Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [102]
Angved flicked on towards the book’s heart, those key paragraphs that had set his own heart racing.
And yet the demands of a future aerial war are more than simply about which flying machine will outperform its rivals in an airborne fight. There is a world of potential in air war that remains untapped, because the mechanical capabilities of the machines that we rely on, even our most sophisticated designs such as the Spearflight orthopters that were used at Solarno, are too limited. While they are so greatly limited in range, orthopters will only ever hold a supporting role. The fuel demands of mobile-winged flight are great, resulting in an air force tied closely to a ground base of operations: a flying force with clipped wings, therefore. Conversely, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that fixed-wing engines are capable of a far greater fuel efficiency, and therefore a greater striking range from their base, had they only the ability to survive against enemy air resistance once they arrived . . .
After that, the book descended into theory and dream: Varsec’s hypotheses, his ‘if only’ thoughts, his tentative sketches of joints and mechanisms, his list of requisite developments that would make his future come to pass.
If I had not come along, with what I know, he would be in a prison cell still, or dead. He had spoken with Varsec on that very subject, and they both knew it, just as the reverse was surely true. Their projects were mutually reinforcing innovations, and they had fallen into the hands of ambitious Colonel Lien, who was aware that the Engineers should have been taking a greater place on the Imperial stage, but had previously been at a loss as to how to further his cause. The resurrection of Drephos, not dead but only defected, could have been the death knell for the Engineers’ rise, with the Empire coming to lean more and more on outside inventions and becoming dependent on creatures like the loathed halfbreed. Even though Drephos seemed to have won the argument as far as ground-based machines went, however, Varsec and Angved had given Lien just enough ammunition to paint the skies of the future in pure black and gold.
A soldier tugged the tent flap open a little, but without looking inside. ‘Sir, the enemy’s moving. You said you wanted to see.’
‘I did, thank you, Lieutenant.’ Angved closed the book and stuffed it back into one of his belt pouches. A true artificer could never have too many pouches.
He let his wings carry him to the wooden parapet so that he could get a commanding look at the surrounding terrain. There he discovered the book’s author sitting in a folding chair, one hand holding a little board with a sheet of paper tacked on to it, the other wielding a pencil. When not revolutionizing the world of mechanical flight, Varsec fancied himself as a landscape artist.
The landscape here was not what Angved considered inspirational, however. They had made considerable progress towards the heart of the Nem, the desert lying between Khanaphes and the cities of the Exalsee. Angved knew it well, for he had lived out here for tendays as a guest of the violent and unruly Many of Nem, the local Scorpion-kinden, while his then commander had armed them and pointed them towards Khanaphes. The Imperial force was now in what was referred to as the mid-Nem, which the Scorpions claimed as their own territory. The fringe of the desert remained a constant skirmishing zone between the Many and their neighbours, whereas the desert’s heart . . .
Well, perhaps we’ll see. They had made remarkable progress inwards, and the first drilling site they had chosen was nudging the inner edge