Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
"Smoke dead astern!"
"Hard to port!"
The Mikoyan veered to the left.
A whole lot of work went into making those three sentences possible.
The Mikoyan might have been designed to be run by three ponies at a time - but, apparently, the designers assumed that those three ponies would already have years of sailing or windjamming experience, and would only need a bit of familiarization with this particular model. We didn't have anything of the sort - so all five of us had to work together, doing things we barely had any idea what to do, just to pull off a simple sight-and-turn without flipping upside-down and crashing.
First, up on top of the sterncastle was Blanche, who, with hawk-like Pegasus eyes and some binoculars, was looking around in all directions for any airships, dragons, pegasi, or other potential dangers. She had to learn a particular lingo - 'cloud' meant something fluffy in the air, while 'smoke' meant something from the ground, no matter whether one or the other happened to actually be smoke or clouds. Her announcement meant that she'd spotted some cloud or smoke or something on the ground directly behind us - which, since she hadn't seen anything of the sort ahead of us, meant that it had appeared roughly when we flew over it. Which was probably a bad sign.
Captain Red was on the bridge, in the sterncastle directly under Blanche's post. There were some speaking tubes to ease communications from one point in the ship to another. (They didn't work all that well, though, and one of my side-projects was rigging up a proper intercom system. Which was stalled by our complete lack of electrical wiring. We had CAT WHISKER as another option, but the buzzing codes didn't lend themselves well to rapid orders, and the Dairy had their own CAT WHISKER devices which could overhear ours if they got close enough.) She had to hear Blanche's shout over the noise of the wind, and move her attention from her usual job of long-range navigation to decide on what to do in the short-term - which, given our limited skills, at least kept her from being overwhelmed by a variety of choices. A simple, slow turn was about all we could manage - so that's what she called for.
Star Chaser was in the bridge with Red, serving as pilot. She had control of two big throttles, one for each of the main, stern-mounted engines. What each lever actually connected to was a valve, which could squeeze off the fluidized crush-gemstone running in pipes between the engine-core beneath the bridge, and each of the outboard engine nacelles. Less gemstone flow meant less magic, which meant the 'come to life' spell on the actual propellers starved, which slowed its turning, reducing its thrust... resulting in the whole ship yawing - that is, rotating to turn left or right. This didn't directly change our course, it simply meant that we kept traveling in the same direction while facing another.
That was where I came in. I was stationed amidships, between the two smaller propeller housings mounted there. My job, when we changed course, was to figure out the best way to rotate them up and down, and spin them faster and slower - as well as pick how fast the two propellers up on our mainmast needed to spin - to get us going in the right direction, and keep us from flipping upside-down. By rotating the port prop down a bit and the starboard prop up the same amount, I could roll the whole ship a few degrees leftish, so that the air flowing over the hull and along our keel would actually change our course to match our heading. As the main engines were throttled down, I had to throttle mine up and tilt them further up to make sure we maintained a steady lift. The top props helped with our pitch - spinning them harder pushed our nose down for a dive, slowing them down helped pushed the nose up to climb. It was all a bit of a mess, given that I was in the middle of the ship, couldn't really see outside, had only the most fundamentally basic of instruments to tell what our ship's tilt and acceleration were, had to keep a close ear on the speaking-tube, how hard every control was to shove, and the delays between when I moved something and when the ship responded; if I didn't have a slight leg up on the basic principles of flight from an old interest in World War One aircraft, and some MS-DOS era flight-simulator games, I wouldn't have had a chance of being able to manage all of that on my own. Fortunately, I did, and so was actually able to spend about half my time reading and prepping my experiments, while keeping an eye on my gauges and an ear for Red's voice.
At the time of the course change, Amethyst was napping, having tuckered herself out keeping an eye on the kids, running the galley, fiddling in the engine room, and doing a few of the other tasks necessary to keep the ship running that didn't involve directly flying it.
According to the ship's manual, the single pony on the bridge was supposed to watch through all the windows, plus navigate, plus control the main throttles. That wasn't going to be happening any time soon.
After we moved out of the potential direct line of fire, and Blanche confirmed nothing seemed to be rising up to meet us, Red ordered, "Full stop!". This didn't mean all the engines stopped - just the main ones, while I fiddled with the smaller ones to put us into a fairly steady hover, barring a change in the wind. "Owner to the bridge," Red added once we were steady. As I trotted to the back, I passed Star coming the other way to take my place, so that there'd be somepony ready to fiddle with the maneuvering props if we had to leave in a hurry.
When I climbed up to the bridge, Red was peering out one of the side windows near the back, looking down at the ground with some binoculars. I snagged another set, joined her, and pressed the things up against my glasses. "What am I looking at?"
"It's mostly gone now," she said. "Blanche says her wings feel back up to full strength, so I sent her down to take a look. I need you up on overwatch until she gets back."
"Aye, ma'am," I acknowledged, and went out on deck. I wasn't sure why she hadn't just sent Star up top, instead of shuffling us around, but at the moment, we needed a lookout - and it was her call to make me it. So up the stairs I went, and started slowly circling around and around. I was glad for the pseudo-sails above the sterncastle; they helped aim the airstream while in flight, but right now, they were handy to keep me shaded from the noonday sun. I still had to squint at the bright landscape, especially after being inside so long.
We were, oh, fifty miles or so north of Oasis. Red had decided that since Marble knew we were planning on going there, it was possible she'd spread the word to our enemies... so our plan was to drop me off as close to the Great Battlefield as the Mikoyan could get without risking getting shot down, and while I tried finding whatever I could there, the rest of the gang would head back to Oasis to try hiring some new crew. If the Battlefield got me, then Red and the Mikoyan could keep trying to do the job; if something happened to them in Oasis, I'd have a chance to go back to help them, and, failing that, to get on with the job myself without them. It wasn't the best plan - just the best one we could think of in case something went wrong.
In addition to poker, we'd started up a betting pool for what would go wrong first. My points were on 'engine trouble', Blanche had picked 'hostile locals', Red was 'enemy attack', Star thought 'loved ones taken hostage' was most likely, and Amethyst had plunked her money down on 'monsters'.
After a while, I saw Blanche circling back up, taking advantage of a handy thermal updraft to climb, and let Red know. Our scout landed on the rear balcony, panting from the effort, and went in. I went back to scanning the horizon. After about five minutes, Red came up the steps, said, "She wants to talk to you," and took over lookout as I went back down.
Red was poring over our navigation charts. "What's the word?", I inquired casually. She gave me a stink-eye, so I sighed, and stated, "Owner reporting as requested, ma'am." She nodded at that.
"We're here," she said, pointing to a spot on the map with a hoof. "And there's nothing here, according to the maps. What Red found was... a cave. A big cave. More of a ravine, with the top closed off, maybe a thousand feet deep and so long she didn't have time to fly from one end to another - over a dozen miles, at least. She grabbed a few rock samples. What we saw is a small opening, one that's not visible from above, or from anypony walking around down there. I think us flying right over it might have caused a small cave-in, or something of the sort, which sent out a bunch of dust. One of those freak random chance events. It's very possible nopony else knows it exists. We don't have time to explore it right now - but for now, we can use it as a rendezvous, which Marble doesn't know about - and even Brick doesn't."
I nodded. "Call it the 'Alpha Site'," stealing an idea from the Stargate TV series, "and when we get a chance, we can see if it's a good place to put a static HQ. For the Battlefield scouting - if you don't show up to pick me up, I'll look for you here, and if you aren't around, go check at Oasis. Let me make sure I can find the spot with the maps I'll be taking..." We revised our timetables with the new sub-plan, until Red sent me back amidships and called Star back to the bridge, and we were on our way again.
The closer we got to the Great Battlefield, the lower we'd flown. This was based on the recommended no-fly zones in our charts, which were derived from various reports of airships, balloons, pegasi, dragons, and other things in the air in the region suddenly blowing up. Such attacks were also why I was willing to risk investigating the place at all; anything that could shoot down an airship from miles away sounded like something quite useful, and my 'special knowledge' just might give me a shot at figuring out how to control something which no native Equestrian would have ever had a chance to.
Our final approach was skimming barely over the treetops, coming up to the backside of a hill. If the Mikoyan rose above that hilltop, then there was every chance that would be the last maneuver she ever made. This limitation of our possible escape routes made us all a bit nervous and twitchy, and Amethyst joined Blanche on lookout, so we'd have that much more of a chance to spot an attacker early, and have a slightly better chance of being able to fly away. Fortunately, we seemed to be entirely on our own.
I gave the pups a last nursing while at my station, stroking their fuzzy little heads between shoving the levers. Red directed us to come to a halt at the base of the hill, and to make a fairly quick one-eighty, so that all the Mikoyan needed to do if we were surprised was to kick the engines to full throttle.
I'd assembled everything I planned on taking with me a while ago, and now just needed to suit up. My tan walking outfit, Chekov, pepper spray, the Hope necklace, the Warden whistle, a CAT WHISKER box, charged gems, and assorted odds and ends for my pockets, to take with me wherever I went. In addition to all that, I'd packed a crate of supplies, to use for a base camp if I decided to stay longer, or if the Mikoyan didn't show up on time.
I watched as the rope was pulled back up, and the airship started sliding through the air back south, until it was out of sight. After a quick sigh, I shoved the crate into a handy hollow, and started zig-zagging up the slope.
When I was near the top, I slowed down, and pulled out one of my gizmos - a pair of small mirrors and some folded cardboard, which I assembled into a periscope. I inched my way up the bare rock face until the top of the periscope could see down the other side of the hill without exposing even the tips of my horns...
Off as far as I could see, it wasn't quite the mud-strewn mess of the 'No Man's Land', between trenches in pictures of World War One battlefields... but there were plenty of craters, some filled with water, and churned-up earth, and broken-off trees... and, scattered here and there, in various states of brokenness, were what I could only take to be machines of war. Some looked like tanks or field artillery; some like crashed flying things; there was something that looked like a pony AT-AT, missing one and a half legs; and a whole bunch of stuff that I couldn't make heads or tails of. Or, to put it another way: it was the freakin' motherlode.
For the next hour, I simply sat in place there, looking over the area for any sign of movement, and sketching out rough maps. Since the whole place seemed quiet, I then turned my attention to the far side of the hill, looking for anything like a path containing concealment. There wasn't a path - but with the churned-up earth, there were plenty of cow-sized bits of cover, so I worked out a way downhill with the shortest distances between those points.
I took a breath, stuck my hat on the end of my periscope, and held it up... and, after a minute, nothing happened to it. So I stuck my head up over the ridge - looking down with my own eyes... and I survived. After a few more stages of this, I was over the hump, and belly-down in a shallow crater. I checked my next spot, a turned-up bit of turf with a ridge I could crawl behind, pushed myself up to trot over to it...
... and the next thing I knew, I was rolling downhill, tail-over-teakettle, covered in dust and dirt, my chest aching, my ears ringing.
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Mines?
You bastard.
...Mines?
Well, possibly, or traps... But she could have just tripped... Or the gravity could be messed up. XD
Nice update.
And for some reason you using the word' frickin' mother lode made me think of doctor evil.
Given the title of the chapter, Missy's obviously run into some freaky bichromatic aliens.
1128599
Considering such ancient war machines as Omega Weapon,
i.imgur.com/ttIFS.jpg
AKA THAT Ugly S.O.B are still roaming around and quite hostile...
yeah...I wouldn't wanna go there without a flak jacket....
And now ye shall look upon that with which the Wardens of old waged holy war upon the forces of evil, and ye shall know fear for the second time.
Ah sterncastle. A world only non-sailors use. We salties just call it the stern.
Bravo on the description of actual maneuvering techniques. If your rudder is sticky or lost you can still turn so long as you have engines, albeit slow as hell. Useful for spinning around at a dead stop though.
And I will stand by my statement: To hell with airships.
Fudge stands at the bow of the Catharsis in the George Washington crossing the Delaware pose, badass cape billowing in the wind
If Missy knows that Latin is the language of Magic, then why doesn't "She" create her own fancy-bodancy thermal vision goggles?