MBGSP Chpt 168-170

Hey everyone! We're back to new chapters following the break. It'll be a straight shot from here to the end of the story in another fifteen chapters or so.

I'll also have a sneak peek for you soon on the next web serial project following goblins, which is working titled D.O.R. which will be another contemporary/fantasy mashup with a new twist and a very different focus. I'm hard at work making sure there will be no gap between the end of MBGSP and the launch of D.O.R. so I hope I'll continue to earn your support and patronage through providing another compelling and entertaining story.

Chapter 168 - Fools of Fate

Really, Habberport couldn’t have been worse positioned to respond to the surprise attack from the Midnighters. Almost all of their newly-mustered ground forces were on the jungle-side of the city, not the waterfront. Our presence outside the gate had caused a further redistribution of the city’s defenders and static defenses disproportionately toward the outer wall. The docks and narrow beaches were undermanned, and it would take time for the humans to re-deploy their soldiers. Meanwhile, the Midnighter landing craft were being propelled by some sort of giant aquatic bug, pushing the barges from behind with such force that they rode up on white crests.

Even if the humans couldn’t quickly redeploy to protect their vulnerable backsides, helicopters excelled at rapid repositioning.

“Choppers, get to the beaches. I want troops deployed. Scrappers and igni to the docks. Block the jetties so the Midnighters can’t offload into the city. Air support, take out those bugs on the backs of the barges before they can make landfall. Eileen, are you up on the net?”

“In the C2 jet, boss! We’re holding at 7,000 chooms.”

“Good, I want that refit railgun charging and I want you calling movements.”

“APOLLO!”

I recognized Dame Redfang’s voice outside the airship and saw the dragon knight dodging between crossbow bolts and lesser spells, angling for the open lower deck of Gemini-II. I scrambled down from the control station. The CG of the airship shifted as the heavy dragon landed, causing more than a few goblins to stumble and at least one to roll right out the front of the airship. The dragon knight deftly snatched the squawking blue creature out of the air, catching its leather shirt between her teeth and flinging the lucky goblin back into the ship.

The armored mage on her back had his plate scorched in a few places, and the dragon herself was missing patches of scales. Over the waterfront, other members of her order were attempting to harry the landing craft with lances of white fire and dazzling spells—but the elite air cavalry of the Midnighters outnumbered them badly. She had seen what I’d seen.

“The landing craft,” she gasped. Combat flying on her injured wing must have been a special kind of excruciating. “We can’t keep them off the beaches!”

“Way ahead of you, sister,” I said.

Below, goblins were spilling out of the helicopters and onto the sands by the hundreds. Dozens of personal gliders circled, owners looking for favorable ground for their rifles and mortars. Others dropped poppers or fire bombs on the wooden ships. Troops dispersed, the choppers began to rake the decks with turbid flamers and self-cycling guns, or angle recoilless rifles at the tractor bugs. Several of the landing craft wallowed, robbed of their living propulsion. But for each one stopped, four more kept on. The Midnighters weren’t currently firing on goblins. Perhaps they were caught completely off-guard, thinking us aligned to their genocidal goals.

“Dame, I need the humans to know not to attack my goblins on the beaches. I can buy Habberport time to muster, but a fight on two fronts only aids the landing fleet.”

Below us, a formation of heavy hobgoblin fighters swooped low, firing their complements of rockets. Several explosions rocked the middle of the Midnighter fleet. Fully a third of the flying cavalry turned to pursue the jets, and the assault magic finally began to target the airborne goblins, taking some of the heat off the dragon knights.

Dame Redfang laughed. “Even the humans are not too daft to see which direction your spears are pointed, King Apollo.” She hesistated. “But… why do you do this? Is the Midnight Queen not your ally?”

“Anyone who endorses the wholesale murder of an entire city is no ally of mine,” I growled. Especially when done in a misguided effort to protect me in the first place. “We don’t need to kill the Midnighters, just turn them back. We have got to get this mess sorted!”

The airship rocked as a Midnighter artillery spell created a black displacement nearby. But the magic fizzled, and I thanked my lucky stars that we’d added magic-resistant null-devil hide to some of the armor panels. Redfang’s battle mage strode to the opening in the deck and spun his glaive in a circular pattern. A blue shell of energy materialized in front of Gemini-II, intercepting several smaller spells aimed at our dreadnaught.

Our goblin gunners returned fire, sending recoilless rifle shells and rockets back down at the ships below us. One of the capital ships angled our direction, and the palanquin at the prow began to shift and warp with the makings of a Midnighter battle spell.

“Boss, boss!” shouted a goblin running up to me with a portable handset radio. “Canaveral on the line!”

I took the handset. “This is Apollo. John, you there?”

“Aye boss. Midnighters are all in a huff here, but they ain’t tried nuffin’ yet. We got lads comin’ in from the badlands and the other bluffs. The bugs know they’re squashed.”

“They won’t do anything to risk the rockets or the space program,” I said. Hell, that was the whole point of their stupid surprise attack that had derailed my negotiations. For a race of people who purported to see the future, they sure could be short-sighted.

On the beach, the first few landing craft dropped ramps, and rifle fire rippled up and down the sands, along with the pops of grenades being fired from slingers atop the Ifrit war forms. Several igni had flame spewers and their pressurized jets of kerosene blazed against black Midnighter shield walls. Their rank and file warriors pushed up the beach against a withering fusillade of fire and gunsmoke.

An explosion of black energy erupted against the mage shield protecting the airship, tilting Gemini-II almost 45 degrees. I barely kept my footing as a dozen goblins tumbled across the deck, piling up against the port-side wall. I caught a glimpse out the front of the airship at the three capital ships below us, spear-headed by the royal palanquins.

“Do you see that banner in the center?” asked Redfang. “That is the Queen’s standard! She’s aboard that ship. But why is she here? We had no quarrel with the Midnight Queen!”

I looked at Redfang. She twisted her neck away.

“Well, no more quarrel than usual.”

“It’s for me,” I said. “The Midnight Queen is desperate for me to reach the surface of Raphina.”

“Why?!” asked the dragon knight.

I grit my teeth. “It’s a long story. But if there’s anyone that can call off this attack, it’s her.” I looked at the saddle on her back. “Can you get me on that ship?”

“A goblin riding a dragon?!” she sputtered. “We… I… it would be…” She shook her head and I saw the muscles in her neck tense as she blasted a lance of fire out the front of the ship—not at anything, just from exasperation, I think.

“Very well,” she said, crouching down. “I’m ready.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “There’s a lot of fire in both directions down there.”

“I swear upon my honor as a dragon and a knight of the Redfang Hills, you will reach the deck of the queen’s ship,” she said.

“Good enough for me.”

I scrambled up the side of the saddle and onto the crest, with Armstrong and several other secretive service goblins behind us. If Redfang noticed the extra weight, she didn’t mention it. Then again, all of us together were probably not much heavier than the single mage in his thick plate armor.

“Uh, boss?” asked Armstrong, “Is this one of those times, you know?”

“Probably,” I said, squeezing the saddle’s pommel tight as Dame Redfang began to sprint toward the front of the ship. We passed her pocket mage, and it wasn’t lost on me that we were leaving both the protection of his barrier spells and the magic-nullifying armor panels of Gemini-II. “But this is something that’s gotta be done by me. And I don’t see any other wayyyyoooah!”

Redfang launched herself from the front of the airship, wings folded tight against her body. We plummeted down, the dragon maneuvering us with movements of her sinuous neck and tail. Magic explosions detonated in the air in all directions—from Midnighters targeting the dragon knights and my fighters and choppers, and also from the Habberport response from inside the city that accounted for only a fraction of the magical ordnance being flung about. Artillery spells flashed against barriers below, or were brought down by intercepting spells. Redfang twisted us to deftly avoid a black bolt, and then unfurled her wings and caught the air.

I spotted the black bulk of Gyrfax draw alongside us.

“Dame Redfang!” he called. “Where is your mage?”

“Alas, my company is strange of late. Pray aid me, knight, for we go to kill a queen.”

“Negotiate” I reminded her.

“We go to negotiate with a queen.”

“Very well. We are with you, and we shall clear the sky!”

Gyrfax let out a deafening roar. I had to clamp my hands over my ears and hold on to Redfang with my feet. The other dragons took notice of the summons and their formation shifted, flanking us and clearing the way with their white fire attacks, even though it cost them ground.

With all the aeronautical grace I’d expect from a dragon, she rode the wind like she’d been born in it, making delicate adjustments to the shape and profile of her wings to hug the wave tops and shoot us between the oncoming ships. The dragons above us drew most of the fire. What few Midnighters angled crossbows down at us from the decks, found Redfang moving far too fast for them to track. The bulk of the Midnight Queen’s flagship rose up in front of us. Several figures on the deck were pointing down and starting to bring the ship’s fixed ballistae to bear. Redfang flared her wings and brought us above the level of the deck, landing on the prow before leaping down to the flat panels and digging her claws in.

My secretive service spilled off, spreading to form a protective circle around us, while Redfang opened her mouth and hissed a great gout of a smokescreen at the soldiers now pushing back from the front of the ship. Midnighters pushed in from every angle, hesitant when they saw the goblins, and doubly so when they saw my crown and prosthetics.

A big, broad-shouldered elite pushed forward with a spear and shield. He looked a lot like Cla’thn’s head guard, though his carapace was faded from dark black to grey and gouged with dozens of old scars. An old soldier, then.

“You… are… goblin king… Apollo?” he clicked, mouth-parts working mysteriously to produce human speech.

“That’s right!” I said. “Stop this attack against the humans, immediately! Innocent people are getting hurt on both sides. It ends now.”

“We… take king… keep safe. Kill… dragon.”

Chapter 169 - The House of Midnight

The elite raised his spear and the Midnighters pressed in, raising weapons. My goblins growled and raised cleavers and rifles. Redfang growled behind me. I could feel the heat pouring out of her mouth.

“Wait!” I shouted, raising the radio handset into the air. “One more step and I’ll blow this ship right out of the water!”

The Midnighter general (admiral?) hesitated. His spear twitched back just a hair, but his soldiers noticed, and held their positions. “A… bluff… trick. We are… protected.”

I grit my teeth and brought the handset down. “Eileen, you listening?”

“Loud and clear, boss!”

“The big ship on the left.”

I held my hand against the sun as I looked out over the water. The spells from Habberport being slung outlined a thin blue half-shell over the ship. The barrier flared slightly where it intercepted individual spells. But suddenly, a line of fire appeared in the sky, connecting the deck of the ship with what I know was the C2 jet with its recently repaired railgun several thousand feet overhead. The entire barrier shone a brilliant, blinding blue before shattering. A great gout of steam and splinters erupted from the deck.

A few moments later, the supersonic shockwave reached us, along with the actual ocean waves kicked up. The deafening crack of the railgun forced every midnighter down in alarm, except for their leader, who stood as straight and unyielding as a granite column. When the rumble faded and the smoke cleared from the other ship’s deck, I could see the panic as the warship began to take on water. The occupants scurried, scrambling to get the palanquin at the prow to safety. Onboard our ship, many of the Midnighter sailors stared in awe or horror and chittered amongst themselves.

“How’d it look, boss?” Eileen chirped on the radio.

“Bullseye,” I reported. “Standby for the next shot.”

“Uh, boss, I don—”

I twisted the power off on the radio handset and pointed it at the elite. “That gun kills null devils without using magic. No anti-magic defense can protect a ship from it. The attack, call it off, now.

The elite general practically steamed from the joints in his armor. He slammed the butt of his spear against the deck and ground it into the wood. “We… are… ALLIES! We… help you!”

I waved an open hand at the smoking city on the coast. “This!? This helps no-one! I had it sorted, until you dill-weeds came and mucked it all up.”

An attendant that I recognized as being from the priestess servant caste from her robes rushed up, pushing her way through the crowd and whispering up to the general in their own clicking, chittering language. The elite leaned down and then stiffened. He struck his spear against the deck three times. “Stop… assault. Recall marines.”

I knew he was speaking the common language for my benefit, but his soldiers still leapt to, running to a set of brass horns and flag-waving serfs to get the word spread to other ships in the fleet.

“Queen… wishes to see.”

“Armstrong, with me,” I said. I looked up at Dame Redfang. “Will you be alright out here?”

“Should they attack me, we’ll not need another of your rockets. I’ll blast a hole in this ship myself before they take me.”

I paused. “That wasn’t a rocket. It was a railgun.”

“What is that?”

I struggled to simplify the technology in terms she could understand and eventually just settled on “It launches a solid projectile like a catapult or a ballista.”

Redfang twisted her neck to look at me. “It set the air aflame!”

“It launches it really, really fast,” I said, shrugging. “I’ll be right back.”

The elite general stood aside and gestured toward the steps leading below the flagship’s deck, so I took his invitation. The Midnighters needed me alive. But they’d shown the lengths they would go to in order to keep me that way, and I didn’t agree with their methods. I wished I had Sourtooth with me, or Rufus or Taquoho. Their knowledge of the lands and cultures of Rava had come in clutch on more than a few occasions. But they all seemed to be in agreement that the Midnight Queen led a powerful faction interested only in their own ends.

The interior of the ship was hot and cloying, so humid that steam was visible in the air. Attendants poured water onto heated rocks like one big dark sauna. I had to guess that the Midnighters had come from a tropical jungle climate as well, one even closer to this planet’s equator than Lanclova. Serfs and attendants scurried through the halls, some in the silk robes like the servants I’d seen at Canaveral, and some in simple trousers or sashes where their bodies were more bug-like than hominid. I had to wonder what the relation between the creatures was. Were they all members of the same hive? Was it different species of insects who had evolved concurrently?

The Midnighter general led me to a deep chamber in the ship, practically a vault with steel walls and a circular door. At a word in their chittering Midnighter language, two soldiers  twisted it open and a swell of steam billowed out. Swallowing, I stepped over the rim and into the gloom.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. There was light in the room, from hundreds of sources—some of them moving. Plants and insects, I realized. All of them bioluminescent in some way. And moving among them, a bipedal form in voluminous robes. I had expected an enormous monstrosity, akin to the First among Daughters, crushed into the tent at the base of Canaveral. But when the Midnight queen leaned in toward one of the luminous plants, what I got was… completely different.

“A human?!” I asked, confused.

The woman illuminated by the light of glowing moths she tended looked like nothing so much as a ageless human woman, smooth-skinned but sharp featured and olive flesh—not carapace or chitin—that glistened in the humid vault.

She looked over at me and laughed. Then she flicked one of her sleeves back, extending a very long, sharp claw and clipped a small bud off of one of the trees with a short, scything motion..

“I can assure you, other-worlder, I am no more human than you are.”

That’s not much of a denial, I thought to myself. Then again, maybe they didn’t know that my world had humans, too—or something as close as no matter to the Rava version.

“You’re not what I expected. The First is…” I spread my hands apart.

The queen turned toward me, and for the first time I noticed her attendants working in the gloom, sweeping, watering, feeding, and otherwise managing the forest. Two tiny Midnighters buzzed behind her, holding up lengths of her long silk robes so that they didn’t brush the floor. But what caught my eye most was the level System had put above her head. XX. Just light the First Daughter. Only unlike the corpulent worm-like priestess, I got the impression the Queen was just as dangerous physically as she was with any spell. Something in the way she moved suggested those claws weren’t just for show.

“My birthing days are long behind me. I now take whichever form I wish. And I also did not expect…” she pointed a claw at me and drew a slow circle. “Now, tell me, why do you wave the threat of my death as though it were a flag of truce?”

“You don’t think I could do it?” I asked.

The queen tsked me. “I know you could do it. Any being capable of saving a world must be equally capable of destroying it. It is much easier to tear down than to build, after all.”

“Rich words coming from someone launching a massive attack on an unprepared city.”

The queen continued circling, pruning, and occasionally catching individual bugs and popping them into her mouth. “We had seen their ships and their dragons launch across the sea before ever they decided to muster them. We saw the additional ships that would come. Habbe is preparing for war. We could not afford your tribe being wiped out, or even slowed to the point of failure, by ignorant humans.”

I crossed my arms. “Your own ignorance is on display. I was in the middle of peace talks with them, which you just tried to sabotage. Or, I suppose, you couldn’t have known that.”

The queen hesitated a moment. “The prince would never make peace with goblins.”

“You said would never, not will never. You’re relying on your intuition and experience to make a judgement that consigns an entire city to death, but you can’t see under Raphina’s shadow any better than the rest of us. You haven’t seen what happens here. You don’t know what the outcome will be. Why not bring the prince into the fold? If the world is in danger, he’s got a stake in seeing it saved as well. Why not tell him what you’re trying to accomplish?”

“Humans can’t fathom what’s coming,” the Midnighter Queen hissed. “The future is lost on their kind. Only we know the disaster that looms overhead. Only we have seen the feasting reflected from Raphina’s night side. If these humans threaten your progress, they must be pruned as any branch for the good of the tree.”

She clipped another twig with her claw, and the light of the stem on it dimmed as it fell to the deck, where two smaller servants quickly swept it away.

I shook my head. “I take it back. You’re not just as blind as the rest of us. You’re worse, because you’ve lost a whole sense and you’re striking out in the dark without it. Well, here’s something you didn’t see. Habberport is under my protection. If you attack it, I’ll consider it an attack against myself.”

“But they would destroy you,” she said. “You are one small tribe of goblins in a very large world. The prince would grind you beneath his heel. I have seen their ships, their warriors, and their dragon knights come in numbers not seen since their war with the last goblin king.”

“Don’t you get it?” I demanded. “It doesn’t matter. We’re already too far ahead. The technology from my world that I’ve leveraged… it doesn’t matter that they have wizards. It doesn’t matter that they have dragons, or thousands or even tens of thousands of soldiers. We’re hundreds of years ahead of them in terms of progress. I was trying to stop this war not for the sake of Tribe Apollo, but to prevent the needless deaths of the humans that would be thrown against the meat-grinder. Now you’re here doing it anyway.”

“What is the loss of one country weighed against the risk that you are wrong?” asked the Queen. “They have interfered, continue to interfere. Stars bar they were able to stop you from saving this world.”

I grit my teeth. “I won’t save this world just so you can rule over the ashes.” I pointed to the steel walls. “You want to help me? Don’t give me death and destruction. Give me this. Iron, steel, sulphur, rubber, textiles, cadmium, oil, copper, and phosphates. Help me create instead of taking the easy road of destruction.”

I crossed my arms. “Any queen capable of stewarding a future must also be capable of destroying it.”

The queen hesitated at that, so I continued.

“Dismantle this fleet and let’s turn these ships into more rockets. I need more materials if this mission is going to upsize from a lunar lander to a lunar super slam. Move it through Habberport where the dragons can vouch for me and out to the fields where my airships can haul it south. Habberport stands, and I need their infrastructure, their deep-water docks and roads to turn your raw materials into space-faring equipment.”

The queen stroked one of her plants with a claw, considering. “Why would the landed dragons of Habbe vouch for you?”

I laughed. “Didn’t your general tell you? I rode to your ship on the back of one.”

The Midnight queen flinched, claw accidentally scything through a healthy branch. I watched it tumble to the floor with the rest of the discarded pruning.

“I must consult the stars. My position demands no less.” Her eyes slid to me. “I wonder if the Queen of Queens would not have been better served with a more reasonable champion as we tried to call in past attempts. That it has placed you in such an intractable form…”

“I was intractable long before I had this form. System knew what it was doing,” I said. “Better than you did, I dare say. Did you ever consider that maybe it had a good reason to hide me from your night sky?

That stopped the queen in her tracks. She folded her claws back into her robe. Without them, she was indistinguishable from a human. But how much did she think like one?

“A day,” she said. “We will take one day to treat with the humans and read the stars before we render our judgment on Habberport. You must prove to me that the humans can be turned from their warpath. Now, leave my ship, other-worlder. And stand down your weapons. I’ve much to consider.”

Chapter 170 – A Crisis Diverted

The Midnighter elite took me back to the deck of the ship, where I could see the fleet turning around to take it out of artillery range. Habberport still launched long-range magic after it, but not at nearly the voracity it had before.

“I know not what you said to her, Apollo. But you’ve certainly got sway with the Midnight Queen to turn an attack such as this aside.”

I worked my neck to get the tension that had been mounting to relax. “At the end of the day, the Queen wants the same thing I do. I just had to convince her that Habberport wasn’t the biggest obstacle to it—her own actions were. I can’t blame her; I might have done the same thing in her position. But she’s basically on board. Now I just have to wrangle the Prince.”

I looked up at the dragon. “Think he’ll come out to talk, now?” I asked.

The dragon knight huffed a puff of smoke through her nostrils. “Who can say? I’ve often heard that the prince makes inscrutable decisions, ascribes to a logic only he can fathom. But there are few on Rava who can turn the Queen’s course once she’s tacked it. He’ll want to know how, and why. Come, let us be away from here.”

“Gladly,” I said, climbing aboard with the other goblins. Once Dame Redfang launched herself from the deck, I pulled out the handset and switched the radio back on.

“Eileen, you can stand down. We’re off the ship.”

“Uh, yeah, boss. The thing is… the zap’em cables for the big gun caught fire after that first shot. We gotta set down and fix things before we can fire again.”

“Ah,” I said, feeling a cold sweat dampen my fur. All my threats had just been empty bravado. If Raphina hadn’t blinded the Midnighters so badly, and if they weren’t so reliant on their star-reading, they might have seen right through what had turned out to be a bluff. Maybe the jets could have mounted an attack run that would see the insectoid flagship scuttled, but the armor panels made it look like a pretty tough vessel on its own without the sorceress or even the Midnight Queen herself shielding it from attacks. We needed more rail guns on more platforms if we were going to get any reliability out of them.

Rather than flying directly back to Gemini-II, I had Redfang take us to the beaches where my goblins stood in uneasy lines, apart from the Habbe soldiers that had mustered too late to repel the Midnighter landing craft.

We landed between two of the groups, and I jumped off.

“Good job, everyone!” I shouted. “The city is safe!”

The crowd of my beach defenders went wild. Don’t get me wrong, Goblins had no stake in the safety of Habberport or humans. But they did have a stake in their king’s approval. My goals were canon to them, scribbled and codified by portly noblins—of which I spotted two at the head of a crowd of zealots who shouted even more maniacally than the rest. This power I had, the authority and respect demanded by the job title System had given me had created a force that I’d completely molded to align with my own ideals. And the humans could see them now, plain as day, cheering for a city that wasn’t their own.

Dame Redfang walked across the sand to speak with the Habbe captain in charge of their defenses while the surviving choppers returned to pick up the goblins and take them back to the bivouac in the clearing outside the city. One by one, the choppers came, loaded up, and then lifted off again in a cloud of sand and soot while the humans watched. To them, we were now the force that had repelled the Midnight Queen’s fleet using mysterious new artifice that could challenge even dragons. On the beaches they’d seen the guns, the armor, the flamethrowers, and the explosives. I doubted any of them would be keen to face us in the field, regardless of our comparative statures. Bushwhacking through the jungle where goblins could be hidden behind every tree and shrub? Forget about it.

I mounted up with the last helicopter. Redfang launched herself into the air to keep pace as we flew directly over the city as though we owned the place. The skies above stayed clear—no darkening cumulonimbus clouds, no lightning trying to strike us from the sky, and no errant artillery from the defensive emplacements.

“Boss, look!” said Armstrong, pointing down at the city.

Two massive cylinders were spread across six wagons which in turn were being pulled by a team of at least twenty oxen. Our boosters were packaged up and headed for the front gate.

“Looks like they’re finally ready to come to the table,” I said.

System, how many goblins died protecting a city that wants to exterminate us?

<182 goblins died in the defense of Habberport. You currently have 4562 members of your tribe.>

182 goblins on the beaches and in the air. We’d turned back one of the major military powers on Lanclova, and we’d done it without even dropping below daily replacement numbers.

The chopper landed at the bivouac, which had gained timber walls and a squat tower in my absence. Buzz’ builders were busy hammering away, and a chopper was being used as a crane to fit heavy wooden fixtures to serve as crenelations. Nevermind that the wall was only at about chin-height for a human, I didn’t think any of them would be attacking us until at least morning. All of their forces had been redeployed to protect the sea-side of the city, after all.

Most of my goblins were already getting cookfires stoked under the watchful eyes of noblin igni. A pair of jets circled overhead, and to the south, a bright flare ignited in the growing twilight. The goblins all dropped what they were doing and dashed to the southern wall, climbing over each other to get the best view as the small starburst climbed up toward the stars. Just because we were negotiating and fighting and dying by the hundreds didn’t mean progress could stop.

I pulled the radio and tuned it to the mission control frequency, listening to the panicked squawks of the goblins in the command module of the rocket lifting off from Canaveral. This one carried more food, more parts, more modules for the growing station, and most importantly, more goblins. As long as this rocket didn’t explode, we’d have almost 30 blue, furry astronauts in orbit laying the ground work (space work?) for that to become hundreds.

The rocket’s path curved, carrying it northwest, over us, and then past. Soon I’d be on one of those rockets. It wouldn’t be my first time in space, but

“Another new star to join your constellation?” asked Dame Redfang, watching the silent starburst flicker. The flames gutted out momentarily as the first stage separated. The second stage kicked on, and my intrepid explorers continued their rapid ascent.

“I won’t hold you here,” I said. “Seems pointless, at this stage. You can return to Habberport.”

“I may meet with the knights,” said Redfang. “They need orders, after all. But chivalry demands I remain in your care until my debts are paid.” she hesitated for a moment. “As does my curiosity. The world is changing indeed, when goblins fly higher than dragons.”

“Ah,” I said. “Wait, what do you mean they need orders? Can’t your boss do it? Sir Gyrfax, right?”

Redfang puffed smoke from her nostrils. “You seem mistaken, King Apollo. I am not Sir Gyrfax’s lieutenant. He is mine. I command the landed dragons.”

“I… you do?” I asked.

“Beginning to wish you’d asked more than a pair of metal pipes in ransom, o king?”

I looked up at the dragon knight, at the proud, fierce creature who had literally roasted me alive as soon as she’d laid eyes on me. But I’d won her over. The rest of the dragons would follow her. The prince and the queen, as well. And then, once I was sure Tribe Apollo’s place had been secured on Rava, I would lead them to the moon. I’d been planning, I’d been prepping, and I’d been building.