Desolation

by Yoshiki Tanaka

  What Yang liked about life in Iserlohn Fortress was that, as it was only a peripheral military installation, no one outranked him there, so he was far less bothered by entertaining and public responsibilities than he had been on Heinessen. In practical terms he was the dictator of a fortress-city, and could have behaved like some medieval princeling. But there is ample testimony that his lifestyle and behavior fell far short of that extreme. His complete lack of interest in seeking the privileges of a high-ranking military officer was less due to self-control than character, but it was worthy of praise all the same.

  Even historians who took a negative view of Yang had to admit that he was by no means an average man. On the other hand, even those who viewed him favorably had to concede a kind of passivity that prevented him from seeking more opportunities with more allies.

  At the Rescue of El Facil, where Yang had first made a name for himself, he had been a callow youth of twenty-one. The civilian authorities had stubbornly doubted the viability of his proposal. Unable to reveal to others the brilliant strategy he bore within his breast, Yang had simply repeated “No need for concern”—the least valuable utterance since the birth of civilization—and not even attempted to convince them. Bringing people on different psychological wavelengths, or with different values, around to his way of thinking was an unbearable burden to him, and in that respect he lacked entirely the sort of character necessary for a man of politics.

  “If I don’t like someone, I don’t care if they don’t like me either. If I don’t want to understand someone, it doesn’t matter if they don’t understand me”—such, we may conclude, was Yang’s true thinking. Of course, we also have evidence that he did not isolate himself to the extent that he needed neither friendship nor understanding: when he discovered that his ward Julian Mintz was able to receive his transmissions, he taught the boy all he knew about tactics and strategy, delighting in his intelligence. It was not Yang’s intention to shape his ward into a military man, but he inadvertently cultivated the qualities within Julian that would make him an excellent one all the same. Julian was a kind of mirror reflecting the estrangement between Yang’s genius and his hopes.

  Having ended what one historian called his “short, variegated life filled with inconsistencies and victories,” Yang Wen-li, his remains under the guard of his subordinates, floated through the void back to his castle.

  III

  Ulysses rendezvoused with the five other craft that had been following closely behind it, and the funeral procession returned to Iserlohn Fortress. They arrived at the base at 1130 on June 3.

  Julian and von Schönkopf had had to take care of several problems on the way.

  To begin with, the three captured Terraists were interrogated. That the attitude of their interrogators failed, at times, to emphasize empathy and shared humanity, is a fact. When no answers were forthcoming, the men of the Rosen Ritter, who had lost their commander and many brothers-in-arms, grew even more furious.

  “Admiral, please turn the Terraists over to us,” said Rinz to von Schönkopf. “They’ll never talk anyway. Let’s give them the vivid martyrdom they crave.”

  Rinz’s subordinates elaborated on this abstract proposal with more specific suggestions.

  “Throw them alive into the fusion reactor!”

  “No! We slice them up slowly, flushing each slice into the sewer as we go!”

  Von Schönkopf looked them over, seeing the thirst for vengeance in them. “No need to rush,” he said. “Iserlohn has a fusion reactor too. A big one.” In the coldness of his tone was an ominous intensity beyond the experience of even the men of the Rosen Ritter.

  The crowd ebbed away, and von Schönkopf and Julian exchanged a look too deep to be called mere melancholy.

  “Patrichev and Blumhardt followed the commander into the unknown, then. They’ll make good chess partners for him if the imperials are right about Valhalla.”

  Julian nodded. “Both of them were even worse at the game than him,” he said. Wind spiraled through his soul. These meaningless, pointless conversations felt to him like sowing seed on a concrete wasteland. And yet, he feared that unless he kept saying something, the concrete would flood into him, reaching his very capillaries, and petrify him from head to toe.

  “I didn’t defect from the empire to feel like this,” said von Schönkopf. “Surely this can’t be punishment for betraying my homeland?”

  Julian was silent.

  “It might have saved me some trouble to destroy the empire instead of just abandoning it. Well, that’s in the past now. Our problem is what comes next.“

  “What comes next?”

  “That’s right. Yang Wen-li’s dead. Don’t plug your ears! Marshal Yang is dead. Dead! And it wasn’t Kaiser Reinhard who killed him, either. His final surprise for us! Not that I’m happy about it, mind you.”

  Von Schönkopf pounded the table, which creaked in protest. Julian sensed himself growing as pale as the admiral. An intriguing question: when all the blood ran from your body, where did it go? When you bled from the soul, where did it end up?

  “But here we are,” von Schönkopf continued. “Alive. That means we have to think about what comes next. How we’re going to fight the kaiser from now on.”

  “From now on?”

  Julian heard himself answer in a voice he could barely believe was his own. A string of phonemes devoid of intellect or reason.

  “I can’t even think about that now. Not with Marshal Yang gone…”

  Yang had done all their thinking for them. Why to fight, how to fight, what to do afterward—Yang had supplied all the answers. Julian and the others had just followed him. Now, it seemed, they would have to start thinking for themselves.

  “Should we surrender, then?” asked von Schönkopf. “Bend the knee and swear fealty to the kaiser? Fair enough, I suppose. Not unnatural for a band of mercenaries to fall apart when the head mercenary goes.”

  Julian was at a loss for words. After two and a half seconds, von Schönkopf gave him a short, wordless grin.

  “If that doesn’t interest you,” he said, “we’ll have to stick together, since they outnumber us. And if we’re going to stick together, we need a leader. We need a successor to Yang.”

  “I know, but…”

  How could we possibly choose a successor to Yang? Just as most of a solar system’s mass was in its central star, the constellation that was the Yang Fleet had only shone so brightly because of Yang himself. Could another leader achieve the same feat? On the other hand, von Schönkopf was right—if no successor to Yang could be found, the fleet would be forced to disband.

  “One more question,” said von Schönkopf.

  “There’s more?”

  “This one might be even more important. Who tells Yang’s wife?”

  Surely no question could have been as unhappy, as unpleasant, and yet as unavoidable as this one. Nevertheless, wearing the expression of a man with a mouthful of diesel oil, von Schönkopf had done his minor duty as the older of the two and raised it anyway.

  Julian felt suffocated by the magnitude of the problem. Von Schönkopf was right—who would report the news to Frederica Greenhill Yang? Your husband died not on the bridge of his flagship facing down the kaiser, but all alone in a corridor of a cruiser. Cornered and desperate, he suddenly hit on a potential escape route.

  “Why don’t we ask Mrs. Caselnes?” he said. “She might—”

  “Yes, the thought had occurred to me too,” said von Schönkopf. “That might be for the best. Shameful as it is, men aren’t strong enough for things like this.”

  The acid-tongued fugitive noble offered no criticism of Julian’s attempt to escape. It was the first time Julian had ever seen him like this. His vitality and spirit had seemed limitless, but now it had dried up like a river in a time of drought, exposing the riverbed to the sun.

  The same
went for the others. The same would go for everyone at Iserlohn, too. Julian shivered. With the loss of their central star, what would become of the planets and moons that had orbited it? He stood rooted to the floor, in the grip of fear so strong it overwhelmed even his grief.

  IV

  And so, at 1130 on June 3, the funeral procession docked at Iserlohn.

  Caselnes, Attenborough, and Merkatz had learned of Yang’s death through top secret comm channel, and met Ulysses as it arrived. A cluster of alabaster statues under an old fluorescent light—these were invincible men who had led armies of millions back and forth across the galaxy; now they wrapped wounded souls in their uniforms and awaited a single young envoy.

  “Julian.” Caselnes forced his voice palely from his throat. “Even under the best of circumstances, Yang would have died fifteen years before you. But he was six years younger than me. Hardly seems fair that I should have to be the one to give him the send-off.”

  These words were the best that one of the highest-ranking officers in the Alliance Armed Forces could come up with. That alone spoke to the depth of his shock.

  Julian did not see Olivier Poplin. Later he learned that, upon hearing the news, Poplin had said only “Yang Wen-li’s no good to me dead” before locking himself in his quarters with a case of whiskey.

  “Has Frederica…?”

  “Heard? No. We haven’t told her. You’ll do that for us, won’t you?”

  “I don’t want to tell her any more than you do. We were hoping your wife might help…”

  But when her husband conveyed Julian’s request, Hortense Caselnes wanted no part of it. “Julian,” she said, calm but firm refusal in her uncharacteristically pallid face, “this is your responsibility and your duty. You’re her family. If you can’t tell her, who can? And if you don’t, you’ll come to regret that much more than you would just breaking the news to her.”

  Julian had to admit that she was right. He even felt ashamed. Frederica, after all, had no one to receive the news of her husband’s passing on her behalf. It was something she would have to do herself too. Julian’s gaze turned to the officers. Caselnes shook his head hurriedly; von Schönkopf, slowly. Merkatz, his eyes half-closed, said nothing. Attenborough moved his pale lips silently, but Julian read the words they formed: Are you kidding? Julian wanted to sigh, but his breathing was already becoming irregular.

  Resigned to his fate, he knocked on Frederica’s door. His vision and hearing seemed to malfunction the moment she opened it.

  “Julian! That was quick. When did you get back?”

  Both smile and voice were blurred in outline. Julian managed some kind of reply. An empty conversation began. Three exchanges, four—and then, suddenly, a crystal clear sentence passed through his auditory nerve to pierce his heart.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  Julian trembled. Frederica’s hazel eyes seemed to be looking through his physical form into his gallery of memories. Mustering all the vocal-cord function he could, he finally forced out an insubstantial reply: “What makes you think that?”

  “Well, what else could you be so obviously unwilling to say? So it’s true, then. He’s dead.”

  Julian opened his mouth. Words, not under the control of his will, spooled themselves out. “Yes,” he said. “That’s right. Marshal Yang has passed on. He was killed by Church of Terra fanatics to prevent his meeting with the kaiser. I tried to save him, but I was too late. I’m so sorry. It took everything I had to bring him back.”

  “I wish you were a liar, Julian,” said Frederica after a brief pause. “Then I wouldn’t have to believe this either.” She spoke as if deciphering an ancient inscription on a tablet of clay. “I knew something was wrong, somehow. Admiral Caselnes wouldn’t show his face, and Mrs. Caselnes was acting strangely, too…”

  She trailed off into silence. A gigantic dragon was rising from a trench far beneath her surface of awareness and sensibility. Julian’s whole body stiffened as he sensed its presence. Frederica lowered her gaze to the floor. Julian was afraid that he would flee at the moment she began to cry.

  Frederica raised her face again. It was dry, but her vitality and reality seemed wiped away by the sponge of grief.

  “He wasn’t supposed to die this way,” she said. “He should have died the way he lived…”

  With the tumult of war more than a generation in the past, an old man lives in an age of peace. They say he was once a famous warrior, but few remain who saw this with their own eyes, and he himself never brags of his military service. Treated by his young family members with seven parts affection and three parts neglect, he lives now on his pension. His sunroom has a large rocking chair where he can sit for hours until called for dinner, reading so quietly he almost becomes part of the furniture too. Day after day, as if time has stopped.

  One day, the old man’s granddaughter is playing outside when she accidentally throws her ball through the sunroom’s entrance. It comes to rest by his feet. Normally, he would reach down slowly to pick it up for her, but this time he does not move, as if ignoring her calls. She runs in for her ball, then looks up into her grandfather’s face to scold him—but senses something she cannot explain.

  —Grandpa?

  There is no answer. The setting sun illuminates the man’s face, peaceful as if in sleep, from the side. Still clutching her ball, the girl runs into the living room to report what she has seen.

  —Mommy! Daddy! Something’s wrong with Grandpa!

  As the girl’s voice recedes into the distance, the old man still sits in his rocking chair. Eternal peace slowly begins to fill his face, as if the tide were coming in…

  That, thinks Frederica, is how Yang Wen-li should have died. It is less a certainty than a memory of a real scene witnessed through déjà vu.

  Yang had spent his life on the front lines, fighting the greatest enemies, or struggling in the jaws of conspiracies against him. Frederica herself had once saved him from what seemed like certain death. And yet somehow she had always thought of her husband as a man who would not quite go over the edge.

  “But perhaps this sort of death was like him after all. If Valhalla exists, he must be busy there apologizing to Marshal Bucock. After all, the marshal left him in charge of things only six months ago…”

  The movement of Frederica’s tongue and lips ceased. Beneath her skin, now drained of blood, the sea dragon was awakening. She put her last ounce of self-control into her low voice.

  “Please, Julian, let me be alone for a while. I’ll go and see him once I’ve pulled myself together a little.”

  Julian did as he was told.

  V

  The sun had set on Iserlohn. The boisterous festival was over, ended with the tolling of a type of bell hitherto unimaginable.

  At that moment, the entire population of Iserlohn Fortress, down to the lowest-ranking soldier, lay submerged in the well of grief. But, with the passage of time, shock and confusion were sure to give way to a turbulence engulfing every floor of the base. And the luxury of surrendering to that madness would not be permitted to the leadership. They had to reveal the news of Yang’s death to the outside world, organize his funeral, and try to fill, however inadequately, the yawning chasm that had opened in their ranks. The responsibilities that came with their position were intense.

  As von Schönkopf had foreseen during the voyage back to Iserlohn, that leadership also urged Julian to direct his attention to the matter of Yang’s successor. Attenborough spoke to him with particular force, saying, “Humans don’t fight for isms or theories! They fight for those who embody them. For the revolutionaries, not the revolution. We’ll be fighting in the late marshal Yang’s name one way or another, but even then we need someone to represent him in our world.”

  Giving up the fight entirely was not an option Attenborough seemed to have considered. Of course, Julian felt the same way.
>
  “We need a leader,” Attenborough insisted.

  “We need a political leader too, with Dr. Romsky gone,” said Julian.

  He thought that Attenborough had simply forgotten this point, but the self-described champion of “foppery and whim” did not seem taken aback in the slightest. Their political leader had already been decided, he explained, as if it were quite obvious.

  “Who do you mean?” asked Julian.

  “Mrs. Frederica Greenhill Yang, of course.”

  Astonishment has many colors, but what came to mind for Julian just then were Frederica’s hazel eyes.

  “We haven’t told her yet, of course,” said Attenborough. “That’ll have to wait a day or two, I suppose, until she calms down a little. But whoever Yang’s political successor turns out to be in the long term, right now she’s the best we have. No offense to the late Dr. Romsky, but Mrs. Yang has him beat on all fronts—name recognition, chance of sympathy from the republican faction, everything. She might not have the political insight and finesse of the great figures in history, but we only need her to be better than Dr. Romsky. Right?”

  Julian couldn’t answer right away. What Attenborough said seemed on-target, but would Frederica accept that kind of position? Or would she view it as stepping over her own husband’s body to seize power for herself, and refuse?

  Julian looked uncertainly at Alex Caselnes, who met his gaze frankly. “Sometimes even Attenborough gets it right,” said the great military administrator. “Including the political judgment. If we want to be accepted as legitimate successors in terms of democratic republican governance, we need Mrs. Yang as our political representative. Of course, if she refuses, that’ll be the end of that, but…”

  “I think she will refuse,” said Julian. “She’s always been dedicated to her role as an assistant. To accept a post at the top…Especially—”