Steel steam and flame

Take a commercial airship to get there. Airships specially designed to carry guests are rare in the empire. Although the ticket per person is expensive, compared to the consumption of the airship itself, no matter what size and level it is, it is not a cost-effective deal. The generally adopted method is to mainly carry various commercial goods, supplemented by passenger navigation.

The battle front we went to this time was specifically chosen based on the location of Messelia. We not only considered the convenience of the itinerary, the number of events that occurred on the front, but also the number of people dispatched by hostile countries to the front. one of the benchmarks. There is some pressure on Cassia now, after all, it is also the first time to go. Even in the military school, he is well-trained and has a strong ability to withstand various emergencies. But the current situation is not much different from the first time I went to Gerun Oasis to perform a mission. At least the mood can be found to be somewhat similar.

It is a front that is closely adjacent to the territory of the Far Sea Commonwealth and faces due north. When we set off, the sky in Meselia was already filled with dark clouds. Shortly after the airship took off, through the round window in the room, we could see that the bronze iron sheet had been covered with mottled colors. of ice.

The height was reached in a short period of time after the airship shook violently. Arriving high in the sky, below is a layer of clouds that looks like a new continent. The long-lost sunshine in winter can be seen through the window at this time, and the clouds are also dyed brightly.

Cassia just sat by the window reading borrowed books, and from time to time looked outside at the scenery that had not changed much for a long time. The sky is still the same deep blue, really like a silent lake, as if it can absorb and swallow up everything.

That is the deep blue sky, which is also one of the forbidden areas of mankind. It is shrouded in powerful air currents without any rules all year round. A cruiser-level airship could survive it for only more than a minute, and this was the result of overloading the steam furnace and other values. Time stayed for a long time, and when the various stresses accumulated on the airship reached the critical point, they broke out in an instant, turning a cruiser-level commercial airship with a length of more than 400 meters into a The sky is filled with fragments, which is not a difficult matter.

Cassia knew all this, and she got it all from the book. They were experiments by scientists, various levels of airship tests, and the overcontrol aspect seemed to rely on some trained death row prisoners. Because of the special climate in the deep blue sky, radio signals will be greatly interfered with. Except for its own internal circuits, it is no longer capable of receiving external signals.

In the end, without exception, military use was not included in the calculations in the book. Finally, the introduction about military airships is just that they can barely sail in the low-level deep blue field, that's all.

What is the difference between commercial and military use? Cassia still doesn't have a specific concept in her head. Maybe it was because he had never seen a military airship until now. When I returned to Manoma from the Oria region before, I took a ride on a modified airship used by the Webley Company to transport arms. Although in appearance, all the airships in the empire are inevitably overly bloated, and the lifting devices are mostly installed in the same position, but on Webley's airship, you can still see some parts that were welded on later. steel plate with shadow. It seems to be the location of the dismantled gun barrel, or the launcher of the aerial bomb, the most common weapon of airships. There are a lot of them. For an airship, it is definitely a design that is completely disproportionate to its size, covering its entire body. A single salvo, the firepower covered will definitely be visible and terrifying.

There are only three days to sail in the sky. The further north you go, the closer you are to the Far Sea Commonwealth, the more obvious the changes in the common cold climate of the empire. Although the temperature has not skyrocketed by more than ten degrees, most of the snow clouds that have been gathering in the sky have disappeared here.

Cassia remembered that during the three days, this kind of commercial airship occasionally flew low, and at that time a piece of white could be seen below. There are many areas with heavy snowfall, but as time goes by, this phenomenon gradually becomes less and less.

By the time Cassia got off the airship and hurriedly caught up with the high-speed train schedule, most of the regional weather had left the snowy weather. The temperature was still cold, but the sky remained clear, and there were rare signs of snow. . Falling white snowflakes are a relatively rare thing for people living near the Far Sea Commonwealth.

If it weren't for the fact that many mountains of varying heights existed at the intersection between the Empire and the Far Sea Commonwealth, the hot wind brought here from the central ocean current belt would have eroded more areas of the Empire.

The next three days of the journey were all taking different high-speed trains. This place is already very close to the front line, and the three-day sailing distance of an airship is not comparable to that of a high-speed train. It's just that as they get closer to the front line, many commercial equipment no longer want to do business there. Even though there is a long stretch of desolate area that is deliberately isolated between the living area and the front line, only the empire's railway tracks are laid here without counting the cost. On the one hand, it is used for civilian purposes, but more importantly, it is used as an exclusive railway line for the imperial military. Machine parts, ammunition, etc., are mostly transported by railway lines during peacetime. Just one imperial train trip can often last for a long time, as long as the senior officials in the military department don't have a particularly big appetite.

There are no lights on the horizon at night. Here, when the distance between the location and the battle line exceeds a certain value, the population begins to decrease in a stepwise manner. It is difficult for a convergent big city to appear here, and the population is completely insufficient to support such construction and consumption.

On the last day, the outside of the high-speed train was almost desolate. They are all covered with weeds turned gray and yellow by the winter frost. Bare groves often appear on both sides of the railway. Rivers covered with gravel have become more common. The terrain here has also begun to show signs of change. A few patches of earth have begun to bulge out, and more and more exposed rocks have begun to appear. The soil layer seemed to have become thinner. This was what Cassia saw when he got off the train after the high-speed train stopped for repairs at the penultimate station. The station here seems to be under reconstruction, and many hanging towers are erected on the side of the old station. It is a little different from the stations in the center of the empire. The stations here are generally open-air. There is a tin canopy only at the platform where goods are transported.