MBGSP Chpt 156-158

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Chapter 156 – The First

<Your tribe has increased to 2104 members>

We left the Ifrit city in the morning. Rather than heading straight back to Village Apollo, I angled our course northeast. Flight by chopper wasn’t nearly as fast as the jets, and it gave me time to consider things before Bluff Canaveral came into sight.

The bluff now had what appeared to be three towers jutting up against the horizon, as well as the Midnighter observatory. The towers themselves were the rockets and boosters coming together, looking less like a majestic Saturn V and more like a column of scrap. What’s more, the base of the bluff had been further cleared and the Midnighter presence increased threefold from my last visit. I saw more cavalry, more spears, and a hive of attendant activity servicing a large, enclosed tent of black fabric. Elite queen’s guard soldiers patrolled the area, and a detachment of Midnighters stood ready to repel attacks at palisades that now lined the perimeter. The fortifications were thick enough to repel thundercleaves, let alone the pale lizards that attacked the bluff daily. Completely overkill. Likewise, the Midnight air cavalry patrolled the sky, warriors riding on their winged mounts with their black carapace glistening in the sun. Canaveral was the most well-defended bluff by far, thanks to the Midnighter military presence.

The air patrols moved aside for us to land at the helipads on the western side of the bluff. Goblins with rifles and shock spears patrolled together with the soldier-caste Midnighters on the ground as easily as though the two species had interacted since birth—which for some of the goblins, I suppose they had.

I set the aircraft down and hopped out with Armstrong. He looked out over the edge to the base of the bluff.

“Sure are a lot of ‘em, boss,” he said.

“Sure are,” I agreed. Last time I was here, the priestess had promised answers when he boss got here. From the look of the pavilion below and the big increase in security, I was willing to bet someone with a lot of authority had arrived. I glanced up into the air, where several choppers still flew in the airspace. If things turned sour, they already had their orders. So did the other bluffs, if it came down to it.

John was ready and waiting, along with a contingent of scrappers and igni armed with the best arms and armor available to goblin-kind. And, unbeknownst to the Midnighters, what goblin jets that had survived the battle with the null devil were fueled, armed, and ready for takeoff.

The Midnighter leadership must have realized something was up, because Priestess’ Cla’thn’s palanquin met us at the lift along with the captain of her guards and her attendants. I held back the secretive service and stepped up to the captain. “Last time we spoke, Cla’thn promised me answers.”

A voice drifted out from the palanquin.

“And as promised, you shall have them, King Apollo. Come, we will speak with my superior.”

I waved my retinue forward, and we boarded the lift that lowered us down to the forest floor below. Many of the Midnighter soldiers and attendants surprised me by making the circular sign of the goblin religion over their heads, though many also made the Midnighter sign of the watchful eye. We walked through the Midnighter camp until we reached their thick, black tent that had been decorated with stars and sigils. The Midnighters moved to block us until they saw the priestess’ palanquin, at which point they stood aside and came to attention.

“I must warn you, King Apollo. Many outsiders are unable to stand in the same space with the First. She will take no offense if you choose to flee.”

“Duly noted,” I said, steeling myself. One of the elite soldiers lifted the flap of the tent, and I ducked under after the palanquin. Armstrong and John both made to follow, but the elites dropped their spears across the opening.

“Boss!” shouted Armstrong.

“It’s alright,” I said. I hoped. I had talked to the Ifrit king, after all. “Take up stations outside and wait for me to come back.”

My guards backed off, looking uncertain, but respecting my orders. The Midnighters dropped the tent flap, plunging us into near darkness but for the glow of smoldering incense coals atop small holders. I gave my eyes time to adjust as Cla’thn unfolded herself from her palanquin. Other attendants in the antechamber worked, lighting more of the incense sticks or bringing platters of Midnighter food through, which even my goblin side didn’t find appetizing. It looked like nothing so much as half-mushed maggots and uncooked game offal, drizzled with a sauce that smelled like ammonia.

Once her robes were properly arranged, Cla’thn gestured two of her palms toward the inner folds of the door, and the attendants pulled on two cords to lift the cloth.

I stepped through. It seemed the star patterns on the outside of the tent were actually sewn from a semi-transparent material, because the inside of the tent was like a planetarium screen. The dome showed an illuminated starfield swirling with colorful clusters of nebulae and marked with strange constellations. The dimmed shafts of light shimmered through smoky air, and I coughed as I tried to get a look at the… something that took up a sizable portion of the large tent’s space. I caught a glimpse of a stinger slithering out of sight and was hit by a smell like death and heat-rash sweat that had been bottled and left out in the sun. In the gloom, a bulbous mass moved, only partially silhouette by the defining rays of the pseudo starlight stabbing down from above. Every threat sense I had spiked and screamed at me to run, that I was instants from death. But most telling of all, even though we’d defeated the null devil, System still imposed a “XX” over the creature. Whatever was in here with me was a monster of nigh unimaginable power. Perhaps not physically powerful, despite its enormous size, but the air veritably crackled with potential energy.

“Um…” I said, trying to keep a tremor out of both my voice and my knees. “Hello?”

“Greetings, King Apollo. I am Szala, First Among Daughters, reader of the stars, Voice of the Midnight Queen, and Heir to the Midnight Empire.”

“That’s intense,” I said.

The creature shifted, and a ray of light played across a half-dozen compound eyes. “It is indeed a most heavy weight. In reading the future, we become its stewards. Our actions—all of our actions— have such weight as you could not fathom. I know this better than most, I believe. You defeated the null devil and spoke with the King of the Ifrit. Now you are here to ask why we brought you to Rava.”

At least she didn’t beat around the bush. I had expected her to deny or deflect. I almost wasn’t ready for the admission. “I thought the future was blocked in Lanclova,” I said.

“When you read the ripples as long as I have, repeated patterns begin to emerge. Is there a word in your world for a seer who predicts not the future, but the predictions of other seers?”

I shook my head. This was moving so fast. “If there is, I don’t know it. We don’t have seers in my world. Or magic at all.”

A long, curved hand tipped with razor-sharp talons moved through the light shafts, seizing a handful of goo from a platter, which the sorceress devoured thankfully out of sight (though unfortunately, not out of earshot). I shuddered at the sucking, snapping, slurping sounds all happening simultaneously.

“Why might we seek one from such a world?”

Of all the places to employ the Socratic Method. I continued down her train of thought. “The null devil… there are forces on Rava stronger than it, forces with more influence, forces with incredible power. But they all rely on magic. Though they could destroy more than that creature could have, they could not destroy the creature itself.”

Beside me, Priestess Cla’thn nodded her approval.

“So, we brought you here to free the Ifrit from their shackles?”

I shook my head. “It can’t be that simple. The King of the Ifrit said that summoning magic is ancient, long-defunct, and incredibly risky. But clearly, you want me to do something that can’t be done with magic. Something only a—” I stopped just short of saying human, “—person from my world could do.”

The First among Daughters remained silent, so I continued that line of thinking. “The null devil terrorizing the desert wasn’t the only one of its kind. Others fell on Rava.” I raised my eyes to the star-scape of the tent, and the pink and blue orb stitched with utmost care directly over my head. An orb unmarred by deep canyons or blighted forests. “And they didn’t just fall on Rava, either, did they?”

I looked down at the shadow of the First again. “You brought me here to go to the moon.”

Chapter 157 - Cards on the Table

My head spun. I had so many questions. For each answer the Midnighter royal had given me, a dozen more queries took its place. “Did you kill me to bring me here? Did you blow up my rocket and kill the other astronauts? How did you know I would do what you wanted?”

The First raised her hands in what she must have thought was a placating gesture but looked more as though she was about to pounce on me with claws and teeth. “Peace, Apollo. I will answer your questions, and more besides. A coven of our most powerful seers and sorceresses cast a spell, one ancient and dangerous, that empowered the Queen of Queens.”

“The Queen of Queens?” I asked and then realized what she meant. “Oh, what you call the System. It seems pretty powerful already, so what did your ritual do?”

“You must understand,  King Apollo. The spells were not of our design. Magic is will made manifest, but the methods are as unique as the effect. These were human spells, but humans are blind to the stars and their reflections.”

I tilted my head. “Why does that matter?”

“They would not share with us their secrets, and thus our first attempt at reaching worlds unknown was a failure.” The First wrung her hands and made the symbol of the watchful eye against the glowing fabric of the moon. “We did not know how or who the Queen of Queens would choose because we did not fully understand their function when we were left with no alternative but to seize the knowledge denied us.”

“…by force,” I finished. In seeing the future, they believe themselves its stewards, I remembered Taquoho saying. The ends would justify the means. “I bet I know how well the humans took that. But why?”

“Because our world will die without our intervention, You have seen for yourself the changes wrought to our moon. The canyons and deformations, the ruined landscape and the death of its natural life. The Queen of Queen sleeps within long past when she ought have gone to soar the cosmos, growing ever larger all the while. She is the font of all magic, such is her power. But the poison of the fallen star parasites keep her in fugue, even as they feed on her essence and corrupt its shape.”

I put my palms to my head. “Wait, hold up, you’re telling me the System is some sort of celestial space dragon, that it’s in the moon, it’s growing large enough to destabilize Raphina, and that despite being omniscient, it’s not even awake?”

I glanced over at Priestess Cla’thn, who nodded. “If you are infected by poor humors, do you will your body to fight it?” she asked, “Or

“So the System, this omniscient, mind-reading entity, this mad world’s entire framework for skills and logic that overwrites the very laws of physics and speaks in the mind of every individual, and plucked me from another planet, or maybe even another dimension is… is… what, an auto immune response to an apocalypse?” I ground my heels into my eyes. “God damn it. I hate how much sense that makes.” I held up my hands out, palm up. “Source of all magic. The null devils eat magic, or at the very least disrupt it. So what does this creature do?” I lowered one palm and raised the other. “Its unconscious mind emits some… some sort of a framework. The opposite of magic. Rather than the free-flow of will-made-manifest power, it’s a construct of enforced rules and limitations. Something that, at least in part, gets past the null devil’s disruption because it’s grounded in rules, and it’s bound itself by those rules, which is why it can’t—or won’t—talk about certain things.” I looked up at the First. “How am I doing so far?”

The giant bug was silent for a moment before answering. “I must admit, you are more receptive to this knowledge than I had expected.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Yeah, well, clearly I’ve watched too much bad sci-fi.”

Sorry I thought you were just a bored IT nerd, System.

<Apology noted.>

I took a deep breath. “Alright. So where do we go from here?”

The First took another bite of her rancid food. “You continue upon your path. We will aid and protect you, as the life of the Queen of Queens depends upon it, as does every life upon Rava. We must wake the Queen of Queens.”

“No pressure or anything,” I muttered. “All right. Fundamentally, knowing about all this doesn’t change much. My motivations and determination are probably as much why I was plucked as my technical skills and winning personality. The Ravan Apollo program will continue. But things are going to get hairy if we’re fighting null devils on another planet. And I’m… relieved, I suppose, to know your own motives. What happens once this creature wakes up?”

The First gave a very human, very massive shrug with several sets of shoulders. “Likely she will soar among the stars, taking both magic and skills with her. We cannot see what form her successor takes. Such things are beyond ripples clouded by uncertainty.”

I still had more questions, but this was already a lot to process. Neither the priestess or the First made objection to my bowing out to return to the antechamber. This creature that created the System in its sleep must be a creature of unimaginable power. A living stellar core’s worth of energy, able to disperse that energy not through heat or light or other electromagnetic waves, but in ways that defied all logic and flew in the face of all understood physics. And it was apparently up to me to help it. Had been up to me since the day I landed on Rava with its menus in front of my face and its voice in my head. And once it woke up and left, and it took its framework with it, what would I be? A human trapped in the body of a goblin at the head of primitive savages? No longer a goblin king? That was, after all, a job role bestowed by the System.

Once it woke up, could this celestial creature send Ringo and I home? And what was Ringo doing here, anyway? A botched early attempt at the poorly understood spell?

I shook my head. Everything just led to more questions, more uncertainty. But at least the Midnighters weren’t trying to wipe out the tribe.

Back in the light of the day, I held up a hand to the sky while my eyes adjusted. The eclipse wasn’t quite overhead, but it was getting close.

So, some sort of psychic celestial space creature powerful enough to warp reality to its whims. This universe sure was strange. But heck, in its infinite vastness, how improbable was it that such a creature  come to be? I had assumed that if this wasn’t a simulation that it was some sort of parallel reality. But was it? Could System really pull me through dimensions or had it simply reached across space and seen me leaving Earth on a rocket about to explode and plucked me from the moment of my death? When I looked up at the sky each evening, was Sol one of the stars I saw? Was I even in the same galaxy?

System

<Awaiting query.>

Can you at least tell me if that ritual saved me from my death or caused it?

There was a pause before System’s reply appeared.

<Unable to return requested information.>

Is Earth up there somewhere?

<Unable to return requested information.>

If we succeed, and we wake you up, could you send me home?

<Keep advancing, Chris.>

I honestly didn’t know if I ought be thanking the Midnighters or cursing their names. But there was little to be done about it. I was here, now. I was at the head of an army of crafty, industrious creatures with a manic passion for gadgets and going places they ought not go. This world, this crazy beautiful world full of creatures and bound by strange physics was facing its great filter event. I had the technology they needed to get through it. Now I had allies rallied to the cause: the various forest goblin tribes working together, the orcs, the Ifrit, and the Midnighters who had at least as much skin in the game as I did—and were the only ones who knew the true stakes and probably the only ones who knew System’s true nature.

Now that the javaline had been dealt with, the elves had been pushed away, the Dawn’s Light had been satisfied, and the Ifrit bottle had been uncorked, we had only Habberport to worry about. But humans were slow, and they had jungles and mountains and monsters to get through before they could truly reach us. With most of the immediate threats to the tribe quelled, we could really buckle down and get the rocketry program burning. By the time we had to worry about them, we’d be in the space age.

Speaking of immediate threats, the eclipse was getting awful close.

I spotted the elite captain that had accompanied Cla’thn patrolling the edge of the camp and trotted over. “Hey Captain. Are you sure your people want to stay on the ground here? This place is about to be lizard central.”

The captain tapped the butt of his spear against the ground. “No lizards. All gone.”

“I know it seems like that, but they come pretty regularly, every day. They have for months.”

“No more. We follow to nest. No more nest. No more lizards.”

I tilted my head. “Seriously? They weren’t that big a deal. Hell, they’ve basically been a free food source that threw itself at us and kept Canaveral self-sufficient. We probably could have taken out the nest at any time, but there wasn’t really any need.”

“Was threat. Now no threat. Protect Apollo Program. Safe,” said the captain, making the circular sign with two of his four hands. “So say First. Ad Luna.”

“I guess,” I said. I looked out past the southern barricade. Something about that didn’t sit right. We didn’t need the lizards anymore, not really. Not with such bountiful hunting in the plains and our wranglers managing herds of livestock. But the lizards weren’t the night haunts. They didn’t need to be completely wiped out for the tribe to survive.

But the Midnighters must not have seen it that way.

Chapter 158 - One Small Step

<Your tribe has increased to 3312 members>

Some days later saw the tribe in a frenzy of activity. No attacks meant we could focus on development, and our renewed friendship with the Ifrit meant we had access to the Brass City’s artificers along with the gratitude of the 1,000 name king. We put those artificers to good use, having the Ifrit craft components more precise and exacting than could ever come out of a goblin forge. Transistors, solenoids, crystals for radio tuning and control—they didn’t need to know how radio waves or electricity worked in order to built devices that would use them. And we’d put those instruments into two small test rockets to get metrics, pointed them at the sky, and turned them on. Now it was time for the real thing. Our first flight to deliver a useful payload into orbit waited on the pad.

“Boss! Here’s them figures from the priestesses you wanted!” said Eileen.

I put down the schematics I was reviewing and accepted the sheet of paper from my chief pilot. “Thanks,” I said. The Midnighter priestesses were proving deft number crunchers—not unlike the human calculators that had been critical in the early space program. The Midnighters already had a version of algebra and geometry, and it wasn’t a huge leap to get at least the priestess caste up to speed on trigonometry and some calculus which they did in the dark hollow of the pyramid interior. They also had accurate figures for the size of both Rava and Raphina, as well as the distance between them. We needed tests to know the exact details of orbit around Rava and a trans-lunar insertion to get to Raphina.

Raphina was much closer to Rava than Luna was to Earth—and much larger than our own moon, too. In theory, it shouldn’t take nearly as much fuel to escape Rava’s gravity and travel the 170,000 kilochooms (roughly 97,000 kilometers, at my best conversion guess) to Raphina. But with a two-body mass, we needed a handle on the orbital dynamics. And that’s what today was all about.

Eileen ignored me and pressed her face up against the glass, staring down at the probe currently being fueled. I set the burn and rotation figures down and joined her at the window. From the top of the observatory where we’d put mission control you could see the entirety of Bluff Canaveral, but most importantly you could see the rocket pads we’d dug out. Fuelers on gantries were dumping the volatile mix of kerosene and bomb-fruit juice into the probe’s first-stage tank while other goblins shoveled compacted scat into the boosters. Dangerous job, and one stray flame could send the entire thing up in smoke—which was a real threat, since welders still climbed on the second stage vehicle patching seams in the plating, despite my best efforts to secure them.

“Those lunatics,” I muttered. I turned around to look at the various stations around the room. Each of the twenty stations was crewed with a taskmaster, making it the highest concentration of leadership in the whole tribe. Each taskmaster had a radio connection to their own team, as well as a simple console with a radio repeater to instrumentation aboard the probe. “Get those igni off the rocket!”

Many of those consoles burned with subtle fire from the Ifrits. My own station glowed as well, with the newly reunited Taquoho after Tabun and Horal had returned to the bluff via radio. “It seems ill-advised to fuel presently,” they said, flickering in alarm.

“No kidding,” I said. A couple scrappers down below were already shouting and waving at the igni. What did they even still have to weld? I’d been over every square meter of that rocket myself.

“Boss, are we really gonna ride one of those?” asked Eileen. “I can’t believe something that big is gonna fly!”

In actuality the probe was small, by Earth rocket standards. It wasn’t going to Raphina, just to orbit for metrics and communications. The tiny payload at the top would separate once we hit 250 kilochooms of altitude, which I estimated would be around the lowest stable orbit. Thanks to having jets with both instruments and the System’s flight data screen, it was easy to verify that we had accurate instrumentation before loading it onto the rocket.

“Sure will,” I said. “The ones we’re going to ride will have to be much bigger. More fuel to lift personnel and equipment, and more fuel to lift the fuel to lift personnel, and so on. But we’ll get there.”

The fuelers finished loading the boosters down below and pulled the trucks away from the rocket. I turned back to the room. “Alright, go-time, people! We’re wings up in 15 minutes. I want preflight checks!” I pointed at each station in turn.

“Weather!”

“Winds are good, boss!”

“Radio control!”

“Gettin control surface feedback, boss!”

“Telemetry!”

“Instruments are readin’, boss!”

“Air traffic!”

“Path’s clear, boss!”

“Person—”

<Your tribe has decreased to 3,250 members>

I turned around as the floor began to rumble. Massive gouts of flame and smoke had erupted from the blast pit and the trench that held the rocket. The window in the control center rattled in its fitting. I looked over my shoulder. “… Booster ignition?”

My ignition system taskmaster pulled at his fur. “Argh! You said go-time, boss! I didn’t know you were gonna say ‘in 15 minutes’ next! When you say go, I go!”

I almost pulled out a few of my own tufts. We had two rogue solid rocket boosters going off down below, and over 100 vaporized goblins to show for it. I pointed to my damage control task master. “Evacuate the rest of the landing area, now!”

“Do we abort?” asked Taquoho.

“No,” I said, vaulting over the first row of consoles. “The longer those solid boosters are burning, the hotter that blast pit is going to get. We have to get those boosters off the ground before the first stage tank explodes!”

I pulled up to the flight control console. “Give me primary ignition!” I called.

The primary ignition taskmaster tilted his head and pressed a finger to the side of his nose, winking. “In 15 minutes, right boss?”

“No, now!”

He squawked and began flipping toggles. The rumbling in the floor got stronger, and the telemetry dials started to shift. “Primary ignition, boss!”

“Eileen, take the flight surface controls,” I said. My chief pilot ran up next to me and seized the stick for the rocket’s yaw controls. I pointed at the gyroscope repeater. “Keep that nose true,” I said. I had my own hands on the stick for the pitch and roll thrusters. The horizon on the gyroscope started to shift, and I hauled back on the stick, forcing the nose level again.

Outside, I could see the nose of the rocket lifting—including a half-dozen goblins who hadn’t cleared the welding area before my trigger-happy booster taskmaster. Nothing for it now, they were about to test the extent of the goblin fall damage immunity. The bottom half of the rocket was glowing red from the flame backwash of the boosters. I flicked my eyes back and forth from the telemetry to the rocket itself as it rose up from the Canaveral launch pit with a roar so loud I couldn’t even hear myself think.

The rest of the taskmasters were going wild, cheering and jumping and climbing on the consoles. but we weren’t out of it yet.

“Lift-off!” I said. “Start the chronometer. We can still salvage this. Maybe.”

The Ifrit had given us something that we’d been sorely missing—a spring-powered clock. I watched the numbers flip, counting up the seconds. At this point, I just wanted to get the rocket as clear of the bluff as I could in case it decided to explode—a very likely event, given the damage it had already sustained.

I pushed the stick forward as the wind caught the rocket, and Eileen did the same on my other side. I continued to make small adjustments, putting my weight into the stick and checking it against telemetry. We were flying completely by radio control and instrumentation.

“5 degrees pitch down,” I called.

“Onnit,” said Eileen.

“Two minutes, boss.”

“10 degrees,” I said.

I pulled back on the stick a little more as we passed 15 kilochooms of altitude. Eileen did the same beside me, bringing the nose to a 10 degree pitch down as our altitude continued to climb and our airspeed increased.

“Three minutes, boss! Boosters are empty.”

“Disengage boosters,” I said.

<Component Technology Unlocked: Scrap’em boosties>

“Good break, boss!”

Overhead, the two side boosters would be separating from the primary rocket as we continued to burn through the first-stage liquid tank. The altitude and airspeed continued to climb.

I don’t suppose you could give me the flight data for the rocket?”

<The goblins aboard are viewing it.>

Christ, they still hadn’t let go? We were already passing the 30 kilochoom mark, and the rocket was likely over the ocean.

<Those goblins are currently falling. I referred to those stowing away in the payload compartment.>

“King Apollo, given the rate of climb and the chronometer output, will you have enough fuel to reach orbit?” asked Taquoho.

I glanced at the first-stage fuel tank quickly draining. “No idea.”

Eileen grunted beside me. “65 kilochooms. What altitude did the plan have us staging?”

“110,” I answered. The tank on the first stage ran dry a few seconds later, about 30 kilochooms lower than I’d hoped. “Separate first stage.”

One of my taskmasters (hopefully more competent than the one at NuEarth) slammed his toggle. “First stage separated, boss!”

I looked over my shoulder. “Second stage ignition in 5 seconds.”

“Onnit, boss. Here we go!”

I held my breath. If the rocket was going to explode, the heat stress from the pit would probably cause it to do so here. But I watched the altitude continue to tick up, and up, and then climb even more rapidly.

“100 kilochooms, boss. We gotta pitch her down,” said Eileen.

“Keep climbing, we need to make up for 30 seconds of wasted burn on the ground.”

Eileen shook her head. “We need airspeed! I looked at those bug squiggles, boss. I don’t know what they told you, they ain’t even got pictures. But I’m tellin’ you we need to pitch.”

I grit my teeth and considered. I had the math and experience, but Eileen had a natural intuition for pilotage that few humans I’ve met could claim. “Alright,” I said, relinquishing the thruster controls. “Pitch her down. Easy.”

“Pitchin to halfsies,” said Eileen. She barely put any force on her stick as she slowly brought the nose of the rocket down to 45 degrees, introducing more forward airspeed we continued to climb.

“You have passed 140 kilochooms, King Apollo,”

“Thanks Taquoho,” I said. I glanced at the dial for our radio reception. It had already begun to flutter. With Tribe Apollo being the only source of broadcasts in the entire world, there was no interference. But even with the C2 jet airborne as a relay, we were pushing the limits of our range with this launch—and who knew what kind of stellar interference we’d get in the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

“Ok,” said Eileen. “We got this boss. I can feel it. Pitch to 75.”

“Pitch to 75 degrees,” I said, watching as the console pitch angle started to tip down. “Ok, level it out.”

I felt my shoulders relax. The dial for our radio reception was near zero. I reached up and hit set the timer for the engine shut-off and the payload release before we lost connection entirely.

“Payload release is set, boss!” said one of my taskmasters. “Releasing in 30 seconds.”

The dial for our radio connection dropped to zero. Did the remaining fuel in the rocket and its current momentum have enough energy to make it to orbit? All that was left to do was wait.