Ambition (15 page)

“This time, the cargo is human.”

“The lovely young daughter of some billionaire?”

That was more a wish than a question.

“A group of pilgrims bound for Earth.”

An awkward silence followed.

His eyebrows drew together as he took the paperwork and flipped through its pages, and at last he shut the binder sullenly.

“If we go to a place like Earth, won’t the ship be empty on the way back? There’s not a speck of resources still left on that planet.”

“Just take on another group of pilgrims returning from Earth. I got them to pay their fares up front. Unless I make payments to three different vendors by tomorrow,
Beryozka
will be this close to the auction block.”

The young captain tsked and wondered aloud on what planet this so-called war boom was actually happening. Just once, he’d like to go flying from system to system, holds packed tight with liquid radium or raw diamonds, and then decorate his cabin with a trophy reading
This Year’s Winner of the Sinbad Award
.

Reliability, however, was the clothing that Marinesk wore each day, and, naturally, to hear him tell it, it was when one abandoned those dreams of making a fortune overnight that the path toward becoming a truly great merchant opened up.

In any case, Konev was in no position to be picky about the jobs he took. After all, he had not only himself but also his twenty-member crew to feed.

Five days out from Phezzan’s primary port,
Beryozka
encountered a huge fleet of tens of thousands of vessels. Space was vast, but the regions that could be used as shipping lanes were limited, so it was not an unthinkable sort of coincidence. By the time Konev and his crew received a transmission saying, “Stop your vessel. If you fail to comply, we will attack,” they were already surrounded. They could only pray that the commander was someone who could be reasoned with. If he wasn’t, there was even the danger that they could be shot on suspicion of spying.

This was a fleet operating far apart from Reinhard, quelling resistance among the frontier stellar regions. Its commander was Siegfried Kircheis.

The face that appeared on the comm screen wore a mild expression, so, feeling relieved, Konev explained the situation.

“As you can see, the people I have with me are pilgrims. They aren’t soldiers. They’re mainly old folks, women, and children. I’ll understand if you want to board us and see for yourself, but …”

“No, there’ll be no need for that,” Kircheis said, shaking his head. There was sympathy in the blue eyes that gazed at the pilgrims standing near Konev. They certainly seemed poor. Sleeping in simple beds installed within the cargo vessel and taking their three meals from portable rations they had brought with them, they were enduring a journey that required a month just to get to their destination. Using a cargo vessel cost only a tenth of what a passenger ship would have. Legally, however, they were treated as cargo, and even in the event of an accident, compensation could not be paid for loss of life.

“Are you lacking anything in terms of foodstuffs or medical supplies?” Kircheis said, turning toward an elder of the pilgrim band. The old man nodded and answered that they were short of some things, such as milk for infants, artificial protein, and detergent for washing clothes. Kircheis gave instructions to his subordinate, Captain Horst Sinzer, that supplies should be sent over from the regiment’s stores.

To the old man’s stammered words of thanks, Kircheis smiled and told him to take care, and then cut off the transmission. Marinesk, impressed, was rubbing his palm back and forth across his bald scalp.

“He’s a really nice man, that Admiral Kircheis.”

“Yeah, a shame, isn’t it?”

“Huh? What’s a shame?”

“Nice people don’t live long, especially in times like these.”

Konev turned to look at Marinesk, but since he didn’t answer, he walked back toward his own seat.

Watching him from behind as he walked away, the office chief shook his head. He was thinking,
If only our captain didn’t feel compelled to spout cool-sounding lines like that at inappropriate times …

It was still a long, long way to Earth.

Rentenberg Fortress, which Duke von Braunschweig had at first assumed would be his third military stronghold, occupied an asteroid in the Freya system. While it was no rival for Iserlohn in sheer scale, Rentenberg still had the capacity to hold soldiers by the millions and more than ten thousand ships, and was equipped for a wide variety of functions including combat, communications, resupply, and maintenance and repair. It also served as a hospital. As such, it was an important facility for the military of the aristocratic confederation.

Defeated by Mittermeier and set to flight by Reinhard’s main force, Staden, defended by the remnant of his forces, just barely escaped to this fortress, and there he rested his wounded body and spirit.

Had that been all, Reinhard might have ignored this fortress like a pebble by the roadside. However, Rentenberg housed a control center for various reconnaissance satellites and spaceborne radar devices, as well as an FTL transmission center, a communications jamming system, spaceship repair facilities, and more. Further, a large number of soldiers had been stationed there since before the battle had commenced. If he ignored it and drove on ahead, there was the danger that squirming insects might make designs upon his backside. Poisonous sprouts should be plucked early.

“We’ll assemble our full force and capture Rentenberg,” Reinhard decided. He summoned the admirals to the bridge of his flagship
Brünhild
and, with cross-sectional and planar maps of the fortress displayed on the screen, gave each of them their orders.

When he had taken the Ministry of Military Affairs on Odin, a vast number of top secret documents had also fallen into Reinhard’s hands. Blueprints for Rentenberg Fortress had been among them. Its strengths and its weaknesses were all in Reinhard’s hand, and the enemy had had no time to shore up its vulnerabilities.

The one problem in taking it was Corridor Six. The fortress had been built by hollowing out an asteroid, and at its center was a fusion reactor that supplied energy to the entire facility. Corridor Six formed the shortest route between the outer wall and the fusion reactor, and if they could get through it and capture the reactor, they would have the power of life and death over the fortress. However, concentrating their firepower invited the danger of a secondary explosion caused by a direct hit on the reactor core.

That being the case, the only way through was hand-to-hand combat.

Three days later, Reinhard’s forces, having closed in on Rentenberg Fortress, launched an all-out attack. Von Reuentahl and Mittermeier were put in charge of combat operations.

Following close on the heels of the first exchange of cannon fire, the fleet stationed there came racing out of the fortress, challenging Reinhard’s fleet in ship-to-ship combat. Reinhard’s forces, however, blocked their way with a long wall of battleships that boasted superior firepower and attacked them on both flanks with high-speed cruisers. Crisscrossing missiles and energy beams wove a web of death, and chained fireballs crafted works of exquisite jewelry in the black void.

After less than an hour of combat, the enemy, reduced to half its original force strength, retreated into the fortress. Von Reuentahl and Mittermeier followed hot on their heels, and while the fortress gunners’ timing was off—they were fearful of shooting allies—they ducked into a blind spot of the giant cannons whose presence they had calculated from the blueprints.

Military engineers dressed in space suits broke through the wall using a laser-triggered hydrogen bomb, at which point an assault landing craft moving in sync with the fortress’s rotation attached itself and disgorged row after row of infantry in power armor. Mittermeier and von Reuentahl had created a temporary command center inside that one ship attached to the fortress wall and, observing via surveillance camera the state of the combat, carried out command of the operation from the front line.

It was thought that the fortress’s fall would be only a matter of time. However, both of the young admirals were very nervous. This was because they knew that the man commanding the defense of Corridor Six was Ofresser, Commissioner of the Armored Grenadier Corps.

Senior Admiral Ofresser was a huge man in his late forties, with firm, powerful muscles enveloping a sturdy frame. Like a bull when challenged by a matador, he was a man bursting with both physical power and the will to use it.

Around his left cheekbone there was a vivid purple scar. It was a symbol of what a ferocious admiral he was. Once, when in battle with the forces of the Free Planets Alliance, an enemy soldier had shot him with a laser, cutting through skin, muscle, and even a part of his skull. Of course, he had repaid that soldier for the favor—by crushing his skull with one swing of his giant tomahawk battle-ax.

The tomahawks used in hand-to-hand combat were made using diamond-hard carbon crystals. The standard type had a length of eighty-five centimeters, weighed six kilograms, and was swung with one hand. Ofresser’s ax, however, was 150 centimeters long, weighed 9.5 kilograms, and was wielded with both hands. When a weapon of this gigantic size was combined with Ofresser’s outstanding strength and fighting prowess, its destructive power became unimaginable. Even if helmets and power armor could withstand one of his blows, the human inside could not. Even if the soldier still lived within the armored suit, a broken breastbone and ruptured organs would rob him of the capacity to keep fighting.

“If you meet Ofresser in a one-on-one fight, what will you do?” said von Reuentahl.

“Run for my life,” replied Mittermeier.

“I feel the same way. A man like that must have been born for the sole purpose of pounding people to death.”

In everything from marksmanship to hand-to-hand combat, both of the young admirals were first-rate warriors, but they knew just how inhuman the ferocity of Ofresser was. Some would surely say there was no shame in fleeing an opponent like him—and failure to recognize that was either impetuous or idiotic.

That said, present circumstances did not allow them to turn to the men and say, “We really don’t mind if you run away from him.” They had to take Corridor Six without destroying it. Power armor was equipped with air filters, so even if they gassed the halls, it would have no effect. Hand to hand was the only way.

There in Corridor Six, the soldiers of Reinhard’s forces were likely to become a river of blood choked with corpses, thanks to Ofresser and his squadron. An order had to be given, which even for Mittermeier, and even for von Reuentahl, was a little depressing:

“No matter the cost, secure Corridor Six.”

In this manner, the eruption in Corridor Six of combat primitive and brutal became inevitable.

Charge and retreat.

During the space of eight hours, Reinhard’s armored grenadiers charged nine times into Corridor Six and nine times were beaten back.

Among the high-ranking officers of the imperial military, including both pro- and anti-Reinhard factions, no man had killed as many people with his own hands as Ofresser. Born a low-ranking aristocrat, this man had reached the highest echelons of the imperial military not through political power, and not through tactical wizardry, but simply through the sheer amount of rebel blood he had spilled. This man had flooded Corridor Six with the gaseous explosive known as Seffl particles, denying his opponents, and his allies, the use of even light firearms. Determinedly using only his body and his physical strength, he kept on fighting to send one more, just
one more
opponent, to death.

His tomahawk, as though making its own the gruesome desires of its owner, smashed the bodies of Reinhard’s men, reducing them to blood-splattered chunks of meat.

Both Mittermeier and von Reuentahl were men far removed from what might be called squeamishness. Even they, however, could not help averting their eyes from the scene as a soldier with one leg chopped off at the knee was trying desperately to drag himself away with both hands, and Ofresser simply walked up to him and smashed in his head with his giant, blood-fouled tomahawk.