Chapter 78 - Independent Suspension of Disbelief

The week or so following the reinvention of the internal combustion engine passed in a frenzy of activity that saw renewed vigor in the bog iron collection and the first pumps pulling swamp kerosene out of the wells. The first powered vehicle had come in the form of boats to scout and collect more ore and fuel. Wheeled vehicles weren’t far behind, and powered flight was still the second priority behind food security.

But it’s tough to worry when you’re got an engine to redline. Village Apollo starting to sound more like a rat-rod car show than a medieval village. Internal combustion had been leveraged to power not just our first generation of gas-powered vehicles, but various tools and processes as well. Lathes were turning to mill out rounded parts, a motor-driven blower with brass piping had taken over for the crank teams on every forced-air kiln, and the friggen canoneers were busy enforcing quality standards under threat of branding deviants as heretics.

But a food shortage meant we couldn’t afford to rest on our laurels. And while the first generation of gas vehicles had been nautical, the second generation was meant to broaden our range and let us navigate the savannah to the south.

I watched Sally and her team assemble the frame for a five-goblin buggy. Other frames lined the yard, swarmed by goblins with hammers, wrenches, knives, and saws. We were making everything from 2 wheeled motorcycles for a pair of partners, to big 6 and 8-wheeled monsters that carried 15 or more goblins. I wished we had some rubber for tire-making, but you can’t have everything.

After struggling with the rotary engine, the rest just kind of fell into place. Basic automobiles weren’t exactly complex machines, when you think about it. Rotational energy goes back to the gearbox, which sends power through the drive shaft, and a simple rack and pinion gear set allows for steering. These vehicles didn’t even have batteries, airbags, or windscreens. They were the kind of bare bones rigs you’d see in a post-apocalyptic flick, complete with hooligans hanging off at odd angles. Every type of resource we had was being utilized, from the metal frames and wheel banding to wood paneling and rims, to bone armor and suspension, to ceramic gearing.

The scent of exhaust fumes and the rumble of fresh engines reverberated through the ground. My hunters and wranglers, especially, had been suffering the wait for our first push out from the bluff on wheels ever since we stuck a prototype engine into something with four wheels. Can’t say I blamed them. I had my eye on one of the trikes, myself. Admittedly, after the accident I somewhat lost my taste for riding motorcycles. Plus these rough riders had little in the way of creature comforts, and sitting on the motorcycles felt a little bit too much like sitting on top of the kiln, for my tastes.

The resident Ifrit showed great interest in our work—if not for attempts to reproduce gas engines. They flitted around, many having convinced my igni to make them versions of Taquoho’s coaxial vessel. Some of them remained distant and aloof, but a dozen or more had come around to Taquoho’s way of thinking and began ingratiating themselves into the tribe. Besides, they got better ceramic parts from goblins who liked them than from goblins who were indifferent. They continued to possess and try out every new piece of tech we developed.

“King Apollo,” said a voice behind me. I turned to see one an ignis, somewhat smaller and wider than Promo—though, a few of the igni were looking a bit slimmer with the food shortage.

“We have a buggy ready for a test drive. Would your majesty care to do the honors?”

“Of course,” I said. “In fact, I insist on it.”

I followed the igni over to the forge yard, where a group of noblins and their non-variant assistants were securing the last bolts on a 3-wheeled buggy. Secure is a bit of a strong term, since the vibrations on goblin engines were so bad that almost all bolts eventually either sheared or worked themselves loose. Luckily, loose bolts didn’t seem to adversely affect the vehicles much. The Goblin Tech Tree was built on loose tolerances.

As with the rest of our technology, as soon as the tribe unlocked it, every goblin in it gained an innate understanding of how to use it. But building them was still too much for the average goblin to wrap their soft heads around, so the Igni led the charge on that front. They were hammering out variations on engines from steel and ceramic in different shapes and sizes to fit the vehicles. But they were all variations on the Wankel engine we’d started with.

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I climbed up in the saddle of the trike buggy, which had been designed for a wrangler, so it was a bit big. Three other goblins climbed aboard, including Armstrong manning the rear rifle position. A double-barreled lever gun had already been mounted to a pintle, and Armstrong swung it around, sighting down the bore. I reached into the ammo hopper behind the seat and pulled out one of the rockettes.

The igni had made a modification to the starter that was rather genius, in that they’d affixed a permanent flywheel. Simply dropping a rockette into a slot on the engine and stabbing down with a tamping rod would start the engine up. I stuffed the rockette down the hole and one of the other goblins was ready with the tamping rod. I manipulated the throttle pedal as it went down, giving it enough gas to get the ignition going. The trike rumbled to life underneath me, and I revved the engine to get it warmed up.

Promo leaned in. “You got enough fuel for a couple laps. Break ‘er in good, boss.”

I gave him a quick salute and threw the trike into gear. The buggy lurched forward, nearly tossing two of the goblins off as torque hit the wheels. The whole thing tilted back as it shot forward, and I worried it would immediately tip over backwards. But the front wheel crashed down and we were off, churning dust and adobe gravel under the wheels.

I peeled out of the forge area and navigated my way through the narrow lanes toward the edge of the bluff. Goblins dodged out of our way squawking as we roared past, and then chased and cheered. They loved the engines and had all taken to making Vroom vroom noises as they stomped invisible gas pedals. The bikes and trikes were almost as popular as the good ol’ classic of throwing themselves off the edge of the bluff.

Speaking of the edge, it started coming up fast, so I cranked hard on the handlebars and brought us around to skirt the perimeter instead of careening off the side—which had happened more than once to test drivers already.

The trikes didn’t have brakes. Oh, I’d invented them, and the System acknowledged that they had entered the Goblin Tech Tree. But every goblin in the tribe had staunchly refused to admit they understood the concept. So, either there was a dedicated brake-tech variant of goblin that I’d yet to unlock, or we had the tribe’s first conspiracy—which was much more plausible now knowing that the goblins followed my orders voluntarily out of a sense of collective ambition, rather than as a biological imperative.

I swore I’d give them a reason to follow me. Well this trike was about 4 horsepower worth of reasons. Not much by Earth power standards, I know. But on Rava, it was bleeding edge stuff. And goblins didn’t weigh much.

Riding north until we hit the perimeter wall, I glanced over at the newest extension on the northwest corner of the bluff. Javier’s tailors were hard at work stitching the Ifrit cargo canvas sheets together to prepare for the launch of our first powered aircraft. I swung us around, riding in the shadow of the wall as the sentries atop it hooted and hollered down. A bit further down, one of them kicked over a pole fixed to the top of the wall, on which a wooden target dangled.

“Armstrong!” I called out.

I heard the scrapper load the gun and close the action. The barrels thundered, and two rockettes zipped out on thin trails, punching two new holes in the target. My side goblins angled spears down toward a pair of low targets and one cheered as the tip smacked into the target. The other’s pole dipped too low, hitting the ground instead, and then launching the goblin out of his seat with an EEEeeeeee when the side of the trike turned the spear into a flex-a-pult.

I had to turn the trike so hard to avoid squashing my spearman that it rode up on two wheels and another goblin toppled out of the side saddle. Armstrong roared with laughter, barely able to hold on himself. We passed the pond and the kilns and turned south toward the airstrip. The goblins had gotten one of the launch ramps turned around, because of course they had. I got us lined up and jammed the throttle as high as my little prosthetics could push it. We hit the ramp at probably 40kph if I had to take a guess. Faster than a clifford could run, but not as fast as some of the revved up bikes could go.

I let up on the gas to shift the trike’s weight forward just as we hit the ramp, then stomped down hard. The iron-banded wheels shrieked for a moment on the wooden ramp, and we hit air, suspended for just a moment at the apex of our parabolic trajectory. Then we crashed back down and fishtailed. It was all I could do to hold on, let alone steer us.

“Boss!” shouted Armstrong.

“I see it!” I said, as we drifted perilously close to the edge of the cliff. I hauled right on the bars and applied more throttle to get some positive steering. The back of the trike swung out over the edge of the bluff, but momentum carried it round and the wheels bit into dirt and gravel again.

Armstrong whooped and pumped his fist in the air as I angled us back through the engineer workshop and toward the motorpool. God, I loved that we had a motorpool! Even if it only had a half-dozen wheeled vehicles in it so far, and they were so basic and bare boned as to barely qualify as such.

I pulled the trike into a cleared spot and cranked it back to neutral, then choked the motor. I had to work some feeling back into my hands and my butt from the vibration. Goblin transportation did not make for a smooth ride.

Promo came up and gave me a hand down. “How’s she handle?” he asked.

I grinned. “Like a feral hog in heat.”

Promo laughed, and then hem-hawed.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Speaking of hogs,” he said. “We’re running real low on meat. Can’t run on pulp-slurp forever, boss.”

“You’re right,” I said, looking at the assortment of vehicles. “Once Big Hoss Rig is up and running, we’ll make a run at the badlands. How soon?”

“Tomorrow, earliest,” the ignis said. “Day beyond more like.”

“Guess we’ll be cinching up belts another two days, then,” I said.