Ambition

by Yoshiki Tanaka

  After dismissing the staff, Yang retired to his private rooms and called Julian.

  “Shortly before the Battle of Amritsar,” Yang told him, “Admiral Bucock tried to get a meeting with Marshal Lobos. He wasn’t able to, however, because the marshal was taking his nap. What do you think about that?”

  “I think it’s horrible,” Julian said. “It’s irresponsible, and …”

  “Exactly. But, Julian?”

  “Sir?”

  “I am about to take a nap. For just two hours, don’t put anybody through to me. I don’t care if they’re admirals or generals—just send them away.”

  On the bridge of Leonidas, the Eleventh Fleet’s flagship …

  “Has there been any word from Commander Bagdash?” asked Vice Admiral Legrange, glaring at the staff officer who was his intelligence chief.

  As Legrange’s brow furrowed at the answer of “None, sir,” a communications officer looked up at the fleet’s commander.

  “We’re ready for fleetwide broadcast, sir. Please begin.”

  The vice admiral nodded. Driving thoughts of Bagdash from his mind, he unfolded the draft of his speech.

  “Attention, all hands. This is a battle on which hangs two things: the success or failure of this military revolution to rescue our republic, and the prosperity or ruin of our fatherland. Perform your duties with your entire body and soul, and fulfill your devotion to the fatherland. Nothing in this world demands greater respect than devotion and sacrifice, and nothing is more despicable than cowardice and self-centeredness. Patriotism and courage is what I expect of you all and what I long earnestly for you to show me. Give this your all.”

  The Eleventh Fleet charged across the void, certain of its coming triumph.

  With a light yawn, Yang Wen-li raised the back of his chair. Julian handed him a hot towel and a cup of cold water.

  “How long was I asleep?”

  “An hour and a half.”

  “I wanted to sleep another thirty minutes. Oh well, can’t go back to sleep now … Thanks, you did great.”

  After handing his drained cup back to the boy, he gently straightened the scarf at his collar. Soon, he was going to have to make another little speech. That wasn’t something that Yang enjoyed doing, but speechmaking, too, was one of the commanding officer’s duties. He stood up and went to the bridge. Every face in that spacious room turned toward their commander, wearing tense expressions.

  “The battle is just about to begin,” Yang said. “It’s a meaningless battle, and for that reason, it would be all the more pointless to fight it and not win. We do have a plan for victory, though, so just relax and do your jobs, and don’t go pushing yourselves too hard. What’s riding on this is at most the life or death of the state. Compared to individual rights and liberty, the state is just not worth all that much. Well then, everyone, shall we begin?”

  By the time he had finished speaking into the microphone, a sparkling cloud of lights was beginning to appear on the main screen. They shone with an ominous white.

  Displayed there was a side view of the Eleventh Fleet’s main force—a column of seven thousand warships. Beyond, the stars spread out in infinite succession.

  “Enemy fleet sighted! All ships, prepare for combat!”

  III

  Yang was not the fierce commander type of leader, but he could always be found on the front line when going into battle and in the rear when disengaging—particularly in losing battles, in which he would stay behind to cover his comrades’ retreat.

  That, he believed, was his bare-minimum duty as a commander. If it wasn’t, then who in their right mind would entrust their life to a greenhorn who had only just turned thirty?

  In front of Yang’s flagship, three thousand vessels under the command of Admiral Nguyen Van Thieu were waiting with bated breath for the order to attack. As were his comrades arrayed port, aft, and starboard.

  “Relative distance 6.4 light-seconds …”

  The operators’ voices, too, were as low as whispers.

  “Enemy is moving from starboard to port perpendicular to our fleet. Velocity 0.012 c. Near maximum velocity for in-system flight …”

  In the restrained illumination of the dim bridge, the only other sound besides operators’ voices was that of shallow breathing.

  His gaze fixed on the screen, Yang raised his right hand as high as the line of his shoulder. That was the signal that started everything.

  “Fire!”

  The order was relayed to the gunners on every vessel.

  In the next instant, white-hot javelins of energy, tens of thousands of them, pierced the darkness of outer space. These had not been fired in parallel from each ship but were focused on a single point in the midst of the enemy fleet.

  A striking characteristic of Yang’s beam-cannon tactics was his concentration of fire on a single point, so as to increase geometrically the beams’ destructive power. This was one of the reasons he had so grieved the empire during the Battle of Amritsar last year. When multiple allied ships showered a single enemy vessel with their firepower, the enemy’s energy-neutralization fields were easily overloaded.

  “Energy waves approaching rapidly!”

  The operators of the Eleventh Fleet cried out warnings that were halfway screams. In that instant, a huge mass of energy struck the first blow, smashing into the fleet’s flank.

  There was heat and light like that of a small star. In its midst, several hundred ships were vaporized, and three or four times that number exploded.

  The white light of the fusion explosions pulsated, expanding every instant, until it seemed as if that eerie light would bleach out the entire screen.

  Julian was sitting next to Yang’s command desk. For the first time in his life, the boy was witnessing combat in outer space directly. Aware of the shiver running down his spine, he tried to tell himself that it wasn’t fear but excitement. Not yet, not yet. It’s only just begun.

  “Send a message to Admiral Nguyen Van Thieu,” Yang said. He was not in his seat but was sitting on top of his command desk with one knee raised. This was outrageously ill-mannered, and yet his subordinates felt oddly reassured seeing him like that. “Tell him to advance at full speed and hit the enemy on the flank.”

  On receiving the order, Nguyen felt his spirit lift.

  Nguyen Van Thieu was the fierce commander type, so when he was supported by the coolheaded leadership of central command, the destructive power he could wield was enormous. Out of Reinhard’s subordinates, he was most similar to Wittenfeld.

  “Charge!”

  Nguyen Van Thieu’s order was clarity itself, and there was no way for his officers to mistake it.

  “Charge! Charge!”

  With its commanding officer front and center, Nguyen Van Thieu’s combat group attacked the enemy fleet’s flank at maximum combat velocity. The energy beams and shells released from the mouths of their cannons rained against the enemy, and flashes of light from launches and explosions lit up one small corner of the eternal night.

  From the vast hole opened up by the volley of cannon fire, Nguyen’s group succeeded in cutting deep into the enemy’s column.

  Staff officers in the Eleventh Fleet turned pale. If they allowed Nguyen to advance any farther, the entire fleet would become divided fore and aft. And although it was theoretically possible to use a divided force like that to catch one’s opponent in a pincer movement, very flexible and refined tactical skill was required to make that work—skill such as that possessed by Yang Wen-li.

  Since they didn’t have that much confidence in themselves, they made a more commonsense response. Orders flew: Attack the enemy from all directions! Don’t send a man or a ship back home alive!

  Right away, Nguyen’s group was exposed to ferocious attacks converging on them from five directions—fore, up, down, port, and starboard. Fire
balls exploded, vibrations shook the frames of the vessels, and viewscreens—in spite of spite having had their photoflux capacities adjusted—were filled with flashes bright enough to sear the retinas.

  On the bridge of the flagship Maurya, Admiral Nguyen raised his voice in cheerful laughter.

  “This is perfect—nothing but enemies any which way you turn! So many there’s no need to aim! Get them! Keep shooting! Fire at will!”

  Some there were impressed by what they saw as their commander’s daring and boldness; others present were certain he must have a screw loose. Either way, one thing was certain—they would have no tomorrow unless they killed the enemies before them. There was no time to consider the meaning of this battle or the reasons for this slaughter.

  “Missiles closing at ten o’clock! Returning fire!”

  “Turret four, maximum output!”

  Shrill voices and suppressed voices permeated the communication channels, and the sounds of impacts and jamming noise blended to repeatedly assault the ears of the crew—even though it was a universe of silence just outside the vessels.

  Their vision was similarly under attack. The light of the stars, frozen for all eternity, was rent by crisscrossing missile trails and the harsh glitter of energy beams. And the white lights that wiped away each and every one of those stars monopolized the field of view with their overwhelming volume.

  Thirty minutes after the opening shots were fired, even Yang’s flagship Hyperion had its nose pressed up against the Eleventh Fleet’s flank.

  Hyperion was enveloped in rainbow fog, proof that its hull was being protected from destructive energy beams by its energy-neutralization field.

  “This is more trouble than I expected,” Yang murmured to himself as he kept his eyes glued to the screen. The Eleventh Fleet’s resistance was quite formidable, and it was known to all that Vice Admiral Legrange was no incompetent.

  “That useless Bagdash!” shouted Legrange. “What did he even infiltrate the Yang Fleet for?”

  While continuing to oversee the battle, Legrange couldn’t help berating the man in his heart. Use mis- and disinformation to throw the enemy into disarray, or if that is impossible, shoot Yang dead. Bagdash was supposed to have infiltrated the enemy camp on this vital do-or-die mission, but at present, Legrange doubted that the man had succeeded. Far from it, actually, since his was the side that had been hit on the flank by what should probably be called an ambush. Instead of catching the enemy in a pincer movement, were his divided forces going to be destroyed separately?

  Had they seen through Bagdash, after all? Legrange clenched his teeth tightly. Perhaps he had entrusted the job to someone he shouldn’t have. Unease and regret were pounding on his chest with invisible hands.

  The voice of an operator requesting instructions pulled his consciousness back to reality.

  “What is it?”

  “They’ve broken through the center, sir. Our force has been divided fore and aft, and it looks like the enemy’s trying to envelop the aft section.”

  Although Nguyen’s combat group, showered with fierce cannon fire, had taken considerable damage, it had at last succeeded in breaking through the center. Then it had swung to starboard and was now advancing to envelop one half of the divided enemy force.

  Legrange fell silent and glared at the screen. He knew what Yang had in mind. I see it now. So that was it! A frustrated tsk sounded from inside his mouth.

  “Miracle Yang is a pretty sly fox, confound him.”

  In short, Yang had split at the tactical level one half of a force that was already split at the strategic level and was now trying to completely destroy them, starting with one of the severed ends.

  This made the firepower ratio between those two about four-to-one. Once the battle reached this stage, fleet commander Yang no longer needed to oscillate between hope and despair with the minute-by-minute state of the battle; he could simply look on as his lower-ranking commanders took out each segment one by one.

  From Yang’s perspective, this sort of thing wasn’t any kind of remarkable strategy; it was nothing more that following one of the rudimentary principles of tactical theory: “Fight with greater force strength than your enemy.” He was both surprised and disappointed when he heard it referred to as a magic trick or a miracle.

  The main forces of both fleets made contact. The ship density in the region increased, and the mode of fighting gradually shifted from long-range cannon fire to close-quarters combat. This was where the single-seat fighter craft known as spartanians took the stage. Lieutenant Commander Olivier Poplin, captain of Hyperion’s flight squadron, had lined up his team on standby, but the instant that the order came down to sortie, he had all of them board their craft, cut loose from the mother ship, and dance out into space.

  “Whiskey, Vodka, Rum, Applejack: command of your companies is left to your company leaders. Sherry and Cognac, follow me. Don’t break formation.”

  Poplin often boasted, “Wine and women are life’s bread and butter, and war merely its three o’clock snack,” and it was just like him to come up with such names. Of course, there was also a story going around that he had come close to naming his companies after women’s undergarments, but naturally he had refrained in the end and settled for booze.

  Poplin’s spartanian charged ahead, tracing out an invisible path through the void. Sherry and Cognac companies followed behind the ace pilot, and the other four dispersed in different directions in search of enemies.

  The ships of the Eleventh Fleet were launching single-seat fighters one after another as well. Dogfighting between spartanians began breaking out in all quarters amid the crisscrossing cannon fire. Because the specs of the fighter craft were identical, victory and defeat were decided by the skill of the pilots inside them. Many of the fighter pilots approached their work with the zeal of a craftsman, and for them a trial like this could be called the chance of a lifetime. At this moment, those involved were not thinking about the fact that they were killing one another; rather, they were simply drunk on the blood-boiling excitement of it all.

  Not two minutes had elapsed since launch, and Poplin had already scored three kills. Dodging through enemy as well as allied fire, he raced ahead at maximum velocity through rough seas of roiling energies. The raw vitality of a fully self-realized existence was circulating at full speed through Poplin’s entire being. With his reflexes honed to their utmost sharpness, every cell in his body was bursting with energy and life.

  The battleship Ulysses was also in the midst of the chaotic fighting. The ship’s outer hull had been cut open by a blade of energy, causing the shock-absorbent material to leak out in a white cloud as it enveloped the ship. Visibility from the rear turrets had been degraded and sensors rendered useless, and after cursing God and devil alike, the soldiers inside had had to give up on doing anything other than shooting back in the direction of incoming fire.

  Eight hours were required for the desperate combat to draw to an end.

  After breaking through the center of the Eleventh Fleet and destroying its aft column, the Yang Fleet enveloped the forward column headed by Admiral Legrange and smashed its forces ship by ship. Because nearly all of the vessels, carrying on with a resistance that reached the fanatical, refused to surrender, there was no other option.

  What for Yang, too, was a depressing battle of utter destruction was brought to an end by the suicide of Admiral Legrange. He had stubbornly continued to resist until his remaining forces had amounted to his own flagship and just a handful of others.

  “I count it a great honor for a humble officer such as myself to have fought the illustrious Yang Wen-li in my final battle. Hail to the military revolution!”

  These had been Lagrange’s last words, broadcast to all by his flagship’s communications officer.

  Staff Officer Patrichev breathed out a huge sigh that emptied his lungs. “Well, then, that�
��s that. That was one heck of a fight.”

  But no matter how intense the combat had been, the winner and loser this time had actually been determined quite early.

  Numerically, Admiral Yang had had twice the force strength of his opponent and, furthermore, had succeeded in splitting it with a strike on its flank. That it had taken so long to achieve total victory from such an overwhelmingly advantageous position was proof that the Eleventh Fleet had fought the good fight under Legrange’s fierce direction. Yang would have called it a meaningless good fight, though. If only he would have thrown his hands up early …

  “If Legrange had been incompetent, there would’ve been a few less deaths on both sides,” said von Schönkopf.

  Yang nodded silently. From the moment that the first stage of combat was finished, he seemed to have been overwhelmed by exhaustion.

  So, ultimately, does the Yang Fleet amount to just this one man? thought von Schönkopf. Without their young commander’s clever schemes, the Yang Fleet was certainly not a powerful force. From the start, it had been a ragtag mixture of defeated remnants and raw recruits. Dragged along by their commander’s invincible reputation, they had kept on fighting and kept on winning, and thus achieved the military feats of today. But even if that were true, what von Schönkopf had said about Legrange certainly applied to Yang as well. For if Yang had been an incompetent commander, this fleet would have been wiped out early while the scale of the combat was still small, and in exchange, many enemy soldiers would have lived to go back to their hometowns.

  Even if they left the past in the past, there was still a problem looming in the future, for there was another individual in this galaxy who also boasted an invincible reputation.

  Marquis Reinhard von Lohengramm. The day would surely come when he and Yang would do battle with all of their forces and all of their abilities. It was not so much the work of fate or destiny as the rapid convergence of history’s footsteps that would bring that about. On that day, could the Yang Fleet defeat Reinhard’s forces? Or, rather, could Yang’s subordinates win out over Reinhard’s?