drawing the model from that can be somewhere around 150-300 toms and poms...
9952845
Big. As they've said, she was originally used as a troopship for hauling battalions of infantry to and from the Equestrian mainland to the Isles. Admittedly for short periods of time, and in crowded circumstances. Her sisters in design and use, those also not operating as troopships, were fast haulers for high-value bulk.
To lightly equinify Tennyson,
I kinda like constellation names, maybe something like Orion's Slumber? That, or something that somewhat unsettlingly hints at night and the number of batponies aboard, just for the reactions of the highest ups. Celestia won't like it, but a ship full of loyal nightguards coming to the rescue against an equally confused Nightmare Moon is just a hilarious mental image.
It would be awkward if the person who slipped in 'HMS Gleaming Shield's Pimp Hoof' won.
I like where this is headed.
If you want a good show, you got the right pony to handle things. Trixie gets to have some fun!
Personally I'd go classic and reference an old book series by calling it the Surprise.
At least then Twilight could muster the troops before a battle, and after a rousing speech end it off with 'Now no need to worry, my friends, we have the element of Surprise on our side.'
How in Tartarus do you snap a hoof in front of someone's muzzle?!
11663347
Same way you pick things up with it. Frog magic! And not looking too closely.