Ambition (5 page)

The third attack was to take place on Planet Palmerend, on April 8, and the fourth on Planet Shanpool, on April 10. The man explained how the four uprisings were located at points near the surface of an imaginary sphere with Heinessen as its center, and showed on the star chart how they were all far removed from one another. The government would have to dispatch forces to suppress these rebellions, and each of them lay in entirely different directions.

“This alone will be enough to empty Heinessen of military power. With a small number of troops, we’ll be able to take control of its vital points.”

The High Council, the National Assembly, Joint Operational Headquarters, the Military Transmissions Trafficking Center, and other targets to be occupied were named, and the times for the assaults, the names of the commanders, and the numbers involved were all reiterated. However, these things had already been discussed in meetings more than ten times already, and the attendees were all fully aware of the whole plan and the roles they themselves would play in it.

The attendees shared a common understanding and sense of crisis that if things kept going the way they were, the Free Planets Alliance would be destroyed. Setting aside the scale of the blow suffered last year at the Battle of Amritsar, the rapid advance of political corruption and the weakening of the economy and of society at large was spurring on this sense of crisis.

These problems could under no circumstances be left to the current crop of politicians, who traded in political power like poker players laying down chips. That entire lot needed to be purged.

The man at the head of the table looked around at all of those present. “With our own hands, we must purify our homeland of this mobocracy that has spat upon our ideals and reached the pinnacle of corruption. This is a just battle, and one we can’t avoid in order to renew our nation.”

His voice was fully controlled, with something about it that drew a line, distinguishing the speaker from the kind of fanatic merely drunk on himself. To display their confidence in him, all present nodded with equal enthusiasm.

“Now, at present, there’s an individual who is going to be a problem.”

The man’s speech grew more formal, and the other men straightened their posture just a bit.

“That man is Admiral Yang Wen-li, commander of Iselohn Fortress. It’s partly because he hasn’t been in the capital that I haven’t made him one of our compatriots, but if there are any opinions on the matter …”

When the man finished speaking, an argument broke out.

“Are we not in a position to win him over? His mind and popularity would prove extremely useful. We can’t ignore the strategic value of Iserlohn, either.”

“If he did throw in with us, we could take control of all the territory from Heinessen to Iserlohn.”

“It’s the end of March, and you think we can make time to try to convince him?”

“We don’t need to lure a man like that into joining us.”

The voice that spoke those words was the youngest of those present, but it was an oddly sullen voice—one lacking in spirit. There was a slight mismatch between the forcefully assertive tone and the voice’s quality. Seeing the mood of the other attendees dampened, the man at the head of the table opened his mouth to speak reprovingly.

“It’s best not to let your feelings run away with you. However, it’s also true that we’ve no time for trying to win him over. Instead, I’d like to consider this again after the uprising. Taking the astrographical situation into account, it should be Yang who gets tasked with putting down the Shanpool uprising …”

Even using pulse-warp navigation at maximum combat speed, it would take five days to reach Shanpool from Iserlohn. Even if he departed Shanpool immediately and raced to the capital the moment reports of the coup d’état there reached him, a minimum of twenty-five days would be necessary. Thirty days total. In that span of time, they could gain complete control of the capital, and most importantly, as long as they controlled Artemis’s Necklace—a fearsome space defense system consisting of twelve linked combat satellites—taking back Heinessen would be no easy task. Even “Miracle Yang” would be stymied.

“If we can negotiate with Yang under those circumstances, we may be able to convince him more easily than we might otherwise expect. For now, we should act according to plan, and once the seat of power is in our hands, the authority of our new order will be magnified.”

“I’d like to make a proposal …” Just as before, the youthful yet gloomy voice drew all the eyes in the room. “We should send one of our comrades to Iserlohn and have him keep Yang under surveillance. If he starts to take any action that would put us at a disadvantage, he should be eliminated.”

There was a moment of silence, after which voices of agreement rose up from several of the figures. Factors that endangered success should be eliminated.

“Those opposed? Very well, then—proposal is adopted. Let’s expedite the selection of our agent.”

However, there was reluctance in the voice of the leader.

A man who was sitting in the corner, not saying a word, let out a heavy sigh. A sigh that reeked of alcohol. A bottle of Rotherham whiskey was in his hand, and its contents had decreased by about half since the meeting began.

His name was Arthur Lynch.

Malicious grumblings came to the surface of Lynch’s heart like bubbles in beer.
Dance, dance, dance … everybody dance like crazy in the palm of fate’s hand. Whether you lose your footing and fall along the way, or keep on dancing till the day you die, it’s all up to every man’s skill.

Whether he was hoping for the coup’s success or its failure was something even Lynch wasn’t entirely sure of. He had the feeling that ever since that day nine years ago, not even his own future could be of any interest to him.

Until that day, Lynch’s life had never been particularly tragic. He had marked moderate successes in frontline duty and desk work alike, and had made rear admiral right at age forty. People had called him “Excellency.” But then he had made one little misstep. When he had fought the empire in the El Facil system, he had been seized with strange terrors, and after abandoning the civilians in an attempt to flee, he had become a prisoner of the empire. Still alive, he’d become the shame of the navy, and from that day forward had been branded a coward.

Well now, how will things turn out?

Lynch closed his eyes. Beyond a heavy curtain woven of alcohol and ennui, a single planet showed its vague outline.

Back on Odin, capital of the Galactic Empire, separated from this place by ten thousand light-years of empty space, the man who had given him this mission—Reinhard, the young Marquis von Lohengramm—must be gazing into the vast sea of stars, with the keen light of ambition gleaming in his eyes.

It was in November of
the prior year that Arthur Lynch had been summoned to appear before Reinhard von Lohengramm, supreme commander of the Galactic Imperial Navy. This was shortly after Reinhard had crushed the Free Planets Alliance’s invading military forces in the Amritsar Stellar Region.

Lynch had been living in a correctional block on the empire’s frontier ever since his ignominious capture in the El Facil Stellar Region.

POW internment camps as such did not exist within the Galactic Empire. Rather, captured members of “rebel forces” were—for malicious thoughtcrimes against imperial rule—remanded to facilities such as this one, which sought to instill “correct thinking and morals.”

Within these vast facilities, the inmates somehow managed to grow just enough food to live on. The imperial military kept their borders under surveillance, and every four weeks delivered clothing and medical supplies. They interfered little in these POW colonies. This did not bespeak the generosity of the imperial military so much as it did its shortages of funding and manpower. Despite the fact that a conscription system was in place, human resources were not infinite, and it was a fact that the military’s reach did not extend into every corner of the frontier. The situation was such that whenever these “thought criminals” were kind enough to kill one another in their internal disputes, the military was grateful for the trouble saved.

In the Free Planets Alliance, prisoners from the empire had at first been treated warmly as guests. This had been a sort of psyop, designed to educate them through direct experience about how good a free society could be. After the war had dragged on for a century and a half, however, the FPA could no longer afford to put on airs. Nowadays, those taken captive were treated as something midway between ordinary citizens and prisoners.

Lynch and his old subordinates had been living together in the same colony for some time when word of his ignominious actions at El Facil had spread from the mouths of other soldiers sent to the same correctional block, placing Lynch at the end of cold stares from his fellow inmates.

Unable to defend himself even in the face of the bitterest invective, Lynch had fled to alcohol for escape. He had also learned from newly arrived captives that his wife had had her name stricken from his family register and had returned to her parents’ house with both of the children. As he sank ever deeper into the bottle, he dragged his reputation ever further into the gutter, until even those who had been his direct subordinates had begun to look at him with open hatred and contempt.

Into these circumstances there had appeared a single Imperial Navy destroyer, which had carried him away to the empire’s capital of Odin.

Unlike Yang Wen-li, Reinhard von Lohengramm’s appearance had been exceptionalism distilled.

His age at that time had been twenty, and in his slender figure could be seen an exquisite balance of grace, strength, and courage. His gently curling, brilliantly golden hair was longer than it had been the previous year and was now worn in a style that resembled a lion’s mane. There was not a blemish to be found on his porcelain skin, and there was an exquisite grace to his features. In his person was monopolized all the favor of creation’s goddess. Only the flashes of light in his ice-blue eyes made them too sharp, too intense, to liken to an angel’s—unless perhaps one meant the eyes of the fallen angel Lucifer, who had longed to surpass God himself.

“Rear Admiral Lynch.”

With these words, a single chair had been set out in front of Marquis von Lohengramm’s desk, in which the guards had forced their solitary prisoner to sit. Reinhard had been well aware that his voice lacked warmth, yet he had no intention of starting over for the shameless and detestable wretch who sat before him.

After a moment’s hesitation, Lynch had said to him, “Who’re you?”

“Reinhard von Lohengramm,” he had answered.

Lynch’s reddish, cloudy eyes had snapped open wide. “Seriously? You look awful … young, don’t you? You know El Facil? How many years ago was it? You must’ve been just a kid when that happened … I was a rear admiral …”

To Reinhard’s left, there had stood a tall, redheaded young officer, whose blue eyes had harbored both pity and disgust. “Lord Reinhard, can any man of his ilk really be of use to us?”

“I’ll make him useful, Kircheis. Otherwise, his life is worthless.” The young, golden-haired marshal had turned his eyes toward Lynch with a gaze that pierced him like a sword of ice.

“Listen well, Mister Lynch—I will not repeat myself. I will delegate a certain mission to you, and I expect you to execute it. Should you succeed, I will grant you the rank of rear admiral in the Imperial Navy.”

Lynch’s reaction had come slowly but surely. Flames had seemed to blaze up in the backs of his cloudy, bloodshot eyes, and Lynch had shaken his head repeatedly as if driving away the toxic fog of alcohol that lay upon his brain.

“Rear admiral … ha ha ha … a rear admiral, is it … ?” His tongue had emerged to lick his upper and lower lips. “That doesn’t sound like a bad deal at all. So what do I do?”

“You infiltrate your homeland, enflame discontented elements within their military, and convince them to stage a coup d’état.”

For a long while after, the air had been roiled by the sound of Lynch’s unhinged laughter.

“Heh heh heh, that ain’t gonna happen, man. Something like that … it’s utterly impossible. I mean, you’re sober here, right?”

“It’s possible, and I have the operational plan right here in my hand. Follow it to the letter and you will succeed.”

That dull light had begun to shine again in Lynch’s eyes.

“But … if that plan were to fail, I’d be a dead man. I would be absolutely, positively dead. They’d kill me …”

“Then if it comes to that, die!” Reinhard’s voice had split the air like the crack of a whip. “You think your life is worth anything in your present state? You are a coward. You shamelessly fled like a frightened hare, abandoning both the civilians you were to protect and the men you were to lead. There’s not a man alive who would plead on your behalf. Yet even so, you still cling to life above all else?”

His voice overpowered Lynch’s dulled, alcohol-ravaged spirit, stirring something in the man. The quality and quantity of Lynch’s mental energy was nothing compared to Reinhard’s. As he had sat there, his whole body had begun to tremble, and drops of sweat had even begun to roll off of his body.

“It’s true. I’m a coward,” he had murmured in a weak but distinct voice. “It’s too late now to ever salvage my name. So why not just take it all the way? The cowardice, the shamelessness … ?”

He had lifted up his face. The cloudiness in his eyes had not dispersed, but already there writhed in them flames like those of a smelting furnace.

“All right, I’ll do it. The rear admiralship’s a sure thing, right?”

In that voice had been the faintest trace of the spirit he had possessed more than a decade ago.

After Lynch had departed, Reinhard had looked up at his redheaded friend. “If this succeeds, Yang will be far too busy with domestic concerns to interfere with us here.”

“I agree … and with their domestic peace disrupted, the rebel military as well will abandon any plans they might have made against us.”

“Peace. You know what peace is, Kircheis?” Reinhard’s tongue had dripped acid. “It refers to a blessed age when incompetence is not held to be the greatest vice. Just look at those aristocrats.”

The empire was, on its surface, in an ongoing state of war with the Free Planets Alliance, yet in the midst of all that, those who held rank within the aristocracy were alone enjoying “peace within the fortress walls.” While in the blackest void thousands of light-years away wounded soldiers fell trembling with the fear of death, decadent balls were being held under the crystal chandeliers of the royal palace—with the finest champagne, with roast venison steeped in red wine, with chocolate bavarois … There were Persian cats of purest white, blue pearl hairpins, amber wall ornaments, vases of white porcelain handed down through the centuries, black sable furs, long dresses adorned with splashes of countless gemstones, stained glass windows rich in color and light …

Is this … this tragically absurd disparity the true reality?

That was what a boy with ice-blue eyes had thought the first time he had appeared at a ball.

Yes,
he had thought.
This is reality.

So reality must be changed.

Those thoughts had developed quickly into firm conviction, and ever since, ballrooms and parties had to him been places for observing the enemies whom he must someday destroy. After many a night of such observations, Reinhard had arrived at a conclusion: there was no one he need fear among these highborn in their showy costumes.

That opinion he had revealed to Kircheis and no other.

“I don’t believe we need fear any
noble
, either,” Kircheis had replied. It was around this time that Kircheis began to assume a more humble demeanor toward Reinhard. “But we should be wary of the
nobility
.”

At those words, Reinhard had stared at his friend in surprise.

The unified will of a group—even when it amounted to nothing more than a collection of personal grudges against a common foe—was nothing to take lightly. While crossing swords with the enemy in front of you, someone else just might stick a dagger in your back.

“Oh,” Reinhard had said. “In that case, I’ll be on my guard.”

That sharp-edged part of his soul—which like the blade of a narrow sword was too sharp for its own good—was kept sheathed and restrained by his dear friend.

One other had long smoothed his sharper edges and cooled the raging emotions inside him: his elder sister by five years, Annerose.

Locked away at age fifteen in the inner palace of prior emperor Freidrich IV, she had seemed at that time to have relinquished all future prospects of her own. Dubbed Gräfin—or Countess—von Grünewald by the emperor, she had taken Reinhard in from the unstable husk of their father and provided backing and support for Kircheis, the boy who was like a brother to him, becoming primary benefactress to them both.

Now her former dependents, having greatly surpassed her in stature, wore titles of admiralty and went racing through the war zones of the galaxy. Yet whenever they appeared before her, the pair could revert in no time at all to the days of their boyhood—to those bright, shining days of long ago, suffused with sweet, clear light.

Ever since previous emperor Friedrich IV’s utterly disarrayed life had come to a sudden end, the Galactic Empire’s governing authorities had been visited by the political equivalent of intermittent geological upheavals.

First, the five-year-old child Erwin Josef had become the new emperor. Although he was the grandchild of the late Friedrich IV, his succession had invited the anger and jealousy of two highborn aristocrats—Duke Otto von Braunschweig and Marquis Wilhem von Littenheim. Both were married to daughters of the late Friedrich IV, and their wives had both given birth to daughters of their own. These men harbored ambitions of making their own daughters empress and of ruling the empire themselves as regent.

With the crumbling of those ambitions, they had joined hands against their common enemies and vowed revenge. Those enemies were the child emperor Erwin Josef II and the two powerful vassals who supported him—the seventy-six-year-old acting imperial prime minister, Duke Klaus Lichtenlade, and a twenty-year-old marquis named Reinhard von Lohengramm.

In this way, the splitting of the Galactic Empire’s ruling class into two factions became unavoidable. There was the emperor’s faction, the Lichtenlade-Lohengramm axis, and the anti-emperor faction, the Braunschweig-Littenheim confederation.

Many concerned for the empire’s future, or for their own personal security, sought to remain neutral, but the worsening tensions would not allow them to just sit on the sidelines indefinitely.

Which side should I ally myself with if I want to live? Which side is the right one to follow as a subject of the empire, and has a chance of winning?
In these matters, their judgment and insight came to be tested.

Emotions leaned from the start toward von Braunschweig and von Littenheim, but it was widely known that Reinhard was a military genius. Unable to easily decide, they were caught in the vale between their hearts and their heads, desperately trying to guess which way the winds would blow.

“The nobles are all running about like mice, racking their brains over which side will be more advantageous to align with. It’s made for great comedy of late.”

The one to whom Reinhard made that remark one day was the Imperial Space Armada chief of staff, Vice Admiral Paul von Oberstein.

“Unless it comes to a happy ending, it can’t really be called comedy.”

Von Oberstein was a man utterly devoid of frivolity, so he was widely believed to lack a sense of humor altogether. Although still in his midthirties, half his hair had already gone white, and cold light brimmed in his artificial eyes, which housed internal photon computers. His lips were thin and tightly drawn, and his facial expressions contained nothing whatsoever that could be called endearing. The man himself also feigned ignorance of his reputation, no matter what might be said of him.