MBGSP Chpt 95-97

Happy Thursday, goblin fans!

You'll be happy to know that my surgery went well, despite the anesthesia making me violently ill for the next several days (because projectile vomiting is really what you want with three abdominal incisions).

Monster hunting is something I always love writing about, and in fact I wrote an entire novel about an undead monster hunter a while back called Ought to be Dead, which you are welcome to check out. It's on Kindle Unlimited.

With the chaos of the past couple weeks over and done, there should be less disruption to updates for a while. I hope you enjoy the chapters and thanks for your support during the disruption!

Chapter 95 - Dartwing

<Your tribe has decreased to 428 members>

The dartwing must have spotted us as well, because it suddenly cut at a right angle, heading south. Far in the distance, I could see heat shimmering off great dunes that our buggies would never be able to handle. The dartwing’s enormous, bat-like wings cast a silhouette against the sky as it turned. Sourtooth was right, this wouldn’t be like trapping night haunts. This thing was massive. Maybe not as heavy as the thundercleave, but long and sinuous, despite the presence of feathers. It looked more like a winged serpent than a bird, and I started to wonder if the ‘dart’ in its name referred more to the shape of its body than its weaponized quills.

Maybe it was both. I cast a look over at the sour old orc. Between their name for the world, the names they had for creatures, and the name of our team captain in his esteemed self, I got the feeling that orcs were very literal namers.

Sourtooth leaned his chopper into a turn to match the dartwing’s new trajectory and the rest of our convoy followed him.

I did a check around the buggy to make sure All the goblins had their armor on. I wasn’t sure if one of those quills could pierce the bone of a skull-mask, but I’d issued the drivers all ceramic versions. The goblins hooted and hollered as we began to close the distance.

The dartwing didn’t flap its wings as it flew. Rather, it used them to glide, and then dive down to the ground in a huge plume of dust before somehow shooting back up into the sky to glide again.

I directed our ifrit to pull the buggy close to Sourtooth’s bike. “That’s sluggish?” I demanded.

The orc looked over. “Oh, aye. Heavy of wing and scale with her belly full, she. Hungry, we’d never catch her, nor likely, the coming of her see!”

“Splendid,” I yelled over the motors. Behind us, the Blood Gorgers had closed the distance some, ready to interfere with the chase on their oryx. They were leaned far forward in the saddle, and I saw them using a horn on the side to draw and nock crossbows with one hand while they gripped the manes of their mounts in their other fist. Well, lets see how their crossbows fared against our rifles.

I raised my hands above my head in the circle and whistled for attention. All the goblins turned my way, and echoed the hand signal as they cheered, including ones that ought to have been driving—nearly causing two trikes to collide and the monocycle to wobble alarmingly. I held out my hands and mimed working the action of a lever-gun, complete with chck-chck sound effects. My tribe echoed the onomonopea, and then echoed it with the real thing. The mechanical slam of dozens of rifle actions dropping into place filled me with an electric anticipation.

Ahead less than a kilometer now, the dartwing slammed into the ground in a plume of dust and folded its wings. Through the haze, I could see the form coiling like a spring and then launching itself into the air before unfolding those wings again. Dust cascaded off the trailing edges. Its feathered head twisted back and hissed at us, and I could see its distended belly dragging against the wind and slowing it down.

A creature like that could feed a tribe twice our size for a week. More, even. And I could make a half-dozen prop planes from the membrane of its wings. Maybe a larger airship. There was only one problem I could see: the large XX superimposed over its head by the System, where its level ought to be. I grit my teeth. No choice. All hope now lay in trusting that Sourtooth knew his business.

“Ready the launchers!” I called.

Across the convoy, bits of canvas and leather dust-covers came off the new additions to our buggies—courtesy the Flock’s stockpiles. Armstrong climbed up to the gunner’s mount himself and pulled the cover from a hollow metal tube. I joined him and slid open the action on my newest rendition of Earth’s ballistics science converted to Rava goblin blastics.

The shells for these looked like up-sized rockettes, but they weren’t rockets per se. Though, looking at the long, hollow tube of the launcher, you might thing that. I slid the cover back into place and latched it while Armstrong got his shoulder under the controls and locked the firing mechanism back. He pressed his eye to the targeting ring and started to angle the muzzle up, waiting for us to get in range.

The dartwing, however, must have realized it wasn’t going to outrun us. It wheeled with frightening speed, twisting back on itself and folding its massive wings tight against its body. The shriek from the wind through its quills reached us, sounding like a stuka siren from a WWII flick. The dartwing impacted a couple hundred meters ahead of us, shaking the ground with its impact as a wave of dust erupted.

A low whistling was my only warning to throw myself to the floor of the buggy before a staccato of dull thuds peppered the front of the vehicle. The other goblins onboard squawked, and at least one fell off the back.

<Your tribe has decreased to 423 members>

A blue flame tendril emerged from the gearbox underneath me. “King Ap! The Dawi appears to have impressive defensive capabilities at distance,” said Girmaks.

Something Rufus had said came back to me. “You could take a thousand goblins into the desert and you’d lose a thousand goblins.”

“No kidding,” I muttered, lifting my head. Several quills had buried themselves in the sloping front side of the buggy, fletching blowing in the wind. If this was the type of creature that existed in the deep dunes of the southern desert, the interior of Lanclova never being settled or conquered made a lot of sense. I looked back. Armstrong had two quills standing up on the front of his armor, but was otherwise fine. He yanked them out of the plate carrier and threw them behind him.

“How exciting! I shall have to tell Taquoho of the Dawi”

Right. Exciting. Dawi, huh? Even monsters weren’t spared Girmaks’ unique brand of familiar brevity.

Ahead, one of the trikes surged forward, occupants shouting. I spotted the canoneer on the back, and a bunch of goblins on board who had supplemented their skimpy leather with religious iconography. The driver opened the throttle so wide the trike bucked up on its rear wheels, surging forward. So many zealots had crammed on board that the spears made the vehicle look a bit like a wedge-shaped hedgehog.

Armstrong reached down and pulled me back to my feet. “C’mon, boss! Can’t let the nutters ‘ave all the fun!” He stomped on the deck, and the engine began to roar as Girmaks opened the throttle up all the way.

A massive shadow slithered in the dust cloud, coiling in layers like a set of gears. It stilled and compressed for a moment before the body of the thing shot from the cloud, directly overhead of us. The massive head twisted down and hissed as it flew over, mane of feathers rattling. Its head was big enough to swallow a goblin whole. Its wings spread and cast a shadow over the entire group.

Girmaks swerved to the right to avoid the drooping tail that dragged across the badlands terrain. As I held on, I could hear the screech of crude rubber tires, and then the crunch of at least one vehicle that hadn’t managed to get out of the way in time and the collective squawks as a dozen goblins were sent flying.

<Your tribe has decreased to 424 members>

“Bring us around qui—woooah!” I shouted. We might not have had brakes on the vehicles, but that apparently didn’t matter to an Ifrit who could simply jam the gearbox. The buggy slid sideways, and the engine screamed. We bucked forward.

<Goblin technology unlocked: Extra-lock braking>

The zealots who had been leading the pack were now bringing up the rear, which they were not fans of, from their angry shouting. Their vehicle ramped up on two wheels as it pivoted nearly in-place. Goblins swung from the frame like pennants, doing whatever they could to hold on.

“Nice going, Girmaks!” I shouted. Then, back to Armstrong, “Ready!”

“Ready, boss!”

I glanced over at Sourtooth, who had brought his chopper around and had his pistol raised straight up in the air. “On my order!” he shouted.

“Prepare to fire!” I called out.

In our path, the Blood Gorger detachment was now directly in the path of the dartwing, which they seemed to notice only just before the big snake folded its wings and that air-raid alarm noise grew. A wave of dust and quills spread out from the impact, peppering more of the colorful feathers against the front of our buggy. One of them hit me in the chest hard enough to knock the wind out of me, but Armstrong caught me before I could tumble off the back of the buggy.

One of the Blood Gorger mounts tumbled over, sending a pair of riders flying, but the rest managed to dodge the worst of it. I looked down to see Sourtooth pluck one quill from the meat of his shoulder with his teeth and spit it out behind behind him. He held his pistol up.

Once more, the dartwing rocketed into the air. But as it spread its wings to catch the air, Sourtooth fired his signal gun, sending a rockette with a colorful trail through the air where it burst in a puff of green smoke.

As one, the gunners on the buggies fired.

Chapter 96 - Reckless Rifles

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Reckless rifles>

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Buster-busters>

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Drogue chutes>

Swoosh-whump!

A shell went flying out the front of Armstrong’s cannon as a blast of exhaust sprayed out behind. Fire rippled up and down the line of buggies, and only one of them burst into flame. I’d consider that a huge success for untested designs. Most of the shells went wide, bursting harmlessly in the air. A few struck home in the leathery wings of our target, and small chutes deployed.

The weapons we’d mounted to the buggies were an old anti-tank technology that I’d co-opted for big game hunting. Recoilless rifles look and function a lot like rocket launchers—a big shell comes out the front and a jet of exhaust comes out the port in the back. But, as their name would suggest, they have more in common with traditional firearms. In this case, the payload wasn’t a rocket, but a self-contained shell with a hook in the front and a secondary charge in the back that deployed a small braking parachute. Individually they wouldn’t slow the dartwing much. But as they started to increase in number…

I heaved the action on the recoilless rifle open and pulled out the steaming expended primer case before dropping another one in place. Additional shots whooshed out from other buggies as well. Armstrong adjusted his aim and fired again, this time striking home. The dartwing’s glide began to falter with the additional drag pulling at its lithe, otherwise aerodynamic body.

“We’re in it now, boss!” shouted Armstrong. “Get after ‘er!”

The dartwing hissed back at us, now flapping its wings in frustration to maintain altitude instead of gliding. It reared back and ripped two of the chutes out, snapping the lines. But for each one it pulled, two more goblins landed hits. The beast began to lose lift and entered its dive. But the chutes worked to blunt its impact, and the wave of dust and quills was noticeably blunted.

<Your tribe has decreased to 422 members>

Not entirely blunted, of course.

<Your tribe has decreased to 420 members>

The bark of lever guns sounded somewhere to my left, and a crossbow bolt whistled in front of my face. I looked over to see the orcs of the Blood Gorgers closing in on our flank.

“Sourtooth!” I shouted.

The old orc glanced over and his face twisted into a laugh. He yanked his handlebars and moved to intercept.

“They move to intercede! The Gorgers must draw close to their own kill. They fear we might actually have a chance this beast to bring down first! At them!”

Girmaks swerved us left to avoid the dust cloud and bring us to shore up the flank. I shouted over at Neil, who was commanding a special new vehicle, not unlike the Big Hoss Rig in size but of very different purpose.

“Keep the rig safe, Neil! And keep hitting the dartwing!” I shouted, before Girmaks carried us into the melee.

The orcs had reached our line on the left, close enough to see their face paint. The Blood Gorgers all had a red splatter painted across the lower half of their faces, with blood-red stained cloths tied around their arms. One of them threw a spear at Sourtooth, but the old orc steered back away and returned fire with his new rockette pistol. The shell took the gorger in the shoulder and knocked him out of his saddle. He rolled through the dirt, before coming to a stop and beginning to laugh. But there were more ready to replace him.

Armstrong picked up his double-barreled lever gun, detached from the buggy we’d ridden against the javeline. He fired on the orcs as they closed in, The first of the orcs began to leap atop the buggies. Guns were dropped in favor of cleavers and spears, but the orcs were terrific infighters, nimble and quick, striking with daggers in close while those still riding oryx probed with spears from the backs of their mounts.

<Your tribe has decreased to 416 members>

The buggy shifted, and I whipped my head around to find one of the Blood Gorgers had managed to get onto our buggy. He kicked the rear gunner off the back of the buggy and pulled a dagger out from between his teeth.

I had expected him to snarl in rage, but instead, his eyes lit upon me and he grinned. “Ah, little brother king! How find you the Stampede? A lark most bracing, yes?”

I was so stumped for words that I just looked at the orc. Behind us, I heard the whump of the dartwing attacking again somewhere behind us, and then three feather quills appeared in the Blood Gorger’s chest. He looked down at them curiously, ran his fingers over the fletching, and then tipped off the back of the buggy. But more were ready to take his place—until the zealots hit them.

And when I say hit them, I mean hit them. The Buggy plowed into the line of oryx, engine and occupants screaming. What goblins didn’t go flying into the desert were quick to swarm onto the backs of the oryx, weapons raised as the cumulative combat bonus from their fervor skill let them fight toe-to-toe with the much stronger orcs—at least with a significant numbers advantage. Armstrong fired his rifle, and I threw several of the poppers we had onboard. It sounded like being caught in the middle of a Midwest thunderstorm.

<Your tribe has decreased to 412 members>

I spotted one of their members further back, speaking to a keeper on the back of an oryx. That orc raised a horn to his lips and blew a low blast. The Blood Gorgers, whose main goal had been to distract and delay, withdrew from the melee. But was that because they were badly outnumbered? Or because their own team elsewhere was close to securing their own quarry?

Sourtooth seemed to share my concerns. He pulled back to speak with our own keeper, and then moved up to the side of my buggy. “Tis now or never at all, little brother mine. When it launches again, we strike!”

“Right,” I said. I whistled to get Neil’s attention. My taskmaster looked over at me from the back of his vehicle and nodded. His driver came close enough for me to make the transition. Ideally we’d have slowed the dartwing with more of the small chutes, but the Blood Gorgers simply didn’t give us the opportunity. Together, Neil and I pulled the dust cover off the second part of the plan.

The weapon on the back of the buggy crewed by Neil’s most fanatical hunters wasn’t a recoilless rifle. We finished removing the dust cover and threw it into the wind to reveal a rack of two large rockets with a terrifying new addition: cockpits. While I hadn’t expected a shortage of volunteers, I hadn’t expected a practical civil war to erupt over who got to be the ones to strap in. The S&M club smacked and bit and pulled at each other, until two finally managed to get to the top of the pile and tumble into the small seats, laughing maniacally.

I locked eyes with Neil. “No time for speeches,” I said. “They know what’s to be done?”

Neil nodded, and opened a small tinderbox to reveal two glowing coals. I reached in and grabbed one, thankful for the heavy hide gloves I’d donned to act as loader for Armstrong’s recoilless rifle. The material hissed and I could feel the heat through it. I moved back to the rear of the rockets as the hunters made a hole. Neil and I nodded to each other, and we touched the coals to the igniters at the back of the rockets. They fizzled for a moment, and for a few terrifying seconds, I worried that I’d gotten the liquid mixtures wrong.

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Liquid rock’em fuel>

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Single-crude rock’ems>

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Composite goblin rock’ems>

The sputtering sparks turned into a roaring jet of flame. I held a hand against the heat, and the two rockets and their unfortunate pilots shot off the racks and toward the dartwing, just as it launched back into the air.

The goblins still aboard the buggy all held their hands above their heads, whistling and making the sign of the moon above their heads.

This was it.

Chapter 97 - Stage 2

The plan to bring down the dartwing wasn’t the only thing with 2 stages. As the rockets climbed up and away toward the flying serpent, they carried with them two lines on reels locked to the front of the rig. I could just make out the tiny figures in the cockpits maneuvering the missiles as best they could, considering the circumstances. The liquid fuel began to sputter out, and then the back half of the missiles fell away.

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Drop-away rock’ems>

With the first stage successfully separated, the second stage motors kicked on, and the icky-putty power pumped the smaller delivery vehicles with the needed energy to climb up above the dartwing’s altitude. The serpent hissed, eyes up, tracking the new threat. It wheeled to the left, trying to evade, but the drogue chutes slowed it down, and one of the two rocket pilots course corrected. The other struggled to bring his craft in line.

“Come on, come on!” I shouted. The reels on the rig shrieked as they played out the cord. Overhead, the two rockets caught up with the dartwing. The first pilot bailed out, deploying a personal glider that carried him up and away from the rocket, just before its payload exploded. A wide net, courtesy of the Flock, spread out, and just missed the dartwing. It dropped, and Neil slashed the line coming out of the reel that had been connected to it.

The second rocketeer got his craft back on track—but didn’t bail out. He screamed toward the dartwing on a column of sickly-brown exhaust smoke. The two converged in the air, and then another explosion… and no glider.

<Your tribe has decreased to 409 members>

The dartwing flailed in the air as the second net wrapped about its wings, tangling and driving the creature to the ground. This time it fell, rather than diving. It hissed and shrieked as it came down, twisting in the air, until it landed on the badlands with a whump. By this time, the goblins had learned to duck, and we didn’t lose any more to the quill barrage.

“Let’s go!” I shouted, pointing at the downed creature. “Finish it!” It was down, but not out. My mouth was already salivating at the thought of how much meat was on that thing. We’re talking snake fillets, we’re talking wing meat, we’re talking shoulder roasts.

A horn blast sounded from one of the vehicles at the back of the convoy. I looked back, and the blood drained out of me as I saw the orc keeper with a ram’s horn in one hand and his beads raised high in the other. Sourtooth brought his bike nearby, and I didn’t need to hear the words that passed between them to know we were too late. Sourtooth’s dark glower said it all.

We were too late. The Blood Gorgers’ interference had delayed us just long enough from bringing the dartwing down, and someone else had managed their kill first. If it was Lura, then that would mean the Stampede was effectively over, as she’d have more points than anyone would be capable of overtaking. Unbelievably, I had to root for the jerks who had just attacked us.

I had Neil drop our buggy back alongside the orc leader.

“Sourtooth, who got it? Are we still in this thing?”

The old orc looked at me. “The Blood Gorgers claimed a kill. Onward the Stampede marches, little brother.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Then glanced at the dust plume from where the dartwing had fallen. “At least my tribe won’t go hungry for a while,” I muttered.

“We must free her of those binding ropes,” said Sourtooth.

I snapped my head around. “What?! But we have her!”

Sourtooth shook his head. “Forbidden to claim a totem outside given time. To do so is to rob another team of hunting. This law is ironclad, and violated would see us thrust from the Stampede.”

I threw my hands in the air. “So all that work, the goblins I lost, and the resources we spent, and it’s all for nothing?”

“Tis the way of things, little brother. The strong prevail and whine not. Come, we must free her and join the slayer’s camp.”

The rest of the Blood Gorgers were already headed south. I had the convoy stop up while a few of us went on to where the dartwing had landed. Trapped on the ground, it didn’t look like such a monstrous threat, coiled and caught. System had let me see its level, finally, and a luminous 43 hovered over it. This was one of the winged creatures the bestiary had only alluded to, and there were much stronger threats. But it was the toughest thing we’d brought down to date, and we weren’t even going to get to eat it.

It glared at us, even as we cut the binding lines off the nets and allowed it to slither free. It didn’t attack us as we did so. Some part of it must have known that we no longer intended to kill it. With a final hiss and ruffling of feathers, it sprung back into the air and headed towards the dunes on the horizon.

Sourtooth sighed, shaking his head. “There’s no catching her in the desert, little brother. We must regroup and plan anew. Come. We shall see if the Gorgers quarry is of their name worthy.”

It was with some reluctance that I piled on the scattered bits of the vehicles we’d lost onto the backs of the buggies and headed south after the detachment of Blood Gorgers. It wasn’t until the sun had dropped nearly to the horizon that we came in sight of the Stampede camp, centered around a massive carcass. The celebration was already in full swing, with the red-faced Blood Gorgers getting a head start on the merriment. I left Chuck in charge of getting our corner of the camp set up and followed Sourtooth into the encampment.

“Little brothers!” I heard one of them shout, and the rest pointed and cheered. One of them sauntered over, grinning. I recognized him as the leader from the detachment that had hounded us. “Well fought, neath the spreading of the dartwing’s shadow. Had we dallied but a few heartbeats more, we might have been feasting on snake tonight, instead! Taste in our victory.”

He handed down a handful of dripping meat wrapped in a flatbread like a gyro, the smell of which made my mouth fill with saliva. I reached out, half expecting him to rip it away in a cruel jest. But I took it, and glanced at Sourtooth, who already had one of his own, which he chewed on the good side of his mouth. The Gorgers had more ready for my secretive service that accompanied us, and even a platter to bring back to the rest of the goblins.

The sandwich itself was fresh and hot and greasy, packed with seasoned meat that reminded me of a kebab joint near my university. The orcs liked things spicy, and my eyes began to water along with my mouth as I dug in. The Gorgers moved on, clearly half-drunk already and shooting for full.

Once they left, I shook my head. “I don’t understand orc customs,” I admitted to Sourtooth. “They refuse to trade, but Lura and the Gorgers both offered us food from their kill.”

Sourtooth stuffed the last of his gyro into his mouth and swallowed it. “For a goblin, you think oddly like a human, little brother. I know not from where this backwards reason comes. Men and elves show wealth by hoarding it, by wearing trinkets of soft, useless metals and stone houses to anchor them. But an orc’s wealth, only by what they can spare is it displayed. All can see the quality of a feast spread amongst respected rivals and know an orc to also be of quality. That is the way of things.”

I pressed my hands to my forehead, trying to understand. “So, you take what you want, because the strong taking from the weak is the way of things. But you share as much as possible with anyone who doesn’t have as much, because that shows off how rich you are?”

Sourtooth clapped a hand on my back. “Now you’re getting it!”

I really didn’t. It was some weird inverse Robinhood custom. Steal from the poor and give some of it back. It was as backwards as their high school drama club speech. But if it resulted in gracious winners and me not going hungry tonight, who was I to judge?