Chapter 110 - The Missing Beatle
The first thing Armstrong did on landing was press-gang several Huntsville goblins into the secretive service to make sure I had ample protection. The swamp had long-since proven to be a hostile environment—maybe even more-so than the badlands. We hadn’t conquered it so much as mitigated it, and we’d still only explored a small part of the waterways and islands that made up the big crescent-shaped bog.
But we’d also come a long way since first braving its waters with ceramic-tipped spears, slingers, and small hot-air balloons. We had gas-powered engines, steel, guns, and soon we’d have electricity. From what I’d seen, the croc-knockers were now an annoyance at best, rather than a monolithic obstacle that could only be avoided or deterred. But the red mist spirits we’d only run across once before. Which made me have to ask: what changed? Ringo had existed in the swamp for years, and apparently not fallen afoul of them. And the answer was pretty obvious. I’d come. I’d spent the last few months disrupting the balance of power on Lanclova. It was only natural that things begin to respond.
I found Hadfield on top of the tower on the north end of Camp Huntsville, directing the flow of iron and oil coming in from the bog through a new canal that had been dug from the camp straight to the waterway, sealed off by a portcullis in the water. The process of extraction and refining at Huntsville was best described as barely-controlled chaos backed by the occasional detonation of a boom furnace producing a piece of workable iron. Totems erected throughout the camp boosted the productivity of the labor pool, and production here had to be diligent to keep the growing need for motor vehicles supplied at the bluff and on the plains.
I told Hadfield about the situation on Ringo’s Island, and he considered the problem.
“We’ve steered clear of the place, most-like, as you said. Built a pump for their spring. Leave supplies out for ‘em on occasion, and they leave us little stacks of smooth stones and shells, for some reason. But they stopped taking them 2 days ago.”
“So whatever happened, happened very recently,” I said, nodding. “Then there’s a good chance he and some of his tribe are still out there. We need to find them and figure out what’s coming.”
With boglins most active at dawn and dusk, that would be the best time to perform our search without disrupting iron and kerosene production to a degree that stunted food collection efforts and tribe defense. We still had Lura’s task to accomplish as well, and the huntress didn’t seem the sort to rest on her laurels.
“We got plenty of boats and crews, boss. But they get stuck in some of the thicker peat. Boglins could be gone to ground in areas wot we can’t reach.”
“I might have something for that,” I said. “Come with me.”
Navigation in the bog so far had been primarily for the purpose of collecting the iron found near the loose river runoffs where rafts tough enough to withstand a croc-knocker attack could maneuver between the peat mounds. Getting up some of the smaller waterways choked with vegetation meant we needed something different.
We went down to the forges where the local igni were working with their crafting teams to make impeller craft. Most of them were still goblin-powered via pedal crank, since motors had been reserved for ground and air vehicles—and in fact, the swamp had a pair of helicopters that they’d built because there was no area clear enough for a runway. Taking a small engine with a spare prop from one of the choppers, I had the igni mount them sideways to a pair of canoes strapped together. The result was a shallow-draft pontoon boat with an air fan, and no underwater impeller to get choked by debris.
Once the first one was done, the craftsmen got sorted out on making a few more. The choppers would also be useful in the effort, being able to scout through the bog—but I doubted you’d spot boglins from the air, especially if they didn’t want to be spotted.
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“Armstrong, I want scrappers leading the charge on this. Your boys are natural trackers.”
“Onnit, boss. Trust,” said Armstrong. He scratched his chin. “But… why do you care wot happens to Ringo? Didn’t he stab you? An’ didn’t you torch him?”
I didn’t want to explain that Ringo was the only other person I’d met who might be from my home world and therefore my only link to it. The fact he was a paranoid Florida swamp-man just meant he fit in better with the goblins than I did. But it was a legitimate question. Other goblins had actually stopped working to wait for my answer. I looked around for a canonneer and whistled him over. I pointed a finger in the air.
“What’s the first commandment?”
The canonneer reached into his bag and fumbled for a folded scrap of paper. “Be excellent to each other,” he said.
I looked at Armstrong. “Goblins help goblins. Ringo got paranoid and scared because for years, he thought he was alone in a world where no one gives a goblin anything, they only take. Well, he’s not alone, and neither are we. We’ve got orcs, we’ve got the Ifrit, and we’ve got the boglins. Maybe they’re not all entirely on our side, but we’re getting there. And we’re not giving up any of them. And we’re definitely not giving up on any of them.”
A wave of straighter backs and puffed up chests passed through the crowd. The canonneer scribbled furiously on a corner of his pamphlet, and even Armstrong nodded.
“Guess we gotta stick together, even with a goblin that tried to stick us,” he said. “Right. I’ll gather the lads.”
By nightfall, we had a handful of boats and two-dozen scrappers and their non-variant crews. Hobgoblins were pretty common as far as variants went, making up about a fifth or sixth of the entire tribe. 20 of them would be a force to be reckoned with. I started to climb onto the lead boat, but felt strong hands pin my arms to my sides and lift me off the gangplank. I kicked the air helplessly.
“Sorry, boss,” said Armstrong. “As your secretive service, we’re stayin behind walls ‘til we know wot we’s dealing with. Leave it to the scrappers. They’re good lads.”
I relaxed, deflated. “You’re right, of course,” I said. Armstrong put me down, and with a longing look at the airboats, I wished the scrappers luck and headed back to the safety of Huntsville’s walls. The scrappper search and rescue teams set off so they could search into the night. But I still had the diurnal limitations of a non-variant forest goblin, and not long after that, a hot meal put me down for the count.
* * *
I woke up to a hell of a shock, losing nearly 40 goblins overnight. I checked the roster menu and found that fully 15 of them had been scrappers I’d assigned to the search party. That was most of the search party. What was even worse, though, was that a taskmaster had vanished—one responsible for pumping and transporting kerosene from the springs in the swamp. Without task-masters managing the minutiae of logistics, the downstream effects would start to stunt efforts of everything that required fuel—which now heavily influenced food production and aircraft manufacturing.
I struggled out from the bottom of the cuddle puddle and went up to the north wall, where several goblins were already pointing out smoke trails from further north where the pumping station had been. I grit my teeth. If I’d just been there… it probably would have made no difference. As much as I hated to admit it, even more goblins would have died from the Head of the Snake skill, if they really did meet with such a catastrophic result. But the search parties hadn’t returned yet, there was no way to know what had happened. Hell, it could have been the red spirits, or it could have just been some other form of particularly nasty endemic life.
It was a couple hours before two of the scrapper boats limped their way back to Huntsville with dead-tired skeleton crews.
“We never even saw wot was attacking us,” one of them said. “It got real dark. Then 4 crocs jumped out all at once, right onto the boat! And these even bigger things. We lost sight of the other lads with us, and when we’d made it out of the fight, they weren’t nowhere.”
“Didn’t you have torches?” I asked.
“Somfink snuffed ‘em,” said the scrapper. He looked over his shoulder back at the bog. “I could feel ‘em watchin’ me.”
That wasn’t good. Something was definitely in the swamp, and it was making a concerted effort to attack goblins. It knew to hit at night, it knew to separate groups of goblins to negate their numbers advantage. Scrappers were great ambush fighters and surprise attackers. What could get the jump on them?
I opened the variant spawn control submenu and slid the slider for Scrappers all the way to the right, prioritizing their reproduction above other variants.
The goblins started squawking and running to the eastern rampart. I closed the menu and followed them and was greeted by a dark shadow in the sky to the east. A shadow that was drawing closer.