Rainbow's eyes twitched, spotting the crimson glint of the Noble Jury's skystone from a distance. Her heart fell as she saw the vessel plunging, diving to meet the collapse of the smoldering goblin battleship. In a blur, she brought her sound stone to her lips and sputtered: “Jury, this is Rainbow Dash! You there?”
Silence, save the biting chill of the wind in Rainbow's ears.
She gnashed her teeth, flapping her wings harder. “Belle! Come on, Ding-Dong, answer me!” Her breaths came in frantic little spurts. “Pilate? Props?” She gulped. “Zaid? Gimme something, guys!”
The leyline airwaves crackled, but all Rainbow got was static.
“Darn it...” She seethed, nostrils flaring as she accelerated to her feathers' breaking point. Skyscrapers and towers whizzed by underneath her. “What are you guys doing? Don't be idiots at the last second! Don't be—”
“Crkkk! Rainbow?”
With a gasp, Rainbow hollered into the soundstone. “Jury! This is Rainbow! What are—?”
“Sorry, Rainbow. It's Booster. On board the Tarkington.”
“Booster?!” Rainbow wheezed. “What the heck is up with the Jury?! Why are they flying towards the battleship?!”
“Because the Tarkington's too far away, and there's only one possible chance at steering that mess away from the citizens below.”
Rainbow blinked, the edges of her eyes tearing.
“They... they knew the risk, Rainbow. We all did.”
Rainbow frowned, snarling into the whipping winds. “Like Hell. More like we knew how to be awesome.” She gestured towards the Lounge Spheres trailing after her and burst forward with a clap of rippling thunder.
The entire cockpit rattled as Zaid soared directly towards the crooked hull of the battleship's port side. The goblin ship was thirty seconds away from cruising into the apartments below. Bursts of leaking skystone billowed out from its exposed bulkheads.
“We're almost there,” Zaid sputtered.
“Easy... easy...” Bellesmith droned.
“Mr. Zaid, you must slow down,” Pilate insisted. “We're attempting to steer the ship away, not impale it.”
“Hey, I gave up suicide runs when I ditched the Herald,” Zaid said. He then gulped. “Or so I thought...”
“Zaid—” Belle grunted.
“Right.” Zaid sputtered into the intercom. “Ease us down, Blondie! All forward steam thingamabobbers, if you can handle it!”
“Okie dokie lokie! Firing the forward thingamabobbers!”
The lavender tome pulsed and fluctuated like a strobe light.
Bursts of steam hissed and whistled out of multiple, ruptured consoles.
Her coat slick with sweat, Props nevertheless fought the blistering heat, reaching deep into a mess of pipework to twirl a bunch of valves and dials. Her goggles fogged up instantly, so—with a grunt—she tossed the article away completely in order to better see what she was doing.
A wall of metal instruments exploded behind her, forcing the mare to grunt with surprise.
“Scrkkk! You okay down there, Blondie?!”
“Yup yup yup!” She nevertheless grimaced, casting a forlorn look through the shattered doorway ahead of her. Where the Navigation room had once been, she instead saw apartment rooftops and scurrying citizens. Then, at last, there was a plume of smoke, followed by a pulsating skystone aura and the looming, battered bulkheads of the goblin battleship.
“We could really use the air brakes right around now!”
“You got it, Zaidy Waidy!” Props stretched, stretched, and finally reached a lever past a bent array of pipes. She pulled the thing, issuing a loud clatter through the groaning steamworks. The entire ship lurched backwards. “That should do it! Tugboat party time!”
“Goddess I love that girl,” Zaid hissed out the side of his muzzle, gripping the controls of the ship with two tight hooves. “This is it.” His eyes narrowed. “Come on.”
Belle and Pilate embraced each other as the ship cruised ever so slowly forward, fighting huge tufts of steam jetting out its bow.
The burning hull of the Cartel's descending battleship loomed closer... closer...
Down below, Val Roans were frantically evacuating the buildings where they had previously huddled to avoid the air battle overhead. Bucks, does, and fawns gaped at the burning sky, gasping in fright as they galloped north in desperate streams. It was far too late for a proper escape. Chunks of shrapnel fell in hot rain around them as the air filled with a pungent fume of skystone exhaust.
The battleship loomed closer, scraping the rooftop of the tallest apartment structure. Lengths of bronze metal buckled, threatening to peel off and collapse on the deer within seconds. Citizens yelped, cowering in the darkening shadow.
Just then, the Noble Jury swooped in with a pulse of bright skystone, illuminating the hazy urbanscape. Its bow came into contact with the battleship, producing a thunderous thud that rippled across every elk's ears. The Val Roans looked up, blinking in surprise. With rapid speed, the battleship was lifted up in time to clear the apartment complex, although several more bronze towers loomed to the immediate south.
“Steady... steady,” Belle insisted.
“Blondie!” Zaid spoke above the rattling bulkheads. “Fire up the skstyone! Now!”
“Firing!”
Pilate tilted his head about as the vessel filled with a deep hum. The ship shook, its consoles buckling and sparking under the pressure. A deep crimson light permeated every niche as the ponies felt their manes rising on end with static electricity.
At last, the windshield before the cockpit cracked down the center, spiderwebbing in a dozen fractured directions. Zaid had to crane his neck to see the result of his piloting maneuvers. Through the glass fissures, he saw the nose of the Noble Jury breaking, collapsing, and yet the ship pressed on, shoving defiantly against the hull of the Cartel's burning metal behemoth.
“Aaaaaaaand sexy times!”
Belle, Pilate, and Zaid gasped as the Noble Jury surged forward.
FWOOOSH! The skystone's magical leylines aligned, covering both the Jury and the goblin dreadnought in a bright red aura. Swiftly, both vessels cruised above and beyond the looming towers that lined the southern edge of the Val Roan capital.
Citizens, who just seconds before were embracing their grim fate, now stood tall on their hooves, sobbing and giggling with relief. A loud cheer filled the air as the smoke and flames dissipated in the wake of the two ships' exit. Families hugged each other and parents nuzzled their fawns as they gazed with thankful expressions at the departing sight.
“Bloody Hell...” Prowse gasped, looking out the far edge of his cockpit as he struggled to steer the Tarkington around in a wide turn. “They did it! Those crazy sodders actually did it!”
“Woohoo!” Booster Spice pumped his forelimb, grinning wide. “Way to go, Jurists! Yeah!”
“H-hey!” Basso stepped up, smiling. “Not a bad way to end the day, huh?”
“Uhm...” Zetta's teeth chattered as she grimaced at a flashing array of lights on her console. The stallions turned to glance at her. “I'm... I'm detecting a violent eruption of mana.” She turned to look forlornly at the other three. “The Cartel's engine is losing cohesion.”
“Wait.” Basso blinked. “Does that mean it's gonna—?”
Zetta bit her lip, nodding furiously.
With an iron frown, Prowse reached for his communicator—but Booster had already grabbed it in a bandaged hoof.
“Guys! Get out of there!”
“The goblins' skystone is about to blow! Move! Fly!”
Zaid yanked at the controls. “Don't have to tell me twice—!”
Pilate gasped, clutching Belle as the whole ship rocked. “Mr. Zaid—!”
“Hold on to your plots!” Zaid spat.
Belle shrieked as the ship lurched upwards. The engines were still fully accelerating, forcing the vessel to scraaaaaaaaape along the battered hull of the goblins' battleship. Seconds later, they smashed through a dormant propeller engine, sending chunks of metal scattering across the bow. The Noble Jury plowed on through, charging through a smoky sky as it finally cleared the warship. However, just as it was soaring over the descending vessel—
KAPOWWW! The Cartel's engines exploded, surging a blast wave in every direction, ripe with shrapnel and destructive skystone discharge.
“Gaaaaugh!” Zaid clenched his eyes shut. Two and a half seconds later, he reopened them, surprised to see that the vessel was still in one piece. What's more, the arid landscape was rolling swiftly underneath the Jury at a steadily increasing pace. “What... what in the blue Hell?”
“How are we still in one p-piece?!” Belle exclaimed.
“Everypony, I'm hearing something,” Pilate stammered, ears twitching. “The engine's making a sound it's never made before.”
“Blondie?!”
“Scrkkkt! Did we clear it?”
“We sure did!”
“Good! Cuz we've got something of a nasty booboo down here!”
“Oh yeah?” Zaid gulped, struggling to keep the wayward flight steady. “Just how nasty?”
“The book's shorted out! But its last pulse of energy is still lodged in the skystone!”
“What does that mean, Props?” Belle hollered. “Do we have enough energy to land?”
“No, you don't understand! It's too much energy! The shard carrying us is gonna overload! Any second, and it'll—”
FLASSSSSH! With a blinding pulse of scarlet light, the skystone crystal above the metal gondola caught aflame. Plasma leaked from every jagged crevice as the Noble Jury accelerated at blinding speed, cruising due south at a screaming velocity.
Rainbow saw the bright flash from a distance. She had been just seconds away from matching the Jury's speed, but now it warped completely out of reach. Her jaw dropped as she watched the crumbling vessel's wild trajectory.
The Noble Jury rocketed south. Its wild path was gradually descending, and Rainbow guessed it would be barely a minute or two before it crashed violently into rising mountains to the south.
Something pulsed deep within Rainbow's eyes, a red-on-yellow glint of righteous anger. Her pendant flashed, and she carried herself southward with a valiant shout. The Lounge Spheres attempted to catch up, but something suddenly and violently exploded in front of them, knocking the naga's armada collectively back.
POWWWW!
Haman spun around as his fellow crew members flinched all across their battleship. High above, a prismatic halo of light erupted in every direction, carrying with it an enormous salvo of deaffening noise that shook the very mountains of Val Roa.
“Was...” One imp gulped. “...was that our sister ship?”
Haman's greasy eyes narrowed. A bullet of spectral energy soared outward from the explosion's epicentered, carried southward on furious blue wings.
“No,” he said. “But whatever it was, we'd best get out of here.” His brow furrowed. “Now.”