ALL NOVEL Chapter 61 – Back to the Drawing Board
Chapter 61 – Back to the Drawing Board
Village Apollo rang with the dulcet tone of metal on metal. Oh, that sweet sound of progress.
Under the supervision of Prometheus, the igni and their assigned assistants took to blacksmithing like a baby bird to the sky—eventually, and with much struggling. Even the heat-crafting specialists weren’t born experts. I can’t imagine how tough it would have been to get ordinary goblins up to a level of competence in smithing that would allow us to progress into the industrial age. Even with understanding of the process through the Goblin Tech Tree, the igni needed time and practice to perfect their skills. They weren’t quite at the point where they could bang out an engine block, so they were working up to it with knives, nails, gears, poles, and my newest set of prosthetics while we prototyped advanced pieces with clay molds.
I was partial to the spring-steel blades on my legs, especially. They were still much heavier than the carbon fiber blades I’d used in races on Earth, but they were still a cut above the sloth claws. Buzz nearly fainted when the concept of iron nails was introduced to the GTT lexicon. Granted, no two came off the line in a similar shape or length, but neither did any of the structures Buzz built, so it was a start. Poles would eventually be purposed for axles, propeller shafts, and rifle barrels. Though, I doubted we’d see anything like a unified bore caliber. The gears being similarly disjointed had been a problem ever since we’d been making them by chewing wood into shape.
Standardization was a completely foreign concept to goblins, no matter how many examples and templates I tried to offer them. The only thing that sort of worked was making molds, and things somehow still came out of those wonky. Without the strange grease of the Goblin Tech Tree, I don’t know that any mechanical devices produced in the village would work.
Piecemeal parts and soft fits weren’t going to cut it for something with a pressure vessel and moving parts like an engine. Sure, we could hand-make each one under my direct supervision, and that’s how we were going to unlock the technology, but the industrial age meant industrialization. That meant factories and assembly lines and part tolerances. That meant guides and regs, and some method to record and keep track of them.
Bark and charcoal could only get us so far. We needed paper—actual paper. The method to make it isn’t complicated and it had other industrial uses, as well. You take a finely woven screen and sift it through a pulp mass, then press and dry the result. Now, don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t so far gone as to think the average goblin had the attention span to read and write modern English. But the Egyptians had built the pyramids (and if you like conspiracies, the first battery, refrigerator, and UFO landing pad) with drawings of birds and cups. Or at least that’s what it looked like to me when my anthropology major then-girlfriend had tried to educate me about early human cultures.
Huh. Maybe I should have paid more attention to her explanations instead of daydreaming about rowing away from the conversation. Anthropology was now much more relevant to me than it likely ever would be for her. Go figure.
I already had most of what I needed to make a basic paper factory, including one of the rainwater collection vats Buzz had been building to satisfy the village’s drinking water needs. When the goblin-powered hammers weren’t pounding the impurities out of iron stock, I instead turned them to mashing wood pulp. Fires were always going at Village Apollo, now, so heating the pulp pool to break down the plant fibers was a matter of just heating rocks and dunking them into the vat for a primitive heat exchanger. While that was working, I took two of Neil’s hunters with the highest skills in basket and net weaving and set them to making fine corded mesh screens.
Toward the late afternoon, I oversaw Javier’s clothiers dunking the first of the mesh screens and applying pressure by jumping on flat, heated rocks. Also, turns out, paper pulp is a bit like milkshakes to goblins. I had to install a bunghole (don’t laugh, it’s a real thing) on the side of the vat so goblins could uncork the tub for a sip and quit trying to stick their heads into the pulp slurry between log hammer strikes. When the System said goblins could process nutrients from almost any organic matter, this is not what I had pictured. We’d lost a half-dozen thirsty goblins to the papermaking process and tinted half the first batch of sheets blue.
The eyes of most of the goblins in the village glazed over for about a half-second before they resumed what they were doing—except for Sally’s engineers, who redoubled their effort. Yeah, paper isn’t exactly the stuff of rock stardom. But the tribe would see soon enough what else they could use it for. At least the engineers seemed excited about it. Which, yeah, laugh all you want. I wasn’t just an engineer, dammit, I was an astronaut. And I would be again.
I spent the afternoon relaxing as the hammers rang and the scent of wood pulp wafted through the village. I had to admit, I found it much more appealing as a goblin than paper mills had ever smelled as a human. But not quite enough to take my turn at the bung. Still, if we could use wood pulp as a nutritional supplement, it might take some of the load off the hunters and fishers.
* * *
I had dozed off but was awakened by a loud shriek in the distance. A large number of goblins were streaming to the east side of the village, tasks dropped. I joined them and pushed my way to the edge of the bluff, hand sheltering my eyes from the sun. “What happened?” I asked. Of course, the goblins just chittered and squawked.
I needn’t have bothered asking. A few minutes later, the eastern horizon filled with a dozen winged shapes. They were escape gliders from Canaveral. John had pulled the ripcord. The air controllers in the tower started making a fuss, clearing the landing area of the goblins napping or working in the open space.
One by one, the gliders laden with goblins came in for landings, often spilling their payloads as goblins bailed out before even reaching the bluff. The gliders came in, performing the goblin equivalent of a smooth landing (that is, a crash that wasn’t completely catastrophic). The pilots barely had time to leap from their craft before the next in line would plow into the back of the one before it, resulting in a pileup of gliders that clogged half the landing strip. One of them didn’t even make it onto the bluff, and instead crashed into the side.
At least most of the goblins had bailed out ahead of the crash.
The final glider came in, rough and ragged with several tears in the wings. I wasn’t sure it would make the transition, but the pilot flared off and just got it over the edge of the bluff before dumping his altitude and crashing down.
I ran over to the landing strip and saw John, the martial taskmaster in charge of Canaveral, climbing out of the cockpit with his two hobgoblin lieutenants. He had a hide bandana tied around his forehead that was stained with blood, and his lieutenants were similarly festooned. All three saluted upon spotting me, and John stepped up to report.
“Sir, the porkbellies hit us at the same time as the lizards. A group of maulers, at least 30 of ‘em, led by that big side of bacon you warned us about.”
“Hrott?” I asked. Rotte’s brother had threatened me at the river. I knew he’d be back eventually, after he finished with the other tribes in the area.
John nodded. “I commanded a withdrawal from Canaveral. I’m sorry, boss. We couldn’t hold it.”
“Damn!” I said, kicking a patch of dirt with my blade. Not only had it cost us goblins, but the most reliable source of food, as well. I sighed and turned around, thinking. Bringing in more herd animals depended on engines. But we weren’t going to get engines if the tribe starved before then. We needed Canaveral. And I knew what I had to do to take it back.
“Follow me,” I said.
I marched, John in tow, to the blacksmithing area where the igni hammers still rang.
Promo greeted me, holding up a finished pinion gear and a rack with teeth that actually married up. “Success, King!”
“That’s great,” I said. “But we need to shift gears.”
Promo looked at the gears in his hands.
“No, we need to adjust our priorities. Get the straightest, cleanest poles from the piles that you can find—as thick as your thumb. We’re going to use them to make hollow tubes from iron.”
“What are we doing with those tubes, boss?” asked Promo, scratching his belly.
I hated that internal combustion would have to wait. I hated that the javeline had pushed me to this point. But I suppose it was inevitable. Rava was a dangerous place. I’d only been here a few weeks, and in that time I’d been bitten, slashed, stabbed, and shocked. The planet was so dangerous that goblins were practically stamped with expiration dates. I needed something more than sharp sticks to level the playing field against the javelines. “Making rifle barrels. We’re going to war for Canaveral.”