Sunset Page 7

  Annerose was aware of Reinhard’s condition, and had already visited Stechpalme Schloß once during this bout of fever. She had not met with him on that occasion, instead only offering comfort and encouragement to Hilda before returning to her lodgings. On the night of the 23rd, a new messenger sent by the kaiserin arrived at those lodgings, and Annerose came to visit Reinhard in his sickbed the following morning. Hilda left the room and allowed the siblings thirty minutes to speak privately. After Annerose emerged from Reinhard’s sickroom, the two sisters-in-law took tea together at the kaiserin’s private salon.

  “Kaiserin Hildegard, the kaiser is yours now,” Annerose said with sincerity. “He belongs to you and you alone. I hope you will never abandon him, or give up on him.”

  “Annerose…”

  “I appreciate your thoughtfulness in calling me here. But it has been many years since my brother belonged to me.”

  Annerose’s smile was like sunlight filtered through leaves that swayed in the wind.

  “Three and a half years ago, he may have believed I’d abandoned him,” she said. Her voice was as subdued as her expression. A lesser soul would never have sensed how deep the waters ran beneath that placid exterior—far deeper than any roaring rapid.

  “Annerose, no…”

  “No, I am sure he thought so. I understood, of course, that he sought my comfort then. But that was not all I understood.”

  Learning from then-admiral Paul von Oberstein of Kircheis’s death had plunged Annerose’s consciousness into those inky depths. At fifteen, she had been locked away in Kaiser Friedrich’s inner chambers before she even knew what love was. She had spent the years since then watching her brother soar ever higher with his friend. Her ability to offer minor assistance from time to time gave her the strength to carry on. For two years this had continued, but Kircheis’s death had brought it all to an end.

  Light danced on the wind, illuminating the succession of particles that make up history: her brother, growing taller by the day as the beauty of his features and the keenness of his spirit increased; the red-haired youth who had shared with her the burden of accepting that brother’s acuity and intensity. Annerose had sensed the admiration in Kircheis’s blue eyes becoming something deeper and more serious. He would not be a boy forever. Confusion and apprehension about the import of this had secretly grown within her.

  Then came the day on which Kircheis had ceased to age forever. And after that, the day when the von Müsel family—nobility in name only, eking out a living on the fringes of society with no connection to the glory of the privileged classes—became known as the family that had birthed the conqueror who had seized the history of humanity itself in his crushing grip. The flower of her brother’s genius had reached full bloom. Had such been Annerose’s wish? Had what she had wished for been granted?

  Annerose took Hilda’s hands in her own. “Do you see, Hilda?” she asked. “My brother shares his past with me. But his future will be shared with you. With both of you.”

  Hilda blushed, realizing that Annerose spoke of the child still growing inside her. And along with this realization, another came to her unbidden: the fact that the kaiser’s sister had never birthed or raised a child of her own, and never would.

  The expedition led by Reinhard had been postponed, but the disruptions in the Neue Land and the Iserlohn Revolutionary Army’s provocation remained pressing concerns. On February 25, Reinhard ordered the minister of military affairs, Imperial Marshal Paul von Oberstein, to travel to Heinessen in his place, vested with the full authority of the kaiser to deal with the offenses against order there.

  Von Oberstein was a highly respected military official and staff officer, but as a leader in actual combat he lacked both experience and the confidence of the troops. This, at least, was the impression shared by the operational commanders, one of whom would naturally be assigned as his subordinate for this mission. The commanders waited restlessly to see who would be given that duty, and the answer was finally announced on February 26.

  “Why should I have to take orders on the battlefield from von Oberstein? I’ll take responsibility for my own mistakes, but I’ve no interest in mopping up after his. He’s spent his life behind a ministry desk, and if there’s any justice that’s where he’ll die, too.”

  This lamentation came from Senior Admiral Fritz Josef Wittenfeld, in a voice even louder than usual. Senior Admiral Neidhart Müller was sentenced to the same fate, but he accepted it with only a small sigh. And so it was decided that von Oberstein would be accompanied on his mission to Heinessen by two senior admirals and a vast fleet of thirty thousand ships.

  “We wouldn’t be stuck with this dismal assignment if Siegfried Kircheis were alive,” muttered Wittenfeld. “The better the man, the younger he dies.” His words cut too deep to be entirely dismissed as an angry outburst, and they would strike later observers as more than a little prophetic in character.

  At this time, Wolfgang Mittermeier was busily traveling back and forth between Phezzan and sectors near Schattenberg, discharging his various duties. When he heard of the “late February assignments,” he turned to his subordinate, Admiral Bayerlein, and said, “Von Oberstein, sent to the Neue Land?! Well…I suppose I have no business commenting on an imperial order.”

  With luck, he will never return, Mittermeier refrained from adding. Feeling a pang of sympathy for the residents of the Neue Land, he asked Bayerlein who would be providing operational support to the minister to compensate for his meager battlefield experience. Wittenfeld and Müller, came the reply, and the Gale Wolf ran a hand through his unruly honey-colored hair. “I’m not sure which side deserves more sympathy,” he said.

  “A difficult question, Your Excellency. I do not imagine that the minister will find Admiral Wittenfeld eager to take his orders.”

  Young Bayerlein was not by nature mean-spirited, but he knew when to lay on the irony.

  In any case, the eight imperial marshals and senior admirals on Phezzan were now reduced to four: Mittermeier, von Eisenach, Mecklinger, and Kessler, with the other four all deployed to Heinessen. Von Oberstein aside, Mittermeier reflected seriously for a moment on how much he’d like to see Müller, Wittenfeld, and Wahlen again.

  III

  February, SE 801, year 3 of the New Galactic Calendar. History had become a titanic and rapidly spinning wheel that spanned the cosmos and threatened to crush any unfortunates who lost their balance and tumbled off.

  According to that subset of historians who make biting observations their business, the ability of each planet to govern itself was never tested as severely as it was at that historic moment when the administration of the Free Planets Alliance was no more and the New Galactic Empire’s Neue Land governorate had been dismantled. However, we cannot assume that everyone alive at the time recognized this. They found themselves in a raging torrent, struggling desperately simply to keep from drowning. As Dusty Attenborough might have put it, to die tomorrow they first had to survive today.

  Under the circumstances, some confusion in the values of Heinessen’s citizens was to be expected, but it was not until the last third of February that they all shared the same enthusiasm.

  Word that Iserlohn’s navy had achieved a victory over the Imperial Space Armada had found its way through the Galactic Empire’s network of censors and reached the citizens of Heinessen. It was received like oil on a flame, spreading rapidly and sparking celebrations in every quarter.

  “Three cheers for freedom, democracy, and Yang Wen-li!”

  Had Yang himself heard this, he would have shrugged helplessly, but the citizens of Heinessen were sincere. The idea of Yang Wen-li as a masterful commander who had fought undefeated until his premature death had quickly crystallized into legend, and it is estimated that over forty underground resistance movements were active at that moment that invoked Yang in their names. Under these circumstances, Wahlen, following
his retreat from Iserlohn Corridor, elected to wait in the Gandharva system for the fleet dispatched from Phezzan rather than returning to Heinessen and risking a confrontation with its excited citizenry.

  In Iserlohn Fortress, the intoxication of the republic’s temporary victory had already worn off. Their circumstances were not so easy that they could gloat forever over the result of one localized battle. The blazing light of Kaiser Reinhard’s ice-blue gaze had surely turned in their direction.

  Even so, being put in a tight spot only heightened the cheerful mood. Such was the nature of Iserlohn.

  One day, Yang’s widow Frederica approached Karin. “Congratulations on the other day, Karin,” she said. “Not on the results of the battle—on coming back alive.”

  “Thank you, Frederica.”

  Karin studied the expression on Frederica’s face. She was ten years older than Karin, which meant that she would be twenty-seven this year. She had become Yang’s aide at the age of twenty-two, married him at twenty-five, and parted from him forever at twenty-six. Considering only these superficial facts, she seemed a tragic widow. But Karin knew that to offer Frederica sympathy was to insult her. Her support for Frederica was meant as a contribution to her happiness, not compensation for her tragedy.

  “You know,” Frederica said, “When I was seventeen, I was a junior student at officer school. I was completely engrossed in my studies. I had no battle experience at all—I was really just a child compared to you.”

  “I’m a child too,” said Karin, flushing. “I know that. It just irritates me when others point it out.”

  Karin wished she could be as unguarded with certain others as she was with Frederica. She had never thought this way before coming to Iserlohn. Whether this change represented maturity or compromise was unclear even to her.

  As it happened, Hortense Caselnes had spoken about Frederica to her husband Alex that very day—specifically about the fact that she had stored Yang’s body in a cryocapsule rather than burying him in space.

  “Frederica wants to bury her husband on Heinessen,” Mrs. Caselnes said. They were in their living room, and their younger daughter was sitting on Alex’s knee. Their older daughter Charlotte Phyllis was in the room that served as both library and parlor, quietly reading a book.

  “On Heinessen?” Alex repeated.

  “I suppose she doesn’t think of Iserlohn as the right place to lay him to rest, even if it was where he came to sleep in his lifetime. Not an unreasonable position.”

  “I suppose I understand how she feels, but she may have to wait a long time before she gets the chance to bury him on Heinessen.”

  “Really?”

  Alex stared. “Hortense, this isn’t another of your prophetic pronouncements, is it?” His voice was guarded—armored, even. He had reason to be wary, given his past experience with his wife’s oracular talents.

  “Daddy, what’s a prophetic pronouncement?”

  “Well, uh…” The man who had been one of the highest-ranking military officers in the former alliance cast about for an explanation until his wife stepped mercifully in.

  “When you grow up, dear,” she said to their daughter, “Try saying this sentence to a man: ‘I heard the whole story, you know.’ When you say that, they’ll jump every time. That is a prophecy from your mother.”

  “Hey now, come on…” Caselnes called out, though his voice was lacking in authority. Hortense headed for the kitchen with the look of a master homemaker. “Tonight’s dinner will be cheese fondue,” she said. “Garlic bread and onion salad will also be served. Will you have beer or wine, dear?”

  “Wine, please,” said Alex, already losing himself in thought once more with his daughter still on his knee. Something about what Hortense had said nagged at him.

  Iserlohn Fortress was impregnable, but was it the right place for a permanent, independent political entity? Its demographics were unbalanced, with men severely outnumbering women. Above all, being located right at the midpoint of the corridor that linked the empire’s core systems with the former alliance territories meant that it attracted an excess of both aspiration and suspicion. As Yang Wen-li himself had once said, too much attachment to Iserlohn itself would turn it into a chain around the necks of both the republic and the Revolutionary Army. How did Julian intend to thread this needle? Caselnes was still struggling to come up with a solution when the smell of melting cheese drifted into his nostrils.

  When Iserlohn learned through underground routes from Heinessen that von Oberstein had departed Phezzan to quell the unrest, it sent a chill wind through the fortress’s air ducts.

  “Von Oberstein’s a coolheaded military bureaucrat and a master of intrigue,” said von Schönkopf. “He won’t simply throw brute force at the problem. What he will do, though, I have no idea.”

  None argued with this summary of the situation.

  Von Schönkopf had once described von Oberstein as “a razor bearing the imperial seal and chilled to absolute zero.” The two had never met in person, but once, whiskey glass in hand, von Schönkopf had wondered if that was really true.

  “I remember walking through the city once with my mother, back when I was a young boy in the empire. I saw another boy with a dark, baleful glare coming the other way, so I stuck my tongue out at him as hard as I could. Thinking back, that might have been von Oberstein himself. I should have thrown a rock at him when I had the chance.”

  “I imagine the other boy recalls the incident in much the same way,” remarked Captain Kasper Rinz as he drew in his sketchbook.

  Von Schönkopf paused. “What makes you think that?”

  “Why, when I was in my mother’s womb I was a subject of the empire myself,” said the young officer and would-be artist, not quite answering the question.

  In any case, von Oberstein was a man now. What kind of rock was he preparing to hurl at the republic?

  There was no pressing strategic need on the imperial side to maintain control of Heinessen. If it fell into enemy hands, they could simply apply military force to recapture it at their leisure. Unlike Iserlohn, it was not a fortified military base and the space around it was safe. Also, the Iserlohn Revolutionary Army was not large enough to secure an entire planet as well as their home fortress.

  If von Oberstein were to make a show of abandoning Heinessen, Julian was not sure how to fight back. The planet’s inhabitants would surely be overjoyed and call the Iserlohn Revolutionary Army to join them right away. But if Julian heeded such a call, Iserlohn would find itself floating in space without any defenses to speak of, liable to be surrounded and crushed by the imperial forces at any time. On the other hand, if he refused to go to Heinessen, that might amount to abandoning the planet to permanent military rule under the empire.

  Suddenly, Julian remembered something. The record that proved the relationship between the Church of Terra and Phezzan—a record that he had risked his life to bring from Terra itself.

  It was a record which viewed humanity in a profoundly negative light. Von Schönkopf, Poplin, Attenborough–none of them smiled after reading it. On the contrary, they looked as though they had drunk and then regurgitated poisoned liquor. And these were Iserlohn’s finest, famed for their nerves of steel and stomachs of reinforced ceramic.

  Julian himself felt no joy at having brought this information to Iserlohn, even after risking his life to travel to Terra, infiltrate the Church, and obtain it. Above all, it had not been sufficient to save Yang Wen-li’s life.

  But did Iserlohn’s knowledge of the connection between Phezzan and the Church give them an advantage over the Galactic Empire? From a strategic perspective, the task before them was to put that information to use in such a way as to make it an advantage. But Julian was not sure he could do that. If only Yang had been alive, he would surely have found a way to fit it into the dazzling, finely worked-out jigsaw puzzle of his strategic thinking. />
  Either way, there was nothing on Terra that made me want to return. What lies there is not the future but the past. If we have a future, it’s not on Terra, but…

  Here Julian’s heart fell silent as mild consternation gripped him. Did humanity’s future lie on Phezzan? Not as the former Phezzan Land, but as capital of the New Galactic Empire? In short, would the future of humanity be entrusted to Reinhard von Lohengramm and his dynasty? The idea was not itself impossible for Julian to accept. Simply by moving the capital to Phezzan, Reinhard had demonstrated that he was a creator of history. But if a reformation could be effected by one “great man” alone, where did that leave the people? Were they just a powerless, passive presence there, existing solely to be protected and rescued by their heroes? This was a painful notion for Julian, just as it had been for Yang.

  In any case, Julian remained unsure of what to do with the knowledge that a web of intrigue had been spun between Phezzan and the Church of Terra.

  “Maybe we should instruct Kaiser Reinhard on the matter, and bill him one planet as tuition,” Attenborough suggested with a chuckle.

  He was clearly joking, and Julian laughed too, but, on reflection, “one planet” struck him as a telling phrase. Reinhard would not, of course, exchange an entire planet for that information alone. But politics, and diplomacy in particular, always had a transactional side. If they sought reconciliation and even concessions from the proud kaiser, they would need something of appropriate value to trade. Perhaps, Julian thought, a measure of victory through military force could play that role.

  Julian’s thoughts roamed still further. All this aside, what had happened to Adrian Rubinsky, the man who had not only escaped the crushing weight of an eight hundred–year grudge but had actually repurposed it to fuel his own ambition and talents? Was he deep underground on some planet somewhere, still sharpening the claws of his conspiracy against the empire and its ruler? If he was, he had surely painted those claws lavishly with venom…