“As to how I came to be chasing after this particular band of pirates—” Wesley Smythe stumbled to a halt. He was suddenly looking down the barrel of an odd revolver, bearing what was unmistakably a muffling device.

“I say!” he spat.

“Say it quiet, then,” Tall Pines cautioned. “We don’t want any mistakes bein’ made premature-like.”

“Have you gone mad?” Wesley Smythe demanded. “Do you have any idea at all what it is you’re doing?”

“Got a general idee,” Tall Pines admitted.

“I’ll have you know that I have eleven hundred men on or above this bloody island!” Wesley-Smythe blustered.

“Closer to eight hundred,” Tall Pines corrected. “Even counting the Royal Marines you’ve landed.”

“Even so,” Wesley Smythe glared. “What do you suppose they’d all do if you were to kill me? Do you in any way imagine that you’d survive such folly?”

“I’d be in for a right arduous day, and that’s a fact,” the old man nodded. “I’m hopin’ it won’t come to that.”

“Won’t come to—” Wesley Smythe’s eyes went wide. “And what, pray tell—?”

“Take your shirt off,” Tall Pines stopped him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“And don’t think about trying to skin that little rat-ta-tat whore pistol you’ve got tucked in your jacket pocket neither,” the man cautioned. “I might hafta take it wrong.”

“I will not—”

“You will, or I’ll ventilate you and do it myself.”

“And of what possible—?” this time Wesley Smythe stopped himself, remembering the odd wounds on some of the bodies outside the stead. “I see,” he growled from beneath lowered brows.

Standing very deliberately, he made a show of undoing his tunic buttons with great care, elbows wide. Shrugging the tunic clear of his shoulders, he started to undo the buttons of his blouse.

“I said off,” Tall Pines reminded him.

“But...?”

“Listen, Baggett,” Tall Pines growled. “This ain’t a debate. This is me with a gun in my mitt and you doin’ what you’re told. Savvy?”

Wesley Smythe renewed the glare, slipping the tunic clear of his arms and draping it ostentatiously from the back of the chair he’d been using. The blouse followed, and the undershirt, with only token hesitation. He’d been in far more humiliating positions in service to the Crown and survived.

“There, you see?” he indicated his unmarked chest with a sharp jab of his hand. No tattoo. That is what you were bloody well looking for, was it not?”

Tall Pines smiled a small, tight smile. “Know a lot, don’tcha?” he asked, though it didn’t really sound like a question. “So I guess you know to take a step back, raise your hands up high, and turn around slow.”

He didn’t, but he did, looking over his shoulder as he rotated, observing the old man’s perusal.

“All the way,” Tall Pines cajoled, gesturing with the revolver. “Full circle. You’re supposed to know alla this, ain’tcha?”

“Now hike that left pant leg up,” he added once Wesley Smythe had completed the circle. “and roll that sock down.”

Wesley Smythe followed these instructions as well, glaring into the revolver’s muzzle the while. This was bordering on ridiculous.

“Okay,” the old man gestured with the muzzle. “inside rear of the ankle.”

Wesley Smythe twisted his leg, glancing down to ensure the indicated location was exposed. When he looked up, the revolver was gone.

He yanked his sock up without bothering to ask, and stepped forward, slipping into his undershirt with possibly more force than was necessary, his face red. He was buttoning the cuffs of his blouse, eyes focused on the old American when he’d had enough.

“And what was that all about, then?” he demanded, voice tight.

“I thought you knew?” Tall Pines put wonder in his voice. “Which, come to think of it, how, anyway?”

“Well,” Wesley Smythe’s voice chirped falsely bright, the good humor not reaching his eyes. “I believe that I just might be doing your former job, Old Bean.”

Av blinked deliberately. It wasn’t every day that he got surprised anymore, but the fake commodore had managed it right smartly and from an entirely unexpected direction. “Do tell?” he asked into the expectant silence. “And that would be?”

Wesley Smythe snapped the tunic square about his shoulders, buttoning it meticulously before resuming his seat. He stared across the desk at the old pirate as he regained his calm. They were apparently not enemies, but nor were they yet friends.

Abruptly, he reached into his tunic pocket, looking for a flinch. He was disappointed. He withdrew a small memorandum binder. Opening it to a page about a quarter of the way through, he spread it out upon the desk. Flattening it with a sweep of both hands, he slid it, face up, across the desk.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Without taking his eyes from the commodore, Av reached out and drew the binder to him, reaching up with his other hand and readjusting the lamp to show him what he was looking at. He looked down. And then, for a long while, he just looked.

“Well, that’s one of ‘em,” he raised his regard from the meticulous rendering of the Black Sun symbol. “You got the second row of stars in the wrong places, though,” he noted. “They go closer in and are spread out more.”

“Indeed?” Wesley-Smythe raised an eyebrow. “One of them, you say?”

Av leaned back, leaving the binder on the table. He stared down at it for a moment as the pages slowly rolled up and over, concealing the hated symbol.

“Not all of them wear this one,” he said calmly. Not the ones working in our ranks, anyway. They’s got different badges. Ones not so noticeable.”

He raised his right arm and indicated the hollow of the armpit with his off hand. “Lightning bolts here, sometimes,” he said. “Two or three... sometimes four.

“Between the shoulder blades,” he reached back to pat his own back. Sometimes this one here, sometimes another one — more elaborate... darker. That one’s what the assassins wear. Different kind of cross.”

Wesley Smythe nodded slowly, taking in the grimness that had come over the old man.

“Right, then,” he reached for the binder, drawing it towards himself. “The ankle?”

"Kinda a crooked cross with what looks something like a jagged flower in the middle.”

"You’ll provide drawings, of course?”

Tall Pines gave him the eye. “Sure,” he said dryly. “Because you ain’t figured them out in how long?”

“Nearly six years.”

The next question, Av did not want to ask. He’d been running a pretty good bluff here up to this point, and the question would give him away sure as hell. But the contents of the red airship’s hold were gnawing at him. He needed to know. “How deep?”

Wesley-Smythe’s eyes narrowed again. “You don’t know? I’d have thought—”

“I don’t get to look so deep inside Colonial House as I’d like,” Av ventured. “And we’re a long way from the States up here.”

“Ah,” Wesley-Smythe seemed to accept that. “Fairly deep, I’m afraid. Deep enough that I have to be careful what I report and to whom.”

Av nodded. That simple statement told him a lot. If the Englishman was on the square. If he wasn’t? Well, if he wasn’t, then none of what they’d been talking about meant a damned thing more than that Av was settled in the dead center of a big frying pan over a hot fire, ass deep in butter.

His knowledge of the marks was decades old, and they might have changed. If the Englishman was somehow in cahoots with the Black Sun, nobody on the island was safe.

Sighing in resignation, he reached inside his own jacket pocket and withdrew the bills of lading he’d taken from the crates in Katzbalger’s hold. He leaned forward and passed them to Wesley-Smythe.

The Commodore didn’t quite gasp. “Where did these come from?” his voice was strained.

“The hold,” Av chucked a thumb in the general direction of the airship. “Crate after crate of ‘em. Looks like she ain’t been fitted out completely yet, and these was waiting to be mounted.”

“This... I mean...”

“It gets worse,” Av told him. “She’s laid out like one o’ them Glasgow tubs your bunch was so fond of back in the day, but modernized. She’s got a combat control center’d be at home on any U.S. Navy destroyer in the sky.”

Wesley-Smythe had gone still.

“You know what this means, right?” Av demanded.

Wesley-Smythe shook his head, “every one of their ships we’ve encountered thus far might just as well have come straight out of the Deutsche Werke Hangers in Frankfurt but for the highware. Nothing like... I have to see that ship.”

Av nodded. “I suppose you do,” he said. “But just you. C’mon.”

Suiting action to words, he slid the chair back and rose, turning for the door without waiting to see if the commodore was following.

* * *

“Eintreten.”

Feldwebel Brandt followed the opening door into the room, placing his ramrod stiff back against it and coming to attention with a clack of polished boots.

“Korvettenkapitän Drachmann, Mein Herr.”

The Korvettenkapitän swept past the feldwebel as though he were invisible, cap clamped beneath his left arm. Bringing himself to attention before the Luftadmiral’s desk with a snap and a click of his heels, he shot his right arm out stiffly, parallel to the floor, hand bladed, palm down.

“Korvettenkapitän Drachmann,” he barked at the window above the Luftadmiral’s head. “Reporting as ordered, Mein Herr.”

Stahl regarded him dispassionately. Tall, muscular, square of jaw — chiseled, one might say. His pale, nearly white hair lay in neatly coiffed waves, his pale blue eyes shone clear and bright. A matinee hero in his impeccably tailored black uniform, its silver piping accentuating his trim physique.

Looking at the man, one could easily miss the blood that soaked him body and soul, if soul the creature still retained. Stahl could see it easily, for hadn’t most of it been spilled in service to the luftadmiral himself? And so he concealed his distaste. Men like Drachmann were a necessary evil, and one did well to avoid open displays of disgust.

He returned the party salute with somewhat less rigor than the korvettenkapitän’s. He had little patience for such nonsense.

“Kapitän,” he ordered without preamble. “You will gather your einsatzgruppe along with sufficient weapons, ammunition, and supplies for a sixty day tour, during which you will expect heavy enemy engagement.

“You will find and, if possible, retrieve the top secret experimental vessel Katzbalger, which the late Luftkapitän Pasche would seem to have misplaced in enemy territory. If you find yourself unable to retrieve the vessel, you will destroy it beyond recovery or the possibility of investigation. Do you understand?”

“Jawohl, Mein Herr,” Drachmann answered the window. “I will need a ship.”

Stahl laughed dryly. “You will need four, Drachmann, if even it can be done with so few. However, we cannot have half the fleet wandering about among the untermenschen, now can we? You will have to make do with two.

“I have made arrangements for you to take command of Grosse Messer and Heilbronn. You will have to content yourself with their current crews, I’m afraid,” he frowned. “Time is of the essence, and there is none of it to ready a more acceptable compliment.”

“Jawohl, Mein Herr,” Drachmann returned the frown. He wasn’t used to working with common army or naval units. Many of them had proved too squeamish for his liking in the past.

“You’ll work them into shape in short order,” Stahl assured him. “I have no doubt.”

“Will that be all, Mein Herr?” he asked the window.

“I would prefer a retrieval, Kapitän,” the luftadmiral said evenly. “But I am prepared to be disappointed so long as the ship does not fall into enemy hands.

Beyond that,” he retrieved a sheaf of documents from his desk, “try to keep a low profile if at all possible. The Grand General Council would prefer the enemy not ascertain they are at war until they’ve sustained a few more casualties, nicht wahr?”

Bending, the luftadmiral hefted a leather satchel from beside his chair, placing it on the desk before the standing officer, and sliding the documents inside. “Your orders,” he nodded. “Along with as much information on Katzbalger and her potential whereabouts as I am able to give. There will be blank areas. You will have to work around them.”

Drachmann nodded curtly, repeated his salute, and hefted the satchel, noting its weight.

“For the motherland,” he barked.

“Hyperborea,” Stahl answered with less gusto and his more casual salute.

Drachmann spun about and strode from the room without further comment.

Luftadmiral Stahl regarded the oaken door morosely for some time after it had closed behind the Korvettenkapitän. A sense of foreboding was growing in his belly that had little to do with Drachmann, and everything to do with Katzbalger, and the treasure she represented in both outlay and promise.

“Hymie!” he called.