Laveki answered my call quickly, she quickly tied her hair into a ponytail as she arrived.
"Whacha need, teach?"
"I want you to draw me up a helicopter blueprint, it's gotta have ten seats and be able to land on a specially made airship. I'll pay you and answer any question you need to make your airship later." I made an offer as I always did.
"Nah, just having you proofread my blueprint is enough." She refused, as she always did.
"As long as you're good with it, but I'm going to tell you now that you're better than me when it comes to helicopters."
"You flatter me, but they aren't fast and the minute hand keeps getting lower. The first helicopter we actually put a number in for was the MH5, then there was the MH4.5, then the MH3. I need it to be more efficient."
"That's up to me, I have to make a more efficient engine, there really aren't many ways to make a more efficient helicopter." I pondered for a minute. "Do you want a lesson on aerodynamics? That could reduce your drag and increase your speed."
She smiled at me cheerfully. "What's that?"
'Oh, yeah, probably should have mentioned this.'
"Well, you know how when you fly, you feel the air on your face?"
"Yeah?" She asked, confused.
"That's imparting a force against you, and slowing you down, allow me to demonstrate."
I took her to the kitchen and emptied a barrel of water into the sink, creating an environment to test drag.
"Ok, so, pretend that this is the air, believe it or not, this water and the air are both fluids, and as such act the same way." I grabbed a knife and put it blade first into the water.
"Watch what happens when I move this in the same direction of the blade."
The knife glided through the water with ease, leaving only small disturbances.
"Now watch this."
I turned the knife ninety degrees and moved it along the flat, the water sloshed over the sides and slowed down the knife.
"This is the basis of aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, and the umbrella term: fluid dynamics. The sharper the edge you present to the direction you move, the less drag you will experience, thus making a faster and more efficient craft. That doesn't mean you want a flying knife though, there are more efficient shapes and you can test them all with a sink and a model."
"Wow, if only you told me sooner, I have some blueprints to fix, could you make models of them for me?" She asked, silently calling in favors for the things she had done for me.
"Easy, I've got you."
With flow manipulation my knife became the Minute Hand Three, then a set of two forks became the Minute Hand 4, finally, a butter knife, and a spoon became the Minute Hand 5. None of them had blades because they would snap off too easily at this scale.
"I'd suggest making a specialized chamber for this, it will probably be hard to test them all in a sink without contaminating your results with errors and the drag on your hands."
Laveki gave me puppy dog eyes.
"Fine, I'll do that too." I smiled at the chance to finally pay her back.
"Great! I'm going to take the principles you taught me and try to draw up a helicopter. Now that I know it should be easy."
********
Some hours passed and I finished the testing chamber, it used water instead of air so I could make lines of dyed water to show where turbulence is.
'I've only ever seen one of these in my old world and it used air and some chemical that was the same density, this should still work though.'
Once the dye got to the other side it was filtered out of the water and recycled. The water would pump in at one side and leave through the other via a pump run on an Eneru engine.
"There ya go girlie, I'm off to work on the airships, I'll start with the one yours has to land on."
"Sure thing teach, I'm almost done with the frame."
"Keep at it."
I made my way to my drafting table and started drawing.
'The balloons have to be secured from attack because they are too vulnerable, fire is my main concern because hydrogen is inflammable. Perhaps a coating of gelnium for fire resistance?'
'Gelnium would be great if it weren't so reactive and heavy, you would need a coating on top of your gelnium for that to work.' Spirit brainstormed along with me.
'Yeah, it would probably be too heavy, maybe use a resin?'
'Write it down, perhaps we could simply integrate the balloons into the ship itself, they can be small because of the high pressure in this atmosphere.' Spirit mind-nodded.
'We can also think of using a fire-proof gas, but let's move onto the next problem, the landing pads.' my Thinkwrite went into overdrive, drawing out the draft with an artist's dexterity.
'As they are now, there aren't enough to attack in force without forcing the helicopters to stay in the air for a long time.' Spirit agreed with my assessment.
'Maybe we can launch them off of the bottom and just have them land until the assault is done, there is no way they could get up to an airship's height and land without being at least MH18s, and that's assuming the helicopters are piloted by experts.'
I stroked my full beard and leaned on a wall. I thought about it for a while, eventually deciding to take a break.
'I'm going to check on Laveki.'
I realized that it had been several hours since I leaned up against the wall when my legs buckled under my weight for a second.
"Any progress?" I asked as I made my way to Laveki's draft.
"Nope!" Laveki took a piece of paper off of her drafting table.
"Aww, c'mon you said you wouldn't hide your blueprints from me."
"But but-"
"No buts!" I took the paper from her hands before she could react.
"It's... not a blueprint." She fiddled with her hands. "You're, uh, draw-able."
On the page was a line drawing of me stroking my beard while leaning on the wall.
"Oh, that's cool, where's your blueprint?"