Ambition Read online

  No sooner had they selected the all-news channel on the solivision than that scene came leaping into their living room.

  “… At present, the outbreak of crimes committed by returning soldiers is ongoing. Also today, tragedy struck on Hutchison Street, and even now, the situation remains unresolved. At least three have been killed …”

  The expression on the mournful-looking announcer’s face was at odds with the lively cadence of his voice.

  Soldiers who used hallucinogens and stimulants to escape from the fear of death on the battlefield would often become addicts and then return to civilian life. One day, they would just explode. Fear and madness became an unseen magma that eventually overflowed, burning up everything around them.

  A thought occurred to Yang. He called Julian and had him pull up and forward some materials related to crime statistics from the Data Service. He would have done it himself, except that he didn’t know how to search the databases very well; he wasn’t deliberately trying to push everything off on Julian.

  It was just as Yang had expected. Criminal cases were up 65 percent compared to five years ago. On the other hand, arrest rates had fallen by 22 percent. As the ruin of the human heart progressed, the quality of law enforcement declined as well.

  Over the course of this long war, there had been millions of fatalities. The military filled the vacancies that were left behind. As a result, human resource shortages had appeared in every field in society. Doctors, educators, police officers, systems administrators, computer technicians … the numbers of seasoned workers had decreased across the board, their seats either filled by the inexperienced or simply left vacant. In this way, the military’s support structure—society itself—was being weakened. A weak society inevitably weakened the military, and a weakened military again lost soldiers and sought replacements from society …

  One could say that this vicious cycle was an accumulation of contradictions woven together by the spinning wheel that was, in a sense, war. I’d like to show this to all those prowar cheerleaders who say, “The corruption that comes from peace scares me more than the destruction that comes from war,” thought Yang. What would they insist they were fighting to protect as they urged on the collapse of society?

  What was all this to protect?

  Tossing aside the materials he’d obtained, Yang turned over and lay faceup on his sofa. After mulling the question over, he couldn’t help wondering what meaning there was in what he himself was doing. For Yang, it did not fill the heart with cheer to think that it all might be meaningless.

  The ceremony was held in the afternoon on the following day and ended with the usual content-free eloquence and hysterical militaristic frenzy.

  “I feel like I used up a lifetime’s worth of patience in those two hours,” Yang grumbled to the waiting Julian when he came out of the auditorium.

  He really did hold it in well this time, thought Julian. In the past, Yang had displayed bald-faced antagonism at such ceremonies and had even remained seated when everyone else in the auditorium rose to their feet. This time, he had gone no further than murmuring “What are you even talking about? That’s ridiculous!” too low for anyone else to hear.

  Yang breathed out a heavy sigh, as if venting poisonous vapors absorbed in the auditorium, and then noticed a group of about one hundred marching down the road ahead. They were wearing long white robes with red fringes and chanting something as they held aloft placards that read The Holy Land, in Our Hands as they walked leisurely along.

  “Who are they?” Yang asked a young officer standing next to him.

  “Oh, those are followers of the Church of Terra.”

  “The Church of Terra?”

  “You haven’t heard? It’s a religion that’s growing like crazy these days. Its ‘object of worship,’ if that’s the right term … is Earth itself.”

  “Earth … ?”

  “Earth, humanity’s birthplace, is in a sense the ultimate holy land. Right now, it’s under the control of the Galactic Empire. They want to take it back militarily and build a cathedral there to guide the souls of all humanity. To join in a holy war for that purpose, no matter what sacrifices might have to be made …”

  Yang couldn’t believe what he had just heard.

  “They can’t be serious. Something like that is utterly impossible.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Julian said, turning on him with unexpected vehemence. “We have righteousness on our side, and above all, Admiral Yang, we have a great warrior like you, so we can destroy the tyrannical Galactic Empire, and we can even recover Earth. Am I wrong?”

  “I don’t know …” Yang replied, taking care not to let his ill mood come to the surface. “Nothing’s ever that easy, you know.”

  The seeds of fanaticism existed in every generation. Even so, this latest iteration sounded exceptionally bad.

  Earth was indeed mother to the whole human race. However, to put it in extreme terms, it was nothing more than an object of sentimentalism now. Eight centuries ago, Earth had ceased being the center of human society. When a civilization’s reach expanded, its center shifted. History had proven this.

  Where had they gotten the idea that they could spill the blood of millions just to take back a worn-out old frontier world?

  “Now that you mention it,” Yang said, “they remind me of another group. What’re the Patriotic Knights up to these days?”

  “I don’t really know, though I hear quite a few of their members have joined the Church of Terra. At any rate, their ideas mesh rather closely, so it doesn’t strike me as unnatural.”

  “Wonder if they’ve got the same backer,” Yang said, in a voice so low that the officer didn’t seem to have heard.

  Yang, having decided to rest at home until it was time for the party that evening, got into a driverless cab with Julian and fell into a deep reverie.

  Long, long ago, there had been people called crusaders on Earth. They had declared they would take back the Holy Land, and using God’s name, invaded other countries—laying their cities to waste, plundering their treasures, and slaughtering their people. Far from feeling shame for those inhuman acts, they had actually prided themselves on their achievements in persecuting unbelievers.

  It was a stain on the historical record, brought about by ignorance, fanaticism, self-intoxication, and intolerance, and was bitter proof of the fact that those who believed, without doubting, in God and in justice could become the most brutal, the most violent of all people. Were these Terraists trying to re-create on a galactic scale a folly more than 2,400 years in the past?

  There was a proverb that said, “He who works virtue does so in solitude, but he who works folly seeks companions.” Grief awaited anyone who followed after such people.

  But was this movement to recapture Earth really nothing more than the foolishness it appeared to be on the surface?

  Behind the Crusades, there had been seafaring merchants in Venice and Genoa who planned to weaken the influence of the unbelievers and monopolize trade between the East and the West. Ambition backed by cold calculation had been supporting that fanaticism. Supposing that bit of history were to repeat itself as well …

  Could the third power, Phezzan, be behind this?

  Yang was stunned at the thought as it came to him in a flash in the back of his mind. In the seat of the narrow taxi, he moved so suddenly that Julian’s eyes snapped open wide, and he asked him what was the matter. After giving him a vague answer, Yang sank into thought again.

  From Phezzan’s standpoint, it would be most welcome for the empire and alliance to reach new levels of mutual hatred and killing in a dispute over Earth. That much he could see. However, if both sides were to fall, and there were a complete collapse of order, wouldn’t it be Phezzan—a nation dependent on commerce—that would be most distressed? Unless the activity were limited to a range that could be co
ntrolled by Phezzan’s will and calculations, fomenting something like this would be meaningless. And it was safe to say that the energy of a fanatical spirit would inevitably break free of control and explode. There was no way that Phezzan didn’t know that.

  He couldn’t believe that they were seriously aiming to recapture Earth militarily and restore its lost glory, but …

  “I just don’t understand it,” Yang murmured with an unintentional grimace. “What is Phezzan thinking?” Then, amused at himself, he thought ruefully, I’m worrying too much over nothing—it’s hardly certain that Phezzan has anything to do with this Terraism movement at all.

  They arrived back at Yang’s official residence, and wanting a drink to help clear his exhaustion, Yang called out to Julian.

  “Can you get me a brandy?”

  “We’ve got some vegetable juice, but …”

  After a pause, Yang said, “Now listen here, you think inspiration comes from vegetable juice?”

  “What matters is how hard you’re trying.”

  “Gah! Where’d you pick up an expression like that?”

  “Everyone on Iserlohn is my teacher.”

  Yang growled as the faces of the venom-tongued Caselnes and von Schönkopf rose up in his mind.

  “I should’ve given your boyhood educational environment a little more thought.”

  Julian smiled and reminded Yang it was “just one glass” as he brought him his brandy.

  V

  The party was an improvement, at least when compared to the ceremony that had preceded it.

  Although the humorless, rambling speeches from politicians, financiers, and high-ranking bureaucrats continued, there was predictably little hysterical content here.

  At Iserlohn as well, parties were held for the purpose of military-civilian relations, but as the one ultimately responsible for them, Yang insisted on doing things in his own personal style. When asked to give a speech, he would say, “Everyone, please enjoy the party,” and with that be done with it. In both the military and the private sector, there were many notable persons who loved giving speeches, but when Yang did that, the other dignitaries had no choice but to shorten their speeches as well.

  “Admiral Yang’s two-second speech” had become an Iserlohn specialty.

  The black-haired admiral, having become a hero of legend while yet young and alive, was even at this party an object of curiosity to certain ladies of celebrity and was forced to use his mouth for purposes other than eating and drinking all evening.

  “Admiral Yang, why don’t you wear your medals?”

  “Well, those things are heavy, so when I’m wearing them, I end up tilting forward when I walk.”

  “Oh my, oh my!”

  “My ward tells me I look like an old man walking around with my spine crooked, so …”

  The ladies laughed pleasantly, but the one who was telling them this was not having such a great time. He was merely making a compromise because this was part of what he was paid for.

  In a corner of a ballroom spacious to excess, Julian had found himself a seat, and with nothing else to do, was watching the crowd as people walked back and forth. All of the ten thousand in attendance were people of renown, and if it were called a magnificent sight, a magnificent sight was what it was.

  The alliance’s head of state, High Council Chairman Trünicht, was there. Renowned as a master of flowery rhetoric, Yang hated the man so deeply that he would turn off the solivision whenever he appeared on it. Perhaps wisely, Trünicht seemed to be avoiding Yang as well.

  Eventually, Yang slipped out of the ring of ladies and walked quickly toward Julian.

  “Julian, I think it’s about time we snuck out of here.”

  “Yes, sir, Admiral.”

  All of the preparations had been laid out in advance. Julian went to get a bag that had been left with the attendant at the front desk, while Yang went to the bathroom and changed into some nondescript civilian clothes. His dress uniform went into the bag, and then the two of them walked right out of the building, with no one the wiser.

  Mikhailov’s Restaurant—though to call it that strained the principle of truth in advertising—was a modest food stall that was open for business all day at the entrance to Courtwell Park, located in a corner of downtown where there were many blue-collar laborers.

  Poor couples with little of anything except youth and dreams would come there to buy food and drink, and then sit talking on benches beneath the security light. It was that kind of place.

  When things were busy, the hardworking Mikhailov—who even in his military days had been a cook—didn’t pay attention to the faces of each and every customer. So when the peculiar combination of an old man, a young man, and a boy came to his counter—there was also the fact that the lighting was dim—he paid them no mind either.

  The three of them ordered fried fish, fried potatoes, quiche, and milk tea, then sat down together, occupying one of the benches fully, and began to eat and drink. It was a three-generation picnic. After all, none of the three had eaten very much at the party …

  “Whew, it’s a pain in the neck to have to sneak off to a place like this just to talk without being seen,” said the eldest of the three.

  “I enjoyed myself quite a bit,” said Yang. “Took me back to my days in Officers’ Academy. We’d rack our brains back then coming up with new ways to break curfew.”

  If they had realized that the old man was Admiral Bucock, commander in chief of the FPA’s space armada, and the young man was Admiral Yang Wen-li, commander of Iserlohn Fortress, both the proprietor Mikhailov and the other customers would have been speechless. The two military leaders had ducked out of the party separately in order to meet up in this place.

  There was something about a light meal of fish and chips that stirred feelings akin to homesickness. In his days at Officers’ Academy, Yang would sometimes slip out of the dormitory with his partner in crime Jean Robert Lappe to sate their adolescent appetites with cheap, delicious food from stalls like this one.

  Oh man, I shoulda called it quits after the wine, he’d been thinking. Yang had ordered schnapps, and no sooner had he stepped out of the bar than he’d taken a hard fall on the sidewalk and found himself unable to move. The proprietor had called Jessica for him, and she had rushed over and dragged him into the back of the bar, so as not to be seen by their stern instructors. She had treated his injuries there.

  “Jean Robert Lappe! Yang Wen-li! Wake up! Sit up straight! Who knows what’ll happen if we’re not back in the dorms by sunrise!”

  The coffee that Jessica had brewed for the two hungover youths, in spite of being black, had tasted oddly sweet …

  That same Jean Robert Lappe had been killed in action last year in the Battle of Astarte. Jessica Edwards, who had been engaged to marry him, had since been elected as a delegate for the Planet Terneuzen electoral district and occupied a seat in the National Assembly, where she was now in the vanguard of the antiwar peace faction.

  Everything changed. As time continued to march onward, children became adults, adults grew old, and the things that could never be undone only multiplied.

  The voice of the old admiral interrupted Yang’s reverie.

  “Well, nobody is going to recognize us here. Let’s hear what you have to say.”

  “All right, then,” Yang said slowly, after washing down his umpteenth fried fish stick with milk tea. “It’s possible we just might see a coup d’état in this country before long.”

  He spoke in a nonchalant tone, but it was enough to bring the old admiral’s fingers to a sudden midair halt en route to his mouth.

  “A coup?”

  “Yeah.”

  That was the conclusion Yang had reached. He explained plainly, but in great detail, his insight regarding Marquis Reinhard von Lohengramm’s intentions, as well as the fact that whoever
ended up starting it would probably not realize they were being manipulated by Marquis von Lohengramm. Bucock acknowledged his points and nodded.

  “I see. Quite logical. But does Marquis von Lohengramm really believe a coup can succeed?”

  “Even if it fails, that’s fine with him. Because from his standpoint, all that matters is that our military be divided.”

  “I see.” The old admiral crushed his empty paper cup in his hand.

  “Still,” Yang continued, “Before you can foment a coup, you need to convince the ones doing it that they can succeed. That means coming up with a detailed plan to show them—one that at a glance seems highly doable.”

  “Hmm.”

  “A localized rebellion, unless it was quite large-scale and accompanied by a chain reaction affecting other regions, wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance of shaking the central authorities. The most efficient method would be to seize the capital from within. Especially if they can take the authorities hostage as well.”

  “That’s certainly true.”

  “But the bottleneck there is that the center of political power is also the center of military power. If an uprising is faced with a stronger, better-organized military force at the moment it breaks out, it’s going to fail. Any success it did have would be short-lived.”

  Yang tossed the last hunk of fried potato into his mouth before continuing.

  “Which creates a need to organically combine the seizure of the political hub in the capital with localized rebellion.”

  Sitting at Yang’s side, Julian’s eyes were gleaming as the young commander’s theory unfolded before him. This was the result of mental wrangling that had gone on in his head for months.

  “In short,” said Bucock, “they have to scatter the capital’s military forces. To do that, they’ll sow rebellion on the frontier. There’ll be no choice but to mobilize the military to put it down. But their real aim will be taking the capital while we’re gone. Hmm. If all went well, it’d come off pretty as a picture.”