The news of USS Georgia’s grounding spurred a change of formation for the merchant vessels further out in the Atlantic. Leading the way, Amandine kept right on her course towards Savannah while Fugro Symphony and Rhine Forest altered their course by just a few degrees to the south. They could actually do something to help, unlike the large Ro/Ro.

According to their charts, the submarine had run aground at the edge of the continental slope off the coast of Georgia, some hundred nautical miles south of the fleet’s intended destination at the estuary of the River Savannah. Considering how far out they still were, the slight change in heading meant that Rhine and Fugro didn’t so much as veer away from Amandine as they slowly drifted apart, disappearing a couple hours later over the horizon with a few parting words over the VHF.

Amandine’s helicopter pilots were the last to see the two ships with their own eyes on that day, during a test flight. Dilip had decided to make use of the short window of decent weather they were enjoying to try out landing and take-off maneuvers with their newly acquired helicopter, albeit only once he was absolutely certain that both pilots were fully acquainted to their new bodies, healed from any previous injuries and ready to fly.

Which they were, something Hawthorne – the lead pilot- had been quite confident about when he’d told the Captain they were ready.

An odd… pony, the Brit was. He was also the first actual Pegasus he’d seen that actually came from Earth (Radiant Course being, arguably, an alien): pristine white fur, swept back brown mane, coupled with a square jaw and a remarkably stocky build (at least by Pegasus standards). For a pilot who’d just crashed a few weeks prior, he pranced around with a surprising amount of confidence in his flying skills.

Much more so considering that as far as self-powered flight went, he still was in the gliding part of the flight lessons.

Dilip decided the cocky attitude was either due to him being a pilot, or because of his apparent American lineage – which he also suspected was why the Brit was a Pegasus to begin with-.

Comparatively, his co-pilot, Adkins, wasn’t anywhere near as cocky and even a bit on the overly-cautious side of the spectrum. He had turned into a hedgefog, and a kid at that, which came with a gangly, inelegant build that had yet to bulk up, a shaggy mane of quills, and a pair of very pale – near white actually- blue eyes that made him look more tired than he really was.

He also walked around in fog form more than strictly necessary, for what little it did for his sake. Hawthorne was a pegasus, turning into fog would never prevent him from touching his subordinate, what with the cloudwalk gimmick.

Not the bad king of touching, mind.

Pilots aside, the helicopter’s first flight went remarkably well. They had a bit of a hiccup when it came to rigging the anti-skid net for the landing, but beyond that everything worked out without hassle. Scarface had quickly figured out how to go about maintaining the AW189, making sure the SAR-grade equipment was as good as new and polishing the bright orange-and-white exterior to such a point that it glowed like a beacon in the afternoon sunlight by the time it landed back on Amandine’s deck.

The only thing the sailors needed to do was to make sure Amandine always was on a good heading relative to the wind so that it didn’t make Hawthorne’s landing any harder than it needed to, and the Ro/Ro had plenty of deck space to land on to begin with.

The display alone gathered a crowd of curious sailors that watched the two pilots land the helicopter, the downwash from its blades strong enough to kick up a cloud of spray as Hawthorne put it in a hover before landing with a soft thud of its landing gear.

Dilip descended from the bridge to the main deck once he was sure their helicopter was secure, the D-Dog walking over to the two pilots as they watched Scarface and Artyom wheel their ride back inside of the hangar for maintenance and refueling.

“Pretty helicopter don’t you think?” He began, arms crossed behind his back, the gentle breeze coming in from the open hangar doors ruffling the fur on top of the Diamond Dog’s head.

“She’s a dream to fly I’ll admit.” Hawthorne nodded in agreement, his flight helmet held between the primaries of one wing, the other smoothing down his mane. “The AW189 is as modern as it gets. We were just putting it in trials for the Coast Guard before things went tits up. Anyway, something the matter, Captain?”

“None at all, hmm...” Dilip trailed off. “Do you have a rank or should I just call you by your name?”

“Just stick to names, we don’t have a rank.” He told the Captain. “SAR flights in Britain are done by a private company working on the gov’ment’s dime, we’re just pilots from Bristow.”

“Duly noted.” Dilip nodded. “Now, if I may, how confident are you in your ability to carry out missions with that helicopter? As in… can you carry a lot of personnel or cargo with that?” He said, waving a paw at the helicopter Scarface was currently putting the intake covers back on.

“It’s a twin engine, sir.” Hawthorne said. “I’ll admit she’s not as big as a Sea King or even a Chinook, but don’t let appearances fool you. Depending on how many seats we fit inside we have room for at least sixteen passengers, and she takes off with just over eight tons of weight. She does the job.”

“Confident aren’t you?”

“Absolutely. A more modern helicopter you won’t find.” He paused. “At least on the civilian market.”

“I’m sure it’s a great aircraft.” Dilip smiled politely. “Now, for the sake of practicality, can you go to Roberto’s office once this is all tidied up so he knows to which extent he can count on your aircraft for expeditions?”

“The secretary?” Adkins quipped, the hedgefog raising his eyebrows in disbelief.

“Secretary is a bit of a stretch nowadays...” Dilip stretched his neck. “As of late he’s been more about managing our hardware and doing intelligence work than mere paperwork, but in either case he’s a lifesaver. Just make sure he knows how far you can fly and how heavy, I’m sure that might give us access to a couple more destinations I’m not inclined to send ground vehicles to. Copy?”

“Aye Captain.” Adkins firmly nodded.

“Excellent then. On a brighter note, what do you say about having dinner with me and Alejandro this evening? This first flight calls for a celebratory meal, don’t you think?”

“I’d be delighted.” Hawthorne smirked.

Space was always at a premium on submarines, much more so than on surface combatants, far more so than on merchant vessels that didn’t need the extensive crews military vessels carried. Georgia was no exception to that rule, something which irked Ignacio to no end as the head of Georgia’s Engineering Department – Eng colloquially- found herself repeatedly struggling through hatch openings and doorways with her new enlarged canine frame. The submarine being pitched backwards and to the side didn’t help either. Going anywhere was either a sluggish climb or a harrowing slide into Hell, the sub’s attitude making it so that the hatches wanted to hang open, making going aft risky, not only because of the tilt, but also because hatches would pull the hatch opener aft with the weight of the heavy steel hatch wanting to swing open. Going forward, they not only had to fight the angle, watch for the hatch swinging into their faces, but also had to pull the damn hatch up and closed. Unfun, to be sure.

Much like the rest of the boat, the CO’s stateroom was cramped, every single nook and cranny fitted with that piece of folding furniture or this recessed compartment to maximize the space used and not waste even a single inch. Some of those were hidden by light brown fake-wood panels or even drab blue curtains, others were just stainless steel doors with their purpose scribbled on it with a sticker. Even though the Captain was one of the few on the crew privileged enough to have his own cabin (along with the Exec and Ignacio herself, among other people), that didn’t mean the compartment was big by any stretch of imagination. She had to duck her head under an overhead closet as she headed through the doorway, shoulders scraping both sides on the way in.

“So, how’s everything aft, Eng?” Graham asked her.

Ignacio’s head snapped towards the pony, spotting their XO sitting by the Captain’s bedside. The large Earth Pony had commandeered a sailor with a working set of hands to help him refit his uniform a few hours prior, which only involved ripping the sleeves and legs of his pants to match his new limb length and tie up the rest with an extra belt around his barrel.

Not dignified by any means, but still a major improvement over the rest of the crew. As the Exec, appearances had to be maintained.

“You want the good news, or the bad news, sir?” She asked, heading deeper inside the cabin until she found a spot where she could stand up to her full height, in passing throwing a look at the silent and bedridden Captain Green.

Graham may have told her what he’d turned into, but it was something else to see it through her own eyes. What she knew used to be a stout man in his graying forties was now a tiny colt covered by his bed sheets and with three hooves kept tightly in place by splints courtesy of Chief Ezra, the Corpsman.

She could see the new… color palette the Captain was gifted with, his sky-blue fur pairing with pink eyes and a spiky rainbow mane making for such a sharp contrast with the attitude she knew him for she’d have hardly believed it. The sole sign that seemingly still matched Captain Green was the heraldic eagle symbol he had on his… butt? Or was it a flank with equines? She didn’t know.

Idly, she wondered how a Captain that looked so… juvenile would possibly garner any form of respect in the future.

Hundreds of miles away from Georgia, Captain Lorelei of Rhine Forest sneezed cutely during a risk assessment meeting.

“Cut the chatter and get to the point Eng.” Captain Green ordered, his sour mood seeping into his tone despite the new high-pitched child’s voice.

“It could be worse, sir.” She replied, forcing herself not to mumble anything in Spanish in Green’s presence.

Graham had a habit of humoring her with that. The Captain though? Not too big on Hispanics.

“We’ve looked at every system aft, and patched up what we could, shutting down everything we don’t need. All electrical loads are on turbo-gen number two for now. The reactor is operating in Natural Circulation mode, steam plant is port side only, the cross connects are on for the steam and feed sides to keep the loops cooled, through our main condenser on the port side. We’re obviously not going anywhere, so the main turbines are secured. Shaft seals are holding without having to deploy the emergency seals.

The 10K evaporator is down, too much pressure on the brine pump at this depth. I have the 4K up and running, the brine outlet routed through aft ASW, so we will have enough potable water without the need to ration.

Air conditioning is stable, as is atmosphere regeneration. Due to the list, the O₂ generators are not able to work at full capacity, but we have enough reserve to not to worry about the generators. Scrubbers and burners are also reduced, but still adequate.” Ignacio reported, keeping her voice cool and stable.

“What are you concerned the most about, Eng?” Green managed to growl, clearly unhappy, but his new little colt body made the voice less intimidating than it could have been. Still, knowing Green she knew better than wasting his time just from his tone.

“Two things in particular concern me, Captain. One: waste water. We would normally blow the sanitary tank with compressed air, but we’re down to one tank without replenishment, and it’s an awful lot of air we’d need to overcome the pressure at this depth. Sure there is the drain pump, but if it slips then we got a backflood. The other most important problem is the battery. I sent two griffins…” Ignacio started to say before being interrupted.

“Two what?” Green snapped.

“Griffins, sir. Some sort of cat-bird hybrids with front claws instead of paws, works better as hands than hooves.” Ignacio managed to say without snapping back. “To resume, I sent two griffins into the battery well. There is seawater leaking in from somewhere, but at a very slow rate. I have a pump rigged up to take the water out of the battery well bilge and into the diesel room, enough volume there to last a while at the rate it’s filling. I would like to disconnect the battery cells starboard aft, so if the leakage speeds up, we won’t worry about a short.”

“We got a good charge on the battery?” Green asked.

“On the float, sir. Full charge and both motor-generators working properly. We’re not going to die tomorrow, unless something unknown happens.”

“Very well. Now Graham, you had something to say?”

“Better news I’d assume.” The Earth Pony tentatively smiled. “Within a couple hours of switching the distress call to civvie frequencies, we got a ping. Someone acknowledged the call. That’s the only thing the system can tell us, but at least that means someone is coming. I took the liberty of passing the news to the rest of the crew, better for morale.”

Inwardly, Ignacio felt as if a weight had been taken off of her shoulders. Someone was coming. Hope. Something to hold on to.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves now.” Green reminded them. “The call was acknowledged by civilians, we have no idea whether or not they’re even competent enough to get us out of this sub, and most of us...” he waved his sole unbroken hoof at himself and Graham. “… aren’t even able to use the escape suits anymore.”

Ignacio’s face fell, suddenly reminded of one crucial little detail.

Griffons might be able to squeeze in a suit with room to spare. Maledogs too, they were actually just the right size. For ponies it was an exercise in futility since their body type was too far from human.

And her? A female dog? She’d noticed how much bigger she was than the males.

The suit wouldn’t fit.

“I’m going to check the atmosphere systems again.Permission to leave, sir?” She breathed out.

“Dismissed.” Green said.

Ignacio was sullen when she began making her way back down to the engineering section.

Utterly ignorant of Georgia’s plight – as well as most of the world’s problems-, a little fawn was just merrily frolicking in the woods around the castle that was now his home in Brittany. Martin was pretty content with his situation. Ever since that big white stag had come and nuzzled him all the animals in the woods had started acting like friends to him.

Rabbits and hares would pass by and greet him with a twitch of their little noses, squirrels would peer at him curiously from atop their trees, and birds would sing for him whenever he took a trot out in the woods. That was great! Lots of friends to make even though he had yet to meet kids his age.

Walking near the edge of the castle’s moat, he took a quick pause to wave a cloven hoof at a family of mallard ducks, the hen quacking back a greeting before disappearing behind the reeds that surrounded her nest, her ducklings following in an orderly line after her.

Next to the gatehouse, Miles eyed the display with an eyebrow raised so high it risked disappearing inside the pegasus’ mane.

“Is that normal or did I miss something?” She asked aloud.

“Started happening the day after the White Stag marked him according to Meadow.” Rockhoof filled in. “We don’t really know what it exactly intended to do by marking him like that, but Starswirl thinks it’s about stewardship of Broceliande.”

“Stewardship?”

“You heard me.” Rockhoof insisted. “I mean… look at him and how the animals are acting.”

Miles looked back towards Martin, only to see the little fawn cutely nuzzle a flower stem and coax it into blooming, the sight of its white petals eliciting a happy laugh from him.

“Okay, I’ll admit that’s pretty darn cute.” She admitted. “But why him?”

“Like I’d know.” Rockhoof shrugged. “For all I know the stag read his soul and decided he was a good successor or some stuff like that. At least that’s the reasoning I’m sticking with. So much for the kid living a simple life…” He sighed.

“I mean no offense, but assuming a kid living near a magical forest in a castle with Merlin in a post-apocalyptic setting is anything but a simple life. Protecting him from how it may turn out sounds like a vain endeavor.”

“I’m aware, won’t stop me from trying.” Rock replied acidly.

“No need to be bitter about it, I’m just saying.” Miles raised her wings in a shrug, ears flicking as they caught another laugh from Martin who was now making friends with a pair of hedgehogs. “I know kids gotta be kids and all, but a time will come where you won’t be able to shield him from his destiny.”

Silently, Rockhoof gazed over the moat and off in the distance. Why did so many folks show interest in the kid to begin with? Starswirl saw potential in him as an apprentice, so did Meadowbrook, and now the White Stag? This was ridiculous! Preposterous! What was next? Morga-

He halted his train of thought. Best not to tempt fate.

“Anyway, I’d rather not go down that rabbit hole again, never seems to do me much good.” Rockhoof grumbled. “Stay on watch and keep a tight eye, Star said he’d vectored a couple more returnees towards us.”

“Again?”

“Yes, again. At this rate it won’t be just a castle but a fully-fledged village by the time fall rolls in.” Rock said. “At least I know we have the food stores to get through winter.”

“Well as long as you’re confident about the stores.” She shrugged. “I’ll give them the standard pitch when they turn up, ten thousand years and all. We gonna lodge them in the outbuildings?”

“Correct. Couple days of rest and getting acquainted to the place, then we get them to help with the farm.”

They still had plenty of room to spare if they wanted to increase the size of the settlement. The farm buildings around the castle had a couple free bedrooms – formerly lodgings for tourists visiting Broceliande- that they could lend to newcomers, in addition to some more rooms in the castle itself.

And while they could have hosted them in the castle, Rock would rather they start making use of the other buildings, if only to spread ponies around and make sure all buildings were lived-in and not deteriorating from being left vacant. Granted the outbuildings weren’t as well-defended as Trecesson Castle itself, but Rock had some plans to raise a wooden palisade to supplement Star’s wards on the outer perimeter.

But the palisade could wait a little while. What garnered his attention after he bade Miles a good watch was what their one lazy colony member was doing. Despite some continuous prodding, the doe he’d already had problems with – a former secretary called Sandrine- still refused to do her part in helping the colony.

As Trecesson’s Lord, it had thus fallen upon him to get her working. Which meant a dip in the moat for the lazy doe, and then sticking her with what was arguably their worst duty.

The charcoal kiln.

Kilns weren’t very complicated tech. Finicky, sure, but not complicated. It was essentially just a pile of firewood with a couple very thin air ducts, covered in dirt, clay and straw to ‘choke’ the fire. Whoever monitored the kiln just had to make sure partial combustion was maintained throughout the entire process. The fire couldn’t be allowed to breach the dirt dome covering the firewood – thus fully combusting and ruining the process-, and it couldn’t be allowed to die down.

And it was lengthy. A single kiln took a fair while to assemble properly, and it took up to a week for the batch to turn into charcoal.

That was the task Sandrine was now saddled with, something the doe with the spectacled fur pattern around her eyes wasn’t too happy with. When Rock came to the clearing they’d built the kiln in, he found her clad in a sooty set of denim jumpers, glaring a hole into the kiln as a thin plume of smoke rose out of the vent at the top of the brownish mound.

She barely acknowledged his presence despite his attempts at sparking a conversation.

Not that he minded. If she was going to behave like a petulant filly then he’d rather not waste his time with her, so he just reminded her how important it was that they get their supply of charcoal and not waste their first batch.

More than just for heating actually.

Emeric – the French LT that had come with Miles- was basically done with his pet project. The unicorn had completed his system in the castle’s courtyard after a couple days of trial and error plus an extra errand in the ruins of a nearby technical school (which had been swallowed up by the ever-expanding Broceliande by the time they located it).

So now they had a generator. In a fashion. The system Emeric had come up with wasn’t anything spectacular: it was a charcoal burner heating up a boiler, which then used the steam produced to drive two shafts.

That at least, Rockhoof mostly understood. From what little he knew about modern Equestrian technology, it sounded like a regular steam engine. Like the ones they used on the locomotive that pulled the Friendship Express.

What his admittedly medieval mindset couldn’t fully wrap itself around was what happened next. One shaft drove an ‘alternator’ – as Emeric had called it- that gave them all this electrical stuff and lighting inside the castle, while the other drove a centrifugal pump to give them running water.

Whatever a centrifugal pump was supposed to be. As if the piston pumps weren’t hard enough to understand.

Technology was hard. He wasn’t a scholar like Starswirl who could figure it all out in the blink of an eye. So he had resigned himself to sticking to the simple notion of: need charcoal for running water and electricity, and Emeric had convinced him and Meadowbrook that having the amenities would greatly facilitate the mare’s pregnancy, and even make her alchemy lab in the dungeon that much more comfortable with proper heating and ventilation.

Call him a fussy stallion if you wanted, but if there was one thing Rockhoof was, it was protective when it came to the mother of his foals. Much to her irritation, mind.

With that train of thought going through his mind he did a complete tour of his castle’s outer perimeter, idly noting how Starswirl’s wards had halted the forest’s growth before it could encroach on his domain and damage their fields.

Magic sure was running strong in Broceliande, making the plant life grow at a rate that was astounding even for him as an Earth Pony. For one he was pretty sure that little sapling he’d just passed near the potato field wasn’t as tall a few days prior.

The place really was an Everfree stoked on performance enhancers, and he’d known the forest way before modern Equestria could tame it and curtail its growth.

On the bright side it meant they’d never run out of firewood for heating or for making charcoal.

On the bad side, it meant life was going to be an unrelenting struggle between them and the forest. They seriously needed to get that wooden palisade going as soon as possible, because Rock doubted Starswirl’s siege-shield spell could be raised quickly enough, and it couldn’t protect them all the time.

The palisade would be necessary. And…

Rockhoof stopped in the middle of the path, casting a look around. He could see the pastures holding the larger farm animals on one side, with the fields on the other. What used to be a typical French bocage weeks earlier was now steadily transforming into an isolated patch of farmland around their castle in the middle of the forest.

Wood wasn’t in short supply, but having somepony to assemble the defenses was going to be a problem. The palisade probably should just wrap around the castle and the outbuildings. That would leave the pastures undefended and he was pretty damn sure there were more critters in the forest than just hunchback boars and Vivian’s piasts.

Would a fence really stop such critters? Maybe if he added some barbed wire on top?

Yeah, that would have to do. Fence for now, palisade later.

Rockhoof would spend the next few hours dropping stones here and there around the perimeter to mark where he intended to build his project, only making his way back to the castle once he was satisfied with its path.

Still, that was going to take a helluva lot of workforce and lumber.

Emergency Position Indicating Radar Beacon. EPIRB for short. A wonderful thing really, they were recognized worldwide by the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System, worked on multiple frequencies, and could allow rescue units to easily home in on a distressed vessel’s position. Most of them worked on two frequencies: one in UHF to communicate with satellites and report a simple digital message with basic data on the vessel and her GPS position, and another frequency via VHF that allowed vessels in range to be guided towards the beacon.

That was what Rhine Forest and Fugro Symphony were attempting as they came in VHF range of Georgia’s last reported position. On the barge carrier, watchkeepers were standing on the bridge wings with binoculars, hoping to locate the buoy that would hopefully allow them to locate the downed submarine.

In the Captain’s seat, Captain Lorelei straightened up in her seat, her gaze drilling a hole in the electronic chartdisplay in front of her, thinking.

The homing beacon part of the EPIRB had already proved useless. They did find the distress beacon, but considering it had been released from the sub and allowed to drift away, the location where they found it was vastly different from the one displayed in the original distress message.

By several nautical miles actually. The Gulf Stream and two days of travel time to the rescue site would do that.

So now there were two things she could hope for to locate the sub:

One, that Americans fitted their subs with distress buoys tethered to their ships. She was more or less certain there were a couple navies around the globe that did that.

Two, that Fugro could – maybe – make use of her multibeam echosounder to scan the seabed and find the sub. Equipment like that was frequently used to do surveys and locate wrecks, so a giant nuclear submarine shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. On her ECDIS, she watched Josselin draw a track depicting the scanning path Fugro planned to run to locate the sub, a textbook expanding square search pattern.

“Josselin… take our search pattern opposite to Fugro. Focus on visual. Oil slicks, sailors in immersion suits, hopefully the distress buoy. Tell the lookouts to focus on that.” She said, holding a pen in her telekinesis to flick the controls on her monitor. “Do we know the size of that distress buoy? Something we can spot on radar?”

“No guarantee ma’am.” Monika replied. “Only data I found was on Indian subs.”

Her secretary technically. The matronly gargoyle now wound up with a set of tasks similar to Roberto’s on Amandine as a de-facto intel officer, lacking an actual need to manage their paperwork. Rhine didn’t have the extensive array of servers of the more modern Amandine, but they did have more than enough room to store any kind of paperwork they found all over the world.

Might need to invest resources in a shipboard server network though, if only to make managing all that data easier. Worst case scenario, it would cost them one TEU of container space. Tragic.

“And what did you have on those Indian subs?” Lorelei pressed on.

Funny how quickly she’d taken to the nickname.

“Simple tech. A buoy about a meter wide with a radar reflector mounted on top. You have a tether tying it to the sub near the escape trunk, and it should have a sound-powered telephone too.”

Lorelei eyed the monitor in front of her dubiously.

“Well if it’s got a radar reflector we’re not seeing it, and it’s not like we can blame waves or rain for cluttering the radar.” She remarked, quickly checking the radar to make sure it was properly tuned.

Which it was, shame that wasn’t enough to locate the buoy.

Minutes later, Lorelei ordered a momentary halt in their search pattern so they could drop off some of the barge carrier’s auxiliaries and extend their search coverage. Having just the one torpedo escort down in the water screening the fleet wasn’t enough, and soon the single boat was joined by another escort and two trawlers that formed a line abreast formation and proceeded to comb the seabed with their sounders in search of USS Georgia.

For a submarine that displaced over sixteen thousand tons, it was proving surprisingly hard to find. The entire fleet wound up sailing in circles around the distress call’s assumed grounding position for hours before any advancements were made.

It was only after over twelve hours of searching and long after the sun had set over this part of the Atlantic that one of the trawlers radioed the rest of the fleet, the pilot sounding positively elated as he announced their discovery. They’d found Georgia’s buoy.

Turns out, American distress buoys were quite a bit bigger than those of Indian submarines. What a surprise...

All ships in the vicinity rushed towards the position as soon as the declaration was heard over the VHF, including Fugro in particular, which they counted on to do most of the leverage in the salvaging effort. The big red and white offshore support vessel slowly approached the area the smaller trawler was pointing her floodlights at, finding the distress buoy with its radar reflector damaged either by the sub’s impact against the seabed or by the waves on the surface.

Either way, it was no surprise they couldn’t see it on radar. The entire device barely protruded more than a meter above the surface. Low enough for most radar computers to discard its radar reflection as nothing more than a wave’s crest. According to their charts, the little buoy was positioned just above a sudden rise in the sea floor where it transitioned from sheer abyss to a more shallow underwater plain in a cliff the sub must have plowed into.

While Rhine was busy setting up an anchorage less than two miles west of the buoy – on the shallow side of the cliff-, Fugro’s crew began the careful process of getting the buoy to slide under their hull and into their moon pool without damaging it or disconnecting the tether that connected it to the submarine.

Moon pool indeed. It was a large square-shaped hole in the deck a few meters aft of the superstructure, originally designed to avoid having to lower diving bells overboard. It still was exposed to the weather by virtue of being outside (unlike some other dive support vessels who had their pools inside the superstructure itself), but using it proved little trouble to the well-trained crew of the offshore vessel.

Getting it operational required them to first open the ventral doors in Fugro’s belly to flood the pool with seawater, before one of their sailors manned the deck crane to remove the hatch covers that prevented random sailors from falling into the pool when they weren’t using it. Additionally they also rigged a quick rope railing around the hole to prevent such accidents, if only to err on the safe side.

Captain Skinner strode out onto the bustling deck to the sight of his ratings tying up the buoy inside the pool. The cold night wind was blowing across the deck, ruffling the hedgefog’s quills as he tightened his sea vest around his chest. Night had long since fallen, and the deck lights had been turned on, powerful floodlights that ruined a sailor’s night vision and made it near impossible to see the stars above them or even the rest of the fleet off in the distance.

“Is the phone line connected yet?” Skinner loudly asked Quinn – his Chief Officer- raising his voice to overcome the ever-present whine of the engines.

The short black dragon abruptly turned around on his heels, only then noticing his superior behind him.

“Not yet Cap’n.” Quinn replied. “Just got done mooring the buoy to the pool. We’ve switched to Dynamic Positioning to minimize tension on the tether, so now I’m just waiting for MacClelland to find us a reel of wire to connect. Phone line’s too short on the buoy side.”

“DP? You found something to maintain a position fix on?”

“At first I was hoping we could stick a laser marker on a weather sensor platform I saw on the charts a couple miles west, but it’s way out of range.” Quinn said.

“So what did you do?”

Really, what did he do? Dynamic positioning was one of the most cutting-edge technologies in use in the offshore industry. It was a shipboard system that allowed vessels to stay in position with an extreme degree of accuracy, with margins of error that frequently didn’t exceed half a meter.

To achieve that the system – of course almost entirely automated- made use of a vessel’s propulsion systems which in Fugro’s case involved bow and stern thrusters, plus the retractable azimuth thruster they could deploy out of a ventral hatch along the keel. The entire ship was essentially capable of moving in any direction, and the DP system could freely vector thrust in whichever direction it needed to keep the ship in place.

And how did the system know what to do? With a given point of reference. The one thing Skinner was now wondering about, because the system needed something stable to fix its position on.

There were myriads of reference systems like that. There was the taut-wire system they knew Rhine Forest used; essentially an extremely sensitive anchor on a gimbal mount that measured tension in the cable and adjusted thrust accordingly to stay in position.

There was the DGPS system, that improved base GPS accuracy using a ground-based reference station that they obviously didn’t have.

There was about half-a-dozen different laser-based systems that required stuff like reflective strips to be placed on a spar or a platform to serve as a reference point. They did have that system on board, though as Quinn had stated: they were way out of range of any spar to get a reference from.

Which left…

“You used acoustics?”

“Correct sir. I took the liberty of grabbing a couple transponders from storage.” Quinn said.

That was the last big system he could think of off the top of his head, one that was mostly used for dive support actions and when subsea templates were involved. Which meant with Fugro’s former role as a dive support vessel they certainly had it available.

Acoustic systems like that made use of two components: a transducer on the ship side of affairs, and acoustic transponders that could be programmed on different frequencies and placed (or dropped) underwater to set up a frame of reference the DP system could affix itself to.

And according to Quinn, that was exactly what he’d just done. Fugro always carried a couple spare transponders in her holds in case they had to replace one when working on subsea templates, pipelines or even well heads. The black dragon had elected to set up two of these and toss them down the moon pool so the computer would have the frame of reference it so desperately needed.

Judging by the whirr of the servos, the system was doing alright with keeping them in place, something Skinner didn’t hesitate to congratulate his Chief Officer on as they watched an engine rating finally emerge out of the engine room with a spool of wire under the Diamond Dog’s arm.

Silently, the two Officers watched the border collie put on a climbing harness and climb down in the moonpool to attach the wire to the distress buoy’s phone line. Not settling for just sticking it to a handset and calling it a day, they went the extra step and wired it to a station in the nearest office available, one that overlooked the deck through an observation window.

“Cap’n, the phone line is connected.” His Chief Engineer, MacClelland, announced crisply as the white unicorn mare led him and Quinn inside the office where her subordinates were just tidying up the place.

With a proud grin, she passed over the handset to her superior with her telekinesis before sitting down on her haunches, distractedly brushing off a speck of grime on a strand of her purple mane that peeked out of her bandana.

Skinner carefully eyed the phone. Just a regular, drab, black handset similar to household phones from the late eighties.

“Moment o’ truth I guess...” The Scot solemnly muttered, bringing the set to his ear and pushing a button that would make the other end of the line ring.

The phone didn’t even get to ring one time before someone picked up, though whoever that was also dropped the phone, swore a couple times about hooves, dropped it again, and then let someone else pick up the set.

“Lieutenant Gardner, of Sierra-Sierra-Golf-November Seven-Two-Niner, are you the rescue asset?”

Connection between the sub and surface units was now officially established.

Meanwhile, Amandine hadn’t wasted her time getting to Savannah. By the time the rest of the fleet finally connected a phone line to the downed sub, the large white and gray Ro/Ro was reaching the estuary of the River Savannah.

Up on the bridge, Dilip barked – pun intended- a few quick orders to get the ship to an anchorage by the fairway’s entrance. He didn’t want to take any excessive risks by heading upstream at night. River sailing was already tricky to begin with given Amandine’s sheer size, doing it by night and without any tugs or safety nets was just asking for a grounding. What data Roberto had managed to scrounge up on the region pointed out that, in addition to the fairway being a little over a cable in width and fairly shallow (for a ship of Amandine’s size at least), the banks of the river had a tendency of branching off into an extremely shallow delta that turned into mudflats and wetlands typical of the region that were just begging to swallow up their ship.

Idly, he wondered if a seapony might be able to fend off the gators native to the American south. Probably not, they’d best avoid dipping anyone in the water just in case, marshlands were nasty.

To make matters worse, Amandine was about as long as the fairway was wide, meaning if they needed to turn the ship around they’d have to use one of the few turning basins the locals had dug in the river banks prior to the Event.

In short: sailing up the river was going to be tricky. They were already planning to lower their sounding boat in the water to make sure the dredged depth shown on their charts was still the same as the actual depth, what with the tendency of estuaries to build up mounds of soil in odd places.

Plus there was the whole fact the buoyage system in America was inverted. That was going to be a mild annoyance as well, seeing the red and green buoys on the opposite side of where they’d be in Europe.

As he watched the anchor being lowered from its winch in the fo’c’sle, Dilip also signed the last passage planning and enclosed water detail documents Alejandro had brought him a few minutes prior before finally standing up from his seat, one eye flicking over to the ECDIS.

“Alright, good job with the anchoring.” He told Vadim. “Switch over to anchor detail until tomorrow at dawn. Entry into port is to resume as soon as the sun is up, we got a delivery to do and it’s waited long enough already, copy?”

“Aye Cap’n.” The griffon in the navigator’s seat nodded firmly, grabbing a new checklist from under his seat and beginning his procedures. “Anything particular to pay attention to?”

“Check out local data and monitor VHF channels, just in case some returnees are using them, and make sure the sounding boat is already fueled and rigged for entry, I want a crew list to man it yesterday. If there’s anything wrong, I’ll be in my office with Schmitt.”

Right now, he just needed to go give a notice of ETA.

To Eko. About time the HPI got their delivery.

Author's Notes:

Ok, now I'm convinced Fimfic's system is screwing with my word count. I was well below my desired 7k words threshold for this chapter, but their counter put me over it.

That and it has a bad habit of removing horizontal lines and even some spaces when copypasting from .odt to... whatever format this is.

And I have no clue why.

Anyway, I hope the stuff about DP and all didn't feel like too much of a lecture. I know some of the stuff used in the offshore sector isn't widely known about (even more so than the maritime industry as a whole, so that's saying something).

I think I've heard of some construction and farming equipment that used DGPS too, except now it's also able to go from Glonass to Galileo and GPS depending on which gives the best reception.

On another note I was going to name this chapter: 'Georgia reached, both of them', but that would have been too spoilery for the content I believe. Can't have that now, can I?