Chapter 130 - Sky Kings

  I was a little surprised when Taquoho elected to take the radio back to Bluff Apollo, considering how disorienting his first trip had been. But then, trying to keep an Ifrit from possessing a piece of technology that had caught their interest was nigh-impossible. And in all honesty, I wanted them to continue exploring the possibilities of transmission by radio frequency. I had long worried about the prospect of taking Ifrit up into space. Goblins could survive falls from any distance. And if something killed them on the ground it was, as awful as it sounds to say it, not a dire issue. The loss of an Ifrit in orbit was something entirely different. But if they could escape emergencies by using a radio like a parachute? Well, there wasn’t much to limit them.

  By the time those of us limited by corporeal bodies landed back at the bluff along with the returning searchers still scouring the forest for the remaining elf, nightfall was approaching and our maiden airship, Gertrude, was also pulling into port. Pretty much the whole bluff turned out to welcome our intrepid Eileen back, whereby goblins with a plethora of new stripes and fur patterns jumped down to greet their new tribemates from the main branch.

  The canoneers stumbled off the ship with armloads of new comics that they immediately began distributing before I could attempt to stop the spread of their propaganda, but that concern was only secondary.

  “Boss!” Shouted Eileen, waving down at me. She’d acquired a flight cap with crystal lenses at some point in her journey, rounding out her classic aviator look. Everywhere they’d gone, they’d taken the tech tree of Tribe Apollo, and now we had a network of bluffs making iron, glass, radios, copper wire, and more. Gerty’s hold was full of goodies.

  “Welcome home!” I shouted over the cheering. “How does it feel to be a hero?”

  “Amazing! We’ve got so many new friends and stories and stuff! Is this how it feels to be you all the time?”

  I tried to avoid wincing. If only she knew.

  Eileen vaulted down, summersaulting gracefully and then landing flat on her head, whereby she rolled to her feet. Several of her fellow air corps goblins mobbed her and lifted her on their shoulders. She was grinning so wide I thought the top of her head might flop back. “Boss, I can’t believe you sent me on this pig and then made those chopper things to fly without me! I want to try one right now!”

  I laughed. “I’ve got something even better for you. Come see what we’re working on.”

  She dropped down from her underlings and scrambled over, climbing up Armstrong like a ladder to straddle his shoulders.

  “Onward!” she declared.

  I led Eileen and several of her aviators up to the factory level of Bluff Apollo and into the hangar where we’d stored the first prototypes of the turbine test planes. Her eyes bugged so wide I thought they might break the lenses on her goggles from the inside. She stared at the first-generation models, jaw slack and hands on her cheeks.

  “I haven’t seen these in the tech tree! Boss, you shouldn’t have!”

  “We haven’t officially unlocked them, yet,” I said. I moved over and ran my hands on the sleek, metal fuselage made from whistler hide alloy. “But we’ve got them sized for goblins, hobgoblins, and orcs. Chuck has been champing at the bit to fly one, but…”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Eileen grinned. “You can say it, boss, everyone already knows.”

  I shrugged. “Your mechanical aptitude skill is higher.”

  Armstrong moved alongside the primitive jet aircraft and Eileen hopped over to the top of the wing. She got into the cockpit and started fiddling with different controls, actuating the sticks and watching as the control surfaces warped at the tips of her wings and tail.

  “Of all the stuff to come from your brain, boss, this is the best yet.”

  I climbed up onto the wing myself and swung into the back seat in the cockpit, pointing out various controls and their functions along with the primitive instrumentation. Eileen listened raptly.

  “How fast will they go?”

  “About 7 times as fast as the prop-driven bi-gliders,” I said.

  “7 times!? How is that possible?”

  “Turbine engines,” I said. “A compressor rotor draws in air, squeezes it tight, mixes it with fuel, blows it up, and then shoots it out the back.”

  Eileen cocked her head. “In’t that how the combust’em engines work?”

  I nodded. “Yep. Except a combustion engine works in discreet cycles. In a turbine, it’s happening constantly, all at once.”

  Eileen grinned and worked the flight stick back and forth. “Sounds proper goblin, this. When do I get to try it out?”

  “We’re putting the finishing touches on the airstrip at the base of the bluff. These need a bit of run to takeoff and land so we can’t just drop them off the second ring like they’ve started doing with the gliders. Rest and relax for a day or two, yeah? Then you and Chuck can fly formation in the first prototypes.”

  Eileen groaned and draped herself dramatically over the edge of the cockpit. “That’s forever, boss! I’m ready to fly now!”

  A woman after my own heart, truly. And if my secretive service would have entertained the idea, I’d already be up in the air in the first prototype. But historically, bad things tend to happen when I went into the air alone and so I needed goblins like Eileen and Chuck watching my back.

  “You’ll get your chance,” I said. “We’re going to need these. If Lura wants to take on the sky-devil oppressing the Ifrit, jet fighters are going to be the key to beating it. It’s not just about helping her with her hunt and getting Taquoho home, either. These get us one step closer to high atmospheric flight and then space flight. I’m asking a lot of you, Eileen.”

  “That’s cause you know I can do it,” she said. She dropped down into the nose turret and oggled at the guns. “Wow, what are these?”

  “Well,” I said, “Can’t take to the skies in jet engines with lever-action rifles, can we?”

  Eileen made gunshot noises as she angled the turret guns around. She slapped at the glass. “Armstrong!” she shouted. “Are you going to run these for me?”

  Armstrong looked up at me, eyes starry as he pressed his index fingers together.

  “Can I, boss?”

  I sighed and shook my head. “Who am I to refuse?”

  I slid out of the cockpit as my two taskmasters celebrated their impending adventure. I ran a hand along the underside of the fat-bodied jet. In other parts of the hangar, goblins scrambled, working on putting together more of the jet prototypes. Right now we had two ready and waiting for pilots. By the time the runway was ready, we’d have another. Every day, we were advancing. I had expected technology development to slow once we hit the industrial age and things became infinitely more complex. But, if anything, it was accelerating.

  Ifrit, orcs, and goblins seemed to be the perfect storm for lightning-quick iteration and design. Now, with Midnighters in the mix, if all went well it wouldn’t be long until space was within reach. Tomorrow, jet engines. A month from now? High altitude rockets. Satellites, maybe. I already had almost a thousand goblins turning food into fuel in anticipation of our need for high-volume boosters. Every choom of scat was being saved and moved to Canaveral. At the same time, their labor turned raw resources into refined products. And the workforce just kept growing. It wouldn’t be long before we truly ruled the skies of Rava. Maybe they’d need a new word to describe us, once the sky was filled with goblins.

  We were long past being pests or vermin. In fact, Tribe Apollo was beginning to feel unstoppable.