Desolation Read online

  Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Volume 8: Desolation

  GINGA EIYU DENSETSU Vol. 8

  © 1987 by Yoshiki TANAKA

  Cover Illustration © 2008 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. | Huddleston, Daniel, translator.

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

  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) | ISBN 9781421584980 (v. 5: paperback) | ISBN 9781421584997 (v. 6: paperback) | ISBN 9781421585291 (v. 7: paperback) | ISBN 9781421585017 (v. 8: paperback) v. 1. Dawn -- v. 2. Ambition -- v. 3. Endurance -- v. 4. Stratagem -- v. 5. Mobilization -- v. 6. Flight -- v. 7. Tempest -- v. 8. Desolation

  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, December 2018

  Haikasoru eBook edition

  ISBN: 978-1-9747-0827-7

  GALACTIC EMPIRE

  * * *

  REINHARD VON LOHENGRAMM

  Kaiser.

  PAUL VON OBERSTEIN

  Minister of military affairs. 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 heterochromiac eyes.

  FRITZ JOSEF WITTENFELD

  Commander of the Schwarz Lanzenreiter fleet. Senior admiral.

  ERNEST MECKLINGER

  Rear supreme commander. Senior admiral. Known as the “Artist-Admiral.”

  ULRICH KESSLER

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

  AUGUST SAMUEL WAHLEN

  Fleet commander. Senior admiral.

  KORNELIAS LUTZ

  Fleet commander. Senior admiral.

  ARTHUR VON STREIT

  Senior imperial aide. Vice admiral.

  HILDEGARD VON MARIENDORF

  Chief imperial secretary. Often called “Hilda.”

  FRANZ VON MARIENDORF

  Minister of domestic affairs. Hilda’s father.

  GÜNTER KISSLING

  Head of the imperial guard. Commodore.

  HEIDRICH LANG

  Chief of the Domestic Safety Security Bureau.

  ANNEROSE VON GRÜNEWALD

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

  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 and wife. Lieutenant commander.

  ALEX CASELNES

  Acting general manager of rear services. Vice admiral.

  WALTER VON SCHÖNKOPF

  Commander of fortress defenses. Vice admiral. Retired.

  EDWIN FISCHER

  Vice commander of Iserlohn Patrol Fleet. Master of fleet operations. Temporarily relieved of duty.

  MURAI

  Chief of staff. Vice admiral. Temporarily relieved of duty.

  FYODOR PATRICHEV

  Deputy chief of staff. Rear admiral. 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.

  LOUIS MACHUNGO

  Julian’s security guard. Ensign.

  KATEROSE VON KREUTZER

  Corporal. Often called “Karin.”

  WILIABARD JOACHIM MERKATZ

  Veteran admiral. Commander of the Yang Fleet’s remaining troops.

  BERNARD VON SCHNEIDER

  Merkatz’s aide. Commander.

  DECEASED

  ALEXANDOR BUCOCK

  Died as the last great admiral of the Alliance Armed Forces.

  CHUNG WU-CHEN

  General chief of staff. Died in battle with his commander.

  FORMER PHEZZAN DOMINION

  * * *

  ADRIAN RUBINSKY

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

  DOMINIQUE SAINT-PIERRE

  Rubinsky’s mistress.

  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 Tempest

  or their first appearance in Desolation.

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  MAJOR CHARACTERS

  CHAPTER 1

  WIND IN THE CORRIDOR

  CHAPTER 2

  THE SPRING STORM

  CHAPTER 3

  THE INVINCIBLE AND THE UNDEFEATED

  CHAPTER 4

  KALEIDOSCOPE

  CHAPTER 5

  THE MAGICIAN VANISHES

  CHAPTER 6

  AFTER THE FESTIVAL

  CHAPTER 7

  HOLLOW VICTORY

  CHAPTER 8

  MOVING THE CAPITAL

  CHAPTER 9

  NEW GOVERNMENT IN AUGUST

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  I

  STARS LIKE SHATTERED CRYSTAL shone upon the golden-haired young man who stepped out of the landcar. The assembled crowd of soldiers roared, and his fair locks seemed to gleam all the brighter with the ring of their cry: Sieg Kaiser! Reinhard von Lohengramm raised his hand to acknowledge the crowd, which roared again. The boy once dismissed as “that golden brat” by the nobles who opposed him was now hailed as the “golden lion.” And just as Reinhard never tired of gazing at the stars, his loyal soldiers would have happily basked in the aura of their youthful emperor forever.

  It was April 2, SE 800, year 2 of the New Imperial Calendar. T
he twenty-four-year-old kaiser was preparing to leave the planet Heinessen, former capital of the now-defeated Free Planets Alliance, for the next destination on his journey of conquest: Iserlohn Corridor. He already held the better part of the galaxy in his porcelain-white palm. He had usurped the Galactic Empire, annexed the Phezzan Dominion, and crushed the alliance utterly. Only a few grains of stardust had slipped through his slender fingers—but those grains were now the last redoubt of the political force that had controlled half the galaxy for 250 years. As long as they remained outside his control, Reinhard lacked the last piece of the puzzle that must be completed to fulfill his staggering ambition of conquering the entire galaxy.

  Reinhard accepted the reverent salute of Commodore Seidlitz, captain of the Imperial Navy fleet flagship Brünhild, and stepped aboard. He was followed by his staff officers from imperial headquarters—around twenty in all, including Marshal Oskar von Reuentahl, secretary-general of Supreme Command Headquarters—and his personal bodyguard Emil von Selle.

  “Fräulein von Mariendorf!” said Reinhard.

  A young woman stepped forward. Hildegard von Mariendorf was the daughter of Minister of Domestic Affairs Count Franz von Mariendorf and chief secretary to the kaiser in her own right. She was a year younger than Reinhard, and kept her dark-blond hair closely cropped, giving her the mien of a lively, perceptive, and beautiful young boy.

  “Yes, Your Highness?”

  “Has that matter we discussed been taken care of? I forgot to check for myself.”

  The young countess did not seek clarification of Reinhard’s vague inquiry. Not for nothing was her ingenuity said to be worth more than a fleet of warships.

  “Your wishes have been conveyed to the relevant parties, Your Highness. You may rest assured that you will not encounter that displeasing sight again.”

  Reinhard nodded in satisfaction. On the occasion of his departure from Heinessen, he had ordered the destruction of just one nonmilitary structure: the great bronze statue of Ahle Heinessen, founding father of the Free Planets Alliance.

  This was not mere conqueror’s hubris. The main memorial to Heinessen, as well as his tomb, had been left untouched. The statue was targeted partly for political reasons and partly out of a cynical solicitude for the reputation of the man it depicted. Reinhard had never suffered from the psychic illness that drove some to assert power and authority with outsized effigies, and his imperial edict on the topic had made his position on the matter clear to the entire galaxy. For as long as the Lohengramm Dynasty survived, no one would be permitted to erect a statue to any emperor less than ten years after their death, or in any case larger than life.

  “If Heinessen was worthy of the esteem in which the people of the alliance hold him, he would surely have backed my decision,” Reinhard said to Hildegard. “No statue, however imposing, can stand against a righteous man.”

  Hildegard nodded, and Reinhard switched the channel of his thoughts from planetside matters to the stars.

  Senior Admirals Fritz Josef Wittenfeld and Adalbert Fahrenheit had left the planet in advance of Reinhard and were currently leading their respective fleets toward Iserlohn Corridor. Both were fearless commanders always eager to go on the offensive, but Wittenfeld in particular was known for his valiant leadership of the Schwarz Lanzenreiter fleet. He had been at the vanguard of Reinhard’s expeditionary force since its departure last year. His military record was formidable, and he was so well-known that his name had a destructive power all its own.

  There was an anecdote about Wittenfeld’s fearlessness in which one staff officer asked “Is Wittenfeld at the front?” and another replied “At the front? Wittenfeld is the front.” According to Marshal Wolfgang Mittermeier, commander in chief of the Imperial Space Armada, Wittenfeld had spread this story himself, but no one could deny that it captured him well.

  Mittermeier himself was with Reinhard, preparing to depart Heinessen with him alongside the admirals Neidhart Müller and Ernst von Eisenach. On the way to Iserlohn Corridor, they would also rendezvous with Admiral Karl Robert Steinmetz.

  Admiral August Samuel Wahlen, too, had left Odin, the Galactic Empire’s nominal capital, and was hurrying through the distant Phezzan Corridor to join them at Iserlohn. The task of guarding the Phezzan Corridor had been left to Admiral Kornelias Lutz and his soldiers, but even without them the sheer size of the force that would gather at Iserlohn was prodigious.

  Heinessen itself would be under the protection of Admiral Alfred Grillparzer. Grillparzer had formerly served under the now-deceased Helmut Lennenkamp, sent to the planet as high commissioner. The kaiser had warned him on the occasion of his promotion to be fair and magnanimous, and Grillparzer had meekly agreed, vowing to keep Heinessen safe until Admiral von Reuentahl arrived to relieve him.

  Von Reuentahl was currently secretary-general of Supreme Command Headquarters, but once Iserlohn Corridor was conquered he was to take command of the entire former Free Planets Alliance territory as its new landesherr. At thirty-three, he was nine years older than the kaiser, and would rule more than half the Neue Reich in His Majesty’s name. Von Reuentahl’s record of feeding the kaiser’s boundless appetite for conquest and dominion was near-flawless, but once the galaxy had been unified, administering this colossal domain would put him to the test on a new front. Of course, no one doubted that he would rise to the challenge.

  Admiral Ernest Mecklinger’s fleet was stationed at the other end of Iserlohn Corridor to harass the enemy from the rear. A vast net encircling the corridor at both ends was almost complete.

  It was fair to say that this vast concentration of force had been mustered to subjugate a single man: Yang Wen-li, former marshal of the Free Planets Alliance, now commander of Iserlohn Fortress and the Iserlohn Patrol Fleet. In the last days of the alliance, the Imperial Navy admiralty had almost come to see Yang as its personification, and begrudging admiration for him drifted both above and below the surface of their psyches. It was difficult to believe how many defeats this single man had handed so many veteran imperial commanders.

  Put less charitably, a galaxy-spanning empire was devoting its entire military to defeating a single man. Officially, this was not only to ensure that unification was completed, but also to prevent Yang Wen-li from becoming the core of an anti-imperial movement.

  In Reinhard’s office on Brünhild, effectively the mobile headquarters of the Imperial Navy, the kaiser was considering some specific future maneuvers when his ice-blue eyes suddenly rose to meet those of his secretary Hilda’s.

  “Tell me, Fräulein von Mariendorf,” he said. “Do you remain opposed to my leading this expedition personally?”

  Hildegard’s opposition to Reinhard’s personal involvement in the operation against Yang Wen-li’s forces was well-known. There was a roguish twinkle in the smile the kaiser now directed at his beautiful and sagacious secretary, but his object was not to intimidate her. On the contrary—he hoped that she would argue with him.

  Hildegard knew this, and obliged him willingly. “If I may speak freely, Your Highness, yes. I do.”

  The handsome young conqueror’s words were evidence that his biorhythms were rising, his psychic energy putting forth new shoots in search of an outlet.

  “You are surprisingly stubborn, fräulein,” said Reinhard, laughing merrily despite the irony of a man of his personality criticizing her on those grounds in particular.

  Hildegard blushed lightly for reasons unclear even to her. “I was under the impression you were already quite familiar with my personality, Your Highness,” she said.

  And that isn’t entirely fair, either, she thought to herself. She opposed Reinhard’s involvement not on political or military grounds, but because she knew that his true motivation was personal pride and sheer competitive spirit. To this might be added respect for, and high expectations of, his enemy. If Yang Wen-li were to abandon all resistance and kneel meekly before him,
what would Reinhard’s reaction be? Disappointment, Hilda suspected, notwithstanding the fact that Yang’s defeat had been the kaiser’s object since the previous year. Reinhard viewed Yang first and foremost as a worthy opponent, and intended to engage him with the highest of honors—along with impeccable strategy and overwhelming force.

  How would Yang react to the Imperial Navy’s movement toward Iserlohn? Would he fortify his position in the impregnable Iserlohn Fortress? Would he advance to El Facil at the corridor’s exit for a fleet-to-fleet battle? It was impossible to say.

  II

  The front lines of the Imperial Navy at that moment arced through inhabited space as a vast dragon of light, one well over ten thousand light-years long. The dragon’s head was pointed at the former territory of the Free Planets Alliance at one end of Iserlohn Corridor, and its tail reached the worlds of the old empire at the other. If Iserlohn Fortress fell to the Imperial Navy, the dragon would swallow its tail and form a loop drawn tight around humanity’s galactic footprint.

  In principle, military science frowned on such lengthy lines of battle, but the strategic balance between the two sides was so uneven that it seemed unlikely to become a liability. Yang Wen-li was in Iserlohn Fortress, restricted in his ability to make bold maneuvers. The Imperial Navy might be stretched thin, but he had no way to strike at their flank. Beside that galaxy-spanning dragon of light, Iserlohn Fortress was a bird’s egg at best. The strategic inequality between the two sides was staggering, and a tactical victory was Yang’s only hope of overturning it. His position was as difficult as it had been before the Vermillion War. But Reinhard knew that using mere strategic leverage to corner and extinguish Yang would not satisfy the ferocious lion stirring now within him.

  “Whatever fantastic maneuvers Yang may be considering, ultimately he has just two choices remaining: advance and attack, or retreat and defend. The question of which he will choose—how he will seek to stop me—is a most interesting one.”

  Reinhard moved according to the whims of the conquering spirit within him. His strategic superiority guaranteed freedom of action. His decision to pin Yang down and wait for his counteroffensive had only been possible because he had already conquered the other 99 percent of the galaxy.