Ambition Read online

  “Julian’s one flaw,” Alex Caselnes—Yang’s sharp-tongued upperclassman from Officers’ Academy—had once opined, “is that he worships the ground you walk on, Yang. Honestly, that’s just terrible taste. If not for that, I’d gladly give him my daughter’s hand in marriage.”

  The thirty-six year-old Caselnes had two daughters, actually, the elder of whom was seven.

  Yang, having still not learned his lesson, said, “One more game.”

  “You really want to have a nineteen-game losing streak? Not that I mind, but …”

  It had been Yang who had taught Julian to play 3-D chess, but it hadn’t taken the disciple even six months to surpass his master. Since then, the gap between their respective abilities had only widened. Still, whenever Julian described himself as being good at chess, it always stopped short of being anything more than a joke. This tendency wasn’t limited to chess, either, and trivial skills weren’t the issue; on a more fundamental level, Julian had it in his head that he could never come close to matching Yang in anything.

  A soft chime sounded, and an attractive female officer with hazel eyes and golden-brown hair spoke from the visiphone screen. “Commander, this is Lieutenant Greenhill.” She had been working as Yang’s aide since last year and had recently been promoted.

  “I’m kinda busy right now. What is it?” Yang’s tone sounded terribly unenthusiastic.

  “An Imperial Navy battleship has arrived with an envoy. He wishes to see you on some urgent business.”

  “Does he, now?”

  Not sounding terribly surprised, Yang put the chess match on hold and stood up, but just as he was about to leave the room, Julian said, “Excellency, wait! You’ve forgotten your gun.” It was still lying on his desk where he’d tossed it earlier.

  “Don’t need it, don’t need it,” the young admiral said irritably, waving away the suggestion.

  “But going in unarmed is too—”

  “Supposing I take a gun,” Yang said, “and supposing I fire it … Do you really think I’ll even hit the guy?”

  “Er … no, sir.”

  “Well then, there’s no point in my taking it, is there?”

  Yang started walking immediately, and Julian, in a panic, followed after him.

  It wasn’t that Yang was fearless and daring; he just saw human capability as a thing demarcated with sharp lines. He was the one who had caused impregnable Iserlohn to fall so easily, using a clever trick that not one other person had been able to anticipate. That had taught him all the more that there was no perfection where humans were concerned, and no absolute guarantees.

  Yang—having never held the slightest intention of becoming a soldier, having aspired instead to the life of a historian—had learned through his studies that no matter how powerful a nation may be, it will eventually collapse without fail: that no matter how great the hero, after gaining power there comes a fall.

  The same applied to life as well. A hero who has survived many battles dies from complications of influenza. The last one standing after a bloody power struggle is felled by some unknown assassin. Former galactic emperor Ottfried III, afraid of being poisoned, eats next to nothing and finally wastes away.

  “When your luck runs out, your luck runs out, even if you are being careful.”

  Yang didn’t even take any guards. When he was first assigned to Iserlohn, he’d had four teams of twelve looking out for him in rotating shifts, but they had even been following him into the toilet, so he’d finally gotten fed up and dismissed them.

  On the other hand, Yang did pay great attention to the workings of the fortress’s security system. Its control functions he divided among three different stations, putting them under mutual cross surveillance so that the system could not be hijacked without simultaneously gaining control of all three stations. In addition, he had devices added to the air-conditioning system that analyzed the local atmosphere’s component molecules to detect attempts at poisoning the fortress.

  The security systems did not reflect Yang’s original intentions; there were military brass who wouldn’t shut up about them, as well as nervous subordinates, bureaucrats concerned that the budget wasn’t being spent, inspection-loving politicians, and journalists waiting with bated breath for something to go wrong. For these people, he had to do some PR so as to say, “See, the security system is perfect.”

  “I can totally see how people’s thinking gets less and less pure as they rise higher and higher,” Yang had once grumbled to Julian.

  Speaking like he was the grown-up in the room, Julian had replied, “If you understand that yourself, you won’t be swept along with them. As long as there aren’t unnecessary problems, don’t you think that’s good enough?” Then he had appended the following opinion: “What I worry about is that the higher you rise, the higher your alcohol intake is getting. Please try to lay off it a little.”

  “Am I really drinking that much more?”

  “At least five times what you did three years ago.”

  “Five times? There’s no way it could be that much.”

  Before Yang’s doubting eyes, Julian had produced three years’ worth of household expense data. The index of 100 applied to alcoholic beverage expenditures three years ago had risen to become 491. Since this number did not include the amount consumed outside the home, there had indeed been grounds for Julian’s insistence on an increase of fivefold or greater.

  Unable to argue, Yang had promised to refrain from drinking, though both the promisor and promisee felt little confidence in how long he could keep it up.

  Two hours later, Yang had his executive staff gather in the conference room. This was the storied chamber in which the commanders of Iserlohn Fortress and its permanently stationed fleet would meet back when the fortress had been under Imperial Navy control—where locking horns, arguing, then going their separate ways had been the norm.

  The staff gathered around the table were as follows:

  Rear Admiral Alex Caselnes, Fortress Administrative Director.

  Commodore Walter von Schönkopf, Commander of Fortress Defenses.

  Rear Admiral Fischer, Vice Commander of the Iserlohn Patrol Fleet.

  Rear Admiral Murai, Chief of Staff.

  Commodore Patrichev, Deputy Chief of Staff.

  Captain Blood-Joe and Commander Lao, staff officers.

  Lieutenant Frederica Greenhill, the commander’s top aide.

  Also present were Lieutnant Commander Nilson, captain of the battleship Ulysses, and its first officer, Sublieutenant Commander Eda.

  Yang made a conventional show of looking around at the assembled officers’ faces, then opened his mouth to speak. It wasn’t really him to speak in grave and solemn cadences; he sounded more like he was talking to friends over a cup of tea.

  “I think you all know this already, but the Imperial Navy battleship Brocken has arrived as a military envoy with a rather interesting proposal. They want to do a prisoner swap of the two million POWs the empire and alliance are holding between them.”

  “So they’re having a hard time feeding theirs, too,” Caselnes said sarcastically. Of average height and with a plump, healthy-looking build, he was more a military bureaucrat than a soldier, with far more experience in the rear service than on the front lines. A master of desk work, he was a specialist at running supply lines, operating organizations, and managing facilities. After the defeat at Amritsar, the blame for the failure of the supply plan had been dumped on him—although that disaster had in fact been due to the ingenious strategy of Imperial Marshal von Lohengramm—and he had been shuffled off to a remote outpost before being reassigned to Iserlohn at Yang’s request.

  It was fair to say that Alex Caselnes was the de facto mayor of Iserlohn’s city of five million. His ability to handle public administration would likely have proven useful even in larger and more complex organizations.r />
  “That’s probably part of it,” said Yang. “In any case, I’m half to blame as well.” When taking Iserlohn, Yang had acquired POWs in numbers equivalent to the vast city’s population.

  Commodore von Schönkopf smiled at the exchange. Thirty-three years old and refined in appearance, he was the one credited with having successfully executed Yang’s plan. He was a man of noble birth, who had been brought as a small child from the empire to the alliance when his grandparents defected. He had both courage and intelligence to spare, and an indomitable spirit that was occasionally interpreted as dangerous. As for the man himself, he was ever calm, even in the face of suspicion and stares.

  “Still, this really is no laughing matter,” said Yang. “The phrase ‘having a hard time feeding them’ carries with it a serious implication—that circumstances may be not far off when there’ll be no way for them to do so.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Put simply, we should view this as a sign that Reinhard von Lohengramm has finally decided to get into an armed conflict with the highborns’ confederacy.”

  When Yang spoke the name of that blond-haired youth, which the Alliance Navy considered its greatest threat, a deathly quiet fell across the entire chamber.

  For the past few months, Yang had been thinking about it constantly: what to do about Marquis Reinhard von Lohengramm as he inched ever closer to the seat of power in the Galactic Empire.

  For Reinhard to secure absolute power, he would have to destroy a powerful group of highborn nobles who viewed him as an enemy. That would probably involve the outbreak of full-scale civil war. The intelligence that Yang had was by no means bountiful, but it was enough to make it clear that Reinhard was moving steadily forward with preparations for exactly such a conflict.

  The problem was that Reinhard was setting the board not only within the empire, but within the Free Planets Alliance as well. Reinhard was not about to stand by and let the aristocrats’ confederacy join hands with the FPA, or allow the Alliance Navy to strike both sides after they had exhausted themselves. The wounds that the Alliance Navy had suffered in its loss at Amritsar were still unhealed; they had nothing to spare for external campaigns, but Reinhard was apparently leaving nothing to chance.

  So what should he do?

  Yang tried analyzing the circumstances into which Reinhard had been thrust. There were certain limitations that Reinhard was saddled with, and there was no question he would make his plans in accordance with them.

  Analyzed and arranged, the results looked like this:

  1.Reinhard’s forces would have their hands full just fighting against the confederacy of highborn nobles.

  2.Opening a two-front operation would therefore be an impossibility.

  3.Due to conditions 1 and 2, the thing to do was strike the FPA through subterfuge rather than military force.

  4.To divide the enemy and set them against one another was the essence of conspiracy.

  With Reinhard having advanced to this stage, Yang could guess what move was coming next: he would find some way to tear the Alliance Armed Forces apart from within!

  That was what Reinhard would do. That was what he had to do. Even if Yang were standing in Reinhard’s own shoes, he wouldn’t be able to come up with anything else. If factions of the alliance military were fighting one another, Reinhard would be free to do battle with the highborn, without fear of being struck from behind.

  Well then, what will he do specifically … By the time Yang’s thoughts had advanced to that point, he had arrived at a conclusion.

  Maybe I’m overthinking this, Yang couldn’t help wondering. He wasn’t really as full of confidence as others thought he was.

  Still, the work he was engaged in was not about the pursuit of truth and humanity. It wasn’t about chasing some absolute value. It was win or lose. It was competition. Winning and losing were merely relative terms, so if he got one step ahead of his opponent—if he got one leg up on the enemy—then his job was done. That made it sound like it was easy, but getting a leg up on a genius like Marquis Reinhard von Lohengramm was extremely hard business.

  For Yang, there was one little thing he regretted.

  During the battle at Amritsar last year, Yang had given a combat performance that no one else had been able to match, but he couldn’t necessarily say he had done his best in the operations meeting that had come before. Even if it had ended up turning into a wrestling match, shouldn’t he have tried to block the irresponsible, aggressive rhetoric of the ultra-hard-liners?

  Of course, I’d have just ended up losing even if I had grappled with them, Yang reflected with a grimace.

  In any case, a proposal for a prisoner swap had arrived from the empire, and Yang needed to report it to the alliance’s capital of Heinessen, the planet named for the nation’s founding father. The government would likely accept the proposal gladly. POWs did not enjoy suffrage, but returning soldiers did. That amounted to two million votes plus the votes of their families. An empty but grand celebration would no doubt be held.

  “Hey, Julian, it’s been a while, but it looks like we might be able to go back to Heinessen.”

  His voice was cheerful, which Julian felt was a little strange. Heinessen would be full of ceremonies, parties, speeches, and all kinds of things Yang hated.

  But now there was a reason that Yang needed to go to Heinessen.

  III

  The prisoner exchange was not carried out under the auspices of the two governments involved. Both nations held themselves to be humanity’s sole legitimate governing authority, and as such did not give official recognition to the other’s existence. That being the case, there was no way diplomatic relations could be established.

  If such foolish hardheadedness had existed between a pair of individuals, people would probably have laughed at it with scorn. Between two nations, however, people accepted all manner of corruption in the name of dignity and authority.

  On February 19 of that year, the prisoner exchange ceremony was carried out at Iserlohn Fortress. Representatives from both militaries came forward, exchanged lists, and signed certificates.

  The Galactic Imperial Navy and the Free Planets Alliance Navy, in accordance with the principles of military regulation, do hereby determine to return all captured officers and soldiers to their respective homelands, and upon their honor shall do so.

  Imperial Year 488, February 19. Senior Admiral Siegfried Kircheis, Galactic Imperial Navy Representative.

  Space Era 797, February 19. Admiral Yang Wen-li, Free Planets Alliance Navy Representative.

  When Yang had finished signing, Kircheis turned toward him with a youthful smile.

  “The formalities may be necessary, but at the same time, there’s something rather absurd about them, don’t you think, Admiral Yang?”

  “Full agreement.”

  Yang observed Kircheis. Yang was young himself, but Kircheis was even younger—still only twenty-one. He was a handsome young man—hair as red as if dyed in dissolved rubies, pleasant-looking blue eyes, unusually tall of stature—and although he was known to be one of the empire’s boldest and most powerful admirals, he seemed to have made a favorable impression on the women of Iserlohn. Yang had engaged him in direct combat at Amritsar, knew that he was the right hand of Marquis Reinhard von Lohengramm—and yet even so found the young man difficult to dislike.

  It seemed that Kircheis had formed a similar impression of Yang. His handshake as they parted was more than just perfunctory.

  Afterward, Julian expressed his impression: “Likable fellow, isn’t he?”

  Yang nodded, but when he thought about it, it struck him as odd to feel more favor toward an enemy commander than he did toward the politicians on his own side. Of course, there was nothing unusual about the enemy in front being vastly more forthright than those scheming behind one’s back, and also, it wasn’t as th
ough the present enemy-ally configuration were set in stone for all eternity.

  In any case, the welcome ceremony for the returning soldiers had provided Yang with the public excuse he needed to make a temporary return to Heinessen.

  IV

  Four weeks after departing Iserlohn, Yang and Julian arrived in the capital of Heinessen. Having avoided the central spaceport, which had become murderously choked by two million returning soldiers, the family members come to greet them, and huge throngs of journalists, they arrived by way of Spaceport 3—which exclusively served the local passenger and cargo lines—and immediately headed for the officers’ houses in a driverless taxi. As they were passing by the warehouses and working-class apartments on Hutchison Street, however, they encountered a roadblock. Police officers were sweating hard as they directed large crowds of people. It looked like they were trying to physically do the job of the malfunctioning central control system for ground traffic, but Yang and Julian couldn’t see why the road was closed. Yang got out of the taxi and approached an inexperienced-looking young officer.

  “What’s the matter?” he said. “Why can’t we go through?”

  “It’s nothing. Please don’t come any closer—it’s dangerous.”

  Speaking contradictions, the officer pushed Yang back, a tense expression on his face. Yang was in his civilian clothes, and the young officer apparently didn’t recognize who he was. For an instant, Yang felt a slight temptation to reveal his name and find out what was going on, but in the end he remained silent and went back to the taxi. His disgust for the exercise of privilege outweighed his curiosity.

  The matter only became clear after they had made a wide detour and returned to the house on Silver Bridge Street, empty these past four months.