“These orders are the greatest honor a warrior could possibly receive. I shall spare no effort to carry out Your Majesty’s wishes, and if those efforts should be insufficient I shall apologize with my life. Sieg Kaiser!”
…is what Eisenbach did not say, instead making only a deferential, silent bow before leaving the kaiser’s presence.
One by one, the other admirals received their orders and set off to their posts. Wittenfeld, who had tasted the bitter chalice of defeat in the first engagement, was given temporary command of the former Fahrenheit Fleet in addition to his own, giving him almost twenty thousand ships in total. The implication was as clear to Wittenfeld as it was to everyone else: the kaiser had high expectations of the ferocious commander’s burning desire for revenge.
Neidhart Müller, youngest of the senior admirals, was assigned to guard the rear. He had played this role at almost every stage of the kaiser’s Great Campaign since its commencement the previous year. The truth was that the Imperial Navy simply could not eliminate the uncertainty that lay in its wake as it advanced across the galaxy. Behind them stretched a vast territory that had once belonged to their now-defeated enemy. If organized rebellion should arise, it might be beyond the ability of even the seasoned Wahlen to put down. In such a case, Müller would turn back from the battlefield and cooperate with Wahlen to secure the widest possible route back to the empire’s home territory for the rest of the fleet. He was also responsible for defending against enemy attack from the rear, although that seemed impossible in their present situation.
The man who had been entrusted with the vanguard and tasked with cleaning the minefield as he plunged into the depths of the corridor was Vice Admiral Rolf Otto Brauhitsch. It was a grueling operation of more than half a day, but he completed this assignment eventually.
Brauhitsch had formerly served under Siegfried Kircheis. After Kircheis’s death, he had come under the direct command of Reinhard. Whether on the front lines or at the rear, his ability to deal with situations as they arose was first-rate, and his meticulous advance preparations and decisive leadership in battle belied his youth. Sometimes, however, he was accused of forgetting the preparations he himself had made and rushing in blindly. Perhaps it was simply that while his bravery was inborn, his attention to detail was the fruit of conscious effort.
At 2100 on May 3, Brauhitsch fired his first volley at the Yang Fleet. Return fire tore through the dark void toward him precisely fifteen seconds later. Points and beams of light multiplied by the half second until his screen had become a vast, rippling curtain of light.
From this moment on, Iserlohn Corridor was a dizzying kaleidoscope of devastation and slaughter.
In short order, the Brauhitsch Fleet was taking concentrated fire. Worse yet, the minefield behind them made retreat all but impossible.
This was all as expected—indeed, part of their strategy. Brauhitsch carried out the instructions he had received from the kaiser and divided his 6,400 ships into squadrons of one hundred to avoid the concentration of enemy fire, but the fleet took no little damage while executing this maneuver. With walls of fire and light penning them in both fore and aft, the vanguard of the Imperial Navy had been forced into a perilous position.
At 0220 on May 4, secretary-general of Supreme Command Headquarters Marshal von Reuentahl ordered the commencement of the operation’s second phase.
The release of directional Seffl particles began. The minefield was run through by five invisible pillars of cloud, which when ignited became five vast dragons of flame dancing in the void. It was both a magnificent sight and a ferocious manifestation of the terror within that very magnificence. Eventually the dragons burned themselves out, leaving five tunnels through the minefield like the fingers of some colossal god that had seized the dragons and crushed them.
High-speed cruisers poured into the five tunnels.
When they emerged into the corridor, the former alliance forces quickly showered them in fire, and many exploded into balls of flame. However, it was impossible to maintain suppressive fire on five entrances at once—and, above all, the cruisers were a diversion. While the Yang Fleet’s attention was focused on the five tunnels, the Imperial Navy’s main forces were making their entry through the path that Brauhitsch had so painstakingly cleared into the corridor proper.
After two hours of pitched battle, the imperial military finally established what might be called a bridgehead within Iserlohn Corridor.
The pure-white form of Kaiser Reinhard’s flagship Brünhild emerged into the corridor at 1200 on May 5, and the Yang Fleet’s communications channel filled at once with vocalized tension and anxiety.
“The kaiser’s made his appearance. Are we ready to present our bouquet?” asked Attenborough, in a rather subdued style for him. He steadied his breathing and heartbeat, then slapped his commander’s desk and shouted, “Fire!”
Attenborough was the most accomplished student of the Yang Wen-li school of one-point concentrated fire. Tens of thousands of beams of light fell on hundreds of individual points in space like torrential rain. It was a perfect combination of calculation and practice.
The densely packed Imperial Navy was unable to avoid the frontal cannon fire. An inaudible roar of destruction pounded ships and humans alike, and waterfalls of heat and light poured in every direction.
The corridor filled with tiny, newly created stars. Spirals of energy sparked a chain reaction and flooded the narrow corridor with dark, torrential flows. Both sides were thrown into disarray, and the energy beams were also knocked off course, reducing their hit rate. For a moment, the front lines were pure chaos. The first to regain some grip on order was the Yang Fleet, which was accustomed to fighting in the corridor. Just as Mittermeier was struggling against harassing fire and Iserlohn’s cramped dimensions to scrape together a proper formation, the Yang Fleet closed in and showered his ships in cannon fire.
“Left wing, fall back! Right wing and center, advance!”
Mittermeier hoped to draw in the vanguard of the Yang Fleet with the retreat of his left wing, while simultaneously rotating in a half circle counterclockwise to attack the enemy from their port flank. None but the Gale Wolf could have even hoped to execute such a dynamic maneuver.
Had Mittermeier succeeded, Yang would doubtless have been put in a difficult position. The movement of the imperial fleet, however, did not match the speed of his orders at that moment. His communication systems were also functioning imperfectly, and he lacked sufficient room to maneuver his enormous forces freely. Yang did not miss the moment when the Imperial Navy fell into slight confusion, and gave orders to fire.
Brünhild’s screen filled with billowing explosions. Hundreds of the ships guarding the unspoiled white goddess erupted into pulsing flame and were torn to pieces. But the fleet flagship remained hidden behind the rest of the Imperial Navy’s dense formation.
Mittermeier made a noise of frustration and turned to his aide, Lieutenant Commander Amsdorf.
“While I was letting them flatter me with titles like ‘marshal’ and ‘commander in chief of the Imperial Space Armada,’ it seems that my feel for command in battle was dulled,” he said. “Can you imagine? Formulating a plan without ensuring that the entire fleet could keep up!”
Mittermeier sought and received permission from the kaiser to transfer from Brünhild to his own flagship Beowulf and enter the fray at the front. It was 2015 hours on May 4.
III
“The Gale Wolf has arrived at the front lines!”
The Imperial Navy’s communications channel filled with cheers. The only man in the imperial military whose popularity among the enlisted men compared to Mittermeier’s was the kaiser himself. Even von Reuentahl would come in third.
Calmly exposing himself to enemy fire, Mittermeier reformulated the fleet’s tactics and then gave orders to his subordinates for execution.
“Bayerlei
n, go!”
The young officer felt his heart race faster at the order from his beloved and respected commander. Bayerlein had around six thousand ships under him at that time. It was not a large force in the context of the Imperial Navy, but it was superbly agile and responsive. Mittermeier, restricted by the shape of the corridor from much more than advancing in a single column, had Bayerlein form a wing for potential half encirclement.
They were met by Dusty Attenborough’s battalion. Yang had recognized Mittermeier’s strategic intentions and deemed it imperative that Bayerlein be stopped.
As commanders in battle, Bayerlein and Attenborough were more or less equals. The imbalance was one of resources. Attenborough could muster only 80 percent of the forces that his enemy could develop as a vanguard. If the situation slipped from frontal clash to mixed battle, he would be overwhelmed before long.
As a result, he decided to lure Bayerlein into a position between Attenborough’s battalion and the main body of the Yang Fleet in order to launch a pincer attack. And so, just five minutes after their first engagement, Attenborough began his retreat and invited the enemy to charge.
Bayerlein recognized the trap, but nothing would be achieved by turning back now. Trusting in Mittermeier to think of something, he accepted Attenborough’s invitation and surged ahead, accelerating as he went and wildly firing energy beams and missiles, almost as if to intentionally waste energy.
Yang’s tactical activities at this point were unusually refined. While checking Mittermeier’s movements with cannon fire, he directed his vanguard to move forward with full speed at a ten o’clock angle.
By the time Bayerlein realized what was happening, Yang almost had him half-encircled. A hurried retreat allowed Bayerlein to keep his losses to a minimum.
Mittermeier couldn’t suppress a short but rather serious rueful chuckle. “The Magician’s toying with Bayerlein now? He’s in a class of his own.”
Without Yang Wen-li’s leadership and strategy, the El Facil Revolutionary Reserve Force would have been a disorderly rabble at best. On the other hand, so long as Yang was guiding them, the units under his command were the crème de la crème, the strongest in the galaxy, striking on the left and parrying on the right, first advancing and then falling back, so vigorous and active that their twenty thousand ships could stand against five times that many. Of course, this came at the cost of attrition by fatigue. Even if their spirits remained high, their bodies would gradually falter when trying to obey orders.
That, Mittermeier mused, was when his chance of victory would arrive—but there was no guarantee that the Imperial Navy would hold together that long. If that were not enough, the topography would force them to deploy their resources piecemeal—almost one by one.
Reinhard, von Reuentahl, and Mittermeier were all thoroughly aware of how unwise this was, but having been drawn into the corridor, they had no other choice. The only option they could see was to continue piling force upon force and grinding the Yang Fleet down as best they could.
Nevertheless, Mittermeier’s tactical direction, too, was near supernatural in its accuracy and alacrity. Just like his close friend von Reuentahl, Mittermeier nursed some private criticisms on the strategic level regarding the kaiser’s campaign of conquest. Having received his orders, however, he confined his thinking to the tactical level and concentrated all his knowledge and ability as a commander on establishing an advantage in the battlefield before him. He used the forces he had available to create thousand-ship battle units of two types, one focused on mobility and the other on firepower, and used these units to reinforce the battle lines wherever they seemed in danger of collapsing. He also kept the supply and medical ships running at full capacity to keep fleet logistics knitted organically together.
As a result, although the Imperial Navy recognized the advantage the Yang Fleet enjoyed, it did not flee, and indeed stubbornly maintained order to a degree that even Yang had to admire.
“That’s the Gale Wolf for you,” he said. “Nothing ostentatious about his tactics, but not just any admiral could pull them off.”
In truth, Mittermeier would have dismissed this praise as foolishness. The Imperial Navy was vastly more powerful than its enemy, and yet they had entered a battlefield so cramped that it robbed them of their very freedom of movement. Those at the rear of their forces were unable to join the fray at all, and could only watch the situation unfold from afar through a wall of their allies.
“I’ve left men idle,” Mittermeier muttered to himself. “What kind of commander am I?” He felt deeply embarrassed at this failure to master and apply even the fundamentals of military learning.
On May 6, Yang attacked the Imperial Navy using a strategy suggested by Merkatz. Yang, Merkatz, and Attenborough hammered the enemy’s left wing—narrow, but still there—in succession. When the Imperial Navy began pouring its main force into that wing to reinforce it, Commodore Marino led a strike team into the core of their main force. This was not an unorthodox plan; if anything, it was the height of orthodoxy, but that was exactly why it was likely to succeed—and, indeed, it very nearly did.
“All right, go!” Marino shouted, stamping his foot. “Let’s give that lovely kaiser of theirs the loveliest funeral they’ve ever seen!”
Excited by his own voice, breathing fast, Marino dove toward Brünhild like lightning to a lightning rod.
Senior Admiral Steinmetz realized the danger to his prince. His fleet was in a long, narrow formation, not necessarily the most advantageous for battle, but they did have the edge in numbers. They lunged toward Marino from the front and left to stop his approach.
Unnerved by the size and momentum of the enemy fleet, Marino’s strike force broke right. After a thirty-minute skirmish, Marino had lost 40 percent of his ships. Their formation was collapsing and they were on the verge of a rout. What saved them was the main body of the Yang Fleet.
“Main enemy force approaching in tight formation!” bellowed Steinmetz’s operator. Steinmetz ordered his men to welcome the intruders with cannon fire, but their aim was far less precise than the gunners of the Yang Fleet. Soon the Steinmetz Fleet was a mass of fireballs and light stretching over tens of thousands of kilometers.
By this point the main Yang Fleet and Merkatz’s fleet had wordlessly united. Side by side, they alternated attacks on the Steinmetz Fleet until, surprisingly quickly, it was taken apart.
Steinmetz’s flagship Vonkel took three simultaneous rail gun slugs at 1150 on May 6. Fire followed explosion, and the ship’s interior was engulfed in panic. The god of flames swung his sword on the bridge, laying the officers low and sending equipment and instruments flying with a wave of intense heat. As shrieks of agony gave way to dying groans, Steinmetz’s adjutant Commander Serbel looked around for the admiral through the blood and fire and smoke. Steinmetz had fallen facedown beside him. Serbel coughed up a bloody mass and then opened his redly stained mouth to speak.
“Your Excellency’s left leg is utterly crushed,” he said.
“Your reports always were accurate,” Steinmetz replied, unsmiling. “I don’t know how many times they’ve saved me.” He looked at the left side of his lower body in an almost businesslike manner. He had almost no feeling in his leg. “I think this is it for me, though. Are you wounded?”
He got no reply. Serbel had already collapsed facedown in a pool of his own blood, now rapidly evaporating from the heat coming through the floor from the level below. He was completely still.
Steinmetz called for his chief of staff, Bohlen. As expected, there was no reply. The numbness spread to his right leg and hip as his hemorrhaging worsened. Night fell on his field of vision, and invisible barriers went up in his ear canals.
“Gretchen!” he murmured, and breathed his last.
Even von Reuentahl had to pause for a moment as his heterochromiac eyes reflected the rainbow of light engulfing the Vonkel. Reinhard glance
d back over his shoulder at his secretary-general. The young emperor’s face was half lit up by the beams of light from the screen like a sculpture of porcelain and obsidian.
“Did Steinmetz abandon ship?” Reinhard asked.
“I will check right away, mein Kaiser.”
Von Reuentahl did not even notice the four half moments of stunned silence he had required before replying.
The only member of Steinmetz’s command center to survive was Rear Admiral Markgraf. It took three minutes before he was able to report the death of his commander. Kaiser Reinhard put one hand to his fair brow at the news of a second admiral lost. His long-lashed lids were closed for only a moment before they opened again and his ice-blue eyes sought out a single person.
“Fräulein von Mariendorf.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“I hereby appoint you the new chief advisor of imperial headquarters. You are to take Steinmetz‘s place as my lieutenant.”
Hilda was taken aback, notwithstanding her usual insight.
“But, Your Majesty, I—”
Reinhard raised his hand, as white as if it had been carved from halite, and silenced the countess’s objection.
“I know. You have never led so much as a single soldier. But leading the troops is the job of the frontline commanders, and leading the commanders is the job of the kaiser. All I ask is that you advise me. Who will object to me selecting my staff as I see fit?”
Hilda bowed respectfully, tactfully refraining from naming the one person who would indeed object, with very high probability.
IV
At this point in the battle, the Imperial Navy’s formation was collapsing, and even Mittermeier’s preternatural direction could not entirely reverse the trend. The fleet Steinmetz had commanded was not by any means underpowered, but with its command center gone it could not coordinate its movements, and even its valiant defense against the Yang Fleet’s offensive was almost entirely ineffective. In fact, because it was spreading in a disorderly fashion to both left and right, it was actually making things worse by confusing the chain of command among its allies.
Desolation Page 9
