“How do you know they can’t see us, Captain?” The navigator’s breath tickled her ear and she gave it an irritated flick.
Slipstream kept her hooves firmly clasped on the wheel, keen eyes peering out the front window panels and into the thick clouds ahead. “Because they’d be shooting us if they knew we were here,” she whispered quietly, though not sure of exactly why they were whispering.
“Slipstream!” A blue-coated stallion panted, dropping from the hatch in the roof to the wheelhouse, not even bothering with the ladder. His hooves banged down on the thin metal floor, the impact vibrating through to her hooves. “Intelligence from the Friendship suggests the enemy has reason to suspect our attack!”
She growled under her breath. Briar was the only pony that dared call her without the title of captain and not fear being thrown overboard. “And?” she asked lackadaisically, purposefully not making eye contact. Instead, she cast a glance to the compass mounted on a pedestal beside the wheel.
Northwest.
“We have reason to believe, Ma’am, that we may have lost the element of surprise.”
She turned back to look him in the eye, tilting her head down to peer at him over the black aviators adorning her face and brushing away her crimson locks of mane with a forehoof. “We have not traveled three hundred miles across barren mountain terrain with a fleet of twenty-six airships to simply turn back because somepony suspects we may have been detected.”
Briar rubbed the back of his neck and shifted his stance in a solicitous manner. “Slipstream, let me remind you that the enemy’s fleet rivals our own by at least—”
“I am aware,” she said dangerously, “of the risks.” She glanced the gauge linked with the anemometer and bit her lower lip for a second, thinking. “We’ve got a tailwind,” she voiced aloud, not talking to anypony. Ignoring Briar, she turned to her navigator, an orange colt with a slight limp a black mane. “Are we still on course?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he said, magically running his compass across the map for another check of their coordinates. “Estimated forty minutes before arrival at the maintained speed of thirty-four knots.”
Through periodic breaks in the clouds skimming across the plate glass windows, Slipstream was afforded with glances of other ships in their fleet. Accompanying the Departure on either side were two massive dirigibles, each spanning six hundred feet long. To save on weight, they had not bothered with any paint to cover the fabric coating apart from the reflective layer of silver. The exception of excess paint was the name of each ship painted in purple cursive and the Equestrian crest on the envelope and fins. The one on the right was named Strider, the one on the left, Friendship.
Slipstream had to refrain from rolling her eyes every time she read that name. Friendship—the airship was a floating cliché.
The radio buzzed from the console, a stallion’s voice crackling to her from the speakers. “Captain Slipstream, one of our battlecruisers is reporting a break in the cloud cover west of the fleet.”
She grabbed up the receiver and fumbled for the switch at the base of the little pedestal-mounted speaker. “Stupid technology,” she grumbled. “Acknowledged!” she yelled.
“Take it easy,” the stallion replied. “It’s a radio, not a ninety foot pipe.”
Slipstream flared her silver wings, rolling her eyes. She would never get used to radios. How ponies managed to make her voice move through the air, she would never know.
“I recommend we remain in cloud coverage for as long as possible,” Briar advised from over her shoulder.
She nodded and eyed the altimeter, then grabbed for the radio receiver again. “Proceed to seventy-two hundred feet and hold.” She reached over and yanked back one of the many bronze levers along the console, then leaned over to a steel pipe jutting from ceiling; they were more her style. “Save the ballast tanks for combat! Vent gas into the foremost cell!”
“Aye, Captain!” The mare’s heavy, Trottingham accent returned from the pipe.
She turned to the colt stationed on the elevator wheel portside the wheelhouse. “Six percent incline.”
He nodded without a word and gripped the wheel.
Slipstream sat back for a moment, and as she waited, the airship began to rise, nose leading the ascent. The other crafts remained in formation, climbing slightly behind the leading airship.
The enemy might have them on numbers, but nopony could beat Equestria’s finest aerial fleet, or so she liked to tell herself.
Slipstream had been stationed on this very airship for six years now, though the war had only gone on for four. Before the war, Slipstream had flown her as a passenger vessel, and the Departure had been later drafted and weaponized for military use; she had refused to hang up her captain’s hat, and so joining the aerial forces as an airship captain had been her only option.
Equestria had never deeply considered the idea of a foreign threat, nothing of such magnitude. But shall something exist, others shall want it.
Damn Longcoats.
They were ponies from the north. Equestrian analysts believed that the feral ponies instigated the war for resources such as coal, or gemstones, or the newfound liquid gold: oil, or possibly even their research on an experimental new fuel made from Zap Apples. Equestrians had adopted a suiting name for them: Longcoats. These ponies originated from up north, and had lived in the harsh environments for so long that their coats had thickened and grown longer to serve as protection from the cold—henceforth the name.
They had been the first to weaponize dirigible airships, and the first to use them in a state of battle, which is exactly why the Longcoats’ initial raid had leveled part of Canterlot before ponies had even had the chance to duck. Of course, faced with such threats, Equestria had provided, and the age of aerial warfare was born.
The Longcoats, mysterious in nature and customs, might as well have been from another planet in Equestria’s eyes. Their presence had been known, though not deeply acknowledged as anything more than a group from the north that wasn’t worth tying into the trade route. Their motives had been unknown as well, though later interpreted as violent means of seizing resources, most likely oil. Attempts at compromise with the Longcoats had been demolished, attempts at contact denied. Where the enemy acquired supplies and materials for what seemed to be an ever-growing aerial fleet was unknown, and although attempts had been made to find out, none had succeeded. The Longcoats held Equestria on the defensive, stunned from the initial strike, and had held that grip up until a week ago, meaning that nopony had ever been more than a hundred miles over what had been vaguely established as enemy lines.
From there it had only gotten worse.
The Longcoats seemed to have rewritten every page in the very large book of war tactics, and Equestria, while familiar in tactics, had been left scrambling to keep up with methods that had never been known to exist. Attack after attack had played out, and each time the Longcoats would deliver a heavy punch and be gone before Equestria could recover enough to swing back.
The Departure crested the clouds and slowly leveled out, the reflective outer dome shining in the sun’s bright rays. The rumble of the engines seemed quieter out of the claustrophobic hold of the clouds. On both sides, the other two identical ships sliced through the fluffy white surface, then followed four smaller ships on either side of them, then the six battlecruisers, long and sleek and loaded down to the very last pound with offensive ornaments. Finally was the small fleet of eight-pony crew gunships, small and agile and specifically designed to get under the enemy’s skin.
This would be the raid to end the war. It was rumoured that the Longcoats’ entire fleet would be found at the ahead coordinates, fueling and restocking for another bombing run while the airships’ crews took the day to whatever it was Longcoats did. If Slipstream and the other captains played their cards right, the Longcoats would never be crossing another border.
“Ready your crews,” she said into the radio, remembering not to yell. “Time’s short.” One hoof drifted to the set of throttle levers on a brass console to the right of the captain’s wheel. There were eight levers—taking the main control lever connected the smaller, she guided it forward, hearing the growl and feeling the vibration through the floor as propellers spun up.
She turned back to Briar. “Rouse our crew and set them to their stations.” She scanned the surface of the clouds thirty feet below them. “We’ll be leaving our cover soon, and once we’re in the open, we’ll make nice and shiny targets.”
Briar gave her a quick salute and dashed off, disappearing up the ladder and through the hatch in the roof.
The familiar churning in the pit of her stomach returned; it drove her to squirm a little where she stood and switch her balance to her right legs. It always felt this way before battle, whether it be a drunken tavern brawl or standing behind the wheel of an airship in the final stand for her nation, the feeling was identical. Apparently, this was why Celestia had assigned her to lead this mission. “I need a pony who knows how to handle themselves, but is not arrogant. Nothing is more powerful than fear.” Slipstream recalled the words of the princess.
“Captain Slipstream.” Her navigator looked up from the mapboard. “It is advised that we begin our descent to strike at the proper altitude.”
She gave him a brief nod, then leaned over to the pipe sprouting from the ceiling of the glass gondola. “Bring us to fifty-two hundred feet! Casual descent!” She was purposefully avoiding use of the elevator fins for the time being.
“Aye, Captain!” the same Trottingham mare yelled.
Slipstream swallowed an uneasy lump in her throat as they dropped back into the clouds, the dark, fluffy whiteness once again surrounding the gondola as the nose sunk into the white sea. It was always a tense sensation: dropping through the ceiling. A good half of their crew were pegasi, and in the very-possible case of an ‘abandon ship’, or destruction, any pegasus crew member caught in a fall would be saved by the clouds below; this was known from personal experience. At this altitude, a pegasus could easily overexert themselves in the thin air and pass out.
It was a whole new world up here, beyond the mountains. Below, there was nothing but snow and empty space. A lost pony here would most likely die in the white wastes—even pegasus ponies had trouble flying hundreds of miles in the freezing cold with nothing but the work of their wings and woolen aviation jackets for warmth.
She could do nothing but sit in anxiety, staring out the front windows while listening to the palindromic thurm of the eight engines as they carried the ship onwards into suspense.
“Can't see a bloody thing in these clouds,” a mare said over the radio. Slipstream chewed the side of her tongue anxiously. That mare had been Wilted Wings, the captain of the Friendship and the only captain in the fleet that wasn’t a pegasus, apart from Darius. She had never liked being called Captain Wilted, or Captain Wings for that matter, so she had slapped them both together.
“Be ready, Wiltings,” Slipstream replied, a tone one lower than she would normally speak. “You and I both know how things like to pop out at you through the clouds.” She fought the urge to snicker.
“My navigator has confirmed there are no mountains of this altitude within a two hundred mile radius,” Captain Wiltings replied, voice layered with satisfaction and a little bit of irritation.
Slipstream cracked a tiny smile. Wiltings had lost a battlecruiser to a mountain before, and had been wary of mountains ever since.
The Departure was the very first to break the cloud ceiling.
And the very first to be spotted.
“Captain Wiltings,” a pink mare squeaked, poking her head down through the hatch in the ceiling, “your presence is requested in the conflict room.”
Wiltings, who had been slumping a little on the wheel, shot erect, shaking her brown mane away from her eyes. Self-consciously, she turned towards the hatch in the back of the gondola, trying to pat down a mint-green tuft of her ruffled coat where her chest had rested on the wheel. “Conflict room?”
“Thats what Grid Point is calling it for the time being.” The mare gave an upside down shrug. “It’s the spare room inside the envelope we use to store fabric patch sheets.”
Wiltings blew air out her nose and cast a look to the Departure, which hummed along to the right, the nose leading the Friendship by about fifty yards. She turned to her navigator: a yellow stallion with a brown mane and a small twitch in his right eye. “Keep her straight. Fetch me if anything goes wrong.”
His head shot towards her like a cracked whip. “Aye, Ma’am,” he said in a grating, high-pitched voice, hoof snapping to a salute.
Wiltings tipped her hat and made for the ladder near the back of the gondola, following the pink mare. If this wasn’t good reason to call her from the wheel, Grid point would be walking back to Equestria. “Do you know what this is about?” she asked, scaling the ladder as the mare withdrew her head.
The mare closed the hatch once Wiltings was through. “No, Ma’am, but he said it was very urgent.” She nodded towards the gondola below and shook her head. The message was clear: not for all ears.
“It had better be urgent.” Wiltings flicked her tail as she set off across the small catwalk running between the massive, inner framework of the Friendship, the pink mare taking up the behind. In the semi-gloom cast by the reflective skin stretched over the fame, a small, aluminum room rested a hundred yards ahead, just above the gunnery cabin, which was fitted into the frame and hung below the ship.
The pink mare left Wiltings halfway and shot a quick salute. “I’m getting back to my station, Captain.”
Wiltings acknowledged her with another flick of her tail, continuing on. She set a brisk pace, not liking the idea of her being away from the wheel and leaving it in the hooves of her navigator, who she was... pretty sure had received flight training. She winced. On a thirty foot vessel.
For a moment, all that mattered was the drum of her hooves on the steel and the hum of the eight engines, the vibration they sent through the frame—much less than most other vessels; the ponies who had balanced them had done a very fine job—almost soothing.
She paused just outside the aluminum door to the flimsy room, thinking of what expression she should wear upon entry. After a short moment, she decided on mildly-irritated, and kicked open the door.
He had set up a makeshift table with the use of a sewing board, which he had unrolled a telegraph sheet across. The windowless room was lit from an oil lantern dangling from the ceiling by the handle, swaying to and fro ever so slightly with the airship. The room was a mess; lengths of string and fabric and other tools hanging from hooks on the walls surrounded her on all four sides, and three out of the four corners were heaped with piles of fabric. In the only fabric-free corner was a large, industrial sewing machine.
Grid Point’s orange and light-purple mane hung around his face as his eyes scanned a series of marks on the sheet, lips moving silently. Fittingly, his cutie mark was a rectangular grid with a single, red point in the upper left corner, outlined by the green of his coat.
He barely looked up as she closed the door behind her. “Good, you’re here.”
She flicked her tail—it seemed to be becoming a habit. “What was so important that you couldn’t address it with me back in the gondola?”
He only shook his head and beckoned her over. “Look.” He ran his hoof down a line on the telegraph sheet.
She deadpanned and flicked her ears, snapping her eyes up and sideways to give him a flat look. “I don’t know how to read dots... Why did they send us a telegraph? Can’t Celestia do her magic thing where she sends us a letter with the green fire?” She had seen it done before on missions, the letter usually received by an experienced unicorn.
He rolled his eyes at her, and was very lucky she decided not to smack him for it. “Apparently, her magical reach only extends so far. Anyways, one of our ponies near the border picked up an encoded enemy broadcast and forwarded it to the castle. Translators did the best they could with it, but it wasn’t much.”
“Get to the point,” she groused.
“There’s reason to believe that the enemy has knowledge of our planned assault.”
Wiltings blinked, glaring at the dots like they had wronged her. “What?”
“Intelligence suggests that the enemy has made preparations for our assault on their docked airships.” He raised one eyebrow at her. “Celestia hasn’t called anything off, but asked we proceed with caution.”
“Does the crew of the Departure know?”
A nod. “Yes, Ma’am. They should have received the very same message we have.” He paused. “In the end, the decision is up to Slipstream whether or not we continue with this raid. She’s ordered to pull back if she feels the mission may be a failure.”
Wiltings sank to her haunches, thinking. “The only ponies who knew about this raid up until yesterday were the captains and Celestia herself... There’s no way word could have gotten out.”
“Maybe they’re just paranoid?” he suggested meekly. “Keeping on their guard.”
“I don’t know...”
“Maybe you’re just paranoid.”
She gave him a dirty look. “There’s no other way they could have found out.”
Grid Point rolled up the paper sheet, purposefully not looking at her. “We don’t even know for sure if they really know. And if they did manage to find out, it doesn’t mean a pony gave us away; they could have intercepted one of our radio broadcasts or something, just like we did thiers.”
“No.” She shook her head. “We never spoke about it on the radio. Celestia, two of her consultants, Slipstream, Thrush, and I, all held a private meeting about this day. The meeting only took place because it was our last resort. If word of it got out—”
The door behind her burst open and in charged a gray mare. “Captain, you’re needed at the helm.”
Wiltings gritted her teeth. “Acknowledged. Now return to your post.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Just as fast as the mare had arrived uninvited, she was gone, leaving the door open as her hooves clattered away.
Wiltings fixed her eyes back on Grid Point. “Keep posted. If you get anything new, show me.” She trotted halfway out the door, then stopped and looked back at him. “And bring the news to me next time.”
She closed the door on him before he could respond. Adopting a swift trot, almost a gallop, Wiltings headed back for the gondola. The sooner she was back at the wheel, the sooner the twitchy, yellow navigator wasn’t. With every passing second, leaving the wheelhouse seemed like it had been worse and worse idea to her.
She was almost at a full gallop by the time her hooves skidded her to a stop on the dimpled steel. Running in the framework was particularly dangerous for her, considering the fact that she was an earth pony. She was pretty sure there was a betting pool somewhere amongst the crew on how long it would take until she hurt herself in the maze of narrow catwalks and ladders. She had found a paper about it once; it had been filled out with different times—two months, a week, three days, an hour. She had been rather insulted that there hadn’t been a single bet for never—that just wasn’t fair. It was also a sign of disrespect, which she was sure originated from the fact that she unwittingly given the commands that had led to the destruction of a battlecruiser and the death of her entire crew.
She threw open the hatch and scaled the precarious ladder down into the gondola, expecting to see a mountain looming down on her. She cringed, raising her hooves to cover her face.
She blinked. “Oh...” The colt sat up on his haunches at the helm, eyes affixed firmly ahead as he steadied himself with the wheel. The Friendship still maintained perfect position in the fleet beside the Departure.
Wiltings moved up beside the buck and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Great work.”
He flashed back to his post, somehow making a beckon towards the wheel in the process. “It was a pleasure, Captain!”
She took her place at the wheel and set her hooves on the brushed wood and aluminum. The altimeter caught her eye. “Why’s our altitude different?”
He scratched the back of his neck. “Orders from Slipstream, Captain. She raised the entire fleet above the cloud cover to remain undetected.”
She ran her tongue across her teeth for a moment, mildly surprised that she had only just noticed the change in altitude. “Nice job...” She gave her head a little shake. “What was I requested here for?”
He jerked his head towards the radio. “It’s Thrush: she wants you on a private frequency.”
“Private frequency?” She squinted at the radio box fitted in the console below the controls to the right of the wheel. Curiously, she turned the dial on the left of the black box to the frequency she knew belonged to the Strider. “Thrush?”
“Wiltings?” Thrush replied. “You’re the only one listening, right?”
Wiltings turned back to the navigator. “You’re not here.” She knew the buck was loyal, and it was more of a gesture for him to keep his mouth shut about anything said. “Yep,” she said to the receiver mounted on a small stand by the wheel.
“You got that message from Canterlot, right?”
“Yeah, just heard about it... why?”
Static filled the channel as Thrush hesitated on the transmission. “Well then Slipstream had to get it too.”
Wiltings glared at the speaker. “Yeah...?”
“Well, we haven’t received any word from her. From what our scouts have seen, we know that the enemy force is three times ours. What if they do know?”
Ahead of her, the Departure began to descend into the clouds, and Wiltings matched its course. “We’re going to have to find out. Slipstream’s the one calling the shots, and if she thinks we should continue on, then we will. We do nothing until she gives the order.”
“But what if she makes a mistake? What if they are expecting us?”
Wiltings growled at Thrush, her vocals traveling through the air, through the skin of the Departure, and threateningly out of the speakers of the Strider’s wheelhouse radio. “I’ve been under Slipstream’s wing for two years now. I would trust that mare with my life, and the lives of my kin, and the lives of my kin’s kin. You speak afoul of her again and I will personally make sure to break your wings and throw you off your airship.”
There was a good ten seconds of silence. “I don’t doubt her,” Thrush replied hesitantly, “but this is all of Equestria we’re talking about... not just a battle. Is it safe gambling Equestria on the whim of one mare?”
Wiltings keyed the transmitter one last time. “I suggest you watch your step and stay in line.” She dialed the frequency back to the channel the fleet shared and looked back to the yellow colt. “How much of that did you hear?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t hear a thing, Captain.”
She smirked and turned her attention back out below the bow of the ship’s framing. “Good.”
The clouds, they were menacing. Flashbacks of rocky mountain faces looming out of the murk shone in her vision, implanting themselves in her iris as an ugly, green shape that hovered, transparent wherever she looked. She blinked a few times, but it only made it worse.
Fifty-seven ponies... to a mountain.
A little tense, she flicked the transmit switch. “Can’t see a bloody thing in these clouds.”
“Be ready, Wiltings.” Slipstream’s voice crackled from the radio, a playful-dark tone to it. “You and I both know how things like to pop out at you through the clouds.”
Wiltings’ grip locked on the wheel and she threw a nervous glance to her navigator. “A-are there any mountains around here?”
He ran a compass across the mapboard, tongue sticking out the side of his mouth a little. “Nothing of this altitude within two hundred miles.” His horn ceased to glow has he returned the compass to its cup on the table.
She huffed and rolled her eyes, keying the radio. “My navigator has confirmed there are no mountains of this altitude within a two hundred mile radius.”
Through the clouds, Wiltings watched the Departure break out into the open sky. She narrowed her eyes and squinted ahead out the glass shielding, trying to spot something, anything.
The gondola of the airship sliced through the final wisps of cloud and Wiltings tensed, bile rising in her throat. She swung blindly for the transmit switch, missing three times, unable to tear her eyes away from the sight ahead. “Sweet Celestia!” She paused a second to gape. “They’re everywhere!”