He sighed. “Other notes clearly show that Beetle believed that she would be able to control Slaver Wasps. He planned to use her. Against whom is unclear, probably myself.”
Bangladesh leaned back against the table. “I thought you and Beetle were, I dunno, friends. Beetleburg’s listed as a friendly port. If you knew the Heterodynes so well, why didn’t Barry tell you any of this?”
Klaus looked troubled. “That is the most disturbing part. Because of the fire, there is a lot that is only hinted at, but there’s one place where he mentions that Barry Heterodyne claimed that I worked for The Other.”
Bangladesh snorted at the idea.
Klaus shrugged. “But the notes don’t say why. This does explain why Beetle didn’t confide in me, or why Barry, Punch and Judy hid from me.” He paused. “You would think they’d have known me...” He startled Bangladesh by slamming his hand down upon the nearest table, causing the objects thereon to leap several centimeters into the air. “Confound that fool and his fire!” he growled.
As a person who had set her share of fires, Bangladesh thought it prudent to change the subject. “So she can control Slaver Wasps? But when we had that outbreak on Castle Wulfenbach, people said they saw her fighting them with Gilgamesh.”
Klaus allowed himself to be distracted. “One of the many mysteries that makes this so frustrating. One of the first revenants we uncovered was Mr. Rovainen.”
Bangladesh hissed in a surprised breath. Mr. Rovainen had been one of Klaus’ chief assistants for over a decade.
Klaus acknowledged her understanding of the situation with a nod. “He swore that young Agatha was The Other. That she was the one who gave him the order to activate the Hive Engine aboard Castle Wulfenbach, and that he was compelled to obey her.
“Therefore I must conclude that even if she is not the original Other, The Other’s servants will see little difference. That alone makes her dangerous.”
They headed toward the bridge. The corridors were filled with crew addressing last minute details.
Bangladesh considered all that Klaus has said. “So why haven’t you announced this? You’re the one who claims that the troops fight better when they’re informed of the big picture.”
Klaus looked embarrassed. “Because I want this girl alive, and even now, just the mention of The Other inspires fear and rage. Many people lost loved ones in the attacks. Few could properly control their emotions.” He paused, and continued slowly. “Plus... I am not one hundred percent sure of her guilt. There are things here that do not feel right. I must treat her with utmost caution, I will bring her here, but I won’t falsely accuse her.”
They passed through a reinforced doorway into the main control room of the airship. This was the largest room onboard, easily four meters tall and almost ten wide. It was surrounded on three sides by enormous floor to ceiling windows. The remaining wall space was covered with work stations and various gauges and read-outs. In the center of the floor were two enormous ship’s wheels, each manned by a burly airshipman.
Behind them was a low platform, circled with brass rails containing a large, comfortable chair that had been bolted to the deck. As they entered, a lieutenant roared out “Captain on the bridge!” All of the personnel present snapped to attention, faced Captain DuPree and saluted. She returned the salute and dropped into her chair and attached the restraint webbing all ship-board chairs were equipped with.
Bangladesh’s second-in-command, another “reformed” air pirate, stepped up and saluted before handing her the final check-list. Bangladesh didn’t bother to read it. “Are we ready to kill people, Lieutenant Karuna?”
The Lieutenant shot a startled look at Klaus, who refused to rise to the bait, and continued to examine the view through the window. “Only if they refuse to listen to reason, Captain.” It was a measure of her fear of Klaus that Karuna was able to say this with a straight face.
Bangladesh had selected her executive crew with care over the years. They were all ex-pirates, all ruthless enough that Klaus had determined that they had to be taken out, but smart enough to accept his offer of employment. They were all deadly fighters, and they were all women[60].
When they were again alone on the platform, Bangladesh leaned back and considered her employer carefully. “So why are you telling me? I don’t even try to control my emotions. Gives you wrinkles.”
Klaus glanced at her unlined face. “You are in command. These are things that you need to be aware of.” He looked at the Captain seriously. “Besides—If I decide that she must die, I know that you won’t hesitate to kill her.”
A little frisson of pleasure ran down Bangladesh’s spine. “Why Klaus, you sweet talking flatterer,” she purred. She mulled over the information. “So who else knows?”
“Boris. The Bug Squad commanders, and the Deep Thinkers[61].”
Bangladesh nodded. “What about the Jägers? They’re good fighters, and wasps won’t—” she realized what she was suggesting. “I guess not. You might have to kill them.”
Klaus nodded soberly. “I have considered this.” He looked at DuPree with a hard look in his eye. “They have served us loyally and well these last years. Could you do it? Kill them all? Just because of their misplaced loyalties?”
Bangladesh sat back hard. “I don’t know. It would be really tough.” She shook her head and the admission was torn from between her gritted teeth. “I... I might need help.”
Klaus rolled his eyes. “Keep the possibility in mind. I have taken pains, these last few months, to keep the Jägers busy in distant parts of the Empire. With any luck, this will be done with by the time they get wind of it.”
At this point, a Bosun stepped out onto the “ready” platform that was attached to the nose of the ship and blew his whistle[62], announcing that this ship was ready to leave. They were the first to do so, a fact that Bangladesh appreciated, and always rewarded on the first night out with an extra ration of schnapps.
They had only beaten the other ships by a few minutes however, and the other whistles sounded forth, each ship determined not to be the last to go. Indeed, to Klaus’s ear, the last two whistles came simultaneously, a judgment that was verified by the grins that spontaneously broke out all over the control room. Simultaneous debarkation whistles were seen as a sign of good luck. Klaus smiled[63].
“Lieutenant Karuna, take us out.” Bangladesh’s First Officer acknowledged the order and within the minute, the airship was sliding out of the side of Castle Wulfenbach. They hovered in place as the great guide poles were retracted and the final lines were cast off.
The remainder of the force, twelve ships in all, slid forth and began maneuvering away from the great mothership towards the rendezvous point a kilometer away.
Bangladesh nodded in satisfaction as her crew performed. She turned back to Klaus as a new thought struck her. “What about Gil? He’ll have an opinion about this.” She rolled her eyes. “He always does.”
Klaus agreed. “At the moment my son is busy repairing and reanimating Punch and Judy, that pair of constructs he thinks I don’t know about.”
He settled back against the rail. “I don’t want to disturb him, or them, more than I already have. If he can establish a sufficient level of trust, they will answer many important questions. They raised this Agatha girl, after all. But it definitely would be best to resolve this before he is ready to interfere. He would find some of these revelations to be... disturbing.”
60
In the three years since she had joined Klaus’ forces, Bangladesh’s unconventional fight against the air force’s traditional glass ceiling had produced a disturbing number of conventional casualties. Klaus did little about this, claiming that it was an internal problem that the service should work out itself. In truth, he had noticed that the newer officers, especially those who had helped bury their predecessors, tended to be a lot more open-minded about things. Plus, when he used female officers, a depressing number of foes of the Empire underestimated them—usually right up until they were blown from the sky.
61
Sometimes, when a madboy’s schemes were not producing the desired results, they actually had sufficient insight to blame themselves. However, instead of addressing their numerous psychological problems, behavioral issues or basic inability to grasp reality, a significant number of them tried to solve their problems by making themselves smarter. The results never failed to be entertaining. If they survived, Klaus found them to be quite useful. Admittedly, the Deep Thinkers’ ruminations were useless for day-to-day planning, but they were able to correlate vast amounts of seemingly unrelated data, and use it to predict future trends and outcomes, as well as enhance or prevent certain outcomes, usually by minutely affecting things that had no apparent connection. The downside was that Klaus grew weary knowing that every time he had oatmeal for breakfast, he was dooming humanity to a thousand years of war and slavery and that this terrible fate was only prevented by his having a banana with lunch.
62
Every Wulfenbach Bosun’s whistle was a marvel of acoustical engineering, and was tuned to a different pitch. These pitches were used to identify particular ships in fog and at night by dockhands as well as fleet commanders. While a Bosun might be transferred, the whistle itself was handed down within the ship. Particularly discordant or nerve-wracking whistles were a source of pride, and the sound of a dozen or so of them keening in the dawn air, growing louder as the great ships dropped out of the sky, had broken the nerve of more than one set of defenders.
63
Mad Behavioral Scientists didn’t get a lot of press, but Klaus had several of them on his payrolls. The morale of the forces of the Empire were often bolstered by statistically odd, but not all that uncommon occurrences that had been carefully woven into an efficient mythos of good luck. Similarly things that were seen as bad luck tended to be things that happened because of sloppiness (uncoiled ropes), foolishness (not checking your safety line when outside the gondola), or terminal ignorance (lighting a match inside a gasbag). As a result, the Wulfenbach troops did better overall because they felt lucky, and as one surveyed the wreckage of those who went up against them, it was a hard point to argue against. If only because it was unlucky.