Chapter Thirty-Five - Looting

Clin looked a little green as I held out a knife towards him, handle-first.

“I don’t know,” he began.

I glared at him, then flipped the knife over and poked at the goblin. “Right over here, under the sternum,” I said, tapping the spot with the tip. “You don’t want to actually hit the sternum itself. It’s too hard, But the ribs right next to it crack easily. Just stomp on the ribcage if you need to. Then you cut along here, and reach in. You should feel it. The core tends to quiver a bit, and it’s warmer.”

“Warmer?” he repeated.

I nodded. “Body’s only a few minutes old. Still warm,” I explained. Reaching up, I handed him the knife again, then nodded the side of my head to the bodies.

Clin had been kind enough to let me volunteer him for core-picking duty. We’d started by lining up the bodies in a nice row, then I shoved those without a magical core aside.

“I’m going to go digging for loot,” I said.

I patted the elf on the shoulder as I walked past him. He’d figure it out. For all that he was a bit of a pansy, he had a tough stomach to him, I was sure. And if he didn’t, then he was probably clever enough to take his mask off before emptying his dinner.

Started with the pure-goblin mech. Not that there was really such a thing. This one had two miss-matched legs connected, somehow, to the lower torso of an honest-to-the-gods warmech chassis. Just the lower end though. The upper half, crumpled and wrecked when the mech fell, was all goblin.

I ducked into the mech and started looking around. The shaman that had been piloting this thing went down when the mecha fell onto its front. A bar rammed right through his chest. Didn’t bother trying to grab a core from him.

There wasn’t all that much for loot. From a couple of little guns at the back. Grease-guns. They had a long tube over their barrel, and an adjustable stock with a box under it. No trigger, instead there was a pistol-grip in the middle that you’d pull into your shoulder, and a crank on the side. A quarter-turn would eject a round, another would move the ammo belt, another would load the next round, and the last quarter-turn fired.

Stupidly inaccurate, and they fired these dinky little five millimeter rounds that the gnomes liked. Still, the box could hold nearly a hundred rounds and with good momentum, I’d seen some idiots popping out three rounds a second.

Popular with farmers and the like. The noise would scare most anything off, and with enough rounds down-range you’d hit eventually.

I flipped the gun over. It was a bit tarnished, lacked any oiling and looked like it’d been dropped in the sand. Still, it didn’t look like something a goblin ought to have, let alone two of them.

Ammo boxes were full too.

“Gods damn the gnomes,” I said.

There was less and less doubt about it, the bastards were arming the goblins.

But what in the hells for?

I rummaged around a little more. The engine was a smoking mess, and was damned near out of fuel already. Found some ammo in the shaman’s little pouch, some I might even be able to use. The mech itself was armed with a semi-fixed cannon at the top.

Grinning, I yanked the shell out of the gun’s breech and spun it around. Twenty-five millimeter shells, nice and brass and shiny. Just the sort of round Rusty’s revolver used. Bit piddly for a mecha’s main gun, but I wasn’t complaining.

The mech had a little tin box with eleven rounds in it, the one in the cannon made a dozen.

I dragged it out of the carcase, looked around to make sure we were still alone, then hefted it up and headed for Rusty. Free ammo was the best sort.

Next was the gnomish utility mech.

My suspicions about the gnomes giving it away weren’t quite confirmed as I looked around, but they were getting closer. The inside was too orderly. Sure, a goblin or two had been in here for a while, but all the little cupboard and lockers on the sides were empty.

No one who used a mech for any extended period left the glove box empty. Tools and papers, knick-knacks and little souvenirs from home. A pilot’s personality would splatter itself all over the inside of a mecha after a while.

Even if it was sold recently, there should have been cloth or junk left from someone. Instead, every place that wasn’t touched by the goblins was clean. Someone had scrubbed this mech.

I found another case of ammo, this time for the revolvers the mech had been using. Not the right size for any of my guns, but worth a few silvers all the same.

“You done?” I asked Clin as I stepped out.

The elf turned towards me. His hands bloody, and his arms held away from him as if one touch would spell his end.

“I think so,” he said.

I shook my head and dumped my loot in Rusty before joining the elf. He’d actually managed to pull a couple of cores from the bodies. “Huh, well done,” I said. “There’s a knack to doing it, but you’ll get it with practice.”

“No offence, but I’d really rather not get that practice if I can.”

I snorted and smacked him on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s get out of the sun. Still a few hours of daylight to burn.”

“Are we going to make it to Daggerwren tonight?” Clin asked as he jogged after me.

“Maybe,” I said. “Really doubt it though. Do you know what the moon’s like tonight? I’ve lost track.”

“I... don’t, no,” he said.

I sucked on my teeth. “We’ll see.”

Getting back into Rusty--with Clin being real ginger about touching anything with his dirty hands until he found a cloth to clean himself with. Wasted a bit of water too, but I left him to it--was a slow affair. My tour around the mech had revealed a few new scratches and dings, some of them in ugly spots. My left shoulder would need replacing, I figured.

I jacked in, ignored all the new warnings that Rusty brought up when I started him up, then we were off once more.

There was a strange thing about being cautious. See, if you slow down to look under every rock for a scorpion, eventually a snake’s going to bite your rear.

So, while I kept my eyes peeled for trouble, I didn’t do so while standing still. I pushed Rusty along at a good clip, marching just shy of what I’d start to consider a little reckless. It ate up the distance, and maybe even made up for some of the time we’d lost.

I also changed directions, turning more northwards. Still heading towards Daggerwren, but on a path that would have us crossing a particular landmark sooner rather than later.

“Those goblins,” Clin asked eventually.

“Yeah?”

“That was abnormal, wasn’t it?”

I nodded. “It sure was. Not seeing goblins, mind you. That’s half my job. They’re a pest at the very best of times. A menace otherwise. No, it’s their equipment.”

“That was a gnomish mech,” he said.

“Seen one before?”

“Maybe. It’s mostly the design philosophy that gave it away. Low centre of gravity, tracks instead of just using legs. The arms too. Thin and long. Very boxy under all the goblin... additions to the design.”

“Hmm. Yeah, that was a gnome utility mech. One that looked clean enough for something goblins were using. And those guns were all gnome-made. Not too old too. Also, those boxes of shells?”

“Gnome made as well?”

“I don’t rightly know, actually,” I admitted. “But goblins don’t carry their ammo in fancy crates.”

Clin was quiet for a while. “This is bad,” he said with the obvious air of someone making a dumb understatement.

“It sure is,” I said. “I’m thinking we ought to find ourselves as far away from the gnomes as possible as soon as possible.”

“I need to warn my clan. We need to warn everyone,” he said.

I considered it. He was probably right, but I wasn’t keen on sticking my nose in that sort of business. No more than I already had. Still, I’d write a letter to some of the folk in Galenook. I was fond of a few of the older folk there.

“We’ll see about that later,” I replied. “First, we make it to Daggerwren.”

“Should we be stopping for the night?” he asked.

It was getting darker already, but I’d spotted my goal up ahead.

The Long Knife river sliced a furrow into the landscape. And at the end of that river, I knew, was Daggerwren.

“We’ll be walking through the night,” I said.

***