The flight back was long and disappointing. I had made a sizable detour of course, but there was still some Luxite in my collectors when I arrived back at base. The dogs were not as productive as I once thought, and with the agreed upon price of three Erudite for one Luxite, I was only able to make the trade twice before they were out.
That wasn’t all either, we discussed where to actually find Erudite, and for the most part it was simply luck of the draw. There was hardly any surface indication for it unless there was incredibly high saturation or some major geological event managed to unearth part of it. It was a similar situation to some of the other resources, since it formed deep underground, there was no one environment to pin it down to, you just simply had to stumble upon some.
As described earlier, it wasn’t very valuable either, despite being so rare. The dogs didn’t settle in their area because of the Erudite, it just happened to be there along with all the other gems. Luckily that meant I wouldn’t have a lot of competition when searching for it or harvesting any, but first I would have to actually find some. Thankfully with the proper incentive the dogs were more than willing to pick up the pace for my next visit.
That just left me to deal with the results of my meeting with Twilight.
I had essentially asked her to start investigating classified information, which was an incredibly risky thing to do. She seemed ready to accept that risk however, just like I had accepted the risk of actually meeting them. I was fully prepared for my destruction upon arriving, whether it be via a trap or somehow the meeting going sour. There were several spare cabins back at base, and several were a part of combat techs on standby.
Of course, none of that actually happened, the meeting went fine and there was no trap. I still would’ve landed if there was though, as it still would’ve provided some useful information.
Now that it was over, there was going to be some time before I checked back on them, and I could focus on more pressing matters, considering two more tunnels were in need of maintenance. The dump tunnel was completed without any incident, and now just needed to be cleared. I set up a smaller team of cleaners to begin work on it as getting the stone out was a high priority.
On the other side of things, the Titanite drill had reached the desert. As expected, it encountered much softer rock and stopped as per instructed, only for it to let out a distress signal immediately afterwards. Switching over revealed nothing, my view was obstructed on all sides, and the drill was seemingly locked in place.
It had been caught in a collapse. That wasn’t as much of a problem for the drill as it was for the tunnel as a whole. The drill could dig itself out easily enough, but if the surrounding area already suffered a collapse, there was a significant risk of causing another one. Without anything to hold up the material, the damage would quickly reach the surface.
Flying over to the drill’s location in the plane, there was already a rather large fissure breaking up the sandy earth. Even worse, there was what looked like a pathway nearby. Thankfully there were no settlements close, but I would still prefer not to make my things anymore visible. I would have to be careful not to cause any more surface disturbances.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could actually do about it yet, as I had yet to even begin work on clearing the Titanite tunnel, and moving the drill in any direction would cause the rock it was now holding up to fall further. That brought the number of drills stranded up to three, literally all of them.
I didn’t think this through very well.
At least two of them could reach the surface, which improved their situations marginally. With access I could at least slowly disassemble them, but since the tunnels were pretty much off limits now, I didn’t have any way to move them any time soon. I didn’t want to wait that long just to free up a single drill, there were more tunnels to be dug, and any number of additional projects that might appear in the future.
Taking a drill apart piece by piece would take a ridiculous number of trips in the plane, but at least the bigger the plane, the bigger the pieces.
…
How big of a plane would I need to move an entire drill?
I had the rough size and weight measurements for the drill, so I could figure out what I needed to build something able to lift it. The drill was essentially just a big, heavy cylinder, which is already the perfect shape for a plane to begin with. I could just build the plane around it, using it as the main body. The only issue was weight, seeing as the drill was built to plow through stone and operate underground, it was naturally quite dense, meaning I really had to give it some lift in order to get it off the ground.
That brought the total wingspan from massive to ridiculously big. I didn’t exactly have the materials for it either, but at least it didn’t take anything locked away like Plumbite, I could just go harvest what I needed when I was finished with the design.
It also needed quite a bit of thrust, too much for an abundance of Pinwheel Propellers to handle. Thankfully I had just gotten some more Erudite, which meant I could fabricate some better propellers. Since I was focusing more on power over defense, I decided to go with Venture’s Seraphim Nose Propeller.
It all started with combining the Erudite with some Ignite in the Component Factory, forming a Heat Coil. Then, by combining some Carbite and Rodite to make Blast Caps, then adding some more Carbite, you get Z4 Explosives, which can then be combined with the Heat Coil to make Dervish Gel, the main driving component of the propeller. With the addition of a Cyclone Jet made of a bunch of Oleite and some Carbite, along with all the Fibrewood and Rubber structure, you get yourself a single propeller.
Thankfully the Component Factory and Fabricator make quick work of the actual assembly process, but it does little to diminish the amount of steps. Just fabricating one propeller with my modified fabrication station took a little under an hour, nevermind the time it took to acquire all the resources necessary. I cannot imagine the amount of time it would take to fabricate just the ordnance portion of an interceptor satellite, let alone the rest of it, then the rocket to get it up into orbit in the first place. Hopefully when I upgraded my production that issue will be resolved, everything should be working in tandem and as efficiently as possible, putting together a still indeterminate amount of satellites and rockets.
I was working my way to that point at this very moment. By chaining together wings along a large frame, then connecting the propellers at regular intervals, I had myself a gigantic plane. Given an actual body, it could become quite the cargo plane, able to transport plenty of materials from almost any distance in a good amount of time. It was the type of thing I would normally use if I could, but it was huge, and extremely eye catching as well, meaning there was simply no way for me to use it regularly.
I took off in record time. Without an actual body, it was basically just a stick with giant wings and immense thrust, which naturally made it fast, but also incredibly hard to control. The same definitely could not be said for the return trip.
Going over to the ocean first, I pulled the drill out of the ground, taking care to partially fill the hole with rubble. I could always clear it later, and it would stop any would-be spelunkers from getting in. With that out of the way, I hooked up the drill to the plane, making sure all the connections were secure. Then I went about trying to take off.
Emphasis on trying.
I couldn’t get enough speed to reliably leave the ground. I had the thrust and the lift, but now that the drill was acting as the body of the plane, it was creating a lot of drag and friction. The heavy duty tracks were not meant to travel at high speeds, and as such they literally couldn’t, dragging in the dirt and slowing down the plane as a whole.
It wasn’t very aerodynamic either. Contrary to what you might think, large drill heads are not cone shaped, they don’t actually pierce the earth, rather they carve through it with a flatter, cylindrical head. It’s why there’s so much stone to clean up afterwards, as it would take too much energy and cause too much damage to try and force the earth out of the way. Bottomline, it doesn’t help with airflow.
Thankfully, with a bit of ingenuity and cannibalism, I fashioned a makeshift nose for the plane, and by using a few small hills, I could get the treads off the ground for long enough to gain enough speed to stay in the air. With the added weight, the plane was much slower, but it flew much steadier, and I successfully brought the drill back to base, taking care to avoid any known settlements, as I couldn’t fly very high either.
It had worked, but it was still unreliable, and it would not work for the drill stuck up in the mountains. There was no stretch of land long enough, nor an upward facing slope shallow enough to take off. I wasn’t stupid enough to attempt a downwards facing launch with such a heavy plane, and there was no way I could get enough speed going upwards to take off from the peak. I would need to change the design.
For one, I gave the plane an actual nose, one that was more streamlined and lightweight. Then I extended the frame below, adding a place for the drill to rest on, whilst giving the plane its own set of wheels to use. Finally, to help with the runway issues, I simply added a bunch of rocket boosters.
With these additions, I could probably retrieve the Rodite drill, but there were some preparations I wanted to make first. Instead, I brought the first drill back underground and headed East with another beacon.
The first stop? Carbite.
To Be Continued…