A Leaf on the Wind
by Admiral_Biscuit
Iron Author 2025
A gentle breeze swung the airship around on its pylon, its tail weathervaning downwind. As it moved, a group of pegasi pushed the servicing cloud along to follow, one of them watching as the gangway slid across the cloudtop, threatening to slide off.
A pair of pegasi stood on the cloud, watching it intently. Once the relative movement had been negated, they lashed ropes between the gangway and cloud-mounted cleats, temporarily making the cloud and the airship one.
Once they were satisfied it was secure, disembarkation took place, and presently there were a dozen officers and crew standing on the cloud.
The ropes were loosed, and the cloud pulled away until it butted up against a more permanent structure, a wooden boarding tower. Initially, the builders had intended to lash the airship to it, but the winds proved too fickle for that to be an option. Weather patrols had tried to fix it, but the higher-ups felt that was too much wasted wingpower, and now they had a transfer cloud.
Not unlike the sailing ships in the harbor below with the skiffs and lighters that went between them and the shore—as below, so it was above.
Some ponies thought that was a lazy solution, others thought it a practical one.
The equine cargo stepped off the cloud in an orderly procession and it was pushed back to the airship, lashed to the gangway, and cargo transfer began in earnest. The stevedores on the cloud clambered for the crates and barrels and chests of luggage.
Aboard the ship, the lower-ranked engine room crew was tasked with assisting, and they did their appointed task with little grace or motivation. They were hired to work on engines, not to shift some officer’s medal collection on and off the airship.
Brass Tandem grumbled under his breath as he shoved a crate onto the cloud. It would have been much simpler to just shove it out the door and let it land on the ground, and if it broke? Well, the officers and insufferable noble passengers should just pack better.
“All clear,” Red Cap shouted once the passageway was emptied and the cloud loaded with cargo.
Loading was the reverse of unloading, and once again the engine room crew assisted. Brass Tandem fumed, his patience rising like the pressure gauge on the engine. Turbina was down there doing all the maintenance by herself because he was up here doing stevedore’s work.
She’d assured him that it was all part of the job, but it wasn’t the job he’d signed up for. Not wanting to do it wasn’t laziness, it was pride.
Wasn’t it?
He sighed as he stacked boxes, and he plodded down the same hallway carrying those boxes on his back, placing them in cabins while the cloud was moved and reloaded with a new officer’s compliment and a new crew of nobles all set for their first-class voyage thorough the sky.
Brass Tandem plastered a fake smile on his face as they came aboard, not even reacting as one of them frowned, a hoity unicorn bedazzled with jewels.
She took exception to the grease in his fur--he knew this because she loudly proclaimed it to her travelling companion, a well-groomed stallion who’d clearly never done a day’s work in his life, a stallion whose hooficure cost more than Brass Tandem made in a month.
Once they were gone, once the boarding door had swung shut, he left the hallway, pushed open a disguised door--the nobles must never know that there were machinery spaces about the airship--and trotted down the narrow passageway to the access room to the engine pods.
There were two of them, port and starboard, and boarding ramps leading to each. Said ramps were in the center of the latticework supports that held the pods, and gave him a good view of the ground below.
Turbina was in the portside pod, an oilcan in her mouth and a rag wrapped around her forehoof.
“Everypony loaded,” he reported. “Boarding door is closed, and any minute now we’ll get the signal.”
“Excellent,” she said, her eyes sparking in the dim light of the engine pod. “Here.” She handed him the oil can. “I gotta get up to my post.”
He nodded as she trotted off to the control room, back on the airship proper. That was where she’d get the bells for the engine room; as far as he was concerned that was where the brains of the operation really were. The airship didn’t move unless Turbina made it do so.
And her crew—if it wasn’t for them in the back, it’d be hanging there in the air, or at the mercy of the winds, drifting along like a cloud.
Brass Tandem lifted the caps on the oil cups down the length of the camshaft, filling each if it was low, then dropped the caps back down. They were supposed to be dogged down, each had a little screw for that purpose, but nopony bothered. Gravity held the oil in place perfectly well.
Plus it saved time to skip a step. That wasn’t laziness, it was prudence.
Brass Tandem had ten more minutes on duty when the ‘standby for engines’ signal rang in his pod. He’d long since hung up the oil can, trading it for a potboiler he kept stashed behind the engineer’s desk. He grudgingly got to his hooves and walked over to the engine, carefully twisting a few valves and angle cocks until the luminous aether began flowing into the engine, causing the crankshaft to start lazily spinning. Only a few RPM, but now the airscrew was pinwheeling in the still air.
One quarter astern, the telegraph rang, and Brass Tandem complied, opening the feed valves and watching the revolutions gauge as it came up. There was a repeater gauge for the starboard engine, and he was supposed to match it as well as he could.
Stop engine. He pulled a lever, disconnecting the reaction engine from the airscrew; as it wound down, the airship continued drifting back, carried on its own momentum.
Half ahead. The lever went to the forward position now, and then he twisted the aether nozzles, setting the screw in motion.
The bow of the airship swung clear of the pylon and the screws began propelling it forward just as the midday bells rang and Brass Tandem’s shift ended.
He didn’t dally in the engine pod; as soon as his replacement signed the log, Brass Tandem vanished up the ramp and into his cabin.
All day, the airship had climbed, and by midnight it was well above the cloud cover that had rolled in. Brass Tandem looked out between the lacy struts at the moonlit clouds below, glowing like a snowscape under the airship.
And it was appropriate to think of snow; the air got colder as they got higher, something that Brass Tandem hadn’t known until he got this job. The air was biting at his fur, and he welcomed the warmth of the engine pod, a cozy contrast to the chilly atmosphere.
All night the airship plodded on, lit only by the luminous glow of the pale moon above and its own navigation lights reflection on the clouds below.
As his relief returned to the pod, he ventured out once again on the access ramp, the clouds now lit by the ruddy sunrise. He paused to appreciate the view, and then returned to his cabin, snuggling into the covers, lulled to sleep by the vibration of the mighty engines pushing the airship.
Working four on, four off took some getting used to. At first, it had seemed like he barely got to sleep before the bells rang and it was his shift again, and he cursed whichever pony had come up with that particular arrangement. But then he’d grown used to it, and when it was his off-time, he could sleep.
Practically through anything, if he was being honest.
And when the bells rang, he was fast asleep, despite the rocking of the airship, despite the pitch and roll that would sand passengers back off the observation deck to their cabins; he would sleep through rain or snow or sleet . . . but not a constant ringing of the bell, not the general alarm.
As he jerked awake, he didn’t have to be told what the emergency was. A brilliant flash lit up his cabin, followed only moments later by a crash of thunder loud enough to make his ears ring.
He blinked spots out of his eyes and stared agog at the waterfall of rain washing off his cabin porthole. They were in a Luna-damned thunderstorm, a place an airship should NEVER be.
Brass Tandem shoved open his door and galloped down the gangway towards the engine pods. Whatever happened, however they’d gotten themselves into this position, there was one thing that was certain; the engines must remain turning or else they had no chance, the mighty winds would tear apart the airship like it was made of tissue.
Which, to be fair, it basically was.
Brass Tandem didn’t trot down the gangway into his engine pod, he hydroplaned down it, bouncing off several diagonal braces on his way. He got back to his hooves and shoved the door shut against the wind, shaking off his fur inside. It was gauche, but doing it outside would accomplish nothing.
The entire pod vibrated as the airship shook in the turbulant air, and he struggled to stay on his hooves as a gust hit the airship, knocking it sideways.
The entire ceiling was coated in oil, sprayed there from teh unsecured cups. Dripping down everywhere, on his forehead, on his back—he didn’t need to be told what to do, he started securing the cups but the damage had already been done.
Not that he knew it just yet. “Is there anypony in charge on the bridge?”
“I don’t know,” his counterpart shouted over the howling wind. “I hope so, I swear to Celestia I saw a pegasus bail out of the passenger quarters.”
“Red Cap?”
“Could have been,” she admitted. “I was kinda focused on staying on my hooves.”
“I think we’re through the worst of it.”
Another crash of thunder put lie to his words, and the entire airship juddered into a thermal, rattling the entire pod. “Do you think—”
Whatever she was about to say was lost to the howling winds, and to the moment of horror each pony felt as the lantern, sole illumination for their entire workspace, shook off its mount and crashed to the floor, shattering the glass chimney and damping down the flame to a dim glowworm glow.
Until the guttering flame found a puddle of spilled oil, that is. The delicate fabric skin of the airship made a fine wick.
In weather like this, there was no way to fight a fire. The two abandoned the engine pod, clamoring onto the passageway in the strut for shelter. That, at least, was made out of strong, unflammable iron.
The rain kept the heat at bay, and kept the fire from spreading to anything besides the nacelle. That was the good news.
The bad news was that as the two ponies were scrambling to safety, the engine sputtered and died. As Brass Tandem pulled the door to the main body of the airship open, he could hear the engine room telegram ringing, calling for more speed—but there was nopony there to service the valves. Raw luminous aether spilled out of the exhaust pipe, sputtering and sparking into the monsooning storm.
“We’ve lost the engine,” he shouted to Turbina, who’d taken up her place back in the control room.
“What? How?”
“Fire.”
She frowned. “We can’t . . . if we can’t get it running, we won’t make it through the storm.”
Brass Tandem felt a thrill of fear course through him. Were they going to have to abandon the ship? He’d done the drills, but never in anything like this. The lifeboats were difficult to manage in clear weather, what would it be like to try and launch them in the dark, in a storm? Would they even hold together? Would their stubby wings keep them aloft, or would they crash uselessly to the ground far below?
Suddenly, a sense of resolve—or was it resignation?—filled him.
“Understood. I’m going back out.”
Turbina raised an eyebrow, and that was it. No ‘you can’t,’ or ‘it’s too dangerous.’ They were professionals, they knew what was at stake, they knew what needed to be done.
Brass Tandem pinballed his way down the passageway. Now that the portside airscrew had stopped spinning, the pilot was having a heck of a job keeping the airship on course, and it was more and more at the mercy of the winds.
That could only end one way; the winds would toss the airship until they could get a bite into it, until they found the weak spots in its flimsy skin and tore their way through and then they’d lose buoyancy and . . . well, then they’d find out if the life rafts worked or not.
Brass Tandem swallowed down a lump in his throat. The pod was horribly exposed; while the fire was out, all the skin of the nacelle had been burned off, leaving just flimsy twisted spars that did nothing to stop the driving rain. The engine controls were scorched, and the only illumination he had was a few flashes of lightning.
He knew this engine. He understood this engine, and he could fix it. Surely.
The tool crib was supposed to be secured to keep the tools in. That had never been done, it was easier to keep it unlatched, and turbulence had done its work. There was little to find in there of the well-stocked supply they’d once had. Every tool had fallen out en masse and he imagined that some farmer’s field now was scattered with a cluster of craters, each with a tool in the center of it.
That was water under the bridge. What he did have to hoof was a single adjustable wrench, and that would have to do.
By the time he’d cut off the fuel supply, he’d been joined by his opposite crewmare who’d braved the storm to come back to the engine, and as she was helping tear apart the burnt-out control stand, they were joined by Turbina, who was useless in the main engineering compartment: the only chance the airship had was for the other engine to work its heart out until this one could be fixed.
And then, another pony came sliding down the accessway. A stallion, his fur unblemished from a single day’s hard work.
He hesitated as he stepped through the crispy remains of a doorway—the door was still there, but none of the wall which had formerly surrounded it.
Brass Tandem saw him swallow nervously, no doubt seeing the swirling clouds around them, the rain which was falling just as relentlessly in the engine room, the burnt-out husk of a control station, the luminous aether still spilling from a cracked valve.
“I’m Topping Lift,” he said calmly, “and my company builds these engines. What do you need me to do?”
It was no mob of ponies that descended on that engine, that worked through the worst of the storm. It was naught but four, working with the few tools that remained in the engine pod, stripping back the control stand to access the control cables, to cut them free of jammed levers.
Topping Lit scuffed his manicured hooves on a coupling valve, twisting it tight. He stained his perfectly curried fur on the spilled oil which hadn’t burnt off in the fire, and he didn’t complain about the driving rain that threatened to drown them all, or fling them off into oblivion.
The four of them stood up to the sky, to everything it could bring to bear, and nursed the scorched engine back to life, manually pulling control cables, bypassing feed nozzles, and after an hour of struggle they managed to get it running again.
There was a cheer and hoofbumps as the airscrew stopped windmilling and began turning on its own power. More hoofbumps as it sped up, as they could feel it bite at the air, and once it was established, they felt the airship bank and turn, freeing itself from the cloud which had tried to tear it from the sky.
Dawn was just breaking as the airship limped its way into Port Pleasant. The skin of the airship still gleamed and sparkled with moisture, all but the port engine pod which hung out in the air like a skeletal limb, twisted and burnt but still operational.
Two ponies stood at the railing, watching over the mob of press photographers each snapping photographs for their exclusive, fireponies and medics there just in case things went wrong. Worried staff of the airship company, curious onlookers—as he looked down, it felt like the airship was buoyed along by the crowd below, riding along their backs as if it were a ship on a rainbow-colored ocean. Flashbulbs went off like lightning and a few pegasi flew up to the ship in the hopes of getting a better shot—or an exclusive early interview.
Brass Tandem ignored them.
“Half ahead,” shouted a grime covered stallion, his hooves chipped and stained.
“Half ahead, aye.” Brass Tandem repeated, setting the makeshift engine controls into position and watching until the airscrew responded. “We’re going to make it.”
“Never a moment of doubt,” Topping Lift insisted. “Although.” He looked back at his grimy fur. “My wife is going to kill me.”
A gentle breeze swung the airship around on its pylon, its tail weathervaning downwind. As it moved, a group of pegasi pushed the servicing cloud along to follow, one of them watching as the gangway slid across the cloudtop, threatening to slide off.
A pair of pegasi stood on the cloud, watching it intently. Once the relative movement had been negated, they lashed ropes between the gangway and cloud-mounted cleats, temporarily making the cloud and the airship one.
Once they were satisfied it was secure, disembarkation took place, and presently there were a dozen officers and crew standing on the cloud.
The ropes were loosed, and the cloud pulled away until it butted up against a more permanent structure, a wooden boarding tower. Initially, the builders had intended to lash the airship to it, but the winds proved too fickle for that to be an option. Weather patrols had tried to fix it, but the higher-ups felt that was too much wasted wingpower, and now they had a transfer cloud.
Not unlike the sailing ships in the harbor below with the skiffs and lighters that went between them and the shore—as below, so it was above.
Some ponies thought that was a lazy solution, others thought it a practical one.
The equine cargo stepped off the cloud in an orderly procession and it was pushed back to the airship, lashed to the gangway, and cargo transfer began in earnest. The stevedores on the cloud clambered for the crates and barrels and chests of luggage.
Aboard the ship, the lower-ranked engine room crew was tasked with assisting, and they did their appointed task with little grace or motivation. They were hired to work on engines, not to shift some officer’s medal collection on and off the airship.
Brass Tandem grumbled under his breath as he shoved a crate onto the cloud. It would have been much simpler to just shove it out the door and let it land on the ground, and if it broke? Well, the officers and insufferable noble passengers should just pack better.
“All clear,” Red Cap shouted once the passageway was emptied and the cloud loaded with cargo.
Loading was the reverse of unloading, and once again the engine room crew assisted. Brass Tandem fumed, his patience rising like the pressure gauge on the engine. Turbina was down there doing all the maintenance by herself because he was up here doing stevedore’s work.
She’d assured him that it was all part of the job, but it wasn’t the job he’d signed up for. Not wanting to do it wasn’t laziness, it was pride.
Wasn’t it?
He sighed as he stacked boxes, and he plodded down the same hallway carrying those boxes on his back, placing them in cabins while the cloud was moved and reloaded with a new officer’s compliment and a new crew of nobles all set for their first-class voyage thorough the sky.
Brass Tandem plastered a fake smile on his face as they came aboard, not even reacting as one of them frowned, a hoity unicorn bedazzled with jewels.
She took exception to the grease in his fur--he knew this because she loudly proclaimed it to her travelling companion, a well-groomed stallion who’d clearly never done a day’s work in his life, a stallion whose hooficure cost more than Brass Tandem made in a month.
Once they were gone, once the boarding door had swung shut, he left the hallway, pushed open a disguised door--the nobles must never know that there were machinery spaces about the airship--and trotted down the narrow passageway to the access room to the engine pods.
There were two of them, port and starboard, and boarding ramps leading to each. Said ramps were in the center of the latticework supports that held the pods, and gave him a good view of the ground below.
Turbina was in the portside pod, an oilcan in her mouth and a rag wrapped around her forehoof.
“Everypony loaded,” he reported. “Boarding door is closed, and any minute now we’ll get the signal.”
“Excellent,” she said, her eyes sparking in the dim light of the engine pod. “Here.” She handed him the oil can. “I gotta get up to my post.”
He nodded as she trotted off to the control room, back on the airship proper. That was where she’d get the bells for the engine room; as far as he was concerned that was where the brains of the operation really were. The airship didn’t move unless Turbina made it do so.
And her crew—if it wasn’t for them in the back, it’d be hanging there in the air, or at the mercy of the winds, drifting along like a cloud.
Brass Tandem lifted the caps on the oil cups down the length of the camshaft, filling each if it was low, then dropped the caps back down. They were supposed to be dogged down, each had a little screw for that purpose, but nopony bothered. Gravity held the oil in place perfectly well.
Plus it saved time to skip a step. That wasn’t laziness, it was prudence.
Brass Tandem had ten more minutes on duty when the ‘standby for engines’ signal rang in his pod. He’d long since hung up the oil can, trading it for a potboiler he kept stashed behind the engineer’s desk. He grudgingly got to his hooves and walked over to the engine, carefully twisting a few valves and angle cocks until the luminous aether began flowing into the engine, causing the crankshaft to start lazily spinning. Only a few RPM, but now the airscrew was pinwheeling in the still air.
One quarter astern, the telegraph rang, and Brass Tandem complied, opening the feed valves and watching the revolutions gauge as it came up. There was a repeater gauge for the starboard engine, and he was supposed to match it as well as he could.
Stop engine. He pulled a lever, disconnecting the reaction engine from the airscrew; as it wound down, the airship continued drifting back, carried on its own momentum.
Half ahead. The lever went to the forward position now, and then he twisted the aether nozzles, setting the screw in motion.
The bow of the airship swung clear of the pylon and the screws began propelling it forward just as the midday bells rang and Brass Tandem’s shift ended.
He didn’t dally in the engine pod; as soon as his replacement signed the log, Brass Tandem vanished up the ramp and into his cabin.
All day, the airship had climbed, and by midnight it was well above the cloud cover that had rolled in. Brass Tandem looked out between the lacy struts at the moonlit clouds below, glowing like a snowscape under the airship.
And it was appropriate to think of snow; the air got colder as they got higher, something that Brass Tandem hadn’t known until he got this job. The air was biting at his fur, and he welcomed the warmth of the engine pod, a cozy contrast to the chilly atmosphere.
All night the airship plodded on, lit only by the luminous glow of the pale moon above and its own navigation lights reflection on the clouds below.
As his relief returned to the pod, he ventured out once again on the access ramp, the clouds now lit by the ruddy sunrise. He paused to appreciate the view, and then returned to his cabin, snuggling into the covers, lulled to sleep by the vibration of the mighty engines pushing the airship.
Working four on, four off took some getting used to. At first, it had seemed like he barely got to sleep before the bells rang and it was his shift again, and he cursed whichever pony had come up with that particular arrangement. But then he’d grown used to it, and when it was his off-time, he could sleep.
Practically through anything, if he was being honest.
And when the bells rang, he was fast asleep, despite the rocking of the airship, despite the pitch and roll that would sand passengers back off the observation deck to their cabins; he would sleep through rain or snow or sleet . . . but not a constant ringing of the bell, not the general alarm.
As he jerked awake, he didn’t have to be told what the emergency was. A brilliant flash lit up his cabin, followed only moments later by a crash of thunder loud enough to make his ears ring.
He blinked spots out of his eyes and stared agog at the waterfall of rain washing off his cabin porthole. They were in a Luna-damned thunderstorm, a place an airship should NEVER be.
Brass Tandem shoved open his door and galloped down the gangway towards the engine pods. Whatever happened, however they’d gotten themselves into this position, there was one thing that was certain; the engines must remain turning or else they had no chance, the mighty winds would tear apart the airship like it was made of tissue.
Which, to be fair, it basically was.
Brass Tandem didn’t trot down the gangway into his engine pod, he hydroplaned down it, bouncing off several diagonal braces on his way. He got back to his hooves and shoved the door shut against the wind, shaking off his fur inside. It was gauche, but doing it outside would accomplish nothing.
The entire pod vibrated as the airship shook in the turbulant air, and he struggled to stay on his hooves as a gust hit the airship, knocking it sideways.
The entire ceiling was coated in oil, sprayed there from teh unsecured cups. Dripping down everywhere, on his forehead, on his back—he didn’t need to be told what to do, he started securing the cups but the damage had already been done.
Not that he knew it just yet. “Is there anypony in charge on the bridge?”
“I don’t know,” his counterpart shouted over the howling wind. “I hope so, I swear to Celestia I saw a pegasus bail out of the passenger quarters.”
“Red Cap?”
“Could have been,” she admitted. “I was kinda focused on staying on my hooves.”
“I think we’re through the worst of it.”
Another crash of thunder put lie to his words, and the entire airship juddered into a thermal, rattling the entire pod. “Do you think—”
Whatever she was about to say was lost to the howling winds, and to the moment of horror each pony felt as the lantern, sole illumination for their entire workspace, shook off its mount and crashed to the floor, shattering the glass chimney and damping down the flame to a dim glowworm glow.
Until the guttering flame found a puddle of spilled oil, that is. The delicate fabric skin of the airship made a fine wick.
In weather like this, there was no way to fight a fire. The two abandoned the engine pod, clamoring onto the passageway in the strut for shelter. That, at least, was made out of strong, unflammable iron.
The rain kept the heat at bay, and kept the fire from spreading to anything besides the nacelle. That was the good news.
The bad news was that as the two ponies were scrambling to safety, the engine sputtered and died. As Brass Tandem pulled the door to the main body of the airship open, he could hear the engine room telegram ringing, calling for more speed—but there was nopony there to service the valves. Raw luminous aether spilled out of the exhaust pipe, sputtering and sparking into the monsooning storm.
“We’ve lost the engine,” he shouted to Turbina, who’d taken up her place back in the control room.
“What? How?”
“Fire.”
She frowned. “We can’t . . . if we can’t get it running, we won’t make it through the storm.”
Brass Tandem felt a thrill of fear course through him. Were they going to have to abandon the ship? He’d done the drills, but never in anything like this. The lifeboats were difficult to manage in clear weather, what would it be like to try and launch them in the dark, in a storm? Would they even hold together? Would their stubby wings keep them aloft, or would they crash uselessly to the ground far below?
Suddenly, a sense of resolve—or was it resignation?—filled him.
“Understood. I’m going back out.”
Turbina raised an eyebrow, and that was it. No ‘you can’t,’ or ‘it’s too dangerous.’ They were professionals, they knew what was at stake, they knew what needed to be done.
Brass Tandem pinballed his way down the passageway. Now that the portside airscrew had stopped spinning, the pilot was having a heck of a job keeping the airship on course, and it was more and more at the mercy of the winds.
That could only end one way; the winds would toss the airship until they could get a bite into it, until they found the weak spots in its flimsy skin and tore their way through and then they’d lose buoyancy and . . . well, then they’d find out if the life rafts worked or not.
Brass Tandem swallowed down a lump in his throat. The pod was horribly exposed; while the fire was out, all the skin of the nacelle had been burned off, leaving just flimsy twisted spars that did nothing to stop the driving rain. The engine controls were scorched, and the only illumination he had was a few flashes of lightning.
He knew this engine. He understood this engine, and he could fix it. Surely.
The tool crib was supposed to be secured to keep the tools in. That had never been done, it was easier to keep it unlatched, and turbulence had done its work. There was little to find in there of the well-stocked supply they’d once had. Every tool had fallen out en masse and he imagined that some farmer’s field now was scattered with a cluster of craters, each with a tool in the center of it.
That was water under the bridge. What he did have to hoof was a single adjustable wrench, and that would have to do.
By the time he’d cut off the fuel supply, he’d been joined by his opposite crewmare who’d braved the storm to come back to the engine, and as she was helping tear apart the burnt-out control stand, they were joined by Turbina, who was useless in the main engineering compartment: the only chance the airship had was for the other engine to work its heart out until this one could be fixed.
And then, another pony came sliding down the accessway. A stallion, his fur unblemished from a single day’s hard work.
He hesitated as he stepped through the crispy remains of a doorway—the door was still there, but none of the wall which had formerly surrounded it.
Brass Tandem saw him swallow nervously, no doubt seeing the swirling clouds around them, the rain which was falling just as relentlessly in the engine room, the burnt-out husk of a control station, the luminous aether still spilling from a cracked valve.
“I’m Topping Lift,” he said calmly, “and my company builds these engines. What do you need me to do?”
It was no mob of ponies that descended on that engine, that worked through the worst of the storm. It was naught but four, working with the few tools that remained in the engine pod, stripping back the control stand to access the control cables, to cut them free of jammed levers.
Topping Lit scuffed his manicured hooves on a coupling valve, twisting it tight. He stained his perfectly curried fur on the spilled oil which hadn’t burnt off in the fire, and he didn’t complain about the driving rain that threatened to drown them all, or fling them off into oblivion.
The four of them stood up to the sky, to everything it could bring to bear, and nursed the scorched engine back to life, manually pulling control cables, bypassing feed nozzles, and after an hour of struggle they managed to get it running again.
There was a cheer and hoofbumps as the airscrew stopped windmilling and began turning on its own power. More hoofbumps as it sped up, as they could feel it bite at the air, and once it was established, they felt the airship bank and turn, freeing itself from the cloud which had tried to tear it from the sky.
Dawn was just breaking as the airship limped its way into Port Pleasant. The skin of the airship still gleamed and sparkled with moisture, all but the port engine pod which hung out in the air like a skeletal limb, twisted and burnt but still operational.
Two ponies stood at the railing, watching over the mob of press photographers each snapping photographs for their exclusive, fireponies and medics there just in case things went wrong. Worried staff of the airship company, curious onlookers—as he looked down, it felt like the airship was buoyed along by the crowd below, riding along their backs as if it were a ship on a rainbow-colored ocean. Flashbulbs went off like lightning and a few pegasi flew up to the ship in the hopes of getting a better shot—or an exclusive early interview.
Brass Tandem ignored them.
“Half ahead,” shouted a grime covered stallion, his hooves chipped and stained.
“Half ahead, aye.” Brass Tandem repeated, setting the makeshift engine controls into position and watching until the airscrew responded. “We’re going to make it.”
“Never a moment of doubt,” Topping Lift insisted. “Although.” He looked back at his grimy fur. “My wife is going to kill me.”