MBGSP chpt 150 - 152

Hey everyone! The null devil arc is drawing to its climax here, and the story is swinging towards its final arcs. In a couple weeks on the Patreon will be some big story reveals (many of which readers have guessed from hints and foreshadowing), and we're still on track to wrap up the third book in under 200 total chapters.

I want to thank everyone for following on Patreon to support me and the story, and I hope that when I launch my next project you'll continue to follow.

Chapter 150 - The Null Brood

I pulled on the discarded headset from our missing tail gunner. “Lura, our tail’s clear, but won’t be for long.”

“Perhaps we ought have kept to plans simply to look, little brother!”

“No need to rub it in,” I muttered.

I only had a moment before the nymphs would be on us. Sighting through the viewfinder on the gun, I began to rattle off rounds at the encroaching null broodlings.  Armstrong squeezed his way up behind me to lean out into the ferocious wind with his rifle, taking shots at the creatures that pushed in on our port and starboard sides. The young ones were fast, nearly as fast as a goblin interceptor—which really wasn’t that fast in terms of jet fighters. But I hadn’t expected anything on Rava to be able to keep up with a turbojet engine.

Lura banked us around, taking the fighter back toward the battle. Our pursuers gave chase as well, and soon rockets were spitting from both fore and aft as we shot through the swarm.

“Draw them north! Away from the city, lest these minor dragons worm their way within its walls to escape us,” said Lura.

While not exactly for altruistic reasons, I did appreciate the effort to pull the fight away from the Ifrit city. The devastation if these tinier version of the magic-devouring beasts had managed to get in through cracks too small to permit the adult… It might be an end to an ancient civilization.

I spun my gun to the left to spit rockettes at a nymph that had to be at least as long as the orc fighter. The hits weren’t lethal, but they did knock it to the side, and the wind catching its underbelly slowed it as though we’d attached one of the recoilless rifle drogue chutes. I felt Armstrong twist behind me, and his gun sounded on the opposite side—answered by an unearthly shriek as his shots hit home.

We banked sharply, enough that I had to hold onto the gun mount to avoid being thrown from the rear turret. I risked a glance behind to see Lura had cut in on three broodlings giving chase to one of the other orc fighters. With bursts from her cannons, she quickly cut down two of the beasts, and dove to avoid the third as it circled back and threw itself at us. I had to duck back down into the turret in order to avoid the creature stoving in my head as it skipped off the top of our aircraft with the shriek of stressed metal. When I stuck my head back out, I saw that its claws had torn furrows in the skin of the fuselage.

“Quiet, are these cannons, now,” said Lura. “My quiver is spent. We must roost this iron hawk and file fresh its talons.”

The shadow of the null devil passed overhead, casting just as much shade as Raphina. I grit my teeth as Lura poured on the throttle, pushing us clear of the swarm. Two more of the orc fighters followed suit, though they all had to be running low on ammunition. I shot at one of the broodlings who attempted to keep pace, but they turned rather than travel too far from the full-grown null devil. But we had its attention now. The massive beast seemed to have lost all interest in breaching the City of Brass.

“Look ahead, little brothers. Joined the hunt, have your kin!”

I twisted around in the turret, looking at the line of black dots in the sky to the north. A dozen more aircraft were screaming in at full throttle. The fast, nimble goblin interceptors piloted by Eileen’s most lunatic air delivery pilots raced toward us, and a salvo of 24 missiles streaked overhead. Some impacted early against broodlings, and some veered off to God-knows where. But most of them flew on to strike the null devil. Even goblin accuracy couldn’t miss a target that size.

The fighters passed us, and then broke formation to engage the broodlings in tight dogfights with their nose guns. The nimble goblin interceptors weaved in and out of the cloud of juvenile devils, covering our retreat. I saw one interceptor go down to a trio of broodlings that latched onto it. Another crashed against the hide of the null devil.

“Boss, four more Ifrit just landed at China Lake,” came Eileen’s voice, relaying the messages she got through the command jet.

“Eileen!” I called. “The interceptors are in the fray, but the orc fighters are bingo on fuel and ammo.”

“The hobgoblin heavies should be there soon, and the rest of the orc jets were almost ready to take off.”

I watched the null devil swat at a plane who barely managed to avoid the monolithic claw. Another lost a portion of its wing to a collision with a broodling, but somehow managed to stay airborn. Hopefully they got here soon, because this was far from a sure thing. The dozens of small parachutes that dotted the obsidian hide needed to be hundreds. And now with the broodlings in the mix, that was going to be even harder to achieve. I had tried to build for every contingency. I had planned for the creature’s hide being nearly impervious, I had planned for it climbing to 15,000 meters or more in altitude. I had planned for it to be smart, fast, ruthless, and as tough as a granite mountain. I hadn’t planned for it to come with a posse.

But we would adapt. We had the tools, the knowledge, and the skills. I kept the gun pointed behind us. Lura turned the nose north and retreated with the other orc fighters who had spent their payloads. A few minutes later, we passed a wave of hobgoblin fighters, and a few minutes after that you could hear the thunderous rumble of their missiles striking the creature and, worryingly, it’s even-louder answering roar.

My hands itched with nothing to do. My goblins were fighting behind us, and I was on my way out. Ahead of me, in the sky, a fat dot resolved into the C2 jet, hanging heavy in the air with its trio of engines.

“Lura,” I said into my mouthpiece, “can you match our course and speed with that one?”

“Aye, tis less hawk than goose. We can match it easily.”

“Good, I want to transfer over to it.”

“Perhaps my ears ring too thick with blood.”

“Just trust me! Eileen?”

“Onnit, boss!”

Ahead, the command and control jet banked slightly to accommodate us, and Lura lined us up directly underneath as slow as the jet could go without stalling. Overhead, a hatch opened at the bottom, and a knotted cord trailed down with a hook at the end. I managed to catch it and fasten it inside the turret.

“Alright, Lura, we’re going across. We’ll send back crewmen to undo the line and fly the rest of the way back to China Lake with you.”

“You’d best send a pilot, as well. If you think not that I’ve seen yon cannon on the great gull above, you are mistaken. I am no ferry-man when fighting is to be done.”

“Read you loud and clear,” I said. “We’ll sort it.” I gestured for Armstrong to go first, and then shimmied up the rope after him. Even with the buffeting wind, we had no trouble scaling the knotted cord thanks to our natural goblin climbing ability. Several goblins and hobgoblins already waited above, ready to swap with us. They dropped down once we were through the deck hatch, and only one of them missed the rope and flew off into the desert.

A few minutes later, Lura’s head emerged through the hole in the floor, red-faced and hair blown into disarray. Her air bottle was clipped to her belt, and the leather mask was tight against her face.

“How was swapping out for a hobgoblin pilot?” I asked, grinning. “Those cockpits are awful tight.”

“I wish not to discuss it, little brother,” Lura grumbled, eyes narrowing behind her flight goggles. She glanced back through the hatch and shook her head. “Madness,” she declared, straightening.

The cord below us was unhooked and hauled back up by the goblins. I turned my attention to the frenetic hive of activity that was the lower level of the command ship. Goblins packed the compartment wall to wall, squabbling and squawking as sparkers worked radios and tried to coordinate the wings of goblin fighters. The totems mounted throughout the cabin glowed and flickered, as though their benefits were being tested by the null devil’s silencing effect on the System. Igni prepped small arms and tube launchers at a small armory, and goblins were donning their protective plate vests and ceramic skull masks.

Lura waded through the sea of blue fur, following us to the forward end of the aircraft. A palpable tinge of voltage hung in the air at this end of the jet, and buzzing banks of electrical equipment arced and spat sparks under the watchful eyes of sparkers. Each one snaked into a single opening much like the nose ball turret on the orc fighters, connecting to an assembly of rails and gears and ceramic bearings that formed a huge gimbal built around a long-barreled gun half as long as the aircraft itself. Wind howled through the gaps in the paneling.

“It’s actually good you’re here,” I shouted. “This takes a crew of several to operate.”

“What is this beast called?” asked Lura, running a hand across its metallic surface.

“The System called it a steely sparky huck’em. But where I’m from, we called them railguns.”

Chapter 151 - Steely Sparky Huck’Ems

Though we could already see the battle happening, we had a few minutes before we’d reach it.

“It fires those,” I said, pointing to a rack of ferrous rods at the rear of the turret. Lura picked one up.

“Full access to your tech tree denied, was I. Yet I know that your rockettes require a source of gas and a pressure vessel to perform. Yet, I see neither.

“That’s because this thing uses electromagnetism,” I said. I pointed up to the circular discs lining the rails. “Each one of those is a wrap of copper wire. When a charge is applied, they create a powerful repulsive field that sends this carriage—” I pointed to a shiny metal housing bracketed between the rails “—down the length of the barrel, accelerating the iron dart.

Lura peered at the carriage. “Tis the attracting metal of the whistler’s tail!” she realized.

“You need powerful magnets to make a railgun work. And a lot, and I mean a lot of electricity. This jet isn’t just a command vehicle. It’s basically a giant generator pumping as much voltage as it can, and it’s all going right here.”

Railguns on Earth had been experimented with for decades as a replacement for missiles and artillery. For a long time, people had even thought they would be a way to deliver cargo into orbit. What they turned out to be was a big, expensive waste. They were bulky and unreliable. The parts wore out too quick to be useful in combat, they were too expensive to mass produce because of the rare earth elements, and they weren’t guided by computers like cruise missiles were.

Ironically, all the things that made them awful on Earth made them perfect for goblins. The Goblin Tech Tree seemed to thrive on devices that were loud, obnoxious, impractical, and outright hazardous to the user. Railguns checked all four boxes—to the point where the System had unlocked the tech as soon as we’d hooked up the primitive capacitor banks.

“Lura, you’ll be on aiming duty,” I said, pointing up to the gunner’s seat. “Armstrong, you’ll be loading. The gun is controlled from this station here at the front, which is where I’ll be firing when you give the word.”

Lura looked down at me. “I notice the firing station is behind finger-thick steel shields,” she said flatly.

“Look, it was an uphill battle even getting that,” I said. “If it makes you feel better, I was pushing for it to be on the aiming station instead, but the weight was too much for the gimbals.”

“It does not,”  she said, looking at the conspicuously unarmored seat with the aiming controls and viewfinder.

“Trade?” I asked.

“Not on your life, little brother king,” she said, gripping the rungs that led up to the gunner’s chair and hauling herself up. “Damnable goblin contraptions. I shall look upon Sourtooth’s remaining limbs with envy, by the end of this. Mark these words.”

“If it helps,” I said, we still have to get through the dozens of swarming juveniles in order to get close enough for a shot,” I said.

“It does not!” the dawn huntress snarled down. I made my way forward to the firing control system, which was more like a bank of toggle switches—the full on Frankenstein’s Castle throw lever style switches—that controlled the various functions that would either let the gun fire, or blow up the front half of the aircraft. In theory. Since System had unlocked the device without a shot, I hadn’t wanted to risk testing it. I didn’t know how many uses we would get out of the rails before the whole thing failed catastrophically. But I felt like knowing that wouldn’t improve Lura’s disposition. She had her white whale, and I’d just handed her a million-volt harpoon.

Around me, other goblins were moving into position with guns and tube launchers, angling them through the holes in the paneling. I may not have planned for the null devil to split, but after fighting the silvermane night haunt swarms, I wasn’t keen to be caught out by a numerically superior flying force again.

A trio of hobgoblins hauled back on a chair, opening the roll door at the front of the jet. The gale of wind redoubled as the front of the turret became exposed to the open air. A  canoneer somewhere in the press lost hold of his papers in the storm, and they whipped throughout the compartment before being sucked out one of the open panels on the side. Lura maneuvered the gun within its confines, the whole assembly gliding effortlessly on ceramic bearings and discrete motors.

“Boss, orcs!” said a hobgoblin I didn’t recognize. To our left and right, the remaining orc fighters were drawing abeam with us, and then pushing past a line of spent goblin interceptors limping their way back to China Lake with empty magazines. We were grinding at this thing with a will to bury it—spending resources that should have rightly gone to rocketry and launching our first satellites into Rava’s orbit. But seeing this alien, this thing-that-should-not-be leaving its black smudge on reality itself made me believe it was all worth it. The null devil couldn’t be allowed to wreak further damage to this planet or its people. It now trailed dozens of small, white drogue chutes, but our side wasn’t without losses.

The Sands far below were dotted with blackened, smoking smudges of their own where at least 6 or 8 aircraft had been disabled or destroyed and their debris scattered across the dunes. If it came down to a measure between the null devil and its brood versus the fighter fleet of Tribe Apollo, the null devil would eventually win out. I’m sure of it.

It was time to put our finger on the scale.

“Boss,  here they come!” shouted a noblin ignis.

Sure enough, at least a score of the sky devil brood were headed right toward us. We made a compelling target, being the biggest thing in the sky aside from the sky devil that could cut this aircraft in two with its pincers.

“Let ‘em have it!” a scrapper yelled in reply.

Airburst mortar tubes erupted in a fireworks display of explosions ahead of us, rounds detonating in the midst of the broodling swarm. some fell away, hissing or trailing black ichor. The ones who pushed on were treated to the scrapper line of lever guns, and their volley filled the cabin with smoke and foul-smelling soot.

But even that wasn’t enough. Despite being juveniles, these creatures were still the tough apex-predator species that had terrorized the desert for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The C2 jet was a big target, and it had a lot of openings to accommodate the railgun assembly and its air cooling system. The first of the creatures misjudged its approach and ricocheted off the front armor panelling. The second shot through the gap, bowling through goblins by the handful. Some of the riflemen turned, aiming their guns back toward the cabin. But discharging firearms in the tight confines would be just as dangerous to our own people and we couldn’t leave the prow undefended. I whistled and pointed ahead. “Keep firing! Leave that to the response squad!”

A noblin canoneer charged out from the planning room, sheaf of papers in one hand and tesla-wasp spear in the other. He raised the spear high overhead. “For Apollo and the moon!” he shouted.

A flood of forest goblins festooned in engineering symbolds flooded around the canoneer’s legs, choppers, axes, and spears raised high. The zealots made perfect in-fighters, thanks to their small size and stacking damage buff while in proximity to one another. The nymph reared up and hissed, darting toward the charging mass. But was quickly covered in a carpet of falling cleavers and manic, screaming goblins.

Ahead of us, the igni kept up their airburst barrage, punishing the other nymphs who dared push through it. Turrets on the top deck and sides rattled away with self-cycling rockette guns at the creatures coming on our flanks. Further still, the full-size null devil loomed out the front aperture, a black leviathan in the sky that dwarfed reason and defied physics. It had taken notice of the command jet, despite the swarm of fighters exchanging blows with the broodlings in the dark cloud that swirled around it. Another wave of our fighters retreated, hobgoblin heavy fighters this time, shrieking past with empty missile racks and magazines. Most of them bore battle damage from creatures that had gotten close enough to rake them with claws or mandibles. But they’d done their jobs, and they would be back.

 On my console, I threw the switch to begin charging the capacitors. My console threw of a shower of sparks in my face but every goblin connection went up like a bootleg firework, even when functioning properly. The dials began to climb as the power banks flooded with voltage. Next to me, a small grill covered a vox intercom, and I pressed the send switch.

“Eileen, the rails are charging. Take us above the target.”

“Sure thing, boss!”

Chapter 152 - Riding the Rails

The null devil was beginning to resemble a partly-blown dandelion with the number of drogue chutes trailing off the thing. That is, if the dandelion bud and stem looked carved from black, alien onyx. Still, the thing had slowed, even if its broodlings had shed none of their alacrity. But those chutes were under terrible strain as they resisted the pull of the creature, and several had torn free already. This was a battle of our resources against the creature’s endurance. Every basic component material and complex machine we had were funneled to a single front above the desert; the might of an expanding technological kingdom measured against the innate brutality of an ancient and powerful creature.

By rights, this culture shouldn’t exist. The goblins should still be frolicking in the forest with basic spears and stone cleavers, roaming and eating and free of worry. Instead, they were armed with guns and cheering at 15,000 meters in the sky with breath borrowed from compressed air tanks. I could see the curve of Rava’s surface even better than you could see the Earth’s at this altitude owing to its smaller size. And we were still only 1/10th of the altitude we’d need for low orbit. I didn’t know if any creature on this world had ever seen such a thing—other than the null devil itself who had crashed into the planet ages ago.

With its eyeless gaze fixed on us (or more likely, the ifrit in our engines and flight control systems), the null devil pressed towards us.

“How soon until we can fire?” shouted Lura.

“Soon!” I shouted back, watching several of the capacitor banks reach their redlines. At least one had burnt out and gone to zero, and beyond the zealot’s melee I could see sparkers frantically crawling about the electrical cables trying to fix the faults. Armstrong teetered past them with one of the heavy iron spikes, which he loaded into the back of the carriage and secured. The hobgoblin flashed me a thumbs up, and I returned it. On my console, the loaded light winked on, fizzled, and then burnt out. I threw the toggle from charge to arm.

“Clear!” I shouted.

The goblins all edged away from the railgun, which began to traverse as Lura operated the gimbal controls built into the aiming station. The rails protruding from the front of the turret angled down, compensating for Eileen’s steep climb to put us in view of the creatures armor that the missiles had weakened.

“Lura, I don’t know how many shots we’ve got with this thing before it breaks, so make ‘em count,” I said. “Those darts have expanding tips, so they’ll do terrible damage to soft tissue but they won’t punch through armor.”

“Aim then, for the burns and the blast marks,” she said, working the gimbal cranks to see how they affected the pan and tilt of the gun.

“We’re ready to fire on your call!”

More of the broodlings crashed into the hull. I could hear the thumps of their bodies against the outer skin of the aircraft, and the shouting on the deck above us as the crew rallied to repel one that must have gotten aboard. One of the side guns had gone silent. The zealots, having finally finished off the first broodling, screamed and charged back into the main cabin of the command jet.

Lura leaned into the viewfinder and worked the cranks, fine-tuning her aim.

“Fire!” she shouted.

I threw the switch to the fire position.

A flash and a wave of pressure like a rocket detonating early nearly blasted me off my feet. At first I worried the gun had exploded, but when I looked over, the gun was in one piece and the now-empty carriage had slid forward to meet the hard stops. The rails themselves glowed with heat bloom, and two small fires burned at cable connections.

Most telling at all was the five-meter geyser of smoking black ichor that erupted from the null devil’s back, as well as its roar of pain and fury.

“Good hit!” I yelled over the roar. I hauled the firing switch back to the ready position and threw the other switch back to charging.

Lura pulled back from the view finder with her brow furrowed and clicked her tongue. “For some drop I planned. But flew so true did this bolt that I missed my mark by 10 chooms or more.”

“Yeah, if this thing is anything like the old military, it should have almost flat trajectory out to 7 kilometers or so.”

“How far is that?” asked Lura.

I watched the needles rise again. “Do you remember the length of the box canyon where we fought the whistler with those helicopters?”

“I do.”

“Lay 7 of those canyons end to end.”

“Great grandfather spirits!”

I held on to my console as Eileen banked hard to avoid a sudden surge of speed from the null devil that tore loose a dozen more of its drogue chutes. We began to climb, and this time the null devil pursued us higher into the Ravan sky, weaving a slow circle below us. The running dogfight climbed with it, though both fleets had visibly thinned. More of our fighters limped away and fighting was still raging on the deck above us.

Armstrong hauled the carriage back with a hooked pole and loaded another dart. I could hear the thick leather of his gloves sizzling from the heat of the railgun, but our forward air speed supplied a continuous stream of cooling wind to the assembly.

“Uh, boss?” came Eileen’s voice on the intercom.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The, uh, wranglers are saying the little just broke off from the fight.”

“Good! The railgun must have frightened them.”

“Nah, boss,” said Eileen. A note of worry had entered her usually unflappable attitude. “They aren’t scarpin’. They’re all headed for the command jet.”

I stiffened, and then moved to the side to peer out one of the panels. The cloud of swarming broodlings had coalesced into a lance that spiraled up to meet us, even as the orcs and hobgoblins in their jets pursued it mercilessly, cannons rattling rockette trails through the ascending column of miniature null devils.

A heavy fighter The command jet was tough. But it wasn’t take-on-the-entire-brood tough. I ran back to my station. “Clear!” I shouted, throwing the toggle from charge to arm. “Lura, make it quick!”

“Marksmanship such as this is not to be rushed, little brother,” she said, looking through the viewfinder.

“It is when there might not be a plane around us much longer!”

The gimbal was tilted almost vertical, so that the barrel of the railgun hung down below us like a fin cutting through the air. The coils still glowed with heat, and the capacitors were already reaching their redline. 2 more of the broodlings slammed into the side of the jet, followed by another just a few seconds later. The gun on our life side went silent.

“Lura!”

“Rush me not!” she spat back, cranking on the aiming wheels. “Stand ready!”

I gripped the fire toggle, ready to throw it. At the opening near the muzzle of the railgun, one of the null broodlings’ claws wrapped around the metal, and it hissed as it began to worm its way in, heedless of the scrapper fire. It couldn’t have been more than 3 meters away from Lura.

“LURA!”

“Fire!”

I swallowed and threw the second switch.