Chapter 19: Sinking Battleships
The first major setback occurred less than an hour after Bowselta's successful forcefield test, when Morton and Larry found themselves up against a human destroyer and the landing craft it was escorting. They were about halfway down the coast, just south of the Clubba/Electro-Koopa-inhabited town of Bayside, from which they had picked up a decent amount of fresh combatants. But they couldn't wait for the ships to land and put those fighters to use: they were on a tight schedule. They couldn't keep going either, however, because the coastlands behind them would be defenseless against another wave of humans. There was only one thing to do.
"We have to attack them," insisted Morton, standing in a triangle with a pair of crystal-gazing Magikoopas. He didn't want to risk the destroyer intercepting and decoding the Koopan radio transmissions, and so he was using one of the Magikoopas to talk with Larry. The other Magikoopa's crystal ball was connected with Kammy in Koopa Castle, flanked by Bowser and Bowselta. Emerald and Crystal were busy helping out in the medical wing.
Bowselta shook her head. "The ships' forcefields won't stand up to the destroyers' guns."
"We don't know that for sure," said Larry; he couldn't see his mother (the curved glass of the balls made the other crystal look like nothing more than a blur smeared up the one side of his glass), but he could hear her.
He could hear his father too: "we don't?"
"How could we know for sure? We've never tried it," said Morton.
"We don't need to try it: I am sure the forcefields won't hold," insisted Bowselta.
"Oooh, did Koopa tell you that?" asked Morton eagerly.
"No," said Bowselta.
"Then how do we know?" asked Morton again. "We should try it: we'll move all the non-flying troops off one or two of our airships and go get those suckers. We have four airships, so even if they both crash, it won't be so bad, not to mention all the older airships, which have than enough space for everyone."
"That's a bad idea – you'll be throwing away half your flight," said Bowselta.
"We won't – and we can't, for that matter: most of our flight's made up of the old wooden ships and we'll keep those far back," said Morton.
"Actually," said Bowser, "I thought it'd be a good idea to use the wooden ships to distract the airships-"
"You mean the plan I said was a kamikaze mission?" growled Bowselta, before turning back to the crystal ball. "Larry's right: it's a bad idea."
"But we have to do something," moaned Morton.
"He has a point, Your Apprehensivenesses," said Kammy, looking over her shoulder at the Dragon-Koopas at her end of the crystal ball.
"Don't look at me – I support this plan," said Bowser.
"What plan?" said Bowselta incredulously.
"The one where they attack the humans instead of sitting here yakking," huffed Bowser.
"Yakking is better than dying!" protested Bowselta.
"We're not going to be dying," said Morton. "And if you guys can't come to a consensus against the attack, your 50/50 power split cancels itself out, and the decision falls to me and Larry, and we want to go for it!"
"Yes, we need to do something," said Larry. His face was flushed and his heart was pounding, but his brother was right. Bowselta was just being overprotective again – maybe the whole thing reminded her of when the Koopalings took the first fleet of airships and invaded the Mushroom Kingdom, and how that ended badly. The plan was actually to keep going along the Mushroom Kingdom's coast once they finished with the Koopa Kingdom – they had even been hoping to reach the border by noon. Larry wondered if that had been a little too optimistic.
Bowselta growled in frustration, but she could see that she was hopelessly outnumbered and relented. Before she could change her mind, Morton had his Magikoopa cut off her connection with Kammy's crystal and he and Larry set to work reshuffling the soldiers between the airships. The destroyer was coming ever closer, but the Koopas worked quickly. The two "attack" airships hovered nose-to-nose with the two airships that would remain behind, with their bows overlapping so that the non-flying troops could safely jump down from one ship to the other. It was similar to how the Koopatrol had deposited her troops within the hangar back in the Koopa Castle attack. Since they weren't anticipating any hand-to-hand combat, only a skeleton crew of flying troops remained behind, and at the last minute, Larry decided to accompany them.
"Are you crazy!" bellowed Morton over his ship's external loudspeakers as he saw Larry running out onto the deck of his airship and head towards the other vessel. "Mom's gonna kill me if she finds out I let you go on this attack run! What if she's right and the shields don't hold!"
Larry ignored him as he jumped up to the deck of the other ship and sprinted towards the doors. All the troops had finished departing, and he was the only reason the ships hadn't turned to attack. Once he was on the bridge he'd explain what he was doing to Morton (he was still accompanied by his three Magikoopas, including a crystal-gazer), but obviously he couldn't respond now – the loudspeakers were one-way. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to explain himself eloquently, and was glad the Magikoopas hadn't questioned him. He just felt like a Koopaling had to be there – he couldn't send the troops on what could be a suicide run and just sit and watch.
He didn't want to die, but he supposed it wouldn't matter much if he did. Of all the Koopalings, he was the least valuable in close combat: he didn't have any remarkable magic abilities nor any worldly skills to make up for that. Everything he could do well, like scheming or botany or tennis, were either useless or covered by someone who could do it better. It'd be fitting if he was the one who died flying a ship: maybe he'd even be a martyr, so even if the attack was a resounding failure, it'd be remembered not for that, but for the sacrifice of a brave Koopaling. Maybe Crystal would say something nice at his funeral: she'd surely cry, but she'd always have Roy there to comfort her…
As he closed the door behind him and started down the corridor towards the bridge, Larry shook the image out of his head: it was wrong of him to think that – Roy doesn't comfort people.
-x-
Once he got to the bridge, Larry ordered the Koopas to turn out to sea. He hoped they would have done so on their own, but his presence had confused them, and Morton was still yelling over the loudspeakers. He could make out some of it through the glass: he was telling his younger brother to "get his tail" back out of the airship and making many elaborate threats against the pilot, should he fly off with the Koopaling. Larry was glad he couldn't quite make out the details of that part, and told the pilot to ignore Morton: the Koopaling was all talk and no action. As he spoke to the Koopa Paratroopas on the bridge, he tried to keep his voice calm and level, but despite his best effort, he was shaking a little. He took a deep breath, but it did nothing to calm him as he asked the Magikoopa at his elbow to call Morton's mage on the crystal ball. He spent almost the entire flight trying to explain himself to Morton, who was ranting so fast and furiously, the younger Koopaling barely got the occasional line in. Fortunately, this suited Larry, but he knew there was something he'd have to say, and as the airships approached the destroyer and the three smaller boats accompanying it, he cut Morton off.
"Sorry, I have to use the radio now – maybe the humans will surrender and all that bad stuff won't happen to you because I won't die." Taking his cue, the Magikoopa cut off the crystal ball connection, and watched as Larry walked over to the communications console and hailed the humans. He knew Morton would be listening too, and probably even broadcasting it to a larger audience: they used crystal balls to keep their scheming secret, but all the human-Koopa interactions were made public. They wanted to world to know of their progress.
"What?"
Larry jumped at the sound of the angry human, struggling to sound confident as he replied. "Um, this is Larry Koopa – er, Prince Larry Koopa – of the Koopa Kingdom, and I am asking you to surrender or we'll destroy your ships. Um, these airships are state-of-the-art and we are protected from your weapons by forcefields, so it is no use to fight us."
"We'll see about that," said the human. A second later, the destroyer fired at the airships.
Larry gasped: he hadn't thought they were in range of the destroyer yet, but he had a feeling he had underestimated the range of their missiles. Wondering if he had underestimated their explosive strength as well, he decided that he didn't want to put to the forcefields to the test just yet and turned on the com system. "Use the lasers! Shoot it!"
The Paratroopas and Paragoombas manning every forward-facing laser array opened fire the second the missile was within range. The second airship, following beside and slightly behind Larry's, copied them. The air was filled with red beams of light and the missile was hit. By that point, Larry had scrambled to the helm of his vessel; piloting airships was very simple and all the Koopalings had been taught what to do just in case they found themselves in a situation like this. Larry hadn't flown an airship into battle for years – not since he oversaw the invasion of Grassland, but he knew what to do. The destroyer was firing more missiles at the airships, and Larry didn't want to press his luck: he needed to get close enough to destroy the landing craft before their escort destroyed him.
Pushing the engines to their max, Larry forced the airship to go faster. The Goombas and Koopas were firing their lasers again, but there were a lot more missiles this time – he wondered if that first shot had been a warning. Or a test… had he shown the humans what they wanted by destroying the missile, instead of letting it hit the forcefield? Had they called his bluff?
The lasers were all pointed skyward. One missile exploded, then another, then another, but there were more. How many missiles could the destroyer fire at once, anyway? They were slowly closing in on the destroyer, which was horizontal to the airships and surrounded by the three landing craft, one of which had slipped around to the far side. They would be in range soon, but to Larry, time was barely crawling by and he started to wonder if he had made a horrible mistake: they ships were too far away – there were too many missiles. The first one to make it through the lasers hit the forcefield, but was eliminated in a flash of green. It was right above the bridge, and the Paratroopas and Magikoopas whooped with relief, even as a second missile plunged harmlessly into the shield, but then something bigger hit. Larry wasn't sure what it was, but he was sure of what it did: the airship lurched and the shield sparked angrily – it had taken a lot of energy to stop that last projectile from doing more than shacking the ship.
People yelped and the laser fire became chaotic. Larry didn't even have time to yell in horror – two of the lower-gauge missiles had already made it through the disorganized defenses and exploded on the weakened barrier. It was the 7-Koopa-7 all over again as the air around the airship turned green; alarms were going off and the ship shuddered as it flew into the fireballs that had punctured its shield. The ship lurched violently as a third missile plowed into its bow and exploded, having been completely unfettered by the faltering shield. Unlike the Seven, the airship didn't have a second layer of shielding on its hull (except for the glass around the bridge), and a huge hole was blasted open on the deck below. Larry was glad it had landed down there, instead of on the tower, but he could still hear people panicking in the halls behind him. It hadn't been smooth sailing down the coast – many people had been hurt and killed in the battles that raged below the airships, and a couple old wooden vessels had been felled, but the new airships had never failed. They weren't supposed to fail.
Looking beyond the burning hole in the bow, Larry was snapped out of his racing thoughts by the sight of the first landing craft – it was so close! It'd be in range any second! "The boats!" he cried. "Shoot them!" The Koopa manning the com relayed the order and the crew tried their best to pull themselves together and respond. Bullet Bills and lasers spilled forth from the lower regions of the airship. The lasers didn't go far enough, and Larry had a bad feeling that the humans would be able to deflect the Bullet Bills with their own projectiles, as his troops had deflected their ballistics, but he didn't have a chance to see for himself. More missiles were falling from the sky, and while the generators were still working and the shield was back up, as Bowselta feared, it wasn't powerful enough and the next gunshot from the destroyer crashed straight through the forcefield in front of the bridge.
The Koopas were lucky, however, and the projectile missed its mark, passing overhead and harmlessly passing back through the one-way forcefield above. Unfortunately, its initial puncture wound wasn't sp harmless, and a missile plowed straight through the sparking forcefield, landing on the tower a bit behind the bridge. Most people were thrown from their feet by the jolt, and Larry heard screams coming from the hallway before the automatic blast doors shut the bridge off from the burning hallway. Larry jumped back up and seized the steering wheel; the airship had started to list to port and he wrenched it back upright as smaller bullets pelted at its starboard side. A new alarm screeched at him: the forcefield output panels had finally shorted themselves out as the ship struggled to put out enough energy to stop the latest barrage. The belly of the ship was still protected, but the starboard side was irreparably naked and the rest of the upper regions of the shield were still flickering: many of the top panels had been destroyed, and the port side was doing almost all the work.
The only comfort Larry took was that the humans were in range now and some people on the bottom of the ship were still fighting. One of the small escort vessels had been sliced open by a laser and caught fire, but the warnings blaring on his console told the Koopaling that he was burning too. More missiles were bearing down on him, and while the Koopaling tried to turn the ship and protect the starboard side, it couldn't maneuver as fast as the Seven. It wasn't a head-on collision, the next shot from the destroyer's phalanx gatling gun was still fatal. It plowed straight through the over-exerted port shielding and hit a key energy conduit near the back of the ship, which had already been exposed by earlier missile damage. The safeties prevented an explosion by funneling the sparking energy into the surrounding systems, but unlike the power that flooded Bowselta's airship from the Meteor, this energy was corrupted by the bullet. Power wasn't lost completely, but most of the forcefield generators gave up the ghost, unable to cope with the dark, human energy inside their systems as well as around them.
The airship was almost on top of the humans now. "Keep shooting!" cried Larry, but more missiles were hitting – no one was shooting them down with the lasers and the shield was gone. Larry was amazed the humans still had ammo, but he didn't think about it for long. The entire bow of the ship seemed to be blasted away and the glass around the bridge shattered. The missile that had hit it would have killed them all had it not been for the membrane-like shielding that coated it – the last gasp of the generators as they were consumed by the fires ravaging the engine room below.
Two engines, already damaged by missiles and shrapnel, gave out, and the remaining ones were becoming destabilized. Unlike the Seven, the airship was designed to automatically vent the raw energy should that happen, but since all the vents on the port side were destroyed, it all escaped on the starboard side. Larry struggled to keep the ship flying straight adjacent the barely controlled energy spurting from the vents; he knew it was going to crash, but he wasn't done yet. His mother said it was a kamikaze mission – he wasn't going to make her a liar. He had no idea what was happening with the second airship; he couldn't even see if the second escort vessel had been downed – like his own crashing command.
"Abandon ship!" he screamed, hitting the final warning alarm and wondering how many people were actually in a position to escape. How many were trapped by the fires, knocked unconscious, or even dead already?
"Sir, what about you?" cried one of the Paratroopas.
"I have a plan!" replied Larry, shuddering with the effort to steer the airship towards the destroyer. He aimed right in the middle, hoping that nothing would happen to knock it too far off-course, and then he locked the controls. "Come on!" he shouted, diving sideways off of the top level of the bridge and blasting the glass paneling before him. The forcefield was gone and while his firebreath wasn't enough to break through the glass, his body was. He spun around in the air so that his spiked shell hit first, but the cascade of shards sliced through the scales covering his neck, face and limbs as he tumbled into the open air. The three Magikoopas had followed immediately behind him and used levitating spells, making sure they were all clear of the ship as is careened past them.
Larry turned and watched as the Paratroopas on the bridge also appeared and spun in the slipstream of the airship, which was wreathed in flames and acrid black smoke. The two starboard engines were flickering blue and white energy that could barely be seen filtering through smoke on that side of the ship, but the scene didn't last long anyway. Larry's aim was true, and the ship smashed into the destroyer, consuming both of them in a brilliant orange fireball. The second airship then screamed overhead: its shield was sparking a bit, but Larry's ship had taken the brunt of the damage, and in the end, the other ship even used its destruction as a smokescreen. It now swooped through the plume of smoke from the wreck, a Banzai Bill primed for launch; Larry heard another echoing explosion and watched as the airship climbed back higher in the air beyond the burning vessels, suspecting they had dispatched the last of the three landing craft.
Craning about, Larry could make out a couple more crewmembers fluttering in the night sky, but while the fires below didn't illuminate the situation very well, he had a sinking feeling that most of the people in the airship hadn't gotten out. But, as he looked beneath him at the two sinking landing crafts and realized that all the humans who had survived the explosions and fire would surely die in the frigid waters, he knew the Koopas had come out much better. It hadn't even been a complete suicide mission: he was alive and the other ship was almost unscathed. He looked back up at the airship, but frowned when he was that it wasn't circling around to pick up the survivors: it was heading south. "What the-?" Larry then turned his own sights south, and the pit of his stomach seemed to drop all the way to the waters below: there were two more destroyers on the horizon, sailing around a curve in the coast.
-x-
The entire run had been televised: Morton used the cameras outfitted on his airship to follow the others – the technology was meant to help in battle by tracking enemies, but the Koopaling had repurposed it. He knew Bowser and Bowselta would want to know what was happening, and while he'd be happy with describing the altercation afterwards, he knew they'd be happier seeing it with their own eyes. Especially since Larry was on one of those ships: in a way, the broadcast was Morton's attempts to avoid a berating for letting his brother go on the mission. And, this way, if Larry did die, Morton wouldn't be the bearer of bad news to his parents: it was the one thing he wouldn't have wanted to describe about the attack.
As he watched the shield faltering and the airship catching fire, Morton wondered if perhaps Larry would die. Between the smoke and the second airship following so closely behind the first, Morton could barely make out what was happening. He flicked on another viewing screen with feed from a different camera as the airship began slipping out of the sky: the main screen was zoomed out enough to show both airships and the human ships, but he had the other camera close in on the crashing airship. He could see what Larry was doing: he was going to crash his vessel into the destroyer, but Morton knew his brother wouldn't simply go down with his ship. "Come on, Larry," he hissed under his breath as he started at the zoomed-in screen. "Come on, Larry, come on, Larry, come on, Larry, come-" suddenly he saw what he was looking for and took manual control of the camera, snapping it off of the airship.
The screen was immediately filled with smoke, and Morton muttered darkly as the people around him gasped, having watched the airship hit the destroyer on the main monitor. He saw the explosion out of the corner of his eye, but his attention was on the smoke as he frustratedly zoomed in and out, fiddling the camera around but not leaving the general area he had initially targeted. He was sure he had seen something solid in the air – something that wasn't debris. "Come on, Larry," he resumed his chant. "Come on, Larry, come on, come on! Stupid smoke, come on!" No one was listening, but talking to himself helped ease the knot that was rapidly forming in his stomach. "It doesn't help that it's pitch black out there even without the smoke – I wish it was daytime. Thanks to our constant cloud-cover there aren't even stars this close to shore, 'cept on the horizon but there's smoke on front of that. Argh, stupid smoke: get out of the way!"
The people around him were starting to mutter as well – something about the radio and the destroyer. Someone called up a third screen – from a camera on the starboard side, by the looks of it, but Morton only spared it a passing glance and tuned out the voices about him as he caught sight of a light in the smoke before him. Zooming in again, a grin slowly spread over his face: there were three lights – two red, one green, and between them, barely illuminated by the wandlight, was Larry.
"Yes!" whooped Morton, pumping his fists in the air and looking around at the crew surrounding his console. "He's alive! He's alive! He's… Shit!" – Morton had finally looked at the third screen.
-x-
Bowselta was glad the humans hadn't tampered with the big screen in the Throne Room of Koopa Castle, like they had with so much of her castle's technology. The Koopas mostly spoke to each other with crystal balls, but many of the battles over the towns were broadcasted on the normal channels, as this one had. They had been winning so handily, and they figured it would be a good thing if they showed that to the world: help keep up the people's fighting spirits. However, Bowselta wasn't sure if this particular battle was the best thing to flaunt, however: she was sure it wasn't going to end, and she wasn't surprised as the airship soon caught fire and crashed. They watched the scene unfold in silence, until Bowser finally spoke up.
"What's with the smoke-screen?" asked Bowser, before looking back at the part of the screen showing the feed of the second airship reappearing behind the column of smoke.
"Morton must have seen something," said Bowselta, looking between both that and the zoomed-in screen. "Hopefully, it was Larry," she added quietly.
Suddenly, the third picture opened up.
"Now what?" asked Bowser. Bowselta and Kammy's breath drew in sharply as the camera finally settled on the destroyers in the distance, but Bowser just squinted at the lights. "Um, are those…"
"More humans? Yes," said Bowselta, before turning to Kammy. "We need to call Morton."
The old Magikoopa hadn't bothered putting her crystal ball away after their last conversation with the Koopalings, but as she held it up, she saw it was already starting to swirl. "Someone's calling us."
Bowser and Bowselta looked over as Ludwig appeared in the glass. "I have just finished clearing Gavelview Town – my two airships can meet up vit Morton's group in less zan an hour."
"Good: leave the wooden ships there – Bowser will be right over."
"My soughts exactly," smiled Ludwig, before nodding at his Magikoopa, who ended the call. As soon as he saw the other destroyers, he knew Morton needed backup, but regardless of what was happening on the coast, someone needed to clear the interior. The wooden ships would be no help against the destroyers – leaving them to help Bowser take Ludwig's place away from shore was a no-brainer.
"What do you mean I'll be right over?" asked Bowser as Kammy called Morton's crystal gazer.
"He's going to help Morton and you're going to take over his flight of airships and clear the eastern interior. I had a feeling we'd hit a snag like this, but with any luck, you'll still be able to rendezvous with Roy at the Keep before it gets too late in the day," said Bowselta. "Now get going."
"Now?" gasped Bowser.
Bowselta turned back from the crystal, where Morton was now blabbering about how Larry was alive (which Bowselta had already seen on the screen) and how they were all screwed, regardless (which she could also see on the screen). "Yes, now."
"But I'm not ready. The crew-"
"The ship's been fully crewed for the past half-hour – the full compliment of soldier's not loaded up yet, but there's a Warp Pipe in the next town south of Gavelview: once you secure it, I'll send the reserves through." Bowselta then turned back to Morton and started arguing with him about what he should do next.
Bowser hovered in place for a moment: he hadn't been expecting to leave his wife so soon. It was a comfort to have her on top of the war, like in the good old days of invading the Mushroom Kingdom, but he didn't want to leave that comfort – he didn't want to leave her. He also wanted to know what she was going to do about the ship: he hated not being in the middle of the action, but he supposed he'd find out her plan soon enough.
Looking up, Bowselta misinterpreted Bowser's hesitance. "I'll send Kammy along in a minute: she'll catch up with you before you take off – I promise, this won't take long, right Morton?"
As the Koopaling's voiced spilled out of the crystal at a renewed rate (and volume), Bowser sighed and finally lumbered off towards the ruined front doors to the castle. Bowselta didn't look up from the crystal again. Bowser was halfway across the landbridge before he realized he didn't even say 'goodbye'.
-xxx-
It was a close call, but Morton's troops managed to sink the remaining two destroyers. The Koopaling had wanted to follow Larry's lead and use the three remaining airships on the humans, but Bowselta refused: even with Ludwig's backup, the Koopan forces on the coast would be too weakened. If more destroyers attacked, the only other airship in range would be Bowser's, and he was needed elsewhere. They needed a new strategy, and while she wasn't happy about it, Bowselta ended up borrowing her husband's plan, and told Morton to use the older airships as cover for one newer airship. The airship would then skim as close to the water as possible, so that all its energy could be focused on only a half-shell forcefield, which she hoped would buy it more time against the missiles.
As it turns out, Bowser's idea to use the smaller airships wasn't very effective: the destroyers knew the bigger airship was the real danger and focused almost entirely on it. The shield did last a bit longer than Larry's, but there was twice as much being fired at it by the two destroyers, which made good on their name. The airship never reached its target, instead plowing into the water and sinking when a missile dropped almost vertically down through its rear shielding and destroyed three out of the five engines. However, it wasn't all in vain: the soldiers inside managed to fire a couple Banzai Bills into the water before all power was lost, which the humans were not expecting. The explosives plowed through the sea like giant torpedoes and while they would have been slow enough to shoot out of the skies, the humans couldn't make sense of their radar readings in time to pount their weapons at the water, and one of the destroyers was sunk.
Once the shielded airship had been eliminated, the remaining humans turned their attentions to the wooden ships, which were spewing Bullet Bills as fast as they could. In the end, the lone destroyer finished off all the airships, but it had sustained heavy damage. Against Bowselta's recommendations, Morton sent a third airship to finish it off, but he unwisely decided not to sacrifice even more of his wooden vessels, and while the airship returned victorious, the destroyer had gone down fighting. When Ludwig finally arrived, he found only one airship with a functioning shield, a mere handful of over-stuffed wooden airships, and a shuddering, bottle-shocked Larry.
"You shouldn't have gone," sighed the oldest Koopaling, but he understood why his younger brother had did what he did, and looking into his eyes, Larry knew that.
Once they reached the next town with a Warp Pipe, all the Paratroopas and Paratroopas who had survived the two crashes (and who had quickly been picked up by a pair of the wooden airships, same as Larry and his Magikoopas) would be sent to Koopa castle to recover. They were all chilled, in shock and many had burns and other injuries, although most of them – like Larry's many glass-cuts – had been healed long before Ludwig rendezvoused with the flight. The psychological toll still haunted the crewmembers, and Larry was especially bad off: it was his second aircraft crash in under ten days, and what's more, he felt responsible for this one, in a way. But Ludwig didn't even bother asking him if he'd like to go back too: he knew what the answer would be. The Koopalings were the heirs to the throne, and the blood of Koopa herself ran in their veins: they couldn't run away.
So instead, Ludwig asked Larry if he'd like to fly with him, and while some might have guessed it was to keep the younger Koopaling from risking his neck again, they both knew Ludwig was simply being kind. Larry would have pressed on alone if he had too, but he was grateful to simply stay on his brother's ship and watch him make the decisions: he didn't want to be a leader anymore – not even of a single airship. And Ludwig didn't blame him.