Stratagem Read online

  “My, our little ensign has quite the imagination. The Imperial Navy, of all things!”

  The man’s voice undulated with laughter.

  “Are you saying the Imperial Navy will pass through the Phezzan Corridor and invade alliance territory? No, that would make for a great story, but…”

  The man was getting preachy.

  “Isn’t that just a little too far-fetched? The Phezzan Corridor is a veritable ocean of peace. Only passenger and merchant ships sail through there. Any vessel flying a military flag would never get very far.”

  “Who decides that?” asked Julian with an unbefitting lack of civility.

  “Who decides?” asked the man in return, trying to laugh but failing.

  The others around them became aware that Julian had raised the question in earnest. Standing amid all those stares, Julian raised his voice to be heard.

  “If the people established that law, I think those same people could also revoke it. Given the way Duke Reinhard von Lohengramm of the empire operates, I don’t see him following the old customs. I don’t know that any reigning emperor has ever defected from his homeland.”

  His audience was stunned.

  “Does not Duke von Lohengramm calmly destroy tradition and unwritten laws to command and conquer? I doubt anyone would argue otherwise.”

  Everyone was talking quietly among themselves. Even if there was opposition to Julian’s remarks, no one could voice it.

  “But let’s say Duke von Lohengramm does harbor such ambitions. I doubt the people of Phezzan would sell him their pride so easily.”

  Behind his air of nonchalance, Julian’s heart was trembling. Having no idea how his own provocations would be received, he was swimming in dark waters.

  A trim young man engaging in friendly chatter with a nearby group cast a sharp glance at the young guest of honor. Such a keen-witted boy, thought the landesherr’s aide, Rupert Kesselring. Nonetheless, it was strange for the boy to have derived such a well-formed conclusion on his own. Yang Wen-li was most certainly behind this. He bowed curtly to his fellow guests and joined the circle of people gathering around Julian. Not a minute later, he was standing in front of the boy to grab the reins of this conversation.

  “Even so, Phezzan selling itself to the empire is quite a daring conjecture, isn’t it, Ensign Mintz?”

  “Is it really? I don’t think that independence, even formal independence, is Phezzan’s highest priority.”

  “But it’s close to the highest. You mustn’t underestimate that, Ensign Mintz.”

  The way Rupert Kesselring put emphasis on Julian’s name gave him the chills. His scornful superiority billowed in the air, seeming almost to blow Julian’s voluminous bangs.

  There was seven years’ difference between Kesselring and Julian, but an even bigger gap besides—not of intelligence but of independence. As Kesselring saw it, Julian had yet to take a single step off the palm of Yang’s hand.

  Thankfully, Captain Viola came rushing in with his booming, classical voice to dispel this noxious atmosphere.

  “Ensign Mintz, you came here to be welcomed, not to argue. Have you forgotten your place? My apologies, everyone. Please excuse him. I’m afraid he’s let his youthful ardor get the better of him.”

  Sometimes even this kind of snobbery was effective. The music played on, and vacant conversations bubbled once more above the attendees.

  V

  Rupert Kesselring heaved a sigh in the driver’s seat of his landcar. His breath was warm more from the alcohol flowing in his veins than as a reflection of his frustration. The car’s interior was dim, illuminated only by the light coming from the four-centimeter-square screen of his visiphone, on which the face of the bald, vigorous man who’d been listening to Kesselring’s account of the party’s progress still glowed: Landesherr Rubinsky.

  “All of which can only mean that Yang Wen-li has probably seen through the Imperial Navy’s strategic plans. What now?”

  “Even if that’s true, there’s nothing he can do about it.”

  “Isn’t there?”

  Kesselring feigned mockery but was having trouble picking out the fly of suspicion from his mental soup. Ensign Julian Mintz wouldn’t present a problem, but he wasn’t so thickheaded and presumptuous as to think he could turn his back on Yang Wen-li for a moment.

  “Nevertheless, that boy certainly spouted some choice words to the people at that party. Sure, they’re all drunk, but I wonder how many of them will remember it in the morning. And if their interest should turn into political speculation, what then?”

  “It’s too late. Whatever their doubts might be, there’s no time to act on them. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  Switching off the visiphone, Rupert Kesselring kept his eyes fixed on the cloudy screen, muttering to himself, “Even if I am worried, it’s not about you.”

  Getting out of his landcar at Coburg Street, Rupert Kesselring briskly entered an old building. A genderless mechanical voice confirmed his identity. The bare concrete steps leading underground were steep, but his perfectly controlled pace kept him from stumbling. The hallway made a turn, and Kesselring opened the door at its end, bathing his body is a sickly orange glow. He looked down at the figure cowering like some dying animal on the sofa.

  “And how are we feeling today, Bishop Degsby?”

  He was met with a pathetic, curse-filled wheeze. Kesselring lifted a corner of his mouth in a derisive smile. The smoke of half-lit pleasures drifted about the poorly ventilated room.

  “Alcohol, drugs, women. You’ve indulged in every sin under the sun, despite being a religious man who preaches abstinence. I wonder if His Holiness the Grand Bishop back on Earth will be so lenient regarding your promiscuity.”

  “You forced me to take those drugs!” said the young bishop, wheezing. His capillaries had burst, giving his pale irises the appearance of swimming in a red sea.

  “Did you not slip me those drugs and kick me into the depths of depravity? Blasphemer! One of these days, the time will come when you realize the folly of your actions.”

  “By all means, make me. Will I be struck down by lightning? Or maybe a meteor?”

  “Do you not fear righteousness?”

  “Righteousness?” The young aide laughed sardonically. “Rudolf the Great didn’t become ruler of the universe thanks to a surplus of righteousness. Neither did Adrian Rubinsky gain the landesherr’s seat by his impeccable character. They got to where they were because they were the higher power. The principle of control is might, not right,” Rupert Kesselring pointed out indifferently. “There’s no such thing as absolute righteousness to begin with, and so judging anything on that basis is pointless. The many millions of people killed by Rudolf the Great got their comeuppance for insisting on righteousness despite their lack of power. If you had power, you could live without fearing the Grand Bishop’s wrath. Which brings me to my point.”

  He took a breath.

  “I care nothing for religious authority. You can monopolize it all you want. If each of us becomes the guru of his respective world, we won’t have any need to be jealous of each other.”

  “I don’t get your meaning.”

  “Don’t you? I’m saying I’ll give you Earth and the Church of Terra.”

  The bishop said nothing.

  “I take Rubinsky down. You take the Grand Bishop’s place.”

  Degsby still said nothing.

  “This is no longer their era. Eight hundred years of hatred on Earth will make a fine meal for the devil’s table. From here on out, you and I…”

  He closed his mouth, furrowed his brow, and looked at Degsby, who was laughing.

  “You forget your place, you fool!”

  Degsby’s eyes were a blast furnace boiling with unbridled emotion. His thin lips turned upward, and from within his throat exploded a staccato of w
rath. The young bishop, clad in black, trembled from head to toe.

  “With such ambition and shallow thinking as yours, you actually mean to defy His Holiness the Grand Bishop? Laughable isn’t the word. It’s beyond ridiculous. Dream your canine dreams, you cur. But don’t go trying to stand up to an elephant. It’s for your own good.”

  “I think you’ve laughed enough at my expense for one day, don’t you, Bishop?”

  That Rupert Kesselring’s script was so common in and of itself delineated a frame around his uncommon spirit. By remaining calm, he allowed himself to respond from a place of personal truth. He wasn’t used to being ridiculed. Neither did he want to get used to it. Only victors should have that privilege.

  “I’ve got all of your disgraceful escapades with alcohol, drugs, and women on tape. If you don’t cooperate with me, I’ll use them as I see fit. A clichéd tactic, I admit, but tried-and-true. The clock is ticking.”

  “You filthy dog,” answered the bishop, although by now his voice was weak, stripped of its zeal.

  Julian Mintz tossed and turned in his bed many times that night, which was unusual for him. Something bitter from the party had left such a bad taste in his mouth that he even got up once to rinse it out. He flipped through his mental file, wondering if he could have done things better. He felt the sting of his own inexperience and blushed alone in the darkness.

  There were many different types of combat. That he knew, and knew very well. But there was something he knew even more to be true: the type of combat spawned by his little exchange with Rupert Kesselring was not something he liked. If he was going to fight at all, he wanted it to be with ingenuity and bravery, in the vast expanse of outer space, stars at his back, against the heroic Reinhard von Lohengramm. It was an outrageous ambition, of course. Julian didn’t have the energy to enumerate all the ways in which Reinhard surpassed him. Not even Admiral Yang could hold a candle to Reinhard von Lohengramm’s genius. And here he was, barely worthy of kissing Admiral Yang’s feet. But, as von Schneider had said, sometimes it took a common man to defeat the smartest one. This tangle of thoughts had pulled him far from sleep’s embrace.

  Julian suddenly wanted a drink, and was only now beginning to understand the force of Yang’s habit. It was, perhaps, his biggest epiphany of the night.

  Beyond Julian’s bed, the world continued to rumble noiselessly.

  I

  November came, and with it the knowledge that a lit fuse was rapidly being consumed as a spark headed toward a point of ignition. The Imperial Navy was performing true-combat drills and all manner of simulations daily, stockpiling material resources, shuffling around units, and carrying out arms inspections in preparation for an unprecedented campaign. On the fourth of that month, Commander von Reuentahl, in the capacity of inspector general, conducted large-scale maneuvers with fleets of thirty thousand ships. These practice sessions were so intense that training exercises alone sustained more than a hundred casualties.

  Manufacturing on the nonmilitary side of things was proceeding smoothly. The empire’s attaché on Phezzan, Commissioner Boltec, sent word to Phezzan on Reinhard’s orders that the Imperial Navy would soon deploy for Iserlohn.

  In return, Boltec requested to be the new landesherr of Phezzan. Reinhard was no miser, and naturally Boltec believed his request would be honored, but Reinhard’s reply was quicker than he expected. Once he conquered the alliance, Reinhard had no intention of placing anyone in a position of indirect authority when combining newly acquired territory with the old. Phezzan was best placed under his direct control, and he would rather give Boltec a leisurely post, along with a high salary, and be done with it.

  Although this was a righteous path to rule, it hardly seemed worth the Machiavellian effort of concentrating the hatred of the Phezzanese people on Boltec. Ultimately, as he had once said to von Oberstein, he expected Boltec to fail early on in his attempts at maintaining public order, and so Reinhard had promised him succession of the landesherr position. But Boltec would need to take full responsibility for maintaining Phezzan’s public order in cooperation with the Imperial Navy.

  Thus, Boltec continued feeding false information to his native Phezzan. It was, of course, necessary to conform as much as possible to the information being sent out by civilians. In a state of mind he could not have imagined having a year ago, he already regarded his once-unconditional loyalty to Rubinsky as the actions of another self in another life. Originally, Boltec had unexpectedly sold himself, beginning with his mishandling of Reinhard, but to justify his guilt, he found fault in Rubinsky and resigned himself to the fact that he would lose his authority. Boltec’s successor, chief aide Rupert Kesselring, was hardly ever on his mind anymore. He wasn’t the only one to think of Kesselring as a satellite feeding off the landesherr’s gravitational orbit.

  On November 8, Reinhard made his final assignments for Operation Ragnarök.

  First, he would mobilize a large vanguard fleet toward Iserlohn. And while all eyes and ears were on Iserlohn, he would thread that needle to dominate the Phezzan Corridor in one swift motion. The orders to invade Phezzan would be the jurisdiction of Senior Admiral Wolfgang Mittermeier and him alone.

  The wounded Admiral Neidhart Müller would act as commander for the second formation after the Gale Wolf. Müller was a feather in Reinhard’s cap who’d fervently hoped to participate in the capture of Iserlohn Fortress as a means of vindicating his past, but on this occasion had to curb his instincts for revenge.

  Commanding the third formation was the Imperial Navy’s highest commander, the imperial marshal himself, Reinhard von Lohengramm. Under his direct command he placed five vice admirals: Aldringen, Brauhitsch, Carnap, Grünemann, and Thurneisen. Chief of Staff Senior Admiral von Oberstein, chief aide Rear Admiral Admiral von Streit, and secondary aide Lieutenant von Rücke, along with chief secretary to the imperial prime minister Hildegard von Mariendorf and head of the imperial guard Captain Kissling, would be on board the flagship Brünhild. It would be the first time a woman had held rank on that warship.

  To the fourth formation, Reinhard assigned Admiral Steinmetz. As a high noble with a long and decorated career in frontier defense, he’d held rank as vice admiral. After the Lippstadt campaign, he’d handed over the frontier, pledging loyalty to Reinhard, earning him the full admiral rank he desired.

  As a last defense, the fifth formation would be led by Admiral Wahlen. He had counseled the redheaded Siegfried Kircheis in the Lippstadt War, in which he had fought bravely. He was a great general who balanced courage and tactics, and was this time entrusted with the heavy responsibility of connecting the Phezzan Corridor with the imperial mainland.

  All told, Reinhard’s forces were twelve million strong, including four million essential personnel to defend on land in occupied territories of Phezzan and the alliance, and a total of 87,500 ships in the fleet.

  Meanwhile, a formidable battalion was mobilized as the Iserlohn District Army. Although fundamentally purposed as a diversion, their apparent weakness would not be perceived as such. For this, the appropriate balance of military strength, human resources, and materials was arranged. Depending on the circumstances, this unit would be entrusted with the grand and tactically important duty of penetrating the Iserlohn Corridor, infiltrating alliance territory, and then merging with their comrades invading from the Phezzan side. Leadership, large-scale tactical acumen, and the ability to assess things coolheadedly: all these and more were demanded of the commanding officer Senior Admiral Oskar von Reuentahl.

  Admirals Lutz and Lennenkamp would serve as vice commandants. Lutz, like Wahlen, had once worked as a vice commandant for Kircheis. Lennenkamp, like Steinmetz, had become Reinhard’s staff officer after Lippstadt and a full admiral thereafter. Although he’d held seniority as a superior officer when Reinhard was still a boy, by outward appearances he was nothing more than a thin middle-aged man.

  Admirals Fahrenhei
t and Wittenfeld, as heads of reserve forces, were ordered to be on standby. Both were great generals, strong in the face of aggression, and more than up to the challenge of holding their own in a decisive battle. Wittenfeld’s fleet, notoriously known as the Schwarz Lanzenreiter, or Black Lancers, was a bonus.

  Admiral Kessler would stay behind on the planet Odin as commander of capital defenses, and, along with Admiral Meckinlger, was to await further orders. In addition to sanctioning business administration at the Ministry of Military Affairs, he would be tasked with the important duty of supply and organization of reinforcements as rear services manager.

  The Iserlohn forces were widely announced, and many were notified down to the exact date and time they would be heading for the imperial capital. That, in and of itself, was part of their strategy.

  “We can expect the Imperial Navy, led by Senior Admiral von Reuentahl, to head for Iserlohn.”

  In contrast to the Imperial Navy’s ostentatious provocation, the alliance’s information network communicated that danger to the capital conservatively at best.

  The alliance capital of Heinessen was shocked, if only because its citizens believed in the continued existence of a preestablished harmony. Just as spring followed winter, they never doubted that peace would be revived. And why should they have doubted it? For insofar as Iserlohn was an impregnable fortress and had an invincible young commander on its side, there was no reason for the Imperial Navy to attempt an invasion of alliance territory.

  In this case, it seemed government officials were banishing any memories of having ever treated the eminently accomplished Admiral Yang from a factional perspective.

  When top government and military brass met to hold a Defense Committee meeting, the commander in chief of the space armada, Admiral Bucock, requested to speak. After being ignored several times, he was finally given the floor. The old admiral was of the opinion that any attack on Iserlohn would be nothing more than a diversion while the enemy’s main forces set their sights on Phezzan.