This was the abolition of the treaty and a redeclaration of war. The air of every inhabited world was suffused with a horror-stricken silence. Piercing this silence, soaking into the people’s eardrums, was the voice of the kaiser, speaking in a slightly altered tone.
“Marshal Yang is not entirely without blame in this matter, but he was a victim, and merely protecting his own rights. If Marshal Yang will present himself before me, I will receive both him and his followers warmly.”
The dignity of the Free Planets’ government was dealt a fatal blow by the verbal atom bomb that Reinhard had lobbed their way. That was clear as day even to small children.
Among that government’s high-ranking officials, there were some whose faces showed release from their rather weighty responsibilities. They were saying to themselves, “I knew all along things would turn out like this. There was simply no other course I could take. Even the worst outcome was better than no outcome at all.” Those who spoke such words probably wanted to live steady, stable lives within a blueprint created for them by some gigantic, overwhelmingly powerful Other. Far fewer in number were those who would joyfully take up brush and easel when presented with a pure white canvas.
A life of subordination, of following someone else’s orders, was just easier. This was the psychological soil from which had sprung man’s acceptance of dictatorships and absolutism. Five hundred years ago, a majority of citizens in the USG had by their own free will chosen the rule of Rudolf von Goldenbaum.
In any case, there were also those who had no escape from weighty responsibilities. These included João Lebello, isolated in the High Council chairman’s seat which nobody even wanted any longer, and the military leadership, which had to face a second imperial invasion while leading a force that, in terms of both spirit and provisions, was a hollowed-out husk of what it had been.
V
Since retiring due to age and poor health, Marshal Alexandor Bucock’s requests to return to active duty had been turned down three times. Two days after Kaiser Reinhard had turned the whole galaxy upside down with his renewed declaration of war, Bucock went to visit Space Armada Command HQ.
Lieutenant Commander Soon “Soul” Soulszzcuaritter, who had been serving as Bucock’s aide-de-camp at the time of the elderly marshal’s retirement, raced over to the front entrance of Space Armada HQ in order to assist the labored steps of the revered old admiral, running so fast that his black beret was blown right off his head. Now, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, he showed Bucock to the commander in chief’s office. Since Deputy Commander in Chief Chung Wu-cheng was out at the moment, he tried to get him to sit down at his old desk. If the deputy commander in chief had been present, Soul might well have run him out in order to secure the old admiral his seat. Bucock smiled and waved a hand, though, and instead sank his old frame into the sofa that was for guests.
“Excellency, does the fact that you’ve come here in uniform mean you’re returning to active duty to fight the empire? Will I be under your command again?”
The lieutenant commander’s words were far closer to wishes than questions. Bucock calmly nodded.
“Unlike Admiral Yang, I’ve been on the Free Planets’ payroll for more than fifty years. At this point, I can’t just look the other way.”
The hot-blooded young officer felt the temperature and humidity around his eye sockets skyrocketing. Again he saluted, and in a trembling voice said, “Your Excellency, I’m coming with you.”
“How old are you, soldier?”
“Huh? I’m twenty-seven, but…”
“Hmm, that’s too bad. This time around, I can’t take any of you kids under thirty. This party’s gonna be adults only.”
“Excellency, please—!”
Realizing the old admiral’s true intention, Lieutenant Commander Soul was left dumbstruck. Because he was young and had full prospects for the future, Bucock had no intention of taking him along. The old admiral gave him a smile like that of a naughty child who had unexpectedly aged a whole lifetime.
“Listen here, Soul, I’ve got an important mission for you, and you mustn’t take this lightly.”
Soul, tightly bound by invisible chains of tension, listened as the old admiral Bucock pronounced each and every word clearly.
“I want you to go to Admiral Yang Wen-li, and tell him this: ‘Take no thought of vengeance for the commander in chief. You’ve got a task that only you can do.’ ”
“Excellency…”
“Don’t get the wrong idea. I might be wasting your time giving you this kind of message. I don’t plan on losing twice to a young pup fifty years younger than me. This is nothing more than a contingency in case things go bad.”
Physically, Bucock had grown a bit feeble, his once-muscular frame having atrophied with advancing age, but although the shadow of old age hung over him like a gray fog, the gleam in his eye and the power in his voice had a vitality that could overwhelm a man in his prime. Even if this was all just bluster, he wasn’t showing off his zealousness to the young man; he was showing his consideration for him. It was through something other than reason that the lieutenant commander realized that he should follow the order.
The door of the commander in chief’s office opened, and the “Baker’s Son” appeared. Having probably heard report of his visitors already, no surprise showed on his face as he looked at the old marshal and saluted him with an easygoing smile.
“Welcome back, Your Excellency.”
Lieutenant Commander Soul would later remark that he had “never seen such a fine greeting before.”
“I understand you’ve said you can’t take along anyone under thirty. Being as I’m thirty-eight, I think I’m qualified to go with you…”
Bucock started to open his mouth, then closed it and shook his gray head. Unlike with Lieutenant Commander Soul, he knew that with Chung, he would be the one to get nowhere by arguing.
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do with you, either. This, when Admiral Yang’s needing all the talented help he can get.”
“Too many old upperclassmen, and the young won’t have anything to do. Caselnes is enough for Admiral Yang by himself.”
The elderly marshal nodded, turning his gaze toward someplace far beyond the wall. “Kaiser Reinhard could’ve had us tried as war criminals, but he didn’t. I at least owe him personally for that, though I’m not going to reciprocate. There’s no need for young folks to be so choosy, but as for me, I’ve lived in this screwed-up country long enough.”
Rubbing a hollow cheek, the old marshal smiled at Lieutenant Commander Soul, who stood rooted to the spot. “Oh yeah, Soul, I’d almost forgotten—in the basement of my house, there’s a yellow wooden box with two bottles of very fine brandy inside. Could you take one of them with you when you go, and give it to Yang for me?”
The spectacular bolt of lightning that Reinhard had hurled stretched out to the very edges of the vacuum of space. Yang Wen-li heard the news in a room on board the “unsinkable” battleship Ulysses, pressed into duty as a temporary flagship for the Irregulars.
The handsome young kaiser and the emblem adorning the crimson banner behind him overlapped and were magnified in the back of Yang’s mind. Goldenlöwe, eh? They should’ve called it “gorgeous banner that’s suited to nobody except that young man.”
The kaiser’s announcement that he would “receive Marshal Yang warmly” weighed heavier on Yang’s mind than anyone else’s. When the feeling surfaced, it only took the form of a bad joke (“Think he’ll pay me a contract fee?”) that earned him icy stares from his staff officers. Still, it was because they were Irregulars staff officers that they could take the joke as a joke; the government of the Free Planets Alliance had a guilty conscience about its actions, and would have almost certainly viewed that comment as evidence of his going over to the empire.
It wasn’t as if Yang had faced
no dilemmas up till now. If he had revealed the truth about his unjust arrest and how it had driven him to flee Heinessen, the government’s ignominious violation of the law would have been exposed, and people’s trust in the fairness of republican democracy would have been undermined. To say “What have I been fighting for?” would have been not just a denial of his own past—it would have been a slight against the dignity of countless people who had fought for the sake of republican government.
He was well aware of how truly naive this was, but even now, he was still counting on the government of the Free Planets to own up to its mistakes, to apologize, to ask him to come back.
Democracy had always been worth counting on. After all, hadn’t it been in the denial of states’ and power structures’ infallibility that democratic government had originally begun? Wasn’t the strength of democracy found in its willingness to call its own wrongs wrong, to examine itself, and to purify itself?
However, the barren silence from the government of the Free Planets Alliance had dragged on and on, ultimately letting the empire get away with their preemptive move in the most drastic of manners. After all, what the empire had made public was “factual,” so the only way the Free Planets had to resist was through a fiction of even greater truth. As no such thing existed, their silence had continued.
Yang’s road back to the government of the Free Planets Alliance was already cut off. Thus far, he had not responded to El Facil’s declaration of independence, instead letting the fleet burn through supplies as it continued silently running, but that too had been a wasted effort. Kaiser Reinhard’s announcement that he would treat Yang well was most certainly not a falsehood. Even after the Vermillion War, Reinhard had encouraged him to join the imperial military. His indictment of the government’s true intentions had had the maximum political effect, completely severing the relationship between the FPA government and Yang. This was what made the golden-haired young man so extraordinary. Yang couldn’t help but be impressed.
Was it a deficiency in Yang’s own reason or the heart’s infinite capacity for caprice that even as he denied autocracy—in particular, “merciful and efficient” benevolent rule—Yang couldn’t bring himself to hate Reinhard von Lohengramm as an individual? Yang found that question difficult to answer himself. Either way, Yang had now been robbed of every option but one: to take advantage of the struggle between the empire and the alliance and build a third force.
A third force? All Yang could do was shrug his shoulders. Calling it that depended on the Free Planets Alliance being healthy enough to call a second force. The alliance’s collapse was closing in right before his eyes.
“Shall we go back to Iserlohn, then?”
Yang had only murmured the words, but in Frederica’s ears, they roared like crashing breakers, stirring something very much like homesickness. Not even a full year had passed since their departure, yet that inorganic, man-made silver planet swelled up in her heart with inexpressible nostalgia. That was the homeland of Yang’s Irregulars, of the Yang Fleet.
“After that,” Yang said, “We take El Facil, and secure the entrance to the corridor. Let’s give Attenborough’s plan a try, shall we?”
El Facil was just one frontier stellar region, but as a supply base for Yang Wen-li’s forces it would more than suffice. And then there was the matter of Julian. Whenever he got back from Earth, the boy was going to need a home to welcome him, and for that he could think of nothing other than the “liberated corridor” linking Iserlohn and El Facil.
Yang’s dark eyes began to fill with life and energy. Something lurking deep inside him that was not the historian began to stir. In the back of his mind, a seal of ice broke apart, and a powerful torrent of backed-up ideas began to gush forth.
“Kaiser Reinhard is probably going to order Admiral Lutz to launch an attack from Iserlohn. It’ll be Operation Ragnarok all over again. And that’s when we’ll have our opening…”
As Yang began to murmur enthusiastically, Frederica listened with all her being.
I
AFTER THAT MOST venerable of crowns had come to rest upon his brow, Reinhard von Lohengramm had moved his imperial headquarters to Planet Phezzan. Not five months had passed since that day, and now a second expedition into Free Planets space was about to commence. Others looked on in amazement at the speed of it all, but during that period the golden-haired young conqueror felt slightly ashamed, as though he were backsliding into a preference for stability over progress, and letting history carry him along on its conveyer belt rather than seizing it in his own two hands.
To outsiders, it must have looked like Senior Admiral Wittenfeld’s passionate, even extremist, speech was what had finally roused the kaiser, but from Reinhard’s perspective, he had merely ripped open the curtains of an afternoon nap, and found that fierce admiral standing on the other side. Since Wittenfeld’s arguments aligned perfectly with both Reinhard’s strategic thinking and his fundamental nature, though, it was only natural that his regard for the Schwarz Lanzenreiter’s commander was on the rise.
Some historians point to a worsening of the new kaiser’s biorhythms during the first few months following his enthronement, and indeed, Reinhard did experience occasional instability in his physical condition, including loss of appetite and outbreaks of fever. Undeniably, scattered glimpses of a slight passivity could be perceived, which had been absent in his precoronation self. Still, even if it was true that his biorhythms were down, Reinhard’s mines yet retained rich veins of spirit and talent. He had dispatched Admiral Wahlen to crush the headquarters of the Church of Terra, and he had moved the imperial headquarters to Phezzan from its home of five centuries on Planet Odin. In the meantime, new systems and organizations were taking shape, talented people were being appointed to key positions, and laws were being reformed and abolished on a daily basis—Reinhard was certainly not idling away his days as a ruler.
Nevertheless, Reinhard himself felt more than anyone else that this brief respite of 141 days had been a waste of time. Reinhard’s dearest friend, the late Siegfried Kircheis, had once put it this way: “Lord Reinhard’s feet were never made for walking the earth, but for bounding across the sky.” Construction projects and the work of setting up a government most likely qualified as “walking the earth” to him. He certainly had no intention of neglecting these things. Still, it was when he was commanding gigantic fleets, when he and enemy forces were blasting away at one another, that he felt deep satisfaction—blazing exhilaration—filling the depths of his soul.
Reinhard housed many contradictions beneath his porcelain skin, albeit in a sense slightly different from that of his battlespace rival Yang Wen-li. On and on he had fought, and on and on he had won. Winning meant reducing the number of his enemies, and if his enemies were reduced, then so too would be his opportunities for battle. It was possible that his vitality itself had ultimately been reduced as a result of this.
Little problems that felt alien to his nature were always cropping up both inside and outside of court. Just the other day, a bureaucrat at the Ministry of Industry had caused an unintentional dustup with a careless remark. The man was a hard worker who had even been assigned to Imperial Capital Construction HQ, but one night he went out drinking with his colleagues, and while trying to emphasize the importance of Phezzan during the course of their conversation, he had wagged his tongue too far.
“Phezzan should be the node that organically ties all of human society together. Even if the Lohengramm Dynasty were to end, Phezzan would still be the most important location in the galaxy.”
The latter part of this statement had marred the sanctity of the emperor; it was lèse-majesté, and as such deserving of the ultimate penalty, said the one who had informed on him. With a put-upon expression, the young kaiser delegated judgment in the matter to Hilda. After confirming the background and details of the case, she reprimanded the speaker for his carelessness, but pronounced
a heavier sentence on the informant—a one-rank demotion for making a colleague’s slip of the tongue out to be a deliberate crime, and for causing a needless uproar. In so doing, he had harmed the kaiser’s many vassals and officials, and stained the kaiser’s reputation for tolerance and equity.
Several days went by, and Reinhard, suddenly remembering the case, asked Hilda how she had handled it. Hilda reported the facts without embellishment. Satisfied, the young kaiser brushed his long hair back behind his neck. “You’re most reasonable, Fräulein von Mariendorf. This will make a fine lesson for anyone who thinks I take pleasure in stool pigeons. Moving forward, it seems I’ll be delegating a variety of matters to you.”
After thanking him, Hilda had a request of her own for the kaiser, regarding a less-than-desirable trend that was spreading rapidly these days both at court and in the government. While it was a matter of course that people show their respect for the kaiser, some were using this as a tool for achieving unworthy ends.
“What, specifically, do you speak of, Fräulein von Mariendorf?”
“Things like criticizing someone who doesn’t say ‘Sieg kaiser’ when greeting a colleague or sharing a toast, for example, or supervisors making notes of such things in personnel performance records.”
“That’s absurd.”
“As Your Highness says. Which is why I would be grateful if you would make a formal proclamation to that effect, which would go out to all of your vassals. A preemptive strike, if you will, against those who would try to advance their own careers by criticizing and tearing down others.”
Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Volume 7 Page 8
