Just as they had planned, Amandine’s crew woke up with the sun and set to make their entry into Savannah. The time had come to make due on their delivery. Up on the bridge, Greet slid into the navigator’s seat, having just relieved Micha from her watch.

Grabbing a fresh checklist template and a pen from under her seat, the scarlet macaw brushed her talons through her crest before she started making sure everything was fine and dandy for their entry into port. And it sure was, most of the work having already been done by the previous watch and the engineering staff having long double- and triple-checked all the propulsion systems to make sure they were ready.

On that train of thought, most of the concerns down in engineering were focused on the bow thruster that had been damaged in their collision with Fugro. Sure, they’d repaired it in the meantime, but there was a very distinct possibility that the self-machined parts they’d made to patch up the system back in Belfast wouldn’t hold up to the strain.

A significant risk, though the system giving up on them wouldn’t necessarily mean they couldn’t reach Savannah. In all fairness, Amandine was pretty agile and speedy for a cargo ship of her size, thanks in no small part to her powerful engine and double-propeller layout (the variable pitch being the cherry on the cake in the equation).

“Everything in order boss?” She heard behind her as Ivan came up on the bridge after her own round of inspection.

“It’s coming together Ivan.” Greet nodded, checking off one more square on her checklist and standing up to go ensure the gyro compass was properly tuned.

“Ain’t Ivan anymore.” The osprey griffon shook her head.

“Oh really? Finally decided on a new name? Took you long enough.” Greet chirruped, going to grab the gyro’s logbook to measure the error…

… which turned out to be pointless since Micha had done it already. What was the point of having her go through the checklist if it was to check stuff that was already done?

“Long enough? Names are important, I wanted to pick something nice.” She replied as she served herself a mug of coffee.

“So what did you pick then?”

“Nastya.”

Greet paused in her inspection of the charts.

“Hold on, wasn’t that one of the very first names you thought of?” She asked, ears flicking in bemusement. “Like… before we even reached Derry?”

“Maybe? I think it’s pretty decent.”

Her superior looked right at her for a couple seconds, not yet awake enough to fully process it before she shook her head sharply with a quiet ‘nevermind’ and just told her to go fetch a kettle of fresh tea before the Captain arrived.

She didn’t expect the old sea dog (literally in his case) to turn up until after they weighed anchor, but it didn’t hurt to have his Darjeeling ready for action.

Weighing anchor at this point was a triviality. They sent a team to the fo’c’sle to reel in the chain and blast it with a pressure washer to clean up the silt from the seabed before the anchor was locked back into position, the windlass all tidied up, and the large vessel turned her bow towards the estuary.

By the time Greet was done with the operation, Dilip was already present on the bridge with a steaming cup of tea. He took over command from her, setting himself down in his chair and ordering for the boat team to be deployed.

Lacking any kind of safety net in case of accident and not being able to trust that all the buoys would still be in their charted spots – what with being unattended for so long- they’d decided to pick the careful approach and dispatch a boat with an echosounder to locate where the dredged channel – the point of entry into the River Savannah- was. The boat wasn’t even the usual they’d use for man-overboard situations (a little glass-fiber orange boat with a fairly nippy engine), but a larger gray semirigidthey’d picked up somewhere down the line in foresight of that very situation.

A situation which soon proved to be true as the buoys turned out to have drifted no less than two cables off target. For a channel that was half as wide as that, two tenths of a nautical mile was nothing to scoff at.

Thankfully, poor buoy placement was the only real problem they encountered with the river. Currents were pretty mild in comparison to what they’d experienced in the North Sea, and soundings revealed the river seemed to have retained most of its dredged depth. A nice relief, if anything. Dilip ordered the boat team to carry on and show them the way while Amandine followed a safe distance behind, keeping an already sedate pace for extra maneuverability that was only heightened by the fact Amandine was sailing upstream.

It was thus at a snail’s pace that they entered the river, greeted by the sight of Fort Pulaski’s battered brick walls, a Civil-War era landmark that guarded the river delta, right on the border between Georgia and South Carolina. A tattered flag hung limply from its mast, the absence of wind making the humid heat of the American South all the more sweltering.

The river delta was an interesting piece of geography in its own right. There were countless little rivers, brooks and inlets that branched off from the main river as far as a dozen miles inland, forming a myriad of little creeks and shallow bays that blended in with the wetlands, digging into the low muddy relief like a tree’s roots. What tidal data they had over the area pointed to currents making a breathing pattern flow inside the delta, in and out, every tide.

All of these saltwater marshes were protected from erosion by the Atlantic thanks to long strips of lands, sandbars that had turned into island and which the Americans seemed to think made for excellent seaside resorts judging by the ruined villas the sailors had spotted when they passed Tybee Island, the first populated landmark upon entering the river.

Anything past these narrow bars seemed to be made up of wetlands, with the odd levies here and there to allow for the construction of roads that barely rose more than a couple meters above the vast expanses of swampy terrains. Cordgrass grew there, a kind of tall hardy weed that grew in saline waters like those, covering the more shallow parts of the delta in a green carpet that sheltered all the animals that lived there, be they manatees, muskrats, waterfowl or even gators.

Dilip was particularly cautious about the latter.

Bar the fort guarding the estuary and Tybee Island, constructions were a rare sight for the first few miles of their inland passage. Understandably so considering dry land was at a premium and required extensive infrastructure to be reached in the first place.

It wasn’t until they sailed far enough inland for more solid ground to appear – noticeable when little palm trees started to replace the cordgrass, a proof there was enough soil for trees- that human activity started to make itself more apparent. Jetties and small cabins first appeared along the banks of the river.

Or rather, the ruins thereof, as Dilip and Greet soon noticed through their binoculars.

Maybe it was one of the hurricanes Sandra had reported having observed via satellite, maybe it was a particularly nasty spring tide, either way some catastrophe had swept the area and caused a great deal of damage to constructions all around. Levees were collapsed, houses made uninhabitable by water damage, and infrastructure as a whole had suffered greatly when a flood swept the entire region.

Worse even, lacking any kind of handymen to repair the damage, it had only worsened when exposed to the subtropical climate of Georgia. Many of the buildings they spotted when they passed downtown Savannah proper had outright floundered without someone to drain their basements, and most of the formerly paved roadways had been rendered impassable for most cars from all the mud and debris blocking the way. And that was when sinkholes hadn’t collapsed them, taking with them any surrounding building, big or small. The sole exception they could see to that rule was the convention center on the bank opposite to downtown Savannah, along with an adjacent hotel, thanks in no small part to the hulking modern foundations they were built on.

A scene ripped straight from an apocalyptic painting in a way, made only worse by the general overgrowth that had built up in the meantime. Hanging tree moss and vines covered so many of the old brick buildings Dilip didn’t know where to turn his head.

Yet there was a bright side to all of this. For one the flooding hadn’t managed to damage sturdier structures, which explained why the fort in the estuary still stood. As did most of the quays in the harbor for that matter, meaning they could still berth safely.

Furthermore, despite the fact that the chemical and gas terminals had also collapsed and been damaged, the region’s marshy nature and the relative lack of water flow it involved had somewhat contained the pollution so that it at least stayed within the limits of the few storm basins that surrounded the plants. It was most likely hazardous to venture anywhere near these, but it didn’t seem to threaten to spill out.

Dilip also assumed that if the harbor’s rail yard had been damaged to the point where it couldn’t receive a train, then Eko would have told him so on their last call the previous evening and called off the delivery.

Amandine sailed on under the suspension bridge that marked the border between downtown Savannah and the harbor itself, the crew noting as they went how much better the harbor had fared compared to the older city center. Where the early 20^th century architecture had been heavily damaged by the flood and where the gas and chemical terminals had been far more damaged by virtue of being closer to the sea than the rest, anything past the bridge had managed to weather the flood decently thanks to better positioning and a sturdier build.

They weren’t intact, of course, but they were serviceable.

Hence, it was with relief in his heart that Dilip handled the last maneuver when they approached the container terminal. Making use of the current to turn around and their own bow thruster, he had the ship line up with one of the turning basins that formed a semicircle on the bank opposite the container terminal before slowly pulling sideways on to the quays with the shadows of the cranes looming over them like skeletal giants. Lines were thrown out and lifted towards the bollards via telekinesis courtesy of the sphinxes among the crew, before they reeled themselves in as softly as possible using the winches.

They might have some issues offloading vehicles with just the side ramp and no stern ramp, but Savannah lacked a dedicated L-shaped terminal to use it, unfortunately.

Dilip gazed out at the expanse of container stacks from the starboard bridge wing. They were like a technicolor blotch in his sight, an eyesore of company logos of all shapes and makes. Some stacks had collapsed, some hadn’t, turning the normally straightforward layout into some kind of ruined maze that was nigh impossible to traverse except if you figured out the age-old trick of going around it. Behind him, seagulls cried and cawed at the sudden disturbance while some ratings were busy putting the sounding boat back in its cradle, its task of guiding them now done.

The Indian dog turned command over to Greet before he made his way down to his office. They had a delivery waiting.

Some hundred miles off the coast of Georgia, Rhine and Fugro were now well settled over the wreck of USS Georgia. On board the latter, Captain Skinner had had some lengthy talks with the CO of the stricken submarine and was still in the process of discussing how they would go about helping the Americans stuck below the surface, all from within the confines of Fugro’s office.

“And that’s how we wound up with the current situation.” Green finished with his tiny youthful voice.

Skinner put down his pencil and looked down at his notes, handset still in his hand and a frown on his muzzle. He had a status report on the submarine, an assessment of the situation on board from crew count with species to casualty list.

And it was a long casualty list. Many of them were lighter injuries, but even with the two docs they had across both ships treating the heavy injuries alone was going to prove difficult. He was pretty damn sure Lorelei didn’t keep enough of those health potions stashed in her med bay to take care of all of them.

Provided they could even get them to the surface that is. That alone was going to be a different kettle of fish. Apparently most of the crew was unable to use the escape suits they’d normally be able to don to evacuate quickly.

Meaning another solution would have to be found, and Green didn’t really have an accurate estimation of how long they had to do it. He told him the nuclear reactor was fine – mostly-, but that was one system, of many that could jeopardize the sub’s integrity.

Skinner drummed his fingers against the desk.

“Thank you for this information, Green. I’ll communicate this across the fleet so that we can prep medical facilities to receive those of your crew that are injured. You’ll find Fugro Symphony to be pretty well suited to deal with underwater operations.”

“Actually, this is one of my questions. Why aren’t there any US Navy assets present? We couldn’t be any closer to American waters.” Green asked.

Skinner winced internally. Guess now it was his turn to give the classic, post-Event, 10,000 years pitch.

He couldn’t see the pony’s face over the phone line, but judging by how long he stayed silent after he recited the details of what exactly it was that had happened, he didn’t take it too well.

But who would?

At least he could thank the transformation effect for making it more believable. He doubted the American would have believed his tale had he still been human. As a pony? It probably sounded far less outlandish to a submariner who had yet to see the state of affairs on the surface.

“Listen, I know time is of the essence, but there’s a lot we here on the surface can do to help. First things first, I’m going to order my crew to send down our drones to do a visual survey of your boat. See how’s the damage and all. There’s a couple things we need to do before I want to dig in proper, and I need to get off the line to do that. I’ll leave a sailor on standby to keep in touch, okay?”

“Fine...” Green slowly said at long last. “Anything we can do on our end?”

“I know most of your crew is unable to use them, but if there’s even one sailor you could send up to us using those escape suits, then an advisor up on the surface would do us some good. Tell them not to worry about the bends, we got some decompression chambers for divers up here, so just follow the distress buoy’s tether and you’ll emerge in our moon pool, okay?”

“I’ll check around for volunteers.”

“And… Green? Get those spirits up. You’re not going to go the way of Kursk, understand?”

He didn’t get a reply on that.

Not that it bothered him. He ordered Floyd – an Able-Bodied griffon- to keep an eye on the phone while he headed deeper inside his ship, to the dive operations center. Set in the deepest recesses of Fugro’s hull near their decompression chambers and the divers’ facilities, the electronics-filled room was, by his reckoning, the closest thing you could have to a navy ship’s CIC whilst remaining on the civilian market. Screens and various displays and consoles covered the walls from top to bottom, feeding information to a few control stations over which Captain Skinner held a presiding seat.

This was the nerve center of Fugro Symphony’s underwater operations.

One of the things Fugro was fitted with was a pair of ROV’s – Remotely Operated Vehicles-. Drones. Skinner only had to call over the PA system once and order their deployment to have sailors filter in the room and begin booting up the various systems.

Above the waterline, two hydraulic hatches opened up on either side of the hull before rails slowly began to extend out of the openings, each carrying a drone mounted on a rack. The FCV 3000 was a great piece of tech, if a bit of an eyesore. They were pretty simple in build at a glance: a tubular frame as their skeleton mounted all the equipment they needed to operate: ballast tanks, batteries, motors, optics and floodlights facing forward that helped guide the two robotic arms they used to manipulate stuff when they weren’t able to deploy divers.

As they were right then, Skinner mentally noted. Fugro had been running on a skeleton crew at the time of the Event, meaning crew was pretty limited compared to what they’d usually operate with. To the point where the ship felt almost empty. Out of a maximum complement of 105 they only had twenty sailors aboard.

Not few enough to impair drone operations, but certainly not enough to be comfortable with timetables either.

Outside, the two drones were slowly lowered to the surface as the sailors manning their controls finished the pre-deployment checks.

As soon as the winches’ tension sensors felt the drones were well in the water, each separated itself from the gimbal mounts that kept them attached to the overhead rails before diving, still connected to the ship by their umbilical tethers that carried data back and forth between them and the ship.

It was a testament to the quality with which the system had been designed that Skinner could enjoy a general overview of the situation from his own screen. The multibeam sounder mounted on the forward section of the hull provided him with a 3D display of the seabed – not too clear though, what he assumed to be Georgia only appearing as a vague oblong shape-, above which was layered stuff like the acoustic beacons they had already dropped overboard, the position of each of the two drones – which were fitted with acoustic beacons of their own to track their position- and anything else he may need a mouse-click away.

Such as what the drones were seeing on their cameras.

Slowly, both drones sank, following the tether that now connected Georgia to Fugro Symphony through the distress buoy. Light faded away the deeper they dove, most of the color spectrum unable to pierce the depths and turning what they got from the drones’ optics into a bluish monochrome display. Until the operators turned on the floodlights that is.

It wasn’t too long after that that the drones came in visual range of USS Georgia, her monolithic black hull rested against the smooth continental slope at an angle, stern partially buried in the sand after she’d slid backwards down the slope after the failed emergency blow. Rubble lay around her, bits of rocks from the seabed, dead coral, and wreckage from her heavily damaged outer hull. She was a sorry sight, with her bow crumpled from the impact, numerous rips in her outer hull, and the remains of her propeller and stern planes lying here and there around her along the trench she’d dug in the seabed after Lieutenant Gardner’s unfortunate attempt at salvaging the situation. Schools of fish scattered upon noticing the two drones, with some crustaceans burying themselves underneath the sand at the arrival of the two big predatory-looking machines.

“Not going to lie… that’s pretty bad sir.” One of the operators – Akshay, a Diamond Dog pup so young he was no taller than a pony- said. “And they say the inner hull survived the impact?”

“Damn lucky.” The other operator said.

That was Praveen. Another Indian (Bengali actually), this time not overly rejuvenated like Akshay but instead genderswapped and turned into a gray-furred Abyssinian with a white spot on her throat.

“Ain’t gonna argue, they were lucky. Alright then...” Skinner leaned forward and frowned. “Pay attention not to entangle the tethers. We’re lined up with the sub, so port drone surveys the port side, and starboard on starboard. You catch my drift?”

The two Indians nodded in unison, proceeding to line up their drones perpendicular to the submarine’s bow and starting to go down it length sideways on so as to do a visual survey of her hull.

While they were doing that, Skinner reached for the intercom and asked Floyd to patch him through to Captain Green. They may not have an optic fiber connection to share data, but at least he could relay the damage verbally.

And ensure they sent them a sailor. Crafty or not, they would need one of the submariners up there for advice.

Before the griffon could connect him to the sub though, another call was sent to his station from the bridge, Quinn’s voice telling him over the line he had a call waiting from Lorelei on Rhine Forest.

“Problem?” He blurted in the handset, eyes not leaving the live feed coming from the drones.

“Not at all, just thinking you don’t actually have any divers,” came Lorelei’s accented voice.

“True, but we got drones to make up for that.” Skinner replied matter-of-factly.

“Maybe, but I heard you were planning to get a sailor from the sub up. I just want to tell you I don’t intend to sit on my ass here waiting for you to get it done, and I can send sailors down to the sub. Hippogriffs. You know: seaponies. Divers that don’t need air and don’t get hypothermia.”

Skinner blinked.

“Oh… Ah kinda forgot ‘bout ‘em…” He mumbled, his Scottish accent shining through from being caught off guard.

“Listen...” Lorelei said in her usual high-pitched voice. “I’m already keeping my torpedo escorts in screening positions around our anchorage, but I’m sending a trawler over to you with my doc on board and some divers. She’s a seapony, so she can get down there inside the sub and help patch them up. Copy?”

“Sounds good to me, send her over then. We are still using the diving bell for the evac, yes?”

“They can’t all use escape suits, so yes. We need to use your bell.”

“Alright, just making sure.” He nodded. “But I’m not deploying it until I have one of them navy guys up there to confirm it’s worth a shot and it can dock.”

“Your ship, your rules.” Lorelei audibly shrugged before hanging up.

As soon as her end of the line went silent, another call came through as the phone line to the submarine was connected to his station.

“Captain Green, I have good news for you.” Skinner began cheerfully.

In Savannah, things had slowly ground down to a halt once they were done tying up Amandine alongside the quays. Much to the disappointment of most sailors, it turned out in a message Eko transmitted to them that the HPI’s freight train wouldn’t reach the rail yard until late afternoon because of some damage to the infrastructure encountered elsewhere.

Turns out, hurricane Ana as it was called had also caused an impressive amount of damage to the infrastructure further north in the Carolinas, forcing the HPI to backtrack and pick a new approach.

Hence: they had some free time before they needed to unload the cargo. Time enough to raise a rampart of containers around their mooring point for security, with a single gap in the barrier fiercely guarded by their CV90 and a team of lookouts.

Inside the Ro/Ro, it was chow as usual in the cafeteria. Sailors were gathered in various groups at their own tables, sharing discussions on various topics: the veterans were swapping tales of their previous service around a beer, the Officers were making friends with the new Air Crew, Roberto was bickering for no good reason with Rahul – cats and dogs these two-, there was even a group gathered around Miss Hawkins – the American seamstress they’d taken as passenger in Belfast to bring her back to the US- for a farewell before she left them.

She knew she was going to have a hard time getting back to Jacksonville, particularly with how badly the roads had been damaged, but it was her home, and if there was even a 1 in 10.000 chance that some of her family was there, then she’d take it.

“I’m glad I got to meet you all.” The Earth Pony mare smiled humbly at the sailors around her. “And I’m sure touring the world on a ship like that is fantastic, but a gal like me needs something stable. Some solid ground under my hooves. No offense, but if I can skip seasickness I will.”

“Eh, what can I say? The sea life ain’t for everyone.” Danny chuckled, the Filipino parrot sitting across from the mare with a glass of juice in her talons – a popular choice among parrots as of late- and Carlos by her side. “I’m sure any colony that gets you is going to be very happy with your skills though, you shouldn’t have much trouble with that. Right, Carlos?”

“Yeah, once we let you leave though.” The cockatoo pointed out casually, keeping an arm over Danny’s shoulders.

The eyepatch he had worn after the Gothenburg debacle cost him an eye was long gone now, no longer of any use, though it left him without the rugged charm it came with. There was also the oddity that the health potion Vadim had administered him had turned his eye golden.

Beyond some slight sensitivity to light, nothing more than a medical peculiarity though.

“Beg your pardon?” Molly quirked her head, cutely flicking one ear in confusion at the Filipino’s remark.

“We’re not holding you prisoner of course!” Carlos squawked out, quickly raising his talons. “I’m just sayin’… we can’t let you out in the wilderness with just your bags and your hooves. I overheard Scarface saying he had learned a technique in Belfast to modify cars so they can be driven by ponies. From Codsworth and his Vauxhall ah think. So... we’re going to grab a car from the harbor and fix it up for you.”

“That’s very kind of you, thank you.” She beamed.

“C’mon. We’re not heartless, and all the stuff you’ve done to help us with our clothes certainly warrants the help.” Danny said. “I know we can’t give you a gun – not that any of us have any idea how an Earth Pony like you would use one-, but Roberto’s probs going to give you a satellite phone. Ya know, those smartphones with a sleeve for satellite comms we use all the time. Just so you can listen in on Sandra’s broadcasts and call us if shit hits the fan, you know?”

“How far is Jacksonville anyway?” Carlos asked.

“Oh it’s really close.” Molly reassured them with a wave of her hoof. “Done it in the past plenty, it’s just two hours down the I-95 by...” She paused.

All conversations in the cafeteria ground down to an awkward halt when they spotted the doors open up and reveal a certain shipmate of theirs.

Anton.

The peregrine falcon griffon looked over the crowd with a wince before she lowered her eyes and shuffled over to the buffet under what felt like the whole crew’s scrutiny. She was only dressed in her white track suit, form fitting, which made it all the easier to notice how large her belly had gotten over the last few weeks, so much so that she looked bloated and waddled around more than walked, the few times she was seen outside her cabin.

It hadn’t taken long for the news to spread down the grapevine about her ‘pregnant’ status, in that she was expecting to lay eggs, maybe in as little as a week from then. The bump wasn’t hard to miss, and neither was the engineering crew had built an incubator, the fact she was eating thrice the usual amount, or even how ridiculously protective Boris became whenever she was mentioned.

Even then Danny could see the goshawk griffon put himself between his mate and the crowd, a comforting wing draped over her back. Self-consciously, the parrot brushed her talons over her belly.

It could be her in that situation.

Worse even, was that the shipboard welder didn’t know whether to look at the prospect with outright dread or curiosity. Whispers spread around the cafeteria as they all watched the griffon couple take their food and take a seat beside Vadim and Micha, with even Andy innocently asking Anton a couple questions.

Opinions varied wildly among the crew about that little ‘incident’.

Some said it was disgraceful it even happened in the first place. Some looked at Anton with sympathy, others with disgust or just mild curiosity. Rumors had it there had been an argument between Boris, Artyom, Alejandro and the Captain about breaking the eggs when she laid them and-

A shudder ran down Danny’s spine.

“You know, that reaction really doesn’t match the tough sailor act.” Molly joked.

“Ex-cuse me?!” Danny squawked, recoiling slightly in outrage, her feathers all fluffed up.

“Oh for Christ’s sake.” Molly rolled her eyes. “It’s babies -err, cubs I mean. Or are they hatchlings? Whatev’, what I mean is: why are you lot acting like there was a murder on board where it was just the natural result of a solid dicking?”

Carlos choked on his drink.

“And there we have it.” Molly sighed. “Really, how long did you lot think you could last without that happening to any of you? And don’t start with the excuses, I got ears you know, none of you are particularly discreet when you get down to it.”

“A while longer?” Carlos deadpanned, wiping the juice off his beak with his sleeve. “I don’t know if you’ve figured but a cargo ship isn’t the best place to start raising kids, which is exactly why some of us bother using protection. Don’t you think that maybe, just maybe...” He leaned forward. “Bringing a child into this world isn’t the best of times with monsters on the prowl, natural cataclysms and demons over the horizon?”

“Plus you have the whole fact griffons should have it the easiest when it comes to preventing accidental conceptions.” Danny added.

“Alright, fine.” Molly raised her hooves, conceding defeat. “You got me, that is a pretty good reason. Doesn’t change the fact this will only be the first case of many to come. Maybe you could avoid it when the overwhelming majority of you were dudes, but that’s changed. Probs forever too.”

“The entire world has changed, crew relations being altered seem pretty minor in comparison.” Carlos snorted.

“Doesn’t make Nala getting railed by Thanasis any less weird.” Molly replied offhandedly.

Maybe a bit too loud too, because all of a sudden the attention in the cafeteria shifted from Anton to her, before sailors turned their heads towards Thanasis, the sphinx from Aleksei’s team suddenly looking suspiciously sheepish.

“Weird time to be a sailor.” Danny commented, taking a sip of her juice.

On the other end of the room, Anton was just glad the attention had been diverted from her. For the brief moment she raised her head from her plate she caught Molly throwing her a quick wink.

“Smooth diversion, American...” She muttered in Ukrainian.

Things were looking up for the colony in Brittany.

One day prior, Emeric had finally completed his makeshift steam turbine and connected it to the local grid, meaning they now had a stable source for electricity and running water provided their supply of charcoal didn’t dry up anytime soon. The whole system still needed a little fix here and there to fix its kinks since it was cobbled together from various pieces of machinery, but he had plenty of time to think it all through, and the simplicity of the system made it so that it shouldn’t need much more than a pressure relief tank here and a mechanical seal there to improve its performances.

He might need to read up on his electricity basics though. The current exiting the generator was nowhere near as stable as it should and had already flipped the fuses three times in the span of time since he’d installed it. He just needed something to regulate power going from the generator to the household installation.

“Everything in order over here?” Rockhoof asked in French, coming over to the little shed in the courtyard that now sheltered the coal turbine.

It wasn’t very impressive, just a little brick construction with a sheet of corrugated metal for its roof, but it did the job. The little shed contained the turbine and the breakers inside, with the water feed tank on one side outside, and the coal bunker on the other.

“Working fine and dandy.” Emeric confidently smiled, the unicorn wiping some soot that had built up on his camouflaged poncho with his hoof. “Believe me, with central heating and electricity from that thing, heating the castle will be a lot more efficient this winter.”

“Oh I sure do, never been too pleased with the open fires they put in castles. Longhouses are better to endure the cold.” Rock said. “And you said...”

“I did my rounds and inspected the electrical installations around the castle and the outbuildings. I had to disconnect it all from the regional grid for obvious reasons, but now it’s all centralized from here for electricity.” He stated. “Too bad I can’t do the same for running water, but that we can sort out later.”

“Well if you say so...” Rockhoof examined the coal turbine. “So with this thing...”

“You give it charcoal, you get electricity to light up the interior, electricity to heat up the outbuildings somewhat, and running water inside the castle. Plus some appliances.”

“And we also need charcoal to heat up the stoves and the forge too.” Rockhoof added in a quiet tone.

Which meant they would need to build up a pretty sizable stockpile to run it all. A stockpile of charcoal they made from wood...

… the very same wood they needed for so many things. They needed it to help refit the various buildings for use by deer and ponies and not humans, they needed it to build up the palisade and fences they needed to protect the castle and the farmland, particularly given it was the third time this week he had to repeal a pack of hunchback boars before they could reach the fields.

Given the kind of damage a regular boar could do to a field, Rockhoof wasn’t feeling too curious as to what kind of mayhem the gigantic pigs might cause if they were ever allowed anywhere near their farmland.

Faust almighty, the bloody things were so darn big they might actually attack the cattle, or worse: the colonists whose population had recently swelled up with a fresh influx of returnees, most of them reappearing as deer and unicorns, with some exceptions like the one centaur that had arrived with the last group.

That same population growth meant more fields and garden had to be prepped for production to feed them all, fields and gardens that attracted more hungry boars Rockhoof and his lieutenants had to repel while the colonists tended to them, only further highlighting the need to get that palisade built.

“Okay...” Rockhoof began slowly. “I think I’m going to send out a lumber party soon. Miles is calculating how much wood we’re going to need for the palisade, you think you can do a rough estimate of how much charcoal this thing here is going to need? I need to know how much firewood Sandrine needs with her charcoal kiln so that stockpile is big enough to last us all winter. Think worst case scenario: cold winter, early frost, late thawing, plus an extra margin and all. Can do?”

“Can do. Should be done this evening in fact.” Emeric confirmed. “If Sandrine keeps making the same batch size with the kiln that should be simple enough...” He added, glancing towards the charcoal bunker.

“Fantastic then! Also, with the new arrivals, try and pick out a few more guards. I’m not comfortable knowing it’s just you, me and Miles guarding the place. Ain’t enough for a castle and village this size.”

“I will.” He paused. “Can I ask you something?”

“You just did.” Rock smirked.

“Right...” Emeric snorted sardonically. “The military academy where Miles and I came from had some communications equipment. Radios I mean, and big ones at that. Merlin was pretty interested, and I think now that we have electricity we-” He stopped when Rock raised his hoof.

“That technology is beyond me, remember?” He pointed out. “Whatever it is, if you can get Star to help you, then you have my support to go and get it as long as there is somepony to guard the castle. Now, keep it simple, what does it do?”

“A radio might allow us to know if there are more colonies around us, or even further depending on how it’s set up. We could communicate with them.”

Rockhoof took a long pause to munch over the information, his eyes drifting away from the turbine and out towards the courtyard where Meadowbrook and Martin were unloading a cart of vegetables one of their new colonists had just brought in. A rich fruity smell came in from the kitchens, indicating the mare bearing his foals was once more busy canning the food for long term storage.

“You have my blessing, but make it quick. Ask Starswirl, teleport there to get the stuff, come back. The woods are getting more dangerous, no need to take risks.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s nothing. Anyway...” Rockhoof sniffed. “I’m going to run some rounds around the fields just to make sure the boars stay away. See you for dinner, and tell Miles she got the night patrol.”

“Will do, boss.”

Author's Notes:

Whelp, guess going from Europe to Savannah only took about 40 chapters of going from tangent to tangent, delays and other stuff.

Speedy writing init?

Speakin' of tangents... boars. Nasty shits these things. Ruins you a field overnight, and don't underestimate them when they charge. The tusks? Yeah that can go for the femoral artery.

Plus there is the whole fact some dudes just shoot them like they're deer, wind up with gut shots that are immediately plugged up by the pig's fat, and then they start complaining about some 'fat armor'... They're resilient yes, not bullet-proof.