Julian was inspecting some port facilities one day when Attenborough called him into the command center. He arrived to find the vice admiral wearing an uncharacteristically grim expression.
“What is it, Admiral Attenborough? I didn’t think anything could faze you.”
Attenborough jerked his chin toward a screen. Julian’s gaze shifted as directed and was immediately transfixed. His reason sought to deny the information his vision supplied. Could the imagery of a personnel announcement from the empire really be true?
The screen showed a familiar smiling face. A face that had charmed hundreds of millions of citizens, electors, and supporters within the Free Planets Alliance as its onetime leader.
“Job Trünicht,” Julian said, voice no louder than a whisper. He seemed to be having trouble even breathing, as if the function of his lungs had been suddenly degraded. High counselor to the Neue Land governorate, Job Trünicht—the words were a waking nightmare.
“Don’t get me started on the kaiser’s judgment here,” Attenborough said, “but this man is a wonder. I don’t know what’s inside his head, but I’m astonished that he can smile like that, even if it’s only superficial. It seems that Trünicht was more monstrous than we imagined.”
Attenborough’s observations prodded at Julian’s memory. Even as Yang had despised Trünicht’s fondness for mob rule, hadn’t he actually feared the other sides of him?
“How can you take this news so calmly?” Julian asked Frederica, who was staring at the screen in silence.
“Oh, I’m far from calm,” said Frederica. “But we have to think about it. About what this appointment means.”
Frederica was right. No appointment was entirely unwanted. At the very least, either the appointer or the appointee desired it. Who, then, had sought Trünicht’s appointment as high counselor to the Neue Land governorate, and for what purpose? If it was simply a manifestation of Trünicht’s brazen lust for power, Julian could rest easy. But that only explained the flower that had bloomed. The problem was the root—and the soil. Julian did not yet have the vision to discern their true nature. Above all, he lacked information. Yang had always been wary of the foolish practice of reaching convenient conclusions from poor information, and Julian hoped to follow his example there if nowhere else.
Yang’s death had forced Julian to quietly revise his dreams for the future. He had never revealed this to anyone, but he had come to hope that once everything was over he might extricate himself from both war and politics and become a historian instead, testifying as a contemporary to the events of his age.
But there were two things he had to do first. One was to triumph over the greatest conqueror in history, Kaiser Reinhard, and sow the seeds of democratic governance in history’s soil. This duty was his bequest from Yang, but a reflection of his own ideals as well.
His other duty was revenge.
Much as he blamed himself for failing to save Yang Wen-li, Julian would not allow those who had plotted and carried out the assassination to escape punishment.
If Yang had been slain at the hand of Kaiser Reinhard, be it in battle or through treachery, the only path remaining to Julian would be to loathe and defeat Reinhard. If the difference in strength between their forces made victory in battle impossible, then he would simply have to resort to the scourge of terrorism. Even if that choice was not what Yang would have wished, Julian would have been obliged to take it anyway.
The fact that Yang had been murdered by the Church of Terra spared Julian such pointless hatred of Reinhard. And it would have no small influence on the unfolding of the history that was still to come.
V
On August 10 of year 2 of the New Imperial Calendar, Job Trünicht arrived at the planet Heinessen to take up the position Reinhard had appointed him to: high counselor to the Neue Land governorate.
As was well-known to everyone involved, until just one year before Trünicht had been head of state in the very same territory. The Free Planets Alliance itself no longer existed as a state. The two men who had led the military efforts to prevent its disappearance, marshals Alexandor Bucock and Yang Wen-li, were also gone forever. Trünicht alone had survived to present himself before Marshal Oskar von Reuentahl, the Neue Land‘s governor-general.
How dare he even show his face here, after draining his fatherland of its very life like some parasitic vine?
So von Reuentahl thought, but he did not speak the words aloud. His heterochromiac gaze glinted coldly as it slashed across Trünicht’s face.
The two of them had met before. When the Imperial Navy had descended on Heinessen and forced the alliance government to sign a humiliating peace treaty the year before, von Reuentahl had been one of the three representatives of Supreme Command Headquarters who accepted Trünicht’s surrender. The other two were Wolfgang Mittermeier and Hildegard von Mariendorf. Different as the three were in personality and thinking, they were united in their disgust for Trünicht’s actions. They could barely even accept what he had done, much less find reason to praise it. The sight of Trünicht sauntering back to his old haunt, this time as an imperial official, added another thick brushstroke to the canvas of von Reuentahl’s loathing.
Trünicht did not appear shaken in the slightest by von Reuentahl’s evident ill will. He delivered a long speech of welcome, ending with the following: “Marshal von Reuentahl, you are the greatest of the Galactic Empire’s retainers and its most renowned military leader. I can hardly imagine that what little wisdom I possess could be of use to you, but if I am able to serve you in any way, such would be my honor.”
Just as prejudice and partiality threatened to cloud von Reuentahl’s piercing mind, he detected a menacing shadow drifting beneath Trünicht’s elegant verbiage. Or so, at least, it seemed to von Reuentahl.
Some chemical reaction transmuted his loathing to murderousness, but von Reuentahl remained in control. Precisely because the emotion was so fierce, in fact, it pushed against the bounds of his reason and invoked a strong suppressive reaction.
On one occasion, von Reuentahl had reprimanded Domestic Safety Security Bureau Chief Heidrich Lang strongly enough to earn his resentment. He had not viewed Lang as a threat, and the sight of his close friend Mittermeier humiliated had been enough for him to respond with pure anger. For Mittermeier, von Reuentahl often took greater risks than he otherwise would, and Mittermeier returned the favor.
But none of that would be possible this time. Von Reuentahl sensed the need to armor himself. He responded to Trünicht’s continued droning with perfect courtesy, but left their meeting quickly. Immediately after this, he summoned Admiral Bergengrün, his inspector general and second in command in military affairs.
“Monitor Trünicht,” von Reuentahl said. “He’s sure to be planning something unpleasant.”
Bergengrün furrowed his brow slightly. He would not dream of disobeying the orders of a superior, he explained, but he also saw little reason to waste any effort on a nothing like Trünicht.
“In principle I agree with you,” von Reuentahl said. “But look at it from another perspective. Yang Wen-li died an unnatural death, but Trünicht is not only alive but thriving.”
Bergengrün considered this caustic observation, but apprehension still filled his earnest face.
“Your Excellency, this may not be useful, but might I offer a word of warning?”
“Go ahead. Since you became my lieutenant, I don’t recall you offering a single piece of advice that wasn’t useful.”
Bergengrün bowed, acknowledging the compliment. “Please do not allow yourself to be replaced by a cipher like Trünicht,” he said with intensity. “You support the very Galactic Empire as a key retainer to the Lohengramm Dynasty, and it is my fervent wish that you recognize the importance of this role.”
A smile filled both of von Reuentahl’s eyes, but it was more than half artificial.
“It is precisely because I recognize this that I am having you monitor him. But your warning is accepted wit
h thanks.”
“What I find mystifying,” Bergengrün said, “is why the kaiser has seen fit to place such trust in Trünicht. Perhaps His Majesty’s thoughts in this matter run too deep for an ordinary man like myself to understand.”
I doubt it, von Reuentahl thought. To Reinhard, simply recognizing Trünicht’s existence surely felt like befouling the fertile plains of his psyche with effluent. The kaiser would surely strike his name from the list of the living if such were possible, but it would not do to kill a man simply because he disliked him. Von Reuentahl felt the same way.
The face that was drawn in von Reuentahl’s mind was not the kaiser but his pale, sharp-featured secretary of defense, Marshal Paul von Oberstein. Von Oberstein devoted himself to eliminating every possible impediment to the kaiser and his empire. Could he not be hoping that von Reuentahl would slay Trünicht for them—and in so doing, give him a pretext to dispose of von Reuentahl too?
“In any case, Trünicht is the man His Majesty has chosen. Whatever his sins, it is not my place to punish him for them. Monitor him closely, never relaxing your vigilance. I doubt you will have to do so for long.”
With that, von Reuentahl sent his trusted inspector-general away. Alone in his office, the handsome general ran a hand through his dark brown hair and thought in silence.
Many historians have argued that Oskar von Reuentahl was, at this point in time, the “second most powerful man in the galaxy.” Considering that military authority at the center of the empire was divided between von Oberstein and Mittermeier, von Reuentahl had dictatorial authority over the mightiest single force of all the empire’s retainers, if only within the confines of the Neue Land. By comparison, von Oberstein did not command any actual forces, while Mittermeier took his orders directly from the kaiser. In which direction, though, would von Reuentahl’s staggering authority and power direct itself? At this stage, the answer was unclear even to von Reuentahl himself.
I
REINHARD VON LOHENGRAMM, history’s greatest conqueror, was still living in a hotel on Phezzan, the planet he had made the capital of his new empire.
It was August in year 2 of the New Imperial Calendar, and Reinhard was 24 years old. Four years and seven months after succeeding to the county of Lohengramm, he had been crowned emperor, and more than a year had passed since then. The months and years had been filled with wars of conquest and the demands of governance, and despite his power he still had no permanent abode.
He had used the hotel on Phezzan as the command center for Operation Ragnarok in the days before he had become kaiser. Following its official designation as Imperial Headquarters, a few renovations had been carried out, but from the outside it looked like any other hotel between first and second grade.
Reinhard disliked excessive security and preferred simplicity in his surroundings, leaving his retainers no choice but to station guards out of their golden-haired kaiser’s sight to protect his safety. Every time Commodore Günter Kissling, head of the Imperial Guard, recalled young Baron von Kümmel’s attempted assassination of the newly crowned Reinhard, he broke out into a cold sweat no matter what the weather was like.
What was more, in June, Yang Wen-li, the Galactic Empire’s strongest, most feared, and most respected enemy, had fallen victim to terrorism on his way to an audience with the kaiser himself. That attack had shaken even the core of the empire’s leadership. Of course there were those who danced with glee at the news of the death of Yang Wen-li, official enemy of the entire empire, but Reinhard and his senior officers, like Marshal Mittermeier and Senior Admiral Müller, felt the death of their enemy painfully. For Kissling, of course, it was also a pointed reminder that he must remain vigilant in guarding the kaiser’s personal safety.
Reinhard’s office was on the third floor of the west wing. For living quarters, he kept a suite on the fourteenth floor. There was an elevator, but sometimes, as the mood struck him, he took the stairs, so there were soldiers stationed on every landing.
The design of the future imperial residence, tentatively named Löwenbrunn, had been left in the hands of Reinhard’s secretary of works, Bruno von Silberberg, but von Silberberg’s assassination had left the work stalled at the planning and site selection stage. Reinhard himself had no strong attachment to the project. Unlike the Goldenbaum Dynasty’s founder, Emperor Rudolf, Reinhard was not interested in projecting imperial power and authority through buildings of staggering scale.
Von Silberberg’s replacement as secretary of works, Gluck, had urged Reinhard to rethink his personal austerity. “Over-abstemious habits restrict those who serve your majesty to frugality too. For their sake if nothing else, please consider making some changes.”
Reinhard had promised to take this under advisement. The problem had not occurred to him before; he was oddly ill-informed about topics other than politics and war. In this case, he had obediently heeded Gluck’s counsel and decided to move his headquarters to the former state hotel on Phezzan, effective September 1. His minister of domestic affairs, Count Franz von Mariendorf, and of military affairs, Marshal Paul von Oberstein, were also instructed to establish residences on the planet, as was Marshal Wolfgang Mittermeier, commander in chief of the Imperial Space Armada, and several mansions were purchased or leased for this purpose. Von Mariendorf moved with his daughter Hildegard into the residence Nicolas Boltec had used as acting secretary-general of Phezzan. Mittermeier was offered a palatial mansion with more than thirty rooms that had once belonged to one of Phezzan’s richest retired merchants, but he found its gilded excess not to his liking, and leased an unremarkable two-story house ten minutes’ walk from headquarters instead.
On August 22, Mittermeier went to Phezzan Spaceport 2 alone, with neither deputy nor orderly, to meet an arrival from a distant planet. Finally he spotted the young woman with cream-colored hair and violet eyes. He raised his hand and approached her.
“Eva!” he called.
“Wolf! How are you?”
The highest-ranking admiral in the imperial armada, and one of only three imperial marshals, pulled his wife close and kissed her for the first time in almost a year.
“How am I?” he said. “After such a long time without your cooking, not very well, I’m afraid. My taste buds’ standards have slipped dramatically.”
“I see the standard of your flattery has increased though.”
The two exited the spaceport arm in arm. An uneducated observer might have mistaken them for a young couple at field officer or, at most, lieutenant grade. But a few of the people they passed turned to stare in astonishment. Could it really be Wolfgang Mittermeier, senior retainer to the empire that controlled most of the galaxy—if the galaxy were a human body, the empire would account for all but the last few hairs—and his wife Evangeline? An imperial marshal of the Goldenbaum Dynasty would have been driven in a luxury car, scattering the people before him with beeping and batons, and accompanied by at least a division’s worth of orderlies alone. But the Mittermeiers simply boarded one of the many autonomous taxis that roamed the streets. Evangeline had an audience with the kaiser to attend.
Mittermeier had married at 24, the same age Kaiser Reinhard was now. But about the imperial person there was no suggestion even of romance, let alone marriage. For his senior retainers and aides, this inevitably became a source of mild vexation.
Had Reinhard been a philanderer like Oskar von Reuentahl, another imperial marshal, his staff would have had other headaches. For his part, Mittermeier would have preferred the kaiser to walk the middle path—call it the common one, if you prefer—of household and heir. A private citizen could remain single or even celibate until death if this pleased them, but the ruler of an autocratic state had two duties: governance, and the continuation of their line. There were no grounds for criticizing Reinhard regarding the first of these, but regarding the second he was at present a perfect failure. There were even rumors—whether true or not Mittermeier did not know—that the Ministry of the Palace Interior had, with
the best of intentions, dispatched a series of elegant beauties to his bedchamber—but that every single one of them had been left solemnly waiting outside that chamber’s door.
Reinhard received the Mittermeiers at Imperial Headquarters. His fever had flared again the previous night but subsided in the light of morning, leaving him full of energy to apply to the tasks of government.
“Frau Mittermeier,” he said. “Thank you so much for coming. Your husband is a steadfast friend on the battlefield. It gives me immense pleasure to have him as my subordinate.”
“You are too kind, Your Majesty. My husband’s position under your command is his greatest joy in life.”
Reinhard’s bodyguard Emil von Selle brought in three cups of coffee with cream. As their rich aroma filled the room, what had begun as somewhat awkward conversation soon flowed freely. Reinhard was not a master raconteur by nature, but he appreciated the time he spent with the Mittermeiers and enjoyed their stories about how they had met and their life together.
“And what kind of flowers did Marshal Mittermeier take with him on that occasion?”
“I’m afraid I’m too embarrassed to say,” Mittermeier said with a rueful grin. He knew now that in the language of flowers yellow roses were not the appropriate choice for a proposal of marriage.
Their conversation was not overlong, and the kaiser saw the Mittermeiers as far as the entrance to Imperial Headquarters when it was time to leave. Excusing themselves once more, they walked side by side back to their new residence.
Mittermeier was still thinking on their audience with the kaiser. So much about it had been somehow unusual. “If His Majesty wished it, his life could be a field of flowers,” he muttered. “What a waste.”
“Do you mean Countess von Mariendorf?” asked his wife.
“And many others, if he pleased. But if it were within my authority to do so, I would advise the kaiser to make her his empress.”
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