Chapter 48 - Croc Blocked

The problem with the crocs was that ceramic-tipped spears and poppers might as well have been sticks and harsh language as far as the high-level beasts were concerned. Their hide wasn’t just tough, it was thick and scaly. our weapons weren’t penetrating deep enough to draw blood, let alone deter the monsters. I unpeeled the tongue from around the iron prill and folded it up, stashing it in my snack pack on my skinny hide belt in case I got hungry later.

System, how much iron did we collect?

<4.1 chooms.>

Please tell me that’s in volume.

Damn. Without the ability to deter, defeat, or distract the crocs, that was likely to be the result every time. So far, the only thing I’d seen be mildly effective against them was the tesla wasps, which were equally happy to zap us goblins. Weaponizing the bugs wasn’t just a matter of finding and trapping them—if such a thing could even be done.

“Boss!” Hadfield yelled down from the tower. “You should come see this!”

I glanced at the other goblins and hurried over to the tower where a rope pulley dropped down and two goblins counter-weighted me up at lightning speed. As soon as I’d landed on the top platform, Hadfield pointed off to the east. A column of white smoke rose from Village Apollo, clearly visible from the bog.

“Oh no. What have the igni done to the village?” I asked.

Hadfield shrugged. “We’re getting ready to loft the balloon. What signal do you want to send?”

I considered. The iron gathering had been a disaster. But it was always going to be messy, and I had a few more days before the new guests would arrive. “We’re continuing. Resupply and additional personnel.”

“You got it!” said Hadfield, grinning. All of the goblins who had been with me in the bog slumped over, moaning. I needed to figure this problem out. They would follow my orders to their own detriment. At least, until their fear response overwhelmed all sense of reason in their little goblin brains, and then they’d break and run. But they would be most effective if they believed in my orders. Believed that, somehow, what they were doing was to their benefit. Ordering wave after wave of goblins to their deaths might eventually accomplish my goal, but it would be inefficient and wasteful as the entire workforce were paralyzed by fear.

I waited as the goblins set the balloon up and lit the fuel canister. Hell, say nothing of the goblins, I was feeling demoralized. I couldn’t even go for a run to blow off steam because there were monsters in the forest. But, I could at least go for a short glide. As the balloon began to ascend, I borrowed one of the personal gliders and hopped on the plaform. The lizard-skin balloon strained against the extra weight, but thanks to the burning goblin excrement, it slowly started warming enough to pull me off the ground. I rose up past the cheering goblins who stopped working on the tower to watch the balloon loft. They’d take a midday break in order to shimmy up the tether and dive off. Some of them would even have gliders. What pleasure the rest got out of bouncing off their heads, I can’t say.

As the platform lifted above the trees, I got yet another kick in the teeth. The croc-knockers were now dozing in the reed area we’d cleared, next to our bricks that we’d set to dry. Well, they weren’t bricks anymore. The croc’s had smashed everything vaguely goblin-like in the clearing. They knew which direction we’d come from. Just one more problem.

The balloon reached full height none too soon. I spotted the glider inbound from the east and hoisted the signal flag. The light aircraft did a tight circle, hooking around the balloon and drawing close enough for me to see one of the wranglers laying prone in the harness. He recognized me and gave a quick tilt of his wings. I waved back, then grabbed onto the platform as a strong gust hit the balloon.

“Woah!” I said. The glider pilot seemed to be having issues of his own, as his aircraft nearly inverted. He wrestled it back on course and turned back east. Maybe a half-kilometer toward the village, his wings bucked and nearly folded in on themselves. A wall of wind hit his glider like a hammer, and it was all he could do to keep from being hammered down into the treetops below.

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“Reel me in!” I shouted down.

The goblins below had no chance of hearing me. In fact, they’d formed a circle and started doing the wave in anticipation of me jumping. I held on tight to the balloon platform, wondering why, in my infinite wisdom, I hadn’t thought to include anything like, say, a seatbelt.

When the wind hit the lizard skin envelope, it nearly jerked the platform right out from under me. I felt the whole ensemble buck and pull against the tether. The glider went flying, despite my attempts to grab at it. Below me, the goblins panicked as the sudden windstorm kicked through the trees. Some of them had the presence of mind to grab the rope and start pulling down the balloon. But too many of them yanking on it at once while the wind pulled the other direction would stress the line. It wouldn’t be long before—

Snap.

My stomach lurched as the balloon separated from the tether and spun in the wind. I prepared to jump, ready to abandon ship—until I saw what was under me. The wind had blown the balloon to the northwest at the end of its tether, to the point where I hovered over the site of our unfortunate battle that afternoon. If I bailed out now, I would land right next to the two crock-knockers. The bastards were tripping me up again, and it wasn’t even on purpose this time! I had no choice. I held on as the loose balloon continued westward. Unhelpfully, the System provided my airspeed/altitude window.

This was a disaster. I couldn’t bail out. But I couldn’t keep floating forever, either. The fact I was still gaining altitude was problematic, as well. I reached up and bashed the fuel canister out of place. The fiery jar of goblin scat went tumbling down into the bog below. Curiously, when it hit the surface of the water, instead of snuffing itself out, the flame spread rapidly across the surface, and flared for a moment near an island. That startled a flock of birds who quickly flew up and nearly knocked me out of the balloon. I swatted at the little devils, but they had sharp beaks and boy did they let me know it. One of them succeeded in tearing a small hole in the gas envelope.

“Ah, hell,” I swore. Looked like climbing in altitude wouldn’t be a problem anymore. The balloon leveled out as the hot air began to escape. I was still high enough to get a lay of the land from a bird’s eye view, so I focused on committing the terrain to memory. Navigation on Rava wasn’t difficult. Between the moon and the mountains to the northeast, I always had a positive visual marker. Plus the several bluffs that dotted the forest north of the plains were distinct enough.

The bog extended west and north, though it was roughly the shape of a crescent moon hooked around a peninsula on our side of the wetland. The balloon was carrying me more west than north, and I wasn’t sure what was on the other side of the bog. I hadn’t taken a long-range glider out that far because the lack of thermals made the return journey uncertain. Go figure.

Over the next hour, I watched for a better spot to drop as the balloon slowly descended on its own. Somewhere with land, and not just a small crop of rocks that a croc-knocker could easily get onto. I didn’t want to drop in the bog, but dropping on the other side of it would mean a long trek either through or around it anyway, and that might be even more dangerous than the croc-knockers. I had to at least get out of the croc infested eastern shore. Every minute carried me further from the tribe, but also further from the clutch of croc-knockers that we’d pissed off.

I spotted an island with a bit of a hill to the west that my flight path was taking me mostly near. It wasn’t quite steep enough to qualify as a proper bluff, but it might do in a pinch. I’d pass within a few dozen chooms of it. It looked like it would be my best bet to get out of the water quickly, and then I could work on getting back to the expedition. Best of all, I couldn’t see any crocs sunning on the waterside. As the balloon floated over it, steadily loosing altitude, I wriggled out of the lines of the platform, reached up with my bogging knife and sliced open the balloon. The whole thing deflated, and both I and the balloon began to free fall.

The human part of my stomach still jumped up into my throat at the idea of such a suicidal fall. But, of course, it wasn’t any threat to me as a goblin. I just had to make sure I landed head-first.

Hitting the water felt like being slapped with a rock, but my head pushed through, and then buried itself halfway in the mud at the bottom. I beat at the base of the bog bed, trying to dislodge myself as my prosthetics waved in the air above the surface. Luckily, I’d loosened up the mud on impact, so I came out relatively easily and thrust my head above water for a breath. The balloon and platform had fallen somewhat close by.

First order of business: get the remains of the ensemble to land.

A splash in the water somewhere behind me drew my attention. I turned around to see a ripple in the water headed my way.

Oh, no. First order of business: don’t become lunch. I splashed through the water, trying to stay ahead of whatever was coming. I was still a dozen feet away when a wide, spade-shaped turtle head broached the water, along with a massive shell. Only this one was wide, flat, and horned with a crest of red, fibrous kelp growing on the back of its neck. Huh. I half expected it to start spitting fire and trying to kidnap princesses from Italian plumbers. It hissed at me.

I relaxed a bit as the system put its level above it’s head. 9. We’d taken care of much worse. Only—I’d had my tribe at a time. No, no. My first instinct was right: Alarm was perfectly warranted. I resumed my panicked retreat as the turtle’s head dipped out of view.

The ripples approached, way too fast for something that was supposed to be as slow as a turtle. I was never going to make it.