J. King - INVASION

Sisay cringed away. "Whatever it is, it's about to be dead." She wheeled Weatherlight hard about. The ship's keel skidded on buffeting air, caught hold, and cut a tight, clean semicircle.

The bristly creature swept up before the bow.

Mounting on her new course, Weatherlight blazed to life. Her engines roared.

Squee had moved to the starboard prow ray cannon. It barked. Energy roared in superheated shafts out from the gun. Rays plunged from the bow, struggling to escape the hurtling ship. They crashed into the spiny mass.

White puffs of smoke went up. Quills curled acridly. Pink skin split open to a muscle mass that seemed writhing maggots. Awash in yellow blood, the maggot-muscles ebbed down ragged hunks of bone.

"Die, monster!" Sisay growled through clenched teeth.

It was no good. The yellow tide of blood welled up over bone. White hunks of muscle fused.

"Those maggots are machines," rumbled Karn through the speaking tube. "I see them through the running lights. They fragment to absorb damage and then join together to regenerate flesh."

Weatherlight had not even passed the beast when its pink skin had closed. New spines jutted obscenely from the scar. Tentacles slapped at the stern of the ship,

"Damn it!" Sisay roared. "How're we supposed to kill that thing?"

From the speaking tube came a shout-Orim, on deck with a wounded ensign. "The anchor. We harvested Phyrexians with it before. Hook that beast, and we can drag it."

"Or it can drag us," Sisay replied.

"Do it," Karn said. "The engines will hold. The chain will hold."

Sisay shook her head. "It'll rip the hull in half."

Another presence spoke to Sisay out of a wooden boss in the bridge ceiling. "Do it," Multani echoed. "The hull will hold. It will heal."

There was someone to speak to. Sisay grinned eagerly. "Yeah. Let's do this. Orim, if you've got that gunner stabilized and strapped down, I could use you at the capstan."

"On my way." Beyond the wind screen, Orim picked her way to the prow.

Weatherlight cut a long smooth arc out over the battlefield. In her wake, Phyrexian cannons bled fire into the sky. A few bolts struck, ripping holes in the hull.

Multani worked quickly to regrow the sections. Where energy lashed the engines, Karn healed the spots with Thran metal. All the while, Orim hunkered by the rail.

The ship roared into her new flight path. Ahead, the witch engine rose. Its legs reached out toward Weatherlight.

"We'll have one shot at this," Sisay warned. "We've made it mad enough. This'll make it furious."

"This'll make it dead," Orim called back through the capstan tube. "I learned a little about fly fishing among the Cho-Arrim."

Sisay snorted. "Cast your line."

Orim pulled the pin from the capstan. It spun. Chain paid out loudly. The ship's massive anchor plunged downward through the boiling air. Ten fathoms, fifteen fathoms, twenty fathoms.

"Ratchet that off, Orim!" Sisay called. The healer hauled hard on the capstan's lever, and the rattling chain grumbled to silence. "Karn, I'm going to need your eyes on this one. I want to sink the flukes in that monster's maggot heart. And help me keep the ship trim. That thing could flip us end over end."

Instead of words, Karn answered in a surge of the engines. Weatherlight vaulted higher into the reeling skies.

A cannon blast clipped the starboard gunwale, cutting a trough through it. Another ripped through the port-side airfoil. The ship dipped, heeling to starboard.

"Fold them!" Sisay ordered Karn. She pointed the prow at the midsection of the beast and held her course. "Fold the airfoils. We're going in full speed."

With a loud clap, the wings folded. The ship's engines thundered. Weatherlight leaped out ahead of a volley of plasma bursts. She clove the air like an axe head, outrunning even ray fire. The anchor swung up beneath the keel.

"Bring us in low!" Sisay ordered. The ship plunged.

Below, the witch engine swelled out grotesquely. It had reared up. Its countless mouths gnashed the bodies of its latest victims. White arms groped toward Weatherlight.

Squee fired a series of bursts. They cut a swath through the forest of lashing legs. The ship soared down that avenue. More fire blazed from Squee's gun. Hunks of severed white leg pelted across the deck. Toothy mouths hissed fetid fumes at the fleeing craft. The anchor swung down, cracking across the hard jaws.

"Got a nibble!" Orim shouted.

Sisay hauled back on the helm. Weatherlight jagged upward. The anchor swung down, digging itself deep in one of the monster's mouths. It sank away.

"Make that a bite!"

Links slashed through the thing's wet white flesh. In the maggot storm of the beast's innards, the anchor at last lodged on something solid.

The prow deck bulged upward beneath the straining bolthead. Green mana flowed through the wood, strengthening it to steel hardness.

"Let's flip it!" Sisay growled.

Weatherlight vaulted just above the hairy, horrible beast. Chains whipped tight against the monster's bulk. Metal burst flesh and sawed deeper. The witch engine roared from its myriad mouths. Weatherlight nosed toward ground. Her anchor chain cut brutally deep, spreading the walls of the laceration widely apart. The ship's keel shot forward, just above the maggoty canyon it carved. She roared down.

Legs flapping into the heavens, the witch engine slowly toppled. Its spiny back flipped down to the battlefield.

Cannon fire meant for Weatherlight smashed instead into the riven monster.

Spotting Phyrexian armies beyond, Sisay shoved the helm all the way forward. The ship dived sharply, dragging its captive down behind it.

"Let's see how you regenerate this," Sisay growled. Weatherlight avalanched down the skies. She seemed about to impact the battlefield when she drew sharply level. Her keel smashed the heads of Phyrexians. Landing spines jutted, slicing more of the beasts. Those hewn in half by the rushing skyship were lucky. The rest stood in the path of a great bristly ball.

In its first revolution, the witch engine's legs were shredded. Sections of muscle smashed down atop Phyrexians, crushing them. In its second revolution, the engine pounded its folk into paste. In its third, the anchor chain sawed through it.

Equal halves of the monster split from each other and rolled away across the battlefield, spewing destruction. Maggot-machines flung free. They pelted the monsters into the ground. The torn halves of its skin emptied themselves. The last of the witch engine's essence pattered away uselessly.

Sisay hauled back on the helm. Weatherlight climbed into the heavens. "That's the way to cut 'em! Good work, Orim!"

The healer smiled grimly. "I could use a hand reeling in the anchor."

"Leave it be," Sisay said. "I'm not done fishing."

Did you see that? Bo Levar sent to the other planeswalkers. He was busily ripping legs from another witch engine. The giant monster grew replacements faster than he could pull them loose. It climbed his multicolored titan suit. Did you see what Weatherlight did?

Indeed! Commodore Guff replied. A witch engine straddled the shoulders of his titan suit. Hundreds of mouths gnawed at the power conduits. Bother these buggers!

We cannot expect Weatherlight to save us, Urza replied. Three of the vast beasts swarmed him. Cannon blasts from his wrist rockets tore into them. The wounds closed as quickly.

Impatient, Bo Levar growled, Rip 'em open. They can regenerate as long as the maggot machines are together. Rip 'em open and dig away the machines. These beasts are like cigars-without their wrappers, they come to pieces.

He rammed his clawed fingers deep into the witch engine before him. With an almighty roar, he tore back the thing's skin, splitting it open and spilling billions of writhing machines. The tear deepened. Wriggling white maggots showered across the titan suit. Ignoring them, Bo kept ripping until the two hairy halves peeled away from each other. He flung the empty halves down onto the Phyrexian hordes.