There is no evidence of subordinates such as these consciously banding together under Yang; it had simply turned out that birds of a feather truly did flock together, and multiple rotten apples spoiled their barrel that much faster. Since its beginning in SE 796, the Yang Fleet—the strongest fleet in the universe—had developed a spirit all its own.
During a break from the military duties with which they were supposed to be occupied, Attenborough and Poplin shared this indiscreet exchange:
“We need our own version of the Imperial Navy’s ‘Sieg kaiser,’ but ‘Viva democracy’ is about all I can think of. What do you think?”
“As an appeal to public sentiment, it’s missing something. I still think we ought to use our commander’s name like they do, but in terms of relative impact, that’s missing about five somethings, isn’t it?”
But it was only natural that even men who prided themselves on fearlessness and good cheer were driven momentarily into the depths of silence when they received word of Marshal Alexandor Bucock’s death.
When Frederica heard the news, several hundred seconds of darkness and silence elapsed before she rose to her feet and looked in the mirror. Finding her complexion strikingly devoid of red corpuscles, she steadied her breathing, lightly applied some makeup, and went to the office of her husband and commander. She stepped inside and stood in front of Yang, who was holding a paper cup of hot tea in one hand while looking over some documents. She waited for his suspicious glance to find her, then, in as steady a voice as she could manage, said, “Commander in Chief Bucock has fallen in battle.”
Yang took a sip of his tea. It smelled strongly of brandy. He blinked his eyes twice, then looked away from his aide and wife, staring at an abstract painting by some forgotten artist that was hanging on the wall.
“Excellency…”
“I heard you.”
It was a feeble voice—one of which no inscription existed on the pillar of Frederica’s outstanding memory.
“That report didn’t leave any room for corrections, did it?”
“The transmissions we’ve picked up are all saying the same thing.”
After a long silence, Yang murmured, “I see.” The life seemed to have drained out of Yang, giving the impression of a young scholar changed into a sculpture of a young scholar. Suddenly, the fragrance of brandy was strong in Frederica’s nostrils, and she gasped. Yang had crushed in his palm the paper cup he’d been holding, drenching one hand in steaming hot tea. Frederica took the cup from her husband, and wiped his scalded hand with her handkerchief. From a drawer in his desk, she retrieved a first aid kit.
“Inform the whole fleet, Frederica. For the next seventy-two hours, Yang’s Irregulars will be in mourning.”
Yang gave the order, accepting Frederica’s treatment as though it had nothing to do with him. His emotions had taken a critical hit, and while at first it seemed that his reason alone was in service to his vocal cords, his psyche unexpectedly reversed its vector, and his voice grew intense.
“ ‘Brilliant admiral,’ my eye! A hopeless incompetent’s what I am. I knew what the commander in chief was like. That the chances of this happening weren’t exactly small. Even so, I couldn’t see this coming.”
“Darling…”
“I should have brought him with us when we left Heinessen—even if it meant essentially kidnapping him. Isn’t that right, Frederica? If I’d only done that…”
Frederica tried desperately to console her husband. If he was going to make “what Marshal Bucock was like” an issue, Bucock would have never approved of the flight from Heinessen in the first place. There was no need for Yang to hold himself responsible for his death. Wasn’t feeling responsible like that actually taking little account of Bucock’s own wishes and decisions?
“I know,” Yang finally said. “You’re right, Frederica. I’m sorry I got worked up.” But the immensity of the blow was such that an easy recovery seemed unlikely.
Even in a system whose sins of despotism were many, there were always some who would lay down their lives and die with it when destruction came. The Goldenbaum Dynasty had been one example. Moreover, if the Free Planets Alliance, which had supposedly lived by its morals and ideals since the time of its founding father, Ahle Heinessen, were to be extinguished without a single martyr among its high-ranking officials, it would mean that the existence of that democratic state had been worth even less than the Goldenbaum Dynasty. The idea of human lives joining the state in the hour of its destruction was one Yang would have liked to have rejected, but he was in no state of mind to criticize Marshal Bucock’s choice.
While that old man had lived, Yang had always looked up to him. He felt the same way now, and in the future was likely to feel even more so.
Thoughts of Bucock’s age were no consolation whatsoever. Though he had crossed into advanced age, medically speaking, he had still been more than fifteen years shy of reaching the average life expectancy. Still, it did come as some slight consolation that no one could say his life hadn’t been fulfilling. Yang’s subordinates came to share his mind on that matter as well.
Von Schönkopf toasted the old man, celebrating his life and wishing him a joyful hereafter. Soon Soul opened up his tear ducts and ran them at full capacity for the first time in fifteen years. Merkatz solemnly straightened his uniform collar. Murai turned toward the distant world of Heinessen and saluted. Half of that gesture had been for Chung Wu-cheng, who had given his life for Bucock. Attenborough joined Murai in so doing, and afterward went to join von Schönkopf.
As for Julian, he felt Yang’s grief even more keenly than his own. This brought with it a multiplier effect, and he sank into a world devoid of color.
Even Olivier Poplin, oft praised as a veritable reservoir of good cheer, had become noticeably less talkative. His face had not been made for sullen expressions, but now a winter wind was blowing against it, and the young man who described himself as “a half-breed child of inconstancy and indiscretion”—of whom the likes of Dusty Attenborough said, “If trouble’s afoot, he’s sure to stick his nose in it, and if it’s not, he’s out sowing the seeds himself”—was left silently wandering around a fortress that for a time had lost its lively energy.
Alex Caselnes was concerned about everyone’s uncharacteristic depression. Once he himself had gotten over the worst of his own disappointment, he turned to his wife, Hortense, shaking his head. “Laziness and sunny dispositions are about all this bunch has going for it. We can’t have them down in the dumps like this.”
Hortense was just then giving the old oven in their officer’s quarters—which had not seen use during the yearlong interval that Iserlohn had been occupied by the empire—a reason for living in its old age.
“Well, not all of them have nerves made of steel cable like you do,” she said. “Marshal Bucock was a good man. Everyone’s reactions are perfectly proper.”
“I’m speaking out of concern for them. Gloom and doom just don’t suit those guys at all.”
Caselnes was excluding himself from his own criticism. He was also beyond any doubt a member of the Yang Fleet; he simply thought that he alone had his act together.
“You should stick to just worrying about supplies and accounting. Do you think they would’ve ever defied the government, defied the empire, and started a revolutionary war if they were the type to let something like this devastate them for good? Being a yes-man to the authorities is the easiest way to live, but they consciously volunteered to take on hardship. And that’s also why the mood around them is always so festive.”
“That’s absolutely true, those morons.”
“Without even one exception, you know. Whose fault do you think it is that I missed out on being the wife of the general manager of rear services?”
Hortense Caselnes humphed at him, flustering the man who had punted the chair of general manager of rear services.
“Of course I did,” she said, showing no sign of backing down. “If you were the kind of man who’d abandon a friend to protect your position, I’d have divorced you ages ago. As a woman, I’d be ashamed if I had to tell my children that the man I was married to was somebody who only made superficial friendships.”
Caselnes’s word balloons were getting popped inside his mouth. Hortense transferred a splendidly roasted cream chicken pie from the oven to the table.
“Well, dear, call the Yangs over, would you? The living still have to eat properly—and enjoy it for the departed’s sake as well.”
Olivier Poplin probably rediscovered as early as Caselnes had that a festival mood was essential to the public square that was the Yang Fleet. Even he, who on the day that the tragic news was received had been as formal and respectful as anyone else, had stripped off his mental sackcloth by the second day after, and now seemed determined to work toward the psychological rebuilding of the Yang Fleet. For that reason, he had caused a large amount of whiskey to emigrate to coffee cups in an effort to cheer everyone up. Because they were in mourning, they couldn’t openly drink alcohol.
“Still, I wonder if even our esteemed marshal ever gets that depressed?” Bernhard von Schneider pointedly asked. Von Schneider was not a heartless man, but he had hardly even met Bucock, and had thus required no assistance from Poplin in recovering from the blow. “It seems you all think of your own commander as some kind of rare beast, but…”
Poplin didn’t answer directly.
“Marshal Bucock was an amazing old man,” he said. “Totally wasted on the FPA military. It’s a shame I have to use the past tense, now. But even if mourning him is only natural, it’s about time we started thinking about the real way to console the dead.”
“By which you mean?”
“Fighting the Imperial Navy, and winning.”
“I think it’s for the best if you don’t breeze right past ‘how’ on your way to the results…”
“The ‘how’ is what our esteemed marshal will come up with. It’s the only thing he’s good for.”
In Poplin’s disparaging words, von Schneider sensed a variety of things at work in Poplin’s mind—pride, respect, teasing, and so on.
“Still, Commander von Schneider, you’re not too bright either, now that I think about it. If you’d stayed in the Imperial Navy, you could’ve really moved up in the world working for Kaiser Reinhard.”
Von Schneider just gave a curt laugh, and did not answer the ever-provocative Poplin’s question. If he had had brothers or sisters, they might have convinced him to serve the brilliant young kaiser and make the most of his talents and skills, but as for himself, he intended to follow the defeated Admiral Merkatz to the very end. Kaiser Reinhard had numerous loyal vassals serving him. So why shouldn’t Merkatz at the very least have him?
II
Even after the Baalat Treaty was finalized in April of SE 799, the violent currents of history still were not calmed. In August of the same year, Yang Wen-li rebelled against his own government’s stratagem and fled the capital. In the same month, the Church of Terra’s headquarters on Earth was destroyed by Admiral Wahlen of the Imperial Navy. The angry swells and surges continued to roll forward without end.
Still, at the beginning of SE 800, the underground streams seemed to boil to the surface all at once, engulfing everything. It may be that the strange sense of stillness associated with the four prior months—despite their chain of innumerable, small-scale bursts of will and action—was due to the immensity of the heat and light given off by the eruptions that bookended that period. To those who look no deeper than the surfaces of events, it may seem that Reinhard von Lohengramm wasted a number of days between departing Planet Phezzan and arriving at the alliance capital of Heinessen. They might also wonder what Yang Wen-li was doing between his escape from Heinessen and his recapture of Iserlohn Fortress, and afterward as well.
Such people probably think that all the kaiser needed to do was give the order, and a massive force of ten million would mobilize on the same day, with no need to organize fleets or set up supply lines; they likely have no idea how much time it takes to develop the strategic plan needed to prepare an environment suited to executing one’s tactics on the battlefield. Because Reinhard’s imperial forces were large in scale and Yang Wen-li’s revolutionary forces were small, both had problems with establishing their respective supply networks. In the Imperial Navy’s case, it was oddly difficult to move such vast amounts of goods across the long supply route from Phezzan. For reasons of both honor and political strategy, plundering was strictly forbidden. In the case of Yang Wen-li, El Facil’s production capacity and Iserlohn’s stockpiles were sufficient for the time being to keep his forces supplied, but in order to resist the Imperial Navy, he had no choice but to increase the size of his force, and as the number of soldiers grew, the supply effort was bound to exceed capacity. Foreseeing a grave choice between two mutually exclusive options, even Alex Caselnes had had no trouble finding things to give him headaches.
Yang Wen-li was in a difficult position, in which it was difficult to make his strategic plan coexist with the tactical conditions needed to carry it out—it was Kaiser Reinhard’s chief secretary, Fräulein Hildegard “Hilda” von Mariendorf, who had deduced that, though in fact political tasks were also piling up on Yang at that time. In addition, he once again found himself struggling to stay a mere specialist in the revolutionary government’s combat division, and not be made supreme leader of the revolutionary movement itself.
From the viewpoint of Walter von Schönkopf, Yang’s way of doing things seemed so roundabout that he felt like clucking his tongue a dozen times.
“Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures” summed up his feelings; for the past three years he’d constantly tried to talk Yang into seizing power.
Julian once said, “While he lectured others about convictions being harmful and useless, he held to his own pretty stubbornly. His words and his actions didn’t really align.” Though Julian was also pretty impressed by von Schönkopf’s persistence; it had been three years, and the man still hadn’t given up.
When Walter von Schönkopf received the news of Bucock’s passing, he thought, This is why you should have put an end to Reinhard von Lohengramm when you had the chance, although he did not let that thought clear his tongue. There was likely some degree of error among others’ evaluations of von Schönkopf, but the man himself understood that there was a time and a place for his sharp tongue.
What he did say to Julian was his only mention of a plan that had missed its chance to come to fruition:
“If Old Man Bucock were still alive, I could’ve also seen me recommending him to head up the new administration, with your guardian running military affairs. No use talking about it now, though…”
To Julian, as well, this was a fresh and attractive idea. Though it was hard to imagine the elderly, now-departed marshal agreeing to take the top position.
Eventually, von Schönkopf himself had to face a problem of his own. With an attitude that might best be called “resolute,” Corporal Katerose Karin von Kreutzer requested a meeting with her father. In whatever form it might take, she was trying to put an end to the awkwardness that had resulted from avoiding contact these past six months.
When Karin appeared in von Schönkopf’s office, she was battle ready, wearing two or three layers of invisible armor. Her salute was stiff, her expression tense, and her bearing solemn. None of these qualities suited a young girl who was to turn sixteen this year, von Schönkopf inwardly appraised.
“Vice Admiral von Schönkopf, I volunteered to fight at the time of the operation to retake Iserlohn Fortress, but Your Excellency, serving as commander of combat operat
ions, removed my name from the roster. This is difficult to accept, and I want to hear the reason.”
It was obvious that Karin was reading from an invisible script she had prepared ahead of time. A somewhat ironic smile formed around von Schönkopf’s mouth; it had just occurred to him how much his colleague Attenborough would like to be here for this, even if he had to pay admission. The girl’s demands for an explanation weren’t worth worrying about, though.
“I wanted the operation to come off perfectly,” he said, “so I didn’t want to include anyone—not just you—who was inexperienced in hand-to-hand combat. That’s all it was. What’s so strange about that?”
Karin was at a loss to answer. She was still shortsighted in a number of ways, and hadn’t thought about how others with no experience in hand-to-hand combat had been treated.
After a moment, von Schönkopf said, “Well, that’s my excuse. The truth of the matter is that I didn’t want to see a pretty young girl brandishing a tomahawk.”
The attitude von Schönkopf copped as he appended that comment was exactly the attitude Karin had been thinking all this time that she didn’t want to see.
That of a frivolous, unfaithful womanizer.
She steeled herself, and spoke: “Is that how you were when you seduced my mother, too?”
It was she herself who was the more surprised at her sharply rising tone; her father literally did not raise an eyebrow. He looked up again at the girl standing ramrod straight in front of his desk, and said, “So asking me that is the real point of this meeting?”
His voice, which seemed to be holding back a rebuke, was all the more unnerving to her.
“I’m disappointed. If you want to hold me accountable to my responsibilities as a father, you should say so up front. There’s no need to go finding fault with my command decisions.”
Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Volume 7 Page 22