Chapter 104 - A Meteor Made Flesh

I ran back to the chopper with its engine still hot and running.

“What did she demand?” asked Girmaks.

“She wouldn’t say,” I said. As soon as all the goblins were aboard, I pulled us into a rolling takeoff. We still had our trump card: the two-stage rocket mounted in the belly compartment. I’d already seen the whistler take a direct hit on the armor from one of them and keep trucking. A headshot would probably do for it, but with the erratic way it moved, we’d never nail its head with a rocket—even if the goblin guidance pilot rode the warhead all the way in.

I lifted us up off the deck and soared over the ranks of Dawn’s Light hunters on their oryx, spilling over the side of the canyon and bounding down its walls on the sure-footed beasts towards the battle below.

“How did you know she would demand something?” I asked.

“She is an orc. She is devious and exacting—always ulterior motives and plans within plans. But I believe I know her mind. I believe I know, King Ap, what she will ask.”

“Care to enlighten me?”

“It is not my scheme to expose. To do so would be—”

“Crude and reductive?” I guessed.

“—dishonoring her culture.”

Considering her culture was currently, in large part, the extortion of Tribe Apollo, I couldn’t find myself to be too sympathetic. But we had bigger fish to fry and a freight-train millipede monster that sounded like it was tearing through the Flock. I angled down into the valley, flying almost low enough to brush the tops of the Dawn hunter spears as I built speed. Ahead, I could see the wreckage of another chopper and at least two buggies on the floor of the canyon. The narrow spires were crisscrossed with the body of the whistler. It continued making passes at the fleet of choppers and ground vehicles.

The first wave of the dawn hunters hit the canyon floor and thundered toward the whistler. Before they reached it, they split into several groups and circled, shouting and waving spears. The whistler, which had been making another run at the BHR, instead shifted. Its eyes tracked the bright light reflecting off the spears, and it zig-zagged towards the closest contingent of Lura’s hunters.

I tilted my stick to the side, following along as they wrapped around the back of a pillar, then changed course abruptly. The whistler rammed through dirt and gravel where they would have been and kicked up a gale with its passing.

I pulled up, watching as another group of hunters angled small, polished shields to catch the sun’s light and reflect it into the whistler’s eyes. It diverted for them, mouth open wide. Not all of them were fast enough to get out of its way, and an orc and mount both disappeared down its gullet without it slowing.

What were they doing? Not striking any decisive blows, that was for sure. Hell, they hadn’t even attacked it at all. I climbed in altitude for a better view but had to angle quickly out of the crisscrossed segments of the whistler. Again, I marveled at its length, easily hundreds of meters of stampeding legs headed by what looked like a cast-iron dome of a skull plate that could crush through a bunker door. And even as I watched, it smashed a boulder to gravel with barely any notice.

Again, a group of Lura’s hunters flashed light into its eyes and distracted once more it split from the group it chased in favor of, quite literally, the new shiny thing. This time it had to maneuver over one of its own segments in order to reach the target. The thing was so damn big it was doubling back over itself and…

Oh.

Oh…

Lura was a devious one. She’d seen what these aircraft could do and put it together even better than I had. She wasn’t going to make things easy for me, because it suited her pride to rub my little goblin nose in it that I’d bought into a bargain I hadn’t even needed. Damned orc. Use its length against it. And she knew we could do it because I’d already shown her. I looked back at the smoldering sunbursts at the stern of my chopper. The whole time, I’d wondered why it was so focused on us. I grabbed the handset. “Flares!” I barked. “Pass the word! Every chopper, scatter and ignite flares!”

“I believe I understand what she is trying to show us, King Ap.”

Stolen story; please report.

“Way ahead of you!” I shouted.

My little semaphore zealot worked his flags while another of our crewmen ignited another smoldering torch and slotted it into the back of the chopper. None too soon, as Raphina’s shadow passed over us, and the Dawn hunters lost their method of distracting the beast. That’s why it was more dangerous during the eclipse, because it was easier to distract the whistler with bright, shiny things. Now the only source of light was the flares igniting on the backs of the choppers.

I wasn’t low enough to see its eyes fix on us, but I did see it suddenly snake towards the nearest pillar, spiraling up.

Wait for it…

It lunged, gaping maw coming within a few lengths of our aircraft as I dumped us into a temporary autorotation. I quickly maneuvered behind its skull-plate, and it fixated on another chopper’s glowing flare. It hit another pillar, swung around it, and shot right back. Unfortunately, this chopper pilot wasn’t as quick on the sticks as me, and barely had time to bail out along with most of his crew as the hardened skull of the whistler obliterated the aircraft.

“Ready the missile!” I shouted into my handset, looking at the central spire the creature had wrapped several times. The crew of my ship squawked and fought to be the first down into the belly compartment. One of them got situated, and I brought the craft around.

The rest of the fleet, cast out of formation, were now flying as erratically as any goblins—which was perfect. The whistler simply had too many bright lights to chase. It had doubled back on itself so many times that it had coiled around the same pillar in three different places. For the first time since we’d stirred the beast, I actually saw the end of its tail snaking towards the spire.

I pointed the nose of the chopper between two of the sets of coils, at what looked like the narrowest part of the spindle formation. “There!” I shouted. “At the skinny part, just like the practice run! Tally ho!”

I yanked down on the plunger and felt the mechanism beneath me give way. The squawk of the goblin riding the missile fell away, and a moment later I heard the rocket motor ignite. Our payload shot out, erratic and barely under control. But its pilot managed to get it on track. Even the whistler took notice, and it screamed after the rocket, mouth open and ready for the kill. The goblin pilot bailed out at the last second, and the warhead hit the pillar and exploded. The crack echoed off the canyon walls, but it was nothing compared to the thump of the whistler skull-bashing the impact. A spiderweb of cracks spread out from the impact site, and you could feel the impact in the air. It quickly reeled back and circled the spire, shooting off in another direction. But when the dust cleared, I could see a fissure had been opened in the rock face. What’s more, so could the rest of the fleet, and the BHR on the ground. Two more chopper missiles followed, and then the cannon of the new and improved Big Hoss Rig. And it had a secret of its own.

The back of the armored vehicle split open, and a pair of the largest rockets we’d made yet raised on geared platforms. Cased in steel and tipped with several chooms of explosives, these were multi-staged monsters built with a single purpose: to kill a whistler.

The two motors ignited on the platform, and even in the chopper I could hear the distant rumble over the shriek of the whistler’s perforated carapace. I held a hand up to the glare of their ignition as they roared to life. The two rockets shot off their launcher—one of which immediately exploded, knocking three buggies and BHR completely over.

The second rocket struggled to right itself, pilot desperately wrestling with the controls. But the first stage fell away, the booster kicked on, and the second stage shot up toward the gap, sun-bright flame of the burning accelerant illuminating the eclipsed canyon.

“Come on baby!” I shouted, pumping my fist in the air. Armstrong was leaned so far forward watching that I thought he would tip right out of his seat.

“Woooo!”

The goblins on board were all cheering and whooping at the sight of the full-fire rocket riding a plume of hot exhaust. But a sound was mounting over both their shouts and the sound of the rocket: the shrill freight-train horn of the whistler. It’s iron-plated head shot up into the sky, mouth wide, every eye fixed on the brightest source of light in the canyon.

And it swallowed the rocket whole, rider and all.

The noise of the rocket motor cut off with the clamp of powerful iron jaws, and my own mouth dropped open. The goblins on the chopper froze mid-cheer, and the whistler barreled right past us, deafeningly loud.

“Boss?” asked Armstrong, looking back at me.

“Did… did that really just happen?” I asked.

BOOM

A wave of hot air and steaming viscera hit us from behind. Some of it hit the rotor, which showered us even further with finely mulched whistler meat. I had to fight to keep control as the shockwave threatened to slam us against the standing spindles of rock in the canyon. Several of our crew were thrown completely free of the craft. Finally, I got the aircraft under control and leveled out, and looped us around a pillar as I wiped viscera off my face.

The enormous millipede monster, now headless, slumped to the canyon floor. The weight of its body hitting the ground made the whole canyon quake, and for a moment I thought the damaged spire would come down. But it held, and I brought the chopper in for a landing near the capsized Big Hoss Rig. I jumped out and ran to the tank, and over the ringing in my ears I could hear a clanging from inside.

The side hatch on the rig opened, and a very discombobulated Sourtooth pulled his wiry frame on top of the wreck. He looked around, finally seeing the decapitated whistler. He looked at me, looked at the whistler, looked back at me.

“Pray tell, o’ king,” he roared, pointing at the decapitated beast, “Why was this not our opening gambit?!”