My Big Goblin Space Program

Chapter 43 - Welcome to the Jungle

<1 hobgoblin scrapper has been added to your tribe>

<2 hobgoblin wranglers have been added to your tribe>

What in the hell? I opened my eyes and looked through the open lattice below at the carnage that had been our convoy. several wagons were demolished. They’d been torn apart at the frame. Of the cliffords, there was no sign. Which was a bad sign. I quickly realized the hobgoblins were gone, too. Which was a really, really bad sign.

I dragged myself out of the pile and over to the edge of the portable bluff, where Hadfield was knelt down along with several of Buzz’ builders and a scrapper.

“Well, at least one of you managed to survive,” I said, looking at the bigger hobgoblin.

Hadfield shook his head. “He’s new.”

“Oh? Well, happy birthday,” I sighed. “What a disaster.”

“But, boss, we got a problem.”

“Yeah,” I said. I had to take control of the situation before it spiraled. “The builders are slacking off.”

One of the goblins at the edge of the lattice squawked in indignation, then remembered who he was talking to and acted appropriately cowed.

Hadfield tossed a stick down into the clearing. “They don’t want to go down in case whatever did that is still mucking about nearby.”

“Understandable. I know of this animal that sometimes has to jump into water to hunt food, but they’re never sure whether there’s a predator underneath it waiting for them.”

“How do they get sorted?” asked Hadfield.

I lifted my prosthetic and planted it in the back of the nearest goblin, knocking him over the edge of the lattice. He tumbled, EEEeeeeing, to the ground below, where he bounced off his head and ran for the rope ladder. It was still retracted from where we’d pulled it up the night before. He started hopping, trying to reach the lattice. It was about 9 meters too high.

“Ah,” said Hadfield. “Straight to the point.” He raised his hand. “Slingers ready!”

The rest of the goblins ran to retrieve weapons, which were conveniently stored away from the edge of the platform. They readied poppers in their sleds and trained them down at the forest below. I had to yell at them to angle their payloads over the edge. If they managed to burn down the temporary bluff, we’d all be on the ground, and with no pack animals, hobgoblins, or wagons to protect us.

We waited for a few minutes until our experimental penguin stopped jumping and started trembling in fear so bad his knees sounded like maracas. When nothing came out to gobble him up, I relaxed and gave the go-ahead for the rest of the goblins to bail out. Once we’d picked ourselves off the ground, I set to examining what was left of the campsite.

All the hobgoblins had been dragged off. Silently enough that whatever did it left only blood and tufts of blue fur behind. Of the cliffords there was no fur or blood. Their leads simply ended in frayed cordage. But they hadn’t raised a ruckus in the night, which was the strangest part.

We’d had most of the food supplies in the lattice with us, so even though the carts were smashed, they held mostly building supplies, which themselves were fine. Bricks, wood, cordage, tools, and parts to build portable lifts and cranes.

I called over the scrapper that had been born in the pile the night before. “Sniff around and see what you can find. Report it back to me.”

The scrapper saluted and, unexpectedly, dropped to all fours, sniffing at the ground as he started patrolling the campsite. I hadn’t meant the instruction literally and was about to correct him when Hadfield stopped me. “He knows what he’s about, boss.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said. I raised my voice so the rest of the goblins could hear me, pointing out a couple stragglers. “You six, go with him. As for the rest of you, we’ve got work to do! Unless you want to sleep on the ground tonight, let’s get moving!”

Goblins might not be verbal, but their body language was expressive enough to tell when they were bothered. Honestly, they might as well have been wearing glowing neon signs with their emotions depicted by excited noble gasses. My gaggle of swamp builders were terrified. As their king, I had to be brave for them. But it definitely worried me. What could get in, kill multiple hobgoblins, all the cliffords, and not make enough noise to wake the tribe?

The bestiary was in one of the wagons that hadn’t been smashed, so I dug it out and thumbed through while our builders tore at the clearing with spades to get the area—if not level, at least slightly less lumpy. We weren’t as close to the bog as I’d have liked, but I wanted to make sure we had hard cover tonight in case whatever had visited us could climb. Or worse, fly. Just because the night haunts prowled the heights of the bluff didn’t mean they couldn’t visit a swamp.

Our slingers now had small nets that we could launch skyward to trap night haunts. And I was now confident that we had enough goblins to take them on, even without variants. But this didn’t seem like their MO. Whatever had taken them had gone for the goblins on the ground instead of elevated in the lattice, and the night haunts had only ever taken 1 or 2 goblins at night. Not 5 or more. They’d also never shown interest in other animals, like cliffords or the captive stone-sloth, who had been easily accessible at the village. No, this was something else.

Rufus’ bestiary was incomplete. And that was putting it generously. Rava was still being explored by most of the humans and elves who compile books like these, who kept mainly to the coast because the interior of the continent was incredibly dangerous. Apparently, this was a land notorious for powerful monsters enhanced further by the System. Lots of the entries were based on hearsay, native legends, and speculation. The only entry that made sense for where we were was an incorporeal night spirit that bewitched expeditions who ventured west of the mountains.

By midday, the bricks were stacked up almost 4 meters and continuing to grow. The scrapper found me as I was supervising the lifting of a flex-a-pult into position.

“Found, found somethin’, chief.”

I left the construction to Hadfield and followed the scrapper and the other goblins. We skirted the edge of the bog, close enough to hear the bellowing of crock-knockers in the distance. After going about a half-kilometer, the scrapper stopped and dropped down, pointing to the mud.

Multiple sets of tracks had come and gone. Small, webbed feet, with strange circular tracks irregularly placed alongside some of them mixed with those larger tracks of a hobgoblin. The scent of blood mingled with the mud and iron from the bog and, curiously, burnt fur. I turned around, looking back at the campsite. You could just barely see the temporary bluff suspended in the canopy from here. I ran a hand through my fur, considering.

“Wotcha fink, boss?” asked the scrapper.

I took one of the spears from the other goblins and set the butt into the mud near the footprints. It was a perfect match.

“There’s some sort of hominid in the bog,” I said. “Did you find any tracks like this closer to camp?”

“Nuffink.”

“And no sign of the cliffords or other hobbies?”

“A paw print here’n there.”

I took a deep breath. “Alright. Let’s head back.”

We’d planned for this. Well, not for losing all our hobgoblins and every animal on the first night. But we’d expected this to be a dangerous venture. Goblins were going to die to get us the iron in this bog.

When we got back to the camp, I began to distribute the rest of the armor we’d brought, as well as padded packs of poppers for the goblins to keep on hand. At the current rate of construction, it was going to take three days to finish the top tier of the tower, but I could start moving goblins into it tomorrow night. Until then, we had to survive another night in the lattice.

Crock-knockers, tesla wasps, some sort of ethereal spirit, and now a sapient, possibly hostile race. I decided to push up our contingency. One of the wagons had a new experiment. I took the scrapper and two goblins with me and unpacked the balloon kit sewn from the hides of eclipse lizards. It had needed 32 square chooms worth of frills, the lightest part of their hides, which equated to about 60 of the lizards. But it resulted in an extremely light, almost foil-like material that weighed very little and had decent, stretchy properties.

I attached a clay cannister to the bottom and used a coal from the previous night’s fire to start a small flame on the scat contained inside. As the balloon started to expand from the burning methane in the goblin scat, I attached a banner to the tether that had been stained with charcoal. This was the first functional balloon big enough to lift a goblin, and it did so by means of a small platform just large enough for a single goblin to sit on.

Whistling for attention brought a halt to the construction. “Who wants to fly?” I asked.

I might as well have been giving away free hotdogs at Fenway for the riot it almost caused. After the disaster of the morning’s discovery, it felt good to reintroduce a little levity into the tribe. Goblins seemed to have memories similar to that of goldfish, because all thought of getting the shelter up gave way to the stampede of grasping arms and excited squawks. I had to hold the platform over my head to keep them from grabbing at it.

“Woah, woah!” I called. I picked one goblin at random and nodded to them. “You’re today’s lucky winner!”

The goblin roared in triumph and was immediately the target of concerted physical assault as he made his way to the front. Luckily, the armor he wore absorbed most of it. He stripped out and shimmied up the rope to the platform. I passed up a hide flag that we’d stained red with berries for him to wave. Slowly, we let out rope and the balloon began to lift, thanks to the methane flame heating the air within.