Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess gg-2

by Phil Foglio

  Agatha leaned in and for the last time, gave Lars a kiss. “You were anything but ordinary,” she whispered.

  Wooster surveyed the battle. Not good. He aimed his rifle at the Baron. He couldn’t kill him. The political ramifications of the Baron dying at the hands of a British operative would greatly displease Her Majesty, but wounding him—

  A gun barrel poked against the back of his head. The fact that he was familiar enough with the sensation probably meant that he should get a new line of work. He was also rather impressed at his own calm. This evaporated when he heard the voice of the gun’s owner.

  “Please, try to resist.” Bangladesh DuPree said hopefully. Wooster froze.

  After it became evident that he was not going to resist, she sighed in disappointment. “Klaus always knows where the party is, but they’re always so dull.”

  She raised her voice. “You are surrounded! Surrender and die!”

  “I believe, Wooster said carefully, “It’s supposed to be ‘surrender or die.’”

  Bangladesh cocked her pistol. “Dull, dull, dull.”

  Agatha slowly folded Lars’ hands together on his chest. “Ordinary.” She whispered. “But I am a Heterodyne!” She stood up and screamed. “SHOWTIME!”

  The fighting paused. Bangladesh poked her gun against Wooster’s head. “What is she trying—?”

  With a groan, the wagon Bangladesh and Wooster were standing on began to tilt sideways. With a squawk, they lost their footing and slid off the roof, tumbling to the ground.

  They stumbled to their feet, trying to avoid the wagon that appeared to be about to crash back upon them. They heard shouts from the other soldiers. Drowning these out were a series of snappings and grindings. All around them, all of the circus wagons were shuddering and warping. Wheels bent and slammed to the ground. Roofs broke and unfolded. Chassis’ rearranged themselves, joints sliding into new positions. Springs and slats re-organized themselves into new configurations.

  Klaus stared at the nearest wagon as it wrenched itself up upon two extended fenders, spoked wheels unfolded like flowers into crude hands at the end of their axles. From the under-carriage, a single great eye ground open, and with a whine, focused upon him. A shudder went through the giant clank, and it took a ponderous step towards him, shaking the earth.

  “Clanks!” Klaus roared. All around him, the wagon clanks began sweeping their metal arms back and forth, scything down the human troops too slow to run.

  A quartet of Wulfenbach trooper clanks strode forward, purposefully lowering their great machine-cannons. Klaus pointed to the nearest wagon-clank. “Crossfire!” he ordered.

  Immediately the four opened fire. Their bullets chewed away at the wooden structure and sent metal bits flying. Within thirty seconds, the ponderous clank had been reduced to fragments.

  A Sergeant grinned at the Baron. “Haw! These things have no defenses!”

  But Klaus was staring at the pile of rubble. It was shifting, heaving...

  “There’s something wrong here—”

  Suddenly the rubble disgorged hundreds of miniscule clanks, none of them taller than thirty centimeters. They darted forward and then fanned out. Several dozen of them scurried towards the trooper clanks. The larger clanks seemed to be at a loss as to what to do. One went as far as to fire several rounds into a particularly slow specimen, but the rest easily converged around the larger clank’s feet.

  Several of the machines then began tossing their fellows at the trooper clanks. The small devices flew though the air and clung to the troopers with a magnetic “clang!” Before the clanks could react, the smaller machines detonated, blowing the troopers into fragments, which whistled through the Baron’s forces.

  Klaus picked himself up in time to see another lumbering wagon clank explode into a cloud of smaller clanks, which charged into the lines of soldiers.

  He looked around wildly. The girl. The Heterodyne girl. Where had she gone? It was then that he became aware of the music that overlay the noise of battle.

  Bangladesh DuPree and Ardsley Wooster stood side-by-side, their mouths hanging open in shock at the scene of chaos before them. They both remembered at the same time who they were standing next to.

  Bangladesh raised her gun, but Wooster simply punched her in the face, and then ran away, which Bangladesh considered, in some undefined way, to be cheating.

  “All right!” She roared. “I’m going to kill somebody, and I’m not picky about who or what it is!” A rumbling from behind caused Bangladesh to turn about and stare.

  The newly repurposed merry-go-round focused its attention on her, took a step forward, activated its calliope, and began to spin.

  Everywhere, Wulfenbach troops found themselves fighting clanks that minutes ago had been inanimate objects. The organized, by-the-numbers rifle volleys that had broken armies across all of Europa began to dissolve into random, panicky, free fire.

  “All troops fall back!” Klaus roared above the din.

  “Fall back to where?” a trooper shouted back. “We’re surrounded!

  ” Another trooper pointed skywards. “Incoming cavalry!”

  With a crash, a Hoomhoffer[75] slammed to the ground, crushing a phalanx of steadily advancing water barrels.

  Several more thudded to earth and urged on by their mahouts, began to simply bulldoze their way through some of the encircling wagon clanks.

  With a ragged cheer, the Wulfenbach troops rallied, and began a break-out action. Klaus took charge, and began directing the troops’ fire.

  “Don’t shoot to destroy the clanks,” he ordered. “Shoot to disable them. Concentrate fire on their legs!”

  After several minutes, it was obvious that this strategy was working. Several of the lumbering wagon-clanks fell to the ground and began to clumsily drag themselves forward.

  Suddenly, over the roar of battle, the ever-present music changed.

  “Of course!” Klaus realized. “The music! She’s directing the actions of the clanks through the music!” He paused and shook his head. “That’s brilliant. I’ve got to remember that.”

  “Is ‘brilliant’ the same as ‘trouble’?” asked a corporal who’d served with the Baron before.

  “It is that,” Klaus acknowledged with a grim smile, “We’ve got to find that girl and stop her before—”

  There was a deep boom of sound, and one of the Hoomhoffers disappeared.

  A scream from the mahout drew every eye upwards. Above the fray, the Baba Yaga flapped its enormous pinions as it dragged the Hoomhoffer skyward, clutched in its great metal claws.

  The troops on the ground swung their rifles up and began firing, just as the flying wagon swooped about and launched the captive insect toward the ranks of its fellows. The Hoomhoffer screamed in from above, its torn wings buzzing ineffectually, and smashed into two others of the tank-like creatures, crushing one and sending the other flying for several dozen meters. When it tumbled to a stop, it lay twitching, stunned.

  With another loop, the Baba Yaga prepared to swoop down for another victim.

  “The Hooms are scattering!” The corporal reported. An explosion sent shrapnel screaming through the air. “And that was the last of our clanks! We can’t penetrate the enemy lines to find this girl, those friggin’ little bomb things are everywhere!”

  Klaus grit his teeth. I underestimated her, he realized. “Drummers,” he roared. “Sound Full Retreat!”

  The soldiers looked at each other in astonishment. Full Retreat? One of the drummers had a panicky moment before he could even remember how to play it.

  They hesitated. A furious lieutenant kicked a wooden chest, which extruded a set of mechanical legs and began to pursue him, its lid snapping at him. That did it. The drums boomed out the unfamiliar refrain. With a step, then another, then several speeding up into a run, part of the greatest army that Europa had ever seen, took to its heels.

  Klaus loped up next to a Captain. “Have them form up on the other side of that wall!” He pointe
d.

  “Not that great a defensive position, sir!” the Captain opined, eyes glancing up at the still circling wagon.

  Klaus reached into his coat as he ran and produced an elaborate flare gun. He spun several wheels, aimed upwards and fired three times.

  Overhead, various explosions bloomed in a variety of colors.

  “I’ve called for reinforcements!” he said loudly. “Once they arrive they’ll carpet-bomb the area, but we have to keep these clanks contained!”

  This cheered the troops that heard it, and they ran with a renewed purpose.

  In a small clearing near-by, the circus troupe, as well as the soldiers who were guarding them, stared at the wall of trees that separated them from the various shouts, gunfire, music and explosions that filled the air.

  A trooper gripped his rifle tighter and muttered. “What the hell is going on over there?”

  A seasoned campaigner who sported a prosthetic brass nose tried to maintain an air of detachment. “That’s Spark stuff. You manage to steer clear of it—you’ll live longer.”

  The trooper looked resolute. “But they might need us.”

  This got him a mechanical sounding snort. “Oh? So you think you’re smarter than the Baron?”

  “What? No! Of course not!”

  “Well, he’s the one who told us to guard these mooks. So just do your job.” This advice was accompanied by a metallic “click.”

  Suddenly the two soldiers realized that they were shackled to each other. As they stared at this, two more clicks caused them to turn, or rather to try to do so. They then discovered that their other arms were attached to nearby trees. Shouts of alarm from around the camp revealed that the other sentries were discovering similar constraints.

  “What’s going on?” the old soldier shouted. “How is this possible?”

  A burst of fire and a plume of smoke revealed Master Payne standing before them. “A good magician never reveals how a trick is done,” he intoned ominously. “An evil magician never leaves any evidence that there was a trick in the first place.” He leaned in menacingly. “So which am I going to be today?”

  The two soldiers stared at him and then dropped their weapons and huddled on the ground with their eyes firmly shut. “Good!” they screamed.

  Abner shook his head admiringly as the troupe slipped past the prostrate guards. “That is such a great act.”

  The Countess looked at him in confusion. “Act? What act?”

  At the keyboard of the Silverodian, Agatha directed the clanks through her music. Strange notes spun away into the air and swirled around her.

  “Agatha!” Zeetha stood at her elbow and yelled over the music. “The Baron’s troops are withdrawing!” She pointed back towards Balan’s Gap. “But there are airships heading this way! Your clanks can’t fight them all! We’ve got to get out of here while we have the chance!”

  Agatha waved her away. “You go!”

  Zeetha blinked. “What?”

  Agatha looked at her and Zeetha shivered at the expression on her face. “You go,” Agatha said patiently, as one would to a child. “Get everyone away from here. Lars was a good person. He tried to help me. He cared about me. And for that, he’s dead.

  “He’s dead, and I can’t even try to fix it. Not out here, with nothing to work with—and the Baron is trying to kill all my friends, and—and there’s other things... things wrong with my head. So you go, and I’ll stay here and stop the Baron.”

  She turned back to her keyboards and the façade of calm reasonableness shattered as a maniacal grin smeared itself across her face. “I’ll crush his whole army right here. Right now! And then he won’t be able to hurt anyone else I care about. No one will. No one will ever hurt anyone else I love ever again or else I’ll—”

  And that was when Agatha’s head exploded.

  At least, that was what it felt like. Her vision went white. Well, actually, a sort of creamy, custard-like off white. She tasted an unexpected hint of lemon, and began to realize that it was, in fact, custard that was now dripping down her face.

  Taki leaned in and scrutinized her. “So. How d’ye feel?”

  Agatha considered this question. The answer surprised her. “Um... Pretty calm, actually.”

  Taki pumped his fist and twirled in place. “Yes!” He shouted. “Extra butter! Less nutmeg! I am a genius! Take that Brillat-Savarin[76]!”

  A wave of water hit Agatha in the face, cleaning the remnants of the calming pie away. Taki whirled to face Ognian and Krosp, who held an empty bucket. “She was fine, you idiots! Now she’ll—”

  Agatha raised a dripping finger. “No, no... still calm.”

  Taki blinked. “Really? Um...”

  Klaus Wulfenbach appeared from around a smoking wagon. In his hands he carried one of the great trooper clank’s machine cannons. “There you are!” He swung the cannon up and fired. “DIE!”

  Agatha took stock as hundreds of bullets screamed past her. “Astonishingly, still calm.”

  “Get DOWN!” Taki shrieked as he jerked Agatha back behind the bulk of the Silverodian.

  Huddled down, Agatha saw the organ begin to come apart as it was chewed up by the stream of bullets. She turned to the cowering cook. “Got a calming pie for him?”

  Taki considered this. “I don’t think I could bake one big enough.”

  At this moment, there was a small explosion, and the underlying base notes that had been filling the air stopped dead.

  Agatha’s eyes calmly narrowed. “Uh oh.”

  Taki rolled his one eye at her in alarm. “What?”

  “Well, I was using the organ to control all the wagon clanks. Without the music to guide them, I don’t know what they’ll do. They might run amok. It could be bad.”

  “Run amok—” Taki twitched. “More than they already are? It could get worse?”

  Agatha calmly sighed. “It can always get worse.” She shrugged. “On the other hand, they might just lock up.”

  Taki looked at her. “And that would be good, would it?”

  The ground shook as a tremendous crash came from the other side of the fragmented organ. The machine-cannon fire cut off. After a few seconds, the two gingerly poked their heads up over the top.

  Before them lay the shattered hulk of the Baba Yaga, which had evidently frozen in midflight, and crashed to the ground. Poking out from underneath was the twisted barrel of a smoking machine-cannon.

  Agatha looked at Taki. “It could be helpful, yes.”

  Krosp popped his head up from behind a leaking barrel. “Oh No!” He leapt out and frantically tried to move the wagon, which didn’t budge.

  The three Jägers ambled up. “Get this thing off of him!” Krosp bellowed. The Jägers looked at him and then as one, looked towards Agatha.

  “If the Baron is dead, there will be chaos!” Krosp declared flatly. “But if the Baron is dead, and you killed him, the Empire will hold together just long enough to exterminate you before it begins to tear itself apart!”

  Agatha nodded. “Get him out!”

  Without a word, the three Jägermonsters plowed into the side of the wagon, and it began to tip over.

  As it went, it revealed the battered body of the ruler of Europa. Agatha leapt into the small crater and examined him. The others clustered around anxiously.

  She leaned back on her haunches and looked up. “He’s not dead, but I can’t explain why.” She looked down. “Or how much longer he’ll stay alive. He needs medical attention. More than I can give him.” She frowned and looked around. “Wulfenbach troops always travel with first-aid kits—where the heck are they anyway?”

  “They retreated,” Zeetha said. “But I kind of thought they’d come back when the music stopped.”

  “They’re waiting,” Krosp pointed skywards. Several airships that had been stationed over Sturmhalten were now noticeably closer. But much more alarming was a smaller ship that was now practically on top of them.

  “The Baron’s ordered a bombing run. Th
ey won’t come back here until it’s done.” He looked grim. “But I imagine they’ll be watching to make sure we can’t get out.” He looked at the Baron speculatively. “But if we haul him along with us, they’ll have to let us through.”

  “NO!” Agatha said sharply. “The last thing we want to do is move him!” She slumped. “Gil is going to be so mad—” She started. “Gil!”

  Krosp flattened his ears. “What about him?”

  “He’s here! One of the last things I remember from inside Castle Sturmhalten was that his airship had been sighted! His heavier than air flyer! I’m sure he’s here, but I haven’t seen him!” Her eyes widened. “I could’ve killed him myself—during this stupid fight!”

  Ardsley Wooster, looking surprisingly unruffled, stepped out from behind a burning wagon and cleared his throat. “I can relieve your mind on that account, Miss, Master Gilgamesh is not, in fact, here.”

  Inexplicably, Agatha felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach. “He’s not?”

  Ardsley shrugged uncomfortably. “He suspected that you were here, but he said that he was quite busy...”

  “Did he.” Agatha felt her face going red. “Well. I guess he’s found... something important.”

  Wooster paused, and then, nodded. “Oh yes, ever since his father began negotiating his marriage...”

  “Fine.” Agatha cut him off. “Let’s just figure out how to get out of here.”

  Wooster nodded in silent satisfaction. If a wedge could be driven between the nascent Heterodyne and the House of Wulfenbach, it could only benefit England. He frowned to himself. So why did he feel like such a cad?

  A rising sound interrupted his thoughts. At first he thought it a sustained artillery barrage, but then he realized it was people.

  “It’s the troops.”

  Krosp got a worried look on his face. “Does anyone else smell something... odd?”

  Zeetha leapt to the top of an overturned wagon. “They’re advancing!” She paused. “But... their guns are down. They’re... they’re waving.”

  Wooster glanced upwards at the approaching airships. “At least they’ll prevent the ships from bombing us.”