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Chapter 4

The Other Side Of The Rainboom (WIP)

The head of the department for the study of the “Sonic Rainboom Effect”, Dr.Spectro, has recently been criticised over his new theory that a sonic rainboom could indeed function as a way to transport oneself over vast areas. He went on to theorise the way in which it could also result in time travel or as a means of multi-universal travel. Dr.Spectro says that his ideas are based on expanded theories of Albert Equine’s theory of relativity and that the new scientific discovery, that light may not in fact be the fastest means of travel within the universe, helps to reinforce his own theories. The scientific community believes that his theory is just in fact a way of getting new funding from LUNA - The Administration for the study of Light, the Universe, Nebula and Atoms.

Chapter 4

Colonel Ambler was once again in the dark control room as he had been for the past five days. Ever since the prisoner had come into his life, he had spent every waking moment on it. Watching it, studying it, trying to learn its secrets but this was easier said than done. Prisoner RD refused to crack. Most other prisoners would have broken a long time ago, or would have at least shown signs of stress. She,on the other hand, seemed constantly resilient, still showing the same lack of cooperation that she always had.

They had been interrogating the prisoner since she had first arrived. They were doing nothing too serious, even though the Geneva Convention and human rights clearly didn’t apply to this particular prisoner.

The Colonel stared at the screen, watching his prisoner sit in her cell. If, the need for information wasn’t so urgent, he would have admired her resilience. At the moment though the Pentagon had recently become involved and this raised a whole new range of problems. Earlier that day, a whole team of scientists came to the base and had requisitioned the hangar nearest the prisoner. They had filled the hangar with sophisticated machinery that only he and the base commander were allowed to see. Already they had nearly filled half of the massive hangar and they told him that more was to come. The Pentagon had clearly taken a keen interest in the prisoner.

Strangely they had also ordered that the prisoner be kept on the premises instead of being moved to a more secure location. They obviously didn’t want any extra attention. Even so the personnel on site were becoming anxious as to why a large area of the base had suddenly become restricted. Thankfully the pilot had not been spreading information around the camp which would have resulted in certain repercussions that he would rather not have to go through with. The pilot was keeping his word though and so he was being left alone for the time being.

Without looking away from the screen the Colonel called out.

“Have we gathered any more information from the prisoner since I last checked?”

He heard footsteps come over to beside him and a voice reply back.

“Negative sir. Prisoner RD will still only tell us that she is from Equestria and that somepony,” the Colonel turned to the man next to him, gave him a stern look for a few seconds before turning back to the screen allowing the man to continue, “called Twilight Sparkle will come and save her.”

“Have we learnt anything about this Twilight Sparkle?”

“No sir. We believe that wherever the prisoner is from, they use code names to communicate with each other. The code names could be acronyms. We currently having a team trying to crack them and cross-check them against any known terrorists.”

The Colonel was beginning to become worried. This group, who seemed to be calling themselves Equestria, was beginning to seem like an ever more professional group. This prisoner was a tribute to this. She had either been well trained in anti-interrogation techniques or was just a very resilient individual.

“Could drugs be used to gather more information from the prisoner?” asked the Colonel, still staring at the screen.

“That’s another negative sir. We have no idea what results the drugs could have on the prisoner and whether her body would be able to handle them. They could throw her body into shock and possibly kill her. The newly arrived Pentagon scientists, have taken samples of the prisoner’s blood and have told us that they will run tests to see if any drugs will have the desired affect on the prisoner.”

The Colonel continued to stare at the screen, taking it all in. He would have to use other techniques to get anything out the prisoner but he would have to time it right. Then he saw what he wanted. The prisoner’s shoulder suddenly slumped and she rested her head against the wall.

The Colonel stood upright and walked out of the room. He had finally found what he had been waiting for: a sign of defeat. He called back to the faces within the room.

“Begin to transfer the prisoner to the interrogation room and allow no one in until I get there.”

Behind him he heard the sound of shoes scuffling and of orders being given. As he walked alone to the interrogation room he treated himself to a small smile. This was his opportunity to get the information that he wanted. The prisoner had revealed her true feelings; she may have begun to break. When she first arrived, they all believed that she was already broken but as soon as they began to ask questions she suddenly gathered her resolve and refused to give any answers.

This would be the first time that he would actually see the prisoner in person; he had only seen her through the monitors before. He had seen the looks of the interrogators after they had questioned the prisoner. They had come out of the room with the far-off look of shock on their faces. It was no surprise, it’s not every day that you talk to a pony and expect to get an answer back. At first the prisoner seemed to share the same reaction to the fact that they shared a common tongue but it didn’t help much in getting any information.

He soon arrived outside a steel door with two armed guards on either side of it. He looked at them. They both stood rigidly to attention, staring forward. They both had a M16A1 in their hands, and a Beretta 92 in a side holster cocked and loaded for immediate action. They definitely looked a match for the prisoner and yet the assault rifles were too large if any trouble happened within the cell but hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

“I’d like to have a word with the prisoner,” said the Colonel in a certain way that only came with years of practise of being an important part of a society.

The guards each replied with a gruff, “ yes sir.”

One of the guards slung his assault rifle over his shoulder, pulled out a key on a chain attached to his waist and began to unlock the door.

The guard next to the Colonel steeled himself; his whole body was tense, as was the guard in front of him. The Colonel, on the other hand, was calm, or at least seemed to be. Within himself though he was also tensing with anticipation at what lay behind the thick steel door. Finally the door became unlocked. The guard stood to the side as the Colonel calmly walked into the interrogation room.

He saw prisoner RD sitting in the centre of the room. He also saw that unfortunately her shoulders were no longer slumped and that she had that same steel expression that she always seemed to carry upon her face.

Her most favoured mask, thought the Colonel. The guards followed him inside, standing to either side of the now closed door. Their eyes were staring straight ahead but all their focus was on the prisoner that they now shared a room with. The Colonel noted with dissatisfaction that their guns did in fact seem too large and cumbersome to be use-able in this room.

The Colonel walked up to the chair that was positioned in front of the prisoner. The prisoners eyes stared intently at him. He returned the look. Luckily the prisoner was tied down to the floor by heavy bolts around a reinforced pair of handcuffs around her hind legs. She had already tried to break the handcuffs and the lock during earlier interrogations but to no avail. She wasn’t going anywhere. He sat down in the chair and looked at the prisoner in front of him. She was sitting down on the bare concrete floor looking straight at him. Occasionally, her eyes would flicker over the guards stationed either side of the door, evaluating her chances of escape. He waited until he saw a flicker of disappointment within her eyes and then began his questioning.

“What is your name?” He wasn’t about to start a good cop, bad cop routine as he didn’t want to lie to himself. This wasn’t the time for it anyway.

Prisoner RD didn’t reply, she just sat there on her back legs looking straight into the Colonel’s eyes. He stared back, their eyes battling each others, willing the other into defeat. They were sharing a silent battle that only they themselves could experience. Eventually one of them relented.

“I’m Rainbow Dash.”

The Colonel could understand why the previous interrogators had had that expression on their faces but hopefully he wasn’t showing it. At least they were getting somewhere. This was the first time the prisoner had relinquished her name. The name that they had chosen for the prisoner seemed to fit surprisingly well.

“How did you get here?” asked the Colonel in an authoritative tone and saw that the prisoner’s gaze relented once again.

“Sonic rainboom,” was all that she said back as she looked at the ground. The Colonel continued to use his most powerful asset and carried on staring into her. “Look, I don’t know how I got here! One minute I was in Equestria and now I’m here with you!”

Her deep purple eyes were now once again staring straight at the Colonel, full of anger. She is an aggressive one, he thought to himself.

“Do you know that your sonic rainboom nearly killed two men?”

For a few brief moments he saw a look of regret flash over the prisoner’s face but it was quickly replaced by a familiar mask.

“They attacked me first!” shouted back the pony.

“No, they didn’t.” He paused for a few seconds before carrying on. “When your sonic rainboom happened one of the planes crashed and the pilot only just managed to escape with his life. Even so, it’s lucky that he didn’t die from that altitude. The other then went on to catch you. You attacked first and they reacted.”

The Colonel looked at the graze across the prisoner’s forehead.

“How is that cut of yours? You’re lucky to be alive.”

There was no response besides another glare. He had gotten all that he was going to get out for her for the time being. He stood up and turned to leave when he heard a small voice.

“I didn’t mean to.”

Ignoring the voice, he began to walk out of the room. The two guards took up positions on the other side of the door and the Colonel walked out. Just before the door separated himself from the prisoner he turned to her and pointed to a camera in the corner of the room.

“We’re watching you. Don’t forget that.”

Later when he would watch the recording of the session he would see her shrink into herself at those words.

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Rainbow Dash was once again in her tiny slice of prison. The room had seemed to get smaller and smaller over what had felt like months. Maybe it had been months. She certainly slept enough for it to have been months. Her life now consisted of sleeping, eating and being dragged out the room and placed into a larger room where some of the creatures would ask her questions. They had told her that they were called “humans” but to her they were just monsters.

Food seemed to arrive at random times and it was never very appealing. Even more so by the fact that sometimes after eating she would feel drowsy, fall asleep and then wake up with bruises and needle marks adorning her body. They must have used some kind of magic on the food to make her unconscious. Despite this fact she still always forced herself to eat; she would need all the energy she could get if she had any hope of escaping.

Her ears pricked up as she heard familiar sounds on the other side of the door. It swung open and she tried to back away, as she always did, and, like always, they blind folded her and dragged her out of the room. Her hooves scrapped across the hard ground as she was carried by her front legs to a familiar room. These were the only two places that she knew in this world. They stopped, the blindfold was torn off and she was thrown into the room. The two guards followed her in. She walked over to the middle of the room and sat down, as she had done every since she had first arrived here. One guard wrapped her back legs in tight iron constraints and locked them to the ground. She had seen similar things in Equestria but had never had the misfortune of wearing a pair.

The guards exited the room and left her to her own thoughts. She waited there, bored with nothing to do. Occasionally she would glance up at the camera, glowering at it but it had no effect and so she continued to sit there. She ran over a plan in her mind. It wasn’t perfect but it was better than nothing. She had already tested the metal around her back legs and found that she could quite easily break the chain and then, when the door opened, she would fly out as fast as she could and escape.

Simple but effective, thought Rainbow Dash with a small sense of pride but when the door did open, her body went rigid.

In through the door came the same human that she had seen only once before. The man with the evil eyes. The human was most likely male judging by the voice but it was hard to tell as they all seemed to sound the same. She stared at him as he came and sat down on the chair in front of her, as he had done the past time. Also like the last time, he stared at her and she stared back. His eyes were examining her and she could feel herself being searched from within by those piercing eyes. They soon found what they were searching for as the human began to talk.

“When you perform a sonic rainboom how does your body react?”

Nearly all the questions that she had been asked seemed to focus on sonic rainbooms. They seemed to be fascinated by them. Everypony would normally ask her questions about them but since she had been here the questions were focused on things that even she couldn’t answer. They wanted to know every little thing that she did while performing one, every minute detail, every tiny tremor of information that she could reveal was of the utmost importance to them.

Rainbow Dash steeled herself. She looked into the eyes of the monster before her and turned her back to it. She could feel the eyes on the back of her head, burrowing deep into her but she ignored them.

“Don’t you ignore me.” Yet she continued to do so. “We will find out what we want to know.” She could hear anger beginning to form in the voice of the normally calm human.

She heard him rise from the chair and begin to walk towards her. She felt the eyes get closer. All or nothing.

She kicked out her back legs with all the strength that she had stored over the months. Her legs broke free of their metal shackles and landed in the midriff of the human behind her. She turned around and saw the human on the ground, groaning in pain. She looked at the broken chains on the floor and her heart flipped. Quickly she flew to the corner of the room that the human had once pointed out. In it was a small square box; she kicked it with all her might. It smashed open and made a small sizzling sound. Now they couldn’t see her anymore.

She heard sounds on the other side of the door. She flew above it and hovered there. The door burst open and in rushed two humans. They quickly looked around the room and immediately noticed her absence. One of them looked upwards and spotted her. With amazing speed she lashed out at it with a right hook. It fell to the ground landing in a heavy heap. The other human turned its whole body to face her and began to raise a strange device but it was too slow. She once again kicked out and the body flew to the ground.

Rainbow Dash shot out of the room and over the two unconscious bodies to find herself in a large hallway. She heard shouts coming from one direction and so quickly flew down the other. She had no idea where she was going. It was now that she wished that she had thought out her plan a bit more. Regardless she flew as fast as she could in any direction that she could. Eventually she would find a way out, or so she hoped. She noted that the walls looked far too thick for her to be able to break through them.

Suddenly she stopped. Voices were coming from every direction, surrounding her. She looked around desperately for any avenue of escape but there was nothing but bare walls. Then she spotted a metallic grated cover high up on a wall. She flew up to it and kicked out with her back legs. It shattered and she flew inside. There wasn’t enough room to fly and so she had to crawl inside of it. With every movement she made a horrible, echoing noise as the metal groaned around her and so she tried to be as careful as possible. She heard voices below her as she silently crawled high above the view of the humans below.

It was a maze up here. Every new turn led to another. Every small metal wall looked the same. She was lost, even more so than before. The voices quickly became more quiet and more distant only to be replaced by a more familiar one.

“Lock the whole base down if you have to! We are not letting the prisoner escape.”

She had to find a way out of this maze quickly or she would never escape. She turned a corner and a ray of light blinded her. She blinked a few times before hurriedly crawling towards it. She crept up close to the grate and peered through. She saw two humans standing alert and looking around but behind them she saw something which she hadn’t seen for far too long. She saw a blue sky.

She took a deep breath through the nose, paused, and exhaled out of her mouth. She kicked the grate and flew through the hole. The two guards instantly became aware to her presence and began to go for something by their sides. She threw herself towards them. She briefly saw the confused expressions on the their faces before she broke through the glass door and embraced the great blue sky.

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Michael looked around at the sky around him. These were the moments when he loved what he did. The blue ocean surrounding him went on for as far as the eye could see, punctuated by the odd low hanging cloud. Towering over him was a heavy layer of cloud that blocked out most of the sun.

Michael was flying alone today. After the incident, patrols had been stepped up considerably but that was five months ago and now most patrols were confined to single planes. This patrol was coming to an end and he was nearing the airbase when a voice crackled over the radio.

“Bravo actual you have a hostile aircraft in your AO at heading 2-9-0 to your immediate position. Your orders are to engage and destroy. How copy?”

Michael replied instantly.

“Roger Hotel 1.2.” he wasn’t afraid anymore. He had been tested before and come out on top, this time would be no different. “Adjusting course for heading 2-9-0.”

Michael felt the adrenaline being pumped into his blood stream, fueling his muscles for whatever they must do. He began to check the radar for any signs of hostile aircraft. He heard the sound of his breathing over the radio. It was heavier than he expected.

“No sign of hostile aircraft on the radar.”

“Keep looking Bravo Actual. Target is in your AO,” came the reply.

Michael continued to check his monitors yet they showed no signs of any disturbances. Michael once again heard the voice over the radio.

“Target should be nine miles ahead of you and heading 3-1-0. How copy?”

Michael thought for a few seconds and then responded.

“Bandit could be above cloud cover. Proceeding to increase altitude.”

“Copy,” came the reply.

“Travelling through cloud layer, minor turbulence,” noted Michael as he passed through the clouds.

“Copy Bravo Actual. Any sign of the bandit?” asked the voice.

Michael scanned the sky in front of him and noted a small smudge in the distance.

“I have a possible sighting but no heat signature. Proceeding to move closer. Over.”

Michael flew his plane forward, using the thrusters for maximum effect. He quickly closed the gap and his grip tightened at the sight.

“I have a confirmed sighting of the bandit. Heading 3-1-0.”

“Confirmed Bravo Actual. Proceed to engage,” commanded the voice.

Michael flicked the switch to arm the plane’s weapons of war. “Roger. Master switch on. Proceeding to engage.”

Michael swung the plane into a level firing position and began to try and get a lock on the small aircraft. He looked on with confusion when the on-board computers refused to lock onto the plane.

“That’s a negative on lock. Proceeding to get closer and attack with cannons,” said Michael over the radio.

“Affirmative,” was all that came back.

Michael could hear his breathing get even heavier over the radio but he ignored it. All his attention was focused solely on the target in front of him. He was closing fast on the target and was nearly within firing range when his heart stopped. To Michael's horror the aircraft disappeared in an explosion of light and he realised why he hadn’t been able to lock onto it. Before he could stop himself he heard his screams inside his helmet as his world was enclosed in a bright, colourful light.

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Glossary for military/air force terms

AO - Area of Operations

Bandit - An aircraft identified as an enemy

To anyone still reading this is, thanks.

-Alex

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Cunt_Crusader

Cunt_Crusader #1 · Nov 28th, 2011 · · ·

OOOHHH! looking awesome!

Reaper1oo

Reaper1oo #2 · Nov 28th, 2011 · · ·

Not bad! Have to say that I want to read more of it!

Ghost-091

Ghost-091 #3 · Nov 28th, 2011 · · ·

From time to time there are some very minor spelling and grammar mistakes (ie use-able is supposed to be usable), usually it's the military grammar so that's not as big a deal. Good work. Overall this story is shaping up to be quite the interesting ride. Can't wait to see what's going to happen next.

One last nit pick. The weapons that guards have are wrong. The US military has long since moved beyond the old M16A2 and is now using the M16A4 or the M4A1. M16A2 went out of use just before Desert Storm, if I remember correctly (this I'm unsure about, but I know it was phased out by the late 1990's at latest). Also, all branches, save the USMC (from what I've been told), use the M9 Beretta pistol. I'm fairly confident that the Beretta 92F is the civilian version of the M9, but there are differences (AR15/M16 type differences, which are mostly minor). Again, this is a nit pick, because I'm a soldier and just want to pass the info and experiences I have on to those who might find uses for it. Usually these are extremely minor overall, but add a more realistic aspect to the story.

Cody MacArthur Fett

Cody MacArthur Fett #4 · Nov 28th, 2011 · · ·

This story . . . desperately needs a rewrite. It needs one because the idea that anyone, never mind a colonel, could mistake a multi-colored pegasus for a member of a Earth terrorist group is so ludicrously absurd that it breaks suspension of disbelief like a sledgehammer to a wine glass. The idea that someone could escape a base while banging around the sound amplifiers known as air vents is also absurd, as are several plot points. I say again, this needs a rewrite.

alexrockclimber

alexrockclimber #5 · Nov 28th, 2011 · · ·

43739

Thanks for all this. I'll look over it when I have time and the last chapter is still getting edited for grammatical errors. All this info does help and, as you said, makes it more believable. I'll also change the flight Lieutenant as I thought that it would be the same as the RAF.

alexrockclimber

alexrockclimber #6 · Nov 28th, 2011 · · ·

43750

Some things like this will be ironed out and made more believable later on. Thanks for the advice on things like that. A multi-coloured talking pegasus is also absurd.

Meta Knight