Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

Briefly Klaus appeared to relax. Muscles taut with tension released for the first time in years. “Yes. Yes it was.” He gazed down at his son with undisguised pride, then snapped back to his usual tense self. “Get me back to bed,” he ordered Bangladesh. “Quickly, before he comes back.”

There followed a period of screaming that Sun tried very hard to ignore. When it was done, he turned back to find Klaus again stretched out in bed, white-faced and sweating but still with a ghastly grin on his face. Sun shook his head, and set about reconnecting the assorted drips, feeds, and hoses to his patient. He hissed at the messages that his reconnected meters began to display. “I hope it was worth it,” he snarled.

Klaus grabbed his hand in a steely grip. “Anything,” he whispered, “even being paralyzed for life, would be an acceptable price for seeing what I have seen my son do today.” With that he released Sun’s hand and collapsed backwards, eyes fluttering closed while he muttered, “He will survive.”

And then, the Master of the Empire slept.

Atop the walls of Mechanicsburg, the presumptive mistress of the town was leaping and twirling in glee, while a growing crowd watched. Finally Zeetha reached out and grabbed Agatha by the sleeve, dragging her to a halt. “A little decorum?”

Agatha couldn’t contain her excitement. “Did you see what he did? That was a logical extension of the electrified sword I built by modifying the electrical discharge system he showed me back on Castle Wulfenbach!” She took a deep breath. “It’s an elegant demonstration of some of the underlying principles of our research!” she explained happily.

Zeetha eyed the two smoking ruins on the plain below. “Very elegant,” she agreed amiably.

Krosp and Wooster were leaning over the battlements—peering into the chaos below. “Is Master Gilgamesh all right?” Wooster slapped the stonework in frustration. “I can’t see!”

Krosp nodded. “Too much smoke from the burning machines. I can’t tell.”

Agatha looked stricken. “What? Of course he’s all right!”

Wooster shrugged, uncomfortable in the face of Agatha’s conviction. “Perhaps, but there were a great many shots—”

There was a crackling flare from behind them, and—with a muffled explosion—one of the mysterious brass cylinders erupted in a tower of flame. The technicians, who had left their tools to watch Gil’s performance with the rest of the crowd, rushed back to the device as it deformed and then melted.

“But we just set it up!” one of the mechanics wailed. “No one was even near it!”

Agatha hissed in annoyance and turned around, searching. “Oh no,” she muttered. “There goes another plume…three…” Pillars of smoke marked the locations of several of Wulfenbach’s machines, with more of them erupting as they watched. Some of the mechanics responsible for them were in hysterics—others were carefully edging away, trying to blend into the crowd.

After a minute or so, it appeared that no more were going to combust, but Agatha still looked pensive. “I figure that at least half of them went up. Oh, dear.”

Krosp looked at her. “You know what they are?”

Agatha shrugged. “I think it’s fairly obvious that they’re some sort of supercharged atmospheric ionization engines.” She saw the cat’s blank stare. “Well,” she said unapologetically, “It’s obvious to me.”

Krosp still stared. “…So?”

Agatha sighed. “So if they are, then Gil used them to electrically saturate the air around Mechanicsburg. Thus he had access to a tremendous amount of potential power. But how…” She paused and gazed upwards thoughtfully. “Ah, of course! That walking stick! It must be some sort of focus—an aiming device!” Her voice began to take on the subtle harmonics Krosp now knew to listen for. “Very elegant,” she murmured. “Oh, I have got to get a look at—” Krosp gave her hand a casual nip, effectively derailing her runaway train of thought. “Ai! Um—Well, he obviously didn’t have time to test it. His concept is sound, but I suspect he didn’t have enough engines to prevent the whole thing from overloading. There’s an unbelievable amount of power in lightning, you know.”

Krosp nodded. “So I see.” He waved a paw towards the smoldering hulks. “But he can relax. These guys are surrendering.” Agatha bit her lip. “I sure hope so. Because without these engines supplying him power, his focus device is now useless.”

The last of the walker crews lined up before Gil. He eyed them closely. There were close to two hundred of them. Almost evenly divided into engineers and marines, if he was any judge. A few of the ones with more braid on their shoulders looked at him with anger in their eyes. They were the ones he had to disarm.

He pointed to one of the more disgruntled-looking officers now. “You! You’ll speak for these men. Do I have to do any more convincing?”

The officer looked at the young man standing above him, armed with only a glowing stick. He hesitated and his eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth, and from around him his men roared, “No! Spare us! We surrender.”