“You have violated the Insurrection Act and become a danger to the survival of our nation. These are the charges brought against you by the imperial high commissioner’s office.”
“And does the chairman agree with the charges?”
“I’m not sure yet. I was hoping you’d do me the favor of denying these allegations outright.”
“And if I did, would you believe me?”
Yang could tell this conversation was going nowhere. Lebello’s face went dark.
“Personally, I’ve always believed in you, but I can’t very well deal with this situation on a purely emotional or moral level. The survival and safety of our nation has nothing to do with our one-on-one relationship.”
Yang vented a sigh.
“You can stop right there, Chairman. You’ve always been known as a fair-minded politician, as your many actions attest. So how can you think it’s at all natural to sacrifice individual rights of citizens for the sake of the nation?”
Lebello’s expression was like that of someone with a respiratory disorder.
“You know I don’t think that. But isn’t that how it goes? Self-sacrifice is the most noble of human deeds. You’ve truly devoted yourself to the nation. If you realize that way of life to the very end, then posterity will value you even more.”
Yang was ready to object. Lebello was in a tough position, to be sure, but even Yang had a right to assert himself. The way he saw it, reality wasn’t reflected in the civil servant’s mirror, and yet he’d always gone above and beyond what his salary required. What’s more, he’d always paid his taxes. After already being cursed as a “murderer” by bereaved families of subordinates who’d been killed in action under his command, why did he have to sit there and be lectured by a representative of the very government for whom he’d made all those sacrifices?
Yang chose not to speak what was on his mind. He gave a small sigh and sat back into the sofa.
“What would you have me do?”
There was nothing admirable in asking for such instruction. Yang wanted to know what Lebello really thought. Lebello’s response was more abstract than it needed to be and set off loud warning bells in Yang’s head.
“You’re so young to have gotten so far. You’ve never once met defeat at the hands of even the most formidable opponents. Time and again, you’ve saved us from certain danger and kept our democracy from crumbling. Present and future generations will intone your name with pride.”
Yang stared at Lebello. There was something almost palpable that Yang couldn’t ignore in his far-too-formal way of speaking. Was Lebello reading off Yang’s epitaph? Lebello wasn’t speaking to the Yang of the present, but justifying his use of the term “present and future generations.”
Yang’s mental roads were suddenly jammed with traffic. In fact, many fruits in the orchard of his intellectual activity had ripened, and among them hung the very conclusion that von Schönkopf had also reached. He didn’t want to believe it, but the situation was beyond his control. Yang reprimanded himself for being so naive. He’d had an inkling for the past five or six years that something bad was going to happen, but the situation had now thrown on a pair of roller skates and amped up to full speed, and it was as if the brakes of his shame were no longer operational.
“Naturally, good citizens should obey the law. But when their nation seeks to violate individual rights by laws they’ve set up only for themselves, it would be an outright sin for those same citizens to go along with them. The people of a democratic nation have the right and responsibility to protest, criticize, and oppose the crimes and errors committed by the nation.”
Yang had once said as much to Julian. Those who opposed neither unfair treatment nor the injustice of the powerful were no more citizens than they were slaves. And those who didn’t fight back even when their own equitable rights were violated were certainly never going to fight for the rights of others.
If the alliance government was going to try Yang for “commandeering military vessels and ordinances belonging to the Alliance Armed Forces,” he could only be resigned to his fate. But what of his opinion? The law was the law, and if he’d broken it in any way, he had a right to stand before a jury. But Yang wasn’t ready to give in just yet.
They wanted him dead, and this was the only way they could get away with it. The government’s power structure enabled laws through due process and punished criminals in accordance with those laws. Premeditated murder was an unjust use of their authority, and the act itself was proof of the ugliness of their motive.
Even more deplorable was that his accuser was the very government for which he’d performed his many duties. Even knowing that Lebello’s hand had been forced, Yang found it hard to sympathize. It was an unthinkable story, but it stood to reason that the one being killed should be worthier of sympathy than the one doing the killing.
Even if the government did have the right to kill him, he wasn’t obligated to go down without a fight. Because Yang was weak on narcissism, he agreed with the sentiment of Lebello’s “epitaph,” but not out of some masochistic allegiance to the idea that death by self-sacrifice was more meaningful than death by resistance. He looked through the figure of this unwilling actor to Frederica’s hazel eyes in the background. She wasn’t going to just stand and watch as Yang died a useless death or was unjustly abducted. Rescuing her good-for-nothing husband would take every ounce of courage and scheming she had. Until then, Yang would need to buy some time. Yang turned these thoughts over in his mind, barely noticing that Lebello had already stood up and bid his farewell.
Admiral Rockwell, seated as director of Joint Operational Headquarters after the establishment of the Lebello administration, had yet to return home, waiting as he was for a certain report in his office. The Joint Operational Headquarters building had just the other day been decimated from the ground up by a missile attack from the imperial Mittermeier fleet, and minimal operations were still being conducted in several of the underground rooms.
At 11:40 p.m., a transmission came via Captain Jawf, commander of special forces. Jawf had failed to bring vice admirals von Schönkopf and Attenborough into custody. The admiral chewed out Captain Jawf, making no efforts to hide his disappointment.
“Vice Admiral von Schönkopf is an expert in hand-to-hand combat. I’m sure Vice Admiral Attenborough can hold his own as well. But aren’t there only two of them? I guess I should’ve lent you two squads.”
“But it wasn’t just the two of them,” Captain Jawf corrected in a gruff yet dejected tone. “Rosen Ritter soldiers came out of nowhere and attacked us, and so they escaped. Highway 8 is covered in flaming cars and dead bodies. See for yourself…”
The captain leaned out of frame to reveal a flurry of silhouettes moving about orange flames painted on indigo canvas. Rockwell’s heart did a triple axel in his chest.
“The entire Rosen Ritter regiment was in on it?!”
Captain Jawf rubbed the light-purple bruises on his cheekbones. As you can see, he wanted to say, it took a lot out of us.
“Their membership hasn’t been replenished since after the Vermillion War, and yet there are still more than a thousand soldiers attached to that same regiment. And not the usual thousand, either.”
Admiral Rockwell shivered. No exposition was needed. The Rosen Ritter regiment may have been exaggerating when they said their combat abilities were comparable to those of an entire division, but they clearly had enough resources to substantiate that claim.
“Your Excellency, I’m fine with starting the fire, but I wonder if we have everything we need to extinguish it.”
After voicing this half-sarcastic musing, Captain Jawf waited for his superior’s answer, knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that the spread of fire was inevitable in this case. Admiral Rockwell’s face was like a dozen sour expressions in one.
“Beats me. Go ask the government.”
I
THE PLATEAU WAS FOUR THOUSAND METERS above sea level and had been scorched bare by excessive sunlight through a thin atmosphere. Julian Mintz sat on solid earth that had been eroded more by time than by wind or water, watching the rhythm of the waves gently breaking and receding along the shore. The opposite shore was well beyond the horizon, imperceptible to Julian’s naked eye. The strong wind blew his flaxen hair into disarray.
This lake was called Namtso, located one thousand kilometers inland from the southernmost coast of this continent. It had an area of nearly two thousand square kilometers and served as a landing spot for merchants and pilgrims alike. After acclimating themselves to the altitude, new arrivals would head out in landcars or on foot to the holy land, where an eight thousand–meter mountain called Kangchenjunga served as the Church of Terra’s stronghold. People in black clothes dotted the landscape, barely moving in the distance. Julian had been watching them for the past three days.
The bluish-purple sky drew his gaze upward as if by magnetic attraction. As he gazed upon that sky, Julian recalled the eyes of the girl Poplin had introduced him to on Dayan Khan supply base in the Porisoun star zone. Her eyes had glistened as if under immense pressure and had convinced Julian there was no room in them for himself. Her name, if he remembered correctly, was Katerose, nicknamed Karin. Her surname escaped him, but he was sure he’d seen her before. She was a beautiful girl, impressive in every way and impossible to forget.
Someone sat down next to him. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Olivier Poplin’s grin.
“You don’t have a headache?”
“I’m fine. I’m younger than you, Commander. I adapt better.”
“I guess you are fine if you can talk back like that,” Poplin snorted.
As Poplin stretched out his long legs in front of him, he squinted and looked at the vast bluish-purple dome above them. He’d only ever had an interest in everything beyond this so-called sky, and since landing on the surface of this “worthless planet,” three days had been enough to make him homesick for what lay on the other side of the atmosphere. The ace pilot said he was never meant to live on land, but that was just his ego talking. Julian felt no homesickness for the time being. But sooner or later, thought the boy, he would come to agree with Poplin.
On July 13, Julian, along with four fellow travelers, hopped in a reserved landcar and set out for Mount Kangchenjunga, 350 kilometers to the south. Accompanying him were Commander Olivier Poplin, Captain Boris Konev, Ensign Louis Machungo, and a crewman with the overly decorous name of Napoleon Antoine de Hotteterre. Unfaithful was left in the capable hands of its administrative officer, Marinesk, and its astrogator, Wilock. Such precautions allowed them to leave the planet at a moment’s notice should something come up.
Marinesk and Wilock bade farewell, left the others on the shore of the lake, and crossed over a massive landform protruding in the distance.
The ground was like something out of a black-and-white movie, interrupted only by the Technicolor brown of high mountains. By the time the Creator had gotten to this desolate land, his supply box had surely been almost empty. The atmosphere and sunlight played harshly on the skin. The panoramic ridgeline of the mountains was precise enough to have been rendered by hand.
Realistically, it would take them twelve hours to reach Mount Kangchenjunga. Along the way, they would pitch tents and camp for a night. In such high altitude, it was impossible to overestimate one’s own stamina. Making a journey of ten thousand light-years to Earth only to collapse from altitude sickness had all the makings of a morbid joke.
They’d packed the back of the landcar with space food, medicine, and a modest selection of silver ingots for “alms.” Boris Konev, who’d brought several groups of pilgrims, knew from experience that such alms held currency value as commodities and would only work in their favor. According to him, everyone here was happy to receive even a simple gift.
Along the way, they occasionally came across returning pilgrims and exchanged casual greetings with them. Meanwhile, Konev shared the various bits of knowledge he knew about Earth.
“The United Anti-Earth Front was nicknamed the Black Flag Force, but even after their indiscriminate attack, there were about a billion people left alive. But even that number dropped in the blink of an eye.”
Nearly all of them had abandoned their barren homeworld for other planets, but bloodshed was rampant among those who remained on the surface, first out of a need for survival and subsequently for their beliefs. Boris Konev didn’t know the specifics. What he did know for sure was that those Earthers who fell from high positions of authority only fought among themselves to satisfy their belligerence and lust for power.
“So, Earth’s present degeneration can be traced back to that meaningless conflict?” asked Julian.
“Who knows? It’s been eight hundred years since the Western calendar ended. And this is an isolated and introverted society. I’d be surprised if it hadn’t degenerated.”
More surprising was that this incessantly degenerate Earth had reverted to the same methods of influence that had brought about its downfall in the first place.
“I’m hoping there’s some sort of reference room at the church’s headquarters,” mused Julian.
“Even if there is, we may not be allowed inside.”
“If security is too tight and we try to break in, we’ll get what’s coming. That might just be our chance.”
Either way, Julian knew they couldn’t do much of anything until they’d gathered more information and acted efficiently, and with better judgment. But Admiral Yang, who was surely aware of these developments, had only allowed this reckless plan because he thought there was something useful to be found within the scope of Julian’s capability.
The following afternoon, Julian and the others reached the Church of Terra’s base of operations. More than a thousand meters of Mount Kangchenjunga’s summit, which at one time had pierced the azure sky, had been blown off by missiles, giving it the appearance of an abandoned, half-built pyramid. A deep ravine cut its way between the plateau and the mountain peak. Julian’s group would need to leave the landcar behind and scale the cliffs until nightfall.
Inside the enormous door, sixty centimeters thick and made of multiple layers of steel and lead, they found themselves in a spacious room of bare concrete. A throng of believers, each cloaked in black, sat waiting to be led in. Julian guesstimated about five hundred of them. As he sat down to join them, an elderly man with white hair who’d clearly been sitting on his blanket for a while held out his basket with a kindhearted smile. Once he caught the meaning of this gesture, Julian thanked him and accepted a piece of rye wheat bread, then asked where he was
from.
The elderly man gave the name of a planet Julian had never heard of.
“And where are you from, young man?”
“Phezzan.”
“That’s much farther. I’m impressed, especially for someone as young as yourself. Your parents must have taught you well.”
“Thank you…”
Julian looked even less favorably on the Church of Terra’s cultish ways now that he’d seen the simpleminded people whose piety they were taking advantage of just to restore their selfish power.
While Julian took stock of his surroundings again, a low inner door opened to reveal a small congregation of what appeared to be lower-level acolytes or clergymen in the middle of their ascetic practices. They began mingling with the believers, whose plain black clothing matched their own. In exchange for waterproof sacks filled with alms, which they received with chants of blessing, they handed out guidebooks to the compound. Julian did as the other pilgrims did, trying to hide his face as much as possible.
“This is an underground shelter,” said Boris Konev with blunt scorn when they’d first entered the room. “At one time, the Global Government’s
top army brass secluded themselves in this fortress while directing the war with the colonies. You may have heard good things about this place, but…”
Secure in their fortress of thick bedrock, massive firearms, and air purifiers, these military leaders had watched as tragedy unfolded on the surface. They had plenty of wine and women, to say nothing of food, and expected to enjoy the tranquility of their underground paradise for years to come. This enraged the Black Flag Force’s commander, who, realizing that a full-on attack would be futile, instead blew up one of the giant irrigation channels running beneath the Himalayas, sending millions of tons of water into their underground den of sin. Of the twenty-four thousand people trapped inside, only a hundred had escaped a death by drowning.
Julian examined the guidebook handed to them, thinking it might have the whole incident recorded inside. Then again, no religious organization, past or present, had ever thrown open its infrastructure, financial affairs, and full backstory to believers. Whatever was written there was probably a lie.
The grand chapel, crypt, bishops’ assembly hall, archbishops’ assembly hall, Grand Bishop’s audience room, confessionary, meditation room, interrogation room, and several larger and smaller rooms besides were included in the guidebook. There were, of course, also the pilgrims’ quarters and mess hall, but no reference room was mentioned.
“Hey, find any nuns’ quarters in there?”
“Afraid not, Commander.”
“Does that mean men and women bunk together?”
“I’m amazed, perhaps even a little jealous, that you can still go there, given the circumstances,” said Julian half-jokingly, standing up with his rucksack in one hand.
At the clergymen’s signal, the pilgrims obediently formed a line and made their way slowly through the doorway. As they followed suit, Julian and the others were handed small tags, each printed with a room number.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Volume 6 Page 17
