Morning rose above Copenhagen, and with it began yet another day filled with training, modifying the ships and learning about races from the ‘aliens’.

A day that was barely beginning for Alejandro. The Spaniard woke up in a bed that wasn’t his, with an arm wrapped over him and a soft breath rustling the hyacinth macaw’s neck feathers.

Right. He was on Sirocco. And the breath on his neck…

“Bos días.” Elaena greeted him in her raspy voice, one of her claws ruffling the feathers on his chest.

“Bos días to you too.” He replied with a smirk.

He knew if he turned right now, he would be greeted to the sight of a corset-wearing female parrot, the lace enticingly hugging her curves; the sole thought of it enough to make mini-Alej’ rise to the call.

But not today. He had work to do. And so did Elaena, probably.

“You know, for someone pretty new to that body, you were not half-bad yesterday.”

“Neither were you.” Alejandro smiled cockily. “I must say, knowing the human equivalent, I can’t really regret the change.”

“Oh really?” Elaena blinked, one of her ears twitching before she propped herself up on one elbow.

The male parrot was far from being a sore sight himself. At least that’s the gist of what went through her mind as her pink eyes swept over the rippling muscles and large shoulders Alejandro sported, all barely hidden below his dark blue plumage.

“Or maybe it’s you.” He winked at her, the yellow down feathers around his eyes highlighting the gesture before he swung his legs over the side of her double bed.

He could see his clothes lying in a pile next to the bed. Not the usual orange coveralls he wore when working on Amandine, but instead civilian attire he had retrofitted to fit his new shape, which included a sleeveless Hawaiian shirt he probably would never have worn had it not been for parrots’ attraction to that kind of colors.

Elaena’s cabin was eerily reminiscent of the kind found on sailboats before the Event: cramped, with a visible effort spared towards saving space by using folding furniture and recessed compartments. Her bed was in the center on top of a small dais, the bed being fitted with a set of white gossamer curtains with hints of green dye matching the color of the bed sheets.

Just like the rest of Sirocco’s structure, the interior decorations matched the materials used to build the airship: varnished balsa wood panels all over, with the stronger green-painted aluminum beams and girders forming the skeleton of the structure and appearing here and there, mainly around doors and portholes, or to support the fixtures for the gas lamps that lit up the insides of Sirocco.

And there were also the signs indicating Sirocco was basically Elaena’s home: sepia pictures hung on the walls along with souvenirs from her voyages. A half-open closet in a corner of the room showed him some articles of clothing like a colorful Victorian aviator suit or her own set of dress blues.

Leftovers from their ‘funtime’ on the previous day also littered the cabin: a couple wine bottles by the side of the bed, their discarded clothes…

The obligatory used condom lying halfway to the small bathroom adjacent to the Captain’s cabin.

“It’s been a while since I had that kind of fun.” Elaena commented.

“Same here. The fall of civilization doesn’t really lend itself to fooling around.”

They didn’t even intend for it to occur. Not really. They had already had sex the first time after Elaena’s improvised flight lessons.

The second time however wasn’t planned. Alejandro had already mastered his winged form, he didn’t really need to go back to Sirocco for extra lessons, Gust and Radiant could have provided that. Yet he came back, out of uniform and with alcohol.

And she had put on lingerie.

Frankly the sole opportunity of letting off some steam after all the stuff that went on was a relief. The two of them had a lot more in common that he first thought.

“Anything planned today?” She asked him.

“Besides the usual duties?” He shrugged. “Just more training. We had a reunion about some expedition planning late in the morning but you already know about that.”

Alejandro rifled through his pile of discarded clothes, eventually spotting a golden glint and pulling out his watch. Two more hours before the reunion. Plenty enough time then…

They wound up fucking one more time in the shower, the cramped space forcing them against one another as they rubbed soap through their plumage, Elaena hanging off Alejandro’s neck with her legs wrapped around his hips.

“Better be careful, this could become a bad addiction.” He chuckled just as he was running his talons over her taut buttocks, absently twirling her tail feathers with one digit.

“Doubt anything like that could be considered bad.” She answered, her crest feathers sticking to her neck from the water running down her back.

Unfortunately they had to move on sooner or later. Sirocco was an airship, and much smaller than seagoing vessels like Amandine. Her water tank was tiny, so…

They blew through it all in one shower. Whoops. At least they would be able to refill it from nearby Amandine, the car carrier’s desalination plant could produce in one day ten times what Sirocco could store at maximum capacity.

Soon enough, both of them shuffled out of Elaena’s cabin to move on for breakfast. Outside the cabin was a sort of ladder/hallway that occupied the bow section of the airship: up and forward lead to the chartroom and the cockpit in the ‘neck’ of the ship.

In the opposite direction, the hallway curved back down towards Sirocco’s accommodation: a common room that doubled as the meeting room, the mess, and the ship’s office. It connected to a hallway leading to the passengers’ cabins, and another to the kitchen where a rustling told them Derek was currently making breakfast.

In the looks department it wasn’t too bad looking. The usual balsa wood panels occupied the walls, their varnished colors pairing decently with the thin carpet and its navy/gold diamond pattern. Furniture was rather sparse, what with the weight saving requirements of an airship, but it did feature things like a dining table, a well-crafted library and even a couple couches in a ‘lounge’ of sorts, separated by a curtain from the rest of the room. Light streamed in from a pair of portholes pointing forward, as well as one ceiling window under which hung a small chandelier.

And then there was a ladder in the back of the room, one hatch leading up to the weather deck, another leading down to the holds.

Sirocco was very different from most cargo vessels, or even most airships. As Elaena had told Alejandro earlier, she was not meant to carry vast amounts of cargo. Her net payload of 16 tons was still but a sixth of what purely cargo airships could carry. No, what she specialized in was high-value cargo.

She was much faster than the 60 knots average of other airships, and she also flew much higher than they could thanks to her ability to pressurize her crew cabin –though for reasons pertaining accurate navigation, she preferred to fly below the cloud cover-. She could safely cruise at 90 knots far above whatever threats could go after her precious cargo.

And if anything somehow managed to follow her that high? Push the engines to full ahead and reach 120 knots. Anything that could manage that would have to be small enough to be vulnerable to the breech-loaders above the cockpit.

And then she even had a bit of extra utility. Despite being built with a single-parrot crew in mind, Sirocco packed six extra cabins in her accommodation. With her speed, Elaena sometimes managed to attract a small crowd of rich entrepreneurs that needed to get from one continent to another fast. Something she was all too glad to charge them for.

Two of these passenger cabins were now taken up by Derek and Armiger, with the gargoyle greeting them with a wave as he emerged out of the kitchen, one bowl of porridge in hand and a magic manual stuck under his armpit.

“Morning lovebirds.”

“Morning Fireburst.” Elaena greeted back. “That’s odd; I’d expect Armiger to be here right now.”

“I take it you didn’t hear the outburst then?” Derek said, taking a seat on a bench by the long table that occupied the center of the room.

“Beg your pardon?”

“He left in a huff when he realized the water tank was empty, complained he couldn’t manage a good day’s work without proper care to his fur.”

“Wait so where did he go?” Alej’ asked.

“Either Rhine or Amandine, probably to ask access to a bathroom or something.” Derek shrugged.

“Never knew the guy was some kind of prima donna.” The Spaniard’s ears twitched in amusement.

“Not really, he’s actually pretty decent as far as nobles go.” Derek told. “It’s just typical of Abyssinians like him to care for their fur.”

“Like parrots and our feathers?”

“Not like that at all.” Elaena shook her head vehemently. “We do that and all the dyes and bright colors to look nice. Abyssinians use their fur as… sort of like a societal code? The way they brush and style it is like a body language that reflects their social status, their political opinions, marital status and even more…” She explained, one talon drawing circles in the air. “… frankly speaking, I don’t care about it at all, way too complex for me. Nobles like him though? It’s basically an obligation, just to not be treated as a pariah.”

“Interesting. Never figured it could be that complex.”

“With most races it doesn’t get that complicated.” Derek pointed out, porridge-filled spoon in hand. “Subtleties like that are a strictly Abyssinian thing. See, their magic…” He started between two spoonfuls. “… it’s mostly passive. They have this extreme sensibility to the flow of magic with their brain. It can go a number of ways really, because we don’t fully understand the brain and few species have their foci in their brain.”

“Unicorns?”

“Horns, not brains. It’s close, and linked near-directly to it, but still a separate organ.”

“So what does it change?”

It all depended on the individual actually. Most Abyssinians turned out to be empaths, one assumed reason behind their success as a trade nation. It was also what lead to that culture of subtlety (and guile, depending on which species you asked), their society evolving with the fact that most of them could perceive subtle cues and small changes in each others’ emotions.

There were even tales of groups of Abyssinian scholars honing their empathy to the point where they mastered a form of telepathy. That, however, had never been confirmed by the Abyssinian Crown.

Of course in other cases it went a different way. Abyssinians that didn’t have any innate empathy developed a different form of magical sensitivity.

The Nine Lives was its street name. A form of prescience with varying degrees of intensity. Sometimes it manifested itself as an actual form of precognition –albeit rarely-, though it more often led to a short-term version where the Abyssinian developed a ‘sixth-sense’, in a fashion. It made them able to sense threats, predict movements in a fight, or even dodge projectiles.

Needless to say, most of their armed forces were prescient Abyssinians, empaths being more suited to civilian life. As far as Derek knew, the King himself was a prescient, while the Queen was an empath.

“Makes them infuriating to spar against.” Elaena told Alej’ after coming back from the kitchen with two servings of dried fruits mixed with seeds.

“You know you can just force them into something they can’t dodge, right?” Derek pointed out.

“Contrarily to you, mage, I can’t just toss a fireball in the fray and call it a day.”

“What about Armiger?” Alej’ asked.

Elaena paused between two bites of her breakfast.

“Not sure. Never sparred against him and that’s always the best way to figure which type they actually are.” She frowned in thought, her ears lowering as she did that. “Don’t quote me on that, but I think he’s a prescient. Cat guy may insist on the subtle codes of his species but he doesn’t seem to like doing it.”

“Yeah, I’d assume the prescients wouldn’t be too fond of all the codes the majority of the species presents as tradition.”

“Can’t tell, I ain’t Abyssinian. Must be annoying living in a world where you’re expected to pick up on cues you can’t even sense.” She mumbled.

The rest of the breakfast was spent in silence, with Derek making a point of avoiding looking at the two avians across the table who were both a bit close to each other.

“Greetings everyone.” Dilip began as the projector next to him turned on. “Today we are going to review next week’s expedition schedule. Now that the works on Rhine Forest are winding down, we’ve reached a point where most of the stuff we wanted in Copenhagen has been secured and possible threats within the city limits have been eliminated.”

And that included an unfortunate encounter an art retrieval team had had with a runaway herd of rhinos. He didn’t know which was worse: the damage done to one of their unimogs (which, though fixable, had Scarface swear profusely at the amount of work), or the fact they shot an endangered species so many times they weren’t sure whether it died of bullet damage or lead poisoning.

“If anyone has any objections towards the presence of our… otherworldly allies, please air your grievances now.”

The Diamond Dog ended that sentence just as he was lifting his eyes up from his notes to look at the assembled group.

In front of him, a wide variety of species were sitting here and there at tables inside Amandine’s cafeteria. Some Officers, but there were also many curious ratings and even Rhine’s half-dozen cadets sitting together in one corner of the room –including the injured one splayed across the back of one impala centaur mare-. All of the Equestrians were there too, as well as Sirocco’s crew.

Their presence went uncontested, though a few sailors cast annoyed glares in Armiger’s general direction, which the noble promptly ignored.

“Now, several long range expeditions have appeared on our radar. I’ll start off with the easy one…” Dilip said before lifting up a small printed list for all to see.

“I have here an empty roster for an expedition aimed at retrieving a fleet of boats for Rhine Forest, commanded by Chief Barge Officer Amadi. We’re looking at several sorties towards Odense and its surroundings, maybe even Sweden, with requirements for several barge pilots, drivers, and guards –preferably veterans-. Any slot that is not filled by tomorrow evening will be picked at random among competent crewmembers.”

A hand –or hoof, rather- went up in the crowd, belonging to a white appaloosa unicorn stallion with bronze spots and mane. The flag patch on his white coveralls –an addition some sailors had taken to wearing after raiding a sewing shop- depicted him as a German from Rhine.

“Ordinary Seaman Diethelm, Barge Department, sir. Can we… alter an expedition’s course? To get something else while we’re on the way.”

“Looking for something in particular sailor?”

“Yes sir. A farm, looking for horseshoes.”

“We can help with that.” Cheese Cake interjected.

Dilip raised a paw to stop the lanky mare before she could start a rant.

“Thank you Miss Cake, but I think this matter may be addressed later.” He apologized before turning his eyes to the unicorn stallion that had asked the first question. “As for altering an expedition’s planned route, then yes, you may. But, any change has to be approved by the supervising Officer. Understood?”

The seaman lowered his hoof and Dilip watched Cheese slip him a note in her telekinesis. Partial as he may be about allowing crewmembers to flick around the countryside picking up stuff they wanted… both he and Raimund felt it necessary to let them.

They couldn’t exactly pay them, Euros, Crowns, Dollars, all that money might as well be toilet paper. Maybe once they started connecting colonies and trading resources they’d be able to give each sailor a share of the profits… but that might take months before trading could become a reality.

“Back to the original subject.” He coughed. “Let’s move on to expedition number two: Gothenburg.”

The riskiest, by far. They still had the bridge’s CCTV recordings showing pictures of the murky gas cloud floating above the city like a deadly blanket. It may have been weeks since they passed next to the harbor and spotted the cloud, but that didn’t necessarily mean the gas would be gone.

“Sir, why are we even considering going there?!” It was Carlos; the Filipino cockatoo who had up until then been sitting next to Danny had stood up in protest. “We all saw the cloud over the city, and I don’t think I’m the only one here thinking there are dozens of other cities we could scavenge from!”

“That is true. However, the expedition to Gothenburg is no mere scavenger hunt.” The Diamond Dog calmly explained before half-turning towards Sidereal. “Doctor Venture, if you’d please explain?”

With a curt nod, the mare stood up and moved in front of the assembled crowd.

“It is a recent discovery we made yesterday while scanning the flow of magic using mage sight.” She began. “I was looking in the general direction of Narvik –what for, we’ll explain later- when I spotted a… blob of sorts at a range that put it in the vicinity of Gothenburg’s harbor. The magical signature appears to match that of a survivor group.”

“How big a group?”

“Along the lines of 20-30 individuals.” Sidereal stated. “It’s the same system I used to locate your group. With so few sentient beings around detecting the natural magic production that’s the signature of… terran lifeforms I guess? I mean, with so few creatures around, any survivor that reappears stands out rather starkly against background magic, particularly considering you produce magic in addition to processing it unlike us on Equus.”

“We believe that with such a grouping, it’s possible for a vehicle filled with survivors –a bus, a tramway car, a small ferry even- to have reappeared. I don’t think survivors reappearing on foot would survive the gas, but with the protection of a vehicle, they might.”

“So that’s a rescue mission.” A red kite griffon in the back concluded, Valentyn, Rhine’s Second Engineer.

“Correct.” Dilip confirmed. “We need to find them, and get them out of Gothenburg. It’s no immediate departure since we have to make sure all of our chemsuits are properly fitted for whoever volunteers for that expedition, so I expect a departure within… three days, give or take.”

Which also included giving Bart enough time to finish training the Piranha drivers. They may have started training them, but that didn’t mean their performances were actually any good at the moment. That and they didn’t really have any other vehicle that was both CBRN-protected and capable of getting to Gothenburg and back on one tank.

The CV90 had the protection, sure, but it would have run out of fuel just as it was reaching the target city. Towing a 35-ton IFV out of a toxic gas cloud wasn’t really on his bucket list.

“Considering the important nature of that expedition, I’m assigning Chief Engineer Schmitt as Expedition Leader. We still need one Medical Officer and another Officer -or Engineer- to fill the lead slots. That is up to you to volunteer for.”

In fact there weren’t even that many ‘free’ slots on the roster considering the rescue team would have to bring Sidereal –and probably another Equestrian- along just to locate the survivors. The mare herself would need some training to use a chemsuit with a SCBA.

To make things worse, they only really had two Medical Officers and one of them was still injured, so that really was a ‘choice’ in name only. Come to think of it, with Marta, Boris and Camille still injured, Vadim was the only healthy medical personnel they had left. They’d need him to take care of the survivors.

“Now let’s move on to the last expedition…” Dilip said, the dog throwing a side glance towards where Elaena and Sirocco’s crew were sitting… and Alejandro as well apparently, the Spaniard having an arm around Elaena’s shoulders.

Frankly speaking, he wasn’t even surprised considering Alej’s reputation.

“Narvik.” He stated simply. “By now, most of you should probably be familiar with our latest hypothesizes regarding archeology and ley lines. Narvik appears to be the site of the closest convergence point, which is why Captain Ceylan here has volunteered her vessel for the expedition. Be aware, this will be the furthest expedition we’ve ever done, by far. Captain Ceylan, if you have anything to add?”

Elaena stood up slowly before moving to join Dilip in front of the crowd, a confident smile on her beak. She began reciting the usual: required personnel for the expedition, expected departure –two days from then- and expected duration.

Sirocco also needed to be properly prepped for the expedition. They would have to do a transfer of hydraulic fluid and fresh water to fill her tanks. She would have also liked to bunker on some coal slurry -the fuel Sirocco’s burners ran on-, but it was pretty clear she wouldn’t find any in Copenhagen.

Charts too was something she needed. And there they ran into an obstacle: they didn’t have any aeronautical charts. Ground charts, highway maps, city plans, nautical charts, sure.

But nothing an aircraft could use. Using a ground chart would have been ill-advised, what with the mountain ranges that ran across the entirety of Norway. Not knowing where or how high the mountains exactly were, that was just asking for trouble.

But they had a couple days to figure it out before leaving at least.

The objective was straightforward at least: fly to Narvik, let Derek use mage sight to locate the convergence point, do some observations and maybe find some artifacts to analyze. What they knew about the ley lines at the moment was entirely based on assumptions; they needed actual data if they wanted to figure out what lead to the present situation.

Another thing Dilip wouldn’t say out loud was that he needed to keep Sirocco away from Copenhagen for now. He couldn’t allow the HPI to find out about the aliens on their own terms, so that meant the expedition wouldn’t even be bringing a satellite phone along.

GPS was fine though, being a passive device. So were radios, some of which would soon be fitted to Sirocco. Provided whoever was operated the radio kept an eye on the frequency, it was highly unlikely they would accidentally broadcast far enough to be heard by the HPI agents all the way in America.

Or by the Asian facility either. Eko wasn’t really forthcoming about that one.

Aleksei never was much good at coding.

She had no trouble admitting to it. The skill always took second place to her role as Amandine’s Third Engineer, and she had received very little in the way of formal training prior to the Event.

Unfortunately, it didn’t really matter whether she was good at it or not at the moment. Just that she could do it, something very few people in the fleet could boast about. Micha could code too, but she was even worse than her –if such a thing was even possible-.

The griffon had come to her weeks ago with her problem about creating a conversion algorithm for the radio log. Put it in a format where they could actually read and analyze it, just so they could take a look at the background noise that had occurred prior to the Event. Vadim had been pretty clear about it: he had caught a lot of static on all frequencies before the Event whisked the ship away and propelled them a few hours into the future.

The last few weeks of work on that pet project had been… unfruitful, to put it mildly. But now that she had a code repository to base herself on, the Latvian was advancing by leaps and bounds in a matter of hours. Sure, the conversion algorithm was about ten times the size it should have been if created by a competent coder, and it was probably three times as slow, but at least her earlier tests on a few samples showed it worked.

She caught the sounds of hoofsteps entering the engine control room before she could finally start the conversion process on the radio log.

“Hej, you weren’t there for the expedition briefings?” Sandra’s accented voice pierced through the constant rumbling of the generators just as the batpony came down the stairs.

“What for? I’ll be staying here anyway. Not much to do besides letting the paint dry on Rhine and keeping the generators running.” Aleksei grumbled before inviting the shorter pony to sit down beside her.

She might have to tidy up the control room after her coding spree though. There were notes and manuals lying here and there across the command consoles and on the ground, with her chair in the center of the whole mess. Sandra awkwardly hopped from one free spot on the ground to another before fluttering her wings and joining her by the central console.

“So watcha doing here?” She asked, the little pony peering over the console at the engine room below, through the observation window.

“Just coding. Our little expedition at the tech company finally allowed me to finish my project.” The light green hippogriff explained, waving her talons over to her laptop. “I was just about to run the algorithm one last time.”

Strictly speaking she didn’t need to code down here in the engine room. She just preferred doing it because she could work on it during her watches and very few crewmembers ever came down there without a reason.

With a theatrical tap of her talon, Aleksei finally pressed the button that would set the code in motion. As a testament to the inefficiency of the whole thing, a loading bar immediately appeared in the middle of the screen, the laptop’s cooling fans starting to whirr in protest at the load she was putting on the hardware.

“Sounds like a complicated program you’re running.” Sandra commented.

“It really isn’t.” She sighed. “I’m just that bad. At least now we will know what went on on the radio when the Event struck.”

“So that’s a radio recording! You should have told me, I can help analyze that if you want. It’s my job after all.”

“Eh, why not. We’ll see if that’s necessary.”

After a minute of awkwardly staring at the loading bar in silence, the algorithm finally finished processing the data and spat out a neatly compressed file. Aleksei eagerly opened it with her audio player, its flashy menu appearing on screen…

Only for the program to start replaying some garbled screech mixed with static that sounded like someone was rubbing nails against a blackboard while torturing a litter of disabled kittens.

At least that’s what it sounded like to the hippogriff, her ears flat against her skull at the sound. Once the recording finished playing, Sandra watched her sag in her seat before half-collapsing against the command console with the lower mandible of her beak quivering.

“Seventy hours…” Aleksei whispered, looking forlornly at the display on the laptop. “I clocked seventy hours of work trying to wade through the code, went back through at least a dozen manuals, mustered an expedition just to get a repository to make the algorithm… and that’s what I get?” The last sentence was said in such a low tone Sandra had to take off her headphones to catch it, and there may have been a few swear words in Latvian inserted here and there.

“Al’?” Sandra prodded the near-catatonic Engineer with a hoof. “Al’, it’s alright. You didn’t fail.”

The hippogriff didn’t move, except for a subtle twitching in her ears that invited the batpony to tell more.

“I can take it from here.” She comforted the Engineer. “It may get a bit complicated, but your recording is repeating every frequency at once on the same document. I have a program to do that on my laptop, so if you give me a copy, I can start trimming off the ‘human’ frequencies since we probably won’t care about maritime broadcasts, then I can isolate the real electromagnetic burst from the background noise, identify the exact waves, and if I’m lucky I might even be able to wade through all the encryption.”

“Wait, encryption?” Aleksei suddenly raised her head and turned towards Sandra. “Where did you even learn about that?”

“I have weird pastimes, and a weirder special talent.” Was all the batpony said. “Let’s leave it at that. You’ve done your part, now it’s my turn to pick up the torch, and it’s best left to professionals, ok?”

“Fine… I’ll make you a copy.”

But before she could reach for her laptop, a dark purple hoof slammed it shut.

“Later.” Sandra stopped her, a grin appearing on her muzzle.

Had it not been for her quite unsettling row of fangs, the expression wouldn’t have looked out of place on the Cheshire Cat. The fangs and slitted yellow eyes instead looked disturbingly out of place on the shorter batpony.

“Work can wait. I came down here for a reason you know.” Sandra whispered, leaning ever closer to the hippogriff.

“… yes?” Aleksei hesitated, not knowing whether to look like a deer caught in the headlights or the subject of a weird friend’s antics.

“Can you play billiard?”

“What?”

“Billiard. Snooker. Pool. Whatever you call it.” She mimicked holding a cue in her wings and hitting a ball. “They’re holding a contest on Rhine Forest since they looted a table for their rec room, and I hereby enlist your assistance.”

“You can play pool?”

“I… honestly I’m terrible.” Sandra smiled sheepishly. “But I convinced Sri to hang out with me for the contest and we need a third member on the team. I think we hit it off decently on your expedition.”

“I basically called you a slut and told you off for flirting with crewmembers.” Aleksei deadpanned.

“Frankness! Frimodighed! That’s what I need in a friend!” Sandra exclaimed before throwing a hoof around her neck. “Somebody who’s not afraid of telling the truth.”

Aleksei just blinked.

“Come on!” Sandra let out a whinny. “I’ve been looking around, everyone on board at least hangs around with someone.”

“Are you taking pity on me? I have friends on board I’ll have you know!”

“Really? Find me somebody you can hang out with on shore leave.”

Aleksei straightened up in her seat and crossed her arms in a huff.

“Micha for one.”

“Busy dating Vadim while Rahul watches Andy.”

“Angelo and Carlos.”

“One is playing videogames; the other already made a team with Danny and John for the contest.”

John being number three of the trio of Filipinos they had on the crew. Their resident plumber had become a pale yellow hippogriff mare, if a bit on the short side (though what with how tall hippogriffs were among quadrupeds, it wasn’t even that short).

“Ajit!”

Sandra actually laughed at that.

“Try again! Even if he wasn’t a Diamond Dog, the guy’s still like a puppy: friends with everyone. Hence: doesn’t count.”

“Fine.” Aleksei relented with a roll of her eyes. “I’ll come and play pool. How did you even make friends with Sri anyway? No offense but except for the other vets she’s a bit of a shut-in.”

“Same as I did with you: push through even if it pisses you off.” Sandra grinned. “Had to get help from Artyom to pry her open, but I managed to barter her out of her cabin.”

Which involved having the rest of the veterans take part in the contest. Bart, Artyom and Scarface were on another team, Artyom having made up an excuse about putting one pony per team so everyone had to make do with hooves.

Artyom himself recognized it wasn’t healthy for the Indonesian to solely hang around with the veterans. She needed another friend group, just so she wouldn’t start seeing only in shades of grey from the sheer amount of ruggedness and gruffness of the veterans.

That last part being Sandra’s extrapolation.

Probably. With magic in the equation that might actually happen. She was pretty sure she had seen an angry sailor expel steam from his ears at one point…

“Wait, you’re just creating your own circle of friends on the crew now.”

“Ja, and what’s wrong with that?” Sandra cocked her head smugly.

Aleksei pinched her beak and let out a sigh.

“We hired a social engineer… fantastisks.”

“Just try to find something to wear that’s not a set of coveralls.” Sandra called over her shoulder as she hopped off her seat and made for the stairs. “Even if it’s just a track suit at least it’s not those orange coveralls.”

“What’s wrong with our coveralls now?”

“That you all look like escaped convicts, that’s what. See you in the evening!”

The Latvian decided to let it slide and just rolled her eyes. No sense explaining to the Dane how important high-vis clothing was when someone fell overboard.

Now did she remember to retrofit her regular clothes?

A knock on the door.

“Come in.” Josselin called over his desk, the unicorn momentarily pushing aside the files he had been going through.

He was in his cabin working his way through his daily paperwork. The standard fare, nothing unusual. His role as Rhine Forest’s Third Officer made him responsible for the maintenance of all the firefighting equipment and other life-saving appliances like the lifeboats.

The former in particular was proving to be rather troublesome. While Amandine may have been able to provide blueprints to adapt their SCBA’s to their new forms –something which mostly involved turning the gas masks into a one-size-fits-all version that worked for muzzles, beaks, snouts and all else-, firemen’s suits and chemsuits were something else. That was mostly owed to the centaurs. Quadrupeds like ponies and griffons could be given roughly the same type of suits –provided the ponies tightened the straps-; Diamond Dogs could roughly fit in the same suits used by parrots, hedgefogs and Abyssinians.

But the damn centaurs? Sure minotaurs were a problem too with their sheer size, but there were only two of them in the entire fleet. Centaurs though? Thirteen. And until he found a solution to the problem of fitting them with proper protective clothing, that would be thirteen souls that could not be assigned to damage control parties if worst came to worst.

His door opened and in shuffled his new visitor. Rear half first actually, as he was greeted to the sight of half an impala backing into his cabin. Speaking of centaurs here was one.

Which brought him to another one of his duties. Him being the lowest-ranked Deck Officer on the Rhine, the French stallion had been saddled –pun intended- with managing and evaluating the Deck Cadets. The other Officers helped sometimes, giving the cadets a lesson or two, but he was the one who kept track of every evaluation they took and decided their work schedules.

There were three Deck Cadets on board, exactly as many as they had Engine Cadets: Carla and Sebastien, the two Belgians that found the roles in their couple reversed, and then…

Asha. The youngest of the three at eighteen-years old. And, at least according to Josselin, the most controversial.

The controversy wasn’t because she was a centaur, nor a mare, nor was it because she was Congolese. Well, actually it kinda was, but for matters of ethics. It went back to before the Event and Rhine’s planned role as an offshore support vessel.

See, the Nigerian company that had bought the vessel and ordered them to sail to Lagos actually wanted them to be able to operate around the entirety of the Gulf of Guinea. The problem was… offshore industries tend to be intrinsically protectionist. Meaning if you wanted to operate inside a country’s EEZ for offshore work, you had to employ a certain number of locals.

Granted, Asha wasn’t the only Congolese present on board, but she was the most concerning of them. At least in Josselin’s opinion. The others were all certified ratings, already experienced and used to the industry. Her on the other… hoof, she had just completed her first year of maritime academy. An education that was paid for by… roll-of-the-drum… Rhine’s operator.

Unlike the others, she couldn’t have ‘rolled with the blow’ if the company decided they didn’t need her anymore. Worse even, had it not been for the Event they could have very well decided to cut funding while she was still studying and even demand the money back.

“Sir?” Asha interrupted his thoughts.

Josselin shook off his train of thought and jerked his head back towards the Cadet. No sense wondering about the ethics of what could have been. Now they were all just stuck together, for better or for worse.

It was a testament to centaurs’ height that even though Asha was laying down on her side with her impala half, she was still easily a head taller than the unicorn stallion who was sitting on his haunches in his chair.

“My excuses Asha, I’ve got a lot on my mind as of late.” Josselin apologized before pulling out a couple files in his telekinesis, including her Cadet Training Record Book. “It’s for your weekly evaluation, right?”

“Aye sir.” She nodded.

“Please don’t ‘sir’ me. I’m not even 30 and you haven’t done anything that warrants calling me that either.” He chuckled. “Just call me Josselin, everyone does.”

Actually it was his surname, but he never bothered correcting anyone. He wasn’t too fond of his first name.

“Understood.” She nodded firmly.

Josselin idly took note of how she was wringing her frizzy ponytail in her hands, ears held low.

“Anything you need to tell me?” The brown-furred stallion quirked an eyebrow at her.

“It’s about my weekly projects…” The wringing of the ponytail continued. “… I got help doing it.”

Guilt now?

“What kind of help?” Josselin asked cautiously, already pulling one of the projects out of her files.

Nothing too important. Cadets had to complete certain basic tasks during training. Draw a cross-section of the ship, list all life-saving appliances, draw a plan of the bridge… Simple things that ensured they were familiar with the vessel they sailed on and routine operations.

“I asked the other cadets for advice.” She blurted out, not making eye contact.

“Advice? Only advice?”

“Yes, I asked them how they did the tasks.”

Josselin sighed.

“Look Asha, there’s nothing wrong with asking for advice. I’ll admit I’d prefer if you asked regular personnel instead of your fellow cadets, but I think I can let it slide since they’re a couple years ahead of you in their education. What does matter is that you do not plagiarize their projects. Projects for which –I must stress- it’s perfectly normal to ask around for information.”

Honestly he’d be more worried if she came to him with the cargo procedures without having asked around.

Unfounded guilt aside, there wasn’t much he could tell her about training that week. She was dutiful in her studies, nobody had any remarks against her and she even got good marks after a test on signal flags he had asked the bosuns to have the cadets take.

“Asha?”

“Yes sir?”

“Josselin. It’s Josselin.” He insisted.

“Yes Josselin?” She repeated, if a bit shyly.

“I hope you are aware that with the… turn of events our new situation brings, your education may take a different turn. There will be no going back to an academy for regular lessons and exams, not anytime soon.” The stallion said, making a show of flipping through her Cadet Training Record Book. “You of all Cadets will be the most affected. Carla and Sebastien were already done with most of their studies but you… I expect you’ll be one of the first Officers in a long time to have a mostly hands-on education.”

“I’m not sure where you’re going…”

“That it will take longer before we deem you ready to swap your Cadet ranks for those of a proper Officer.” Josselin stated. “I will have to come up with a rearranged training program to make up for the lack of academics, and you’ll have to understand that my duties will take precedence over your education.”

He paused to check if this was all getting through. After getting a meek nod from the impala centaur, he continued.

“To that extent, you –as well as the other cadets- will be given new duties. The Captain has already approved the motion, so here I have yours.” He told her, his telekinesis carrying a thin folder over to her.

She snatched it out of the air and took a look at the title.

“Hydroponics sir?”

“Josselin.” He corrected. “The idea came from Chief Officer Wetzel. With the addition of the container bay we’ll be adding a number of compartments to our vessel. It’s no big thing really: a workshop there, the hydroponics, the armory. You catch my drift. That’s where you Cadets come in play. You’re going to be in charge of those ‘mini-departments’ if you will. Of course you’ll still have navigational duties and your lessons, but we’re thinking long-term now.”

“That I understand… but why the hydroponics? I thought Doctor Delacroix wanted to take care of them.”

“A last minute adjustment. Tell me Asha: are you aware of your new species latent ability?”

“I… I’m not.” She shook her head.

“Then I believe an explanation is in order.” Josselin smiled before he slid her yet another file.

Actually assigning her to the hydroponics made sense when you accounted for the fact she was a centaur. The reason being that, in some respects, centaurs were pretty similar to Earth Ponies. Both species shared a… connection of sort to the land and plant life thanks to their magic. Their presence alone could be a tremendous help to fertility, they made plants grow faster, they made crops healthier, and their care could turn the most barren of soils into a lush oasis.

Centaurs were sort of a mix between minotaurs and Earth Ponies in a fashion. A heavyweight species with quite a bit of strength and just a touch of magic.

Asha wasn’t the only centaur cadet, but the other one being an engineering cadet made it preferable to assign her to the hydroponics. She was scheduled to take some lessons on agronomy from Pulp Orange later that week, just so she would know what exactly she would have to do.

Josselin was confident being responsible for a small section of the ship’s operations would have a positive effect on the cadets. They would have the opportunity to oversee operations while still remaining in reach of Senior Officers who could step in if need be. Might also be their first confrontation with the eldritch beast that went by the name of paperwork. That was an enemy every Officer had to face eventually. Really, they were doing the cadets a favor.

It took but a few days to get the expeditions ready. The one headed for Narvik was the first to leave.

Modifying Sirocco for the expedition didn’t even take that long. They unloaded anything they didn’t really need: most of the biology manuals, books and documents meant to for the survivors; the alchemical gear that they proceeded to move to Rhine’s new labs.

Of course they didn’t unload everything. Some of the stuff in Sirocco’s holds was also meant for other survivors the aliens may find once they moved on. They also kept their supplies and filled up the airship’s tanks.

Sirocco’s mast also received the addition of a couple radio antennas, along with a GPS receiver to help them in their voyage. The chart problem was eventually solved by deciding to follow nautical charts and go around the mountains, along the Norse shore. It wasn’t ideal by any stretch of imagination; in fact it made the travel length jump from seven hundred to just over a thousand nautical miles.

Luckily Sirocco was a pretty fast ship. By Alejandro’s reckoning the airship should be able to get to Narvik under twelve hours, provided the winds were favorable.

And he’d be coming along.

Dilip wasn’t particularly enthused at the prospect of his Chief Officer leaving on an expedition, but the Spaniard felt compelled to point out he wasn’t really needed on Amandine. Not until they sailed out.

“I know why you’re doing this.” The Indian said as the two of them were watching the last preparations for the expedition.

Mikhail from Rhine Forest would accompany them. The Ukrainian assigned as guard to cover their back was now in the process of loading a couple ammo crates on board of the airship, along with a dismantled .50 cal to complement her breech-loaders.

“Do you?” The parrot smiled, rolling his shoulder to adjust the strap of his seabag.

“Please, I know what you and Elaena have been doing.”

“Aye, and what’s wrong with that?”

“She’s an alien Alej’. At some point, you two will have to part ways.”

“We know.” Alej’ smiled. “This ain’t gonna be a problem. That’s not the first time I’m having that kind of relationship Dilip, and I find it all the better. It’s not aimed at lasting, we’re just cruising on the honeymoon phase, and we’ll leave it at that when we part ways. I’ve done, I’m doing it, and I’ll keep doing that in the future.”

“If you’re so sure… then I can’t really stop you.” The Diamond Dog ran a paw across his muzzle with a sigh. “Be careful out there. You got your sat phone?”

“In my seabag. Anything bad happens, I’ll turn it on and call.”

“Prioritize the radio.”

“I know. The moment I turn it on, they will know we’ve been doing stuff behind their back. I won’t use it unless absolutely necessary. But…”

“We will tell them, eventually. I’d just rather they didn’t look into it too much, they will know about it once the Equestrians leave and we sold them the data they had.” Dilip promised. “I know we’re threading the needle.”

“Damn right we are.”

He was about to add something about the HPI when their discussion was stopped by the arrival of Geert. The scarlet macaw hobbled in their direction with her cane, a chart tube stuck under one arm.

“All the charts for your voyage. All tracks are already drawn, with waypoints set on clear landmarks. Can’t miss them from the air, and even if you do I put countdowns between each waypoint so you know when to turn.” She immediately began, holding out the chart tube to Alejandro.

“Thanks, that’s going to save me a lot of time.” He accepted the charts with a smile before eying the cane she was resting her weight on. “Still held back by your hip, uh?”

“Dislocated hips take time Chief.” The scarlet macaw winced. “I can put some weight on it, but not to the point where I can go a day without my cane.”

“On the bright side it gives you a classy style.” Alejandro comforted her before smoothing his crest and looking off in Sirocco’s direction.

Mikhail was done with the weapons, the purple dragon now waiting for him by the ramp, seabag over his shoulder and claws on his hips.

With him, they would be the only former humans on board. Elaena had insisted she didn’t need a large team, so Sirocco would only be leaving with her original trio, the two sailors, and Radiant. The Pegasus’ experience with airships being what put him on the roster.

“Right, gotta go…” Alejandro trailed off. “Stay safe you lot, ok?” He concluded, giving Dilip and Geert firm handshakes before jogging over to Sirocco.

Not five minutes later, the Spaniard found himself inside of Sirocco’s cramped cockpit. Elaena was already there in the pilot’s seat, inspecting her instruments and working her way through her preflight checklist.

“All good over there?” He asked her, squeezing past her seat to go hang the first chart on a cork board on the port wall.

“Instruments are alright. Wasted a bit of time readjusting the compass to the local poles but it should be fine. Got a bit of a worry with accuracy since we’re going pretty far North, but it should do it.”

“Yeah, normally we’d use a gyrocompass this far North to avoid the magnetic/geographic difference but Sirocco just couldn’t fit one.” He commented while placing the pins to keep the chart on the board.

This was only the first one they would be using for that voyage. All the rest were still a deck below in the chart room. You always have to use the chart with the largest scale available, which is exactly why they wound up with two dozen of them prepped for the voyage.

The charts weren’t the only thing to navigate by, of course. Outfitting Sirocco with a proper ECDIS was impossible, but they had managed to rig her with a small GPS screen that showed their coordinates without leeching off of the airship’s pretty limited acid-lead batteries.

Elaena decided to hang the instrument next to her altitude gauge.

Radiant was on board as well. The Pegasus was busy inspecting the two steam engines that powered Sirocco’s propeller, back in the aft section of each of her two balloons. Interesting machines as they were: high pressure engines that ran on coal-water slurry. Alejandro was a bit… partial to say the least about the idea of powering an airship with a steam engine, but Elaena reassured him the system worked just fine.

They might have to refuel on fresh water in Narvik though. And avoid taking too many showers. Hopefully they’d find a source of fresh water; otherwise they might have a lot of work ahead of them with the reverse-osmosis pump.

“Eh Captain.” Radiant’s voice echoed through the starboard speaking tube. “Engines are A-Okay, but what do I do about the gas bladders?”

“Leave ‘em.” Elaena quickly said. “That gas ain’t any kind of tech an Equestrian like you would know about. They’re fine, last overhaul was a month ago.”

And the gasbags may actually be the most interesting piece of tech on Sirocco. Each of her two balloons held about twenty of them, and they contained a very peculiar mixture of gases. Plural that is.

See, the trick was that they didn’t carry just any kind of gases. They weren’t just lighter than air, that wouldn’t have been enough. They were a rare (and expensive!) kind of magically-infused substances produced via alchemy that also generated an upwards force.

A force Elaena could control with a bit of trickery, which she did once the flight checks were complete, sailors from all around the docks gathering to see her take off.

With a flick of her talons, Elaena started explaining in detail to the attentive Alejandro (the male parrot uncomfortably squeezed between the chart and the pilot’s chair) how each gas bag was fitted with a solenoid around it. She needed to run some current through them to ‘activate’ the gases inside.

Once the current was on, she could do one of two things: heat them up or cool them using Sirocco’s cool and hot water circuits. Changing the temperature of the gasbags while they were ‘active’ would change the upwards force by a factor far higher than the change in lift caused by the temperature changes. This was all thanks to the control she had over the chemical equilibrium inside, something she could easily lock down by turning off the solenoids. One gas in the reaction had downward lift, the other giving upwards lift, she just had to manage the ratio carefully.

Which was exactly how Sirocco managed her altitude without resorting to ballast or venting gases, and this was exactly how they took off.

In her seat, Elaena carefully steered the airship away from the harbor’s cranes as they started climbing, Alejandro’s ears quickly popping from the change in altitude. The ships and sailors below them shrunk down in size until they reached an altitude of a thousand meters. Then, the female parrot gave a satisfied nod before flicking a few controls to stabilize their altitude. She shut off the current in the solenoids to ‘lock’ the airship at the right altitude before he talons wrapped themselves around the engine telegraph.

With a rumble of her engines, Sirocco sped away from Copenhagen. Headed North. To Narvik.

Author's Notes:

I think I nailed down an interesting technique with Sirocco's gas bags. Balloon to canopy ratio of Equestrian airships appears too small just for lighter-than-air lift to be sufficient in most cases. If you compare the ratio of Graf Zeppelin to that of a Storm Airship, it does seem a bit too small, even with Helium.

Which brings me to the next concept: magically-imbued materials. Can't make up new elements, so they'd have to be like isotopes. Elements that, when exposed to high magic flows, take on new properties. In Sirocco's case, it's a simple force, up or down depending on the gas ratio.

Paired with magnetic cathalysis, feeding the gas bag energy or taking energy from it (heat) will influence the chemical equilibrium inside, thus controlling 'lift'. The technique most certainly isn't the only one on Equus by a long shot -particularly considering electricity and induction must be primitive at their tech level-, but it's one that fits the kind of ship I wished Sirocco to be.

As for the 'magical isotopes' (I know they're not isotopes but can't think of a better name), I'd wager they start appearing after long term or intense exposure to magic flow, already present on Equus, but not on Earth save for convergence points where the field is strong enough to force their appearance.

Their existence in trace amounts in a compound would probably also cause what the likes of the HPI would classify as 'residual thaumic contamination'. A significant problem in their case, even more so in the long run.

Guess I should stop rambling now. Have a nice week folks!