"You even told him," Multani pointed out as he pulled the last of the stragglers onto the deck.
One by one, Tolarian helionauts and Metathran jumpships buzzed into the air around Weatherlight. Soldiers lifted her gang planks.
Phyrexians closed on the ship.
Gerrard shouted to Karn, "Get up here, bucket head! Get us out of here!"
The silver golem solemnly clambered up the gunwale. His feet had no sooner left the sand than a surge of Phyrexians crashed against Weatherlight's hull. Horns and claws tore into the wood.
"I'm needed," Multani said simply, slumping into the deck. He fled from splinters and hemp, leaving them empty. His spirit surged down through the planks to fortify the hull.
Gerrard hardly acknowledged the departure of the nature spirit. He was too busy running along the rail to chop away the lines before Phyrexians could climb them. He knocked aside Benalish warriors who blocked the forecastle stairs and stabbed a climbing Phyrexian in its fangy mouth. It fell back atop its comrades, but two more monsters rose in its place.
There were too many. They were too quick. Claws fastened around the stanchions and seized the rail.
Gerrard hacked viciously at the beasts. His sword clove the horned shoulder of a Phyrexian trooper. He skewered the scabrous mouth of a bloodstock. He split the skull shield of a scuta.
"How about a little help!" he shouted over his shoulder.
Red energy burst into being before him. Sudden flames mantled hackles and poured down throats. Plasma shattered thoraxes and flashed flesh to ash. Where once there had been hundreds of Phyrexians, now there was only fire. Bones and armor dropped in a grisly hail.
Gerrard reeled back from the rail and blinked the red spots from his eyes. His sword had melted beyond the hilt. Tossing the thing overboard, he glared to the forecastle deck and the smoking gun.
Behind the starboard ray cannon, a familiar minotaur hunched in the gunnery traces.
Tahngarth shrugged. "You needed a hand."
Gerrard flashed him a smile and climbed toward the port-side gun.
As he went, the ship's engines suddenly surged. The deck pitched. Weatherlight lurched from the ground. Most of the warriors went to their knees on the planks, but Gerrard kept his feet. He'd ridden this ship to Rath and back, and he had his sky legs.
On his way up the forecastle stairs, he decked a Phyrexian in the jaw. The bone shattered, and dagger teeth drove into the beast's pallet. Its eyes went dark, and it slumped on the rail. Gerrard shoved it off and crossed to his gun. He charged up the cannon even as he strapped himself into the gunnery harness.
"Grab a gun or get below," he shouted to the Benalish irregulars still crowding the deck.
Gerrard spit on the plasma manifold. The saliva boiled away instantly. With a grim smile, he pivoted the gun about to shoot along the hull. Rays struck the air and turned it plasmatic. Crimson energy spattered across the beasts that still hung there. It ripped them loose and dissolved them on their way to ground.
On the starboard side, Tahngarth's cannon blasted. The fireball plunged to impact Phyrexians. Where it rolled, the sphere of energy obliterated monsters. The blaze spent itself eating through the invading troops.
"They're everywhere," Tahngarth snorted. "How do we defend Koilos against this?"
Gerrard hissed, "Kill Phyrexians."
A charge shrieked from his cannon. It arced down toward the moiling army. The energy column twisted like a cyclone. It touched ground and hurled blackened bodies in its wake.
"There's got to be more to it than that," Tahngarth replied even as his cannon spoke again.
"Not for me there isn't," Gerrard said, firing. "Not after what they did to Hanna."
Beyond Weatherlight, Urza's titan engine strode patiently across the crowded battlefield. Each footfall crushed hundreds of Phyrexians. Fireball spells from the pilot bulb paved his way. Rockets sprang from the suit's wrists and punched into monsters, exploding on impact. Lightning blasts jagged from an energy fork above and lanced Phyrexians. Monsters struggled to cling to the metallic legs of the titan, but periodic surges of magical energy fried them where they climbed. Flocks of falcon engines launched in silvery waves from the back of the battle suit. Urza killed with grim dispatch.
"There isn't more to it for Urza either," Gerrard muttered. "Not after what they did to Barrin."
New fire woke from the edges of the world. Phyrexian cannons sent scarlet rays stabbing across the sky. The beams sought Weatherlight.
"They're bringing up their mana bombards!" Gerrard shouted into the speaking tube beside him. "Stay sharp, Sisay."
Through the tube came the captain's reply. "I'm never dull."
Sisay spun the ship aside, just in time. Raw power ripped the air along her stem.
"How about some help back there, Squee?" Gerrard called.
The tail gun came to life. Its goblin gunner shrieked over the roar of the weapon. Plasma belched from the end. Like a claw, it ripped the rest of the enemy flack from the sky.
Worse was coming. A ball of black mana hurtled over the hills. It welled up behind the massive head of Urza's titan engine. The goo struck, spattering across the metal. It hissed, seeking to crack through seams.
Pausing in midstride, Urza flung off the clinging stuff. It fell across Phyrexians below and ate them away. Urza's engine took another step, and more black-mana shots filled the sky.
"We're not going to last long up here!" Sisay called through the speaking tube.
Gerrard answered with his gun. A pulse of plasma smashed aside another black-mana bomb heading for the ship. "Take us to Urza! See if he's got any great ideas."
Weatherlight banked and surged toward the titan engine. Rays darted out on all sides of the ship. Beams crisscrossed in a deadly net. As the warship neared Urza, Gerrard stood in the traces.
He saw too late. Scores of Phyrexian cannons had drawn a bead on them. The energy that surged suddenly through the dark sky was inescapable.
"Damn him," Gerrard cursed.
Chapter 2
Urza's titan engine extended a massive metallic arm around Weatherlight's amidships. Thran metal clamped on living wood. The ship lurched to a halt above clambering armies of Phyrexians.
"What the-!" Gerrard growled, slinging sideways in his gunnery traces. He slammed against the red-hot chassis of the gun. Gritting his teeth, he managed to squeeze off two more rounds. The rays stabbed from the cannon barrel and turned the air into a pair of red fists. They soared down in a one-two punch that sizzled Phyrexians to nothing and cratered the sand into glass bowls.
New power surged. Along every rivet and seam of Urza's titan engine, blue energy glowed. It swelled out to envelop the titan, the skyship, and its fleet. Through a glass dome, Urza was just visible in his pilot's harness. His form shimmered-the start of a planeswalk. Rings of disturbance spread out rapidly from him. The piloting mechanisms dissolved into fuzz. The armor shell went next.
Weatherlight's hull glowed too. Even Gerrard at his gun, even Tahngarth, turned insubstantial.
The mad world folded up around Weatherlight, her scrappy fleet, and Urza's titan engine. Koilos and its cockroach armies slid away into sudden creases in reality. The false dawn faded. The false world disintegrated.
In their place swirled the Blind Eternities. It was a cloudy chaos, a space of shapeless energies and potentialities.
Gerrard gripped the fire controls of his cannon and gritted his teeth. He had soared through this nowhere place before, in Weatherlight's own planeshifts, but he'd never been dragged through.