Siren Song

by TheDarkStarCzar

Fight

Captains don't really go down with their ships.

It's an old ponytale. It's implication is one of solidarity between the old man and even his lowliest sailors, a promise that their interests are unified. When the hull's actually stove in and the ship's loss is a foregone conclusion, though, I'd rather be on the bridge than below decks. There are, afterall, a great many more ships lost than skippers drowned. Honor is a bunch of horseapples when suicide by drowning is the other choice. Being beneath the hatches limits one's options regardless of any esprit de corps.

How many brave ponies have lost their lives in battle, confined to noisy engine rooms or trapped below decks, helpless and confined?

I had a premonition I was to be one when Applejack told me, "Why don'tcha trade back with Rarity? We need to have a bit of a confab posty hasty-like."

I might have been insulted in another circumstance, but they wanted their proven friend to stand by their side if they were about to face battle and I needed the element of generosity as an advocate. Not for me, for some ponies who they seemed to be forgetting, the crew Captain and crew of the Morningstar who were, presumably, innocent still and shouldn't be forced to die with their vessel if it could be helped. That's putting aside the reservists and whatever their unique situation was.

In my mind, the axiom that you can't save everypony rang clear and true, my fortitude being somewhat wan, so I gladly chose to trade with somepony who had a bigger heart than I. Somepony who would actually stand up for them like I would have if I had any measure of forthright conviction. Somepony who truly believed that they could and should be saved and I believed Rarity was that pony.

I just hoped that I would not meet my demise trapped down there.

"Fluttershy's back, they need you up there, they're planning on fighting." I said quickly, then added in as if it was but a little matter rather than an overwhelming concern of mine, "I'm not sure what they mean to do about their crew." She nodded at my prompt, though, telegraphing a certain understanding. I took back over the shield spell and cast it improperly out of habit. Rarity pulsed her magic strongly to remind me and I switched over to doing it correctly, "Thanks."

She looked genuinely baffled, though I knew she wasn't and asked, "For what?"

I just shook my head, smiled and said nothing. Again, she knew and I knew. She bid us good evening and sprinted up the steps. I nodded to Spike and couldn't help but notice that he had a simpering grin on his face which I found most suspicious. "She fed you gemstones and then you told her everything I said, didn't you?"

"No!" He said with a start, "I may have just mentioned..."

"No, don't tell me." I interrupted, "I don't think I could take actually knowing what you told her."

"Sorry, but if it makes you feel any better..."

"Eh eh eh! I said don't tell me. Let's just drop it." I interrupted again. If he told me I'd have spent the foreseeable future trying to justify, correct and defend myself both to Spike and in my own mind. It wasn't a mystery worthy of losing sleep over, even if it was certain that I would anyway.

"Okay." He sighed, "So they're going to try and fight, huh? How's that going to work?"

"I don't know." I grumbled, "We flee, I get stuck below decks, we fight, I get stuck below decks. I might take a couple arrows just to see some scenery now and again."

"Tell me about it." Spike groused, "Back home I get stuck in the library during all these amazing adventures. Like this one time they went to talk to a dragon and didn't think to bring me! As if I wouldn't have anything to offer. I was probably dusting shelves or critter sitting that day because we might get banished to the moon if there was an extra weeks worth of dust on the reference section or Angel Bunny didn't get his dinner spoon fed to him."

Some minutes later the engineer came down, adjusted some valves dispassionately, wiped his greasy talons on his feathers and finally spoke to me and Spike, making it seem like an afterthought, "Decided to stop running, cut out that fire and leave off the spell 's soon 's the pressure drops into the yella on this here dial. I'll keep an eye on it from there on."

With that spare communique I was freed from my prospective grisly death amongst the burst plates of a steam boiler, "C'mon, Spike," I laughed, "We're finally busting out of here!" and as soon as the pressure waned me and Spike shuffled back out onto the deck, reprieved!

What with my previous train of thought I had some considerable sympathy for that grease darkened griffon and a feeling of gratitude, as if he'd consciously traded his life for ours. Who's to say, maybe that was his intent?

The bellicose nature of the griffons had, in fact, kept the ponies' participation in the planning to a minimum. They were relegated to hauling up every piece of the ship that could reasonably be discarded. The standard tactics in an airship battle, where the target was required to be intact anyway, were to gain altitude and damage the balloon. The onus on using deadly force took away our advantage. All things being equal, the Morningstar should have us dead to rights, but, where their magics were limited, we had one of the better shield casters in Equestria at out disposal (though by now I imagine she was wishing we'd make some haste in our preparations) and the griffons explosive tipped projectiles were nothing to scoff at, judging by the missing stern of the Equestrian vessel. Between the two we could have decimated our pursuers readily, were their safety not lobbied for as I'd hoped.

"It was the best I could do to steer them away from more drastic tactics." Rarity told me when I complained about the uncertainty of it all, "They, of course, have little enough stake in the continued safety of any of our crew, their job is simply to escort us safely back to Eagleland. I assure you it was the best compromise I could secure despite all of our efforts on their behalf."

We'd been cooperatively wrenching the fold down bunks from the hull of the ship and piling them on deck where they awaited the moment when they would be discarded. With the amount of helium we'd mysteriously lost it was no certain thing that the lift would be sufficient, but we intended to do the best we could without hacking away the already spartan structure of the ship itself. The griffons were readying their steam powered rifles and fitting them with harpoons and ropes to damage the balloon most effectively.

Time was a factor, the Morningstar was gaining, Twilight was already straining and sweating, her horn shooting the fizzling sparks of overexertion as the cannonfire only intensified.

I understood the griffon's reservations about involving us directly. Even though they knew, factually, that these six mares had saved the world on two or more occasions, (There's some debate about that in the third case which posits that despite the changeling queen's ambition her reach far exceeded her actual grasp.) they simply couldn't overlook the fact that we were a herd of warm hearted, soft eyed, pastel ponies. Even Twilight, once her shield inevitably failed, had no place in the already overcrewed griffon's battle plans and she was inarguably the best suited to this undertaking amongst us.

Screaming death's head cutie marks would be insufficient to make us look like the sort of hard flanks who didn't need to be protected by these big bad predators of the sky.

Pinkie Pie told me that it was like they wanted to be our cool big brothers and sisters and that we should be taking it in the loving way in which it was intended.

As a principal I found it condescending. In practice I had mixed feelings. I was certain that ship was coming after me in particular and regardless of my objections I really did feel the need for some protection.

We were to be on deck up until the extra ballast was released, then retreat to the relative safety below decks. Needless to say I was not amenable to that, my phobias about the dying in the dark bowels of a doomed ship now being well known, but I really had little enough use in a proper battle.

I scrutinized the list of spells I could perform to find something useful I could add that would keep me on deck. There was nothing.

I've avoided mentioning it thus far but the plain truth is I only know about a dozen real spells and by about a dozen I actually mean precisely eight.

But I can juggle and I can ride a unicycle, not at the same time mind you, but still with a little more practice I could make it into clown college.

So that's something, right?

Captain Grizelda stood in the center of the deck and carefully surveyed the crew over which she held dominion. A few minor corrections and she conceded the preparations were probably as good as they were likely to get. Delaying any further would just allow the Morningstar more time to prepare. Since both crews were operating in full sight of each other there was no surprise to be had. With her much smaller vessel and limitations on lethality imposed by Rarity's generous goodwill, Captain Grizelda's plans relied quite heavily on the reservist's inexperience with ship to ship combat. Experience she had won the hard way in the turbulent skies of Saddle Arabia where peace was just a time to rearm and dress one's wounds.

She snapped her talons and bellowed, "Come about one eighty, flank speed, make ready to dump ballast..."

Great lumbering airships aren't intended for such drastic maneuvers. Centrifugal force swung the ship's hull outward at an exaggerated angle, pinning us in place until we'd made a full turn, then it swung pendulously, causing us to dance and stagger to keep on our hooves. The balloon turned another thirty degrees before it's momentum gave out and it swung back past center in the other direction.

All and all it had the grace of a marionette newly in the clutches of a toddling foal, which is to say, none whatever.

Crossbow range is a much longer distance than one might expect but when the ship's gyrations petered out we were frighteningly close to the Morningstar and comparatively lower than we should have been.

Considering the limited number of crew and guns that could be trained on us, the fire logically couldn't have intensified to any great degree, but we were closer to the reports and the shockwaves of their cannon's impact upon Twilight's shield shook the ship.

The polyphony of explosions, the wall of fire before us, it really brought it home. Despite my cynical detachment this was real, we were charging into an inferno and I was certain we were all going to die. For all my foalish navel gazing, my self destructive recriminations that should have appeased karma, we were all going to die.

Twilight's shield wouldn't falter and fade, I knew about the spell, it would shatter in an instant and fall away and all those explosive shells that were destined to burst against it would instead fall on us and we would all die in the cold blue skies, out of sight of land.

Broken, we would fall into the sea and be swallowed down forever and we would all die and the broken stern of our enemy was level with our deck and belching grim fire so that we could see nothing else but sparks and flame bursting across our whole world, a newborn universe of expended cordite and white hot metal and we were all going to die, oh Luna please don't take me I don't want to die, Celestia I know I've been worthless and lazy and I'm not worth the trouble to save and I want to be better and I can't promise I'll do better because I'm so weak, Celestia, you know how damn weak I am, but I don't want to die and I'll try as hard as I can to walk the narrow path, just please I don't want to die, don't let me die...

...and then there was silence and there were arms around me. I think they'd been there the whole time. Rarity's voice was saying, "...it's fine, we made it past their guns, we're going to be fine, everything's okay, we're going to be fine, it's all okay..." and I wrapped my arms around her gratefully, abject fear melting into short, hiccuping sobs.

It may be that I am ill suited to battle.

Twilight's shield had held, a corona of energy flaring from her horn flickering and speaking of it's imminent demise, but it had held and we were broadside to the Morningstar.

Their cannons and crew had been at the rear of the ship so the gunports we glided past on their sides were either vacant or uncrewed, for the first time all day, this close to the enemy, we weren't under fire. The sky was unnaturally silent as our two vessels, bent on each other's destruction, slid past each other in the cerulean sky like dancers.

"Drop ballast!" Captain Grizelda squawked. Rarity and I sprung back into action, no more time for emotion now, and quickly cleared the decks of the detritus that had been the crew's effects and comforts. At the same time Georgia blew the ballast tanks and with our weight reduced we rocketed upward.

Twilight's shield finally fell under it's own weight, shards of solidified magical energy tumbling to the sea so far below. The purple unicorn herself collapsed, only to be carried back towards the center of the deck by two of her friends.

Harpoons thumped into the underside of our hull, the cannons and their crews still misplaced for action, but we could deal with that shortly. For now we had the advantage of altitude and with their envelope was vulnerable, it was ours to press.

"Fire!" Bellowed Grizelda with her talon dramatically clenched in the air.

The steam guns unloaded their volley with loud thumps and were rapidly cycled and fired again. Where these should have assured us victory, though, they fell short. Somepony had rigged a series of steel yards across the top of their balloon. As we rose so did the yards, and they hung what appeared to be a fine mesh gill net from them down the entire length of their gasbag. It wasn't a particularly stalwart looking shield, the harpoons penetrated it with ease, but the coarse ropes they trailed from their tails were too large to pass through and were hopelessly ensnared, stopping them fast. The net being hung well proud of the gasbag itself arrested them before they could puncture it with their leak inducing hemp tails. They just hung there like fishing tackle in a hat.

In the confusion our intended banishment from the deck was overlooked to my mixed relief. A dozen griffons, half the crew or thereabouts, armed with their naturally given complement of weapons, made ready to fly over, tear the net away and ravage the white whale manually.

An equal number of pegasi, armed with wing blades and pikes, summited the balloon from the far side, well prepared to put down any such attempts. In truth the pegasi's reach and greater weight gave them the advantage from a fixed position and both sides knew it.

The griffons looked back to their captain for guidance and she gestured for them to back off, "Reload the guns with the high explosive rounds and give them a couple warning shots! Ahead half and we'll see if we can't get around that net!"

She didn't waste rounds on the balloon, it would heal from most punctures without something to keep them open and the volatile rounds wouldn't meet enough resistance to trigger their charges, making them useless.

The pegasi scattered for a moment when fired on directly, then lit back on the top of the balloon as we lumbered ahead towards the bow of their balloon. The crew on the deck of the Morningstar were not left idle. Much as we had they were hastily dumping their excess articles to gain altitude. We made it around the front of their ship as they rose above us. We had no more ballast to lose and so were at an altitude disadvantage. They let fly with their own harpoons and soon had a crippling number of lines fished through the fabric of our envelope.

Unless our gasbag could be patched up immediately the ship would be lost. The situation had just turned desperate for us and the captain knew it. She looked to Rarity and growled, "Deal's off." Then screamed for her gunners to open fire with the explosive rounds, which they expediently did. Captain Grizelda deemed the situation desperate enough to attack in earnest and with her full force, killing and maiming whomever she might.

Rarity still stood close by me. For her part, she was looking at what rips in the fabric she could discern and almost certainly thinking about how she could repair it's gaping wounds, but it looked rather hopeless.

The bow of the Morningstar took all the punishment their steam guns could give, it's white wood splintering and falling away like straw in the wind under the thunderous assault. When the gunners paused momentarily to assess the damage they'd done they were disheartened to find that the entire bow was built up of metal plate underneath the wood, which their explosives did little to harm.

"Don't you have armor piercing rounds?" Rainbow Dash demanded. The captain shook her head, "What kind of warship is this when you haven't got anything worth fighting with!"

"It's not a warship at all!" Countered Georgia, "We're a diplomatic escort vessel, the harpoons are enough to take care of small warships and the explosive rounds are to scare off dragons, we're not equipped to be taking on an Equestrian gunship!"

Our ship backed off so much as it could and came around broadside where out rounds might do some damage, but nary a round was fired before a hiss of steam erupted from the trunk line that supplied the guns. Ever the helpful sort, Pinkie Pie pointed to it, "Your doohickey just went kerblooie."

We were leashed to the Morningstar by thick ropes in the hull and balloon both, a wounded animal trapped and tethered, just waiting for the killing blow. Their cannons finally barked to life, but instead of lethal loads it was mercifully a volley of mince pies with which we were assaulted. It was a way of telling us that we would be dead by now if that had been their desire.

"Cut all the lines, we'll have to set down in the sea and try to fend them off from there!" Captain Grizelda directed and her griffons set to work severing the lines. The ropes, however, had different ideas. They glowed with an orange aura and retied themselves.

Rainbow Dash watched in disgust, then flew up to their bow.

"Clove Hitch!" She yelled, landing on the prow of the Morningstar, "I know that's you! Now you just cut that out!"

All action stopped, both sides waiting for the response in silence. Sitting below the bow at the limits of their tether the once friendly visage of a white whale loomed over us, a passively leering god, waiting to pass judgment on we poor sinners in our battered craft.

"Aw c'mon, Commander, you know I can't do that!" A voice yelled from the Morningstar.

"Says who?" Rainbow Dash demanded, "You cut us loose right now or I'll have you up for insubordination!"

"It...I don't think it works like that. You can't order us around when you've been taken by the enemy! I'll have to ask the Lieutenant about this." The soldier said and called for Keen Edge who saluted his erstwhile commander. They had a heated argument who's words drifted away with the wind. It ended with confused frustration on both faces and he walked to the bow of the ship and yelled to Captain Grizelda.

"Parley?" He asked.

"Parley." She conceded and flew herself over to join Rainbow Dash on the Morningstar.

"Marvelous," Rarity grumbled, "Quickly now, who here is proficient with a needle and thread?"

Hesitantly I raised my hoof.

I can sew with the best of them. I went through a phase where I made my own clothes, I even made my own prom dress though I didn't attend the event itself. That's a whole story in and of itself if you've the time and a pint of whiskey.

With the assistance of six griffons, two of whom could also sew, Rarity, Fluttershy and I patched up the leaky griffon ship as quickly as we could. Fluttershy was unencumbered, but both Rarity and I were in harnesses hoisted by griffons as we worked. My previous fear of heights, thankfully, didn't seem to affect me over the ocean. We were so high that the scale was completely foreign. If I fell it looked as if it would be some modest distance into a deep blue shag rug that swayed in the breeze. I fumbled a needle, it's arcing curve flashed the sunlight with each revolution seemingly forever, trailing thirty yards of coarse beeswaxed thread until it finally shrank away to nothing, an abstract curiosity rather than symbolic of danger.

Our curved needles darted through the gooey backed silver fabric patches and back out. We quilted them in place right over the harpoons, their ropes trimmed off to a more manageable length. They left tall, tented blemishes under each square of added cloth. By the time we were done the balloon was a silver pufferfish and we sat, pleased with a job well done, atop the somewhat flaccid balloon, three ponies and the lazing griffons.

It wasn't shirking, there was little enough to be accomplished until terms had been reached.

"Sea Swirl, darling, can that amplifying spell that you used to talk to fish be redirected to hear the goings on over on the Morningstar?" Rarity inquired. I hadn't ever thought of using it as an ease dropping spell. I considered it and simply couldn't see any reason that it wouldn't work.

"I think so, I'll try." I said and cast it. After some adjusting and focusing I found a balance that let us hear the pertinent going's on.

"...is what you're telling me, and you really expect me to believe that?" Captain Grizelda's amplified voice was saying.

"Believe it or don't, they fired on us first!" Keen Edge insisted. The Morningstar's Captain was nodding in the background.

"But that's..." She looked back to her own ship and called out harshly, "Captain Gale? Get over here!"

A griffon in an outfit much like Grizelda's but tailored much more elegantly flew over to join them on the battlescarred deck, she was curtly introduced around, then Grizelda's scrutiny fell upon her. "How certain are you that the ponies' ship fired upon you first?"

"How certain?" Gale was taken aback, "Quite certain. As a show of trust we didn't have but a paltry few guns mounted, and I didn't feel them fire until well after your cannons fired!"

"I was on the gundeck," Keen Edge observed, "We most certainly did not fire those cannon."

"Perhaps we need to track this back to it's origins, where was the first explosion?" Grizelda asked.

"When their guns struck our hull!" Keen Edge gestured to the ship's starboard.

"No, the first explosion was their cannon firing." Gale adamantly replied.

"What kind of damage did you sustain?" Captain Grizelda demanded of her colleague.

"I've little enough idea about that." Gale replied, "We returned fire promptly, but the ship was dead in the air long before I had a chance to get a proper damage report."

"Perhaps we should inspect the damage on this vessel, then, hmm?" Grizelda arched her eyebrow. Keen edge took them the the starboard side of the ship and pointed down. The two griffon captains and Rainbow Dash flew down to inspect the impact sites. From our perch we were at a poor angle to see them but we could still make out their words.

They were large, star shaped holes with jagged edges tinged black with soot, regularly situated between the gun hatches across the Starboard side of the Morningstar. Grizelda ran a talon over the sooty leavings and rubbed the charred powder away between her fingers. "Do you see a problem with this?"

"I...No. Wait, it's the soot, isn't it?" Gale asked.

"The soot? Of course there's soot, there was an explosion." Rainbow Dash said with an irritation tinged voice.

"Our munitions use smokeless powder, nitrocellulose and the like. The marks it leaves are unlike those when they explode." Gale clarified, "Those marks were made by black powder charges, and to do this sort of damage they would have to have been exploded in contact with the outside of the hull."

"This explosion was intentionally set with pony made explosives and fixed to the outside of the hull. They assumed they were fired upon and you assumed they fired upon you." Grizelda said and the three of them returned to the deck where Keen Edge was considering their revelation, "If it's not some sort of subterfuge, and we will, for now, assume that it isn't, I'd say you have a saboteur on board."

"A very successful one at that." Gale said, "They fooled us both and dealt mortal blows to both griffon airships. Your Morningstar has been made to be rather an eyesore by the skirmish as well. It's lucky noone was badly injured."

"I have an idea how we can find out saboteur." Keen Edge stated, "We just need to know who shot out the signal light, because they had to have known that we would have sorted this out if only we'd been able to communicate."

"Actually that's my fault." Grizelda admitted. Of course it wasn't her fault at all. It was mine. My harebrained theory had run rampant and caused all this destruction.

"Gottfried!" Captain Grizelda yelled back to her ship and the scrawny griffon flew over and presented himself with a smart salute and frightened demeanor, "Just what was the extent of the message that was being sent to us when their light was extinguished?"

Gottfried gulped, he knew now, for certain, that he was the bearer of bad news, "It said, 'These unprovoked hostilities will not be tolerated. As per the treaty of nine eighty 'um...something,' we demand you release your hostages immediately and prepare for...' before we hit it, Captain."

Grizelda clenched her eyes shut, held her beak between her forefingers and sighed, "We shot it out to keep you from making ultimatums. We thought, at the time, that you had one of the Element Bearers and the crew of the ship hostage."

"Where did you get an idea like that?" Keen Edge bristled.

"Paranoia and overactive imaginations." Grizelda replied. I felt all the eyes atop that sagging dirigible upon me as I let the eavesdropping spell collapse.

"Oh, buck me." I got the distinct impression that I was headed for rough seas.

Author's Note:

Run on sentences are indicative of a right and proper freakout.

Have you ever read a mystery novel or watched a detective novel where the protagonist makes wild assumptions that are later proven to be correct? Humphrey Bogart is pretty bad about it. He goes and beats up some guy on a hunch and, surprise, it's always correct, innit? Well Sea Swirl's like the opposite of that, though she doesn't seem to realize it. Her omens and assumptions don't seem to pan out at a better than average rate. Still she puts them out there as if they matter.

In the next chapter?
Let's say they get fed up, throw her off the ship and she has to SOS for rescue from the you know who's.