The radio static hissed in Daenerys Targaryen's ear.
It was a strange sensation. The voice was not coming from the air around her. It was vibrating directly into her skull through the bone conduction pads of her leather helmet.
"Check in," Andar's voice crackled. "Dragon One. Do you read?"
Daenerys pressed the button on her throat mic as instructed.
"I hear you," she said. It felt ridiculous talking to the wind. "I am... Dragon One."
"Dragon Two? Dragon Three?"
Drogon roared. Rhaegal and Viserion flanked him. They were wearing the new chest plates. The ceramic steel composite gleamed in the winter sun.
"Good enough," Andar said. "We are approaching the target zone. Eastwatch is ten miles out."
Daenerys looked to her left.
The Leviathan floated majestically against the grey clouds. The black painted airship looked like a flying shark. Its propellers hummed a low constant bass note that Drogon seemed to harmonize with.
"Descend to two thousand feet," Andar ordered. "Stay above the effective range of arrows. Do not dive until I mark the target."
"You do not command me," Daenerys whispered instinctively.
"I command the battle space Your Grace," Andar's voice came back calm and professional. "If you fly low blindly you will catch a spear. Follow the lead."
Daenerys gritted her teeth. She nudged Drogon downward.
Eastwatch by the Sea
The castle of Eastwatch sat on a spit of rock where the Wall met the ocean.
Usually the waves of the Bay of Seals crashed against the base of the Wall keeping the approach clear.
But today the ocean was silent.
From the gondola of the Leviathan Robb Stark looked down through his binoculars.
"The gods," Robb whispered.
The water was white.
A sheet of unnatural ice had spread from the haunted forest out into the bay. It curved around the end of the Wall like a white sickle.
On that ice a black stain was moving.
"There are thousands of them," Jon Snow said standing beside Robb. "They are walking on the ocean."
"They are bypassing the Wall," Andar noted. "If they reach the shore south of Eastwatch the Wall becomes a useless decoration."
He grabbed the radio handset.
"All units. Target is the ice shelf. We need to shatter the bridge. Dragon One you are clear to engage the front ranks. Do not stop moving. Speed is life."
"Copy," Daenerys said. She felt a rush of adrenaline.
She leaned forward against the aluminum saddle.
"Dracarys."
Drogon tucked his wings and dove.
He fell from the sky like a black meteor. Rhaegal and Viserion followed in a tight formation.
The wind screamed over Daenerys's goggles. The ground rushed up.
She saw the wights clearly now. They were skeletons. Corpses in rotten furs. They looked up with blue eyes.
WHOOSH.
Three columns of dragonfire erupted.
The heat was intense. The black fire of Drogon hit the white ice.
The reaction was explosive.
The wights were vaporized instantly. But the ice itself screamed. The thermal shock of dragonfire hitting supernaturally frozen water created a massive cloud of steam.
"Pull up!" Andar shouted over the radio. "Pull up! You are too low!"
Daenerys yanked the reins.
Through the steam a projectile flew.
It was not an arrow. It was a spear made of translucent blue ice thrown with the force of a ballista.
It whistled past Drogon's flank missing by inches.
"They have heavy weapons!" Daenerys shouted.
"I see them," Andar replied. "White Walkers. Third line. Leviathan commencing bombing run."
The massive airship moved over the steam cloud.
"Open bay doors."
"Dropping heavy ordnance."
Andar did not use the small antipersonnel bombs this time. He used Depth Charges.
These were massive drums filled with 500 pounds of Amatol designed to create shockwaves underwater.
The drums fell. They punched through the weakened ice and sank into the freezing black water below.
BOOM.
The sea erupted.
A geyser of water and ice shards shot three hundred feet into the air.
The shockwave traveled through the water lifting the ice shelf. The rigid sheet of ice cracked.
CRACK... CRACK... CRACK.
The sound was like gunfire. Spiderwebs of fractures spread across the bay.
The army of the dead faltered. The solid ground beneath them turned into tilting rafts.
Thousands of wights slid into the freezing water. They did not swim. They sank like stones weighed down by armor and rot.
"It is working!" Jon Snow cheered from the gondola. "We are drowning them!"
But the Night King was not an idiot.
On the shore a figure in black ice armor raised his hand.
The storm clouds above the bay began to swirl. The wind picked up instantly going from a breeze to a gale. Snow began to fall so thick it was like a white curtain.
"Turbulence!" The pilot of the Leviathan wrestled with the wheel. "The wind shear is tearing us apart!"
"He is summoning a blizzard," Andar realized. "He is grounding the air support."
Andar keyed the radio.
"Dragon One break off! Return to base! We cannot see the targets!"
"I can finish them!" Daenerys argued. She was circling looking for the leaders.
"No!" Andar barked. "You are blind in that snow! The Walkers will snipe you! Get out now!"
A bolt of lightning struck the water near Rhaegal.
Daenerys looked at the wall of white death approaching. It was a magical storm.
"Drogon fly!" She commanded.
The dragons banked hard struggling against the magical headwinds. They climbed above the storm breaking into the clear sunlight at five thousand feet.
The Leviathan groaned its engines pushing to the limit as it retreated toward the safety of the Wall.
An hour later they landed at the Eastwatch rail depot.
The mood was mixed.
"We broke the bridge," Jon Snow reported wiping snow from his coat. "The bay is liquid again. They cannot cross."
"For now," Andar said. He was looking at a map of the coast. "He froze the ocean Jon. He changed the weather. We destroyed ten thousand wights but he has hundreds of thousands more."
Daenerys walked into the command room. She was still wearing her flight suit. Her hair was windblown.
"My children are safe," she said. She looked at Andar with a new expression. It was not warmth but it was professional respect. "The armor saved Viserion. A spear grazed his chest. It shattered on the ceramic."
"It did its job," Andar said.
"And the radio," Daenerys admitted. "You saw the storm before I did. If I had stayed..."
"You would be an ice sculpture," Andar finished.
He poured a cup of coffee from a thermos.
"We bought time," Andar said. "But we learned something terrifying."
"What?" Robb asked.
"The Night King adapts," Andar said. "He saw the airship. He saw the dragons. He didn't panic. He used the weather to neutralize our air superiority."
Andar tapped the map.
"He won't try the sea again. He knows we can bomb the ice. He will hit the Wall. Hard."
"Where?" Jon asked.
"Eastwatch is a feint," Andar said. "He wants us to mass our forces here. He will strike where we are weak."
He drew a line to the center of the Wall.
"The Nightfort. Or Castle Black. He will try to brute force the tunnel."
Andar looked at the telegraph operator.
"Send a message to Winterfell. Mobilize the Armored Train. And tell Mott to double the production of Napalm."
"Napalm?" Daenerys asked.
"Dragonfire in a can," Andar said darkly. "If he wants a blizzard we will give him a firestorm."
[Quest Complete: The Ice Bridge]
[Tactical Victory: Flank Denied]
[Enemy Intelligence Gained: Weather Control]
[Asset Saved: Viserion (Armor Check Passed)]
Andar looked out the window at the swirling snow. The Long Night had truly begun.
"Get some sleep Your Grace," Andar said to Daenerys. "Tomorrow we teach your dragons how to fly in formation with a bomber wing."
Daenerys nodded.
"Winter has come," she whispered.
"Yes," Andar replied checking his revolver. "And it brought a blizzard. But we brought the heat."
....
Author Note
Hi guys! Thank you for reading my fanfiction.
I wanted to let you know that I'm releasing bonus chapters for Power Stones. Here are the goals:
50 Power Stones: 1 Bonus Chapters
75 Power Stones: 2 Bonus Chapters
100 Power Stones: 2 Bonus Chapters
120 Power Stones: 3 Bonus Chapters
Thanks for the support!