Chapter 20: the Sting of a Hornet
While they didn't have destroyers to contend with, Iggy and Lemmy were up against the countless hundreds of humans who had attempted to invade Sarasaland from the mountainous east, and their progression down the western border of Dark Land was the slowest of all the Koopan fleets. The humans had learned to take advantage of the terrain: they hid in the rocks so the airships couldn't simply obliterate them with Bullet Bills or lasers, and so the Koopas were forced to come down and get them. As with the castle attacks, the magical protection given to the Koopas by their shells was a great asset, and many had supplemental Koopatrol or Terrapin armor as well, but the humans still claimed many lives as they were slowly overcome.
While most of the Sarasalanders were aiding Mario's group spread through the central and western Mushroom Kingdom, the Roketons from the Koopalinga siege and the forces of Easton that had been keeping the humans at bay swelled the Koopa's numbers. Even so, finding their own replacement combatants was still a major priority for the Koopas, and while Iggy oversaw the fighting on the border, Lemmy took two of the four newer airships and went deeper into Dark Land. The western border had been Koopa Troopa territory, although most of the small villages that dotted the region were melting pots of all the basic Koopa species. The human presence in the west was all concentrated on the border, and so almost every villages was only guarded by a couple of soldiers. And, as in the east and north, many of them were eliminated far before Lemmy's forces appeared overhead.
The Koopaling was still struggling with himself over his role in the war: the carnage and death around him made him wonder if he'd ever sleep well again. It was a hundred times worse than Mario's most violent quests – Lemmy wondered if he'd ever get the smell of blood out of his nostrils. Iggy knew Lemmy wasn't handling the fighting as well as he should, and that's why he sent him to get recruits. It was a wise move: freeing the villages often required bloodshed, but seeing the people joyfully greet him and his soldiers as their saviours helped remind Lemmy that the Koopas were doing the right thing in fighting back. And it wasn't like they weren't showing the humans mercy: many of the soldiers threw their weapons to the ground when the airships appeared overhead, and many more had been overwhelmed and thrown in jail by the villagers themselves when they witnessed Queen Koopa's transmission.
Lemmy still didn't relish the thought of recruiting people for war, but the Koopas wanted to fight, and he wanted to help, so he swallowed his personal demons and worked tirelessly throughout the night. Between Iggy's fighting and Lemmy's constant supply of reinforcements, the Koopas slowly but surely cleared the western reaches of their kingdom. The pale dawn of Dark Land found them finally passing the lower end of Easton, and entering the short stretch of the border between the Koopa Kingdom and Sarasaland's half of Dry Dry Desert, Birabuto. But that's when the airships ran into trouble. The humans didn't try sending troops of helicopters into Sarasaland through the treacherous desert, but they didn't want to natives trying either, and had flown in some heavy artillery to shoot anything that came that way out of the sky.
Like the destroyers' missiles, the big guns could wear down and pierce the shields of the airships, and with the element of surprise on their side, the humans managed to land a fatal blow to Iggy's ship before they were destroyed by a barrage of Bullet Bills and lasers. The blast that had finally made it through the shield had gone straight through the bow of the ship, narrowly missing the bridge above it. However, a couple of the Banzai Bills were hit, and their explosions completely severed the bow and sent fire and destabilized energy blasting backwards into the rest of the ship.
Iggy would have liked to try and salvage the vessel, or at least parts of it, but the crew was panicking, people were dying and there was no time for tinkering anyway, so with a heavy heart, he made the call to abandon ship. The lower levels were awash with flames and impassable after the Banzai Bill blast, and so they used the wooden airships to evacuate the survivors through the escape hatches in the upper levels of the ship. That's when the second surprise hit: it turned out that the humans were planning on attacking through the desert, and had flown an entire squadron of F-18 Super Hornets over from the aircraft carrier the night of the Dragon-Koopas' capture. They had found a hidden spot near the Birabuto border with a flat stretch of rock long enough to use as a runway and stashed the planes. Extra fuel to help them cross the desert had already been brought there by the fleet's lone C-2 cargo plane; it was also what brought the heavy artillery to the border, though it was long gone by the time the Koopas drew near. The F-18s, on the other hand, were still there.
The radar picked them up first: a group of tiny planes moving at supersonic speeds straight towards them. Iggy was still on the bridge, and knew he only had a few seconds to decide what to do: both his airship and the two rescuing his people would be helpless is they remained connected. If he had the other ships move away, they could move around and shoot back a bit better, not that Bullet Bills would be much use. His airship's lasers would be useful, as the Seven's had been, and some of the side and top weapons fixtures were still working, as were a few of the forcefield panels. He couldn't really fight, but protecting himself wasn't out of the question: if he landed the ship with its ruined face against a cliff, he could guard the unshielded regions and try to defend the airships with his lasers.
But then there was the fact that his ship was on fire. The bottom levels were unstable and so landing could easily turn into partially imploding, and if the faults reached the engine room, the energy could be destabilized. A few cracks in a few key pipes – not to mention the fires themselves – and all the safety systems wouldn't matter; it'd be the Seven all over again. Iggy forced the image of Ludwig lying in the ruins of the engine, burned and covered with blood, out of his head – he had to remain in the present: the seconds before the F-18s were on top of them were rapidly ticking down.
Flipping on both the internal com system and the external loudspeakers, Iggy decided on his course of action. "Move the other airships away: send in Lakitus and Magikoopas and anyone else who can ferry people around to continue the evacuation. I'm going to activate what's left of the forcefield to give us more time to get everyone off, so they'll have to fly down and around the edge of wherever the shield extends to: it'll be green and sparky so you'll know where to go. People on my ship: continue moving outside – make it easy for the flyers to pick you up. I'll be counting on the other airships and the Roketons to keep the humans busy, but I am also rerouting the control of all the functioning lasers on this ship to the bridge – it won't be precise, but hopefully it'll keep the planes away from us."
Iggy was typing as he spoke, half-expecting to be cut-off mid-sentence by the arrival of the airplanes, but he managed to finish his orders in the nick of time. The wooden airships obediently moved away and holding his breath, he turned on the forcefield: sensors indicated the majority of the ship's stern was covered, including a lot of the area underneath the lower tower, which surprised Iggy. Without the forward panels, the shield fell apart once the ship started narrowing towards the remains of the bow; the bridge was completely exposed except for the membrane shield on the glass, but either way, one shot could end it all.
"They're speeding up!" yelped the Goomba manning the radar console as Iggy slowly turned the airship towards the nearest vertical cliff he could see. It was above a particularly deep, black gorge, and Iggy wished he could have found one in which the drop wasn't so far, just in case worse came to worst and his crew had to jump for it, but there was no time. If he couldn't have a forcefield protecting the airship's face, he'd use rock, and the other nearby peaks were all heavily sloped. He had a bad feeling about the gorge, but he was glad he had ignored it when six planes suddenly appeared over the mountains – before he had even reached the nearby cliff. Had he gone for one of the other mountains, he would have been a sitting duck.
The humans immediately opened fire on the Koopas, although most of the shots were directed at the fleet of functioning airships above Iggy. Roketons shot forward to meet the F-18s as the undamaged forcefield-bearing vessel launched a barrage of lasers, slowly moving forward and downward to shield its sister ship. The planes passed overhead with a sonic boom and Iggy's ship was finally facing the cliff. Activating the lasers, Iggy and his bridge crew started firing skyward as a second round of Super Hornets appeared, but they weren't perturbed and went straight for the two big airships. They knew the lower one, which was covered in people and surrounded by smaller flying creatures ducking around its failing shield, would be easy pickings.
The other airship returned fire and tried to shield its sister from the bullets, but some of the projectiles still made it past the vessel. Iggy was barely able to stay standing at the helm as the glass above him turned green and sent the sapped bullets clattering down the curved window. It was a struggle to keep looking down at the screens controlling the lasers, rather than up at the planes roaring overhead. But while Iggy managed to keep his eyes averted, the people awaiting evacuation on the hull of the ship had nothing to distract them from the death machines heading towards them, and as bullets and missiles smashed into the forcefield above, many simply leapt off the ship in panic. Their screams echoed in the black gorge as they fell to their deaths, but were ultimately droned out by the airplanes and cannons, and too scared for their own lives, the survivors on the airship forgot their fallen comrades as they scrambled towards the Lakitus and Magikoopas.
The wooden airships and Roketons were holding their own against the F-18s, but the bigger airships were faring far worse. The planes darted around like stinging flies, focusing their missile barrages on the rears of the ships – in hopes that the forcefield behind the engines was somehow weaker in order to let that energy through. That wasn't the case at all: air and pure energy went straight through the external forcefields (although, like the Seven, the membrane shields were impervious to air), but the generators were soon feeling the strain of continuously replenishing that part of the shields. The humans were slowly bleeding them dry.
While he was protected from the planes by the cliff and the airship above him, Iggy was in trouble and he knew it. He could smell the smoke from the fires and internal sensors indicated that there were problems in the engine room: the safety systems had dealt with most of the destabilized energy, but too much energy was being lost through the faltering shields. They didn't even need to be hit by the humans: the energy was simply spilling out of the ragged edges of the incomplete shell. A few times, the humans managed to pierce the shield as well, although the majority of the bullets were taken by the Koopas swarming on the hull, and the crowd soon degenerated into a bloody, chaotic mess, the living creatures stumbling on bodies and slipping on less solid remains. The Lakitus, Magikoopas and even Paratroopas and Paragoombas were desperately trying to get people to safety, but it was impossible: the ship had been completely full of soldiers and there were simply too many. They were rioting, clawing at each other to try to be the next person flown away from the death trap, knocking each other off the edge – by accident or even on purpose, depending on the Koopa.
A few Koopas were more level-headed, and heroically remained inside to try and fight the fires and keep the engine room safe. They tinkered with the control panels to try and keep the energy under control, but it was a losing battle. As had happened before, it was a crashing plane that finally did the Koopas in: nicked by a laser as it made a pass at the engines of the airship, it wasn't able to pull back up and simply flew into what it had been shooting. If the airship had been moving forward, the Hornet may have been vaporized, but it was barely even hovering by that point, and the small amount of energy exiting the five burners did nothing to stop the F-18, just as the forcefield had failed to stop it. The entire vessel shook as the engines exploded and the forcefield disappeared without even a final flicker as the ship slipped out of the air.
Everyone screamed as gravity seemed to disappear and the ship dropped out from under them. The air was filled with flailing Koopas, Goombas, Shy Guys and a dozen other Dark Land species. The few creatures who could fly tried to grab as many people as they could, but were often seized by more than they could support and succumbed. Paratroopas could only carry one person, but were often seized by multiple pairs of hands and while some managed to break free and save only themselves, other found their wings ripped from their shells in the struggle, and fell with the rest.
The airship and its cloud of crew soon descended too deep into the gorge for the still-rising sun to reach them – the only real illumination was from the burning airship itself, suddenly joined by angry red lasers from the airship above and the three F-18s they were targeting. When they saw the damaged airship's forcefield give out, the remaining Hornets had dived as one unit: they didn't want to risk the ship recovering halfway down – they wanted to make sure it and its passengers were destroyed. Some of the other airship's marksmen had paused before shooting at the planes that pursued the other ship: they didn't want to shoot their falling people, and it took a moment for them to realize their comrades were as good as dead anyway.
The Koopas and Goombas on the bridge had all been thrown from their feet by the blast, Iggy managed to grab hold of something as the ship fell, but as he looked around for the Magikoopas charged with protecting him, the glass above him shattered in a barrage of bullets. Iggy screamed in terror as the ship lurched, hit by a missile. He was thrown into something sharp that bit into his upper leg, and then the ship's nose scraped against the cliff it had been hovering in front of and the world twisted about as the vessel rolled and pointed skyward. Lights flashed as the F-18s blasted at the airship, point-blank, and Iggy screamed again, this time in pain as something hit him in the stomach. It was much worse than the gouge in his leg – even worse than when he had fallen in the lava: whatever had hit him had was in deep, and it burned so much it felt cold.
The ship was still tumbling and he was thrown against the shattered edge of the window. His head spun almost as much as the hulk around him, but then one thought filtered through the pain-fueled delirium: he didn't want to die, but there was no one to save him this time. If he was going to live through this crash, he'd have to save himself.
With great effort he pulled his wand out of his hammerspace, and gripping onto it as tight as he could with both hands, he started screaming a spell at the top of his lungs. Slowly, he the ship slipped away beneath him: he was slowing down. He knew he couldn't stop himself all the way: not even Ludwig or Wendy could have managed that, but he just needed to be slow enough to survive the impact. It was close: soon the airship hit the ground beneath him, and the valley was illuminated with a bright blue flash of energy, immediately giving way an orange fireball. He wasn't sure he had slowed himself enough, but as the burning hulk and the ground raced up to meet him, he gave up on the spell and retracted into his shell at the last second. The airship was still pointed skyward, and he hit the bottom lip of the glass dome. It shattered, helping to break his fall, and he tumbled deeper into the ship, crashing through the bridge and into the hall, ricocheting between the walls and the floor of the hallway. The energy within his shell saved him, but even with his flesh protected in hammerspace, the final impact with the back wall was too much and he lost consciousness. His head and limbs slipped out of his shell and he lay in an unmoving, broken heap, surrounded by fire.
The pain helped bring him back to consciousness. Moaning, he pulled himself up, trying to ignore his spinning head as he started to climb back towards the bridge. He needed to get out of the wreck: someone would surely come down to check for survivors, but the smoke spilling past him from the bowels of the ship would probably deter even the most tenacious searcher. He pushed all other thoughts from his head as he climbed, steeling himself against the pain in his leg and gut, and ignoring the cloying smell of burning electronics and bodies alike as smoke billowed out from the bowels of the ship. But Dragon-Koopas were no stranger to smokescreens, and he could clearly see what he was doing as he picked his way towards freedom.
The smoke let up when he reached the more spacious bridge, and looking up he could make out the flashes of light in the battle that still raged above. The F-18s had resumed buzzing about the other airship: the shield flickered green and the laser blazed red. There was also an orange fireball in the sky: one of the wooden airships was falling into the gorge, by it would hit another part of the ground and so he didn't let himself get too concerned.
During his climb, he had seen a couple dead bodies; there were two more on the bridge and one was a Magikoopa, impaled on a broken rail. The other two wizards were still unaccounted for, and he hoped they were alive – that they had managed to fly free like he had. He hoped they would immediately fly down in search of survivors: the wound in his midriff was bad, he doubted he could walk on his one leg for much longer, and he was covered in smaller cuts and bruises. Some healing magic and potions would be really handy.
Climbing to the edge of the metal wall, Iggy pulled out a hammer (all the Koopalings carried a couple, just in case; Bowser had lots, although he rarely used them), and smashed away the last fragments of a glass panel in his way. He then gingerly clambered over the edge. His timing was fortuitous, for as he perched there, the airship groaned and tipped towards its starboard side, crunching against the nearby cliff at a nearly 45º angle. Iggy was glad he had decided to climb up the port side as he slid down the outside hull, although if he hadn't gotten out in time, he probably would have fallen when his wall turned into the ceiling.
The fires had started to die down, but Iggy still made a jump for it once he got near the stern, which was still hot and burning a little. He somersaulted on the ground to try and soften the landing, only to reel in pain over his stomach and then lie panting on the ground on his side. Around him were dozens of dead bodies – killed by the fall, most likely. Their bodies were contorted and eviscerated; even their faces were often smashed in, but Iggy was already in shock and the horror of the scene around him didn't quite hit home. All he really thought was that he didn't want to join them. He tried to stand, but his injured leg gave out beneath him, and he couldn't find the strength to try again. He looked down at the bloody hole in his stomach and his head spun – he was losing too much blood: he might've escaped the fires, but he was still in trouble. Pulling his eyes away from the potentially mortal wound, Iggy looked across the gorge: the wooden airship he had seen falling before was now a flaming wreck. Two other ships had been downed earlier, but flames still illuminated where they lay, and all three wrecks seemed to be surrounded by moving figures.
"Hey!" Iggy tried to call, only to sputter into a fit of coughing. Blood bubbled in his mouth, and his eyes widened behind his goggles (which had miraculously come through unscratched): exactly how many internal organs had been damaged? And what exactly had caused the damage?
Truth be told, he had a pretty good idea of what might've sliced through his thick belly scales like butter before imbedding itself deep within his young body, but he didn't want to dwell on that for now.
Iggy tried to call again, but his voice was weak. With a painful moan, he pulled his wand out of hammerspace again, shuddering with effort. Now he was really getting worried: had something destabilized his energy too? He was getting worse by the minute – he could feel it. A cold numbness was spreading through his body. With a grunt, he managed to light the tip of his wand, and using all of his strength, he held it straight above him and slowly waved it back and forth. He hoped the light from the fires at the base of the airship behind him wouldn't drown it out, but he couldn't move any farther away. As much as he tried, his legs refused to work anymore. The puddle of blood was growing around him. He didn't want to look at it. He didn't want to die.
Suddenly, the only surviving Magikoopa from his escort appeared. Like Iggy, Kay Koopa had been knocked clear of the airship after the windows had been blasted open. He instinctively summoned his broomstick and slowed himself: he knew he should have dived after the ship to see if he could rescue Iggy, but it had all happened so fast, and it seemed like second after he was clear of the chaos, it had all ended far beneath him. There was no stopping the fires in the airship – they were impregnated with raw energy – and so he merely started looking around the dead bodies littering the ground for survivors. He found one of his comrades, his head and body at a funny angle, but there was no sign of the Koopaling, alive or dead. Kay was on the far side of the wreck, next to the cliff, when Iggy finally struggled up and out, but finding nothing, he finally held his breath and plunged into the smoky interior of the airship. When the Magikoopa flew back out of the suffocating smoke, he was sure there was no one else alive, and started to fly over to one of the wooden wrecks, when out of the corner of his eye, he saw Iggy's wand.
"Your Highness!" gasped the Magikoopa as he landed next to the Koopaling.
"It worked," said Iggy, smiling with relief and letting his arm and the wand drop back down.
"I can't believe you survived, how in Koopa's name-" Key then saw the wound in Iggy's stomach and gasped.
"Yeah, it's bad," said Iggy, before succumbing to another fit of coughing. The wizard held his wand high and sent up a few flashes of spinning shapes, hoping someone in another wreck might notice and come help. But he couldn't afford to wait and see if it hard worked. Kay was by no means skilled in medicine: a green-roped Magikoopa, his specialty was fighting, but he knew enough to see that the Dragon-Koopa needed to be treated immediately, and he knew the rudimentary training he had received would be good enough for now.
The Magikoopa rolled up his sleeves and told Iggy to lie straight; the Koopaling obeyed, trying to ignore the pain.
"Can you move your legs? Can you feel your legs? Tail?"
"Yes, they hurt," said Iggy, wiggling his toes to prove it to the Magikoopa.
"Okay, good. And you can use your energy, which is also good. Even so, I'm going to immobilize your back, but you have to roll over first," instructed Kay. Iggy recalled the time Bowser's shell cracked and how he had to lie in a concrete cast, as he struggled to roll onto his back, aided by the Magikoopa who made his own stone cast as soon as Iggy was in position. "I can't have you rocking around on those spikes," said Kay, materializing a block for himself to stand on. He then pulled out a vial of Revitalizing Potion (he didn't usually carry potions, but all the Magikoopas assigned to protecting the Koopalings had been given a sample of this most important liquid by Kammy Koopa) and leaned over the wound, pouring a bit in. Iggy hissed – it stung. Kay frowned. "It's not taking: there's something still in there." He put the potion away and paused with his wand and fingers poised above the wound. "I'm really sorry, Your Highness – this is going to hurt a lot."
Iggy squeezed his eyes shut as the wand tip started to glow, and while he tried to hold it in, he screamed in pain as whatever was lodged within him started to move. Using his other hand, Kay prodded at the ragged flesh to try and clear a path or grab the object itself, thankful that Dragon-Koopas were resilient enough for this sort of mistreatment. Iggy's eyes flew open as the Magikoopa finally withdrew his fingers and wand, and leaned back. "Give me that!" he demanded, suddenly reaching up and snatching what had hurt him from Kay's hand. His arm trembled as he brought it up closer to his face and opened his fist.
It was a piece of shrapnel – probably from between two of the window panels. It was large with jagged ends and sharp edges, but Iggy nearly sobbed with relief. In the darkness of the valley, he had been sure the blood pouring out of his stomach was black – he had been sure it was a bullet that had pierced him. He had never been happier about being wrong than he was at that moment.
-xxx-
Lemmy returned just as the last F-18s were being eliminated. The other airship had sustained some damage by the end of the battle: after Iggy's ship went down, the humans turned put of their efforts towards making the other one join it. A few missiles got through the forcefield, which simply couldn't keep up with the amount of energy it needed to reflect so many projectiles. And by focusing on the area around the engines, the humans ensured that the few shots they did get through made a mark. They wrecked a few forcefield panels, a battery of lasers, some starboard emergency vents and two of the five engines, though the safety systems (using the port-side vents) kept them from exploding. After the battle, the engineers soon confirmed that the airship wasn't in danger of exploding later, or simply losing power like Iggy's: the ship simply couldn't go as fast and would be susceptible from any more attacks from behind. So, while it was unlikely that the airship would have to weather another vicious assault (it was doubtful that two squadrons of F-18 had been hiding in the region), it still brought everyone comfort to know that backup was on the way.
Having finally cleared the entire northern realm of Dark Land overnight, Wendy and Junior were already heading south with an army of Magikoopas as fast as they could. Lemmy refused to move forward until they joined his group: while Iggy had made a full recovery thanks to the Magikoopas and their spells and potions, like Larry, he wasn't really in any fit state to command the fleet just yet. He was slowly recovering from the trauma, but he was oddly quiet, and kept fiddling with the shrapnel that had been pulled from his belly, and which he refused to get rid of. He insisted on wearing the same old labcoat too, saying that the bloodstains were an even greater testament to his grit in the face of human brutality than the missing sleeves. Lemmy thought it was just unsanitary, but he knew that now wasn't the time to try and reason with his brother. He also knew Bowselta wasn't happy about this latest snag, but it wasn't just his aversion to fighting that was making him hold back. The Koopas had lost nearly four shiploads of soldiers to the twelve F-18s, and if they wanted to continue clearing the border, they'd need backup soldiers.
But Lemmy couldn't go get those backups, as it would leave the attacking party unprotected; even if the took the weakened airship to clear the surrounding villages, he was paranoid that another squadron of F-18s would come and actually manage to kill his brother (who refused to leave the front line). It was a miracle that Iggy survived the crash – or at the very least, really, really, really good luck. Either way, Lemmy didn't want to put it to the test again, and Bowselta eventually relented. She hated that both the east coast and the western border had been delayed at all, but not only because of the time issue.
In the west, Mario was right on schedule: he had taken Toad Town shortly after midnight, and while King Peasley continued west towards the Beanbean Kingdom, Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Wario and Waluigi were fanning out to the south of the Mushroom Kingdom capital. Their front would then slowly creep back east, and all the while, the Sarasaland forces occupying the area they had cleared on their way to Toad Town would put pressure on the humans from the north. The Koopas were supposed to do the same heading west, and while it didn't look like that was going to work out exactly as planned, Bowselta knew she could whip something up. At the very worst, Mario and the others would free more of the Mushroom Kingdom themselves while the Koopas played catch-up, and while having the humans pull up her peoples' slack was embarrassing and annoying, it wasn't the end of the world.
No, what really rattled Bowselta was that both delays had nearly taken one of her children, and the war was far from over. Most people who had heard about the Koopalings' narrow escaped figured it had something to do with Koopa and her power, but Bowselta knew that wasn't it. Koopa was gone, and the current Koopa Queen had no cosmic powers to speak of – no one did, although she couldn't admit that publicly. At least, not yet. But in private, like Lemmy, she was worried that sooner or later, her family's luck was going to run out – and to her, that would be the end of the world.