Chapter 7

Bold eyed, the Gaea figurehead peered from the prow of Weatherlight down toward Urborg.

As pestilential as the swamps had been before the battle, they were worse now. Mosquitoes and vipers were better than Phyrexians and trench worms. Bloodstocks churned ancient marshes. Gargantuas ripped through thorn brakes. Glistening-oil burned atop every pool.

The Phyrexians weren't Urborg's only ravagers. Vodalian warriors undermined the coastal marshes, joining them to the sea. Metathran mounded dead bodies on the beaches. Serran angels ripped out the bellies of Phyrexian fliers. Helionauts and hoppers sent exploding quarrels into swarms of dragon engines.

Weatherlight was the greatest despoiler of all. She tore through clouds and outran sound. Ray fire ripped from her gunwales. The heavens belonged to Weatherlight, and she jealously attacked any creature that dared disagree.

Ahead were the latest offenders. A flight of dragon engines shot from a vent in the volcanic hillside. They seemed lava, so hungrily they ascended. Twenty pairs of wings raked out. The serpents coiled in a broad ribbon and drove toward Weatherlight. "Big mistake," Gerrard growled. Gripping the fire controls of his cannon, he leaned in the gunnery traces and shouted into the speaking tube. "Take us in at full throttle, Karn. Gunners, cut them from the air. Sisay, be ready for a ram attack and keel slam.

Multani, prepare for hull burns. Orim, lock down your wounded and get ready for more." The orders emerged like cannon shot, fast and final.

The response came just as quickly. Heat flared beneath the soles of Gerrard's boots-Multani surging through the forecastle planks to reach and strengthen the Gaea ram and the keel. The ship's engines roared. The motion hurled all the gunners about, bringing their weapons to bear on the flock of dragon engines dead ahead.

"You know it's suicide…" Sisay's voice came in the tube. "What's suicide?"

"A head-on assault against twenty dragon engines." "Yeah," Gerrard shot back, "suicide for them." He glanced over his shoulder and sent her a smile. It was not the careless grin he used to give. Something had died in his eyes. Not something but someone. "Is the mighty Captain Sisay afraid of death?"

"Not afraid of it, but neither am I eager for it." "It's time somebody brought death to account," Gerrard said, as he faced forward. "I'm that somebody."

The distant figures swelled. Wings of leather tore the air. Living metal flashed amid clouds. Eyes glowed lanternlike. Mouths gaped with fang and fire.

Gerrard brought the crosshairs to the tongue of one beast and squeezed off a shot. Energy rushed from the nozzle. It crossed the reeling distances between ship and dragon and found its mark. The bolt splashed against that steely tongue and rammed down the beast's throat. The dragon's neck dissolved. Its head hung for a moment on the beam before melting in a metallic rain. The body lasted only a heartbeat longer. It exploded.

Tahngarth's shot was not as precise but twice as deadly. It swept through two dragon engines. The first was crosssectioned, its chest and belly neatly sliced away from its back and wings. Sparks leaped across the severed vitals of the beast. Both hunks plunged. The second dragon dived aside to avoid the fate of its comrade. Instead of ripping through its torso, the bolt vaporized one wing. The dragon fell twisting from the sky.

That was three beasts out of twenty. The seventeen others closed on Weatherlight.

"Fold the airfoils!" Gerrard shouted.

With a snap, Karn complied. Weatherlight no longer soared on the air but rocketed through it.

Gerrard managed one more shot. It bounded free of the cannon, dead on for a dragon engine. Before it struck, though, the beast's own incendiary weapon vaulted out. Black mana met red plasma. The opposing energies ate each other away.

More black mana belched in a killing cloud before the dragons. Tahngarth and Gerrard unloaded their cannons into the deadly stuff. A thin corridor opened.

At the helm, Sisay steered into the slim passage. The Gaea figurehead plunged through clear sky. Whips of black power scourged the keel and hull. It ate the wood away in moments.

Multani surged to the affected sites and awoke new life in them.

One tendril slipped past the rail and slapped Tahngarth's arm. His white fur melted immediately. Corruption ate into skin and muscle. With a roar the minotaur flung the stuff away.

"Orim! Get up here!" Gerrard ordered.

Weatherlight punched through the black mantle and was suddenly among the roaring throng of dragons.

Gaea destroyed the first beast herself. Her hardwood brow smashed into the horned head of a dragon. Normally the titanium crest of the serpent would have shattered wood, but Multani was in the figurehead. He bore the braining blow as an attack on his own being. He held the wood together, diamond hard.

The dragon's skull buckled over its biomechanical brain. Shards of metal cut wires and optic fibers. The dragon went limp in flight.

Even the corpse of the thing was deadly. It folded up before the surging ship and struck it like a hammer.

Gerrard and Tahngarth unleashed twin beams that vaporized much of the body. The rest grated away beneath the compromised keel.

Intent on preventing the keel from giving way, Multani drained from the figurehead down along the line of damage. Green wood swelled out where he went. He did not merely replace what had been destroyed but made it stronger, sharper. He grew a knife-edged spine directly before the keel. It proved its worth a moment later, lancing through a dragon engine and splitting it in half. The segments tumbled to either side of the keel.

"Good work, Multani!" shouted Gerrard. "Sisay, make good use of that spike."

"Way ahead of you, Commander," Sisay replied.

The prow rose suddenly, slicing the blade through the neck of a dragon engine. Its head flung over the bow rail and impacted the forecastle. Its severed neck followed, spitting sparks as it whipped past Gerrard. Head and neck bounded away. Its body meanwhile slumped brokenly off the racing hull. Three more shuddering thumps announced the deaths of three more dragon engines, chopped as if by a cleaver.

Weatherlight shot out beyond the pack of beasts. Sisay brought her hard about. Air spilled over the rail as she turned. The dragons were turning too, the eleven that remained. Weatherlight leaped eagerly toward the swarm.

Gerrard sprayed the heavens with ray cannon blasts. A beam struck a nearby dragon and burst over its metallic scales. Energy sank within and melted through flesh. The dragon held together one moment more before the blast dismantled it. Only wings and legs, head and tail remained to find their separate ways to ground.

Another bolt pierced a great black machine. The dragon's core went critical. Seams of white fire opened across its frame, turning it to shrapnel. The pieces tore outward to strip the scales from serpents nearby. Three more beasts spun crazily, tumbling for the ground.

"Think you're death incarnate, aye?" growled Gerrard over the roar of the falling beasts. "Well, Death, you've met your match."

He swung his cannon down and shot away the black mana breath of another beast. Energies ate each other. Gerrard followed up the shot with another. It scouted a dragon's head down to the metallic skull. Another beast lost its wings in a flare of cannon heat.

"You see that one?" Gerrard shouted over his shoulder to Tahngarth.

The minotaur stood with hooves spread on the deck, one arm deftly wielding the ray cannon and the other extended for Orim to bandage. Almost casually, he triggered a bolt of energy. It swatted a dragon engine from the air.