Chapter 720 — The Sky
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Rebecca's chirping, cheerful voice was still rattling on beside her, but Maggie only smiled, bending her head to check the assorted control levers and the somewhat crude gauges and rune dials.
Over these past days she had committed these levers and instrument panels to memory; she knew them so well that even with her eyes closed she could find any button or rod before the pilot's seat with perfect accuracy.
Beside her, Tyr, who had been battling the sandman for quite a while, came wriggling over inch by inch. Seeing that they were finally about to take off, the siren lady seemed to have rallied a little; she raised her head, watching Maggie in the cockpit, her tail tip poking at the ground beside her, tap by tap: "Don't forget to take pictures once you're up there—of course, if you crash right away, then just protect yourself first..."
Before she could finish, several technicians nearby rushed over and dragged the speechless siren off to one side.
Maggie watched all of it with a smile.
She felt the faint trembling of the rune modules and mechanical assemblies beneath her body; she could sense this vast, complex machine waking bit by bit.
Steel, crystal, thaumaturgical materials, leather, wood, cloth... these lifeless substances had been assembled by human hands into an intricate outer shell, and within that intricate shell sat a dragon that could not fly, preparing to use it to rise into the blue.
An outer shell ought to be something that conveys a sense of safety, yet in every experiment to date this "shell" had offered nothing but danger—just as most new technologies behave during their experimental phase: unstable, riddled with flaws, full of problems even the technicians could not foresee. It was not safe in the least.
Back when it was still a small-scale prototype, this "airship's" anti-gravity ring had lost control more than once; those validation-model anti-gravity rings had wrecked laboratory walls and ceilings, and burned out rune substrates on the test benches. As the project advanced into its later stages, the small validation models gave way to full-scale test craft, the entire project was relocated to a "special laboratory" in the suburbs, and testing proceeded on this open stretch of ground.
The technicians around her had already withdrawn. Maggie sealed the cockpit canopy, then pressed down the main control lever before her. The power spine, already warmed up and charged, began releasing magical energy into the anti-gravity ring, and a stronger tremor rose from beneath her.
After the test site was relocated, the project no longer posed a threat to bystanders, but the risks faced by those taking part in the trials remained great—especially the test pilots.
The validation-model anti-gravity devices and the hard-won "dragon wing" apparatus were both highly unstable, and far more so in combination. And for a human without wings, to entrust oneself to a machine still under testing, to challenge the blue with such crude equipment—that was a magnificent but far too reckless undertaking.
Of course, the test personnel could have chosen mages versed in flight spells, so that at least when the machine crashed they would still have a chance to return safely to the ground under their own power. But as a test craft, the problems this airship faced went far beyond a mere crash: midair explosions, loss of maneuver control, magical surges—any of these could put even a flight-capable mage's life in danger.
Maggie believed that Rebecca and the technical team she led would face these challenges without fear, but she had still stepped forward of her own accord to serve as test pilot.