IC:
Day broke as it always did, obscured by a fog that clung to the embankments of the river Meuse. The sun had yet to rise completely, or so it seemed through the blanketing haze that hung over the landscape. There was no brilliant disk of light shown down from the sky, simply an even glow that diffused through to the scenery around. Upon closer inspection a nearby observer might have noticed slight wisps of some black, opaque smoke that drifted through the fog on its own accord, driven by winds and currents unseen to any but it. Or perhaps they would have come to the realization that the grey tone which the dirt and foliage took on the banks of the river was not entirely the result of having been viewed through the haze around, but rather the fine, powdery dust which clung to nearly every available surface.
Suddenly a rapid succession of lights flashed from the western bank, breaking the eerie silence that had hung over the landscape, followed immediately by a thunderous crack and a faint whistling through the air.
And then all was silent once more.
Until a trio of explosions ripped into the landscape, one landing on the eastern bank and sending a huge gout of water and sand into the air. The other two sounded somewhere deeper into the mist, each more distant than the last. Scarcely had the debris from the massive impacts fly out of view did another barrage of artillery fire echo out across the grey landscape, melding with the cacophony of weapons fire which seemed to have taken the cue to begin. Not all originated from the western bank, however, as a pale green, ghostly shaft of light lanced out from within the mist on the opposite side, tracing a path like one would move the beam of a lantern across the landscape. Foliage burst into flames from its touch, and sand fused itself into glass. The water of the Meuse burst into a column of steam as the beam traced over its surface, and then it was lost in the fog.
Above the fog, suspended in the air nearly a thousand feet above hung the airship Thunderchild. The leviathan of steel and steam was, for the moment, motionless, though within the winding corridors and lightened frame in its interior it was anything but. At the heart of the massive airship, within its cavernous hanger space, engineers and officers rushed to and fro. They wore a multitude of uniforms and equipment, matched equally by the multitude of languages that echoed about the interior space of the airship. All were dwarfed by the massive fighting machines which they scurried about. Each was as unique as those that serviced them, bearing the flags of nearly every nation on the planet, though were still arranged in a pair of neat rows down the length of the hangar. The air was positively electric with activity.
“One minute,” Came a voice, projected by voice tubes from a far off location somewhere else on the airship. The hangar space began to clear, as service people made last second checks on the colossi before moving.
“Thirty seconds,” the voice sounded again, this time louder as the conversation which had filled the hangar not a bit earlier was pulled away with the crews.
“Five.”
“Four.”
“Three.”
“Two.”
“On-”
The last bit of the final count was drowned out by the great sound of mechanisms engaging, and one by one the section of hull beneath each of the individual fighting machines dropped away to release the metal behemoths into the sky below.
It was not a complete freefall, however, as nearly as quickly as they had dropped did pressurized seals break and gaseous envelopes not unlike those that held the Thunderchild aloft inflated, slowing their descent to a more manageable speed.
Guided by the crews within, one by one these armored warriors slipped beneath the fog…
Day broke as it always did, obscured by a fog that clung to the embankments of the river Meuse. The sun had yet to rise completely, or so it seemed through the blanketing haze that hung over the landscape. There was no brilliant disk of light shown down from the sky, simply an even glow that diffused through to the scenery around. Upon closer inspection a nearby observer might have noticed slight wisps of some black, opaque smoke that drifted through the fog on its own accord, driven by winds and currents unseen to any but it. Or perhaps they would have come to the realization that the grey tone which the dirt and foliage took on the banks of the river was not entirely the result of having been viewed through the haze around, but rather the fine, powdery dust which clung to nearly every available surface.
Suddenly a rapid succession of lights flashed from the western bank, breaking the eerie silence that had hung over the landscape, followed immediately by a thunderous crack and a faint whistling through the air.
And then all was silent once more.
Until a trio of explosions ripped into the landscape, one landing on the eastern bank and sending a huge gout of water and sand into the air. The other two sounded somewhere deeper into the mist, each more distant than the last. Scarcely had the debris from the massive impacts fly out of view did another barrage of artillery fire echo out across the grey landscape, melding with the cacophony of weapons fire which seemed to have taken the cue to begin. Not all originated from the western bank, however, as a pale green, ghostly shaft of light lanced out from within the mist on the opposite side, tracing a path like one would move the beam of a lantern across the landscape. Foliage burst into flames from its touch, and sand fused itself into glass. The water of the Meuse burst into a column of steam as the beam traced over its surface, and then it was lost in the fog.
* * *
Above the fog, suspended in the air nearly a thousand feet above hung the airship Thunderchild. The leviathan of steel and steam was, for the moment, motionless, though within the winding corridors and lightened frame in its interior it was anything but. At the heart of the massive airship, within its cavernous hanger space, engineers and officers rushed to and fro. They wore a multitude of uniforms and equipment, matched equally by the multitude of languages that echoed about the interior space of the airship. All were dwarfed by the massive fighting machines which they scurried about. Each was as unique as those that serviced them, bearing the flags of nearly every nation on the planet, though were still arranged in a pair of neat rows down the length of the hangar. The air was positively electric with activity.
“One minute,” Came a voice, projected by voice tubes from a far off location somewhere else on the airship. The hangar space began to clear, as service people made last second checks on the colossi before moving.
“Thirty seconds,” the voice sounded again, this time louder as the conversation which had filled the hangar not a bit earlier was pulled away with the crews.
“Five.”
“Four.”
“Three.”
“Two.”
“On-”
The last bit of the final count was drowned out by the great sound of mechanisms engaging, and one by one the section of hull beneath each of the individual fighting machines dropped away to release the metal behemoths into the sky below.
It was not a complete freefall, however, as nearly as quickly as they had dropped did pressurized seals break and gaseous envelopes not unlike those that held the Thunderchild aloft inflated, slowing their descent to a more manageable speed.
Guided by the crews within, one by one these armored warriors slipped beneath the fog…
