III
Between von Oberstein and the “Five Marshals” (excluding the absent Mittermeier and Kessler) an awful mood flickered on the brink of ignition. Von Oberstein had just told them that the final remnants of the Church of Terra would soon attack the provisional palace, determined to end the kaiser’s life.
It was Mecklinger who expressed the first doubt. Why, he demanded, would the Terraists commit such an outrage? They had only to wait: the situation would change without any need for their violent methods.
Von Oberstein’s reply was lucid to the point of cruelty.
“Because I drew them here,” he said.
“You did?”
“I allowed them to think that the kaiser’s condition was improving, and that as soon as His Majesty was well again, he would destroy their sacred Terra itself. In order to prevent this, they have taken drastic action.”
The air in the room was frozen so cold that it actually seemed to burn.
“Do you mean to say that you used His Majesty as bait?!” Mecklinger cried. “I appreciate that your options were few, but that is not how a loyal subject behaves!”
Von Oberstein icily brushed off this denunciation. “The kaiser’s passing is inevitable,” he said. “But the Lohengramm Dynasty will continue. I’ve merely enlisted His Majesty’s cooperation in eliminating the Terraist fanatics for the sake of the dynasty’s future.”
Wittenfeld unconsciously balled his right hand into a fist and took half a step forward. Blood frothed in both his eyes. But just before their disastrous clash on Heinessen was reproduced on a grander scale, Müller spoke—though he, too, was struggling grimly to keep himself under control.
“Our first task is to obliterate the Terraists. If our leadership is divided, we play directly into their wretched hands. Let us work together under the direction of Admiral Kessler.”
And so from 2000 to 2200, as the summer storm raged, the provisional palace waged the gravest of battles against enemies both within and without its walls. This battle was carried out in near silence, to avoid disturbing the kaiser on the third floor. The storm had rendered the mechanical security systems useless, so Kessler’s subordinates crawled through the wind and rain and mud searching for intruders. They shot the first one dead at 2015.
Julian and the others were waiting in a room in the west wing of the ground floor, but they could not pretend that the matter did not concern them.
“Perhaps we ought to thank the Terraists. Shared hatred of their church has led the Galactic Empire and democracy to discover a new road to coexistence…”
Julian was, of course, speaking ironically. His true feelings were quite different. The Terraists had assassinated Yang Wen-li, making them—and their leader in particular—his sworn enemy. In order to offer some assistance to the Imperial Navy, Julian, Attenborough, and Poplin stepped into the corridor, leaving Karin in the room.
“Fighting…the Church of Terra…on Phezzan…to protect…the kaiser,” said Poplin. “You know that game where you cut up several different sentences and rearrange the fragments? That’s what this reminds me of. Even just fifty days ago, I never would have imagined that one day I’d be in a place like this doing what we’re about to do. One thing about life—it never gets boring.”
Julian agreed with Poplin’s musings, but his interest was quickly drawn in a different direction. Dusty Attenborough had spotted a man dressed in black crumpled in a corner of the corridor. It seemed the man had managed to run there after being shot, before expiring from his wounds. A blaster glinted dully in his damp, muddy, bloody hand.
“I’ll just borrow that,” said Attenborough. “We won’t get anywhere without a weapon.”
As Attenborough took the blaster from the dead man’s hand, the lights in the corridor went out. At once, the three of them instinctively flattened themselves against the wall. Elsewhere in the palace, beams of light flashed and footsteps pounded. Their eyes were just growing accustomed to the dark when a man who was clearly not from the Imperial Navy appeared in front of them. A beam of light erupted from the blaster in Attenborough’s hand, piercing the man through the chest. He collapsed onto the floor.
This was not, perhaps, so much because Attenborough was a crack shot as because the Terraist had run into the blaster bolt. In any case, another intruder had been felled, and Julian’s party gained another weapon.
At this point, the lights came back on—perhaps the emergency generator had been activated. As the wind howled and lightning rumbled, imperial troops continued their desperate battle with the Terraists both inside and outside the provisional palace’s walls.
The sound of a small explosion assailed Julian’s eardrums. He gave it little thought, but it was a blast that would have historical repercussions. It was from a primitive explosive device that had detonated in a room on the second floor overlooking the inner garden, and a flying piece of shrapnel had torn von Oberstein open from his stomach to his chest.
It was 2025.
After the explosion, the Terraists moved around to the west wing of the building and tried to escape into the night, looking like shadow puppets against the flickering lightning. A thin beam of light seared horizontally through the darkness and falling rain, and one of the Terraists fell, arms spread wide. The other men tried to change direction, splashing flecks of mud.
“Where do you think you’re going, Terraists?”
Blaster fire concentrated on the source of that youthful voice. A pillar on a terrace screamed as fragments of marble flew and glass shattered.
Julian rolled across that terrace once, twice, and then pulled the trigger twice the instant he stopped moving. Bolts erupted from his blaster, and two more Terraists collapsed with low groans. They rolled across the ground, sending mud and blood flying, then twitched slightly before falling still.
The third and last man spun on the spot and tried to run, but Attenborough stepped out in front of him. The man changed direction again, but ran into Poplin, whose eyes gleamed with even greater menace than Julian’s. The darkness and the rain formed a double curtain, enclosing them in another world.