//------------------------------//
// Chapter 8: Trial by Fire 
// Story: The Engineer’s Wings 
// by Keeper of time RD 
//------------------------------//

The chaos of battle was all around Scootaloo. Streams of bullets here, flashes of lightning there, mercenary prop-planes and Wonderbolt Lightning Bolt Mark 2’s weaving all over the place in the mother of all dogfights. Speaking of the Wonderbolts, they were clearly outnumbered at least 10 to 1.

And yet Scootaloo managed to follow Rainbow Dash’s Mark 2 for about fifteen seconds before she lost track of which Mark 2 was hers. In the filly’s defense, unless you were close enough to make out the cutie mark painted on the tail, all of the Wonderbolt’s planes looked the same.

That said, when two Mark 2’s wove past each other, Scoots chose to follow the one that had two enemies on its tail, shooting down one and causing the other to brake away. It took about five seconds for her to notice that she was now protecting the ‘wrong’ Wonderbolt.

Jumping on her radio she said, “Rainbow Dash! I’ve lost sight of you!”

Even as she called out, the orange filly pulled away from protecting one Wonderbolt plane to another, This one having three enemies on its tail. Punching the storm cloud connected to her ion cannon a few times, she managed to get one bolt to land, sending another merc plane down and scattering the other two into evasive maneuvers.

“Don’t sweat it, Squirt! I still see you! Just make your way to the north edge of the battle and we’ll join back up there!” Dash answered over the radio, the boom of her own ion cannons catching the mic before the transmission cut off.

Then a stream of bullets whizzed by in front of Scootaloo’s fighter. Pulling up hard she shot almost straight up and did a spin. Although she did it only to fly erratically, this spin also resulted in her silver plane reflecting the sun into the eyes of anyone looking right at her plane. Conveniently enough this bothered the enemies chasing her much more than the Wonderbolts looking to shoot down those chasing the silver jet fighter.

However, this maneuver caught the attention of more than just the planes on the battlefield.


* * * * * * *


Spitfire muttered a curse under her breath as she darted over to the nearest radio.

Right as she hit the broadcast button the silver fighter plane she was watching dove through the dogfight, scoring another shoot down before it pulled out heading north.

“Courier Seven! What the heck are you thinking? Get your tail back in here this instant!” the captain of the Wonderbolts shouted into the microphone.

The response that came wasn’t the voice of a filly, instead it was the male voice of a Wonderbolt named Rapid Fire. “I’m guessing she’s thinking she just saved my hide. Oh, and captain, I don’t think you invited her to this morning’s briefing. So I doubt she’s on this frequency.”

The eyes of the yellow pegasus shrank into dots as she realized she couldn’t recall the silver plane. Turning her gaze down to the instrument panel Spitfire pushed the button for the intercom.

“Engineering! What were you thinking launching a civilian into a firefight?”

If looks could kill, the microphone would have melted into slag under the gaze Spitfire was giving it.

A short moment later, the speakers once more crackled to life, this time with the sound of the maintenance chief’s voice. “You said launch ALL fighters, and last I checked a Lightning Bolt Mark 1 is a fighter jet.”

The pony on the other end of the intercom continued to speak, but whatever else he said fell on deaf ears.

“No,” Spitfire whispered in a tone of pure dread. “I can’t have her blood on my hooves, too.”

Then she pushed the intercom button again, and said, “Get my plane ready for launch.”


* * * * * * *


A Wonderbolt fighter jet shot down two enemy planes that had lined up behind Scootaloo before passing in front of her.

“Told ya I’d keep an eye on you!” Rainbow Dash said over the radio, as the blue and yellow plane rocked its wings.

Scootaloo released a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding and answered, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Getting shot at is scary.”

“Then don’t thank me yet. Somepony needs to silence those cannons on the enemy airship. I don’t need you to get too close to the airship, but I do need you to keep the fighters off me while I take care of it. So kid, can I count of you for that?”

The filly pilot looked back toward the Cloudsdale. A gash had been blown in the side and cloud was leaking out of the hole. Rainbow Dash was right. Even with its own defensive cannons returning fire, the cloud ship couldn’t take much more punishment before it would be forced down. It needed help from the fighters, and it needed it now.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Scootaloo envisioned Apple Bloom shaking in fear, trying to hide somewhere in their room. Oddly enough she also imagined Sweetie Belle with her face plastered to the window cheering her and the Wonderbolts on and even wishing she was out in the firefight.

Shaking the thoughts of the suicidally adventurous unicorn filly from her mind, Scootaloo refocused on the damage to the ship that said filly was on.

“I’ll try my best,” she finally answered.

“That’s all I ask. Now let’s go!”

With that Rainbow Dash turned her plane back toward the fight and Scootaloo followed.

As they headed for the enemy airship, five planes broke away from the main fight, assembled into formation and moved to intercept the two jets.

Dash turned to face the enemy formation head on. She managed four shots of her ion cannon before she zipped past them, scoring four shoot downs in the process. Scootaloo had turned a little wider thus avoiding the hail of bullets sent at Dash’s plane. The filly also managed to kick four shots out of her cannon, one even taking down the last enemy plane before it could turn onto Dash’s tail.

“Nice shooting, Squirt! But this is as far as you need to go! Stay out of the flack cannon’s range. I can handle this part myself!” Rainbow Dash called over the radio.

The orange filly didn’t need to be told twice. Banking hard, she peeled away from the attack run, perfectly happy to not go anywhere near the enemy airship with at least ten flack cannons on the top deck. And yet even as she put as much distance between herself and every enemy she could, she could only watch in awe as Dash’s plane wove its way through the exploding flack shots with unreal precision.

Scoots wasn’t sure how any plane could manage to last more than two seconds with so many explosions all around it, yet Rainbow Dash not only lasted, but was dodging everything thrown at her so well that her plane hadn’t even acquired any damage visible from the filly’s distance.


And once the Wonderbolt was through the flack field, she returned fire with lightning, raking the side of the airship. The row of long-range cannons exploded one by one as lightning bolt after lightning bolt came from Dash’s cannons. The instant her targets exploded in flashes of ionic destruction, Rainbow Dash rolled and dove, causing her plane to slip underneath the airship. Continuing to dive low, she skimmed along the snow-covered treetops until those manning the flack cannon finally managed to figure out where their target had gone. By the time the flack cannons spun around and opened up on her again, she was already halfway out of their range, so with a little more evasive flying she was quickly free from their threat.

Any sigh of relief Rainbow Dash might have given was cut short by a cry over the radio.

“Help!”

Spotting the only silver jet in the sky was easy enough. It seemed Scootaloo had three enemy planes on her tail. At the moment she seemed to be doing a repeat performance of climbing and spinning. Unfortunately, this time her pursuers didn’t seem phased as they managed to stay on target and dodge any fire being sent their way.

Dash put her throttle to full and slammed a hoof on the button for her afterburners. Surging forward she aimed for her fill-in wingpony and hit her radio.

“I’m coming! Just hold out for ten seconds!”


Scootaloo cringed as she heard the sound of the air change for the third time in as many seconds. Which meant that there were three new bullet holes in the cabin of her plane. Half of her mind was thanking her lucky stars that SHE hadn’t been hit by any of the bullets that had made it in here. The other half of her mind was wondering if she even owned enough pegasus tape to patch up all the damage her jet plane was taking.

The part of her mind thankful for still being alive was also trying very hard to keep her that way and decided that this would be a good time to bank hard and dive for speed. Doing just that, she also found the lone Wonderbolt plane out away from the main dogfight, the one she knew was Rainbow Dash, and made another hard turn to start heading more or less toward the one pony she knew was trying to help her.

Another stream of bullets informed her that she’d been flying straight for more then a half second, allowing those chasing her to try aiming again.

Rolling to the side and giving climbing another shot bought her a moment’s reprieve from the sound of bullets bouncing off of her plane’s wings. Glancing back at her enemies, she growled at what she saw.

Steam clouds were being left in the wakes of the three planes chasing her.

She wasn’t surprised as she had seen them using steam boosters as soon as she’d launched from the Cloudsdale. The large cylinders under each wing of the prop-planes were the steam boosters. They were basically fancy bottle rockets. But it was enough to let a propeller-driven plane keep up with a jet for about thirty seconds or so.

Just as the three enemy planes were lining up to unleash another burst of gunfire, all three exploded so quickly that Scootaloo only heard one crack of thunder, despite the obvious fact that three shots had been fired. It took another second before her mind realized that the flashes had come from the opposite direction as Rainbow Dash’s plane.

Sure enough, another Wonderbolt Mark 2 zoomed out of the mess of a dogfight and flew a loop around Scootaloo’s still ascending Mark 1. Then the Mark 2 cut its engines, stalled, flipped over and fired its engines back up to dive back into the dogfight with a vengeance.

After breathing a sigh of relief, Scootaloo hopped on her radio and asked, “Who was that?”

As Rainbow Dash’s plane slid into formation ahead of Scootaloo’s, the elder pilot answered, “Only pony I know who can fly like that is Spitfire. But she rarely flies combat missions, so I wonder what these poor mercs did to tick her off? Heh, I guess it doesn’t matter now. Come on! Let’s get back in there!”

With that Dash dove back into the fight. Scoots only lingered a second to calm herself before following.