Invasion

Chapter 8

Engineer Karn had made good use of his time alone aboard the wounded ship. Outwardly, he crouched down, impersonating an inert engine module. The trick fooled Phyrexian crews. Inwardly, Karn activated the ship's healing routines. Once Weatherlight was skyworthy again, a jolting takeoff ripped her mooring lines from the ground. Karn rolled the ship to fling Phyrexians from her deck. He ignited her ray cannons and blasted his way into the brig. Together, he and Weatherlight had rescued the crew.

Now, aloft, Karn proved more powerful still. In flight, the ship was his body. In it, he charged across the heavens like a thoroughbred. A pack of Phyrexian ships howled in his wake, but none could even approach him.

Weatherlight ruled the skies beyond Benalia City. In a series of lightning attacks, she strafed troop transport ships and cruisers, pinning them in their deployment arc. None could get off the ground. The cruisers' heavy batteries hurled flack into the sky, too slow to strike the shrieking vessel. Phyrexians scrambled from damaged engines and melted cannonades. They were no match for Weatherlight's crew.

Sisay worked her own magic at the helm. She soared down the throat of Phyrexian cannonades, hopping Weatherlight away before plasma split the air. The incandescent stuff narrowly missed the ship, instead blanketing pursuers. Flinging off hunks of magma,

Phyrexian fighters collapsed and plunged from the sky. They impacted cruisers docked below or troops off-loading from them.

Hanna, meanwhile, pinpointed the Phyrexian vessels' critical sectors-fire controls, fuel tanks, power conduits, flying bridges… She plotted strafing runs that cut straight across numerous engine cores. In a steady stream, she barked out heading directions and blast coordinates.

"Target thirty degrees to port, the red 'midships manifolds. You're warm! You're hot! Bull's-eye!"

As flames engulfed the vast structure, Tahngarth shouted from the starboard prow cannon, "Stop calling them bull's-eyes!"

"Yeah," rejoined Gerrard at port. "That was my shot!"

"Get ready for another," Sisay warned. "A cruiser's lifting off."

Hanna growled out hasty instructions. "Three degrees left, vault over this next ship, and bring us in low."

"Low?" Gerrard called back. "It's lifting off."

"She's plotting a course beneath it," Sisay guessed.

Hanna worked out the vectors.

"Beneath it?" Gerrard echoed.

"The engines are exposed on the underside. The hull guns won't be operational yet," Hanna explained. "It's the safest route and the surest kill."

"What if we shoot it so well it falls on us?"

"Have a little faith in Karn," Hanna replied, smiling wryly at Sisay. "Three degrees to port, and dive, Captain."

The ship plunged above the smoldering heap of a grounded cruiser. Weatherlight raced over black mountains of mechanism, past splayed Phyrexian corpses, past shattered cannonades and batteries spewing corruption into the air. Weatherlight's plunging keel sliced through a cloud of plague spores, which rose in white canyon walls around the ship. The ship rocketed out of the killing tunnel.

Dead ahead, a cruiser labored into the air. It was a mountainous ship. Tangled grass and clods of dirt rained beneath it.

"Take us below," Hanna called.

With a gut-wrenching drop, Weatherlight plummeted. Her own keel sliced grasses. She left a wide-boiling wake of stalks behind her. A surge from her engines sent the ship screaming beneath the enormous cruiser.

Dust pelted down from convoluted pipework. It stung the gunners and anyone else on deck. Weatherlight arrowed beneath the huge black shelf and above the trammeled ground. Her spars cracked occasionally against the cruiser's belly. Her keel gouged lines in the dirt.

"Where's this exposed engine you promised?" Gerrard shouted through the tube.

"You'll feel it," Hanna said.

They did. Sudden, incredible heat tore across the deck. It radiated from a network of huge black cylinders, each bristling with thermal fins.

"Fire!" Gerrard ordered even as he squeezed off a few blasts.

The rays looked vermilion against the ship's dark underbelly. They tore outward, striking column after column. The huge cylinders cracked open, their hulls seeming as brittle as eggshells. Pure energy oozed from the engine cores. Tahngarth's own blasts mixed red power with black, blood and rot commingled.

"Cease fire," Gerrard called. "All power to the engines!"

Weatherlight leaped. Even her running lanterns dimmed.

The Phyrexian cruiser jolted, descending in a great rush. It fell like a mountain from the sky. The air trapped beneath it fled in roaring waves out of the way. Weatherlight was caught up on the currents.

Gerrard and Tahngarth clung for dear life to the hot chassis of their guns. The leather straps strained to hold them in place.

Weatherlight's masts scraped the cruiser's underside. The keel plowed through the ground. With a last shriek, Weatherlight vaulted from the collapsing space. She shot into clear air. The ruined cruiser smashed to ground.

The air was clear no longer. Pulverized ground rushed out. After it came shards of shattered metal. The cruiser exploded. Wild energy cratered the plains down a hundred feet. The fireball lashed out, toppling two adjacent ships. It flung them onto another. The blaze was so bright, it cast Weatherlight's streaking shadow before the cruiser.

"That'll keep them out of the sky for a bit!" Gerrard crowed. "Let's give the ground troops some help."

"I think we're a little late," Sisay reported grimly.

Gerrard's breath caught in his throat as he looked out beyond the rail. "Take us in slow, Sisay!"

The city was destroyed. While Weatherlight had slain ten thousand Phyrexians in their warships, a hundred thousand had overrun the city. Every house poured black smoke into the air. Every threshold was strewn with bodies. Some had been eaten half-away-the sweetmeats first. Others had been too badly burned to be consumed. They were little more than tarry skin stretched over black bones.

It wasn't just the homes that were destroyed. Ram-ships had felled every tower and turret along the outer wall. Some guards had been chewed to pulp by falling stones. Their comrades decorated the remains of the walls. Soldiers were piked on their own weapons.

Phyrexians loped like wild dogs through the city. The garrisons were decimated, the manor houses, the infirmary…

"Slow down. Come in lower," Gerrard said, glimpsing a pair of gibbets beside the infirmary's ruins. Gerrard stood behind his ray cannon, straining against the straps to see.

There, nailed to a pair of tall posts, were Capashen Clan Chief Raddeus and his wife Leda. The spikes driven through them were twelve inches long. Something had climbed the poles, making a feast of the bodies-empty eye sockets, teeth showing past missing lips, a purple cavity beneath the ribs…

Gerrard turned away, closing his eyes. I'd rather die than lose anything more to them.

Sisay's voice was gentle in the speaking tube. "There is nothing more we can do here. There is no one left to defend."

"There are Phyrexians left to kill," Gerrard hissed bitterly. "Turn us about. Take us back over the cruisers."

"There will be other battles, more important battles, elsewhere. Benalia is overrun. A single ship cannot stop it. The Capashens are gone."

"I am a Capashen!" Gerrard growled. "Bring us about!"

"Aye, Commander," Sisay replied.

Weatherlight banked, pulling swiftly away from the devastation. She cut through a column of black smoke. It dragged covetously across the ship. The ravaged city shrank below. The Phyrexian fleet-a range of mountains on the horizon-swelled outward.

Gerrard felt a heavy hand on his shoulder.

"We did all we could," Tahngarth rumbled.

The commander's eyes were bitter as he watched the demonic skyline. "You're the one who always talks of those I have lost. Now I have lost a whole nation."

"You can't save everyone, Gerrard."

"What are you doing away from your gun? We're coming up on a strafing run. With the starboard gun amidships unmanned-"

Tahngarth let out a sudden roar and vaulted down the forecastle ladder. He rushed toward the port gun amidships. There, Gunner Dabis thrashed beneath a gigantic spider.

Tsabo Tavoc! She must have clambered onto one of the airfoils when the ship hovered above the infirmary. Despite a missing leg and the oozy flesh where it had torn loose, the Phyrexian commander was still fast and powerful.

Clutching Gunner Dabis, she jabbed a long metallic stinger into his belly. Her abdomen pumped venom. The gunner convulsed, falling to the deck. Tsabo Tavoc pivoted toward Tahngarth. Her stinger reluctantly withdrew from the black wound in the man's side. He was a dead man now, and Tahngarth could be next.

In midstride, the minotaur reached up over his shoulder for his striva. His hand fastened on empty air. His weapon lay in the rubble of the infirmary.

It was too late to stop the charge. Tahngarth bulled forward, ramming his horns deep into the seven-legged thorax of the spider woman. Ivory sank into spider muscle. Golden oil-blood poured down. Tahngarth thrashed his head, ripping the monster's flesh.

She shouted in fury and drew herself upward.

Tahngarth hung from his horns. He growled, kicking. Hooves struck to either side of the spider's darting abdomen. Her venomous stinger jutted between his knees. The barb was crazed in Dabis's blood. An inch-wide hole in the end gushed poison.

Tahngarth twisted his head. Horns broke free of the monster's thorax. He hurled himself in a back flip, away from that stinger. The world tumbled once magnificently. His hooves struck the deck, slick with poison. He slipped and fell backward.

Tsabo Tavoc was quick. She lunged. Three of her seven legs slid about Tahngarth, clutching him tightly. They constricted. His arms were trapped at his sides. Metallic limbs closed implacably. Tahngarth couldn't move, could little breathe. Tsabo Tavoc squeezed him beneath her thorax. Her wounds seeped over him. Above a massive torso and mantled shoulders, Tsabo Tavoc's queerly beautiful face stared down in cruel satisfaction.

Her look suddenly darkened. In compound eyes, a rushing figure reflected.

Gerrard.

His sword, too, was missing. He had snatched up what he could-a short-handled gaff hook-and leaped to the charge. The hook arced overhead and sank into Tsabo Tavoc's belly.

She reared back, clutching Tahngarth all the harder. Her four remaining legs scratched back to the rail.

Gerrard would not let her go. Hanging onto the hook, he climbed. He braced a foot on Tahngarth's bloody horn and swung his free hand toward her face. The roundhouse cracked her jaw. Knuckles left a gray print beside her segmented mouth.

Hissing, Tsabo Tavoc slid one of the three legs free of Tahngarth and reached up around Gerrard.

He wriggled the hook loose and drove it into soft flesh above the spider woman's collar bone.

Spitting black bile, Tsabo Tavoc yanked Gerrard and the gaff away. The hook snapped through her collar bone. She flung Gerrard brutally to the deck.

He landed in a roll and smashed into the far rail.

The spider woman, with Tahngarth in tow, crept over the rail, preparing to leap.

"Oh, no you don't," Gerrard growled.

He hurled himself across the ship just as Tsabo Tavoc slipped below the side. Gerrard swung the gaff. It pierced flesh. He clutched the rail and braced himself. Only then, through the rail posts, did he see that the gaff had impaled Tahngarth's shoulder. The minotaur's whole weight-as well as that of the spider-hung from that single hook.

"Do you kill him," Tsabo Tavoc purred in a voice like summer cicadas, "or do I?"

Winds tore sweat from Gerrard's brow. He stared down into Tahngarth's eyes. Despite the obvious agony, there was no fear, no resentment in the minotaur.

Segmented mouth parts worked. "Either way, I win. I have killed your land. I will kill your world."

Gerrard felt his own shoulder pulling out of the socket. He clenched his arm. Bone ground against ligaments.

"Even if you win," he panted out, "we won't stop fighting."

Tsabo Tavoc's compound eyes became inky black. "Fool." She lifted her stinging abdomen, curling it up toward Gerrard's clenched fist. The trembling stinger oozed white poison. It drew itself up to strike.

A gash of red light tore through the air. It curled the hairs on Gerrard's arm. The blast struck two of the great spider's legs. They vanished in the crimson gush. More energy raked across her belly. The hook wound was immediately cauterized. She shied back from that blast, letting go of Tahngarth and dropping. Her remaining five legs balled about her. Landing, Tsabo Tavoc rolled amid her troops. Warriors were unmade by her lashing metallic legs. At last, she came to a stop and stood.

Meanwhile, Gerrard hauled Tahngarth up over the rail. Despite the minotaur's mass and the tearing winds, Tahngarth felt suddenly very light. Gerrard caught him in his free arm and laid him on the deck.

"Now, I'm a… bull-fish," Tahngarth growled out.

Gerrard smiled grimly. "I thought I'd got that leggy thing, not you."

"But… who shot the… ray cannon?"

They both looked up to see the blind seer, white knuckles clinging to the fire controls of Gerrard's gun. Gaseous plasma dripped from the muzzle.

Gerrard gabbled at the man, "H-how did y-you know tto shoot?"

Beneath his dark hat, the man spoke simply, "I know things."

Orim emerged from the hatch and rushed to kneel beside Tahngarth. She set her hands on the gaff hook, sending an enchantment down into it. With a slow, smooth motion, she pulled the hook forth and stanched the flow of blood.

"Another thing I know," said the blind seer, descending the forecastle steps, "is that you're wasting your energies here. There is only vengeance here-and death."

Gerrard stared grimly down at Tahngarth's clenched teeth. "Yes, old man. I think you are right."

"There is a better Battle of Benalia. There is another army- heroes after your own stripe. An easy thousand of them. You must go lead them."

Arching his brow, Gerrard said, "Another army? Who? Where?"

"The Atrivak Mounds-Benalish Penal Colony."

"Military prisoners?"

"An easy thousand. Powerful warriors, but incorrigible."

Gerrard gave a dry laugh and shook his head. "Heroes after my own stripe."