“If I may say so, Excellency, there was nothing wrong with my proposal. Surely, responsibility for the operation’s failure lies with those charged with its leadership and command.”
And wasn’t even Müller forgiven? he was all but saying.
The handsome imperial prime minister turned toward him with a low, cold laugh.
“Don’t flap your tongue over irrelevancies. Who said you’re being called to account over the defeat? Kessler! Come here and show this fool the charges.”
With a sound of booted feet, one of the officers stepped forward.
Admiral Ulrich Kessler, whom Reinhard had made both commissioner of military police and commander of capital defenses that year, turned his sharply angled face toward the commissioner of science and technology and, taking a stern bearing toward the discomfited man, said these words:
“Tech Admiral Anton Hilmer von Schaft, I am placing you under arrest on charges of accepting bribes, misappropriation of public funds, tax evasion, extraordinary breach of trust, and dissemination of military secrets.”
Six sturdy MPs had already formed a threatening wall of uniforms around von Schaft.
The face of the commissioner of science and technology changed color until it was like mud mixed with volcanic ash. That look was clearly not shock at being falsely accused; it was the kind of look caused by hidden facts suddenly blown wide open.
“On what evidence …;” he started to say, but that was the limit of his bluffing. As his arms were taken by MPs on the right and left, he squirmed, shouting unintelligibly.
“Take him away!” ordered Kessler.
“Why, you filthy—!”
Listening as his shouts faded into the distance, Reinhard spat with disgust. In his ice-blue eyes there floated not a speck of sympathy. Just as Admiral Kessler was about to leave, he called him to a halt and ordered:
“Increase surveillance of the Phezzan commissioner’s office. And I don’t mind if they notice. That in itself should help keep them in check.”
It was not hard for Reinhard to surmise that Phezzan was cutting von Schaft loose as a pawn that had lost its worth. For Reinhard, this provided a perfect opportunity to replace the tired old blood at the Science and Technology Commission. That didn’t mean, however, that he could simply overlook Phezzan’s movements. Why was von Schaft no longer needed by them? Because Phezzan had achieved its designated goal? Or because some other route had opened up? In either case, something had been gained by them or else they wouldn’t be throwing out their trash.
“What are those money-grubbing Phezzanese up to?”
He wasn’t worried, exactly, but he had suspicions he could not wipe away. It was not a pleasant feeling to know that some Phezzanese plot or scheme had been allowed to succeed so easily.
IV
The duty of visiting the home of Senior Admiral Karl Gustav Kempf in order to inform his family of his passing fell to Admiral Ernest Mecklinger, deputy manager of Imperial Armed Forces Supreme Command Headquarters. Mecklinger, also an artist, steeled himself and set to his task, but at the sight of Kempf’s widow—who, unable to restrain herself, burst into tears, her eight-year-old eldest trying his best to console her—he could feel himself involuntarily flinching from them in his heart.
“Mommy, Mommy, don’t cry! I’ll get revenge for Daddy! I’ll kill that Yang person for you. I promise!”
“I’ll kill him!” his five-year-old brother chorused, not really understanding what he was saying.
Unable to bear being there a moment longer, Mecklinger took his leave of the Kempf family. Kempf would be promoted to senior admiral, buried with a military funeral, and given several medals. The family he left behind would never want for the daily necessities of life. Still, no matter what honors and rewards were bestowed, there were most certainly still some things they could never make up for.
Hildegard von Mariendorf understood that Reinhard’s heart had an empty space not easily filled. And, difficult though it might be to do so, Hilda was concerned that failure to fill that void might eventually ruin Reinhard’s character.
One day at lunch, the young, golden-haired imperial marshal said, “Whether they steal or they build, it’s whoever’s first who is worthy of praise. That’s the natural way of things.”
Hilda was in full agreement on that point, so she nodded earnestly.
“But what rights can be claimed,” Reinhard continued, “by those who simply inherit power, wealth, and honor through no ability or effort of their own? The only path for their ilk is to beg mercy of those who are capable. They have no option but to quietly disappear into the waves of history. The very notion of dynasties based on bloodlines offends me. Authority should be for one generation only. It’s not a thing to be yielded—it’s a thing to be stolen.”
“By which Your Excellency means that your own position and authority will not be left to your offspring, correct?”
The young imperial prime minister looked at Hilda; he appeared surprised, as though someone had just shouted right behind him. No doubt the thought of himself as a father had been beyond the young man’s thinking. He shifted his eyes away from Hilda and seemed to be pondering something. Then he said, “My heir will be someone whose abilities are equal to mine, or greater. Also, succession will not necessarily take place after I’m dead.”
When he spoke those words, the faintest hint of a smile flashed across Reinhard’s handsome face, then quickly vanished. Hilda saw it, and it reminded her of diamond dust, glittering as it danced through icy air. As beautiful as it was brilliant, it was at the same time joyless and frigid—a mist made of minute ice crystals.
“If someone thinks he can stab me from behind and gain everything that is mine, then I welcome him to try. That said, I’ll make sure such individuals think long and hard on what will happen if their attempts fail.”
Although he spoke in almost musical cadences, something in Reinhard’s words sent a chill down Hilda’s spine. After he finished speaking, Reinhard drained his glass of rosé. Since losing his redheaded friend, Reinhard’s liquor intake had shown a marked increase.
Hilda remained silent. She felt as though his porcelain mask had cracked, and she had glimpsed the loneliness hidden underneath. Siegfried Kircheis, that presence in his life that might have best been called his second self, was gone, and his elder sister Annerose had left him. Those with whom Reinhard had shared the years and his heart were now gone. He had loyal and capable subordinates, but for some reason he kept his heart closed to them. There was even one standing by who considered this a good thing: Paul von Oberstein.
What von Oberstein required was someone who could execute his plots and deceptions with the skill of precision machinery and not get carried away by emotion. Put in extreme terms, Reinhard was just a means to an end for von Oberstein. No doubt he would watch in satisfaction as his “tool” conquered the galaxy, unified humanity, and came to stand at the pinnacle of all power and glory. That satisfaction was probably no different from that of an artist upon the completion of a work made with perfect technique. With strokes of an incomparable brush called Reinhard von Lohengramm, artist Paul von Oberstein would complete his grand historical painting on a canvas woven of time and space.
On the way home that day, Hilda continued to examine the thoughts she’d had during lunch, tracing out their trajectories and following them where they led.
As far as von Oberstein was concerned, the feelings Reinhard had toward his sister Annerose and the late Siegfried Kircheis were probably emotions to be shunned. To his artificial eyes, they bespoke a weakness and fragility unbecoming of a conqueror.
“A ruler should be an object of fear and awe to his subjects. What he should not be is an object of affection …;”
Hilda had learned in her university studies of two ancient thinkers who had made that assertion. Their names, if she remembered correctly, were Han Feiz
i and Machiavelli. Did von Oberstein now wish to become the faithful practitioner of their ideas, though separated from them by several thousand years of space and time? Most likely, he was going to midwife the birth of a conqueror unlike any the galaxy had ever seen. And yet at the same time, he might also destroy the feelings in a young man who had once been very sensitive. If the birth of this new conqueror ended up being nothing more than Rudolf the Great’s rebirth on a magnified scale, that would be a disaster not only for Reinhard personally, but for all of humanity, and all of history as well.
Hilda felt the twinge of a mild headache and a sudden shudder, brought on by the thought that she herself might ultimately end up making an enemy of von Oberstein.
If it’s a fight that can’t be avoided, though, I’ll fight it, and I’ll have to win it, Hilda thought, confirming her own resolve to herself. Reinhard must not become “Rudolf II.” Reinhard needs to be Reinhard. It’s so important to us all that he go on being Reinhard—with all his faults and his weaknesses!
Later, when Hilda was back at home, she noticed her own slightly flushed complexion reflected in an old-fashioned oak-framed mirror.
“Resolve is a fine thing to have, Hildegard von Mariendorf,” she said, directing a solemn question toward the reflection of her blue-green eyes that shone with such vitality and intellect, “but what are your chances of winning? If people can win just by being resolved, no one would have to work as hard as they do. I know what I should do—I should go visit his sister, the Countess von Grünewald. Ah, even so, there’d be no need for the likes of me to stick my nose into this if Admiral Kircheis were still alive.”
Hilda’s smooth fingers brushed back her short, dark-blond hair. She couldn’t call the dead back from Hades’s palace, but even so, she had to wonder: how many people both now and in times to come would be moved to murmur those selfsame words because of that redheaded youth who had died so young?
“If only Kircheis had lived!”
Baron Heinrich von Kümmel, cousin to Hildegard von Mariendorf, was resting his sickly frame in a luxurious canopy bed. He had been running a slight temperature for some time, and his sweating had been bad enough to necessitate more than ten changes of sheets on that day alone. The maidservant sitting at his bedside was reading aloud from a book of poetry to console her young master.
“Whether my heart hath wings or no …; I slip from gravity’s palm …; as if bounding across the boundless sky …; to the homeworld I left, green in olden days …; though now its birdsong is silen—”
“Enough! Leave me.”
So ordered in that fierce yet impotent voice, the maidservant obediently closed the poetry collection, gave a hasty bow, and left the room. Heinrich glared at the door, seething with a frustrated hatred of all who enjoyed good health—and had to steady his breathing after the tiring strain of that alone.
For a while, Heinrich’s glassy, feverish eyes were turned toward the mirror on the wall. There was a sickly redness in his cheeks, and beads of sweat were tracing lines down his throat toward his chest.
I won’t be here much longer, thought the all-too-young head of House von Kümmel. It’s more of a wonder that I’ve lived these eighteen years. As a child, every nightfall had brought with it the terror that he might not live to see the light of the coming dawn.
These days, though, he didn’t feel so frightened of death itself. What frightened him was the thought of him gradually fading from people’s memories after he was gone. The servants here at this estate, his relatives—even Hilda, that beautiful, clever cousin of his—after he had been gone for a year, would any of them still remember that frail youth named Heinrich?
And what had been the point in his living this long, anyway? Was he only here to eat his meals and wash his face with the aid of his servants? To pay his doctors the fees for his treatments? To come to the end of his short life staring up at the canopy above his bed? Was it simply his lot to meaninglessly fade away, leaving nothing of his own creation in this world, nor any proof that he had ever even lived? He had heard stories of another eighteen-year-old just like himself who had become an admiral at that age, who had been named an imperial marshal at age twenty, had gained the seat of imperial prime minister at age twenty-two, and who even now continued to stride toward a boundless future—so why was it that he had to die yoked to a cruel, unfair fate?
Heinrich pressed a thin, pale cheek against his sweat-dampened pillow. He wouldn’t die like this. He couldn’t die like this. He couldn’t die in peace until he had done something—left some kind of mark on history as proof of his having lived.
On the evening of the day of Admiral Kempf’s military funeral, Wolfgang Mittermeier downed a single glass of white wine and went to visit his colleague Oskar von Reuentahl at the official residence where he lived alone. Von Reuentahl seemed to have something on his mind, but he welcomed him gladly into his living room and gave him another glass. Mittermeier had been planning on chatting a bit between drinks or something, but his host, oddly enough, seemed to be drunk and blurted out something truly surprising.
“Listen to me, Mittermeier. I used to think we had common goals: putting down the aristocrats, destroying the Free Planets Alliance, conquering the whole universe. I used to think we shared that with Duke von Lohengramm. But now …;”
“You mean we don’t?”
“Lately, I’ve been thinking—maybe subordinates are nothing more than convenient, disposable tools to that man. Aside from Siegfried Kircheis, of course. But other than him, does anyone in the admiralty mean anything to the duke? Look at Kempf. Now, it’s not like I actually feel any sympathy for him, but look what happened—the man was literally used and thrown away in a pointless battle.”
“But still, the duke mourned Kempf’s death and had him promoted to senior admiral despite his loss. And won’t his family be getting a pension to take care of their needs?”
“That’s what’s bothering me. Think of it this way: Kempf is dead, so the duke cries a few tears, bestows a few honors, and that’s that. But what he needs to do is give something more tangible—authority, maybe, or wealth—to the living. But I have my doubts about whether that man is capable of it.”
Mittermeier, his face now warm from the liquor, shook his head once and then replied, “Wait a minute. Last fall, when Kircheis died and the duke had shut himself off from the world, wasn’t it you who said you were absolutely going to get him back on his feet? Were you not serious about that?”
“I meant every word. At that time.” Von Reuentahl’s heterochromatic eyes flashed, both with their own unique light. “But it’s not like I’ve just made a long string of right calls and right choices every day since I was born. And while it isn’t the case right now, the day may come when I regret that choice to help him.”
When von Reuentahl stopped speaking, an invisible cage of heavy silence closed in around the two young admirals.
“I’m going to pretend I never heard this,” Mittermeier said at last. “You shouldn’t be so careless about what you say. If someone like von Oberstein got wind of what you just said, you could even be targeted for a purge. Duke von Lohengramm is the hero of our times. It’s enough for us to act as his arms and legs, and to be rewarded accordingly. That’s what I think.”
At last, his friend left, and von Reuentahl sat down alone on his sofa and mumbled, “Hmph. I can’t believe I did that again.”
A bitter light sheltered in his mismatched eyes. Just like when he had talked about his mother before, von Reuentahl had drunk too much and told Mittermeier far too much. And this time, he had gone and exaggerated thoughts he wasn’t necessarily all that passionate about. Ever since last year, when Reinhard had told him to challenge him anytime if he had the confidence, such thoughts had been precipitating in the bottom of his heart, like silt in the bed of a river.
Von Reuentahl turned his black and blue eyes toward the window. Twilight was sl
owly, gently falling. In short order, a dark sapphire canopy flecked with grains of gold would spread out over everyone’s heads.
To seize the universe in my hands …;?
He said the words in his mind, trying them out. From the standpoint of humanity’s present level of ability and accomplishments, it was a terribly grandiose thing to say, but there was a strange something in those words that set his heart racing.
He had heard that Reinhard von Lohengramm—his young lord and master—had once posed this question to Siegfried Kircheis: “Do you think what was possible for Rudolf the Great is impossible for me?” If he were to amplify that—did he, Oskar von Reuentahl, have the same qualifications? Could he not hope for the same thing that Duke von Lohengramm had hoped? He was still just thirty-one. He held the rank of senior admiral in the Galactic Imperial Navy. The rank of imperial marshal was within his reach. He was far closer to the seat of ultimate power than Rudolf the Great had been when he was thirty-one.
In any case, it had been an extremely disquieting thing he had said. Mittermeier would under no circumstances repeat it to others, but perhaps there was a need for him to make it out to have been a joke sometime tomorrow.
Meanwhile, on his way home, Mittermeier felt like he had drunk some excessively acidic coffee. Unable to wipe away the memory, he was trying to tell himself that those words had just been the liquor talking and not von Reuentahl. Still, he couldn’t fool himself.
Did a new age simply mean an age that brought new conflicts? Even if it did, to think that, of all people, his good friend von Reuentahl had been carrying that much dissatisfaction and distrust toward their lord! While that alone would probably not lead to any catastrophes directly, he ought to hold back from doing anything that would get him noticed by someone such as von Oberstein.
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