My Big Goblin Space Program [COMPLETE] Chapter 120 – Radio Free Sparker

Chapter 120 – Radio Free Sparker

Limping our way back to Huntsville, we were treated to an aerial view of the smoldering husk of our once-great and short-lived airship, Gemini. Her canvas envelope was still mostly in one piece—if burnt. Possibly we might be able to salvage it, or at least enough of the sailcloth to make a smaller version. But just from this attack, we were down an airship, several helicopters, and dozens of goblins. But we’d taken out another elf. And we still had work to do.

I circled the town and brought the struggling, beaten helicopter down in the southeast corner of the yard near the forges. I got out and tried to wiped the splatter out of my fur before giving up and taking a dunk under the cistern. Armstrong simply pulled out bug guts and fur in seemingly equal asures and it all went into his mouth. Sourtooth found us there, brace of ball-tipped javelins close to hand. I nodded to them. “What are those?”

“Elf blunts,” he said. “An elf would make a fine gift, if alive, one I can take. That your boglin friends managed it, a wonder it is. A king have they, said the one called George. True?”

I nodded. “True.”

“And you suffer this wretched creature to live?”

I shrugged. “He’s mostly harmless.”

“Captured King Apollo once, he did,” said Armstrong.

“Sort of,” I admitted.

Sourtooth raised an eyebrow.

“They hadn’t invented locks or even proper cages. I could have left—but the swamp was too dangerous on my own. Ringo even gave us a few secrets to help manage it.”

Armstrong continued, mouth full, “The boss sort’a set ‘im afla and scarpered.”

“You did what?”

I shrugged. “Relations actually improved sowhat after that. We’ve helped them out from ti to ti.”

“A strange kinship, have you,” said Sourtooth, shaking his head. “Tis typical not, for a goblin king such a way to act. But then, so too is it queer to ride the wind on strange artifice.”

I grinned. “Regretting your decision to co with us?” I asked.

Sourtooth spat on the ground. “I regret every crooked decision that marked my twisted path through life, o’ king. I am architect and mason both of mine own tower of follies, ever mounting may it be.”

Well, at least the tart old orc took responsibility for his sourness.

The air group that had gone north ca in for a landing, so overgrown with vines and creepers that they looked as though they’d donned the elf camouflage themselves. After they reported, I sent them back to start repairing their craft. The other chopper hadn’t managed to take out the third elf. He’d gone to ground in the swamp, evading the burn’em crews and the search lights. The stealth suits they wore made them effectively invisible in natural environnts, while able to strike back against both the boats and the choppers from range.

Still, if Sourtooth’s guess was right, there were at least 3 elves still at large in the swamp and now 1 in the forest. They’d shown their hands, and we could put up a fair fight. The only issue was the elves were clearly not the type to fight fair. I probably wouldn’t if I was their size, either. Though, as a goblin, I wasn’t exactly physically imposing myself.

I shook my head. “Sha about Gemini. I wonder why they wanted it gone so badly.”

“Like, they thought, to find you aboard, I’d say,” said Sourtooth. “Saw you aboard through their familiars and assud it to be your personal vessel.”

Armstrong nodded in agreent.

“Right,” I said, shaking the last of the cistern water out of my fur. “They’re hunting . Can’t stay in one place for too long, then.” I considered. “And we can’t have them air-dropping in. That’s our thing. Send your boat boys to collect Ringo. And tell the scrapper crews to start destroying any bat or hawk nest they find in the swamp. I want to clip the elves’ wings. Anything large enough to carry an elf over the walls, I want it on a cook spit.”

Armstrong saluted and ran off.

“What will you do now?” asked Sourtooth.

“We can’t keep communicating with lights and flags and flares,” I said. “I want to build a version of the keeper beads.”

The old orc tilted his head. “Shaman magic, are the beads. Goblins can use them not.”

“No,” I said. “But there’s other ways to pass ssages.”

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I left Sourtooth and went to find Sally with her engineers. Luckily, she hadn’t been aboard the airship when the elves sabotaged it, but she wasn’t happy about being stranded in Huntsville—not that she’d tell you outright. But she had a grumpy aura about her, and she squawked and chittered at her engineers as they went through iterations of the simple radio designs I’d given them. She, herself, had several scorch-marks on her fur from working with the electric motors and basic transducers.

I started poking through the projects, seeing what looked close and what went on a completely wild goose chase. The audio diaphragms from the sound-powered phones were the hardest part, chanically speaking. And that was done already. But the engineers still struggled with anything to do with electricity—and the sparkers were more like Frankensteins than Einsteins. Electricity had a tendency to arc through their whiskers and onto the nearest unfortunate goblin, which would invariably start a fight, which the rest would stop to either watch, cheer on, or pile into.

Eventually I ran out of energy watching the antics, stuffed so whistler jerky down my gullet, and passed out in the tower.

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