Gaiesburg Fortress was convulsing in its death throes. Inside, numerous explosions and fires were breaking out along the paths of its electrical-distribution network, and the heat and smoke overpowered the air-conditioning system and filled the inside of the fortress. Soldiers covered in sweat and grime were coughing as they walked, while at their feet were slumped blood-splattered comrades who weren’t moving at all. Even the central command room had been halfway destroyed, and Kempf was sitting motionless at his command desk.
“All hands, abandon ship.”
Chief of Staff Fusseneger’s voice broke as he replied to that order:
“Excellency, what do you intend to do?”
Kempf gave a painful laugh.
“It’s too late for me. Look at this.”
Kempf was holding his hands down over his right side, but the blood spilling out from that place could be seen, as well as part of a broken bone that was sticking out. Most likely, his internal organs were severely damaged. A piece of the wall sent flying by the explosion had bored deep into his tall, muscular body.
Fusseneger was filled with silent grief. Last year, the brilliant and undefeated admiral Siegfried Kircheis had met his untimely end in this fortress. Gaiesburg had been the stronghold of the confederated aristocrats’ forces. Was some gruesome grudge of its former masters now dragging Reinhard’s great admirals down to the grave one after another? Seized by a superstitious fear, the chief of staff shuddered. The ominous life of Gaiesburg Fortress was now drawing to a close.
At last, Fusseneger stumbled his way out of the command room, seen off by the eyes of the dead.
“All hands, abandon ship!” the alarm kept shouting. “All hands …;”
Dirty, wounded survivors had gathered at a port used exclusively by evacuation shuttles. One shuttle was about to take off without even half of its carrying capacity filled. Several people were clinging to its hull.
“This is an emergency launch! Get off!”
“Wait—let us on! Don’t leave us!”
“I told you people to move …;!”
The hatch opened. Thinking they were about to be let on board, the soldiers gratefully rushed forward.
And that was when a scream split the air. A soldier who had just boarded that rescue shuttle lashed out with a laser knife and sliced off the hand of the soldier who was trying to come aboard after him. The soldier who had lost his hand lost his balance as well and, writhing in pain, rolled off the boarding gate and fell to the floor. That was when a soldier who had lagged behind the others drew his blaster from his hip and, without a word, shot the man with the laser knife through the face.
That was the beginning of the panic. Terror and desire for survival boiled over, and reason was washed away. Crisscrossing beams of blaster fire leapt back and forth, as comrade blasted comrade down to the floor, then trampled one another under their military-issue boots.
With several soldiers still clinging to its hull, the shuttle began to take off anyway. That was when the roar of a shot fired from a hand cannon was heard, and the cockpit was filled with orange flames. Blown-off arms and legs were carried up into the air by the force of the blast, and the shuttle became a ball of fire that crashed into the crowd of soldiers. The soldiers were mowed down like weeds, and the blood that geysered upward steamed, stuck, and blackened as soon as it touched the scalding-hot floor.
Suddenly, that crimson tableau underwent a dramatic change—it was painted over entirely in white. That was the moment in which Gaiesburg’s fusion reactor had exploded.
A blast of immense heat threw everyone still living to the floor and then promptly added them to the rolls of the dead. Suddenly, a great swell of blinding light appeared where Gaiesburg Fortress had been. As the alliance vessels peeled away at emergency speed, their viewscreens’ photoflux-adjustment systems pulled out all the stops trying to dim the brilliance, yet even so, not a single hand on board was able to look at that ball of light straight on. The light’s invasion lasted for more than a minute. When the last of the explosion’s afterglow had faded and space had returned to its primordial darkness, Yang looked at the screen and, still sitting on his desk, took off his uniform beret and bowed his head toward his defeated and destroyed enemies. He felt so tired. Victory always left him feeling exhausted.
VI
The explosion of Gaiesburg Fortress was, for the wounded and worn-out imperial forces, the killing blow. As much as 80 percent of the imperial force remaining from the battle with Yang and Merkatz had been caught in the explosion of that artificial supernova and had met the same fate as their commander. Even among those who were spared, hardly a one had escaped completely unscathed.
Neidhart Müller had been thrown backward several meters by the shock of the explosion. He had crashed into a bulkhead with exposed instruments and parts, and then fallen to the floor. With great effort, he managed to reel back his consciousness, which for an instant had threatened to disappear into the distance. He tried to call out for a medic but was only assaulted by a suffocating tightness in his chest.
Four of his ribs had been broken, and breathing was impossible with their points stuck in his lung. There was no way he could have called out.
Enduring the intense pain and choking tightness, Müller silently, deeply, breathed in. His bones ground, his chest swelled out, and the broken ends of his ribs touched one another again. With his lungs free of pressure, the seriously injured vice commander at last succeeded in speaking to a medic who had come running to his side, in spite of a nasty bruise on his own head.
“How long will it take to recover fully?”
Müller’s voice was pained but had lost none of its composure.
“Our vice commander is immortal, is he?”
“That’s a good one. I’ll have that written on my gravestone. Well? How long will it take to recover from this completely?”
The medic counted off his injuries: “Four broken ribs, cerebral concussion, lacerations, bruises, and scratches, as well as the associated blood loss and internal bleeding. It’ll take three months.”
Since Müller refused to be carried to the infirmary, a bed furnished with medical equipment was brought up to the bridge. As electrotherapy was applied, blood that had been preserved at ultralow temperatures was transfused and painkillers and antipyretics were injected. Müller met with Vice Admiral Fusseneger, who had just barely escaped from Gaiesburg.
“What happened to Commander Kempf?”
Fusseneger, all cuts and scratches, didn’t answer right away, though ultimately he had to say something.
“He’s dead.”
“Dead?!”
“I have a message for you from Commander Kempf. He said, ‘Tell Müller I’m sorry.’”
Müller fell into an electrified silence that was enough to frighten Fusseneger, but at last he grabbed hold of his sheets and squeezed out a low moan.
“As Odin is my witness,” he said, “I will avenge Admiral Kempf. With these two hands, I will wring the neck of Yang Wen-li—though I can’t do it now. I haven’t the strength. The gap between us is too wide …; but you just watch me, a few years down the line!”
When Müller stopped talking and grinding his teeth, he recovered a little of his composure and summoned an aide to his bedside.
“Get me a comm screen ready. No, on second thought, never mind the screen. Make it so I can transmit audio only.”
Even if he was able to control his voice, he couldn’t afford to show himself to his troops when he was badly injured. No matter what kind of overblown rhetoric you might use, the soldiers’ morale would drop if they saw their commander covered in white bandages.
At last, the surviving members of a pummeled, defeated imperial force listened to the voice of the young vice commander flowing out of the comm channel. Even if it could not be called a powerful voice, it was a clear and lucid one, rich in re
ason and will, and had the effect of dragging their despair a few steps closer toward hopefulness.
“Our force may have been defeated, but central command is alive and well. And what central command promises is to return each and every one of you to your hometowns alive and well. So hold on to your pride, maintain order, and let’s head back home in an orderly manner.”
An imperial force that had numbered sixteen thousand when it left home had shrunk to one-twentieth its original size and been set to a pitiable retreat. Even so, it had not completely fallen apart and had been able to maintain order as a cohesive unit. Without a doubt, that success was the result of the sensible command that Müller carried out from his bed.
“Ships approaching from dead ahead!”
At that report, Senior Admiral Wolfgang Mittermeier trained his eyes on the bridge’s main screen. His flagship, Beowulf, was out in front of even his fleet’s vanguard, a position that in itself underscored the valiant reputation of its commander.
All hands were called to battle stations, and a hail was sent out to the approaching vessels.
“Unidentified vessels, you are ordered to stop. If you fail to do so, you will be attacked.”
A very busy minute followed, and then Mittermeier learned that the group of ships ahead of them were, in fact, allies set to flight. When Mittermeier had the image on the viewscreen magnified, he let out an unconscious groan at the pitiful sight displayed. His comrade-in-arms Müller appeared on the comm screen, wrapped in bandages and lying in a hospital bed, and after he had explained the situation, the Gale Wolf’s shoulders slumped, and he sighed deeply.
“So, Kempf is gone …;”
He closed his eyes for a moment in silent prayer for his fallen comrade, then immediately opened them wide again. The urge to do battle was now coursing through every centimeter of Mittermeier’s body.
“You may proceed to the rear and report to Duke von Lohengramm. Leave the avenging of Kempf’s death to us.”
After cutting communications, Mittermeier turned back to his subordinates. In stature, this commander was somewhat on the short side, but at times like these, his men felt overwhelmed, as though in the presence of a giant.
“Proceed ahead at maximum battle speed,” the Gale Wolf instructed. “We’re going to hit the vanguard of the enemies chasing Müller. We’ll take them by surprise, hit them hard, then peel off. Any more than that, at this juncture, would be meaningless. Bayerlein! Büro! Droisen! Carry out your assigned instructions. Got it?”
His staff officers replied by way of saluting and scattered off toward their departments. Next, a transmission leapt across the void to von Reuentahl’s flagship.
When von Reuentahl’s aide, Emil von Reckendorf, relayed the message from Mittermeier, the young heterochromiac admiral gave a confident nod of his head and issued the same orders as his colleague had.
“So Kempf is gone, is he?” he murmured as well, though his expression and intonation were slightly different from Mittermeier’s, sounding somewhat lacking in sympathy. Even if there were such a thing as a victory without a cause, he believed there was no such thing as a defeat without a cause. Kempf lost because he deserved to lose, von Reuentahl thought. I’ve no time to waste on sympathy.
Iserlohn Fortress was in such a state of celebration and wild revel that it seemed as if the Alliance Foundation Festival had landed on the same date as Victory at Dagon Memorial Day. What little champagne they had was uncorked, and noncombat personnel returned to their homes just long enough to drop off their luggage before running back out again to go and greet the soldiers. As Caselnes and von Schönkopf gazed at the main screen in the central command room, they took turns drinking from a pocket flask of whiskey.
However, Yang couldn’t set foot in his own home just yet. In spite of his strict warning against pursuing the enemy too far, the divisions of rear admirals Nguyen and Alarcon, totaling over five thousand vessels, were chasing the defeated enemy in a relentless advance. With communications not yet fully restored, they had clung to the fleeing enemy’s heels, continuing their rapid charge. It was up to Yang to bring them back in.
Intoxicated by the thrill of a perfect victory, Nguyen and the others were not yet aware that von Reuentahl and Mittermeier were standing in their way ahead.
The struggle for control of the Iserlohn Corridor waged from April until May of SE 798 / IC 489 would provide future generations with many lessons and discussion topics when it came to military tactics. Strategically speaking, it was not held to be of any great importance. That said, the course of human history clearly would have changed forever from that point had the empire been victorious. Most significantly, though, this was the year, and this was the battle, in which Julian Mintz first made his presence known on the stage of history. From a historical perspective, then, it was not a battle to be overlooked after all.
The final act of that battle saw the Imperial Navy recover a portion of its wounded honor. Forces commanded by rear admirals Nguyen and Alarcon, carrying out a pursuit even less organized than the fleeing imperial retreat, were led into a trap of exquisite intricacy and daring.
“Enemy vessels attacking from the rear!”
Dreams of victory were dashed instantly by the astonished operator’s report. Nguyen stood up from his command seat, at a loss for words. Imperial vessels lurking right on the border between the corridor’s zenith and the dangerous, unnavigable region beyond had suddenly swooped down on them, blocking the alliance forces in from behind. These vessels were the cream of the imperial crop, commanded by Wolfgang Mittermeier himself. Fleeing vessels that Nguyen and Alarcon had thought to be defeated enemies had in fact been a part of Mittermeier’s fleet, retreating in order to lure them into the trap.
“This is for Admiral Kempf,” said Mittermeier. “Slaughter them. Don’t let even one escape.”
Mittermeier wasn’t so much giving orders as unleashing his subordinates on them. Having already secured the tactical victory, he allowed the battle itself to be prosecuted with a natural dynamism, rather than trying to micromanage it.
At the same time, Vice Admiral Bayerlein’s division also ceased its fake retreat and turned all its cannons around toward pursuers unable to execute a sudden stop.
It looked as if the vessels of the alliance force were running headlong into a wall of light.
High-energy molecules collided with superalloy molecules at relative velocities just below the speed of light, and half an instant later, the victor between the two had been decided. The empty space was filled by slashed-open shipwrecks and the silent screams of dismembered bodies. As they were vaporized, blown to pieces, or sliced apart and sent tumbling through space, the vessels of the alliance wove a gorgeous tapestry of death before these imperial forces.
Those who witnessed it were left speechless by a madcap dance of blinding color and overpowering brilliance. It was astonishingly beautiful yet at the same time horrific beyond description. Could such a disconnect really exist between beauty and virtue? Had it always existed?
The imperial vessels attacking from the rear continued to sing an almost entirely one-sided chorus of death. In its first verse, energy-neutralization fields overloaded and ruptured; in the second, ships’ composite armor plating was pierced; and in the third, the ships themselves exploded—in this way was a single dirge concluded.
“Take us down! Escape to the nadir,” Alarcon screamed. To avoid the withering attack from above, the alliance vessels raced down toward the corridor’s nadir, desperate to secure the time and room needed to either flee or launch a counterstrike.
That, however, did nothing but slightly shift the coordinates of their gravestones, for in that direction Oskar von Reuentahl was waiting and ready for them. All of his ships had energized their main cannons already and were awaiting the arrival of their prey with fangs sharpened, ready to rip the alliance vessels apart with cannon fire at the moment their
commander so ordered. Their eyes gleamed with aggressive spirit as the alliance vessels came swooping down right in front of them, almost as if begging to be slaughtered.
“Main cannons, three volleys!”
At von Reuentahl’s command, merciless cannon fire was unleashed toward the warships of the alliance, which appeared as reflected blips in their scanners. Blades of light slashed them and crushed them, shattering things crafted with purpose into hundreds of millions of purposeless fragments, scattering them through the void.
The alliance forces had reached the height of panic, and their unified chain of command fell apart. They became like a herd of livestock, stampeding wildly as they tried to escape. The imperial forces had greater numbers, superior tactics, and better commanders. They executed a pattern leading to certain victory, rounding up and crushing those doomed to die that day, who would never have the chance to learn from the mistakes that had been made. Leaving behind streaks of light more fleeting than a firefly’s glow, they vanished and were gone.
“Are these really Yang Wen-li’s people?” the Gale Wolf said to himself, sounding, if anything, disgusted. “His forces were nothing like this when we fought him at Amritsar.” Could a military force really be weakened this severely by the absence of an outstanding commander?
Amid a whirlpool of exploding streaks of light, Rear Admiral Nguyen Van Thieu vanished from this world along with his ship. It had been hit by six energy beams simultaneously.
Rear Admiral Sandle Alarcon lived longer than Nguyen, but only by five—or at most ten—minutes. The vessel Alarcon was riding took a direct hit from a photon missile and split in half; the forward part, which included the bridge, collided with a friendly cruiser, and there it exploded.
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