My Big Goblin Space Program

Chapter 41 - World War Clay

I’d consulted the bestiary on the desert monsters Rufus claimed were so dangerous, and it said that some of them could get up as high as level 40 or 50. There were even dragons in the area that were in the high 60’s. Plus some sort of ancient skyborne predator that didn’t leave witnesses, but was presumed to be somewhere in the 90’s. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d said I could take a thousand goblins into the desert and I’d lose a thousand goblins. But I had to wonder how Rufus and the ifrit were able to travel the region safely, and what prevented these monsters from destroying the artificer city.

Eventually, we would have to face monsters like that. And the majority of the fighting force would be Goblins. Goblins, as the System was often quick to remind me with floating numbers superimposed on my vision, were perpetually level 1. The Rava creature at the ultimate disadvantage individually, incapable of speech, and completely unable to pull in the same direction. Until I arrived. The first stone sloth we’d killed had been a happy accident, and it had still killed a third of my tribe at the time. For the second, we’d had to rig a minefield of bomb-fruits, and even trying to avoid conflict all-together, we’d lost the entirety of our bomb-fruit stock and a half-dozen goblins—albeit, technically entirely to friendly fire.

As a tribe, we were iterating. The goblins were adapting. They were constantly developing to respond to greater and greater threats. And so was I. When I’d arrived on Rava, I spent most of the early days flailing like a newborn. But I was learning how to effectively apply what resources I had, and my lieutenants had given me new confidence in the ability for the entire system to function. And it didn’t function because of the taskmasters. It functioned because at the lowest common denominator, the common, non-variant goblin, was still at least as competent as the average government worker. Hell, if my local DMV had been staffed entirely by goblins (maybe one taskmaster in the back office), my license might not have had my name misspelled as Julia, the wrong street address, and a picture of the senior citizen from the booth next to me.

It might have been nibbled a bit at the corners, though.

You might think to yourself that the people running the local licensing office aren’t the same ones responsible for overseeing the projects going at NASA, and by extension, their sometimes private-sector space partners like NuEarth. You’d be wrong. It’s exactly the same people. Only, they’re in charge of engineers and scientists instead of fax machines and decade-old web cameras. Really, I wasn’t even re-inventing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I was just relocating it.

I won’t go so far as to say I didn’t think we would lose any goblins today. Hell, we’d probably lose a few just to misfires and the unpredictable nature of the Goblin Tech Tree. But we’d also not attempted to take on anything above level 20 before, and I had to believe that monsters in the bog were at least that tough.

“Prodder team forward,” I ordered.

The armored goblins hefted their device and trotted toward the stone-sloth’s den by the river. The other goblins waited, and I had to maintain discipline as some of them got bored or simply forgot what they were trying to do. Others had begun to play with the RPP’s, or start chewing on the housing.

All the levity ceased when I heard a shrill whistle, followed by a distant pop, and then an enraged roar. Shock and alarm rippled up and down the line, and I marched back and forth offering encouragement in the language of the goblins, which mostly consisted of shouting and physical blows where necessary.

A few moments later, a pair of armored goblins ran, screaming, back toward the caravan.

“eeeeeEEEEE!”

Hot on their heels trundled the enormous sloth monster, digging deep furrows in the turf as it gave chase. It was truly massive when seen from the ground, and not the back of a clifford. It was at least the size of a horse, and probably twice as heavy. Its claws alone were nearly as long as a goblin was tall, and they looked razor sharp. The stone-sloth took a swing, which cut cleanly through a sapling and skipped off the ceramic back plate in the slower prodder’s vest. The impact knocked him forward, and he tumbled like a wheel back toward our line while his partner squawked and ran even faster, knowing he was now the closest goblin to our foe.

“Hold!” I said.

One of the goblins must have thought I meant fire, because he ignited the sulfur striker on the end of his RPP, and smoke and flame gouted out the back end. The rocket-propelled popper launched out the other end of the tube, streaking across the intervening distance. It split the difference between the two prodders, and veered off hard to the right where it exploded against an old stump in a spray of clay shards and ceramic bearings that pierced the canopy above. The stone sloth barely flinched. It had eyes only for the arses of the goblins who had struck it with the smaller versions.

“It’s still too far!” I warned, holding up my hand. “Hold!”

The rolling prodder reached our minimum safe area, and I dropped my hand once the second one crossed out of the kill box.

“Now!”

The rest of the goblins held tight to the housings as the gunners struck the rockets alight. Up and down the line, primitive rocket motors kicked to life, joining in a roaring crescendo. Only two exploded in the tube.

10 rockets streaked out, with 10 heavy poppers on the front. They exploded around, under, and against the stone-sloth. It blasted the heavy creature off its feet, tumbling it to the side as the fragmentation warheads peppered it with shards of clay and ceramic. But the thing was tough, armored, and wasn’t about to be brought down by just a few goblin-sized rockets. Still, when it climbed to its feet, it was bleeding and disoriented.

“Stage 1 complete! Proceed to stage 2.”

The rocketeers dropped the empty RPP tubes and most picked up spears, huddling shoulder to shoulder as they leveled the ceramic-tipped business ends toward the sloth. The rest picked up slingers and fanned out. It began to approach, but having its momentum killed made it less willing to charge directly into the wall of spears that had caused its predecessor to accidentally discover the flex-a-pult. It couldn’t just bulldoze over the formation. The goblins squawked and menaced it, standing in close ranks to present a thicket of razor-sharp spearheads that began to circle up into a half-moon around the stone-sloth, even as they gave ground toward an area marked on the forest floor.

“Work him back!” I ordered.

My goblins eased back. The monster struck out with its long claws, unable to get past the thicket of spears, though it did manage to tangle a few of them and yank a couple goblins out of the formation. It opened its mouth wide and crunched down on one while the other was smart enough to drop its spear and crawl back under the phalanx. I had another spear waiting for him, and he took his place again.

Any time the sloth tried to move back toward its den, the slinger goblins that had circled around fired a volley of poppers into it, discouraging retreat. Its only avenue of movement was toward the phalanx.

“Good!” I said. “Now, begin stage 3.”

three of the goblins at the rear of the formation backed out, gladly putting more distance between themselves and the large predator. Instead, they picked up a trio of slingers that had been positioned earlier, loaded with rocks attached to cords, which were themselves attached to corners of a net.

The longest, most arduous part of this expedition wasn’t creating the tools, or the mobile bluff, or the wagons. It was simply manufacturing enough cordage to make a net capable of holding such a large stone-sloth.

Each of the slingers angled their crossbows up and fired. The net sprung up from where we’d laid it out near the rockets. The launched slinger anchors drew the net taut against the wooden stakes holding it in the ground, and then draped it over the bulk of the sloth. It roared in confusion, pulling against the net.

“Stakers!”

The slinger goblins on the other side of the sloth dropped their bows and unslung mallets from their backs. They ran up and placed more wooden stakes on the far-side of the net, hammering them down into the ground to secure the trap. We’d done it.

Shouts of alarm drew my attention, and I thought the straining sloth-bear might be strong enough to rip through the net. But what I saw was something else entirely. Several of the goblins had spotted forms in the trees across the river: a squad of javeline maulers, watching us with their thick arms crossed.

“Stay focused!” I shouted. “Stage 4. Finish the job!”

I picked up one of the discarded slingers as the phalanx fanned out. I held it low, crooked in the corner of my arm as I made my way to the near side of the riverbank across from the armored maulers. Behind me, the stone-sloth roared as the goblins pressed in from all sides and delivered death from a thousand cuts to the restrained monster.

The javeline prodded each other and pointed to my prosthetic legs. The largest among them, a level 18–nearly strong enough to challenge the stone-sloth in his own right—stepped forward with his heavy spear and pointed it at me.

“You are talking goblin, yes? You make big fire and wooden bird and ride dog? Do not die?”

“That’s right,” I shouted back. “I’m the talking goblin. Who are you?”

“I am Hrott, brother of Rotte.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Did you come to take my tongue and my ears, too?”

Hrott thumped the butt of his spear into the turf. “I am a taker only of life, little goblin. prince of Habber men make demand you come. So, you come talk man prince.”

A few goblins ran to join me, spears in hand that were tipped in blood. A glance behind told me the fight was reaching its end, and the clay deposit was as good as ours. The goblins at my side hooted, squawked, and hissed at the javeline, jumping up and down. A few pointed their own slingers.

I put on my best deep-southern drawl. “So what yer sayin’ is, ya’ll are with the gov’ment?”

“What you say, little talk-goblin?”

I leveled the slinger. “Folk ‘round these parts don’t care fer gov’ment types. Ya’ll need to be movin’ on.”

“I not understand small goblin voice. Speak you me clear.”

“This clear enough for you?” I asked as I pulled the trigger on my slinger. The jar shot out, arcing over to the other side of the bank, where it fell short. It was not a precision instrument, after all. But it made a nice little bang and covered the trio in mud. Hrott shied back, and then roared in rage and what must have been profanities in his native language. One of the others leveled a crossbow at me, but Hrott pushed it down. Not only did he want me alive, but he probably knew from Rotte that the System kept me from dying anyway. A few other goblins let loose with rocks from their slingers, and one even threw his spear, which fell woefully short and splashed into the river. The spearman’s compatriots rained blows on him by way of admonishment.

“This is being mistake, little talk-goblin! We will bleed you and then crush you.”

I yanked the crank on the slinger to reset the sled and held out my hand, palm up. Another goblin dropped a new popper into it, and I fit it to the slinger and brought my sights up. “My only mistake was missing your head, javellero. And I’m not in the habit of repeating my mistakes.”

The boar-dwarf growled within his helmet. But the goblins had finished off the stone-sloth and were starting to bring more of their own slingers over. Maybe taunting them was an error. But the sensation of Rotte’s spear punching through my chest was still fresh in my memory, called to the surface with a visceral, sharp phantom. The most efficient way to wipe out Tribe Apollo would be to capture me again and then stab me 130 times until I was the only one left. For the sake of the tribe, I couldn’t put myself in position to be captured by javelines again. And I would have to be a damn fool to give my well-being over to the care of these cruel brutes.

If this human prince wanted me, he could come out here and talk to me himself.