Chapter 11

Angels and spirits, helionauts and hoppers were no match for Phyrexian cruisers. Five of the enormous black ships now filled the sky. Their mana bombards heaped death on defenders. Their horn-studded rams chased Weatherlight across the heavens. "I thought we'd gotten rid of these bastards!" Gerrard shouted to no one in particular. He couldn't bring his cannons to bear on the pursuing cruiser, but he found a target anyway. His gun hurled a corridor of flack abeam. The red blaze dissolved a dragon engine into claws and teeth. Energy bounded on and melted the stern of a Phyrexian dagger-boat. Deprived of its engine, the ship bobbed drunkenly and plummeted.

On the other side of the forecastle, Tahngarth's cannon shouted. It tore away a gout of black mana that surged toward Weatherlight.

"Perhaps these are the cruisers from Benalia."

Gerrard gritted his teeth. "Oh, you had to say that." His cannon barked. Crimson bolts shrieked from the muzzle. The first shot struck a Phyrexian ram and pocked the metal. The second and third shots cored the ship as if it were an apple.

The pursuing cruiser sent fire in a deadly tunnel up around Weatherlight.

"How 'bout some rear defenses, Squee?" Gerrard shouted into the speaking tube.

Before his words were even finished, an angry protest answered. "You think dis easy, yeah? You think just 'cause Squee save your butt hundred thousand million times before, he save you now?"

A glob of black mana struck the port airfoil and ripped a rattling hole through it.

"Yes, Squee! Exactly!" Gerrard growled. "The tail gunner's job is to save our butts."

The rapid shots of the tail gun fused into a single, constant, furious discharge. Squee leaped within the traces, spraying beams across their wake. Defensive fire rose from the cruiser but could not anticipate the random blasts. Squee's shots smacked the fuselage, tore holes through conduits, ripped into inner corridors, and clove engine modules. Smoke belched up, and after smoke came fire. The cruiser jolted, dropped backward, and heeled slowly away.

"Nice shooting, Squee," Gerrard called.

"Dat's another two hundred butts you owe Squee."

Tahngarth interrupted the goblin tail gunner. "What's Agnate doing down there?" The minotaur stood and gaped over Weatherlight's rail.

Gerrard peered through his captain's glass, but even with it, he could not make out the figures in the forest.

A metallic voice spoke for all of them-Karn, who could see through the running lamps of the ship. "He marches. He marches with a company of the dead."

"What?" Gerrard asked, reeling. "Agnate has turned traitor?"

Karn's voice rumbled like distant thunder. "No. They march together against Phyrexians. Agnate allies with evil against evil."

Staring over the rail, Gerrard murmured bleakly, "Desperate times…"

"Desperate, indeed," Karn replied. "There's a cruiser dead ahead."

Gerrard turned and looked fore. The cruiser seemed only a small black cloud on the horizon, though it swelled outward with alarming speed.

"Evasive!"

"Keep your pants on, Commander," Sisay replied lightly. Weatherlight banked to starboard. Her engines thrummed. She rose on thundering winds.

The cruiser shifted into an intercept course. It grew even bigger, eclipsing half of the sky. Its ram, a stout block ending in hornlike protrusions, reached for Weatherlight.

"She's trying to ram us!" Gerrard called.

"Yes! Yes!" Sisay replied.

Weatherlight pitched toward port and climbed again.

The cruiser shifted its attitude. It loomed, inescapable, before Weatherlight.

"I can't break free!" Sisay called. "She'd drawing us in!"

"She's going to ram us!" Gerrard warned.

"No," Sisay shouted back. "We're going to ram her!"

"What!"

Weatherlight plunged like a cleaver toward the massive ship. Multani coursed into the Gaea figurehead, the stabbing spine beneath, and the serrated keel. It struck first.

Wood as hard as diamond plowed through the armor of the cruiser's upper deck and ripped into its fuselage. The spike struck next. It punctured a gun nest and gored the monster at the machine. The beast was wiped away as Weatherlight plunged deeper into the cruiser. Metal parted in black waves before her.

It was as if more than her own momentum drove her forward, as if something in the cruiser's heart dragged at her.

At last, the Gaea figurehead itself breasted the metal wave. Her brow dug in, and Weatherlight ground to a halt.

"Reverse engines!" Gerrard called. "Pull us out of here!"

Weatherlight's engines flared but seemed to wedge the ship only more tightly.

"Reverse engines, Karn!"

The ship's power core went silent. The hatch to the engine room flung back. Steam billowed out above the deck. From that hissing cloud emerged the silver mass of Karn. He climbed laboriously from the hatch and strode with heavy intent toward the forecastle.

"Karn! What's happening?"

"The power cores," he said, leaping from amidships to the forecastle. His legs drummed the deck. "They're drawing each other together like a pair of magnets. Every time we fire up our engine, it pulls us deeper. The only way to get out is to shut down their engine."

Eyes wide, Gerrard said, "And how do we do that?

Karn gestured toward the prow. Thick metal curled away from the ship's hull. "Give me a door."

Wordlessly, Gerrard nodded. He swung his cannon toward the armor of the Phyrexian ship and squeezed off two shots. Red rays melted air and then metal. It dripped through the breach, revealing the cross section of a corridor.

Dipping his head, Karn vaulted over the prow rail and in through the red-hot hole. His feet struck a floor of metal grate. The sound echoed both ways down the long corridor and was answered by more feet-Phyrexian feet. Gibbering hungrily, monsters scampered down the passage toward the intruder. They loped on all fours like wolves, though their bodies were scaly and their mouths could have swallowed a wolf whole. The monsters converged on Karn and leaped, howling.

Rearing his fist back, Karn hurled a roundhouse at the first beast. Silvery knuckles cracked through rows of teeth. Enamel tumbled in the creature's mouth. Karn's hand rammed down the monster's throat. It closed its bite on him, hoping to sever his arm.

Karn whirled, bashing the second attacker down with the writhing body of the first. He withdrew his arm from the creature's throat, bringing with it a handful of innards. A third hound died beneath a stomping foot, and a fourth with a broken back. The last beast leaped on Karn and bit his head, trying to take it off. Sliding hands into the chewing jaws, Karn opened them wider than they ever should have opened.

He took a moment to make sure all the beasts lay destroyed and then shouted toward Weatherlight, "A door for me is a door for them. Defend this breach until I return."

Gerrard's sardonic face shone above the smoking barrel of his cannon. "Aye aye, Engineer!"

Karn looked down, considering the dead. At one time, he would not fight, would not harm a soul. Now, Karn had just torn five creatures apart. Perhaps these were mere beasts, but smarter foes would lurk ahead. They would realize what he was trying to do and would fight-and would die.

"Better them than my friends," Karn thought aloud. Without another word, he headed down the passage toward the ship's power core. He could sense its emanations. There was an uncanny kinship between Karn's body and the cruiser. Even the runes carved in the ships inner halls resembled the characters scribed on Karn's chest. Living metal surrounded him, half designed, half grown. The dark corridor had an organic logic, more like a vein than a hallway. Each footfall seemed a heartbeat. For a moment, the passage dissolved, replaced by another from long ago. It was a white hallway. He walked beside a young man, a boy really, though a genius. Beneath his bald forehead lurked impish eyes and a slightly cruel smile. It was no Gerrard. His skin was too dark. It was another friend, Karn's first friend. He struggled to remember a name. Ladlepate? Arty Shovelhead? No, those weren't names for the boy, but for Karn. The boy's name was… Teferi?