“ What the hell…?” Cross wondered aloud.
“ Impressive,” Ramsey said. “I could be wrong, but I believe the Circle has modified their cannon to cut instead of blast. That lens and that fuel would let it fire a sustained beam.”
“ And that way they can dig,” Cross said with a nod, “without bringing the entire city down. They couldn't do that with a flame cannon.”
The Bloodhawk sent a ground team to do a quick sweep of the Bone Tower’s lower level, while Cross and his team remained on board their ship. The Southern Claw soldiers found evidence of a recent dig, including tools and signs of forced entry, and a blasted hole that seemed to lead down to some sort of catacombs beneath the tower. Harker’s team reported that it didn’t appear the tunnels themselves had been breached, as the only means of entering was covered with a thick sheet of transparent ice.
Hopefully that means the Black Circle hasn’t actually found the Woman, even if they have made progress with their dig.
Signs of a recent struggle — dead human mercenaries and Gorgoloth — indicated that the Circle had run afoul of trouble, which must have been the reason they'd been forced to halt their efforts.
There was no sign of Jennar, however, nor of any of the more dangerous Black Circle members known to the Southern Claw, criminals like Molochai, Lllandrix, Malath or Klos Vago. Those few bodies that Harker’s men found appeared to be the remains of hirelings and minions.
Before Cross or any of his companions could inspect the excavation site firsthand, distant and hollow booms sounded in the air. Explosions.
A second sounded, and then a third. The radio blared with static. The reception was terrible — the radio was almost eighty years old — but the sending stone in Cross' hand went white hot as a priority message was sent to every ship, vehicle and foot soldier in and around the frozen city.
Incoming, the message said. Vampires, approaching from the west.
Cross’ team and Harker’s squad regrouped. They flew the airships away from the Tower and set down on an elevated hill near the north end of the city, where they surveyed the horizon with the Bloodhawk's scopes.
A single armored Wing approached. There were seven vampire warships outfitted with heavy armor and long-range weapons and a dozen mounted Razorwings — brutish flying reptiles with enormous hinged jaws, reptilian wings, and razor-sharp bone protrusions that could slice through body armor. The Wing was led by a large airship the size of yacht, a vessel covered with large-bored cannons and preposterous blades as big as sawhorses. The Southern Claw called those command vessels “Coffins” due to their box-like shape and the fact that they were usually packed wall-to-wall with undead infantry: armored zombies, war wights, kaithoren, ghoul runners, and things much worse.
Between pilots and crew, over 200 undead approached the icy city. The First and Second platoons of Claw Company, conversely, had six Bloodhawk airships, plus the stolen vampire vessel, a Panzer II that had been reinforced with arcane-treated cold steel plates, and an M2 half-track that towed a Flak 38 20mm cannon. There were maybe seventy-five men between the two platoons. While the Southern Claw had ground fire superiority, they were badly outnumbered, and severely outclassed in the air.
God damn it.
“ We’ve faced worse, Sir,” Harker told him. Cross was twenty-seven years old, but he felt like an old man next to Staff Sergeant Harker, who was twenty if he was a day.
“ Please don’t call me ‘Sir’,” Cross said. “I’m not an officer.”
Harker nodded. Cross had voluntarily exited the chain of command in the Southern Claw as part of his deal to continue work as a special operative. The fact that he was no longer an officer with no true command authority hadn’t diminished his value in the eyes of most Southern Claw soldiers that he met. Because in spite of Cross’ attempts to keep a low profile, almost every soldier he ran into knew that he’d prevented the loss of human magic, and that he’d never wanted to be re-assigned to another team out of respect to the fallen members of Viper Squad.
“ In any case, we’ve faced worse,” Harker said. “Wait…orders are coming through now.”
The vampires were maybe ten minutes away.
It was important to try and reduce the risk of collateral damage as much as possible, so the decision was made to engage the vampires from the western edge of the city, using the sloped ice walls of the ruins to hide the Panzer and the 20mm. The vampires would almost certainly strafe the area with their warships, run interference with the Razorwings, and try to land the Coffin close to either the Panzer or the Bone Towers, where their undead infantry's sheer numbers would overwhelm the humans. It was imperative, then, to destroy the Coffin as quickly as possible.
Crylos, via radio, asked Cross to take command of Harker’s squad. Cross could have refused, based on the fact that he wasn’t a true officer. He also could have decided to stick with his mission, and penetrate the sealed catacombs immediately while Crylos’ men engaged the enemy.
But he didn't refuse the command.
Careful, he warned himself. You've been here before. Don’t lose sight of your mission.
Yes, he answered, I’ve been here before. And the last time, my friends died because we couldn't stay together. The Black Circle is nowhere to be found, and we need to secure this area before we can figure out what needs to be done next.
To do that, Crylos needs every available man.
He would've told that to the others if he’d needed to, but no one questioned his decision. He almost wished they had.
The Panzer moved just inside of the outer city walls, where the wide streets gave it enough room to maneuver, which was necessary with how slick the terrain was. They detached the Flak 38 from the M2 and left it with a four-man crew, who could roll the artillery around the outer edge of the city and pick and choose their targets.
From what Cross learned, Crylos would stay on the M2 and direct the ground troops, while Ankharra would lend aerial support from one of the Bloodhawks. Cross didn't have quite as much flexibility with his limited personnel — both he and Ekko had to be on board the vampire warship in order to make its weapons function, and since there would be no separating Kane and Ekko, they decided to send Black and Cole onto Harkness' Bloodhawk in order to make it three Southern Claw ships with magic capabilities instead of just two. Not only would that grant them more strategic options in the open air, but keeping the mages separated made it so no single ship would become the sole tempting target to the vampires. Ramsey decided to stay in the vampire ship with Cross, Kane and Ekko.
The Bloodhawks and the older, rickety vampire vessel circled low in the pale sky, trailing dark exhaust that swam through the air like smoke serpents.
Cross saw the Ebon Cities vessels through the arcane scopes. They were thickly bladed ships surrounded by clouds of black steam. Their motor guns were massive, and each vessel was equipped with several iron-tipped short-range missiles along their hulls. Their black and red armor was curved and angled like a creature's bones, and the collective approach of the Wing was like that of some polluted storm, slow and roiling, deliberate, an advance that darkened the entire sky.
The Razorwings flew amidst the warships. They were black and leather-skinned beasts whose serpentine necks and chitinous bodies leaked shadows like dust. The riders and the vampire raiding crews that rode on the creature’s backs were almost invisible against their mount’s sinuous bodies, but the silhouettes of long spears and large-bored hand cannons were easy enough to make out. The black banner of the Ebon Cities swung in the hands of a rider on the rear Razorwing. Bat-like wings bound with hardened razor steel flapped slowly through the air, their methodical motion almost dreamlike.
The Coffin cruised along at the rear of it all, its 6-inch guns aimed straight ahead. It was a monstrosity of devilish iron and arcane plate, a floating armored juggernaut that spewed black fire and that bore barbed protrusions the size of lances. Even from a distance, Cross felt foul magical energies radiate from its core. The vessel used twisted perversions of tormented souls that were held captive and burned as fuel.