The Junebug

The Junebug is a stubby R-71 utility aircraft of the original colonial period, recovered by Master Minalan in Practical Adept from the underground hangar of an old Colonial Defense Force outpost, the Sagan Institute Palomar Astronomical Facility (which the original garrison had nicknamed Outpost 28, the "Stardust Lounge"). The craft had sat under the mountain for some seven hundred years; Gareth and Heeth the Arcanist coaxed it back to life out of the same trove of colonial sites Gareth had catalogued during his year at Anghysbel.

The Junebug is a search-and-rescue and command-car variant, a four-seater with a stubby fuselage, an electrogravitic drive ringed for "red mercury" and burning kerosene as propulsion fuel, weeks of range in the field, and a payload bay that will take either military or civilian cargo. It is durable, surprisingly swift in skilled hands, and not pretty.

Minalan can fly it because Lt. Col. Andrews — the colonial-era Exploration and Survey Corps officer whose enneagram he carries in his head — logged hundreds of hours on the type. Andrews' Junebug was a long-distance exploration rig; the one Minalan recovered is the rescue / command configuration, with a different layout but the same airframe. The Constructed Intelligence Ariel slots into the cradle to handle the actual flight controls.

Once airborne, the Junebug became Doge Mirkandar's public signature in Farise: the "flying chariot" he used to put a hole through the mast of the Gilded Adventure, to drop in unannounced on Commodore Sadikoas' flagship, and to be seen above the city. It is not to be confused with the Argo, the much larger seagoing project Pentandra has been building down the coast.