Chapter 81 - Camp Canaveral

Canaveral was more organized than Apollo, to be sure. Part of that was the resident taskmaster, John, who had the unusual skills of organization, motivational speaking, and battle tactics. Unusual for a goblin, anyway.

He greeted us as we brought Gertrude in for docking by running up and offering a stiff salute beneath the brim of his tortoise-shell helmet.

“The men’r ready fer inspection, sir!”

“At ease, general,” I said, returning the salute. I hopped down from the side of the airship and clapped my commander on the shoulders. “Good to see you well.”

John grinned. “Aye, got the camp up and running right enough. Piggies left it a right mess.”

“Well, we did the same to them,” I reminded him.

John beamed.

Wood creaked behind me. “Oy! Is that who I think it is?” Armstrong shouted down.

John grinned and shaded his eyes. “Armstrong!”

Armstrong jumped down, laughing, and pulled John into a hug. Tight as brothers, those two. They’d defended Canaveral together, and then stood shoulder to shoulder against the maulers when Rotte and Hrott attacked Apollo.

“Now he’s just a couple hours by airship,” I said. “Should be able to get over here more often.”

Armstrong looked at me, a question in his eyes.

I sighed. “Fine, let’s go see the new defenses.”

The two goblins whooped and ran off. I looked back up to Eileen. “Keep the engine warmed up. We want to be back before nightfall.”

“Aye, boss!”

The noblin canoneers struggled down—mainly due to the fact that their arms were filled with sheafs of papers. I eyed them warily.

“Just what’s in those?” I demanded.

Luther had the decency to look chagrinned. “Erm, tech manuals, majesty?”

“They’re comics, aren’t they?” I asked.

The smaller noblin piped up and squeaked “Important histry!” before Luther could clamp a hand over his acolyte’s mouth, somehow managing to keep from dropping his load of papers.

“King Apollo,” he said. “The goblins of Canaveral don’t get to see your daily deeds, or see the marvelous machines of the Church of the Right Angle. It’s only fair they receive record to help inspire them in their fight. You cannot always be here, after all. And where you are not…”

I sighed. Goblin loyalty could falter, especially during combat—which was a daily occurrence at Canaveral. “That’s those persuasive skills at work, I suppose.” I looked around. “Still, I wish I knew why the lizards were so persistent here. They were winning before, but they must know they can’t make headway against our improved defenses.”

The smaller canoneer managed to free its mouth from Luther’s hand. “Oh, that’s one’s easy, boss!” he said. He shuffled through his papers and pulled one out, handing it over. Sure enough, it was a comic. And it depicted a group of goblins venturing into the plains, finding a nest, and taking some eggs back to the bluff. Apparently, the lizards had never stopped trying to get them back.

Ok, so maybe recorded history in comic book form wasn’t so bad. But they could have at least drawn the lizards with the right number of limbs and not ten times the size of the goblins.

“I guess that explains it,” I said, handing the comic back. “Fine, spread the good word. Tech manuals first. Then ‘histry’, ok?”

Both goblins made the circular icon over their chests and trundled off (since it’s quite impossible for noblins to scamper).

I was left to my own devices with a handful of bodyguards. I spend some time just wandering around Canaveral, looking at how these goblins had managed their shelters. We’d reinforced and mixed the tribes, but here and there I still spotted one of the Canaveral originals with their green-tinged fur from before they’d hitched their wagons to Tribe Apollo. The history of Canaveral was the history of tribe Apollo. And as much as I didn’t care for comics, the canoneers were making sure that our tribe didn’t stay prehistoric as it advanced into the industrial age Armstrong, likewise, had colored striations on his arms and back that matched his original tribe before the piggies had reduced them to 3 members.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

It was also much, much quieter here. Village Apollo was now constantly humming with the low roar of engines and the crackle of gunfire. Nor did it have the baying of cliffords or the ringing of steel hammers. Canaveral still sounded like a jungle, filled with bugs and birdsong and, yeah, some light construction.

At the airship, a couple dozen goblins worked to unload the supplies we’d brought on the test run. Rifles, raw materials, and even the pump-action flamethrower was staying along with the ignis to wield it and work a local forge. The piggies may have been gone, but Canaveral was still the central hub of our martial might, where goblins were turned into warriors. Having the lizards back and basically throwing themselves into our larders helped with the food supply problem, but it didn’t abate it completely.

In the distance, I could see more bluffs to the north and east. That’s where this airship was really meant to go, and I wondered what the noblins would find there. Wayward tribes looking for direction? More goblin kings? Or just smoking ashes of the goblins we were too slow to save from the porkbellies. Was there something I could have done differently to get there faster?

I’d already run the first few thousand years of human history in a little over a month. Progress would slow in the preindustrial age as development became more reliant on complicated tools and processes and might become a trickle when it came time to make things that required computers.

The basic principles of organizing a computer weren’t actually that arcane. Turning binary into useful logic is primarily a function of yes/no/maybe/sort-of questions filtered into an output. Granted, that’s an extremely simple explanation of a very nuanced discipline. But it had only taken 40 years for humans to turn that concept from punchcard machines to personal computers and a huge amount of that time was spent refining and miniaturizing those gates and switches to something that could fit on a microchip instead of a small bus.

I stared down from the edge of the bluff for more than a few minutes and tried to imagine the forest cleared into a great field, whereupon hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of goblins stood with flags, simulating the various why, and, and for gates that would comprise a basic program. Each individual gate doesn’t need to understand the whole process, just its individual part.

God, could you imagine trying to build a computer out of goblins? It would somehow manage to overheat and explode, I’m sure. It would be more bugs than features, and half the goblins would probably eat their own flags. And somehow, it would still spit out useful data thanks to the Goblin Tech Tree.

But I digress. The point is that now we’d unlocked gas engines, we’d likely be moving into a period of refinement and expansion as we moved towards laying the groundwork for the infrastructure a space program would require. Metalworking, assembly lines, and tools to make processes more efficient and effective. More tools to make the acquisition of resources more efficient. Tools to make tools more practical and useful. And all without OSHA anywhere in sight to gum up the works. Workplace safety was heretical to the Church of the Right Angle, after all. Safety inspectors were likely to be burned at the stake.

And eventually, it would all lead back here. How could it not? Village Apollo was becoming a sprawling town, and eventually if the goblins continued to reproduce, it would develop into something of a cliff-side metropolis. So, this would be where the rockets would launch. Oddly prescient and prophetic that I’d named it Canaveral.

I whistled for attention and spun my finger in the air in a round-up gesture.

Armstrong reluctantly parted ways from John with another bear hug. The canoneers finished handing out the rest of their religious literature and rejoined us at the airship. Eileen had her crews stoke the burners and get the engine ready to spin up again, checking the various lines and simple pipes that supplied the primitive engine with fuel.

We climbed aboard, and my air delivery captain started up the props with a Bang and a gout of angry, black smog. I patted the side of a rumbling engine as it whumped and thumped, spinning the paper-covered prop and pushing the airship against its anchor lines. Within a few minutes, we had enough lift and the engine was warmed up enough to start pushing us back east towards Village Apollo.

One of the Canaveral gliders took off to escort us back, rocketing up to high-altitude for a view of the land. Most of the Canaveral goblins came and waved at us as we began our slow ascent, though much faster than our takeoff from Apollo now that the cargo holds had been emptied of supplies. Though, not entirely empty, as the goblins who had stowed away below decks were only mostly managing to stifle their giggles and only occasionally bumped their heads on the floorboards beneath my feet.

The golden hour approached as we rode west, with the sun slipping low enough to start opening Raphina’s eye. I watched the pink surface and verdant forests of the moon begin to sparkle, and narrowed my eyes at its surface. Hadn’t it had more water before? It seemed like desert lined with long, narrow fissures had claimed some of its landmass. Maybe I was just seeing a side I wasn’t used to looking at as the moon rotated on its axis.

The crack of a popper directed my attention lower, where our escort had detonated one of the warning signals. Night haunts had been spotted on the wing, and this time I caught the silhouette below us. The early evening flights had spurred at least one of them out of their nest.

And it was drawing closer.