Ambition (19 page)

From the vast hole opened up by the volley of cannon fire, Nguyen’s group succeeded in cutting deep into the enemy’s column.

Staff officers in the Eleventh Fleet turned pale. If they allowed Nguyen to advance any farther, the entire fleet would become divided fore and aft. And although it was theoretically possible to use a divided force like that to catch one’s opponent in a pincer movement, very flexible and refined tactical skill was required to make that work—skill such as that possessed by Yang Wen-li.

Since they didn’t have that much confidence in themselves, they made a more commonsense response. Orders flew:
Attack the enemy from all directions! Don’t send a man or a ship back home alive!

Right away, Nguyen’s group was exposed to ferocious attacks converging on them from five directions—fore, up, down, port, and starboard. Fireballs exploded, vibrations shook the frames of the vessels, and viewscreens—in spite of spite having had their photoflux capacities adjusted—were filled with flashes bright enough to sear the retinas.

On the bridge of the flagship
Maurya
, Admiral Nguyen raised his voice in cheerful laughter.

“This is perfect—nothing but enemies any which way you turn! So many there’s no need to aim! Get them! Keep shooting! Fire at will!”

Some there were impressed by what they saw as their commander’s daring and boldness; others present were certain he must have a screw loose. Either way, one thing was certain—they would have no tomorrow unless they killed the enemies before them. There was no time to consider the meaning of this battle or the reasons for this slaughter.

“Missiles closing at ten o’clock! Returning fire!”

“Turret four, maximum output!”

Shrill voices and suppressed voices permeated the communication channels, and the sounds of impacts and jamming noise blended to repeatedly assault the ears of the crew—even though it was a universe of silence just outside the vessels.

Their vision was similarly under attack. The light of the stars, frozen for all eternity, was rent by crisscrossing missile trails and the harsh glitter of energy beams. And the white lights that wiped away each and every one of those stars monopolized the field of view with their overwhelming volume.

Thirty minutes after the opening shots were fired, even Yang’s flagship
Hyperion
had its nose pressed up against the Eleventh Fleet’s flank.

Hyperion
was enveloped in rainbow fog, proof that its hull was being protected from destructive energy beams by its energy-neutralization field.

“This is more trouble than I expected,” Yang murmured to himself as he kept his eyes glued to the screen. The Eleventh Fleet’s resistance was quite formidable, and it was known to all that Vice Admiral Legrange was no incompetent.

“That useless Bagdash!” shouted Legrange. “What did he even infiltrate the Yang Fleet for?”

While continuing to oversee the battle, Legrange couldn’t help berating the man in his heart.
Use mis- and disinformation to throw the enemy into disarray, or if that is impossible, shoot Yang dead.
Bagdash was supposed to have infiltrated the enemy camp on this vital do-or-die mission, but at present, Legrange doubted that the man had succeeded. Far from it, actually, since his was the side that had been hit on the flank by what should probably be called an ambush. Instead of catching the enemy in a pincer movement, were his divided forces going to be destroyed separately?

Had they seen through Bagdash, after all? Legrange clenched his teeth tightly. Perhaps he had entrusted the job to someone he shouldn’t have. Unease and regret were pounding on his chest with invisible hands.

The voice of an operator requesting instructions pulled his consciousness back to reality.

“What is it?”

“They’ve broken through the center, sir. Our force has been divided fore and aft, and it looks like the enemy’s trying to envelop the aft section.”

Although Nguyen’s combat group, showered with fierce cannon fire, had taken considerable damage, it had at last succeeded in breaking through the center. Then it had swung to starboard and was now advancing to envelop one half of the divided enemy force.

Legrange fell silent and glared at the screen. He knew what Yang had in mind.
I see it now. So that was it!
A frustrated
tsk
sounded from inside his mouth.

“Miracle Yang is a pretty sly fox, confound him.”

In short, Yang had split at the tactical level one half of a force that was already split at the strategic level and was now trying to completely destroy them, starting with one of the severed ends.

This made the firepower ratio between those two about four-to-one. Once the battle reached this stage, fleet commander Yang no longer needed to oscillate between hope and despair with the minute-by-minute state of the battle; he could simply look on as his lower-ranking commanders took out each segment one by one.

From Yang’s perspective, this sort of thing wasn’t any kind of remarkable strategy; it was nothing more that following one of the rudimentary principles of tactical theory: “Fight with greater force strength than your enemy.” He was both surprised and disappointed when he heard it referred to as a magic trick or a miracle.

The main forces of both fleets made contact. The ship density in the region increased, and the mode of fighting gradually shifted from long-range cannon fire to close-quarters combat. This was where the single-seat fighter craft known as spartanians took the stage. Lieutenant Commander Olivier Poplin, captain of
Hyperion
’s flight squadron, had lined up his team on standby, but the instant that the order came down to sortie, he had all of them board their craft, cut loose from the mother ship, and dance out into space.

“Whiskey, Vodka, Rum, Applejack: command of your companies is left to your company leaders. Sherry and Cognac, follow me. Don’t break formation.”

Poplin often boasted, “Wine and women are life’s bread and butter, and war merely its three o’clock snack,” and it was just like him to come up with such names. Of course, there was also a story going around that he had come close to naming his companies after women’s undergarments, but naturally he had refrained in the end and settled for booze.

Poplin’s spartanian charged ahead, tracing out an invisible path through the void. Sherry and Cognac companies followed behind the ace pilot, and the other four dispersed in different directions in search of enemies.

The ships of the Eleventh Fleet were launching single-seat fighters one after another as well. Dogfighting between spartanians began breaking out in all quarters amid the crisscrossing cannon fire. Because the specs of the fighter craft were identical, victory and defeat were decided by the skill of the pilots inside them. Many of the fighter pilots approached their work with the zeal of a craftsman, and for them a trial like this could be called the chance of a lifetime. At this moment, those involved were not thinking about the fact that they were killing one another; rather, they were simply drunk on the blood-boiling excitement of it all.

Not two minutes had elapsed since launch, and Poplin had already scored three kills. Dodging through enemy as well as allied fire, he raced ahead at maximum velocity through rough seas of roiling energies. The raw vitality of a fully self-realized existence was circulating at full speed through Poplin’s entire being. With his reflexes honed to their utmost sharpness, every cell in his body was bursting with energy and life.

The battleship
Ulysses
was also in the midst of the chaotic fighting. The ship’s outer hull had been cut open by a blade of energy, causing the shock-absorbent material to leak out in a white cloud as it enveloped the ship. Visibility from the rear turrets had been degraded and sensors rendered useless, and after cursing God and devil alike, the soldiers inside had had to give up on doing anything other than shooting back in the direction of incoming fire.

Eight hours were required for the desperate combat to draw to an end.

After breaking through the center of the Eleventh Fleet and destroying its aft column, the Yang Fleet enveloped the forward column headed by Admiral Legrange and smashed its forces ship by ship. Because nearly all of the vessels, carrying on with a resistance that reached the fanatical, refused to surrender, there was no other option.

What for Yang, too, was a depressing battle of utter destruction was brought to an end by the suicide of Admiral Legrange. He had stubbornly continued to resist until his remaining forces had amounted to his own flagship and just a handful of others.

“I count it a great honor for a humble officer such as myself to have fought the illustrious Yang Wen-li in my final battle. Hail to the military revolution!”

These had been Lagrange’s last words, broadcast to all by his flagship’s communications officer.

Staff Officer Patrichev breathed out a huge sigh that emptied his lungs. “Well, then, that’s that. That was one heck of a fight.”

But no matter how intense the combat had been, the winner and loser this time had actually been determined quite early.

Numerically, Admiral Yang had had twice the force strength of his opponent and, furthermore, had succeeded in splitting it with a strike on its flank. That it had taken so long to achieve total victory from such an overwhelmingly advantageous position was proof that the Eleventh Fleet had fought the good fight under Legrange’s fierce direction. Yang would have called it a meaningless good fight, though.
If only he would have thrown his hands up early …

“If Legrange had been incompetent, there would’ve been a few less deaths on both sides,” said von Schönkopf.

Yang nodded silently. From the moment that the first stage of combat was finished, he seemed to have been overwhelmed by exhaustion.

So, ultimately, does the Yang Fleet amount to just this one man?
thought von Schönkopf. Without their young commander’s clever schemes, the Yang Fleet was certainly not a powerful force. From the start, it had been a ragtag mixture of defeated remnants and raw recruits. Dragged along by their commander’s invincible reputation, they had kept on fighting and kept on winning, and thus achieved the military feats of today. But even if that were true, what von Schönkopf had said about Legrange certainly applied to Yang as well. For if Yang had been an incompetent commander, this fleet would have been wiped out early while the scale of the combat was still small, and in exchange, many enemy soldiers would have lived to go back to their hometowns.

Even if they left the past in the past, there was still a problem looming in the future, for there was another individual in this galaxy who also boasted an invincible reputation.

Marquis Reinhard von Lohengramm. The day would surely come when he and Yang would do battle with all of their forces and all of their abilities. It was not so much the work of fate or destiny as the rapid convergence of history’s footsteps that would bring that about. On that day, could the Yang Fleet defeat Reinhard’s forces? Or, rather, could Yang’s subordinates win out over Reinhard’s?

That’s a difficult question
, von Schönkopf mused. From just what he knew, Kircheis was another Reinhard in terms of ability, and Mittermeier’s and von Reuentahl’s operational command abilities were also extremely high. The likes of Nguyen Van Thieu probably couldn’t compete with them.

And still, when he looked at the victorious Yang sitting there unhappily, he could hardly believe it was the same person he’d seen dancing for joy at receiving favorable intelligence. His qualities as an invincible artist of war and his qualities as a serious and conscientious student of history were always in competition inside of him, and when the battle was over, it was the mood of the latter that dominated him.

“Commander Yang!”

The voice that made the young black-haired commander turn around belonged to his aide, Lieutenant Frederica Greenhill.

“Half of the enemy is still left. The longer we wait here, the heavier a load Admiral Fischer will have to bear. Instructions, please!”

Her words were right on the mark. Yang blinked his eyes twice and stretched.

“All ships: fall in!” he said. “Reverse course, and head for the orbit of the seventh planet.”