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.
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.