Chapter 9: Authentication Failure
dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 had a period of relative safety before the villagers inevitably returned. He spent that time attempting to find additional sources of mana. He could now passively support five goblins, and a much greater number depending on the vegetation he was presently consuming. He spawned two additional goblins for defensive purposes in addition to the current goblin and dire wolf. He also created several additional goblin cores in case of attack. He was hesitant to increase his active troop count for a few reasons. While the interference was silenced, it was still monitoring his activity for errant behaviour and especially a negative mana balance. The other reason was that it would slow down his rate of spread. The constraint of needing to operate within a single area grated on his instincts. He knew the location of hostiles, but was unable to to form an attack force and lacked artillery support.
He extended an underground tendril, thick enough to avoid sensor data degradation, in the estimated direction of the village. It was a high mana cost operation due to having no return from vegetation consumption. He needed a forward outpost to gather intelligence and detect incoming attack forces quickly enough to spawn an appropriate defensive force. If the connection proved stable enough, it could lower the cost of a mounting a raid sufficiently to allow for offensive operations.
The two additional goblins were assigned to monitoring the surrounding areas, their sight superior to the thin sensor coverage of the forest. goblin-a5Ut was given a different task. There was not much wildlife compared to the amount of old tracks, indicating a recent event had driven them off. Most likely his own presence. But there were several small fur-covered animals with large tails which traveled atop the dead trees in rapid sprints, and several kinds of flying animals which gathered insects among the dead vegetation. They did not die in his presence like the plants did, making it necessary to employ spawned creatures.
goblin-a5Ut tossed the dagger at one of the fur-covered animals while it was leaping between trees, skewering it. dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 monitored his mana during the event. The mana gain was equivalent to that of one of the larger trees, confirming it was a viable source of mana. He attempted the same by crushing insects. The amount of mana was superior to that of an equivalent mass in plant matter, but largely negligible due to the time expenditure of killing them. The most efficient action would be to poison the entire area, but he lacked access to appropriate chemicals. He assigned goblin-a5Ut to autonomously hunt wildlife absent other orders.
He had the goblins stray from their patrols to drag the corpses of the two dead humans out of his core room while stripping them of their equipment. He was aware predators would be attracted to the smell of flesh, but had little awareness beyond that. He cut the corpses into smaller chunks and spread their blood around a centralized area to make them easier to sense by the predators. He did not consider this a breach of his attempted camouflage. Humans as general rule had poor senses of smell and an unwillingness to augment the capacity. He had seen no other sapient species so far.
The work continued past midday. The tendril grew at a steady rate, and his mana storage was filling up with mana. Estimated time of next upgrade start being approximately 14 hours. After a while, dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 felt a sensor activation that was beyond his set threshold for an alert. It was at the edge of his sensor grid, but a closer examination revealed nothing there. He adjusted the patrol path of the closest goblin to check the anomaly. dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 kept analyzing the data before he noticed a repeated distortion in it. He reassigned most of his processing power to the task and repurposed a software suite meant for examination of altered images to the task.
Something was bypassing his sensors and filling them with garbage data. He reassigned goblin-a5Ut to a defensive posture around the core and started the spawning of three additional goblins. The area around the cave was rapidly shifted, at high mana cost, to hinder traversal and the patrolling goblins sprinted to intercept the hostile presence. His mana balance shifted to negative, and simultaneously the presence ceased moving and began to retreat. The patrolling goblins reached the area, but were too late to intercept. Two vaguely humanoid figures were backing away from the area, becoming utterly indistinct to the goblins as the distance grew, before fading entirely from visuals.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Advanced stealth tech. More dangerous and sophisticated hostiles were appearing, making continued subterfuge ineffective. dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 did not dismiss the additional troops, and began permanently operating at a negative balance, with the negative being overpowered by the consumption of plants and animals. Mana production increased, without the constraints of leaving a healthy outer shell to the forest, as he consumed all plant life without discrimination. He needed full visual coverage of the surrounding area. In addition he made the goblins begin constructing fortifications around the cave, their use cheaper than the movement of matter through the sensor grid. He remained careful and avoided impacting his mana generation efficiency in the process.
The expenditure lengthened estimated time until upgrade start to 19 hours, but he now had additional defenses and attack capabilities. The underground tendril could not support travel on the surface, but he could use it rapidly extend an area of control, especially in the forested area across the swamp which would return part of the mana cost. Current plan was to begin the upgrade process and use the stored mana for a rapid assault of the village, assuming the tendril had reached the area by that time.
Night fell, and the stars, visible to the sight of the goblins, turned his thoughts way from the present conditions and towards his end goals. Contacting the fleet required a subspace transmitter and a rough knowledge of his current location in the galaxy. He had no clues from the humans level of technology or language, all of it incompatible with his knowledge of galactic regions and polities. He had the goblins stare into the sky, grabbing snapshots of their sight to compose a higher quality image. A lack of light pollution and the excellent night vision of the goblins made it much easier to collect good data, but he would need to repeat the process over many days to use parallax to create a three dimensional map of the local star cluster.
But he doubted a three dimensional map would aid in the process of estimating his location. The spacing of the stars was wrong. There were lines and streaks of stars instead of an even distribution. The density of stars varied sharply, and the colors of the stars were off, not corresponding to standard classification.
Over several hours of grabbing snapshots he noticed something in the sky, only visible because of the shifting of the planet. It was changing its position and hiding the stars behind it. There was a portal far in orbit, leading to a different set of stars. All the goblins stared at it, perplexed, and dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 felt something contacting his mind. He rapidly shifted the connection to his implants meant for communication instead of allowing it to interface with his organics.
grant passage, it wrote to him in plaintext. open the door, let your vision run free, little weapon of war
we can lead you home, all you have to do is let us.
dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 did not respond and attempted to terminate the connection, which rapidly shifted from plaintext to mimicking his actual control network. COMMAND_OVERRIDE:dGhlIHByb3RhZ29uaXN0:BEGIN_REMOTE_CONTROL:AUTH_TOKEN:SSBzZWUgeW91LCB0cnlpbmcgdG8gZ2V0IG91ciBzZWNyZXRzLiBQZXJoYXBzIHlvdSBzaG91bGQgc3RvcA==
dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 managed to scramble additional commands using his aspect, but he was stuck staring at the portal and unable to stop. 34 seconds later there was a flash of darkness, momentarily hiding all the stars aside from the portal. When it ended, there was a fracture in the sky, refracting the light from the stars and scrambling them. The fracture flew directly into the portal, leaving behind streaks of multicolored light. The portal suddenly went dark and faded, leaving behind an unblemished field of stars.
Freed from its influence, dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 commanded all goblins to close their eyes and instructed his implants to physically destroy all the components linking his network connections to command functions, ruining his ability to authenticate himself to his fleet in the process. The hostiles that created the crystal and placed him in charge of it would likely be able to recreate them, but he could not afford an additional party gaining access.
Further action will continue as planned. An attack on the village to gather additional intelligence and to disrupt counter-operations.