II
With complication and confusion stumbling about the galaxy like competitors in a three-legged race, was anyone living at that historic moment able to fully grasp their situation, accurately assess their circumstances, and see ahead to the future?
Both Julian and Attenborough later mused that Yang Wen-li might have been that person, had he lived. However convincing this assertion may be, however, it is merely a hypothesis. As a matter of fact, the individual who came closest to seeing everything—who judged the situation more correctly than any other—was probably Imperial Marshal Paul von Oberstein, the minister of military affairs. Since von Oberstein had absolutely no interest in disclosing what he knew, however, even high-ranking admirals like Wahlen and Müller were excluded from the center of his information-gathering network.
Following the near-complete unification of the galaxy under the Lohengramm Dynasty, only three entities worthy of being called Reinhard’s enemies remained: the Iserlohn Republic, the remnants of the Church of Terra, and those loyal to Adrian Rubinsky, the last landesherr of Phezzan. Von Oberstein appears to have assigned himself the task of eradicating all three of these to ensure the stability of the empire.
Von Oberstein, it seems, found it difficult to call even Reinhard von Lohengramm, greatest conqueror in history, a perfectly ideal ruler. It is believed that he hoped to instruct and shape the younger kaiser into that ideal. It was because Reinhard intuited this that he joked to Hilda about being overthrown by his minister of military affairs.
Despite what the future held, Reinhard was in good health at that point, and had already ordered von Oberstein not to mistreat the “political prisoners.”
But before any action could be taken, yet another calamity unfolded.
Late at night on April 16, a full-scale riot broke out at Ragpur Prison, home to more than five thousand political prisoners. Lives were lost by the score to firearms, explosives, arson, and structural collapse. By the time order was restored, 1,048 of Ragpur’s prisoners were dead, 3,109 seriously injured, and 317 uninjured and still on premises. The rest had either fled or disappeared. Of the soldiers who had been standing guard at the prison, 148 were dead and 907 seriously injured. And this gruesome main course was soon followed by a series of horrible desserts.
First, Commodore Ferner, who as chief secretary of the Ministry of Military Affairs had rushed to the scene to take command, was mistakenly shot through the left side of his chest by a guard, receiving a wound which would take fifty days to heal in full. Meanwhile, in central Heinessenpolis, reports circulated that Black Lancers were running amok, so that when Halberstadt led the Lancers’ ground forces out to suppress the disturbance, they were intercepted by the military police and halted in their tracks. The impasse soon boiled over into a physical clash as the enraged Black Lancers tried to force their way past.
Ferner’s sound judgment and quick thinking prevented this standoff from deteriorating into a free-for-all. In the end, the military police and the Black Lancers made their way to Ragpur Prison together, where they set about quelling the riot.
Given the position the imperial military was in at the time, the decision was inevitably made to use deadly force when necessary to prevent prisoners escaping. But, as often happens with mixed forces, the pressure was heightened by those seeking to avoid criticism from allies, and many deaths were the result. Ferner’s own injury could be called a byproduct of the same phenomenon. Had he remained in control of the operation, order would have surely been restored more effectively. For one thing, his injury prevented him from ordering the medics he had standing by into action, and they spent three hours waiting helplessly outside the prison. This led to hundreds of deaths and entirely avoidable bloodshed.
When April 17 dawned, disorder still reigned, with fires and explosions blooming across the city as if in sympathy for the rioters. Black smoke rose even from the residential districts, which teetered on the brink of anarchy at one point. Wahlen was sent to put down this disturbance, and he successfully prevented panic from spreading throughout the citizenry.
During this operation, someone actually attempted to eliminate Wahlen himself, but fortunately he escaped serious injury. It seemed that his would-be assassin was using a heat-seeking gun, but the shot had gone wild, drawn off course by the greater heat of the flames from a small explosion near his armored landcar.
Minor incidents and anecdotes like this were swept away by the bloody tide, and by 0940 the imperial military had fully quelled the rioters.
Even during this disturbance, Wittenfeld’s house arrest had remained in effect, leaving him unable to take any action whatsoever. Von Oberstein had ordered that forces be stationed at key points in the city to prevent the unrest from spreading, but he had left the execution of this order to Müller while he calmly took his breakfast.
The riot’s unfortunate casualties included many who had once held high positions and commanded great respect in the former Free Planets Alliance government and military. This was only to be expected, since such figures had made up the bulk of Ragpur Prison’s population, but it was nevertheless sobering to learn that Vice Admiral Paetta, commander of the alliance’s First Fleet, and President Oliveira of Central Autonomous Governance University had been erased from the rolls of the living forever. What was more, during the riot, many of the dead had been left where they had fallen, to be ravaged by fires or explosions—or worse, as discovered by one imperial soldier who saw a wild dog running past with a human arm in its mouth. Unsettlingly, some bodies were said to have been found with gold and silver teeth missing, presumably pried from their jaws by unscrupulous and opportunistic soldiers.
Marshal Sidney Sitolet, who had been imprisoned in Ragpur since the Nguyen Kim Hua Plaza Incident of the previous year, was pushed into a ditch by a gang of fleeing prisoners. The fall left him with a fractured left ankle, but being forced to sit in the ditch and await rescue would ultimately be what kept him alive.
Vice Admiral Murai, former trusted staff officer of Yang Wen-li, avoided the violence and gunfire and walked toward the prison’s rear gates. His steadfast refusal to panic and race about blindly was testament to his commitment to order and discipline, but he was blown off his feet by a fierce blast, discovered unconscious on the ground, and taken to the hospital.
Given how many of the prisoners had once held high positions in society, their average age was also high, making it seem unlikely that the riot had broken out spontaneously. The inevitable conclusion was that it had been purposefully instigated by some unknown conspirators. Indeed, how the armaments needed to launch such a riot had been brought into the prison in the first place remained an unanswered question.
Virtually every senior officer in the imperial military had the same suspicion: that this was the work of the Church of Terra.
During this period, the Church of Terra was always the first suspicion of the empire’s admirals whenever they encountered or were informed of some misfortune. Nor did they see this as a prejudice in need of correction, since such suspicions were more often than not correct in the case of the more severe misfortunes. Common criminals, both alone and in gangs, would often borrow the church’s name as cover for their crimes. Of course, this impertinent misrepresentation often cost them dearly. More than a few petty criminals met sad fates they would have otherwise avoided—being shot, or dying in prison—simply because they claimed to be Terraists. Still, they had no one to blame but themselves.
Once events began progressing toward the restoration of order, von Oberstein rapidly seized control of the situation, but it was Müller who realized that another important problem had emerged. If news of the tragedy at Ragpur Prison reached Iserlohn in a distorted form, it might invite the misunderstanding that the imperial military had begun mass executions of political prisoners. This could undo all the kaiser’s efforts to dilute the venom in von Oberstein’s plans and facilitate an honorable discussion.
But did that mean that the riots were indeed the work of the Church of Terra, intended to prevent any trust being established between the Galactic Empire and the Iserlohn Republic? Müller went to the hospital and examined the list of patients with some connection to Iserlohn Fortress specifically. He found Murai’s name there, but Murai had yet to regain consciousness, and could not therefore serve as emissary to repair relations with Iserlohn. When chaos gave way to order, von Oberstein sent troops under the ministry’s direct control to manage and monitor the hospital, cutting short without debate Müller’s attempt to overstep the bounds of his authority.
During this period, Müller also freed a former alliance figure named Aubrey Cochran from a different detention camp, eventually receiving the kaiser’s permission to take him on as a staff officer. However, this story has nothing to do with the events before our notice here.