Chapter 121 - Daytona Beachhead

  The airship dock certainly looked empty without Gemini docked there. I watched the goblins break down what was left of her for firewood while the canvas was folded and hauled away on the back of a flatbed buggy. The elves were still out there, and I accompanied the scrappers on the daytime water patrol to Daytona Island. Sourtooth came along as well, with his blunted spears, hoping to bag himself an elf to send home—though the logistics of transporting it remained something of a mystery to me.

  Ringo came along, uncertain on the prosthetics I’d gifted him. But there simply wasn’t room on one of the boats for several goblins to manage his high chair—which he’d lost anyway. He wobbled around the deck, uncertain and unhappy—despite the fact we were racing to liberate his island fortress.

  “Hold up!” I called. The ifrit managing the engine pulled up and cut the throttle. I pointed up to a low-hanging tree. “There.”

  Armstrong stepped up to the gunwale with a nozzle in his hand. He pointed it up to the bottom of the tree and squeezed the lever. A gout of flame burst out the tip and engulfed the bat nest in the tree. Several goblins leapt onto the shore, running around the small island with their mouths open waiting to catch the pre-barbequed creatures as they fell from the branches. No sense letting the meat go to waste.

  I didn’t like having to burn the nests. The bats and birds hadn’t done anything to me, but left as they were, each one was potentially a weapon for the remaining elves. And that wasn’t something we could contend with.

  Beside me, one of the sparkers went rigid and opened his mouth. “King Apollo, boat 3, here. Coming up on the beach now.”

  I grabbed the handset and cranked a lever to raise up a shortwave antenna. “Copy, boat 3. Any sign of the elves?”

  “Crocs and big-jaws, none of ‘em fightin’. But they seen us.”

  Big-jaws were what we’d taken to calling the lizards that were closer in form and function to primates than they were to the crocs. They were strong, fast, and vicious—which was why the elves had taken them.

  “Tell them to get off my island!” shrieked Ringo from behind me. “I made it, they can’t have it!”

  I shot him a look and turned back to the handset. “Alright, be careful. Maintain a perimeter until we get there.”

  I hung up the transmitter and stowed the antenna. The elves had attacked Daytona and forced Ringo out. They had attacked Huntsville, too, but found it a much tougher nut to crack. I don’t know what they had been expecting, but it definitely hadn’t been goblins in helicopters with flamethrowers and rifles. Not after fighting Ringo’s boglins with simple boats and tesla-wasp spears. Now, we had the initiative. The elves had taken Daytona because it represented an important staging ground in the swamp. Now I wanted it for the same reason.

  Somewhere to our west, I heard the squawk of birds and saw a column of smoke rising. One of our other boats had taken out a nest. I waved to the ifrit, who pushes us away from the island as the goblins ashore scrambled to get back on board. We rejoined two other boats on our way to meet up with the rest of the force headed toward Daytona. It wasn’t long before we spotted it.

  The dilapidated fortress rose out of the swamp as we approached, singed wall and platform rose out of the swap on stilts. The screw-pump on Ringo’s personal icky-slicky extractor still spun—a product of the slightly-shredded windmill at the apex powering the device he’d learned to make from us. A sheen of oil spread across the surface of the water from where it overflowed from the collector. Wasted. Sure enough, crocs dipped below the surface as we approached, and I saw several sets of eyes on the platform itself, as well as inside the keep.

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  I pulled out the radio transmitter. “Remember,” I said. “No fire, no sparks on the lowest level of the platform or in the water. We don’t want to lose the derrick, and we don’t want it setting fire to the keep.”

  “Boss, incoming,” said Armstrong.

  “I see ‘em,” I said, eyeing the shadows underneath the surface of the water. “Keep us out of the sheen. Prepare to repel!”

  Around me, goblins prepped rifles and tesla prods. We were as prepared as we could be when the coordinated croc-knockers came out of the water from all directions, attempting to get aboard as they struck with their prills. My goblins struck back weapons buzzing as they shocked the thick skin of the swamp monsters. The creatures roared, but the shock sticks were more of a deterrent than a lethal weapon, and monsters under the effects of the red swarms couldn’t be deterred. But they could be slowed long enough for the big guns to draw a bead.

  BOOM!

  One of the recoilless rifles went off and a croc fell back off the boat, sizzling hole where its middle ought to be. More shots followed, even as the melee intensified. Orc iron tips in the hands of totem-empowered hunters were able to penetrate the croc hide, and another went down looking like a pincushion. Meanwhile, two of the boats surged forward and dropped front ramps onto the derrick. As soon as we were free, our ifrit put on a burst of speed and butted us up against the derrick.

  “No fire from here on out!” I reminded them.

  The scrappers stormed aboard the derrick, shouting and cheering. Most of them had upgraded their cleavers to orc metal or steel variants that fared much better against the thickened hide and scales of swamp creatures than did brittle ceramic tips. Sourtooth swapped his own blunted spears for ones tipped in iron and limped into the fray with other members of The Flock. On the derrick, two of the big-jaws dropped down into the mix, swinging and slashing and snapping. I saw a big-jaw go down beneath the blades of two large scrappers, and then Sourtooth drove his spear completely through another before punching it over the edge of the platform.

  My scrappers began to push their way up, fighting for possession of the platform. Even hampered by the limitation of not being able to use poppers or firearms, they gained ground. Sourtooth, experienced in fighting, coordinated their movement as if they were a crack hunting team. And the two other members of the Flock that he’d brought with him warded the sides of the platform with spears, keeping additional crocs from pulling themselves aboard.

  I made to push along with them, but one look at my secretive service told me I was close enough to the action. Armstrong made a point of putting one hand on the back of my plate vest, just to make sure I didn’t get any heroic ideas. Fine. I could man the radio, at least. I picked up the handset.

  “Team 2, you’re up!”

  The other team of boats kicked their engines, but instead of heading for the island where several creatures waited, they formed a line in the water between the derrick and the beaches. Not a moment too soon, either, as emerald light began to shine under the water, and grasping creepers snapped out from beneath the surface at where the boats would have been. On the top of the Daytona wall, I spotted the silhouette of the elves moving—but it was hard to stay focused on them, as though enchanted in such a way that my eyes refused to focus. But they weren’t in a natural environment.

  “Team 3! The elves have shown themselves!”

  The drone of helicopter blades mounted. A handful of choppers crested the tree-line, flying low and fast. Emerald lances started to shoot out of the island fortress at the attackers, who shot back with underslung rifles as their occupants threw poppers inside the fort. Fortifications started to burst, and the elves were forced to put their heads down. A few poppers landed on the beach between us and the keep.

  “Watch those poppers!” I shouted. “Not too close to the kerosene!”

  A screech brought my attention around, and I spotted a flock of birds too coordinated to be natural angling toward the fleet of helicopters, intent on bringing down the fleet. A big one. We’d destroyed what we could, but apparently the bite-sized bastards had come prepared. A swarm of wings flapped toward us—bats and birds of all sizes and breed. The elves had already shown they didn’t have to destroy choppers outright to bring them down. They just had to distract or delay them long enough to choke out motors or rotors with creeping vines. They’d been hiding this fleet in reserve, waiting for us, apparently.

  Well, when it came to airspace superiority, I had a little surprise in store for the elves, as well.