Four Views In The Rear Mirror
Giles led his lance as they launched off the gunwales, following the second lance as they dropped ahead of them in the grip of gravity. First lance was already rising in the thermals curling around the edge of the airfield, their broad griffon wings beating to keep their stolen velocity as they spread out into the planned formation.
The Princess's Bit accelerated next to them as his rankers and file-closers dropped in turn, wrestling that ancient foe, that force that says, remorselessly, blindly, stubbornly, all things fall in my grip.
Giles dropped like a feline stone in that wicked force's talons, feeling that sinking dread that all things that fly must defeat every time they take to the air. The further they fell, the faster their part of the formation would fly.
That was far enough.
His wings snapped out from his barrel, catching the loving grasp of the whistling air. He felt that jerk in his shoulders as his wings cupped the fullness of the wind, and he felt gravity's grasp stretch, pull, and break.
Giles and his lance rose like rockets in their fellows' train, gravity's spite thrown back in its faceless fury.
Not today.
The batpony platoon followed his, flying in their own peculiar batty fashion. Sharper, lighter, more agile. Griffons battered gravity into submission. Thestrals behaved as if gravity was simply optional.
Their opposite numbers were now coming into sight on the other side of the airship, the other platoons spreading out from their launching-points on the port side of the Bit. They knew that there were eyes on them as the squadron headed out, and the lieutenant and the ensigns had ordered a full wing deployment.
So long as Trottingham was in sight, they'd be showing the colours.
And there was the lieutenant herself, rising at the van. One single pony at the apex of forty-two griffons, her wings beating twice for each of their own. Lieutenant Martin Gale was saying something to Giles's ensign - Ensign Gerald's head bobbed twice, and then the pegasus was darting off towards the other platoon in the distance.
The orderly came flitting back along the column, and by the time she got to Giles, he'd already figured out the order, and as her wings and head twitched in the exaggerated gestures which signified the intended movement, he and his rankers were already conforming to the rest of the column, left incline and dress left.
As the griffon platoons advanced in front of the ship, the two columns converged in a single front, meeting the lieutenant at the true apex of a new two-winged formation. Giles was tempted to look back to see if the thestrals had followed them, or if they'd formed rear guard behind the Bit.
He knew better than to do that, now. The lieutenant had screamed that habit out of him and the other lance corporals, and they'd screamed it out of the rankers. It'd be terrible for discipline if his own griffons caught him breaking order like that.
The pony fields and lanes far below continued to drop further below their talons, and their wings beat to keep them ahead of the ship, which was still rising and gaining speed as she left behind the moorage and the air-field.
We're really doing this. Leaving Trottingham.
The city wasn't Giles's home. He'd come here to pull down those walls, and had never fallen in love with the stinking alleys and nasty natives, griffish or ponish alike in their cheapness and their hostility to back-country hicks like Giles MacGregor.
But he'd been there for almost a year, and you get used to damn near anything, given time. And he'd had nothing but time after the Crab Bucket.
Well, time had run out, and now his new home was floating in the sky behind him, her engines roaring and rumbling as the engineers ran them full-out, figuratively clearing her throat. Like troopers crying cadence.
The lieutenant hated cadence singing, but she'd not been able to beat it out of the corporals. And the ensigns had just told everygriff to ignore her grumbling. There were certain things in the traditions of the service which lieutenants had no authority over, and cadence calls were definitely one of them. Territorials, EUP, or the Guards, it didn't matter.
Troopers called cadence. If the corporals didn't want those calls to be obscene, they led the cadence. And Giles had heard some sniggering about certain NCOs who curried favor with their troopers by leading them in positively filthy cadence rhymes, but their sergeant had reportedly laid down the law.
Lieutenants might not have any control over matters like cadence, but sergeants certainly did.
And here it came…
Granny Gharne sang of maidens true! came the baritone singing voice of Corporal Gwaine, cutting through the noise of the wind.
"Granny Gharne sang of maidens true!" Giles and his griffons bellowed back, in time with the beating of their wings.
To the toms who her throne pursued!
"For every tom that'd sit the golden seat!" cried out some singleton wag over the others giving a proper response.
Queen or Duchess, or pretty maid!
"Queen or Duchess, or pretty maid?"
Soldiers only care they're getting paid!
"Soldiers only care they're getting paid!"
And the Sixth Guards left Trottingham, singing a song of six bits.
Trixie looked back at the stage she'd broken, and lit off the rockets.
The stubby finned blackpowder devices flared and shot up their rails, launching to port and starboard. They'd only extended two of the rocket mortars, leaving the other four folded along their storage racks beneath the gunwales.
Purse Strings had run a peal over Trixie's head for all the ordnance she'd expended in the 'battle', but she had felt that they couldn't leave town without at least one volley in salute. She'd purpose-built these two bombs with modified thumpers and star-shells doped with the right colors. If she'd gotten the mix right…
The first stage dropped, about two hundred yards over the heads of the trailing batpony platoons. She'd warned the ensigns of the thestral troop, but if they didn't get those earplugs in, in time, there would be a lot of angry bats…
THUMP! THUMP!
Well, that ought to draw the eyes of those griffons and ponies out and about to take the city's morning air.
The second stages lofted her bombs' charges another two hundred yards beyond the batpony escort, who were barely wobbling in the wake of the flash-bangs' enormous, chest-thumping aural assault.
And the star bombs exploded, with much more modest thumps.
The skies behind the rumbling airship lit up with terrestrial star-stuff, pink and purple with yellow and red highlights to starboard, and its twin in lavender and purple with highlights in magenta and blue. They weren't quite correct, but hey, you try to get fine color control doping chemical explosives on the first try.
Trixie Lulamoon saluted the city that broke her, and turned away to oversee her gunners as they cleaned her mortars and locked away the rails.
Purse Strings looked up at the sounds of mortar-bombs going off above-decks, and frowned to himself.
She just couldn't leave without throwing away more bits, could she?
He looked back to his work. The cargo holds were a tumbled, jumbled mess. His checklists were a galaxy of red-penciled corrections and scribbled notes. He was still finding lost sacks and boxes, but most of the pallets had been located and marked down in the loadout maps now sitting in his left pannier.
He looked at his assistants, and wondered who they really were. Weird as it was, he had mostly been working with the actual front-rank troopers, consultants, and outside suppliers in his time with the regiment. Now that they'd pitchforked themselves onto his ship, Purse had suddenly found himself in charge of an actual company of supply-ponies.
Well, mostly ponies. A few griffons here and there, and you know he'd be working those birds to the nubs of their worn-down talons, once things came down to deliveries and retrievals. Not to mention the stretcher-birds.
His carter birds would be doing double duty as the surgeon's corpstoms. And they were mostly toms, for some reason. Some smart-mouthed hen with the griffons' troop had told Purse that your average tom just didn't have the killing instinct, but enough troopers in ear-shot had rolled their eyes at the hen that he was about fifty percent sure she was having him on.
But by and large, the other sections he had been given were full of Trottish ponies, thick-voiced and neigh-unintelligible in their provincial palaver. Luckily, Gilda and Sergeant Gustav had also given Purse the pony who actually would be ordering around all of these uniformed grunts. Corporal Chain Gang had been running the various support sections - the cooks, the carters, the supply squad, the cleaning crew, the chariot pool - for weeks on his own hook, and he clearly didn't think that he needed the authority of an officer to get things done.
Not that Purse Strings was an officer, thank Celestia. He was just the quartermaster. Nopony had asked him to swear an oath, and though he'd taken a bit - more than a few, if he was being honest - he'd never taken the bit.
To be even more honest, he lived in fear of the major dropping in one foggy day and demanding he clarify the relationship between himself and the regiment. But that moment just kept not happening, and if Purse had his way, it never would.
Felt better this way while he got his business done. Fewer qualms about 'peculation' or 'misappropriation' or 'kickbacks' or… whatever fresh Hades the law-ponies came up with this week.
He was pretty sure that the officers didn't want to know all the laws he'd broken getting all this mess onto the ship. Nor how much he'd cheated and crimped and skinned to preserve the regiment's increasingly limited funds.
Purse Strings had always known that airships were howling money-pits, but he'd had no idea how deep the hole that guards regiments dug beneath their hooves. Excavate that abyss below the existing void which was a refitted 'light carrier'?
They might just bore their way to Neighpon, the hard way.
Purse looked around at the cramped, stuffed-to-the-ceilings contents of cargo hold #4, and hoped it would be enough.
He'd been most everywhere, but even he had never been east of Sip Tea. Their first voyage, and they were sailing over the edge of the world.
Or Well Burn, whichever they hit first.
Fish Eye waved to her ensign as they landed on the main deck in front of the aftcastle. The griffons had been given the first air patrol, which left the nocturnal batponies at loose ends. Fruits Basket occupied her platoon with a dress inspection right there on the main deck, with that big roc looming over them with what looked for all the world like an amused smirk.
Rocs weren't people, were they?
Fish couldn't get her ensign's attention, but Fruits Basket knew that Fish Eye had other duties now. They'd just be doing the manual of arms for a few evolutions, just to remind everypony that they were on duty even when they weren't flying around like acrobats in a circus.
Fish wandered forward, passing through several lances worth of griffons milling about doing abyss knew what. She climbed the stairs onto the forecastle, which was only occupied by a single rating doing something or other with a mop.
Fish Eye stared at the suspicious-looking sailor, and walked up to the bow to make sure that her work from the other day hadn't been washed off. The chalk and the stains were still in place, and she nodded her approval.
She turned back to the pony now leaning on his mop.
"You know you all aren't supposed to touch any of this?"
"Yes'm. The ship's master, she was verra clear. No touchee the bitch-goddess's warpaint."
"No! Don't ever call any goddess that but Athena herself. That's bad, mister - what's your name, colt?"
"Sneaky Peat, marm."
"Our Auntie here is being very tolerant of our shenanigans, Sneaky. If looked at in the wrong way, the renaming battle could be taken as a terrible insult by the sea-foam goddess. Calling her by another goddess's epithet would be even worse."
She looked at the rating, and wondered why he was up here pushing a broom around.
"Actually, if I talk to - who is your officer?"
"Well… it ain't like that in the merchant marine. We've basically got the chief engineer, and the ship's master, and the purser. Except Rolled Bits took Prench leave when the Captain brought on Purse Strings, and it don't look like Purse Strings is part of the crew, is 'e? More of a regimental, that pony."
Fish Eye gave Sneaky Peat the hairy eyeball. She somehow doubted that there wasn't any pony who had authority over this pony other than the ship's master. She'd have to look into it.
"Well, until I figure out who you answer to, you stay the hay away from Auntie's shrine, you understand?"
"Yes, marm! May I be excused?"
"You may. By which I mean, scram!"
Fish Eye sighed as the sailor scampered off, and looked at the crude paintings. It wouldn't do, she needed to carve something more permanent into the space she and Corporal Ping had sacralized. Maybe Purse Strings knew where the woodworking tools might be?
She paused at the top of the stairs heading down onto the main deck, and realized she couldn't see the smoke of the city in the receding distance.
They'd left Trottingham behind, and she'd not even noticed.
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Due to a mis-spent youth, I read this as "sront-rank".
10009585
Dd'oh!
An interesting bit from so many to see leaving behind. So many takes and perspectives, but the new blood have so many great thoughts.
And now, now, we have the great blue yonder and live on deck, if certainly a bit more up than most.
Let's hope that shrine appeases auntie, else they're quite screwed
And they're off, to locales unknown and unfamiliar!
Wonder if that'll change before the story's over...
TIL "hairy eyeball". You learn new things in surprising places...
They are finally starting. Four views, four opinions. All matters of perspective and experiences.
But wow, the ship finance and shrine worry me a bit. Will they be ok?
Just chuck the entire thing overboard.
Corporal Chaingang is a great name.
So... the ones actually running the ship are civvies, and so, technically, is their quarter master. Ah the bizarre days when this stuff was even more complicated then it is now. And doubt that'll stop some uppity grunt or another from getting to swap the deck to teach them.
On the plus side, doubt an airship has any bilges to clean.
And Rainbow Dash treats gravity as if it were the black sheep of the family that no one ever wants to have over during the holidays.