Chapter 3: Shrublands in the Gloaming

The airship skirted the southern border with Ayaru and one day the lookout found an encampment of settlers within sight to the south. They had passed out of the winter storms and directly to the south the land dropped away into an enormous basin. Shrublands as far as the eye could see and they could see far from that vantage. Down a gentle slope with a dusty gray volcano in the middle of nowhere and dust bowls and dust devils and more volcanos black and humped and the meridian of snowclad mountains beyond. A patchwork of puffy white clouds squatted up on some inversion layer and this patchwork was mirrored in shadow on the arid expanse below.

The encampment was not dug in but they had their own lookouts and when they spotted the airship they scattered on horseback. The captain got up in front of all the officers and gave a little speech. He said that the men down in that desert would stop at nothing short of betraying the Queen of Light to achieve their dream of conquering the land that was promised them and the women therein. Then he went on a long rant about the degeneracy of the race living in the south and he described the destinies of various bloodlines and the rise and fall of races going back as far as the time of Reynell the Paladin and his luck elemental Titania. This animated speech seemed to enrage the other officers and while Ingrid was skeptical of his claims she did not voice this skepticism except to Vaska.

Three fighter jets were scrambled in the late afternoon to hunt the raiders. A fourth fighter jet was brought out, one of the two-seat trainers, and the pilot was not from among the Air Navy but it was instead Glenice. The captain summoned Ingrid to the deck and he gave all the pilots their orders.

"You are hereby ordered to fly into the airspace of Ayaru with a full complement of dark-three missiles only. You will use your missiles to annoy and distress the Ayaruans. Our lookouts say that there are no military aircraft in this airspace but if you encounter any such aircraft you are permitted to use lethal force. Ensign Varelion."

"Yes captain!" Ingrid said.

"You will fly in the front seat with Glenice and you will participate in the mission. Dismissed!"

Glenice gave Ingrid at least a dozen individual gems. There was a red gem, a blue gem, one of the turquoise variety that could summon wind elementals, two green gems with subtle indigo swirls, and four wooden boxes each of which contained two black gems laced with gold.

"What's the green gem?" Ingrid asked.

"Those are contracts with life elementals," Glenice said. "One for each of us. Your body will experience intense G-forces in a fighter jet and the life elemental will help you endure them."

"They taught exercises for how to deal with G-forces but they never said anything about life elementals."

"That's because only very high-ranking officers have access to them. The vast majority of life elementals are used in large hospitals and there aren't enough of them for all the fighter pilots needed to staff a functioning Air Navy."

"That makes sense. But I'm not a high-ranking officer."

"Vaska's orders. There is one red crystal for the engine, a blue one for the hydraulics, and the turquoise one is used to reduce noise and control the oxygen levels in the cabin."

"What about these wooden boxes?"

"Those elementals are always summoned in pairs. In fact, they cannot be summoned without summoning the pair. They are called shadow hunters and they allow dark-three missiles to navigate."

Glenice took one of the boxes and she plucked both of the dark crystals out and she held one in each hand.

"Hunters of the Domain of the Queen of Darkness," she said. "I invoke these contracts and I summon you together!"

Two huge puffs of shadow and the wolves appeared, each as tall as a man. One of the wolves was black and one of the wolves was white. Their various features were inverted. The white wolf had black fangs and eyes and the black wolf had white fangs and eyes. Glenice pointed to one of the four missiles which burdened the wings of the fighter jet and the black wolf padded forward and vanished into the missile in a puff of black smoke. The white wolf leapt up to the cabin of the fighter jet and it also vanished in an explosion of shadows.

"Go ahead and summon the life elemental," Glenice said.

"Daughter of the Queen of Life!" Ingrid said. "I invoke this contract and summon you!"

A swirl of green mist congealed in front of her. It was very tall and it looked something like a mix between a woman and a tree.

Glenice pointed to Ingrid. "Strengthen her body against the forces of flight!"

The green tree-woman dissolved into Ingrid and then she was gone.

"You know the other commands, do you not?"

"I know them," Ingrid said.

She proceeded to summon the fire, water, and wind elementals and she gave them the proper commands. Then Ingrid climbed the ladder into the forward of the two seats and Glenice sat behind her. The airmen on the deck lowered the canopy and Ingrid locked it in place with the pull of a heavy lever. In front of Ingrid the inside of the bubble-like canopy was lined with a metal support with three mirrors riveted onto it. Through these mirrors Ingrid could see behind the aircraft.

"I will take off by myself," Glenice said. "Pay attention to what is different."

Unlike the highwing, the fighter had a nose-wheel that could turn, and it did not rely exclusively on the brakes while on the ground. Glenice skillfully drove the craft out of its parked position and lined it up along the white line on the runway on the deck of the airship.

"Flaps down one notch," Glenice said. Ingrid could not see the flaps drop. "Up we go."

The throttle went forward to full, but the brakes kept them in place for a second. When the brakes were released, the craft lurched forward. The rudder kicked in, and the nose stayed straight on the line. The deck and all the airmen on it began to rush past in a blur. The nose pitched up before they reached the bow of the airship and they went aloft just as the deck vanished behind them. Up they went and Ingrid felt the intense G-force and the whole world rotated longitudinally as if that little airplane could command the attitudes of the horizon itself.

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"Gear up," Glenice said. A large lever went up and there was a low rumble for a bit. The altimeter was spinning wildly, and the ground was dropping away fast in the mirrors. The whole of the airship soon appeared in the mirror and shrank rapidly until it could fit entirely in a single mirror. In just a few breaths they had flown vertically ten-thousand feet into the sky and still they went on.

With some effort, Ingrid twisted her neck and looked out at the roiling ocean of clouds below them. The hemisphere of her vision was rapidly expanding out over that pale blanket and the desert had become an indistinct carpet of tans and grays in the gaps between the clouds. The airship looked like a toy. Even the mighty mountains looked like small ripples in a blanket. The engine hummed and hissed and a long trail of smoke was left in the wake of the craft, dominating the mirror above Ingrid's head.

Twenty-thousand feet. The nose began to pull down slightly, and they entered into a long arc over the desert. By thirty-thousand feet the nose was almost at the horizon, however they were not level until thirty-five thousand feet. Beyond the desert below there was a vast flat floodplain bisected by a snake-like river leading off to Jekla and who knew where else.

"Alright, grab the stick and turn heaven-ward." Glenice said.

Ingrid tilted the craft to the left. It just kept going mostly straight, even with the wings slightly tilted. "It won't turn," Ingrid said.

"Keep going until we are completely sideways, then pull up on the stick gently."

Indeed, as Ingrid pulled the stick to the left side, the craft went completely sideways on edge but went straight ahead without turning. This was completely unexpected given that rolling the highwing even slightly caused it to begin changing direction. When Ingrid pulled the nose up the craft began to change direction.

"Level off, then it's my airplane."

With Glenice in control, the airplane flipped upside down rapidly and then the nose came up and pointed straight at the ground. They were descending fast, with the gauge reading tens of thousands of feet per minute. Then she pushed down on the stick, causing the airplane to return to a level position but still inverted. With a jerk of the stick the craft flipped over and they were flying straight again.

The motions were very fast, however Ingrid saw the pattern right away. Rolling the craft only rolled the craft, it did not change direction. Directional changes came from pitching the nose while rotated in some way. This property applied no matter which way the nose was facing, even straight up or down.

"Still my airplane," Glenice said. As they leveled off, she said "I am going to use the rudder."

The pedal at Ingrid's left foot shifted forward and the nose drifted slowly heaven-ward. Then Glenice kicked the right rudder and the nose drifted life-ward until they were going straight ahead again.

"What happened!?" Ingrid asked.

"What did you expect to happen?"

"When changing direction using the rudder like that, one wing moves forward faster than the other. Moving faster means more airspeed, which means more lift, which causes the craft to roll. As the craft rolls, the rudder starts acting like an elevator which causes the nose to drop, but the roll will overshoot and the nose drops towards the ground."

"That's the way it works in the little highwing," Glenice said. "That's not how this fighter jet works."

"So how does it work?"

"Watch the surfaces."

Ingrid watched and she kicked the rudder herself. Automatically the ailerons compensated for the difference between the airspeeds of the two wings and the wings remained perfectly level even as the nose yawed heaven-ward or life-ward.

"How?"

"That's Vaska's work. This fighter jet is equipped with what is called a colored orb. It is a type of lesser lightning elemental. Colored orbs come in different colors and by tradition these colors are named after flavors. Cherry, blueberry, lemon, lime. In this case Vaska taught a blueberry orb the math equations required to yaw without rolling."

After that small lesson Glenice instructed Ingrid to practice a variety of maneuvers. The fighter jet could easily roll all the way around so that the ground was the sky and then the ground once again, all in a near instant. At any point during that roll, the pitch could be moved up or down to move in almost any direction or orientation, while the rudder could be used to smoothly yaw side to side at any attitude.

The other three fighter jets had gone off to other corners of the sky leaving Ingrid and Glenice alone. Ingrid flew the airplane to the east high over the shrublands and she looked down upon the humble peaks and their shadows which went further east all the way to the ocean.

"Now we are going to need to command the black shadow hunter," Glenice said. "Listen and attend. Missile one, black hunter! Search the ground for souls!"

"I have found two souls riding upon horses," the elemental replied. She sounded a bit old, like a wise old woman.

"Pick the closest soul! Ingrid, say 'Dark three!' and pull the trigger on your stick."

Ingrid said "Dark-three!" and she pulled the trigger and the missile rocketed off the rails and the elemental said "Whooo!" and the missile began to descend rapidly, leaving a long white streak in the sky which went down and out of sight. Glenice instructed Ingrid to use the same command on the number two missile and she did and then she launched a second missile and she said "dark-three!"

A little while later the white hunter reported, "Direct hit. The horse has exploded. Also the man is dead."

"That poor horse!" Ingrid said.

Glenice took over the airplane and she flew them down almost to the ground so fast that it frightened Ingrid. The airspeed was extremely high and it took a quick trip north into Taisia and back again in order to dump the airspeed from descending thirty-thousand feet. They skimmed over the ground like a stone upon water and the bushes and the funny little trees with green pom-poms all rushed by in such a blur that Ingrid was suddenly dispossessed of all pretense of understanding. Never before in human history, Ingird thought, has a woman flown this fast over this spot of land, and perhaps never again shall it be.

They went down and they passed over the smoldering wreck of the two men. Horse and rider both had become vague pinkish smears on the blackened desert floor, viscera and gore and blood all sprawling out in a cone thin and drying and darkening in the desert air. If there was such a thing as a horse down there Ingrid could not see it.

They went back toward the airship and the signal officer approved their approach. Glenice turned the controls over to Ingrid and she followed the standard protocols for approaching the airship. As they descended, the airspeed began to increase dramatically.

"I am going to deploy the air brakes," Glenice said. "They are designed to dump airspeed as you approach for landing."

Even with full flaps and the air brake deployed they were traveling much faster than the top speed of the smaller propeller-driven craft. Ingrid lined them up on the center line of the airship and the airship itself was flying forward and it was flying into the wind. Ingrid estimated that she was going too fast and Glenice must have agreed because she said "My airplane" and then she took over.

They went around. On the second pass Glenice masterfully took them down and she pulled up at the last second and the threshold of the airship rushed by in a grayish blur. Nose up without stalling and the wheels touched down and the nose dropped and they casually rolled on down the runway into the wind. It was the softest landing Ingrid had ever felt and she had done some soft landings herself in the highwing.

After all the fighter pilots had landed they were corralled into a room with a long table and the captain of the ship sat at the head of the table. Then they went through the debriefing. The captain asked Ingrid how many people had been killed on the mission and when all the kills were tallied the lookouts were satisfied that none of the raiders had survived. By the time they were done it was the hour of gloaming over that shrubland and Ingird went to Vaska's room tired but determined.

After another month of flying they began to instruct Ingrid on the geometry of head-to-head and head-to-tail dogfights, which they called one-circle and two-circle dogfights respectively. For two more months Ingrid flew a fighter jet against Glenice in the merge and in beyond-visual range engagements. Finally they gave Ingrid her own fighter jet and it was a two-seater fighter jet.