Chapter 125 - Assemble’em Lines

  The turbine plant was on the second floating ring above Village Apollo, directly across from the aircraft factory. A series of rickety bridges spanned the gap in between, and a flatbed buggy bounced its way across one with the engine rattling in the back. I half expected it to spill out and tumble down to the ground below, flattening some goblin relaxing in the central square. Or maybe take out one of Buzz’ budding towers. The chief of my builders had been building higher and higher in order to make use of the limited space atop the bluff. Soon the floating rings would be supported from below, rather than lofted from above, if he kept up his pace. Not exactly skyscrapers, but certainly higher than goblins were used to being.

  We took the engine to a wide building with an open bay. Inside, I could see hundreds of goblins scrambling, and the spark of welders. The addition of compressors to the GTT had unlocked both pneumatic rotary tools and the ability to capture and compress the flammable fumes put off by scat piles—resulting in possibly the most foul-smelling torch welding to ever exist. The sparkers had figured out arc welding as well, using metal from the whistler’s dense magnetic tail. But since they had no mechanism or inclination to stop from shocking other goblins (or themselves) in the process, most of the workers had stuck to gas torches.

  Inside, we had a dozen stations where I’d set the process of building Lura’s jet prototypes up like a traditional aircraft plant—albeit with a goblin’s disorder and disregard for safety, efficiency, thoroughness, or attention to detail. The first three stations were putting together basic aircraft frames out of steel and wood. The next two involved fitting fuel bladders and landing gear, and the ones after that were routing electrical power to the flight control surfaces. Then came fitting the engines, weapons, and generators, bolting on the whistlite panels, and the glass canopies.

  As for the aircraft themselves, I wanted to keep them as simple as possible. For the basic design, I’d essentially built each plane around a single turbine engine—and I do mean around. They looked a bit like a goblin version the old F-86 Sabre jet fighters from just after WWII, albeit with about half the length and twice the girth. Rather than the long, slender blades of their inspiration’s namesake, I’d taken to calling this model the Gladius. The Goblin Gladius. If I’m being honest, they looked more like someone had strapped wings to a single passenger airline engine and decided, contrary to their best interests, to try and fly it.

  Would they be fast compared to their Earth counterparts? Not even a little. They’d be lucky to break 150 knots, 200 with afterburner. But they’d fly higher and faster than our rotary-powered bi-gliders. We were skipping a few generations in aircraft design by jumping straight from biplanes to jet fighters. But that was hardly unusual for Tribe Apollo. In just a few months, we’d sped from the stone age to the age of the jet engine.

  Almost every industrial process on the bluff was now feeding materials into the jet factory. Aerospace manufacturing is such a complex and varied industry that it takes a mammoth workforce to produce pretty much anything—and nearly every technology or material we’d unlocked was being utilized in some way by the new prototypes. Tech tree component unlocks were coming nearly hourly, without any direct input from me, as Sally’s engineers and sparkers fiddled with things and put them together in new ways in the course of assembling

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  “Let’s get this motor to station 6,” said Promo. He slid down from the back of the buggy and grabbed some of the overhead chains to start securing the engine. The other goblins started to crank, and the buggy began getting lighter on its primitive suspension as the weight of the turbine was lifted off of it. A few other igni stopped to help, adding their noblin muscle (or at least heft) to the task of pushing the chain cradle along the rails overhead in order to move the engine to the mounting station.

  “Easy!” I called, as the engine started swinging on its chains. At station 6, several of the goblins started to panic, realizing that they had no way to get the engine in place. They scrambled to steal a cart from a neighboring station, which started a minor scuffle that didn’t go well for the station 6 goblins, as station 5 involved torch work. Station 7 came to our rescue, running one of their carts directly underneath the motor, just as one of the chains slipped and the tail end of the engine thumped on the top of the wheeled cart. Everyone froze, and I was able to regain some semblance of order.

  Even led by a king and managed by taskmasters, these were still chaotic creatures not used to all pulling in the same direction. The fact we were currently building advanced aircraft was nothing short of miraculous. Then again, so was the fact that I’d been granted a second life in which to do it.

  We unclasped the rest of the chains and got the engine safely down to the mounting cart without any visible damage, despite the partial drop. Goblin technology was nothing if not robust. It had to be, to survive being used by goblins.

  “Looks good, boss,” said Promo, wiping a hand through his damp fur. “Just glad I don’t got to saddle up in one.”

  “Aww, come on, Promo,” I said. I climbed up into the canopy and dropped into the pilot’s seat. This was one of the ones built for an orc or wrangler pilot, so it was slightly too large for me. Still, I wrapped my hands around the flight stick and moved it from side to side. Without the electric assist active, it took all the strength I had in order to shift the flight control surfaces. I ran a hand over the basic gauges in the cockpit, and flipped the toggle for the basic battery-powered HUD to project onto a glass panel just inside the canopy—just a crosshair, really. Without computers, I couldn’t put things like digital instrumentation. “There’s nothing like flying a turbine aircraft. When I was training for the moon mission for NuEarth, I put 50 hours on one of NASA’s turbine trainers.”

  “You can keep them 50 hours,” said Promo. “I’ll keep the ground ‘neath my feet.” One of his igni buddies wheeled a torch-welding setup over. But instead of aircraft parts, he was passing the flame over strips of dripping meat. “Reckon that effort warrants repose, eh boss?”

  “Reckon you’re right,” I said, hopping over the side of the aircraft. The rest of the goblins who had helped move the engine swarmed the grill until the igni threatened to start singing fingers with his torch. He doled out strips, handing me an especially juicy one with a wink. I stuffed it into my mouth, savoring the seasoned meat. The orcs had given us spices when we took down the whistler, and the igni were putting them to great use.

  Over the clamor of the factory, I began hearing a taskmaster chittering on the new big voice—some unknown group was approaching Canaveral and had been spotted by the scouts. Promo cocked his head and listened along with me. “What d’ya suppose that’s about?” he asked.

  I pursed my lips and wiped the grease from my face with the back of my hand. “Let’s go find out.”