“No, it needs to be here for the center of gravity,” I said.
Luther examined the sketch while I wiped workshop soot from my fur. We were going to need ventilation. I looked up at the other side of the factory floor, where a crucible of heated copper was extruding thin wire to be cooled and coated with melted rubber. Other goblins worked on glass, floating panes of it or teasing it into bulbs or bowls or other shapes. More still worked the whistlite into panels according to my design.
I picked up a ceramic compressor blade and showed it to the canoneer. “These aren’t exactly light weight. We can’t have them on the front tip of the aircraft. It would never be able to take off and it definitely wouldn’t be able to land.”
Luther adjusted his scratchpad and turned it over for me to see. I looked at the basic schematic. “Closer. Put it in the book.”
The book simply referred to the repository of canonized schematics and device illustrations and covered everything from simple cog-wheels to complex impellers. Luther passed the design off to one of his canoneers and looked at me. “What’s next, my king?”
I rubbed my eyes. “Next? Next we start putting together the prototype.”
I’d spent five days in what would become the new propulsion assembly plant as Buzz and his builders threw the thing up practically around us. All the necessary materials for the next generation of powered goblin gliders were being refined here—including the most critical part themselves: the turbine engines.
I pulled over a broad overview draft of my plans—a single-engine fighter aircraft crewed by 6 goblins. The heavy rotory engine favored by the bi-gliders and helicopters was being swapped out for a more efficient turbine engine using aluminum housing and ceramic internal parts, rather than the heavy cast-iron and solid ceramic housing of our first generation combust’ems. Before we’d used the turbines to throw burning fuel on elven defenses. Now they were being put to their actual purpose: generating thrust. A lot of thrust. When it comes to which powerplant is better, there’s no real question that a turbine will outperform a rotary or a reciprocating engine every time. But they’re many times more mechanically complex, and that meant, more prone to failure under stressful conditions.
Overhead, several goblins maneuvered one of the turbines on a system of chain pulleys, moving it from the assembly pad to the test platform. This version was nearly 10 times bigger than the smaller helicopter-mounted flame projectors. And if it were made out of iron or steel, it would, on its own, be as heavy as any two of those aircraft combined. But access to the lightweight natural alloy had given us a critical boost in a material with excellent strength-to-weight properties, which meant we could start to scale up into more modern aircraft.
I climbed my way up to the test platform, fishing in my bag for a set of goggles—which I pulled on. While flight goggles had taken the bluffs by storm and become something of a fashion icon among the forest goblins, very few others used them for any kind of eye protection in the workshops—and efforts to institute a hardhat policy had utterly failed. In this time of relative peace, the biggest source of attrition now was simply workplace accidents.
A lot of workplace accidents.
An inconceivable amount of workplace accidents.
Even before I could gain the platform, the goblin fueler got a little too excited and doused one of the testers with kerosene, who then sputtered and stumbled too close to the sparks coming off a radio being tested. He went up like a firework.
I held up a hand to the heat. “Get that fuel capped!” I shouted. The fueler squawked and actuated his flow valve, stemming the flow and pushing the bladder cart away from the test platform. Most of the engineers were so focused on the engine they didn’t even notice their fellow’s incineration. To them, the only remarkable thing about it was that it had happened before they’d turned it on.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
I swung around to the test control panel and began hooking up connectors. The other big problem with turbine engines is that starting them isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. At least, on Earth that’s how it works. Human turbine aircraft have complicated startup sequences involving a battery, an auxiliary power unit, sometimes compressed nitrogen cylinders, and carefully bringing an engine up to the proper RPMs without melting it down or over-torquing it. Our turbines still had mostly the same principles, but evaded all efforts to keep them from guzzling fuel as fast as they could burn it.
Goblin turbines, conversely, seemed to have hair triggers. Add in fuel, give it a good spin, and off she goes. The hardest part was keeping them steady and stable. After all the trouble it took to get our first internal combustion rotary started, all the trials and pitfalls and tearing my fur out, I was a little peeved that the much more complicated turbines had been as simple as bolting one together, fitting the stage fans, pumping in the fuel, and making sure it was strapped down.
“Clear the rear!” I called. The goblins scrambled out of the way of the backblast area, which had probably killed as many goblins as the whistler whose metallic hide had gone into its housing.
I pulled the lever for fuel, and then turned on the priming motor. A small electric motor hooked to one of our new sulfur batteries started spinning the front fan and compressors and drawing air through the shroud. The turbine started to whine as the compressors worked. Hot compressed air met injected fuel, and the engine roared to life with a flame at least 2 meters long. It singed a few hairs, but no fatalities this time, it seemed like.
Several of the goblins were visibly disappointed by that. Integrating Ringo’s Technology Tree had introduced gambling to the tribe, but not the concept of money, surprisingly—a product of Ringo and his father betting inconsequential things like rocks or beads on the outcome of races and football games. What the goblins seemed to enjoy betting on most, was which of them were most likely to die. As far as I could tell, there were half as many betting pools on the subject as goblins, and everything from knives, to antlers, to ammunition changed hands on the regular.
So much material changed hands that System unlocked a technology for it: the GDP, or goblin domestic product. That didn’t sound right, but having never dated an Econ major, I wasn’t confident enough to call System on its shenanigans.
I cut the priming motor, and listened to the climbing pitch of the mounting RPMs as the engine self-sustained the combustion cycle. A turbine has the same stages as a reciprocating or rotary engine: intake, compression, ignition, and exhaust. The difference is that they’re all happening constantly, flowing smoothly from one to the other. And on a turbine engine, the main output isn’t torque (though you can configure them for that), it’s good, old-fashioned Newton’s Third Law. An equal and opposite reaction. Thrust.
On the test bed, the engine roared, pushing against its chains and tie-downs. A squawk of alarm alerted me before the first belt snapped, and the whole ensemble rocked up. I grit my teeth. Looked like some of them might win bets after all.
“Hold it down!” I shouted. The back of the engine began to fishtail, and this time a pair of goblins did get caught in the blast—though far enough away that they were simply thrown across the room from the thrust. The rest of the goblins leapt at the testing platform, tightening ropes and chains in a vain effort to keep it steady.
It wasn’t until a floating ifrit vessel hovered in, and a pale green flame transferred into the turbine, that it began to settle down. I relaxed, and fed more fuel in. The engine whined, and the roar of wind increased. I gave it full-throttle, and then added afterburn to boost it even more. The goblins who had secured the engine by leaping on top of it screamed almost as loud as the engine itself as they held on, in danger of being either sucked against the screen in the front(a lesson that had only taken two broken motors to integrate), or shot away from the back.
Once satisfied that the turbine was good, I eased off the fuel and let the engine flame out, whine decreasing in pitch and volume as the compressors and thrust wound down.
Promo waddled up, pulling his fingers out of his ears. “Sounds good, boss. Reckon we get this one over to station 4, yeah?”
“Sounds good,” I said. “Let’s see how things are shaping up over in the factory.”
I looked over at one of the discombobulated goblins, currently dropping a pile of small, smooth stones into the cupped hands of one of his grinning companions, and shook my head.
Between religion, guns, and gambling, it was clear I was a terrible influence on this tribe. Oh well, soon I’d have a jet aircraft underneath me, and all problems on the ground seem insignificant at 15,000 chooms.