Of Aerial Dominance

by Sorren

Chapter 10 - Out of The Icebox And Into The Storm

Golden sunlight cast itself across the floor of Slipstream’s cage as the engines of the Longcoat vessel hummed at an idle. Through the vertical slash in the siding of the storage bay, she could spot nothing but the golden shine of the sunrise. The light did serve one purpose, however; she could now see Minnow and Wiltings, both asleep.

Minnow had curled herself into a tight ball, the remainder of her tail hiding her muzzle and eyes from view. Wiltings had slumped against the bars in a sitting position, her head tilted back and mouth ajar as she breathed heavily.

Shouts and yells of ponies reached her ears over the gentle sounds of the engines. She had spent too much time as a docking hand not to know the scenario. They were landing the airship.

Up until this point, the space around her had been filled with a morbid sense, the kind that made you want to curl into a ball in a dark corner and pretend life wasn’t real. Now the feeling was panic. She was a filly caught shooting spit wads in the hall sent on a treck to the principal’s office. Here she was now, staring into the frosted glass that was the door to death, the cold, hard realization that she had been caught rooting into her soul and sucking the life out of it. Any minute he would open the door and life as she knew it would end.

The floor below her hooves bumped softly to the assumed ground and a moment later the engines began to shut off one by one.

Wiltings stirred. “Wha... what is it?” She lifted her head and stared around with puffy eyes. Wincing, she put her forehooves on her head and twisted it around, forcing a collection of meaty pops from her vertebrae that sent a shiver down Slipstream’s spine.

“We’ve landed.”

Wiltings yawned and sat up.

“What... it’s morning?” She twisted her head the other way and got two more pops, much to SLipstream’s discontent. She huffed out a breath of steam and hugged her forehooves close to herself. “It’s colder than the outskirts of the blasted Crystal Kingdom in here.”

Slipstream shivered. “Why’d you have to bring it up?” She huffed and rubbed her hooves together. “Now I’m thinking about being cold all over again.”

Wiltings shrugged. “Just be glad they let us keep the jackets.” She looked down to her still-swollen foreleg. “And my brace...”

“So they can bury us in them,” she muttered under her breath. She inhaled sharply as three hard knocks reverberated from the outer wall. A second later twin lines of blinding light appeared as a door on the starboard wall began to open with a squeal. The hinges protested as it dropped and met the ground without resistance, a resonating bang echoing through the cargo bay.

Slipstream covered her eyes with a forehoof, hiding from the rays of warm sunshine. The brightness fogged her eyes, made them water, and when she closed them a green overlay remained, strongest whenever she blinked.

Two ponies stepped into view, nothing but silhouettes of black. “This them?” one asked in a deep voice.

The other grunted. “Be them. Orders say to move.”

Slipstream listened with interest as they spoke. They seemed to cut their sentences in half lengthwise, only using words necessary for understanding. They spoke much unlike the commander she remembered.

She tried to glue the pieces together in her head. It was most likely they were the blue-collar type if they were unloading a docked airship, so it was possible that what they were speaking was a working-class accent.

Another pony came forth dragging a cart behind him. “Stop wase’n time.” He struggled to pull the cart up the ramp and the other two moved up to help him. “T’want to eat this hour.”

Slipstream scrunched up her face as the burly, deep-voiced one moved up to her cage. He smelt like a dead fish marinated in rotten meat. “Look’t this one.” Slipstream tensed as he and the other stallion lifted her cage into the air and hurled it onto the cart as unceremoniously as possible. “She’s thin as my neck.” He laughed as his eyes looked over her.

Slipstream steadied herself in the cage and moved away from him, pressing against the bars on the opposite side.

The other stallion laughed as well. “Don’ye get any ideas.” He prodded Slipstream’s rump through the bars and the mare gave an eep, hopping away in repulse. “You’d split’er in two.”

Slipstream swallowed the bile rising in her throat as the two chortled and moved away. Stallions had always joked around with that kind of stuff, and usually it was all in good sport—it was their nature. But this... they weren’t stallions—they were big, furry worksponies who could probably snap her like a toothpic. She knew all too well how much big stallions liked lithe mares. She gagged again and found herself wishing she were ugly and built like a refrigerator.

Wiltings’ cage clattered down next to her own, and Minnow’s was tossed somewhere on top.

The pony who had hauled in the cart waved his hoof at the two stallions. “I’ll take them. Unload the boxes.”

Now that the stallion that smelt like death was no longer near her, Slipstream got a good whiff of the environment. Coal. She smelt coal like one often did aboard Equestrian passenger trains.

The stallion struggled with their cart for a moment before pulling it to a start and riding up on the handle as it rolled down the airship ramp. The wheels thudded to the steel ground of the loading dock and the stallion hopped back to the ground.

Slipstream peered into the light, eyes still adjusting. “Can’t see a thing.”

Wiltings seemed to be going through the realization phase now, for she held herself close. “What do we do?”

The golden white of the sun had become somewhat bearable now and Slipstream used this time to look around, still blinking rapidly.

The sun peeked just over snowcapped mountains in the distance, casting its rays across the valley. After a moment, she realized that they had been unloaded atop a multi-story docking tower, maybe a good ten stories into the air.

Her jaw fell open. She had expected civilization, but nothing like this. Crowded buildings spanned on for miles in all directions, almost every other sporting a chiney pouring black smoke. Away, far in the distance, six massive smoke stacks spired into the air, smoke as black as plain coffee pouring from the unfiltered tops and spreading out in the air as a thick sheen of yellow smog.

It was apparent why she smelt coal. “Sweet Celestia...”

Wiltings looked just as shocked. “It’s massive.”

Dirty-looking non-rigid airships floated around above the city, wooden structures slightly resembling sea ships suspended from sooty gasbags.

Slipstream opened her mouth to speak, but her first attempt was silence. “What...” She closed her eyes for a good four seconds before opening them again. “Everything’s coal...”

Wiltings only shook her head as the cart they were on continued to roll across the platform. “Equestria’s already advancing from the coal age... it’s old technology.” Her eyes drifted from the astonishing sight and over to Slipstream. “I thought they were more advanced than us?”

Slipstream shook her head. Far in the distance, she spotted a thin line traveling lengthwise down a mountainside, a black jet of smoke rising into the air from the front. “Coal is cheaper.”

“But look at this place!” she hissed under her breath. “It’s raining ash! They’ve over-stressed the environment.”

Slipstream nodded in agreement. Though all the roofs of the buildings were covered in snow, they were varying colors of yellow or gray. “Celestia... look at that though. There’s more than we could have ever thought. I doubt this is the only city!”

The pony pulling the cart gave Slipstream’s cage a light smack. “Prisoners are not supposed to talk.” He spoke slowly, as if he were thinking about his words.

Slipstream turned towards him and found herself staring at his rump as he pulled from the harness collar. “Are there more?”

He looked back at her, showing his trim face and thick blue coat. “There are more.” He looked away. “They will kill me if I make speak with prisoners.” He gave his head a shake. “Don’t.” He rolled the over the crest of a platform and stopped. Reaching over, he cranked a wheel around and the valve above it gave a hiss. With a little jolt, the platform he and the cart was on began to lower.

She pressed anyways. “What is this place?”

He grunted and looked towards the sun. “Praeclarus.”

Slipstream racked her mind and tried to bring herself back to school where she had learned the bases of pony language. It had something to do with magnificence. Looking back to the stallion, she noticed for the first time the short blade strapped to his underbelly. He was armed, most likely for the chance they tried to escape. He was giving off more of a guard aura than a yard worker.

“Where’re you taking us?” Slipstream asked as firmly as she could bring her voice to sound as the lift jolted to a stop at the bottom of the tower.

It appeared to be an airbase. There was no better word for it. Tarmac spread out for a good three hundred yards in all four directions, mostly flat apart from a sag here or there where the ground had settled. Longcoats trotted about in a busy, most in groups but some alone, all in uniform. As the stallion started out over the tarmac, breathing heavily under the strain of pulling the cage-laden wagon, Slipstream only watched. Two ponies crossed their path up ahead hauling a truck of three inch ammunition. Seeing the rounds on a cart made her doubt the actual relevance of such large ammunition aboard airships. If they could get something to explode, set off the hydrogen...

The bustle of the place reminded her of the average Equestrian airfield, though much smaller than the one she had taken off from. Just above, a five hundred foot cargo vessel was sweeping in for a landing. Just below it hung a rather large piece of salvage from four cables: a sack of sixteen cylinder engines, most likely gathered from the scene of the battle; the Longcoats seemed to have wasted no time at all to get that out of the way. Pegasi flew around the airship in a tight ring, each with their own guideline tied off to the envelope of the ship as they helped steer it manually in for a landing. Short billows of water escaped the stern and bow ballast tanks as the airship stabilized itself, splashing down to the cold tarmac below. About thirty feet from the ground, more ropes dropped from the cabin for the ground crew to grab and pull taut, the ponies shouting orders and positions to one another.

Slipstream had seen too many landings to know that this was a mint setdown in progress. She had also watched this process enough times to know when a pony was out of place. So far, everypony but one was where they needed to be. A green pegasus hovered in the shadow of the gondola, trying his best to look busy and utterly failing.

It’s Price. “What do you think he’s up to?” Slipstream said lowly to Wiltings. It has to be Price.

Wiltings frowned across cages, then looked back to the descending airship. “The green one, under the gondola?”

“Yeah.”

“Stop talking!” The cart puller panted forcefully, working hard to keep up his pace of a brisk trot.

Slipstream bit back a snappy reply and kept her eyes glued to the shifty pegasus. The major lack of security around her made her wonder if the Longcoats really realized that they had the Equestrian fleet commander and her second-in-command in the same place at the same time. It would have only made sense to receive a full army escort, but instead she was being treated as cargo.

Somepony had made a mistake, and a big one at that.

The only thing that made her wonder if the green pegasus really was Price was the fact that he was clad in gray combat armor and had wrapped most of his head in bandages. She didn’t get her hopes up, though. There were equally great chances he was just a new recruit who didn’t know what the hell he was doing. Though as he slipped up behind the gondola and pulled a small package from his left saddlebag, she started to suspect something greater was up.

Something was definitely up. There was no doubt about it as the pegasus planted the little package upon the envelope then sprang away in a quick flight towards the stern of the airship.

What did little, mysterious packages usually have in common? They blew up.

A loud snap reverberated through the brittle air. Steel and fabric flew in shredded ruin from the place the package had been placed, then it started to rain. A solid pillar of water poured from the ruptured ballast tank. Slipstream’s eyes flashed. She’d had nightmares about this happening to her. Ponies yelled and dodged out of the way as the wall of freezing water crashed to the ground below, creating a small tidal wave that spread out in a circle. All talk across the landing field rose to a clamour, and an alarm bell lit up the air from somewhere aboard the cargo vessel.

Slipstream could hardly believe her eyes. The trouble to come next was something she’d only heard of in tavern stories told by ponies who had been fired for similar accidents.

The nose began to lift, gradually at first, but with even more speed as the entire stern ballast poured onto the tarmac. Ponies all around yelled and shouted, the pegasi taking to the air and leaving the rest to gallop towards the unfolding chaos.

“Get weight on that ship!” a stallion decorated in rank yelled. Pegasi filled the air, swarming around the vessel, gathering ropes and trying to pull the vessel steady while the crew struggled with the rising breeze, the ponies on the ground being lifted into the air by the ropes they clung to. The smart ones let go, knowing very well that too much had been lost from the ballast for body weight to make any difference, while the stubborn and stupidly-brave held on. A mare who had been dangling from one of the further most ropes to the front decided that she wasn’t taking that flight once she had been carried twenty feet into the air. She released and screamed her way to the ground, and although she landed on all four hooves, only one of them held her, the other three letting out muffled cracks and pops.

Slipstream winced.

“We need help!” a mare bellowed across the airfield.

No, really? Slipstream scoffed. Four Longcoats were clinging in futility to one rope as it dragged them like yarn across the tarmac. The cargo vessel was now on the verge of a catastrophic tailstand, the cargo below threatening to rip free form the tetherings.

“You!” the decorated stallion yelled, pointing to their wagon puller, who had since stopped to balk at the carnage. “Get your flank in there and help pull!” were the words of the stallion who hadn’t lifted a hoof to help.

The stallion in the harness made a few conflicted movements towards the ranking pony, showing plainly that his cargo could not be abandoned, but a stern and ignorant eye forced him into submission and he pulled out of the harness to race over and attempt some sort of earth pony magic.

The captain should have dropped the bow ballast tanks earlier, but now it was much too late to prevent a full-on tailstand.

Slipstream jumped to her hooves and flared her wings in the barely-enough space. “We have to find a way out of these cages.” Feeling more futile than ever, like a rat in a cage, she shook the bars before her and the lock rattled in the latch.

Wiltings sighed and slumped her shoulders. “What’re you gonna’ do, bite through the bars?”

“I don’t need any sarcasm right now!” Slipstream snapped back.

“Well then what the hell do you want!?” Wiltings glared. “There is no way a stomper like me, nor any pegasus, can get out of a steel cage on their own!”

“I know that!” Slipstream snapped back, groaning and clasping her head in her forehooves. “Where’s one of those hornheads when you need them?” Her cage shook as a heavy pair of hooves came down on top. “Minnow?” she asked with an ascending squint to the roof of her cage.

The inhabitants of the airfield raced around like frenzied ants, too worried about the chaos to give the three caged ponies on a discarded cart any notice. It all seemed too good to be true.

Hoofsteps clanked across the top of her cage and she heard Minnow mutter something from above, though quiet and forced, then a pony dropped down from the front and wasted no time in fitting himself into the harness. Better yet, it was the green stallion who had sabotaged the cargo vessel which was now on the brink of utter destruction. He grunted and beat his wings, pushing off with his hooves to get the cart moving.

It has to be Price. It even looks like him. Suddenly, the fact that Price had died seemed a whole lot more unbelievable. Why had they continued to fire aboard the transport vessel if they had gotten him? Why had the security on the remaining three of them been tripled? It was all making sense now. “Pric—”

There was a tremendous grating of steel from the stern of the cargo vessel as the tailfins hit the tarmac and began to drag. Steel and fabric twisted and tore as the rough ground hacked the delicate fins to shreds, and even as it moved, the weight of the vessel forced more of it into the ground. From this perspective, it reminded her of a giant block of airship-shaped cheese sliding across a cheese grater.

Everything seemed to be prospering against the Longcoats as the wind gusted, carrying with it ash and the smell of sulfur. Maybe it was fate’s way of lending Slipstream a hoof.

The green pegasus who was now almost ninety percent confirmed as Price had managed to haul them up to a fast trot’s pace, but the Longcoat pulling the cart before had made it look easy. Unfortunately, they were also drawing eyes. By now, it was apparent that saving the airship was a lost cause, and the ponies that weren’t still dangling from ropes were beginning to look around in anger and confusion. Though somehow, no alarms were thrown; the Longcoats simply watched as if the escaping prisoners were nothing more than obnoxious foals making too much noise on one’s street.

There was no doubt about a rescue now. The pony pulling their cart was undoubtedly Price and they were actually going to make it out of here easily. Slipstream, you always have been a dreamer. No matter the case, she positively squealed in delight at the wonderful carnage unfolding before her very eyes. The captain of the airship had just made one mistake after another. Now, signified by the sudden drop in altitude, the derpy pony behind the wheel had most likely vented the hydrogen chambers—another bad idea in the chain of bad ideas spoken aviator had already carried out. However, the dirigible now stood directly on its tail end, having wedged into the ground and been lifted by the hazardous winds. All that venting the hydrogen did was add more weight to the frame. Then it buckled like an old grain silo a little bit above the ground and began to keel backwards.

“Get away!” a mare screamed, putting as much distance between herself and the groaning airship. Others followed suit, abandoning whatever tasks they were performing and making like athletes for the edge of the yard. The internal supports gave, and like a film reel played in slow motion, the entire frame mimicked a tin can underhoof as the vessel turtled, pointing its belly to the smoggy sky. Welds and rivets snapped like popcorn, and the cargo hung below snapped free of the cabin and crashed to the ground, pistons and steel parts flying as the sixteen cylinder engines were introduced to gravity. The top of the envelope fell against the tarmac almost like a comforter would settle upon the bedsheets. Better yet, the structural design of the entire airship did not permit upside down flight—or landings for that matter—and with another snap and a groan the entire cabin collapsed down into the envelope of the ship.

“Yes!” Slipstream screamed to the heavens, pumping one hoof forward. She closed her eyes for a second. “Hydrogen ignition, hydrogen ignition,” she chanted. “Come on, just one little spark!” A muffled pop signified that her prayers had been answered. A second later the remnants of the airship went up in brilliant flame of red, lighting up the morning like a second sun. Slipstream covered her eyes and winced as the heat washed over her, even from this distance.

“Serves ‘em right,” Wiltings gruffed from her cage.

After everything they had been through, seeing such disaster at the Longcoats’ suspense filled her with joy she knew she shouldn’t be feeling. Ponies had probably died in that fire, but right now she couldn’t kill the smile. “Yes!” she yelled again, then quickly fell back as a bullet rung off of one of the bars of her cage. “I mean, oh darn,” she corrected flatly, eyes darting about for the shooter.

It was the wagon puller. He had gotten a rifle from somewhere and was using a mare’s back as a deadrest as he took aim at them from a good hundred or so feet away. “Them!” he shouted, pointing with the bayonet of the rifle. “Equestria ponies!”

Slipstream’s hopes for a smooth escape suicided as every ear on the airfield perked at the word ‘Equestria’. Now she was no longer smiling, and suddenly, she felt very exposed in her little cage with four inch gaps between the bars. The gunshots started and she cried out, imagining all the different places she could be shot. The most she could do was curl herself into a ball at the back of her cage and hope they didn’t ventilate her.

“Alive!” the stallion hurriedly corrected. “We need them alive!”

Slipstream breathed a sigh of relief and dared a look as the gunshots subsided. “We have to get out of these cages,” she told the assumed Price.

“Working on it!” the pony grunted in Price’s accent. He dug his hooves into the tarmac and pulled them through a rolling gate that was in the process of rolling closed, around a sharp corner, and into a cobbled street.

Slipstream yelped as she was thrown up against the side of her cage and shaken like paint in a can. At least they were finally out of the airfield, even if their problems did remain. They’d exited the base onto a mostly deserted cobblestone street. The problem was that the wagon they were on had rather small wheels designed for smooth surfaces, and cobblestone was in no way smooth.

The city streets reminded her a little of Canterlot after the bombings. What wasn’t made of wood was stone, and whatever stone was either gray or ash-black. The only white the Longcoats probably ever saw was the side of an Equestrian airship and fresh snow.

So far, Minnow hadn’t made much of a fuss or a sound, and Slipstream worried for a moment that she could have been shot. Of course, there wasn’t blood raining around her cage, so that was a good sign. Minnow was probably just being quiet, like she usually was since had been toasted.

What could only be called Longcoat civilians pointed and muttered and adorned concerned or worried faces as the odd foursome passed. The yells and shouts that followed the chattery cart served as warning enough that they were still under chase. A mare that stood out in front of a pasty shop with her foal gasped and drug the young pony to safety.

Price whipped them around another corner and came to an unexpected halt against a cluster of trash barrels. He tripped and ate cobble, leaving the cart to hop to the left and auger into the corner of a building. The cart stopped dead, however Slipstream did not. Her cage slid across the cart and nailed the wall, knocking her up against the bars for a second time. Minnow’s cage was a bit more explorative; it sheared off the wall with a clank and tumbled to the ground, the mare inside bouncing like a deflated volleyball.

Price didn’t stay down for long. Comically enough, he emerged with a banana peel draped over his head and rotten lettuce peppering his coat. He wasted no time in rushing over to Slipstream’s cockeyed cage, only pausing a moment to undo the bandages that had been concealing most of his mane and face.

He sure was a sight for sore eyes.

“Price!” Slipstream exclaimed.

He reached back and pulled a set of compact bolt cutters from his saddlebag. “You told me to come back,” he gruffed, fitting the jaws of the device over the padlock ring. “I wasn’t about to disobey orders from my commander.”

“But... how?”

“No time.” The lock snapped and he yanked it out of the loop, then moved right on to Wiltings.

“Down there!” a mare shouted from the street. “They went down there!”

“No, no, no!” Slipstream threw open her cage door and stumbled to freedom, immediately stretching her legs and flaring her wings. One thing was for sure: she did not do cages.

Wiltings exploded out of her cage before Price had even had time to back away. She bowled the green stallion onto his back and ripped the bolt cutters from his grasp, slicing a line straight to Minnow’s cage. “You okay?” she breathed, seizing the jaws of the tool onto the lock.

Minnow only nodded as she struggled to her hooves on shaky legs at the same time Wiltings all but ripped the cage in half trying to get past the simple latch.

Slipstream had made this observation before, but Minnow really looked bad; all of them did, but she was the worst. Wiltings had her swollen knee and improvised brace which probably wasn’t fully functioning. Price seemed dead exhausted, almost falling asleep where he stood. Minnow was a walking shishkebab. And she herself had more cuts than hairs in her mane. Now all they needed was a cheesy name and they’d be the ragtag squadron of battle rejects.

“Come on!” Price butted her firmly in the rump. “Stop daydreaming and move!”

Then they were running. Well, as close to running as the four of them could achieve. Wiltings lolloped along on three and a half legs and Slipstream ran in a similar fashion. Minnow wasn’t doing much running at all; Price half carried her, and although her hooves kicked feebly at the ground to show she was giving the effort, she really wasn’t doing anything.

“There they are!” Slipstream pushed herself harder at the voices behind her.

The four staggered around a corner to come to the sight of a wall ten feet ahead.

Price spat and nearly dropped Minnow. “What’s this nonsense!?” He skidded to a stop. “What Twisted idiot would build an alley shaped like an L!?”

Slipstream started to ring up options as her eyes seeked. There was a balcony, and nothing but, three stories above. She turned to Price. “Think you can fly Wiltings?”

Price darted his eyes to her. “You can’t?”

“She’s too heavy.”

Wiltings glared with a hurt look. “Hey...”

“I can,” Price said quickly, then nodded towards Minnow. “Be careful with her.”

Without hesitating, Slipstream flared her wings and trotted to the shallow-eyed mare, very aware of the pounding of hoofsteps around the corner. “Are you doing okay?” she asked softly, despite the current gravity of their situation.

Minnow nodded her head. “It hurts.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper.

Slipstream nodded, the hoverd and took position over the mare. She lowered herself and wrapped her hooves around the mare’s body.

Minnow whimpered and shook.

“I’m sorry.” Slipstream gritted her teeth. Minnow’s right side felt wet and raw, utterly disgusting. With a few strong flaps from her wings, she lifted Minnow off the ground, the mare letting out a gurgled scream as she hissed and writhed in Slipstream’s grasp. Slipstream tried to be gentle, but she had to squeeze to keep the mare from slipping, feeling like some sort of cruel torturer. Price carried Wiltings just beside her, looking strained, the tendons in his neck sticking out.

“B-big boned earth pony,” he grunted as WIltings dangled below him, looking a combination of tense and insulted.

Slipstream was the first to reach the balcony. She released Minnow an inch from the ground and the mare dropped into a quivering heap, her mouth stretched wide in a silent wail as tears streamed from her eyes.

Price dropped down beside her with Wiltings, panting softly. “Stupid balcony.”

Slipstream tossed her head to the side to look at him. “The stupid balcony that just saved your rump... unless they’re pegasi...”

“Up there!”

Slipstream ducked involuntarily, then remembered that they weren’t allowed to shoot her and she was tempted to poke up her head and wag her tongue at them, though for some reason the wooden railing exploded where her head had been a moment before. She didn’t even jump this time, instead just tensed her shoulders as her wide eyes drifted up. “They’re shooting at us!” she hissed, dropping to her belly and starting to crawl towards the double doors ahead.

“What did you expect?” Price snapped back, keeping pace with her. “Water pistols and foam dart guns?”

Under normal circumstances, she would have given him reprimand for being a cheeky jackass, though she didn’t feel like too much of a commander right now and her statement had been pretty unorthodox. Really, she felt less like a commander than she ever had, more like a grunt going through training. Although she had trained to be a captain, every pony went through the same basic training before splitting off into specialized fields. She’d learned to fight, run, crawl, and be a supposed killing machine. Just like then, they were all equals; rank was a thing of the past that no longer mattered.

Upon bursting through the doors into the building, they stumbled upon a family who had probably been enjoying a rather meager breakfast. Mom exploded to her hooves and wrapped the young colt beside her up into a crushing embrace. A much older colt—young, but old enough to pass as an adult—flipped the table and snapped up a knife in his jaws. Even as he looked at the three Equestrians, his legs trembled and fear ran through his eyes.

“Take you resistance and get out!” the mare screeched at them, hurling a salt shaker that Price was forced to duck. It exploded on the wall behind him. “All you ponies are is trouble!”

Slipstream squinted at the mare. “Resistance?”

Price grabbed her by the back of the mane before she could receive an answer and half threw her towards the opposite doorway. “Keep moving or they’ll trap us in the building!”

The four of them barged out into the hall and ran, Wiltings fully carrying Minnow as the mare groaned and closed her eyes. The pain of being lifted by her burnt flesh must have put her into shock again.

Slipstream lost track of all the twists and turns. She simply followed Price’s tail as he tore them through rooms and down three flights of stairs.

By the time they had begun to slow, Price lowering their speed in the presence of semi-safety, Slipstream’s legs were jelly. She wasn’t a soldier anymore, she was a captain, and boot camp had been a long time ago.

Somehow, Wiltings had managed to carry Minnow on her back, all while only running on three hooves; it had to be something to do with her earth pony traits, because Slipstream knew for a fact if she had attempted that she would have eaten the cobblestone minutes ago.

It just plain wasn’t fair. Longcoats were bred bigger, faster, stronger... The half of them made her feel like a toy in their presence, a Border Collie beside a St. Bernard. Slipstream may have been a tad on the small side for a mare, but Longcoats were built like earth ponies that had been ploughing rocky fields all their lives. Of course there was still diversity of small and large, but they had the advantage.

It wasn’t fair.

Neither is war.

Price pointed off ahead to an old, rickety two-story house that gave the impression it would fall over in the wind and looked like it had been pulled directly directly out of a horror movie and slapped on a street corner between two empty lots. “Think it’s empty?”

“No... more...” Minnow choked. Apparently, even the treatment of being carried was slowly killing her.

Slipstream shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. If there’s ponies there we’ll bind and gag them if we have to. We can’t keep running like this.”

A very ominous ‘condemned’ sign had been nailed to the door and the latch had been comically padlocked with a riveted device the size of a pony’s hoof. The unorthodox lock really didn’t do anything to stop Price from kicking in the door. With the rusty squeal of a few screws, the latch ripped out of the door and the flimsy piece of wood screeched open.

The inside of the home somehow looked worse than the outside. The wood had turned gray from age and abuse, and the windows on either side of the threshold appeared to have been shattered, boarded up, broken into, then boarded up again. The vaulted stairs directly across the entryway looked as if they’d been used as a tumble chute for concrete blocks and roughly resembled the world’s most splintery slip ‘n’ slide. The banister was a thing of the past, having long since broken away and fallen into the hallway below, which in turn was in the process of collapsing into the basement. Slipstream was afraid to look at the roof. Through a door to the right she could see a shattered bathtub in what was left of the kitchen, having fallen from the floor above.

Price led them up the stairs which creaked and groaned dangerously as the ponies ascended, and to a room at the far end of the house down a short hall and around a corner. The room was completely empty aside from a coat of dust and a vacant fireplace set in the wall, which somehow hadn’t collapsed through the floor. The room was at the corner of the house, and a window was set in either wall overlooking the intersection below; miraculously, the glass panes were still intact.

Now what? I wish I knew. “We wait,” Slipstream said with a small cough. “They’ll be looking for us.”

Minnow curled herself into a ball, shaking like a wet dog. “I-I can’t tell if I’m h-hot... or if I’m f-f-freezing.”

“You’re going to be okay,” Slipstream whispered, patting the mare softly on the neck. “We all are.” Her eyes drifted out the window to Celestia’s morning sun. How can she let her sun shine on such a place? She knew they were here... why does she still spare them the warmth of her sun and not freeze their sorry flanks back to the icebergs they crawled out of?

We’re going to be okay. Slipstream closed her eyes, then opened them again, watching the rising sun.

“Please.”

Comments

[Skeeter The Lurker]

WHOA. A new chapter to this?

Nice to see it isn't dead.

~Skeeter The Lurker

[Sorren]

2819421

... why would it be dead?

[Skeeter The Lurker]

2819920

Because I didn't read the dates.

~Skeeter The Lurker

[the other sans]

She smelt coal like she aboard Equestrian passenger trains
Others followed suite

1. You're missing a word here.
2. Suit.

Now for the daring escape that I hoped for! A Team go!

[Thunder twister]

Explosions... Check!

Shooting... Check!

Ponies back from the dead... Check!

This has been a good chapter my friends!

[CuriousCurse]

A vivid and well explored world giving meaning in every little detail to describe the state of things and how each character feels. For example, you could tell the thing making those ponies hostile was not anger at intrusion, not loyalty to their sovereign, nothing of the sort, simply fear and desperation. The mother telling them to leave (and the manner of which she did), the colt shaking while he tried to threaten them with his knife, the impoverished meal they were eating. All these things specified clearly that we were looking at a struggling family in a desperate state, possibly living in fear, and the mere presence of a resistance indicates civil unrest. The little things add up very quickly and I'm still not used to authors putting everything into such vivid perspective. The only possible drawback is that foreshadowing is everywhere and it sometimes makes the events they were leading up to seem rather obvious at times though you do seem to manage in keeping a few details under you hat to surprise us with.

[Uncr3at1ve]

“Working on it!” the pony grunted in Price’s accent.

I now have no choice but to read his lines in the voice of Captain Price... Was this intentional?

[Sorren]

2861266 I know who you're talking about, but is that one of his lines?

And I've gotten a lot of this. People seem to think I made this character after SAS Captain Price, from CoD. I didn't think about it, but by some coincidence I got the name and the accent the same despite the fact I didn't even remember Captain Price until someone brought it up to me.

[Uncr3at1ve]

2861286
It wasn't really his line that stood out to me, though with how many defending objectives there are it wouldn't surprise me if this were one of his lines, just not one of his iconic lines. It was more the fact that Price was doing some heavy special forces-esque stuff and then you mentioned his accent... kinda loose connection but it just popped into my mind.