Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Volume 9: Upheaval
GINGA EIYU DENSETSU Vol. 9
© 1987 by Yoshiki TANAKA
Cover Illustration © 2008 Yukinobu Hoshino.
All rights reserved.
English translation © 2019 VIZ Media, LLC
Cover and interior design by Fawn Lau and Alice Lewis
No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders.
HAIKASORU
Published by VIZ Media, LLC
P.O. Box 77010
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tanaka, Yoshiki, 1952- author. | Huddleston, Daniel, translator.
Title: Legend of the galactic heroes / written by Yoshiki Tanaka ; translated by Daniel Huddleston and Tyran Grillo and Matt Treyvaud
Other titles: Ginga eiyu densetsu
Description: San Francisco : Haikasoru, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2015044444| ISBN 9781421584942 (v. 1: paperback) | ISBN 9781421584959 (v. 2: paperback) | ISBN 9781421584966 (v. 3: paperback) | ISBN 9781421584973 (v. 4: paperback) | ISBN 9781421584980 (v. 5: paperback) | ISBN 9781421584997 (v. 6: paperback) | ISBN 9781421585291 (v. 7: paperback) | ISBN 9781421585017 (v. 8: paperback) | ISBN 9781421585024 (v. 9: paperback) v. 1. Dawn -- v. 2. Ambition -- v. 3. Endurance -- v. 4. Stratagem -- v. 5. Mobilization -- v. 6. Flight -- v. 7. Tempest -- v. 8. Desolation -- v. 9. Upheaval
Subjects: LCSH: Science fiction. | War stories. | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Military. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure.
Classification: LCC PL862.A5343 G5513 2016 | DDC 895.63/5--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044444
Printed in the U.S.A.
First printing, July 2019
Haikasoru eBook edition
ISBN: 978-1-9747-1232-8
GALACTIC EMPIRE
REINHARD VON LOHENGRAMM
Kaiser.
PAUL VON OBERSTEIN
Minister of military affairs. Marshal.
WOLFGANG MITTERMEIER
Commander in chief of the Imperial Space Armada. Marshal. Known as the “Gale Wolf.”
OSKAR VON REUENTAHL
Governor-general of the Neue Land. Marshal. Has heterochromatic eyes.
FRITZ JOSEF WITTENFELD
Commander of the Schwarz Lanzenreiter fleet. Senior admiral.
ERNEST MECKLINGER
Rear supreme commander. Senior admiral. Known as the “Artist-Admiral.”
ULRICH KESSLER
Commissioner of military police and commander of imperial capital defenses. Senior admiral.
AUGUST SAMUEL WAHLEN
Fleet commander. Senior admiral.
KORNELIAS LUTZ
Fleet commander for Phezzan region. Senior admiral.
NEIDHART MÜLLER
Fleet commander. Senior admiral. Known as “Iron Wall Müller.”
ARTHUR VON STREIT
Senior imperial aide. Vice admiral.
HILDEGARD VON MARIENDORF
Chief advisor to imperial headquarters. Vice admiral. Often called “Hilda.”
FRANZ VON MARIENDORF
Secretary of state. Hilda’s father.
GÜNTER KISSLING
Head of the Imperial Guard. Commodore.
HEIDRICH LANG
Junior minister of the interior and chief of the Domestic Safety Security Bureau.
ANNEROSE VON GRÜNEWALD
Reinhard’s elder sister. Archduchess.
JOB TRÜNICHT
High counselor to the Neue Land governorate. Former head of the Alliance.
RUDOLF VON GOLDENBAUM
Founder of the Galactic Empire’s Goldenbaum Dynasty.
DECEASED
SIEGFRIED KIRCHEIS
Sacrificed himself to save Reinhard, his closest friend (vol. 2).
KARL GUSTAV KEMPF
Killed in base-versus-base defensive battle (vol. 3).
HELMUT LENNENKAMP
Committed suicide after failing in an attempt to assassinate Yang (vol. 6).
ADALBERT FAHRENHEIT
Marshal (posthumous). Died in the Battle of the Corridor (vol. 8).
KARL ROBERT STEINMETZ
Marshal (posthumous). Died in the Battle of the Corridor (vol. 8).
ISERLOHN REPUBLIC
JULIAN MINTZ
Commander of the Revolutionary Reserves. Sublieutenant.
FREDERICA GREENHILL YANG
Leader of the Iserlohn Republic.
ALEX CASELNES
Vice admiral.
WALTER VON SCHÖNKOPF
Vice admiral.
DUSTY ATTENBOROUGH
Yang’s underclassman. Vice admiral.
OLIVIER POPLIN
Captain of the First Spaceborne Division at Iserlohn Fortress. Commander.
LOUIS MACHUNGO
Ensign.
KATEROSE VON KREUTZER
Corporal. Often called “Karin.”
WILIABARD JOACHIM MERKATZ
Veteran general.
BERNARD VON SCHNEIDER
Merkatz’s aide. Commander.
MURAI
Chief of staff. Vice admiral.
DECEASED
YANG WEN-LI
Legendary military talent. Never defeated in battle. Assassinated by Church of Terra (vol. 8).
JESSICA EDWARDS
Antiwar representative in the National Assembly. Casualty of coup d’état (vol. 2).
DWIGHT GREENHILL
Frederica’s father. Chief conspirator behind coup d’état, killed when it failed (vol. 2).
IVAN KONEV
Cool and calculating ace pilot. Died during Vermillion War (vol. 5).
ALEXANDOR BUCOCK
Commander in chief of the Alliance Armed Forces Space Armada. Died in battle defending the alliance (vol. 7).
CHUNG WU-CHENG
General chief of staff. Died alongside Bucock (vol. 7).
EDWIN FISCHER
Master of fleet operations. Died in the Battle of the Corridor (vol. 8).
FYODOR PATRICHEV
Deputy chief of staff in Yang Fleet. Died protecting his superior officer (vol. 8).
FORMER PHEZZAN DOMINION
ADRIAN RUBINSKY
The fifth landesherr. Known as the “Black Fox of Phezzan.”
DOMINIQUE SAINT-PIERRE
Rubinsky’s mistress.
BORIS KONEV
Independent merchant. Old acquaintance of Yang’s.
CHURCH OF TERRA
DE VILLIERS
Secretary-general of the Church of Terra. Archbishop.
*Titles and ranks correspond to each
character’s status at the end of Desolation
or their first appearance in Upheaval.
I
THE BENCH TUCKED AWAY in a corner of the wooded park had been one of Yang Wen-li’s favorite places. Since Yang’s sudden passing, Julian Mintz, his adopted son and apprentice in the arts of war, had come here in his place. Julian did not believe in communication with the dead any more than Yang had, but taking the time to sit quietly beneath the trees had become a kind of daily ritual that gave his restless heart something concrete to hold on to.
Julian had not mentioned this habit to anyone, but word must have gotten around. Today he saw a boy with curly black hair lurking nearby. After some hesitation, the boy stepped closer to speak.
“Excuse me, sir, but aren’t you Lieutenant Julian Mintz?”
Julian nodded.
The boy’s eyes shone. Color filled his cheeks; even his breathing quickened. He became the very image of adoration.
“How old are you?” Julian asked.
“Thirteen, sir.”
The sands of the hourglass rose upward before Julian’s eyes. The film of his memory rewound through the projector; Julian felt himself shrink, and the curly-haired boy’s eyes were replaced by another pair that gazed down at him, mild, warm, and intelligent.
“Can you guess what I’m thinking, Captain Yang?”
“You’ve stumped me, Julian. What is it?”
“I really admire you! See—I knew you wouldn’t be able to guess.”
Julian ran a hand through his flaxen hair. Just a few years ago, he had been in the boy’s shoes himself, no doubt looking at Yang in exactly the same way. The galaxy’s greatest magician, now gone forever. Julian had respected him, admired him, wanted to be just like him—or at least to follow in his footsteps somehow. Now he was the object of another boy’s starstruck adulation.
“I’m not the great man you think I am,” Julian said gently. “I just found my place beside Yang, and that always put me on the winning side. It was luck, pure and simple.”
“Oh, no, sir, luck alone can’t take someone at the head of Iserlohn’s armed forces at the age of just eighteen. I really respect you, lieutenant—I mean, commander. Really!”
“Thank you. I’ll try not to disappoint.”
Julian held out his hand. He knew from his own experience that this was what the boy was hoping for. After their handshake, the boy ran off crimson with excitement. Julian settled back down on the bench and closed his eyes.
Was this how his own ideas would be passed on? It was certainly how he had inherited Yang’s. Not all, of course—only a fraction—but they had come to him, a handing of the torch from one generation to the next. From trailblazer to follower. Anyone who valued that flame had a responsibility to pass it on to the next runner before it went out.
It was August, SE 800, three days after the proclamation of the Iserlohn Republic. Julian was eighteen years old. He could be a boy no longer, neither in years, nor in experience, nor in his responsibilities.
In later ages, historians would deride the Iserlohn Republic as “joint rule by widow and orphan.” The republic’s early stages, at least, justified that derision. When Yang died, undefeated in battle, his grieving widow Frederica became the political leader of the republic, while Julian, as his admirer in the park had noted, took command of its military.
All this had been decided by the leaders of Iserlohn, but it had not been seen as the best choice so much as the only one. If outsiders had their criticisms, these could not be shrugged off completely. But without a core, Iserlohn could not hold, and the afterimage of Yang Wen-li was the only core they had.
Alex Caselnes’s head for administration, Walter von Schönkopf’s bravery, Dusty Attenborough’s leadership and willingness to act, Olivier Poplin’s prowess in the cockpit, Wiliabard Joachim von Merkatz’s reputation—all of these helped stabilize the core, but none could have taken its place. To their credit, all of these men were aware of this.
“The greatest miracle in the story of Yang Wen-li is not his string of victories in the face of superior numbers but the fact that, even after his own death, there was no struggle for power among his followers”—thus wrote one historian of the period. There had been a significant exodus of Iserlohn’s population after Yang’s passing, true, but no one had had sought to usurp Frederica’s or Julian’s position.
Of course, interpretations being more multitudinous than facts, for other historians this very stability became an object not of admiration but ridicule. “Who, after all, would actively pursue the kingship of some barren backwater? In the end, Yang Wen-li’s officers crowned his wife and ward with thorns. They were nothing but exiles on the outer frontier…”
Confronted with ungenerous assessments of this sort, Julian was forced to concede one thing: they were indeed on the frontier. Not of the galaxy or the Free Planets Alliance, but of the human race itself. Alone in all of known space, Iserlohn refused to bend the knee to Kaiser Reinhard von Lohengramm. The base was a holy place, populated by heretics who refused to rejoin the overwhelming majority of humanity. Only on the frontier could such a place exist, and for this reason Julian wore the word with pride. The frontier is closest to the horizon, he told himself, and the horizon is where the new age dawns.
Walking back from the park to his office, Julian ran into an acquaintance stepping off the elevator. She was dressed in a pilot suit, and her hair was the color of weakly brewed tea. “Corporal von Kreutzer,” he said with a nod.
“Good day, Lieutenant Mintz.”
They were still awkward around each other. Still? Perhaps they would be forever. What lay between Katerose “Karin” von Kreutzer and Julian was not so much a stable alliance or entente as the word “neutrality” inscribed on thin ice.
But in a group as small as theirs they could not afford to be at each other’s throats—and, after all, both Julian and Karin had chosen to remain in Iserlohn. Some part of their hearts overlapped—a part that was determined to see an important ideal made reality. Perhaps, at least for the time being, that was enough.
They exchanged a few more pleasantries before Karin turned their conversation to the topic of the departed.
“Marshal Yang never really seemed that impressive when you met him in person. But he was supporting half the galaxy—politically, militarily, even philosophically.”
Julian said nothing. She knew that he agreed.
“I still can’t believe that I stood alongside him,” Karin continued. “Even if it was only briefly. It’s strange to think of yourself as a witness to history.”
“Did you ever speak to him?”
“Once or twice, but never anything important. Funny, though—things I forgot immediately after they happened come back to me now clear as day.” Karin put her finger lightly to her lips. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t think of the marshal as such a great man while he was alive. But now that he’s gone, I’m finally beginning to understand. Here in Iserlohn, we feel his spirit directly, but as time goes on it will grow and grow until it streams through all of history.”
With that, Karin raised a hand in farewell and walked away. Her expression might have suggested embarrassment at having said too much, but her stride overflowed with life and rhythm. Julian watched her go, adjusting his black beret for no particular reason, then turned back toward his office.
Three centuries ago, when Ahle Heinessen had died during the Longest March, those left behind wept and lamented their loss, but none tried to halt their collective journey into the unknown. Those who remained in Iserlohn, too, had cried their fill, and were beginning to face the present once more—and the future.
Heinessen had fallen, Yang was lost, but history marched on. Lives went on. Power molded those who held it; ideals were conveyed from one bearer to the next. As long as the human race survived, the deeds of those who had come before would be recorded and passed on to the generations that followed.
History, Yang had once told Julian, was the common chronicle of all humanity. Painful as some memories were, they could not be banished or ignored.
Julian sighed. It hurt to remember how Yang’s life had ended. But to forget would be more painful yet.
II
When people of later ages were quizzed on Yang Wen-li’s final rank in the Free Planets Alliance, most answered, without hesitation, if not quite accurately, “Supreme commander of the Alliance Armed Forces” or “Alliance Navy high commander.” Some were more precise: “Director of the alliance’s joint operational headquarters and commander in chief of its Space Armada, known by the term ‘supreme commander.’ ” Of course, all of these were wrong: from the year 796 to his death in 799, Yang Wen-li was officially “Commander of Iserlohn Fortress an
d commander of Iserlohn Patrol Fleet.”
In April of SE 799, when the Vermillion War began, Yang Wen-li did command essentially all of the alliance’s armed forces. Certainly, virtually every alliance ship capable of interplanetary travel was gathered together under his command. All this was of course with the blessing of Alexandor Bucock, actual commander in chief of the space armada.
As a result, while none criticized Yang’s actions as illegitimate or insubordinate, it was impossible for him to satisfy everybody. There were even those who called him timid, incapable of action without proper legal grounds.
But Yang was too busy to bother himself with every quibble and slander directed at his person. His own tendency toward introspection aside, action and creation had to take priority over criticism.
Which meant that the same was true for Julian. Even as he took action, Yang had always asked himself, Am I in the right? Is there no other way? Julian did the same. He formulated the question somewhat differently, however: What would Marshal Yang do? If he were still alive, would he agree with me?
A meteor swarm left behind by a planet’s disintegration—such was the Iserlohn Republic after Yang’s death. It was only natural that so many of its residents should have felt that the festival was over and abandoned the base.
“Personally, I’m impressed that more than six hundred thousand stayed,” said Dusty Attenborough, steam from his paper cup of coffee rising up around his chin. “Takes all types, I suppose.”
Attenborough was working frantically to shore up Julian’s leadership abilities. Today, too, he had “politely” kicked out an influential civilian leader who had sighed that they’d have been happy to stay if only Marshal Yang were alive.
“We don’t need fair-weather friends like that anyway. If this were some cheap solivision series, enough complaints from the audience might bring a dead protagonist back to life. But we don’t live in that world. We live in a world where a life lost is gone forever, which is what makes life itself so priceless.”
“Hear, hear!” Olivier Poplin applauded from across the table. “In a kinder age, Admiral Attenborough, you could have been the next Job Trünicht. What a waste to put you in military duds.”
“Thank you, thank you. When I make chairman, you’ll be first in line for the Job Trünicht Memorial Prize.”
Julian laughed at their banter, partly with relief.
Upheaval Page 1