“Fire!” barked Künstler.

His artillery crew, a motley mix of hardened combat troops and milquetoast Freikorps thugs, looked at each other for a moment, unsure of shelling inside Peeneburg simply to neutralize a gymnasium student to whom gravity did not seem to apply. Perhaps they were thinking twice about the Weimar official ordering them around like a battlefield general.

In any event, they obeyed.

British poets had written in praise of the “five nine” 150mm howitzer; when the Freikorps cannon roared and collapsed a side of a butcher shop with a direct hit it was easy to see why.

Weber, though simply pirouetted–leaping off the side of the butcher shop to the facade of the old opera house across the street in an astonishingly graceful move. He continued running, perpendicular to the street below and in violation of all laws of physics, as bits of shrapnel and masonry filled the street.

“Again!” Künstler cried. “Hit him again!”

The crew hesitated again, but the veterans were old Western Front hands, and they chambered another howitzer round after only a few moments’ delay to adjust elevation and windage. This time, the shot hit ten or so meters ahead of Weber, and he vanished in smoke and dust–along with most of the ornate opera house which had survived two revolutions and two wars.

“Did we get him?” Künstler craned his neck at the ruins.

Weber was in fact face-down, ears ringing…on the ceiling inside what had once been the opera vestibule, concealed behind a mound of rubble that choked the entrance.

“Hey!” A whisper from the ground brought a flicker to Weber’s eyes. He looked down and saw a young man with a red armband gesturing at him. “This way! Come on!”

What he couldn’t see, though, was the pistol in the small of the man’s back and the folded orders in his pocket–secure the gravity-defier for the Revolution at all costs.