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  “Well, I’m awfully grateful to hear that.” Bucock was in no mood for losing his temper. “So thirty million soldiers have to stand in the jaws of death in order to cure this guy’s hysteria? That’s just wonderful. I’m so moved I think I’m just gonna drown in a sea of tears.”

  The medical officer made a weak smile. “If we focus on the single point of curing His Excellency Rear Admiral Fork’s illness, that is what it will take. If we widen our view to include the entire military, a different way of solving the problem presents itself, naturally.”

  “Exactly—he should resign,” the old admiral barked. “It may be for the best this has happened. The imperial military would be dancing for joy if they learned that the strategist in charge of thirty million troops has the mentality of a kid crying for chocolate.”

  After a slight hesitation, Yamamura said, “In any case, I’m not authorized to speak on any matter outside of his medical condition. I’ll put on His Excellency the Joint Chief of Staff …”

  Disgusted, Bucock thought, So the unofficial wedding of politicians hoping for an election victory and a bright young soldier given to childish fits of hysteria has resulted in thirty million troops being mobilized. You’d have to be a self-intoxicated masochist or one serious warmonger to hear that and genuinely want to fight harder.

  “Admiral …” The man who replaced the medical officer on the comm screen was Senior Admiral Greenhill, the expeditionary force joint chief of staff. There was a deep shadow of anxiety on his handsome, gentlemanly face.

  “Well, Admiral Greenhill, I’m sorry to bother you at such a busy time.” It was one of the old admiral’s virtues that people just couldn’t hate him, even when he was being openly sarcastic.

  Greenhill smiled the same sort of smile that the naval doctor had. “I’m sorry as well that you had to see such an unsightly moment. We’ll need the supreme commander’s sanction, but I think we’ll be giving Rear Admiral Fork some R & R right away …”

  “In that case, how about the proposal from the Thirteenth Fleet to withdraw? I’m 100 percent in favor. The men on the front lines are in no shape for combat, mentally or physically.”

  “Wait just a minute. This also requires the supreme commander’s sanction. Please understand, I can’t give you an answer right away.”

  Vice Admiral Bucock gave him a look that said he had had about enough of bureaucratic answers.

  “I’m aware this may sound indiscreet, Admiral, but I wonder if you could arrange for me to speak directly with the supreme commander?”

  “The supreme commander is taking a nap right now,” Greenhill said.

  The old admiral’s white eyebrows drew together, and he blinked his eyes rapidly. Then, slowly, he asked: “What did you just say, Admiral?”

  Senior Admiral Greenhill’s reply was all the more solemn. “The supreme commander is taking a nap. His orders are not to wake him for anything outside of an enemy attack, so I will relay your request to him when he wakes. Please, wait until then.”

  To that, Bucock made no attempt at answering. His eyebrows quivered so slightly that the movement was almost undetectable. “Very well. I understand very well.”

  Well over a minute passed before the old admiral continued, in a voice of tightly restrained emotion. “I’m just carrying out the duty I have as a frontline commander toward the lives of my subordinates. Thank you for your trouble. When the supreme commander wakes, please tell him that Bucock called and hopes he had pleasant dreams.”

  “Admiral …”

  Bucock cut the transmission from his end, staring with a heavy expression at the comm screen, which had become a monotonous shade of grayish white.

  IV

  Reinhard finished reading the reconnaissance team’s report, nodded once, and summoned the red-haired vice admiral Siegfried Kircheis. To him, he assigned a mission of great import.

  “A fleet of supply ships will be dispatched from Iserlohn to the front lines. That’s the enemy’s lifeline. Take all the forces I’ve given you and go smash it. I’ll leave the details to your own discretion.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Use whatever intelligence, organizations, and supplies that you need.”

  Kircheis saluted, turned on his heel, and started to leave, but Reinhard suddenly called him to a halt. His friend looked back mistrustfully, to which the young imperial marshal said, “This is to win, Kircheis.”

  Reinhard knew. He knew that Kircheis was critical of the harsh tactic he’d employed, of letting the people in the occupied territories starve in order to shackle the enemy’s hands and feet. It didn’t show in Kircheis’s face, let alone in his words, but Reinhard understood only too well. He knew the kind of man that Siegfried Kircheis was.

  Kircheis saluted once more and left the room. Then Reinhard informed the rest of the admirals.

  “While Admiral Kircheis is knocking out the rebel supply fleet, our forces will launch an all-out assault. At that time, I’ll put out a false report that the delivery fleet came under fire but is now safe. That’s to prevent the rebel force from losing its last hope and resorting to the actions of a cornered animal. At the same time, it’s also to keep them from realizing we’ve gone on the offense—naturally, they’ll realize at some point, but the later the better.”

  He glanced over at the man who was sitting by his side. Before, it had always been a tall, redheaded youth at his side. Now it was a man with half-silvered hair—Paul von Oberstein. Though he had made the decision to put von Oberstein there himself, it still felt a little strange.

  “Furthermore, our supply corps will provide food to the people the moment the occupied territories are recovered. Although this was permitted in order to oppose the rebel invasion, driving His Majesty’s subjects to starvation was never our military’s wish. Furthermore, this is a measure necessary to demonstrate to the residents of the frontier that it’s the empire alone which is responsible enough to rule them.”

  Reinhard’s true intent was not to win hearts and minds for the empire, but for himself, although there was no need to go out of his way to tell them that here and now.

  The alliance transport fleet, under the command of Admiral Gledwin Scott, consisted of one hundred transport vessels in the hundred thousand-ton class and twenty-six escort craft. Regarding the number of escorts, Rear Admiral Caselnes, the rear service chief of staff, had argued, “That’s not enough—at least give them a hundred!” but the request had been denied.

  The reasons given had been that the empire seemed unlikely to send a very large force to attack a transport fleet and that dispatching too many ships would leave Iserlohn’s security forces shorthanded.

  What kind of excuse is that, when you’re sitting far removed from the front lines in an “impregnable” fortress? Caselnes was so angry he was about to burst.

  Admiral Scott was far more optimistic than Caselnes. When Caselnes had told him just before departure to be on the lookout for enemies, Scott had brushed off the admonition, and even now he wasn’t on his bridge but in his cabin enjoying 3-D chess with a subordinate.

  When fleet staff officer Commander Nikolsky came to get him, his face was as white as a sheet. Scott, who had been just about to put his opponent in check, asked crossly, “Something happen on the front? I hear a lot of noise out there.”

  “On the front?” Commander Nikolsky stared back at his commander in disbelief. “This is the front. Can you not see that, Excellency?”

  Held in his fingertips, a small panel connected to the bridge’s main screen was showing a rapidly expanding cloud of white light.

  Admiral Scott was speechless for a moment. Not even he could believe those were friendlies. A surprisingly large enemy force was enveloping them.

  “This many …” Scott finally squeezed out. “I can’t believe it! Why this many for one measly transport fleet?”

  As he was racing do
wn the corridor to the bridge in a hydrogen-powered car driven by Nikolsky, the admiral kept asking stupid questions. Don’t you understand the point of your own mission? Nikolsky was about to say, when the cry of an operator burst from the hall speakers:

  “Multiple enemy missiles, closing!”

  An instant later, that cry became a veritable scream.

  “Unable to respond! There are too many!”

  Imperial flagship Brünhild—

  A communications officer stood up from his station chair and turned toward Reinhard, face flushed with excitement. “Message from Admiral Kircheis! Good news, sir. Enemy transport fleet annihilated. In addition, twenty-six escort ships destroyed. Our side’s losses limited to one battleship with moderate damage and fourteen walküren …”

  Shouts of joy filled the bridge. Though the Imperial Navy’s repeated pullbacks had been born of strategic necessity, it had nonetheless been in retreat ever since the fall of Iserlohn, and for its soldiers, this was the thrill of victory that had been missing for far too long.

  “Mittermeier, von Reuentahl, Wittenfeld, Kempf, Mecklinger, Wahlen, Lutz: follow the plan, and hit the rebel forces with everything you have.”

  Reinhard gave the assembled admirals who were standing by their orders.

  The admirals responded with a hearty “Yes, sir!” and were about to depart for the front lines when Reinhard called them all to a halt and ordered an attendant to bring wine for each of them. It was an advance celebration of their victory.

  “Victory is already assured. But more than that, we have to make this victory a perfect one. The conditions are all in order. Do not allow those rebel upstarts to return home alive. May the favor of our great lord Odin be upon you. Prosit!”

  “Prosit!” the admirals shouted in chorus. Then, after draining their glasses, they hurled them to the floor as was the custom. Innumerable shards of light danced brilliantly across the floor.

  After the admirals had left, Reinhard stared fixedly at his screen. There he could make out a cluster of sterile, inorganic lights that were infinitely colder and more distant than the scattered flecks of light upon the floor. He loved those lights, however. It was to take hold of those lights and make them his own that he was where he was right now …

  V

  October 10 of the Standard Calendar, 1600.

  Admiral Uranff, who was positioning his fleet in orbit above Planet Lügen according to gravity-gradient stabilization, could tell that the enemy attack was coming. Of the twenty thousand reconnaissance satellites that had been positioned throughout the region, about one hundred of them in the two o’clock direction had ceased transmitting images after displaying countless points of light.

  “Here they come,” Uranff murmured. He felt a current of tension running through him all the way to his terminal nerves. “Operator, how long until contact with the enemy?”

  “Between six and seven minutes, sir.”

  “All right, then. All ships: prepare for all-out war. Communications officer: send messages to Supreme Command HQ and the Thirteenth Fleet. ‘We have met the enemy.’ ”

  Alarms rang out, and orders and responses flew back and forth across the bridge of the flagship.

  “The Thirteenth Fleet will eventually be coming to assist us,” Uranff told his subordinates. “That’s ‘Miracle Yang.’ When that happens, we can catch the enemy in a pincer. Don’t doubt our victory.”

  Sometimes commanders had to make their subordinates believe things that they didn’t even believe themselves. Yang will probably be under attack by multiple enemies at the same time we are and not have the luxury of coming to assist the Tenth Fleet, Urannf thought.

  The Imperial Navy’s massive attack had begun.

  Sublieutenant Frederica Greenhill looked up at her commanding officer, tension evident in her white face.

  “Excellency! There’s an FTL from Admiral Uranff.”

  “They’re under attack?”

  “Yes, sir. He says combat with the enemy began at 1607.”

  “So it’s finally started …”

  An alarm rang out at that moment, drowning out the tail end of his words. Five minutes later, the Thirteenth Fleet was exchanging fire with an imperial force led by Admiral Kempf.

  “Enemy missiles closing from eleven o’clock!”

  At the operator’s cry, Captain Marino, captain of the flagship Hyperion, made a quick-witted response: “Eject decoys! Heading nine o’clock!”

  Yang remained silent and focused on his own job, which was operational command of the fleet. Defense and counterattack at the individual ship level was the job of the captain; if a fleet commander were to involve himself to that extent, first of all, his nerves would never hold.

  Missiles tipped with laser-triggered fusion warheads bore down on them like ferocious hunting dogs.

  To counter them, decoy rockets were fired. These emitted tremendous amounts of heat and electromagnetic radiation to fool the missiles’ detection systems. The missiles in the cluster turned their noses at sharp angles and went after the decoys.

  An ominous glow was steadily filling the black void as energy collided with energy and matter clashed against matter.

  “Spartanians, stand by for launch!”

  The order was relayed, and a pleasant tension ran through the minds and bodies of several thousand spartanian crew members. These were children such as the war god Ares might grant his petitioners, possessed of fierce confidence in their skills and reflexes, to whom the fear of death was but an object of ridicule.

  “All right, let’s head out and go around!”

  The man who gave this enthusiastic shout aboard the flagship Hyperion was ace pilot Lieutenant Waren Hughes.

  Hyperion was carrying four aces. Besides Hughes, there were lieutenants Salé Aziz Cheikly, Olivier Poplin, and Ivan Konev. To show off their titles, each had had an ace mark of spades, diamonds, hearts, or clubs stenciled in special paint onto the hull of his favored spartanian. Having nerve enough to think of warfare as a sport was likely one factor that had kept them alive this long.

  After leaping into his spartanian, Poplin shouted out to the mechanic, “I’m shooting down five, so start chilling the champagne!”

  But the answer that came back wasn’t what he’d expected:

  “There’s no way that’s happening, but I’ll at least get you some water!”

  “At least try and play along,” Poplin grumbled, as he and the other three pirouetted out into the space together. The wings of the spartanians shone with rainbow hues, reflecting the light of distant explosions. Missiles rushed toward them with hostile intent, and beams came racing in to attack.

  “Think you can hit me?!” Poplin shouted.

  All four men were making similar boasts. It was the pride of warriors who had crossed the lines of death any number of times and yet lived to tell the tale that was making them do so.

  Showing off divine skill, they banked sharply, dodging past missiles. The slender trunks of the missiles that attempted to follow them, unable to endure the sudden shift in g-force, broke apart from their centers. Up ahead, imperial walküren danced into view, tilting their wings back and forth as if in ridicule as they came in spoiling for a dogfight.

  Hughes, Cheikly, and Konev met them gladly, and one by one enemy craft exploded into balls of flame.

  One of the alliance aces—Poplin—was flushed crimson with anger and suspicion, however. At a rate of 140 rounds per second, he was firing on the enemy with uranium-238 rounds. These had excellent armor-piercing ability and became superheated and exploded upon striking a target—yet all his shots were merely being swallowed up by the void, hitting nothing.

  Without his help, the other three had already drawn first blood, destroying a total of seven enemy fighters.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Vice Admiral Kempf, commanding officer of
the imperial force, said with a sharp exhalation of disgust.

  Kempf was an ace pilot himself—a hero of many battles who in his silver-winged walküre had flung dozens of enemy craft at the Grim Reaper’s feet. Though he was extremely tall, the breadth of his body was such that people didn’t really notice. His brown hair was cut short.

  “Why are you wasting time on enemies like that? Form half-envelopment formations to their afts and drive them into firing range of the battleships!”

  Those instructions were right on target. Three walküren assumed a half-envelopment formation to the aft of Lieutenant Hughes’s spartanian and skillfully maneuvered him into a battleship’s firing range. Realizing the danger, Hughes banked sharply and sent a hail of U-238 rounds into the cockpit of one enemy fighter, and then tried to thread his way through the gap he had opened. However, he had failed to take into account the enemy battleship’s auxiliary cannons. Beams flared, erasing both Hughes and his ship from this world in a single shot.

  Cheikly was also felled using the same tactic. The remaining two aces barely managed to shake off their pursuers, and ducked into a blind spot of the battleships’ cannons.

  Poplin’s sense of self-respect had been hopelessly wounded. It was bad enough that Konev had sent four enemies to their graves already, but Poplin, unable to shoot down a single enemy, had done nothing but run, dodging back and forth.

  When he discovered the reason why not a single round had hit its target, his sorrow blazed forth into fury. When he returned to the mother ship, he jumped down from the cockpit, ran toward a mechanic, and grabbed him by the collar.

  “Bring out that murdering chief mechanic! I’m gonna kill him!”

  When Tech Lieutenant Toda, the chief mechanic, came running, Poplin gave his vitriol free rein.

  “The sights on my guns are nine to twelve degrees off! Are you even servicing them, you salary-thieving—!”

  Tech Lieutenant Toda’s eyebrows shot upward.