by Phil Foglio
The locket opened on recessed hinges, revealing the portraits. Simple enough, to any casual observer. But the impact that had broken the mechanism had also caused the back of the case to pop off—to expose a small compartment behind Lucrezia’s portrait. A similar compartment lay behind Bill’s—Klaus had pried it open during his initial examination. The hidden mechanisms inside were now laid bare—strange watch-like movements that needed special lenses to see clearly. But this was clearly not a device for telling time. Deep within the framework of the tiny assemblage, Klaus could see fantastically coiled springs that powered tuning forks as delicate as human hairs.
Klaus had always had an artistic eye. This meant that, when dealing with Sparks, he was often able to identify the creator of a particular piece of technology through nothing more than their stylistic quirks—the type of gearing they preferred, for instance, or the type of stitching on a construct. Because of this knack, he was able to identify this locket and its mechanism as the work of Barry Heterodyne. And yet... it was more sophisticated, more... intense than anything he had ever before seen his friend create. Barry had always been a mechanical genius, it was true, but this little machine was a new high. It was clear to Klaus that his friend had poured everything he had ever learned into this little device. It would take time and careful study to understand its full potential.
Normally, Klaus would have found this exhilarating. An intellectual puzzle of this caliber came along all too rarely. Unfortunately, the appearance and escape of the girl, and all these implied, left him no time for such amusements. There was going to be trouble because of this, and it would require swift action.
Doctor Merrliwee straightened up and slipped a screwdriver into a loop at her belt. She then coughed discreetly. Klaus looked up. She had apparently finished tuning the speed-healing engine she had bolted around his leg, and was now about to activate it. She raised one eyebrow. “Are you ready, Herr Baron?”
Klaus took a deep breath and nodded. The Doctor nodded back, and flipped a series of switches. The machine chugged slowly to full power, lights began to flash, and a wave of hot, pulsing pain caused Klaus to clench his teeth so hard that stars swam across his vision. It would have to be endured. There was no time to allow himself the luxury of normal healing.
He lay back, closed his eyes, and ran through a complex series of mental exercises, shunting the pain to the back of his mind, where it could be locked away and ignored. After a minute or so, he breathed deeply, opened his eyes and turned his attention to the room beyond his bedside.
It was a large room, lined with tall windows, beyond which over a hundred assorted airships could be seen jockeying for position. These were some of the ships that danced attendance upon the behemoth airship, Castle Wulfenbach, but they were only a small part of the actual airship fleet of the Wulfenbach Empire.
The Castle’s escort was in even more disarray than usual, due to the recent emergency. As Klaus watched, a fire-fighting tanker, its water bags shriveled, dropped before the window, on its way to replenish its supply from some lake or river below.
Little ships moved between the larger ones, searching for damage along the vast expanse of Castle Wulfenbach’s hull. While escaping, Othar had bought himself an extra head start by causing havoc on board the Castle. He had triggered alarms, set fires, and released all manner of experimental subjects. Klaus made a mental note: he would have to think up some very solid defenses against this simple, yet surprisingly effective, strategy.
Klaus then paused and, with effort, reminded himself that he could delegate things like this now. With a tight smile, he scanned the crowd in the room and considered the abilities of each. Each member of his command staff was already overloaded with work—whose day should he make more interesting?
The people before him were a wildly varied lot, but they all shared the distinct look of People Who Got Things Done. Here were representatives from every corner of the Empire: Sparks, minions, mechanics and managers. Some were former enemies. Many were the results of experiments, given freedom, acceptance and purpose.
As they arrived, they clustered into small groups and conversed in hushed tones, waiting for the Doctor to finish her work. The mood was tense. Although quietly engaged with one another, everyone was keeping one eye upon their leader: the center of the Empire, the man who dictated the terms of the Pax Transylvania. With a final warning that he was under no circumstances to “fiddle with the controls,” Doctor Merrliwee snapped her bag shut and stepped back. Klaus cleared his throat, fixing his assembled command staff with a serious gaze. Once they could see that their Baron was alive, alert and back on the job, a palpable wave of relief washed through the room. Everyone straightened up and prepared to deliver his or her reports.
Klaus had witnessed his people’s extreme concern, as well as their obvious relief. Another stone settled onto the mountain of worries that weighed on his soul. The “Pax Transylvania” they called it—and also “The Baron’s Peace.” Everywhere the Wulfenbach Empire had influence, the fearsome battles that had once raged between warring Sparks were kept in check. The influence of the Pax Transylvania stretched from the Atlantic to Istanbul, and yet it was, for all the strength of the Empire, terribly fragile, resting as it did solely upon the shoulders of one man. Klaus had no illusions about the chaos that would ensue if he were to die, and he was still unsure of his son’s ability to share the burden of the Empire.
Ah, but that was a worry for another day. A stream of functionaries filed past, bringing him up to speed on the aftermath of the day’s disastrous events. Klaus listened carefully over the burbling and clucking of the healing engine on his leg, and did his best to project the demeanor of calm authoritarianism that his underlings found most reassuring.
The first report was from Doktor Øy, the minor Spark in charge of the laboratory decks. Øy was accompanied by a squat clank that scooted about upon a single small wheel, clutching a bundle of notes in its manipulators and blinking two large round lensed “eyes” that gave it an owlish look. “Some time between midnight and 2 A.M.,” Øy began, “Someone activated the Hive Engine that my Baron discovered in the possession of the late Doctor Tarsus Beetle. It had been placed in the Large Dangerous Mechanical Lab. Doctor Vg was listed as working late in that lab. So far, we have yet to find Doctor Vg.”
There was a burst of static, and the clank chimed in. “A Hive Engine is just one of the many nefarious devices constructed by The Other, the mysterious über-Spark who decimated the Great Houses of Europa a generation ago.” Doktor Øy smacked the clank, and with a squeal, it subsided into silence.
Øy looked embarrassed. “Forgive me, Herr Baron, it has a bad habit of assuming that everyone around it is a child.”
The tool doesn’t fall far from the hand that built it, Klaus thought to himself. “Don’t worry,” Klaus assured him, “No one expects anything to work perfectly the first time.”
Doktor Øy, who had rebuilt his “Moveable File Cabinet and Brain Stimulation Companion” seventeen times, grinned weakly and continued.
“A hive engine of that size is reported to release approximately one hundred warrior wasps. The clean-up crews have reported finding ninety-eight of them. They are still searching, but it appears that we have found them all.”
Øy’s clank once again buzzed to life. “The fight to free Europa from the scourge of The Other supposedly ended over a decade ago, but hive engines and other devices are occasionally still found. This is the first time on record that one has been purposefully activated.” Doktor Øy was frantically slapping at a panel of buttons and switches on the clank’s side, then gave up and pulled a spanner out of his pocket. He incapacitated the mechanism with a single, brutal blow. With an apologetic grin, he dragged it from the room.
Klaus frowned. Øy’s clank had raised an important point. No sane person would have willingly activated a Hive Engine. He had to admit that there were plenty of non-sane personnel aboard Castle Wulfenbach, but there were limits. It was anoth
er puzzle, and the answer Klaus kept returning to was extremely troubling.
Also troubling was the ease with which the creatures had nearly overwhelmed Castle Wulfenbach’s defenders. The next man to report was Colonel Chakraborty—the grizzled old veteran who was in charge of onboard security.
Stoically, Chakraborty recited evidence of the probable path the creatures had taken through conduits and service corridors—a route that had allowed them to move around the airship for quite some time before being detected. The fact that the creatures had spread as far and as quickly as they had was inexcusable. Alarms were in place that should have been activated immediately. Sentries that should have been present had somehow been reassigned. Controls had been sabotaged. At the end of his report, the Colonel silently handed the Baron his letter of resignation. Klaus considered it for a moment, and then eyed the Colonel.
“Before I accept this,” he held up the letter, “you have twenty-four hours to explain to me what went wrong.” The Colonel blinked, saluted crisply, and strode off, determined to make someone else’s day very bad indeed.
Next to be called was a creature that closely resembled a gigantic green-furred gorilla. Thick metal bands, a complicated set of goggles that automatically adjusted themselves whenever it moved, and an enormously tall cap—complete with shako—were its only clothing. When the creature spoke, it revealed a mouthful of thick, sharp teeth. This was Sergeant Nak, one of the many constructs who, upon the death of the Spark who created him, had taken service with the Baron. Nak was in charge of the military forces aboard the great airship. This was partly because of the brilliant mind that lay nestled behind those goggles, and partly because he was one of the few creatures that even the most unruly of the Empire’s rag-tag military forces hesitated to fight.
As Nak approached the Baron, he extended a massive paw. Clutched within was a small bunch of flowers, tied with a festive blue bow. A cheerful tag exhorted the reader to “Get Well Soon!”
Klaus looked at this blankly and then forced himself to smile. Sergeant Nak was indeed a terrifying fighting machine, but he was also considerate to a fault. Klaus had noticed that for many people on Castle Wulfenbach, this only served to make Nak more worrying, and so he always made a point of encouraging the green-furred creature’s kind impulses.
Nak’s report was concise. The fighting had been intense, but in the end, the Baron’s forces had prevailed. He gently unfolded a sheet of paper, and emotionlessly read off a list of those killed in the attack. He then read from another list, this time of units which could reasonably spare soldiers to replace those that had been lost.
The Baron pondered this for a moment, and made a few suggestions. Sergeant Nak saluted and shambled off.
Mister Rovainen, one of Klaus’ army of laboratory assistants, had performed the examination of the dead Slaver Wasp Queen. He held his report in one of his perpetually bandage-wrapped hands, but never bothered to look at it.
“The device was constructed at least seventeen years ago, and was no doubt launched in one of the original attacks.” Mr. Rovainen’s voice was thick, and rasped with a buzz that made listeners want to clear their own throats.
This information piqued the Baron’s interest. “How were you able to determine that?” Mr. Rovainen seemed to hunch deeper within his voluminous coat. “Doctor Vg. Before disappearing... Vg proposed a comparison test. Using brine crystallization rates. Vg...” Klaus could see that Rovainen was upset over the disappearance of his colleague. This was understandable, since the two had worked together for years. He took a deep phlegm-choked breath before continuing.
“I believe it was the age of the engine that resulted in a glitch in the Queen’s development, causing it to delay the release of the direct slaver swarm.”
A burst of static made everyone jump. Doktor Øy’s owl-eyed clank lurched into the room. “Slavers come in two varieties. The familiar ‘Warrior’ class, and the far smaller ‘slaver’ class. These latter are the creatures that actually infect humans, using a combination of chemical and protean bonding, forcing their victims to become the shambling, mindless creatures colloquially known as Revenants. These revenants become the slaves of The Other. As yet there is no cure—” There was a sudden loud “pop” and the clank exploded into fragments.
Doktor Øy stepped into the room, wild-eyed and clutching a smoking gas gun. “I am so sorry about that, Herr Baron. It’s back to the drawing board, apparently.” He bowed and exited.
There was a stir at the doors, and the assembled staff made way for a newcomer who stood framed in the doorway. The Baron took a deep breath and nodded. His son Gilgamesh strode to his bedside. Klaus nearly smiled, but caught himself just in time. One of the few bright spots in the last twenty-four hours was the widespread recognition that it was Gil who had slain the Hive Engine’s Queen. Unfortunately, just to make things more complicated, people had seen him being aided by the Heterodyne girl.
Klaus sighed. Another day, another crisis.
Almost as tall as his sire, Gil moved stiffly through the crowd. The young man was under a great deal of strain, but was doing a masterful job of hiding it. It would take someone who knew him well to see it. Klaus approved. A commander should not let his underlings see that he was under pressure.
Gil had a lot to be worried about, certainly, but could see that his father was in no mood to ease his mind. He stepped up and ran a critical eye over the healing engine.
Gil was a strong Spark, and his medical training had been excellent, but he could find no fault in the setup. He would have been astonished if he had. Dr. Merrilwee looked unassuming, but he knew that she was one of the finest medical minds of the Empire.
As always, his father’s expression was one of barely-suppressed irritation. Gil was unsure just how angry his father was, so he took a neutral tone. “You wished to see me, father?”
“Idiot!” Klaus snapped back.
Gil winced mentally, but kept his face straight. Chastising him in front of the assembled command staff? His father must be very angry indeed.
The Baron continued: “How long have you known that the girl was a Spark?”
Gil sighed. His father had good cause to be annoyed. “I suspected it back in Beetleburg. I knew this morning.”
Klaus’ eyes narrowed. “And yet you let me continue to believe that the Spark was Moloch von Zinzer, and that the girl was just his assistant. Wasting the valuable opportunity to study an apparently powerful Spark—a Heterodyne, no less—in the breakthrough stage! A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity like that, gone!”
Gil could see the shrewd sadness in his father’s eyes. “Was it that important to you to catch me in an error?”
Gil felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. Had he been that obvious?
He had never known his father to be wrong, never.
He had always hoped, in a childish sort of way, that one day he would actually get to see his father make a mistake about something—anything.
Well he’d gotten his wish, and then some. He’d made a game of it, right from the moment he had noticed the grease under Agatha’s nails. Helping Von Zinzer fake the Spark, taking Agatha to assist in his own lab—it was true that Gil had hoped to prove his father wrong, but there had been so much more to it.
Agatha had been something very new to him. He had wanted to keep her to himself, hidden away in his lab, for as long as he could before his father took her away. Watching her break through as a Spark had been miraculous. The delight that had played across her face when she had first laid eyes on the little pocket-watch clank and realized that she had built it—and that it actually worked—that alone had been worth all the trouble he could possibly be in now.
And there had been the fear, too. The fear of what would happen to her if his father were to study her, as he had so many other Sparks.
And then Gil had panicked. He’d moved too fast, said all the wrong things, and she had been angry, of course... and now he couldn’t even apologize...
&
nbsp; When Gil still said nothing, Klaus continued. “Did you know she was a Heterodyne?”
Gil shook his head. In that at least, he could honestly claim innocence. “No. I admit, that was a surprise. I didn’t know about any of that until DuPree told me. She thinks the whole thing is hilarious.” He winced again, visibly this time.
His father nodded briefly and he growled: “Well, now I know it too, as will the whole of Europa! And she’s gone off with Othar Tryggvassen no less![10] For all we know, Othar might have killed her himself, once he discovered she was a Spark!”
Gil paled visibly at this. His body tensed, and he glanced toward the door. DuPree hadn’t told him that Agatha had escaped with Othar. She’d been too busy laughing. If he went after her right now, would he be too late?
Klaus noticed the reaction and swore silently. Gil’s obvious agitation confirmed several suspicions that he had hoped were unfounded. “I want you to leave immediately with Captain DuPree. The two of you will find this girl and bring her back.”
Gil nodded. He’d been expecting this, and was happy to go, but the addition of Bangladesh DuPree made things... difficult. “Father, I can’t just grab her by force and drag her back here. She’s a Spark, but she hasn’t broken the peace.” This was a rather fatuous argument, as Klaus had people dragged off all the time. These were usually people who had broken the peace, and spectacularly so, but the fact remained that the ruler of the Wulfenbach Empire certainly could arrest anyone he pleased, no matter what the reason. And so could his son.
