Reinhard laughed. Wittenfeld, who had lost communications with the main fleet and been rushing ahead isolated from the rest of the force, had at last arrived in time for the battle. After successfully picking up Steinmetz’s transmissions, he had followed the alliance forces that had set out from Heinessen, and in that way made his way back to the main force. When Fahrenheit had confirmed the sudden appearance of a massive swarm of lights, he had been momentarily shocked to think it might be a reserve enemy force. Taking no heed of his colleague’s surprise, Wittenfeld had charged right past him, and set about kicking around and scattering the exhausted-looking ranks of the alliance forces.
“Don’t charge in there like wild boars, gentlemen,” the kaiser’s chief staff officer, Imperial Marshal von Reuentahl, cautioned over the comm channel with a hint of irony. “The enemy’s commander is an experienced and talented man. He might be preparing some trick you can’t even imagine.”
Although slight, he did feel an urge to say, You plan on boasting of personal achievement after reaching the battlespace at a time like this?
Reinhard, however, pushing back his lustrous golden hair, spoke up for his fierce commander, albeit with a bit of a wry smile: “Let him be. If Wittenfeld were to have an excess of prudence, it would end up sapping the strength of the Schwarz Lanzenreiter.”
Von Reuentahl nodded agreement. The kaiser was right, so all he could do was recognize it with a wry smile of his own. Charging in like wild boars was, after all, what the Lancers were good at.
Wittenfeld himself had a rationale to defend. As a fleet commander, he had tasted utter defeat only once: in year 487 of the old Imperial Calendar, when in the Battle of Amritsar he had yielded before Yang Wen-li’s point-blank counterattack. His defeat had been among the first fruits of the focused-point firing tactic that had come to be the specialty of both Yang and the Yang Fleet, and for the past three years, ever since experiencing that humiliation, the Schwarz Lanzenreiter had continued, in every battlespace, to deliver blows to the enemy that had exceeded the damage they took. For the highborn nobles’ confederated forces, and for the Free Planets Alliance’s military as well, a swarm of fearsome black-painted warships was an object of awe.
And now, Wittenfeld struck the alliance forces straight on with all his spirit, steadily mowing them down in a storm of cannon fire. Flecks of light consumed flecks of light, as the domain of a dark god spread out across the battlespace. In what had originally been a fight among individuals, the alliance forces were no match for the Schwarz Lanzenreiter, and now, with their energies depleted, they were destroyed without even being able to resist.
At 2310, Bucock received word that Carlsen had died in battle. By that time, the alliance fleet had already lost 80 percent of its force strength. The destruction and slaughter became a one-way affair, and even ships that were second to none in terms of bravery viewed the winners and losers as completely decided, and began groping about for some means of escape. However, the alliance’s command headquarters had still not crumbled. A mere hundred vessels surrounding the flagship persistently continued to wage a battle of resistance, creating a narrow path of retreat for the sake of their allies.
“They’re tough, just like that old man’s spirit.”
Guessing Reinhard’s mood from his murmured words, Hilda suggested advising them to surrender one more time. The young conqueror, however, shook his head, making his lustrous golden hair wave back and forth.
“A wasted effort. That old man would only laugh at me for getting too attached. In the first place, what need do I as the victor have to curry the loser’s favor?”
The kaiser did not sound displeased, but his words did seem somehow tinged with the pride of an injured boy. Hilda once more begged the kaiser’s indulgence, saying that to extend one’s hand to a defeated enemy showed a victor’s ability; it was the vanquished foe who could not accept who was small-minded. Reinhard nodded, and although he did not advise surrender himself, he did have a representative do it for him.
It was 2330.
“To the enemy commander!”
The voice of Imperial Marshal Mittermeier, commander in chief of the Imperial Space Armada, came borne on the comm signal.
“To the enemy commander: you are under complete envelopment by our forces, and have already lost your path of retreat. Further resistance is meaningless. Idle your engines and stand down now. His Highness Kaiser Reinhard will reward your valiant efforts in battle by treating you with generosity. I’ll say it once more: stand down now.”
As he’d expected no answer, Mittermeier was actually a little surprised when a comm operator reported a response from the alliance forces. In any case, he had it patched through to the flagship Brünhild. The old admiral who appeared on the screen had a leaden complexion due to exhaustion, but his eyes had a quiet but bountiful vitality. The hand with which he saluted the handsome young conqueror didn’t even tremble.
“Your Highness, Kaiser Reinhard, I think very highly of your talent and ability. If I had a grandson, I would want him to be someone like you. That said, I will never be your vassal.”
Bucock looked over to the side, where his general chief of staff, head wrapped haphazardly in blood-tinged bandages, was holding up a bottle of whiskey and two paper cups. The elderly marshal showed a hint of a smile, then turned back to the screen.
“Yang Wen-li, likewise, would be your friend, but he will never be your vassal either. He isn’t here to vouch for that, but I’m sure enough to guarantee it.”
Reinhard looked on, speaking not a word, as Bucock’s extended hand took hold of one paper cup.
“The reason being, if I may speak so arrogantly, that democracy is a mode of thought that makes friends who are equal—not one that makes masters and servants.”
The elderly marshal gestured toward the screen, as if making a toast.
“I want good friends, and I want to be a good friend to somebody else. But I don’t think I want a good lord or good vassals. Which is why you and I weren’t able to follow the same flag. I appreciate your courtesy, but you’ve no need of these old bones anymore.”
The paper cup tilted where the old man’s mouth was.
“To democracy!”
His general chief of staff echoed the sentiment. With destruction and death right before his eyes, he seemed unafraid, and even indifferent, although a rather sheepish expression had appeared on the old man’s face. It seemed to say that preaching sermons was generally not his style.
His courtesy rejected, there was nevertheless no anger in Reinhard’s heart. If even a little had existed, it would have been overwhelmed by an emotion of a different sort. Quietly, but bountifully, it was soaking into the continent of his spirit. When it came down to it, an outstanding death was the consequence of an outstanding life, and Reinhard didn’t think it possible for either to exist in isolation. And hadn’t Siegfried Kircheis, the friend to whom he owed his life, been the same way as well? Reinhard wrapped his palm around the silver pendant that hung on his chest.
Imperial Marshal Oskar von Reuentahl, secretary-general of Imperial Military Command Headquarters, turned the gleam in his black and blue eyes on the handsome kaiser’s profile. Responding to that, Reinhard lifted up his face and looked squarely at the screen. Together with his nod, shards of ice seemed to shoot from his eyes, piercing the flagship of the alliance forces. Von Reuentahl lifted one hand, and then brought it down.
A fireball exploded in the midst of the screen. More than a dozen beams, focused on that solitary vessel, had been fired. In that instant, the Free Planets Alliance Armed Forces, which had boasted a two-century history, was extinguished, along with its last commander in chief and general chief of staff.
“What does a stranger understand…” Reinhard said to himself, his demigod-like beauty lit by the pulsating light. Even in his low murmur, there was a vague note of horror in his voice. In his own life, it h
adn’t just been vassals he’d been searching for in the beginning. A friend, his own other half, with whom to share dreams more vast than space itself, and to accompany him on the road toward realizing them—that was what he’d been looking for first. For a time, that request had been granted, but after it was shattered, Reinhard had had to bear his dreams alone. He’d had to walk alone. The old man’s words had left no impression on Reinhard so great as that of his resolute bearing. He had reached out his hand, and in accordance with his rightful authority, the old man had rejected it. That was all.
It was 2345 on the same day. Marshal Wolfgang von Mittermeier, commander in chief of the Galactic Imperial Space Armada, relayed orders from Kaiser Reinhard to the entire fleet: “While passing by the battlespace during our departure, all hands are to stand at attention for the enemy commander, and salute him.”
There was no need to confirm that the order was carried out. It seemed unlikely that Reinhard would soon forget the figure of the enemy’s elderly marshal who had gone to his death unyielding, and even resolute. He must have vanished amid the light and heat, still trading toasts with the chief of staff at this side.
“Marshal von Reuentahl…”
“Yes, Your Highness?”
“It seems that in the near future, I’ll once again be conversing in this manner with an enemy admiral.”
There was no need to ask the proper noun for whom he spoke of.
“Aye, Your Highness…” von Reuentahl answered. As Reinhard left the bridge to return to his private room, von Reuentahl’s eyes followed him, with a gaze that rather lacked simplicity.
Should I place Yang Wen-li under my command, or view him only as an enemy to fight against and destroy? It would be hard to claim that the strings of Reinhard’s heart were stretched out in straight lines leading to a conclusion.
Although Reinhard’s talk of lord and vassal had been clearly rebuffed in the meeting that had followed the Vermillion War last year, Reinhard’s greed for collecting talented individuals was thought to still be bent toward adding the greatest thinker of the Alliance Armed Forces’ admiralty to a corner of his collection of talent. Did this, too, qualify as the victor currying favor with the vanquished?
No, it does not, Reinhard thought. He wanted to make Yang Wen-li bend the knee to him, and swear his allegiance. He also thought that if that was the result, he might become disappointed and lose interest, but still, it was a shame that one who was out conquering the entire universe was incapable of conquering one man.
When Reinhard went into his private quarters, his young attendant Emil von Selle came bringing cream coffee. Excitement from the battle had left its afterglow in his eyes. “Thanks to being able to serve Your Highness, I’ve been able to travel so far, and experience so many things. I’ll have plenty to brag about whenever I go back home.”
“Hearing you speak that way so deliberately, it sounds like you miss your home. If you’d like, I can grant you leave so you can go back for a visit.”
Teased by the great young lord whom he worshipped, not just the face, but the whole body of the kaiser’s future chief physician flushed red.
“I couldn’t possibly ask that. Wherever Your Highness may go, I will come with you. Even to another galaxy.”
After a moment’s silence, the young kaiser laughed aloud in a voice that was like a diamond hammer crushing a crystal bell. He caressed the boy’s face, and then tousled his hair.
“For a child, your attitude is far too generous. This galaxy is plenty for me. The other galactic nebulae you can conquer.”
In this manner, the Battle of Mar Adetta came to a close. For the Free Planets Alliance Armed Forces, this was their final fleet battle, and their final defeat.
Three hours later, Kaiser Reinhard received word that Iserlohn Fortress had fallen. It seemed as though history itself was not content with merely trying to swallow its actors in its violent currents; it was carrying them off toward a waterfall as well. It had seemed that way too when Yang Wen-li, immediately after arriving on Iserlohn Fortress, had received the unfortunate news of Marshal Bucock’s passing.
I
INNUMERABLE CHEERS TRANSFORMED into innumerable disappointments, and victory toasts turned to bitter draughts of defeat that were hurled against the floor. The kaiser’s uniform shoes transformed all of their owner’s weight into a fury that ground the slivers of his shattered wineglass into ever-smaller pieces, and scattered weakly gleaming grains of light across the floor.
Across many hundreds of light-years of emptiness, Senior Admiral Steinmetz stood half cringing before an FTL screen that had finally been cleared of the effects of alliance jamming. When he thought of Lutz, standing in the background with his head hung low, and the imperial rebuke he’d just incurred, he couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Last year, it had been Steinmetz himself who had been seated in the loser’s chair, having also fallen victim to Yang Wen-li’s cunning tricks. Lutz’s regret was not simply “somebody else’s problem.”
Reinhard, having diffused a portion of his wrath on the wineglass, had managed to listen to Lutz’s report all the way to the end without shouting. Lutz, with a pallor that seeped even into his voice, had described the scene of defeat, and apologized.
Behind Reinhard, who was facing the comm screen, Mittermeier said with a mixture of anger and disgust, “Yet again, that man has made fools of us.” Von Reuentahl agreed, though he referred not merely to the tactical-level defeat of having Iserlohn stolen from them. The late marshal Bucock and Yang had divided their roles in a difficult coordinated operation, with the former sacrificing himself to hinder the kaiser’s main force, and the latter recapturing Iserlohn. This wasn’t merely a matter of Yang defeating Lutz as individuals; if what he suspected was true, hadn’t Yang—all by himself—just forced the entire Imperial Navy to sip bitter wine from defeat’s chalice?
Of course, this was an overestimation arrived at by working backward from the result, but Reinhard had the same suspicion as the two of them. For a moment, a feeling of black, ashen defeat became so intense that the middle part of his field of vision went dark. It was his chief secretary, Hilda, who made the case that he was overthinking this.
“This is nothing more than the result of two mutually isolated solo operations happening side by side. If it had been a coordinated operation, Bucock would have drawn the duty of taking Iserlohn, while Yang Wen-li himself would have come out to face His Majesty. If the plans were already laid out for the capture of Iserlohn, they could have been executed even without Yang present. But when it came to doing battle with His Majesty, Yang himself would have had to have been here. Now, Marshal Bucock has achieved nothing but a death on the battlespace. This must be a difficult loss for Yang. Sacrificing Bucock while securing his own victory runs against the kind of person Yang is, and if it became widely known that he had done such a thing, he might lose the trust that people place in him. I don’t believe Yang would adopt that sort of foolish plan…”
“I see,” said Reinhard. “You’re most likely correct.”
Though he accepted Hilda’s opinion, the news of Iserlohn’s loss was still a bitter pill to swallow. Reinhard decided to hold off on judging Lutz until after his fury had subsided, and ordered him not to leave his quarters for the time being.
Imperial Marshal Oskar von Reuentahl, secretary-general of Imperial Military Command Headquarters, was standing behind Reinhard, in the angel of silence’s embrace. The handsome young kaiser turned toward him, white fingers brushing back lustrous golden hair as he said, “Marshal von Reuentahl, your success unfortunately had a life span of less than a year.”
“It’s most unfortunate,” von Reuentahl said. It was a brief reply, but the famed heterochromatic imperial marshal had not collected his thoughts well enough to form a proper response. It was a fact that Lutz had played right into Yang Wen-li’s hands, but neither Kaiser Reinhard nor von Reuentahl himself were
entirely without fault in the matter. Reinhard had turned out to have taken too light a view of Iserlohn Fortress’s strategic value, and when von Reuentahl had achieved the monumental feat of retaking the fortress last year, he had failed to see through Yang’s “evil plan.”
“I’d thought he was probably up to something, but to think he was making meticulous preparations so far in advance…”
Kornelias Lutz had been von Reuentahl’s vice commander at the time he had retaken the fortress. He had a stable personality and an outstanding talent for commanding operations—had there been no way for him to stand against Yang Wen-li’s farsighted schemes and clever strategies?
Driven from Iserlohn Fortress, Kornelias Lutz was also leading a force of ten thousand ships of various sizes, and if he had just had the will to do so, he could have mounted a fierce attack on El Facil, and burned it all in hellish flames. Still, plundering an essentially defenseless world had seemed a graceless way to retaliate for Iserlohn’s loss, so making an effort to retain his honor in the midst of defeat, he had withdrawn and headed for the Gandharva system, where his colleague Steinmetz was stationed. Had he known that Yang Wen-li was on El Facil, he might have changed his mind, but Lutz believed that the black-haired magician had spearheaded the attack personally, as he had done in all of his battles up to that point. Lutz was not alone in that; Reinhard and von Reuentahl both thought so as well.
Reinhard, for his part, had nothing to say to Lutz by this point. His was just the latest name on a growing list of top imperial commanders defeated by Yang Wen-li’s ingenuity since the previous year. Reinhard left to reorganize his emotions, and shut himself away in his private quarters. The assembled admirals looked at one another, and naturally adjourned.
“Are all of the empire’s greatest admirals nothing more than a cast of foils for Yang Wen-li?”
Walking down the hallway, von Reuentahl ejected those words from his voice box with a mixture of irony and disgust, and Mittermeier, dissatisfied, ruffled his honey-blond hair with one hand.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Volume 7 Page 19
