J. King: INVASION

Across the forecastle, Tahngarth swung the massive barrel of his ray cannon about. He spat on the shaft, watching the white glob hiss away on impact.

"Fore starboard gun ready!" he shouted.

Gerrard likewise spun his weapon to fore and spat on it. "Fore port gun ready!"

From amidships, Dabis and Fewsteem reported in from their gun encasements.

"Squee, too," came a squeal through the speaking tube. "Squee, too."

The belly gunner and top gunners reported in.

Gerrard shouted to them all. "They look awful, sure, but they've never been in battle. They've never tested their ships in combat. Shoot for the power conduits. Shoot for intakes and stabilizers, anything that'll make one shot count for two."

Weatherlight mounted up the sky. Her engines screamed in the ascent. The cruisers didn't seem to get any nearer, only bigger.

"They've got to have fifty guns per ship," Dabis gasped. "How do we stand against fifty guns?"

"We'll stand, and they'll fall," Gerrard said. "Sisay, take us between the ships."

Her voice was shrill in the tube. "Between them?"

"You heard me. Thread the needle."

"You mean run the gauntlet," Sisay growled. "Threading the needle, Commander."

After the stress of shifting, this kind of tooth-and-nail ascent was like poetry. Never before had Weatherlight been so powerful. Skyshaper, Juju Bubble, Bones of Ramos, Power Matrix-the engine had almost doubled in size since leaving Dominaria for Rath. It showed. Weatherlight rose with a vengeance.

Ahead the two Phyrexian cruisers formed the cliff walls of an aerial canyon.

Weatherlight was still accelerating as she drove between them.

"Fire at will!" Gerrard roared.

He squeezed the cannon handles. A great bolt of radiance roared out of the flaming end. It struck clear air, melting it to red plasma. A hissing comet, the flare arced across the racing sky. It smashed fistlike into the starboard intakes of one cruiser. Sparks and great shreds of metal danced in the engine. A black plume belched out the rear of the ship. Tahngarth scored a similar strike on the cruiser on his side. Dabis and Fewsteem squeezed off a few shots.

Then black bolts answered. They shot out like sooty spider webs from ports along the ships' baselines. These were no webs. They were mana beams, their touch bringing death. They reached out toward Weatherlight.

"Cut those lines!" Gerrard shouted. His cannon unloaded three rounds in quick succession. The bolts grabbed Phyrexian flack from the air and obliterated it.

Tahngarth's cannon shouted. It ate away a pair of webs just before they lashed Weatherlight's hull. He shot a third time. This beam sliced through the air to punch into a set of mana conduits on the starboard cruiser's flank.

Already, the air was black with fire from the cruisers.

"What have you done?" Tahngarth roared even as he loosed a new volley. "We'll never survive the crossfire!"

"They'll never survive the crossfire," Gerrard shouted back.

Black bolts filled the air between the cruisers. Most of the shots went wide of Weatherlight. They continued on, slamming into the opposite vessel. The Phyrexian cruisers were slaying each other.

A black blast struck Weatherlight's hull just below Fewsteem's gun.

"Forget the ships!" Gerrard shouted. "They're already done for. Defensive fire!"

Over the tube came Sisay's voice. "Shall I take us out of here, Commander?"

"Sure, Sisay. Straight forward. Take us up, through the portal!"

"Take us where?" Sisay's voice echoed in the speaking tube.

Gerrard had expected her to resist. He squeezed off two more blasts, watching gaseous plasma smack against the lateral thrusters of one of the cruisers. The mechanism melted, and the Phyrexian warship listed farther.

Through a grim smile, he called back to Sisay, "We've got to destroy the portal ship. We can't shoot it from this side."

"On the other side, there's an armada," Sisay protested, "and Phyrexians."

Gerrard spat dismissively. "Their ships are crap." As if in proof, he fired twice more. The shots soared out like twin stars and smashed through the main bridge of the cruiser. It lit lantern bright. "And their crews are no match for ours." "I agree with you there," Sisay replied.

Weatherlight surged with new speed toward the portal. The engines roared their resolve. Karn, below, was reworking the intake-exhaust ratios to maximize thrust. Weatherlight shot from the gulf between the cruisers. A whoop went up from the crew, followed by a second one, even louder.

The port-side ship foundered and plunged from the sky. It rolled massively over, its guns still firing. Webby mana trails tangled about the shuddering vessel. Explosions rocked it. The stern cracked away, propelled on red flame.

The cruiser's main body shown in cross section. It tipped on end, smashed to ground, and shattered like a rotten egg.

A third cheer erupted, cut short by a sudden explosion.

Weatherlight was still a thousand yards from the portal when a black-mana bolt struck the starboard amidships. It ate the rail and part of the gunwale and swept toward the starboard ray cannon. Fewsteem, strapped there, shouted as his gun blazed. Red energy punched through the center of the black mass. It was not enough. Inky death spattered the cannon and fell on Fewsteem. Metal hissed. Flesh turned to rot and white ash. The gun belched green smoke and went dark. Fewsteem was gone-nothing more than a pair of legs beneath a puff of soot.

Without its counterpart, the remaining Phyrexian cruiser was unloading its arsenal.

"Tahngarth, blast that cruiser!" Gerrard shouted. He struggled to wrench his gun about, but its angle of fire couldn't reach starboard aft.

"It's behind the wing!" Tahngarth shouted back.

Sisay initiated a series of swooping lunges. Ropy charges of black-mana spent themselves in empty air beside and behind the ship.

Crimson charges rushed out from the stern ray cannon. Squee stood in its traces, blasting away. The pulses danced erratically through the air. Many shots missed their mark. Others batted down the cruiser's fire. Two rounds won through the barrage and sank into the exhaust port of the main engine.

The enormous craft hiccuped. It shuddered once. Its attacks faltered.

In a sun-bright blaze, it exploded. Hunks of ship hurtled outward, trailing fire. They raced toward Weatherlight at twice her speed. Had she been in clear air, the shrapnel would have hailed across Weatherlight and dismantled her.

Fortunately, it was just then she punched through the portal.

Fortunately? The blue skies of Dominaria gave way to twisted clouds in red and black. The wide plains and deep forests gave way to volcanic rills and tortured lava tubes. Worst of all, though, in place of two Phyrexian ships, there were thousands.

Airships were stacked to the sky. As devilish as they had seemed in the sunlight, in shadow these vessels were demons in hell. Wings of skin. Dripping claws. Jetting fires. A dozen of the ships were as big as mountains. A hundred were the size of the cruisers already destroyed. A thousand were the size of Weatherlight.

"Forget the armada!" Gerrard roared. "Target the portal ship!"

Fire answered from the six remaining guns. A sunburst of scarlet energy raced out from Weatherlight. The charges soared up toward the vast metallic claw that hung in the skies of Rath. The ship seemed to glare down at them, robotic arms twitching impotently in the portal. One by one, the shots impacted the claw. Flowstone panels slumped. Fires hissed forth. The flames seemed impossibly small on that massive machine. Already Weatherlight was out of range for more attacks.