Chapter 35 - Multi-Crude Aircraft
The rocket boosters burned for several more seconds before the flames fizzled, and the two pods fell away from the soaring aircraft while my ears rang. The nose started to pitch down, and Eileen raised both flags over her head. The goblin at the back of the aircraft hauled on its cords, raising the elevator until our pitch stabilized. Then, she thrust one flag out to the side, and the goblin at the end of the wing lifted its aileron. The wing dipped on that side and we established a gentle bank to the southeast. The glider was too big and too heavy for one goblin to control it alone. Eileen needed her whole crew operating the individual control surfaces that kept the aircraft aloft.
I heard the Shwoosh roar of another launch behind us and twisted around to see a smaller glider riding up into the sky behind us. That would be Chuck. I wish we had radios to communicate with. But at least if we went down, he’d know exactly where to bring the rescue team. And I’d have a scrapper with me from the start. I looked at the burly hobgoblin holding on with white-knuckled fervor. She wasn’t quite as solid as Armstrong, but I had no doubt she would throw herself at any threat with the same ferocity.
The rockets burned for less than a minute, but they had gotten us almost a third of the way to the bluff already. As we passed over the hot springs, three of the goblins bailed out, EEEEeeeeeing down to the forest canopy below. They’d be harvesting more of the sulfur that we needed for the primitive rockets.
We kept going, getting lift off heat still rising from the pools. The bluff was coming up, and Eileen was doing a good job managing the glider’s energy. I lowered my head for a closer look, and it seemed like the lizards were already swarming out of their desert holes and moving for the village. They weren’t high level, but there were a lot of them. With the sun behind Raphina, they were taking their opportunity to raid the village.
The village itself was in much better shape than when I’d come by in my first glider. A palisade had been erected on the southern side, and goblins stood atop in helmets made from lizard skulls, equipped with long spears and slingers. Traps and weighted pendulums dotted the rampart and the cliff face. I spotted several goblins, much bigger than the rest, moving along the wall and getting into position as the lizards hit the base of the bluff and started to climb. Armstrong waved at us as we soared overhead.
Eileen raised one of her flags, and we dipped to the left, angling over the village. All but the crew bailed out, free-falling down—including the newest hobgoblin scrapper, who shot me a grin and a thumbs up as she fell toward the village. Builders, engineers, and fighters for the war effort against the lizard menace. I wouldn’t abandon these goblins. I didn’t want to abandon the bluff, either. It was an important expansion opportunity. I didn’t have to be a military genius to know castles were built on high ground for a reason, and the plateaus were the highest ground short of the mountains to the northeast. Rather than evacuating, I would fortify this village, just as I’d fortified Village Apollo in my war against the night haunts—a war we might actually be winning, despite the obvious level disadvantage.
“Payload’s away, boss!” shouted Eileen. “But we got another surprise for them, don’t we lads!”
“Yeah?” I shouted up. “What have you got kicking?”
With most of the weight off the glider, our performance increased dramatically, and Eileen directed us in a wide loop, coming even with the side of the bluff where the lizards were starting to climb.
Eileen stowed her semaphore signals and crawled back to where I sat in the middle of the fuselage. The goblins at the wings and tail locked their control surfaces and made their way to the middle of the aircraft, where they uncovered a wicker basket full of small, clay jars padded with moss and straw.
“Are those what I think they are?” I asked.
Eileen handed me one of the small pots, grinning with a mouth full of sharp teeth—so wide that I thought her head might just come right off. “Compliments of Neil, ya know? I wanted bomb fruits but he said these would be safer so I had the lads whip some up: bomb fruit juice mixed in with the icky-sicky. Best be quick! She won’t hold steady long.”
“That would explain the explosions this morning,” I said. So, Neil had figured out a way to get the explosive juice from the fruits. Though, based on the number of explosions, it seemed like it was far from a sure thing. Probably why Neil was fishing when they’d tried it.
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My master hunter had a keen thought, there, in mixing it with the putty. The vibration from the rocket-assisted launch would have absolutely set off a bushel full of bomb fruits, no matter what you tried to cushion them with. I briefly wondered if there was a safe method of stabilizing the juice in liquid form. But that seemed like a dangerous line of thinking. Especially when goblins were prone to drinking nearly any liquid they encountered. I passed the popper to the next goblin, who passed it to the next, until we’d distributed two to the entire crew of the glider. The side of the cliff loomed, and just a few meters from us, the lizards scaled the sheer face of the plateau.
“Let ‘em have it!” shouted Eileen as she reared back and hurled her icky-sicky popper. The rest of her crew followed suit, and I tossed mine as well, one after the other.
The clay jars hit the cliff face, and small explosions rippled against the surface of the stone, dislodging lizards and sending them plummeting down the side of the wall. They reached and scrabbled for purchase but found none as they disappeared below the treetops. An entire wave of the beasties came off the cliff face and fell to their deaths, and falling rocks accounted for several more. But the battle was far from won and the glider was losing energy.
Cheering reached us from the top of the bluff as Eileen returned to the front of her glider and the rest of the crew took their positions at the control surfaces. A shadow passed over us, and I looked up as Chuck did a hairpin turn, knife-edging along the cliff wall and slashing one lizard nearly in half with his cleaver. Others snapped at him as he passed, but the wrangler was too quick to be caught. He pulled his glider out of the dive and overtook us with his lighter craft. I waved to him as he soared on ahead toward the nearest thermal.
Behind us, more lizards flooded up the cliff. Some were knocked away by the simple traps and hazards, but the first few had reached the spears and cleavers of the goblins and hobgoblins. They seemed to be without number. But in a war of attrition, I got the sense that you shouldn’t bet against goblins. Not ever.
Not when there was a goblin king in town.
Ahead, Chuck suddenly deviated to the north. Eileen watched the wrangler’s sudden turn and looked back to me. “Should we follow, boss?”
“Can we afford the detour?”
Eileen checked her surfaces, tested her speed by licking a finger, and gauged her altitude by tossing a pebble off the side and counting the time it took to reach the trees. “I think so,”
I had the system’s helpful window showing me all that information the easy way, which made me curious.
System, can Eileen not access the flight data window?
Not bad, Eileen. Trust your instruments, but back up your findings. I could respect that.
“Get after him, then. His eyes are better than ours. Let’s see what he spotted.”
Eileen raised her flag, and we dipped into a bank that carried us toward the mountains to the northeast. We crossed the river where we’d launched the first of our fishing fleet, and I saw the vessel back in the middle of the river, though we were too high to see the individual goblins crewing it.
We continued on, passing over thick forest with open stretches, and stopped at a sun-baked patch of earth to ride a thermal up for some extra altitude before continuing on. The terrain started to rise into the foothills, and Chuck began to circle. Eileen directed our heavy glider over to the area, and I looked down.
A horde of javeline moved through the woods—at least 50 of the porcine hunters—in what must have been the main war band that sent off detachments like Rotte's group of rutters. Some of them looked up and pointed with spears or slung rocks from leather straps that fell laughably short of the aircraft. Given the general direction they were headed, it looked like there was a bluff further east that they had their eyes on first. But they’d come for us eventually. I scowled. Goblin ears and tongues, eh? Well, we’d give ‘em a welcome.
“Hey Eileen. We got anymore poppers?”
She flashed her wicked grin and signaled her crew to lean us into a slow circle. I moved to the armory basket and pulled out a pair of munitions. There were still five left. The javeline watched us with wary curiosity, probably wondering if we were some sort of large bird. I wound up and hucked the first two poppers, then grabbed two more and threw them as well. Baseball was never my sport. I’d always been a rower and a runner—give me a twelve-kilometer shaded course and an EDM soundtrack at 170 beats per minute and I’ll choose it over a diamond and a bat any day. But I feel I accorded myself well with the improvised goblin grenades.
The javeline maintained their disinterest until the first poppers exploded in their midst, shocking and scattering the pig-men. The rest fell in quick succession, wreaking havoc among the ranks as the rutters scrambled away from the danger. But I’d knocked down a few of the half-bacon bastards and they’d had no idea what happened. I could see at least two of the rutters down, and another half-dozen limping or dazed by sharp fragments of the clay casing.
I hope one of them was Rotte. But there’s no way I’d get that lucky.
“Alright,” I said, putting the cover back on the empty basket. “Let’s go home.”