Dusts of Avalon - Beastwithin.org

“Doctor,” Daleworth interrupted, clearly sensing where this was going. “Youneed to ask about the specifics of your reimbursements from Major Plaerman. Iam only supposed to say that you'll be eventually properly compensated for yourefforts, whatever that means.”“I won't get my hopes high, then.” Dr. Grovepath sighed. “Yet, I have to saythis sounds fascinating. I can't even begin to guess what the army grunts wouldneed araeologists for. I need to see this.”Twenty minutes later, Dr. Grovepath had his cellphone ba, and was carryinga bag of gear he had haphazardly selected — most of it would probably turn outuseless, but his computers were somewhat important. He could barely keeping inpace with the lieutenant lady.Dr. Grovepath was somewhat surprised to see he was being pied up in aTalon, one of the newer VTOL aircra that the WFDF had developed. He hadn'teven seen one in use yet, but had been following its development rather closely; itwas somewhat rare to see a marvellous feat of engineering that actually managedto stay within its budget and sedule, thus appeasing the engineers, the soldiersand the politicians.e Talon resembled the earlier Tiger VI-B aircra in its appearance, and hadslightly smaller wings and less conspicuous tail fin and rotor; it too had two foldableand tiltable helicopter rotors in its wings to facilitate landing and takeoff.Dr. Grovepath was more interested of the main engines and what they were capableof. Like the Tiger, Talon was built for supersonic atmospheric travel — specificationssaid it was supposed to take its passengers halfway around the world ina hour, with no discomfort to the troops, and its fuel tanks had enough juice tofly six times around the planet before refueling. Tiger was capable of the samefeats, but its supersonic booster had the annoying tendency to run out of fuel inreal-world combat scenarios, whi limited its usefulness. e troops had learnedto get appropriately depressed when the Tiger pilots said “sorry guys, but I thinkwe need to do this Bowman's way” — Bowman being the Navy admiral who hadproposed smaller fuel tanks and an older-generation fuel distribution system thathad a curious flaw; while the jets could, in theory, be operated normally once thesupersonic engines had dried out, the jets needed a handful of supersonic fuel tostart up. Careful pilots could exercise the engines to get them fire maybe once ortwice to wrist the last few drops off the supposedly empty tanks, but aer that,the cra was brought to helicopter mode and the passengers just had to sele fora propeller ride. ere was nothing quite like heading to the balefield at a brisktru-ride speed when the fight was still a hundred kilometers away. Or two. Afterthe first year in service, even the top commanders started to fear the response“they're coming in Tigers, sir” when they asked why the troops were arriving thin,