Chapter 103 - Pain Train
On the ground, the whistler barreled its way across the floor of the canyon, churning gravel and dust underneath hundreds of legs. Directly in its path, Big Hoss Rig stopped, and its wheels started to spin backwards. The turret on top swung, tracking the head of the whistler, and fired. It had the biggest gun we’d built yet and I could feel the explosion as it kicked up dirt and debris in advance of the whistler’s rush.
The monster flinched to the side but kept on coming. The Flock hunters still on oryx bounded out of its way, hurling spears and firing crossbows at its eyes—and there were a lot of them on the thing’s face. At least 20 eyes covered the front of its face below an armor mantle. While the majority of them were fixed on the BHR, others scanned in every direction. There was no sneaking up on this thing while it was awake.
Another shot from the BHR exploded against the whistler’s back, twisting the creature just enough that it only caught the front corner of the BHR on its attack run. The armored rig spun out, tires shrieking almost as loud as the whistler’s natural airhorns. Almost immediately, the head diverted right, spiraling up and around a pillar before shooting the gap to another—directly at us.
My eyes went wide, and I hauled back on the controls and yanked up on the collective. The maneuver shot us almost straight up, though I could hear the main rotors shuddering as the engine struggled to put out enough power to meet the demands of the steep climb. I fully believe that the engine would have exploded then and there without Girmaks inside it. If this little chopper had a safety envelope, I was flying well outside it. And worse yet, through the flicker of the rotor disc, I could see an arch directly overhead. I slammed the stick full forward, and we lurched forward, tail over teakettle with our semaphore signaler squawking and waving his flags helplessly in the air.
Some of our choppers followed high, a couple followed low, but at least one of them failed to maneuver in time and I felt the heat of the explosion on the back of my neck.
“King Ap, I must advise against pulling such a maneuver again.”
“It might not be up to me!” I shouted back.
With our increased altitude, I spotted a glint of metal in the sunlight at the top of the canyon’s ridge. Spearpoints from Lura’s Hunters, if my mark was right. But they were just waiting and watching. Why? They had to know the Gorgers were closing in on their own kill. But they did nothing.
The whistler shot the gap again, this time aiming straight for us. I was treated to a close-up of its gaping mouth and dozens of eyes all fixed on my aircraft before the whistle of a rocket-motor and an explosion knocked its head off course. The head narrowly missed me, and I hauled on the collective. The passing of the creature created a low-pressure zone that threatened to suck us right into it, where we’d be ground to fine powder against its carapace. I just managed to get us free and climb up.
The whistler changed targets again, spiraling down a pillar and snaking across the ground to snap at oryx riders that dared leave the shadow of the pillars and cross the open ground.
I tried to calm my heart. It kept prioritizing my chopper. Did it know I was the leader? Why was it focused so heavily on my aircraft? I didn’t know what would happen if I were swallowed whole. Would the tribe simply count down while I slowly dissolved in the dark? Would the whole of us croak at once? Could I somehow escape, given enough goblins dying in my place?
Looking down at the massive creature, I could see the tell-tale damage we’d inflicted in the form of shattered shell and pock-marked carapace. Even a pair of direct hits from the BHR had only served to break armor—and the thing seemed to be mostly armor. It was like fighting a cast-iron freight train with an appetite and a grudge. Nothing this big had a right to move so quickly and change direction on a dime. But then, it didn’t exactly act like a single cohesive creature. Segments followed other segments, and no brain or neuron system in the universe could control that many independent limbs in a creature of such scale. It was Rava’s greatest game of follow-the-leader, no different from the goblins in choppers following my flares and signal flags.
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I could exploit that, somehow. But I couldn’t do it alone. Even with rockets and recoilless rifles, we just didn’t have the firepower to strike a decisive blow against this thing. On the ground, two buggies tried to hit it with a net launcher, and the whistler tore the net to shreds without even noticing the effort. Maybe if we had some mines we could set underneath it they might flip the beast and expose weaker underbelly. But against an outer hide that seemed to be, at least in part, metal plating? I hadn’t designed any kind of munition to get through that. What would it take, a steel dart? Tungsten? Once again I’d come to a fight unprepared, and found myself in an untenable position.
I grabbed the handset. “Signal the squadron to continue the fight,” I barked. I looked over my shoulder as the semaphore zealot clasped a hand to his ear-cups and then gave me a salute. His flags began to work, and I peeled out of the formation towards the ridge line to find the Dawn Light chieftess, Lura Sunskin. As I climbed, my stomach just about jumped into my throat. Keeper had said she’d left the hunt to her lieutenant. What she hadn’t said was that Lura had taken the vast majority of hunters south with her. Hundreds of orcs on boars and oryx, and even one thundercleave, spread out across the top of the ridge, all waiting and watching, unafraid, as I approached. This wasn’t a force meant to hunt a whistler. It was a force meant to finish off what was left of the Flock. The threat was immediate and obvious.
Well, I’d certainly caught the woman’s attention. The fact she hadn’t wiped us out already told me there was still a way out of this. I wheeled the chopper around and brought us down on a clear patch near the head of the column where Lura waited, cross-legged atop her oryx with a small ladder and a highchair with a small seat. It was obvious who that was for.
Armstrong hopped out of the chopper with me, as though he could protect us from 50 times our number in orc hunters. But I was grateful for his company. I moved over to Lura and scrabbled my way up the ladder. The flock huntress looked at me with a mix of emotions—anger, barely concealed, but also curiosity and no shortage of chagrin.
“I have naught other than my pride, for blame, I suppose,” she said. “Pressed to my throat, is this dagger, yet its blade would cut us both—and it will slide ‘cross skin at any moment with the aid you lent the Gorgers, unless I aid your elsewise lost cause. Your intent, ‘tis clear.”
“Where I’m from, we call it a Sword of Damocles,” I said.
Lura grinned. “It’s become all too clear, o little brother king, that where you’re from is not the Land of Shaded Skies.” She gestured with an open palm to the roughshod chopper behind me. “And despite your artifice so clever, you will break upon the whistler without my aid.”
“That’s true,” I said. “And without your aid, the Blood Gorgers win the Stampede. So, will you help me?”
The sound of another explosion reached us, and Lura made a show of cupping a hand to her ear and waiting until the last echos had died off. Every moment she dallied cost the Flock.
“There is a price, little brother. I know now why the grandfather spirits led you to my doorstep.”
“What is it?”
Lura grinned a wicked little smile. “I’ll tell you not, lest you balk and query, and we’ve not the time for that. I want your word as king of goblins that this pact you’ll honor.”
“And if I don’t want to give it to you?” I asked.
Lura Sunskin laughed. “Then we watch you crash upon the beast, and we crush what’s left. This dagger may against both our throats press, yet it’s still I who directs its course. Shall it cut us both?”
I opened my mouth to respond, but Lura cut me off.
“Before you answer, know that should your words you renege upon, I will carve your tribe from the jungle and the name Apollo will become a word meaning only death upon the plains and forests and sands of Lanclova.”
“You’ve got me between a rock and a hard place, here,” I said. I raised two fingers. “There’s two things I won’t do: I won’t wage war on another sentient species for you, and I won’t betray the Ifrit.”
“Then an accord, have we?”
“You have my word.”
Lura laughed and raised her spear. As one, the troop surged forward, hooves pounding as the orcs streamed to either side of us, disappearing over the ridge and dropping into the valley.
Lura angled her spear down at me as she heeled her mount to action. “A whistler is meteor given flesh, little brother. It cannot be slowed. But when they grow as this one has, its own length can be used against it. Take heart and take aim. Do not miss.”