Painting the Sky [7]

The airship followed the east coast of Taisia to the south. Out the windows of Vaska's room the Ashe River Plateau could be seen looming to the west, a white meridian sandwiched between the ominous gray clouds and the verdant farms on the floodplains. It had been morning when Ingrid received the summons and the captain set course for Taisia City immediately.

Vaska was working on something and she had been working since before dawn. Some time in the night Vaska had added the Domain of Metal to her painting. A splash of red laced with white and black and yellow. The rivers and lakes of silver, the giants, the gray sky and the silver-white moon. An inverted pyramid crowned with a shining city skyline.

Ingrid got up and padded over to Vaska's table. There were several open books and some engineering diagrams scattered about. Vaska was busy copying one diagram which resembled some type of mechanical arm.

"What is it?" Ingrid asked.

Suddenly animated, Vaska began rifling through the pages of one book. She stopped at a diagram of a big airplane with very long wings and four engines mounted on pylons, two to each side.

"This is the HM-6 Longshore. It is the cutting edge bomber used by the Central Army Air Force. It replaces the smaller HM-4 Sweeper, which could operate from airships. Barely. The new Longshore has a crew of six pilots and there are living quarters where pilots can eat and sleep. The thing can basically fly for an entire day or maybe longer before it needs to land for maintenance."

"Are you working on a new bomber?"

"No. Sorry, I digressed. The other important aspect of the Longshore is that the bombs are all stored internally, whereas the Sweeper carried the bombs on the wings. Hydraulic arms force the doors of the bomb bay open, even at high airspeeds, and then the bombs roll down a track where they fall out of the airplane."

"And you want to use those hydraulic arms on a fighter jet?"

"Yes. There was some work done a few years ago by the Heylin Society of Aeronautical Engineers. There were some papers published and there was even a design review. Basically, the engineers theorized that the fighter jet's performance in the merge could be improved slightly by improving the aerodynamic efficiency of the airframe. The plan was to move the missiles into weapon bays where they would not contribute to the overall drag. When the pilot wants to shoot a missile, the hydraulic arms force the bay doors open and a second hydraulic system ejects the missile with a great deal of force. The fuse to ignite the propellant is carefully timed so that the missile starts moving forward only after it has left the weapon bay.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"However, the Central Army Air Force never ordered any airplanes with this feature because it greatly increased maintenance requirements and it complicated the procedures for arming the fighter jet on the ground."

"More moving parts that can fail."

"That's right. The top brass shelved the idea because the costs were estimated to be too high relative to the marginal benefits during the rare situations when fighters actually end up in a merge. They also note that additional pilot training would provide greater merge performance when compared to this new technology."

"Do you think they were wrong?"

"No. They were right."

"So why are you researching this?"

"Because, the White Ravens perform without weapons on the wings for aesthetic reasons. The airplanes simply look more elegant and impressive in a clean configuration. I'm trying to design a fighter jet that can perform at airshows and look beautiful while still being armed with a full complement of missiles."

Vaska shuffled through a couple of her diagrams and she pointed to a rough sketch of a fighter jet. It was large with two engines and two tail fins angled slightly out, like the HY-8 Fat Meg. However, it also featured a large weapon bay on the belly and two smaller weapon bays behind the engine intakes. The whole thing was sleek and curvy, unlike the Fat Meg, which was blocky and somewhat ugly.

"The lower weapon bay is larger and it can hold four dark-three missiles. The two smaller weapon bays on the sides can each hold two ice-two missiles. There is also a ship's cannon on the heaven-ward side of the pilot's cabin."

"What are you going to call it?"

"The HY-9 designation is already reserved by the society for a different project. I contacted my associates on the mainland and they said HY-10 is available. But I'm not sure what the name should be. Do you have any ideas?"

"How about the Showman? Or maybe the Show… woman?"

"The Showgirl!"

"That sounds too obscene."

"The HY-10 Showgirl."

"Vaska!"

"It's perfect!"