"My lord—Primarch—"
A mortal poked his head through the hole, looking at Lu Jin and Lion with fear and guilt.
When Lion turned his gaze on him, the mortal said shakily, "The Aerial Fortress is plunging toward the ground. Even with everything we've got, all we can do is keep it from smashing apart on impact—"
Lion immediately rushed through the hole and returned to the flight deck.
He saw that the mortal pilots had already begun returning to the deck.
On the holographic control panel projected above the deck, the Aerial Fortress's altitude was dropping rapidly. At this rate, it would hit the ground in a minute.
Lion looked at Lu Jin, frowning in thought.
He remembered that when the mortal pilots had scattered in terror, the Aerial Fortress had still been flying steadily—Kasan must have set this enormous aircraft into a dive earlier.
But when?
In an instant, Lion replayed everything from his first encounter with Kasan to Kasan's death, but he still could not identify when Kasan had taken control of the Aerial Fortress.
Yet the Primarch's intuition and deductions were correct.
When the mortal pilots tried to overload the Aerial Fortress's antigravity systems, an Ork skull symbol flashed on the main control screen.
"Evacuate everyone from the three cabin levels in the nose of the Aerial Fortress," Lion ordered calmly.
The communications personnel immediately relayed the order.
"Once the Aerial Fortress crashes, the Winged Holy Grail squadron's Valkyries are to land immediately and take aboard the wounded. Then they'll cover the rest of us as we advance toward the nearest Hive City, until their fuel runs out."
"Order Hera and the others to move the Chimera troop transports aboard the Aerial Fortress to the tail.
"Anyone near the supply stores is to collect food and fuel