Sunset

by Yoshiki Tanaka

  Disruptions and discontinuities were affecting the Imperial Navy’s coordination to a degree that was far beyond subtle, and this granted Iserlohn’s fleet breathing room that they should never have had.

  Müller’s disgruntled staff officers sat down to yet another “lunch,” while over in the Iserlohn camp, a ball of confidence with green eyes that flashed like dancing sunlight was docking his single-seater spartanian in the fleet flagship Ulysses. He leapt out of the cockpit, gave some hurried instructions to the mechanics running up to service the craft, then grabbed a comm handset off the wall and called the bridge.

  “Julian? I’ve got news I think you should hear.”

  “What is it, Commander Poplin?”

  “I picked up a strange transmission out there. I was hoping to report it and get a decision on what to do.”

  “Well, if you’re willing to share it,” Julian joked, but moments later his youthful expression had grown sharply tense. Muddled communication between enemies and allies had provided Poplin with a piece of intel: the single, shocking phrase, “Kaiser’s illness.”

  Had the kaiser succumbed to some infirmity? Would Reinhard von Lohengramm’s dazzling drive and vitality, his extravagant battlefield achievements unparalleled in the history of war, be lost to mere sickness? Julian could not believe it. Nor did he want to. He felt something akin to the sweeping, furious sense of unfairness that had gripped him when Yang Wen-li was slain by terrorists. Reinhard, he thought, was not the kind of person who should be felled by malady.

  But he must not rush to conclusions. Even if Reinhard had taken to his sickbed, it was not necessarily terminal. It might be nothing more than a cold. Yang Wen-li had always said, “If I die, it’ll be of overwork. Chisel it on my tombstone, Julian: ‘Here lies an unfortunate worker killed by his job.’ ” Then he would wander off for a nap. Kaiser Reinhard had a dozen times the diligence of Yang, and his medical dictionary probably lacked even an entry for “playing sick.”

  Julian called his staff officers to the bridge. Merkatz and Attenborough had already come to Ulysses by shuttle, a situation brought about by disrupted communications and the peculiar quagmire that the battle lines had become.

  When Poplin shared his news, a silence fell on the assembled group. This was broken by Walter von Schönkopf, who made an audacious proposal: that Iserlohn send soldiers to the imperial flagship Brünhild and slay the kaiser.

  “It was a great pity that we let Marshal von Reuentahl escape with his life during the Battle of Iserlohn three years ago. If we could take the head of Kaiser Reinhard himself, that would put us well into the black again.”

  Von Schönkopf’s tone gave the impression of a man discussing apple picking on a farm.

  If the kaiser was confined to his sickbed, it should be more than possible to confuse the Imperial Navy. If, during that confusion, they could get close enough to Brünhild, the imperials would be loath to attack them for fear of harming Reinhard. It would be more a gamble than a stratagem, but if they let this opportunity pass, they might never have another.

  Julian’s heart contracted as he wavered. Finally he turned to a man more than forty years his senior. “Admiral Merkatz, what do you think?” he asked.

  The admiral once hailed as a pillar of the Imperial Navy gave the matter earnest thought. Finally, in a calm, analytical voice, he offered his conclusion.

  “If we simply keep fighting as we have been, we can most likely avoid losing this battle. The Imperial Navy’s movements are unusually sluggish. When we fall back, they do not seem to pursue us. However, if we survive this battle and return to Iserlohn, our forces will be more diminished than ever, so that our next battle will be far grimmer.”

  Merkatz closed his mouth, having no more to say. Von Schönkopf nodded vigorously and clapped his hands together. “It’s decided, then,” he said. “We board the beautiful Brünhild and claim the kaiser’s head.”

  “Die, kaiser!” chorused several of the young staff officers.

  “Then I’m going too,” said Julian.

  Von Schönkopf raised his eyebrows. “Just a moment. We’re talking about manual labor. The commander in chief of the whole fleet shouldn’t muscle in on a chance for us workers to earn some overtime. Take a leaf out of Yang’s book—pull your beret down and take a nap in the commander’s chair while we handle it.”

  Julian ignored the joke. “Either I go too, or I refuse permission for the whole operation. And my goal is to negotiate with Kaiser Reinhard, not murder him. Don’t get that wrong.”

  Von Schönkopf thought silently for a few seconds, still grinning wryly. Then he gave in to his young commander’s insistence.

  “Okay, Julian. Whoever gets to the kaiser first can do what they like with him—start a polite conversation, or bring a tomahawk down on his head and turn that golden mane into one big ruby.”

  “Another thing,” Julian said. “I have every intention of coming back alive, but the Imperial Navy may have their own ideas about that. If they end up swallowing me…” His eyes met those of a young revolutionary. “…I designate Vice Admiral Attenborough as the next commander of the Revolutionary Army. Of course, this means you’ll have to remain behind on Ulysses, Admiral. Take good care of her.”

  The startled Attenborough protested, but he himself had granted Julian the power to give such orders. In the end, he had no choice but to accept them.

  The prospect of hand-to-hand combat had the Rosen Ritter regiment like a volcano on the verge of eruption. Julian, Poplin, Machungo, and several others joined them in the preparation room. As they were all putting their armor on, one of the regiment members raised his voice.

  “This is the biggest stage we’ll ever play on, admiral. Let’s leave a mountain of corpses and a river of blood they’ll speak of for generations.”

  Von Schönkopf grinned, smoothing down his hair with one hand. This grin, like crystallized invincibility, was the most reassuring thing he could offer his regiment.

  “No, one corpse will be enough,” he said. “As long as it’s Reinhard von Lohengramm’s. That’d make it the most beautiful and valuable corpse in the galaxy, of course…”

  Von Schönkopf’s gaze shifted to a lone girl, about seventeen, in a pilot suit with her flight helmet under her arm. With hair the color of lightly brewed tea and lively eyes of violet, she truly made a striking impression. Ignoring several overlapping whistles of admiration and curiosity, Katerose von Kreutzer marched up to the flaxen-haired youth she was here to see and stared right into his dark brown eyes.

  “Be careful, Julian. You’re always the reasonable one, but you can trip yourself up sometimes. That’s why everyone watches out for you.”

  “Even so, you aren’t trying to stop me.”

  “Of course not. What kind of man would let a woman stop him from doing something like this? How could he protect his family if worse came to worst?”

  Karin pressed her lips together tightly, visibly irritated that her powers of expression were insufficient to the moment.

  “Stay close to Walter von Schönkopf. My mother said that as long as he has his feet on the ground—or the floor—there’s no man you can count on more.”

  Karin’s eyes met von Schönkopf’s. The thirteenth head of the Rosen Ritter regiment looked at the girl who had inherited his genes with interest, then smiled.

  “Can’t say no when a beautiful woman’s doing the asking, eh?” he said to Julian, slapping him on the shoulder. Then he smiled at his daughter again. “Karin, I have a request for you too, if you don’t mind.”

  He spoke the name she preferred to go by casually, but it was the first time he had ever used it. Unable to muster even a thousandth of her father’s composure, Karin’s face and voice stiffened and her whole body went tense. “And what might that be?” she asked.

  “By all means, have your grand romance,” he said. “But wait until you
’re twenty to have kids. I’ve got no interest in becoming a grandfather while I’m still in my thirties.”

  The armored men surrounding them roared with laughter as Julian and Karin blushed together.

  I

  THAT DAY, JUNE 1, SE 801, year 3 of the New Imperial Calendar, marked precisely one year since Yang Wen-li’s assassination. In the sense that every day of the year is the anniversary of someone’s death, this was nothing more than coincidence, but it surely had a deep emotional effect on the leaders of both forces currently battling in the Shiva Stellar Region.

  Not long after midnight, Senior Admiral Mecklinger, in his capacity as chief advisor to Imperial Headquarters, had Marshal Mittermeier and Senior Admiral Müller brought to the fleet flagship Brünhild. Just as the Iserlohn forces had found, the unusual quagmire of this battle made it possible for key commanders to confer in this way, though even so, Wittenfeld and von Eisenach could not abandon the left and right wings. Müller, however, was in command of the rear and had not yet joined the battle proper, while Mittermeier was the only imperial marshal who served in actual combat.

  “Variable Fulminant Collagen Disease.” It was the first time the name of the kaiser’s illness had been revealed to the imperial military leadership. Its ominous ring left Mittermeier, Müller, and Mecklinger speechless, exchanging glances with each other. Each man saw what he himself felt reflected in his colleagues’ faces: an unease that was all too close to terror.

  “What does ‘variable’ mean, specifically? Let’s start with that.”

  Mittermeier lowered his voice without realizing it as he spoke to the physician. He knew that an explanation would make no difference to anything, but he wanted at least to understand what Reinhard’s condition was and how it might be treated. His voice shook with emotion at the thought of the kaiser laid low by illness just as he entered his time of greatest flourishing, a new wife and son by his side.

  The physician’s response was the polar opposite of clarity. After questioning him exhaustively, the admirals established that Reinhard was suffering from a disease of the connective tissue, a rare one that had not been seen before; that repeated bouts of fever were gradually wearing him down; that even the name of the condition was tentative; and, of course, that no regimen of treatment had yet been established. In short, the exchange did not relieve one milligram of their unease.

  “Surely you do not mean to say that the malady is untreatable.”

  Combined with the gleam in Mittermeier’s and Müller’s eyes, Mecklinger’s quiet voice was so threatening that the medic’s cardiopulmonary functions faltered.

  “I-I do not know. Without further research—”

  “Research?!” Müller shouted. For all his famed geniality of character, even he could lose his temper. He took a step forward, his light brown eyes blazing. The physician cringed, falling two steps back.

  “Müller, no.” The Gale Wolf restrained the Iron Wall, taking him by one arm. By nature, Mittermeier was the more volatile one, but because his younger colleague had erupted first he was forced to be the voice of reason.

  Then, from behind the screen that shielded his sickbed from prying eyes, the voice of the kaiser was heard.

  “Do not blame the physicians. I was no model patient, and I am sure they found me frustrating to deal with.”

  The admirals stepped around the screen and saw Reinhard sitting up in bed wearing a medical gown that Emil von Salle had helped him slip over his shoulders. He turned his ice-blue gaze toward his trusted officers.

  “If doctors were all-powerful, no one would die of illness at all. I expected no more of them than this to begin with. Do not blame them.”

  His words were less caustic than simply cruel, but he was not conscious of this. His mind was on more important matters than the faults of physicians. The several seconds of silence that followed bore down on the nerves of those assembled in the room with half the weight of eternity.

  “How much longer will I live?”

  No question could have been graver. The physician was caught in the kaiser’s intense gaze, as well as the eyes of the admirals, who no longer even seemed to breathe. He hung his head, unable to answer.

  “You cannot even tell me that?”

  This time, there was clear malice in the kaiser’s voice, but he spared not another glance for the doctor, whose terror and awe had pushed down on his neck until he prostrated himself before the kaiser. For a moment, the kaiser had put the circumstances his fleet faced, along with the silent stares of his staff officers, outside his consciousness.

  Reinhard did not fear death, but the prospect of expiring in his sickbed rather than on the battlefield did come as a surprise to him, with an emotional resonance something like disappointment. Unlike Rudolf von Goldenbaum, Reinhard had never wished to live forever. He was still only twenty-five years old, barely a quarter of the way through a medically average life span, but he had already confronted death many times. The idea of rotting away, inert, repulsed him, but it had never been accompanied by realistic fear; there had always been too many barriers to that.

  He dismissed the useless physician, gave Mittermeier temporary authority over the fleet, and decided to sleep for a time. Maintaining his strained lines of thought had been enormously draining for him physically.

  Not five minutes later, a report arrived from the bridge.

  “The enemy has begun acting unusually. They seem to be preparing to flee in the direction of the Iserlohn Corridor. Requesting orders.”

  Mittermeier sighed with frustration and ran his hand through his honey-colored hair, fighting back the urge to yell Now is not the time!

  “If they want to go home, let them.”

  It would be an unexpected stroke of good fortune—we are busy with other things, he started to say, but then thought better of it. If the Imperial Navy did not show at least some sign of life, the Iserlohn camp might suspect something.

  “Wait,” he said. “Wittenfeld’s still hungry for more combat. Let him give chase. We wouldn’t want him to end the battle unsatisfied.”

  Mittermeier did not mean to single Wittenfeld out or show him disrespect. Everyone had their own responsibilities, and everyone had their appropriate stations. They could not let the enemy simply slip away, so there was nothing wrong with allowing the commander who never tired of battle to harass them.

  When Wittenfeld received these orders, he quickly roused his subordinates—who were also tiring of their enforced self-restraint—and set a course that would take them in a clockwise arc. The speed of his fleet’s advance and the skill with which he cut off the enemy’s retreat to Iserlohn Corridor were, as usual, extraordinary. If Julian had truly been planning to fall back to Iserlohn, the Black Lancers would have destroyed the fleet utterly.

  “The kaiser’s illness must be serious,” he said.

  The Imperial Navy’s reaction allowed Julian no other interpretation. The empire’s top battlefield commanders were men of exceptional ability, and yet their reaction had been entirely within the bounds of what Julian himself had expected. This would not have been the case unless the situation on the imperial side was abnormally grave.

  As his certainty grew, the melancholy shadow cast on his heart darkened. He had lost Yang Wen-li exactly a year ago; how dimmed the galaxy’s luster would be if this year saw Reinhard von Lohengramm disappear beyond the horizon of history!

  But perhaps that would be for the best. The season of turmoil would pass, and with it the need for the hero, the genius. Accommodation and cooperation and order would come to be prized above fierce individuality. “Better the wisdom of the crowd than that of the genius,” as Yang Wen-li had said. And there were Kaiser Reinhard’s words, too: “Peace means an age of such good fortune that even incompetence is no vice.”

  But before that age could arrive, Julian had to meet with Reinhard personally. If the kaiser’s illn
ess was severe, there were things they must discuss before his vital energy and reason burned out. They must build the kind of framework for coexistence and cultural awakening that had not been permitted during the Goldenbaum Dynasty, and ensure that peace and unity did not sour into isolation, self-righteousness, and stagnation—or, if such were inevitable, at least to combine their wisdom to delay it as long as possible. With Reinhard as negotiating partner, Julian thought, all this might be possible. And he wanted the chance to learn whether he was correct.

  A sudden change was seen in the movements of the former alliance fleet. Not long after 0100, it stopped its forward advance—even stopped intercepting enemy vessels—and began moving toward Iserlohn Corridor. Merkatz and Attenborough had pooled their creativity to come up with a finely crafted maneuver that drew in Wittenfeld’s front line, disrupting his forces’ formation. The situation intensified by the minute, and the Black Lancers began a pointless engagement with Iserlohn’s autonomous vessels. It ended with the vessels’ self-destruction at 0140, throwing the Black Lancers into disarray.

  “Damn it! How could I let them mislead me like that?”

  Regret flashed across Mittermeier’s gray eyes when he read the report. For all his justified renown, he had been so shaken by Reinhard’s illness that he had failed to pay close enough attention to the Iserlohn fleet’s trickery. He had fallen for their decoy, hook, line, and sinker, and all he had managed to do was thin out the formation surrounding Brünhild.

  Then came the shock. Brünhild suddenly made a rapid turn. Beams fired wildly from a handful of Iserlohn ships that had managed to slip through the Empire’s front line defenses during the confusion. The energy-neutralization field protecting Brünhild’s fair skin flared with dazzling luminescence. The imperial ships accompanying this white queen prepared to return fire, but then hesitated. The thought of a beam or missile going astray and striking Brünhild instead of the enemy was enough to make them hold their fire.