Ether was hunched over a singed amplifier when the teletype repeater started clattering. She cocked an ear backwards, listening to the tones, then set down her soldering iron when she picked out the identifier for Fairflanks. Sounds like Short Spark on the key tonight, she thought, as she sat down at the console and donned her earphones.
TTR - TTR - FLK - FLT TIMES/UPLIFT AS REQ
Ether curled her hoof over the iambic key and twitched back a reply. FLK - TTR RDY COPY
TTR - FP ON 2120 IN 2128 - REQ TOPOFF 5.7 BRLS - BLOCK 2214 OFF 2220
As the next set of tones came through, Ether quickly jotted them down in the station log. Featherprop landed Fairflanks at 9:20, shutdown at 9:25. Fuel topped off, 5.7 barrels. Blocked out 10:14, took off 10:22. With a quick flutter of her hoof, she acknowledged the transmission. FLK - TTY MSG RECD. She hopped up to take the message to Espresso when the teletype came to life again.
ETHER THAT YOU?
Ether gave a quick glance around and sat back down. The lack of station formatting meant this was an informal conversation, not meant to go in the station logs. When she replied, she changed her keying pattern and dropped into the shorthoof the regions’ operators had developed and smirked. The ECC frowned on non-logged communications, but anypony down south who picked up these side conversations on a wild bounce would be scratching their ears in confusion.
EVENIN SPARKY
SORRY WE MISSED FP BEFORE DEP. DIDNT THINK HE WOULD GO SO SOON. WHATS SO IMPORTANT?
Ether frowned. Espresso had been vague, but the frazzled look in the older mare’s eyes had gotten Ether’s guard up. Something was wrong, and it wasn’t just the weather.
NOT SURE. ESSY DIDNT SAY, JUST WANTED TO VOX WITH FP. THAT AINT HAPPENING TONIGHT.
Short Spark’s next question sounded hesitant. Ether knew it was silly to read emotion in the dots and dashes, but to her experienced ear the anxiety in the sloppy keying was plain as day.
WHATS GOING ON? HEARD FP ARGUE WITH PAX, SOMETHING ABOUT MEDICINE AND FETLOCK.
Ether frowned. SORRY SPARKY. ALL I KNOW IS FLT IS LAST MINUTE CHARTER. CAME IN TONIGHT.
FETLOCKS OFFLINE FOR FEW DAYS NOW. HAVE FAMILY OVER THERE. PLEASE IS ANYTHING GOING ON?
PROBABLY A BAD TRANSMITTER. NOT THE FIRST TIME RIGHT? Ether’s stomach clenched as she sidestepped the question.
When Short Spark’s reply came through, the keying was even shakier than before, and Ether swore she could feel the worry pouring out of the speaker.
THATS NOT ALL FETLOCK MAIL IS BEING HELD BUT NO WORD WHY. ALSO NO MAIL OUT OF VILLAGE PAST FIVE DAYS. PLEASE DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING?
“Deuces.” Ether swore to herself. Something was definitely going on– there were too many coincidences coming together. She was suddenly glad Short Spark had kept this in shorthoof– if it had been in the clear, it’d be all over the wire service by morning. But Essy wants to keep it quiet. Sparky’s a good hoof, though, and she’s got family out there. She stared at the iambic for a minute, unsure of what to say.
IF ANYPONY WILL ITS ESSY. LET ME ASK HER. IF ANYTHING I PROMISE TO PASS IT ON.
THANKS ETHER. HOW SOON CAN YOU ASK?
RIGHT NOW. HOLD YOUR HORSES.
The response was a couple fast blips. Ether sat back, now genuinely worried. The news that Fetlock was essentially cut off struck her like a hoofblow. Alone, each event could have been explained away; trees fell across trails, transmitters broke, and sometimes the mailponies needed a rest. But all of them together made the back of her brain itch.
She found Espresso coming in from the weather station, snow sparkling in her mane. “Essy, I need to ask you a question.”
Espresso nodded but didn’t break her stride– after being out in the cold, her mind was focused on getting a hot cup of something to hold in her hooves and warm up with. “Sure, Ether, but you’ll have to keep up. What is it?”
“What’s going on in Fetlock Falls?” Ether was surprised to see Espresso stumble, and she had to stop short to avoid bumping into her rump. When Espresso looked around at her, Ether was surprised to see a guarded look on her face.
“Why do you ask?” Espresso resumed walking, but more slowly. The question had dragged her thoughts back to Featherprop, the flight, and what to do about the secret she'd discovered.
“Well, I was talking to Sparky, and she was wondering what the deal was up there. They can’t reach Fetlock on the radio, and she says the mail hasn’t run for a few days, either. It’s like... like the village is cut off, you know?”
Espresso winced at the other mare’s last words. Ether’s a ‘Maner. This might be hard for her– Infurenza, for Celestia’s sake. And I don’t want it getting out, either. That could be a nightmare. She stepped into her office and sat at the desk, head down as she mulled over what to do.
Ether paused at the door and continued, “And Sparky’s got family out there, you know? She’s really worried, I just wanted to see if there was anything I could tell her? That could, well, help her worry less?”
Espresso wavered, her eyes dancing around, looking anywhere but Ether’s. “Ether, there’s a lot going on. I need you to tell Short Spark everything is going to be okay. Can you do that for me?” It hurt to ask. She felt like she was asking her friend to lie for her. Hoofrot, I AM asking a friend to lie for me.
Ether’s ears shot up as her eyes narrowed. “This has something to do with Featherprop’s flight, doesn’t it? I mean, it all fits together– him zooming off with some fancy doctor, Fetlock going silent... What’s going on, Essy? Come on, you have to let me know what the real skinny is.”
Espresso looked up and down the corridor, then rolled her eyes and gave an exaggerated sigh. “Okay. I want you to promise me you won’t speak of it, at least not until this charter is settled.” When Ether nodded in assent, Espresso beckoned her and said, “You’d better come in and sit down, Ether. You’re not going to like this...”
~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~
Feattherprop’s ears perked inside his ‘phones as the volume of the range’s tones fell away, and he frantically looked at the instruments for a moment before realizing just why they had faded; rather than drifting off-course, they were almost over the range. He fumbled for the microphone button and made a hasty announcement on Fetlock's traffic frequency, “Fet... Fetlock Traffic, Snowpony’s over the range, ah, inbound. Anypony, we need a weather check. Fetlock Radio, Snowpony, calling for weather.” He held his breath, hoping, waiting for any sign of life from the station ahead of them.
When none came, he let out a sigh and shook his head. He thought for a moment, then shrugged; the silence on the radio had doused whatever faint hope he'd held. With a heavy voice he said, “Okay, we’ll still try this. Once we cross the range we'll have two minutes and twenty seconds– that’s how long it should take to get to the field. If we don’t see it by then, we have to start climbing. I need you to watch outside for lights– the big beacon, or a lot of lights like you saw at Fairflanks, anything at all. If you see something, sing out. Otherwise, keep quiet, got it?”
Pasture nodded in assent while biting off a sharp reply. Featherprop’s renewed impertinence rankled his sense of order, but the thought of getting his hooves back on solid ground was so strong that he was willing to overlook the Pegasus’s disrespectful tone. For now. Pasture took a deep breath and peered out the windows, unsure of what he was supposed to be looking for.
Featherprop pulled the throttles back and hoofed the ship’s timer on. Two-twenty. Again the nose of the Twin Trotter pointed towards the frozen ground, and this time Featherprop had to swallow nervously. Without a weather check, he had no idea how to adjust his altimeter for the local conditions– they could be high or low. He clamped down on his wings as they strained against the seat and re-checked his chart. Field elevation is four hundred sixty-five... we can go to eight hundred, maybe seven. Luna, I wish I had the barometer setting! As they flew away from the range, the tones came back to life, and Featherprop found himself busy hoofing in small corrections to heading and altitude, his world shrinking to the instruments ahead of him and the muffled tones in his ears. One minute down, one-twenty to go.
Pasture peered out the window intently, searching the grayness. His ears twitched beneath his ‘phones, and his nausea was nearly forgotten as he stared downward, looking for any sign of the ground. He was surprised to see that the cloud was not solid, but there were areas where the illumination seemed to dim as they flew through an open area, and then sudden brightness as they flew back into denser cloud. Suddenly the Trotter was plunged into true darkness, as first the landing lights and then the green beacon at the wingtip went out. What now? He whirled to look at the Pegasus, and saw him reaching for switches on the overhead panel.
“Sorry. I should have turned these out earlier. Easier to see without ‘em.” Featherprop spoke tersely as he darkened the aircraft, leaving only a dim glow to illuminate his own instruments. At low altitude, with no idea how close the ground really was, he was desperate to see something, anything to reassure him that there was air under their hooves and they weren’t about to smash into the frozen ground. He stared at the instruments, trying to block out the image running through his mind of a treetop materializing out of the fog. He glanced at the timer and said, “One-thirty. Fifty seconds, Doc,” in a taut voice.
Pasture nodded as he peered into the darkness. There was a quaver in the pilot's voice that caused the crest of his mane to stand up on end. He stared out the windscreen with wide eyes, searching for a spark of light in the deep blackness ahead of them. Occasionally the blackness changed, and Pasture wondered if it meant the clouds were breaking apart.
Featherprop fought the urge to stare out the window as well. Keeping the Trotter on course was taking all of his attention. He snuck a glance out the side windscreen, his heart thrilling for a second as he saw a glimmer, then despairing as he realized it was just a reflection from his panel. He shook his head and forced himself to focus on the panel again. Twenty seconds to go. This isn’t going to work, is it? Luna, we’re so close, it has to be down there! “Doc, twenty seconds. See anything?”
The Unicorn paused as he swept his eyes over the darkness“No, not yet, but almost. Can we go any lower?”
“No, it’s not safe.” Featherprop suppressed a bitter snort. Not safe, like where we’re at is so much better. Fear and desire were battling in his head– he had been wondering if they could get away with another hundred feet lower, but the thought of running into an errant tree or hill kept him from trying. He took a closer look out the side window, his breath catching as he saw a narrow break in the clouds. “Ten seconds.”
A glimmer of white caught Pasture’s eye, and he leaned forward to press his horn against the windscreen. Celestia, a light! The light brightened, a beam that swept across them and highlighted the edges of a ragged hole, then faded away as it continued to turn. “A light, I see something!” He started to turn towards the Pegasus, but reared back as Featherprop thrust his hoof across the flight deck.
“WHERE?” Featherprop shouted and would have lunged across the cockpit if not for his restraints. He leaned as far as he could, straining to see past the Unicorn’s mane. “What did you see? Where was it? Was it colored or moving?”
Pasture pointed ahead and to the right, trying to ignore the Pegasus’s breath on his neck. “Down there, I saw a break in the clouds, and a light, a white one, swept past!” He stared at the patch of glass, straining to see it again.
Featherprop followed his gaze, hoping beyond hope that the clouds would magically open wide for them. Then, from beneath the right wingtip, a beam of green light stabbed at them through a ragged gap. Next to it, a cluster of dimmer white lights was visible, and the pilot nearly whooped in excitement. The cry caught in his throat as he saw the break slide past them, the lights fading away and leaving them in darkness again.
“Horseapples.”
Featherprop slumped back into his seat. His chest felt tight, and his mind tumbled from one fantasy to the next– that the clouds would clear, that they had another thousand feet below them, that the sun would rise and reveal an end to the utter darkness outside the windscreen. He was torn from his wishful thoughts when the steady tone of the range broke into an ominous dit-dah in his ears. His heart pounded as he looked at the gauges and realized he'd let the Trotter drift to the left again. “That's it. There's no way in. We have to go for Kathia.” His voice was thick and leaden as he forced his eyes back to the panel, and then took the power levers in hoof and pushed them forward to the stops.
Still gripping his armrests, Pasture snapped his head around to glare at the Pegasus. Nearly shouting, he exclaimed, “Leaving? You saw the lights, Fetlock Falls is right over there! Land this... this thing!” Caught between anger and panic, a slight aura began to surround Pasture’s horn. The Unicorn’s chest burned with frustration– the thought of coming so close and simply giving up was almost more than he could stand.
Featherprop gulped as he took note of the aura, but kept his gaze locked on the panel ahead of him and gripped the controls more tightly. “Doc, we can’t. We’re already past the airfield.” He tried to keep his voice neutral; the frantic edge in the doctor's voice had caused his mane to rise on the back of his neck, but this was no time for another argument. For a second, he wondered if Pasture was desperate enough to try to wrest control of the aircraft from him. No, nopony would do that. Not like he could figure out how to work this beast, anyway. He dismissed the thought and focused again on his piloting.
“Well, turn back! We can't just try once and prance out of here!” Pasture’s voice roughened with anger as a vision of a Court of Inquiry flashed through his mind. The reserved, commanding demeanor he’d worked to hold together began to crumble, and his muzzle curled into a frown as he cast about for some way, any way to convince, cajole, or shame the Pegasus into bending to his will. We can’t leave. The medicine... Celestia, I can’t let this happen. I can’t... The last words echoed in his mind, over and over.
Featherprop clenched his teeth together as the Unicorn blustered, clamping down on a comeback that went well beyond the border of rudeness. When the Trotter began to claw back the altitude they'd given up, he reached down and lifted a wing-shaped lever. Somewhere behind them, a motor thrummed as the flaps began to tuck themselves up against the wing. Only a few gusts rocked them as they climbed; the turbulence that had made the south end of the valley a hellish descent was muted and restrained to the north. For a moment, Featherprop felt a bitter anger grow, a sense that it wasn't fair to have had to work so hard simply to fail. I hope Pasture doesn't latch onto this as well. I don't care how calm it is here, we can't stick around to try again.
As they flew outwards on the range, he hoofed the microphone button and, after a moment of hesitation, he spoke with a calm detachment into his voice, one that he certainly didn't feel inside. “Fetlock Traffic, Snowpony is going missed.” He waited for a response, but nopony replied. Shaking his head, he continued, “Fetlock, Snowpony is at minimum fuel and cannot hold. We will depart the area to the southwest, outbound on the range. Anypony monitoring please advise Kathia of our intentions. We'll come back as soon as we can.” Slumping back in his seat, he added, “I’m sorry.”
Pasture reached over and laid a quivering hoof on Featherprop's foreleg. “You can’t do this!” He pointed towards the cargo bay behind them, his voice tight with frustration. “That medicine is perishable– it will be useless in less than twelve hours! Try again! If you take us away from here, I'll tell them... ” Pasture bit off the rest of the sentence, realizing that he was on the verge of making a crude threat. With a twinge of shame, he watched Featherprop’s head rear back, and knew it was too late. The poisonous words hung between them, and he quickly looked away as he finished his sentence, “...that you are to blame.”
As Pasture spoke, Featherprop felt an icy jolt shoot up his back, shivering his wings. Slowly, he turned to look at Pasture, and his fear turned to anger. I’m tired of being pushed around. I’m sick of bending. Damn his hooves, I’m done with giving in! He can rip me up one side and down the other to some stupid judge or whatever, I’m DONE. I don’t care anymore. I want to get out of this Luna-forsaken plane and forget this night ever happened. “Tell them what, Doc? And who, your Academy?” His words dripped with sarcasm as he stared at Pasture.
Pasture glowered and slowly nodded– there was no denying what he had been about to say. In a resigned voice he said, “The Dean’s Committee. They’ll want an explanation as to why I have failed. There will be a hearing, and they will want to know why resources were wasted. I’ll have have to give a full accounting of this flight, and the decisions made on it.” Pasture hoped that baring the knife, as it were, might convince the pilot to change his mind. If I can’t get him to turn around now, I’m as good as ruined.
Featherprop’s gut flip-flopped at the threat. With blood pounding in his temples, he turned on the elder stallion. "You want to get it there so bad?" he growled, one hoof shaking on the yoke as he stabbed the other back towards the cargo bay, "Well, there's a door back there. If you really want to get there, take your junk and jump! GO ON, JUMP!" Featherprop stared at Pasture with his muzzle clenched in an ugly snarl. A part of his mind wondered what the consequences of yelling at a representative of one of the most prestigious institutions in all of Equestria might be, but he found that he just didn’t care. I’ve had it with these damn summerhoofs. Doctors, businessponies, Princesses, to Tartarus with all of them!
The pilot’s outburst left the Unicorn staring in wide-eyed disbelief. This was not the same yielding stallion he had been dealing with, and the sudden change made him wary. Pasture forced himself to relax, and when he spoke he chose his words with care. "You're... we're leaving, then." It was a half-statement, half-question meant to give the Pegasus a chance to reconsider.
Featherprop seemed to shrink in his seat as his anger faded. But instead of self-doubt, what replaced it was a conviction that had been absent all night. “Yes, we are leaving. I tried. Now we're out of options." Though he spoke the words with certainty, Featherprop's eyes were full of the regret. He realized that his anger wasn't only directed towards Pasture. Demanding and blustery though he had been, Pasture wasn't the one who'd allowed them to get lost, nor the one who chose to fly into a turbulent box canyon with a load of ice. His cheeks reddened in shame as he looked back at his conduct throughout the evening. It’s like I tried to find ways to kill us. How did I ever let myself fly that let-down? How many rules have I broken tonight? In a more subdued voice he continued, "This is my plane, at least until we hit the ground, and I’ve decided we’re diverting. There's nothing to do here but make more mistakes."
He waved a hoof at the side window and the glazed, shiny airfoil beyond. "Look at the wings. If we go down through any more icing, we might not come back up. And just seeing a glimpse of the lights is different from being able to line up and land. I can't get us into Fetlock Falls tonight. We never should have tried. I never should have let us get this far." He slumped back, jerking as he pinched his wing against the armrest.
Featherprop glanced at the dwindling fuel gauges and grimaced. Luna, this is going to be close. I can’t back down. If I do, and I’m wrong... we’ll die.
4685128 Shoot, if everyone figured it out by the first few chapters, I didn't do a very good job, did I?
Speaking of which, which way do you guess? I... well, it's not that I'd have any revisions to do, per se, but...
Anyway, I'm glad you're enjoying it! Next chapter will be up on Friday, shouldn't be a problem unless I find another body part to lacerate and glue up!
4685482
Read A Flock of Ships by Brian Callison (if you can find a copy; it's kind of obscure). The very first chapter tells you exactly how the story ends, and the rest of the novel is how it got to that point.
Because a story is more about the journey than the ending.
Interesting choice to put the hyperlinks in the story explaining what an iambic key was.
My brother used 'pilot lingo' when he sent me a text message after wrecking his Jeep, and he used pax in the message. Somewhat related, an ex-girlfriend was a veterinarian, and she used to use that lingo all the time (so the white board said delta fish H2O one Saturday). And as my pre-readers know, I often abbreviate words with exes. [like 'add desx of guard']
Still, it might be worth adding a blog post or an author's note to the end. As I've said before, many of your readers might not know the ins and outs of flight, why icing on the wings is bad, or even what that beacon Featherprop is hoping to see is. I can't give an unbiased opinion (I know too much about aviation), so I can't say whether or not it's apparent by context. . . .
4685730 Yeah, that's a good point about making a blog post or a note. I tried to keep most things to where a reader could gloss over details and keep going, or get some extra insight if they do a little looking. I'll put something together that gives the basics on A-N nav, non-crystal radios, and a bit about icing.
I'm actually disappointed- so far, no one has asked the question I thought would be the FIRST one asked: How in Celestia's can anypony have a turboprop engine? I've been ready to counter that one since day one.
4685662 What I meant was, if I'm trying to keep it uncertain then it'd be a poor job if I made it that easy to guess. I agree, the story itself is more important than the ending, but the way this one developed the uncertainty became a part of the process. How much risk is too much? Is it a major error or a minor oversight that ends up being one too many?
4695424 Glad you like it! World-building is one thing I got interested in when I first started here on FimFic... but the I realized that it was a hydra- so many authors, so many little individual worlds, some that had minor differences, some that were unrecognizable.
Except in a few cases, I find that I prefer the world-building that fills in the gaps of the one we see on the show. For me, the really enjoyable part is figuring out how to make up details that are plausible, that fit with the show, and that fill the needs I have for a story. Hence, we have sandwich factories in Cloudsdale; totally reasonable, totally unsupported by the show... but it doesn't contradict anything in the show.
... Um... I sorta ran out of steam. Which, uh, which Pegasi details were you talking about, anyway?
4711905 Good questions, though for now it isn't clear why magic is weaker. There's not even a quantification, if indeed there's any way to measure the 'strength' of magic.
This assumes, of course, that magic can be affected by environmental factors, and is not solely produced by organisms. I don't think it's illogical to assume that, since if we look at physics in general, the energy budget needed to perform some of the tasks magic has been used for in the show is ENORMOUS- things like lifting rocks, flinging objects around, even flying at speeds that approach the speed of sound or teleporting from place to place, all of them need much, much more energy than any living being could produce and store.
I suppose my view is put together from a few headcanons- Jetfire's concept of a 'magical circuit' along a Unicorn's spine, a 'near-field effect' that lets ponies pick up objects with their hooves, and the familiarity of the Earth's magnetic field all sort of thrown together.
So I suppose the question of, "Why is magic weak?" could simply be answered with "It makes for another obstacle to overcome."
And because, according to a snippet buried deep in a Google Doc, it lets me force Featherprop to do some aerial laps while Rainb... hm.
Ether may have promised to keep quiet, but it strikes me that telling the local radio operator is a good way for the secret to develop an untraceable leak.
4696241
The anatomy details, all the bits about their body structure.
4719069
OK, I saw this eight hours ago. Since then, I've been both writing up a reply and finally getting down to laying out where stuff is and making it make some sort of sense.
You're stepping ahead in technology there- so far, they're pretty limited in radio. It's still Marconi-level stuff, low-frequency transmissions and all.
In one sense, it IS a 'unidirectional' antenna- it's not like the loop-sense system in an ADF or the time-dependent signal of a VOR. There's no instrument to give you an indication of direction or signal strength, rather you have to listen for a set of tones. The navigational range is just two big antennas, one of which broadcasts the Morse letter "A" (dot-dash) and the other the Morse letter "N" (dash-dot). The arrangement of the antennas means that you get two large areas where you will only hear A or N tones, but near the boundaries you will have a region where the signals overlap.
When you are on course, the dots and dashes combine and make a steady tone. Here's where it gets tricky. The only way to determine you are on course is to hear a steady tone. If you have a chart, you can see what the bearing is- that means a course line as measured against magnetic or true north. In a no-wind situation, you should be able to fly along the range by pointing your nose on that bearing.
But airplanes almost NEVER travel in the direction they point- any sort of wind will make them drift sideways. The solution is to turn slightly into the wind, so part of your forward motion cancels out the wind's effect.
Furthermore, there is no "to-from" indicator, nor a needle pointing to the station. The only way you can tell if you are moving towards or away from the station is the quality of the tone- as you get farther, the signal gets weaker. As you get closer, the tones get louder.
The course also becomes narrower as you approach, because it's based on angles from a single point, the width of the overlapping signals gets wider the farther you get from the station, and narrower as you get closer. That's another clue a pilot uses to estimate position.
So, to put that to Featherprop's situation: First let me say that I turned my stacks of runsheets (I do my roughing out while in cruise flight- inspiration, ya know, and I use my weather printouts as handy notepaper, which then gets mixed in with my copies of the runsheets)inside out, but couldn't find the map I drew to sort this out in my head. I'm going to do up a simplified example to help explain this, and post it in this reply. They'd been flying north from Fairflanks (FFL) when they lost the range. Whenever possible, ranges were set up so they did not have a course change between stations- so that when the station you were flying away from got weak, you were properly aligned with the next one and coudl switch to the new frequency and be close to on course.
The winds blew them east and north of where the next range, Sheltie's Meadow (SHM) would have been audible. Featherprop had left the tuner on Fetlock Falls' (FFL) frequency, and that's why they heard it when the signal got strong enough to cut through the interference.
After that, he had to use some deductive thinking to figure out where they were. He could hear a "dash-dot" on Fetlock's frequency, and a "dot-dash" when he tuned in Whitepony. That gave him a HUGE area to try, so he took a guess and kept flying. One of two things would happen: He'd eventually start to hear the "A" tones of Fetlock, or the "N" tones would fade completely, and he'd know he'd wasted a lot of fuel going the wrong way.
I never said it was an easy system to use, but it's how radionav got it's start.
As for the airport... hm. I may have an answer for that in a few hours- I spent too long making something to show you, which I will post as a blog and link to it.
Have a map!
4721220 Oh, okay! I wasn't sure if you meant the physiology stuff or the take on Cloudsdale culture.
4720991 I wasn't sure if I got the action and everything nailed down well. It was intense for me writing it, but I'm glad to hear that translated well for a reader. I reworked it so many times I felt like I'd lost perspective, you know?
I gotta go exercise and find food, but I'll be back later. I know I left a wall of text and some scribblings, so good luck!