Sunset

by Yoshiki Tanaka

  Meanwhile, Kessler had cast a surveillance net over not just Phezzan Central Spaceport but every spaceport on the planet. Three Terraists were spotted attempting to flee; two were shot dead, but the third was captured alive. As an additional benefit, around ten more common criminals were also arrested, including thyoxin smugglers, black marketeers specializing in military supplies, and perpetrators of fraud.

  On May 17, Kessler personally led ten companies of armed military police to 40 Ephraim Street, the center of the church’s activities on Phezzan. At 2200—the moment they had the building surrounded—the Battle of Ephraim Street began. The battle’s final outcome was never in doubt, but the fighting was grim and grueling because the losing side refused to surrender. “In that battle, there was not one iota of beauty,” Kessler would later observe. The fighting concluded at 0130 on May 18. Of the 224 worshipers who had been hidden in the building, all were now dead except three who had lost consciousness. Twenty-nine of the dead had committed suicide by self-administered poison. The military police also lost 27 men, but the Church of Terra had at last been fully uprooted from Phezzan.

  Also on that day, the death sentence of Heidrich Lang, chief of the Domestic Safety Security Bureau and junior minister of the interior, was carried out just before dawn. Lang did not weep or beg for his life. He fainted when dragged from solitary confinement, and did not recover consciousness even when the lasers eradicated his medulla oblongata.

  This death was, perhaps, a fortunate one for Lang. But this made no difference to the family he left behind. They had lost a husband and father, and begun a life of shame as the surviving family of an executed convict. Unlike the Goldenbaum Dynasty, the Lohengramm Dynasty did not visit the sins of political criminals on their families, but even so, records and memories still hounded them. As Lang’s coffin was hauled away in the darkness, Kessler rushed to the scene and silently saw it off. The sight of Lang’s widow dressed in mourning clothes and looking utterly adrift was one he did not think he would forget for some time.

  That afternoon, with these dark and unpleasant tasks achieved, Kessler returned to his residence for the first time in four days. He undressed, tumbled into bed, and slept until evening. When he finally woke, a visiphone call came from the hospital as he was showering. Kaiserin Hilda was asking to see him.

  He rushed to the hospital and was ushered into Hilda’s room. She was sitting up in bed attended by nurses, and greeted her husband’s capable subordinate with a smile.

  “My son was saved by Her Majesty the Archduchess and you, Admiral Kessler. You have my sincere gratitude.”

  “If I may, I do not deserve it,” Kessler said. “My fumbling caused grave trouble for Your Majesties. I should be reprimanded, not praised.”

  Kessler’s mortification was twofold. Hilda, with her gown over her shoulders, was nursing her infant. Kessler had seen the new prince before Reinhard himself.

  “One other thing…Captain Kessler.”

  A pause. “Your Majesty?”

  “Marika von Feuerbach is a close friend of mine. She has entrusted me with a message for the kindly captain she met. Do you have plans for dinner tomorrow?”

  The veteran admiral and coldly competent commissioner of military police blushed like a little boy.

  V

  The series of reports that soon arrived on Heinessen opened with rainbow-hued tidings of good fortune.

  “His Majesty the Prince has been born! Mother and child are both in fine health and their august presence currently graces the hospital at Phezzan University School of Medicine.”

  The last part was a bit oddly phrased, but no matter: the news was like six and a half tons of flower petals scattered in a joyous blizzard above those of the imperial military stationed on Heinessen.

  The birth announcement, however, was followed by news of the Stechpalme Schloß Inferno, the firefight, the light wounds sustained by the Archduchess von Grünewald, and the rest of it. Finally, a message arrived for Reinhard from the kaiserin herself, assuring him that all was safely resolved.

  Before even fully coming to terms with being a husband, Reinhard had become a father. He was mildly dazed for a brief time, until Vice Admiral von Streit reminded him that he would have to think of a name for the newborn prince. He had known this responsibility was coming, of course—but how he agonized over the decision! Later, his attendant Emil von Selle would be vexed by the sheer number of crumpled-up balls of paper discarded around the kaiser’s desk.

  Reinhard had never been close to his own blood relatives, just as the six major elements of genius predicted. He had despised his father, and his mother had been lost to him before she could become a target of his enmity. But now he was a parent himself, with a family of his own to care for.

  Family: to Reinhard, the word was more unsettling than soothing. Due to his mother’s early passing, she had left no deep impression on his memory or the foundation of his psyche. To Reinhard, a mother was a highly abstract concept, a presence that somehow made him think of warm distilled water.

  In truth, Reinhard’s father had been lost to him at the same time as his mother. Physically, his father had survived, but his spirit had atrophied, and he had shown no interest in meeting his responsibilities to his children. Quite the opposite—he had sold his daughter to the nobility for a handful of coins. Reinhard had never really had any parents—or, to be more accurate, he had never really needed them. Not since they had given him life.

  To Reinhard, family meant Annerose, who showered love like spring sunshine on her younger brother. The only other who joined her in his estimation was the tall, red-haired boy who had lived in the house next door. Reinhard and Siegfried would return home tired from playing outside, and be shooed into the narrow shower room by his sister. When they emerged, still in high spirits, she would wrap them up in bath towels as the aroma of hot chocolate rolled in from atop the battered old table, speaking of joys yet to come…

  “Siegfried,” Reinhard muttered at these old memories. “What a vulgar name.” He took a pen and yet another sheet of paper, and with them wrote a single name:

  Alexander Siegfried von Lohengramm

  This was the name of the second kaiser of the Lohengramm Dynasty. Accordingly, the infant soon became known as “Prinz Alec.”

  The birth of the second kaiser did not, of course, free the first from his responsibilities. Reinhard had inherited the title and holdings of the von Lohengramm family not long before his twentieth birthday; if his son followed the same trajectory, Reinhard’s reign would last nineteen more years.

  The idea of turning forty lay beyond the horizons of Reinhard’s imagination. But becoming a father had been unimaginable to him, too, and yet now it was reality, so presumably he would turn forty one day, and then sixty. Incomparable genius and unmatched hero though Reinhard was, no man was ageless and immortal.

  However, before he could think of tomorrow, Reinhard had business to attend to today. A plethora of public and private matters large and small awaited his attention.

  Sending a new call for negotiations to the Iserlohn Republic and its Revolutionary Army. Freeing the political prisoners from Ragpur Prison, and investigating who was responsible for what had happened there. Rebuilding the Neue Land’s transport, communications, and supply networks, which had yet to fully recover from the unrest. Dealing with Adrian Rubinsky, last landesherr of Phezzan, now under arrest for crimes against the state. Formally reprimanding von Oberstein and Wittenfeld for sowing disharmony within the Imperial Navy. Addressing Wahlen’s defeat by the Iserlohn Revolutionary Army, while also recognizing his success in keeping the fleet from being utterly obliterated. Publicly announcing the name of his son through the Ministry of the Palace Interior. Writing to his wife and his sister. Choosing a new imperial residence, now that Stechpalme Schloß was gone. Recognizing the achievements of Kessler. And…was he forgetting anything? The position of kaiser
was highly demanding. At least in the Lohengramm Dynasty.

  That Annerose had been present at the birth of Prinz Alec and saved both mother and child from the bloodthirsty fanatics brought Reinhard joy enough to warm the depths of his heart. More than a thousand days after the death of Siegfried Kircheis, it seemed that the time lost between he and his sister had at last been restored. If he rowed further back up the river of time, his boat would arrive on shores of fifteen years in the past, in the days when spring light had showered down upon him like glittering fragments of crystal.

  Reinhard had given the name of his beloved, redheaded friend to the child he had not yet seen himself. This was not an attempt at expiation but an expression of gratitude—and greater feelings beside. Kircheis had shared the warmest, brightest part of Reinhard’s life. Granting his name to the child who would one day lead the Lohengramm Dynasty was both right and natural.

  All at once, Reinhard was gripped by doubt. As he was considering those past landscapes filled with music and light, he had realized something. Running a hand through his mane of golden hair, he sank into thought.

  Kircheis had called him “Lord Reinhard.” When had that begun? Not at their first meeting. He had started adding the honorific after they entered elementary school, when they were speaking alone. At some point, it had become completely natural. Yet Reinhard had never once thought of himself as Kircheis’s “lord.” The idea simply had not occurred to him. Kircheis was a part of him, and when Kircheis had been alive, Reinhard had lived a life twice as great in both quantity and quality.

  “What Reinhard von Lohengramm felt regarding Siegfried Kircheis was, ultimately, nothing more than an attempt to beautify his own life as reflected in a mirror.”

  Such was the dismissive assessment of certain later historians. It can only be called their good fortune to have been born generations after Reinhard himself. Had the kaiser heard their comments, his rage would certainly have far outweighed his magnanimity.

  In the Silver Wing hotel, where the imperial commanders had been given lodgings, there was a parlor with a large polarized glass window that offered an almost unobstructed view of Heinessen Central Spaceport.

  The room still echoed with the aftermath of celebrations of the prince’s birth, but on the whole the atmosphere had quietened. The admirals sitting with their coffee placed before them looked like birds of prey resting their wings—a flock of golden sea eagles whose wings had carried them farther than any of their kind had ever been before.

  “It seems that Kessler has all but destroyed the Church of Terra’s underground organization on Phezzan.”

  “He has, has he? This is turning out to be quite the year for weeding.”

  “That slippery Rubinsky, too, has finally been caught in the law’s net. It looks like Prinz Alec will grow up under extremely favorable circumstances.”

  “But it was our minister of military affairs who caught Rubinsky in that net, wasn’t it? What do you think of that, Wittenfeld?”

  Sensing a hint of ridicule in Wahlen’s question, Wittenfeld recrossed his legs, his knee bumping the table and setting the coffee cups dancing. Fortunately, all of them were already empty.

  “If a goblin catches a devil, what can a man do but hope they take each other down? I thought more of Rubinsky than that, to be honest. Inoperable brain tumor or no, what an anticlimax for him go straight to the funeral parlor!”

  Wittenfeld’s position was rather insensitive, but it had a peculiar persuasiveness, and the others could not help a few rueful smiles.

  Every one of the highest-ranking imperial officers was gathered in the room except for von Oberstein and Kessler: Mittermeier, Müller, Wittenfeld, Mecklinger, von Eisenach, and Wahlen. The group was less than half the size it had been immediately after Reinhard’s victory in the Lippstadt War. How numerous were their lost colleagues and their undying memories—and how precious! Deep down, they knew that the sea of stars they sailed was also a sea of blood. The thought brought a moment of solemnity, but also the realization that they felt no regrets whatsoever. Mecklinger, standing at the window gazing out at the streets below, turned when he heard the door open.

  Admiral Karl Eduard Bayerlein, a subordinate of Mittermeier’s, rushed into the room and saluted the assembled officers. Lowering his voice, he made some kind of report to his superior officer. At first Bayerlein’s tension was transferred to Mittermeier, but the marshal made sure to dispel this before turning a sharp smile on his colleagues.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “I have just received word that almost all of Iserlohn’s military forces have left the Iserlohn Corridor and are on course for Heinessen.”

  Silent surprise rippled through the air, and several men in black and silver uniforms leapt from their chairs. One, however, who remained stock-still while peering at a game of 3-D chess, only nodded to himself before moving his knight.

  “Checkmate,” he said.

  His voice was low, meant only for his own ears, but it echoed in the silence around him. Each of his colleagues showed surprise in their own way as they stared at him. It was the first time any of them except Mittermeier had heard him speak.

  The time was 1600 on May 18, year 3 of the New Imperial Calendar.

  I

  Coincidence at the tactical level is nothing but the fragmentary afterglow of necessity at the strategic level.

  —Yang Wen-li.

  TOWARD THE END OF MAY in year 3 of the New Imperial Calendar, SE 801, the Galactic Imperial Navy and the Iserlohn Revolutionary Army collided in a full-scale confrontation. When the surface facts were ordered and examined, everything seemed to have resulted from one minor and unfortunate accident.

  It began with a small civilian spacecraft on a heading that would take it out of the now Empire-controlled former alliance territory and into Iserlohn Corridor. The vessel was well above carrying capacity, with over 900 souls on board—young and old, male and female—seeking freedom and liberation. Despite bearing the grand name New Century, the spacecraft was old and run-down, and its engine eventually malfunctioned. A transmission seeking aid from Iserlohn drew the attention of imperial forces, undoing all their efforts to slip unnoticed through the empire’s patrol network.

  “Ideals are ghoulish flowers, feeding on the corpse of reality. One ideal requires more blood than an army of vampires, and that blood is taken both from its supporters and its opponents.”

  This irony, more overwrought than incisive, could, at times, exemplify a portion of the truth. This may have been one such time for the people of the Iserlohn Republic. No matter how they may have privately grumbled at the New Century’s inconvenient timing and wished they could ignore its call for aid, to stand by and watch as seekers of freedom fell back into the empire’s clutches was one thing that the Iserlohn Republic could never do. Of course, its leaders had witnessed the political and military developments of recent years from the closest possible range, which made them cynical enough to wonder whether the ship’s stranding might be some subversive operation by the Empire. Given Kaiser Reinhard’s nature, however, this seemed unlikely. In the end, Iserlohn’s military scrambled a small rescue mission.

  The mission soon developed into an all-too-classic example of a battle that comes of a chance encounter. Startled by the sudden appearance of Iserlohn’s ships, the imperial commander who had come to investigate New Century called for aid from nearby allies, and before long Admiral Droisen arrived with his fleet, forcing Iserlohn to launch a full-scale mobilization in response. The battle eventually involved thousands of ships and raged for two hours until Droisen, realizing that under present conditions it would be folly to keep chasing after a tactical victory, withdrew his fleet. When Iserlohn’s ships turned to leave, however, he immediately made a show of pursuit, so that while he was gathering more and more allies to his side, Iserlohn’s forces could not turn their backs on him, lest they be attacked from the rear. Even
as Julian sent the grateful passengers of New Century on ahead to Iserlohn, he felt a kind of dread mingled with regret. This encounter, he suspected, would awaken the kaiser’s thirst for war.

  A survey of Reinhard von Lohengramm’s short life will show that he never once ended a troop mobilization with a mere show of force. He always plunged into battle. This was why a taste for warfare was said to be in the kaiser’s character, and why his short reign was painted with deep crimson as well as lustrous gold.

  Under Julian’s leadership, Iserlohn’s military had concentrated its main forces near the entrance to the corridor, preparing to respond to events they could not foresee. With last year’s assassination of Yang Wen-li and this year’s riot at Ragpur Prison, their attempts at peaceful negotiations had been foiled by outside elements not once but twice, and these things perhaps inevitably tended to thicken their psychological armor. Thus, no matter what conditions prevailed, open hostilities were inevitable.

  Julian had no desire to reject Kaiser Reinhard’s call for negotiations, but by the same token, he also had no intention of rendering obsequious and one-sided homage to him.

  Yang had often spoken to Julian about Reinhard’s personality and values. “He would leap into the flames without a second thought if it were for the sake of his ideals, his ambitions, or of course what he loves—or hates. That’s just the kind of man he is, and he expects the same even of his enemies. It’s why he still grieves the loss of Siegfried Kircheis so deeply, and I imagine it’s also the reason behind his contempt for our leader, Job Trünicht.”

  If democracy was so precious, why had Trünicht meekly surrendered to autocratic authority instead of defending the alliance’s political freedom with his life? Why had the will and choices of the citizenry granted a man like Trünicht authority and security in the first place? These questions must have left Reinhard utterly baffled. Today, the kaiser doubtless sought his ideal enemy in the handful of people who still rallied around Iserlohn.