J. King: INVASION

"They're getting through!" Squee shouted through the aft speaking tube.

Two more cruisers nosed beneath the portal ship, toward undefended Benalia.

Gerrard shouted. "Turn the ship! We've got to stop them!"

"Turn the ship-?" Sisay shouted. Her objection was cut short.

The portal ship spewed black smoke. Its gleaming vision of Dominaria flickered. Explosions bloomed in the joints of one pincer. It cracked free, toppled, and dropped toward the twisted ground of Rath. Like a soap bubble, the portal popped. Sunlight died. Benalish skies were gone.

Gone too were the front halves of the two cruisers. The closing portal had guillotined the ships. The shriek and groan of failing metal was punctuated by explosions from severed engines. In tandem, the cruisers' afts sputtered sparks and soot. They tipped, crashing down atop waiting craft below. In a storm of fire and smoke, five ships impacted the flowstone ground. The first power core went critical. It sent a column of black force a thousand feet into the sky and fifty feet into the ground. Hunks of flowstone pelted a second craft. Its power core cracked, and then a third. More ships went down there before the closed portal.

"Nice work for the first ten minutes of the invasion!" Gerrard shouted to his crew. "A ruined portal and a dozen ships down!"

"And ten thousand ships trapped on this side with us," Sisay warned. "We've got company."

Though cruisers and plague ships were too slow to pursue Weatherlight, the dragon engines were not. To the untrained eye, they seemed merely dragons. The sinuous constructs were as agile, as sleek, as intelligent as their natural kin. Beneath scales of enameled titanium were meshes so fine as to form skin and muscles. The beasts wheeled about and swarmed after Weatherlight. They opened jaws lined with true scimitars and breathed breath as powerful as any ray cannon blast.

"Punch it, Karn! Full speed!" Gerrard called.

"This is full speed," came the rumbled response.

"Evasive action," Gerrard shouted.

"This is evasive action," Sisay responded.

"Laying in planeshift!" Hanna called.

"Belay that," Gerrard responded. "Stay here on Rath. Lay in a course to the closest active portal ship."

"Aye, Commander."

"One armada isn't enough for you to take on?" Sisay asked through the tube.

"We'll shut down that one just like we've shut down this one."

Weatherlight jagged, her keel smashing a dragon engine that had flown up beneath it. The metallic wyrm plunged from the air to tumble brokenly across the tortured ground.

"Nice flying, Captain!" Gerrard said.

"How about you shoot some of them?" she replied.

"Yeah, how about it?"

Gerrard's cannon blazed. Blood-red energy dragged plasma from the air. It roared down the open gullet of a dragon that swooped up to port. The eyes of the beast glowed for a brilliant moment before going black. The dragon engine's wings folded, and it plummeted away.

Two more engines soared up to take the place of the first. They spat their own fire. It mantled the fore hull and made wood instantly blaze.

Had Weatherlight been a ship of dead timbers, she would have gone up like a jack straw. But Weatherlight lived. Her hull was living wood, her Thran metal fittings grew, even her engine was a vital organ, capable of agony and joy. The silver golem attached to that engine served as a kind of brain for the machine. Together the components of Weatherlight made a powerful being, more than capable of her own defense. Sap oozed from the living hull, extinguishing the fire and salving the charred grains. The port-side landing spine jutted suddenly, and the ship rolled. The sharp metal spine lanced through the dragon engines, slicing their chests. They veered off, falling through the swarm of their comrades.

"Course locked in," reported Hanna. "A hundred miles to the next portal ship."

"They're targeting the wings!" Sisay shouted in warning.

The ship swooped to avoid a killing blast of breath. Shots from Squee's cannon destroyed the offender. Another dragon engine followed, unshakable.

Gerrard growled, "Karn, can we fly without wings?"

"Like a rocket, fast and fatal. It'll be almost impossible to steer."

"Not for Sisay. Fold the wings. Rocket us to the next portal." Gerrard expected a chorus of dissent. The others were either inured to his requests or dumbstruck.

The wings folded, ratcheting inward on chains. For a moment, Weatherlight lost lift. Then her intakes opened wide, and her exhausts narrowed to blazing jets.

"Hold on!" Gerrard shouted.

It was futile. He could not be heard above the sudden roar. Besides, anyone who was not strapped down or inside the ship would have been blown from the deck.

Weatherlight rocketed away from the pursuing cloud of dragon engines. Her exhaust vents painted the folded masts vermilion. The afterburn lit the eyes of the metallic serpents. They fell back, their jaws snapping on nothing.

As the yawing hull settled into its roaring course, Gerrard let out a whoop. "Would you believe it? All the time I spent running from my Legacy-if I'd known it was so damned much fun-"

"There has been a casualty," Tahngarth reminded through the speaking tube.

"Yeah," Gerrard acknowledged. He drew a long breath and pivoted to stare at the starboard amidships gun. The black rot that had once mantled its barrel had spent itself, hissing away to nothing. The goo had taken Gunner

Fewsteem's body with it, had burned away even the harness that had held him. Gerrard muttered, "Fewsteem. He was a brave man. There have been so many lost… Yes, that's why I ran for so long-"

"I'm picking up an even larger armada at the next portal ship," Hanna reported, her voice tense in the speaking tube. "We're going to need every gun."

"Any chance of repairing Fewsteem's cannon?" Gerrard asked.

Karn answered from the engine room. His connection to the ship allowed him to sense its every fiber as part of his body. "There is a single ruptured conduit in the plasma supply field. Replace it, and the gun will work again."

"I'm on it," Hanna said, moving away from the speaking tube before Gerrard could countermand her. Moments later, she descended from the helm to amidships, the needed part in one hand and a big wrench in the other.

He had to grin. It was classic Hanna. Her blonde hair whipped in the wind. She leaned steeply to make her way forward. She seemed so slender there, against the racing landscape of Rath, the coiling red clouds. Gerrard was glad she had a wrench to weigh her down. She reached the gun, removed a split panel, and worked at loosening the ruptured conduit.

"That's my girl," Gerrard said, shaking his head in admiration.

"Gerrard, you see what we are flying over?" Sisay asked at the helm.

He had not. Eyes that had seen only Hanna against the red turmoil of Rath now shifted their focus. His face darkened.

On the unruly hills below waited a huge army of Phyrexians. Their forces stretched to the horizons. There were no tents or bedrolls, for these creatures needed neither shelter nor rest. There were only patient ranks of troops and penned beasts to feed them. No campfires, either-Phyrexians did not need heat and preferred their meals raw, indeed live. There was not a stick of furniture and no provision for comfort-unless gladiatorial circles could be called comfort. There was only order and slavish obedience and savagery.

"Waiting to board troop ships, you think, Sisay?" Gerrard conjectured.

"Waiting for something but not troop ships. There're too many soldiers."

"Gun's fixed," Hanna announced triumphantly. She repositioned the split panel and staggered to her feet.

Sisay let out a hiss. "Incoming!"

A plague bomb dropped from a sentry craft overhead. It fell straight toward Weatherlight. The ship jagged out from beneath it, but the bomb burst in midair. Shrapnel hailed across Weatherlight's amidships. Shards bounded briefly against the planks before being ripped away on the winds.