Elsewhere, in the tiny nation-state of Landalusia, a group of
finely groomed men roamed the streets, surrounded by fire, chaos, and
persistent cliché.
	"This place bores me," said one, checking his reflection in a
shard of glass still hanging from a shattered windowpane.
	"I know," said another.  "It's been so long since we've utterly
destroyed a village, but it's still so unsatisfying."
	"I suppose we'll move on to the next one," said a third.  This
one dropped the cigarette he had been smoking and crushed it under a
finely crafted leather boot.  He was wearing sunglasses, marking him as
the leader.
	"I guess..."
	"Whatever..."
	A steam boiler exploded nearby, sending shards of wood and metal
flying in the trio's direction.  They paid no heed to the potentially
deadly projectiles, and indeed, the flying bits missed them completely.
It was as though they were far too disinterested to be bothered with the
trivial action of being shredded by high-speed shrapnel.  One of them
looked wistfully at the smoke-filled sky.
	Ahead, a young woman stumbled into the street.  The leader
noticed her immediately, and walked over to her.  The other two followed
in a disinterested fashion.
	"Young miss, are you in need of assistance?"  The man took off
his sunglasses, revealing two radiant blue eyes.
	"Yes, God, yes!  I was at the market and I saw the fire and I
need to get home to make sure my parents are not injured, but there is
fire ahead.  Will you help me?"  The woman was already covered in a fine
layer of ash, and there were several rips in her plain dress.  The
leader stared into her eyes.
	"You are the light beyond the stars."
	"... What?"
	"Yes, we can help you."  The trio smiled a sickly smile,
revealing overly-long canine teeth stained with blood.
	Above, an airship the size of a castle floated toward the ruined
city as a shriek filled the air.

	On the Flying Fortress's bridge, Draco was unhappy.
	"So what you're saying is, all this smoke and fire that I see
suggests very strongly that Landalusia, which we intended to sack and
pillage, has already been sacked and pillaged?"  Draco was bearing down
on a small thin man who was wearing thin wire-frame glasses and
clutching a notepad with white knuckles.
	"That's pretty much the size of it, sir."
	"Well that's just fantastic!"  Draco threw his hands up in
disgust.  "What are we going to do now?  We can't sack and pillage a
sacked and pillaged city!  This is all your fault, Niles!  How could you
let this sort of lojiss... logess..."
	"Logistical, sir."
	"Logistical failure pass by your watch!?"
	"All of my figures were accurate as of two days ago, sir.  No
other parties have expressed interest in Landalusia in over nine months.
It should have been ripe for the picking."
	"Well a lot of good that does us!  We don't have another
pillaging planned!  That's days of downtime, there!"  Niles' notepad was
shielding him from a rain of spittle leaving Draco's mouth.  Niles
peeked out from underneath his makeshift umbrella.
	"There... is another option, sir."
	"What?"
	"Well, it can't have been very long since the attack.  In fact,
from analysis of explosions and smoke trails, it seems that the attack
is ongoing."  Niles paused, expecting an outburst.
	"Go on..."
	"We're already geared up for an attack, sir.  If we can catch
the attacker with their hand in the cookie jar, so-to-speak, then we can
chop off his hand and keep all the cookies to ourselves."  Niles smiled
with self-satisfaction at his clever wordplay.  Draco worked it over in
his mind for several moments.
	"So what you're saying is, we attack the attackers, and then
sack and pillage what they sacked and pillaged?"
	"Precisely, sir!"
	"Niles, my good man, you are a genius!  Why didn't I think of
that?"
	Under his breath, Niles muttered, "...'cause you don't have a
college education."
	"What was that, Niles?"
	"Nothing, sir!  Just talking to myself, sir!"
	"Very well, then." Draco started for the door.  "WE RIDE!"

	"Ok," Victoria nervously lectured herself, "you're sitting in a
bedroom in a flying castle led by an idiot."  Several minutes had passed
since Draco's exit, and Victoria was searching the room for anything
useful.  She wasn't sure what "useful" meant right now, but another
sandwich wouldn't have hurt.  Several minutes of searching turned up
very little.  The candle had been replaced; it must have burned down.
The vanity held nothing of use.  The wardrobe held clothes that looked
very much like hers.  Victoria then noticed that she was wearing an
unfamiliar nightgown.  Someone had cleaned her clothes and left them for
her.  At least the help was competent.
	After hastily changing into her dress, she decided that the best
course of action was to leave with all possible haste.  She took the
candle and opened the door cautiously, peering outside.  Seeing no-one,
she stepped outside the door and wondered about which direction she
should go to reach the exit.  A long hallway stretched away in either
direction; neither way looked particularly promising.  She picked the
direction that seemed to be less noisy.
	Several minutes later, she came across a brightly lit red sign
with an arrow, marked "ESCAPE."  That sounded about right.  The
designers of this flying monstrosity also seemed competent.  She
followed the arrow.
	Around the corner, Victoria heard a couple of voices.  She
quickly extinguished the candle and ducked into a dark corner.
	"...can't just put a regulator in the steam circuit without also
putting in a blow-off valve.  Otherwise, your regulator is going to act
like a blow-off valve when it blows up."
	The other voice laughed as it passed Victoria's location. "Yeah,
James sure learned that lesson the hard way."  The voices faded, and
Victoria chanced to peek into the corridor to make sure they were gone.
Satisfied that she was again alone, she crept out of the corner and
continued down the corridor.  At the end of the corridor she found a
stack of parachutes marked "ESCAPE" next to a large metal door.  She sat
the candle down -- it wasn't doing her much good now, and without really
thinking about it, she cranked open the large steel door.  The handle
creaked as she turned it, then the latch released and the door swung
open on creaky hinges.  Wind whipped at her through the new opening,
which revealed a cloudy blue sky.
	"Here goes nothing," Victoria encouraged herself as she fastened
herself in one of the "ESCAPE" 'chutes.
	"Oh, there you are!" a voice said behind her.  Victoria panicked
and fell backwards.  Ordinarily this would result in a bruised bottom
and some embarassment, but Victoria was flat out of anything upon which
she could fall.
	"AAAAAAaaaaaaaa...." Victoria fell out of the open hatch and
disappeared.
	"Oh, dear," Annette said with some worry.  "That's not good."

	"...aaaaAAAAAA!" Victoria ran out of breath.  Breathing again,
she briefly pondered another scream, but instead decided to spend her
quickly dwindling time on searching for a way to open her parachute.
She hadn't had time to read the instructions, so she groped frantically
for a catch, or a release of some kind.  When she found none, she
resumed screaming.
	"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA..."
	A small "pfssh" sounded as a pressure-actuated valve opened,
unlatching the pouch on her back and releasing the silk parachute
within.
	"...AAAAAOOFH!"  Rapid deceleration knocked the wind out of the
rest of her scream.  For several seconds, Victoria hung from the
parachute, stunned and unable to move.  Not that moving would have
helped her present situation very much.
	Below her she now noticed the burning city of Landalusia, and
with some adrenaline-fueled clarity of thought, realized that she might
have been better off back in the Flying Fortress.  Unfortunately for
her, there was no way to go now but down.  She touched down ungracefully
in a relatively unscathed area of town -- lots of ash and ruined
buildings, but not very much fire.
	Scared, beaten, and unsure of where to go next, she looked up at
the sky.  A glittering squadron of metal dragons flew high overhead.  To
properly express her feelings about the current situation, she had to
delve into that dirty realm of vocabulary reserved for men.  A word of
perverse meaning and distinctly British origin.  A word for when
everything goes wrong.
	"Bollocks."