Chapter 29 - Multitasking

The effect was near instant. The goblins seemed less impacted by the effect of the rain on the village, continuing to work—if slowly—instead of huddling inside the shelters until it stopped.

I found Sally at the edge of the bluff, hard at work with a charcoal stick and a sheaf of bark filings under a lean-to. She’d woken up with the new knowledge passed down through the Tech Tree in the wake of my ill-fated attempt at making black powder. Well, black putty, at least. Instead, I’d made something close enough to what this world considered rocket fuel to unlock the basic concept of rocket motors. As expected of my chief engineer, she was busy combining new and old concepts into amalgamative technology to further her own understanding.

She passed some of the sketches over, and I looked at the primitive schematics, nodding, and equal parts impressed and appalled by her ideas.

“We’re going to need more sulfur,” I told her. “And clay. And hides.” I scratched my head. “I hope the artificers can get us refined copper wire. There’s so much we need.”

Behind me, I heard cheering as several of the goblins loaded into the flex-a-pult. They had new contraptions with them that I hadn’t seen before. As soon as the flex-a-pult launched the first five goblins, they unfurled mini gliders that caught the wind and launched them skyward. They floated in circles as the next several wind surfers loaded up and got a boost. Only one of them lost hold of their glider and plummeted into the forest at the base of the bluff.

I watched the lazy floaters taking enjoyment off the sheer act of soaring, and I couldn’t help but smile. These little astronauts in the making—though they didn’t know it yet— were fearless in the face of heights and willing to embrace change at an unheard-of rate. Two weeks ago a smooth rock had been the height of their technological prowess. Now they were conquering the skies. But we needed more. If I was going to rescue the remaining goblins on the southeast bluff, I needed the hobgoblins, and I needed something that could carry them.

“Have your team make more of those gliders,” I said. I took one of the bark scraps and a piece of charcoal and began sketching out a modification of the stubby-winged design that extended the wings out, added winglets, and made it better for soaring.

I left her to find Neil, who hadn’t yet set out with his hunters and fishers.

He looked up at me from where he was greasing the rails of his slinger. He’d fashioned a loop on the bottom of it that he could feed his hook through to keep it steady for shooting and reloading. He had a pile of down next to him that he’d been using to line the sled for some reason. “Yes?”

I sat down next to him. “Got a special task for your boys today. Javelines left their camp in a hurry. I need the supplies they left. Tents, poles, tools, anything they can carry back. I’m sure they had food, too. See if you can salvage anything from the crash site. Also, we need sulfur and rutter scat for putty.

Neil tilted his head. “Ours works near as well,” he said.

“It does?” I asked, looking at the overflowing latrine pit on the edge of the village. I’d been planning to use it for fertilizer once we started an agrarian tech path. But apparently goblins were little phosphate factories who literally shit components for primitive rocket fuel. Which meant, the more goblins, the more icky-putty.

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He nodded. Neil set down his slinger and held up a small, round clay jar and tested the fitting in his sled.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Neil made the goblin pantomime for an explosion. Good god. The little psychopath was turning my rock slingers into grenade launchers. I took the jar. It was about the size of my hand, which meant it wouldn’t be much of a payload. But it would certainly ruin the day of whoever or whatever got hit with it. The javeline might think twice before running down goblins if every wrangler on a clifford had a goblin with a slinger riding shotgun packing a few of these things. I looked around and saw several of his hunters working on other clay jars to set out in the sun to dry. The First Apollan Grenadiers Division. Yikes.

As loathe as I was to condone the creation of explosive weaponry, I had to admit it was at least safer for the tribe than the bomb fruits. And we desperately needed to defend ourselves long enough for the tribe to grow and develop more variants. But I worried about putting too much destructive power in the hands of a collective who immediately gained an innate knowledge of its functioning. The standard goblins weren’t as skilled at specialized tasks as the variants, but they were skilled enough to be dangerous—to our side as well as any enemies.

Neil collected his hunters and loaded their equipment and folding gliders into the flex-a-pult. They launched off toward the southeast toward the hotsprings—no longer falling straight down after the apex of their parabolic launch but catching the wind and pulled away. These new gliders massively extended the range of the flex-a-pults when launching goblin-based payloads. Which, in turn, expanded our own rapid response territory from just a few kilometers from the bluff up to about five kilometers. That encompassed the hotsprings, as well as the edge of the grasslands to the south. To the west? Well, to be completely honest, I hadn’t given much thought to the west, yet. There were other bluffs on that side, but much further than the ones to the east and through thickly-forested and swampy terrain that offered few spots for thermals to form. No bones about it, we’d need powered flight to reach them.

To the north, humans were a 10-day round trip for a half-badger across the forests and foothills of a mountain range. But how much territory did a half-dwarf beast-kin cover in a day? I should have asked Rufus. We just knew too little.

I worked with Sally and her crew until mid-day. They were busy with the new glider pattern, while I had my own task. But we wouldn’t be able to make them until we had the canvas from the javeline tents that I’d sent Neil to retrieve. Canvas was something our aeronautics program needed, but maybe I could substitute more wing membranes from night haunts. Of course, that required hunting them during the day. That would almost certainly cause casualties. A better solution would be setting traps for them at night to lure them in and take them by surprise with hobgoblins. I threw my project over my shoulder and went to see the resident experts on nocturnal dealings.

The hobgoblins woke up about the time as Raphina’s eye, stumbling from their shelters bleary-eyed and yawning. I had jobs for both the scrappers and the wranglers.

Chuck and Armstrong came over first thing.

“Armstrong. Did your village ever have contact with the one south of you?”

“I seen ‘em,” he said, looking out to the southwest. “Small like. No hobbies. Never caused us no grief. Recluses, boss.”

“They’re at war with pale lizards that don’t like sunlight. Or, it would be more accurate to say, they’re being predated upon in the same way the night haunts are attacking us. Think your boys can give them a hand on the warfront so they can start making gliders instead of spears and head this way?”

Armstrong looked around. “Getting cozy up here, boss.”

“I’ll deal with that.”

The scrapper cracked his knuckles and grinned. “In that case, we can do for some lizards.”

I clapped him on the arm. “Good. I’ll send support your way as soon as we get the new gliders built.”

Armstrong rounded up his unruly rabble of scrappers and trotted off to the eastern flex-a-pult.

I turned to Chuck. “Nice save with the cliffords last night. How did you manage to get them following your orders?”

Chuck shrugged. “Just an understanding, boss. Best to raise ‘em as cubs. Then you don’t gotta remind ‘em who’s boss as much. Hard to hold on when they get to bucking and biting.”

I hefted the leather on my shoulder. “This might help with that. Where are the kennels?”