My Big Goblin Space Program [Isekai, Faction-building, Reincarnation, Goblins]

Taquoho and his fighters had been meant to buy us time to get defenses set up and begin drilling. The fact they'd also managed to take down one of the skyborne null devils was a bonus. But those jets were also a one-and-done deal, lacking any kind of landing gear in favor of making them as light and sleek as possible. The rockets simply didn't have the payload capacity for a reusable air wing.

The tight formation of jets passed overhead and towards the black smudge on the plains to the south. We had a clear view of the approaching swarm, with a large crawling null devil that resembled the whistler in both appearance and its zig-zagging movement. There was no doubt left in my mind that the null devils had taken on the appearance of Ravan creatures, likely influenced by the magic from System that twisted those creatures in the first place. You are what you eat, after all. I also had no doubt that this black obsidian whistler was both tougher and deadlier than the real thing.

But we'd come a long way since fighting the whistler. The light Ifrit aircraft stayed low and fast. Once they reached the ground swarm, the fighters disgorged every remaining rocket on their racks. Dozens of explosions rocked through the swarm, some of them hitting the null-whistler. Black, chitinous bodies flew into the air from the impacts. The Ifrit climbed back out, looped around, and then set their courses and maxed their throttles.

The radio station at the center of the camp burst into multicolored flames. Rather than an electrical fire, it was the Ifrit pilots bailing out of their fighters before they deliberately crashed their aircraft into the swarm of crawling nymphs. More explosions wracked the black, insectoid creatures as the remaining fuel in any unfired, faulty rockets still on the pylons detonated. If anything, this second attack was even more devastating than the rocket run.

"Get those war forms running!" I shouted.

Goblins ran, carrying brass jars up to the platform where Ifrit waited in the radio equipment, and then to the hunched metal bodies of the gas-powered war forms. They slotted the jars into larger ceramic containers and closed the hatches on them. One by one, the Ifrit battle suits started to belch black smoke from their kerosene engines and straighten.

The foremost of them stomped its way over to me, and a tinny voice issued from a vox-box built into the machine. "It is good to see you again, my friend. We now stand united and will see this to the end."

"Let's just hope it's a good end. How do you like your new pants?"

"Pants?" asked Taquoho. "We are familiar with the mortal habit of clothing, but referring to such a time-honored martial artifice as the war form to be the equivalent of simple pantaloons is both crude and reductive." He extended his war form's hands, where long, barbed chains were looped around a track and metal motors. He engaged the motors and I watched as the chainsaws spun up to a blur. "Still, I suppose a mortal might say that they 'fit like a glove', and it be somewhat astute a metaphor."

I grinned. "Better than going into battle in a birthday suit," I said.

The war form tilted. "We are unfamiliar with the cultural garment of… ah, you are invoking the mortal concept of nudity. Very clever. But even these advanced vessels will prove a poor shield against a full-size devil."

"Don't worry," I said, pointing south, "Just get ready to put those things to use. And bail out back to Spinefish if things get dicey."

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Taquoho lumbered to the southern side of the site, followed by the rest of his exile kin. At least a hundred goblins chased after them, climbing up to the platforms on the war forms to man the built-in guns and recoilless rifles.

I got the attention of every railgun operator at the site.

"All guns on the southern crawler. Fire at will."

The hobgoblin poachers manning each of the stations saluted and then turned their muzzles southward. Armstrong and I joined Taquoho along with my radio operator, climbing up on the back of Taquoho's war form to the platform behind its shoulders. So much dirt and rock had already been excavated from the tunneler that Buzz and his builders had used it to build a fortifying perimeter wall of packed dirt shored up by scrap from the wrecked modules. I held on to the self-cycling war form gun as Taquoho ascended the short wall.

The null-whistler had drawn within a few kilochooms, still zig-zagging ahead of its centipede-like nymphs. The first railgun fired, and the shot cracked overhead as a rail spike split the air. It hit the whistler just aft of its skull plate and punched through. A second and third shot followed, and then the rest of the guns just a few seconds later. The rear legs went dead, and most of its body became an anchor. The head section pulled against the dead weight, jerking and lunging until the length of the thing parted in a fountain of black goo. It howled at us with its unearthly, grinding voice, and kept coming with what little of its body still remained.

"Gross," I said.

"An accurate assessment," added Taquoho.

One of the scrapper gunners ran up to me. "King, two guns down for good. Got the other devils in sight. What should I tell the lads?"

I looked down from the platform. "Tell them to focus on the threats from the other directions. We'll hold here." I picked up the radio. "What's the ETA on Spinefish?" I asked.

"Twenty minutes, boss," said Eileen. "I've already got four more targets lined up for them. We're down 3 guns up here, but I think we can get 2 of 'em fixed."

I almost did a double take. "Did you say four targets for Spinefish?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah, boss. Big swarms comin'. Looks like a black flood sweeping over the plains."

I ran a claw through the fur on my head. "Alright. Make sure John keeps one in reserve, like we talked about. Promo, where we at?"

My igni chief responded on his drill rig's radio. "We're still goin', hoss. Drill's churnin' and that heartbeat's gettin' so loud it's shakin' the tunnel. Figure we must be close."

"Alright," I said. "Just keep going. We'll hold off as long as we can."

The gun buggies at the perimeter wall began to spit fire at the advancing line of nymphs, who were still coming at full speed and had passed up their wounded sire. I leveled my own self-cycling gun and started to let them have it, while Armstrong unslung his trusty double-barreled lever action and laid into the nymphs as well. The gun rattled in my hands as it spat rockettes. Our combined fusillade tore through hundreds of the young parasites, further thinning the swarm as they charged in. They hit the wall, and it shook beneath the feet of the war form.

Armstrong swapped his rifle for a spear and lofted it overhead. "'Ere we go, lads!" he shouted. "Now it's gettin' good!"

The nymphs angled up, digging spiked feet into the earthen works and beginning to ascend, only to meet the spinning blades of the Ifrit and supercharged spears from the poachers on the battlements. While tough, the juvenile null devils hadn't nearly the fortitude of their parents, yet, and the Ifrit war forms carved through the swarm with broad sweeping strokes.

It wasn't completely one-sided. The war form to our left was overwhelmed by the crawler nymphs and knocked prone. I angled my gun to the side and shot off the nymphs tearing their way through the armor, but the Ifrit panicked and escaped via its onboard radio. The form went still, and Taquoho shifted left to cover more of the battlements while Armstrong fought off the nymphs attempting to take the backside of our own war form.

What crawlers slipped through were met by the builders and poachers, ready and eager to throw themselves into the fight. After what felt like ages, the swarm thinned enough for me to breathe. 4 of our 25 war forms were down and several others had been damaged. But the southern crawler swarm had slowed to a trickle.

"King Apollo, this level of attrition cannot be maintained indefinitely," said Taquoho.

"No," I said, thinking of what Eileen had said. A black flood is coming over the plains. "It can't.