“Lennenkamp is all yours. Take only ten men with you.”
“But, Your Excellency…”
“Do it now! The sand in the hourglass is far more precious than any diamond.”
“Understood.”
After Blumhardt disappeared with ten soldiers, von Schönkopf led the twenty left behind. Von Schönkopf posed at the top of the stairs, provocatively swinging a tomahawk polished in human blood.
“What’s wrong? Is there no one who will stand before Walter von Schönkopf?”
Von Schönkopf was putting on this little performance in the hope it would buy them some time.
A young soldier, full of determination yet obviously lacking in experience, came running up the stairs. Although he brandished his tomahawk with plenty of vigor, von Schönkopf could see how futile the attack was.
Their tomahawks clashed, flashing with sparks. The outcome was decided in a moment as one of the tomahawks clattered across the floor. The soldier with a tomahawk poised at his throat experienced von Schönkopf’s laugh as if it were the devil’s.
“Do you have a girlfriend, young man?”
The soldier was silent.
“Well, do you?”
“Y-yes.”
“I see. Then take my advice: Don’t throw away your life so easily.”
Von Schönkopf thrust the handle of his tomahawk into the young soldier’s chest, sending him tumbling down the stairs, leaving his short scream hanging in the air above the landing. Fresh grunts of anger arose from the bottom of the stairs. As von Schönkopf and his men were delving into that moat, Blumhardt and his were storming into Lennenkamp’s room. They surrounded the door and made to pass through a much shallower moat of human blood.
The imperial soldiers’ brave yet futile resistance reached its final movement in a matter of seconds. Eight corpses tumbled onto the floor, leaving only the high commissioner.
Light surged out from the blaster in Lennenkamp’s right hand. It was not a single flash, but a continuous rapid fire with perfect aim. He had, after all, started out as a soldier.
One of the Rosen Ritter members was hit in the center of his helmet and toppled sideways. He’d been too close to evade the shot. Blumhardt nimbly went around and cut in on Lennenkamp’s right flank, sending his blaster to the floor with a single attack, then drove the butt of his blaster into the commissioner’s chin.
Lennenkamp stopped himself from falling by putting both hands on his desk, his voice bellowing from a bloody mouth.
“Just kill me already!”
“I’m not going to kill you. You’re my prisoner.”
“Do you think a low-ranking officer, let alone a senior admiral, would be resigned to becoming a disgraceful prisoner?”
“I’m hoping you will be. I’ve no interest in your aesthetics or your pride. Your life is all that matters to me. We need you alive.”
Blumhardt’s words triggered something in Lennenkamp. The commissioner groaned.
“I see. Do you plan on taking me hostage in exchange for Admiral Yang?”
While that wasn’t an entirely accurate insight, neither was Blumhardt incorrect.
“I would hope you’d be honored that we recognize you on equal terms with Yang Wen-li.”
The one saying those words had no idea how much they’d offended Lennenkamp. It was not because of fear but humiliation that Lennenkamp went pale to the very tips of his splendid mustache.
“Don’t go thinking I’d value my life so much as to negotiate with the likes of you.”
“That’s not what I had in mind, but you aren’t the one who’ll be doing the negotiating. It will be your subordinates.”
“You look like a Rosen Ritter offer, so does that mean you were originally a man of the empire? Aren’t you betraying your motherland?”
Blumhardt stared at Lennenkamp, but not because those words made a deep impression on him.
“My grandfather was a republican thinker, and for that was captured by the imperial ministry of the interior, tortured, and finally killed. If my grandfather was a true republican, then I guess he died an honorable death. But my grandfather was just a major complainer.”
Blumhardt cocked a half smile.
“The only way I can repay that ‘kindness’ is with resistance. Anyway, time is more precious than emeralds. Come with me,” urged the commander.
The metaphor was accurate. He could already hear the rhapsody of hand-to-hand combat wafting from the floor below. Von Schönkopf and his men had run up from the fourteenth floor, clearing away more enemies.
Three minutes later, the imperial soldiers—soaked in blood, sweat, and vengeance—stormed Lennenkamp’s office, only to find it empty. The whole purpose behind their rescue had disappeared along with the one they were trying to kill. Von Schönkopf and his men used the same route by which they’d come and made their successful, if not as quiet, escape. Immediately after, there was an explosion in the elevator repair shaft, and the only route by which the imperial forces might have pursued them was closed off before their very eyes.
IV
Lennenkamp was staring at an empty room. Ceiling above, floor below, walls in front. In that space, despair wore a black robe, gloomily singing a song of ruin. Lennenkamp was still in the rebel force’s hideout. The bare concrete walls and floor were all soundproof. Compared to his magnificent office in the Hotel Shangri-La, the differences were staggering.
The imprisoned imperial high commissioner thought this was the end. When he was dragged here, everything made sense. He’d lost not only to Yang’s clique, but had also been sold out by Lebello, who supposedly represented the interests of the alliance government.
By what honor could he ever hope to look his emperor in the face again? The emperor had tolerated his failure against Yang Wen-li and given him a high commissioner’s post. Lebello strove to meet the expectations of such magnanimity and trust. For the sake of the new dynasty’s 1,000-year plan, he’d eliminated obstacles and cleared a path for the empire to subjugate all alliance territory. Until he was taken here, he’d seen a path opening to a superior position. But after being in the same room as both Yang and Lebello, Lennenkamp realized he’d been had. The chairman had been half-averting his eyes behind Yang’s back, perhaps out of guilt, but Lennenkamp had lost the will to reprimand him at that moment. It was the only way to avoid the scorn of enemy and ally alike.
His originally narrow view had become even narrower. With eyes devoid of sanity and widened only by a twisted desire for prestige, Lennenkamp looked up at the ceiling.
The soldier who’d brought Lennenkamp lunch found him hanging in the air twenty minutes later. He’d stopped breathing, swaying slowly left and right in his military uniform. Seeing this, the soldier put his ceramic tray warily in a corner of the room and sounded an alarm with his voice. The body, dead by suicide, was taken down by Commander Blumhardt and the men who’d rushed to his aid.
A soldier qualified to be a medic straddled the torso of a man more than ten ranks above him, reaching the limits of what his textbooks and experience told him could be done with an artificial respirator.
“I’m sorry, I can’t revive him.”
“Out of my way, I’ll do it.”
Blumhardt did his own inspection of the body, but the result was the same. Against all their efforts, Lennenkamp had shut the door permanently on life. When at last the commander stood up, his complexion as pale as the deceased’s, the door opened and spit out von Schönkopf, who’d just returned from releasing Lebello, hands and feet still bound, in a public park. A slight nick appeared in the blade of his usual fearlessness, and his expression became grave. He regretted having to hold off on fulfilling his promise, but at this point it was unnecessary.
“Lennenkamp’s death must be kept under wraps. Those alliance government bastards would capitalize on this unique opportunity to mo
bilize an all-out attack in a heartbeat. Do whatever it takes to make him alive again.”
Without a hostage, the Imperial Navy would have no reason not to attack the “rebels.” But with Lennenkamp dead, the truth would be buried along with him. As for the alliance government, it wanted to set fire to every reality and rumor alike.
When he heard of Lennenkamp’s death, Yang thought it over and at last came to a decision with the face of one swallowing a bitter medicine.
“Officially, Admiral Lennenkamp must be kept alive. Profane as it might be, there’s no other way.”
This one incident guaranteed him, Yang thought, a special seat in hell. Frederica came up with a suggestion. If they applied a little makeup to the deceased’s face, it might convince people that he’d only fainted. It didn’t seem like a bad idea.
But who was going to do that sickening job?
“I can do the makeup,” chimed Frederica. “After all, I was the one who suggested it, and as a woman I’m suited for the task.”
The men exchanged glances, but as it was clear they were out of their league when it came to makeup, despite their courage. And so, somewhat inarticulately, they left it to the lone woman of the group to get started.
“This is my first—and last, I hope—experience putting makeup on a corpse. If only he were a little more handsome,” Frederica muttered, “then I might not feel so bad wasting it.”
It wasn’t like Frederica to poke fun at the dead, but it was the only way she could endure the morbidity of this task, despite being the one to propose it herself. As she opened her makeup kit and set to work, the door opened and Yang caught an awkward glimpse of the face.
“Frederica…I, uh…I didn’t mean for you to…”
“If that’s an apology, I don’t want to hear it.”
Frederica beat her husband to the punch as her hands worked without rest.
“I don’t have any regrets, nor am I angry with you. Not even two months have gone by since we got married, and they’ve been nothing if not entertaining. So long as I’m with you, I’ll never lead a boring life again. Please don’t let me down, darling.”
“So, married life is entertaining for you?”
Yang had taken off his black beret and ruffled his unruly black hair. The beautiful young woman who was now his wife never ceased to amaze him. Their life together never seemed all that boring in the first place.
“Be that as it may,” Yang muttered indiscreetly, “this doesn’t strike me as the right time for such a conversation.”
It was the same emotion Frederica had felt before. A third party had been casting a deep, murky shadow across their exchange of courtesies.
Even as Senior Admiral Helmut Lennenkamp, the Galactic Empire’s high commissioner, stood on the same planet as Yang Wen-li, his heart was hundreds of thousands of light years away in death. When Yang thought of Lennenkamp’s bereaved family, he couldn’t suppress a bad aftertaste. The number of people seeking revenge on him had increased yet again.
Yang shook his head and closed the door on his wife’s unpleasant responsibility. He thought to himself: To be forced into an unwilling death or an unwilling life: which is closer to happiness?
I
ON JULY 30 OF THIS YEAR—SE 799 and year one of the New Imperial Calendar—on the imperial capital of Odin, two reports came in, one bad and one good.
The first was from the punitive Earth force’s commanding officer, August Samuel Wahlen.
“We were imperially commanded to go to Earth, suppress the main headquarters of the terrorist organization known as the Church of Terra, and arrest its founders and leaders. But as we breached the Church of Terra stronghold, those same founders and leaders blew up their own headquarters and buried themselves, making capture impossible. I humbly regret to inform you that I was unable to completely carry out my duty.”
Two recon battalions under Commander Konrad Rinser, going on Wahlen’s intel regarding entry and exit points, managed to infiltrate the stronghold and commence their all-out attack. One of their tasks was to pursue a group of independent Phezzanese merchants representing a “flaxen-haired boy.”
The black-clad pilgrims came at the fully armed imperial soldiers with knives and small firearms. Dumbfounded by their recklessness, the imperial soldiers nevertheless immediately returned fire, mowing down the religious fanatics and their primitive weapons, trudging over their corpses as they went deeper into the compound.
Normally, such unilateral slaughter would have intoxicated soldiers who lived for the taste of blood and flames. But their emotional stomachs were tested to their limits. While the believers, who’d been infected mind and body with fanaticism and thyoxin, were firmly in death’s pocket, the soldiers vomited, laughing hysterically, and even burst into tears.
Upon reaching the eighth stratum below the surface, the imperial forces knew they’d stepped into the deepest part of this underground maze.
Even here, believers resisted with everything they had, and any warnings on the part of imperial forces to surrender were met with gunfire. After a failed third attempt, the imperial forces gave up on arresting the old founders, starting with the Grand Bishop, and chose to exterminate them all.
Despite their overwhelming firepower, manpower, and battle tactics, the imperial forces had just faced one of the toughest fights they’d ever waged, if only because the Church of Terra had home field advantage, and because none of the believers feared death. They filled the passages with water, drowning their own and enemy soldiers alive and even martyred themselves with nerve gas grenades, taking as many down with them as they could.
“Are they complete idiots?” screamed the imperial officers about these church believers who lacked any concept of death.
They weren’t even killing each other. Rained upon by imperial gunfire, the church believers were committing suicide, burying themselves in the earth by blowing up the deepest parts of their sanctum.
“Did we really get them all?”
“Who knows…”
Such were the whispered exchanges among the soldiers afterward, feeling anything but proud of their victory. Every face was pale, overcome by shades of weariness.
The Grand Bishop, of course, didn’t see the corpses of most of his followers, buried as they were beneath trillions of tons of earth. But nothing could bury all of their lust and malice. All terrain within a ten-meter radius of the stronghold caved in, crumbling the holy mountain from within.
When Julian first met this admiral called Wahlen, his complexion looked weak. Julian knew it was because of a serious wound, but seeing that his courageous countenance was undisturbed, he couldn’t help but admire him deep down. And while, of course, Julian adored nothing so much as Yang Wen-li’s “utterly unheroic” side, he felt a certain attraction to the different effect of an iron-tough fortitude such as Wahlen’s.
“According to Commander Rinser, you helped out considerably in our capture of the Church of Terra’s headquarters.”
“Yes, absurdly enough, we were caught by Church of Terra followers, and while we partly had our own reasons, we were more than happy to be of assistance.”
Because Julian deemed this Admiral Wahlen a man worthy of respect, it pained him somewhat to be hiding his true character.
“I’d like to give you a token of my appreciation. Is there anything you desire to have?”
“Only for us to get safely back to Phezzan.”
“I’ll be more than happy to compensate you for any damages you suffered from all this nasty business. There’s no need to be modest.”
If he refused, he might raise suspicion for being too frugal. Julian was careful in shamelessly receiving the commander’s good favor, calculating the exact amount of damages and presenting it to Admiral Wahlen the next day. He also said they should reward Captain Boris Konev. A single optical disc was all the recompense he needed.
Everything was recorded on there. The history of Earth, a planet which had lost its hegemony over humankind by vindictively stitching its desire and malice into a veritable Gobelins tapestry of power spanning nine centuries.
This had been passed on to Admiral Yang’s hands, and had been useful in Julian’s long journey all the way to Earth. Julian had led the imperial forces, clearing away human and material obstacles, and that had led them to finally discover the “reference room” he’d been searching for. Knocking down knife-wielding fanatics left and right, they made it to the unexpectedly modern data room, where it took five minutes to gather the required information. Although they managed to wipe the remaining records so they would not fall into imperial hands, the data room got buried anyway, which meant they’d ended up doing twice the work for nothing.
As Julian stepped back from Wahlen, standing at the edge of the cliff and looking down on the caved-in terrain, Boris Konev stood next to him.
“Underneath all that lies the bodies of believers.”
“To a religious cult, nothing’s cheaper than the lives of its followers. It’s the same with leaders and their citizens, tacticians and their soldiers. Worth getting angry over, maybe, but not being surprised about.”
Julian found it increasingly difficult to condone Boris Konev’s harsh words. Then again, Boris was in a foul mood, having lost an important crew member in the melee.
“You once said Admiral Yang was different.”
The captain shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s fine to like Yang as a human being. I do, too. It’s only natural to respect him as a tactician as well. But the tactician leads a cursed existence. Yang himself knows this, I’m sure, so it’s nothing for you to get worked up about. You know it, too, so I forgive you for criticizing soldiers.”
Olivier Poplin was watching them from a short distance.
“That Julian’s a mystery to me,” muttered the ace pilot under his breath, leaning his head to one side.
Even he, and elders concerned with Julian, seemed compelled to appoint themselves as the boy’s guardian.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Volume 6 Page 22
