that miles still separated the two aerial forces, and yet suddenly there they were, both sides in plain sight of one another, close enough to gaze into enemy cockpits.
The warships were not fast. Dark and soiled smoke trailed from thaumaturgic engines like streams of paint, or blood. Vessels swam in the thick air as though stuck in turgid waters. The scream of engines sounded like metal banshees.
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.
