Chapter 38 - On the Wing

The wind blew through my fur as Eileen turned us into a bank. I had to be the one to hold Taquoho’s bottle with its tiny questing flame cupped in my hand against the gale. Rufus was holding on for dear life.

“This model is just a glider. But I hope to have powered versions soon using that propeller assembly you just saw.”

We flew south from the village over the grasslands where thermals were plentiful. Below us, the savannah stretched, and just beyond I could see the transition into a red, sandy desert. Could I make out a faint glimmer on the horizon? Was that the city of ifrits or just a mirage?

“How curious. How does it fly when its wings are stationary? What mechanism keeps this sky-craft aloft? Goblins cannot use magic.”

“Aerodynamics,” I said. I pointed to the wings. “It’s all about airflow over that surface creating a negative pressure area above the wing, which pulls the glider upwards against gravity. The more air over the wing, the more lift. Right now, the only way we can get airspeed is by trading altitude. That’s why powered flight is so effective.”

“We are not familiar with this natural philosophy. And it is controlled by pushing and pulling on those cords?”

I nodded. “Raising the aileron puts us in a bank, changing the thrust vector of the lifting surface.”

“I’m going to pretend I understand all this!” said Rufus. “In hopes that understanding it will make it less terrifying!”

I laughed. “Believe it or not, in my world, flying is one of the safest forms of travel.”

“And how many gliders have crashed as a result of your attempts in Rava?” he asked.

I grit my teeth. That question depended on whether he meant the refined glider attempts, or the small single-goblin hanging gliders that were more like jumping off a cliff with an umbrella than soaring. But I doubted he’d like the answer, either way.

“If you’re so frightened of a hard landing, why did you join us?”

“Badger!”

Of course.

“We take it your attempts to harness the meager might of goblin-kind was unsuccessful in this endeavor of powered flight, and you are seeking alternate means.”

“That’s right,” I said. God, it was nice to talk shop to people who could follow science, even if they didn’t quite understand (at least, in Rufus’ case). “There are two main ways to get powered fixed-wing flight—electric motors and internal combustion engines.”

“Have you not considered clockwork?”

“Too heavy. It’s not an efficient store of potential energy in terms of strength-to-weight ratio for flight. Unless you guys are way better at it than humans. No. I could make a basic internal combustion engine with more metal and a fuel source. But I can also make a basic electric motor with the magnets and copper wire you sent with Rufus. Except, you also need a battery to power an electric motor.”

“It harnesses the elemental primal of linear lightning to spin a shaft? How curious. I can conceive of numerous applications.”

Sounded reductive and crude. But of course, I didn’t say that. “Close enough. Batteries are chemical and mechanical in nature. I know of several types, and how to build battery cells. But I have no way of finding the chemicals in question without an online order—erm, without a chemist. That would be lithium, nickel-cadmium, or lead and copper and an electrolyte like…”

I trailed off. Sulfuric acid. This whole time, I’d had a viable electrolyte in the sodium and sulfur-rich water at the hot springs. My heart began to beat faster. Rechargeable batteries were in sight if I could secure more lead and copper. That meant electricity. Probably not enough voltage to get us to another bluff without the battery being too heavy for an aircraft to lift, but it was a start to an idea.

Taquoho had gotten more comfortable on the flight, and his questing tendril stretched downward. I lowered the jar, and he began to flow out of the jar and into the glider.

Really? Back-to-back puns? He’s not even a goblin.

“We can feel it. The air, the… lift. It is exhilarating. This new type of body fascinates us. So few moving parts, and yet such freedom of movement. The Spirit is querying—it has offered us new skills.”

New type of body? Huh. I guess for ifrit, it sort of was. I could see why primitive humans would consider them demons bewitching objects and devices. The glider shuddered and rocked gently from side to side as the flight control surfaces worked on their own. Eileen started hurling abuse and threats at her crew, but I raised a hand to her.

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“Let him cook,” I said. She calmed down, and her crew backed off their control surfaces.

In a few moments, Taquoho infused the entirety of the glider. He may not have been strong enough to spin a heavy propeller at speed, but he could certainly move ailerons and elevators. He brought us into a gentle bank, entering a thermal. The upward momentum pushed me down against the frame as we rose in a slow, wide loiter. It seemed ifrits, with their inclination to inhabit mechanical devices, were natural pilots. Pale, blue flame trailed behind the craft at wingtips and tail.

Rufus was squeezing his crossbar so hard I thought the wood might shatter under his claws. Eileen looked more snubbed. She was the flight captain, after all, and she’d just turned her machine over to a lamp flame.

We flew for almost 10 minutes before I heard Taquoho’s voice again.

“We tire.”

I signaled Eileen, who pretended not to notice at first, feet kicked up at the fore end of her captain’s station at the nose of the craft. But eventually she shot me a grudging glare and moved her crew back in place to take over the flight.

“Tired of being an airplane?” I asked.

“Only in the sense that we require recuperation. But I do not know that we could ever tire of flight.”

You’re not the only one, I thought to myself. As every time I flew, the System focused on our endeavors to such a degree that the attention was palpable. What made it so curious about flight in particular?

Maybe it was just the strain of simulating complex flight physics. I still hadn’t ruled out the possibility that this was all an elaborate computer program and that my existence was some cruel code base in an alien computer. Maybe I could crash the System by forcing it to simulate too many aircraft flying at once. If I somehow did do that, what would happen to me?

But then, the complex physics that governed every perceivable part of this world were much more complicated than aerodynamics over an airfoil. Hell, you could make a basic flight simulator to calculate lift over a wing in a few days with a decent knowledge of Python or C++. Maybe the system simply was curious. I had no idea why such a thing might spark the intrigue of a world-wide computer, but then I had no idea why the System had been programmed with such a petulant sense of humor.

Case in point.

Hey, wait a minute.

I narrowed my eyes and waited to see if the System had anything else to add. It refrained.

Taquoho poured himself back into the bottle in my lap while Eileen and her crew resumed their positions.

What the hell?

“Back to, erm, the village now, I presume?” asked Rufus, hopefully. While the Ifrit seemed to enjoy the flight, Rufus clearly preferred solid ground.

“Yeah,” I said reluctantly. I was losing goblins with the sun still out, so it would probably be smart to make sure they weren’t getting into trouble. Within a few minutes, we were off the plain and back to the forest with Village Apollo in sight. They already had the dinner’s cookfires going. I could smell the smoke drifting on the air.

Then I heard the pop, pop of explosions, and I realized it wasn’t cookfires I smelled. It was fire fires. Several of the thatch roofs were burning, and I could see a flurry of activity on the northern wall.

“Eileen, bring us around to the north,” I said.

Eileen dipped the aircraft around, taking us in a wide circle around the bluff. As we got to the north side, the scene at the wall came into view. A small army of 8 or 12 javeline were at the brick wall with pikes, torches, heavy hammers, and crossbows. These ones weren’t bare-chested and garbed for scouting like the rutters. These had armor across their shoulders, torso, and flanks that worked moderately well against even the ceramic tips, and more than a few chipped spears and cleavers were being swung down or waved about. They were more like, I don’t know, maulers.

The maulers managed to pull down a few of the wall’s defenders with long, hooked polearms, which accounted for the deaths. But they were having trouble getting close enough to hammer down the wall with 40 some odd goblins on the ramparts hurling stones, grenades, and abuse down at them. In the forest below, I caught flashes of red among the trees as Chuck and his wranglers harried them from behind with slingers and thrown spears. It was a difficult position for the javeline, but they were tough, hardy creatures, and difficult to deter.

What finally broke them was sight of the aircraft, and its silhouette casting a large shadow over their formation. Some of them pointed skyward with weapons or fingers, and a pair of bolts punched up through the left wing from javeline crossbows. Yikes. I held Taquoho’s bottle close, so as not to drop it as Eileen maneuvered.

With our appearance, the javeline maulers made themselves scarce. Maybe they remembered us dropping bomblets on them from the previous flight. They withdrew down the steep slope on the north side of the village, leaving two of their own number dead on the slope.

We’d won the battle. But it didn’t feel like a victory. In fact, I felt more vulnerable than ever. Eileen brought us around and into the wind. We set down on the cleared and level landing strip, and I jumped out, shouting for Armstrong.

My scrapper taskmaster, Armstrong, appeared, with a cut above his right eye and, despite everything, a grin on his face.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Ah, well, ye know,” he said, working his shoulders. “Bit o’ a scrap, boss. Nothing we can’t handle.”

“Yeah? And what if they come back at night?”

Armstrong had nothing to say to that.

“Neil!” I shouted.

The leader of the hunters stepped out of the crowd. He was cleaning his cleavers. “Boss?”

“Take every bomb fruit we have. Bury them on the northern slope. Before nightfall. If those armored javaline come back, I want to introduce pork rinds to the ionosphere.”

“Trust.”

“Good. Buzz, Sally!”

My OG taskmasters appeared.

“Wall, thicker and higher. I want a trench in front of it, and I want some scaled-up slingers on top of it, something that can launch a sled full of rocks.”

Buzz glanced at Sally and then back to me. “She’s already drawn up plans for it while we was scrapping. Tribe Apollo is onnit, boss. We know what to do,”

“Good,” I said. I looked around. Despite the deaths and the chaos, the village wasn’t in a state of panic. Just me, really. My lieutenants gathered around me were calm—at least, calm for goblins. It struck me, then, that they really did know what to do. I’d set this village up to function without my direct intervention. If I’d been ten minutes later flying back, maybe those javaline would be inside the wall, and maybe they’d still be getting shoved off by Armstrong’s boys. But I was in danger of becoming the very type of micromanaging supervisor dreaded by the engineers at NuEarth. “Very good. Carry on, then. I’ve got some negotiations to return to. I trust you all to do what needs doing.”

And I did. I think my taskmasters picked up on that, because they left with chests just a little bit puffier than they’d arrived.