Free Engines of War by Steve Lyons

his joystick hard to the left and banked around. He swooped past another fly. Its rider hurled a grenade in his direction, but missed.
    And now he saw it: the metal dragon, the daemon engine that had ripped him out of the sky once already. He was sure it was the one: its right wing had lost one of its metal panels. He had noticed that before, as his gunship was blistering in its infernal fire and his cockpit had crumpled around him.
    The daemon’s wound didn’t seem to have slowed it down. It was jousting with another Stormtalon – and it was winning. It sideswiped the Imperial gunship with a claw, causing black smoke to pour out of its engine. This was it, thought Chelaki. He knew what he had to do now. He knew why the Emperor had kept him alive this long.
    The other Stormtalon was already badly damaged; the blow to its engine must have been the final straw. The pilot ejected. It seemed like everything was happening in slow-motion. The Stormtalon spiralled towards the ground. Its former pilot was suspended in midair, in that fraction of a second before gravity took hold of him. The daemon engine was wheeling towards him again, throwing open its maw to release its searing hellfire.
    And Chelaki’s thumb was poised over his missile launch rune.
    The Typhoon missile launcher was underneath his cockpit. He felt the vibration through the soles of his boots as it spat out three rockets in quick succession. His hope was to ram them down the daemon’s open throat.
    The first of the missiles flew wide. The daemon engine twisted out of the way of the second, but straight into the path of the third. It unleashed the stream of flames that had been meant for the falling pilot, and the warhead blew before the missile could reach its target. The daemon was battered and flung away by the shockwave, but – as far as the disappointed Chelaki could tell – it wasn’t damaged.
    At least he had saved his brother pilot’s life. The jets in his seat were flaring to control his descent. He had also got the daemon engine’s attention.
    He had already begun to take evasive action. He plunged into a nearby cloud bank and dived steeply. The daemon engine was faster and more manoeuvrable than Chelaki was. His only hope of shaking it off was to deny it line of sight on him.
    Dropping out of the clouds, he saw the Death Guard’s tanks underneath him. There were over a dozen of them, plastered with filth, festooned with rotting bones and sprouting arcane weapons like swollen tumours. They were holding their ground in a line in front of Fort Kerberos. They were letting the Imperial invaders come to them, although a few of them were already straining forward, like wolves against a leash.
    He was closer to the fort – closer to the warp rift – than he had thought. A little too close for comfort. Had any of those tanks had sky-strafing weaponry like the Imperial Hunters and Stalkers did, he would have made an irresistible target for them.
    The daemon engine was above, still searching the clouds for him.
    A fly and its rider came at him from the right, but Chelaki wasn’t interested in engaging either of them. He banked away from the arc of the rider’s swung blade – but the fly spat a plume of green goop in his direction, which he couldn’t evade.
    His starboard engine pod took the worst of the spray. A second later, predictably, his instrument panels flared red with warning runes. In the meantime, he had outpaced the mutant fly easily enough. He fixed his true nemesis – the dragon, the daemon engine – in his gun sights, and he opened up his throttle.
    The acid was eating its way through Chelaki’s starboard engine, while the damaged port engine couldn’t take the additional strain. He might have made an emergency landing – he might have – but for what purpose, he asked himself grimly?
    For the second time today, his ship was done for – and so was he.
    He could feel the infection coursing, burning its way through his veins.
    Right