MBGSP chpt 86 thru 88

Howdy, goblin fans! The story continues with a couple surprising new twists, leading into the meat of arc 2. Hope ya'll enjoy.

Chapter 86 - On the Prowl

Splitting from Taquoho’s group with a final wave, we pulled out onto the open plain, steering through grassland and bare, rocky turf while the sun beat down overheat. Armstrong was right about one thing: It was hot without the canopy cover of the forest. Of course, we were also riding unstable internal combustion motors burning rocket-fuel enhanced kerosene.

Not having to bear multiple riders, the cliffords were easily able to keep pace with the convoy, even ranging out ahead in some cases. They’d adapted well to the dense clutter of the jungle, but this was their natural habitat and they dove through the grass stands as if they were olympic swimmers, barking their heads off and circling back for more.

We set a generally easterly course toward the rising sun, leaving a trail of dust behind us that climbed into the sky. I stood in the stirrups and leaned over the handlebars, enjoying as the terrain rushed by. This was almost as good as flying. Almost.

Speaking of flying, I spotted the flash of reflective lizard skin in the air, and Chuck pulled alongside.

“It’s a glider,” he said. “They’ve spotted something,”

“Let’s check it out,” I said. “Lead the way!

Chuck took his bike back ahead, raising his shock spear overhead and spinning it, before pointing in the direction the glider was facing. The convoy whooped and cheered as they turned north-northeast, cutting across a small stream and bounding up the other side through a stand of scraggly trees. We rode for a couple hours, keeping the circling glider in flight as it rode thermals and pointed the way to our destination.

The eclipse came and went. As it receded, far in the distance, I could see the flash of sunlight on water. And near it, a small herd of white creatures. Pay dirt. I didn’t know what they were, but I’m sure they were delicious.

Chuck caught sight of them, too. And then the cliffords caught the scent. At the wrangler’s whistle, they broke out to the right, bounding into the grass and vanishing from sight. One of the other bikes pulled up alongside.

“Pass word to Promo, take Big Hoss Rig and the fueler and set up near the water.”

The bike dropped back to pass the word. Behind me on the trike, the goblins readied various weapons and tools, including lengths of rope with nets, slingers, tesla prods, and more than a couple premature sets of eating utensils that they had to have filched from the paladins.

Armstrong opened up the magazine on his rifle and stuffed a handful of rockettes in, but I held a hand out to him. “Hold off if you can. We want herd animals if we can get them. Herds can be driven. Carcasses have to be hauled.”

“Aye, boss! Just in case, then, yeah?”

Sounded prudent. Herbivores drew carnivores, and we didn’t yet know what kinds of beasts stalked the plains.

Rufus’ bestiary had described large cats, bipedal lizards, diurnal birds at least as big as a night haunt, and some manner of burrowing predator. But most of it was folklore, rumors, or just plain fabrication. The fact was, the interior of Lanclova was inhospitable to the ‘newcomers’ as the Ifrit dubbed them. Which was fortunate for goblins, even though the powers that be had already sent agents like the javelines.

I scanned the grassland for any sign of predator, but the trike was a little too low to penetrate the tall grass stands. Still, I didn’t see any immediate threats. Behind me, one of the buggies was extending a line attached to a kite with a goblin strapped to it to get eyes in the air. That should give us vision for miles in every direction.

Unfortunately, the herd spotted the paper wings on the glider, and decided they’d had enough to drink. The creatures, maybe 30-40 strong, wheeled and started bounding in the opposite direction. All around me, engines roared as wranglers opened their throttles all the way up. Not one to be left in the dust, I did the same.

About that time, the cliffords broke out of the brush much further up, startling the herd and forcing them to shift directions. No longer running directly away, they cut an angle that would let us close the distance. The goblins on the trike chittered and whooped as we closed the distance, smacking the side of the vehicle with the butts of spears and the sides of cleavers as if to spur the iron horse on.

As we got closer, I was able to make out more details of our prey. They were some type of large bipedal creature with broad, twisted horns—not all that dissimilar from the shape and sweep of my trike’s handlebars. They were half again as tall as a goblin, and they had four eyes set wide, able to track us as we pursued with long arms that they used for turning. They also had thick haunches, and they moved in a bounding leap that carried them probably close to five or six meters per bounce as their long, floppy tails waved in the wind like streamers.

Strange creatures. Put me in the the mind of a kangaroo crossed with an antelope. But those haunches were thick, and one of these things could probably feed 10, maybe 15 goblins for a day. My brain was vibrating too much to do the mental math, but if we got even a few of these creatures, it would be a huge boon for the bluff.

The creatures wheeled again, toward a grassy area where they must have hoped they could lose us. One by one, they started hopping through the wall of grass, vanishing as though they had turned into smoke. And it was true that these vehicles wouldn’t do as good in thick grass as they would on bare earth. But we weren’t helpless and we weren’t afraid to get dirty.

The bikes split up and headed in either direction, and I fell back behind a four-wheeled buggy with a wide, ceramic cutter on the front.

“Armstrong, get ‘em in line,” I said, securing a scrap of canvas over my nose and mouth.

Armstrong stood up in his station and cupped his hands. “You lot queue up! Single rank, onna double!”

The vehicles pulled in, and then the front buggy hit the grass stand.

His cutter flayed the grass, sending clippings through the air as he carved a path ahead of himself. He necessarily slowed, and I eased off the throttle so as not to hit him from behind. The walls of grass rose on either side of it, taller even than the goblins atop the buggy who hadn’t bothered to mask up, currently spitting out and coughing up grass clippings.

One of the goblins on my trike got snagged by a scraggly branch from a tree in the grass field, and I heard his cry of EEEEeee as we kept moving, but I couldn’t afford to stop. Hopefully he would find us before nightfall.

The front truck burst out the other side of the grass stand, back onto hard turf, and opened his throttle back up. I pushed mine to the max, as well, and spotted the motorcycles on one flank, moving ahead to make sure the herd couldn’t deviate again, while the cliffords sprinted up another.

The herd itself seemed to be starting to tire, as well. Their break-neck pace started to drop, and individual animals started to lag behind. With the motorcycles and cliffords penning them in, the main convoy gained ground. The lead buggy drew close enough that the goblins on board started throwing nets and lassos—which immediately got tangled in the buggy’s axle and cause it to spin out.

“Jesus!” I shouted.

I jerked my steering to the right, aided by the Ifrit, and narrowly dodged the grass-cleaving blade from making my leg remnants even shorter. Several of my passengers were not holding on especially tightly and flew off the sides of the buggy. The monocycle had been following me too close to react when I swerved, and they ramped off the front of the cleaving buggy, steel suspension acting like a springboard to launch the unfortunate pilot in his one-wheeled craft at least fifty meters into the air. The accident caused a chain reaction behind me, as more vehicles were forced to slow or swerve to avoid wrecking against the buggy. Dust from all the wheels skidding across the ground rose up in a choking cloud that confused all four directions for a minute before the wind blew it clear.

We got it sorted, but the bulk of the herd used the distraction to build distance again. All that lagged behind were the old, the injured, and a few juveniles who couldn’t keep up with their older generations. I got us back on track and the trike began to catch up to the stragglers who fell behind the herd. Three vehicles, including the monocycle, the cleaver buggy, and one tipped over trike did not rejoin the pursuit. We’d make do.

“No ropes!” I shouted over my shoulder. I didn’t need a repeat of the buggy’s blunder. I reached down to a holster by my knees and pulled out one of the tesla prods with a snapping, buzzing wasp pinched between its tines. As we drew even with one of the exhausted creatures, I thrust out my rod and was rewarded with the snap of electricity. The creature locked up mid-hop and toppled over. the goblins on the trike cheered, and I grinned myself.

I’d never been a hunter on Earth. My old man had told me only bakers and thieves woke up early enough for that sort of thing, and he didn’t have the belly for an apron or the face for a mask. Just one of those weird things dads say, I guess. But the point is that it didn’t run in my family. Now that I was riding the plain on a trike, zapping animals into submission with my tribe. And it felt good, to both the human and goblin sides of my brains.

We pulled further ahead, and two of my gunners with reed dart guns shot another pair of wasps at another horn hopper. It bleated as the insects struck it, and it tumbled ass over teakettle with the angry bugs buzzing for freedom in its flank.

All around, vehicles veered off and chased down onesie-twosie hoppers as they broke and ran different directions. But the main herd was still ahead.

“Armstrong, what’s are fuel look like?

Armstrong opened up the brass tank. “Gettin’ low, boss. Just below that line you scratched.”

The bulk of the herd pulled further and further ahead. But we were also getting further away from our support vehicles, and I didn’t want to spend the evening trudging back to the lake we’d passed with bladders to fill and carry back just because I got greedy.

“Alright, load up the ones we stunned. Let’s rendezvous with Promo and celebrate our first hunt with a proper fry-up.”

That got the loudest cheer of the day.

Chapter 87 - The Hard Things

We drove slower back to the pond where Promo had set up the BHR. We took advantage of the stunned state of our newest livestock to feed iron pins through the septum of each animal and attach it to a line. Some of them surrendered to their fate as soon as they woke up, trotting alongside the convoy with heads lowered. Other resisted, painfully, and the wranglers had to box a few snouts to bring them around. One of the motorcycles pulled up, and I looked over to see my wrangler boss handing off the controls before making the jump over to my buggy. The goblins on the bike squawked as their center of gravity shifted, falling back with a bad case of the wobbles.

“How’d we do, Chuck?”

“Way better’n on cliffords, boss. Seen these hoppers before, but never caught the jump on ‘em. 16 tied up. 10 of those can feed the hunt, and the rest we can send along tomorrow.”

I nodded along. “Imagine if we’d gotten more of the herd. Our food problems would be sorted. We were so close.”

“We’ll get ‘em, boss. We’ll fuel up and track ‘em again tomorrow.”

I patted the engine beneath the trike. “You did good today, too. Nice job on keeping this engine running smooth.”

“Thank you, King Ap. This union experienced much excitement and thrill.”

It took us about an hour to get back to the watering hole where we’d first spotted the herd. Promo had already unpacked the BHR, which was the next iteration of the portable goblin tower—on wheels, this time.

Since a forest canopy didn’t exist out on the badland plains, we had the equivalent of a dump truck’s rotating payload, only this one rotated a telescoping square tower onto the ground. Hollow inside except for a series of nets, it could sleep over a hundred goblins, with room for more at the top. Not as tall as the one we built in Huntsville, but hopefully just as secure. Especially with hobbies on choppers running night patrols.

Promo had 2 other igni and about 20 non-variant goblins with him, just there to back him up when setting up the rig and with whatever else Promo needed around the camp. More than a few of our rides were dinged up needing maintenance. Luckily, he already had a forge fire and a cookfire going.

I pulled the trike up near the tower and hopped down, shaking the dust from my fur. The wind sweeping across the badlands carried a lot of dust and debris. Promo eyed the hopping creatures we’d brought back, barely managing to keep his drool from dripping. “I, uh, see it was a success,” he said.

“Not nearly successful enough,” I said. “We’ve already had one total loss, and we’ll need another vehicle tomorrow to take back whatever we don’t eat tonight.”

“Yeah, but we planned for attrition,” said Promo. He rubbed his chin. “Want to start setting up here? Get a couple structures going, spare parts, some basic resources…”

I looked around. “It’s got mud, grass, and fresh-ish water.” I eyed the brackish, brown pond. “That’s bricks and something to drink, at least. Be good to have a solid base of operations, and it’s only a few hours southwest of Canaveral. Alright, let’s do it.”

Promo nodded and poked at his fire.

The goblins made quick work of the animals set aside for dinner. I didn’t know if I’d ever get used to them tearing through prey like a school of land piranhas, but they had 10 animals skinned and quartered as fast as you can blink, and the various bits spitted and turning over the cookfires. Soon the camp was settled into an evening of repairs and crackling fat starting to render. We kept the remaining hoppers in the lowest level of the BHR tower, which would hopefully keep them safe from predators.  Or, failing that, alert the goblins sleeping above.

Our first day on the plains had been fortunate in how few goblins we’d lost. I knew there were still a few stragglers out in the brush that would get picked off before finding their way to camp. But hopefully they’d find some way to survive the night on the ground.

Goblins weren’t meant to be on the open plain. Maybe there was another variant suited to it already out here, like King Ring’s boglins. But without the trees and the bluffs, it seemed to me like isolated goblins were a snack waiting to happen. Still, in terms of our losses, we were doing well. Downed crewmembers were below my replacement reproduction projections for the sleeping arrangements in the tower, which were too large per-pile for optimal spawning efficiency, but made good use of the available space inside.

I worked on the vehicles with Promo until dinner was ready. Lord knows I’ve been elbow deep in an engine or two on Earth. Personally, I preferred rocket motors to Wenkles, but I’d take what I could get on this new world. Finding problems with my designs wasn’t hard from this perspective. The badlands weren’t gentle on the primitive vehicles with their iron-banded wooden wheels, and replacement parts were the most jury-rigged contraptions this world had likely ever seen. By the time we were done with the repairs, I’d replaced the dust with grit and grime from the engines, and I smelled vaguely of the thicker lubricant oil from fish livers that we’d mixed in with the spring kerosene.

No one ever said this was going to be glamorous. But at least I was going to bed with a full belly for the first time in what felt like a week. And in the morning I’d see to it that tomorrow was an even more successful day for the desert warriors of Tribe Apollo. I looked up at the stars above while I ate, and at the big shadow that was Raphina’s closed eye marking a wide circle in the sky. It didn’t have rings or a bullseye, but it was a target none the less.

We’d come so far in such a short time, but there were still so many steps along the way. Every thought I had, every decision I made, every goal I set; it was all meant to take us closer to Raphina. But none of it would matter if the tribe starved. And I didn’t need to feed hundreds of goblins in order to reach the moon. I’d need to feed thousands, maybe tens of thousands of goblins by the time we were through. An entire nation working together toward a single goal of space exploration.

We choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

I yawned, and the stars began to blur in my vision. I dropped the bones in my hand and stumbled my way over to the BHR tower, climbing past the livestock into one of the nets stretched across the interior where several other goblins already lay snoring. I tossed myself on top of the nice, warm pile. And before long, I was out.

Chapter 88 – Accidental Animal Husbandry

<Your tribe is no longer starving. A spawning penalty has been rescinded.>

<Your tribe has increased to 401 members>

<Congratulations! You have unlocked a new tribal benefit: Controlled Breeding. You may now prioritize the spawning of variants within the tribe. Would you like to view the sub-menu?>

I blearily selected yes. The new screen flashed in front of my eyes with a set of sliders underneath labels for all my unlocked variants. I played around for a minute, watching as dragging one slider up or down influenced the rest. Not all variants were equal, it seemed. The igni and the canoneers required more of the total variant capacity, while taskmasters required more, still.

I dragged the slider for canoneers down to the lowest it would go, closed the window, and went back to sleep.

I woke up some time later, still sleepy and contented from the meal the night before. Starlight filled the opening in the top of the tower, with the barest glow of dawn gilding the eastern horizon. The tower swayed back and forth, pushed by wind. I think the motion was what had woken me up. I wasn’t worried about it tipping over since we’d secured it with cords staked down at each of the four corners. I mumbled to myself and rolled over on the top of the pile. I could get at least another hour’s worth of sleep in before we got the convoy on the move.

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Thundercleave scratchy-post>

Wha…?

A particularly stiff gust hit the side of the tower, and I heard the lines part with a snap. The whole thing tipped dangerously, becoming a tunnel of squawking, startled goblins as sleeping mounds all shifted to one side. That, of course, accelerated our rotation. I shouted in surprise as I went zero-g for half a heartbeat before the tower collapsed

<Your tribe has decreased to 391 members>

Panicked, screeching goblins worked to extricate themselves from the nets and wood that had quickly turned from fortress to prison. I tried to free myself from the sleeping net, and eventually resorted to simply biting through the cordage to get free from the tangle and out into the early morning light.

Goblins poured out of the collapsed BHR tower like ants scurrying out of a compromised hill, confused and disoriented in the dark. The hoppers we’d sequestered in the bottom of the tower all bolted, seeing their chance at freedom. They raced into the darkness. I heard a cry of alarm, and then they came racing back through the camp, knocking goblins aside as they decided we were better than whatever they’d found waiting.

Slowly, a lumbering shadow resolved, pawing at the downed tower. I squinted to get a closer look, and then held my hands up agains the sudden glare as an arc of electricity split the night between two massive tusks from a white, shaggy creature. It was someone had taken a mammoth, then taken away the trunk and squished it down shorter and wider and bleached its fur. It hunched down on wide paws with stubby toes.

It caught sight of us for the first time as well, flinching back in confusion. Numbers resolved over its head. 36. The bio-electric arc cut off, and the creature faded back into shadow.

One of the goblins got ahold of a rifle, and I heard the crack of a shot splitting the early morning. The—what had the System called it, a Thunder-cleave?—shied back, growling. Another crack followed, and the beast growled in response. A small silhouette ran out in front of the beast with its hand raised. It tossed what it held, and the flash of a popper exploded against the animal’s tusk in a brief, bright flash.

The thunder-cleave took a half-jump back, planted its feet, and lowered its head.

“Uh oh,” I said.

The bioelectricity snapped again, igniting an arc of what must have been extremely high voltage between the tips of the two. Its front paws flexed, digging up earth, and its massive shoulders hauled the thing forward as it drove through the camp.

<Your tribe has decreased to 385 members>

Most of the goblins got out of the way. The few that didn’t scramble out of its path in time were caught in the bolt between its tusks. I saw a brief flash of big-headed skeletons, and then all that remained were rapidly expanding clouds of blue fur.

“Move, move!” I shouted.

the thunder-cleave tore past, swinging its head in a wide arc, and I managed to dive down and avoid being trampled under its wide front paws and rear hooves. I bounced on the ground with the impact of its massive footfalls, covering my head as it bounded over me.

Not interested in sticking around, apparently, the gigantic beast plowed through one of the trikes, smashing the vehicle into a cartwheel that shredded it from the force of the spin. The thunder-cleave shadow receded into the night as its footfalls continued to resonate through the hard-pack ground.

I climbed to my feet, knees shaking, and stared after the retreating shadow. I felt a pair of hands on my shoulders, steadying me.

“Boss! Boss, you alright?”

“Armstrong?” I asked, staring up at the hobgoblin. I shook my head to clear it, then shook his hands off my shoulders. “To the vehicles!” I shouted. “Everything we’ve got, move, move!”

The disoriented goblins snapped to attention like my voice had jolted them as bad as a tesla wasp. The crowd of disheveled, rudely awakened goblins piled into the buggies and the roar of engines started to split the night. I hauled myself up onto one of the four-wheeled buggies and looked around.

“Where are the wranglers?” I asked.

“No good to anyone, woken up like they was,” said Armstrong, swinging into the driver’s station. Much to my dismay, a canoneer seemed to have been born overnight before I could de-prioritize them, and he scrambled into the seat to my left with a handful of crumpled paper and a charcoal stick.

Armstrong dropped a rockette in the starter. “Lucky my boys went down early, so at least we got scrappers.”

“It’ll have to do,” I said.

“You don’t mean to chase that fing, do ya?” he shouted over the roar of the starter.

“Heck yeah, I do. System let me see its level. Which means we should be able to take it down.”

<That is a poor guiding metric.>

Armstrong threw the buggy in gear and we peeled out, chasing the receding shadow of the thundercleave. We may have lost the extra hoppers we’d kept in the base of the tower, but this thing was big game. I bet it could feed the whole tribe for a month. Maybe longer. Not to mention it had more bioelectricity, like the wasps. Only this wasn’t enough to just shock a goblin, it was enough to vaporize one. Millions of volts. Which meant that electricity had to be stored, channeled, insulated from the rest of the creature, and eventually released. That meant natural capacitors. And if I could figure out a way to release it gradually, instead of all at once? Well, that would make a fine battery.

The sun crept over the horizon ahead of us as we pursued the thundercleave. It looked back at the wedge of vehicles behind us and howled, before lowering its head and charging away.

“Keep after it!” I shouted.

Armstrong floored the accelerator. Luckily we’d fueled up the vehicles the night before—the ones that didn’t need critical fixing. Surprisingly, the mono-cycle had survived its encounter with the bladed buggy, and rolled along right next to me, piloted by one of the leather-bound S&M club goblins.

On my other side, a half-dozen bikes, trikes, and buggies made up the bulk of the fleet. Slowly, we started gaining on the thundercleave. It must have realized it wasn’t going to outrun us, so it spun around, claws dragging deep furrows in the ground.

“Slingers ready!” I yelled. “Here it comes!”

I worked the crank on my own buggy’s heavy slinger along with 3 other goblins, and we got the payload in place as the thundercleave dug its paws in and lurched toward us.

“On my signal!” I shouted as I cranked.

The other vehicles must have thought that was the signal, because most of them launched their payloads. Cast nets shot skyward from several vehicles, while others launched rocket-propelled poppers. Any goblin with a gun fired it, and even the mono-cycle goblin leaned out with a pistol and took a pot shot.

Most of the nets fell short, but as the thundercleave began to charge, one managed to get tangled between its paw and right tusk, and it stumbled. Armstrong jerked his wheel to the side as the bulk of the thing tipped mid-charge and it rolled over, right where we’d have been in another second.

Three goblins shouted war cries and leapt from the buggy, catching the thundercleave by locks of its thick, shaggy fur. They climbed it, trying to keep their balance, and attacked it with spears, cleavers, and knives. Its fur was, unsurprisingly, an absolute deterrent to the close quarters weaponry. We weren’t going to take this thing down by stabbing it.

The thing pushed to its feet, shaking to try and dislodge the goblins on top. 2 of them flew free, while the other managed to stick his spear deep enough to lodge it, and held on for dear life as he whipped like a flagpole.

The thundercleave growled, and the lightning began to arc between its tusks again. It reared up on its back legs, and then dropped into a charge at the circling vehicles.

The goblins in its path scattered in a dusty scramble as wheels spun out. One trike wasn’t so lucky, and the ‘cleave managed to plant a heavy paw on the back quarter of it as it ran past, flipping the trike and crushing a few of its riders.

<Your tribe has decreased to 387 members>

The rest of the goblins bailed out as the thundercleave wheeled around, digging its tusks down and tossing the wreckage into the air, where it spun before crashing back down. All the while, gunfire rang and poppers popped against its hide, to little avail.

I cursed to myself. This thing was flesh and blood. We could kill it, but not with what we had here. We needed heavier ordnance. Cannons might do the trick, maybe heavier rockets. But varmint rifle rounds? Might as well have been BB guns and slingshots.

“Pull back!” I said. “Make sure we get the Ifrit out of that wreck,”

“Boss! Dust cloud! Something’s coming!” shouted Armstrong as he swung us around close enough for the stunned fire spirit to jump from the destroyed truck into our own engine.

I stood up at the gunner’s station, watching as a wedge of large, horned creatures barreled towards us on four hooves, with larger creatures interspersed with the pack. They looked like muscular antelope. But that wasn’t what worried me.

They had riders.