Things had mostly been 'as usual' for Dan Murphy, the head of the news department at FOX News. The elections were still on the boil, the President was at Camp David, in seclusion with several of his advisors. Senator Corddis was keeping a low profile over the last few days as well, making it hard to get anything decent to air. The 'Pony Plague', as some put it, was still current as more people were changing; and the arrival in U.S. airspace of an enormous golden-skinned airship full of the converted people had been big news for a few days now, after they'd stopped to lay a wreath at the Hindenberg memorial. That had been a very interesting side-story to the massive debate about the 'Ponies' and what to do about them.

Dan had several crews taking turns in watching the airship, which was named the Stellar Wind, of all things; the enormous air vessel was currently over Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg. One of his local crews had phoned in that they had been ordered to stay on the ground for a period of over two hours that morning, something that had made Dan very suspicious. Now he waited to see if any of his other contacts had any idea why this had occured...

Then his mobile rang.

As he picked it up, Dan noticed it was one of the freelancer teams he kept on retainer, usually for doing local pieces. "Yeah, what'cha got?" He asked in his somewhat-fake Manhatten accent.

"Dan, old son!" Came the reply from Fred Hays, a long-time Harrisburg resident. "Have I got something for you!"

"I hope so. You don't call me unless you do." Dan said back.

"Yeah. I'm standing a few klicks away from that big golden airship. You know someone grounded all the helos from its vicinity earlier?" Fred asked.

"Tell me you know why." Dan almost pleaded.

"It'll cost you." Fred told Dan. "Twice our usual, but I got photos and some video as well."

Dan sighed silently. Fred always thought about Money first, but he'd never let him down yet. "Okay, done. What happened?"

"Someone sure don't like those ponies. They tried to shoot that big thing out of the sky." Fred revealed to Dan

Dan was almost out of his seat. "You saw it? What happened?" He repeated himself.

"Sure did. Didn't see everything, but there were four big drones that came in from four sides and tried to take out the airship." Fred explained. "I'm e-mailing you the footage and the digital pics we got. The drones looked kinda familiar, but when one went over us while we were circling, I got a real funny feeling about it when I saw it." Fred told Dan. "Anyway, they came at the ship three times. We didn't see what they did first-up, but I can guess they were probably using cannons on the ship's skin. We did see them fire missiles at the ship the second time, but there were no impacts, no explosions. The clouds around the ship was making it hard to see what happened the first time, but the second time, we saw the drones go in really close before they fired. And what we saw..."

"Stop being dramatic, Fred. That's my job." Dan said as he brought up the e-mailed footage on his biggest screen.

Fred chuckled. "Okay. Well, we saw it from right behind one drone. As it reached close to the ship, a huge hole in space opened and the drone disappeared into it, and it and the hole vanished. I can't say if that happened to all four, but I can guess it probably did."

"Holy..." Dan said in a whisper as he watched the footage. "You're quite the distance away, aren't you?" He asked.

"Yeah. We were trying to get a really good shot of the ship as it hung over some buildings for the sheer scale of the things, and we didn't get our really good lenses in place in time to capture any real close-ups using video. But my son had his 50mm lens on his DSLR and caught some good close-in snaps of the drones. Maybe your lab boys can make something of them." Fred suggested.

Dan nodded. "Okay, you and your boys just earned their cash, Fred. And I'll send your son the usual fee as well." He told Fred as he skimmed through the photos. "Send them through in as high a resolution as you can, thanks."

"Sure thing." Fred replied. "A pleasure, as always." Fred concluded, and hung up.

Dan dumped the footage directly to the photo shop with very clear instructions, then called his resource co-ordinator. "Sarah, get the team together. We've got a really juicy one to thrill our viewers." Dan grinned to himself as he sat back and contemplated the broadcast that would be up-coming...

The staff in the White House swirled around, waiting for their boss to return. Only minutes after Marine One landed on the lawn, he strode in, all Business. "So, what's been going on while I've been busy?" He asked as he headed into the Oval Office.

"We've got a situation, Mr President." One of his National Security advisors replied. "You know that massive airship that's been steadily cruising across the eastern states?"

"The one that's full of Ponies?" He asked.

The advisor nodded. "We've been keeping an eye on it, as requested. This morning at Seven AM, it was attacked... we think."

The President stopped and looked at the Advisor. "You think?" He asked as they then headed into the Oval Office.

"The surveillance crew we were hiding amongst the airborne news crews were ordered to stay on the ground ten minutes before the attack, when they landed to refuel at Harrisburg's Central City airport." He explained. "The ground crews following it saw it approached by four small drone aircraft that they identified tentatively as Predator Combat drones. They were seen to commit several attack runs on the airship, using what we presume were gun pods and missiles, but somehow the airship not only came through unscathed, the missiles and the drones themselves vanished in mid-air before getting close to the airship." He showed the President footage of the attack runs. "As you can see, the drones committed three runs, and on the final run, as you can see here, we tracked one of them as it reached as close as half-a-kilometre from the airship... then it vanished." He waited as the President watched the slowed-time video.

"That's... incredible." He said softly. "Did anyone else get this?"

"Not to our knowledge." The Advisor answered. "We were the only 'official' news-crew on the ground for several kilometres; the news channels have been relying too much on their helos to bother much about ground crews. Plus, since our surveillance cameras are several magnitudes more sensitive than the ones they use, anyway, it's highly unlikely anyone else there got as good a footage of the incident as we do, regardless of the dozens of groups following the airship on the ground." He explained further. "We were lucky to be almost underneath the airship when this happened. As you can see, the camera operators were strapped down in the back of a pick-up with full steady-cam rigs, so we got very clear images as they followed the airship along. The crew also reported there was no falling debris at all. Whatever they did to the missiles and drones, it left no traces behind, not even bullets."

The President frowned as he thought. "Do we know who sent them?" He asked.

"We've inquired. Observers around Langley said four drones took off yesterday morning close to Five, but they lost sight of them as they headed north. It is possible they could have been the ones, but the only information we have obtained since then is that they crashed over three hundred kilometres from the New Jersey coast. The footage of those doing the attack shows they have no markings whatsoever, but we managed to identify the missiles they were using. They looked similar to the usual Hellfire missiles, but after we reviewed the footage, they looked closer to the PRZ-012 anti-helicopter missiles used by the Russian Kamov-50 and 52." The advisor answered. "We're also working to get radar confirmation on both sets of drones' travel routes, but the type we saw earlier today seem to be covered in RAM, rendering them almost invisible to civilian radar. So far, we have no further results."

The president nodded. "Find out more about what happened to the drones that crashed off the coast. I want all the operational details of that flight." He said. "I also want to know who authorised it and what its supposed mission was."

"Of course, Sir." The advisor replied. "Shall we continue to follow the airship?"

"You'd better believe it." The President said as he got to his feet. "With that thing flying around out there, with all the footage the news services have shot while following it, we can barely hope to keep anything about these ponies under wraps any longer." He sighed. "Can you get Mary to put a breakfast tray together for me, John? I couldn't eat on the flight back."

The advisor smiled. "Of course, Sir." He told the President, and moved to the door of the office, speaking to one of the guards.

He turned to one of his other staff. "Warren, I need you to draft an executive order for me. These... ponies, for want of a better term; as far as we have been able to establish, they were once human, as we know from my daughter's example." He told Warren. "I need to put in place an order that will preserve their status as sapient beings, with full rights under the Constitution... at least until it is proven one way or the other that they have not suffered any mental degredation in their sapience due to the transformation." The President detailed.

"Of course, Sir." Warren replied. "Do we expect to see any evidence of degredation?" He asked.

"Personally, I don't expect to." The President replied. "But we have to keep our options open for the moment. What we have to do is make sure people don't start automatically treating them like animals and start trying to take things, such as property or financial savings from them, just because they now look like multi-colored miniature horses... and please stop chuckling, it's infectious." The President grinned as half the staff there was smirking or giggling. "And this is serious." He sighed. "We know some agencies have been trying to 'herd' them, for want of a better term, into facilities for supposed study... some examples we've uncovered suggest that some of these 'agencies' are not above using live vivisection and things we wouldn't condone on real animals to try and study them." He looked at them. "I want to know who is behind this, who is sending ponies to these places, and I want the ponies freed and brought to a place where they can be kept safe. I also want any... remains to be handled humanely and preserved for return to their world, when they find a way back." He stated.

"Yes, Mr President." The staffers replied, then they got up and left the Oval Office.

The President relaxed back and looked at John. "Anything to add?" He asked.

"Senator Corddis is still keeping the line that 'These Ponies are nothing but a distraction from the REAL issues', unquote." John answered. "But he's been unusually quiet since that airship appeared in our skies. There's something going on between the two that we're just not seeing, and it has me... concerned."

The President gave a noise that, if he'd been a pony, might be considered a nasal snort of disgust. "Corddis. He's got his fingers in so many pies, he hardly needs to own the bakery. What's he been up to, besides his anti-Pony fetish?" He asked.

"He's been behind a covert intelligence-gathering exercise into a group called Spectrum, an international 'security operations' contractor." John replied. "We don't know why, but he seems very concerned over them and their less-than-savory activities."

The President nodded. "Find out what you can about Spectrum and what Corddis is doing looking them over." He said. "And get me that draft Order as soon as possible."

"Of course, Mister President." John replied as he rose and left the President alone in his office, as the leader of the United States contemplated the near future, and what he had learned about their 'newest' residents...

The director of the C.I.A. section who had been ordered to attack the Stellar Wind was now regretting the fact that he'd ever listened to Senator Corddis. Thanks to the ponies' magic, what should have been a simple operation had turned into a debacle. "At least we'll been able to use their sending the drones so far away so quickly to put together a good cover story." He muttered to himself as he entered a small briefing room. Several other people in the room sat up straighter and looked at him as he sat down before them. "Okay, so, what do we have as resources to get this to blow over?" He asked them.

One man then said "Whatever they did to get the drones as far away from them as they did, the ponies have inadvertently helped us to put together a good cover story." He told the Director. "We're putting together a training flight profile from Langley out over the ocean, ending where they crashed. As far as anyone knows, they were being piloted by trainees for rendezvousing with a Navy craft."

"Plausible." The Director replied, nodding. "What do we have out there?" He asked a female agent.

"The Navy's newest mini-carrier, the Wasp-class USS Hornet, is very close to the site, as they're doing trials of their landing gear for their F-35s." She told the Director. "We could say that they were heading out there to do simulated attack runs, then landing practice on the Hornet's flight deck once the runs were completed."

"Better." The Director said. "Do we have anything out there to retrieve the drones? Maybe the Hornet and her crew?"

"The USS Ulysses, one of the Hornet's combat group, has a liaison intelligence officer on-board her." A third team member answered. "She could be directed to pick the wreckage up and bring it back for analysis."

"One thing, Sir." The first man then said "We need to point this out to the F.A.A. and N.T.S.B: the drones crashed nearly at exactly the same spot where that Globemaster went down several nights before-hand. We could make suggestions to them that there's something at the spot that brings down aircraft, and suggest they quarantine the area until such time as there are no more incidents, or the problem can be found." He pointed out. "I have information from a contact in the Air Force that the Globemaster might have been deliberately shot down by a Russian aircraft. If that is proven, then we might suggest that a Russian drone, or several, might have been operating in the area and made our drones crash."

"Any possible interference from the N.T.S.B.?" The Director asked.

"So far they're not concerned with the wreckage too much, as the Air Force already has the Black Boxes and the crew to question.' The first man spoke again. "There's very little mystery surrounding the Globemaster crash. I'll have a report about it on your desk as soon as they have anything concrete."

"One thing: How likely is it that anyone could identify our drones while they were firing on the airship?" The director asked.

One of the other men smiled and answered "Quite unlikely, Sir. The drones we used were bereft of identifying marks and sanitised. The weapons were all disguised as Russian weapons systems easily available on the Black Market, even down to the gun pods using 23mm ammunition commonly used by their Frogfoot ground attack aircraft." He detailed for the Director. "If any of the shells and/or fragments of the missiles were found, they would be identified as anything other than coming from the United States."

"Very good, then." The Director replied and nodded, looking relieved. "All right, that's a very good scenario." He agreed. "Write it up for release, schedule a press conference and tell the press that we are assisting the FBI and DHS with their investigation into the owners of the drones that attacked the Airship. Point them, if we can, to assuming that the drones were Chinese copies bought on the Black Market, and that they might have belonged to private contractors." Then he got a smile on his face. "Have our press people give little hints that we might suspect the Spectrum Group of the attack... but nothing more than hearsay or speculation at this stage."

"Of course, Sir." They all said as they rose and left.

The director relaxed back a little. 'Let's see how the dear senator handles having little spotlights cast on his pet contractors...' He thought to himself.

Tim Dalzielle walked through the corridors of the J.Edgar Hoover building, heading towards the garage. He was supposed to be meeting up with Michelle Hastings, an agent he'd never worked with before. They were scheduled to head for Harrisburg in Pennsylvania to lead an investigation into an attack on an airship which, the brief had said, was crewed and inhabited by 'people changed into ponies', something that made Tim shudder. He'd seen some of the poor individuals that had been transformed, then detained by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. Many of them were fairly confused and disadvantaged by their new forms. Some of them, however, were very lucid and showed signs of some very interesting abilities... not that that was his purview. That was for others to look into.

Emerging into the building's garage, he headed along the line of fleet cars, choosing a Chevy Lumina wagon. It wasn't the latest model, but it was a good quality car he'd used before; an import from Australia, it was tougher than other cars, yet had plenty of power from its V-8 engine. He put his bags in the back of the wagon, and heard the sound of a woman wearing high-heels walking towards the car as he straightened up. He walked around the Lumina to see a quite pretty woman in her early thirties, dressed in the agency-approved suit, walking towards him. He gave her a friendly smile and asked "Agent Hastings?"

She nodded back to him. "And you're Agent Dalzielle." She replied.

Tim smiled and said "Do we have to pick anything up for you? I've got my 'away' gear here already."

"Yeah. Can we stop at my apartment?" She asked.

Tim nodded. "Sure. Hop in." He said as he moved to the driver's door and slid in behind the wheel. Michelle joined him and they drove out minutes later.

Michelle looked about the insides of the unfamiliar vehicle. "This thing's pretty well-appointed." She commented.

"That's why I chose it." Tim said as they entered the local traffic. "If we're going out to Harrisburg, we might as well ride in style."

"So... why are we driving out there?" Michelle asked.

"The site of the incident is outside town." Tim explained, putting a folder on Michelle's lap. "If we flew in, we'd have to accept what could be a lesser vehicle from a hire company. This car's got a good forensics kit in the back and photography gear, so we're well-equipped to handle the investigation." He detailed for Michelle. "And there's no hire charges as well, which lowers our expenditure."

"Point." Michelle agreed.

They talked on for a while, before arriving at Michelle's apartment. Twenty minutes later, they were heading out of town, heading for Pennsylvania.

Author's Notes:

Just a little look at what else is going on behind the scenes as the Stellar Wind heads for Iowa.