Chapter 14
Gliders
It was obvious the ships had ill intentions: They came in hugging the ground with silvered surfaces, barely distinguishable at first from the shimmering heat haze, so they could get as close as possible without being seen; three of them coming from different directions, appearing on the horizon within ten minutes of each other.
The Dulcet's defence officer had seen them first, but by the time Lucille had informed the rest of the mine and summoned Sweetie Belle and her friends to the bridge, the the lead ship had already sent its first message in flashes signal lamps:
CO-OPERATE FULLY AND YOU WILL BE UNHARMED. LEAVING SHIPS WILL BE FIRED UPON
This it repeated while Sweetie Belle looked through the telescope.
“Shit,” she murmured to herself.
“Friends of yours?” said Lucille.
“Yeah, it's a safe bet they're after us,” said Scootaloo. “We need a plan. Any chance we could fight our way out?”
Lucille looked over to her defence officer, a slight, small-beaked griffon. “Cerise?”
Without looking up, for her instruments, Cerise replied, “We're up against an Aquileonan light cruiser and two armed scout ships and … at least two gunship each. We're armed –”
“Which is more than I can say for Hinny's Revenge,” interjected Lucille.
“ – but these three would kick the shit out of us. At best we might be able to fight off one of the scouts, if they had no support.”
“And the only defence the mine has is a gunship. That's one gunship, to their six or more,” said Lucille.
“Right, so if we stay,” said Scootaloo, “We're screwed. Surrounded, there's not much we can do. Right now, we might be able to make a break for it.”
Sweetie Belle summoned Saffron. “Could I fight them off? With the sylphs?”
“You might cripple the ships, but what about the passengers themselves?”
“Yeah,” said Sweetie Belle. “That's it! If we run, they won't want to risk killing me, so maybe they won't fire. Then all we have to do is get to Ilmarinen in time.”
“Or they might just shoot out the engines and board the ship,” said Tom.
Lucille clicked her beak. “Look, girls, I like you, but I'm not going to risk a trick like that. And I doubt you're going to find anyone else who will either.”
For a moment they were all silent. Outside, the three ships came closer.
“Okay!” said Sweetie Belle. “How about this? We leave on a glider.”
They all stared at her.
“You have gliders, right?”
Lucille nodded, still looking uncertain.
“You can't really shoot down a glider without risking killing whoever's inside, right? So they won't do that. And let's say we release two gliders – one as a decoy. Now, suppose they see that – for all they know, I might be in either of the gliders, or I might have stayed back here. They'll have to split up three ways to be sure. Then, after they've done that, you might be able to get past whoever's left. Or, at least, have a clear escape route.”
“You know this plan is insane, right?” Lucille cocked her head.
Scootaloo grinned. “Yeah, but doesn't it sound fun? One thing, though – where are you going with your glider once you're forty miles away and losing altitude? Once you've used up your balloon relaunch?”
“Actually,” said Lucille slowly, “there are a couple of solar sintering facilities in the desert near here where the mire ends.”
“We'd still be trapped there, though.”
Sweetie Belle leaned in at her and grinned. “You can be my workhorse.”
“Oh, don't you dare –”
“Let's put those magic wings to the test, see if you can pull the glider back to Ilmarinen.”
Scootaloo gave her a mock-angry glare for a few second, which then dissolved into laughter. “Yeah, alright,” she said.
“Uh …” Tom raised his hand. “If we're going ahead with this, let's at least do it properly.”
“Meaning what?” asked Scootaloo.
“Three options won't be enough if we're counting the gunships too. Launch every glider – or as many as you can spare – in as many free directions as you can. Aim some specifically at those solar sintering sites. Maybe that'll draw their attention. We go in a glider that isn't aimed directly to those sites or Ilmarinen, so we look like a low priority. Now, we won't be able to steer the glider without giving ourselves away, so you'll have to rotate the ship to launch. Finally, if we are going all in, I think we should tell the captains of the other ships here. If they decide to try and escape to Ilmarinen when the enemy's attention is divided, that'll just add to the diversion, and be safer than staying here.”
“Damn, dude,” said Scootaloo.
Tom shrugged.
“Well, I guess that's our plan right there,” said Lucille. “Now let's see if we can get it all done in the next ten minutes. One more thing, though. All three of you won't fit in the glider –”
“I'll stay,” said Tom. “I'm the only one who doesn't need to be there.”
“Alright. You're with me then. We'll try and meet up again in Ilmarinen. The rest of you, let's go!” She pointed to one of her bridge officers. “Basil, show them to the glider bays. Come on, hurry!”
The glider cockpit wasn't designed for two ponies, they sat with Scootaloo almost on Sweetie Belle's lap, a constant warmth against her chest, and ragged purple mane occasionally brushing against her nose. The glittering wings were a welcome coolness against her forelegs.
They'd cantered half the length of the ship to get here, and she could still feel the rhythm of Scootaloo's breathing, harmonising with her own.
Another clang as the third empty glider was released. Nearly there – she was fifth. Dulcet swung slowly about her axis, aiming the gliders. Another clang, and away went number four. She prepared herself for that stomach-jolting moment of release.
They'd be heading, Lucille had told her, about thirty degrees away from Ilmarinen, on a path that would take them within two kilometres of the sintering facility, just in case anything went wrong. Otherwise, Scootaloo would take over as soon as it was safe.
Clang – and the glider bay open up, vanished behind them. She strained to look around Scootaloo, to try and catch sight of their attackers, but there was nothing save the expanse of pure blue sky above and bottled blue mire below.
Everything in her body told her she needed to be looking, moving, doing something. And yet all there was sit and wait and avid the controls, while her life was in immediate danger. She tried to concentrate on other things: The soft whistle of air, the muttering daemons, the Scarlight shadow Scootaloo's mane cast on her neck. None of it worked.
A first presence over her hoof made her realise she was hugging Scootaloo. She was about to let go, but Scootaloo's forelegs settled soft and reassuring over her own.
“That was a good plan,” said Scootaloo. “I mean it. You're pretty awesome when you want to be, you know that?”
Sweetie Belle couldn't help smiling even as she tried to be serious: “Thanks. Let's just hope it works.” Then, her smile fading: “And let's hope Tom's okay.”
“Yeah.”
She held Scootaloo a little tighter. Outside, nothing but the sky and the Scar. She thought this must the most relaxing emergency she'd ever been in. And possibly the most romantic.
The poisonous blue mire was soon replaced by silvery-white sand scalloped into gentle dunes. She saw something that looked a bit like an insect in silhouette clinging to the horizon to their left and pointed it out to Scootaloo.
“I guess that's the sintering facility.”
Perhaps ten or twenty minutes later, when she was nearly asleep, there came a faint but unmistakable hum. It grew quickly past a hum and into a roar.
“You hear that?” asked Scootaloo.
“Yeah.”
They both twisted round trying to see anything through the cockpit. A moment later something slipped into sight above them, a greyish brown thing hovering on twin rotors connected to the end of its wings. A gunship. The roar of its engines battered her ears.
Then, louder still, came the thunder of machine gun fire in three short burts. Sweetie Belle held even tigther to Scootaloo, filled with raw animal fear.
But they kept on flying as before. She realised: “They're trying to scare us into turning!”
“Good luck, buddy,” said Scootaloo.
The gunship opened fire again, still avoiding them.
They watched it warily as it trailed them. After a minute or so it pulled ahead of them and, tilting its rotors slightly, turned around to face them. Then, keeping pace, it dropped a few metres until the small plastic bead of its cockpit came into view.
The glider shivered in the gunship's turbulence.
“Shit,” muttered Scootaloo.
“What?” said Sweetie Belle. Then she saw the faint outline of the gunship's pilot in the cockpit and understood. The glider's canopy was silvered the protect against the sun – that would make it difficult for an observer to see the pilot from a distance, but at close range they might just be visible.
The glider shuddered again and dropped a few metres, making her insides lurch and leaving the gunship behind momentarily.
“Listen,” said Scootaloo. Speaking fast, she moved Sweetie Belle's forelegs down until they were encircling her lower body. “Hold on here as tight as you can. Don't worry about hurting me. And do not let go, you hear?”
“What are you going to do?”
The gunship dropped into view again, moving cautiously to the side to avoid disrupting the glider.
“Trade in the glider for something better.” With a soft whispering hum, Scootaloo's wings unfurled as far as they could. Glittering iridescent fields of energy coruscated between the artificial feathers. Her body tensed like a coiled spring. Outside, the gunships' cockpit came into view again.
Sweetie Belle held on.
In one motion, Scootaloo's wings opened, smashed she canopy off the glider, and swept back, pulling her and Sweetie Belle into the open air. The roar of the gunship's engines increased threefold, and the rushing wind clawed at face, her body, threatening to pull her away from Scootaloo. Below them, hundreds of metres away, the desert looked like a glittering silver sea. She tightened her grip more than she thought possible.
Scootaloo didn't even need to flap: They accelerated and hurtled forwards towards the gunship. Sweetie Belle couldn't hear her scream over the noise. A moment later, they were there. At the last moment, Scootaloo reached one wing forward towards the window and punched through it and the fuselage. They landed almost on top of the griffon pilot at his array of controls in the tiny cockpit. Somepony – Sweetie Belle wasn't sure who – brushed against the controls and sent the gunship spinning.
The pilot stared up at them. Sweetie Belle suspected he was even more surprised than she was. Scootaloo wrestled with the controls, trying to pull the gunship out of its spin and, simultaneously, shot a shimmering pinion feather at him. But with the three of them in the cockpit, there wasn't enough room for her wings to open properly, and the feather embedded itself in the wall just above his neck.
At last the pilot moved. He hit something on the control panel, then scrambled over them, over the control panels, and towards the hole in the window. Sweetie Belle tried to grab him, but he kicked out with a rear paw, hitting her in the face. And then he was away, wings spread.
Scootaloo glanced at him and swore, but her attention was still on stabilising the gunship. They tipped forward, tumbled towards the ground. Maybe a hundred metres away, Less. Scootaloo swore again, fiddled with the controls.
And finally, the ship steadied. Scootaloo held them hovering for a moment. Then she ascended and spun the ship around. Sweetie Belle saw the glider ahead of them with its broken canopy, shuddering and angled downwards. It looked like it would crash into the desert soon. The griffon pilot was already flying back in the other direction. “Let him go,” Scootaloo muttered. “By the time he finds his friends, they won't be able to catch us.” She turned the gunship back toward Ilmarinen and accelerated.
Once they were moving safely, they tried to shuffle into a slightly more comfortable position. The gunship's cockpit was bigger than glider's, made to fit a second occupant (to operate the guns, perhaps, thought Sweetie Belle), but it was still close quarters. Actually, considering the wind coming through the hole they'd made, it was a good thing; she huddled up closer to Scootaloo.
Scootaloo looked over at Sweetie Belle. Her eyes widened. “Oh, Luna!” she said. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah …” Sweetie Belle's throat caught. “What is it?”
“Your face.” Scootaloo put a hoof to her left cheek. It stung to the touch, and the hoof came away smeared in blood.
Sweetie Belle checked it herself. The hair was soaked. From the pain and blood, she guessed she's been cut just below her left eye. She'd been too caught up in the scuffle to notice it. “The griffon,” she realised. “He must've had his claws out when he kicked.” Seeing the look on Scootaloo's face, she went on: “I'm fine. It always looks worse than it is for me, remember? Because I have a white coat.”
“Alright. Just keep –”
“Keep pressure on it. I know.” She pressed a pastern to her cheek.
Scootaloo looked around the cockpit, presumably for some cloth. Turning up nothing, she peered past Sweetie Belle at the edges of the hole. “I thought maybe I'd … On the glass, you'd …” She shook her head, a gesture that seemed to be directed more to herself than Sweetie Belle. “I shouldn't have done that. Stupid thing to do.”
“What was the alternative?”
“I dunno. Something less dangerous.”
“Everything's dangerous right now.”
Scootaloo sighed and stared out at the desert ahead. “Yeah. And the last you need is me risking your life too.”
Sweetie Belle took her shoulder and pulled her round. “For pony's sake! I'm not some little foal who needs to be looked after all the time! It's just a little cut. You just said I came up with a good plan.”
“And you did.”
“Then why can't you see me as that sort of pony? I'm not completely useless, you know.”
“I know,” said Scootaloo. She looked into Sweetie Belle's eyes. “And you're right. Sorry.”
Sweetie Belle gave her a soft smile. “Okay. Never mind. Let's go on.”
“Good idea.” Scootaloo turned bacck to the controls, steadied their trajectory. Her attentionsnapped back to the controls. “Wait. Is that …? No way is that possible. Oh shit.”
Sweetie Belle couldn't help snorting with laughter. Of course they couldn't catch a break. “What is it?”
“Fuel. We're nearly out of fuel.”
“Are you serious?”
“He can't have come out here with the tank so low. He must have drained it …” Scootaloo scanned the array of controls for a few moments then pointed to a switch on the far side. “Emergency tank dump.” She back to Sweetie Belle. “We're not going to get anywhere near Ilmarinen at this rate. I could've pulled the glider, but not this … ”
“So what now? The sintering facility?”
“Looks like. Maybe we can find another ship or refuel or something before they find us.”
“And if we can't?”
“We fight.”
The desert outside swooped around as Scootaloo turned the gunship. They'd passed the facility how long ago? Twenty minutes at least. With any luck, the gunship would be faster.
Scootaloo took them in a broad curve – “to avoid the other gunship,” she said.
“Couldn't we fight them? And change ships again?”
“I don't want to risk it. They have the fuel for fancy evasive manoeuvres. We don't.”
Eventually the sintering facility rose beetle-like on the horizon and crawled towards them. Its legs, four pairs of hydraulic-laded struts with fat caterpillar tracks for feet. For pedipalps, bucket chain excavators buried in the sand, full but unmoving. Its carapace, an array of glass lenses, glittered in the sun. Under the bay doors of its abdomen, glass would be stacked up, waiting for the next airship to take it away.
Behind the abdomen a small landing platform jutted out. Scootaloo landed the gunship and turned the engines off. A broad, low portal, blocked with shutters, led into the facility.
Already through the hole in the cockpit Sweetie Belle could smell a sourness in the air. Once the door was open she pulled her leg away from her cheek, barely glancing at the blood-caked pastern.
Scootaloo was out and looking around already. With a flick of her wing she pushed open the shutters; the interior was too dark to see well.“This thing is heavy industry,” she said. “It should be louder than this.” She was right, Sweetie Belle realised – there was nothing beyond the slow creak and groan of the facility's superstructure.
“The buckets at the front weren't moving. Maybe it's been turned off?”
“Yeah,” murmured Scootaloo. “Let's –” She caught sight of Sweetie Belle's face and trotted up to look at her cut. “Here, lemme clean that off for you.” She pressed her pastern against her tongue, then dabbed it against Sweetie Belle's cheek.
“Shouldn't we be looking for a way out?” said Sweetie Belle, but she didn't step away. The touch was uncomfortable and made her cut sting, but was nevertheless soothing. She leant into it.
“We can spare a few seconds,” said Scootaloo. She moved onto her other past and went to work again. “I wish I had some disinfectant. These wings should be able to do that, but …”
“Yeah, they only let you fly for hours, smash holes in ships and shoot fast-acting tranquilliser feathers. What a joke. You should take them back.”
Scootaloo pulled back and gave her a look. Then she turned her attention back to the cut: “That should do. And it doesn't look deep enough to scar.”
“Shame.”
“When did you get so sarky? And yeah, it kind of is, because that would be badass.”
Together they traipsed down the length of the facility, hoofsteps echoing through the cavernous gloom of the rear loading area, where cranes lurked in the shadows like giant beasts. A broad open arch led them to the equally dark main floor lined by rows of conveyer belts. Between the belts were bulbous riveted vats of unknown chemicals, linked by tangles of pipes. Three rows of metal columns held up the roof maybe ten metres above them – it looked like the glass lenses they'd seen from outside were blocked by shutters, turning the ceiling into a grid of blinding white lines against a dark background.
At the front where, had the facility been operational, the bucket conveyers would have fed the facility with sand to be sifted and separated onto the belts they walked up a flight of stairs into the engine room: Two giant solar boilers with quartz windows, lenses for focusing sunlight, steam pipes, transmission axles as thick as a pony. “I guess that rules out finding useful fuel,” Scootaloo commented.
Sweetie Belle wondered why such a heavy piece of equipment would be abandoned like this. Economics, perhaps – it hardly seemed like Amaranth was lacking glass.
A second flight of stairs took them finally into the light, into the control room, circled by panels brimming with levers and switches, and with windows offering full circular view. Behind, a hundred metres of lens-roofing; ahead, a wavescape of pale dunes.
“Well, it looks like we're shit out of luck,” said Scootaloo. “No fuel, no other ships, nowhere else to go. We could hide … but they'd just take this place apart looking for us, wouldn't they?”
By now, the cold grasp of fear on Sweetie Belle's stomach had become almost a companion. She embraced it. “We have to fight then?”
Scootaloo snorted. “I guess so. Maybe I could fly out and pick off another gunship. It's a long shot, but –”
“Could we turn this thing on?”
'Do you know what buttons to press? Because I sure don't.”
“The ones that look like ON buttons?”
“Okay, sure. But why would you want to?”
“The last time Blueberry tried to get me, Saffron showed me how to use an elemental to damage her airship. That was air, but I'm guessing from the name there are others, right? And if we can start the facility, we've got sand – earth – and maybe fire too. Saffron, are you there?”
Saffron flicked into being beside her. “Yeah.”
“That'll work, right?”
“Sure. You can summon elementals out of all sorts of materials, actually, Not just the standard five.”
]
“Didn't you say,” said Scootaloo, “that using qilin magic will make you crazy?”
“Not right away. And it's better than being captured by the pirates or Blueberry, isn't it?”
“You'll have to limit yourself,” said Saffron. “It's easy to create elementals, but they're tied to you: They'll drain your energy when they do work or collapse. If you make too many to start with, they'll easily knock you out when they start fighting.”
Sweetie Belle relayed this to Scootaloo, then turned back to Saffron. “Can you keep track of that for me.”
“Sure thing, boss.” Saffron gave her a mock salute.
“Now let's turn this thing on.”
In the end, it took them maybe ten minutes of poring over the three giant consoles looking for an ON button. They found seven suitable candidates, plus a set of important-looking switches labelling with a variety of cryptic abbreviations. Scootaloo wanted to try them all, but on Saffron's suggestion relayed by Sweetie Belle, they first searched for a manual. That took as long again.
“It would hilarious if they turned up now, wouldn't it?” Sweetie Belle commented as she peered underneath another gap in the wall.
Eventually, though, Scootaloo pulled out a six-inch-thick document with crumpled corners and print so small you had to rub your muzzle against the paper to read it. “We're never gonna get through this in time,” she said.
Sweetie Belle took it off her. “Let's try the index.”
“Be my guest,” said Scootaloo. Then, after looking up: “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
She pointed.
On the horizon, barely visible, was a ship. No. Two ships. At least two – the gunships would be invisible at this range. Sweetie Belle stared at them a moment, then went back to the index.
There it was – basic startup. She skimmed back through great chunks of tissue-thin pages until she reached number 1006, then pressed her nose against the text.
“That one,” she said. “Then those two, together. Middle switch, then check the dial on the left.”
“Yes, ma'am,” said Scootaloo with a grin. “You make reading a technical manual pretty awesome, you know that?” First came a series of clanks as the mirrors opened either side of them. Then the thumps of water pipes opening.
“I know,” said Sweetie Belle. She smiled back at Scootaloo.
“Okay, the dial. What about it?”
“Now using the azimuth-altitude controls, orient the reticule over the lightpoint.”
“Huh?”
Sweetie Belle trotted over. “Turn these wheels until that thing is on top of that thing.”
“Right. Got it.”
Together they oriented the lenses, waited a few moments for the boiler to start, and at last engages the feed. A symphony of thudding pistons, singing gears, roaring engines with undertones so deep you could only feel through your hooves as the floor hummed.
Outsides, the buckets conveyers scooped and sand and carried it into the belly of the machine.
“Now we're ready to start,” said Sweetie Belle, snapping the book shut with her aura. “I'm going to try put some elementals together. Is there any way you could get the last fuel out of the gunship? We'll need some fire.”
“Sure thing. I'll see you in five.” She opened her wings as wide as would fit and launched herself down the staircase.
With the facility active, the main floor felt like an entirely different place to the one Sweetie Belle had walked through half an hour previously. The shutters had opened, and everything was bathed in light. The focal points above the conveyer belts were searing bright. The sand hissed and crackled and spat smoke as it passed beneath them. What came out on the other side didn't look anything like usable glass, but she supposed that was what all the other controls were for.
She stepped up to the nearest focal point, stared at it for a moment, checked Scootaloo wasn't coming back yet, then flopped down on her haunches.
“I don't know if I can do this.”
Saffron appeared beside her. “It's a bit late to duck out now.”
“How much longer before it ends, huh? How long before I get out of this place? I've had enough.”
For a moment, no response. Then the pressure of Saffron's hoof on her shoulder. Not really, of course – just faked sensations. But it was enough. She put her hoof against it, felt the touch there too.
“If we fight, some of those griffons are going to die.”
“Probably.”
“And it's my fault we're here at all. It's my fault they're going to die. My fault if Scootaloo gets hurt If I get captured.”
A sound – a swish of air coming from the loading bay. Scootaloo was on her way back. That meant the pity party was over. Sweetie Belle closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and stood. “Thanks,” she murmured to Saffron.
With the kerosene Scootaloo brought lit under the lens's focal point, Sweetie Belle set about making her army of elementals. It was, admittedly, less of an army than platoon: She settled on fifteen, which would be pushing the limits of safety, but not obviously lethal. That divided nicely into five of each type:
Sylphs flitting about in the air like giant, quick amoebas, visible only through their refractions. Salamanders, smaller but even faster, glowing savage blue-white. Pygmies, crawling like giant slugs of sand, incapable of flight but strong enough to twist through a solid beam of steel by constricting around it. Worried about the pygmies, she tried combining it with a sylph. The result was a pleasing flurry of sand that could fly around and then separate into its component elementals a few metres away. Then she tried combining a pygmy with a salamander, which was just as effective, and left the pygmy at the end of the journey glowing with heat.
While she worked through them, she discussed strategy with Scootaloo and Saffron. Fighting wouldn't be enough – they still needed to commandeer a gunship, this time without having the pilot dump the fuel. That was Scootaloo's job. Then the elementals would have to keep Sweetie Belle safe, and once they had the ship, slow down their pursuers.
It wasn't going to be enough.
She added another three salamanders, and answered Saffron's protests by noting, “They can stay in reserve until we're in the ship. It doesn't matter if I pass out for a bit then.”
It still wasn't going to be enough. Against all those pirates? Against all those ships, all those guns? Against Blueberry herself?
“The gunship!” Scootaloo said. “Can you operate the controls?”
“Uh, no.”
“I could teach you a bit … maybe.” Scootaloo frowned, then shook her head. “No. Not enough to fly.”
“Actually, if it's simple enough, I could memorise the sequence for you,” said Saffron.
Sweetie Belle relayed this to Scootaloo.
“Brilliant! Let's go”
“Just, uh … why?”
“First of all,” Scootaloo said as they trotted back to the landing platform, elementals in tow, “because if I die, you need to be able to get out of here on your own.”
“Don't say that –”
“And second, because this thing is still loaded. It can shoot for a while, even if it can't fly.”
They stepped back outside. “And … if they think I'm inside, they won't want to risk firing back.” She scanned the sky, checking to see how close the airships were. They were clearly visible now – it wouldn't be long before they arrived. Then, looking around to the left – “What's that?”
“What's what?”
Another pirate airship? But it was coming from the wrong direction, from the north. And it didn't look like an airship. It moved with great sinuous strokes. Then she realised.
It was the aelewyrm.