The night always did seem to hold some sense of accomplishment, whether it be just knowing you got through the day, or in this case, getting something you want. There it was, the single most important thing to our thief. For months he had been planning on a way to steal this precious piece of machinery. Of course it had to be at night since stealing something of this size is quite the noticeable act. Tonight would be the night that it would be all his, and he would be halfway to Anchor Wind before anyone even knew it was gone. Yes, this was the airship of his dreams and nothing was going to stop him from getting what’s his.
The thief snuck onto the airdock where the ship resides. He took one last good look at it from the outside before making his way to the docking door. The platform that was used to connect the door to the dock couldn’t have been any noiser. You’d think someone with enough money to purchase a ship like this could at least get a decent platform. Thankfully for the thief, no one had heard him enter.
This ship was one of a kind, even the interior looked amazing compared to the exterior. There were no pipes extruding from the walls like most other airship, no this one was pure luxury. It kind of surprised the thief that there weren’t more safety precautions around this ship seeing how luxurious it is.
As the thief was about to round the corner he quickly stopped himself just in time. It had seemed his suspicions turned out to be correct. There was infact a type of security in this ship, automated defences. How was he going to get around these things, they probably had alarms built into them. Just then it hit him on how to proceed. He remember seeing a maintenance panel at the base of one of the walls a ways back, perhaps it lead to some vents.
Doubling back to a hallway he had just recently been in, he found that panel and undid it from its hinges. Crawling into it was no easy task. Even though our thief was able to fit through it easily enough, just the noise of him crawling inside of it left worry in his mind that those automated defences had audio receivers.
Upon his travels throughout the mysterious labyrinth that was the vents of the oddly named Cloud Warper, he spotted a glowing grate in front of him. Curious, he took a look through it revealing what must have been the core of the ship. It was in no way comparable to any other core he had ever seen though. This one was different, it actually radiated energy, and an incredible amount of it at that. Though not surprising, the owners were quite wealthy. They could have bought this off some secret science project headed by Mantel Corp. Mantel Corp. always did have this thing with making out-of-this-world machinery. Their most recent product is proof enough of that; some kind of engine that could actually move the floating islands.
The thief continued on with his trek through the vents to eventually find himself at his desired location, the bridge. He carefully unhinged the grate and dropped down through with a small thud, trying not to attract much attention. Luck would have it that there was no security on the bridge, probably because the owners didn’t think anyone would be so clever as to use the vents to get past security. His eyes locked onto the bridges control panel.
“Alright, so which one of you turns off the security...” He said to no one in particular as he quickly walked over to the control panel, looking down at the buttons,levers, and switches.
He took a seat in the command chair and whisked himself around to face the controls. Although he himself was an avid airship flyer, the controls on this bridge were far different than the others. It seemed to be like that for the whole ship now that he thought about it. The only controls he did recognise where the throttle and altometer. Really those were the only things he would need to know for now as he was only interested in escaping with this ship.
The bridge window allowed for a wide sight range, so far that he could see both forward wings. He also noticed the docking ropes that held the ship secure. Those would definitely need removed, one of these control must do it. After a few moments of looking over the control panel his eyes set upon a button with the words “Docking Release” in small print beneath it. Pressing that button let off a loud noise of clamps being undone.
Lights in the house turned on quickly and the thief knew that he was going to have to book it out of here. He pulled back on the throttle to send the ship in full reverse. There was no time to disable security now, not like it mattered being on the bridge at the moment anyways.
He swung the steering wheel to the left as hard as he could and back again to the right as he leveled out in the direction he wanted. There would be no catching him now as he pushed the throttle all the way forward and set on his way to Anchor Wind. That heist went better than expected, aside from waking up the owners of this ship. Now all there was left to do was sit back and enjoy the rest of his trip on his newly owned luxury ship, Cloud Warper.
Turning off the automated defences was now the primary goal of his mission. It didn’t take long to figure out where the controls were, it was just the matter of making them identify the thief as the owner. After some grueling minutes over the security panel, the thief made his way to the rear viewing port of the ship. It was just another night sky with clouds being illuminated by the moonlight, though there seemed to be something amiss. The thief couldn’t help but feel like he was being followed.
A few seconds later, some smaller airships had burst out of the clouds behind the Cloud Warper, interceptor class by the looks of it. The thief took this as a sign to get out the area as fast as possible and he sprinted to the bridge. The ship was fast, yes, but not as fast as small interceptor airships like the ones following him. On his way back to the bridge, he passed a door with light radiating from the porthole. This gave him an idea, one that may or may not save his life.
Upon reaching the bridge he quickly strapped down into the command chair and went to work on the controls. He maxed out the throttle and looked to his side. There was a button that was out of place from the rest and the words “Warp Drive” lay above it. the thief had no idea what this meant but he saw the word “Drive” so it must have something to do with the engine. Thinking over a few scenarios that could possibly happen, he decided to go with the one where he gets to keep the ship, and smashed down on the Warp Drive button. It wasn’t until a second later that he noticed coordinate dials underneath it and hated himself for not thinking to put them in.
From outside the ship space had bent around the ship, distorting view from both inside and out. After a second or two the ship seemed to fade from existence, leaving the pursuers alone in the sky.
The thief had no idea what was going on and wasn’t even sure he was going to live at this point as the bridge around him started to fade as well as his own body. For a moment everything went black, but then light started to come back into view. The ship and thief slowly started to fade back into reality. It was still night, but he wasn’t in the same place as before. There even seemed to be something out in front of his ship, a floating island?
“Haha! I made it Anchor Wind!” He screamed out exuberantly.
As he approached the island however, it turned out to not be an island. It was a city in the clouds, actually made on and out of clouds. The thief couldn’t quite process what was happening at the moment. Could this be a side effect of the Warp Drive? What ever it was, it wasn’t something that could be man-made. What was even stranger was that there were liquid rainbows being poured from some of the buildings. How any of this is possible the thief didn’t know. For now, he felt it was best to get some rest, these were probably just hallucinations. He throttled down the ship to a complete stop and made his way to the entrance to the bridge, on which had a layout of the ship to the right of the door. The bedroom was the next destination, but not before he grabbed what had read as the manual for the ship from an undisclosed area of the bridge. There would be much studying this night.
Morning came, far more pleasant than any other morning to the thief. As he now had a luxury airship and that of which has a luxury bed that provided him with the best sleep of his life. The added security helped as well. From what he saw of the layout, this ship was pretty much like a flying house, kitchen and all.
The thief got up out of bed and made his way over to the porthole revealing the sky outside.
He wanted to know if what he had seen the previous was gone and that he was just hallucinating. There was no city to be seen from the porthole. There was however clouds that seem to be circling around the ship. Some kind of figures were at equal distance from each other facing away from the ship.
He made his way to the bridge to see if this circle of clouds extended to that side of the ship as well. Along the way he was greeted by the automated defences, oh the irony. As he reached the bridge the view was pretty much the same aside from the fact that there was a floating city made of clouds staring him in the face. Not to mention more figures facing away from the ship, and what it looked like, though he was not quite sure at the time, creatures with wings on the other side of the figures.
Wings were open for public use, but not on this mass of a scale. They were still only in prototype stages, at least that’s what the newspapers had said. Regardless, if his ship was causing some sort of scene, he didn’t want to be around for long. He took hold of the throttle and pushed forward on it slowly while pulling back on the wheel. The crowd in front of him dissipating from view as he climbed in altitude.
It wasn’t soon after that he had heard noises of something hitting the top of the ship. The thief had looked out the bridge window and saw nothing but sky. From the manual he had read the previous night he had a good idea of where everything was and and brought down the periscope to check the top of the ship. What he saw was...strange to say the least. There were what he had assumed to be ponies, taken what he had already known from his school days. The strange this about them is that they were multicolored and had wings.
He sat there just staring at the ponies with actual wings for a few seconds until one of them noticed the periscope staring at them. It looked like it was mouthing something to the others that had been on top of the ship. He thought to himself how ponies could talk, but the fact that they had actual wings was more surprising at the moment. They took off in the direction of the front of the ship at which he tracked them with the periscope, but they disappeared over the front end.
The thief put the periscope back up to its resting position and looked back outside. The ponies with wings appeared in front of the bridge, and he recoiled at the sight of them staring at him through the window. Their expressions were that of more shock than he currently had. This most likely to the fact of what he was wearing. True it may be a tad bit scary for anyone who hadn’t seen its likes before, especially the face portion. It was completely covered save for a pair of goggles and a respiratory mask.
Once he regained his composure he reached for a switch that was labeled “One Way Com.” and switched it on. From outside the airship a hatch opened up and revealed a large Victorian styled speaker. Taking a minute to figure out what it was he was going to say, and at the same time wondering if they could even understand him (being ponies and all), he finally let out a single sentence.
“Could you please back away from my ship.”
The flying ponies on the outside understood what he had said from the looks of it as they exchanged glances with each other, eventually moving to the side. Such strange things, he had thought. Though something new caught his attention as he put the ship on autopilot in a random direction away from the floating city and those ponies. There seemed to be something going on in the engine compartment as told by the blinking red light under the “Engine Status” sign.
“Oh crap...that’s not good.”
He sped towards the engine room taking the shortest way he could possibly find. Sliding down a maintenance ladder he almost missed the platform that was for the core room. The door for the core that once radiated light did not do so anymore. The thief made his way over to the porthole that allowed viewing access and took a peek inside. Aside from there being no light coming from it the core seemed fine. There were no steam leaks or anything of the sort.
Puzzled as to why an emergency light would come on for the engine he began to walk back towards the bridge. Then it hit him. What if it wasn’t an emergency light? what if it was a recharge light. He had hit a button that said Warp Drive before, maybe that was what’s recharging. It would explain why there is wasn’t anymore of that light radiating from the core.
After the whole engine incident, the thief would probably like to have a small crew right about now, what with having to run all over the ship to check on problems like the engine. Come to think of it, getting a crew wouldn’t be much of a bad idea. He could even start a legitimate business! No more life of a thief for this thief, he had thought. New ideas kept racing through his head as he walked back to the bridge to check his heading. Perhaps he could run a mail service, the concept seemed easy enough. Plus there was plenty of room on the ship to store packages, especially in the docking bay, that of which he had recently seen on the ship layout paper. The docking bay was an alright size, big enough to fit a few small steam powered aircraft, single seat, as well as have enough room left over for some crates.
When the thief had gotten to the bridge there was a shocking sight. A mountain was heading right for the ship; rather the ship was heading for a mountain! It didn’t take him long to sprint to the helm and take hold of the wheel, spinning it as hard as he could to the left to avoid catastrophe. The sheer force of the sudden immediate turn had thrown him a little off balance, holding onto the wheel for dear life, and for the ship’s sake.
Thankfully he had gotten to the bridge in just the nick of time to avoid a head-on collision with a rocky doom. The only thing worse than that might be getting stuck in a room with a moose, eventually meeting a...moosey fate.
After the whole almost dieing incident, he decided it was best to leave the ship at a hover for now. The reason for this is that he saw a land settlement at least five miles out. It was a small sight from this far up, but judging from this it was probably a bustling town, though lacking in any factories from the looks of it. It may even have people willing to join his new mail service.
“Who could resist working on such a machine as this? No one that’s who!” He had said out loud.
Since the only living thing he had seen thus far had been ponies with wings, there was no doubt that that town held the same. That means his crew would consist of...ponies... No, no that’s just silly. There was no way that a pony could possibly work on a ship, let alone even talk his language. The only way to find out for sure was to go down there and take a look for himself. Though there didn’t seem to be anyplace for his ship to dock, so that meant he would have to take one of the one seater aircraft, if this ship even housed any. Taking one last look out of the bridge window and looking down on the town he slowly turned towards the bridge door.
“Next stop...uh...what ever that place is.” He said as the steam powered door hissed open and then closed behind him.
