Chapter 6

Chapter

Six

T apping her pencil on her notepad, Pip swung her legs as she sat at the end of a table in the first row of tables in a small room off the large underground aeroplane hangar. As the chairs had been designed for adult trolls, her feet didn't touch the floor, even when she sat slightly forward.

A common problem. Elven chairs catered toward height as well, and even in Escarland where the chairs were shorter, her feet still didn't touch flat when she sat in a normal chair.

The other mechanics had taken seats near the back of the room. As their commander, Pip probably should have sat with them. But she'd never be able to see if she were in the back. Instead, she sat here, more fully highlighting the divide between her and the others.

Some of the flyboys began to file in, and Pretty Face plopped into the seat at the other end of the table. A dark purple ring surrounded one of his eyes, and his nose was an interesting shade of yellow-green. At least it was still straight .

Pretty Face gave her a smile, then winced. "Ugh. My face is broken."

"Doesn't Dar Goranth have an elven healer?" Pip winced on his behalf. Though knowing Pretty Face as she did, he deserved the punch Fieran's cousin Sathrah had given him. "I thought all important military bases had at least one."

"It does." Pretty Face grimaced and touched his nose. "It turns out this is considered a minor injury and not worthy of direct healing. After confirming that my nose isn't broken, the healer gave me a flask of juice with stored healing magic and sent me on my way."

Stored healing magic like that wasn't as powerful or fast as a direct healing. But Pretty Face's bruise would still heal quicker than it would have otherwise.

Stickyfingers and Tiny took the seats next to Pretty Face. Stickyfingers smirked at Pretty Face and gave him a nudge with an elbow while Tiny nodded a greeting at Pip. Lije slipped into the seat beside Stickyfingers, leaving only one seat between Pip and Lije free at their table.

When Merrik quietly took that seat with a murmured greeting, Pip's heart sank. As much as she liked Merrik as one of the guys, he wasn't the one she'd wanted to sit there.

But as Fieran strolled past the tables to stand at the front of the room, her disappointment vanished. Right. Fieran was leading this meeting. He wouldn't be sitting at all.

Instead, he leaned against a small desk positioned at the front of the room, his hands braced on either side of him with his legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles. Utterly nonchalant, even in his olive-green uniform that contrasted sharply with the bright red of his hair.

And utterly handsome, standing there so casual and confident .

Not that Pip was going to admit that out loud. Or dwell on it. Much. She had a job to do.

As the rest of the flyboys filed into the room and took seats, Baragh leaned against the stone wall next to her and her flyboys' table. Pip shared a nod with him before she faced forward again.

Fieran glanced over the gathering, his gaze not lingering on any of them. "Lady and gentlemen, I know you are all disappointed that we're spending the first weeks of this war grounded."

A murmur of agreement swept the room. Pip resisted the urge to shake her head. Flyboys and their crazy need to take to the skies. Her half-dwarf side preferred to keep her feet firmly on the ground, thank you very much.

"But what we are doing is important." Fieran's bright blue eyes swept the room again. "You more than anyone else know what it's like to go up against an enemy unarmed and unprepared."

Another murmur, then a shout from the back row, "But we had Laesornysh!"

"Laesornysh!" A few echoes rang throughout the room.

Fieran held up a hand, something in his face grimmer at the praise. "Exactly. You had me. But the squadrons stationed at the other aerodromes from here to southern Escarland don't have a Laesornysh."

Now the entire room had that same grim pall over it.

During training at Fort Linder, Pip had only rarely seen this side of Fieran come through. There hadn't been an opportunity.

Now that he was in command, the years he'd spent as a prince of Escarland and Tarenhiel in the public eye were showing. He knew how to make a speech and work a crowd when needed. He might have his father's magic, but now he was very much his mother's son.

"The plan for war has always been that we would stay safe within our borders and let Mongavaria weaken and break against the Wall." Fieran's jaw worked, something flashing in his eyes. "But Mongavaria has made it clear that their plan is to weaken us by attacking not just military targets, but also civilians."

Down the table from Pip, Tiny's knuckles cracked as he clenched his fists.

"It's the duty of the Flying Corps to be the Wall in the sky." Fieran straightened from his casual position leaning against the table. "All across Tarenhiel and Escarland, our fellow pilots will be going up—probably even as we speak—to defend the Alliance Kingdoms from further attacks, and they need to be properly armed. So while we might be sitting out these first few weeks, we aren't wasting our time. What we do here could be crucial to the war effort."

As a cheer rang through the room, Pip couldn't help but join in, a deep sense of duty welling inside her, even if she knew exactly what Fieran was doing.

He'd taken a room full of flyboys despondent at being grounded and given them a sense of purpose and patriotism.

Her stomach was fluttering, witnessing this extra confidence in him. He'd always been cocky. Confident. But he'd never had the command to show it off before now.

She shook herself. Focus on duty, not on the half-elf lieutenant leading the meeting.

Fieran held up a hand for silence again. When the pilots quieted, Fieran glanced over them again. "So what did we learn in the fight over Bridgetown?"

"That rifles and pistols aren't enough against an airship," someone from the middle row spoke up. "Too small of caliber."

"My machine gun did some damage." Stickyfingers smiled with an unfocused, fond look on his face.

"Yeah, to our wings. And almost to me." Lije scowled at Sticky, giving him a none-too-gentle nudge. "You shot one of our wings nearly to shreds. We're lucky we didn't crash."

"The side mount was less-than-ideal." One of the other flyboys turned to Pip. "No offense, Pip. We don't blame you."

"No offense taken." Pip kept the words light, but her heart still sank. She should have done better that night. Somehow thought of a better way to mount the guns to the aeroplanes.

Could she have come up with a better solution in the less than five minutes she'd had that night?

"Things were less than ideal that night. No time for a proper engineering analysis." Fieran's mouth tipped with a slight smile.

That reminder made her feel marginally better, even if the niggling that she should have done better didn't entirely go away.

If she couldn't have done better back then, she had the time now to do so.

"Even beyond the problem of shooting our own wings, we had only a limited line of fire between the wing and the propeller." The voice came from somewhere behind her to the right.

"Nor could we aim. Aiming didn't matter for shooting at the balloon but hampered trying to take out the machine guns on the airships."

Pip half-listened to the various critiques and suggestions as the flyboys made them. What would be the best way to mount a gun on an aeroplane?

It would need to be a fairly large machine gun, which would be heavy and bulky. Weight and aerodynamics would need to be taken into account, even beyond all the problems with aim and shooting parts of the flyers.

While Pip had a degree in magical engineering, she'd been mostly focused on the mechanical side of things. Not to mention, her experience was mostly with trains. She wasn't sure she was the most qualified to figure out the complicated engineering that far smarter and experienced engineers in Aldon hadn't solved yet.

Yet as she'd learned with trains, sometimes it wasn't always the most elegant or engineered solution that worked. Sometimes it was the ugly-but-functional methods jury-rigged in the field or trainyard that did what no engineer with schematics and theories could do.

"I have heard of other aerodromes mounting machine guns on the upper wing." Baragh spoke for the first time, though he didn't move from his position against the wall.

"That would be the place to start. Pip, any thoughts?" Fieran turned to her.

For a moment, she sat there, utterly frozen in his gaze. And in the gazes of everyone in the room swinging toward her, though their weight was different than the warmth in Fieran's blue eyes.

Pip swallowed and forced out a few squeaky words. "We'll need to reinforce the upper wing to handle the extra weight and recoil."

Baragh nodded, as did Fieran. Fieran still held her gaze. "Any other suggestions?"

He wanted her to come up with more? Pip cleared her throat, wracking her brain. A tidbit from some of the various journals, papers, and newspaper articles on the early pioneers of flight rose to her mind. "There was cursory experimentation into mounting a larger gun on a flyer a few months ago. The biggest complaint with mounting on the upper wing was that it was very difficult to clear jams or reload or even reach the trigger, especially for shorter pilots."

A difficulty that she could sympathize with, which was why that particular article stood out to her.

She swung her legs beneath the chair yet again. "I could possibly rig some kind of track so the gun could swing up and down from firing position to a more reachable position for the pilot."

A track like that would be best made out of stamped steel to be an interchangeable part, but she should be able to make a workable version with her magic.

Fieran gave a decisive nod. "All right. You and the mechanics can work on that. Use one aeroplane to test a fixed machine gun and the other on a track."

Pip nodded in return. "We'll have a workable model for testing shortly."

"Anyone else have any observations on the fight over Bridgetown?" Fieran's gaze finally swung away from her to scan the gathered flyboys again.

One of the others pointed toward Tiny. "Tiny's ice did more damage than anything the rest of us did, except for your magic, Laesornysh."

Tiny hunched a little lower in his seat, as if embarrassed by being singled out. Pip could sympathize with the feeling.

Fieran nodded. "You nearly had an airship down by yourself, Tiny. But carrying all that water with you was probably a bit unwieldy."

"It was." Tiny shrugged, his voice squeaking slightly higher than his normal tenor at being the center of attention. "I could barely move the rudder with so much water stacked around my feet."

Not a good long-term solution.

"Pip, would it be possible to add a water reservoir to an aeroplane?" Fieran's gaze was back on her again.

Pip made a note on her paper, sticking to that cool professionalism. "Possibly, but I'd have to run the calculations to see how big of a water tank we could install before the added weight would affect the maneuverability and stability of the aeroplane. The Mongavarians obviously have gasoline tanks in their flyers, so there has to be a way to do it."

Granted, water weighed more than gasoline, so that would have to be factored in.

"Maybe…maybe I could help?"

Pip swiveled in her seat to see Murray, a stocky man with dark skin and curly black hair, with a hand in the air. She hadn't interacted with him much back at Fort Linder as he was so quiet, but the entire training squadron had made a fuss over him when he'd returned to training after surviving his crash.

He was, also, the squadron's one human with magic. Humans with magic were rare, and often their magic wasn't nearly as strong as that of the elves, trolls, or dwarves.

Murray ducked slightly. "I'm only a 2.2 on the Marion Scale and water magic isn't a specialty of mine, but I have some training."

That made sense. Pip had interacted some with the magicians taking various magic-focused classes at Hanford University, and most magicians were required to take a base set of courses. Likely, if Murray had been skilled with water-related magic, he would have been highly encouraged to join the navy, where most magicians who wanted to join the Escarlish military ended up.

"Thanks for the offer, Murray. That would be helpful." Fieran gestured from Murray to Tiny. "The two of you are exempt from gun testing so that you can work together to figure out the best way to maximize both of your magics."

Tiny and Murray both nodded, sharing a glance with each other as if they were already plotting to disappear into a quiet corner to work on magic in peace.

"The rest of you flyboys, Lt. Rothilion should have a scouting rotation for us shortly." Fieran's mouth only slightly pursed, as if on something sour, while saying Lt. Rothilion's name. "In the meantime, we can study maps and previous aerial photographs, brush up on recognizing ships from the air, and on our air navigation. Flying practice runs over Escarland is one thing. Flying patrols over the open ocean will be another thing altogether. One wrong calculation, and we could find ourselves flying straight out to sea, utterly lost with no landmarks to find our way back."

Great. Another thing for Pip to worry about once Fieran and her other flyboys started actively flying.

A collective groan filled the room. Apparently sea nav calculations weren't something the flyboys enjoyed.

She'd rather do a bit of calculus than fly an aeroplane.

Guess that was why she was the mechanic and not a reckless flygirl.