Free Chenda and the Airship Brofman by Emilie P. Bush Page A

her toward a wall covered in shiny chrome, and Chenda took in her reflection.
    “Ah. I guess this thing fits after all. I really thought Lilianthal's had made a mistake sending this size.” She smiled at him again. “Thank you.”
            “You look ready to fly,” Fenimore said with approval. “Just in time, too. Here comes the Brofman .”
    Chenda turned, eager to see the approaching airship as it glided toward the terminal. The Brofman floated majestically through the open air.  The hull was sleek and shimmery, like a flying fish. A beautiful wooden railing ran the perimeter of the main deck .  Just below it, rows of propellers lined the sides of the Brofman , whirling and pivoting, ever making corrections to the airship's course.  From the center of the deck rose a glass fronted wheelhouse, where Chenda could just make out the muscular outline of Captain Endicott and another man.  The ship was compact, perhaps just twice the length of the city trolley, but the grace of the Brofman made Chenda's breath quicken.
    Fenimore watched Chenda admire the ship. “I see that you have an eye for a beautiful cruiser. Do you know much about airships?”
    “Not really,” she said. Despite being the wife and daughter of senior airship officers, she had never seen an airship up close. Edison's stories were mostly about the places he'd been or the people who served with him, not so much about the ships themselves.
    “Well, there's much to tell. At this point, it's probably safe to say that the airship is both the pinnacle of the Republic's achievements and it's most fervent disaster,” he said.
    “I don't think I follow you,” Chenda said, watching the Brofman glide ever closer.
    “You know that airships are responsible for the Tugrulian War, don't you?”
    “I thought the airships were responsible for saving the Republic by defending the coast during the war.”
    Fenimore nodded.  “True, but you have to go back to the beginning of the Republic to totally understand. When Anthony Kite started to research Cyanophyta Saralyndia, a  type of blue green algae that creates massive amounts of electricity under certain conditions, he revolutionized energy on the western side of the Kohlian Sea. Kite developed the optimal formula for sustaining the algae and the process for harvesting the energy. His Aqueous Photovoltaics enabled people here in the West to generate power where they needed it, or even on the go. You've studied this part of history, right?”
    “Sure,” Candice said, “who hasn't heard of the founding father of the Republic? I can see why people decided to rally around him. He was the greatest mind of his time. I don't want to sound like my history tutors, but forming a new kind of government may have topped his electric algae discoveries.”
    Fenimore smiled at Chenda's electric algae reference as he continued. “It's a little more complicated than that. See, the research and the ideology go hand in hand. Kite's research subtly affected life in the West. Almost immediately, the availability of nearly unlimited energy led to a dramatic increase in electromechanical inventions. As labor saving devices abounded, new forms of art, architecture, literature and music grew. When Anthony Kite became the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Western States, his new and cultured society began to advance faster than the rest of the world.
    “As the West became more interested in self reflection, science and art, contact with the less evolved continents fell away. This strained the already unstable regions of the East. The tribal societies there increased the warring amongst themselves, squabbling over their various resources. The Eastern Kingdoms fought with one another for almost 100 years until finally one society dominated the region: the Tugrulians. “You still with me?” he asked.
    She nodded.
    “When Kotal Varinian, the leader of Tugrulians, proclaimed himself Emperor, he cut off any