Ambition (21 page)

“
Stop that!
”

Jessica caught the man as he collapsed and, holding up his head, gently laid him down on the ground. Then she rose to her feet. The captain saw flames of anger burning in her eyes.

“You think that if you’re ready to die for it, you can do just any stupid thing? Any terrible thing?”

“Shut up, you—”

“There’s a breed of people who force their own righteousness on others through violence. They come in all sizes, from big ones like the Galactic Empire’s founder, Rudolph von Goldenbaum, to little ones like you, Captain … You are Rudolph’s own son. Understand that. And then get out of this place where you have no right to be!”

“You whore!”

In the instant he gasped out that word, the thread of his reason snapped without a sound. A blaster already smeared with the blood of two others was slammed into Jessica’s face. Three times, then four, the captain struck her with all his might, the glint of sanity having vanished from his eyes. Skin split apart. Blood flew through the air, making colorful dots all over the captain’s uniform.

Civilians and soldiers alike were staring dazedly at the captain’s frenzy, but when at last Jessica was lying on the ground covered in fresh blood and the captain still stomped on her face with his uniform boot, a chorus of shouts rose up like an explosion, and one of the civilians slammed his own body into the captain. The captain staggered, and then, cheeks twisted with fury, he brought his weapon down on the man’s back. There was a dull
thud
, but it was erased completely by countless cries of rage and footfalls of a crowd that was beginning to stampede. Things quickly escalated into a full-blown clash. The captain disappeared beneath the feet of the multitude.

Soldiers used beam rifles to mow down civilians, but when the rifles ran out of energy or were forcibly taken by civilians, there was not a thing they could do before the raging sea of people. They were beaten to the ground and trampled underfoot.

The Military Congress for the Rescue of the Republic was uniformly shocked when its members learned of the riot at the stadium. They attempted to calm the people, but when it became clear that several dozen rifles had been stolen by civilians, they decided there was no room for dialogue and pivoted to suppression by force.

Large numbers of infirmity gas shells were fired into the stadium. The gas itself had no power to kill, although not a few deaths resulted from direct hits by the shells. Those who collapsed after breathing the gas were arrested on charges of violating martial law and thrown into prison, yet even so, quite a few of those involved succeeded in getting away. Lack of personnel prevented the military from pursuing and arresting them, and the security police were not merely uncooperative but displayed a tendency toward active sabotage. And even if broadcasts were tightly controlled, muffling the voice of every person was simply impossible. Dealing with the aftermath of this incident was extremely difficult. In terms of deaths alone, the numbers rose to more than 20,000 civilians and 1,500 soldiers.

“What do we do if the whole city—the whole planet—rises up together? There’s no way we could handle that. And we can’t just massacre them all, either …”

The members of the Military Congress for the Rescue of the Republic had realized too late that they were a minority that had never had the support of the people.

Bagdash, who had been sedated with a sleeping agent, at long last opened his eyes. When informed of the situation, he sat there dazed for a while and then—inexplicably—requested a meeting with Yang.

This took place just as Yang was reluctantly finishing his after-dinner vegetable juice. Unlike dark tea, he couldn’t drip brandy into vegetable juice. Bagdash, who appeared at that moment accompanied by von Schönkopf, admitted plainly that the ultimate goal of his mission had been to assassinate Yang. He further went on to say, “And the reason I participated in the coup was because I thought it had a chance of succeeding. I can’t stand here and say that it was just some terrible misunderstanding. Your clever strategies exceeded all of our predictions, so there’s nothing to be done about you now.”

Saying nothing, Yang stared at the bottom of his paper cup.

“Honestly, if you hadn’t been there, everything would’ve worked perfectly. You really butted in.”

Watching him pour out his heartfelt disappointment and frustration, Yang couldn’t help but let a wry smile slip onto his face.

“So, you requested this meeting so you could register complaints about me … to me?”

“It isn’t that.”

“Well then, what is it?”

“I want to turn. I want to work under you.”

Yang turned the empty paper cup around and around meaninglessly in his hand. “I wonder if you’re really able to toss out ideology and conviction and turn that easily,” he said.

“Ideology? Conviction?” Bagdash said with shameless scorn. “Those are just expedients for getting through life. If they get in the way of my staying alive, then out the door they go.”

It was in this manner that Bagdash came to be treated as one who had voluntarily laid down his arms and surrendered, and was confined to quarters in a cabin on board
Hyperion
. He had an insolent attitude, however, and complained that there was no wine with his meals. He also demanded that the soldiers who brought him his meals be women—and extraordinarily beautiful ones, to boot. The officer in charge of guarding him got angry and complained to Yang about his attitude, but the young, dark-haired commander did not say the word “Inexcusable!”

“Well, why not?” he said. “I’m not so sure about the women soldiers thing, but I don’t mind if you at least give him wine.”

Graciousness toward shameless and impudent men somehow seemed an odd point of commonality between Reinhard and Yang.

Two or three days passed by, and Bagdash appeared before Yang once again. Yang was in his private room, up to his neck in desk work as he dealt with the battle’s aftermath, planned the next operation, reorganized units, and so on.

“To be honest,” said Bagdash, “I’m tired of puttering around with nothing to do. I’ve started wanting to work. Do you think you could give me some kind of duties?”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll put you to good use soon enough.”

Yang pulled a gun from his desk drawer.

“My gun. I’ll let you borrow it. It does me no good even if I carry it.”

Yang’s reputation as a shoddy marksman was well established.

“I, uh, appreciate it …” Bagdash murmured as he took the gun, checked to see that an energy capsule was loaded, and stared at Yang, whose eyes were turned down on his paperwork. Silently, he turned the barrel toward him.

“Admiral Yang!”

Yang looked up at the sound of his voice, but although he saw the barrel pointed at himself, his expression didn’t really change, and he just turned his eyes back down to the paperwork once again.

“Don’t tell anybody I let you borrow that gun, Officer. Murai and the others like to nag. If you’ll just understand that up front, we’ll be fine. In any case, once your status is decided, you’ll be issued a gun officially.”

Bagdash gave a little laugh and put the gun into his jacket’s inner breast pocket, positioning it so that it wouldn’t be noticeable. Saluting Yang, he turned back toward the door. And then, his face froze for the first time.

Julian Mintz’s sharp gaze was penetrating Bagdash’s face like an arrow. He had a gun in his hand, and it was pointed with precision right at Bagdash’s heart.

Bagdash cleared his throat loudly and showed Julian both of his hands, waving them. “Whoa, whoa. Don’t look at me like that. I understand if you were watching. It was a joke. There’s no way I would shoot Admiral Yang. I owe him.”

“Can you say you weren’t serious, not even for an instant?”

“What?”

“If you were to kill Admiral Yang, your name would go down in history—even if it wouldn’t be in a good way. Can you honestly tell me the temptation didn’t run through your mind?”

“Now wait just a minute …” Bagdash said in a low voice.

There was no opening in Julian’s stance, and unable to move so much as a finger, Bagdash just stood there.

“Admiral Yang, please say something,” said Julian, finally asking for help. But before Yang could answer, Julian shouted, “Admiral, I don’t trust this man. Even if he swears loyalty now, there’s no way to know what he’ll do in the future.”

Yang tossed his documents aside, threw both legs up on his desk, and crossed his arms.

“Future danger is no reason to kill somebody in the present, Julian.”

“I know that. But I’ve got a good reason.”

“Which is?”

“While still a prisoner, he took a gun belonging to Admiral Yang Wen-li and tried to assassinate the admiral with it. That’s deserving of death.”

As Bagdash stared at Julian’s ruthless expression, beads of sweat broke out on his face. Julian’s argument would convince almost anyone. It struck him then that he had been put in an untenable position that he couldn’t have even imagined.

Yang laughed.

“It’s all right. Surely you can let a little thing like that go. Bagdash has been scared long enough, too. Don’t you feel sorry for him? Lazy bum’s sweating, isn’t he?”

“But, Admiral …”

“It’s okay, Julian. Commander, that’ll be all. You can go now.”

Julian lowered the gun, but the eyes staring at Bagdash were no less harsh and pointed. The commander took a deep breath.

“Well, well, you’re scarier than you look, kid,” Bagdash said on his way out. “I’ll be sure not to forget that your eyes are on my back.

Julian turned back toward his legal guardian with dissatisfaction. “Admiral, if you had just given the order, I wouldn’t have let that man walk out of here.”

“It’s fine. Bagdash is a man who knows his arithmetic. As long as I keep winning, he’s not going to betray us. For now, that’s enough. And besides …”

Yang lowered his legs, which had been propped up on his desk.

“Insofar as it’s possible, I don’t want to force you to kill people.”

Yang knew that he was being selfish. After all, he was forcing the sons of other households to kill. But still, that was where Yang’s feelings honestly lay.

They were already into July by the time word of the Stadium Massacre on Heinessen slipped through the netting of broadcast controls and made its way to Yang. When Yang learned of Jessica Edwards’s death, he said not a word on the subject. He put on his sunglasses and hid his eyes from view, and not once did he remove them all that day. The following day, his appearance and bearing were no different than usual.

Yang, having secured the environment behind him, now turned his attention toward Heinessen, the fourth planet of the Baalat system. It was the end of July when he began to move the fleet, and it was clear to see that this deployment would settle things one way or the other with regard to the rebellion. No one among the fleet was able to conceal their anxiety but Yang himself.

at the beginning of July,
an order went out to Siegfried Kircheis, who was spearheading a detachment far removed from Reinhard to gain control of the outlying stellar regions.

Kircheis had been given full discretion over tactical administration of the occupied territories under his command. Some even called him, half-jokingly, the “Backwater King.” Not that anyone would have said this to his face, of course.

Backed by the young imperial marshal’s full confidence, the redheaded youth had worked diligently to subdue the frontier. Although there had been no large-scale combat, he had scored resounding victories in each of the more than sixty battles he had fought. He allowed citizens of the planets he occupied to govern themselves, while doing everything in his power to safeguard interplanetary security among them. His strict ban on the plundering of captured territory distinguished him from the usual brass and made a big impression on the population.

It was why Reinhard had given him the task in the first place.

After reading over his orders, Kircheis called for his two vice admirals, August Samuel Wahlen and Kornelias Lutz.

They may have been older, but then again, there was not a single admiral to be found in either the empire or the alliance who was younger than Reinhard and Kircheis.

“What’s the matter, Commander?”

“Pardon me, but I have received orders for us from Marquis von Lohengramm.” Despite his higher status, the redheaded youth knew to comport himself with respect around his elders. “Due to the discord between him and Duke von Braunschweig, Marquis von Littenheim is currently leading a fleet of fifty thousand ships our way. While this is nominally for the purpose of recapturing the frontier stellar regions, we can safely say it’s really a cover for factional activities. We have been ordered to engage and destroy.”

Lutz and Wahlen were ill at ease. It would be their first confrontation with such a large force in this civil war.

Some vital intelligence gathering revealed that von Littenheim’s forces had occupied the Kifeuser system—and specifically Garmisch Fortress within it—as their base of operations.

“A decisive battle awaits us in the Kifeuser system. When the time comes, I will lead a detachment of eight hundred ships from the main fleet.”

“Only eight hundred ships?”

Wahlen and Lutz widened their eyes at this figure. Kircheis nodded, calm as ever.

Although the enemy had deployed fifty thousand vessels, they were not deployed in formations according to function. Instead, a hodgepodge of military vessels of varying degrees of firepower and maneuverability—high-speed cruisers next to gunships, battleships side by side with torpedo boats—mingled in chaotic disarray. All of this connoted a lack of consistency in both the enemy’s tactical planning and chain of command.

“It’s an undisciplined mob, is what it is. We’ve no reason to fear,” declared Kircheis.

Lutz and Wahlen met the enemy head-on. Rather than take the front line, they opted for an echelon formation, with Lutz pushing out on port and Wahlen falling back on starboard. In the event the enemy attacked them en masse, Lutz was to engage first. In the time it took Wahlen to join the fray, Kircheis would swing his own eight hundred cruisers around to the enemy’s right flank. Then, once Wahlen had entered combat, Kircheis would charge the enemy’s nerve center, deliver a crippling blow, and exit from the left flank. In that moment of confusion, Lutz and Wahlen were to go on an all-out offensive.

“We can most likely win with this strategy—we just need to take care not to pursue them too far in afterward.”

The young redhead cocked a grin at his two vice admirals. It was all Lutz and Wahlen could do to hide their astonishment. As he proposed this formidable cut-and-run attack, a tactical plan that had the commander himself leading the charge, this seemingly mild-mannered young man smiled without the slightest air of nervousness.

One should expect nothing less of Marquis von Lohengramm’s most trusted retainer
, they thought. Once again he had made a deep impression, proving that his ascendancy was more than just a benefit of being von Lohengramm’s childhood friend.

Kircheis’s plan was to take Yang Wen-li’s strategy of dividing his entire fleet into high-speed expeditionary and rear support forces, and deploy it at the tactical level in its most acute configuration.

Von Littenheim’s main battery volley acted as overture to the Battle of Kifeuser’s first act. Thousands upon thousands of striations of light spanned the dark void, bearing down on the energy-neutralization fields that enveloped Kircheis’s forces. Particles annihilated one another, and Kircheis’s fleet was gradually engulfed in a spectral fog.

Kircheis’s fleet held a diagonal formation and advanced with caution. Before long, Lutz’s portside fleet opened its gun bays at a distance of six million kilometers.

A dramatic cloudburst of energy stormed down on the von Littenheim fleet. Explosives etched a mosaic of light as Lutz’s fleet at last made contact with the enemy, and the close-range combat of dogfighting walküren was added to what had thus far been a battle fought with cannons.

Wahlen’s fleet was still at some remove from the enemy, catching only a negligible amount of the gunfire.

Kircheis stood up from his captain’s chair on the flagship
Barbarossa
and cleared his high-speed fleet of eight hundred for launch. They set out in the shadow of Wahlen’s advancing forces, waiting for the right moment to emerge, tracing an arc to strike von Littenheim where it would hurt the most.

Even as they turned to face the enemy’s massive oncoming fleet, von Littenheim’s forces were overtaken by gunfire from an unexpected direction. Commands to return fire flew, and the ships’ bows turned to meet the surprise attack squad. Only this time, beams and missiles in great numbers rushed in on them from the front. Wahlen’s fleet, now within range, had begun its attack.

Mayhem swept through von Littenheim’s forces as they scrambled to figure out whom to deal with first. It was more than Kircheis could have hoped for.

The flagship
Barbarossa
’s main battery launched three successive volleys. Blades of light cut through a row of von Littenheim’s ships. This chain of explosions resolved into a gaping hole at the center of the fleet, granting
Barbarossa
access as it stormed into the midst of its adversaries. Eight hundred ships did likewise.

An enormous wedge had been driven down the middle of von Littenheim’s forces, moving with blinding speed. Von Littenheim’s admirals attempted to surround the invaders, but unable to reckon with their celerity and deft maneuvers, their losses only grew. Kircheis’s fleet emerged from the port flank of the enemy column once, and with that alone the strategy had been successful. Even so, they altered course and breached the enemy’s core again. Kircheis and his eight hundred–strong fleet corkscrewed into the great army’s vulnerable heart.

Chaos and confusion escalated. Once it spread to the perimeter of the fleet, Lutz and Wahlen charged with everything they had. As the mayhem from within collided with that from without, von Littenheim’s army faced certain defeat. Their flagship
Ostmark
was detected at close range by Kircheis’s ships.

“That’s Marquis von Littenheim’s flagship. Don’t let it get away. I want the ringleader who started this war!”

As Kircheis shot out his orders over FTL, the entire fleet charged the enemy flagship, their only goal being total victory.

Marquis von Littenheim winced at the images on his screen as his allied battleships were reduced to clouds of white heat amid the hail of concentrated fire. As contact with his flagship grew imminent, his consternation turned into terror. By its commander’s order, now bordering on a scream, the
Ostmark
shifted course, as if out of madness, and fled.

If I’m going to fight with a brat, I would rather it had been the gold-haired one. That redheaded henchman of his is hardly up to snuff, but he’ll have to do.

Those were the words Marquis von Littenheim had uttered before trading blows with Kircheis.

Marquis von Littenheim’s boasting had been lost somewhere in the battle zone. Before he could withdraw, countless specks of light appeared before him. A fleet of his supply vessels had been stationed at the rear in preparation for prolonged battle. But now, to Marquis von Littenheim, they were nothing more than an obstacle in his path of retreat.

“Open fire!”

The gunnery officer could hardly believe his ears.

“But they’re on our side, Your Excellency. To fire on them now would mean …”

“If they’re on our side, then why are they blocking my esca—I mean, our change of course? I don’t care who they are. Fire! I said fire!”

Thus did the Battle of Kifeuser give rise to even greater tragedy. An unarmed supply fleet was attacked by its own for the sole purpose of opening an escape route. It was a grotesque symbol of the absurdity of war itself.

Aware that its allies were taking flight, the supply fleet slowly changed course. In the middle of that maneuver, however, the operators cried out with shock.

“Energy waves and missiles are rapidly approaching! Evasive maneuvers impossible!”

“The enemy?”

It was only natural that the officers should have reacted this way. Situated as they were in the rear, they expected to be spared from the cross fire, which could only mean that enemies had been lurking nearby.

“No, our allies are—”

A flash eradicated them all before the man could finish his last utterance.

The vessel which had now been sacrificed to friendly fire was the
Passau 3
, attacked by neutron warheads deployed from rail cannons.

In a single moment, a raging storm of neutrons filled the ship, felling the entire crew.

It meant an almost instant death. Only one man, a Sergeant Kurlich, who had been inspecting provisions in the ship’s cargo hold, managed to survive a few seconds longer, surrounded as he was by a thick inner wall and shipping containers.

The sergeant fell to the floor, unable to comprehend what had happened to him. Had the main fleet not been shielding them? Who could possibly have attacked them? Or had there been some sort of accident?

In any case, he had to get up. To go outside and ascertain what had happened. To live and return home, where his wife and newborn twins were waiting for him.

He couldn’t get up, however. A fleck of purple appeared on the back of the sergeant’s hand as he clung to the wall. The fleck grew larger, covering his skin and bubbling until it penetrated his biological tissues down to the very last cell.

At the moment of the explosion, Lieutenant Rinser of the
Düren 8
supply vessel was thrown against a wall. He felt a piercing-hot pain in his right arm just before losing consciousness.

When he came to, he found himself surrounded by smoke and corpses. He coughed violently, losing his balance as he tried getting to his feet. He looked down at his own body and especially his right arm, now missing from the elbow down.

During the explosion, a piece of flying debris had severed it. His muscles had immediately contracted from the suddenness of it all, resulting in surprisingly little pain and bleeding.