Even the strategically oriented Mecklinger, whose gifts of wisdom and reason were both significant, found it surprising that the Iserlohn Republic had granted him passage in this way. When he reported their decision to Kaiser Reinhard in distant Phezzan, the kaiser’s initial response had been several moments of silence. It was not that either of them had underestimated Julian. Indeed, they had been unaware even of his existence, let alone his capacity as a leader, and unable to harbor any prejudices about him at all.
“If he says he will grant your request and let you through, then go through,” the kaiser said finally. “It appears we owe Yang Wen-li our gratitude for leaving a sensible successor. No doubt he has ideas of his own, but we shall leave that for another day.”
Mecklinger complied, but among his staff officers there were, of course, some who had misgivings.
“If Iserlohn fires on us with Thor’s Hammer, the fleet will be obliterated. We must remain alert.”
A hint of a wry smile appeared under the artist admiral’s neatly trimmed mustache. “Will alertness sap Thor’s Hammer of its power? If so, I am all for it, but I fear we have rather surrendered our rights in that area…”
As uneasy as Mecklinger’s troops were, the residents of Iserlohn Base must have felt an unease of their own. Offering the Mecklinger fleet up as a sacrifice to Thor might bring some temporary satisfaction, but would only call down the wrath of the entire Imperial Navy. And, of course, they had their own nagging suspicions that Mecklinger would attack while Iserlohn’s guard was down.
If I am honest, my mental state was more hopeful than confident, however slight the unbalance. If Yang Wen-li had been alive, that proportion would have been reversed—no, in fact, I would have been able to put near-perfect faith in him. I prayed from the bottom of my heart that Yang’s youthful successor would not succumb to his impulses and prioritize ambition over reason.
Julian knew nothing of Mecklinger’s prayers, but he did control his impulses. Having granted the empire its request, he knew that he could not allow anything to harm the relationship of trust thus engendered.
“If the fleet tries anything underhanded, we’ll just shoot them down. Iserlohn’s outer walls can brush off ship’s cannon without a scratch. We’ll make sure the whole galaxy knows of their dishonor.”
Julian was in the base’s central control room, eyes fixed on the main screen. The imperial fleet was passing through the firing range of Thor’s Hammer in an orderly formation. Mecklinger had plotted a course that put his fleet within point-blank range of the weapon, presumably to convey his trust in Iserlohn’s leadership.
Beside Julian sat Dusty Attenborough, slurping coffee from a paper cup. “Almost makes you wish they’d just attack us,” he muttered, just loud enough for Julian to hear. “I’d give them a nice pat on the head with Thor’s Hammer then.”
“I don’t ask for much,” said Poplin, who was watching too. “I just want to see some fireworks. Not that I’d complain if things escalated, mind you.” Beneath the cheer in his green eyes was a hunger for combat. He understood that Julian meant to “sit this one out,” but, by all appearances, would not have been dismayed in the least if combat had broken out.
Beside Poplin stood Merkatz, with von Schneider a respectful half pace behind him. Both remained silent throughout. What might they have said to Mecklinger in their hearts?
A communications officer brought Julian a message from the passing fleet:
From Ernest Mecklinger, senior admiral of the Galactic Imperial Navy, to the Iserlohn Republic’s government and military representatives. I offer thanks for your goodwill and anticipate with pleasure the future normalization of relations between us. As we pass, my entire fleet will offer a respectful salute toward the sacred resting place of the great Marshal Yang Wen-li. I hope this gesture will be received in the spirit in which it is offered.
“In other words, the enemy’s a pack of sentimentalists, just like us,” said von Schönkopf with a sideways glance at Julian. “ ‘Sacred resting place,’ was it? I suppose, commander, that this shared sentimentalism is where you expect to reach an understanding and find our hopes for the future?”
“Something like that. But I don’t expect the path to be a smooth one.”
What was in Julian’s mind was less a prediction than an expectation. This was something Yang had always warned against, but at that moment Julian felt that he could sense the direction and speed of history’s flow through his skin rather than his reason, and see its final end point more or less accurately.
All the galaxy was a stage, as Yang had once said. Players trod the boards of space-time in tragedies and farces, large and small. The curtain went up, the curtain came down, and one lead gave way to the next. Iserlohn was currently starring in a historical drama colored crimson and gold by staggering bloodshed and resplendent dreams, and Julian sensed the final curtain approaching. As Yang’s disciple, however, he was embarrassed by the fact that this feeling was not the fruit of rational, intellectual analysis, and not inclined to speak of it.
Shortly after their imperial guests had finished their passage through Iserlohn Corridor, five thousand light years away in the void, another scene in the drama imagined by Julian would begin.
II
December 7.
The pursuing Mittermeier fleet caught the tail of the Reuentahl fleet in its sights. This should have meant an orderly development of attack and counterattack, but as the Reuentahl fleet prepared to return fire, it suddenly fell into confusion.
“Grillparzer is firing on us!”
The scream from the operator ran through von Reuentahl’s auditory nerve. Next came the assault on his optic nerve. Despite controls on the luminosity it allowed through, the screen on the bridge was dominated by pulsing nebulae of light. Voices on the communications circuits repeatedly called the same ship or combat squadron, revealing that contact had been lost with them. Tristan was caught in a vast explosion of malicious, murderous energy.
“He must have been waiting for this opportunity all along. That cunning—”
The bitter realization controlled even von Reuentahl’s vocal cords. He had crafted his strategy and tactics for Reinhard and Mittermeier alone, never considering the possibility of petty intrigue by a petty traitor.
Grillparzer’s betrayal was met with unbridled rage. It can only be called ironic that the ships that returned fire most furiously were those that were formerly under von Knapfstein’s command, and now threw the full force of their still-raw grief and anger at Grillparzer. “Coward!” one captain shouted. “Do you think we will sit on our hands and let you have all the glory? No, you are coming with us. When you reach Valhalla, apologize to those who fell!”
The Grillparzer fleet was not entirely unified either. Some unfortunate ships were still hesitating, unsure whether to obey the sudden, unexpected order to attack, when they were blown apart by the response. The situation raced toward the brink of catastrophe, dissolving as understanding clashed with intellect into a rancorous free-for-all of ally versus ally.
Grillparzer’s betrayal would leave a large, black stain on the historical canvas of this civil war, otherwise painted in such splendid colors. Until that day, Grillparzer had seldom been criticized on the grounds of ability or morality, and great things were expected from him as a scholar too. Even Mittermeier had once urged Bayerlein to learn from the broadness of Grillparzer’s broadness of vision, cautioning him that a warrior must do more than fight.
But while the histories of later ages would describe Bayerlein as the “successor to Mittermeier; a capable soldier of honesty and integrity,” Grillparzer was deemed a “despicable traitor.” He would join that unfortunate group whose entire legacy is dismissed due to their actions at the very end of their lives—less than one percent of their allotted time.
Mittermeier did not immediately grasp the import of the confusion unfolding before his eyes. But when the word “traitor” began to be heard in the chaos of intercepted messages,
all became clear. The Gale Wolf’s youthful face reddened with indignation. This was to have been his battle, with his friend, at which they would both exert themselves to the utmost. He had not expected such an ugly development.
Amid the gaudily hued turmoil, firing converged on von Reuentahl’s flagship Tristan, and a shot from a rail cannon flew toward it from one o’clock. Tristan evaded the projectile, but when another flew in from the direction in which the ship had taken evasive action, the increased relative velocity allowed it to breach Tristan’s outer hull and explode inside the ship itself.
Von Reuentahl’s field of vision shook violently, first up and down and then left and right; it was bleached by dazzling light before subsiding to a glowing orange. Amid the rumbling and howling wind, the commander’s chair toppled over, coming down on the leg of von Reuentahl, who stood before it. The sound of explosions battered his eardrums.
Through the scramble of vision and hearing, von Reuentahl’s mismatched eyes perceived a presence that was neither light nor shadow descending on him. Had his leg not been caught under the commander’s chair, he could have dodged it with ease. But his polished reflexes, ever so slightly, betrayed their possessor’s will, and he felt the shock of impact run through the left side of his chest in a straight, narrow line.
A long ceramic shard had pierced him beneath his left clavicle, and the pain went right through to his back.
“Your Excellency!” screamed his aide Lieutenant Commander von Reckendorf, seeing his commander run through amid the smoke and chaos.
“Calm yourself. I’m the one who’s wounded, not you.” Despite the gravity of the situation, von Reuentahl smoothed down his hair with one hand. “As I recall, screaming on behalf of superiors is not among the duties of an aide.”
With an expression more of irritation than pain, von Reuentahl pulled the forty-centimeter ceramic spear from his chest. Blood gushed forth in a thin but powerful stream, immediately soaking the front of his uniform. His hands, too, looked as if he had wrapped them in vermillion silk.
Von Reuentahl snorted. “Whatever the color of our eyes or skin, it seems we all bleed the same color,” he said.
He threw the fragment away. By now the blood had reached the tips of his shoes and begun to pool on the floor. The small wound that had opened in his back also formed a vermillion stream that lasted until his muscles contracted to close it. The locations of his wounds were pure coincidence, but those who believed in fate may have seen some meaning in the fact that they mirrored those of Kornelias Lutz.
Incredibly, von Reuentahl pushed the commander’s chair off himself and, despite his massive blood loss, got calmly to his feet. Not a hint of pain showed, at least in his face or his movements. He was resolute to an almost impudent degree. Von Reckendorf screamed for a medic, and one came running to hastily begin first aid.
“Your Excellency,” von Reckendorf said, cheeks shaking with rage, “we must teach the traitor Grillparzer a lesson. I will muster the fire of the apocalypse to send him to hell, where cowards belong!”
“Leave him.”
“But—”
“Survival will be the greater misfortune for him in the end. Do you think the kaiser or Mittermeier will ever forgive what he has done?—Well, how does it look?”
His final question was directed at the medic, still tending his wounds. The medic wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of a hand now stained red with von Reuentahl’s blood.
“There is damage to the blood vessels connecting your heart and lungs. I will freeze it to stop the bleeding, and seal the wound for now, but you will need proper surgery as soon as possible.”
“I don’t much like surgery, I’m afraid.”
“It isn’t a question of like or dislike, Your Excellency. Your life depends on it.”
“On the contrary, doctor, it’s about far more than like or dislike. Surely you can agree that it wouldn’t suit me to die in my pajamas on a hospital bed?”
Von Reuentahl’s pale but almost insolently calm smile forestalled all counterargument from the medic as the rolls of the dead swam into view in von Reuentahl’s mind.
Siegfried Kircheis. Kempf. Lennenkamp. Fahrenheit. Steinmetz. Lutz. Even his enemies, Bucock and Yang Wen-li. It seemed to him that, in the end, all of their deaths had been appropriate to their lives. In what manner would he, Oskar von Reuentahl, take his place alongside them? He had not thought too deeply on this before, but at Valhalla they might have begun sweeping the path to the gate for him.
Once the cryotreatment stopped his internal bleeding, his wounds were covered in bandages and jelly palm and he was injected with antibiotics.
After thanking the medic and instructing him to see to the rest of the injured, von Reuentahl righted the commander’s chair and lowered himself into it. He was far from the only one to have been injured. The bridge had become a ghastly exposition of blood and flesh. In one corner, a soldier still in his teens cried for his mother as he groped about for a missing arm; another man wept tears of agony and terror as he used both hands to stuff his innards back into the abdominal wound they had spilled from.
He had a student orderly wipe his soiled desk. The orderly did so, hazel hair still in disarray, but then turned his face to von Reuentahl, revealing that he was on the verge of tears.
“Your Excellency, you will aggravate your injuries. Please do not overexert yourself.”
“No need to worry,” von Reuentahl said. “But you can go and get me a change of clothes. Shirt and uniform. Smell your own blood for five minutes and it starts to get tiresome.”
The fires on Tristan’s bridge were finally extinguished, but its offensive and defensive capabilities were both severely degraded, and it was forced to withdraw from the battlefield at forty minutes past midnight on December 8. Von Reuentahl’s fleet was on the brink of defeat, but his calm, measured control ensured that at least part of it was able to withdraw in an orderly fashion along with his flagship.
“With no further treatment beyond periodic injections of painkillers and hematinics, Marshal von Reuentahl remained upright in the commander’s chair overseeing the entire fleet. He changed his uniform, fastening every button correctly, with an utterly impassive expression. I cannot imagine the agony that must have assailed him, and yet his judgment and command remained flawless. As I watched this demonstration of true fortitude played out before my eyes, I felt proud to be among his subordinates. I entirely forgot, if only for a moment, the awesome truth: that we had placed ourselves in opposition to the great Kaiser Reinhard himself…”
The source of this testimony was Lieutenant Commander von Reckendorf, but even he could not deny that the blood was draining from von Reuentahl’s face. At one point he passed out from cerebral anemia, but when his subordinates tried to carry him from the chair to the medical ward, he regained consciousness, rebuked them, and ordered them to return him to his chair. They felt as if they beheld a man who challenged the very lord of death, and their awe and respect for him grew even stronger. They also realized that this fortitude was only made possible by the sacrifice of his physical form, meaning that the commander’s remaining life was rapidly dwindling.
Grillparzer would disgrace himself five times in the end. The first time was his initial support, however feigned, for von Reuentahl’s revolt against the kaiser. The second was his betrayal of von Reuentahl after having sworn fealty to him. The third was his choice of the worst possible time to enact that betrayal. The fourth was the failure of the betrayal itself, which saw him defeated by von Reuentahl’s forces. And the fifth came when, having achieved nothing, he asked permission to surrender to a man who thought such acts despicable. Given that Mittermeier was von Reuentahl’s friend, it was natural for Grillparzer to choose Wahlen instead, but it only exacerbated the already unfavorable impression he gave of low cunning.
Mittermeier did not even meet this dishonorably surrendered deserter. He was not sure he could control his tongue if he did.
III
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br /> In the thirteen years since von Reuentahl’s graduation from officer’s school, he had taken part in more than two hundred battles of all sizes, as well as thirty private duels. As a warrior, he was far more aggressive than he was as a tactician, and seemed to enjoy putting himself in danger. Of course, it may be that his heterochromatic eyes made such an impression that those who saw his noble, even features were especially inclined to search for two sides to his personality. Whatever the case, in all of his public and private battles, von Reuentahl had never been seriously injured before. Even in brawls outside the contexts of war and dueling, the only person who had successfully landed a punch on his face was Wolfgang Mittermeier.
For von Reuentahl, his injury at Rantemario may have seemed the vesper bell of his life. And, at the realization that Grillparzer, of all people, had struck at him from behind, he perhaps felt more scorn for himself than loathing for the youthful turncoat.
The Mittermeier fleet were not aware that von Reuentahl had been wounded, but they had seen the damage to his flagship Tristan. The withdrawal that followed settled the matter completely.
Grillparzer was not the only one to surrender. Many ships’ crews, wounded or tired of fighting, shut down their engines and abandoned all resistance. Had their enemy been the Coalition of Lords or the Free Planets Alliance, they might have fought more doggedly, but not against former brothers-in-arms who rallied around the Goldenlöwe too.
“We are not abandoning von Reuentahl. We only seek to return to the kaiser and the correct way for imperial soldiers…”
In response to this claim from one surrendered officer, Senior Admiral Wittenfeld snorted and replied, “Sophistry, all sophistry. You fear for your lives, and nothing more.”
The soldiers of lower rank spoke more candidly, feeling less need to justify themselves. One teenage soldier, wounded and picked up by a hospital ship, responded to questioning as follows:
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