“However, I do have a condition.” Here Reinhard’s smile disappeared. “Come and work for me at Imperial Military Command Headquarters.”
Von Streit didn’t answer at first.
“I hold your good judgment and clever schemes in high regard. I’ve let you roam wild for nearly a year now, but a new year has come. Don’t you think it’s about time to put an end to this loyalty toward your old lord you so cling to?”
Von Streit, who had been listening with his head hung low, at last looked up. His brow shone with determination.
“I’ve no words for Your Excellency’s generosity. In return for such kindness toward a fool like myself, allow me to offer my full and wholehearted loyalty.”
Arthur von Streit was given the rank of rear admiral and made Reinhard’s top aide. One other, Sublieutenant Theodor von Rücke, was made a secondary aide and teamed with the newly minted Rear Admiral von Streit. Thus it was confirmed that no one man could fill Kircheis’s shoes alone. In von Rücke’s case, rank and age made no difference; he was essentially von Streit’s aide.
It was no secret that von Streit had once been an enemy of Reinhard’s, so Reinhard’s decision to put him in such an important position surprised a lot of people.
“Well, that’s a bold thing he’s gone and done.” Mittermeier, second to none when it came to boldness himself, couldn’t help feeling deeply impressed.
The viewpoint that “Chief of Staff von Oberstein isn’t going to like this …;” was also prevalent, but in this case that prediction missed the mark, as von Oberstein was fully accepting of his senior officer’s daring appointment. He was aware of von Streit’s capabilities and was also considering the political value of von Streit bending his knee to Reinhard, despite having been a loyal vassal of Duke von Braunschweig. That said, should he acquire too much power in the future, von Oberstein would be sure to start whittling away at it …;
Von Oberstein was not a family man. At his official residence, he had an attendant, and at his private residence, he had a butler and a maid—they were a married couple—in early middle age. There was, however, one other member of his household who saw to his personal needs.
This was not a person but a dog—a dalmatian that anyone could tell at a glance was very old. In the spring of the previous year, when the Lippstadt War had not yet escalated to the stage of all-out combat, von Oberstein had gone out for lunch one day and had been on his way back to Reinhard’s admiralität. He had climbed up the steps to the building and been about to step into the atrium when an odd look had appeared on the guard’s face as he was presenting arms. When von Oberstein turned to look back, he saw that a skinny, dirty old dog had been following right at his heel, amiably wagging its lean tail.
The chief of staff, well-known for his cool and ruthless nature, had spoken in an unamused tone. “What’s this dog doing here?”
The guard’s face had stiffened—a look of panic appearing on his face as inorganic, artificial eyes turned on him, flashing with their ominous light.
“Ah, er—isn’t it Your Excellency’s dog …;?”
“Hmph, does it look like a dog I would own?”
“Y-you mean it isn’t?”
“Oh, so it does look like it’s mine?”
Looking oddly moved, von Oberstein had nodded his head. And from that day forward, the nameless old dog had become a dependent in the household of the chief of staff of the Galactic Imperial Space Armada.
The aged canine, although rescued from a life of aimless drifting, had virtually no praiseworthy qualities and would eat nothing but chicken meat that had been boiled until it was soft.
“We’ve got a senior admiral of the Galactic Imperial Navy—one who could silence a screaming child just by looking at him—running out to the butcher shop in the middle of the night to buy chicken for that mutt.” Neidhart Müller had revealed this tidbit at the admirals’ club one evening, after having spotted von Oberstein doing so while on the way home from work.
Mittermeier and von Reuentahl had both looked like they wanted to say something but had exercised silent restraint in the end.
“Huh. So our chief of staff is hated by people but loved by dogs, then? I guess dogs get along with one another.”
That insult had come courtesy of Fritz Josef Wittenfeld, commander of the Schwarz Lanzenreiter fleet.
Wittenfeld was highly regarded for his ferocity in battle, and it was said of him that “if the fight were limited to two hours, even Mittermeier and von Reuentahl might have to retreat from him.”
However, this evaluation also testified to Wittenfeld’s short temper and lack of endurance. Wittenfeld was at his best when it came to single-blow assaults and all-out attacks, but if his opponent endured that first strike, he wasn’t able to maintain the same intensity. Not that there were many enemies who could withstand his first strike. …;
“Wittenfeld is strong, certainly,” von Reuentahl had once said to Mittermeier, brimming with confidence. “If the two of us ever tangled on the battlefield, he’d definitely have the advantage when the fighting started. When the fighting ended, though, the one left standing would be me.”
Naturally, they had been alone when he said that. The number of enemies the heterochromiac admiral did not believe he could beat could be counted on one hand.
Reinhard’s reforms acknowledged no sacred cows. Waste and luxury had bloomed in wild profusion at the imperial court, but not even those blossoms lay outside his reach.
While the emperor’s palace of Neue Sans Souci had managed to escape outright demolition, its vast gardens had been closed and half its stately buildings shuttered, with a great many chamberlains and ladies-in-waiting let go in the process.
Most of those who remained were elderly. Duke von Lohengramm hated the palace because of its splendor—or so it was rumored; Reinhard had his own ideas about that. The elderly chamberlains and ladies-in-waiting had spent decades at the palace by this point, and it was too late for most of them to adjust to life in the outside world. As for the young ones, they had strong backs and adaptability, and there was also demand for them in the labor market. They would be able to find other jobs to support themselves.
Reinhard concealed this sort of kindness—or lenience—behind a mask of ruthless ambition. The late Siegfried Kircheis had been the only one who could have understood without ever a word spoken. Had Reinhard been the sort to stubbornly refuse those who did speak up and ask him his reasons, his actions could have only been interpreted as malice toward the emperor. After all, the malice he felt toward the emperor was a very real thing …;
When would this young, powerful vassal do away with the young emperor and set upon his own brow that most venerable of crowns? Not only the empire, but all the universe seemed to be watching with bated breath to see.
Throughout the five centuries that had passed since Rudolf von Goldenbaum abolished republican government and founded the Galactic Empire in SE 310, “emperor” had been another word for the von Goldenbaum family head. When one family—one bloodline—makes a nation its property and monopolizes its highest seats of power for five hundred years, it comes to be thought of as the orthodox system, acquiring an air of holiness and inviolability.
But where was it written that usurpation was any worse than hereditary succession? Wasn’t that just a self-justifying theory that rulers used to protect the power they already had? If usurpation and armed rebellion were the only way to break up a monopoly on power, then it should hardly be surprising if those who were passionate for change took the only road available.
One day, when von Oberstein had come to see Reinhard, he asked him in a roundabout way what sort of treatment he had in mind for the young emperor.
“I won’t kill him.”
In the crystal glass Reinhard was holding, barely visible undulations ran through a fragrant liquid the color of blood. Its reflection gleamed ee
rily in Reinhard’s ice-blue eyes.
“Keep him alive. He has value I can exploit. Wouldn’t you agree, von Oberstein?”
“Most certainly. For now.”
“Yes, for now …;”
Reinhard tilted his glass. As the liquid poured down his throat, a warm sensation spread out through his body. It burned hot within his breast but came nowhere close to filling the empty space therein.
The central command room at Iserlohn Fortress was a vast affair, with a ceiling sixteen meters high and walls roughly eighty meters long on each side. When entering from the hallway, one came first to a guards’ anteroom. Then, after passing a second door farther in, screens came into view, spreading out over a portion of the forward wall. The main screen was eight and a half meters tall and fifteen meters wide. To its right were twelve subscreens, and to its left an array of sixteen tactical intelligence monitors. In front of the main screen were twenty-four operator boxes arranged in three rows, and a three-dimensional display on the floor behind them. Even farther back was the commander’s seat and desk, where Yang Wen-li could usually be found sipping tea while wearing a bored-looking expression. Using a special hotline on his desk, it was possible to speak directly with Joint Operational Headquarters on Heinessen or with the patrol fleet while it was out on maneuvers. To the left, right, and rear of the commander’s seat were another twenty seats, which belonged to the fortress’s top executive staff. Most of the time, the seat next to Yang on his left was occupied by his aide, Lieutenant Frederica Greenhill, with Rear Admiral Murai, his chief of staff, taking the seat on his right. Rear Admiral von Schönkopf, the commander of fortress defenses, sat behind him. There were also seats for Guest Admiral Merkatz, Patrol Fleet Vice Commander Fischer, and Fortress Administrative Director Caselnes, though Caselnes spent a lot of his time in the offices of Administrative Management Headquarters, and Fischer was often away in the spaceport’s traffic control room.
All announcements, instructions, orders, and official conversations in the room were transmitted by headset. Two monitor cameras set in the walls fed video to two different monitor control rooms. In the unlikely event of the central control room being overrun by the enemy, either of these rooms could become a new command center.
In later years, when Julian Mintz would think back on his days at Iserlohn, the first thing that would come to his mind was Yang Wen-li sitting in the commander’s seat. Ill-mannered Yang, with his feet propped up on his desk, or perhaps sitting on top of it cross-legged, a perennial object of criticism from that cross section of the military that believed real soldiers had to exemplify the stately beauty of solemn formality. Yang had never been a cookie-cutter soldier, though, and solemn formality had been something there was no point in expecting from him …;
Julian, as yet without a seat of his own in this room, would sit facing the screen on the inclined, stair-step floor in those days, leaping to his feet and running over to Yang whenever he was called for. It was only after he advanced to officer rank that he would secure a seat for himself in the command room.
A faint tinge of ozone lingered in his olfactory memory, along with the aroma of coffee rising from paper cups in the hands of crew. Yang was partial to red tea—a minority in the control room—and the fragrance of it had usually been drowned out by that of the coffee, a fact that Yang seemed to find rather irritating. It had been a trivial matter, of course; Yang had had all sorts of other large and small irritations to deal with. Included among these had been Julian’s first time to go out into battle.
When Julian met Yang for the first time after returning from his combat mission, Yang greeted him with an expression that was hard to put into words, and after a long moment of not saying anything, he said something spectacularly unsoldierlike:
“How many times have I gotta tell you, Julian, don’t do dangerous things like that.”
Both Julian and Lieutenant Frederica Greenhill, who was standing nearby, had trouble keeping straight faces.
Afterward, Julian headed back to officer country, where he put Yang’s domestic computer to work on peaceful everyday chores. He was just working up a menu for dinner when the visiphone sounded and Frederica appeared on the screen.
“Fighting the battle on the home front now, Julian?”
“My CO can’t exactly be trusted with this kind of mission. How may I help you?”
The boy’s attitude was perhaps a little on the formal side. If anyone had suggested he was at the age when young boys often idolize older women, though, he would have vehemently denied it.
“Yes, Julian, I have an important message to relay. As of tomorrow, you’re going to be a chief petty officer. Report to the commander’s office at noon sharp tomorrow to receive your letter of appointment. Got that?”
“I’m being promoted? Me?”
“Of course. You did a great job out there. Very impressive for your first time out.”
“Thank you very much. But what does Admiral Yang think about it?”
A slight look of surprise appeared in Frederica’s hazel eyes. “Why, he’s happy for you, of course. Though he’d never admit it …;”
It was probably the only way she could have answered him. After the call ended, Julian sank into thought for a while.
Yang had never wanted to turn Julian into a soldier. Julian himself, however, wanted to be a soldier. As for Yang, he didn’t feel he should force his own wishes on the boy, but at the same time he wanted to keep him close by. This was one matter in which the words and the deeds of the most brilliant admiral of the alliance had been highly inconsistent.
In any case, Yang’s own vocational choice had been an extreme case of life not following its intended script. After looking around for a school where he could study history for free, he had entered the Department of Military History at Officers’ Academy—only to have his department abolished along the way, to be transferred against his will to the Department of Military Strategy, and then to enter the military without so much as a spark of enthusiasm.
In contrast, Julian was really taking the initiative in his martial ambitions, and being true both to his chosen profession and to himself. This shouldn’t have been any of Yang’s business. It shouldn’t have been, but Julian really did want Yang’s blessing on the course he had chosen.
Julian’s father had been a soldier, but if Julian had not been raised by Yang after his death, it was far from certain that he would have set his sights on the military. For good or ill, Yang’s personality had exerted a powerful influence on Julian, and if Yang were to criticize the boy’s career choice now, he would only end up scowling at himself in the mirror.
Remembering that look on Yang’s face, Julian smiled to himself. He had no doubt that he would understand eventually.
That year, Yang Wen-li turned thirty-one. “Not because I want to!” he had fervently insisted.
“You’re still young,” Julian had said consolingly.
In fact, Yang really did look young enough to pass for someone in his mid-twenties, though to hear Alex Caselnes—his upperclassman from Officers’ Academy—tell it, he only looked young because he wasn’t doing the hard work of raising a family.
“Well, with a husband like you,” Yang shot back, “I’d say it’s Mrs. Caselnes who’s doing all the heavy lifting. The patience that saintly woman must have. With a tyrant like you for a husband, a normal lady wouldn’t last a year under the same roof!”
Julian had chuckled when he heard that. If he hadn’t known what a warm family atmosphere there was at the Caselneses’ house, or that Yang and Caselnes were friends who enjoyed insulting each other for fun, Yang’s words couldn’t have sounded like anything other than a stinging indictment of Caselnes’s character.
As a soldier, Yang was an awful marksman, average in terms of physical strength and reflexes, and completely useless on the battlefield. In Caselnes’s pitiless estimation, he had “nothing v
ital below the neck.” Not that Caselnes had much room to talk. Master of desk work and outstanding military bureaucrat he may have been, but he was hardly first-rate material as a combatant himself.
Caselnes’s duty was to manage and run both the hardware and software sides of the gigantic battle station that was Iserlohn Fortress. Facilities, equipment, communication, manufacturing, distribution—all of the many functions indispensable for the smooth, organic operation of the fortress were kept running thanks to his skills.
“When Caselnes sneezes, all of Iserlohn breaks out in a fever,” soldiers sometimes said, and there was a kernel of truth in that joke. In fact, when Caselnes had been down for a week with acute gastritis, Iserlohn’s administrative offices had become unable to do anything more than their usual work, and found themselves surrounded by a chorus of angry soldiers:
“Do you even have a clue what you’re doing? That’s way too inefficient! Can’t you do something about all this red tape?”
Yang was good with letters but bad with numbers, so just like his aide Frederica, Caselnes was immensely valuable to have around.
Yang delegated his more prosaic work entirely to them; he only came alive when concocting battle plans for fighting massive war fleets and when putting them into action on the battlefield. Contrary to Yang’s own wishes, his talents seemed geared for times of upheaval and emergency. Had it been peacetime, he would have died a nobody—at most, a second-rate historian known to only a handful of people. What had made him one of the most important people in a vast interstellar nation was the simple fact that the times had made his talents necessary.
Among the varied talents of the human race, military genius fell into an extremely specialized category. In certain periods and circumstances, it became utterly useless to society as a whole. In times of peace, some people probably lived out their whole lives without ever having a chance to put their immense skills to use. Unlike scholars or artists, they left no lost works buried amid their effects to be posthumously discovered and appreciated. Not even their potential would ever be acknowledged. Only results mattered. And young though he may have been, Yang had already accumulated more than enough of those results.
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