Chapter 36 - Subtle Progress

<2 Hobgoblin Scrappers have been added to your tribe>

<3 Hobgoblin wranglers have been added to your tribe>

<1 Goblin taskmaster has been added to your tribe>

“Alright, test flight number 9. Go for launch,” I said.

Sally pulled the lever to drop the rock load, and the glider shot forward on the rails. I watched it hit the ramp and then take to the air as the scrapper onboard pedaled furiously. His pedaling went to a direct drive wooden propeller at the back of the aircraft that started to spin.

For about thirty seconds, it looked like he might manage to keep it up. But the nose started to dip, and no matter how much the scrapper tried to correct, the prop just wasn’t generating enough thrust to keep smooth airflow over the wings. The whole thing tipped, and the scrapper came out of his seat. Both pilot and plane plummeted to the terrain below the bluff without even reaching the new tree-line that Buzz had cleared to over the last several days. I winced as the sound of the wooden frame splintering reached us on top of the plateau.

“This ain’t it, Boss,” said Eileen, standing next to me with her hand on her chin. “We’re going to need another solution if we want to save on sulfur.”

I sighed. Even the scrappers weren’t physically strong enough to maintain powered flight that overcame the added weight of the prop assembly. Even with the reduced gravity of Raphina directly overhead, and even launched directly into the wind, a goblin-powered aircraft just didn’t seem feasible. We were going to need either gas envelopes or internal combustion to maintain powered flight. And right now, both were still out of reach due to material constraints.

Getting the lighter-than-air gas for airships was surprisingly easy. I had a test balloon stitched by my most recently born taskmaster, Javier, hovering right now—directly over the latrine. It turns out that goblin scat, in addition to making a great base for primitive rocket fuel, puts out an insane amount of methane that could either be trapped in an envelope to create lift or burned to create hot air. And the solution to needing more fuel was the same as the solutions to most problem as a goblin king: get more goblins. I’d managed to stay out of trouble the past few days and enhance our progress on all fronts except this one, which had given the tribe some breathing room.

The problem with gas-envelope airships was a materials one. Even with the square-cube law on your side, you needed a lot of surface area for an envelope capable of lifting people—even people as small as goblins. I’d mathed it out, and our new clothier division would need roughly a thousand hides from cliffords or eclipse lizards, or other similar sized animals in order to lift up a frame and five goblins plus the weight of the craft itself. That just wasn’t feasible. And I couldn’t rely on Rufus to come back with a wagonload of sailcloth in his overstuffed backpack, either. Not when we were in the middle of the untamed jungle. We needed roads if we were going to get actual trade. But roads could also be used to move armies.

Internal combustion was a more mechanically complex solution that required metal—which was on the docket anyway—as well as liquid fuel, lubricating oil, and a stable source of ignition. A simple, self-lubricating rotary engine had only a few moving parts and could take a hell of a beating. I could build one out of ceramic. But when it failed (and it would fail), it would do so catastrophically and most likely explosively. And it would take several dedicated firings to iterate one that worked in the first place. Steel would be better, and we had a source of iron nearly in reach.

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I sat at the western edge of the bluff as Eileen and her team ran over to the east side to set up for the day’s transfer of supplies and personnel to Village Canaveral—what I’d named the bluff beset by the lizards. There seemed to be no end to them and reinforcing the village had only brought them out in greater numbers. Even with the enhanced fortifications and a dedicated taskmaster with a militaristic skillset (John) heading up Canaveral’s defenses so that I could give Armstrong some much-needed rest at Village Apollo, an end to the war was nowhere in sight. Which had, ironically, become a huge boon as I needed fewer hunters and fishers to support the tribe. The lizards were the closest thing in Rava to Doordash. Canaveral had started sending back meat and hides via glider for every load of fresh goblins and raw materials. They’d been using those hides to produce more rocket-assist aircraft, as well. But eventually, we’d run out of sulfur without new sources.

Below, the open land had started to stretch where Buzz’ timber team had cleared area for Chuck’s paddocks. And rather than a single herd animal, the wranglers had brought back a hodge-podge of grazing savannah creatures and thrust them together to figure things out via spaghetti testing. Essentially, they had thrown the entire biome at the wall and were seeing what stuck in the goblin equivalent of animal husbandry. It had started to attract predators, but Chuck had let the stone-sloth cub have the run of the enclosures like a sheep dog and it kept most other nasties away. It was growing incredibly quickly, as well. The cub now weighed as much as a hobgoblin, and I knew it would only get bigger.

Far beyond that, iron waited for me in the peat bog, and that consumed the lion’s share of my attention and planning. Metal was the answer to most of our immediate bottlenecks. But it was a long way to travel on foot. A couple hours ride on a clifford meant at least 2 days’ walk as the goblin bushwhacks. And goblins wouldn’t—couldn’t survive on the ground at night without the safety of high ground. So, we were going to bring it with us. But that would still be a multi-day trek through dangerous terrain with heavy supplies.

I’d started inventing wheels, wagons, yokes, and even gravel roads to haul everything in preparation. Luckily, a large enough group of goblins basically carved their own freeway as a matter of course when moving from place to place. Roads were a simple matter of paving that cleared brush over with gravel from broken or discarded construction bricks. When I was going to grad school, they’d shut down one lane of the main stretch outside my apartment for 6 months in order to re-pave 2 miles of asphalt. Give me a dozen of Buzz’ builders and I’d have had it done in 3 weeks.

I sat for a while, considering that iron and the threats in the bog. We’d been there all of 10 minutes and encountered two major dangers—and who knows what else lurked there. I wouldn’t send the iron expedition unprepared. Weapons, leather and ceramic armor, fortified building supplies, and munitions were all going. I worried that the expenditure of personnel and resources might not be worth it if the bog bounced us back as brutally as it had the first time. At least I also didn’t have to worry about things falling apart in my absence.

Thanks to my supervision, the tribe was running like a well-oiled machine—or at least a stack of spinning plates kept aloft by a well-oiled stage magician. Logistics were a matter of raw materials available vs collected vs consumed and left-right limits for the different divisions within Tribe Apollo let things function without my direct intervention in most circumstances without worrying about critical shortfalls. But I’d specialized in closed-loop systems in my engineering classes, and my expertise were surprisingly applicable to the tribal management. At least until the next crisis occurred. And it seemed like goblins lived in a near-constant state of one crisis after another.

Case in point. The javeline and night haunts were still out there as well. I’d seen smoke rising from a bluff in the direction I’d last seen the rutters moving and had to assume they’d wiped out another tribe before I could get to them. I needed powered flight in order to rescue the more distant villages.

I brought up the System window and checked the rosters. Looked like Buzz had lost one of his construction crew to some sort of accident.

I dismissed the window and pulled myself to my feet. The sloth claws were holding up well. But I couldn’t help looking forward to the day I’d be able to augment this design with steel springs and blades. And it was coming. I was certain of it. No pig men or croc-knockers or lizard swarms could slow me down for long.