Lord-Admiral Marcos pounded on the door, and his desperate cry was answered just in time. The door opened and he was able to scramble through, but the creature forced its way through behind him. A shout went out for armsmen, anyone with a weapon. It pushed through the door, bending it asunder, presenting its true form to the men in the observation room. One man went for his sidearm, but found himself stabbed through the chest and slumping to his death.
Marcos fled in panic, most unbecoming of an officer and most unknown to him, but entirely justified. A creature of unknown origin had suddenly appeared, manifesting itself in place of Midshipman Vinson, morphing free of its restraints, scrabbling to escape its prison. Dark and sleek, with glowing eyes and a hissing tongue, it leaped for the armsman who answered the call as he stepped through the door, blocking the creature's access to the Lord-Admiral. Before he could raise his shotgun it was on him, shoving him down bodily and biting, tearing with its fangs. Another man appeared in the doorway, taking aim, but was met by a sudden psychic blast from the creature's curved horn, cutting a channel straight through his body and shocking the men behind him.
Hissing and spitting, the creature charged through the doorway from the observation room into the corridor of the brig. Warders equipped with nothing more than batons for controlling unruly prisoners backed away in terror. The two men armed with shotguns had already been cut down by the thing in their midst, and they had seen their Admiral run. So they did the same.
It pursued them, green blasts from its horn slicing through several of the hapless warders as the creature took to the air, insectlike wings buzzing as it gained some height in the tall, multi-level brig complex. It had a target, and it was searching for it; there, up ahead, near the end of the hallway. It swooped down, horn lowered, toward the Lord-Admiral, who made it through the bulkhead door just in time. A bolt of energy cut a sizzling hole into the metal beside him. The creature dropped back to the deck and skittered through the door after him.
On the other side it was met by a party of armsmen, the brig's response team, called in in case of trouble to combat riots or mass escapes. They were wearing armour, helmets, visors, and carried plasteel shields to go along with their electro-stun batons. Taken by surprise, the lead man flailed wildly with his baton, striking the creature. It hissed in pain and annoyance, and a concussive blast from its horn tossed him back along with several of his compatriots. The men hesitated; they were used to dealing with prisoners, burly men perhaps armed with a length of chain or pipe, but not this monstrous thing, springing forth from an interrogation room that contained only a human prisoner and was suddenly in their midst.
Two of the squad were armed with shotguns, and they tried to recover and take aim, but the creature was fast and relentless. It leaped on one man, sprawled defencelessly on the floor, tearing at his throat, the only unprotected part of his body. As it did so, its horn let loose a spray of green sparks, blinding those looking at it. It was followed immediately by a rapid burst of shimmering beams that cut down two men. The others huddled behind their shields, which proved to be just about able to resist, their plasteel surfaces melting and warping but protecting the men behind. One man raised his shotgun and fired, winging the creature but just angering it, as its chitinous outer plating proved quite resistant, buckshot pattering ineffectively off of its carapace.
Sensing the potential threat, the creature lunged forward, another concussive blast sending men scattering. It was upon the gunman in a moment, its horn sinking deep into his side. His riot armour cushioned the blow, but the creature then released another psychic burst inside him that cut straight through his body and out the other side, striking the next man in the leg and knocking him down.
A flurry of blows from electro-stun batons struck it, and it kicked out its hind legs like a mule, knocking one man back, his baton spinning away. The other shotgun-wielding armsman took aim at point blank range and fired. The creature reared back screeching. Green ichor was oozing from the ruins of its left eye, caught by the spray of buckshot. Its horn flashed and the armsman barely dove to the side in time. He brought his gun up again and fired, catching the creature on its carapace and causing no further injury. Stun-batons struck it but were ignored. It used its wings for a surprising burst of speed, coming down on top of the gunman, fangs bared, knocking his gun away. He screamed for his life, and the Emperor answered his prayer.
A las-round punched a hole in the creature's chest, sending it writhing away, hissing. Its horn flashed again, but so did the las-pistol of the brig's commanding Lieutenant, leading another squad of armsmen, all equipped with shotguns instead of riot gear. The creature tried to take off, but it was wounded. It felled one of the advancing shotgunners, but the laspistol struck it again in the leg. Distracted by the new threat, the creature was unable to finish off the man who lay beneath it. He reached out desperately and managed to grasp his shotgun. He pulled it and aimed it upwards, firing once, directly into the creature's soft underbelly.
It slumped down on top of him, hissing weakly, its guts and green blood spilling out of its abdomen as it finally died. The Lieutenant put a las-round through the back of its head to make absolutely sure. It was finished, but it had taken a heavy toll on its way through the brig, leaving bodies littered in its wake. There was a single question going around the survivors and the prisoners who had seen the rampage through the bars of their cells- what the hell was it?
None of them knew, none of them had ever seen a creature quite like it before. A Tyranid, the prevailing suggestion- it had to be. It certainly looked like one. Lord-Admiral Marcos knew differently. Recovering from the ordeal, he quickly regained his senses and grabbed for the nearest vox-intercom. If Midshipman Vinson was one of those Changeling creatures, then Colonel Harding, down in the medical bay, might be too.
'This is Lord-Admiral Marcos calling primary medical bay, respond at once!' he ordered. 'Urgent security alert!' There was no reply over the circuit. He tried calling Master-At-Arms Kaestron on the bridge, and got through.
'My Lord! Are you hurt?' she asked immediately. 'We're receiving reports of some kind of violence in the brig! Is there a prison break?'
'Not exactly,' Marcos replied. 'Midshipman Vinson was one of those creatures...Changelings, from the planet. It escaped its confinement. We need medical teams here. Alert the primary medical bay that Colonel Harding may also be one of these creatures.'
'I have no contact with the medical bay, My Lord,' Kaestron replied. 'The link went quiet, there was a report of violence there also. I have several teams en route as we speak.'
Get them there as fast as possible,' Marcos urged. 'I am on my way to the bridge now. Marcos out.' He replaced the vox handset. Things had taken a sudden and most unwelcome turn.
Lord-Admiral Marcos arrived at the bridge, where numerous armsmen were guarding the entrances, as well as doubling the number posted around the main chamber. Kaestron reported that security teams had arrived at the medical bay. They found that 'Colonel Harding' had indeed escaped its restraints in its true form. It had been wounded, however, by the last-blast during the fight in the ready room, and it only managed to kill a few orderlies and medical cadets before the security detail outside the door was able to kill it.
Both assassins were dead, and had shown their real nature; not mutineers, but Changelings. Far from a minor nuisance, this new species was proving themselves to be extremely dangerous; somehow they had managed to get aboard the flagship, undetected, in disguise. Nobody had suspected a thing. Both men had seemed to be acting exactly as they would were they their real selves, rather than alien doppelgängers.
Marcos re-read the report transmitted by the Magi aboard the Ferrus Terra about the Changeling corpses recovered from the siege works on the planet below. They would have two more now to compare with. Marcos had to admit he had underestimated the new threat, being far more focused on the eradication of the Archenemy and the potential danger of the pony princess and her powers. Even with the assassination of Marwan down on the planet, it had seemed inconceivable that the Changelings would even know about the human fleet, given that the princess had reported that they used almost no technology, which most likely meant no telescopes. For them to board with the apparent intent of assassinating the commanders of the Imperial Crusade meant that they obviously knew more than Marcos thought. The princess had been on board the ship; had she told them, perhaps? Unlikely; the two species were apparently old foes. Could they learn of such things from the minds of those they killed? A fanciful notion, but stranger things had been found out on the fringes of the galaxy before. Had they tortured guardsmen for information? Quite possibly, assuming the creatures were even capable of speech and learning. Or was the whole thing just a huge coincidence? After all, the primary target of the assassination on the ground seemed to have been the princess, rather than Major-General Marwan, suggesting the Changelings had been after their old enemy again.
That was clearly not the case this time. The princess was not aboard, nor any other pony. There was only one explanation for the targets they had chosen, and that was to decapitate the human leadership from the very top. More worryingly, their very nature and the fact they were aboard ship meant that it was almost impossible to know exactly who could be trusted. When the enemy looked like a friend, how could you tell the two apart?
More worryingly still, it seemed the ship's own security systems had failed it. Sensors placed at every landing bay recorded conditions in varying spectra, searching for unknown contaminants being unwittingly brought aboard by landing parties or attack craft. The sensors could, and did, record the presence of the unknown particle they had been detecting since arriving in orbit; Marcos knew they did, because they had given a reading when the princess came aboard, a massive spike in the particle count that almost overwhelmed the recorders. No alarms had been sounded at any of the docking ports when Colonel Harding came aboard, or, after inspection of the records, when Midshipman Vinson's last supply party returned. The sensors had not given the warning they were supposed to give- were the readings given off by the Changelings too low to be measured? Was the sensitivity of the detectors not high enough? Either way, it had allowed them to slip aboard undetected, and where there were two, there could be thousands. Potentially, every man who had been to the surface could be a Changeling, and so, theoretically, could any crewmember who had come into contact with them while onboard. There would be no way to tell; the Chief Medical Officer who had treated the impostor Colonel Harding reported that in every way it seemed like he was treating the man himself; the skin, the tissue, the muscle, the blood, the organs, the bones- everything resembled a human perfectly, until the creature had decided it was time to reveal itself and slip free of its restraints. This meant, the medicae had warned, that even a blood test could not determine a man from a Changeling.
He did not know what the intentions of these Changelings were; from what the princess had relayed through Commissar Birbeck, it seemed that they were normally content to just attack their old enemies, the ponies, periodically. What they wanted with the Imperial forces was anyone's guess. With both prisoners now deceased, there was certainly no chance of figuring it out any time soon, but they had deprived him of a friend, and the Imperial Guard of a competent and intelligent leader. While the ship remained on lockdown, Marcos ordered an intensive search to commence for the location of the Changeling's base of operations- their Hive, the princess had called it. Once they located it, it would be pulverised from orbit- no survivors.
The EAS Canterlot sailed wearily back to the capital. Their mission had been an abject failure. They had not found the Hive, not the active one anyway, but just a decoy, a mocking taunt from Chrysalis and her minions. The blasted, scarred wasteland, it seemed, did not hold the answers they were looking for. But if not there, then where? Where could the Hive be? They had no other clues, no indications of a possible location for Twilight and the all-important Element. Their report would have to be made to Princess Luna, who would send a messenger to her sister. No luck, no joy, no hope of finding the Element.
They had searched high and low across the wasteland, even after finding the decoy Hive, in the hope that it might be a distraction from a nearby location, but it was not to be. There was nothing to be found in the barren coastal plains, no sign of the Changeling menace. But it had been worth a try; the trick may have been an obvious one, but it could have been a genuine oversight, or a double bluff of the part of the Queen. All the crew knew was that they had failed, and the fate of the Elements remained hanging in the balance.
It was a long journey back over the mountains, and bad weather was building up. A storm was forming, lightning flashing between the peaks, crackling through the leaden skies. Too dangerous to go over, Ironside decreed. One strike too many to the gasbag could ignite it, despite the self-sealing skin and armour plating. The winds could force them down into a rock face or blow them off course, lost in the cloud until they collided with sickening inevitability into a mountain. Climbing over the mountains tended to also put an undue strain on the airship's engines, and with the disruption caused by the invasion, spares and trained maintenance personnel were difficult to obtain. Nevertheless the message had to be delivered to Luna as quickly as possible. That meant they could either bypass the mountains to the south, or to the north. The south meant the valley, still held by the human enemy. To go north would take longer, but it might allow them to send a messenger Pegasus to Celestia, assuming she were still in Manehattan, to alert her directly to the disappointing results of the expedition.
North it would be, Ironside decided, and the mighty airship swung its bow around. The storm rippled and rumbled alongside them as they struck a course parallel with the mountain range. Canterlot was just beyond, now a mere few miles away, but it would still be quicker to go north and swing around into the upper valley than to wait for the storm to dissipate. They droned on, engines humming, sailors of the skies riding north for home port.
'Aerial contact!' came the sudden cry. 'Due north' Observers rushed to vantage points to confirm the sighting. Ironside reached for his telescope. Another cry joined the first.
'New contact! Nor-nor-west!' came another shout, a different voice, then the initial voice once more.
'Now two contacts at due north!' A moment's pause before a fearful cry. 'Dragons, skipper! Big ones!'
'Battle stations!' Ironside ordered promptly and calmly. 'All hooves to your battle stations! Raise the shield, run out the guns!'
The crew hurried to obey, preparing the airship for combat. Gunports were lowered, hatches sealed, fire hoses primed and charged, ready ammunition lockers opened and guns loaded. The deck crews donned their armour and helmets, while in the hold below the Assault Infantry did the same, arming themselves with their rifles.
Dragon attacks, at least before the arrival of the humans, had been the bane of airship crews across Equestria, generally bringing down one or two craft per year, usually isolated patrol or transport vessels- which was exactly what the Canterlot was, carrying its cargo of ponies. Unlike most cargoes, however, this one could at least fight back.
'Are they coming our way?' Ironside hailed the lookouts.
'Yes, skipper! All three of them,' came the affirmative reply. Three dragons against one airship- those were not good odds, even against the new City-Class and their dedicated anti-air armament. And these dragons were big. Hulking great monstrosities, the kind not usually seen in Equestrian skies. Evidently something, most likely related to the invasion, had disturbed them from their hibernation somewhere in the deep dark mountain caves. They were out, they were looking angry, and they were coming straight for the Canterlot.
'Looks like we're fighting, then,' Ironside muttered. 'Helm, hard to port! All starboard guns, standby to fire on my mark! Maybe we can scare them off.'
The gun crews complied, the machine-cannon, anti-air guns and the main deck bombardment cannons were prepared, the latter at maximum elevation. Gun captains hunched over the sights, tracking the targets, waiting for command. The dragons drew closer, and closer, and then it came.
'Fire!' Ironside roared, and the guns roared with him. Shells burst around the dragons, but did not deter them. They swept onward, mighty wings beating like drums. 'Main guns reload!' Ironside ordered, and the gunners slammed fresh shells home. 'Anti air guns, fire at will!'
The steady rattle of the machine-cannon was joined by the regular thump of the anti-air guns, hurling lead and shrapnel into the air. But the dragons continued on, unfazed. The main guns belched smoke and set off a string of explosions in their path. They pushed through effortlessly. The closest dragon roared in irritation and projected a great plume of fire toward the airship. It burst mercifully against the shield like a flood of water striking a dam wall. While the flames could not get through, the dragons could still hurl themselves against the shield itself, and that was what the leading dragon, the largest of the three, some hundred feet of dark-red scale and muscle, did. The gondola shuddered a little as she shield feedback made it move. The guns continued to fire as the dragons poured more hellfire at the airship, burning harmlessly against the shield but causing more feedback. Every impact added to the pressure, and the other two dragons joined in their leader, slamming bodily against the protective bubble. Unlike projectiles or the human aircraft, the dragons were not moving at a sufficient speed for the impact to do them physical harm, but they had enough bulk behind them to shake the shield and the ponies powering it.
The guns spat defiance at the huge creatures which, though relatively small in comparison to the full length of the Canterlot, were still monstrous beasts in their own right, particularly large examples of their species, and seemingly filled with a ferocious anger. The starboard machine-cannons stitched a trail of impacts across the body of one of the dragons, merely irritating it. The heavier anti-air guns had more of an effect, blowing chunks out of their scaly plating. Roasting columns of flame washed against the shield in reply. The dragons swung around to get out of the line of fire, but found themselves beset by the portside gunners with their accurate shooting. More defiant roars bellowed from giant throats as the dragons swooped, attacking from both sides and the rear.
The head of the Shield Section shouted that his unicorns were tiring from the assault and the battering the shield was taking. Ironside called across to Spitfire, who was holding onto the deck railing, not as used to the movements of an airship deck during combat as he was.
'Major! If you'd be so kind as to get your companies on deck. It's time for some sharpshooting.' Spitfire nodded and relayed the orders below. The Pegasi infantry and the Special Tasks Group squad came rapidly up the hatchways from the hold. She ordered them to line the railings in between the cannons, and two hundred rifles sprouted from the sides of the craft. At her command, the crackle of musketry added its weight to the din of battle. The bullets were pinpricks against the dragons' hide, but they could be targeted with great accuracy by the trained marksponies of the Assault Infantry. Eyes, open mouths and the softer underbellies and wings could be struck. Surrounded on three sides by dragons and on the other by the mountains, the Canterlot needed all the firepower it could get.
The dragons continued to swoop in, breathe fire at the shield, slam into it a couple of times, and circle away, almost forming a steady pattern of violence. The guns volleyed fire back at them, with patters of rifle rounds and machine-cannon shells mingling with the heavy roar of the bombardment cannons. But ammunition was finite, and a dragon was a hardy beast. Three were extremely dangerous. Spitfire pondered using the same tactic as she had in the abandoned Hive, with sticky bombs and careful movement, but that was against one dragon. With three in the air, any attempt to approach and isolate one would be met with flame from another, and being roasted alive was not the way she wanted to go. A massed approach by the Assault companies might achieve victory, but a single blast of flame could massacre an entire platoon in an airborne holocaust and swarm tactics were not so effective against such large beasts as they would be against the smaller, more common dragons that plied the area.
One of the bombardment cannons struck a heavy blow, getting a lucky shot in and ripping through the side plating of one of the two smaller dragons, a grey creature that was suddenly pumping red blood from its flank. It roared in pain, and Spitfire shouted for the rifleponies to focus their fire on the wound. Ironside gave the same command to the machine-cannon operators, and a hailstorm of bullets and small-calibre shells struck home. The dragon screeched and spat flame against the shield, but it was hurt, and it was struggling to stay airborne. The starboard anti-air cannons blazed and struck it, slowed by its wound. With a final death-roar, it plunged from the sky, trailing blood behind it.
Its fellows charged, smashing against the shield and rocking it violently. The unicorns providing the magic for the defences were stumbling, straining to maintain the bubble around the airship. The flames, being spread across such a large area of the shield at once, provided a greater burden for them than a concentrated attack would have, as providing magical support for a larger area required more mental output. The shield was wavering, and the dragons were relentless, belching out flame and smoke from above, from below, from the sides, wherever they would appear. Sometimes guns could not engage them; sometimes they would dance between the shell bursts, or sometimes just shrug them off. They kept coming, kept striking, the shield quaking and shivering, the unicorns shaking on unsteady hooves, their horns sputtering. With two final massive blasts of heat from two sides at once, the shield collapsed with a pop of displaced air. The Canterlot was vulnerable.
Ironside immediately ordered full speed ahead, driving toward the mountains. The unicorns tried to raise the shield again, but the feedback from collapse had stunned them, rendered them temporarily incapable of erecting it. The dragons came in again, and this time their flames found a target. Fire leaped across the flank of the gondola and scarred the top deck, the dragons mercifully not posessing the awareness of the nature of airship construction to know that the gasbag was the jucier target. Nontheless, fire gripped the wood-and-metal structure. Hoses were immediately put into operation. Half a dozen ponies screamed in utter agony as they were burned alive, several leaping over the side, blazing torches in the fading light.
Damage control parties threw buckets of sand onto the burning wood and played hose lines over the flames as the gun crew continued to fight the ship. The dragons, sensing their prey trying to flee, pounced again, coming in from astern where there were only a couple of machine-cannons mounted. But the rails were lined with rifles still, and several shots to the eyes saw one dragon wheeling away in pain. The other, the dark-red monster, pressed on, and let loose a huge belch of flame that swathed the quarterdeck in smoke and fire. A quick-thinking unicorn threw up a much smaller shield bubble around the command crew, protecting Ironside, Spitfire, the chief gunnery officer and the helmspony from the heat. Hoses hurriedly quelled the blaze as best they could, but the water tanks on board only held so much. Many more fires would result in the situation getting out of hoof. 'All ahead, flank speed!' Ironside ordered. 'Take us up! Cut loose ballast fore and aft! Into the storm!'
A few of the crewponies glanced at him, but he knew it was the only decision to take. If either of the two dragons got in a good shot at the gasbag, if they came in at the right angle and engulfed most or all of the top deck in an inferno, or if a significant quantity of fire got going on the main gun deck, the airship was doomed. The fire hoses and extinguishing magic of the unicorns could not cope with a full-scale blaze. If fire caught hold of the gasbag or the main magazines then the whole ship would go up.
Streams of water ballast vented from the nose and tail of the airship's gasbag. Pegasi flapped over the sides of the gondola to cut away the sandbags used as emergency ballast to gain a further advantage; not ideal, but a necessity. They were already getting close to the rising rock wall that formed the edge of the Foal Mountains, and to get over it in time they would need all the help they could get.
'Sir, she's heavy1' cried the helmspony. 'She'll never make this climb.'
'Major!' Ironside shouted across the din to Spitfire. 'Can your boys fly alongside? We need a lot of altitude very quickly and I'm afraid they're weighing us down.' Spitfire gave a nod in return and passed the command to the Assault Infantry. They would need to get out and stay in close formation as the airship climbed, otherwise they would be easy pickings for the dragons. The word went around, and squad by squad the Pegasi leaped over the side, taking to the wing and remaining close to the airship as it began to rise rapidly, elevators and engines tilting to add extra lift and thrust respectively. Rain pattered against the wooden deck and the armour of the crew as they reached the storm's edge, still climbing, the rock face looming ahead of them vertiginously.
The dragons came in again, the guns thundering in response. A blast of flame caught the port side of the gondola, charring timbers and igniting spot fires on the main gun deck, swiftly extinguished by practised hooves. Several of the Assault Infantry were caught in the curving arc of flame and spiralled away, their wing feathers burning, unable to keep themselves airborne.
The other dragon, the dark-red leader, flapped above the airship and dove down upon it. Lightning crackled near it but it sped on, mouth open wide, a torrent of heat and flame erupting. Some of it caught the front of the gasbag, while the rest descended upon the main deck. Some ponies were caught in the blast and fried alive in their armour, the metal melting into their skin, fusing it to their bodies as their agonised screams were silenced by the air being sucked from their lungs. As the dragon dropped lower, it flew into almost a full broadside from the starboard bombardment cannons, which knocked it about heavily, blood pouring from several wounds as it let out a mighty roar. It backed off to regroup, but that allowed the crew time to react.
Hoses plied their trade, using up the last of the emergency water extinguishing the blazing forward deck. Ammunition was hastily rolled or shoved away from the burning areas, while the wounded were pulled to the rear hatch where the medics awaited. The rain was aiding them now, a heavy squall pelting them with cold, sharp drops, cooling the deck planks and helping the firefighting efforts. But there was still fire clinging to the gasbag's surface, threatening to burn through the outer cover and defeat the self-sealing skin of the internal cells that contained the precious, and highly flammable, lifting gas.
A damage control team flapped up to check out the conditions. They called for water, but none was available. Buckets were hastily laid out and passed up. Gutters running along the top and sides of the gasbag collected rainwater or condensation and funneled it into the water ballast tanks inside the envelope. Now they were pressed into service as sources for firefighting, with the ponies scooping up what they could and tossing it onto the lingering flames. The canvas outer skin, reinforced with armour in key places, had burned through, but fire had not reached the internal cells. The flames were checked just in time.
The dragons continued to pursue at a greater distance, wary as the leader had been wounded and their compatriot killed by the airship. The clouds swirled around them, thunder roaring above them as lightning flashed, illuminating the deck of the Canterlot. Rain pounded as the visibility dropped. The dragons astern of them came and went through the clouds and fog. The lookouts were ordered to keep an especially close watch, as the deck crew could see nothing more than a few hundred yards ahead at best. Flying an airship through a thunderstorm over mountain peaks wasn't quite suicide, but it wasn't exactly a surefire way to a pension and a cosy retirement.
Rain lashed the deck and the gasbag, putting out the last of the stubborn fires. Intense winds buffeted the sturdy craft, setting the gondola swaying. They were really inside the clouds now, and Spitfire ordered the Assault Infantry back aboard lest any get lost in the storm. The altimeter was constantly checked and rechecked, needing to be wiped clear of rain and condensation repeatedly. The highest peak of the mountain range was at twelve thousand feet, but the area they were climbing over had a maximum height of just over nine thousand. Canterlot lay beyond, just a few miles away, but visibility continued to shrink to almost nil. The water ballast tanks refilled within minutes as rain poured into the collector tracks. But that was not the only place it was getting into.
The fire on the gasbag had burned a ragged gash in the outer skin, and rain was flooding into the hole. The torn fabric flapped in the strong wind, and the front-most interior fuel cell found itself being ripped by a sudden, strong gust. The precious lifting gas, lifeblood of the airship, began to vent away into the atmosphere. It was not enough to bring the ship down, but the more gas drained, the more nose-heavy the Canterlot would become.
The dragons had disappeared astern, lost in the clouds behind, perhaps scared away by the lightning that played all around, or perhaps just bored of the pursuit, retreating to lick their wounds. The Canterlot was all alone, tossed on the endless stormy grey sea that surrounded it. Somewhere in the mists, perhaps perilously close beneath them, lay the jagged peaks of the Foal Mountains. Ahead lay Canterlot. They pressed on, as much out of necessity as anything else. The dragons may still be behind them, and they were no longer in any fit state to fight. Several of the anti-air guns had been taken out by the flames, there were numerous casualties who needed more medical attention than could be given in the overwhelmed sickbay, and the gasbag was torn. If they could make it over the peaks, they could drop down below the storm and into relatively clear air, and make their approach to Canterlot. An inspection of the gasbag by the damage control party, however, revealed the extent of their problems.
'Skipper!' one pony called, flapping down from the gasbag above, buffeted by the wind, her mane and tail blown into straggly tatters. 'The forward cell is ruptured! We're bleeding lifting gas!'
'Are the other cells intact?' Ironside asked immediately. The mare nodded. 'It looks like it. It's just where the fire hit the cover, burned through...I guess the rain and the wind got inside. There's a tear a good four feet long in the cell.'
'Damn, no wonder she feels nose-heavy!' the helmspony muttered. 'Skipper, if we're venting gas at the bow then we're going to start losing altitude, no matter how much ballast we release.'
Ironside nodded gravely. Under normal circumstances, such a problem would be serious, but not calamitous. Ballast could be released forward and not aft, to stabilise the ship's centre of gravity somewhat while a controlled descent was made onto level terrain. But the circumstances were not normal- they were in the midst of a storm, an unknown height above the mountain peaks. The altimeter read ten thousand, but with no visibility they didn't know their precise location, or where they might encounter a taller cliff or mountainside that would spell disaster.
Ironside ordered their speed cut to one half ahead and all remaining forward ballast to be dumped. Extra lookouts strained their eyes for any sign of something looming out of the murk. The clouds were lit by lightning, which played on the metal armour of the gasbag, mercifully diverted around the potentially flammable gas by the structure of lightning rods built into the outer skin and gondola. The winds howled around them, shaking the gondola from side to side as the rain lashed down, soaking every surface, but at least cooling and easing the agonies of those burn victims still on deck, there being no room in the sick bay for them all.
The lifting gas continued to bleed away from the forward cell, steadily bringing the nose lower and lower despite the best efforts of the helmspony. A few hundred feet could be all that spared them from a collision. But if the nose kept dropping, they would soon be plunging into trouble anyway if they didn't know what was below them. Ironside ordered the helm to limit the rate of descent as much as possible, slow, creeping, double lookouts on both sides, with Pegasi flapping below the gondola itself for a better view, though they were wracked and buffeted by the gales blowing around them. One hundred feet, nothing below. Two hundred. Three hundred, five hundred, one thousand.
'Hold her there!' came the cry from below, faint, carried barely on the wind. 'Ground sighted! Hold her!'
The helmspony raised the elevators and applied more power, engines swiveling downward to stop their descent. The airship as a whole stabilised, but the nose continued to drop lower and lower as more gas drained away. The damage control party worked feverishly to plug the leak, but it was too big. It was not a simple patch job with a few squares of canvas. It was a long gash in the self-sealing cell, requiring the application of fresh untrated rubber in between the canvas layers, a time consuming process, and time was something that had run out.
The rocks below came closer and closer, the bow plunging from the sky despite every effort to correct it. The emergency ballast had already been cut away to expedite their climb away from the dragon threat, the bow ballast had been drained already. Another purge of the small amount of rainwater that had accumulated since the last ballast blow was tried, to no avail. The engines throbbed as they tried in vain to compensate with thrust for what the airship now lacked in sufficient lift. With no way to pump gas from the other cells to the ruptured one, no more forward ballast to compensate, and no other way of raising the nose, the Canterlot was doomed to drop until it struck the mountain below.
Ironside sent out a simple order; abandon ship.
Crewponies prepared the emergency evacuation, opening all hatches and gunports. Pegasi rapidly formed up to receive the unicorn and earth pony members who they would airlift to safety. Each casualty, unable to support their own weight or hold onto their rescuer, required several Pegasi for evacuation, but luckily the two companies of Assault Infantry on board provided more than enough willing hooves. The wounded from sickbay were brought onto the main deck as quickly as they could be packaged for transport. With the engines screaming in full reverse to try and slow the descent, the crew and passengers began to flee the dying ship. The wounded and the non-Pegasi first, followed by the rest of the passengers, then the gun crews below deck, then the top deck crews, the command staff, and finally, last pony off, her captain. Ironside flapped into the air mere moments before the bow of the Canterlot made contact with the mountain.
The nose of the gasbag slammed into the sharp outcrop, crumpling up, the canvas ripping and tearing, the already deflated gas cell collapsing entirely. All forward progress was halted by the collision, and the airship dropped, the gondola slamming bodily into the rocks beneath. The gasbag's interior metal supporting framework concertinaed up on itself as something, somewhere, ignited the lifting gas that was now leaking from multiple cells. A tiny spark and a tiny flame became, within seconds, a raging inferno, as the huge craft settled into its grave, high atop the mountains. If the weather had been clear, the death of the Canterlot would have been visible from the walls of the city whose name she bore.