Endurance
Page 1
Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 3: Endurance
GINGA EIYU DENSETSU Vol.3
© 1984 by Yoshiki TANAKA
Cover Illustration © 2007 Yukinobu Hoshino.
All rights reserved.
Cover and interior design by Fawn Lau
No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders.
HAIKASORU
Published by VIZ Media, LLC
P.O. Box 77010
San Francisco, CA 94107
www.haikasoru.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tanaka, Yoshiki, 1952- author. | Huddleston, Daniel, translator.
Title: Legend of the galactic heroes / written by Yoshiki Tanaka ; translated by Daniel Huddleston.
Other titles: Ginga eiyu densetsu
Description: San Francisco : Haikasoru, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2015044444| ISBN 9781421584942 (v. 1 : paperback) | ISBN 9781421584959 (v. 2 : paperback) 9781421584966 (v. 3 : paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Science fiction. | War stories. | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Military. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure.
Classification: LCC PL862.A5343 G5513 2016 | DDC 895.63/5--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044444
Printed in the U.S.A.
First printing, November 2016
Haikasoru eBook edition
ISBN: 978-1-4215-9484-2
Galactic Empire
Reinhard von Lohengramm
Commander in chief of the imperial military. Imperial prime minister. Duke.
Paul von Oberstein
Chief of staff of the Imperial Space Armada. Acting secretary-general of Imperial Military Command Headquarters. Senior admiral.
Wolfgang Mittermeier
Fleet commander. Senior admiral. Known as the “Gale Wolf.”
Oskar von Reuentahl
Fleet commander. Senior admiral. Has heterochromatic eyes.
Fritz Josef Wittenfeld
Commander of the Schwarz Lanzenreiter fleet. Admiral.
Ernest Mecklinger
Deputy manager of Imperial Armed Forces Supreme Command Headquarters. Admiral. Known as the “Artist-Admiral.”
Ulrich Kessler
Commissioner of military police and commander of capital defenses. Admiral.
Karl Gustav Kempf
Fleet commander. Admiral.
August Samuel Wahlen
Fleet commander. Admiral.
Kornelias Lutz
Fleet commander. Admiral.
Neidhart Müller
Fleet commander. Admiral.
Adalbert Fahrenheit
Fleet commander. Admiral.
Arthur von Streit
Reinhard’s chief aide. Rear admiral.
Hildegard von Mariendorf
Chief secretary to the imperial prime minister. Often called “Hilda.”
Heinrich von Kümmel
Hilda’s cousin. Baron.
Annerose von Grünewald
Reinhard’s elder sister. Countess von Grünewald. Lives in seclusion at her mountain villa.
Erwin Josef II
37th emperor of the Galactic Empire.
Rudolf von Goldenbaum
Founder of the Galactic Empire’s Goldenbaum Dynasty.
Deceased
Siegfried Kircheis
Died living up to the faith Annerose placed in him.
Free Planets Alliance
Yang Wen-li
Commander of Iserlohn Fortress. Commander of Iserlohn Patrol Fleet. Admiral.
Julian Mintz
Yang’s ward. Civilian employed by military; treated equivalent to lance corporal.
Frederica Greenhill
Yang’s aide. Lieutenant.
Alex Caselnes
Administrative director of Iserlohn Fortress. Rear admiral.
Walter von Schönkopf
Commander of fortress defenses at Iserlohn Fortress. Rear admiral.
Edwin Fischer
Vice commander of Iserlohn Patrol Fleet. Master of fleet operations.
Murai
Chief of staff. Rear admiral.
Fyodor Patrichev
Deputy chief of staff. Commodore.
Dusty Attenborough
Division commander within the Iserlohn Patrol Fleet. Yang’s underclassman. Rear admiral.
Olivier Poplin
Captain of the First Spaceborne Division at Iserlohn Fortress. Lieutenant commander.
Nguyen Van Thieu
A fierce commander in the Iserlohn Patrol Fleet.
Wiliabard Joachim Merkatz
Highly experienced admiral of the Imperial Navy who defected to Iserlohn. A “guest admiral” who is treated as a vice admiral.
Bernhard von Schneider
Merkatz’s aide.
Alexandor Bucock
Commander in chief of the Alliance Armed Forces Space Armada. Admiral.
Louis Machungo
Yang’s security guard. Warrant officer.
Job Trünicht
Head of state. Chairman of the High Council.
Deceased
Jessica Edwards
Representative in the antiwar faction of the National Assembly. Died in the Stadium Massacre.
Dwight Greenhill
Frederica’s father. Ringleader of a failed military coup.
Phezzan Dominion
Adrian Rubinsky
The fifth landesherr. Known as the “Black Fox of Phezzan.”
Rupert Kesselring
Rubinsky’s chief aide.
Leopold Schumacher
Former captain in the Imperial Navy. Defected to Phezzan.
Boris Konev
Independent merchant. Old acquaintance of Yang’s. Working in the office of the Phezzan commissioner on Heinessen.
Marinesk
Administrative officer on board Beryozka.
Degsby
Bishop dispatched from Earth to keep an eye on Rubinsky.
Grand Bishop
Ruler in Rubinsky’s shadow.
*Titles and ranks correspond to each character’s status at the end of Ambition or their first appearance in Endurance.
Major Characters
Chapter 1:
First Flight
Chapter 2:
The Fortress Takes Flight
Chapter 3:
One Slender Thread
Chapter 4:
Things Lost
Chapter 5:
Court of Inquiry
Chapter 6:
A Battle without Weapons
Chapter 7:
Fortress versus Fortress
Chapter 8:
Return
Chapter 9:
Resolve and Ambition
About the Author
The boy hadn’t always loved the stars.
One winter’s night, when he might have been most accurately called a toddler, he sat on his father’s shoulders and looked up at the sky. Above snow-capped peaks tinged blue by starlight, a cold, hard expanse of utter blackness had spread out above him. Seized with terror, he had clung to his father’s neck tightly, fearful that invisible arms were about to reach out of that endless darkness, scoop him up, and carry him away.
Now his father was gone. So was his fear of the depths of space. What he had now was someone greater than his father and a heart that longed for wings to carry him through the vast sea of stars.
It was January. SE 798, IE 489.
Julian Mintz was about to turn sixteen.
Rear Admiral Dusty Attenborough had departed Iserlohn Fortress leading a 2,200-v
essel division composed of warships both large and small. Operating far away from both the fortress and the rest of the Iserlohn Patrol Fleet, Attenborough’s division was deployed inside the Iserlohn Corridor, like a bayonet pointed toward the Galactic Empire’s territory. It was in this formation that Julian Mintz was presently serving.
Their mission was to run security patrols along the front, although this doubled as large-scale training maneuvers for new recruits as well.
The Alliance Armed Forces’ human resources pool had been drained to no small degree last year by the so-called Military Congress for the Rescue of the Republic, whose coup d’état had rocked the FPA to its core. Under the command of Admiral Yang Wen-li, the Iserlohn Patrol Fleet had weathered many battles in that conflict, and in the civil war’s aftermath a significant number of its veterans had been headhunted to fill key positions in new or expanded units.
This meant that the fleet’s most experienced personnel had been replaced by raw recruits, and although the numbers remained the same, it was hardly surprising that the fleet’s overall quality as a fighting force had declined. No matter what latent abilities these new faces might conceal, efficient use of those talents could only come with time and experience.
It’s gonna be no easy job makin’ soldiers outta these kids …;
Such thoughts were never far from the minds of the instructors as they contemplated the long road ahead for their young charges. Moreover, Iserlohn Fortress was on the very front line of the Free Planets Alliance’s defenses, so every time the Galactic Imperial Navy made a move, it was those so stationed who stood to take the first blow. In spite of that, the battle-hardened warriors of this vital military installation had been poached, then replaced with untrained recruits.
What do those imbeciles in government think they’re doing?!
After much verbal abuse of the powers that be, Iserlohn’s officers had set about dealing with the reality in front of them. These newbies had received only about a tenth of the training required to become fully functioning soldiers. To raise the odds of victory and increase their likelihood of survival, it was essential that they have at least 50 percent of the recommended training before it came time to face combat.
Accordingly, from the moment they arrived at Iserlohn, the recruits were subjected to an overwhelming barrage of intense training, as well as blistering rebukes from veteran soldiers and angry, red-faced instructors.
“Did you scumbags just come here to goof off?! All you are’s a buncha good-for-nothing puppy dogs!”
“You want to live, you improve your skills! The enemy won’t be giving you any handicaps!”
“Understand? The one who wins is the one who’s stronger, not the one who’s right. Losing out here doesn’t just disqualify you from some debate about right and wrong—you’re disqualified from breathing, too. Don’t you ever forget that.”
“Focus less on shooting early and more on shooting accurately! And even when you do shoot first, timing is everything. Remember: when you open fire, you’re also giving the enemy your position.”
“Your responses are slow! Do it over, from the beginning!”
“Go back to military school! I don’t see how you ever graduated in the first place! Don’t come here until you’re at least out of diapers!”
The voices of the instructors grew ever louder and more heated. Whenever someone responded too sluggishly or failed to grasp an explanation, merciless abuse was sure to be heading their way.
Although it was rare to find a youth with reflexes and powers of comprehension on par with Julian, not even he was able to make it through a training session without a baptism of invective—and not just once or twice, either. One of the more reprehensible characteristics of the military’s specialized hierarchical society was that recruits too far above average earned the same angry glares as those who underperformed.
Nobody in Attenborough’s division got punched, but that was only because it was part of the Iserlohn Patrol Fleet; that was not the case in other regiments. In most matters, Yang, the commanding officer, was rather soft when it came to military discipline, but there were two areas in which he was so strict as to seem another person altogether: when soldiers harmed civilians, and when senior officers inflicted unfair or “creative” punishments on their subordinates. He had once demoted an officer decorated for valor on many a battlefield—and also sent him back to a post on Heinessen. It hadn’t been the first time the man had used violence against subordinates, and Yang had ignored the cohort of officers who’d said they hated to lose his abilities.
“Subordinates can’t do a thing to resist their CO’s punishments. If a CO goes around hitting his men and we hold him up as a model soldier, that just makes soldiers an embarrassment to humanity. We don’t need a man like that. At the very least, I don’t.”
Yang had neither raised his voice nor shouted. Both his expression and his voice had been rather soft. He was always like that when he was sticking to his guns about something.
Yang Wen-li was Julian’s legal guardian, and when the boy had told him he wanted to be a soldier, Yang had not looked pleased. With the look on his face and his voice alike, he’d said, “There’s all kinds of careers out there to choose from. Of all things, surely there’s no need to pick the military.”
Yang Wen-li was a military man himself. Although he was young, he was a full admiral already and was viewed as the number three man in uniform after Admiral Cubresly—director of Joint Operational Headquarters—and Admiral Bucock—commander in chief of the space armada.
Most in his position would have gladly offered assistance if Julian wanted to join the military; Yang, however, didn’t feel that the military life was his own calling and decided that it would be a poor fit for Julian as well. At the same time, however, he couldn’t just obstinately deny the free will of a young boy. As things stood presently, he was giving Julian his silent, if reluctant, assent.
Although Yang was Julian’s legal guardian, holder of parental authority over him, and his guarantor, none of that gave Julian any advantage whatsoever in training. On the contrary, it provided once-in-a-lifetime grist for mean-spirited junior officers to use when calling him names and making fun of him. Don’t think you’ll get any special treatment here because you’re Admiral Yang’s adopted son …; Just look at you—you’re an embarrassment to the admiral’s name …; If you think we’re gonna go easy on you, you’ve got another thing coming …; You probably think you can run crying to the admiral and he’ll take care of everything, but that isn’t gonna happen here …; Comments like these infuriated him, but they never pushed Julian beyond the bounds of his endurance. The boy knew that, despite the abuse, he was still in an enviable position. The attitude pervading Iserlohn Fortress and the patrol fleet was still without a doubt the best in all the armed forces of the alliance. That the air here could not be completely purged of such negative emotions was perhaps simply a cross that had to be carried—not only by the military, but by any other group of humans as well.
II
Triglav was the flagship of Attenborough’s division. Named for the war god of Slavic mythology, the warship was beautiful—graceful, even—in its refined functionality, and in that respect exceeded even Yang’s flagship, Hyperion. Triglav had arrived at Iserlohn as a brand-new, top-of-the-line warship, and at the time many had wondered aloud whether Commander Yang might move his commander’s seat. That speculation hadn’t panned out, however, at which point other voices supposed that Yang was simply the type who couldn’t recognize the need for beauty in military vessels.
“If I may ask, sir,” his chief of staff, Rear Admiral Murai, had asked, “Why didn’t you make Triglav your flagship? It has that sort of presence that suits a flagship, I think …;”
Yang’s reply had left Murai speechless. This is what the dark-haired, dark-eyed young commander had said:
“Yeah, Triglav sure is a pretty s
hip to look at. And that’s precisely why I didn’t make it the flagship. After all, how am I supposed to admire it from the inside?”
Julian had had his doubts as to whether Yang had been answering seriously. Knowing Yang, he might have just thought it was too much of a chore to move his command from a ship he was familiar with. It was always a hassle for him when subordinates wanted to argue issues that were really beside the point, so maybe he had just given a totally out-of-left-field answer to see if it would shut Murai up. That was what Julian thought, though at the same time, he also had a feeling that Yang could have been entirely serious. In short, Yang was still a difficult person for Julian to read.
Aboard Triglav, the operators’ movements were growing more hurried. The enemy-detection system had picked up a group of more than one thousand unidentified vessels.
If one set aside the minuscule chance that this was a massive fleet of defectors, the only other possibility was a Galactic Imperial Navy fleet. Rear Admiral Attenborough received the report and had orders relayed to all ships’ captains to cease training exercises and go to alert level two. By that time, everyone in the forward group could already feel the enemy approach in their bones, due to the disruption of their transmission signals.
Warnings rang out from the intercoms. Enemy fleet detected! Fifty minutes till contact! All hands, battle stations!
Tension raced at the speed of light into the mind of every officer and soldier. Those who had been sleeping jerked awake, and mess halls were left vacated in moments. As for the new recruits, they were in a pathetic state, going through all the panic, confusion, and dread of the unknown that the seasoned crew did not. Taking twice as long as their battle-hardened brethren to get into their combat suits, they stood in corridors looking back and forth, not knowing what they were supposed to be doing until at last they were shoved out of the way by senior crew who looked like they were ready to kill them.