From deep within the bowels of the Tyrant, Chief Engineer Twilight Velvet glazed nonchalantly outside one of the battlecruiser’s portholes. A five-layer thick composite of steel, carbon fibre, and clay separated her and the air-conditioned, pressurized interior from the frigid winter air outside. One of the Tyrant’s huge five-bladed propellers spun madly outside, pushing the cold air out behind the engine gondola and into the airship’s massive main drive propeller. Small bursts of steam flew out into the sea of clouds. Velvet could barely tell the difference.

The moon was out; nighttime reigned. In the distance, caught between the spinning propeller, was the city of Fillydelphia, with its signature clock tower jutting into the sky. The light of millions of kerosine lamps just barely illuminated the bulky, ovoid shapes of cargo freighters circling over the aerodrome. Their rigid cloth bodies stood in direct comparison to the Tyrant’s hardened metal armor, and their smooth, shiny frames were nothing compared to the endless array of bruiser cannons, flak guns, and rocket tubes that lined the battlecruiser’s hull. Some of the stronger corporations could perhaps afford full-metal, aerogel airships, but the rest of society had to deal with the hydrogen- and helium- filled dirigibles.

Velvet stared out at the city, rapidly disappearing into the mountains. Fillydelphia was a great place to have a shore leave, even if it was for just one week. Filled with museums, amusement parks, and glorious markets, the second trading capital of the world was tied behind Manehatten for the most clogged-up skies. It had taken the Tyrant, a military vessel, four hours to even leave her berth, and two more to get past the city outskirts. And, even as Chief Engineer, Velvet did not want to stay any longer inside her tiny cabin than she had to.

No, it wasn’t that she didn’t like the ship, far from that. It’s that the only reason why her husband was working a desk job was that they couldn’t fit a queen bed inside her cabin. Maybe it was the mountain of paperwork that was still in there. Maybe it was all the dried-up quills. Maybe it was just some bureaucrat being a troll. The military ended up giving Night Light a promotion to Chief Logistics Officer and permanently stationing him in some backwater town to the west of Canterlot. At least the house they received was bigger than they expected. Hell, it was probably bigger than the crew quarters on board the Tyrant.

Velvet strained her eyes a bit and tried to look past the Tyrant’s portside maneuver propeller, but the bright sprawl of Fillydelphia blotted out all traces of light from the countryside. Sometimes, if they were west of Canterlot, she could see the glimmering lights of farmhouses below. Each time, she prayed that they were Ponyville, even if they weren’t.

At least, if there was a military vessel flying overhead, the corporations wouldn’t try and invade.

Corporations. This was why Velvet was sitting behind a window, staring at a city she’d never understand. Corpo-bucking-rations.

Corporate raids were happening all the time now. It was never the actual corporation that did the raiding -they left it to the PMCs. But the terror was real. The corporations hate Celestia. Hate her guts right out the window. Their “representatives” in the Princess’s cabinet pushed for a Parliament, which Celestia was going to rebuke. The day she did so, a massive corporate raid overwhelmed primary defenses in Cloudsdale, not twenty miles away from Canterlot. And it wasn’t just Cloudsdale - company vessels razed more than a hundred towns in the surrounding area. Ponyville wasn’t within their active operating area, but Velvet was scared regardless.

The corporations wouldn’t dare attack Canterlot - even they didn’t have that strong of a military force. But if Fillydelphia was attacked... if Manehatten... then Ponyville, Night Light, and her dear son would all be thrown into the maw of corporate greed. And, even if she was Chief Engineer, the captain would never let her assume command of the vessel just to save a faceless logistics officer and a five-year-old colt.

Just last week, corporate soldiers had attacked Fillydelphia’s I/C hub. Killed everything. Left mana-scorched and leadened bodies everywhere. And when they had to land... even the military weren’t being let out of the security checkpoints.

All throughout their shore leave, there were police everywhere. They always had their weapons ready. So much as a glance in their direction would arouse suspicion. It was even worse at night, when, despite the enormous amount of nighttime traffic, the police would stop every car, poke around every trunk, question every filly, and keep the skies filled with searchlights attached to heavy flak cannons.

The sky suddenly grew dark. Somepony, probably the only pony at the controls was pulling the Tyrant up through the cloud layer to cruising altitude. The hard metal floor below her didn’t move, nor did her stomach. Her ears barely felt a thing. Military vessels like the Tyrant had the pleasure of having an environmental pressure control circuit installed. The PCC was a luxury that even the finest passenger cruisers could not obtain, and one of the many reasons why the corporations had not yet attacked Canterlot. With the PCC, a military vessel could execute any number of highly dangerous, reckless, and epic maneuvers without their crew so much as batting an eye. Of course, they wouldn’t take too kindly to their cabins being turned inside out by a barrel roll, but the PCC guarantees that the only injuries they’ll be receiving is the bruises they get from being slammed into the walls.

Just one of the benefits of the advent of arcanotechnology.

Some time ago, the world changed. The world changed because one pony discovered that magic could be sued for more practical things than turning back time, or switching destinies. That pony devised a spell that could allow for the storage of a vast amount of arcane energy within a compact form; a battery, if you will. Although her first attempts were unstable, and exploded mere minutes after their creation, the pony eventually found a way to stabilize them - the magically conductive flight bladders of Sky Gods, massive, gentle beasts that roamed Equestria’s stratosphere. Pegasi flight bladders failed at such high altitudes, but vehicles could still function despite their operators’ ailment. The flight bladder that she obtained was from a crashed Sky God, a chance find that has not happened since. Using her magical battery, she tapped into the world of arcanotechnology - for it was discovered that her battery radiated large amounts of plasmatic heat into the surrounding environment.

Indeed, inside the grimy bowels of the Tyrant, there are exactly four arcanotechnologic boilers maintaining a massive shipwide network of pressurized pipes containing magically energized steam. These steam pipes power everything from the complex automated reloading systems on the guns to the coffee machine in the officer’s mess. But it isn’t just mechanical - magical energy within the steam also powers the Tyrant’s sensors, a cluster of strange machines that magically detected the locations of other ships - something that used to require four separate arcane adepts to even poorly replicate. It powers the lights and the doors, the switches and the control panels, the weapons and the engines and the heating elements in the aerogel-filled flotation bladders that keep the ship in the air. And all this machinery and technology, down to the arcano-batteries, boilers, and corrosion-free pipelines, is manufactured by the corpo-bucking-rations.

The hooing of a Sky God thundered in the distance. Once a proud and graceful race, now farmed as a herd animal by metal monstrosities. Rarely, a wild herd will fly past, but if they’re smart they’d flee as fast as they could.

Velvet stared outside the portside window as the Tyrant broke through the clouds, with two hundred sleeping ponies on board, and diverted all its power to the engines.

There they were. Two massive wing-shaped creatures soaring in the distance. Their spirally eyes reminded Velvet of the little hurricane symbol the news reporters would mark corporate fleets on their paper maps. They were right. It was a storm.

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