III
Julian Mintz may have been bolder, or perhaps brasher, than he himself realized. Once he had determined that Iserlohn’s forces would not be able to return to the fortress without a clash with the Imperial Navy, he decided to embrace the situation. His intention from the beginning had been to match wits and valor with the vast might of the empire using only the minimal forces available to him. There had never been any possibility of a perfectly prepared environment. This left him with no choice but to push ahead with the combat and search for a path to victory as it progressed.
By nature, Julian may have been more tactician than strategist, and in that sense he was not a “mini-Yang” so much as a “mini-Reinhard.” But Yang had been to him the kind of mentor that Reinhard never had, leaving no small mark on his reason as well as his sensibility. Julian had sought to become a military man, but only as Yang’s subordinate or lieutenant—never as his successor. Iserlohn’s forces were the Yang Fleet to Julian, and this somewhat biased view was quite understandable given the life he had led.
Iserlohn had only a fraction of the Imperial Navy’s ships, and its troop situation was even more dire. Under normal circumstances, at least a million soldiers would have been needed to fight this battle. With their actual numbers at half that level, it was simply impossible to man each individual ship in the fleet. There were limits, too, to centralized control from the bridge.
Julian compensated for this severe disadvantage with a stratagem that was almost too bold. He had a tenth of Iserlohn’s vessels set to autonomous operation and positioned them towards the rear of the fleet’s left flank, giving the impression that they were being held in reserve. If the imperial forces detected the ruse and concentrated their attacks on this part of the formation, Iserlohn’s battle lines would crumble in an instant.
Had Reinhard been in full health, he might have seen through Julian’s trick—in fact, he almost certainly would have. Strictly speaking, it was nothing but a variation on a tactic once used by Yang, who had often used automated ships as props in his magic shows; further back in the annals of tactical history, Marshal Sidney Sitolet had used these methods in an attack on Iserlohn Fortress itself. In a way, automated ships were an alliance tradition.
Because this particular unit of automated ships often feinted in the direction of Iserlohn Corridor or the Imperial Navy’s right flank, the imperial commanders were forced to spare some of their attention for it and prepare a response. This alone would have made the ships an effective presence on the battlefield. As a tactician, however, Julian was greedier than that.
If given the opportunity, he intended to use the autonomous ships as a decoy while he attacked Reinhard’s flagship Brünhild directly. He did not expect Reinhard to fall for such an obvious trick, but the only other way the Iserlohn forces could win was by luring their imperial counterparts within firing range of Iserlohn Fortress’s main cannon, Thor’s Hammer. Julian wondered if he had gotten so caught up in the circumstances that he had made an error of strategic judgment, but to follow that line of thought at this point amounted to deplorable perfectionism—one of the less salutary tendencies he had inherited from Yang.
As for Reinhard, he had settled on a straightforward approach to the battle.
“There is no need for convoluted stratagems. Launch attacks in an endless, unbroken chain until the enemy is ground away.”
Vast numbers, reliable supply lines, and the correct utilization of both: like Yang Wen-li, Reinhard knew that the true road to victory lay in these things. His will to conquer had reason as its companion, and this reason had always prevented his genius from running wild. On this occasion, however, mild unease over his own powers of concentration had forced a note of caution into his tactics. As he considered the enemy’s formation and movements, Reinhard muttered to himself, “Such a deep formation, and with so few vessels…I see Merkatz has lost none of his ability.”
Wiliabard Joachim Merkatz did not care for surprising gambits. Steady, thorough, and unfailingly rational: this was the consensus in textbooks on his approach to military strategy. In his later years, Reinhard von Lohengramm and Yang Wen-li outshone him with their dazzling brilliance, but that is precisely what made him the model which the average officer of later generations would strive to emulate. Few dared to set their sights on becoming the next Yang or Reinhard, and none succeeded in doing so.
Blazing barrages of cannon fire merged into bands of terrible light that scattered organic and inorganic particles across the void, writhing in vast clouds that were themselves like malevolent, living beings.
Iserlohn’s forces fought valiantly, but they were so outnumbered it was unclear how long they could last.
“How are we supposed to fly this cruiser with just fifty-two men? How? Press-gang the spiders, too?”
“You don’t know how good you’ve got it. I was once part of an eighty-man party that had to put away a feast for three hundred. It was for some commander’s second marriage, but the bride eloped with the groom’s son. The reception was canceled and we were left with a mountain of food.”
“You hear that, boys? Forget the spiders, this ship’s got some kind of pig-ox hybrid on board. I bet his stomach goes up to the top of his skull!”
Even teetering on the brink of disaster, Iserlohn’s troops continued to trade jokes and insults, as had been their practice since the days when they were known as the Yang Fleet. As Olivier Poplin put it, “Every joke is a drop of blood.”
When Julian was younger, he had thought of himself as part of this camaraderie, but after Yang’s death his taste for humor and irony had all but vanished, replaced by a painful earnestness. His sense of humor had depended entirely on the presence of a catalyst named Yang Wen-li.
Additionally, Julian’s situation at that moment was, in a sense, the opposite of the kaiser’s. Reinhard, the historic conqueror, was forced to make allowances for the impact of his physical state on his mental condition; Julian, the rebel leader, had to be careful to prevent his mental state from excessively interfering with his physical condition.
Beams of light from the screen illuminated Julian’s face in vivid colors. He had not slept for over twenty-four hours. His nerves had been so worked up that, somewhat pathetically, he had not been able to.
Julian was torn over what to do. The Imperial Navy’s maneuvers were not as agile as he had expected. Their cannon fire was dense and their formations broad and deep, but hadn’t there been more of a dynamism to Kaiser Reinhard’s tactics before? Sluggishness, however, also meant solidity, and Julian was unable to find any openings for tricks to stir up the imperial fleet. With their minimal numbers, the most important thing for Iserlohn’s forces was to avoid being dragged into a protracted battle of attrition.
“Traps are more successful when you can fool the enemy into believing that their predictions were correct or their hopes realized,” Yang had once told him. “The money goes on top of the pit.”
Julian viewed Yang as the greatest psychologist in military history. If this assessment was overgenerous, “among the greatest psychologists” was not. Many of Reinhard’s feared and famed admirals made appearances in Yang’s career as honorably defeated foes; more often than not, they had fallen victim to some psychological snare laid by Yang. Indeed, Reinhard himself had done the same.
Marshal Wolfgang Mittermeier, commander in chief of the Imperial Space Armada, was by nature a master of lightning-quick maneuvers, but he also knew how to control the impulse to strike for momentary advantage. This is what enabled him to unleash explosive force just when the timing was right. Far to Mittermeier’s starboard, however, Wittenfeld’s “goody two-shoes act” (as Attenborough called it) could be maintained no longer. At 2330 on May 30, the Black Lancers that made up the right wing of the imperial fleet began a ferocious maneuver.
Under Wittenfeld’s command, they arced toward the Iserlohn forces’ left wing, tracing pale silver trails through the inky void, descending on them like some vast and ravenous bird of prey.
“Enemy incoming!”
The Iserlohn forces’ operator sounded shaken. It was not easy to hold firm against the sheer menace and pressure of the Black Lancers’ charge, their ships growing larger on-screen by the second. Energy beams and missiles by the thousands rained on Iserlohn’s ships, sparking a riot of explosions; some vivid, some colorless. Attenborough’s orders went out, and Iserlohn’s fleet met the assault with a curtain of heat and light of their own.
Flashes. Fireballs. Howling storms of energy.
High-density cannon fire left ragged holes in the Black Lancers’ ranks. But the damage to Iserlohn’s fleet was also great. And, unlike the Imperial Navy, their ability to recover numerically was severely constrained.
When the intense firefight subsided, Iserlohn’s formations were thin and forlorn, and even the indomitable Attenborough had to order all ships under his command to fall back, though not without a noise of irritation.
A disturbing thought passed through his mind: Was this the beginning of the end? Would Iserlohn’s fleet continue to dwindle until it melted away entirely into the cosmic abyss?