I fixed my jiggery-pokery with the maneuvering prop, and we got the Mikoyan righted just as the sun hit the horizon. Red declared that we now had enough ponies aboard to crew the ship for night flying, so as soon as we hauled up my unused basecamp crate, off we went - keeping the hill between us and the main portion of the Great Battlefield at first, and then keeping low to avoid getting shot down by some random war machine. Once we were far enough away, we turned west, paralleling Equestria's northern border; we didn't expect to find any nonsapient cattle at night, but we could at least get far enough away from the Battlefield to where we might find some, come morning.
I was fairly sure that Safe and Micro would stay within the general terms of our arrangement... but I felt it best not to give them too much temptation. So while Red was captaining, I took over the captain's quarters for the night, along with the pups and Amethyst; enough warm bodies to let me sleep, and enough claws and fangs to delay a would-be abductor long enough for me to wake up and start slinging spells.
I was still irritated, at least on a background level, by that whole concept. All a word really was, was a serious of pressure waves of various frequencies and amplitudes in the air - the only meaning that one series of waves had over another was a meaning given to it by a mind. Sure, I could make a prediction that a given Latinate word could cause a certain effect - but I still had no overarching theory as to why words had any effect at all, or why it had to be Latin. I'd tried mashing various other unexplained aspects of this universe up against that one, such as how songs could have magic or what the magical field storable in gems consisted of, but nothing had offered a Eureka moment. The closest I'd had to a valuable insight was that French was closer to Latin than English was, and so my memories of grade-school French classes should provide a wider inspirational vocabulary. For example - I remembered that 'dormir' was French for 'sleep' ("Frère Jacques, frère Jacques, Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?"), as paralleled by 'dormitory' and 'dormant', so something like 'dormire' was likely a good candidate for a sleep spell - if I ever got a chance to test it out. With my light spell, dispel magic spell, truth spell, and glue spell, I was turning into a passable imitation of a first-level magic user - or, as they'd been called in the first edition, when every class got a new title with every level, a 'prestidigitator'. I even had myself a cloak of invisibility - if I could figure out how to get it to work again - and a whistle of Monster Summoning. I certainly wouldn't mind a decent way to Detect Magic, and given we were on an airship, Featherfall could have some immediate applications - but I was still a little hesitant about coming up with direct combat magics. I supposed Chekov would serve as a 'wand of Magic Missiles', and the pepper spray as an 'amulet of Stinking Could'.
I'd really needed to get out more when I was growing up.
Come morning - there was a lot that had to be done, but actually doing it wasn't all that exciting. The night-shift crew had to get some sleep, the new crew had to fly the ship, lookouts had to look for any cattle we could acquire, disguises had to be made and parts practiced, food cooked, exercises exercised, adaptations made to the point system for the new crew, and pretty much all of us were keeping an eye out in case somepony from another faction decided to break the tentative truce. Which all lent a certain, shall we say, color, to the various interactions.
"So, Gallant," I inquired, ladling out a bowl of soup for lunch, "what were you doing before getting caught up in all this?"
"I was - technically, still am - part of the Guard contingent for the Oasis area, tasked with keeping an eye out for incursions from the Wasteland or Badlands." He was already slurping from a bowl of his own. "Ma'am - when you said I could 'always' ask you questions - did that include personal ones?"
"Yep. At worst, I won't answer them, though I'll probably at least try to explain why."
"That's fair. I'm trying to figure out... well, anything. I get that you are, or were, some kind of government official, and I heard that you met Captain Red Pepper in prison and gave her a job, and that you cured Miss Blanche of some strong love potion... but I still can't figure out why the diamond dogs are here, or the other unicorn."
I pulled my muzzle from the soup for a breath of air. "Well - I negotiated a peace treaty between the pack Amethyst, the adult diamond dog, is from, and the nearest pony town, and in the process, semi-adopted her pups. You should probably ask her about her motivations - I'm not entirely sure I understand them myself. As for Star Chaser... while complicated things were going on in Canterlot, I needed to make contact with some other ponies without being obvious about it, so I needed a go-between, a pony nopony would expect me to get in touch with - so I looked up the ponies who tried to rape me, found one left, and offered a deal she-"
"Wait," he interrupted, "wait wait wait. I'd just heard she'd assaulted you - she raped you?"
"Not exactly. One, she was a he at the time. Two, he didn't succeed."
"Well, that makes it all better then, doesn't it?" I suspected that he might not be expressing his genuine opinion. "What in Celestia's name is he - she - doing here, then?"
"Initially, I offered her a deal - a letter of recommendation to the Princesses to commute her sentence, in exchange for some help. I expected her to go straight to the castle when I left Canterlot - but she's continued offering her help, when she didn't have to. I suspect - I hope - that in our first encounter, she didn't realize how bad a pony she was being, and Princess Luna's punishment drove the point home rather firmly, and she's trying to be a better pony. I've been willing to offer her that chance - and have benefited significantly by doing so, such as by having a spare unicorn handy to imitate Micro while Micro's stuck guarding me."
"Ma'am - please don't take this the wrong way - but are you out of your bucking mind?"
"I'm not ruling out that possibility. That's why I'll be waiting to hear word from Canterlot about whether or not my double gets killed - if my prediction's wrong, then I'll be quite willing to admit that my paranoia may have reached irrational levels."
"I think you're trying to change the subject."
"It's not impossible that I am."
"Do you really think that she's not going to just start doing that again, once she's out of your sight?"
I frowned, examining my soup. "I suppose this isn't much of a secret at the moment, but I'd prefer you try to treat it at least as sensitive information. I can apply a piece of magic which compels the subject to tell the truth."
"I still don't know how you can do that - you're not even a pony, let alone a unicorn."
"That information is still a secret. Would you like me to glue you to something again to prove I can?"
"Er, no thank you, that won't be necessary. So - you trust her because... you know she told you the truth?"
"Let's just say that I've got sources of information you haven't dreamed of, which give me good reasons to do the various incomprehensible things I do."
"Say, Micro," I said, as I watched her try to teach Star Chaser how to walk more like her, "I've been wondering. You shrank down yourself and Safe, right?"
"Right. More sway in the hips, please."
"So - when you're shrunk, everything looks bigger to you, right?"
"Right. Not quite so much tail-swish."
"So if you look into a microscope while you're shrunk - is that like adding an extra amount of magnification, letting you see even smaller details than normal?"
"Only for the less powerful lenses. The most powerful ones are limited by optics, edge diffraction, and other physics things - being shrunk only makes what's already visible bigger. Try lying down - no, cross your front hooves. I've been wondering something myself."
"Mm-hm?"
"Since Safe and I got our promotions through the mail - which you think somepony is meddling with - does that mean that you still think you're really still in charge of the Dairy?"
"Depends. If I told you a way to improve how the Dairy works, how likely would you be to accept the suggestion?"
"If it worked? Probably seventy-five, ninety percent, depending on the details."
"Then I'd say I'm still around seventy-five to ninety percent in charge. Star - don't forget, Micro won't admit it, but she bites her hooves when she's thinking..."
"Missy," Safe growled, "We need to talk about who's in charge."
"... of?"
"I just went to get Bouncer-"
"Who?"
"The pegasus I pulled to detached duty. I just went to have her fly high to get a longer-distance view, but she said she couldn't - she was busy piloting the ship, and couldn't leave until she was relieved."
"We do kind of need somepony to keep us from crashing."
"I didn't order her to that post, Red did!"
"You mean Captain Red."
"That's not a real title!"
"She's in charge of running my ship - I'd say that makes her a real captain."
"It's not your ship - you stole it!"
"I've got the paperwork to prove it's mine - and you don't have any actual evidence it's not. I'd say that means that I've got a better claim to ownership than anyone else - which means that Red's the best claimant to the title of captain."
"Even if she is - she's not in the Guard chain of command!"
"No, she isn't. If you want to press the point - then we should find a river or pond to set down. You interrupted her trip to hire more crew - and if none of your Guard are going to fill in, then we're only going to be flying for about one shift out of three, and we've already been in the air for the night and half the day. One third the flight time, means the trip will take three times longer - hope you weren't planning on getting back to Canterlot this week."
"I can... live with that."
"That reminds me - the Guards you picked up in Oasis? Were you planning on taking them with you to Canterlot? Or sending them back to Oasis?"
"I was thinking of having them help Micro keep an eye on you."
"Ah - well, Micro isn't in the Guard chain-of-command, either. So who'd be giving them orders once you left?"
"She would."
"If she can, why can't Captain Red?"
"Because I haven't said she can!"
"So - after you leave - if Micro orders them to obey Red's orders and serve as crewponies here?"
"That would be up to her."
"Well - right now it's up to you. Give the order and we can stay in the air and you can be back in Canterlot soonest. Or you can worry more about how things get done than actually getting them done... and waste all our valuable time."
"I think I'm beginning to hate you as much as your imaginary enemies do."
"Say, Missy?"
"Yepperooni, Red?"
"... Anyway - I've been going over the ship's manuals - and there's nothing in any of them about that stunt you pulled."
"I can't imagine why not."
"Do you need to rebuild that bypass thing to let us do it again?"
"No, that was just to keep anypony on the bridge from being able to stop it from happening. Getting us to flip is fairly easy, really - getting us to flip and stay in the air, well, with the way the main engines are positioned relative to our center of mass... that's harder."
"Is there anything we can do to add that to the maneuvers we can try, when we need to try 'em?"
"Well, for one thing... Seatbelts."
"Pardon?"
"If you're thinking of trying to turn this ship into a barely-turnable arrow into a fluttering butterfly - every station a pony's likely to be at, including the mess and beds, are going to need harnesses to keep us from being flung all around the place. The pups are going to need a gyroscope-type basket, which keeps them pointed 'down' at all times; I once saw a bowl designed to do that. Think any of the new ponies aboard are any good at carpentry?"
We found ourselves a herd of non-intelligent, un-marked, un-owned cattle, and Red ran the operation to capture a cow roughly my size and bring it aboard. Even though I'd proposed this whole plan, I was now finding myself rather disturbed by the whole idea, so I hid out in my makeshift lab in the cargo bay, trying to come up with some decent words to use for a spell to breach open holes in walls or doors. And I tried to keep as far away from the animal as possible while it was aboard.
We turned around, and headed straight for Oasis. Red said that even with some Guards, we were still a few ponies short of a full crew. I didn't want word of my not really having been completely captured to spread too quickly, so I stayed aboard while Red went crew-hiring, Safe went to do some paperwork for the Guard's he'd appropriated, and Micro made arrangements for Safe and my double to get to Canterlot. When Red came back, she had three new faces - a unicorn mare, a female griffon, and an earth-pony stallion.
The next few days, we mostly spent shaking down, getting the new crew settled in and practicing more complicated maneuvers. I went back to the Battlefield site for a day, but didn't learn anything I hadn't already found out.
And then we got a message from Canterlot, partially relayed through the optical telegraph, then Pegasus Express: a newspaper article. The headline read "GOVERNMENT COW KILLED IN FREAK ACCIDENT". According to the reporter, one of the few bovines serving in the halls of power was killed when a pegasus-drawn moving van lost some of its cargo. According to witnesses, she was struck, in turn, by a flower pot, an anvil, a hay cart, and a piano - obviously, nopony could survive such a mishap.
When I read that, I couldn't help but twitch. Micro seemed sympathetic. "Didn't expect to be right after all, did you?"
"It's not that - I did. I was just reminded of an information source I've been completely neglecting to consider - RAINBOW WELL."
"Wait, what? I know we've got a few WELL sources, like BLUE WELL - but there's nothing in Dairy records about a 'RAINBOW' WELL."
"That's because I never gave that information to the Dairy - I couldn't think of a way to describe it that wouldn't make me sound, well, even crazier than usual. Only the Princesses and I are privy to the details, as far as I know. And even they've got memory charms so they don't remember most of the time."
"So why bring it up now?"
"Because I have to decide whether to continue the policy the Princesses and I agreed on, to avoid doing anything that would interfere with RAINBOW WELL's predictions - or if I should try to come up with some way to leverage that knowledge for immediate gain, at the risk of invalidating everything else."
"Is there anything you can say about it, besides the specific info?"
"Hm... I suppose I could describe the general nature. You know how I talk about how some of my memories are impossible? Well - some of those memories take the form of, let's call them carefully scripted plays..."