The Engineer’s Wings

by Keeper of time RD


Chapter 3: Over the Mountains

“Heh, Ah guess Ah’m busted,” the earth pony filly said.

“What are you doing here?” Scootaloo asked, while directing a scowl at her friend.

“At the moment, Ah’m hoping we’re too far from Ponyville for ya to consider turning around and dropping me off.”

The young pegasus shook her head slowly and said, “It’s your funeral.”

“Why do ya say that?”

As Scootaloo slid back down into the pilot’s seat, she answered, “This isn’t a normal delivery. I have to stay with Sweetie Belle until she’s done with all the spirit key stuff and then bring her back home. So we could be out of town for days.”

“Oh,” was all Apple Bloom could say. A look of dread came over her face as she realized just what that meant.

“Yep, Applejack’s gonna skin you alive when she finds out you ditched school several days in a row.” Scootaloo quickly added, “Sweetie Belle, do you mind sharing the back seat?”

“Not at all!” the unicorn filly answered happily. Then she slid over as far as her harness would allow and tapped her hoof to invite the farm filly up off the floor.

* * * * * * *

For a while they simply flew on with the Unicorn Mountains on the horizon growing ever closer.

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle passed most of the time talking to each other. Although every now and then they’d come up with a question that Scootaloo had to answer. Like when Sweetie asked why ‘CMC03’ was written on the plane, and she had to explain what a tail number was. Or when Apple Bloom didn’t know why the air in the plane’s wake had rainbow sparkles in it, so Scoots had to explain that it was a because the engine used liquid rainbow as it’s fuel.

As the forested hills at the base of the Unicorn Mountains forced Scootaloo to ascend to a higher altitude, she noticed some movement below and ahead of them.

Of course seeing as her passengers were in the back seat, and neither had enchanted goggles on, only the young pegasus holding the stick could see the dozen or so gyro-copters rising out of the forest ahead.

“Uh, Apple Bloom… You might want to hold on to something.”

“Why? Is something wrong?” Bloom asked, picking up the worry in her friend’s voice.

“Yeah, we got sky pirates coming up to intercept us.”

“Pirates?” Bloom gulped.

“Pirates?!” Sweetie said, as she excitedly did her best to stand up and look out.

Scootaloo took a breath and said, “Relax, I got this. Just don’t distract me once they start shooting at us.”

“Wait? Shooting?” Sweetie asked, finally sounding as nervous as Bloom.

“How else would they force someone to land so they can loot what’s left?”

Scootaloo’s question went unanswered. Which was fine by her given that she wanted to concentrate on the other aircraft around her. They seemed to be in groups of three, spread out just enough that any two could gain firing range if she tried to fly through the gaps in their formations.

The airplane pilot pushed the throttle to full and aimed for the northernmost group of gyros. Pushing the nose down slightly she accelerated even faster. Keeping her eyes locked on to the closest gyro-copter as she closed the distance she waited for the right moment to make her next move.

A second later that moment came.

Lights flashed and puffs of cloud formed from the front of the gyro-copter as its steam-powered machine guns opened up. Scootaloo pushed her plane into a sudden right turn and pulled up. Sweetie Belle gave a squeaky ‘eep’ when she saw yellow streaks zip past nearby.

As two more sets of yellowish-orangeish lines were painted in the sky just outside the cockpit, the young pegasus pushed her plane to the left and back into a shallow dive. By the time she made another right turn all three streams of bullets were coming from behind. Then as she leveled out, the enemy fire stopped.

“Aww Yeah! I didn’t even hear them touch the paint job!” Scootaloo cheered.

“Is it over? That’s it?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Yep!”

“That wasn’t even two seconds!”

That got a giggle out of Scootaloo. “Yeah, gyros can’t really keep up with airplanes. So one pass is all they get. If they don’t shoot you down with that, they just have to go home empty hoofed.”

With a round of relieved sighs and a few laughs to relieve the tension of having faced danger the three youngsters continued their journey through the sky, up and over the Unicorn Mountains.

* * * * * * *

When they’d finally cleared the spine of the mountain range they found a blanket of overcast below them, preventing them from seeing the ground as they continued northward. This forced Scootaloo to do her best to use the mountain peaks poking through the clouds to guess their location.

As the sun approached the 4‘o clock position in the sky the pegasus filly frowned at the fact that they were sill flying over a sea of clouds.

“We should be over the rendezvous point,” Scootaloo announced with a sigh. Then she added, “Can you two help me look for a hole in the clouds?”

“Umm, sure. Why exactly are we looking for a hole?”

“Because there’s no way I’m descending blind through the clouds. I need a hole that I can see the ground through, so we can get below the clouds and search for the landing place. There should be a spare set of pilot’s goggles in my stuff back there, if one of you wants to use them to look down easier,” she added.

With a round of nods three young sets of eyes started scanning the clouds around them.

After a few minutes of quiet searching, Sweetie Belle broke the silence. “Ooh ooh! Over there! Is that good enough?” she asked, pointing a hoof to the east.

Sure enough Scootaloo spotted a patch of green through the clouds.

“Perfect!”

With that she pointed the plane toward it, and smiled even wider as they neared and she could see that it was more than big enough to dive through. And more importantly, she could see that the trees were a good thousand feet down, and that there was several hundred feet of clear sky between the bottom of the cloud layer and the ground.

Scootaloo nosed down and dove through the tunnel of water vapor. As they reach the end the fluffy passage opened up to reveal forested hills and the base of the mountains. A scattered lake here or there dotted the forest, and just like the forests around them, all was shrouded in the shade of the overcast day that had found its way to this part of Equestria.

However, nothing on the ground jumped out as a landing field.

“If anypony sees something like a landing field… or any sign of whoever it is we’re supposed to meet with, say something.”

With the pilot’s request, the other two fillies once again set their eye to the search.

“Ah think Ah see something moving over there!” Apple Bloom called out, pointed a hoof to the southwest.

Squinting her eyes, Scootaloo also thought she saw something appear from behind a mountain for a moment, before it circled back out of view. That was good enough for her. After all there didn’t seem to be anything else worth flying toward around here.

As they crested the hill and gained line of sight on another part of the mountain valleys, all three fillies gasped at what they found.