The imperial soldiers were far from cowardly, but even they recoiled before von Schönkopf’s overwhelming martial valor. Half-tumbling backward, they aimed their weapons at him, but von Schönkopf did not allow them to fall back from melee to firefight. He charged forward twice as fast as they could retreat, swinging his tomahawk left and right. Gouts of blood flew. The imperial side’s encircling net began to crumble. Von Schönkopf spun; his tomahawk flashed again; fresh war dead collapsed beneath the spray of blood. Who could ever have imagined that such a gorgeous, monstrous scene would be painted in Brünhild’s corridors?
“Enemy though he is, he is a remarkable man,” Mittermeier said, gray eyes fixed on von Schönkopf’s figure on the monitor. “Meanwhile, our own side achieves nothing. Perhaps I should take charge of the interception.”
Had Mittermeier followed through on this, von Schönkopf might have had the honor of single combat against both of the Imperial Navy’s “Twin Ramparts.” But Mecklinger and Müller shook their heads. Mittermeier was to stay with the kaiser. After a brief exchange in low voices, Mecklinger set off for the bridge as a representative of headquarters, while the other two remained with Reinhard.
Behind the standing screen, the kaiser spoke. There were faint sounds that seemed to indicate he was sitting up in bed.
“Emil,” he said. “Help me change into my uniform.”
“That will not do, Your Majesty, not with your fever,” said the young attendant, clearly torn. “You must rest.”
“The kaiser of the Galactic Empire cannot receive guests improperly dressed. Uninvited guests though they be.”
Emil glanced at the admirals’ faces from around the screen. Stop His Majesty! He is too unwell for this! his eyes pleaded, but Mittermeier’s response betrayed his expectations.
“Do as His Majesty says, Emil von Salle.”
Beneath Mittermeier’s mask of calm lay naked sorrow. Along with Mecklinger and Müller, he had been forced to recognize that it would not be right to prevent the kaiser from using his remaining time as he saw fit. Reinhard himself well understood what the acquiescence of his staff officers implied.
Feet that had trampled the very galaxy now struggled to support the kaiser’s own weight. The decline in his vitality and strength could no longer be hidden. He had borne on his shoulders a vast interstellar empire containing tens of billions of people, but now, even his customary uniform seemed a heavy burden.
It was thirty minutes since the boarding of Brünhild.
Hideous bloodshed had already reduced the Rosen Ritter regiment to less than the size of a company. Even at the beginning of the operation, they had lacked the numbers to form a full battalion. Now the imperial troops were successfully pursuing a strategy of separation, isolating and cornering them one by one.
However, each Rosen Ritter death cost the Imperial Navy at least three men of its own. When it came to former regiment leader Walter von Schönkopf and current leader Kasper Rinz, it was anyone’s guess what sort of human resources would have to be expended. Several times now von Schönkopf had been boxed in by the enemy only to push them all back again, terrified and beaten.
“Reuschner! Dormann! Harbach! Anyone shameless enough to still be alive, respond! Zefrinn! Krafft! Kroneker!”
Standing amid stacks of enemy corpses, von Schönkopf lowered his tomahawk with one arm and called out the names of his men. After a few echoes with no reply, von Schönkopf struck his helmet with his fist.
At that moment, an imperial soldier lying on the floor sat up. He was a young man, perhaps not even twenty. He had blacked out after taking a tomahawk handle to the back of his skull, but now he had finally regained consciousness. As blood trickled thinly from his nose, he gripped his own tomahawk, took aim at the broad, muscular back currently at sixty degrees of elevation relative to his position, and hurled it with all the strength he had.
Shock exploded in von Schönkopf’s back, followed by pain. The tomahawk had pierced his armor, torn skin and flesh, and smashed his right scapula.
Von Schönkopf turned, the axe still planted in his back. Expecting retaliation, the soldier covered his head with both hands, but von Schönkopf only looked down on him, making no attempt to bring his own tomahawk down.
Finally, the former imperial noble spoke.
“Young man. What do they call you?” he asked in fluent Imperial Standard.
“What difference does it make to you, rebel scum?”
“I just wanted to know the name of the man who wounded Walter von Schönkopf.”
“Sergeant Kurt Singhubel,” said the man after a pause.
“Thank you. To repay you for introducing yourself, let me show you a trick.”
So saying, von Schönkopf reached behind him with his right hand, pulled the tomahawk from his back, and threw it. A soldier who had been taking aim with his rifle to finish von Schönkopf off took a direct hit to the chest and toppled with a scream.
But this intense action only widened von Schönkopf’s wound. New pain spiraled hotly through his body, and blood welled forth to paint his silver armor red from the inside. Crimson streams flowed down the surface of the armor plate, reaching the heels of his boots. It was clear to the imperial troops that his wound was fatal.
An imperial soldier, perhaps emboldened by von Schönkopf’s injury, moved around behind him and ran him through with a bayonet.
Von Schönkopf’s tomahawk flashed and the soldier’s head went flying as if struck by lightning. The enemy fell back uneasily. Drenched in human blood, von Schönkopf seemed to them the Erlkönig himself. How could he endure such terrible wounds, lose so much blood, and still stand armored and undefeated? Singhubel was frozen, glued wordlessly to the ground where he lay. Emptied of all longing for glory, he silently called his mother’s name in terror.
“Come on, then! Who wants the honor of being the last man killed by Walter von Schönkopf?”
Von Schönkopf laughed. It was a laugh that could only have come from him—an indomitable laugh without an iota of pain. His bloodstained armor already looked as if a great crimson serpent had wrapped itself around him, and still he bled.
He coughed, and a hint of red came with it. He did not feel hard done by. His life, like Yang Wen-li’s, had been stained with more blood than he could ever hope to repay with his own. It seemed that debt had come due.
Von Schönkopf began to walk. His pace was leisurely, and the imperial soldiers gasped to see him shrugging off blood loss and pain that would have left an ordinary man unable to stand. Too shocked to aim their weapons at him, they only watched.
Arriving at a staircase, von Schönkopf began to climb it as if out of duty. He left a small puddle of blood behind him on each step, and when he finally reached the top he turned and sat down.
He placed his tomahawk across his knees and looked down at the imperial soldiers below. A fine view, he thought. To die on the low ground would not have been to his taste.
“Walter von Schönkopf, age thirty-seven,” he said. “Before my death, my parting words: I need no inscription on my gravestone. Only the tears of beautiful women will bring peace to my soul.”
He frowned, not with pain but dissatisfaction.
“Not quite the last words I was hoping for. Maybe I’d’ve been better off letting young Attenborough write them for me.”
The imperial soldiers inched toward the foot of the stairs. Von Schönkopf watched with little apparent interest. The core of the network of cranial nerves controlling his vision, however, was traveling backward up the dark river of memory in search of something else. When it found its quarry, von Schönkopf closed his eyes and began to speak to himself.
“Ah, yes, she was the one—Rosalein von Kreutzer. Preferred to be called Rosa, as I recall…”
The exact time of Walter von Schönkopf’s passing is unclear. At 0250, when the imperial troops cautiously approached,
trying to determine whether this dangerous man was living or dead, he remained seated on the staircase, not moving a muscle. He had already passed through the gate reserved solely for the dead, chest thrown out with pride.
At around the same time, Captain Kasper Rinz’s advance had also halted.
Wounds in more than twenty places garishly adorned his form. He had been saved from critical injuries up to that point by his armor and his fighting ability, but it seemed that these were at their limit now too. His tomahawk was already lost, and fatigue bore down on his shoulders with ten times the weight of his armor. He leaned against a square pillar covered with embedded cables and then slid down to sit at its base.
He looked at his combat knife. The blade had snapped in half and it was soaked to the hilt in blood. His hands, too, looked as if he had dipped them to the wrists in red paint. Exhaustion and resignation pressed on his back, growing by the second. He lovingly kissed what remained of his faithful knife’s blade, then leaned back against the pillar and waited, with serene detachment, for death—in the form of some enemy soldier—to make its self-important arrival.
V
Julian, Poplin, and Machungo continued to push forward, leaving bloody footprints on Brünhild’s exquisite white floors. The flaxen-haired youth was at the center of their party, with the ace to his left and the giant to his right.
Two years ago, the three of them had gone up against the fanatics at the Church of Terra’s headquarters in a firefight followed by hand-to-hand combat. As an ensemble, they played trios so dangerous to foes that even the Rosen Ritter paid them a grudging respect. Their sheet music was written in blood, and the shrieks of their foes were marked fortissimo.
After passing through several floors, they emerged in a place like a hall into which hostile enemy soldiers poured, too numerous for even them to handle. Wordlessly, they ran in another direction as fast as they could.
Intense fire came from behind them. The three of them hit the floor, rolling to cling to the walls and dodge the blaster bolts. As soon as there was a break in the barrage, they leapt out and ran for it. Five or six armored enemy soldiers appeared before them. They closed the distance rapidly, but just before tomahawk met tomahawk they were fired on from behind again.
“Machungo!” Julian heard himself cry. What he saw should not have been possible: Machungo’s shoulders were lower than his own. The man had fallen to his knees. His broad, muscular back was covered in dozens of blaster wounds, and there was so much blood it was as if he wore a red board like a backpack. He had used his own body to protect his two companions from the hail of bolts.
Machungo looked at Julian. A faint smile appeared on his lips, and remained there as he sank heavily to the floor.
Julian charged the enemy before them, smashing his tomahawk into the top of the ceramic shield held by one soldier. The instant the shield was slightly lowered, Poplin leapt forward as if wearing winged sandals and swung his tomahawk horizontally along the shield’s upper edge, striking a powerful blow at the point where the enemy’s helmet joined his armor. Vertebrae crunched and the soldier’s body flew off to the side.
Julian and Poplin dove through the gap they had thus created. Their rage and grief at the loss of Machungo drove their duet to new heights of bloody ferocity. In theory, Julian understood perfectly what the blood he shed meant. In practice, emotion overwhelmed reason, and it could not be denied that he sought targets solely to satisfy his hunger for vengeance.
Running shoulder-to-shoulder through the gates of bloodshed, Julian and Poplin saw a new figure appear before them. A young man, perhaps the age of Poplin himself, in the black and silver uniform of a senior officer. In one hand the man held a blaster.
Poplin did not know it, but this was Commodore Günter Kissling, head of Reinhard’s personal guard. Green eyes stared daggers at Kissling’s amber ones. Kissling slowly began to raise his blaster.
“Go, Julian!”
With this short, sharp shout, Poplin shoved Julian from behind. Julian was less running than flying across the floor as Kissling’s blaster swung in his direction. A combat knife flew from Poplin’s hand toward Kissling’s face. Kissling arched his back and used the barrel of his blaster to knock the knife away. The knife bounced off the floor. As it gleamed, Poplin leaped at Kissling and knocked him over. The blaster flew from Kissling’s hand, and the two young officers began to grapple on the floor.
Finally Poplin managed to get on top. “Don’t underestimate the master of flyball fouls, my mannequin friend,” he said.
In the next instant, the “mannequin” had reversed their positions, pinning the intruder to the floor. They continued to roll across the floor, struggling ferociously.
Julian’s memories were confused. He separated from Poplin, clashed with several enemies, passed through corridors and climbed stairs. Finally, he arrived at a door, which opened before him. He stumbled through, just barely managing to keep his balance as he looked around the spacious room.
When his memories and senses were put back in order, the first things Julian became aware of were his breathing and his heartbeat. His lungs and heart felt ready to explode. Every muscle and bone in his body groaned, pushed to the limit. His helmet had been sent flying off to who knows where, leaving his flaxen hair exposed. Blood trickled from a wound on his forehead.
Was he in the kaiser’s private chambers? There was no hint of machinery; on the contrary, the room was appointed in an exquisite classical style. The floor was not metal or ceramic; it was carpeted, which clashed oddly with his armored boots.
Two senior officers in black and silver uniforms stood motionless, staring at Julian. One of them was familiar: Senior Admiral Neidhart Müller, who had come to Iserlohn around a year ago to convey the kaiser’s respects at Yang Wen-li’s funeral. Who was the other, more slightly built officer?
When Julian heard Müller address his colleague as “Marshal,” he immediately knew who the man was. Only three men had received that title in the Galactic Empire’s Lohengramm Dynasty. This man clearly was not Paul von Oberstein, with his bionic eyes and white-streaked hair. Nor was he von Reuentahl, who was dead. That left only Marshal Mittermeier, the Gale Wolf, greatest admiral in the Galactic Empire. Julian wondered if he should introduce himself, then chuckled at the strangeness of the idea.
Julian staggered and sank to one knee, supporting his body on his tomahawk. Like his armor, the axe was smeared with blood, and Julian’s sense of smell was long since overloaded with the stink of gore. Blood had gotten into his right eye, dyeing half of his world red, and Julian had begun to feel the call of the void.
Mittermeier and Müller began to move at the same moment. Then came a voice from the throne.
“Let him come. He has not reached me yet.”
The voice was not loud, but it seemed to reverberate throughout Julian’s entire sense of hearing. It was a voice with the power to dominate—the voice of one who could make the very galaxy his own. Even ignoring its musical ring, there could be only one man in all humanity with such a voice.
When Yang Wen-li had become unable to walk one year ago, the reason had been blood loss. If Julian suffered a similar fate, it would be due to fatigue instead. But he pushed stubbornly on. He could not collapse in front of Kaiser Reinhard. He pushed his quivering knees straight and rose to his feet. The champion of democracy would never bend the knee to an autocrat. He took a step forward and his knees began to falter; another step and his back began to fail. He repeated the process, over and over, until he finally stood before Reinhard.
“By Your Majesty’s leave, I will stand for our discussion.”
“Let us begin with your name.”
“Julian Mintz, Your Majesty.”
Julian gazed on the golden-haired kaiser, who received him seated on a high-backed sofa. His right elbow was on the armrest, and his chin was propped up in his right hand; his left leg was cro
ssed over his right, and his ice-blue eyes were fixed on the man who had violated the sanctity of his flagship.
“And what is it you have come here to propose, Julian Mintz?”
“If Your Majesty wishes it, peace and coexistence. If not…”
“If not?”
Julian smiled weakly. “If not, then something else. I can say, at least, that I did not come here to offer submission. I…” He paused to calm his ragged breathing. “I am here to advise Your Majesty on the medicine that will be needed to restore the Lohengramm Dynasty when it is worn and tired and old. Please listen with an open mind. I am sure Your Majesty will understand then. Understand what Yang Wen-li hoped to win from you…”
Julian heard his voice receding. A veil came down over his vision, and was then doubled, and tripled, before emptiness invaded his consciousness. Julian fell to the floor like a powerless statue. A deep, heavy silence filled the room like mist.
Reinhard straightened up in his seat. “A bold presentation,” he muttered, although with no apparent anger. “Here to advise me? And yet, Müller, he is the second man to faint after reaching me.”
“Indeed, Your Majesty.”
“Call my doctors. They cannot help me now, but perhaps they can help him. And, Mittermeier, let us accept a part of Julian Mintz’s proposal and end the fighting. Anyone who has survived to this point deserves to go home alive.
The frozen senior officers sprang into urgent action. Müller summoned the medics, and Mittermeier took the telephone from the marble table and called the bridge.
“This is Marshal Wolfgang Mittermeier, commander in chief of the Imperial Space Armada. I call to convey orders from His Majesty the Kaiser. Cease all combat immediately. His Majesty wills peace!”
Had those words gone out a minute later, two more of Julian’s friends would have been erased from the galaxy. Olivier Poplin and Kasper Rinz saw the gates to the afterlife close before their very eyes. Neither was still able to stand by that point, but as they lay wrapped in the stench of gore, they heard the words crackle from speakers above them.
Sunset Page 20