“Impact in forty seconds. If you don’t feel up to the task at hand, eject your boosters and get back to base.”

Okay, this is it. Just think happy thoughts. Wait, I should be concentrating. Where is the target?

While soaring through the sky, a mare squinted while trying to identify anything other than the glowing exhausts of three pairs of rocket boosters in the darkness above her. The aviation goggles she wore made seeing anything nearly impossible. She struggled to fly in a straight line under the immense air resistance the rocket boosters on her back were forcing her into. Her wings fought to keep extended against the wind.

“Impact in 30 seconds.”

The voice in her ear became almost inaudible under the loud humming noise of hundreds of engines that came closer and closer with every passing second. She raised a hoof to her ear so that she could adjust the volume. Her breath grew heavy under her black mask.

I hope this doesn't hurt too much.

“Impact in 20 seconds.”

The screechy tones of the distorted voice coming through the earpiece caused her to wince. Suddenly, the boosters on the mare’s back burnt out. She punched the clasp on the bottom of her abdomen, sending the pair the pair of torpedo shaped attachments on her back flying off of her body. She looked behind herself to make sure that had safely been detached.

She looked back up, winced and rolled to the left side. A yell of pain filled the air when a hoof stuck her into her right flank. The stallion who had been flying in front of her had lost control and most of his momentum, causing her to almost crash into him. One of his boosters had burnt out, while the other was still at full power.

“Impact in 10 seconds. I wish you good luck. You will need it.”

Clenching her teeth, she pulled together all of her strength to regain control. She tried to find a point of orientation without success. The glowing lights she had been following before had already all died out. Slowly, parts of a silvery figure came into her vision. She extended the harpoon that had been attached to her left foreleg by flicking it to the side.

This is not good.

She aligned her hoof in flight direction and tried to ready herself for immediate impact.

This is going to hurt so much.

She slammed into the bottom of the silver figure, after the harpoon on her foreleg successfully penetrated. Her hind legs creaked under pressure as they hit the metal. She half collapsed on her chest before falling back as she tried to pull herself back up with her left hoof. After a moment, she had regained enough composure to orientate herself while she dangled in the wind.

Yep, that hurt… I must be on the horizontal stabilizer.

A gasp passed her lips as she noticed that a stallion been watching her through a pane of glass.

Buck!

With a flick of her free hoof, she extended a long black spear and thrust it through the pane to hit the shocked stallion in the breast.

No time to think. Just do!

She retracted the weapon and began to repeatedly smash her hind hooves into the glass. With every kick she groaned in exertion from curling her body together against the air resistance, as her boots broke away more and more pieces.

After enough glass had broken away, she grabbed the metal edge where the glass had once been, and detached herself from the harpoon after she was sure she could haul her weight into the small opening. She whimpered as her left wing was slowly torn by a piece of glass while she pulled herself in. While pushing herself past the still breathing, but decapacitated stallion.

Don’t think! Don’t think! Just do what you learned in combat training and everything will be okay.

The inside of the aircraft was filled with the echo of humming motors. There wasn't much space to move, and she had to duck her head to shoulder-level to fit into the pipe-shaped construction. She pulled a knife free from where it had been attached to her hind leg, and grasped it so that the edge pointed away from her body. The weapon trembled in her hooves. With her other foreleg she pushed her goggles up in an attempt to get better vision in the dark interior.

Ahead of her were the shadowy figures of two stallions, each of which were too concentrated on keeping their eyes on their respective sector of the sky to have noticed that one of their comrades was fighting for his life only a few paces away. They only moved slightly while grasping their mounted machine guns with both hooves. She slowly made her way towards them, breathing heavily and slightly limping on her right hind leg, while shivering with the rest.

Shortly before she had reached them, the left stallion caught sight of her approach. His eyes grew wide and he screamed as he saw the masked mare.

No way anypony could have overheard that. Now I have to be fast.

She thrust the knife down between his neck and his collarbone before she pulled it back and stabbed the blade to the side and into the neck of the other stallion, who had only been given enough time to turn his head towards the mare. His neck was pushed off of the blade in a well trained procedure.

With a quick jump she made her way past the collapsing gunners and towards a hatch at the end of the construction. After a moment, another mare looked through this only to be rewarded with a knife being jammed into the bottom of her jaw. Her eyes slowly slid closed, and she fell out of the hatch and onto the ground, while her attacker sidestepped.

Only two left.

She jumped over the corpse and through the opening. In front of her, a pilot was working the controls of the aircraft. He was occupied with trying to keep his machine in formation while barely being able to see the aircraft around him through the dark sky. A dark-red light at the top of the cockpit gave him enough vision to see his controls. In the front of cockpit a winged mare crouched over her machine gun.

With a quick stab into the pilots back from below his ribs and into his chest, the now gurgling stallion was ended with little resistance. She simply pushed him to the side. After his hooves lost contact with the controls the aircraft fell into a moderate descent.

The last pony noticed this and looked up over her shoulder from where she lay over her machine gun. Her eyes grew wide while she tried to turn around and get up to her hooves. She was pushed up with her back against the side of the cockpit. Her wings fluttered in panic. She pushed back and attempted to struggle, but her futile resistance was brought to an end when a knife was stabbed into the front of her chest.

They looked into each others eyes. One face held the expression of dismay while she tried to breathe, but her body failed to respond. While the other stared back through a black mask. One heavy gasp after another was pulled air into the attacking mares lungs, as if she were taunting her prey.

She pulled back and let the mare fall out of her grip and onto the floor.

She was... Don’t think. Now I only have to get out of here alive.

It didn’t take long for her take the pilot’s place and get an overview of the machine. Her shivering hooves grasped the side-stick controllers, and she let the aircraft descend further out of formation.

I don’t think I will ever be able to get used to this.

She leaned forward to look out the side of the cockpit to both sides. To her relief, all four propellers still seemed to be rotating, even if it was hard to see anything outside of the windows at all. She was still breathing hard, but she slowly calmed herself. The familiar vibration of the controls in her hooves and the loud humming of motors comforted her greatly.

She gasped in pain as she tried to extend her left wing; sure enough a large cut went from the alula of the wing all the way down into the secondaries. It seemed as if any further attempt to use her wing would only result in the appendage ripping like a wet piece of paper. She carefully pulled her wing back to her side while clenching her teeth.

Looks like the only way I’m getting out of here is if I can land this thing.

The calm humming of motors was interrupted by the voices coming out the mares headpiece.

“Alpha, here. Report!”

“Bravo reporting success.”

“Gamma reporting success.”

“Epsilon reporting success,” the mare half-yelled in an attempt to overshadow the ambient noise while pressing a button on her neck.

“What happened to Delta?”

“One of his boosters malfunctioned. He lost control.” she replied. With a few long breaths, she forced herself to breath normally again.

“I’m sure he got himself back under control. It hasn't been the first time one of his boosters gave up on him.” replied the commanding officer on the other end of the headpiece.

Even though her breathing had calmed down, she started turning green under her mask. The mask was hastily discarded to the floor in a further attempt to calm her breath.

Am I sick because of the thin air up here or because of what I just went through?

“Dammit! Eighty percent success isn't a bad record though. How was your first raid, Epsilon?”

“I think I’m going to puke,” she said after her breath had lost all of its regularity.

“That’s the spirit. Everypony lose altitude and get rid of your bomb-load in a safe place. Over and out!”

She looked down at the dead mare lying on her side at the front of the cockpit. She still had that shocked expression in her face, which became more grotesque in the dark red light of the cockpit. Her green eyes and her jaw were wide open, as if she were stuck in that state of horror for all of eternity. A few stands of her yellow short-cut and mane stuck out from under her aviation headgear. Only the large, but barely bleeding wound in the front of her pink chest and her lack of locomotion indicated that she was no longer amongst the living.

On her other side another aviator lay in rest. His lower body still occupied the navigators seat, while his upper body hung limply from the side. She couldn't see his expression from here, but she could see the laceration on his lower back. A considerable amount of blood had spilled down his back and over the seat, as well as leaving a puddle on the aluminium floor that glowed in the eerie red luminescence.

I am going to puke.

After a few moments the reek of a thick green substance filled the air. The fluid spilled back and forth to the half rhythmic movements of a mare who was juggling between flying an aircraft and spreading her last meal onto the floor.

10 years ago...

“Daddy, I want to be pilot like you when I grow up.”

“Are you sure about that Firefly?” her father replied with a wide grin on his face.

“Yeah!”

The stallion playfully bopped her nose with his hoof. “But you already have wings, not like your old pa. You can fly whenever you want to.” He looked into the eyes of his daughter, who was seated next to him on the grass.

She replied with a giggle.

“I want to be just like you daddy. I want to take everypony flying with me!”

He felt so proud of his daughter in this moment, and nothing in the world could make him feel happier.

Author's Note

This is my first story that I have ever submitted anywhere, and I haven't been writing for very long. I don't have an editor either.

So please feel free to comment and share your thoughts with me. Some constructive criticism would really help me.