A ball of energy burst out of a half-destroyed cruiser in a raging torrent. Karin pulled up the nose of her craft again. Her vision and heart whirled. Just as she finally managed to reconfirm her position, a single imperial walküre flew into her field of vision. It followed its own line of fire toward her, scraping far too closely over her head.
“Under—estimate—everything!”
Karin forced the syllables out in bursts as she strained to bring her beloved fighter about. The walküre completed its 180-degree turn first and fired on her again, but hit only empty space. Karin captured it in the sights of her neutron cannons and tossed her hair, so like the color of weakly brewed tea, inside her helmet.
“Damn the kaiser—!”
“I have been informed that Corporal Katerose von Kreutzer returned safely with one confirmed kill.”
Vice Admiral Walter von Schönkopf, Karin’s biological father, was given this information on Ulysses’s bridge as he opened his flask of whiskey. He raised the drink high and smiled cryptically. “Three cheers for the tomboy!”
Was he sincere, or only using his daughter as a pretext? The defiance in his expression was so resolute that it was impossible to tell.
V
At 2315 on April 30, Fahrenheit’s flagship Ahsgrimm was finally caught in the Yang Fleet’s net of firepower. Fahrenheit was using the ship as a last line of defense, supporting his fleet’s retreat to prevent it from becoming a total rout, but as the other ships slipped away the density of the enemy gunfire directed at his own increased in inexorable proportion.
Right at the moment the limits of Ahsgrimm’s energy-neutralization system were exceeded, a sizzling spear of light pierced its hull. This set off further explosions, and a serpent of flame writhed through the ship. Fahrenheit was thrown from his commander’s chair and against the wall, then dashed against the floor for good measure. Agony spiraled up through him, and he retched breath and blood from the bottom of his wounded lungs.
Sitting upright with some difficulty, Fahrenheit heard the rapidly approaching tread of death in the depths of his ear canals. A smile found his bloody face. His blue eyes caught the lighting and glinted with metallic reflected light.
The home I was born to was as poor as His Majesty the Kaiser’s was. I joined the navy because I needed to eat. I met my share of useless commanders and senior officers, but my reward in the end was service under the greatest man of all—Kaiser Reinhard himself. I call that a fortunate enough life. If things had been the other way around, I should never have been able to meet his eyes…
Blood spilled from the corner of Fahrenheit’s mouth, a new agony made solid. In his darkening field of vision he saw that the student from the elementary school who served as his orderly was still by his side. Fahrenheit looked the boy directly in his grimy, tearstained face. “What are you doing?” he shouted. “Hurry up and abandon ship!”
“Your Excellency…”
“Go! Now! Do you know how they’ll look at me in Valhalla if I bring a child with me?”
The boy coughed amid the fire and smoke and stench of death. He was determined to uphold the principles of the school.
“In that case, please give me a token. I will see that it gets to His Majesty the Kaiser even at the cost of my own life.”
The fearless admiral glanced back from death’s door with something like exasperation. He attempted a rueful smile, but was already too weak.
“A token? Very well.”
His control over his vocal cords was failing rapidly.
“Here is your token: your life. Bear it all the way to the kaiser. You are not to die. Do you hear me?”
It seems doubtful that Fahrenheit himself heard the last words he spoke.
At 2325, the flagship followed its commander into death, leaving only a handful of survivors who threw themselves into the shuttles to escape the bloodshed.
On May 2, the defeated troops rejoined the main fleet under Kaiser Reinhard. Wittenfeld’s Black Lancers had lost 6,220 of their original 15,900 ships and 695,700 of their original 1,908,000 men. Fahrenheit’s fleet had lost 8,490 of its 15,200 ships and 1,095,400 of its 1,857,600 men. And, above all, a senior admiral of the Lohengramm Dynasty had fallen on the battlefield for the first time.
“Fahrenheit is dead, then…”
Reinhard’s ice-blue eyes sank into grief. In this opening skirmish to the decisive battle, they had lost a member of their top military leadership. Despite fighting on the side of the kaiser’s enemies in the Lippstadt War, his genius in combat had seen him forgiven and welcomed by the blond conqueror. Reinhard surely regretted the loss deeply, but said nothing more. His gaze fell like a crystal sword on the other senior admiral, who had returned alive. This was Wittenfeld’s first taste of loss since the Battle of Amritsar, and the fearless admiral, face haggard but back as straight as he could manage, waited for the kaiser to unleash his wrath.
“Wittenfeld!”
“Yes, sir.”
“This error was very like you. Aware that it was a trap, you nevertheless stepped directly into it and attempted to tear your way through. Thousands died, and not one hero to be remembered.”
“I caused the needless death of a brother-in-arms and squandered thousands of Your Majesty’s troops,” said Wittenfeld, using all his strength to keep his voice steady. “I will resent no punishment you may deem appropriate for my idiocy.”
Reinhard shook his head, luxurious golden hair rippling like solid sunlight. “I do not mean to criticize you,” he said. “Better an error like you than unlike you. The task before you now is to take further action in keeping with your character to regain this lost ground. This is, I feel sure, what Admiral Fahrenheit would have wanted too. I, too, am more determined than ever to defeat Yang Wen-li. Lend me your strength.”
It was known that Fahrenheit had been named the fourth marshal of the Lohengramm Dynasty. Wittenfeld bowed his head deeply and was unable to raise it for some time. He was frankly touched by the magnanimity of his liege.
Von Reuentahl, however, standing beside the young conqueror, observed something rather different. He knew both consciously and unconsciously that the kaiser’s conquering spirit was currently focused entirely on one man: Yang Wen-li.
“Is it to be victory or death, then, mein Kaiser?” asked von Reuentahl.
Hilda, chief secretary to Kaiser Reinhard, stirred slightly and divided her gaze equally between the kaiser and von Reuentahl, who was also secretary-general of Supreme Command Headquarters.
“No,” said Reinhard. “The options are not victory or death. They are victory…or more perfect victory.” He laughed in a translucent voice. Sometimes he wondered if even he went over the top in his speech. For now, however, he had wanted to reaffirm his raison d’être. He felt at that moment throughout his entire body the bliss of pursuing victory on the battlefield.
It was the kaiser’s first smile in some time. This above all else made his bodyguard Emil von Selle happy.
I
IN KAISER REINHARD’S NAME, Imperial Military Command Headquarters announced publicly that Senior Admiral Adalbert Fahrenheit had fallen in battle and would be promoted posthumously to the rank of marshal.
This news also reached the Yang Fleet back in Iserlohn Fortress. Admiral Merkatz took a day to mourn his former brother-in-arms, a friend since their days in the Goldenbaum Dynasty, and was absent from the May 1 strategy meeting. His aide von Schneider took his place, but even he wore a mourning ribbon on his breast. This drew some barbed looks from Vice Admiral Murai, possibly the fleet’s sole stickler for protocol, but even he did not say anything. Walter von Schönkopf made certain highly unmilitary observations, including “Nothing like mourning dress for bringing out a woman’s beauty” that also drew Murai’s ire, including some looks that were not so much barbed as bristling with needles.
Yang was exhausted. He appeared to want nothing so much as
a glass full of sherry and a bath full of hot water, but this was not unusual for him. Before battle, when he was dreaming up ways to achieve the impossible, he came off like a creative artist, full of intelligence and vitality, but afterward, when the plan was carried out and the objectives achieved, he lolled around like an old hunting dog.
“Once the fighting’s over, he remembers that he hates it and gets put in a bad mood,” was Julian Mintz’s assessment. This was not meant cynically; if anything, it was intended as a defense of Yang’s sloth. Frederica Greenhill Yang, on the other hand, saw no need to defend her husband at all—in her opinion, his idleness was better counted as one of his virtues. Neither of the two were capable of a strict and objective assessment of his character.
“Our fleet has won the first battle, but will this affect the Imperial Navy’s basic strategy?” asked Murai. It was the custom in the Yang Fleet for him to open the strategy meetings with a suitably meeting-like question.
The youthful staff officers, assured, arrogant, and anarchical, quite obviously kept Murai at arm’s length. Captain Kasper Rinz, head of the Rosen Ritter brigade, had wanted to be a painter in his youth, and often sketched the other staff officers at meetings. When Rinz drew Murai, though, instead of capturing his face he simply filled the space between beret and collar with the word ORDER. Of course, without Murai’s eyes and mouth, it was highly doubtful whether this “band of fugitive mercenaries” could have maintained cohesion as a military unit.
“I don’t think it’ll change things much,” said Yang. “This wasn’t another Amritsar or Vermillion. We were just hiding meanly in our hole so that even the kaiser couldn’t choose his own field of battle.”
That “meanly” wasn’t Yang being humble—it was the truth. In tactical terms, Yang was neither generous nor an idealist. Until victory was achieved, he fought with extreme bitterness, giving no quarter whatsoever.
At this time, Dusty Attenborough had already begun giving orders for five million chain mines to be deployed at the entrance to the corridor, demonstrating that Olivier Poplin had been correct when he said that preparing for a fight was the only thing Attenborough wasn’t lazy about.
The consensus was that the mines would at least buy some time, and Yang did not argue against it. The ceaseless fighting had taken its toll on the Yang Fleet. Their tank beds, which left their users fully refreshed in no time at all, were running at full capacity, but with excitement, agitation, and anxiety tap-dancing through their minds, some of the troops visited the beds several types a day. As might be expected, there did not seem to be many in the “merry Yang Family” who were on the same psychological level as von Schönkopf, Attenborough, and Poplin. As for Julian, he was not suffering from fatigue, but he did feel as if his heart and lungs might suddenly destabilize at any moment.
How were things with the Imperial Navy?
Fahrenheit’s death and the defeat of the Black Lancers in the early fighting had come as a shock, of course, but had not critically wounded their psychology. Fahrenheit had been a talented general. The Black Lancers were strong and fearless. But neither were Kaiser Reinhard. And was not that justly praised leader proudly unfurling his perfect, uninjured golden wings even now?
Morale among the fighting men was high, but the navy’s leaders could not formulate strategy relying on morale alone. The Twin Ramparts of the navy met for discussion daily.
It was a commonplace notion in military studies that while a large force and significant strength were essential elements in establishing superiority at the strategic level, this was not necessarily true at the tactical level. Depending on the geography of the battlefield, superior size could even factor into defeat.
Mittermeier and von Reuentahl knew this to be true from their own experience. If force size had been the only thing that determined victory, the Goldenbaum Dynasty should have utterly eliminated the Free Planets Alliance at the Battle of Dagon; meanwhile, the alliance should have won at the Battle of Amritsar. A large military force could not function as intended unless it was supplied perfectly, provided with accurate information, and was free of idle soldiers—in that order. Faced with Iserlohn Corridor’s unique topography, von Reuentahl and Mittermeier were forced to keep that third item particularly in mind.
Not all accepted the view that the Battle of the Corridor was the final, glorious act in Kaiser Reinhard’s “Great Campaign” and therefore the most important battle of all for the kaiser. Some of the military historians of later ages argued that the “splendid refinement” that characterized the kaiser’s previous military actions was nowhere to be seen at Iserlohn, which instead played host to nothing but “an ostentatious display of military superiority”—but were these criticisms or regrets? In any case, Reinhard’s “military superiority” had never wavered, but that was because it had been employed in environments where military force was effective.
News that the Yang Fleet had mined the entrance to Iserlohn Corridor caused some furrowed brows among the Imperial Navy leadership. They could not grasp, immediately, what Yang Wen-li was planning. Was not dragging the enemy into the corridor his only tactical route to victory? Was he simply buying time before he would be forced to meet their invasion?”
“Why even carry directional Seffl particles, if not for cases like this?” said one attendee at the meeting. “Why not use them to open a path through the minefield, just as we did at Amritsar? What Yang is planning is irrelevant.”
Marshal von Reuentahl, secretary-general of Supreme Command Headquarters, dismissed this opinion at once. Their circumstances at Amritsar had been entirely different. Even if that had not been the case, their battlefield here was Iserlohn Corridor. It was cramped and narrow, and if it were “plugged” with a minefield their freedom of movement would be severely restricted.
“Suppose we use the Seffl particles to bore a hole in that plug,” von Reuentahl said. “The Yang Fleet will be waiting for us on the other side, ready to concentrate fire on that freshly bored hole. They will snipe our ships as they emerge from the hole, leaving us no opportunity to even return fire. The entire fleet could be lost.”
The fact remained, however, that to crush the Yang Fleet they would have to enter the corridor somehow.
“But perhaps we do not have to discard your idea entirely,” muttered von Reuentahl.
After half a day of thought, he presented his own proposal to Reinhard.
The kaiser nodded his assent, golden hair swaying. “Very good,” he said. “Our forces are seven or eight times the size of theirs. Surely enough to eliminate Yang Wen-li if we can only get inside the corridor.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty. With your assent, I shall move forward with execution. If you see any areas requiring additional work, of course, I shall amend them…”
“I see none at this time. If even your stratagem does not bring us victory, I will think of another method to counteract Yang’s scheming. You have done well.”
Oskar von Reuentahl, just like both his prince and his enemies, contained contradictions. A range of circumstantial evidence raises doubts about whether he truly hoped to see Kaiser Reinhard victorious in the end, but the strategy he had proposed on this occasion was probably the best, given the circumstances and conditions at the time.
Wolfgang Mittermeier, out of consideration for their kaiser as well as for his friend, also examined the proposal in detail, but he, too, found nothing that required amendment.
“A passing grade from the Gale Wolf! What an honor,” said von Reuentahl. “Perhaps there’s room on the staff at the space armada for me, too, eh?”
Mittermeier’s gray eyes, rich in vitality, flashed with recognition of his friend’s hidden meaning.
“No, I think not,” he said. “At least not among my staff officers. Our kaiser might not be the type to feel jealous of talented subordinates, but I am.”
Von Reuentahl smiled faintly at this feeble response to
his own feeble joke. The smile came through differently in his black right eye, his blue left eye, and his even lips.
“The Gale Wolf is too modest! The only men in the galaxy who can outthink me as strategists are mein Kaiser, Yang Wen-li, Merkatz, and you. That I only need to fight two of those is my great good fortune.”
Von Reuentahl’s voice put one in mind of the sound of an ocean current with multiple layers at different temperatures. After half a second of silence, Mittermeier seized his own earlobe.
“By your logic, more than half of today’s five greatest commanders are in our camp. If we work together for a common purpose, victory will be within our reach.”
Irritation showed suddenly on Mittermeier’s face.
“Enough, von Reuentahl. I do not understand why you and I always speak so archly. It was never necessary until very recently.”
Von Reuentahl nodded, smiling frankly at his old friend. “Just as you say,” he said. “Evening is here, and we have not yet even started drinking. I have a white from 446. No match for a 410, perhaps, but what do you say?”
II
At 0630 on May 3, SE 800, year 2 of the New Imperial Calendar, the Galactic Imperial Navy began its entry into Iserlohn Corridor under the direct command of Kaiser Reinhard. Even after losing more than a million souls in the first skirmishes of the battle, the imperial forces still numbered 146,600 ships and 16.2 million officers and men, with more in reserve at the rear—specifically, 15,200 ships under the command of Senior Admiral August Samuel Wahlen, currently stationed between the corridor and the former alliance capital Planet Heinessen. Yang Wen-li’s fleet, on the other hand, was already down to fewer than 20,000 ships. In terms of sheer numbers, the two sides simply bore no comparison.
Kaiser Reinhard was on the bridge of the fleet flagship Brünhild, where the viewscreen showed the Imperial Navy vanguard clearing mines as they advanced.
The “Silent Commander,” Senior Admiral Ernst von Eisenach, had been chosen by the kaiser to lead the strike force that would follow.
Desolation Page 8
