Kings Bay wasn’t a small base, at least as far as Greet could judge from up in the sky. It certainly looked bigger than any of the European bases they had visited in the past, with an extensive array of facilities designed to support the Ohio-class submarines that would have been stationed there prior to the Event.

A narrow strip of land on the sea side – Cumberland Island- kept the base from being directly exposed to the Atlantic, with a single sinuous channel dredged south of the base allowing for access to the docks through a narrow gap in the shoreline and into the Georgian wetlands.

One thing was for certain: Kings Bay was nothing like those Swedish underground naval shelters. There was nothing even remotely ‘compact’ about the whole installation, and where other navies would try and use the landscape to camouflage their submarines from prying eyes, the Americans had taken to erecting ginormous shelters to hide their vessels. Tall, looming hangars rose up above a couple of berths and the base’s graving dock to ensure no satellite could ever pry into their affairs. Being made of concrete and steel, most of those structures had fared reasonably well, past a couple of collapsed cranes and some weeds slipping through the cracks in the stonework.

But the dock side of the base was just the tip of the iceberg, as all occupants of the helicopter quickly noticed when Flynn flew their helicopter in a wide circle around the base while Bart hitched his harness and grabbed the door gun from the cabin’s ceiling. Just in case.
Greet mimicked the unicorn manning the door gun and hitched her harness before moving closer to the door as wind whipped at her large ears and crest feathers. Carefully, she surveyed the ground and compared it to a diagram she’d already memorized, that being a rough drawing of the base facilities that had been transmitted to them prior to departing.

There was a lone damaged railway track going from the docks to a cluster of short buildings she quickly identified as the ammunition depots, with a myriad of perfectly lined bunkers that looked like blisters from up in the sky, before the tracks moved further inland and split towards multiple secondary facilities.

Kings Bay looked well compartmentalized. Each different section was separated from the others by vast swathes of lush forest, swamps and shallow reservoirs, one of which was so close to the tracks that it had collapsed the levee and cut off the dock from railway transportation.

Was the base in good shape? Yes. Unscathed? Absolutely not.

If she let her gaze trail further west she could see a bigger cluster of buildings, more varied in shape and size that she soon identified as the section where the barracks and training facilities were, along with some base housing, and an adjoining town outside the security perimeter.

Not their goal, but spotting it allowed them to better get their bearings and finally locate the cluster of hangars and research facilities where they had been told the segmented docking seal should be. It didn’t look like much from the air, though the white roof and reflective windows of the nearby office building made them stand out sharply against the surrounding vegetation.

Flynn brought the helicopter down in a parking lot right in front of the buildings, touching down smoothly just as Owen in the co-pilot’s seat called the fleet to signal they had reached their objective.

“There we go, Officer.” Flynn called out to Greet after he throttled down and the blades stopped spinning. “Got you to your AO, time for you to do your part of the job.”

“Thanks for the ride, sky taxi.” She replied, hopping off the chopper and readying her SMG, mimicked a minute later by Nastya and Bart behind her, the griffon and the unicorn having picked some of their modified assault rifles instead. “Keep an eye out while we’re busy, there might be monsters out there. And ready the cargo hook, last thing I want is us wasting time out here.”

“Don’t like the place, uh?” The pegasus smirked.

“Dunno...” She shrugged, eyeing a cluster of disarmed ballistic missiles that had been put on display by the parking’s entrance, one of which had collapsed on the road, taking with it an electric pole that would have connected to the research facility’s substation. “… it’s being so far away from any kind of support that puts me on edge.”

“Nah, chill out. You seen the size of the door guns? We got this.” Flynn waved a hoof dismissively.

“You ever seen a hydra?” Bart brought his hoof down and threw the pilot a warning look. “Omdat I did, and I’ve seen monsters like that shrug off .50 cal in Zweden.”

Mostly. With all the haze in the air at the time, it hadn’t been too clear whether or not the Piranhas had done any damage. It did get the beast to back down though.

“As he said.” Greet put a claw on her hip and gave Flynn a flat stare. “I know it’s hard, but don’t get cocky. You spot anything, radio us and we’ll see if we got to bail out, OK?”

“Yes ma’am.” Flynn let out a very equine snort.

The Ornithian scowled at him for a few seconds before a gesture from Owen made her decide to ignore the attitude for now. She conspicuously threw the hedgefog Flynn kept for a co-pilot a look that clearly told him to keep his colleague in line, before she waved her two companions over and moved off to the hangar.

There was no need to bother with the office buildings. In other circumstances, they might have looted them for the intel and stuff, but they were there for the rescue submarine’s docking seal, not miscellaneous paperwork. And by her reckoning it would be no small thing.
Her hunch soon proved correct, as the prototype came in sight as soon as Bart bucked a side door open for them to enter. Various pieces of gear and components littered the cavernous hangar as they made their way inside, they being illuminated for the first time in months of abandonment by their weapons’ flashlights.

The SRDRS wasn't exclusively a rescue submarine, it was a complete system that also came with an extensive set of supporting gear like A-frames for deployment, containerized decompression chambers so that it might operate with any ship, enough stuff to fill the entire hangar and turn it into a dark sinuous maze that only lit up when they managed to pry the hangar doors open with a makeshift pulley they made on the spot.

Perks of being sailors and all.

But they didn’t care much for the supporting gear.

They were there for the yellow submarine. They found it in the center of the hangar, mounted on a mobile frame so its big docking seal wouldn’t rub against the floor. In a similar fashion to Fugro’s ROV’s, the rescue sub was built with a light skeleton frame around it to protect the pressure vessel from impacts and support the many electric propellers, ballast tanks and the like that made it mobile, all of this keeping it at about the size of a standard forty-foot container.

A pretty impressive piece of machinery, and it took them about three hours to manage to pry the docking seal away from the pressure vessel, some of the work being wasted locating the right tools for the job and going to their resident hedgefog to ask him if he could use his electric powers to jump-start a forklift. And even then they had to thank Nastya for her technical skills because Greet was damn well sure she and Bart wouldn’t have been able to remove the docking seal on their own.

Yet in all the time it took them to get the job done, not a single soul manifested itself despite the conspicuousness of a bright white-and-orange SAR helicopter landing in the middle of a base that normally housed nuclear submarines. And no monsters either.

It was thus completely uncontested that they rolled the docking seal out of the hangar with a forklift and attached it to the belly of their helicopter in a sling load.

Not five minutes later, all five of them piled back inside the chopper and took off, headed east towards the fleet that awaited their delivery, leaving the Georgia shoreline behind them to the droning beat of the main rotor.

What followed was pretty straightforward. They flew away from the coast for half an hour until Rhine and Fugro came into sight, whereupon they called over the radio for the latter’s ship deck to be cleared for the arrival of their cargo.

The helicopter was fitted with an umbilical winch long enough for Flynn to cautiously remain above Fugro’s deck cranes – one of the two was actually pretty darn tall- and lower the docking seal for a gang of sailors to hastily detach it and carry it off inside what he assumed to be their workshop, where they would mount it to their own diving bell.

But the burden was off their shoulders. In a maneuver he must have practiced a couple dozen times over the course of his career, Flynn rotated the chopper’s tail away from Fugro, rising briefly before landing on the dive support vessel’s helipad, right in front of the bridge.

Unlike Amandine, Fugro didn’t have a hangar to permanently keep a chopper on board, but she did make up for it by having a pad that was relatively easy to land on for refueling, something Flynn was all too eager to make use of.

They landed, had a coffee with the crew while a bunch of Fugro’s sailors topped off their kerosene tank, long enough to tell them what they were up to in Savannah; and then they took off once more, finally headed back to their own ship.

Greet and her expedition team eventually reached Amandine by sundown, to be greeted with the dire news of what was to happen with the bandits that occupied Savannah’s Westin.

The day had gone by fairly normally on Amandine after Sri’s presentation. The Captain didn’t wish for anything beyond guard duties and basic maintenance to be done while he let the crew make their choice on whether or not they wanted to participate in the intervention.

Some had quite clearly said they wouldn’t. That being their two pairs of mated griffons. Sri could understand. They literally had children to worry about, so risking their lives for the sake of complete strangers was a stretch.

Others were still hesitating well into the evening by the time the helicopter team returned from their little expedition, chatting between themselves as they helped Scarface take the chopper back into the hangar for maintenance.

Sri had already made up her mind. She would help. But that didn’t mean she was without her own kind of worries. She had had a brief talk with Artyom about religion after dinner, but the Russian proved unable to provide much more advice than his usual ‘whatever suits you best’ stance.

She could get behind the ‘Live and let live’ attitude that permeated the crew, but there were times it could truly be annoying.

And then there was Klavins… Aleksei that is. The other hippogriff had been at the forefront of her mind ever since she’d seen her clad in her new robes, all changed from apparently – the grapevine was still going strong on that one- taking the leap and becoming a priestess. Cleric. Whichever.

She spied the Latvian here and there over the course of the entire day, though she had yet to make her approach by the time she checked out inside the ship’s office after her evening duties.

The office was fairly quiet this late. Rahul had already brought a large thermos of coffee for the overnight watchstanders – which unfortunately included her on the 0-4- which he had set down next to the entrance. Sri checked the clock and… only one hour before she was expected by the ramp for her watch.

Probably enough time to go see if someone in the ratings’ rec room was playing FIF-

“I think you wanted to see me.” Aleksei suddenly said behind her, abruptly breaking the silence.

In the confines of her own mind, Sri swore. She turned around, coming face to face with the recently-made-taller hippogriff that was their Third Engineer. Still wearing her clerical robes too.

“Good evening ma’am.” Sri greeted her.

“And a good evening to you too.” Aleksei’s beak parted in a smile as she moved towards the thermos and served herself a mug. “You know, you’re not exactly discreet when you’re leering at someone. Hope you were not as conspicuous when spying on the bandits.”

“I would have assumed looks are something you got a lot of today.”

“That is true, I’ll admit...” She said, taking a tentative sip of her coffee.

Too warm. She set it down on the table to let it cool off a bit, in passing taking an extra second to wonder how different her new longer limbs felt.

“… but there is a difference between the looks I get for the change in appearance and those I got from you. And I don’t catch any of the Filipinos or Ukrainians staring at me from the background.” She pointed out. “Is something the matter?”

Sri cautiously surveyed the room. There weren’t any sailors using the computers inside the office or the library at this hour, and there wouldn’t be for at least an hour when the change of watch was due.

“It’s rather personal...” She started.

“If I may say, don’t you and the veterans usually talk through your problems on your own?” The other hippogriff quirked her head.

“Biasanya ya- oh, sorry. I meant: usually we do. I tried talking about it to Artyom, but he… he isn’t too good when it comes to matters of religion, I guess?”

“Oh… religion...” Aleksei blinked. After a few seconds of awkward silence she waved her talons over to the table that was in the ‘meeting room’ section of the office. “I can try to help, wanna take a seat?”

Sri nodded softly and took a seat opposite to Aleksei’s, talons cradling her own steaming cup of coffee. She was about to open her beak and speak when Aleksei raised her talons to halt her.

“Sorry if that seems rude, but I feel like I should at least give you a warning. I’ve barely been a cleric for more than a day, so I’m still pretty fresh to the job. Plus, I know you’re Muslim, but what I can reasonably give you in the matter of advice would be about Celtic values and what ties to them. I can’t just go and preach another pantheon.” She pointed a talon at the ceiling. “Got a superior keeping an eye on me up there, you know? That being said, I can promise you I won’t say a word of what we discuss to anyone, and we’ll keep it informal. No notes, nothing. That's alright with you?”

“I get it, thanks for the warning. Can I ask you something?”

“Go on...”

“Why did you accept the position? As Epona’s cleric I mean.” Sri clarified.

“It’s… complicated.”

“Few things aren’t.”

“Touché.” Aleksei conceded. “I guess it’s because Epona and I had been communicating for a while already, so I don’t think she means harm to society and I genuinely believe she can help. We live in a whole new world Sri, things are changing, some of them are coming back to light after millennia of darkness. The Celtic pantheon? They can help, and the values can provide for a measure of stability in an ever-changing world.”

“And why serve Epona? I mean… she’s Celtic, you’re Latvian. Isn’t there a...”

“I was offered a similar post by Epona’s Latvian equivalent.”

“You didn’t take it?”

Aleksei’s face fell and she stared down at her coffee.

“It didn’t feel right. What he said… Have you ever had a revelation? I had been in relation with Epona for a while, and then he tells me I’m not actually fully Latvian. I… in all fairness I should have expected it. But I always looked up to my father. Wanted to be like him. To be told that my mom really did… that while she was in Bali.”

“Bali...” Sri blinked. “So she was that kind of woman. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, it’s not an insult if it’s true.” Aleksei sighed. “But now you know why I picked Epona instead of Ūsiņš. That ain’t what we’re here for though, is it? It’s about you.”

“Yes… me...” This time it was Sri’s turn to look down at her coffee. “I guess I couldn’t just settle for Artyom’s advice.”

“I’m all ears, what is it you’re worried about?”

“So… I feel like even if I do it badly, I should have some kind of faith to follow. And last I checked none of the churches or mosques we’ve seen in the past had any kind of power to them. I want to convert, follow some divinities that I at least know are real.”

Used as she was to outlandish stuff happening on a daily basis, it still took Aleksei a couple seconds of opening and closing her beak to fully process what Sri had just said.

“You… You… want. To convert?” She stammered.

“That I do.” Sri stood up in her chair and leaned across the table, closer to the cleric. “It’s pretty simple in my books. There are gods we can see, and some we don’t. I want to follow what my eyes show me, and you’re a pretty good proof yourself. If what went on in Ireland wasn’t enough. I’m aware I may be missing some ancient Javanese divinities I could follow instead, but they’re on the other side of the world and we may never meet them for all I know. So tell me then, what’s the Celtic faith about? You know, core values, principles, is there a rite of conversion?”

Aleksei took a second to gather her words whilst she sipped her coffee, talons drumming against the table.

“I can begin to tell you, but it’s not exactly succinct you know? I’m still in the process of learning most of it, and some things like the Brehon law might undergo an update process if the two biggest divinities choose so. That being the Dagda and the Morrigan, for clarification. Consider it as… a code of laws all followers have to abide to.”

“That I can understand...” Sri nodded slowly. “So Dagda and Morrigan lead the pantheon?”

“Yes and no.” She made a so-so gesture with her claw. “Polytheistic faith is much more varied than monotheistic, and in the case of Celtic faith it is heavily decentralized with dozens of various specialized gods, some of them even focused on certain regions. The Dagda and the Morrigan’s role is to gather them in the Otherworld when important matters need to be discussed. In other circumstances, they have their own domains to worry about. For followers, it’s pretty simple: depending on what you need, you would make an offering to a specific god if you need divine advice, protection from ill or a favor.”

“Such as your patron?”

“Lady Epona concerns herself with all things equine – which I guess makes her the patron of hippogriffs and ponies- and fertility rites. Now, as there are many gods and goddesses that fall under the realm of Celtic faith and thus have their own realms within the confines of the Otherworld, some have either very specific domains, or they protect certain areas. Like Vosegus. Hunter god, and patron of the Vosges mountains, in France. You catch the drift?”

“I think I do… so if I need advice, I do a ritual and make some prayers and offerings to a god?”

“Or you request a favor from one of their assigned clerics.” Aleksei completed. “And since you also asked about values, there are six core values to be respected: Honor, Loyalty, Hospitality, Honesty, Justice and Courage. I could elaborate some more on all six, but I don’t think you’ve got the time from now ‘til your watch, correct?”

Sri ruefully glanced over towards the clock. The cleric was right, time was passing by rather fast.

“Pity.” She shook her head. “I was starting to get into this. I’m really interested, do you think that I could convert?”

“I can arrange for such a rite, yes...” Aleksei nodded. “I would need to check a couple things and gather the oils and paints for the ritual, but it can be done. Be warned though...” She paused to throw a piercing look in Sri’s eyes. “… such a ritual comes with a package. You may experience a dreamwalk through the Otherworld, and you will be expected to follow Brehon law and the core values. That… and there is the afterlife that comes with it.”

“Still in.”

“Very well then. I’ll let you pick and choose when you want the ceremony to happen and who it is you wish to invite. But… it’s probably going to happen in the next port of call at this rate.”

“Havana? Aye, I can live with that.” Sri downed the rest of her coffee and stood up. “Thanks by the way. That helped.”

“Such is my duty these days...” Aleksei whispered, watching the other hippogriff make her exit, off to her watch.

What a weird world to live in, seeing Muslims convert to Celtic faith...

If there was one thing Rockhoof wasn’t fond of, it was court formalities. Sure he was all for the ‘verbal heritage’ stuff the Northern tribes did, and he didn’t have any problem with hosting a Thing to settle tribal matters, but…

He had been quite disappointed to find the tradition had fallen into disfavor when he and the rest of the Pillars took their leap forward in time. What used to be his birthplace had instead replaced ancestral traditions and Things with a Unicornian style of centralized governance ripped straight from Canterlot. He could understand how that had come about, what with the integration of the territories into Equestria proper and all, but that didn’t help with the nasty feeling of alienation he had received when he rediscovered the place he used to call home.

So it should come to no surprise that if Starswirl could replicate a miniature Canterlot inside the magical plane he had created, then Rockhoof would attempt to do the same with how he chose to reign over the castle.

Centralized power had its merit, but to that the large Earth Pony vastly preferred the old system of mostly sovereign tribes that would gather among themselves during Things to settle internal matters. There was also an external variant of the same principle, a Thing hosted between chieftains, but to do that you usually needed a tiny little detail called another tribe.

In the meantime though, the castle had a room that was ideal for holding a Thing in the form of the banquet hall. Now, Trecesson had never been a large castle to begin with, so it came to reason that the hall wouldn’t be too large either, but the narrow room with the vaulted ceiling proved sufficient for the amount of colonists they had amassed overtime and gathered on either side of the long table over which both Meadow and Rockhoof presided.

It had a sort of homey feeling to it, the otherwise drab whitewashed walls being covered in tapestries, and the ceiling above them being reinforced with numerous rafters whose warm brown texture balanced the otherwise cold atmosphere, something which was helped along by the yellowish glow that the ceiling lights gave off as they hung from their chains.

Had it not been for Emeric pointing out they were electric, Rock would have mistaken them for candles.

“Thank you all for taking a break and gathering here today.” Rockhoof started in an effortlessly booming voice as he looked down at the assembled creatures in front of him. “I know we all have a lot of work to do, but it was high time we gathered for our first Thing... – oddly enough the word ‘Thing’ stayed the same in French- … and since our latest accident with a forest guardian and subsequent meeting with a God, some things had to be said.”

He had seen bigger gatherings for a Thing in the past. Tribe-herds in the North could easily number around the two-hundred-pony mark in his time. Comparatively, the three-to-four dozen assembled creatures in the banquet hall made for a tiny tribe, with a smattering of unicorns mixed with some deer and the odd centaur. And the lone pegasus in the form of Miles, but then again the American wasn’t a local.

“What’s a Thing?” A doe asked, somewhere in the back of the room.

“It’s how I intend to rule this colony.” The Earth Pony explained. “See, where I’m from, the inhabitants of a tribe, colony, settlement… whichever you prefer, they gather together to discuss and decide the future of the village under the supervision of the chieftain and the elders.”

“Wait… so we get here to discuss stuff, but you’re still the Lord?” The same doe questioned.

“Yes, as Lord my role is not only to implement the decisions taken during a Thing, but I’m also tasked with representing the interests of the village if there is ever a Thing with another village, and I am sworn to ensure your safety.”

As expected of a group of French people, that got them all talking so fast neither Rock nor Meadow could quite follow, with all of them starting to argue over matters like representation, executive and legislative power, unelected elites and the like.

It wasn’t until Starswirl teleported inside the room in his human form, switching to equine mode in a flourish, that they finally calmed down and seemingly came to an agreement.

“We have decided this form of government is viable.” A short-ish stallion in the front of the crowd concluded with a curt nod that was echoed by the rest of the crowd.

“Great I guess?” Rockhoof blinked, throwing Emeric and Miles a questioning look.

His two Lieutenants’ response was just a gesture that said to roll with it.

There were many matters he brought up to the colonists. From their agreement with Lord Cernunnos and the need for offerings to appease Broceliande, to the need to finish the palisade and establish an altar in the courtyard, to a myriad of other little problems and projects of one sort or another.

Not particularly interesting – to the point where Meadow spotted Martin snoozing in a corner of the room-, but it was a necessity that gave them a course to steer and raised morale by giving everyone the impression they had an active role in the colony. Most were a bit partial towards the prospect of giving offerings to an unknown God for the sake of their safety, but thankfully Starswirl managed to appease their concerns and stressed the fact that they would have to eventually turn the altar into a fully-fledged temple when they could spare the ressources next year.

As good a start as Rockhoof hoped he could get. Trecesson might actually turn into a nice village in the long run.

The only thing he didn’t tell them was Martin’s future as a representative of Cernunnos.

“Hello world, DJ Jensen here with WSU radio. Hope you’re all having a blast of a day, I got some news for you.” Sandra eagerly recited in the radio, keeping an eye on her notes for the day’s broadcast.

“Today’s going to be more on the informative side of things with just me on the line, so sorry for you folks who were expecting a correspondent or another. At least I can tell you DJ Grizzly will be coming back this week for some survival tips, for those of you that are too far away from Montana to catch his FM radio.

I must say, the news I just got leaves me plenty of hope for society to recover. Colonies in Ireland are blooming under the new diplomacy. Looks like that Celtic Confederation gig is working for Eire because a few colonies have joined the fold after Carrickfergus and Belfast. I already knew a farmstead in Antrim had declared itself its own colony, but now it seems a group of those relief teams from Equus managed to gather survivors from the recently attacked colony in Derry, and some extras.

The result you ask? Well, now they have two more colonies. One set up in Glenveagh Castle in county Donegal. Pretty good idea by the way. With the amount of castles you can find all over Europe you might as well use them to stay safe from monsters, and they can be decently luxurious depending on which you pick.

The second colony isn’t a castle, though as far as I heard they have a fortification to fall back to. They’re in Baltimore, county Cork. It’s a fishing haven down south, and if anyone is passing by they said they were open to traders.

Here I am giving business tips...” Sandra chuckled. “But it’s as you can see: Ireland’s doing pretty good with their colonies even though one was attacked recently. Just remember people: have a plan for when monsters turn up, or worse. It’s important, and don’t you go saying you’re pacifists or some such. The monsters won’t care.” She warned.

There was a brief pause as she turned to the next page of her notes.

“Then I got another colony for you in Norway, if anyone feels like going really far north. What I mean is Narvik. You may have heard me speak about one of the locals a few times, that’s Gunnar. A reindeer with his own farm at the tip of a fjord.

Well, turns out the guy – or is it bull with male reindeer?- gathered himself a following that’s more than just a herd of regular reindeer. They’re the magic kind of reindeer. Not much of a difference I know, but he told me now they had a couple scattered farmsteads at a distance from Narvik and they gather once a week by the docks to trade and all.

Oh, and of course if Ireland got their Celtic pantheon going on, the Norse revived theirs as well. Don’t fuck with these guys, they’re in good favors with Thor as he claimed. Guess that’s why they don’t think it’s necessary to cluster together inside a castle.

Or they’re just northerners who would rather stay on their own. I dunno, maybe if you lived this far away from civilization even before it collapsed then you got a pretty large radius when it comes to personal space. Still counts as a colony, decentralized as it is.

And that’s about it for today folks. Rather brief I know, but tune in tomorrow if you want to hear of Miss Naomi and her lions. I may also have some info on more colonies, I’m still digging. DJ Jensen… Out.” She concluded, flipping a switch on her console and terminating the recording.

She did have a few more contacts than just Narvik and the Celtic Confederation. They just weren’t too fond of sharing their locations. Maybe because they lacked divine protection or something else, but she couldn’t exactly force them to tell her their location.

Pity.

Taking care of all the wounded on board of Georgia hadn’t been easy. Doctor Delacroix – or Camille as she insisted everyone call her- never thought of herself as particularly lazy and she’d found herself in some pretty stressful situations over the course of her career.

She had been to East Africa with NGO’s to provide assistance and had been forced to struggle with tight funds, poor supply management and even poorer security.

She had been faced with the sudden rush of dozens of wounded the one time a bus crashed near the emergency ward she’d been working in at the time and forced to cope with a rather gruesome triage.

And now? Camille was damn sure Georgia’s rescue ranked among those top catastrophes. It had soon turned out that the only true medical practitioners on board were her and the resident corpsman – a unicorn, thankfully-; and the patient list the two had to go through was just short of a hundred souls.

Plus there was the novelty of taking a dive into the Atlantic to reach the sub in the first place, as a pony-mermaid-thing no less.

Chief Ezra could keep a cool head though, so she and Georgia’s corpsman soon worked their way through the triage process and onto proper treatment and first aid. Most of the injuries suffered in the impact had been light and relatively simple to treat, leaving them with a core group of heavy injuries that still numbered at twenty. That was where the resource management entered the equation.

Now, she and Asha had spent the better part of their voyage monitoring the hydroponics on Rhine Forest and making the best of what plants they could grow to bolster their stores of health potions. As usual, the first-aid variant was easy to make, and she’d even used some of the supply to treat the light injuries the American submariners had suffered. Bruises, small gashes and concussions. No big deal. Though getting their stores back up would be high on the priority list.

As usual with the health potions, the problems came from the healthcare variant. The ‘miracle juice’ as Ezra had nicknamed it when she started using it in small injections on the heavily injured patients. The supply was small, very small. The Poison Joke they used to make the stuff wasn’t known for growing very fast and bottlenecked the whole process, forcing Camille to keep her use of the stuff to little injections in key areas that would guarantee patients would live to see another day and be transported to the surface where they could be operated on, either on Rhine Forest or Fugro Symphony in their medical bays. On the Georgia? It was either the sick bay – which was too small- or the wardroom – that was too poorly equipped-. And with the angle of the whole boat, she wouldn’t even try basic surgery.

There was the one exception though. The last time she went to the surface to pick up some gear and resupply on potions, Captain Lorelei had explicitly ordered her to use whatever was needed to fully heal Captain Green, Georgia’s CO.

Which was why she found herself waiting in front of Green’s quarters once she and Ezra were done patching up the rest of the crew.

“So...” She trailed off, looking towards Ezra who was sitting on his haunches on the opposite side of the narrow passageway. “… Captain Green, how is he?”

“Stern.” Was the corpsman’s immediate reply. “Not in a bad way either, got a reputation for keeping a cool head in the worst scenario. Only problem the crew got with him is he’s… spartan, to put it politely. Probably not as exuberant as some of the Captains you civvies get.”

Camille’s memory flashed to an Italian Captain she’d met in the past that had a habit of working in his office wearing only briefs and a shirt.

A dull Captain could be a good thing.

They chatted a bit about the state of the sub and the crew, the two of them exchanging their opinion on what treatment the more heavily injured patients would need to receive once they were on the surface and how this may affect the order in which they evacuated them.

It was only a couple minutes later that the Captain’s door opened with a click, revealing the XO’s bulky navy blue frame as he invited them in with a wave of his hoof.

Camille and Ezra silently shuffled inside, allowing Graham to close the door behind them for the sake of Captain Green’s privacy. The grizzled submariner-made-pegasus-colt was still bedridden with three splinted hooves, though now he appeared to be using his sole intact limb and wings well enough as makeshift hands. Pretty much like all pegasi, though him being forced to do it made him all the faster at learning the gimmick.

His surroundings had been adjusted to accommodate his injured state. Multiple reports and files surrounded him along with a laptop and a phone whose line had been extended from his desk to his bed so he could contact Fugro on the surface.

Still, judging by the scowl he bore on his muzzle, something displeased him. Whether that was his own transformation, the age change, the general state of Georgia or even the weather up on the surface, Camille wouldn’t bet.

“Captain.” Camille straightened up to greet him.

Behind her, she heard Ezra click his hooves sharply to salute his Commanding Officer.

“Ah...” Green acknowledged her by pushing aside the report he had been reading, forcing an awkward smile. “Miss… Delacroix is it? French I take it?”

“Yes sir, born on Reunion Island though. Oversea territories.”

“Exotic.” He simply said. “Courtesies aside now, I was told by Captain Skinner you had some medicine for me? The same health potions you’ve been using on the crew?”

“Yes.” The orange hippogriff nodded as she pulled out the golden vial from her satchel. “The difference being you don’t get a split dose. All the others got reduced doses to stabilize them, you get a full vial to heal you completely.”

To his credit, Green didn’t start asking questions like many of his subordinates. He didn’t need to. The concept of the health potion was simple enough, and he wouldn’t overlook the gift of escaping the weeks of recovery time fractures usually came with.

Camille could thank Green’s diminutive size for not needing as much potion to heal as an adult pony would have. As it stood, one vial of potion was all it took to fix up all his broken limbs when properly managed and injected directly in the fractures. That being said, the caveat with healthcare-variant potions hit him all the sooner as it sapped his strength and drew him into a fitful sleep.

“You know, if I wasn’t already used to Captain Lorelei I would be pretty weirded out by a foal behaving like an adult as he does.” Camille commented once she was done.

“It’s a brave new world. Green is far too competent to cast aside because of such a triviality.” Graham shrugged. “Thank you Doctor. I know it looks like I could manage in his stead, but Captain Green is the Captain for a reason.”

“Having a hard time?”

“Quite.” He admitted. “Green’s gifted, truly so. We’re the same age you know, but of us two he’s the one for whom it comes naturally, the attitude, the grasp on how the ship should be run. Hardly ever second guesses himself.”

“You look up to him.” Camille pointed out.

“Like I’d tell him to his face.” Graham chuckled. “But yes, I do. Aside from that, it’s one thing to know about it from our calls with the surface, it’s another to see it. You’ve been up there, how are things going with the diving bell?”

“Last I checked they were melting a rubber gasket and milling some bolts to fasten the segmented seal to the bell. Should be done tomorrow morning, Skinner’s keeping the workshop going around the clock.”

“Good… good...” Graham trailed off with a frown, as if mentally gauging something.

“Is this going to be a problem, sir?” Ezra interjected.

Georgia’s XO threw a look at the sleeping Green before motioning for them to follow him with a wave of his hoof. The draft stallion of a pony led them to his own quarters on the opposite side of the passageway, a much smaller compartment than Green’s, but roomy enough for the three of them. There, he moved over to his desk and prodded a set of graphs with his hoof.

“About an hour before you came by, Green and I had a chat with Eng. Georgia isn’t looking healthy.”

“Technical issues, sir?” Ezra inquired. “The reactor?”

“No, thankfully.” He reassured the corpsman. “Though no less concerning in the long run. There is leakage from the sonar sphere to the torpedo room, and there will come a point where no matter what we do, the water will get to the battery well. We’ve already removed a few sets of batteries and installed a pump to counter that, but given time Georgia will flood. It’s not gonna be today, not even next week, but it will happen. And I’d rather the sub be empty by the time we lose the critical compartments.”

“That’s uh… well at least we should start the evacuation tomorrow.” Camille blinked.

“It gets worse. Life support systems are failing. Eng is making sure it stays a bit hush hush, but the number one carbon dioxide scrubber gave up on us yesterday. Number two had broken down before the grounding. We were intending to have the shore command work on repairing it. Don’t have the parts on board. We’re going with Lithium Hydroxide canisters set up in the ventilation system to make up for that, but the hourly monitoring doesn’t look good.”

“Why tell us, then?”

“It’s about the injured. I know heavily injured patients can be more sensitive to changes in atmosphere. Most of the crew should only feel a mild headache, but you two come and warn me if it gets bad enough that it endangers your patients, okay? We’re going to put them at priority one on the evac plan.”

“Bien compris.” Camille nodded sharply.

Author's Notes:

Okay, so there were a couple choices to be made when I wrote that chapter. I know last chapter's ending would have implied this one might contain the assault on the hotel... but arranging scenes coherently had me postponing that to later. Still had a couple plot threads I wanted to adress to keep things flowing at least semi-coherently.

Doesn't help with giving the story a fast pace, but I don't think it ever had one to begin with. 'cause I suck at time skips...

Really amazing how some people manage to make an adventure story below the 100k words limit yet here I'm past the... 500k I think? Depending how much fluff and worldbuilding I add, wouldn't be surprised if it passed the 700k by the time I'm done.