He had a fanatic’s eyes; that much anyone could tell. The eyes through which he viewed reality were shrouded by a membrane of delusion. He held a blaster in one hand and was wearing a military uniform in the wrong size. The uniform was spattered with human blood, and the spots moved like red insects with every ragged breath he took.
Annerose rose silently to her feet, stepped between the man and her sister-in-law, and calmly spread her arms, permitting him no clear shot at Hilda.
“Take your leave at once,” she said. “You intrude upon the kaiserin of the Galactic Empire.”
It was a rather quiet voice for a rebuke, but not for nothing was this pristine, beautiful woman older sister to the galaxy’s conqueror. Hilda felt the truth of this in every centimeter of her body. The fanatic flinched, his eyes showing intimidation.
But only for a moment. In the next instant, the man opened his mouth wide and unleashed a most unmelodious cry as his finger curled around the trigger of his gun.
Just then, a bloodied military policeman appeared in the doorway.
A scream rang out.
Beams of light crisscrossed through the room, and one pierced the underside of the intruder’s jaw, going through his skull. Spinning about and spraying blood, he collapsed onto the floor. The military policeman came running forward, asking if Hilda and Annerose were all right, but then suddenly a beam of light bored through the side of his head too.
Annerose’s sense of smell was choked with the stink of blood. She covered the body of her very pregnant sister-in-law with her own. As she whispered words of encouragement, she noticed her vision becoming clouded. The intruders must have set a fire. It was later determined that the fanatics had meant to symbolically burn the kaiser’s wife and child at the stake—a pyre to purify their sins.
Composite battalions formed of smoke and flame rose from countless corners of Stechpalme Schloß, soaring into the darkening sky. As Kessler arrived in the front garden and looked up at the structure, worry flickered in his stoic gaze. The fire had further reduced the effectiveness of the heat-detection system, making it difficult to determine how best to enter.
Regardless, His Majesty’s wife and sister were trapped somewhere inside. Kessler sent in an initial wave of military police, but blaster bolts from upstairs mowed them down. Only two men escaped with their lives. Out of respect for the privacy of the imperial couple, the residence had not been equipped with any sort of internal monitoring systems, but now that lack was causing problems. Because it had originally been a private residence, only the basic floor plans remained, and it was impossible to tell what was happening inside.
“Let me through! Let me through!”
A figure suddenly slipped through the line of soldiers, nimble as a squirrel, but before it could get past Kessler, the commissioner reached out quickly and seized the passing collar. He found that he had caught a girl of about seventeen. She had dark hair and eyes, and a sensitive-looking face.
“Don’t you realize how dangerous this is? Get back and stay clear.”
“But Hilda—I mean, the kaiserin and the archduchess are still on the second floor. Let go of me!”
“You’re her handmaiden?”
“Yes. Oh, if only I hadn’t gone to buy chocolate ice cream, none of this would have happened.”
I’m not so sure of that, Kessler thought, but remained silent. The girl turned toward him with a serious expression.
“Please, Captain, please get the kaiserin and the archduchess out safely. I’m begging you.”
Suppressing a smile at being addressed as someone five ranks below his actual position, Kessler asked the girl if she knew which room Hilda and Annerose were in. She thought for a few moments, then seized the “captain” by the hand and dragged him around to the rear garden. She pointed directly at a corner room from which white smoke was beginning to escape.
“That’s the south window in the library,” she said. “There’s a sofa right under it, and that’s where the kaiserin will be. I’m sure of it.”
Kessler nodded and ordered his men to bring him a light alloy ladder designed for field combat. He checked his blaster’s energy capsule, then called three officers over and gave them new orders. Next, Kessler leaned the ladder against the wall, confirmed that it was stable, and put his hand on a rung. He had decided to go in himself.
“Hox pox physibus, hox pox physibus!”
The girl was reciting a peculiar chant as she clasped her hands together, fingers intertwined. Noticing Kessler looking at her curiously, she began to smile, then remembered that this was not the time or place and straightened her face again.
“It’s a charm my grandfather taught me,” she said. “He said it means ‘Misfortune, begone from here!’ ”
“Does it work?”
“If you repeat it enough times.”
“Keep going, then.”
Kessler scaled the ladder, blaster between his teeth. Even after becoming a high-ranking officer, something in his nature craved front-line action, and was now driving him forward. Approaching the window, Kessler cautiously peered through the glass. In the room beyond, he saw a man with a gun. A split-second later, he was certain that the man was not with the military police.
“Hox pox, etcetera!”
He steadied his aim and fired. As a sharpshooter, Kessler was not, perhaps, on the level of the departed Siegfried Kircheis or Kornelias Lutz, but he was a first-class marksman nonetheless. The blaster bolt burst through the glass and ran the terrorist through on a sword of pure energy. The man was thrown back against the wall, then he crumpled to the floor.
Kessler caught sight of a second man. He was outside the room, by a bannister. Snarling at the unraveling situation he saw through the doorway, he pointed his gun directly at the two women. Kessler fired again.
This second Church of Terra fanatic screamed and tumbled backward over the bannister. He struck the granite floor of the landing below, convulsed briefly, and then lay still. Three or four military policemen ran past him, leaping up the stairs. Multiple blaster bolts rained down on them from above, and return fire boiled up from below. As flame and smoke struggled for supremacy, beams of light crisscrossed the stairwell’s interior, bringing new deaths and suffering. Eventually, three would-be Terraist assassins abandoned the pointless slaughter and came running into the library in search of their target.
Kessler crashed through the glass into the room, a bolt of energy flying from the blaster in his right hand. Two more flashes of light followed it. One Terraist was shot between his chest and left shoulder. Another had his face blown off. Blood sprayed onto the wall and trickled down toward the floor, leaving thin crimson trails.
The third Terraist managed to get off a shot before Kessler could. He was shooting to kill, but his aim was off, and he only managed to knock the blaster from Kessler’s hand. The man swung his gun around, pointing the barrel directly at Hilda’s unborn child.
In that moment, Annerose’s graceful form leapt across the room like a butterfly on the breeze. From the fireplace, she seized a small pedestal and its attached sculpture and hurled it at the final Terraist. It struck him square in the face, and they heard his nose crunch as shards of crystal and marble embedded themselves in his flesh. Blood and screams filled the air. The barrel of his blaster went wild and he fired harmlessly into the roof. Annerose bent down and positioned herself in front of Hilda.
A flower of blood bloomed on the man’s breast. Kessler had snatched up his blaster again and fired. The man swayed back and forth, then toppled over backward, arms spread wide. There was a loud crack as his head struck the floor, and then a sudden silence closed in around them. The firefight on the stairs appeared to have reached a conclusion too.
Kessler ran a hand through his unruly hair, then knelt before Hilda and Annerose.
“Your Majesty, Your Highness. Are you both unharmed?”
Annerose’s golden hair was in disarray, and blood had beaded on her arm and the back of her hand where fragments of glass had broken her fair skin. Perspiration ran down her cheeks in rivulets, and her breath was wild, but her eyes, like blue gemstones, held an expression that might have been pride. She had put her own life on the line for the sake of her brother’s bride, and had saved her unborn niece or nephew in the bargain.
“Senior Admiral Kessler—if I recall correctly,” said Annerose. “Please call the court physicians and ladies-in-waiting at once. Her Majesty is about to give birth.”
It took several seconds for Annerose’s voice to traverse Kessler’s auditory nerves and rap on the door of his reason. When he grasped the situation, he all but levitated. Once recaptured by the invisible hand of gravity, he ran to the window and called for his men. Before they could arrive, though, someone else bounded through the room’s open door—the dark-haired girl he had met earlier.
“Kaiserin! Your Majesty Kaiserin Hilda! You’re safe!”
The girl hugged Hilda tightly. Despite the onset of her labor pains, Hilda smiled and stroked the girl’s hair. The girl burst into tears of joy and relief.
But there was no time for basking in sentiment. A disgruntled god of fire had the entire building in a deadly embrace. Kessler’s military police ran in with a stretcher, lifted Hilda onto it, covered her in a blanket, and then carried her out through the thickening smoke. Kessler led the other two outside as well, lending Annerose his arm for support.
In the front garden, Hilda’s stretcher was carried into a waiting medical landcar. Annerose, the young handmaiden, and Hilda’s attending physicians and nurses boarded the vehicle after her, and then it began to move, surrounded by military vehicles on all four sides. Kessler’s subordinate, Captain Witzleben, led the convoy to the hospital while Kessler himself remained behind to help extinguish the fire and render aid to the wounded.
At 1940 on May 14, Stechpalme Schloß collapsed. The sojourn there of the Lohengramm Dynasty’s imperial couple had lasted less than four months.
III
As one tale ended, a new life was about to begin. After restoring order to the fourteen sabotaged sites around the city, Kessler arrived at the hospital in his sooty uniform to wait outside the delivery room, praying that the child would be delivered safely.
Count von Mariendorf had already been notified and rushed to the hospital. After thanking Kessler for all he had done, the count was ushered into a special room to await the birth of his grandchild.
“Refreshments, Captain?”
Hilda’s dark-haired handmaiden, having noticed Kessler’s arrival, brought him a white porcelain cup filled with coffee.
“Thank you, Fräulein…?”
“My name’s Marika von Feuerbach. Sounds pretty impressive, right?”
She smiled, and it was like blue sky glimpsed through a gap in the clouds.
“What’s your name, Captain?”
“Kessler. Ulrich Kessler.”
Marika frowned slightly. The rediscovery of a memory brought immediate shock, and her mouth and eyes opened in three perfect Os.
“The Ulrich Kessler? Military police commissioner?! So you weren’t a captain after all…”
“I was once.”
“I’m so sorry. I guessed from your age that you’d be about commander rank, and thought it would be more polite to err on the high side, but I just ended up being rude instead. I have the most terrible memory. You’ve visited the kaiserin many times—I really should know your face by now…”
“It’s all right. I didn’t know your face either, Fräulein von Feuerbach.”
Kessler smiled, and Marika responded in kind.
“Thank you, sir. And…please call me Marika.”
As Marika was speaking the final vowel of her name, another sound—a powerful hymn of life—rang out on top of it. As Kessler and Marika watched, the doors to the delivery room swung open and a physician emerged, pulling the surgical mask from his flushed face.
“It’s a boy,” he declared, voice shaking. “A healthy baby boy. Her Majesty the kaiserin is also in perfect health. Long live the empire!”
It was 2250 on May 14, year 3 of the New Imperial Calendar, 801 SE, and the most celebrated infant in all of human society had just been born—the boy who would one day become the second kaiser of the Lohengramm Dynasty. Whether having Reinhard von Lohengramm as father would be a blessing or a curse was not, at this time, something anyone could predict.
Hilda’s delivery had not been too painful, but given the shock and alarm that had preceded it, her usually well-ordered reason and memory inevitably succumbed to confusion. Events had proceeded at a dizzying pace, and she was still somewhat dazed as the most important moment in her life passed her by. When she had recovered enough to consider her surroundings, she found herself lying in a bed. She was no longer in the delivery room. This was a lavish bedchamber painted in a unified palette of green tones that soothed the optic nerve. The kaiser had prepared this room for his wife and child more than a hundred days earlier.
Hilda shifted her gaze and saw a face she recognized. It belonged to a ruddy, middle-aged nurse.
“Her Majesty the kaiserin has awakened,” the nurse called, and in response to this another figure entered Hilda’s field of vision. This time it was a beautiful woman with a cloud of golden hair. She had a white bandage on her right hand, and cradled an infant in her arms. For a moment, it seemed to Hilda that she was illuminated from behind by a disc of light.
“Annerose…”
“It’s a healthy baby boy, Kaiserin. Whichever parent he takes after, he’s sure to be a comely and wise child.”
Outside Hilda’s bedchamber, the mood was celebratory. And why not? The kaiserin had delivered her child. What was more, it was a boy—an heir to the throne! Who could resist joy under the circumstances?
“Long live the Prince!
“Long live the Kaiserin!”
Marika hugged Kessler, who was a head taller than her. As the man who was both military police commissioner and planetary defense commander spun the girl’s lithe form in his arms, a cheerful song of celebration began to crackle forth from the hospital’s public address system. Champagne corks were popped. When the girl laid her cheek against Kessler’s face in all the excitement, her faintly rosy complexion came away smudged with soot. She laughed aloud, dropped to her feet, then took Kessler’s hands in her own and began a sprightly dance.
As we may read in chapter 5 of Marshal Kessler: A Critical Biography, published many years later,
In this way, on the night that the second kaiser of the Lohengramm Dynasty was born, the stern and sober commander of planetary defenses danced with a girl more than twenty years his junior without even changing out of his uniform. Incidentally, the girl in question would become Mrs. Ulrich Kessler two years later.
The biographer went on to note that, in outward appearance, Kessler resembled not so much a military man as a talented barrister in the prime of his career.
IV
Had this been an operetta, there would have followed a jovial song for chorus and then the final curtain falling to thunderous applause. But for Ulrich Kessler, the real work had yet to begin. Leaving the kaiserin, the prince, and the kaiser’s sister in the care of court physicians and officials from the Ministry of Palace Interior, he organized a guard on the hospital and headed for military police headquarters. Marika came as far as the hospital entrance to wave goodbye, but once her form had receded from view, Kessler changed his psychological wardrobe. In the back seat of the landcar, he transformed from kind and trustworthy “captain” to cold and stern police commissioner.
Six terrorists were being held in the infirmary at headquarters, and another twenty had been arrested and imprisoned during the decoy operations. The dead outnumbered the living six to one, and the Church of Terra
’s ability to operate on Phezzan seemed to have been all but eliminated. But Kessler had a question that he was determined to find an answer to: where were the church’s leaders? Unfortunately, the captured fanatics were not inclined to answer.
“Use truth serum. If it kills them, it kills them.”
By nature, Kessler was a man of action—the kind of officer who strode boldly across the galactic stage. He was happiest when commanding a fleet, and had accepted the assignment of military police commissioner with mixed feelings. Nevertheless, his performance as commissioner—as well as commander of planetary defenses—had been so outstanding that during Reinhard’s reign he had been unable to leave the center of imperial administration, even as it was moved from Odin to Phezzan. Ironically, the very soldier’s nature that made him restless with these assignments only deepened the trust others placed in him.
There is no doubt that he was a just and noble individual in many ways, but he was also a military officer of the Lohengramm Dynasty, not a campaigner for the human rights of political prisoners. Accordingly, he did not shy away from torture when it seemed necessary to him. When dealing with fanatics, however, physical suffering often gave way to the intoxication of martyrdom, in many cases transforming into religious ecstasy. Kessler had learned this from previous experience rooting out the Church of Terra. This left truth serum as the only option. From Kessler’s point of view, it was only natural that it should be used.
The ferocity of the military police during the interrogations that followed would pass into legend. Eight subjects died during the process. The police, however, judged the results more than worth the effort. Comparing and contrasting several confessions extracted by force, they finally pinpointed the center of Terraist activities on Phezzan. Surreptitious surveillance revealed that a large number of worshippers were currently in hiding there, preparing for an armed assault on the hospital where Hilda was recovering.
Sunset Page 14
