In a broad, shady valley in the Plane of Darkness, the rivers of blood and forests of fungi had been cleared away to make room for the workshop grounds. A small, serene lake of clean water occupied one side of the valley. At the edge of the lake, the dark crystal ground had been flattened into a perfect, shining runway. Several buildings, made from the same dark crystal, were organized into a campus beside the runway, complete with two large hangars. From within the compound, Ingrid could not see the floating cities in the sky.
Glenice's Marines hauled carts of materiel, instruments and tools through Vaska's portal. Each had been vetted by Titania for loyalty before being allowed to see the campus, as had all of Vaska's engineers. The train of supplies had continued throughout the day, and the pile of supplies recovered from the Elemental Plane of Wind had shrunk to a few desks and some boxes of engineering diagrams.
Ingrid stood at the edge of the runway and looked out over the water. It was flat and mirrorlike, reflecting the single purple moon in the sky. The mountains all around the valley were capped with snow, providing a lovely reminder of home. "I like this better," Ingrid said.
"I hate it," Ashe protested. "You mortals are boring."
A familiar sound approached from behind them, high-heeled sandals clattering on the crystal runway. "I am going to close the portal soon," Vaska said. "You should leave."
"I want to stay here," Ingrid said. "I have a request for that man. Jack Vail."
"Suit yourself," Vaska said. She handed Ingrid a trio of lopsided, dark keystones. "You should have these either way. If you open a portal here, I have no idea where in the world you will end up."
"I put this location near your father's lodge," Ashe said. "Are you worried?"
"Not really," Vaska said. Ingrid took the three crystals. "I have a list of possible contingencies, possible traps in the way of the keystones to the Plane of Fire. I have tapped some domestic spies as well. And worst case, I'll just kill everything alive then come back to sleep for three days like last time. Also, this time I have four Elementals. I can blind them, fill them full of metal spikes, zap them into powder. I have options."
She leaned out and kissed Ingrid. Her breath was hot and minty, and for a moment Vaska looked like she was going to melt. She grabbed Ingrid's hand and pulled her out across the runway.
"The only thing more gross than a bag of organs," Ashe said, "is two bags of organs who are constantly rubbing their various organs together."
"Does she bother you?" Ingrid asked.
"I just pretend she is a cat," Vaska replied. "I don't mind if a cat watches us kiss and thinks its gross."
Within the workshop Vaska took off her sandals and began to strap herself into a pair of stiff boots. "How long will you be gone?" Ingrid asked.
Vaska tapped her watch. "I'm not sure, but I am going to take my time. No risks, no cut corners. It could take several hours, however I will give up if it takes too long. The risk is that they will discover our plans."
Special Agent Vladimir approached with two Marines at his side. "Everything is through, Princess."
"Leave this place," Vaska commanded. She handed him a trio of yellow-metal gems. "Summon these magenta Orbs, Ingrid will contact you if she needs to get out."
"Yes Princess." The Marines turned and left the Plane of Darkness. Vaska stood, and the portal closed.
"I look forward to seeing the result of your request, Ingrid." Suddenly Vaska vanished, sucked into the Firstborn's projection.
"You have a request, Lady Ghost?" Jack asked. He looked her up and down, his eyes betraying desire.
"A command," Ingrid corrected. "Take me to the other engineers. I want as much help as I can get."
"Only Vaska gives us commands," Jack Vail said.
"You are in my realm now," Ashe said, fluttering like a butterfly onto Ingrid's shoulder. "Perhaps you and the other meat puppets would like to experience my sense of aesthetics?"
"Right this way," he replied, pointing to a larger structure of crystal near the runway. "My chalkboard is in there."
The interior of the crystal structure looked remarkably human. Tables of crystal, boxes of books from the outside, chalkboards, wooden easels holding engineering diagrams, and dozens of pot-bellied men scribbling away with pencils. Jack Vail led Ingrid to an empty chalkboard and picked up a perfect cylinder of chalk. A dozen chemistry textbooks sat in a pile next to him, on a table.
"Vaska wants me to theorize a radar-absorbing chemical," Jack said. "What does the Lady Ghost request?" His question caught the attention of half a dozen men, who slowly meandered between the tables to eavesdrop on the conversation.
"When I was caught in a flat spin," Ingrid said, "falling toward my inevitable doom, the horizon spiraling around me, my nose waffling up and down, I saved myself with the help of the High Daughter of the Queen of Fire. She wrapped her long legs around the nose-cone of my fighter jet, and angled her arms to shoot fire up and against the direction of my spin. The flat spin stabilized, my nose dropped, and my airspeed recovered."
The men surrounding her were transfixed by her story. One man was frantically scribbling notes on a pad. Ingrid glanced around at them, uneasily.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
"I wish for a feature in my fighter jet to easily recover from flat spins," Ingrid continued. "Perhaps a quad of exhaust ports on the nose or maybe a second engine, something that can be used to stabilize a flat spin automatically. Maybe blue Colored Orbs could be involved."
A balding man approached the man called Jack Vail and whispered something in his ear. The man with the notepad joined the conversation in whispers. Jack turned to his blackboard and began frantically writing a long, long string of letters, numbers, and math symbols along the top. His frantic scrawling's continued, line by line, until it almost filled the entire blackboard. The other engineers clapped.
"Ingrid you are a commoner, yes?" Jack asked.
"No!" Ingrid said. "I am a proper Lady of House Veronika."
"Before, you were a commoner when you lived in Wave Crest, right?"
"What of it?"
"Nobles have gardens, and gardens need to be watered with hoses. Pressurized water flows through the hoses, usually fed by gravity through an ancient iron tube or stone aqueduct. Either way, the gardeners have tricks, you see. They manipulate their thumbs, covering the opening of the hose, to spray the water over the plants. By covering most of the opening to the hose, they can make a very fast, very thin spray. Relaxing their thumb, the spray becomes slower and thicker."
He drew a diagram of a cylinder on the chalkboard. Then he sketched, in overlay, a pair of surfaces, like elevators, that pointed in toward the center of the cylinder. He repeated the diagram two additional times, one above and one below. In the upper diagram, the two surfaces both pointed up, and in the bottom, they both pointed down. He drew arrows to represent the vector of the thrust out of the cylinder.
"Thrust... vectoring!" Jack Vail cried. "It should be trivial to train a blue Colored Orb to automatically vector the thrust along with the elevator motion. This would allow you to point the nose at the ground in a flat spin, gain airspeed, and recover."
"I understand," Ingrid said. And in fact, she did. She understood every single syllable that the man said. "I command you to make a prototype that features this... thrust vectoring."
The man bowed his head slightly. "It shall be done, Lady Ghost." The desire in his eyes remained, but the object of his desire was no longer Ingrid. He was hungry for this idea. Inspiration had consumed him. Ingrid at once understood the source of his insomnia.
----------------------------------------
Metal ingots lay scattered upon the floor of the hangar. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of metal ingots. Most of them were aluminum, and some of them were steel, titanium, or other metals. Apparently the titanium was extremely difficult to make and handle. Tools that contained cadmium would destroy the metal.
Jack summoned a Metal Elemental and a cyan Colored Orb. He presented blueprints to the cyan Orb, and then it floated over to the Metal Elemental, a mirror-like humanoid, not unlike the giants of the Plane of Metal. The Orb struck the Metal Elemental with bolts of cyan lightning, and then the humanoid thing lurched toward the ingots. Those pure, heavy metal ingots seemed to liquify, slowly rising and bloating outward, forming the shape of a fighter jet. When it ended, the burly landing gear of the craft rested on the ground without tires. Equally burly men arrived to begin the work of installing the massive tires they carried, using the leverage of hydraulic jacks.
A Stone Elemental was summoned to create the glass canopy, and the pot-bellied engineers began the process of installing the instruments in the cabin. Hours passed, and Vaska returned before Ingrid had a chance to fly the machine. Her clothes and arms were covered in blood once again, and she carried the severed head of a man, but otherwise she looked in good spirits. Her smile looked twisted, satisfied.
Vaska casually tossed the head onto the smooth crystal ground.
"Oh, how lovely!" Ashe said. "A gift for me?"
"Just like a cat," Vaska said. "One of our enemies, and his entire family, was exterminated. It was not a Great House, but this is still a victory." She pulled a stack off her belt and tossed it to Ingrid. It felt light, leathery, and slick with blood. Ingrid opened it, and fished out a trio of red-blue keystones. "Mission accomplished. Tell me Ingrid, have the men here entertained your request?"
"We have, my Princess," Jack said as he approached. "I would be delighted to give you a demonstration flight."
"Absolutely not!" Ingrid said. "It was my idea. I will be the first to fly it!"
"Ingrid flies first," Vaska said. "Do not spoil it for me, let me see for myself." Shadows consumed the bleeding head at her feet, and it vanished from sight. Jack Vail watched the dissolving head with a suspicious disbelief.
The cabin of the new fighter jet smelled like a newly-printed leather-bound book, and it felt hot. The seat had just been screwed into place, as had the instruments, the glass canopy, the gunsight, and the stick and rudder pedals. Engineers all around opened bottles of expensive wine in celebration, grasping each other on the shoulder and laughing at secret jokes. Vaska eyed the exhaust nozzles of the fighter with discerning eyes. She looked up at Ingrid and smiled before leaving the runway.
Ingrid closed and locked the glass canopy. Then she rifled through a sack of crystals and began to summon the appropriate Elementals. Two Fire Elementals for the pair of engines, a Water Elemental for hydraulics, a Life Elemental to protect against G-forces, and a Wind Elemental to pressurize the cabin. Ingrid looked around outside to clear the area, and clasped the stick and throttle in her hands. Ashe sat upon her shoulder, her face determined.
"I think," Ingrid said as she slammed the throttle to full power, "That I am going to enjoy this."
The crystal runway sped past in a perfect blur, and Ingrid nudged the stick back slightly. The thrust vectoring kicked in with the elevator, and the nose jolted up into the sky. She rocketed away, leaving two vertical trails of smoke as she flew, her back pressed hard against the leather seat behind her. The runway grew small in the mirrors overhead.
Pulling back on the throttle, Ingrid dropped the nose with help from the thrust vectoring. Kicking the rudder, the various surfaces flexed up or down to compensate, and the nose slowly drifted to one side or the other. She cut back the throttle to idle, and kicked hard on the rudder once the airspeed began to drop.
The world went mad around her, purple sky spinning, an angry purple moon swirling in the sky, the horizon rotating around her at an unfathomable speed. "A normal flat spin," Ingrid said. She pushed down on the stick, and the nose pointed perfectly at the ground, brought about by the power of the vectored thrust. "Not a normal recovery." The airspeed indicator rapidly increased, and with a tiny bit of sidestick she countered the lingering rotation.
The magenta Colored Orb in her cabin began to glow. "Is that you, Vaska?" Ingrid asked.
"Ingrid, that is exceptional," Vaska replied. "What do you want to name it?"
Ingrid did not reply. Instead, she flew high into the sky again, powered by both engines. Even now she could not see the floating cities, and presumably others could not see her. With a quick glance to her shoulder, Ingrid saw that Ashe was grinning like a child. Once again she cut the throttle, and once again she kicked the rudder. This time, before she recovered, she caught the airplane in a figure eight through the sky. Like a falling leaf.
"I would like to name this airplane," Ingrid said, "HY-8 Falling Leaf."
"Noted," Vaska said.
Just before striking the water, Ingrid pointed the nose toward the sky and boiled the too-clear lake below her into a cloud of steam. Even then, nothing could bring her down, not even a flat spin.
Unstoppable.