“I must say, it’s an unexpected surprise having you back aboard, Miss Shade. I’m not quite certain I’ve had the pleasure of stating that as yet.”
“Not for lack of opportunity. Also, isn’t every surprise unexpected by definition?”
“Indeed. I’m merely livening our current predicament with banter. Something I’d hope you’d appreciate.”
“Hmm, always. You know I thrive on wit. It makes me wonder why I seem to find myself engaged in conversations with you so very often.”
“Ah, touché.”
“However, you seem to be inferring that being wedged betwixt the frightfully unswept flooring and this monstrously ugly bit of machinery is the sole reason you are enjoying my company.”
“By my feathers, Miss Shade, I would have you infer no such thing and I resent the leveling of such accusations against my character.”
“Well, perhaps a thoughtful complement might alleviate my doubt and distract me from my current discomfiture.”
“Certainly. It has never been my style to dismiss a lady’s request.”
“Then let us hear it.”
“I was just giving thought to the subtle perfume you’ve no doubt acquired sometime over the last two years. Photo De Gio, if I’m not mistaken.”
“You aren’t. How delightful! I gather from your tone that it’s amenable?”
“Quite. I admit I was taken with it when you first stepped aboard my airship. . .”
“Your airship?”
“The airship. Anyhow, the fact that it reaches my nares despite the nearby fuel leak brings me a measure of solace.”
“Charming. I daresay I believe you, Thistle.”
“Oh. Are we back to first-name basis again so soon, Miss Shade?”
“One would hope so, considering events. You have no doubt registered the altering of gravity’s pull.”
“Well, the explosion clearly knocked out the power to the turbines. I will grant you that. However, that it didn’t ignite the fuel lines seems quite the stroke of good luck to me. And by the way, my airship. . .”
“Your airship?”
“The airship is entirely sea-worthy. There’s every chance we will survive, so one wonders why the sudden morbid turn of conversation?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s something to do with being pinned beneath the servo housing for said turbine. Consider it one of my personal quirks.”
“Of course. I must have mistaken your invitation to investigate a strange rapid ticking noise in the aft section of the engine room for a sense of adventure.”
“On the contrary, Sir Thistle Down, my quite seemly desire to investigate said noise should indicate the opposite. An adventure of this nature was just what I was hoping to avoid.”
The tawny gryphon tried to crane his neck backwards far enough to see the magenta colored earth pony trapped behind him, but all he could glimpse was a lock of black mane. “Ah. I see.” He said. “Please accept my most genuine apologies.”
“That explosion has thoroughly unbalanced the delicate truce I’d achieved between myself and my mane.” Sun Shade announced. “When the rescue team frees us. . .”
“Unless they’re at emergency stations. You understand, the whole ‘falling from the sky’ bit.”
“They can’t all be occupied with emergency protocol at once. And if they are. . . well, what a ghastly oversight.” The pony managed to sound charmingly annoyed with the thought. “Nevertheless, when they free us my first order of business will be to visit storage.”
“Storage? From the state of this floor I would have placed a solid wager on a bath. Assuming, as I do, that you will lack the good sense to see Pin Feather in the infirmary straight away.”
“You are partly right, Thistle. I merely require my Mareson Junior Mixture Bristle and Nylon Hair Brush tucked in with my effects.”
“Such an important-sounding implement of personal care? You mean to say it isn’t in your quarters?”
“No. It is most certainly amongst my effects.” A determined note of excitement crept into her voice. “However, since I’ll be down there anyhow, I can pry through the crew’s belongings and see if I can find evidence as to who has livened our afternoon so.”
The edges of Thistle Down’s beak curled up in a smile he knew his companion couldn’t see. “That’s terribly useful of you, well done. If you still have your ocular spectrometer, I’d point out the distinct lack of smoke and the acrid scent left behind from the detonation.”
“You believe we’re looking for traces of guncotton?”
“You’re as sharp as ever, Miss Shade. I’ll see to it the crew stays out of your mane.”
“Aren’t you taking the easier of the two jobs then, considering how distracted everyone likely is at the moment? Any decent gentlecolt would offer to trade.”
“It’s a shame I’m not a colt, it would seem. And secondly, I should think you’d want to feel useful, and denying you this opportunity would be frightfully uncouth of me, wouldn’t you agree?”
Thistle could hear the smile in her voice. “Of course not! How could you say such a thing! Now I will simply have to find the traitor in our midst to spite you. Or perhaps I will faint. I haven’t decided yet which.”
Thistle sighed, and a grim edge slid into his voice. “I really thought I could trust this crew. Those half-plucked Tarsonists just don’t know when to quit.”
“Don’t you mean ‘arsonists’?” It was a little joke between them. “Well, we shall just have to be cleverer in the future. We can’t let this sort of thing happen with Celestia on board, can we? Just think of the scandal!”
“Ah yes, the scandal. Of course,” he said drily. “As is, the repairs alone may set her a few days behind schedule, which may be bad enough. I confess I do not look forward to explaining all this to her Royal Highness.”
“Pish posh. Celestia will understand. She’s marvelously unflappable.” Sun Shade paused as something beneath them hummed to life and the weight pressing them to the floor grew noticeably heavier. “Oh, did you feel that? I think we’re leveling out! Quick, help me shift this mess.”
“Finally.” The gryphon moved his forearms to brace them against the large metal cylinder as best he could and waited. As the airship leveled out and course-corrected, the added weight vanished and for a brief moment they all became lighter. With a well timed shove the metal detritus moved, freeing the pair, before crashing back to the floor. The magenta earth pony climbed carefully to her hooves, trying in vain to fluff out her lustrous black tail and brush the dust off of her cutie mark: a sturdy-looking parasol. The tan and brown gryphon next to her stood more gingerly, favoring his right wing.
Sun Shade generally trotted through life with a bemused gleam in her eye, a look as though she were secretly laughing at some unknown joke. This gleam disappeared as she turned to consider her companion. “You made no mention of being hurt!”
Part of his right wing stuck into the air at an odd angle, and there was blood smeared through his feathers. Thistle Down, despite the apparent pain, smiled slyly. “You never asked.”
Sun Shade arched an eloquent eyebrow. “Your wing looks to be in rough shape. Would one could say the same for your tongue.”
He clucked in disapproval. “Now now, civility if you please. I’m a war hero, see? Injured upon the field of battle, as it were. No pony of class such as yourself would want to be quoted as saying such things, would they?”
She looked her friend in the eye. “Will you be okay?”
“Of course I will. Now you run along. I’ll take a poke around here and see what I can turn up. You, as I recall, have other tasks to tend to.”
Sun Shade looked downward and sighed heavily before turning to the door to the engine room and departing. Thistle turned his attention to the ceiling, studying the marks left by the two small detonations that almost surgically removed a part of the airship’s inner workings. It was classy, as sabotage goes. Not nearly enough explosive to greatly endanger anyone, or even the ship itself. Just the right placement and force to ground the bird, so to speak. That eliminated a couple of suspects right there. Pin Feather, for example, didn’t know enough of the airship’s inner workings to boil water. After committing what details he could to memory, he set off to find his oldest friend.
“Ok, so I got everyone onto the bridge like you asked, except Sun Shade, but Clouded Gaze is livid. She says she’ll take this airship right into the sea if we don’t get everyone out of her way soon.” Pin Feather stood noticeably shorter than Thistle Down, and looked noticeably more worried. “To be quite frank, I believe her. Sir.”
“You know I hate it when you call me ‘sir.’” Thistle snarled through the pain as he limped down the port row of cabins, his blunted talons clicking against the metal floor.
“And ‘sir’ you shall remain until you let me get a look at your bloody wing, you stubborn pigeon.”
“In time, old friend. In time.” Thistle reached the door to the bridge and flung it open dramatically. All manner of conversation stopped as twelve heads turned to look in his direction. The airship crew was a scattered mix of ponies and gryphons, although there were more beaks than manes this time out. Three heads did not turn to watch Thistle’s entrance, one of them being a grim grey and steel colored gryphon gripping the flight wheel. The other two, a small white-feathered gryphon and a deep-blue unicorn, were clearly focused on feeding power to the turbines with magic. An exhausting task, and one that probably couldn’t be duplicated by anyone else aboard. Thistle hoped that they could bring his ship back to dock before they collapsed.
Thistle limped into the room, pitching his voice into a menacing growl. “Cloud, cut power to the auxillary fuel pumps.”
“Aye Captain.”
Thistle turned to address the crew. “You’re probably all wondering why our. . .”
“Hey! I found him!” Pin Feather bounced and pointed at the larger, tawny gryphon. “Now we can get started! So, don’t steer us into the ocean, ‘kay Cloud?”
“I’ll think about it.” Clouded Gaze said gruffly, not taking her eyes off of the horizon visible through the large windows in front of her.
Thistle turned a dangerous glare upon Pin Feather. Pin Feather shrank away, and then offered a rather overlarge smile. Thistle continued. “. . .Why our ship here decided to fall from the sky. It wasn’t mechanical failure.” He paused for effect and turned to reveal his still bleeding and clearly broken wing. “It was sabotage.”
Gasps and general murmurs erupted. Clouded Gaze shook her head in disappointment, as though she’d suspected it from the start. And she probably did. This wasn’t the first airship flight that had been undermined by the Brotherhood of Reformed Tarsonites. One of the crew asked, “Any idea who’s responsible?”
“Absolutely,” Thistle lied. “We know exactly who planted those charges. And that’s why we’re all going to sit tight until we hit dock.”
As if on cue, the door burst open again, and Sun Shade stepped in. Half of the crew gasped in shock. Sun Shade glanced around, startled, before realizing she was still wearing her ocular spectrometer; a device comprised of various lenses suspended and toggled within an amber fluid. She had entered looking like some sort of mechanical vagabond. With a practiced twitch, she slid the device off the end of her nose where it hung by its strap. She immediately gestured towards a deep muddy-brown pegasus on the far side of the room. “Clear Sky? Would you mind describing to us all why your locker is covered with traces of nitric acid?”
The pony’s eyes grew wide with shock. “I. . . what?”
“Grab him!” Thistle shouted, as crew members turned and pounced on him. He offered no resistance.
“Wait! There’s been some kind of mistake!” Clear Sky looked around in a panic. “It wasn’t me, Captain! I swear it!”
“Take him to the hold and chain him to something!” Thistle growled. “The rest of you? Get back to work!” Sun Shade backed primly out of the way as the crew flooded past, practically carrying the makeshift prisoner between them. Thistle turned, giving them all a minute to disperse before following them slowly out of the bridge. Sun Shade and Pin Feather followed him closely. Once the door closed behind them and the three of them were alone, Thistle dropped his dramatic tone. And his limp.
Sun Shade nodded her approval while adjusting the bags cinched about her middle. “A clever and subtle ruse, creating tension amongst the crew.” She remarked as she fell into step alongside the airship captain. “One might assume you’ve done all this before.” She smirked.
“Yes, and I grow tired of it.” Thistle agreed.
“Hey! You can walk just fine!” Pin Feather accused softly, glancing around for eavesdroppers and trying to keep up.
“Naturally.” Thistle Down responded.
“So.” Sun Shade said nonchalantly. “That implies you are aware that Clear Sky is innocent, yes?”
“I had gathered that.” Thistle sighed.
“He’s what?” Pin Feather squeaked.
“My question is, how did you?” Thistle inquired.
“Oh, the frame was entirely too sloppy.” Sun Shade sniffed. “No saboteur worth the name would leave behind such a mess.”
Thistle nodded. “I believe I can narrow down our search, but I’d like your take on the evidence.”
Sun Shade smiled as though it were a grand compliment. “Certainly.”
Pin Feather sputtered a bit before clamping his beak shut and glaring at the pair walking ahead of him.
They reached the engine room before long, the trio pausing before opening the door. Pin Feather had a faraway look in his eyes, and he began slowly reaching a foreclaw towards his captain’s side. Thistle was busy speaking softly to Sun Shade. “Now, when we enter look for faint markings around where the charges were set. I’d like to know if you see what I SQUAAARRK!” And Thistle Down dropped to the floor like a net full of fish.
“I’m sorry!” Pin Feather squeaked. “I’m so sorry! I just thought, you know, you might have been faking the wing injury too.” Thistle picked himself up off the floor, glaring daggers the whole time, but as his breathing slowed, his eyes unfocused. Then he raised an eyebrow and nodded, conceding the point.
Sun Shade rolled her eyes in exasperation and pushed her way into the engine room. “Let’s move quickly, if you both please. The longer you force me to wait to brush this mane out, the greater your odds of spontaneously acquiring cranial injuries.” She stood beneath the damage, sparing an angry glance for the fallen piece of machinery beside her. She gestured to the space in front of her. “Pin Feather, if you please.”
“Oh. Um, sure.” Pin Feather walked to the spot she indicated and crouched, spreading his wings for balance.
Sun Shade leapt lightly atop his back and stood carefully on her hind legs, reaching towards one of the charred spots on the ceiling. After a moment, she made a prim, frustrated sound and placed her spectrometer back on her face. “Yes. I see them! Fine scratches, four of them, in the metal.”
Thistle growled deep in his throat. “We are clearly looking for a gryphon. And one who isn’t a tinker.” For effect, he held up his own talons, which had been carefully filed down to dull tips and overlaid with fine strips of rubber to steady an engineer’s grip.
Pin Feather glanced down at his own dulled foreclaws. “Well, that narrows it down.” he said. “We have, what, four on board?”
“Five.” Thistle said. “Including Cloud.”
“Sure, I guess. But you don’t really suspect Cloudster, do you?” Pin Feather sounded doubtful.
“Not really.” Thistle conceded with a smile. “Not unless I caught her with a bomb and a startled expression. And maybe not even then.”
“Hush.” Sun Shade didn’t sound panicked, just impatient. “There’s more.” She leapt down and reached into one of the bags slung across her flank, withdrawing a cloth pouch. She opened the drawstring with her teeth, then grabbed Thistle’s right foreclaw and plunged it into the opening, releasing a puff of black dust. When he withdrew, all of his digits were colored a deep grey. Thistle nodded his approval as Sun Shade closed the bag and offered it to him.
He plucked it out of her grasp, turned and pushed it against the bulkhead like he expected it to stick there. It didn’t, but his charcoal-coated talons left distinct marks against the metal wall. Sun Shade nodded decisively and wiped the marks off with a white cloth she’d produced, quickly stashing everything back into her packs. “The angles are off.” She announced as she turned to leave.
“So, the charges were placed with the left foreclaw?” Thistle Down asked.
“Both of them.” She confirmed as the door swung shut behind her.
Thistle’s smile turned predatory. “Gotcha.”
“Huh.” Pin Feather squinted up at the scorch marks on the ceiling, then back at the now blank wall. “That’s very clever. Now, if you don’t let me set your wing properly, I’ll be forced to sing to you. Loudly. And at length.”
The sun had just reached the horizon, filling the sky with brilliant reds and purples. Shadows along the coast melded together, preparing for their slow invasion of the lands beyond. Millennia of relentless surf wearing away at the grim stone had produced a vast stretch of gnarled, textured shoreline interspersed with coastal islands ranging from tiny nubs to forested mountains. Aether’s Vigil swept towards the largest of these rugged islands as a large, flat landing pad parted down the middle, revealing an elaborate cradle comprised of metal arms shaped like ribs adorned with soft rubber wheels. The airship adjusted itself a couple of times, coming to rest in the center of the massive braces, bringing the deck of the airship down to within a talon’s length of the surrounding platform. Flags were waved, hoses and wires were connected, and somewhere on the bridge a gryphon with some magical skill and a unicorn collapsed, exhausted.
Sun Shade stood by the metal rail, ready to disembark. Her mane and tail back under control, she’d donned an elegant umbrella of her own design to keep the sun’s glare out of her eyes. A cluster of airship crewmembers gathered on the deck behind her, holding a stunned-looking Clear Sky between them. His wings were taped to his sides and his forelegs were hobbled. Sun Shade disengaged the latches before the airship had even come to rest and hopped down to the platform the moment it was safe to do so. A quartet of stern-looking unicorns wearing the Royal Seal of Canterlot approached, and Sun Shade whispered to them urgently. The crew started forward together, ushering their prisoner between them as they stepped off of the airship. Thistle kept pace with them from behind. As he stepped down off the deck he pitched his voice loudly. “Guards! I trust you have accommodations suitable for a traitor.”
As the cordon parted, shoving the bound blue-maned pegasus from behind, the guards stepped around him and pounced upon the dull-green gryphon who had been to his left. Pin Feather leapt nimbly out of their way as the guards bound their new prisoner with glowing strands of magic. The affronted gryphon didn’t struggle. He just set his beak in a grim line, taking in the startled expressions on his crewmates' faces. Thistle paced around to look the gryphon in the eye. “Dusk Wing, you are hereby charged with sabotage and treachery against a foreign leader. Not to mention a clumsy attempt to frame an innocent pegasus. What say you?” Dusk Wing kept his head up, said nothing and glared. Thistle leaned in closer and dropped his voice. “I trusted you.”
The gryphon’s stoic mask melted into anger. He lashed his tail as he said, “You know why. Everyone here knows why. Yet you heathen tinkers persist in trying to cross the ocean.”
Thistle glanced at the pony guards and tilted his head, clearly indicating that they should take him away. “Yes, we’ve heard it all before.”
Dusk Wing’s anger crumbled into uncertainty and fear as the armored guards forced him stumbling into motion. “We aren’t meant to cross the divide. You test the will of the Ancients! You damn us all to corruption and blackness! You will return as creatures of nightmare!”
Thistle Down turned his back on the increasingly hysterical diatribe to regard the remainder of his crew. He gestured to a relieved-looking brown pegasus and said, “Pin Feather, would you mind cutting our friend here loose? I do believe he’s worn these long enough.”
“Right!” Pin Feather bounded forward and began using the inner edge of a talon to carefully cut the tape off of Clear Sky’s midsection. Another crewmate started taking the hobbles off.
Thistle sounded clearly apologetic. “Thank you, Sky. Allowing you to be framed helped us keep Dusk Wing from bolting before we could pin down the necessary evidence.”
The amber-eyed pegasus nodded, smiling. “Of course, Captain. But you really had me going there for awhile.”
Thistle glanced upward at the massive steel crane secured atop the deck of the airship. “The work crew will be up shortly with a list of parts they’ll need. I suspect the solenoids are shot, and they’ll need all new servos and servo housing. Run the crane to load the new parts for them before you take shore leave.”
“Yes sir.” Clear Sky flexed his wings, stretching them out before launching himself back aboard the deck of the airship.
“The rest of you, shore leave until Her Royal Highness Princess Celestia arrives, then you are to reassemble here the following morning at dawn. Dismissed.”
The crew saluted and dispersed. As the sun began to properly set, Sun Shade and Pin Feather moved to stand by Thistle’s side as he stared out over the ocean. Sun Shade took her umbrella off of her head and folded it up. A cunning strap of her own make allowed her to throw it stylishly over one shoulder. She sighed. “It’s a right shame he didn’t put up a fight. I didn’t even get to use my parasol.”
Pin Feather chuckled. “You are quite dangerous with that thing.”
Sun Shade accepted the compliment wordlessly and with ladylike grace. Thistle, however, hadn’t moved. She nodded in understanding. “The next time we take Aether’s Vigil to the sky, it won’t be for a test run, will it?”
“So many years.” Thistle Down’s voice grew husky with longing. “So many years of building and testing and refining. Piloting my ship to places everyone has already been. Finally, we’ll get to see something new. We get to explore.”
Pin Feather nodded in agreement. “Even if half the population assumes we’ll kill every living thing by trying.”
“Paugh. Those ignorant, cowardly superstitious Tarsonites. . .”
“Reformed Tarsonites.” Sun Shade corrected. “It’s an important distinction, you know. No gryphon of class such as yourself would want to be quoted as saying such things, would they?” She grinned devilishly. “Like calling it your ship when clearly Princess Celestia has paid for most of it.”
“Well, Celestia hasn’t spent the time with her that I have.” He mumbled, gesturing towards the airship behind him. “Anyhow, the Reformed Tarsonites don’t make up half the population around here, and even if they did they’d be wrong. The ancient texts are just stories from an old set of scrolls, nothing more.”
“And here we are about to violate every one of their sacred beliefs. I can’t imagine what they’re upset about.” Pin Feather shrugged.
Thistle cocked a smile at him. “I daresay this is not my call. If Celestia says it’s time to put this thing to use, who am I to argue? And if I hadn’t known you my whole life Pin Feather, I’d think you were trying to defend those crazy zealots.”
“Not at all.” Pin Feather replied honestly. “Just trying to understand them, Sir.”
“Don’t call me ‘sir,’ Pins.”
“Anything you say, Sir.”
Shore leave wasn’t a terribly exciting thing, considering that no one was allowed to depart the island, from the Director to the engineers to the cleaning crew. But they each had their own quarters, and as the crew of Aether’s Vigil got some well deserved rest, Thistle lay awake reviewing ship manifests by candlelight. Sun Shade also couldn’t sleep, and as she lay in her bed she kept reliving the exciting moments of the day, thinking how much more interesting this posting was compared to being an ambassador to the gryphon noble court far to the northwest. She solved a crime her first week here, for pony’s sake. She grinned to herself and kicked at the air in a most undignified fashion.
Not far away, Pin Feather poked his head out of the door to his chamber and looked around. Seeing that the coast was clear, he slipped into the corridor and focused on a spell he’d learned years ago. A spell that the majority of gryphons, and even most unicorns would find impossible. After a moment's concentration his form shimmered and vanished completely from sight. Once he snuck his way outside he took to the wing, flying tight circles to gain altitude without crossing paths with the flight patrols. Veils were rarely perfect, and Pin Feather had to work really hard to maintain his.
Once he was high enough that the island was just a dot beneath his wings, and the air grew thin, he angled south along the coast, resting his wings by trading a little altitude for speed. He waited a long one-hundred count after losing sight of the island before he dropped his veil and focused on landmarks. Eventually a sprawling watercourse led him inland, and two freshwater lakes adjusted his course until he landed in a small, nondescript clearing, in the middle of which there was a moderately sized hole angled into the ground. Nothing else existed to indicate this was anyplace special, but the gryphon tucked his wings in close and crawled inside.
He made his way through tunnels and chambers splattered with green resin, ignoring the scattered chitters and snarls from vague shapes hidden in the darkness. Despite the complete lack of light, Pin Feather moved with confidence, eventually coming to the deepest chamber where he stopped and closed his eyes. There was a flash of green light, a burst of power surrounding Pin Feather’s form, briefly revealing several hundred black shapes curled up around the edges of the chamber, every one of them a respectful distance from the middle, where a misshapen black dais loomed. In a moment, Pin Feather’s entire form had changed. His fur and feathers had been replaced with slick black chitin, his warm brown eyes replaced with pupil-less blue orbs, his beak replaced with pallid fangs as the darkness closed in again. Atop his head a small black horn protruded.
Pin Feather bowed low and stayed there. His voice now buzzed and hummed with multiple frequencies, and it resonated with reverence. “The saboteur has been taken, my Queen.”
A bodiless voice drifted from the dais. This voice also buzzed, but it was richer, more textured. And it was decidedly female. “I see. Then the path before us is clear. You know your mission. Carry it out.”
“Aether’s Vigil will be sky-worthy within the week, my Queen.”
“Hmmmm.” The disembodied voice grew pensive. “That is time enough, but we can purchase ourselves more to be certain. I have spent far too long laying these plans. I have no intention of wasting this opportunity.” Unseen in the darkness, the vague shape atop the dais shifted and cracked, unfurling into a black figure of grace and power. It stretched, scattering dust and flakes of resin around itself. “Celestia will make her move now. She no longer has a choice.” And there in the deep blackness, Queen Chrysalis grinned fiercely. “Dear, sweet, radiant Celestia. This is going to break. Your. Heart.”