Vadim carefully gauged the huge reptile sunning itself amidst a congregation of regular gators before he looked back towards his mate.

“You feel like pissing it off?”

“‘course not.” Micha snorted, having already slung her .308 rifle over her back. “You see the skin on that thing? Hard pass.”

She was already spreading her wings and opening her beak to tell Andy to follow when she felt a tug on her tail. Turning her head she found her adopted cub, looking a bit confused.

“No hunting?”

“I’m sorry kotka, but you need to learn to pick your fights.” She waved her talons over to the cragadile. “You need to know what you can hunt safely. This? No good. Come. We’ll go shopping instead, ok?”

“Oh…” Andy’s wings sagged slightly and she looked down at the ground dejectedly. “Ok mommy…”

Micha stroked her between the wings for comfort, the little griffon arching her back like a cat and brushing closer to her before she quietly motioned to get back to their Defender.

Because why bother killing a monster that hadn’t noticed them? In the middle of a swamp?

Most of their afternoon was thus spent trying to find the few shops not too damaged by the floods in downtown Savannah to have their pick of the remains and start filling up that loot concession they had been granted recently thanks to Artyom’s intervention with the Captain. Liquor was one thing they found plenty of, a couple extra toys for Andy – that made up for the lack of a hunt to the young cub-, and even decorations for their cabin that they retrieved from some semi-dilapidated art-deco shop near a sinkhole.

That took up the brunt of their day before they decided to make their way back to the west side of Savannah, stop by the truck stop to warn the locals they’d need some seriously high power weapons to deal with the abnormally-sized reptiles that now inhabited the swamps.

Ho-Jin took it in stride. The kirin and his grandson were actually more bothered by the sudden influx of inhabitants to their truck stop than they were by the need for bigger guns, though the same influx that disturbed the elderly kirin’s peace and quiet also made it possible for the place to expand the scope of its utilities. Already there was the tall mast of a radio relay rising above the motel, a sign WSU radio would be able to broadcast in the region in the future and, more importantly, keep in touch with the colony.

Industry-wise, Savannah actually had some pretty decent development projects available. While there wasn’t a whole lot they could do in the realm of farming, the area around the truck stop held a number of small manufactures that could be salvaged and revived in very short order. Nothing too big, but some of the stuff they made near the truck stop just so happened to be the exact things that were in high demand as of late:

Ammunition for small arms.

Tractor engines that could readily be turned into generators with a proper retooling.

There were even a couple breweries lying around, probably as much of a need as ammunition in a post-apocalyptic world, what with the effect it had on morale. Folks liked their booze.

Vadim and Micha found Roberto in heated talks with the locals about supply chains and all the logistics that would need to be involved to make the production chains viable with what little data they had available as of late. It would take some time still before it could actually be put into action, but the Italian made damn sure he wrote down what Savannah would need to start its own industrial production.

Industrial revival was the WSU’s end goal after all, lest they forgot.

However there was the problem that they were still rather limited in the amount of colonies they had available. Roberto was pretty sure Belfast, Narvik and Savannah weren’t enough to constitute a viable trade route. Not quite yet.

That would have to wait until they visited all the colonies in Latin America that the HPI had given them intel on. As far as they knew, the process should be straightforward: reach a colony, help it set up to cover its basic needs, then move on and analyze local industries and figure out what’s good for export.

So far they had parts of a couple production chains: scrap and steel could come from Narvik’s former mining industry. Belfast could make food of various sorts and had the ability to machine parts to a certain extent, plus their whole dry dock deal.

And now they had Savannah with ammo, alcohol and generators. And the contact point with the HPI. Can’t forget that one. Not that they could tell any of the locals.

Not a complete puzzle by any means, they needed more. Not much though. Roberto hoped that adding an oil refinery to the fray might be enough to get an actual trade route going. A refinery like the one intel pointed was near the colony they knew of in Mexico.

“Hard at work uh?” Vadim asked Roberto after they picked him up from the truck stop to bring him back to the ship.

The Abyssinian sitting in the back of the Defender turned his gaze away from Andy and faced forward, looking at Vadim through the rearview mirror.

“It’s annoying is all. We have the contacts, they’re all willing, but it’s a puzzle that can’t work until we at least have the border parts to hold it together.” He complained. “Problem is, we only have a vague idea of where those pieces are from the intel we bought off the HPI.”

“Gives us a direction to follow.” Micha shrugged.

“I get that.” Roberto replied. “But if you look into it, all we’re doing for now is screwing around without producing anything of actual value. We’re exploring.”

“I beg to differ.” Vadim countered. “We’re not screwing around. Main reason we came here in the first place was to trade for parts, or did you forget that?”

“I haven’t.” Roberto frowned. “But Belfast and Narvik, I need to placate them you know? Tell them we’re working things out and that if they wait they’ll have their import/export gig. Here in Savannah? I cannot tell them about the HPI, so in their books we just sailed up the river for no reason at all.”

“Wait, they don’t know about the HPI?” Vadim did a double take.

“It’s all in the contract. Only ones we can discuss their existence with are other WSU members, and that’s because they’re under contract as well.” He told them. “Please tell me you didn’t...”

“We haven’t!” Micha exclaimed quickly, the words coming out of her throat in a sharp squawk. “Almost did, but we haven’t. You might want to put up a PSA or something about it though.”

“Guess I will.” The feline drawled before he leaned back in his seat as the container stacks of the harbor came into view.

And as soon as he was back inside, he would have to get behind his computer and work his ass off placating colonial leaders to tell them their supply chains were being created and that the sailors weren’t screwing around for no good reason.

Colonial politicking was almost enough to make him long for the mind-numbing simplicity of his pre-Event duties.

Continuous, rhythmic beeping punctuated the relative quiet of Amandine’s sick bay as Artyom glowered at the ceiling. The sharp smell of antiseptics weighed heavily on the dragon’s nostrils, most of it coming from his thickly bandaged wing that throbbed dully, the appendage kept extended fully over the side of his bed.

He had to give it to Vadim, the griffon had become surprisingly good at treating wounds despite not being an actual doctor, but even then there was only so much the griffon could do. That buckshot really had done a good job at making swiss cheese out of his wing’s membrane, blood loss not helping, yet the griffon had managed to stitch it back together pretty decently and stabilize him.

Keyword being: stabilize. Vadim had only given him enough of their limited stock of health potions to help his membrane heal faster, but that didn’t extend to the blood loss, which admittedly the potions weren’t too efficient at handling to begin with.

Didn’t extend to the other wounds either.

This was why he was stuck inside the infirmary feeling like shit. Not only was his wing injured, but now that the adrenaline was flushed out of his system he was feeling the full brunt of all the hits he had sustained in the firefight. Minor hits that required no treatment, sure, but that didn’t make them any less painful. More annoyingly, he could hardly get up without feeling faint because of all the blood he’d lost.

Which would have been worse had it not been for Schmitt volunteering for a transfusion. She was the only other dragon on the crew, and unfortunately they were universal donors, not recipients.

The result? Rest, red meat, and plenty of gems to regrow the scales he had lost in the fight.

Eh, almost feels like after Grozny. His mind supplied.

A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts before he could drive himself down that rabbit hole, the door opening to reveal none other than the rest of the veterans.

“Guys.” He greeted them as he tried to sit up in his bed.

Not a bright idea. His vision went fuzzy before he could rise and he would have fallen over were it not for Bart and Scarface grabbing him in their telekinesis.

“Take it easy pal, you’re still recovering.” Scarface told.

“I hadn’t noticed.” The dragon said dryly.

“So you’re not getting too bored in there?” Sri tried, the hippogriff grabbing a stool in her talons before she came to take a seat by his bedside.

“What do you think?” He snorted. “I can’t do shit in here, I can’t even fap without fainting, and I feel like I’ve been dragged under a steamroller. So yeah, I’m having a great time.”

“There’s an upside at least.” Bart offered. “At least you didn’t have to bury the bodies and clean up this mess.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I fucked up.”

“I wouldn’t call holding an entire flank by yourself a fuckup, just sayin’.” Bart stated, entirely nonplussed. “We and Scar’, we had magic and shields. You did it all on your own.”

“Amazing where that achievement got me, don’t you think?”

“Gee, it’s almost like you love being rude.” Sri rolled her eyes.

“Coping mechanism.” He shrugged, albeit only on his uninjured side. “Didn’t help me get along with the nurses in ‘95 when I was recovering.”

“It’s about Chechnya isn’t it? You mentioned it before we attacked.” She prodded.

Not that he’d ever gone into details about it. Going by the way the dragon’s features distorted at the question, even that had been more of a slip than something he really intended to reveal.

“You never really did tell us what you did during your service.” Bart pointed out.

“Because that ended poorly, that’s why. Doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.” Artyom growled, letting himself sink back in his pillow. “Scar’, Sri, you knew me before I grew scales, where do you think I got my bad leg?”

The two sailors looked at each other awkwardly.

“We had our assumptions, we just never asked.” Sri finally admitted after a minute. “But… if that was so bad, then why do you wear the beret and celebrate VDV day?”

“That’s… complicated. Look, most of the shit that went on in Grozny, that’s the brass’ fault, shitty Officers, politicians and all.” He glared at the ceiling. “I can’t just spit on all the guys that got injured alongside me, the guys I shared barracks and trained with you know?”

“And then there is the nostalgia.” Bart guessed.

Artyom’s eyes flicked to the unicorn.

“That too, yes.” He nodded. “Hard not to join in on the fun when it’s VDV day. Then the habit starts to stick.”

There was a bit of an awkward pause for a minute or two.

“So...” Scarface finally uttered to break the silence. “It really was that bad?”

“Ever get hit with a faceful of reality? That’s pretty much what happened.” Artyom told them. “I’d love to pretend I was just a dumb kid who didn’t know better, but come to think of it, it wasn’t really that. I enlisted in the mid eighties, all starry-eyed at the time. Wanted to be the best, so I did all I could to become an airborne trooper. Veh-deh-veh. That was too late for Afghanistan though, my unit had already pulled back by the time I finished training. And here I was sad not to be part of the debacle at the time...” He chuckled ruefully.

“Wait, there’s like...” Scarface paused. “Ten years between that and the first Chechen war?”

“Sounds about right.” Artyom confirmed. “Didn’t do much in that time. It was… weird. Things were already falling apart in the Union, you could see the ‘cracks’ showing here and there. I tried to ignore that and focus on what I was doing. Barracks life, training, the typical military bullshit and all… Hell, I still went to church at the time and I landed myself a fiancee. Wasn’t great, but I figured it was better in the VDV than outside as a civilian.”

Sri blinked. She’d never seen the bosun with a ring. Then?

“Then they dissolved the Union. The nineties happened. And Post-Soviet Russia… Yulia and I married in a hurry in ‘93 when things were starting to look rough...-er. Even got to live off base for a little while. That was nice. I was already getting a bit old for the barracks lifestyle. Yulia was a bit worried about what was happening elsewhere and all, people had it rough because everything was changing so damn fast.” He breathed out. “Me? I was just somewhat glad I could ride it out.”

“Then Chechnya happened.” Scarface muttered.

“And it was a right mess. It wasn’t like exercises where stuff was clear and all. Felt like the brass was making shit up as they went, just to look nice for the press and the politics. Me? I was just below them, forced to pick up their shit and try to make it work. I know with the VDV we did better than the rest, but when I laid eyes on that shitfest… I told myself: there is no God.”

Actually things proved the contrary as of late, but pre-Event and post-Event were two different worlds.

“That bad?”

“The conscripts were getting butchered like cattle. I’m still surprised we even managed to capture that airport east of Grozny. Khankala I think it was? Doesn’t really matter anymore. Had to watch my buddies be carted off one after another, people I had known for years, they had families and all. Most were wounded, some...”

“But you did better than the conscripts, right?” Bart tried.

“Buddy, us doing better doesn’t mean we did good.” The dragon snorted out a puff of smoke through his nostrils. “We were supposed to be the good ones, the professional army. That? That was just shameful. I managed to survive the assault on Grozny in one piece, somehow, and then we hunkered down to defend the airport. Two days later, bang, I caught shrapnel with my knee.”

“How come?”

“Stray RPG. I ducked like a bitch soon as I heard it fire, except I was a bit too slow. And ‘cause I was, I spent the next twenty years walking around with a bad leg. Fun fun fun.” He laughed acidly. “Story ain’t over though. It gets worse. Triage and medical was fucking terrible at the time. They kept saying they were going to handle it correctly and all. ‘Correctly’, my ass. I almost lost my leg a couple times due to sheer medical incompetence, they lost track of me more times than I can count before I was transferred to Sochi, and worst of all: they screwed my whole family over.”

“Your wife?”

“They straight up told her I was dead. Yulia, she had always had some trouble with the drink. That tipped her over. She lost the kid. That made it worse. Drank some more while I was still recovering in Sochi. By the time I made it home to St-Petersburg – and that was an adventure in its own right-, she’d been buried for a couple months, and she never knew she wasn’t actually widowed. Me? I was.” Artyom crossed his arms over his chest while he was looking at the ceiling. “Dunno if you figured it, but try being a wounded, widowed veteran in a country that’s transitioning away from communism, where you can’t get any form of compensation for your war injury, people hate you for fighting in a fucked up war and...” The scaly ridges he had for eyebrows furrowed. “All my life I had been in the military. Never knew how to live the civvie life at the time. And here I was dropped into it as a near-cripple.”

“Near-cripple? You weren’t that bad when I first met you.” Sri interrupted.

“Because I managed to save enough to have the operation the army refused to give me.” He stated matter-of-factly. “Couldn’t rely on any of the stuff I used to, folks hated me… so I went looking elsewhere. Joined the merchant navy – wasn’t easy getting a job with the injury, but the experience as an NCO helped- and… I guess at that point I didn’t care too much about Russia anymore.”

“I wonder why.” Scarface snorted sarcastically. “Still… that’s fucked up. Real fucked up I mean.”

“Yeah...” Bart blinked. “I’ve been places with the Belgian Army, and they screwed me over a couple times for small stuff, but never was it that bad. I mean… I was unionized.”

All three other veterans suddenly turned to him.

“Hold on a sec’, you werein a friggin’ union? Like, a labor union? In the military?” Scarface gaped.

“Well, yeah. I wasn’t a rep’, but it helped. Like a lot. Why? That’s weird?” He asked innocently.

There was a pregnant pause. Just a few seconds of utter and complete silence before Artyom suddenly burst out laughing, the dragons laughing so hard he was clutching his sides.

“No offense, you a good guy Bart...” The dragon chortled. “… but the Belgian Army? Kind of a joke.”

To say Meadowbrook and Rockhoof weren’t happy about what had happened to Martin would have been the understatement of the month. It didn’t take long for Starswirl to figure out what happened in the clearing with the Golden Tree through the use of a few spells.

Martin is an element bearer. His magic is now distinctly linked to the tree’s.

The problems started when he teleported the group back to the castle and explained to the fawn’s two adoptive parents what it was that had happened.

“What the buck, Star?!” Meadowbrook yelled shrilly after they put the unconscious Martin back in his bedroom. She rounded up on the ghost and jabbed a hoof through his ethereal chest. “The Cernunnos incident wasn’t enough already? Now he’s got to be an Element Bearer too?!”

“Why are you saying this like I’m the one at fault?” The mage protested.

“I’m sorry Star, but he’s got the purple Element. Same as yours. That does sound a bit suspicious.” Rockhoof pointed out.

“I didn’t do anything to lead to this. The Tree did it.” Star pointed a hoof in the general direction of the Golden Tree. “I was already busy giving him magic lessons, why would I push it furth-?”

Starswirl paused, ears flicking this way and that as he heard hoofsteps walking through the castle’s hallways. With a snort, the ghost ignited his horn and in a flash the three former Pillars of Equestria were teleported inside his magical plane, the one inside his tower with the floating islands.

The place wasn’t as barebones as it was when he first showed it to Rockhoof. The Canterlot-esque golden spire that towered above the rest of the floating islands had become better furnished overtime with everything the wizard needed and then some, like the little balcony he had teleported them onto, somewhere near the top. A fake breeze gently rustled his mane as the enchantments of the pocket dimension gave him a fleshy form once more.

One of the reasons why he stayed inside his plane so much. Yes he had his other half – technically the real Starswirl, since his half on Earth was Merlin- still alive and kicking in Equestria to feel material, but even then he didn’t really like being a ghost. He still had to be ethereal whenever he left the tower, but he’d much rather keep to his experiments within the pocket dimension and be able to touch stuff without extensive magic.

Not like that was particularly hard. His backlog was filled up with research projects, both his own and some he owed to Morgane, in addition to the multitude of modifications he still needed to add to the magical plane. Like a floating island for trying out combat spells.

He didn’t really feel like blowing up his garden. Again.

“Star?” Rockhoof quirked his head.

“Sorry friend.” Starswirl turned away from the balcony. “I felt like this discussion had better be kept private. You haven’t told the rest of the colonists much about the Elements, have you?”

“Miles and Emeric know a bit about it… otherwise not really, no. They know about the deal we got with Cernunnos because it’s so important, but I didn’t feel like they should know about the Golden Tree.”

“Probably a good call then.” He turned towards Meadowbrook. “Tea, dear?”

“Hold it a second!” The mare trotted up to him with a glare. “Don’t try to shift the subject. We were talking about Martin.”

“Peppermint and honey then. That should help with the stress.” He said calmly before igniting his horn and summoning a tea set from somewhere inside the tower.

“Star...” Meadowbrook uttered in a low tone, the pregnant Earth Pony already pawing at the ground, much to her husband Rockhoof’s alarm.

“There’s no need for violence Meadow. I swear I’m as concerned by this turn of event as you are.”

“If you were you wouldn’t be so nonchalant!”

“Some things, you just can’t do anything about. This is one of those. I do have Martin’s best interests at heart, I’d swear on it, and don’t get me wrong: this burden that’s piling up on him is concerning...” He paused to fire off a heating spell at the kettle. “… But there is not a single thing that can be done to cut one’s ties to an Element. You and I both know it.”

Meadow snorted. Loudly. She maintained her glare towards Starswirl for a couple seconds more before she stopped when Rockhoof embraced her from behind and she melted in her husband’s hooves, shuddering.

“If there is nothing that can be done Star, then…?” Rockhoof voiced, inquisitively.

“I don’t actually think this will change how he should be raised. Not by much.”

“Faust almighty Star, he’s an Element Bearer!” Meadowbrook raised her voice.

“And if he got the Element in the first place...” Starswirl turned around abruptly after pouring himself a cup of tea. “… then that means he’s of the right material to make it. He wouldn’t have earned it if he couldn’t pull it off. We’re already raising him to become proficient in magic. You, I, even Cernunnos’ influence. The way I see it, he’s going to turn out like much of Celly’s students.”

“Celly, now?”

Starswirl blushed and stroked a hoof over his beard in embarrassment.

“Princess Celestia I mean. Sorry.” He rubbed a hoof against the back of his head. “Hard to stick to decorum when she’s become so informal after her abdication. We hang around each other a lot in Equestria.”

“We’re aware.” Meadowbrook smiled. “What of her students?”

“You know she’s had her ‘prized pupils’ in the past.”

“Yet some of them broke down from sheer stress trying to keep up.”

“Not all of them. Take Twilight for instance. That’s a brilliant mare if I’ve ever seen one, and she carried on with the alicorn spell where I didn’t.”

“You didn’t finish it because only mares can be alicorns.” Rockhoof drawled.

“Among other things.” Star cringed. “I had my reasons. Back to Twilight though, she being an Element Bearer means she could shoulder the burden, and I’m confident such is the case with Martin.”

“Twilight Sparkle was also an arguably unbalanced and socially atrophied mare for the better part of her youth.” Meadowbrook countered. “You’re saying Martin should go down the same path? I’m not sure I can accept that.”

“You know, the good thing with the past is we can take lessons from it, didn’t you know?” Starswirl commented sarcastically after taking a sip of his tea. “Lest you forgot we now have a school in this colony, and kids he can grow up alongside. Martin can get his lessons from us two, grow up to be a good mage, alchemist and Element Bearer, and he can have a social life with colts his age.”

“And when the time comes for the Elements to assemble?” Rockhoof inquired, one hoof tightening around Meadow.

“He’ll be ready. Believe me. He will.” Star confidently told the couple.

Now if the tree’s spirit could just wake up from its dormant state so he could go back and ask for advice. Or even ask the actual names of the Elements, if only so they wouldn’t just refer to them by color.

Or he could just ask Martin when he woke up.

Not unlike what was happening in Savannah, things had moved on quite a bit in the last few days for the folks down in Kings Bay, leading to the creation of a burgeoning colony populated by the one hundred and fifty or so US sailors from USS Georgia.

It turned out that the solar farm they wanted to seize and use as their main power supply was too damaged to be used as it was. Multiple teams of electricians from the fleet then spent their time dismantling the photovoltaic panels and salvaging what they could from the substation before they relocated all those components to the base’s ammo depots. The multitude of well protected bunkers were already fenced off and formed a vast array of mounds they had little difficulty installing all the solar panels on before they hooked them up to a new substation that was actually a converted ammo bunker.

And while the electricians were busy with that, the rest were doing their best fencing off sections of the base so that it could be kept secure with what little personnel they had available, or converting humvees for use by quadrupeds.

Supply-wise: not much trouble. The actual problem was the fauna in those swamps, because they soon turned out cragadiles had joined local gator congregations, and that unlike their smaller brethren, it took either some full-auto 7.62 fire to drive them off, 40mm grenades from underslung launchers, or better yet: a .50 cal for a more lasting solution. And even then the .50 cal sometimes ricocheted off their ridge plates. Bloody saurians were resistant, gotta give them that much. Not mobile by any stretch of imagination however. Even in the water they were far more sluggish than their Earth-born brethren… but you try and stop one when it’s on the offensive.

Except for a couple light injuries though, nothing they couldn’t deal with. The fencing process carried on, which eventuallydivided Kings Bay into three compounds: base housing, the furthest inland with their community gardens, barracks, medical facilities and general utilities; the ammo depots with their power supply along with a water treatment plant – drink swamp water if you want, see how it goes-; and finally the quays where Fugro and Rhine were still tied up along with a small fleet of tugs and patrol boats.

The quays were also where they had most of the offices, warehouses, workshops and garages that tended to the small fleet of six-wheeler trucks and humvees they had managed to repair and retrofit for use by their patrol teams.

All in all it took surprisingly little time to get it done. The wounded that were still undergoing medical care in Rhine and Fugro’s sick bays were slowly transferred to shore facilities once deemed stable enough, the sailors got their briefings and lessons on the new world that awaited them outside the wire, they left them plenty of intel and tips. They even raised a radio relay.

But there always came a time where you had to leave. With Kings Bay all set up and ready to face the world on its own, there was nothing else the sailors of the WSU could do for them. Already, messages were coming over the radio from Savannah that Amandine was done with her own works and cabin conversions, and that the truck stop had become a fully-fledged colony.

Which meant they were technically free to move on and investigate Cuba. Lorelei’s Third Officer had already enlisted the help of the Cadets to prepare the charts for their passage to Havana, all the data was calculated, the tides accounted for, and they even had a meeting point with Amandine somewhere off the coast of Florida provided they sailed slow enough for the last ship in the fleet to catch up with them.

This was how Captain Lorelei found herself on the quay next to her own ship, watching a plume of acrid black smoke rise up from the funnels as her Chief Engineer fired them up. Departure was imminent.

“It’s been a pleasure Lorelei.” She heard Green say as Georgia’s former CO trotted up behind her, the rainbow-maned pegasus having spared some time to make his mane look more professional.

She was tempted to tell him that was futile unless he dyed it.

“Likewise.” She nodded, not taking her eyes off her ship as she watched the gantry crane mounted on Rhine’s deck load up a few containers filled with supplies the US sailors had let them salvage from the base.“You’ll manage with your… men?”

“It’s going to be hard leading them as… a colt.” Green said. “How do you…?”

“Not have a mutiny despite looking like that?” She guessed, showing off her flank.

Lucky her, her new body wasn’t even past puberty yet (and woe her when she faced the heat season that came with it), so there was no further implication to the mare’s gesture than mere emphasis.

“That.” Green confirmed, pushing a strand of his rainbow mane behind his ear with a hoof. “Rugged sailors following… kids.”

“Unless you had issues with your command prior to the Event, I don’t think you’ll have any now. I’m sure they all remember you as you were before. Nothing that changes your wits… at least I’m pretty sure there isn’t.”

Because how the transformation may impact intelligence wasn’t a topic she ever wished to broach. The influence on behavior was sensitive enough already, so how would it go if anyone tried to assert some species were inherently smarter than others?

Badly.

Last she checked anyway, there wasn’t anything that would imply that was the case. Not to a noticeable extent at least.

“I’ll admit it’s not easy.” She went on. “But I think the main reason I wasn’t booted off my position is I have more experience being a Captain than all my Officers. I know the job already. I can lead. And frankly put they have their own problems to deal with and would rather that I hold the hot potato. I don’t think any of my crew gives a damn how old I am so long that the ship is well captained.”

“So long as you’re confident in your position.”

“What are you going to do now anyway?” Lorelei turned to face him.

“The same thing we already said we would.” He explained. “Get settled, build up our forces and our resources… and then we’re going to hit up the mothball fleet and see what we can salvage. We’ve cross-referenced the data you gave us with what’s available on base already. There aren’t any mothballed submarines to salvage, but I spotted a couple candidates in the list. Say… how many sailors do you need to run your ship?”

“Twenty five on a skeleton crew, fifty if you add the barge department to handle the auxiliaries. Why?”

Green shuffled a bit on his hooves before he pulled out a picture from under his uniform with his wing. Lorelei grabbed it in her telekinesis, finding it to show… what looked like a carbon-copy of Rhine Forest, except with a narrower wheelhouse and painted haze gray (the typical ‘navy’ color) instead of her actual black and white paint job.

“So what am I looking at?”

“Potential candidates. I got...” The pegasus colt looked up at the sky in thought. “Three of those in Beaumont. Cape Florida, Cape Farewell and Cape Flattery, all LASH vessels. Any advice?”

Lorelei looked back towards her ship, now finding that they were done loading the supply containers.

“Rhine is a good ship. She’s got great endurance, but don’t forget she was retrofitted very recently.”

“The auxiliaries and the container bay?”

“No, more than that. Before the Event I mean.” She shook her head. “Originally she didn’t have diesel-electric propulsion or azipod thrusters to manoeuvre as easily as she does. LASH designs are… fairly old actually. If the ones you salvage in Beaumont are like Rhine before her retrofit… it’s going to be barebones. Hell, she couldn’t even carry the tugboats before the retrofit. That’s a recent thing too.”

“It’s that extensive?”

“Rhine Forest was built in ‘72. She’s a very old lady, particularly for a cargo ship. Dunno how old those ships you’re going for are, but expect to have to update the crew quarters, redo the whole wheelhouse, replace the propulsion from the ground up, the cargo handling gear...” She paused. “Now that I think about it, it’s pretty much everything that’s not the hull. Don’t get me wrong, in this world the design is actually damn useful if you add the mods we gave Rhine.”

“How so?”

“The auxiliaries. That allows us to have dedicated combat escorts, launch tugs to manoeuvre and handle the barges in low depth, fish with the trawlers, land equipment ashore with the hovercrafts… you get it. Only thing she’s not too good at is launching operations inland. That’s what you want a Ro-Ro in your fleet for.”

“Like Amandine?”

“Like Amandine.” She confirmed.

“And Fugro?”

“Underwater stuff, diving, cable-laying, maybe even a bit of hydrography if she’s set up correctly.”

“Not cargo?”

Lorelei did a face.

“She… technically she could, but she’ll never be as good at the job as a dedicated cargo vessel. The deck cranes help a lot with the handling, but it’s the capacity that’s bad. And everything is carried on deck and left at the mercy of bad weather. Her type of vessels were only ever meant to resupply platforms, not to operate on common trade routes, get it?”

“Sort of, thank you.” Green looked towards the ready-to-depart ships. “I think it’s about time, no?”

“Yes. Best of luck with the salvaging.” She held out a hoof.

“Best of luck with the colonies.” He pressed his hoof against hers. The closest he could think of to a handshake.

And on that note, Lorelei left him to make her way up the gangway before he subordinates raised it. Green watched the little pink unicorn disappear behind her ship’s railing.

An hour later, Rhine and Fugro were gone, no more than a plume of smoke over the horizon, bound for Cuba.

That night, Aleksei found herself once more appearing as a spiritual projection inside of Epona’s realm. She blinked a few times, getting accustomed to the abrupt change of light from her dark cabin to the divinity’s holy plateau before she spotted Epona – as usual standing by her scrying pond with her foal- and bowed down.

For a second Aleksei threw a look at the foal. She had seen Epona give birth to… him. Played the role of midwife even. What a strange new life she was leading.

“Milady.” She finally greeted the Goddess, electing to use Gaelic for good form.

“Rise child, you of all mares should know I’m not too attached to such decorum.” Epona smiled. “Particularly from my own clerics.”

“Proper decorum with divinities is important. I only wish not to fall into bad habits that would garner me the ire of less lenient gods.”

“A good justification if I’ve ever heard any.” She stomped her hoof on the ground, beckoning the hippogriff to come sit by her and her foal near the pond. “I must say I’m happy with your actions already.”

“My actions?” Aleksei repeated, one ear tilting ever-so-slightly in confusion.

“Converting one of your shipmates wasn’t too big of an achievement, but it’s a milestone. Lady Sri’s prayers have already reached me and I’ve even influenced her dreams somewhat to soothe her confusions. I can’t wait for a proper conversion ceremony.”

“I’m glad to know she’s happy...” Aleksei looked down at the pond.

“And she seems willing enough to fill the void in her life through Celtic faith, but this is not what I was referring to.” Epona smiled. “Believe it or not, but you explaining your role as cleric and showing off your magic to those colonists netted us a dozen new followers.”

“I... uh...” Aleksei stammered. “A dozen? I thought they were just looking out of curiosity, not that they would actually… did they pray or something?”

“The formulation was a bit… haphazard to put it mildly, but it was enough for me and some other divinities to manifest ourselves in their dreams and seal the deal, so to speak. This is great news for all those that share the Celtic faith.”

“Thank you milady.”

“However, this does spark a new… issue, to deal with.” Epona looked down into her pond. Her eyes shone, and the waters shifted to show two earth ponies – a stallion and a mare- walking side by side. “Our ideology was designed for humans, and I can tell you the halls of the Tuath Dé are in perpetual debates as to what suits the world best.”

“I’m not sure I understand where you’re going with this.”

“I noticed the griffons you hang around with. The two couples. I noticed the way they mate for life to form families, the details...” Epona tilted her head slightly. “Family is the building block of a strong society. Without it, the males run around wildly doing nothing to help the world advance, the females become vapid parasites living off what they can steal, and the children are either used as pawns or outright abandoned. No society can survive like that for long.”

“So… you want everyone to mate for life like griffons?”

“Actually I don’t. Some would benefit from such a scheme, humans most likely would if given a magic ritual to develop griffon-levels of pair-bonding… but ponies aren’t griffons which aren’t dragons either. And yet all must form families eventually. Hence, I give you this mission: study the mating habits of all species in this fair new world, gather what information you can, and help me figure out what sort of family unit we have to encourage for which species. I am a fertility goddess. Many would believe I have to encourage wanton lust and orgies.”

There was a pause.

“Do you, milady?”

“I am one god among many. What I would like to encourage doesn’t necessarily fit what our whole pantheon suggests as a whole. What I can say is that a family is meant to produce and raise offspring. What we have to figure out now, is what kind of family a species needs to produce the most children while raising them properly so that one generation can stand on the shoulders of the previous one. If such involves creating a ritual so species that aren’t griffons may pair-bond the way they do, so be it. But I’d be surprised if it were the case. Understood?”

“I understand.” Aleksei nodded slowly. “This… this will not be easy, but I’ll do my best to compile all the data I have at my disposal.”

“Thank you Lady Aleksei, you’re a good cleric.”

“I’m flattered, milady.” She thanked the equine divinity as she stood up, already feeling her ethereal self fade away with the end of her dreamwalk. She was waking up.

“And… Aleksei?”

“Milady?”

“Learn to relax. Have fun. Practice your spells.” Epona smirked. “Use banishment sometime. Just for fun. I won’t mind if you blow up a tree or a wall with the spell.”

Author's Notes:

I often wind up with idle questions like that writing this story. For all the variety there is in species, it would be a bit of a stretch to assume they would all benefit from the same family structure. There's been several theories regarding ponies on the subject, and there's also the peculiarity with dragons and their slow aging process (and the fact they don't seem to have a problem with leaving their unhatched eggs under the supervision of what amounts to a bunch of teens)...

Just the kind of thought that passes through my head at times.

On another note: that's the Georgia arc done with.