Constellation

Chapters

Prologue
Chapter 1: The Ambassador's Visit
Chapter 2: Plane-Speaking Locomotion
Chapter 3: Checking In
Chapter 4: The Liner Vanishes
Chapter 5: Breaking News
Chapter 6: The Investigation Begins
Chapter 7: In Search of the Black Boxes
Chapter 8: The Sentry Awakens
Chapter 9: Hospital Visit
Chapter 10: Crisis with the Constellation!
Chapter 11: The Sound of Sabotage
Chapter 12: The Trap
Chapter 13: On Course For Disaster
Chapter 14: Emergency Landing
Chapter 15: Aerial Arrest
Epilogue

Prologue

The late afternoon sun hung just a few feet above the horizon, bathing the nation of Equestria in a soft, golden light. In a small woodland located deep within one of its more northerly counties, the many animals which resided here were going about their daily business; some were gathering food, others were exploring, and the rest were preparing for a peaceful slumber under the milky white glow and the soft twinkling of the night sky...

But their hopes for a quiet night's rest were suddenly dashed as the peace and stillness of their homeland was shattered by a deafening, whining roar from up above. In an instant, the terrified creatures scattered, trying to reach the safest hiding places they could find as the unearthly cacophony came closer and closer. As they looked up towards the sky, desperately trying to outrun whatever was making this frightful noise, they could see what looked like a giant silver bird thundering overhead. Its wings and tail were as stiff as boards, and its eyes, focussed straight ahead, were of a very unusual shape. It was quite unlike anything that the badly shaken animals had ever seen before.

Inside the head of the “bird” sat three stallions, each one clad in a flying suit with an oxygen mask over his muzzle. Two of them sat in front of what looked like a lavishly equipped dashboard, peering through the “eyes” as they brought their flying machine higher and higher into the air, while the third sat at a control panel immediately behind them. Satisfied that all was well, the stallion on the left of the “dashboard” spoke into the microphone of the headset he was wearing;

“Foalborough Test Control, this is Constellation Equine Bridle Apple X-Ray Zebra.”

“Go ahead, X-Ray Zebra.”

“Take-off has been completed,” stated the pilot. “We're now taking her up to Flight Level Four Five Zero for high-altitude testing.”

“Roger, X-Ray Zebra. Cleared to ascend to Flight Level Four Five Zero. Lots of luck.”

“Thanks, Control.” The pilot then turned and nodded to his colleague in the next seat, who responded by pulling the control stick further towards him.

Through the huge glass windows surrounding the top of a tall observation tower, right in the midst of a web of airstrips, a further group of twelve ponies looked on with intrigue as the plane was put through its paces. One of them, a sky-blue Earth stallion with a charcoal mane and tail and a finely combed handlebar moustache, couldn't help but smile proudly upon this massive new creation – and rightly so too, for this pony was none other than the owner of the company that had designed and built it. His name was Captain Sir Geoffrey de Hoofilland.
“She's looking pretty good so far, sir,” said one of the other stallions, gazing at the aircraft through a pair of binoculars.

Sir Geoffrey nodded in agreement. “And so she should,” he replied in a distinguished upper-class Trottingham accent. “We at de Hoofilland have been putting a tremendous amount of effort into making this latest vision a reality, don't you know – lots of research, lots of investment, lots of test flying...seven years we've spent developing the Constellation, all told. If it pays off, we should be onto a world leader in passenger aviation – the first in a brand new generation of 'superliners'.”

“We certainly should,” chuckled another stallion. “We've had plenty of large airliners on test here, but this just about beats the lot! Why, I'd eat my hat if I found out that this baby couldn't take the 1200 passengers you'd intended for it to carry.”

“Well, we'll just have to wait and see on that one; but yes, the old girl's quite the sight to behold if I do say so myself,” observed Sir Geoffrey. “All we need is for her to pass her final tests and we're laughing.”

“Oh, I don't doubt she will for one moment, sir. When it comes to innovative aircraft, you always manage to knock 'em sideways!”

“Well, let's hope,” mused the first stallion, returning to his desk in the middle of the room and watching the screen intently.

The minutes trotted briskly by, and soon they heard the voice of the test pilot over the radio; “Control, Equine X-Ray Zebra is now at Flight Level Four Five Zero and levelling off.”

The stallion at the desk responded at once; “Roger, X-Ray Zebra. What are your current readings?”

“Cabin temperature and pressure normal, airspeed: 490 knots, thrust levels: 68,500 pounds. Commencing high-altitude tests now.”

The twelve onlookers gathered by the observation window to watch the spectacle. They gazed with interest into the sky as, thousands of hooves above their heads, the massive airliner banked and rolled as ably as a speedboat through an obstacle course, occasionally obscured by the clouds. Sir Geoffrey beamed in delight – even now, it was plain to see that all the efforts on the part of his company and his good self, all the exhaustive experimental work and rigorous testing, all those rejected blueprints and repeated attempts by the drawing office to come up with a viable design for what many had deemed to be a mere pie in the sky, a white elephant that would soon fade into obscurity, were starting to pay off. Slowly but surely, his vision of an airliner far bigger than anything like it before was turning into a reality, and everypony else knew it.

The high-altitude testing went on for nearly an hour, and to its creator's further delight, the test crew couldn't identify any faults in the plane. As a grand finale to its highly successful trial flight, they brought the massive airliner down to just a hundred hooves above the airfield before swooping majestically over one of the runways, prompting a round of applause from the admiring crowd in the control tower.

“Magnificent! Absolutely magnificent!” proclaimed Sir Geoffrey jubilantly.

“I'll say it is,” agreed the test controller. “Seems we really are onto a world winner in passenger air travel. This'll go down a treat at the Foalborough Air Display.”

“Ah, but that's just the beginning,” went on Sir Geoffrey, a tone of eagerness apparent in his voice. “Only a few years from now, passengers will be travelling across the Titanic Ocean in far greater numbers than have ever travelled on a single flight – and many of them in levels of luxury almost completely unheard of in passenger aviation!”

“Indeed,” chuckled the controller. “You ought to be really proud of yourselves, Mr de Hoofilland. May I be the first to congratulate you on your success.”

Sir Geoffrey smiled modestly as he shook hooves with the controller. “Oh...it was a team effort really; my company may have built the Constellation, but we couldn't have done it without your assistance – or the Government grants that have gone into its construction.”

The controller nodded appreciatively before turning back to his radio. “Equine X-Ray Zebra from Foalborough Control. Okay, guys, I reckon that ought to do it,” he instructed. “Bring her into land on Runway Two Five, and we'll fill out the report to the Equestrian Air Ministry.”

“Roger, Control. Commencing approach onto Runway Two Five.”

The Constellation gently banked to the right to line up with the runway in question, its landing gear descending as it approached. With its nose raised slightly, it soared over the threshold and gently touched down on the tarmac before gently braking to a halt.

Chapter 1: The Ambassador's Visit

With his latest miracle of aviation engineering fully tried and tested, Sir Geoffrey and his company experienced little trouble in proving its worth to the whole world. Shortly after the final tests had been completed and his report had been submitted to the Air Minister, Lord Cloud, he invited him over to Foalborough so he could see the Constellation in action for the first time. Lord Cloud duly accepted, and was most impressed by the plane's performance; put simply, he observed, this was the most impressive aircraft that he had ever seen to date, and he would be more than happy to certify it as airworthy.

Five months later, the newly certified Constellation made its bow at the Foalborough Air Display. Of all the aircraft that attended the event, this gargantuan airliner easily proved to be the star of the show – its size and shape alone took the general public by storm, and even the most hardened experts could only stare in disbelief as it swooped majestically over the airfield again and again! But more importantly, the performance of Sir Geoffrey's creation appealed enormously to commercial airlines all across Equestria, and indeed the whole world.

Orders for the new aircraft came thick and fast, starting with the nation's biggest airline operator, Royal Equestrian Airways, and rapidly spreading further and further afield. At last, within a year of its first public appearance, Sir Geoffrey's vision came to pass as the Constellation went into full-scale production – by early November, the first batch had already been pressed into service with Royal Equestrian Airways, with many more due to follow shortly. They became an instant hit with passengers, and gained a reputation over the next four months as one of the finest airliner models ever to grace the skies, a reputation that made them the subject of many a magazine article, documentary film and airline advertisement throughout Equestria.

But not everypony welcomed the new airliners into service so warmly. Even though the prototype had very effectively proven its worth, many still held that the airframe would never be able to hold itself together for very long, while others claimed that the demand for such a bulky aircraft would soon fade out. The most formidable opposition, however, came not from the sceptics, but from rival aircraft manufacturers...

As yet another commercial played out on television screens all over the nation, heartily singing the Constellation's praises, a white Earth pony stallion, with a black mane and tail, a grey five o'clock shadow and a silver airship for a Cutie Mark, glowered at the new airliner with growing contempt. Where many had seen this flying behemoth as the symbol of a new era in passenger aviation, all he could see was a smug, overgrown upstart, and not out of mere scepticism either – in his case, it was pure jealousy over a plane that, in his mind, should only have been the second such aircraft to enter service. Ever since it had been shown off for the first time in front of an admiring crowd at Foalborough, the mere mention of its name – of its creator, even – left a sour taste in his mouth.

“So,” he muttered to himself, “the famous Constellations are still the talk of the world, are they?” With a bitter sneer, he watched as Sir Geoffrey spoke proudly to the millions of watchers about the life story of his company, and of the Constellations' development. “Curse that stuck-up de Hoofilland! Thinking he's all the better than me just because he's won the superliner race!”

Gritting his teeth, he gazed upon a set of blueprints on his desk, ignoring Sir Geoffrey as he outlined some of his most ambitious future projects, including a supersonic jet based on the Comet, his most ubiquitous airliner to date. “Twelve years I've been working on the Phantom – and yet he launches that flying sumo wrestler into service after only seven?! I should be the one reaping the rewards!” With an angry grunt, he picked up the telephone. “Get me Research and Development at once. Top priority.”

Over in another office a few blocks away, the telephone at the opposite end of the line alerted the attention of a bespectacled sunshine yellow Earth stallion who was reviewing a similar set of blueprints. His mane and tail were a greyish brown in colour, and his Cutie Mark was of a grey aircraft propeller with the tips of its four blades in red, while his attire consisted of a white shirt, a green business jacket and a purple bow tie. Anypony who happened to be in the same room as him would never have to look too hard to see how badly he suffered under his iron-hoofed boss; the barely noticeable streaks of white in his mane and the occasional tic in his small, weak eyes practically shouted it out for all the world. Nervously, he picked up the receiver and spoke into the microphone.

“Waylon Withers here, Head of Research and Development at McPommel Airliners Incorporated.”

“WITHERS!!!” bellowed the sharp tone of his superior through the speaker.

“Oh...uh, Professor McPommel, sir!” stuttered Withers, flinching slightly. “Uh...what can I do for you, sir?”

“How soon can you have the Phantom prototype in the air?!”

Withers gulped hard as he began rifling through his paperwork, trembling like a condemned prisoner awaiting execution. At last, he came across the very document he was looking for – and to his dismay, it didn't look very promising. “Um...I'm afraid we won't be flying it any time soon, sir,” he confessed uneasily. “We, er...we've still been having difficulties with the outer wing structure, and I don't really know how long it'll take to sort it out.”

“Well, get on with it then!!” barked McPommel. “We can't afford to dither about any longer, or else there won't be any demand left for the Phantom! And make sure you do it properly – I'm fed up to the back teeth with all these technical hitches!”

“Uh...yes, sir...” but before Withers could continue, a loud thud crackled through the speaker, followed almost instantly by the dialling tone. With a weary sigh, he rested the receiver back on its holder and turned his attention back to the drawings, trying to find a solution to the problem with the wings that he had just mentioned.

Back in his own office, McPommel let out a frustrated growl and slammed his hoof on the desk. “This is ridiculous!” he blurted out angrily. “At this rate, I'll never be able to compete with de Hoofilland and that misshapen blimp of his! Honestly, how is it that none of my staff know how to assemble an airliner properly?!”

But no sooner had those words escaped his lips than the germ of an idea started to implant itself in his memory. His eyes widened in realisation, and then a sly, fiendish grin spread across his face – maybe...just maybe, there was still the slightest chance...

“That ought to knock the wind out of de Hoofilland's wings,” he murmured as he turned back to his telephone...

A fanfare of trumpets echoed throughout the throne room at Canterlot Castle, where a huge crowd of dignitaries had gathered for a very special occasion. Under the watchful eye of Prince Shining Armour, the Royal Guards lined up either side of the red carpet that led up to the thrones of Princesses Celestia and Luna and stood to attention. As the doors slowly swung open, one of the equerries made the announcement that they had all been waiting for;

“His Imperial Excellency, the Ambassador of Saddle Arabia, Yehuda El Equuis.”

This was greeted by a second fanfare, at which point Shining Armour turned towards a younger, orange-coated Pegasus stallion stood next to him. “Okay, Lieutenant,” he prompted, “you know the drill.”

“Sure do, Cap...uh, Sire.” Playing off his faux-pas with an awkward grin, the younger stallion barked out the word of command; “Right, company – present arms!”

In one single movement, the twenty-six guardsponies all sloped their spears forwards as one, and Shining Armour and his lieutenant saluted as their foreign visitor entered. He was a kindly silver-white stallion, with pure gold bands on each leg, a V-shaped blue and purple breastplate, and a brown nose-band with a small bell hanging underneath. His white linen headgear extended all the way along his back, and he was carrying a jute saddlebag which contained all his diplomatic paperwork. Accompanying him was his attaché Sandhi Dunah, a slightly older dromedary camel in similar attire to his superior, though with the headgear replaced by a colourful silken saddle blanket on his hump, and no leg bands.

The two diplomats made their way across the throne room and stopped just before the royal alicorn sisters, whereupon Yehuda bowed graciously. “Honourable rulers of Equestria, Princesses Celestia and Luna, salaam,” he greeted them politely.

“Welcome to our kingdom, Your Excellency,” smiled Celestia warmly. “It's a real pleasure to be doing business with Arabia's latest ambassador.”

“Believe me, Your Highness, the pleasure is all mine,” replied Yehuda with a hearty smile of his own. “My people have always held the great kingdom of Equestria in high regard, and I myself am no exception – especially on this auspicious occasion.”

“Well then,” declared Celestia, turning to her unicorn scribe, “let's get down to business. Can we have the documents please, Raven Quill?”

The scribe bowed in response, producing a folder from his saddlebag, the front of which bore the words: “THE EQUESTRIAN/SADDLE ARABIAN OIL AGREEMENT”. Celestia then levitated the folder across to the ambassador; “If you would care to review the terms and conditions before signing the agreement, I'd be very much obliged,” she said.

Yehuda nodded respectfully and began to read through the folder, carefully scrutinising every detail of its contents as he progressed. The ensuing silence and stillness was only broken by the occasional murmur and nod of the head, until at last, after nearly a quarter of an hour, he closed the folder and looked up at the royal alicorn sisters.

“I trust that the conditions are satisfactory, are they not?” asked Luna.

“Very much so, Your Highness,” agreed Yehuda.

“Excellent,” said Celestia. “In that case, I just need your signature on the dotted line.”

“As you wish.” Taking a fountain pen from his diplomatic bag, Yehuda opened up the folder on its last page and wrote his name on the dotted line underneath the words; “I, the undersigned, hereby agree to the terms and conditions above.” That done, he handed the folder back to Celestia, who accepted it with a grateful nod. “Well, Your Highnesses, it's been an honour and a privilege to have been the one to settle this oil agreement between our nations. On behalf of my Sultan, and all our loyal subjects, I would like to thank you for your kind generosity.”

“No,” replied Celestia kindly, “thank you for letting us have a share of the oil. As I said not fifteen minutes ago, it's a real pleasure to do business with you.”

“You're very welcome. Farewell, Your Highnesses, and long may your nation prosper.”

“Long may yours,” smiled Celestia. “We hope you have a safe journey home.”

“Thank you once again, Your Highness.” With that, Yehuda turned and made his way out of the throne room to the sound of yet another trumpet fanfare, with Sandhi close behind. Shining Armour and his lieutenant saluted a second time, and as soon as the two Arabian diplomats had left the room, the dignitaries also began to file out.

“Company – slope arms!”

The guardsponies sloped their spears back against their shoulders.

“Fall out.”

Only then did the guardsponies relax their vigilance. Their important work over, they too headed out of the throne room leaving Shining Armour and the lieutenant alone with the princesses.

“How did I do, Sire?” asked the lieutenant hopefully.

“Pretty nicely for a first timer,” replied Shining Armour with a chuckle. “I've got to admit, Flash, when Princess Celestia requested for you to come up here and take charge of the Royal Guard for the day, I wasn't sure you'd be up for the job. Seems being second-in-command at the Castle of Friendship was even better for you than I first thought!”

“Yeah, I guess so,” mused Flash.

“I think you did really well, Lieutenant Sentry,” praised Celestia. “You've come a long way since you enlisted in the Third Crystal Empire Regiment, and I'm really pleased with you. I'm sure Princess Twilight will feel the same.”

“Oh...it was nothing really, Your Highness – just glad I could be of service,” replied Flash modestly. He then turned back to Shining Armour; “Now, about my vacation...”

“All taken care of – I've arranged for Lieutenant Spearhead to come down to Ponyville and stand in for you while you're away. Where were you planning on going anyhow?”

Flash grinned broadly. “I'll be spending the next two weeks in Abu Dhonki – maybe even get to see an air show while I'm there,” he announced.

“What, the capital of Saddle Arabia?”

“Yeah.”

“Lucky blighter!” chortled Shining Armour. “Never had the chance when I was just another guardspony. Speaking of which,” he added, assuming a straight face, “I've just remembered something. See, Princess Celestia had just yesterday advised me that Ambassador Yehuda could probably do with an aide-de-camp for his journey home. I was going to assign one of the Canterlot guards to the job, but since you're headed there anyway, I was just wondering if you could escort him yourself. Purely on an unofficial basis, most likely, seeing as you're...”

Flash was only too happy to agree. “Say no more, Prince Shining Armour,” he conceded. “I'd consider it a real honour.”

“Ah, good,” said Shining Armour. “I'm glad that settles it. I'll just go and run it past Celestia and the ambassador,” and he trotted off to make the arrangements.

Chapter 2: Plane-Speaking Locomotion

Several hundred miles away, in the town of Ponyville, Princess Twilight Sparkle was reading through a new set of books that she had just received. In the aftermath of Lord Tirek's rampage, the young alicorn had felt the destruction of the former Golden Oak Library so sorely that, following the creation of the majestic Castle of Friendship, she had devoted a great deal of her time and effort to establishing a brand new library on its ground floor. This not only made her feel more at home, but being the only part of the castle opened to the public on a daily basis, it also meant that the services and indeed the legacy of the Golden Oak Library would continue for many, many years to come.

Looking back over the whole turn of events, the lavender-coated mare could only smile as she reflected on how much her life had changed since the attack. In earlier times, she had seen the old Golden Oak Library not just as a home, but also a safe haven to which she could retreat; but now that the Castle of Friendship had come into being, she could think of nowhere else she would rather live – especially since a certain member of the Royal Guard had been reassigned to her new home...

“Morning, Twilight.”

Breaking herself away from the book she was reading, Twilight turned towards the doorway as Locomotion, the young railway enthusiast, entered the library. “Hello there,” she greeted him.

“How's tricks then, Twilight?”

“They're good, thanks, Loco,” smiled Twilight. “Just this morning had a letter from Flash Sentry telling me of how the ambassador's visit went.”

“Ambassador?” Locomotion paused, trying to recall what Twilight was talking about. “Oh yeah – that Yehuda El Equuis guy from Saddle Arabia. Yeah, I remember you talking about him earlier this week. He's come over here to sign an oil deal with Celestia, hasn't he?”

“That's the same one.”

“So what was Flash doing up there then?”

“Princess Celestia had invited him personally to take command of the Royal Guard for the occasion,” explained Twilight. “According to the letter he sent me, he's also been assigned to the ambassador as a kind of unofficial bodyguard for the return journey.”

“Yeah, that'd make sense, I guess,” mused Locomotion. “I mean, you did tell me, did you not, that he was going to be taking a vacation in Saddle Arabia himself?”

“Correct again,” affirmed Twilight. She then paused, heaving a wistful sigh; “I just wish I could have come with him.”

“I know how you feel,” sympathised Locomotion. “I'd probably feel the same way if I had a fillyfriend who was taking a break in some faraway land. But oh well, you'll have him back after two weeks, I'm sure,” he added optimistically. “Not as if he'll be gone forever, after all.”

“No, I guess not,” agreed Twilight with a wry chuckle.

“Anyway,” went on Locomotion, changing the subject, “have you got anything on Great Griffin War fighter planes in this literary collection of yours?”

Twilight raised an amused eyebrow. “What? No train studies?”

“Not today. See, we've got the Great Griffin War as part of our history studies at school and have been asked to write up various essays relating to said conflict,” explained Locomotion. “We've already looked into the Griffonian dictator Adolf Hawker and why we went to war with him, and our current assignment is military aircraft and the roles they played during the war. We'll be looking into the railways' involvement later on.”

“Ah, I see. Well, I'll see what I have available.” Twilight set her book down on the desk and led Locomotion to the Military section of the library. “Right, let's see – I can offer you......'Sky Sentinels', 'Griffonian Dogfight', 'The Ultimate Guide to Equestrian Combat Aircraft'...”

“Whichever is the most informative,” chuckled Locomotion.

Twilight paused. “Hmm...well how about 'Griffonian Dogfight' then? That should give you all the information you'll ever need.”

“Okay then. Thanks, Twilight.” With a polite nod, Locomotion accepted the book and trotted over to the reading area to start taking notes for his essay. Once out of earshot, though, he couldn't help but chuckle as he remembered the story Twilight had told him about how she and Flash had become an item.

Twilight had first met Flash when he was new to the Royal Guard in the Crystal Empire, and then in two forms – firstly in his true form as a Pegasus pony, the one with which Locomotion was already familiar by now, and later, after she had pursued a power-mad and thoroughly spiteful unicorn mare named Sunset Shimmer into an alternate dimension, as one of those strange bipedal creatures that she and Lyra called humans. It was during her time in this parallel universe that the young princess had started to develop feelings for him, though whether these were for the stallion himself or for his human counterpart remained a mystery for quite some time – indeed, there were times when Twilight found herself losing a great deal of sleep over the matter.

A year later, she was called up to a summit at Canterlot Castle along with her five best friends and her dragon assistant Spike. As luck would have it, her former foalsitter Princess Cadance had brought Flash along as part of her entourage, and duly noticed what was going on between them; but unfortunately, her attempt at a gentle nudge only served to confuse the younger alicorn even further, and so Twilight ultimately resorted to a hastily created “Soulmate Spell” in a bid to verify whether she really did have a crush on the young guardspony. Predictably, this spell turned out to be horribly flawed, and in the end it took a great deal of counselling from Cadance to soothe her frustration and distress and persuade her to give Flash a trial run.

Needless to say, Twilight was extremely shy about it at first, not just because of her uncertainty, but also out of fear for how Flash would react when he found out that her feelings for him had stemmed from some otherworldly creature who was virtually the same as him – and yet at the same time, rather confusingly, he wasn't. But much to her bewilderment, when she explained this to him at their first date, he didn't seem the least bit put off by this revelation – though it came as a shock at first, the young guardspony was surprisingly philosophical about her dilemma, especially after hearing that many of the other humans she had met were otherwise identical to everypony she knew of back in Equestria. If this other Flash Sentry was virtually the same as him, he observed, then he and Twilight were probably destined to be together.

This of course set everything right, and thus began a growing relationship between princess and guardspony. It must have been quite the eye opener, Locomotion thought to himself as he studied the blueprints of a Griffonian bomber, for only a month later, Rarity had also managed to come to terms with her own feelings for Spike, and shortly after, Scootaloo and Rumble had started going out together...

“Hey there, Loco!”

Locomotion stifled a chuckle when he heard that voice. “And just when I was thinking about you guys too!” he grinned mirthfully, looking up at the two-tone grey Pegasus colt who was just approaching. “How's it going, Rumble?”

“Not bad, thanks, Loco,” replied Rumble. “We've just come up here to see if there are any books on the Great Griffin War is all.”

“Have you?” Locomotion's eyes lit up. “Well, what a coincidence! I was just reading about the same topic. You looking up fighter planes as well?”

“Sure are,” affirmed Scootaloo.

“Ah – well then, perhaps we could share this book I'm reading right now,” offered Locomotion. “Should have all the info we'll need.”

Scootaloo and Rumble were happy to agree. Soon, the three of them were indulging in an idle chat as they jotted down the information they felt would be most relevant to their essays. As was not unusual, Locomotion wasn't above giving his two Cutie Mark Crusader friends as informative a lecture as he could without being boring should they need certain details in the aircraft or a specific chapter of the war explained to them; but otherwise, their conversation mainly consisted of small talk and their opinions on the conflict with the griffins.

“You know,” observed Locomotion at one point, “it's quite incredible to think how far we've come in the world of aviation over the years.”

“It sure is,” mused Rumble. “Just a couple of centuries ago, the only way you would have been able to fly was if you'd been born with wings like us Pegasi – and now look at us.”

“Yeah,” chimed in Scootaloo. “Now we've got all sorts of aircraft in the sky – balloons, airships, helicopters, stealth bombers, fighter jets, seaplanes, passenger airliners...”

“And to think,” chuckled Locomotion, “were it not for aircraft, the Great Griffin War could have been a totally different story. Bravo for the Supermare Spitfire and the de Hoofilland Mosquito, that's what I say. Come to think of it, Scoot,” he added, “your aunt shares her name with that first one.”

“What, Aunt Spitfire?”

“Yeah. Was that intentional or just coincidence?”

Scootaloo paused. “According to what Dad told me, yeah, it was intentional,” she replied. “He says Grandpa was a fighter pilot in Baltimare and thought it a nice gesture to name my aunt after the planes he flew.”

“And quite right too,” said Rumble feelingly. “Without the Spitfire, we'd be a Griffonian colony by now – and I really don't like the idea of living under the rule of someone like Adolf Hawker.”

“Neither do I,” agreed Locomotion, scowling at the mention of the notorious griffin dictator. “Heck, it'd be pure agony having to suffer under him! As far as I'm concerned the only thing worse than having that...that...that racist, sexist, power-mad psychopath as a leader would be if Tirek succeeded Celestia and Luna on the throne!”

“Did I just hear someone say 'Tirek'?!” snarled an angry voice from nowhere in particular. The three foals looked around, startled, and noticed a disgruntled Discord hovering close by.

Locomotion rolled his eyes, unsure whether to feel relieved or dismayed. Even though Discord had managed to redeem himself throughout Equestria, there were still plenty who found him rather annoying at times, and the red-furred colt was no exception. “Sure did, Discord,” he grunted, “but before you ask, none of us were speaking favourably of him in any way whatsoever.”

“I should certainly hope not,” scowled Discord. “Imagine tricking me into giving away everypony else's magic with the promise of eternal chaos if I complied – I should have known that he would be the one dealing it instead of me! Why, if I ever saw him again, I'd throw him into space and see how long he could last up there just so I could see him die!”

“And I'd probably do a lot worse!” put in Locomotion fiercely. “Given half the chance, I'd grab him by the neck, slam him into a drystone wall, punch him once in the face and twice in the guts for every living being from whom he tried to steal magic, stamp on his head until I'd mashed it to a pulp and throw his sorry remains back into Tartarus!”

Discord gave an approving smirk. “You know, Locomotion,” he commented, “I think I like your idea better. I'd better remember that if he ever does break out of Tartarus again.”

“Better that than him taking all your power away because you helped feed his thirst for magic until he was too far gone for you to stop him yourself,” retorted Locomotion smugly.

This didn't go down too well with the irritated draconequus; “Watch it, Loco,” he threatened. “I have the power to make you go against your own persona should you give me any more cheek!”

“Oh, sure,” scoffed Locomotion dismissively, though with a broad smirk on his face, “corrupt me with your Chaos Magic, why don't you, and make me even more obsessed with railways than I already was.”

In response, Discord assumed a smug expression, pointing his eagle talon at Locomotion and raising his lion's paw as if to make a snide comeback – but after little more than a single second of holding that stance, his paw dropped back to his side, and his jaw fell to an impossibly low level as his expression changed from smug to stunned. “H-h-h-h-h-h-how...did you do that?!” he spluttered.

“I dunno,” said Locomotion innocently. “You were the one casting the spell, not me. You must have messed up somewhere – big time!”

“I......had?” Discord groaned and slapped his paw to his face before transforming himself into a sheep. “Well, now I feel a little sheepish! You know what? Go ahead and have your victory, Mr Triumph Over All – see if I care,” and he promptly vanished.

Locomotion watched with a triumphant grin. “One in the headlamp for the wisecracking draconequus,” he chortled.

“Yeah, well, 'A' for effort and all,” said Rumble uneasily, “but isn't that a bit...brutal, what you suggested for Tirek?”

The young railway enthusiast sighed ruefully. “Yeah, sorry about that, Rumble – I just...that's how much I hate Tirek and Hawker. It really ticks me off when some...idealistic brute, Equestrian or otherwise, tries to threaten the welfare of all those whom he or she thinks is beneath them. You guys may not understand this, but...when I read about a war or a disaster or a serious crime, see it in a film, hear it on the radio or through word of mouth, I...it's just so easy for me to put myself in the mindsets of whoever was affected by whatever it was that happened to them. That's what makes me feel so sorry for them...and so angry about their circumstances.”

Rumble smiled kindly and gave Locomotion a reassuring pat on the back. “I know the feeling,” he sympathised. “I've often gotten rather ashamed and even mad at myself for being able to fly where others aren't – my cousin especially. But then I keep telling myself; some things aren't meant to be, and we just have to live with that.”

“Well...you and me both,” Scootaloo pointed out.

“Besides, as I said earlier, we don't really need wings if we want to fly nowadays,” continued Rumble. “That's what aircraft are for.”

“Well, you're welcome to them,” chuckled Locomotion, “but me? I'd much prefer a good old-fashioned steam train to get me where I want to go. I mean, not that I have anything against aircraft; I like them for their technological value and all, but I just...wouldn't want to travel in one.”

“Why not?”

“It just sounds so...alien, the idea of being up in the sky in some giant metal tube,” admitted Locomotion unhappily. “Your chances of survival in a crash are almost non-existent too.”

“What do you mean 'non-existent'?” objected Scootaloo. “Soarin says that airliners are the safest form of travel ever invented.”

Locomotion shook his head in disbelief. “Have you any idea how many air disasters there have been with a total loss of life? Air Prance Flight 229 from Bearlarus in 1928; that lost an engine and crashed into a mountain – there were no survivors. Chineighse Airlines Flight 53 for Tokyoke; the main fuel tank exploded over the Golden Sea – there were no survivors. Royal Equestrian Airways Flight 781 from Maregentina; one of the first ever jet airliners, the de Hoofilland Comet 1s, broke up on its way to Miamane – there were no survivors...”

“Okay, okay, we get the idea, Loco!” interrupted Rumble. “Look, if you don't want to travel on a plane, then that's fine; but you don't need to go into a rant about it.”

“Yeah, Loco, cool it, why can't you!”

Their red-furred friend sighed heavily. “Sorry, guys,” he apologised meekly. “I just don't trust aircraft is all – even if I so much as think about the idea of travelling on one, I keep worrying I might sign my own death warrant in the process.”

“Alright, Loco, keep your mane on,” teased Scootaloo, turning her attention back to her notes.

“I shouldn't worry too much, Loco,” soothed Rumble. “Okay, so perhaps you don't always have a chance of survival if ever you do get into an air crash, but Soarin's right – there's not much chance of that sort of thing ever happening.”

“I should certainly hope not,” mused Locomotion; but then his face lit up again. “I wonder how Aunt Carnation Petal's doing right now.”

“What about her?” asked Scootaloo, who wasn't really listening.

“She's headed over to Saddle Arabia in three days' time aboard Royal Equestrian Airways Flight 759 – plans to spend a week in Abu Dhonki. Another one of those Celestial Faith missions, I'm guessing...”

Chapter 3: Checking In

The loud roar of aircraft engines, both jet and propeller, filled the air at Starswirl International Airport in Manehattan, the busiest air terminal on the Eastern Seaboard of Equestria, and the main hub for air travel across the vast Titanic Ocean. As other planes plied their way across the vast network of runways and taxiways, some lining up for take-off while others that had just arrived were picking their way towards the paved area outside the gates – the so-called “airport apron” – passengers were checking in at the main terminal building for their flights.

As he waited patiently in the queue for the Royal Equestrian Airways check-in desk, Flash happened to gaze out of the window at the vast aerodrome beyond. Any minute now, he thought as he eagerly watched the many airliners shuttle back and forth between the runways and the terminals, he would be joining one of them for his flight to Abu Dhonki – but which one? Braewing 747 “Jumbo”, maybe, or a McPommel PC10? Perhaps the check-in clerk would be able to tell him.

Immediately behind the Pegasus guardspony, Yehuda was cheerfully reflecting on the benefits that the oil agreement would bring, both to Equestria, and to his home country of Saddle Arabia.

“Just think, Sandhi,” he mused, “soon enough, Equestria will be able to generate more kerosene for these planes, and with the money we gain from the oil, we can improve the lives of our people still further. New schools for our young, new hospitals to take care of the old and the ill, new rail links, irrigation schemes...”

“Indeed, Excellency,” agreed Sandhi with a small smile. “I probably speak for the whole nation when I say how lucky we are to have a stallion of the people like you as our ambassador. All the same,” he went on, shifting uncomfortably, “I'll be very glad when we return home; this Western climate just isn't right for a camel.”

Yehuda chuckled heartily. “Worry not, my friend,” he soothed, “you'll be back in Abu Dhonki with your wife and calves before the day is out.” A hearty sigh followed as he took a quick peek into his saddlebag; “And not a moment too soon either. I'd hate to miss dear Soraya's birthday, especially with the present I've picked out for her. I just hope she likes it.”

“What, a golden silk sari? As if there was any doubt!” scoffed Sandhi, a hint of mirth in his expression. “Young Coco Pommel may only be a beginner with foreign clothing, but she seems to have done a wonderful job of it at any rate. Your wife will be thrilled.”

Flash could only smile as he listened to their conversation. He wasn't all that familiar with this Coco Pommel, but he knew from Twilight's friend Rarity that the young fashion designer had made quite a name for herself in Manehattan, rivalling her former employee Suri Polomare, so whatever Yehuda had bought was almost certain to impress his wife. Clearly he cared very deeply for her – but then, just as Sandhi had said, he was very much a stallion of the people, so it was only natural that he should put the opinions and feelings of others before his own...

“Next please.”

Quickly snapping out of his reverie, Flash stepped forward. “Good morning,” he greeted the clerk politely. “Name's Lieutenant Flash Sentry, and I'm here for REA Flight 759 for Abu Dhonki.”

“Right,” said the clerk, “can I see your papers please, Mr Sentry?”

“Sure.” Flash promptly withdrew his passport, airline ticket and visa from his saddlebag and rested them on the desk. “Any chance you can tell me what plane I'm going to be taking?”

The clerk looked up with a smile. “Well, consider yourself lucky, Mr Sentry, because you're booked to fly on one of our new Constellations,” she replied.

“Constellation? As in...one of those new superliners? Wow!” remarked Flash, mesmerised. “Talk about the trip of a lifetime!”

“A lot of other passengers are saying the same thing,” agreed the clerk as she returned her attention to Flash's documentation.

“And well they might!” chuckled Flash. “That plane's a real technological statement, and no mistake.”

The clerk nodded and continued reading. After a while, she looked up again and said, “Well, Mr Sentry, seems everything is in order. All I need now is to take your baggage and print you out a boarding pass.”

“Thanks, miss,” said Flash, hoisting his panniers onto the desk. “What time does my flight leave?”

“You'll be boarding at 1000 hours for a 1030 departure,” the clerk specified as she passed the bags over to the baggage handler, “so if you would like to make your way to the Fairy Flight Lounge...”

While all this was going on, the Constellation airliner on which Flash, Yehuda and Sandhi were to travel was undergoing preflight checks in readiness for its flight to Saddle Arabia. So far, the ground engineer in charge of the operation, a brown Earth pony named Great Snipe, could find nothing in particular about this aircraft to suggest that it was unfit for flying that day; indeed, it felt like one of those days where you could forget to check a certain part of the plane and it would still make it to its destination in one piece. Nevertheless, his experience as an engineer had taught him that it was better to be safe than sorry, especially when it came to aircraft.

“Morning, Snipe,” said a well-spoken Trottingham voice from behind him. “How's it coming?”

Great Snipe looked over his shoulder with a smile as the flight crew approached. The captain of this particular flight was Mark Skywalker, a sunshine yellow Pegasus stallion with orange mane, tail and sideburns, a pair of dark blue shades and the typical blue cap and jacket with which Royal Equestrian Airways pilots were issued. He was younger than most other airline pilots at the age of thirty-one, but he was nevertheless a calm and confident pony with great faith in his own ability.

“Looking good so far, Mark,” replied Great Snipe. “No tyre damage, no fuel leaks, airframe seems to be in good nick...it's all good.”

“Excellent. Keep it up, Snipe.”

“How have you been keeping then? Everything okay with you?”

“Yeah, they've been good,” answered Mark casually. “Seems my little colt's become one heck of a hoofball fan since he started school last year; the amount of Manehattan Jaspers stuff he's got in his room, you wouldn't believe! He's even thinking of starting his own team one day.”

Great Snipe laughed heartily. “Might want to take care then, or else you'll find him in the Equestrian Hoofball League before you know it,” he quipped.

“Well...maybe. How far along are you anyway?”

“About half-done, I think. We should be finished by about ten minutes to take-off.”

“Ah, good. Thanks a lot, Snipe,” and with that, Mark followed the rest of his crew into the plane, leaving Great Snipe and the rest of the engineers to continue checking for any faults.

The minutes ticked slowly by as more and more passengers checked in for Flight 759. Flash, Yehuda and Sandhi sat patiently in the Fairy Flight Lounge, the ambassador cheerfully listing all the major points of interest in Abu Dhonki to the orange-coated Pegasus while the dromedary attaché leafed through a travel magazine he had bought from the souvenir shop. At last, just as the clock was showing ten, they heard the announcement over the public address system;

“Fillies and gentlecolts, Royal Equestrian Airways Flight 759 for Abu Dhonki is now boarding. Will all passengers for Royal Equestrian Airways Flight 759 please make their way to Gate No. 7.”

“That's us,” said Flash, standing up and making for the door. Sandhi and Yehuda nodded their acknowledgement and started to follow; but just as they left the lounge, the Pegasus guardspony noticed a flustered rose-coloured Earth mare with brown mane and tail just outside the gate. She seemed to be having trouble with her luggage. “Ah...excuse me, Your Excellency, I, er...”

“That's quite alright, my friend,” replied Yehuda patiently. “'For the benefit of others', my Sultan and I always say. Besides, we've all the time in the world before our plane leaves.”

With an appreciative smile, Flash turned and trotted towards the frustrated brunette. “Pardon me, miss,” he asked politely, “is everything okay?”

The mare looked up with a weary frown. “Not exactly. I probably shouldn't have kept so much luggage with me at check-in.”

“Do you want some help?”

“Hmm...could do with it, actually,” replied the mare.

“Okay then.” Flash turned back to Yehuda; “Won't be a minute, sir.”

“Of course, young Flash.”

Yehuda and his attaché waited while Flash helped the mare untangle her panniers and pick up some documentation she had dropped. Luckily for all four of them, her bags weren't in too much of a tangle and neither had she dropped too many papers, so it didn't take very long to sort out.

“There you go, miss,” said Flash at last. “You be okay now?”

“Yes, I think so. Thank you so much, kind sir.” The mare paused, curiously looking the orange-furred stallion over. “Don't I recognise you from somewhere, by the way?”

“Um...that depends on where you think you might recognise me from,” answered Flash, taken a little aback.

“My nephew Locomotion described you in a letter he wrote to me a few months ago,” explained the mare. “He said your name was Flash Sentry, and you've been resident at Ponyville Castle since last year. Is that right?”

Flash's eyes lit up. “Why, so it is!” he remarked. “Well – fancy bumping into one of his relatives here at Starswirl Airport! You headed for Abu Dhonki too, huh?”

“Yes, I'm a missionary for the Celestial Faith. My name's Carnation Petal.”

“Pleasure,” replied Flash, shaking her hoof. “Ah well, I guess we'd better get moving. Time – and planes – wait for nopony. I hope we meet again, Miss Petal.”

Carnation Petal nodded gratefully in reply as she made her way through the gate and along the walkway towards their flight. Flash briskly followed suit, accompanied by the two Arabian diplomats.

More than a quarter of an hour had gone by, and all preflight checks had been completed. Their gargantuan charge deemed fit to fly, Mark Skywalker and his crew waited eagerly for the passengers to finish boarding the aircraft, indulging in some cheery gossip to pass the time.

“So,” mused Storm Chaser, the co-pilot, “our first flight to Saddle Arabia on a de Hoofilland Constellation. This ought to be an interesting experience.”

Mark chuckled heartily in agreement. He had flown the route to Abu Dhonki since before the first Constellation had been built, but to fly it one of these magnificent behemoths, which he had already handled on other routes previously, would be the chance of a lifetime. “Yeah, and with the ambassador of that very same country flying with us too!”

“What, as in that...El Equine fella?” This came from Radar, the plane's flight engineer.

“Yehuda El Equuis?”

“Yes, him.”

“Ah, yes, I know the guy,” remarked Storm Chaser. “He was here for that oil deal between our kingdom and his, wasn't he?”

“Yeah, that's the one,” affirmed Radar.

“So we're finally getting that extra supply of kerosene for our planes, eh Radar?” asked Mark hopefully.

“So it would seem, Mark.”

“And about time too,” chuckled Mark. “For a while, I thought we'd never get these monsters off the ground.”

“So how much did they say we'd be getting?” inquired Storm Chaser. “10 percent, wasn't it?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Well, that depends, really,” said Radar, “but from what I'd read, they definitely had 10 percent as a sort of ballpark figure. We'll just have to see how we do on that, I guess.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” conceded Storm Chaser, watching nonchalantly as an Airwain A340 airliner, much smaller than the Constellation, and headed for Le Mars in northern Prance, began its take-off run. “Still, at least we've got a share of Arabia's oil, that's the important bit. Say, Mark,” he went on, “any plans for when we get to Abu Dhonki?”

Mark took a second to consider this. “Um...well since we're not due to leave until tomorrow morning, I might as well see if I can visit the Ali Khamel Memorial Centre,” he decided. “How about you, Storm?”

“Dunno, personally,” admitted Storm Chaser. “It's the first time I've ever been to Saddle Arabia, let alone Abu Dhonki.”

“Seriously?” asked Mark, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah.”

Radar gave a mirthful smirk. Just like his co-pilot to miss out on somewhere like Abu Dhonki, he thought to himself. “Then you've never lived. I've been there twice myself, and let me tell you, Storm, if you're the sort of pony who loves foreign culture like I do, that country's an absolute must!” he proclaimed enthusiastically.

“I'll take your word for it, Radar,” chuckled Storm Chaser heartily.

“Tell you what, Storm,” offered Radar, “if you want, I could take you on a tour of that place.”

Storm Chaser nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, I think I'll take you up on that.”

At long last, all the passengers and cargo were aboard, and the Constellation could now begin its long journey across the Titanic Ocean. With all doors locked shut and the walkway retracted, an aircraft tug gently eased the plane away from the terminal building before detaching and heading back to the hangar to await its next turn. The huge airliner then started up its powerful jet engines and cruised gracefully off the apron towards the runway.

From the control tower in the midst of the airport, Air Traffic Controller Speedbird watched closely through his binoculars as the gigantic engineering marvel ponderously picked its way along the taxiways. “That's certainly some airliner,” he thought aloud.

“She sure is,” agreed one of the other controllers. “That de Hoofilland's sure outdone himself with that baby.”

By now, the airliner had reached the runway and was waiting eagerly behind the threshold for its take-off run. Over the radio, they could just make out the slightest hint of anticipation in Mark's voice as he updated them on their position;

“Control from Equestria Seven Five Niner, we're now lined up and ready on Runway One Four.”

Speedbird turned to his fellow controller. “Are we all clear for Seven Five Niner to depart?”

“Yep – all clear,” replied his colleague after a quick check on the radar screen in front of him.

“Right, then I might as well let them go,” said Speedbird, turning on his radio headset. “Equestria Seven Five Niner, you are cleared for take-off.”

“Roger, sir.”

With a loud roar from its engines, the Constellation began to move forward onto the runway proper, slowly at first, but rapidly gathering speed until it was travelling faster than an eagle. As soon as it reached the middle of the runway, the landing wheels left the ground and the gigantic airliner boldly took to the sky. Speedbird gazed admiringly upon the flying behemoth as it soared across the opposite end of the runway, mentally praising its creator on a job well done – it was moments like these, he told himself, that made him feel proud to be Equestrian.

From the observation deck in the terminal building, a mysterious all-over grey unicorn stallion was also gazing upon the Constellation as it climbed higher and higher into the air – but national pride and praise for the plane's inventor were the last things on his mind. What he was thinking, nopony could tell, but if anypony were to take notice of the shifty, sinister expression he was directing towards the enormous flying machine, or the sly, fiendish tone with which he spoke, it would have been palpably clear to them that he could well be up to something. Indeed, if Flash, Yehuda, Sandhi or Carnation Petal had been around to see or hear him, they might have thought twice about going anywhere near the aircraft...

Chapter 4: The Liner Vanishes

Ten minutes into the flight, and all seemed well aboard the Constellation. They still had a long way to climb, but Mark and Storm Chaser had the plane flying smoothly and steadily by this time, so the passengers and flight attendants could now get up and go about their business. Many were looking forward to what they would see and do when they arrived in Abu Dhonki; but all that Flash Sentry in particular could think about was how incredibly lucky he was to be flying all the way across the Titanic Ocean in this veritable Goliath among passenger aircraft.

In the cockpit, the flight crew were cheerfully discussing what they would be doing in Abu Dhonki after they booked off when a call came through from another airliner;

“Equine Apple Pommel calling Equine Zebra Trigger.”

“Zebra Trigger receiving,” acknowledged Mark.

“We've just been in contact with Lemberg VOR regarding the weather schedule.” The two pilots recognised the voice over the radio as that of fellow REA pilot Captain Jetstream, who was flying the A340 that had taken off more than ten minutes ahead of them. “They say that a cloud layer of three tenths is to be laid at Flight Level Two Eight Five, about three miles from Bermuleda on heading Zero Niner Two, between 1045 and 1100 hours.”

“Understood, Apple Pommel. Thanks for the update.”

“What's your current position and flight level?” asked Jetstream.

Mark paused for a moment while he checked the instruments. “Well, we're currently at Flight Level Two Zero Zero,” he replied, making a mental note to inform the passengers of a temporary diversion if need be. “We should be approaching the cloud-laying team in fifteen minutes. I'll give them a heads-up as soon as we approach.”

“Roger. Out.”

A further ten minutes elapsed as the plane came closer and closer to the Bermuleda Islands. By now, Sandhi and Yehuda had gone to socialise with other high-profile passengers in the cocktail lounge; but even though they had invited Flash to join them, the young guardspony had politely declined. He was far more content to just sit and watch the clouds crawl slowly along beneath them...and maybe – just maybe...

With a decisive nod, Flash stood up and pressed a button above his head. Shortly after, a flight attendant came over to his seat. “You rang, sir?”

“Yes,” affirmed Flash, “I just wanted to ask if it would be okay to come and see inside this plane's cockpit?”

“I'll have a word with the captain,” replied the attendant. “If you'd just like to follow me this way.”

“Sure.” Flash followed the flight attendant to the vestibule in the front of the cabin, where she paused to speak to the captain over the intercom;

“There's a passenger in the first class lounge wanting to come into the cockpit, sir...Lieutenant Flash Sentry, sir – Equestrian Royal Guard......certainly, sir.” She turned her attention back to Flash with a smile; “He says he's more than happy for you to come and see inside the cockpit.”

“Ah, good. Thanks very much, miss,” said Flash. The attendant nodded politely in reply and headed back down the gangway, leaving the orange-coated guardspony to make his own way to the cockpit.

But he never reached it...

Up ahead, Captain Jetstream was keeping a careful eye out for any Pegasi still in the process of laying clouds as he resumed his original course. The amount of activity at this altitude meant he had had to deviate by a few degrees; but now all seemed clear for him to resume his designated flight path.

“On course now, sir,” reported his co-pilot at last.

“Good,” answered Jetstream. “Switch on autopilot.”

The co-pilot acknowledged, and flicked a switch that would allow the plane to carry on flying along its selected route without any input from the crew. At that moment, they heard Mark's voice over the radio; “Equine Zebra Trigger to Equine Apple Pommel.”

“Equine Zebra Trigger to Equine Apple Pommel,” replied Jetstream, “receiving you five by five. Go ahead.”

“Equine Apple Pommel, we're just approaching the...” but Mark never finished. Much to the crew's confusion and concern, the radio link suddenly cut out in mid-sentence, and all they could hear was an endless stream of static.

“That doesn't sound right,” exclaimed Jetstream, anxiously fine-tuning the frequency on his radio transmitter. “Zebra Trigger, are you receiving me? Come in, Zebra Trigger.”

There was no reply.

“Equine Apple Pommel to Equine Zebra Trigger, do you read me?”

Still nothing.

“Radio must be dead,” muttered Jetstream anxiously. “I'd better try Starswirl, see if they can raise them. Starswirl Control from Equestria Three Seven Eight...”

Back in Manehattan, Speedbird was understandably perturbed when he heard Jetstream trying to contact him. His plane should have passed the Bermuleda Islands by now, so why was he calling Starswirl Airport of all places? Something, he realised, must be terribly wrong.

“Control here,” he responded tersely, “receiving you strength three. Go ahead.”

“We've lost contact with Equestria Seven Five Niner, Starswirl,” Jetstream informed him over the radio. “They seem to have just...disappeared. Can you reach them?”

This confused Speedbird still further. Surely the Constellation couldn't be in trouble already...could it? No, he must have misheard the flight number – or maybe it was Jetstream who had got it wrong. All the same, it was probably best to make absolutely sure that Flight 759 was still flying. “We'll do our best,” he replied, and nodded to one of the other controllers, who immediately attempted to regain contact with the Constellation.

But no matter how hard they tried on what frequency, the same thing happened. All they could hear over the radio was ceaseless static, occasionally interrupted by transmissions between ground crew and other planes. Just as they were about to try again, however, another message, much more urgent, came in from the very islands over which the two airliners were headed;

“Lemberg VOR to Starswirl Control, urgent! Equestria Seven Five Niner has just disappeared from radar screen. Last known return was: West 64.55, North 32.19.”

As the transmission ended, a deafening silence fell over all fourteen ponies in the control tower, none of whom could believe what they had just heard. Surely Lemberg must have got the wrong plane too...any other plane, they could understand, but a Constellation? This couldn't be possible!

Speedbird stared out across the airport, trying to size up the situation. He and his colleagues hadn't had any luck trying to contact the Constellation either – maybe there was a chance that it had crashed. “Call the air-sea rescue teams together,” he ordered at last. “Constellation or no Constellation, there are lives at stake right now.”

“Very well, sir,” said one of his colleagues, and turned to his telephone...

While all this was going on, a group of Bermuleda fisherponies were busy landing their early morning catch. They had been working long and hard since well before sunrise, and were now looking forward to a rest – but their hopes for a quiet day of relaxation were soon to be dashed.

The youngest of the fisherponies, a teenaged Pegasus stallion named Cod Catcher, had just finished helping his father and uncle unload their boat and was now about to make a start on repairing their nets. Barely had he begun to inspect them, however, when his attention was suddenly interrupted by what sounded like a roll of thunder. Puzzled, he gazed up at the sky – but he was by no means prepared for what he saw.

“What in the hay is that?!” he exclaimed.

“What's what, Cod Catcher?” asked the slow, lax, laid-back drawl of his uncle Salmon Trout.

“That great fireball up in the sky,” replied Cod Catcher, pointing out to sea. Salmon Trout and the other fisherponies looked, and sure enough, they could see a cluster of wreckage plummeting towards the water, some of it burning brightly. “Was there supposed to be some sort of naval exercise or something, Pop?”

His father, Gadus, raised an eyebrow. “I don't think so, Cod,” he said doubtfully. “If there was, we'd have known about it a good few days in advance.”

“Then why the burning debris? That's what I wanna know,” put in Shark Bait, the toughest of the lot.

“Dunno – but I don't like the look of it,” said Cod Catcher gravely.

“If Ah might say so,” decided Salmon Trout, “we might wanna go out there an' investigate. Could be that there's a passenger airliner in trouble.”

“I think you're right, Sam.” Gadus leaped back into his boat and started the engine. “Come on, guys – let's go see if we can help!”

“Right with you, Pop!” Cod Catcher and Salmon Trout quickly boarded, and the three stallions led the other fisherponies and their boats out to where they believed the plane would crash.

The flotilla hadn't gone very far when Cod Catcher noticed something else. “Hey, Pop, Uncle Sam, there's a Pegasus pony a few miles off our starboard bow!”

“Good grief, so there is!” exclaimed Gadus, looking to his right and glimpsing an orange-coated stallion with sapphire-blue mane and tail plunging towards the water. “Shucks, he looks in bad shape.”

“Yeah, an' he's gonna be in even worse shape if we don' get to 'im quick enough,” murmured Salmon Trout anxiously.

“Don't worry, Uncle Sam, I'm on it!” and before either Gadus or Salmon Trout could reply, Cod Catcher shot into the air like a jack rabbit, rapidly gaining altitude as he made to intercept the unknown stallion in mid-air.

He was only just in time, for the stallion was almost about to hit the water as he closed in. Swooping down as low as he dared, Cod Catcher reached out and just managed to grab him a few hooves above the surface, causing the older pony to emit a weak groan as he did so. The teenaged Pegasus breathed a sigh of relief – at least the wounded stallion was still alive.

But for how much longer, he wondered? There was still a pulse, that much was obvious; but his every breath seemed worryingly shallow and strained at the same time, and both his wings appeared to have been broken too. All told, this pony was clearly in a very precarious state, so unless he received medical attention...

Cod Catcher made up his mind. If there was anypony else still alive after the crash, his father and uncle and the other fisherponies would be more than enough to bring them back to the island; but if this particular pony was to survive, he couldn't afford to hang around any longer. With this in mind, he headed back towards the island, shouting out a brief message to Salmon Trout as he went;

“Take care of the others! This guy needs help!”

Salmon Trout waved his acknowledgement and turned to his brother. “Hear that, Gadus? We're gonna have ta count Cod out, or that guy's as dead as a dodo.”

“Yeah, I got it,” replied Gadus, still looking ahead as he ploughed on towards the crash site.

When at last they reached the battered remains of the stricken aircraft, they could only look on in dismay as they realised the scale of the disaster. Everywhere they looked, they could see hundreds of lifeless bodies floating limply on the surface of the ocean, including a dromedary camel, a rose-coloured mare with the emblem of the Royal Canterlot Sisters as her Cutie Mark, and a silver-white Arabian pony wearing a diplomatic saddlebag. Various items of luggage and other commodities were strewn among the crash victims, ranging from food and drink to toys and clothes, the most noticeable item being a golden silk sari. In the midst of this literal sea of carnage, they could just about make out part of the wrecked airliner drifting forlornly in between its former occupants, which bore the legend; “R. E. A., E–BAZT”.

Gadus shut off his engines and turned to Shark Bait, who had just heaved to alongside him. “Search for survivors,” he advised. “We'll pick up bodies later.”

“Will do.” But even rough and ready Shark Bait knew that there was little chance of anypony surviving so horrific a disaster as this...

Cod Catcher paced anxiously back and forth outside the operating room. It had been nearly half an hour since he had reached the local hospital, and even now, their finest surgeons were trying their best to bring the mystery stallion back from the brink of death; but still he hadn't heard back from them.

“Gees, would I give anything to know what's going on with this guy right now,” he muttered to himself in an edgy tone. It had been bad enough to discover a half-dead Pegasus pony in the middle of the Titanic Ocean, all breathless and unable to fly himself to safety, but for his attempt to save the stricken stallion to have been in vain......the mere notion shook the teenaged fisherpony to the core of his existence.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, one of the surgeons emerged from the operating room with a serious look on his face.

“How is he, Doc?” asked Cod Catcher anxiously.

“Still not in a good state, I'm afraid,” replied the surgeon gravely. “We've fixed him up as much as we can, but he's in a pretty deep coma right now. Best we can do now is put him in intensive care and see where he goes from there; but chances are he's not going to make it.”

Cod Catcher's heart sank. “Well...thanks,” he mumbled, gazing at his front hooves in sullen guilt. If only he had been that little bit quicker in getting that stallion to hospital, he thought ashamedly, he might yet have been able to save his life – but as it was, there was little chance he would ever see the light of day again. Unable to think of anything that would take the sting out of his verdict, the surgeon solemnly headed off to the staff room to make his report.

But if Cod Catcher was disappointed at having potentially failed to save the stricken Pegasus stallion, his father and uncle and their comrades were even more dismayed by the number of casualties at the crash scene. Though many of the nearly six-hundred bodies they discovered still had their eyes open, giving the impression that they were still alive, none actually were. Even the air-sea rescue units couldn't identify any survivors when they arrived. With heavy hearts, the fisherponies hoisted as many corpses into their boats as they could hold and mournfully made their way back to their home harbour.

Chapter 5: Breaking News

In Canterlot Castle, Princess Celestia was in the middle of a discussion with one of her advisers when the throne room doors suddenly flung open as a messenger came charging in, frantically trying to attract her attention. The alabaster alicorn directed a look of utter confusion towards the white-furred Pegasus stallion, whereupon he quickly remembered his manners and bowed respectfully. “Your Highness,” he announced, “I'm afraid I bring bad news from Starswirl Airport in Manehattan. It concerns Lieutenant Flash Sentry, second-in-command at Ponyville Castle.”

“What about him?” asked Celestia.

“The Air Minister has informed me that his plane, Royal Equestrian Airways Flight 759, has come down in the Titanic Ocean,” explained the messenger. “I haven't got the full details yet, but the Constellation in charge of the flight is a complete write-off, and the rescue teams can't find any survivors. Flash's body appears to be missing too.”

Celestia could only stare in dismay, unable to bring herself to terms with this horrific bombshell, and equally unsure how to respond. Surely this couldn't be true, she tried to reason with herself – these Constellation airliners may only have been in service for a few months, but she was well aware of all the rigorous testing they had gone through before production and delivery. For such a well-built and thoroughly proven machine as this to crash so soon in its life was just......unthinkable! But even more heart-wrenching was the realisation that Twilight Sparkle, that most faithful of all her personal students, the one of whom she had grown so fond in all the time she had known the former unicorn, had almost certainly lost the one pony closer to her than those first five friends she had made in Ponyville seven years previously. How would she react to the discovery that her beloved Flash Sentry was gone forever?

The messenger hung his head ruefully. “I don't know what else to say, Your Highness,” he confessed.

Only then did Celestia manage to find her voice. “Does Twilight Sparkle know about this yet?”

“I don't think so, Your Highness. I only received word of the accident less than five minutes ago.”

Celestia responded with an understanding nod and turned to the scribe. “Raven Quill, take a letter.”

“Are you sure you want to be sending one so soon, Your Highness?” asked Raven Quill doubtfully. “There's still a fair bit of searching to be done out there, after all. You never know – Lieutenant Sentry might yet have survived.”

“I'm aware of that, Raven Quill,” stated Celestia, “but the fact remains that he's missing, and whether or not he has been killed, Mother forbid, then Twilight will have to know sooner or later. I repeat, take a letter.”

Raven Quill sighed and did as he was told; but even though he tried to focus his full attention to the letter, even he couldn't help but detect a tone of deep sorrow in Celestia's voice as she dictated her message to him. Not that he could blame her either – having to break the news to somepony else that a friend or a relative had passed away, the silver-coated unicorn opined, was enough to strike guilt and shame into anypony.

But guilt and shame, of all emotions, were the last things that McPommel felt right now, as he sat in his office and gazed up at the television with a broad, fiendish smirk. Once again, the topic of the newsflash he was watching centred around the Constellation; but far from the high praise that the plane had been receiving (praise which, in his opinion, it never deserved in the first place), the general tone of this broadcast was one of deepest anguish as the reporter related the tragic story of Flight 759's crash to all the peoples of Equestria.

“So much for launching that flying death-trap into service ahead of the Phantom, eh, de Hoofilland?” he said smugly as the film ended. “Now we'll see which one is the superior airliner!”

Withers, who happened to be in the office with him, shook his head in dismay. “I don't understand you, sir. An airliner crashes, and the first thing you can think of is the Phantom? What about all the lives that have been lost?”

“You would have to think about that, wouldn't you, Withers?” scoffed McPommel disdainfully.

“Well...yes, sir, but...think of all the ponies who might have been affected by the loss of their loved ones...”

“That, Withers, is precisely why I am a highly successful aviation entrepreneur, and you are a mere lackey!” snapped McPommel. “You keep snivelling about ponies being killed on rival airliners rather than focusing on your own, you'll never produce a successful aircraft.”

“Uh...a-a-actually, sir,” Withers tried to respond, “if it weren't for me, you'd never have sold a single aircraft yourself.”

McPommel glared at him. “Don't give me that, you worm!” he scowled. “I employed you here to design aircraft, not to preach all these pointless sermons to me about who's the most important part of my company! Now then, how soon can you have the outer wing-tips sorted out?”

Withers paused. “Uh...should have them done by next week, I think.”

“Then I suggest you get back to work,” ordered McPommel. “I don't know how long we have until the cause of the crash is identified, but I'm certainly not going to let this opportunity slide. The sooner we get the Phantom in the air, the better – so get moving, you idiot!”

Withers opened his mouth to protest still further; but the sharp tone of his boss' voice clearly left no room for argument, so instead he nodded in reply and resignedly left the office, still brooding over the loss of life that had resulted from the crash. All those ponies and other creatures dead...all those bereaved families who would never see them again...and all this for reasons he was afraid to reveal to anypony outside the company for which he worked...

It was late in the afternoon, and dull, grey clouds hung overhead as Locomotion and his uncle Steamer made their way home. The two ponies had been having a very busy day, Steamer on a special excursion to Fort Maine, and Locomotion with extra shunting; and both were looking forward to some quiet downtime at the red-furred unicorn's house. As they strolled through the now empty streets, Locomotion listened intently as his uncle told him about the excursion, unaware that their good moods were to be shattered the moment they passed through the front door.

The first thing that either pony knew of anything wrong was how disturbingly quiet it was when they entered the house. Normally, Locomotion's little brother and younger sister would be playing in one of the two front rooms, and his older sister was often to be heard playing the piano in the other; but today, there wasn't a single sound to be heard. The only other pony in the house was his mother, who bore an expression of deepest woe as she turned to look upon her son and brother-in-law. Upon seeing this, Locomotion immediately forgot to be cheerful. “Mum, what's wrong?” he asked anxiously.

The white-furred mare sighed heavily. “Loco...I'm afraid I've got some rather sad news,” she replied. “You know your aunt Carnation Petal was going to be staying in Saddle Arabia for a week?”

“Uh...yeah, what of it?”

“Well...I've just this morning been informed that her plane has crashed only a few miles away from the Bermuleda Islands,” explained his mother gravely.

Steamer and Locomotion were visibly horrified.

“It's what?!” Steamer could hardly believe his ears. “How in the hay did that happen?”

“They don't know yet, but they think it might be an in-flight fire or something.”

“And what about Carnation Petal? Did she survive?”

Locomotion's mother sadly shook her head. “None of them have. They've recovered her body, but she was declared dead at the scene.”

This was far too much for Locomotion. Carnation Petal, arguably, was his favourite aunt, and the news that she had been taken away from the land of the living so suddenly left the pre-teen colt so thunderstruck that he didn't know what to say, think or feel. Unable to manage an audible reply, he trotted swiftly up the stairs and into his bedroom, leaving his mother and uncle alone in the hallway. Only when he had entered the room and closed the door did he allow himself to succumb to the tidal wave of emotions with which he had been struck, shedding tears and sobbing hard as he sprawled out across his bed and buried his face in the soft pillows.

Twilight had been having a busy day too. Throughout the morning and most of the afternoon, she had been holding discussions with Rarity, the mayor and several other important ponies regarding the upcoming Ponyville Days Festival, and she was now winding down in the castle library with one of her favourite novels to keep her occupied. Nearby, her dragon assistant Spike was in the middle of dusting the books and shelves.

“How's it coming, Spike?” the lavender-coated alicorn asked, briefly looking up from her book.

“Looking good so far, Twi,” replied Spike cheerfully. “Should have this lot done by dinner.”

“Ah, good. Keep up the good work.”

“As if I'd ever do otherwise!” chuckled Spike, promptly resuming his dusting. “You just focus on that book, Twilight, and let the dragon do the real work.”

Twilight couldn't help but let out a small chuckle of her own as she watched the purple reptile quietly going about his work. Spike had clearly come a long way since the two of them had first moved to Ponyville all those years ago – indeed, it was hard to imagine that someone as smart and diligent and mature as he was now, someone who simply got on with the job without quip nor complaint, had started out so small and cheeky and occasionally clueless. He still had a lot to learn in life, and there were times when the old Spike managed to rear his mischievous head, but ever since he and Rarity had started going out together, his already loyal personality seemed to have improved enormously with the passing of time and the growth in their relationship.

And to think that she had all too often brushed off the possibility of those two being together as a mere pie in the sky! Now, seven years since they had first arrived here, three years after that fiasco in which the white-furred unicorn had saved him from drowning and revealed her own feelings for him, Spike and Rarity had become inseparable, and the purple dragon seemed to spend more time at Carousel Boutique than he did at the castle. But the real surprise came late the previous summer, when Spike finally popped the question after attending a fashion show in Fillydelphia. Rarity couldn't think of a single moment when she'd been any happier, and once their friends had gotten over the initial shock, they were full of praise for the happy couple.

The lavender-coated alicorn sighed dreamily at the memory as she turned over another page. Just think, she thought to herself – one of these days, the very same thing would be happening with her and Flash. Heck, if they were lucky enough, maybe their own wedding might take place under the same roof as her dragon assistant and...

But her train of thought was rudely interrupted by a slight grunt from Spike. She looked up from her book, and was just in time to see him burping up a jet of green fire, which quickly reformed itself into a neatly rolled scroll with the Royal Canterlot seal.

“Uh...were we expecting anything off of Princess Celestia?” wondered Twilight, confused.

“Dunno,” murmured Spike, picking up the scroll and opening it up, “but I sure could do with a more...polite way of receiving mail. Imagine if I'd been on...” but he suddenly broke off when he noticed what was written on the scroll, his eyes widening and his jaw dropping in alarm. Surely this had to be some sort of joke!

“What is it, Spike?” asked Twilight, concerned.

Spike didn't reply. He didn't even dare to look upon his surrogate older sister. He just stared upon the sheet of parchment, hoping desperately that this was just some crazy dream, and that if Twilight were to read it, she would find a completely different message to the one he had just done.

“Spike, what's wrong?”

The horrified dragon gulped hard, silently wishing for the ground to open up beneath his feet and swallow him whole. “It's......it's Flash,” he stammered, feeling his legs starting to weaken as he spoke. “He......well, I'm......something's happened to him, and......here, you read it.” Without another word, he handed Twilight the letter and sat down on one of the other sofas, mentally bracing himself for the inevitable.

There was a long silence.

“I......no! It can't be!”

Daring to look up, Spike noticed Twilight staring in horror upon the unfurled scroll, her eyes brimming with tears as the horrible truth slowly began to sink in. She read through the text again and again, silently wishing there was something she might have missed, or that she might have misread the letter entirely. But still the message remained the same;

Dear Princess Twilight Sparkle, my most faithful student,

I deeply regret to inform you that we have just received word of a plane crash near the Bermuleda Islands. I am given to understand by my messenger that the downed aircraft was Royal Equestrian Airways Flight 759 for Abu Dhonki, and that your consort, Lieutenant Flash Sentry, was on said flight when it crashed.

We are unsure as yet how many lives have been lost in total; but given that the plane involved in the crash was a de Hoofilland Constellation, we believe there may have been as many as nine hundred passengers on board. Five hundred and eighty-three bodies have already been recovered, but several are still missing, including that of Flash, and they have been unable to find any survivors. It is with deepest sorrow, therefore, that I wish to offer my condolences.

Yours sincerely
Princess Celestia

This had to be by far and away the worst moment in all her life. Flash Sentry, her beloved guardspony, the one pony she cared more about than anything else in the world – even more so than reading and research – had almost certainly departed this world, never to return. It was almost as if her heart had been ripped from her chest and torn to shreds right before her very eyes.

“I'm really sorry, Twilight,” murmured Spike sadly.

Twilight didn't reply. She just gazed down upon the silk cushions of her sofa with a distraught look on her face, her chest aching like nothing she had ever felt before. “Why?” she wept, finally allowing her pain and grief to make itself known to the whole world. “Why did this have to happen?”

Spike opened his mouth to try and answer Twilight's question; but quickly shut it again for fear of hurting the heartbroken alicorn's feelings still further. An inquisitive hoot distracted his attention at this point, and he looked up to see Owlowiscious, Twilight's pet owl, touching down on the armrest with a look of concern on his face.

“Twilight, that's who,” explained Spike morosely. “We've just had some bad news from Princess Celestia about Flash. It's on that sheet of parchment just in front of her.”

Perplexed, Owlowiscious flew over to his mistress and examined the letter. Only when he had fully analysed the message did he realise what Spike was talking about, and he gently ran his wing through Twilight's mane in an effort to try and comfort her. Much to the relief of both dragon and owl, her sobbing ebbed away into tiny sniffles as she began to calm down – though not by much.

“I just...don't understand,” she faltered. “That pony's been my whole world for the best part of three or four years. Why did he have to leave me like this?” She closed her eyes as fresh tears trickled down her muzzle. “It just isn't fair.”

“Darn right it isn't,” agreed Spike softly. “That Flash Sentry was a real nice guy – I should think we'd all feel bad for his passing. I know there are probably tens of thousands who feel the same about the rest of the crew and passengers on that plane.” He looked across to Owlowiscious, who gave a solemn hoot in agreement. “I mean, yeah, it was an unfortunate occurrence, and one that probably should never have happened in the first place, but we mustn't give up hope,” he added, trying to sound optimistic. “They still haven't found his body yet; it could be that he's survived the crash.”

Twilight paused, mulling over what Spike had just said. He was definitely right about the crash being an “unfortunate occurrence” which “probably should never have happened in the first place”; millions of bits and seven long, gruelling years had been spent on the Constellation's development, and for such a bold national icon to crash was undoubtedly a huge blow to the kingdom of Equestria. But what really worried her was the possibility of a similar accident with another airliner of the exact same model. This airliner, after all, was a pioneer in its field, and for all she knew, there could be a fatal flaw in these behemoths that their tests had failed to identify – one that could threaten the lives of tens of thousands of passengers worldwide.

At last, the lavender-coated alicorn spoke up; “You're right, Spike,” she said bravely. “There is still a chance for Flash – and even if there isn't, I'm going to make sure his death wasn't in vain.”

“How are you gonna do that?”

“Simple,” answered Twilight decisively. “The Air Ministry will be launching an official investigation into this crash, and I'm going to be in on it.”

“What, in your state?!” Spike could only stare in disbelief. “But we only just received that letter a few minutes ago! Surely you might want...”

“Surely I might want nothing, Spike!” insisted Twilight firmly. “We've lost something like nine-hundred lives in that crash, and whether or not Flash has survived, there's no way I'm letting this happen again. Take a letter, Spike; Princess Celestia will want to hear of this.”

“Uh...well, if you're sure,” said Spike doubtfully, taking a quill and a sheet of parchment. Secretly, he wasn't sure Twilight should be putting herself through such stress so soon after hearing about Flash, but he kept it to himself as he began writing...

Chapter 6: The Investigation Begins

Dear Princess Celestia,

I have received your letter regarding the downing of Flight 759, and am most distressed to hear that my consort has been reported missing, presumed dead. In light of this, and the involvement of a de Hoofilland Constellation in the crash, I would like to request that I myself am allowed to oversee the official investigation. I realise you might wish for me to take sufficient time to recover from the ordeal, but I cannot rest knowing that a repeat of this disaster may yet claim further lives.

Hoping you understand.

Your faithful student,
Princess Twilight Sparkle

Princess Celestia looked up from Twilight's letter, unsure how to react. She had already known her former student would be none too happy to hear about the crash, but the last thing she had expected was for her to request that she herself take part in the investigation.

“What do you intend to do, Tia?” asked Luna.

Her older sister pondered. “Well...by rights, I shouldn't really be dragging Twilight into all this – not in her state. However, I do concede that this air crash constitutes a major national crisis and international catastrophe...”

“Because of Ambassador Yehuda?”

“Yes, because of Ambassador Yehuda,” affirmed Celestia, “but also due to the involvement of the Constellation. Under the circumstances, we will need all the help we can get in identifying the cause of the disaster, so if Twilight wishes to offer hers, she has my leave.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure about this? I would think it unwise to put any further pressure on Twilight than necessary.”

“Yes, Luna, I realise that,” answered Celestia gravely, “but this aircraft has spent nearly six-hundred million bits to develop, much of it from government grants. This isn't just an airliner we're looking at – it's a major status symbol for Equestria and its air industry, and unless we can work out the cause of the crash, tens of thousands of lives could be at risk. From here on in, we must leave no stone unturned, no faults undetected – the cost of solving the Constellation mystery must be reckoned neither in money nor in horsepower.”

“Well...if you insist,” conceded Luna uncertainly.

“One thing's for certain, though,” added Celestia. “On the basis that a highly important Saddle Arabian diplomat has been lost to the tragedy, the Arabian Safety Council will want to be in on the investigation as well, so before I reply to Twilight's letter, I must first inform the Sultan.” She then nodded to Raven Quill, who levitated over a quill and a sheet of parchment at the ready...

On the other side of the Titanic Ocean, the morning sun hung high over the arid landscape as Solaris, the wise immortal who ruled over Saddle Arabia, discussed plans for a new dam project and rail link in the north of the kingdom with his advisers. They were just in the middle of working out a suitable route for the new railway to follow when the doors swung open, and a sphinx messenger came into the throne room, bowing respectfully the moment he reached the sultan. “Pardon me for the interruption, Your Majesty,” he apologised, “but I have a message for you from Princess Celestia of Equestria. It's about our ambassador, Yehuda El Equuis.”

“About El Equuis, you say?” asked Solaris, looking up from the relief map he always used to plan new projects in his kingdom.

“My information is that the plane on which he and his attaché were travelling back to Saddle Arabia has crashed into the Titanic Ocean only a few miles away from the Bermuleda Islands with a total loss of life,” explained the sphinx. “They think nearly nine-hundred others must have gone down with him.”

Solaris paused, letting the information sink in. Yehuda El Equuis had been one of his finest diplomats, and at first he could only mourn for the late ambassador's passing – but the more he thought about it, the more he realised that this was no ordinary plane crash. Most airliners could only carry a few hundred passengers, yet his messenger had informed him that nearly nine-hundred had been killed in the disaster, even though the plane had come down well short of the nearest landfall.

“Did Celestia mention which model of airliner was involved?” he inquired at last.

“As a matter of fact, Sire, yes she did,” affirmed the messenger. “She said that the flight was Royal Equestrian Airways Flight 759 from Manehattan, and the plane was a de Hoofilland Constellation.”

“The Constellation, eh?” mused Solaris. “Well that would explain a lot. I presume then that she wishes for us to assist in identifying the cause of this disaster?”

“Yes, Sire. She says it's absolutely vital if they are to assure the future of the Constellation and safeguard the lives all who travel on it.”

“Very well then.” Solaris turned to his vizier; “Have the Safety Council dispatch a team of air crash investigators to Equestria at once.”

“As you wish, Your Majesty.”

In the back garden of a luxurious Abu Dhonki penthouse, Colonel Panthera, one of Saddle Arabia's finest aviation metallurgists, was dozing laxly underneath the warm sunshine. He barely seemed to hear the sound of the telephone ringing in his office; but the noise alerted the attention of his spider monkey aide-de-camp, who was slouching across a desk chair as he enjoyed a light snack of pistachios. Startled by the sudden interruption, he sat up with a loud screech, spilling his snack on the floor in the process as he made a grab for the receiver.

“Colonel Panthera's office, Major Spyder here...yes, General? ...Yes, sir.........what?! ...what?! ...wha-a-at?!?! ......I'll alert him immediately...yes, sir!” Spyder slammed the telephone back onto its holder and ran out into the garden. “Colonel? Colonel Panthera?”

His superior didn't reply.

“Colonel! Colonel, wake up!” shouted Spyder frantically. “We've got an emergency! The world needs our help! We need you to be awake!”
But this had precious little effect on Panthera. Anxious to alert his attention, Spyder tried everything he could to awaken him – he shook him, prodded him, tugged his ear, tickled his nose – he even tried banging loudly on a drum; but ultimately, nothing worked.

In desperation, Spyder reached into a nearby bush and pulled out a small water pistol. “WAKE UP, COLONEL!!!” he screeched, squirting water into the slumbering sphinx's face.

Coughing and spluttering, Panthera woke with a start; but his alarm turned to annoyance when he saw his would-be attacker. “Ugh...Major Spyder, how many times do I have to remind you not to wake me up with a water pistol?!” he demanded indignantly.

“Well, what else was I supposed to do, Colonel?” protested Spyder hysterically. “I receive a telephone call about an air crash, and here you are sleeping your head off and not bothering to answer me when Sultan Solaris wants you to take part in the official investigation!”

“An air crash? Where?” asked Panthera, forgetting to be cross.

“Near Bermuleda, sir – but that's not the half of it! Ambassador Yehuda's been killed in the same crash, and nearly a thousand others with him! We've gotta find what caused it, or we're all DOOMED!” Spyder screamed out loud. “DO YOU HEAR WHAT I SAID, COLONEL – DOOMED! DOOMED, I TELL YOU! DOOMED!!”

“Okay! Okay! Control yourself, Spyder!!” shouted Panthera. Spyder ruefully subsided. “Now, what does the General want me to do?”

“He said to fly out to Equestria immediately, and that he'd send a team of investigators with us. We're to meet up with a team from the Royal Transport Safety Executive in Manehattan.”

Panthera nodded, secretly grateful that he could keep up with a fast talker like Spyder so easily. “Very well,” he replied grimly. “Tell him we'll be at Abu Dhonki Airport as soon as we can.”

“Yes, sir! Right-ho, sir! Right away, sir!” answered Spyder, giving Panthera a quick salute and turning to head back to the office.

“And one more thing, Spyder...”

“Uh...yes, Colonel?”

“I'd leave that water pistol here in Abu Dhonki if I were you,” warned Panthera bluntly, “or else I may have to reconsider your rank.”

Spyder gulped. “I'm in for the high jump, aren't I? Oh, grief, I wish I'd paid more attention to sports lessons when I was still in school! How is it going to look if I get the sack?!” he rambled nervously. “How do I know it's got enough pistachios in it to keep me going...”

“Spyder!”

“AAGH...er, I mean...yes, sir!” and Spyder scurried off back to the office. With a loud yawn, Panthera stood up from the sun lounger and followed him inside.

Having gained Celestia's permission to oversee the investigation, Twilight and Spike chartered a special train to take them up to Starswirl Airport. They arrived in Manehattan by first light the following morning, followed two hours later by the investigation teams from both sides of the Titanic Ocean.

The Royal Transport Safety Executive team's lead investigator, a structural engineer unicorn named Dr Tailspin Rotor, was understandably surprised when he found that Twilight would be personally supervising the inquiry, especially after hearing of her loss. “You needn't have troubled yourself with all this, Your Highness,” he said.

“I have to,” answered Twilight stoically. “Nearly nine-hundred lives have been lost as a result of this tragedy, including that of my consort, and if we don't work together to determine the cause, tens of thousands of other passengers and airline employees could suffer the same fate. As Princess Celestia's finest student, and a member of royalty in my own right, I consider it my duty to ensure that this never happens.”

Rotor pondered for a moment – and then nodded. “You make a valid point there,” he mused gravely. “Very well then, Princess Twilight Sparkle, we're at your disposal.”

“Thank you. Now, first things first; what measures have you taken to avoid the possibility of another crash in the short term?”

“Royal Equestrian Airways have already agreed to ground their Constellation fleet until further notice and are checking the remaining planes over for any potential faults as we speak,” stated Rotor. “Air Prance and Pegasus Travel Ltd will be flying theirs back to Starswirl over the course of the next three days.”

“So do we have any idea what might have caused this crash?” asked Spike hopefully.

“None whatsoever, I'm afraid, Spike,” admitted Rotor. “Anything's possible at this stage – faulty engines, short circuits, structural failure, pilot error...the field's wide open.”

“So what evidence do we have so far?” inquired Panthera. “I realise it's a bit early in our investigation, but I just want to be able to paint a picture of what might have happened.”

“Well, Colonel,” replied Rotor, “according to the news reports immediately after the crash, the aircraft appeared to be structurally and mechanically sound during boarding and take-off – yet eyewitnesses from the Bermuleda Islands claim that they saw burning wreckage falling from the sky to the west of the islands at between ten and five minutes to eleven.”

“Okay, so we at least have a rough idea of when it disappeared,” Panthera summarised.

“Airport Controller Speedbird has also informed me that, around the same time, Lemberg Radar Station and the captain of REA Flight 378 reported a loss of contact with the plane,” Rotor went on. “This evidence alone would appear to suggest an in-flight break-up.”

Spike raised an anxious eyebrow. “You don't think accidental fire breath from a dragon might have caused it?”

“I should think it highly unlikely, Spike,” said Rotor. “World Airline Regulations dictate that all passenger aircraft interiors be fireproofed before entering service. Even the carpets and seating fabric have to be doped with fire-retardant, so there's very little risk of a fire taking hold inside the cabin of...well, any airliner, let alone a Constellation. That alone points towards a rather worrying possibility – sabotage.”

“So...you're saying somepony could have planted a bomb aboard that aircraft or something?!” Spike's eyes widened in shock.

Spyder went into a frenzy at this notion. “Sound the alarm!” he hollered frantically. “Call the police! Alert the army! We need to track this guy down, corner him in a cave, tie him up, shoot him down, kill him with fire...”

“Spyder, we're doing nothing of the sort!” interrupted Panthera sharply. “We need to find out what exactly happened to that aircraft first, and then, only then, do we take action.”

“But Colonel, if we don't hunt that maniac down immediately, then it'll all result in death! DID YOU HEAR WHAT I SAID, COLONEL – DEATH! DEATH!!!” Spyder screeched hysterically, causing everyone else in the room to cover their ears and eliciting a frustrated growl from Spike.

Panthera directed a stern glare at the hyperactive primate. “Listen, Spyder,” he snapped, “we're taking every measure to ensure that the cause is identified and remedied – but if you keep overreacting every time one of us comes up with a theory, then how in Solaris' name can you expect us to do so?! Now do try to control yourself!”

With a meek nod, Spyder retreated to a corner of the room and stood facing the wall with his hands against his head, almost as if a firing squad was about to shoot him. Panthera rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to Twilight and Rotor; “You'll have to excuse him, I'm afraid, Your Highness,” he apologised. “He does tend to get a little overexcited does Major Spyder.”

“That's quite alright, Colonel,” replied Twilight, pretending not to mind. “But getting back to the sabotage theory,” she went on, “what I want to know is who could have had a motive to destroy such an iconic aircraft.”

“Well, I can hardly see it being a terrorist attack,” observed Spike. “The only ones I can think of offhand who might consider such a thing would be the changelings, and even they would have a hard time what with all the precautions we tend to take nowadays.”

“True,” agreed Twilight thoughtfully, “which means that either a rival aircraft manufacturer or airline was involved, or there was some sort of fault in the Constellation.”

“Either that,” put in Panthera, “or it might still have been aimed at passengers and/or crew rather than the aircraft itself.”

Rotor blinked. “How do you mean, Colonel?”

“In as much as Yehuda El Equuis had been dubbed one of the finest ambassadors ever to have served under Solaris, there may yet have been a jealous few who might have wanted to topple him from his position, even if it cost him his life,” explained Panthera gravely. “Since he assumed his role two months ago, there had been three attempts against him by an unknown assailant; and for all we know, this 'accident' could well have been yet another of these.”

“Except that this one would have been far more successful than the rest,” mused Spike, and the others murmured in agreement. “Still, it seems a bit extreme, killing nearly nine-hundred passengers and crew just to get rid of an ambassador. If they wanted him dead, why didn't they try killing him here in Starswirl Airport instead of making a massacre out of the whole thing?”

Panthera shrugged in reply. “Your guess is as good as mine, Spike,” he admitted with a wry half-smile. “It's only a theory, anyway – even I don't know if there's any truth behind it.”

“Well, we're not going to find the answer just sitting here,” said Twilight decisively. “Our only hope of doing so is if we can recover the remains of the plane – starting with the black boxes.”

“The what now?” asked Spike, visibly confused.

“The on-board flight data recorders,” Twilight clarified. “One records the diagnostics of the aircraft – thrust levels, control surface settings, cabin pressure, altitude, airspeed, etc. – and the other records all conversation and various other noises in the cockpit. If we recover those, we can get a better idea of what happened up to the moment of impact.”

“Easier said than done,” said Spike doubtfully. “That wreckage could have spread for miles after the Constellation broke up – it'd probably take years to find them.”

“Not likely,” Twilight assured her dragon assistant. “Black boxes are enchanted with powerful locator spells before being fitted; all it takes to find one is a unicorn, a salvage vessel and some divers.”

“Ah – well, that should make things a little simpler,” remarked Spike. “So what's our next move?”

“Well, firstly, I'll need to get in contact with the Navy and tell them I want a salvage team dispatched to Bermuleda,” stated Twilight. “But even with them seeking out the wreckage and the black boxes, we'll need a team of Pegasi to fly them back to Manehattan so that we can reconstruct the downed plane and find out where the break-up started.” The lavender-coated alicorn gazed thoughtfully out of the window; “And I think I know just the ponies...”

Chapter 7: In Search of the Black Boxes

“Attention, all personnel. This is Captain Spitfire requesting all Wonderbolts to assemble on the runway and await further orders.”

Soarin stood up, setting his newspaper down on the coffee table. “Dashie, Fire Streak, that's us,” he called.

“Yeah, we heard,” answered Rainbow Dash as she followed her husband and fellow Wonderbolt out of the lounge, with Fire Streak and the other Wonderbolts close behind. “Wonder what Spitfire wants this time?”

“Dunno,” murmured Fire Streak anxiously, “but judging by the tone of her voice, it must be pretty urgent.”

“Well, we'll soon know,” mused Soarin.

Swiftly, the Wonderbolts lined up on one side of the airstrip with Soarin, Fire Streak and Rainbow Dash in front and centre. As Spitfire came out onto the runway, Soarin barked out a word of command, and the other Wonderbolts all stood to attention.

“All present and correct, Captain,” he announced, saluting smartly.

“Thank you, Soarin.” Spitfire returned the salute and addressed the patiently waiting Wonderbolts; “Now, as you all know, yesterday saw the downing of Royal Equestrian Airways Flight 759 for Abu Dhonki. The Royal Transport Safety Executive has already begun to investigate into this, the deadliest plane crash in history, but I have also been informed by Princess Twilight Sparkle that the team requires assistance in recovering the remains of the aircraft; and that is why we, the Wonderbolts, have been instructed to bring back any items of wreckage recovered by the salvage teams. This mission is of the highest importance – the safety of airline passengers the world over depend on the outcome of the salvage operation, and that's why I'm giving it top priority. As soon as we've kitted ourselves up, we're to fly out to Bermuleda and rendezvous with the Equestrian Royal Navy anti-submarine destroyer HMS Farrier. From there, we will patrol the surrounding area for any signs of aircraft debris and fly the fragments back to Starswirl Airport as soon as they have been retrieved. Any questions?”

Misty raised her hoof. “Do we know what aircraft was involved in the crash?”

“Yes; according to the letter I received, the plane was a de Hoofilland Constellation. Registration: Equine Bridle Apple Zebra Trigger.”

“How many vessels will we have at our disposal?” chimed in Blaze.

“Farrier will be our operational base, and I am also informed that seven salvage vessels will be joining the search,” Spitfire clarified. “Are there any other questions?”

There was a brief pause before Rainbow Dash ultimately spoke up; “I don't think so, Captain. Fire Streak? Soarin?”

“Nope – you've given it to us straight, Spitfire,” added Fire Streak, and Soarin nodded in agreement.

“Good,” said Spitfire. “Now I needn't remind you that the lives of tens of thousands of airline passengers, and of one of our nation's greatest engineering wonders, depends upon the outcome of this investigation. Alright, Wonderbolts – I'm calling an immediate scramble for Bermuleda!”

“Yes, ma'am!” replied the Wonderbolts in unison, and galloped back into the barracks to prepare for their long flight east.

Within only a few minutes of their briefing, all were lined up behind the runway threshold clad in flying suits and equipped with radio headsets. Their captain having ascertained that they had a clear airspace, the twenty-two Pegasi stampeded down the airstrip and took off towards the Titanic Ocean, and the wrecked remains of the Constellation.

The Wonderbolts made good time, and reached the crash site just a few hours into the afternoon. HMS Farrier and the salvage vessels had already arrived and were sweeping the area for any sign of the Constellation wreckage, using the larger vessel's powerful sonar to scan the ocean bed. Spitfire brought the team into land on the deck of the warship, where its commander stood waiting for them.

“Ah, Captain Spitfire,” he said, “excellent timing!”

“How's the search coming along, Commander Swordfish?” asked Spitfire.

“Not all that well at the moment,” admitted Swordfish, “but we've taken preliminary soundings of the search area, and we can determine that the wreckage is spread out over an area of around...170 square miles.”

“What about the black boxes?”

“We have a unicorn scanning the area for any locator spell signals, but he still hasn't picked anything up yet.”

“Right, well seeing as we're all present and correct,” instructed Spitfire, “we might as well get searching. I'll supervise from Farrier's bridge; the rest of you can accompany the salvage vessels.”

And so it was arranged. With Spitfire keeping a close eye on the operation from the destroyer, Soarin, Fire Streak and Rainbow Dash banded together on one of the salvage vessels, and the remainder of the Wonderbolts distributed themselves among the other six in groups of three. Whenever the vessels located or retrieved an item of wreckage, they would report their findings to Spitfire before flying them back to Starswirl Airport, from where they would be taken by rail to Foalborough, the very same aerodrome that had seen the maiden flight of the Constellation prototype.

But finding aircraft wreckage at sea is never an easy task, even with sonar, diving bells and underwater cameras. The search went on for several days, but still they couldn't seem to find the all-important black boxes – nor could they identify the prime piece of evidence behind the Constellation's destruction.

Back in Equestria, Twilight and the investigation team seemed to be having far more success in gathering evidence than the salvage vessels. Judging by the radar scans from the day of the disaster, they were able to work out that the plane had indeed broken up in mid-air, leading to a sudden loss of pressure in the cabin. This much was also evident in the autopsy report they received shortly after the crash, which specified severe skull and lung damage as the cause of death in most of the bodies, while the remaining few appeared to have drowned after impact. But even with this information, the big question still remained – what was it that had caused the Constellation to suddenly disintegrate for no apparent reason?

Without much more to go on, speculation was rife among the world media. Many supported Twilight, Rotor and Panthera in their belief that the plane must have been sabotaged; but some, still wary of the world's biggest passenger airliner, insisted that either a design flaw must have brought the Constellation down, or the plane itself was simply too large to hold itself together. Sir Geoffrey de Hoofilland himself denied these claims, emphasising on the rigorous testing, experimental and design work that had gone into what he still held to be his greatest creation of all time.

It wasn't until a month later that two things happened to bring them closer to finding the cause. On the HMS Farrier, Commander Swordfish finally received the message they had all been waiting for.

“You say you've found both black boxes?”

“Yes, sir!” replied the unicorn who had been homing in on the locator spell signals. “They were only a few hundred yards away off of our port bow.”

Swordfish turned to Spitfire with a look of satisfaction. “Well, Captain, seems our search might have paid off already.”

“Well, we'll soon know,” replied Spitfire, turning on her headset. “HMS Farrier to Salvage Vessel One. We've found the black boxes, Soarin.”

“Brilliant!” exclaimed Soarin's delighted voice over the radio. “We'll be over as soon as we can. I'll just go and alert the coxswain.”

“Roger, Soarin. I'll see you when you get here. Out.”

Minutes later, the salvage vessel arrived on the scene. A team of divers descended to the ocean floor, and after only a quarter of an hour of careful searching, they found the two vital recording devices amid a small pile of debris. Having removed most of the wreckage, they carefully picked up the black boxes and headed back to their vessel.

Once the divers reached the surface, Soarin and Rainbow Dash flew over to help them back on board.

“You got the boxes?” asked Rainbow Dash hopefully.

“Yep – safe and sound,” replied one of the divers, holding up the cockpit voice recorder. “They're pretty battered, though.”

Soarin frowned when he saw the state of the boxes. “Yeah, so I can see,” he mused. “I just hope the tapes are okay. Anyway, let's get them back to Manehattan; no doubt Twilight's gonna be relieved when she finds out.”

Twilight was indeed relieved when she heard about the black boxes, but understandably less so when she realised they had been damaged.

“Those tapes had better have survived the crash,” she murmured anxiously as a technician took them away to the laboratory, “otherwise we might never find out what caused it.”

“There's a good chance,” Rotor assured her. “Those black boxes are built to withstand a heck of a lot of force before they become useless. The lab ponies should have the tapes sorted out within a few weeks.”

The lavender-coated alicorn smiled faintly. “Well, that's something.”

“What about the wreckage?” asked Spike. “Do we have any clues as to where a bomb might have been planted?”

“Well that's just it, Spike,” said Panthera gravely. “I've been taking a look at the aircraft fragments, and I can't seem to find anything that might suggest bomb damage as the cause of the break-up. The only conclusion I can make is that the initial failure seems to have led to multiple overload fractures.”

“As in...more stress than the plane can handle?”

“Exactly,” Panthera affirmed. “We still don't know what might have caused it, but it seems as if the skin of the aircraft has been punctured by a bullet or an energy beam...or something.”

Twilight raised a thoughtful hoof to her chin. “Sounds plausible, I guess,” she agreed. “It could be that one or more of the passengers – or even crew members – could have sacrificed themselves in order to destroy the Constellation. Either that, or relating to your murder theory, they could have misfired when they tried to attack Yehuda and ended up rupturing the fuselage. That said,” she pointed out, “I would have thought an energy beam would have been more likely to cause an explosive decompression than a bullet.”

“Which means,” surmised Rotor, “that the attacker must have been a unicorn. The big question is – who would have had a motive?”

“Probably ought to check the passenger list,” began Twilight. “If we can go through their records, then...” but an excited screech quickly caught her attention as Spyder came bounding into the hangar, clutching a sheet of parchment in his hand. “What is it, Major?”

“Big news right from the Bermuleda Islands!!” crowed Spyder, slamming the parchment onto a workbench and prodding it repeatedly, with a look of crazed joy in his expression. “Take a look at this, Princess Twilight – this is gonna be the best thing since banana fritters!!!”

“Uh...I don't follow.”

“It's about your consort!” Spyder took a deep breath and screamed ecstatically at the top of his voice, “IT'S ALI-I-IVE!!!!”

Twilight gazed at the parchment, wondering what in the hay Spyder was talking about – but when she read the message it contained, she had to hold a hoof over her mouth in order to stifle a gasp. Her eyes began flooding with tears as she scanned through the text once again;

Dear Dr Tailspin Rotor & team,

Having interviewed eyewitnesses on the Bermuleda Islands, we have discovered that the tragic crash of Constellation Flight 759, contrary to our findings on the day of the disaster, has in fact yielded a solitary survivor. One of the local fisherponies, Cod Catcher, aged 17, reports that as the plane went down, he noticed “an orange Pegasus (stallion) with blue mane and tail and a shield and lightning bolt for a Cutie Mark plummeting towards the sea.” He further states that said stallion was still fighting for life, but held out long enough to be flown to the nearest hospital.

We sent a representative to Queen Faust Hospital, Bimineigh Island, and his information is that the stallion, though still in a coma, is in a stable condition, and should hopefully make a full recovery. While at the hospital, he also interviewed unicorn surgeon Dr Scalpel, who had performed an emergency surgery on the stallion shortly after he had arrived, including extensive repairs to the lungs. He has also informed us that, after a thorough check of all medical records, the stallion brought to him by Cod Catcher has been positively identified as Lieutenant Flash Sentry. We have made arrangements for Scalpel to send a message as soon as Sentry is fully awake and ready to answer any queries we might have regarding the disaster.

Yours truly,
Aerosmith,
Senior Investigator, RTSE

There was a long silence as the lavender-coated alicorn gazed in disbelief at the letter, her mind flooded with emotions. For the longest time, she and many others had feared that nopony, absolutely nopony, would have had even the slightest chance of surviving such an horrific plane crash – yet there it was, in black and white and plain as the muzzle on her face; against all the odds, in a scenario where any injuries sustained might have proven the final nail in the coffin for anypony involved, her beloved Flash Sentry had only just managed to cheat death, and was slowly recovering from what in theory should have been fatal wounds. It was as if Fortune had chosen to spare him from death the moment she knew he was on that fateful flight.

It was Spike who broke the silence first. Having taken a look at the letter for himself, he breathed a deep sigh of relief. “Cor, thank Celestia he's okay,” he murmured.

Twilight didn't answer – overcome with euphoria, she instead turned and clung hard to her dragon assistant as she wept joyously into his shoulder. Spike smiled faintly and ran a claw though his surrogate older sister's mane, while Spyder began bounding around the hangar in a celebratory dance. Rotor and Panthera each gave a smile of their own, but otherwise remained respectfully silent.

Chapter 8: The Sentry Awakens

Many long and gruelling weeks went by following the discovery of Flash's survival and the retrieval of the black boxes. As time went on, more and more wreckage from Flight 759 was rescued from the seabed and brought back to Foalborough, where a wooden mock-up of the Constellation had been built on which to reassemble its remains. Every time a new fragment arrived, the investigation team would examine it carefully to try and work out where in the airframe it might have originated from, after which they would give it a number and wire it onto the wooden frame in the appropriate position.

Work on the black box tapes progressed swiftly, and after nearly a whole month, the investigation team managed to extract most of the readings from the flight data recorder and transfer the cockpit voice tape onto a playback device in their Foalborough laboratory. Finally, less than two months after the crash, they could get a look into what was going on in the cockpit and on the flight deck up to the moment of impact.

Twilight, Spike, Rotor, Panthera and Spyder all sat around the tape player, each wearing a set of earphones and listening intently for any sign of trouble. In spite of the damage dealt to its casing, the cockpit voice recorder tape had survived more or less intact, and only a few seconds had been lost; but the further they listened, the more their anticipation began to wane.

Rotor shrugged and pressed the Pause button. “Not much in it so far,” he said unhappily. “If anything, it all sounds fairly routine in there.”

“Yeah – and fairly casual too,” added Spike. “It's as if this crash was never gonna happen.”

Spyder shot an agitated look at the player. “It's a trick, that's what it is!” he chattered. “That thing's trying to pull the wool over our eyes, lull us into a false sense of security, catch us unawares, jump out and kill us when we least expect it...”

“Yes, yes, I get the idea!!” growled Spike, exasperated.

“There's gonna be a disaster in there somewhere!” went on Spyder, ignoring the purple dragon completely. “I just know there will! There's gonna be nearly a million ponies and other creatures killed, just like that last plane to crash..”

“No there won't, Spyder!” interrupted Panthera promptly. “That plane may boast a greater capacity than any other, but no aircraft in the world can take that many passengers. And need I remind you, the death toll on Flight 759 was only...how many did you say were on that aircraft, Rotor?”

“Uh...according to Starswirl Airport, twenty-five crew and eight-hundred and four passengers, making it a total of eight-hundred and twenty-nine.”

“...which means a death toll of eight-hundred and twenty-eight with only one survivor,” Panthera concluded.

“A million, eight-hundred and twenty-eight – what's the difference?!” protested Spyder. “It still means there are passengers and crew lying dead in cemeteries and hospital beds...”

Spike groaned and slapped a claw to his face. “How the hay do you keep that...that ape under control?!” he muttered crossly.

“Never mind him, Spike, let's just carry on with the CVR tape.” Twilight nodded to Rotor, who began playing the tape again.

But still they couldn't identify a single sound that might give the slightest hint of trouble – at least, not until around twenty minutes into the flight. Shortly before the moment where Captain Jetstream had lost contact with the Constellation, they heard Flash's name being mentioned, and around half a minute later came the last words of Captain Skywalker;

“Equine Zebra Trigger to Equine Apple Pommel.”

“Equine Zebra Trigger from Equine Apple Pommel, receiving you five-by-five, go ahead.”

“Equine Apple Pommel, we're just approaching the...”

Suddenly, the sound of an explosion cut the captain off completely, accompanied by muffled screams of pain – and finally, after a further few seconds, the recording fell silent.

Spike stared at Rotor in disbelief. “Is that it?”

“Seems like it,” answered Rotor, removing his earphones with a disappointed look on his face.

“Well that's annoying,” grunted Spike. “I would have thought that tape would have told us a little bit more about the crash than just the airframe exploding!”

Spyder raised both hands to his temples in frustration. “YOU STUPID LEMON!!” he screeched angrily. “WHY WON'T YOU DO AS WE ASK YOU TO?!?!”

“SPYDER!!” bellowed Panthera.

“WHAT?!”

“Shouting at the tape isn't going to bring us any closer to finding the cause of the disaster,” Panthera firmly reminded the agitated monkey. “Now unless you have anything sensible to suggest to us, I suggest that you remain silent.”

“Yes, Colonel,” Spyder mouthed, pulling his cap down over his eyes.

Rotor turned to the technician who had been working on the black box tapes; “What about the flight data recorder?”

“Yeah, we've managed to interpret the readings,” replied the technician. “They actually seem a bit more promising in a rather unusual manner.”

“How do you mean?”

“Take a look at this.” The technician unrolled a graph containing all the diagnostics leading up to the moment where the Constellation started to break up. As with the cockpit voice recordings, all seemed perfectly normal up to the moment where contact had been lost, at which point the readings seemed to cut out one by one until there was nothing left to record.

Rotor's eyes lit up. “Good grief, you're right!” he remarked, scanning through the readings with interest.

“Yeah, it at least gives us an idea of how the plane broke up,” added Twilight. She then pointed to a line marked “Cabin Pressure”; “That – that right there, the point where it suddenly drops – that must be the exact moment where the fuselage ruptured.”

“The very moment where contact was lost,” mused Panthera, taking note of the timing. “So whatever it was that caused the structural failure, Captain Skywalker and Co-pilot Storm Chaser obviously didn't have any time to react.”

“Yeah, but it doesn't stop there,” continued Rotor. “The moments where the control surface settings stop registering give us a pretty good lead to which parts came off at what point.”

“So by the looks of it, the order of break-up was...” Twilight paused, taking another look through the diagnostics. “So...part of the main cabin first...then the rudder and elevators...now the ailerons...wing slats...and then it just cuts out altogether. Yeah, I think that might be it – roof; tailplane; rear wing structure; wing-tips...and at around this point, either the nose of the aircraft or the engine powering the FDR must have come off.”

“And the cause?” asked Spike hopefully.

Twilight shook her head gravely. “Whatever it is, the data doesn't appear to have picked it up.”

“So we're back to Square One?”

“Well not quite, Spike. We know what parts of the aircraft broke off in what order, but not how. The only way we're going to find that out is to keep searching the crash site for evidence – see if we can find that 'golden nugget'.”

Spike raised an eyebrow. “What's gold got to do with an air crash?”

“It's a forensic term for the piece of an aircraft that shows how and where all the trouble started – the 'smoking gun' if you like,” explained Rotor. “And judging by the flight data readings, I'd say that 'golden nugget' is closer to the Constellation's last recorded position. We'd better let the HMS Farrier know about this.”

“You want me to alert the Navy, I take it?” offered Spike, picking up a nearby quill and producing a sheet of parchment.

“If you would, Spike,” conceded Twilight. “Now, this is what I want them to do...”

“Canterlot GHQ to HMS Farrier.”

Commander Swordfish raised an eyebrow. He wasn't expecting a message from General Headquarters so soon. “HMS Farrier receiving you strength five, GHQ; send your traffic.”

“Message from Foalborough Aerodrome,” announced the female voice at the other end of the radio link. “You're to amend your search zone to within approximately a thousand yards east of Flight 759's last known radar position; we believe the required evidence to be within that area.”

“HMS Farrier to GHQ, wilco.” Swordfish turned to Spitfire. “Well, Captain, looks like we've been seeking out the 'golden nugget' in all the wrong places,” he said with a wry smile.

“Well, at least we know where to concentrate our search now,” mused Spitfire. “I'd better alert the others, though, and let them know about the change.” With that, she turned on her headset and radioed the news to the salvage vessels. Their crews duly acknowledged, and the whole convoy made their way westwards towards the point where the Constellation was presumed to have disintegrated.

As the salvage team progressed further and further west, some of the vessels paused at intervals to pick up more wreckage in the hope of finding the offending fragment. None did, of course, and the further they went, the more spread out the debris became; but regardless of this, they continued to comb the ocean floor for anything that looked like it came from the Constellation, thoroughly examining each piece once on deck before flying it back to Manehattan.

A further three months passed, and all remaining traces of the plane's wreckage continued to peter out. At this rate, it seemed as though the Constellation crash would never be solved – but over in Bermuleda, that was all about to change...

A faint beeping noise echoed through the dark void as Flash Sentry slowly started to regain his senses. Where he was exactly and how he had ended up here, he didn't know; all he knew was that he seemed to be lying in some sort of bed somewhere. His wings felt numb, and his chest seemed to throb dully with every breath he took. Slowly, drowsily, he opened his eyes, trying to identify his surroundings; but the sudden influx of light promptly caused him to shut them again.

Cautiously, he tried again, though much more slowly so as to allow his eyes to adjust. Even then he failed to open them very wide, but at least he could make out the neutral blue walls, the teal curtains and chequered floor of the room he was in. A white object shaped like a desktop computer sat next to him, probably a life-support machine of some sort, but otherwise, the room seemed fairly empty. He looked around, confused – clearly he was in a hospital bed, but where? And what was he doing there in the first place? In that moment, it all came back to him – the sudden tearing sound of metal – the loud bang, almost as if every molecule of air around him had exploded – the sudden rush of wind – the sight of a plane falling to pieces before his very eyes...

The sound of a door opening distracted him from his thoughts, and he groggily looked to his left as a dull grey unicorn doctor with brown mane and tail came over to his bed. His Cutie Mark consisted of a knife-like object and a pair of scissors, and from the stubble on his muzzle, it didn't take a genius to work out that he rarely had any time to shave properly. As soon as he saw the condition of his patient, the grim look on his face gave way to one of relief. “Ah, good,” he said, “you're awake.”

Flash blinked groggily. “Where...where am I?” he croaked, his voice low and raspy.

“You're in the recovery ward at Queen Faust Hospital, Bimineigh Island, Bermuleda,” replied the stallion gently. “You've been in a coma for the last five months.”

“Five?” For a fleeting moment, Flash could only stare at the doctor in disbelief.

“Yeah,” said the doctor. “One of the local residents saw you falling from the sky and flew you back here. We'll give you the full story later when you're a little bit more awake. You just rest yourself now, sir – you're still not in a very good state at the moment. I'll be back after lunch.”

The orange-furred guardspony merely nodded in reply. He was still finding it difficult to come to terms with what was going on, but he knew the doctor was right – too much information too soon, and there was a potential risk of him relapsing. With a reassuring half-smile, the doctor quietly exited the room, leaving the weary and disoriented Flash Sentry to drift off back to sleep.

True to his word, the doctor returned a few hours later, and told Flash all about the fiasco with the Constellation, and how Cod Catcher had caught him in mid-air as he and his father and uncle were headed towards the crash site to pick up survivors. Flash was none too pleased when he discovered that he was the only one, but the doctor calmly explained to him that most of the passengers had already been killed by head and lung trauma before the plane hit the water.

“Your own lungs seemed pretty bad when Cod Catcher brought you in,” he went on. “You were lucky to have pulled through, Mr Sentry.”

“Yeah, but it hardly feels worth it if more than eight-hundred others have died,” murmured Flash bitterly. “If only I'd tried harder to reach that aircraft, I...”

“...you might have killed yourself,” interrupted the doctor sternly. “I realise you might feel guilty for not having saved anypony else in that fall, but the sad truth is that most of the victims were already beyond hope.”

Flash looked crestfallen.

“Even if you made it back into the aircraft – which, with both wings broken, you would never have done – you'd have trapped yourself in there until the moment of impact,” added the doctor, “at which point you'd have drowned if you hadn't already died of lung trauma. Either way, a certain princess would have been heartbroken if that had happened to you.”

“A...princess?!” Flash's eyes lit up. “As in Twilight Sparkle?”

“Yes, she's been trying to find out the cause of the crash ever since she heard about it. In fact, I've even made arrangements with one of the investigation team with whom she's working for her to come over here and see you.”

The orange-coated stallion placed a hoof over his chest. “So...she hasn't given up on me?” he asked softly.

“Not on your life, Mr Sentry,” replied the doctor. “I've already informed her by telephone, and she'll be coming out to see you tomorrow afternoon – that is, if you're okay with it.”

“Okay?” Flash chuckled lightly in spite of himself. “Are you kidding me, Doc? Any excuse to see my favourite princess again!”

“Even if it means answering a few...questions? Because they want to hear your account of what happened when the plane crashed.”
Flash took a moment to consider this before answering the question simply; “As long as there's a chance of helping them solve the mystery, I'd be more than willing to do so.”

“Very well then,” said the doctor, “but only as long as you take care not to overstress yourself.”

Chapter 9: Hospital Visit

Spike rested a gentle claw on Twilight's shoulder, noticing how tense and trepid the lavender-coated alicorn had become since arriving at the hospital. “You okay, Twi?” he asked softly.

“I'll be fine, Spike,” muttered Twilight, a twinge of anxiety apparent in her voice.

“You don't have to go in there unless you really feel ready for it,” soothed Spike. “I'm sure Flash will understand if you don't.”

Twilight sighed heavily. “No, Spike – I've been away from him for far too long, and it's driving me crazy,” she replied unhappily. “If I don't get to see him now, I...it'll be like the whole want-it/need-it spell fiasco all over again!”

Spike shuddered as he remembered how Twilight, in her desperation to learn a lesson in friendship that she could report to Celestia, had lost her mind and ended up brainwashing half the town into fighting over a tatty old doll she had lying around. “Yeah, Smartypants I can understand, but the Constellations? That's just asking for trouble!”

Panthera, who had been discussing further theories behind the crash with Rotor for the last five minutes, directed a sympathetic smile towards the nervous alicorn. “You really care for him, don't you, Princess?”

Twilight nodded in reply, still staring into space. “My fellow Bearers of Harmony might have taught me a lot about friendship, but Flash was so much more than that – and still is, in fact,” she murmured. “He means half the universe to me......I don't know what I'd do without him.”

“Must have been pretty difficult, not knowing whether you would ever see him again,” said Panthera gently. “If it makes you feel any better, Your Highness, I think you were very lucky not to have lost your loved one.”

“I'll second that,” put in Rotor. “Thousands are probably still grieving for the loss of the eight-hundred and twenty-eight other passengers and crew. Considering the traumatic injuries they suffered, it's a miracle Flash has lived to tell the tale.”

Only then did Twilight begin to feel better about herself and her consort. With a small tear in her eyes, she looked up and whispered to the heavens, “Dear Faust, I don't know what Flash or I have done to deserve his survival, but...thank you. Thank you so much.”

At last, the stillness in the lobby was broken as a nurse entered. “Princess Twilight Sparkle?”

Twilight stood up. “Yes, nurse?”

“Lieutenant Flash Sentry is ready to see you now.”

With a nod of silent gratitude, Twilight headed down the corridor towards her beloved guardspony, followed closely by Spike, Rotor and Panthera. But even as she approached the trauma recovery ward, she still couldn't shake a feeling of dread for what awaited her. What if she were to enter the room only to find a sheeted body where Flash should have been? What if his bed was empty? With a nervous gulp, she banished these chilling notions back to whatever dark and treacherous canyon of her mind they had come from and opened the door – and sure enough, she saw none other than her beloved Lieutenant Flash Sentry laid out on the bed immediately across the room. His wings were in casts and his chest wrapped up with bandages, but otherwise he didn't even have a single scar left over to remind him of his ordeal. The moment he saw Twilight enter, he gave a soft smile and gingerly held out a foreleg as if to invite her into his embrace.

This did it for the lavender-coated alicorn. Unable to restrain herself any longer, she all but bolted towards him and cried joyously into his shoulder, clinging onto him for dear life, but taking care not to hug him too tightly for fear of damaging his lungs a second time. Choking back a small sob of his own, Flash wrapped his arm around his princess and nuzzled lovingly against the side of her head. From the doorway, Spike looked on with a claw over his chest and a look of relieved happiness on his face; and even Rotor couldn't help but smile upon their long overdue reunion.

A whole minute went by before Twilight finally pulled back from her consort, her eyes still flooded with tears. “Oh, Flash,” she wept, “am I ever glad you're okay. I thought I'd never see you again.”

“You and me both,” murmured Flash solemnly. “That moment where the plane broke up...I genuinely thought that was my final hour.” He gave a small, kind smile as he reached up and brushed her tears away. “Take it easy, Twily – I may have been through the mill, but at least I made it out the other side okay, didn't I?”

Twilight smiled back as she nuzzled against the side of his neck. “You sure did, Flash – and I'm really glad of that. I don't know how I'd carry on without you.”

“Don't you worry about that, Twily. I may be a right cripple at the moment, but there's no way I'm leaving you until I'm called!”

This caused Twilight to stifle a chuckle in spite of herself. Even in such a weak state, Flash still managed to maintain a wry sense of humour.

At this point, Spike decided that now was the time for him and the two crash investigators to make themselves known. “How are you feeling, Flash?” he asked, leading Panthera and Rotor into the room.

“Oh, hi there, Spike,” said Flash, looking up at the purple dragon. “Yeah, still a bit sore from the plane crash, but I'm getting there.”

“Well that's a mercy,” mused Spike. “You sure had Twilight and me worried when we heard you were missing. We didn't think you'd stand a chance when the plane exploded.”

“Nor did I,” put in Flash. “I know us Pegasi can withstand rapid changes in pressure, but if that was anything to go by, I'd say I'm lucky they managed to mend my lungs so quickly.”

“A narrow escape indeed,” agreed Rotor gravely. His expression then became more serious; “Anyway, Mr Sentry, I don't mean to change the atmosphere so abruptly, but am I right in assuming that the staff here told you the reason for our visit?”

Flash nodded. “Yes, they said you wanted to know what happened to the Constellation when it fell out of the sky.”

“Correct. Now, I realise you might not be up to this, and frankly I wouldn't normally ask this of anypony before they've fully recovered,” Rotor continued, “but there's a lot at stake with this airliner, and any evidence you can give us will be invaluable.”

“I'll do my best, sir,” promised Flash.

“Thank you, Mr Sentry,” said Rotor levitating a quill and notepad from his pannier. “Now, you were travelling in the first-class passenger cabin at the time, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir. I was headed for Abu Dhonki for two weeks' furlough, and had been assigned as an aide-de-camp to Ambassador Yehuda El Equuis – purely on an unofficial basis, I might add.”

“So, in other words, you weren't actually required to act as such?”

“No; the job of personal aide actually fell to his attaché, Sandhi Dunah,” clarified Flash. “As soon as we were in the air, I just left them to their own devices while I sat and watched the scenery go by.”

Rotor nodded as he jotted down the information. “So what were your precise actions in the moments leading up to the pressure cabin failure?”

There was a momentary pause as Flash tried to recall the full details of his last moments aboard the Constellation. “Well...seeing as this was my first time travelling on such an aircraft, I decided to try and see how it all worked. I called for a flight attendant, asked her if I could get a look inside the cockpit, she then ran it past the crew, and they said yes.”

“What then?”

“I went up to the cockpit door, paused for a few seconds, and I was just about to open it up when I heard this really loud noise all around me, almost as if a bomb had exploded right next to my ears. At the same time, there was a sudden rush of air, and next thing I knew, I was falling.” Flash couldn't help but grimace at this point as he remembered plummeting out of the sky, forced to watch helplessly as the stricken Constellation tore itself apart. “I could see the plane breaking up a few hooves above me, and there was this horrible feeling of agony in my chest like somepony had run me through with a pike several times over.”

Spike frowned and covered his eyes. “Doesn't bear thinking about,” he muttered.

“Did you at any point see or hear anypony firing a hoof-gun or a magical energy beam before the plane exploded?” Rotor further inquired.

Flash raised an eyebrow. “You think somepony might have deliberately punctured the fuselage? Why the hay would they have wanted to do that?”

Panthera tactfully stepped in at this point. “We're working on the theory that either the aircraft might have been sabotaged, or there might have been an assassination attempt against Yehuda,” he explained. “If the latter case is true, it might be that they'd ended up firing at the walls rather than the ambassador himself.”

“Causing the plane to explode, huh?” Flash pondered the matter for a few moments. “Well, I don't recall hearing any shots, magical or otherwise. There wasn't so much as a struggle as far as I'm aware.”

It was Twilight who raised the last question; “Do you remember how exactly the plane broke up? It might help us find the piece of wreckage we need to identify the cause.”

Again, Flash took a moment to try and remember what happened. “Well, it's still a little fuzzy, but from what I can recall, there was this gaping hole in the roof of the plane, just above where I'd been standing previously. I think the tailplane was the next bit to come off – took most of the rear wing structure with it too. The wing-tips followed along with the leading edges, then the cockpit started to break free...and then I think I must have passed out,” he concluded. “I don't remember anything after that.”

“Hmm...” Rotor scanned his notes with interest. “...just as we deduced from the flight data readings. Right, thank you for your time, Mr Sentry,” he concluded, returning the book and quill to his pannier.

“That's okay, sir,” replied Flash. “Just glad I could be of help.”

“Well, just be glad you're still alive, Flash,” quipped Spike. “Dead ponies don't give useful info, you know!”

Twilight shot a stern glare at her dragon assistant; but Flash simply laughed it off. “I'll bear that in mind, Spike.”

“Anyway,” said Rotor, “we'd best head back to Foalborough and make our report. The sooner we find out what downed the Constellation, the better.” He then turned to leave, but paused just before he reached the door; “Do you still wish to partake in the investigation, Your Highness? We won't consider it dishonourable if you don't – I mean now that we know your consort...”

“It's okay, Doctor,” interrupted Twilight. “At least I know Flash will still be around when we're done – and besides, we still have a duty to protect our airline passengers.”

“Very well, Your Highness,” conceded Rotor. “Come and join us as soon as you're ready.”

“Will do.” Twilight watched as the two air crash investigators made their way back to the lobby before returning her attention to her consort. “Thanks for all that info, Flash. I'm sorry we had to ask so much of you so soon.”

“No need to apologise,” the orange-coated Pegasus chuckled. “You clearly had yourselves a really tough job, trying to work out what happened to that plane – heck, I'm surprised it had any kind of problem to begin with! But hey, as long as I'm helping you make headway, I'm fine.”

Twilight smiled and planted a soft kiss on his lips. “Always the chivalrous one,” she murmured fondly. “Take care of yourself, Flash. I hope you get well soon.”

“Thanks, Twily,” replied Flash heartily, as his princess stood up and made for the door. “I'll see you round, okay?”

“Okay. Love you.”

“Love you too. Oh, and Twily?”

Twilight stopped. “Yes, Flash?”

“Best of luck with the investigation,” said Flash.

This prompted another warm smile from the lavender-coated alicorn. “Thanks, Flash,” she said. “That means an awful lot to me.” With that, she and Spike headed out of the ward and back to the lobby to join Panthera and Rotor, leaving Flash to recuperate in peace. This had truly been a long overdue moment of relief for the young princess; not only was her faithful guardspony consort very much alive and well – or at least on the road to recovery – but they were now yet another stage further to solving the mystery behind the downing of his plane. With any luck, it would only be a matter of time before the Constellations were deemed safe to fly.

But what none of them could realise was that this was only the lull before the storm...

“...look, I know you're anxious to get those planes back into service, but we still haven't come to a firm conclusion regarding Flight 759......yes, I know all that, but you're just going to have to wait! We're working our tails off to try and solve this mystery; the least you can do is be patient! No......no, I can't allow it, not without royal consent...well you're just going to have to fly it with other planes!”

With a sigh of exasperation, Lord Cloud slammed the telephone back onto its holder and began pacing back and forth in an attempt to relieve the tension. These Constellation airliners had been causing him no end of trouble since the crash of Flight 759, what with the planes being grounded and all the endless interrogation by the world's media, and Royal Equestrian Airways' Head Office hadn't been making things any easier for him either; throughout the five long months they had kept them at Manehattan, they had constantly been pestering him for permission to press them back into service, only to be met with a frustrated refusal. At this rate, he would probably find himself with an alarming hospital bill with all the stress he was enduring.

“This is ridiculous!” he groaned. “How am I supposed to manage the airline industry properly if REA keeps ringing me up every five minutes?!”

Just then, his attention was distracted by the sound of the door being opened. The sky-blue Pegasus looked up to see Prince Blueblood entering the room with a stern look on his face.

“Ah...good afternoon, Sire,” said Lord Cloud, bowing politely. “What can I do for you?”

“Perhaps you could start by telling me why you're taking so long to deliver a verdict on the Constellation superliners,” demanded Blueblood. “We have a major status symbol at stake, and yet you still haven't allowed a single one of those planes back into the air. Now I want an explanation for all this, and I want it now!”

The weary Air Minister let out another sigh. “We're dealing with a major catastrophe here,” he replied. “We can't allow the planes to re-enter service until we have positive proof as to what downed Flight 759. That'd probably take a few months at least.”

“A few months?!” burst out Blueblood crossly. “You've had a team of the finest air crash detectives trying to work that all out for nearly half a year now, and they've discovered absolutely nothing!”

“Sire, it takes more than a few days to explain an air disaster,” insisted Lord Cloud. “They still need to find out whether the aircraft itself was at fault or not.”

“What, a Constellation? That's just preposterous!” scoffed Blueblood dismissively. “That plane was clearly sabotaged – everypony knows that!”

“Well, yes, Sire, but we do have to look at all the facts...”

“To Tartarus with all the facts,” interrupted Blueblood rudely, “we've wasted enough time with that investigation. As the Seventh Duke of Yoke, and a member of the Royal Family, I demand that the Constellation be reinstated immediately.”

Lord Cloud was horrified. “What?! While the Royal Transport Safety Executive is still investigating into the case?”

Blueblood glared at the sky-blue stallion. “You can tell the Royal Transport Safety Executive that they might as well forget about their faulty aircraft theory and give up the investigation altogether,” he told him firmly.

“But Sire...if Princess Celestia should object to...”

“Don't you start talking back at me, Cloud! You're to get those planes back into service, and that's an order!” and before Lord Cloud could protest any further, Blueblood turned on his fetlock and strode out of the office, slamming the door shut behind him.

Lord Cloud frowned, trying to weigh up the options. His gut reaction told him that Blueblood had made a serious error of judgement, and that if he were to allow the Constellations back into the air, the same tragedy that had befallen Flight 759 could very easily strike again – but on the other hoof, maybe the prince had a fairly valid point. After all, the general public as well as the airlines were eager to see these graceful giants make their long-awaited comeback...

At last, the sky-blue stallion made up his mind; if the Royals wanted the planes back in the air, then who was he to argue? With that, he sat down again and picked up the telephone. “Hullo, operator? Get me Royal Equestrian Airways Head Office, please...”

Chapter 10: Crisis with the Constellation!

News of the Constellation's relaunch quickly spread across Equestria, whole towns and cities were rejoicing as their greatest triumph of aviation engineering began rolling out of the hangar, ready to serve the world's airlines for what they thought to be many, many years to come. But while many celebrated their return, others were not so enthusiastic.

Early the following morning, the Cutie Mark Crusaders were just discussing their latest ideas when Locomotion came storming up to them with a look of horror on his face and a copy of the Ponyville Express in one hoof.

“What's wrong, Loco?” asked Apple Bloom.

“WHAT'S WRONG?!?!” burst out Locomotion, flinging the newspaper down in front of them. “This is what's wrong – they're returning the Constellations to service!”

The Crusaders exchanged glances, unsure how to react.

“Well...that's not so bad then, is it?”

Locomotion's face took on a half-crazed expression of disbelief. “Not so bad?! This is worse than bad!!” he hollered. “We're talking about the Constellations here, Sweetie-Belle, not some hot air balloon! They haven't even got close to finding how that plane crashed – killing my aunt, lest you forget – and they're already flying it again even though it may yet be defective! Of all the worst things that the Air Ministry could have done right now, this is THE – WORST – POSSIBLE – THING!!!”

“Well...maybe they aren't defective,” objected Scootaloo. “Maybe Twilight and the investigation teams have deemed them safe to fly again.”

“That's the point, Scootaloo!” snapped Locomotion. “Twilight wasn't the one who allowed them back into the air – it was that stuck-up old duke of whom Rarity sometimes speaks! He even ordered that the investigation be terminated!”

Sweetie-Belle gasped. She had heard all about Rarity's experience at the Grand Galloping Gala, and knew exactly whom Locomotion was talking about. “So...he didn't even...”

“Three guesses says no!” growled Locomotion darkly. “That windbag doesn't care about passengers' lives; he's just sending out those planes because it suits his ego! National pride, that's all that matters to him!” He took a few deep breaths before continuing with his rant; “His actions are only gonna lead to further disasters, I just know it! You mark my words, next crash they have, there'll be citizens involved!”

None of the Crusaders knew how to respond. They could only hope that another crash didn't happen...

It was late in the afternoon by the time Twilight arrived back at Foalborough with Spike, Rotor and Panthera. The lavender-coated alicorn was still in good spirits after seeing Flash alive; but that was promptly swept aside the moment they entered the hangar. The four of them had barely made it through the doorway when Spyder came running up to them, waving his arms like mad and yelling out loud;

“Colonel Panthera! Princess Twilight! Dr Rotor! Mr the Dragon! We've got trouble! TROUBLE!!!”

Twilight's cheery mood suddenly vanished altogether as she sensed the frantic urgency in Spyder's voice. “What is it, Major?” she asked anxiously.

“The Air Minister called while you were gone! He says we're taking too long to find the cause of the crash and that we're to pack up and go home while he returns the Constellations to service!! DO YOU REALISE WHAT THIS MEANS?!”

Spike growled furiously and covered up his ears at the sound of Spyder's frenetic screeching. “WHEN IS THAT LITTLE BABOON GONNA STOP YELLING AT US!!” he burst out.

“Spyder, for Solaris' sake...” began Panthera angrily.

“ENOUGH!!!” yelled Twilight. The hangar immediately fell silent. “Now, Spyder, could you please tell me clearly and slowly what Lord Cloud said?”

Spyder paused, taking several deep breaths to calm himself down. “He says he'll be letting the Constellations take flight again,” he explained. “But that's not all, Your Highness; he says we're taking too long to identify the cause of the crash, and that he's launching them back into service as soon as he can – in other words, right now!”

Twilight's eyes bulged with alarm. “WHAT?!? But we don't even know if the Constellation is safe to fly!” she hollered.

“That's what we tried to tell him,” agreed Spyder, “but he wouldn't listen to reason. He said that, by royal command, the Constellations were to be reinstated and the investigation terminated!”

The lavender-coated alicorn paused. Something about what Spyder had told her didn't seem right; for there was no way Celestia would be so blasé as to risk so many passengers' lives on a potentially dangerous airliner. Surely, then, this “royal command” must have come from some other member of the Equestrian royalty, or maybe Lord Cloud must have misinterpreted a completely different instruction. But whatever the reason, they now had a fresh crisis on their hooves that had to be resolved – even if it meant going against orders.

“Right, well...thank you, Spyder. Tell the investigation team I want results and I want them fast!”

“But, your Highness, the Air Minister...”

“I'm overruling the Air Minister, Spyder,” interrupted Twilight firmly. “I don't care who told him to cancel the inquiry for whatever reason – we've got to get to the bottom of all this before tragedy strikes again!”

“Oh...uh, yes, ma'am!” Spyder gave Twilight a smart salute and scurried away.

“Panthera, check all fragments of the plane for any details we might have missed!” ordered Twilight. “Go through the whole airframe with a fine-toothed comb! If you find anything – anything whatsoever that might hint towards the cause of the crash, let me know immediately!”

“Will do, Your Highness.”

“Rotor, send a message to Canterlot GHQ – tell them I want HMS Farrier and the salvage vessels to double their search efforts! The sooner we find the golden nugget, the better!”

“Will do!”

“Spike?”

“Yes, Twilight?”

“Take a letter...”

“What do you mean you're having trouble with the engines?!” McPommel angrily slammed his hoof down on the desk. “You said they were working perfectly!!”

“They are, sir,” replied Withers nervously. “It's just...well...”

“Out with it, Withers! I haven't got all day!”

Withers gulped and looked away. “It would appear the engines are too small and the fuel consumption rate too high to stay in the air for longer than three-thousand miles.”

McPommel seethed with frustration. “Then find some bigger engines!” he ordered.

“Well that's just it, sir,” explained Withers. “That aircraft is around twice as big as anything we've ever built before; it's going to require bigger engines than the ones we've got.”

“Then why are you still here?!” barked McPommel. “If we don't have big enough engines, your place is in the design office, not in mine!”

“Well...with all due respect, sir, we've been working on this project for twelve, thirteen years now, and it's pretty much been going nowhere. Don't you think it'd be best to go back to Square One and start again?”

This turned out to be a huge mistake. McPommel was so enraged by Withers' suggestion that his patience suddenly snapped. “GET OUT OF MY OFFICE!!” he screamed.

With a startled shriek, Withers darted out of the room. His livid boss turned and faced the window, breathing deeply and sipping his mug of coffee to try and calm himself down.

“That idiot Withers!” he growled. “I have a whole aircraft company on my hooves and he tells me I should give up my most important project to date?! Not on your life, you coward!”

He turned on the television and began flicking through the channels, hoping to find something that might improve his mood. He didn't get very far, however, before coming across what appeared to be a very interesting newsflash. Curious as to what it might be about, he stopped browsing and sat back to watch – but he wasn't prepared for what he saw and heard.

There, right before his eyes, was his arch adversary being drawn proudly out of its hangar, with an admiring crowd watching in excitement from either side of a taxiway. On a podium nearby stood Lord Cloud and the Chief Executive of Royal Equestrian Airways, and immediately next to them was a certain white unicorn with blond mane and tail. McPommel stared at the screen, wondering whether his imagination might be running away with him; but judging by the commentary, it plainly wasn't.

“I'm here at Starswirl Airport in East Manehattan, where the mighty Constellation, the world's biggest airliner, is being launched into service for the first time in five months,” announced the cheerful voice of the reporter to the many viewers across Equestria. “Air Minister Lord Cloud, this morning, announced that, on the orders of Prince Blueblood, Duke of Yoke, the ban on Captain de Hoofilland's greatest achievements in the world of aviation is to be lifted and the Constellations reinstated on flights across the Titanic and Pegacific Oceans. On this, its first flight since the tragic crash of Flight 759, Prince Blueblood himself was booked to travel on this flight between Manehattan and Queen Faust Airport in Canterlot.”

McPommel glowered upon the Constellation with disbelief. Here he thought these behemoths had flown their last – at least until his Phantom took to the sky – yet here they were carrying on in the face of the serious blow that had been dealt to their reputation. He could almost hear the plane taunting him as it made its way onto the apron! Listening still further, he sneered harshly as Blueblood gave the Constellation a hubristic vote of confidence;

“Flight 759 may have been an...unfortunate incident, I will admit, but after five months of investigation, we can conclude that the aircraft itself is perfectly fit for service. We may never know who or what caused the crash, but we and the Air Ministry are wholly satisfied that this airliner is more than ready to serve the airlines of the world.”

“Oh, you are, are you?” snarled McPommel. “Well, we'll soon see about that!” He switched off the television and turned to his telephone. “Just you wait, Blueblood – soon enough, you'll live to regret treating that plane with the respect that mine deserves...”

Princess Celestia stared at Twilight's letter. “Surely there must be some mistake,” she murmured. “I don't recall ever authorising the Constellations' return to service.”

“Nor do I,” replied Luna, obviously as confused as her sister. “If I remember correctly, Tia, you insisted that the Constellations remained grounded until a cause is identified.” She scanned through the letter again. “Perhaps we had better ask the Air Minister about this.”

“Yes, maybe we should,” agreed Celestia anxiously; but just as she was about to stand up, the throne room doors opened, and Raven Quill came trotting down the aisle towards the two alicorn sisters.

“Pardon me, Your Highnesses,” he spoke up gravely, bowing respectfully before them, “but I bring news of a rather...disturbing nature. We've just received word that Royal Equestrian Airways have just relaunched their Constellation fleet.”

The two alicorns stared in disbelief at their scribe, and then anxiously at each other.

“Whose orders?” asked Luna.

“We don't know, but Lord Cloud did say he acted by royal command,” said Raven Quill. “I'm assuming he didn't mean either of you?”

“You assume right, Raven Quill,” affirmed Celestia. “Neither Luna nor I gave him any authority to relaunch the Constellation fleet until the cause to Flight 759's crash had been identified.”

“I think I might know who it is.” Discord materialised in front of them, bearing an unusually serious expression as he held up a television for all to see. “I know, I know – you're expecting a red herring,” he stated, pulling a fish out of nowhere and flinging it behind his back, “but I think you'll find I'm not fooling around this time.”

“What do you mean you aren't?!” demanded Luna accusingly. “You who takes delight in spreading chaos?”

Discord looked hurt. “My dear Luna, I am surprised at you,” he faltered. “I may be all for chaos, but the last thing I want is for a living creature to be killed in the process. Matter of fact, I'm absolutely appalled that somepony should play me at my own game for that very purpose.”

“Like you wouldn't know! I bet you struck that aircraft down on purpose!”

Celestia directed a reproving glance upon her younger sister. “Now then, Luna,” she chided, “there's no cause to be so rude. Discord may have been a bane in the past, but he's quite right; nopony has ever been killed by him, directly or indirectly. Anyway, Discord,” she went on, “you say you might know who ordered the planes back into the air?”

“I did indeed, dear Celest,” affirmed Discord, resuming his serious expression. “It's right here...” and he turned on the television.

All three ponies watched, Luna cautiously scanning for any magic to suggest this might be a trick – but as the newsflash played out before their eyes, even she had to admit that the renegade draconequus truly meant what he had just said. There was the Constellation being prepared for service, the airport crowded with onlookers including a rather uncertain Lord Cloud, all greeting the gargantuan steel bird warmly. The two alicorns stared at the screen in dismay.

“Good thing I caught this on video,” mused Discord, pressing the rewind button, “because I think there's a certain detail in the commentary that you might have missed out.”

Celestia wasn't sure what Discord could mean by this – but when the draconequus played back the newsflash a second time, she quickly realised what he was getting at. Upon the mention of a certain nephew of hers, the penny dropped, and her eyes narrowed.

“Prince Blueblood!” she exclaimed. “I might have known it! I must write to the Air Minister at once and tell him to ground those planes again before another crash rears its head.”

Luna looked uncertain. “Are you sure this is the right thing to do? We could end up with a public outcry if the Constellations go back into mothballs.”

“Yes, Luna, but the consequences to our airline passengers could be even more disastrous unless we act immediately,” said Celestia firmly. “We must ensure that no further lives are lost, no matter what it takes.”

But it was already too late...

Over the next few days, the investigation into Flight 759's crash proceeded rapidly as the two teams tried to understand how the plane had managed to break apart without being bombed. Colonel Panthera was stretching himself to the limit in his attempts to find out where the break-up had started, while HMS Farrier and the salvage vessels continued to search the ocean floor west of Bermuleda for any and all remaining traces of the wrecked Constellation. With the remaining planes back in the air and no hope of a swift withdrawal, they all knew that until the cause of the crash came to light, the lives of tens of thousands of passengers worldwide lay squarely in their hooves.

A week later, the inevitable happened. Another Constellation was flying west on a charter flight from San Franciscolt to Tokyoke, which was being operated on the behalf of Royal Equestrian by All Neighpon Airways. Half an hour after taking off, the plane reached its cruising altitude, and the captain reported back to their starting point at San Franciscolt International Airport;

“San Franciscolt Tower, All Neighpon Three Zero Four is now on course for Haneighda Airport on Flight Level Three Seven Zero.”

“Roger, All Neighpon Three Zero Four,” replied the tower controller over the radio. “You're cleared all the way across the Pegacific Ocean. Have a good flight.”

“Thank you, San Franciscolt. This is All Neighpon Three Zero Four, listening out.” With a look of satisfaction on his face, the captain switched on his autopilot and sat back in his seat. “Well, friends, roll on Tokyoke, eh?”

The flight engineer nodded his agreement with a broad grin. “Yes, and on a Constellation too! This must be the first time an All Neighpon crew has ever flown one of these monsters.”

But the co-pilot didn't seem half as enthusiastic. “I just hope this thing doesn't blow up like the last one,” he muttered anxiously.

“You don't seriously think of these planes as being dangerous, do you?” asked the captain sceptically.

“No...” The co-pilot paused for a few seconds. “...but there has been an awful lot of opposition to this aircraft over the years, and on top of all that, one of them seems to have just fallen out of the sky for no apparent reason. I've just got a feeling that trouble could still strike at any minute.”

And as the roof suddenly tore away, causing the aircraft to break apart and fall into the sea, it became abhorrently clear that, in the last words he was ever heard to speak, the co-pilot was absolutely right...

“...THERE'S BEEN ANOTHER CRASH! THERE'S BEEN ANOTHER CRASH! DON'T PANIC! DON'T PANIC! DON'T PANIC!!”

Panthera looked up from his microscope as Major Spyder ran around the hangar, waving his arms and screeching his head off. Normally he would have given the hyperactive monkey a good scolding, but any such intention was interrupted by the sound of alarm bells ringing in his head. “Another Constellation down?” he asked tersely.

“YE-E-E-ES!!” hollered Spyder. “One of them has just crashed into the Pegacific Ocean between San Franciscolt and Haywaii – Flight 304 for Tokyoke! We mustn't panic! WE MUSTN'T PANIC!!”

“How many casualties are there?” asked Rotor.

“All Neighpon Airways are saying there were six-hundred and ninety-two on that plane!” replied Spyder. “They've picked up more than four-hundred bodies, but they're all dead! DEAD!!”

Twilight let out a growl of frustration. “This had to happen now, didn't it?! And just when we were making headway with the inquiry too!”

Spike clenched his fists in anger; but for once, Spyder was the last thing on his mind. “Yeah, and before we even knew whether or not the plane was safe to fly!” he snarled. “Curse that Blueblood! Imagine booking all those passengers on a flight to Tokyoke and then flying them to their deaths – all because he won't give a toss about anything or anypony other than himself and his pride!”

“He'll probably have more than his pride at stake when Princess Celestia's through with him,” grunted Rotor, annoyed.

“True,” observed Panthera, trying to remain philosophical about the whole affair, “but at least now we know that, if indeed it was sabotage, then the plane itself must have been the target rather than an individual passenger.” A deep sigh followed as the sphinx stared ruefully at his front paws. “But I was so sure it must have been a murder.”

Rotor smiled faintly. “You were quite right to bring it up in the first place, Colonel,” he soothed. “Yehuda, as you say, was a much envied diplomatic figure – for all we knew at the time, there could have been some truth to your statement.”

Panthera remained silent for a few moments, but eventually replied with a weak nod, saying, “I suppose you're right, Rotor. But I've still got a hunch about these two crashes.”

“You and the rest of us, Colonel Panthera,” put in Twilight grimly. “Structural failure I can understand, but this early in a plane's life? And with no charring or deformation on the wreckage to suggest a bomb blast? It just...doesn't add up.”

“Captain de Hoofilland himself doesn't think it possible either,” agreed Rotor. “He's already performed exhaustive pressure testing on that plane's hull, and according to their results, it should have been good for around 28,000 pressurisation cycles.”

Panthera frowned. “Yet Constellation Zebra Trigger broke up after just nineteen despite having been given a clean bill of health at Starswirl Airport – and all this, seemingly, without the aid of a bomb,” he remarked suspiciously. “There's something very fishy going on here.”

Chapter 11: The Sound of Sabotage

Locomotion paced back and forth within the lobby at Sugarcube Corner, fuming with rage. “I knew it! I just knew it!!” he growled furiously. “That idiot Prince Blueblood was issuing death sentences by letting the Constellations back into the air!”

“You said it, Loco!” agreed Lickety-Split feelingly. “It was bad enough with just one crash, but to allow another to happen? That's just...I'm surprised it was just the one plane!”

Sweetie-Belle frowned. “How can he be so heartless?” she protested. “I can understand what Rarity said about him being all rude and selfish, but that's just...cruel!”

“It's nothing less than homicide!” snorted Locomotion. “Nearly seven-hundred passengers and crew, including Buck Rogers...”

“What?!” burst out Lickety-Split, visibly shocked. “As in...that cowpony actor from Applewood?”

“Same one – and he's not the only one either,” Locomotion ranted on. “Hoofball player Bo Rein, fashion designer Suri Polomare, alchemist Thermit Weld, they were all on the same flight – and joy of joys(!), there wasn't a single survivor after it crashed!”

“Hardly surprising,” mused Ruby Pinch, who was sitting nearby. “They were saying that the only reason Flash managed to survive for so long was because there was another pony close enough to catch him before he hit the water. That other plane was probably miles away from land when it crashed.”

“Yeah, no doubt Rarity's gonna be a bit...surprised, to say the least,” added Sweetie-Belle, “especially when she hears that Suri was on the plane.”

“Surprised indeed!” scoffed Locomotion. “I'd say she'd be glad to be rid of that mare, after how she messed her around in that fashion show in Manehattan once!”

“True,” said Sweetie-Belle solemnly, “but whatever Suri may have been in more recent times, she was still an old friend to Rarity.”

Locomotion rolled his eyes and scowled. Somehow, he found that very hard to believe. “Yeah, whatever,” he muttered. “Still, at least we can rest assured that Blueblood's gonna be in serious trouble with Celestia when she finds out about all this!”

And indeed he was. Princess Celestia spoke severely to Blueblood about the disaster, reminding him in no uncertain terms that he had no business ordering the potentially unsafe Constellations back into the air without her say-so – and as punishment, she had him locked away in the dungeons while he considered the consequences of his actions. In addition, when he was released a week later, he was made to apologise in public for all the lives lost through his fatal error of judgement.

But it was the Constellations themselves that suffered the most from the crash of All Neighpon Flight 304. In order to prevent any further accidents, Celestia not only grounded the planes a second time, but also ordered their airworthiness certificate to be revoked and all manufacturing of further such planes to be halted. Now, after only half a year in service and a further five months of investigation, and in spite of the seven long years and millions of bits spent on their development, the future of these engineering triumphs looked bleak.

For Professor McPommel, however, this news came as a much-needed bounty after all the trouble he had been experiencing with his Phantom airliner. It was with a triumphant smirk that he listened to Prince Blueblood's public apology and the news that the Constellations, those most formidable of all his opponents, and the bane of his existence, were no longer deemed fit to fly.

“So much for your 'miracle of modern engineering', de Hoofilland,” he taunted. “The lead in the superliner race is as good as mine!”

Withers, who had been looking on with an expression of deep guilt, directed a look of doubt towards his superior. “Are you absolutely certain about this, sir?” he asked uneasily. “The investigators haven't said anything about it being a possible design fault yet; it could be that they still suspect sabotage.”

“As if! The way those planes have been affected, they'll never find any evidence to suggest sabotage,” snorted McPommel dismissively. “Face it, Withers, the Constellation is as good as dead.”

“Well...yes, sir, but in fairness, you did speak pretty harshly of the Constellation right in front of an entire press conference,” pointed out Withers, trying in vain to reason with the iron-hoofed entrepreneur for the umpteenth time. “We'd probably be better off giving de Hoofilland a break...”

But this only served to incur his boss' wrath. He promptly turned and directed a threatening leer at the spineless worm he called his chief designer. “At what point, Withers, did I say you were allowed to talk such trash in front of your superior?!”

Withers backed away nervously. “I-I-I'm just stating a fact, sir,” he stammered. “Everypony knows of your desire to gain the upper hoof on de Hoofilland.”

“Is that so?”

“Uh...y-y-y-yes, sir,” affirmed Withers uneasily.

McPommel reverted his gaze to the television, a look of mock remorse on his face as he silently cursed Withers' pitiful attitude. “Yes......I suppose you're right,” he answered at last. “Now tell me this – how do you reckon 'everypony' would react if he came into the office and suddenly discovered that he had been...oh, I don't know...” He paused for a moment before swinging round sharply, slamming both front hooves on his desk and practically roaring out the last word; “...UNEMPLOYED!!!!”

“Uh...yes, sir...I'll bear that in mind, sir.” Without another word, Withers hurried away back to the drawing office.

With the Constellations' reputation in tatters, the investigation teams found themselves working twice as hard to find out who or what could have caused the two planes to crash. Incredibly, in spite of the deeper waters of the Pegacific Ocean, the black boxes only took three days to find, and the flight data readings showed that the plane must have broken up in a similar manner to Flight 759. But it still didn't bring them any closer to working out the cause of the crash, and to make matters worse, the depth of the ocean made the rest of Flight 304's wreckage extremely difficult to retrieve.

Two months later, much to Twilight's relief, Flash's lungs had fully recovered and he was up and about once again. Having been discharged from the hospital, his first thought was to head over to Foalborough and see how the investigation was going – but it was while he was making his way back to mainland Equestria that, after seven long months, the investigation team finally made their much-needed breakthrough...

“Dr Rotor?”

Rotor turned to face the hangar door. “Yes, Aerosmith?”

“Lieutenant Echo Fleetfoot has just arrived with Item 926, sir,” said Aerosmith. “It looks like it might be off the roof of Flight 759, and we think it might be the fragment we're looking for.”

“Ah, good. Right, bring it into the hangar and let's have a look at it.”

Spike's eyes lit up. “So we're finally gonna find out what destroyed the plane, huh?” he asked hopefully.

“Looks like it, Spike,” mused Twilight, watching closely as the offending fragment was brought into the hangar.

At the same time, Colonel Panthera and Major Spyder, who had been speaking with the team investigating into Flight 304's crash, came into the hangar through the other door. “Hullo,” remarked Panthera, catching sight of the fragment they had just received. “Did I miss anything, Rotor?”

“No, actually,” replied Rotor, “you were just in time, Colonel. We think we might have found the 'golden nugget'.”

“Oh right? Might I take a look at it?”

“By all means.”

As the technicians lay the fragment down on the workbench, Panthera examined the item carefully while Spyder eagerly muttered under his breath. Sure enough, the fragment seemed to have suffered from some sort of cracking, and there were several dull grey streaks in the metal. The sphinx metallurgist arched a suspicious eyebrow as he traced the course of each streak. “Yep – this is the smoking gun alright, but there's something strange about this fragment that I can't quite place my paw on.”

“What sort of something?” inquired Spike.

“Well, the fracture line and all the streaks on the surface seem to indicate metal fatigue,” explained Panthera, noticeably confused, “but this sort of failure shouldn't be happening so soon in...well, any plane's life. Added to that, there's nothing to suggest that it might have been caused by a dent or a mechanical overload.”

Spike directed a quizzical glance towards Twilight. “What's metal fatigue?”

Twilight glanced grimly at the fragment. “It's when repeated movements cause tiny cracks to form in a weak point of a metal component,” she clarified. “The more it moves, the bigger the cracks until eventually it just breaks apart. As Panthera just said, it usually takes months or even years for metal fatigue cracks to develop – which, in the case of Item 926, can only mean one thing...”

“And that is...?”

“...that Constellation Zebra Trigger had been tampered with before it even left the hangar.” Twilight looked across to Rotor; “Have the lab ponies prepare me a few samples of the Constellation's hull, but make them about a third of the original thickness. I want to see if my theory stands up.”

“Oh right? What do you think might have happened?”

“I'll explain later,” replied Twilight. “Oh, and while you're up, get in touch with the de Hoofilland Aircraft Company. I have a feeling Sir Geoffrey himself will want to see this.”

Rotor nodded obediently. He was still mystified as to what Twilight meant, but quietly assured himself that all would soon be revealed as he went to telephone.

Twilight, Spike and Panthera spent the best part of the rest of the day conducting experiments on the metal samples, trying to work out how part of the roof could have been subjected to such alarming metal fatigue growth in what could only have been a few days. They completed the tests with moments to spare before Captain Sir Geoffrey de Hoofilland, now in a foul mood thanks to the tarnished image of his graceful new flying machines, arrived at the aerodrome late that afternoon. Rotor, Panthera and Twilight greeted him warmly, but it did little to quell his frustration.

“Now then, Your Highness,” he said to Twilight, “I believe you've found the root cause of the crash?”

“We have indeed, Mr de Hoofilland,” affirmed Twilight, “but it's a bit...complicated, to say the least.”

“Complicated?” Sir Geoffrey looked perplexed. “How so?”

“Well, it was sabotage alright; but whoever was behind all this seems to have taken a somewhat unorthodox but very effective approach.” Twilight pointed towards the broken panel as Colonel Panthera explained what had happened;

“We've just been examining a section of the roof from Flight 759's forward fuselage which had only just turned up this morning. From what we've observed, there seems to be a dangerous amount of metal fatigue throughout the panel, and the line of fracture shows signs of just such a failure.”

Sir Geoffrey looked put out. “Metal fatigue?! That's absolutely preposterous!” he claimed. “We at the de Hoofilland Aircraft Company have not only used the very finest aluminium alloy to build the Constellations – we've also taken every step to eliminate all stress concentration in the airframe! Always had done ever since the crash of Royal Equestrian Airways Flight 781 back in 1954, dash it all!”

“We know that, Mr de Hoofilland,” interrupted Twilight calmly. “We never once suggested that it could have been faulty materials or stress concentration.”

“What do you suggest then?”

“Well, part of my studies under Princess Celestia involved the application of magic to metallurgy,” explained Twilight sagely, “and from those, I have managed to work out that a simple ultrasound spell, similar to the one that aircraft engineers use to detect fatigue cracks, can also have the potential to cause them.” She then turned and nodded to Spike, who produced two three-hoof wide metal sheets. “Now, as you see, Spike here is holding up two samples of the aluminium alloy used in the Constellation's construction – basically identical, no defects whatsoever. We also have a magnifying glass with which to examine each sample. Now first off, Spike is going to subject one of these samples to repeated bending forces for thirty seconds. Take it away, Spike.”

With little more reply than a succinct nod, Spike rested one of the samples on the workbench and began bending the other one back and forth again and again. Sir Geoffrey looked on reticently, while Twilight counted the seconds as they passed; but predictably, the metal sample still remained intact after the thirty seconds were up.

Twilight levitated the magnifying glass over the sample, showing a series of dark lines where fatigue cracks had begun to extend outwards from the edges of the metal. “So,” she surmised, “we've managed to induce a few cracks in the metal, but none large enough to have any real effect.”

“Yes, I can see that,” retorted Sir Geoffrey in a bored voice. “Where are you going with this anyway?”

Twilight nodded a second time to Spike, who held up the second sample. “This,” she replied simply, “is where I'm going. We're going to subject this next sample to the exact same bending forces, but before we do that, I'm going to use the aforementioned ultrasound spell for around five minutes.”

Spike held the sample in plain sight while Twilight cast her spell, closing her eyes in concentration. There was a dull humming sound as her aura surrounded the metal, but Sir Geoffrey barely noticed any movement at all – in fact, by the time Twilight had finished, he was beginning to wonder if there was any point to this demonstration. But when the lavender-coated alicorn hovered the magnifying glass over the sample, he was almost rendered speechless by what he saw.

“What in thunder?! But you never applied any force to that!”

On the surface of the metal was a whole network of dark lines, far more extensive than on the previous sample. Many extended right across from one side to the other, while others branched out and even interconnected at various points. But if these dark lines had taken him by surprise, the next part of the demonstration came as a bombshell; once again, Spike began bending it back and forth, this time with much more ease. No sooner had Twilight passed the three-second mark than the metal started to come apart with a groan – and finally, just four and a half seconds in, the metal sample snapped in half like a cookie.

Sir Geoffrey stared in shock at the broken metal sheet, unable to believe what he had just seen. “Great Scot!!” he blurted out. “How the dickens did you do that, your Highness?!”

“It was pretty simple, really – all I needed to do was boost the signal to a frequency of around 800MHz and concentrate it to an area of around half a square hoof,” Twilight replied. “This has the effect of vibrating the metal by a few microns each way. It may not seem like a large amount, but at this kind of frequency, it's enough to cause a lifetime's worth of metal fatigue in a matter of minutes. We believe that's exactly what the saboteur must have done to the two crashed planes.”

“Yeah, and that leaves only one piece of the puzzle,” put in Spike; “who could have had a motive to destroy two fully loaded Constellations?”

“We've already ruled out the changelings as potential culprits,” added Rotor, “and we can hardly see it being a would-be assassin of Ambassador Yehuda El Equuis, so we can only assume that the plane itself must be the target.”

Sir Geoffrey frowned. “And I think I might know who'd have a motive,” he said darkly.

“Who would that be?”

“If I didn't know better, Mr Panthera, I'd say a certain McPommel must have had something to do with this. I wouldn't be surprised anyway, considering how he slandered the Constellation as being a mere upstart at the Foalborough press conference, shortly before it was launched.”

“Wait – McPommel?” Spike's eyes widened. “As in...Professor Arrowhead McPommel of McPommel Airliners Incorporated?”

“That's the same one.”

“Yeah, I know the guy,” remarked Spike. “If I remember correctly, he had been working on a superliner project of his own for about...five years before you started on yours.”

“He sure was, Spike – the McPommel PC14, latterly known as the Phantom,” affirmed Rotor. “He actually managed to obtain government support with that plane for about...two years; but eventually they just dropped it in favour of the Constellation.”

“How come?”

Rotor heaved a sigh. “Well, it looked pretty promising at first, but we soon found that there were far too many problems with the overall design,” he said gravely. “It was pretty much a white elephant by the end of the day.”

“So...you think McPommel might be holding a grudge?”

“Could be,” agreed Rotor. “He was a successful enough entrepreneur, but he's pretty ruthless, that one.”

“And jealous of my achievements too,” put in Sir Geoffrey. “I bet you half my factory he's been plotting against me all this time. I just wish there was a way to prove it.”

Twilight spoke up; “Well, I think I might know a way. It'll involve a calculated risk, but if it works, then it should more than clear the Constellations' name.”

Spike looked perturbed. “What are you planning to do, Twilight?”

“What I'm planning,” replied Twilight, a look of steely determination in her eyes, “is to set a trap for the saboteur. The location – Starswirl Airport; the time – early morning; and the bait...” she paused dramatically, “...the very aircraft they've been targeting all this time!”

“WHAT?!” Sir Geoffrey was appalled. “You mean...risk one of my Constellations to lure the culprit out into the open?!”

“Not just the one, Mr de Hoofilland. We'll need an extra plane as backup should anything go wrong on the big day.”

Not for the first time since arriving on Equestrian soil, Spyder went into a horrified frenzy. “Princess Twilight! Have you gone bananas?!” he blurted out. “Here we have a plane that's in constant danger of attack, and you plan to fly two more out to their destruction?! That's just...ape!!!”

But if Spike was anxious about the use of the Constellations as part of the trap, he was absolutely furious with Spyder for offending Twilight, and duly leaped to her defence. “Look who's talking!” he bellowed. “You who's done nothing but yell and screech like the world's gonna end – and then there's Twilight who's been nothing short of an asset to the team ever since the investigation started! So what if it sounds crazy – Twilight knows what she's doing!”

“Alright, Spike, that'll do,” chided Twilight, promptly halting any further argument between the dragon and the monkey.

“Same goes to you, Spyder,” added Panthera severely. “Any more trouble out of you, and I'll put you on a charge!”

Spyder ruefully subsided.

“Believe me, Mr de Hoofilland, I realise the risks involved, but it's the only way to expose the culprit and exonerate the Constellations,” persisted Twilight. “It's either we chance it, or your creation goes on the scrap heap. Now what's it going to be?”

Sir Geoffrey hesitated. Over the seven years that he had spent developing the Constellation, he had grown so proud of what had proven to be his most expensive plane to date that the mere thought of sending one to certain destruction shook him to the core of his existence. All the same, he had to concede that there was little chance of proving that the planes had been sabotaged unless they risked destroying a third plane – and if they didn't, then his greatest works would likely die out altogether.

“Alright then, Your Highness,” he sighed at last. “If you really need to go to such lengths, then you have my leave.”

“Thank you, Mr de Hoofilland. Let's just hope Princess Celestia agrees to my plan.”

Chapter 12: The Trap

Against all the odds, Princess Celestia did indeed agree to their plan once Twilight had outlined it to her by mail, but only on the condition that she risked as few lives as possible. That evening, having received her reply at the hotel in which she had been spending the last seven months, Twilight immediately began making preparations for a bogus charter flight across the Titanic Ocean.

“Okay, Spike,” she instructed, “now for Step 2; leak it to the press that the Ponyville branch of the Equestrian Variety Club will be flying out to Abu Dhonki in a few weeks' time aboard one of Royal Equestrian Airways' Constellations.”

Spike stared dubiously at his surrogate older sister. “Uh...but the Variety Club doesn't have a Ponyville branch.”

“Exactly!” affirmed Twilight triumphantly. “The way I'm planning it, the saboteur will read it and think this has only just been set up, whereas in truth, it'll just be around nine-hundred random actors and actresses.”

“Oh yeah! Yeah, I think I see what you're getting at, Twi. So, what, you want me to tell them that they're off on their first outing and have insisted on using a Constellation?”

“My point exactly, Spike.” But just as Spike was beginning to draft out the letter, they heard a knock at the door. Twilight went to answer, and was pleasantly surprised when she saw who it was. “Hullo, Flash.”

“Hey, Twily, how are you doing? I heard you were about to find out what had caused the crash,” the orange-furred Pegasus said as he entered.

“Well, actually, we already have.” Twilight told Flash all about the broken roof panel, and how it might have been sabotaged.

Flash frowned and gazed out of the window, which offered a panoramic view of the aerodrome. “So – eight-hundred and twenty-eight lives lost, and all because some maniac wanted to gain a lead over the Constellation with what would turn out to be a lemon?” he murmured grimly. “Gees, I've heard of industrial sabotage, but this is taking it way too far!”

“Well, we need to be certain it was something to do with McPommel,” Twilight pointed out, “and that's why I've come up with a plan. We're organising a 'charter flight' to Abu Dhonki in a few weeks, and we hope to catch the saboteur in the act before it heads out.”

“You're not seriously thinking of flying a whole plane full of passengers...”

“No – just me.”

Flash was horrified by this notion. “What?! You risk being killed at the hooves of a saboteur?”

“We're hoping it doesn't come to that,” Spike pointed out before either pony could even think of anything else to say. “I'd already been speaking to Twilight earlier; she's gonna scan for any ultrasonic fatigue cracks while the plane's in flight, and if she does find any, she'll hold it together until they can get to the nearest airstrip.”

“We're also planning on posting a night guard in the hangar in the hopes of apprehending the saboteur before he weakens the roof panel,” added Twilight.

Flash thought quickly. “Let me go in there, Twilight,” he offered. “I'll see that he doesn't get very far.”

“You?” An almost frightened expression of concern plastered itself onto Twilight's face. “But Flash, this is probably the work of a unicorn! Suppose he or she hit you with...”

“Suppose nothing,” insisted Flash. “More than fifteen-hundred ponies and other creatures have been killed at the hooves of this saboteur, and there's no way I'm gonna just stand by and wait for others to join their ranks – and especially not you.”

“Flash, I nearly lost you to one of those crashes...”

“Look, if you're putting your own life on the line to save others, then so am I,” stated Flash firmly. “I may have been close to death after Flight 759, but I can't get back to normal until I've avenged the eight-hundred and twenty-eight I failed to save – especially after all the effort you guys have put into finding the cause. And if I remember correctly,” he put in, “the whole reason you joined in on the investigation was to ensure I hadn't died in vain?”

Twilight pondered. “Well...yeah, I did...”

“Well there you go – if that's not a good enough reason to help you catch the saboteur, then I don't know what is.”

“I hate to say it, Twi, but Flash has a point,” mused Spike. “I would have done the same if Rarity had been on either of those two flights, and I'm sure it would have been the case for...well, pretty much all our friends and their loved ones.”

The lavender-coated alicorn remained silent for a few moments, mulling over Spike and Flash's words. Flash rested a comforting hoof on her shoulder. “I know this is difficult for you, Twily,” he said softly, “but you're going to have to trust me here. I am a guardspony, after all – I've been trained to deal with militant unicorns...” A light chuckle slipped through his lips. “...especially with the way Shining Armour reacted to us becoming an item.”

At last, Twilight managed to crack a small smile in response. “Yeah, I guess you're right,” she murmured, drawing her beloved Pegasus into a warm embrace. “Thanks, Flash – that was so brave of you to offer your assistance.”

“It's okay, Twily,” whispered Flash as he returned the hug. “It's what I'm here for, after all.”

Arrangements took time, but within ten days of the phoney news report, Twilight's plan could finally be put into action. Under the cover of darkness, in the very same airport from which his ill-fated flight had taken off, Flash Sentry furtively picked his way across the apron, clad in a black spy-suit and wearing a pair of ear defenders over a radio headset. As he approached the hangars on the far side of the airport, he paused to check for any signs of suspicious activity. Satisfied that nothing seemed out of the ordinary, he spoke into the microphone;

“Starswirl Tower from Agent X. This is Agent X reporting to Starswirl Tower.”

“Starswirl Tower to Agent X, receiving you loud and clear. What have you to report?”

“Have just traversed pasture – no cattle to wrangle just yet. I'm going to check in kennel,” answered Flash. “Will radio again as soon as I've explored.”

“Roger, Agent X. Kennel type is Rodeo Equine Apple Seven, repeat; Rodeo Equine Apple Seven. Good luck.”

“Thanks, Control.” Taking care not to make too much noise, Flash flew over to one of the hangars and hovered over its roof in search of a way in. He eventually fixed upon an open skylight, and cautiously wriggled his way through before drifting down onto a nearby catwalk, below which stood the Constellation over which he was to stand guard.

Even with his ear defenders removed, the hangar seemed fairly quiet as Flash entered – not a single living soul to be seen or heard, not a shadow to give them away, and the only other occupant was the huge airliner awaiting its next turn of duty. Even when he inspected the Constellation, he could find nothing to suggest that it had been sabotaged as yet.

“Agent X to Control. I'm now inside the kennel, and the terrier is in good health,” he reported. “Still no sign of the opposition as yet.”

“Roger, Agent X,” replied the controller. “What's your next move?”

“I'm going to stay in the kennel and keep the terrier in check. The opposition could still strike any time between now and tomorrow morning.”

“Understood, X. Next radio check at 2200 hours.”

“Okay, Control, I'll call back at 2200. This is Agent X, listening out,” and with that, Flash retreated to the roof girders to begin his long, tense vigil.

The hours ticked slowly by, but still there wasn't a sound to be heard nor movement to be seen. Aside from the hourly radio checks, all remained quiet in the Constellation's hangar – perhaps a bit too quiet for Flash's liking. Having spent half the night waiting for nothing to happen, he was becoming increasingly restless, and wondered if perhaps a look inside the plane at what he had missed on Flight 759 would help pass the time.

But just as he was about to fly down to the gargantuan airliner, he heard the sound of clicking coming from one end of the hangar. Flash stopped dead and looked over his shoulder just in time to see a door swinging open, revealing an all-over grey unicorn stallion in technician's overalls, a pony whom he seemed to recognise all too well. The unicorn paused, checking left and right as if he expected somepony to attack him, and with a satisfied nod made his way over to the catwalk.

“Starswirl, Agent X here,” whispered Flash, trying to ensure the message got through without the intruder overhearing him, “the kennel has just been infiltrated by an unknown animal. Have you sent the vet to check on the terrier?”

“Negative, Agent X. We already had the vet inside the kennel at approximately 1900 hours, and he's given the terrier a clean bill of health. Keep your eyes open – it could be that the cobra is about to strike.”

“Don't worry, Control – I won't let him out of my sight. Out.”

From the safety of the roof girders, Flash watched surreptitiously as the unicorn made his way along the catwalk. Halfway along, he stopped and stared down at the Constellation, his horn glowing a menacing red colour – and then, as his aura wrapped itself around one of the front roof panels, the faint sound of vibrating metal registered in the orange-coated Pegasus' ears.

Flash grimly narrowed his eyes and clenched his teeth. There was no question about it – this was the very saboteur they were looking for! Silently deciding that he had seen enough, he quietly drifted down towards the catwalk.

After three minutes, the vibrations slowly petered out before ceasing altogether. The unicorn smirked with satisfaction upon the damage he had caused, and turned to make his exit...

“Okay, that's far enough, mister!!”

The saboteur stopped in his tracks, a look of alarm on his face as he noticed the young guardspony stood before him with his wings spread out. “You!”

“Well, who did you expect – Colonel Purple Dart?!” Flash glared upon the intruder. “I might have known you of all ponies would be behind this, Tailstrike!”

“But...but I thought...”

“...that I was dead?” interrupted Flash. “Well, yes, nice try – and it might yet have worked had I not been fortunate enough to stand underneath the section of roof you weakened. And need I remind you that we Pegasi can withstand far more sudden changes of pressure than ordinary ponies?”

Tailstrike gazed in bewilderment for a few seconds before assuming a cold scowl upon his opponent. “You're better than I thought, Sentry!” he snarled.

“The game's up, Tailstrike,” said Flash. “We all know what brought those two planes down, and it certainly wasn't the plane blowing up of its own accord. You're coming with me!”

“Oh, I think not, Sentry!” retorted Tailstrike, the red glow returning to his horn. Before Flash could react, the dastardly unicorn seized him with his magical powers and suspended him in mid-air. The orange-furred stallion struggled and yelled, but Tailstrike's grip was too strong. “Sorry, buddy, but I can't have any witnesses ruining my plans – and that includes those with radio.”

Still struggling, Flash watched in horror as Tailstrike levitated the headset away from his ears and brought a hoof down right on top of it, smashing it to pieces as he did so. The unicorn saboteur then carried his Pegasus captive into a nearby storeroom, where he proceeded to tie him to a ladder.

“Well, Sentry,” he said sarcastically, “it was nice knowing you. Just a pity your survival was all for nothing.”

“Don't be so sure, Tailstrike!” growled Flash defiantly. “You won't get away with this, not if Twilight has anything to do with it!”

Tailstrike laughed derisively. “Why must you kid yourself?! There's no way Twilight will catch me out, not by flying to her own death!” He then assumed an expression of mock sympathy; “But don't worry too much about losing your precious princess – I'll be back for you later, and rest assured, I'll be more than happy to put an end to your misery whether you like it or not.”

Flash's eyes widened in alarm. “No!” he cried. “You can't do this...” but any further protest was promptly muffled as Tailstrike stuffed a wad of cloth into his mouth and tied it around his head so that it stayed in place.

“Still trying to make out like I might yet fail?” he smirked. “Face it, you winged weakling, nopony will ever stop me, least of all you – by tomorrow morning, the Constellation will be a twisted heap of aluminium, Equestria will be short of a princess, and the McPommel Phantom will be back in the lead where it belongs. Goodbye, Flash Sentry!” and with an evil cackle, he walked out of the storeroom and slammed the door shut behind him...

Chapter 13: On Course For Disaster

Author's Note

Free :eeyup: s for deciphering the passengers' names.

Chapter 13: On Course For Disaster

Dawn broke over Manehattan, and the next stage of the plan was set in motion as more than nine-hundred ponies and other creatures gathered in Starswirl Airport and began checking in for their flight. They all claimed to be travelling to a festival in Abu Dhonki aboard Royal Equestrian Airways Charter Flight 3877 – but what nopony in the terminal building could realise was that these “passengers” were actually actors, and that of the nine-hundred and fifty-six who checked in, none would actually be aboard the plane when it left. The only airline staff who knew about the plan were the control tower personnel, the security officials and the crew of the Constellation sitting patiently on the airport ramp.

From the control tower, Speedbird watched through his binoculars as the final preparations were made for the plane's long flight east. Spike, Rotor, Panthera and Spyder stood close behind.

“Well,” mused the grey-blue unicorn stallion as he set the binoculars down, “so far, so good. Constellation Equine Zebra Flower should be ready to fly in about ten minutes.”

“Yeah – just so long as they don't suddenly find it's got a fatigue crack in its roof like the last two,” muttered Spike.

Rotor nodded in agreement. “Either that or they might find the saboteur casting that spell from a distance,” he put in.

“Exactly, that's why Twilight shouldn't be doing this!” protested Spyder. “Here we have a saboteur on the loose, and yet she goes right ahead and starts taking risks! RISKS, I SAY – RISKS!”

“And so are you by shouting in a control tower,” warned Panthera sharply. “Now be quiet and let the controllers concentrate!” He stared upon the giant airliner with a look of uncertainty in his eyes. “Although I must say, now I come to think about it, I'm rather inclined to agree with you on this one. Once that thing takes off, it's going to get pretty dangerous up there.”

“I'm sure Twilight knows what she's doing,” asserted Spike, trying to sound confident. “I mean, she's been through a hay of a lot of trouble to ensure safety, and with all those weird anagrams she came up with for the passengers' names, nopony will be any the wiser.”

“What, like...Scripting Whistle?” asked Spyder, his anxiety giving way to mirth.

“Uh-huh.”

“Purloined Cobble?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Colonel Titans?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Lord Barnacle?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Moral Soupier?” Spyder barely finished uttering that last name before collapsing onto the floor in a fit of helpless laughter.

“Yes, every one of those, and plenty more before you even begin to suggest them,” affirmed Spike, mildly annoyed, “so could we please stay focussed instead of suggesting names every five seconds and making me go 'uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh' like I've got OCD or something.”

“Yeah, yeah,” spluttered Spyder, trying to assume a straight face. Spike simply rolled his eyes in reply.

“Well, what I want to know what's going on with Flash,” mused Rotor anxiously. “It's been...how long since his last radio check?”

“Nearly six hours, I make it,” said Speedbird. “Could be that his radio battery's run out or something.”

“Or maybe he's already spotted the saboteur and was unable to pay any attention to the radio at all,” murmured Panthera. “I just hope he's okay.”

While the controllers and investigators were debating, the last of the Constellation's would-be occupants were making their way through the portal that Twilight had cast across the walkway, which would take them to a field over on the far side of the airport. One by one, they disappeared through the magical wormhole until the only one left other than Twilight herself was Technicolour Tarquin, the famous film-maker who had been hired to direct these “passengers” for the purpose of the ruse.

“Well, my dear Princess Twilight,” he said as the lavender-coated alicorn closed the portal, “that's the last of the extras safely, er...out of sight, as it were.”

Twilight nodded her approval. “Thanks, Tarquin. Well, let's hope this all goes successfully.”

“So do we all, Your Highness,” agreed Tarquin gravely. “It's bad enough to lose one of these magnificent beasts, but to lose a Princess would be most tragic. Anyway,” he went on, “I'd better remove myself and let you do the rest. Good luck.”

“Thanks again, Tarquin,” replied Twilight nervously. “I think we'll need it,” and she watched uneasily as Tarquin uttered his booming, echoing catchphrase of “MOVIE MAGIC!” before teleporting out of the plane. Then, using the headset with which she had been equipped before joining the flight, she spoke to the control tower; “Starswirl Control from Alicorn Four. All passengers have passed through the gate, and we're just waiting for our preflight checks to be completed. Any word from Agent X yet?”

“Negative, Alicorn Four,” replied the voice of Speedbird over the radio. “We can't seem to get a response out of him.”

Twilight gritted her teeth, silently cursing herself for having thrown Flash's life away – and all for nothing, it seemed. “Okay, well...if he doesn't call back within ten minutes of take-off, then put out a search for him,” she instructed. “I'm now passing all radio communication with Air Traffic Control to Captain Clipper Victor for the duration of the flight to Abu Dhonki.”

“Roger, Alicorn Four. Good luck.”

After a further two minutes – much too soon for Twilight's liking – the ground crew finished their preflight checks. With the plane itself in seemingly perfect condition and its solitary passenger aboard, the flight attendant shut the door, the walkway slowly retracted, and an aircraft tug carefully eased the bulky airliner away from the terminal building. All the while, Speedbird, Spike and Rotor watched anxiously for anypony about to make a last-minute attempt to damage the Constellation – but even now, none of them had any idea that, in another part of the airport, Tailstrike and McPommel were also watching the leviathan airliner being prepared for its ill-fated journey.

Tailstrike smirked evilly as the plane backed off the ramp area and onto the apron. “Yeah, good luck, Princess Twilight – if you know where to look for it,” he murmured, his voice heavy with irony.

“Serves her right if you ask me,” grumbled McPommel, sneering coldly at the mention of Twilight's name. “That foolish upstart of a princess should know better than to interfere with my plans like this. The sooner she and the Constellation are out of the way, the better for the Phantom project.”

“Don't you worry, sir,” Tailstrike assured him. “The loss of that meddling brat should be the final nail in the coffin for de Hoofilland's monstrosity – and certainly if I have anything to do with it.”

“It had better be. If that plane stays in the air any longer than an hour at most, then I'll...” but McPommel quickly broke off when he noticed Tailstrike heading back towards the hangars on the other side of the airport. “Where do you think you're going?”

“Where else?” snorted Tailstrike dismissively. “There's still one pony I need to silence before we take off, you know.”

“Listen, Tailstrike,” growled McPommel sharply, “we're in enough danger of being nicked by the airport police without you gallivanting off into hangars! You told me you'd tied him up before you left; that's good enough! Now come back here and help us check this thing over, you idiot!”

“But sir, I don't think you understand...”

“I don't need to understand anything, Tailstrike!” snapped McPommel. “All I need is to get away without anypony knowing I had anything to do with that plane, and if you don't cooperate, you're on your own! Do I make myself clear?!

Tailstrike rolled his eyes in sullen exasperation. “Yeah, fine,” he muttered, and trudged sulkily over to the smallish propeller-driven airliner standing nearby. Secretly, he couldn't help but worry about what might come of his client's decision not to bother with Flash any further – one little slip, and their whole scheme could very easily be thwarted...

As the two ponies and their Pegasus pilots continued to check their plane over, the Constellation was just approaching its take-off position. From the plane's first-class cabin, Twilight watched nervously as the scenery crawling past her window slowed to a complete stop. Not long now, she thought.

“Alicorn Four to Starswirl Control,” she heard the voice of her captain saying over the radio, “we're in position on Runway One Four and awaiting our departure clearance.”

“Alicorn Four, you are cleared for take-off,” replied Speedbird. “Report back as soon as you reach Flight Level One Two Zero – in the meantime, I'll be keeping the frequency clear for you and your passenger.”

“Roger, Control. You ready, Princess?”

“As ready as I'll ever be,” Twilight responded, wisely double-checking that her seatbelt had been fastened.

“Good. Now commencing take-off run.”

No sooner had Captain Clipper Victor uttered those fateful words than the engines picked up again with a loud roar from outside the cabin. Slowly at first, and then faster and faster, the Constellation thundered down the runway on the first stage of its dangerous journey eastwards. As it reached halfway, leaning back to begin climbing, the lavender-coated alicorn took a deep breath and steeled herself for the perils that lay ahead. There was no turning back now.

At last, with a light shudder, the landing wheels parted company with the tarmac, and the Constellation soared boldly into the air. In the control tower, Spike continued to gaze upon the giant airliner as it ascended further and further. “Well...so far, so good,” he murmured, crossing his fingers. “I just hope it stays that way.”

“They'll make it yet,” asserted Panthera grimly. “We've taken every step to ensure that whatever struck that plane down doesn't happen again.”

“Yeah,” muttered Spyder anxiously, “but is 'every step' gonna be enough?”

Rotor nodded faintly. “Well...here's hoping, anyway.”

More than five minutes later, back in the hangar where the Constellation had been resting during the night, Great Snipe was silently brooding over its fate as he began to make preparations for another aircraft to undergo routine maintenance. It had been bad enough losing just two of these planes, especially after he had passed one of them as being fit to fly – but a third one? With an Equestrian princess aboard? That was just...crazy!

His thoughts were suddenly interrupted, however, by a faint rattling and some muffled yells. Puzzled, he made his way across to where the noise appeared to be coming from, ultimately tracing it back to a nearby storeroom.

“Odd,” he murmured, taking out a key and unlocking the door. “What would one of the others be doing locked away in here?”

But as he cautiously entered the room, it quickly became apparent that it wasn't a fellow technician – instead, it was an orange-coated Pegasus stallion with sapphire-blue mane and tail, lying bound and gagged against a ladder leaning against the far side wall. He was clad in a black spy-suit and struggling helplessly, though clearly to no avail.

“Holy cow!” exclaimed Great Snipe in alarm, as he began untying the stallion. “What the hay are you doing in here?!”

Flash tried to reply, but the gag prevented him from speaking clearly enough. Taking the hint, Great Snipe removed it from his mouth before getting back to setting him free.

“Never mind what, where's the Constellation?!”

Great Snipe looked confused. “What Constellation?”

“The one that was in this hangar last night!” hollered Flash frantically. “Where is it?!”

“Oh, that Constellation! Yeah, that only just left the airport six minutes ago, why?”

Flash's eyes widened in horror. “WHAT?!?” he burst out. “But that means Twilight and the crew are in peril! I must warn them!” and before Great Snipe could ask what he was talking about, the young guardspony was out of the hangar and making a beeline for the control tower, donning his ear defenders as he went. The confused ground technician could only stare in confusion at this unexpected turn of events.

Flash, however, couldn't bother any less with his rescuer – he had far more important things to worry about.

“Come on, Flash!” he hissed anxiously, gritting his teeth as he set his wings into motion. “This is a matter of life and death we're dealing with here – you don't get to that tower soon, you'll lose...” but he quickly broke off and veered sharply to the left, just in time to avoid being struck by an incoming airliner. The plane shot past with a loud roar, the slipstream almost knocking him clean out of the air; but he only just managed to correct himself in time to avoid a crash landing. His composure regained, he resumed his course for the control tower, hoping to goodness he wasn't too late...

Up in the tower, Speedbird could only raise a confused eyebrow at the radio message he had just received. “That's weird. Titan Niner Two Six reports that some Pegasus pony nearly darted out in front of him as he was coming into land.”

“Say what?!” Rotor stared in disbelief.

Spyder raised both hands to his temples, almost ready to panic again. “What in the name of banana fritters is going on here?! First we're missing a secret agent, and now we've got ponies charging randomly across other planes' right of way?!”

“Hang on a minute, Spyder,” exclaimed Spike, pressing his face against the observation window, “I think that is Flash headed our way!”

“It...is?” Speedbird looked out across the airport – and sure enough, he could see the orange-furred stallion rapidly closing in on the control tower. “Good grief, you're right! Somepony let him in at once!”

“I got it!” screeched Spyder, leaping for the door and only just swinging it open in time to prevent Flash from ramming it down. The frantic stallion quickly came into land within the control room, collapsing onto his haunches as he tried to catch his breath.

Speedbird trotted over to him. “Where were you, Agent X? What happened?”

“They've...they've struck again,” panted Flash. “Roof's been damaged...must warn plane...or they'll blow up...”

“WHAT?! And you tell us now?!” burst out Spike.

“He tied me up...smashed my radio...”

Rotor raised an eyebrow. “Heck, that'd explain why we couldn't contact you! You say they've already damaged the plane?”

Flash was just about to reply when they heard the voice of the Constellation's captain on the radio; “Alicorn Four to Starswirl Control, Flight Level now One Two Zero. Nothing to report so far – continuing towards Flight Level Three Seven Zero.”

This radio message triggered off what was probably the loudest alarm bell that had ever rang out in Flash's head. Without thinking, he suddenly leaped for the radio and grabbed the microphone. “NO! TURN HER AROUND!” he shouted urgently. “YOUR HULL'S BEEN DAMAGED! SHE'LL BREAK UP ANY MINUTE!”

Chapter 14: Emergency Landing

Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.

Chapter 15: Aerial Arrest

“...well, Professor, seems that princess and the Constellation type are as good as dead by now.”

McPommel smirked triumphantly as he looked back towards the general direction of the airport. “Excellent. You've done very well indeed, Tailstrike,” he praised. “You'll be rewarded very generously for this.”

“Like I would ever let you down, sir!” chortled Tailstrike smugly.

“And thanks to you,” finished McPommel, “nothing will stand in the way of my Phantom project. That airliner will take the lead it deserves, and that meddlesome de Hoofilland will be stuck in the light aircraft market where he belongs.”

But he had spoken far too soon. Barely a minute or two had passed, with the two stallions enjoying a light cocktail in the main cabin when suddenly, with a loud roar, the plane rocked violently and knocked them off their balance.

Tailstrike staggered to his hooves, gritting his teeth at the stains their spilt drinks had left on the carpet. “What the dickens does that idiot pilot think he's playing at?!” he exclaimed.

“I don't know,” replied McPommel grimly, “but I'm going to find out.” He marched crossly over to the cockpit and flung the door open, startling its occupants. “Just what are you imbeciles trying to do?!” he demanded.

“Wasn't anything to do with us, sir,” protested the pilot. “Jet of some sort came diving past us – caught us unawares, it did.”

“Yeah, and that ain't all – we saw a couple of ponies perched on the wing of the aircraft,” put in the co-pilot.

McPommel stared in confusion. “What are you talking about?! You never told me there was a jet on our flight level!”

“No, sir, and neither did Air Traffic Control. I don't understand why they didn't, but...”

“Constellation Equine Zebra Quarter to Equine Apple Iron, this is Princess Twilight Sparkle speaking. You have been classified as a hostile craft and are requested to return with us to Starswirl Airport.”

“Constellation?!” McPommel's eyes bulged with rage as the damning realisation struck him. He immediately swung round to face Tailstrike, who had only just entered the cockpit himself; “You fool!! You said you'd sealed their fate!”

“But...but I had, Professor!” blustered Tailstrike, visibly horrified. “I was going to take that last measure while you checked the PC3 over, but you wouldn't let me!”

“Then you should have killed him while you were still in the hangar instead of tying him up and letting him sit it out!”

“Come in, Equine Apple Iron!” said Twilight's voice over the radio. “If you don't comply, we shall have to resort to more persuasive methods!”

“Alright, I've had enough of this charade,” growled McPommel impatiently, “give me that!” and he grabbed the pilot's headset. “And just how do you intend to make me turn back with that flying bomb, you meddling duchess?!”

“Okay, firstly, I'll thank you to know it's 'princess'. Secondly, you're not going to scare me with that 'flying bomb' claim of yours – now do as I ask, or else!”

“Listen, Sparkle,” snarled McPommel menacingly, “in case you haven't already guessed, I have one of the finest unicorns in existence on my side, and you are on little more than a heap of scrap in the making! Now leave the area before your precious Constellation falls out of the sky like all the others!!” and before Twilight could reply, he reached over the flight engineer's shoulder and turned off the radio.

Back on the Constellation, Twilight, who had cast an adhesion spell on herself and Flash and was now riding with him on the plane's port wing, stared anxiously at the microphone of her own headset. “Seems they're not going to give in without a fight, Flash,” she remarked, her voice more than audible over the sound of the engines thanks to a sound baffle spell she had also used.

“No kidding, Twily,” agreed Flash. “Seems we're going to have to really give it to them.”

Twilight nodded grimly. “Sorry about this, McPommel, but I'm afraid you leave me no choice.” With that, she spoke into the microphone again; “Equine Zebra Quarter cockpit from Twilight. Turn her around, Captain – we're going in again.”

“Roger, Your Highness; but be careful,” advised Victor. “Leave it too late, and we'll all be goners.”

“Not if I can help it,” replied Twilight. “Just keep her steady as you approach.”

“Will do. Hold on tight!” and the huge airliner banked sharply round to the right, the lavender-coated alicorn and her Pegasus clinging onto its wing as they headed back towards the smaller and more archaic PC3.

From inside the propeller-driven plane's cockpit, McPommel watched with a frustrated snarl as the jet made a tight U-turn and began climbing towards their flight level. “Foolish young brat!” he growled. “Why won't she get it into her head that she's wasting her time?!”

“She will – so long as I'm on this plane with you,” smirked Tailstrike, eager to seek revenge against Flash and Twilight for foiling his plans.

“Then what are you waiting for?! Give them what they deserve!!”

“My pleasure. Just as soon as we're within a nautical mile of the plane, they'll wish it had never existed.”

McPommel turned towards the navigator; “How long before we come in range?”

“We're about thirty seconds away – twenty-eight – twenty-seven – twenty-six...”

The white-furred Earth pony gazed out of the cockpit with an agitated expression on his face. All he wanted right now was to see the Constellation blow out of the sky, but time seemed to pass so slowly that it might as well have been taunting him with every passing second. In his angst, however, he failed to notice a small, pinkish purple light emitting from its wing.

Closer and closer they came. Any second now, thought McPommel, it would all be over – but for which one?

“...twelve – eleven – ten – nine – eight...”

Suddenly, the navigator was cut off by the sound of creaking towards the back of the plane, and a buzzer began wailing urgently.

“What the......what's going on?!”

“Ailerons aren't responding to order!” exclaimed the pilot. “I can't control her!”

This set off alarm bells in McPommel's head, and only then did he remember that he was dealing with a pony far more accomplished at magic than Tailstrike could ever hope to be. Could it be that she had mimicked his ultrasound spell? Or could she have been using a different sort of magic? He didn't know – but it was tantalisingly clear by now that, by underestimating her abilities, he had landed himself, Tailstrike and his crew in grave peril. “Quick!” he bellowed. “Never mind the ultrasound, just zap them!”

“Yes, sir!” replied Tailstrike, and began to focus his magic; but it was too late. One minute, they were still safe and sound in the cockpit – the next, everything around them seemed to vanish as the PC3 suddenly fell apart, and Tailstrike, McPommel and their flight crew plunged out of the sky amid a sprinkling of wreckage. In that very moment, the destruction of the Constellation was the last thing on the grey unicorn's mind; all he could think about was the terrifying end he would inevitably face...

But as if fate had suddenly changed its mind, he felt something furry wrapping around his barrel, and everything seemed to slow down until he was hovering in mid-air. Slowly, gingerly, he gathered his awareness – but he soon wished he hadn't.

“Well, Tailstrike, we've caught you at last!” said Flash triumphantly.

“Make that all eight of you, even!” put in Twilight, pointing upwards to where she had McPommel and the flight crew suspended with a levitation spell. “So, McPommel, I believe you told me a plane would blow apart if Flash and I didn't leave the area – surely you didn't mean your own, did you?”

“So what if I said any of that, Twinkle Hooves?!” railed McPommel defiantly. “You've no evidence to show I was responsible for de Hoofilland's death-traps blowing apart!”

“Think again, McPommel.” Twilight pointed upwards a second time, and when McPommel looked, all he wanted was to scream with anguish. There, hovering just above his head, were the black boxes from his plane. “I think your libellous threat and hasty reactions will be more than enough to see you behind bars for good. Just a pity you forgot that planes can still tell the truth long after they've met their end.”

Tailstrike snarled bitterly as he glowered at the black boxes. “You'll pay for this!”

“Oh, we've already paid for it, Tailstrike,” quipped Flash smugly. “All we need now is for you to repay your 'loan', and...say – I think that's Canterlot Castle down there!” he remarked.

“Is it?” Twilight looked down towards the ground. “Why, so it is – seems we won't have to head back to Manehattan after all. Well spotted, Flash!”

“Hey – nothing at all, Twily,” chuckled Flash modestly.

With a small chuckle of her own, Twilight made one final radio transmission as they drifted back down to firm ground; “Twilight Sparkle to Equine Zebra Quarter, mission successfully completed. Opposition has been captured, and we're taking them back to Canterlot. You can go home now.”

“Thanks, Your Highness. Returning to Starswirl Airport.”

And with that, the mighty Constellation soared away into the distance, none the worse for its adventure, while Twilight and Flash touched down gently in front of the castle...

“Your Highness?”

Princess Celestia looked up from the documents through which she was reading. “Yes?”

“Princess Twilight Sparkle and Lieutenant Flash Sentry to see you, Your Highness. They have a few prisoners with them as well.”

This took Celestia by surprise. Surely Twilight and Flash were supposed to be still in Manehattan...weren't they? Still, she reasoned with herself, there had to be a logical explanation as to why they were in Canterlot of all places. “Very well. Let them in, then.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” The messenger exited the study, shortly replaced by Twilight and Flash.

“Twilight,” asked Celestia anxiously, “how did it go?”

“Few hiccups here and there, but I ultimately have to report complete success,” declared Twilight. “We've not only exposed the saboteur, but we also have his, er...'client' and the evidence we need to convict them.”

“Excellent work, you two,” smiled Celestia. She then shot a disapproving glance towards Tailstrike; “Quite frankly, though, I shouldn't have expected any less out of you. As if trying to murder my niece wasn't enough, you go on to rid Saddle Arabia of its finest ambassador and nearly do the same to both my most faithful student and her consort?”

“Only because you won't accept that my own plane is the superior!” hissed McPommel under his breath.

“I heard that!” said Celestia severely. “Need I remind you, Professor, your own plane was too flawed for us to invest in it any further – if you had accepted that instead of crashing two Constellations in a way that made them seem like a repeat of the Comet Mark 1 crashes, you might have been a lot better off. As it stands, you're both under arrest for terrorism, malicious damage, mass murder and endangering the life of Princess Twilight Sparkle. Guards!” she called out.

Moments later, three Royal Guards entered the room. “You called, Your Highness?”

“Take these two down to the dungeons at once,” instructed Celestia, indicating towards McPommel and Tailstrike. “They're to remain there until I can arrange a trial for them.”

“What?! Now just a minute,” burst out McPommel, “I've got an entire aircraft factory to oversee! You can't just fling me in prison...”

“You're not overseeing any factory, McPommel,” interrupted Celestia firmly. “Until your trial is over, your company won't be producing any further aircraft, and that's final. Alright, guards, take them away.”

McPommel seethed with rage. “Curse you meddling alicorns!” he shouted as he and Tailstrike were dragged away.

But any further protest ultimately fell on deaf ears as Celestia, none too bothered about McPommel's insults, shut the door behind the guards and turned back to her student and the younger guardspony with a warm smile. “Well done, Twilight and Flash,” she praised, “well done.”

Epilogue

Locomotion gazed out of one of the library windows towards the clear blue sky, smiling softly as he watched the unmistakeable outline of a de Hoofilland Constellation weaving its way westwards through the few clouds that hung above Ponyville. Twilight sat snuggled up next to Flash with the latest Daring Do novel on the nearby sofa.

“Well,” the red-furred young railway enthusiast mused, “seems the Constellation's finally proving its worth.”

“It sure is, Loco,” agreed Flash, “and boy, am I glad we've managed to make sure of that. A few lives lost, I can understand, but over fifteen-hundred – that's just...overkill! Still,” he went on, “at least Tailstrike and McPommel got what they deserved.”

“I'll say,” put in Locomotion, a hint of anger in his voice. “Imagine killing all those passengers just to make a plane look dangerous! Heck, if I'd been the jury, I'd have taken every length to ensure they regretted their actions.”

“Precisely what the real jury did,” chuckled Twilight, recalling all the heckling and insults that had been hurled at McPommel during the trial. “Turns out the travelling public were absolutely furious with Professor McPommel, and they made no secret of it at the trial either – one pony even stood up and called him Judas before he could give his name!”

Locomotion laughed as the mental image crossed his mind. “Serves him right if you ask me! What kind of penalty did they give them, anyway?”

“Poetic justice – that was their penalty,” replied Flash simply.

“Yeah, both their personal fortunes went towards the compensation to the victims' families,” Twilight explained further. “After that, Tailstrike was banished, McPommel was given a life imprisonment, and his company was passed over to the de Hoofilland Aircraft Company free of charge. But there's more...”

“Oh yeah, what?” asked Locomotion, interested.

“You know that tip-off we received at Starswirl Airport regarding Tailstrike?”

“Yeah?”

“It turns out the call was made by McPommel's Head of Research, Waylon Withers. He told us at the trial that he had been subjected to ruthless bullying by his boss, but also that he felt he was going too far by attacking my plane, hence why he called the control tower,” Twilight clarified. “It was more than enough for de Hoofilland to take pity on him and offer him a job in their own design department.”

“Oh, well, that's good to know,” smiled Locomotion. “I reckon that's the best thing for him, after what that blackguard McPommel has put him through. I mean, who would want to work under some...maniac like him?”

“Who indeed?”

“Still, at least we can finally get back to normal – sort of,” went on Locomotion. “That fiasco with the Constellations has given way more trouble than it's worth, and I'm darn well glad it's over. The number of hours I spent away from Ponyville MPD because I was too upset to work...ugh! Don't even get me started on all that!”

Flash nodded sympathetically. “I know how you feel, Loco. I'd been losing a fair bit of sleep myself from having nearly lost Twily, and I'm still having to go for counselling over the whole thing.”

“Never mind, Flash,” soothed Twilight, nuzzling her guardspony lovingly. “At least we're back together again.”

Only then did Locomotion notice something interesting about the lavender-coated alicorn's front right hoof. “Here, Twilight, what's that on your fetlock?”

Twilight looked down. “Oh, that,” she remarked, a light blush creeping onto her cheeks. “Yeah, Flash gave me that just last week.”

“Oh, right? What, is it a late birthday present then?”

“No, it's an engagement bracelet.”

Locomotion's jaw fell open, and he gazed in awe upon the golden trinket. “No!”

“Oh, yes,” smiled Flash. “See, after the trial, we decided we couldn't make do with dating alone anymore, so I proposed to her.”

“Wow,” remarked Locomotion. “First Dash and Soarin, then Spike and Rarity, and now you, eh? Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” said Twilight, still beaming from ear to ear. “Guess we'd better start planning a wedding soon.”

Locomotion chuckled in hearty agreement. “Well, I'd better not get in the way of you making the arrangements,” he decided. “I've got a lot of engine cleaning and shunting work to catch up on at any rate. So long, you two – be sure to let us know when you do decide to get hitched.”

“Will do, Loco. See you later.”

And with a cheery smile, Locomotion trotted out of the castle feeling a lot happier about the way things were going. True, his favourite aunt and more than a thousand other airline passengers had gone, but thanks to Twilight's intuition and her and Flash's bravery, their souls could finally be laid to rest – and on top of it all, he and the rest of Ponyville had a royal wedding to look forward to. In spite of all the hardships that he and the two love-birds had been through, their lives were slowly but surely beginning to settle...

But his train of thought was quickly disturbed by the sound of a colt making a shoddy attempt at aircraft noises. Looking over his shoulder, he could see his friend Button Mash, latterly known as High Score, galloping round in circles with what looked like a very odd plane in his hoof. “Hey, High Score,” he called. “What are you up to, playing aeroplanes?”

“Who, me? No way!” scoffed Button Mash dismissively.

Locomotion cocked an eyebrow in confusion. “Aren't you? But I thought you were almost as obsessed with aircraft as with video games – and if you're not, then what's that plane thing in your hoof?”

Button Mash laughed. “Plane indeed! This is no plane!”

“Well, what else could it be, a daft brush?!”

“Nope – it's a space ship!” replied Button Mash. He then darted away, continuing to make aircraft noises as he flew his “space ship” home and leaving a baffled Locomotion standing speechless in the middle of the street.

“A...a space ship?! Cripes, now I've heard everything!”