The company they put me into was VERY different. The group of eighteen goblins were walked, not ran, walked, to a barracks, and told to ‘find a bed’. After each of us had staked out one of the twenty racks in the much smaller barracks, we were sent over to a meeting hall where we stood while a goblin lieutenant started speaking to us.
“Okay folks,” he said, much more quietly. The murmuring died, and even though the acoustics of the steel shelter sucked, most of us had ears more than large enough to hear him. “I am Lieutenant Fraz. Your company commander is Petty Officer Bex, and you will meet him in the morning.”
“Now, I know that a good chunk of you were press-ganged. Excuse me, I mean ‘recruited’, and the rest of you were probably sent here by the courts in exchange for early release. I need to be straight with you on a few things.”
“First off, This is a dry base. This is going to be as hard on you as it is on the dwarves.” That was the common name for morans, but most of them didn’t care which term you used. “I know every single one of you is capable of building a hidden still, but don’t. Just tough it out for the next couple of months. There are at least three seekers on the command staff, and they WILL sniff it out, and then you get to spend the next two years breaking big rocks into smaller rocks before you wind up right back here. If you don’t believe me, ask recruit Bantan over there.” he gestured towards one of the recruits, who snickered a little.
“Seriously, they will find it. I promise. Goblins stink when they drink, and a seeker will sniff out the still and have you marching into the brig before you even realize you got caught.”
“Secondly, this is a penal battalion. You didn’t volunteer, so everything we do will be watched. If you want to, you are welcome to strike for any of the engineering schools you think you can get into. If you don’t, you are going to get sent to primary mechanized units. They need what we can offer, but it also means regularly risking getting your head blown off. You know what they call mechanized goblins, right?”
The one who’d spent some time in jail replied, “Bullet magnets.”
The Lieutenant nodded, “Exactly. Mech techs get light armor in the same instances that the big boys get heavy. We stay at the back in a raid or field battle, but sweeping up the supports is one of the favorite tactics of both the Chaos Lords and the rebel factions, for good reasons. Without techs, heavy armor cannot be repaired, and you might find yourself stuck clearing rifts all the way down to tech two, which is not any fun.”
He shrugged, “If you can survive more than a few months, you might get promoted to a shipboard unit, but the average lifespan for a goblin mech tech is about three missions. There are a lot of us, so do anything you can to prove you are indispensable for higher-end jobs. Right now, the big push is for drone and transfer techs, but unless you have or can earn at least an apprentice in tech, you might as well not even try. We also have a couple of physical types here too… you guys, I am sorry to say, are almost guaranteed to be mech techs, since your odds of survival are much higher.”
“The rest of you, leave field tech for the brutes, build your tech to at least a master rank, and get the hell out of the field. Some of you love the idea of quick rewards from directly challenging rifts, but remember, every single orc warrior, human knight, and fruity elven scout considers us expendable leeches, even if we just spent ten hours repairing the shield or gauss rifle they just tried to stick down a dweller’s throat.”
One of the Goblins, a bigger one wearing glasses, asked, “What about drone specialists?”
The lieutenant nodded, “drone specialists are always in high demand, but unless you have something that lets you work a remote node, your lifespan will suck just as much as mech techs, if not worse. Ten feet per rank in tech means that you’ll be right up there with the brutes, either piggybacked or trying to hide behind them when a fireball goes up your ass. Again, only get saddled into drone field tech if you have high resistances or some affinity that allows you to remote.”
“That being said, the fleet has a bad history with goblins. Follow orders, never get caught building a homemade sex drone or a still, do your time, and get the hell out. Half the officer corps hates us and considers us barely better than chaos beasts, so always be on your guard against suicide mission types and martinets. The MGC, Military Goblin collective, has a list of names you can compare once you finally get your assignments. If your command’s name comes up, talk to them about getting reassigned away from someone with a bad record with goblins.”
“Last but not least, if any of you do NOT have tech affinity, well, there’s a lot of planets out there that are unfriendly with UPF extradition, and to be honest, if the UPF tried to track down every goblin deserter, they’d never have time to fight the Chaos Lords. I am not telling you to desert, but unless you are a sorcerer, enchanter, or elomancer, your first mission will also be your last mission. I’m sorry. Good luck with your training!”
That night, three Goblins disappeared. Disappearing is one thing goblins are VERY good at. Only one was caught, and he proudly declared that he’d rather be breaking rocks than dead. I didn’t even remotely blame him, since his metalomancy almost guaranteed getting sent as a field tech with a correspondingly short lifespan.
Our UI bands were stupidly simplified, but incredibly durable. At any point, you, or any officer in command of you, could call up your attributes at will. I’d monkeyed with the machines scanning me to be fitted and hacked the band itself. You couldn’t hack what the band itself did, but you could certainly screw with its ‘external’ display and transmission. It read one way to me, but anyone reading it remotely got a very different picture.
Roisin Reynard
Gremlin (wood)
Affinities:
Physical (Novice)
Technology (Adept)
Spiritualism (Novice)
Forces (Journeyman)
Traits:
Cross-discipline sorcery
Remote Node
Force Screen
Micro-active Swarm Control
Quantum Milling
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Endurance
Utterly simple, right, and perfect for getting me discharged… right out of an airlock. I could explain away remote node as magitech without breaking a sweat, and force screen could get explained away the same way. Cross-discipline sorcery allowed me to use sorcery techniques to make certain self-only affinities, like tech, behave with sorcerous formulas, at range. Meaning I could alter a drone’s coding, alter data on the fly, and even repair an engine using raw materials without having to actually strap into a rad-suit and enter the engine’s leak zone.
It could also explain my drone range being close to sixty miles remote instead of a mere sixty feet, I hoped that three AUs of remote node could help me control drones a LOT farther away than that, but that was assuming I could install a node in something local before they were launched.
What THEY saw from the simple UI was a lot different
Roisin Reynard
Gremlin (wood)
Affinities:
Physical (Novice)
Technology (Adept)
(unknown)
Traits:
Sorcerous Technology
Remote Node
Minor Shielding
Drone Control
Endurance
Micro-active Swarm control was right out. It implied some kind of energy manipulation, and at any level, the fleet would consider that a security risk, even if they didn’t assume forces affinity. Drone control was much, much safer, and easier to explain.
Force screen got downgraded to minor shielding. Minor shielding was an uncommon combination that allowed a physical affinity that had something with remote use to extend their aura of durability or force to whatever they were using or wearing, based on how strong their affinity was. At low levels, a physical with, say, kinetic manipulation could protect his own armor with improved durability, or allow his weapon to channel his strength if it was far beyond the weapon’s material strength, and at higher levels some of them could even form a protective bond with their mechanized suit, golem, or space-fighter.
If I had to use my force screen to protect myself, it could be passed off as minor shielding easily enough, but using it at my remote range, or protecting something as large as a star-ship, would immediately give away that I was working with an affinity with a little more oomph than just remote tech.
Sorcerous technology was, again, a much more limited form of cross-discipline sorcery. It would allow me to ‘cheat’ in rifts that had higher magic levels than tech levels, and considering that I wasn’t some kind of wizard, being able to use a pulse rifle inside of a tech two rift would still be a powerful advantage.
And quantum milling? Well… that sort of had to stay hidden. It was not impossible for an adept tech, but I considered it one of my ultimate emergency abilities. As I said, it would scream security risk, and it was unlikely to be something I’d need to defend myself.
The goblins immediately nicknamed me ‘alien’. I was somewhat similar to them, but my skin was almost blueish compared to their rich green, my ears were slightly smaller and my eyes quite a bit bigger, and more importantly, my frame was slender rather than squat, short instead of bandy-legged, and I was glad that the training was only going to be a few months, or I might be taller than them by the time we were through. It didn’t help that my mouth was much smaller as well, and not filled with sharp teeth, but that could be hidden.
The training schedule was very different. You had to do two months of basic before you could start applying to strike for a school, but if you were already trained you could test out. Basic training involved a half a day of exercise, and a half day of sitting in a room trying to stay awake while you were trained in military etiquette, drills, hygiene, repair, and a HUGE amount of safety and damage control.
Goblins were not as picky about bathing schedules either. Even with heavy exercise, most of us seldom broke a real sweat, because Goblins, and I, didn’t get overheated from working our tails off… most of us tended towards the scrawny, and more effort was spent towards making sure we ate enough protein to keep up with the exercises and not start to starve. Most goblins didn’t eat very much, a survival trait, and tended towards energy-saving indolence… what the petty officers called ‘laziness’.
Orcs, on the other hand, stank horribly and were expected to bathe twice a day. It was not their fault, they were designed to sweat off any mineral poisons or heavy metals rather than the later breed’s adaptation to them. In our case, though, we didn’t have to shave, and as long as we didn’t smell too badly, no one cared. If a recruit went too long without bathing, we were expected to take care of our hygiene problems ourselves, and we did.
I was able to get clean privately, which was something I really was picky about. Maybe Goblins were used to crowding into warrens and doing everything in company, but I was not a Goblin.
The Petty officer that was assigned to our company was a surprise, he was a hobgoblin.
Hobgoblins were goblins that had achieved an evolution. They gained a physical or ranged affinity from the transformation, and often gained a number of traits, from durability and strength to innate accuracy, that put even a normal-G world hob on par with most heavyworlder orcs.
He was also surprisingly helpful and sympathetic with the goblins who weren’t troublemakers. He called us into his office, one at a time, after the second week, to talk to us about our striking potential.
When he called me in and offered me a seat, he looked straight at me and said, “What the hell are you?”
I smiled a little, “I am a gremlin, chief.”
“So what exactly is a gremlin? I can see why they put you in here with us, but your traits are off the charts. It looks like, from your chart, you plan on being a drone wrangler, but I have no idea what sorcerous technology is.”
I smiled a little, “ST allows me to utilize a lot of tech specialties at range, and I get to pull higher-tech equipment into lower-tech rifts as long as the sorcery level is up to snuff. Tier three tech, tier six magic, and I get to run a tier six tech drone or a golem. With my tech level, I can get up to a dozen low-information drones running in a bronze rift, and it also radically increases my range so I don’t have to dodge heavy armor while I run them.”
He shook his head, “Then why are you here instead of OCS? Who did you kill?”
I shook my head, “Sorry chief, I was press-ganged. I ran afoul of the age of consent law. Gremlins have a very long adolescence, and so when the recruiters hit, my parents sent me to live with the fey… I am barely out of adolescence for my type, but the Unified Planets didn’t care. So I got sent here as a conscript when they caught me. No kills yet.”
He nodded, “So you had a very long learning period, and used it to boost yourself. I can see why they mistook you for a goblin. I suggest you strike for ship drone tech, but since you have physical, it’s most likely going to get blocked. They are desperate for rift cleaners, and with your durable frame, whatever it is, you have endurance bonuses, and with extra drone range, you are going to be thrown into the lines almost certainly.”
“What I’d recommend is remote drone striking. At least that way you won’t get nailed to an assault drop-ship or sent to a hell world. You would probably spend a couple of years with a ship detachment, but with your stats survival shouldn’t be a problem. After you work off your mandatory service, apply for OCS as a ship engineer. On the plus side, with physical, I am betting you survive easily, especially if you can stay back far enough.”
He sighed, “Normally at this point, I’d give you a command, but I assume that Hobgoblin command doesn’t work for a Gremlin?”
I shook my head, “No, it does not. But you can give me a legal command.”
He nodded, “I will give you a suggestion instead. In the end, courage is not a goblin’s friend, nor yours. If your team is losing, run. Don’t try to rescue them, you will likely get killed, even as a heavyworlder. No one expects anything different, and if you do, you won’t get black-marked for it as the sole survivor. We goblinoids have a rep, and that rep gets us mistreated by almost every officer. Lean into it, you might as well get some use out of it. Dismissed!”
He was right. I tried to strike for many different positions, from dock drone engineer to engineer’s mate, but I got fast-tracked right into team training for drones, just like a good quarter of the group.
A couple of times during training I almost got caught, once by a group of gobs who decided to fight in the shower, and once by the petty officer’s inspection. They might not have cared overly much about non-stinky goblins, but they were even pickier about clean surroundings, always talking about attention to detail.
I was very much a fan of daily cleaning, and the differences between me and the goblins were slowly, and steadily, becoming more apparent over the weeks, especially as I had to keep re-tailoring my uniforms for my new height and I was starting to stand out from the rest of the goblins.
There wasn’t much of a ceremony for graduation, just a march in review, and then the two of us, including me, who had performed well enough for promotion to lance corporal, five PFCs, and the other eight to privates.
To be completely honest, as support, our ranks were pretty much irrelevant except as a measure of what we’d be paid someday, assuming we lived long enough. It mattered for the ones who were going to ships, but for those of us who were going to be stuck on combat teams, well, an orc private that is your team’s primary defender that gives support orders in a rift is obeyed, regardless of relative ranks. Fortunately, the majority of leadership-capable orcs were also going to come out of training as at least Lance Corporal.
And then we got our orders, and I began to sweat. Now that I was an actual ranked military person, certain surprises had to come to light. Before this, I could have been tossed from the program the moment I was discovered, and I would have been so far up shit’s creek that an outboard motor and a snow plow wouldn’t have helped.
“Private Nax!”
“Yes, Petty Officer!”
“You are going to J-School for munitions management.”
“Aye Aye, Petty Officer.” Nax was ambivalent. It could be good, it could be bad, but there were lots of profit opportunities in supply if he played his cards right and didn’t get too greedy. Nax was likely smart enough to avoid getting caught in black market sweeps, but he might not be bright enough to truly milk a supply position for all it was worth.
“Private First class Pok!”
“Yes, Petty Officer!”
“You are going to A-school for shipboard drone maintenance.”
“Aye Aye Petty Officer!” Pok was grinning. Fleet meant he’d be switched over to spaceman apprentice, and had a LOT higher chance of survival, and possibly even an eventual engineer slot and more power than most goblins ever saw in their lives. Not to mention more money. He might not even skip out of the military the moment his obligation was done.
“Lance Corporal Reynard!”
“Yes, Petty Officer!”
“You are going to an assault J-school. Huh. I haven’t seen that before.”
“Excuse me, Petty Officer?”
“They are sending you to assault drone coxswain school. Normally only dwarves get that fleet billet because you graduate minimum E-3, a noncom. Either you are incredibly lucky, or incredibly unlucky. Come get your papers, Lan… err… Spaceman.”