At the end of my tether, I saw a bright flash, and then a half-circle of smaller explosions as the charges set into the transition ring blew in a cascade of compressed scat and bomb-fruit juice. The rest of the ring and the mangled debris from the first stage tumbled away. One small goblin space suit, knocked clear of the rocket by the blast, tumbled untethered through the sky.

"Nozzle's clear from here, boss-man," called Neil. "I know the way home. Let 'em know I'm taking the scenic route."

Armstrong continued to pull me in. As soon as I was close enough, he snatched me into the airlock and hauled the hatch closed. The compartment began to repressurize, and sound returned to the world.

"Chuck, I got 'im onboard," called Armstrong. "Do it now!"

I struggled, but Armstrong was far stronger than an ordinary forest goblin—let alone a legless goblin king. He subdued me easily, overriding my protests with his secretive service skills, until the second stage motor kicked on and flattened us both against the bulkhead of the airlock.

Neil had gotten the job done. He'd given up his ticket to the moon in order to make sure the rest of us got there. I gasped for air against the bulkhead, tangled up with Armstrong as our rocket carried us further away from Neil.

We had to burn hotter and faster to make up for the time we spent ballistic. The rest of the launch I spent in a state of near blackout, blood and fire pounding in my ears as I struggled to stay conscious. But finally, the second stage motor cut off and I drifted free of the bulkhead, back into the weightless feeling of free fall.

"There she is boss." said Armstrong.

I pushed my helmet against the glass, looking at the hodgepodge space station we'd cobbled together from the series of rocket launches. Myriad Station. It looked more like a debris field of space junk loosely connected by tethers and docking bridges. A dozen distinct craft had been used in its creation, adding their compartments and contraptions even as they contributed air and fuel. All the equipment we would need on Raphina, and the goblins to make the impossible happen. Though, we'd already made the impossible happen as far as I was concerned. We were in space.

I laughed, cackling in my helmet, even as I tugged at the buckles securing it. I twisted and pulled the helmet off, releasing it to watch it float in the air of the compartment. Armstrong pulled his own off.

System.

<Awaiting query>

Show me my hunter hierarchy

A window popped up with the list of my hunters. Neil still populated the top slot, which meant he was still alive—though he had a long way to fall, his suit had held for the high-altitude drop and his fall damage immunity should protect him from a hard landing. And we had people in the majority of the island subcontinent that was Lanclova. Whether he fell to the forests, the mountains, the swamp, or the desert, we could get him back. Even if he landed in Habberport itself, he would be able to make his way back to Tribe Apollo.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The hatch at the front of the compartment opened, and Eileen drifted back through with Buzz and a handful of other goblins.

"Nice job, boss," said Sally. She drifted over to the docking thruster controls by the airlock window and took position. Buzz offered a salute and went to check to make sure none of his materials had come unstowed in the tumble. I pushed off a bulkhead and floated over to Sally.

Through the window, the distance between our ship and the station continued to decrease. I let Sally have the pitch and yaw controls while I took the roll and lateral controls. From this position, the controls moved the rocket very differently. Being that we were now at a 90 degree angle from the cockpit of the control module, it was now like driving a schoolbus side-on with micro-thrust movements.

"Easy," I said, feathering the thruster control to slow our approach. I kept an eye on the etched reticle in the window that married up to the target plate on the airlock of the station. "Eileen, give me 6 degrees pitch down."

My chief pilot twisted her stick and our view of the station rotated, then twisted the opposite direction to cancel it out. I moved my own roll controls to get us lined up better, and continued to feather the lateral thrusters. We continued making smaller adjustments as we approached. I tried to ignore the windows on the station module, which were becoming clogged with blue, furry faces as they pressed their noses against the glass. The target plate began to fill the outer ring of the reticle.

"10 chooms," I said, adjusting our bank slightly. "Armstrong, get ready," I said.

A quick touch of Eileen's yaw controls got us perfectly positioned, and I slowed our approach to a crawl. My scrapper chief floated over and took hold of the mechanical actuator. The target plate completely filled the outer ring of my reticle, and I pulled back on the lateral thrusters as our two airlocks made contact. I bumped my face against the glass as my body wanted to keep moving. At a hand signal, Armstrong threw the lever, engaging our locks and joining the two spacecraft together.

The goblins in the compartment began to cheer—both the ones who had come from the command module and the stowaways that began to pull themselves out of cargo containers and storage lockers, out from behind equipment panels, and one that wriggled out from behind the air piping.

"Welcome to Myriad," I said. It took a minute for the vacuum between the two airlock doors to pressurize. But once it did, I opened up the hatches. On the other side, the goblins already spaceborn hauled open their own airlock doors, and a tide of floating, fuzzy hellions floated over, grinning and squawking and patting us (and each other) on the back for a job well done. I made my way against the flow, pulling myself into the next module.

The station interior was packed with goblins of all variants. Hundreds of the ultra light-weight creatures had ridden the rockets up, and the sleeping mounds on the station had continued to produce new goblins, as well. A rainbow sheen of soft fire clung to many surfaces as well, and some smaller legged Ifrit vessels crawled along the bulkheads. I pulled myself through the mob, over to one of the windows in the module and pressed my face to it.

Myriad traversed the Ravan sky in a low orbit, carrying us all the way around the planet roughly every hour and a half. Already, the continent of Lanclova was drifting towards the horizon while we passed over lands that were unfamiliar to me beyond the vague shapes of the continents the Midnighters had showed me. And for the first time, Raphina hung not directly overhead, but appearing to draw closer and closer to Rava as we continued our journey around it. I watched in silence despite the frenzy of activity on the station until the moon dipped all the way below the horizon. The empty sky above Rava looked wrong without that pink and blue orb. The empty, black abyss of space surrounded both the planet and Myriad, and all I could hope for was that it didn't end up swallowing us all.

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