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.
Cross pulled himself up, winced at his bruised arm and neck, and looked around.
The front panel was smashed. Arcane circuitry sparked and burned. Ekko pulled herself away from the console; a jagged piece of steel stuck out of her left arm. Kane, bruised and bloodied, pulled her away from the cockpit. Ekko yanked the metal out of her arm without a second thought. Cross watched the wound seal up, like sand falling into a hole.
“ Ramsey?” Cross called out, but there was no answer, because Ramsey was dead.
His small body had been crushed between two plates of steel that had folded in and collapsed where the warship impacted the ground. One hand protruded out of the ruined metal. Cross saw bits of crimson cloth and dark stains of blood.
“ Shit!” he shouted.
They heard gunfire seconds later, the scream of warship engines overhead, and the deep-throated screech of Razorwings. Cross sensed bodies moving outside, guns and claws and saw-blades. They smelled the charnel stench of a mass grave.
They snatched up weapons. Cross pressed a panel to open the rear hatch, which slowly groaned upwards. They heard growls just outside of the smashed viewport at the fore end of the ship, as well as whirring blades and sickening wet slurps.
The rear door took an eternity to open. Cross gauged their weapons. He had his HK, a machete, and the vampire triple-barrel. The M16 was dry, but Kane had the Remington, two short swords, and an axe. Ekko had an MP4A and her claws.
It would have to do.
They heard growls. The moment that the door opened high enough for them to squeeze through, they ran.
A small horde of undead came at them from around the front of the warship. The ground looked clear around the aft end and to the port side, but Cross knew that they had only moments before they’d be overrun.
The dead pushed at them from the starboard side. There were armored vampires and razor-fanged gray zombies encrusted in salt and ice, taloned war wights with pale blank eyes and horrible mouths of saber-like teeth. Cross saw undead monstrosities that oozed phosphorescent slime and dripped dark waste from the pores in their decaying hides. Expanding clouds of flesh and tentacles filled the air, pulsating beaks and hungry innards. Dozens of lifeless eyes looked at the three humans, hungry, angry. The dead soldiers filed forward with shocking speed.
Cross, Kane and Ekko ran. The undead were right on their heels.
They fired back behind them as they fled. Bullets flew into the lifeless mob. Shotgun blasts and automatic fire tore through the wall of the dead. The vampire weapon strained Cross’ forearms and fingers with its rapidly spinning shotgun barrels.
Their feet moved sluggishly, as if stuck. The air felt frigid and slow.
Ahead stood more of the ice city, cold and pale and empty. Undead ran through and over the warship behind them. They fell from the top of the vessel like flesh rain and landed clumsily on the blasted ice.
The ground was slippery and uneven. Centuries of rock hard rime covered mounds of gravel and cobblestone, so even in those areas where the ice had melted the ground was still difficult to cross.
Cross fired into the undead mob. Bullets lanced around him on the ground. Black blades soared through the air in high arcs and buried themselves in the ice just inches away from Kane's feet. A whirling sphere of flesh leapt at Ekko as she reloaded, but she tore it to shreds with her razorine claws. Her face was bestial and inhuman.
They ran.
Adrenaline pumped through Cross' body. The Ebon Cities ground forces were right behind them.
The wreckage of the Coffin was just a few hundred yards off the bow of their downed ship. The M2 sat just north of the Coffin, near a ruined building made of ice and stone. Crylos’ vehicle was also under attack by the same horde of undead foot soldiers that continued to pour out of the Coffin.
Flares fired into the smoking sky. They saw Black's Bloodhawk engage the last vampire warship, and more Razorwings.
