//------------------------------//
// Chapter 10 
// Story: Just Like Magic of Old 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

A day or so later, when her ship first touches the upper atmosphere, they’re both wearing their pressure suits again; she does not expect the hull to remain airtight through this dangerous of a reentry, and it’s entirely possible they may have to use their suit parachutes to survive themselves.  Cold Coils has strapped herself into her seat, using the Hands built into her suit; unlike Flight, her hooves don’t seem to want to stick to things.
She has her ship carefully aligned with her trajectory, despite how much of her precious power that burned.  The first of the three reactors finished defrosting twenty minutes ago- meaning, for the first ten minutes of her descent, she’s running on stored power alone.  Once it does come alive, she should be able to maintain a relatively low-altitude flight- but not a hover…  and she was able to verify, the pirates busted their way into her gear wells and deflated her tires.  Which means she’ll have to use the landing legs instead- and those can’t be used with anything that isn’t VTOL.
She pulls on the helm slightly, one hoof hovering over the gyro governor switch.  The gyros themselves are at idle, a small power drain- but she has them switched out, so they’re not being used for helm control.  She’s going to do as much of the descent profile as she can with the aerodynamic controls.  And, of course, use atmospheric contact to level off as quickly as she can, before focusing on losing speed rather than altitude.  Even if she manages to lose all her speed, down to safe velocities, the moment she hits low enough altitude to hold a glide at such speeds, she’ll still have a good fifteen minutes of glide time- and by then, she will have had her atmospheric engines running for at least five minutes.
The ship twitches.  Gravity seems to shift slightly.
She takes a deep breath.  That’s the atmosphere, pushing on the belly of her ship.
She scowls at the screen, and adjusts the rudders to keep her on course.  Something seems to be applying more drag on the left side of her ship.
Something then vibrates violently, and nearly robs her of her control.  It might have actually done that, had she not kicked the gyros back in and used them to overcome the twisting force.  Something is definitely dragging on the left side of her ship- the one the pirates attacked from.
She sucks in a sudden breath, right before another blast rocks her ship, this one throwing her away from her control panel.  That door!  She’d never sealed it!
She makes a grab for the helm, but it’s way out of reach, and she’s falling away from it.  She wills it to shift, to force her ship back onto the appropriate heading; autopilot doesn’t work for unpowered reentry, and she won’t be able to reach the helm in time.
Then…  it moves, and the ship shudders as it twists back on course.  She slams into the back panel, horn tingling for some reason, and gallops back up the floor to the panel.
As she gets there, she notices something.
She’s galloping on all four hooves…  yet she’s also holding the helm firmly.
And while the helm is inexplicably surrounded by a strange, golden aura…  so is her horn.
She braces herself against the panel with her hooves and concentrates on making things happen with her horn rather than her hooves.  She’s certain she couldn’t do this before- but now isn’t the time to worry about that.
Then another alarm goes off, and her blood runs cold.
She doesn’t need to look at the panel.  Yes, she should have sealed that door.  She really should have sealed that door; if she had, she might have survived.
That’s the predemolition alarm, to indicate that total destruction of the vessel has become certain.  It exists primarily for the cases when a landing or atmospheric escape is impossible due to multiple equipment failure, to give the crew sufficient warning to bail and parachute to safety.
Then she glances at her controls, most of them glowing oddly golden, takes a deep breath, points her horn at the windshield, and screams at the universe.  She concentrates on making it down safe- on protecting her ship.  Her horn burns, the aura on it expanding and glowing brighter.
The twisting slowly abates, and becomes easier to control.
Then the predemolition alarm shuts off.
She can still land safely.
She doesn’t let up.





She takes a very deep breath and finally allows herself to relax when the second reactor- which had gone into startup almost five minutes after the first- finally starts generating power, while she’s still on approach to Orbital Control no less.  She’s already diverted to autopilot control- and thanks to that second reactor, should be able to land on autopilot, as well.  Sure, it’ll take some five minutes or so to spin up to full power, but it doesn’t need to hit more than about thirty percent power for VTOL operation.  And, in about two minutes, the third and final reactor aboard her ship will start generating power.  Meaning, she should have enough power for careful VTOL in a minute and a half- then for maximum aerodynamic thrust in about eight.
And that’s just live production.  Her reserves are charging even now.  Her reserves, which had been at a measly two percent- solar is not the fastest way to charge any ship- when she hit the atmosphere, had come within a hair’s breadth of running out.  Fortunately, that first reactor had started producing power just barely in time to keep her aerodynamic controls working properly…  after which she’d promptly restarted the gyroscopes to stabilize her ship even further, and ordered the atmospheric engines to start spinning up.
She taps into her internal comms, reaching out to Coils in one of the passenger bays.  “Okay, we’re in stable flight now.  Reactors online and everything- at this point, autopilot will get us down safe and sound.”
“...  Okay, thank you,” Coils mutters.
Her comms panel chirps suddenly.  She glances at it, snorts, and punches accept.  She’d tried connecting to Orbital Control on the way in- but it would seem the pirates took out her radio transceivers…  but either couldn’t find or didn’t target her comms transceivers.  Meaning, she could call her parents’ staff and vice versa, but she couldn’t call in to Orbital Control the way she’s supposed to.  She’d gotten around it by requesting an audio-only comms channel with Orbital Control.
Her father’s steward looks out of the screen at her.  “Short Flight!” he yelps, almost panicking.  “I-  We evacuated the building, and your parents said they were coming- but they haven’t shown!  I-  And-!”  She sees him glance up, and looks up herself.  She can see the castle in the distance…  and she can also see the plume of fire that is the remnants of the pirate ship coming straight down at it.
“I see it,” she mutters.
She watches it hit the castle.
“I…” the steward begins fearfully.
“Calmly, please.  It doesn’t look like their bedroom took much damage, and I’m in-atmosphere nearby.  I’ll take a peek under VTOL power, see if they’re okay.”





It takes her only about five minutes to fly to the castle and transition to VTOL.  She loses a little height, peering out her windshield and straight in the open wall of her parents’ bedroom, where both of them are still staring open-mouthed at the opening.  She sighs, and taps the key for the external PA system.  “Maybe you’ll listen next time I order an unscheduled drill,” she grumbles into the mic, before re-engaging autopilot to complete the journey to Orbital Control.  The VTOL engines go instantly to full power to rise over the castle- but there’s enough power in the reserves, so they don’t instantly starve themselves.
She can let the fire department rescue them, now that she can calm ponies’ worries that they might have been killed.





Almost twenty minutes later, the external airlock door slides open in front of her and Cold Coils, neither wearing their pressure suits.  They’d shed those while it flew; she’d then donned one of her dresses…  and battered her regalia rather badly, after trying to put it on.  She’s grown quite a bit since she last used it, so it no longer fits.  Especially now that she’s grown a mid shoulder and tiny, newborn wings.
Now, though, the ship’s been on the ground for a scant twenty seconds; this lock is right up near the bridge, though on the same side as the one the pirates attacked.  She grins as they step out onto the ramp; she can even hear the engines still spinning down!  She looks to the side, towards the massive wings she’d unfolded shortly before hitting the atmosphere, and the similarly massive engines attached underneath them, fans still spinning.  For safety reasons, they can’t be folded until they reach a full stop.
Then she looks up, above the wing, at the airlock the pirates had attacked, and blinks.  “...  Woah.”
The side of her ship seems to have been ripped open by the atmosphere, casting black burn marks all the way down the side…  and creating a hole at least six meters across.
Coils looks.  “...  Wow.”
“What the-!?”
Short Flight starts at the sudden scream, whirling to face.  It’s…
It’s Night Skies, at almost noon, long after her shift ended.  Running behind her is Shooting Star, who is off duty today.
“What?” she asks.
“How-!?”  Skies begins, before stopping to take a deep breath.  Star nearly runs into her from behind, scrambling to the side just in time and looking up…  to gasp himself.
“N-No offense,” Skies tries again, “but how in the world did you get that thing down in one piece!?”
She looks at the scar, and back at Skies, and shrugs.  “I flew it,” she states.
Star scowls at the side of the ship while Skies continues.  “But that kind of scarring would only happen at hypersonic velocity in the upper atmosphere.  And once it started, you’d have less than a minute to live before the ship was ripped apart.”
She shrugs.  “Oh well.  I mean…”  She looks back at it.  “It is repairable, right?”
Right at that very moment, the engines emit distinctive clunks as the shafts lock in place, before they start drawing back into their storage positions inside the wings.
“W-Well,” Skies mutters.  “It’s clearly still working, and that seems to be the majority of the damage, so…”  She looks at Star.
Star blinks back at Skies, before looking at the ship contemplatively.  The wings are mostly folded by the time he speaks up again.  “It’ll probably cost a pretty penny to put back together, but it takes a lot more than that to total a ship this big,” he mutters.
She looks back at it.  “Hmm…  Depending on how far in the damage goes, this might even be a good time to refit it, too,” she mutters.
Skies’ eyebrows fly upwards.  “Refit?  Hmm…”  She scowls at the damage again.  “Yeah…  Depending on where the damage is, you might be able to blast two asteroids with one missile…”
The corner of her mouth twitches in a smile.  Of course Skies would use the asteroids-and-missile variant of the phrase; she’s a thestral, and the most common version of the phrase anymore is to ‘kill two thestrals with one stone’.  Once upon a time, it was to ‘kill two birds with one stone’- but then somepony likened pegasi to birds, and it was changed…  to the discriminatory disaster it is now.  She vastly prefers the asteroids-and-missile variant herself.