Virga

by Dave Bryant

ENE

The leisurely pace of refit became a hectic rush. Repairs and adjustments were finished with careful haste. Titles and chain of command were settled. “There’s room for only one captain on a ship. Folks get mighty confused otherwise,” Galea pointed out. “For the duration of the cruise you will be Ms. Brass.” Rose made no comment, accustomed as she was to military traditions and practicalities, and the ship’s master continued, “Wish I had an experienced XO—ah, executive officer—but Mister Fancy Pants will have to do. No offense.”

Fancy Pants merely smiled. “I’ve heard worse, Captain, and it’s only the simple truth.”

Billets were offered discreetly to carefully selected ponies, both civilian and ex-Guard, for a cruise north to put the bundle of experimental technology out of easy reach, which was true enough to serve. Those who accepted, along with the volunteers, were drilled with merciless thoroughness by the old mare under whose orders they’d placed themselves.

“This all might seem like fuss an’ feathers, but our lives may depend on doing everything right and right now,” Galea informed the group during a brief rest. “All of us, even I, need to practice until we can do it all without even thinking about it. ’S also why we looked t’ hire on experienced mechanics and such, ’cause we can’t spare the weeks we’d need t’ teach the fancy stuff before we take off. Break’s over. Back to it!”

In particular, Galea concentrated on the manual of arms for the three quick-firing guns. Sunset and a young unicorn stallion objected when she specifically forbade using any spells in the process. As always, she had a ready answer. “First off, careless spellcasting’s been known to touch off powder—not often, but just once is enough to ruin your day. More importantly, everypony has to do the exact same things in the exact same ways, even if they aren’t always the best ways for any single pony. Otherwise a designer can’t count on her gadgets being used, or an officer can’t count on her orders being carried out, exactly the way she has in mind. That never ends well, I can tell you.”

She tossed her head in Rose’s direction. “When Ms. Brass there took command in the heat of battle, she knew right away how the company was supposed to work. If all the company’s squads willy-nilly did things differently, there’s no way she could’ve figured out how to run it in time to save the day, and you, Ms. Analemma, wouldn’t be around to have this discussion.”

Sunset, subdued, kept her mouth shut after that, but the brash young stallion couldn’t resist asking, “Why even bother with all this claptrap, then? Why not just shoot magical bolts?”

With elaborate patience the old veteran replied, “Guns this size have longer range and are more consistent, and they hit harder than all but the most powerful unicorns or the princesses. B’sides, any fumbling idiot of any tribe can be trained t’ use ’em.” Galea’s lips had pursed as if she was considering a continuation of her lecture, but instead she went on with, “Go through it again, and don’t fumble it this time.”

An eleventh-hour debate over the rockets was cut short by a peremptory command not to bother with them. “In fact, just dismount the brackets,” Galea added with a wave toward the fittings in question. “If we don’t carry any rockets, we won’t need ’em, and every ounce of weight we cut lets us carry another ounce of food, water, or fuel.”

Several ponies burst out with protests, and she stamped the same hoof. “Knock it off! I gave an order, and I expect it to be carried out. You.” She pointed at one of the hired mechanics. “Get to work.”

Fancy Pants, whose brows had risen, but who’d declined to intervene, murmured to the mechanic as he passed, “What the captain says goes, my good fellow, and she won’t always have time to explain herself. Best to accustom yourself to that now.” He cocked his head as the frowning earth pony paused. “Since we have a moment, however, I will point out this is to be a ferry cruise, not a hunting expedition. The rockets are designed for attack, and are almost useless in defense. They are heavy, potentially hazardous to carry for extended periods, and not terribly accurate. Unlike the guns, they are restricted to forward fire and cannot reach out to long range. So we leave them behind.” The mechanic grumbled, but he did the job.

Weight allowances were calculated and supplies purchased, most at inflated prices as the ongoing crisis dragged at the country’s economy. Fancy and Fleur spent bits like water. Cook haggled. Sunset and Rose fetched, along with a few other ponies. A second air raid, more desultory but still frightening, followed by another naval skirmish only a few miles offshore lent urgency to the last hours. Boxes, crates, barrels, drums, and bags were loaded in a feverish hurry.

Then—suddenly enough to be a little disorienting—they were ready. Galea gave the order to board. An understrength ground crew of company employees who hadn’t disappeared in the wake of the latest attacks slowly hauled the airship, small only compared to others of her kind, out of the shed. Smoke flavored the light breeze and a few bits of flame still flickered here and there across the city, almost the only illumination. The ship’s bell sounded a crisp signal to cast off, the ground crew let go the mooring lines, and Comet rose smoothly into the night sky.

By sunrise the swift little airship was well out over the northwestern wilderness. Golden glory silhouetted the dragon’s spine of the Unicorn Range, its jagged peaks marching more or less parallel to their east-northeasterly course. The broad lowland between the mountains to the east and the ocean over the western horizon couldn’t make up its mind whether to be taiga or cold steppe; thin patchy coniferous woods rose from otherwise grassy plains dotted with clumps of colorful summer flowers just becoming visible as the sun rose. Puffy clouds obscured parts of the surrounding panorama; wisps above were painted with dawn colors.

“I’m afraid that’s outside my expertise, Ms. Brass.” A parka-clad Cook raised his voice over the omnipresent rattle and vibration. The gondola’s tube-steel structural network, trussed deck, and exterior cladding of thin corrugated sheet metal were built for minimum weight rather than maximum quiet or shelter. Even during high summer the interior was cold and drafty at cruising height, and it would only get worse as they continued north.

“What? But Mister Platter, you know everything,” the newly arrived Rose, equally bundled up, protested straight-faced as she stepped up beside him.

Cook lowered Rose’s borrowed pair of binoculars, which despite their altered outward appearance retained the superior optics of digital-age technology, and offered them to the pegasus who’d come to relieve him as aft look-out. “All right, you’ve gotten back some of your own. You wouldn’t be the first to let me know I have a terrible sense of humor.” He turned back to the unglazed aft wrap-around window, through which the tail gun pointed directly astern, locked in place until needed. His thoughtful gaze ranged over the landscape scrolling away below—slowly for one accustomed to jet airliners; quickly for one who was not. “Geology? Climate? Magic? Some combination? I have no idea why that, ah, habitat looks the way it does, and I suspect nopony on the ship has the background to tell us.” He lowered his voice still further. “I doubt the science exists here, for that matter. After all, back home it’s only a few decades old.”

Rose cleared her throat and said, “I relieve you, Mister Platter.”

“I stand relieved, Ms. Brass.” After a beat Cook added, “How are you feeling?”

The pegasus rustled her wings but didn’t answer right away. When she did her voice was distant. “I feel strange. Excited. A little confined, maybe. I guess that’s pegasus instinct talking. But . . . I also know I shouldn’t be out there right now, and even the instinct agrees. My duties are here, and I don’t have enough practice at flying just to jump out of an airship—how far up?”

“You tell me,” Galea’s voice came from behind them. They turned their heads to see her, also wearing heavy cold-weather gear, shrugging through the windblock curtain between the deck-to-overhead ammunition racks that separated the gun position from the rest of the mostly open gondola. “We’re flying short in the pegasus department. I’d prefer t’ have at least one more aboard, especially given your lack of experience, Ms. Brass, but it is what it is. Now. How high are we?”

Cook gave Rose an encouraging nod before ambling toward the curtain. “I’ll go check on Analemma and leave the two of you to it.”

“Ah—” Rose’s brow furrowed as she watched him depart. “As high as we can go safely and still breathe, Ma’am.”

“Good guess. But you were the one talking about pegasus instinct. What does that tell you?”

By the time Galea finished putting her through her paces, in between sweeps of the sky around and land below, Rose learned her sense of direction and altitude was “fair t’ middling” by pegasus standards, which meant quite good compared to a typical unicorn or earth pony. “Why, I knew one stallion who could tell barometric altitude t’ a hoof’s-breadth and compass direction t’ less than a point,” the old guardspony claimed. “But for all sorts o’ reasons, I wouldn’t hold you t’ such a preposterous measure, Ms. Brass. You’re doing fine.”

“Ana?” Cook crowded to one side of the passage, right beside an upper cot mounded with blankets. The over-and-under cot pairs, slung like stretchers from horizontal supports and similarly piled high against the chill, were arranged foursquare at the gondola’s midsection. The port and starboard gun positions sat between and outboard, screened off by more ammo racks and curtains; the open space in the middle served for all purposes normally accommodated with compartments such as wardrooms or lounges. Forward and aft, nets strung from vertical supports held supply containers in place, leaving a central gangway clear for passage.

The only response was a muffled noise and brief seismic activity shifting the fabric hills and hummocks. Cook prodded the blanketscape with a forehoof. “Ana, you need to eat something. I know you skipped supper last night. I brought you some breakfast.” He proffered a bag of mixed dried fruit and a canteen, both enveloped in the pale gray aura of his levitation.

Another stir was followed by a sigh and the appearance of a flame-colored muzzle and forelock. “Just leave it,” the normally throaty voice croaked.

Cook ignored the implicit dismissal, instead asking, “How are you feeling?”

That brought all of Sunset’s head out from under the covers to bend the full force of a glare on him. “How do you think I’m feeling? I just found out Celestia—and Luna and Cadance—are lawn ornaments and Twilight and her friends are missing,” she hissed. “And I can’t do a da—a thing about it.”

Cook nodded with apparent calm. “Yes. I doubt there’s a pony aboard who isn’t feeling at least an echo of that sentiment, though most of them probably don’t have such personal connections. The ones who do . . . Fancy Pants, certainly. Fleur, probably. Dame Galea, perhaps. Ms. Brass and I, to some extent. Even we didn’t grow up with Celestia in our lives as you did.” He tucked the rough-and-ready meal between the cot’s edge and the outermost blanket. “But you really do need to eat now. And drink.”

Mechanically Sunset obeyed, her own crimson magic opening the bag and canteen, followed by moving chunks of fruit to her mouth for chewing and swallowing. Cook sat and watched without speaking. Finally the younger unicorn paused long enough to say quietly, “Sorry, Uncle Silver. I know everypony has to be hurting. It’s just—”

“Hey, so long as you pull your weight, nopony’s going to blame you for feeling down, okay?” Cook poked the blankets again. “You’ll be up for your next watch, right?”

“Yeah.” Sunset drew a deep breath. “Yeah, I’ll be up for it. Gotta keep my eye on the ball.”

Cook gave her a tired smile, then to her surprise leaned in for a brief familial nuzzle. “Okay. I just had a long night, so I need to hit the sack myself. I’ll see you later.”

By the time Sunset, in yet another parka, showed up a few minutes early for her watch, the isolated clouds had blended into an uninterrupted deck. The fluffy carpet stretched to the horizon, brilliant in the afternoon sun other than the small shadow of Comet herself racing along below and to the east.

Rose gave the younger pony a searching look as she offered up the binoculars. “Hey. You okay, Ana?”

“I relieve you, Ms. Brass,” Sunset said in place of answering.

Rose rolled her eye, but responded, “I stand relieved, Ms. Analemma. Now. Are you okay?”

“No.” The unicorn sat and raised the binoculars for an initial sweep. “But I’m not gonna be okay for a while. Uncle Silver reminded me nopony’s gonna be okay for a while. Just . . . don’t ask anything else. Please.”

The officer and social worker heaved a conflicted sigh. “Fine. I won’t ask if you have any questions, then.”

Despite her mood Sunset lit with a brief, tight smile. “Sneaky. You’re not gonna go to bed until I ask ’em, are you?”

Rose didn’t bother to say anything, instead brushing Sunset’s back once with her good wing.

It was the unicorn’s turn to gust a deep breath. “I guess I could use some distraction—not from keeping a look-out,” she added hastily. “Um. Why are you here instead of up in the cockpit? I mean—” The binoculars came down long enough for an apologetic glance. “—One eye, right?”

“I’m not an engineer—at least, the kind of engineer an airship needs. I can navigate, but Dame Galea, Mister Fancy Pants, and even Ms. Fleur are better at aviation navigation than I am. I definitely am not a pilot. That leaves look-out, and I can use experience to make up a little for the lost eye by knowing where and how to look.”

Sunset grunted an absent syllable. “The only other question I can think of right now is the whole rank thing. Galea is both a captain and a colonel—and a knight too, I guess. You’re a captain, but it seems like Galea outranks you. I mean, I get that it would be too confusing for two ponies to be called ‘captain’ on the same ship, but I don’t understand the rest of it.”

Rose snorted a laugh. “Yeah, that’s another one for the ‘weird military traditions’ column. Okay, it’s like this, at least back home, though it sounds like the story’s kinda similar here. Back before gunpowder, the main way naval battles were fought was by getting close to enemy ships and boarding them with soldiers. There are lots of other details, but those aren’t important right now.” She paused until Sunset nodded in acknowledgement.

“At the time, a company was any independent body of troops, as small as twenty or as large as several hundred, and a captain was the leader of a company. That meant even if he didn’t have any experience with ships, the captain was in charge. The pilot was the senior seafarer, I think, and he tried to advise, if the captain wasn’t too full of himself to listen,” Rose appended wryly.

“When cannon took over, navies started going their own way, and as armies and navies got bigger, they needed more officer ranks—well, and enlisted grades and rates too, but that’s a whole different subject. Armies added new ranks above captain, but navies added new ranks below captain, so it’s ended up that an army captain’s fairly low, equivalent to a navy lieutenant (senior grade), but a navy captain’s equivalent to an army colonel.”

The pegasus concluded ruefully, “Just to make things even more complicated, a navy officer in charge of a ship is called ‘captain’ no matter what her rank is, and that seems to be how they do it here for airships too even if they’re army units. Anyway, it’s a real pain when the services try to work together, but no one wants to give up their cherished traditions, so we just put up with it and muddle along.”

Sunset cracked another smile at Rose’s droll tone as she leaned over the lip of the window to look at the cloud deck underneath them. Then she stiffened. “Rose.” The urgency in her voice brought the pegasus up next to her; the reason for it brought a curse to the older pony’s lips.

“Got it. You keep watching.” Rose spun to the tubular signal bell and shoved a hoof through the wooden ring dangling from it. With a yank she pulled down the muffle, then sounded the bell with a rapid clamor followed by a slower sequence for azimuth and another for elevation.

Seconds later the main bell rang “beat to quarters”, and there was bedlam.

Author's Note:

The controller sat back from her monitor and frowned.
   Temporary flight restrictions were a fact of life—even the SECURITY-labeled TFRs that so often provided no useful information beyond the bare minimum—but they rarely were so large, or lasted as long, as the one from which she’d just shooed another light plane. After all, they were called temporary for a reason. It was hard to blame the annoyed pilot out on a lark; NOTAMs were flying thick and fast these days, a lot of them were clear as mud, and the TFRs they notified airmen about could appear and disappear unexpectedly.
   On the other hand, she had a feeling this one simply hadn’t checked before taxiing out, which also could explain his ire. Whatever the case, she’d keep an eye on him to make sure he actually did sheer off from the invisible cylinder in the sky centered on a suburban neighborhood surrounding a high school, of all things.

Comments

[Eroraf86]

Oh dear. I sense an air battle/chase coming. This may or may not end well.

[Super Trampoline]

Yay, new chapter!

[Acoustic Pulse]

This story hasn't ceased to impress yet. Keep it up.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Interesting that they're still using Sunset's pseudonym even as the others' become cover wears thin. Of course, right now there are much more pressing concerns...

[Dave Bryant]

9259395
All their legends are back in use, for the benefit of the new hires.

[jqnexx]

9246729
Sunset's always struck me as more of an artificer than Twilight, so I have to wonder if she'll try to channel her anger into cobbling together some sort of horrible magic artillery system. Either that or a "The Maretian" style mana battery and turn herself into the equivalent of those Davy Crocket nuclear rocket jeeps.