MBGSP Chppt 121-124

Ok, all chapters should have correct numbering now.

Chapter 121 - Daytona Beachhead

The airship dock certainly looked empty without Gemini docked there. I watched the goblins break down what was left of her for firewood while the canvas was folded and hauled away on the back of a flatbed buggy. The elves were still out there, and I accompanied the scrappers on the daytime water patrol to Daytona Island. Sourtooth came along as well, with his blunted spears, hoping to bag himself an elf to send home—though the logistics of transporting it remained something of a mystery to me.

Ringo came along, uncertain on the prosthetics I’d gifted him. But there simply wasn’t room on one of the boats for several goblins to manage his high chair—which he’d lost anyway. He wobbled around the deck, uncertain and unhappy—despite the fact we were racing to liberate his island fortress.

“Hold up!” I called. The ifrit managing the engine pulled up and cut the throttle. I pointed up to a low-hanging tree. “There.”

Armstrong stepped up to the gunwale with a nozzle in his hand. He pointed it up to the bottom of the tree and squeezed the lever. A gout of flame burst out the tip and engulfed the bat nest in the tree. Several goblins leapt onto the shore, running around the small island with their mouths open waiting to catch the pre-barbequed creatures as they fell from the branches. No sense letting the meat go to waste.

I didn’t like having to burn the nests. The bats and birds hadn’t done anything to me, but left as they were, each one was potentially a weapon for the remaining elves. And That wasn’t something we could contend with.

Beside me, one of the sparkers went rigid and opened his mouth. “King Apollo, boat 3, here. Coming up on the beach now.”

I grabbed the handset and cranked a lever to raise up a shortwave antenna. “Copy, boat 3. Any sign of the elves?”

“Crocs and big-jaws, none of ‘em fightin’. But they seen us.”

Big-jaws were what we’d taken to calling the lizards that were closer in form and function to primates than they were to the crocs. They were strong, fast, and vicious—which was why the elves had taken them.

“Tell them to get off my island!” shrieked Ringo from behind me. “I made it, they can’t have it!”

I shot him a look and turned back to the handset. “Alright, be careful. Maintain a perimeter until we get there.”

I hung up the transmitter and stowed the antenna. The elves had attacked Daytona and forced Ringo out. They had attacked Huntsville, too, but found it a much tougher nut to crack. I don’t know what they had been expecting, but it definitely hadn’t been goblins in helicopters with flamethrowers and rifles. Not after fighting Ringo’s boglins with simple boats and tesla-wasp spears. Now, we had the initiative. The elves had taken Daytona because it represented an important staging ground in the swamp. Now I wanted it for the same reason.

Somewhere to our west, I heard the squawk of birds and saw a column of smoke rising. One of our other boats had taken out a nest. I waved to the ifrit, who pushes us away from the island as the goblins ashore scrambled to get back on board. We rejoined two other boats on our way to meet up with the rest of the force headed toward Daytona. It wasn’t long before we spotted it.

The dilapidated fortress rose out of the swamp as we approached, singed wall and  platform rose out of the swap on stilts. The screw-pump on Ringo’s personal icky-slicky extractor still spun—a product of the slightly-shredded windmill at the apex powering the device he’d learned to make from us. A sheen of oil spread across the surface of the water from where it overflowed from the collector. Wasted. Sure enough, crocs dipped below the surface as we approached, and I saw several sets of eyes on the platform itself, as well as inside the keep.

I pulled out the radio transmitter. “Remember,” I said. “No fire, no sparks on the lowest level of the platform or in the water. We don’t want to lose the derrick, and we don’t want it setting fire to the keep.”

“Boss, incoming,” said Armstrong.

“I see ‘em,” I said, eyeing the shadows underneath the surface of the water. “Keep us out of the sheen. Prepare to repel!”

Around me, goblins prepped rifles and tesla prods. We were as prepared as we could be when the coordinated croc-knockers came out of the water from all directions, attempting to get aboard as they struck with their prills. My goblins struck back weapons buzzing as they shocked the thick skin of the swamp monsters. The creatures roared, but the shock sticks were more of a deterrent than a lethal weapon, and monsters under the effects of the red swarms couldn’t be deterred. But they could be slowed long enough for the big guns to draw a bead.

BOOM!

One of the recoilless rifles went off and a croc fell back off the boat, sizzling hole where its middle ought to be. More shots followed, even as the melee intensified. Orc iron tips in the hands of totem-empowered hunters were able to penetrate the croc hide, and another went down looking like a pincushion. Meanwhile, two of the boats surged forward and dropped front ramps onto the derrick. As soon as we were free, our ifrit put on a burst of speed and butted us up against the derrick.

“No fire from here on out!” I reminded them.

The scrappers stormed aboard the derrick, shouting and cheering. Most of them had upgraded their cleavers to orc metal or steel variants that fared much better against the thickened hide and scales of swamp creatures than did brittle ceramic tips. Sourtooth swapped his own blunted spears for ones tipped in iron and limped into the fray. On the derrick, two of the big-jaws dropped down into the mix, swinging and slashing and snapping. I saw a big-jaw go down beneath the blades of two large scrappers, and then Sourtooth drove his spear completely through another before punching it over the edge of the platform.

My scrappers began to push their way up, fighting for possession of the platform. Even hampered by the limitation of not being able to use poppers or firearms, they gained ground. Sourtooth, experienced in fighting, coordinated their movement as if they were a crack hunting team.  And the two other members of the Flock that he’d brought with him warded the sides of the platform with spears, keeping additional crocs from pulling themselves aboard.

I made to push along with them, but one look at my secretive service told me I was close enough to the action. Armstrong made a point of putting one hand on the back of my plate vest, just to make sure I didn’t get any heroic ideas. Fine. I could man the radio, at least. I picked up the handset.

“Team 2, you’re up!”

The other team of boats kicked their engines, but instead of heading for the island where several creatures waited, they formed a line in the water between the derrick and the beaches. Not a moment too soon, either, as emerald light began to shine under the water, and grasping creepers snapped out from beneath the surface at where the boats would have been. On the top of the Daytona wall, I spotted the silhouette of the elves moving—but it was hard to stay focused on them, as though enchanted in such a way that my eyes refused to focus. But they weren’t in a natural environment.

“Team 3! The elves have shown themselves!”

The slap of helicopter blades mounted. A handful of choppers crested the tree-line, flying low and fast. Emerald lances started to shoot out of the island fortress at the attackers, who shot back with underslung recoilless rifles as their occupants threw poppers inside the fort. Fortifications started to burst, and the elves were forced to put their heads down. A few poppers landed on the beach between us and the keep.

“Watch those poppers!” I shouted. “Not too close to the kerosene!”

A screech brought my attention around, and I spotted a flock of birds too coordinated to be natural angling toward the fleet of helicopters, intent on bringing down the fleet. A big one. We’d destroyed what we could, but apparently the bite-sized bastards had come prepared. A swarm of wings flapped toward us—bats and birds of all sizes and breed. The elves had already shown they didn’t have to destroy choppers outright to bring them down. They just had to distract or delay them long enough to choke out motors or rotors with creeping vines. They’d been hiding this fleet in reserve, waiting for us, apparently.

Well, when it came to airspace superiority, I had a little surprise in store for the elves, as well.

Chapter 122 - Invasion

A heavier, wider boat came up behind us, and two of the boats moved off the derrick to make room. Even though we were still actively fighting aboard the extractor, a group of igni hauled equipment off the flat-bottom—each with the heavy barrel of a modified reckless rifle tucked cradled in their arms. They climbed up to the top level, avoiding the thickest of the fighting, and got the top of the platform where they began to set up.

Rather than pointing their rifles over at the island, they pointed them up and began firing off charges that burst mid-air after a short delay, taking chunks out of the swarm, and only occasionally hitting one of our own aircraft.

Meanwhile, a wider boat came up from behind us. The heavy, twin-motor barge bumped up against the derrick, and the top hatch opened. Over one hundred goblins shrieked out war cries as they began to flow up the outside of the derrick. As they reached the top, they pulled gliders out, unfurled them, and leapt off the top of the platform to catch the wind.

What was left of the elf-controlled swarm of flyers harried them, tearing hide and paper wings and dumping goblins into the water by the handful where they were grabbed by the magic traps the elves had laid and dragged under, or snapped up by croc-knockers. But the majority made the beach, and many of those made it over the perimeter wall and into the keep itself, dropping poppers and firing off rifle shots as they weaved between emerald bursts and swarms of red bugs. A second heavy barge came up, bumping into the stern of the first, and another wave of goblins surged up and mounted the kerosene platform—reserves brought in from Apollo, Canaveral, and the bluffs north of our first two settlements. Builders, engineers, craftsmen, gunners, hunters, and mechanics all joined the attack.

We were a goblin tribe nearly a thousand strong.

<Your tribe has decreased to 892 members>

We were a goblin tribe nearly 900 strong. The elves had seen Daytona and Huntsville. As far as they knew, that was it. And for that, maybe 5 elves would have been enough if we’d stuck to small night-time raids and search parties. But guerrilla forces don’t hold ground, and they fold when pressured directly by a larger force.

Tribe Apollo now stretched from the swamp to the badlands, and included not just the land, but the air above it. Every location had sleeping mounds producing new goblins daily, and wherever possible I’d optimized conditions for maximum spawning. Individual elves might be powerful spellcasters and able to defeat a few-dozen goblins at a time. But we didn’t have a few dozen goblins. We had hundreds. And each day we could have a hundred more. And it was time the would-be invaders got better acquainted with them.

Beside me, I could tell that my secretive service were itching to join the fight. On the derrick, Armstrong and his scrappers finished off the last of the bewitched creatures, and raised a skull-capped banner with a red pennant atop a pole. “Let’s get a little closer,” I said.

My secretive service practically hauled me over to the kerosene platform.

We climbed to the top. The hands and feet of the swarming goblins scrambling up the scaffolding to assault the fortress sounded like a thunderstorm, accompanied by the occasional crack of an airburst mortar from the igni. I found Armstrong, taking a well-earned break with a haunch of croc meat between his teeth, and he grinned around the tough hide. All around him, the scrappers who had stormed the platform were gorging themselves on the elves’ defeated minions. He handed a hunk of greasy meat over.

“I didn’t do much but watch,” I said.

Armstrong swallowed his mouthful and proffered further. “Yer too humble, boss. All this came outta that brain o’ yours. The king ain’t s’posed to do everything hisself, s’why you got us!”

The battle raged on around us, but the elves’ defenses were completely overwhelmed. It was only a matter of time, now. Time and goblins. I looked around. “Where’s Sourtooth?”

“Went on ahead,” said Armstrong, slurping up a length of entrails. “Had to make sure the lads didn’t eat all the elves. Twix you’n me, boss,” Armstrung stuck out his tongue. “They don’ taste good at all.”

“No?” I asked. If true, it would be the first thing that hadn’t tasted good to goblin taste buds as far as I could tell.

“Like old mud,” he said. “And bitter greens.”

I huffed and shrugged. Maybe some sort of deterrent they actively used to avoid being eaten. “I’ll take your word for it. Come on, we’ve got a swamp king to reinstate.”

                            *

The elves weren’t the only ones shocked by the number of goblins tribe Apollo brought to bear. Nearly a third of the tribe had turned out to retake the swamp fortress, and Ringo was now keenly aware that the forest goblins outnumbered his own boglins by at least 10:1. I’d purposefully obfuscated my true tribe’s size from him, letting him think the bulk were at Huntsville in order to make sure he saw me as a rival and not an existential threat. But as his subjects carried him on a freshly-rebuilt chair through the sea of blue fur blanketing his island and the cacophony of victorious goblins cheering for me, he looked a bit in shock. His eyes were bugged out even more than usual, and for once he stopped barking orders.

I walked on the muddy ground of Daytona Island next to his throne-bearers. The last time I’d been here, it had been as a quasi-prisoner. It had been myself, a captured scrapper, and a few dozen boglins kowtowing to a legless king not even willing to make himself a set of legs to work on. He didn’t have fire, gliders, balloons, ceramic, or metals. Likely, if not for us, he still wouldn’t. The differences between our two tribes could not be more stark. I’d spent a lot of time pondering why. It wasn’t just the difference in available materials. Ringo might not have had access to clay or dry wood, but he should have still been able to develop fire and bricks. He should have known the physics principles behind hot air rising, raft-making, fishing, and a dozen other simple technologies.

We went up to the keep, where I found a smug Sourtooth holding a small chain connected to a dour-looking elf with a substantial lump on its forehead. I nodded to him, and then looked back up at Ringo.

“Ringo, when did you come to Rava?”

The boglin king looked down at me, wary. His advisor, George, peered at me around the legs of the chair. “I have always been king, here,” he said.

I nodded. “Ringo is quite a kingly name. You know, there was another Ringo where I’m from.”

“And where is that, King Apollo?”

“Ohio.”

He tried to hide his surprise, but his eyes widened just a touch too much at the mention of my home state.

“He was from this really old band. I think they had this song called I’m a Believer.”

“No! That was The Mon—”

Ringo slapped his hands over his mouth.

“You tricked me!” he hissed.

I nodded.

He looked around at the sea of forest goblins. “Please don’t be mad,” he whispered through his fingers.

“It’s alright, Ringo. Just tell me the truth.”

“That song was by The Monkees…” he admitted. His eyes looked down and away. “My dad really liked them. But I always liked The Beatles best. I’m sorry I lied.”

“It’s ok, you’re not in trouble. How old are you?”

Ringo shifted uneasily in his chair. “I was 10 when I came here. It was my birthday. We were going to pizza and another car didn’t stop when we stopped, and it pushed us in the road. There was a truck… I don’t know how long it’s been since. I tried to count the days, but I kept forgetting. It’s been forever.” He looked up. “Are you really from Ohio?”

“I was. It must have been hard for you, when you got here.”

Ringo nodded. “Things tried to eat me. I found an animal that could talk, like on TV. He said he’d help me, but he tried to trick me. I got away and the boglins saved me and made me their king. They helped me build this fort.”

“You must have been pretty brave to survive,” I said. I patted the side of his chair and sighed. “It was tough when I came here, too. But I was lucky. I found a talking animal too, but he was friendly and helped me. I knew a lot before I came, and I was able to use that to help the goblins who decided to help me. If you’re okay with it, I’d like to help you, too.” I held my hand up. “Would you like to team up?”

Ringo reached his hand down but drew it back. “How do I know you’re not mean? You tried to burn me.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t know you then. And I’m sorry. I’m an astronaut, though. Are astronauts usually mean?”

Ringo’s eyes bugged. “No way! You’ve been to space?”

I couldn’t help grinning. “I have. I’ve orbited the Earth 32 times. And I was headed to the Moon when I ended up here.” I extended my hand a little more. “We’re going to build rockets at my village to go to this world’s moon. Want to see?”

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Vassals>

<Congratulations! Tribe Ringo has joined your tribe as a vassal. Vassals retain direct control over their domains, but all associated Goblin Tech Tree technologies and variant subspecies are now available to your tribe.>

<Your tribe has increased to 1023 members>

<You are a king of kings. Your job class has changed from ‘Goblin King’ to ‘Goblin Emperor’>

I reeled back as a barrage of unlocks and notifications and new skills from the job change assaulted my vision.

Holy cow!

Chapter 123 - Much Ado about Elves

 “Don’t suppose you understand him,” I said, peering at the unfortunate elf at the end of Sourtooth’s lead. The old orc himself sat on a low stool on the side Ringo’s throne room, puffing pipe in one hand while the other kept the elf on a yard’s worth of leeway. The others had been killed in the fighting, unable to escape the fortress they’d lain with traps and pitfalls—some of which were still claiming goblins as they swept the place for bewitched beasts and hidden mechanisms.

“A word, here or there, may brush between tongues learned long-past,” said Sourtooth. “But a crass and unsubtle people, they, for all their slink and creeping.”

“So what’s he saying?”

“Harsh Indictments, utter shall I not, concerning my brood’s mother and your lack of one.”

I crossed my legs and looked at the little fellow on more of a level—though speaking of levels, once cleaned, this one was level 29. Like the other, he had the physique of a 9-inch action star and spoke in the rapid-fire barrage of down-pitched cartoon chipmunks.

“And you’re sure he’s not dangerous?” I said, eyeing the number superimposed over his head.

“Only to your ankles. Nay, absent his druid-bough, no charms can he work. Withered is his power less focus or tool.”

The elf lunged for me, but Sourtooth hissed and yanked back on the chain, swinging the elf overhead, where he spun the chain for a dozen or so seconds like a helicopter blade(and the elf made much the same sound). When he set the elf back down, the creature stumbled drunkenly, and then collapsed on its haunches.

“A nuisance, still,” he admitted. He changed the pitch and camber of his own voice, slipping into a rapid-fire falsetto. The elf responded with a kata of gestures that were undoubtedly obscene to someone, even if they were lost on me. “He’ll make a fine gift, indeed, once properly tracted.”

Part of me had reservations about letting Sourtooth ship off the creature to be someones… slave? Servant? Pet? But then, the elves were snorting goblin ears, so all bets were off.

“Have you learned anything from him?” I demanded.

A quick exchange passed between the two before Sourtooth looked back up at me.

 “Mercenaries from Habbe. Expected a sprinkle, did they, and found a deluge. The prince awaits their return with good news—absence shall be with action met.”

“A further escalation,” I sighed. But it would take time, and more time still for the port city to muster troops from the mainland. I hoped. I had no illusions about how well my goblins would fare against seasoned human fighters. Even with the benefit of the Goblin Tech Tree, magic seemed like a force multiplier that couldn’t simply be countered with technology. At least, not with what we had now. Numbers, as well, were an issue. The tribe grew swiftly, but we were talking about an entire pre-established city of humans, here. Thousands of them—and that just a splinter of their mainland population across the sea.

We already had so much to contend with. Lanclova was at least harsh to human forces trying to penetrate the interior, but that was a deterrent, not a barrier. Off in the east, the Ifrit were simmering with whispered lies, and I didn’t know how well Rufus’ attempts at quelling them would go. Somewhere in the forest, an elf still roamed, and I’m sure it was going to play merry hob with our operations until we could suss it out. All the while, we’d be working toward’s Lura’s task and the inevitable moon missions that would require a monumental effort and procession of steps. Orbital dynamics aren’t exactly high school algebra, and I doubted there was some sort of math variant goblin. I was going to have to start from scratch there, too.

“Is there no way I can send an envoy to Habberport? Work out some sort of peace accord?”

Sourtooth rolled his head back and laughed, hands over his belly. And to my supreme shock, the elf mirrored his merriment, gesture for gesture.

“Sooner you’d walk upon the watchful eye, little brother mine, than convince humans to treat with goblin kin.”

The elf tilted his head up at Sourtooth and slapped the old orcs shin as they giggled. I didn’t need a translator to understand the intent behind the words that passed up. What is he, stupid?

Sourtooth chuckled under his breath. It wasn’t lost on me that, being Ravan natives, both these creatures, these mortal enemies, still had more in common with each other than I had with either one. He cleared his throat and spat a thick wad of phlegm on the ground. “Nay, little king. Take it from this sun-dried and wind-blown old orc. I have seen many things in many lands, yet not once have I seen a man treat a goblin as anything but vermin to be stamped out. There is no treating with Habbe—though perhaps your envoy’s tongue may find some use after a fashion, in soothing the prince’s irritated bowels.”

The elf fell over laughing, kicking his legs in the air. I grumbled to myself. I really did not like them. I turned my back on the foul little creature and ground the heels of my hands against my temples. “Let’s get back to the bluff. One problem at a time.”

One problem at a time… as if they ever lined up single file instead of hitting all at once. I needed to know where we stood with the Ifrit before I could decide what to do about Habberport. I collected my secretive service and left the keep. I offered Ringo a chance to come with me, but surprisingly, he decided to stay in the swamp. The boglins were his friends, after all. And even though George still regarded me with suspicion, I knew he’d act in Ringo’s best interest the same way Armstrong and Chuck and all the rest of my taskmasters acted in mine.

Outside the keep, I boarded one of the boats, and the ifrit in the engine glowed with a pale blue flame. I narrowed my eyes at it, but stopped short of asking if it was Girmaks. Either way, the spirit would deny it. We pulled the boat around and pointed it back toward the towers of Huntsville, which were just visible over the treeline—helped somewhat by a great deal of the treetops having been scorched to clear the bog of flying fauna. We were certainly leaving our mark wherever we went. And we were starting to go a lot of places.

Idly, I brought one of the sparkers over and had them tune in to whatever signals were being broadcast on the long-waves—the radios connecting together the various bluffs and outstations. Mostly taskmasters manned the radios, with names like Bootworm, Chokey, Tailbone, and other decidedly non-astronaut monikers, coordinating the dispersement and transport of raw materials and refined goods. Sand and copper from the north bluffs to Apollo, where it would be turned to glass and wire. Sulfur from mountain hot springs to Canaveral to be combined into icky-sticky powder. Lamps and guns from Apollo to outstations on flat-bed buggies. Who was going where, when, and with how much. But word about my change in status had spread fast, too. Emperor Apollo is returning home.

Goblin Emperor. Even if in name only. As we rode, I opened up my job screen and took a look. It hadn’t even come with any new abilities, just access to the vassal sub-menu. Probably the only ones who would even care were the canoneers. And the System, I thought.

Once we reached Huntsville, I commandeered one of the choppers. Sourtooth refused to fly in one, so we left him to hop a buggy back to the main base while I slid behind the controls. Two more lifted off as escort and entered the formation behind me. We lifted off and passed over the bog on our way back east, over the convoy of boats returning from Daytona, and over the newly reclaimed platforms pumping the hydrocarbons out of the depths. Just a handful of elves had managed to disrupt our operations in Huntsville to a degree that would have far reaching effects. The logistics infrastructure of the tribe was tight and efficient, but vulnerable. It needed more redundancies.

Flying over the forest, we passed low-level bi-gliders sweeping the area where the last elf had gone down, and there were parties on the ground as well. Not the most methodical searchers, goblins. Even with scrappers to coordinate, their patterns were hap-hazard, semi-random, and often intersected or doubled back on their own routes. In essence, their sweep had more holes than Swiss cheese.

Still, it was one elf, and it was isolated and on the run.

How much harm could it realistically do?

Chapter 124 - Twin Turbids

<Your tribe has increased to 1554 members>

“No, it needs to be here for the center of gravity,” I said.

Luther examined the sketch while I wiped workshop soot from my fur. We were going to need ventilation. I looked up at the other side of the factory floor, where a crucible of heated copper was extruding thin wire to be cooled and coated with melted rubber. Other goblins worked on glass, floating panes of it or teasing it into bulbs or bowls or other shapes. More still worked the whistlite into panels according to my design.

I picked up a ceramic compressor blade and showed it to the canoneer. “These aren’t exactly light weight. We can’t have them on the front tip of the aircraft. It would never be able to take off and it definitely wouldn’t be able to land.”

Luther adjusted his scratchpad and turned it over for me to see. I looked at the basic schematic. “Closer. Put it in the book.”

The book simply referred to the repository of canonized schematics and device illustrations and covered everything from simple cog-wheels to complex impellers. Luther passed the design off to one of his canoneers and looked at me. “What’s next, my king?”

I rubbed my eyes. “Next? Next we start putting together the prototype.”

I’d spent five days in what would become the new propulsion assembly plant as Buzz and his builders threw the thing up practically around us. All the necessary materials for the next generation of powered goblin gliders were being refined here—including the most critical part themselves: the turbine engines.

I pulled over a broad overview draft of my plans—a single-engine fighter aircraft crewed by 6 goblins. The heavy rotory engine favored by the bi-gliders and helicopters was being swapped out for a more efficient turbine engine using aluminum housing and ceramic internal parts, rather than the heavy cast-iron and solid ceramic housing of our first generation combust’ems. Before we’d used the turbines to throw burning fuel on elven defenses.  Now they were being put to their actual purpose: generating thrust. A lot of thrust. When it comes to which powerplant is better, there’s no real question that a turbine will outperform a rotary or a reciprocating engine every time. But they’re  many times more mechanically complex, and that meant, more prone to failure under stressful conditions.

Overhead, several goblins maneuvered one of the turbines on a system of chain pulleys, moving it from the assembly pad to the test platform. This version was nearly 10 times bigger than the smaller helicopter-mounted flame projectors. And if it were made out of iron or steel, it would, on its own, be as heavy as any two of those aircraft combined. But access to the lightweight natural alloy had given us a critical boost in a material with excellent strength-to-weight properties, which meant we could start to scale up into more modern aircraft.

I climbed my way up to the test platform, fishing in my bag for a set of goggles—which I pulled on. While flight goggles had taken the bluffs by storm and become something of a fashion icon among the forest goblins, very few others used them for any kind of eye protection in the workshops—and efforts to institute a hardhat policy had utterly failed. In this time of relative peace, the biggest source of attrition now was simply workplace accidents.

A lot of workplace accidents.

An inconceivable amount of workplace accidents.

Even before I could gain the platform, the goblin fueler got a little too excited and doused one of the testers with kerosene, who then sputtered and stumbled too close to the sparks coming off a radio being tested. He went up like a firework.

I held up a hand to the heat. “Get that fuel capped!” I shouted. The fueler squawked and actuated his flow valve, stemming the flow and pushing the bladder cart away from the test platform. Most of the engineers were so focused on the engine they didn’t even notice their fellow’s incineration. To them, the only remarkable thing about it was that it had happened before they’d turned it on.

I swung around to the test control panel and began hooking up connectors. The other big problem with turbine engines is that starting them isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. At least, on Earth that’s how it works. Human turbine aircraft have complicated startup sequences involving a battery, an auxiliary power unit, sometimes compressed nitrogen cylinders, and carefully bringing an engine up to the proper RPMs without melting it down or over-torquing it. Our turbines still had mostly the same principles, but evaded all efforts to keep them from guzzling fuel as fast as they could burn it.

Goblin turbines, conversely, seemed to have hair triggers. Add in fuel, give it a good spin, and off she goes. The hardest part was keeping them steady and stable. After all the trouble it took to get our first internal combustion rotary started, all the trials and pitfalls and tearing my fur out, I was a little peeved that the much more complicated turbines had been as simple as bolting one together, fitting the stage fans, pumping in the fuel, and making sure it was strapped down.

“Clear the rear!” I called. The goblins scrambled out of  the way of the backblast area, which had probably killed as many goblins as the whistler whose metallic hide had gone into its housing.

I pulled the lever for fuel, and then turned on the priming motor. A small electric motor hooked to one of our new sulfur batteries started spinning the front fan and compressors and drawing air through the shroud. The turbine started to whine as the compressors worked. Hot compressed air met  injected fuel, and the engine roared to life with a flame at least 2 meters long. It singed a few hairs, but no fatalities this time, it seemed like.

Several of the goblins were visibly disappointed by that. Integrating Ringo’s Technology Tree had introduced gambling to the tribe, but not the concept of money, surprisingly—a product of Ringo and his father betting inconsequential things like rocks or beads on the outcome of races and football games. What the goblins seemed to enjoy betting on most, was which of them were most likely to die. As far as I could tell, there were half as many betting pools on the subject as goblins, and everything from knives, to antlers, to ammunition changed hands on the regular.

So much material changed hands that System unlocked a technology for it: the GDP, or goblin domestic product. That didn’t sound right, but having never dated an Econ major, I wasn’t confident enough to call System on its shenanigans.

I cut the priming motor, and listened to the climbing pitch of the mounting RPMs as the engine self-sustained the combustion cycle. A turbine has the same stages as a reciprocating or rotary engine: intake, compression, ignition, and exhaust. The difference is that they’re all happening constantly, flowing smoothly from one to the other. And on a turbine engine, the main output isn’t torque (though you can configure them for that), it’s good, old-fashioned Newton’s Third Law. An equal and opposite reaction. Thrust.

On the test bed, the engine roared, pushing against its chains and tie-downs. A squawk of alarm alerted me before the first belt snapped, and the whole ensemble rocked up. I grit my teeth. Looked like some of them might win bets after all.

“Hold it down!” I shouted. The back of the engine began to fishtail, and this time a pair of goblins did get caught in the blast—though far enough away that they were simply thrown across the room from the thrust. The rest of the goblins leapt at the testing platform, tightening ropes and chains in a  vain effort to keep it steady.

It wasn’t until a floating ifrit vessel hovered in, and a pale green flame transferred into the turbine, that it began to settle down. I relaxed, and fed more fuel in. The engine whined, and the roar of wind increased. I gave it full-throttle, and then added afterburn to boost it even more. The goblins who had secured the engine by leaping on top of it screamed almost as loud as the engine itself as they held on, in danger of being either sucked against the screen in the front(a lesson that had only taken two broken motors to integrate), or shot away from the back.

Once satisfied that the turbine was good, I eased off the fuel and let the engine flame out, whine decreasing in pitch and volume as the compressors and thrust wound down.

Promo waddled up, pulling his fingers out of his ears. “Sounds good, boss. Reckon we get this one over to station 4, yeah?”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Let’s see how things are shaping up over in the factory.”

I looked over at one of the discombobulated goblins, currently dropping a pile of small, smooth stones into the cupped hands of one of his grinning companions, and shook my head.

Between religion, guns, and gambling, it was clear I was a terrible influence on this tribe. Oh well, soon I’d have a jet aircraft underneath me, and all problems on the ground seem insignificant at 15,000 chooms.