Felix felt mildly uncomfortable as he marched through the forward camp. The ground underfoot was a mosaic of pale tiles separated by dark fractures, and it was slightly soft, almost like walking on beach sand. Geomancers roamed nearby, gray specters in layers of robes, drawing minerals from deep underground. A new runway was taking shape, black as obsidian and freshly-painted with long white lines. Rows of airplanes were parked in the field beyond. They had been tied down atop the thin snowpack, and now that the wheels rested against the lake bed, the ropes were slack, rocking gently in the cold wind.
A distant, muffled whirring sound announced the approach of a helicopter. Felix made his way toward the center of the camp, where it would no doubt be landing.
Dozens of wooden cabins, blockish with peaked roofs, were arrayed in a huge circle. Enlisted men marched in lockstep across the circular, dusty field between the tenements, guided by whistles and shouts. The signal tower in the southern quadrant was flashing a green-tinted light, the signal to land. A few moments later the helicopter appeared from the north, its loud rotors beating against the wind, its long exhaust ports under the belly spewing crimson flames. It kicked up a plume of dust as it gently touched down on its skids.
The Lord Paladin departed the craft with a handful of staff officers. He dismissed them all with a wave, then waddled across the field toward Felix.
"Commander."
"Felix, we need to talk."
"As you like. There is a lounge on the hill."
To the north, on the edge of the lake bed, there was a small hill. It was arid but clad in ancient, twisted, leafless trees, eternally blackened by the unrelenting sun. A handful of cabins had been constructed on platforms jutting out from the hillside, reserved exclusively for high-ranking officers. Felix led the Lord Paladin to the officer's lounge. The small wooden structure's insulation had never been installed, so the vertical support planks were bare, decorated only with a handful of artifacts from the Battle of the Teeth, including a huge propeller. A red model airplane was suspended from the roof by a quartet of strings, chasing a wooden blue drake.
A small wooden table occupied the center of the room, upon which sat a few cups of cold coffee and a deck of playing cards. The room was occupied when Felix entered, by Neasa and the geomancer Cliona. Their lips were locked together in a passionate kiss, but when Cliona caught sight of the Lord Paladin she leapt out of her seat with a high-pitched squeak.
"I shouldn't be in here," Cliona admitted.
If the Lord Paladin saw the two women kissing, he said nothing. "Neasa, excellent. I need to speak with you as well."
Cliona threw one gray hood over her red hair and then silently glided out of the cabin. Neasa produced a handkerchief and began to wipe the smears of lipstick off her face. The Lord Paladin began rifling through the liquor cabinet in the corner, and, finding a bottle of wine but no empty cups, he popped the cork and took a swig directly from the bottle.
"How is the weather in the south?" he asked.
"Below freezing temperatures above two thousand feet," Felix said. "Our pilots report a fog layer, south of the purple spire, at about twelve-hundred feet. Above that fog layer, the sky is partly cloudy, with larger clouds appearing at about five thousand feet."
"Is it safe to fly?"
"If we fly in between the two cloud layers the entire way, it should be safe."
"Excellent!" the Lord Paladin said. He took another few gulps. "Then we shall begin the invasion immediately."
"Invasion?" Felix asked. "You mean, all of our airplanes at the same time? I warn you that if we encounter enemy airplanes, our ability to maneuver may be impaired."
"That is an acceptable risk."
"Commander, will you be there to share in that risk?"
"I will lead the invasion myself," the Lord Paladin said. "From aboard my new airship, the Paladin's Revenge."
Felix was momentarily shocked by this proclamation, and even Neasa looked skeptical. "Commander, if you are willing to risk yourself on the front lines, then I will follow. Neasa, prepare the auxiliaries. I want every wind mage, storm sorcerer and geomancer ready to open new portals."
"Yes commander," she said.
"What is this about?" the Lord Paladin asked.
"It was Neasa's idea," Felix replied. "When die pilots in the initial wave, Neasa and her staff will teach some of our glider pilots how to use draconic sorcery."
"I'll bet Shane contemplated this possibility as well," Neasa added. "He is a skilled sorcerer, and he will want to make use of those skills. We should expect at least a second wave of airplanes attacking from the south."
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"Carry on then, soldier."
"I will give the orders," Felix said.
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Some of the clouds were black, and some were white, but none resembled any shade of gray. A dark haze blanketed the whole world. Far above, in the gaps between the clouds, the dull magenta sky was filled with souls. Thousands of souls, some of them flying alone, but most of them flying together in huge clumps.
Princess Astrid, she thought. The invasion has begun.
Be watchful, Astrid replied in her mind. It is their fate to survive, however our world will only bend itself so far. If either of them is in danger, I want you to intervene.
It will be as you say.
"I Wish for a portal to the Plane of Dreams!" Alice said.
She led her Pegasus by the reins through the portal to the other side, and immediately felt cold. Thousands of feet above the peak of the purple spire, a thick layer of clouds obscured the sky beyond. A deep hum permeated the air, the sound of hundreds of propellers whirring in unison.
One of Mercy's hooves tapped the very apex of the purple spire as Alice flew in a tight spiral, nearly vertically, up toward that blanket of clouds. Leaning back, Alice began to level off, inverted at first, and then with a quick roll Mercy righted herself and began flapping her huge white wings once more. They quested upward, closer and closer to the roiling gray, until they were so close that Alice could reach out and stick her hand inside. She reached into her pack and grabbed a thermometer, attached to the end of a small wooden arm, and held it above her head inside the cloud for a few minutes.
"It's above freezing," she mumbled. "And if there are airplanes above us that must mean it's above freezing all through the cloud. It should be safe."
Mercy snorted.
"Up we go."
Little droplets of water began to race across the lenses of her brass-rimmed goggles as she passed into the cloud. The air was cold, but in the deep shadows of the inner cloud, the temperature stayed the same, or even increased slightly.
"I was expecting it to be colder here," she said.
As annoying as it is, my brother once lectured me on this topic, Astrid said. Water releases a small amount of latent heat when it condenses.
"As long as it's not dangerous."
By degrees the interior of the cloud began to brighten, and then finally her head burst up into clear air. Most of her body remained within the cloud below, hidden from view. Alice wiped the water from her goggles and glanced around. Dozens of squadrons of airplanes, organized into diamond formations, were flying southward with full flaps. To the north, a half a dozen huge airships were struggling to keep up, their engines pumping out huge plums of black smoke. And in the lead, Alice immediately recognized the shape of the aircraft that was towing each airship with long cables.
It looked an awful lot like Ingrid's tilt-rotor.
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"Forty nine! Forty nine knots!" the Commander announced.
His voice boomed from the brass speakers at the top of the glider mast. The glider was, unfortunately, not designed to fly at such high speeds, and as much as Felix would have loved to test it out, the airmen insisted that it needed to be stowed below the landing deck. Everything on the airship seemed to rattle, and the outer layer of the helium envelope tended to undulate from the chaotic airflow. Felix himself grasped the rail near the leading edge of the airship, watching that strange new craft directly ahead.
When he had first seen the thing, it seemed so simple and stupid that he was ashamed that he didn't think of it himself. About the size of a twin-engine airplane, except with large, rotating pylons at the very tips of the wings. The propellers were also huge, so long that they would strike the ground unless the pylons were rotated vertically. Each pylon also featured a swashplate connecting to the main rotors, exactly like a helicopter. The control column included a collective, which allowed the pilot to change the pitch of all the rotor blades collectively, but the engineers did not yet understand the mathematics behind using the cyclic motion of the swashplate to create yaw. Instead, the craft was equipped with an oversized horizontal stabilizer with a pair of vertical stabilizers and two rudders.
Beating against the wind, the strange craft was pulling on a trio of metal cables connecting to the keel of the airship. The tilt-rotor by itself could fly at about a hundred knots, but while towing an aircraft carrier it needed to have the pylons angled slightly up, with full flaps deployed.
"Fifty! Fifty knots! Unbelievable!"
Fifty knots was almost exactly the minimum stall speed of an airplane. The thought made Felix grin.
The Air Sergeant on deck clambered forward, snapping his pair of lifelines across sections of the forward railing. "General Felix!"
"What is it, soldier?" Felix shouted.
"That officer!" the man replied, his booming voice clear over the sound of the tilt-rotor. He pointed to a woman huddling under the wing of her airplane. "She wants to take off without power!"
"Full flaps!" Felix managed. "Off the back of the airship! Immediate nosedive! The maneuver is approved!"
The Air Sergeant saluted.
Shortly after, the woman climbed into her airplane. The enlisted men on deck untied the ropes and began to haul the craft toward the rear of the landing deck. One man on each wing, two men at the empennage, and no less than six men managing the lifelines. They seemed to stand around in a heated debate for a few minutes, long enough for Felix to make his way to the back of the carrier.
"Fifty one knots!" the airship's Commander announced.
Finally, all nine enlisted men, including the Air Sergeant, arrayed themselves around the craft, their double lifelines secured to the guard rails on either side. The Air Sergeant began shouting: "One! Two! Three! Heave!"
With full flaps the wings would be producing almost one-G of upward force, and together the nine men succeeded in lifting the airplane clear off the deck, hurling it backwards. The craft rocked back and forth slightly as it seemed to hover in the air, propeller windmilling, teasing a stall of the main wings. A sharp motion on the elevator, and the nose dropped. The aircraft vanished beyond the edge of the landing deck.
Silence from the men.
Felix watched the craft. A vertical nosedive of some sixty feet in the wake of the airship, very little aileron, lots of elevator, the occasional kick to the rudder. It picked up airspeed, then pulled up, vanishing under the airship.
The enlisted men began cheering and laughing.
That's the first time I've ever seen an airplane take off without using its engine, Felix thought. I bet Prince Kai is going to want that airplane for his museum.
Indeed, Astrid said in his mind. You know my brother so well.