//------------------------------// // Chapter 2 - Call it a Bluff // Story: Of Aerial Dominance // by Sorren //------------------------------// Slipstream’s eyes stretched wide and her jaw went slack. She felt her steady grip on the wheel loosen and she slumped against the stand. The Friendship brushed out of the clouds beside her. “Sweet Celestia!” Wiltings screamed over the radio. “They’re everywhere!” Slipstream took a long and shaky breath, eyes picking out every threat in the sky. The Longcoats had been ready for them, lined out in strategic defensive positions. Small gunships were in great supply, dotted around the sky like cotton in an Autumn's breeze, pegasi combatants around them to add. They had ten battlecruisers, each painted a menacing maroon color and streamlined in shape and design. Three of their ships Slipstream didn’t even know to name. There were two which almost doubled the length of her own vessel, and there, nestled in the center of their forces, was the most menacing flying machine Slipstream had ever seen in her life. It was painted maroon, like the others, only the nose was styled with sharp ribbons of gold, and foreign, unreadable text. It must have spanned three times the length of any other vessel in Slipstream’s own fleet, and supported two, massive balloons on either side so it appeared more as three, massive airships tied together. Across the top of the center ran a long strip of wood with a small railing on either side. Slipstream grabbed for the enchanted, brass spyglass and extended it to its full length, peering down the magically magnified barrel. She grabbed for the radio with the other hoof, missing twice. “Anypony else seeing this?” she asked. “Seeing what!?” a nervous-sounding stallion replied. “The top of that massive airship.” She eyed one of the strange machines on top. Through the spyglass, she could see a few Longcoats on the upper platform. “They’ve got some sort of contraptions on that long and top deck... They’ve got stabilizing wings on the left and right and a propeller on the front... what the hell are they? They haven’t got anywhere to store lighter-than-air fuel.” “Well if they’ve got a propeller, then theoretically, they’re meant to fly?” Wiltings said skeptically. Slipstream looked closer through the spyglass. There were unicorns on deck, two of which had their heads bowed, horns glowing in the direction of the machines. “I don’t see how they can.” “Why don’t you worry about the ship,” a mare grumbled. “You’ve got to be kidding, it’s big enough to be a small town.” From one of the enemy ships, an air raid siren began to blare, then another, then two more. Slipstream’s breath grew tight in her chest as she watched ponies begin to flock to their stations aboard the enemy vessels. Harpoon and gun barrels swiveled in the carriages, and shadows of ponies raced to and fro between windows. Pegasi by the dozens took to the sky, soaring around the vessels like flies. She grabbed for the radio. “Their fleet is a lot bigger than ours. Stay together! If they separate us we’re done for!” “This is insanity!” a mare cried, the captain of one of their battlecruisers—Minnow. “You will hold your rank!” Slipstream howled back. “I doubt this is the half of their fleet! If we don’t knock them out now then they’ll hit us with three times this on our own turf! Then it’ll all be over!” “Y-yes, M-ma’am,” the mare replied shakily. “How did they know?” Wiltings questioned. “They knew we were coming.” “Ponies,” Slipstream addressed them all before acquisitions could start to fly. “Chances are a lot of us are going to die here today.” She took a long pause to frown at her cliché remark, hoof on the transmit button. “You’re all the bravest ponies I know, and serving with you is the greatest honor any commander could ever experience.” The gunships of the enemy fleet begin to assemble in a rough wedge, like a flock of geese, moving out ahead of the larger ships. “Their maneuverable vessels outnumber ours three to one!” a heavily-accented stallion yelled. “Captain Slipstream, what is desired action course?” “They’re expecting us to send our gunships out to meet them...” She paused, thinking. “Take up the lead by three hundred yards to draw the fire and we’ll push forward—take them by surprise.” “Aye, Captain!” “I want the battlecruisers to hang back just behind the fleet leaders,” she instructed, watching as the small gunships began to float into a leading rank. “We’ll take any hits for you until we can get you close enough to the fat mares to do any damage.” “Acknowledged!” the head captain of their six battlecruisers voiced. Slipstream shook her head slowly, trying to recall his name; she was blanking. “All pegasi combatants stay on board. We’ll be moving too fast for you to do any good.” Slipstream suppressed a shudder as both fleets formed their ranks, her captains maneuvering their vessels behind. Estimated, It would only be another thirty seconds until the initial clash. No matter what, she had to keep the enemy gunships away from her battlecruisers. Battlecruisers were offensive vessels; they could outpace any other dirigible of their size and pack a punch like a sack of bricks, then get out before the enemy could even turn their guns, but their weapons were meant for big damage, not accuracy. A single gunship could do a great number on a battlecruiser. For assault vessels, nailing a small and maneuverable gunship was like trying to shoot a fly out of the air with a slingshot. Briar burst back into the gondola, panting. “All forces are at their stations, Captain.” His eyes swept the scene of maroon death ahead of them. “This is a suicide mission...” She shook her head slowly. “Not if we play our cards right.” He swallowed loudly. “You’ve got the aces but they’ve got a full house.” Her eyes narrowed in determination. “Then in the name of Celestia, let’s give these assholes a royal flush.” One of the Longcoat gunships was the first to fire and the sound reached her ears as a deep snap. A moment later their ranges crossed one another, and it began. Almost immediately, one of their rookie captains called over the radio. “Left fuel cell punctured and fire’s spreading rapidly!” Slipstream grabbed madly for the receiver, her eyes picking out the gunship in question. Jackrabbit. “Order abandon ship, Rookie! Now! Any second it’s going to reach the forward hydrogen—” Slipstream winced as a flash of of fire lit up the cloudy sky, the whole front portion of the burning gunship going up in an explosion of fire. Small gunships possessed the ability to fly on helium, but hydrogen was still used as a primary to carry the extra weight of the one-inch ammunition. In an onboard fire scenario, it was protocol for the captain to release the sixty gallon hydrogen tank to give the crew time to either evacuate or dump off enough weight to stay afloat on helium. Slipstream pounded the console. The rookie hadn’t dropped the hydrogen tanks. She clicked the receiver. “You’re dead, rook.” The Jackrabbit blasted apart like an over-inflated party balloon, the flame washing over both Equestrian and Longcoat vessels alike and setting them afire. None of the crew of eight had made it off. It was a small sacrifice. The Longcoats had played exactly into her plan though. “All vessels, full forward!” she screamed into the radio receiver. She pulled one hoof from the wheel to slam forward the throttle lever, coaxing an angry roar from the engines. The enemy had left all of their fleet—except for the high percentage of their gunships—hovering back, awaiting the results of the first battle. In their confident state, they had not been expecting the Equestrian forces to fly so tactlessly into the battle. But now, they had left the majority of their gunships locked in combat, completely unprotected from the advancing, greater force. The floor below Slipstream’s hooves shook as the pony operating the six-inch cannon fired from the deck below, the recoil reduction spells in place on the cannons the only reason the frame wasn’t being jarred apart. Slipstream watched as the projectile ripped through the air in a trail of smoke and smacked clean into the side of the carriage on an enemy gunship. She hoped it had done some damage, though none was apparent apart from a gash in the steel. “Captain Slipstream!” Wiltings called on the radio. “I recommend we slow our advance. We’re topping forty knots and—” “Hold your course!” It was a bluff. She was betting the majority now, and if the enemy didn’t play into it, they could all be doomed. Her bluff payed off. The enemy gunships scattered, breaking their frontal stance and turning the small airships for retreat. “Open fire!” Slipstream called to the radio. The enemy gunships, in their unorganized retreat, had now exposed themselves broadside, making much easier targets. Slipstream whooped as the ponies aboard all seven leading ships opened fire with the frontal cannons, sending twenty trails of smoke through the air with a series of deep detonations. Six enemy gunships were hit, the force of the weapons’ impact knocking them sideways and tearing apart hunks of gondola and steel framing. A smile crept across Slipstream’s face as pony silhouettes began to enter the sky, abandoning their wounded vessels. The smile quickly vanished as a burning maroon ship pitched on its course and crashed broadside into one of their own; they both went up in flame. The two teams of gunships between the much larger dirigibles now held no order. silver-white and maroon battled it out as the Equestrian forces advanced. Although the enemy was retreating, that didn’t mean they couldn’t shoot. Three more Equestrian gunships fell, two dropping dangerously in altitude, one going up in flame. It was only a small relief to see a number of pegasus ponies of Equestrian origin retreating, flying towards the nearest vessel to access the small landing platform on one or the other side. The relief was masked by the sight of others, non-pegasi, falling to their deaths, mere black specs as they raced to the ground like stones hurled from a cliff. Slipstream had once tried to commission parachutes or magically enchanted emulates that decreased a pony’s falling speed, but all funding possible had been going to a new fleet of battlecruisers at the time; of the twenty-two built, three remained today, two of which with her now and one stationed in Canterlot. “Side gunners ready!” she howled into the steel pipe by her head. At the rate they were traveling, they would overtake the enemy’s gunships, which were still too numerous to count effectively. Slipstream winced internally. She could count their own. Nine. She had another problem; they were about to fly right into the rear of a Longcoat vessel that was only just spinning up both portside propellers to get under way. It was sure they would survive the impact with a vessel only a tenth as large as the Departure, but not without substantial damage to the nose that could not be afforded in a state of battle. “Captain!” Briar stressed. “I know!” She grabbed the wheel and spun it hard to the left, shifting the two rudders at the end of the vessel. That was the thing about dirigibles... steering them was difficult and sluggish, and the more weight onboard, the worse it got. She clenched her teeth as the nose slowly changed course, the lighter tail end drifting out slightly to the right. Fifty feet. Twenty-five feet. Ten feet. The Departure roared past the enemy vessel so close to the gondola that Slipstream could make out the face of the portside gunner, eyes stretched wide as he looked down the crosshairs of the multi-barreled anti-personnel one-inch machinegun—it was by some aid of Celestia that he forgot to shoot. The starboard and rearmost propeller swiveled much too close to the small ship, spinning so fast it might as well have been a solid disc of steel. The stern of the Departure shuddered dangerously as the tri-blade propeller hacked the tailfins off the maroon aircraft in a flurry of red and silver fabric, then proceeded to open up the rigid outer frame like a jury-rigged can opener. Something vital snapped in the bracings when the spinning blade struck a support inside the small dirigible, and the whole engine nacelle tore free from the side of the Departure with a metallic groan and a shearing of bolts. The still-howling propeller shattered like ice struck with a hammer and the entire engine went into a spin, smashing into the maroon gunship to disappear into the gas chamber. It exploded out the opposite side a second later in a ball of flame, taking a whole sheet of fabric with it. Wiltings cackled over the radio. “Is that your method of saving ammo?” Slipstream drew back on the portside rear engine to compensate for the loss of propulsion. Satisfaction surged through her very veins and arteries, warming her heart with bloodlust. These ponies threatened her way of life, and they were all going to die for it. The massive rigid frame above her shook as the crew onboard lining the gunning posts opened fire on the retreating Longcoat gunships. “Commander!” It was Thrush, captain of the Strider. “The enemy is advancing. If we don’t break off now then we face separation!” She was right. The enemy was advancing, specifically with their battlecruisers. As much as she would have enjoyed to stay in the midst of the enemy gunships, shredding them, on this current course they would be in range of the deadly frontal cannons of the enemy battlecruisers in less than a minute. “Break left and raise altitude five hundred feet!” She yanked the wheel around drew back on the throttle for the portside engines, milking as sharp of a turn as she could from the massive airship. Their ranks had broken slightly, but still held their basic outline as the seven airships swung into a right turn, spewing trails of smoke from the hardworking engines while the battlecruisers stayed on the inside, shielded from possible enemy fire. An enemy gunship she had been confident they were going to pass over began to catch her eye. Water poured from both ballast tanks in a furrowed stream cast astray by the ship’s propellers. It was on a direct intercept with the Departure on its current heading. At this angle, if it continued to rise the way it was now, they would strike the tail end. “Pull up!” Briar yelled to the colt on the elevator wheel. “No!” Slipstream intervened. “Down. The gondola will be crushed against their frame.” The colt at the wheel compiled and heaved the massive wheel to the left. The Departure began to drop, nose first, heading directly for the starboard side of the enemy gunship. “What are you doing!?” Briar yelled in her ear. Adrenaline blotted out his voice as Slipstream kept her eyes straight ahead, willing the airship to continue its course. The prediction she had calculated came true; the maroon gunship continued to rise, already having let out much more water than it could lighter-than-air gas, and the captain could not compensate for the sudden change in the Departure’s course. The nose of the Departure struck the protruding, lower tailfin of the enemy gunship, and the entire frame shook, knocking everypony in the gondola to the floor. Metal screamed from above as the much-heavier dirigible batted the gunboat out of the way, tearing off the entire tail section of the craft when it tangled in the nose bracings. The enemy gunboat went into a hopeless spin, but not before the starboard gunner could do some damage. High-velocity personnel rounds tore through the glass plating portside gondola, exploding the armored glass and spray it about like shrapnel. The navigator, poor colt, who had managed to get back to his hooves quickly, was shot topside of the shoulder. The round took with it six inches of coat and flesh upon exit through his belly, just behind the foreleg. He stood for a second in shock, then fell onto the mapboard, dead as a doornail. The Departure fell into formation at a slightly lower altitude than the rest of the fleet. Slipstream glanced back at the crippled ship they had left in their wake, now going into a nosestand. “They’re mad,” she breathed to herself. Wiltings’ voice crackled over the radio. “Is that thing you’re flying a dirigible or a battering ram?” she scolded. “You’ve got a Longcoat’s tailfin sticking outta’ your nose.” “I don’t want to hear it!” Slipstream growled back over the wind now filling the gondola. She took a short moment to breathe, burning off the adrenaline still trickling through her veins. “Casualties?” “Six gunboats,” the heavy accented stallion said. “What damage did we do to the enemy?” she asked nervously, hoping for a good answer. “I can count four or so that I saw go down, and two confirmed by us.” “Fourteen.” Slipstream thumped the wheel in triumph. “We took a nasty dozen rounds through the envelope and a few to the gasbag chamber, but we’re cherry,” Thrush said, voice a little jittery. “All battlecruisers are accounted for and unharmed.” The connection clicked, and Slipstream recalled the voice of her fleet commander. “Good to know, Darius.” The stallion’s name had come back to her now that she was able to calm herself a little. Darius was probably the only pony who had been in the business longer than she had, since before the war.. Like her, he had migrated to the aerial forces, and somehow, like her, he was still alive after four long years of airborne warfare.   Slipstream rested her head on the wheel for a moment. This was far from over. There was a throaty bang from the distance and Slipstream looked up in time to see the smoke trail from the top of the enemy mothership as a pony-sized projectile rocketed past the gondola, rocking the aluminum shell in its bracings and managing to shatter a cracked pane of glass. Slipstream knew it. Somepony was dead—lots of ponies were dead. It had hit something. Still, she had heard no sound of impact. “What the hay was that thing!?” Thrush yelled from the radio. “Those rounds must weigh a ton apiece! How can they even mount a cannon that big!?” Slipstream shook her head for the sake of confusion, trying to clear it. “Just one of those rounds could spell the end for an entire ship!” They had to push, or the battle would never last. She had thought them out of range, but they were very much n range. From here, she could already see the ponies on the platform of the massive airship struggling to reload the long-barreled cannon which had fired the round, six unicorns levitating a massive round as big as they were. “Pass above and to the left! Open a slot; I want a battlecruiser on both sides of me and I want them flanked by the Friendship and Strider! Remaining gunships take the lead and the rest of you try and keep the leading airships between you and the enemy!” A cacophony of “Yes, Ma’ams” and “Aye Commanders” returned to her one by one from the radio, and the fleet began to circle back to the cluster of maroon airships. In any normal case, this would usually be the time in which captains sent out their aerial combatants, pegasi trained in the art of airborne battle, but the enemy showed no intentions of doing so. It seemed they wanted it over and they wanted it over now. The enemy compensated for the Equestrian’s advance, matching their altitude. Slipstream balked as the engine pods on the enemy mothership—she had taken to calling it—swiveled and turned downward, using propulsion for lift. “What else do they know that we don’t?” she whispered quietly, hardly registering the two battlecruisers taking up the sides of the Departure. Minnow’s airship had her left, the oldest battlecruiser in the fleet. Ironically, the newest battlecruiser in the fleet had her right, captained by Streak, a pink pegasus. The enemy commander must have heard her question, because the answer came. A small shape sped up on the ramp atop the massive airship and barreled towards the nose end. Slipstream blinked a few times, staring in unmasked and worried curiosity as the winged shape hurled off the end of the semi-rigid airship. She gasped when, instead of falling, as she had predicted it to, the maroon thing took to the air, and made a turn towards her. “Is that thing flying!?” Wiltings cried over the radio, aghast. “Well it’s not falling,” Thrush snapped back. Slipstream tightened her one-hoofed grip on the rudder wheel. “I don’t care what it is—shoot the damned thing out of the sky before it can do whatever it’s meant to do.” Disdain washed through her as three more went through the same process, taking to the air behind the first. “They’re birds!” Minnow yelled. “They’re mechanical birds!” Slipstream tried not to focus on the flying machines, keeping her eyes fixed on the enemy vessels ahead; if one of them was trying to get the up on them, she would be ready for it. Over the sounds of the other airships’ in their fleet opening fire, Slipstream picked out the distinct rat-a-tat-tat of the bow gunner letting loose from atop the rigid frame at the first enemy aircraft to come in range. Slipstream couldn’t help but watch. The enemy aircraft banked, exactly like a bird, and from her spot behind the wheel, Slipstream picked out a blue mare in the tiny fuselage, working madly at the controls. Their gazes met, and she could see that the mare was frightened, frightened to death. Her eyes were wide behind her aviator’s goggles and her expression read grim, and for a moment, Slipstream felt sympathy. This was war, for everypony. That mare hadn't started the war; she hadn’t chosen to start this battle. There were bigger ponies in charge, away from the front lines, using them all like pieces on a chessboard. The sympathy vanished as fast as it had come when two weapons on either side of the aircraft’s churning propeller lit up, pinprick rounds hacking through the Departure’s envelope. The aircraft howled past the gondola and hurled back towards its other companions. “How many of those things have they got?” Slipstream asked the radio. “I see two more hanging from below their smaller vessels!” “I can not hit them!” the gunboat commander yelled. “They are too fast and much too small! Could I suggest sending the pegasi out to intercept?” “No,” Slipstream answered. “They’re too fast and those guns are deadly. Our ponies’ll get destroyed out there.” The enemy was succeeding; they were drawing Slipstream’s attention away from her advance. Now the enemy vessels were changing their formation, taking up the front with half of their battlecruisers interwoven between some of their larger, gunned vessels. The only vessel away from the front line was the mothership, which hung back a good five-hundred yards, playing it safe. She swallowed the apple rising in her throat and grabbed for the radio, betting it all. “All leading forces, full throttle!” “They’ll shred us!” Thrush screamed. “They’re trying to play it safe.” To serve as a leading example, she cranked the throttle lever forward. “They’ll try to evade us.” “And what if they call your bluff?” the lower caption questioned, breaking procedure, much to Slipstream’s irritation. “Then we crash.”