Maeve flew in a huge ring around the trunk of the crystal tree, and so she frequently lost sight of the enemy airships. Spirits swarmed in the branches above, pressing out toward the fleet in aggressive circles. The upper branches were obscured by thick clouds, and the airships were difficult to isolate against the diffuse gray light. She fought against relentless winds, struggling to keep the horizon in the center of her propeller disk. Her hands were sweating, and her little wooden coffin was starting to stink. Also, there were hundreds of other airplanes crowding the sky around her, and while the storm sorcerers were technically capable of flying, they had adopted none of the usual right-of-way conventions.
Parallel to the line of ships, with wings slightly tilted in a gentle banking rotation around the tree, she watched the enemy airplanes suspiciously through her foggy canopy. Until they began to quit the field. Then her mind reverted to her distant past.
Those airships are undefended, she thought. We could board them. Take them! Maybe Torrance would be able to reverse engineer the design?
A flash of orange-magenta light dominated her vision, so bright that it darkened the world outside. A huge flaming bird appeared atop a desert hill north of the plateau. Shortly after, Maeve felt Shane's storm sorcery. She knew the man was more powerful, but in that moment her previous conceptions were shattered. He was drawing enough power from the Realms to burn himself into a tiny pile of ashes. And yet the sorcery persisted, until it winked out after intercepting the huge bird.
The Phoenix flapped its wings and slowly lurched toward the closest airship. It puffed up its chest, rapidly flapped its wings, reared back and screeched. A wave of orange-magenta fire split the airship in half lengthwise, incinerating all the canvas and the wood and the people in an instant. The two halves of the airship were actually launched up higher into the air by the impact of the wave of heat.
Instead of continuing her circle around the tree, she reversed her roll in the direction of her engine torque and brought the enemy fleet into the center of her propeller disk. The violent tail wind, combined with her engine torque, caused her to rapidly lose altitude, and if she had not pressed forward on the stick and kicked the rudder against the torque, she would have departed flight. At least three other storm sorcerers decided to follow her, and, lacking her experience, they almost immediately flopped over and began to spin.
The huge Phoenix attached itself to the bottom of the largest airship. The whole airship began to bend and ripple. Bravely, the craft held on for another minute or so, before it crumpled under the weight and split in half. A torrent of heat incinerated the remains of the airship even as it fell.
Even though the airships had been destroyed, the tugboats, little twin engine airplanes with huge propellers, pressed on toward the city. The Phoenix fluttered over to the third airship, ignoring the danger. The other tugboats began to detach themselves and race forward, abandoning their doomed airships. Maeve descended in a long arc, approaching from the east to catch them all in a long line, gathering airspeed as she descended. She estimated that they flew at about fifty knots, and her own gauge indicated double that number.
She brought the first into the center of her propeller disk, then attacked with a long lance of blue draconic fire. The plume of fire struck the near-side engine pylon, causing it to burst apart. The torque of the opposite engine caused the craft to instantly begin spinning, and Maeve pulled up and rolled over to watch it fall. It was spinning like some child's toy, spewing bodies in every direction.
Perhaps if they had swapped the direction of the engine torque across the two pylons, maybe it would not spin so fast?
She didn't bother to contemplate the answer to this question, because she found herself subconsciously pulling toward the next target. Her lance of flame struck the rear body, severing the empennage and causing the leading wings to nose dive. Those two huge propellers drove the craft faster and faster into the "river" of blue crystal spires below. One unfortunate soldier was impaled exactly on the tip of one of those spires, leaving a dark red smear at the tip.
Maeve shivered. Red blood is so unnatural.
The other four tugboats had managed to make it all the way to the escarpment. The engine pylons began to tilt upward, transforming the tugboats into dropships. Maeve managed to rake one of them with a blast of draconic flame even as the soldiers disembarked, but she was forced to pull up and roll over to avoid ramming into the thing. She glanced down at the plateau as it rushed past below. Dozens of soldiers poured out of the surviving three dropships, men armed with sabers and crossbows.
She was flying very slow, barely fast enough to roll over. The runway in the center of the city was directly ahead of her. She began laughing. "I could land right now," she said.
As her airplane began to lose airspeed, she could not honestly think of a reason not to land directly ahead. Immediately she began cranking the wheel to deploy the flaps, then she cut the engine and coasted, keeping the close edge of the airfield in the center of her windmilling propeller. The sandy ground grew closer and closer, and at the last second she pulled up hard, stalling the airplane just over the ground. It was a hard landing but the wheels held, and Maeve didn't bother using the whole runway, electing instead to kick the rudder and roll to a stop just off the side of the airfield.
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Her hands moved in a blur to unlatch the canopy and throw it overhead. She ripped the seat forward and grabbed the survival kit out of the tail boom, split the seal apart, and grabbed the crossbow and saber within. She floated up over the lip of the cabin and settled down onto the hard red stone of the plateau, grasping the crossbow in sweaty palms.
"Time to get to work."
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The last of the six airships disintegrated into ash and molten steel. Overhead, dozens of twin-engine haulers towed at least two hundred gliders with long cables. The Spirits, who perhaps had been afraid to attack armed airships, raced forward in a huge wave to intercept the gliders. Flying trees wrapped their roots around the twin-engine airplanes, then twisted, initiating spins. The centrifugal force of the heavy engines on the wings caused the craft to level off into unrecoverable flat spins. Giant bees swarmed around the vulnerable gliders that managed to detach themselves, but most of the gliders were dragged down, with wings bending until they snapped off.
Shane turned his attention to the tilt-rotors that had been hauling the airships. One brave pilot had engaged them, managing to score no less than two kills before any of them reached the escarpment. He recognized the particular style of sorcery used by that pilot.
"Lady Maeve, I think I owe you a drink."
He pointed to the surviving tilt-rotors, and the Phoenix Elemental began to bank. Shane was not an expert pilot, but he estimated that her maximum speed was about one-third as fast as the friendly airplanes circling the tree. Perhaps thirty knots. Wisely, Maeve leveled off and then began to descend straight ahead, toward the airfield.
"I'll give you one of them."
When he arrived at the very edge of the plateau, the Quarian soldiers had managed to disembark and form up into a fire team. Their extraordinary professionalism and skill was rewarded with an encounter with the talon of a Phoenix crashing down between them. Shane could not see them when she landed, but he guessed they felt very little pain. A twist of the neck and another screaming breath incinerated the second craft. The last craft was further away from the others, and a single storm sorcerer raced forward to face them.
Shane glanced around. He could not see signs of battle anywhere. The Quarian airplanes were still in retreat, traveling at perhaps one hundred knots to the north. He would not be able to catch them on his Phoenix. There was at least one skilled sorcerer in Quaria, the geomancer named Cliona, and if he sent the storm sorcerers to chase those airplanes, they would likely encounter an auxiliary force of some sort.
"The battle is won," he said. "Thank you, old friend. We will fly together again, when Princess Astrid allows it."
With a flash of red-orange light, the Phoenix Elemental vanished, abandoning him to gravity. He floated down to the escarpment toward the sixth tilt-rotor, the one which had been hauling the Flameraker. He skimmed the ground, with his loose robes fluttering against the dusty red stone. He saw flashes of lightning and heard the thud of a crossbow. One last soldier remained. That man rushed forward with his saber, only to be stunned by a wave of lightning.
Maeve kicked him between the legs, causing him to slump over. Then she struck him on the side of his head with her saber. Red blood stained red stone.
"You could have helped!" she bellowed.
"Where did you learn to fight like that?" he asked as he floated down in front of her.
"I may have picked up a few tricks from the other pirates," Maeve replied.
Her loose white trousers appeared soaked with urine, which was perhaps not unexpected of a pilot returning from a long fight. She resumed hacking away at the man's neck with her saber, splattering bits of red meat everywhere.
"Red bloods!" she hissed.
Shane felt the feather-weight of the Spirit of Riln settle on his shoulders. Her sky-blue hair tumbled across his cheeks, blocking the southern winds. She began to whisper in his ear: "Stories of this battle will spread. The people of Riln will want to know what this woman has done."
"They shall know," he swore.
His intuition caused him to turn to face the city, where Princess Astrid stalked forward. He walked toward her, but fell to one knee before she drew too close.
"Retainer Shane," Princess Astrid said. "You have witnessed firsthand the ineffectiveness of the flying machines that the northerners have conspired to create. The airplanes are the key. Of this fact, Felix has complete understanding. Tell me, Retainer Shane, what is the fate of the Lord Paladin?"
"I killed him with my own hands," Shane admitted. He reached out and displayed his palms, still caked in dried blood. "He was incoherent, unaware of his situation."
"Rudderless?" Lady Maeve asked.
The Purple Dragon nodded. "Rudderless, an excellent metaphor. Most nations are indeed rudderless."
"Just before he died, he offered me a bottle of brandy, imported from the Physical World by The House Anna-Rhea Imports Corporation."
Astrid chuckled. "One of Brigid's interventions, without a doubt. Brigid, my dear, would you kindly give my Retainer his new orders?" She turned and began to glide away. Her deep purple hair and her mother-of-pearl skirts tossed about in the wind.
A rainbow shimmer, breaking and reforming into the shape of the assassin-bodyguard Brigid. Her bob-cut purple hair tossed in the violent winds, and she grasped both daggers at her hips as if she was on the verge of attacking.
"Retainer Shane," Brigid began. "Anything that flies, must fly faster than your Phoenix Elemental. You have permission to summon her in the defense of your nation, provided that you do not destroy any airplanes. As you have surmised, the Exalted Princess Astrid wishes to continue Ashe's eugenics program on this continent, with slight modifications. Only the pilots should be allowed to fight, and the surviving pilots should be allowed to have many children. This battle ends the Age of the Airship, and thus begins the Golden Age of Flight."