I went over to yet another carcass and crouched down, lifting its jaw. It was definitely bigger than the one that had tried to skewer me, and the downy hair of its shoulders had gone silver. Like the others, it had traces of the red insects around its mouth. “The elf found the nest. He might have every night haunt in the foothills bewitched by now.”
Even Armstrong looked concerned at that. The normally unflappable hobgoblin shifted his eyes back and forth, as though one of the nocturnal predators might leap out of the shadows. Something in the goblin brain was especially wired to be frightened of the flying predators. Maybe they had been the primary goblin predator in Lanclova even before whatever strange force here twisted the beasts into true monsters. “Boss. Croc-knockers and big-jaws is one thing. But night haunts workin’ together?”
“I don’t like it either,” I said. I snapped my claws to call a sparker over. “See if their radio is still intact. Warn every bluff to have sparky weapons and be ready for concerted attacks by multiple night haunts. Check with Sourtooth and see if he knows how many of these things an individual elf can conceivably control at once.”
The sparker saluted and dashed off.
I straightened and dusted my hands off, considering.
“Boss, ain’t you worried?” asked Armstrong.
“Of course I’m worried,” I said. “But the elf may have played itself.”
“How’s that?”
Eileen perked up. “Ooh! Ooh! We know where the nest is!” she said.
I pointed a claw at her. “Got it in one. He has no way of knowing we already found the night haunt roost in the cliffside. And unless I miss my mark, this is the closest bluff to it.”
“It is,” added Eileen. She pointed out to the east. “Out that way.”
Armstrong whooped. “Then what’re we waiting for? Let’s go get the big guns and take out that nest while it’s still daylight. We can make it there and back, yeah?”
“Easily,” said Eileen.
“Not likely,” I said. I dusted off my hands. “The normal rules for night haunts probably don’t apply when there’s an elf at the wheel. Daytime, night-time, I doubt it makes a difference.”
Armstrong’s expression fell. “Well, then, we need to at least get you out of here. Back to the choppers.”
I shook my head. “Have your boys start pulling together barricades and figuring out which buildings can withstand a second attack.”
“Boss?”
“This attack did exactly what it was probably intended to do.”
“It drew you here…” Armstrong finished, then started kicking dirt. “Dirty elf’s probably waitin’ fer us to take back off again to send the haunts at us! They can out-fly the choppers no problem, we seen ‘em do it.” He whistled and made a circle in the air with his claws. “Dig in, lads! We’re having night haunt for dinner. Best make ready.”
“Salvage wire, get the exterior hulls of the choppers electrified and take the guns off the ones we can’t rig up,” I added.
One of the goblins came back, chittering. Armstrong listened for a moment and then relayed. “Radio room is functional,” he reported. “They’ve raised Bluff Apollo.”
“Good, take me there.”
I did a quick mental head count on the goblins scrambling to scrape together some cover while we walked. We had maybe 20 scrappers, 10 wranglers, and 100-120 other forest goblins with us—all armed and armored. It was a sizable force and heavy on variants. We had rifles, pistols, spears, and poppers—plus a few heavier guns we could dismount from the chopper noses. I estimated it would take at least 10-12 night haunts to have any chance at winning. How many were packed into that cliffside cave?
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Dozens, at least.
I grit my teeth. You already know the answer to that, System. And how many night haunts there are, down to the youngest cub. You could just tell me.
No answer. No surprise, either. Whoever, whatever the System was, it was clear that one of its governing rules was that it couldn’t play favorites. Even though I’d managed to crack its shell a little, even though it was obvious there was some sort of sentient intelligence behind the seemingly cold, rules-driven mask, be it an alien sys-admin or AI or grandfather spirit or whatever, it wouldn’t lift a finger to help me over, say, an elf.
Huh. System actually sounded a little hurt at that. Not this time, though. Not when we were walking into a trap.
I paused, causing Eileen to bump into me with a startled squawk. System had a point there. Hell, I would go so far as to say it had been one of my defining qualities throughout my life. Where others saw signs warning of danger or limits not to be exceeded, I saw opportunities to challenge myself. Heck, it was part of how I ended up in this new world. The accident that ferried me to Rava was part of the biggest challenge there was. The only bigger challenge was surviving once I got here.
And that, yes. Bootstrapping the Apollo program from the stone age. But what did System care about my goals? What did anyone care?
Who?
This time I didn’t just pause. I stopped dead in my tracks. My fur became damp with sweat. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Who brought me here?”
“Boss?” said Eileen, unsure. “Uh, I did. On the chopper.”
I shook my head. “Not you, System! Someone picked me specifically? Why me? Why not Sanders or Davis?”
No answer.
“Hell, they brought Ringo, too! Why Ringo? Why bring a kid from Florida?”
Nothing.
I growled. “Nothing to say, now? Figures. You should’a been a government database with all the queries you fail to return.”
“Boss!” I looked over at one of the scrappers shouting from the eastern side of the bluff. He ran up, gasping for breath. “I think they figured out we don’t plan on takin’ back off. There’s a bunch of haunts, headed right for us.”
This isn’t over, System. I looked at Eileen. “Let’s get to the radio room. And, I’m sorry,”
“For what?” she asked, confused.
“We need reinforcements. Looks like Chuck is going to get first dibs after all.”
Eileen swallowed, pointing east where a handful of black dots had appeared in the eastern sky. “Well the faster he gets here, the better.”
We ducked into the radio room, which had been partially collapsed—but miraculously, the low-frequency antenna was in-tact and the sparkers had managed to finagle a channel with Bluff Apollo. I took the handset and barked instructions through until I heard Sourtooth’s voice on the other end.
“Little brother! A mad scramble, you’ve got here. Pray, what troubles found you ‘ere northern village?”
“Our missing elf. He’s found the night haunt nest. I know you think night haunts are pests, but they’re dangerous enough to exposed goblins.”
“Night haunts by 1’s and 2’s, are pests. A nest inflamed by the bough of an elven infiltrator is a pestilence. You must retreat.”
“We can’t retreat,” I said. “We can already see them coming.”
“Then fortune favor you, little brother king, for luck has not.”
Weren’t those just the same things? A commotion outside drew me away from the radio, where several goblins I didn’t recognize were coming up over the bluff’s edge. They had longer, lankier arms than the goblins from my bluff—an adaptation to the higher cliff faces, I assumed. There were concentric circles on their fur, and their little skull masks were mostly of birds and fowl.
“Locals?” I asked. They chittered and nodded. Another dozen goblins that had managed to survive. “You escaped the attack?”
Nods.
“How many night haunts?” I asked.
The group looked between each other. 2 of them held up both hands and all their fingers, and another held up only his left hand. I flinched. Two-dozen night haunts heading our way. And reinforcements from Bluff Apollo were at least an hour away. We needed some edge. “Come with me.”
I brought the survivors to one of the slain night haunts with the silver fur. They immediately began shouting as they punched and kicked it, and I had to shout to get them under control.
“Hey, HEY! Stop that. Bring tools and a beam. We’ve got to get this thing mounted up, yeah?” The mountain goblins seemed to understand what I was telling them to do, and several rushed off and started pulling rope or intact bits of wood from the flattened structures.
In the main clearing of the bluff, several of the helicopters started to spin up again, what ones the sparkers had managed to rig-up with improvised anti-elven defenses. Engaging the night haunts in close-air support would be incredibly dangerous. But then, so was engaging them on the ground. Nothing about the situation was ideal.
Nothing new for us, really. I just had to keep reminding them, like everyone else, that Tribe Apollo were not goblins to be underestimated.