“So basically, we’ve nothing to fear on a military campaign spanning a hundred thousand light-years except the content of Yang Wen-li’s skull. If that man had the same number of troops we do—or more—then it might be him that the fates were winking at.”
If anyone other than Mittermeier had said that kind of line, he would have been denounced as a coward, but he knew just as well as his lord how to respect an enemy, and on that point even surpassed him.
Von Reuentahl answered, saying that suppositions were meaningless, at which point a different supposition blossomed in the mind of the famed heterochromatic admiral.
“If Siegfried Kircheis were alive, we might not have lost Iserlohn like this.”
Had Siegfried Kircheis been yet among the living, then he, acting as Reinhard’s alter ego, would have applied his remarkable talents and skills to commanding a massive force that would likely have hemmed Yang Wen-li in on all sides in some distant corner of space. At the very least, the military windstorm named Yang Wen-li would have surely experienced a drop in speed and pressure. Or maybe, if Kircheis had been living, he would have applied his unparalleled fairness and clarity of thought to the duties of high commissioner—duties too heavy for Helmut Lennenkamp—and encouraged trust and integrity in the Free Planets’ government, rather than panic and desperation. Or again, he might have occupied the seat of minister of military of affairs, allowing Kaiser Reinhard to undertake his personal campaign without anxiety for the future, and dispelling the admirals’ distrust and dissatisfaction with the present-day Ministry of Military Affairs before it had ever begun.
“That’s right. If Kircheis were alive, we wouldn’t have had that smug-looking von Oberstein guy lording it over Military Affairs either.”
Mittermeier spoke as though that were the point deserving greatest emphasis.
Both imperial marshals felt that, in any case, it was imperative to waste not a day in subduing Heinessen, so as to prevent Yang Wen-li from working his martial sleight of hand in tandem with ongoing political developments. Reinhard, who shared this opinion, was preparing to order the entire fleet to renew its rapid advance right away, but Hilda shook her head and held him back.
“Your Majesty, there’s no need to hurry. If we approach Heinessen boldly, that alone will exert pressure enough to shatter the Free Planets’ government.”
Seeming to forget for a moment his displeasure over the loss of Iserlohn, Reinhard turned to look at the beautiful, boyish contessina, forming an expression that appeared to be in striking distance of becoming a little smile.
“Do you think the Free Planets’ government is made of eggshells, Fräulein?”
“Yes, and I think a storm is brewing inside that egg. Most likely, they’ll destroy themselves with internal squabbling. It won’t be worth troubling Your Majesty’s hands with.”
“Heh—”
Reinhard’s little laugh ended before it had begun. He sank into thought with a rather vague expression, and then, having made up his mind, gave orders to resume the advance. Boldly, as Hilda had said, and without any rush.
Karl Robert Steinmetz had so much firepower at his command that he could have reduced Heinessen to ashes with a single word. The reason he did not—devoting himself instead to deterrence, observation, and the duty of improving the empire’s base—was blazingly clear. The young, golden-haired kaiser longed to set foot on Heinessen’s soil not as its guest but as its conqueror. That was what Steinmetz believed, and in terms of outcome, his judgment had been sound. There was also a need for Steinmetz to act as a guide for the kaiser, so he was frequently relaying to Reinhard intelligence received from Heinessen. However, as they headed into February, a shocking piece of intelligence suddenly arrived.
It informed him of the surrender of the Free Planets Alliance, and of the death of João Lebello.
II
The record is silent regarding what João Lebello, the Free Planets Alliance’s final Head of State, was working on in his office on February 2 of that year. What is certain is that, regardless of his ineffectiveness and lack of results, he never tried to shirk his duties, even in his life’s final chapter.
Kaiser Reinhard’s declaration, which had exposed both Lennenkamp’s death and its cause, had now proven a fatal wound for the alliance. Going by the subjective reasoning of an alliance government that had desperately concealed those facts, this was the equivalent of being stabbed in the back by one’s partner in crime. However, it wasn’t as if they had ever embraced some vision for what came next after the cover-up. Had Lebello been some wicked schemer, he might have clung relentlessly to his fiction, making Yang out to be a despicable fugitive, and shifting blame for all the chaos onto him.
However, he had not been able to take it that far. Even if he was by nature a bit narrow-minded, he was a man who had walked the righteous path, and after Lennenkamp’s death, it seemed his meager talent for “flexible planning” had been exhausted. Afterward, he had lost himself in the narrow range of his duties. When he sensed the emanations of a gruesome intent rolling in on him, he suddenly raised his head, looked around, and perceived that he was surrounded by an armed group that could not possibly have been in that place. His one old acquaintance in the crowd hailed him in a rather emotionless voice. It was Admiral Rockwell, director of Joint Operational Headquarters.
“Director, what business brings you here? I don’t remember calling for you all.”
“We couldn’t care less about your memories, Chairman. The issue here is what we require.”
Although Admiral Rockwell might have once been plagued by trepidation and indecisiveness, he now seemed ready to roll straight ahead, crushing his own sense of shame under his wheels. A file was applied to Lebello’s dulled emotions, and very suddenly, he realized what kind of situation he was in.
“You…intend to kill me, don’t you?”
Rockwell didn’t answer.
Silence was another way of saying yes. Lebello breathed a rather apathetic sigh, folded his arms, and surveyed this band of officers, here to force on him a ticket to some place not above the ground.
“May I hear your reasons?”
“We can’t trust you.”
“How do you mean?”
“If the Imperial Navy demanded Yang-li’s head, you’d hand it over right away. If they came demanding mine, you’d do the same. This is nothing more than a means of self-preservation. I don’t want your power.”
“You have no need to defend yourselves. The Imperial Navy won’t ever come for your heads. After all, none of you are Yang Wen-li.”
This calmly made point was like a noxious spray that stung at the officers’ faces.
“You were the one,” said Rockwell, “who taught me how to do things this way, Excellency. Didn’t Marshal Yang try to defend himself when you made him a sacrificial lamb? Meeting your end here, now, like this, is what they call ‘reaping what you sow.’ Blame your own foolishness.”
New life welled up in Lebello’s eyes. It looked as if his whole, weakened body had received an infusion of the energy that came of intellect and will. He sat up straight and faced the officers, looking free of all fear.
“I see. So I’m reaping what I’ve sown? Maybe I am, but justifying my death is not the same as justifying your actions. My conscience and your consciences were also given different loads to bear. But that’s all right. Shoot me down, and buy your security.”
Was there no one to feel pity for Lebello’s conscience and unrewarded sense of responsibility? Who in the moments before his death would grant him whatever grace was possible for him? At that moment, the slim figure of the High Council chairman carried not a single weapon, and yet he intimidated the assassins. Admiral Rockwell sensed unrest rising like a heat mirage off the figures surrounding him. It was rising off of him as well—his spirit sublimating, robbing his body of energy, feeling as though it would leave nothing
behind except regret and defeat. After no small effort, he opened his mouth, then closed it again. When his scattered thoughts refocused, he saw Lebello’s body, pierced through by numerous beams, sliding from his chair to the floor.
Reinhard said nothing on receiving the report; at any rate, this would best be called a bloodless surrender. Reinhard ordered the armada to make straight for Heinessen, and there he was welcomed by Steinmetz, who had already deployed his fleet in orbit around the planet. An imperial force of one hundred thousand ships watched over the armada flagship Brunhild, protecting it as it descended.
On February 9, SE 800/NIC 2, Reinhard von Lohengramm became the first Galactic Emperor to set foot on Planet Heinessen.
After arriving at the spaceport, Reinhard, protected by four divisions of armored troops under Steinmetz’s command, went to the National Cemetery where João Lebello’s body was lying in state. The visit itself was a brief one, and the kaiser offered nothing amounting to an opinion, but Steinmetz was appointed council chairman on the occasion of Lebello’s funeral.
“João Lebello’s misfortune was not that he became head of state at the worst possible time—it was that he became head of state at all. While Lebello was able to believe in fictions created by others—in the inviolability of the democratic regime, for example—he simply wasn’t blessed with the qualities—the charisma, to put it bluntly—necessary to construct a fiction of his own.”
Such appraisals do exist, but history’s verdict aside, Reinhard, as victor, maintained perfect decorum toward this old enemy. Or to put a more cynical spin on it, maintaining decorum would not cause problems of any sort, though the situation being what it was, there is no need to infer any excess of emotion on his part.
After leaving the cemetery, Reinhard transmitted brief orders to von Reuentahl, Mittermeier, and Müller from the landcar he was sharing with Hilda.
The Goldenlöwe, von Lohengramm’s golden lion banner, was rustling from the elevated post where the flag of the former Free Planets Alliance had once flown. That day, Planet Heinessen had clear skies over its government and municipal office district, but with a strong, chilly wind caressing their skins, onlookers cringed from the cold air and unease as they watched the young conqueror’s procession go by. Ranks of armed soldiers divided the victors from the vanquished, and from time to time, the citizens’ eyes would catch sight of the handsome conqueror’s divine beauty. When that happened, the women in particular tended to forget for a moment the cold and unease. Of course that was a mostly superficial reaction, so vastly unlike the worship of the soldiers who had followed him from battle to battle on this campaign as to not even register. If we define a hero as someone that many people would gladly go to the land of the dead for in order to satisfy their greed or the ideals of their subjective reasoning, then Reinhard was certainly a hero. Valhalla was bursting at the seams already with dead men who had perished for him—and their residential block was likely to yet require further expansion.
The landcar came to a halt. It appeared that trouble of some sort had broken out among the crowd. An Imperial Navy armored car drew near, and a high-ranking officer, his tall, muscular frame wrapped in a black and silver uniform, got out and bowed on his knee beside Reinhard’s landcar. Together with Steinmetz was Senior Admiral Wittenfeld, commander of the Schwarz Lanzenreiter, to whom Reinhard had delegated responsibility for metropolitan security.
“For the Schwarz Lanzenreiter, there is no retreat.”
That boast strengthened their faith, and that faith produced results. Under the former dynasty, Wittenfeld had risen to the admiralty in spite of his nonaristocratic birth, and it was his faith and results that had led to his being discovered by Reinhard. He had what it took to be regarded highly by the young conqueror.
It is said that weak troops don’t exist in the service of a fierce general. In the Schwarz Lanzenreiter’s case, that was an incontrovertible fact. When their commander charged forward while standing at the head of the whole fleet, his subordinates became a muddy stream of steel following after him, continually exhibiting unparalleled destructive power.
Fritz Josef Wittenfeld was the same age as Yang Wen-li and Oskar von Reuentahl; he would turn thirty-three in SE 800/NIC 2. Others felt that his whole being could be summed up in one word: “ferocious.” The man himself, far from denying this, was actually using that word himself boastfully. His daring, his rigid, straight-arrow tactics, and the battlespace feats he had accomplished thus far certainly backed up his reputation for ferocity. Following the Battle of Rantemario, however, he had made an evaluation of the greatest feats performed among his subordinates, and the report he had sent to Reinhard had spoken not of heroes mowing down the enemy like grass, but of the crews of medical vessels treating wounded soldiers in the midst of fierce combat, performing daring rescues, and transporting the wounded to the rear of the fleet.
Reinhard was surprised, and frankly moved, and gave generous rewards not only to the medical ships’ crews in Wittenfeld’s fleet, but to those of the entire armada as well.
“That Wittenfeld…I wonder if he’s making a play for His Majesty’s favor.”
“Even if he is, it’s not a bad thing to reappraise the accomplishments of the medical ships.”
“You’re certainly right about that. Even if he was currying favor, it was pretty shrewd of him just to think of that…”
At that time, von Reuentahl and Mittermeier acknowledged with wry smiles this unexpected side of their colleague.
That same Wittenfeld was now kneeling formally next to the stopped landcar. Hilda glanced at Reinhard’s eyes, then opened the landcar’s door. The fearsome, orange-haired admiral saluted, donning a coat of tension on top of his uniform.
“My apologies for the disturbance, Your Majesty. Please be gracious, and pardon your vassal’s error.”
The handsome young kaiser had no interest in the usage of polite language. He clearly wanted only to be told what had happened.
“Yes, there was a republican ideologist in the crowd, who attempted to take outrageous action against Your Majesty’s life…”
I thought everyone in this crowd was a republican idealist, Reinhard mused, although he didn’t say it aloud.
“And the perpetrator? Was he arrested?”
“When we surrounded him, he killed himself on the spot with a gun. Not that even death can excuse the grave crime of attempted regicide. I’ll confirm his identity as quickly as possible, and take appropriate measures.”
Reinhard’s well-shaped eyebrows, as comely as if painted by an artist’s brush, formed an arch of displeasure.
“Do nothing unnecessary or unprofitable. Release the body to his family. And to make myself doubly clear: do not harm his family.”
“Yes, Your Majesty…”
“You don’t care for that? I do prize your loyalty, but too much of that kind of thing will turn me into another Rudolf.”
With that one word, the fierce, orange-haired admiral understood his lord’s intent perfectly, and bowed his head with the greatest of humility. The name of Rudolf was reviled not only by Reinhard himself, but by his vassals as well.
The door was closed, as the landcar started moving again. Reinhard sat back in his seat, sank into the forest of his own deep thoughts, and closed his eyes. For some time after, Hilda stared at the shadows that his long eyelashes cast on his pale white skin.
III
Reinhard’s generosity toward old enemies did not come without some guiding principles. His last official duty for that day was an interview with João Lebello’s assassins. Since the other admirals were attending to municipal security duties and the commandeering of various facilities, the only ranking military officer to accompany him was Senior Admiral Adalbert Fahrenheit.
From the very start of Reinhard’s interview with the assassins, he made no effort to hide his contempt for them. Arrogantly, he crossed his long le
gs, and looking down on the awkwardly kneeling Admiral Rockwell and his ten rebellious officers, spoke in a voice far colder than zero degrees.
“My time is too precious to spare for the likes of you. I’ll ask you one question: When you did it, what were you ashamed of?”
Admiral Rockwell just barely managed to raise his face toward the young conqueror, but resisting his ice-blue gaze was no easy task. His expression was somewhere between shock and terror.
“Are you saying we lack shame, Your Majesty?”
“If it sounded any other way, my wording was poor.”
“Even Admiral Fahrenheit, who’s standing by your side, was once an admiral in the aristocrats’ confederated forces. But now, he’s changed his goals, and serves Your Majesty. That being the case, I think you should be able to deal with us generously as well.”
Reinhard strummed a harp of ice with his cold smile.
“Did you hear that, Fahrenheit? These men say they’re the same as you.”
After a moment, Fahrenheit said, “I am truly, deeply honored.”
As he looked directly at the surrendered conspirators, a wrathful steam was floating in the aquamarine eyes of that admiral, famed across two dynasties for his valor. As an officer in the boyar nobles’ confederacy, he had done his utmost, and even after losing faith in its shortsighted and incompetent leader Duke von Braunschweig, he had never dreamed of selling him out to his enemies. There were no words for the disgust he felt at having Lebello’s assassins equate themselves with him. Glancing at his face, Reinhard nodded.
“Very well, Fahrenheit—I feel exactly the same. I know how you’re usually averse to bloodshed off the battlefield, so I’ll give the order especially for you. Dispose of these filthy, two-legged hyenas, and sanitize at least one cranny of this universe.”
“Aye!”
While the kaiser was still speaking, the surrendered assassins had lost their color and risen to their feet. Fahrenheit raised one hand, and a human circle moved in, creating a wall of uniforms around the eleven men.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Volume 7 Page 20
