Jan Aeronautics Association

Factory #007

Manehatten, Equestria

31/05/100

For the eightieth time today, Apple Buck pressed the button that would fire up the airship's boosters.

A cup of bitter coffee lay at the control panel. Various buttons and levers riddled the surface, covered with rust and marked with peeling labels. Multicolored wires spilled out the back, leading to a metal apparatus that lay bolted to the floor. A picture of his wife and two kids sat upright next to the coffee.

The clock's minute hand was nearly upright; Apple Buck's shift was nearly over. All that was left was to press this button, sign off this airship, and go to bucking bed.

Apple Buck was a quality control technician in a factory. One of a million. It was his and many others' job to test the completed airships once they had finished construction. This wasn't just fiddling with buttons, though. The main drive propellers on the JA-3's rear end required manual starting. Maybe that was why the entirety of the QCTs were either extremely fit earth ponies or powerful unicorns. The main drive propeller was, after all, two and a half times Apple Buck's height, and three times his weight. He'd always wondered how the beasts were able to get off the ground. Unfortunately for him, flying would never become a reality. He'd never pass the flight school entrance exam.

Not that it mattered. He had two kids and an old mother to support. Ever since his wife's death, the farm hadn't been what it used to. Sure, his son was fit enough to do most of the heavy lifting. Sure, his daughter was an expert wrangler. Sure, even his mother could make the best zap apple jam in the entirety of Equestria. But without bits, all of that meant nothing. So, with nothing but a tux in his bag, Apple Buck left the farm to look for work. Fourteen times he was turned down. Kelliah, Farthing, Minnowhoof, all the big airship companies rejected his offer. Fourteen times he left the recruitment building sad, but fifteen times he saw a new ad in the paper and ran to get airship tickets. It was after the fourteenth time that a representative from Jan had stopped the big stallion on the sidewalk and offered him a job.

It was a simple process, really. The operator would first check the steam network, get a few pressure readings and telemetric prints, then start the four maneuvering engines. If all went well, he would then jump on the two-story-tall vessel, run to the back, and spin the blades of the drive propeller until they were just a blurry black disk.

In his first month working for JAA, he made more money than a year's worth of zap apple jam would ever make. The day he got it, he sent all that money back to Granny Smith and Big Mac and his beloved daughter, Applejack. It arrived covered in soot and sweat.

His fifth anniversary of the daily grind was tomorrow, and the boss had promised him his bonus. One thousand bits. One thousand bits. Enough to buy a small airship, or at least a first-class suite in one. Apple Buck had already promised to take his kids to Cervidius, land of the deer. Tomorrow, he would get his money, and...

Nothing.

The room was usually filled to the brim with the ear-shattering noise of a Cormorant’s four powerful maneuvering engines by now. Instead, there was nothing.

Apple Buck looked back at his control station, but the Warming Tree was all green. No red light in sight. Everything was working fine, yet nothing was working. He squinted at it harder. The machine hated him equally back.

Eventually, Apple Buck slammed his hoof down on the abort button. Only, the tree still stayed on. The lights were supposed to be red. And yet, they were still green. Still the same green as the granny smiths that grew in the northeast orchard.

A loud siren erupted over the hangar bay. One of the many connection pipes that attached the airship to the monitoring clamp burst open, letting a cloud of bright-pink smoke pour out. Flurries of magic and mana flickered within the cloud. Apple Buck instinctively covered his face - unless you were a unicorn, breathing in the magically amplified steam was nothing short of a deathwish.

WARNING, WARNING, NETWORK OVERPRESSURIZATION DETECTED.

A cold, ethereal voice began blaring through the speakers mounted on the walls. Immediately, a team of hazmat-suited unicorns burst through the door behind Apple Buck, rubber-coated hooves racing towards the flopping beast. Now fully released from its shackles, the rogue airship began filling the hangar with steam, pink clouds flying everywhere. Even with their enchanted ropes and magnetic grappling hooks, the control team could barely even lasso the Cormorant as it began swimming towards the corrugated hangar door.

With a blast of pink smoke and yellow sparks, the airship broke free of its cell and glided out onto the tarmac. Unicorns ran, flew, and screamed after it, attached to their prey via their magical lassos. Yet even the best weight spells could do nothing to stop it as it ripped free from the fuel line, its last ungodly restraint, and began climbing towards the sky.

Surrounded by toxic pink smoke, Apple Buck could only watch as the airship rose up into the air through its maneuver propellers alone, flipped onto its belly, and proceeded to loop-de-loop and slam straight into the concrete hangar roof.

Soon, the entirety of the tarmac was covered in pink smoke as a horde of suited ponies chased after the obviously insane ship. As if it had a mind of its own, the Cormorant swung its hardened metal sides into the workers which enough force to bring down a building. Even if the suits were doubly padded and armor-enchanted, the workers still found themselves getting thrown back by the dying whale’s sheer force. Fortunately, the main drive propeller wasn’t active, or there would be a lot more blood mixing in with the pink clouds.

Buckie himself was in the midst of the the chaos, a magic rope in his hooves and a respirator around his mouth. The airship had just taken out half of the team around him, and Buckie was the only one who had thought to duck. His rope was just one of ten which still managed to hold onto the airship’s welded metal sides. Wrapped tightly around one of the four side-mounted guns, Buckie was almost dragging the ship instead of the ship dragging him. Sure, he was missing a bit of fur around his rear end, but at least he wasn’t being thrown to pieces unlike the unlucky unicorns lying limp around him.

An autogyro bearing police branding was hovering above the scene. Pegasi officers and patrolponies were already approaching the construction site. Some had already begun to fire their grappling hooks. But even the best marksmen failed to land their shots as the wild airship ducked to and fro on the asphalt.

In an instant, Bukie could fly. The last unicorn let go of his rope, and soon it was just the apple red stallion who was still attached to the Cormorant. Pink smoke and soot was pouring out of multiple hull breaches, all serving to give the airship enough momentum to go flying through the control tower and just barely grazing a police autogyro.

A familiar roaring sound filled Buckie’s ears. The main drive propeller was somehow beginning to spin. Considering the conditions, it wouldn’t be too difficult to imagine that a pipe or two had burst, letting the magically energized steam flood the rear engine and give it life. Indeed, the booster vents that shot high-pressure steam out the back were beginning to flap uncontrollably, letting out the evil mist.

Apple Buck immediately began climbing up the rope, almost losing his tail to a passing lamppost. The airship, almost as if it sensed his approach, dove towards the ground. A new hull breach had opened near the command bridge.

Just before it hit the ground, a second breach erupted straight through the keel, sending the airship, but not Buckie, soaring into the air. Despite his rock-solid earth pony frame, Apple Buck slammed hard against the asphalt, cracking his mask and shattering a few ribs. Instantly, the ground rejected him, and he was thrown upwards along with the ship.

He saw the glint of a rocket launcher in one of the autogyros out of the corner of his eye before resuming his climb towards the deck. Tangled up in the drive propeller, the rope was the only thing keeping the massive steel blades from claiming one of his limbs. Quickly, Buckie slipped past the death trap, trying his best to ignore the horrendous g-forces that threatened to snap every bone in his body.

As soon as the red stallion saw the steel deck of the airship below him, the rope went slack, and Apple Buck felt the command bridge warmly embrace him in an explosion of tiny glass specks.

The bridge was filled with steam, but at least the Corm was briskly floating now instead of trying to kill everything within five miles. It was slightly banking to the left, and even that was beginning to slow. The network pressure gauge on the pilot’s dashboard was barely even there.

Apple buck grabbed the control column and, following whatever flying instinct he had, pulled up. Instantly, the giant metal beast responded, slightly tilting up the nose and turning the maneuver engines upwards. Despite the pressure losses, hull damage, and complete lack of flying experience, Apple Buck managed to heavily land the metal piece of Swiss cheese onto the now ruined tarmac of JAA Factory #007.

Even as the police carefully dragged the limp stallion out of the steam-filled cockpit, Apple Buck felt the magically-energized steam burning away at the membrane of his lungs, setting them on fire in the most painful way. A medivac gyro was already there by the time the energy batteries were removed from the boilers, and the ship emptied of water.

“Okay, why don’t you start off by telling me what happened.”

“There was an... incident at Factory Seven. One of the airships was overpressurized with steam and crashed into a... few things.”

“Few? Then how do you explain the six million bit repair bill? Or the hospital fees that we are liable to pay?”

“Its just a freighter, sir. One of a million. This incident and the bills could disappear in less than a sec-”

“Sir, I-”

“No, Barney, there are reasons why this company is at the very least, successful.”

“Sir, being truthful is the least profitable way to an early demise-”

“So what? Cheaters never prosper, Barney. Cheaters never bucking prosper. My dad lost a poker game to a cheat and, a week later, won his first airship off the same guy. Started JAA four months after that.”

“Sir, with all due respect-”

“No. We will clean this up ourselves. See to it that it’s done.”

“Yes sir. But what about the ship?”

“The ship?”

"Yes sir. If we just get rid of it that's nine hundred thousand bits worth of machinery and materials going down the drain."

“Patch it up and sell it. Just not to the buyers. Sell it to a second-hand store.”

"Yes sir. At once."

“Rogues like this don’t happen very often. You’d better make sure its a good second-hand store, Barney. She’s one in a million.” Next Chapter: Two - I Am Become Estimated time remaining: 16 Minutes