WrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
My eyes snap open instantly at the noise coming from right above my head. “Who the buck is launching jets right now?”
“Oh wow, LD, it’s almost like daily flight operations are starting,” replies a sleepy but sarcastic voice from the other rack.
I grumble and get out of bed. If that was the first wave of aircraft launching, it means I have an hour before I need to be ready. The flight schedule that had been slipped under the door last night told me that I was flying as part of the second wave.
“What kind of favor did you call in to get the morning off?” I ask, finding my roommate’s name further down the schedule.
She chuckles. “Don’t complain that you’re only getting ten hours of sleep.”
I grumble some more. Then, I smirk and stealthily reset my alarm clock to its loudest setting. I give it a few minutes, time for me to get away and time for Rainbow to fall asleep again. She would do the same for me.
I go to the head for morning business. I look in the mirror as I brush my teeth. My mane is everywhere, but so is everypony else’s on this ship. I could do something with it, but I took a shower the night prior and it’s not worth the time to take another.
After putting on my flight suit, I get going, walking through the tight ship passageways. Even though I’ve been at this job for a while, it’s still mind boggling that somepony was crazy enough to put an airport on a ship. Crazier still, it works. Plenty of little problems remain, though, like trying to make airwing and ship ponies get along.
The passageways are crowded with ponies. Some of them are fellow pilots, but most are members of the ship’s crew. I head for the wardroom to see what’s for breakfast and make it there without crossing too many sailors. Checking out the selection, I make my choice: nothing. I’m not going to eat any of this disgusting stuff, but looking at my options has made me not as hungry, so that’s a plus. The less said about ship food, the better.
Down a different passageway, I arrive at the squadron ready room and go inside. It’s the closest thing to a living room that any of us pilots have. The floor is crowded with chairs and our flag is on the wall. Somewhat comfy, and a good place to meet.
The coffee pot is full and I pour a cup. The duty officer’s brain is empty, but at least she knows how to make coffee.
“Good morning, Lightning!” Derpy quips.
Having not had any coffee yet, I mumble through a reply. The first sip opens my eyes. It’s so black that my soul might be in danger. Tasty.
I plop down in my chair, the one that has Lightning Dust embroidered on the headrest. Other ponies start to come into the ready room. I spot Fleetfoot, the mare that would be leading the section I was in that day.
She nods to me and takes a cup of coffee. She winces at the taste. I quickly take a sip of my own to hide my grin. Fleetfoot comes over and sits down. “I’ve got the documents for the mission today.”
“What are we doing?”
“The same thing we do every day.”
I sigh. If she had meant “take over the world,” I would be down for that. Unfortunately, the only thing we do every day is fly over countries that don’t like us to help them fight ponies that like us even less. Sometimes that actually involves dropping bombs. Sometimes.
Fleetfoot notes my expression. “Cheer up. Just another six months before we go home.”
I give her a flat stare. I can’t imagine how she could be so chipper. Just because this wasn’t her first deployment, she’s trying to tell me that things aren’t so bad. How could this so-called war be so bucking boring?
Fleetfoot doesn’t appear to notice my contempt, however. She reads through her notes, still holding her coffee cup. I notice a tremor go through her wings every time she takes a sip.
It isn’t just our squadron that will be participating in this event, so after working through a few notes, Fleetfoot and I get up to head for the brief room. A few ponies from other squadrons are already there, waiting on the intel guy to show up. Shortly he does, and turns on the computer.
The slides are the same ones every day. Go here, hang around until something interesting happens – or more likely, you get low on fuel – and come back.
Thus armed with more bombs than brains, we go topside to strap into our jets. The F/A-41Q is an ugly abomination of a couple airplanes stitched together by a blind foal. It had been designed for the flexible fighter-attack role. I don’t know if it could do that. I had only ever seen it drop bombs on lightly armed enemy pedestrians.
But it’s all we have, budgets being what they were. I do a walk-around to make sure I’m being given all the bombs and missiles that I’m signing for and nothing serious is leaking out of the jet. Small leaks are good, because they mean the reservoir isn’t empty. Why would anypony want to properly fix a multimillion-bit aircraft?
I hop in the cockpit and strap in. Beside me, Fleetfoot is doing the same in her jet. As I close the canopy, the deck ponies give both jets a tow towards the front of the ship. I happily notice that I’m being taken to the catapult that runs directly above mine and Rainbow’s room.
I feel a bump as the catapult shuttle hooks onto the jet’s nose gear. Just in case Rainbow is still sleeping, I make sure that the engines are extra loud when I come up on the throttles. After a quick stir of the stick to check the ailerons and tail surfaces, I’m ready.
The catapult shooter crouches beside the jet and points a hoof forward. At his command, I launch. The catapult shot is exhilarating as it rockets my jet into the air, side by side with Fleetfoot’s aircraft. The skies and the seas are beautiful this morning, under a warm sun. Sometimes I have moments where I feel very smart for joining the Navy instead of the Air Force.
“Cupcake One-One,” Fleetfoot says, checking in.
“Cupcake One-Two,” I reply.
Fleetfoot orders the next step in the checklist. “Spread and FOD check.”
We put a little distance between the jets and then roll inverted to see if there are any foreign objects or debris hanging around. In my upside down jet, a water balloon rolls out from under the seat and explodes on the canopy.
It takes me a moment to realize what just happened. I hang there from my seat straps and stare at the puddle of water resting in the hollow of the canopy. When I roll right side up, it’s going to soak me.
“Anything?” Fleetfoot asks.
I grit my teeth and return to level flight. Splash. “No more than usual.”
Ahh, yes. A few extra precious moments of sleep… So much win. Little does LD know, I swapped our names in the flight rotation before it was posted last night.
I hear the door shut as my comrade in arms heads toward the ready room. It’ll be a good solid thirty minutes before the next flight op wakes me up. Plenty of time to catch a bit more shuteye…
“WEEERK WEEERK WEEERK WEEERK WEEERK”
“DAMMIT LIGHTNING DUST!”
Well, it looks like I won’t be getting any extra sleep today. Time for some bucking coffee, I guess... After a long, hot shower, of course. At least I can have that.
The first (and undoubtedly the hardest) mission of the day is to drag myself out of bed. The extra motivation of Lightning’s early morning sabotage helps, every time the thing sounds off I can feel my brain try to explode. As soon as my hooves hit the deck, I turn off that bucking alarm before it can scramble my brains.
With that epic journey out of the way, I decide to hit the head. A small shuffle of my wings as I walk is enough for me to know just how badly my feathers are jacked up. My mane’s probably even worse, so I don’t bother looking into the mirror as I walk past.
After taking care of some very important morning paperwork, I head over to the shower and turn it on. Of course, it always takes a while for the water get hot, so I let it flow, waiting for it to steam up before I step in and soak myself. As soon as the water hits my head, that horrible, pounding headache begins to fade. I pretty much fall in and lean against the wall, not even bothering to pull the curtain shut. There’s a drain on the floor. That’s what it’s there for, right?
The water is glorious, just the thing I need before strapping my flank in the seat of a big, clunky airboat for the day. I can’t wait to fly around pointlessly until I almost run out of fuel… again. Maybe this time I can actually fly somewhere that isn’t over the ocean, heck, maybe even blow something up… at least I have that to hope for.
The roar of jet engines on the upper deck brings my mind back into the present. As much as I don’t want the shower to end, I still have a mission briefing to catch. After drying off and tossing my wet towel onto LD’s pillow, I squeeze into my flight suit and head for the upper decks. The shower was great and all, but I still need some coffee before I can even think about thinking about things.
I’m actually looking forward to getting to the ready room just so I can have a cup of that awesome brew. Derpy doesn’t do a lot of things right, but coffee is one of the few things she’s got figured out. A few minutes of squeezing past grumpy sea-ponies in the hall while trying to resist the urge to see if I can fly over them is all it takes to bring me together with my cup of coffee. Wonderful, wonderful coffee.
I take a seat at the table and give myself a moment to let the caffeine do its job. As usual, Derpy didn’t disappoint. It might be cheap, stale, ship coffee, but she makes it strong enough that you might be at risk of a heart attack if you drink more than two cups… I always like to have three.
After downing the first cup and getting about halfway through the next, the rest of my flight squad for the day’s mission starts to filter into the Flier’s Lounge. Yeah, I came up with that one. With us in charge of the place, the description fits. At this point, it’s pretty much our hangout spot when we’re not out on a flight mission. Too bad we don’t have anything stronger to drink than coffee… Maybe one day me and LD can get back to base and go out for a night on the town.
The craziest part about this whole war thing is how incredibly lame it is. Nopony told me it was gonna be so much intense waiting, with the occasional explosion that I don’t get to watch. I’d rather be out there flying on my own, without some big, metal cage keeping me trapped in a state of eternal boredom. Yet, here I am, about to go on another mission to babysit the skies… Speaking of which, here comes the intel guy, probably about to put his stupid slides up on the screen and brief us on the same mission as always. What fun.
We all walk into the brief room just as the screen flickers on, and the intel guy (whose name I always forget) takes his seat behind the table in front of us. He looks like he could use a few cups of coffee himself… I thought my mane would look bad this morning, but this guy... wow. I find my mind wandering off as he rattles on about the exact same flight mission we’ve been doing for the past three weeks. It’s like they actually expect us to run into trouble out there! If only we could be so lucky, I never thought being a pilot could be so dull.
With all that excitement out of the way, it’s time to make the journey topside to the flight deck. It’s a fairly short walk to the end of the hall and up the stairs that lead to my destination. I get to the end and open the hatch. Of course, being trapped in a dimly lit ship for so long has the effect of making even a dark, cloudy day seem like somepony is blasting you in the face with a searchlight. Today is not one of those days. There isn’t a cloud to be found in the sky and of all the stupid things for me to do, I went and let LD borrow my feathering sunglasses.
I swear, sometimes I’m too nice to that mare… Good thing I left her a little present to wake her up this morning. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to see me when I get back from this skysitting mission. I squint my eyes as hard as I can to deal with Celestia’s eye-scorching photon blaster until I can get my flight helmet on. I’d like to find whoever decided to work a tinted visor into the design and buy them a few rounds of drinks. It’s been a lifesaver more than once.
Finally, I make the walk across the deck and reach my jet. Since I still have a good bit of time to perform my pre-flight inspection, I decide to take a moment to check my cockpit for any surprises. You never know what someone might leave laying around in there. It might get awkward if someone left me a present that got me all wet in the cockpit… Hehehe.
Aside from the usual oil leaks and dingy paint, my jet seems to be in pretty good shape. Of course, I wouldn’t mind the chance to punch out, just so I can get the chance to fly with my own wingpower. It would be a shame to waste a perfectly good jet like that though, me and this baby have been through a lot together. She’s taken pretty good care of me so far.
That’s one thing I gotta give to the flight crew here, they keep our birds up and running, even on the worst days. Now, if only they weren’t so uptight. I swear, most of these stallions walk around like they’ve just had something shoved up their plot. Well… this is a Naval ship. From what I hear, some of them probably have had something shoved up their plot recently.
While I was zoned out thinking about what stallions do for fun on this ship, my wingpony for the day, Lightning Streak, caught my attention. For a moment, I look back at his flank, continuing my mental tangent without even realizing it. Unfortunately, my eyes betray me, and that moment is just long enough for him to catch me.
“See something you like back there, Dash?”
For a moment, I contemplate telling him I was wondering if he’d had anything long and hard shoved up his plot recently… But I really don’t wanna know. And, to be honest, I kind of hope he isn’t into that. I’d definitely like to take a little bit of liberty with him, if you know what I mean… He pretty much looks like a male version of Lightning Dust, so he’s hotter than the average stallion. Don’t ever tell her I said that.
“Naah, I was just zoned out thinking about the mission. Never know what we’ll run into out there, it’s best to be prepared for all the possibilities.” The smirk on his face was enough to tell me that he didn’t buy it.
“And just what kind of mission did you have in mind? I don’t think getting flank was on our list of objectives this morning… Too bad it isn’t, I’d sure like to pull a hit and run mission
on your bunkmate.”
“Hah, yeah right, Streak. If you wanna get some of her, you gotta get through me!” I lift off and hover, then cross my forelegs for extra emphasis. Gotta make sure I’m sending the right signals.
In response, he looks up at me with a raised eyebrow and that (really sexy) lopsided smirk, then replies, “Well, there’s no need to fight over it. I’m sure the three of us could find a way to keep ourselves entertained.”
I drop to the deck and give him my best bedroom eyes. Of course, he falls for it like a chump and leans in as I slowly close the distance. I stop just a breath away from his muzzle and look deeply into his eyes.
“You wouldn’t last eight hours…”
The look on his face is priceless. I bump my bose against his, then swat his muzzle with my tail as I turn my back to him, making sure to sway my flank far more than necessary as I head for my jet. Once I’m close, I wing jump up to the cockpit and land perfectly in the seat, then watch as Lightning Streak shakes his head in my general direction and walks off. At least now we both have something entertaing to think about during the next several hours of sheer boredom.
I close the canopy and start working through the cabin portion of my pre-flight inspection. I’ve never had a problem out of this baby, so I feel okay with skipping some of the less essential steps. Our mechanics always do their job right, so I don’t even need to worry about it. I radio in and call for a taxi. The deck ponies come and pull my jet onto the runway. I go through the last few steps of my pre-flight, including firing up the engines. I’ve always loved the way it feels in the cockpit as the engines roar to life. There’s just something thrilling about controlling all that power… Though, these jets aren’t exactly what I’d call sporty.
I throttle up a bit to warm the engine a little faster, slowly increasing the thrust until I feel the jet start to lurch forward. With all that out of the way, I signal the deck ponies that I’m good to go and they prepare the catapult for launch. All I can do now is hang tight and wait for a crazy ride. It’s always a rush to accelerate so fast, definitely my favorite part of all the lame missions we’ve been doing lately.
The catapult shooter gives me the signal and I punch the throttle. I hear a loud, metallic clang along with what feels like something violently snatching my jet forward, but instead of being launched off the ship, I just continue to slowly roll towards the edge of the runway. Steam rises from the deck where the catapult has just passed, and I see some unidentified shiny object flying off the end of the runway. That is definitely not normal. I snatch my throttle back and grab the brakes before it’s too late to stop. The jet comes to a screeching halt, and a sudden alarm starts sounding off on the instrument panel. A series of flashing lights that I’ve never seen before go off all over the cabin, then the engine dies completely and whines to a halt, followed by the whole instrument panel… And the air conditioning system.
“What the BUCK?!”
I try cycling the power toggle on and off, but it doesn’t work at all. I grab the radio and try to key in, but it’s totally dead too. After a few moments of trying everything I can imagine, I finally give up. So much for our awesome feathering mechanics. Could be worse, I guess. At least now I might get the day off. With that joyful thought in mind, I reach for the button that opens the canopy. Of course, nothing happens when I press it. For a moment, I start to freak out a little bit, but I realize there’s a manual crank that opens the canopy in case of power failure. Gotta love those engineers, making life just a little bit better.
I grab onto the latch that manually unlocks the canopy and give it a good tug, but it won’t budge. I try again just to be sure, but I get the same result. My day just got a lot worse... All I can do now is sit and wait for somepony to come get me out of this boat. To top it all off, the lovely sunshine beating down on the cabin is causing the temperature to rise a lot faster than I’d like. I sure hope those damn deck ponies get me outta here fast… Now I’m kinda wishing I’d saved that water balloon for myself.