Two days of preparations later, I watched—as an astral projection—over the preparations for the scout-filled plane to take off.
This location for construction and takeoffs of planes was built far away from Hive Supremo, closer to the sea. This way, planes could travel shorter to reach the Ashida continent... when runways are completed there, too.
The sowhat bird-like machine was standing on top of a runway dozens of kilotres long, and thousands of bees were roaming around it, checking the machine’s details. A few dozen glowing moths that signified other astral projections were there, too—they had to be scouts that had already settled inside and now were curiously watching what was going on outside of their passenger seats.
A cha was operating so levers in front of it that were too large for a bee, and another was putting extra canisters of fuel at the back of the plane and attaching them with valves to the main fuel tank.
During the flight, the crew mbers will be able to open these valves to refuel. This was a direct fuel tank extension.
Much more fascinating was the passenger part of the plane. It was an area of space that could’ve fit a small human; right now, it was covered with honeycomb-like construction full of hundreds of thousands of sleeping cells.
It was made from wood in just these two days, and scouts could lie down in it, focusing their entire being on their astral projections. Although the wooden honeycomb made them almost helpless in case of sothing dire happening—like a plane accident—it was the only way to pack so many bees in a single plane at once.
These constructions were made for cargo transport first of all. If bees and cargo were mixed up more evenly, both would’ve been safer; instead, we got what we got.
The crew was working in other parts of the massive machine. A lot of them were hidden from my sight—like in chas, they worked on their own details.
Earth planes, the designs of which served as a base for this one, had relatively few moving details, especially in the control part. Most of their control machinery was chanical—just levers. Simple and elegant.
But pulling large levers would require placing at least a human in the plane, and they were heavy and would’ve reduced the amount of cargo a plane could carry trendously. A cha would’ve been even heavier than a human.
Researchina and her hive mind Researchers ca up with a solution for this problem. There was additional machinery built into the plane that controlled the details instead of levers, and this machinery was designed to be controlled by bee crews.
Like chas, but much more specialised and much smaller.
As a result, the planes required large crews of bees, but their control was still fully chanical and rather simple. The plane crews required much less training than the cha crews.
Still, inside these majestic machines that looked like dragons themselves rather than simple bi-planes (thanks to the work of my Artist girls) were entire work camps fitting endless bees from the crew and everything they needed to sustain themselves during long flights.
The chas finished their work and moved away from the plane. All the bees either moved away, too, or got inside.
The Foreman in charge of organising the entire thing shouted so words of encouragent and began a countdown until takeoff. I inwardly wished my girls luck.
They would need it.
***
The scouts had an imnsely difficult task. Not so difficult because it required skill—although that too—but because it was very chance-based.
I imagined how they would have to send their conscience into the dark depths of the sea, where even darkvision won’t help them much, and where their slling and hearing will be muddled by unfamiliar surroundings.
With almost no ways to orient themselves besides their ability to think about a landmark to teleport to it, these astral projections will have to scour the sea as deep and wide as they could before their plane returns to the shore and pulls their astral projections together with their bodies.
I waited impatiently for this plane’s return.
The takeoff happened in the morning; the plane returned in the evening. The scouts have given their reports to their leaders, who have sorted them and given them to their own leaders and so on, until I got a short and easily digestible answer:
This expedition found nothing interesting. Only the sea plants and so beasts that, for so reason, didn’t travel with the migration wave. They found fear in the minds of beasts in the wave itself, but couldn’t tell WHAT they feared.
The next day we sent the plane again, and the result was the sa.
By the third day, the migration wave moved even closer to our shores. There were so cases of fish-beasts pushing themselves out of the ocean and creating havoc on the beaches since they refused to peacefully suffocate and seemingly tried to crawl to the nearest lakes. Other beasts have been sighted in rivers, even attacking humans who gathered water there.
Soldiers were sent to keep these beasts under control. Thankfully, they were less defended than the green sea turtles and could be killed with enough venom, bullets and fire.
Despite this, the Oracles still couldn’t’ see the upcoming threat, so the plane with scouts was sent the third ti... and it was the charm.
This evening, Bloodhero ca to my office in a strange mood. Whatever was in this report, it made her puzzled.
"The scouts say that they have discovered the place from which the beasts were fleeing, but they can’t tell what’s so dangerous about it. It’s a titanic mountain on the bottom of the ocean that spits out noxious, hot water. This water could kill soone, but only close to the mountain—the beasts that fled from it were far away."
Now I was puzzled, too.
A mountain? That spits hot water? Like an underwater geyser?
Or was this, perhaps...
"An underwater volcano?!"
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