Star of the Sea

by JNKing

Chapter 8: Learning the Ropes - The Fire Twins

“So where are we going today, Auntie Atlas?” Star asked as she and Atlas walked though one of the halls in the lower stern section of the Dragon, Atlas smiled at being called auntie.

“Well Star; I’m not sure if it will come up much during your time here, but Razor thinks that you should have some technical knowledge, like how engines work and so forth: You never know when you might need it. So today we’re going to visit our two Fleet Engineers Gold Fire and his twin brother Shadow Fire, who will show you the basics of engineering as well as teach you about the maintenance and repair work undertaken to keep the ship afloat and in good condition.”

“Gold and Shadow,” Star noted. “Cool.” Her eyes brightened. “Please tell me Shadow is the bright and bubbly one of the two. It’s too perfect.”

Atlas chuckled. “Well Star I wouldn’t say bright and bubbly; Shadow’s more of a doer if you understand what I mean, and likes to get in the thick of a fight. Gold’s more of a bookworm and a ranged fighter. Now they’re both nice dragons and quite intelligent.”

As they neared their destination a sudden explosion sounded off as sparks and smoke blasted out of a door ahead of them, though the crew around the area were surprisingly unfazed and continued with their work like nothing had happened.

Star blinked at the explosion. “Woo!” she noted. “Sounds like they’re gonna be fun.”

Atlas rolled her eyes with a sigh. “One thing you quickly learn when working with the Fire Twins is that things blowing up are common. Now don’t get me wrong the two are quite gifted; but when you’re working with tech that could be groundbreaking, you have to expect a few setbacks.”

“Oh, I don’t mind explosions,” Star replied. “I love them; every kind.” She grinned. “Nothing was cooler than reading about a hero that would walk away as a big explosion blanketed everything behind the hero in fire, and yet the hero just keeps walking all cool and stuff.” She breathed, imagining the image in her head. “So awesome…” she mumbled.

The two entered the large room to find a Longma and a quadruped dragon covered in soot arguing around an engine of some kind.

“Gold, I told you to make sure the seals were tight!” The quadruped dragon was saying to the Longma.

“I did Shadow! I said to not over-pressurize them!” The Longma said back. The two would have continued but Atlas motioned to Star to cover her ears.

Grinning, Star covered her ears, watching with intrigue as Atlas put a hoof in her mouth and let out a loud whistle. Instantly, the Longma and the quad-dragon turned.

“Boys,” Atlas chastised. “I get you’re frustrated, but snapping at each other like serpents fighting over a fish isn’t going to help matters. So tell me; what happened?”

The Longma, Gold Fire, went first. “Well, as you know, we’ve been working on that project that Razor and Power Gears set up for us. But we’ve been having trouble with a few things like the seals.”

The quadruped Dragon, Shadow Fire, continued. “We’re not sure why but every time we test them, either the seals fail or they go above the safe pressure. Either way they explode as you likely saw.”

“And when we do get the seals to work as they should, the engine’s power output is lower than what we need.” Gold started.

“And we have no clue why,” Shadow finished.

Star gasped in delight. “Sounds like a job for a cliche raw rookie to figure out!” she declared, marching forward and striking a pose. “My new friends, I am here to help!”

The two Dragons turned to look at Star, both surprised at her entrance but they both smiled warmly. “Well Star, pleasure to finally meet you.” Gold said. “I suppose you already know who we are.”

Star indicated him. “Gold Fire…” She glanced at his brother. “And Shadow Fire, right? Hope I’m not mixing you two up.” The two gave her a thumbs up, showing she got it right.

“And help would be appreciated; a pair of fresh eyes could point out what we’re missing.” Shadow said. Gold turned to Atlas. “Thanks for bringing her down, we’ll take it from here.”

“Alright guys, I’ll drop by later to see how things are going.”

After Atlas walked out Star found herself in a blue magic field and was set down on a table, noticing the blue field was also around Gold Fire’s hand.

“Not sure if you’re aware, Star, but Longmas can use magic, though we’re mostly limited to levitation.”

Star hummed. “Well, I… didn’t get to meet many Longmas in Equestria, so… thanks for the facts.”

Gold shrugged. “That doesn’t surprise me; We Longmas were… distant to other species at that time.”

Star shrugged. "It's not surprising," she noted. "Equestrians were kind of... well, there's a few words I could use to describe them, but I'd rather not get my mouth washed out."

Shadow picked up a pair of earmuffs from a shelf and gave them to her. “Since your hearing is going to be more keen than most, you’ll want to wear these to protect it.” He said while also picking up a pair of goggles. “Can’t forget eye protection too, these will also protect your eyes from any bright flashes.”

Star eagerly took the goggles. “Oh, please help me protect my eyes,” she noted, slipping them over her head. “They’re my favorite body part.” She quickly added the earmuffs as well.

Shadow chuckled. “Considering you read stories like no tomorrow from what we’ve heard…” He started.

“It makes perfect sense why you’d want to protect your eyes.” Gold finished.

Wing’s eyes gazed between her goggles, darting between them. “Nice synchronization,” she praised. “I always loved when teams or partners or siblings could do that with each other.”

The two brothers smiled and started gathering materials for what they were doing, Gold bringing over some blueprints. “Now Star; this engine is one of a few designs that Power Gears, the head of Outcast R&D, sent us.” He showed her the blueprints, revealing some sort of flying machine on it.

Star tilted her head at the sight of the machine. “Are those… wings?” she asked. “Why do you need a machine with wings?”

“Well Star let me give you a little lesson about the vessels found in the Sea of Legends; you’re familiar with Airships right? Well out here there are what we call “Air Warships” or “War/Battle Airships”, basically the various water-borne warships like the Sloop up to the Ship-of-the-Line turned into an airship by removing their masts and sails, replacing them with large bags or balloons filled with an unnamed lighter-than-air gas to keep them aloft. The bags are attached to the hull by chains and heavy rope, the shroud that would hold a ship's masts in place allow travel up to the bags. The bags are generally, though not always, oval-shaped and made from thick, durable materials with metal bracing reinforcement. Beyond that the bags' appearance matches the ship's with some sails and other extra additions.

Smaller ships have one bag while larger have two and ones like the Ship-of-the-Line variant have three.

The hull is more or less the same as its sailing counterpart, but with several changes. Besides the masts being removed, the keel has also been removed and redesigned to fit weapon mounts, like the ship's artillery which is now mounted in turrets to aim and attack ground targets. Along with the ship's normal armament a section called the "Bomb Bay" has be installed and the bags have platforms on top and gangways between each bag allowing the crew to attack any flying targets.

Airships in the SOL are propelled by steam powered turboprop engines at the back under the quarterdeck and at the front just behind the prow, each engine is able to run independently of each other allowing the ship to turn on a dime. Sometimes the bags will have engines but this isn't very common for several reasons, one of each is the fact that trying to run hot pipes from the hull to the bags isn't easy and the crew don't what possible burns.

Although Air Warships are powerful and have the major advantage of being able to travel anywhere, they have a number of flaws that keeps them from becoming the norm. The bags' gas is very flammable and if lit can very easily bring the ship down, the bags themselves, while durable, will leak or tear open if damaged enough and it’s generally the rule that if the Airship's crew see the ship's repair team bailing after they sound alarm, it’s time to get off.

Air Warships also have, as a rule of thumb to save weight, light and thinner hulls, making the ship more vulnerable to cannon fire. This flaw is the reason they try to stay out of range of cannons on the ground and engage with only their underside artillery and bombs, and some bolt launching weapons have been modified to fire long range bolts, often tip with fire and/or explosive tips. The last major flaw is they are very vulnerable to the random storms that plague the SOL, even with equipment designed to help them avoid those.”

“Right,” Star noted. “So… pardon me if I’m not getting it, but why build them in the first place if they're vulnurable? If you’ve got people who can fly, maybe they can carry people who need to fly somewhere.”

“Well Star; why do we have airships in the first place or even trains for that matter?” Shadow said. “To travel over long distances, sometimes carrying lots of cargo, without having to stop and rest. While it is true we can fly, most can only fly for certain distances, and if we push too hard we risk our wings locking up.”

Gold picked up after Shadow. “There’s also the fact that Airships can carry far greater loads than an individual can. In fact, there are places not just in the SOL but in the wider world that are heavily dependent on Airships since they’re often in areas where travel by land is difficult to outright impossible. Airships, as Shadow mentioned, are able to travel great distances without having to rest. For example: Say a town in an isolated forest runs out of an important life-saving medicine and access by train has been cut off while travel by land is impossible and it’s too far to fly with stopping, which puts lives at risk. This is where Airships become critical…” He trailed off.

“Since Airships can keep moving over everything in their path, including storms. Are you getting it now Star?” Shadow finished.

Star remembered her own encounter with a storm, and realization struck. “Yep. I’m getting it now,” she said with a nod.

“Now Air Warships are hard to attack from the air with just infantry, since only those who can fly can attack and the crews of Air Warships are fully able to fend them off, which brings us to this;” Gold continued as he gave the blueprint a tap. “These will hopefully allow taking down enemy Air Warships, and there are a few other ideas for them. But as you know we’re trying to find an engine design that does what we need.”

Shadow picked up after his brother. “Early tests showed right away that steam turbine engines, or steam engines in general, were not going to work. So we decided to go with a different type.” He picked up a medium-sized metal can colored red and showed it to Star. “This can is filled with a type of fuel called Kerosene is a combustible oil with low viscosity used by businesses and homes as fuel to generate heat, light and power. Power Gears found out this fuel was perfect for this project, and now we’re trying to get the right engine for this new machine. And as you can probably tell from the explosions… We haven't had much luck. Personally; I’m thinking this current design is the problem.”

Star scratched her head, the whole engineering gig way outside of her area of expertise. “Well, I’ll help as best I can, but the stories I read usually just had the heroes blinking in confusion while the smart guys told them how things worked, so… sorry if I blink a lot here.”

The twins chuckled. “Don’t worry Star,” Gold said with a light-hearted smile. “We’ll walk you through it.”

So the three went to work; the Twins showed Star some basics on machines and how to fix them as they went over the engine, the next test went the exact same way as before: up in a bang with sparks and smoke as the Twin’s frustrated yells joined them in filling the air.

“Well, on the plus side,” Star noted. “These things will at least make nice bombs. Or at least flash bangs.”

Eventually the Twins decided enough was enough and moved onto another design… and this one actually worked!! Though there were some stutters so they turned it off to do some tinkering. The first try…

“Well something’s not right O’ brother mine.” Shadow deadpanned, “Because now it wouldn’t start at all!”

“This is the first time I’ve worked on an engine like this Shadow.” Gold said as he read the blueprint for the engine. “This is new ground we’re trending here.”

Eventually they got the engine running again but there were still some issues so the two tinkered some more before lifting their heads up with smiles and turned to Star, who was sitting on the nearby table with a button control pad which was hooked up to the engine.

“Alright that’s it.” Gold started.

“Try it Star.” Shadow finished. Star gave a nod and pressed the on button… and yet again more sparks and smoke appeared, with even bigger blasts then before causing the Twins to jump back in surprise as Shadow flared his wings.

“OH TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!!” Both shouted as Star tried to do so… by repeatedly pressing the on/off button in a panic.

Later Atlas came down to pick up Star, only to find the three covered in soot. “What happened to you guys? Engine blew up on you again?”

“In a sense…” Gold said.

“But the good news is we got the engine working the way we need.” Shadow said.

“And we had a blast of a time.” Star added with a wink.

The three Head Officers couldn’t help but smile/snort/chuckle at her pun.

Comments

[Mystic Sunrise]

So do I need to read Survival of the Wolves to understand this? I know Star Wing comes from there, but I'm not sure if I can read these two separately or not.

[JNKing]

11789330
You do not need to read Survival of the Wolves to understand this.

This is essentially an alternate version of that, where instead of Star meeting up with the wolves, she instead meets up with pirates.

Think of it like a sort of Spider-Verse (or should I call it 'Star-Verse' in this case): different versions of Star going on different adventures.