On board the Rhine Forest, one hippogriff was seriously questioning his life choices inside of Dot’s cabin. Curled up in a ball on his girlfriend’s bed and holding a pack of ice against his aching nether regions, he let out yet another whine as more pain coursed through his strained testes.

Dot wasn’t in the room, the mare currently busy taking a shower in the adjacent room, leaving only Asha present, the centaur standing there and looking down at Carl with her arms crossed.

“It can’t be that bad, can it?” She questioned.

“Bad? She was a freaking succubus!” Carl exclaimed, raising his head from the bedsheets and revealing the disheveled state of his blue crest feathers, sticking to his forehead and neck from all the sweat. “I lost count past thirty times! Fuck’s sake, look at the bin!” He whined, pointing a talon at the not insignificant amount of used condoms they’d tossed in the trash ever since the start of Dot’s heat season.

A pile of condoms that certainly didn’t help with the scent of sex that permeated the room despite the running A/C and the open porthole venting air. Asha just smiled in amusement, one thumb tracing over her breast pocket where she could feel the bump from the now empty vial of potion she’d given Dot a few hours ago.

“Well at least you know you’ve got endurance to spare.”

“Endurance hurts.” The hippogriff complained. “Wish I could be female again, that was a lot more simple.”

“Oh, quit your whining.” She rolled her eyes. “You know, it’s only because it was her first time that it was even that bad, and now I left a batch of potion in deep storage to mitigate the effects of future heat seasons. Think of it like Dot going through puberty, only worse because she has the body of a fully-grown mare.”

“Why, thank you for the free medical advice.” Carl snarked.

“Eh, hard to miss the details when I’m the one brewing the potions.”

“Doesn’t help. You got anything to give a stallion that’s been pumped dry?” He said, looking at her flatly.

“A pat on the back?” Asha smirked.

“Why, you sarcastic bitch.”

“Rude.”

“You get what you give.” Carl said. “Anyway… you say she won’t be… with the potion?”

“The heat season should be under control.” Asha shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong, she’ll still be horny as-”

They heard some moaning coming from the bathroom.

“I think I don’t need to finish that sentence.” The centaur quirked an eyebrow at the bathroom’s door in amusement. “The potion doesn’t do miracles, so you’ll still have to bear the burden of your own masculinity, stud. That being said, so long as the potion runs its course, you can ditch the rubbers.”

“I wish it could just end quicker...” He groaned, falling down limply on the mattress, a whimper escaping the hippogriff’s beak as his balls protested at the sudden movement.

“Only way books say you can end a season quicker is with no potion and you becoming a daddy.”

“I’ll pass.” Carl quickly replied.

“You could look at it from the bright side then.”

“There is a bright side?” The hippogriff’s ears flicked.

“She got her time now, but wait until she’s done ovulating and menstruates.” Asha smirked. “Then you get your turn gloating.”

“She really doesn’t know what’s around the corner, does she?”

Another moan came from the bathroom.

“Self-explanatory.” Asha deadpanned. “Little Dot is going to experience the biggest downside to marehood soon. That’s what she gets for freaking out the whole crew.”

“Freaking out the crew? How?”

“Well, maybe not the whole crew, but she managed to spook all the genderswapped and equine folks. Including the Captain if the rumor’s true. I mean… I know I’m at least slightly concerned ‘bout what’s going to happen to me when it’s my turn to have...” She waved a red hand towards the bathroom. “That.”

“Centaurs go into heat too?”

“Once a year, or griffon-style through sexual activity. Both work, but I’m still going to make damn sure my potions are ready for when it happens. Do you know how long centaur pregnancies last?”

“I do not.” Carl blinked slowly.

“Nineteen to twenty months!” She exclaimed. “You think I want to wind up preggers for nearly two years just ‘cause my own body made me horny for a couple days? Hell naw!”

Carl blinked owlishly at the centaur. In the bathroom, they heard the water stop running, signaling Dot was done with her shower.

“Man, the coming years sure are going to be interesting, seeing what society becomes with that mess.” He mused aloud. “Just think of the chaos that would ensue if mares start going into heat at the same time.”

“You just defined an orgy, and that’s not going to help with teen pregnancies.”

“Depends, how hard is it to make the potion?” He asked.

“It varies, really.” Asha shrugged. “Book suggested young mares need a more potent version to mitigate the intensity of their first season, so the batch I made was particularly powerful. Any subsequent stuff wouldn’t need to be as potent, so I could tone down the concentrations and maybe even dilute it.”

She paused.

“Then again the potion manual only mentions doses for ponies. Centaurs might need more of it.” She added. “Gonna be fun...”

Carl was about to make a snide comment about that when he was interrupted by a knock on the cabin’s door. He quickly pulled the bedsheets over himself before calling in whoever it was that needed them. The two cadets were then greeted to the sight of a geared-up Doc Delacroix wearing a large medical satchel standing in the doorway.

“Something happening ma’am?” Asha asked, casually doing a 180 with her humanoid half to face the French hippogriff.

A strange sight even to those who were familiar with centaurs, them having a spine like an owl’s neck may be convenient for them, but it didn’t look any less bizarre to observers.

“Yes Asha, and call me Camille please.” Rhine’s resident doctor reminded the centaur. “We’re gathering all hippogriffs on board. Fugro’s above the submarine but they only have drones, so they’re sending us as divers. Carl, you need to go gear up, we’re deploying a trawler within the hour and...” She paused, only then noticing the pained look he had on his features.

“Are you injured?”

“Nothing serious.”

“Well then if it’s not serious just take an Ibuprofen and get on with it,” she said. “One hour, geared up, by the gantry crane, copy?”

Carl parroted the order, earning a satisfied nod from Camille before she left in a hurry, closing the door behind her with her wing. For a few seconds he looked right at the door before slumping down on the mattress with a whine.

“Man, is it me or are dudes treated more callously? Can’t I just be female again so people give a damn?”

“Ups and downs on either side of the equation.” Dot laughed out loud as she finally exited the bathroom wearing nothing but towels around her mane and barrel. “Gotta live with it, liefje.”

“Just get me an Ibuprofen please...” He groaned.

Deploying the hippogriffs didn’t take too long. With all ships in close proximity to one another, it was only two hours later that a trawler took position over the downed submarine and began unloading the seaponies they’d need to investigate the submarine.

In open waters like that, seaponies were a vast improvement over human divers, particularly considering they needed to reach a target as deep as Georgia. Sure, they needed their utility gauntlets to manipulate tools, but the design had been improved since their previous use at the Harland and Wolff yard in Belfast. They were now more comfortable around their fins, the mechanisms more accurate, and, more importantly, they could swap tools on the fly without needing to resurface.

Better even, seaponies weren’t afraid of the bends. Where a human would have needed to resort to saturation diving, setting up stations at different depths to replenish their air and slowly surface to avoid barotrauma, they could just surface whenever they felt like it. And with their fur coat worthy of a sea lion’s, hypothermia wasn’t a problem either. They could stay underwater for as long as they needed, not even needing to worry about water currents since seaponies were easily ten times as fast as Olympic swimmers.

In fact, the only real concern down there was that they could hardly see anything, meaning the half-dozen seaponies assembled on the team immediately began dropping underwater flares during their dive before starting to add marker ropes and chemlights all around the grounded submarine to make sure they kept track of where they swam around Georgia’s monolithic black hull.

They were deep. Very deep. So much so that the environment felt like another planet entirely to Carl as he swam around the submarine, exploring the trail of debris the large vessel had left along the trench she’d dug when she slid down the continental slope.

The sun felt so distant at this depth, only a pale blue light far above him, easy to ignore since its rays hardly managed to reach this far down. Particles floated in the water here and there, slowly drifting away with the soft current in the blue expanse that were the oceanic depths. Everything he looked at that was out of the light of either the flares of the ROV’s floodlights was like looking through a blue lens, mostly devoid of colors in this cold weightless world. The atmosphere was made all the more eerie by the noise: echoes carried through the ocean, groans and cracks from far away, the rumble from the ships’ engines overhead, the whirr from the drones’ little electric propellers, and the quiet chatter from all the seaponies working around the wreck.

It was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. Schools of fish sometimes passed by above them, headed for the great large. Heck, a frickin’ baleen whale had also come by with her calf, the gigantic mammal cautiously looking at them as she interposed herself between the divers and her offspring as she swam past, exposing her barnacle-covered, scarred hide to them in all its massive glory.

That was half an hour ago and the memory was still vivid in his mind as he secured another marker ropeto the seabed near a rip in the submarine’s outer hull. A safeguard if their underwater flares ever went out, so the seaponies wouldn’t lose their bearings. The seabed here was only covered in a thin layer of sand, with solid rock underneath it, jutting out in odd places, along with a couple coral reefs here and there.

Not the usual warm water, low depth coral, mind. It was more dull, easy to mistake with rocks if you missed the odd, organic shapes it formed in places on the rock formations. Georgia had broken a couple reefs, their shattered remains mixed with the debris. Some even lay near the tears along the hull and in the crumpled remains of Georgia’s bow.

Not a pretty sight.

Soon enough they were done setting up the area and Camille gathered them around one of the submarine’s hatches, somewhere aft of the sail near what she assumed to be their engine room. Prior to deploying the hippogriffs, Fugro had had some lengthy talks with the submariners, questioning them on how it was supposed to be used.

In simple terms, it was a big airlock. All submarines had a couple of these, with uses ranging from deploying SEAL teams to simply allowing for stores to be loaded on board. There was one outer hatch on the exterior side of the hull, followed by a chamber connected to an intricate valve and air system to cycle air in and out of the chamber, before leading up to a lower hatch that entered the submarine proper.

Going by what the sailors on Fugro told Camille, the airlock had been readied for entry by the submariners already.

And if it wasn’t, the pressure differential between the ocean and the chamber would prevent them from opening the hatch in the first place anyway. No real concern on their end.

Not a minute later, the hatch was open and Camille swam inside the cramped space, mindful not to snag her back fins on anything like the ladder connected to the hatch. Carl followed close behind, but only him. The rest of the seaponies would stay outside and make sure everything was kept tidy.

The chamber inside was built like a tall, large cylinder, big enough to fit two dozen sailors and with a myriad of pipes and valves lining the walls. In addition to that, the hatch coaming around the upper access above them extended out for about a foot, allowing for a little air bubble to form in a recess near an intercom that allowed divers to communicate with the sub’s crew.

She did her part, she swam up to the phone, told a Chief on the other end they were in, and proceeded to drain all water from the trunk. The two seaponies inside turned to their hippogriff form as soon the water was out of the compartment.

An indicator light flipped above the inner hatch as soon as pressure stabilized. The airlock was good to go.

Doctor Delacroix had now successfully boarded the stricken submarine.

Up North in Savannah, Dilip had ordered his teams to prepare for the delivery. Out of Amandine’s entrails rolled their fleet of vehicles, leaving the security perimeter around the ship to go secure the rail yard for the HPI.

Two of their Piranhas left, both APC’s fully loaded, heading south. Their target wasn’t actually the container terminal’s yard, but a smaller, more sheltered one situated between the oil terminal and a gypsum depot. This wasn’t a problem on their end, as it meant folks like Artyom and the veterans could easily cover all approaches from perches on top of conveyor belts and storage tanks that lined the sides of the rail yard while the Piranhas kept their .50 cals trained on the main road.

A lone train track slipped inside this industrial landscape before spreading out into multiple junctions that in normal circumstances would have allowed to load and unload multiple convoys at once, on one side with conveyor belts for the gypsum, and with manifolds and chicksans on the other for petroleum products. Artyom didn’t see any kind of pollution that warranted particular concern around the venue. The place had suffered from wear thanks to being battered by the elements that had swept the region and not repaired, but the oil terminal’s flare stack had managed to burn out all the volatile gases that may have accumulated in the meantime.

At least according to his equipment. The explosimeter he wore on his flak jacket next to his mag pouch had yet to detect anything, even when he took a perch with a DMR (one of the FAL rifles Greet had retrieved from the police station in Derry) on top of a storage tank.

A bit lower and on the other side of the rail yard, he saw Sri do the same on a conveyor belt. The gypsum depot had actually fared worse than the oil terminal, some of its conveyor belts collapsing outright on the buildings and offices that surrounded the place, coating everything in a thin layer of white dust.

Artyom checked the time. Fifteen minutes before the arrival of the HPI. From his vantage point, he quickly made sure every sailor was in position.

The Captain was waiting by one of the Piranhas, saber on his hip and Greet behind him with a clipboard.

The second Piranha piloted by Bart and Scarface was overseeing the main road, gun ready to act if anything popped up from that direction, while only needing to retreat behind a ruined office building if they needed cover or had to relocate to address any threat that might come from the river.

Plus they had him and Sri on overwatch with DMR’s, also overseeing half a dozen machine gun nests he’d quickly positioned to plug gaps in the perimeter.

Hence: they were ready.

“Bosun to Captain...” He called over the radio. “Perimeter secure, ready to proceed. Out.”

Dilip replied with a quick acknowledgment before switching frequency, calling for their cargo to at last exit the ship. A small convoy of trucks and lorries emerged out of the holds on that order, slowly rolling down the ramp with a heavy-duty forklift in tow – big enough to handle fully-loaded forty foot containers-.

Dilip eyed them all critically. In so few containers, they’d managed to cram stuff that would be worth millions before society went to hell in a handbasket. Antiques, paintings, statues, ancient furniture,… And that was without the magical artifacts accounted for, those same artifacts they had found on a stroke of luck in Derry. They weren’t selling all of them unfortunately.

Not because they didn’t want to, but because Eko had told him upfront that the HPI wouldn’t be taking too many risks with magical stuff. A handful of minor artifacts were all the Indonesian would accept, apparently because they were too hazardous to handle. Or something along those lines. Not that Dilip would ever expect the HPI to be clear about anything.

Thus: of all the magical artifacts they had found, the HPI didn’t accept the powerful stuff and only agreed to take in items like a few cups, bowls, and some pieces of jewelry secured inside a reefer container lined with extra protection. Asbestos? Apparently good at insulating against minor thaumic radiation when paired with certain alloys.

And the remaining artifacts? Like Greet’s fire sword and Dilip’s Congo Sword? That they could keep for themselves, study on their own terms… and sell the research data to the HPI.

Eh, at least that meant even the shadiest of organizations is prone to outsourcing.

“Is that all the cargo accounted for?” He turned his head ever so slightly to ask Greet.

“I see one sealed container with their prototypes, three FEU worth of art pieces, one TEU with the artifacts and corresponding high thaumic hazard warnings… Yes, that is all I got on the bill of lading, sir.” Greet confirmed. “I also have a list for all the parts we ordered, if necessary.”

“We’ll see, keep it on hand.” Dilip replied before checking his watch. “Five minutes, let’s hope they’re on time.”

“With all due respects sir, I don’t think we have any right to call them out on being late.” Greet joked.

“True that.” He acknowledged.

And they were late. Which wasn’t even much of a surprise considering the news they’d received that damage to the infrastructure had forced them to reroute their train.

In the meantime they got the chance to bid farewell to Miss Hawkins. Scarface hadn’t needed much time to find a random F150 on a nearby parking lot and have it towed inside the vehicle bay for a quick repair-and-retrofit, just to make it so it could be driven by an Earth Pony. Comical as it was for a diminutive equine to drive around in a truck that big. It would allow Molly to make her way back to Jacksonville in decent time, though they also warned her about the shelf life of diesel and how she shouldn’t expect the truck to last her more than a few months.

That didn’t seem to worry the seamstress overly much, and soon she was driving away towards the freeway in her newly acquired F150, with all her possessions safely stowed under a net in the bed. Hopefully she’d find somebody.

One and a half hours later, they finally felt the first signs of the train’s arrival. Emphasis on felt, as a feeling of deep-seated uneasiness and dread crept its way up their spines before they even laid eyes on the train. A feeling Scarface recognized as that caused by thaumic shields, if slightly different from what he remembered from the facility in Chooz.

Strangely though, they also heard the crack of gunshots before they even saw the train, as if a firefight had suddenly erupted on the other side of town. It didn’t last more than a few seconds, the first shots being drowned out seconds later by a hailstorm of autocannon fire.

A few minutes later, the train finally rolled into the yard, rounding a junction that implied it had passed very close to the city.

First thing they saw were the drones. Not huge UAV’s like the ones used by the USAF, but little quadcopters some 2 meters in width with a sleek black casing protecting their components. They all flew in formation above the train, a dozen of them, each armed with a single gun attached on a ventral mount and connected to dull optics that carefully eyed the sailors.

As for the train itself, it looked ripped straight out of science-fiction. It was a diesel, albeit unlike any they’d ever laid eyes on. The engine was like a black monolith: angular, aggressive, leading the way like a knife thrust onward, with nary a detail emerging out of its heavily armored plating save for a few gratings on either side and a floodlight up front. Behind it emerged the cab, as heavily armored as the engine, its black tinted windows seamlessly merged with its shell, culminating above the whole thing in a remotely operated turret that mounted a pair of autocannons. There was a tender behind it, likely a larger cabin for the crew but also a docking port for the fleet of drones that escorted the train.

Right then, they could see one of them swoop down with a buzz of its propellers, quickly attaching itself to a port where its battery was swapped out before it took to the air once more, narrowly avoiding the communication array that sprouted out of the roof of the tender.

That was pretty much the layout of the train: engine up front, with a tender cabin behind it on both ends of the convoy. Anything in between was occupied by generic flat cars with a few shipping containers on them, with the odd exception of the central wagon, which they all immediately identified as the shield generator from gut feeling alone. It was far larger than even the engines, but equally as featureless save for the two autocannon turrets on its roof.

It was also covered in impact marks, white spots where bullets had harmlessly pinged against its composite plating.

Over the radio, they all heard Artyom order all sailors not to open fire on the admittedly menacing vehicle. Just to err on the safe side. A rolling black monolith that spread dread like that was an extremely tempting thing to shoot at.

Dilip eyed it all calmly, twisting a knob on his walkie-talkie and raising it to his muzzle. The feeling from the thaumic generator wasn’t too different from that of the Congo Sword, it just reached further. That and it didn’t feel actively malicious like the saber on his hip.

“WSU Captain to train operator, radio check. Over.”

“Operator here, loud and clear. Are you ready to exchange cargo? Over.” Came the reply on the agreed-upon frequency, the guy on the line replying with a thick southern accent.

“We have your delivery and are ready to proceed with the trade.” The Captain replied. “Interrogative: what was that gunfire about? Over.”

“Look, let’s cut the procedures, I can hear you clearly and I can bloody see you out the windshield.” The operator replied tiredly, as if annoyed by the common radio speech. “That firefight? Was a buncha hoodlum ponies over in the ‘burbs getting spooked by the train. We just chased them off, maybe thrashed their car, but they were looting the place so we don’t have much remorse with that.”

“So there are locals in the area?”

“Apparently.” The train operator replied. “Probably something you should look out for, we didn’t kill any but they looked shady as shit.”

“Hello pot, kettle calling.” Greet quipped.

“Well, thank you for the information. I’m surprised you’d sound so… ahem, casual, mister?” Dilip inquired after giving his youngest Officer a warning look.

“Keyes. Bob Keyes. I agree I don’t fit in with the crowd over at base, but they needed me and I’ve been in the trade for twenty years, Norfolk Southern. Not like they had a choice if they wanted them trains to run proper.” He chuckled. “That’s four peeps like me running this thing if you’re wondering. Five if you count that fella Lexington, but he’s just cooped up in the shield car doing his science stuff, so take that however you want.”

“Well met then Keyes.” Dilip politely waved at the engine, not seeing anything on the cab’s tinted windows. “I’m Captain Prateek. Glad to learn your organization has more variety to it than I first thought, now what do you say we get this delivery over with so we both stay in Agent Eko’s good graces?”

“You’ll make the boss happy the day I’ll grow a third nipple.” Keyes snarked. “Now, it’s not that I don’t trust your sailors – boss seems willin’ enough to trust your lot- but I’m not up to gearing up for EVA, did that for the last half dozen junctions and that was annoying enough, bein’ cooped up in an astronaut suit with a backpack to make an army ranger blush and a power cord trailing behind that. You feel me? Gonna need you to do the cargo handling. Manifest says all these containers here are for you, so if you could please swap them with those over by the quay so we can get back to base? Not that I mind the novelty but we’re behind schedule and the Upper Echelon is a bit stiff up the rear end this time of the year.”

“No worries on that end.” Dilip replied, turning around and waving the forklift over. “I’d rather it be done quickly too, that shield of yours does us no good.”

The exchange happened quickly, if a bit tensely because Keyes insisted his drone swarm remain up in the air throughout the whole procedure. Dilip could sort of understand the reasoning, what with the bandits nearby. The sailors got the cargo they’d ordered: parts, lots of them for the whole fleet, things they couldn’t machine themselves in their workshop like electronics and specialized designs with strict quality control requirements. Like the propeller shaft Fugro Symphony needed if they wanted their propeller pitch control back. With everything accounted for, the whole shipment boiled down to slightly more than a dozen fully-loaded FEU containers. About 380 tons of spare parts.

If that didn’t last them a good while he’d eat his own saber.

He blinked. Bad analogy. He was a Diamond Dog, for all he knew he might actually be able to digest the metal.

And in addition to that he managed to pry some information about monsters having also attacked the train on the way from wherever their base was to Savannah.

Had he known more about American railways, he might have managed to get a vague idea about which state the HPI’s HQ was in. With his current knowledge though? Keyes’ lips remained sealed, making only a passing mention of how Lexington was running some experiments in the shield car.

“I’m impressed.” Dilip commented. “Going by what my subordinates saw in France this shield unit is a lot smaller. And obviously more effective.”

Still big though. Even for a train car it was rather big.

“Thank Lexington for that.” Keyes said offhandedly. “Guy’s a genius. A creepy genius, but a genius nevertheless. Retooled the whole design under a few weeks and cut down projector size and power requirements by two thirds. Don’t know the details, but it’s a lot less massive than the first generator me and the guys delivered to base.”

“Nice to know you’re developing your gear. Hopefully those prototypes from France will help with your projects.” Dilip said, watching as said sealed container was loaded onto the train, still bearing the HPI’s logo of seven interwoven circles.

“Hold on for a second here… I must know, did you open it? ‘cause it’s important it’s still sealed.” Keyes quickly asked, one of his drones swooping down to take a look at the container.

“Seal’s intact, none of us touched it since we picked it at the French facility.” Dilip reassured him. “Only clue we got is that Eko said it was about cybernetics. Or robotics. Whichever.”

The drone flew a circle around the container, optics trained on it like a hawk looking for hares before returning to the swarm above them after a minute.

“It’s fine.” Keyes said. “Policy has it I gotta check the stuff’s still sealed. Nothing to check on the others though, ‘cept if you have a bill of lading? By the way, make sure the reefers are plugged, ‘cause they ain’t gonna last on battery.”

“We do, paper version. Want me to stick it in a container?” He asked, motioning for a sailor to go and attach the power cords that would connect the reefer containers holding the art pieces to the train’s power supply.

A necessity. Particularly when it came to atmospheric controls. There was no way the sweltering Georgian heat could do any good to paintings older than most countries were before the Event. If his memory was right they had painting in there that dated back to the Renaissance.

“Hold on...” Another drone flew over to Dilip, slowly coming to a hover in front of him. “Just… attach it to the drone so I can get the paper inside and sign it. You filled your part?”

“Paperwork’s all neat and tidy, you can have it.” He answered, struggling to find a place where to put the sheet of paper before deciding to just fold it tightly and stick it inside the drone’s gun barrel like a plug. “There, best I can manage.”

The drone buzzed back and went to dock itself on the tender car, a small hatch seemingly opening on the docking port and swallowing up the drone with a quick thanks from Keyes over the radio.

“Looks like everything’s in order Captain. My thanks for the delivery, I’d be happy to stay and chat, but duty calls and we’re already behind schedule. I’d advise you to stay safe, but it looks like you got that ground covered. Nice guns by the way, saw the L1A1’s your snipers got. Good luck and farewell.” Keyes said.

And on that sentence, the train’s engines rumbled back to life, slowly pulling it away from the yard and back the way it had come from. The assembled sailors watched it leave, some with visible relief as the feeling of dread the thaumic shield caused faded away.

“What shall we do now, sir?” Greet asked.

“Load up those spare parts and secure them for sea passage. Sort it per ship if it’s not already so we can pass it back to Rhine and Fugro when we meet up in Cuba. I’ll need to have a chat with Eko about our credit balance with the HPI and...” He frowned. “I figure if the rest of the fleet is still busy with the submarine then we probably should investigate this town. You know, locate the bandits and find out whether or not they’re the thugs Keyes declared they were.”

“At once, sir.”

The submariners had opened the hatch for them as soon as the pressure was stable on both sides, greeting them with the sight of Georgia’s interior proper. The loading hatch they had taken was aft,which meant they were now just ahead of the reactor, in the compartments that housed all the auxiliary equipment that the US sailors were watching like vigilant hawks.

Camille and Carl carefully looked around as the two hippogriffs stepped out of the escape trunk, with the former mindful not to snag her medical satchel on anything.

Most of the sailors she could see were hobbling around shakily, the submarine’s inclined state not helping the fact they were still unfamiliar with their new bodies. A lot of them were injured too, bearing makeshift dressings, most of them limb injuries that made it all the harder to move around.

They were also overwhelmingly ponies, which given the fact they likely had yet to discover unicorns had telekinesis and that pegasi could use their wings as hands, meant they couldn’t get much done. She could see a few non-ponies running around – griffons and Diamond Dogs-, looking disheveled from having to make up from their shipmates’ lack of hands.

Georgia was cramped, obviously, though maybe because she was on the larger end of the scale as far as submarines went she wasn’t as cramped as say, that one diesel-electric submarine Camille had visited once in Paris. The Argonaute it was called? Not that it mattered. Space was certainly used more efficiently than on a merchant vessel, with the slightest nook or cranny occupied by equipment, cabinets and wall lockers.

It was also surprisingly silent when compared to the ships she was used to. She’d have expected the reactor to be a lot louder than that, but it barely thrummed, the noise actually dwarfed by that of the air conditioning.

“Are you the doctor?” An Earth Pony asked her as he came over, the ranks on his collar depicting him as an…

Well she didn’t know the US Navy ranks by heart but she was going to assume the stallion was an officer. He was a fairly large stallion, managing to equal the two hippogriffs in height, though unlike them he didn’t have a wiry or lean build, looking more like a draft stallion. He had bay fur with a black mane, and with him only wearing the shirt part of his uniform they could also see the large white patch of fur he had on his rump, along with the dumbbell mark adorning his muscular flanks.

“Yes. I’m Doctor Delacroix, from M/V Rhine Forest.” She told, reaching up to shake his hoof. “And this is Deck Cadet Van Peij. He’s here to help me out.” She added, waving her talons over to Carl.

“Well met then, you can call me Gardner.” The pony replied. “I’m so glad someone could get to us so quickly. Can I ask… how did you dive this deep? I don’t see any diving equipment on you.”

“Carl?” Camille casually said.

The other hippogriff closed his eyes and quickly turned into a seapony in a flash of light, much to the shock of all the navy sailors inside the compartment. He turned back a few seconds later, calmly brushing his talons over his coveralls with a cheeky grin on his beak.

“Classic hippogriff skill, we do that and we can breathe underwater. Works rather well, we have half a dozen seaponies surveying the outer hull as we speak.”

“Right, fine, whatever.” Gardner rubbed a hoof over his muzzle. “You know what, let’s keep that for when it actually matters and focus on what’s needed. Doctor, we have a corpsman on board but he’s just the one guy and he could use the help. We have a handful of patients in need of treatment, and there’s so many of them we’ve had to put them back in their bunks. Think you can help with that?”

“That I do.” Camille nodded. “Just point me towards the sick bay and I’ll be happy to get to work, see what can be done. Is there any particularly serious patient I should be worried about?”

“A couple, Captain included, but you’ll have to ask doc about the details.” Gardner told her, motioning with his hoof towards a passageway that led further forward. “And there’s the other thing with the evacuation.”

The three of them slowly started making their way towards the med bay, where the amount of wounded sailors waiting for treatment had considerably decreased since Georgia had first settled on the bottom. Most of them were back to ‘work’ (for as little as they could do on a grounded sub), those with the light injuries. Those that couldn’t move around had been relocated to their bunks to rest in the mess rooms that lined the sides of the main passageway.

“Now that I’ve laid eyes on your crew I can figure why you can’t just use your immersion suits.”

“Escape suits.” Gardner corrected. “They won’t fit ponies.”

“Meaning Fugro will have to lower her diving bell at some point.” Camille guessed as they finally reached the sick bay where doc was waiting for them. “I’m going to assume we’re still planning to send a sailor up top so we can have a technical advisor?”

“Of course.”

“Okay...” She came to a stop, her gaze surveying the large orange canisters that housed the Tomahawk missiles.

She had been told Georgia didn’t have ballistic missiles with the nuclear warheads. That didn’t mean her weapons suite was any less impressive. If anything it was more, since the lack of nukes made her more likely to be used in anger.

“I need to ask, your escape suits, do they need a decompression chamber after use?” She asked.

“If only to err on the safe side. We’ve already picked a volunteer to get to the surface and play the role of advisor.”

Vàzquez. Male diamond dog, technically just a junior enlisted but he was bright enough to be trusted with helping the merchant sailors on the surface. Right then he was probably in control with the XO who was prepping him and cramming as many .pdf’s through his head as humanly possible.

“Okay then...” Camille mumbled, staring off into a bulkhead, her talons drumming against the floor in thought. “Let’s do it this way: Carl, you’ll accompany the advisor dog to the surface and make sure he gets to Fugro safely. Aim for the moonpool so they can transfer him safely without getting the bends. I’ll stay here and deal with the wounded, but you get back here as soon as you can manage, okay? I still need your help.”

“Aye ma’am.” Carl nodded.

Gardner didn’t have anything to say against that. Camille moved off inside the sick bay to do her part of the job, while the Lieutenant took the other hippogriff over to control where the XO and Vazquez were doing their best to prepare the ‘technical advisor’ for his work on the surface. They had a bit of a problem with getting documents from the submarine to the surface though, what with the water being in the way.

Something Carl was all too happy to bring a solution for when he mentioned one tiny little detail with hippogriffs.

Item retention. When a hippogriff switched form, anything he had on his person in one form would be stowed safely in the other. Meaning they were essentially able to carry twice as much as any other species.

He just knew there was a lot more a crafty person might be able to do with that inventory trick, he just didn’t feel the need to develop it too much.

Half an hour of being briefed by Georgia’s XO later, Carl and Vàzquez found themselves headed back towards the escape trunk.

On the opposite end of the submarine, someone stirred awake.

It had been days since he’d been inspected the sonar sphere, days since the incident where his shipmates had suddenly been turned into ponies and the submarine took an abrupt nose dive. He had been in the sonar sphere at the time, the foremost compartment in the submarine.

The first to impact the seabed and take the brunt of the damage.

It had crumpled upon hitting the ground, like a bent fender in a car crash, except there were people inside the fender. There had been screams, weps had started yelling, the sound of a hatch being shut over the rushing water that poured in from an open tear in the hull.

He hadn’t done anything. He couldn’t have done anything even if he’d tried. He had just watched on helplessly from where a girder had trapped him at the bottom of the compartment as water slowly built up and the lights failed and his shipmates battled with the water.

Why was he alive?

Cold seawater had rushed to cover him, so cold he couldn’t even feel his hands. He could barely move, stuck underwater and yet, somehow, alive.

He knew the others were dead. For a while now. One of their bodies had bumped into him at one point, long drowned, lifeless, stiff. He couldn’t see them in the complete darkness, but he could hear them bump into things every so often.

Sound carried surprisingly far underwater. He should know, working in sonar.

How long had he been there? Was it hours? Days? Weeks spent trapped in limbo? Hard to keep track in the dark like that.

What did he do to deserve that fate?

Idly, he wondered what it was that had stirred him out of his slumber. Was that… voices? Outside the sub? He turned his head. That was coming from outside the rip in the hull he could feel next to him, where some colder water streamed in with the current.

There was a flash of red outside, and he watched an underwater flare come to a landing, the first light to reach his eyes in days.

Mustering what little strength he’d left, he started banging his arm against the hull.

Author's Notes:

You know, I can't fathom the amount of chaos that would happen in Equestria if the entire country found itself in a situation where all mares fell into heat at the same time and they lacked the potions to keep it under control.

Pity the stallions, it's pretty much established they're a minority among equines (by how much, I don't know. Maybe 35% of the population?).

Oh and there is that hammerspace trick with the seaponies. You know, there is a ton of implications with being able to change from one form to another at your leisure. Found a fic that delved into it once, superhero story, pretty great details and speculations; though the author got too preachy with the politics so I ditched it.

Far as I'm gonna use it with this story is probably to let the seaponies keep their tool gauntlets on their person and have a set of dry clothes available at all times. If they were army though? Imagine being able to do a rucking without ever feeling the weight of your stu-

Nah, who am I kidding? Brass would just have them pack more stuff.

Next week: Why enchanted forests shouldn't be messed with.