“But how can we stand by and watch as something we fought to win for ourselves falls back into enemy hands?”
Deputy chief of staff Commodore Patrichev looked around the table, leaning his hulking body forward.
“How much more regretful for the Imperial Navy, who at great pains expended so much in the way of resources and labor to make the fortress, only to have it snatched away in the first place,” answered Yang nonchalantly.
Three years ago, he’d dispossessed the Imperial Navy of Iserlohn, much to the continued chagrin of the commanders under Reinhard von Lohengramm’s dictatorship. Yang Wen-li was in no position to criticize from the standpoint of a philanthropist. The reason Rear Admiral Walter von Schönkopf laughed so cynically was because at that time he had fulfilled an important role in Yang’s military operations, having been the one who thrust his blaster muzzle at the Imperial Navy’s fortress commander, Admiral von Stockhausen.
“But, Commander, even if we do abandon Iserlohn, I doubt the Imperial Navy will look on passively. How are we to stave off an attack?”
“Perhaps we should try making an earnest request to Admiral von Reuentahl of the Imperial Navy? Since we’re giving up the fortress, we might ask him to turn a blind eye to the women and children.”
No one laughed at this ill-conceived joke. Then again, even a good one might not have been enough to pierce their shells of tension and impending doom. Even as they spoke, a large fleet of Imperial Navy ships was unfolding before their very fortress under Admiral von Reuentahl’s exquisite tactical command, setting their nerves on edge. The blade of von Schönkopf’s ambush had swung close to von Reuentahl, but the honorable heterochromatic admiral wasn’t about to let that happen a second time. In spite of von Reuentahl’s renowned hand-to-hand combat skills and heroism, von Schönkopf kept beating himself up over letting the big fish get away.
Rear Admiral Murai held his ground.
“Still, one cannot deny the psychological ramifications. If Admiral Yang is chased off Iserlohn Fortress by the Imperial Navy, the citizens of the alliance will be greatly disturbed. Tormented by a sense of defeat, they’ll lose their morale before we’ve even fought. Which means a rematch will be out of the question. I would advise you to consider that possibility.”
Yang recognized some truth in Murai’s remarks but in all honesty didn’t see the public’s reaction as his responsibility. Fighting against the enormous Imperial Navy using only the single fleet with which he’d been entrusted would require him to use up every ounce of his tactical reserve if he was going to prevail.
Von Schönkopf was the first to chime in.
“I agree with the chief of staff’s opinion. We’d do better to let those big shots go red in the face demanding we leave Iserlohn before we bend over backward for them. Only then will those ingrates realize just how much Your Excellency’s existence means to them.”
“By then, it would be too late. We’d lose our chance at victory.”
“Wait a minute. By ‘chance at victory,’ do you mean to suggest we could still win?!”
Outside of Iserlohn Fortress, such a remark would have been inappropriate. But Yang was open-minded when it came to his subordinates’ viewpoints, and he was sometimes criticized by superiors of his generation and later historians alike for being too forbearing in that respect.
“I know what you want to say, Rear Admiral von Schönkopf. Militarily speaking, we are in an exceedingly disadvantageous position, and our training tells us that a tactical victory cannot trump a strategic one. But here we have one chance, and one chance only, to turn the tables in our favor.”
“And that is … ?”
Even the discerning von Schönkopf had difficulty grasping his answer. Miracle Yang smiled coolly.
“Lohengramm is unmarried. That’s his weak point.”
II
The meeting adjourned, Yang called for his aide.
“Lieutenant Greenhill, take whatever measures are necessary for a full civilian evacuation. We’d better just follow the manual procedure for this type of situation … assuming there is one.”
“Right, I’ll wait for Your Excellency’s command, then,” answered Frederica Greenhill in a voice that was clear and filled with conviction. “Does this mean you have some grand scheme already in mind, Your Excellency?”
“Yeah, well, I do need to live up to expectations as much as I can, right?”
Yang wasn’t one to brag. He held extreme contempt for delusions of “certain victory” and “huge military gains.” Such ideals had never helped Yang win a single battle.
Frederica had her own reasons for trusting her superior. When she was fourteen, still living with her mother on the planet of El Facil, she had experienced the Imperial Navy’s terrifying power firsthand. Still a girl at the time, Frederica had handled it better than her mother, who was prone to hysterics. And the person responsible for getting the people safely off the planet was none other than Yang Wen-li, who had recently been promoted to sublieutenant. Frederica made sandwiches and brought coffee for the twenty-one-year-old sublieutenant, who’d just reluctantly cut his hair. Timidly, she probed him about the possibility of a strategic success, but the sublieutenant had his head in the clouds and responded with noncommittal phrases like “Well …” or “Somehow …” that only increased the people’s uneasiness and distrust.
“I’m doing the best I can. Anyone doing less than that is in no position to find fault with me.”
Frederica, who always defended him, had been Yang’s only ally. But after he had succeeded in formulating a miraculous escape strategy and had become revered as a hero, such was not the case.
“We’ve believed in his genius since the time he was anonymous,” chorused the masses.
At this, Frederica cast a sidelong glance before returning to the capital, where she reunited with her father, Dwight, nursing her mother while endeavoring for the Officers’ Academy entrance exam. Her father had long thought of his daughter’s military ambitions as the consummation of his influence.
While the Frederica of the past had helped Yang, it had only been with the little things. Now her abilities and position were considerably strengthened, and without her Yang’s inability to deal with paperwork would’ve drained him completely. The amplification of her own value was, to Frederica, no small joy—but an exceedingly private one about which Yang’s aide, who embodied beauty and brains in equal measure, kept silent.
Walter von Schönkopf came back. It seemed that the commander of fortress defenses, known for his boldness and sharp tongue, hadn’t yet finished speaking his piece. Stroking his tapered jaw, von Schönkopf faced Yang without shame.
“I was just thinking, you see. What will those bigwigs do once they know they’re no longer safe on Heinessen? And then it hit me: won’t they just abandon their citizens and escape from Heinessen with their loved ones to the impregnable Iserlohn?”
Yang said nothing. Because he couldn’t or because he didn’t want to, he couldn’t say for sure. Yang was upset over high officials abusing their political power in the Free Planets Alliance. Not because they disavowed the alliance’s political system, but because they looked down on the spirit of democracy itself. Either way, he was in no position to voice such opinions.
“Those who have an obligation to protect their people yet instead protect only themselves should be punished accordingly. It might be good to round them up where they’ve fled and turn them over to von Lohengramm in one neat package. Or maybe we could just execute them for treason. That would put you at the summit. A republic of Iserlohn isn’t such a bad idea.”
Although it was difficult to tell just how serious von Schönkopf was being, he clearly had his heart set on Yang’s authority. If Yang agreed, he’d likely command his own Rosen Ritter regiment and set out to arrest those high officials himself. Yang gave his reply but avoided a direct answer.
“If you ask me, political power is like a sewer system. Without one, society can’t function. But the stench from it clings to everything it touches. No one wants to get near it.”
“There are those who can’t approach it no matter how much they want to,” parried von Schönkopf, “and those who are the rare opposite. It’s odd for me to be pointing this out now, but you didn’t become a military man because you liked it.”
“I don’t think it logically follows that all dictators start out as military men,” said Yang. “But if it does, then I’d like to wash my hands of this worthless business sooner rather than later.”
“If the people are the ones who support the dictator, then it’s also up to them to resist and demand their emancipation. It’s been thirty years since I was exiled to this country, but there’s one question I still can’t answer: How does one reconcile the paradox of a majority that desires dictatorship over democracy?”
Von Schönkopf noticed an unusual dexterity in the young commander as Yang involuntarily shrugged his shoulders, shaking his head at the same time.
“I doubt anyone could answer that question.” Yang paused, deep in thought. “It’s been a million years since humans discovered fire, and not even two millennia since modern democracy was established. I think it’s too soon to tell.”
Everyone knew Yang aspired to be a historian, but such reasoning was more befitting of an anthropologist, thought von Schönkopf.
“More importantly,” said Yang by way of changing the subject, “we have some urgent business ahead of us, so let’s attend to that first. Here we are arguing over tomorrow’s breakfast when we haven’t even prepared tonight’s dinner.”
“Granted, but you’re being too generous by giving the ingredients back to those who provided them.”
“We just borrowed them as we needed them. And now that we don’t, we’re simply giving them back.”
“And what happens when we need them again?”
“We borrow them once more. Until then, we’ll let the empire look after them. I only wish we could collect interest.”
“You can’t borrow a fortress—or another man’s wife, for that matter—so easily.”
Von Schönkopf’s suggestive metaphor prompted a wry smile from the young, black-haired commander.
“If you ask to borrow it, naturally you’ll get turned down.”
“What you’re saying is that we can only trap them.”
“Our opponent is von Reuentahl. One of the Twin Ramparts of the Galactic Empire. He’s not one to be trapped.”
Despite Yang’s attempts at derision, from where von Schönkopf stood, his commander’s expression, more than that of a resourceful general working out a grand strategy, was of a student playing a practical joke on an infamous teacher.
III
The Galactic Imperial Navy’s senior admiral and commander of its Iserlohn-bound fleet, Oskar von Reuentahl, welcomed the new year on the bridge of his flagship Tristan. On the main screen, the silver orb of Iserlohn Fortress, separated by eight hundred thousand kilometers of empty space, hung like a disembodied eyeball.
Von Reuentahl was a handsome man with dark-brown hair, but nothing gave so deep an impression as his differently colored eyes. The heterochromia that left his right eye black and his left eye blue had no small influence over his life. The fact that his mother had tried to scoop out one of his eyes before killing herself, that his father had drowned himself in alcohol to the brink of self-sufficiency—these were all deformed chicks hatched from the intangible eggs laid by his condition.
His father, since confined to the second level of their spacious mansion, who’d abandoned the diligence and honesty of his bachelorhood to share a perpetual bed with Bacchus, would sometimes stamp his way down to the first floor. Standing in front of his son, now free from the control of his steward and wet nurse, the elder von Reuentahl would glare with his bloodshot eyes and say things like “No one ever wanted you” and “I wish you had never been born.”
The latter had become the refrain of Oskar von Reuentahl’s discontent. Over time, he’d come to believe that indeed he shouldn’t have been born. But at some point—when, he couldn’t say—he’d gone from a death wish to making the best of things.
At present, he had two fleet commanders awaiting his orders: admirals Kornelias Lutz and Helmut Lennenkamp. By way of contrast to Lutz, Lennenkamp had caught von Reuentahl’s attention for his uncooperative attitude toward a younger supreme commander and continued to press for an all-out attack against Iserlohn in the strongest terms possible.
Von Reuentahl didn’t think of Lennenkamp as incompetent. Reinhard von Lohengramm would never have permitted incompetence among his ranks. Lennenkamp had sufficient tactical and command abilities. His purview was mostly limited to the battlespace at hand. He placed the highest value on tactical victories and couldn’t see the forest for the trees when it came to war’s grander purposes.
Von Reuentahl pegged him as a “one-track fighter.”
Indeed, von Reuentahl didn’t even put so high a valuation on himself. Winning or losing, superiority or inferiority—these were all relative and subjective.
“An all-out attack would be futile,” said von Reuentahl to Lennenkamp in the hope of persuading him. “And if it could be taken by force, Iserlohn Fortress would’ve changed hands five or six times by now. The only one to have accomplished this is that impostor who oversees Iserlohn as we speak.”
For this reason alone, von Reuentahl held the black-haired enemy general in high esteem.
Lennenkamp, too, had a foundation for his assertion. Reports of Mittermeier and the others on Phezzan were already reaching them. As things stood, a fruitless standoff against Yang Wen-li in the Iserlohn Corridor would only serve Phezzan and its allies. At least they wouldn’t have the honor of recapturing Iserlohn Fortress. With the overwhelming military power of three fleets at their disposal, shouldn’t they strategize more violent attacks to crush the enemy—mind, body, and soul?
“An interesting opinion, but the more intensely one refuses, the quicker one exhausts oneself.”
Sensing malice in von Reuentahl’s tone, Lennenkamp glared at his supreme commander with a wounded expression.
“I cannot abide by your position, Admiral. If Yang Wen-li abandons the fortress, he’ll be accused of acting for the enemy’s benefit. And in any case, a real military man defends his post to the last.”
“What would be the point of that? The Imperial Navy is already attempting to invade alliance territory from the Phezzan Corridor. Back when the Iserlohn Corridor was the only target of military action, the fortress’s existence had meaning. But times have changed. Clinging to the fortress for the sheer sake of it does nothing whatsoever to move the war along.”
Not only that, but if they couldn’t get the fleet stationed on the fortress mobilized, the Alliance Armed Forces would have nothing to show for itself militarily. As it was, chances of an alliance success were negligible at best, and the possibility of this reserve force, which had yet to see combat, inflicting a fatal blow was nonexistent. Their only logical recourse was to withdraw from Iserlohn.
“Yang knows this,” said von Reuentahl. “There’s a slight gap in the angle of the foul line between Yang Wen-li’s good sense and yours.”
Lennenkamp countered with an obvious question: “And if the alliance is destroyed and Iserlohn remains impregnable, won’t Yang’s reputation remain untarnished?”
“Yes, Yang might think that way were he you.”
Unable to hide his scorn, it took von Reuentahl all his strength to keep calm. The “one-track fighter” was incorrigible, unable as he was to imagine the grander significance of the battle ahead.
On a strategic level, Reinhard had rendered powerless the tactically impregnable Iserlohn Fortress via his passage through the Phezzan Corridor, which meant that Reinhard was no simple military man.
But Lennenkamp, for whom victory was solely a tactical outcome, couldn’t quite grasp the revolutionary change of circumstance.
Von Reuentahl nodded cynically to himself. I see, so this is why that blond brat can take over the universe. The battlespaces were filled with brave men, but strategic masterminds orchestrating the wars taking place within those battlespaces were few and far between.
“Admiral Lennenkamp, if it were possible, I would also like to launch a mass offensive against the fortress, but our supreme commander says it’s a no-go. We can only follow orders.”
Kornelias Lutz had to step in to intervene. Von Reuentahl wiped the expression from his mismatched eyes and bowed slightly to both admirals.
“It seems I’ve crossed the line. Forgive my impudence. But sooner or later the ripe fruit will fall. Right now, I don’t think we need to overextend ourselves.”
“Then we just stop attacking Iserlohn and surround them?”
“No, Admiral Lutz. That won’t work, either. It would buy the enemy precious time. If they’re planning something, that doesn’t mean we allow them undivided attention to their preparations.”
“You mean we subject the enemy to harassing fire?”
“That’s putting it too bluntly. Let’s just say we’re laying every possible gambit.”
As for von Reuentahl, who erred on the side of political forethought, he didn’t harbor the same fighting spirit that animated a man like Lutz. He was only fit to be commander of one fleet, as the subordinates under his command were aware.
The full-scale attack instigated by von Reuentahl disturbed Yang Wen-li to the core.
Even as he was dealing with von Reuentahl’s fierce offensive, Yang had to prepare for evacuation. He’d entrusted Caselnes with the practicalities involved, but for the sake of allaying the outrage and discontent of civilians being snatched from their homes, direct persuasion was necessary. A public appearance, he thought, might be enough to assuage their fears.
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