novelraw Chapter 283: Experimental Flight, why couldn’t we keep that name?
Chapter 283: Experimental Flight, why couldn’t we keep that name?
[Pod integrity at 100%, thermal shield integrity at 4%...]
[Purge thermal shield?]
[Y/N?]
Ale had totally not doubted a single second that this would work, she hadn't debated the pros and cons of moving herself back into Main Core with Alexa in tow and prepare to create an emergency shield to protect themselves from becoming a kinetic impactor.
No sir.
"Check external temperature and altitude, confirm angle of insertion and status of wings and emergency engine." Ale instead focused on what was important.
The VR environment she was in right now was a reproduction of what it looked like on the outside, and her current mock-up plane was a very simplistic way to look at her current situation.
[Currently exiting the mesosphere, altitude at 48kms from ground level.]
[Temperature ranging -50°C and increasing the closest one is to drop pod.]
[Angle of insertion stable and no changes are needed, current trajectory will have host landing near the target.]
[All wings are functional and can be deployed as needed.]
[Engine returns green on all diagnostics.]
[Do you wish to deploy wings?]
[Y/N?]
[Do you wish to prime Engine?]
[Y/N?]
Ale hadn't felt that it had been that long her travel into atmospheric flight, how high was that plane going then?
As far as she was aware above 100km there shouldn't be any way for a plane to work... as a plane was supposed to work anyway. So had that plane been truly that high? He did say that in roughly two hours they would be back here... Or less if needed.
So it should be pretty high into space...
But a plane wasn't supposed to be able to work as a plane in space....
That technology seemed to be working in some weird way; probably it was made with Core power shenanigans, that or mana shenanigans. Ale wasn't sure what it would be worse, either way, both made her head hurt.
"Can we even fly or generate lift at this altitude?" Ale asked Main Core, she already was somewhat aware of what the answer would be.
[The technical limit for atmospheric flight is set at 20 km.]
[There have been records of planes working at 30kms.]
Ale somehow doubted her small glider would be one such exception, but then again, this was made with the Saintsworths technology, designed for Alexanders. The CEO of said company... Surely...
"Deploy wings." Ale said after thinking for a few seconds, "And prepare for an emergency burn in case we need to correct trajectory."
Ale would need to be ready just in case.
[Would you like to purge thermal shield first?]
[Current setup would negate any lift generated by deploying wings.]
"... Purge thermal shield and anything that isn't needed and could increase the drag generated by the pod." Ale said unsure if she should punch the controls or not, it wouldn't do anything after all, "And by that I mean anything that was designed to be purged or isn't needed to ensure my flight back home is sucessful."
[Purging thermal shields and spare thermal shielding.]
[Design of Hatchling One will allow Host to survive.]
Wait, what?
"We have spare thermal shielding? What for?" Ale asked confused, there was no reason why they would give her glider more thermal shielding.
The thing was a shield yes, but only for re entry, it would create way too much drag to have it out in the open after all.
[Downloading additional schematics...]
[Additional thermal shielding put in case the first suffered from catastrophic failure, also in case the host decided to do an orbital insertion again.]
"...We don't have enough fuel for escaping into orbit." Ale pointed out, she was thankful for the extra shielding, but the math had already said that the previous one would be enough, and sure enough it had been.
She even had spare integrity, albeit only 4%.
[Host may burn Mana to create more fuel in case she wishes to experiment orbital insertion again.]
.... That wasn't wrong. And Ale guessed that the design of Hatchling One took that into consideration, Alexanders probably would do this a couple times before he was satisfied too. And since this glider used an ion engine in the original design...
She knew that these things weren't supposed to be effective in atmospheric flight, but if one had enough lightning...
Perhaps it would be viable that way?
Either way, "It matters not, purge them." Ale reaffirmed her decision.
[Purging thermal shield and extra thermal shields.]
[Deploying wings.]
[Preparing Engine for use.]
[May the light of civilization guide your flight back home.]
Ale nodded and saw the projection of her glider deploy wings, turning her head back allowed her to see how the Engine was being deployed at the back. In reality it was probably not something this dramatic, but Ale didn't mind that, instead she nodded and placed her hands on the controls.
This was not how one of these would look in the real world of course, she was not someone who knew how to fly one of these things after all.
All her knowledge about flying planes came from the gaming streams she had done, and those obviously wouldn't translate that well to realism, she was sure that there was a ton of tests and procedures that she should have done before this. But half of those things were being taken care of by Main Core, so Ale only needed to do a single thing.
"Onwards!" She smiled as she pulled at the lever that worked as the control for her wings.
The glider reacted almost instantly and Ale felt the joystick-like thing react to her tampering.
[Detected a deviation, current trajectory will-]
"Shut it main core," Ale said as she played with the pedals to see if they would help her go faster and slower. "Let me check how this work, only interfere if what I do stalls the plane or will put me at risk of stalling."
[Acknowledged, setting alarms.]
Ale nodded and noticed how the speedometer started to fluctuate, she was indeed gaining speed and lossing it depending on if she pushed at the accelerator-like pedal or the brake.
Turning her attention to the side let her see how the wings moved when and reacted to her controls, but Ale didn't have time to worry about that.
"Full speed ahead then!" Ale merely enjoyed the feeling of how it felt flying the thing.
That is until... "... The wind doesn't feel right." Ale noticed the problem with the VR Environment. It had its limits, the data was very good and it allowed her an almost one to one projection of the real world.
Ale could see quite well the sights of where she was flying by, but that was it, it was only visual data, there was no translation one to one for how it should feel the wind on her skin.
Granted, at the speeds she was going she would not be getting any wind on her face unless she wanted to be flattened against the cockpit. But that was besides the point.
She was not feeling any of the G forces from the movements either, and that kind of annoyed her, it made this look and feel closer to a game than what it was. She wanted to feel something from flying at Mach whatever she was going dang it!
"Main Core, can we return my awareness back into my body?" Ale decided to ask as she did another quick turn up and down as she dodged what looked like a giant bird.
[It is possible, but ill adviced, Host's body is currently encased in a special mixture of pseudo gel that is keeping her safe from danger and possible damage caused by hosts irresponsable flight habits.]
Well, that was nice to know.
"That was not enough reason to not do it though." Ale pointed, if she was in that weird Substance then she knew already of it, she had felt it when they were filling her pod with it after all.
[Substance is currently encasing the whole pod, Host may suffer from a claustrophobic attack as this Substance hardens as needed.]
That was also kinda fine though, didn't Ale just want to experience that?
[Substance is also slimy and may feel as if smaller animals are crawling over Host as the hardening is reactive depending on the direction needed.]
"Aaaand I don't want that anymore, I'll just steal the blueprint and modify it later." Ale decided to leave that as it was, she did NOT want to deal with that feeling.
She had enough with the space octopi and Alexa's crawler worms from the other day. She had no issue with the tentacles made by her own powers, but external ones? Nope, no sir. That was not something she wanted to deal with.
Was it hypocritical? Who cares! Ale didn't.
[Receiving hail.]
[Transmitting.]
"This is New Jersey Air Traffic Control Tower." The voice came from the speaker of her glider... the one in the VR environment of course, the real one probably didn't have any type of control after all, unless they had added it while she wasn't paying attention that is. Which was a real possibility.... "I have you registered as a Saintsworths Experimental device, but you are deviating from your flight path..."
"Can I actually answer this?" Ale said aloud.
[It is possible, connect call?]
"Yes," Ale said and after a second or so she had a new headset with a push to speak button on her controls, so Ale pushed it and she saw the red light with a mic at the side turn on. "Air Traffic control, this is Hatchling One."
"....Hatchling one?" The person at the other side of her call seemed flabbergasted.
"... How do you have me registered?" Ale asked mildly annoyed, if this was a joke from Alexanders....
"Experimental Flight Vessel, name is censored. You know what, it doesn't matter." The person seemed to shake his head, or that was the impression that Ale got anyway, "Any reason why you aren't following the flight path? Saintsworths you may be, but I need you to be aware that other planes are scheduled to pass by near your flight path."
That... seemed fair.
"Sorry about that, I was testing the limits of this plane." Ale said as apology, "Can you send me the telemetric data of the planes so I can change direction as needed? I'll try to stay out of their way."
"That is privileged... and it got sent." The man was about to complain before the data was transmitted to Ale, niece. "... Just... stay out of danger, I know you Saintsworths have the ultimate say and whatever. But there are commercial flights near your path. You may have a rescue team to get you out of no man's land. But most of these planes don't have that."
....Right... megafauna.
"Will do," Ale answered nodding, not that the person on the other side would know.
"Thank you, this was New Jersey Air Traffic Control Tower. Have a safe flight." And with that, the call was cut short.
Ale had almost expected a 'May the light of civilization guide your path back.' Or something.
She was getting these kind of messages more often after all.
But since it didn't came, she wouldn't complain about it, that was part of the reason why she was doing this whole thing after all, realistically there wasn't a good reason for her to return to Ohio after all.
Most of what Alexa needed to survive could be acquired in Aquila, and if anything, Ale got the impression that they would be somewhat safe there. Not that they had been in actual risk in Ohio.
All the danger they experienced came from Ale's work as a minion, and really, it was mostly from Melissandra Singh, and since that was solved there was no reason for danger to remain.
Unless one took into consideration anomalies such as The Theater Master and The Scrambler, but she couldn't expect them to become a treat just because they were anomalies. That was not how it went about.
"Okay... Flight path..." Instead of dwelling into that, Ale focused her attention into her flight path, she had... deviated by quite some distance. She was almost two states away from what she was supposed to be at the moment.
So tweaking the controls and her orientation, Ale shifted just enough for her flight path to get her back into her target. She had wasted almost half an hour of flight thanks to her previous shenanigans, not that she regret it. It had been fun, but that was probably why that air traffic control guy had called her.
Looking at the flight paths of other planes, Ale was going to get close to some planes, mostly commercial ones. Or so they said.
"Main Core, check the data against the Saintsworths server. Check if we know who these planes are from." Ale said as she noticed some of the data in a few of those planes was... weird.
[Flight routes are from the Brighton Enterprise.]
"Brighton?" Ale asked, where had she heard that name?
No wait, wasn't that the ones that Alexanders complained about? The family from Dylan? Or well, Bryan.
[The Brighton Enterprises is one of the leading companies that is against the Saintsworths Conglomerate monopoly.]
Well, that was something Ale didn't want to deal with at the moment, she didn't want to get entagled into that, not if she was to keep her friendship with Bryan anyway.
So she made a conscious effort to keep a wide enough distance from the predicted flight path of that company and what she was going to follow, which was harder than one would think, since some of those paths also went to Columbus Ohio. So at the end of the day she would end up crossing paths with them.
"Main Core... send an amended flight path, and update it as needed." Ale said finalizing her flight path.
From what she could see from other people's flight plans, most had some leeway for corrections... And most were flying way lower than what Ale was doing right now.
Probably because the megafauna got in the way, Ale was not followed that often by megafauna, and she had only needed to dodge that one bird so far.
Most of the megafauna she could see ignored her, and if not, tried to get out of the way.
She suspected that as she started to slow down and fly lower and lower, she would become a more frequent target of attacks, but right now? She was cruising at 38kms altitude.
There was not many things that flew this high, or at this speed. Granted, the lower her altitude became, the slower she would fly. Since there would be more and more air friction and she would need to really focus on keeping a stable flight path.
She had lost almost 20 kms of altitude in her previous shenanigans when she was testing her controls after all.
But well, that was life!
And Ale did not regret that, at all, it had been fun after all.