Fumble Mini-Update!

Alternate Title: This story will never die.

Hoy, ladies and gents! Damn, I've gone quiet for a while, haven't I? Well, not to worry, people, because the crew's been hard at work getting the re-write done piece by piece, and we've got a preview for you all!

The attacking ship cut through the sky with a speed that made Spyglass shudder. It was clearly a light craft, intended for a crew of perhaps fifteen, maybe twenty ponies to operate, but even a very light craft should have trouble making that kind of speed, or turning quite so sharply. Not with only a single, red-maned unicorn on deck, her magical aura gripping some kind of clockwork apparatus which might have been a steering column. Within moments it had overtaken the Iris and wheeled to face it. Spyglass sucked in his breath.

“Are they trying to ram us?” Patch could barely contain his disbelief and confusion. “They’ll do more damage to themselves than our ship!”

It was then that Spyglass got a good look at it. The weapon mounted on the smaller ship’s prow seemed innocuous enough. Where any other airship might have included a figurehead or similar decoration, this craft had mounted a single, wide-barreled cannon, bolted to the deck to avoid recoil. He wouldn’t have worried much about an unmanned gun had he not seen faint violet sparkles gathering around its barrel.

Pure instincts flared to life within Spyglass. “Mr. Patch, remain on the deck and prepare to take command in my absence if something goes wrong! Mr. Oracle, get below decks and adjust our arcane engine’s output, we’re going to make a manual turn! Everypony else with wings, follow me! We’re giving the Iris a hard shove toward starboard!”

For all their faults, not one member of the Farsight pirates would be willing to so much as hesitate when they heard Spyglass’s voice take that particular tone. They launched themselves into their tasks with a vigor nopony aboard the ship had felt since the days before they had found Velvet. There was a blur of wings as Spyglass and fully half the crew positioned themselves on the port side of the Iris. “On my mark!” Spyglass’s voice echoed. “Three… two…”

The violet sparks around the barrel of the attacking ship’s weapon had coalesced into a gleaming, iridescent orb at the barrel’s center. Spyglass imagined he could hear a dim rumbling. “PUSH!” he shouted. His crew went to it with a will.

With a great, concerted shove, the Iris banked, turning sharply to starboard and out of the way of its oncoming foe. Before it had quite finished, a burst of light traced itself through the air. It reminded Spyglass of a lance made of bright, violet light and came within inches of piercing through the Iris entirely. As it was, a loud ‘crack’ greeted his ears as it clipped the railing of the ship’s stern, reducing a section to nothing but kindling. “What in hellgates?”

Vex stared in awe at the attacking ship, reading its name as it swiftly banked and darted out of range of the Iris guns. “The Little Dragon,” she muttered as she caught a glimpse at the nameplate on its side. “Incredible!” She whirled to face Space Jam. “Did you manage to see what it just fired at us?”

Space Jam’s mouth was hanging open as he tried to process what he had just witnessed. He closed it, returning his attention to Vex. “Some kind of magical cannon, probably meant to replicate the concussive effects of several unicorns casting a burst of manipulation magic on a single point. Normally impossible to cause this much damage with, but if what they’re actually doing is pressurizing the air, then I suppose-”

“Do you understand what this means?” Vex was practically doing an excited dance as she struggled to find a better vantage point and get a look at the Little Dragon, which was now circling back. “Arcane cannons are barely operational as a technology yet, and the only existing specimens I’m aware of are all in use in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, mounted to dreadnought-class or higher warships! That little craft must have somehow incorporated a dreadnought-class arcane engine’s output into a small frame! Not only that, but with only one visible pony it’s highly likely that it’s being run by a skeleton crew. This is incredible! Ships like this shouldn’t have been possible for at least ten, maybe twenty years- no, when you factor in the accuracy and power of that cannon, it’s possibly even half a century ahead of its time! Who built this?”

“Vex?” Jam interrupted. “Do you know of any way to stop that cannon from firing?”

Vex frowned. “Well, I’m not sure. Why?”

“Because they’re already in position and I can see it charging for another shot.”

Spyglass cursed as he caught a glimpse of the telltale violet sparks gathering once more. Most of his crew was now outside the ship. In the time it would take to marshal them into a new position to manually dodge again, that weapon would have already smashed the deck. There was little choice. “You lot on deck, return fire!” he shouted, before frantically gesturing to the rest of the crew to follow him. Every second was of the essence. He could only hope that somehow they would be fast enough.

On deck, Eye Lash giggled with delight at the order. “Ooh, my favorite part!” Whirling his pistol into position he carefully lined it up with the single, visible unicorn on the other ship’s deck and fired. The bullet whizzed through the air, a messenger of certain death. And then-
The sound, everypony agreed later, was something like hearing a bug fly into a lightning jar on a hot summer afternoon.

Eye grimaced at the rapidly-receding bright green sphere which had surrounded the enemy vessel. “That’s cheating,” he harrumphed. “If you’re going to shoot at me, I demand equal chance to shoot back. It’s not sporting otherwise!”

“I don’t think they’re very concerned about that!” Space Jam yelled above the crackling noises surrounding the Little Dragon’s barrel. At this point, it was hard to say whether Spyglass and the others would make it in time. An acrid smell filled the air.
Jam sniffed. “Sulfur…?”

“Probably a byproduct of running their arcane engine at full power,” Vex muttered.

“Full power?” Jam blinked. “Wait, then- of course! That weapon isn’t firing shot, it’s firing pure magic! They’re charging and not reloading because it’s gathering power from the engine!”

Vex caught onto his meaning almost immediately. “I see, then. Velvet, fire on that ship! Full barrage!”

“THIS UNIT WILL COMMENCE FIRING.” Velvet’s gears whirred, and she seemed dangerously close to overheating for a moment. Then every weapon available to her use seemed to emerge and discharge in the general direction of the Little Dragon at once. Each, in turn, slammed into the sphere of light, which had expanded once more.

“As I suspected.” Jam smiled, then turned. “Captain, we bought you the time we need! Push!”

“Appreciated, Mr. Jam!” Spyglass bellowed, not wasting any energy to confirm the details. Instead, he and his crew threw their backs into another push, this time hard to port. Seconds after they had passed ,the second shot rippled by them.
The remaining crew on deck scurried about. Patch frowned. “How did you two know that was going to work?”

“It was a hunch on my part, but as soon as I realized that cannon was drawing energy away from the ship’s engine, I thought perhaps we could get it to split its thaums between offensive and defensive capabilities, thereby-” Jam paused as Patch stared blankly. “Ah. Vex, perhaps you should handle this one.”

“Gladly,” Vex chirped. “Basically, that ship has an arcane engine on board that’s far higher quality and output than what it needs to actually stay aloft, allowing for incredible bursts of speed and the use of that concentrated magical weapon and shield. But given the size of that ship, it’s unlikely it has the room for more than one engine. That means if it’s charging the energy, it can’t charge as quickly and still throw up a shield, and if it’s doing both of those it can’t be diverting excess energy to movement. If they’re forced to use the shield, they won’t be able to return fire as quickly.”

“So we can just keep shooting at them and they’ll run out of power?” Patch asked. “Seems like a lame design, if that’s the case.”

“Oh no, they’ll still be able to shoot at us. We’ll just stand a better chance of dodging if we force them to slow down the interval between shots.” Vex continued smiling, still looking out at the Little Dragon with longing. “What I wouldn’t give to see how the shipwright ran the output from the engines to that cannon. I haven’t even heard of such a thing!”

“It’s less practical than just using magic to accelerate a conventional shot, but agreed. Firing a beam with that much force behind it would require a good hundred unicorns or so to focus their magical energies on one spot. If nothing else, it /looks/ intimidating.” Jam stared down the Little Dragon as well, contemplating it as it swung back. “We have to do something about that shield.”
Spyglass lighted on the deck, along with a few crew members. “Another push like that isn’t going to happen in a hurry,” he grumbled. “Takes it out of the crew and eventually they’re going to just move in close and ram us with that bubble of theirs if we don’t start firing back. Mr. Jam, do you happen to have a plan?”

“I do,” Vex replied, stepping in between the two. “At least, if Jam can disable the shield I do. Even a few seconds should be enough.”
Jam stroked his chin with a hoof thoughtfully. “Give me a minute to study it and I might be able to. It looks like a standard bubble barrier, the kind nobles use for private events or to lock down cities under threat of invasion. They’re hard to deal with when they’re big, but one of that size? A single unicorn might be all we need to disrupt it.”

“In that case, I’m going to buy you some time.” Spyglass turned hoof and roared his orders. “Right, listen up! Everypony to your stations immediately! Gunners, load up on my mark! We’re going to fire so many broadsides into that half-sized excuse for a ship that it’ll look like kindling by the time we’re through!”

A roar of approval went up from the crew as they went to their tasks with a will. Vex frowned. “He doesn’t really mean that, does he? Destroying that ship would be a crime against shipwrights and artificers everywhere!”
Jam chuckled in spite of himself. “The Academy has no idea how much they lost by not taking you in and offering you tenure instead of sending the guard after you, do they?”

Spyglass strode below the decks, bellowing his orders in rapid succession to each gunner. Broadside after broadside was launched from the Iris’s cannons, but each one impacted against the side of the Dragon’s shield to no avail. It was as if he were firing each shot into the sea. And to make matters worse, now that he had fully staffed the guns, another last-ditch turn was out of the question. In the distance, he could already see the Dragon beginning to move closer to the Iris, intending no doubt to close the distance gap and finish them in one fell swoop with that main gun.

“I’ll be damned if I’m sunk by a noble’s pleasure-yacht with a few magical trinkets aboard!” He roared. “Port side gunners, fire!”

As the noise of his cannon filled the ship, Spyglass grunted. There was, of course, another problem. A magical cannon like the /Dragon’s/ could be fired, presumably, as long as the ship’s arcane engine was feeding power to it. Cannons could only be fired so long as the Iris still had cannon shot aboard. There hadn’t been enough time in Tradewinds to restock the ammunition supplies for the ship’s guns.

“Reload! Reload like your lives depend on it, which they do! And aim… Port side gunners, fire!”
The steady barrage of orders left his lips again, and Spyglass fumed internally. His ship and his crew were in the greatest danger they had faced in their entire naval career, and he had been reduced to merely shouting empty orders to buy time for a few unicorns he had run into by chance in a merchant town.

He couldn’t help but think that this, too, was all somehow Eye Lash’s fault.

And there you go, fellow readers. A preview into progress! There'll be more coming soon, so keep your eyes peeled, everyone!