Chapter 80 - Gertrude

There’s certain imagery I’ve always associated with certain names. Part of it is the meaning behind the name itself. Diana, for instance. It just screams poise, class, and wisdom. Likewise, Cooper sounds like someone who can sling a couple of barrels around the farm and then fall into a black hole.

Then there’s names like Melvin. You just know Melvin is going to play Dungeons and Dragons. Just like you know Chad is going to get a visit from campus police after pledge week. And then, at the prow of the unfortunate name boat, is Gertrude. It’s a weighty cudgel of a name. It’s the name of someone whose ankles look like salamis. It’s the name of someone that no amount of caked-on makeup can disguise their bloodhound jowls and cigarette-stained teeth.

It’s the name of our first and currently only airship. I don’t make the rules. It’s just what her name was. It’s a fundamental law of the universe. And if you don’t believe me, you can ask System.

Ignore System. It doesn’t know everything. The point is, when Gertrude belched to life, she was fat, she was slow, and she was damned ugly. I’d still have married her, though. No prenup.

The engine sputtered to life with a dangerous-sounding BANG, before settling into an unsteady rhythm. With the throttle at idle, the paper-covered prop created very little thrust. But once we cast off the anchor lines and started to rise, Eileen turned up the RPMs and I felt the airship tug against the hot-air balloons keeping it aloft. Eileen turned the engine mount to change the thrust vector, and we pivoted as we climbed.

It seemed like half the goblins on the ground raced us to the eastern edge of the bluff, whooping and cheering. More than half of them followed us right off it, plummeting to the ground below.

“Gertrude’s maiden voyage,” I said to no one in particular as we gained altitude. Several of the crew were in the rigging below the envelope openings, managing the scat fires that kept the conjoined balloons aloft. There were three of them, lashed together like a snow pea, so that if one failed, the airship would land instead of crash. I wasn’t worried about the goblins, of course. They could fall from space so far as I knew and be completely fine thanks to their System-given fall damage immunity (though they’d probably burn up on reentry). But the airship was a tremendous investment of resources and goblin power. Plus, it was just so darn cool.

Admittedly, even if we were calling this an airship, it was more of an air canoe. It didn’t have niceties like cabins or a galley, just floorboards that could be lifted up in order to access stores in what would be the bilges if this were a water vessel.

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For the next hour, goblins scrambled all over the rigging and the tops of the envelope, checking for leaks with a complete and total lack of fear. Several swung off the side of the gunwales for little more than a lark. Even a few of the scrappers were arm-wrestling. Despite the hungry goblins, spirits soared high whenever new technology was on the docket. Wasn’t too long ago the bleeding edge was a blunt rock for this tribe. Now they were conquering Rava’s skies.

Or, at least contesting them.

“Sighting, boss!” shouted Eileen from the helm. I followed her pointing to where one of the gliders had burst a popper of colored powder. The scrappers all rushed to the side and leaned so far over the rail I thought they might tip the whole thing over.

“I don’t see anything,” I said, shading my hand. “Must be a wrangler in that glider. They’ve got better eyes on the wing."

We’d been in an uneasy truce with the night haunts ever since we got pretty good at trapping and killing them and spawned enough wranglers to keep watch through the night for their attempts. But they were still out there, and we competed with them for food. That made us a threat in more ways than one. Not to mention that when we did trap one, we turned it into a glider. And they knew it, too.

Most of the monsters on Rava, it seemed, possessed at least rudimentary intelligence. You could see it when they looked at you. The croc-knockers held grudges. Night haunts could work out traps and sneak into even the most well-defended shelters. Even the stone sloths and the swamp turtles were more than just base beasts. I wondered if that was a result of the System or if Ravan creatures simply evolved better brains naturally.

After a few minutes with no excitement, my crew lost interest and returned to what they were doing. I, myself, dropped my hand from where it rested at the new pouch at my hip.

It took another two hours before we made it to Canaveral. One thing Gertrude was not, was expedient. The eclipse was underway, and what light did emerge reflected off the photosensitive lizard frills as they swarmed up the cliff.

At the top, they’d rebuilt much of the defenses, but they had upgraded weaponry to make up for the abused fortifications. The pop and flash of shock spears rippled up and down the cliff.

“Eileen, bring us in for the assist!”

Last time we’d come by with a meager handful of poppers haphazardly thrown from a glider on the wing. This time, the scrappers broke out rifles and loaded up the port-side heavy slinger with a clay ball. Eileen bled off some hot air from the envelopes in order to drop us into a controlled descent, until we were level with the face of the bluff.

“Grease ‘em,” I said. The hobgoblin on the slinger tilted it up and fired. The ball flew out on a lazy arc and shattered against the cliff face, where it spread a stain of oily grease on the cliff face. Lizards who tried to cross it scrabbled for purchase and fell back. On either side of the slinger, rifle barrels erupted with flame and smoke and tiny trails of exhaust. Goblins aren’t accurate marksmen. Even if our rifles were capable of reliably keeping shots within a 45 degree arc of the shooter, goblins would still have a tendency to shoot directly behind themselves, somehow. But with a half dozen scrappers under Armstrong’s direct supervision, and about a dozen other goblins working in teams of two, we knocked twenty or more off the wall in a matter of seconds. But that wasn’t the only surprise we had in store.

Our ignis came forward. His mask was down, and he had a brass cask on his back, which a smaller goblin stood on top of, furiously working a pump. The ignis had an apparatus in his hand with a pump and a nozzle, and he held it up to the airship burners to ignite the tiny ball of scat near the tip of it. Then he leveled the pipe and opened a valve. A jet of flaming fuel shot out, splashing against the side of the cliff and igniting the oil patch already there. The flaming oil spread and created a barrier that funneled the lizards up a narrow corridor where the ignis proceeded to roast them. I could smell the cooking meat from where I stood, but even ten or twenty meters away, the heat was intense.

The brass cask couldn’t maintain pressure, though, and the goblin pumping on it began to get tired. Eileen brought us around, trying to hold our position in the air. But the sun peeked out from behind Raphina and the lizards abruptly changed their course before the natural light could harm their skin. We’d only caught the tail end of the daily battle.

Gertrude’s maiden flight was a success.