Agatha H. and the Airship City

PROLOGUE SIXTEEN YEARS AGO

In a small clearing, an intricate device of glass and metal tubes scanned the night skies. The stars glittered. Barry Heterodyne sat back and rubbed his eyes. Nothing. Around him the nighttime sounds of frogs and insects filled the marsh air. He glanced over at the campsite. Bill sat in front of the black flames, endlessly cleaning his weapons.

Barry sighed. His worry about the state of his brother’s mind was steadily increasing. It had been three years since the explosions had ripped through Castle Heterodyne, killing Bill’s infant son and covering the escape of his wife’s abductors. Three years without a clue to the identity of the perpetrators, a ransom note, or indeed, any information at all.

Barry pulled out a pocket watch and flipped open the cover to check its glowing numerals. He then pulled out a pad of foolscap covered with equations and, for the hundredth time, checked his calculations. He sighed again. It all balanced out. If this was another blind alley—

The device quietly chirped. Suddenly Bill was at his side. Barry swallowed. Whatever deterioration was taking place in his brother’s head, there was no effect upon his abilities. If anything, Bill was getting faster.

Barry fitted his eyes to the scopes. Yes! There was a new set of stars in the crosshairs. Two more flickered on as he watched.

Unthinkingly, he gave his brother the old “thumbs up” signal, and then realized with a start that it was the first time he had done so since that terrible night in Mechanicsburg.

The destruction of their castle had only been the first such attack upon the Sparks of Europa. Six months later the attacks had begun in earnest, and in the subsequent two and a half years, thirty-eight of the most powerful Sparks of Europa had been snuffed out.

The most frustrating thing had been the lack of information. There had been no demands, no manifestos, no ultimatums. Just a single-minded effort to destroy as many Sparks as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, accusations had flown between the Great Houses, usually accompanied by wind-up starfish ninjas or giant glass crabs. But as time went on, all the obvious suspects were wiped out in turn, and soon there were few left. Eventually they just started calling the mysterious antagonist “The Other.”

Barry switched off the scope and stared up into the sky. The new stars could be seen with the naked eye now and rapidly were getting brighter. This attack looked like it was following the traditional pattern, but this time, they were ready. He handed Bill a pair of bulky goggles and donned a pair himself. Now when he looked, the objects hurtling towards the ground were greatly magnified. Then, they seemed to fall apart and vanished. Barry whipped a hand up to the goggles and flipped a switch. The quality of the light changed and the sky was now orange. He looked about frantically. His brother growled, “Down. Left. At 7:37.” It was the most Bill had spoken this week. Barry shifted his head as instructed and—there! Three small shapes in freefall. There was a fourth and—

Without warning the shapes seemed to burst apart yet again, and each one sprouted a huge mushroom-like growth—Barry blinked. It was a da Vinci parachute. But it must be enormous. On the other hand, they certainly seemed to be working, as the objects, now clearly discernable as spheres, were noticeably slowing.

Bill tapped his shoulder, and the two dashed back to the swamp strider, which Barry had left ticking over. Bill maintained observation of the falling spheres, while Barry maneuvered the craft through the pools and bogs.

All too soon they broke through a wall of brush in time to see all ten spheres gently plow into the spongy ground and roll to a stop. The great parachutes fell to earth and were draped over the landscape.

The spheres themselves were six meters in diameter, constructed of glass and metal. As Barry watched, he saw the last of what looked for all the world like bread crust flaking off the spheres and falling to the ground. Possibly some sort of insulator, he mused.

The spheres were hot. They could feel the heat from where they were. Barry tugged his thick leather gloves out of his belt and pulled them on. Then he hopped down beside his brother who had already begun unloading the swamp strider’s cargo pod, and the two of them got to work.

Barely an hour later, as the sky was beginning to lighten, there was a sudden change. Lights began to bloom across the spheres, and machinery could be heard activating. Pumps began to whirr, and pipes sucked and gurgled.

When a Spark was attacked, those that were not crushed by the initial bombardment suddenly found themselves attacked by large, insect-like creatures that would appear, seemingly from nowhere, and overrun the area. While people were battling them, smaller wasp-like creatures would also appear, burrowing into anyone they could find. Many died outright. Those that didn’t were infected by parasitic organisms that forced them to obey the orders of the insect army, while physically distorting their bodies in unmentionable ways. These doomed souls came to be called “Revenants.” While they were slow and easy to spot, they were fearless and many a despairing band of fighters had been overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. The transformation took place quickly enough that, often, newly infected revenants helped overrun their own towns, killing all non-human creatures and converting as many people as they could into monsters like themselves. Once they were finished, they lurched off, without a backward glance, led by their insect masters towards the next target. There was no cure.

Again and again this pattern repeated itself. The governments of Europa were powerless, and many quickly fell into ruin as the Sparks propping them up were exterminated.

Both varieties of Slaver Wasp, for so they were labeled, were examined, but even the greatest Sparks couldn’t determine if these creatures were natural or constructs, let alone how to prevent their depredations.

With a hiss, the spheres began to split open. First to emerge were waves of the all-too-familiar soldier wasps; they tottered weakly out of the spheres, and immediately began to feed upon the remains of the parachutes. Barry nodded. No wonder they’d never seen any evidence of them.

Then, from the heart of the burst spheres, reared enormous slug-like grubs, themselves laced with pipes and valves. They stretched upwards, opened their surprisingly small mouths and began droning an eerie call. When the soldiers had finished devouring the last remnants of the parachutes, they gathered around the base of the spheres and waved their claws in time to the song. More and more of the monstrous creatures began to sing in the predawn light. Barry had to fight the urge to clap his hands over his ears. In desperation, he began to hum the comforting atonal drone that helped him to think clearly. Beside him, Bill was already humming in familiar counterpoint.

All of the grubs were singing now. A ripple of color spread over the first, and it opened its mouth even wider and began to spit out a swarm of the feared Slaver wasps.

That was good enough for Bill; he twisted the control lever in his hand, igniting the string of phosphorus grenades that the boys had festooned the spheres with as they lay cooling.

Almost a hectare of swamp fiercely burned with a white-hot glare for several minutes. Within the inferno, Barry could hear the screaming of the great slug monsters and the crackling of the soldiers. Several of the latter attempted to break free of the conflagration, but they were easily cut down by the boys.

Half an hour later, Barry sat down, exhausted. The nature of the swamp had prevented the fire from spreading, but the great heat had ignited enough trees that they’d had to move quickly to escape. But the danger was behind them now, and the fire was already dying down.

Scarcely five kilometers away loomed the gutta-percha citadel of Lord Womak, “The Lightning Eater.” Barry had to admit that he felt a small, unworthy bit of satisfaction as the first of the flaming boulders smashed into His Lordship’s castle. They had tried to warn Womak, but he had merely laughed and released a pack of flying badgers against them.

A total of ten boulders impacted. Two of them directly upon the main castle. In Barry’s opinion, the rest were quite superfluous, as the devastation caused by the first two left no doubt in his mind that the Lightning Eater was pulverized along with everything within the castle walls.

The remaining eight missiles were obviously meant to soften up the town and the surrounding countryside for the subsequent attack by the Slaver wasps.

Womak had situated his castle on a crag outside the nearest town, so the town had only suffered minimally from the impacts that had destroyed the castle. The remaining boulders rained down in a precise geometric pattern surrounding the town, and culminated with the last falling directly into the town center.

Barry forced himself to watch as each boulder impacted. It was as he’d suspected. When they had first viewed a bombarded town, the general consensus had been that the missiles must have contained explosives. But Bill had never been able to find any chemical residue for analysis. Watching now, Barry could see that there were no additional explosions, the devastation was caused by the terrible kinetic force of the impacts themselves. That was the final confirmation of his unthinkable hypothesis.

The Other had tipped his hand. Barry knew where to find him, and once there—

But there was time enough to deal with that later. The townspeople would need help, but for the first time, one of the Other’s attacks had been predicted and curtailed.

He could be beaten.