Chapter 136 - Apollo Rising

  It wasn’t the first time I’d flown over Lanclova, but it was the first time I’d done it straddling 30,000 RPMs of turbine power. Twisting in the seat, I could see the rest of the fleet getting into what passed for a formation for goblins. After the whistler had nearly taken us out of the sky, I decided to trust to goblin instincts for chaotic maneuvering. En masse, goblins moved almost more like a fluid. I’d seen it my first day on Rava when their eclectic pathfinding flowed through the forest, leaving a trail of semi-cleared greenery in their wake.

  Likewise, the pilots of the aircraft twisting around each other in the sky, corkscrewing and barrel rolling, coming within a few chooms of each other’s hulls in passing, but somehow coordinated in a way the scientist in me couldn’t quantify. Maybe it was a product of the goblin pseudo-gestalt that powered the tech tree. It certainly wasn’t goblin air traffic control, because they were entirely comprised of forest goblins, and therefore non-verbal—just like most of the pilots circling the bluff. The general traffic frequency sounded like a howler monkey acapella sing-a-long to a thrash metal song. I honestly don’t even know why they had a radio in their tower.

  The Package separated from the general traffic and headed northwest, and I flew down close to the abomination of an aircraft (even more-so than a helicopter). Gemini had been resurrected. But now, instead of a hanging gondola, it was an oblong framework built around the hot air envelopes giving it lift. But the hot air wouldn’t be enough to haul around all the metal we’d added to it. That was the job of the four tilting turbine motors at each corner. At the front, the goblins had carved a prow to look like one of their skull masks. All together, it gave it a top-down silhouette a bit like a sea turtle, except that it trailed black, oily smoke. I had to throttle down almost to minimum flight speed to not outpace Gemini-II. Our first ‘dread-naughty’ as the System deemed it, was faster than any hot-air aircraft had a right to be, but still not exactly a speed demon.

  The sparker crackled. “Oy, King, which one o’ them’s you?” came Armstrong’s voice.

  I dropped down close to the aircraft, to the side where I could see dozens of goblins scurrying through the lattice structure behind the improvised armor panels. The whole thing wasn’t unlike one of the floating rings above the bluff, except that it surrounded a balloon strung with electrified wire.

  “On your right,” I said, tipping my wings.

  Enough goblins on Gemini-II dashed to the starboard side that the engines had to tilt the opposite way to compensate for the shift in gravity. At least 2 that I could see fell off from the weight shift before the course could correct itself, but personal gliders unfurled in the sky below.

  “I see ya, boss! Oy!”

  I could see a large hobgoblin in the back with a transmitter jumping and waving. I waved back. The other interceptors fell in around The Package. I keyed my radio again.

  “Just have the pilot follow me in, Armstrong. Chuck, we’ll stay with Gemini. Go on ahead, and report back.”

  “Aye boss,”

  The heavy fighter engines rumbled overhead as Chuck and his wranglers opened up the throttles and pushed forward in the sky. I pulled slightly ahead, and the massive canvas envelopes of the dread-naughty were like a second full moon off my tail. The other members of the fighter escort wove in and out as we flew—sometimes keeping formation, other times ranging out on the flanks.

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  The distance that had taken the helicopter fleet an hour to cover was maybe a third of that by jet. It was only a few minutes later when Chuck came back on the radio.

  “Boss, haunts are already out. Looks like daytime patrols around the cliff. A few of ‘em climbin’ to engage us.”

  “Good copy, Chuck. Time to earn your namesake.”

  Eileen came on the channel. “Psh, the hobbies get all the fun.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ll definitely get your chance. Just remember, stick close to Gemini-II.

  “You don’t gotta worry about me or my pilots, boss. Trust.”

  “It’s not you I’m worried about,” I said. “It’s that elf.”

  “Ah, yeah, him. Don’t sweat it, boss!”

  Easy for her to say. Heavy is the giant pumpkin head that wears the crown, and all that.

  I climbed us up over a ridge, and the terrain got substantially more hilly. Up ahead, the start of the mountains reached out of the jungle, dotted with white streaks of cliff face. A few twisted contrails already curled through the distant air where Chuck and his team had engaged the patrolling night haunts. I hoped that attacking during the morning would give us the best chance at catching the nocturnal creatures unawares, making the rest of the creatures slow to rise even with the elf’s prodding. Hell, best case scenario they’d be hit with the same no-sleep penalty that afflicted goblins who didn’t get their 7 hours down. But when had I gotten the best-case scenario yet since coming to Rava?

  We flew low over the ridgeline. Gemini-II banked slow, avoiding the high spots. The flying fortress didn’t exactly turn on a dime. It was low enough that some of the highest trees brushed its underbelly. Every pilot instinct in me would have told them to climb. But it was important that the elf not see them coming, so nap-of-the-Earth it was. My old flight instructor would have called it scud running. But the nice thing about Rava is that there aren’t any power wires or radio towers to reach up and snatch your aircraft out of the sky.

  I took an odd sort of satisfaction from flying low over the hills and ridges, low enough to see the individual trees flash just below me. I hugged the depressions and valleys. Some of my pre-astronaut training was riding trainee in old Navy trainer jets—but even those instructor pilots had minimum altitudes. I was lower than any of those guys had flown probably since the Gulf War.

  “Just up ahead, we’ll swing around that hilltop and it should be a straight shot to the nest,” I called over the radio. Then, into the intercom, “Ready all weapons.”

  My gunners made ready, loading leather belts of ammunition into the self-cycling gun and taking out the clamps that held the turret in-place. In true goblin fashion, the whole nose-ball itself rotated, so the gun wasn’t limited to simply firing directly forward. One goblin controlled the guns, the other pushed against the glass like a hamster in a ball to swing the whole ensemble around.

  Ahead, we moved abeam to the hill, and I pulled us into a bank to swing us around for our final push north. The cliff face with the yawning maw came in sight. Already, I was seeing night haunts climb out and scale up the cliffs by ones and twos, until they were high enough to jump free of the wall and fly furiously to reach the fight overhead.

  “Rockets!” I called.

  I bumped up the throttle and lined up with the cliff mouth with the reticle etched into the canopy. “Just like shooting womprats back home,” I muttered.

  “King Apollo, we are unfamiliar with this creature,” said Taquoho. “Are they native to your bluff?”

  I grinned. “Nah, they’re from a galaxy far, far away,” I replied. I squeezed the trigger on my flight stick, firing our entire salvo of rockets.

  The unguided rockets shot forward, roughly straight (except for one that corkscrewed off to God-knows-where). They impacted against the cliff in a ripple of explosions, knocking several night haunts free as they attempted to climb. The creatures plummeted down into the canopy, spinning helplessly. The other interceptors followed suit, sending salvos of the munitions at the nest. Dozens of rockets exploded, most of them with more flash than substance, but it made the night haunts wary of pushing back out. One of the pilots managed to get a rocket in the cliffside opening, and my flight crew started cheering as an explosion roiled back out of the cave.

  If only it were that easy. Unfortunately, caves don’t have main reactors, so one perfect shot wouldn’t blow the whole thing. We were going to have to exterminate this nest the old-fashioned way. I pulled back on the stick, making way for Gemini-II.