“Attention, all personnel. This is Captain Spitfire requesting all Wonderbolts to assemble on the runway and await further orders.”
Soarin stood up, setting his newspaper down on the coffee table. “Dashie, Fire Streak, that's us,” he called.
“Yeah, we heard,” answered Rainbow Dash as she followed her husband and fellow Wonderbolt out of the lounge, with Fire Streak and the other Wonderbolts close behind. “Wonder what Spitfire wants this time?”
“Dunno,” murmured Fire Streak anxiously, “but judging by the tone of her voice, it must be pretty urgent.”
“Well, we'll soon know,” mused Soarin.
Swiftly, the Wonderbolts lined up on one side of the airstrip with Soarin, Fire Streak and Rainbow Dash in front and centre. As Spitfire came out onto the runway, Soarin barked out a word of command, and the other Wonderbolts all stood to attention.
“All present and correct, Captain,” he announced, saluting smartly.
“Thank you, Soarin.” Spitfire returned the salute and addressed the patiently waiting Wonderbolts; “Now, as you all know, yesterday saw the downing of Royal Equestrian Airways Flight 759 for Abu Dhonki. The Royal Transport Safety Executive has already begun to investigate into this, the deadliest plane crash in history, but I have also been informed by Princess Twilight Sparkle that the team requires assistance in recovering the remains of the aircraft; and that is why we, the Wonderbolts, have been instructed to bring back any items of wreckage recovered by the salvage teams. This mission is of the highest importance – the safety of airline passengers the world over depend on the outcome of the salvage operation, and that's why I'm giving it top priority. As soon as we've kitted ourselves up, we're to fly out to Bermuleda and rendezvous with the Equestrian Royal Navy anti-submarine destroyer HMS Farrier. From there, we will patrol the surrounding area for any signs of aircraft debris and fly the fragments back to Starswirl Airport as soon as they have been retrieved. Any questions?”
Misty raised her hoof. “Do we know what aircraft was involved in the crash?”
“Yes; according to the letter I received, the plane was a de Hoofilland Constellation. Registration: Equine Bridle Apple Zebra Trigger.”
“How many vessels will we have at our disposal?” chimed in Blaze.
“Farrier will be our operational base, and I am also informed that seven salvage vessels will be joining the search,” Spitfire clarified. “Are there any other questions?”
There was a brief pause before Rainbow Dash ultimately spoke up; “I don't think so, Captain. Fire Streak? Soarin?”
“Nope – you've given it to us straight, Spitfire,” added Fire Streak, and Soarin nodded in agreement.
“Good,” said Spitfire. “Now I needn't remind you that the lives of tens of thousands of airline passengers, and of one of our nation's greatest engineering wonders, depends upon the outcome of this investigation. Alright, Wonderbolts – I'm calling an immediate scramble for Bermuleda!”
“Yes, ma'am!” replied the Wonderbolts in unison, and galloped back into the barracks to prepare for their long flight east.
Within only a few minutes of their briefing, all were lined up behind the runway threshold clad in flying suits and equipped with radio headsets. Their captain having ascertained that they had a clear airspace, the twenty-two Pegasi stampeded down the airstrip and took off towards the Titanic Ocean, and the wrecked remains of the Constellation.
The Wonderbolts made good time, and reached the crash site just a few hours into the afternoon. HMS Farrier and the salvage vessels had already arrived and were sweeping the area for any sign of the Constellation wreckage, using the larger vessel's powerful sonar to scan the ocean bed. Spitfire brought the team into land on the deck of the warship, where its commander stood waiting for them.
“Ah, Captain Spitfire,” he said, “excellent timing!”
“How's the search coming along, Commander Swordfish?” asked Spitfire.
“Not all that well at the moment,” admitted Swordfish, “but we've taken preliminary soundings of the search area, and we can determine that the wreckage is spread out over an area of around...170 square miles.”
“What about the black boxes?”
“We have a unicorn scanning the area for any locator spell signals, but he still hasn't picked anything up yet.”
“Right, well seeing as we're all present and correct,” instructed Spitfire, “we might as well get searching. I'll supervise from Farrier's bridge; the rest of you can accompany the salvage vessels.”
And so it was arranged. With Spitfire keeping a close eye on the operation from the destroyer, Soarin, Fire Streak and Rainbow Dash banded together on one of the salvage vessels, and the remainder of the Wonderbolts distributed themselves among the other six in groups of three. Whenever the vessels located or retrieved an item of wreckage, they would report their findings to Spitfire before flying them back to Starswirl Airport, from where they would be taken by rail to Foalborough, the very same aerodrome that had seen the maiden flight of the Constellation prototype.
But finding aircraft wreckage at sea is never an easy task, even with sonar, diving bells and underwater cameras. The search went on for several days, but still they couldn't seem to find the all-important black boxes – nor could they identify the prime piece of evidence behind the Constellation's destruction.
Back in Equestria, Twilight and the investigation team seemed to be having far more success in gathering evidence than the salvage vessels. Judging by the radar scans from the day of the disaster, they were able to work out that the plane had indeed broken up in mid-air, leading to a sudden loss of pressure in the cabin. This much was also evident in the autopsy report they received shortly after the crash, which specified severe skull and lung damage as the cause of death in most of the bodies, while the remaining few appeared to have drowned after impact. But even with this information, the big question still remained – what was it that had caused the Constellation to suddenly disintegrate for no apparent reason?
Without much more to go on, speculation was rife among the world media. Many supported Twilight, Rotor and Panthera in their belief that the plane must have been sabotaged; but some, still wary of the world's biggest passenger airliner, insisted that either a design flaw must have brought the Constellation down, or the plane itself was simply too large to hold itself together. Sir Geoffrey de Hoofilland himself denied these claims, emphasising on the rigorous testing, experimental and design work that had gone into what he still held to be his greatest creation of all time.
It wasn't until a month later that two things happened to bring them closer to finding the cause. On the HMS Farrier, Commander Swordfish finally received the message they had all been waiting for.
“You say you've found both black boxes?”
“Yes, sir!” replied the unicorn who had been homing in on the locator spell signals. “They were only a few hundred yards away off of our port bow.”
Swordfish turned to Spitfire with a look of satisfaction. “Well, Captain, seems our search might have paid off already.”
“Well, we'll soon know,” replied Spitfire, turning on her headset. “HMS Farrier to Salvage Vessel One. We've found the black boxes, Soarin.”
“Brilliant!” exclaimed Soarin's delighted voice over the radio. “We'll be over as soon as we can. I'll just go and alert the coxswain.”
“Roger, Soarin. I'll see you when you get here. Out.”
Minutes later, the salvage vessel arrived on the scene. A team of divers descended to the ocean floor, and after only a quarter of an hour of careful searching, they found the two vital recording devices amid a small pile of debris. Having removed most of the wreckage, they carefully picked up the black boxes and headed back to their vessel.
Once the divers reached the surface, Soarin and Rainbow Dash flew over to help them back on board.
“You got the boxes?” asked Rainbow Dash hopefully.
“Yep – safe and sound,” replied one of the divers, holding up the cockpit voice recorder. “They're pretty battered, though.”
Soarin frowned when he saw the state of the boxes. “Yeah, so I can see,” he mused. “I just hope the tapes are okay. Anyway, let's get them back to Manehattan; no doubt Twilight's gonna be relieved when she finds out.”
Twilight was indeed relieved when she heard about the black boxes, but understandably less so when she realised they had been damaged.
“Those tapes had better have survived the crash,” she murmured anxiously as a technician took them away to the laboratory, “otherwise we might never find out what caused it.”
“There's a good chance,” Rotor assured her. “Those black boxes are built to withstand a heck of a lot of force before they become useless. The lab ponies should have the tapes sorted out within a few weeks.”
The lavender-coated alicorn smiled faintly. “Well, that's something.”
“What about the wreckage?” asked Spike. “Do we have any clues as to where a bomb might have been planted?”
“Well that's just it, Spike,” said Panthera gravely. “I've been taking a look at the aircraft fragments, and I can't seem to find anything that might suggest bomb damage as the cause of the break-up. The only conclusion I can make is that the initial failure seems to have led to multiple overload fractures.”
“As in...more stress than the plane can handle?”
“Exactly,” Panthera affirmed. “We still don't know what might have caused it, but it seems as if the skin of the aircraft has been punctured by a bullet or an energy beam...or something.”
Twilight raised a thoughtful hoof to her chin. “Sounds plausible, I guess,” she agreed. “It could be that one or more of the passengers – or even crew members – could have sacrificed themselves in order to destroy the Constellation. Either that, or relating to your murder theory, they could have misfired when they tried to attack Yehuda and ended up rupturing the fuselage. That said,” she pointed out, “I would have thought an energy beam would have been more likely to cause an explosive decompression than a bullet.”
“Which means,” surmised Rotor, “that the attacker must have been a unicorn. The big question is – who would have had a motive?”
“Probably ought to check the passenger list,” began Twilight. “If we can go through their records, then...” but an excited screech quickly caught her attention as Spyder came bounding into the hangar, clutching a sheet of parchment in his hand. “What is it, Major?”
“Big news right from the Bermuleda Islands!!” crowed Spyder, slamming the parchment onto a workbench and prodding it repeatedly, with a look of crazed joy in his expression. “Take a look at this, Princess Twilight – this is gonna be the best thing since banana fritters!!!”
“Uh...I don't follow.”
“It's about your consort!” Spyder took a deep breath and screamed ecstatically at the top of his voice, “IT'S ALI-I-IVE!!!!”
Twilight gazed at the parchment, wondering what in the hay Spyder was talking about – but when she read the message it contained, she had to hold a hoof over her mouth in order to stifle a gasp. Her eyes began flooding with tears as she scanned through the text once again;
Dear Dr Tailspin Rotor & team,
Having interviewed eyewitnesses on the Bermuleda Islands, we have discovered that the tragic crash of Constellation Flight 759, contrary to our findings on the day of the disaster, has in fact yielded a solitary survivor. One of the local fisherponies, Cod Catcher, aged 17, reports that as the plane went down, he noticed “an orange Pegasus (stallion) with blue mane and tail and a shield and lightning bolt for a Cutie Mark plummeting towards the sea.” He further states that said stallion was still fighting for life, but held out long enough to be flown to the nearest hospital.
We sent a representative to Queen Faust Hospital, Bimineigh Island, and his information is that the stallion, though still in a coma, is in a stable condition, and should hopefully make a full recovery. While at the hospital, he also interviewed unicorn surgeon Dr Scalpel, who had performed an emergency surgery on the stallion shortly after he had arrived, including extensive repairs to the lungs. He has also informed us that, after a thorough check of all medical records, the stallion brought to him by Cod Catcher has been positively identified as Lieutenant Flash Sentry. We have made arrangements for Scalpel to send a message as soon as Sentry is fully awake and ready to answer any queries we might have regarding the disaster.
Yours truly,
Aerosmith,
Senior Investigator, RTSE
There was a long silence as the lavender-coated alicorn gazed in disbelief at the letter, her mind flooded with emotions. For the longest time, she and many others had feared that nopony, absolutely nopony, would have had even the slightest chance of surviving such an horrific plane crash – yet there it was, in black and white and plain as the muzzle on her face; against all the odds, in a scenario where any injuries sustained might have proven the final nail in the coffin for anypony involved, her beloved Flash Sentry had only just managed to cheat death, and was slowly recovering from what in theory should have been fatal wounds. It was as if Fortune had chosen to spare him from death the moment she knew he was on that fateful flight.
It was Spike who broke the silence first. Having taken a look at the letter for himself, he breathed a deep sigh of relief. “Cor, thank Celestia he's okay,” he murmured.
Twilight didn't answer – overcome with euphoria, she instead turned and clung hard to her dragon assistant as she wept joyously into his shoulder. Spike smiled faintly and ran a claw though his surrogate older sister's mane, while Spyder began bounding around the hangar in a celebratory dance. Rotor and Panthera each gave a smile of their own, but otherwise remained respectfully silent.