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For just one instant, the young imperial marshal was seized with a claustrophobic tightness of breath. Illogical suspicions were even aroused in him, as he wondered if the functionality of von Oberstein’s bionic eyes included the power to overwhelm the will of others or if perhaps he had activated some component that applied psychological pressure.

  Though von Oberstein’s voice was low and the entire room was furnished with soundproofing devices, his words carried like an out-of-season peal of spring thunder.

  “The Galactic Empire—by which I mean the Goldenbaum Dynasty—must be destroyed. If it were possible, I would destroy it with my own hands. However, I lack the acumen, the power. What I can do is assist in the rise of a new conqueror, that’s all. I’m speaking of you, Your Excellency: Imperial Marshal Reinhard von Lohengramm.”

  Reinhard could practically hear the crackling of the electrified air.

  “Kircheis!”

  As he rose from his seat, Reinhard called out for his friend and closest advisor. The wall opened up without a sound, and there appeared the tall figure of the redheaded youth. Reinhard’s finger was pointed at von Oberstein.

  “Kircheis, arrest Captain von Oberstein. He’s spoken words of lawless rebellion against the empire. As a soldier of the empire, I cannot overlook it.”

  Von Oberstein’s bionic eyes flashed intensely. The young redheaded officer had drawn his blaster faster than seemed humanly possible and taken aim at the center of von Oberstein’s chest. Since his days in military preparatory school, few had surpassed Kircheis in terms of shooting skill. Even if von Oberstein had been holding a pistol and had tried to resist, the effort would have been futile.

  “So in the end, that’s your measure …” von Oberstein muttered. A bitter shadow of disappointment and self-reproach crept into a face that had had precious little color to begin with. “Very well, then—walk your narrow road with only Vice Admiral Kircheis to guide you.”

  His words were partly performance and partly heartfelt. He shot a glance at Reinhard’s silent figure, then turned toward Kircheis.

  “Vice Admiral Kircheis, can you shoot me? I’m unarmed, as you can see. Even so, can you fire?”

  Though there was also the fact that Reinhard had issued no further orders, Kircheis—his aim still fixed on von Oberstein’s chest—had hesitated to put strength into his trigger finger.

  “You can’t do it. That’s the sort of man you are. Deserving of respect, but you can’t claim that respect alone will see you through the work of conquest. Every light has a shadow that follows it … Does our young Count von Lohengramm still not see that?”

  Still staring hard at von Oberstein, Reinhard motioned for Kircheis to put away his blaster. Ever so slightly, his expression was changing.

  “You’re a man who speaks his mind.”

  “I’m honored you should say so.”

  “And Admiral von Seeckt … how he must have hated you! Am I wrong?”

  “The admiral was not a man to inspire loyalty in his troops,” von Oberstein answered, not batting an eye. He knew in this moment that he had won his gamble.

  Reinhard nodded.

  “Very well, then. I’ll buy you from those nobles.”

  III

  The minister of military affairs, the secretary-general of Military Command Headquarters, and the commander in chief of the Imperial Space Armada were known collectively as the three directors general of the Imperial Armed Forces. For an example of one man holding all three posts at once, one would need to go back nearly a century to the time of then crown prince Ottfried, the only man who had ever done so.

  Ottfried had been imperial prime minister as well, but since that time, the ministers of state had come to be named as acting prime ministers, with the office itself never being officially filled—the reason being that vassals tended to avoid emulating any precedent set by that particular emperor.

  In his days as crown prince, Ottfried had been a capable and promising young man, but after succeeding to the throne to become Emperor Ottfried III, he had found himself in a whirlpool of repeated palace conspiracies that nourished nothing but his suspicions. Four times he replaced his empress and five times his named successor, until at last a fear of death by poisoning caused him to abstain from food much of the time, and he died, emaciated, while only in his midforties.

  The three directors general of the Imperial Armed Forces—Minister of Military Affairs Ehrenberg, Secretary-General of Military Command Headquarters Steinhof, and Commander in Chief of the Imperial Space Armada Mückenberger—submitted their resignations to the acting imperial prime minister, Marquis Lichtenlade, the minister of state. This they did in order to take responsibility for the loss of Iserlohn Fortress.

  “You seek neither to avoid responsibility nor cling to position. I think your gracefulness in this matter is praiseworthy. However, were the posts of the three directors general to be vacated temporarily, that would probably mean at least one of them going to Count von Lohengramm. Surely you wouldn’t trouble yourselves to pave his way for advancement? All of you are quite comfortable financially, so how about giving up your salaries for the next year or so, instead?”

  When the minister of state had thus spoken, an anguished expression rose up on the face of Marshal Steinhof, and he replied:

  “It’s not that we haven’t considered that, but we are also soldiers. The regret would be too great if it were said of us that we clung to our positions and erred in staying when we should have resigned … So, please, accept these letters.”

  Reluctantly, Marquis Lichtenlade headed to court and got Emperor Friedrich IV started on the resignation letters of the three directors general.

  The emperor, who had been listening to the minister of state with the same apathy as always, gave instructions to his chamberlain to have Reinhard summoned from his admiralität. Going to the trouble of a direct summons when a visiphone call would have finished the task within minutes was just one of the formalities that the emperor’s conspicuous showing of power required.

  When Reinhard appeared at the imperial palace, the emperor showed the young imperial marshal the three letters of resignation, and with the same intonation used when letting a child choose a toy, asked him which job he wanted. After a brief glance toward the minister of state, who was standing by unmoving with an unhappy look on his face, Reinhard answered.

  “I can’t rob someone of his seat when it’s not for any achievement of my own. The loss of Iserlohn was due to the mistakes of Admirals von Seeckt and von Stockhausen. Also, Admiral von Seeckt has paid for his sins already with his life, and the other is in an enemy prison even as we speak. I don’t believe there’s anyone else deserving of blame. I humbly beg Your Highness to please not blame the three directors general.”

  “Hmm. How magnanimous.”

  The emperor looked back at the minister of state, who was surprised at this unexpected turn of events.

  “The count has spoken. What say you?”

  “Your humble vassal is struck by the count’s keen insight, far beyond tender years. The three directors general have done great things for the nation, and for my part, I too would like to ask that you deal with them graciously.”

  “If that’s what the both of you have to say, then I won’t hand down any harsh punishments. At the same time, however, it won’t be possible to avoid punishing them altogether …”

  “In that case, Your Highness, I wonder what you would say to having them give up their salaries for the next year and forwarding those funds to the Families of Fallen Soldiers Relief Foundation.”

  “Yes, something along those lines would be fine. I’ll leave the details to the minister of state. Is this all you need to talk about?”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “In that case, the two of you may go. I have to get to the greenhouse to care for my roses.”

  Both men withdrew.
r />   Five minutes had not passed, however, before one of them secretly returned. Since the seventy-five year-old Marquis Lichtenlade had returned at a half run, he needed a moment to catch his breath, but by the time he was standing in the emperor’s rose garden, he had recovered his physical composure.

  There, amid thick hedges of rose bushes that filled the greenhouse with wild, bounteous swirls of color and fragrance, the emperor stood unmoving, like a withered old tree. The aged aristocrat approached him and carefully eased himself down to his knees.

  “If I may, Your Highness.”

  “What is it?”

  “I say this with awareness that it may earn me your displeasure, but …”

  “Is it about Count von Lohengramm?”

  The emperor’s voice was devoid of any edge, intensity, or passion. It was like the sound of windblown sand—the voice of a lifeless old man.

  “You mean to say that I’m giving too much power and prestige to Annerose’s younger brother.”

  “Your Highness knew that already?”

  What also surprised the minister of state was how unexpectedly lucid the emperor’s delivery of those words had been.

  “The man knows no fear, and so he might not stop at wielding the power of a chief vassal—perhaps he’ll get carried away and plot to usurp the throne. Is that what you’re thinking?”

  “It is only with the greatest of reservations that I even let it cross my lips.”

  “So what if he does?”

  “Majesty?!”

  “It’s not as if the Goldenbaum Dynasty has been with humanity from its beginning. Just as there’s no such thing as an immortal man, there’s no such thing as an eternal state, either. There’s no reason the Galactic Empire mustn’t end in my generation.”

  His low, parched laughter sent a shudder down the spine of the minister of state. The depths of the gaping void he had just glimpsed chilled his soul to its core.

  “If it’s all going to be destroyed anyway, then its destruction should at least be spectacular …” The emperor’s voice trailed off like a comet’s ominous tail.

  IV

  The three directors general had to admit, however reluctantly, that they owed Reinhard a favor, offensive to them as that was. It followed, then, that they were in no position to refuse when Reinhard contacted them the following day to request Captain Paul von Oberstein’s exemption from all responsibility regarding the loss of Iserlohn and his transfer to the Lohengramm admiralität. They could hardly take harsh measures against others while themselves basking in the grace of “the emperor’s generosity.” There was also the fact that they didn’t view the retention or dismissal of a single captain as being terribly important anyway. In any case, it was a satisfactory outcome for von Oberstein.

  Regarding Reinhard having willingly declined the seat of a director general, opinion among the elite was split fifty-fifty between the favorable—“Surprisingly unselfish, isn’t he?”—and the negative—“He’s just trying to look good in front of people.”

  Reinhard himself paid no mind to either evaluation. A directorship was his for the taking any time he liked. Until then, he was merely lending those positions out to feeble old men. Most importantly, that sort of position was nothing more than a stepping-stone as far as he was concerned.

  On the day that Reinhard assumed that most noble of stations, there would be no satisfaction even in holding all three directorships at once.

  “What is it, Kircheis? You look like you have something to say.”

  “You’re not being very nice, are you? Pretending not to know what it is.”

  “Don’t get upset. This is about von Oberstein, isn’t it? I was suspicious myself for a while that he might be a tool of the highborn. But he’s not the sort of man the aristocrats can handle. He’s got a sharp mind but too many peculiarities.”

  “But can you handle him, Lord Reinhard?”

  Reinhard tilted his head slightly. Whenever he did that, one lock of his brilliant, golden hair would slide to the other side.

  “Hmm … I’m not expecting friendship or loyalty from that man. He’s only trying to use me in order to achieve his own goals.”

  Reinhard stretched out his long, supple fingers and playfully tugged at his best friend’s hair, as red as if dyed with molten rubies. Reinhard would do this sort of thing from time to time when no one else was around. During his boyhood, he would describe Kircheis’s hair according to his whim: whenever they were quarreling—a state that never lasted very long—he would say mean things like, “What’s with that red hair? It looks like blood.” Then after they made up, he would praise it, calling it “really pretty, like a burning flame.”

  “… So in the same way, I’m going to use him for his brain. His motives are irrelevant. If I can’t control a solitary man like that, I haven’t a prayer of holding sway over the entire universe. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Politics isn’t about processes or systems—it’s about the results, Reinhard believed.

  Taking over the USG and making himself emperor wasn’t what made Rudolf the Great so unforgivable; it was that he had used his vast, newfound powers for that most asinine of purposes—self-deification. That was the true face of Rudolf: a hunger for power masquerading as heroism. What a boon he might have been to the advancement of civilization if he had only used those vast powers in the right way! Instead of wasting its energy on conflicts arising from political differences, humanity could have been leaving its footprints all across the galaxy. Today, humanity ruled only a fifth of this vast realm of stars, even when taking the rebel power into account.

  Responsibility for this roadblock in the path of human history lay solely at the feet of Rudolf’s monomania. A “living god”? The best thing you could call the man was a plague-spreading devil.

  Immense authority and power were necessary to destroy the old system and carve out a new order. But Reinhard would not make the same mistakes Rudolf had. Emperor he would become. However, he would not hand that title to his descendants.

  Rudolf had been a blind believer in bloodlines and the gene. But genes were not to be trusted. Reinhard’s father had been neither a genius nor a great man. Lacking in both the ability and the will to live according to his own efforts, he’d been a good-for-nothing who had sold off his lovely daughter to the powerful in order to lead a life of comfort and self-indulgence. Seven years ago, when excessive drinking and carousing had culminated in his father’s sudden death, Reinhard hadn’t had in himself the tears he should have cried. Though it had cut him to the heart to see pellucid drops running down and falling from his sister’s porcelain cheeks, his grief and pain had been exclusively for his sister.

  For an example of untrustworthy genes, one need look no further than the present state of the Goldenbaum imperial family. Who would imagine that even a milliliter of that giant Rudolf’s blood was flowing in the decrepit body of Friedrich IV? The blood of House Goldenbaum was already clouded beyond recognition.

  Every last one of Friedrich IV’s nine brothers and sisters were dead. Starting with his empress, Friedrich IV had impregnated six women for a total of twenty-eight times, but there had been six miscarriages and nine stillbirths, and of the thirteen who had been born, four had died before their first birthday, five had died before reaching adulthood, and two had died as adults. Only two daughters yet remained: Marqesse Amalie von Braunschweig and Duchess Christine von Littenheim. Both were wed to powerful aristocrats from old families, and to both of them, one child had also been born, both of them girls. Aside from her, Crown Prince Ludwig, who had died in adulthood, had left one child behind. This was Erwin Josef, who was presently the only male child in the imperial family. As he had only just turned five, however, he was not even crown prince yet.

  Emperor Friedrich IV, who had seemingly absorbed the whole of the palace’s decadence into his person, was to Reinhard nothing but an ob
ject of bitter hatred and derision—yet on two points only, Reinhard was able to approve.

  The first was that the emperor, having been through the deaths of many mistresses in difficult past childbirths, feared losing Annerose and had never made her pregnant. Another factor in that decision was pressure from aristocrats concerned about the succession struggle that might ensue if Annerose were to give birth. From Reinhard’s standpoint, the thought of his sister bearing that emperor’s child was too disgusting to even contemplate.

  The other thing was that the number of claimants to the throne was so extremely small. There were only the emperor’s three grandchildren. All he had to do was eliminate those three. Or he could use the strategy of marrying one of the two granddaughters—albeit just for appearance’s sake.

  Either way, von Oberstein would prove useful. With dark enthusiasm and tenacity, that man would envelop the aristocrats and imperial family with plots and schemes, and if it were necessary, would probably not hesitate to murder even a woman or child. It was likely because Kircheis had surmised this unconsciously that he loathed the man, but still, Reinhard had need of him.

  He wondered if Annerose and Kircheis would look on him kindly now, having come to have need of a man like von Oberstein.

  Yet still, this was something that he had to do.

  V

  Phezzan landesherr Rubinsky’s briefing on economic strategy was held at his official residence.

  “Universe Finance—a dummy corporation in the Free Planets Alliance that is operated by our government—has secured excavation rights for the solid natural gas on the seventh and eighth planets of the Bharatpur system,” an aide said. “The total amount of extractable reserves comes to forty-eight million cubic kilometers, and they expect to be profitable within two years.”

  Watching as Rubinsky nodded, the aide continued with his report.

  “Also, regarding Santa Cruz Line, one of the largest interstellar transport companies in the alliance, our percentage of acquired stock has reached 41.9 percent. Ownership is divided among more than twenty people, so they haven’t realized what’s happening. Still, we’ve already surpassed the state-run investment trust that’s at the top of its shareholders list.”