Chapter 127 - Servants of the Midnight Sea

  In building out roads to connect the various disparate bluffs and outstations that made up our budding society, it had also given other interests a smooth approach to our front door—one I found I didn’t appreciate. That’s not to say I wouldn’t prefer to be neighborly, but a few of the neighbors had already proven to be raucous and violent. Sort of like the unhinged guy down the road from my house as a kid who shouted while mowing his lawn. Not at anyone, just in general at the world. Some neighbors made you want fences, instead.

  I’d adopted an unofficial policy of extending an olive branch first, but making sure it was big enough to swing. At heart, I still considered myself an explorer and a scientist. Not a warrior. Many, many astronauts come from the military, especially from Army and Air Force aviation programs. John Glenn was a marine and Buzz Aldrin flew fighters in Korea. My own mission commander, Dave Sanders, was an F35 pilot with a dozen combat missions (most of which he couldn’t talk about). I hadn’t understood their experiences when I was at NuEarth. Now I had flown into combat too, and I felt more in tune with what they’d seen and done—even if my missions were against orcs and elves and monsters. The difference was, they volunteered. I wasn’t given a choice when the javeline went bluff to bluff exterminating and the elves attacked Ringo on his island. When we encountered the stampede, if an orc ghost hadn’t conspired to get us to join it, the orcs would have run us off the plains to keep us from hunting on them unless we’d fought. And at the time, we’d have lost. The Stampede was an entire culture of sport hunters, and it would have been a stretch to say we’d even offer them a satisfying target.

  Right now, it seemed like the fortune tellers down below were offering me at least simple choices. Talk with us. Or don’t. Attack us. Or don’t.

  It was more than I’d gotten in the past. When given a choice, I would still choose to be the explorer. Granted, this wasn’t Starfleet, and my mandate wasn’t to boldly seek out new life and new civilizations. I had no obligation to the ‘damnable Midnighters’ as Sourtooth called them. But the old orc sounded more perplexed than worried.

  “Get that lift down!” shouted John. Like his real life counterpart, he had his crew snapping to him with almost (for goblins, anyway) military precision.

  At the eastern edge of the bluff, a pair of clutches were engaged that allowed wind-powered winches to start lowering the wide freight lift. To the sides, many goblins peered over the edge at the newcomers, curious but wary. My own Ravan instincts for danger were kicking in as well. Goblins were hardwired to fear anything both larger than themselves and stronger than themselves. Since goblins were perpetually stuck at level 1 that listed included, essentially, everything in the world. Except some birds and bugs and most plant life. But Rufus’ book had described a few floral monsters that would make a quick snack and a long digestion of goblins, so even there we weren’t safe.

  At the base of the bluff, the procession took notice immediately. Warriors who had been lounging rose to their feet and shrugged back into their packs or smacked the ground with the butts of spears to wake their buddies. Animals rustled at the activity. The bearers for the palanquin rose from their meditation and placed cloths on their shoulders as a buffer for what must have been a sacred vehicle.

  The freight lift lowered onto the dust of the ground. The party stopped short. They realized pretty quickly that not all of their party would fit on the lift—designed as it was for goblins and goblin-sized vehicles. An exchange passed between what must have been the officer in charge of the templar (from his feathered helmet) and the occupant of the palanquin. A few moments later, the cavalry dismounted and handed off their reigns to a group of attendants before stepping up onto the lift. One of the mounts stretched, and I caught a flutter of something on its back.

  “Is that…?”

  “Wings, aye,” said Sourtooth, leaning against the rampart. “Armored air cavalry. Elite shock soldiers. Clash upon occasion, they, with the dragon knights of Habbe.”

  Dragon knights of Habbe? File that away under yikes.

  The palanquin bearers stepped up onto the lift as well and were followed by a dozen unarmed attendants. When it seemed the rest of their party would remain on the low ground, the lift operators threw the clutch and the platform began to rise. I hoped it wasn’t a mistake. Within a few minutes, they passed out of view beneath the lift platform, so I quit the ramparts with Armstrong and Sourtooth.

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  “Have the boys armed and armored-front plates in, rifles unloaded. I don’t want a stray shot causing a diplomatic incident.”

  “Aye, king,” said John.

  “Same for the secretive service,” I told Armstrong. He nodded and whistled for a pair of his scrappers to round up the rest of the lads on Canaveral. He also deputized a half-dozen other goblins, just to be safe.

  The freight lift finished its climb as I reached the platform with my own entourage—which now also included a pair of canoneers brandishing pages with pre-drawn panels, the portly noblins ecstatic at the chance to capture live events and make it ‘fficial goblin histry.

  The midnighters stepped off the lift, carrying the palanquin carefully onto the loading platform, and then on to the bluff, where we waited. System began assigning levels as they drew close enough. Sure enough, the elite guards were similar in strength to the Ifrit paladins. But what was most curious to me, was that the sorceress and her attendants were all clumped together into one level 40 ensemble. She was at least twice as strong as the ones protecting her. Her guardians were dressed in silks draped and wrapped around smooth, shiny armor that didn’t look metallic, but more like lacquered wood or polymer.

  As they moved closer, something itched at the back of my human mind, giving me the ick, if you will. But it wasn’t until the head of their guard dropped his veil that I realized Sourtooth hadn’t been wrong after all. No human would treat with a goblin. But the midnighters weren’t human at all. They were bipedal insects. What I’d taken for a lacquered carapace armor, was in fact, just carapace. The smooth, exposed skin of the palanquin bearers was also chitin—though not as thick, I presumed.

  The leader’s mandibles clicked and clacked. His eyes scanned the collected goblins—eyes that were complex and emotive, not the sterile facetted eyes of a fly. Close enough to a human’s that I noticed the spark of surprise, quickly covered, when he spotted an orc among our ranks.

  “Priestess Cla’thn. Voice of the night. Reader of stars. Watcher of midnight tides. Seek your leader,” he said in our general direction. His mandibles moved in a way that I couldn’t tell how he produced the low, buzzing voice. But it was stilted and halting, like an early computerized voice with too low a bit-rate. It looked like his mouth parts were punching syllables into a typewriter, rather than shaping sounds. “Is one among you who can speak?”

  Every goblin present—even the other speech—capable ones, pointed straight at me. I looked around. I was going to have to have a word with them about opsec in the near future. Especially now that we were sending traffic over the airwaves.

  Nothing for it, then. I stepped forward. “I’m Apollo, the leader here. I’d like to know your intentions, but that can wait. The rest of your… people… are in danger. The eclipse will be here soon, and with it, the forest floor will be swarmed with carnivorous reptiles. I’d advise bringing the rest of your contingent up onto the bluff if they don’t want to be lunch.”

  If the captain was surprised to hear a goblin speak, he did a good job of covering it. “Ap-pol-low,” he buzzed, sounding his way around the word. He leaned back toward the palanquin. An exchange passed with the occupant that caused the captain to stiffen before turning. My guess was that he wasn’t too happy being surrounded by, and at the mercy of, a group of goblins. The silk curtain in the window moved and I saw a white claw for just a moment. The captain turned back. “Very well.”

  “Does the priestess intend to speak to me, herself?” I asked.

  The guard captain slammed the butt of his spear into the dirt, but I got the impression it was a ceremonial gesture, not a rebuke. “Priestess Cla’thn. Voice of queen. She treat with you. By shade. Eclipse or light of stars only,” he said.

  I shrugged. Suit herself. I gave the signal and the lift began lowering again to bring the rest of the attendants and the mounts back up. The captain eyed me the whole time, clearly curious, but unwilling to give voice to the questions he obviously had. Maybe it wasn’t his place? between the colorful, decorative silks and the overly-ornate workings on his spear, plus the palanquin and the bearers and the deference to the priestess, I got the impression this was a very, very structured culture with discrete castes and heavily enforced etiquette and decorum. Maybe I was just associating them too much with an Earth beehive since they looked like insects. Hell, for all I knew, these guys were actually mammals that gave live birth and nursed infants.

  The captain and his fellows stood, unmoving, as the sun drew closer to Raphina.

  “Can I, uh, offer you anything?” I asked. “Water, food, a place to sit?”

  Sourfang nodded his approval, but the captain simply stood stiff and rigid.

  “We bring provisions,” he said.

  We waited as the lift brought up the remaining attendants, mounts, and their baggage—lots of ornate wooden trunks on decorative carts—hauled by pack beetles. What I’d taken for horses were taller, slender insects with vicious, elongated mandibles and faceted eyes. I wondered if these were all similar species bred for different purpose, or a collective of different insectile races. I’d have to ask later, if I could figure out a circumspect way of doing so.

  John tapped my arm. I turned to look at the leader of Canaveral. “Ought to make ready, boss,” he said.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “We’ll be fine here.”

  I hoped.