“Did you all see that just now?!” Eagle Eye's voice called from mid-deck.
Inside the cockpit of the Noble Jury, several ponies leaned forward.
The centermost battlecruiser of the Ledomaritan line was drifting sideways. Several escort ships were rushing in, densely swarming around the vessel in question.
“Seems like they have a problem,” Imre said.
“It's a huge battle!” Imre said. “On board their very own ship!”
“Only Rainbow Dash could cause a commotion of that sorts,” Pilate said with a nervous twitch.
“Nancy Jane is no longer safe here,” Floydien grumbled. “Away from the glimmer we must fly, swiftly!”
“I'm inclined to agree with the kindly elk,” Clark said. “Now's our chance.”
“But what about Rainbow Dash?!” Imre exclaimed. “She hasn't even given us a signal!”
“Look!” Eagle Eye shouted.
Everypony glanced in time to see a prismatic streaking lifting off the battlecruiser, weaving to the side, and literally flying through one of the escorts. The bodies of shrieking soldiers fell to the grasslands below as the multicolored pegasus darted around, avoiding cannonfire.
“Reckon that's a good enough signal for you?” Tweak remarked.
“Quite.” Clark gulped and turned towards Pilate. “If you would do the honors...”
Pilate spoke into his sound stone. “Everypony! Rainbow Dash has engaged the enemy! This is our one and only chance! Break out of formation and head towards safety! Put as much distance between yourself and Blue Nova as possible!”
“Fly, boomers! Fly!” Floydien shouted above the sound of cannonfire.
“Did they get the signal?!” Imre asked.
“They'd better,” Tweak grumbled. “Or those idiots have gravel in their ears.”
“I see them!” Eagle Eye called out. “They're moving out! All of the ponies!”
Imre and Tweak glanced over the deck in time to see several airships flying north, south, and west, breaking away completely from the thick cluster of vessels. As shells went off and exploded with shrapnel all around them, no errant cannonball flew purposefully towards any one of the many ships.
“The Ledomaritans aren't firing at them!” Eagle Eye shouted. “They're gonna be safe!”
“Heh...” Tweak folded his shiny forelimbs. “For now.”
“Time that we make like time and crumble!” Floydien's horns flickered as he steered the heavy skystone ship aside. “Yes yes yes...”
“But wait wait!” Imre waved a hoof, suddenly breathless. “What about Roarke?! Where is she?!”
“Never mind that metal murderer!” Eagle Eye squeaked. “Where's Crimson?!” He shrieked as a gray streak roared violently past the port side of the Noble Jury. Then, just as swiftly, three more ships burned by, shaking the air with furious turbulence.
“What in the sapphire-huffing heck was that?!” Tweak growled.
“Sounded like Searonese manaships,” Pilate remarked.
“That's because that's what they are!” Imre said, frowning. “Terra and her friggin' cronies are here! Damn it!” She stomped her hooves. “I thought we were nearly out of this!”
“I don't suppose there's any way we can help her...” Clark muttered.
“Not unless you got a spare Rainbow Dash in your pocket!” Eagle Eye exclaimed. “We're screwed as soon as one of those metal mares see us! They could blow us out of the sky in a blink!”
“Ungh, so many boomers and not enough muscle,” Floydien yanked Pilate towards him so he could growl into the gasping zebra's sound stone. “Blonde thing! How goes it in the womb of my beloved?!”
”Why, hey there! Glad you remembered us, handsome!”
”Propsy here thinks she's got the manaconduits cleared for energy transference.
”I don't think, silly Ebony! I know! Ready when you are, Captain! Just shove those antlers into Nancy cuz she's ready to pur!”
“Crawling ant martyrs,” Floydien uttered out the side of his muzzle. “Does their spit have to be so armpitty?”
“Y-you're asking the wrong stallion—Gah!” Pilate yelped as Floydien dropped him.
“Horses for hiccups!” The elk frowned as he gripped the dashboard and brought the ship into a steady climb. “If your boomer of the metal bits is so damnably worth the shimmering spits then let us give her room to bring forth the flame flame!” That said, the elk forced the Noble Jury into higher altitude, throwing most of the ponies off their hooves with gasping cries.
Meanwhile, Roarke's manaship streaked below, weaving its way once more through the spreading ocean of empty hovercraft. All the while, a nonstop barrage of mana blasts streaked after her.
“Nnnngh!” Sweating through the edges of her helmet, she jerked the controls to the side, whirling her ship into a spiral just as a pair of Searonese weapon discharges hit the hull. The vessel's cyclonic movement shook most the heat off, but the engines suffered for it, and the three pursuing aircraft pulled in closer.
Roarke flashed a look to her right. She slapped a button, and a rear facing mirror popped out the edge of her cockpit's windshield. Briefly, she saw all three metal mare ships in hideous clarity.
“Hmmph...” Roarke's voice hissed through the breathing slits with a fountain of red mist. “You picked a terribly lame place to draw your last breath.”
She was answered with a manablast to her starboard side. The mirror flew off, and she grunted as sparks spilled loosely from the console. Hooking her right forelimb around a release lever, she pulled the ship into a left turn and skimmed over the hulls of three, four, five separate zeppelins. Once passing a sixth one, she yanked to the right, all the while pulling the lever.
The ship shook as the vessel's elastic cables shot out of the starboard side. They hooked into the hull of the nearest dirigible, anchoring Roarke into place. She sling-shotted swiftly around the vessel like a tetherball. As it came around, the three Searonese ships had already passed by.
“Hnngh!” Roarke grunted as she pulled against at the lever. The cables detached and retracted. Her ship angled out, and now she was immediately behind Terra's squadron. Her body leaned forward, and with an icy breath she triggered her forward facing cannons. “If you worship the Goddess so much, you can go service her personally...”
It took about six blasts, but at last she made the engines to the rightmost craft explode. The ship veered, wobbled, and ultimately fell into a grim descent.
From Terra's leading craft, the mares inside could see the wingponies' horrid fate.
“Our sisters!”
“Damn that Roarke!”
“She's killing her own flesh and muscle!”
“Silence!” Terra roared, motioning with her hoof for the pilots to bring the vessel around. “They are not defeated yet! We can still rescue them before they succumb to weakness!”
“Look!” A mare shouted from her station. “They are recovering!”
The damaged ship started pulling up again, its engines puttering back to life.
Terra grinned from ear to ear. “Searo be praised! There's still spirit in my cause yet—!”
Out of nowhere, Roarke's manaship flew over the ailing vessel, decelerated, and flew straight down. The rogue mare's aircraft slammed into the top of the Searonese craft, shaking the last bit of life out of its engines. The thing plummeted like a bag of dynamite, exploding into solid earth down below.
As Terra gasped, everypony inside flinched, for Roarke's vessel next pulled up, spun to the right, and cut clear across Terra's bow. The two ships nearly collided, causing time to slow down before Terra's twitching eyes.
During those few oozing seconds, Roarke's ship spun about so that the gaping door in its starboard side faced the cockpit, and Terra in turn. In perfect timing, Roarke had pivoted her seat to face Terra. Her helmet had opened, and she brought a hoof down to her crotch before blowing a kiss with the same forelimb. Terra made out the motion of Roarke's helmet closing before she could see nothing but engine exhaust.
Time resumed with a roar of thrusters, and Terra's entire ship shook from Roarke's vessel thundering back into the vehicular carnage beyond.
“Unngh!” Terra flew forward in her seat, jostled. Slowly, she tilted her frowning gaze up. The edges of her open helmet buckled from her heaving muscles as she spat, “Gut that bitch like an albatross!”
“Aye, bloodiest spear!”
“Blood for Searo—”
“Just bucking do it!” Terra's voice cracked as she slammed a hoof across the nearest console. A random zeppelin blew up from manablasters in front of them as they spun about to give chase.
And a chase, Roarke gave them. She bobbed and weaved her way through a swarm of airships, dodging cannonblasts with a hair's grace. As the seconds burned by, she found herself running out of cover, for the unmanned ships were spreading further and further apart. At last, as she attempted to accelerate down a solid stretch of air, one of the two metal mare ships hit her broadly across the port side.
“Aaaugh!” She flew against the cockpit, wincing. The alarm of her ship was blaring, and the entire hunk of metal was falling skyward with a hiss of pierced motors. She wrapped her hooves around the controls and pulled them back, stressing the instruments to the breaking point. She dipped low, grazed twenty serpentine feet of topsoil, and finally pulled up with a spray of earth.
Terra's and her partner's ships drew closer, firing denser and denser streams of mana. At this point, every other shot was grazing Roarke's hull, knocking away more and more plates of silver armor. The consoles around the mare flickered as one station after another lost power.
“For blood's sake, I was hoping this would suck just a little bit less...” She panted and panted. At one point, she froze in place. Time paused again, this time for her. She gazed out the edge of her cockpit window, spotting the battlecruisers and the Ledomaritan escorts dealing with a prismatic streak buzzing between them.
She breathed and breathed. A cold shudder ran through her body, a lasting shake.
Then, with steely poise, she grabbed the controls once more and yanked upwards harshly. Time resumed, dragging gravity along with it. Roarke's whole body pressed to her seat as she twirled her entire ship into a massive vertical loop.
The vessels belonging to Terra and wingponies split apart, swung opposite arcs, and came back together in time to meet Roarke as her ship leveled out. The three ships were now screaming towards each other at incalculable speeds, zooming along a clear strip of air between drifting zeppelins.
Roarke pushed the throttles forward all the way. Her ship rattled straight through the bulkheads as the engines spat out the last of their fuel. Then, with a single jerk, she hooked both forelimbs around opposite release levers and shot every single elastic cord out at once. Metal threads exploded from Roarke's ship like an onyx spiderweb. At least half of them embedded into the hulls of dirigibles all around. Roarke's vessel was flying so furiously fast that it actually dragged the tiny aircraft along. Soon, the manaship was hurling towards the two Searonese bogies, carrying a dense cluster of weighted metal and wood along with it.
On board Terra's ship, the would-be Top Spear drew back in her seat, sweating. “What in the Hell does she think she's doing?”
“Terra, she's coming in fast!”
“We can't shoot all of that junk down as well!”
“That crazy maniac—” Terra turned and shouted to her subordinates. “Evasive maneuvers!”
Inside her cockpit, Roarke let out the mother of all screams. “Rrrrrghh-Haaaaugh!” She spun the ship completely around. Panels flew off and chunks of the hull were ripped off of their frames. The weight of the multiple, tethered vessels was too much, and they all flew off in a dense spray, like a swarm of angry missiles, reducing what was left of Roarke's ship to a wireframe mess of exploding consoles and burning metal.
The two rogue ships tried veering off, but the cluster of projectiles was just too dense. Terra's ship was pelted all over before pinballing off two wooden zeppelins, tearing them to shreds as it flew—burning and smoldering—in a random, skyward direction. The other ship smashed through a tossed vessel, rendering itself to a burning husk. The mangled bodies of armored mares fell like spilled entrails as the ship began a nightmarish plunge into the Ledomaritan countryside.
As for Roarke's ship...
Imre gasped. Her moist eyes reflected something that resembled a burning comet, spiraling into the dust of the crashing airships far below. She leaned back from where she sat on the edge of the Noble Jury's deck, holding a pair of hooves over her mouth.
Tweak clenched his jaw, his eyes darting left and right as he contemplated the violent scene.
Biting his lip, Eagle Eye trotted over to Imre's side. He fidgeted at the last second, but ultimately rested a hoof on her shoulder—only to have it brushed off.
In a cold trot, Imre shuffled towards the ship's stern. She lingered there, alone, hugging herself amidst the high winds of the airship's ascent.
Eagle Eye turned and gazed helplessly towards the open cockpit.
Clark hung his head while Floydien continued flying the ship. Pilate's metal brow stretched over a woesome expression. He tilted his head up with a flicker of O.A.S.I.S.
The sounds of battle resumed, and Eagle aimed his twitching eyes towards the three battlecruisers. “Wh-what about Rainbow Dash?”