a young genius' scientific chronicles 3

[Tanya von Degurechaff]

All told, despite her shameful reaction to a superior officer (Rudersdorf would collapse laughing if he could have seen her), that went rather well. Apparently, the primary reason he decided to handle things personally was because he wanted to see the Absolute Safety Mecha Mk. II for his very eyes. Not because it was particularly innovative or impressive, but merely because the man was also a Spark and enjoyed seeing the works of new sparks. 

So after the immediate matters were settled, she was instructed to bathe and then was put into a nice dress by Von Pinn, prettied up to what some of the actual noble ladies would call ‘casual’ standards

, and escorted to a four PM lunch appointment with the Baron as he quizzed her about the specific innovations she had used in her mecha’s design. 

“The propeller design was my second idea.” Tanya explained, twirling her finger to mime the rotors. “Initially, I had thought about creating a parachute, but I was unable to source enough cloth of suitable durability to counteract the large weight I was working with. The propellers, in addition to their thrust generation, cause fluctuations in the magnetic reinforcement fields, reacting with any metal below to create an additional repelling force.” Really, it was kind of a longshot design. If she was hurtling down towards something that was heavily metal, like, say, a crashed airship, it would work great, flattening the metal objects and allowing for a clean landing. In the wilderness? Less so. It also prevented the thing from landing directly on a metal spike or something similarly improbable. “Although, the bigger problem was rope.”

“Hm, yes, it wouldn’t be nearly as effective as a parachute.” Baron von Wulfenbach agreed. “Unless you just so happened to be landing directly on an iron stockpile, I suppose.”

Tanya deliberately giggled at the Baron’s joke. Now this was the kind of schmoozing she was good at. Sure, the alcohol parts of the ‘drinking with the boss’ etiquette didn’t really apply, but she put in her time at the steak house and golf course as well, so this was familiar territory. 

Still, she never got a satisfactory answer as to whether or not the Baron knew that the story about her being the Count’s heir was just that or if they genuinely made the mistake (or, even more improbable, that the Count was actually her father but she just never knew), but she was definitely not going to bring it up. 

That didn’t mean she couldn’t be discreet… “Ah, herr Baron?” Tanya asked, “Can I ask you something?” The Baron ate one of the two soft pretzels he had the cook prepare at the last minute for his dessert. A third one was in front of her. He gestured for her to continue. “Was there any… notes or journals from the late Count, my father, that survived the attack? Particularly anything in reference to myself?” She paused, her pulse pounding at lying to the Baron’s face. “He was… not the most attentive sire, so I would like to have known what he thought about me.” There. A perfectly reasonable request if the story was true. 

“I’ll have some “copies” made for you.” The Baron said with a wry smile between pretzel bites. Was she imagining those pauses? Was he inventing evidence for her “pedigree” or were there actual journals? “Did you have anything in mind for your next project?” He asked. 

Did she? “...I was told that you had a similar device to the Absolute Safety Mecha Mk. II, referred to as ‘drop armor’.” She began, “I was thinking I could start to see if I could make an improved version, although I would need to see the design in order to see the bar I’d have to overcome, of course.” She smiled pleasantly. “After all, something that improves the safety of yourself helps the Pax Transylvania more than anything else I could create on my own.”

The Baron hummed. “Reasonable in concept, to iterate on your previous design.”

Tanya nodded. “Seeing your own work would doubtlessly inspire me to greater heights as well, herr Baron.” She offered. It was pure flattery, but also completely honest. 

The Baron’s nose twitched in an aborted snort of laughter. He must hear better toadying every day. “I'll store the armor in your new workshop, on the condition that it remains intact enough to be readied for deployment on short notice.” That was far more than she expected. “You will be attempting to make a replacement, not an upgrade.” 

She bowed her head obsequiously. “I thank you for the extension of trust, herr Baron. I will do my best to not disappoint you.” He likely acquiesced to the roundabout request because he was going to have her watched closely enough that sabotage would be unthinkable anyway. 

“We’ll see.”

-------------------------

The Baron’s drop armor was… surprisingly terrible. Not in the sense that it was simple, as it included a few technical systems and innovations that Tanya didn’t even think of, and numerous that she had but was unable to incorporate into the Absolute Safety Mecha Mk. II. 

The issue was that it didn’t do nearly as much as it should have when it came to protecting the pilot from the normal forces of being dropped at terminal velocity. It instead focused nearly entirely on protecting itself from outside interference, both with shielding and simply being made of some spark alloy that she was looking forward to working with. From her calculations, the necessary anti-air screen required to intercept the drop armor would be… well, it would be enough that Tanya wouldn’t have even tried to penetrate it in the war without the Type 95. 

Hm. Well, unless the Baron had a proprietary kinetic dampener or something similar that he had removed… but that didn’t make any sense if she was to limit any disassembly to removing maintenance access panels. 

Unproductive line of thought. Assume the spec sheet on the kinetic impact of landing is accurate. That would ordinarily be enough to break several bones, although the harness did control the forces well enough that a fatality would be… unlikely. But if the Baron had a man-portable method of increasing his durability in a way that would help with falls… Now that has potential. 

Or maybe… Huh. She forgot sometimes that this world’s penchant for anachronistically potent technology extended to the biological and chemical sciences as well. Perhaps the Baron had acquired some method of increasing his durability directly?

Still, with these parameters… Perhaps she could adjust things so that her own design of a kinetic dampener combined with a magnetic reinforcement field could allow the drop armor to allow a survivable impact without lowering the falling speed at all? Or even use wings to allow for a greater deployment range? 

…Come to think of it, despite living among a literal air fleet, she doesn’t think she’s ever seen any kind of airplane. A few helicopter-like devices and at least one glider, but no fixed wing aircraft. That could be a decent project idea, although runways would be in short supply. 

Tanya looked around for her minder. They knew they had one, because the Baron wasn’t an idiot, but they had never introduced themselves. In fact, Von Pinn was the one to lead her to the lab, with instructions to ‘stay safe and do not explode’, which was nice of her. While Tanya always paid attention to safety standards, she was still a twelve year old girl working with combustibles and pressurized machinery, so explosions were a real risk and she had yet to prove her competence in that front, so concern was warranted. Von Pinn had since left to teach a lesson to the younger children on board Castle Wulfenbach. 

…There. Tanya looked straight at the second-best place for the watcher to observe her (the best place was too obvious) and said “Would it be possible for me to ask you some questions? Are you familiar with the armor?”

No answer. Then Tanya turned to the best spot. “I see I was assigned an inexperienced spy.” The spy definitely moved when she talked to them. She spotted them. 

The spy leaned out of their hiding spot. They were dressed in a black cloak, goggles, and had shortly cropped black hair. From the voice, the spy was a woman. “Hey! I'm not some green novice!”

“Correction: I was assigned an incompetent spy.” Tanya deadpanned. It made sense, while she could theoretically sabotage her project, they probably expected her to be much less perceptive than she was. Which was odd, because the spark definitely improved her senses and reflexes, so they shouldn't be assuming she was an ordinary preteen girl when it came to that. Nevertheless, Tanya wasn't so arrogant as to assume that spying on her was considered anything but an easy, low-stress assignment. “Now, my questions?”

The spy grumbled and walked towards the workbench, taking a seat and facing Tanya, allowing her cloak to fall open as she crossed her legs and leaned back onto the table. “No promises, but ask away.” Tanya took a moment to curse the fact that her hormones had already kicked in. 

Well, now that Tanya got a closer look… “Whats your name? You have the look of an Easterner.” a southern one, to be more precise. 

The spy sighed. “Call me Nguyen.” She said, before muttering something unflattering in vietnamese. 

She wondered if that was her real name, or just a code name, like an American calling themselves Smith. Could go either way. 

“It's nice to meet you.” Tanya said in her native tongue, before switching back to the Germanic mishmash this country uses, infuriatingly similar to Imperial but with just enough differences to piss her off. “I don't speak a lot of Tieng Viet.” She added. She was honestly lucky to have remembered the handful of phrases and words she did, honestly. 

“...that is a very specific dialect you learned. Southern coast, I think.” Nguyen stated, a little off balance. “Maybe I'll teach you a little more if you make my job easy.”

Tanya smiled. She loved languages. “My more relevant question was concerning my objectives. I noticed that the drop armor would break the bones of an ordinary man.”

Nguyen immediately understood where she was going with this. “The Baron’s a tough one.” She confirmed, “You don't need to make it softer for him.” 

…Plan ballistic drop armor is a go, then. She’ll tweak it to end up a little softer, just to be safe. Ten percent less force on the pilot should do it. The Absolute Safety Mecha Mk. III would need to cut at least eighty. “I'm ready to draft the plans.” She announced, grinning widely. 

“...you're not going to just write down materials and get to work?” Nguyen asked, confused. 

Tanya looked at her strangely. “Of course not! I'll need at least a week of running calculations before I can even begin ordering anything more complicated than raw materials.” If she had… wait. “What kind of computation resources do I have access to? I could do it a lot faster with a good computation engine.” She knew they existed, but the lab she had didn't come with one. 

“...You're the weirdest Spark I've ever seen.” Nguyen deadpanned. 

She clearly listened to too many radio dramas. Engineering isn't as flashy as what you hear Sparks do on those. Wait… was she weird? She’s only worked with one other Spark… No, Tarvek was just as meticulous with his chemistry notes. The Baron’s documentation is also… not quite as meticulous as hers, admittedly, but it still met an acceptable standard, in her eyes. 

No, Nguyen must just be surprised that someone so young is acting so professional about this. Now, back to the important thing: “You didn’t answer my question…”

-------------------------

It was actually rather surprising how easy it was to request materials for her project. Yes, it was supposed to be for the Baron, but she was also untested, presumably low priority. Instead, things were even easier than they were when she was the darling of the General Staff, her kampfgruppe had the highest priority in the entire Imperial Army. She rang the bell, outlined what she needed to the attendant that arrived promptly enough that she suspected he was assigned exclusively to her, then he took the plans and list away, and she went back to the dorms. By the following afternoon, when she was done with classes and could begin again, the plans were approved and the materials were there. 

Within the month, she had tested enough small-scale prototypes of the subsystems she had planned to use and had run the numbers (using a steam-powered computational engine with a startlingly advanced 8-bit processor, given that it was the 1880s) that the only thing left to do was to actually build the full-scale prototype, followed by the construction of the final product assuming that the defects didn’t require additional rounds of testing to remedy. 

“Are you ready, Captain Vole?” Tanya asked, the real drop armor having been moved out of its deployment chute to be replaced by the prototype. The Baron wouldn’t need it, he was groundside dealing with… actually, she wasn’t entirely sure why the Baron decided to personally go down to Mechanicsburg, it wasn’t her job to know this. She did know that he was currently at the Great Hospital, but that was because he had a transponder that his drop armor was tracking. Naturally, her improvement also had this functionality… but Vole had the transponder for that one. She opened up the door of the deployment chute, and a faint breeze started to equalize the pressure with the thin air of the outside. 

“Reddy und villing!” The particularly patriotic jagermonster shouted over the vox. Normally Tanya wouldn’t dream of using a live volunteer for this kind of test… but when she explained that she would need some additional assistants with strong backs or a labor clank to conduct the tests, the next day she got to greet Captain Vole, the jagermonster that all the other jagermonsters hate, and was also incidentally one of the stronger and more durable examples of the regenerative super-soldiers. 

You see, most of the jagermonsters are only serving the Baron on loan from the defunct Heterodynes. A small portion of the army of super-soldiers were detached to continue to search for signs of the heroic exemplars of a long line of marauding mad scientists, while the rest joined up with the Baron instead of being exterminated via a very messy and expensive war. Vole, on the other hand, joined up with the Baron years beforehand, renouncing his oaths to the Heterodynes. Only he would be willing to risk his death just to ensure that Klaus von Wulfenbach had a fully operational… well, it was technically an escape pod, even if it was intended for a different kind of use; Vole was even looking forward to it. He was insulted at the idea that she would send the effigy she had prepared, even. 

“Deploying in three…” Tanya announced, disengaging the safety locks. “Two…” She disengaged the backup safety lock. “One…” She grabbed the ripcord and steadied her stance. “GO!” She pulled the ripcord to finally make the drop armor shoot towards the ground at full speed. On impulse, she immediately flung herself to the side and avoided the wrench that tore out of its mounting from the suction of the suddenly-open part of the room. 

She, of course, was secured to the airship’s frame via a three-point harness, so despite losing her footing, she was fine for the seconds it took for the door to close back up automatically upon the sensor a few meters away from the chute detecting the change in pressure. “All launch systems functioning as intended.” She said as she went down her checklist, verifying that the re-usable systems were still in usable condition after one use. 

“Tanya!” Gil said cheerfully as he entered the workshop the instant the lock on the outside door disengaged. “I heard you were testing the drop armor today.” He started looking around for it “...That effigy doesn’t look nearly dour enough to be the Baron.” Gil decided before taking a marker and adding angry eyebrows to it. “So I can’t help but notice that it looks exactly like the old drop armor.” He added. 

“That is the old drop amor.” Tanya corrected, trying to suppress her amused smirk at the changes to the armor. Whatever the Baron said to Gil those years ago worked wonders for his self-confidence on top of making his loyalty to the despot ironclad, although it only tended to show when none of the other students were around. Was this what Visha looked like to the other members of the 203rd when she wasn’t around? Note to self: discreetly check Gil for signs of homosexuality. This could bode well for an arrangement of mutual benefit. “You missed the test launch. Captain Vole insisted on a live subject and volunteered.”

 “...huh.” Gil said, thinking about it. “...Where did you send him?”

“We arranged for him to interrupt a training exercise for…” She checked her paperwork. “The Devil Dolls. Squads one through thirteen are performing maneuvers five kilometers away from  Mechanicsburg’s walls.”

Gil took on that odd expression he uses that means ‘I’ve done the math, and it doesn’t add up.’ Or he could just be holding in a fart. “We’re positioned only half a klik from Mechanicsburg. One klik up.” He said, as if that was a problem. 

“It would hardly be a useful test if I sent him straight down, Gil.” Tanya explained, quite reasonably. “Besides, I’m not going to ask Captain Patel to move the castle to make a good test.” She asked for the Devil Dolls to relocate to be further away, instead. Major Gunzel was eager to comply, stating that last-minute orders to reposition would keep the girls on their toes. Useful, for a light infantry skirmish unit, death rays notwithstanding. 

“...You made the drop armor able to deploy at a range of five times the castle’s height?” Gil asked, visibly impressed. 

“It was designed to glide up to eight times the castle’s height.” Tanya corrected, “But I thought I should aim lower for the first test.” She stopped, then swore in Vietnamese. “Ah, I forgot to visually confirm that the wings deployed properly. Drat. I’ll need to wait for Vole’s report.” And Major Gunzel’s report, of course. Also the report of whatever telescope jockeys Captain Patel tasked to observe the test. “If you would be so kind as to help little old me put the Baron’s old drop armor into the deployment chute?” She asked, giving him a sad expression at the thought of having to do so herself. 

Naturally, Gil was weak to Tanya’s little-sister type status moves. It was super-effective. 

-------------------------

While there was a bit of confusion vis a vis the difference between a prototype and a finished product, Tanya eventually finished the Baron’s new drop armor, exceeding all design targets after the final revisions were complete. As it turned out, the original drop armor was a very old project of the Baron’s, and was overdue for an upgrade. So it was much more understandable why she was able to find it so easy to improve on than she had initially expected. 

In fact, she was even tasked to create a variation that could be used as the basis of a deep strike squad of jagermonsters or other similar unit. She was even allowed to name the resulting military unit, which she happily selected ‘the 20Xth Aerial Assault Squad’ as in 201st, 202nd, 203rd, etc. Their unit insignia was the usual Wulfenbach tower, but with upside down diving raptor wings instead of the generic feathered wing of the Wulfenbach military as a whole or the bat-like wings for the jagermonster’s insignia. She had initially wanted to put pixie wings on it instead, but that was taken by the Vespiary squad. 

The mass-production (if lots of no more than a dozen could be called mass production) variation had more kinetic dampeners, a greater emphasis on horizontal movement, and much less focus on protecting from aerial interdiction, which were the most expensive systems. She’d rate the durability of each one at about the same level of necessary firepower as would be required to mission-kill a mage using the type 13, instead of one using the type 95 as would be necessary to stop the Baron’s drop armor from reaching its destination. 

She also created the Absolute Safety Mecha Mk. III, a much more refined design created with a much more generous budget. It was slotted into the deployment chute now that the Baron didn’t need it anymore, and now she had her own safety pod in the event of the castle needing to be evacuated. Granted, she needed to wire the primary safety locks to the alarm system in order to be allowed to use it, but that was why the Absolute Safety Mecha Mk. III’s arc welder could be used to cut those locks if she really needed to. She also planted a little device she could activate to trigger the evacuation alarm. Just in case. 

Still, after that success and now that she was Safe, she was finally able to put her talents towards what was really important: industry. She had been exchanging letters with her Regent, a former Colonel by the name of Mr. Schwarz and the minor spark he brought with him by the name of Professor Bilderling. From these exchanges, she felt that she had a reasonable handle on the state of Rhine county. It was on the remote side, mountainous, and Industry-wise, by the standards of the Wulfenbach Empire, it was pathetic. However, in size, it was actually on the large size for a county, containing sixteen towns and one city with a total population of approximately sixty thousand. It had lots of farms in the valleys and a few terrace farms on the hills, a few mines (not nearly as many as there could be), forests for lumber, and most importantly: a single petroleum well that kept the place well-stocked in kerosene, which was widely used, and lots of waste in the form of flammable liquid hydrocarbons that were previously used to supplement the more solid fuels that steam engines typically used. Which meant… gasoline! Precious internal combustion fuel! 

There was just one little problem: The rate of random monster and rogue clank attacks was thrice the average, and the amount of troops required to garrison it adequately against that threat was substantial. Productivity struggled to keep up with the taxes necessary to sustain that force. 

So her second, well, really more fifth if you counted… Her second project intended for mass production was a way to potentially solve these problems. She had long sent instructions to properly silo the petroleum products and to stockpile them for later use, and later on she intended to rebuild the petroleum extraction apparatus to a greater standard, but it was already spark-tech, so it was acceptable for as long as it continued to function. 

She designed a tractor. Why a tractor? Because as a percentage of economic output, the food that was transported down the river to be sold was the largest industry to be concerned with. It could also be used to harvest lumber and transport goods. 

It was with this tractor that she got to be introduced to her County for the first time. It had passed all of her safety standards, was tested as much as was practical, and one of Castle Wulfenbach’s on-board factories produced a test run of twenty units, which all passed her inspection. She was initially worried about the amount of resources allocated, but apparently that particular factory was reserved solely for making test batches of machines intended for use in the Wulfenbach military, and it had an opening in its schedule. Quite useful. 

While the county was large enough that gathering literally everyone was impractical, the usual workaround was to call in ‘all heads of families’ which inevitably included a fraction of them sending their wives or oldest sons in their stead for whatever reason. Given that the announcement was about meeting their new Countess, a population that had been getting administered by a Regent was naturally very concerned about the competence of their new feudal overlord. 

So she had in front of her a crowd of burly men and tough-as-nails women, with the goal of getting them invested in a pie in the sky vision of the future that required them to do what she tells them to despite the massive personal risk and also being a thirteen year old girl. 

Finally, familiar territory. 

“People of Rhine County!” Tanya shouted with a posh affectation, dressed appropriately for presenting as a Countess: A fashionable red dress with her hair done up in a set of three buns, the latest style from the Parisian magazines. “My name is Tanya von Degurechaff, and I have been recognized by Baron Wulfenbach as the heir to the late Count von Degurechaff.” 

The crowd was very unimpressed. The silence was oppressive, but Tanya shook it off with ease. She clapped her hands, and immediately switched to the militant growl she had used so long ago. “Alright, introductions over, time for the fun part!” She shouted, pulling a cord and letting her dress fall to the ground, revealing the working overalls and the power frame underneath it, the parts that folded into her skirt quickly encasing the rest of her body. The metal rods sticking out of her hair buns started to arc electricity between them, a purely aesthetic effect. “Let’s talk tractors!” She continued, letting the power frame fold out and properly envelop her hands and then pulling the cloth out from it. 

The audience gasped. “Behold! The Type 1 Mechanized Agricultural Walker!” Tanya announced, “Equipped with the patented Degurechaff-type internal combustion engine, it packs the power of a seven ton clank in a five ton package! Allow me to demonstrate!” She let her power frame, carefully constructed to allow her to match the dimensions of your average farm boy, carry her into the driver’s harness. Then after securing it, she engaged the clutch, and turned the key. 

In seconds, she had finished the start up sequence and started walking towards the pallets of attachments, showing off the power of the machine by lifting two of them off the ground at once. “The controls are designed to be as intuitive as was feasible, with three methods of operation: First, you can use tools normally designed for animal or monster use.” She took out a plow and cut a furrow in the ground. “Second, you could use one of the specialized implements, like this seed drill!” She triggered the sheathing protocol, causing the human-like hand to compress into a fist, and set it into the storage beneath the pilot seat. Then, she lifted up the seed drill with the other hand and let the hitch connect to it. “I’ve already loaded it with wheat seeds.” Quickly, she rolled the ten-line seed drill and had it deposit seeds into the earth, two hundred stalks planted in seconds. This meeting was held in a place that was suitable for farming, albeit not currently used. “Or…” The mecha sat down and leaned forward, and a cable spool was revealed in the lower back. “...you could use the engine as a portable electrical generator to power another device!“ Tanya laughed at her own genius. As one could expect for a world where ‘flipping the switch’ was the kind of thing that got sparks to fistfight each other for the privilege, it was kind of a coin flip whether any steam engine was directly operating a device or if it was instead powering a dynamo that did all of the actual work. If it wasn’t mobile? It was definitely electric. ”Hooking up the crankshaft to something directly can be done too, but that’s a bit trickier to demonstrate.” She added more calmly. 

“Any questions?” She asked. 

The farmers, naturally, had the most questions, asking her about specific tasks and conditions that they expected the tractor to perform. Tanya was happy to have been prepared for the vast majority of the questions, even a few that were clearly asked in an attempt to trip her up. 

Could it do X? Yes, with this implement or tool. 

Can it handle X conditions? It was tested in those conditions and performed better than other models of tractor, although naturally that was not an invitation to drive it straight into mudpits or during big storms. It will still explode if it gets hit by a lightning strike. 

What does it use for fuel? Anything liquid that burns, and the county has plenty of gasoline stockpiled for exactly this purpose. If all else failed, alcohol could be used, with a little distillation if you wanted it to run well. 

How will it be paid for? Baron Wulfenbach has agreed to front the bill as a loan, to be paid back over the next ten years. Anyone who gets a tractor will be required to pay the County seat over that time frame, which will be passed on to Castle Wulfenbach. Each one costs twenty-five thousand castlemarks, which is the official currency issued by Castle Wulfenbach. It’s a very reasonable rate for mechanized farming equipment. 

What if it breaks? Every mechanic in the county will be issued an official maintenance manual for the Type 1, and the Regent will have a stockpile of replacement parts that should tide everyone over for the acclimatization period. 

After the question-and-answer session, there were still plenty of skeptics among the crowd, but then Tanya unveiled the twenty other tractors, and invited the gathered men to try them out. She even led them in a few marches, showing off the “hunting spears” and organized the lads into a coordinated volley throw, which would have absolutely ruined about 80% of the monster attacks that she saw in her days leading her kids in battle all on its own. Showing off the singular clank gun she brought with her and firing a few bursts off into a hill was met with cheers instead of terror at their feudal lord wielding a giant gun in their vicinity. 

By the end of the day, every single one of them was calling her ‘Countess’ with smiles on their faces. With a scapegoat ready to soak any administrative failures, she knew that she’ll return to those smiles as well.