Chapter 64 - Peppered Pork

The piggies didn’t give us four days. Two days after the first rifles came off the line, A hunter spotted a group of maulers scouting the paddocks on the west side of the bluff. A day after that, a recon glider spotted a group of at least 25 of them on a direct route to our woefully depleted livestock pens and bomb fruit orchard.

I handed out rifles and ammo to as many goblins as I could, with scrappers each getting one and teams of 2 goblins getting one between each pair—one to shoot, one to act as a bipod in hopes we got a little more accuracy. The models we had for the non-variant goblins were lighter and shorter-barreled carbines, but they were still too heavy and we had far more goblins than rifles. I also gave some to the wranglers for them to shoot from the back of cliffords, in hopes that they could effectively harry the javeline. Every goblin going down the bluff had taken the time to appreciate the totems.

Armstrong and John led the infantry while Chuck led the cavalry. I had Eileen on the bluff above, ready to evacuate the Igni and the non-combat taskmasters to Huntsville in the event we lost. All in all, it was still a motley assortment armed mostly with spears and slingers. Part of me worried the maulers would smash right through our resistance.

It was smart of the piggies to attack the less defended territory at the base of the bluff and force us out from behind the fortifications to hold it, especially having already damaged our food security at Canaveral, the paddocks and groves weren’t defenseless. I watched as some of Buzz’s boys finished up a small tower with a heavy slinger mounted. There were several such platforms at my best guess of strategic locations. But we were out of time. I could hear the javeline war party through the trees. I made to grab a rifle to join the line, and my taskmasters damn-near tackled me.

“What is this?” I demanded, trying to wriggle free.

“You’re a king!” said Armstrong. “Start acting like one!”

“No fighting,” said Neil.

“Chuck!”

My wrangler boss looked conflicted. “I want you with us, boss. But… this is for the best.”

“Unhand me!” I ordered.

All of my taskmasters were powerless to resist the direct order of my goblin king class. All except one. Armstrong, as captain of my guard, could ignore my orders if it meant keeping me safe, and that’s exactly what he did when he stuffed me onto the freight elevator with three of his assigned goblins with orders to keep me from joining the battle.

I didn’t like that I was asking others to fight a battle I wouldn’t fight myself. But they were right. The risk of capture was too great, and then I’d be further than the hotsprings or the swamp. I’d be carted off to Habberport or wherever the javeline thought they could turn a profit for a talking goblin.

I made my way to the edge of one of the platforms on the west side of the bluff. My bodyguards chittered and looked ready to grab me, but I waved them off. “I’m not jumping,” I said. “But I still want to watch.”

My goblins had formed into loose ranks on the north side of the paddocks, while the cliffords had melted into the forest to the west. The group of almost 150 goblins, the greater share of my tribe, waited to receive the javeline with rifles, grenades, RPPs, shock spears, and more primitive weaponry. Behind them, heavy slingers and flexapults. Every bit of tech we’d developed was pointed squarely at the piggies. I just wish we had a good wall between us and not a paddock fence. But the javelines had forced our hand.

They didn’t have to wait long. I smelled the first ones before I saw the first scouts dash out of the forest with spears raise high to throw. The first few goblins in the western half of the line cracked off shots and the piggy fell mid-stride. But his spear was already out and it landed among the formation. The sound was like listening to bottle rockets fire off on the next street over.

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The second scout veered to the side and managed to avoid the shots, though several of the goblins tracked him and made to chase. I heard Armstrong yell for order and get the excitable riflemen back in ranks and squared off.

I could see the wave of understanding pass through the ranks. The goblins shifted their positions in subtle ways: a few meters here, a step back there, angling rifles over and through the paddock’s northern fence. Somehow they seemed more ordered and less a gaggle—though, they were still very excited goblins with new toys. Many of them cheered the fallen javeline and waved guns in the air. Luckily, only a few fired off shots that spiraled up into the air.

A loud mix of squeals and barks from the western forest alerted the gaggle to an incoming threat from that side, and several of the wranglers retreated. I spotted three of them without their gunners. The gun line shifted, and the main mauler force erupted from the trees.

“There he is!” I said, pointing at the largest of the pack. Hrott was leading the charge, big and broad with a spear raised overhead. Armstrong spotted him immediately, shouting back to the fixed positions.

The slingers on the towers let loose with sleds full of poppers, which landed on and around the force of armored javeline, causing a few to fall. Other positions flung rocks or shock darts, but they weren’t effective at that range.

Armstrong held his rifle steady, tracking the incoming force. The maulers hooves sounded like rolling thunder from where I sat on the bluff, and several goblins broke formation and ran in a panic for the southern forest.

<4 goblins have abandoned the tribe. Your tribe has decreased to 230 members>

I froze. What? They can do that?

What? This whole time I’d thought it was an in-baked biological imperative they had no choice but to follow. Why now? They’ve faced death for me before.

Ouch.

Still, most of the line held. Armstrong took his shot first, and then a wave of thunder that drowned out even the javeline charge echoed across the forest and cloaked the entire line in smoke. Several of the javelines fell. But not enough. The maulers split into two, one group charging straight into the fire with shields raised, and a smaller group circling around to strike at the pens with the livestock. Two more goblins threw down spears and ran for the trees.

<2 goblins have abandoned the tribe. Your tribe has decreased to 228 members>

I grit my teeth. Even King Ringo had come into the swamp with his boglins instead of hiding in his wooden castle. I glanced at my bodyguards, who chittered to themselves, looking alarmed as the javeline reached the line of goblins and started to jump the fence.

The gun smoke was thick, and it wafted up to the bluff smelling somewhere between the fourth of July and a cow farm. It began to drift over the line, obscuring the goblins and javeline both from my view. From within, I saw the occasional electric blue flash of a tesla wasp, or popper alongside the crack and whistle of the rocket rifle ammo.

<3 goblins have abandoned the tribe. Your tribe has decreased to 212 members.>

<5 goblins have abandoned the tribe. Your tribe has decreased to 202 members.>

Most of the goblins had held, and now the battle was joined. I had to hope they’d thinned the group enough because the maulers were absolutely deadly in melee combat with their strength, size, armor, and metal weapons.

Chuck chose that moment to bring the rest of his wranglers out of the woods in a red tide of barking and baying. And Chuck himself was on the back of the adolescent stone sloth as it roared and trundled alongside the drooling cliffords. They smashed into the back of the javeline. Chuck and several others broke off to take down the pigs that were in the paddock, laying wanton slaughter to our dwindling livestock supply.

I let out a whoop as the javeline squealed in the smoke, but a squawk from one of my bodyguards brought my attention around. He was jumping up and down, pointing and chittering and making snort noises. I followed his finger just in time to see another two-dozen lightly armored javeline rutters erupt from the forest south of the bluff.

The maulers had been conspicuous on purpose to keep our eyes north while their lightly armored cousins snuck around behind the bluff. It was a double attack!