The Withered Land: Dragons and Marauders

Dragons and Marauders, Part Fifty-Five

Akkitus Orthwaine, standing at the jetellin's piloting console next to brutish Durkka-jan, marveled at the wild beauty of the horizon-obscuring bank of rolling fog that rapidly approached from the distant far northern side of The City. The fog bank was driven against the hot breezes that strengthened as the planet's dual suns began to set by an uneasy breach in gravitational force. That breach was a reminder that, out in space, the rift known as The Wound had left its mark on the landscape of The Withered Land. Disarray, upheaval and a cancerous entropic anarchy controlled the planet despite the best efforts of the Hegemonic Emperium's scientists to control the planet's slow atmospheric collapse. The fog reminded him of an exhalation of ash-laden smoke from a monstrous dragon's open mouth.

The paradox of how strange it was that something so close to poetry could bubble up from the depths of a machine-man's mind escaped him. His thoughts were focused on other things... Like how well the jetellin would survive the oncoming savage turbulence brought on by Grimmurmanthe's assault against Niyaddour.

The khaki-colored higher altitudes were already thundering, vibrating with the release of alien energies and the violent passage of techno-organic, robotized weaponry running strafing patterns.

Though he was better experienced with piloting the craft, Akkitus had assumed a more supportive role allowing Durkka-jan to guide the massive airship along the prescribed approach-corridor through Niyaddourian airspace. Akkitus remained as navigational primary, taking over for the airship's failing directional nav-computer, damaged as it had been by the buffeting and the pounding the vessel had taken over Peravendath during the cataclysmic storm. During his reign, the warlord Kolag Y'phree had installed civil air defenses that were tied in with air traffic patterns. As aerial vessels entered The City's air space, any incoming aircraft not conforming to navigational expectations would trigger the targeted launch of airburst cluster bombs to bring down what The City's computer-networked defenses saw as an "intruder". As a forcibly-conscripted member of the Warlord's urban air defenses force, Akkitus knew the codes for the proper navigational approach vectors and could input the information, fine-tuning the directional guidance of Durkka-jan's steerage.

"I've got thirty-eight amoebic air-beasts on a portwards banking approach over The City's southeastern perimeter, coming in fast from an altitude of 0.75 aeronautical leagues, flying into heavy particle beam-discharge cannon fire," Pnoom-Aig suddenly blurted from behind her surface-scan monitoring console. "And there's another twenty-five, at an altitude of 0.5 aeronautical leagues, coming in from starboard, moving at 30-degrees from horizontal towards the city's municipal center. We need to be careful not to cross their path. Their tentacles harbor an incendiary, corrosive gel powerful enough to liquefy the unarmored plates in our outer hull. The air-beasts appear to be relatively immune to the particle beam discharges and they're increasing their airspeed as they cross over the battlement walls. They get hit and the impact slows them down, but the beam impacts aren't doing them any lasting damage nor does the surface-to-air weaponry at all disorient them. I'm thinking the beasts are not independent units, but are instead a swarm controlled by The Arbiter through a select wing-leader."

"That swarm of flying, tentacled globs unleashed against The City and its defenders... they ignite and disintegrate any organic being they touch. Are they his primary weapon? Or are they a preferred way for this alien devil to enact attacks against multiple victims?"

"I have no way of answering that," Pnoom-Aig reluctantly answered.

"The Arbiter, how is it or he fairing against Kolag Y'phree's military?" Durkka-jan asked tensely.

"Quite well, unfortunately. Their numbers are definitely slowing down his advance, he's immensely strong but he cannot fight everyone all at once, however the Warlord's field ordnance is mostly ineffective," the synthetic woman responded. "I cannot see nor predict whether or not there will be any cumulative effect from Kolag Y'phree's field forces that will eventually impede the creature's progress."