Aircraft Design Company- Matsura's Planes Are Always Fastest!

open_sketch · Jul 12, 2018

Stress
0

Office Stress
0

XP
5

Matsura Asuka
Head Designer for Ohara Airworks
Age 24 (Legally 25)
Year 12 AF (After Flight)

Design Stats
Aerodynamics Engineering - +2
Structural Engineering - +2
Chemical Engineering - +1
Mechanical Engineering - +1
Ballistics Engineering - +1
Electrical Engineering - 0

Personal/Political Stats
Social Skills - 0
Politics Skills - 0
Importance - 2
Income - 1
Investments - Ohara

Resources
Power - 0
Wealth - 2

Designs
Type 1 Series - Military Variation (Designated T1M1)
Type 2 Racer (World Speed Record October 1910-April 1911, 180kph)
Model 2 Scout (Designated T1M2)
Navy Scout Prototype (Drowned Rat)
Dive Bomber B1M1 "Duck"
Machine Gun Carrier R1A "Dragonfly" (World Speed Record May-July 1911, 200kph)
~~Naval Rescue~~ Water-Landing Supply Plane NR1M0 "Dolphin" (World speed record 240kph)
~~Rhino~~ Demon Train Hunter
The world's first airliner
The world's first pulsejet airplane

Assets
Slide Rule
Computator (1 Reroll per Routine)

Languages
Albian
Gallian

Familiar Vices
Drinking
~~Prostitutes~~
Dancing

Family Life
- Engaged to Arita Yachi, formerly the leading Ace in the Imperial Army. Designated #1 Cutest ~~Army~~ Boy, he's having some serious problems with PTSD right now.
- Taking a second try at dating Mikami Kiho, ex-dockerwork from the south.

Upgrades
- 3 XP to upgrade a stat.

Ohara Airworks
Start Up, Imperial Capital, Akitsukuni

Owner
- Mr. Ohara, Rich. Aircraft Enthusiast. Business guy.

Engineers

Kibe Koume, 26, Office Manager
Tiny & angry, Kibe went to school in Albia, picking up the language, the religion, and a fuckload of swear words. Speaks Albian.
Mechanical +2, Ballistics +1
Office Manager: If Kibe is not assigned to a team, the Office Stress is reduced by 1.

Sakane Jun, 26, Second Team Leader
A soured patriot, Sakane is married and has a young child being raised gender-neutrally. His two brothers who fought in the war.
Structural +2, Aerodynamics +1
Team Leader: If there are any additional projects, Sakane will lead them.
Joinery: Sakane has training in the traditional Akitsukuni carpentry art of joinery, creating complex self-supporting joints with no fasteners or glue. When working with non-monocoque wooden spars or ribs, +1 Structural.

Tezuka Kenji, ???
A stoner with occasional flashes of insight. Nobody really knows what he does, but he's probably useful?
Aerodynamics +2, Chemical +1
Flashes of Brilliance: Each natural 10 rolled by any team Tezuka is assigned to gives +1 forward to the next research roll.

Hasegawa Morio, 26
A hopeless nerd with a photography habit, mostly on account of developing his own film, Hasegawa seems to do nothing but work and stack card houses, but somehow has an incredible attractive boyfriend. Speaks Gallian.
Chemical +2, Ballistic +1
Silent Workhorse: Hasegawa can work on two different projects at once for no cost to Office Stress, providing they use different stats.

Kawamura Yosai, 25.
Serially successful womanizer and incredibly attractive, Kawamura doesn't seem to have much of a personality outside of seducing women. Well, except for that time he seduced Asuka, which nobody talks about. Speaks Dyske.
Structural +2, Electrical +1, Social +1
Easily Distracted: If Kawamura is working on the same team as a female or non-binary employee, the team is at -1d10.

Koide Hatsu, 24.
One of the few female graduates of an Akitsukuni engineering school, Koide is brilliant and incredibly driven, but her first job at Akibara was both humiliating and exposed her to an abusive coworker. Her father is a rich businessman with factories in Joseon, and she's engaged to Ken from Castles of Steel. Speaks Joseon.
Mechanical +2, Structural +1
No Sleep: If you let her, Koide will work herself to death. She can work a second project for no Office Stress, but all her stats will be reduced to 1 for the routine.

Kobayashi Ayao, ???
Disowned heiress of the Kobayashi family, all Kobayashi wanted was a career and to be a modern woman. For her trouble, a cousin threw acid on her, scarring her face, neck, much of her torso, and her left arm. Despite appearing serene and above it all, she's actually an avowed communist activist and baseball player.
Aerodynamics +2, Social +2

Adachi Ren, 24
Adachi learned chemistry from her father, one of the most famous chemical engineers in the country, rather than through formal schooling. She's married, has a kid, and takes spirituality very seriously. Yes, you did the math right, she had Yuki when she was 17. It's 1912, folks.
Chemical +2, Electrical +1
Young Mother: Adachi will cause double Office Stress if she has to work multiple tasks.

Uyeno Sei, Ballistics Engineer, 31.
The oldest member of the crew, this is Uyeno's second career. Her first was as an officer in the Imperial Navy with specialized technical training: her very promising career was cut short by her transition. Her work in a naval arsenal on machine-guns landed her the job here. Briefly dated Satomi (the age range is a bit creepy but again, 1912), she's missing a piece of her ear and is deaf on that side, from an exploding cannon. Recently returned from Varnmark from experimental surgery, she's known for her skill navigating gendered bureaucracy.
Ballistic +3

Mi Kyung-Jae, 23
A recent graduate of the Imperial College of Heijo, Mi is from the recently annexed territory of Joseon. For those keeping track at home, that means he's a Korean national living in Imperial Japan in 1912. We haven't seen much of his personality because he's rightfully terrified of everything around him. He has a specialty in endurance engine design and modification. Speaks Joseon.
Mechanical +1, Chemical +1
Endurance Engines: Mi has an excellent understanding of metallurgy and tolerances. Any engine he works on gains +1 Reliability if a 16+ is rolled.
Pulsejet Wizard: Mi is now one of the world's leading experts on the pulsejet engine. He can be given his own project to custom-craft pulsejet engines, and he gives +1 to any pulsejet-related project.
Joseon National: Mi does not have security clearance to work on any top-secret projects.

Miyoshi Shigeri, 23.
A non-binary person and admirer of Asuka's work, they were in an support role in the Army before joining the company.
Structural +1, Mechanical +1, Aerodynamic +1
Mechanic: Miyoshi has some experience repairing and refurbishing aircraft. They get +1 if assigned on the clean-up phase.

Other Employees
- Ohara Satomi, 22, Mr. Ohara's niece and the company test pilot, Ohara is a general lesbian disaster. She's good at flying planes, driving cars, and kissing girls. She's bad at being patient, being respectable, and sticking to literally anyones conceptions of gender roles. Deeply in lesbians with Coralie D'Amboise.
- Fujkikawa Sotatsu, old, modelmaker. He's an old man and toymaker and we don't see much of him because he locks himself in his workshop a lot. He's friends with Kawamura?

Assets
- Engine Test Rig (Allows engine tweaking and optimization.
- Wind Tunnel (+1 Aerodynamics)
- Rapid Prototype Lab (+1 Clean Up)

Expanded Cast

Akitsukuni Industry
- Homura Mohoko: Head Engine Designer for Kobayashi. First female engineer in the country. A lot of sex appeal.
- Okumura: Head of Akibara aircraft design.
- Yamanaka Hajime: Kobayashi engineer. Young and eager.
- Igarashi Masazumi: Kobayashi engineer. Reserved and experienced.
- Admiral Akibara Toru: Imperial Navy Admiral. Maximum nepotism. Maximum douchebag.
- Lt.Cmnd Akibara Shinzo: The above's son. A hottie but very forward.

Character Families
- Matsura(?) Mizuko: Asuka's sister. Was paralyzed in an accident in Asuka's first flight. Lives Elsewhere and is married now. Can't forgive Asuka, even though she's tried.
- Adachi Motoki: Adachi's husband, an accountant. Legally blind.
- Adachi Yuki: Adachi's 7 year old daughter and wannabe pilot. Very adorable.
- Yachi's Brother: Exists.
- Sakane's Wife: Exists. Drives him a bit crazy, but he loves her.
- Yachi's Brother's Wife: Exists. Is statistically likely to be pregnant.
- Lt. Coralie D'Amboise: Gallian pilot in exile. Satomi's girlfriend. 25. Accomplished bisexual duelist. She flew in the war for a single day, and for her troubles got a hole blown in her cheek and had her left arm paralyzed.

Akisukuni Army & Ex-Army
- Lt. Torio Tanaka: Yachi's former observer as an enlisted man. Was jumped up to fly Ducks and lost a leg on his first mission. A trained painter, married to Torio Saya.
- Captain Amari Shiro: A Dragonfly pilot who ended up flying as Yachi's partner. Kind of delightfully twinky. They sorta slept together at one point, which wasn't great. He lost his previous boyfriend in the April Offensive and turned his plane into a shrine. He was shot in the gut and is still recovering.
- Major Izuhara: Logistics officer, Imperial Army, this bespectled officer stood up to the Caspian Crown Prince and accidentally kicked off the Akitsikuni-Caspian War. The guilt was so much that, after almost a year of running Army procurement, he shot himself in a phone both.
- Captain Nakai Sekien: Army scout pilot. First person to drop a bomb from an airplane, later head of the Duck Squadrons.
- Captain Teshima: A Desk pilot that fought with Yachi. Lost an arm in the process, took over for Major Izuhara after his death. Seems cheery despite it all.
- Captain Nashio: A real piece of shit dude and probably a rapist, he's also a war hero as the second-highest scoring ace on the Akitsukuni side. He was a young shitty kid in way over his head but it's no excuse.
- Lt. Kinjo: Kind of a dumb lump and Nashio's friend, one of the desk pilots. Dead at 19.
- Lt. Okazaki: Yachi's friend from before the war and pilot, he died in a spin in his dragonfly. His death probably hit Yachi the hardest.

Westerners
- Rose & Antoinette Sears: Pioneers of flight. Sisters. Black in 1910s not!America. Yikes.
- Timina Guasti: Famous aircraft designer from Otrusia. Likes big planes and green.
- Prince Protasov Vasilyevich: Crown Prince of Great Caspia. Real dick. You gotta hand it to him though, a decent flier.
- Count von Zeppelin: Invented rigid airships. Runs a successful airline business. Damned impressive.
- Bennhold: Aircraft Engineer. Experimenting with metal aircraft.
- Aileen Middlemiss: Albian reporter for the Artimis Times. Well meaning and oblivious.

Available Tech

Materials: Wood, Duralumin, Molded Wood, Wood & Silk Composite, etc
All engine mounts
All wing types
Basic reinforcement
Wing warping and ailerons
Basic water radiators
Flying Wings
Semi-Monocoque design (requires at least half the slots have frame pieces)
Valved pulsejets
Basic weapon mounts and turrets

Tech not Yet Developed

Custom engines
Monocoque construction
Cantilever Wings and associated tech
V and T tails
Tailless designs
Aluminum and titanium
Cellulose surfacing
Any kind of radar
Weapon accessability mods
Interruptor gear
Geared propellers
And Maybe Other Stuff

Akitsukuni
Island Nation

Government
Constitutional Monarchy
- The democratic portions of the government are dubiously legitimate.
- The head of state is the Empress of Akitsukuni. She gives her blessing to newly formed governments.
- The Navy and a small number of families have undue influence on politics.

Economy
Developing Mixed Market
- Most industry is controlled by a small number of wealthy, family-owned companies.
- The state provides most contracts to industry. Consumer good market is anemic.
- Exports are few, mostly cultural.
- Imports are raw minerals, food, oil, and expertise.
- Currently suffering an economic crash after the last war.

Politics
The Diet is currently ruled by a Constitutional Nationalist government. It has a system of nonlocal proportional representation, with representatives appointed by the party in accordance to their share of the vote.
- Constitutional Nationalists: 50%
- Purity Club: 9%
- New Independents: 26%
- Fairness Association: 11%
- United Communist League: 2%
- Monarchists: 1%
- Assorted Fringe Parties: 5%

Demographics
Akitsukuni is mostly very ethnically homogeneous. Around 5% of the population are various minorities, most from nearby countries. Roughly .1% are westerners here for business or in advisory positions.
- Population: 55 Million
- Religion: Mostly Kodo. Roughly 2% of the population follows western religions.
- Wealth: Most wealth is concentrated in the top 5% of the country. Nearly 20% of the population lives in conditions indistinguishable from peasantry.
- Urbanization: Heavily urbanized for a small economy: 35% and rapidly growing.

Military
At Peace
- Imperial Akitsukuni Navy (IAN): The 6th largest in the world, and the most experienced.
- Imperial Akitsukuni Army (IAA): 150,000 highly experienced soldiers, and a considerable reserve.

Aspects
- Poor Resources: Aluminum costs +1.
- Damn Akitsukuni Engines!: Engines have -1 Reliability.

The Main Character Of This Quest Is Nonbinary And Uses They/Them Pronouns.

I Am Putting This Here Because The Next Person To Misgender Them Is Getting Yeeted Into The Trash

Also here's the Gayaverse TV Tropes page, because why not.

Artificial Girl · Dec 13, 2018

brmj said:
On the one hand, that looks like a really wonderful target to shoot at. On the other hand, that looks big enough that there are plenty of places to shoot that won't actually mission kill it, just take out a particular gun or go through empty space or something.

Yeah it's big, but all the important bits are in the central armored compartment, which is a smaller target.

I'm assuming it's armored similarly to the early British and French tanks and have 6-19mm of armor. Enough to stop shrapnel and small arms, but not enough to make them proof against artillery or larger/higher velocity weapons.

Shadows · Dec 13, 2018

Sturmi said:
This is an extremely unreasonable set of assumptions to make. For one, we have no actual idea of what a Caspian tank actually looks like, or how much armor it has. Maybe it's like an early British tank with maybe half an inch of armor. Or maybe since the leap in tank capabilities seems to be winning the vote, it could be like a German A7V with up to 30mm armor or worse, which would be resistant or possibly even immune to non AP 20mm rounds.

It is also not practical to assume that every single attack will be able to done from the vertical down onto the top of armor of the tank, and even then that is asking for a non ideal attack. No pilot is going to willingly point their plane perpendicular to the ground in an attack run. The JU-87 typically made dives of 60-70 degrees and no more. This type of run also requires a level of setup that a pilot may just not have time to perform. There will be many occasions in which a pilot must perform glide attacks on non-oblique targets from various approaches, many of which will be bad enough that a 20mm round will be deflected.

It's an extremely reasonable set of assumptions to make.

This kinda crap is literally my job.

60-70deg incline is more than sufficient to normalize the 5 millimeters of armor on top of the tank you mentioned! Hell, even at a thirty degree AoA a 20mm will shred the top armor. Believe it or not, that would actually make it worse, because the bullet has a longer time in which it can produce spalling inside the tank.

20mm HE will go through it from above/the sides/the rear.

brmj · Dec 13, 2018

There are fundamental engineering issues with the Tsar Tank related to weight distribution and the drive mechanism. The latter is probably addressable without too much trouble; even just adding some gearing rather than just pressing on the rim with automobile wheels like one source claims would have been a good start. The former, though, is going to require some more fundamental changes. If these things aren't getting stuck everywhere and being completely impractical even by early WWI tank standards, they are going to have more of their weight farther forwards, in the space between the two big wheels. The wheels on the tail might also be altered for more ground contact so they don't dig into soft ground as much. What we're facing probably isn't actual Tsar Tanks, so much as it is a vehicle built on that theme but engineered a little better.

Sturmi · Dec 14, 2018

Shadows said:
It's an extremely reasonable set of assumptions to make.

This kinda crap is literally my job.

60-70deg incline is more than sufficient to normalize the 5 millimeters of armor on top of the tank you mentioned! Hell, even at a thirty degree AoA a 20mm will shred the top armor. Believe it or not, that would actually make it worse, because the bullet has a longer time in which it can produce spalling inside the tank.

20mm HE will go through it from above/the sides/the rear.

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1042194.pdf

This paper on the tactics of strafing in an F-16(which to be fair in many ways is inapplicable to the situation by means of speed and durability of the target) indicates that a typical strafing attack is going to be done at either 15 or 30 degrees to the target, and from looking at gun camera footage of strafing aircraft in WW2, this seems to hold true at least back to that era as well.

I'm not denying that hitting the top armor of the tanks is going to fail to cause immense damage or anything like that, but with those sorts of angles of attack, a comparatively minimal amount of the top of the tank is going to be showing, and if the tank is being approached at an angle non perpendicular to the front or sides, there is serious chance of failure to penetrate by 20mm rounds, disregarding the admittedly significant effects of spall which is going to mulch the crew, but still leave the tank open to recovery and repair at a later date.

Aside from this, there remains the issue of 20mm autocannons being immensely prone to jamming and 37mm cannon lacking that same tendency in the era as far as I'm aware.

open_sketch · Dec 14, 2018

It was strange, leaving work so early, everyone still in at their desks. You hoped you'd given them enough to go on. You wanted to stay, but your doctors had impressed on you that you didn't mess around with head injuries.

They also told you that you weren't to be driving, which you didn't disagree with. You were feeling better most of the time, but every once and a while, often unexpectedly, your vision would begin to swim, or you'd get dizzy or suddenly very tired. This was maybe almost worst, because you felt proper sometimes now, and regression away from it was like having seized your mind back from some force and having it slip away through your fingers.

Three weeks and you were still like this. You only now just realized there was a call you forgot to make at work, when everything was swept aside for the new project. Urgh.

The streetcar stopped just at the end of your street and you stepped off, almost falling at the last step. One of your neighbours caught your shoulder, and you were struck with the terrible thought that they might think you a drunk, so you stopped the poor man to babble about your concussion as an explanation until you had to sit down on the sidewalk. After a few minutes, you managed to get back to your feet and make it to your house.

Officer Horikiri was gone, of course, back on the beat. That had been what tipped you over the edge to buying yourself a telephone, though when you told the team in the morning Takai had ruled that nobody was to contact you outside of work hours unless it was a life or death emergency, which you did appreciate, though you weren't exactly sure when the interns got to be in charge of such things.

You did have a call to make today, though. You picked up the speaker, put it to your ear, and leaned in as the fuzzy static tone started on the line.

"Operator." A female voice said.

"Hello, I'd like to speak to Tokei 713, please." You said.

"Right away." There was a pause for a few seconds, and a little squelch on the line, then the snap of the connection.

"Hello, this is Colonel Izuhara speaking."

"Hello Colonel." You said. The two of you had come back into contact during the procurement of the B1M1, briefly. He was looking a little worn these days, despite his promotion, with a scruff of beard. His scars were healing, at least. You'd crossed paths a few more times since then, and he was your main casual point of contact with Army procurement, where he'd ended up since the war started and they'd pulled him back.

"Matsura. How's the head treating you?" You hadn't told him directly, but you suspected everyone in Army air procurement was kept appraised of your condition.

"It's fine, really." You lied. "I'm calling about that thing you said, getting us a look at those captured Caspian planes. Do we have an update on that?"

"Yeah, one second." There was a clunk as the phone went down, then some muffled voices. "Yeah, looks like they're back from Akibara Complex on the 5th September. I'll talk with you more during the meeting on the 4th, okay?"

"Yes, thank you. We'll arrange it then." You paused a second. "...um, I'm going to hang up the phone now."

"Okay. Goodbye."

"Goodbye." You put the speaker back and crawled over to your futon. Somebody needed to come up with proper etiquette for those things and come tell you what it was.

You were exhausted, even though it was by your standards a short and fairly uneventful day. Your slide rule had gone unused, you'd walked only a short distance, there hadn't been anything to your day, but it seemed like just living right now was tiring enough on its own.

You sorted through a few letters, your eyes dimming. Letter from your parents, letter from Kobayashi offering you a frankly absurd amount of money (as usual), a few other uninteresting things. There was a letter from a Dysche designer working in the Kyburg Union named Lisa Nürnberger, one of a series of correspondences. Bad news in this one: she had been flying a new design of hers on July 19th and had managed to go into a spin at 40 meters during a test, breaking both her wrists. That probably explained her handwriting, poor thing.

You were writing a response joking that God or the Spirits must have been out for aircraft designers when, suddenly, you were simply too exhausted to continue. All at once, like somebody flipped off the magneto switch and the propeller ground to a halt, one last cough of the exhaust. You didn't even have time to move your writing table, you just leaned back and were out.

---

You were standing on a green field. The sky was bright and blue, with big fluffy clouds, and a wind make the grass wave. There were a few figures standing around, talking. A few were flying kites. And old, bald man let a balloon float off into the air.

You'd been here before. You'd forgotten so much recently, but this, you suddenly remembered. You'd been here as a child. Every night, or so it seemed for a while, watching dreams sail by, trying to imagine what would come next.

You'd stopped. Why had you stopped? This was where you belonged.

"Hey Matsura. Good to see you again." A familiar voice said. "Nice hair!" You turned.

"Oh! Hi Lisa!" You greeted your old friend. She was grown now, just like you, and she still had a mischievous look in her eye. She also had casts on both her hands, which was funny.

"How did that happen?" You said. "I mean, I know about the spin, but what were you trying to do?"

"Let me show you." She said, turning. There was her plane, just behind her. How had you missed it?

"Wow, it's beautiful." You said. Three wing decks, an engine pushing it into the air, tailplanes on the front and back. "What was it for?"

"It was for going there." She said, pointing behind you. "Where you came back from."

You turned to see. In the distance, there was something now, beyond the green field. A massive scar on the earth, black smoke and fire rising in the air. Above it, planes twisted and shot and burned. Explosions crumped in the distance, audible only now that you were looking. You could hear screaming, begging, sobbing. Terror and hatred.

You fell to your knees, a mute horror gripping your heart. Tears streaming down your face.

"What's wrong, Matsura?"

"I did that." You said.

Heads turned in the field as a machine passed overhead, a new dream. It had four little wings and an engine that buzzed behind it, guns perfectly smooth in the hull, and it roared just inches above you, so close that the wind caught your hair and kimono, close enough to whip Lisa's hat from her head.

"You did. I'm proud of you." She said, putting her hand on your shoulder. "You beat us all there. It's glorious, isn't it?"

Your words couldn't escape your mouth. You wanted to leave, to wake up, anything.

A beautiful woman in a green scarf was there, and she shooed Lisa off and helped your to your feet, turning you away from the dark skies.

"Asuka, ignore her. She doesn't see what you see." The woman said. You nodded weakly.

"Thank you."

"That's just our art. We didn't get here for free. Nothing is free in this world. We wrote a contract in blood and engine grease. We'll make dreams fly, and then hand them to people who will make them nightmares." You were walking up one of the hills now, the wind gentle again. "Come, let me show you my latest dream, before somebody does the same to me!"

As you crested the hill, you saw a massive machine in the valley below. It must be fifty meters from wingtip to wingtip, and it had three of them. You counted the engines two at a time. Four, six, eight, ten. Your Dolphin was beside it. It looked tiny by comparison.

"Do you think it's big enough?" You asked.

"I hope so! Isn't she glorious! I hope she flies. The math was... eh, mostly on my side."

"What will she do?"

"Passengers, Matsura! Around the world in eighty hours, forty at a time!" She said, waving her hands as if trying to will it up into the air. "And mail, and medicine, and whatever else!"

"... and bombs." You said, as you realized it. "For cities."

"... yes. They will do that to her, won't they."

You sat on the grass together and looked up. Distantly, you saw something above your head, far, far up in the sky, a line of something moving.

"What are those?" You asked. "They're new. Did somebody here build them?"

"We all built them, Asuka. Those are where planes go, in the end. See that one?" She pointed, and even thought it seemed infinitely far away, you saw it like it was right next to you. A little golden para-monowing, with a radial engine. The pilot was relaxed behind the controls, peaceful. His freckled face and straw hair seemed familiar.

"Oh." You recognized him now. The boy with freckles. He wanted to land an airplane on a ship. You always thought that was absurd. Guess you were right.

You looked over the other machines. One or two oddities, test planes, you supposed. A few production models.

And then a procession of a hundred planes, easily. Some of the little yellow monoplanes, some of them familiar blue planes. All floating serenely through the sky.

You looked away.

---

September 4th.

Today was a big day. The military, both branches, were cooperating today to put on a demonstration for the engineering teams of Akibara and Ohara, the two companies competing on the Armour Hunter project. You were dressed your best: everyone in the office was. Akibara was your rivals, and you didn't want to be shown up by them.

You were just waiting for the Army's trucks to arrive now, sitting in the office talking casually about theory and speculating on what the Akibara design. Those of you that smoked were doing so: you had a cigarette, but it was half-forgotten beside you because you were too busy sketching. A usual afternoon in the office, made tolerable by the pressure in your skull being reduced to a dull, minor ache.

Whenever you talked about Akibara machines, Koide was treated as the authority. She had worked there for over a year, after all. She hadn't worked too closely with Okumura Shihei, their head designer, but she was generally aware of his attitudes and the disposition of the crew, and was usually happy to spill about their personal failings, blunders, and her general distaste for them. Today, though, she was quiet.

"I bet it's gonna be another of their wing-warpers, too. That stuff was obsolete like, last year. I swear, Okumura must be obssessed. Do you think he's given it up, Hatsu?" Kawamura asked. You all looked over at her, and she shrugged weakly.

"I guess?"

"Hey, what's wrong?" Kibe said instantly. You went back to your sketch. There were better people on your team to deal with people's problems. Still, you tried to listen. After completely forgetting about Uyeno's departure, you were trying to make an effort to pay more attention to your staff's lives, and not just their work.

"It's fine. It's nothing." She said. It really didn't sound that way...

Come on, Asuka. Be a friend. Don't be the lonely genius.

"It doesn't sound like nothing. What's wrong?" You said. You admit, you had some apprehensions too. You weren't terribly interested in seeing more weapons, but the war had it's demands.

"It... I don't want to see my old team again." She said. "I don't want to go back there."

"You're not going back. It's just to a-" Hasagawa started, but Adachi cut him off. As one, the women of Ohara got up and moved off, taking Koide with them, like some kind of unspoken signal had set them off.

"Am I supposed to be moving too?" You asked, confused. Kibe gave a little shake of their head, and they disappeared around the corner, heading for the benches of the prototyping workshop.

"Anyone have any idea what just happened there?" Kawamura asked.

"Who knows, man. Chicks." Tezuka leaned back, puffing on his cigarette. "Asuka, any ideas?"

You turned your sketch around, showing off your latest idea for the possible Akibara machine. You'd been speculating they might use rockets, because they built signal rockets already. "Something like this?"

"No, about... nevermind." Tezuka said with a smile.

"We shouldn't pry. Women have their stuff, you know?" Sakane said. You sat in the silence for a while, pencils scratching. Sakane was closest the window, glancing out every few minutes. "Hey, I think that's the truck. Asuka, you should go tell them."

You nodded, and headed off to the prototyping workship, knocking gently on the door before pushing it open. They'd sat Koide down in the chair of a half-finished fuselage and were clustered around her with handkerchiefs and concerned expressions. She had tears streaking her face.

"The truck's here." You said. There were nods of acknowledgement, and everyone looked to Koide. She took a breathe to steel herself, then put on a pair of large round glasses you'd never seen before and stood up to go.

---

You were currently at the Yanagimachi Military Complex outside the city, which was a rather large testing and training range for artillery built into what used to be an ancient quarry. Stone from here had built the walls of the Imperial palace, and now served their country once more by being targets for shells. There were two huge lumps on the dusty field, covered in massive canvas tarps.

Your truck pulled up into a line with a dozen others, and everyone got out and assembled on the field. The black-suited staff of Akibara was there too, a cluster of women in subdued kimino standing behind them. Maybe secretaries and support staff, maybe those 'junior engineers' Koide talked about. All of them were wearing little yellow armbands with the Akibara Complex logo on them.

You walked up and greeted Okumura. He was maybe two or three years older than you, having been top of his class just a few years ahead of you. Kind of chubby and with a warm expression, he was much harder to look down on in person, in part because he was three inches taller than you.

"Hey Matsura! I saw your new Dophin the other day. Incredible!" He said.

"And I saw your Seagull. Taking some lessons from my book, are you?" You said, only mildly accusatory.

"Hey, learn from the best, right?" He said. "I gotta say, it's a little intimidating competing against you and our old professor on the other project." Akibara was apparently working on the other mandatory study too, which they were capable of due to their larger manufacturing capacity and greater number of engineers. While the details of the other project were secret, you suspected it was a machine to air-drop torpedoes for the Navy, given the "hypothetical payload masses" in the letters you exchanged with the other lead designers as part of the knowledge-sharing program the military had mandated.

The men in the Ohara team were talking with some of their opposite numbers, but the women were keeping to their side of the field, clustered protectively around Koide. You saw her glance over a few times, always at one of the unremarkable engineers on their team, who was currently talking and laughing with Tezuka. He looked like any other young man in engineering: a bit nerdy, kind of weedy, hair unkempt. Maybe mid-twenties?

The socializing came to an end as a group of officers in blue and white came forward to address the team. Leading them was Colonel Izuhara. He... looked like hell, you had to admit, but he still put on a smile for the team.

"So, at the request of my bosses and your bosses, today we're going to run you through everything currently in the combined Akitsukuni arsenal that might stop one of the enemy armoured rollers. And to do that, we have a couple of demonstration pieces for you.

At his signal, the canvas was pulled away from the two lumps. The first, larger one revealed most of a AT-TA, looming vast over the field. You knew they were big, but you only now grasped how big. It was maybe ten meters tall, with huge spoked wheels and a fighting compartment in the middle, dragging a smaller set of wheels behind on a tail. A fighting compartment sat in the middle, with a machine-gun position that could face forward or down, and two cannons on sponsons jutting out from either side of the wheel. It reminded you quite a bit of the Aresian tripods in that science fiction book. It had been hastily repaired from a blast on it's right wheel: You wondered if it was the machine Sergeant Fujiyama had killed, and a perverse thought creeped through your head, hoping they had cleaned it out first.

Behind the other tarp was a beautiful grey locomotive, and your heart sank. Oh, they were going to shoot up one of the old Yamabe machines. That wasn't right. Thought it was already ruined, it's lines obscured by metal plates bolted on crudely.

"So, today, we're going to see the practical effects of a variety of weapons on these machines. Well, not quite." A few men ran out and started setting up some stands, into which square pieces of metal were being placed. "We'll shoot up the train later, but the AT-TA is a little too valuable. It just happened to be here because we've been trying to make it work and drive it around, and it made a good setpiece, didn't it?" Everyone laughed. "No, we're just going to be shooing some pieces of metal instead. We've lined them up thickest to thinnest, and at a 60 degree angle. That's so that any rounds don't skip off and hit you guys, but it also is about the angle a plane might shoot them at."

Sure enough, six pieces of metal had been set up on the range, all of them angled slightly away.

"The two front plates are 35mm, the thick sort we estimate cover some of their armour train engines. The middle two represent the front and sponson armour of the AT-TAs, that's about 16mm. The last two are from the rear the same, about 7mm, and the usual boiler plate on a train, 8mm. Now, for your safety, I ask that everyone take a helmet and move into one of the trenches once we break out the bigger guns, alright?" He gestured to the pile of blue, conical metal helmets lying nearby, each with a little Imperial mon on the front. They'd started issuing those to troops recently to cut down on head injuries, which was all well and good, but it had meant the Army had bought up pretty much all the remaining steel on the market for it. Major Izuhara had his own, one of the more rounded officer types, strapped to his belt.

Soldiers from the nearby trucks came out and started setting up their weapons.

"Firstly, we'll show you the problem. This is the standard Type 11, which fires the same 8mm rifle round as our infantry rifles. We have thousands of these overseas, an average of two and a half every kilometer of trench. The Dragonfly has two of these. This is what it does to an AT-TA-1." Major Izuhara explained, then blew a whistle.

The little crew of soldiers finished their preparations and arranged themselves, and started firing. Tack-tack-tack-tack-tack. The rounds stiched across the plates and did nothing more than create some scuffing to the first four. The teams were allowed to get close, and you saw a few on the edges left some minor dents and created cracks in the metal behind. The final two plates had a few holes, but mostly ugly dents.

"So, yeah. Massed machine-gun fire can work against an AT-TA, but usually not before they blow up the gun position." Izuhara explained. "Next up, the 11mm rechamber."

The soldiers moved to a near identical gun, loaded it up, and started firing. This was even less effective, with not a single round penetrating any of the plates, though it left big dents in the last one.

"These rounds have half the velocity of the 8mm ones. They're mostly used to lob grenades from modified rifles and on some small boats and submarines to smash up wooden boats. Velocity is the key to armour penetration." Izuhara explained.

"Now, we've got some other smaller weapons we're not even going to show you. A Type 2 rotary gun isn't even going to register on these plates. No, we're going to start moving into some bigger stuff, and it's quite a jump from here to the next gun. This is a Wakamatsu 2 cannon. It fires one of these..." He held up a shell to demonstrate: it was rather large. "... at about 450 meters per second. That's 200 meters per second slower than even the 11mm gun, but that's fine. We use these mostly on light boats to lob shells at torpedo boats and stuff, and we're actually not allowed to use them on land with an explosive filler. I don't know how that'll work in the air, but we signed a treaty and I'm sure the bigwigs will figure it out. Ladies?"

You looked over as the Navy crew ran out. You were surprised to see four women in cadet uniforms, being led by a female sailor of some kind (you understood Navy ranks even less than Army ones.) The sailor yelled at them a bunch, and they got the little 20mm gun (which looked pretty much like a long tube with some metal bits on it) lined up on a small carriage. A second later, it started firing with a *thump thump thump*, each shot strikes a plate downrange and bursting like a firecracker. The first four plates were fine, though one of them cracked, while the last two had huge holes punched through them, and one of them snapped in half.

"Those were high explosive shells, which are standard. However, we do have some solid lead shots with steel tips, which were experimented with to attack smaller ships. Petty Officer Mikami, if you could?"

The weapon was reloaded, and a second wave of shots range out. These ones were much more successful, punching through all but the thickest plate, leaving a hole exactly the size of the shell in each. Unfortunately, midway through this demo, the gun jammed, and it took about ten seconds to be ready to fire again, as the cadets had to pull back on a heavy bar to reset the gun.

"Right, there's the problem with these bigger guns. They start to want to jam a lot, and they don't carry many rounds. The longest strip clip we've ever gotten to work on the Wakamatsu 2 is 11 shots, but we usually keep it to ten. Let's move on."

It was the Army's turn again. New plates were being set out while the team set up behind a rotating gun on a carriage, powered by a big crank. Sakane leaned over to you. "Hey, I bet we could connect that crank to a driveshaft." He said.

"This is the 25mm Mechanical Gun Mark 3. We don't use it anymore, so they're all in storage, meaning they're perfect for you guys. It's got roughly the same velocity as the last weapon, but the shells are bigger and heavier. Lads?"

The army teamed started the gun rotating, and the barrels spat out shells with a huge cloud of smoke behind each. This one got through all the plates but the thickest with non-explosive rounds; you were informed afterward there were no explosives rounds for it. It looked promising, if very heavy and bulky.

"Alright! Now, finally, the last gun. This is a 'pom-pom' machine gun, which are mounted on ships to destroy torpedo boats mostly. We've been pressing it into service as an improvised anti-aircraft gun as well, but we're limited in how many we have, because we don't actually build them, the Albians do. You might want to cover your ears for this one."

The Navy cadets were set up on this next gun, a massive copper thing. You suspected it must weigh a great deal. They wheeled it around to point in the right direction and started firing with a massive series of impossibly load *pops*, each of which made the rocky ground shudder. These rounds were explosive, and all of them simply blew right through the plates one after another.

"Right! Any questions before we shoot up the train?"

Here's the weapon list. Scatter guns are currently off-limits and the heat ray is not a thing. The precision rifle could be acquired as maybe an Elephant Gun? Belt feeds for the cannons will need to be researched. Continue your discussion, and leave some nice comments. I worked very hard on this one today, it took hours. Remember, my brain and Asuka's brain are currently going through the same stuff, but I don't get timeskips.

Fun fact: All the characters in the dream sequences are either somebody in the story already or analogs to real aircraft designers. Lisa Nürnberger is our Heinkel, who worked for the Austro-Hungarians in WW1 and really did suffer a plane crash in July 1911 that left him with persistent injuries through his life.

(Funner fact: When I genderflip aircraft designers, I often just use their wife's name.)

Adhoc vote count started by open_sketch on Dec 21, 2018 at 3:06 AM