Chirr shook his head, groaning as he tried to get some feeling into his tail. The thaumokinetic launcher's acceleration had been reduced in deference to Red One's live cargo, but had still been high enough to make his vision turn grey. Not that there was much to see, except for his hardsuit's heads-up display.
"Everypony still alive?" Trailblazer asked, his voice strangely hollow in the confined space.
"Just about," Chirr grumbled, his response hidden beneath the enthusiastic 'I've gotta do that again.' from Bleve. Nightstorm just grunted. Chirr bounced in his shock harness as the Loup-Garou shook violently. "Rutting Tartarus--!"
"Just a little turbulence, my little ponies." Echelon's cheerful voice came over his intercom. "No shooting just yet. If you would switch to channel fourteen, that's the rear camera. It's quite a sight and you don't want to miss it."
Clumsily manipulating the unfamiliar tongue and lip controls, Chirr blinked as the static suit parameters were replaced by a wonderfully detailed video feed. The Express hovered over an expanse of ocean, at the centre of a spreading patch of clear blue sky. Tendrils of steam curled up from the water, looking for all the world like what might come off a pan of boiling water, but much, much bigger. They twisted together under the dark pip of the aircarrier, lifting ever faster to surround the vehicle in a column of fog that started to spin.
"So Celestia did us a favour, after all." Trailblazer's voice contained more than a little awe, and Chirr found himself nodding. All that heat dumped into the surface layers, enough sunlight to bring the ocean to a boil...
"That she did, everypony." That voice, light and playful, was the unicorn weapon's officer, Willow. "Intentional or not, I don't care. Our Express is spinning herself a hurricane to hide in."
On the feed, violently churning clouds the colour of pitch were boiling up from the volume above the aircarrier, spreading out at altitude like they had reached a glass ceiling. The Express was lost from view in moments, but the clouds expanded like ink dropped into a swirling bowl of water. Magic was reaching out faster than even the Loup-Garou, the once blue sky overhead turning wispy with mare's tails before bubbling grey cumulous covered everything. The first lightning strobed from the newly-formed eyewall, flash-bulb freezing an ocean surface covered with building waves.
===
Equilibrium jumped as the alarm siren whooped once and the deck shivered under her hooves. Since she was already crowding close behind Neighmann, she leaned into the contact and drew comfort from his solid warmth. Heart still fluttering, she smiled briefly as he glanced questioningly at her and said something that sounded reassuring, but couldn't be made out over the combined warble of hundreds of damaged spellcraft systems.
She stood wedged into one of the narrow spaces that honeycombed the walls around the Friendship Express' summoning circle, a piece of spellcraft technology she'd read about but never thought she'd see. Neighmann was ahead of her in the one-pony passageway, and in front of him was another unicorn, Manny Fold, who was the chief spellcraft engineer. Half-seen hornlight flared in the gap between the two unicorns, as they did something to part of the mechanism embedded in the walls.
The circle, quiescent now the Friendship Express was no longer under direct magical assault, was powered by the many cubic meters of equipment that they stood within. A highly versatile magical machine, it was the core of the Express' defences, as well as allowing control of the local weather. Where she stood was part of the arcane waveguide that allowed all these banks of spellcraft devices to operate in concert; when running, this space would be full of unpredictable short-lived spells and was not a place anypony could survive for long.
The noise of the place was really beginning to set her teeth on edge. The walls were rough with crystals of various shapes and sizes -- not actually sharp, but you wouldn't want to fall into them -- so tightly packed that they might have grown there like sugar crystals in a foal's chemistry experiment. All the light came from the walls, each gem a separate colour that cast odd diffuse patches of light that distorted the natural hues of anything it shone upon. A fair proportion were pulsing instead of glowing steadily; each of these emitted a harmonic of the distressing whine.
Even without most of her horn, Libi could feel the damaged crystals; they almost seemed to cry out for somepony to fix them. The half-powered spellcraft made her nervous; while working on operating systems was necessary to fine-tune the trapped magic, it was only ever done when they were in good repair. Damaged spellcraft could be unpredictable, and the last thing she wanted was to be caught in an accidental casting.
The fear did have some benefits, distracting her from the despair and self-loathing that had filled her mind of late.
I'm worse than useless, she thought, mouth working and ears flat, mind diverted from its recent preoccupation with what she'd been forced to remember. Manny Fold might know his ship's systems, and Neighmann must understand those things the Princess dug out of the Monster Room's floor, but I've been fixing spellcraft for years. Libi ground her teeth, trying to feel what the other ponies were doing.
It wasn't going well. They'd hooked up all the physical connections -- a chaotic wiring loom of optic fibre, high-frequency shielded analogue cable and meters of distribution-grade superconductors -- some time ago. Libbi nodded to herself. Integrating the spellcraft will be hard. I keep getting flashes-- She shook her head, smiling weakly when Neighmann, distracted from his work, turned to look at her. "It's too complex, isn't it?"
Her mate's ears drooped and Manny Fold sighed, his magic fading as he let a thaumic monitor fall back into his tool panniers. "We'll get it working," the engineer said, his eyes drawn to the hovering rectangle of his terminal, currently displaying a set of schematics in thaumic notation. "These arcane systems are designed to do so much, and these new things of Luna's..."
Neighmann shook his head slightly. "Too complex, yes. I was never on the build teams, and I only watched the installation. We really need Luna for this... " His voice dropped to a mumble.
Libi nodded unconsciously, trying to read the schematics over her mate's shoulder. There's something very familiar about parts of those... "Manny? My job involves a bit of spellcraft installation -- do you mind if I take look at those?"
He looked at her with narrowed eyes, suddenly suspicious, then relaxed. "It's all secret, and so is the inside of the summoning circle... yet here you are." The terminal floated over to land between her hooves, and the engineer pulled out the little control stylus and held it up. Libi looked at it in confusion for a moment, then slumped, reaching forwards to grip it between her lips. Waggling her ears in thanks, she lay down in the confined space and started to read.
With each screen of complex symbology, her excitement grew. Here were things she'd discussed as theories, blue-sky extensions of wild ideas kicked around during late-night lab sessions. Things that she would have bet were impossible, or pure fiction, yet obviously had been formed into physical devices. Complex doesn't do it justice, she thought, drawing air in through her teeth in a silent whistle. This is an order of magnitude more involved than that feedstock converter.
Still... there are some interesting similarities. Flipping quickly to the Express' own engineering files, Libbi searched for the summoning circle, immersing herself in the far more comprehensible -- although massively overpowered -- spellcraft systems it was constructed from. A kilosecond later she sat back, staring up at her mate's horn as it flickered and flared. Libi gritted her teeth. This is my speciality, dammit! There must be something I can do!
The germ of an idea took a grip of her mind, and her face became slack. "Neighmann? Do you remember the sharing spells from back in university?"
The interplay of hornlight went out. "Focus, Neighmann! If we don't get this working--" Manny Fold broke off and stared at her, trying to keep the anger from his features. "Equilibrium, I must insist that you return to the infirmary." A glow of spellight pulsed over his communicator and Libbi shrank back, sudden uncertainty and guilt making her heart race. "This is Manny Fold at the circle; I need somepony to escort--"
Neighmann reached out and touched the engineer on the chest with one forehoof. "My Libbi wasn't kidding when she said she did spellcraft installation; she's Fancypant's chief arcane hardware troubleshooter; I don't know about you, but I'm stuck."
Manny fell silent, then after some internal struggle whispered "Standby." into his microphone. Looking tired, he tossed his head in a gesture for them to continue.
"What is it, love? What have you thought of?"
"I can't do it myself, but if you share with me..."
Neighmann looked doubtful. "Are you sure? After what Luna put you through--"
Libi nodded vigorously. "This is my area of expertise, Neighmann, and Discord... Discord used me to get to the rest of Equestria; I was his v-vector." She spat the last word, head drooping and eyes filling with tears. "I know you don't blame me, but if I don't at least try to fix this, I'll... I'll never be able to live with myself. I want to be able to look into junior's eyes and say that this didn't break me." She swallowed heavily, heart starting to pound. "Just... no peeking, okay?"
"Promise." Neighmann smiled gently, nuzzling at the junction between her neck and shoulder. His horn glowed, and suddenly there was another presence in her head. Libbi gasped, fighting the urge to fight off the intruder, relaxing as her mate resolutely turned his attention to the arcane standing waves that filled the complex spaces around the summoning circle.
Light, in brilliant, primary colours, washed through the whole volume, penetrating the walls, floor and ponies. Everything glowed and flickered, pulsing in rhythms that seemed overwhelmingly complex as first glance, but actually contained hidden patterns. There was a dissonant presence, of notes and colours out of harmony with the vast array of the summoning circle. Below everything, in a cleared engineering space, were those six featureless cubes of brushed metal. Heavy cables linked them, not to the aircarrier's normal power circuits, but directly to the massive banks of homopolar generators that fed the circle.
Right. Equilibrium fought to remain calm, hunting for that state of mind that came while she was calibrating some multi-million bits worth of spellcraft machinery that had taken months to construct. Let's start with the waveguide's resonance frequency. From what I've seen, the new additions were designed to operate in free space. Manny? Could you put one of the modules into test mode please?
More light flared in the shared mental space, and Libbi reached out through Neighmann's magic and started to work.
===
Admiral Twister wanted desperately to pace the command deck, either that or take wing and turn tight loops in the air to release some of the tension. Instead, he bottled up all that urge to move, channelling it with long practice into a ferocious stare that raked his personal repeater displays. It's not like I can actually go anywhere, he thought, mouthing the harness' quick release with his lips.
"All fighters at their initial points," called out the steel-grey unicorn stallion at Flight Ops, with all the inflection of a computer.
"Engineering?" Twister glanced at that station, watching for the nod from the crewpony.
"Circle has been safed, sir. The installation is underway."
Well, this is it. I could call them all back right now and suffer no more than the courts-martial for the whole crew and a major international incident... Twister snorted, earning himself questioning glances from the bridge crew. ...that would be a hoofnote in the subsequent war with Celestia, who'd probably make a terminal example of us all. Despite everything, that thought tore at his heart. To think that the pony he'd believed to be a beacon of perfection could do all this.
"Sir? Your orders?"
The worried tone, well hidden under a veneer of professionalism, brought him back. You don't need to worry about me, Flight. "Acknowledged. Space, you have authorization to launch. All stations, stand-by." There was a chorus of reflexive 'aye sirs' from the bridge team, then muzzles reached for master switches and telekinetic glows condensed around thaumic command interfaces.
Twister straightened his wings where they lay over his restraint harness, then stared straight ahead at the main screen, currently showing a view from high up on one of the Friendship Express' tail fins. Careful computer processing and well-designed optical surfaces meant that, even with the torrential rain from the eyewall, it was only like looking through a fog. "Execute," he snapped.
High above the eye of their pet storm, the Express' complement of Cicada electronic warfare drones did their job, pumping megawatts of radiofrequency energy out through their phased-array transmitters. They'd spent long minutes collecting pulse trains from the active radars along Razorclaw's coast, and those installations were immediately irradiated and brutally suppressed. Other systems came online, only to become targets themselves as the agile transmitters switched focus.
Dark shapes, little more than slender cones with tiny fins halfway up their sides, jumped from a pair of silos on the aircarrier's flanks, flicking out and away without any sound. A few hundred meters out they seemed to pause, like a gently thrown ball reaching the top of its arc. Then the rain just vanished.
Yellow light, painfully bright, shone through the clouds as the dozen missiles lit off their drives and punched upwards, moving far faster than anything physical had any right to. They were out of his visual range in moments, five hundred gravities of acceleration pushing the anti-satellite missiles to Mach fifteen in less than a second. Only two seconds after that the oversized, spellcraft-augmented, solid fuel boosters were discarded and the high-efficiency plasma drives lit, inhaling the rapidly thinning air and preventing the feeble paw of gravity from slowing their onward rush.
Not that it could; they were already at escape velocity.
Tracking systems followed them as they flew, vectoring in on communications, navigation and surveillance satellites. Not all of these were Razorclaw national assets; Intel had long known that the gryphon nations in the area had a number of military cooperation agreements. Flight time to the middle orbital altitudes was only two minutes or so; the missiles had long since switched to on-board reaction mass and were adding to their early headlong flight at a steady half a gravity.
The military satellites were already manoeuvring, but Twister had ordered the Express' full complement of anti-satellite 'Shrike' missiles to be used. The important targets had been tasked to multiple weapons, and there was little chance of escape. The Shrike was very good at what it did, able to provide almost a hundred gravities of lateral acceleration with a reaction time measured in microseconds. Worse, they talked to each other, each missile in a flight covering a particular escape vector.
The feed from one of the Cicadas, orbiting high in the stratosphere and well above the cloud 'cap' covering the hurricane, was through a half metre reflector that compensated for what little atmosphere was sitting between the telescope and space. The target satellite, a boxy thing studded with a bewildering array of antennae and sensors, jetted gas from one corner, sending the background lights of the orbital debris ring spinning as the Cicada's scope tracked its evasive manoeuvres.
A point of light, only really visible because of the green tracking diamond that surrounded it, swept across the corner of the screen and exploded. A tenth of a second later, so did the target. "That's one," Twister muttered, then raised his voice. "Space, report."
"Shrikes four, five and nine report kills. One and two, and six and eight have been retasked to the secondary targets at higher altitude; intercept in... five hundred seconds, plus or minus."
"Excellent. Carry on, Space." And all across Goldenwing and Hookbeak, entertainment and data feeds will be going out as I kinetic kill their orbital hardware. That the satellites would die was not in question; these were civilian vehicles only used by the military when they had to. Twister smiled quietly to himself. If the average gryphon was like the average pony, then stopping them from watching Gryphon's Got Talent was the act that would gain him the most notoriety.
The view from the Cicada abruptly went a brilliant green, as the drone switched to using its telescope as a laser mirror, blinding the debris ring installations and high-orbit satellites that were out of the Shrike's immediate reach.
I'm never going to hear the end of this, the Admiral thought.
===
Echelon crooned gently to himself, near unconscious flutters of his wings translated through the flight armature to their metal and composite proxies. The clear air turbulence under the masses of heavy cloud made Red One feel alive. He goosed the throttles, the shockwaves of his supersonic transition ripping the water under his keel to vapour. Red Two was five hundred meters to his port, with Green One -- carrying the other FOAL team -- and Green Two as a similar pair a couple of kilometres behind his tail. Other formations of the deep strike fighters fanned out from the Express, heading for Razorclaw's coastal defences and airfields.
The mission was clear; punch through whatever the gryphons could throw up in front of them, dropping the special operations pod en route to a target deeper in Razorclaw territory. Doing so much with only one aircarrier; how many-- Echelon bit off the dangerous thought, instead grinning ferally in the close confines of his console's muzzle slot. We'll show these feather dusters what it's like to face a real force.
His radar warning receiver made coloured shapes on his virtual display, placing markers on the horizon where it had located hostile emitters; others were high in the sky, running racetrack orbits at the ocean borders of the gryphon kingdom. The first were over-the-horizon backscatter units: Razorclaw's long-range early warning systems. Too poor a resolution for anything other than threat detection, they operated at frequencies which were the hardest for Red One's passive stealth to defeat.
Echelon's grin widened still further as friendly emitters came alive behind his fighter. A dozen bright green icons moved in chaotic orbits over the centre of the artificial hurricane, radiating rays of light that represented the pulse and chatter of the heavy transmitters that lined the drone's flanks. The OTH-B signals flickered and fluttered, threat indicators fading as the faint, multiply-reflected radio pulses they relied upon were overwhelmed.
Patches of dense cloud to his stern glowed brilliantly in the infrared, hazy zones of fast-moving light appearing across a wide arc of horizon and accelerating upwards. It was almost like they had been pulled straight up by an angry Goddess, the lights turning into elongated streaks that jumped from the horizon to halfway to the zenith in less than a second, before going dark. Huh, I was half expecting old Twister to back out at the last moment. Makes me glad I'm not in charge.
"There go the Shrikes," Willow said, her normally cheerful voice sombre, "first shots fired. We're actually at war."
Despite the situation, Echelon chuckled quietly. "Ah, Willow. We're not at war; we're a rogue military unit carrying out an unauthorised operation." The broadcasts from the rapidly closing Baltimare force had been harrowing to watch, full of accusations of treason from ponies that many of the Express' complement knew personally. These are the ones I don't want to fight. Bring it on, gryphons.
He was lead pilot on this flight, so at least he could do something about that... and the briefing had been completely clear. Getting his cargo to its target was the only goal that mattered, a task more important than his life or Willow's, right up there with the Express and its still not working payload of top secret spellcraft. A quick signal through the closed squadron network and all the Loup-Garou fighters responded, engines surging.
"I guess." Willow sighed, the quiet noises of her breathing through the intercom sounding a little strained at the sudden acceleration. "Coming up on our insertion point. I'm seeing launches from sites bravo, zulu and... delta. Looks like... at least four Shredders and a whole bunch of aerodynes. There's something bigger further back..." There was a long pause, so long that Echelon thought she might have decided not to speak. "Luna dammit. It was supposed to be laid up for a refit."
"What have you got, Willow?" Echelon pulled up the displays his weapon's officer was examining: colourful, three-dimensional plots of radar and emissions profiles as received by electronic warfare drones flitting ahead of the fighters. Means nothing to me, he thought, frowning at the annotated graphs.
"It's the Sundering Claw, I'm sure of it. It was at site delta, the last intel packet I saw, with half its engines pulled. Guess they put one over us this time."
Echelon swallowed, the hair of his mane tingling. The Claw was nearly the size of the Express, and far more heavily armed. With a properly supported expedition she wouldn't be a problem, but for just the Express, her aircraft scattered across the mountainous country... "Well, it's a good job we'll be below its horizon, at least until we can deliver our FOALs. We'll have our agility back after that." Celestia, despite everything, I'm going to thank you again. Without your 'gift' of sunlight... "Any clue what her refit was for?"
"Not really, although there are some interesting new ports on the top side; might be an upgrade to the spinal mount."
Red One had reached its new speed and, fifty metres beneath his hooves, the waves vanished sternwards at almost a kilometre a second.
===
Chirr gritted his teeth as the suspension harness jerked again, this time as a prelude to a long, high-G pull that seemed to be trying to draw his stomach out through his mouth. A red haze crept in from the edges of his vision, accompanying the suddenly loud thunder of his heart and a feeling that his head was going to explode. Then, just as quickly as it started, the horrible feeling vanished, replaced by a surge through his hooves that made him exhale in a startled whoof.
"Fifty klicks out, fillies and colts. Get ready; we'll be upon their defences momentarily."
"Roger that," Trailblazer said, his voice calm and clear in Chirr's ears. "Alright everypony, you know the drill. Check everything you've already checked a dozen times. This one's for real."
Damn the pony, the chiropt thought, trying to keep his breathing steady, he could at least show some sign of excitement! His ears folded back and his wings unconsciously flexed against their confining carapace panels. Chirr could feel the urge to fly building.
"Chirr, this is a private channel. Everything okay with you?"
That same, steady voice. For an instant, Chirr hated the pegasus, but the feeling faded almost immediately and he chuckled weakly. "A contested drop into enemy airspace isn't exactly what I've trained for, Captain, but I'll manage."
"More of the ninja type, eh? Don't worry, all you need to do is find the ground; my team and I will do the rest."
I know why you are in charge. There was something unshakably solid about the big pegasus, even over a voice-only link. Chirr's ears relaxed and he held that voice in his head. Princess Luna herself wants you here. She believes in you, even if you don't. The thought made his head come up inside the hardsuit. I'm not going to be the first Night Guard to question the Mistress.
"Yessir, understood. I know the plan." Do a stealth drop while the fighters deal with the local defences while en route to their decoy target. The suits were almost completely dielectric, and wouldn't add to his already small radar signature. Infrared was similarly not an issue; for the brief minutes they were likely to be in view of any thermal sensors, all his body's heat would be transferred to his drinking water, currently four kilos of ice at liquid nitrogen temperature.
None of which will stop a hit from one of those defensive triple-A units if they decide go 'spray and pray'. Chirr pushed aside the thought, listening to the chatter between the pilots.
===
Red One and the rest of the squadron had slowed below the speed of sound, muting the howl of the engines and allowing the airflow manipulations of the unicorn weapon officers to direct the remaining sound high into the air. The formation contracted and they flew in a vertically staggered single file, weaving through the glacial valleys and high mountain passes. To any gryphon on the ground they were like ghosts, flitting bat-like against a background of dark rock and precipitous pine forest. With the heavy cloud and rain they were effectively silent at any distance greater than two hundred metres.
Which was fine, as long as enemy forces weren't exactly where they needed to be.
"Aerodynes ahead," Willow sang out, throwing up a spray of red diamonds across his overhead map. About half flickered, pulsing to show that detection wasn't certain. The things were noisy, not just to the ear, but electromagnetically. The twin disks of their rotors thrashed the background radio frequencies in a very particular fashion, giving the receivers distributed across the squadron advance notice of their presence, even without line of sight. "Site alpha has picked us up; they're scrambling more assets."
Threat warnings flared on Echelon's HUD, ringing his filtered and stabilised view with red icons. "I've got a flash from the launch detector--" The moving map in the lower part of his visual field tracked the missiles, showing them as a spreading glitter of pulsing red points attached to velocity vector arrows that lengthened as he watched.
"We're below their visual horizon; they must be receiving data from a passive we missed. I'm seeing mostly Slugfish, which is good... bad news is there's more than forty." Willow's tone was one of distraction as she worked with the threat mitigation suite to deconvolute the multitude of signals from her sensors.
Pretty slow, but pack-brained; that was the main point he remembered from the OPFOR briefings. Singly they were no threat, but they cooperated well, especially amid terrain they were programmed with. They've fired at extreme range, so at least they won't get much maneuvering time. His training threw up the best solution, just about at the same time as Willow launched their countermeasures. The semi-disposable drone gave him half a second warning, then jumped from its housing on Red One's back.
At the same moment he turned away from his original course and throttled the engines into high bypass mode, dumping some of his meagre supply of emergency coolant into the airflow. Injected into the vectored exhaust and wept from pores in the aircraft's composite skin, the liquid nitrogen crash-cooled hot leading edges and nozzles to close to outside air temperature, rendering Red One near-invisible to an imaging infrared sensor. "You can fool some of the sensors some of the time..." Echelon muttered, his eyes on the approaching swarm.
"They must have salvoed all their long range stuff; this is about right for ten aerodynes." If anything, Willow's voice had become more disconnected from the physical reality of forty missiles with twenty-kilo directional blast-fragmentation warheads closing at twice the speed of sound. She was far too busy running the drone to spend any time worrying about their imminent future.
They know it's just us and no support. Why hold anything back? Echelon hunkered down in his crash couch. Wish I had something to occupy my mind, he thought, fighting the urge to flex his wings and send Red One into wild evasive manoeuvres
Ahead, the drone, along with those from the other fighters, continued on their original course, engines bright and noisy at any number of wavelengths and blowing hot gas along unfolded wing spars to simulate the warmth of fast atmospheric flight on aircraft surfaces.