Author's Note: I wrote the airship battle while listening to a looped metal remix of Emerald Hill. I recommend attempting to locate one for the reading of this chapter. Everything sounds better set to Emerald Hill.
Knuckles awoke to the sound of a blaring alarm. True to his fighter's instincts he rolled out of bed and into a defensive stance in one fluid motion, eyes sweeping the room in search of the source of the disturbance. His soulmate Julie-Su rolled out of the other side of the bed, grabbing her gun as she did. She came up pointing at the door to the bedroom. Belatedly he realized it was not his personal alarm that was going off, but rather the city wide emergency alert system.
"Hold on," he said to Julie-Su "That's the city's emergency alert, not the cave's"
"It doesn't help that they sound exactly the same," she said, lowering her weapon "but at least we aren't likely to be attacked by knife wielding assassins in the next five seconds."
"Yeah, but it also means whatever caused it is enough of a threat for Constable Remington to wake the entire city in the middle of the night."
Knuckles' computer screen illuminated, displaying the icon that meant someone was requesting a video call. He punched the accept key. As he expected, the face of Constable Remington, chief of the Echidnapolis defense force, appeared on the screen. The Constable appeared to have been roused quickly from his sleep, as had Knuckles. His dark hair was ruffled and the hat he always wore was slightly askew on his head. Knuckles was the first to speak.
"Remington, what's going on? Why did you sound the alarm?"
"Look outside and see for yourself, Guardian. Angel Island is under attack. Doctor Robotnik's armada has us surrounded. Sonic and Tails just called. They alerted us to the attack and they're on their way to help. I want you and Julie-Su to go protect the Master Emerald. I'll send the Chaotix to back you up."
"What about Echidnapolis and my family?"
"We'll erect the shields and try to force him back with the defensive armaments. I can't promise we'll win against that fleet, but we'll do the best we can and hope help arrives in time. You'll be more useful protecting the Emerald. Shields won't matter any if he steals that and the island falls."
"Right. I'm on my way."
The explosive bombardment began as Knuckles and Julie-Su exited his cave. Looking up into the sky he saw a sight that turned his blood to ice. The outlines and running lights of an immense fleet were visible in the distance above the city. Knuckles increased his pace as he headed in the direction of the Master Emerald Shrine. With any luck, Robotnik would only be trying to steal it, which would make defending it relatively easy as he would shy away from using excessive force against anyone nearby for fear of shattering it. The Master Emerald was uniquely prone to shattering, unlike normal Chaos Emeralds which were virtually indestructible. This was both a blessing and a curse. Robotnik couldn't use it in pieces, but neither could Knuckles. Knuckles always had the option of restoring it later, but if Robotnik was bent on the total destruction of Angel Island he might simply carpet bomb the shrine and then there wouldn't be a later. With that thought in mind Knuckles broke into a full out run.
As much as Sonic loved the Tornado, and as fast as it was, at the moment he really wanted to curse it for being too slow. Fast as it was, there was no way it could match his top speed, and right now speed was the most important thing of all. The faster they got to Echidnapolis and dealt with Robotnik's impending attack, the faster they could get back to New Mobotropolis and make sure it was still standing. Unfortunately, Tails' on board computer told them that Angel Island was far out over the ocean, and thus there was no way Sonic could have reached it on foot regardless of how fast he ran.
"Hey, Tails, can this thing go any faster?" he asked, not for the first time, "I don't want to be late for the party or Rad Red will have trashed all the good bots before we get there."
"Maybe," Tails replied, giving the same explanation he had before, "but I really don't want to push the engine any further into overdrive. It might stall out. We'll be there in just a few more minutes anyway, and I highly doubt Knuckles will have wrecked the entire fleet by himself."
"How big can it be? It looked like Robuttnik had most of his ships at New Mobotropolis, and he was busy with Station Square too."
"I don't know, and that's what worries me. Robotnik always had impossibly large armies and bases, but he had a huge fleet at Station Square and the one at New Mobotropolis was the biggest I've ever seen. Where is Robotnik getting the resources to attack all three cities at once? For that matter, how did he mobilize all those ships to strike in three places so far removed from each other without anybody knowing until they were right on top of us? It just doesn't make sense."
"I dunno, but I think it's time to stop guessing how they got there and start taking 'em out! Look!"
A dark smudge had appeared on the horizon, lit from behind by a red sliver of sun just peeking above the ocean's rim. Though they had left New Mobotropolis in the middle of the night less than an hour ago, dawn was just breaking in this part of the world. The light refreshed Sonic, even though it meant he would likely be going without sleep for longer than was healthy. As they approached the distinct jagged outline of Angel Island became recognizable, its prominent mountains and ragged underbelly coming into sharper focus.
At first glance the island appeared untouched, but as they drew closer a haze of smoke became visible, as did an armada of battle ships every bit the equal of the one bombarding New Mobotropolis. Individual outlines of the larger battle cruisers began to stand out, flashing as the occasional beam of sunlight penetrated the smoke to hit the polished metal sides of the warships. Soon they could both see and hear the explosions as the ships bombarded Echidnapolis, which was mercifully still standing under the assault and apparently fighting back, though for how much longer Sonic did not know.
Sonic's heart sank and his mouth dropped open as the full immensity of the fleet hit him. It was impossibly numerous, especially given that there was one of equal size at New Mobotropolis. Where was Robotnik getting the material for all these ships?
"Sonic," Tails squeaked, his voice breaking as he took in the size of Robotnik's force "What are we going to do? There's too many of them to fight."
"I have an idea. We're going to destroy those three ships," he said, pointing at three of the largest ones, clustered in close formation as they bombarded Echidnapolis "and punch through. You keep the smaller fighters around them distracted while I hop on and destroy the engines from inside. Then you go tell them to use the Hyper Zone Projector while I go find Knux and the Master Emerald and lend him a hand. You know what I'm talking about, right?"
"Yeah. That's a good plan," Tails said, angling the Tornado towards the indicated ships. By now they were close enough that their approach had been noticed, and several of the smaller ships broke off to engage them. The response was too late. Tails was an expert pilot and the targeting system in the Tornado had been designed to be able to track Sonic. Tails swerved out of the interceptors' lines of fire, dodging and rolling, and picked them off with quick, precise bursts while Sonic held on for dear life. A few ingenious movements and they were out of the firefight and in the midst of the ships.
Tails pulled up alongside the closest of the three ships and Sonic jumped off the Tornado, on the move before he even touched the deck. Meanwhile Tails veered off to engage another cluster of small ships before they could target Sonic, mowing them down with expert precision.
Sonic quickly smashed the gun turrets as they targeted him, ricocheting from one to another like a pinball, destroying each in turn with his homing attack. Next he concentrated on the robots swarming him. Their reaction time was better than usual, and he had barely cleared the turrets before they were on him. A quick series of break-dance inspired kicks bought him enough breathing room to homing attack the remainder, using the charging robots as stepping stools to hit the hovering ones.
From there he ground up a supply rail to the upper deck, where he was greeted by an E-2000. He dodged the lasers it fired and homing attacked its weak points until the robot crumpled on the deck. Then he entered the door it had been guarding. He made his way below decks, stopping to smash any robots that engaged him in the cramped halls and anything that resembled an important valve or control panel until he heard the warning siren blare, then evacuated to the top deck.
He tried to signal Tails, but his friend appeared to be occupied in a dogfight, so he demolished the robots charging him, took a running start, jumped on a rail, and used it to launch himself in a tremendous leap of faith on to one of the smaller ships below and in front. As he landed, just making the edge of the deck, an explosion rocked the one he had just vacated and it started to lose altitude. As he watched it crashed down on a pair of smaller ships beneath it before exploding in a fire ball that demolished many of the small ships around it and knocked Sonic off his feet.
Fortunately, it also unbalanced the robots behind him that had been about to take advantage of his distraction, and one of them went plummeting off the deck to the ocean below. Sonic was first to his feet, destroying the other robots before they could rise. He proceeded to wreck this ship too, and, using rails to jump from ship to ship, proceeded to leapfrog across a series of small ones, destroying each as he went until he could gain enough altitude to launch himself to the next big ship. There were two E-2000s guarding the door on this one, but Sonic defeated them just the same and ran inside.
By the time he was finished with that one this section of the fleet was in disarray and Tails had managed to disengage from his opponents. Sonic hopped on the Tornado as the fatal chain reaction began and they flew clear of the ensuing explosion. Together they reached the third ship. Sonic destroyed the robots on deck, ran inside, and made short work of the control consoles.
This left the Tornado much closer to Angel Island as well as a substantial hole in the armada where the three ships had exploded and taken their smaller support fighters with them. Now only a few small ships stood between Sonic and the island's edge. He turned to Tails
"Looks like we made it okay. Just gotta scrap these guys and we're practically there."
"Yeah! We did it!" Tails exclaimed exuberantly
"Not so fast, rodents," said an unnervingly accurate mechanical imitation of Robotnik's voice. "You'll have to get through me first."
"We'll do that just as soon as you show yourself!" Sonic yelled at thin air, looking around for the owner of the voice. "Come out and fight, ya coward!"
"But Sonic," said the voice "I'm right here above you!"
Sonic looked up just in time to see the brilliant golden beams coming. Luckily, Tails was a little quicker on the uptake and had begun evasive maneuvers as soon as he realized the enemy was not readily visible. He rolled to the left and the attacks missed them by inches. Sonic nearly lost his grip and went plummeting to the ocean.
For the first time Sonic got a good look at the robot. It reminded him somewhat of the Egg Emperor, only much more lethal looking. Where the emperor had been a bulky ungainly thing, this was trim and looked very nimble. It was around the same size, maybe a little bigger. It was colored in the usual Robotnik red and black, and the only signs of vanity it bore were a stylized representation of Robotnik's trademark mustache and a weird v over the faceplate that looked like eyebrows. It spoke again "Hahahaha! You pitiful fools! I applaud your courage, but it will lead to your deaths. Did you really think you could defeat me?"
"Yeah, actually," Sonic shot back, "Keep talking big Doc, we'll see who has the last laugh."
Tails fired at it, but the robot merely raised an arm and deflected the shot with some sort of multihued energy shield. Then it returned fire from its arm cannons. Tails avoided this, but that seemed to be all he could do. The Tornado lacked the firepower to penetrate that shield, no matter how many times Tails fired on it. Switching tactics, he tried to race past the robot and land, but it kept itself positioned squarely between them and the island, chasing them off with more energy shots.
This game of cat and mouse continued at some length, but the robot was simply too good to get past. It was winning, beating Tails at his own game. Each time the shots came closer to hitting them, and Tails had to pull more elaborate rolls to avoid them. Finally, one struck the tip of an x shaped wing, which began sparking.
"Sonic, it's no good. I can't seem to do more than superficial damage and I can't outrun it."
Sonic wasn't prepared to give up and die. "Charge him. I'll jump off and homing attack it."
"What if you miss?" Tails asked, frantically jerking the controls as the robot powered up another shot.
"Well we can't just keep doing this. We're sitting ducks here."
Tails suddenly broke and veered right at the robot, under the angle of its blast. Sonic leapt off at the last second as Tails passed beneath it and struck. He hit hard, and bounced off. As he fell Tails reversed course and got beneath him. Sonic landed on both feet.
"Did it work?" he asked, looking up at the robot. It appeared largely undamaged; all he had done was dent the chest plate a little.
"Hahahaha, your pitiful attempts amuse me so. Try again, rodent, maybe you'll have better luck this time. Too bad you won't get the chance to find out! It's been fun toying with you, but I'm afraid it is time for our game, and your life, to come to an end. Say goodbye, Sonic"
With that he began firing again. Tails jerked the controls around, rolling madly to dodge the shots. One impacted the second wing, blowing off some of the paneling. The exposed and blackened circuitry crackled feebly, and the Tornado began to list to one side.
"Nowhere for you to run, nowhere for you to hide. You won't be dodging this next shot." Robotnik said, charging up another blast. Sonic knew he was going to charge it to full strength for the fatal blow, but that only bought them scant seconds more before Robotnik fired.
"Tails! Can you get us out of the way?"
"I don't think so. I'll try to avoid it but the Tornado isn't responding," he said, wrestling with the uncooperative controls. "I don't think I can move us to either side fast enough to dodge once he fires. We're toast."
"Then we'll have to jump and hope for the best."
"But you can't swim!"
"Do you have a better idea?"
"Actually," said Tails "I think I do. When I say now, jump!" With that he pressed a red button and pushed the throttle all the way forward. The Tornado shot towards Robotnik like a bullet, engine screaming in protest.
"NOW!" Tails shouted above the noise, and he and Sonic leapt from the Tornado as Robotnik fired. The blast bew the wings off, but the main body of the plane, now wreathed in flame, collided with the robot.
It was a direct hit, dead center of the torso. Upon impact the engine of the Tornado erupted in a giant fire ball, engulfing the robot as well as the remains of the plane. Charred, broken remnants of robot and plane fell to the ocean below with a pitiful splash.
"That was awesome!" Sonic yelled as Tails caught him in midair, his namesake appendages whirring above his head. "Way to go, Tails! That rocked!"
"Yeah, but we lost the Tornado."
"You've got other ones back in the lab, right?"
"Well yeah, but that doesn't mean I don't hate losing it. Do you think we got him?"
"Nah," Sonic replied, "I'd bet my sneakers Buttnik wasn't actually in that bot. He's harder to kill than that."