The Adventuring Type

by Cold in Gardez

The Orithyia

From her perch in the crow’s nest, a shallow wood platform mounted to the top of the Orithyia’s balloon envelope, Rainbow Dash kept her silent vigil, scanning the vast desert extending out from the airship on all sides.

Yup… yup. Still desert. Plenty of desert out there. She yawned, set her head back down upon her crossed forelegs, and closed her eyes to resume her nap.

Napping was technically against the rules while on watch, but Rainbow Dash suspected that was just a technicality foisted upon them by the heartless airship insurance industry. The insurance industry – barely a week into her new job as iceberg wrangler, and already she had her first enemy. The first of many, probably. An awesome mare like her was bound to inspire jealousy and rivals, and soon the skies would swarm with corsairs and brigands and pirates and insurance agents, all jousting to make their names by taking her down.

But that was in the future. For now the insurance company that insisted she stay awake keeping watch from the top of the ship was her enemy, and she spited them as best she could – with frequent naps.

The Orithyia was cruising at about 3,000 feet, and despite the desert sun the air had a pleasantly crisp tang. The little ship’s propellers buzzed like bees, nearly maxed out, but despite their efforts the laden airship could only average 15-ish knots. Barely enough to generate a pleasant breeze.

Behind them followed the air iceberg. It was a mountain in every sense that mattered, so huge that her little pegasus brain sometimes mistook it for a stormcloud or simply ignored it altogether, seeing the desert and the sky and everything except the massive cliff of ice. The Orithyia was like a gnat against its side, tethered to the icy heap with thousands of feet of rope as thick as her forelegs. The ropes seemed to slim with distance, stretching to wires and then to gossamer threads, invisibly thin, where they met the anchors driven into the iceberg’s skin.

The iceberg radiated cold, like a furnace turned down to zero and then somehow turned down even more until it sucked away heat, drinking it like a black hole. Frost coated the rear half of the Orithyia’s envelope, and icicles built up overnight on the lines tying the ship to the ‘berg. They cracked when the morning sun struck them, filling the air with chimes, and then they fell away into the still-gloomy desert below, tiny missiles that melted before they struck their targets.

At noon, the sun and the iceberg warred with each other. One toasted her coat while the other drank her body’s heat. Every fifteen minutes she had to wake from her nap, turn, and let half her body thaw while the other half cooled.

It was hard work, but Rainbow Dash managed. She was tough like that.

“Ahoy! First Mate Rainbow Dash!”

Rainbow Dash lifted her head to see Nutmeg crest the envelope, hauling himself up the rope net that covered most of the airship’s surface. His wings beat at the air for balance, but as usual he preferred to use his legs to scale the Orithyia’s various skeins rather than fly. He was nimble as a monkey in the ropes, scrambling across them with a fluidity and ease that Rainbow Dash could only admire. The few times she’d tried her hooves in the rigging, she’d gotten so tangled that Nutmeg had to cut her free.

“Mm, ‘sup Nutmeg?” she asked. She stifled a yawn as he picked his way over the ropes toward the crow’s nest.

“You probably saw it hours ago, but Appleloosa’s just ahead,” he said, and pointed with his hoof. Sure enough, the sere dusty expanse of the desert was broken by a wide swath of green growing on the horizon, and she could make out the faint sparkle of the sun reflecting off the river that bisected the valley.

In fact, she hadn’t noticed the town. But seeing as how she was supposed to be the lookout, that didn’t seem like something she should mention. Instead she nodded casually, as though Appleloosa’s presence were the most obvious thing in the world, that of course she’d seen it hours ago, probably even before that back when it was still dark, because her eyes were just that good.

She stretched, arching her back like a cat, and hopped up onto the rail surrounding the crow’s nest. “So, what’s the plan? Do we just, like, land this thing into their orchards?” She glanced back at the iceberg as she spoke.

“Oh, heavens, no.” Nutmeg shook his head. “That’d freeze all their crops. And besides, it’s not the town that’s paying us.”

“Huh? Who is, then?”

“The buffalo.” Nutmeg squinted down at the desert, searching for something, then extended a hoof toward a rising cloud of dust just outside the town. “There they are! Prepare for descent, Miss Dash!”

“Aye aye, cap’n!” She snapped off a smart salute, turned in place, then turned back again to face him. “How do I, uh, do that?”

“Just tie down anything that looks loose, close the ports. Oh, and wash your dishes. You didn’t wash your dishes again this morning.”

Hadn’t she? Dash remembered eating breakfast, but she was always in a hurry in the morning (or noon, or whenever breakfast was), eager to get out and fly her first laps across the open desert skies. The fate of her breakfast plates was a bit foggy. Besides, normally Nutmeg just sighed and washed hers anyway.

Still, orders were orders. “Right! On it, captain!” And with a flare of her wings she vanished over the side, once again the hardest working pegasus pony in the skies.

---

It turned out there were, like, a million loose things on an airship. Tools, drawers, ropes, dishes, chairs, hammocks, literally every single item that was not already nailed down could conceivably come loose and present a hazard if it weren’t secured.

Fortunately, the Orithyia had plenty of drawers. After a few minutes of trying the ‘proper’ way to secure the ship, she realized just about everything could be tossed into the drawers and locked shut. It was a stroke of genius, but in the interest of humility she decided not to tell Nutmeg the specifics.

She found him at the wheel, adjusting the levers that controlled the airship’s speed and elevation. As long as they were still tethered to the air iceberg the elevation lever (or ‘elevator,’ as he called it) was basically just decoration. Even if they let all the hydrogen out of the envelope, the ship would just hang from the iceberg’s side like a deflated balloon.

The throttle, however, was quite important. Icebergs had a rather chummy relationship with inertia, and unless some very powerful force acted upon them, they wanted to stay put. Nutmeg cut power to the engines, and the constant whine of the propellers faded, leaving a silence that rang in Rainbow Dash’s ears for minutes afterward. Without the airship pulling it forward, the iceberg began to slow, and some tens of minutes later it finally crept to a stop above the outskirts of the town.

Rainbow Dash peered over the railing. Five hundred feet below, ponies and buffalo mixed on the ground, pointing up at iceberg. Foals ran in circles, chasing after snowflakes, and the earth beneath their hooves began to darken and turn to mud as drops of water fell from the melting ‘berg.

“There we are!” Nutmeg exclaimed. “Another successful delivery. Well done, Miss Dash.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Rainbow squinted at the horizon. “Think pirates will attack us here?”

“Well, they never have before, but anything’s possible!” Nutmeg locked the wheel in place and slipped into his climbing gear. It was mostly just a vest with ice axes and crampons and ropes, but he also wore a neat set of spiked horseshoes that gripped the ice and refused to slip.

They walked from the airship to the iceberg atop one of the swaying lines. Nutmeg moved with the grace and confidence of a cat, well-practiced with the high-wire act, but Dash slipped several times and had to use her wings for balance. She tried to play it off as nothing, but her cheeks burned with each misstep.

And why was she walking, anyway? She could fly. She frowned all the rest of the way to the iceberg.

The rest of their afternoon was spent decoupling the iceberg from the Orithyia. The steel rods that anchored the lines into the ice were expensive to replace, and if left behind would eventually fall to the earth as the iceberg melted. Then woe-betide any customer of theirs who happened to be below. So the insurance industry demanded their removal, and Rainbow Dash ruefully decided they were probably right about that one.

Finally there was only one rope left connecting the ship and the ‘berg, and Nutmeg gripped it with his legs. “See you back on the ship, Miss Dash!” he shouted, then swung his ice axe into the glacier, knocking the anchor free. It fell, and he swung hundreds of feet through the air to dangle beneath the airship like a spider hanging from a line. When it stopped swaying, he scrambled up, wings beating at the air for extra lift, and within seconds he was back aboard.

Rainbow Dash watched this from the side of the iceberg. Its sheer wall extended hundreds of feet above and below her, and to either side. It was like resting on the frozen edge of the world, and she felt her heat slowly leeching into the ice. Frost built on her hooves, and she knew if she waited the ice would eventually grow around her, encasing her, and she would stay with it forever.

In the interest of not being entombed in ice for the rest of time, she kicked away with a shower of ice chips. The smaller ones began their slow fall to the earth, while the larger chunks floated in place, bobbing among invisible waves before slowly drifting back to the ‘berg and fastening to it.

Nutmeg was waiting for her on the deck, coiling the last of the lines. His vest was laid over the railing to dry.

“What next?” she asked.

“Now? The best part, Miss Dash! We go get paid.”

---

There were no spires to tie the Orithyia to in Appleloosa, so they settled for landing the airship on the dusty plain outside of town. Drops of melting iceberg fell as rain onto the envelope, and Rainbow Dash sheltered her head with her wings as they ran for the town hall. Cold mud gave way to baking, hard-packed dirt in the space of just a few steps.

The ponies of Appleloosa were an excitable bunch, just as Dash remembered, and they all turned out to view their new iceberg with enthusiasm. Scarves and fancy hats were passed out to the foals and buffalo, and all the makings of a party were being laid out when Dash and Nutmeg arrived. They were promptly seated at the head table, hard ciders were poured into their mugs, and the rest of the day was a bit of a blur for Rainbow.

When she woke it was to the weak light of the early morning back aboard the Orithyia. She stank of sweat, her mouth tasted like vomit, and there was a huge pile of bits, larger than anything she’d ever seen, lying on the decking beside her hammock. She stared at them for a while, trying to remember just how much an air iceberg was worth.

Nutmeg was working the wheel up on deck. They were a few thousand feet above the earth, and Rainbow stumbled to the prow, leaning into the wind, letting its cool bite chase away the last muzziness left in her brain by all those ciders.

“Ahoy! Feeling better, Miss Dash?”

“Meh.” She spat over the rail. “Getting there. What next?”

“Next is the best part, Miss Dash! We go hunting!”

Yeah, that sounded pretty good. Rainbow Dash smiled, letting the wind pull her mane back, then slipped below decks for a bath.

Comments

[Derpmind]

a shower of ice chips. The smaller ones began their slow fall to the earth, while the larger chunks floated in place, bobbing among invisible waves before slowly drifting back to the ‘berg and fastening to it.

Because science fiction/magic/awesome!

[djthomp]

Aerial icebergs, how do they work?

[Lurks-no-More]

6761677
The Rule of Cool, obviously.

[AppleTank]

6761677
Magnets

[pterrorgrine]

Rainbow Dash

hydrogen

I smell trouble.

[Malandy]

Weird, but interesting!

I wonder what'll happen when people ponies notice Dash has left...

pointing up at the iceberg

[Lancerlot]

An awesome mare like her was bound to inspire jealousy and rivals, and soon the skies would swarm with corsairs and brigands and pirates and insurance agents, all jousting to make their names by taking her down.

Insurance agents representing: The Crimson Permanent Assurance!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lANSiGLWPzw