This chapter is twice as long as the others, but it's the ending. Sorry for the delay, a crate of junk falling on one's head really hurts! I was out cold for a day.
Also, the song at the end of the chapter is the Axis version of "I Double Dare You" by Louis Armstrong. I merely reprint it in it's original form.
Enjoy! And please, do review!
It seemed, however, that there were some pilots who were either defiant enough, or insane enough, to keep harassing us even after we were within range of Valiance Keep's Gryphonhawk Patrol routes. As I looked back at that field of flak, I sensed a rising tide of dark energy and swung a bit to the right. I immediately saw him - it was the same Undead Warlock who had knocked out my Intercom. He had a mad, crack-jawed (literally) grin on his face - or what was left of it as he had an eye missing and part of his mouth hideously exposed. And he was still spitting all the spells he could muster up.
They began to slam into the main body of the plane with enormous force, and somehow I guessed he was pouring out not only his magic, but also his rage at us attacking his faction. I swung around so I could nail his hide, but he kept swinging away - he was an extremely skilled pilot. All the while firing his magic.
He fired a volley directly at the tail, which elicited a muted scream. The fellow had hit her with something nasty. In fury, I fired wildly at him, but to no avail.
However, everybody has limits. And he soon reached his. As he drew back to gather his reserves of energy again, he adjusted his flight so that he was exactly behind the Mega-Bomber.
Big mistake.
Less than three seconds after he repositioned himself, a barrage of Auto-Gun fire erupted from the tail, shredding him to pieces - again quite literally. It was gruesome - and just a little comical - to see him fall bit by bit to the ground - first his arms, then his legs, and finally his head. The Wyvern, having lost its master, roared fiercely and made for the plane in a feral state - to be cut down by my Turret gun as I unloaded into the ugly beast.
"Pilot to Tail - Korah, what the nether?"
"Argh! Oh Light, help me! My leg! That son of a whore! My leg!"
"Pilot to Copilot - Tarkus, see what you can do to help her. And fast."
I heard scurrying below me and a few minutes later Tarkus's voice came over the intercom - "She was 'it in the leg 'ead on - Bane of Agony. Bit of damage to her hoof. I wiped as much as I could an' patched 'er up - she'll live. But damn, I can bet it was painful."
"Turret to Tail - damn, I'm sorry I couldn't hit him faster."
"You better be...and you owe me a beer for this!" She retorted over the intercom with a dry laugh.
I grinned and said "Sure. I owe ya two actually."
"Pilot to Crew - quit your jabbering and focus!"
"Right, sorry."
Just then I heard another crash - this time it was that Orc Defence Commander attacking - and something went through the centre of the Bomber with a tearing sound.
"Copilot to Radio - come in. What in the nether happened?"
"Radio to Copilot - some equipment damage. Bastard hurled a spear with a LOT of force. Going to check on Bombardier."
"Pilot to Radio - is the Bombardier OK?"
"Yeah, he's OK - got some equipment damage and he's rubbing his ass like he might have been zipped there, but I don't think it's too serious." A few moments later, "He says he's OK. Bit stunned, and his intercom's smashed. Nothing else."
"Tail to Pilot - come in."
"Go ahead, Korah."
"765 has been hit - I repeat, 765 has been hit. Don't think it can keep up with the formation."
At this, I swung around and watched in apprehension as 765 fell slowly. Soon, she hit the ground and - to my horror - exploded violently.
"Tail to Crew - 765 is down. No parachutes. Damn!"
A few moments later Radio spoke up, "Six Chimeras tore her apart. Seemed to me they had time to jump off. It's a damn shame - fine craft she was too." I could sense the anguish in his voice.
Our old faithful aerial warhorse was gone! As we rolled over it, I felt stabs of sorrow. It was like losing an old friend with whom I had shared both escapades and harrowing experiences.
Another fighter zoomed by and cut loose at us with gunfire.
"Tail to Copilot - damn, the Horde seems to be out to get my poor hooves today! A shot damn near got me, crashed on through without exploding though."
I noted that Mega-Bomber Tinker-Toy moved into the position 765 had been in.
"Bombardier to Crew - Holy Crap, look at Tinker-Toy, man! She's riddled from the waist to the Tail!"
"Hah! That's Tinker-Toy doing her special thing." said the Radio.
"Copilot to Crew - Dragonhawks incoming at eleven o'clock high! Let 'em 'ave it, Turret! Korah, blast the bastards!"
Surprisingly, they bypassed the rest of the formation and went straight for Tinker-Toy. There was a hit bang in the centre of the Cockpit and a small explosion.
Ames called, "Shit! Pilot's dead! Copilot is hit too! The Radio is trying to move the Pilot's body. Copilot is slumped in her seat - can't tell at this distance how badly she's wounded."
"Turret to Copilot, I just saw the Radio put Tinker-Toy on autopilot until he can get control."
Tarkus motioned to Sorassa to switch over to Intercom.
"What is it?"
"Keep an eye on Tinker-Toy. Pilot is dead, Radio has put her on autopilot and is trying to move the pilot's body. The Copilot's slumped in her seat , we can't tell how bad she's wounded."
"We'll watch her - don't want a collision with Tinker-Toy."
The Dragonhawk fighters kept striking her. One wing was badly torn and an engine cowling had been knocked off. But she flew on. In my mind I could almost hear her taunting those Horde pilots, "Yah! Yah! You Horde pimps! You can't knock me down! Go ahead! Try it! You square-headed bastards ain't good enough to get me! Yah! Yah! Go ahead and try shooting me down! Yah! Yah!"
The wounded copilot raised up in her seat momentarily and helped the Radio-op with a control then collapsed again. How could those two in the cockpit withstand the freezing air of the Tundra at this height without windshields, squarely in their faces?
I then realised my left hand was going numb with cold. That normally was a sign the Electric Gloves had burned out. I looked down at my hand. It was bare except for a thin silk glove. Where was the electric glove? Oh! I had removed it to wire the Turret-gyroscope in place. At thirty-five below zero in the Borean Tundra I was handling the metal Auto-Gun control with a hand covered only in a light silk glove normally worn under the electric outer glove.
Impossible! My hand should have frozen solidly in a few minutes. Yet, there I was, looking at a slowly numbing hand and the electric glove was resting where I took it off earlier, before the bombing run. There was only one explanation - in the excitement of the action, my blood pressure must have zoomed sky-high and pushed a large quantity of warm blood to replace the lost heat in my hands (see, Gnomes can find uses by learning Skinning!).
As we approached the sky just above Valiance Keep, the Horde Air Force faded out and flew away. My relief at their leaving was soon to be punctured by the antics of Number Three Engine.
The engine suddenly unfeathered and began to spin wildly out of control - which meant the engine oil pressure required to keep the blades steady had failed. Without oil-pressure, the wind speeds would start to rotate the blades swiftly, to fantastically high rotation rates. This was caleed Windmilling. With no lubricant, the engine would overheat and eventually explode, tearing the wing off the craft. In short - we'd be screwed.
The engine revved up and beyond the twenty-five hundred RPM limit. I watched with a sinking feeling as it shot up to three thousand. Then, inexplicably, it slowed down and assumed a feathered position again.
As I recovered my wits, I spoke, "Turret to Copilot."
"Go ahead, Turret."
"Check number Three Engine for an oil leak."
"No oil leak from number Three. What's up?"
"Pilot to Turret, what's wrong with number Three engine?"
"Not sure. Could be a fracture in the oil-pressure valves in the propeller hub that opens and closes. Copilot says no oil-leak so far. If it starts squirting oil again, we'll have a runaway prop."
"Turret to Radio - Grob, how does this sound to you?"
"Can't see how it can be anything but a pressure leak."
Five minutes later the process repeated. All the way back to Fizzcrank Airstrip that propellor would race up to three-thousand RPM and feather itself again. And everytime it did go up, my blood pressure soared with it.
We could have caught fighters again, but luckily nothing else happened. Tinker-Toy had serious landing issues but ended up with nothing more serious than slipping off the runway into the mud just beyond the landing strip. A crowd gathered quickly to see what new horrors she had unleashed on her unfortunate crew. And once again the question - was she really a Jinxed Ship? For the men and women who flew her, it wasn't just another wartime superstition - it was a series of nightmares! That day her nose cowling had been blown off, all windshields wiped, one wing battered and she was heavily damaged from nose to tail. The cockpit was splattered with blood, pieces of flesh and hair - horrible!
When I climbed out of 755, we saw Fizzcrank Fullthrottle waiting for all crews to assemble. He came over to us, looked over the planes, and said, "Well, you boys and girls certainly took one hell of a shellacking. But you got the job done. Good work, all of you. You had better put in a call for some sheet-metal men, all of you will need new engines, quite a few radios seem shattered, you will be needing new windshields and some will need Thorium coating and Wing flaps. You had best replace all your fuel tanks as well, since they are all bound to be perforated..."
As it turned out, we had sent some twenty-four ships and had lost seven. Total loss for the raid was forty-two dead, though this was tentative - if anyone had survived the crashes, hopefully they'd come back to the airstrip. Of the returning aircraft, seventy-five percent were damaged, half of them critically. Also, with a few exceptions, almost every crew had wounded personnel among them - Korah was our casualty. She recovered a few hours later though.
Afterwards I asked Sorassa and Fullthrottle about two things - first was that mechanostrider-sized thing that had flown along us. Fizzcrank laughed as he told me that it was a new way to confuse goblin-made tracking devices by dumping out strips of thin thorium. It confused the devices as it appeared to it as an enemy aircraft, drawing away fire from the actual crafts. Later, we would drop it regularly from our crafts - they called them chaff flares.
The second thing was about the voice in my head. He said that was a phenomenon to which no one had fopund the answer to yet. The Kirin Tor supposed it was the whisper of the unstable Nexus nearby in Coldarra and they were researching it by examining the warp-rifts in the Coldarra strait. But no conclusive answers had been found.
That evening, I strolled out onto the airstrip and saw that the Radio Tower was broadcasting something on an open channel. I pulled out my pocket-trnsmodulator and listened, with amusement. It went as follows,
"Yo, Alliance dudes and Horde losers in the Tundra! This is the Fizzcrank Airstrip. I'm sure by now news has spread that we bombed the heck outta those smelly Horde fools! In celebration of this, we're playing a song especially for those Horde idiots o'er in Warsong Hold. So sit back and enjoy, folks!
(pause, thena feamle voice, presumably a high Elf, started singing)
I double dare you to come over here.
I double dare you to venture too near.
Take off your high hat and quit that bragging.
Cut out that claptrap and keep your hair on.
Can't you take a dare on?
I double dare you to venture a raid.
I double dare you to try and invade.
And if your loud propaganda means half of what it says,
I double dare you to come over here,
I double dare you!
I grinned as I listened and looked up that the sky, twinkling with a thousand stars and the Aurora leaping over the shores and the cliffs of the Tundra.