Großluftadmiral Herr Ritter Wilhelm von Stahl, Overall commander of the Hyperborean Luftmarine, stood at ease, his back to the spacious office that might just as well have been his home.

It would be a grand place to live, were that so. Accommodated more in the manner of a palace chamber than an officer’s workplace, the junkers he claimed as ancestors would have been completely at ease within its gilt and velvet lined confines. It offered every commodity, from a full bath to a small alcove where he might rest on those nights he chose not to bother leaving.

At this moment, however, he had no thought for the lavish furniture or accouterments. His attention was directed instead to the view through the tall, peaked windows that lined the southeast wall. The sun was cresting the rim of the chamber, and that vision always held him enthralled.

Not dawn, for dawn was the domain of the surface crawlers and several hours gone already. No, this sunrise marked the first point on this day by which the sun had achieved sufficient height to cast her glow down into the mouth of the world and over Glaosheim’s capitol city Neuasgard, some six hundred feet below.

Spearing down through the roughly circular opening where a long ago collapse had exposed the gargantuan lava chamber to the sky, the wash of light struck the chamber’s walls, sending explosions of reflective brilliance out from the embedded crystal formations that lined them. The golden tide raced down from the upper reaches of the chamber’s walls, sweeping down along the oddly spaced columns stretched out like imperfectly arranged cathedral colonnades holding aloft the vast sheets of the chamber’s upper reaches.

In the distance, here and there along the fifty or so square kilometers of the chamber visible from these windows, other shafts shone through other rents, performing their own parts in the sunlight’s daily ballet.

The entirety of the dance took nearly ten minutes before the sum of them all was sufficient to suffuse the whole of the city. In a few short hours, the beams would begin to crawl up the far walls on their journey into the long night. Day time was short down here in the belly of the world, but it was glorious!

There sounded a knock on the door, firm yet not quite intrusive. Luftadmiral Stahl ignored it, remaining where he was, hands clasped behind his back, feet spread wide as he observed what amounted to his domain in all but written decree. There were still several minutes of the ballet yet to be observed, and he would not allow intruders to dilute his enjoyment of it.

Luftkapitän Otto Pasche stood stiff and ill at ease in the luftadmiral’s antechamber, glancing nervously from the luftadmiral’s orderly to the impressively massive door and back. In spite of the fact that he was bringing good news, speaking with Luftadmiral Stahl was never a pleasant experience for the luftkapitän, and he saw no reason that this meeting should be any different.

The man frightened him — he who had stood upon the decks of a score of ships in heavy combat, all without flinch or fear. Before the luftadmiral, he might as well have been an ordinary airman caught out sleeping on watch.

After a pause of several minutes, Feldwebel Brandt repeated his knock.

“Kommt!” the voice was faint through the thick oaken door, but clear and commanding.

The feldwebel swung the door inward and stepped aside, standing to attention and clicking his heels just so, back pressed to the opened door, hand still on the highly polished brass of the knob.

Pasche hesitated an instant. The news he bore was undoubtedly welcome. Surely, there was no danger.... And yet he hesitated. Girding himself, taking a deep breath, he strode purposefully into the vast room.

Luftadmiral Stahl hadn’t turned. He yet stood framed in the brilliant light filling the city cavern, hands clasped casually behind his back. The deep maroon leather of his greatcoat flared about his legs as though he’d just this moment stepped from the deck of his airship. His imposing silhouette nearly filled the window in which it was framed, square shouldered, muscular, and erect, belying his sixty plus years. The close-clipped crown of his blond hair formed almost a halo about his head with the window’s glow.

“It is done?” the luftadmiral asked without turning his head.

“Ja-jawohl, mein Herr!” Pasche slammed his heels together unconsciously, shooting to attention and nearly crushing the peaked cap he had clamped beneath his arm. “The flotilla is well on their way home with the target in tow. The target’s crew have been dealt with and disposed of.”

“Good, good. Losses?”

“Very light, Mein Herr,” Pasche smiled uneasily. “Five of our new Sperling fighters were lost—”

“Five?” Stahl tilted his head, showing the barest hint of a blazing blue eye to his visitor. “That seems excessive.”

“M-mein Herr,” Pasche hurried to explain. “It seems that our... friends... were not entirely accurate with their intelligence. The Englisher escort was carrying much more advanced fighters than we had been made aware of.”

Stahl was looking out the window again, his eyes narrowed. “And of what import that?” he wondered to the luftkapitän. “The Sperling, we have been assured, is superior to anything our enemies can hope to field by an order of magnitude. Be they mark IV Lampreys or something newer. Losing five of them to a ship that should not have been able to launch any countermeasures is not at all acceptable.”

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Pasche gulped quietly. How was that his fault? He neither designed, approved, nor deployed fighter aircraft. That was the air ministry. Blame them. His was only to assign assets to given tasks, and that he had done as ordered.

But what he said was, “of course, Mein Herr.”

“And...?”

“Ah. And one of the larger ships of the flotilla was damaged in the attack and was unable to maintain minimum way.”

“Hmm,” Stahl hissed. Still worse news. Oh, the exchange was equitable considering the prize, he supposed. But to lose five fighters and have a ship of the line so damaged that she must needs limp home in the wake of her fellows — particularly in what was to have been a blitzkrieg ambush. There would have to be an accounting of some sort for this.

“Who is she?”

“Mein Herr?”

“This ship that was unable to make speed,” Stahl snapped.

“Ah,” Luftkapitän Pasche searched his memory. The ship had been a last minute addition to the force. “Ah, Katzbalger, I belie—”

Stahl turned so quickly that the tails of his greatcoat flared horizontal with an audible snap, like an opening umbrella. “What did you just say, Pasche?” he demanded, voice gone cold and hard as the steel of his namesake.

Pasche was taken aback. He stumbled backward a step or two before regaining his courage. “Ka-Ka-Katzb-balger, m-mein Herr,” he stammered.

“What in hell was Katzbalger doing out there in enemy airspace?” Stahl demanded.

“M-mein Herr...?” Pasche gulped.

“The question was simple and direct, Pasche,” the luftadmiral stalked up to him, looming over his five feet and nine by a good six inches, veins bulging in his forehead. He glared down at the frightened luftkapitän and grated, “why was Katzbalger with a flotilla raiding into enemy airspace?”

“M-mein Herr,” Pasche was terrified. “You-you directed me—”

“I most certainly did not!” Stahl roared down at him.

“B-but, M-m-mein Herr,” Pasche squirmed. “Y-you told me that this mission was of the utmost import!”

“What has that to do with anything?” Stahl demanded.

“Y-you inst-instructed me to dispatch a-all available ships!”

“Available!” Stahl roared. “Available! And in what demented alternate reality do you consider a top secret, multi-million weltmark advanced weapon —a weapon still undergoing air trials and shakedown testing— to be available, Pasche?” he brought a finger up to bang against Pasche’s forehead to emphasize the point.

“B-but, Mein Herr,” Pasche quailed, nearly whimpering. “She was in the air and crewed, and already underway—”

“She was on air trials, Pasche!” Stahl’s voice did not diminish, nor did his finger stop punctuating. “Air trials! We do not yet even know that her systems work, damn your feeble mind!

“Was she even armed? No, never mind, it does not matter! Her main guns are experimental, and even if they do work, they cannot be counted upon without much more extensive testing than she’s had time for!

“Who was in command?”

“F-Fregattenkapitän H-H-Heinemann,” luftkapitän Pasche blurted. ‘Fregattenkapitän Rolf Heinemann!”

Luftadmiral Stahl straightened and let off glaring at the shorter man for a moment. Heinemann. He knew that name. Well, of course he knew that name, but not from that Heinemann.

Heinemann, Heinemann. Ah! “The boy from the Palestine brigade, yes? The fencing prodigy. And how does such a boy merit a craft the likes of Katzbalger?”

“A boy no longer, M-mein Herr,” Pasche clarified. “An experienced commander now. An excellent swordsman, and an accomplished raider, both here and on Earth.

“Also,” he added, “a man with certain... connections within the high command.”

Stahl stroked his chin again. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course. His uncle Klaus.” That other Heinemann.

“Jawohl, Mein Herr,” Pasche confirmed. Generaloberst Herr Herzog Klaus Heinemann, of the grand general counsel.”

“An idiot,” Stahl said, voice much lower. “And if he is truly a herzog, I’m a circus clown. But you are correct in that he is an influential idiot, herzog or no.

“The boy, now,” he ruminated. “The boy struck me as being of much more substantial stock. Yes, much more substantial.”

He looked down at Pasche again. “So, there is every possibility that he will keep her aloft, yes? And how soon will she be retrieved?”

Pasche’s blood ran cold. “R-ret-retrieved, M-mein Herr?”

Luftadmiral Stahl’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Yes, Pasche,” he growled. “Retrieved. Returned to us. Fetched home. Rescued. How soon?”

Pasche gulped noisily.

“Who did you send, Pasche?” Stahl demanded.

“N-n-n––”

“If you are about to say no one,” Pasche,” Stahl warned, “I’d advise against it.”

“Bu-bu-bu—”

“What have you done, Pasche?” Luftadmiral Stahl felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach.

The luftkapitän looked as though he were having a stroke. He was shivering violently, his eyes were unfocused and he was sweating like a pig in a broiler.

“Or-or-orders... M-mein Herr,” Pasche stumbled. “Orders were clear.” His eyes were pleading. “Any ship caught behind enemy lines and unable to—”

Seated at his desk in the antechamber, Feldwebel Brandt heard the muffled but distinct sound of a pistol shot. He lunged to his feet, drawing his own sidearm, charging the pistol’s chamber as he raced the ten steps to the luftadmiral’s door. Hauling the portal open wide, he leveled his P42 into the room and froze.

Luftadmiral Stahl stood over the body of Luftkapitän Pasche. A small pistol in his right hand oozed a faint plume of powder smoke. His free hand covered his face.

“That order, the idiot obeyed,” he was muttering.

Feldwebel Brandt lowered his pistol and looked down at the body. Powder burns marred the smoking blue hole in Pasche’s forehead. There was almost no blood — only the slightest trickle from nose and ears. He’d be able to wear his uniform in the casket without the need for cleaning.

He looked up at the luftadmiral, questioningly.

“I gave him every chance,” Stahl explained quietly, though he’d no need given his rank. “You know me, Hymie. Every chance. But poor Pasche would insist on racing through them all at once as though he were competing on the Nürburgring.”

He continued to stare down at the body as he moved to his expansive desk, replacing the small pistol in the rosewood box in which it customarily resided.

“Clean this up, will you, Hymie?” he ordered as he turned back to the window. “And see if you cannot find Korvettenkapitän Drachmann. I’d like to see him as soon as possible.”

Brandt saluted smartly and retreated to his desk. First things first. He phoned up the hospital and requested a coroner’s team to fetch the body. Then he phoned the maintenance orderly on duty. He’d need something to wrap the body in, lest even that small trickle of blood stain the luftadmiral’s carpet.

Only then did he begin to wonder where he might find the mysterious and reclusive Korvettenkapitän.

TO BE CONTINUED....