The railgun carriage hit the suspension springs of the hard stop and rammed straight through them, blowing out the front third of the railgun and twisting the rails outward. The concussion from the passing dart splattered the broodling near the muzzle, instantly liquifying its entire body to black ichor that splashed across half the turret—my half of the turret, coating everything in a layer of obsidian filth that tasted… horrifyingly good to my goblin taste buds.
Below us, Lura’s aim was true. Her shot struck the null devil on its back, ten meters behind the base of its skull and a little to the side. The shot sank into a piece of oozing flesh that missiles had scraped clean of chitinous armor and napalm had further weakened. The flesh warped, and then the shockwave of the expanding projectile fountained black ichor out the sides of the creature, spraying geysers of goo around its chitin segments. The creature ballooned around the site of the impact, then collapsed in on itself as the railgun round punched out the other side, taking with it an appreciable amount of the null devil’s pureed innards.
There was no roar, no death rattle, no mournful call. Simply the deafening hypersonic CRACK of the railgun echoing off the dunes, and the null devil finishing the fall from the stars it began all those centuries ago.
This time, the broodlings truly did flee. The grasping lance of them scattered, dispersing into the wind as each fled in a different direction.
“Tell my hunters to chase down every last one of its brood!” declared Lura. “Let none escape to prowl this land as its sire did.”
“That’s oddly altruistic, for an orc,” I commented.
“Nay, little brother. If there are none left to hunt, never can my feat be duplicated!”
“That makes more sense.”
Still, I repeated her order to the radio operators. The fighters below didn’t even need to be told, not really. They were already chasing the individual broodlings down. All the sounds of combat on the decks above us has ceased, replaced by cheers and the mad howling of zealots. The canoneers would have a field day putting this in the ‘histry books.
The corpse of the null devil twisted through the air below us. Eileen put us in a steep descent to follow it, and I leaned out the front of the turret to watch. Now dead, the black smudge of the creature’s taint began to dissipate. It wouldn’t be long, I figured, until the System was once again able to communicate. Over my head, the glowing, warped muzzle of the railgun still sizzled from heat. Lura approached and looked up at them herself.
“What, pray, o’ king, would we have done if the beast required a third shot?”
I grinned back at her. “Just be glad we didn’t test fire it.”
Lura began to laugh and leaned out the opening herself. “A greater quarry this world has never seen, little brother. Twas my vision, lead, huntsmen, and marksmanship that felled yon beast. But twas your artifice which carried us. You share in this glory.”
“I have little interest in glory,” I said. “But congratulations on taking it down—despite this not being the plan.”
“Spoils, then,” said Lura. She wrinkled her nose at the black ichor smear the broodling had left—along with a fetid, caustic odor. “I doubt much that its flesh is good for eating by any but your kind, but surely a creature of that size has materials both common and exotic.”
I pursed my lips. “Aye. We can always use more materials. Armor and ichor, ammonia, nitrates, stomach acid, or whatever passes for stomach acid in an alien. Teeth, claw material, whatever organs made it capable of flight without wings and whatever let it sense magic or survive the vacuum of space. We’ll take anything you can spare or don’t want.”
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“You shall have it. The harvesters at China Lake have already begun to relocate, though weeks it will take, if not longer, to process the entirety of the beast.”
Lura retreated from the opening. I watched a few moments longer as the creature fell through the air, until the massive carcass struck the dunes, blowing out a ring of dust and sand. The shock rumbled through the air, sounding like the crash of distant thunder. The characters in my flight data window started to stabilize, finally, showing an airspeed and altitude figure that wasn’t complete gibberish.
System? I asked in my mind.
No answer, yet. Not even awaiting query. Well, the menus were slowly coming back so it was only a matter of time. Or maybe the creature kept some amount of its blocking mechanism even after death. I left the railgun opening and climbed to the upper deck with Armstrong, past the sight of battles and holes torn in the hull where the broodlings had forced their way in. I went to the cockpit, instead, to check on our pilot. Eileen whistled as she worked the flight stick for the lumbering jet. Her flight goggles were pulled down, despite the cockpit being entirely enclosed, and looked every bit the quintessential early aviator—once you got past the blue fur and 1-meter stature.
She glanced back on hearing us enter.
“Hey, boss! I’m ‘bout to turn back to China Lake. Take a load off!”
I moved up to the copilot seat “Nice flying, Eileen.”
She grinned a wide smile of tiny, sharp teeth. “Ain’t nothin’! Someone’s gotta push this great hog around. Figured I’d have to fight you for the stick once you came aboard, though!”
I chuckled. “Let me guess, you’d have won?”
“You know it!”
I leaned forward in the chair and looked down at the tool bag left in the corner. “Where’s your copilot?”
She shrugged. “Ah, well, when the little ones swarmed us he went to join the fight. Ain’t come back,”
“Ah,” I said. There was a lot of loose blue fur stuck to the black ichor stains in the aftermath of the boarding. I didn’t have a total number of the goblins killed in this battle, but we’d lost several fighters and half or more of the crew of the command jet. Still, the ratio was starting to shift towards spending material and equipment over goblin lives to accomplish tasks. Goblins were less likely to die by the dozen with machines acting as force multipliers. Yet die by the dozen they continued to do as the challenges we faced grew in lock-step.
I couched my chin in my hands. “We’ve come a long way, since that first glider flight to liberate Canaveral.
“Have we?” asked Eileen, tilting her head. Genuinely perplexed at my statement.
I suppose to my air delivery captain, this rapid progression through basic unpowered flight all the way to high-altitude jet engines must seem as natural as any other tech tree unlock. When we put our first manned capsules into space, she’d probably be kicked back in the cockpit, whistling or humming as she soared through the cosmos as though it were any other Tuesday.
In the distance, the brass dome above the Ifrit city glinted in the sunlight.
“Once we drop Lura off, we’ve got some work to do ahead of us,” I said. “Need to have a king-to-king chat, clear the air with our fiery friends.”
“The Ifrit were real keen to kill that thing, yeah?” asked Eileen.
I nodded. “It’s terrorized them for so long. They might be safe beyond the walls again for the first time in a long time.” I ran a hand through my fur. “I don’t think I appreciated before, just how brave they were to leave the city in a convoy to trade with us. A monster like that on their doorstep? Even with their paladins.”
Eileen shifted in her seat. “They’re not all gonna leave us, right boss?”
I cocked my head. “What do you mean?”
“Well, now they can go home, right? I don’t want ‘em all to leave. I want ‘em to keep flying with me.”
I laughed, long and hard, before answering. I pointed at the subtle fire peeking out of the control console. “Eileen, the exiles aren’t with us because they didn’t have a choice. They’re with us because they chose to stay when the rest went home. They’re as much a part of the tribe as any of the bluffs you visited or the orcxiliaries. Heck, Taquoho even broke up their union and reforged it around a turbine engine.” I looked over at the glinting dome again. “And if their king doesn’t see it that way? Well, then I’m going to have a few more choice words for him.”
I slapped Eileen on the shoulder. “But that’s tomorrow’s problem. Everything at China Lake ready?”
Eileen grinned again, now reassured. “Of course!”
I leaned back, listening to the drone of the engines and the wind for a while as we flew back towards the salt flats.
I sat up. System? I did it, we pushed through and beat the null devil. I don’t know how, but we managed it.
What do you mean? We did keep advancing.