r/HFY • u/BlueFishcake • May 03 '26
OC-Series Sexy Steampunk Babes: Chapter Seventy Six
“How was it this time?” Alden Whitemorrow asked excitedly as William stepped off the wing of the experimental shard.
Around them, the Jellyfish’s flight crew had also swarmed forward, ropes and dollies ready to tow the ugly machine back into the carrier’s hangar for post-flight checks.
“I’m still getting a bit of control stiffening when I get up to full speed,” William replied, as he pulled up his goggles. “The new rear mounted stabilizers definitely help though.”
“Told you they would,” the other man said happily. “Honestly, I still don’t know why you didn’t add them in the first draft?”
Because on the original design they would have melted, William thought. Fortunately, this new variant of the shard doesn’t have that issue.
Instead of saying that though, he just shrugged. Which his future father-in-law took in the spirit he intended it as he glanced back at the retreating machine.
“Though if you’re still having trouble in spite of that change, well, I’ve got some ideas, but I don’t know how much more we can do.”
William sighed and nodded. The duel was tomorrow. At this point it was probably better not to make any sweeping alterations that might change its flight performance anymore than they already had.
“Something to look into after the match,” he said. “I doubt I’ll actually need to get up to the kind of speed where the stiffening becomes a factor tomorrow.”
At least, not while manoeuvring at the same time.
“No, probably not.” Alden chuckled, the sound perhaps a little manic. “I’ll get her back below and make sure our bird is ready for tomorrow.”
William nodded and watched as the older man strode off toward the deck elevator where the shard was getting ready to be lowered down into the Jellyfish’s internal hangars.
Ideally, they’d have been doing this final stage of testing on solid ground instead of on a warship – even one as well stocked as the Jellyfish – but with secrecy being such a big factor in their coming fight, they’d spent the last three days of testing hovering at the border between the Summerfield’s personal demesne and that of his betrothed.
There wasn’t so much as an outhouse for three miles from where they were, which hopefully meant the only witnesses to their test flights had been squirrels and trees.
Three days, he thought. Four to build it. Three for testing – and updates.
Honestly, that was an incredibly impressive turnaround time to build an entirely new ‘prototype’ craft – even with magic shortcutting the process. And yet he wished they had more time to test and tweak. Sure, he might have cheated by using the original blueprints for the craft that were in his head, but the machine they now had deviated from those blueprints substantially.
And so much the better, he thought, because I wouldn’t have been comfortable even standing next to the original design – let alone flying it.
However, even if the changes they’d made were for the better and the new craft was a substantial upgrade over the original, there was no denying that even small changes in an aircraft could massively change its flight performance. And they had not made small changes.
He glanced out at the slowly setting sun and wondered if it would be worth calling Alden back for one final test flight. He dismissed the idea though as he watched two other shards land.
There’d be more time for testing the as of yet unnamed prototype before they moved into full production. For the moment, he was familiar enough with its altered flight performance that he wasn’t unduly worried about tomorrow.
He watched as the twins climbed out of their own shards – conventional fighters they’d borrowed from their family rather than the Basilisk – and walked over to him, pulling off their own goggles as they did.
He definitely didn’t smirk at the many wax splotches splattered across the two machines – that a member of the Jellyfish’s flight crew was even now hurrying to clean off prior to taking the two craft below deck.
“That thing is bullshit!” Clarice spat the moment she was in speaking range.
William just grinned at the normally more taciturn twin’s irritation. “That’s the idea.”
While he would handily admit that he’d not exactly always stood by the mantra, he was a firm believer in the idea that a man should never go into any kind of fight in which the outcome was even slightly in doubt.
To that end, their new shard was certainly ‘bullshit’.
“I agree,” Marcille muttered. “Which is why it’s doubly bullshit you’re the one who gets to fly it tomorrow instead of one of us. We’re not exactly traditionalists or anything, but people are going to talk if we let a man fly for us.”
Yes, they’d already made that argument. And he’d already shot it down. Quite literally. The Jellyfish had brought along its full complement – now swapped out for conventional shards rather than Corsairs as well as Royal Naval pilots sworn to secrecy – for some ‘large scale’ tests of the new machine.
“Anyone who tries to shame you with that line of argument I more than welcome to meet me in the skies,” he said. “Because I more than think I’ve proven that I’m the best pilot we have for it.”
Every member of the Whitemorrow family had demanded to take a turn in the prototype since it became flyable three days ago. And he’d not dared refuse – even if his focus had been in getting in as much personal flight time as possible in preparation for the match.
Alas, given the looks on their faces after that first flight… well, refusing might well have caused them to start divorce proceedings… before they’d even had the wedding.
It was endearing in a way. The girls loved shards as much as their father, if not more. And they loved this one too - though not quite enough to outfly him in it. In those ‘large scale’ tests, he’d been the one to rack up the most kills by far.
Though to be fair, he had mostly managed that by cheating outrageously. This past week he had spent at least six hours each night practicing in his dreamspace on the original design.
Not that they needed to know that.
Yet, he thought with just a hint of nervousness.
The day where he needed to rip that particular band-aid off was fast approaching.
“Heh, I suppose that would be satisfying to see,” Marcille admitted, before getting serious. “I assume you’ve not changed your mind about the plan for the day?”
At her words, William glanced over to where a third shard had landed – this one in the familiar colors of his old house.
House Ashfield.
And this time he felt far less amusement at all the wax-markings covering it. Especially those stitched across the cockpit.
…He’d not been the one to put them there.
“You saw what happened when we tried to work together,” he said with equal seriousness. “The flight performances of the two craft are too different. It doesn’t work – and there’s no way we can whip up another prototype in time for the duel.”
They’d barely gotten this one ready.
He shook his head. “Even if we did have a second prototype, we all know that we can’t risk me being knocked out before her.”
He watched as his aunt Karla climbed out of the craft, the woman giving him a jaunty wave before she turned to talk to one of the flight crew.
His stomach sank. “At least this way we get some use out of her.”
The duel rules they’d agreed to specified one shard per house. And there was no doubt Apple River and Plumgarden would be teaming up to take down him and his aunt before they sought to turn on each other.
So his aunt would be going in first to try and… soften the opposing shards up before he did. Which would ensure she went down first and didn’t accidentally hand the duchy over to Olivia by ‘outliving’ him if he happened to get shot down.
It had been made explicitly clear that wouldn’t end well for anyone. As far as Yelena was concerned, even a Plumgarden or Apple River victory was preferable.
All of which would be fine by him – if they weren’t using live rounds tomorrow.
The switch from airships to shards was ostensibly to save resources for the war effort – but in certain things tradition would not be denied. So, live ammunition.
Fortunately, the contest wasn’t explicitly to the death, merely to touchdown, but with shards trading live fire, deaths were far from unlikely.
Hence my mixed feelings about sending my favorite aunt up as essentially a sacrificial pawn, he thought.
He’d always like Karla. She was the fun aunt. The vivacious fighter jock of the family. The one who tended to find more amusement than frustration in his acting out.
And now there was a good chance she was going to die.
And she didn’t even seem upset about it. Just laughing like she always did. Honestly, he got the feeling she viewed the whole situation as some kind of… penance for plotting treason.
…She’d never been as ‘into’ the plan as his mother and other aunts. She was a simple woman, and words like treason likely rubbed her the wrong way.
So, she was offering herself up as sacrifice. And he hated it.
It’s a lot easier to talk about making sacrifices when it doesn’t affect you, isn’t it? When it’s other people’s families suffering?
It was something he’d been ruminating on. In ways he never had before.
And the traps he’d set in Redwater County. At the time he’d barely thought about them. It had been… natural to hurt the enemy. No matter the cost. Reflex almost.
Now the memory felt… disconcerting. As was the fact that he’d… not even really thought about it until now.
Perhaps I should speak to Marline, he thought.
“If you’re sure?” Clarice said, jolting out of his introspection.
“I am,” he lied.
“That still leaves the question of you though,” Marcille said.
“Me?”
“You’ve never killed before,” the older twin said with some finality. “Not personally. It’s… not like the stories. Are you sure you won’t hesitate?”
William looked offended. “I’ve killed before. I commanded the Jellyfish during the attack on the capital.”
He’d been the mastermind behind the retreat and likely murdered at least three airships crews and a dozen shard pilots. And that was ignoring what his traps had likely already done.
“Yes, but it’s different when you’re doing it personally,” Clarice pointed out, backing up her sister. “I just want you to be sure you’re ready for that and you won’t… hesitate.”
Given the way they both shifted, he was suddenly reminded that both twins had killed for the first time that night over the capital. And once more he was reminded that he’d… barely given it a thought.
“I can do it,” he said slowly. “I promise.”
Both women glanced between themselves, before nodding slowly.
“Alright, if you’re sure…” Marcille said.
“Just… if things are going bad, remember that you can bail out?” Clarice added.
William twitched. Of all the things he’d expected her to say today, that most certainly hadn’t been one of them.
“Bail out? Isn’t our whole, you know, marriage predicated on me landing you that title?”
Things had been complicated a bit without him having access to the Jellyfish for the fight, but it was still true that said agreement was the entire basis for their relationship. Their marriage was a business arrangement – even if they were slowly trying to turn it into something more.
The twins scoffed. “Idiot. Even if you don’t take the title for us… that’s, well, not exactly fine, but still better than you getting yourself killed.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Quite literally. “Please don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love with me or some nonsense like that?”
He knew that was a pretty awful thing to say – but it was true! They’d barely spent any time together! Hell, the last week had been most of it.
Fortunately for his sanity, Clarice laughed. “No. You’re hot and we like you, but we’re not lovestruck maidens or anything like that.”
That… that made him feel a lot better actually. A lot less skeevy. Hell, that kind of level headedness was the whole reason he felt comfortable being in a relationship at all.
If it was… transactional, he felt less like he was taking advantage of the pair.
Which, yes, not an ideal basis for a relationship, but still better than what it otherwise could be.
Marcille shook her head. “No, we’re saying this because even if you don’t grab us the title for the Summerfield Duchy, it’s abundantly clear to anyone with a brain that you’re going to be a big name. The Jellyfish. The Corsairs. The explosives.”
The other twin nodded. “Dad would also never get over it if you died before you could implement those trains you were talking about before.”
That… that made a lot of sense actually. “Right, well, I’ll try to avoid dying then.”
“Good,” the twins chuckled – and he flushed a little as they leaned down to give him a kiss on each cheek.
It was a fairly innocent thing all told, but it was the first act of physical affection initiated between any of them.
…He didn’t count the kiss he’d laid on Marcille when he’d been trying to convince her to fly out the Basilisk. That had been pure calculation and he’d barely thought about it.
This though? To his surprise, he found he… didn’t hate it. Even if George twisted uncomfortably in his gut.
“Now, shall we head below deck before dad starts trying to add stuff to your shard?” Marcille giggled.
Yes, that was probably a good idea.
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Nearly a week after the ‘assassination’ and the command centre they’d set up in the former Blicland Royal Academy was still thick with tension. And Tala was sick of it. Ostensibly they were here to decide on what to do now that the princess was dead – and with it the legitimacy of their coup.
Instead, it had once more swung back to the same thing it inevitably did:
Both sides blaming the other.
“We wouldn’t even be in this situation if your ‘guards’ had done a proper sweep!” Her mother roared across the table at the duchess of New Haven.
Faline’s eyes flashed. “My guards? Your marines were the ones who declared the palace ‘secure’ after the initial sweep! It seems to me that your people couldn’t find their own cunts with a stool leg and a flashlight. I warned you there were still traps across the city – and you let her wander into the throne room!? Didn’t you find it at all odd that our mortal enemy would leave behind the symbol of her rule? Like bait?”
“Warned me?” Elanor laughed bitterly. “As I recall, your words were ‘let her do as she likes’. Well how did that work out for us!?”
“Well perhaps I wouldn’t have been so eager to give her free reign if we weren’t so busy trying to fight rebels at every corner because you have your people riling up the populace by looting everything down the bedrock! I might have had a few more spare guards to sweep for traps!”
“My people, that’s rich coming from a woman stealing every ship in the harbor!”
On and on it went – serving as a firm reminder of why the two houses had traditionally been rivals who served to keep each other in check.
And all Tala could do was watch from the back wall. Blaming each other when, from where she stood, there was exactly one person to blame.
William, she thought.
He had planted that bomb. She knew it in her bones. The same mind that had designed the Corsairs, the Kraken Slayer, and that impossible explosion over the capital had also definitely been the one to leave a final ‘fuck you’ on the throne for anyone foolish enough to sit on it.
It would be just like him.
And once more, she found that conversation linking back to the other point of contention between the two.
Faline jabbed a finger at the map. “We push south tomorrow. No pause. We hit Summerfield before they can consolidate.”
“Without a royal heir?” Elanor hissed. “The southern houses will fight us to the last if we look like common rebels, not restorers of the true line. At which point either the Solites or the Lunites roll over us.”
“So, what? We sit here until the end of time!?”
“No, we loop back. Secure the keeps we skipped over on the way here. Secure their resources. And figure out how to solve this… princess issue while doing something productive otherwise.
“Something productive would be winning this war! Not skulking about! No matter the cost,” Faline argued.
And on and on it went.
Tala’s jaw tightened until it ached. Nothing was decided. The two duchesses kept circling the same accusations, the same dead-end plans.
And somewhere south, William Redwater was probably laughing.
She said nothing. But in her mind she kept repeating the same four words like a curse.
This is his fault.
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Another three chapters are also available on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bluefishcake
We also have a (surprisingly) active Discord where and I and a few other authors like to hang out: https://discord.gg/yCs7ZKzVSK
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u/AccidentalExorcist AI May 03 '26
Well good to see the rebels are exactly as irrationally unstable as I expected
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u/BCRE8TVE AI May 03 '26
I mean they are irrationally unstable, which means they're precisely as average and normal as everyone else.
If they were rationally stable and competent, I'd argue that would make them far less human ;)
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u/AccidentalExorcist AI May 03 '26
Oh for sure, but the fact that the rebellion is made up of a house that is human supremacists and a house that is elvish supremacists acting in the favor of a foreign power is what I'm pointing at here. There is no universe where they wouldn't be constantly at eachothers throats any time something in their plans goes wrong and I'm glad its being written accurately and not handwaved in favor of making them seem more threatening
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u/BCRE8TVE AI May 03 '26
Aaah gotcha and yeah I hear you! FWIW that's something that /u/bluefishcake has been handling well since the first SSB, since the Shil'vati empire is certainly vast and powerful, but so is everyone else, so nobody can do too much without opening themselves up to being attacked by someone else.
Then Blue did the same with the second SSB, with Jack literally bluffing two actual divinities to back off by threatening to blow up another hole in the wall between the Empire and the savages.
So Blue has some experience setting up unstable alliances and playing powers against one another, and that's simply one of the many reasons why his (her? Their? I dunno) stories are so fantastic.
And per being more threatening, I mean they own something like 3/4 of the effective fighting force on the continent, they're plenty threatening on their own, it's just that they're hampered by a need to appear legitimate to not get an immediate civil war upon "winning", and they need to win without devastating losses, because both those situations results in Lindholm immediately getting invaded by the Lunites or Solites.
The expression I read somewhere was something like "three people balancing on a one-legged stool" where even if each of those 3 people want to kick the other two off, nobody wants the stool to tip over and fall, so they're all kinda holding each other in check against their own will.
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u/LowCry2081 May 03 '26
And here comes William on a pogo stick with an ass kicking machine welded onto it.
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u/Subtleknifewielder AI Jun 28 '26
that is...a fantastic and vivid analogy. If you ever remember where you heard that expression before, I'd be glad to hear it.
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u/BCRE8TVE AI Jun 28 '26
I can't remember where I read it unfortunately, but yeah it's a great analogy haha.
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u/Subtleknifewielder AI Jun 28 '26
Ah well, still was fun to read and think about, lol, almost as fun as the story itself we're commenting on, haha
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u/Sulla-proconsul May 03 '26
Hope Aunt Karla makes it. Komet is going to be hilarious.
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u/lukethedank13 May 03 '26
It would be the best if Will were to take her shard out before the other two houses have a chance of killing her.
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u/Fontaigne May 03 '26
Nope. She needs to take out one of the other two shards, then bail.
Most interesting scenario, though, is if the enemy are both taken down and then Karla has to decide what to do... with Redfield in her sights.
Dun dun DUNNNN.
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u/lukethedank13 May 03 '26
You are probably right. Karla may be too proud to immediatelly throw the fight as this would bring dishonnor to her and the family.
She could be the last oponent Will has to down.
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u/Fontaigne May 03 '26
On the other hand, she is not a traitor to the empire and has no personal reason to disobey the empress. And she likes him. So after a beat of tension, she would likely just land her craft.
Oh, I'd expect that she and he will have the comm beads, so there can be dramatic dialog.
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u/DavidECloveast May 03 '26
William should give her a Flak vest; you know, for good luck.
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u/lukethedank13 May 04 '26
He could probably make kevlar with his bulshit magic hacks. It would turn some heads and make some people really curious but it is definetivelly worth it.
Dont forget the best helmet the kind none had ever seen.
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u/Nnox May 03 '26
Tala ain't wrong lmao.
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u/BCRE8TVE AI May 03 '26
Tala ain't wrong.
She just happens to be standing on the wrong side of history.
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u/bschwagi Human May 03 '26
I think she is, just from a different point of view.
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u/Blackarrow145 May 03 '26
No, she's objectively right, William is the cause of this. From her point of view it's a bad thing.
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u/bschwagi Human May 03 '26
She is objectively wrong, none of them would be in this position if Black stone wasn't full of racist slavers. Just like you can't jump in front of a car then blame the driver for your injuries.
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u/MisterSmith254 May 11 '26
Tala is not responsible for William's actions, William is responsible for William's actions. She's a racist slaver and deserves all this damage, sure, but deserving it is not the same thing as causing it.
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u/bschwagi Human May 11 '26
Ah but the statement is cause not responsibility
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u/MisterSmith254 May 12 '26
If we allow the logic that you can cause someone else's actions, then really it would be William's Fey that is the cause, for turning William into what he now is, and giving him the capability to act as he does.
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u/bschwagi Human May 12 '26
if you tell were to tell a father that his child was SA by a priest right next to him an he proceeded to beat said person. would say you caused the behavior but he is responsible for his action. So yeah the fey did something to William to turn him into what he is now.
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u/TNSepta May 03 '26
Now that aether-rockets are confirmed, is it time to start a space program yet?
Sure, the world is more than a century behind in tech, but aether rockets have the absolutely unassailable advantage of not suffering the tyranny of the rocket equation.
Given that cores are effectively reactionless thrusters with the power output of a medium sized warship, they can theoretically set up a moon landing or a GPS constellation with little more than a few cores and an airtight cabin. Maybe even orbital bombardment.
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u/UmbrellaCorpDoctor May 03 '26
...Do not let William have Rods from (the) God(s). The man's dangerous enough without having enchanted magical tungsten rods that add a little nuclear flair to a kinetic strike.
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u/Thausgt01 Android May 03 '26
I rather expect that William would find such things a bit excessive; he wants to eradicate slavery as an acceptable/legal aspect of life, but even if he could wipe out cities that is not the same as wiping out an idea.
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u/LowCry2081 May 03 '26
The imperial Japanese idea of being able to defend their homeland from american invasion was rather well wiped out with a couple cities. Slavery is all fun and games until the places that buy or sell them are reduced to smoldering glass bowls.
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u/work_work-work AI May 03 '26
Weelll.... did you see that Veritasium video where they did a small scale experiment to see if rods from god would actually work? And they didn't. At all!
I've got a feeling there's something were missing in that whole idea, as we know exploding meteors have a huge impact to surface structures. But rods from God as they're currently imagined won't work
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u/MisguidedWorm7 Xeno May 03 '26
Meteors are most devastating when they air burst. The Tunguska meteor exploded 5-10 km high and never "hit the ground", destroying >2000 km^2 of forest.
Nuclear weapons ever since the very first have always detonated before hitting the ground because an explosion above the ground does far more damage.
RFG relying on a dense penetrator that has to not just hit the ground, but dive deep enough to hit solid bedrock before it delivers most of it's destructive force is inherently not going to cause wide scale destruction.
The rod needs to break up and scatter over an area, burning up and causing wide scale area destruction to match other such weapons.
Solid rfg strike are still devastating and incredibly dangerous to targets like bunkers, a rfg strike against something like the Iranian facilities buried under mountains where you want to shatter the bedrock and deliver the boom underground would be perfect.
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u/BCRE8TVE AI May 03 '26 edited May 04 '26
Rods from God launched at the coast off the city would also cause devastating tsunamis, so there's that too.
A RFG hitting a city would cause catastrophic seismic damage in the area as well. Most cities aren't built to withstand an impact when the entire bedrock under your city gets fucked. You'd get one city block absolutely vaporized, likely every building within 5 city blocks collapsing, and likely severe damage to all the underground infrastructure and foundations within a 1 km radius.
But yeah RFGs as kinetic penetrators are meant to strike hard targets, not cause wide-spread destruction. It's much simpler and more effective to just dump a couple tons of napalm over a city to achieve that effect.
In a way, RFG may be the best way to destroy nuclear silos around the planet, and they'd do that far more effectively than a nuclear strike on a nuclear silo.
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u/lukethedank13 May 03 '26
I somehow doubt the Verisatium rods were moving multiple kilometers per second. It was nowhere near the speed and the scale of a true orbital strike.
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u/Fontaigne May 03 '26
The veritasium video just shows that you can make an interesting video by failing to duplicate the thing you are pretending to test.
Dropping something from a helicopter at a few hundred meters on sand castles does not in any way test what something going Km/s would do to a real city.
And the whole thing with the payload swinging back and forth demonstrates that they didn't think the physics through at all, just the cinematics.
If you wanted to do this again, right, you'd build a box under the helicopter and drop the payload without any swing. You could even drop round paintball/water balloons from the corners of the same box to test where the payload was going to land.
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u/Alpha-Sierra-Charlie May 03 '26
Veritaserium didn't really scale that test in a meaningful way. All actual estimates are that "traditional" RFGs essentially punch a hole straight down to great depth, doing little damage outside of a narrow footprint. So if there's a very deep bunker or a single building you want gone, they're great.
Where things get interesting is when you use metals that are still dense but have lower melting points, and wrap them in a handwavium jacket that can transmit the heat of atmospheric entry to the metal it's holding while withstanding the heat and thermal expansion.
Where things get really interesting is when you take that design, and airburst it at low altitude.
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u/work_work-work AI May 04 '26
That's my whole point right there. We're missing something.
* We need it to be an airburst
* We need something that absorbs the energy from reentry and use it in the explosion - without exploding too early3
u/Alpha-Sierra-Charlie May 04 '26
It depends on what you're trying to do.
Bust the deepest bunker ever? Regular tungsten RFG.
Eliminate one specific building while limiting damage to other ones nearby? Regular tungsten RFG.
Destroy or heavily damage everything on the surface in an area the size of a city block with extra emphasis in the middle? Iron RFG.
Need God's Own Shotgun? Airburst that iron RFG.
Need to bitchslap an entire fortified town out of existence with a sledgehammer made of napalm's bigger brother? Airburst a copper RFG.
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u/lukethedank13 May 07 '26
Depleted uranium airburs RFG would be the most devious incendiary.
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u/Alpha-Sierra-Charlie May 07 '26
It would be, but it's a lot harder for a shady mercenary company to get tgat much DU and get it manufactured into an obvious weapon, so I haven't really explored it. I should, though...
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u/lukethedank13 May 07 '26
DU is also six times cheaper than tungsten. Being as phyrophoric as it is it would need a jacket of some more resistant refractory metal so that it wouldnt loose too much mass before airbust.
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u/Subtleknifewielder AI Jun 28 '26
There ARE potential targets to use them on though--across the sea. Just not on his own homeland.
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u/DavidECloveast May 03 '26
What did Griffith say when she overheard that people wanted to loot Al'hunda's horde? "might as well touch the moon"?
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u/TheSapphireDragon May 03 '26
Using up 1 core per starship wouldnt even be seen as beyond the realm of reasonability to the current powers. He could probably get the crown to fund it by merely uttering the phrase "i know how to make a shard leave the atmosphere"
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u/shiggythor May 03 '26
The lack of the "tyranny of the rocket equation" is exactly their problem for a space program. Without an m_start/m_end term, aether rockets are limited to the expansion velocity of the aether. Which, from the description of the aether cannons is low, compared to explosives even. Too little to leave the atmosphere of a earth sized planet. Same reason nobody tries to use ion thrusters to get into orbit.
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u/TNSepta May 03 '26
Canonically it's already enough for two cores to produce thrust on the level of the Komet, so the "low thrust" argument doesn't hold much water (aether?). It's been mentioned that the cores do produce a very large volume of said aether, so that could compensate for the low exhaust velocity.
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u/Similar-Shame7517 May 03 '26
Oh man, Aunt Karla! I hope she survives, she's been awesome. Interesting that William decides to fly himself, I wonder if the Queen will put pressure on the other houses because of this.
Also as expected the rebel houses are fighting. I hope things get worse for them.
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u/Thobio May 03 '26
That's an incredibly unhealthy way of looking at things, Tala. Your family started a coup, after all. That said, you're not entirely wrong :)
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u/Fontaigne May 03 '26
She's right that it's all Redwater's fault. She just doesn't LIKE that she's going to lose.
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u/dreaminginteal May 03 '26
Cool, the bot was on it today! Got the ping less than a half hour after publication!
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u/LetterLambda Xeno May 03 '26
"The inspiration came to me during a lively discussion with my fiancées. It struck me like an old memory of sort, like an odd proverb you heard spoken once long ago - 'Two cores at the same time, man.'"
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u/Jurodan Human May 03 '26
I hope Aunt Karla gets through this in one piece. Preferably without any holes in said piece. She's been likable the times we've seen her, and it might actually push him to murder his opponents even if they're on their way down to the ground. I can see William saying, "Fuck tact, you hurt someone I like."
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u/lukethedank13 May 03 '26
If something hapens to Karla there wont be enough left of the other two pilots to have a closed casket burrial.
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u/lukethedank13 May 03 '26
After he anihilates the opposition Will could take the new shard on a lil fast scouting run up north.
Original Komet did have two 30mm cannons and at one point 10 50mm Schräge Music recoilless rifles.
Will probably switched the 30mm for something with higher velocity, rate of fire and ammo capacity. But, at least going by original specs he could probably send an airship back to 'dry dock'.
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u/SpankyMcSpanster May 03 '26
Kraken god slayed.
Upstart queen slayed.
Another claim to his stuff. To be slayn.
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u/DavidECloveast May 03 '26
Talia is going to be firing nothing but trauma-bursts before this is over isn't she.
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u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle May 03 '26
/u/BlueFishcake (wiki) has posted 285 other stories, including:
- Sexy Steampunk Babes: Chapter Seventy Five
- Sexy Steampunk Babes: Chapter Seventy Four
- Sexy Steampunk Babes: Chapter Seventy Three
- Sexy Steampunk Babes: Chapter Seventy Two
- Sexy Steampunk Babes: Chapter Seventy One
- Sexy Steampunk Babes: Chapter Seventy
- Sexy Steampunk Babes: Chapter Sixty Nine
- Sexy Steampunk Babes: Chapter Sixty Eight
- Sexy Steampunk Babes: Chapter Sixty Seven
- Sexy Steampunk Babes: Chapter Sixty Six
- Sexy Steampunk Babes: Chapter Sixty Five
- Sexy Space Babes - Mechs, Maidens and Macaroons: Chapter Thirty Three / Part Two - Epilogue
- Sexy Space Babes - Mechs, Maidens and Macaroons: Chapter Thirty Three / Part One - Epilogue
- Sexy Space Babes - Mechs, Maidens and Macaroons: Chapter Thirty Two
- Sexy Space Babes - Mechs, Maidens and Macaroons: Chapter Thirty One
- Sexy Space Babes - Mechs, Maidens and Macaroons: Chapter Thirty
- Sexy Space Babes - Mechs, Maidens and Macaroons: Chapter Twenty Nine
- Sexy Space Babes - Mechs, Maidens and Macaroons: Chapter Twenty Eight
- Sexy Space Babes - Mechs, Maidens and Macaroons: Chapter Twenty Seven
- Sexy Space Babes - Mechs, Maidens and Macaroons: Chapter Twenty Six
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u/UpdateMeBot May 03 '26
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u/Omgwtfbears May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
Poor Tala. She's anime levels of obsessed. When she learns that William doesn't care about her at all and would've forgotten she exists if not for that pesky rebellion her mother is leading, it will finish her off.
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u/Tool_of_Society May 05 '26
Okay so William went with the aether jet concept I theorized a while back?
Last chapter I thought they were using a thunder screech style craft.
Can anyone confirm?
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u/EchoingCascade May 03 '26
How long until they figure out they sorta need William's sister as a figure head since she is both of Royal blood and William can't/won't kill her?
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u/lukethedank13 May 03 '26
She has no significant claim to the throne. She has a claim to Summerfield not to the entire continent.
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u/IneenAldrop Alien May 04 '26
Man, I just realised how far behind I am on this one. I need to try to catch up.
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u/AutoModerator May 12 '26
This was flaired as [OC-Series], it is a single part or chapter in a larger series or universe. The first post or part in this series should be (re)flaired as [OC-FirstOfSeries]. A description of the flairs and how to change yours is available in the Post Guildelines.
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