The Engineer’s Wings

by Keeper of time RD


Chapter 23: The Wings that Pierced the Heavens

“Is that what I think it is?”

The question went unanswered while the two pegasi stared at the object in the center of the tower’s top chamber.

The object was slightly larger than the Lightning Bolt Mark 2. Its shape set it worlds apart from the aircraft the two observers knew, however. If one looked at it from above or below it looked like a giant arrowhead, or maybe a spear tip. Its wings were extremely thick at their base and tapered out slowly enough so that they weren’t entirely sure where the fuselage ended and the wings began. Or perhaps it would be better to describe the plane as just thick wings, which happened to have a cockpit built into them. On top of that, the design wasn’t rounded like the aircraft they were used to. This thing was mostly flat surfaces with sharp angles instead. For its colors, most of it was silver, although did have blue stripes on the leading edge of the wings and two down the middle, going from just behind the two off-center windows to the base of the twin tail fins at the back.

“Will wings like that even fly?” Rainbow Dash added another question to the one the filly had asked.

As they continued to look the thing over, they couldn’t help but notice how small the three windows near the front were. Not to mention the angle they were at seemed awfully low. As a result they would give a very small amount of vision if the pilot was trying to see what was in front of the plane. Although given that both of them were accustom to the use of enchanted pilot goggles, they just assumed the windows were a failsafe and the pilot was expected to be seeing through the opaque parts most of the time.

Finally moving from their spot just in front of the portal they’d come out of, Rainbow Dash set Scootaloo down on the floor and flew a quick lap around the strange aircraft. Then she landed on it.

A moment later, she called out, “Hey squirt! You might want to come up here!”

Whipping her wings into a buzz, Scootaloo ran forward and leapt up onto the strange craft. Once she was on top she found Dash was about halfway between the front and back of the plane and was examining a rectangular line in the metal skin of the aircraft.

The size and shape of the groove certainly made it look like a hatch or doorway akin to the apple cellars she’d seen on Applejack’s farm. But it didn’t seem to have a latch or anything to open it with.

“Any idea how to open it?” Rainbow Dash asked now that the young engineer could see the obvious problem.

With nothing else she could see that looked like a latch on the door, she looked near the door for anything that might be useful. But she couldn’t see anything that looked like a panel that would open up and reveal the locking mechanism for the door. Then she tried running her hoof along the groove that outlined the door to see if she could feel something too fine to see, just as Dash had been doing when she first jumped up.

Or at least she would have, but the moment her orange hoof touched the door it slid back a tiny bit and then slid sideways, opening the way.

“That, I guess… Not that I know what ‘that’ was.”

Inside they found a space that amounted to a short hallway that had been filled as if somepony were trying to stuff a one-room apartment into it. The space was wide enough that three adult ponies could walk side by side down it. That is, they would have if not for the beds and counters on either side. As a result two adult ponies would have to squeeze past each other if they were going opposite directions.

At the far end was a small doorway that went to the cockpit. At the back end, the hall was even narrower than when going toward the front and ended in three doorways. The two doors on the sides looked like they might led to small closets, but the door at the back was marked with a high voltage warning sign. Unlike the outside of the plane, on the inside all the doorways had ‘open’ and ‘close’ buttons next to them, even the one they’d entered through.

There were two beds, one on each side of the ‘hallway’, and each was then followed by the counters. Like the beds, the counters mirrored each other, being identical save one feature: the one on the left side had a stove/oven built into it while the one on the right had a refrigerator built into it.

While it was hardly the first time they’d seen the cargo hold of an airplane converted into a livable space, such an airplane wasn’t what either pegasus expected to find at the top of the tower.

It was Rainbow Dash who put the obvious question to words. “So, how do you suppose an airplane is supposed to help us reach the moon? I mean, fancy plane or not, they all have altitude limits, don’t they?”

That was also the moment that curiosity had drawn Scootaloo to the high voltage door, right when she’d pushed the ‘open’ button.

The silver metal door slid open revealing a glass door. Beyond the glass door was a ball of lightning in a chamber made of dark storm cloud, solid rainbow arranged in magic rune like patterns, and over a dozen cloud crystal spikes holding the ball of lightning in place as it arced with power.

“This isn’t an airplane…” Scootaloo said, staring with awe at the sight before her.

“It’s not? Sure looks like one to me. A weird airplane sure, but still an airplane,” Dash answered skeptically, clearly not drawing the same revelation from the plane’s power source that Scootaloo was.

“Rainbow Dash, do you even know what this is!?”

The elder pegasus blinked, shrugged then answered, “Yeah, it’s a storm core generator. The Cloudsdale is powered by one, so I’ve seen one before.”

Scootaloo slowly pressed the close button and let metal door once again seal chamber of the craft’s power source, all the while still holding a haunted look in her eyes.

Finally turning to look Dash in the eyes, she said, “I can’t imagine what such a small plane would do with a power core that could run an entire city.” With a slow shake of her head she added, “Whatever it is, this thing is on a whole different level that any plane I know of.”

“Oh.”

Rainbow Dash’s one word answer was accompanied by a slight widening of her eyes as she finally grasped what had Scootaloo in awe.

Both pegasi slowly turned their heads to the door at the other end of the room, the door to the cockpit.

Rainbow Dash opened the door and the two entered the cockpit. The pilot’s chair sat in front of a curved control panel that was loaded with buttons, switches and instrument displays. At the back were two foldout chairs built into the wall on either side of the door. So the cockpit could accommodate three, but the craft was clearly built to be piloted by one.

And as they’d suspected from outside, the three small windows didn’t offer a vary useful field of view. As a result, the first thing Dash did was look around to see if there were any enchanted pilot’s goggles keyed to this aircraft. But as far as she could tell, the only goggles in here were the ones she and Scoots had brought with them.

After concluding her brief and unsuccessful search, she joined the filly beside the pilot’s chair in looking over the control panel. Scootaloo already seemed at work deciphering the symbols on the panel. Some were clear, like the small lightning bolt that was the same one pegasus engineers had been using since the dawn of pegasus engineering for the main power switch. Other symbols were a mystery as they seemed to be tiny pictures custom made for whatever button or switch they were near.

“Well?” Scootaloo asked, shaking Rainbow Dash out of her thoughts. The orange filly was looking at her as if she expected the elder pegasus to hop into the pilot’s seat and go through the craft’s startup sequence.

Instead, Dash leaned over, grasped Scootaloo in her forelegs and pulled the filly up onto the seat.

“Go for it, Squirt.”

Scootaloo just looked at her in bewilderment for a moment, then said, “Are you sure? With all the magic runes and stuff, it might bind to the first pony who turns it on! What if it binds to me?”

Dash just smiled and said, “The way our reflections were talking, I think it already is. The door opened for you, after all.”

The young pegasus’ eyes went wide. Then she shook her head back into a focused look. Slowly she reached her hoof out toward the main power switch.

When she flipped it, the control panel lit up. With the next switch in line, the instruments came to life, and with the next one the radio lit up. With the last switch in the start up line, a pulse of magic filled the cockpit, and then the walls went transparent, offering a full view of everything around the craft.

With that, the images of three ponies flickered into existence. One was a pegasus, one a unicorn and one an earth pony. Their transparent nature made it clear that these ponies were magic imprints made long ago.

“Scootaloo,” the pegasus said. “Of those who faced the tower’s trials, you were deemed most worthy of our greatest work, The Silver Nova.”

“Why?’ she asked.

“These wings that pierced the heavens.” He continued, making it clear that it truly was just a magic recording. Even if it had added her name to the message, it couldn’t hear or respond to her. “After completion of our work, we realized that ponykind wasn’t ready for such a thing. And so we hid it away, to await the day that they would be. Knowing this, I implore you to use its power responsibly. Or even not at all, if you also come to believe that ponies aren’t ready for its power.”

With its message finished, the spell ended, and the three ghostly ponies vanished.

And yet, Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo were still able to see through the walls of the cockpit. And with that freedom of vision they saw two more portals open up beside the one they had come through. Within seconds Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle and their elder sisters came out of the two new portals. And a few seconds after that Twilight, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie appeared in a flash of purple teleportation magic.

Scootaloo quickly gasped when she saw her friends. Apple Bloom was sporting a few new bruises, and Sweetie Belle had scorch marks all over her. Applejack and Rarity weren’t fairing much better as they also sported wounds of similar natures.

“What is that?” one of the newcomers to the room asked, pointing toward the craft.

While those outside pondered over the strange craft, it immediately became clear that the see-through walls of the cockpit was a one-way feature to those inside. Once it was clear that none outside were able to see the gestures of those in the cockpit, Dash instead headed out to gather the others inside.

“We found a pond, and our reflections came up and fought us!” Apple Bloom explained once she was inside. “Sis’s was a bit tough. Ah can’t believe how mean hers was!”

“At least your reflections didn’t shoot fire,” Sweetie Belle offered.

Fluttershy hung her head in shame and weakly apologized for getting caught in the maze and thus being unable to help in the portal. Yet at the same time something in her eyes almost seemed grateful that she hadn’t faced her reflection.

Dash did her best to comfort her childhood friend, but the tight circumstance didn’t help. Between the two harness attachment points on the walls next to each bed and the three seats in the cockpit, the craft was able to accommodate seven ponies. Of coarse with the size of the craft’s interior, it was clearly only meant for two ponies, three tops. Needless to say, having nine ponies in it had left things a little cramped.

Given how crowded the main room of the craft was, Scootaloo and her friends were standing more or less in the doorway to the cockpit. And it was here that the pegasus of the three youngsters turned her gaze back to the transparent walls around her with one question on her mind.

“Anypony know how we’re supposed to get this thing out of here?”

A sudden quiet filled the craft as they all seemed to realize that the top floor of the tower both lacked any apparent hanger doors and certainly had no runway long enough for any airplane they knew of.

“How about that?” Apple Bloom asked, pointing a hoof off to the right side of the craft’s nose.

Where she was pointing there was a lever built into the wall.

“Sweetie, can you pull that?”

The young unicorn quickly lit her horn, and the lever was surrounded in a matching light green glow. With a slight crane of her neck, Sweetie pulled her head back, and the lever on the wall flipped. With that, the wall peeled away as solid stone rolled up as if it were nothing more than curtains, revealing the starry night’s sky beyond.

At first, Scootaloo smiled as the tower’s magic opened up the side of the tower, but that smile slowly faded when things stopped moving and there was still no runway. The opening was large enough for the craft to escape the tower, but that direction was not only going to dump them out the side of the tower but over the side of the mountain cliff, too.

“So… What? We’re just supposed to do the mother of all short field takeoffs?” Scoots thought aloud.

“Looks like it,” Rainbow Dash answered, sounding notably less bothered by the idea than the younger pegasus.

It took a moment for everypony to get in place. Not to mention with only seven seats and nine ponies aboard, Rainbow Dash and Twilight wound up standing. Dash sat with her hooves wrapped around the back of Scootaloo’s chair so she could look over the filly’s shoulder. And Twilight did the best she could to brace herself in the doorway between the cockpit and cargo hold.

“Ready?”

In response to the question from the filly in the pilot’s seat, Twilight focused magic into her horn. First casting the spell she’d learned from the scroll Celestia had sent on everypony on board, then she channeled her magic to both protect herself and Dash and root the two of them in place to try and make up for the insufficient number of harnesses.

“Ready,” Twilight said hesitantly.

Once Scootaloo had strapped into the pilot’s seat, the magic in the craft seemed to sense that its pilot was a filly and had moved the hoof pedals up to within reach of its pilot’s short legs. Pressing on the pedals to put full brakes on, she pulled the throttle to idle and flipped the switch that she’d interpreted as the ‘thrusters’ switch.

She felt a slight nudge of the craft as the engines came to life but were held back by the brakes. “Here goes nothing!” she announced. Then she jammed the throttle all the way in and released the brakes.

Pretty much everypony had expected the plane to accelerate, fall out of the tower, achieve flight speed while falling and have to pull up. That didn’t happen.

Instead, the craft shot forward explosively, leaving the tower crumbling in its wake, and immediately soared heavenward.