It had been kind of an up and down day.
Coloratura had attended the Helping Hooves music festival in Ponyville. Charity events were always good. She enjoyed meeting the schoolkids. It always reminded her of her own upbringing when singing was simple.
Speaking of her upbringing, she'd reunited with an old friend, Applejack. Realizing her childhood companion was now one of the Elements of Harmony and watching her work to bring goodness and justice to the world, Coloratura couldn't help but feel that her pop music stardom was just a little...frivolous.
It wasn't that she didn't enjoy singing, but she could see how the trappings of her image came off as a little high-falutin', as Applejack put it. Not only that, but the nerve of ponies like her manager taking advantage of her for their own gain. Or others who thought she was somehow stupid or a tramp or some other unkind thing because of how she looked and her fame.
So, Coloratura shed her makeup and performed her last show without synthesizers or lasers or anything besides her voice and her talent.
Also, she fired her dirtbag manager, as one does.
She knew her ad-hoc, simplistic performance had raised a lot of eyebrows. She wasn't sure if she could go back to her usual style. She wasn't sure if she could keep her newfound one.
Hanging out at Applejack's place for a few days kept her away from the tabloids. It was nice, getting away from it all. But doing nothing on a farm in the middle of nowhere wasn't permanent. It was a vacation, and Coloratura knew she would eventually have to go back to doing something.
That was when she met him.
Applejack supplied apples and apple accessories to many ponies. One of them was Soarin'. Coloratura's own fame had altered her perceptions of celebrities. She found it much easier to just talk to them since there was less ohmygosh and more I liked your show! Me too! Say, what do you think about the weather?.
Soarin' was friendly enough and made chitchat with her while waiting on a pie. "I heard you performed at the festival here."
"That's right. I was thinking about taking a break, though."
"Oh? And do what?" he asked.
Coloratura shrugged. "I haven't figured that out yet. I was maybe hoping for something a little different. I think I kind of lost myself these past few years. I can't even figure out what I want to do anymore."
Soarin' chuckled. "I went through a little of that when I was younger. Well, I wasn't an internationally best-selling pop star, but kind of know the feeling."
"What did you do?" she asked.
"I joined the Air Force."
So, Coloratura got a haircut and enlisted in the military, as one does.
That was almost two years ago now. The celebrity rags had finally gotten over their can't even and let the story die. It helped that she wasn't in a high profile assignment.
Coloratura looked down at the wide ocean below. She checked her safety harness and let her hooves dangle off the tailgate of the C-130 as it churned across the sky west of Equestria.
The noise and the wind precluded anyone from hearing her, so she was free to sing whatever she wanted. Some old songs, some new, some favorites, some improv.
"Stand by, ready for pickup."
The voice in her headset got her attention. Coloratura got up, still jiving to the beat in her head. A couple of the others in the back of the plane seemed to get a kick out of it. They knew who she was, of course, but it had become routine. They'd all trained long hours for this moment.
"Winch operators, lower your poles."
Two rods, each thirty four feet long, were pushed backwards from the cargo bay. They slid to their stops in swivels mounted near the tailgate. At the end of each pole were high-strength straps fitted with metal hooks. The swivels pushed downwards, powered by hydraulics, until the poles and their hooks trailed below the aircraft as it flew.
The squadron had a complicated, yet extremely sensitive and important mission. The government operated satellites in outer space under a program codenamed Corona. They were capable of taking pictures of foreign countries as they orbited the planet. The pictures allowed Equestrian intelligence agencies to see places where ponies couldn't normally go. Such sensitive reconnaissance kept Equestria a step ahead of their rivals.
The problem was, the technology didn't yet exist to beam images back from space. Coloratura wasn't quite sure why that was. However, it wasn't her job to know. It was her job to collect film canisters as they were ejected from satellites and fell to the earth below.
Hence the need for a plane with special equipment.
"Parachute deployment now!"
The falling capsule contained a beacon, which the navigator's equipment could detect. Coloratura felt the plane adjust course, aiming for the reentering target.
She bent down to the winch and checked it, also the grabber on the end of the cable. The plane wove back and forth, taking bearings on the beacon.
"Visual sighting!"
Somepony up front had seen the parachute.
"Winch operators, ten second warning."
Coloratura got ready.
With a whoosh, the orange and white parachute swept by below the plane and tangled in the hooks, just as planned.
"Snagged!" Coloratura announced into her headset, hitting the winch control. The parachute had collapsed, but twisted in the wind behind the plane. It slowly dragged closer as the winch reeled in.
Coloratura watched a couple of the handlers at the edge of the tailgate grab the lines as they entered the plane. The film canister was the size and shape of a bucket. It was hard to believe she was actually looking at something that had come from a satellite, but anything could become mundane if one did it long enough.
She was already planning her next career move, as one does.
