Ambition Page 5

  “Peace. You know what peace is, Kircheis?” Reinhard’s tongue had dripped acid. “It refers to a blessed age when incompetence is not held to be the greatest vice. Just look at those aristocrats.”

  The empire was, on its surface, in an ongoing state of war with the Free Planets Alliance, yet in the midst of all that, those who held rank within the aristocracy were alone enjoying “peace within the fortress walls.” While in the blackest void thousands of light-years away wounded soldiers fell trembling with the fear of death, decadent balls were being held under the crystal chandeliers of the royal palace—with the finest champagne, with roast venison steeped in red wine, with chocolate bavarois … There were Persian cats of purest white, blue pearl hairpins, amber wall ornaments, vases of white porcelain handed down through the centuries, black sable furs, long dresses adorned with splashes of countless gemstones, stained glass windows rich in color and light …

  Is this … this tragically absurd disparity the true reality?

  That was what a boy with ice-blue eyes had thought the first time he had appeared at a ball.

  Yes, he had thought. This is reality.

  So reality must be changed.

  Those thoughts had developed quickly into firm conviction, and ever since, ballrooms and parties had to him been places for observing the enemies whom he must someday destroy. After many a night of such observations, Reinhard had arrived at a conclusion: there was no one he need fear among these highborn in their showy costumes.

  That opinion he had revealed to Kircheis and no other.

  “I don’t believe we need fear any noble, either,” Kircheis had replied. It was around this time that Kircheis began to assume a more humble demeanor toward Reinhard. “But we should be wary of the nobility.”

  At those words, Reinhard had stared at his friend in surprise.

  The unified will of a group—even when it amounted to nothing more than a collection of personal grudges against a common foe—was nothing to take lightly. While crossing swords with the enemy in front of you, someone else just might stick a dagger in your back.

  “Oh,” Reinhard had said. “In that case, I’ll be on my guard.”

  That sharp-edged part of his soul—which like the blade of a narrow sword was too sharp for its own good—was kept sheathed and restrained by his dear friend.

  One other had long smoothed his sharper edges and cooled the raging emotions inside him: his elder sister by five years, Annerose.

  Locked away at age fifteen in the inner palace of prior emperor Freidrich IV, she had seemed at that time to have relinquished all future prospects of her own. Dubbed Gräfin—or Countess—von Grünewald by the emperor, she had taken Reinhard in from the unstable husk of their father and provided backing and support for Kircheis, the boy who was like a brother to him, becoming primary benefactress to them both.

  Now her former dependents, having greatly surpassed her in stature, wore titles of admiralty and went racing through the war zones of the galaxy. Yet whenever they appeared before her, the pair could revert in no time at all to the days of their boyhood—to those bright, shining days of long ago, suffused with sweet, clear light.

  Ever since previous emperor Friedrich IV’s utterly disarrayed life had come to a sudden end, the Galactic Empire’s governing authorities had been visited by the political equivalent of intermittent geological upheavals.

  First, the five-year-old child Erwin Josef had become the new emperor. Although he was the grandchild of the late Friedrich IV, his succession had invited the anger and jealousy of two highborn aristocrats—Duke Otto von Braunschweig and Marquis Wilhem von Littenheim. Both were married to daughters of the late Friedrich IV, and their wives had both given birth to daughters of their own. These men harbored ambitions of making their own daughters empress and of ruling the empire themselves as regent.

  With the crumbling of those ambitions, they had joined hands against their common enemies and vowed revenge. Those enemies were the child emperor Erwin Josef II and the two powerful vassals who supported him—the seventy-six-year-old acting imperial prime minister, Duke Klaus Lichtenlade, and a twenty-year-old marquis named Reinhard von Lohengramm.

  In this way, the splitting of the Galactic Empire’s ruling class into two factions became unavoidable. There was the emperor’s faction, the Lichtenlade-Lohengramm axis, and the anti-emperor faction, the Braunschweig-Littenheim confederation.

  Many concerned for the empire’s future, or for their own personal security, sought to remain neutral, but the worsening tensions would not allow them to just sit on the sidelines indefinitely.

  Which side should I ally myself with if I want to live? Which side is the right one to follow as a subject of the empire, and has a chance of winning? In these matters, their judgment and insight came to be tested.

  Emotions leaned from the start toward von Braunschweig and von Littenheim, but it was widely known that Reinhard was a military genius. Unable to easily decide, they were caught in the vale between their hearts and their heads, desperately trying to guess which way the winds would blow.

  “The nobles are all running about like mice, racking their brains over which side will be more advantageous to align with. It’s made for great comedy of late.”

  The one to whom Reinhard made that remark one day was the Imperial Space Armada chief of staff, Vice Admiral Paul von Oberstein.

  “Unless it comes to a happy ending, it can’t really be called comedy.”

  Von Oberstein was a man utterly devoid of frivolity, so he was widely believed to lack a sense of humor altogether. Although still in his midthirties, half his hair had already gone white, and cold light brimmed in his artificial eyes, which housed internal photon computers. His lips were thin and tightly drawn, and his facial expressions contained nothing whatsoever that could be called endearing. The man himself also feigned ignorance of his reputation, no matter what might be said of him.

  “In any case, Your Excellency should remain patient while watching your enemies squirm, of course.”

  “Certainly. I’ll take my own good time.”

  Reinhard, of course, wasn’t just passively waiting. Employing a host of clever tactics, he had incited the highborn nobles to blind wrath while they still hadn’t a prayer of victory. Their hysterical explosions of outrage were exactly what Reinhard wanted. Their own plots against him he swatted aside with the purehearted passion of a young boy chasing beautiful butterflies.

  “There’s really no need to drive the nobles into a corner,” Reinhard said, as his supple fingertips toyed with his friend’s red hair. “It’s enough just to make them think they’re going to be cornered.”

  In point of fact, the wealth and military power of the nobility would have far outstripped that of Reinhard alone had they stood united against him. Nevertheless, the responses of those harried nobles—At this rate, we’ll be destroyed! We’ve got to fight back somehow!—were lacking in reason and seemed to Reinhard simply absurd.

  Reinhard’s mind was no longer that of a boy, but something of boyhood yet remained in his heart. Those who opposed him he hated with earnest, yet whenever he noticed some unique quality in the words or deeds of his opponents—even if it were a quality that could hardly be called attractive—it would arouse in him a certain curiosity. At present, however, he could see no such qualities among the aristocrats, and in that, he felt just slightly disappointed.

  III

  Count Franz von Mariendorf, a mild-mannered and conscientious man, enjoyed the confidence of not only the aristocrats but his own people as well.

  Undecided as to how best to deal with present circumstances, he was feeling every day like holding his head in his hands. He wanted to maintain neutrality if at all possible, but was that going to be an option?

  It was on one such day that his eldest daughter Hilda made a brief return home from university on Odin.

 
Hilda—the count’s daughter Hildegard von Mariendorf—had only just turned twenty.

  Her darkly shaded blond hair was cut short for ease of movement. There was a hard sort of beauty to her features, yet she didn’t give a cold or harsh impression, a fact likely due to the lively sparkle in her blue-green eyes. Those eyes were practically bursting with life and vibrant intellect, giving more the impression of an adventurous young boy.

  An old man with shiny pink cheeks met her in the mansion’s hall and bent his corpulent body forward in a bow.

  “Milady, it’s so good to see that you’re well.”

  “You’re looking well yourself, Hans. Where’s father?”

  “He’s in the sunroom. Shall I go and tell him you’re here?”

  “No need—I’ll go myself. Oh, can you bring coffee, please?”

  Aside from a pink scarf tied around her collar, the count’s daughter was attired no differently from a man, and she walked through the hallway with a rhythmic step.

  A pair of sofas had been placed by the wide sunroom’s window, and there in the sunlight, Count von Mariendorf sat with his back hunched forward, lost in thought. Looking up at the sound of his daughter’s voice, he forced a smile and beckoned her near.

  “What were you thinking of just now, Father?”

  “Oh, ah, nothing of any great import.”

  “That’s reassuring—to say the fate of the Galactic Empire and the future of House Mariendorf are of no great import.”

  Count Franz von Mariendorf gave a great involuntary shudder.

  His face went rigid, and he looked toward his daughter. With an expression that was impish—but not merely impish—Hilda returned her father’s gaze.

  Hans the butler came round with a coffee set on a silver tray. A long silence stretched out until he withdrew; it was the daughter who broke it.

  “So then, have you decided what you’re going to do, Father?”

  “I am hoping to remain neutral. However, should I be left with no choice but to take one side or the other, I will support von Braunschweig. As a nobleman of the empire, that is my—”

  “Father!”

  With a sharp cry and a harsh look, the daughter had cut off her father’s words.

  Hilda’s father stared in surprise at his daughter. Her blue-green eyes shone intensely. They harbored a strange beauty, like flames that danced within jewels.

  “There is a fact from which most of the aristocracy is averting its eyes. It is that as surely as every human born will someday die, death comes for nations as well. There hasn’t been a single nation to escape ultimate destruction since civilization first emerged on an itty-bitty planet called Earth. How can the Galactic Empire—the Goldenbaum Dynasty—alone be an exception to that?”

  “Hilda! Stop it, Hilda!”

  “The Goldenbaum Dynasty survived nearly five hundred years,” said the count’s bold daughter. “They ruled the entire human race for more than two hundred of those years, doing whatever they pleased with their wealth and power. They killed people, they stole the daughters of other houses, they created laws for their own convenience …”

  She was all but pounding the table in her fervor.

  “They’ve done however they pleased for so long. If the curtain were to finally fall, who could you blame? Then again, it’s only natural to be grateful for five hundred years of continued prosperity. But even the laws of nature say that it can’t go on forever.”

  It was a lambasting worthy of a revolutionary, and her mild-mannered father was at first left speechless. At last, however, he gathered up spirit enough for a counterattack.

  “Even so, Hilda, that doesn’t mean there’s any reason to throw in with Marquis von Lohengramm.”

  “Oh, but there is a reason.”

  “What kind of reason?” His voice was filled with doubt when he asked that question, and at the same time contained a hint of pleading.

  “There are four reasons. Will you hear me out?”

  Her father nodded. His daughter’s explanation was as follows:

  First: Marquis von Lohengramm had sided with the new emperor, and by order of that emperor, had just cause to subdue those who opposed him. Compared with that, the Braunschweig-Littenheim camp was preparing to wage nothing more than a private war of naked ambition.

  Second: The military power of Duke von Braunschweig and the others was great, and sooner or later most of the aristocrats would consolidate behind it. Therefore, even if House Mariendorf participated, it would not be viewed as a particularly important ally and would receive no special treatment. The Lohengramm camp, on the other hand, was the weaker force, and if House Mariendorf aligned with it, its forces would not only be strengthened, there would also be a political impact—which meant it was certain that House Mariendorf would receive a warm welcome.

  Third: Duke von Braunschweig and Marquis von Littenheim were only joining forces for the time being; they lacked the will to cooperate over the long term. Most importantly, the chain of command in their military forces was not unified, and that could be fatal. On the other hand, the Lohengramm camp was operating with both purpose and a unified command structure. Regardless of what might happen en route to the finale, it was self-evident who would come out on top in the end.

  Fourth: Neither Reinhard von Lohengramm nor any of his chief subordinates were of highborn lineage, and he was thus very popular among the common class. It was impossible to fight a war with only officers, and the ordinary soldiers of both camps were all commoners. Among the rank-and-file soldiers of the Duke von Braunschweig camp, riots and mutinies had broken out as a result of accumulated hostility toward officers of high birth. There was even the danger of collapse from within …

  “What do you think, Father?”

  After Hilda had thus concluded, Count von Mariendorf remained silent, simply wiping his brow. He couldn’t argue with his daughter’s logic.

  “I believe House Mariendorf should align with the winner—that is to say, with Marquis von Lohengramm. As proof of our loyalty, we should also offer him land and a hostage.”

  “Land is not a problem—by all means, give him some. But I won’t furnish hostages. That’s out of the—”

  “Not even if the hostage wishes it?”

  “But who would ever—”

  In midsentence, a fearful look appeared on Count von Mariendorf’s face. “No, not you …”

  “Yes. I’ll go.”

  “Hilda!” her father gasped, but she just kept calmly adding sugar and cream to her coffee. She was confident her body was not predisposed toward weight gain.

  “I’m grateful to you, Father. You brought me into the world on the eve of some very interesting times.”

  Count von Mariendorf looked on in stunned silence.

  “I can’t propel history by myself, but I can observe with my own eyes how history moves and how the people caught up in it live and die.”

  After drinking her coffee, Hilda stood and hugged her father’s head, rubbing her cheek against his brown, lusterless hair.

  “Don’t worry about me, Father. Come what may, I’m going to protect House Mariendorf. No matter what I have to do.”

  “Then I leave it in your hands.” Calm was starting to return to the elder von Mariendorf’s voice. “Whatever the end result, I’ll have no regrets. But you need not sacrifice yourself for the sake of House Mariendorf. Instead, think on how you can use House Mariendorf as a tool, to open up a path for your own survival. Will you do that?”

  “Father …”

  “Take good care of yourself.”

  She tilted her head and kissed her father’s brow. Then, like a butterfly, she turned and left the sunroom.

  IV

  After a six-day journey, Hilda arrived on Odin. Or, from her perspective, she returned. She had been living on Odin for a full four years now.

>   Hilda took a robocar from the spaceport to the Lohengramm admiralität. Perhaps because she was in such elevated spirits, she felt no fatigue whatsoever. In any case, once this was over she could rest as much as she pleased.

  “Do you have an appointment, fraülein?” asked the boyish-looking young officer at the window. He wore a name tag that read Lieutenant von Rücke.

  “I’m afraid I don’t. But this concerns the lives and the hopes of a great many people. I’m certain that His Excellency the marshal will consent to see me, so could I please ask you to announce me?”

  At the sight of the beautiful young woman’s earnest expression—about 30 percent of which was an act—Lieutenant von Rücke seemed overcome with chivalrous spirit. He had her wait briefly in the lobby, but after making several calls, he at last beamed at her, as though he were the one whose request had been granted.

  “He says that he’ll see you. Please take elevator 4 up to the tenth floor.”

  “Thank you very much. I’m sorry to have put you to such trouble,” Hilda said with complete sincerity, and boarded an elevator that doubled as a weapons detection system.

  That day, Reinhard was awaiting the arrival of a particular report, but it didn’t seem to be forthcoming, and he took interest at the news that a lovely young woman was here to see him. For Reinhard, of course, beautiful women were not to be prized too highly. Even so, the sight of Hilda’s beauty—raw and natural, no noticeable makeup—left him just a little impressed at how unlike an aristocrat’s daughter she appeared.

  “It’s a pity Kircheis isn’t with us today,” Reinhard said once they were seated in the reception room. “Did you know he has a bit of a history with the von Mariendorfs?”

  “Yes, of course. He saved my father’s life during the Kastropf Rebellion last year. I’ve never met him in person, though.”

  After a moment’s silence, Reinhard said, “So then, you say you have business with me today?”