Page 20 of Stalk the Sky

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.

Chapter

Seven

“Test Eleven,” Fieran called out before he switched on the old, rattling Garrumon Model 2 aeroplane.

Pip jotted a note on the paper on the metal clipboard she held. Merrik stood beside her, a pair of field glasses in his hand so that he could better observe the practice run. The other mechanics clustered a few feet away, also holding clipboards for their own notes.

This was strangely familiar to the routine Fieran had back at his dacha’s company—the Alliance Magical Power Company—when testing new engines or other inventions. It had been one of his favorite parts of the job…when stuff blew up. When stuff didn’t blow up, it had gotten tedious. He’d chafed under all the restrictions and proper protocol.

Now he was doing everything all over again, just for the army.

Strange how it didn’t chafe as much, as long as he was working with Pip.

The aeroplane rolled forward, its nose pointed toward the end of the airfield facing the interior of the island. Stacked haybales with paper targets pinned to them sat at the end of the airfield.

He bumped and bounced toward it, not moving fast enough to lift the aeroplane off the ground. As old and brittle as this outdated aeroplane was, it might just disintegrate if he tried to fly. He wasn’t so sure it wouldn’t shake to pieces the first time he fired the machine gun that had been mounted to its nose.

Once he drew close enough, he released the control stick with his right hand—still keeping it steady with his left—and reached for the machine gun’s trigger.

The deafening chatter of the machine gun cut through the morning. Hay puffed while large rents appeared in the paper target. Hot gunpowder residue blew back into his face, peppering his skin everywhere that wasn’t protected by his goggles.

Another crack sounded, this one louder and closer.

Fieran released the trigger, then grasped the stick with both hands again to swing the aeroplane in a long, arcing turn before rumbling back the way he’d come. When he neared the hangar, he cut the engine and let the aeroplane roll the last few feet.

As the ground crew hurried to chock the wheels, Fieran pushed up his goggles and levered himself out of the cockpit. He jumped to the ground just as Pip and Merrik approached.

The three of them stood before the propeller as it slowly spun to a halt.

Pip reached up, and Fieran sensed her magic building before she cast a small shield of her magic. One of the propeller blades clunked into the magic, forcing it to stop. Pip released her magic, then gestured. “Looks like you hit your propeller several times. This one here is pretty banged up. A few more hits like that, and this blade would sheer off.”

“Not unexpected.” Fieran sighed and took in the bullet-riddled propeller blade. It was the problem everyone had been running into while trying to mount guns onto aeroplanes, and the reason Fieran had been piloting this particular test aeroplane. If the propeller broke apart and came back toward him, he could incinerate it with his magic rather than be hit in the head with shrapnel like anyone else would have been. “But I suspect we’ll find a gun mounted like this is more accurate to fire than one on the wing.”

He gestured toward their other test aeroplane, another Garrumon Model 2. This one had a gun mounted to the upper wing with the lowering track Pip had devised curving from the upper wing down to the fuselage so that the pilot could reload and clear jams. Lije currently sat in the cockpit, letting the engine spin up.

“Accuracy does not matter if we shoot ourselves out of the sky,” Merrik oh-so-helpfully pointed out as he reached up and rested a hand on the propeller. A hint of his green magic flowed into it, and Fieran suspected that he was examining the integrity of the wood after the hits it had taken.

“True. And it isn’t like a lot of accuracy is needed to punch holes in an airship’s balloon.” Fieran crossed his arms. “But the whole point is to figure out a way for aeroplanes to do more than take random potshots. We need to be accurate enough to take out the machine gunners or disable the airship significantly in some way. Otherwise there is no point in even arming the aeroplanes, and we should just leave fighting airships to our airships.”

Not something Fieran wanted to contemplate. The flyers were faster and more maneuverable than the large, drifting airships. He firmly believed aeroplanes would play a bigger role than mere scouts, as many in the military still believed.

“Beyond that, the wing-mounted guns have a few problems.” Pip tapped her pencil on her clipboard, her eyes also fixed on the end of the airfield. “The Yshendar aeroplanes favored by the Tarenhieli Flying Corps have a more forward upper wing, allowing for an upper gun mount. But the Soarwings currently used by the Escarlish Flying Corps have their upper wings too far back for a sliding gun mount to work. Not to mention, the upper wing gun mount still isn’t short person friendly, even with the lowering track.”

Fieran glanced at her. “How so?”

“While you were spinning up, we had the other pilots all sit in the other test aeroplane.” Pip gestured to where Lije lined up his aeroplane at the end of the airfield. “The shorter pilots struggled to reach the trigger, and Stickyfingers couldn’t reach it at all. Once some kind of firing mechanism can be attached to the control column, that won’t matter, except that it would still be difficult for shorter pilots to reach the lowering mechanism in case the gun jams or needs reloading.”

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