I was more than a little peeved that our first orbital launch, despite a solid fuel cook-off on the ground, was still more successful than my doomed NuEarth moon mission. And that included the several crews being vaporized. On Earth, our rocket disaster with just a couple deaths would have been a national tragedy for years. For tribe Apollo, losing 100 goblins in a flash of rocket flames was just another Tuesday in goblin tech development.

With our current tribal population, their loss would be replaced three times over by the next morning and goblins always looked ahead to new births more than they let past losses weigh on them. There was a certain sort of strength that came with their ability to completely reject a sense of loss in favor of looking to the future. But I suppose a creature as short-lived as the average goblin would have to evolve that way to not be constantly crushed beneath a mountain of grief.

But the mission wasn't just about getting a rocket off the ground, it was about using the data we'd collected over the last weeks to deliver a useful payload into orbit. And while we had our target altitude, heading, and speed, we couldn't know for sure—nor could we be certain how Raphina's gravity would affect satellites passing between the planet and the oversized moon. I moved from the mission control side of the pyramid to the observatory, which was an enclosed dome now, to protect the light-sensitive Midnighters from the sun.

One of the attendants greeted me, folding at the waist in their unusual insectoid bow. "Apollo, king. Welcome. Priestess awaits."

Priestess Cla'thn sat at the viewing aperture of her arcane telescope, which was swung to the eastern sky. We'd timed the launch for the 90 minute orbit to circle back during the eclipse, in order to give the Midnighters the best chance of spotting it. As the sun passed behind the moon, the canopy of the observatory was opened, and the dim twilight spilled in. I approached the priestess, who startled when I cleared my throat behind her.

"Apologies, King Apollo."

"Easy," I said. "What's got you riled up?"

Cla'thn rubbed her hairs together, producing a note like a low violin chord. I took it to be a sort of calming ritual. "Raphina's shadow presses on us. It is… not easy, losing our sense of events. We of the star readers all feel it."

I circled to the viewfinder. "That's your culture's whole edge, yeah? Reflections in the stars and ripples of the future? I suppose it'd be like if my people lost smart phones and internet—not that you have any context for that." I huffed a laugh. "We always said 3 days without essential services, internet, or plumbing and society would crumble. I suppose you're doing better than my world's humans would."

"That is some small assurance. It is still hard to adjust to the idea that your world also has human, and that you were once one."

"That's been bugging me, too," I said. "We've got theories of convergent evolution, where a dominant bipedal, highly mobile, dexterous, tool-using, large brained mammal is almost inevitable. But for your world's humans and mine to be nearly identical is a bit much of a coincidence." I hadn't seen them up super close in the City of Brass, but from what I could tell, they checked all the boxes for humans: tall, 5 fingers, a mix of hair, eye, and beard colors that wouldn't have been out of place on Earth. No hooves or anything.

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I waved it away. "Can you see anything yet?"

Priestess Cla'thn lowered her eye to the aperture. The glass had a film over it to dim the light passing through the scope even further. Apparently, even the eclipses were uncomfortably bright for a species that had spent most of its evolutionary path in underground colonies.

"I see nothing yet," she admitted.

I sighed. Maybe we hadn't had enough fuel after the booster snafu. Or maybe Raphina's gravity had yoinked the payload out of a stable freefall. Heck, maybe it had all exploded as soon as it was over the horizon.

"Wait a moment, King Apollo. I see the shine of a star where there ought not be such."

"What? Let me see!" I said, moving up to the aperture. "Erm, please," I added.

The Midnighter priestess moved aside and I removed the filter to peer through the aperture at full brightness.

"That's it!" I shouted. "It worked!"

The small satellite caught the rays of the sun on its reflective surface as it came up from the horizon. Within a few minutes it should be within radio range—if it was working. I left the observatory and ran back to mission control.

"Anything yet?" I asked my chief satellite traffic controller. The sparker taskmaster, Harris, fiddled with the dials and switches on his console. "Startin' to get somethin' boss!"

<Goblin technology unlocked: Space rock'ems>

<Goblin technology unlocked: Satty-lights>

<Goblin technology unlocked: Solar charge-ems>

Ok, photovoltaic cells were still out of reach. But it turned out the Ifrit had one half of a solution to the problem of how to power our satellites. The defensive crystals they had used to ward off the null devil took in power from sunlight. We combined that with the electricity generating organ from a Thundercleave, and boom: instant solar capacitor.

I watched mission control's eyes glaze over as the new technology propagated through the room. Meanwhile, I leaned over and checked the responses from the satellite on the ground station. The altitude was decaying slightly, but the limited fuel we had on board could be used to course correct. Most importantly, its speed was good and its flight was stable. The long antenna we'd mounted to it could now be used to extend our radios even further for a limited time by acting as a line-of-sight relay.

As a matter of fact, one of the radio operators was listening intently to a message that was coming down the line.

"Uh, boss?" he asked.

"What is it?"

"You oughta hear this report yerself."

I made my way over to him and took the ear cups.

"Go for Apollo," I said.

"Boss? Hey boss! Yeah, we're uh, everything's good!" said the wrangler on the other end.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. I knew exactly what that meant. "What was your assignment?" I asked.

"Keep an eye on the humans during the launch."

"And?"

"…keep a safe distance."

"Where are you now?"

"Uh… circling above one of the boost 'ems from the launch. The ones you said would fall in the ocean. Looks like its in good shape, too!"

"That's fantastic!"

"Yeah, yeah… The wizard tower it landed on doesn't look so great, though."

I stopped. "The what?"

"Yeah there's a bunch of the big guys with swords all around it. Lot's of folks looking around and pointing at us."

"Are you in Habberport right now?" I asked.

There was a pause. I checked the dial for the satellite signal strength just to make sure we were still receiving.

"Ah, we may have interpreted the 'safe distance' bit. It's definitely safer without a wizard, yeah? So it should be fine!"

It should be fine that we just crushed a wizard's tower with a giant metal tube that fell 20 kilochooms through the air? I put a palm through my fur. Those boosters were supposed to drop off over water and splash into the sea. The early cookoff in the pit had meant they were lower and closer when they detached from the rocket. Enough so that Habberport, a coastal city, had been unlucky enough to be the recipient.

"It's not just wizards you have to worry about," I said. "There are also those dragon riders we saw. They could come after you at any time."

"No worries on that front, boss. The other booster landed on their launch pad."

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