I was working in the hangar with Promo when a sparker found me, running up with mouth agape with a portable transmitter in his hands. I recognized John’s voice already speaking through the sparker’s antennae whiskers.
“King Apollo, Rufus has returned from the deep desert. He caught a buggy from the badlands to Canaveral.”
I took the transmitter and switched it on. “Received. I’ll take a chopper and meet him there.”
I handed the radio back.
Promo lifted his mask to scratch his chin. “Didn’t we unlock the two-way broadcast’ems?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but the Sparkers like speaking in other goblins’ voices.” I watched the sparker dash off to return the transmitter. “Who am I to get in the way of their fun? Be like if I told you that you had to use the auto-hammer for everything.”
Promo hefted his trusty steel hammer, the first the tribe had ever produced, though he’d had to replace the head once and the handle twice. “Point taken, boss. I’ll finish up here.”
“Thanks Promo.”
I took Armstrong with me and we caught a lift up to the helipads on the second floating ring above Bluff Apollo. The air crew always kept a chopper fueled and waiting for me so that I could move between bluffs, as well as two decoys that would fly along with us—just like Marine-1, 2, and 3 did with the president back on Earth. Only, as far as I know, the president didn’t usually fly his own helicopter.
Canaveral was a short flight over, and I got my first look at the start of the observatory tower the Midnighter priestess was building. I circled low for a closer view. The stepped structure on the north end of the bluff stretched up into the sky at a steep angle, and I could make out narrow staircases cut into the side like a Mayan pyramid with several flat terraces built out along its height. The Midnighters had already installed some measurement equipment at the apex, some mundane and some apparently arcane in nature. They’d been busy in the week since our big air battle and put the goblin builders and material I’d loaned them to good use. But I had ulterior motives—which I saw as only fair. If the Midnighters were allowed plans within plans, then so was I. That observatory/temple was going to be my mission control center.
I landed at the helipad atop the bluff and handed off the controls to my co-pilot to park. We barely beat Rufus, who rode the freight elevator up with the buggy on the east side of the bluff. I met him at the top, and he was quick to greet me.
“King Apollo! These are interesting times indeed. I bring news that servants of the Midnight Queen have been seen in several…”
He finally noticed the two elite Midnighters standing guard. Rufus offered them wary looks and a wide berth. Once past, he immediately keyed in on the newest structure, despite it being on the other side of the bluff. His eyes scanned up and down the pyramid and the priestess’ palanquin atop it.
“King Apollo, I must ask…” he said, then shook his head. “Nay, at this point your menagerie of unlikely allies is the least of your surprises. I’m now told that you light up the night sky, ride on pillars of fire, and summon lightning to carry your voice over great distances.”
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“Not lightning, per se,” I said. “The rest is… close enough. How was the Ifrit city?”
I took Rufus back towards Canaveral’s common area while we spoke, so that I could treat him to a lizard sandwich (the orcs continued making flatbread, though I haven’t the foggiest idea where they got the flour).
“It’s in flux, as I feared. They permitted entry into the city only briefly, but neither were they outright hostile. The political situation is in a minor upheaval with the accusations I levied against the leader of the delegation, and the ceramic trinkets that I brought before the king. But they will not send another Ifrit to verify my claims for fear they, too, will be lost. Nothing but the complete return of all Ifrit will assuage doubts. You must understand, their unions being taken is among their worst fears and as far as they are aware, it has happened.”
I pursed my lips and sniffed. “Pretty much what I expected. Haughty-von-haughty really did us dirty. I don’t think I could get all the Ifrit exiles to leave, even if I wanted to. But I may have a solution to that now if I can get a radio and a generator to the City of Brass.”
The bulky equipment needed to run the radio and keep it powered, with a transmitter and receiver with enough gain to communicate with Bluff Apollo was a tall order. But if I could get one installed, it would open up free travel for the Ifrit between any bluff in my kingdom and the deep desert where the City of Brass waited and worried after their missing kin. The Ifrit would be able to travel to the city and present their side of the story and then travel back and continue running engines and flying via their helicopter vessels.
But a radio antenna like that meant an airborne station in order to maintain line of sight. I didn’t want to send any Ifrit over an unstable broadcast. And an airborne antenna in the desert would almost certainly be attacked by the null devil or other hostile creatures without the means to protect it. We were getting close to having heavy jet fighters reliable enough for Lura’s hunters to fly. In fact, even as we watched, one screamed overhead, as dozens of goblins at the bluff cheered and chased it to the edge (and in a few cases, over it).
Rufus followed the aircraft with his fingers pressed in his ears. “Stars above! The noise of the thing!”
“Yeah,” I said. I tried to imagine what a difference those aircraft would have made against the dartwing. If we’d had them then, we’d have taken that beast down in time and never gotten ourselves beholden to Lura. But we also wouldn’t have fought the whistler and gotten our hands on such high-quality magnets and its vast aluminum-like hide—hide which was currently being shaped into jet fighters and rocket boosters.
Every challenge, every setback we’d faced had led to progress in some significant way. Necessity was the mother of invention, after all. And I not only had necessity in spades, but an entire extended family tree of inventions rattling around in my human memory.
“How fast does such a terror go?” asked Rufus, uncorking a bottle of some dark amber liquor that somehow survived in his bulging backpack.
I itched at the fur on my chin. “Well, we went from here to Habberport and back in about three hours,” I said.
The badger-marked scholar nearly spit out his pull. “Three hours!” he said, and then paused, eyes growing even wider. “You went to Habberport?”
I couldn’t help grinning. “A brief flyover. Had to see what they were working with and what they were up to. It’s a much bigger city than I expected.”
Rufus pressed a meaty palm to his forehead. “10 day’s round trip that is, for me,” he said.
“Ah, well, we can’t have the tribe’s official Minister of Trade taking 10 days to get anywhere. How would you like a personal cargo helicopter?” I asked. “It won’t get you to the coast in a couple hours, but it will take you anywhere you want and haul a lot more than what will fit in your pack.”
Rufus shuddered. “O’ King, if it’s anything like that winged deathtrap you imposed upon me in our second meeting, I shall have to abstain.”
“Oh, good, you’re in luck!” I said, pushing to my feet.
“I am?” asked Rufus, relief evident on his face.
“Yep. Helicopters don’t have wings at all.”