Slipstream landed down on the side of the maroon airship's cabin.
The airship had come down directly in an intersection. From what appeared to have been the case, the lower envelope had caught the steeple of the Canterlot grand library and the vessel had been pulled into a nosedive. Too late to correct itself, the nose had struck the street and the entire airship had keeled over onto its side. Now, it lay where she had come across it, crippled, all but one engine having stalled as the propellers spun down.
Her coat burned and tingled like a million tiny needs had been stabbed into every gland and every nerve. This very vessel had just finished releasing a load of heavy ordnance on the city of Canterlot.
On innocent civilians.
There was no time for rational thought. Somepony was going to pay.
She plodded along the aluminum siding for a moment, hooves banging loudly as the lightweight metal oilcanned under her weight.
Other ponies were now converging on the crash, amongst them civilians and royal guards alike. Some sat back and just balked, unsure of exactly what to think. Others began to scale the wreckage, just as enraged as Slipstream was herself.
Beside her landed a red pegasus in the royal armor. He grasped a spear in his teeth, eyes angry and determined. She gave him a little nod and he nodded back before flaring his wings and jumping down into the cabin through a window.
As she watched, her belly churned in mounting fear. This vessel wasn’t Equestrian. The frame was built differently, it was painted the wrong color, the type of metal they used was different along with the engine in the nacelles. This was truly an attack, an attack from some sort of foreign force big enough and confident enough to be a threat.
But why attack civilians?
There was the very distinct crack of a musket from inside the quarters and Slipstream thought immediately of the guard. Unthinking, she flared her wings and hopped down into the dark of the gunnery cabin, flapping them slowly to make a steady descent.
The entire place was a wreck. Guns and canons lay scattered everywhere, and many of the support beams had either bent or snapped. The fact that the cabin was tilted ninety degrees from normal operating conditions threw off any sense of coordination Slipstream possesed. The only thing that kept her flying upright was her internal sense of gravity.
She heard the crack again. Suddenly, something sparked off a steel beam to her immediate right. A numb pain filled her rump and her wings faltered. Half-spiraling towards the ground, she landed on a pile of ammunition with an impact that knocked the air out of her. Gasping for breath, she rolled onto her back and lifted her head to look at the spot on the left of her haunches.
There was a lead ball embedded right in the center of her cutie mark, the flesh around it torn and bleeding. Examining the wound, it was clear she had been struck by a ricochet, for the ball hadn’t penetrated much further than the outer layer of flesh. Her jaw tremored, though only for a second. Her cutie mark would scar. The distinct shape of a dirigible balloon covered in riveted plates of lead that adorned her flank was now barely visible under the lazy flow of blood flowing from the wound.
She gasped and flopped back down, head hitting the brass casing of a three-inch round. Metal clashed somewhere close and ponies yelled and jeered. More muskets cracked and snapped somewhere very close, possibly within the cabin, though this section was dark and seemed deserted. A faint, orange glow reached her from further back, most likely the origin of a fire.
That’s when she saw it. The guard she had seen earlier: his body was slumped on the ground maybe ten feet away, a thin trail of blood trickling down the sloped steel of the cabin wall to pour out a window to the pavement below. Then she noticed the pony who stood over him.
As slowly as she could, slipstream rolled over onto her belly to get a better view, not daring to move for fear that the ammunition under her would shift and make noise. The pony who stood over the dead guard was different. His coat was snow white, though, it looked as thick as a dog’s. His wings were large and the feathers thick, almost like some glorified pegasus one would see in a painting. His amber mane was cut short, though it was as thick as a throw rug and tangled around his neck. His tail, on the other hoof, was long and thick and just a little bit bushy.
But his eyes were what really put her speechless. They were blue, bluer than the sky and as bright as the moon, a deep cobalt that that reflected light like a mirror.
Slipstream couldn’t take her eyes off him. He was some sort of superior being.
She gasped as his steely eyes found her. Expression hardening, he cocked his head and tossed aside the smoking musket.
“Ouch!” Slipstream flailed as she was jolted awake. Groaning, she wrapped both her forehooves over her head and held them there until the stinging of the impact went away. Once the stinging had calmed to a dull throb, she opened her eyes and let them drift.
She was in a cage.
“What in the name of Celestia?” She placed her forehooves on the steel bars and glared through them into the darkness. The steel floor of the cage below her vibrated and shook with the soft hum of what Slipstream knew no better than to be engines.
She was hit with two questions. Question number one was, why was she in a cage? And question number two was, why in the name of Celestia herself... was she in a bloody cage?
“Well this is rich.” The accounts of the morning were clear as day in her head, and already her brain was piecing together the puzzle. She had been knocked unconscious, that much was clear. The Longcoats hadn’t killed them because they were taking high-ranking officers. She was now in a cage in the dark aboard what she was sure was an airship. “Damnit...” She pressed the top of her head against the bars and sighed. Nothing good could come of this.
“Is she awake?” a voice asked.
“I think she is,” came another.
Slipstream’s ears perked and she looked around, unable to see much of anything in the dark. Faintly, she could make out the square shapes of other cages and the silhouettes of ponies inside them. “Hello?” she asked in a voice like gravel.
“Slipstream?”
Slipstream perked her ears. “Wiltings?”
“Yes.”
“Where are we?”
There was a pause from the darkness. “We’re aboard a Longcoat transport vessel. It picked us up maybe half an hour after they knocked you out.”
Slipstream nodded to herself. “Who else is here?”
“I’m here,” came the voice of Price to her left.
“Minnow isn’t doing so well,” Wiltings muttered. “She was awake for a while, but she’s real bad off. She’s got frostbite on her burns for Celestia’s sake. She’s lucky to be alive.” A shaky sigh pierced the air. “Sage... How could they do that?”
Slipstream rubbed her eyes to see if they would adjust any better. Her coat was matted and ruined, and she remembered the blood. She dry heaved, suddenly feeling very hungry when absolutely nothing came up. She rubbed her hoof at her face, chips of dried blood flaking out of her coat and raining down to the steel floor of the cage below.
“Are there others?” she asked after a moment.
“From the way they were speaking it sounded like they had others,” Price said. “Though they aren't on this vessel, or at least this part.”
They all shared a moment of silence and gave Slipstream time to think. She could only assume what remained of her fleet had made it out alright. Though with what remained of the Longcoat’s once the battle had broken...
Chances of recovery were slim.
She was jarred out of her thoughts when her entire cage jolted, the steel gate rattling against the lock. She had barely laxed when there was a second, sudden jolt. A swift gain in altitude knocked her to her belly, then, like an elevator coming to a fast stop, she flew upwards and crashed against the top of her cage. Her cage lifted as well before crashing down on its side. Slipstream fell against the steel bars and let out an eep of pain as the cage began to roll, not yet settled from the bounce. Her world spun for a moment until her cage crashed to a stop and settled at a diagonal angle.
Hooves flailing for purchase, she righted herself according to gravity and tried her best to sit at the new angle. “Blast,” she hissed, rubbing the back of her head which was still sore from the rifle butt, and now even moreso from the top of her confinement.
“Slipstream?” It was Wiltings’ voice, now much closer.
Slipstream leaned forward and pressed her head against the bars, tilted sideways to look through the five-inch gap with one eye. It appeared her cage had landed up against another cage, and inside she could make out the obvious shape of Wiltings and her distinct, earth pony form. The shape shifted and a mint-green head moved into Slipstreams tiny sight range. Brown eyes lost to the darkness, even her whites were gray.
“Yeah.”
Wiltings breathed a rough sigh. “Turbulence.”
The airship gave a series of rough shakes and Slipstream’s cage threatened to tip again.
She shivered and rolled up to her haunches, clinging her meager accessory of a jacket to her with crossed forehooves. “You think they’d at least tie down the cages.” Shaky breathing was all she could manage, the fog of her breath misting from her muzzle and dissipating into the dark. “Sweet Celestia, it’s cold.”
“We’re in the storage bay—why heat cargo?” She breathed fog onto her raised forehooves and pressed them to her cheeks. “It’s night time now, so the air’ll be colder.”
“I’ll kill every one of those bleeders.” Price’s voice echoed through the storage bay, accompanied by the clash of hooves on steel. “Go and shoot us down in the middle of bloody nowhere, if that’s not already enough. But no, they’ve got to hit us on the ground as well and execute our very own right in front of us!”
Slipstream took a deep breath. “Price, they—”
“They’ve no honor!” he bellowed, making himself well-heard over the rumble of the engines through the frame.
Slipstream winced, worried about the noise. “Price...” They were in enemy hooves after all.
“I’ll kill every one!” Again came the sound of his cage rattling. “Why don’t one of you bastards let me out of this cage so I can tear your bleeding throats out!” The stallion was now howling, his voice threatening to give. Though Slipstream couldn’t see Price, by his tone she knew he was positively raving. He was furious, this much was obvious, but something about his rage seemed fake, overdone possibly.
There was a slamming of something solid against aluminum near the front wall. “Shut up!” a stallion yelled to them in a voice like he’d gargled nails and taken a heavy whiff of helium—it would have been funny had he not sounded so angry.
“Why don’t you bring your furry flank in here and make me!?” Price fired back.
Wiltings hissed through her teeth. “Price, you shouldn’t—”
The aluminum door at the front of the cargo bay exploded open and slammed against the wall. A tan stallion stomped in, his barding nothing short of a brown jacket with two ammo belts—as unorthodox as they were—slung over each shoulder. A carbide lamp was strapped to his neck on the right side, the flame encased completely in a glass dome that shaped the flame into a yellow cone.
“I said shut up!” he repeated in the same, scratchy voice like he had a bad head cold.
The glow of his lamp gave Slipstream an opportunity to observe her surroundings. Her cage was near the starboard wall center of the cargo bay, leaning heavily on Wiltings’ cage. Price was located portside of the enclosure, which proved to be only ten or so feet wide, though appeared even smaller due to the boxes and empty cages stacked all around.
Her real attention was on Minnow. The mare was now sitting up on her haunches—which was a good sign—with her forehooves planted firmly on the cage floor. Though she was sitting, she had slumped against the bars and her head was hung. Her once beautiful golden-silver mane, charred and stringy, hung around her face like some ammerature barber’s hackjob attempt at a bob. Her coat was patchy, like an old jacket left to hang in the elements for a year then beat dry and rubbed all over with vaseline... She looked a real mess.
“Make me!” Price snapped, snarling like a pit dog through the bars of his cage.
Slipstream was almost glad Price was in a cage.
The Longcoat stomped towards him and pulled the rifle from its holster on his side. “I said!” With both forehooves, he threw the butt of the rifle through the bars and the barely-padded end struck Price clean across the brow, forcing him into what appeared to be submission. “Shut!” Price went into defensive mode, covering his head as the Longcoat stabbed with the rifle again. He instead drive the butt of the weapon into the green stallion’s ribs. “Up!” He made to deliver another blow to Price’s head.
It had been a trick, Slipstream quickly realized, as Price sprung up with a smug sneer on his face. The rifle butt missed and hit the cage floor below the green stallion. Swift as lightning, Price grasped the rifle with both forehooves and jerked it towards him into the cage. The Longcoat reacted in shock and wrapped both hooves around the grip half a foot forward from the breach to keep Price from seizing the weapon.
He realized just a second too late that the barrel was aimed at his jaw.
Price slammed the firing mechanism with his hoof and the Longcoat’s head snapped backwards as the bullet exited out the back of his neck. The shot longcoat released the rifle and stumbled backwards. He staggered in a confused circle, blood dribbling from his shattered jaw and pattering to the floor as his breath gargled and hissed in his throat. His eyes fixed on Price, angry and utterly flabbergasted before they rolled to the top of his skull. He dropped to the floor like a sack of flour, his carbide lamp coming to settle on Price where he sat with the smoking rifle, looking more surprised than anything.
“Price!” Wiltings hissed. “They’ll kill us!”
He worked the bolt and ejected the smoking shell, which spun away through the air and tinkled to the ground somewhere in the dark. “Not if I can help it.”
Slipstream could hardly believe her eyes as she watched the veteran combatant line the rifle up with the padlock on his cage and brace his hoof on the firing lever. With a loud crack and a spark, the center of the lock blew out and the latch clicked open.
There were shouts and the pounding of hooves on the floor above.
Slipstream tapped her hoof impatiently, jittering with nervousness. “Price, you’d better make this fast!”
The pegasus struggled to remove the shattered lock from his cage, and after two fumbled attempts, got it to fall away. Butting out the cage door, he hefted the rifle and half flew to Slipstream. “We’re getting out of here.” He lined the rifle up with the lock on her own cage and fired.
Slipstream awaited eagerly for him to pull her lock away, but when the stallion cursed under his breath and slammed his hooves against the steel casing, she realized he must have missed, probably miss-aimed in the darkness.
“No!” Slipstream commanded as he struggled to load another cartridge under the pressure. “Go!” The shouts were growing louder.
“But, Command—”
“Go, now!” She gave him a shove through the bars. “You can come back for us!” She doubted her own words the second they left her mouth, but anything to keep him from staying and getting killed in the process would do.
He fixed his eyes on her, and for a moment it looked as if he would protest, but he gave a brief nod and backed away.
Slipstream wrapped her hooves tightly around the bars of her cage and gritted her teeth as Price put the rifle in his mouth and made a beeline for the one door leading out of the cargo bay. “Go, go, go!” she hissed through clenched teeth, shaking the bars.
He was ten feet from the door when two ponies appeared in his path, a mare and a stallion, rifles already trained and ready to fire.
Though the rifle was in his teeth, he made no time at all in getting it back in his forehooves, rearing up to aim and flaring his wings for balance. With the benefit of darkness on his side, they hardly saw the movement.
Price fired and Slipstream heard the distinct thwack of lead on flesh as the stallion on the right of the door keeled over. The shot Longcoat fell against the mare, who turned towards him with a face reading confusion and shock—that was when Price drove the bayonet into her shoulder at full pelt.
The steel blade sank to the bone and snapped off at the hilt with a clang barely muffled by the mare’s scream as she was pitched sideways. Price swung the rifle around and clobbered the mare across the side of the head with the stalk. His shoulder threw her aside as he released the rifle and ploughed through the doorway, leaving it to clatter to the ground beside the unconscious mare.
Slipstream held her breath as she lost sight of the combatant pegasus. There were more yells, thundering hooves, and six, maybe seven gunshots. All she could do was clench her hooves and listen. There was a loud yell from Price, whether in pain or anger she was unsure, but it set her even further on edge.
It all stopped. There were four more rifle bursts, then still, followed shortly by the tromping of hooves and angry yells.
From the next room, two voices conversed loudly and Slipstream looked just in time to see two stallions race into the cargo bay, still yelling things to one another too fast for her to make out.
Slipstream tried her best to look insignificant as the two paused to scan the inhabitants of the three cages with accusing eyes. The two muttered something, and one headed over to the stallion with his jaw shot off and began to look him over. The other, a smaller stallion with a green coat, made straight for Slipstream. He stopped just in front of her and grinned cruelly.
“Your friend should have known not to try to escape.”
She swallowed and her eyes widened. Wiltings watched silently, shaking.
“He should have learned to obey.” He turned without another word and went back to the other stallion. Together, they drug their companion across the floor, blood trailing behind him like water from a mop.
The door slammed shut behind them and the room was plunged once again into black.
“S-slips...” Wiltings said after what very well could have been hours, the time mulled by shock.
“Yeah?” she replied, voice dry.
“Do... do you think they got him?”
Slipstream swallowed a lump in her throat and choked back a soft whimper. “I... I don’t know.”
“Slipstream, even if he got off the ship, we’re in the middle of the—”
“Shut up!” she snapped. “Okay!? Just shut up!” She sighed. “I don’t want to hear it...”
Wiltings remained silent for a long while after that. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I’m just worried... Are you alright, Minnow?”
Slipstream opened her mouth to reply, only to realize she wasn’t being spoken to. She shut her mouth and listened eagerly, hoping to hear the battlecruiser captain’s voice.
“Minnow?” Wiltings repeating.
Slipstream squinted. She could see the shape of the mare, still sitting against the side of her cage. She was sure she could see Minnow shaking her head.
“Minnow, you hear me?”
Minnow nodded her head and tapped her hoof against the floor of her cage.
Slipstream turned to Wiltings. “I don’t think she can talk...” She remembered a thought that she had meant to bring up earlier; now it would serve as a good diversion from the shock of what had just happened. “So, I think we both know why they want us.”
“Secrets,” Wiltings said darkly. “Interrogation.”
Slipstream slumped against the back of her cage. Her eyes drooped and her head bobbed slightly. She was tired, more tired than should have been normal. “We tell them nothing, understood?”
Wiltings breathed a long sigh. “What if... what if these ponies allow torture?”
Slipstream shook her head. “They can’t... there hasn’t been torture since before the princesses themselves.” She nodded off, then jumped back awake and shook her head.
“I sure hope so...” She began to fiddle absently with her forehooves. “But if they’re taking us where I think they’re taking us—to a city, some sort of base—then, we’re officially an issue of their security if we’re alive.” She took a long and shaky breath. “Wherever they’re taking us... we won’t be leaving.”
His cobalt eyes studied her, looking her up and down. Teeth clenched, Slipstream pulled herself to her hooves despite the musket ball in her flank. Pushing past the fear bubbling in her belly, she glared at the stallion, acting a lot braver than she felt. She bet he could snap her like a toothpick if he wanted to.
“You killed him,” she growled.
He stopped a few feet in front of her. Fires were starting to burn around the destroyed cabin, and his eyes lit up with the orange flicker of the firelight. His wings folded out halfway and his eyes darted briefly to the port windows above that allowed light to pour into the cabin.
She eyed the musket he had discarded near the body of the guard. “You tried to kill me, and missed.” Her eyes flashed at him and she took a pained step forward.
There was a small explosion somewhere close and the metal below her hooves shook. A few cannon cartridges dislodged from somewhere and went clattering down the gradual incline.
He looked at her. “This ship is hydrogen—it may explode.”
“You just bombed a civilian city!” she snapped. growling, she lunged at him.
He batted her away with one forehoof and she thumped to the floor. “I did not give the order.” His accent was deep, strange.
He was going to kill her; she already knew it. He was only humoring her with her own life. She wasn’t going to show him weakness. “But you followed it!” She picked herself up again and flared her wings, hurling her body at him again, and again he threw her back to the floor.
“Do not make me kill you,” he said wearily.
She lifted herself, slower this time, struggling to pull her haunches up. “What, you can drop bombs civilians and families and foals, but you can’t kill one mare face-to-face?” She spat at him. “Coward.” A rolling wave of nausea struck her and she nearly keeled over on the spot.
He actually smiled the tiniest bit, and she oh so wished she could hit him repeatedly for it. “You are strong-willed.” He made a single step towards her. “You will be strong, and dangerous. I should kill you now, but I can not bring myself to.”
“I do not want your pity!” she hollered, shoving her muzzle in his and fighting the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm her.
“It is not pity!” he spat back. “It is respect.” His wings flared out fully. “We are enemies, and if we ever meet again it will spell the end of one of us. I hope to not regret this.” With that, he took flight. springing off with his forehooves and taking to the air.
Immediate relief washed through her, and although her heart still pounded in her head, relief made itself apparent. Her body shook as she watched him disappear into the dark and smoke. Her life hadn’t flashed before her eyes, but it might as well have.
Other ponies would be across her soon. The sounds were getting louder, and through the smoke and dark she could see movement.
“Hydrogen!” somepony yelled. “Gas is leaking. Get out!” There was a whole clamour of shouts and yells before another authoritative voice took over.
“Leave the scum! They’ll die on their own. We need to go, now!”
As Slipstream flared her wings and made flight for the windows at the top of the cabin, wincing at the pain in her rump, she would have never figured what this would tie her into.