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Chapta 3 | |
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Da Raiders From Da Shadows Chapta 3 |
Above the sound of the powerful engine that powered his aircraft, Knagglod laughed. He had expertly outpaced the rest of his formation. That was not very difficult when it came to the bombers that carried the bulk of their available firepower, but most of the aircraft he commanded were fighters like his own. Clearly the extra teeth he had spent on getting the meks to install a few ‘special’ upgrades had been worth it and had not yet caused his fighter to explode in mid air. “Keep up lads!” he shouted into his radio, not wanting to pass up the opportunity to remind his fellow pilots that he was the fastest. Then he spotted the arch shape of the eldar portal ahead and Knagglod stopped laughing. Engaging ground targets required slowing down to get a proper aim and that would let the other orks catch up with him. Then Knagglod came to a decision. He wouldn’t bother. He would make his run at high speed anyway, it wasn’t like the target could suddenly leap out of the way at the last minute and the shot would not need leading. Knagglod put his fighter into a steep dive, directing it straight at the arch and he began to laugh again. “Dracon look!” Hynor looked upwards as one his trueborn warriors pointed to the sky. There he saw a growing shape coming down from the clouds and he instantly realised that it was an aircraft. The aircraft of the Dark Eldar force were still held in reserve in the webway so this could only be a vehicle of the local ork tribe. Crude but deadly, like everything to do with their barbaric species, he thought to himself. There was no sound from the approaching aircraft, which meant that it was still travelling at supersonic speeds. Orks lacked the noise cancelling technologies of the dark eldar and their aircraft made even more noise than their ground vehicles. “Why is it here? Shall we summon the razorwings sire?” another of the trueborn asked. Using his hand to shield his eyes from the sun, Hynor stared at the ork aircraft as it grew larger and for just a brief moment he thought he saw a flash from under each wing. Then he spotted the two smaller shapes now racing out ahead of the ork aircraft. “It’s attacking!” Hynor yelled, “Summon the razorwings!” Knagglod watched with glee as the two rockets streaked towards the arch, thick black smoke billowing out from their exhausts. “Kop dat!” he shouted to no one in particular as they got closer. Then his face fell as two huge plumes of dirt were thrown upwards by the rockets as they both exploded on impact. Nowhere near the arch he had been aiming for. “Soddit!” Suddenly the arch disappeared from view as Knagglod’s fighter flew over it still at supersonic speed and he looked into his rear view mirror in time to see a growing sphere of light appear beneath the archway. The sphere continued to expand until it filled most of the space beneath the arch. Then for a brief moment it distorted before a vaguely triangular shaped object shot out at high speed and climbed upwards into the sky, followed almost immediately after by a second one. Knagglod smiled. Though he had never seen anything exactly like them before, he knew exactly what they were. Eldar fighters. Knagglod was about to get to engage in air-to-air combat and he roared with laughter. His vision blurred slightly as he banked his fighter around, still travelling faster than sound and there was a sudden ‘clump’ as something fell off. Whatever it was though, it did not seem to be important enough to make him crash and Knagglod flew straight towards the eldar fighters. With a flick of his thumb, Knagglod activated the trigger for his fighter’s cannons before pressing firmly down on the firing studs. “Kop dis ya pansies!” he shouted as the tracer fire streaked across the sky. Mishura, kalabite warrior pilot of the Kabal of the Flame had acquired the ork aircraft on her sensors as soon as she had emerged from the webway and was not surprised to see it perform a dangerously high speed turn as its pilot sought to engage her and her wingman. “Break!” she snapped and the two razorwing fighters split apart, allowing the stream of glowing cannons shells to pass harmlessly between them. Followed soon after by the fighter itself. “Reform.” Mishura ordered as she brought her aircraft around to face the ork. She did not need to check her instruments to know that her wingman would right now be positioning his own fighter just behind her where he could watch for the approach of any more orks. A chime from her instruments indicated a weapons lock on the ork fighter and Mishura fired her dark lances. Knagglod felt his aircraft lurch as it was struck by the eldar attack. Looking over his shoulder down the fuselage he saw that part of his tail had been blasted away. Fortunately it seemed that the sudden change in his aircraft’s weight and balance had pushed him out of the line of fire and the majority of the energy beam directed at him had therefore missed. Though as he looked the beam did dazzle him somewhat, even through his goggles. He decided to do something unconventional and he activated his airbrakes. The sudden drag they imparted cut his speed rapidly enough that the pair of eldar fighters passed either side of him, the turbulence of their passing buffeting his aircraft. He fired his cannons again and banked towards one of the eldar, but the pilot of the agile alien fighter anticipated the attack and jinked at the last minute and yet again the stream of shells missed. “’Old still!” Knagglod bellowed, firing another burst that went wide. Mishura was becoming frustrated. The ork pilot now on their tail was good and despite the unquestionable superiority of the eldar razorwings they had been unable to shake him off. “Get right on my tail.” She signalled to her wingman, “I’m going to fly right at the beast. When I break off open fire. With any luck he’ll be too busy watching me to notice you.” “Confirmed, falling back now.” Her wingman replied as his aircraft slide effortlessly into position behind Mishura’s own. Mishura banked, letting her aircraft’s inertial compensation keep her conscious during the sharp midair turn and brought the nose around to point directly at the ork fighter. By this point the ork himself was flying directly at the eldar, just as Mishura had wanted. She rolled and jinked as the ork fired at her, trusting that her wingman would also be able to react in time to avoid the fire behind her. A warning chimed inside the cockpit, informing her that a collision was imminent. Ignoring the sound Mishura continued to fly directly at the oncoming ork. “Now!” Mishura shouted as she broke off suddenly and her wingman fired. But the ork pilot reacted faster than she had anticipated and he too banked his aircraft fast enough for the energy blasts to pass by harmlessly. Mishura continued to bank her fighter, trying to bring the ork back into view. But before she could reacquire her target another alarm sounded, this one warning her of an incoming threat and she flinched as an ork rocket flashed past her canopy with thick smoke trailing behind it. Automatically her fighter’s electronic defences activated, just in time to jam the guidance system of the next two weapons homing in on her. No longer able to track the eldar aircraft, one of the two crude weapons instead locked onto the other and the rockets collided and vanished in a ball of flame. As he circled Knagglod saw the outlines of the rest of the aircraft in his squadron heading towards the fight and behind them he could just make out the larger outlines of the bombers. “Yeah lads!” he shouted as he saw the rockets fly past the eldar, “Get ‘em!” and he continued to bank around, hoping to claim at least one of the pansies for himself. Both Mishura and her wingman put their aircraft into evasive flight patterns. Their instruments showed them that they were facing two waves of aircraft, a fast moving fighter squadron that was now engaging them and behind these a group of much larger and slower aircraft. An alarm sounded as another missile shot past Mishura’s canopy from behind her. “Brake!” she shouted and both her and her wingman adjusted their angle of flight, lifting up their noses so that instead of a narrow wedge shape their aircraft presented their entire surface area against the air in front of them and their speed plummeted. Unable to copy the eldars’ manoeuvre, the ork aircraft flew overhead and presented the underside of its fuselage to them as a target. Together, Mishura and her wingman fired their dark lances. The blasts struck the wings of the ork fighter and sheared through them. Then the highly unstable particles in the beam reacted with the equally unstable fuel held inside the ork aircraft to produce a massive ball of flame that consumed the remains of the fighter and its pilot. “I’m hit!” Mishura’s wingman signalled and Mishura looked to see a thin line of smoke trailing from one of his engines. The sudden loss of speed they had experienced had allowed one of the ork fighters to acquire him with his cannons, the simple projectiles unaffected by the eldar jamming. “How bad?” Mishura asked. “Not too bad I think,” the wingman answered, “I’ve lost some power but my flight computer has compensated. I can still manoeuvre.” Knagglod frowned when he saw the eldar craft keep flying even after he had shot the last of his ammunition into it. “Bombers,” he radioed, “take out dat arch thingy now!” In the nose of one of the bombers now closing on the dogfight raging ahead the ork aimer stared through his crosshair sight and saw the growing shape of the eldar structure. He looked back down the cabin of the aircraft towards the bomb bay. “Ready?” he shouted over the noise of the engines and a gretchin perched on top of one of the bombs gave him a thumbs up. The aimer smiled and pulled a lever beside him. The floor of the bomber opened up and the rushing of air beneath the aircraft joined the sound of the engines. Then he pulled a second lever and the bomb dropped through the open hole with the gretchin still sat on top of it. “Woo-hoo!” Rakki yelled as the bomb he rode fell through the air. His cap slipped from his head as soon as the bomb had left the bay and he reached out his hand to snatch it back. It was his favourite cap and he didn’t want to lose it. “Woo-hoo!” he yelled again, waving the cap above him. Mounted on the nose of the bomb, a crosshair sight allowed him to judge the path of the weapon, while the joystick just in front of him let him adjust the position of the flaps at the rear of the bomb and steer it. He smiled excitedly as he saw the ground and in particular the eldar webway gate draw closer. A stationary target, Rakki was confident that he could not fail to hit the alien structure with his bomb. Soon he now longer needed the cross hair, the arch was close enough that he could lock off the controls and just let the bomb keep falling. Then he suddenly realised that he had now way off the bomb and that he would be killed when it went off. Rakki screamed and threw his arms up in front of him. He had just enough time to feel the bomb hit the ground before it detonated. Mishura gasped as she saw the expanding ball of flame consume the gateway that was her fighter’s only exit from this world. She recovered her senses just in time to avoid another burst of fire directed towards her by the pair of ork fighters currently manoeuvring wildly behind her, each one trying to get into an optimum attack position while preventing the other one from doing the same. “What now?” her wingman signalled. Mishura looked towards the gateway once more. The ball of flame had given way to a cloud of dust and smoke kicked up by the ork weapon. Somewhere within that cloud Mishura hoped, the webway gate had survived. “I can’t see the gateway.” Mishura replied. Then she looked at her instrument panel and an idea hit her. She reached out for her communication system and set it to broadcast the code that would activate the gateway. But in return the system simply displayed a message via her helmet display. ***CONNECTION ERROR. NO SIGNAL*** That settled it. The gateway was gone, the structure that had stood for millions of years destroyed in an instant. “Retreat.”
Mishura signalled to her wingman, “The gate’s gone, there’s no point in us
staying here.” “I’ve got the archon’s beacon bearing forty six. We’ll link up with his forces.” Mishura pointed her razorwing in the direction of Lord Shraycht’s beacon, and with the orks still buzzing around her she opened up the throttle and accelerated away. “Dey’s ‘ad enough!” Knagglod bellowed as he saw the first of the eldar fighters turn and run. Then a moment later the second, damaged fighter followed it, “After ‘em lads! Let’s not let ‘em get away.” He added and even though he had no ammunition left he joined the rest of his squadron in racing after the fleeing eldar craft. “I can’t shake them.” Mishura’s wingman called. Mishura took a look at her instruments. She knew that her fighter could outrun anything made by non-eldar, so it stood to reason that the orks should be way behind and indeed they were well out of range of her. But her wingman’s fighter was damaged and he was operating with reduced power, an unfortunate event that was allowing the greenskin pilots to keep up with him. “I’m hit!” her wingman said desperately. “How bad?” Mishura asked. “Just secondary systems. I’m still airworthy, but the orks are still with me. Oh hell no.” “What?” “My countermeasures. They’re-“ The transmission ended in static. The advanced electronics that had kept the orks from acquiring the eldar fighters with their missiles were part of the secondary flight systems in a razorwing and when the cannon fire had shut down those systems Mishura’s wingman had lost his best form of defence. The orks chasing him had been quick to take advantage of his vulnerability and one of them had launched an air-to-air missile almost immediately. Striking the razorwing centrally, the missile had caused the fragile fighter to disintegrate in midair; it’s pilot dying with his craft. Mishura snarled. Somehow she vowed she would have her revenge on the beasts that thought themselves worthy of killing one of the warriors of Commorragh. Knagglod grinned as he saw the pieces of the eldar fighter falling towards the ground. Even though he had not fired the lethal shot himself it was at least one of his lads who had shown the pansy eldar who was the best around here. Added to that the archway that his forces had been commanded to destroy by Warboss Kazkal Kromag himself was now, like the eldar fighter, nothing more than a collection of tiny pieces of scrap scattered over a wide area. The bomber crews would need another grot to guide their bombs of course, but there were always plenty of them to be had. Looking in the sky ahead, Knagglod could no longer make out the shape of the other eldar fighter that had fled and he decided that his boys had done enough for one day. “All right my lads,” he signalled on an open channel, “let’s go ‘ome. I wants another beer, I only ‘ad eight before we took off.” |
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