The Ghost of You Clings (AU: Well Met at Mechanicsburg sequel)

[persephone_kore]

Title: The Ghost of You Clings
Authors: khilari and persephone_kore
Summary: Sequel to Well Met at Mechanicsburg. Klaus and Barry take a squad of Jägers into space to finish the threat of Lucrezia once and for all.



The lab was so new Gil had never been in it before, but he was pretty sure his father and Agatha's uncle were building a spaceship.

Once they got to the overwatch balcony, Mnemosyne had observed that her ankle was making a strange sound. So Agatha and Tarvek were both distracted by inspecting the gears under high magnification, and as there was only room for so many people to work on the same bit of miniature clockwork, Gil was still watching the construction project. Mostly. He glanced over and was a little surprised to see that Mnemosyne was too, leaning on the railing with her leg stretched out behind her.

"I'd think you would want to see what they're doing," he said.

"I could mostly see their heads," said Mnemosyne. "It was not new information."

"We tried to let you watch," Tarvek protested. "At least while we were checking the front."

"It was only a little less efficient," added Agatha.

"This is also interesting," Mnemosyne assured them.

Gil grinned at her and turned his attention back to the lab. The heavy-duty seals could have been for high-altitude use, but combined with the configuration of the engines -- wait, where had his father gone? Around behind the --?

His father popped up over the edge of the balcony at the ladder and swung Gil up into the air. "Sneaking around the airship again?"

He didn't sound angry, but this was still completely unfair. "No, we came through the hallways and everything!" Gil said indignantly. Then, because it had been on his mind, "Are you building that to go to Mars?"

His father tucked Gil against his chest, but hesitated for a moment before speaking. "No," he said, quietly. "It's a very long way to Mars, I'm afraid. We're going somewhere much closer."

"Oh." It... would have been nice, and Gil was kind of glad he could hide his face against his father's shoulder for a second without really looking like he was doing it, because he hadn't realised he was hoping for it so much until he felt the disappointment. But it was a long way. "Where are you going, then?"

His father sighed and looked at Agatha and Tarvek, still working on Mnemosyne. "I suppose you'll all have to know before we go. There's a copy of Lucrezia remaining as a space station. It's not as dangerous as it sounds -- she's badly damaged and Barry already defeated her once, but after finding out about the possibility of beacon engines it's best to destroy her at the source."

Agatha sat back on her heels and her fist tightened around the delicate wrench she'd been using. "Is that where the Geisterdamen were going to get her?"

"Yes." Gil's father sat down with his back against the balcony railing, still holding Gil, so he wasn't looming over her as much. "So once we've done this, even if someone rebuilds the engine, you'll be safe."

"...Thank you." She swallowed and looked back down at Mnemosyne's ankle but didn't lean in again. "...Used to like them."

Gil wriggled around until he could reach to pat her hair and Tarvek was close enough to put an arm around her. "Maybe they'll be nicer once she's completely gone?" Gil suggested, feeling a bit hopeless. "If they just obey her whatever."

Agatha shrugged a little. "It doesn't matter. You don't want me to be somebody else."

"Of course not!" said Gil.

"It is possible that the Geisterdamen will have a different opinion once they no longer have the possibility of retrieving Lucrezia," Gil's father said carefully, "but none of you are to try to investigate that personally."

"I don't want to," said Agatha. "It's their fault I don't trust them."

"That's definitely for the best," said Tarvek. He looked up at Gil's father. "But will you and the Lord Heterodyne be all right? Even if she's damaged, if she's a whole building..." Tarvek shivered, and Gil had seen enough of the Castle too that he could see why. "And it's Lucrezia."

"We don't intend to underestimate her." A wry smile. "We certainly don't intend to rely on her to provide a survivable environment. Barry isn't sure she's capable of that even if she wanted to, at this point. But we are fairly good at this sort of thing."

"I know you are." Tarvek didn't look reassured. "But... is this where the last Lord Heterodyne died?"

"Ah. Yes," Gil's father shifted uncomfortably. "But she wasn't damaged at the time and this time we're taking Jägers."

"Were you not going to mention that?" Gil asked, disturbed.

"I keep forgetting you all want more things to worry about!" his father said.

Agatha said, "Excuse us" to Mnemosyne and got up, towing Tarvek, to come and cuddle up against them. "Be careful."

Gil's father exchanged a what-can-you-do look with Tarvek even while settling one arm around both him and Agatha, and Gil smothered a laugh, feeling strangely reassured. "--We'll be fine. Really. We've been working through all Barry's observations to extrapolate plausible system states and hypothetical self-upgrade capabilities to prepare for worst-case scenarios."

At this point Barry himself came up the ladder, having presumably noticed he was down one lab partner. "What have I missed?"

"This," said Gil's father, "is why I don't explain things!"

Barry looked them over. "Because then people hug you? That's a terrible reason, Klaus."

Klaus was glad they were taking Jägers, not only for the obvious practical benefits but because they made it more difficult to brood. He suspected that making the long dark trip into orbit with only Barry, with several hours of limited activity and that grim task ahead....

...Well, anyway, they were taking Jägers. Fortunately, this was no longer remarkable, and nearly everyone else on Castle Wulfenbach had been allowed to assume that the most unusual thing about the journey was the use of an experimental airship.

Said Jägers were currently hugging Agatha goodbye, which involved tossing her from one to another in between hugs, and had the result of making Agatha giggle despite being worried about Barry. When the last one flung her to Barry himself she wrapped her arms around his neck. Gil, meanwhile, had swarmed up Klaus and was hanging onto him. Klaus would have to put him down soon so they could leave. In a minute.

"Don't worry," Barry was saying to Agatha. "I promise we know what we're doing."

"I know," she said, sighing. "But it's still bothering."

Barry might have put his chin on top of her head mostly so she couldn't see him trying not to smile. Klaus looked away quickly because this tended to be contagious.

Tarvek briefly leant against Klaus's leg in something that wasn't quite a hug, and Klaus ruffled his hair. Tarvek pushed his glasses up and looked at him. "You'd better come back safely," he said. "Because someone will probably kill me if you don't."

"We will," Klaus said firmly. Only a few days. We're not leaving you forever. Any of you.

"Ve iz gunna get dem beck to hyu, no problem!" announced Maxim, striking a pose by the ship.

"See, we're being looked after by experts," said Barry, surprisingly managing to keep a straight face, then added gently, "and we really should get going."

Donna stepped up to kiss him. "Love you, good luck, be careful, don't shoot holes in anything whose air you're using."

"That's why we have environment suits and short-range weapons that fit the gloves," Barry said. "Also, thanks for those."

Donna grinned. "My pleasure."

"And good luck to you too."

Agatha blinked. "What are you doing, Aunt Donna?"

Donna smiled mischievously. "Keeping the Castle company while it fusses."

Klaus swung Gil down next to Tarvek. "Stay out of trouble," he said.

"You're not," said Gil, and then grinned at him. "Good luck."

"Privileges of adulthood." Klaus ruffled Gil's hair, too, and narrowly resisted picking him up again. Donna stepped back from Barry with Agatha in her arms. They boarded the airship -- spaceship -- in a small tide of Jägerkin, and it launched from the hangar normally and set off for the horizon.

When they were well out of sight of Castle Wulfenbach, the gasbag above them reconfigured to a smooth armoured cone, and the more powerful engines pointed straight down. And fired.

Strong acceleration didn't last that long, not that it bothered the Jägers much while it did. Barry had them sit before it started, but people who could casually pick up a horse or two and go for a run didn't exactly feel compelled to stay strapped down just because gravity had effectively tripled.

He probably should have warned them when it was time to cut the engines, but, they knew it was coming at some point, they'd stuck to instructions and he didn't see any loose objects, and most of them liked surprises....

Klaus, who might have insisted on getting up too if he hadn't been at the controls, gave him an inquiring look as the timer ticked down.

Barry shrugged minutely against the increased weight and gave him a small grin and a thumbs-up.

Klaus cut the engines.

The acceleration pressing him into his seat lifted abruptly, and Barry released the harness and let himself drift.

The Jägers who'd been walking, naturally, between one step and the next found themselves floating up off the floor. Several exclaimed. One or two with a bouncier gait propelled themselves right to the ceiling, where consternation gave way to discovering why Klaus and Barry had attached handholds at odd locations. Showing true experimental spirit, they immediately launched themselves in whole new directions and careened into slower-moving Jägers. Well, formerly slower-moving Jägers.

The lightness felt... good. Surprisingly good. Barry hadn't been in much state to enjoy things the last time he'd felt the sensation. Not that they'd known who their enemy really was yet, but Bill hadn't been any less grim than usual for figuring out where.

A yelp of actual dismay drew his attention, and Barry pushed off, narrowly avoiding two bouncing Jägers, one squabble, and what might have been a rescue attempt before closing his hand on a wayward hat. He deflected over to another wall, hooked one foot on a convenient hold, and got hold of the hat's Jäger, bracing against rotation until he was more or less steady and upright with respect to Barry. "Gorb," he said. "What did I tell you about chinstraps?"

"Tenk hyu, Master Barry," Gorb said, grabbing the hat back and fishing some string out of his pocket.

Barry released him to concentrate on his knot-tying and worked his way gradually back around the room to Klaus. "Well," he said, "it's neater than my last trip."

Various Jägers gave him incredulous looks. They would probably have stopped to do so, but inertia carried them along, so several incredulous looks sped past him.

One of them did stay right beside him. "I have to ask," Klaus said. "What did you do?"

"Accounted for vacuum," Barry said. "Accounted for reduced gravity." Comprehension dawned on Klaus's face, along with what looked like a degree of uncertainty as to how Barry might take it if he laughed. "Botched a calculation somewhere," Barry said ruefully. "It's amazing how many things there are to forget to secure. Like containers of rivets."

Klaus coughed unconvincingly into his fist.

"And then we had to refit all our equipment for zero-gravity combat. So you can see how the occasional loose hat hardly compares."

Maxim floated past nonchalantly braiding his hair, the ends of which appeared to be trying to strangle passing Jägers.

"I see," said Klaus, waving a handful of it away from him. "If only because it would take a lot to compete."

"It usually takes a lot to compete with Jägers."

"If ve iz being beaten by rivets ve is not tryink hard enough!" Oggie announced, bouncing across the room by pushing off a number of other Jägers and seriously changing their flight paths, before anchoring himself by grabbing Klaus's collar.

"You are not to try to beat the rivets," Barry said promptly, trying not to laugh. "They were in the way when we didn't want them and nearly impossible to find when we did."

"Der second vun vould be tricky to pull off," said Oggie, looking around the room. He then twisted around to plant his feet against Klaus's shoulders and launched away into Dimo, who nearly managed to dodge him and, on failing, grabbed Oggie's horn and swung around to put himself back on his original path.

Barry looked at Klaus. "I admit, I'd be impressed."

Barry was relieved to find that at least some of the worst-case scenarios they'd worked out did not appear to be in play. For example, as they approached the troublingly organic-looking cluster of rigid bubbles that served as Lucrezia's space station, it didn't fire on them.

It was also right where his extended calculations said it should be, which meant neither external forces nor deliberate manoeuvres had changed its course.

"It looks like a piece out of a wasps' nest," said Klaus. "Appropriate, if not something I ever imagined her wanting to look like."

It did. Barry supposed Lucrezia could have made it spherical, but it was roughly shaped like a cake, or like the paper combs. One of the flat sides even had an array of open cells where the rocks had been launched.

"Yum," said Oggie, coming to peer over their shoulders.

Barry snorted and steered their ship around toward the edge. "Given what we know now," he said, "I think I'd sooner not park inside this time." There was a gap in one of the bubbles that served as a hangar, and he was looking for that. Lucrezia had had portals, but she hadn't used them for everything.

"There's something uncomfortable about going into orbit around Lucrezia," said Klaus. "She'd enjoy it too much. But it might be the best thing to do with the ship."

"We can tether, but I'm not sure that would entertain her any less," said Barry. "If the station can still talk, we may get more than enough commentary about going inside it."

"Is this going to be more awkward for her ex-lover or her husband's brother?" Klaus asked.

Barry grimaced. "I categorically reject all such metaphors on the grounds that I live inside what is effectively a mechanical relative."

"I will never mention this in the Castle's hearing, I promise," said Klaus. "Especially after its eagerness to have you spend your wedding night inside it."

"I'm not sure this could actually make it any worse on the subject," Barry mused. He'd been rather surprised to discover that the Castle had apparently mortified many generations of Heterodynes. Even now, it was difficult to imagine most of them being embarrassed.

The gap came into view, a sector simply missing from one of the bubbles. Barry bent his attention to matching course just outside it and glanced up sharply when Klaus cursed. "What's wrong?"

"There's already someone--" Klaus stopped, frowning. "That looks like your work."

"Oh. Yes." The old ship was still there, magnetised to the interior wall of the hangar. Memories swarmed up -- building it, feverishly rebuilding their battle armour for true weightlessness in the cabin, rivets getting everywhere, Bill's grim purpose. Barry swallowed, cleared his throat. "That was ours."

"This may be a silly question,” said Klaus. “But how did you manage to leave your spaceship behind?”

Barry supposed that did look strange. "Lucrezia mentioned having had a daughter," he said. "And left her with--" Everything had been burning and Bill had got out of his armor to-- Barry took his hands carefully off the controls. "Bill told me to go, while he was... tangled up with Lucrezia. I went through her portal to the Geisterdamen's city before it blew up."

"Ah," said Klaus. There was a soft chorus of hisses and growls behind them, which he ignored. "...And then you built a new one to come home in? In an enemy city with a small child?"

"Yes. Well--" Barry grimaced. "I built it and then got Agatha. I watched as much as I could, but I didn't really arrive subtly and they were guarding her and what was left of the portal both pretty closely after that. I didn't think I could hide or fortify the workspace well enough to keep them out if they were all focused on looking for us." He had brought her home safely. They hadn't replaced her mind before he could take her away. He didn't have to apologise to the Jägers for the set of risks he'd chosen.

"That's still impressive," said Klaus. He shook his head slightly. "So, there's no one else here we have to worry about."

Barry considered this. "If she was able to rebuild the portal, she might be able to call in reinforcements. I doubt her repair capabilities are that good, since she hasn't started dropping rocks on people again, but it's a possibility to keep in mind."

Klaus nodded. "I think we can handle Geisterdamen if we have to."

Barry managed a faint smile. "We've done it before." He raised his voice slightly, even though the Jägers' attention was already on him. "Suits," he said. "We're jumping across. We've got armbands for everybody to call the ship back, if it drifts or we leave from another direction. When we get there, check whether the rest of the the station's airlocks still work or if we have to carve our way in."

The Jägers righted one another in the air and propelled themselves to the suits. When they were all sealed in and the armbands in place, they moved into their own airlock, lining up on notches built into the floor like runners at the start of a race. (Barry had considered the option of building them into the walls and ceiling until Klaus pointed out they'd need a much larger airlock to keep from knocking heads. Klaus had suggested going feet-first, but Barry thought they were likely to need to grab onto things at the end and anyway, since when had anybody involved objected to flinging themselves into things headfirst?)

Barry and Klaus prowled the tiny compartment as the air was pumped out, doing a last check of suits and seals, before taking their own places.

It wasn't a perfect vacuum. When they finally opened the exterior door, the last remaining air burst outward and added a tiny extra boost to their leaps... and then they were only streaming forward in the eerie silence of real vacuum, the ship behind them and the yawning hangar ahead.

Barry didn't launch quite as hard as the rest, which meant he fell steadily further behind. He got an alarmed "Master Barry?" over the radio -- Dimo, maybe; he couldn't identify them all by voice transmission.

"I'm fine," he said quickly into his own radio. "Do not try to turn around. There's nothing to make me lose speed -- I'll catch up when we hit. The rest of you just watch out you don't bounce, and be prepared to catch anybody who doesn't strike near a handhold."

They landed in a ripple like popcorn starting to jump. The first few hit hardest, and some of them did bounce but were snatched back to the surface as soon as anyone had the chance. About half struck good handholds to start; the rest grabbed onto each other, or were grabbed, or let their claw-tipped gloves gouge into the metal as they hit, getting a grip before the force could deflect them. Klaus fired his boot jets in two brief pulses, to reach the one Jäger who'd bounced a little too far back and then to reorient them both correctly.

Barry glided in straight ahead to a spot where the Jägers were making room for him; more out of curiosity than anything else, he let his weight drive the sharpened fingertips of the suit into a flat spot before looking around for whoever had found the nearest airlock controls.

The airlock doors did open. Several sets. The Jägers set up a chain so Barry and Klaus could back away to eye all the openings dubiously at once.

"Well," Klaus said. "Naturally it looks like walking into a trap. Did the airlocks do anything interesting last time?"

Barry rubbed the back of his helmet and then pointed to a set of doors in the middle that hadn't opened, possibly suggesting Lucrezia hadn't been able to repair the interior ones. "We went in through that one and didn't actually wait for it to pressurize."

"Hmm," said Klaus. "So, do you remember what we're likely to find operational in this area?"

"We were fighting Geisterdamen," Barry said slowly. "And Bill was there. So it's theoretically possible she could do things like collapse chambers to crush people or flood them with dangerous gases and just didn't. There weren't hallways, really, at least not here -- there might be bigger channels for moving hive engines and rocks. It was all more or less rounded rooms mashed together, really disorienting. There were hidden guns with bullets, energy shots, and glue. Keep in mind that flat walls probably have doors, and curved sections next to them might have a gun behind them."

"Mostly things that the Castle threw at people when we were testing the suits, then," said Klaus. "Apart from the lack of gravity. It did its best to be disorienting."

"It's good at that," Barry acknowledged. "Okay, so, for the airlocks, I'd rather not separate during the process, but it might be a little crowded. Leave room to wield polearms or death rays in case we have to take out the interior doors again." Maybe they should consider taking out the exterior doors? Nobody was likely to be living here, they weren't going to trust Lucrezia's atmosphere regardless, and it would provide a potential exit if she'd managed any corrosive gas capable of damaging the suits... and send it streaming right past both ships. Nope, bad idea. "So, move out. ...I mean in."

The Jägers reeled themselves and each other into the airlock and hooked themselves onto the walls all the way around, a circle inside the airlock. The ones with polearms were at the front, anchored by comrades looping arms around their waists so that they could keep both hands on their weapons and point them forwards.

Barry threw the interior switch for the outer doors, and they paused. No need to rush this time. Yet.

They knew they had air when Lucrezia's voice warbled through it -- mechanically tinged by the transmission, uneven like the Castle having trouble with musical playback. "Come i/into my pa/a/arlorrrr," she crooned.

Barry bit his tongue to keep from telling them to cut through the door, now, and watched the gauges instead. "Pressure should have equalised," he said. "Try the yellow switch, there."

One of the Jägers freed an arm and threw the switch.

The doors, unexpectedly... creaked. They didn't open, which wouldn't in itself have been surprising, but it looked and sounded as if the mechanisms had tried to respond. Barry frowned. "Okay, that's odd."

"Hyu vant us to cut now?" Dimo asked over the radio, even though he wasn't one of the ones with polearms.

"Yeah, go ahead."

"Vun," said someone, and the remaining Jägers joined in with, "Two. THREE."

There was a surge as the Jägers with polearms were pushed forward and hit the door more or less at once, punching a circle of holes in it and then slashing until they'd cut out a ragged circle. they looked pleased with themselves until it, not surprisingly, started to rotate, and the ones it was rotating towards hurriedly grabbed at the walls to push themselves away from the jagged edge.

Barry heard the very edge of some calculation muttered under Klaus's breath, just before Klaus launched himself at the circle, managing a precision strike with both feet just off-centre so it spun back the other way and went shooting through the gap. Having imparted most of his momentum to the disc, he floated in the opening for a second.

Barry spotted a panel opening in the curve of the opposite wall and shouted a warning, but by that point Klaus was already swinging his gun around. The recoil from his shot sent him hurtling back into the airlock, but his aim was true and Lucrezia's death ray exploded, leaving a black pit in the wall. With marginally more time to anticipate, Barry dodged around him and darted through the gap, setting up a low reflexive hum as several protesting shouts came over the radio at once, and braced himself against the wall to take out the remaining guns in the room.

"Clear," he said, and looked around as the rest of his party crowded into the chamber. There were no other doors; it might be that each airlock opened into an individual one. It was mostly round, with smooth walls slightly flattened where it pressed up against its neighbours, curved where there was interstitial space or machinery like the guns. One had a niche in it holding a small statue -- the Geisterdamen's Madonna, this one thankfully too smooth and featureless to notably resemble Lucrezia. It was upside-down with respect to the way they'd entered. The peculiar behaviour of the doors was explained by a shallow melted streak that had compromised the mechanisms, which Barry tracked back to a hole in the wall to their left. "Bill and I came in the next one over," he said. "We might as well follow our trail from there."

They forced the door. A head with flowing white hair came drifting through the gap, and a Jäger reflexively whirled his halberd down and took it off. There was no blood -- Lucrezia began tittering -- and they realised it belonged to a corpse.

Not the only one. More bodies drifted through now that they'd disturbed the wall and the air currents. Lucrezia's soft mechanical laughter rippled and clicked around them, unsettlingly steady, never rising to mania. The Geisterdamen had been waiting, when he and Bill arrived, and more had come fast.

That was when they'd realised this wasn't a rescue.

And gone through them.

The Jägers, ever practical, pushed several more of the corpses through into the room they were leaving to make space. They weren't very much decayed, practically mummified. It couldn't have been cold and dry enough for that when they were living here. Lucrezia must have.... Barry was glad they'd brought their own air.

It didn't look like Lucrezia had been doing many repairs. The bubble-shaped room they'd entered was connected to a series of other ones, all right -- by melt-edged holes leading inward in multiple directions, big enough for the battle armour they'd been wearing last time. Parts of the other rooms were visible, at cockeyed angles. Smaller holes punctured the curved walls he'd remembered as gun emplacements.

The path he and Bill had taken toward the centre of the space station gaped open ahead of them.

"Something you forgot to mention?" Klaus asked.

"...I'm pretty sure I said we shot our way in," said Barry, "but I admit I didn't remember being quite this thorough."

"I don't think we need to worry too much about guns."

"Oooh, re/eally?" Lucrezia's voice cooed at them.

Barry suppressed a shudder. Great, she could hear them. "Well, nobody get overconfident. We might have missed some."

"Nize job," someone commented over the radio. Around them Jägers were shooting the trail of destruction admiring looks.

"...Thanks," Barry said. "As long as we're in a partially disarmed area, let's get a look inside the walls."

"Hyu vant uz to cut in?"

Barry peered into one of the burnt-out gun emplacements and ran a hand over the edges, looking for joins where the wall might have been put together. Curiously, except for a fragment of the panel that had originally concealed the gun, he couldn't find any, only odd, eye-bending curved ripples... also not unlike the paper in a wasp's nest, but this presumably hadn't been constructed quite the same way -- he wasn't sure what the material was, eggshell-coloured with that curious internal structure, not metal and definitely not paper.... "Yes, but shallow cuts if it's an otherwise intact wall. I want to see how it's put together inside without the next room over shooting at us." Could Lucrezia shoot through her own walls to get at them? He and Bill had done enough damage in here that it was hard to tell if any of her misses had even left a mark.

The Jägers opted to make the cuts as shallow as they could by punching through the walls with their suits' claws rather than weapons -- a good thing Barry and Donna had made them sturdy. This time they were prepared for the sharp edged cut-out, carefully flipping it over and back the way they'd come.

Barry moved over to the newly exposed workings with Klaus and started tracing mechanisms. The structures really were organic-styled in a way that Castle Heterodyne, for example, was not. "Structured like a nervous system," he said. "What do you think?"

"I think we're probably looking for a brain," said Klaus. "But we might want to check for ganglia."

Barry nodded. Secondary control mechanisms. Maybe full secondary minds -- if Lucrezia had wanted more than one of herself, why not several? "Let's go, then. This way."

More Geisterdamen dead lined their path, drifted across it and had to be nudged out of the way -- grey with death, brown with spilt blood; ghost-white hair and slagged swords, bodies broken and pieces charred away, all the more gruesome where they'd fetched up against pictures or wall-hangings or plush squashy chairs still attached to the walls. The walls they opened up bore out the theory that they were only looking for one ‘brain’. Nothing fired at them, although Barry occasionally saw what looked like flickers of movement or electrical sparks in the depths of a burnt-out cavity.

Lucrezia mocked them carelessly in an irregular purr for a few rooms, punctuated by occasional giggles. The most worrying part was that she didn't seem worried. Barry and Klaus mostly tried to ignore her. Some of the Jägers jeered back. "Thi/is is no time to get squ/eamish, Barry," she said once when he looked too long at a corpse. "Regrets?"

The carnage sickened him, but the Geisterdamen had been trying to protect Lucrezia so she could keep raining destruction and slavery down on Europa. So she could replace Agatha. There hadn't been time to stop to talk (there had been less time than he'd realised), and he thought there had been about as much chance of talking the Geisterdamen down as anybody else would have had with the Jägers. Barry pushed across the room. "Pity," he said deliberately. "You put them in a pretty bad situation."

That won them a brief period of offended silence, which made the sudden shriek of "STOP!" all the more shocking. The note of both command and real fear in her tone was so strong that Barry and Klaus actually did stop. The Jägers kept going briefly before they noticed and pulled back around them, ranging themselves in a guard formation, alert for danger. And then somewhat confused, when none materialised, and it became apparent that the Sparks actually had stopped because the enemy was yelling at them.

Barry exchanged a rueful look with Klaus. "Moving on," he said. "Sorry, but we actually were used to travelling with her once."

They moved.

Lucrezia hissed, "I will dest/troy you. Do you underst/and me? If you keep go/ing you all die."

"If you could kill us all, you'd have done it already."

"Maaay/be not," Lucrezia said thoughtfully. "I li/ike Klaus."

"Thank you so much," Klaus muttered.

The route zigzagged. Barry paused at one point, hesitating, and said, "I think we went a little out of our way here. We could probably cut through... about that direction."

"I don't think so," said Klaus. "That is, we could, but we might lose more time fighting. You got where you were going in the end, didn't you?"

Barry exhaled softly. "Yes."

They got there this time, too. At the final angle, the corpses grew thicker, here where the Geisterdamen had made their last defence. Barry pushed through them, at last more impatient than careful, and a few of the Jägers swore and scrambled to flank him before he could end up anywhere actually dangerous.

He clawed past the obstruction, saw Lucrezia's control room for the second time, and back-jetted just enough to stop and hang in the air. They all stopped too, grabbing onto things, using bodies to kill their momentum if they had to. His pulse pounded in his ears and chest.

Because Bill and Lucrezia were still there.

Lucrezia the space station was still capable of repairs, and this was the one place they'd fought that she'd made any. All her remaining power was focused here. The eggshell-ripple walls were whole; shiny in patches, as if they'd never cured properly, or the rest had worn smooth with use. The portal was a twisted wreck; Barry remembered lunging for it, racing the failure cascade.

And in the heart of the room (the heart of the station) floated two last bodies. There was a glimmer in the air around them, probably a protective energy field. Dry and undecayed in the dead air, mouths sealed together and limbs intertwined -- except for Bill's withered right hand locked around a hold in the centre of the controls. Preserved with their flesh burnt and fused as he'd held them in place.

Bill's battle armour, empty and open and braced where he'd left it, with the guns still trained on their hearts.

It evidently occurred to Lucrezia that she could shoot at him now. He saw guns move on the opposite wall, started the boot jets and then shut them off as fast when one of the Jägers tackled him. Fortunately somebody else bellowed, "Live room!" to everyone who might be in the firing path because Barry still didn't think he could talk.

"All right," said a voice that must have belonged to one of the stragglers, because it went on, "now comes de fun part!"

And Barry started laughing, because he'd heard that line before.

It was so familiar and so unexpected and Bill should have been the one saying it. Klaus should have been grinning in anticipation and Barry should have been rolling his eyes at his elders and trying to pretend to be the responsible one. And while he was at it Lucrezia should have been with them and plotting something. Something that wasn't this.

What else could he do but laugh?

"Steady there," said Klaus, over the intercom, voice quiet and shocked but determinedly level.

Lucrezia laughed. "Do you want to see us da/ance?"

Barry let out another peal of wild laughter, still trapped against the wall and out of the line of fire by a mildly worried Jäger, and then gulped back air and exhaled it slowly between his teeth, trying not to hiss audibly. Calm, control, focus. The plan was to destroy her, as it always had been, and raging at her wouldn't help. Well, actually that wasn't out of the question, but cackling maniacally had a pretty low chance of success. Although at least with Jägers he probably wasn't freaking out the people on his own side. "Okay," he said, wasn't sure even the Jägers could have heard that properly, and cleared his throat. "Okay. Slight addition to the plan. We get Bill's body back." A pause. "Well, I think we'll have to take Lucrezia's too."

"Yezzz. Tell uz vhen to go."

The Jägers were still keeping out of Lucrezia's line of fire, but they were gathering around the doorway, heads pointed forwards.

Barry closed his eyes and pictured the room, trying to tear his thoughts away from the scene in the centre to where he'd seen guns, where they could be hidden, where to fire. Maybe he should have found a way around the bulk and the differences in fighting style and put everybody in --

--Battle armour. "Wait," he said. "I'll be incommunicado for a few minutes." And he wasn't going to explain what he was planning so Lucrezia could hear him. He just had to adjust his radio frequency.

It required unsealing his helmet, which wasn't good. Oversight. He held his breath, but he could smell old death and the dry chill bit at his skin as it crept inside. Change the frequency. Let air trickle out against the stench, fight the spots in front of his eyes, he thought he had just enough time to add a makeshift switch he could hit with his chin.

He restored the seal and flooded his suit with his own air, inhaled, coughed violently at the smell, but Lucrezia didn't seem to have taken the chance to poison him, at least not with anything quick. As long as he made it back to the ship Klaus could probably fix anything slower. Klaus was probably calling him nine kinds of idiot on the regular frequency right now.

Barry smiled faintly and hummed. Not to shut out noise, this time, but a complicated drone that nobody outside the family was likely to reproduce. It meant reset and listen to me.

Then he told Bill's battle armour what to do.

It snapped shut and sealed itself. It swiveled toward their side of the room and started shooting; the walls quivered around them. Lucrezia fired back, rocking it, but not much. Barry knocked his switch to the old frequency, grinning, and shouted, "Got it! As soon as it's taken out the guns on this side of the room we can --"

And that was when Lucrezia started screaming.

She'd always had a piercing scream, and now it was coming from all around them. It took a moment for Barry to realise the sharp pain in his ears and the ache in the back of his jaw were more than that, especially as he'd instinctively started heterodyning to block as much of it as possible. He saw Klaus fling a hand up, the exasperation in the motion suggesting an unheard curse.

Around them Jägers were twisting in the air. Some trying to recoil, others trying to press on, all of them disoriented and flailing. Klaus grabbed someone's hands, stopping them from clawing their helmet off, and shoved them towards the door, propelling himself further into the room.

"Klaus, what--" Barry began, and got only that far before it felt like his skull was going to crack into pieces. He doubted Klaus could hear him anyway. He went back to heterodyning and upped the volume on his transmission, trying to block the sonic weapon from the Jägers (who might be hearing frequencies he wasn't even feeling, damn Lucrezia, she'd been able to talk to them as soon as the airlock pressurised, she'd been saving this). Trying to think. Whatever Klaus was up to, he could probably handle.

There were more Jägers clawing at their helmets. Barry could hardly blame them but his heart seized. He couldn't reach them all but he couldn't let them kill themselves. He launched toward the ones who'd reeled out into the control room, in range of Lucrezia's guns, and the screaming grew louder in the open space. He shoved the nearest Jäger back toward the doorway, propelling himself further. Bill's armour was still faithfully stitching its way across the walls, priority on the most dangerous weapons, but one of the glue guns hit it and it slowed, dragged, lost the coordinates he'd given it and blasted haphazard craters until it stopped and simply blew a hole into the next room.

Barry gave up on grabbing anybody and roared over the radio, trying his best to make his voice cut through Lucrezia's weaponised shriek, "Keep your helmets on and get back --" No, too disorienting, even he wasn't sure if he was spinning in flight or if it only looked like the room was. "Hold your positions!"

He streaked out past them and started firing by hand, less powerful weapons but enough (it had to be enough). It didn't matter if he was spinning or on course, or where the recoil sent him, only if he hit his targets.

The ache spread to his bones, and his vision narrowed and wavered, grey spots creeping in around the edges. It made it hard to aim. Everything in his world was down to Lucrezia screaming at them and the need to destroy the muzzles of her death rays wheeling around him.

Another sound struck him, a roar and a shockwave that actually threw him, and then the scream was suddenly only a wailing wind that dragged him the opposite direction. His ears rang with a high whine that was possibly more annoying than the screaming, and the pain was suddenly down to echoes and the vague feeling that he'd been shaken partly to pieces. He took out another gun emplacement before it occurred to him to use his jets to resist the wind, and also why was there wind in a space station, and then something else slammed into him.

Barry tried to twist around to fight and discovered that Klaus had tackled him, so he relaxed and tried to peer through both faceplates. "Oh, hi. What were you doing?"

"I blew a hole in the hull," Klaus said.

"Oh." Yes. Right. Sound required air. That would fix it. "Good thinking."

Klaus righted them and let go of Barry. "Some Jägers were sucked out with the atmosphere, but they have armbands."

Barry looked around and found that they were next to the central controls (and the burnt embracing corpses -- okay, focus), and nothing was shooting at them from the pitted walls anymore, although it did look like the glue guns had got a few Jägers. "They can call the ship right over to our new exit. Everybody more or less okay?"

"Dimo, reportink," came a voice over the radio. "Zum ken't hear again yet, permission to send dem out?"

"Yes, go ahead. Check everybody for leaks -- if the patch kits aren't enough, call me over, otherwise I'll be trying to get this force field down." He wondered, vaguely, if it had been weird for this version of Lucrezia when the other one opted for manual controls. Most of which were protected inside the field. But he could get this panel off at the base (root?) and work his way in toward the brain directly... he hadn't noticed how odd working in heavy clawed gloves was until he calmed down... Klaus reached past him to heave off a panel that struck and crackled against the force field, and Barry ducked in around it, grabbed a handful of wires and gears, and yanked.

The force field went down. So did the lights. Well, it wasn't like they'd gone in expecting Lucrezia to make things convenient. Barry switched on his headlamp. Klaus's was already on.

Bill and Lucrezia stood like ghosts in the harsh white light, looming out of the darkness. Klaus reached forwards and tugged lightly at Lucrezia's body, it swayed towards him, Bill's body pulled too by the arms twined around it. Barry wrinkled his nose and reached for his brother, the suit hiding how much he was shaking as he pried free the hand that fixed them in place and gently took Bill's arms (as if he was pulling him back from something, trying to make him let go, calm down, rest).

Klaus moved his grip to Lucrezia's arms and they untangled them, lifting stiff arms away from one another, breaking a kiss that had lasted years.

Barry looked away, just for a second, and as the lamplight passed over the holes in the walls he could see things moving in them. They froze like startled spiderroaches when the light hit them, and if they had been the next step would be to swarm. He thought these were probably the start of repairs, eerie in the airless silence, but all the same he ducked his head to aim the light at the work nearer to hand. "We'd better hurry. How much of your explosives did you use?"

"None," said Klaus. Barry glanced at him (past his brother, past Lucrezia) in confusion. "I overloaded a death ray. The chassis made it easier to shape the charge, anyway. These are all a little too omnidirectional."

"Right." Barry swallowed and drew in a breath. "Hey, Dimo? ...We need a funeral guard."

Jägers drifted over, sombre and eerie in the lamplight, reaching for Lucrezia's corpse and, with infinitely more care, for Bill's.

Barry let him go, told him silently that he was in better hands than he knew. Then he busied himself alongside Klaus with nestling explosives around Lucrezia's central brain and the heavy cables fused to it.

They set them and then signaled the remaining Jägers, streaming out through the jagged hole Klaus had ripped in the hull (Barry was impressed), no longer trying to conserve the jets, to where the ship had glided gently around and the deafened Jägers were waiting in the airlock.

He and Klaus nodded at each other and for a moment it was as if the years rolled back, as if Bill and Lucrezia were waiting for them aboard the ship as something other than corpses, because Barry grinned and knew Klaus was doing the same. They pressed the detonator and jetted for the exit, getting caught up on the blast half way and flung out ahead of heat and brightness. Klaus let out a bark of laughter, sharp with triumph more than amusement.

They came into the airlock still going a little too fast, skimming close to the edges and grabbing on to arc inside when they could have braked properly at a safe distance. Somebody grabbed Barry before his momentum could slam him against the wall. He nodded his thanks, let go, found the floor to orient himself, and did a headcount.

Himself, Klaus, thirty Jägers, and two corpses.

On the space station, the heat conducted by the cables must have reached oxygen storage, and a ring of secondary explosions shattered the remaining cells.

"We win," Barry said into the radio, and shut the doors.

The top of Castle Wulfenbach was a garden and one that the children from the school were allowed to play in now it was fully established. Today one of its sturdiest trees contained, on the highest branch that would hold them, three children and a telescope.

"We can't actually see better from here than from an observation deck," Tarvek said, eyes trained on the sky.

"We're not seeing any worse, either," said Agatha.

Gil didn't say anything, but it felt like he could see more from here, as close to the top of the sky as he could get. Besides, if he was on an observation deck, he'd have to hide how worried he was from people who didn't know his father was in space fighting a building. He drew his legs up to his chest, only to uncurl again when Tarvek handed him the telescope.

He scanned the sky, carefully avoiding looking too close to the sun. It was the same calm blue it had been all day. Then something shone, like a silver spark in the corner of his vision.

"I think I see it!" he yelled, leaning forward as if that would help, until Tarvek pulled on the back of his shirt.

"I think your father would rather you welcome him home without falling out of a tree!" said Tarvek.

"Oops," Gil said, leaning back, unable to stop grinning.

Agatha grabbed the telescope out of his hand and looked for herself. The silver speck was rapidly getting larger, if Gil looked carefully now he could see it without the telescope, just.

"It really is them!' said Agatha. She thrust the telescope at Tarvek and grabbed Gil's hand imperiously. "Help me down."

"Just climb on my back. It'll be faster." Agatha clamped on piggyback-style, and Gil slithered down one branch to get a good angle and then jumped. Tarvek let out a yelp above them, but Gil caught himself and kept going, finishing the trip with leaves stuck in his hair and slightly scraped hands. He let Agatha down at the bottom of the tree and spat out a leaf. Tarvek paused a few branches up, scowling at him, and then tossed down the telescope as soon as he was sure he had Gil's attention.

Gil caught it. "Come on," he said, as Tarvek finished his less precipitous descent.

But he barely had time to be impatient, really, before all three of them were running, the two of them holding one of Agatha's hands each so she could run with a bouncing, swinging motion, that let her keep up. They dodged past messengers on unicycles, a secretary on tentacles and a surprising amount of Jägers heading nonchalantly in the same direction.

Boris was already waiting in the hangar when they arrived, with Mnemosyne at his elbow, which probably meant she'd been shadowing him again. She looked around at them and then back out the open door, which was where Gil wanted to look anyway. Agatha was still holding his hand really tight. He squeezed back. The Jägers they'd run past strolled in, and Boris turned to look at them over his glasses, a little exasperated. "The experimental airship appears to be intact," he said.

Which it did. Gil could see it properly now, looking almost completely normal, maybe a little smudged. He sort of wished he could have seen the spacefaring shape for real instead of just in diagrams.

The door opened and Gil's father and Barry stepped out, looking tired and grim but not as if they were at all hurt. Gil blinked, finding his eyes suddenly wet and blurry, then let go of Agatha and hurtled forward. Hands caught him up before he'd even started climbing his father, and he found himself pressed against his father's chest trying to only sniffle a little bit instead of the huge, relieved sobs his body seemed to want.

He was being squeezed almost too tight to cry, and to his surprise, his father buried his face in Gil's hair for a moment. "I told you we'd be back."

Gil nodded. "I knew you would be if you could," he said.

"Your faith in my competence is astounding," his father said, then sighed deeply. "I'm glad it's done with."

"I'm glad you're back." Gil wiped his eyes on his father's collar and raised his head. Agatha was in Barry's arms too. Tarvek was watching them with a strange expression, relieved, but like he was looking at something he couldn't have.

His father looked at Tarvek, too, and then took a step forward and extended a hand to him. "I trust you and Boris kept things running smoothly while we were away."

Tarvek's eyes lightened, a little, and he adopted a serious expression that looked like it maybe wanted to be a smile. "Yes, but it'll be easier to keep up now that you're here again."

Barry took a breath and smoothed Agatha's hair down, which never worked. "Agatha," he said, and glanced around at the Jägers who'd come to meet the airship. "This isn't something we were really expecting, but -- we recovered Bill and Lucrezia's bodies."

Agatha went stiff and still for a moment and then said carefully, "It's too late to try revivification, isn't it?"

"Ah -- yes. Rather a lot too late. I'd have tried it on Bill if I could."

"Can I see them?" Agatha asked quietly. Then, wiggling slightly as Barry's arms tightened, "I don't remember them and I never even met my father to remember. So if they're going to be buried after this I won't get another chance."

Barry swallowed. "You can if you want to, but they've been dead for a few years now and it was -- it was in a firefight. They don't look like themselves anymore. You're probably better off sticking to pictures."

Agatha bit her lip. "It's not the same. It's not as real."

"It's not pleasant."

"I know. I saw dead people in Sturmhalten."

Barry blew out a breath that made her cowlicks dance wildly. "Okay." He turned around and took her into the airship.

Tarvek looked after them, then at Gil, then back at Agatha before nodding to himself and turning to follow. Gil wriggled and for a moment his father's arms tightened around him, then he was put down in time to trot after Tarvek, his father following closely.

Inside the airship the bodies were laid out, not on slabs but just on trestles, arms folded over chests and eyes closed. The trestles were as far away from each other as the interior of the airship allowed.

Agatha had stopped midway between their feet and was looking back and forth, one hand curled around the trilobite locket with pictures of them that Barry had given her. (He'd told her sometimes even people who tried to kill you were worth remembering.) Gil didn't think she could see very much, because the platforms were almost as high as her head. Barry was right, though -- they didn't look good. They'd been shot in the chest with death rays, and their skin was weird and dried up.

She went over to Bill first, and Gil and Tarvek followed her. She stood there quietly and looked at him for what felt like a long time.

...Gil didn't think he'd really wanted to see Bill Heterodyne like that.

Agatha turned away and walked to Lucrezia's body, gazing at it just as solemnly. Then she walked back over to Barry and took his hand. "I'm not sure whether it's even sad when they were dead for so long already," she said.

"It was kind of a shock for me," Barry said. "I hadn't expected to find them." He hesitated, then asked, "Are you ready to go?"

Agatha nodded and looked up at him. "Are you okay?"

Barry closed his eyes for a moment. "Getting better."

It was a relief to be outside, away from the corpses that Gil found sad even if Agatha didn't. His father had been watching them from just inside the door and as soon as they were outside Gil latched onto his leg without thinking, because that had been Agatha's father dead in there and he was so very glad it hadn't been his.

"Come on," he heard Barry say. "We should check some of the Jägers' ears."

"Some of you did get hurt?" Agatha demanded.

Gil glanced around in time to see Barry rub one of his own ears. "Nothing that won't heal."

Tarvek hovered until Barry and Agatha were out of earshot, with the Jägers trooping after, and then said, sounding a little disturbed, "I thought he said that -- that Bill killed her." Barry had said that. To Tarvek's father. Very loudly. "Those injuries look like he was hugging her."

"Sometimes you're a little too perceptive," said Gil's father. He put a hand on Tarvek's shoulder, the other pressing gently against Gil's back. "Their relationship was... contentious at its best and close at its worst."

Tarvek leaned into the hand a little. "He didn't have to die, did he?"

"Don't tell Agatha that," Gil's father said immediately, and after a moment's pause tugged slightly, and with the hangar nearly empty Tarvek came in to lean against him next to Gil. It was just a little bit funny, even though they were talking about something awful, because of how often Agatha just dragged them together. "I honestly don't know. There were a number of strategic decisions that could have made it less likely, and from what Barry's said, Bill... had not been thinking very clearly for some time. On the other hand, Lucrezia was a formidable and often elusive opponent even when there was only one of her. And I -- I wasn't there."

He sounded like he was sorry, and Gil was sorry Bill Heterodyne was dead but he couldn't wish his own father had been there and maybe died too. "I'm glad you weren't," he blurted.

"I could have--" his father started, and then fell silent for a moment. "I want to think I could have made a difference," he said, slowly, as if the words had to be worked free like an uncooperative loose tooth, with sharp bits. "I'm not sorry I was with you."

Gil held onto him, feeling weird and sad and glad he'd said that all at once. Families could be such sad things. Tarvek's had been. Agatha's parents were dead at each other's hands. It made him want to know his family was okay, but even if he was holding onto his father... "I still want to meet my mother some day," he blurted. "And my sister. And you've got a space ship now."

His father let out a soft huff, almost a laugh. "We even managed to land it intact. Barry and I have been a little rough on our previous spaceships."

Tarvek gave him a serious look. "If you take Gil to Mars you have to land it carefully enough that you can fly him back."

"I did build one there before, you know," he said. "But that would greatly simplify the process."

"So, we can go?" Gil said, clinging turning to eager tugging on his father's coat.

"Not quickly. It will take a lot of preparation. Both for the trip itself and for being gone so long." His father squeezed him, looking a little more grim than Gil thought the idea warranted. "But -- yes. You should know your mother and sister. I'll try."

"Thank you!" Gil squeezed his father back gratefully. He might really, really find out where he'd come from and meet the other members of his family. Everything he'd ever dreamed of back when he hadn't known he had any family at all.

"Gil." His father cupped a large hand around the back of his head and looked into his eyes. "You'll have to be careful too."

"I'll pay attention to all Tarvek's lessons about assassins," Gil said earnestly.

His father looked at Tarvek and smiled wryly. "That's a start."

The procession filed solemnly out of the Heterodyne crypt. Barry attached Agatha to Donna's hand, waved Klaus on when he looked over his shoulder, and lingered until the doors boomed shut and the echoes faded to silence.

Bill's sarcophagus was as elaborate as any of their ancestors', in white marble with bold carvings. None of them skulls, thank you. Barry thought he deserved it. He'd made as much of a mark in life as any of them, and for the better.

The funeral was finally over. Half Europa would probably be holding vigils all night.

Barry folded his arms on the stone and put his head down.

"It's good to have my previous Lord back where he belongs," said the Castle, voice oddly serious as it echoed quietly through the crypt, before taking on a more teasing lilt. "But it's not quite time for you to settle here yet."

Barry snorted without lifting his head. "I'm not staying that long."

"One day," said the Castle, cheerfully.

"I realise you're glad to know where he is," said Barry. "I didn't want to leave him in the first place. But if you're going to be chirpy, please shut up."

The Castle, surprisingly, did remain silent for a few minutes before returning to its more sober tone. "I realise you didn't do it to please me, but thank you for retrieving him. And for choosing to bury him here."

Barry rubbed a hand over the marble and sighed before looking up. "Well... he is part of the family."