Invasion

Chapter 3

On a lofty ridge in eastern Benalia stood two men. They might as easily have been two armies. Power armor encased their bodies. Metallic, hypertrophic, veiny-the suits were set with power-stone arrays. Thick capes draped their shoulders. Bladed battle staves leaned in their grips. Flight dynamos jutted from arms and legs. Black crystals gave gauntlets the touch of death. Whole armies had been defeated by these two men.

They were not men, not truly. One was a millenniumold mage, with short gray hair, mutton chops, and a pair of wide-spaced mustaches bracketing his mouth. He wielded the power of skies and seas, of volcanoes and verdant fields. The armor he wore was a concession to his friend. Even without it, the mage could bring the heavens down to kiss the dust. The other man was a near-god. His body was nothing but a convenience of his concentration. Nothing but will held him in one place. He stepped among and between worlds as easily as other men stepped stone to stone. For him, the power armor was a vanity. He could have simply imagined the suit into being, but he loved to build machines.

Urza Planeswalker drew a deep breath of the cool air. Wind dragged at his long, ash-blond hair and goatee. It snapped his cape behind him.

"Do you sense it, Barrin? Do you sense what Weatherlight has just done?"

Mage Master Barrin nodded. Time had wrinkled his flesh and clouded his eyes. Still, he seemed a young protege to Urza. Indeed, he was. Though Barrin had lived a millennium, Urza had lived four.

"Yes, my friend. I sense what they have done-your savior and my daughter and their ship." The words sounded sharper than he had intended. It mattered little. Urza was oblivious to social slights. "They've closed two of the portals."

"Splendid." Urza rarely smiled, but he did now. "Gerrard at last is testing well." He glanced at his friend. Caprice shone in the planeswalker's gemstone eyes. "You said it was a mistake to create him. You said no man could live up to the destiny I assigned to Gerrard."

"I said no man could endure Gerrard's destiny." Shrugging his eyebrows, Barrin added, "We have yet to see. I only wish my daughter had chosen another man to love. It is dangerous business to love a savior."

"Hanna chose as her mother chose," Urza said offhandedly.

Barrin scowled, regret boiling in his eyes. "There is still this third portal." As if to banish memories, Barrin stared out over the wide plain. Wild wheat filled the fields, nodding white heads in the wind. "We should summon the aerial contingents. At top speed, they could arrive even as the portal opens."

"No," Urza said flatly. "I will summon them, but they will come slowly. They would be weakened after a more speedy flight." He activated gems imbedded in his staff.

"Better to field many troops early than to perish before stronger troops arrive," quipped Barrin.

"Haste makes waste. Better to bide our time," replied the planeswalker.

"If it were up to you, Urza, we would bide forever."

"If it were up to you, Barrin, we would do the same."

"But it is not up to us. It is up to the Phyrexians," Barrin said.

Urza's temples reddened. He had no need to blush. The capillaries that suffused his flesh were mere figments of his mind but, as figments, were all the more receptive to Urza's mood.

"If we succeed in this war, nothing ever again will be up to the Phyrexians," replied Urza.

Barrin grasped Urza's armored shoulder and pointed toward the wide heavens. "Here they come."

The sky opened. Blackness ripped a hole in blue. A portal yawned wide. From its lightless depths stared a malign presence.

Urza's hand tightened on his battle staff. "My old foe. He is gazing at me."

"And you are gazing at him."

"Were it not for him, I could simply walk to that portal and shut it down, but he knows me. He shoves at me, even here."

Ships-small, fleet ships-shot from the yawning portal. They buzzed outward and swarmed there, watching for attack. Some were dragon ships, their necks and tails coiling. Others were smaller still, single-pilot jump-ships configured like fleas. A few were puppet craft, unmanned and controlled distally. All flew in intercept patterns as the first big cruisers made their way through the portal.

"They've learned from Weatherlight's tactics," Urza observed grimly. "We'll not be shutting this one down in Gerrard-fashion."

"He's shoving at you, Urza," Barrin said. "Shove back."

Nodding in satisfaction, Urza raised his battle staff. "First- some old friends. Do you think they will remember my falcon engines?" He pressed a certain stone.

From among waving heads of wheat, metal things surged suddenly skyward. There were ten thousand of the birds-little more than wings of steel, gemstone eyes, and nostrils that craved glistening-oil. In their brave breasts the falcons bore Thran-metal shredders. When they struck Phyrexian flesh, the shredders emerged to dig through.

Falcons rocketed skyward. Their pinions shrieked in the ascent. In moments, they had reached the foe. Falcons converged on the vanguard of Phyrexian vessels. Many cracked through jump-ship windscreens and punched into the chests of Phyrexian pilots. Most hurled themselves onward to the cruisers that lumbered above. Plasma batteries answered from the huge ships. The falcons easily evaded. They reached the cruisers, delved into whatever hollows presented themselves, and coursed down corridors into chambers where Phyrexians stood their posts. There, they shredded.

Once again, there came that impossible grin on Urza's face.

"You're enjoying this," Barrin observed grimly.

"It's a sort of chess match," Urza replied. "Two foes, ancient and powerful, battling over little squares of turf."

Barrin's face was bleak. "Two not dissimilar foes-"

"He has led with his knights and bishops. I have led with my pawns. They are swarming and destroying his pieces."

"Weatherlight is not a pawn. That ship, and Gerrard, and my daughter-it's your king. You're leading with your king."

Urza gestured as jump-ships fell in a regular rain from the skies. "It is beautiful. How can you not smile?"

"In this chess match, Master Urza, you have sixteen pieces and he sixteen thousand."

"I have sixteen billion," Urza said. "I have every fluttering heart on this planet." He brought his staff down.

From the rocky peaks all around came the whine of cables snapping suddenly taut. Enormous trebuchet arms arced up from machines hidden in cut branches. Their uplifted baskets flung Metathran troop transports high into the air. The small ships spun skyward. They were simple in design-mere wheels hurled on the air. Within those wheels sat Metathran shock troops-blue-skinned warriors bioengineered for this very war. They were held against the walls by simple centripetal force. The transports had no engines of their own. On the perimeter of each disk, five powerstones in the five colors of magic were imbedded equidistant. In dynamic opposition, they made the wheel into a mana magnet. It was drawn inexorably to the most powerful mana source nearby, where it would clamp tight. Reaching the height of their arc, the transports sensed the cruisers emerging above. One after another, they whirled upward. Dragon engines flew down to intercept them. A few disks struck the dragons, knocking them aside and continuing on their steady flight upward. The pull of gravity was nothing next to the pull of magic. Like sucker fish around a shark, the disks schooled up around the nearest Phyrexian cruiser and latched on. Immediately, Metathran warriors climbed from their wheels, boarding the enemy vessel.

"They will not survive the battle," Barrin noted. "They are bred not to care whether they do," Urza said. "So are Phyrexians," Barrin replied.

"Then they should be a fair match," Urza mused. His eyes glinted. Whenever he stared intently, the faceted gemstones in his skull showed through the masking glamour they wore. "I only wish I had batteries of ray cannons. That was my one great oversight." "One… great

… oversight," Barrin echoed sardonically. Urza raised an eyebrow. "Phyrexians inherited Thran power-stone technology undiluted. They had six thousand years and a world laboratory to improve on it. I've had to dig Thran hulks from deserts and volcanoes and guess at glyphs and work in impoverished isolation." He gave another rap of his war staff. A hundred more troop transports launched overhead. "Of course they have ray cannons."

"Weatherlight has Phyrexian ray cannons. You could study them there. Your titan engines could use such weapons."

"I would not interfere with the development of the crew." "They wouldn't even know you were there," Barrin interrupted testily. "You are Urza Planeswalker, after all."

The new batch of troop transports swarmed a third cruiser, just then emerging from the portal. The first two ships, sharks drifting side by side, no sooner cleared the gap than black-mana bombards hurled destruction from one to the other. Ropy lines of energy spattered the sides of one cruiser, eating it away.

Urza nodded. "I see the teams have reached the fire controls,"

The attacking ship banked inward. Its huge hulk ran up alongside the neighbor ship. Lateral spikes sank like fangs into the wounded vessel's flank. Sparks ringed the gouges, and oil bled forth.

"They've reached the ship's bridge too," Barrin added.

The cruiser ground a deep cleft in the side of its cohort, severing vital conduits. The second cruiser began to list.

"You don't need ray cannons when you have strategy," Urza thought aloud.

The sky leviathans seemed to fuse. They scissored together, shearing away metal as they went. One lost lift.

Spewing flames, the two massive machines pitched toward the plains.

"And now, they've shut down the batteries," Urza said as commentary. "They should be returning to their transports. Once the mana batteries are dead, the transports will rise." His gemstone eyes followed the battleships as they plunged. Not a single transport had disengaged from the hull. "Any moment now, and they will whirl away to attach to the next ship."

The ships formed a huge V as they struck ground. Their prows dug deep. Soil mounded ahead of them and splashed outward like water. The ships compacted. What air once resided in those oily chambers shot forth in angry hisses. Panels blasted loose. Explosions followed. They began in shattered power cores and spread on plumes of oil and ignited even the white heads of wheat. Then the raving flames were extinguished by a black implosion that sucked air into its empty belly.

Grass was pulled from its roots. Trees were leveled in converging rings. Barrin himself would have been sucked into the vortex had it not been for Urza's stony hand grasping his shoulder. The whole world seemed to gasp in that moment. It was a deafening drone. Slowly the roar died to a sound like horses screaming, then sudden silence.

Releasing his comrade, Urza said hoarsely, "Not as I had planned it."

"Nothing will be as you had planned it," rasped Barrin. To soften the comment, he said, "Thank you for anchoring me."

"I was only returning the favor." Urza hitched his goatee skyward. "Enough observation. We had best wade in ourselves."

"Yes," Barrin replied.

The two rose into battle. Azure crystals embedded in their power armor lifted them with the silent alacrity of bubbles through water. This was not so much flight as levitation, keyed directly to the minds of the suits' wearers. Soon the wind set up complaint at their passage. It tore at shoulders and wrung cloaks. No one was supposed to rise this quickly, not even a mage master and a planeswalker.

They had planned greater affronts to nature.

Barrin swept his battle staff through three arcs. Blue energy formed a sphere of protection around him. It was barely complete when a great tarry fist of black mana struck the shield. Dark energy spattered the sphere and crawled around it.

Pressing his lips together in irritation, Barrin whirled his staff again. It peeled back the shield as though it were an orange rind. He gathered the black-dripping shards of blue energy, mixing the colors. Swinging the staff in a final wide arc, he flung the glittering ball up to impact the belly of the third cruiser.

The ball tore through plates of metal to rip open a barrack. Out tumbled Phyrexians, cockroaches from a rotten log.

Urza meanwhile dodged red blasts from a ray cannon as he approached the cruiser.

The shots grew more precise. The gunners worked with frantic fury. One gunner had once been a human. Now it was a tortured thing of crisscrossed cables and gearwork implants. It caught Urza in its sights and fired. Red fury belched from the smoldering barrel of the cannon.

Urza lifted leathery gauntlets and deflected the hot plasma as if flinging away globs of wax. Heedless, he neared. Another volley spewed from the machine. This time, Urza caught the killing stuff and hurled it back at the gunner.

Gaseous plasma struck its tortured face. Its head collapsed like a balloon. It slumped in the straps of the machine.

Urza was glad to see that the ray cannon itself was unharmed.

The other gunner had never been human. A vat-grown monster, its body configuration was arthropodal. Beneath a red skull piece lurked a round mouth set with in-curved fangs. Its four forward appendages were poison barbed, and they lashed out to strike Urza. The reach of those things told of their unnatural origins.

The first jab caught Urza in the side. He had been too distracted, admiring the weapon. Now he was focused. Stingers the size of bull horns cut through power armor, sank into his side, pierced viscera, and met in the middle of him. Their fangy tips pumped venom.

Any man would have been killed. Perhaps that was why the O-shaped mouth wore a leering grin. Urza, however, was no mere man.

He ripped the stinger from his flesh. It was agony but an agony he could survive. He yanked the creature's arm out by its roots. Poison jetted from one end and bug-gore from the other. Urza jabbed the stingers into the Phyrexian's astonished mouth. Poison pumped. The gunner thrashed briefly before slumping beside its partner. Urza flung the dead arm away.

Almost as an afterthought, Urza reshaped his flesh, squeezing the venom out of him. His viscera and muscle regrew. Even the power armor repaired itself, now a mere projection of his mind. As long as the planeswalker could think, he could heal.

With a single almighty yank, Urza broke the ray cannon from its mounting. The huge weapon cracked loose from the walkway. It weighed an easy ton. Clutching the gun, Urza floated away from the cruiser. He slowly turned the cannon about, so he could engage its fire controls.

With a mere touch, Urza understood this machine. His eye glinted in the crosshairs. His hand compressed the trigger.

Red plasma blazed from the barrel, first taking out others guns like it. Next, Urza aimed at engine banks, at power stations, at stabilizers. It was short work with the single cannon to cripple the third cruiser. The massive ship began to sink.

Urza set his feet on it and paused to breathe. He did not need to breathe, but it helped him think. This ray cannon would prove very helpful. He would ride the cruiser to the ground and see what else he could salvage.

A cry came from overhead. Urza looked up. A huge dragon engine hovered there, its scales limned with blue motes of magic. From the back of the engine, a familiar figure called down.

"I requisitioned a ride. Where are you going?" Barrin asked.

"I'm riding this one down to see what else I can salvage," Urza said, happily hoisting the ray cannon. "Then I have pressing business elsewhere."

"Pressing business?" Barrin echoed incredulously. He gestured over his shoulder, where two more ships emerged, spraying flack. "This is pressing business."

"Yes," Urza replied. He pointed beyond the cruisers. Small white figures descended out of the sky-Metathran warships and flights of Serran angels. "But you have some new help. This battle is well in hand."

Barrin could only stare incredulously as Urza slid away atop the plunging cruiser. With anger meant for his old friend, Barrin savagely dug his heels into the sides of the dragon engine.

"Get up there, now. We've got a battle to win."

The dragon could not resist the blue thrall of Barrin's magic. Its wings surged, and it climbed into the sky.

Barrin patted the metallic neck. "You and I are the same, dragon. Enthralled. Driven into someone else's battles. One of these days, if we last long enough, we will awaken."