Chapter Five:
The Hopi Monk In The Beer Hall
When Chief Jacob Two Star, of the Cherokee Nation, and Chief Everett Mauser of the Chocktaw led their bands of native mercenaries to the frontier of the White Man's empires to found the Oklahoma Kingdom on the basis of the vast reserves of gasses naturally occurring to the otherwise bland and disinteresting land, they had invited (some said kidnapped) a number of German chemists to assist them in exploiting the resource.
The Germans were fabulous chemists and physicists, and they had happily assisted the Prairie Crown in developing the industry to wrest the gas from the earth, then separate out the precious helium from the less noble elements. The pay was extravagant, compared to what they could command as instructors and professors in the universities of the Rhine, and many worked two and five year contracts with the Crown and retired to Europe rich men. But their presence had had another, unintentional effect, however: the construction of an authentic German beer hall in the middle of a dusty native Kingdom.
Das Jagerhaus
had the feel of a Saxon hunting lodge – or, that was what the original design had intended. Made of wattle-and-daub, complete with rune-like exposed beams,
Das Jagerhaus
had become the unofficial headquarters for both the German scientists who toiled for the Prairie Crown's Helium monopoly and the airship mercenaries who protected it. The two groups mixed freely, providing one of the few truly cosmopolitan venues in Tillassa, both attracted by the hall's near-monopoly on the brewing and dispensing of good German beer.
King Steven Two Star, noting his own people's poor history with strong drink, had thus restricted the production and sale of such spirits to fully licensed purveyors – of which
Das Jagerhaus
was one of three in Tillassa. While the restriction had not completely protected the Indians from indulging in the wickedness of drunkenness, it had made the frequently violent outbursts a drunken native was reputed to be capable of a rarity. A native could go to
Das Jagerhaus
and get a drink, but did so under watchful eyes of foreigners and fellow tribesmen, both of which took a dim view of such behavior. Indeed only a few, notably the mercenary marines like Wolf Rider and his men, made a habit of entering the German tavern, and a marine who could not maintain his control with drink there would not be employed long. None of them would have risked their well-paying positions by hazarding a stupor.
But the European, American, and Louisianan airmen mercenaries were more accustomed to liquor, and had no hesitation about the lure of strong drink. They made
Das Jagerhaus
their unofficial home, place of business, and recreation hall. Each ship had a section of the large hall where they were in the habit of congregating after a flight, concentrating around an Indian-style fetish on the wall above upon which they bestowed ribbons signifying their battles and triumphs.
The usual air of celebration was muted today, however, due to the silence coming from the Hobgoblin's empty table. No one had yet removed the ship's trophies, which had been draped in black in mourning while the fallen airmen's comrades drank to their memory.
The corner where the
Star of Baton Rouge's
crew drank was muted, at best. Five of their number had fallen in the Atlan skirmish, but they had only barely escaped the
Hobgoblin's
fate when a massive Borealis nearly clipped them in midair. The ship had spun crazily, but Fortune or some unknown native Sky God had favored them, merely leaving them unpowered and battered, not fallen. The bounty on their kill – which Gideon had been only too happy to confirm to the Crown's representative – would be barely enough to pay for repairs, a process which would keep the ship out of service for at least a fortnight.
The big round table where the
Victrix's
crew was stationed, however, was as jubilant as propriety allowed, under the circumstances. By tradition, the large table was reserved for the marines and flight crew, while a rectangular table nearby attracted the engineers from the ship. As captain, Gideon had the pick of the tables but mostly clung to the larger, in deference to his sister's reign at the latter.
Having successfully nursed his prize ship back to port, as well as his relatively unscathed
Victrix
, Gideon's band of "Sky Panthers" (he had relayed the Beanie dame's sobriquet for the mercenaries to his men, if not the circumstances under which the intelligence was gathered, and they had adopted the moniker with savage pride and humor) had been richly rewarded for their bravery and efforts. The prize ship was already in the process of being converted into an Oklahoman warship – resigned to patrol, due to her primitive nature – by being repaired and outfitted with Helium balloon and good Manchester rockets. When the conversion was complete, she would work the pickets along the southern frontier, along with her relatively weak sister-ships, espying on the land of her birth like a captive Sabine pining from Rome.
Gideon was glad that he had driven such a hard bargain for her, too, commanding a good thirty percent over his last prize. Still, the Crown had been eager to pay it – even with the additional expense of overhauling her to Okie standards, it was less expensive than purchasing such a craft new from Europe or even America or Louisiana, both of which had nascent airship manufactories. Yet while he had haggled with the wily old Baron Amadahy (made easier by his relation as an uncle or something to his sister Tayanita), he had also discovered the incipient arrival of five brand new warships purchased from the French, through the Louisianans, for the purpose of interdiction duty.
Each was half again the size of his
Victrix
, real three-hundred-meter
Emperor Napoleon I
-class air frigates armed with the latest French Imperial military-grade accoutrements throughout. They were devastating war machines, as the Indochinese discovered during their recent rebellion, able to over-match all but the largest German-made Atlan ships.
In addition to the nine smaller airships the Kingdom currently used for patrol and interdiction duties (ten, with the addition of Gideon's prize), the five would essentially replace the mercenaries that had protected the Crown and its lucrative Helium for the last decade. It had been a complex, complicated bargain that Baron Amadahy had personally negotiated, but it seemed as if the tenure of easy money for airship mercenaries was drawing to a close. While the ships would not arrive for another month, and take a month beyond to be fully crewed, the
Victrix
would be redundant soon enough. Even with Amadahy's assurance that Gideon would always be welcome in the Okie Kingdom as a friend to the Crown, he could tell that he was being sacked, albeit gently.
That suited Gideon's own plans nicely – between the bounty for the prize and the likely ransom for Marta the Beanie Dame (who had taken up residence in his Marine barracks, and seemed to be determined to make up for time lost in the convent by making the full acquaintance of the phallus in all of its manifestations ere she was redeemed), he would have easily fifteen fully-loaded cylinders of Helium in a fortnight, with credits payable for up to two more on account with the Crown. That was a titanic fortune, by any account. In truth, he hadn't been particularly surprised by the knowledge - he had heard the rumors of the French ships for months, now, and had factored them into his plotting. Witnessing the
Hobgoblin's
ignoble destruction had further convinced him that remaining in Oklahoma indefinitely was not in his future.
Gideon's sister seemed more enthusiastic than even he was about winning the day and capturing the prize. Despite her allegedly noble upbringing and gentle appearance, Lady Tayanita made a regular practice of joining the rougher elements of the
Victrix's
crew with her own Engineers, and tonight she wore a proper lady's dress in defiance of her usual custom of boyish trousers, braces, shirt and cap. She sat amid her German and Dutch mechanics, sipping brandy and talking with some of the scientists from the Gas Works about some exciting ideas she'd had.
The scientists, lonely, far from home, and drunk, were captivated with the physically ravishing and intellectually brilliant half-native beauty and hung on her every word. Gideon liked to pretend that they were more enthralled with her impressive brain as much as her shapely bubbies, but the gentleman in him knew better. Still, Tayanita could handle herself in nearly any situation, and here she was surrounded by shipmates. Indeed,
