Composite battalions formed of smoke and flame rose from countless corners of Stechpalme Schloß, soaring into the darkening sky. As Kessler arrived in the front garden and looked up at the structure, worry flickered in his stoic gaze. The fire had further reduced the effectiveness of the heat-detection system, making it difficult to determine how best to enter.
Regardless, His Majesty’s wife and sister were trapped somewhere inside. Kessler sent in an initial wave of military police, but blaster bolts from upstairs mowed them down. Only two men escaped with their lives. Out of respect for the privacy of the imperial couple, the residence had not been equipped with any sort of internal monitoring systems, but now that lack was causing problems. Because it had originally been a private residence, only the basic floor plans remained, and it was impossible to tell what was happening inside.
“Let me through! Let me through!”
A figure suddenly slipped through the line of soldiers, nimble as a squirrel, but before it could get past Kessler, the commissioner reached out quickly and seized the passing collar. He found that he had caught a girl of about seventeen. She had dark hair and eyes, and a sensitive-looking face.
“Don’t you realize how dangerous this is? Get back and stay clear.”
“But Hilda—I mean, the kaiserin and the archduchess are still on the second floor. Let go of me!”
“You’re her handmaiden?”
“Yes. Oh, if only I hadn’t gone to buy chocolate ice cream, none of this would have happened.”
I’m not so sure of that, Kessler thought, but remained silent. The girl turned toward him with a serious expression.
“Please, Captain, please get the kaiserin and the archduchess out safely. I’m begging you.”
Suppressing a smile at being addressed as someone five ranks below his actual position, Kessler asked the girl if she knew which room Hilda and Annerose were in. She thought for a few moments, then seized the “captain” by the hand and dragged him around to the rear garden. She pointed directly at a corner room from which white smoke was beginning to escape.
“That’s the south window in the library,” she said. “There’s a sofa right under it, and that’s where the kaiserin will be. I’m sure of it.”
Kessler nodded and ordered his men to bring him a light alloy ladder designed for field combat. He checked his blaster’s energy capsule, then called three officers over and gave them new orders. Next, Kessler leaned the ladder against the wall, confirmed that it was stable, and put his hand on a rung. He had decided to go in himself.
“Hox pox physibus, hox pox physibus!”
The girl was reciting a peculiar chant as she clasped her hands together, fingers intertwined. Noticing Kessler looking at her curiously, she began to smile, then remembered that this was not the time or place and straightened her face again.
“It’s a charm my grandfather taught me,” she said. “He said it means ‘Misfortune, begone from here!’ ”
“Does it work?”
“If you repeat it enough times.”
“Keep going, then.”
Kessler scaled the ladder, blaster between his teeth. Even after becoming a high-ranking officer, something in his nature craved front-line action, and was now driving him forward. Approaching the window, Kessler cautiously peered through the glass. In the room beyond, he saw a man with a gun. A split-second later, he was certain that the man was not with the military police.
“Hox pox, etcetera!”
He steadied his aim and fired. As a sharpshooter, Kessler was not, perhaps, on the level of the departed Siegfried Kircheis or Kornelias Lutz, but he was a first-class marksman nonetheless. The blaster bolt burst through the glass and ran the terrorist through on a sword of pure energy. The man was thrown back against the wall, then he crumpled to the floor.
Kessler caught sight of a second man. He was outside the room, by a bannister. Snarling at the unraveling situation he saw through the doorway, he pointed his gun directly at the two women. Kessler fired again.
This second Church of Terra fanatic screamed and tumbled backward over the bannister. He struck the granite floor of the landing below, convulsed briefly, and then lay still. Three or four military policemen ran past him, leaping up the stairs. Multiple blaster bolts rained down on them from above, and return fire boiled up from below. As flame and smoke struggled for supremacy, beams of light crisscrossed the stairwell’s interior, bringing new deaths and suffering. Eventually, three would-be Terraist assassins abandoned the pointless slaughter and came running into the library in search of their target.
Kessler crashed through the glass into the room, a bolt of energy flying from the blaster in his right hand. Two more flashes of light followed it. One Terraist was shot between his chest and left shoulder. Another had his face blown off. Blood sprayed onto the wall and trickled down toward the floor, leaving thin crimson trails.
The third Terraist managed to get off a shot before Kessler could. He was shooting to kill, but his aim was off, and he only managed to knock the blaster from Kessler’s hand. The man swung his gun around, pointing the barrel directly at Hilda’s unborn child.
In that moment, Annerose’s graceful form leapt across the room like a butterfly on the breeze. From the fireplace, she seized a small pedestal and its attached sculpture and hurled it at the final Terraist. It struck him square in the face, and they heard his nose crunch as shards of crystal and marble embedded themselves in his flesh. Blood and screams filled the air. The barrel of his blaster went wild and he fired harmlessly into the roof. Annerose bent down and positioned herself in front of Hilda.
A flower of blood bloomed on the man’s breast. Kessler had snatched up his blaster again and fired. The man swayed back and forth, then toppled over backward, arms spread wide. There was a loud crack as his head struck the floor, and then a sudden silence closed in around them. The firefight on the stairs appeared to have reached a conclusion too.
Kessler ran a hand through his unruly hair, then knelt before Hilda and Annerose.
“Your Majesty, Your Highness. Are you both unharmed?”
Annerose’s golden hair was in disarray, and blood had beaded on her arm and the back of her hand where fragments of glass had broken her fair skin. Perspiration ran down her cheeks in rivulets, and her breath was wild, but her eyes, like blue gemstones, held an expression that might have been pride. She had put her own life on the line for the sake of her brother’s bride, and had saved her unborn niece or nephew in the bargain.
“Senior Admiral Kessler—if I recall correctly,” said Annerose. “Please call the court physicians and ladies-in-waiting at once. Her Majesty is about to give birth.”
It took several seconds for Annerose’s voice to traverse Kessler’s auditory nerves and rap on the door of his reason. When he grasped the situation, he all but levitated. Once recaptured by the invisible hand of gravity, he ran to the window and called for his men. Before they could arrive, though, someone else bounded through the room’s open door—the dark-haired girl he had met earlier.
“Kaiserin! Your Majesty Kaiserin Hilda! You’re safe!”
The girl hugged Hilda tightly. Despite the onset of her labor pains, Hilda smiled and stroked the girl’s hair. The girl burst into tears of joy and relief.
But there was no time for basking in sentiment. A disgruntled god of fire had the entire building in a deadly embrace. Kessler’s military police ran in with a stretcher, lifted Hilda onto it, covered her in a blanket, and then carried her out through the thickening smoke. Kessler led the other two outside as well, lending Annerose his arm for support.
In the front garden, Hilda’s stretcher was carried into a waiting medical landcar. Annerose, the young handmaiden, and Hilda’s attending physicians and nurses boarded the vehicle after her, and then it began to move, surrounded by military vehicles on all four sides. Kessler’s subordinate, Captain Witzleben, led the convoy to the hospital while Kessler himself remained behind to help extinguish the fire and render aid to the wounded.
At 1940 on May 14, Stechpalme Schloß collapsed. The sojourn there of the Lohengramm Dynasty’s imperial couple had lasted less than four months.