Ambition (32 page)

“Medics will be here soon. They’ll patch those wounds right up. As soon as you’ve recovered, we’ll go see my sister and tell her that we’ve won. Let’s do that!”

“Lord Reinhard …”

“Don’t talk until the medics come.”

“Take this universe for your own—”

“… I will.”

“—and then tell Miss Annerose … tell her that Sieg kept the promise that he made when we were young …”

“No.” Reinhard’s bloodless lips were trembling. “I refuse to tell her any such thing. You do it. Tell her yourself. I won’t. You understand? We are going to see my sister
together
!”

Kircheis seemed to smile faintly. And when that hint of a smile faded, Reinhard realized with a fleeting shudder that half of himself had just been lost forever.

“Kircheis. Answer me, Kircheis! Why don’t you answer?!”

Mittermeier couldn’t bear to watch any more. He put one hand on the shoulder of the young imperial marshal and said, “It’s too late, sir. He’s gone. We should let him rest peacefully now—”

But the rest of his words he swallowed without a sound. There was a light like he had never seen before in the eyes of his young senior officer.

“Don’t you lie to me, Mittermeier. What you said is a lie. Kircheis would never die first. He would never leave me behind.”

“How is Marquis von Lohengramm?”

“Still no change. He just sits there, unmoving.”

Both the question and the answer were spoken in grave tones.

The admirals had gathered in the Gun Room, one of Gaiesburg Fortress’s clubs for high-ranking officers. The boyar nobles had at one time spared no expense in decorating this wide, luxurious salon, but those who had prevailed over them now had no interest in it whatsoever.

The admirals had imposed a strict gag order regarding the tragedy at the victory ceremony, and the fortress was being managed jointly in accordance with military discipline. Still, it had been three days now, and everyone knew things were reaching a breaking point. They couldn’t simply maintain FTL silence with Odin indefinitely.

Kircheis’s body had been placed inside a refrigerated case in order to preserve it, but Reinhard, overcome with regret, remained right by its side, neither eating nor sleeping day in and day out. The admirals were getting worried.

“Still, to be honest,” said Müller, “I never imagined the marquis had such a fragile place in his heart.”

“He wouldn’t be acting like that if it was me or you who had died,” replied Mittermeier. “Siegfried Kircheis is—or was—something special. The marquis has lost half of his own self, as it were. And because of his own mistake, no less.” The other admirals all acknowledged the soundness of that insight, although doing so made them all the more fidgety about wasting time like this.

Von Reuentahl’s heterochromatic eyes flashed sharply then, and he spoke to his colleagues in a strong tone of voice: “We’re going to get Marquis von Lohengramm back on his feet again. We have to. If we don’t, that means that all of us will sing a chorus of destruction to the depths of the galaxy.”

“Still, what should we do? How do we help him get over this?”

That voice belonged to Wittenfeld, who sounded like he was at an utter loss. Kempf, Wahlen, and Lutz maintained a heavy silence.

Any one of these assembled admirals could raise one hand to make tens of thousands of ships mobilize and millions of soldiers take up arms. But not even heroes who could traverse at will the sea of stars—destroying worlds and conquering entire star systems—could think of a way to get a young man back on his feet when he was overcome by sorrow and loss.

Finally, it was von Reuentahl who murmured, “If there is a solution, I know who’ll have it.”

Mittermeier’s head tilted. “Who do you have in mind?”

“You should know. He’s the only one who isn’t here right now—Chief of Staff von Oberstein.”

The admirals looked at one another.

“You’re saying we need
his
help?” Mittermeier couldn’t conceal the note of disgust in his voice.

“We’ve no choice. Besides, he knows very well that Marquis von Lohengramm is the only reason he’s here. And that being the case, I suspect there’s a reason he hasn’t done something already—he’s waiting for us to come to him.”

“In that case, doesn’t that imply he’s going to expect something in return? What do we do if he wants the right to overrule our decisions in certain cases?”

“All of us, von Oberstein included, are riding on the good ship
Lohengramm
. To save oneself, one has to save the ship. And supposing von Oberstein did try to take advantage of the situation for his own benefit, it would simply be a matter of taking appropriate measures ourselves to get back at him.”

Von Reuentahl finished speaking, and the other admirals nodded to one another. That was when a security officer appeared and announced the arrival of von Oberstein.

“You showed up at just the right time,” Mittermeier said. His lack of affection was clear from his tone.

Von Oberstein stepped into the room, looked around at those there assembled, and began to criticize them without reservation. “Considering how long your discussion has gone on, I take it no conclusion is forthcoming.”

“Well, since our force is currently missing its number one
and
number two, we don’t seem to have anyone presiding here.” Von Reuentahl’s words were harsh; he was taking a jab at the fact that von Oberstein’s “number two” theory had in effect led to the death of Kircheis. “So then, does the chief of staff have a good idea?”

“I can’t say I don’t.”

“Oh? And what would that be?”

“To ask Marquis von Lohengramm’s sister.”

“Countess von Grünewald? We thought about that too, but will that alone be enough to get us anywhere?”

The words were von Reuentahl’s, but the fact of the matter was that nobody wanted to take on the job of reporting to Annerose what had happened.

“Leave that to me, but I do have something for all of you to do: I need you to capture the man who killed Kircheis.”

Even the quick-witted von Reuentahl couldn’t grasp the meaning of that sentence right away. His heterochromatic eyes open slightly wider in spite of himself.

“That’s an odd thing to say. The killer was Ansbach, wasn’t it?”

“Ansbach was small fry. We’re going to make someone else out to be the real plotter. A very big fish.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a form of psychological perversion,” von Oberstein explained, “but in his heart, Reinhard is crying out for the killer to be someone big. He cannot endure the thought that Kircheis was murdered by the likes of Ansbach—a mere underling of Duke von Braunschweig. This creates a necessity for Kircheis to have been murdered by a much more significant foe. Therefore, we need to find someone big who was at work behind Ansbach in the shadows. Such an individual does not, in fact, exist. Which is why we will simply have to manufacture one.”

“Hmm. But whom can we frame as the ringleader? The boyar nobles are all but extinct now. Is there anyone who fits that scenario?”

“Oh, I have an excellent candidate.”

“Who?” Mittermeier asked doubtfully.

“The imperial prime minister, Duke Klaus Lichtenlade.”

Everyone in the room was left speechless for a moment. Mittermeier looked like he had been physically struck. The gazes of the other admirals, too, were focused on the chief of staff, with his artificial eye. They could guess what he intended: he wanted to put this crisis to work for them in order to eliminate a latent enemy.

“I wouldn’t want to make you my enemy,” said Mittermeier. “There’s no way I’d ever win.”

At least on the surface, von Oberstein ignored the deep malice evident in Mittermeier’s words.

“Duke Lichtenlade will need to be eliminated sooner or later. And it isn’t as if his heart is as pure as an angel’s, either. There’s no doubt he’s weaving conspiracies of his own to eliminate Marquis von Lohengramm.”

“So what you’re saying is this wouldn’t be an entirely false accusation. I can see that. That old man is certainly a schemer.” Von Reuentahl, speaking in a low voice, sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

“We return to Odin as quickly as possible, arrest Duke Lichtenlade, and seize the imperial seal. Do that, and we can establish dictatorial powers for Marquis von Lohengramm.”

Mittermeier, in an attempt at sarcasm, said, “But what do we do if the person who takes the imperial seal stays on Odin and tries to become a dictator himself?”

Von Oberstein replied, “There’s no fear of that. Even if one of you had such ambitions, he would be stopped by admirals of similar rank. None of you would just obediently stand leeward of a man who’d been your equal up to now. In fact, that’s the very reason I say we don’t need a number two.”

Power is justified not by how you get it but by how you use it.

The admirals recognized the truth of that saying, and it led them to make a monumental decision.

Conspiracy and trickery were unavoidable. Now was the time to purge the court of Marquis von Lohengramm’s hidden enemies and seize the full power of the government. Von Oberstein’s strategy was exactly what they needed. If they stood by and did nothing, they would simply be handing the initiative over to the enemy.

The admirals went into action. Von Oberstein, Mecklinger, and Lutz stayed behind at Gaiesburg to run security, while the others, leading the cream of their elite military forces, hurried off toward Odin.

In this way, they made the opening move against the palace coup that Duke Lichtenlade was sure to attempt sooner or later. Driven by their determination, they made the twenty-day journey from Gaiesberg to Odin in fourteen.

“Gale Wolf” Mittermeier scathingly told his subordinates, “Leave any ships that fall out of the column behind. I’ll just hope they can make it to Odin sometime.”

At the time he departed Gaiesburg, he was commanding a fleet of high-speed cruisers numbering twenty thousand, but that number decreased with every successive warp, and by the time they reached the Valhalla Stellar Region, where Odin was located, only three thousand ships remained.

Müller used eight hundred of these to take control of satellite orbit, while the other admirals plunged into the atmosphere. That many simultaneous landings were beyond the spaceport’s traffic controllers’ ability to handle, and half the fleet was forced to make water landings in lakes.

It was midnight where Neue Sans Souci Palace was located. Mittermeier headed straight for the prime minister’s office. It was von Reuentahl who led the raid on Duke Lichtenlade’s residence. The prime minister was sitting in bed reading when the young officer with heterochromatic eyes kicked in the door and charged inside.

“What is the meaning of this?! What are you lowborn fools rioting about?” the prime minister scolded von Reuentahl.

“Your Excellency, Prime Minister Klaus Lichtenlade: I am placing you under arrest.”

What ran through the elderly ruler’s mind at that moment was not so much surprise as a feeling of defeat. The old man had hoped to monopolize all power and authority himself, and bring about Reinhard’s fall with a single push from behind—but now he had been beaten to the punch by von Oberstein’s insight and the admirals’ actions.

“On what grounds?” he said.

“You were the sponsor of the failed assassination attempt against His Excellency, Marquis Reinhard von Lohengramm.”

The elderly prime minister’s eyes widened. For a long moment he stood glaring at von Reuentahl’s face. Then a shudder ran through his slender frame, and he spat out, “Foolish dolt. What proof do you have to be spouting such nonsense? I am the imperial prime minister. I stand above you in assisting His Highness.”

“And at the same time are a lawless conspirator,” von Reuentahl said coldly. He shouted to his soldiers, “Arrest him!”

Soldiers of common birth violently grabbed the arm of the old highborn aristocrat, a man whom they once could not even have approached.

At the same time, a squad led by Mittermeier was charging into the building housing the offices of the prime minister and his staff.

“Where is the imperial seal?” Mittermeier demanded of an elderly bureaucrat who was working the night shift. Though he went white as a sheet when he found himself surrounded by gun muzzles, he refused to divulge the seal’s whereabouts.

“By what authority do you ask? This is indeed the Imperial Seal Room, and the office of the prime minister. It’s not a place where military officials unrelated to our work can come barging in in the middle of the night. Please withdraw now.”

At that, Mittermeier acted swiftly to keep the bloodlust of his men from getting out of hand. He acknowledged the old bureaucrat’s courage and didn’t want to see him harmed. Even so, that didn’t mean he was going to back down. He signaled to his men, and the soldiers went into the room, fanned out, and began ransacking what had, until a short while ago, been a holy place that not even a ministry head or an imperial marshal would have dared enter without permission. Cabinets and desks were turned over, and important documents not allowed outside the room spilled onto the floor, to be trod beneath the soles of military-issue boots.