Dawn Read online

  Yang Tai-long had been in his study at home when he received the news that it was a boy. His hands had paused for a moment in their polishing of an old vase, and he had muttered, “Huh. So when I’m gone, all these works of art will be his.”

  Then his hands had resumed their polishing.

  When Yang Wen-li was five years old, his mother died. The cause was acute heart disease, and since she had always been healthy up until that point, her sudden death understandably came as a shock to Yang Tai-long. He dropped a bronze lion ornament to the floor but then unexpectedly picked it back up and incensed his wife’s entire family by uttering these words:

  “Thank goodness I wasn’t polishing something breakable …”

  Yang Tai-long had now lost two wives—one to divorce and one to death—and he had no wish to marry again. He assigned a maid to take care of his son, but when the maid was on break or when the boy became difficult to manage, Yang Tai-long would set him down beside himself, and together they would polish a vase or something.

  When the relatives of his late wife came to visit and found father and son wordlessly polishing vases in the study, they were horrified, and in the end the assertion emerged that the child should be rescued from living with such an irresponsible father. When they had cornered the father and asked him which was more important to him—his son or his antiques—he had replied:

  “Well, the art required a lot of capital, you know …”

  But on the other hand, I got my son for free, being the implication.

  The entire family, driven into a rage by these words, was preparing to take the matter of the boy’s custody to court, but Yang Tai-long guessed what they were up to, and carrying the boy with him, boarded an interstellar trading ship and disappeared from the capital of Heinessen. The family, realizing how absurd it would be to allege that a father had kidnapped his own son, shrugged their collective shoulders and did nothing beyond tracking where in the starry sky the spaceship had gone. “Oh well,” they said. “The fact that he took the boy with him must mean he at least has a beating heart.”

  In this way, Yang Wen-li came to spend the greater part of his first sixteen years inside the hulls of starships.

  In the beginning, the young Yang Wen-li would become ill and run fevers every time he experienced warp, but eventually he got used to it and was able to calmly accept his circumstances. Once he had generally satisfied his interest in engineering, he turned his attention in another direction: history.

  The boy watched videos, read e-copies of old books, and loved listening to reminiscences about the past, but in particular, he held a deep interest in “the most wicked usurper in all of history,” Rudolf.

  Because Yang Wen-li was in the Free Planets Alliance, Rudolf was naturally made out to be the very incarnation of evil, but in listening to what people said about him, the boy had begun to have his doubts. If Rudolf had really been such a villain, he wondered, then why had people supported him and given him power?

  “Because he was dishonest to his marrow. He had the people fooled.”

  “Why were the people fooled?”

  “Because Rudolf was an evil man, y’see.”

  These answers didn’t quite satisfy the boy, but his father’s view differed somewhat from those of the others he talked to. He answered his son’s inquiry in this way:

  “Because the people wanted to have it easy.”

  “Have it easy?”

  “Exactly. They didn’t want to solve their own problems by their own effort. They were all waiting for some saint or superman to show up from somewhere and shoulder all their troubles by himself. And that’s what Rudolf took advantage of. Listen. I want you to remember this: it’s the ones who empower a dictator who deserve most of the blame. But the ones who don’t support him actively—who watch it happening without saying anything—they’re just as much to blame. But listen, don’t you think you should turn your interests in a more profitable direction than this kind of stuff?”

  “More profitable?”

  “Like money or artwork. Art for the soul, money for the pocket.”

  Despite comments such as these, Yang Tai-long never forced his business or his hobbies on his son, and Yang Wen-li became more and more absorbed in history.

  A few days before his son’s sixteenth birthday, Yang Tai-long died. It was the result of an accident involving his ship’s nuclear-fusion furnace. Yang Wen-li had decided to take the entrance examination for Heinnessen Memorial University’s history department, having only just recently gotten his father’s approval.

  “Ah, why not?” he had said. “It’s not like there’s never been anyone to make money at history.”

  With those words, the father had given his son his blessing to walk the path that he loved.

  “Don’t ever despise money, though. If you’ve got it, you can get by without bowing your head to people you don’t like, and you don’t have to compromise your principles just to get along in life, either. But just like politicians, it’s best if we manage it well and not just do as we please with it.”

  At the end of his forty-eight years, Yang Tai-long left behind his son, his company, and his huge collection of artwork.

  After Yang Wen-li had finished with his father’s funeral, he was kept busy with mundane matters such as inheritance and taxes. And then he discovered the terrible truth: the works of art that his father had so passionately collected prior to his death were, almost without exception, counterfeit.

  From the Etrurian vases to the rococo-style portraits to the bronze horses from imperial Han China, everything was “worth less than a single dinar,” as the government’s public appraiser told him by way of an expressionless underling.

  And that wasn’t all. Prior to his death, his father had mortgaged his ownership of the company in order to cover his debts. In the end, Yang was left out in the cold with nothing but a mountain of junk.

  But just as he had done when he was a child, Yang accepted the situation with a wry smile, mingled with a sigh. He did think it was rather odd that his wheeler-dealer of a father should lack an eye for value only when it came to his beloved works of art. If—just if—he had been knowingly collecting forgeries, Yang felt like that would have been just like his father. As for his father’s company, Yang had never had any desire to take over the business anyway, so he didn’t mind losing it one bit.

  At any rate, there was an even bigger problem. He didn’t have enough money left on hand to afford the cost of going to the top-tier university he was supposed to be attending soon.

  Because of the chronic state of war with the Galactic Empire, hugely expensive military appropriations were putting a strain on the national budget, and funding for education in the humanities—which had no direct military applications—kept getting cut. It was hard to get a scholarship.

  It seemed as if there would be no school anywhere where one could study history for free … and yet there was one.

  And the National Defense Force Officers’ Academy, with its Department of Military History, was it.

  Just before the deadline, Yang sent off his application, and although his entrance exam results placed him far indeed from the head of the class, he somehow managed a passing score.

  V

  In this way, Yang Wen-li entered officer’s school entirely as an expedient. Despite the fact that he was a stranger to both patriotism and belligerent militarism, his course had been set.

  Almost all of the mountain of junk he had inherited from his father he threw away—though he did put some of it into storage—and he moved into the officer’s school dormitory quite literally empty-handed.

  His motives being what they were, there was no way Yang was going to be a top-level student. He diligently studied his military history—and all the wide range of nonmilitary history that made up its background—but he skimped as much as possible on his other subjec
ts.

  Particularly in the areas of weapons training, flight class, and mechanical engineering—the boring subjects—he was perfectly happy getting grades that hovered just above failing.

  If he did fail, though, there was the danger of being expelled, and even if he weren’t expelled, the makeup tests would take up precious time. The point being that as long as he didn’t fail, it was okay. His goal was not to be the director of Joint Operational Headquarters, the secretary of the space srmada, or the superintendent general of staff. He wanted to be a researcher at the Military History Collation Office. He had practically no interest at all in advancement as a soldier.

  His grades in Military History were outstanding, and combined with his nap-of-the-earth marks in all the practical subjects, produced a total that was the very picture of “average.” However, Yang’s marks in Strategic Tactical Simulations weren’t bad at all. Grades in this class were determined by having the students face off against one another in VR simulations. The instructors were shocked one day when the class’s top student—a boy named Wideborn, who was touted as the most brilliant student the school had seen in the last decade—was soundly defeated by Yang Wen-li.

  Yang focused all of his forces on one point, cut his opponent’s supply lines, and then switched over to a purely defensive posture. Wideborn, using a variety of tactics, penetrated deep into Yang’s ranks, but when his supplies ran out, he had no choice but to retreat. Both the computer’s judgment and the instructor’s scoring awarded the victory to Yang.

  Wideborn, whose pride had been wounded, was furious. “I’d have won if he’d played it straight and fought me head-on. I mean, all he did was keep running back and forth to get away, right?”

  Yang didn’t argue. For him, this class was making up for his low marks in Mechanical Engineering, and with that, he was satisfied in full.

  That satisfaction, however, was to be short-lived.

  At the end of his second year, Yang was summoned by an instructor and ordered to switch his major to Military Strategy.

  “It’s not just you,” the instructor had said, trying to be consoling. “They’re doing away with the whole military history department, so every student there has to change majors. You beat that Wideborn fellow in the simulation. That’s an achievement. You should change departments anyway, just to make the most of your talents.”

  “I came to this school because I wanted to study military history,” Yang objected. “I don’t think it’s fair to recruit students and then scrap their department before they graduate.”

  “Cadet Yang, you may not be on active duty yet, but from the moment you entered this school, you became a soldier. This is how petty officers get treated. And as a soldier, you have to follow your orders.”

  Yang said nothing.

  “But listen, there’s no way this is a bad deal for you. Military Strategy is a department that’s packed with top-level students. Students who try to get into Strategy but don’t make it flow into other departments. That’s the reality here. It’s a rare thing for someone to flow the other way.”

  “I’m honored, sir, but … do I sound like a top-level student to you?”

  “Watch it with the sarcasm. Anyway, if you don’t like it, you’ve got the right to quit, naturally. Of course, if you do that, you’ll have to pay back all the tuition and school fees you’ve accrued thus far. Only soldiers get to study for free.”

  Yang was dumbstruck. He couldn’t help remembering what his late father had said about money. Truly, with people being people, you could never be free in this life.

  At age twenty, Yang graduated from the military strategy department with average grades and received his commission as an ensign. A year later, he was promoted to sublieutenant, but that was normal for graduates of the Officer’s Academy. It didn’t mean that his service record was particularly outstanding.

  He was assigned to an office at the Joint Operational Headquarters called the Office of Records and Statistics, and no one distinguished themselves in combat there. But for Yang, it was rather pleasant to have a job where he could be around old records.

  However, simultaneous with his promotion to sublieutenant, Yang received orders for frontline duty. He departed for his new post as a staff officer for forces stationed in the territory of El Facil.

  “When one thing goes crazy, everything goes crazy,” the young lieutenant junior grade grumbled.

  Even though he had never once actively sought to become a soldier, here he was, wearing a black beret with a white five-pointed star mark, an ivory-white scarf tucked into the collar of his black jumper, black shoes, and slacks the same color as his scarf: an extremely functional military uniform.

  That year, in SE 788, the Battle of El Facil greatly accelerated the course of Sublieutenant Yang Wen-li’s life.

  The curtain rose on this battle with a scene of outrageous disgrace for the Free Planets Alliance’s navy. To the battle itself, both sides had dispatched in the neighborhood of a thousand vessels each, and after both sides had taken about 20 percent casualties, they had temporarily called it off. Yang did nothing during the engagement. All he did was sit in his station chair on the bridge of the flagship and watch the battle. He was not even asked for his opinion.

  However, as the alliance ships were beginning their return to base, they were unexpectedly attacked from behind. The Imperial Navy, while pretending that they too were returning to base, had executed a rapid reversal of course and charged against the Alliance Navy, which had relaxed its guard and shown them its flank.

  Spears of energy ripped through the blackness of space, and miniature novas flashed and vanished in an instant. The energies unleashed by destroyed vessels became a maelstrom, tossing other ships to and fro. Rear Admiral Lynch—the commander of the alliance fleet—must have panicked. Without trying to calm the confusion of his allies, his flagship fled back toward El Facil at full speed.

  Upon learning that their commander had turned tail, the alliance fleet naturally lost its will to fight, and the ships that had been waging isolated battles with the enemies close at hand began to peel off and run from the field of battle, one after another. Some of them chose their routes of retreat independently and fled from the El Facil territory altogether, while others followed their flagship and escaped to the planet of El Facil itself. Ships that were late in retreating faced one of two fates: annihilation or surrender. Nearly all of them chose surrender.

  Those surviving forces that had escaped to El Facil still numbered as many as two hundred vessels and fifty thousand soldiers, but the Imperial Navy afterward reinforced itself, building its forces up to three times that number, planning to leap at the chance to “liberate the El Facil territory from the clutches of the rebel forces” in one fell swoop. El Facil’s civilian population of three million cowered in the midst of this tense situation. It was already too late to stop El Facil from falling.

  The civilians came to negotiate with the military, seeking the creation and implementation of a plan for planetwide evacuation. The officer in charge who appeared before them was Sublieutenant Yang Wen-li.

  He was too young, and his rank was low. Was the military even taking them seriously? The civilians had their doubts, but Yang did a good job with everything he was supposed to do, even though he kept scratching his head in a way that didn’t inspire confidence. Amid the chaos of the impending imperial invasion, Yang procured civilian and military vessels and made preparations for the evacuation.

  Even if Yang had not been there, any competent military officer could have done that much. Yang apparently calmed the impatient civilians while awaiting the chance to depart.

  The next day, an urgent message came through that shocked everyone. Rear Admiral Lynch was in the process of fleeing from El Facil with his direct subordinates and the military provisions. He had abandoned the civilians and his other subordinates.

  To the pan
icked civilians, Yang finally gave instructions to evacuate … in the direction opposite of Lynch’s course.

  “There is no need for concern,” he told them. “The rear admiral is drawing away the Imperial Navy’s attention for us. We can escape now if we just ride the solar wind in a leisurely way and avoid using radar permeability devices or anything like that.”

  With that casual decision, the young sublieutenant transformed his own fleet commander into a decoy.

  And his prediction was dead-on. Rear Admiral Lynch and the others were spotted by the Imperial Navy, which had been sharpening its claws in anticipation of him trying just such a thing. After being run to and fro like hunted animals, the alliance vessels finally raised a white flag and were taken captive.

  Meanwhile, the convoy of vessels led by Yang was leaving the El Facil system and making a beeline for territory to the rear. They were spotted on the Imperial Navy’s detection grid, but thanks to the preconceived notion that evacuation ships would be equipped with some kind of antidetection system—and the fact that they did show up on radar—the ships were thought to be not man-made objects, but a large swarm of meteors, and thereby they slipped out right under the enemy’s noses.

  Later, when the officers of the imperial fleet learned about this, wineglasses that had been raised in victory toasts were smashed to the floor. Yang arrived in territory to the rear of El Facil with three million civilians, and cheers of welcome were waiting.

  Like a meteor shower, words of praise for Yang’s composure and daring rained down from the high chiefs of the military. They had no choice. After all, their navy had lost the battle, fled from the enemy, and finally abandoned the very civilians that they were supposed to be protecting. In order to wipe out such a blot of disgrace and dishonor, the leadership needed a military hero. Hence: “Yang Wen-li: a paragon of the fighting men of the Free Planets Alliance.” “A warrior shining with the light of justice and humanity.” “Let all the soldiers of the alliance praise this young hero!”