A Method to his Madness

by Luna-tic Scientist

27 -- Sundering Claw

"That's Tau, Alpha and Pi," Equilibrium muttered, trying to hold the complex patterns of the 'Special' modules in her head while simultaneously working Neighmann's magic. Her mate made an encouraging sound, his breathing slow and regular, almost trance-like. He'd opened his mind to her, becoming as clear and transparent as a still pool of water. If she wanted to, she could control his body like it was a puppet, or rifle through his memories, living them like he was some kind of all-senses entertainment system.

There were things down in the depths, hard knots of recollection tainted by the dark colours of heavy emotions, moving like sharks amid the bright and fluffy memories of his everyday life. Libi felt a gnawing curiosity, an intense desire to discover what he'd been through, and the sharing magic acknowledged this, showing her little flashes of horror, despite her best efforts to stay focused.

Eyes closed, she leaned against the lumpy, crystal-lined wall of the Express' summoning circle. The deck shivered under her hooves, tilting to one side, and she lost concentration for a moment. Pi took that opportunity to make one of those odd random jumps in configuration it seemed to be prone to and slipped out of alignment. "Two, dammit!"

"Stay calm; you are doing a great job," said Manny, so close she could feel the little puffs of air from his muzzle. "You are making far more progress than we did... let me just--" His magic reached in and took control of some of the variable and highly mobile arcana flowing only a metre beneath them.

Libi nodded slightly. "Every time I make a change on one of them, it changes the patterns for the others. I've never seen anything so interdependent," she said, taking a shaky breath.

"This is all a bit of a bodge, but we'll make it work."

She swept through Neighmann's memories again, pulling out the little snippets of knowledge he had about how the things had been installed in the first place. The Princesses had set up the originals, that much was clear, but all the fine-tuning had been done by specialist arcane techs from Fancy Pants. If only they'd given me that job!

Okay, let me just try... The second-hoof memories of Neighmann watching the installation became sharp, and she picked away at the third- and fourth-order echoes of the magic they used. The third box-of-whatever suddenly snapped into alignment, its output waveform synchronising with the swell and rush of the quiescent circle.

There was another tremble, then the sharp whoop of a klaxon, followed immediately by a rapid crack-crack-crack. Equilibrium flinched, focus wavering, but managed to hold the patterns stable. "W-what was that?" There was a moment's silence, and Libi opened one eye to see Manny staring back at her. His lips twisted, and she could see the indecision in his eyes. "I've been through a lot, Manny, and it's not broken me yet. Tell me the truth."

He sighed. "The Express is under attack; that was the antimissile railguns cycling. Normally we'd use the spellcraft defences, but…”

...but there are three ponies working inside the summoning circle. Libi nodded. "I'm used to working under pressure. Nopony has told me what we are trying to do..." She smiled, a twisted thing that didn't reach her eyes. "Aside from the obvious."

"We have inserted two FOAL teams into the prison complex you came from. When they find anything interesting they will activate a spellcraft beacon so the Express can do the rest." There was worry on his face now. "We have to be ready for them, otherwise all this might be for nothing."

Libi closed her eyes and nodded, feeling again for the strands of magic tying the Specials to the summoning circle. Pi had fallen back into a chaotic oscillation mode that wasn't uncommon for complex spellcraft, and she knew it was pointless to try and force it into alignment until it had calmed. "Okay, let's try Phi this time..."

===

Twister listened with half an ear to the report traffic coming back from the fighters spreading over Razorclaw. The Express was working well and the current losses were 'acceptable', according to the cold calculations drummed into him at the Baltimare Combat Command School. He kept a straight face, ears attentive, resisting the urge to unsnap his restraints and fly to relieve the churning in his stomach.

Ten crews lost so far, including half the FOAL contingent, but at least we got one team in. A new flurry of activity on the battle management screens caught his eye, and he gave it his full attention. "Flight Ops, report," he snapped.

"The mass drivers at Copper, Iron and Cobalt have been hit; teams are vectoring towards the secondary targets," the unicorn said, pulling up a number of little video clips, each taken from the sensors of a Loup-Garou, or one of their drones. "Intel is making its assessment now, but prelim is that Copper and Cobalt are down. Still checking Iron."

"Unknown track," the earth pony mare at 'Space' sang out, her voice suddenly tight. "High supersonic suborbital, launch point somewhere close to site Delta. Impact in... one-ninety seconds. After that, there are more projectiles en route; looks like one every fifteen seconds."

"Acknowledged. Space, get me intel on that launcher. Helm, take us into the cloudwall, full speed. Spellcraft, what is the status on the Specials?"

"Three out of six, Admiral." The cream and slate-grey dappled unicorn hesitated, his ears going back. "Admiral... our location relative to the target will affect the final spellcraft calibration."

Twister made a little disgusted snort. "Why am I not surprised. Noted; we'll worry about that when the time comes." Typical; our best weapon was designed for fixed emplacement under carefully controlled conditions. The Express tilted under his hooves, the near subsonic beat of the big fans rising to a clearly audible hum.

"Intel has come back on that launcher, Sir," Space said. "It has to be the Sundering Claw; those new upper hatches are likely for the spinal mount to operate in a ski-ramp configuration... and the launch site appears to be moving with each salvo." She shrugged, waving one hoof over her console's display. "Probably explains why the velocity is lower than expected."

"Position the Cicadas for a soft intercept." Not that it will do that much good, but... "I presume the Claw is coming to meet us?"

"Yessir. She is currently climbing and will be in direct fire range within thirty minutes."

Don't want to have line of sight to that monster without the summoning circle. There's too much power in that railgun of theirs. Twister nodded sharply. "Atmospherics, shift the centre of the storm over the coast--" The pegasus opened his mouth to protest, but Twister flicked his wings to silence the other pony. "--we'll take the hit in intensity; it only has to last until we can fire the Specials. Helm, take us lower; follow the storm and get in among those mountains." He turned his gaze on Flight Ops, mouth forming a hard line. "Send whatever we have left against the Claw."

The unicorn flinched, then nodded shakily. "Yes Sir. She... she has a full complement of escorts with her."

Aerodynes and Shredders... I wonder if any-- He bit off the thought, returning Flight Ops' nod. Outside, the howl of the wind built, sending little shivers through the Express. Ahead, filling the direct view windows, the cloudwall looked like a thing made of hammered iron, riven with forks of lightning.

===

"New orders," Willow said, a veneer of professionalism covering a deep well of fatigue. "Change heading to zero one five and join up with Orange, Blue, Yellow and Indigo. It's the Claw."

"Roger that," Echelon muttered, casting an eye over the map overlay and curving the remains of his little squadron down another one of the maze of valleys that rent the land like it was a gryphon-clawed carcass. A settlement, lights still burning, flickered by no more than a hundred metres under his keel. I seem to remember that they don't have much in the way of glazed windows... probably for the best.

"We're a bit low on ordnance," he said. "How are you feeling, Willow?"

"Tired, but I'll manage. The Express is under fire; they are pretty sure it's the Claw. All the remaining mass drivers are disabled"

"So they need some breathing space to get those special weapons of Luna's working. Right." Echelon paused, fiddling with the response settings on the wing armatures. "All this spellcraft stuff leaves me cold... do you think they will manage it?"

"They are artificial versions of the Elements... I had the opportunity to see the real thing, once. Complex, massively complex, but you could almost see how a pony could get them working. These new things..." She sighed, a note of doubt entering her voice. "They were working before the Princess dug them out of the floor of Discord's cage, so it's obviously possible."

Echelon grunted something indistinct. But these are battle conditions, not some nice laboratory stable... and it's not like they stopped him from actually getting out. "I hope so. The Claw is going to be a tough nut to crack." With one eye on fuel reserves, he reduced their speed a little, then blinked. "Willow; sanity check. This is fate-of-the-world stuff, right?"

"Oh yes. He's started with us, but gryphon, zebra, dragon or pony, it won't matter once Discord can operate with impunity."

Echelon smiled. "We were low on weapons when we started, we don't have enough fuel to get back to the Express unless we glide half of the way back, and we have completed our primary mission." He gave the throttles a nudge, letting Red One's speed climb, and sent his revised battle plan to Green Two. His smile widened as the acknowledgement came back. Everypony knows the score.

"Well, what in Tartarus are you waiting for?" Willow snapped, the tremble in her voice masked almost completely by the bravado.

"That's my filly!" The pegasus laughed, pushing the throttles to their maximums, the sheer joy of being able to go so fast -- and actually be paid to do so -- overwhelming his own fear.

===

The Sundering Claw came over their horizon sooner than expected. "She's certainly climbing," Echelon muttered, pulling Red One a little lower and placing a rock ridge between him and the flying battleship.

It wasn't as large as the Express but, unlike the Equestrian craft, it wasn't designed to actually carry any commensal vehicles. The Claw was a weapon, pure and simple. The only one of its kind, at least under Razorclaw control, the other two in the same class not having yet been completed, it was closer to a hurled brick than anything streamlined. Only half of the Express' 300m, it flew using a mixture of stubby, high-lift wings -- as two sets of vertically offset tandems -- and oversized engines. Deep within its metal and composite heart was a triplet of thorium-powered molten salt reactors.

Those reactors were the secret to the Claw's ability to fly at all. Without the need to convert the reactor power to electricity, losing most of it in the process, the aircraft used the nuclear heat directly; those engines were a critical part of its coolant system, replacing burning hydrocarbons with heat exchangers flooded with pressurised molten lithium fluoride.

When the rock ran out and Red One had another clear view of the Claw, Willow was ready. "She's starting to transition to forward flight-- Oh! Did you see that?"

"I did." The view through the half metre telescope, stabilised by the adaptive optics and played on a loop, each iteration getting slightly better as Willow tried to tease out ever finer details. A v-shaped shockwave, visible where it passed in front of some distant clouds, had flicked away from the nose of the Claw at a sharp angle, the projectile invisible at this distance. "How are they... ah. Must be a kind of ski ramp addition to the spinal mount."

"Yes; pretty simple, really. I'm surprised the Panopticon didn't figure that one out. Lets them fire at long range while still in forward flight." She paused, then sighed. "I see this is where all those Shredders went."

The flying beetle machines, miniature versions of the Claw, but with only two sets of wings, flew lazy subsonic orbits at various points around the much larger aircraft. Echelon stopped counting when he reached a dozen. Classic gryphon CAP positions; high and dispersed. Who needs straight line speed when you can stoop on your prey? "Willow, we only have enough ordnance for a single pass; I can't see any benefit in getting tangled in the CAP, can you?"

"Our orders are clear," she said, that little tremor coming back into her voice. "We should get as close as possible; try and punch through the point defence. I'll be able to hold them off for a short while."

Echelon grinned. "We'll show them the flaw in their policy of only building those flying tanks. There are some things you need a real fighter for." Little icons flicked up on his HUD, marking Red One's connection to the remains of the other Loup-Garou squadrons. A battle plan popped up, little more than a few terse lines of abbreviated text and a map covered with curving lines, and the pegasus let out a quiet snort. "That will be old Geodetic's work, I'll bet." The unicorn in the back of Orange One had a reputation for directness. Can't see anything wrong with that... Blue and Indigo flights are nearly whole, makes sense they are the strike package. "Willow, do you concur?"

"Agreed. We don't really have the warload for the assault, so it's CAP-busting duty for us."

The pair of fighters, Red One still in the lead, curved around the Claw in a long, gentle, supersonic arc, heading for their insertion point. Behind him, Echelon could hear Willow take deep breaths, letting them out in quick exhalations, like a free diver preparing for descent. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to take the brunt of this. Despite the spellcraft amplifier, there was a real physical toll exacted on Willow by each arcane operation, something that bled through into her biometric signatures and made the tactical computer tag the unicorn with a caution flag.

The timer spooled down to nothing and Echelon pulled Red One around in a tight arc, accelerating as fast as the Loup-Garou could manage. Willow gave a kind of grunt, like that of a body builder about to lift some monstrous load, and the tingle of magic swept through him from muzzle to tail root. "Suppression confirmed," he whispered, half afraid to say the words out loud, lest he distract Willow from her labours.

At seventy kilometres the gryphon and pony aircraft were well within each other's missile range, but the stealth arcana was obviously working, despite the distressing noises coming from Willow, and the Shredders did not shift from their racetrack courses. Sixty kilometres and Echelon curved up to head for where the Razorclaw aircraft that most threatened the strike group would be-- Something flickered on his screen, a bloom of infrared coupled to a point of vacuum ultraviolet, and Echelon cursed.

One of the Loup-Garou in the strike group, Blue Four, was abruptly visible, and high-powered radars popped up from all corners of the sky and land, sweeping the quadrant to hunt for what else they knew must be there. Burn-through alarms sounded and Willow gave a groan, releasing her hold on the protective enchantment. The circling Shredders all turned, converging on the fighters, but the stealth magic had done its job; the Loup-Garou would close the distance to the Claw in a little over one minute.

The temptation to fire all his remaining missiles was overwhelming, but Echelon held them back, his ears flattening as the 'hostile radar' tone changed to the shrill whine of 'missiles inbound'. Plumes of fire and infrared blossomed from all the Shredders on this side of the Claw, missiles leaping from belly-bays. His own countermeasures went full active, pumping gigawatt jamming pulses at the emitters in view, mercilessly tracking everything that looked like it was heading for Red One.

Echelon changed the priorities of the ECM suite, and the phase-steered beams shifted to increase the protection for Blue and Indigo. Green Two, still operating as wingpony, flew a little closer and expanded her defences to cover them both. The range ticked down further, a kilometre closer for every three seconds, and at twenty thousand metres, with missiles still halfway along their high-Mach crawl, the Shredders fired their own mass drivers.

They had nothing like the power of the surface stations or the Claw's spinal mount, but with a combined closing speed of over three and a half kilometres a second, they didn't need it. Guided things, steered by little slivers of vanes poking into the hypersonic airflow, they appeared as bright red arrows on his threat display, swallowing the distance horribly fast.

What would have been a hundred and twenty seconds to closest approach was suddenly only ten, and the timer in his HUD marked the expected turning capability of those hypersonic projectiles. The indicator flashed from red to green in the last second and Echelon twisted his wings as hard as he dared, praying that the already damaged port wing wouldn't do something unexpectedly lethal in the supersonic airflow.

The early shots missed, out-manoeuvred by the fighter, but the follow-up rounds in the burst, each a half kilometre further behind the one in front, had more time and manoeuvred to match his course. His chaff cutters shrilled their high frequency whine and dazzling lasers fired, all trying to distract the relatively crude sensor suite that could be packed into the kinetic harpoons, but it was Willow that saved them.

Magic reached out, an immaterial hoof kicking at the tiny, fast projectiles, hunting for something to get a purchase on. A few of the frantic impulses connected, imparting just enough force to overwhelm the harpoon's high-speed actuators. In a blurred instant they tumbled, and aerodynamic forces far exceeding the tensile strength of their tungsten bodies shredded them into jagged rubble. At that speed, no material in the world could survive that level of frictional heating, and the highly refractory metal flashed past its autoignition point in an instant, filling the air with magnesium-bright particles.

Smears of light filled the air as Echelon spun the Loup-Garou on its long axis, the crack-crack of near miss shockwaves loud even over the white noise keening of the engines. The pegasus exhaled explosively, then inhaled with a great gasp, holding the breath as the acceleration forces made the blood drain from his head. G-socks clamped down on his legs, tight enough to leave bruises, but they did their job, keeping him conscious during the manoeuvre. The burst of railgun projectiles were past, but the missiles were only five seconds behind.

With his active countermeasures focused on a completely different set of missiles, Echelon pulsed the chaff cutters and flare dispensers again, but the plumes of sliced and patterned tape just blew away in the slipstream. A glance at the medical display told the whole story; Willow was unconscious. Off to one side, Green Two, obviously higher up the Shredder's firing lists, disintegrated in an orange fireball. Damn you, Celestia, for putting us in this position-- Still frantically hunting for a trajectory that would get them away from this trap, the pegasus mouthed the emergency controls.

The cocktail of amphetamines and epinephrine hit the mare's bloodstream, right in the carotid artery, and Willow gave a strangled scream. Her magic thrashed wildly and stabbed out in random directions, some falling within the fighter itself. Immaterial clawed paws struck at Echelon's hindquarters, pulling out bleeding chunks of fur and making something go crack in one leg, then the power stabilized and moved on. The closest missiles exploded, dissolving into sprays of molten metal and incandescent fragments, then Red One was past the rest of the engagement envelope, heading on towards the Shredders, which had started to sprout lines of fire from their point defences.

Willow was sobbing even as she panted, making fast, frantic little noises; the sounds made Echelon quail inside, even as he fought to manage the sudden spike of pain from his rear right leg. Every little motion produced a feeling like gravel being ground together, and he gladly accepted the autodoc's painkillers while manually tightening the G-sock around that leg to immobilise it. Sweet Luna, I'm so sorry. The combat drugs were horribly effective, and grim, ready-room humour always said they were strong enough to make a corpse break into a canter. Every unicorn had a chance to try them, under medical supervision, and Willow had spoken at length about what the experience was like. She hadn't been able to stand still for hours, full of a nervous energy, describing it like 'being filled with burning ants'.

He queued the last of his missiles, targeting them all on the lead Shredder, then let them fly. "One last push, Willow," he said, keeping his voice level. Just us now; got to keep the pressure off Blue and Indigo. "We're nearly done." The enemy aircraft would still be invisible to the naked eye, if it wasn't for the stuttering flash of autocannon fire, but the stabilized optics in the Loup-Garou's nose gave him a wonderfully detailed, multiple wavelength, image of the beetle-like machine. The tandem wings with their tip-mounted engines were twisting, sharp plumes of infrared spraying in wide arcs as the Shredders turned to put as many of their point defence rotary cannon into play as possible.

Weapon fire, highlighted in the optical and infrared from the muzzle flash, and by terahertz imaging of the rounds themselves, reached for the missiles, but Willow was there again. Her magic, made strong and clumsy by the drugs, lashed out and bit into the closest Shredder, making the ceramic armour plates twist into weird and short-lived jagged tentacles that smashed into splinters even as he watched. There was movement on the flank of one target, the troop door abruptly bulging and flying away, ripped off by the pressure of suddenly mobile metal within the hull.

The first missile pair slammed into the unprotected belly of the closest Shredder, outlining the frantic movement within the hull with white fire, and Echelon shivered. Shadows etched in that rapidly blooming brightness told their own story: gryphon shapes struggling with whip-fast snakes of jagged darkness, before the fire engulfed them all and turned the aircraft into fragments and a rain of burning jet fuel.

His final missile, the only one to survive the now overwhelmed defences of the other Shredder, exploded next to its port engine pod. The blow, not immediately fatal, flipped the vehicle into a sudden spin, dropping a hundred metres in less than two seconds as the pilot fought to keep his aircraft under control. The gryphon obviously came to the conclusion that his aircraft could not be saved, because the crew immediately bailed out, diving for the safety of the ground, several kilometres below.

"Good job, Willow! How in Tartarus did you--" Alarms flared over his HUD, not some external threat, but from the spellcraft amplifier.

"Warning, input overload. Internal arcane suppression active. Weapons officer experiencing thaumic shock." The voice, filled with urgency, spat out the message at chipmunk speed.

"Willow! Snap out of it!" Even as he shouted, Echelon prodded the medical systems for something to knock the mare out of her exponentially rising magical surge. More errors came back; the randomised power, despite the amplifier's best efforts to drain it away, was wreaking havoc on the systems surrounding the unicorn, and the drug injector had gone failsafe and shut down. Willow was screaming; long, raw wails that were loud enough to hear over the roar of the engines and slipstream, and through his hearing protection.

Below, carried far closer by Red One's head-long flight, was the Sundering Claw, her defence systems engaging the missiles from Blue and Violet flights. More missiles flew out from her, leaping back along the same trajectories, flicked out at railgun speeds before their engines fired. Magic flashed, but the Loup-Garou crews on Blue and Indigo were focused on keeping their own weapons alive rather than self-defence. Fighter after fighter vanished in fast smears of fire and smoke. Unaffected by the fight, the Claw seemed to pause, making minor adjustments to her alignment.

In a moment of perfect clarity Echelon knew what the big aircraft was doing. Behind him, the Express, hidden within her captive storm system, was above the horizon, marked out by the golden 'home' marker. Shockwaves rippled out from the Claw's nose as she fired; not some high altitude lob, but a direct line, high Mach number shot.

Rage and tears threatened to overwhelm him, and Echelon tipped his wings over, heading straight for the big gryphon warship. "Not long now, Willow," he whispered, trying to shut off her cries. Red One's engines roared as the Claw expanded in his display, its gunnery systems not seeming to realise he was as much of a threat as the missiles they were picking off. A snippet of information from a medical course suddenly flashed into his mind, and Echelon grabbed for it, even while the first 'incoming fire' warnings flickered on his HUD.

A shock. She needs a shock to knock her out of the feedback loop. Echelon grinned, a wild hope building in his chest, and fine-tuned his aim while dipping his muzzle to reach for the eject controls, just as the first shots smashed holes in Red One's wings. The flight systems were good and reacted quickly, but at the speed they were going even a small amount of damage was catastrophic. Echelon bit down as the Loup-Garou flipped into a high-velocity tumble and disintegrated around them both.

Comments

[Willsons]

Shit that was intense

[amberhaze]

Loving the aircraft technology bits.

[Q07]

I am exceedingly grateful that Libi is no longer a big meanie face. From a storytelling point of view it's great, don't get me wrong. However, from a personal feelings point of view I was about to tear my hair out. These sky battles are 100% fantastic. I think you may be the best at describing all these technological aspects of a fight that a lot of people just gloss over.

[Luna-tic Scientist]

10140341
Yeah, she was pretty frustrating!
I do like the tech -- this story let's me get my tech fix with the pones!