MBGSP Chpt 162-164

Hey everyone! It looks like the Podium Entertainment paperback editions of the first book are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, so if you want to snag yourself a physical copy it'll come out November 11 of this year. I don't have details on the ebook or audio version, but I would expect a similar time frame.

Here are the next 3 advance chapters, taking us closer and closer to the conclusion. I'm almost finished with the first draft of the third and final book, so I can see the end looming! As much fun as I've had with this story over the last year, I'm also excited to start the next project and begin posting it. I hope you'll join me for that one, as well.

Lastly, after next week's update there will be a short, 2-week break. After that, it will be a straight shot to the end of the series.

Chapter 162 - Poaching Talent

<Your tribe has decreased to 3890>

<Your tribe has decreased to 3884>

<Congratulations! Capturing a dragon for the first time has unlocked a new optional job for all hobgoblin variants! You may choose between between Hobgoblin Poachers and Hobgoblin Wardens>

One quick trip back to Bluff Apollo to swap the jet for the helicopter, and I was on my way back to Red Rock with Armstrong and Chuck. I glanced at the two hobgoblin taskmasters. “Looks like we wrangled the dragon that went down. System just gave me a new sub-job choice for hobgoblins.”

Chuck leaned against the door of the chopper, looking out at the forest passing below. “So long as I ain’t gotta stop wranglin’, boss.”

“If it’s like zealots or the secretive service, it’s a bonus on top of what you’ve already got,” I said.

Give me the deets, System

<Hobgoblin Poachers excel at fighting and hunting in territory removed from friendly bluffs. They receive temporary bonuses to combat based on the approximate distance to friendly territory through the Hunting Trip skill.>

<Hobgoblin Wardens excel at patrolling friendly territory. Through the Familiar Ground skill, wardens gain temporary bonuses to combat when in proximity to any bluff in the empire. This bonus is based on the level of the enemy they are fighting.>

Supercharged offense or supercharged defense, I summarized. I looked out the chopper door at the moon hanging overhead. Is there a distance cap on the Hunting Trip skill?

<Details on variant skills are only available after unlock.>

Yeah yeah, I figured.

Wardens would have been amazing at several points in the past few months. From night haunts to javelines to elves, and now Habberport soldiers, a sub-variant with a home-field advantage would have been the obvious choice. Up til now it had felt like we were chasing behind the power curve and staying one step ahead of disaster. But for the first time, it felt like we’d pulled slightly ahead of the curve, instead. Where the elves had given us grief for days, if not weeks, the dragon riders had been repelled in hours.

Our technology was pulling far enough ahead of the rest of this medieval world that even advantages like fire-breathing dragons and mages were less of a threat to us now than a half-dwarf-half-pig with a helmet and spear had once been. And I had to keep our goal in mind. Wardens might help us secure the bluffs, but our future wasn’t on the bluffs. It was in the stars. If Hunting Trip was like the zealot skill, it had linear scaling rather than a flat bonus. Presumably that scaling was meant to be limited to Rava’s surface. Would the 100,000 plus extra kilometers to Raphina supercharge it? I had to take the chance that it would.

Give me the Poachers. If even 25% or 30% converted, it would be a huge boon.

<New variant job unlocked: Hobgoblin Poachers. Poachers will sometimes spawn in your tribe. Existing hobgoblins of any type may occasionally become poachers.>

<235 hobgoblins have converted to poachers>

I stiffened. “How many hobgoblins did we have in the tribe?”

“Aft o’ 350 last I looked,” said Armstrong.

<There are currently 362 hobgoblins in Tribe Apollo.>

I opened up the tribe submenu and scanned through. “Nearly every hobgoblin just converted. Over a 90% conversion rate. When I unlocked zealots, only about a third made the swap.”

Chuck shrugged. “No one fixin’ to get left,” he said, thrusting his chin up toward the moon.”

“The rest are already secretive service,” I noted. “Can’t be both, I suppose.”

Armstrong flexed. “Where you go, we go, boss!”

I grinned. “Ad Luna?”

“Ad Luna,” said my two hobgoblin taskmasters.

With the big, bad null devils waiting for us on Raphina, we were going to need any advantage we could get. Three and a half hundred wranglers and scrappers with an anti-proximity bonus on an interplanetary scale would certainly help even the odds.

We flew until the forest turned craggy and rocky, white stone cliffs starting to split the greenery beneath us. The storm had mostly cleared, though a few towering cumulus clouds still remained above Red Rock Rise. Chuck spotted the flares smoldering on the ground before any of us and pointed them out while Armstrong pulled a trio of personal gliders out of a stash in the chopper. I tapped on the pilot’s shoulder. “We’re going down ahead. Find someplace to set down.”

The air delivery goblin gave me a salute and then squawked as the unheld controls jerked to the side. I grabbed for the aircraft frame as the chopper shifted, barely managing to avoid tumbling out the door early. Once we leveled out, I took one of the personal gliders from Armstrong before leaping from the aircraft with my two taskmasters.

On the ground, foliage had been scattered into a small clearing where dozens of goblins swarmed with a few orcs and Ifrit, working to keep the dragon restrained while the armored mage sat tied to a tree. Gliders were scattered across the clearing, discarded from where members of Red Rock had jumped directly from the bluff in order to apprehend the downed knight and his mount.

“Well done, boys,” I called as I flared the glider out for a landing. “Glad to see neither of them spinning over a cookfire already.”

One of the noblin igni quickly shoved something behind his back that trailed smoke, but I elected to ignore it. I approached the restrained human on the ground. System put his level at 45, the highest human I’d seen so far. The dragon itself was 55–for being smaller than some of the badlands creatures, it was no less powerful than any of the totem beasts the orcs hunted. Even injured, they would have been too much for the goblins of Red Rise alone. But they’d brought the Ifrits’ newest toys. One of them lumbered up to me, gas engine chugging.

“Wel…come, Apollo… king,”

I looked up at the Ifrit in the new Goblin Tech Tree version of their war form (steely fire whomp’ems). The kerosene-powered bipedal vessel looked lanky and apish, similar to one of the swamp big-jaws except for the twin recoilless rifles and the firing deck of goblins that the real thing fortunately lacked. After seeing them in the City of Brass, there was no way I could not integrate our own version into the tribe—albeit they were internal combustion powered rather than being manipulated by unions with a dozen or more members. Even with two-way transportation now completely open with the City of Brass, only a small fraction of the Ifrit exiles had any desire to leave the tribe.

“Thanks,” I said. “You’re all getting better at spoken language.”

The subtle fire in the vessel flared a bit in acknowledgment of the praise. I moved past to where the knight watched us. Through the slit in his helmet,  I could see his eyes drift up to the crown on my head. His suit of armor was a blue-colored plate mail with a padded robe over top.

I didn’t have to lower myself much to get on eye-level with the sitting human. His presence still had that disconcerting effect, the natural wariness that my goblin side harbored for large hominids. This creature was something that readily killed goblins. But in its eyes I saw a distinct lack of emotion reflected back at me. Like he didn’t care that he’d been caught and tied up.

“The orcs and the Midnighters tell me there’s no way humans would ever negotiate with a goblin king. But neither of them are here right now, and I have to try. I have to see if I can put the brakes on this escalation before it moves beyond something we can stop. Are the others right? Will you never see me as anything but vermin to be exterminated?”

The mage cocked his head at me, as though he couldn’t understand me even though I was speaking Rava’s unified language.

“Nothing to say to that?” I asked. Still, he said nothing. I scowled. “What kind of knight are you?”

“Him? a knight? The AUDACITY!”

I turned to see who had spoken just in time to watch the dragon throw off its captors with a sudden move that brought its head out from under the net.

“Get hold of it!” shouted Armstrong.

The dragon turned to me and opened its mouth, and I saw a roiling light deep in its ebon throat, like a torch at the end of a tunnel. Before I could react, that deep pilot light became a cascading white-hot blast that enveloped my world. I smelt ozone and burnt fur and felt myself lifted off my feet.

Chapter 163 - Landed Dragons

<Head of the Snake skill has activated>

I stopped tumbling, but continued sizzling. All the fur on my front half had blackened and patches had fallen away to reveal the dark brown skin underneath. I coughed soot and smoke and leaned back against the tree that had stopped my momentum.

My assailant was brought back under control only with great difficulty by Armstrong and a member of the Flock pouncing directly on its snout and clutching its mouth closed, though smoke continued to roil out of its nostrils.

I groaned and climbed to my feet. “Ugh. That hurt like hell.”

My skin was still tender on the furless patches, but they were already beginning to fill back in despite being bathed in literal dragonfire. The pain had been sudden, intense, and blessedly brief. Compared to the agony of being dragged across the ground on the tip of a spear, being roasted by a flame hot enough to blast an aircraft apart was, believe it or not, a vast improvement.

The dragon still had enough play in its muzzle to speak. “Hmph, so it’s true, then. There is a goblin king. Very well, I wish to speak to your boss!”

“My boss?” I asked.

“Yes. I saw the Midnight Queen’s servants. The orcs, as well, and these demons of strange vessels. I know not which pulls your strings. But as Dame Redfang, Landed Dragon of Parr Hill, I am entitled to ransom.”

“You’re the knight?” I asked, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I heard dragon knights, I thought that meant knights riding dragons.”

“Ridiculous!” sneered the dragon. “To think this simpleton to be my equal. All mages care for are their strange geometries. He doesn’t even have wings, how would he safeguard a fief? Now, I demand to speak to your leader at once.”

The mage tied to the tree mumbled a complaint, clearly not content at being labeled a simpleton. But he didn’t offer any more than that and his attention drifted to a passing insect. Not really doing himself any favors.

I had some opinions of my own on that front. Clearly, Redfang and I had some differences in what qualifiers were necessary for knighthood. Then again, my only references were old medieval movies, so what did I know? “I have no leader. I am King Apollo, of Tribe Apollo. The Flock, the Ifrit, and the Midnighters are here at my invitation. I beat back the Javeline, I beat back the druids that followed them, and I’ll send you dragon knights packing again if I have to. But I don’t want it to come to that.”

Redfang considered this, her eyes narrowing to slits. “Then what is it you do want, little goblin king?”

“Peace,” I said. “To be left alone to continue working on scientific progress.”

Redfang blew a gout of smoke from her nostrils. “After dropping steel pillars from the sky?”

I felt my cheeks burn. “That was an accident,” I said.

“Absurd! Midnighter mischief and their stolen magics, by fang and claw. Only ever do goblins seek to destroy and devour.”

I groaned. “You may  not believe it, but I don’t wish harm on Habberport. I’m not on the warpath. I want peace. Our goals are achieving space flight so that I can reach the moon. You’ve seen our flying machines. The boosters that fell on your city were part of an even larger flying machine that we launched a few days ago. They were supposed to fall in the ocean, but we had an accident and they released prematurely.

Redfang tilted her head. “The star 3 days thence which rose instead of falling, that now swims such a rapid pace in the evening sea? That was a machine?”

“Yes,” I said. “And we have others. I can show you.”

“Trickery!” she hissed. “Blue-fur tricks.”

“Transparency,” I insisted. “Everyone insists goblins are mindless killing machines, yet I seem to be the only one at least trying to be reasonable. I judged you for being a dragon, mistook you for a monster, and for that I’m sorry. But I can learn the truth, and I can live in a world with dragons who are also knights. Can you live with the truth of goblins who aren’t monsters?”

Dame Redfang was silent for a time, working my words over in her mind. “You don’t speak as one might expect,” she conceded. “Certainly not as one who would seek war. If there is any in this land who could understand others mistaking them for monstrous, it is I. You would show me this rising-star artifice as proof of your words?”

“If you’ll give me your word as a knight that you won’t use it as an opportunity to attack or escape, I’ll give you my word as king that you’ll be returned in the morning, unharmed.”

“My word and my honor are bonds stronger than those that now hold me, little king,” Dame Redfang said proudly. “I shall accept your offer.”

I looked at the goblins holding her down. “Let her up,” I said.

“You sure?” said Chuck. “Maybe we ought get Rufus to tell us if she’s lyin’.”

“Do it.”

Reluctantly, the goblins and ocs pulled away the net that kept the landed dragon bound. She stood, stretching to her full height to work out the kinks in her limbs. Her body was about the size of a large SUV, with paws the size of dinner plates and a sinuous, flexible neck. She stretched her wings out, and I could see where one was wounded from the dogfight.

“Can you fly?” I asked.

“Slowly,” she admitted. “Not with a rider. And not for any great distance.”

“Canaveral isn’t far,” I said. “We’ll take the mage with us on the chopper. Just follow behind.”

We headed back toward the chopper so that we could lead the fire-breathing dragon to the bluff with our largest concentration of goblin scat and bomb-fruit juice. What could go wrong?

My taskmasters had some concerns as well, which they voiced once out of ear shot.

“You’re bein’ awful trustin’, boss. Maybe we ought get Rufus here to suss if she’s lying,” said Chuck.

“Peace has to start with trust,” I countered. “Someone’s got to extend the olive branch first.”

“Dunno wot olives got to do with things,” said Armstrong. “But as yer secretive service, I don’t like it.”

I looked up at the scrapper. “If there’s even a chance at being left in peace to finish the mission, we have to work toward it. Are we trying to save a world just to let it tear itself apart? No one said it would be easy. But the Midnighter big-wig says we’re running out of time.” I looked up at the moon. Was there just a little bit more brackish brown on that pink forest? Were the canyons getting slightly deeper as the creature growing within pushed against Raphina’s crust?

We boarded the chopper without further dissent, and I was pleased to see Dame Redfang take to the air behind us, albeit heavily favoring one wing. I got on the radio to pass the message that she was not to be harmed and we made it to Canaveral without any of the air patrollers getting too jittery. I’m sure Redfang was noting our defenses and the aircraft circling in the skies. I would be. She was surely smart enough to realize that any attempt to escape would result in her almost immediate recapture. We flew over the Midnighter encampment, looking much sparser than usual with the bulk of their elite cavalry and magic users chasing the dragon knight scouts back across the mountains.

We circled the bluff once, making a wide arc around the two completed rockets and another still being welded together. Redfang flew lower, examining the boosters that were already attached to our next scheduled launch—probably comparing them to the ones that had fallen on Habberport. On the southwest end of the bluff, John was conducting a rocket motor test, and the roaring flame burned even hotter and brighter than a dragon’s as the motor shook against its mountings.

I had the pilot bring us down to the VTOL pad, where we landed next to a cargo airship unloading traded goods from our deals with the City of Brass—canvas, zinc, copper, and other materials in exchange for our ceramics and coaxial flying vessels. Another was unloading bales of dry scat and sheet metal turned out from Huntsville. With Ringo in the fold, we now had the entirety of the swamp to harvest—plus the whistler skin and an alloy we were getting by melting down the ore in the pink badlands gravel and casting it with zinc. It was the closest thing I’d seen so far to aerospace grade aluminum.

Redfang’s eyes took in everything, measuring. She’d only seen Red Rock before, which wasn’t built up like Canaveral.

“This is the seat of your power?” she asked.

“Nah,” I said. “This is our third largest settlement. Our capital is at least three times bigger than this. I’d be happy to show it to you, if we can work out a peace with Habberport.”

Dame Redfang sniffed. “The orcs and Ifrit were not wrong, little king. Mankind will not negotiate with you. Humans can be… persistent in their beliefs, and the prince himself is especially inscrutable. Some years back, he suffered a malady of the mind that robbed him of his memory, though few are willing to speak of it. But perhaps it took away his old hatreds, as well. I can speak to the other knights. Perhaps together we can bend the Prince’s ear to consider that monsters once are not always monsters. But I cannot promise that our words will reach him. Habbe has been bitten by goblin kings before.”

Chapter 164 - Midnight Intervention

<Your tribe has increased to 4810 members>

Moving up the scheduled launch so that the dragon knight could witness it and report back our intentions meant I spent the rest of the evening with Promethius getting the next rocket ready by making sure the self-contained habitation module was ready for space.

Back at NuEarth, my engineering focus was in closed-loop systems, maximizing efficiency and minimizing waste to extend the longevity of astronauts. The first piloted module was going to be the start of Tribe Apollo’s space station, and from there we would add compartmentalized modules and begin sending equipment to Raphina’s surface.

The morning of the launch, I ensured safety interlocks were in place on the booster ignition console this time. Especially while Promo and I worked together on the rocket. It took most of the morning and into the afternoon to finish up with the prep-work to make sure the dozen (plus stowaways) goblins going up could survive long enough to get resupplied with the next module launch. By the time we climbed down, the eclipse was already overhead and I spotted a familiar palanquin in the launch area waiting for me.

I dropped off the top of the rocket and free-fell down to the ground where Cla’thn had already had her sleeves drawn back for a conversation.

“King Apollo, my elites tell me you intend to return the dragon to the humans at Habberport.”

“That’s accurate,” I said.

The air filled with a distressed buzz that I took for an expression of Midnighter worry. “This is ill-advised. Yesterday’s incursion was but a scout and probe of our defenses. Our show of force will hold them not long. They have more landed dragons. Many more.”

“And we have jets with magic-seeking missiles,” I said. “The  dragons might be tough, but they’re not as bad as the null devil.

“The humans are a threat to your purpose, and ought be handled with consummate severity.”

I rubbed my greasy hands off on my fur. “Saw that in the stars, did you?” I asked.

“We saw the buildup of martial power, reflected in the sky as it would cross the sea. And yes, it came to pass as we predicted—as all things do.”

I pursed my lips. “Returning the dragon to the humans is a show of good faith. It’s the best shot Tribe Apollo has at opening a dialogue instead of a firing line. I won’t endorse a martial response that will cost goblin—or human—lives, except as a last resort. Did you predict yesterday’s attack? Or its outcome? Can you say for certain whether this entreaty ends in war or a truce?”

Cla’thn shifted uncomfortably. “You know well that we cannot read the stars shaded by Raphina.”

“Things you can’t predict can’t come to pass as you predict them,” I countered. “If you’re jumping at the answer, it’s little better than a knee-jerk response.”

Cla’thn flicked her arms, drawing back her robe’s sleeves near to her elbows. Several of her attendants stepped back in alarm, and I stiffened. Was this their version of a shouting match?

“The Queen and the First have read  the stars for centuries. They have long learned to recognize the patterns cast across them, where history rhymes and reflections of past and future overlap. Discount not their wisdom, King Apollo. You are vital to the survival of this world. The humans of Habbe are not. Your attempts to make peace are the fruit of a barren tree.”

“Funny thing about goblins and other-worlders,” I said, “When it comes to the predictability of patterns and forecasts. They throw a spanner into the works.”

“This is the very reason you are here, King Apollo: to do the impossible, what no one on this world could. The queen will not allow your program to come to harm.”

I cocked my head. “For a declaration of protection, that sounds an awful lot like a threat,” I said.

Cla’thn held her hands parallel to the ground, and her attendants approached in order to carefully fold her silk sleeves over the delicate hairs on her carapace. Apparently the conversation was over.

I sniffed. “Have it your way,” I said. “I’ve got a launch to take care of.”

I stalked off with Armstrong and Promo in tow. We headed to the observation area on a lower level of the pyramid where Dame Redfang lounged on the stones still radiating heat from baking in the morning sun. Her pocket mage sat beside her, staring off into space. Now that I got a closer look at him without his helmet, he was human… but not my human. I could see subtle differences—the shape of the face was different, the retinas were too pale, the ears too far back. Maybe he was slightly different because he was a mage or had some cross-breeding with another species here. Or maybe convergent biology had seen fit to produce just a bipedal facsimile of Earthlings on Rava. It was an efficient and effective form factor for an apex social primate, after all.

“We’ll be getting underway, soon,” I said. I pointed at the rocket where a pair of wranglers, a pair of scrappers, a sparker, an ignis, and six forest goblins scrambled up the side of the rocket. “Our first astronauts. They’ll be going up into space—though the rocket is still primarily controlled from the ground via radio.”

Redfang’s neck stretched to follow them up. “They ride into the upper stretches of the sky—past the point of the air thinning beyond breath or beat of wing. How?”

I sat back onto the stone. To either side, hundreds of goblins sat, lounged, or fought for the best seats for the launch. Several tried to approach Redfang, but a snarl sent them away. Several had cozied up to the mage, who seemed not to realize they were there. Though he did briefly look at my prosthetic legs with the most curiosity I’d seen yet.

“We have air compressors,” I said. “It’s a device to force a wide space’s worth of air into a small bottle and trap it there for later. We let out a little at a time to breath. Today’s mission is about staging breathable air into orbit.”

“Curious,” she said. “How heavy are these bottles? Could I take one with my to climb above the clouds?”

“Your upper limit would still be determined by how much lift your wings can produce,” I said. “Which, unless it’s just magic, would depend on an amount of air density. But yes, you could probably fly higher and it would feel as though you were breathing air as dense as sea level.”

I opened my pack and pulled out the small portable radio with its bulky battery pack and tuned it to the chaos of the mission control center.

“Do you not wish to direct this endeavor yourself?” asked Redfang.

“More than almost anything,” I said. “I’m a bit of a control freak. But when I go up there…” I jutted my chin towards Raphina hanging overhead, “…I won’t also be able to run mission control. I need to know my taskmasters can handle a launch on their own.”

A warning blared out on the bluff-wide big voice, and the goblins below started to clear the launch pit, pulling back fuel trucks and scattering with hastily packed tool bags. Goblins might not have long memories, but they at least recalled what had happened on the last launch. The squawking ruckus on the repeater might have sounded random, but Harris was going down the canonized pre-launch sequence, just as I’d shown him.

“Not long, now,” I said. Overhead, the aircraft circling the bluff dispersed as well. I pulled a pair of rubber plugs from my pack and put them into my ears. The big-voice started to count down as well. The goblins in the command module closed the hatch, and the gantry rolled back.

Harris reached the end of his litany and launched into a countdown. Below, the last of the goblins cleared the area. I was glad we wouldn’t have a repeat of 100+ flash-fried goblins.

Finally, my taskmaster called for primary ignition. A bright yellow flare illuminated the length of the rocket. A moment later, the rumble reached us. The sound of the steady-state combustion resonated deep in my chest and gut and vibrated through the stones beneath my fingers. The monolithic rocket shifted and then began to rise from the ground as steam and dust spread from the immense downward force.

“Linear fire,” the mage commented. His eyes were fixed on the rocket. “Parabolic acceleration.”

I glanced to him, and then over to Dame Redfang.

“Ignore him,” she shouted over the roar of the rocket, her own eyes glued to the upward progress of the rocket. “Geometries and odd mathema are about all you’ll get out of a battle mage. You say this rockit has no magic?”

“None whatsoever,” I said. “Just Goblin Tech Tree physics.”

The rocket climbed up and away, accelerating on its column of fire until it became just a bight flare in the sky pushing a very tiny spec. It tilted, beginning to angle slightly for its entry into orbit. I couldn’t see the boosters detach at this distance, but I could see where the flare cut off and the first stage separated before the second stage motor kicked in.

“How long does it take to reach the stars?” asked Redfang.

“Low orbit take take as little as 10-12 minutes,” I said. “Geostationary, maybe 20-30. Raphina? 2-3 days.” I rubbed my chin. “The nearest star? Ten or twenty years.”

Home? I added silently. Who knows?

But if we were still in my universe, it was likely so far beyond reach that it might as well be in another dimension anyway.

Dame Redfang watched the pillar of rocket smoke drift away. “The greatest human wizards might fly as high and as fast as a great dragon, but they do not brush the stars, they do not bottle the air, and those who have boasted they would walk Raphina’s surface have never returned.”

Well, that last part might have something to do with the number of magic devouring null devils waiting for them on Raphina’s surface. But I didn’t mention that part.

I kept listening to the radio. With our satellite in the sky already, we now had a better line-of-sight relay, and we were able to track the position of the orbital module all the way up to achieving its stable orbit.

I breathed a sigh of relief. At Redfang’s look, I explained. “Low orbit is a delicate dance. Rava is still pulling at us, we have to be at a precise altitude and precise speed in order to not either fall back to the ground or put us in an unstable orbit.

“The navigation for these rockets is quite precise, then,” she said.

“As long as everything goes correctly.”

“The lords of Habberport were convinced that the boost’ems were a weapon of attack,” said Dame Redfang. She shook her serpentine head. “But they were mere empty, cast-off waste, to you. You have launched several of these, yes?”

“That’s right. A few smaller test rockets and now our second orbital.”

“It occurs to me that, had you wished it, any one of these rockets could have been made to fall upon a city with most of its fire yet unburnt. It would result in more than a simple collapsed building, I should think. I daresay it would end your problems with the prince.”

“What you’re talking about is a technology called a ballistic missile. And it’s something I would never, ever, point at a city, human or otherwise. Come on,” I said, climbing to my feet. “Let’s get you back to Habberport.”