Starbound Flight

by computerneek

Chapter 3: Willowstone

Princess Short Flight didn’t like traveling through the city. She especially disliked traveling in the suburbs, and actively despised traveling through more rural areas around the city.

The problem was that, wherever she went, her Guards would follow. In the city, she would be followed by a mere two guards. There would be a secondary shell of guards set a street or two away from her, but they would be undercover, and identifying possible threats for the ones following her; they would easily disappear into the woodwork, and she hardly ever thought about them.

Whenever she hit the suburbs, all those same guards would be there as well- this time all armed with powerful rifles.

And if she ever saw fit to go out into areas where there even might be four trees placed closer than a hundred feet apart… Not only would all her Guards have powerful rifles, but there would be a minimum of four air superiority fighters swooping around overhead, making all sorts of noise.

She’d never gone near any forests with them; she’d read the policies. If she did, those forests would be flattened with missiles for ‘security considerations’ as she got close.

It was a good thing she knew a thing or two that they didn’t.

For example, her bedroom was at the heart of the Palace. They knew that- but they didn’t know that the air vent in it wasn’t just a little air vent. As a matter of fact, it connected directly to one of the main ventilation shafts through the Castle- much larger than required for her to slide through, with no tight corners or openings to reach it. All she had to do was lock the door and climb in. Since there was a small kitchenette and attached bathroom inside her room, even though nopony she’d ever asked could remember why it was there, they wouldn’t worry unless she missed an appointment or something.

She could then climb up the shaft about two floors, take the eastern branch, and crawl along it until it split into two little ones, one continuing forwards and one turning right. Neither of the little ones were of any use- but if she turned left at that point, she’d find herself facing a similarly outsized ventilation grille… this time facing the Palace air fighter bay.

Then of course, for some reason, her father liked hiring the stupidest guards he could find. It rather handily explained all the commotion when she went to rural areas- but it also explained why the air fighter bay was completely unmonitored, except for somepony that would make a single lap once every hour, on the hour.

So all she had to do was wait, behind that ventilation grille, for that single guard to make his lap and disappear… then slip out through the grate, close it behind her so they wouldn’t know how she got in, tip-hoof quickly to the smallest craft in the bay, climb inside, and start powering it up.

Unfortunately, the smaller ones were never the ‘ready’ ones- meaning she’d have to take almost fifty minutes powering up the electronics, and getting it ready… at which point that Guard would be getting ready to walk around again.

So she’d climb down into the footwell in front of the seat and duck her head. Once the lights dimmed again, she’d hop back up in the seat, log in to the craft so they’d know it was her rather than some random thief if they were to catch up in the air, start the engines, and order the bay doors open.

The bay doors opened quietly enough, and the engines on that small ‘skiff’-class fighter quiet enough in zero-thrust configuration, that nopony outside of the room would realize she’d ever entered until she was taking off.

So of course, that’s what she did. It was a couple weeks after she’d approved the blueprints for her new ship- and she’d spent the time since, and indeed the time before, exchanging letters with Jewel Tone, the mother of Willowstone, the filly that had served as the Admiral’s Tactical officer through the Equineothame Civil War, as it was being called. She had made plans with the mare for her to come visit their house.

Naturally, their house was about as rural as anypony could get. It was situated right in the middle of a dense forest- which meant that, if she ever approached it with her Guards, they would flatten it as a matter of course.

That was the point to stealing one of their fastest aircraft.

Once free of the Palace, she dove, riding full throttle as she skimmed the Palace walls. This was also the aircraft type she liked the most in the simulator- and after a dozen or so excursions like this, usually just seeking a peaceful flight someplace, she was one of the most skilled pilots on the entire planetoid.

She pulled up just in time, and skimmed the outer wall by a distance of six feet, throwing a couple loose bricks off the top of the wall with the blast from the engines. She’d been telling the maintenance crew those needed to be re-mortared every day for months, and this was why. One of them would have sailed through her parents’ bedroom window, crossed the room, and smashed the giant mirror over their dresser to bits while it embedded itself in the wall. The same window, absent the flying bricks, would effortlessly withstand the supersonic blast, despite the noise scaring her parents out of their minds.

So of course, maintaining a radar altitude of about twenty feet, she rocketed down the city streets at well over half the speed of sound, cornering as hard as the gee-frame in the craft would let her. Finally, after swooping under a small bridge with a clearance of about two feet between her craft and the tops of the ground vehicles driving underneath, she shot down the highway as it plunged into the woods. She followed the highway for about three minutes, before swerving suddenly off to the side, and dodging between a few trees. It was hard work, but she was completely confident in three things.

The first was that none of the Guards could do it- even the few that knew how to turn one of these things on.

The second was that they wouldn’t dare shoot into the forest when they didn’t know where she was.

And the third, they weren’t nearly smart enough to simply fly overhead and follow her that way.

As such, after a few miles of flying with a bank of at least forty-five degrees, she swooped out overtop a small dirt road through the woods with a full-on ninety-degree bank, climbed a few feet while inverted to avoid a camper van that was driving the other way, flipped the right way up, and followed the dirt road for several more miles. Eventually, the dirt road crossed a rural highway about two miles before her exit. She crossed that highway at about mach point eight; since the tiny little craft was a stealth fighter, traffic would hardly even notice the noise… so long as she was flying right-side-up. Which was easy, no matter how much she liked her inverted maneuvers.

Her exit was, of course, another series of gaps between trees in the woods.

So she wove through the woods again- and finally exceeded the ten-mile air search radius from the last place they could have known where she was, hardly a block away from the Palace. This time, her twisting route jumped up through a gap in the canopy presented by a small RV park.

As soon as she achieved the open sky, she went back to full speed, skimming treetops as she continued to rocket away from the Castle.

After that, it was about a fifteen minute flight before she pivoted over a quarry and finally set the cruise autopilot for hardly one thousand feet, still subsonic flight, and her destination.

This was the boring part of the flight, lasting nearly two hours- and they’d backplot any comms activity to find her.

But that was why she brought a good book.

---

Princess Flight looked up when her control panel chirped at her again, closing and stowing her book in a single motion. That chirp could be-

-No, it was just the two-minute warning for the autopilot expiration she’d set, not another close-proximity aircraft, such as the Guards that liked flying way too close to her for safety.

She smiled, checked the radar to make sure no Guards were in range, disconnected the autopilot, and started decelerating gently.

Finally, she swooped gently around a small property in the middle of the woods under the craft’s limited VTOL power, selected a spot, and set it down on the driveway. A couple of switches was all it took to cut the engines and set it into ‘standby’ mode, so it’d be quick to start when it came time for her to leave, before she climbed out of the cockpit, removed a few shreds of the front airbreathing engine covers from the leading edges of the intakes, and trotted up towards the front door. Those covers would have ‘popped’ inwards when she started the engines, just like the ones on the back would have blown clean off. The front ones were designed to split and ‘hang’ into the intake, but not reach far enough down to touch the engine itself… but they had never been designed for supersonic speeds. Fortunately, they were also designed to shred apart inside the engine without doing damage should they come loose, so no damage done.

She stopped in front of the door, glanced behind her to make sure there weren’t any Guards, raised her hoof, and knocked. Twice quickly, a slightly longer gap, then twice more.

She didn’t have to wait long before the door was opened.

She blinked. It was the receptionist from the Airbreathing Starship Company- the one she hadn’t seen when she’d gone in for blueprint review.

“Ahh, Princess,” the mare bowed, despite her lack of regalia; she’d left it in the plane.

“Uh, Hi,” she muttered uncertainly.

The mare took her cue and rose again. “I’m Jewel Tone,” she told Flight, “though you might know me as the receptionist at ASC.”

“I do,” Flight muttered. “I… I heard you were on leave after that battle. I hope everything’s going okay…?”

The mare winced. “My… My daughter, River Skip, died in the battle, when the Ostentatious was blown apart.” She closed her eyes for a second. “I… I can only thank you and the Navy again for saving my dear Willowstone.”

She bowed her head. “You’re welcome.”

“Anyways, come in, come in.” She held the door wide.

Flight entered and, after closing the door behind her, followed Jewel Tone into a living room of sorts- where Willowstone was sitting on the couch, propped up on one leg while the other just hung. “Hi,” Willowstone greeted.

“I’ll go get us some snacks, shall I?” Jewel Tone asked. Flight got the impression she was forcing herself to present her cheerful front, rather than letting her true self show. It was something she saw a lot, lately- and it broke her heart that ponies felt like they had to do that around her.

“Sure, thank you,” Flight answered, before turning to Willowstone. “Hello. How’re you holding up?”

Willow blinked, while her mother disappeared in the direction of what Flight assumed was the kitchen. “Uh- what?”

She shrugged. “When I told the High Admiral I was visiting today, she asked me to ask you how you were holding up,” she explained.

“You know the High Admiral?” Willowstone asked.

“I’m the Royal Princess,” she answered soberly.

“... But you’re green.”

She smiled; she got that a lot. Until she had died, Little Bubble had been the well-known Royal Princess… and whereas Flight’s fur was mint green, Bubble’s had been a brighter, sky blue; it was almost a miracle the two of them had colors as agreeable as they did, given their mother’s ugly yellow and father’s fiery red.

“My sister was blue,” Flight told her.

Willow scowled, then blinked. “Oh, so you’re the Little Princess, but after…” She paused. “... Sorry.”

Flight shook her head. “So how’re you holding up?”

She sighed, and looked at her limp left foreleg. “Eh,” she muttered. “The doc keeps telling me to exercise as much as I can, to help this cybernetic… thing learn how I tick faster, but…” She sighed, and leaned back on the couch, dragging the limp limb. “But what’s the use? Less than one out of a hundred midshipfillies ever return to space after hitting dirt, and all I’m really qualified for dirtside is a receptionist, and that-!” She sighed again. “That’s dull, boring work.”

Flight sighed, idly wondering what the filly’s mother thought of that statement. “It’s also less than one out of a hundred midshipfillies that hit dirt on medical leave from the Navy, with the Admiral talking about how much she wanted to jump her straight to Lieutenant Commander if only she were a bit older,” she told her. “About one out of two point six million, actually- I looked it up.”

She looked at her. “And what use is that?”

“Well… The reason ninety-nine percent of all midshipfillies never return to space is because they’re using the program as it was intended- to get a higher education in whatever field was their choosing. Tactical training is useful in a number of different places, such as Orbital Control and so on.

“And only one percent of them choose to take advantage of the fact that, unless you were court-martialed, you’ve got a free ticket back into the Navy when you come of age.”

Willow sighed. “Even with an injured leg?”

Flight smiled. “Yes, even with an injured leg. As a matter of fact, you’re technically still in the Navy, on medical leave and accruing injury pay, until you’re fully recovered.”

She looked up. “Accruing injury pay?” She scowled. “And wasn’t it unpaid?”

“Medical leave is not, by law,” Flight told her. “It’s only half pay, and from the midshipmare grade it’s really not much, but compounded with how they can’t actually pay it to you until you come of age, it means you’ll have a pretty significant birthday present.”

“I’m only nine next week,” Willow answered. “That’s a long way off.”

“So is any other job,” Flight sighed. “That said, if that cybernetic prosthetic is up to scratch in time, my ship will be ready for takeoff in about thirteen months.”

“... Your ship.”

She nodded. “Yeah. She’s going to be the biggest spaceplane in history- and a warship to boot. Just don’t tell my dad.”

There was a pause. “How is that important?”

“Well, any warship needs a tactical officer, and I happen to be in the same room as one of the best ones the Navy has seen in centuries right now- and what’s more, she’ll be of age just in time for said warship to start taking crew aboard.”

Author's Note:

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