Disclaimer: I do not own Halo or My Little Pony. They belong to Microsoft/343 Industries and Hasbro respectfully but all original content is mine.
Prologue: Nothing But Ocean [Revised]
The night on the high seas was frigidly cold and moonless, but the stars were out. Lighting up the sky like guiding torches to show the way home, like the Princess of the Night, had intended herself to do so.
The twin funnel, crystal white passenger liner ENMS New Harmony steamed unabated through the Celestia Sea. Its propellers fed by twin reciprocating steam and magical tome engines built by Equestria's most exceptional lead shipbuilding company Baltimare Designs.
The pine brown Earth stallion didn't a watch to remind him of the time. By his honed years of experience at sea, by his reckoning, it was almost an hour till midnight, his shift in the crows' nest for the night-shift coming to an end.
He, like one of the many crewponies of his kind, served with professionalism aboard the last leading and of the three remaining of the Equestrian Navy and Merchant Shipping New Harmony-class of liners.
Below, strolling the decks, delighted voices came from the few passengers who braved the cold and gaze upon the starry sky.
"Wonderful sight, isn't it, dear?"
"Indeed, it is."
Standing comfortably with hoof under chin, the Earth crewpony surveyed the smooth glass surface that was the sea.
He began to ponder in excitement as to how so many things have changed for the better for everypony in Equestria, ever since they steamed out of the Gryphonian Empire's protective waters three days ago.
The Earth crewpony thought about what things the Royal Crystal Ambassadorial Party aboard would bring about with the new treaty of peaceful relations reached between both nations. He gazed up at the show of the flowing aurora borealis.
A combined spectacular display of colours, dancing with the stars in the night sky above, the vibrant, dazzling hues of purple and the rose-red of this show tonight dominating over the neon greens, blues and pinks of the previous two nights.
Another great treat to his end shift on another graceful night.
A whistle blew from below, and the Earth crewpony exhaled the deep refreshing breath. He began his climb down the ladder to allow the other crewpony below to take his place when everything so perfect not took a terrifying turn.
All of a sudden the ship decided to take an abrupt detour, heaving hard to starboard and racing down a massive rolling face of a rogue wave as if it was plunging headfirst into the bowels of Tartarus itself.
As the ship pitched and rolled erratically, some unknown force seemed to take hold of the maritime vessel and began jarring nonstop like it was ploughing straight into pack ice and kept going.
Events that occurred below decks was like a scene from a horror movie as metal buckets, silverware, and anything else that had a magnetic quality shot forward towards where the bow of the ship would be facing.
A unicorn waitress that had been softly singing absentmindedly to herself as she polished the silverware in the first-class galley was nearly pegged to the opposite wall when a tray full of forks, knives and spoons flew at her as she screamed.
The sudden motion sent the startled Earth crewpony off his ladder for the remaining rungs and onto his back, as well as waking every passenger and casting the off duty crew out from their reasonably comfy bunk beds from their slumber.
The crewponies still out on deck had their eyes wide as saucers, pupils shrunk to the size of pinpricks, and mouths open wide in terrified horror as they stared up at what had become of the breathtaking sky above for lightning crashed overhead at an electrifying pace.
The cruiseliner reached the bottom of the rogue wave and knifed into the seawater, the ocean emptying over the prow and gunwales like it didn't exist.
The churning white water blasted across the open deck like a dam had burst open; catching crewponies and passengers outside alike into its tossing embrace, hurling them unforgivingly into the superstructure's metal walls.
From his view from the bridge, the veteran pony captain of the ENMS New Harmony mouth fell open as the lightning flashes illuminated a danger that loomed ahead.
In all his years out at sea, he could not believe what he saw. A section of the sea – about three miles out – began to part and dropped away. Two entire geysers of spray blasting high into the air, revealing in its parting centre nothing but a sheer drop into inky blackness.
"Cap'n! The maelstrom! It's sucking us in!" A holler from his first officer roused the captain from his frozen state.
The captain bellowed to the officer at the helm, racing horn aglow for the engine order telegraphs on either side with his XO, "HARD TO PORT!"
"Aye, Cap'n'! Hard to port!"
The wheel was turned feverishly in the commanded direction, while in simultaneous dings, both telegraphs changed from 'Full - Ahead' to 'Full - Astern'.
A junior officer near the helm watched through the rain-streaked bridge windows, his body feeling the same dread like everyone was as the liner ploughed through the raging sea straight for it, urging faintly through gritted teeth, "Come on, turn. Turn. Turn, girl, turn..."
The gap in the ocean ahead continued to grow wider and wider, and in turn came closer and closer all the while the storm ramped up in intensity, the pelting rain coming down in thick sheets.
"Is it hard over?!" the first officer yelled in trepidation.
"It is! Yes, sir, hard over!"
Dead ahead, the gap in the sea had spread so wide that, when another series of lightning bolts speared into it, the captain could've sworn he saw six silhouetted shapes of a pod of whales and their calves swimming through the water.
"By Celestia..."
Then, with a slight tilting to the deck, and much to the grateful relief of all the crew and captain, the ship began to veer away.
Resounding cheers of pure happiness followed by the applause of hooves went up from everypony on board as the ship turned from the danger.
From utter disaster, the ship spared a tragic fate.
They were saved.
Saved...
Saved until the storm above unleashed its unbridled fury on the liner that nopony could've predicted.
As the ship turned side on to the open pit in the sea, the gusting winds astern from the storm blew against the hull, giving an unwarranted helping hoof at pushing the ship back towards the danger, much to the sheer heart-wrenching horror of everypony on the bridge and those watching on deck.
With the portside acting like a gigantic metal sail and under the ever sucking pull of the ocean draining into the pit, the stern end of the passenger liner slewed about, the rear pointing arse first towards the ocean opening until it slithered out over the edge — the propellers churning uselessly in empty air.
In desperation to prevent the ship from going any further, the two anchors at the bow were released.
The anchor chains rumbled out with a clattering clamour as the ship eased even further out over the precipice, the deck began to tilt at an incline.
More lightning struck out of the storm as another bolt hit the forward funnel of the liner followed by another striking the same place a scant second later. The tremendous surges of enormous energy from the lightning strikes caused the protective lightning rod of the twin stacks to become overtaxed.
As the anchor chains snapped tautly, the anchors firmly snagging something on the bottom of the sea, a third strike struck the funnel lightning rod.
Overloaded the rod couldn't disperse the energy in time and exploded. A wave of hazy purplish-blue shot out and travelled throughout the entirety of the ship. Knocking out everything left and right that was electrical or magical.
Lighting, radios, the two crewponies still actively using the radiotelegraph to put out the distress call for help, and placed havoc with every unicorn and sole alicorn aboard abilities to use any magic of any form.
As the occurring chaos rampaged his stricken ship, the captains' attention was focused elsewhere as his ears picked up a deep, reverberating, thrumming rumble much like thunder from in storming night above.
Staring up from the wing bridge of his afflicted vessel, the captain bore witness to a monstrous bulbous blunt yet elegantly curved object knifing through storm clouds towards them.
Whatever this thing was, the captain noticed it was not heading for them specifically but directly for the wide-open inky blackness of the chasm they were balancing over.
"Oh, buck me…" the captain breathed as the humungous unidentified flying object clipped the tail end of the ocean liner.
CRUNCH
One of the alien space ship's four fins protruding from the underside of its immense silver-purple prow made contact with the oceanliner's overhanging stern, just behind the second funnel, cutting straight through like a hot knife through butter.
The collision not only served to sever the entire rear half off but also served to pull the rest of the ship, snapping its two anchor chains from the bow like wet twine.
By the time the ENMS Zephyr arrived an hour later at the given latitude and longitude coordinates according to the received SOS distress call from the stricken liner, there was nothing to be seen but the scattered clearing of the reported storm.
No maelstrom looking whirlpool.
No void in the ocean.
No bottomless abyss.
No ship.
No wreckage.
No lifeboats.
No sign of the listed 1483 souls of the passengers that were aboard before departing on its fiftieth transcelestic voyage from the Gryphonian Empire back to Equestria. Although it would be many stressful hours until the news of this tragedy would reach the two princess sisters in Canterlot.
The tragic story of the ship lost at sea would send waves of grief-stricken sadness through the both of them, an empire, the rest of pony kind of the Equestrian nation.
But there was one place that would be hit the hardest to the news. One purple alicorn living within one very one-off town by the name of:
Ponyville.
A/N: You can find me and this story on under Ethereal Shadow