Cross pulled himself away from the scopes. Using them wasn’t as physically taxing as manning the vampire weapons systems, but it still required considerable effort from both he and his spirit.
Cross’ spirit felt at ease for the first time in months. She was calm around his body, ready to expend herself in whatever way he asked of her but not, for once, impetuous or impatient. Something inside of her, and between the two of them, had matured.
Better late than never, I guess.
He steeled himself. It would he mere minutes before the vampires were close enough to engage. He checked his weapons — the HK, a new machete, and a slightly-used sawed-off Remington shotgun with a pistol grip, the so-called “Witness Protection” model — and his armor, took a deep breath, and waited. Waiting was always the hard part.
The airship shuddered and turned slightly to port. He heard the hard arctic wind just outside the cold steel walls. His stomach twisted into a knot, and his hands shook.
He thought of the dream where he sat with his feet in the water. He couldn't remember if it was Snow and Dillon who’d been with him there, or if it had been Snow and Graves. He wished them all there, somewhere peaceful.
A hand on his shoulder broke his reverie and nearly brought his gun out of its holster. Kane held up his hands in mock surrender.
“ Careful, Killer,” he said.
“ Sorry,” Cross said with a relieved laugh. “What's up?”
Kane hesitated, and then offered his hand.
“ For what it's worth…”
Cross smiled. The weight pressing down on him seemed to lift, just a little. He shook Kane's hand.
“ You, too. It's been a pleasure, Kane.”
“ Mike,” Kane said. “My name is Mike. I prefer Kane, though. It reminds me of Batman.”
Cross laughed. He glanced down and caught sight of Kane’s forearms, which were exposed between the end of his armored coat and his thick gloves. Cross saw tattoos shaped like crescent blades and violent letters. They glowed red, but the illumination was so faint and feeble he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been staring directly at them from just a few inches away. He took hold of Kane’s forearms.
“ They gave these to you, didn’t they?” he asked. Cross let go and rolled up his own sleeves. “In Krul?”
“ Yeah…they didn’t even charge me!”
“ Shit!” He saw the same glow on his own arms, incredibly subtle. He realized that a non-mage might not have even noticed. Even as a warlock, he was lucky to see the glow at all, since he guessed it had been intentionally hidden. “We need to figure out a way to get rid of these,” he said after he thought about it for a moment. He raced to the front of the ship.
“ Get rid of what?” Kane asked from behind him. “Our arms?”
“ Tega, can you raise a channel to Harker’s ship?”
“ Sure thing,” Ramsey said. He grabbed the SCR-300 and turned it on. A high-pitched blast of static sound came over the telephone-like transceiver. Luckily, the squelch circuit prevented the Gol’s eardrums from exploding, no matter how loud the feedback.
“ Uh…crap.”
“ What?” Cross asked.
“ There’s no signal,” Ramsey said. “I think it’s being jammed.”
Cross pushed his way around Ramsey and moved behind Ekko. It was amazing how frozen the air felt next to her, almost like she sat in a freezer. Cross looked past her and through the cracked window, so that he could see the white city.
The dark clouds that signaled the vampire’s approach had doubled in size. They hung just over the edge of Karamanganji, a mass of pure black smoke that oozed through the pale air like octopus ink. Cross heard the clang of metal as vampire warships altered their wing configuration: steel dropped into slots that shortened the wings but extended the vessel’s length, making them leaner and faster, like black steel predators wreathed in cold ebon steam.
The battle began, unceremonious and quick. Cross blinked, and suddenly they were in the middle of an aerial war.
There were distant bomb blasts, and flashes of light against the nightmare of clouds to the west. It seemed 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.