The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 770: Sneak A Turn

Once Benedict was back, the plane went through another intensive check, but his landing had been much more gentle, and he hadn’t pushed the plane nearly as hard as Dominic had.

Mostly because the controls weren’t as touchy.

"We need to do a few tweaks, but I think that the core design is good to go. For the guns, it might actually just be best to have them fire explosive shells all the time. Even against airships, fire is the best way to take them out.

One short burst, then circle and reload.

You’re going to blow past your target anyhow, even if you’re diving at it to increase accuracy. So, a dozen or two dozen rounds at a time is enough. It doesn’t need sustained fire, just bursts."

Gully nodded, that was good news. It was also something that was easy enough to do. The guns were Dominic’s specialty, but the rest of it was pretty well reviewed.

"One other thing I will suggest is to put a quick release on the canopy. If something goes wrong, remove your seatbelt, pull the quick release, and grab the canopy to let it pull you out of the plane.

Then, you’ll need a parachute, or wings. But getting out of the plane is the hard part."

Alexis was certain that there was an issue with that logic. But at the moment, she couldn’t say just what it was. The wind resistance on the curved lid should pull the pilot out of the cockpit with ease, as long as they could hold on long enough.

"Show me the other design as well. It’s about time that I reported back to the King on the progress," she demanded.

"His advisors gave us a whole season to get the new design built. There’s no need to reveal it so soon, right? We don’t even have the staff trained to mass produce it." Dominic countered.

"The King should still be one step ahead of the advisors. Unless you’re saying that you’ve got another airplane sitting in that hangar."

She paused as the group went silent.

"You’ve got another airplane, don’t you?"

"It needs work, but it’s at the stage where it looks like an airplane, yes. You see, we needed to modify the turbine, the steam storage tanks, the control surfaces, and a few other things, based on what we learned today.

But it does look like an airplane without the outer skin."

Alexis made a "Get on with it" gesture, and they led her in the side door of the hangar.

"That is... much larger."

"Indeed. The wingspan is twelve metres, with the cockpit set further back, so that the steam tanks and lines are all in front of the pilot, not under him. The turbine is significantly more powerful than the one in the other plane, but we’ve got it limited based on who is flying it.

If it’s a standard pilot, with minimal magical skills, it runs purely on a magitech heating orb for the steam turbine, with vapour recovery and water creation.

That gives it a decent range, but generally limits it to less than half power, except in short bursts. If it’s operated by someone with more magic, you can go all out for longer.

It’s also got significant mana storage to keep up with the rigours of combat for close to two hours. But after that, it will be all on the pilot to get themselves back on what remains."

"So, you’re saying that this monstrosity will fly over four hundred kilometres an hour, carries six oversized rifles, and bombs?"

Gully nodded happily. "In theory, it can be much faster than that, but we’re still working on the propeller design. If we can’t get the adjustment mechanism just right, we will have to compromise between top speed and acceleration rate.

The other one uses an acceleration focused design, since we expected it to be slower."

"How much is it going to cost them?"

"Nearly as much as a cargo airship for every one of these units. And then the upkeep and maintenance costs. Pushing the turbine that hard requires a lot more maintenance. But they didn’t put a cost cap on the design, they only told us what they needed it to do."

Alexis calculated how many they were likely to need, and how much that was going to pay the Duchy, or grant them in tax exemptions.

"Well, I see this being a good thing for us. As much as that thing looks like a deathtrap, if the King agrees to buy them, we will make a fortune on the basic infrastructure that they will need to protect the coast and the major cities.

At least one squadron of them per city should be the minimum. Five, perhaps?

That’s a minimum of fifteen wings, seventy-five planes. Plus spares, in case of damage and maintenance schedule conflicts.

Now, that might not seem like an excessive number, but it will be enough to keep us busy for years, if we don’t expand the operations. Add to that the smaller ones that you intend to sell to the Barons and Knights, and our hangars might actually make more money off airplanes than airships." Alexis noted.

"But not the Duchy as a whole. The cargo that comes and goes via airship is still a primary economic driver, according to my data. Having the capability to keep airships safe anywhere near our territory is also a way to increase profit." Benedict added.

"You seem to have thought this through more than Dominic did."

The Royal Guard smiled at her. "I expected you to be more angry with him, and prepared accordingly."

Prepared accordingly for her anger, but didn’t try to stop Dominic.

She already knew that the Wavemates Royal Guards were on his team, but they could have at least given her some advance warning instead of waiting until after the plane was in the air.

However, that was part of Benedict’s calculation. If he had stopped Dominic from making the flight, the honour would have gone to one of the engineers, and he would have had to wait longer for his own turn.