The yellow mare, her coat dappled with small specks of silver, took her hooves off the wheel and cut power to the engines, which were rapidly beginning to overheat. There was no point in trying to flee now that they had been roped. She wasn’t even able to count the cables drawing taut between the enemy airship and hers.
She keyed the transmit button on her reciever. “This is Captain Minnow!” she said, a pleading air in her voice. “We’re being boarded!” In her left peripheral, she caught a flash of movement that caused her to jump backwards. In an explosion of glass, the harpoon ripped into the gondola where she had been standing just a second before. The silver steel whizzed by her chest and sheared off a corner of the wheel. It changed direction on the impact, and gored right through the gray mare who had been in charge of the elevation wheel. A strangled gasp escaped her lungs and she fell against the mapboard and the navigator looked at the speared mare with horror.
The bloody, clawed last foot and a half of the harpoon snapped open into a tri-headed hook and the cable that had entered the gondola in its wake snapped taut beside Minnow’s hoof.
She threw herself onto the wheel, desperately lifting her hooves off the ground. One edge of the tri-hooked harpoon stuck in the floor and the other gashed at the console, obliterating the expensive radio. Steel groaned and the hook tore a gash in the floor as the cable drug it along, the gray mare haplessly sliding with it in a smear of blood, speared like a river trout.
Minnow tried desperately to balance herself on the wheel as the hook drug by below her, slicing through the floor like the claws of some monster. It stuck to the wall portside gondola, slamming the gray mare up against the glass.
The mare’s eyes rolled in her head as the three claws broke through the glass around her, sticking in the framing and pressing all their weight on her chest. Her frame convulsed and her neck twitched, blood beginning to run from both nostrils.
It all happened in a second. The steel wall of the gondola groaned and the glass cracked alongside the mare’s ribs. With an almighty squeal of metal, the hooked javelin ripped out the entire side of the gondola, knocking Minnow to the floor and leaving her to gaze helplessly after the gored pony as she fell away like a fishing lure cast to sea.
Now Minnow had a plain view of the side of the enemy vessel which rivaled her battlecruiser by at least two-hundred feet, the cables drawing her ship and crew ever closer.
The sound of the battle waging between their two vessels reached her ears, a whole chorus of shouts and gunfire, the distant roar of other engines fogging the air and providing wartime ambience. It was something one would very well expect to read about in epic novels of adventure and war. Only this wasn’t exhilarating; this was horrifying.
“She just... died,” the navigator said absently.
Minnow rolled to her hooves and ran a distressed hoof through her shimmery, silver-orange mane. “Give it five minutes and we’ll be like that too.”
He hugged a long scrollcase to him like it was some sort of armor. “Then what—”
The door leading to the inner framework of the battlecruiser practically exploded open as a burly, brown mare butted it at a gallop. “Captain!” She nearly bowled into Minnow, momentum carrying her. “The enemy’s boardin’ our ship!” Her Manehattan accent shone through painfully strong.
Minnow wished to slew a hoof across the mare’s face and scream, ‘No, really!? It’s not like I didn’t see the big ass MAROON AIRSHIP!’ She nodded. “What are you telling me for!? You’re big. Get back there and fight!”
The mare gave a short salute. “Yes, Cap’n!” Like the one hundred and fifty pounds of raw mare she had entered as, she barged back out through the door and disappeared into the gloom of the inner frame.
Minnow flared her wings and tried to smooth the ruffled feathers. From her suspense and irritation, many stuck either which way, and a part of her wanted to sit back and preen them right now to calm herself down. She wasn’t able to fancy this thought for more than a few moments, however, before she was rudely interrupted by the sound of banaging near the back of the gondola. Glass shattered and tinkled across the steel, and a shadow blocked out the filtered light allowed to shine through the thick layer of clouds.
Her navigator voiced her mind for her. “What was that?”
There were four heavy thuds, all within a second’s proximity to one another, and into her vision stepped a gray pony, eyes almost hidden below his thick, gray-black mane. He held a short blade in his mouth, taking a threatening step towards her as he furled his large, strong wings. “You nice pony,” he rumbled, accent thick and heavy.
Minnow swallowed. She didn’t like the look in his eye; it made her sure he had been chosen specifically as a scare tactic. She backed up until her rump hit the wheel. Tossing her head about, she looked for means of defense. Her sword hung from a hook on the wall by the door. She could actually see it from where she stood, handle glinting ever so slightly. The only issue was she couldn’t get to the door.
The young navigator stepped into the Longcoat’s path. “Stop!” He yielded a scrollcase like a sword, the strap at one end wrapped around his right forehoof as he balanced with the left.
Amusement played on the Longcoat’s face and he grinned around the blade in his jaws. He didn’t even slow.
“What are you doing!?” Minnow howled to the foolishly-brave pegasus. “In Celestia’s name, get back!”
The buck threw a look back at her. “I am sworn to my captain!”
Minnow slammed her hooves on the ground, angry at her utter defenselessness. There was another thud as yet another longcoat, this one red, filed in behind the first. The gray one lunged at her navigator, and miraculously, the buck blocked the attack with the wood and canvas tube.
“Go!” he howled as the Longcoat tried to dislodge his sword from the scrollcase. “Get the hay out of here, Captain!” The sword unburied itself from the scrollcase as the Longcoat gave a hard tug. He swung again, and again the buck blocked the attack, the scrollcase bending in his grasp, the cedarwood cracking and splintering.
Minnow took a step towards the hole left in the side of the gondola, shaking her head. “But what about—” Damnit. She was captain of this ship. They can’t just—
“Go!” he bellowed, hooves sliding across the steel below as the larger pony pushed him backwards. The red Longcoat moved up beside his gray companion, wielding a larger sword.
Minnow’s belly lurched, and she turned away, flaring her wings and jumping in one fluid motion.
It was sick—a captain abandoning their wheelhouse.
She flew alongside her airship towards the tail end, beating her wings as hard as she could to keep up speed and raise herself up at the same time, dodging around the steel cables snaking from javelins that had punctured the skin. All around her, pegasi fought, sparring mid-air, and aboard both ships, ponies exchanged fire, taking potshots at the combatants.
How had she let herself be trapped in this situation? There would be no help; every other airship was engaged. The Friendship was only about three hundred yards away, but Wiltings was in no shape to aid, currently caught up in her own situation.
Something whizzed by her ear and tore through the battlecruiser’s skin to her left. Involuntarily, she jumped, and her right wing caught the air at an awkward angle, flipping her sideways. Two more rounds whizzed by her, each seemingly closer than the last. She stopped, knowing she was making an obvious target as she climbed.
Recovering, she spun frantically, looking for the source. She was too exposed here. She was a yellow speck against a big sheet of white-silver. The Longcoats were probably sitting in their comfortable cabins and betting bits on who could hit her first.
She eeped and ducked her head as two pegasi raced by overhead, an Equestrian in pursuit of a Longcoat.
Somethething grazed her tail and that was the last straw; she had to get out of fire. There were pegasi all around her, maybe only half of them hers. It would only be a moment before a longcoat spotted her bright form, defenseless, and went for the kill.
It seemed a silly idea, but she’d seen it done before. Minnow threw herself against the horizontal skin of the battlecruiser, feeling as it bowed slightly under her weight. A little above her, she spotted a small tear in the fabric, most likely caused by some sort of projectile. Quickly, she shimmied up the battlecruiser’s skin and stabbed the end of her hoof at the slit torn by the bullet, and yanked it wider, straining against the strong fabric. She tore a spot wide enough for her head and crammed it through, beating her wings and wriggling her shoulders, trying to shove the rest of her body through. The fabric tore again with a dry sound, and she fell forward, careening into the semi-gloom.
She yelled, flaring her wings in an attempt to find out which way was up. Her back struck something thin and taut, most likely a nacelle suspension cable, and she cried out as she flipped around in the air, changing directions, shoulderblade stinging like mad. Chancing it, she flapped her wings, the action bringing stability to her form. After a moment, she stabilized herself and looked around the inner framework. She had stopped just short of a series of small beams that helped support the cabin.
Little patches of light appeared periodically around her, torn in the outer skin by stray weaponfire. Bullets pinged off of metal supports, often close enough to spray her with small shards of shrapnel.
She didn’t know which was more dangerous: being shot at or being in the middle of everypony shooting at everypony and waiting for a stray bullet to peg her.
She carried herself through the framework, looking desperately for a place to land. Spotting it, her hooves crashed to the catwalk that ran perfectly center through the envelope of the cylindrical ship. She was near the bow end, and below and a little behind her she could see the gondola supports. The gasbags, four on either side in a tight bundle, placed three-quarters of the way from either end, were still intact. The ponies assigned to them flew around the bloated shapes in a flurry, patching holes whenever they would pop up.
Minnow took a moment to stand and despair. She was losing her ship.
There were screams and shouts from below, accompanied by the sharp clang of blade on blade and the chatter of bolt-action fire. Minnow shifted her stance, trying to coax her mind into action. She hoped to it all she didn’t have to begin the compromise procedure. In fear that an airship would be commandeered by the enemy, it was the captain’s duty to give the order of sabotage so the vessel could not be used by the enemy.
Minnow feared she would have to give that order before she lost the chance to.
There was a bang from below as one of the cabin hatches burst open. “Retreat!” a stallion yelled, pulling himself up through the hatch. “Retreat to the framework!”
Her heart sank. The clatter of hooves and shouts and yells roared up from below, and Minnow peered out over the edge of the catwalk to see countless shapes of ponies running about far below. There was a bright flash of yellow-white as one pony fired a rifle down through the hatch at a Longcoat ascending the ladder.
A mare slapped the colt who had fired the rifle across the back of the head. “Are you trying to kill us all!? One leak in those gasbags and this thing’s a bomb!” She smacked him again for good measure. “No ignition source!”
“They’ve killed the captain!” another mare yelled. “What do we do!?”
Minnow could no longer deny it: the ship was compromised. “Abandon ship!” she yelled down the length of the envelope. “This is your captain! Abandon ship!”
Her heart locked like it had been squeezed in a vice. It didn’t matter how many training runs she had performed, nothing could have prepared her for this.
Swallowing hard, she reared up and cantered for the bow of the vessel, where the maintenance ponies were still patching the gasbags. One pony, a blue pegasus colt, gave her a squinted look as she ran up. “Captain, w-what is it?”
Minnow flared her wings and glided down to the platform thirty feet below, looking for the release device she knew was there. “We’ve lost control of the ship!”
The other three ponies gathered around the mare on the catwalk above. “So,” a mare asked, “we’re doing it?”
Wiltings nodded her head, eyes picking out the small lever that held the gasbag bracings. She pulled it, and the connection snapped apart. Immediately, she went a little light-headed as she took a breath of concentrated hydrogen. The disconnected gasbag took off, soaring upwards within the frame until it collapsed against the frame ceiling, the invisible hydrogen within spreading out above.
Hurriedly, she pulled the second, then the third. The fourth did not come easy, however. Halfway out, the handle lodged in place and Minnow stumbled. Growling, she braced both hooves on the mechanism and pulled.
It wouldn’t budge.
“Forget it,” she breathed, vision swimming. Normally, ponies performing this task would be wearing a mask. She backed away and scaled the small ladder back to the catwalk she had previously occupied, beating her wings to help her in the climb.
The battlecruiser’s frame groaned as the shift in hydrogen changed its center of balance, the bow teetering casually to the left.
Now the entire bow end was a bomb; all it needed was a spark. She set a fast canter away, tossing a look back over her to realize with a rush of horror that the four ponies remained at their post trying to release the bag she had abandoned. “No, come on!” she yelled, never slowing. “It’s good!” She watched long enough to make sure they left the task.
Her eyes drifted down and ahead to where ponies were now fighting in the framework, the Longcoats flooding up from the cabin. “Abandon ship!” she repeated, not sure if any of the ponies could even hear her.
Minnow’s eyes picked out a single pony in particular, a Longcoat. The shag-coated mare had reared up on her hind legs on the ground floor below, aiming a hefty-looking rifle directly at Minnow, who would be passing above her shortly.
Her eyes widened, and her hooves skidded on the catwalk as they carried her to an unplanned stop.
The longcoat aimed the rifle, and even from here, Minnow could see her take a breath to steady, aiming down the sights with both eyes open. Just then, a burly, brown shape hurled itself out of the shadows behind the mare. Minnow recognized the large mare from earlier. The mare butted the Longcoat right in the back of the head, and the both of them fell forward.
The rifle discharged.
Mouth falling open, Minnow swore she could have watched the bullet as it spiraled through the air. Far behind her, back where the gasbag bracings were located, the bullet pinged off the railing with a little spark that was quickly snuffed out by the rush of hydrogen fumes.
“Captain!” a buck was yelling, running towards her, away from the bow. His voice seemed slow, and distorted like a cassette played on low batteries. “Let’s get the—”
A pop loud enough to shatter eardrums ripped through the envelope as a brilliant, orange flame lit the gloom.
Minnow reared up on her hind legs, half turning as the gale-force winds sucked at her mane, pulling it towards the flame. The inferno lit up in Minnow’s eyes as she watched it in awe. There was a certain beauty to it as it spread and consumed the one gasbag she hadn’t released. The buck’s hooves slipped on the catwalk as the rush of air hit him, though Minnow’s eyes were hardly facing him. They were traveling up to the hollow framework above. The hydrogen she had released flashed across the upmost part of the frame, having already mixed well with the oxygen, spreading over her head in a snake of brilliant, orange-green flame.
This is how she would die. Already the hair on her coat was curling and singing at the tips from the heat, and the flash was mere seconds from engulfing her.
The buck ploughed into her at the exact same time the wall of fire washed by.
She was faintly aware of crashing to the ground, her entire body burning like she had been dipped in boiling water. All that she could hear was the rushing of air and, eyes pinched shut, the orange glow of flame was all that seemed to exist. That smell, that horrible smell, assaulted her nostrils: burnt flesh and hair.
Just like that, the dragon’s roar that was the inferno was over. Still fueled by adrenaline and panic, Minnow began to writhe, fighting the limp shape that pinned her to the piping hot catwalk. With a grunt, she pushed it off and staggered to her hooves.
The colt was black, not black as in covered in ash, but black like a marshmallow caught on fire and then blown out. His crusted eyes, still swiveling in their sockets frantically, saw nothing.
All around her, fire burned, gnawing hungrily at the skin of the vessel, leaving nothing but framework in its path. Steel began to groan and lurch as the battlecruiser sagged on the bow end. Behind, fire swirled like the depths of an angry furnace, sucking in who, or whatever was unfortunate enough to be too close.
Minnow forced herself to move, to run, to flee the burning mass. Her hooves slammed on the catwalk as she fled the flame, mind barely registering the feeling. All of her consciousness was focussed on her, on the pain. The right side of her face burned like she had just poured vinegar on a particularly nasty sunburn, and she was aware that her mane no longer licked at her neck like it had, that her tail felt lighter. Every breath brought to her the putrid scent of charred hair, unique in its sort of greasy-musty way, like burnt popcorn, but sickening.
A bracing beam to her right folded in two with an angry squeal as several rivets popped, and the entire system of cables squealed as all the weight was left to them. One by one, they began to snap like gunshots, flicking away like angry cobras, tangling and wrapping with beams or cables. The catwalk Minnow ran upon lurched as the bow of the battlecruiser dipped more.
It was getting harder and harder to run as the incline steeped with every step. The stern gasbags, still holding the ship, struggled under the weight, threatening to tear at the awkward angle.
Ponies screamed, running to and fro in the framework, Equestrian and Longcoat alike, no longer enemies, but beings seeking means of escape.
Before she knew it, she was climbing, digging frantically with all fours at the grated steel, breath needles in her chest. Ponies screamed around the sound of the airship deteriorating. Steel beams and tools blasted by, clanging loudly as they bounced around inside the framing like some massive game of pachinko
Soon, Minnow could run no more. Her hooves slipped and she slid five feet back the way she had come. She managed to catch the railing support with a forehoof and she jarred to a stop. Desperately, she pulled herself up and hugged the bar like a teddy bear.
Looking up the almost now-vertical airship was almost as terrifying as looking down at the fire below. The bar a mare and a stallion had been clinging to snapped under their combined weight and the two went tumbling down the catwalk head over hooves, bodies slamming painfully against the metal. The stallion rolled by, screaming, until his head met a support for the railing. He went silent and continued his tumble down the near-vertical ramp as a ragdoll.
The pink earth pony behind him had managed to slow herself by clinging to the floor of the catwalk above. Minnow watched her hopefully as she reached for the railing with a shaky hoof. Her back hooves slipped and she fell. The mare screamed, and so did Minnow. Again she managed to slow herself by grinding her hooves against the rippled surface of the catwalk. She slid to a stop right beside Minnow.
The two exchanged a horrified glance. The pink mare clung tight to the flat surface of the walk, hyperventilating madly, eyes round saucers. “H-h-h-help,” she whimpered.
Minnow took a long breath and reached for the mare. The pink mare took her left hoof from the catwalk to grasp it, then lost her grip. Screaming, she slid down another four feet. She cried and hugged the floor of the catwalk that had just about become a vertical wall of steel. Her knees bled, shredded from the grated steel. She clung to the surface and shook her head.
“You can’t stay there!” Minnow yelled over the inferno below, rapidly rising. “It’s gonna pitch you off!”
The mare shook her head again. “N-no!”
Minnow flared her wings as she hung, testing them for flight. However, after two beats from her right side, she clenched her teeth and let out a sharp gasp. Her right wing, it was...
She spared a look to it.
Burnt.
The feathers were charred and blackened, shriveled, the flesh and sinew peeking through as red as an Autumn leaf in the more ravaged spots. The woolen jacket she wore was the same way; hopefully it had shielded most of her coat from the same fate as her wing. It struck her that the only reason she hadn’t been crisped was because of the colt who—whether intentionally or not—had thrown himself upon her at the moment of the blast.
Now hyperventilating herself, the searing air of the fire below charring her lungs, she lowered herself from where she clung to the railing support, clinging by the crook of her leg, hind legs dangling fearfully. She reached for the mare, coming up a foot and a half short. The pink mare watched, eyes glazed from the heat, though she refused to blink.
Silently scolding herself, Minnow lowered herself more until she hung only by her hoof. Her reach was still six inches short. “You’re gonna have to jump!”
The pink mare shook her head. “I c-c-can’t!”
Minnow snarled. “Jump!”
The mare pinched her eyes shut, and jumped, shoving off from the catwalk with all the strength in her hind legs.
It was far enough. Minnow’s hoof wrapped around the mare’s as she took her weight.
The pink mare screamed again, kicking the air with her forehooves.
“Stop squirming!” Minnow growled through clenched teeth. The mare weighed more than she had initially judged, and hanging now by one hoof was becoming quite a task.
The steel framing gave the most excruciating of squeals, bending and folding at key structural points. Minnow felt tears streak her face, evaporated almost immediately by the intense heat rising from the burning hydrogen fed from the tanks and fabric skin. Ponies screamed, clinging desperately for life just as she, steel raining all around them. Some fell, like moths into flame, unable to hold any longer, swallowed into the hungry fire far below. The pegasi flew, riding up the updrafts and trying to dodge falling debris; some refused to leave the safety of structural beams.
The pink mare looked up at Minnow’s strained face in utter horror. “Are you okay!?”
Minnow nodded, the muscles in her neck strained as he hung at the awkward, sideways angle. “Y-yeah.” Her hoof slipped and she yelled in horror. The pink mare lost grasp on her forehoof and fell, though somehow managed to grasp Minnow hind leg as she fell.
“Celestia save me!” she screamed, squirming, kicking, crying out.
Minnow lunged for the bar with her now-free forehoof, though fell just short. “Stop it!” she yelled down to the mare hugging her leg. “You’re gonna pull me off!”
The mare was gone. It was drowning pony syndrome, self-preservation fueled by panic and instinct. She squeezed Minnow’s hind leg below the joint like a vice, trying desperately to pull herself up.
Minnow tried again to reach for the bar with her dangling hoof, but with her body pulled sideways by such a weight, reach was impossible. And as the pink mare continued to squirm and jerk, Minnow shuddered at what she would have to do.
Her forehoof was beginning to slip.
“Stop!” she repeated. There was no other choice. Closing her eyes, she raised her free leg and brought her hoof down, hard. It struck against something soft, and there was a scream that followed.
The mare lost her grasp for a second, and she slid down past Minnow’s knee.“N-n-no!” she begged. “Please don’t!”
Minnow shook her head, tears welling in her eyes. “I’m sorry!” She kicked the mare again and the weight disappeared. Gasping, she swung her body upwards and wrapped her spare hoof around the bar, hauling herself up until she hung by the crook of her leg.
One scream rang out amongst the others, drawn out until it was cut off with a strangled yelp.
Minnow couldn’t look down, not after that.
There was an almighty crash, and something in the framing snapped. The bow of the battlecruiser tore free at the midway point, beams snapping one after another. Minnow screamed, clinging tighter to the catwalk as cables and framework ripped by her like a freight train. Then, just like that, the ship was gone, though she wasn’t falling.
A quick glance up told her that, while the frame had given way, the catwalk remained fastened about a hundred feet above, dangling from what was left of the stern half amongst snakes of cables and twisted beams.
Minnow now hung in open air, the battle raging all around her. Below, the burning remains of half of her ship spiraled away in a ball of flame. Farther below it, and a few hundred yards to the diagonal right, was a much larger ship, having already fallen. From what was left of the frame’s shape, she could tell that it was an Equestrian vessel.
“Celestia,” she whispered, breath lodging in her throat and driving her to wheeze as she looked to her ruined wing, floating breezily in the air, “save me.” She hardly expected such prayers to be answered after what she had just done.
The catwalk above her groaned as she swayed to and fro in the wind. Minnow clung tighter, shivering as her hooves hung just at the edge of the abyss. She caught a glimpse of the enemy’s massive, tri-framed airship, drifting away from the midst of the fighting. “Cowards!” she howled, voice throaty, vocals charred.
The wind gusted her, threatening to pull her from the catwalk. The sudden blast of freezing air on her cooked flesh sent her into a state of shock, and her head began to spin. “Celestia,” she repeated as the catwalk lurched and dropped a foot and a half. Above her were ponies, pegasi, fleeing the stern end of what had used to be an airship. Others, not pegasi... fell. A stallion whipped by her, screeching like a siren, his voice fading to nothing as he drifted away. Minnow might as well have been one of them.
The catwalk above her twisted, and the steel stretched like a very rigid form of taffy.
The wind gusted again, much stronger than before.
The icy wind in her mane, in her eyes and ears and mouth, set off her body’s self-defense mechanism and locked down her lungs. She tried to take a breath, but it stuck just at the back of her throat. Her right wing, useless, flared to the wind, only threw her off balance. Little spots of black and green and red and blue poked her irises like needles, and purple blobs began to blot her peripherals.
Last thing to register in her mind was the way her hooves released the bar on their own accord, and the way her body tingled like an acupuncture session.
She fell.