The sun goes down, the silent growth of another sea, which the stormy ocean of the wind cannot disturb - the sea of darkness. It begins to gather in the bottom of hollow places. Deep valleys, and pits on the hillsides, are wellsprings where it gathers, and whence it seems to overflow, till it buries the earth beneath its mass. It sweeps over the mountain, gradually submerging the colossal mass. It rises up to the heavens and into the stars, and lets them shine down through the waters of the dark, to the eyes of all below. High on the mountainside, in the exact centre of an immense ruin, a small pool of light remains, emanating from a large bonfire, and illuminating the excavation site before it. A team of strange, spider-like mechanical robots dig relentlessly, gears spinning and emitting steam at random intervals, as they delve deeper into the ground. Two ponies stand at the edge of the pit, one a unicorn, the other an earth-pony. Both wear cloaks, with the hoods pulled up, hiding their faces in shadow. They watch silently as the automatons scrape away at the dirt. Suddenly, the discordant clang of metal striking metal is heard. Upon striking the object, the robots freeze. “They’ve found it! I told you my calculations were correct Dr Blade! It’s right where I said it would be!” the earth-pony shouts excitedly. The unicorn whips round to face his companion. “Silence! If we are discovered, the plan will fail even before it can begin!” He hisses angrily. His companion cringes at his master’s words. The unicorn glares furiously at his lackey for a few seconds, and then turns back towards the pit. “Bring it up”. He orders. The strange machines obey his command without hesitation, grabbing the artefact and dragging it up and out of the pit.

The device seems to glow slightly, and gears, cogs and wheels can be seen spinning madly within its protective casing.
“Interesting… Very interesting.” Blade muses. “Even after all this time buried in the ground, it continues to function normally.” He quickly locks the device onto the back of one of the automatons. This done, he whips around to face his companion for a second time, and declares crisply “Now, It appears that I have no further use for you…you have suddenly become a liability.” He raises a hoof, revealing a large, pistol-like device attached to the inside of his foreleg, and points it squarely at his minion. The earth-pony takes a step backward in surprise. The pistol cracks once, and the earth-pony falls, face-first into the ground, blood pouring from a gaping wound in his chest, his eyes wide-open, and his face a frozen mask of horror. Blade turns, and leaves the earth-pony lying in a rapidly widening pool of his own blood. The robots follow him as he climbs into a waiting airship. The engine roars into life, the mechanical spiders climb on-board, and the airship ascends into the clouds, driven by the whirling propeller. It sails away into the night, as a low rumble of thunder announces the approach of a distant storm.

Rainbow Dash came swooping down out of the sun like a suicidal angel, all rage and mirth. The rotor of her autogyro whined and snarled with the speed of her dive. Then she throttled up and the blades bit deep into the air and pulled her out, barely forty feet from the ground. Laughing, she lifted the nose of her bird to skim the top of one skywalk, banked left to dip under a second, and then right to zoom over a third. Her machine shuddered and rattled as she bounced it off the compression effects of the air around the skyscrapers to steal that tiny morsel of extra lift, breaking every rule in the book and not giving a damn. Pegasi made excellent pilots, due to the fact that they had a natural tolerance for the G-forces involved in powered flight. Sitting upright in the centre of her flying machine, she let the inertia push her back into the seat. Eight-foot-long titanium blades extended in a circle, with her at the centre like the heart of a flower. This was no easy machine to fly. It combined the difficulty of flight with the physical demands of operating a mechanical thresher. It took all her strength to bully her machine into position while the g-forces tried to shove her away from the controls. She was flying straight and true toward factory alley, a street that was only feet wider than the diameter of her autogyro’s blades, due to the size and location of the massive chimneys that blew thick, black smoke all hours of the day. The margin of error for a pilot flying between the chimneys was so small that one wayward twitch could result in a painful and sudden death as the aircraft collided with one of the chimneys. With her autogyro tilted forty-five degrees, she roared down the alley, her prop wash rattling the windows and filling them with astonished faces. At the intersection, she shifted pitch and kicked rudder, flipping her gyro over so that it rolled over forty-five degrees the other way. The engine coughed and very nearly stalled, then it roared back to life again as she zoomed upwards and into the sky. She laughed out loud as she realised what she’d just done. Five months ago, a committee of the best flyers in the Metropolis had declared that such a manoeuvre couldn’t possibly be done. She’d just proved them all wrong. Dash grinned with triumphant satisfaction. She started suddenly as her radio squawked and crackled into life as she was pinged by tower control.

“Rainbow Dash. Your flight authorisation has been cancelled. Return to HQ.”

Reflexively, she jerked the throttle back, leveling out. “What?!”

“Repeat: Return to Ops. Await further orders.”

“Aw hell. I hear you control. Dash out.” She sighed inwardly as she whipped the machine around and headed back the way she had come, although at a much higher altitude and a slower pace than she’d originally planned...

Rainbow Dash banked her tiny craft and turned it toward the huge Operations Zeppelin, the Imperator. The Zeppelin thrust out its landing pad and she swooped deftly onto the platform, which then retracted into the gondola of the airship. Orange Flourish, her earth-pony engineer, trotted over to the machine as she climbed from the cockpit and dropped lightly onto the steel platform, stretching her wings, and pulling off her flight goggles. Orange had never really liked his name, and only a few of his closest friends, dash included, knew his real name. To everyone else, he was simply known as “Greaser”, mostly due to the fact that he couldn’t manage to work on a machine without getting totally covered in oil stains.

“You’re on orders to report to the flight briefing room. Somethin’ serious is going on I reckon.” Orange had to shout to be heard over the noise of the aero engines, the clanking and grinding of gears, and the sound of mechanics at work.

Dash blinked in surprise. “Huh…what do you think is going on exactly?” She said.

Orange shrugged, and replied simply: “I have no idea. Maybe we’re moving out, I don’t know. All I know is all private craft have been grounded for the time being. Looks like you’ll be flying the F.E for now. I already got her re-fuelled, re-armed and ready to go… Anyway, you’d better get moving, you’re already…” Orange paused to flip open his pocket watch. He looked at it for a second or two, and then continued. “…Oooh…let’s see now…2 minutes late. Guess you aren’t as fast as you say you are huh?” He chuckled as he turned his attention to the autogyro.

Dash rolled her eyes at this, but she didn’t say anything. If it had come from anyone else, it would have been a serious insult. But you had to let the mechanics make jokes at your expense, because without them, you’d never get off the ground. She turned and cantered off into the ship. She’d have preferred to use her wings of course, but the corridors weren’t high enough to fly in. Maybe she could have tried it, but she didn’t fancy colliding with one of the many steel pipes that protruded from the ceiling. They looked pretty solid, and she reasoned that her skull would crack before the pipe did. She thought about what Orange had said; “Looks like you’ll be flying the F.E for now”. The F.E2b wasn’t a difficult machine to fly; but she much preferred her own autogyro. She’d bought the rusted old machine at a rock-bottom price, and, over the years, she’d modified and improved the machine until it felt like a part of her.

The flight briefing room was located amidships. High ceilinged and bare-walled, the briefing room was circular, save for one wall directly in front of the benches, which was flat. The benches were set out in a semi-circle, and each row was positioned slightly higher than the last, giving the impression of an auditorium or a lecture theatre. It was already fairly crowded when she arrived, and she hastily found a seat on the very top tier of benches. The majority of pilots were Pegasi, but she’d spotted the odd Gryphon or two mixed in amongst the crowd. The room buzzed with the conversations of excited and curious pilots, and Dash couldn’t help but wonder why they’d all been called here. She didn’t have to wait long to find out, as a small group of senior officers suddenly trotted in through the door, and arranged themselves in the centre of the briefing room. And, mixed in with the officious military types, and looking very out-of-place, she saw a very studious-looking elderly unicorn. She recognised him immediately: It was Professor Emerald Snow, who was widely recognised as being the best scientist in Metropolis; and perhaps even all of Equestria. She didn’t recognise the young, purple-maned unicorn standing behind him, and slightly to the right. She turned her attention back to the centre of the room, as a green Pegasus, whom they all knew as Captain Thunder; the commander of the Imperator, stepped up onto the podium in the exact centre of the room, and began to speak.

“Good evening. You are probably all wondering why I called this briefing, so I’ll make it as simple as possible. As you all probably know, sky-pirate activity has been fairly minor for the past year. But that’s changed. We’ve been getting reports of a huge pirate fleet that’s suddenly appeared in the northern reaches. They’ve set up shop right in the middle of the North-east-to-North-west trading lane, and they’re raiding any ship that comes through. And they haven’t stopped there. They’ve been raiding sky-ports, attacking some of the smaller ground-based settlements, and causing a whole host of other problems. We’re pretty sure that it’s one pony that’s organising the whole thing, pulling all the strings and such. Obviously, the Trading league is more than a little upset about this whole situation, so they’ve naturally been blaming the council, and they’re demanding that they do something about it. So, as of tomorrow, the entire fleet will be moving out and heading up to the Northern reaches. Our sister ship, “The Titan” is all ready out there, and she’s probably blasting pirates as I speak. We’re going to put a stop to the actions of these pirate scum. Now, on a brighter note, the esteemed Professor Emerald Snow will be joining us on this venture. I’m afraid that I’m not at liberty to tell you why, but it’s important that you behave politely, and that you do your best to make sure that he and his assistant feel welcome. You may now return to your posts and begin preparing for tomorrow. That is all.”

(To enhance the reading expierience, I have added some music to this chapter. Open a new browser window, and enter this into the web adress bar: http://www.youtuberepeater.com/watch?v=gqJ0Fch3UCQ&name=Steampunk+Music+Jon+Magnificent+Hooks+Theme. The song will repeat untill you shut it off.)

One of the most powerful and dangerous classes of airship in Equestria, the Dauntless Class Missile Cruiser is only outsized by the brand new Carrier and a few individual vessels such as the Celestial, the official flagship of the entire Equestrian navy. The pinnacle of line-o-battle warship technology, the Dauntless lies on the verge of a naval revolution. While it keeps its main armament in its 8 Triton missile launchers, its effective firepower is multiplied several times over by the addition of newer, larger guns in higher mobility mounts – 6 8'' cannons, 3 per side, are housed in armoured wide-angle casemates, and 6 14” guns are contained in an armoured gun turrets, two housed within the ship, one port and on starboard, and one up the aft decks. Powerful and accurate, these larger guns are capable of dealing devastating damage at long range, often before enemy ships can close within broadside range. Twin magic-enhanced steam engines give the airship a respectable top speed and make it capable of gaining altitude more quickly than any other large ship of its type. This is what the lookout of the pirate vessel, “Blood moon” saw through his telescope in the grey light of dawn, and his reaction was perfectly understandable in such a situation; He fell out of the observer’s nest in surprise. Luckily for this unfortunate sky-pirate, he tumbled backwards down through the hatch that he had climbed through a few hours before, and not over the rail of the nest, which would have probably resulted in him becoming a red smear on the ground many miles below. Instead, he fell down the ladder and landed painfully on the deck of the ship. The rest of the ship’s crew greeted this spectacle with raucous laughter. The lookout struggled to his feet and yelled at the top of his lungs. “Navy ship approaching! Dauntless class!”

The laughter stopped abruptly, as he pointed towards the naval vessel that was coming towards them from the south. For a few seconds, the entire ship was silent. Then the ship burst into life as the crew began to panic. The captain stared in the direction the lookout was pointing, and swallowed nervously. He’d been assured that there weren’t any naval ships in the area. But now he was looking at one of the most dangerous vessels the Equestrian navy could field, and it was coming straight for his hopelessly outclassed ship. “Throw anything we don’t need overboard! We need to loose weight, and fast!” He shouted, as he turned the wheel in a full circle. The ship banked to the right as the ship span around, and attempted to flee from the oncoming vessel. Barrels, chairs, tables and crates were tossed over the side of the ship. The captain watched as the furniture tumbled through the air, down towards the ground below. He knew it wouldn’t make any difference. The naval vessel was much, much faster than his ship, and it was only a matter of time before it came into range. He didn’t have long to wait. He heard a dull thud as the immense cannons of the naval ship came into range, and the shrill whine of the shell as it hurtled towards him. It missed the pirate vessel by several meters, but he knew it wouldn’t take long until the gunners found their mark. He inhaled, closed his eyes and prepared to give the order to abandon ship, but a hoof that had suddenly been shoved into his mouth stopped him. He stared at the pony that had silenced him. It was their mysterious guest, the one in the long, black cloak.

“Shush… I have a better idea. This is a perfect time to demonstrate the power of my new device…” the mysterious unicorn hissed. The captain stared at him, and then nodded slightly. The hoof was removed from his mouth. “Now…stop the ship.” The cloaked unicorn said simply.

The captain stared at his guest. “Are you mad! We’ll be a sitting duck!” he shouted.

“I think not…” The unicorn replied. “I won’t ask again. Stop the ship. Now.”

The captain reluctantly obliged, pulling the lever that deployed the air-breaks. The ship slowly glided to a stop. The cloaked unicorn trotted over to the stern of the ship, and placed the device he had been carrying on his back onto the deck of the ship. The device seemed to glow slightly, as the unicorn positioned it to face the oncoming vessel. He pushed a series of buttons with his hoof, and then looked up expectantly. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then the clouds above the huge naval ship seemed to glow, and a beam of light suddenly shot down out of the clouds. It smashed through the exact centre of the enemy ship, as a huge shockwave rocked the pirate vessel. Everyone onboard was thrown to the floor, and the captain stared as the naval vessel, blasted clean in two, plummeted towards the ground, engulfed in flames. He struggled to his feet and stared at the terrifying spectacle. Eventualy, he broke his gaze away from the obliterated ship, and turned to look at the unicorn that had fired the device. The unicorn stared back at him, a victorious smirk upon his face. And the captain’s face soon broke into a grin as well. Nothing could stop them now.

Rainbow Dash crouched lower in the cockpit of the F.E, attempting to find some shelter from the bitterly cold wind. Constructed mainly of canvas and wood, the F.E2b had two sets of wings, one directly above the other, with two forward-firing machine guns, and a third, rear gun on a rotating mount. It was a highly manoeuvrable design, but it lacked the full armour of battle autogyros and other military fighter craft. Instead, it was only armoured in vital areas; it had segmented iron plating covering the engine block, and another section of iron plate directly behind the pilot’s seat. She recalled that it had been chosen because of the fact that it was not too difficult to fly, and that it could also be constructed and repaired in very little time.

Cruising along at 15,000 feet, Dash glanced back at her new observer. The Orange-coloured, blonde-maned earth pony had flatly refused to remove the battered-looking Stetson from her head when they were launched from the carrier zeppelin, and dash was amazed that the hat hadn’t already been blown off. This was practically all she knew about the new recruit, apart from her name: Applejack.

Rainbow Dash, looking over the side of the cockpit, could see mile after mile of rolling white clouds, like great masses of cotton wool, stretching away into the infinite distance. Looking up again, she saw that she had slipped a little out of formation, away from the patrol. She sideslipped the aircraft back into position, and looked at the 6 other machines. Whilst the rest of the aircraft were coloured a light brown, the lead machine had was painted a bright yellow, signifying it as the aircraft of Captain Flame Spectre. The female Pegasus was well known for being an excellent pilot, and she had a seething hatred for sky-pirates to boot, ever since her parents had been killed in a sky-pirate raid in the far north 20 years ago. The tale was that she’d personally hunted down the pirates responsible and hanged them. With their own innards. She was well known for taking on any pirate craft she met, no matter how much the odds were stacked against her. So far, she’d managed to remain unscathed, but everyone knew that her luck couldn’t hold out much longer.

For some time they flew on, round the mountainous clouds that seemed to go up and up into infinity. After 20 minutes or so, Dash noticed the Flame Spectre was leading the patrol to the very top of an immense cloud that stood directly in their path. As the lead aircraft reached the top of the cloud, the radio buzzed as the Captain hailed the rest of the flight.

(To enhance the reading expierience, I have added some music to this chapter. Open a new browser window, and enter this into the web adress bar: http://www.youtuberepeater.com/watch?v=ZG_i-Nl4yEo&name=Rayman+Origins+soundtrack+27+Mountain+World+Boss+Meca
The song will continue to play untill you shut it off.)

“Enemy aircraft spotted; looks like a bunch of pirate fighter craft, the usual outdated machines. Seems to be about 15-20 them; we’re going down there to teach them a lesson they won’t forget in a hurry. Spectre out.”

As the rest of the flight reached the top of the titanic cloud, Dash looked down over the side of the cockpit and gasped as she found herself looking down into a very large hole. Straight down for a sheer 8,000 feet the walls of the opaque mist dropped, forming a basin-like depression at the bottom, were a rag-tag selection of machines were making their way across the bottom of the immense crater in the clouds. Then the Captain’s machine began its dive, closely followed by the others. Down, down, down they went, the wind howling past the struts and wires of the aircraft like a thousand screaming demons. Dash stole a quick glance at Applejack, who was now stuffing the hat away under her seat; obviously, she didn’t want to lose it. Soon the patrol was in shooting range: Firing from a distance was a waste of ammo, so you had to get fairly close to your target to make sure you didn’t miss.

It was immediately clear that the pirates hadn’t seen them coming. They continued on their course until they heard the chattering of machine gun fire from above them, but then it was much too late. The lead machine, a rather decrepit looking tri-plane burst into flames and plummeted downwards as the bullets found their mark. A second machine gave a jerked upwards in a convulsive motion, as sure sign that the pilot had been hit. It zoomed upwards, turned slowly over onto its back, and span down through the floor of the cloud and out of sight. Dash pulled up out of the dive, and banked sharply, and re-entered the dogfight that had suddenly erupted in the crater-like depression of the cloud.

As she hurtled back into the fight, she heard the rear gun chattering incessantly. She looked around, and saw a small biplane that looked like it shouldn’t be physically able to fly come in directly behind her. Even as she watched, Applejack poured lead directly into the engine of the enemy air machine, which promptly exploded in a ball of flames. Dash marvelled at the calm deliberation of her gunner, watching as she threw the empty ammo drum out of the aircraft, and replaced it with another, her face set in a look of grim determination. Dash wondered if this wasn’t the first time the Orange earth-pony had seen combat.

The next minute seemed like an age to Rainbow Dash, as machine after machine plummeted downwards, some trailing smoke, others engulfed in flame. Several enemy aircraft fell to the rear and front guns of the F.E, but as soon as they did, another machine would come at her, guns blazing. Even though the patrol possessed the technological advantage, they were still heavily outnumbered. They were fighting a loosing battle. A black-winged-biplane screamed past her on its earthward descent, missing her by inches. The thought of a collision did not frighten Rainbow Dash. She felt only a strange elation, a burning desire to go on doing this indefinitely – to down the enemy machines before she was killed herself, as she knew that she would be in the end. There was no thought in her mind of retreat or escape.

Dash heard a sudden cry of pain from behind her. She turned around and saw that Applejack, her gunner, had been hit in the shoulder, leaving her unable to operate the machine gun. She sank down into her seat, but her look of pain and shock suddenly turned to a savage snarl, and she struggled back up and began firing again. However, her injury had severely damaged her ability to fire accurately, she could only make wild sweeps with the gun, instead of the carefully aimed bursts she had been trained to make. As Dash turned her attention to the scene in front of her, something struck the machine with a force that made it shudder violently. The compass shattered as a bullet struck it, and the liquid it contained spurted back into her face, half-blinding her for a few seconds. She wiped her face with a hoof, and turned around to see a surprisingly new looking biplane directly behind her, painted a blood-red colour. It let off a second burst, and her machine jerked as bullets smashed into it, severing several control lines. But before the red machine could finish the job, a bright yellow F.E zoomed down, heading straight for the Red aircraft. The enemy pilot saw the danger and tried to twist out of the way of the oncoming machine, but it was too late. The two machines collided with a sickening crunch, and then exploded in an immense fireball.

A feeling of nauseating helplessness swept over Rainbow Dash as she realised that her F.E wasn’t responding to the controls, and it began to fall out of the sky. She looked back at Applejack, who met her gaze and nodded slowly, and then braced herself as best she could. For a few sickening seconds, the machine was completely out of control, heading for the solid ground. Then Dash managed to force the F.E into a fairly level position. The plane thundered down towards an empty stretch of land, close to a huge forest. Dash switched off the ignition, and braced herself for the impact. There was a splintering, rendering crash as the plane collided with the ground. It flipped over onto its back, and the top wing shattered into pieces. The aircraft slid to stop. With her vision fading to black, Rainbow Dash was dimly aware of being dragged out and away from the wreck, before she finally passed out.