MBGSP Chpt 79-82

Hello, goblin fans!

We're back and updating again after my short break. I hope you're all doing well and have had a productive couple of weeks. I wish mine had been more-so (though it was technically supposed to be something of a short writing break to avoid burnout, I got the itch to start again pretty quickly).

Here are this weeks updates for My Big Goblin Space Program, taking us up through Chapter 83.

Chapter 79 - Sequential Distribution

Armstrong nudged me as we walked out of the motorpool. “There’s always the…”

“No,” I said.

Armstrong groaned. “Aww, boss, I ain’t had nothing but bird bones and pulp-slurp for three days. I can’t believe yer savin’ all that good lizard meat for them scrawly nobbers.”

“Those scrawly nobblers need food for their mission,” I said. I walked to the northwest side of the village where the platform extended over the edge of the cliff. “Besides, the longer their mission, the less they’re here making those awful comics about me and Chuck.”

Armstrong guffawed. “Haw! You seen that one wot with’ him and you and the big fish, yet?”

“A long, long, mission,” I grounded out between clenched teeth.

“It’s histry, boss! It’s important.”

As cool as the bikes, trikes, and buggies were, this part of the bluff had been dedicated to the new pride and joy of Village Apollo: a powered wooden and canvas airship. It would be kept aloft with canvas envelopes filled with air heated by burning scat, and we’d tested it with 12 goblins. On the back, it had two gas engines with paper-covered props. Two heavy slingers on each side would protect it from night haunts. Soon it would be loaded with food and crew and sent northeast, to scout bluffs and see if any goblins were left after the javeline raids.

I would have liked to hop on and join the expedition. But I’d already needed to be taught too many times that a goblin king’s place is surrounded by his people. I’d go to the savannah and the badlands, instead, with Neil and Chuck and Armstrong all able to watch out for me along with 50-60 other goblins. And I wouldn’t be climbing any signal balloons this time, either. If I’d learned one thing from King Ringo, it was that a goblin king doesn’t fly solo.

I approached the first prototype airship (Well, air boat, really), already floating against its restraints as some of Eileen’s pilots carefully managed the scat burners under the envelope. What would have taken a thousand lizard skins was being done with canvas the Ifrit had been using to cover their wagons. It really struck me again just how starved we were for ordinary composite materials like textiles. At the back of the ship, the first engine was being fitted with its propeller shaft. The airship was getting the lightest engine we had—lighter even than the ones going on the two-wheeled bikes. It still had to be able to fly, which meant every ounce counted.

Why couldn’t the canoneers have at least been regular goblins? I watched as my portly noblin chief, Luther, argued with the engineers. I came close enough to catch the tail end of the conversation—which involved Luther shouting, while the nonverbal engineer chittering away and making rude gestures.

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“Ah, King Apollo,” said Luther, turning my way and making the circle sign over his head. Despite their argument, the engineer made it too. And yes, if you’re wondering, the irony of the Church of the Right Angle’s holy sign being a circle was not lost on me. “I’m trying to make sure there is space allotted for icons of your highness.”

“Icons?” I said.

Luther gestured behind him, where two more of his canoneers worked at what appeared to be a clay bust of, erm, epic proportions. I approached it, looking up. “Is that supposed to be me?” I asked.

“It’s how the tribe sees you!” said one of the canoneers.

“It’s got more muscles than the Masters of the Universe.”

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Artistic liberties>

Stop helping!

I ran my hands through the fur on my head. At least it was a statue of just me. This was probably the kind of thing someone like King Ringo would go mad over, the narcisist.  “Obviously you can’t take it with you. It probably weighs as much as both of you combined. And talk about a waste of clay. How many engine cases do you think we could make with that much ceramic?”

“Oh, that’s the best part,” said one of the noblins, spinning the whole thing around to reveal a cavity in the backside. “It is an engine case!”

I stared. That explained the hole in the front side where the, erm, shaft would protrude. And the exhaust outlet? Well, I’ll leave that up to your imagination. I covered my face.

“Absolutely not. Take the comics. Take the tools. Leave this…monstrocity. Break it down, use it to make shovels, and then bury any ideas like it.”

Luther tapped a hand against his chin. “His majesty, King Apollo, has decreed that his image be destroyed that the common goblin might know the spade. There’s probably a metaphor in there.”

“I can assure you, there’s not,” I said. I turned to one of the igni working on the platform. “How soon til she’s ready to fly?”

He glanced up at the ship straining against its anchors. “Uh…”

“How long until she’s ready to make the voyage,” I corrected.

The ignis brightened. “Oh! That’s easy! Soon as the glue on the prop dries.”

“Perfect.” I turned and clapped Luther on the shoulders. “I’m counting on your boys to hit every goblin village from here to the mountains, Luther.

“Your will, highness,” said Luther, bowing deep.

I turned my attention to the goblins crawling on top of the envelope, stitching patches over leaks. Armstrong came up beside me.

“It really is an important mission,” I said.

“I know ye want to be on it,” said Armstrong, patting my shoulder.

System, tell me about the Big-mouthed skill again.

<Big-mouthed - Canoneers are adept at negotiations and swaying the opinions of other goblins - often through sheer volume.>

They’d certainly spread their antics through Village Apollo like wildfire. Even the Ifrit were getting in on the comic book action. If they could act as emissaries to persuade other goblins to come join the tribe, that could go a long way toward unifying all the goblins in the area. Maybe even let me assimilate new variants. Feeding them once they got here was my problem to solve in the interim. But so long as the canoneers didn’t put a foot wrong and get themselves Captain Cooked… well, even if they did…

The only thing that worried me was the possibility of running into another society with a goblin king. I had thought I was an isolated case until I met Ringo. Rufus and Taquoho had said they were extremely rare, but maybe there was another one hiding up on one of those distant bluffs. If there was, and he was hostile, I had to hope his tribe wasn’t bigger than mine. And if it was bigger than mine, I had to hope they had no way of getting to this forest.

It was a literal application of the Dark Forest theory. I suppose it didn’t help that we kept lighting it up with rockets.

I looked up at the sky and tugged on the anchor rope.

“Alright. We’ve got enough daylight for a test run to Canaveral and back. But I want clifford support on the ground and two gliders in the air.”

“Yer goin on this test run, then?” said Armstrong.

I nodded. “With you and a half-dozen other scrappers.”

Armstrong tried counting to twelve on his fingers, and failing that included two toes and then worked backwards until he only had six. He nodded decisively. “More’n a handful is enough. Ok, boss. I’ll round up the lads.”

“Grab Eileen while you’re at it. She’s piloting this shindig.”

“Truly momentus,” said Luther.

I stabbed a finger at him. “You’re coming too. Gotta make sure the blimp can even lift your fat arse.”

“As you say, my king.”

It took a few minutes to get the crew assembled and climbing aboard. Besides Armstrong, we had Eileen as captain, an ignis for engineer, 2 of the canoneers, maybe 8 other goblins as crewmates, and the half-dozen scrapper bodyguards. I could hear the barks from below the bluff as Chuck took off toward the hotsprings. The gliders would launch to monitor as well. Each of the crewmembers also had a personal glider to help get them as close to home as possible if we had to bail out. Not taking any chances—or at least trying to mitigate the risk of the chances I was taking.

That’s all aviation is, really. It’s an inherently risky business, and if I was going to stay on the ground just to be completely safe, I may as well have not been reincarnated at all. But the key to aviation safety is acknowledging those risks, not avoiding them. You spot them, you plot them, and then you come up with mitigations to make sure that whatever happens, you have a plan B, C, D, and enough backups that scrappers need to start using toes to track them.

And if all goes well, one of those plans keeps you safe when the scat hits the fan.

Chapter 80 - Gertrude

There’s certain imagery I’ve always associated with certain names. Part of it is the meaning behind the name itself. Diana, for instance. It just screams poise, class, and wisdom. Likewise, Cooper sounds like someone who can sling a couple of barrels around on their shoulders.

Then there’s names like Melvin. You just know Melvin is going to play Dungeons and Dragons. Just like you know Chad is going to get a visit from campus police after pledge week. And then, at the prow of the unfortunate name boat, is Gertrude. It’s a weighty cudgel of a name. It’s the name of someone whose ankles look like salamis. It’s the name of someone that no amount of caked-on makeup can disguise their bloodhound jowls and cigarette-stained teeth.

It’s the name of our first and currently only airship. I don’t make the rules. It’s just what her name was. It’s a fundamental law of the universe. And if you don’t believe me, you can ask System.

<It’s not.>

Ignore System. It doesn’t know everything. The point is, when Gertrude belched to life, she was fat, she was slow, and she was damned ugly. I’d still have married her, though. No prenup.

The engine sputtered to life with a dangerous-sounding BANG, before settling into an unsteady rhythm. With the throttle at idle, the paper-covered prop created very little thrust. But once we cast off the anchor lines and started to rise, Eileen turned up the RPMs and I felt the airship tug against the hot-air balloons keeping it aloft. Eileen turned the engine mount to change the thrust vector, and we pivoted as we climbed.

It seemed like half the goblins on the ground raced us to the eastern edge of the bluff, whooping and cheering. More than half of them followed us right off it, plummeting to the ground below.

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Sticky-skinny combust’em zeppelins>

<Goblin Component Technology Unlocked: Thrust vectrin’>

<Goblin Component Technology Unlocked: Multi infernal engine airy-knotics>

<Goblin Component Technology Unlocked: Cluster ‘bloons>

“Gertrude’s maiden voyage,” I said to no one in particular as we gained altitude. Several of the crew were in the rigging below the envelope openings, managing the scat fires that kept the conjoined balloons aloft. There were three of them, lashed together like a snow pea, so that if one failed, the airship would land instead of crash. I wasn’t worried about the goblins, of course. They could fall from space so far as I knew and be completely fine thanks to their System-given fall damage immunity (though they’d probably burn up on reentry. But the airship was a tremendous investment of resources and goblin power. Plus, it was just so darn cool.

Admittedly, even if we were calling this an airship, it was more of an air canoe. It didn’t have niceties like cabins or a galley, just floorboards that could be lifted up in order to access stores in what would be the bilges if this were a water vessel.

For the next hour, goblins scrambled all over the rigging and the tops of the envelope, checking for leaks with a complete and total lack of fear. Several swung off the side of the gunwales for little more than a lark. Even a few of the scrappers were arm-wrestling. Despite the hungry goblins, spirits soared high whenever new technology was on the docket. Wasn’t too long agothe bleeding edge was a blunt rock for this tribe. Now they were conquering Rava’s skies.

Or, at least contesting them.

“Sighting, boss!” shouted Eileen from the helm. I followed her pointing to where one of the gliders had burst a popper of colored powder. The scrappers all rushed to the side and leaned so far over the rail I thought they might tip the whole thing over.

“I don’t see anything,” I said, shading my hand. “Must be a wrangler in that glider. They’ve got better eyes on the wing.

We’d been in an uneasy truce with the night haunts ever since we got pretty good at trapping and killing them and spawned enough wranglers to keep watch through the night for their attempts. But they were still out there, and we competed with them for food. That made us a threat in more ways than one. Not to mention that when we did trap one, we turned it into a glider. And they knew it, too.

Most of the monsters on Rava, it seemed, possessed at least rudimentary intelligence. You could see it when they looked at you. The croc-knockers held grudges. Night haunts could work out traps and sneak into even the most well-defended shelters. Even the stone sloths and the swamp turtles were more than just base beasts. I wondered if that was a result of the System or if Ravan creatures simply evolved better brains naturally.

After a few minutes with no excitement, my crew lost interest and returned to what they were doing. I, myself, dropped my hand from where it rested at the new pouch at my hip.

It took another two hours before we made it to Canaveral. One thing Gertrude was not, was expedient. The eclipse was underway, and what light did emerge reflected off the photosensitive lizard frills as they swarmed up the cliff.

At the top, they’d rebuilt much of the defenses, but they had upgraded weaponry to make up for the abused fortifications. The pop and flash of shock spears rippled up and down the cliff.

“Eileen, bring us in for the assist!”

Last time we’d come by with a meager handful of poppers haphazardly thrown from a glider on the wing. This time, the scrappers broke out rifles and loaded up the port-side heavy slinger with a clay ball. Eileen bled off some hot air from the envelopes in order to drop us into a controlled descent, until we were level with the face of the bluff.

“Grease ‘em,” I said. The hobgoblin on the slinger tilted it up and fired. The ball flew out on a lazy arc and shattered against the cliff face, where it spread a stain of oily grease on the cliff face. Lizards who tried to cross it scrabbled for purchase and fell back. On either side of the slinger, rifle barrels erupted with flame and smoke and tiny trails of exhaust. Goblins aren’t accurate marksmen. Even if our rifles were capable of reliably keeping shots within a 45 degree arc of the shooter, goblins would still have a tendency to shoot directly behind themselves, somehow. But with a half dozen scrappers under Armstrong’s direct supervision, and about a dozen other goblins working in teams of two, we knocked twenty or more off the wall in a matter of seconds. But that wasn’t the only surprise we had in store.

Our ignis came forward. His mask was down, and he had a brass cask on his back, which a smaller goblin stood on top of, furiously working a pump. The ignis had an apparatus in his hand with a pump and a nozzle, and he held it up to the airship burners to ignite the tiny ball of scat near the tip of it. Then he leveled the pipe and opened a valve. A jet of flaming fuel shot out, splashing against the side of the cliff and igniting the oil patch already there. The flaming oil spread and created a barrier that funneled the lizards up a narrow corridor where the ignis proceeded to roast them. I could smell the cooking meat from where I stood, but even ten or twenty meters away, the heat was intense.

The brass cask couldn’t maintain pressure, though, and the goblin pumping on it began to get tired.  Eileen brought us around, trying to hold our position in the air. But the sun peeked out from behind Raphina and the lizards abruptly changed their course before the natural light could harm their skin. We’d only caught the tail end of the daily battle.

Gertrude’s maiden flight was a success.

Chapter 81 - Camp Canaveral

Canaveral was more organized than Apollo, to be sure. Part of that was the resident taskmaster, John, who had the unusual skills of ogranization, motivational speaking, and battle tactics. Unusual for a goblin, anyway.

He greeted us as we brought Gertrude in for docking but running up and offering a stiff salute beneath the brim of his tortoise-shell helmet.

“The men’r ready fer inspection, sir!”

“At ease, general,” I said, returning the salute. I hopped down from the side of the airship and clapped my commander on the shoulders. “Good to see you well.”

John grinned. “Aye, got the camp up and running right enough. Piggies left it a right mess.”

“Well, we did the same to them,” I reminded him.

John beamed.

Wood creaked behind me. “Oy! Is that who I think it is?” Armstrong shouted down.

John grinned and shaded his eyes. “Armstrong!”

Armstrong jumped down, laughing, and pulled John into a hug. Tight as brothers, those two. They’d defended Canaveral together, and then stood shoulder to shoulder against the maulers when Rotte and Hrott attacked Apollo.

“Now he’s just a couple hours by airship,” I said. “Should be able to get over here more often.”

Armstrong looked at me, a question in his eyes.

I sighed. “Fine, let’s go see the new defenses.”

The two goblins whooped and ran off. I looked back up to Eileen. “Keep the engine warmed up. We want to be back before nightfall.”

“Aye, boss!”

The noblin canoneers struggled down—mainly due to the fact that their arms were filled with sheafs of papers. I eyed them suspiciously.

“Just what’s in those?” I demanded.

Luther had the decency to look chagrinned. “Erm, tech manuals, majesty?”

“They’re comics, aren’t they?” I asked.

The smaller noblin piped up and squeaked “Important histry!” before Luther could clamp a hand over his acolyte’s mouth, somehow managing to keep from dropping his load of papers.

“King Apollo,” he said. “The goblins of Canaveral don’t get to see your daily deeds, or see the marvelous machines of the Church of the Right Angle. It’s only fair they receive record to help inspire them in their fight. You cannot always be here, after all. And where you are not…”

I sighed. Goblin loyalty could falter, especially during combat—which was a daily occurrence at Canaveral. “That’s those persuasive skills at work, I suppose.” I looked around. “Still, I wish I knew why the lizards were so persistent here. They were winning before, but they must know they can’t make headway against our improved defenses.”

The smaller canoneer managed to free its mouth from Luther’s hand. “Oh, that’s one’s easy, boss!” he said. He shuffled through his papers and pulled one out, handing it over. Sure enough, it was a comic. And it depicted a group of goblins venturing into the plains, finding a nest, and taking some eggs back to the bluff. Apparently, the lizards had never stopped trying to get them back.

Ok, so maybe recorded history in comic book form wasn’t so bad. But they could have at least drawn the lizards with the right number of limbs and not ten times the size of the goblins.

“I guess that explains it,” I said, handing the comic back. “Fine, spread the good word. Tech manuals first. Then ‘histry’, ok?”

Both goblins made the circular icon over their chests and trundled off (since it’s quite impossible for noblins to scamper).

I was left to my own devices with a handful of bodyguards. I spend some time just wandering around Canaveral, looking at how these goblins had managed their shelters. We’d reinforced and mixed the tribes, but here and there I still spotted one of the Canaveral originals with their green-tinged fur from before they’d hitched their wagons to Tribe Apollo. The history of Canaveral was the history of tribe Apollo. And as much as I didn’t care for comics, the canoneers were making sure that our tribe didn’t stay prehistoric as it advanced into the industrial age Armstrong, likewise, had colored striations on his arms and back that matched his original tribe before the piggies had reduced them to 3 members.

It was also much, much quieter here. Village Apollo was now constantly humming with the low roar of engines and the crackle of gunfire. Nor did it have the baying of cliffords or the ringing of steel hammers. Canaveral still sounded like a jungle, filled with bugs and birdsong and, yeah, some light construction.

At the airship, a couple dozen goblins worked to unload the supplies we’d brought on the test run. Rifles, raw materials, and even the pump-action flamethrower was staying along with the ignis to wield it. The piggies may have been gone, but Canaveral was still the central hub of our martial might, where goblins were turned into warriors. Having the lizards back and basically throwing themselves into our larders helped with the food supply problem, but it didn’t abate it completely.

In the distance, I could see more bluffs to the north and east. That’s where this airship was really meant to go, and I wondered what the noblins would find there. Wayward tribes looking for direction? More goblin kings? Or just smoking ashes of the goblins we were too slow to save from the porkbellies. Was there something I could have done differently to get there faster?

I’d already run the first few thousand years of human history in a little over a month. Progress would slow in the preindustrial age as development became more reliant on complicated tools and processes and might become a trickle when it came time to make things that required computers.

The basic principles of organizing a computer weren’t actually that arcane. Turning binary into useful functions is primarily a function of yes/no/maybe/sort-of questions funneled into an output. Granted, that’s an extremely simple explanation of a very nuanced discipline. But it had taken 40 years for humans to turn that concept from punchcard machines to personal computers and a huge amount of that time was spent refining and miniaturizing those gates and switches to something that could fit on a microchip instead of a small bus.

I stared down from the edge of the bluff for more than a few minutes and tried to imagine the forest cleared into a great field, whereupon hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of goblins stood with flags, simulating the various why, and, and for gates that would comprise a basic program. Each individual gate doesn’t need to understand the whole process, just its individual part.

God, could you imagine trying to build a computer out of goblins? It would somehow manage to overheat and explode, I’m sure. It would be more bugs than features, and half the goblins would probably eat their own flags. And somehow, it would still spit out useful data thanks to the Goblin Tech Tree.

But I digress. The point is that now we’d unlocked gas engines, we’d likely be moving into a period of refinement and expansion as we moved towards laying the groundwork for the infrastructure a space program would require. Metalworking, assembly lines, and tools to make processes more efficient and effective. More tools to make the acquisition of resources more efficient. Tools to make tools more practical and useful. And all without Osha anywhere in sight to gum up the works. Workplace safety was heretical to the Church of the Right Angle.

And eventually, it would all lead back here. How could it not? Village Apollo was becoming a sprawling town, and eventually if the goblins continued to reproduce, it would develop into something of a cliff-side metropolis. So this would be where the rockets would launch. Oddly prescient and prophetic that I’d named it Canaveral.

I whistled for attention and spun my finger in the air in a round-up gesture.

Armstrong reluctantly parted ways from John with another bear hug. The canoneers finished handing out the rest of their religious literature and rejoined us at the airship. Eileen had her crews stoke the burners and get the engine ready to spin up again, checking the various lines and simple pipes that supplied the primitive engine with fuel.

We climbed aboard, and my air delivery captain started up the prop with a Bang and a gout of angry, black smog. I patted the side of the rumbling engine as it whumped and thumped, spinning the paper-covered prop and pushing the airship against its anchor lines. Within a few minutes, we had enough lift and the engine was warmed up enough to start pushing us back east towards Village Apollo.

One of the Canaveral gliders took off to escort us back, rocketing up to high-altitude for a view of the land. Most of the Canaveral goblins came and waved at us as we began our slow ascent, though much faster than our takeoff from Apollo now that the cargo holds had been emptied of supplied. Though, not entirely empty, as the goblins who had stowed away below decks were only mostly managing to stifle their giggles and only occasionally bumped their heads on the floorboards beneath my feet.

The golden hour approached as we rode west, with the sun slipping low enough to start opening Raphina’s eye. I watched the pink surface and verdant forests of the moon begin to sparkle, and narrowed my eyes at its surface. Hadn’t it had more water before? It seemed like desert lined with long, narrow fissures had claimed some of its landmass. Maybe I was just seeing a side I wasn’t used to looking at as the moon rotated on its axis.

The crack of a popper directed my attention lower, where our escort had detonated one of the warning signals. Night haunts had been spotted on the wing, and this time I caught the silhouette below us. The early evening flights had spurred at least one of them out of their nest.

And it was drawing closer.

Chapter 82 - Active Defenses

“Battle stations!” I called out. I stomped on the floorboards as well, signal our stowaways to come out and be useful. Goblins started crawling out of every hole, nook, and cranny on the airship until we had about two-dozen strong.

“Rifles and slingers at the ready,” I said, marching up and down the deck. “Spears at the gunwales. Be ready to repel night haunts.”

Most of the goblins listened, breaking out the weapon and armor stores on the airship and beginning to pass out arms and ammo. Someone handed me a plate carrier and I pulled it on. Other goblins ran to the sides, looking for any sign of the dreaded silhouettes of the natural goblin predators that prowled the Lanclovan nights. Over the sound of the engine puttering, I could barely make out the distant baying of cliffords in the forest below.

Armstrong stood next to me, leaning over the rail, fists tightened around his rifle as he scanned for threats.

“Anything?” I asked him.

The hobgoblin squinted. Now that it was getting towards sunset, he’d have much better eyes than the rest of the goblins. “Nuffink yet, boss.”

<Your tribe has decreased to 342 members>

I scanned as well, but the sky was completely clear. But it shouldn’t have been. “Can you see the other glider?” I asked. “Can anyone see the other glider?”

Nervous chitters went up and down the line. This was early in the evening, even for night haunts. The creatures relied on stealth and the cover of darkness to do their hunting. In the grand scheme of things, they weren’t that tough—except compared to goblins. But the sky was still their domain, and we’d been pressuring them like they’d pressured us.

I heard a soft beating that at first I dismissed for the snap of wind against the canvas, but it stopped. “Steady!” I called. “Spread out, don’t strain the rigging. Watch both sides. Eileen, lower the throttle.”

My air delivery captain hauled back on the throttle and the engine dropped to a low rumble.

Luther approached from behind, wringing his hands. “King Apollo, should we not make all haste to the village before we’re noticed?”

I shushed him. “You’ll face worse than this on your mission,” I said. “Besides, we’ve already been haunted.”

The noblin canoneer gasped. “How do you know?”

“Because,” I said, eyeing the numbers ticking down in a small display window, “We’re losing altitude.”

The night haunts, while not especially heavy, still weighed as much as a half-dozen goblins or more. That was apparently a few too many extra for Gertrude to hold aloft. We weren’t in danger of crashing, but if we dropped four thousand feet, we were still in for a bad night.

I grabbed one of the goblins and pointed up the rigging. “Check up top,” I whispered. “Be careful you don’t damage the balloons.”

He swallowed and moved to clamp his flint knife between his teeth. Once secure, he swung out on the webbing and began to scramble up the lines. I watched him disappear around the swell of the canvas as he scrabbled up to the top of the envelopes. All around me, goblins looked out, nervously clutching weapons. I steadied some of them, offering reassurances I only half-believed myself. But I was their king, and my presence now carried tangible buffs to their combat that were as good as any totem.

Since the goblin on top of the airship didn’t get immediately eaten, there was only one other option.

“It’s on the bottom!” I called out. “Eyes over the side, it’ll come from below!”

Goblins rushed to the sides again, angling spears and gun barrels down. A goblin next to me squawked and stabbed down, drawing my attention. But just as it did, the aircraft lurched hard to port, sending two goblins careening over the side and out into the air.

The night haunt clawed its way up, raking claws against the bottom of the wooden craft for purchase. Its lantern-yellow eyes glared up, it snapped its jaws, snapping off the forward third of the spear of the goblin on that side.

“Hold fast!” I yelled. “Keep the ship balanced! Spears and rifles!”

Rockettes thundered behind me as goblins with rifles took aim and started to pepper the creatures with shots. Thick smoke began to choke the deck of the airship, but I saw the gunners score several hits. Still, night haunts were tough, and not prone to giving up easy. Rather than retreat, this one hissed in rage went berserk, pulling itself through the hail of fire and sweeping several goblins aside in an effort to get at the gunners. I was surprised it knew what was hurting it, but then night haunts were unusually intelligent, even for Ravan monsters.

Other goblins charged out in front with spears with ceramic or shock tips, giving the gunners a chance to reload as they thrust forward with ceramic spear points that the haunt couldn’t simply ignore. Armstrong was in the middle of the line, deadly spear pushed up and blocking off a wide section of the ship. He stabbed his spear forward, shouting a battle cry. I hoped he would score a killing blow. Instead, the night haunt snapped his spear’s haft, tackled the hobgoblin holding it, and drove its beak down into Armstrong’s chest—only to recoil with a pained howl as the sharp beak cracked into a ceramic plate.

“Armstrong!” I yelled, pulling my new toy from my belt and rushing forward.

The hobgoblin gasped in pain, but the fact he wasn’t eviscerated thanks to his armored vest gave me hope. He raised his arms in defense as the night haunt started to rake with its claws. In such close quarters, the riflemen were hesitant to fire. Now that the creature was aboard and in the melee, they stood as much a chance of hitting their own friends as they did the raging beast attacking them. I raised the new prototype pistol Prometheus had given me and pulled back the hammer. Holding it in both hands, I centered the barrel on the bulk of the night haunt before it could drive down and hit Armstrong in the head.

I pulled the trigger, and the gun bucked in my hands. The night haunt jerked, whipped around, and smashed me with its tail. I went tumbling across the deck of the airship and nearly toppled over the side, but one of the scrappers managed to grab me and haul me back.

“Thanks!” I said.

“Don’t mention it. We almost got ‘im, boss!” said the scrapper, grinning.

The night haunt seemed to realize it was on the backfoot. These weren’t the same helpless goblins they’d preyed on a month ago. We had armor, we had weapons, and we had a fighting spirit hot off victory against the piggies. Hurt, confused, and suddenly frightened for its life, the night haunt pivoted and leapt from the side of the airship, spreading its wings into a glide. Several of the goblins raced to the side in order to take shots at the fleeing creature.

I ran up to them, slapping the backs of heads to get attention. “No, no! The slingers! Tag it!”

Armstrong was the one to take up position at the heavy slinger and angle it down at the fleeing night haunt. He launched a dart with a smoldering pot of scat, and it managed to strike the night haunt on the flank. It bucked in mid-air, and flew harder.

“Eileen, full throttle!”

My pilot kicked the engine up to full power, and the airship shot forward. She turned us after the fleeing night haunt, and the smoke from the smoldering tag gave us a trail to follow, even when the night haunt pulled away.

“Come on, come on,” I said as we pushed the airship north after the creature. We followed it for ten, maybe twelve minutes before I lost it among the foothills north of Village Apollo.

“There!” said Armstrong, pointing at a bare cliffside.

Eileen followed his direction and dropped our altitude, and I caught the hint of smoke coming out from a cave about two-thirds of the way up. Unless someone in there was cooking s’mores, this had to be our night haunt hideout.

“Not too close,” I warned Eileen. I suspected the night haunts kept sizable communities, like bats. I’d seen them circling in numbers, after all. And occasionally they attacked the village in pairs. We’d fended off one, but two or three would overwhelm the airship’s defenses, not to mention make it too heavy to maintain flight. Sure enough, I spotted two forms crawling on the rock face, and the flash of yellow eyes in the waning light. Neither were the one we’d fought.

“Alright, Eileen. Get us out of here,” I said.

Armstrong leaned on the gunwale and looked at the hole in the side of the hill as the bulky airship turned. “What do you want to do, boss?”

“We’ve got bigger worries for now. But They’ve been harassing the village for ages,” I said. “Let’s see how they like having that favor returned, yeah?”