The next morning, Rainbow Dash found herself delivering orders to Scootaloo from Spitfire. Unsurprisingly those orders were to stay on the Cloudsdale when Dash was deployed for a mission.
However, with most of the Wonderbolts looking favorably on the youngsters now, they found themselves feeling free to explore the ship instead of being forced to stay in their cabin. As a result of this friendlier attitude from the cloud ship’s crew Apple Bloom soon found herself in the map room, learning to make Scootaloo’s lie the truth. That is to say, learning how to actually be a real navigator.
For her part, Sweetie Belle’s exploration somehow led her to landing bay 3, and while nopony told her to leave, she was quickly shooed over to Scootaloo and her plane.
“I guess this is the filly zone around here, huh?” the unicorn asked as she climbed up.
Scootaloo was lying on the wing, with her back propped up by the fuselage. She looked up slightly and said, “Might as well be. It’s not like they can tell me not to be with my plane, and being my plane I get to say who’s allowed on it.”
Sweetie sat on her haunches beside her friend, and for a while the two sat silently. Eventually she started up the small talk.
“So, I take it it’s all fixed up?”
“As fixed as it’s going to get.”
“It seems kind of empty here.”
Scootaloo nodded. “Yeah, Rainbow Dash and the other pilots finished launching a few minutes ago.”
“Any idea where they’re going?”
“I think Rainbow Dash said the mercs we fought yesterday are guarding the place where your spirit barrier is.”
Sweetie Belle sighed at that news. “So they’ve gone out to fight again?”
“Probably.”
…
“Hey, Scootaloo. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Do normal fillies get shot at often?”
The young pegasus laughed, then choked on her laugh when she saw the look on Sweetie Belle’s face that said she genuinely didn’t know the answer.
“No! I never get shot at in Ponyville! And normal fillies don’t have to work as pilots, so normal fillies don’t usually go out where sky pirates can take a few shots at me once every few months either.”
The young unicorn gave a deep sigh of relief on hearing that response. “Oh good, I was starting to wonder. You know, with all the fighting that’s happened since I’d left the mansion, I was starting to think mom was right to keep me away from the ‘normal’ part of the world.”
Scootaloo reached over and gave Sweetie a pat on the shoulder. “Don’t worry this trip has been nothing like normal.”
* * * * * * *
Rainbow Dash gave an impressed whistle as she and came over the last ridge. Before her was a large valley. Part way up the forested valley was a massive cave just behind a lake. The mouth of the cave was large enough that ten fighter planes could have flown in side by side without risking clipping the edges.
“That is one big cave, isn’t it?” she said, although having not bothered to hit her radio button, no pony else could’ve heard her.
On the shores of the lake, part of the forest had been cut away and a small encampment built between the cave and the lake. Two flack cannons were near the lake at the corners of the outpost while the rest of the buildings looked like benign cabins.
“There are a lot more flack cannons along the edge of the forest, around the lake,” Soarin’s voice came over the radio. “And they had at least ten planes based inside the cave. Also watch the ridges on either side of the cave. I’m sure I saw at least a dozen flashes from those positions when they opened up on me yesterday.”
A few of the other Wonderbolts acknowledged the advice from Rainbow Dash’s wingpony.
Dash herself only looked over the last obvious obstacle to consider, the mercenary airship hovering over the lake. Several of its main guns still had signs of the damage she’d done yesterday. Of its dozen helicopter engines, only eight of them were currently spinning, while the other four looked like they’d sustained some damage from yesterday’s fight.
“Here they come!”
She narrowed her eyes, though the warning that came over the radio had been pointless as it was hard to miss all of the airplanes being launched from the airship and emerging from the cave. Even a bunch of gyro-copters rose up out of the forest.
“Rainbow Dash, would you do the honors?”
The voice over the radio had been Fleetfoot’s. Dash was about to respond when a yellowish glint caught her eye. And looking to the source, her eyes widened. A gold-colored bi-wing plane had just been launched from the mercenary airship.
“I’m sorry team, but it seems honor requires me to take a different course of action. Everypony leave that gold one alone. And Soarin, I guess I won’t be needing a wingpony today after all. This is between me and her.”
“You know the pilot of the gold one?” several voices asked in response to Rainbow Dash’s declaration.
“If it comes after me and me alone, then yeah, it’s exactly who I think it is. If it shoots at you, without you shooting at it first, then all bets are off.”
With that Dash flicked a switch normally only used during air shows, and sprayers at the tips of her plane’s wings came to life, leaving fully formed rainbows trailing from the tips of either wing. With the display wakes turned on, she then pulled up and away from the rest of the Wonderbolt formation.
The gold plane also started to climb away from the rest of the merc planes. Rainbow Dash preformed a role as she climbed, and the gold plane mimicked the gesture. For a moment, Dash held a hoof in the air in front of her radio as she searched her mind for a number she hadn’t used in a long time. When she remembered it, she tuned her radio to it and pushed the broadcast button.
“G, since when did you take illegal jobs?”
A female voice even raspier than her own came from the radio.
“Come on, Dash! You know how this works! If you want answers, you have to win!”
The pegasus pilot smiled and she shook her head slightly. “I’m not sure why you’re in such a rush for me to shoot down your… what is it now? Sixth plane? But if that’s what you really want, bring it on!”
While the rest of the mercenary and Wonderbolt planes entered into a chaotic dogfight, the lone Mark 2 and gold bi-wing began a spiral assent taking them high above the main fight. Despite being a prop plane, the gold aircraft had eight engines, four at the front of the wings and four at the back of the wings, allowing it to keep up with the twin jet engines of Rainbow Dash’s Mark 2. As they went up they flew top facing top, close enough that the two pilots could see each other through the glass of their respective cockpits.
Once their air speed began to fall off from their mostly straight up path, they broke away from each other, heading in opposite directions. Then the two airplanes turned to face each other like knights in the jousts of old.
As they raced toward each other, the gold plane’s guns roared to life. To her credit, G’s aim was spot on, but at this distance there was more then enough time for Dash to weave out of the way before the stream of bullets reached her Mark 2.
Reaching up Rainbow Dash answered by pushing a small button on the side and top of her control stick. A single lightning bolt flashed from her ion cannons, striking one of the engines on G’s plane. The propeller in question sputtered to a halt and jets of steam came from the seams of the damaged engine for a moment.
In response, the gold plane fired two rockets and turned away.
At first Dash was tempted to just shoot the rockets out of the sky but opted to dive and punch her afterburners to get out of the way instead. With the rockets well behind her, the pegasus pilot turned to intercept the gold bi-wing plane, ignoring the bright flash of the rockets exploding behind her… until the shockwave from the explosions threw her jet into a wild spin.
Looking back at the blasts her eyes went wide at the shear size of the explosions the rockets had produced.
“What they hey, Gilda? A blast like that could’ve killed me! What are you thinking shooing something like that at me!?” she snarled into her headset’s microphone.
The griffin’s voice crackled over the radio. “I was thinking that if you died from that, you deserved it, because the Dash I know is too skilled to take lightly.”
Just as Gilda finished talking, Rainbow Dash finally managed to pull her jet of its spin. Which was also just in time for a hail of bullets to bombard the Wonderbolt plane. Another quick swerve and jamming a hoof on the tail-fin control pedals allowed Dash to slide the plane out of the line of fire and minimize further damage.
Alarms buzzed to life. But Dash didn’t even need to check the instrument panel to feel the tug that meant that one wing was way more damaged than the other. A glance over the shoulder also showed a rainbow as clear as day, proving that a wing tank was leaking liquid rainbow. A glance at the fuel gauge confirmed that the right wing tank was draining at an alarming rate.
‘She really is trying to win,’ Dash thought to herself. ‘Well, if you’re going to do something like that, then you just asked for my best too!’
Hitting the afterburners she pushed her damaged jet into a loop and a hard turn, putting herself on the tail of Gilda’s golden plane. Holding down the trigger she let the ion-cannons fire shot after shot as quickly as they could.
The griffin pilot tried to dodge, but to no avail. The accuracy of the weather pony turned Wonderbolt was spot on, ripping the golden plane’s left wings to shreds after a three-second assault.
Rainbow Dash watched the golden plane fall for a moment and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw her old friend bail out and take flight on her own griffin wings.
The battle below wasn’t going any better for the mercenary forces. The airship had gone down and was now half sunk in the lake. Most of the static anti-air guns had been taken out. And the Wonderbolt jets outnumbered the remaining merc planes. And as far as she could tell, none of her fellow Wonderbolt’s jets had actually been shot down. Although two had been forced to retreat due to damage sustained.
Even with the battle below effectively over, Dash tuned her radio to the Wonderbolt’s frequency and said, “You can stop shooting. They should surrender any second now.”
Needless to say, once the Wonderbolts disengaged from a fight they’d clearly won, the pilots of the remaining mercenary planes started looking around to see why. And it didn’t take them long to noticed the remains of their leader’s plane tail spinning its way to its doom. And once the golden plane crashed into the beach of the lake the rest of the mercenary planes signaled their surrender and landed under the watchful eyes of the Wonderbolts.
* * * * * * *
In less then thirty minutes the Wonderbolts had taken full control of the encampment outside the cave. The half-sunken remains of the mercenary airship loomed over the lake, as it turned out the lake was too shallow for it to sink entirely. And on the beach of the lake, sitting atop the sundered remains of the golden plane, was a griffin with a golden brown coat for her lion half, and white feathers for her eagle half.
A sky-blue Wonderbolt flew over to the griffin and landed beside the only griffin not in shackles yet. For the better part of a minute the two just sat, side by side, watching the waves of the lake water lick at the fallen airship.
“So,” the pegasus with the rainbow mane said. “Why did you throw everything away to fight the Wonderbolts? What were they paying you that made you take the job even though this was the only possible outcome of attacking us?”
“Most likely,” the griffin corrected.
“What?”
“Most likely outcome, Dash. Not the only possible outcome.”
Rainbow Dash gave a slight laugh.
“Even so, Gilda. How come? Why take a job that would make you a criminal?”
Turning her head to the sky and closing her eyes, Gilda said, “What choice did we have? Ever since those cross-country railroads were finished, the legal cargo jobs have been drying up. I’ve had to take shadier and shadier jobs just to keep the group running. You try running a mercenary group. It’s not cheap. But if we’d pulled this off, we all could’ve bought new planes AND been set for life.”
Rainbow Dash nodded slowly, then asked, “So, who hired you?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Oh, come on, G! You lost fair and square, so don’t give me that loyalty to the contract bull!”
“No, Dash. I mean I can’t tell you. We only dealt with a contact. I could tell he was just a middleman, not the one pulling the strings. And whoever he was, I could tell there was some kind of illusion magic about him. I’m not even sure he was really a pegasus. But if you really want to know, he wore Crystal Empire armor. Doubt it was real, but that’s how he showed himself.”
“I see.”
For a short while the two resumed watching the lake waves in silence. Until Rainbow Dash finally turned to look directly at her old friend and said, “Gilda, you know I can’t get you out of this and that you're going to go to jail, right?”
“I know,” was all that the griffin said in response.
With that, Dash stood up and two other Wonderbolts who’d been waiting near the tree line came forward with a set of griffin-sized shackles.
Stopping for a moment, Rainbow Dash looked back to Gilda and said, “G, thanks for the info, I’ll be sure to send a copy of my report to the judge with a note asking him to go as easy as he can on your sentence.”
Gilda only nodded and presented her talons to the shackles awaiting them.