Europa, but it was unusual to see any forces of the Empire here. Relations between the Tyrant of Beetleburg and the House of Wulfenbach had been cordial ever since the city had been peacefully annexed into the
The Jager went still. The clank stopped three meters away from the monster soldier. There was a hiss, and then a scratchy voice asked the Jager to slowly and clearly state its business. This should be amusing, thought Agatha. The Jagermonsters carefully cultivated and maintained their original Mechanicsburg accent. There had been numerous instances where clanks or other devices that relied on verbal instructions had, upon hearing it, simply opened fire. This was especially disconcerting when said devices were otherwise harmless household appliances.
Agatha was again surprised, as the soldier fumbled at its belt, and pulled out a crumpled bit of paper. It nervously scrutinized it for a minute, turned it upside down, checked it again and then laboriously stated, “I am coming to… the mar-ket to…” The Jager was visibly sweating now. “To
The voicebox crackled to life. “Please move this horse. I believe it is dead.” With that the mechanical soldier swiveled about, and continued on down the street and bobbled around the next corner.
The Jager blew out a huge sigh of relief, saw Agatha looking at him and gave her a cocky “thumbs up,” before tucking the paper back into the pouch at his belt and strolling on.
As the Jager passed, the rumble and buzz of the town resumed. Housefraus resumed their dickering over soup bones, peddlers hawked candied fruits and insects, and swarms of children flowed through the crowds shrieking and looking for dropped treasures.
Agatha frowned. It wasn’t the first time that the Tyrant’s clockwork soldiers had made a harmless error, but she had been noticing them more often. Discussing it with the Tyrant, however, had proved fruitless. He frequently avowed that the Clockwork Army that had successfully defended Beetleburg for over thirty years had been declared the finest fighting force in Europa by the Baron himself, and thus wasting time and resources on them was unnecessary. Still, Agatha had heard stories about the battle clanks that the Baron’s armies used, and more and more she had found herself thinking about ways Beetleburg’s defenders could be improved—until a quick, sharp blossom of pain behind her eyes ended the chain of thought. It never failed.
Massaging her brow, Agatha found her progress was suddenly slowed by a crowd of people clustered in front of her. Focusing, she saw that she was in front of the familiar windows of the local booksellers. The display inside explained the crowd, a new Heterodyne Boys novel had arrived, and people were in line waiting for the shop to open. A card in the window displayed the title:
People in the bookstore line were eagerly discussing the book, analyzing the cover art, or just reminiscing about the actual Heterodyne Boys themselves.
Passions were easily aroused by this, even though the Heterodyne Boys had vanished over fifteen years ago. Things were a lot quieter now, the older people constantly reminded the younger generation, but before the Baron had imposed the Pax Transylvania, all of Europa had been a crazy quilt of kingdoms ruled by Sparks, embattled royalty, or any number of improbable and unstable combinations thereof. If a mad scientist wasn’t at war with at least two of his neighbors, it was because he had his back to the sea, and even then he had to watch out for an invasion of intelligent sea urchins. The populace at large was used mostly as soldiers, laborers, bargaining chips, or in some of the worst cases, monster chow. Into this nightmare world had come the Heterodynes, a pair of Sparks who had taken on the Sisyphean task of stopping the more malignant despots, a task which seemed to involve battling an endless stream of monsters, clanks, armies of various species, and the insane madmen who’d created them.
Now there was a legitimate school of thought that held that the Heterodynes did not actually accomplish all that much. They were, when all was said and done, just two men, two incredibly gifted Sparks accompanied by an ever-changing coterie of friends, assistants and fellow adventurers to be sure, but they could only do so much. The world produced a never-ending supply of dangerous creatures, as well as the scientists who had spawned them. But the point wasn’t that they had taken down the diabolical Doctor Doomfrenzy and his giant moss-bees, it was that there was someone actively out there, in the world, trying to make said world a better place, and in some small, measurable way, succeeding. They gave people hope, when hope was in desperately short supply.
And because of this, people remembered them as heroes. Almost everyone over a certain age could recite an incident that had, in some way, touched them personally. As she moved through the crowd, Agatha heard the old arguments about how the world would be better if the Heterodyne Boys were still around, as well as the fervent assurances that one day, Bill and Barry would return and make everything better, starting with the price of oats.
By the time Agatha cleared the crowd and hit the Street of the Cheesemongers, she had slowed to a walk and was once again deep in the mists of her own thoughts. Her feet followed the route to the University automatically, which brought her near the institution’s great bronze gates.
The answer she’d glimpsed in her dream was still there, somewhere in her head. If she concentrated, she could almost visualize the correct assembly that would make her little machine actually work. Almost… and then the order of the parts would muddle and blur, the formulae would lose themselves in the murk of her mind and her head would feel as though it were filled with honey—thick and comforting, but impossible to work through. If she could just filter out all of the distractions… She unconsciously hummed a few notes… trying to sharpen her mental sight and cut through the sticky thoughts…
She was so busy chasing ideas around her own head that she didn’t notice the cries of surprise from the people around her, or the electrical smell on the air. A small arc of blue electricity leaping from the metal rims of her glasses to her nose brought her back to the present and she gave a small yelp.
And then a hole in the sky opened up. A huge silver figure pointed the accusation at her as an unearthly voice rang out: “—LIKE THAT?”
In his long military career, Machinist Second Class Moloch von Zinzer had sampled quite a wide variety of alcoholic concoctions. In good times they were made from potatoes, grapes, or sometimes barley. However, in his experience, decent brews could be wrung from wheat, oats, rye, honey, pears, melons, corn, apples, berries, turnips, seaweed, sorghum, sugar beets, buckwheat, zucchini, rice, yams, sunflowers, artichokes, cattails or giant mushrooms. It was sort of a hobby, and one that made him popular with his fellows.
One used what one was able to scrounge, which meant that the drinks were usually brewed up on spare bits of madboy equipment, so occasionally the stuff was blue, or caused you to grow an extra set of ears, but it usually got the job done. But this—this was a new low. He looked at the crudely printed label on the bottle in his hand. “Beetle Beer” it proclaimed. Fair enough, he thought, I can believe that.
Moloch sighed and took another pull. What made it even worse were the smells that even the dank air of the little back alley couldn’t hide. Shops selling all kinds of foodstuffs lined the streets, the rich aromas of cheese, sausages and pastries filled his head. To a soldier who’d seen the outside world, a world filled with shattered towns and endless kilometers of abandoned farms, the sight of shops piled high with food that could be bought directly off the street by anyone with a little money was astonishing. It was like stepping into a world he’d thought lost forever. The bread was the worst. He’d have killed for any one of the fresh loaves he could smell baking.
So what had Omar spent the last of their money on? Beetle Beer. Well, it was sort of like bread, and it was all the breakfast he was going to get. When money failed, philosophy would have to do.
Moloch took a long look at his brother. Of all of the companions that he could have been left with, lost in strange territory, his brother Omar was surely at the bottom of his list. He stood in the middle of the alley, despite his wounded leg, swilling his beer with characteristic nervous energy. Moloch wished that Omar would pull up a crate, relax, and for just once, not be poised to fight. Moloch was well-and-truly tired of fighting. Omar would never get enough. He had laughed off Moloch’s protests over the lack of breakfast. He’d find money enough, somewhere.
