MBGSP Chpt 101-103

3 fresh chapters, coming in hot!

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The Stampede is heating up! I hope you guys are enjoying antics with the orcs. I've written orcs into quite a few stories, and I always try and put a new spin on them every time. These big game hunters are some of my favorite.

Also, the maneuver in chapter 101 is a real thing! It's a fascinating(terrifying) corner of aviation that most people never learn about.

Chapter 101 - Turnabout

The top of the massive rock formation shifted, dust and debris falling off it. Then it tilted. Toward us. My mind raced. This wasn’t part of plan A, B, C, or D. No time to climb, no space to turn. There was only one thing to do.

“King Ap, we appear to be in some danger.” shouted Girmaks from the engine.

“Hold on!” I shouted as I dumped the collective and jammed the cyclic stick forward.

“I have no arms with which to hold!”

 A feeling of weightlessness overcame the craft, and I could feel myself floating up as we fell. We tilted forward, just as the spindle began to topple at the narrowest point. With our altitude dropping, fast, I yanked up on the collective. It didn’t do much for our descent rate, but it pulled us forward, underneath the toppling rock formation. Rubble fell around us, and a shadow not unlike the eclipse enveloped us as the bulk of the formation passed overhead.

“Wooooooo!” shouted Armstrong from the gunner’s seat. He had both his arms raised high in the air as if he was on the world’s best roller coaster. The other goblins just hung on for dear life and squealed.

Shadow turned into sunlight as we shot out from under the collapsing spire, and I craned my neck around to see most of the formation had followed my maneuver—albeit, two a touch too late. A falling boulder smashed through the main rotor of one chopper, pulverizing the aircraft in an instant. The fuel caught, and the whole ensemble exploded.

<Your tribe has decreased to 577 members>

The occupants of the other aircraft saw what had happened. To a goblin, they all bailed out, some unfurling personal gliders, others just tumbling through the air, screaming at the top of their lungs. I saw one of them holding onto a small brass jar that glinted in the sun, which meant the Ifrit had bailed out as well. The now unmanned chopper spun out of control, spiraling in place until the bulk of the spire hit the thing, and it disappeared from view. The pillar crashed down with the noise of an entire thunderstorm compressed into a few seconds, and I watched, awestruck, as the whole thing collapsed into a billion pieces.

I brought the chopper around, lowering us down. A layer of dust had risen, but I still spotted the wreckage from the first chopper. Hauling back on the cyclic, I slowed us up and dipped us down, low enough for a goblin to hang below with a brass jar. As we passed close to the engine of the destroyed chopper, a pale, blue flame streamed from the busted engine to the jar, and I raised the throttle again.

Another chopper followed and picked up the goblins who had bailed out. Several crews had dismounted to run and kick the rocks broken off the main pillar and cheer at our victory. I even spotted a canoneer scribbling furiously to document the event. Even though, effectively, we’d shot a rock.

Still. Who am I to rain on their parade? Truth be told, I was feeling pretty euphoric myself. The tribe was beginning to master powered flight. How long before we had turbine engines? Scramjets? reusable rocket boosters? Space shuttles?

I whistled for their attention and formed a circle over my head with my thumbs and forefingers. A cheer swept through the assembled air crews, and I raised my voice to be heard over the clamor.

“Target practice is over! Time for the real thing!”

The goblins scrambled to get back to their vehicles, and the whine of engines rose again. The aircraft, now lighter having burned up fuel and shot ammunition, were now light enough to take off in a hover. The birds rose unsteadily into the air and waited for me to climb back into the cockpit of my own.

“We going after the whistler now, boss?” asked Armstrong.

“Not exactly,” I said. I hauled up on the collective and took my place at the front of the formation. The remaining aircraft fell in behind me, some smoking from the stress they’d put on their engines or malfunctioning recoilless rifles. “We’ve still got some unwanted company.”

I tilted the stick back and began to climb out of the valley, cresting the ridge of the spire field and angling back toward the camps. The goblins with Sourtooth and the rest of our convoy were watching and cheering, having seen the spire collapse. But they weren’t the only ones observing the spectacle.

Four orc tribes had set out from the Blood Gorger kill camp in order to keep an eye on us, and most of them had already started to set up camp while some watched our antics. A few of them waved and whistled when we emerged from the valley. This was all fun and games and glory, for them.

Well, for me, it was survival. I angled the column of aircraft toward the orc camps as though I intended to make a circle. The orcs on the ground ran along with our circuit, pointing and laughing amongst themselves. I made a full circle, making a note of the layout of the camps.

“Armstrong, you loaded up?”

“Loaded ‘n ready, boss!”

I dipped the cyclic forward and hauled up on the collective, dropping our altitude but increasing our speed as I spun the nose towards the orc camp. The engine whined at the extra strain, but Girmaks kept it running smooth-ish as I drew more power.

The orcs faltered, unsure of what was happening. They saw the choppers coming, of course. But in their heads, we were still just goblins. You could see the cognitive dissonance on their faces as their eyes saw harmless pests, but something in the back of their brains screamed this isn’t right.

“Hit their mounts,” I said.

The recoilless rifle belched out black smoke, and down in the camp, the hitching post securing the oryx and pack hogs for the Blood Gorgers exploded into splinters, freeing and startling all of the Blood Gorger mounts and beasts of burden. They shrieked and scattered, bolting in every direction—including through the camp, shaking off harness, tack, and supplies as they trampled tents. The other choppers opened up as well, hitting their foodstuffs, tents, water barrels, and other prime targets.

We had more than just the explosive launchers. The individual goblins aboard the craft hauled back and hurled poppers by the bushel at the orcs below, as well as taking potshots with rifles and pistols as we passed. Small explosions began to pepper the ground between the orc hunters, who ducked or ran for cover, having been caught completely flat-footed. A few flinched as they were hit by stray shots or shrapnel, but it was impossible to tell at speed how badly we were actually hurting them. The orcs were tough as old leather, and I expected the ordnance would sting their pride more than cause them real harm.

In just a few seconds, we were clear or their camp, and I angled toward the next one as the goblin loader slammed new rounds home in Armstrong’s guns. These ones sported green and black armbands and had seen what had happened to the Blood Gorgers. Several hunters were already at their hitching post trying to untangle mounts now scared and skittish from the sounds of chaos in the first camp. Others had gone for weapons of their own, and crossbow bolts began whistling past us, and took at least one of my goblins right off the aircraft. I kept us low and fast to minimize our exposure. Several of them thumped against the underside, and a couple clanged off the back of the engine as we passed the perimeter of the camp.

Armstrong angled his recoilless rifles down and smashed the second camp’s hitching post, sending orcs diving to the ground. More explosions popped off in the orc camp from the column, but the orcs were fighting back. A spear sailed past us, and several thick arrows punched up through the hide and thin wood planking. One arrowhead jutted up out of the floor, right between my left and right knee, causing me to almost jump out of my seat. But a few seconds later, and we were done with the second camp.

The third had managed to get a few of their mounts free and were riding them away from the unexpected attack. The goblin choppers weren’t exactly fast, but they were faster than a buggy and could keep pace with an oryx. I got us lined up with their retreat path, swooping down. Crossbow bolts thudded into the pole on my left side, and one bounced off my chestplate. It felt like getting hit by a hammer, and it knocked the wind out of me. But Armstrong responded with the launchers and it blue the oryx right out from under the orcs. We sailed past the scattered pursuers, banking to the right. I leveled us out to gain altitude, but the engine draw seemed sluggish.

“Come on, come on!” I called, glancing back. My heart dropped when I saw a feathered shaft sticking out of my fuel bladder, and a decent amount of the liquid dribbling out around it while the engine belched out dark, black smoke. The goblins on board noticed it too, and one squawked, panicking, and started climbing towards it.

“Stop!” I shouted, but it was too late. The goblin plucked the crossbow shaft out, and held it triumphantly above his head just as a deluge of kerosene blasted him full in the face from the now unplugged hole in the bladder. I built what altitude I could, but it wasn’t long before the engine sputtered and died completely.

An odd quiet enveloped the aircraft in the wake of losing the engine. All I could hear was the swoosh of the coaxial rotors as air started to rush up through them. System’s helpful altitude reading began to drop again.

Most people think a helicopter without power glides about as well as a paperweight, but they’re actually just almost as bad as a paperweight. I’d never performed an autorotation, but I have heard of them and understood the principle. I dropped the collective all the way to the deck and watched as the main rotors began to spin faster and faster, whistling as the air passing through sped them up. We dropped even faster, but we were going to need rotor RPMs to get through this, and that was the only way to get them. The spinning blades still gave us some lift, and pulled us closer to the improvised landing zone.

<Interesting.>

In the meantime, I angled us back toward the goblin camp, where the goblins had already seen me start to drop and were now shouting and panicking.

As we dropped closer to the ground, I hauled back on the stick and lifted the collective just a little. The whistle in the rotors became a strained creak and the whole aircraft shuddered. I heard the snap and pop of fasteners bursting. But our downward velocity halted and we shot ahead, trading those rotor rpms and forward airspeed for a little altitude. We actually climbed maybe a dozen meters, which I hadn’t intended, and I lowered the stick again. The ground shot up to meet us, and I hauled up as hard as I could on the collective to soften our impact.

The chopper hit the ground like a sack of dirt, bouncing and rolling on its gear as the main rotor blades overhead spun out the last of their energy. We rolled to a stop.

<Goblin component technology unlocked: oddy-rotation>

Shrugging out of the restraints, I jumped out of the smoking chopper to assess the damage. It looked… well, it had looked battered and barely functional to begin with. Now it looked very much the same state, just with dents, crossbow bolts, and a few less goblins aboard.

“Promo!” I shouted, looking for my chief engineer. The noblin waddled up, hammer at the ready. Sourtooth wasn’t far behind.

“Emergency repairs. Let’s get these patched up and get on the move.”

“We can fix some of ‘em on the move,” he said.

“Even better. Sourtooth, your plan worked. But I didn’t see Lura’s Dawn hunters.”

The gnarled old orc spat on the ground. “Aye, too clever by half, she, for one so few of years. Broke camp as soon as flight yon choppers took, lest she be caught flat of foot like the others. Still, a good showing. Sent afield the Gorgers and the others.”

I helped a handful of goblins shift the chopper onto the back of one of the buggies we’d converted to flatbeds in order to transport the aircraft. The rest of the choppers who hadn’t had punctured fuel tanks were already landing. “Will it be enough time to take down the whistler?”

“Supposing we can take the whistler…” Sourtooth rubbed his scarred chin. “Perhaps.”

Perhaps was better than no chance. But if Lura decided to interfere, those odds would not be in our favor. We needed insurance.

I left the chopper and went looking for Keeper. The hooded figure was working his beads, getting and giving updates—no doubt informing the rest of the Stampede about our little maneuver and our new toys.

“Keeper, can I send a message through those?” I asked, pointing.

“A message, I believe you have just sent, little brother.”

I huffed a laugh. That was true, after a fashion. But it wasn’t what I had in mind. “How are the Dawn Hunters and the Blood Gorgers doing?”

“Both close in on quarry. Both are confident they can stave off challengers, but neither are sure which of them will be first to bring low their beast.”

“I’m confident,” I said. “Because I sending three choppers to the Blood Gorgers.”

Keeper raised an eyebrow. “You think to succeed in thwarting them where others dare not?” he asked.

“Bad enemies to make, the Blood Gorgers,” warned Sourtooth.

“On the contrary,” I said. “I’m going to help them take down their monster. And I want Lura to know that if she does anything to prevent us taking down the whistler, she can kiss her glory goodbye.”

Keeper spun his beads. “Unorthodox, is this. It strides gray trail in the spirit of the Stampede… yet breaks no covenant. Very well. Relayed to both chiefs, your words have been. The Gorgers welcome your aid.”

“Thanks Keeper,” I said.

Most of the choppers had been loaded up. I climbed aboard our buggy, followed by Armstrong. Sourtooth strode up, as well. “Bold plan, little brother. But what should happen, should your ruse she see through?”

“It’s not a ruse,” I said. “I’m sending Chuck with two choppers to help the Gorgers. Armstrong, see to it.”

“Aye, boss!”

Sourtooth sputtered as he watched the hobgoblin dash off. “What?! Not a—we need every chopper we have! And likely a few more, in order to take down that whistler. I can’t spare any to help the Blood Gorgers.”. Need remind you, I, that the Blood Gorgers themselves are but a totem away from claiming the mantle of champions, just as the Dawn is?”

I nodded. “Like I said, it’s not a bluff. It’s an extortion. Lura knows I’m desperate to get the Flock a kill. She also knows that set in motion, whatever arrangement might be made, my chopper pilots will never hear of it because they won’t ever be given access to the Gorgers’ keeper. It’s in her best interest now for us to take down the whistler before the Blood Gorgers take down their totem with our help.”

A voice piped up from the engine. “I believe this plan will work.”

Sourtooth grumbled. “A devious plan. Very orcish, little brother. But it ride’s the knife’s edge. Gamble your tribe’s empty bellies on out-priding a very prideful woman.”

It was a gamble. I was gambling with the lives of the entire tribe. But attempts to introduce agriculture weren’t working with goblins eating all the roots and seeds. Farming would never keep up with the pace the tribe expanded—by the time crops grew, there’d be twice as many goblins to feed. I doubted anyone would be willing to send shipments of food or grain deep into the Lanclovan interior, either, so trade was out. The orcs were the only ones that didn’t hate us, but their version of trade was more along the lines of If you have something I want, I’ll trade it for you keeping your life.

Livestock was the only calorie-dense food to hold us in the short term until I got the tribe big enough to take a shot at the moon. And Lura had to know why I was forcing her hand.

Chapter 102 - Air Raid

“Where’s Lura?” I asked Keeper.

He spun his beads before answering. “She has left her hunt to her lieutenant. With all speed, she makes her way to the narrows.”

I grit my teeth. “Very well.”

I looked over at the choppers being pulled down off the backs of the buggies and fueled up. “With Chuck already on his way to the Gorgers, I don’t think we have time to wait for her.”

“And at whose feet lay that fault, little brother?” scoffed Sourtooth. “Never mind. The tinder is set ablaze and we must outpace its flame or be spit upon it.”

The old orc certainly had a way with words. With a final hawk of phlegm on the gravely floor of the narrows, he reached up and dropped the lid on the re-worked Big Hoss Rig. The heavy vehicle rumbled to life, spitting black smog from a pair of smokestacks at the back. Promo stuck his head out the side as it trundled past, giving me a salute and the sign of the right angle. “Don’t worry boss! We’ll do you proud!”

I waved him off as he and the other buggies, along with the half-dozen orc hunters still aboard Flock oryx and a gaggle of yapping cliffords, set off into the narrows to poke the bear.

Sourtooth had told me he wouldn’t face the whistler in a light buggy. So I’d built him something new out of the bones of Big Hoss Rig. I’d wanted a tank, but tanks require things like treads and sprockets and tensioners—things we simply didn’t have time to fabricate during the hunt. So BHR had been turned into something closer to an early armored car, 6-wheeled and up-armored, with a turret and sally ports for the goblins within to fire from behind steel plates. 2 separate engines kept the whole thing running. And I was reasonably sure it could survive a hit from what we were about to throw it against.

Meanwhile, we’d fixed the choppers that had failed to take off during the test flight, and built another besides. The Flock’s supplies of raw materials were dwindling, but the daily resupplies from Village Apollo helped keep us afloat.

“Ready, Armstrong?” I asked.

“Always, boss!” he said, pulling down his skull mask and swinging into the gunner’s station. A half-dozen other goblins climbed aboard, including our semaphore signaler zealot who strapped himself in at the rear. Over the past day, I’d canonized a set of signal flags and our signalman relished his role with religious dedication.

I patted the engine block. “Girmaks?”

“With you, King Ap. I will keep this vessel running smoothly.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” I said with more confidence than I felt. By sending my best pilot to help our rivals, I’d put a guillotine hanging over our own heads. I had to make sure we were out from under it before it fell. We’d come so far, and simulation or not, I didn’t want it to end here. A couple months ago we’d struggled to fight a low-level stone-sloth using a dozen goblins with makeshift spears. Now we were mounting up in attack helicopters and taking on kaiju. Well, small kaiju. The very monsters that kept most nations on Rava out of the Lanclovan interior (but apparently drew the orcs like a magnet), and we were butting heads with them. And even though the vast majority of our goblins were still stuck at level 1, we were venturing forth in our hundreds. Once I established food security, it would be in our thousands. And the orcs, the Prince of Habberport, the Ifrit, and the other races? They could keep the ground. I was claiming the sky.

Ok, confidence restored. I dropped a rockette into the starter slot and cranked the engine, bringing the aircraft to life. My chopper started to rumble, and around us, the rest of the fleet started to spin up. The rest of the goblins began to climb aboard, armed with poppers and slingers, pistols, and enthusiasm. To my right, I spotted a portly canoneer tumbling into a gunship scrawled with designs of gears, crank cases, and tools. The zealots piled in with him, and the aircraft almost drowned out their fanatical screams. On my left, Neil, with his favored hunters—looking primed and ready for big game. How he managed to work the throttle and collective with his hook hand, I couldn’t say. But he’d proven just as deft a pilot as any of the wranglers who helmed the other craft.

I pulled pitch and turned us on the ground, lining up with a flat stretch for a rolling takeoff before opening the throttle. We bumped and ground down the gravel stretch, building speed, and then with a shudder, bounced into the air. I looked over my shoulder at the rest of the fleet, who were all lifting off one by one in their loose, meandering formation.

I spotted the dust trail of the buggies and BHR on the ground, and angled toward them. They were heading into a narrow canyon with dozens of the slender spire formations dotting the floor. Sparkling water coursed through in a selection of narrow streams, glinting in the sunlight. Long ago, a wide river must have carved these arches and pillars, but now it was little more than a trickle. To the west, the shadow of the eclipse marched toward the hunting ground. Sourtooth had mentioned that the whistler was like the pale lizards, most active during the eclipse—but most vulnerable an hour before it woke.

“Seems quiet down there, boss,” said Armstrong. He leaned forward over the nose of the aircraft, far enough that I had to tilt the controls back to counteract the shift in the aircraft’s CG. “Feels weird, gettin’ the drop in broad daylight.”

I could understand that. But if this thing could sleep through the racket of a dozen buggies and choppers besides coming into its den, it probably needed a bomb to wake it up anyway. I craned my neck, though Sourtooth had been cagey when I’d asked for details on the beast. They’ll do little good, and you’ll know it when you see it. Stay clear of its path, was all he said.

I banked us around for a better look, avoiding the spires that crowded the airspace.

The ground itself looked… fairly clear. I didn’t spot anything huge and horned, though a few small herd animals scattered before the buggies. Scrub brushes dotted the gravel near the streams and along the walls of the canyons. I banked again, angling us through the maze of spires and dropped us low enough to clear a natural bridge connecting two adjacent columns, curious at the spiral ridge on the closest spire. Sourtooth had arrayed the buggies in a wide wedge formation, and had his turret raised and turned toward us.

“Wot’s he watchin’ us for?” asked Armstrong. “He should be lookin’ for ‘is whistler.”

Despite the heat of the day and the boiling engine block behind my seat, a cold feeling crept down my spine. A shadow passed over us, and I looked up at the underside of the rock bridge spanning the two spires on either side of us. Dozens of dangling vines waved in the breeze.

Not vines. Legs. Dozens of legs. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. The ridges spiraling the spires to the left and right were undulating, curling themselves around the rock formations. They weren’t rock as I’d first thought, but bone, lined with thousands of small holes. The whistler was a giant segmented insect—like a millipede.

I pushed the nose down and got clear, looking around frantically for the head. A dozen of the pillars were now alive and undulating, and several of what I’d taken for natural arches and land bridges were actually parts of the monster spanning the gaps.

“Where’s the front?” asked Armstrong. “What am I s’posed to—”

His sentence was cut off by a noise like a freight train’s steam whistle passing directly in front of us in a blur of clacking jaw parts and milling legs. The noise was immense, and the rush of the thing blasted us with a concussive force that knocked us completely off course. I struggled to control the chopper, maneuvering it away from the new airborne obstacle.

The head of the creature reached another pillar, and started to spiral down, before doubling back and launching itself across the gap at yet another column. The noise was incredible, and I think it came from all the little holes on its carapace making a sort of natural whistle as it passed through the air.

On the ground, the BHR fired up at the whistler. An explosion struck it on the side. It immediately changed course, jumping towards a low pillar near the canyon floor. But its tail still hadn’t cleared the pillars in front of the fleet. This thing had to be hundreds of meters long!

Armstrong leveled the front guns and put two recoilless rifle rounds into its carapace, as did several other choppers. The explosions rippled across its hide, drowned out completely by the shrieking whistle of its natural airhorns. I spotted a few cracks in the bony plate as it blurred by, but nothing substantial. This was a tough nut to crack, and we could hammer it until we were bingo ammo and blue in the face (well, blue-er), and not make a scratch.

“After the head!” I shouted. Not that any of the other choppers could hear me. But they could follow just fine. I dipped the stick and dropped collective, chasing after the head as it zig-zagged across the canyon towards the Big Hoss Rig. The whistler was faster than the choppers, but it seemed to only move in straight lines. Of course, the more it doubled back on itself, the more obstacles in our flight path. It reminded me of playing Snake on my old man’s cell phone back when I was a kid, the way you had to dodge your own tail as it kept getting longer and longer. Only this wasn’t a game.

The whistler doubled back again, cutting directly in front of my flight path, and I yanked us over almost 90 degrees to avoid getting shredded on its carapace. One of the choppers with us was not so lucky, and it caught the bony ridges and flew apart as though it had been hit by a full speed train.

<Your tribe has decreased to 569 members>

Still, I could see the head as it spiraled down the pillar, and I got us lined up. Armstrong had managed to catch his loader and keep the goblin from being flung out of the aircraft by my maneuver. He yanked the goblin back in place and the two started hammering rounds home as fast as the tiny hands could open the hatch and slam fresh rounds in and Armstrong could get the barrels lined up.

Bursts of flame and dust erupted on the face of the pillar, and the whistler roared, even louder than its natural shriek. It hit the canyon floor, zig-zagging towards BHR and I led the choppers in close behind it. Now that I’d identified it, System helpfully stuck an XX over its head. And, of course, we all know what that meant it thought our odds of success were. Maybe it was right. But maybe we were going to kick this thing’s carapace-covered butt.

Chapter 103 - Pain Train

On the ground, the whistler barreled its way across the floor of the canyon, churning gravel and dust underneath hundreds of legs. Directly in its path, Big Hoss Rig stopped, and its wheels started to spin backwards. The turret on top spun, tracking the head of the whistler, and fired. It had the biggest gun we’d built yet and I could feel the explosion as it kicked up dirt and debris in advance of the whistler’s rush.

The monster flinched to the side but kept on coming. The Flock hunters still on oryx bounded out of its way, hurling spears and firing crossbows at its eyes—and there were a lot of them on the thing’s face. At least 20 eyes covered the front of its face below an armor mantle. While the majority of them were fixed on the BHR, others scanned in every direction. There was no sneaking up on this thing while it was awake.

Another shot from the BHR exploded against the whistler’s back, twisting the creature just enough that it only caught the front corner of the BHR on its attack run. The armored rig spun out, tires shrieking almost as loud as the whistler’s natural airhorns. Almost immediately, the head diverted right, spiraling up and around a pillar before shooting the gap to another—directly in our path.

My eyes went wide, and I hauled back on the controls and yanked up on the collective. The flare shot us almost straight up, though I could hear the main rotors shuddering as the engine struggled to put out enough power to meet the demands of the maneuver. I fully believe that the engine would have exploded then and there without Girmaks inside it. If this little chopper had a safety envelope, I was flying well outside it. And worse yet, through the flicker of the rotor disc, I could see an arch directly overhead. I slammed the stick full forward, and we lurched forward, tail over teakettle with our semaphore signaler squawking and waving his flags helplessly in the air.

Some of our choppers followed high, a couple followed low, but at least one of them failed to maneuver in time and I felt the heat of the explosion on the back of my neck.

“King Ap, I must advise against pulling such a maneuver again.”

“It might not be up to me!” I shouted back.

<Your tribe has decreased to 562 members>

With our increased altitude, I spotted a glint of metal in the sunlight at the top of the canyon’s ridge. Spearpoints from Lura’s Hunters, if my mark was right. But they were just waiting and watching. Why? They had to know the Gorgers were closing in on their own kill. But they did nothing.

The whistler shot the gap again, this time aiming straight for the center of our formation. I was treated to a close-up of its gaping mouth and dozens of eyes all fixed on my aircraft before the whistle of a rocket-motor and an explosion knocked its head off course. The head narrowly missed me, and I hauled on the collective. The passing of the creature created a low-pressure zone that threatened to suck us right into it, where we’d be ground to fine powder against its carapace. I just managed to get us free and climb up.

The whistler changed targets again, spiraling down a pillar and snaking across the ground to snap at oryx riders.

I tried to calm my heart. I didn’t know what would happen if I were swallowed whole. Would the tribe simply count down while I slowly dissolved in the dark? Would the whole of us croak at once? Could I somehow escape, given enough goblins dying in my place?

Looking down at the massive creature, I could see the tell-tale damage we’d inflicted in the form of shattered shell and pock-marked carapace. Even a pair of direct hits from the BHR had only served to break armor—and the thing seemed to be mostly armor. It was like fighting a cast-iron freight train with an appetite and a grudge. Nothing this big had a right to move so quickly and change direction on a dime. But then, it didn’t exactly act like a single cohesive creature. Segments followed other segments, and no brain or neuron system in the universe could control that many independent limbs in a creature of such scale. It was Rava’s greatest game of follow-the-leader, no different from the goblins in choppers following my flares and signal flags.

I could exploit that, somehow. But I couldn’t do it alone. Even with rockets and recoilless rifles, we just didn’t have the firepower to strike a decisive blow against this thing. On the ground, two buggies tried to hit it with a net launcher, and the whistler tore it to shreds without even noticing the effort. Maybe if we had some mines we could set underneath it they might flip the beast and expose weaker underbelly. But against an outer hide that seemed to be, at least in part, metal plating? I hadn’t designed any kind of munition to get through that. What would it take, a steel dart? Tungsten? Once again I’d come to a fight unprepared, and found myself in an untenable position.

I grabbed the handset. “Signal the squadron to continue the fight,” I barked. I looked over my shoulder as the semaphore zealot clasped a hand to his ear-cups and then gave me a salute. His flags began to work, and I peeled out of the formation towards the ridge line to find the Dawn Light chieftess, Lura Sunskin. As I climbed, my stomach just about jumped into my throat. Keeper had said she’d left the hunt to her lieutenant. What he hadn’t said was that she’d taken the vast majority of hunters south with her. Hundreds of orcs on boars and oryx spread out across the top of the ridge, all waiting and watching, unafraid, as I approached. This wasn’t a force meant to hunt a whistler. It was a force meant to finish off what was left of the Flock. The threat was immediate and obvious.

Well, I’d certainly caught the woman’s attention. The fact she hadn’t wiped us out already told me there was still a way out of this. I wheeled the chopper around and brought us down on a clear patch near the head of the column where Lura waited, cross-legged atop her oryx with a small ladder and a high chair with a small seat. It was obvious who that was for.

Armstrong hopped out of the chopper with me, as though he could protect us from 50 times our number in orc hunters. But I was grateful for his company. I moved over to Lura and scrabbled my way up the ladder. The flock huntress looked at me with a mix of emotions—anger, barely concealed, but also curiosity and no shortage of chagrin.

“I have naught other than my pride, for blame, I suppose,” she said. “Pressed to my throat, is this dagger, yet its blade would cut us both—and it will slide ‘cross skin at any moment with the aid you lent the Gorgers, unless I aid your elsewise lost cause. Your intent, ‘tis clear.”

“Where I’m from, we call it a Sword of Damocles,” I said.

Lura grinned. “It’s become all too clear, ‘o little brother king, that were you’re from is not the Land of Shaded Skies.” She gestured with an open palm to the roughshod chopper behind me. “And despite your artifice so clever, you will break upon the whistler without my aid.”

<Your tribe has decreased to 554 members>

“That’s true,” I said. “And without your aid, the Blood Gorgers win the Stampede. So, will you help me?”

The sound of another explosion reached us, and Lura made a show of cupping a hand to her ear and waiting until the last echos had died off. Every moment she dallied cost the Flock.

“There is a price, little brother. I know now why the grandfather spirits led you to my doorstep.”

“What is it?”

Lura grinned a wicked little smile. “I’ll tell you not, lest you balk, and we’ve not the time for that. I want your word as king of goblins that this pact you’ll honor.”

“And if I don’t want to give it to you?” I asked.

Lura Sunskin laughed. “Then we watch you crash upon the beast, and we crush what’s left. This dagger may against both our throats press, yet it’s still I who directs its course. Shall it cut us both?”

I opened my mouth to respond, but Lura cut me off.

“Before you answer, know that should your words you reneg upon, I will carve your tribe from the jungle and the name Apollo will become a word meaning only death upon the plains and forests and sands of Lanclova.”

“You’ve got me between a rock and a hard place, here,” I said. I raised two fingers. “There’s two things I won’t do: I won’t wage war on another sentient species for you, and I won’t betray the Ifrit.”

“Then an accord, have we?”

“You have my word.”

Lura laughed and raised her spear. As one, the troop surged forward, hooves pounding as the orcs streamed to either side of us, disappearing over the ridge and dropping into the valley.

Lura angled her spear down at me as she heeled her mount to action. “A whistler is meteor given flesh, little brother. It cannot be slowed. But when they grow as this one has, its own length can be used against it. Take heart and take aim. Do not miss.”