In this flowing eloquence, Job Trünicht signed his death warrant with his own tongue. Strangely, he does not appear to have even considered the possibility of being killed by von Reuentahl. After all, von Reuentahl had no reason to kill him; more to the point, he had nothing to gain by doing so.
When von Reuentahl, with an almost majestic grace that actually required every scrap of strength he had left, pointed his blaster at Trünicht, the former head of the Free Planets Alliance’s smile did not falter. He was still smiling when the hole opened in his chest. It was only when the agony seized control of his entire nervous system and the blood that gushed forth discolored his tailored suit that his expression changed. Not to a look of fear, or pain. Rather, it was more a look of rebuke, as if to criticize the man who had been irrational enough to harm him in defiance of his judgment and calculations. Trünicht opened his mouth, but instead of the usual golden-tongued rhetoric, blood from his lungs spilled out.
“Insult democracy, loot the state, deceive the people—none of that is my concern. However…”
The blazing light in von Reuentahl’s mismatched eyes lashed Trünicht across the face, making the former head of the alliance reel.
“However, I will not permit you to befoul the kaiser’s dignity with your filthy tongue. I neither served nor rebelled against a man who deserved to be insulted by someone like you.”
By the end of this speech, Trünicht had already lost the strength to stand and collapsed to the floor. He gazed into space with eyes brimming with disappointment and despair. This rare man, who had attempted to manipulate two different systems with a single inborn nature, still held vast potential within him, but his future had been stolen from him by his dying heterochromiac interlocutor. Freed from all concern for the justness of his cause or even the law, von Reuentahl had shot him dead from atop a torrent of private feeling. Trünicht, a genius of self-preservation who had preserved both life and status flawlessly in dealings with Kaiser Reinhard and Yang Wen-li alike, was being forced out of space-time by an “outrage” committed by a failed imperial rebel. In the end, this was the only type of act that proved effective against Trünicht’s sort of immortality.
What lay on the floor was no longer Job Trünicht. Not because it was dead, but because it could no longer speak. A Trünicht that could not make use of tongue and lips and vocal cords was already no Trünicht at all. It was nothing but an assemblage of cells, not even human any longer. Von Reuentahl let go of his blaster—or, more accurately, his blaster left his hand and violently kissed the floor before spinning away.
“He really was an unbearable man, right to the end. To think that the last person I killed wouldn’t even be armed… What a dishonorable thing he made me do.”
In this way, just before his own death, von Reuentahl made a slight correction to the history that would unfold afterwards. His act was not discovered until after he was dead, and even then it would be some time before the full picture of Trünicht’s unceremoniously interrupted ambition and vision was uncovered.
V
After von Reuentahl had Trünicht’s body removed, it seemed that the invisible hand of accumulated fatigue pushed him into death’s abyss. When an unexpected visitor was announced, he begrudged even the effort of showing his puzzlement.
“Leave me alone,” he said. There was something like a rueful chuckle in his voice, and even perhaps a kind of relief at knowing his debts were paid in full. “I’m not just dying, I’m in the process of dying. And I’m actually finding it quite enjoyable. Don’t interrupt my last moments of pleasure.”
His skin was pale and waxy, beaded with cold sweat. It was a strange feeling to slowly die from a wound over the course of a week. The pain that spread from core to extremities had become an inseparable part of his sensorium; when he lost it, he would be hollowed out inside, and collapse on himself.
Trünicht’s murder had taxed von Reuentahl’s strength greatly. He was as exhausted as a knight that had slain a venomous dragon; he was entirely consumed, and longed for sleep leading directly to death. What held him back, like a drop of water falling from a stalactite, was a cold female voice.
“It’s been a while. And you’re a traitor now—high treason. Of course.”
Von Reuentahl raised his eyes. When they came into focus, he clearly saw the woman’s outline. But it took another five seconds for the vision to materialize in the domain of his reason. The door of memory felt as if it were made of heavy stone, but he finally heaved it open and recognized her.
“The last of the Lichtenlade clan,” he muttered. Her position must have left a greater impression on him than the name she went by: Elfriede von Kohlrausch.
“Now that your own ambition has hurled you into total defeat, I’m just here to watch your miserable death,” she said. Her voice was guarded, just as he remembered, but today it seemed to tremble strangely, even unstably.
“So kind of you to make the effort.” His bland, passionless response may have betrayed Elfriede’s expectations. “Wait just a little longer. You’ll get your wish. I’d like to make at least one woman happy, since I have the opportunity.”
Venom, it seemed, could not be sent out without the power to do so. He felt the desire to observe her face in detail—it was glowing with hate, no doubt—but lacked the energy. From the starting point of his life to that very day, negative emotions toward woman had been cultivated within him, but now they seemed to be evaporating along with the rest of his vitality.
“Who brought you here, anyway?” he asked.
“Someone kind.”
“And their name?”
“None of your business.”
“No, I suppose it isn’t…”
Von Reuentahl wanted to say more, but was held back by what invaded his hearing at that moment. He hesitated—doubted his ears. Why, at a time like this, in a place like this, should he be hearing a baby’s cry?
He poured his last dregs of life force into his vision and realized for the first time that Elfriede was not alone. What she held in her arms was unmistakably an infant of perhaps six months.
The baby had pink skin and brown hair. It opened its eyes as wide as it could, stared at the man who had unwittingly become a father. Its left eye was the color of the sky in the atmosphere’s uppermost layers. Its right was—the same color.
Von Reuentahl heard himself breathing, long and deep. He did not know what emotion this represented. Still not knowing, he asked, “Is it mine?”
Elfriede had surely expected this question, but she nevertheless seemed unsure how to answer. In two moments, she replied, adding another piece of information she had not been asked for. “He’s your son.”
“Is that why you came? To show him to me?”
There was no reply. Whether the question itself had been spoken aloud was itself hazy. Von Reuentahl’s vision filled with the sky blue of his son’s eyes, as if the infant beheld his father’s entire life. In the deepest recesses of his heart, von Reuentahl heard a voice speak to the child.
Your grandfather and your father were more alike than they seemed. Both devoted their entire lives to searching for what would never been theirs. Your father may have done so on a greater scale, but what made up his core was no different. What kind of life will you lead? Will you vainly water a barren field, as befits the third generation of the von Reuentahl line? Or…or will you be able to create for yourself a wiser, more fruitful life than your father or your grandfather?
“What do you plan to do with him?”
Von Reuentahl’s pain spiked, shoving him out of his reverie and back to reality. Dying was a rare opportunity, in its way. You no longer needed to concern yourself with your own future. But the living would have to come to terms with that future eventually.
Again, Elfriede did not reply. Had von Reuentahl been possessed of his usual keenness and perspicacity, he would doubtless have noticed that her expression was one he had never seen before. He was on the verge of losing himself, and she of losing h
im. It was a loss beyond her previous experience, and it was unclear whether she could endure the realization of what it meant. Crushing his final fragments of vital energy between his molars, von Reuentahl struggled to verbalize his feelings.
“There’s an ancient legend about some pompous ass and his pompous pronouncements. According to him, if you have a friend you can entrust your child to when you die, that’s life’s greatest happiness…”
A single drop of cold sweat fell onto his desk. Another drop of life leaving his body.
“Meet with Wolfgang Mittermeier. Put the child’s future in his hands. That will guarantee the best life possible for him.”
There was a couple far more qualified to be parents than he and this woman were. Nevertheless, that couple was childless, while he and Elfriede had a child. The birth of life was clearly under the control of a being either grossly incompetent or bitterly sardonic.
The curtain fell on von Reuentahl’s vision, and his view of reality receded along with his consciousness.
“If you’re going to kill me, better kill me now. You’ll lose your chance forever, otherwise. Use my blaster if you need to…”
When his faded vision grew brighter again, perhaps five hundred seconds had passed. Death, it seemed, had refused to accept him, but he knew both rationally and emotionally that his reprieve was temporary. On his desk lay a woman’s handkerchief, damp and heavy with his perspiration. Self-mocking thoughts became a new stream of cold sweat that ran down the nape of his neck. The definition of a downfall. I’m not even worth killing anymore.
As von Reuentahl closed one hand lightly around the handkerchief, a young orderly came fearfully into the room. His golden-brown hair was in disarray and confusion was in his face, and he cradled the baby from earlier in his arms.
“The lady has left. She…she said to give this child to Marshal Mittermeier. What should I do, Your Excellency?”
The boy’s expression and voice made von Reuentahl smile. Well, well—the mother leaves, but the child remains. Like father, like son, it seems. Perhaps too alike for your own good…
“Sorry to do this to you, but please hold him until Mittermeier gets here. Oh, and one more thing. Could you take down that whiskey from the shelf, and get two glasses out?”
Von Reuentahl’s voice was weak, beginning to fall below even the lowest levels of audibility. The orderly could not have known this, but at that moment, von Reuentahl was turning the final sneer of his life on himself. This was because, with the last powers of intellect remaining to him, he had recognized that, with the approach of death, he was beginning to lose even his flaws. Would he, Oskar von Reuentahl, die in a way that even moralizers would praise as virtuous at the last? A ridiculous concept, but perhaps not so bad. Everyone’s life was their own, and so was their death. Still, at the very least, he hoped for a more beautiful death to come to the very few people he loved and respected.
Still cradling the infant with one arm, the orderly placed two glasses on the governor-general’s desk and poured the amber liquid into them, like melted fragments of sunset. His lungs and heart were leaping within his breast, but somehow he carried out his orders and retreated to the sofa against the wall.
Von Reuentahl placed both arms on the desk. Facing the pair of glasses—no, facing the friend who should have sat beyond them—he spoke without raising his voice.
“You’re late, Mittermeier…”
The smell of good liquor gently intruded into his vision, in which colors were already losing their clarity.
“I meant to hold on until you got here, but I’m not going to make it. Some Gale Wolf you turned out to be…”
Seeing the former marshal’s head fall forward, the boy on the sofa leapt to his feet with a silent gasp. After a moment’s hesitation over what to do with the baby sleeping in his arms, he placed him on the sofa and ran to the desk, where he brought his ear close to von Reuentahl’s still-moving mouth.
The boy hastily, desperately, scribbled down the handful of words that weakly tickled his tympanic membrane. Pen in hand, he gazed at von Reuentahl’s pale, even features. Death spread its wings soundlessly and settled over him.
“Marshal! Your Excellency! Marshal von Reuentahl…”
It was 1651 on December 16 Oskar von Reuentahl, who had been born in the same year as Yang Wen-li and spent his entire life on the side opposing him, died. He was thirty-three years old.
I
WHICH OF THE TWIN RAMPARTS of the Galactic Imperial Navy was victorious at the Second Battle of Rantemario? The chronological tables are clear: “December, 2 NIC: Reuentahl defeated, mortally wounded at Second Battle of Rantemario.” But the other party to the battle took a different view.
“On the surface, von Reuentahl and I may have seemed equally matched. But I had Wahlen and Wittenfeld, while he had no one. On the question of who deserves the title of victor, there is no room for debate.”
This was the correction Mittermeier offered whenever he was described as the victor of the battle. Nevertheless, it was an objective fact that he had survived the encounter, and von Reuentahl had certainly been first to withdraw his forces.
When Mittermeier arrived with Wittenfeld, Wahlen, and Bayerlein at the spaceport on Heinessen, they were met by two men representing the civil and military bureaucracy respectively: Julius Elsheimer, director of civil affairs, and Vice Admiral Ritschel, the deputy inspector general. This was when Mittermeier learned of his friend’s death. His face remained motionless as he took in the news. When he heard that Job Trünicht had died too, he did not wait for them to explain the cause of death before letting out a sigh.
“Let me guess,” he said. “Von Reuentahl did some spring cleaning of the Neue Land as a parting gift to the kaiser.”
Waiting for him at the governorate were Admiral Bergengrün, Vice Admiral Sonnenfels, Lieutenant Commander von Reckendorf, and a few others. When he arrived, the soldiers stationed there trained their weapons on him, but Sonnenfels rebuked them sternly, despite the bloody bandage still around his head. “This is a friend of the governor-general and a representative of His Majesty the kaiser! Have some respect!” At this, the soldiers presented arms and allowed the new arrivals through. It was two hours since von Reuentahl’s death. In his office were three bodies, one dead and two still very much alive.
“Marshal von Reuentahl was waiting for Your Excellency. But, in the end…”
Von Reuentahl’s young orderly burst into tears before he could finish, and the baby in his arms began to wail as if in response. He was so loud that the youngest of Mittermeier’s companions, Bayerlein, took him to an adjoining room, awkwardly comforting the infant as best he could.
Without a word, Mittermeier removed the cape of his uniform and draped it around his friend’s shoulders.
Von Reuentahl’s last words were recorded, but not without certain inconsistencies.
According to the record of his student orderly—whose name, incidentally, was Heinrich Lambertz—those words were:
Mein Kaiser
Mittermeier
Sieg
Sterben
The meaning of the word “Sieg” is disputed. Some argue that it has its usual meaning “victory”; others, that it is part of a sentence that also includes “sterben,” “to die”: “Sieg Kaiser, even in death.” Still others hold that von Reuentahl meant to say “Since Siegfried Kircheis’s death…” but expired before finishing the thought.
Lambertz, who was fourteen years old at the time, said: “I only recorded the meaningful words. There were other, indistinct sounds that I did not write down. I cannot take responsibility for how others may interpret the whole.” He never participated in any further discussion.
Von Reuentahl had left the theater made up of space-time and humanity. The question now was how to deal with those he had left behind.
Mittermeier wanted to save von Reuentahl’s staff officers from punishment, and this feeling was shared by all the admirals of the Galactic Navy. This was pa
rtly because Grillparzer had made such an intensely negative impression that all of their hatred and loathing had concentrated on him alone. For those who had been loyal to von Reuentahl, Mittermeier’s men felt more sympathy than anger.
And so Mittermeier issued a proclamation, declaring that he would request clemency from the kaiser on their behalf, and urging them to do nothing hasty. Most of von Reuentahl’s forces obeyed, but there was one exception. Senior Admiral Hans Eduard Bergengrün, inspector general of the military, committed suicide.
“Marshal Kircheis is dead. Marshal von Reuentahl, too. Meeting them in Valhalla is all I have to look forward to.”
So Bergengrün said to his longtime friend Senior Admiral Büro, who was trying desperately to reason with him via visiphone from outside his firmly locked door.
“Give His Majesty the kaiser a message for me,” Bergengrün continued. “Tell him he must be lonely, losing one loyal general after another. Ask him if Marshal Mittermeier is next. Tell him that if he thinks rewarding service with punishment will help his dynasty flourish, then by all means he should continue to do so.”
No one had ever criticized Reinhard so sharply before. After ending the visiphone call, Bergengrün tore the badges of insignia from his uniform and threw them to the floor, then pressed the muzzle of his blaster against his right temple and pulled the trigger.
On December 16, year 2 of the New Imperial Calendar, or 800 SE, the Reuentahl Revolt, also known as the Neue Land Conflict, came to an end. Wolfgang Mittermeier’s resolution to “end it within the year” was fulfilled.
Mittermeier had already received approval for the postwar arrangements from the kaiser. Wahlen remained on Heinessen with responsibility for the necessary funeral arrangements. Mecklinger was posted temporarily on Urvashi to keep the peace in the Neue Land. Wittenfeld stayed with Mittermeier himself, who departed Heinessen the very next day to report the conclusion of the campaign to the kaiser on Phezzan.
Von Reuentahl’s “treason” did not resonate with what remained of the alliance’s military, and ended so swiftly that it did not rouse any other anti-imperial forces or further rebellion. A long-term occupation by an excessive force would not win the hearts and minds of the Neue Land; the best way to restore normalcy and order was for the imperial military to depart and let the people forget.
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