Multiverse 8 Snippet 5

 Final one.

Running into issues replacing the covers on Amazon and B&N. 🙄

Typical.

Anyway... on to the last one!

 

Research and Development

Eugene Ryans, husband to Deidra, the queen of the realm, and king consort? He snorted at the idea. Whatever his title was these days, he had a problem. Well quite a few actually but the one currently causing him headaches was the plan to build the bombers to strike back at the pirates on their continental island three thousand kilometers east of the Imperium’s eastern coastline.

 The plan was to build the craft in factories inland to protect them from the pirates. Actually all of the aircraft were built inland, so it wasn’t much of a big change. He just wished that they could do the same for ships. Build them in blocks and then ship them to an assembly drydock? He shook his head. It wouldn’t work. The pirates were watching the coast and apparently had spies all over the coast.

The bombers seemed like the smart plan to take on the enemy, to strike from afar and break their will. That was the general idea anyway. Putting it into practice was still an issue though.

He’d shot for the moon with the idea of building a jet bomber. Max had laughed that off so he’d been forced to scale back to something more tangible. He had realized that Max was right; a jet engine let alone a bank of them in a modern aircraft was still light years out of their reach. After all, the Imperium was still less than a decade out of the medieval dark ages. Pre-gunpowder! They were still struggling with modern medicine and tech like electricity was like black magic to them. They were still trying to modernize them to the point of using indoor plumbing, schools, agriculture.

He grimaced in exasperation. Another list that went on and on, he thought with a pang.

Max Howlett, the chief engineer of the realm, had recently made it clear that the B-29 Stratofortress that they had recently settled on was out of their league too. At least, for the foreseeable future. Which was why they had scaled down again to a B-25 Mitchell bomber that could barely make it to the enemy coastline one way.

How to get it back was a problem in itself. The pilots had been talking about rigging a bomber as a tanker and doing some sort of in-flight refueling or something or other.

He made a soft puttering sound at the thought. He wouldn’t want to try to refuel over the sea. What if they failed? That would suck.

The bomber project was a big project, on par with the other aircraft but oh so much more complex. Just trying to work out what they could use in existing production lines was probably giving the logistics people fits. Then there were all of the small farms that would have to be built and the politics around them, security concerns … power … he grimaced.

There was a big concern that a lot of their tech was falling into the wrong hands somehow. Evidence of that was that the pirates had fielded a carrier of all things. It was pre-World War II style, but the damn thing had raided the Nuevo Imperium some time ago. They had also fielded a craft that had shot up one of their PBYs and forced it to land.

Which was another problem. How to find the crew, the craft, and how to rescue them.

Well, first things first, get eyes on the scene. That meant flying, which meant a bomber outfitted with surveillance gear flying at altitudes that the pirates only dreamed about.

If Max and his miracle workers could do it.

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Max Howlett was a big guy with hands covered in calluses, cuts, and perpetual dark stuff under his fingernails that could be from any number of things. He was the chief engineer of the Imperium and a rather busy man.

At the moment, a very busy and frustrated man, he thought with a pang.

He had been tasked with building a bomber to take the fight to the enemy. It was one task among many really, but at the moment, it was the one at the top of his ever-growing pile of things to do before he shuffled off this mortal coil.

He had struggled to design it, though he’d made some headway, but then Eugene had thrown him a curveball and asked for an updated version.

He understood Eugene’s reasoning. Why make a period correct bomber when they could make it faster, safer, with more range and more lifting ability?

There were of course issues though; there always was. He didn’t have the blueprints for anything. They’d thought that they could use the PBY engine off-the-shelf, and he’d worked from that basic assumption for weeks only to find out recently that they were too underpowered to do the job. They also had a tendency to overheat, and two engines had cracked blocks from bad castings. One had thrown a rod, which had torn an engine up. Fortunately, the plane had managed to limp back to land on the water near the coast and had been towed back to a port.

He frowned. Eugene was supposed to be in charge of where to place the factories and the politics involved. There was a lot of concern about people learning the wrong things and how that tech could be misused if allowed in the wrong hands. Duke Medicini was one such concern.

He rubbed his brow. Honestly, what they were doing was so far in advance of what others had that he doubted they’d understand. They could of course sabotage a factory.

He looked up in concern over that thought and then made a puttering sound. Best not to think of that. They were having enough issues with quality control and just getting their current stable of aircraft into the air let alone keeping them in the air.

He rolled his shoulders and neck and then went back to looking at the design document. It was almost a blank page. There were links to common parts with other aircraft, but they were sparse compared to what was needed.

He snorted. To think Eugene had tried to talk him into building a jet! He had nixed that idea, which had killed the idea of a jet fighter to use as an escort. Eugene had downgraded the project twice so far.

He scrubbed his face. There had to be a way to do it. He was looking at a complete engine redesign though, and that was causing a massive headache. Until he figured it out, he couldn’t work on anything else.

“Boss, we’ve got a fire at the LVP plant. And Cecily called to say she’s running late,” Jer, one of his assistants, reported as he leaned into his office.

“Shit. I’ll be right there,” Max growled as he saved his work, what little there was of it, and got up to go investigate.

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