Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Volume 6 Read online

  Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 6, Flight

  GINGA EIYU DENSETSU Vol.6

  © 1985 by Yoshiki TANAKA

  Cover Illustration © 2007 Yukinobu Hoshino.

  All rights reserved.

  English translation © 2018 VIZ Media, LLC

  Cover and interior design by Fawn Lau and Alice Lewis

  No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders.

  HAIKASORU

  Published by VIZ Media, LLC

  P.O. Box 77010

  San Francisco, CA 94107

  www.haikasoru.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Tanaka, Yoshiki, 1952- author. | Grillo, Tyran, translator.

  Title: Legend of the galactic heroes / written by Yoshiki Tanaka ; translated by Daniel Huddleston and Tyran Grillo

  Other titles: Ginga eiyu densetsu

  Description: San Francisco : Haikasoru, [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015044444| ISBN 9781421584942 (v. 1 : paperback) | ISBN 9781421584959 (v. 2 : paperback) | ISBN 9781421584966 (v. 3 : paperback) | ISBN 9781421584973 (v. 4 : paperback) | 9781421584980 (v. 5 : paperback) | ISBN 9781421584997 (v. 6 : paperback) v. 1. Dawn -- v. 2. Ambition -- v. 3. Endurance -- v. 4. Stratagem -- v. 5. Mobilization -- v. 6. Flight

  Subjects: LCSH: Science fiction. | War stories. | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Military. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure.

  Classification: LCC PL862.A5343 G5513 2016 | DDC 895.63/5--dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044444

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  First printing, April 2018

  Haikasoru eBook edition

  ISBN: 978-1-9747-0215-2

  GALACTIC EMPIRE

  * * *

  REINHARD VON LOHENGRAMM

  Emperor.

  PAUL VON OBERSTEIN

  Secretary of defense. Marshal.

  WOLFGANG MITTERMEIER

  Commander in chief of the Imperial Space Armada. Marshal. Known as the “Gale Wolf.”

  OSKAR VON REUENTAHL

  Secretary-general of Supreme Command Headquarters. Marshal. Has heterochromatic eyes.

  FRITZ JOSEF WITTENFELD

  Commander of the Schwarz Lanzenreiter fleet. Senior admiral.

  ERNEST MECKLINGER

  Deputy manager of Supreme Command Headquarters. Senior admiral. Known as the “Artist-Admiral.”

  ULRICH KESSLER

  Commissioner of military police and commander of capital defenses. Senior admiral.

  AUGUST SAMUEL WAHLEN

  Fleet commander. Senior admiral.

  NEIDHART MÜLLER

  Fleet commander. Senior admiral. Known as “Iron Wall Müller.”

  HELMUT LENNENKAMP

  Alliance resident high commissioner. Senior admiral.

  ADALBERT FAHRENHEIT

  Fleet commander. Senior admiral.

  ARTHUR VON STREIT

  Senior imperial aide. Vice admiral.

  HILDEGARD VON MARIENDORF

  Chief imperial secretary. Treated as captain. Often called “Hilda.”

  FRANZ VON MARIENDORF

  Secretary of state. Hilda’s father.

  HEINRICH VON KÜMMEL

  Hilda’s cousin. Baron.

  HEIDRICH LANG

  Chief of the Domestic Safety Security Bureau.

  ANNEROSE VON GRÜNEWALD

  Reinhard’s elder sister. Countess von Grünewald. Archduchess.

  JOB TRÜNICHT

  Former head of state for the Alliance.

  RUDOLF VON GOLDENBAUM

  Founder of the Galactic Empire’s Goldenbaum Dynasty.

  DECEASED

  SIEGFRIED KIRCHEIS

  Died living up to the faith Annerose placed in him.

  FREE PLANETS ALLIANCE

  * * *

  YANG WEN-LI

  Commander of Iserlohn Fortress. Commander of Iserlohn Patrol Fleet. Marshal. Retired.

  JULIAN MINTZ

  Yang’s ward. Sublieutenant.

  FREDERICA GREENHILL YANG

  Yang’s aide. Lieutenant commander. Retired.

  ALEX CASELNES

  Acting general manager of rear services. Vice admiral.

  WALTER VON SCHÖNKOPF

  Commander of fortress defenses at Iserlohn Fortress. Vice admiral. Retired.

  EDWIN FISCHER

  Vice commander of Iserlohn Patrol Fleet. Master of fleet operations. Temporarily laid off.

  MURAI

  Chief of staff. Rear admiral. Temporarily laid off.

  FYODOR PATRICHEV

  Deputy chief of staff. Commodore. Temporarily relieved of duty.

  DUSTY ATTENBOROUGH

  Division commander within the Iserlohn Patrol Fleet. Yang’s underclassman. Vice admiral. Retired.

  OLIVIER POPLIN

  Captain of the First Spaceborne Division at Iserlohn Fortress. Commander.

  ALEXANDOR BUCOCK

  Commander in chief of the Alliance Armed Forces Space Armada. Marshal. Retired.

  LOUIS MACHUNGO

  Julian’s security guard. Ensign.

  KATEROSE VON KREUTZER

  Corporal. Often called “Karin.”

  WILIABARD JOACHIM MERKATZ

  Veteran general. Commander of the Yang fleet’s remaining troops.

  BERNHARD VON SCHNEIDER

  Merkatz’s aide. Commander.

  JOÃO LEBELLO

  Prime minister.

  DECEASED

  IVAN KONEV

  A coolheaded ace pilot who died in the “Vermillion War.”

  PHEZZAN DOMINION

  * * *

  ADRIAN RUBINSKY

  The fifth landesherr. Known as the “Black Fox of Phezzan.”

  NICOLAS BOLTEC

  Acting governor-general.

  BORIS KONEV

  Independent merchant. Old acquaintance of Yang’s. Captain of the merchant ship Beryozka.

  ARCHBISHOP DE VILLIERS

  Secretary-general of the Church of Terra.

  *Titles and ranks correspond to each

  character’s status at the end of Mobilization

  or their first appearance in Flight.

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  MAJOR CHARACTERS

  PROLOGUE

  A CHRONICLE OF EARTH’S DOWNFALL

  CHAPTER 1

  THE KÜMMEL INCIDENT

  CHAPTER 2

  PORTRAIT OF A CERTAIN PENSIONER

  CHAPTER 3

  THE VISITORS

  CHAPTER 4

  PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAOS, DISORDER, AND CONFUSION

  CHAPTER 6

  THE HOLY LAND

  CHAPTER 7

  COMBAT PLAY

  CHAPTER 8

  HOLIDAY’S (UNEXPECTED) END

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  I

  “HUMAN CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT began on this planet called Earth. And now, it is expanding its reach to other heavenly bodies. Someday, we can expect Earth to be one of many inhabited worlds. This isn’t prophecy. It’s only a matter of time before it becomes a reality.”

 
; So proclaimed Carlos Sylva, fifth-generation director of the Ministry of Space for the Global Government, after an exploration team took the first step in interplanetary colonization when it set course for Pluto in the year 2280 AD. Sylva was a capable businessman, but he wasn’t the most philosophical or creative thinker. His speech was little more than a recasting of what was then commonly held knowledge.

  Before the reality of which he spoke took shape, however, humankind would need to spill the blood of its brethren, only to drink it in massive quantities like some unholy communion. It wasn’t until nearly seven centuries after Sylva’s address that the political nucleus of civilization would relocate to another planet.

  The Global Government was formed in 2129 AD. A world exhausted from ninety years of conflict believed that purging its worst creation—sovereign nations—would forever liberate humanity from the folly of laying millions of lives on the altars of the powerful. The global cross fire of thermonuclear weapons known as the Thirteen-Day War reduced the major cities of both parties involved—the Northern Condominium and the United States of Eurafrica—to radioactive wells: a morbid retribution for abuses of military power. Nor were minor powers caught in the middle of this carnivorous savagery spared harm and suffering. The Northern Condominium and United States of Eurafrica alike, fearing the other might suck those minor powers dry of resources so that they might continue to fight, launched their weapons of mass destruction at neutral countries. That both sides were destroyed as a result was one small comfort to those few who came out alive. To avoid such tyranny’s resurgence, a strong, united system would be necessary. Without it, the world was bound to spiral into a destruction from which it might never recover.

  In the long run, it was a matter of uniting a complex of power structures into a single overarching one. But cynicism abounded, and some people were less than optimistic about putting their faith in politics. “Even if there were no more world wars,” they said, “we’d still have civil wars.” Perhaps they weren’t entirely misguided, but such rhetoric wasn’t fatalistic enough to make people turn a deaf ear to its warning. In any case, given that the world’s population had been reduced to about one billion, and food production had slowed to a crawl, there was hardly enough energy to sustain a civil war anyway.

  The Global Government’s capital was set up in Brisbane, a city in northeastern Australia facing the Pacific Ocean. Its location in the southern hemisphere, where damage from the war was minimal, made it ideal as a political center. It was also a hub for the largest economic bloc on the planet, rich in natural resources, and geographically far removed from offending nations.

  A major consequence of the Global Government’s establishment was a sharp decline in the influence of religion. Try as they might, traditional religious organizations had ultimately failed to put an end to the age of conflicts that was at last resolved by birth of the Global Government. If anything, religiosity was a primary factor in fomenting enmity and prejudice between opposing sides. Private armies representing various religious sects rampantly killed the women and children of heretics, all in the name of their almighty God. In the wake of the Northern Condominium’s destruction, the minor “Order Nations” defending local authority across the North American continent transformed this vast industrial power once known as the pinnacle of reason and republican government into a wasteland of metal, resin, and concrete, while infecting survivors with viruses of superstition and exclusion.

  In the end, their God did not intervene, their messiah did not appear, and people barely managed to pull the world up by its bootstraps from an abyss of ruin.

  Reconstruction proceeded quickly. The remnant population put their all into projects large and small, building up the new capital and revitalizing wasted lands, yet with always one foot forward into the frontier of outer space.

  As one popular doctrine had it: “He who owns the frontier will never be counted among the weak.” Prior to the Global Government’s establishment, humanity had left its mark as far as Mars, but by 2166 AD, humans had traversed the asteroid belt to build a developmental base on Jupiter’s satellite Io. The Ministry of Space was the Global Government’s most active department at that time. Its headquarters was located on the moon’s surface, where it functioned as the nerve center for all divisions, including navigations, resources, facilities, communications, management, education, science, exploration, and shipping. The vastness of its scale was in proportion with the times, and by the mid-2200s its population surpassed that of Brisbane.

  Brisbane, some said, might have been the capital of Earth, but Luna City was the capital of the entire solar system.

  At first, any terraforming activities conducted off planet remained confined to the solar system. In 2253 AD, the first interstellar exploratory vessel made way for Alpha Centauri, but when it failed to return twenty years later, people started doubting whether their dreams of colonizing undiscovered worlds would ever be realized. The population was still hovering around four billion, however, so the solar system alone promised to provide more than enough living space.

  In 2360 AD, a team of space engineers and their leader, a Dr. Antonel János, became saviors of the entire human race when faster-than-light travel was at last realized. At first, warp travel worked only at short distances. More importantly, it brought about remarkably adverse effects on the human body, especially regarding female fertility. But by 2391 AD, full implementation was in effect. This widened the scope of exploration to the extent that, in 2402 AD, a habitable planet was discovered in the Canopus star system. And with that discovery, the era of interstellar migration was under way.

  With this new technology, however, came the first cracks in the “single authority” system under which the world was now governed. In 2404 AD, even as the first team of interstellar emigrants set out for the navigations base on Io to enthusiastic acclaim, Global Government leaders in Brisbane were butting heads over an elliptical debate: Just how much autonomy should they grant those settlements as they established themselves farther and farther away from Earth? Should they be allowed total independence, abide by Earth’s laws and regulations without compromise, or operate somewhere between those two extremes?

  Over the course of eight decades, the organization modestly founded as the Ministry of Space Navigation Safety Department was promoted to the Ministry of Space Department of Public Peace, which then became Space Defense Command under the vice undersecretary of defense, and finally Space Force. Space Force was of an entirely different disposition than the NCASF, or Northern Condominium Aerial Space Force, which threatened and overpowered weaker countries from the air before the Global Government came into being. Space Force’s intended purpose was to guarantee the safety of citizens traveling through space by protecting civil liberties and economies against any wrongdoing that might undermine those privileges. With the advent of interstellar travel came near-total amnesia over the fact that any army touting an emphasis on peaceful protection at home was inevitably running wild with invasions and offensive campaigns abroad, where its actions ran relatively unchecked by the central powers that were.

  Time and time again, any student of subsequent history will have encountered proof that an army is a nation’s most powerful and most violent organization, that there can be no military groups outside any nation claiming to unite all of humanity. And so, despite a minimum sufficiency of military power, Space Force continued to expand its manpower and material resources.

  By 2527 AD, this significantly enlarged military organization was showing signs of internal degeneration, but a section meeting on disarmament and arms control at the Unification Congress drew cynical complaints from all sides. One such testimony described the situation in the following terms:

  “Are high-ranking military men nothing more than armed nobility under another name? As an example, let’s take a good look at the extravagant life of Arnold F. Birch, captain of Dixieland, the carrier attached to fourth
company HQ. His quarters consist of an office, a living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom for a total area of 240 square meters. But let’s compare that to the soldiers’ living quarters on the level below him, where we find ninety men crammed into the same area. With respect to labor, it’s only natural for a captain to have an aide attached to him, but he has a private secretary (a female officer), six orderlies, two personal chefs, and a private nurse on call to meet his every need. Of course, their salaries are all siphoned from the people’s taxes, but the greater indignity is that an infirm man in need of a private nurse is commanding an entire fleet.”

  This indictment became a target of heated criticism. The military already had enough spokespeople within congress and the press to handle the situation.

  Interstellar travel had approached a ceiling in terms of technological innovation and effective range, and any prospect of limitless development was withering away. By 2480 AD, humanity’s sphere of influence had reached a radius of 60 light-years, with Earth as its center. By 2530 AD, that radius had expanded to 84 light-years; by 2580, it had crept up to 91 light-years; and by 2630, 94 light-years. And while expansion had clearly plateaued, the military and bureaucratic organisms supporting these increasingly futile efforts were growing to gargantuan proportions.

  Even as scientific advances were coming to a standstill, economic injustices were flourishing. Earth had already folded its agricultural and industrial mining industries, staking capital instead to control its more than one hundred colonies, greedily siphoning profit and resources in return. Any governmental autonomy nominally bestowed upon the colony planets did nothing to alleviate their subservience to Earth. A Pan-Human Congress was established in the hopes of alleviating some of these concerns. But while the Pan-Human Congress had every good intention of doing so, 70 percent of its delegates had been elected from Earth. And because amendment of any bills put to congress required 70 percent approval, there was no chance of the colonies’ concerns being fairly represented. At one point, a delegate elected by the Spica star system called attention to the uneven distribution of Earth’s abundant natural and financial resources. He was answered by the Global Government’s ruling National Republican Party secretary-general, Joshua Lubrick: