Motorguns rattled off hundreds of rounds; they fired black explosive shells or cold iron stakes or ballistic spheres capped with razor shrapnel. Shards of bone laced with necrotic energies sought out living targets, while short-range missiles filled with blessed napalm powders blossomed into mushroom pattern throughout the sky.
Explosions and bullets collided against outer hull armor. Motorgun rounds bounced away from spirit-charged shields infused to the Bloodhawks. Southern Claw incendiaries detonated against hardened shadow carapaces.
For a few moments that stuck in Cross' mind like an eternity, it seemed as if neither side could do the other harm.
That illusion was shattered just moments later.
His spirit swam hot around him, and she scalded his skin with her bristling destructive excitement. Kane and Ramsey braced for close-range fighting. Ekko carefully twisted in her seat as she piloted the warship. Cross clenched his fists till his hands were white, and he ground his teeth until they sounded ready to crack. He put one hand out and grabbed the guide pole located behind the cockpit. He took a breath, and held it. He was ready to fall into the white void.
Vessels crashed into one another like Brahma bulls. Metal on metal, and metal on flesh. Fire exploded in an avalanche of engines and speed. Ships bounced and curled away from one another. Sparks turned the air into a rain of flames. Motorguns blasted armor to shreds. Spiked hulls tore into each other, ripped sheets of metal away so that the crews within the vessels flew out into the open sky.
By the time Cross released his held breath, four ships had been reduced to ruins of metal and exploding skin. There was no way to tell them apart once they exploded. They dissipated like paper, barely visible through the vampire vessel’s dirty window. Vicious noise followed seconds after the destruction occurred, as if delayed. Clouds of dismal blood vapor filled the air where the airships had been.
Bodies, living and dead and undead, fell through the sky like rag dolls. Some fell into turbine engines, which summarily exploded as the bodies ejected out of the other end like flaming husks of jerky. Other bodies smashed into hulls and came apart like sacks of meat, or else they fell headlong into viewports, stuck there as the vessels careened wildly out of control.
Some fired side arms as they fell. The living cried out; the undead fell silent, their eyes cast into the void of sky above them. Caustic black clouds trailed the vampire vessels and cloaked everything in a choking haze.
Cross was only vaguely aware of his own screams as he sent his spirit through the walls. His muscles burned and his eyes watered.
His spirit drove through a warship's bulkhead like a spear made of hardened midnight. He felt the power core tear apart beneath her meteor sharp edge and balloon out in a dire necrotic explosion. Fire filled the vessel and incinerated undead flesh before it blasted through the viewport and out of the rents in the hull. The ship fell from the sky in a hail of scorched metal and bone.
Ferocious booms shook the air and filled it with clouds of explosive smoke.
The Panzer.
Its mobility allowed it to avoid becoming an easy target, but the airships were just fast enough that it was almost impossible to get a quality shot.
The rapid barrage of 20mm shells fired from the Flak 38 carried into the clouds. They hammered low-flying warships as they swooped down and dropped incendiary missiles onto the ice city.
Great frozen structures cracked with a sound like breaking bones. Clouds of icy shrapnel flew into the still air. Undead napalm spread through frigid streets, leaving trails of fire and steam.
Cross’ heart hammered. The ship lurched and twisted as Ekko flew in behind a vampire warship and rammed its aft side with the bladed plates on the front of their stolen vessel. The enemy ship spun away, careening like a lost top through the air.
“
Our guys won’t shoot
us
, right?” Kane shouted. The noise in the ship had grown to a din.
“
Probably not!” Ramsey yelled back. “We’re in an older ship! They look a little different!”
“‘
A little’?” Kane repeated. Ramsey just nodded. “Thanks…I don’t feel any better!” Kane said.
The explosions and the roar of the engines and the hammering staccato rhythm of massive shells made it so that at first none of them noticed the hole in their starboard side. Smoke and wind blasted across their faces and made it impossible to hear. Cross looked out and saw a shred of pale blue sky through the ripped wall.
“
Incoming!” Merrick shouted. His M16 was ready before Cross even made it to the gunner's alcove.
The vampire's second wave, the Razorwings, suddenly filled the sky. Their jagged wings unfolded and arced forward, presenting barbed tips laced with venom and fire. Bloodhawks that had already been torn open presented the easiest targets, as their hulls left soldiers exposed to the armored reptile’s flesh-tearing wings.
The Razorwings swooped with grace and agility that defied their size, and they moved with a sense of utter fearlessness shared with their masters. They ripped men out of open hulls and threw them into the sky. Soldiers flailed and bled as they fell, and some were snatched up mid-air and torn apart by hooked beaks and claws.
Purple and black blood spattered in the air as chain guns and cannons cut through the Razorwing flotilla. Great squeals sounded, and wings shred like paper. A Bloodhawk plowed straight into a Razorwing with its ram-plate blades and pierced its chest like a host of lances, but then the pilot was unable to dislodge the ship from the beast, and they both went down.
Arcane fire coalesced and took the shape of a great winged humanoid, an impressive juggernaut of dark flame. The signature of Black's magic was almost impossible to miss.
Cross smelled charcoal and flames and blood as he slipped into the gunner's console. He heard Merrick rattle off a count, three Bloodhawks down, four vampire warships, four Razorwings, ground troops taking heavy fire from the Coffin. He felt the ship buckle and turn, slammed his shoulder hard into the steel alcove as Ekko made a sharp dive, felt his stomach lurch, felt sweat run down his brow and beneath his shirt, felt his boots clamp hard against the back of the bent recess that reminded him of a twisted doorway made for some caricature of a human, some creepy vampire thing with hunched shoulders and an oversized head, a Gory or a Burton character, and he remembered his childhood, his dad, the beach, the waves
Snow burning on fire
and as his hand fell to the panel he breathed in his spirit as something
noisy shrapnel metal blast rips through the ship and he is torn from his body
His vision is an arcane stream that floats through the air like a jet of fire. He is over the battle and inside of it at once, a detached carrion bird, a wisp of thought. The dark steel cannons on the warship’s turret turn and rotate at his command, an extension of his senses.
Warships dive in and out of dark clouds of smoke, steam and blood. Gouts of corrosive red flame eddy like pyroclastic balloons in the still winter sky. Bullets and blades soar through the air in thick and deadly streams. Razorwings dive and twist around deathtraps of falling steel. Artillery shells puncture armor plate and create pockets of exploding smoke.
The Coffin floats in low beneath the cover of warships and Razorwings and launches short-range ballistics loaded with electrified nails and spheres filled with explosive gas. Fire and steel splatter and spread through the icy city; the blasts crash into glacier structures and create unearthly waves of steam.
The Panzer shoots down one of the Razorwings, turns it into a splatter of reptilian innards and skin that collapses violently to the ground. Three other Razorwings overtake the Panzer, pick its crew away from the damaged shell and latch onto the gun and twist and pull until it fires
misfires the shell goes off inside the turret and kills everything in and around it in a mass of shrapnel and blood.
Cross trains the guns on the Coffin and fires. The roar of the jackhammer cannons is deafening as they launch explosive dark shells. The shots batter the Coffin’s outer armor, but the guns can't do enough damage to reach the hordes that are hidden inside. Ekko brings their ship back into the sky.
Everywhere he looks there is fire and bodies and blood. Ships fly and burn. A missile rips through a Bloodhawk and turns it into a ball of flame. An injured Razorwing flies into a vampire warship and sends them both spinning out of control in a trail of smoke and blood mist, and they crash into an ice dome that explodes into crystal shards.
The once pale city turns black and red.
Danica Black's spirit holds her vessel aloft. She and Cole stand at the door, where they and a pair of soldiers fire small-arms at a dying Razorwing whose claws have latched into the rim of the engines. Cross trains his guns on the beast’s hindquarters, which dangle down well below the craft, and he fires until the body finally falls. Black and Harker's Bloodhawk is badly damaged. It trails smoke and lists to its port side.
Cross blasts through another Razorwing and splatters its reptilian body apart. Its vampire rider drifts away and hovers in the air for a moment before it calmly falls to the distant ground.
There are only three Southern Claw ships left, including Harker’s vessel and his own. He sees no sign of the M2 or the Flak 38. There are still three Razorwings, the Coffin and a vampire warship that need to be dealt with.
He sends his thoughts to Ekko, and without a word she brings the vessel around. Their warship is also damaged, and it leaks blood-red fluid. It moves slower than before, and the roar of its engines has been reduced to a wheeze.
The Coffin flies close to the ground. It bears down on the M2, which races across the ice as the soldiers in the truck fire assault rifles and B.A.R.s at the command ship’s heavily armored hull.
Cross aims the guns and fires. Static booms perforate the air and rip away chunks of steel plate. Fragments of flaming metal fall to the ground. Blasts erupt out of the Coffin's bladed aft and port cannons and paint the sky black.
Explosions rock the warship. Cross tastes metal and rotting fumes. The air outside scalds and scars.
A Razorwing collides with the back of their ship. Arcane blades tear through the beast’s skin as Black’s spirit attacks.
The men on the M2 have rocket launchers. The Coffin moves straight towards them. It flies just above the ground, as its vertical lift has been impaired by the damage that Cross has dealt to it. Ekko flies them in low, as well, and they and the M2 flank the command ship.
The Coffin’s razor cannons fire living shrapnel, necrotic and intelligent blades that fly and seek targets like flocks of malevolent ravens. Cross feels cold wind and black breath. He hears Kane roar as he blasts the aggressive shrapnel with a shotgun in one hand and the M16 in the other just moments before it reaches their ship.
Cross fires at the Coffin's damaged port side, as do Crylos' missile men. Explosive shells claw and burst just as the vessel’s guns blast back at them.
The Coffin is on fire. It descends and lands hard on the icy ground just inside the city. It smashes apart ancient ice structures. The earth shakes as the heavy vessel screams to a halt.
Kane has dealt with the shrapnel, but their ship is losing power. The engines moan and spew forth thick plumes of grim smoke. The wind stings as they bear down on the now grounded command ship.
Flames leap all across its surface. Cross senses the presence of narcotic gasses and fuel tanks that are on the brink of detonation. The Coffin's smaller guns drive the M2 back as they smash open the windshield and perforate its tires. The undead vehicle’s bay doors open.
Cross sees undead
–
black clad vampire shock troops, red clad Shadowclaws, war wights with enormous talons and pale smooth bodies, zombies with shields and swords and hammers, child-sized ghouls in feral packs, a floating kaithoren with dangling tentacles and six mouths made of circular razors, bone constructs of many limbs and saw blades and pyroclastic eyes, hordes of creatures, a legion, and Cross takes a breath, turns the guns, and fires at the opening in the ship, hoping to mow them down before they can do any damage.
But a Razorwing flies out of nowhere and intercepts the blast. Its body explodes into a greasy missile that collides with their ship.
Spinning flaming out of control weightless dizzy falling Cross fires and pulls in his spirit uses her to shield the others as air and metal falls and crashes into cold hard ground
Cross fell back into the physical world with a painful jolt. Metal pressed against his back, and his body had twisted and contorted into a painful position there in the narrow entrance to the gunner’s alcove.
The bitter odor of smelted metal, gunpowder and burning fuel filled the interior of the ship. Despite the cold in the air, a glaze of sweat covered his face and soaked his shirt, which clung to both his armor and his skin. Pale light spilled through jagged holes in the starboard side of the vessel, where blasted metal had torn into the cabin like curved claws.