MBGSP Chpt 133-135

Chapter 133 - The Siege of Red-Rock Rise

It was surreal seeing the bat-winged silhouette of night haunts against the blue afternoon sky. The creatures that hunted forest goblins asleep on their bluffs were night-time terrors, Rava boogeymen. The stuff a mother goblin would whisper to her child to keep them straying too far, if goblins had discrete mother/child relationships.

“Steady!” I shouted. Beside me, non-variant goblins quaked behind hastily erected barricades made primarily from the remains of structures that had already failed to stop the elf’s bewitched night haunts once. I didn’t imagine the second time would be the charm—and I doubted there would be a third. Above, the rapid whump-whump-whump of circling choppers echoed the pace of every goblin’s heartbeat as they looked upon the coming storm.

I didn’t take much comfort in the helicopters. Helicopters are an air support tool for when you have air superiority. They’re not dog-fighting vehicles (because they’re dumb). You need planes for that. The night haunts were closer to fighter planes themselves, fast and nimble with the ability to turn tightly and out-climb a rotor-wing aircraft.

I counted the silhouettes in the sky, but it was difficult to accurately gauge their numbers because their formation twisted and folded in on itself as they approached, flying with that strange coordination the elf magic gave them. But I put their number at somewhere between 18 and 24. Half of the formation split, climbing up to gain an altitude advantage on the helicopters, while the others came straight on. I grit my teeth. The elves actually knew some fundamentals of aerial combat.

Our choppers moved forward to meet them, and the pop of gunfire and the whoosh of flame-throwers came down. The night haunts smashed into the air support like battering rams, sending several choppers spinning out as the weight of the predators sent the light aircraft careening out of control. One of them, still spraying flame, looked like a fiery pinwheel in the sky as it dropped. The night haunt separated to look for a new target while the ruined chopper continued down to the forest floor.

“Here they come!” I shouted. I chambered a rockette in my lever gun.

They were close enough now that I could see the glint of silver in several of their manes. The night haunts that had been harassing us practically since I’d arrived on Rava must have been juveniles, while the silvermanes must have been the adults. The first few came within range of the barricade, and a few over-excited goblins let loose shots that fell woefully short.

“Hoist the colors!” I yelled.

Behind the line, the Red-Rock natives shouted and heaved at ropes. A pole went up, carved with Tribe Apollo iconography, and sporting the head of one of the silvermanes killed in the initial attack.

<New totem unlocked: Silvermane Night Haunt. Goblins in the presence of this totem gain resistance to terror-based skills and spells.>

A strange calm came over me. My hands steadied and a pressure I hadn’t even felt mounting vanished. My chest felt lighter, and I took a deep, gasping breath—not even realizing that I’d been taking half-breaths. So, the all-encompassing fear goblins felt wasn’t just an in-baked prey response. It was a skill inherent to night haunts. And now, we had an answer. A cheer went up, and it quickly turned into a war-cry.

“Fire!”

Rockettes blasted out of every gun on the line, tiny contrails criss-crossing the air on their chaotic gyro-jet trajectories. What we lacked in individual accuracy, we made up for in sheer volume as dozens of shots turned into hundreds, which turned into thousands. The night haunts began juke and dodge, but it seemed like the air was becoming more bullet than not. To either side of me, noblins with recoilless rifles fired. The shots arced out, and one of them struck a night-haunt and erupted into a drogue shoot that stalled the flying predator out. It fell behind the pack, fighting helplessly against the drag. Two others fell to the rifle fire.

But the rest of the night haunts came on.

The better part of a dozen silvermane haunts smashed into the barricade, sending up gouts of dust and splintered wood. The war cry turned to squawks of fear and alarm. I dove for cover as one of the enormous predators impacted directly in front of me, and rolled through the chaos, tossing goblins through the air.

<Your tribe has decreased to 1557 members>

It straightened, lifting its head and scanning left and right across the line with eyes possessed of unnatural intelligence. Red bugs buzzed around its snarling beak-like muzzle. I grinned underneath the ceramic skull-mask I’d traded my bone crown for. It was looking for me. But right now, I looked like any other goblin—except for my legs. But lots of veteran goblins were missing appendages now that had been replaced with prosthetics.

My fellow barricade goblins turned and continued firing, or dropped empty rifles to charge with cleavers or spears. The wranglers had net launchers and hooked poles, and they moved up to menace the night haunts. I charged along with them, shouting and thrusting my ceramic bayonet at the underside of a thrashing silvermane. The haunts lunged forward eagerly, unafraid of the goblins on the line. The silvermanes were at least half again as big as their juvenile counterparts, and bowled through the non-variant goblins like a set of 10-pins. Claws and jaws flashed, sending blue fur flying through the air. A heavy tail whipped just over my head, and a back claw shattered my bayonet and sent me spinning down to my back. One of my secretive service hobgoblins pulled me back.

<Your tribe has decreased to 1550 members>

The scrappers, who had stayed hidden up to this point, burst from the ruins to join the fight—adding their surprise attack bonus as they hit the night haunts from a new angle. Two of the night haunts went down under their spears and cleavers. More scrappers opened up with guns taken off the choppers. Recoilless rifles fired heavy projectiles down and the new self-cycling guns I’d designed fired with a slow c’thunk-c’thunk rhythm. Two helicopters, held in reserve at the back of the bluff, lifted off and flew low over the village. The goblins aboard added their fire to the mix, and more night haunts fell, thrashing and howling.

The night haunts reacted by spinning toward the new angle of attack. One of them launched itself up at the improvised machine gun nest, collapsing half the damaged tower as it clawed its way in to the scrapper. Two of the night haunts still in the air dropped and hit the choppers from above—one of which was killed instantly by the chopping blades of the main rotor, but the other of which shattered the rotor assembly. Both the reserve choppers went down.

<Your tribe has decreased to 1544 members>

I got back to my feet. Not exactly eager to rejoin the melee, I grabbed a discarded rifle and checked it. Predictably, its owner had been all to eager to rush into cleaver range. I knelt down to line up the sights and scanned across the night haunts, looking for a green, mossy bundle atop one of them.

“There he is!” I shouted, swinging my barrel toward a spot of green amongst the silver of one of the larger haunts’ manes.

I fired. The shot, of course, spiralled off at a strange angle. But my secretive service was keen enough to spot it as well. They added rifle and pistol fire of their own, and the night-haunt flinched back as a rockette nearly took out the last of the elf invaders.

“Pour it on him!” I yelled.

The goblins still on the barricade began to concentrate their fire. In response, the night haunt vaulted over the melee, and smashed into the back of the barricade, claws reaching through and beak snapping. It was close enough that I could see the evil little glimmer of the elf’s eyes through his mossy disguise, and he waved a floral bough at us.

“Look out!”

I dived to the side as an emerald ray split the barricade, cutting down through the loose pile of junk like a knife through a cake. Where it hit, the edges of the material sizzled as though melted by strong acid. With an opening, the night haunt squeezed into the narrow space within the barricade and snapped at me with its jaws. I pulled out one of my spare poppers and threw it. It burst against the side of the haunt’s beak, and it recoiled in pain. My secretive service rushed in with spears and cleavers, but thorny vines sprouted from the ground and trapped several of them. The night haunt kept coming. I pulled the revolver from my belt and fired all five shots at the oncoming beast.

<Your tribe has decreased to 1537 members>

A shout mounted, and the familiar form of Armstrong barreled through a gap in the barricade, smacking the night haunt with the butt of the gun he’d pulled out of the chopper. He brought the muzzle around and started firing the self-cycling gun at point blank, filling the tunnel with rockette trails. The night haunt recoiled from the larger, rapid fire shots that peppered its thick hide, back pushing up against the top of the barricade. But it lashed out with a claw and sent Armstrong tumbling towards me.

“Armstrong!”

I dashed forward to try and arrest the larger scrapper, but that went about as well as you’d expect. We both went down in a tangle. Armstrong got to his feet first, and hauled me along as the silvermane clawed after us. Ahead, down the improvised tunnel, another night haunt was pulling its way inside. It snapped at us with its beak, and we stopped.

“Out, out!” shouted Armstrong, pushing me toward a gap in the barricade. I squeezed through, and then pulled the larger scrapper out, just before the elf splattered the gap with a ball of green goo that sprouted a tangling moss. We kept moving. The haunt who had been forcing its way in to cut us off, pulled out of the tunnel and bounded down after us, but a dozen goblins charged it with zap-sticks and spears, giving Armstrong and I time to retreat.

“It’s not looking good, boss,” said Armstrong, surveying the battlefield. We’d taken some of the night haunts down, but there were lots of goblins down as well. Worse yet, only a small number of helicopters remained overhead, while close to a dozen more night haunts still circled and harried them.

But I noticed a sound—distant, but growing. A rushing, low rumble that I’d first heard at an air-show when I was 6 years old that ignited a life-long fever. I’d felt it then as I did now, deep and resonating in my chest as it mounted. My ears and eyes swiveled to the south.

“We did what we had to, Armstrong,” I said. “We held out. Now it’s our turn.”

Chapter 134 - Turbid Terrors

The night haunts realized pretty quick that something in the air had changed. Maybe the elf felt that deep rumble in their gut, same as I did, and knew it was some new toy come to vex them further. If so, it was good intuition.

High in the sky, riding a plume of white vapor, three fast-flying aircraft cut across the moon, and then dove down toward the bluff.

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Turbid Terrors>

I felt a small jolt as the aircraft moved close enough for the pilots to pass the new technology to me, and recovered in time to watch the knowledge spread across the bluff, informing every goblin that the tide was about to turn and giving them all a second wind as they pressed back with a cry of premature triumph.

Small rockets detached from the wings, streaking down and exploding all around the bluff.

<Your tribe has decreased to 1532 members>

In true goblin fashion, the unguided rockets did more damage to our own tribe than to the night haunts, but at least one of the haunts took a direct hit. The rest roared and lifted off into the air. Wranglers with nets and pole hooks kept two of them from getting airborne, dragging them back down where the forest goblins could finish them with cleavers, spears, and rifles. The silvermane sporting the elf clawed its way out of the barricade and launched into the air. He joined the night haunts still flying and climbed to address the new threat.

Overhead, the trio of our first functioning jets wheeled around to engage the haunts on their own terms. The fat aircraft were sluggish and slow to turn compared to the nimble night haunts. As far as performance went, they were far below even the earliest Earth analogues. They were outnumbered, too. At least 8 or 9 night haunts remained. But the jets were faster and had nose guns. And they had one more advantage.

“Guns up!” I shouted. “Lever guns and recoiless rifles on those haunts. Flares, too, and airbursts. Anything we’ve got!”

The goblins on the bluff cut their cheering short and scrambled to find anything that could shoot up. The cracks of gunfire and the whumps of recoilless rifles began to sound across the bluffs, and dozens of little contrails began to shoot skyward. I didn’t know much about military strategy, but I did know that you never wanted to be in an air-to-air fight above the enemy’s air defenses. Every goblin on the ground shot gleefully into the air, heedless of whether or not their rockettes could even reach.

The fighters themselves corkscrewed and barrel rolled and looped, making runs at the night haunt cluster. Surprisingly, the night haunts made a good show of it. The fast, sleek silvermanes were able to keep up with the aircraft in a dogfight, and I saw one of them shred the tail of a fighter that turned a little too tight—right before that silvermane took a direct hit from a recoiless rifle that knocked it right out of the air. The fighter, likewise, spiraled down into the forest and exploded.

<Your tribe has decreased to 1526 members>

The self-cycling nose guns on the fighters clipped two more night haunts before the elf decided he’d had enough and turned the pack to the east to beat a hasty retreat. With two fighters left, they didn’t give chase, but instead circled in the air above the bluff, above the crowd of cheering goblins and discouraging the night haunts from trying for a second rounds. Armstrong had two goblins up on his shoulders cheering even as he cupped his hands around his mouth to whistle at the planes.

Still. This had been too close. The elf had found the most dangerous predators in the forest and weaponized them. Then he’d set a trap, which we’d only narrowly avoided—thanks to technology we hadn’t had a week prior. Without radios, without turbine engines… well, this encounter might have had a very different conclusion that ended with every goblin abandoning the bluff and scrambling in a different direction, in hopes the elf didn’t get lucky in nabbing me out of the chaos to take back home.

The missing elf had graduated from a nuisance to an emergency. But Eileen had been right. We knew where he was hiding out. We’d scouted the night haunt nest before the elves had made their play in the swamp, and avoided it because we hadn’t had the tools to deal with it.

Well, we had the tools now—or at least the ability to make them. And that elf was in for a rude awakening if he thought we wouldn’t go spelunking to excise his pointy-eared behind.

It wasn’t long before the jet fighters had to return to Apollo. Turbine engines burn through fuel like no one’s business and they’d no-doubt been in too much of a hurry to fully fuel them up, anyway. But not long after the jets departed, I spotted the silhouette of Gerty, flanked by a handful of spare choppers to bring additional personnel and supplies to Red-Rock Bluff. Apparently I wasn’t the only one with an idea of how important this location was.

It took about 20 minutes for the airship to touch down with relief. The gangplank dropped, and Buzz disembarked with two-dozen of his builders hauling tools and planks. He waved at me and looked around. “This place could use some shorin’ up, eh boss?”

“A bit,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder.

All of the Red Rock natives elected to stay, along with about half the survivors of the goblins who had come with me initially. They were already busy hauling supplies to build new, improved fortifications to keep another night haunt incursion out. Others had started butchering the night haunts killed in the fight, so that was dinner sorted. Rifles were collected, ammo was collected, counted, and redistributed. Within an hour, the bluff already had better defenses and more defenders than when the elf had hit it originally. It would be a much harder target now.

But it wasn’t the only bluff in the area. At least four more integrated villages were within range of the night haunt cave—including Canaveral, where the Midnighters were camped out. Part of me hoped the elf would be stupid enough to attack, whereby he would probably be very surprised to find the elite flying cavalry of the sorceress’ personal guard, along with whatever nasty tricks the insectoid priest herself possessed. But better not to find out.

“Time to go, Armstrong,” I said.

My scrapper chief, who had been helping Buzz prop up the side of a building so the builders could hammer it back together, nodded. He left the work to Buzz’ lads and whistled to round up his own. Together, with Eileen and Buzz, we boarded Gerty and headed back to Bluff Apollo.

“Good work today,” I said to Armstrong.

“Weren’t nuffin’ boss,” my scrapper chief replied. He ground a fist into his palm. “I just want to give that elf the boot, yeah? Get him out of our turf, then turn the moon into our turf, too!”

“You’ll get your chance,” I said. “I want you leading the assault into the nest.”

“Sounds great!” said Armstrong. “Only…”

“What?” I asked.

Armstrong tapped the last knuckles of his index fingers together. “Only it’s real dark in caves, yeah?”

I laughed. I couldn’t believe it. My big, tough, hobgoblin taskmaster was afraid of the dark. In fairness, with the moon the size it was in the sky, it never really got that dark on Lanclova. Heck, even the daily new moon phase only lasted about 20 minutes, and other than that the darkest time was the eclipse totality.

“You don’t need to worry about that, my friend,” I said. “We’re going to bring a little something for you to brighten it up.”

Chapter 135 - Good Enough for Goblin Work

<Your tribe has increased to 1623 members>

I didn’t want to give the elf time to plan and lick his wounds. But those silvermane night haunts had changed the game a bit. I couldn’t risk stumbling in blindly when there was a magic caster, and possibly something even worse than the silvermanes.

Two more days of prep had cut it close, but with our noses to the grindstone, we prioritized rounding out our earliest iteration of the jets, and I prepared to mount up along with Chuck and handful of his best wranglers in the heavy hobgoblin fighters, and Eileen with a half-dozen of her best air delivery pilots in the lighter goblin interceptors. Both had a small gaggle lined up behind them, ready to serve as flight crews/stowaways.

Over the last two days, we’d pumped every choom of icky-slicky oil out of Huntsville that we could and moved it over to Bluff Apollo. Now, it was going into a dozen stunted, fat-bodied jets that were every bit as uniform in build and design as our fleet of choppers had been. IE: Not even a little bit. Some of the jets had back-swept wings, others forward-swept wings. One had canards. Some had one vertical stabilizer, some had two (parallel and V-tail were both represented).

But they all flew. Except the one that exploded on takeoff. But you can’t expect goblin tech to work every time when even Earth experimental aircraft were unpredictable. We were entering the realm of high science and advanced aeronautics. On Earth, this was technology that had been developed side-by-side with the early rockets that had put the first satellites into orbit.

“Alright,” I said, marching back and forth in front of my flight crews. They weren’t exactly standing at attention. Some of them were slouching, others sitting, two were scuffling amongst themselves, and one had a finger up his nose. “I don’t have to tell you what’s at stake, here.”

Behind me, the crews finished fueling the jets and pulled the bladder buggies back to what they hoped was a safe distance.

“The night haunts have been a menace since the tribe was double-digits. But now, with an elf at the sticks, they’re a real threat. And we’re going to deal with them now. Chuck?”

“Yeah boss?”

“I want your fighters taking on any silvermanes that come out.”

“What about us, boss?” asked Eileen, eliciting chirps and squawks from her crews.

“Our job is to protect: The Package.”

The assembled pilots oohed and ah’d appropriately.

“Alright,” I said. “To your aircraft!”

The wrangler and air-delivery pilots scrambled, pushing each other out of the way in a mad dash to mount up—luckily most of them heading for the correct aircraft (even if it was probably luck). I did see one hobgoblin struggling to squeeze into an interceptor, and one air delivery goblin jumping to try and reach the ladder on a heavy fighter.

I moved to my own interceptor, feeling oddly naked without Armstrong’s shadow. But he’d picked 2 of his lightest-weight and mostly reliable forest goblins to serve as flight crew. I climbed aboard and was unsurprised to see the sparker flight engineer already fiddling with the radio, but was quite surprised to see a boglin squeezed into the back of the cabin with the banded markings of Tribe Apollo on his arms.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

The boglin shrugged.

“Must have rode in on the fuel trucks,” I guessed. “Wouldn’t you rather be back in the swamp?”

The boglin shook his head and made little flapping motions with his hands as he mimicked the sound of a jet engine. I opened my menu and looked at his stats.

“Well, you’re good enough at mechanics to be a flight technician, I suppose. Welcome aboard.”

Goblins only being about 3 feet tall, the jets had enough room to crawl around in, despite being half the size of an Earth fighter. I’d never been aboard a WWII bomber, but I’d seen plenty of movies, and the interior of the plane reminded me more of that than the cramped double-seater fighter jets of something like Top Gun. We needed the space inside because the plane was basically built around the engine so that the engine could be worked on in-flight. It was a delicate act, according to Chuck, to keep the propulsion system from exploding pretty much all the time, even with an ifrit inside.

The rest of my crew scrambled aboard. The two secretive service goblins headed below the cockpit to the nose gun, while the other wriggled back and introduced himself to his new goblin partner. While they got situated, I strapped into the pilot chair and eyed the control console.

“Taquoho?”

“Greetings, King Apollo. My kin are eager to experience this new vessel.”

“How many of you are in here?”

“There are currently 2 unions aboard, and each other of your craft has at least 1. I should say, the debate over which of us would would fly and who must stay behind on the bluff grew quite contentious.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Several unions split and reformed over the decisions.”

“Yikes,” I said. I flipped the toggle for the battery and the auxiliary power unit. The sparker went rigid behind me as his console sparked. “Glad to have you with us,” I said.

“There is nowhere this union would rather be.”

“Just remember, if we go down, take your radio parachute back to the bluff. I don’t want any ifrit getting stranded.”

There was a bright flash and a shwoosh noise outside the cockpit. I looked over the edge to see a rocket climbing skyward on a pillar of smoke that clearly originated in the cockpit of one of the interceptors.

“It appears your ‘wingman’ has located his ejection seat controls,” commented Taquoho.

“No kidding,” I said, reexamining the levers and toggles before switching any more of them.

“I have already disabled ours,”

“Good plan. Go ahead and cycle up the primer.”

I reached overhead and tugged the canopy closed and latched it. Behind me, the electric motor began pre-spinning the turbine. I could hear a whine mount as the electric fans started to draw air through the compressor. I reached up and pulled down the lever for the fuel pumps and set the throttle to start. The fuel pumps began drawing kerosene from the bladders, and one of the lines immediately sprang a leak. The boglin crawled up with his tool bag and applied an adhesive goo.

Deep in the belly of the aircraft, a rumble began to mount as the air-fuel mix compressed enough to ignite, and I watched the RPMs grow on the primitive tachometer gauge. I played the throttle up, bringing the turbine to life until it started producing enough power to self-sustain.

“Alright, Taquoho, we are hot. Generators on, main power on, auxilary power off.”

Switches on my console started to flick themselves to the proper position. The engine RPMs dipped a moment as the generator started drawing power for the jet’s electrical systems. A shower of sparks erupted out of the sparker’s console like the Enterprise had taken a Klingon torpedo, but the eclectic variant simple waved them out of his face and started tuning. A small fire broke out at the back of the engine, but my second technician started slapping it with a canvas cloth to smother the blaze. The cabin took on the distinct smell of hot metal and burning oil.

“Maduri-Massa-Morez would like you to know the engine is functioning within established parameters,” said Taquoho. “Flight control surfaces all function with at least 80% intended range of motion.”

I sighed, shaking my head. This aircraft would give an Earth pilot heart palpitations. “Alright. Everything looks good, I suppose.” Good enough for Goblin work, anyway. I tugged on my radio headset. “Bandit one to air delivery, taking the runway for departure to the northwest.”

The sparker opened his mouth and radio-garbled squawks came out. I assumed they were giving the go-ahead. And if they weren’t? I was the king, so too bad. I waved to the goblin ground crew, who pulled the chocks from in front of my wheels. I released the brakes, and got us rolling from the ramp to the runway. A semaphore goblin ran alongside, waving his flag to give us instructions. The runway itself wasn’t perfect—not just because we hadn’t invented asphalt or concrete yet. It had a visible curve off to the left, since goblins don’t really get the whole straight line idea. And it was basically dirt and grass that had been hacked at with hoes and stamped smoothish. A canvas windsock flapped at the top of a wooden pole, uncertain where the wind was coming from or where it was going.

That was fine. These aircraft had a little help for taking off. Once we got lined up, I pushed the throttle to max, and then reached up and pulled a lever overhead. I was immediately pushed back into my chair as the rocket booster under the aircraft ignited, shooting us forward across the runway so quickly I worried the landing gear would snap off. But System’s little flight status window popped up, and I watched the speed meter steadily climb until we got light on the ground. I pulled back on the stick and the ground vibrations vanished. Below me, I could see the ground rushing by through the open landing gear well.

“Gear up!” I yelled.

My techs scrambled to each be the one to start cranking the manual controls to lift the gear, with the forest goblin eventually winning out while the boglin sulked and nursed the engine. The gear wells closed, and I pushed the takeoff assist lever back flush, dropping the expended rocket booster back to the ground to be picked up later.

We climbed up, drawing level with the bluff. I opened up the throttle, squeezing more power out of the turbine. We kept climbing at a steep ascent rate. Turbine jets, compared to the performance of our powered gliders, were like the difference between a Ferarri and an Amish horse buggy. This was amazing. And it hadn’t even exploded on takeoff. Great for goblin work.

I pulled us into the pattern of traffic seemingly constantly surrounding the suspended bluff platforms and eased off the throttle. I could already see The Package pushing off from the dock. All that was left was for the escort to finish getting off the ground, and then we were taking the fight to the elf.

The little bastard wasn’t going to know what hit him.