I
THAT DAY, JUNE 1, SE 801, year 3 of the New Imperial Calendar, marked precisely one year since Yang Wen-li’s assassination. In the sense that every day of the year is the anniversary of someone’s death, this was nothing more than coincidence, but it surely had a deep emotional effect on the leaders of both forces currently battling in the Shiva Stellar Region.
Not long after midnight, Senior Admiral Mecklinger, in his capacity as chief advisor to Imperial Headquarters, had Marshal Mittermeier and Senior Admiral Müller brought to the fleet flagship Brünhild. Just as the Iserlohn forces had found, the unusual quagmire of this battle made it possible for key commanders to confer in this way, though even so, Wittenfeld and von Eisenach could not abandon the left and right wings. Müller, however, was in command of the rear and had not yet joined the battle proper, while Mittermeier was the only imperial marshal who served in actual combat.
“Variable Fulminant Collagen Disease.” It was the first time the name of the kaiser’s illness had been revealed to the imperial military leadership. Its ominous ring left Mittermeier, Müller, and Mecklinger speechless, exchanging glances with each other. Each man saw what he himself felt reflected in his colleagues’ faces: an unease that was all too close to terror.
“What does ‘variable’ mean, specifically? Let’s start with that.”
Mittermeier lowered his voice without realizing it as he spoke to the physician. He knew that an explanation would make no difference to anything, but he wanted at least to understand what Reinhard’s condition was and how it might be treated. His voice shook with emotion at the thought of the kaiser laid low by illness just as he entered his time of greatest flourishing, a new wife and son by his side.
The physician’s response was the polar opposite of clarity. After questioning him exhaustively, the admirals established that Reinhard was suffering from a disease of the connective tissue, a rare one that had not been seen before; that repeated bouts of fever were gradually wearing him down; that even the name of the condition was tentative; and, of course, that no regimen of treatment had yet been established. In short, the exchange did not relieve one milligram of their unease.
“Surely you do not mean to say that the malady is untreatable.”
Combined with the gleam in Mittermeier’s and Müller’s eyes, Mecklinger’s quiet voice was so threatening that the medic’s cardiopulmonary functions faltered.
“I-I do not know. Without further research—”
“Research?!” Müller shouted. For all his famed geniality of character, even he could lose his temper. He took a step forward, his light brown eyes blazing. The physician cringed, falling two steps back.
“Müller, no.” The Gale Wolf restrained the Iron Wall, taking him by one arm. By nature, Mittermeier was the more volatile one, but because his younger colleague had erupted first he was forced to be the voice of reason.
Then, from behind the screen that shielded his sickbed from prying eyes, the voice of the kaiser was heard.
“Do not blame the physicians. I was no model patient, and I am sure they found me frustrating to deal with.”
The admirals stepped around the screen and saw Reinhard sitting up in bed wearing a medical gown that Emil von Salle had helped him slip over his shoulders. He turned his ice-blue gaze toward his trusted officers.
“If doctors were all-powerful, no one would die of illness at all. I expected no more of them than this to begin with. Do not blame them.”
His words were less caustic than simply cruel, but he was not conscious of this. His mind was on more important matters than the faults of physicians. The several seconds of silence that followed bore down on the nerves of those assembled in the room with half the weight of eternity.
“How much longer will I live?”
No question could have been graver. The physician was caught in the kaiser’s intense gaze, as well as the eyes of the admirals, who no longer even seemed to breathe. He hung his head, unable to answer.
“You cannot even tell me that?”
This time, there was clear malice in the kaiser’s voice, but he spared not another glance for the doctor, whose terror and awe had pushed down on his neck until he prostrated himself before the kaiser. For a moment, the kaiser had put the circumstances his fleet faced, along with the silent stares of his staff officers, outside his consciousness.
Reinhard did not fear death, but the prospect of expiring in his sickbed rather than on the battlefield did come as a surprise to him, with an emotional resonance something like disappointment. Unlike Rudolf von Goldenbaum, Reinhard had never wished to live forever. He was still only twenty-five years old, barely a quarter of the way through a medically average life span, but he had already confronted death many times. The idea of rotting away, inert, repulsed him, but it had never been accompanied by realistic fear; there had always been too many barriers to that.
He dismissed the useless physician, gave Mittermeier temporary authority over the fleet, and decided to sleep for a time. Maintaining his strained lines of thought had been enormously draining for him physically.
Not five minutes later, a report arrived from the bridge.
“The enemy has begun acting unusually. They seem to be preparing to flee in the direction of the Iserlohn Corridor. Requesting orders.”
Mittermeier sighed with frustration and ran his hand through his honey-colored hair, fighting back the urge to yell Now is not the time!
“If they want to go home, let them.”
It would be an unexpected stroke of good fortune—we are busy with other things, he started to say, but then thought better of it. If the Imperial Navy did not show at least some sign of life, the Iserlohn camp might suspect something.
“Wait,” he said. “Wittenfeld’s still hungry for more combat. Let him give chase. We wouldn’t want him to end the battle unsatisfied.”
Mittermeier did not mean to single Wittenfeld out or show him disrespect. Everyone had their own responsibilities, and everyone had their appropriate stations. They could not let the enemy simply slip away, so there was nothing wrong with allowing the commander who never tired of battle to harass them.
When Wittenfeld received these orders, he quickly roused his subordinates—who were also tiring of their enforced self-restraint—and set a course that would take them in a clockwise arc. The speed of his fleet’s advance and the skill with which he cut off the enemy’s retreat to Iserlohn Corridor were, as usual, extraordinary. If Julian had truly been planning to fall back to Iserlohn, the Black Lancers would have destroyed the fleet utterly.
“The kaiser’s illness must be serious,” he said.
The Imperial Navy’s reaction allowed Julian no other interpretation. The empire’s top battlefield commanders were men of exceptional ability, and yet their reaction had been entirely within the bounds of what Julian himself had expected. This would not have been the case unless the situation on the imperial side was abnormally grave.
As his certainty grew, the melancholy shadow cast on his heart darkened. He had lost Yang Wen-li exactly a year ago; how dimmed the galaxy’s luster would be if this year saw Reinhard von Lohengramm disappear beyond the horizon of history!
But perhaps that would be for the best. The season of turmoil would pass, and with it the need for the hero, the genius. Accommodation and cooperation and order would come to be prized above fierce individuality. “Better the wisdom of the crowd than that of the genius,” as Yang Wen-li had said. And there were Kaiser Reinhard’s words, too: “Peace means an age of such good fortune that even incompetence is no vice.”
But before that age could arrive, Julian had to meet with Reinhard personally. If the kaiser’s illness was severe, there were things they must discuss before his vital energy and reason burned out. They must build the kind of framework for coexistence and cultural awakening that had not been permitted during the Goldenbaum Dynasty, and ensure that peace and unity did not sour into isolation, self-righteousness, and stagnation—or, if such were inevitable, at least to combine their wisdom to delay it as long as possible. With Reinhard as negotiating partner, Julian thought, all this might be possible. And he wanted the chance to learn whether he was correct.
A sudden change was seen in the movements of the former alliance fleet. Not long after 0100, it stopped its forward advance—even stopped intercepting enemy vessels—and began moving toward Iserlohn Corridor. Merkatz and Attenborough had pooled their creativity to come up with a finely crafted maneuver that drew in Wittenfeld’s front line, disrupting his forces’ formation. The situation intensified by the minute, and the Black Lancers began a pointless engagement with Iserlohn’s autonomous vessels. It ended with the vessels’ self-destruction at 0140, throwing the Black Lancers into disarray.
“Damn it! How could I let them mislead me like that?”
Regret flashed across Mittermeier’s gray eyes when he read the report. For all his justified renown, he had been so shaken by Reinhard’s illness that he had failed to pay close enough attention to the Iserlohn fleet’s trickery. He had fallen for their decoy, hook, line, and sinker, and all he had managed to do was thin out the formation surrounding Brünhild.
Then came the shock. Brünhild suddenly made a rapid turn. Beams fired wildly from a handful of Iserlohn ships that had managed to slip through the Empire’s front line defenses during the confusion. The energy-neutralization field protecting Brünhild’s fair skin flared with dazzling luminescence. The imperial ships accompanying this white queen prepared to return fire, but then hesitated. The thought of a beam or missile going astray and striking Brünhild instead of the enemy was enough to make them hold their fire.
The assault ship Istria seized the opening. Braving a wall of U-238 rounds from Brünhild herself, she slammed into the imperial flagship’s underside. By the time the dull tremors died down, powerful electromagnets held Istria tight against Brünhild’s hull, and caustic oxidizing agents had opened holes in the two walls that separated the ships.
It had been six years since Brünhild was constructed and brought into service as Reinhard’s flagship, but this was the first time that the beautiful maiden’s fair skin had been marred by the enemy.
The time was 0155.