II
There was a growing push toward war with Iserlohn in the upper echelons of the Galactic Empire, and as if in response, enthusiasm was rising within Iserlohn Fortress for a decisive battle with their imperial foes. The fortress’s inhabitants seemed to be longing to declare their hibernation over. Even the cautious Alex Caselnes pointed out that, with the Galactic Empire still struggling with disruptions to its economy and supply routes, Iserlohn could become the proverbial straw that breaks the Empire’s back.
“But isn’t Kaiser Reinhard at least governing more benevolently than the rulers of the Goldenbaum Dynasty?”
“The foundation of benevolent governance, Julian, is making sure the people have enough to eat.”
Caselnes’s arguments were lucid and correct, as befitted a man who had reached the highest ranks of the military bureaucracy in the former alliance. As Julian had no reply to offer, Caselnes continued:
“What good is a modicum of political freedom if you’re starving to death? The kaiser’s economic bureaucrats must be terrified that these troubles will propagate into the empire’s homeland.”
Caselnes was entirely correct. If these disturbances were the fruit of some vast conspiracy rather than a series of unfortunate coincidences, even the kaiser’s indomitable battlefield prowess would not be sufficient to bring matters under control.
“Do you think that the former powers of Phezzan are behind it all?” asked Julian.
Caselnes nodded. “Very possibly.”
Julian frowned. This only raised more questions. “If it is a Phezzanese conspiracy, why now? And why this?” Born alongside this uncertainty was its inevitable twin, unease. Even in its heyday, Phezzan could never have mustered military force to rival that of the Galactic Empire. A guerilla war in the economic realm was, in that sense, not illogical.
However, if the current disturbances were the work of those who had once wielded power on Phezzan, why had they not made their move during Operation Ragnarök, before Reinhard had become kaiser at all? If they had cut off his lines of supply, transport, and information during the campaign, the empire would not have been able to sustain a long-range expedition, however mighty its military. And that, in turn, could have preserved Phezzan’s independence.
Could it be that Phezzan itself was not the most important thing for Phezzan? Could benefiting the Church of Terra have been their primary goal all along? Or was it simply that their conspiratorial preparations had not been completed until now?
In his mind’s eye, Julian saw the form of his guardian and teacher—a black-haired young man pouring a thin stream of brandy into his Shillong tea with a smile.
“Conspiracy alone can’t move history, Julian. There are always conspiracies, but they don’t always succeed.”
Those were the words Yang Wen-li had spoken, after breathing deeply of the scent rising from his teacup.
“With Kaiser Reinhard at the helm, bloodshed that should appear tragic seems glorious instead.”
Yang had described Reinhard in these terms more than once, usually with a sigh.
“It’s the beauty of a flame. It burns others, then consumes itself. A dangerous thing, I think. But flames this bright appear only rarely in history.”
Reminiscences of Yang were always a light in the darkness for Julian’s thinking. He was inexperienced and young, not yet twenty years of age; he was able to act as standard-bearer for the anti-imperial forces, even if only formally, due solely to the fact that he held aloft a candlestick bearing Yang’s name. No one was more deeply aware of this than Julian himself.
Self-reflection, self-control: these were the qualities that had set Yang apart, and Julian had naturally inherited them too. Taken to extremes, of course, self-reflection could become timidity, self-control stagnation, and this was something else for those around Julian to worry about.
“Since we are the ones who actually run this republic, don’t you think we ought to offer a little encouragement to our young leader?”
With an impish grin, Poplin posed this question to—who else?—Dusty Attenborough.
Attenborough liked to call himself a “militant extremist radical,” but he appeared to be in an uncharacteristically cautious mood today. “Those people on Heinessen are really making trouble for us,” he said. “If they force us to attack and it ends in our defeat, democracy itself might be among the losses.”
“That’s not what I expected to hear from Vice Admiral Attenborough, the man who loves fighting even more than he loves women.”
“I don’t like fighting to lose,” Attenborough said frankly. He was a radical, but not an unhinged one. “And neither do you, as I recall. Especially not in battles that smell of perfume.”
“It’s difficult to say when I’ve ever actually lost one.”
“You know, commander, the quality of your boasting seems to be slipping these days.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“You do have a gift for speaking nonsense, even without running a high fever.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Attenborough opened his mouth to object, but then closed it again, grinning as wickedly as Poplin had before. “I can’t tell you how envious I am,” he said. “No matter how high my fever gets, my thinking can never escape the twin pedestals of conscience and shame.”
“With age comes wisdom,” said Poplin, leaving Attenborough with no retort.
Two days passed with Julian still unable to make his decision. The unrest in the former alliance territories now seemed to be accelerating in the direction exactly opposite from resolution.
“Iserlohn has already received more than ten requests for assistance from the former alliance territories,” said Captain Bagdash, Iserlohn Fortress’s intelligence officer. “Half of them are cries for help. In short, their message is, ‘Don’t abandon us.’ ”
There was a hint of irony in Bagdash’s voice. He was another man whose current situation had come from a string of peculiar choices. He had infiltrated Iserlohn Fortress during the attempted military coup of SE 797 with the intention of murdering Yang Wen-li. But when Yang’s life was threatened by the machinations of the alliance’s government, Bagdash had joined forces with von Schönkopf and Attenborough. Even after Yang’s death, he had remained on Iserlohn, taking responsibility for gathering and analyzing information. He had made himself as essential to the republic as Boris Konev, the free trader originally from Phezzan.
Attenborough made an irritated sound. “I don’t know what they expect us to do for them. We have our own strategic conditions and priorities to worry about.”
“Except that right now a single glass of water would do them more good than a hundred strategic theories.”
Bagdash’s report took Julian and his staff officers by surprise. The winds of rumor, it seemed, had been scattering the pollen of suspicion and mistrust in regard to the Iserlohn Republic’s government, blowing it across some of the republicans who remained in the former alliance territories. As proof of their suspicion, these republicans offered the fact that, during the Reuentahl Revolt of the previous year, the Iserlohn Republic had not only failed to join the armed rebellion against the empire, but also permitted the Mecklinger fleet passage through the corridor and enjoyed a temporary state of amity with the imperial forces. These facts had become a seedbed for mistrust. Perhaps the Iserlohn Republic sought peace and survival only for itself. Perhaps it intended to use noninterference and coexistence as excuses to sit back and watch the anti-imperial movement in the former alliance territories fail.
“Even if that were true, could you blame us?”
Poplin was happy to say such things, but for Julian this was not a problem that could simply be pushed aside. Though conscious of his own lack of boldness in decision-making, he had no choice but to think long and hard on it.
If military force existed in order to achieve political goals, was now the time to use that force? Should they seek a tactical victory over the empire at this point, partly as a way to secure the trust and boost the morale of the republican agitators in the former alliance territories? If they avoided combat here, would democracy perish even if Iserlohn survived? If they opened hostilities against the empire, would they ever have another opportunity for rational negotiations? On the other hand, if they sought reconciliation with the imperial forces, was there still even room for that?
All these thoughts were tangled together in Julian’s mind, but an underground stream must bubble to the surface somewhere. After silent contemplation, Julian finally made his decision. They had to make it clear, somehow, that Iserlohn’s military would fight to protect democracy.
“Let’s take the fight to the empire,” Julian said.
“Excellent,” said Walter von Schönkopf. “We’d been waiting for something to change, and now that change has come. Working to widen that change even further is a fine strategy.”
Poplin clapped and laughed. “The time has come, then,” he said. “Fruit, war, women—they all ripen eventually.”
Julian smiled faintly. “I’ve done a lot of thinking about the Kaiser’s character,” he said. “And I’ve come to a conclusion.”
“That he has a taste for warfare?”
“That’s it. This is just my thinking, and it may not be the only right answer. But it’s what settled my mind on going to war with the empire.”
Julian was a portrait of flaxen-haired sincerity. To accept the sacrifices that war would require and pursue their goals regardless, or to give up before it came to that, and compromise with reality—bend the knee to it, even—in order to avoid the effort necessary to improve their own lot? Which approach to life would win them the respect of others?
It seemed to Julian that Kaiser Reinhard’s values were one standard by which to answer that question, at least. In essence, they boiled down to one commandment: If something is valuable to you, protect it with your life or seize it by whatever means necessary. This sort of thinking might be the ultimate reason why human society was still plagued by bloodshed. But what had the kaiser’s twenty-five years been, right from the very first step, if not a life of battle and victory? If Reinhard showed respect for democratic republican governance, was that not because his greatest adversary Yang Wen-li had died to protect it? If Julian and the others could not show similar conviction, not only would they earn the kaiser’s contempt, they would also lose all hope of ever negotiating on equal footing with him. When Julian arrived at this conclusion, his decision all but made itself.
Discussion moved on to the next problem: finding a path to a tactical victory.
“There is one possibility,” Julian said. “We lure the Wahlen fleet to Iserlohn Fortress.”
This was not his idea alone. He had extracted and refined it from the voluminous memoirs left by Yang Wen-li.
“All right, commander,” Dusty Attenborough said. “May we hear more?”
He settled back in his seat, and the other staff officers followed suit.