//------------------------------// // Chapter 4 - Death From Above // Story: Of Aerial Dominance // by Sorren //------------------------------//         Thrush fought against every single screaming nerve in her body as they begged her to draw back on the throttle. Her amber hoof remained planted on the brass-coated lever, shaking slightly as her wide eyes stared out the front windows of the gondola. The wall of maroon death was growing ever closer.         The battlecruiser to her left fired, and a few seconds later, the enemy fired back with double the firepower. Thrush could only stare, mouth agape, as the enemy rounds banked towards her. Her chest seized up and she pinched her eyes shut.         She heard the whoosh of fire and the very distinct sound of a projectile hacking through the framing of a dirigible. She knew it was hers. Any second the fire would hit the gondola and she would roast like a turkey. When that second did not come, she dared to look. The battlecruiser to her left had gone up in a ball of flame twice the size of the ship, the nose beginning to dive as the airship lost its source of lift. Ponies dived from the cabin windows as flame overtook the interior, scorching anything and everything. Only the first ten or so made it out okay; the others were either on fire when they jumped or never jumped at all. Relief washed through her every vein, relief that made her belly squirm and heart ache like she wished to do nothing more than turn a rifle on herself. She was relieved because other ponies were dead and she wasn’t; it was disgusting, selfish and cowardly. Flame from the deteriorating battlecruiser’s frame licked at the side of the Strider, blackening the silver paint. Hurriedly, Thrush adjusted the wheel and and guided them away from the flames, then back again once it had fallen below her altitude. “Damn...” She fumbled the receiver switch. “Orders, Captain!?” The enemy hadn’t broken their ranks, and in a matter of seconds it would be too late to avoid a collision. “Break formation!” Slipstream’s voice, terrified, returned from the radio. “Take evasive maneuvers to avoid collision!” Thrush allowed herself a second’s thought. This was it, the beginning of the end for them. They would scatter amongst the enemy forces, and one by one they would drop like flies. Sure they might take a Longcoat or two with them, but three versus one never worked in favor of the latter. She cranked her head around and threw a commanding hoof at the young mare waiting with her hooves clasped on the elevator wheel. “Forty percent lift!” She ripped her head back around, black mane waving out around her head like an umbrella, eyes analyzing the scene. There was a battlecruiser ahead on the left, veering off to the left, and directly ahead of her was one of the enemy’s much larger vessels that she didn’t know to name. It hadn’t plotted a course yet, and still held straight bearing. Chances were the captain was readying to turn. She guessed, wrestling the wheel clockwise. The captain of the dirigible directly across from her had also guessed, and on a strike of unluck, had turned the ship left and up, right into her projected path. Collision unavoided. Desperately, she used her entire body weight to crank the wheel back straight. “Level!” she yelled to the mare. The airship ahead of her and steadily growing nearer shifted the same direction, dropping lift and rudder. Thrush was reminded comically of two ponies trying to pass one another in a hall, the both of them continually trying to step around each other, only succeeding in stepping into each other’s way each time. Accidentally, this was turning into a psychology game. If she turned the wheel left, there was a very good chance the captain of the enemy ship could do the very same thing trying to avoid her. Or maybe, she could stay straight and let them move, but that also left the chance that the other captain assumed the Strider would turn and maintain heading, which would also resort in a collision. “All the way!” she screamed to the mare on the elevator wheel. “Full elevation!” No chances. The mare gave a tiny shake of her head like she wanted to argue, but that could compromise the frame! Thrush’s look silenced any protest that may have arisen. Despite the knowledge of the risks, she wrestled the wheel left, bracing herself against the floor for leverage as the the elevator fins at the rear of the airship battled with the wind. “Help!” she cried to the navigator as the wheel threatened to lift her off the ground. She kicked her legs in the air as a gust of wind on the elevators pulled her off the ground; her wings flared and she beat them with a grunt, pushing her hooves back to the floor. The colt abandoned his navigation station and rushed over to her. Placing his hooves over hers on the wheel, the two pulled the wheel around another half rotation. Thrush prayed to all that she stood for that they wouldn’t experience a cable snap, which was very well possible with such strain on the elevators and the geared cable system. The Strider groaned as the tail dropped and the streamlined nose began to steer them into the air at thirty degrees vertical and climbing. Somewhere in the framing above, she heard beams groaning and snapping under the pressure, every sound drawing a wince from her. She grasped the wheel for leverage as the nose titled. A half-empty mug of coffee she had left unattended on the console slipped from the smooth surface and shattered on the floor, the black liquid within running across the metal to the back of the gondola. Her eyes darted to the instrument for measuring ascent, though it only read it up forty-five degrees and the needle now hung out over open air. The pitch of the engines increased as they struggled with dense air, the blades now moving much faster than the craft. Sparing a hoof, she locked the throttle in the full forward position, setting the engines’ tone from angry to raving mad. The top of the enemy dirigible loomed just ahead, barely in view from the bottom on the gondola windows. Thrush wrapped both hooves around the wheel as the slope of the floor threatened to pull her to the back of the gondola and muttered a silent ‘sorry’ for the ponies in the cabin; they were probably making like pebbles in a rainstick right about now. Her focus shifted solely back to the airship before her and that airship alone. The captain had lowered the dirigible’s nose, but it would still be close. Robbed it of its momentum by the unreasonable incline, the Strider stalled, the airspeed meter dancing somewhere around the four-knot mark. The enemy captain seemed to take grasp of the situation. No longer fed by momentum, the equal weighting in the ballast began to pull the tail of the Strider up, nose dropping in compensation. The enemy dirigible went into a dive. Thrush’s hooves deadlocked on the wheel as the maroon airship rocketed under the gondola, tail leading higher than the rest of the ship. “Drop your tail!” Thrush screamed at the glass, panicking. With no momentum at all on the Strider, she was helpless but to watch as the maroon tailfins came within spitting distance of the gondola. At what very well could have been the last second, the elevators folded upwards and the tail of the maroon vessel dropped drastically, whipping just below the gondola with a sound like a hurricane, jarring the suspended cabin in framing as it rocked back and forth, metal creaking and groaning. Thrush almost collapsed with relief as the Strider pitched and slogged back to level. She tipped an invisible hat to the captain of the other vessel. “Another day.” Things had only just begun. About two ship-lengths below her, the battle was forming. Maroon mixed with silver and the hell began. Thrush thanked Celestia for her luck. Above all of the fighting, she could drop in anywhere and do some real damage. Though, now, without speed on her side, she would have to rely on the ballast tanks for altitude. Flipping open the little door on the steel pipe upper left of the wheel, she yelled, “Bring us down right above them! Gunners ready!” She drew back on the throttle, conscious of the fact that the eight temperature gauges on the console were dancing dangerously in the red, the engines sputtering and coughing. She had exerted the engines. The eight propeller engines were designed to hold an airship at speed, and were equipped with air-cooling systems; throttled fully down with an airspeed of about four knots, propellers straining against the heavy air, the engines had been strained beyond purpose without any means of cooling. She winced as the forward right rev meter wound down to fall against the pin. “Repair crew to engine two!” she called to the pipe. “I think it’s stalled.” Steering altitude with hydrogen and ballast tanks was always a harder process because it required close communication between the captain and crew. She threw continual glances out the right and left windows at the mess of airships below her. She wasn’t too much worried about being fired upon, since airships never had large cannons mounted above the framing due to the fact that the frame could not support such strain. Although, many of the port and starboard cannons mounted within the Strider were specifically designed to swivel down fifty degrees. She was death from above. Her belly swirled the tiniest bit at the feeling of weightlessness as the ship began to lower, hydrogen vented from the gasbags. Two cannons portside of the ship let loose, and her eyes darted to their smoketrails. “Yes!” She thumped the console as both shots hacked gaping tears in a maroon gunship that had been encircling Minnow’s battlecruiser. The small vessel pitched to one side, frame collapsing on itself, and began to drop. “This is the Departure.” Slipstream’s voice caused Thrush’s ears to perk. “We’re a dead fish.” Thrush jumped like the floor was electric. Abandoning the wheel, she threw herself against the glass right of the gondola and pressed her face against the cool surface to look down. The Departure was almost directly below her, the tail end swirling out to the side as the rudder and elevator flaps hung limp in the wind. “No...” “Acknowledged,” buzzed the radio in the form of Wiltings’ despondent voice. “I can see you from here. Your rudders are waving in the breeze and you’re drifting to starboard... You might want to hang onto something. It looks like your tailfins are gonna’ take a bite of maroon envelope.” Thrush couldn’t stand the sight of the crippled, lead airship. In battle, the commanding airship was supposed to last as long as possible: command the battle. It was foreshadowing in the worst regard losing their commanding ship first. It did not spell a good end. She growled, eyeing the four, small aircraft that were swooping away from the crippled Equestrian vessel. “That’s enough of that,” she muttered. “Ready your weapons!” She screeched into the pipe beside her head. “We’re dropping right on top of them!” “Captain!” a gruff stallion yelled back. “That’ll put us in range!” “And it’ll give the gunners more accuracy! Now do it!” “Aye... Captain.” “Release ballast on my order!” She gave the order only fifty yards above an enemy battlecruiser. A quick glance over each side told her that the Strider was directly over the enemy vessel, which meant it wouldn’t be able to shoot them, and they wouldn’t be able to shoot it. Ironically, the safest place to be in an airship battle was directly above or below the enemy. “Enemy battlecruiser crippled and losing altitude!” Wiltings cheered to the radio. Thrush’s eyes picked out the Friendship, which was circling just outside the midst of the fighting. Behind it, a maroon battlecruiser was rolling to one side in the air, the front cabin and gondola aflame. As she watched, a burning chunk of debris fell from the cabin and spiraled dangerously away. An idea struck her, and the tiniest of grins played at the corner of her mouth. She craned her head to speak into the pipe. “Wrap one of the center weights in spare fabric and light it! Throw it out the starboard cabin!” “Captain?” the stallion asked. “Just do it!” Thrush could almost feel the realization smack him in the face a hundred feet away. “Yes, Ma’am!” His words became muffled as he shouted orders. Thrush wished that they had provided a radio for gondola-to-cabin communications, but that didn’t leave enough available frequencies for every ship. There was always the option of running an intercom system down a wire, but that had never happened, and Thrush still didn’t understand why. It would be lighter and more effective. Electricity definitely wasn’t an issue with the eight difference engines. “Release combatants?” It was the armory major from a different pipe. “Hold!” Thrush returned. It didn’t really matter as long as it worked, but technology always made everything better. The battlecruiser below her began to pull away, its nose opposite of the Strider’s. “No, not yet,” Thrush hissed through clenched teeth. She reached up and, going against every word of training she had ever received, slammed the engines into reverse. The temperature gauges, which had been fading out of the red, jumped a notch in inflammation, all but the one belonging to the dead engine. When stalled, there was no means of restarting an engine from the gondola. There was a line of kill switches far off to the right, where they would be hard to accidentally brush against, but no way to start an engine without the means of an electrical line. Looking down through the peephole in the floor, she tried her best to keep the enemy vessel below her, though steering an airship backwards was like trying to push a pencil across a desk, and the very possibility of cable break was at full climax while in reverse. All it would take to tear a rudder right off the fins was for the wind to catch one at an odd angle and fold it against the side of the fin. Thrush tried to hold the wheel as straight as possible. “You’re crazy,” the mare at the elevator wheel muttered. Thrush ignored her, ignored everything, even the battle at hand. All that mattered was a spot atop the enemy battlecruiser directly below her. The enemy ship’s captain must have noticed something was up, because they were now trying to shake the Strider, just starting to bank for a right turn. “We are ready, Captain!” the gruff stallion called to her. “Throw it!” There was a second’s hesitation where Thrush feared that they had missed, but then her eyes picked out a burning mass, as large as a pony, hurling through the air. She tensed her grip on the wheel as it rolled slightly in the air, flame threatening to lick out. It crashed into the top of the enemy vessel ten feet away from center and disappeared into the frame. Thrush bit her lip. What if they had missed? What if— Flame lapped at the black hole left by the weight thrown from the cabin of the Strider, but was gone a moment later. Thrush made sure to cover her eyes as the outer frame of the battlecruiser blasted apart, the maroon fabric burning away like pine needles tossed atop a fire. As she had intended, the burning weight had struck the forward hydrogen sack. Slipstream threw her right hoof into the air and cheered. “Death from above!” “Captain!?” It was one of Thrush’s tail gunners, away from her post. Still smiling a little, Thrush idled the engines and turned towards the blue mare. “Yeah?” The feeling of victory surged through her veins like liquid power. “The pipe must be damaged. I couldn’t reach you!” Thrush was reminded guiltily of the damage she may have done to the inner framework. The mare practically threw herself on Thrush. “Crippled enemy vessel, starboard side! We’re on a collision cour—” Thrush felt her hooves leave the ground, and next thing she knew, she was soaring backwards towards the back of the gondola, then followed a crash. She moaned into the coat of the tail gunner she had landed on. All around her, steel groaned and the very world shook like a paint mixer. Rolls of maps and navigation equipment rained from the shelves above, the delicate instruments shattering on the steel floor. Once the initial crash had settled, Thrush picked herself up, leaning heavily on the wall as the Strider rapidly changed course, threatening to throw her back to the floor. “What the hay was that!?” The tail gunner picked herself up and folded her ears. “I moved as fast as I could, Captain...”