A Raptor-class Cloudship is not a small vehicle. If you stood one up on its back end with the stern resting on the ground, the bow would reach up dozens of stories and tower over all but the most impressive pre-war buildings. They massed somewhere in the thousands of tons, a lot of that in the thick armor plating that let them ignore just about any weapon that ponies could bring to bear against them. They carried deadly energy weapons that could punch through a fortress and held the troops and equipment to take over whatever was left. All of this was supported by two tame thunderstorms that let the ship sail through the air with more speed and stability than any of the big civilian gasbag airships.
So when the Grandus took its first step and the whole ship lurched, that gives you an idea of how big the assault armor was. I already had a really good idea, and my bones were still aching and begging me to go somewhere else where I wouldn’t get stepped on and crushed like a bug.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Four said. Her voice resonated through me. It wasn’t just the echoing loudspeakers in the armor, I could hear her in my own skull, like we were face to face. I could feel the anger in it. She was furious that I’d come back!
“I just have a talent for finding the biggest heap of trouble in the world and putting myself right in the middle of it,” I said, trying to joke about it.
“Why didn’t you just leave?!” Four shouted. “I didn’t want to hurt you and they’re going to make me do it all over again because you couldn’t just go away!”
The Grandus took a step, and the deck rattled. Even with all the spells Four had wrapped around it to reduce the weight, it was denting the armor just by walking.
“You know why,” I said. “You know what happened to Sanctuary.”
“It wasn’t my fault!” Four shouted. “I didn’t want anypony to get hurt! I had to do it! I have to follow orders or I’ll never get my memories back!”
“Split Moon is dead,” I said.
“I have to follow orders!” Four repeated, screaming.
“Shadowmere is dead,” I said, more firmly. I took a step closer to the Grandus. I was afraid of it, but I couldn’t be the one to back down. If I blinked first, I’d end up broken and dying all over again. “Grey Gloom is dead. Opening is dead. Do you even care?”
“I-- I-- shut up!” Four snapped. “You can’t understand!”
“How many ponies are you going to kill? How much are your memories worth?” She stood almost perfectly still, letting me get just a little closer. I looked up into the glowing eyes of the terrible visage of the Grandus’ helmet. “Maybe I shouldn’t be here, but neither should you. All the ponies we met in Kasatka grew past what they used to be, and they found something else to live for. You can have a future, and that’s more important than any past!”
Four hesitated, the aura around the Grandus calming.
Beam blasts sprayed across it, the magic barrier shimmering around the machine dissipating them into a harmless light show before they even reached the impenetrable armor. Her aura flared up, and Four turned to look.
When ponies say things like ‘you and what army’, it was exactly this army that they were talking about. A half-dozen VertiBucks and dozens of soldiers were cresting over the deck of the Spirit, probably representing a majority of the ship’s complement of soldiers in addition to the ones stationed below.
“I knew I’d get another shot at you if I waited,” one of them called out.
“Rain Shadow,” I groaned, picking him out of the crowd.
“I’ve got you dead to rights this time,” Rain Shadow said. “No running away this time. No surprise friends to bail you out! It’s almost too bad I couldn’t make it a fair fight.”
“I was IN THE MIDDLE OF A CONVERSATION!” Four yelled. The air pulsed, and I felt my weight double. The VertiBucks strained, engines spinning up harder and hotter. Ponies dipped, fighting for altitude.
Somepony made a big mistake. They shot Four again. I saw them make that decision, just some nameless soldier in a moment of panic pulling the trigger because he was starting to fall out of the sky. The beams did exactly as much to Four as if he’d sprayed her with a garden hose. It just made her angry.
Four screamed in frustration, and a wave of force exploded in all directions from the Grandus, sending me skidding across the deck. The edge loomed, and I snapped my hoofblade out and slammed it down into the deck plating, anchoring myself.
The Enclave soldiers weren’t as lucky. The VertiBucks, already straining themselves to the limit, simply failed. Engines exploded, propellers sheared, and the irreplaceable armored transports crashed down, most of them flipping end-over-end from the sheer force of the Grandus’ attack. The soldiers were flung in every direction. The lucky ones went into the empty sky. The unlucky ones went into something more solid.
Rain Shadow had been closest, and he and the ponies next to him had been thrown into the deck. I grabbed for one as she flew past me, snagging her hoof before she could be tossed off the edge.
“Hang on!” I yelled. I looked at her face, and realized I recognized the mare. “Nova?”
“Rain Shadow was right about how much trouble you cause!” she groaned.
“You saved Four once before -- any idea how to calm her down?”
“I’m a doctor, not a psychologist! Actually, I’m not even a doctor, I’m a medic.”
“Great,” I mumbled.
“Stella!” Rain Shadow yelled. “Are you okay?!”
He flew over and pulled her away from me, keeping his guns trained on me.
“I think my wing is sprained,” Nova said, her voice shaky. “I’m okay, but I can’t fly.”
“Four, please stop!” I shouted. “You’re just making things worse!”
“I’m making things worse?!” Four yelled back. The echoing speakers in the armor distorted, her voice dropping an octave. “Me?! This is all your fault! It’s everypony’s fault! I was so close to having it all back! All my memories! My history! My everything! If you’d just stayed dead I could have gotten it all!”
She reared up and stomped on the deck in rage, smashing the armor. Plates bent and twisted out of place, sheets of metal peeling away and falling towards the city below us.
“You’re all just ruining things!” Four screamed. She stomped again, shattering pipes and sending a spray of sparks into the air.
“She’s going to take the whole ship down!” Rain Shadow shouted. “Bridge, this is Lieutenant Rain Shadow! Fire on the black assault armor! Drive her away from the Spirit of Cloudsdale!”
“What are you doing?!” I yelled, pulling myself free from the deck.
“Fixing a mistake,” Rain Shadow said.
The CIWS turned on the Grandus and fired, the bolts hitting the shielded machine hard enough to make the shield around it shimmer and start to fail, a few of the lasers getting through to land on the armor and leave scorch marks.
“Oh buck!” I swore, and ran for cover because I knew exactly what was going to happen next.
The CIWS turrets were enveloped by an eruption of ultraviolet light and Four tore them out of the hull, throwing them aside and leaving gaping wounds in the ship. Rain Shadow and Stella Nova quickly joined me in my hiding spot behind what I hoped was a relatively bulletproof chunk of the ship.
“Did you even think for one second about what she was going to do if you attacked her?!” I yelled.
“Sorry if I can’t predict what a monster like you or that thing will do!” Rain Shadow snapped.
“She’s not a monster!” I yelled back.
The roar from the Grandus shook me to the core. All three of us hunkered down a little tighter behind the cover, which was probably a really smart decision. Big sprays of beam fire erupted from the Grandus, digging into the Spirit’s hull and blasting through radar dishes.
Rain Shadow looked at her, then looked at me.
“She’s having a temper tantrum!” I snapped. “You know what she isn’t doing? Hunting ponies down and murdering them!”
“You killed my sister!”
“And I feel very bad about it and apologized!”
“Did you actually apologize?” Destiny whispered.
“That’s not the point!”
“I should have taken the posting in Thunderhead,” Stella Nova mumbled. She struggled to move, groaning. “I think this is worse than a strain. It’s dislocated.”
“Maybe your boyfriend should take you to the hospital,” I suggested.
“And leave you here? No way. You’re not escaping again!” Rain Shadow lunged at me, jumping right over his injured marefriend to tackle me. It was one of the dumbest things I’d ever seen a pony do and that’s impressive because I had front-row seats to my own greatest hits. If I wasn’t so surprised, I would have braced myself and just let him bounce off me, but he actually caught me off-guard with the maneuver and knocked me over, both of us rolling out of cover and right into Four’s line of sight.
“You!” Four shouted. “You’re the reason all this is happening! You’re the reason I’m so confused!”
She launched into the air. It wasn’t a graceful leap, it was something with the energy and sheer looming death of a train derailing, and this hypothetical train is specifically aiming for you because it’s an angry train and thinks you wronged it.
Even Rain Shadow wasn’t dumb enough to hang onto me and let us both be crushed like bugs. He threw himself in one direction and I rolled the other way and the Grandus came down between us and punched knee-deep into the ship, crashing through into whatever unfortunate ponies were on the deck below.
“I have to kill you!” Four screamed. “I have to kill you so they’ll give me my memories back!”
She struggled to free herself, thrashing around and breaking more of the ship. Four roared and fired the Grandus’ main cannon again, just blasting wildly. The beam weapon tore deep into the ship and burrowed into something important. A plume of flame erupted into the air, right from where Stella Nova had been taking cover.
“No!” Rain Shadow yelled. He got to his hooves and ran for where she’d been. I got up and slowly approached Four.
“You have to stop!” I begged. “Calm down! Just listen to what I’m saying and--”
Four managed to get a hoof free, ripping it out of the deck and swatting me to the side, flinging me into one of the ship’s main guns. I hit the turret hard and slid down like a bug on a windscreen.
“Ow,” I groaned.
“You can’t talk her down,” Destiny said. “I think you should just leave. Leave her alone for a few more minutes and she’ll take down this ship on her own! That telekinetic pulse and the gravity field took care of everypony in the air, you’ve got clear skies so just run for it!”
“And then what’s going to happen?” I asked. “Will she destroy the city next?”
“With how much stress the Thaumatic Booster causes she’ll probably die,” Destiny said, speaking way too calmly and frankly about a pony I cared about. “I don’t think there’s a way to stop her, Chamomile.”
“There’s always a way,” I mumbled. “We can’t let her rampage here. If she brings down the ship, it’s going to crash right into the city.”
“So? That’s what you were going to do anyway!”
“I came up with a much smarter plan that involved capturing it and flying it outside the city first!” I protested. “I mean, I only just came up with it now, but still!”
“CHAMOMILE!” Four screamed like a wild animal. She levered herself to the side with her free hoof and pulled the Grandus free of where it had crashed through the hull, levitating the back half out of the twisted metal of the deck. The cannon built into the chest flashed. I felt the world slow down, colors and sensations draining from the world. I threw myself to the side in that frozen instant, and just barely dodged the cone of deadly energy that tore through the space I’d been in.
I skidded to a halt, my foil feathers glowing dully as they radiated the extra heat away and tried to keep my body from cooking itself. The Spirit of Cloudsdale fared less well. The beam cannon ripped into the plasma turret and touched off something inside, gouts of radioactive green plasma blasting through ruptures in the turret before it failed entire and blew into the air in one piece like a massive coin flipping from the cloudship into the city below.
A loudspeaker blared to life, the squeal making me jump.
“We’ve got fires in blocks three and five! All hands to fire control! Don’t let it spread to the ammunition magazines!”
“I think this ship is going down no matter what plans you have,” Destiny said.
She was right but I didn’t want to say it. I was trying to catch my breath and figure out my next move. Could I get Four to follow me? If I just flew away, she might chase me into the air… but then the cloudship would probably blow her out of the sky with the main guns. The Grandus was a big enough target that she’d never avoid them.
“Four! Stand down!”
Oddly, it wasn’t me yelling it. An armored hatch had been levered open and the navy blue unicorn I’d met in the ruins of the Damascus lab climbed out onto the upper deck, the wind whipping at her mane and tail. Doctor Anamnesis held up a crystal orb.
“Oh great, her,” I groaned. “Just what we need, somepony to make things more complicated.” The little injuries and general knocking-around were starting to take their toll on me. That burst of speed had drained my reserves of stamina to nothing.
“If you don’t stop right now, I’ll destroy it!” the doctor shouted. “You’re completely out of control, Four!”
The Grandus shook like an engine rumbling, or maybe it was just barely restraining itself. It turned away from me, the huge form moving more carefully and smoothly to face the scientist.
“Doctor?” Four asked, sounding confused, like a pony just starting to wake up from being deep asleep.
Anamnesis sighed in relief. “That’s right, Four. You have to stay in control. If you don’t have control, you’re worthless, and if you’re worthless I can’t convince them to let me give you back your memories! That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“I… I need… my head hurts so much…” Four groaned.
“You pushed yourself past your natural limits,” the doctor said, stepping closer. “Stand down, and I’ll give you your medication.”
The light around the Grandus faded from a raging storm of magic to a dull glow. The machine slumped, clearly unable to really support itself without spells holding it up, and the intimidating oversized helmet split open, revealing Four in a nest of wires and screens. Even from where I was standing I could see the bags under her eyes and a thin trickle of blood from her nostrils.
“Are you… are you really ever going to give my memories back?” Four asked weakly.
“Of course we are,” Doctor Anamnesis said reassuringly. “You have to repay the debt you incurred, that’s all. We can talk about it after you’ve had your medication.”
This seemed like a good time to try and solve this problem once and for all. I landed behind the doctor.
“Give her the memory orb right now,” I said firmly. “I’m not going to let you dangle that bait in front of her forever. She’s not a puppet for you to control!”
“This isn’t the time!” the Doctor hissed.
“Why? Because you won’t have leverage if you actually do what you promised?” I asked. “I’m ending the blackmail right now. You’re going to give her the orb, then we’re going to get her out of that monster and I’m leaving with her.”
“You can’t have her!” Anamnesis snapped. “Do you have any idea how much she’s worth?! We had a half-dozen test subjects and she’s the only one who displayed enough compatibility with the Grandus’ allegorical manipulation system to use it correctly!”
“Stop… arguing…” Four groaned weakly.
“Four is a pony,” I said. “Not a weapon.”
“She’s the most dangerous weapon I’ve ever created,” Anamnesis said. Her voice was as cold as ice. “She killed the other test subjects, burned down my lab, and slaughtered my colleagues. When I prove how deadly she can be to the Enclave, they’ll give me the funds I need to start all over again!”
“To start all over again?” Four asked.
“That’s right,” the doctor said. “It’s going to be just like it was before.”
I saw Four’s expression sink into a deep sorrow. For a pony who claimed not to have memories, it sure looked like she was reliving her past and thinking about the horrors she’d seen.
Rain Shadow flew over a reef of torn deck plates, holding Stella Nova. He landed on one of the few clear spaces left on the Spirit’s broken upper deck and laid Nova’s body down on the steel. The medic’s body had been pierced by a spear of shrapnel as long as my leg, the steel going right through her chest. “She’s dead,” he hissed, his voice cutting through the noise of broken metal settling into place among sputtering flames.
I winced. She’d seemed like a nice pony. She’d never really tried to kill me, even though she’d showed up with the rest of the troops to point guns at me.
“She’s dead and it’s your fault!” Rain Shadow shouted. I didn’t understand what he was doing for a second. The fatigue slowed my thoughts and reaction time and, frankly, I was just so used to him pointing his guns at me that it didn’t register when he’d aimed them in another direction.
Four was strapped into the Grandus, with the armor open. She couldn’t dodge or defend herself. The beam rifle shot right past me and Doctor Anamnesis and hit Four in the chest.
“No!” I screamed, rushing towards her and taking the next shot in the back, shielding Four with my body.
Four gasped, coughing up blood. The equipment around her flared with light, and the Grandus’ telekinetic grip closed on Rain Shadow, squeezing him tight. The beam rifles strapped to his armor exploded, and he shrieked in pain and anger before Four just flung him aside, tossing him off the edge of the ship.
“That idiot!’ Doctor Anamnesis hissed. “Does he have any idea how much it’s going to cost to replace the test subject?!”
“I’m not just a test subject,” Four said, the last word ending in a violent cough and more blood.
“Silence, Four! I order you to--”
The glass orb the Doctor had been carrying was ripped away from her grip by the ultraviolet light of the Grandus. The unicorn looked shocked, like she’d never expected this to ever happen. The great machine stood up, the deck creaking. Doctor Anamnesis took a step back.
“My name isn’t Four!” Four screeched. “I’m not just a number!”
She reared up and stomped. The Doctor couldn’t get out of the way. The huge metal hoof went through her and the deck below. Four stood there, totally still, for a few moments, wheezing and coughing up blood.
“She needs immediate medical attention,” Destiny said. “That shot must have punctured a lung, and it’s dangerously close to her heart. I don’t know if a regular healing potion will be enough.”
“Don’t,” Four whispered.
“You’re going to be okay,” I said. “I know some great healers! If they can keep me alive after the dumb stuff I’ve done--”
Four shook her head. The Grandus slumped, lying down on the deck. The aura around it flickered, barely visible. “I don’t… I’m done fighting. Here.”
She floated the memory orb over to me. I took it from her grip carefully, not wanting to damage it.
“I want you to have it,” Four said. “I want… I want somepony to remember me. The real me. Not just Test Subject Four, but whoever I was before.”
“I… I…” I swallowed.
“Goodbye, Chamomile,” she whispered. She was crying. I think I was, too. “For a while, you helped me feel like I was more than just a weapon.”
She closed her eyes, and the magic aura around the Grandus went out entirely. The full weight of the machine came down on the deck, and something broke. The already-straining hull crumpled in, and the Grandus started to slide. I ran for it, tried to grab the edge of the assault armor’s heavy frame, and the momentum tore it from my grip.
It tumbled off the edge of the ship and down to the city below.
I stood there in mute horror, watching it fall. There was nothing I could do. Four vanished into the smoke and flames rising up from the burning buildings below. A thunderous crash rang out, and a plume of violet-blue light shot past me like a spotlight, shining straight up towards the sky, lasting only an instant before fading to nothing.
“Four,” I whispered.
“I’m sorry,” Destiny said. “She’s gone.”
The wind rushed around me. I stared down into the city, hoping to see some sign of life from her. I looked at the memory orb. She’d died for a tiny, stupid bauble. Destiny put it away into the suit’s Vector Trap. When it vanished it felt… it felt like she really had died for nothing.
“I was trying to save her,” I whispered. “I was so close…”
“You can’t save everypony,” Destiny said.
“I can’t save anypony!” I spat.
“Chamomile--”
“Not now,” I growled. I turned around. The Grandus had punched some big holes into the ship. Big enough for me to get inside. I bent the broken metal aside and jumped down into the ship, trying to get my bearings. I’d been on enough of these ships that I thought I’d be able to figure it out at a glance, but all I knew is that I had to be on the same deck as the bridge.
A pony holding a fire extinguisher and trying to douse flames coming out of a side room slowly turned to look at me. We stared at each other for a moment. He held the nozzle towards me with shaking hooves and sprayed me with foam.
In other circumstances, I’d probably have just sighed and told him to leave. But, and this isn’t an excuse, just an explanation, I was feeling emotionally vulnerable in that moment. I started crying. I pulled him into a hug, and he struggled for a few moments before going limp. He just let me hold him for a minute before saying anything.
“This is really awkward,” he whispered.
“Sorry,” I sniffled. I let him go. “You should go. This whole place is going to explode.”
“...You know what, I have some shore leave coming up.” He said. He put his tools down and looked around. “Uh. Thank you for not killing me?”
I nodded and let him go, the technician flying out of the hole I’d made to the outside.
“You did the right thing,” Destiny said.
“He was just a pony doing his job,” I replied quietly.
“Fires are spreading to block eight now! Heat is rising in the main reactor!” somepony called out over the loudspeaker. “We need damage control in engineering!”
“If you want to get this thing out of the city, we need to get to the bridge,” Destiny said. “I don’t know how much longer this ship is going to hold together.”
I tried to rub my eyes to wipe the tears away, but the helmet was in the way. That moment of confusion and surprise was just enough to shock me back to sense. I nodded and started moving, just focusing on putting one hoof in front of the other.
“All hands, prepare for ground evacuation!”
Before the loudspeaker even had a chance to stop ringing, a second voice came over it. “Belay that order! This is Grand Admiral Bright Song. Nopony is evacuating! Return to damage control stations and get the fires under control! That’s an order! Dissenters will be charged with treason!”
Technicians and even a few soldiers ran past me. They were more concerned with the ruptured hydraulics spraying oil into the hallways and the fires spreading through the ship. A few of them got as far as drawing a weapon before ponies with more sense dragged them away. I could have torn right through them. It would have been so easy.
And even having that thought made me feel so sick that I had to stop and lean against the wall. I wasn’t a monster.
A pony trying to carry too many boxes stumbled and fell. I helped her up, grabbing a box and giving it to her. She looked up at me with terror in her eyes, but still whispered a thank you and took the box with shaking hooves before running off. They weren’t monsters either.
“Are you okay?” Destiny asked.
“No,” I said. “I think I really messed everything up.”
“I know the feeling. You just have to follow your own advice. You told Four she could still have a future if she could stop living in the past. You can’t change what’s already happened, but you get to choose how you live in the future.”
“...Yeah,” I agreed, steadying myself with a deep breath. “First thing I want to do is save the ponies I can. Let’s get this ship clear of the city.”
Nopony tried to stop me from reaching the bridge until I was at the door. Two guards were still stationed there. They trained their weapons on me as I approached. I held up a hoof. I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t heavily armed, but they seemed to understand I wasn’t here to immediately murder them and let me get closer.
“I need to get inside,” I said.
“We’re under orders--”
“Don’t be stupid,” I interrupted. “You know this ship is going down. I just want to make sure it doesn’t crash into civilians.”
“We can’t just leave our posts,” the second guard said quietly.
The first guard looked at him, looked at me, then slapped the door controls and stepped away. The lock light changed from red to green. “I’m not going down with the ship just because the Admiral won’t authorize us to evacuate.”
The second guard bit his lip and looked around, whining. “But he said we’d be charged with treason!”
“Get out of here and tell them I knocked you out and threw you overboard,” I suggested.
“I’m feeling very unconscious,” the first guard agreed, walking past me. “Come on, Air Raid. We’re going to throw ourselves overboard to save this mare a trip.”
The second guard hung his head low and scampered past me like a scared animal. I watched them go.
“I guess all the really dedicated soldiers got knocked out of the air by the Grandus,” Destiny noted.
“Rain Shadow was with them, so maybe it was just the stupid ones,” I muttered. I opened the door and stepped through onto the chaos of the bridge.
“Get those mule-headed engineers back to their posts!” somepony snapped. I instantly clocked him as the Grand Admiral, both because I’d heard him yelling over the loudspeaker and because he was standing in the middle of the bridge on a ship that was literally on fire and wearing just about every medal the Enclave awarded, and a few that he probably dug out of pre-war ruins just to pin on his own chest.
I cleared my throat. “Everypony out,” I said firmly. Destiny helped out, amplifying my voice. Everypony on the bridge turned to look at me. “I’m taking this ship out of the city. If you want to help, show me where the controls are before you leave.”
“You think you can make demands on my ship?!” Admiral Bright Song yelled. “Do you have any idea who I am?!”
“I know exactly who you are,” a pony said, from right behind him.
I had just enough time to process that the bridge fire escape was hanging open, the locked hatch showing the sky above. Either it had popped loose in the Grandus’ rampage, or else the mare who’d come down through it just knew a trick to getting it open from the outside that I didn’t.
Unsung dropped down on top of her father, Split Moon’s sword in her hooves. The blade went right through him, the tip emerging from his chest and scattering medals across the bridge. He fell to the ground, Unsung keeping her footing and perching on his back, holding the sword and riding him to the floor.
“It’s been a while,” Unsung said lightly. She twisted the blade. “You’ve really done well for yourself, father.”
“Y-you--” he gasped.
Unsung hopped off his body and looked around the bridge. “I’m just here for him. You’re all free to go. I apologize for the trouble. You wouldn’t believe how long it took to arrange all this!” She laughed, and it should have been cruel and evil but… it came out bright and pure like she’d just heard a funny joke, even while her hooves were stained red with her father’s blood.
That made it all worse.
The bridge crew rushed past me, fleeing through the door and leaving us alone. The red alert alarms blared in the air in lieu of conversation.
“You…” I started, trailing off.
“You’re going to ask if I did all this just to get back at my father,” Unsung suggested. She reached up and took off her mask, shaking her mane free and dropping the metal visor on the deck. Her eyes were bright blue, like the apex of the sky on a bright day. The mask hadn’t been hiding anything at all except her look of satisfaction.
I nodded.
“I told you before. We all need something to live for.” Unsung looked down at her father. She yanked the sword free and sheathed it. “We’ve got something more important to do than make speeches. I like your idea about getting this ship out of the city, but there’s one more thing to do with it.”
“What?” I asked, skeptical.
Unsung smiled and stepped up to me, putting a hoof on my shoulder. “I promised I’d get you home. This ship has a transponder that will get us through the lightning shield.”
“You want me to ride an exploding cloudship back to the Enclave?”
“I never promised it would be a safe trip,” Unsung said. She walked over her father, and he gasped in pain when she used him as a rug, the mare not even hesitating to dig her hooves in on her way to the helm. “I’m going to send this thing into an emergency climb. It should get above the cloud level before the engines go. As soon as you break through, fly out of here and back home.”
“Mm…”
“I know, I know. You’re a tough mare with no home to go back to, but you’ve got ponies that care about you, and that’s what a home really is,” Unsung said. She hit some controls and I felt the ship’s bow pitch up. The sound of the engines straining vibrated through the hull, rattling bolts and loose bulkheads.
Unsung stepped away and back over to me, giving me a sad smile.
“I think in other circumstances, we could have been enemies,” she said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s a good way to put it.”
We shook hooves. Unsung slipped out, and I was left on the bridge, the deck under me slowly tilting further up. A shudder and groan ran through the floor under me, and the wind whipping through the open fire escape hatch blew papers across the room.
The clouds loomed through the floor-to-ceiling armored windows. It was my last chance to see the surface. I felt a surge of fear. Was I making a mistake? Was I really ready to go? There was so much I hadn’t done, so much I hadn’t seen--
I saw Four’s face in my mind’s eye. The moment she’d given up and embraced what was coming.
The pit in my stomach was deeper than the sea. There was nothing left for me down on the surface. The ship hit the cloud layer, and it should have been an impact like dropping into water, but it was just a sudden silence, the view of the world below vanishing into white mist.
“This ship’s really struggling,” Destiny said. “We’re still gaining altitude, but it’s slowing down!”
One of the consoles exploded, the radar officer’s station erupting in flame. The whole ship rumbled, a wave of vibration running through it from one end to the other. Every display flickered and struggled to come back to life.
“Is it going to make it?” I asked.
“Engine output must be unsteady. The readings on the consoles here aren’t accurate,” Destiny replied.
“Should we just bail out now?” I asked. I stepped over to the ladder leading to the fire escape. It ended in a solid wall of clouds, the mist slowly trickling in.
“I have no idea if it’s safe,” Destiny said. “We might get fried by lightning if we go too early.”
“W-wait! Take me with you!”
I looked down. The Grand Admiral crawled across the deck towards me, reaching for my hooves, leaving a trail of blood behind him like a skyslug oozing across a stormcloud.
“If you save me, I’ll get you anything you want! I’ll make you an officer!”
I stared at him for a moment.
The grey outside vanished, and sunlight streamed through the windows. I looked up, and I could see it for the first time in so long. That pure, bright blue of the open sky. The sun, not filtered through clouds of haze and fallout, not a dim diffuse glow through the clouds, but bright and whole and lighting up the world.
I started up the ladder. Admiral Bright Song yelled after me, but I didn’t answer. The ship rumbled, and a violent thrust to the side almost threw me off the rungs. Two more consoles blew up in showers of sparks and even the emergency lighting gave up the ghost, going totally dark. The vibration of the engines cut off.
“This is it,” Destiny said. “Looks like it’s all downhill from here!”
I pulled myself out into the open air. The ship was a fireball. The entire back half of the Spirit was just a wall of fire and smoke. I have no idea how, but even one of the two captive thunderstorms giving the ship lift was on fire, flames swirling through the vortex.
“Definitely time to leave,” I agreed.
Admiral Bright Song screamed in furious rage and fear. I jumped out and into the open air, my wings catching the wind. The Spirit of Cloudsdale tilted to one side and slipped back beneath the clouds as I watched, fire and flames lighting up the world from below with an ominous, Tartarean glow until they, too, vanished, and I was left free and clear with the blue sky above me and all my mistakes hidden far below.