David Weber - Hell Hath No Fury

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.