Someone grumbled from another bed, but he couldn’t stop the cough no matter how much he tried. Wrapping his head in a blanket was all he could do to muffle it. During one of the brief interims that it abated, as he was fervently steadying his breathing, the kindly voice of an old believer came from the bunk above him.
“Young man, are you okay? Should I take you to the infirmary?”
“No, I’m fine. Thank you.”
His voice was barely audible. His neck and chest were soaked in cold sweat, and his shirt was stuck to his skin.
“Don’t push yourself too hard.”
“I’m fine. Really, I’m okay.”
Julian wasn’t just being modest. If the doctors examined him and saw that he was experiencing withdrawal symptoms, they were sure to pump him full of something stronger and turn him into a total junkie. The cult was in on it.
The urge to vomit jumped up from his stomach to his throat. Anything that came up was pure digestive acid. He pressed the sheets to his mouth and finally forced the bitter liquid back down. After that first wave, he was again wracked by violent coughing, now to the accompaniment of stomach pains.
The other four—Poplin, Konev, Machungo, and de Hotteterre—were surely braving the same storm, and Julian knew he wasn’t alone. Even so, he couldn’t bear the eagle’s grip of pain and unpleasantness wrapped around his body. In the middle of a nasty coughing fit, he felt like he was in the harshest G-force training. Beneath his damp skin, the cells of his muscles began running wildly in all directions. His internal organs and nervous system shouted a hysterical resistance song as Julian’s sense of self was thrashed about by strong winds and thunder. The pain and unpleasantness of it all radiated from his core, bouncing off the underside of his skin and back to his core. Shooting stars streaked across the black canvas of his inner eyelids, bursting into supernovas and battering Julian’s consciousness.
A voice feigning kindness flowed into his ear canal:
“Whatever is the matter with you?”
Julian stuck his pale face out from under the blanket. After who knows how long, the storm inside him was slowly but surely giving up its seat to calm. Two men were looking at Julian with courteous sympathy.
“I heard from other believers that you’re really suffering. We share the same faith. Our hearts go out to you. There’s no need to hold back. Come with us to the infirmary.”
The men had white square patches sewn onto their black robes, designating them as the church’s medic unit. Try as he might to deny it, Julian felt a divine presence. Was this how he was supposed to react? He nodded obediently and got to his feet. Taking that as a signal, his pain and discomfort retreated into the domain of the past. Now more than ever, his act would need to be convincing.
IV
Upon entering the infirmary, Julian knew that the door to Ali Baba’s cave had at last opened before him. Two preceding visitors were in the examination room—a refined young man with green eyes and a hulking giant who appeared more bovine than human. Although they were both emaciated, their eyes flickered with hope when they locked on Julian, who found that he was recovering confidence and energy with every passing second. In his mind, fate was still showing her gentle old woman’s profile.
“What’s with all the sick believers today?” grumbled a middle-aged doctor whose white clothing stood out in a sea of black.
Perhaps it was Julian’s own preconception getting in the way of his thinking, but he didn’t look much like a man who’d devoted his life to medicine.
“I wonder if something is making you all sick.”
One by one, the doctor placed a dozen syringes on a silver tray. Poplin kicked one to the floor.
“There is,” he said calmly.
“Oh? What could that be?”
“Because you made us eat ketchup laced with thyoxin, you damned charlatan!”
The doctor tore off his mask and sprang at him with a laser scalpel in his hand. But Poplin’s agility wasn’t up to snuff. The young ace flicked his wrist instead, sending a hypodermic needle straight into the doctor’s right eye. The doctor let out a bloodcurdling scream. The door opened and two men from the medic unit came bursting in.
Before one of them could reach for his stun gun, Julian’s right foot sank into the abdomen of his black robe and sent the man flying without a sound. The other was restrained in Machungo’s iron grip, only to kiss the wall at ten meters a second.
Poplin dissolved the white powder he had taken from a desk drawer in a cup of water, then filled the biggest syringe he could find. He knelt in front of the doctor, who was sprawled on the floor, clutching his right eye and struggling in pain and anger. Machungo pinned down one of the doctor’s arms and wrapped a rubber tube around it. Poplin spoke softly.
“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that once I inject this much thyoxin into your bloodstream, you’ll die from shock in under a minute.”
“Please, stop.”
“I’d like to, but life doesn’t always go the way you want it. Sometimes, growing up means separating what you want to do from what you’ve got to do. Well then, bon voyage.”
“Stop!” the doctor cried. “Spare me, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Just stop.”
Poplin and Julian exchanged sinister smiles. Julian knelt beside the ace.
“I want to know what the Church of Terra is hiding. First, tell me, in no uncertain terms, where I may find the church’s financial base of operations.”
The doctor’s left eye moved in Julian’s direction, exuding fear and panic. The nonchalance with which Julian had made his demand only made the doctor tremble more.
“I have no idea about such things. They don’t give me access to that information.”
“If you don’t know, then I want you to tell me, if you can, about those who do.”
“I’m just the doctor.”
Poplin laughed through his nose.
“Are you now? Then you serve no purpose here. In which case, I’ll make a corpse out of you.”
The doctor’s final scream was drowned out by an alarm. An electric current of tension ran through the three of them as gunshots and explosions filled the air.
The door opened again. This time, the bishop-level clergymen who came tumbling in took one look at what was happening in the room and yelled as loud as they could.
“We’ve been invaded by heretics! I found some here, too. Kill anyone who violates the sanctity of—”
Before he could finish his sentence, he was thrown against the wall and slid to the floor as if refusing the wall’s embrace.
“You call yourselves clergymen, yet you traffic innocent people and who knows what else. Repent before God of your impoverished hearts,” sputtered Poplin as he began tearing off the bishop’s robe for a disguise. “It’s not so easy taking off a man’s clothes. There’s no payoff for doing it. Was this the reason I came all the way to Earth? Meanwhile, Marshal Yang is living it up with his beautiful new wife. Totally unfair.”
Poplin continued to deride the situation, but when he peeked out of the half-opened door, he let out a soundless whistle and stepped back a few paces, clutching his black robe. He shook his head in exasperation.
“You know, Julian, things don’t always go the way you’d like them to at first.”
“But over time…?”
“They usually get worse.”
Poplin pointed to a group of imperial soldiers taking full advantage of their heavy artillery to barrel their way through the cross fire.
I
WALLS OF ORANGE FLAME had turned one section of the highway into a living oil painting. Fire brigadiers and rescue workers were moving about between the corpses and car fragments, sirens heightening people’s uneasiness all the while. The night was filled with tension, spreading out over the alliance capital of Heinessen.
On a hill one block away, a group of armed soldiers was gazing at the carnage with both the naked eye and night vision binoculars.
Three former Alliance Armed Forces soldiers in military garb stood in the center of the group: retired vice admiral Walter von Schönkopf, retired vice admiral Dusty Attenborough, and retired lieutenant commander Frederica G. Yang, now commanders of a “rebel force” against the alliance government. When Frederica had married Yang and the other two had handed in their letters of resignation, they’d already made their choice between Yang Wen-li and the alliance government.
Going by the definition that “strategy is the art of creating a situation, and tactics the art of taking advantage of a situation,” it was safe to say von Schönkopf and Attenborough had acted as top-notch strategists
tonight.
“First, we incite a big uproar.”
The alliance government was secretly planning to kill Admiral Yang, whom it had wrongfully arrested with no evidence. Fear of an Imperial Navy invasion was mounting into panic, and even without Admiral Yang’s involvement, they were deluded in thinking they could keep the nation from harm. At this point, the rebel force’s objective was to bring about an imperial invasion, thereby allowing them to rescue Yang.
“Second, we control that uproar.”
If the ensuing chaos went unchecked, then their dealings with the Imperial Navy would also become too large to handle, and they might end up summoning not Commissioner Lennenkamp the fox, but Emperor Reinhard the tiger. By streamlining the chaos, as it were, Lennenkamp would feel confident enough to take them on himself. In any event, they would need to buy some time.
Once they had Yang in their possession, they would flee Heinessen and link up with Merkatz and the rest.
What came next was Yang Wen-li’s idea. Which was why they were rescuing him in the first place—to make that idea a reality.
“The problem is whether Admiral Yang will say yes.”
“He probably won’t say yes, even if we press him. Naturally, it’ll be different if his wife is the one who proposes it. Otherwise, he can rot in prison, and then no one will be able to save him.”
As von Schönkopf said this, Attenborough shrugged his shoulders.
“I feel sorry for Admiral Yang. He’d finally gotten out of that uniform and was duly blessed with a wife and a pension.”
Von Schönkopf winked at Frederica.
“Gardens exist only to be devastated by scavengers. No one should keep a beautiful flower all to themselves.”
“Oh, why thank you very much. But maybe I want to be kept all to someone’s self.”
Both retired vice admirals then noticed the suitcase at her feet.
“What’s with the suitcase, Lieutenant Commander?” Attenborough asked.
“It’s his military uniform,” responded Frederica with a forthcoming smile. “I think it suits him better than any formal clothing.”
Then no other clothes suit him, no matter what he wears, von Schönkopf mused to himself.
“Maybe I should renounce my bachelorhood as well,” whispered Attenborough to the night sky.
“Sounds good to me. But before you do, let’s get this one job over with, and fast.”
Von Schönkopf let out a shrill whistle, spurring his armed soldiers into action. Fearing the alliance government would be notified of the situation by the Imperial Navy, they doubted if there was anything they could do to cover it up, and so they decided to march headlong into the storm. Perhaps this rebel force would be successful after all.
Free Planets Alliance council chairman João Lebello first got word of the incident just as he was about to leave his office for the day. The stiff face of Admiral Rockwell on his comm screen glared at the chairman, who was amazed to learn of the Rosen Ritter regiment’s mutiny, and concluded his report.
“I humbly take full blame for this failure, although for the record I’ve always been against these kinds of sly tactics.”
“It’s a little late to be saying that now.”
Lebello barely managed to keep himself from yelling with rage. He’d been assured there’d be no technical problems in the execution stage. And before he shirked any responsibility, he had to take down this rebel force.
“Of course, I will take them down. But if the situation gets out of hand and the Imperial Navy gets wind of it, they’ll intervene for sure. It would behoove you to keep that in mind.”
Rockwell already saw little need in trying to earn the chairman’s respect. His shameless expression disappeared from the screen.
After a few seconds of deliberation, Lebello called the man who’d instructed him on this “sly tactic,” Central Autonomous Governance University president Oliveira. He’d already returned home, but when he’d learned that von Schönkopf and the others had gotten away and launched a full-on counterattack, and after being scolded for his failed plan, he’d sobered up from the fine brandy he’d been nursing.
“How can you say such a thing?”
Now it was the brains behind the operation calling him out for unfairness. He’d always interpreted the law as it was written, and in the best interests of those enforcing it. For legalizing certain privileges, he’d reaped small rewards, and he had never taken responsibility for any trickle-down effect of his decisions. He simply proposed plans and left the implementation to others. He praised his own planning skills even as he disparaged others’ abilities to get things done.
“Chairman, I don’t recall twisting your arm when I gave you my proposal. Anything that’s happened since then is the result of your own judgment. In addition, I demand some armed protection so that no harm comes to me.”
Realizing he could count on neither the brawn nor the brains, Lebello left the council building and got into his landcar. He was a sinking ship. No, he told himself, the alliance government was the ship, and he was its incompetent captain.
For Lebello, it was nothing more than karmic retribution that he was scheduled to see an opera that night with the imperial high commissioner. If he didn’t show up, the commissioner might suspect foul play. And so, he made his way to the National Opera House to waste the next two hours of his life.
Lebello’s landcar was sandwiched by escort vehicles on either side. Where normally one car was standard, such protection increased in proportion to a decline in governability. By year’s end, four cars would probably turn into eight. His regret grew with each passing second. Lebello folded his arms and scowled at the back of the driver’s head. The secretary riding with him was trying his best to avoid looking at his boss, directing his attention instead to the nightscape outside, when he suddenly raised his voice. Lebello turned his gaze to the window and froze. Several landcars had made sudden illegal U-turns and were rushing toward them against traffic. They’d apparently disengaged their automatic controls and were driving completely manually.
The drivers shouted insults at the secretary. From the sunroof of a car closing in on them, they saw a soldier emerge with a hand cannon.
The man shouldered the cannon, met Lebello’s eyes with his own, and laughed without a sound. Lebello felt a lump of ice slide down his back. As someone in a high position of power, he’d been resigned to being a terrorist target, but having the muzzle of such a large weapon aimed at him crushed his theoretical determination and summoned a deep-seated fear in its place.
Fire arrows were unleashed, and a thunderous roar tore through the night. The escort landcars went up in balls of yellow flame, rolling across the road. At almost the same moment, those two balls of flame split into four, encircling Lebello’s landcar in a dazzling ring.
“Don’t stop. Just keep going,” Lebello shouted, his voice scaling upward.
But the driver chose to surrender. Lebello’s command was ignored, and the quickly changing scenery outside his window came to a halt. Surrounded by unfamiliar vehicles, Lebello stepped out of his l
andcar at their center, feeling little dignity in doing so. The council chairman, on whose shoulders now weighed a sense of defeat, was approached by the same man who’d just blasted away the escort cars with a hand cannon. His shoulders were now free of their burden.
“High Council Chairman, His Excellency Lebello, I presume?”
“And who are you?! What’s the meaning of all this?”
“The name’s Walter von Schönkopf, and as of this moment, you’ve just become our hostage.”
Lebello tried frantically to calm his heart and lungs.
“I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“The pleasure’s all mine,” responded von Schönkopf without an ounce of zeal.
“Why all the theatrics?”
“I should ask the same of you. Between you and me, can you really say with any pride that you’ve treated Yang Wen-li fairly?”
“As much as it pains me to say this, the destiny of a nation isn’t something to be examined through the prism of a single individual’s rights.”
“A nation that does everything it can to safeguard individual human rights would be a democratic nation, would it not? To say nothing of the fact that Yang Wen-li has done more for this nation than all of us put together.”
“Do you think my heart is not aggrieved? I know it’s unfair. But ensuring the survival of our nation supersedes all.”
“I see. So, you’re an upright politician when it comes to the greater good?” A bitter smile ran obliquely across von Schönkopf’s graceful face. “And yet, in the end, you bigwigs always end up standing on the side of collateral damage. Cutting off your hands and feet is painful, to be sure. But from the perspective of those same appendages, any tears you shed just come across as hypocritical. What a pitiable man—no, a great man—you are for having killed your own self-interest in sacrifice to your nation. How does that saying go? ‘Shedding tears as you put down your horse’? Hmph. So long as you can get by without sacrificing yourself, you can shed as many tears of joy as you like.”
Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Volume 6 Page 19
