Stratagem Page 16

  “Boltec flashed his trump card too early. This allowed Duke von Lohengramm to turn the tables on him. I guess he was too eager for success.”

  “A surprisingly incompetent man.”

  The landesherr wasn’t bothered by the implication that he had been the one guilty of appointing said incompetent man.

  “Duke von Lohengramm one-upped him. Boltec is a hard worker and until now has been immune to failure, but he slipped off the last step.”

  “How do you propose we deal with him?” asked the young man, doing his best Mephistopheles impression, but there was no answer.

  The thoughts of these three parties—Rubinsky, Rupert Kesselring, and Boltec—had entangled themselves into a giant helix.

  It wasn’t easy to choose the most offensive traitor among them. One thing was for certain: any one of them would sell out the other two in a heartbeat. That didn’t mean they were keen on selling out Phezzan. Phezzan’s wealth and vitality, to say nothing of its strategic position, would guarantee their present and future. With it they could level the playing field between the imperial prime minister, Reinhard von Lohengramm, and the Grand Bishop of Terra. No wonder they were reluctant to sell.

  Rubinsky changed the subject.

  “Incidentally, I understand that Ensign Julian Mintz has been appointed to the alliance commissioner’s office.”

  “I hear he’s Admiral Yang Wen-li’s favorite errand boy. I wonder just how favored he was.”

  Rupert’s scorn was even more garish than his father’s large-scale reproductions.

  “Anyway, he’s just a sixteen-year-old brat. He can’t do much of anything.”

  “When Duke von Lohengramm was sixteen, he’d already earned his stripes as a lieutenant commander. Julian Mintz is only moving at a slower pace.”

  “Isn’t he just riding his guardian’s coattails?”

  “Perhaps, but his accolades are only increasing. Personally, I’d rather not be the one who mistook a tiger’s cub for a cat.”

  Rupert Kesselring agreed. Looking back, at sixteen, had he not already resolved to bring his father down and seize his status and power? Would he not take by force that which his father would never give him? As an ancient wise man had once said, talent was like a stone thrown in water—its ripples magnified as they grew. Ambition and desire were no different. If so, then Rubinsky was naturally on his guard. But was similar suspicion, he wondered, being directed at him as well?

  Rupert Kesselring turned the blade of his cold stare to his father’s profile but looked away at once. As his father, Rubinsky still had power over him. Lust for power, fear of suspicion: Rubinsky embodied both, and both were worthy of Kesselring’s hatred.

  I

  Countless petals danced in a sea of faint light…

  Before waking, Julian Mintz’s entire body was overtaken by precious memories.

  When I get up, I need to take a shower, brush my teeth, and prepare breakfast. Black tea of Shillong and arusha leaves, with milk. Three pieces of rye toast, cut in half. For spread, butter mixed with parsley and lemon juice. Next, sausage and apples pan fried in butter would be nice. Fresh salad and a simple egg dish. Yesterday was fried eggs, so today I’ll make them scrambled, with milk…

  Bubbles of light continued to float and pop, spraying the breath of reality on Julian. When his eyelids opened, his view was filled with morning, populated with the furniture in his room. Looking at his bedside clock, he saw that it was 6:30. It seemed that habit had permeated the boy down to the cellular level. He could’ve slept for another hour, but…

  “Oh seven hundred hours, Admiral, seven o’clock. Please get up. Breakfast is ready.”

  “Please, five more minutes. No, four and a half minutes is enough. Make that four minutes and fifteen seconds.”

  “Really, Admiral, you’re so stubborn. Aren’t you setting a bad example for your subordinates by sleeping in?”

  “My soldiers get along just fine without me.”

  “The enemy is closing in! If they take you by surprise and kill you where you lie, future historians will ridicule you for ages.”

  “The enemy is still sleeping, too, and future historians haven’t even been born yet. Good night. At least it’s still peaceful in my dreams…”

  “Admiral!”

  Four years ago, “admiral” had been “captain.” Regardless, hadn’t they had that same conversation a thousand times over? And in all that time, Yang had made no progress when it came to getting out of bed.

  Julian sat up in his own bed and stretched. It felt strange being by himself and not having to worry about preparing breakfast. Julian jumped out of bed, anticipating his adaptation to the life of a soldier.

  He took a shower, vigorously flexing his young muscles. He changed into uniform and carefully righted the angle of his black beret. With everything in order by seven o’clock, he still had time to kill. Getting up first always bothered the noncommissioned officers and soldiers, or so Yang had told him, but that was probably only partly true. Four hours remained until arrival at Phezzan, and his last meal aboard the ship had yet to be announced.

  Julian stayed in the allied capital of Heinessen for a mere three days. During that time, he was shuffled every which way throughout this nucleus of the government and military. He felt like he was being led to the pinnacle of an exclusive, powerful society. Not unlike Yang, advancing beyond his age invariably upset others, and so he was more often poorly received than not.

  Among the Defense Committee subbranches were Joint Operational Headquarters, Rear Services Headquarters, the Science and Technology Headquarters, and eleven others, including the departments of defense, field investigations, accounting, information, human resources, provisions, engineering, health, communications, and strategy. In cases where the department head was an active-duty soldier, high-ranking officers like admirals and vice admirals were appointed beneath him or her. The late Admiral Dwight Greenhill, father of Yang’s aide Lieutenant Frederica Greenhill, had been a onetime director of field investigations. Julian was required to meet with the head of the human resources department, Vice Admiral Livermore, to receive an official notice for his military attaché assignment on Phezzan. His rank would be no higher than ensign, and once a military attaché, his status would fall under Livermore’s direct purview.

  Julian stuck to his appointment, but the preliminaries took longer than expected, resulting in a two-hour wait. He wondered if this was intentional but had enough to worry about—Yang’s recent hearing, for one—without falling prey to useless suspicions. The inflexibility of a powerful society robbed human beings of their mental verve and weakened their naive loyalties to the state. As Julian was mulling over these somewhat exaggerated concepts, his name was called by an aide, and the boy was ushered into the vice admiral’s office.

  His time inside the office wasn’t even one-fiftieth of the time he’d been kept waiting. He was greeted unceremoniously and handed his notice and insignia, after which he bowed to the slightly hunchbacked vice admiral and left.

  Visiting space armada Commander in Chief Admiral Bucock was like crawling out of a sewer into fields of green. In addition to feeling relieved about safely delivering Yang’s handwritten letter to its recipient, Julian was fond of the old admiral, as were Yang and Frederica, and it lifted his spirits just being able to meet with him again. Although Bucock was also in the middle of something and made him wait for an hour, this time Julian wasn’t bothered by it in the least. Worrying was one bad habit he’d picked up from Yang.

  “My, how you’ve grown,” said the old admiral, welcoming him warmly. “Only natural, I suppose, considering I haven’t seen you for a year and a half. You’re at that age when you must be growing a centimeter every night.”

  “Commander in Chief, I’m glad to see you looking so well.”

  “What? Every day brings me closer to the gates of hell. I ca
n’t wait to see Emperor Rudolf boiling in a cauldron for all eternity. Which reminds me, did Vice Admiral Livermore have anything to say?”

  “No, nothing. There was no informal talk whatsoever.”

  Bucock smiled, expecting as much. As a man affiliated with the Trünicht faction, Vice Admiral Livermore was always wanting to strengthen his own convictions and saw no reason to curry the favor of a sixteen-year-old boy. On the other hand, he was thought childish for resorting to abusive language and took pride in the fact that he said nothing that wasn’t necessary in the context of official business.

  Julian shook his head.

  “Why would currying my favor improve Chairman Trünicht’s impression of him?” said Julian with a slightly prankish glint in his dark-brown eyes. “I’m on Yang Wen-li’s side, not Trünicht’s.”

  “So you are. Perhaps you weren’t aware of this, but the high council chairman asked for you personally. Chairman Islands is Trünicht’s third arm, and that would seem to indicate his interest in you.”

  “I never asked for this!”

  “I thought you might feel that way, but don’t go shouting it from the rooftops. The last thing I’d want is for you to pick up any choice habits from me or Admiral Yang.”

  The old general smiled as if to a favorite grandchild and explained to him the chain of military command in which Trünicht’s faction was involved. It wasn’t fundamentally limited to Trünicht, nor to the Free Planets Alliance. What had always weighed heavily on the minds of civilian authorities was that ships in territories far from the capital might turn into the commander’s private fleet or military clique, in defiance of central government control. Such a possibility was their constant nightmare. As a preventive measure, they considered using their own authority to keep key members of those forces from staying in one place. They had to be careful not to upset equilibrium between their military power and human resources.

  “So my position here is part of that plan?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  Bucock stroked his chin.

  “And when headquarters pulled Admiral Merkatz away from Admiral Yang, was that part of the same plan?”

  Impressed by the tactical sense of Julian’s question, the old admiral gave a deep nod.

  “Yes, it was, at first.”

  From here on, the government was likely to pull advisors Caselnes and von Schönkopf away from Yang as well.

  “But what’s going to happen then? By weakening Admiral Yang, won’t they just be strengthening the Imperial Navy’s position?”

  The foolishness of those in power trying to deal with situations through factional politics alone, and with such a flagrant disregard for logic, was beyond upsetting to Julian. Seats of power were, in and of themselves, cancers waiting to happen, and so long as men were content to sit in them, would not their limited field of vision and self-interest grow into an inevitable disease?

  Bucock opened Yang’s letter, nodding a few times as he read it. The possibility of imperial fleets passing through the Phezzan Corridor, from a purely tactical standpoint, had been considered. But long-term stability had diluted people’s sense of danger to almost nothing, and countermeasures sat gathering dust, forgotten. From the start, both the alliance and the empire had drafted plans based on the assumption that each had comparable military strength and munitions-production power and that in their present state they were useless and ineffective.

  Bucock summarized the contents of Yang’s letter for him.

  “Admiral Yang’s proposal is as follows: If the Imperial Navy should pass through the Phezzan Corridor, thus preventing an invasion into alliance territory, we’ll have to rely on the civil resistance of the Phezzanese people.”

  Specifically, that meant first rendering useless Phezzan’s social and economic systems through systematic sabotage and general strikes on the part of Phezzan’s civilian population. Via these means, they could stall the Imperial Navy’s designs to make a supply base of Phezzan. Second, they would block the Phezzan Corridor with rows of civilian merchant ships, making it physically impossible for the Imperial Navy to advance.

  “Do you think it will work?”

  “Not necessarily. Admiral Yang himself says as much in his letter. In which case, placing the citizens of Phezzan before the Imperial Navy as a shield for the alliance would be a crime far greater than killing each other in the battlespace.”

  Julian was struck silent by this prospect.

  “The people of Phezzan act on their own beliefs, and if forced, the strength of their convictions would never allow them to accede to another nation’s military force. But if they waited until the Imperial Navy occupied Phezzan, effective and systematic resistance would be next to impossible.”

  At that point, wrote Yang, it would be necessary to start groundless rumors within Phezzan. The rumors would go something like this: Phezzan’s government, conspiring with the empire’s own Duke von Lohengramm, was attempting to sell away territory, people, and autonomy to the highest bidder. As proof of this, the Imperial Navy had stationed itself in Phezzan, and the Phezzan Corridor was being offered as an invasion route against the alliance. To prevent that, they had to topple the current administration and forge a new regime that would adhere to a neutral national policy. If Phezzan’s public sentiment could be aroused by these rumors, the Imperial Navy’s occupation might not be so easily realized. If forced, the people of Phezzan would block it. In the end, even if the Imperial Navy was in successful in its occupation, there was the possibility of the alliance supporting Phezzan’s own anti-imperialists. Of course, such Machiavellianism would never escape moral reproach.

  Bucock shook his aging white head.

  “Admiral Yang sees the future very well, but unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about it. Not that it’s his fault, of course. He has no authority to take decisive action to such an extent.”

  “So it’s the system’s fault?”

  The old admiral lifted his grayish-white eyebrows, thinking Julian’s question was more daring than the boy realized.

  “The system?” There was a hint of remorse in his voice. “I could easily blame it on the system. I’ve come to take pride in being the soldier of a democratic republic for so long. In fact, I’ve felt that way since becoming a private at about the same age you are now.”

  Bucock had watched his own progress for over half a century, even as democracy succumbed to weakness and deterioration, an ideal being eaten alive by cancer cells dressed in truth.

  “I think it’s right for democratic nations to limit military power and authority. Soldiers shouldn’t be able to exercise those privileges anywhere but in the battlespace. Also, no democratic government can be of sound body when its military grows obese by ignoring the criticisms of its own society, effectively becoming a nation within a nation.”

  The old admiral’s words seemed like the work of one revalidating his own value system.

  “It’s not the democratic government system that’s wrong. The problem is that the system has become dissociated from the very spirit that holds it up. For now, the existence of our public facade barely forestalls the degeneration of its true intentions. I wonder how long we’ll hold out.”

  Julian could only react to the gravity of the old admiral’s sentiments with silence. His was an inexperienced and helpless existence, and at times he felt powerless to hold himself up.

  After taking his leave of Bucock, Julian headed for the galactic legitimate imperial government building to offer his formal salutations to Merkatz, newly instated as the government-in-exile’s secretary of defense. But the building was nothing more than a former hotel now overrun with exiled nobles. Merkatz was nowhere to be found. It was only by chance that he happened to run into von Schneider just outside the door.

  “This place is swarming with hyenas dressed in tuxedos. They seem to vie for position and rank,
even in a government without citizens and a navy without troops. I’ll be amazed if they settle on six or seven cabinet ministers. Just hurry up and join the Imperial Navy already, Julian. You’d be a shoo-in for lieutenant commander.”

  Julian couldn’t tell whether von Schneider’s sharp tongue came naturally or whether nearly a year of life in Iserlohn had tainted him.

  “Admiral Merkatz, too, must be working extra hard.”

  As von Schneider so scandalously explained it, he’d heard that Merkatz would soon be granted the rank of imperial marshal by the “legitimate government.” For the time being, there wasn’t a single soldier for someone in his position to command. He would have to start by receiving provisions of capital and old warships from the alliance government, recruiting from among the refugees, and building a fleet from scratch.

  “Do they honestly believe they can rally enough forces together to compete with a political and military genius like Duke Reinhard von Lohengramm? If so, they’re either overly ambitious or totally delusional. I’d put my money on delusional. It’s no fun being caught up in all of this, either way.”

  If Merkatz were promoted to marshal, von Schneider would become commander—not that that was good enough for him.

  “If there’s one saving grace, it’s that, although Lohengramm is a genius, history has more than a few examples of geniuses losing out to the ordinaries. Still, I don’t see how we can win without hoping for a miracle from the start.”

  Julian couldn’t keep his thoughts from barreling over a waterfall of pessimism. Had he said as much to Merkatz, it would have sullied his government-in-exile position. There was no one with whom he could even talk about such things. Despite being treated like a receptacle for all these complaints, at least he knew that von Schneider’s loyalty to Merkatz was genuine. His sympathy for Merkatz being unable to gain a position worthy of his abilities was insuppressible. Just the thought of Yang getting the same kind of position as Merkatz made Julian feel the innermost soil of his heart freeze solid. Whatever the outcome, of course Julian planned on going with Yang.