//------------------------------// // Chapter 4 | Developments // Story: Golf Echo Bravo // by part time pony //------------------------------// 144 Hours after the disappearance of Golf Echo Bravo Westman Islands, Iceland On the Westman Islands off the shores of Iceland, Lead Investigator Álfur was in a room inside the same hangar where the briefing took place, the room was full of notes, pictures, information and everything that would be needed in the investigation. Álfur was currently wearing black cargo pants and a zipped jacket, holding a coffee mug which he sipped onto every minute or so. He was currently looking at a board where the map of Iceland and Scotland and the Faroe Islands as well as parts of eastern Greenland and the Jan Mayen island. On the map, there were grid patterns, coordinates and a small compass to indicate north, south, west and east. The map had also red lines from a marker. These lines were the flight plan of the aircraft, the heading it had. There were also some dots on this line, next to the dots was some information such as aircraft speed, altitude, precise heading, along with other known records from Air Traffic Control and military installations. Álfur crossed his arms and continued to look at the map. He saw how after the aircraft had navigated through the Westmann Islands the red line ended and was instead replaced with a green line which represented the remaining of the flight ending at Keflavik International Airport. He placed his coffee mug on a nearby table, then raising his right arm at the point where the aircraft disappeared and with the help of the grid patterns and the coordinates on the side of the map he was able to get a location of the disappearance. The coordinates that he got were located in Iceland's Exclusive Economic Zone at 15 nautical miles away from the closest piece of land. He grabbed a black permanent marker and made a dot, then a line going south, on the map he wrote the coordinate and "ESTIMATED SITE OF DISAPPEARANCE" Then putting the marker down on a table. Álfur looked behind him to see Úlrik, one of his good friends and also an investigator for the Golf Echo Bravo case. Úlrik was currently sitting on a comfortable black office chair, looking at one of the lights in the room while holding a pen, doing some tricks with the pen. By the looks of it, Álfur could tell his friend was thinking about something, just what it was he didn't know, but it didn't matter to him, as he simply did not care. "Úlrik, what are you doing?" Álfur asked looking at him. He then took a step towards the table where he placed his mug and picked it up again, taking a sip and waiting. "I'm thinking," Úlrik responded with having diverted his attention from the light in the ceiling towards Álfur now. "Well, can you think about getting ICG to check out these coordinates? 63°32'57.8"N 20°56'40.3"W." Áflur told Úlrik in a rather demanding voice. "Alright..." Úlrik said as he put the pen back on the table. Úlrik stood up from his chair and walked towards a white phone on the end of the table he was sitting by. He grabbed it and pressed a few buttons to get in contact with the Icelandic Coast Guard. He was then redirected to one of the heads leading the search for the aircraft. The person in charge picked up almost immediately, Úlrik having a quick talk to him about what Áflur told him. The conversation was short, lasting only a minute. As the conversation finished, he put the phone back and looked up at his friend. "Alright, they have dispatched a patrol boat to check it out." He said, walking back to his chair, sitting down and continuing his work on his laptop. Ponyville, Equestria Timothy, having just explained the history of aviation had gone to talk with some of the ponies. Antoine, on the other hand, had climbed back into the aircraft that he, 144 hours ago was flying over Icelandic waters. He wasn't alone though, Twilight Sparkle, Rarity and Rainbow Dash had followed inside, at first Antoine did not know they were there, he hadn't expected for them to come but, seeing Timothy talking to Celestia and some of their other friends they decided to follow the French-man. Entering the cockpit of the A318, he saw how all of the controls, buttons and screens had remained untouched for the past couple of days, only mild dust being seen, which he brushed off on the spots he could then cleaning his hand. He sat down in his chair, the captain seat, and for a minute felt as he was back in the sky, about 30,000m in the sky cruising the world. His imagination, however, was quickly interrupted by Rainbow Dash as she entered the cockpit and was quick to open her mouth to talk. "What does this do?" The mare asked as she raised her left hoof towards the control stick that was next to Antoine. "That is the control stick. We use it to navigate the aircraft, basically, if we want to go up we pull it towards us. If we want to go down we push it farther from us. We can also turn with it, if you turn it to the left, the aircraft moves to the left, same with the opposite side. Quite simple really." Antoine answered. "Huh.." Rainbow Dash said quietly as she processed the new knowledge she had received into her brain, a thing that she wasn't the best at doing, finding education to be the most boring thing in Equestria. Twilight Sparkle, the opposite of Rainbow Dash when it came to education was intrigued to learn about the aircraft, this would most likely be the first and only time she would be in contact with a species this advanced, at least given the current time. But the unicorn mare at the same time was dying to know how an object this large could fly, according to her studies she had made on aviation it was practically impossible for something larger than an Alicorn to fly. "How does this thing fly? Given its size, it should be impossible!" Twilight exclaimed which surprised Antoine, but not entirely. "Twilight, is your name, oui?" Antonie asked just to make sure he remembered her name. At the same time, he turned around to face the purple mare. "Yes," Twilight answered, more quietly this time. "Well, if you lived in my world, you would see planes way bigger than this fly without issues, basically it's quite simple." Antonie paused, took a short break to breathe then continued. "You know the four forces of flight, thrust, drag, lift and weight?" Antoine said and went on to explain in detail how aircrafts worked. The lavender mare then thanked the French pilot for explaining. However, she was still slightly confused, she had never seen an object this large be able to fly and having heard that in his world there were aircraft as much as 10 times larger as the plane she was on existed and flew without problems made her head spin. Several Hours Later Timothy had a busy day today. Having had a lengthy conversation with Princess Celestia and some other curious ponies, he now was really tired. Having walked in the cold winds that Princess Luna's night brought he opened the door to his and Antoine's temporary home in Equestria. He looked at Antoine who was sitting and trying his best to read a newspaper from Ponyville. "Antoine?" Timothy asked, wishing to speak with his French friend. "Oui?" Antoine responded. He put down the newspaper and folded it, putting it on the table to show that he was paying attention. "Can I have a word with you?" Timothy said, sounding unsure. "Of course," Antoine replied. Timothy approached the chair next to Antoine, he pulled it towards him and sat down on it. He looked at Antoine who had put his hands in the pockets of his uniform pants. "What is it you want to talk about." The Frenchman asked. "I- I-. I'm just, wondering if we'll ever return home." Timothy replied, sounding worried which was unusual from him as in the past he had always been sure of himself and never sounded worried. Not even in previous emergencies. Well, maybe a little. "I'm sure we will, I mean, if we got here then we can get out, we just need to figure out how," Antoine replied trying to calm down his friend at the same time. "Well, not exactly. The aircraft.." Timothy stopped and looked at his French friend. "Go on," Antoine said. "It barely has enough fuel to fly for twenty minutes, it's running on fumes." "Well... I suppose we'll have to somehow find a source of fuel." Antoine had never checked the fuel amount left on the plane, turns out Timothy had done so and the finding was shocking, 144 hours ago, the aircraft disappeared from Earth and appeared in Equestria, however, Antoine clearly remembered that the plane had at least one hour of jet fuel left. It seems that during the disappearance of the aircraft they had lost fuel, however, Antoine couldn't put his finger on what it could have been. Maybe the ash was the reason why, none of the two pilots could find a good enough theory to know why, and even the smartest ponies couldn't know as they had no idea what jet fuel was. Only the two humans knew what it was, and while they had gone through years of training for becoming pilots, none of them had the slightest clue of what could've reduced the amount of fuel in the aircraft. However, Antoine being creative as he had always been in the past thought up a crazy idea, one that might be just crazy enough to work. "How long did it take us to reach the outskirt of the town?" Antoine asked Timothy. "I don't know. Probably 10 minutes." Timothy answered, naturally and he would obviously not know this, which didn't come to a surprise to Antoine, but 10 minutes sounded realistic enough. Antoine looked out the window of their temporary house and saw the Airbus A318. It hadn't moved a single inch since they got here and looked still the same. The evacuation slide was still there, it had deflated mostly and no longer looked stable enough to be used in an actual evacuation. "This is a long shot, for sure. But we have around 20 minutes of jet fuel left, so we could probably use what remains of the fuel and when we possibly get back on Earth we glide the plane to Keflavik. If we are able to do this correctly, we can glide the remainder of the distance to Keflavik." Antoine said. "Wait, wait. Do you want to glide the remaining 95 kilometres to Keflavik? Antoine, listen. You're a good mate and all but sometimes I think you go crazy, today I think so as well." Timothy protested against Antoine's idea. "If an Airbus A330 with 306 souls on board can glide to a Portuguese Air Base in the Azores then so can we," Antoine said, referring to Air Transat Flight 236. "Yes, but the captain on board was an experienced glider. We were commercial pilots flying for Air France and British Airways, you have extra experience because you flew in the French Air Force in some operation in Lybia for a few months before being discharged on medical reasons, other than that we have no experience really in aeroplanes apart from flight school." Timothy responded in protest yet again. He had somehow remembered personal details that Antoine rarely shared from a few years ago. However, the protests did little to change Antoine's mind. He was determined his admittingly crazy plan could work. "Well, I suppose we could try and write a new page in the history books," Timothy said, at last, having thought a little between the small breaks in the conversation he became slightly convinced it could work, after all, he was desperate to return home. Equestria was great and he had enjoyed his time here so far but he still had the lust to be back on Earth. Westmann Islands, Iceland As the moon went down, the sun came up. A new day was starting. For most people living on the island, it was a normal day in their occupation. But not for the investigation team partly based on the island in the field operation centre. The small detachment based here were the Icelanders, Álfur being the person in charge was already at the warehouse they were using for their investigation. Being in the main room where all the work took place his attention quickly shifted as the main doors of the warehouse opened and a small truck rolled along with a minor police escort consisting of two bikes and a Volvo V90. Álfur power walked outside of the room he was in and walked over to one of the officers riding the bike who was turning off the bike and switching off the blue lights. "What's all this about?" Álfur asked the Police Officer. "Coast Guard found something for you." The Police Officer answered as he took off his white helmet and black gloves, placing them on the front of the bike. The Police Officer led the way for Álfur towards the back of the white truck, as the truck driver turned off the engine and jogged towards the back, at the same time. Álfur waited patiently as Úlrik who just got to the warehouse entered. He dropped his backpack and rushed over to his friend. "Álfur, what's this?" Úlrik asked as he caught his breath. "No clue, apparently your phone call from yesterday has given us something in return." The Lead Investigator replied with. The driver opened up the back, revealing the content inside. The two investigators were amazed but also confused, by what they saw, and as the driver proceeded to unload the contents the Investigators began to examine it, first from a distance then up close. Úlrik looked over to Álfur, who was in the middle of examining the object. "I don't know what to make of this, never seen anything like it, but damn, this may be it!" He said excitedly. "We'll have to see, all I know for now is that we're gonna be busy the next couple of days," Álfur answered as he was still examining. The Police Officers left, and so did the truck. The rest of the team arrived and everyone got to work. Using all available sources to figure out what was known about the contents brought in. As the day went on, little progress was made, night fell upon the northern nation and most of the team left home to get some rest as tomorrow was gonna be another busy day. However, Álfur stayed along with one of the newer members of the team. Together they processed all data they could and continued their search. The thoughts that this was just another MH370 were by now all gone, the investigation continued and was getting closer and closer for development of the first couple of theories.