Buisiness as as usual
I heard a familiar screetching klaxon from outside my room... Immediately my mind kicked into overdrive and I jumped from my bunk and landed, my comrades already scrambling along with me to the dispatch room. As we rushed through the small hallway the PA system crackled to life and our commander read out what we were dealijg with.
"we have a class 6 sandstorm headed north by north east, winds at 80 knots, we have confirmed the presence of lightning, suit up and use runway 2..."
"with practiced ease I sprinted along to the west hangar and prepped my trusty falcon... The tired old aircraft still holding strong, I checked it over quickly and made sure the sand filters were clear, after the brief inspection I fluttered myself into the somewhat small single pony cockpit and began the startup procedure... I saw the guages bounce up and the 2 gigantic retrofitted wyvern engines turn over and sputter before finally spinning up the 2 giant 4 bladed props, I waggled the controls just to check one last time and I throttled up as the massive tornado proof hangar wheeled its door open.
As I taxied out I saw our local daredevil open wing crew... They wore nothing but goggles, a respirator, and a slightly less thin suit to protect them from the sand... And they called us pilots daredevils for flying these beasts... I clicked on the radio and checked in with the tower as I taxied past the massive magic sensor dish outside of the barracks.
"This is falcon 3 checking in... Tower do you copy?"
"This is tower, we hear you loud and clear... Head to runway 2 and take off immediately... You will join falcons 1 and 2 as soon as you're airborne."
"Rodger that"
I wheeled the plane to the runway and gunned it... The giant engines screamed on wide open throttle and the plane took off almost immediately... The falcon was truly something else... It had the highest thrust to weight ratio out of all equestrian military aircraft, our weather control unit used them because they were tough as nails and could effortlessly handle rough winds and harsh weather. I pulled into a steep climb and soon met up with the 2 other falcon pilots on base.
"This is falcon 3 checking in... You guys hear me?" I heard the rough feminine voice of our griffon pilot Gretchen crackle through the radio.
" I can hear ya..." then the deep voice of Dusty Clouds made itself clear.
" Hey dude... I can hear ya too... " with the comm's tested We all heard the tower start rearing off instructions
" Falcon 1 head off the front and help alpha slow it down, falcon 2, head above the storm and provide support to team beta, and falcon. 3, drop low and assist gamma in collapsing it from below..."
"copy that... All units proceeding" I watched my comrades fly off and I pushed my stick down hard and dove toward the sand below, The massive wall of sand plowed on before me, I flicked on the magic cockpit hud and watched the soft greenish tint appear on the window... In the storm I could see a cluster of dots, each marked with the gamma symbol, from my right arm rest a magic hologram showed fuel, food, and magic capacity, the food was for the teams in the storm... And consisted of mildly flavored and extremely sugary fluid with the consistency of watered down maple syrup. The magic was to power a magic amplifier that would be towed behind and below the plane it served the purpose of amplifying pegasus magic and allowing the weather team to far better control the storm with fewer pegasi.
"Falcon 3 to team gamma... Assistance is here"
" gamma leader to Falcon 3...glad to have ya here! We're ready when you are."
"dropping amp and straw" I flicked another switch and heard a squealy whine as the lower hatch opened and the 2 lines were unwound, I saw the glowing pink magic amplifier appear from behind the plane, the small flaps affixed to the roughly bomb shaped object keeping it at a constant distance from the plane. The food tube dropped below mounted to a metal rod with attached handlebars to allow the pegasi outside to hold on while they replenished themselves, A small hologram popped up to my left to monitor the tube.
"lines dropped... Activating amp" I l flicked the safety cover from the switch and activated it... Immediately I saw the amplifier light up like a shooting star, and the pegasi nearby began to glow a soft pink. I let myself relax a bit... All I had to do was fly a steady pattern following the storm, and keep within a kilometer of team gamma to ensure that the amplifier was affecting them, and that they could get some sugar when they needed to. I looked to the feeder tube monitor and saw a pegasus mare by the name of Mountain Snow, grab the handles and start chugging the sugar drink like no tomorrow... She chugged almost an entire 2 gallons in under a minute and then leave with a very distended stomach, by the time she came back it would be flat again... Only to be engorged once more to continue her work.
A bolt of lightning ripped across the sky and I heard a thunderous boom over my head, several more bolts tore across the sandy roof of the storm... Then I heard the frantic radio call from a pair of pegasi to my stern...
"we have wounded! ... Drop the stretcher and prepare to take on a patient"
"Rodger" I pulled a small lever near my left arm and heard the mechanical thunk of the emergency patient recovery system flip open from below the cockpit of the plane and the little warning buzzer start beeping... The radio crackled on again and the pegasus from before came on
"she's in... Reel it up!"
I did as he said and waited until I heard the little alarm stop... Then I let the autopilot take over... It was rudimentary and kinda sketchy but the system had proven itself to be good at at least keeping an aircraft steady, I rotated the pilot's seat around and slid open the small hatch into the tiny little spot just below and behind the cockpit which served as an Aerial field hospital. I knelt and scooted over to the stretcher where a badly burned pegasus mare laid. I pulled on some rubber gloves and grabbed the first aid kit from the wall behind me,
"okay.... What happened?"
"L-L-Lightning...hit....h-here" she tried to point to a spot on her left hip"
"try not to move... Just try to calm down... Everything is going to be fine" I cut away the flight suit and cleansed the wound... After it was thoroughly cleaned I applied some ointment and gave her a shot of strong painkillers mixed with something to put her to sleep.
"you oughtta wake up when we touch down... Sleep well"
She was already knocked out so I removed the gloves and climbed back to the cockpit and resumed control of my aircraft, the rest of the operation went off without a hitch and the storm died down just south of Appleloosa.
I brought the large silvery plane down on runway 1and called for paramedics to take care of the pegasus in the stretcher.
10 minutes later, mess hall.
"Hey!... Crispy!... Great flying today!" the leader of gamma called out from one of the tables nearby... Crispy was my nickname from when I accidentally set my left wing on fire while maintenancing my plane. My actual name was Sandy Skies... Nobody called me that because It sounded very feminine... Despite me being a stallion... If I was a mare I could imagine that Dunes would probably have a whole new meaning to some of the pervs on base.
"Hey DR!" it was her base wide nickname... Her name was desert rose and it was eventually abbreviated.
"Thanks for taking care of ocean breeze... She's one of my best wing mares... Although she may loose a cutie mark because of her wound... But she's still alive and kicking... If a bit twitchy at the moment."
"just doin my job..." I said casually As I heard the base commander start talking through a megaphone to the lot of us... All 30.
"just a quick announcement... Tomorrow commander spitfire and the wonderbolts will be coming here for their annual visit and inspection... Slipstream.... Before you say anything... Yes that Includes Rainbow Dash... I expect your best tomorrow...please don't Fuck this up like last year... That is all"
Author's Note
I got some serious writers block on my other stories so I decided to write up this idea I had one night. Please pardon any spelling mistakes for the time being... My autocorrect is now somehow even worse at getting words right.
BREEEET.... BREEEET.... BRRREEET.... SMACK!
For some odd reason that alarm clock never seems to break... No matter how hard any of us whack it... It was dented and the little glass window on the front was cracked but it stubbornly persisted.... Much to our chagrin. My bunk mates and I, began the somewhat grueling process of forcing ourselves awake while we got dressed in our uniforms and cleaned up, i was lucky enough to sleep in the same barracks as the rest of the pilots... Save one... Each room had 9 bunks except team beta and ours, which were across from one another, one of their team members was bunked with us because their room was somewhat small and they couldn't fit the ninth bunk. She told us to call her aunty lemons or something similar... I had no clue what her actual name was.
As we neared the mess hall the PA system crackled to life and the base commander started speaking.
"As you know, today the wonderbolts are coming for a visit... So after breakfast I want everyone to go to their stations and clean up so it looks somewhat acceptable... And please do not act like idiots around the visitors... That is all.
30 minutes later.
I stood in the small hangar next to my plane... It was nicknamed Shot the Moon and had a painting of
A naked nightmare moon straddling a cannon with the moon painted in the background across both sides of the nose, whomever was the pilot of it before me had painted it on, And I decided to keep it... Because boobs.
After pacing around for awhile in the hangar I heard the small access door on the east side of the hangar creak open and several sets of hooves walk in...
"What's you're name soldier!" I heard commander spitfire say before she and Rainbow Dash stopped beside the nose of the plane. I saluted and did my best "standard military introduction"
" Senior Airman Sandy Skies SIR!"
"At ease...now...please fill in my comrade, Rainbow Dash about what your job is airman..."
"Will do.... I am one of 3 pilots of the support aircraft on base, my job is to provide assistance to one of the weather teams as we break up the sandstorms coming up from down south in the badlands. I supply magic amplification to said group as well as provide refreshment for them when they need it."
"Okay Dash...I'll leave you here to learn about sandstorm wrangling while I go and talk to the base commander...I'll meet up with you and the rest of the 'bolts in the mess hall afterwards."
"Yes ma'am" spitfire sauntered out and left me to answer Dash's questions."
"....soooo....how do you amplify Pegasus magic exactly?"
" With this funky thing...don't ask me how it works...I have no clue..." I ducked under the plane and used a large wrench to manually pump open the underside of the aircraft.
"Huh...I'll have to ask Twilight about this...What's the refreshment you're talking about?..."
"It's basically liquid sugar...the Pegasi teams get exhausted frequently so they come up to this tube thing here..." I pointed to the currently retracted sugar tube, "and then they chug this stuff until they are almost ready to burst...then they go back out and continue their job..."
"your job Seems kinda boring..."
"You'd be suprised.."
"Umm, another quick question...what do the uniforms look like...a friend asked me to tell her when I get back"...
"Instead of skin tight spandex to reduce drag (and look sexy) it's basically a leather reinforced flight suit with more coverage and a respirator, some goggles and a small gemstone collar thing that makes the amplifier more effective and capable of longer ranges..."
"Why all the extras... Couldn't I just go out there in this with the mask and goggles?
"You could...but the suit would be ground off by the sand, as well as a good chunk of your feathers...the only reason the others can stay out there without their feathers being blasted off is because of some serious conditioning and some dietary supplements to make the feathers stronger and more resistant to being ripped out..."
"Cool....(I could fly even faster with some of those)...uhhhhh....how..fast can it go?"
"About 800 kph...give or take...I usually don't fly it that fast but it can." before either of us could ask the other anything else I heard the storm alarm start screeching. Then the PA ran off the stats.
"We've got a small class 4 inbound north by north east...no lightning, about 100 kilometers out"
" looks like I need to go to work...uhhhhh good talk...see ya" I scrambled around the plane and did a quick inspection, satisfied with that I re closed the support system bay and flapped myself up inside the aircraft, the doors wheeled themselves open and I started the massive engines, dash retreated to the side of the hangar and I taxied out and began trundling to the runway...the wall of sand was to my far right, and I could see the weather teams taking flight from a small strip of tarmac near the barracks.
"Tower, this is falcon 3...requesting permission to take off"
"Tower to falcon 3, you are clear for takeoff, you are on storm front duty today, meet up with beta and begin slowing it down"
"Rodger that." I got to the runway and took off as usual... I pulled in the landing gear and throttled up to meet beta at the edge of the sandstorm. as soon as I got within a few kilometers I switched on the heads up and got as close to the group as I could.
"Falcon 3 to beta leader... readying support"
"Rodger Falcon 3, " with that I let the support equipment deploy and I set myself on a course to keep somewhat parallel to the storm.
the mission went off without any injury, a perfect wrangling of a sandstorm. as I was en route to base I heard commander spitfire come on over the comms.
"Nice job out there...I can see that this place has improved greatly since I last visited...give yourselves a pat on the back and come back to base for a debrief." I literally patted myself on the back and began final decent to the runway, then the radio came back on and the base commander came on this time.
" I second commander spitfire on this... Nice work... "
I saw the other 2 falcons land and I touched down last, the somewhat oversized tires of the aircraft squealed a bit when I touched down and I throttled back to a crawl to taxi the plane back to the small hangar it resided in... As I approached the entrance to the squatty concrete structure I saw one of the wonderbolts flag me down... I had no clue which one it was but I shut down the engines and hopped down to greet the pony...
"what is it?"
"Commander spitfire told me to come get you and the other pilots...she said she has some questions"
"ill meet with her once the plane's parked"
"just hurry please"
"got it"
I opened the hangar door and started up the little tug that sat just inside, I trundled the tiny vehicle to the tail gear of the plane and pulled it inside the hangar, and after making sure everything was locked down I followed the wonderbolt to a small office near the control tower... Usually this was reserved for the base commander, but spitfire had taken up residence in it for the time being, she sat in the plush leather chair behind the desk and looked at me as I entered, she directed me with a hand to sit next to my fellow pilots, all of us sat with some kind of worry... But considering we had been called to be spoken to by the commander of the wonderbolts... Any pegasus would be shaking in their skin...
"Unbeknownst to many of the personnel on base we are working on a biography of equestria's weather teams and who they are...and unlike the rest of the units we have decided that the support pilots of your division need some more recognition because of the key role you all have in this line of work... So... Which one of you is the leader of your unit?"
" That'd be me ma'am, at least by rank, but I do not issue orders"
"id like you to tell me about yourself and your role here"
"well... I'm Gretchen... I immigrated to Equestria about a decade ago when Griffonstone's economy fell apart, i took a job as a bouncer for a club... When that didn't pan out I eventually joined the equestrian air force and was trained as a pilot and sent here... Before we upgraded to the boost crystals the team's were giant... And the casualties were high... I Just flew around the plane full of sugar water... When the teams were reassigned and we were swapped over to the current system I met dusty here... And when the brass decided that it would be more efficient with three pilots we met up with Sandy... We all became very close and it ended up forming a pseudo herd... It's worked out pretty well thus far... And I quite enjoy my job. " I was glad that she didn't mention that we had sex, although that kind of thing was not unheard of, interspecies relationships were typically frowned upon.... Dusty was already in a relation with one of the mares in the command circle, and all 4 of us formed a herd... Not officially but close enough...it became a basewide rumor but died off after a few of the ground crew were found having kinky sex in one of the storage buildings behind the base.
Dusty was up next as Spitfire stared him down like a hawk,
"you're next... Tell us your story"
"I'm Dusty Clouds, I was born in Fillydelphia and i had a passion for flying... I eventually auditioned for the wonderbolts, but I got rejected... But I did get offered a job for the air force reserves, so I took the offer and eventually was moved to active duty and brought here originally to be one of the weather team... Then I was trained and reassigned as a pilot... And that brings us here..."
"Alright... Sandy was it?... Ya don't have to but Id like it if you also told us the story behind your name as well"
"Sure... My mother got pregnant to a stallion and they split up after he found out... My mother married another mare while she was about 2 months pregnant... They both wanted a daughter but got me instead... They accepted it and just kept the name they planned, when I was in my early teens they asked me if I wanted to become a mare.... I said no... They asked a few more times over the next 2 years and I still refused, eventually when I moved out they just left me with a flask of the potion that would swap my gender in case I wanted to go through with it... I still have it, no idea if ill ever use it but it's there... As for how I got here; after I moved out I got a job working for a local jeweler and glassblower... I was the one who did the heavy lifting and went to go buy the raw materials, eventually I quit when the shop was bought out and the new management turned out to be an entitled little bitch... I got another job working as a janitor for Princess Twilight... I quit when Twilight botched a chemistry experiment and I nearly died trying to clean up the aftermath... The pay was good but having to deal with her shenanigans was too much... So I joined the equestrian air force as a pilot and I got transferred here, and the rest is history.
"okay... Can you tell me a little more about your unit as a whole?"
"we fly the support aircraft as you know...although the planes themselves are a bit strange.... The engines have more power and the landing gear was rebuilt to accomodate larger tires for sand landings, they were stripped of paint because the storms would blast it off anyway, the only reason the nose art still exists along with the important markings, is because they were repainted with colored epoxy resin and clear coated with more of the stuff to keep it from rubbing off, the planes were originally designed as high speed dive bombers, but the bomb bays were swapped over to the support equipment that they currently have, the back half is the crystal and the feed tube, the front is essentially an airborne field hospital." The planes were essentially part of the team in and of themselves, so I decided to tell of their origins as well. Gretchen spoke up next.
" The name was made by Dusty, and the patches were drawn up by all three of us... It was eventually officially made into a set of patches. The planes are retired dive bombers from the griffon pony war several decades ago. And the magic based equipment was adapted by the cloudsdale research district from Starswirled's work on the subject of improving the power output of a unicorn's horn to work on innate pegasus magic."
"anything on the meaning of the nose art?..." Gretchen spoke first and presented a photograph of the front of her plane, it depicted a large abstract and immensley detailed piece of art... Within the swirly and graffiti like lines one could find pictures of aircraft, pegasi, sandcastles and many other things... "it is a loose telling of my life story... From my first memories until I was transferred here.
" quite elaborate, now, onto Dusty...what's the story behind yours?"
" its a painting of my fiancée that I had after the mare in the command circle left me... she's now my wife and the mother of our son Spark and our daughter Yunar... He pulled out pictures of all three, his wife was a Zebra almost a head taller than the already big stallion, her name was Tatzuul, after some Tatzelwurm deity zebras of old worshipped, their son had wispy traces of thin stripes and took after his father's coloring, almost mirroring the rusty orange and yellow of his father, both traits made him look as if he was covered in wispy flames, his daughter was sort of an oddball, her colors were far different than either of her parents, supposedly they had come from past generations traits sowing up again. giving her a marbled purpleish coat with pitch black stripes and the occasional splotch or lines of white, her mane was a deep greyish with a bright white stripe running through it, her appearance very closely resembled a planet that she was named for, A purpleish gas giant on the outer edge of our solar system."
"Well Im glad that you are happy....we're kinda running short on time here...so Please make this brief"
"mine is just the art the previous pilot painted on it...I gave it the epoxy treatment to keep the storm from destroying it...but other than that it's unchanged..."
"alright im sick of this backstory crap... Lets just get this info to the writer of this dang biography and be done with it"
With that the room adjourned and we all filed out and returned to our duties, I stopped by Gwen's hangar to see what she was up to.
"hey gwen"
"Sup Crispy"
"how's things"
"pretty good... Boring as fuck when we're stuck on the ground"
"no kidding... Probably not for too long though... Weather observation says that theyre gonna get worse soon, its that time of year again..."
"anything but the boredom"
"seeya round' gwen" I was sad that the brass had passed a "professional relationship policy on base" although we loved each other we couldn't act it, the only place we could was in the barracks and even then it was sorta frowned on by the supervisors.
I had finished for the day and made my way to the barracks, my equipment clicking slightly as I walked along, I entered the pilots room and pulled off my gear, I set my knife and my trusty pistol on top of the steamer trunk I kept my personal things in and sat on the bed... I still had a couple hours before I would have to go to sleep So I grabbed my pistol And looked it over absentmindedly before I dissasembled it for cleaning, It was strange... Made in griffonia as a potent military sidearm and modified by my father during his time in the equestrian royal navy, it now had several odd magic devices stuck to it, a spell charger to enchant the projectile when it fired and a secondary firing crustal to allow it to be capable of firing plain lead slugs with magic rather than ballistic powered cartridges if need be, It also had a strange and crude magic hologram sight on it... I removed the upper reciever and pulled the bolt free, after I pulled the rest of the innards from it I gave it a quick clean and a bit of fresh grease where it was needed, I reassembled it and did ome last check before I put the mag back in and returned it to the holster. Gwen arrived next and we exchanged a quick kiss before all of us began getting ready for bed, lights out order was called and we all went to sleep without much extra thought.
Author's Note
hopefully there are less errors in this chapter, I'll probably do edits in a couple days so I don't miss anything.
It was the middle of the day.... Everyone had been instructed to stay inside to avoid getting heatstroke. The dorms were blazing hot even with AC so everyone in our room stripoed down naked and sat in front of the AC vent... Strangely, none of us saw it as odd... Although some poor mare on supervisor duty saw us and just walked away with her face red as a beet.
After it started to cool off in the afternoon we all got dressed again and went about our buisiness on base until the alarm went off. I already knew it wasnt good... In the earlier months of summer the storms would be far worsr than the rest of the year due to the far wider temperature fluctuations, and the last few dsys had been hot... And now that it was cooling off and the air was redistributing... It was bound to hit hard...
"All storm control personnel, we have a Class 12 sand storm inbound north by north east, scramble and try to slow it down as much as possible. All nonessential personnel, please proceed to any storm shelter location and do not leave under any curcumstances until the all clear is given... May tartarus have mercy on you... " I ran to the hangar and smacked the door open button, I ran through a quick check and hopped up into the cockpit, I fired off the engines and taxi'd out while I was still strapping my helmet on. I saw the pegasus wings go up and begin flying toward the storm,i caught up to falcon 2 and saw falcon 1 taxi in behind me, we took off as fast as we could and began flying toward the storm behind the teams. The radio crackled on as soon as we got within twenty kilometers of it.
"Team alpha and falcon 2, you're taking storm front, beta and falcon 1 get top duty and Falcon three and gamma get collapse duty... Get to it and may faust have mercy"
"Rodger that..." I released the radio button and flicked on the heads up, I found gamma and dropped the support equipment early. I clicked on the squad radio. "See you all in tartarus... "
"Ill pray for us" one gamma member said, she was the super religious one... I had no clue what her name was but she was always quick to pull another quote from her little holy book... Heck I didnt even know what book it was... She was kinda overbearing but at least the sentiment was nice.
I looked ot the massive wall of sand before me, many kilometers high and seeming to strech off into infinity in either direction.
"here goes", the plane punched through the outer wall of sand, followed by Gamma team, i was immediately presented with an image that would
Make any meteorologist shit themselves and run for cover... Massive layers of driving sand, tornadoes and lightning mixed in and windspeeds of almost hurricane proportions, I flicked on the camera mounted in the nose and patched the footage in to home base...
"anyone groundside getting this?" i waited s few seconds and heard only the occasional gasp or some pony quietly saying something along the lines of "oh shit"...
I pulled into a calmer layer and zet a course deeper in to collapse whatever was droving this thing along... Or at least slow it down...
For the first five minutes we were fine... The storm was so huge that it was easy to stay clear of the worse parts... But then we went deeper... And thats where things went south... Fast..
I Frantically heaved the plane around trying to avoid the massive vortexes and walls of sand that would shred me to bits in seconds, my med bay already had the maximum capacity of three in it already and injured reports were coming in left right and center, then they all stopped... While I wrestled the controls I saw something that would make anyones stomach turn, a Pegasus was dragged into a vortex... And seconds later saw bodyparts flying from it, A severed wing from the unfortunate Pegasus got impaled on the sensor aerials stocking out of the nose of the plane, and splattered blood across the camera, I retracted the camera and desperately fought the plane to keep it stable, throttles were full blast and now that the rest of the team was dead I retracted the booster and the tube, I desperately tried to go fast enough to keep stable, but the windspeeds were too high to even escape safely.
For what felt like an eternity I frantically whacked the controls around to keep even sort of stable, radio was down and I felt the plane getting torn apart.... Soon someting failed... The rudder vane was torn of first, only leaving jagged pieces of framehanging from the hinge, soon more failed, a sand filter was torn free, the engine sputtered and died in a cloud of black smoke, I engaged the emergency drive shaft and got both props spinning from one engine, soon enough elevarors and ailerons were torn off as well and the plane began losing altitude fast, i let go of the stick and toom my hooves from the pedals..... And I waited... I clicked on the radio and began talking to nopony... It would be recorded in the black box, so If it was ever found someone would know what became of me.
"mayday falcon three going down... Lost all form of control...and the otjer engine just died... If anyone finds this... Tell my family, gwen and anyone who survived this storm that I loved em like family... Tell gwen I love her...it was a good run... Falcon three signing off, I switched off the radio nd let the storm bounce me around like a toy... Despite my best efforts the three pegasi in the med bay had all flatlined... And I was alone... The altimeter kept falling.... The plane lost its relative balance and went into nose dive, the props still spun because of the wind, sparks flew fromm the rapidly deteriorating props and lit the fuel on fire, bright blue and green flames erupted from the wings, and the ground ever approached.... My life flashed briefly before me and I closed my eyes... I was dead either way, I pulled the eject lever and felt the gees hit me like a train, the canopy spiralled away and the plane fell... I was dragged into the winds and passed out from the gee forces ofbeing thrown around
"Guess this is it..."
CRASH!...... THUD
The plane hit the sand at almost four hundred Kph, crushing the cockpit and nose instantly, the remaining fuel exploded on impact and the remainder of the aircraft was bent and mangled even more by the ferocious storm. The ejected seat was dragged by its parachute farter into the storm, and was bounced around for several minutes before finally coming to rest in the sand below.
Author's Note
This chapter was where the story was originally going to end... But I thought it was a bit short so I'm working on another arc to give this story a little more bulk.