Of Aerial Dominance

by Sorren

Chapter 6 - Rules—Like Airships—Are Meant to be Broken

“Come on!” Slipstream fiddled with the dial on the radio fitted in the console. None of the readings made any sense. “Come on!” She pounded the top of the device. She could hear the enemy speaking back and forth, but couldn’t understand a word of it. They spoke Equestrian, though it was heavily-accented and spoken so quickly that every one of them might as well have been professional auctioneers.

She tried not to look at the bodies on the floor behind her.

With a growl of annoyance, she yanked the radio from its slot on the console and hurled it out the shattered pane of glass to the left. She pulled the box off her back and set it haphazardly atop the navigation console since it wouldn’t fit in the slot filled by the old device.

Her eyes drifted to the controls. At least Equestrian and Longcoat vessels had one thing in common: they both operated in the same fashion. There was a rudder wheel and an elevator wheel, and ten throttle levers, all tied into a main lever.

During their boarding, the vessel they had boarded had fallen below the midst of the fighting, and no matter where Slipstream looked, she could see nothing, though the air carried the sound of the battle above to her ears.

“Altitude,” she said quietly to herself. “Let’s see here...” Her eyes flicked about the wheelhouse. “Altitude...” She picked out something that struck her as odd.

On the wall was a grain-yellow box, about a foot tall and a half-foot wide with a series of silver switches and a little button under what appeared to be a speaker.

Maybe it worked like a radio.

She reached out and hit the button. “Hello?”

“Be this the captain?” came a voice a moment later; it was the trottingham mare. Slipstream smirked; it was nice to know the mare had survived the fighting.

By now, she had realized that this was the intercom system Thrush had mentioned in their previous meeting. “Yes it be.” She cleared her throat. “How’re things going with the airship?”

“As well as I think it can be. There’s things aboard this ship I never seen. We’re trying to reverse engineer things here.”

Slipstream guided the main throttle lever forward, and was glad to find that the engines responded with a growl. “Well hurry up and find a way to get us altitude. I don’t know how long it’s going to be until they figure out we stole one of their battlecruisers.”

“Right, Captain!” The trottingham mare took a moment to snicker over the intercom. “I can’t believe we hijacked an enemy vessel!” The intercom died as she released the button.

Slipstream grinned a little, then immediately remembered Briar. He was still behind her... dead.

Briar.

Consultant, childhood friend, one hell of a second mate... occasional lover.

She swallowed the bile rising in her throat. ‘Not right now, Slips. Keep your head on the job at hand and it’ll work out.’ His voice rang in her head, clear as day, as if he were standing behind her.

The silence of the gondola struck her as odd. She was normally used to radio chatter. ‘The radio.’ She tapped the beaten device, checking over the readouts even though she didn’t know what they meant. She flicked a few switches, thinking maybe she’d bumped one during the midst of all the fighting. Apparently, she had done something right, because there was a quick burst of static, then the familiar radio chaos met her ears.

“—Minnow’s airship!?” Darius was calling.

“It’s floating around looking like a grain silo,” Wiltings replied. “I think it’s hers at least... Celestia... the whole bow’s gone.”

There was a moment of silence. “Is there a little fish painted on the upper tailfin?” Darius asked.

“Yeah,” Wiltings muttered dejectedly. “...I hope at least the pegasi made it out.”

“We are being destroyed!” the gunboat fleet leader howled. “Three gunboats remaining. To preserve forces, the remaining dirigibles under my command will escort the Friendship.”

Slipstream flipped the transmit switch. “This is fleet commander Slipstream! My crew has successfully boarded and commandeered an enemy battlecruiser...” She took a long breath. “Callsign: Sacrifice.” She cleared her throat. “Status report.”

“Four remaining battlecruisers,” Darius said contentedly, as if the number were a good thing.

“The Friendship is intact and in full operational order,” Wiltings said, her voice tense.

“Compromised!” Thrush yelled. “Severe damage to the portside envelope and a ruptured gassbag. We had to dump most the ballast to compensate.”

“Two,” a gruff mare growled. “Two of our four remaining support vessels.”

She tallied them in her head as they spoke. Eleven...

Her stomach curled into a knot and she doubled over for a second. This was all her fault. “And what of the enemy?”

“Thirty,” Darius replied in monotone. “And their commanding semi-rigid airship.”

Slipstream’s mouth opened, but no words came. They’d already lost over half... and the enemy was hardly suffering. Hoof weighted with lead, she reached for the transmitter.

It was the call no commander ever wished to give through the course of their entire life. It was the order that killed countries and destroyed armies.

“...Retreat.”

“Slipstream...” Darius sounded shocked, actually shocked. “There’s got to—”

“If we’re destroyed here, nothing will stop them from destroying Equestria from above! For Equestria, we must live today, to fight tomorrow.” She closed her eyes, resting her head on the wheel. “All forces... fall back!”

The command hurt her very soul. Little did she know what she had actually set into effect.

She slammed the throttle forward, and was almost knocked off her hooves by the forward momentum. “What do they do to these things?” she muttered to herself. “It’s like starting a wagon.” No wonder they were losing the battle.

“Captain!” the intercom blared. “We’ve found the ballast tanks.”

Slipstream shook her head and pressed the button on the little box. “No need. We’re retreating.”

“Captain...” The trottingham mare sounded just a shocked as Darius had.

“Prepare the guns for a strategic retreat and try to cover both the fleet’s and our escape.” With hardly a grunt, she spun the wheel around to the right until it locked and drew back quarter way on the right side engines. Leaving the main wheel, she moved over to the elevator wheel, trying not to look at the bodies as she stepped over them. Just as easily as the rudder wheel had turned, this one acted the very same as she spun it right.

The battlecruiser, much lighter than the Departure and with two extra propellers, handled like a jackrabbit. After flying the Departure for so many years, and learning its every feature and attribute, flying such a lighter and more maneuverable vessel was like trying to learn to fly a dirigible all over again. The wheel spun too easily, and the airship reacted too quickly, leaving her prone to overcorrection.

Once the nose began to tilt, Slipstream was able to grasp the full magnitude of the battle. The radio transmissions had made the situation sound only dire. This, what she was looking at right now, was enough to drive the most battle-hardened mare or stallion to shock. Somehow, the fighting had been condensed to little more than three square miles of sky.

She was reminded rather cruel-humouredly of bumper carts at the carnival. Whatever it counted for, she could no longer see the flying things that reminded her of dragonflies. Maybe they had returned to the mothership, or maybe they had all been shot down. What she did see, however, was maroon, and a lot of it, much more than there was white.

The only ship not in the battle was the enemy mothership. The massive dirigible was playing it safe, hovering about a mile away from the general fighting. It angered her that the ship wasn’t in the battle with the rest of its fleet, but she understood the enemy’s tactics. By now, it was obvious that the mothership was in fact the mothership—the dirigible that served as very epicenter of the enemy fleet; there was no way they were about to just let it sit in battle and take the chance of a lucky shot destroying something vital.

She cursed the enemy fleet commander for being logical. She had been hoping the enemy would grow overconfident and make mistakes, but they had played it smart all the way through, and had succeeded.

Slipstream contemplated flopping over on the floor and staying that way. They had never had a chance. Their assault had been about as effective as a plastic spork was for anything but flinging pees across the lunchroom.

The battle was lost, and even as she watched her remaining dirigibles break away, shattering what attempts of formation they had been trying to achieve in the midst of the battle, the enemy fired, giving the forces attempting to flee hot tailfins.

Slipstream couldn’t believe the Strider was still in the air. The entire left side envelope was torn open and the frame below was decimated, giving a clear view of the hollow, inner vessel. Somehow, Thrush had managed to tweak and bend the entire frame as well.

“Thrush,” Slipstream said into the radio, peering up at the ship as she climbed, now just below the parting battle. “What did you do to the Strider?”

“Air collision,” she replied, tone blunt.

“You bent the frame right down the middle,” she whispered quietly to herself.

“I’m in a bit of trouble here.” It was Wiltings. “They’ve got me surrounded.” She spoke calmly, as if she had simply been purchasing a cup of coffee and was asking the pony behind her for an extra bit.

Slipstream scanned for the Friendship, and found it. Wiltings’ tone had severely undermined her situation. It hovered, separated from the rest of the fleet, the cabin semi-obscured in a cloud of cannon smoke. The fact that the Friendship was away from the fleet wasn’t the problem; the problem was that it wasn’t alone.

The airship was flanked on all sides but the stern. The engines were dormant, propellers twirling in the breeze that was beginning to pick up.

She grabbed the receiver absently. “How’d you manage that of yourself?”

Wiltings breathed over the airways. “Do you remember scenario twenty-seven?”

Slipstream blinked.

“Scenario twenty-seven!” A grizzled stallion stabbed his hoof at a number on a chalkboard. “If, in a state of battle, your fleet enters a state of retreat, any airship that would require rescue from the enemy is to be shot down.”

A young mare near the back of the room raised her mint-green hoof. “Are you saying that we kill our own, Sir?”

He glared intently at her. “Yes, trainee.” Slipstream slumped in her seat. Nopony interrupted a lecture, ever. “What’s your name, earth pony?”

The mare swallowed while the other ponies in the room shifted and ruffled their feathers in discomfort. “Wiltings, Sir..."

Slipstream jabbed for the switch and nearly knocked the radio off the console in the process. “Wiltings, no!”

“You know there’s no chance!” Now the apathy was gone, replaced by anger. “Get yourselves out of here so you can fight another day!”

Slipstream sized up the rest of their fleet. Most had already fled the battle; the ones that remained were either at a safe distance or crippled to the point they had been abandoned. The Friendship could have been thought abandoned, had it not been firing back at the enemy.

“Captain Thrush?” Her hoof felt numb as it worked the transmit switch.

“Yes, commander?”

“Is your airship still in operating order?”

There was a pause. “Yes, Ma’am. We’re gored and off-balance, but she still flies fine.”

Slipstream’s breath tightened in her chest as she gripped the wheel. Retreat and safety was a simple turn to the right. A turn to the left would take her to the Friendship, and the lives of sixty other ponies to possible death. “You are now fleet commander. Proceed with the retreat and do not engage the enemy apart from means of defense.”

“Slipstream!” Wiltings snapped. “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t!”

“A-are you sure?” Thrush asked timidly.

It was as if a fog had settled within her brain. “That’s an order, Thrush!”

The mare sobered up. “Yes, Ma’am! All remaining forces full throttle due south.”

Slipstream fixed her eyes on the Friendship, then the enemy vessels surrounding her. It would only be a moment or two.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Slipstream,” Wiltings said warily.

She clenched her teeth. “I don’t. All I know is that I owe you a favor.”

“Slipstream!” Wiltings’ voice cracked, distressed. “You are not risking yourself or your crew for some sort of stupid pride trip! You owe me nothing! Think of your crew.”

For a moment, she drew back on the throttle, options and thoughts spiraling every which way. She pressed the intercom button. “I have a question for the crew... Wiltings is in trouble, and if we leave her, she and her crew will die. If we try to help, there’s a very good chance we won't make it out. Now I will not put my crew on the line for pride, so I’ll leave the decision up to you...”

She waited

“Slipstream?” Wiltings asked.

The intercom buzzed. “Us ponies in the gunnery cabin say, save the crew of the Friendship,” the trottingham mare said. A chorus of shouts, male and female alike, backed her up in the background.

“The four of us here in the tail second that,” a stallion added.

“I’m with you no matter what, Captain.”

“Slipstream?” Wiltings asked again.

Slipstream wrestled the wheel around to the left and keyed the radio. “I’m coming for you!” Using her right hoof, she slammed the throttle forward, keying the intercom button with the other. “Ready on the starboard cannons! We’re going to cut low alongside the cabin of the enemy vessel portside of the Friendship.” She eyed the scene ahead, picking out the largest ship set tail-end to their current position. “The longest one.”

It was rather difficult keeping the airship both level and aligned the way she wished it to be, whilst the eight engines roared away. Twice she stumbled over one of the bodies on her way from the rudder wheel to the elevator wheel, and twice she was reminded painfully of Briar.

It wasn’t fair. Why did it have to be him?

From the way she had planned it, they would sweep past between the enemy vessel and the Friendship. At this speed, their window of firing opportunity would be about ten seconds. Any longer and she chanced giving the enemy chances of firing back accurately. Not only would this hopefully do some damage, it would draw fire from the Friendship. She did not yet know if the enemy knew she had hijacked one of their battlecruisers, but if they didn’t, they were about to find out.

“Shoot anything that isn’t the Friendship!” she ordered, once again feeling the adrenaline surge that came with the feared anticipation, a tingly, excited-fearful sensation.

If the Longcoats had seen her coming, they hadn’t had time to compensate. The tailfins of the Longcoat vessel whipped by, and Slipstream yowled in excitement when the entire battlecruiser pitched as the portside cannons fired off. Any timidity that had remained inside her withered and died as the larger vessel to her right began to fragment under the heavy blows of the cruiser’s six-inch, magically-enhanced cannons.

Ahead was a gunship, small, much smaller than the battlecruiser.

She adjusted her heading.

“You’re mad!” Wiltings’ voice said from the radio.

Not sparing a hoof to reply, Slipstream kept her eyes locked ahead, right on the combined cabin and gondola of the small, maroon vessel.

The maneuverable battlecruiser banked right as it sliced a course for the gunship. The captain of the small vessel tried to compensate by dropping both ballasts, but Slipstream’s hijacked ship, with the benefit of speed on its side, easily compensated for the rise in elevation when she cranked the elevator wheel.

She didn’t see it, but she felt it. There was a crash like the mighty hammer of a blacksmith and the entire vessel shook like an earth stomper. Slipstream found her hooves in the air, and next thing she knew, she was on the ground propped awkwardly against the rudder wheel at the front of the gondola. Her peripherals picked up raining shards of steel debris and fabric through the plate glass as the remnants of the gunship rained around the gondola.

She would have never attempted something as damaging with her own airship, but this wasn’t hers. The maroon color that surrounded her was as disgusting as wearing the warm and bloodied pelt of an animal just skinned. Hurting maroon with maroon almost seemed glorifying.

“You’re driving that thing like it’s a rental!” Wiltings said, an air of laughter to her voice despite the situation.

Slipstream picked herself up, then picked up the radio, which had fallen to the floor. “You know what they say,” She smirked, ignoring the spinning in her head, “if it ain’t mine, then it ain’t my problem.” She sighed and the moment vanished. “How’s our nose looking?”

“Ruined,” Wiltings replied tensely. “Watch your speed or you’ll tear off what’s left of the fabric and the wind’ll pull the ship apart from the inside out.”

“What’s your status, Thrush?” Slipstream wrestled the wheel around all the way right, a little worried that the battlecruiser was no longer maneuvering as smoothly as it had been. When she was only a filly, her favorite game was to smash her toy wagons together, line them up and then race one at the rest really fast, then giggle at the carnage that ensued. She had wondered why they had stopped working right after a while. Maybe that had been fate’s way of foreshadowing.

“We have a mile on you, Slipstream... I really hope you make it.”

“...Yeah, me too.”

“Listen,” her voice crackled a little with distortion. “We’re heading out of range of the communication radios. If I don’t get to talk to you again, I want you to know that you’re the bravest... and maybe the craziest pony, I have ever met.”

The enemy had begun to return fire, probably realizing that the maroon battlecruiser attacking them wasn’t replying to any radio transmissions. Slipstream tried to keep them just out of range as she brought them around, trying to draw fire from the Friendship. “Thanks, Commander Thrush. I hope you take some pointers from me.”

“You’re not dead yet.” Her voice was becoming harder and harder to make out over the static.

“Never hurts to have a backup plan.”

“Well then... you—make it out of—see...” Static took over.

A smoking projectile whizzed past the bow, drawing Slipstream’s attention to the source. It had come from the vessel they had just fired upon. Most of the cabin was in flame, and it was beginning to sag to one side, though, apparently, there were still guns in condition to return fire.

Though her efforts were genuine, it didn’t stop the Friendship from taking fire. Slipstream watched a projectile hack into the envelope and tear a particularly nasty chunk out the opposite side.

The battlecruiser proved very hard to control while the cannons aboard were being fired. With every discharge, the airship pitched and swayed, wanting to do nothing more than change course. Keeping the nose pointed the right direction required vigilance and at least one hoof on the wheel at all times.

Cutting low across the Friendship’s bow, she actually caught a view Wiltings at the wheel, head darting every which way. Up close, the Friendship dwarfed the marron vessel Slipstream piloted. The only thing it didn’t match or rival was speed and armament, which seemed scary belonging to a smaller vessel.

While the first pass had provided her with the benefit of surprise, after banking widely around the bow of the Friendship and returning the way she had come along the silver airship’s starboard side proved to be much less rewarding. The battlecruiser flanking the Friendship’s starboard side returned fire as soon as they were in range, and the floor beneath Slipstream’s hooves rocked; they had taken a hit somewhere.

It was an effort not to think about what damage the impact could have spelled, though she forced her eyes to stay on the narrow gap between friend and foe. Adrenaline hazing everything, she was faintly aware of passing the scene and readying to bank back around spell of destruction.

“Substantial frame damage, Captain!” cried a stallion from the intercom.

Three-quarters of the way through her turn back for a third assault, the radio crackled for her attention. “Slipstream, don’t! They’re going to be ready for you this time. We’re too crippled to flee anyways. Get out of here while you still can!”

“Forward fuel tanks ruptured!” crackled the intercom. “Oil’s running everywhere in here! Only what is left in the lines remaining!”

“No can do, Captain,” Slipstream replied to Wiltings. She goosed the throttles, coming out of the turn at full pelt. As the crippled battlecruiser surged back towards the mass of smoke and carnage, she felt and heard one of the foremost engines as it began to splutter, sucking what was left in the line dry. Steering once again became difficult as the onboard cannons began to fire. There was a flash of light from somewhere aboard an enemy ship as she neared the Friendship, and next thing she knew she was on the floor, one hoof still hanging on the wheel.

Panting, she picked herself up, trying to asses the situation. The gondola was still connected to the frame, and she was still alive, so it couldn’t be too bad...

The wheel was slack in her hooves. Having felt it too many times before, Slipstream knew exactly the origin of the problem: it was a cable snap. Like a late-night resident leaving the Stumble-Inn, the airship began to pitch left, no longer receiving any feedback from the rudders.

Absently, Slipstream removed her hooves from the wheel and took up the receiver. “Wiltings... Prepare for impact.”

“Impa— Prepare for what!?” the mare snapped back.

Slipstream swallowed hard. Looming towards her on the left was the starboard side envelope of the Friendship. She keyed the intercom. “Abandon airship! Collision close!”

“Capt—”

“Get the hell off the ship!” She focussed back on the radio, trying not to look at the rapidly-growing sheen of silver-white out the left-front glass panelling. “We’re compromised, Wiltings. Cable snap. We’re heading right for you.”

“Time to impact!?” she asked frantically.

“Four seconds.”

“Oh...” Wiltings’ voice returned in a dejected manner, if not a little confused. “Well shit.”

Slipstream ducked down and braced herself against the wheel. The initial impact wasn’t as bad as she had expected it to be, more like extreme turbulence than an actual collision. A terrible ripping sound filled the air, complemented with the groan and squeal of metal. Her hooves left the ground with such the intensity that the gondola shook, then her hooves slipped from the wheel.

Adrenaline had masked the severity of the collision. The second she lost her grasp, her body hurled to the left like a ragdoll and thudded against the aluminum wall. Bouncing like a sack of corn, she crumpled to the floor on her belly, the bodies of the other three non-living occupants raining around her. In vain attempt, she tried to gain her hooves, but the gondola lurched and she soared into the air without the use of her wings. Her head smacked the ceiling and spots filled her vision. Again, she hit the floor, then the right wall, then the left again. Broken glass peppered her like sand blowing in the wind, hacking at her lidded eyes.

The black spots worsened as the grinding of steel filled her brain, loud as thunder. Through what was left of her fading vision, she picked out beams of sunlight through tangles of framing steel, remnants of silver fabric hanging in strands from twisted metal.

“Abandon airship,” she groaned, tasting copper. The command had been too late.

The gondola came to a jarring-near halt and she slid across the floor on a bed of shattered glass, the shards tearing troughs in her back. She barely registered her head smacking against the pedestal on which the wheel was mounted, and from there everything went fuzzy. She blinked a few times, but upon the fourth, all that she saw through her open eyes was a murky green-black.

Her eyes rolled, and consciousness left her.

Comments

[JustAnotherTimeLord]

First comment.................................................

[CuriousCurse]

Not right now, Slips. Keep your head on the job at hand

because hands. Sorry I had to mention it...

Otherwise, it still holds to much of the same skill as before. True, that last chapter's emotional explosion of death, fear, and moral atrocity in the name of survival is a tough act to follow but this fits in very well and moves the story forward. I'm not sure if this is the end of the battle, or if Wiltings is going to somehow save a lot of lives but I look forward to finding out what happens next.

2504563
Shame on you for playing that silly game!

[Sorren]

2505386

You'll just have to wait and seee MUAUAUAUAUAH!!!

Seriuosly though--this is just where things get interesting~

[CuriousCurse]

2506442
If I may ask, what's with the... awkwardly positioned pony. I noticed it a while back but every time I see it I wonder why you decided your OC needs to be upside-down with his legs spread. Guess it just took me until now to finally say something.

[Sorren]

2511758 Someone made it for me.

It's cute.

[CuriousCurse]

2512639
I suppose on one level it is but my mind goes places and sees things and I can't not look at that weird.