with interest and making increasingly happy “hmm...” noises. Perhaps there
Now, Krosp was all business. “Right, then. You get to work. I’ll get everything we can use and try to cover the wreckage a bit. No point in making it easy to spot from the air.” He dived back into the wrecked gondola and retrieved a full pack, obviously left by one of the small airship’s previous passengers. There was a woolen blanket attached to the pack with leather straps. Krosp unbuckled it and laid it out on a clear space near Agatha.
“You can use this as your work bench, and I’ll stack what I find over here.” He said. “Hey! Are you listening?”
Agatha nodded distractedly. She was humming now, and laying out parts from the weapons locker and the nearby engine of the airship in neat rows along the edge. She found the roll of tools she had used on the engine. As she waded back through the debris, she gathered armfuls of interesting-looking stray parts. Finally, she staggered back to the blanket and dropped the lot with a crash.
Opening the roll of tools, she extracted a medium sized hammer, a chisel and a trio of wrenches. She spent several minutes tearing select items off of the airship’s now useless engine before once again carting an armload of interesting potential components back to her makeshift base.
Only then, surrounded by a satisfyingly varied amount of raw material, did Agatha begin to work.
About two hours later, she sat back and noticed a small stack of airship biscuits on a rock beside her. They were chewy and contained flavors Agatha had never encountered before, but she was so hungry that they tasted delicious.
Looking around, she saw that Krosp had been busy. All of the smaller boxes and items had been sorted and stacked around her. She vaguely remembered finding components readily to hand. She frowned. Sparks could be dangerously oblivious when they were deep within the grip of creation. She would have to try to keep this tendency under control, at least while they were out and exposed. The ability to construct a battle clank was of no use whatsoever if an enemy could simply walk up and brain you with a rock while you were busy tightening the screws.
The bulk of the wrecked ship had almost disappeared under a covering of stones and artistically arranged brush. A movement caught her eye. It was Krosp, climbing clumsily about in a tree, trying to detach the now deflated balloon. She hurried over and between the two of them, they managed to get it down and flat on the ground.
Krosp sat and surveyed it with annoyance. “How much of this do you think you can carry?”
Agatha lifted a corner of the treated silk and aero-canvas. “Depends how much else we have to haul, but it’s pretty light stuff.”
Krosp nodded. “Cut enough for a tent, and some more to keep you warm at night. We’ll have to cover the rest. I don’t want anything visible from the air.” Involuntarily they both peered up into the sky.
She unfolded a standard airshipman’s multiplex knife, and hacked free several square meters of fabric.
Aided by Krosp, she then folded the rest and stowed it out of sight beneath the closest stand of trees.
Then, she returned to her makeshift workbench, and returned with a strange device cradled in her arms. It was about sixty centimeters long and had obviously been constructed from parts of various weapons, as well as bits of the airship control panel, the ship’s generator, and one of the emergency pack’s can openers. It was held together with balloon sealant and wire. Krosp’s shoulders sagged. “That’s the best you could do?”
Agatha hugged the weapon possessively. “It’s what I had to work with.”
“Does it actually do anything?”
“Theoretically...” the rest of her statement wilted under Krosp’s unnerving stare. “...I hope so,” Agatha admitted. She swung the stock up to her shoulder, and found a chunk of the airship rudder that had escaped Krosp’s clean-up. It was several meters up, wedged in a crack in the rocky hill. She sighted on it and squeezed the trigger.
There was a crackle of energy, a smell of burnt hair, and at least five square meters of rock vaporized in a ball of blue flame. Krosp stared aghast at the new crater in the hillside, which was already cooling with a series of pops and clinks. He turned to see Agatha gazing delightedly at the weapon. A thin wisp of smoke arose from the interior of the mechanism and spiraled gently into the morning sky. “Beautiful,” she whispered.
“Very impressive,” Krosp muttered. He shook himself. “Okay. We’re done here. There’s no way we can cover
As Agatha turned, he noticed that a little brass trilobite, the traditional symbol of the House of Heterodyne[4], had been attached to one side. He pointed with one claw and gave Agatha a sidelong, questioning look. “Hmm?”
“I found it in one of the packs. I guess it was Lilith’s. I... well, I figured if we’re going to be wandering strangers, we should at least look like we’re good guys. Lots of people wear them these days, you know. For good luck. They even sell them to tourists in Mechanicsburg, so nobody is going to see it and think we’re really connected with the actual family.”
“Hmf.” Krosp rolled his eyes. “Except, of course, that you
Agatha sighed. “True. But the point is, nobody would guess that just because I’ve got a trilobite badge. They’ll just think: oh, look, another fan of the Heterodyne Boys.”
She hefted the pack that held the small amount of useful supplies Krosp had been able to find in the wreckage. “I think we’re going to need to find help soon. There really wasn’t a lot here.”
Krosp shook his head as he surveyed the site. “We’ve got the gun, some medical supplies and a little food.”
Agatha frowned. “Not nearly enough. It won’t last long.” She remembered the exploding hillside. “And I don’t think this gun is going to be of much use unless we’re planning on hunting leviathan.”
The cat waved his hand dismissively. “We’ll eat what I catch, and save what’s in the pack for an emergency.”
Agatha looked at him critically. “I thought you’d never been off of Castle Wulfenbach[5].”
“Hey, cats are natural hunters. We’re in tune with our environment wherever we go. Come on, we’ll be better hidden in that tall grass.”
Agatha peered ahead. “Those are trees.”
Krosp shrugged. “Whatever.”
Several hours later, night was beginning to fall. A delicious smell filled the clearing where Agatha leaned forward over a small fire and deftly rotated a set of sticks, each of which impaled a plump, sizzling sausage. Across from her sat Krosp, sullen, his fur matted and covered with bits of leaves and mould, glowering at the fire.
Finally, Agatha selected a sausage and nibbled at it tentatively. Satisfied that it was warmed through, she bit off the end and chewed, sighing with enjoyment. The hike had been challenging, but Agatha’s foster-parents had always insisted that anyone who spent their days in a machine shop required a stout pair of steel-toed boots as a matter of course. Today, these had served her well.
She held out the stick invitingly. “Come on, have a sausage.”
Krosp’s glare intensified. “Obviously, I’m not hungry.” A small growling sound from his midsection only caused his tail to lash a little faster.
Agatha did not help. “Hey, hunting out in the real world is different. You’ll get something eventually.”
“Of course I will. When I’m really hungry.” Krosp’s eyes were locked upon the sausage. Agatha amused herself by moving it gently from side to side and watching his eyes track it. Then she felt ashamed. She slid the sausage off the stick and onto a flat rock between the two of them, then resolutely ignored it.
“Maybe we can find a farm. We could—”
Krosp’s eyes jerked away from the sausage and he glared at Agatha. “No! They’d ask too many questions, and even if they didn’t, they’d
“No, we’ll try to get as far as possible while we can. When we run out of saus—uh—supplies,
Agatha nodded slowly. She pulled her glasses off and wiped them clean with her pocket handkerchief. “That’s as well thought out a plan as we’re going to get, I suppose. But at some point, we
