Flight to Nowhere

by computerneek

Burn

Her distance estimate turns out inaccurate; by the time she crests the hill to bring the source of the smoke into view, she knows she’s too far to teleport directly to her ship. She should be able to land within a couple minutes’ walk of it, though- and shortening slowly, thanks to her innate mana production. She’s almost ‘full’ by now. However…

She stops at the top of the hill, gazing down at the town beneath her. It’s a small village, matching Whiz’ short description of the one they’d passed over on the way. A nice little village, with a little market square, several dozen buildings, and at least eight house fires.

Oh yes, don’t forget the… things attacking the town. They stand upright- and she’d call them Shielgicians, except their legs aren’t shaped like a Shielgician’s, but more like her new form’s hind legs. So, Shielgician-oid? Regardless, they’re still attacking the village- wielding swords, wooden shields, and torches. The sort of weapons that are beyond easy to deflect with minute amounts of mana. Shields are among the easiest spells to produce, after all.

The villagers appear to be in a panic of some sort. At least some of them are running in circles; others seem to be attempting to fight. Still more appear to be trying to organize an evacuation- and a fourth group seems to be following a preplanned evacuation.

Perhaps the most important part of the village, though, is that the villagers all appear to be… well, like her sister. Four-legged, wingless, and very colorful. As she starts her canter down the hill- the villagers are clearly managing a faster gait, she’ll have to investigate that sometime- she searches for a local with wings. She doesn’t want to look like an alien, after all…

Interesting. That body seems to have something sticking out of its forehead. Maybe it’s a birth defect? Rather… Unlikely. Especially when there’s two. Three. Oh, that one’s wearing golden armor, but it’s also dead. He? She? She’s not sure, from this far away.

She’s halfway down the hill when she locates a second set of golden armor. The villager wearing it seems to have donned it hastily, but is locked in battle with one of the… Minotaurs? She’s close enough to recognize the form by now. While she canters, she watches the armored villager drop the freshly dead minotaur on top of one of its companions and leap into the air to assault another hostile on the other side of a house.

Leap into the air.

Leap into the air, on white wings.

So, the village is familiar with creatures like herself. No need to worry about that, at least. She deploys her own shield while she approaches and, finally, enters the town, headed directly for the main concentration of the attackers. Mana-based attacks, while far less researched than shields, are still fairly easy, even without the focusing conduit of a sidearm.

Ahh! Her first minotaur! This should be fun. The din of battle echoes from ahead as she draws the intended assassin out of hiding. Thanks to this, compounded with her focus on the battle, she completely misses the yell that golden-armored villager with the pointy thing poking out of his forehead sent in her direction. The yell that might have been intended to alert her to a danger, spur her on… Or to order her to turn back. Not that she cares- the thing is swinging its sword now. She can’t wait to see its expression when it bounces off her invisible shield.

Aaaand- Drat! Whatever that blue glow around the flying metal shield was, it stole the glory! And the monster’s attention… She huffs indignantly, using a quick burst of mana to reduce the monster’s nervous cavity to the consistency of chunky salsa. Suffice it to say, the thing keels over rather quickly. She glances around for the offending shield and, not finding it, trots forwards, towards the main party.

She doesn’t reach it, though. That same golden-armored pointy-forehead decided he wanted to get in her path, yelling something into her face. He passes right through her shield- she’s only calibrated it against the minotaurs- and forcibly stops her advance.

Funny, she can actually understand what he’s saying. Kinda. A little bit. About as much as she understands Whiz when she talks about her… whatever it’s called, the boring thing.

Finally, it clicks in her mind. Now, she understands him quite clearly- his words, at least. Something about being out of her mind and going away from danger. Perhaps he’s the locals’ equivalent of the Shielgic Defense Force?

“I can fight too,” she states, interrupting his yelling.

He issues her a heavy sigh. “Leave the fight to us,” he orders. “If you want to help, go back a street, hang a left, and help the survivors.”

Disappointed, she agrees, and does as she was told. She’d never gotten into the Defense Force herself, and given the planet’s young civilization’s war-torn beginnings, she’s also quite used to taking orders from soldiers. He seems satisfied with her action and, while she canters back to the street he’d indicated, he turns back in the direction she had originally been headed and gallops away.

She’s tempted to follow as soon as he’s out of sight, but she doesn’t. A friend saved is worth more than an enemy defeated any day.

---

Finally! The last drop of that wretched uninfused fuel finally squeezes its way into the refinery intake, and she seals the cap. It’ll take it a few hours yet to finish reinfusing; however, the capacitors are full, and interior mana density is up to about a quarter of normal levels. She trots out of the core sector, closing the hatch behind her, and glances around the empty passenger bay.

“Thiz?”

---

She reaches the end of the side street, glancing both ways before she emerges. It’s one of the streets with circles being worn in it… Great. She sets to work organizing the natives, taking advantage of the various information she’d gathered from above the town- where the attackers are, where the organized evac seemed to be headed, and so on. She should be able to cross paths with them fairly quickly, get everyone together. Shielgicians are always harder to beat when they’re together- hopefully, the natives are similar.

However, luck would not have her. She’s on the wrong side of the party of survivors when they’re found; thus, at least two of the townsfolk are killed before she hears the blood-curdling scream… and very nearly teleports over, stopping herself only barely in time; what they call ‘teleportation’ isn’t truly teleportation. Yes, it moves very fast, and matters little what is in between; however, it is far from instant. At this piddling little range, such an act would cost her a precious five seconds or so- and, even from the other side of the party, a shield takes hardly an eyeblink to deploy. Thus, their attackers’ next blows fall on a rippling transparent golden dome while she makes her way around the party in an effort to minimize the mana cost of her return blows.

On her way, she contemplates exactly how best to eliminate her foes. Some of the natives seem to be staring at her, but no matter; she still needs to eliminate them, preferably without spending too much mana; she’ll have to walk back to her ship at this point. She could convert their heads into salsa, just like the first… But while it had certainly been satisfying, that had been a rather significant waste of mana, and unlike Shielgic, there is no virtually limitless supply in the atmosphere for her to draw on. Alternately, she could simply levitate one of their confused swords out of their grasp, and swing that through all of their necklines. Probably the cheapest solution, in terms of mana- and, that in mind, she immediately starts the levitation.

The minotaur lets go of his sword- letting out a terrified yelp- as soon as it starts floating on its own. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to dwell on it for very long; it takes her about five seconds to dispatch them all, then she drops the sword again, and turns back towards the party… every member of which is now staring at the ex-attackers.

“Keep going,” she urges- and, shortly, they’re under way once again.

“Thiz! Where are you?”

Uh-oh. That’s her older sister’s voice, over their telepathic link. Hopefully, she’s powering it fully from the ship’s end.

“Um, in a little trouble, I think,” she answers- and recalls her path, sending that along. Most of it, at any rate.

“Didn’t I tell you to stay inside?”

“You said until the power was back on…”

“You know what I meant.”

“Uh… But these villagers need help!”

“Villagers?”

“Yes… that village we passed over is under attack, I’m helping them evacuate.”

The link cuts off.

She blinks once. Her sister had never cut the link like that, save when she had been terribly angry… Oh. Yep, she’s in big trouble now. At least she’ll have a few hours at least to consider her response; she’ll have to walk all the way back to the ship, unless her sister comes running out after her; even if that happens, her sister can hardly trot, let alone gallop… Which, by the way, she’s starting to figure out. The locals make it seem so easy it’s unfair!

… Then again, it is pretty easy, and now she’s starting to run low on mana. She’s encountered- and joined with- two other evacuee groups, each forcing her to expand the limits- and mana requirement- of her shield. That last attack had consisted of no less than eleven minotaurs; if another like it comes, she worries she might not have the mana required to defeat the hostiles without weakening her shield. If the natives can fight, this should solve the problem… For one attack.

A scream goes up from the other side of the party. She whips her head around, looking; it seems they’re looking between the buildings. Some half dozen or so natives are staring around a building to her right, while the rest are looking left… Where, a momentary virtually-free scanning spell reveals, almost fifty minotaurs are waiting to pounce.

Her eyes widen… and return, while her ears twitch to a familiar noise.

A noise that normally means the Shielgic Defense Force is almost there.

The high-pitched whine of a Mana Engine, normally inaudible from inside the craft.

By the stars, if these villagers are frightened by her flying swords, they’ll be absolutely terrified by what’s about to come.

Her shield shatters into millions of fragments as the first focused beam of mana rips right over their heads- and she can’t hear the rest of the battle, for the screaming.

---

Her sister hadn’t just defied her instructions once again. No, that would have been simple and, normally, safe. Rather, what she’s done is far worse.

First, she abandoned the protection of their shuttle, entering a possibly hostile world.

Second, she had done it alone.

Third, she had found something dangerous… And rather than reporting it, had marched right in.

And now, of course, she’s in danger herself. She hadn’t said as much, but it was implied.

So, leaving the reactor to do its thing, she had seated herself back in the cockpit, drawn on some of the ship’s power to adjust the seat into something more comfortable for her current form, and placed one of her hooves on the control bar. As a matter of fact, she’d even reshaped the console a bit to make it easier to maintain contact during high-G maneuvers.

Then, she had proven to the universe that the object she’s sitting in side is not an inert lump of metal, nor even a simple aircraft. No- she’d lit off her spacecraft’s main drive, rising vertically into the air and folding the landing gear before she accelerated- nearly instantly- to almost twice the speed of sound. In the direction the shuttle had been pointing away from.

And now, as she breaks over the horizon from that town at close to mach three (any faster and she’d outpace the reactor), she gains an eyewitness report on the scene… through the fiber-optic cable connected to the belly ‘pilot’s turret’, one of the only two weapons on the ship directly connected to the main control grid.

The magic shield her sister is using stands out to her as she kills her speed, reducing below the speed of sound. No more need to burn so much mana in motive power. Besides…

There’s no physical trigger to pull, but what better way is there to announce her presence to her sister than with the equivalent of artillery fire? She drops that belly turret into all-out rapid-fire, starting right over her sister’s head- at that party of minotaur hostiles her mana-sensor scan reported in that area- and sweeping across the village, through the thickest parties of those hostiles. She specifically shoots around the natives that bear similarity in form to either her or her sister.

As such, her very first shot doesn’t only shatter her sister’s flimsy shield (nevermind that a single shielgician’s personal supply could never make a shield strong enough to stand up to these weapons for even a moment), but it also simply erases about thirty hostiles… And an entire house.

All told, it takes her just eight seconds to eliminate the majority of the attackers… And extinguish half the house fires, if only by eliminating the houses as well. Hopefully, not too much of value to the survivors was damaged.

After those eight seconds, she releases the maximum-rate fire, trading out her prior volume of fire for more precise sniper shots, to eliminate individual hostiles… including those locked in combat with natives. Even as she does this, she directs her craft to slow to a hover over the town.

An arrow glances off the shuttle’s shield. Heh- they might be able to overload her sister’s shield, but this one could deflect the very weapons she’s using… Not for very long, but it could.

Comments

[Thiz]

8877844
Technically the word Shielgician came from the planet they're from: Shielgic.
Shielgic was known for having a shield around the entire planet, and for it's magical inhabitants.
Thus, Shiel_d-Magic
This gets extended into Shielgician, because I like the word "Magician"

[computerneek]

8879004
And that's also why your aversion to the word 'spell' is so strange.

[Thiz]

8879404
How is that strange?
"Spell" gives me the completely wrong idea of how their magic works.

[LostArchivist]

...Wonder what brought on a sudden attack of minotaurs. Also, if they got to what is presumably Ponyville (which is rather centered in the country... almost as if to make it most prominent to a story or something...), I think it's safe to say the rest of the country is buggered.

I wonder if the residents are somewhat less happy about the amount of dakka used? 😇
(They got an arrow shot at them. I think that's a yes.)

Next up: explosive diplomacy!
I bet Dash is mildly miffed, too. Did the shuttle make a Rainboom, or is that only for magic-assisted flight?

[computerneek]

8879820

or is that only for magic-assisted flight?

Nevermind that it's magic-powered flight, on a different kind of flight... XD Nah, Rainboom- and any other booms I might make (See Iron Mountain) are only for ponies. The arrow was probably minotaur; it's already been mentioned that ALL the ponies did, once they saw the ship, was scream.

[LostArchivist]

8880277
Yeah, that gets confusing fast. :D
Well, then that gives you an opening for confusing Dash when she gets outsped by something NOT leaving a coruscating trail.
And Thiz wondering how the heck a pony is traveling around mach 1.5 despite not having (their) magic (as I'm sure he'll find out soon).

Using pronouns for characters that get rule 63'd is a pain. You already know this, but I have to complain. :D