145 - Do NOT Go Bang One for One

Dee Amardad and Mother Thriti paced out with Mariush as she rose and spread her calm before her. The great halls all along the bottom of the canyon were cut deep and bee metal supports built into overhangs that they hoped would be enough to protect everyone. Only the cuddle flock were allowed in with people, the rest of the warbirds spread south of the city, all along the river bottom, away from the farm terraces and hives.

A day's journey downriver, the canyon pinched in tight enough to the river making the whole canyon floor one long corral.

Amardad sent her dragon-flies soaring out and down to where mist-curtain frames had been set up, each with a Beymander student or two, or even three Ahymanders to relay the images sent out from their teachers.

Thriti set her gnarled hands over the warbird head of her cane and her forehead against her hands and went into code without a ferret or code dog. Amardad caught code from her, resending to every student and everyone old enough to understand caught their breaths and watched as the mist curtains showed them what was happening.

Firedrakes lashed out of the river, flapping like true bush dragons until they cleared the foaming water. Then they began rolling and spinning in the air as they burst into their nearly invisible flames and flickered and glittered up into the sky.

The lin repeated even the chatter between the Firedrakes, people ripping wet pages out of the tanks and passing them to those who could not see the moving pictures.

“Great Hive reports first air contact.”

“Wooo HOOO! We get to go BANG bigtime! Wheee!”

“Eight you're nuts.”

“Shut up Fifty-Two.”

In the upper atmosphere the Drakes began to hit the biggest meteorites, not immolating themselves but clamping on with mouths open wide, becoming the motors to shove them off target. Blue glittering scales lashing, clamped to dirty lumps of ice and dust.

The pale sky was suddenly full of star-fall and fire balls, long, streaking trails of fire, tiny blue sparks.

“You're too slow, guys! A tiny bump, then get the next one! Quit having fun pushing singletons!” FireDrake's voice was snarly, surly.

“There's more of us than there are meteors, One!”

“Oh, oh.”

“Report!” Ilax's voice snapped. “What do you mean, 'oh oh?”

“Triple initial estimates of ice, boss,” Two Thirty Four said. 

“Estimated entry of fifteen hundred snowballs, one third appear to be powered.”

“Two to Three Oh One go high, try to catch those powered ones. Identify and destroy them. Do not... I repeat do not go bang one for one.”

“Sure thing boss!”

The first meteors nudged by the Drakes rumbled into the lower atmosphere, off their initial target but close enough to have people crouch and cover their heads as the fireballs brightened in the sky. Parents sat down and pulled their children in close under their veils, clung to each other, but still in eerie silence. In the desert, noise called predators.

The first one hit “CRACKBOOOOOOOMMmmmmmmmm” out in the badlands, quake tremors rolling through the sand and rock. Supports cracked, the ceiling in one shelter came down, people began screaming.

The Great Hive swarmed in, bolstering supports, Mom scuttled into view, clinging to the ground hard as CRACK CRACK RRRRRRRRummmmmble more ice hit the desert nearby, and began lifting boulders and broken chunks off ceiling off survivors.

Her maw was open and when she had another body cleared Davood and Eshmaeel, wielding their litterboard, carried them inside her.

CRACK

Bboooooooommmmmmmm

“Thirteen get that one!”

“Four twenty two and Eighty seven --” “--on it boss!”

“Eight, no! Endarken it you can't go --” “--BANG.” “Eight engulfed one, blew two others.”

“Three for one... it still won't be enough--”

RRRRRRUMMMMBLLLLLLLL BOOM Hissing as the air scorched. Ilax and his zon directed the FireDrakes, weaving a burning net to intercept the ice. Drakes danced and coiled around what they could not engulf, taking in more and more water, even as they rained on the planet below.

Kyrus ripped open Tertius Gate for his father in code and stood back to back with Werfas holding it open as Kyrus the Elder, armed and armoured in the shining code that Hara and Mariush and Shashi had built, backed by the old Amir, rode hard for the glass mountain to kill the bombardment.

“There's more coming, we can't divert them a--” CRACK. CRACK. BOOM.