Quoted By:
“Perhaps,” Covacs eyed you as you walked around his car to him, “The Luftpanzer Demi-Battalion <span class="mu-i">is</span> the premier rapid-action unit in this side of the Grossreich, some might say the whole of it. Though I think any authority of the Protectorates would rather chew their own arm off rather than ask the Kaiser to lend them his strength in a crisis.”
“But in case they do,” you cracked your knuckles, then your neck, “Nobody better to drop in.”
Covacs stared with half lidded eyes. “In case any of them do ask for favors, you wouldn’t mind refusing, would you.”
“You’ve used up your holiday favor already, Covacs.”
Both of you were in as fine a uniform as you’d cared to put on- which was but Luftwaffe armored units’ black dress trousers, black caps, and the leather pilot’s jacket of the Luftpanzers on top, it little mattered what was under that, because nobody could make you dress in the uniform of the other members of the Luftwaffe. Nobody would mistake you for anybody else, anywhere.
The guards to the Imperial Consulate gave you trouble at first, with your name being present on the invitation but not who it came from- then, you were allowed in, but not Covacs, but ten minutes of cajoling and pestering later, you managed to get the gatehouse to overlook that Lieutenant Reinhold Roth-Vogel was not technically allowed guests accompanied with himself, as he was an officer in need of an attendant himself. Finally, you both could stride coolly, yet pridefully, through the front door.
Once inside, you were struck across the face with the melody of brass, the preferred sound of the middle class over the strings and wind of the old money, as well as the scent of a hundred things that surely were using up a very large portion of rationing, barely edged out by the Reich’s native herbs that would never be so devastated as the late harvests apparently had been- and even within the first set of doors, there were already guests who gawked at you and murmured. Your presence was unexpected, but not unwelcome- and in this city, in this circle, you were a <span class="mu-i">celebrity</span>.
In Kaiser Henrik’s Grossreich, these upper crust folk were not merely nobility. There were the lords from the protectorates, yes, and they ensured they stood out, but most of the guests were diplomats and civilian dignitaries, of a new sort that were not old landed blood nor quite ordinary common folk themselves. People who, in the new Reich, could claw their way up from nothing so long as they stood out enough. The new-minded touch of the Kaiser and his cabinet, as well as the ascendant Parliament, did not disseminate too much into the Protectorates, but it was still to a much larger degree than had ever been before.
