Endurance

by Yoshiki Tanaka

  Merkatz, a warrior forged through countless battles, was there. Surely he would prove worthy of the faith Yang placed in him. And then there was Julian—Yang remembered once more that handsome-faced youth who was his ward. There was one thing he had stressed whenever he talked strategy and tactics with the boy: when the enemy retreats and the timing seems off, watch out. He had taught him a number of variations on what could happen at such times. Now, would the boy just be kind enough to remember? If he did—no, wait. Wasn’t he against Julian joining the military? Wasn’t this too much to expect of him …;?

  “Enemy in firing range!”

  “All right, just follow the plan.” Yang took a drink of tea from a paper cup. “Pull back! Maintain a relative speed of zero with the enemy!”

  Relayed by Morton and Alarcon, his orders were transmitted to every ship in the fleet.

  Meanwhile, in the imperial fleet, suspicious eyes were being turned toward viewscreens and all manner of enemy-detection systems.

  “The enemy’s pulling back. Starting five minutes ago, our relative distance completely ceased from closing.”

  The operator in the imperial fleet was working hard to maintain a businesslike tone but was unable to conceal a faint tremor of suspicion.

  Kempf’s huge frame continued to occupy his command seat as he considered the situation. Then, prompted by a certain anxiety, he asked, “There isn’t any chance, is there, that the enemy is deployed in long, deep columns and is trying to draw us into the middle?”

  Human and electronic brains alike went into overdrive trying to answer the commander’s question, until at last an opinion was output: the possibility was extremely low. Their best guess was that enemy fleet arrayed in front of them was all the force strength that they had.

  “In that case, they must be trying to buy time. Probably waiting for the fleet from Iserlohn to charge us so they catch us between them. What nerve! Do they really think I’ll fall for that?”

  Kempf’s intuition was, at this time, 100 percent correct. Slapping a powerful palm against his command desk, he gave orders to advance at maximum combat speed, as well as instructions to open fire three minutes afterward. In as little time as possible, he would destroy these reinforcements, turn back around, and reenvelop Iserlohn. And that was only the beginning—by following Müller’s suggestion of having Gaiesburg keep Iserlohn in check, they would be able to achieve what up until now had been deemed impossible: passage through to the other side of the Iserlohn Corridor. And that being the case, what was to stop him from continuing onward after his victory and charging straight on through into the alliance’s territory?

  “The enemy is within firing range.”

  “All right, then, open fire!”

  Tens of thousands of brilliant arrows were unleashed from the imperial force.

  For one brief instant, the narrow Iserlohn Corridor became a formless tube carrying a great swell of energy from one side to the other. Eye-catching, colorful vortices appeared as the alliance vessels took a stinging blow, exploding in brilliant flashes of light. Even the ships that had avoided direct hits shook violently in the aftermath—the temporary flagship Leda II was no exception.

  Yang, who as usual was commanding the fleet from a perch on top of his desk, was tossed off entirely by the agitation and fell hip first into his chair. He had completely forgotten that he was on board Leda II, which was 30 percent smaller than the battleship Hyperion, and had weaker defensive capabilities as well.

  Yang, stuck in his seat, was the very picture of carelessness. Face red with embarrassment, he finally succeeded in standing up. With a concerned expression on her face, Frederica approached him with sure-footed steps; she had apparently developed a far better sense of equilibrium than her commanding officer.

  “Formation D …;” Yang said. Having failed to learn his lesson, he was climbing back up onto the desk. Frederica cried out, repeating his order: “All ships: Formation D!”

  The communications officer repeated the order as well, transmitting it not by way of the comm channels, which had been rendered useless, but with coded sequences of flashing lights.

  Formation D was a type of cylindrical formation, and in its more extreme version could encircle the enemy in what was almost a ring. As the imperial forces attempted to slip through that glittering circlet of shining flecks of light, the alliance forces bathed them in cannon fire from above, below, port, and starboard. That fire was naturally directed from the edge of the ring inward, and by focusing on a single point, its destructive effect was amplified dramatically. Imperial vessels that came charging forward were occasionally pierced by multiple energy beams fired simultaneously from different directions, and the ships looked like they were being cut into circular slices in the moments before they exploded into balls of flame.

  When this formation was used in the wide, boundless environment of open space, the enemies that got through could immediately scatter, turn about, and encircle the formation from an even greater radius. Inside this narrow corridor, however, that was impossible. Yang had developed this tactic in order to make use of the specialized topography of the corridor: after the enemy hit them with their first attack, they would turn tail and go on the defensive. And then …;

  “The enemy is attacking us from behind!” the operator cried out.

  As a shocked Admiral Kempf raised his large, muscular form from the command seat, the Iserlohn Patrol Fleet, under the command of Merkatz, was attacking the imperial forces with surprising speed and pressure, both from behind and from directly overhead. If the scene had been viewed from a distance of several light-years, it might have looked beautiful—like a waterfall of light pouring down.

  The imperial forces’ rear guard had by no means been careless, but unable to shake off the shock, they were being picked off one by one as a high-density barrage of beams rained down on them. Watching from a distance, the crew in Yang’s fleet cried out for joy.

  “Formation E!” Yang ordered. Although the ring-shaped formation composed of his patchwork fleet showed a bit of disunity in the process, its shape rapidly converged toward the center, completing a transformation into a funnel shape. The imperial forces that were charging onward, suddenly exposed to multiple layers of attacking beams fired from the same direction, disappeared into muddied torrents of white-hot energy. Attenborough, Nguyen, and the rest, carried away by the certainty of victory, were launching frenzied attacks using localized concentrations of firepower—a hallmark of the Yang Fleet’s cannon warfare—to guide reluctant imperial forces to their graves.

  At a time like this, a foolish commander might have said, “Forward division, fight the enemies in front of us. Rear division, fight the enemies behind us.” In fact, such an order might have allowed them to escape from this crisis. Unexpected opportunities for victory did, after all, arise from the chaos of intense battle. As a strategist, however, Kempf had no shortage of experience and pride, and he was not about to give an order that would mean abandoning his duty and authority as commander.

  Vice Commander Niedhart Müller could feel black stains of despair gradually eating away at his mind, yet even so, he was resolved to do all he could. The seeds of his regret were beyond counting, but at present it was his urgent duty to prevent the collapse of his columns and rescue his men. Rising from his command seat, he issued the appropriate orders one after another, attempting to get free of the danger zone. He was at an overwhelming disadvantage, though, and his efforts bore no visible fruit, although the speed at which things were worsening lessened.

  Even those efforts, however, were about to hit their limits. Both Kempf and Müller had seen any number of their ships erupt into fireballs. The distance between the lines of battle and central command was now effectively zero. Any minute now, the imperial forces were going to fall like an avalanche into the depths of utter defeat.

  “Don’t retreat!”

  A
s Kempf shouted angrily, beads of sweat went flying from his forehead.

  “We mustn’t retreat. Just one more step. One more step, and the whole galaxy is ours!”

  V

  Even amid these circumstances, Kempf’s words were by no means braggadocio. Beyond the defense line of the FPA forces, beyond the exit of the Iserlohn Corridor, there lay a vast sea of stars and planets left practically undefended.

  Once they penetrated that line of defense, Kempf and Müller would spur the fleet onward, forcing their way into the alliance’s territory. What would the forces guarding the Iserlohn Corridor do when that happened? If they pursued Kempf and Müller, that would leave the corridor wide open. When great admirals of the Imperial Navy like Mittermeier and von Reuentahl, presently waiting in Wave II, came charging in through the corridor, there would be no one there to stop them. The corridor would be cited afterward for the historic role it had played as the passageway through which the Imperial Navy had conquered the galaxy.

  That being the case, could Alliance Armed Forces simply ignore Kempf and Müller, and continue to guard the corridor against the second wave that was sure to come stampeding through it? If they did so, Kempf and Müller might go around ransacking alliance territory at will, perhaps even capturing Heinessen. A more likely scenario, however, was that they would establish a beachhead in some nearby star system and wait for the moment—it would not be long in coming—when the second wave invaded the corridor. At that time, they would be able to return to the corridor and, together with their allies, attack the alliance forces there from both fore and aft. For the imperial forces, it was a surefire tactic for certain victory; for the alliance forces, the very thought of it sent an acute twinge of pain into their hearts.

  Or it should have, at least—but Yang Wen-li was in no mood for somber worrying. Even if he had been, he wouldn’t have thought it his duty to so. This was because even if the nation known as the Free Planets Alliance were to disappear, people would still remain. Not as “the people,” but as “people.” The ones who would be most put out if the nation came to an end were those who leeched off the state in the center of its structure of authority; you could search to the ends of the universe looking for reasons why “people” had to be sacrificed in order to please them and not find even one. There was no way that Yang Wen-Li alone could have borne full responsibility for the life or death of the nation—not even if it had been his own personal problem.

  Among the imperial forces, Admiral Kempf did not believe until the very last that he was going to lose. But even if his entire frame was suffused with an indomitable fighting spirit, the spirit of his soldiers and advisors had already withered.

  The blood had drained from their faces at the sight of so many allied ships shattered and in flames on their screens.

  “Excellency, it’s no longer possible to resist,” Vice Admiral Fusseneger, Kempf’s chief of staff, advised with pale, quivering cheeks. “At this rate, all that awaits us here is death or capture. As difficult as this is to say, we should retreat.”

  Kempf turned a blistering glare on his chief of staff, but his reason was not so far gone as to shout him down high-handedly. He took a ragged breath and beheld with an agonized gaze an imperial fleet in its death throes: with every passing second, its numbers were decreasing and its front line contracting.

  “Wait a minute, there is still that option …;” Kempf murmured unconsciously, and Fusseneger sensed something ominous in the color that was returning to the commander’s face. “We still have our final option. We’re going to use it, and we’re going to destroy Iserlohn Fortress. We’ve lost in the battle of fleets, but we aren’t completely beaten yet.”

  “May I ask what you refer to?”

  “Gaiesburg Fortress. We’re going to slam that overgrown, good-for-nothing pebble into Iserlohn. Not even Iserlohn could withstand that.”

  At those words, Fusseneger’s suspicion changed to certainty. Even a commander as capable and broad-minded as Kempf could become unbalanced when backed too far into a corner. However, Kempf had a rather serene sort of confidence when he ordered the retreat back to Gaiesburg.

  At last, the Iserlohn Patrol Fleet rendezvoused with Yang’s reinforcements.

  “Admiral Merkatz, I can’t thank you enough,” Yang said with a deep bow. Merkatz’s grave, dignified face was displayed on the comm screen. Behind both of them, innumerable uniform berets flew through the air as unimaginative but passionate cries of “We did it! We did it!” rang out again and again.

  “This is the man who deserves most of the credit,” Merkatz said, and pulled a young man into the screen’s field of view.

  “Admiral Yang, welcome home.”

  It was a young boy with flaxen hair.

  “Julian?”

  Yang didn’t know what to say. To see the boy in that place came as quite a shock to him. It was just then, however, that an alarm rang out again, and Yang was rescued from his moment of awkward perplexity.

  “Gaiesburg Fortress has begun to move!”

  There was a ring of awe in the voice of the operator who reported it.

  The joy of the alliance forces plummeted back to the ground instantly. Their victory was not complete yet.

  “It’s heading toward Iserlohn. Impossible—impossible …; Are they planning to crash themselves into it!?”

  “They figured it out …; but it’s too late,” murmured Yang. Frederica searched his profile with her eyes. In Yang’s voice, she had sensed a note of something like sympathy.

  In fact, Yang was sympathizing with the enemy commander. Crashing a fortress into a fortress was not the kind of thing an orthodox tactician would come up with. Outside of Yang himself, it would require either an incomparable genius like Reinhard von Lohengramm or, failing that, a complete amateur who had no idea what he was doing. To an orthodox tactician, a fortress was valuable to use and possess because of the armor and firepower it could bring to bear against the enemy fortress; to think of using it as a gigantic bomb would be extremely unusual, and Yang couldn’t help thinking of the mental anguish a commander must feel when driven to the point of such a highly irregular strategic conclusion. Even so, it was still true that the one who had driven Kempf into these dire straits was none other than Yang himself. Some might call his sympathy hypocritical. But on this matter, let people say what they will.

  Gaiesburg Fortress, following the remaining forces of the imperial fleet, was closing in on Iserlohn with its twelve conventional engines running on full power—an immense vulture taking silent flight across a void of utter blackness. The sight of it was overwhelming to the alliance forces. On every ship in the fleet, people were staring with their mouths half-open at the extraordinary sight unfolding on their viewscreens.

  Inside Gaiesburg were Kempf, a number of his advisors, navigation personnel, and about fifty thousand guards; the rest of its personnel had been evacuated, divided among the ships under Müller’s command. Inside the fortress, escape shuttles were waiting on standby, ready to launch at any moment. Filled with a certainty that the tide was about to turn, Kempf looked on as Iserlohn swelled larger, growing nearer by the second. That was when, in the alliance fleet, Yang Wen-li issued a fateful order:

  “Ship-mounted cannons are useless against the fortress itself. Take aim at those conventional navigation engines they’ve got running—at just one of them, actually—concentrate all your fire on the one farthest to port of their vector of advance!”

  On every ship, gunnery officers leapt to their consoles, took careful aim, and shouted their orders in unison:

  “Fire!” “Fire!” “Fire!”

  Hundreds of beams converged on just one of the navigation engines, putting enough of a load on its composite-armor cover to cause it to crack. With the second volley, those cracks immediately expanded. The engine cover burst open, and a white flash blew the whole thing apart.

  In the
next instant, Gaiesburg stopped moving forward. Its vast bulk turned and began to spin rapidly.

  The axis of a spacecraft’s engine thrust had to strictly align with the vessel’s center of gravity. Whether large or small, the basic shape of a spacecraft was either circular or spherical, to make it symmetrical on both its x-axis and z-axis. In the event that this principle was not followed, the spaceship would lose track of its direction of advance and revolve on its own center of gravity. One could, of course, turn off the engines at that point, but even if it stopped the acceleration, the spinning would continue due to inertia, and during that time all control functions would be paralyzed.

  Gaiesburg Fortress spun off course and plunged into the remnant of the imperial fleet; in an instant, several hundred vessels collided with its spinning bulk and exploded. On the comm channels, countless screams superimposed themselves on one another, then stopped, as if cut off by the flick of a knife. Even the fortress itself was damaged by the collisions with those battleships, and what was worse, that was when all of the cannons of Thor’s Hammer were fired simultaneously from Iserlohn, stabbing deep into Gaiesburg’s outer shell. It struck a fatal blow.

  “Did you see that?” The alliance’s soldiers were shouting at each other. “That’s Admiral Yang’s magic!”

  Like all the other soldiers, Lieutenant Frederica Greenhill was struck with a great sense of admiration for her commanding officer.

  If anyone other than Yang had come up with a tactic like this, Frederica would have probably found him terrifying. Yang had been thinking from the very outset that the only way to render the enemy fortress powerless would be to destroy its navigation engines while it was accelerating and throw off the position of its axis of acceleration. This could only be accomplished by causing the fortress to use its navigational engines, which could only be accomplished by driving the enemy into such dire straits that they would attempt to crash their fortress into Iserlohn. And Yang had succeeded in doing that—just as he had succeeded on so many battlefields in the past.