Mobilization

by Yoshiki Tanaka

  Bursts of light filled outer space with their soundless cadence. A fresh sword cut through this white-hot maelstrom, scattering ships like flailing shadows. Not thirty minutes after hostilities commenced, the war had plunged into a fierce fight.

  The Vermillion War had opened on such an ordinary note that both Reinhard von Lohengramm and Yang Wen-li were worried that the other had some clever scheme up his sleeve. In anticipation of the other’s next move, each could only take his first steps using extremely conventional tactics.

  Reinhard had been planning an unprecedented “deep defense” tactic against Yang’s offensive. Yang, of course, had his own ideas. But neither of them put these into operation, so as not to give the other a head start. This epic light show was therefore far from what either side had wanted. But the battle was on. Like raging wild horses who despised the rider’s reins, they stampeded wild and free. Yang was frustrated by Reinhard’s actions enough that he needed to concentrate a good amount of his nerves on orbital corrections.

  Changes in the tide of battle were precipitous and disorderly, and neither Reinhard nor Yang could handle all of them. By the time orders were received, situations had changed drastically, making those orders meaningless. When reports from the Imperial Navy’s front lines begged further instructions, lightning flashed in Reinhard’s ice-blue eyes.

  “Each division will respond as needed! What’s the point of having midranking commanding officers? Do I have to do everything around here?!”

  The alliance fared worse. When commanders on the front lines requested detailed instructions, Yang sighed.

  “Take that up with the enemy, why don’t you. It’s not like I have any power to choose in this situation.”

  Their highest commander’s mental disturbances were rather entangled in the climaxing ferocity of conflict. Beams and missiles clashed in hostility, destructive and defensive powers alike vying for superiority. In cases of superior destructive power, they broke through energy-neutralizing magnetic fields and armor, gutting ships by the turbulence of their lethal heat. In cases of superior defensive power, their enormous energy scattered in vain, harming only the weakest prey in their waning path. As both armies were toyed with by surging waves of energy, they hurled every projectile at their disposal. Even as ships suffered hits to their very bowels by nuclear fusion missiles, they were lasering through enemy ships in return.

  The empire’s rainbow-colored onslaught exploded all around Yang’s flagship Hyperion. The first to go was the cruiser ship Narvik, which after being hit dead center split into equal halves, while the others lit up their corner of outer space with balls of light.

  Apprehension came over the swarthy, virile face of Hyperion’s captain, Commander Asadora Chartian.

  “Your Excellency! Our flagship is too far forward. I fear we might become the target of concentrated fire. Requesting permission to fall back.”

  Yang turned his dark eyes, brimming with trust, to the captain.

  “I leave control of this ship to its captain. Do as you see fit.”

  Within ten minutes, Yang regretted those remarks. A division of imperial forces, lacking communication lines with other fleets, was leading a new charge. “Why are we retreating? I can’t very well command this way,” Yang cried out. The moment Yang saw a gap, he reinforced one of the beams holding up his tactical canopy. Yang leaned forward and gave his command to Frederica.

  In the end the command lacked conviction, but the moment the first imperial formation aimed its gunports at the enemy, a second formation came in from behind for the kill. The collision-avoidance systems of both fleets responded quickly, sending them flying in all directions. Navigations officers cursed gods and devils alike, clinging desperately to their control panels.

  The chaos was short-lived, but for Yang it was enough. Each of the alliance ships turned toward the enemy’s unexpected dance and at once unleashed its main battery. Points of light appeared everywhere, negating each other’s borders as they grew into a larger collective sphere.

  This left a giant hole in the imperial formation. It was a deformed mixture of energy and nothingness, a gargantuan maelstrom of high-frequency waves that denied the very existence of life.

  Back on the flagship Brünhild, Reinhard was fuming.

  “Just what the hell does Thurneisen think he’s doing?!”

  The communications officer cowered at Reinhard’s voice, struggling to establish contact against the electromagnetic waves jamming his communications. The operators, too, were sweating over their attempts to distinguish the jumble of signals from both sides. They confirmed that Thurneisen had abandoned his post.

  “Such a hero.”

  Von Oberstein’s artificial eyes glowed indifferently.

  “His voice travels far, but his eyes only see what’s in front of them. You should cut him loose.”

  “If I’m still around when this battle is over, I’ll take your warning to heart,” Reinhard spat out. “But right now, I need his strength to get through this. Get me Thurneisen!”

  A communications shuttle, carrying a transmission capsule with Reinhard’s orders, left Brünhild’s hold. This aggravated Reinhard even more.

  By going ahead on his own, fueled only by his own belligerence and ambition, Thurneisen had upset Reinhard’s plans on a tactical level. Reinhard would have to drag him by the neck and restore order to his fleet. Rushing into a war of attrition like this risked playing into Yang’s hands.

  Reinhard’s apprehensions proved correct. Yang was in a bad spot but had cleverly changed tactics, inviting concentrated fire from other imperial fleets besides Thurneisen’s into his concave formation. The exquisiteness of his timing earned him a look of astonishment from Merkatz, and the imperial forces, as if being sucked through a straw, broke ranks and scrambled to neutralize the alliance’s barrage.

  “Fire!”

  It was an attack of formidable density and accuracy. Like wild cattle driven by madness, the imperial forces rushed into an invisible wall. Light and heat billowed, and soldiers once filled with courage and exaltation became instant human wreckage. Chains of explosions extended in every direction, bringing forth a craftsmanship of light every bit as brilliant as humans could make. Inside those jewels were figures of life and death that were anything but graceful and magnificent.

  Some people evaporated in an instant. Others burned down the steep slope into death, leaving a trail of futile screams behind. Soldiers blinded by the flash bumped into fleeing comrades, inadvertently plunging their faces into exposed wires and dying in showers of sparks.

  Cruelty had never been their aim in fighting. But now they understood that justice and faith craved blood above all. In order make the justice proclaimed by their highest commander a reality, until their faith was satiated, many had soldiers burned alive, torn limb from limb. If only their sovereign had renounced justice and faith, those soldiers who watched as their entrails spilled out from open wounds would never have had to die in fear and pain. But rulers would continue to insist that justice and faith were more important than human lives, even as they hid behind their own authority, far from the battlespace. If anything distinguished Reinhard from such cowardly rulers, it was that he always stood on the front lines.

  “Mother, mother …”

  These were the last words of a soldier whose legs were blown off by the blast and who dragged his upper body across the floor with both hands as blood gurgled from his mouth. Another soldier, drenched in his own blood, tripped over him. One of his ribs cracked, and the lights went out in the young soldier’s eyes.

  Cruelty and tragedy were by no means exclusive to either side. The alliance, having sustained severe return fire, was also suffering the consequences.

  Uranium-238 bombs fired from electromagnetic catapults pierced the hulls of alliance warships, radiating superhigh heat. Soldiers embraced by arms of flame let out strange screams
as they rolled around on the floor. The floors themselves were already red-hot, and splattered blood evaporated into white smoke on contact. Orders to abort fell on deaf ears. As those still alive, covered in blood, warded off tendrils of flame and smoke, they ran for airtight doors as fast as their bodies would allow them. The blood spilling from their wounds kissed the floor, sending up plumes of fresh steam, while the heat burned the soles of their feet through the bottoms of their shoes. There was another explosion as giant hands of hot wind knocked down more soldiers. Shards of metal and ceramic flew at high velocity, slicing through their necks, helmets and all. Headless corpses fell atop comrades who’d just managed to get up, giving rise to more screams. Hands were hideously burned the moment they touched the floor, leaving skin behind when they were pulled up, their exposed flesh resembling purple gloves. Even as the bay doors closed, blocking off this hellish scene, the gates to a hell of slaughter were opening before the eyes of those still alive.

  Time demanded a sacrifice in proportion to its passage. The destruction grew only fiercer and greater in quantity. Both the empire and the alliance were helpless to save themselves from plunging into the depths of a boiling sludge.

  I

  At the outset, 18,860 ships and 2,295,400 soldiers on the empire’s side and 16,420 ships and 1,976,00 soldiers on the alliance’s participated in the Vermillion War. The numbers were roughly the same, and considering that the alliance’s supply lines were shorter and that the imperial forces, now on the defensive, had reserves to fall back on, they were evenly matched. If anything, the alliance was, for lack of a better term, “not at a disadvantage.”

  But the Imperial Navy had the enormous reinforcements of Mittermeier, von Reuentahl, Müller, and Wittenfeld to look forward to. The alliance, on the other hand, didn’t have a single coin left in its vault. If they were defeated here, not a single soldier would be left stationed on Heinessen. The fate of the Free Planets Alliance hung on whether one man, Reinhard von Lohengramm, could be brought down.

  The weight of the situation was enough to crush the heart of the alliance’s high commander. Despite fraying at the seams over the enormity of his responsibility, he was anything but weak. Yang’s defiance took root in the realization that there was a limit to what human beings were capable of. If Yang Wen-li couldn’t win against Reinhard von Lohengramm, then no one in the alliance could.

  At the same time, he wanted nothing more than to avoid the painful sight of soldiers dying in fear. Yang knew such casualties came with the territory, but the mental pictures of destruction and bloody spectacle were enough to make the ersatz historian’s heart run cold. Now, as before, he couldn’t help but wonder whether he was even worthy of pursuing the joys of domestic life. This had been the biggest reason behind his reluctance to reciprocate Frederica Greenhill’s feelings before. And while it seemed he’d finally overcome that, his heart was still lagging behind. Of course, if Yang gave up on these pleasures, then the dead would have no reason to come back to life …

  The Vermillion War would, for generations to come, be worthy of special mention for the enormity and precision of its tactical machinations, and for the legendary marshals who clashed under its fateful banner. By the close of the battle’s first act, Yang and Reinhard had already coproduced and directed unfathomable carnage, and now both sides were gearing up for a reluctant war of attrition. Despite sensing they were on a one-way track to catastrophe, they were at last successful in bringing the fighting under control, closing the curtain on an hour’s worth of mutual killing that otherwise threatened to go on endlessly. Their discernment and judgment in handling this situation proved their prodigiousness, if only passively.

  “Man, what a mess,” Yang sighed as he ran his eyes across incoming data.

  That the inherent coldheartedness of tactical science could so efficiently kill one’s own men was, this time, made clearer to him by the valuable military forces he’d wasted. He was in a sour mood.

  “If only we had more men. Ten thousand … no, five … even three thousand more ships would be enough. If only …”

  Yang sighed again, knowing full well the futility of such groundless reasoning. As he ruffled his black hair, he pulled himself together and went back to the drawing board.

  Those other than the commander had their respective duties. The military doctors and nurses had mobilized their entire medical network to treat the wounded. Faced with a choice between humanity and efficiency, they favored the latter, and their methods were in some ways cruel. First, they numbed patients’ pain receptors with paralysis gas, then cut off the affected parts and replaced them with artificial organs and skin. Limbs damaged beyond repair were removed with laser scalpels, then switched out for artificial limbs equipped with hydrogen batteries. Such measures were first carried out only in cases where living cells couldn’t be regenerated by electron radiation, but because half the time the body didn’t accept them, those more gravely wounded who then regained consciousness screamed in protest when they couldn’t detect their limbs properly. But no matter how much they cried to get their own appendages back, those amputated parts had already been incinerated. There was no way to preserve them hygienically. Thus, the number of soldiers who came out of the war as partial biomechanoids was comparable to the number of those less fortunate.

  Early on April 27, the war underwent its first major change when, after regrouping his forces, Yang ordered a blitzkrieg.

  It was rare for him to become so proactive against a progressive enemy. Usually, Yang moved only when the other side did and preferred taking his opponents by surprise over attacking them head-on. Likewise, when Reinhard was informed of an alliance blitzkrieg, he acted out of character for one so dynamic by ordering an orthodox counterattack.

  Future historians would speak of these events as if they’d been there:

  “And so, the Vermillion War had begun in earnest. Reinhard von Lohengramm’s forces had made the first strike, while Yang’s adopted a deep defensive posture. Each by his own merits tried his best to turn the tide of the war in his favor by coaxing his opponent into action.”

  But when all was said and done, whether actively or passively, Reinhard could only have done his best within the confines of the arena. Each had his own reason for acting the way he did.

  The Yang fleet attacked the imperial forces in a planned conical formation. From the alliance’s opened gunports, tangible and intangible energy alike rained down on the enemy with the force of Shiva’s hammer. The imperial fleet’s retaliation was just as fierce but was not enough to stop Yang’s advance. Explosions bloomed in profusion all around them.

  Any destroyers hit directly were subsumed by variations of white, orange, crimson, blue, green, and purple that disturbed the optic nerves, scattering as countless fragments in all directions. Clashing bundles of energy sent out light and heat, rocking ships with their turbulence. Tens of thousands of fire arrows battered ships as enormous amounts of air and soldiers were sucked out through those breaches into the darkness.

  Had all of this been accompanied by sound, it would’ve driven the combatants insane.

  The Yang fleet’s concentration technique had never had much of an effect in the past, but this time was an exception. His relentless maelstrom of light beams dealt severe damage to the imperial side, causing plenty of fear and confusion. Reinhard’s forces seemed about to retreat, before quickly abandoning that option to cut a horizontal path. But Yang was one step ahead of them.

  In trying to make a detour while avoiding fire, the imperial forces had drawn the worst lot. They attempted to disperse themselves like a giant river flowing out from a ravine onto the plains, packing tightly together while sustaining concentrated enemy fire.

  Such an efficient attack was worthy, in Yang’s mind, of being carved on his gravestone. The gunners, even without perfect aim, managed to create one explosion after another, rendering an oil painting of blood and flame in
outer space. Just one of those explosions meant the demise of thousands of human lives.

  The imperial forces were unilaterally knocked back, their ranks broken, their formations scattered. Yang wasn’t going to let this chance slip through his fingers. His concise yet powerful command was conveyed to all forces.

  “Charge!”

  The Yang fleet’s conical formation plunged forward at full power and broke through the Imperial Navy’s line formation like a steel sword piercing a bronze shield.

  The operator let out a whoop of excitement.

  “Breach successful! We’re through!”

  Again, despite the cheers filling the bridge of the flagship Hyperion, Yang was anything but moved by their delight.

  “It’s too thin,” he said, sounding more like someone complaining to his butcher than a scrutinizing military leader. Julian understood where Yang was going with that statement. The imperial forces’ defense formation shouldn’t have been so easy to break through.

  “We can expect more enemies at any moment.”

  The commander’s prediction came true not half an hour later. At around 1200 hours, another line of defense appeared, showering them with gunfire.

  As the Yang fleet continued forward at great speed, persisting with the concentrated fire that was its specialty, it drilled numerous holes in the empire’s defenses, mowing down imperial ships at point-blank range. Commodore Marino’s division even succeeded in cutting off the head.

  Commodore Marino had served as Hyperion captain before Commander Chartian had succeeded him. His skills as captain weren’t necessarily comparable to those as fleet commander, but he straddled both roles nonetheless. Like a carpenter working an awl, his division had bored through the imperial formation. But before their cheers could even settle, more points of light appeared before them, spreading to either side in a macabre gesture of welcome.

  “They just keep coming. How many layers of defense do they have? Is this an old-fashioned petticoat or something?”