My Big Goblin Space Program chpt 142-144

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Chapter 142 - The Stars’ Measure

“I have told you,” said the priestess. “We have come to observe Raphina more closely.”

I looked at Rufus.

“It is the truth…” he said. Then, casting a nervous glance at the priestess and the elite guards, added “Not the whole truth.”

“That’s better than an outright lie, I suppose,” I said. I gestured to the bluff. “But why here specifically? Habberport had a dozen towers taller than any of our bluffs, and other infrastructure besides. The City of Brass is much further developed and can provide you with delicate components. As soon as I said you could set up here, every Midnighter delegation instantly changed direction and headed this way.” I narrowed my eyes. “You know something you’re not telling me,” I said.

Rather than looking chagrinned, the priestess stood up straighter. “You are correct, King Apollo. The observatory is not the only reason—nor the primary reason—my kin now brave Raphina’s shadow. But these are not my secrets to offer, as they touch on the reflections of time yet to pass. I face reprisal for revealing even this. I beg time only for my superior to arrive that she of authority might make everything clear.”

I glanced at Rufus.

“She’s telling the truth,” I he said.

I sighed. At the end of the day, I needed the midnighters. I needed their calculations on the size and relative distance between celestial bodies. That information would save us months of testing and careful data collection—the precision of which might not even be possible for creatures like goblins. I highly doubted spacial geometry or calculus were anywhere in the Goblin Tech Tree. And they were months we may not have. Habberport wasn’t staging all those troops and dragon riders for show.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll wait to hear from your priestess. But we don’t have forever.”

“No, King Apollo. We do not have forever. She is making all haste. This, my promise to you.”

I glanced at Rufus. He nodded. Truth.

“All right, then. Can you at least tell me what so concerns you about the moon?”

The priestess leaned down and chittered with her attendants for a moment. She lifted the hands on her right side and gestured toward the telescope. “Come.”

I followed the priestess to the large scope where it rested in its gimbal. Sheets of brass had been erected as windbreaks to keep the device steady atop the pyramid, making a conical structure. But it wasn’t terribly different from observatories I’d visited on Earth (except for the Very Large Array in New Mexico, for obvious reasons). The biggest difference is that the chair beneath the observation lens of the telescope was designed for someone of insectile proportions. Most of the adjustment rings and wheels I could at least guess at. It also lacked the computerized controls and motor-driven stabilization of modern telescopes, but those were replaced with a small team of Midnighter serfs making constant adjustments.

At the priestess’ invitation, I climbed up into the seat and peered through the view-finder. Cla’thn herself began to turn wheels and the crosshairs shifted to a point near Raphina’s horizon where a region of pink trees met a dark shadow. I switched from the viewfinder to the main optic as Cla’thn worked the focus ring.

“A little more… back it off a little… there!”

The planet’s surface came into view, and the dark shadow resolved into a dead and rotting bog, dark and smoky, with a low-lying mire fog. It stretched on for miles and miles, butting up directly against a forest of pink-leafed trees.

“It’s a swamp,” I said. I looked up from the optic. “We have those here. Why are you so interested in this?”

“Observe, o’king.”

The priestess reached out and grabbed yet another ring, one that I hadn’t seen any of the adherents touch. As she spun it, a feeling of potential energy rose in the air. The lens of the telescope wavered, and the air on the other side took on a colorful shimmer, like light refracting through water. I peered back into the optic. As I watched, the line of living, healthy forest began to track back across the surface of Raphina. Dead bog turned to living, vibrant forest. Slowly, the march of decay reversed, until all that I’d seen on the surface was restored. I pulled away from the lens and looked through the viewfinder. The surface of Raphina remained unchanged, where the shadow met the light. The scope itself contained the shifting tableau.

I swallowed, remembering that the priestess was also a sorceress. She had access to the Midnighter magic, and who knew what other tricks.

“What am I looking at?” I asked.

“The past, o’ king. Ripples do not travel only ahead of us. They show, too, where we once walked.”

Cla’thn released her grip on the ring, and it slowly returned to its original position. The charged feeling in the air dissipated, as did the shimmer around the scope. In the main viewer, the image wavered, and the death and decay once again overtook the live growth.

“What’s the time scale on this event?” I asked.

“Many hundreds of years,”

I pushed back from  the scope and looked at Raphina again. The dark shadow wasn’t just on one part of the planet, it crept in from the dark side of the moon at several locations, though none so prominent as the one the telescope focused on. “It looks like a blight of some sort, a floral mass extinction event.” I eyed the priestess. “It doesn’t stop there, does it? You’ve seen what happens.”

Cla’thn remained silent, but her adherents chittered amongst themselves, and she was too busy trying to keep her hands still to notice them.

“And it concerns you, more than a rotting bog on another world ought to. Why? What has the blight got to do with you? With us?”

“Please, King Apollo,” said Cla’thn. She rubbed her forearms together, almost frantically. “I can speak of this no more. I beg you not press further.”

I wanted to grill her until the answers spilled out. But I also saw the elite queen’s guard warriors start to edge forward, hands nearing weapons at belt or shoulder. They couldn’t kill us all, but they could carve a path clear of the bluff, if need be. And then I’d get no answers from the Midnighters. Ever.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll speak to your boss when they get here. Until then, please continue your work.”

Cla’thn relaxed, and made a subtle gesture with a hand behind her. Her guards relaxed, and a different kind of tension seemed to go out of the air.

I turned to go, Rufus and Armstrong in tow. I felt like I was close to the answers I was looking for—but some of the pieces were missing. A blight on Raphina’s forests, a moon that had locked itself to one corner of the sky. A tribe of future-seers that had looked into the future’s shimmering ripples and were utterly terrified of what they saw, or perhaps could no longer see.

What was I missing? Part of it was simply my lack of understanding in how this world worked on a fundamental level. Moons don’t just lock themselves to one continent. Except apparently, here, they could. The amount of energy it would take to shift the orbit of something the mass of Mercury was mind-boggling, even before you took into account that the tidal forces of such an action would rip Raphina to pieces (and probably destroy all life on the surface of Rava in the process). What could do such a thing? Could System have that much sway over physics? Presumably it presided over the entire skill system for the entirety of the planet, effectively re-writing the governing logic of the physical world to impose an entirely new set of rules. Did that field extend to the moon? Did it originate from the moon?

System was, of course, completely silent on the matter.

Well if the answers were on the moon, I was going to have to go and get them myself. Hopefully I wouldn’t be too late to visit those vanishing forests before they were gone forever.

Chapter 143 - To Ride the Roll of Thunder

<Your tribe has increased to 1951 members>

I left the bug priestess to her devices, despite being unsatisfied with the meager answers I’d gotten from her. But pushing the issue further wouldn’t get them for me. It would just push them further away as the Midnighters withdrew. But that didn’t stop me from dwelling on the encounter for the next several days. The scientist side of me hated not knowing. There was knowledge to be gained, new fields to explore. The fact that they had access to see possible futures as well as what had happened in the past… It defied logic. Which, I guess, that’s what magic is at a fundamental level: a defiance of logic.

Still, I wondered how far could they apply their concepts? Could they see the surface of Raphina 1,000 years ago? The creation of the planet? With a powerful enough sorceress and telescope, could they look at the primordial creation of the universe? As much as I disdained the secrecy and the hoarding of knowledge, the Midnighters were not only a major military might on Rava, but they were at least as advanced as humans and elves—albeit in different ways. I needed them in my corner. But I also needed to fulfill my obligation to Lura Sunskin.

I wrenched on the outside of a jet engine with Promo while Tamaho worked on the interior.

“The null-devil devours magic, both natural and spun by the peoples of this world. It seeks to enter The City as it was built upon the largest natural magic spring in Lanclova.” Tamaho explained. “This spring sustains the Ifrit in the city.”

I fitted a fan blade into place on the compressor and waited as Promo secured it. ‘Secured’ is a strong word, since it still rattled quite loose in its fitting. On Earth that meant a non-serviceable engine. For goblins, it just meant a little wiggle-room. “So what about you and the other Ifrit here? Don’t you also need it?”

“There are few enough of us here that the natural ambient magic suffices. It is not an offering of luxury, but we gladly accept the leaning provisions for the chance to gorge in your artifice.”

“Well, if this works, You’ll be eating plenty. If we can get a radio set up in the City of Brass, Ifrit can come and go as they please. I just wish we could count on support from the city itself.”

A pale blue flame licked out of a relief valve, as though Tamaho waved the notion away. “Too stuck in their ways and their walls, King Apollo. They would not believe such a thing could be done—though your wish to aid they who turned their vessels from you is admirable. All the more reason we must show them.”

I nodded, pulling back and wiping the grease off my face. “This one’s done. Let’s get it down to the ground.”

The interceptors and heavy fighters had proved themselves in the battle against the night haunt nest and the last of the elven commandos. They were much more capable in air-to-air engagements than the helicopters, though we’d still lost over a third of our fleet in the process. That just meant an opportunity for improvement and iteration, The third generation of fighters were the ones I built for the orcs. These were the aircraft Lura Sunskin and her hunters would take into the sky in order to hunt the greatest trophy beast in Lanclova. And she’d be backed up by Tribe Apollo. As much as she vexed me during the Stampede with her ploys, jibes, and machinations, I liked Lura. Her competitive nature reminded me of my own, and I wanted to see her come out the other side of this.

That meant, first and foremost, a plane that didn’t explode when she started the engine up.

I watched as the gen-2 jet fighter was strapped up and lifted onto the back of a flatbed buggy so that it could be taken to the base of the cliff. The bluff was abuzz with energy. All hands had been working on this project in some way, whether it was Sally designing the new parts and systems, Buzz shoring up cranes and transport infrastructure, or Hadfield sending a higher volume of kerosene from Huntsville. Promo and his igni had worked tirelessly fabricating and heat-shaping the frames and skins of the aircraft from steel and whistler hide.

I rode the freight elevator down with the jet, to where the rest of the fleet waited under the shelter of meager hangars. We had sixteen of the goblin-driven jets plus one heavier command and control craft, and now eight additional jets designed for orc pilots. The lanky creatures wouldn’t fit in the cramped cockpits of an interceptor, or even the seats of a hobgoblin heavy fighter. But that also meant goblins and hobbies would struggle to pilot the new craft. Sourfang and several members of the Flock were already down at the air strip, waiting for us to finish this last orc fighter. They’d be piloting the jets on our way down south. Eileen and Chuck were preflighting the rest of the fleet and getting it ready to get underway.

There were also about 500 other goblins all turned out to watch the spectacle, instead of working like they should be. Most of them were probably looking for a chance to stow away. Well, at least we didn’t want for volunteers. Swing a bucket once, fill it twice and all that.

The crowd started to hoot and cheer when they saw the buggy rolling up with the final jet—or maybe it was for their king riding it. I stood up on the top of the aircraft and waved, which just about sent the crowd into a frenzy. Armstrong’s scrappers were lined up trying to maintain a perimeter, but half of them had their necks craned to watch the spectacle as well.

We pulled the buggy into the ramp, and I hopped down so that the aircraft could be unloaded and prepped. I went over to where Sourfang stood with his hunters and the keeper that had accompanied us. The old orc woman spun her beads between her fingers.

“Is Lura ready for us?” I asked.

Keeper offered a sly smirk and lowered the beads into my reach. “Rather would you listen for yourself, again?”

I held my palms up and away. “I’ll leave the orc magic to the orcs, I think. We’ll stick to radios.”

“At the Sun Rock Flats, Lura awaits your iron wings. And with great patience, she has bade me remind you.”

“Look, developing an advanced aerospace program in a few weeks isn’t like baking flatbread,  you know,” I said. I sputtered as the beads began to spin in Keeper’s fingers. “Don’t tell her I said that!”

Sourtooth limped up. “That huntress has spite enough without your words to rile, little brother.” He offered his wrist, and I took it. “Fair winds or such nonsense.”

“Thanks, Sourtooth. I wish you were coming with us.”

The sour old orc spat on the ground. “I’ve no wish to know the face of the null-devil. Tis a youthful folly, and mine own youth drained long ago—and urged much of my hair along for its company.” His face twisted up, as though something pained him. “But the bluff will be lessened,  absent your countenance, little brother.”

“Sourtooth!” I said, faux-gasping with a hand over my mouth. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

One of the other hunters muttered something that sounded like “Nicest thing he’s said to any of us,” and the old orc whipped around, all camaraderie replaced by his customary grimace.

“Be glad you’re riding yon winged chariot, cur. Tis more ample a punishment than I could conjure.”

I whistled for attention and gave the mount up gesture, to much cheering.

“You’re sure the Tech Tree skills are transferrable?” I asked Sourtooth again.

“Oh, aye. A mount’s a mount, be it beast or twin turbid. Cunning pilots, the lads will make. Make no mistake—this flock you’ve given wings.”

Just to be safe, I had a wrangler riding co-pilot with each of Sourtooth’s boys. The orc and hobgoblin teams went to their aircraft. Armstrong cast a glance at the interceptors that were much too small for a scrapper, especially one of his size. “I guess I’ll be seeing you on the other side, boss,” he said.

“Nah, you’re with me, Armstrong.” I pointed at the largest aircraft on the runway, where Eileen was scrambling up a set of runs to a high-mounted cockpit over a gun tied down with a dust cover. The barrel protruded through the jaws of a night haunt silvermane skull. I figured if we were going up against a monster with a triple digit level, we were going to need protections against fear.

“For real?” he asked.

“Someone’s got to shoot the big gun,” I said.

By the time we made it over, Eileen already had the gunship’s three turbine engines spinning up. We scrambled into the lower bay where an entire crew of goblins waited in the fat-bellied beast. Some were gunners, others mechanics. A half-dozen sparkers worked the various electrical and radio systems. If Gemini-II was our assault craft, this was our aerial command and control. They all stopped when they saw me climb aboard. “As you were, men!” I called out. “Keep up the exemplary work!” Their backs straightened, and they worked just a little more dilligently.

More totems had been stuffed into the bay. I spotted a stone-sloth skull, a trio of javeline skulls, and even the tiny skull of an elf mounted on a pole so slender it vibrated like a macabre bobblehead as Eileen opened up the throttle.

System?

<Squad Elf Totem: Goblins who admire this totem will be able to approach monsters more closely before being noticed and, likely, devoured.>

Convenient, considering our task. The totem benefits in the command aircraft affected all of the other jets in the fleet, as long as we kept them within a few kilometers. Which was good, because we were going to need every advantage we had.

Chapter 144 - Horde Away From Home

Eileen guided the command craft up and away from Bluff Apollo, angling south toward the badlands and eventually the desert.

Forest goblin, hobgoblin, noblin, and the odd boglin all worked around the gun deck, even if what they worked at was trying to stay busy in front of the goblin emperor.

But me? I simply leaned out the hatch and watched as the terrain passed below. The broad wings trailed clouds greasy, oily exhaust behind them, and the fighters to either side made similar trails. We cut lines across the sky, and I marveled. Tribe Apollo had more jet fighters than many actual Earth countries. On top of that, since several of these aircraft were meant for Lura, that meant we were now an aerospace military hardware export nation, which was a very exclusive club back home.

Our progress had no natural mirror on Earth. A jungle tribe had briefly forayed in animal-drawn carts and carriages before transitioning to dirt bikes and engine-driven cars. We’d flown helicopters before inventing tanks, and invented jets before trains or large ships. It made sense for a land-locked heavily forested region to take to the sky. But most cultures on Earth don’t start from scratch with innate knowledge from higher education.

We flew over herds of animals on the badlands being hunted by formations of goblin vehicles and some orcs on their oryx. The hunting rights we’d won were keeping the tribe well-fed. Further south, the badlands flattened even further, until it transitioned into a shimmering salt-flat. The mirage made it look as though we passed over a great lake, but below us a large collection of tents and temporary structures stuck up from the otherwise perfectly flat terrain.

Eileen put us into a bank and the sound of the turbines relaxed. Our altitude slowly ticked down on the status window as we turned, and the goblins behind me started to get very excited at the prospect of invading the orc side of the camp below. Probably to look for any food that had been dropped, as the orcs were undeniably fantastic cooks.

We touched down on the flats, and once we came to a stop, I jumped down from the command craft with Armstrong. A line of orcs wearing the blue and yellow of the Dawn’s Light waited and watched, along with as many goblins—sent in advance to help prepare the airfield to receive and service a dozen aircraft. The air on the flats was dry and sweltering. Dust blew in on the breeze and heat radiated up from the sun-baked flats. and I had to shield my eyes against the oppressive glare of the sun off the salt and quartz.

A familiar orc detached from the waiting pack and strode over. Lura Sunskin looked every bit the champion, dressed in fine leathers and a skirt of blue pattered fabric that I doubted very much the orcs had woven themselves. Weapons hung at her belt with hafts and handles polished and free of rust or tarnish.

“Welcome, little brother king,” she said. She glanced above my head for a moment. “Little brother emperor, I ought say. Of knees bent and heads bowed, you come. Well you’ve fared, since last we met.”

“We’ve had our share of trouble along the way,” I said. “Had to deal with an elf infestation, Midnighters showed up at my door, and we recruited most of the other goblin tribes in the jungle.”

Lura offered just the barest hint of surprise at the mention of the Midnight Queen before mastering her expression. “Hence why sluggish you’ve been, meeting promised deeds.”

Huh. I’d like to see her pull an advanced turbine aircraft fleet out of that skirt. But, liking my head where it was, I kept that thought to myself. Her camp stretched out behind her, as did a veritable army of very capable hunters who were all here to take on the biggest, baddest creature on the continent for nothing other than the sheer sport of it. It would not do well to get on their bad side. And in any case, I liked Lura. Competitive drive was something I understood all too well.

I looked around at the other aircraft beginning to land on the flats. “This is a good area you’ve chosen, Lura. Perfect terrain for runway.” In the distance to the south, I could just see the variance of the desert dunes breaking up the uniform horizon. The edge of the desert was maybe twenty kilometers away. I didn’t know how large the null devil’s territory ranged, but this would be within striking distance of it. “What do you call this place?”

“No name has this stretch of salt, forsaken by beast and bully alike. Tis a place of no value, unless to bake ‘neath the sun is your heart’s deepest wish.”

“Well we can’t very well call it Forsaken by Beast and Bully,” I said.I thought for a moment. “China Lake,” I finally settle on. “This is now China Lake.”

Armstrong nudged me. “Umm, boss? Did we miss the lake part?”

I didn’t feel like explaining the aviation history behind China Lake to someone who had never even seen California, so I ignored the question. If I understood the orc appreciation for ironic humor, I imagined Lura would approve of the name—and in fact, she nodded her appreciation of it.

“What mean you, that we’ve missed the lake?” she said. She stomped on the hard salt. “Tis right here. We are simply absent water for two day’s ride in any direction.”

Lura’s hunters laughed, and because they laughed, the goblins among them also began to laugh. Armstrong and the other secretive service members, not wanting to be left out, joined in as well.

Lura’s grin softened. “Now, little brother, I am no stranger to the riding of a winged beast of tooth and claw. But such creatures have not the fleetness of the sky devil, and flag before reaching its heights. Tell me of these iron birds you’ve wrought to bear us higher and faster into the sky.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” I said, rubbing my hands together.

As the rest of the aircraft made approaches and landed, I wove Lura inbetween different models. “These two are goblin interceptors. They won’t do much to your sky devil, but they’re great at running interference. Most of ours are back in the jungle. Those slightly bigger ones are our air-superiority fighters. Wrangler-driven with guns fore and aft.”

We got to the orc fighters. Like the rest of our fleet, these delta-wing aircraft had fat central bodies, but instead of one central turbine like a Sabre, these had one on each wing, and a single large gun protruded from the body.

“This is what you’re really here for,” I said. “These are what your Dawn’s Light pilots will be taking up.”

“Interesting,” said Lura. She ran a hand over one of the muzzles that sat at chest level. “When the dartwing you chased, a similar artifice you employed ‘gainst its flight, yes?”

I nodded. “Similar. It functions practically the same, and you’ll have goblins loading it. But your orcs have much better luck hitting your targets, I’m betting.”

Lura leaned up and peered into the (thankfully) now-still fan duct of one of the turbine engines on the side of the fuselage. “These are how it propels itself across the sky?”

“Yep. You won’t understand them through the auxiliary skill transfer—they’re too deep in the Goblin Tech Tree. All your aircraft will have technicians aboard. But the basic flight controls, aerodynamics, push-to-talk radios, and weapons? No problem. All that’s left is…” I waved my hand, “…to do that thing Sourtooth did in order to partner up.”

Lura raised her gaze to the sky. “Grandfather?”

<By partnering with the Dawn’s Light, you can share certain tribal benefits from both groups—including temporary access to the Goblin Tech Tree. Note that auxiliary races may not be able to create or properly operate many advanced goblin devices.>

The eyes of the orcs in the Dawn’s Light faction glazed over as a mild tech trance passed over them. Once it passed, they begin to crowd forward and examine the aircraft with a new level of interest and understanding.

Lura’s own eyes cleared, and began to flick back and forth as she no doubt began to examine menus I couldn’t see.

“Oh little brother, mine,” she said with a grin and a sing-song voice. “You have been holding out on me.”

“See anything else you like?” I asked.

In response, she turned around.

“Fire up the forges, lads!”