MBGSP Chpt 119-120

It's good to be back from Hiatus! The last couple days have been a bit of a jetlagged fugue, but I'm getting back into the swing of things. War Horses Book 6 is done and my focus is back on Goblins and 2oK, so regular serial updates will be resuming over the course of this week and next week.

Chapter 119 – Like a Bat out of Hell

Fire at Huntsville wasn’t unusual. In an outpost dedicated to fuel production and iron refining, it was really a mainstay of the settlement. But the airship dock had been built to be isolated from the worst of it. Well, that didn’t seem to matter, as the deck of Gemini was burning, and so was the rigging, even as the scat braziers went full-blast, pumping her envelope with hot air to strain her against the stressed and smoldering mooring.

I dipped the cyclic forward. Not really sure what I’d do when I got there, I still pushed us forward. The airships were too important—not only for transportation and exploration, but for power projection. We had to do something. But even as I watched, a series of small explosions rippled across the deck, illuminating the trio of tiny silhouettes onboard.

Elves.

I grit my teeth. “Armstrong. Target the deck.”

A burst of flame twisted from the front of the chopper as my scrapper chief checked the nozzles clear on his burn’em. The three elven commandos, having done their sabotage, leapt from the deck and were caught by flock of swamp bats, who carried them out into the night. I turned the chopper after them, giving chase. The goblins aboard took potshots at the bats, but their erratic flight and fluttering wings made them evasive.

The elves themselves weren’t helpless either. Encased in their moss disguises, I couldn’t see what level they were. But even as the bats flew, the elves waved small wooden staffs at us, and emerald light began to shoot across the distance. One of them struck the front of the chopper, and a mass of thorned vines and creepers burst from the site of impact, strong enough to warp the metal of the frame and jam up the mount for the burn’em. Armstrong shouted as he pulled back but grabbed his cleaver and began hacking away at the growth.

Magic. Combat magic. The first I’d seen. Sourtooth had warned me that the elves were skilled mages. Beside us, another emerald ray hit the the rotor mast of another helicopter, and the rotor tore itself apart in mid-air. Some of the goblins bailed, but not all of them managed to make it out before the helicopter hit the ground.

<Your tribe has decreased to 930 members>

Yikes. If we took a hit like that, we’d be down, too. I pulled the throttle wide open, pushing the engine RPMs to dangerous limits as the aircraft tried to shake itself apart.

“Armstrong, roast ‘em!”

Armstrong finished pulling the last of the creepers out of the gun mount and stuffed them into his mouth. He chewed the thorny vines as he angled the flamethrower up. The jet of flame shot out, scorching a jet of fuel that forced  the bats out of cohesion. Half the flock carried one elf north, the other split east with the other pair. I yanked my stick to the right, following the bats that had flown east. Several choppers followed me, but at least 3 went after the northward bats.

The elves we chased still had more tricks up their sleeves. He waved his stick, and a thick cloud of bubbling green mist unfolded between us. Every goblin instinct in me screamed, and I banked us hard. Armstrong hit the cloud with his flames, and they diffused and sputtered within it. Passing by, I got a whiff of some cold gas that made my nose go numb, and I shuddered.

We’d closed the difference, somewhat, despite the elves’ tricks. One of my riflemen managed to wing the bat the creature rode on, and the elf tumbled off, to then be swooped up by a replacement. I grit my teeth. They were experts at controlling these animals. I didn’t know what limitations (if any) their magic had, either. But I knew the limits of our machines. The engine behind me rattled and shook, belching back, pungent smoke out over the swamp. Peat bog began to give way to the tops of the thick trees as we pursued the elves east. I didn’t dare let up on the throttle, but I also didn’t know how much longer the engine would hold out.

More rockettes lanced out from the goblins poking their weapons through the frame of the chopper. I saw several more of the large bog bats taken out. The elves continued bounding from back-to-back, launching green rays at us that I made every effort to dodge. One of my other choppers closed in from the left, boxing them in. Either the engines would give out or the elves would run out of bats.

A shadow passed over us, and I glanced up at the broad wings silhouetted against the moon and grinned. With a glider from the bluff come to intercept, the elves were cooked. I grabbed the handset. “Signal the planes to cut off their escape route. Armstrong! Lay it on ‘em, keep their focus on us!”

Armstrong kept the fire on, but the weapon sputtered and spat flaming droplets. “We’re outta juice, boss!”

“We’ve still got rifles.”

My scrapper chief let go of the burn’em and pulled his rifle from where he’d jammed it He lined it up, and the crack of the double barrels sent a pair of rockettes spiraling towards his target. Another bat went down, and they were running out of animals. One of the emerald rays hit the chopper on our right, square in the cockpit. It veered off, spiraling as the goblins inside were assaulted with the thorny vines.

<Your tribe has decreased to 927 members>

On the left, our other wingmate ran out of juice for his turbine pump burn’em, as well. And then one of our goblins finally managed an impossible feat of goblin marksmanship. They hit one of the elves square center mass, and the tiny form was jerked completely off hit bat, tumbling through the air.

The other shouted, sounding like a pitched-down TV chipmunk, and reached out his hand to his companion. One down, one to go. Behind me, the engine struggled, sputtering. I could feel the heat of it through the firewall.

“Finish him off!” I shouted.

Armstrong took aim at the last of the elves and started to line up his shot. Before he could, a shadow swept over us and something crashed into the waning flock of bats. I was confused for a moment, but my crew started to panic immediately. Then I realized the wings didn’t belong to a glider after all. We’d flown back into the forest. At night.

“Night haunts!” shouted Armstrong.

Ahead of us, the flying predator shredded what was left of the bats. I saw the tiny form of the elf in free-fall toward the forest. At first I thought he was dead, and then I saw a tiny, olive-colored canopy open up and swore. The little jerk had a parachute!

I yanked back on the controls, but the night haunt was already banking around toward us. Shots from the rifles only made it mad, and it latched onto the side of the chopper. Its weight threatened to pull us over, and it screamed as the shock wires bit into it. Quick as lightning, it snapped up one of the rifle-toting goblins and flung it out into the night, before launching itself off.

I tried to track it, but it was so fast, and hard to see in the failing light. It hit us again from the left side, and then rockettes started to impact the chopper from our wingmate trying to intercede. Several struck the night haunt, but not before it speared two goblins with its sword-like beak.

<Your tribe has decreased to 925 members>

On the ground we could swarm and overwhelm night haunts, but the night sky was their domain, and we’d chased the elf into it. I spotted two more shadows overhead against Raphina’s reflected light and grit my teeth. The creatures were too swift and too nimble for the helicopters to handle, and the crews were too small to deal with the higher-level predator. One of them stooped and struck the other helicopter in a surge of sparks and squawking goblins. I saw the flash of tesla spears as they tried to force it off the dangerously unbalanced aircraft.

Hauling on the cyclic, I wheeled us around. “Retreat!” I called. “Signal the retreat!”

The night haunts continued to harry us as we fled back to Huntsville. We tried to respond, but all in all, by the time we reached the bog, we’d lost a dozen more goblins to hit and run attacks, being completely outmaneuvered. The creatures broke off their pursuit, heading back into the woodlands.

No matter how big the tribe grew, no matter the advances we made, the vast majority of the tribe was still level 1 creatures that were little more than snacks to the predators of Rava, and the slow, bumbling helicopters might as well have been a dinner platter. We owned the sky during the day, but it was still a night haunt’s world when the sun was down. We couldn’t fight them like this—especially not multiples.

Silver linings, we’d at least taken out another of the elves. Sourtooth had said they’d have come in a team of 6, which meant there were only four left—one of which was now isolated somewhere in the woods between Huntsville and Village Apollo.

Maybe the other chopper team had gotten lucky with their pursuit of the other elf, but I wasn’t counting on it.

Chapter 120 – Radio Free Sparker

Limping our way back to Huntsville, we were treated to an aerial view of the smoldering husk of our once-great and short-lived airship, Gemini. Her canvas envelope was still mostly in one piece—if burnt. Possibly we might be able to salvage it, or at least enough of the sailcloth to make a smaller version. But just from this attack, we were down an airship, several helicopters, and dozens of goblins. But we’d taken out another elf. And we still had work to do.

I circled the town and brought the struggling, beaten helicopter down in the southeast corner of the yard near the forges. I got out and tried to wiped the splatter out of my fur before giving up and taking a dunk under the cistern. Armstrong simply pulled out bug guts and fur in seemingly equal measures and it all went into his mouth. Sourtooth found us there, brace of ball-tipped javelins close to hand. I nodded to them. “What are those?”

“Elf blunts,” he said. “An elf would make a fine gift, if alive, one I can take. That your boglin friends managed it, a wonder it is. A king have they, said the one called George. True?”

I nodded. “True.”

“And you suffer this wretched creature to live?”

I shrugged. “He’s mostly harmless.”

“Captured King Apollo once, he did,” said Armstrong.

“Sort of,” I admitted.

Sourtooth raised an eyebrow.

“They hadn’t invented locks or even proper cages. I could have left—but the swamp was too dangerous on my own. Ringo even gave us a few secrets to help manage it.”

Armstrong continued, mouth full, “The boss sort’a set ‘im aflame and scarpered.”

“You did what?”

I shrugged. “Relations actually improved somewhat after that. We’ve helped them out from time to time.”

“A strange kinship, have you,” said Sourtooth, shaking his head. “Tis typical not, for a goblin king such a way to act. But then, so too is it queer to ride the wind on strange artifice.”

I grinned. “Regretting your decision to come with us?” I asked.

Sourtooth spat on the ground. “I regret every crooked decision that marked my twisted path through life, o’ king. I am architect and mason both of mine own tower of follies, ever mounting may it be.”

Well, at least the tart old orc took responsibility for his sourness.

The air group that had gone north came in for a landing, so overgrown with vines and creepers that they looked as though they’d donned the elf camouflage themselves. After they reported, I sent them back to start repairing their craft. The other chopper hadn’t managed to take out the third elf. He’d gone to ground in the swamp, evading the burn’em crews and the search lights. The stealth suits they wore made them effectively invisible in natural environments, while able to strike back against both the boats and the choppers from range.

Still, if Sourtooth’s guess was right, there were at least 3 elves still at large in the swamp and now 1 in the forest. They’d shown their hands, and we could put up a fair fight. The only issue was the elves were clearly not the type to fight fair. I probably wouldn’t if I was their size, either. Though, as a goblin, I wasn’t exactly physically imposing myself.

I shook my head. “Shame about Gemini. I wonder why they wanted it gone so badly.”

“Like, they thought, to find you aboard, I’d say,” said Sourtooth. “Saw you aboard through their familiars and assumed it to be your personal vessel.”

Armstrong nodded in agreement.

“Right,” I said, shaking the last of the cistern water out of my fur. “They’re hunting me. Can’t stay in one place for too long, then.” I considered. “And we can’t have them air-dropping in. That’s our thing. Send your boat boys to collect Ringo. And tell the scrapper crews to start destroying any bat or hawk nest they find in the swamp. I want to clip the elves’ wings. Anything large enough to carry an elf over the walls, I want it on a cook spit.”

Armstrong saluted and ran off.

“What will you do now?” asked Sourtooth.

“We can’t keep communicating with lights and flags and flares,” I said. “I want to build a version of the keeper beads.”

The old orc tilted his head. “Shaman magic, are the beads. Goblins can use them not.”

“No,” I said. “But there’s other ways to pass messages.”

I left Sourtooth and went to find Sally with her engineers. Luckily, she hadn’t been aboard the airship when the elves sabotaged it, but she wasn’t happy about being stranded in Huntsville—not that she’d tell you outright. But she had a grumpy aura about her, and she squawked and chittered at her engineers as they went through iterations of the simple radio designs I’d given them. She, herself, had several scorch-marks on her fur from working with the electric motors and basic transducers.

I started poking through the projects, seeing what looked close and what went on a completely wild goose chase. The audio diaphragms from the sound-powered phones were the hardest part, mechanically speaking. And that was done already. But the engineers still struggled with anything to do with electricity—and the sparkers were more like Frankensteins than Einsteins. Electricity had a tendency to arc through their whiskers and onto the nearest unfortunate goblin, which would invariably start a fight, which the rest would stop to either watch, cheer on, or pile into.

Eventually I ran out of energy watching the antics, stuffed some whistler jerky down my gullet, and passed out in the tower.

                            *

<Your tribe has increased to 959 members>

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Broad-cast’ems>

<Goblin Component Technology unlocked: Coil-tune’ems>

<Goblin Component Technology unlocked: Resist’ems>

<Goblin Component Technology unlocked: Electro-warblers>

<Goblin component technology unlocked: Zap-bricks>

<Goblin component tech…

What the hell?

The sparkers were even earlier risers than the rest of the goblins. Or so I thought. Turns out, they just never went to sleep with the rest of us. The baggy-eyed workaholics were practically dead on their feet by the time I pulled myself out of the sleeping mound and made rounds around the camp.

I walked around the workshop area at the piles of discarded prototype iterations, looking at the mounds of electronic waste that made Huntsville look like a freshman electrical engineering lab after a tornado. The starkest change was the 10-meter wire hanging from the top of a sleeping tower, trailing down to an ensemble of parts, wires, coils, and a sound-powered handset. It was all hooked up to a small generator, and had blinking lights and flashers that, as far as I could tell, indicated nothing other than the fact that they were blinking and flashing.

King Ringo sat at the station, shouting at the exhausted-looking sparkers as he wiggled his remnants. Though whether they were exhausted from staying up all night working or from spending 5 minutes talking to Ringo was anyone’s guess. At least the Scrapper’s night operation had been a success. Admittedly, I’d been worried about how it would go without my direct intervention. But the tribe was growing, and I couldn’t do everything myself.

“No, the elves! I wanna to talk to the elves!”

“King Ringo!” I said. “Glad to see you alive and well.”

The king startled and pulled himself around. “Apollo! Your whiskered fiends are attempting to deceive me! They claim this box will let you talk to people over great distances, but they’ll only talk to you.”

“I can’t imagine they’ve claimed much of anything,” I said. “They can’t talk at all.”

“Lies! Deceit! I’ve heard it!”

I looked at the nearest Sparker. He stared at me blankly.

I walked past Ringo and examined the equipment he sat at. Various bits were sparking and smoking, but I couldn’t spot any obvious shorts. Wires stuck out from leads at odd angles, thanks to the sparkers’ natural adhesive saliva just making conductive cobs at each contact. I didn’t know how much juice exactly was being pumped into this primitive radio set, and I didn’t see a receiver or an amplifier anywhere for return communication. But I held out my hand for the handset, and Ringo reluctantly handed it over.

Rather than a push-to-talk button, there was a lever on the side of the box. I pulled on it. “This is King Apollo at Huntsville,” I said.

Nothing happened—other than a small electrical fire as two loose leads arced. Next to me, one of the sparkers went rigid, all of a sudden. His whiskers vibrated in the air, and he tilted his head back, mouth open.

“King Apollo! This is Eileen! Can you hear me?”

“King Apollo! Canaveral checking in, John here.”

Holy cow. We had a working radio! Even if the receiver itself was a goblin. And not only that, but the technology had already propagated—had it done so through the sparkers at other settlements over the radio waves so that they could independently build broadcast boxes? My mind reeled at the possibilities. Even just basic, 2-way communication would be a huge boon for coordination between bluffs that, until now, were relying on messages carried by glider, buggy, or clifford. But I also wondered at the propagation of the tech tree itself. I had assumed that functioning on proximity meant it was maybe a chemical signal. But was it actually some sort of quantum gestalt field? Some super-auditory process? Or was it simply System-driven?

I pulled on the lever again. “Eileen! Good to hear from you! What’s your mission status?”

“Down for repairs for a day on account of some fighting, but Gerty is going strong. We went to a bunch of bluffs, but most were empty. Good to hear from you, chief! This broad-cast’em is awesome! Bit heavy for Gerty, though.”

It was somewhat strange hearing Eileen’s voice coming out of the throat of a sparker and sounding so tinny and thin. But the chief of my air wing had lost none of her zeal, and she’d be back soon.

“Watch out for the elves on your way back. They’re small and mean, and they’ll hit you with animals. Fire and electricity are their weak spots.”

“You got it, boss!”

“Boss,” said John, “We got a situation at Canaveral. Night haunts are getting riled up. We’re makin’ reckless rifles but we could use some of our scrappers back. Maybe some wranglers.”

We’d gotten Ringo, but we still had a long way to go and the scrappers were the best tool we had against the elves. I grit my teeth. “Send a few along, keep the rest with you. I don’t want to lose Canaveral again.”

John’s reply was cut off as the sparker fell over and started snoring. I looked around at the exhausted sparkers and hung up the handset.

“Are you all serious? Get something to eat and go to bed!”

Staying up all night, working themselves ragged, and barely able to take care of themselves. Honestly. They were acting like… well… they were acting like engineers.

Still. They’d done the tribe a great service. I was certain I’d made the right call.

<Are you certain? You could have been eating fungus right now.>

Shut it, System.