Chapter 57 - Harvest 2: Electric Bogaloo

<2 hobgoblin scrappers have been added to your tribe.>

<1 hobgoblin wrangler has been added to your tribe.>

“Harvest teams, go!” I said.

All across the bank of the water, goblins began to wade out in teams of three. I would have liked to be on the front line. I wasn’t comfortable standing with the reserves in the back line.

It had taken a few days for the harvested larvae to grow into wasps capable of producing enough voltage to arc between their prongs. A few days also to stew over the fact that the boglin king of the swamp was very likely Florida Man reincarnated as a goblin, somehow—almost a full year before I was. Why? The System had been utterly silent on the matter.

He’d refused all requests to meet again. Which seemed fair, since, you know, I’d tried to set him on fire and all. But I couldn’t afford to stop trying to make contact again. But it wasn’t my top priority. We were pushing back into the swamp and this time we weren’t leaving without the iron. I held my heavy slinger at the ready, braced on the back of another goblin. Through the slit in my ceramic faceplate, I scanned the waterline, looking for signs our harvesters had been noticed.

The scrappers were in position ready to give the signal, but there was always a chance one of the aquatic reptiles could slip our cordon and make it into the teams. So far so good, as the goblins waded through the water probing for iron nodules in the peat. I started seeing them pull ore from the peat and put it in their harvesting baskets. They were a blur of manic productivity, just like every other pursuit they tackled. With single-minded fixation, they scoured the peat bog for any trace of iron in an uneven line.

Several minutes passed, and the sun even drew behind Raphina’s closed eye. A few of the especially industrious teams hauled ore-laden baskets back to swap for fresh ones, bolstered by the stone-sloth totem’s resistance to movement impedance. I began to wonder if we’d even have a croc-knocker attack—not that that was a bad thing. But… after I’d gone to all the trouble of getting captured by Ringo and having other goblins do the dirty work to steal larva from the tesla wasp nest, it almost seemed a waste. A perverse part of me wanted to see how effective our counter-croc measures would be.

A low whistle sounded out in the bog, which was the scrapper signal that one of the big brutes had been sighted heading our way. I tightened my grip on the heavy slinger and sighted down the lathes.

The goblins in the bog continued to work—if more wary, now with a tighter grip on their shock sticks and slingers. I couldn’t blame them. Croc-knockers had killed over a dozen goblins in as many minutes last time we tried to harvest iron. The only loss we’d managed to inflict on them had been when I’d sliced off the tongue of the biggest one. Maybe it had bled out after that? Psh, I should be so lucky.

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I kept my eyes on the waterline—which was why I was the first to spot a dark shadow climbing toward the surface and shouted a warning to the teams.

One of the harvesters turned just in time to see one of the extendable tongues breach the water and slam into his ceramic armor mask, sending chips and shards everywhere, but leaving the goblin himself alive. The knocker disappeared back underwater, and the beast broached a moment later, full of fire and ferocity. It spotted my gleaming, white crown and diverted toward me.

“I’ve got this one,” I shouted. “Get clear!”

The nearby harvest teams dove to the side, pulling the downed goblin away with them as I released the tension on my slinger. A round, clay ball launched forward with an angry buzzing. The hollow sphere exploded against the hide of the croc-knocker, and a half-dozen angry tesla wasps spilled out, keying in on the largest target in the area to express their outrage.

The croc roared as the wasps stung it. I hadn’t been content to simply put larva into the split poles to make shock spears. I had a whole arsenal of bio-electric based weaponry, now. Several other goblins launched wasp-tipped bolts from their own slingers in a wave of buzzing, popping artillery.

“Reload!” I called. Armstrong came up from behind me and started working the crank on the heavy slinger. “Wranglers up!”

Our bog wranglers pushed forward, insulated from the wasps with ceramic and leather armor from the waist up. Thin as it was, it wouldn’t do much to deter the crocs. But the hobgoblins were able to enter the swarm of stinging electric wasps without being shocked into paralysis. They had their own spears—some with shock tips, and some with ceramic spearheads. We were going to kill this thing if we could. But, if not, we’d at least put the fear of Apollo into it.

Another low whistle sounded from the right side. Armstrong slapped another bug bomb into my sled just in time for the big one to burst out of the water. The alpha had come. When it roared, I could even see its severed tongue where I’d taken its knocker as a trophy. Well, I had something to trade for it, and no doubt. I swiveled the heavy slinger on my goblin pintle mount and let fly with my second bug bomb.

I’d made them by sealing clay half-spheres with large enough holes so the larva wouldn’t suffocate, but not big enough for the adult wasps to escape. The anti-croc bombs were a few steps up, technologically, from the simple shock sticks employed by Ringo’s guards. But the principle was still the same: apply shock to croc.

Even without the iron knocker, the alpha was plenty dangerous with its powerful jaws and rending talons. On earth it was probably the size of a large cayman, not even a true alligator. But to goblins? It might as well have been a T-rex for all the chance we had against it without technology.

I could tell the alpha was caught off guard when the sphere smashed into its side, releasing 6 more of the tesla wasps that proceeded to shock the big bastard of a croc as it bellowed its rage at us.

“Reload!” I called. Down the line from me, one of the slingers exploded in the gunner’s hands, releasing its payload of wasps on the slinger team instead of the croc. But all the standard slingers with the specialized shock bolts had already sighted in the alpha and were pelting it with stinging darts.

With a final, hateful look, the alpha disappeared back below the water.

The goblins cheered, and not just because they’d chased off the alpha. The first croc was caught between a pair of sticky trappers with one loop around its jaws, and another around its rear leg as wranglers and goblins pulled at the poles. Unable to move, and unable to open its mouth, the other guards closed in and began to finish the job with their ceramic spear points. Even the harvesters lost track of their goal and leapt in with their ceramic bogging knifes to help finish off the beast with the help of the night haunt totem buff. I held off on firing my next bomb.

In the grand scheme of things, the croc itself wasn’t one of the bigger ones. In fact, it was only level 19, lower than the stone sloth alpha we’d killed. But it was the first one, and the tribe would be eating good tonight. Plus, it had a hunk of iron ore in its mouth the size of a fist. What was that worth? A knife? Two? 1/4th of a crank case?

The goblins finished hauling the croc back onto the shore as I did mental math, trying to figure out the value of each one between the food and the iron they harbored in their mouths.

I whistled for attention and got the group back on task. There was still work to be done.