.
I caught up with Dilorè less than an hour out of Anto, warning her by spiritual voice that I was about to open the hatch before doing so. Of course, she should have sensed me approaching, but I figured it was the polite thing to do, like knocking before entering a room.
Catching up had been fairly straightforward. The four windmill-like propellers looked impressive, but they turned slowly enough to watch the blades moving. And they were silk hung on bamboo booms and ballooning like boat sails. Considering that, Reia’s top air speed of thirty five or forty miles per hour was actually pretty impressive.
I can fly a lot faster, but Erebos had spoken at length while answering my last question.
I entered the boat expecting to get an earful from Dilorè.
“Are you absolutely out of your mind?! What were you thinking, My Lady?”
…quoth Lady Chiara before I even closed the hatch.
I turned to face the oncoming lady knight only to find her wrapping her arms around me while sobbing.
It was just a rapid squeeze rather than a hold and cry, but she didn’t let go as she pulled her head away from my shoulder to look at me. For a moment, I blinked in confusion at the angry tears in her eyes as she glared at me. Then I turned to look at Ryuu, emerging from the passenger cabin following her.
He had a dark, disgruntled look for me, but a gentle hand for her as he settled on her shoulder.
“She’s been a real mess,” he told me. “She’s been worrying for you ever since you left.”
Then I understood. I had forgotten the effects of the blood bond because she had been doing such a great job of keeping the effects from coloring her outward behavior. It was almost impossible to tell a difference in her, at all.
I pressed my lips together and pulled her back in to return the hug, patting her on the back.
“I’m sorry. It really was necessary.”
I genuinely was sorry, since I could see how torn up she was.
She wasn’t having any of it. “You were so adamant about how dangerous that place was, and how we had to leave as soon as possible, and you went right back there! Do you think you’re indestructible or something?”
“I know I’m not indestructible,” I told her patiently.
“That being killed four thousand people by just making their bodies disappear! And you admitted you had no idea how to defend against it at all!”
“I know,” I nodded.
“My Lady, if you know, then don’t go there!“
I sighed. “According to Eurybia, he wasn’t the danger, Chiara.”
“If a being like that isn’t a danger, what is?” she nearly yelled in my ear.
I would like to voice my agreement to her objection, My Lady, Durandal added.
“The danger is the other one,” I told both of them. “Erebos is on our side.”
“Air-a-who?” Dilorè asked.
I heaved another sigh, then gently forced Chiara into the navigator’s chair. While detaching from her, I commanded, “Sit here and collect yourself. I need to brief everyone.”
“Anto is getting closer by the minute, Your Highness,” Dilorè said. “We need to test whether you can handle the controls well enough to get us through Relador.”
“Ah…” I frowned. “Okay, look everyone. We will have a long chat about why I went and what we discussed, but I need to get used to flying this aircraft. It will be difficult for me to navigate us through Relador unless I’m at the controls.”
Ryuu’s brows immediately bunched up. “You’re going to fly this thing?”
I felt a little offended at his doubting tone. He hadn’t even questioned it for a moment when Dilorè was piloting.
Raising my eyebrow, I reminded him, “I have wings, Mr. Kowa. I know a thing or two about flying.”
“Using your own body is different than flying an aircraft!”
Due to taking care to hold my tongue, I didn’t snap at him. He had picked a bad time to suddenly find some backbone, just after I had my nerves run ragged facing an Ascendant.
Instead, I stated patiently, “I have handled aircraft before, Mr. Kowa. And the type I previously flew actually used the same flight principle as this boat.”
He frowned. “When? I know how young you are. And you were in ground combat and knight training before you joined us. When did you have a chance to fly planes?”
“At the time, I was called Sirth of the Wind-Seeker Folk, and I was living on the world called Quiara,” I told him.
The controls were nothing alike– frankly, much of the controls on Quiaran airships were ropes and spars and lines that the sailors hauled upon as a team, to manage the sails. The spirits that Wind-Seekers commanded to push the craft around like invisible tug boats also qualified as controls.
But the basic principle of flight was identical. ‘Lift Stones’ built into the hull, mounted roughly along what would be the water line off an Earthly ship, employed magic to carry the vessel aloft.
But about those controls… I added, “In addition, although I never flew the aircraft in the world of my most recent life, I played Flight Simulator. These controls are almost the same as those.”
I knew enough about Japanese to be able to roughly approximate how they would pronounce that title. Furaito Shimyureitoru. So I had pronounced it that way, too.
Ryuu’s eyes widened when he heard the famous software title from Earth. I twisted my mouth to one side, wondering how he would react.
Turns out, he asked, in a hopeful tone, “Nihonjin?”
Which happened to be a word I knew. Japanese person?
I think Talene assumed the same thing at first. But with as many countries as the Earth has, why would you assume someone else came from that one country? I guess you might have a one in four chance of meeting a countryman if you were Chinese, but Japan has a much smaller population, right?
I shook my head with a smile and answered, “Amerikajin desu. And I only know a handful of words in Nihongo. I only speak the little bit that I learned watching anime, sorry.”
I moved over to stand next to Dilorè, where she was monitoring the flight controls, then gestured toward them.
I was never one of those hardcore players that builds a game setup like an aircraft cockpit– I only indulged in it maybe once or twice a week– but I did buy a yoke controller. I had always found flying the simulator weirdly easy, like I might have been able to take the controls of a real plane. I don’t know if my interest and my talent were because of Sirth or Senhion. Maybe it was both.
“These controls are similar enough that I suspect a reincarnator from our previous world designed them.” I commented, then grinned. “You saw the rail coach engine, right? Someone from our previous world made that, too.”
Dilorè looked up at me. “Are you ready to try? It’s on self-management now.”
That was how the label of the switch for the autopilot read. It apparently could only hold the craft in level flight, but it really was a functional autopilot.
Leaving the autopilot on, I took over the helmsman’s seat and Dilorè stood behind so she could point things out to me.
“It was easy to figure out, once I realized that the helm controls work the same as on the big ships,” my cousin stated. “The vessels I flew in the Eastern Continent used a different system, but I’ve toured the bridges on Orestanian airliners a few times, so I was able to understand these.”
On an airplane, turning the wheel tips the craft side to side, and that was the same here. It increased the power to the Lift Stones on one side and decreased it on the other, tilting the craft to the side. That’s called ‘roll’.
The wheel was mounted on a pedestal that moved forward and back. Pulling back on the wheel decreased the lift in back and increased it in front, tipping the nose up. Pushing the wheel forward did the opposite. That was also just like an airplane. It’s called ‘pitch’.
Pressing down on one the pedals under my feet allowed the silk propellor sails to go slack on that side. Because that stopped them from pushing air properly on that side, it made the ship turn that direction. The sails tightened back up when I let off on the pedal. Changing the direction that the craft points is called ‘yaw’.
What did all this add up to? Despite the fact that the controls used completely different mechanisms, Reia flew just like a plane. Like I had just told Ryuu, the controls were exactly the same.
A reincarnated airplane pilot was involved in creating those ‘big ships’, for sure. I’m certain that the old Zeppelins that they resemble did not have controls like an airplane. I saw a documentary once that showed a bridge with a guy controlling the rudder with a ship’s wheel like the helm of an ocean liner.
The instruments were nothing like Flight Simulator, but Dilorè confirmed they were also what the ‘big ships’ used. Which meant the reincarnator who designed those first Huadean airships to look just like Zeppelins came from a time before the modern instruments became common. Maybe the time that Zeppelins were crossing the Atlantic.
For instruments, I had those images of the compass and chronometer projected on the windshield, and on the panel, airspeed and altimeter that looked like car odometers, simple needles showing speed and direction of the crosswind, mana charge levels and lift power.
Finally, I had an attitude indicator that was about as steampunk as you could imagine. A small brass gyroscope was spinning inside a brass gimbal mounted on top of the dashboard, right in front of me. It was a magic tool that would continue working as long as its mana charge lasted. To keep the craft level, the pilot just had to keep the main axis of the gyroscope pointing straight up.
But I didn’t need instruments, anyway. I discovered that my fairy flight skills replaced everything. I could tell where we were going and how fast, I could feel the air motion with my fairy senses, and, to be frank, it is just about impossible for a fairy to lose track of which way is up.
I drew in a breath, then took the controls in hand and flipped the lever that turned the ‘self-management’ off. At first, I did very gentle things, like banking the aircraft still slightly to port and leveling it again. I experimented with climbing and descending. I learned how to bring the craft to a stop, and discovered that the propeller sails could be swung the opposite direction to push the boat backward.
Then I tried turning.
“Why are you rolling?” Dilorè demanded.
“Because…” I started, then stopped and grinned. Reia didn’t fly using wings, so it didn’t need to bank during a turn. The only reason I had a roll control was to keep the craft level as people moved on board, shifting the balance.
I had a pretty ready excuse for her, though. Looking a bit sheepish, I told her, “I have to do that when I fly. I have bird wings, remember?”
“Ah. You’re right,” she said, nodding her understanding. “Well, they do make the big ships heel slightly during turns, to make it easier for the passengers to keep balance. But you heeled too much, Your Highness.”
After about fifteen minutes of practice, I grew satisfied with my skills, pointed the boat back toward Anto, and turned the ‘self-management’ back on.
“Now we can talk about the tower. But first, I must warn you. Nobody here is going to be happy to hear it.”
