* * *
"Yes!"
Chan Tesh's fierce exclamation of satisfaction was lost in his men's baying shout of triumph. The stupendous creature hit headfirst, tumbling, rolling, broken wings flailing, and the man who'd been strapped to its back went flying like a discarded doll. He hit with an impact which must literally have broken every bone in his body, and Balkar chan Tesh bared his teeth in ugly satisfaction.
It might be small enough recompense for what that dragon and its companions had already done to his command, but at least the treacherous bastards knew now that their victims still had a sting.
* * *
Berhala's mind refused to wrap itself around what had just happened. None of the training texts had ever suggested anything like what had claimed Urkora and Cloudtiger. Damage from ground fire, yes. Even the occasional loss of a battle dragon. But not this sudden, almost casual blotting away.
It wasn't possible—shouldn't have happened, his mind insisted. It was—
All thought of his wingman chopped off abruptly as Skyfire made a sound Berhala had never heard out of the dragon before. It was a plaintive, mournful, moaning sound, and the rhythm of the beast's wings seemed to falter suddenly as another blinking icon appeared on Berhala's visor. The image of a blood-red sword flashed before him, and his hands moved instantly, instinctively, in the control grooves.
Skyfire moaned again, but he answered to the familiar touch, banking with a suddenly frightening clumsiness he'd never before displayed. Berhala closed his eyes for a moment, lips moving in a silent prayer for his mount. Then he opened his eyes once more, looking ahead, and brought the wounded dragon in as quickly as he could.
* * *
Commander of One Hundred Horban Geyrsof watched Skyfire hit the swamp like a skipping stone in a long, ragged line of foam and mud. He stared downward, literally holding his breath, then exhaled in ragged relief as Skyfire struggled doggedly towards the nearest islet. At least the beast was still mobile. That was a good sign; dragons tended to recover—eventually—from anything that didn't kill them outright.
Which didn't change the fact that he'd just lost a quarter of his reds, the 3012th's commanding officer reflected grimly. He'd been one dragon understrength to begin with, with only three yellows—his own Graycloud, Commander of Twenty-Five Sherlahk Mankahr's Skykill, and Commander of Fifty Nairdag Yorhan's Windslasher—to make up what should have been his third four-dragon flight. Now he was down to a total strength of only nine, and the effectiveness of the enemy's fire was dismaying, to say the very least. Especially given the battle dragons' low numbers and the time required to replace one. It would never do to say so where any of the Union's ground troops could hear him, but each of his precious battle dragons was probably as valuable as at least a couple of battalions of infantry, and now they'd lost one on only their second pass at the enemy.
He glared at the looming portal. There was plenty of smoke, and not a little fire, visible through it, yet it was painfully obvious that the reds' fireballs had proved singularly ineffective against the half-buried fortifications the Sharonians had erected.
He used Graycloud's vision to sweep the enemy's positions as well as he could through all of the smoke, and his mouth tightened. Some, at least, of the Sharonians had abandoned their bunkers, obviously in order to bring their weapons to bear on Twenty-Five Berhala's flight. He didn't know how many of them were still waiting under cover, and that didn't matter at the moment. What mattered was that the enemy who could hurt his dragons had to come out into the open to do it.
He thought about sending the two surviving reds of Berhala's flight back in. They'd have easier targets this time around, and the ground fire wouldn't take them by surprise a second time. But the Sharonians were more dispersed than he'd expected. He didn't know if they'd spread out on purpose, and it didn't matter. The way they'd opened their formation would make the reds' fireballs less effective. The remaining reds could still get the job done, especially if he concentrated all of them into one attack force—Geyrsof never doubted that—but it would take more passes, give the other side more opportunities to cost him dragons.
His eyes narrowed as he considered his options, and then he nodded in decision.
A yellow's breath weapon was the shortest ranged of all, but it also had the widest area of effectiveness. It would take at least four passes by all of his remaining reds to clear the exposed Sharonian personnel he could see from here, and that didn't even consider any of the enemy who remained under cover inside their infernally tough fortifications. But his three yellows could cover the entire Sharonian position in only two passes, and the very fact that their weapon was so short ranged meant that they had been provided with the thickest, toughest ventral scales of any of the dragon breeds. It left them heavier, slower—more ponderous and less nimble—then any of the others, but it also made them much, much tougher targets. Geyrsof doubted that even a yellow could survive whatever it was which had literally blown Cloudtiger out of the sky, but the chances were good that Graycloud's natural armor could defeat whatever had wounded Skyfire.
He used his helmet spellware to fire the white flare which called off the surviving members of Twenty-Five Berhala's flight. Then he fired the yellow flare which announced the attack by his own flight.
* * *
For a few minutes, chan Tesh allowed himself to hope that the shock of having one of their dragons shot right out of the air would cause the Arcanans to reconsider their aerial attacks.
He spent those minutes dashing across to join the men who'd left their bunkers. He wanted to order them back into the fortifications' protection, but he dared not. Unless they could keep the dragons off their backs somehow, even the relatively ineffectual fireball attacks would be enough to keep his bunkers pinned down while the rest of the Arcanan forces maneuvered around them.
So instead of sending them back into a position of temporary safety, he spent his time rearranging them. Spreading them out even further to deny the enemy massed targets and allocating defensive sectors.
He wished fervently that he had more of the Faraikas. Unfortunately, he'd never had more than a single squad of the heavy-caliber IIs. That was only five weapons when it was at full strength, and he'd been one short to begin with. So he'd deployed two of them to cover each aspect of the portal.
One of the ones covering the northern aspect had been too close to the artillery pits. Its crew had died along with chan Talmarha and his gun crews, and he didn't know whether either of the other section's weapons remained intact. In fact, he didn't know anything about how the defense of the portal's other aspect was going, but he was afraid he could guess.
Whatever was happening over there, however, he had to worry about his own position, and his jaw tightened as someone shouted a warning. He turned back towards the portal, and his eyes were cold and bleak as he saw three more black dots plunging down out of the heavens.
* * *
Hundred Geyrsof led the attack personally.
By The Book, he should have let one of his two wingmen take the lead, but he was more experienced than either Mankahr or Yorhan, and the responsibility was his, anyway.
He pressed himself even closer to Graycloud's neck, hands gentle in the control grooves, fingertips moving with a slow, reassuring rhythm. He sensed Graycloud's determination, felt the dragon's own anger at what had happened to Cloudtiger and Skyfire. Dragons were far smarter than most non-pilots gave them credit for, and Geyrsof never doubted that Graycloud understood, at least in general terms, what had happened . . . and who was responsible for it.
And, like his pilot, the yellow wanted vengeance.
Geyrsof laid his strobing crosshair directly atop the tight little cluster of men whose weapon had downed Cloudtiger.
They're going to be shooting at me anyhow, he reflected. I might as well take my best shot at them, too.
Graycloud was still building speed. Geyrsof had never taken the big yellow to such a velocity, and he wondered if even
Graycloud's mighty pinions were equal to the strain he was imposing upon them. But the dragon never complained, never resisted. He only put his head down and flew straight at the enemies who had killed his strike mate.
* * *
Chan Tesh was at the far end of his improvised line from the machine-gun crew as the fresh attack came streaking down upon them.
"Steady, boys!" he called almost gently. "Steady!"
The three huge beasts spread out slightly, coming in on a somewhat broader frontage than the original attackers, and he watched the Faraika tracking the leader. The shot wasn't going to be quite as easy this time. These dragons were coming in more obliquely, not attacking directly head-on, which was going to make deflection trickier.
Rifles began to crackle once more, but the dragons held their course. Then the gunner began to turn the Faraika's crank. The twin barrels spewed flame and tracers, and the gunner traversed, swinging his fire to intersect the oncoming dragon. The stream of heavy, deadly bullets streaked upward . . . and then one of the Marines helping to steady the tripod slipped.
It was a small enough thing . . . or would have been, under other conditions. And it was scarcely the Marine's fault. Standing up to the brutal recoil of that heavy caliber weapon was no picnic, and his boots slid in the soft soil of the dirt pile. His companions tried to compensate, but they couldn't stop the cascade effect, and the machine gun toppled over on its side.
The gunner was forced to cease fire while his assistants flung themselves on the weapon, wrestling it back into position, but they weren't quite fast enough.
* * *
Hundred Geyrsof's belly muscles had tightened convulsively as the fiery stream of . . . whatever it was coming up from the ground reached for Graycloud. He saw it moving to intersect their course, knew that the heavily armored yellow would never be able to dodge it.
And then, suddenly, it simply disappeared.
His dragon's vision showed him the Sharonians struggling to hoist their heavy, awkward weapon back into firing position, and his lips skinned back from his teeth.
Not this time, you bastards, he thought harshly.
The range spun steadily downward. He felt Graycloud quivering as other projectiles hammered into his belly armor from below, but there was no indication that any of them were getting through his thick scales. Skykill and Windslasher held formation on Graycloud's flanks as if they'd been tied together by a single rope, and he felt a burning pride in their steadiness.
And then the crosshair stopped strobing.
"Larkima!" he barked, and the ancient Mythalan word for "strangle" released Graycloud's breath weapon.
* * *
Something came streaking downward from the dragons.
Chan Tesh's eyes narrowed as they tracked it. It was even slower than the first dragons' fireballs had been, but it was also bigger. And . . . different. The fireballs had been like tiny, incandescent seeds when they were first launched, growing steadily until they were perhaps twice the size of a man's head. That was as big as they'd gotten until they hit the ground and detonated.
But these "seeds" were bigger from the outset, without the fiery glare of the fireballs. They were darker, dingier, and they grew rapidly. They were three times the size of the fireballs, at least, by the time they reached the ground, and they didn't explode the way the fireballs had. Instead, they splashed. There was no concussion, no savage flare of heat. It was almost like watching a bucket of water hitting, spreading out, washing over everyone in its vicinity as it spread wider and wider like some green-yellow fog.
For a heartbeat or two, that was all that happened. Then the first of chan Tesh's men staggered. He went to his knees, clutching at his throat with both hands. One of his companions turned towards him, as if to offer assistance, then went down beside him, writhing, choking.
Balkar chan Tesh's eyes widened with a horror even the fireballs hadn't awakened. Perhaps that was because for all their unnatural origin, the fireballs weren't all that different from the artillery with which he was familiar. This, though—he'd never seen, or imagined, anything like this.
More and more of his men went down. Everyone trapped in the area covered by those obscene breath weapons collapsed, strangling, vomiting, coughing up blood from rupturing lungs while they writhed convulsively, twisting in agony.
The dragons which had spawned that horror streaked overhead, climbing once again, and despair closed upon Balkar chan Tesh's heart like a vise of frozen iron.
That single pass had covered over two-thirds of his exposed personnel, and at least a quarter of the bunkers. Even as he watched, strangling, dying men clawed their way out of two of the bunkers, only to collapse in their own vomit as they reached the "open air" outside their position.
No one—not even Imperial Ternathian Marines—could be expected to face something like that. Not when it came at them cold, with absolutely no warning. He looked at the handful of men—there were only five of them—clustered around him, upwind from the killing clouds of vapor. There was still time, he thought. Still time to run, to put distance between himself and the dying, spasming men behind him before the dragons came back. He saw the same thought, the same recognition, in the eyes around him.
And, like Balkar chan Tesh, not one of them ran.
"All right, boys," he said quietly, looking past them, tracking the dragons with his eyes as they swept back up into the heavens. "They'll be back in a few minutes. It doesn't look like rifle bullets bothered the bastards very much, either."
He turned his head, taking his eyes off the dragons, and looked at the men around him.
"Whatever those people are doing, and however they're doing it, they had to come in close before they fired or whatever," he said.
"Yes, Sir," one of the others agreed. "And they opened their mouths, too," he added.
"Good point." Chan Tesh patted him on the shoulder, then gestured at their Model 10s.
"You've all got grenade launchers," he said.
* * *
Hundred Geyrsof studied the ground below through Graycloud's eyes as Skykill and Windslasher formed up on them once more.
The initial strike had succeeded even more completely than he'd hoped. The vast majority of the enemy was already down, dead or dying, and aside from minor damage to Graycloud's and Windslasher's wing membranes, all three of his yellows were unwounded.
He should have felt nothing but satisfaction. He knew that—and he did feel satisfied. But that wasn't all he felt. Graycloud's vision brought it all too close, made it all too clear. He saw the men he'd just killed, even though they weren't all dead yet. He saw them twisting, convulsing in agony, jerking like landed fish drowning in poisonous oxygen, and for the first time, he truly understood why some people had fought for so long to have the yellows banned. It was ugly . . . unclean.
Oh, fuck "ugly!" he told himself fiercely. Dead is dead, Horban. There aren't any good ways to die, and better it should be them than us!
He knew that was all true . . . and it didn't make him feel any better.
Anything he might feel couldn't change his responsibilities, though, and he watched the other two yellows settling into formation once again behind and to either side of Graycloud. He waited until they were both in place. Then his hands moved in the control grooves, and Graycloud slanted downward once more.
* * *
"Here they come," chan Tesh said quietly.
One of the Marines had found the company-captain a Model 10 whose owner would never need it again. Like the others, he'd mounted the grenade launcher and loaded the special blank ammunition that fired it. Now the six of them stood waiting, watching their executioners sweep towards them.
There were other Sharonians still standing, somewhere beyond the swirling haze of green-yellow vapor. Chan Tesh heard their rifles beginning to crack, and his heart swelled as he realized his men were still there, still fighting back, despite everything.
He took his own eyes from the oncoming dragons for just a
moment, let them sweep across the Marines around him.
"Gentlemen," he said, "it's been an honor. Thank you."
No one replied. There was no need.
Chan Tesh looked back at the oncoming dragons. Only one of them—the one on the extreme left of the Arcanan formation—was going to come into the grenade launchers' range, he realized. Well, at least that guaranteed concentration of fire.
Onward, closer and closer. They weren't coming in as quickly this time, a detached corner of his brain observed. Was that overconfidence? Or were they just slowing down to improve their accuracy? Or was it simply that they'd started from a lower altitude, hadn't had the opportunity to build the same velocity?
It didn't matter.
Closer, and closer still.
Properly speaking, rifle grenades weren't launched from a normal firing position. Given their recoil, The Book called for them to be fired only with the rifle's butt firmly grounded. Chan Tesh knew that, but he didn't really care. Not this time.
He nestled the brass buttplate into his shoulder, tracking the incoming dragon steadily, waiting.
One of the Marines fired. The grenade missed, and the dragons swept closer. Another Marine fired and missed.
Chan Tesh and the other three waited. Waited.
* * *
"Larkima!" Hundred Geyrsof barked.
* * *
The dragon belched its dingy death seed.
All three of chan Tesh's remaining Marines launched their grenades. One of them missed completely. Of the other two, one struck a wing membrane and punched clear through without ever exploding. The third slammed into the dragon's left foreleg and exploded, blowing a huge, gaping wound into the limb.
But Balkar chan Tesh waited just a moment longer. Waited even as he watched the growing breath weapon streaking towards him. Waited for the dragon to come just that little bit closer. And then, as it opened its mouth in a bellow of pain, he launched his own grenade.
'Chapter Five
Rithmar Skirvon sat slumped in his chair while Fifty Narshu's splattered brains and blood dried into a caked residue on the back of his neck and the back and shoulders of his elegantly tailored civilian coat. There were probably at least a few specks of Uthik Dastiri's brains mixed in among the rest of it, and his face seemed to have crumpled in on itself. There was no sign of the confident, masterful diplomat now, Dorzon chan Baskay thought grimly, and felt a fresh ripple of anger roiling about in his belly like slow magma as he glared at the Arcanan.