That night, three goblins disappeared. Vanished. No goodbyes, no traces. Disappearing is something goblins are preternaturally good at. Only one was caught. He was dragged back, and when confronted, he just grinned a sharp-toothed grin and proudly declared he’d rather be breaking rocks than dead.
I didn’t blame him. Not one bit. His file said he had a Metal Affinity. That almost guaranteed being sent as a field tech, a one-way ticket to a short, brutal life.
My own UI band was a masterpiece of subterfuge. The bands themselves were stupidly simple but incredibly durable. At any point, any officer could call up your attributes. So I’d monkeyed with the scanning machines during my fitting and performed a delicate hack on the band itself. You can’t stop it from transmitting, but you can sure as hell feed it false data to transmit.
What I saw when I accessed it was the truth, or a version of it:
Roisin Reynard
Gremlin (Wood-Rank)
? Spiritualism (Novice)
? Dominate Node
? Mend
? Forces (Journeyman)
? Cross-Discipline Sorcery
? Energy Expansion
? Force Screen
? Physical (Novice)
? Durability
? Technology (Apprentice)
? Swarm
? Assemble
Utterly simple, and a death sentence if anyone saw it. ‘Dominate Node’ could be explained away as magitech. ‘Force Screen’ could be fudged. ‘Cross-Discipline Sorcery’ was my ace in the hole—it allowed me to use spiritualism to make tech behave with sorcerous rules at range. I could alter drone coding, rewrite data on the fly, repair an engine from a distance without needing to suit up and wade into the radiation. Unlike a goblin, I wouldn’t survive that exposure long enough for my body to purge the toxins. And it was the key to explaining why my effective drone control range wasn’t a pathetic sixty feet, but closer to six hundred miles, assuming I could plant a node first.
What the band transmitted to any official reader was a carefully crafted fiction:
Roisin Reynard
Gremlin (Wood-Rank)
? Technology (Adept)
? Remote Node
? Drone Control
? Minor Shielding
? Tech Sorcery
? Physical (Journeyman)
? Mend
‘Swarm’ was right out. It screamed energy manipulation, a massive security risk. ‘Drone Control’ was safer. ‘Force Screen’ got downgraded to ‘Minor Shielding,’ a known, if uncommon, tech affinity that let a user extend a bit of personal durability to their gear. If I had to use my screen personally, I could pass it off. Using it at my true range, or on something as big as a starship, would instantly give me away. And ‘Swarm’? That was my nuclear option. An emergency ability that would have me in interrogation before I could blink. It had to stay buried.
The goblins nicknamed me ‘Alien’ almost immediately. I was similar, but off. My skin had a bluish tint next to their forest green. My ears were smaller, my eyes larger and, I liked to think, less beady. My frame was slender where theirs was squat, and I was already subtly taller. I was glad training was only a few months; the difference would only get more pronounced. My smaller mouth, lacking their impressive array of sharp teeth, was easier to hide; I just learned to keep my lips pressed together when I smiled.
The training schedule was a revelation. Half a day of physical training—which was laughably easy compared to the orc-optimized torture of the 132nd—and a half day of classroom work. Military etiquette, drill, hygiene, repair protocols, and a staggering, soul-crushing amount of safety and damage control instruction. It was dull, but it was knowledge. Knowledge was survival.
Goblins were also far less… fragrant than orcs. Even with exercise, we seldom broke a real sweat. Our metabolism was geared towards energy conservation. The chief concern was making sure we ate enough protein to avoid wasting away. Most goblins were naturally indolent—a survival trait—which the petty officers called “laziness.” Orcs stank. It was a biological necessity for them, a way to sweat out toxins. We just… didn’t. As long as we didn’t actively smell, no one cared. It was a godsend. It meant I could get clean privately, which was a non-negotiable personal requirement. Maybe goblins were used to communal living in cramped warrens, but I was not. I needed those few minutes of solitude, of hot water and stolen silence, to maintain the facade.
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The Petty Officer assigned to our company was a surprise. He was a hobgoblin.
Hobgoblins were what happened when a goblin evolved, usually upon hitting a certain essence rank. They gained a physical or ranged affinity and a suite of traits—durability, strength, innate accuracy—that put them on par with heavyworlder orcs. Seeing him was a jolt. It was proof positive that my own genetic lineage was rooted in theirs, a similar evolutionary path, just… further along and not dependent on some external energy ranking.
He was also surprisingly decent. Helpful, even, to those of us who kept our noses clean. After the second week, he called us into his office one by one to discuss our “striking” potentials—what schools we should apply for.
When it was my turn, he gestured to a chair. I sat. He steepled his fingers and looked at me, his gaze sharp and intelligent.
“What the hell are you?” No preamble. Straight to the point.
I offered a small, careful smile. “I am a gremlin, Chief.”
“So what exactly is a gremlin? I can see why they dumped you in here with us, but your traits are off the charts. It looks like, from your chart, you plan on being a drone wrangler, but I have no idea what ‘tech sorcery’ is.”
I kept the smile in place. “TS allows me to utilize a lot of tech specialties at range, Chief. Lets me pull higher-tech equipment into lower-tech rifts as long as the sorcery level is sufficient. Tier three tech, tier six magic, and I can run a tier six tech drone or a golem. With my tech level, I can actually get up to a dozen low-info drones running in a bronze rift. It also… radically increases my control range. Means I don’t have to be right up in the thick of it with the heavy armor.” Forces was more complicated than that, but it treated tech and magic as the same set of energy laws, and tech sorcery, unlike forces, was known and used, mostly by elves. It was predictable, useful, and safe.
He shook his head, a look of pure disbelief on his face. “Then why are you here instead of OCS? Who did you kill?”
This was the story, the cover I’d crafted. I let my smile fade, replaced by a look of weary resignation. “Sorry, Chief. I was press-ganged. Ran afoul of the age of consent laws. Gremlins have a very long adolescence. When the recruiters came around, my parents sent me to live with the fey… I’m barely out of adolescence for my type, but the Unified Planets didn’t care. So I got sent here as a conscript when they caught me. No kills yet.” It was a good lie. Plausible, hard to disprove, and it explained my apparent youth and high skill level—a long, safe period to study.
He nodded slowly, processing it. “So you had a very long learning period and used it to boost yourself. I can see why they mistook you for a goblin. I’d suggest you strike for ship drone tech, but since you have physical, it’s most likely going to get blocked. They are absolutely desperate for rift cleaners, and with your durable frame—whatever it is—you clearly have endurance bonuses. With extra drone range, you are going to be thrown into the lines almost certainly.”
He leaned forward, his voice dropping. “What I’d recommend is remote drone striking. At least that way you won’t get nailed to an assault dropship or sent to a hell world. You’d probably spend a couple of years with a ship detachment, but with your stats, survival shouldn’t be a problem. After you work off your mandatory service, apply for OCS as a ship engineer. On the plus side, with physical, I am betting you survive easily, especially if you can stay back far enough.”
He sighed, a sound of genuine frustration. “Normally at this point, I’d give you a command, but I assume Hobgoblin command doesn’t work on a gremlin?”
I shook my head. “No, Chief, it does not. But you can give me a legal order.”
He almost smiled. “I will give you a suggestion instead. In the end, courage is not a goblin’s friend. Nor yours. If your team is losing, run. Don’t try to rescue them; you will likely get killed, even as a heavyworlder. No one expects anything different, and if you do, you won’t get black-marked for it as the sole survivor any more than any other goblin. We goblinoids have a rep, and that rep gets us mistreated by almost every officer. Lean into it. You might as well get some use out of it. Dismissed!”
His advice was cold, pragmatic, and absolutely right. It settled in my gut like a stone.
