Chatper 211: Flying!

August 26th, 625

After a couple more weeks bouncing between forward bases I was sent back to the Treehouse so I could oversee the final touches of the airfield. Since I was stationed here Sawn made sure that it would be the place responsible for combat trials. The airfield had been getting integrated into the base at large, a wall needing to be built around it, so it had taken a while for everything to get prepared enough for the arrival of some aircraft. 

I led the last bits of construction, making sure the runway was flat and long enough and that the hangars were sufficiently large. There was also a massive field where vehicles could be parked, a new road being paved that went straight from there to the main garage. 

And after a couple more days of that, the time finally came. 

A few hundred people stood not far from the runway. Most soldiers had no idea about my new planes and those that did wanted to see these legendary things in person. 

I stood with the Snow Doves, Jasmine, Boris, Polly, and Pollux. The Generals and other Colonels were nearby as well as many other Chiefs and soldiers who wanted to know what was going on. 

I checked the time. 10 minutes. 

Nonnen muttered, “I don’t see anything.”

“I’m sorry, did you think this thing was going to teleport here?”

“You said it was fast.”

“And yet it’s still slower than you in the sack. Give it a minute, bozo.”

“Hahaha!”

Jasmine started cackling, Polly and Pollux shaking their heads. 

Polly sighed, “Children, the both of you.”

“Nonnen started it.” I pointed.

“I was just asking a question.”

“I WaS JuSt aSkInG A QuEsTiOn.”

“Ooo, you gonna let John mock you like that Nonnen?” Jasmine goaded.

“I’m not a man that can be angered by mere words.”
“You the village elder now?”

“Call me old all you want, I’ll still fold you in those clothes, boy. With or without Vigor.”

“I’d still be taller.”

“Pipe down!” Polly shouted, exasperated, “I didn’t think I’d be dealing with infants as a Brigadier General!”

“I know, talk about immature,” Jasmine turned away, looking down at her nails. 

All three of us spun to her, making her flinch. Before she could run away I jumped over and headlocked her.

“You little pipsqueak.”

“Ahh! Let me go!”

“You trying to start something, you little instigator?”

“I order you to let me go! This is insubordination! Polly!”

“John!”

“Fuck.”

I let go, the girl running to Polly’s side and sticking her tongue out at me when she was safe. 

I rolled my eyes. Talk about a toddler. 

That’s when Pollux pointed up at the sky.

“Look.”

“Oh, it’s here.”

I looked over, finally seeing the first plane model that would come in. 

It was the military transport plane, labeled the Cargo 400 or C-400, the largest model we’ve designed so far. It was capable of carrying either four Steeds in a 2×2 configuration as well as 100 troops, or a special eating device could be installed in place of the cargo and allow it to carry 300 troops. 

For the wow factor, Sawn decided to send this one with four Steeds and the hundred troops. 

The massive plane had four huge propellers and ran on Authority 7 Crystals, capable of carrying its cargo across a range of about 3000 miles. 3000 miles was the sweet spot we aimed for with most planes as it was not only a big number but it could go from the front lines to the Capital in one go. 

As for the precise size of the C-400, I had modeled it after the C-5 Galaxy. It was only a bit wider and a bit shorter. 

Still, it looked absolutely massive while it came in. The landing gear deployed, the plane slowly lowering down, the noise from the massive propellers reaching a climax as it got closer. I was a bit nervous, but the pilot did just fine, bleeding his speed before the end of the runway. 

After that it turned into another airstrip and started coming toward us. I looked at the people next to me, smiling. 

I smacked Nonnen’s chest. 

“See that shit?! I built that shit! That’s my invention!”

“…No shit.”

He didn’t even have a retort, simply staring at the massive hunk of metal as it came rolling over. 

By now, nearly two thousand troops had come over to see what had flown in. Knowing this would happen, there were some people who kept control of the crowd nearby. 

I waved, “Come on. Let’s go see our new arrivals.”

We walked over as the plane came to a full stop, the huge back hatch slowly lowering. Inside, we saw the four Steeds strapped down as well as the troops who sat on seats lining the walls. After the troops filed out in awe, a few drivers fired up the Steeds and drove them out one at a time. 

I looked up again, finding another plane. 

“Hey, look.”

I caught the attention of the others, all of them turning to the next arrival. 

It was the recon plane, a plane almost as long as the C-400, but much skinnier and lighter. It had four propeller engines and could hold speeds of over 400 mph at altitudes of 40 thousand feet. It was the highest performance aircraft and could remain in the air indefinitely, only limited by the pilot’s needs. Because of that it had things like a bed, a shitter, shower, and a small lounge area, hence the length. 

Throw someone in there with food inside a storage space and they could live up there for as long as the food lasted. Even the sewage could be dumped, and water could be generated with magic. 

Magic was stupid. 

The recon craft looked a bit more odd compared to the C-400, especially since it was painted a sky blue, but anything was impressive to the people seeing it for the first time. After it came in and landed, several more planes arrived. 5 bombers and 5 fighters. After that, the choppers flew in, among them a few chinook variants, a few combat variants, even some small recon variants. 

I couldn’t help the constant, massive grin on my face as I watched them all arrive. This place was starting to feel properly modern. We were finally getting some real weapons out here. These would be the things that changed the tide of this war. 

Until the Scourge came up with countermeasures, we would have total air superiority and perfect intelligence as a result. The fog of war was a thing of the past. 

And I was getting paid. Defense contracting was the best. 

I saw one of the helicopters land nearby, smiling at the others. 

“Who wants to go for a ride?”

……

…

The next day came. 

“The longer we wait, the longer we put off victory.”

“I get that, but I just want you two to be careful. I trust your intelligence but…”

Polly glanced to the side, looking at the recon craft, dubbed the XR-11. 

I just smiled, “I get it, it’s new and you can’t trust it quite yet. But it’s got multiple redundancies and I’m not going under 30 thousand feet. Even if it fails we can bail and survive a crash.”

“And then you’ll be behind enemy lines all alone.”

“We’ll make it work. Isn’t that right?”

I looked nudged Jasmine with my elbow, making her roll her eyes. 

Polly shook her head, “Alright, just don’t go too far.”

“I told you the plan. We fly for 12 hours and then head across the Pass. I’ll keep an eye on everything and be cautious but we need to know what’s happening as soon as possible. If I need to go by myself then I will.”

“Shut up. I’m going.” Jasmine snapped. 

Polly gave in, “Fine. Go. Check in whenever you’re in range.”

“Of course.”

Jasmine and I snapped off two salutes, Polly returning it before we left. 

We used a ladder to climb into the side door of the XR-11. Once inside we closed up, locked down, and went to the front. 

We passed through a room of dense instruments before arriving at the pilot seats. Jasmine took the co-pilot seat and once I was seated in the pilot seat, we clicked everything on, the Node and Aerial powering and giving us a connection. 

“Dreamboat to Tower, come in.”

“Tower copies, Dreamboat.”

“We are readying for takeoff.”

“Roger, clearing personnel.”

I spun up the engines while several people went running off the runway. I rolled the plane over, everything powered on and ready to go. 

I lined up and clicked the Aerial. 

“Ready for takeoff.”

“Roger. You are cleared. Go for takeoff.”

I smiled and made sure Jasmine was strapped in. She was, thoroughly, even grabbing the nearby handle for comfort. Her knuckles were white and I could almost hear her erratic heartbeat. 

As for Boris, he was staying behind to return to the Capital. I didn’t need him on this mission and I wasn’t interested in dragging him around everywhere. 

I grabbed the throttle and gradually moved it forward, all four propellers spinning up and forcing us back into our seats. This was my first time flying this thing and I slightly misjudged the difference between this and a single prop plane. 

No matter. It just meant that we got into the air faster. The plane tilted up and we started ascending. I sent the throttle to 80% max and we climbed faster and faster. 

After several minutes we were at 20 thousand feet. I called in. 

“Tower, we are at 20 thousand and holding steady. Going dark soon.”

“Copy Dreamboat. Tower out.”

I turned off the Aerial, powering a few other things down. This craft was equipped with the best stealth systems Sawn Industries could devise, such as passive magic shielding that prevented any leakage from alerting sensitive Auras. 

Once all that was done, I started climbing the craft up to 40 thousand feet. Once there, I locked the throttle in place, turned off two of the engines, and activated the auto-pilot systems. 

The auto-pilot was incredibly simple, but it did the job. Sawn and his army of summoners managed to devise a rudimentary altimeter, and with that we could program systems to operate control surfaces and keep the aircraft at certain levels when unmanned. It was enough to keep the thing from crashing itself, and there were plenty of alarms for when anything went wrong. Still, standard procedure would be to have at least one person awake at all times. 

We started flying away from the base, and we could already see the red biomat across the landscape. Jasmine had her face glued to the window.

“Amazing…”

“Right? Not a sight many people get to see.”

“You invented this? How?”

“Designing the plane was easy. The hard part was making the engine that turns those propellers as efficiently as mine do.”

“…You know, I thought you were lying when you told us about all of this. Even when they were making the airfield I was finding it hard to believe. But you’re some kind of genius, huh?”

She turned to me with a cheeky smile, making me chuckle. 

“Of course. I’ve been saying that forever.”

“Yeah, but like, what the fuck is this?” She motioned to everything around her, “We’re flying! Do you realize that? We’re 40 thousand feet up in the sky! Look at the clouds! Look at the hills, the landscape! We’re flying! Flying!”

“Hehe, yeah we are.”

“Why does it not sound like you understand what this means? There’s zero awe in your voice.”

“Jasmine, I started flying the first plane we made nearly 2 months ago. None of this is exactly new for me. Besides, it could be much more grand. This plane is weak compared to what I have in mind.”

She turned in her seat, facing her body toward me, “Enlighten me.”

I glanced at her and pulled a lever, turning my entire seat around to face her. 

I set my ankle atop my thigh, “Do you know what’s beyond the world?”

“What do you mean? Like Heaven?”

“No, I mean, if you keep going up, higher and higher, even higher than we are now. Like, 5 times higher. What do you think is up there?”

Jasmine glanced at the window. We could see the horizon, many miles away. Since it was about to be sunrise, we could see the slightest bit of light peeking over, about to dawn.

She looked up, seeing a dark sky, “I’m not sure. People have asked that question for millennia.”

“Well, what if I told you I could get you there. Given enough time, money, and development, I could take you to the bounds of the world and then beyond it.”

She looked at me with raised brows, “Are you saying that’s your goal?”

“No.” I shook my head, “My goal right now is to eradicate the Scourge. I developed these planes and helicopters for that. However, it’s a possibility that I’ve studied. If I were really pushing things to the limits, we’d be so high up that you could see the curvature of the world itself.”

I brought up my hands, drawing shapes with my Psyka and Aura, “The world is a giant ball, Jasmine. Get high enough, you’ll start seeing the curve of that ball. And then you ask yourself, what’s beyond that ball? And you’ll find something called space. That is the ultimate frontier.”

Jasmine was silent as we just sat there. I was occasionally looking down to make sure we got over the right areas for collecting intel. We’d be there soon. 

Eventually, she shook her head, “I don’t know. I guess when you think like that, none of this is impressive. But I’ve never flown like this before, so I’ll enjoy my awe.”

“And that’s perfectly fine. Enjoy it. Just make sure to come back down to earth when it’s time to collect intel.”

“Funny.”

She snickered before turning back to the surrounding glass. By now, the majority of what we could see was nothing but red biomat. 

I stood and went back a room, flicking on a bunch of the observation instruments. It was mostly optical systems but there were some magical detectors there, nothing super powerful since the tech wasn’t there yet. 

The ‘cameras’ would be the most important. They were the most powerful that Sawn could field and we’d be snapping hundreds of pictures of the things we saw on the ground. It was capable of zooming in great distances too, just enough to snap the pictures and take video from the altitude we were at. 

Soon, we started passing over the forward bases. That’s when both of us started operating a camera each, finding interesting things like Scourge camps, movements, concentrations, and more. We took the pictures and used consoles to log the data onto Orbs. We even had a map that we plotted all the information onto, creating a massive cohesive pool of data. 

We’d be handing it back before diving deep. For now, I just wanted to make sure everything ran correctly. If there were any problems, we’d head back and abandon the mission until the plane could either get fixed or brought up to spec. 

We had around 12 hours until then. Every few hours we were to return to the airspace above the Treehouse and relay the data we collected. This plane had its own Node as well as a long range relay system that could utilize powerful bursts of mana in order to transmit signals. Right now Sawn was working on creating a directional signal caster but until we got that out, transmission range would be limited. 

It was good enough for now though. Jasmine and I simply buckled in and tried to enjoy ourselves. There would be a lot of downtime and boredom. 

……

Jasmine tracked the map and glanced out of the window. After night fell everything naturally got dark. From up above though, it looked much darker. Thankfully the moon was out, giving them a slight bit of light. 

There were also night vision systems enhancing the images coming into the cameras, enabling them to view and snap pictures with good clarity despite it being so dark and them being so high up. 

She took a look through the camera. John was asleep, and she was awake because she had slept not long after they took flight. The bedroom could black itself out so it was perfectly dark and perfectly comfortable.

Oddly enough, she had gotten the best sleep she’d had in years. Probably because, as John put it, they were the safest people in the world this high up in the sky. She agreed with that, though the occasional turbulence didn’t help with her lingering anxiety over the insanity of the situation. 

She still couldn’t believe it sometimes, but every time she got a good look at the Scourge below, she laughed a bit. This was really happening. 

She had never seen the Scourge like this before. She could see their movements, like that of a herd. The perspective this plane afforded her allowed her to think of things differently. It was a different scale. 

She also realized how off the maps were, but those were problems for another time. 

She tracked the massive intestine down below. They were following it. John wanted to see the Epicenter, the thing that Chief Reginold, Vipul, and Prassanna had died to alert them about. There were images of it but he wanted to see it personally. Jasmine agreed, but she still felt nervous. Even up so high, she couldn’t get over how vulnerable she felt as a summoner. 

But she wouldn’t back down. She knew she wasn’t like John but when this opportunity presented itself, she knew she had to take it. It wasn’t just for the experience. 

Up here, collecting intel, she felt like she was doing something that could actually impact the war. There was little that she did at the Treehouse that felt significant. She knew that she helped, but it was only as a smaller cog in a much larger machine. 

A cog protected by tens of thousands of troops that laid down their lives so that she could use her brain in an attempt to outsmart the enemy. Unfortunately, oftentimes her thinking did nothing more than allow another person to think about things just a little more clearly. They didn’t need what she provided, and thus she felt useless, hiding behind all those who died daily. 

Yet she wasn’t jealous of John and his power, nor his ability to survive lethal situations, experiences carved into his flash and immortalized in his scars. 

She couldn’t imagine actually having to fight. It was too terrifying to think about, being face to face with a monster and having to cleave it to death with a blade, and getting hurt in the process. And yet, despite knowing those thoughts were cowardly, she still couldn’t muster the courage to think any other way. 

She hated that. Now though, she finally felt like she was mustering a bit of bravery and doing something substantial. What she saw and documented here would change the war.

No, what she was doing here would change the way the Kingdom conducted warfare forever. This recon mission she and John were running would serve as a case study for years to come. Her name would be passed through history. It wouldn’t be as immortalized as John’s but she was still doing something revolutionary. 

She was among the first to do something. Perhaps that was also a reason why she was so quick to jump into this mission. John had offered it to her, not expecting her to agree so readily, but she had. She didn’t even hesitate. A quick thought and she jumped in. 

Maybe she was selfish for that. No matter what though, she would bring out the most value from this chance that she could. 

She may not be brave but she hated her cowardice enough to take this chance to do something meaningful. 

She did another scan around the intestine. There were extremely few monsters around it. Most of them were walking through it, but she noted occasional openings in the sides where some Scouts came and went. 

She felt weird, watching monsters that had no chance of seeing her. They didn’t know to even look for a plane. Not yet at least. John had no doubt that they would soon start keeping watch for recon planes but for now, they had the absolute advantage of secrecy and stealth. 

Even if they didn’t though, she wondered, what could possibly hit them from so high up?

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