Bucock nodded deeply in response to the young aide’s advice.
“Perhaps. Well, scratch that—I’m sure you’re right. But we have no other strategy to fall back on. We must exploit the enemy’s formation to destroy the middle, one fleet at a time.”
As he said this, the old admiral sighed at the disparity between their determination to fight and their preparedness to do so. The Imperial Navy was purported to have at least one million ships at its disposal.
“Be that as it may, Duke von Lohengramm didn’t earn his reputation as a genius by letting down his guard. He’s always been a step ahead of us.”
“Which is why Yang Wen-li and all the rest praise his tactical abilities so highly. I wonder if you know what Yang Wen-li said, Lieutenant Commander Soul. I heard it from the man himself: ‘Had I been born in the empire, I would’ve proudly hoisted his flag.’ ”
“That’s a pretty dangerous thing to say, isn’t it?”
“How so? I’d do the same. Not that Reinhard would have much use for me, feeble and unskilled as I am,” said the old admiral indifferently.
The young aide was perplexed for a moment, then smiled with understanding.
The next day, on February 8, at 1300 hours, the distance between imperial and alliance forces was reduced to 5.9 light-seconds. From the vantage point of the battlespace’s zenith, clusters of luminous points indicated the vertical approach of the Alliance Armed Forces toward the midsection of a long, horizontal stretch of imperial vessels curving slightly inward: an arrow aimed straight at the body of a giant serpent.
On approach, however, Bucock reconsidered attacking the middle. The body of the imperial formation was especially well fortified, and even if he could make quick work of breaking through it, Bucock risked being flanked on both sides. Wasn’t it easier to let the enemy make the first move, lure them out while fending off their attacks and then destroy each head as it came around?
By 1340, he’d put a new plan into effect. After narrowing the gap between them to 5.1 light-seconds, the first shot was fired five minutes later.
III
The artillery battle was over in thirty minutes. Energy beams and missiles crossed and collided in a mesh of light, spreading out soundlessly in infernal yet beautiful shapes.
Mittermeier’s fleet—the snake’s body—made the first move. An FTL message ordered a simultaneous advance. All fleets did as they were told, firing continuously. Not to bring about a swift victory, but to demonstrate their firepower and test the enemy’s response. Hence Mittermeier’s ordinary method of approach. But the sight of grand forces drawing near in countless points of light held a strangely abstract fascination for the alliance’s frontline commanders, whose throats constricted with fear. Despite the veteran Bucock’s careful insistence that everyone remain on standby, one of his divisions accidentally returned fire. Although oriented toward the imperial forces, most of their shots fell short or fired in random directions. It was enough to incite chaos.
As the alliance pounded away indiscriminately with high-density energy beams and missiles, it didn’t seem like it would be enough to breach the massive imperial wall, much to the surprise of both sides. But then, as the imperial defenses reached their threshold, a temporary crack opened. Against all better judgment, the alliance’s vanguard scrambled forward, and with bared fangs tore its way through. The imperial forces had been compromised.
Mittermeier stared at the flagship screen and clicked his tongue faintly. Kicking at the polished bridge floor with the heel of his military shoes, he turned to his aide, Lieutenant Commander Amsdorf.
“I’d personally like to ask the devil whether he’s making room for the alliance or for us.”
Observing the progress of the war on the screen of his flagship Brünhild, Reinhard held firm. His secondary aide, Lieutenant von Rücke, broke the silence with a voice of meek admiration.
“I’m surprised that Admiral Mittermeier is being forced back. The alliance has its fair share of courageous fighters, does it not?”
“The alliance is more maniacal than it is courageous,” said Reinhard by way of cool correction. “Mittermeier is a matador. It might look like he’s being pushed around by the bull when in fact he’s conserving his strength and looking for a chance to win. But …”
Reinhard lightly and gracefully inclined his head, muttering to himself through a strained laugh.
“Perhaps he really has been stumped by this attack. Shall I make my move now … ?”
Reinhard’s observation had hit the mark on both points. Mittermeier was indeed drawing away the alliance forces while fending off their attacks in order to scatter them, but he was amazed by their spiritedness.
He was a fierce tiger being snapped at by, and shrinking back from, a pack of savage hounds that had never known fear. The Imperial Navy might have the upper hand when it came to its commanders’ abilities, and in the quality and quantity of its soldiers, but an alliance tendency toward erratic vigor often compromised imperial plans and calculations.
Doubtless, the alliance’s attack wasn’t just erratic. As they opened all gunports, loosing arrows of light from multiple directions, they barreled at high speed through uninhabited space. Some warships disabled their own anticollision systems, slicing enemy destroyers in two with their hulls. Cruisers volleyed their main artillery into those enemies directly ahead of them, engulfing their own ships in balls of explosive light. This mad rush broke all reasonable rules of self-defense, spreading out a banquet of destruction. Bucock exhausted every medium available to him before seizing control of the main ship’s communication channel.
“Fall back! Retreat and rejoin the formation! Haven’t you tasted enough blood for one day?”
Drunk with carnage, the alliance fighters at last came to their senses and ceased their rampage, rearranged their ships, and attempted to pull back the war front.
But the imperial forces weren’t about to let the alliance quit while they were ahead. Mittermeier’s most valiant generals—Bayerlein, Büro, and Droisen—launched a counterattack with seemingly predetermined precision, their stomachs churning with the scorching lava of revenge. At that very moment, the large snake, consisting of 150,000 ships, formed a sickle shape and swooped down on the alliance. The entirety of the imperial force, five times the size of the alliance’s, let out a soundless tremor, like a dragon waking up atop its pile of gold.
In a grim reversal of fortune, the alliance went from perpetrators of a slaughter to its victims. They were assaulted from the fore by a glittering firestorm. From the left, the division under Reinhard’s direct control spit out hundreds of thousands of flaming tongues of pure energy, and from the right, Müller, Fahrenheit, and Wahlen hurled unrelenting spears of the same.
The explosions were so bright it was as if the universe was burning to its ends, and the alliance, now the target of concentrated fire, was being cremated alive. Even if the outer walls of a ship could withstand the heat of such an attack, the men inside them couldn’t. They were thrown into walls and onto floors, as well as into the embrace of death by the rapidly mounting temperatures inside their ships.
Those who died instantly were rather fortunate. For those who suffered their fatal wounds over the course of minutes until the doors of final mercy opened to them, their bodies convulsed from the agony of boiling internal organs in the sludge of their own thrown-up blood, which then evaporated into white smoke. Melting floors incinerated the bodies of the living and the dead alike, and a pure-white light bleached out this horrible spectacle as ships were torn asunder in balls of flame. A tremendous waste of life, materials, and energy spread across the battlespace like a great wave of futility.
On this day, from 1600 hours to 1900 hours, fighting on both sides reached peak intensity. The alliance’s Dieudonné division, consisting of 840 ships, was reduced to 130 in a mere three hours. Wahlen’s fleet attempted to finish off the Die
udonné division. As Wahlen advanced, cutting in on the alliance’s port side with unceasing fire, he tried to drive a wedge into its formation. Against Admiral Morton’s counterattack, Wahlen held port and brought about alliance bloodshed through repeated, systematic attacks.
Fahrenheit circumvented the Wahlen fleet and, in a bold maneuver, tried to sneak around to the alliance’s rear, but this brought his ships dangerously close to the fixed star of Rantemario, the magnetism and heat of which made their instruments go haywire, and they reluctantly retreated. The alliance, thanks to Bucock’s levelheaded commands, escaped an hour-long predicament with its front intact.
“Victory won’t come so easily,” said Reinhard to himself. “This old man is unyielding. Just like Merkatz.”
Reinhard called for his chief aide, Rear Admiral von Streit. Seeing that the battle was deadlocked, he withdrew his forces to avoid unnecessary damage and ordered all officers to take a rest to replenish themselves.
Since the battle had commenced, the soldiers had been repeatedly downing high-calorie biscuits fortified with calcium and vitamins, along with ionized drinks. A presence or absence of appetite revealed a striking dissimilarity between rookies and veterans. The latter made a show of their surplus, blaming the blandness of the food, while the younger officers in their first campaign, out of sheer fatigue, wanted to vomit at the very thought of putting solids in their mouths, and they tolerated the ionized drinks as best they could. Even so, they’d pulled through so far, even as many of their comrades were missing out on their chance to become experienced soldiers.
On February 9, an overwhelming difference between these two military factions emerged. The imperial forces pushed their front lines forward, condensing into a half-encircling ring to overcome the alliance’s resistance. The hole in the imperial formation was closed as quickly as it was opened, whereas the one opened in the alliance stayed that way.
Cornered, the alliance abandoned its offensive tactics, going instead on the defensive. Cut by hailing swords of light, discharging energy instead of blood and penetrating armored planks instead of flesh, the alliance forces persevered with all their might. From behind the floating debris of destroyed ships, they rained fire down on their enemies. What particularly made the empire marvel at the alliance’s ingenuity was how it used single-seat spartanian fighter craft to lure enemy ships within firing range. While the empire was busy chasing after an enemy they thought was trying to escape in confusion, lethal blows pummeled their engines from behind and above.
Overall, the empire’s superiority showed no signs of wavering, but the alliance, strengthening the unity and coordination of its chain of command, needed just one strong blow to turn the tide of the battle into a scenario of mutually assured destruction. A tactician as seasoned as Bucock was determined to win, and not even Mittermeier knew how to read one so focused.
“I guess we have no choice.”
Reinhard stared at the screen with his arms crossed, at last summoning his communications officer and, turning his ice-blue eyes on him, giving his command.
“Signal Wittenfeld. Tell him, ‘It’s your turn now. Hoist the alliance commander’s beret on the end of the Schwarz Lanzenreiter’s spear and bring it to me.’ ”
IV
It was 1100 hours on February 9 when the Schwarz Lanzenreiter, boasting incomparable firepower, moved out on the orders of the high commander. Having not received the order to fire the day before, Admiral Wittenfeld wanted nothing less than to watch from the sidelines, but now, letting out an ecstatic whistle, he threw up an arm high before the communications screen and swung it downward.
“The Schwarz Lanzenreiter are on the move.”
In response to Vice Admiral Bayerlein’s report, Mittermeier vigorously rustled his honey-colored hair with one hand.
“The final hour is close at hand. It appears that Wittenfeld, their best performer, will make an appearance after all.”
“What would you have our fleet do?”
“We move to strike. We can’t let the Schwarz Lanzenreiter hog all the best meat of our prey.”
“You read my mind.”
With a broad smile, Bayerlein gave the order to his fleet, encouraging his men to keep pace with the Schwarz Lanzenreiter.
Upon receiving Wittenfeld’s dispatch, the Müller, Wahlen, and Fahrenheit fleets grew excited. The imperial troops felt deeply and unanimously that victory was theirs.
An enormous river of excess energy, guided by a constant flow of solar winds and planetary movements, stood in Wittenfeld’s way. Wreckage of ships stripped of their mobility and scores of human bodies rendered inorganic floated along its soundless, surging current into the edge of darkness beyond the gravitational pull of the sun. Perhaps in due course it would send that wreckage and those bodies back to where they came from.
This formidable river was nothing Wittenfeld could easily circumvent, but neither was he about to compromise his reputation for bravery. He ordered all ships to advance.
This group of jet-black warships drove boldly into the ferocious current, which disrupted their orderly formation more quickly than he expected.
Seeing this, the alliance’s chief of staff, Chung Wu-cheng, shouted at the flagship’s operators.
“Figure out the velocity of the imperial fleet’s charge and that of the energy current! With the right calculations, we should be able to determine their exit point.”
After quickly crunching some numbers, the operators had their answer. The commander in chief’s orders flew again, and the alliance prepared to fire upon the Wittenfeld navy’s “river crossing.”
At 1120, the alliance opened all gunports.
At last, the Schwarz Lanzenreiter ships were spat out on the opposite shore of the rapid energy current, only to be met with a storm rush of beams and missiles. Nuclear fusion explosions went off in succession, and broken warships were thrown into the river of energy from which they’d just surfaced, to be carried downstream.
But the admirals of the Schwarz Lanzenreiter weren’t pacifists who embraced the ethos of total nonresistance. They held their own, unsheathing blades of energy and fiercely slashing at the alliance. Beam crossed beam, sending blinding spirals of light streaking across the black sky. Carbide-steel bullets fired from rail cannons pierced composite armor, and fired photon bullets battered the fleet in haphazard array. Energy beams rushing down at acute angles hit hydrogen-power reactors, sending gun turrets flying and consigning crew members to deadly cyclones of hot wind and radiation.
Using up all their strength at last, the weakening alliance was mowed down like grass by the merciless Schwarz Lanzenreiter. Nuclear fusion detonations overlapped into a giant wall of white-hot light. Within that wall, the alliance’s ships exploded into pieces, went up in flames, or sank into spiraling beams of light, only to be erased by the afterglow, crews and all.
“We’ve taken great damage! Our ship is immobilized.”
“Human and material losses are overwhelming. We cannot maintain the front. Requesting permission to retreat.”
“Mayday! Requesting immediate assistance!”
These cries for help clogged the alliance’s communication channels, but to no avail. Before long, the screams lapsed into silence. Death had prevailed.
“I guess that’s that. And so the sun sets, and a general ascends to fame on the bodies of thousands of soldiers.”
Marshal Alexandor Bucock stared blankly at the screen. Nearly all of his fleet, along with the bevy of officers under his leadership, had been reduced to atoms as unilateral targets of destruction and carnage. With every blossoming of light, casualties were mass-produced, as were the orphans and widows left by their destruction. Bucock didn’t have a single ship or soldier to spare for rescue. Around the flagship Rio Grande, thirty cruisers and destroyers at his front and rear were all that was left; the faces of the few survivors were pale with fear.
Confined in his private room, he removed a blaster and a writing implement from a desk drawer. Just then, the door, which should’ve been wire locked, opened with great force to reveal his chief of staff.
“You mustn’t take your own life, Your Excellency Commander. Even Admiral Merkatz persevered after his loss, did he not?”
Seeing the small unlocking device in Chung Wu-cheng’s hand, the old admiral slowly shook his head. In that gesture was the shadow of his accumulated fatigue.
“What’s the point of a commander living on when his fleet has been destroyed?”
Chung Wu-cheng closed the device and softened his expression.
“Our forces haven’t been completely destroyed. Yang Wen-li’s fleet is still going strong. Even with one last ship to his name, it’s a commander’s duty to carry on.”
“Are you saying there’s a way for me to take responsibility for this defeat outside of dying?”
The old admiral looked yearningly at the blaster on his desk. Since they’d suffered proper defeat at the hands of an enemy five times their size, and with no miracle in sight, there was only one thing left to do, or so every fiber of his old body told him. But his aide purposefully ignored the old man’s silent speech.
“In committing suicide, you’d only be taking responsibility for your allies. But I’m talking about the enemy—yes, responsibility to the ones who gain victory over us.”
Those words were unexpectedly clear to Bucock. The old admiral’s gaze broke away from the desk at last and turned toward his forthcoming intruder.
“What I’m about to say may sound inhumane,” said Chung Wu-cheng by way of prefacing his explanation. “If you don’t like it, then feel free to turn that gun on me.”
Mobilization Page 10
