Desolation

by Yoshiki Tanaka

  “Who’s going to care?”

  “You should, for one! After all, you’re going to meet the second most beautiful man in the galaxy.”

  Frederica took a hairbrush from her night table and quickly tamed Yang’s hair as Hortense looked tactfully away.

  Leaving one of his typically inept kisses on his wife’s feverish cheek, Yang nodded to the Caselnes women and left the room. Julian was waiting in the hallway with Yang’s suitcase.

  When the door closed, Charlotte Phyllis slapped her mother’s knee with excitement and no small amount of emotion. “Did you and Papa ever act like that, Mama?” she asked.

  Hortense glanced sideways at Frederica. “Of course we did,” she said calmly.

  “But you don’t anymore?”

  “Well, Charlotte Phyllis, do you go back and practice the things you learned in kindergarten now that you’re in fourth grade?”

  Such was Julian’s parting from Yang. A faint shadow of unease remained in the young man’s breast, but it was far surpassed by his faith in the honor of Kaiser Reinhard. Little did he suspect the anguish that lay in wait mere days away. Gazing directly at the sun that was Reinhard, he had forgotten that the firmament held other stars too.

  Three days after Yang’s departure, the independent Phezzanese merchant Boris Konev came within communications range of Iserlohn Fortress. Konev had been crisscrossing former alliance territory and the area around Phezzan on assignment from Yang, gathering information and funding for the Yang Fleet. His vessel maintained radio silence to avoid the imperial dragnets, and had actually passed quite near Leda II some thirty hours earlier. As soon as he established contact with Iserlohn Fortress, the first words out of his mouth were, “I want to see Yang right now. Is he still alive?”

  “You’ve never been much of a comedian, but this material’s your worst yet,” said Poplin on his screen. “I’m pleased to report that Death is apparently on vacation and the commander is alive and well.”

  Only the tiniest of hourglasses would be needed to mark the time it took the dripping sarcasm to evaporate from Poplin’s voice as his expression changed completely. Konev bore ill tidings that lit warning lamps of deepest crimson in the minds of Iserlohn’s leadership and caused even Gjallarhorn itself to ring out in warning: Andrew Fork, architect of the disaster at Amritsar, had escaped from his psychiatric hospital and was bent on a new goal: the assassination of Yang Wen-li.

  Attenborough threw his black beret to the floor with rage. “Andrew Fork! Damn that worthless imbecile! Wasn’t killing twenty million at Amritsar four years ago enough for him? If he still isn’t satisfied, why doesn’t he do civilization and the environment a favor and just kill himself?”

  “I’m sure he thinks of this as his life’s work,” said von Schönkopf, voice dark and bitter as overbrewed coffee. “Beating Yang Wen-li, that is. He knows his achievements don’t measure up, so he’s found another solution: murder the competition.”

  Julian felt a chill run up and down within him like a broken elevator. Was Andrew Fork free by his own power? Or had someone—or some group—freed him? Was this truly a solitary madman on the run, or was it some monstrous game, with Fork nothing but a tightrope walker whose fall had been planned from the beginning?

  “Go after Yang and bring him back,” said von Schönkopf to Julian. “Everything else can wait. A small squadron would be best—we don’t want to make the empire nervous.” He then selected the men who would accompany Julian on his mission.

  And so, with confusion still not completely contained, a six-ship squadron of battleships led by Ulysses set out from Iserlohn in pursuit of Yang. The confusion they left to Caselnes to deal with. What he found most difficult was keeping the news from Yang’s wife on her sickbed. Even for one of the greatest officials in the history of the Free Planets Alliance, this was a great deal to ask.

  III

  Matters which had stagnated to the point of semifluidity suddenly began to flow in earnest once more. Though all ran in the same direction, there was no overarching order governing the many courses they described.

  “Everyone hoped for peace—peace under their own authority,” wrote one historian of a later age. “This common objective called for individual victories.” This was broadly correct, but Yang had no intention of insisting on his side’s authority over the other, which should have made a constructive result from the talks with Reinhard possible. Or, rather, if understanding and cooperation could not be established in that way, the only road left open to them would be a barren one, fueled by hatred and leading to destruction.

  What was more, if Yang was assassinated, the route to democratic republican governance would be closed off. Was Andrew Fork so driven by the foul leftovers of interpersonal competition that he meant to slay the philosophy and system he had once claimed to support? Julian Mintz cast around desperately for ways to prevent Fork’s profitless scheme from reaching fruition.

  The remnants of a radical alliance faction had set their sights on Yang Wen-li’s life. What if he reported this fact to the Imperial Navy and had them protect Yang? This idea came to Julian after leaving Iserlohn, as he was stewing in frustration over the limits of his power while traveling.

  But at the moment of moving from contemplation to decision, he hesitated. To entrust Yang’s life to the Imperial Navy was not in itself shameful. The request for a cease-fire and talks had been theirs, so the responsibility of guaranteeing Yang’s safety until his meeting with the kaiser—indeed, until that meeting was over—lay with them. In that light, it would have been acceptable to request from the beginning that they dispatch a battalion to escort Yang to the meeting place.

  But Julian could not suppress one terrifying thought.

  If elements of the Imperial Navy were to seize on this and harm Yang under the pretext of protecting him…

  There were surely those on the imperial side who viewed Yang Wen-li as an impediment to the imperial project of galactic unification who must be eliminated, whether that be through war or treachery. What if they approached him with talk of protection, then murdered him and blamed it on Andrew Fork? How could an escaped madman hope to assassinate Yang, after all? Powerful forces were surely pulling strings in the background. For example, Marshal von Oberstein, minister of military affairs for the empire and font of the Imperial Navy’s intrigues…

  This was prejudice, or perhaps overestimation of von Oberstein himself. It was true that he was constantly formulating and proposing schemes for crushing the kaiser’s enemies and other irritants to the Lohengramm Dynasty. But regarding the danger facing Yang on June 1, SE 800, his hands were in fact clean.

  At that time, von Oberstein was still on Phezzan, finding time between the endless tasks required of a minister of military affairs to engross himself in a certain project of his own design. He had not, of course, declared this publicly, but so long as he maintained his silence, it was not unnatural to suppose that he might be plotting against Yang Wen-li, enemy of the empire. Even if he had denied it, it is doubtful he would have been believed. His long personal history had fixed a certain impression and opinion of him in the public mind.

  Julian had no actual reason to fear or avoid von Oberstein, but this was a result of other factors. For him to fear an imagined von Oberstein was quite understandable. The outlines of the conspiracy against Yang were much as Julian imagined, even if the conspirators themselves were not.

  In short, Julian could not bring himself to seek assistance from the Imperial Navy, and von Schönkopf felt the same way. That left covert action as their only option.

  And so, from May 28 through 31, the former alliance end of Iserlohn Corridor and the surrounding sectors fell quietly into chaos.

  Somewhere unknown and unknowable, those who had conceived and directed this conspiracy squirmed in secret. However unhealthy and unconstructive their work had been, it had not been completed without the req
uisite painstaking effort. They had sheltered Andrew Fork, impressing a course to bloodshed on his disordered psyche by carefully pouring into his ear and then his heart the countless rhetorical justifications they had prepared. This done, they had put him in an armed merchant vessel and sent him off toward Iserlohn. As an organization, they had only barely survived the destruction of their religious headquarters, and this project consumed all their resources. They took the utmost care to keep their efforts secret from the Imperial Navy in particular, lest it all come to nothing. In this respect, the judgment of Julian and the others was not correct, but only those who claimed omniscience for themselves could have criticized them for it.

  “Your Grace…”

  “What is it?”

  “If I may be permitted to ask, is it truly safe to leave the assassination of Yang Wen-li to a nonbeliever like Fork?”

  Archbishop de Villiers looked at the pinched, dogmatic face of the aged bishop who had asked the question. Concealing a lazy smile within, he said, “Worry not. I am aware that Fork is not a man worthy of such an important task. This time, the goals of our faith must be achieved.”

  His solemn, confident tone alone was enough to satisfy the bishop, but de Villiers continued.

  “Andrew Fork is but a mannequin of straw, made only to be burned. The merit for this deed will accrue to good and loyal followers of our faith. Why should we bestow the honor of eliminating the wisest military leader in the galaxy to some heathen fool?”

  That honor rightly belongs to me. The young archbishop did not speak these words, but the light that gleamed in the corner of his eyes was eloquent enough. The light was more worldly than holy, but his questioner had already lowered his graying head in reverence and did not see; he departed deeply moved.

  To de Villiers, the faith of the Terraists was a means to an end, and the Church of Terra itself nothing more than a concrete manifestation of that means. In his irreligious and calculating attitudes and behavior, the person of de Villiers was if anything a universal type found far beyond the church’s narrow confines. Had he been born only slightly nearer to the Galactic Empire’s capital planet of Odin, he would surely have devoted himself to advancement in government or military service. Had he been born into the Free Planets Alliance, he could have chosen a path that suited his talents and abilities and ambitions, whether politics, industry, or academia—although whether he would have succeeded is another question.

  Instead, he had drawn his first breath on a distant planet on the periphery of the empire, which combined vast territory with an unforgiving philosophy of governance. What was more, that planet was not in the domain of the present or the future but the past, forcing him to choose more obscure means to rise from the miserable position forced upon him. And what, de Villiers thought, could be wrong about entrusting his future to such means?

  “Fork!” he muttered. “If he’d had the sense to die after graduating from officers’ school, he wouldn’t have had to live the shameful life he did.”

  Contempt on the part of those planning an assassination for those who would carry out the deed was far from uncommon. In this case, de Villiers likely despised Fork for having failed to take advantage of any of the rich possibilities open to him in life. De Villiers himself now sought nearly the only possibility he himself had in the Church of Terra. He would have to strengthen his position internally while expanding its reach overall.

  A theocracy with dominion over all of humanity. An autocratic, unimpeachable pope with absolute authority over both the holy and the profane. If this magnificent fresco could be painted only in blood, de Villiers saw no reason to balk at shedding it.

  IV

  What did Yang Wen-li himself think the chances were that he might be assassinated?

  Less than a year earlier, he had almost been terminated by the very government he served. If he had been able to detect this danger in advance, it was not by peering into a crystal ball. He had sensed watchful eyes that should not have been there on his honeymoon with Frederica, and when matters escalated to improper detention he had been able to analyze the reasons.

  Yang was neither omniscient nor omnipotent, so the limits of his prophetic powers were defined by the information he was able to gather and his own powers of analysis. He did not dislike intellectual games, so he had explored the possibility of his own assassination from a variety of angles, but there were limits to this process as well. Had he been able to accurately discern the truth—that the Church of Terra was planning to eliminate him, using Andrew Fork as their tool—he would have been something other than human. In any case, he was faced with a different problem that demanded his primary attention.

  “Those who look directly at the sun have no hope of seeing its feebler cousins—and Yang’s concentration was fixed on Kaiser Reinhard.”

  Thus was the judgment of later ages, and although it emphasized the greatness of Reinhard more than was necessary, its thrust was correct. Yang had to think above all on Reinhard’s character, his inclinations; the Church of Terra simply did not command his attention.

  Additionally, there were certain patterns of thought that only made sense within the church itself—specifically, the fear that Reinhard and Yang would collude, with the former directing the latter to bring the Terraists to heel. Nor did Yang have any way of knowing that de Villiers was plotting his assassination as a show of power to strengthen the archbishop’s own position. Yang had taken note of the church even before the discovery of its relationship with Phezzan, but he could never have deduced the murderous intent it harbored toward him from what he knew.

  It was also commonly accepted at that juncture that, if any terrorists were planning attacks, Kaiser Reinhard would be their target. As he had neither wife nor issue, the Lohengramm Dynasty was essentially Reinhard and his inner circle; if he died, the dynasty would fall and galactic unity would be lost. Any assassination of Reinhard would be carried out by one who stood against him as an enemy; it would be an act with reason, with meaning. Surely there were some who remained loyal to the Goldenbaum Dynasty that he had deposed.

  What, on the other hand, had anyone to gain from assassinating Yang? It would only strengthen Reinhard’s grip on power by eliminating his greatest enemy.

  In any case, even if there was some danger, Yang was in no position to refuse a meeting with Kaiser Reinhard on those grounds.

  Speaking to his secretary Hilda—the Countess von Mariendorf, who would in the very near future become chief advisor of imperial headquarters—Reinhard had said clearly, “I shall reach out to Yang Wen-li, but there will be no second chance for him if he refuses my hand.”

  Given Reinhard’s personality and his dignity as kaiser, this was not unexpected. Yang’s insight in this area was precisely why he could not allow his sole opportunity to pass. Warring against an overwhelmingly larger force and destroying more of their ships than his own side had lost—not to mention killing two of the Imperial Navy’s greatest generals—was proof, if any was needed, of Yang’s tactical abilities and the fighting spirit of his side. But the dust had now settled, and the superiority of the empire’s position was unchanged.

  And this strategic superiority was not something Reinhard welcomed. Strange as it is to say, the correctness of the “attack from the front and wear the enemy down” strategy was distinctly unpleasant to him as a tactician and a military adventurer.

  Larger forces defeating smaller ones is the basis of a strategist’s thinking, but tacticians often thrill to victory by a small force over a large one. They locate the height of beauty in dramatically overturning the enemy’s strategic advantage by implementing startling ideas on the battlefield.

  “Victory beyond belief, snatched against all expectations from the jaws of defeat—how many tacticians have been lured to their doom by the devil whispering of such things?” This warning had been current since human society marked its years with “AD,” and its tr
uth was unchanged in Reinhard’s time.

  Reinhard had so far proved immune to that sweet and deadly temptation. He assembled vast armies, chose the right times and places for their movements, delegated authority to superior commanders, and did not overlook supply lines and communications. He had never once let those on his front lines, including himself, go hungry. That was proof that he was not one of the countless irresponsible military adventurers.

  However, after the first Battle of the Corridor in 800 SE—year 2 of the New Imperial Calendar—Reinhard seemed strongly dissatisfied with the performance of his navy as well as his own performance as their leader. For his representatives like Marshals von Reuentahl and Mittermeier, the battle had indeed been unbearable. Despite the rationality shown by the kaiser in establishing strategic security, he had barely made use of it in command on the actual battlefield. In the second half of the battle, Reinhard had forced staggering losses on the Yang Fleet by bombarding them with overwhelming numbers, but whatever the rate of attrition, in absolute terms the Imperial Navy had lost more. And then, just when this war of resources had begun to seem winnable, he had withdrawn.

  “Does the kaiser love war, or only bloodshed?”

  No small number among the frontline commanders were indignantly asking this question, frustrated by the sense of futility they felt. Of course, they had no way of knowing at that time that the kaiser was confined to his bed with fever.

  When Mittermeier heard a commander voice this criticism in person, he slapped the man so hard that he fell to the floor. This treatment seemed harsh, but he had no choice. If he overlooked the discontent, not only would the kaiser’s authority be damaged, the officer who had voiced he opinions could be executed for lèse-majesté. Mittermeier’s slap had been necessary to end the incident on the spot, and his decisive measure was worthy of praise.

  However, Mittermeier himself felt a sense of peril far deeper than the dissatisfaction among his subordinates. The perceptive marshal had seen a crack like a thread of diamond appear in the kaiser’s nature. It was an estrangement between his reason as a strategist and his sensitivity as a tactician. Up until now, these had been held together by strong psychological unity, but the bond seemed to be growing weaker.