Editing City Series:Volume6c Chapter1 (section)

===Part 5===

A city’s night was spread out below.

With a wartime blackout in effect, the city stretching from north to south had barely any lights in it.

The city was Cologne.

The few lights that were on faintly outlined the streets and main roads.

Several billows of smoke rose into the sky as if to obscure the city below. The smoke came from the city’s factories.

The smoke, light, and darkness were all visible directly below an airborne observation deck that allowed a view far, far into the distance.

That observation deck was located on the bottom of the Requiem’s first central ship as it floated high above Cologne. The 30-yard hall’s lower surface was made of thick blast-resistant glass, so the people standing atop it felt like they were floating in midair.

This late at night, there were only two people there.

They were both tall men.

One was a bald old man with a fully prosthetic body wearing a Geheimnis Agency dress uniform. He looked down into the glass and spoke.

“You say preventing an invasion from the north and west will show this land’s Neue Kavaliers what to do.”

His tone made it hard to tell if that was a statement or a question, but it earned a response from the tall man with two prosthetic arms standing next to him. The hem of his German Air Force uniform and his gray hair swayed somewhat and he sighed.

“Are you saying this warship, you, and Maldrick were sent to defend Cologne in order to bring back those who followed Borderson? The Borderson faction insisted on working as an independent unit as Hounds even when they were with the Geheimnis Agency, so they had a fair number of foreign connections.” He continued from there. “Nothing has changed. Twenty years ago, when you received Lowenheit Naylor’s will and began work on establishing the Geheimnis Agency, I repeatedly argued against the idea.”

“Yes, I remember you saying the age of Kavaliers leading the nation was a thing of the past.”

“You do not play fair, brother. You are only protecting this country. …Even Lowenheit and Frobel chose to protect this country instead of creating a new one after that great war ended. But…”

“Do not accuse me of being unfair. Explain how you yourself are fair, Heiliger.”

Heiliger lowered his gaze at that.

He replied while viewing the lights on the surface.

“That is not something I can do. If it worked like that…would you have taken that Psyche Outer device twenty years ago? Isn’t that when everything came to a stop for Graham Karlsruhe?”

The older brother, Graham, said nothing and cleared his throat.

“Lowenheit, Frobel, and Bertecht feared where our country was headed,” said the younger brother. “But they did so as leaders of the people. There was some discord between us, but I thought we had arrived at a conclusion after our loss in the previous war.”

“That the age of Kavaliers was over? That Bertecht’s death and Lowenheit’s will meant the end of our country’s millennium of rule by Kavaliers?”

“It’s a shame, brother. Words spoken by a man with no emotions cannot move anyone to emotion.” He sighed. “I miss when you were as emotional as the second son of Maldrick.”

“Alfred Maldrick vastly underestimates you.” The older brother took a step forward, still looking down. “I know you put together this aerial fleet for local air defense because you had information the Allies were targeting the Gard-class. I hear you even visited the Geheimnis Agency HQ to ask for opinions on the matter.”

“We held a theoretical battle to determine what route the Allies would use to invade.”

“And I hear you won against Müller and the others. First as the Allies and then as us. Even though Müller is known as the Kommandeur, the top-level combat commander.”

“Sadly, my Neue Kavalier blood demands victory.”

“Will that blood allow you to make good use of Alfred Maldrick?”

Heiliger looked up at that question and Graham said more to him.

“At 22:00 on the 29th, your aerial fleet will be dismissed and all but your core fleet will be sent west. Also, the Geheimnis Agency Army Division’s 1st Independent Mobile Grösse Panzer Platoon will be removed from my unit and joined with your core fleet to create an aerial fleet for defense of the North Sea. That will place Alfred Maldrick under your command.”

Heiliger’s eyes widened slightly and he saw Graham’s unmoving back before him.

He frowned and asked a question.

“Brother, I am not part of your agency. I am not even a Kavalier – I am a mere soldier. That cannot change. …Look at this ship. It technically belongs to the air force, but everything inside is controlled by your agency and none of the ordinary German soldiers are allowed inside. …The military and your agency are always at odds like that.”

“But you are allowed here because you are a Karlsruhe. Use that to command him. Prove that the military can work with the Kavaliers and you are sure to grab the attention of the Borderson Kavaliers who left the Agency in ’33. …The necessary paperwork has already been delivered to your aide.”

Heiliger smiled at that. And he shook his head.

“You really do only think about this country…and about the Kavaliers, don’t you?”

“The Millennium is drawing to a close and the world’s destiny is fading fast. Only we can work to fix this problem so intertwined with our country’s history, Heiliger.”

“I know all the world’s Sofort Lesers cannot read destiny past ’43, I know anxiety is running rampant around the world, and…”

And…

“I know Frobel and Lowenheit’s daughter…has prophesied the Messiah’s capture.”

He sighed.

Then he heard a quiet sound in the large observation deck. It was a solid sound like metal gears turning.

It happened once, twice, thrice.

At the same time, he heard something from the ceiling, so he looked up.

The large ceiling had split open. The ceiling panels split in four and folded up like paper to fold up the entire ceiling.

Without the ceiling, they had a view of another space, but they were not directly exposed to it. There was a thick layer of glass beyond the ceiling.

Opening the ceiling panels revealed a glass ceiling above that.

“What is the point of the ceiling panels?” muttered Heiliger, looking up.

He saw only darkness there.

The different depths of darkness were due to the tubes laid out throughout that space.

And in the deepest part was a small red light. It almost looked like a star in the sky.

“Is that you, Rose?” asked Graham without even looking up.

He was answered by a girl’s voice coming from the center of the observation deck.

“It is, bigger brother.”

Rose stood behind Heiliger, in the center of the glass floor.

He turned around and looked alternately between the faintly transparent girl and the red light in the depths of the darkness above.

“Once every three days, my true self requires maintenance and ventilation,” said Rose, looking up.

Heiliger followed her gaze.

Something like white steam was spraying out into the darkness there.

It also looked like smoke, but it turned to bubbles, spread out, and ascended.

“Is that a liquid beyond the glass?”

“The coolant must be fully replaced. That red collection of concentrated circuits is less than an inch long, but it is my true body now. Using my nerves stretched out across the Requiem produces a lot of heat.” Rose kept the smile in her voice. “I can tell. This Eingeweide used a Schreiben device, which gave me that as a new body, but I can sense how it feels far better than I can sense anything from this projection here.”

“Really?”

“When submerged in coolant, it feels a little like when I was sleeping below Munich. But once every three days I get to do this…which feels kind of like taking a bath, I guess. And when we do this-”

Without even turning her way, Graham cleared his throat to finish her sentence for her.

“You selfishly ask to see the outside world.”

The amount of bubbles overhead suddenly grew, but as they rose through that space, they eventually popped and vanished.

A liquid with a different pressure was pumped in and the space solidified somewhat.

The distant red light wavered a bit. Rose smiled.

“I can’t thank the workers up there enough. Today is my third time to do it midair, but the supply transport corridor large enough for a Grösse Panzer is really busy.”

“You can see what’s happening up there?”

“This me here isn’t the real me. It’s only an image created by solidifying the Tons of the air.”

She pointed up at the red light.

“That is my core…my naked self. Only you two get to see me like this, brothers. I haven’t even let Sir Alfred see.”

“So my sister is growing up. …Well, he does appear to be an excellent man.”

“But he always treats me like a child when I’m older than him.”

“But you learned a lot more about him recently, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I learned what happened in the past…and that I am a lot like a certain woman.” Rose smiled a little. “That woman’s wedding is in 5 days, but Sir Alfred says he will not be attending. That Captain Schweitzer is apparently taking Lowenzahn with him.”

“I see,” said Heiliger, trying to pat Rose’s shoulder with his metal arm.

He could not.

His hand vanished inside her shoulder and stopped.

“You were always such a good girl. You would always stop me and my brother’s arguments with a smile. …I am sure Lieutenant Maldrick will realize the same thing eventually.”

“Yes, I think so too. I just know he will remember me forever.”

Heiliger’s eyebrows moved when she said that.

He opened his lips to ask something, but…

“…”

He stopped.

Rose’s smile grew and she looked up at her brother.

“Big brother, you get along with bigger brother, okay? Try to understand him. …Maybe this isn’t the nicest way of putting it, but unlike him and me, you are so ignorant and so soft.”

“Yes, you could have put that nicer.”

“But it’s true. I’m sure you will understand one day and then you will know exactly what I mean…but you are soft and that is a good thing. And you are ignorant, which is also a good thing.”

Meanwhile, another metallic sound came from the ceiling.

It was closing. Sealing back up.

Heiliger removed his gaze from the girl to look up. He saw the red light in the darkness past the closing ceiling.

For a brief moment, he thought the light grew brighter.

At the same time, the image of his sister vanished.

The ceiling had fully closed.

He sighed toward the floor and looked to his brother’s back.

“Take care of Rose.” He lowered his gaze a little. “Because she too has chosen you over me.”

That was all Heiliger said before turning away from his brother.

He walked to the large door leading from the observation deck.

He left alone.

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