Dawn (14 page)

“Now you’re the one teasing me. But yes, milady—whether for errands or whatever else, consider me at your service.”

Reinhard stood and departed, relaxed and at ease.

Annerose and Kircheis stayed behind. Annerose turned her little smile toward her younger brother’s best friend.

“Sieg, thank you for always being there for my brother.”

“It’s nothing at all. I’m the one who’s always being looked out for. Since I’m not an aristocrat, it seems a bit much for me, making captain at my age.”

“You’ll be a rear admiral soon enough. I’ve heard the news. Congratulations.”

“Thank you very much.”

Kircheis’s earlobes started to feel hot.

“My brother never says so, and maybe he doesn’t realize it himself, but Sieg, he really does depend on you. So please, somehow, take good care of him from now on, too.”

“I’m honored … that someone like me—”

“Seig, you should recognize your own talents more. My brother has a talent. Probably a talent that no one else has. But he isn’t as mature as you are. He’s a bit like an antelope that gets so caught up in the speed of his legs that he runs right off a cliff. I’ve known him since he was born, so I can say things like that.”

“Miss Annerose …”

“Please, Sieg, I’m begging you. Watch over Reinhard—don’t let him lose his footing on those cliffs. If you see the signs of it, scold and nag. If the warning comes from you, he’ll listen. The day he stops listening to you is the day my brother is finished. He’ll have proven all by himself that no matter how much raw talent he may have had, he lacked ability to perfect it.”

That little smile had disappeared already from Annerose’s lovely countenance. In her sapphire eyes, a deeper blue than those of her brother, there hovered the shadow of something like sorrow.

An invisible blade glided over Kircheis’s heart.
That’s right, things aren’t the same as ten years ago. Reinhard and I aren’t neighborhood boys anymore, and Annerose isn’t that domestic-minded little girl anymore. The emperor’s favored mistress, the imperial marshal, and his top aide. The three of us, standing amid the fragrance and stench of imperial power …

“If it’s within my ability, I’ll do anything, Miss Annerose.”

Somehow, Kircheis’s voice managed to obey the will of its master as he struggled to contain his emotions.

“Please believe in my loyalty toward Reinhard. I will never do anything that would betray your wishes, Miss Annerose.”

“Thank you, Sieg. I’m sorry—I’m always asking too much of you. But other than you, there’s no one I can rely on. Please, find some way to forgive me?”

I
want
the two of you to rely on me
, Kircheis murmured in his heart.
Ever since that moment ten years ago when I heard you say, “Please be a good friend to my brother,” it’s what I’ve always wanted …

Ten years ago! Again, Kircheis felt that pain in his heart.

If he had been his present age ten years ago, he would never have handed Annerose over into the emperor’s hands. No matter what the cost, he would have taken those two siblings and fled, probably to the Free Planets Alliance. And by this time, he might even be an officer in the alliance military.

But back then, he hadn’t the ability and had lacked even a clear grasp of his own desires. Now things were different. But ten years or more in the past, there had been nothing he could do. Why couldn’t people be the ages they needed to be at the most important moments in their lives?

“You could’ve put this in an easier place to find.”

Those words announced the return of Reinhard.

“Yes, your hard work is much appreciated. But your efforts in seeking it out bring their own reward. I’ll go get the glasses.”

Times such as these were fleeting, though to have them at all was to be counted a blessing. Kircheis told himself that. The next battle, which would surely be coming, was not something he could allow himself to shrink from.

Stretching from fifty-five floors above ground level to eighty floors beneath it, located in the deciduous climatic zone of the northern hemisphere of Planet Heinessen, was the Free Planets Alliance Joint Operational Headquarters building. Positioned in orderly fashion all around it were buildings for Science and Technology Headquarters, Rear Service Headquarters, the Space Defense Command and Control Center, the military academy, and the Capital Defense Command Center. These buildings formed a zone that was the hub of military affairs, about one hundred kilometers away from the heart of the capital city of Heinessenpolis.

In an assembly hall that occupied space on four of the Joint Operational Headquarters building’s underground floors, a memorial service for those who had died in the Battle of Astarte was about to begin. It was a beautiful afternoon with clear blue skies, two days after the alliance force dispatched to the Astarte system had returned as an exhausted remnant, having lost 60 percent of its force strength.

The lane heading toward the hall was packed with crowds of attendees. The families of those lost were present, as were the related governmental and military personnel. Among them was also the figure of Yang Wen-Li.

As he made appropriate responses to the people who came to speak to him, Yang looked up at the vast spread of blue sky. Although he could not see them, countless military satellites soundlessly flew overhead in space above the many layers of atmosphere.

Among them were the twelve interceptor satellites that together formed “Artemis’s Necklace,” that giant engine of murder and destruction controlled by the Space Defense Command and Control Center, of which alliance military leaders were given to boast: “As long as we have this, Planet Heinessen is impregnable.” Every time he heard that, Yang would remember past history and how most fortresses dubbed “impregnable” had collapsed amid devouring flames of judgment. Did they really believe that being strong militarily was something to brag about?

Yang lightly slapped both cheeks with his hands. It felt like he wasn’t completely awake. He’d slept for sixteen hours straight but stayed awake for sixty hours before that.

He wasn’t eating right either. His stomach wasn’t feeling all that well, so all he had consumed was some vegetable soup that Julian had warmed up for him. He had collapsed into bed as soon as he had returned to the official housing, then left to come here not even an hour after waking, and now that he thought about it, he could not remember having had any decent conversation with the young boy whose guardian he had become.

Oh well, guess this makes me a failure as a parent …

As he was thus thinking, someone tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned around, Rear Admiral Alex Caselnes, his upperclassman from the academy, was standing there, smiling.

“It looks like the hero of Astarte hasn’t completely woken up yet.”

“Who’s the hero?”

“The person standing in front of me. You probably haven’t had time to see the news yet, but that’s what the whole field of journalism is writing about you.”

“Me? I’m a defeated general.”

“That’s right,” said Caselnes. “The Alliance Navy was defeated. Which is why we need a hero. Though if we’d won big, I wouldn’t go so far as ‘need,’ you know? That’s because when we lose, we have to avert the public’s eyes from the big picture. It was probably the same thing with El Facil.”

The ironic tone was characteristic of Caselnes. A man of thirty-five, of middling height with a healthy-looking stoutness, he worked as top aide and second in command to Marshal Sidney Sitolet, director of the Alliance Military Joint Operational Headquarters. With more experience at desk work than frontline service, he was a man of great ability when it came to things like organizing projects and dealing with bureaucracy; there was little doubt that the director’s chair at Rear Service HQ lay in his future.

“Is it really okay for you to come over here, though?” asked Yang. “What with ‘top aide’ really meaning ‘errand boy,’ I figured you’d be busy, but …” Under light counterattack, the capable military bureaucrat returned a subtly formed smile.

“Well, this show is being run by the Bureau of Ceremonies. It’s not for the soldiers and not really even for the families. The one most excited for all this is His Excellency the Defense Committee Chairman. Because if I may say so, this whole thing is a political show for the chairman, as he is aiming to run the next administration.”

The face of Defense Committee Chairman Job Trünicht rose up in both of their recollections.

A tall, handsome, youthful politician of forty-one. An energetic, argumentative hard-liner against the empire. Half of those who knew him praised him as an eloquent orator. The other half loathed him for a sophist.

The alliance’s current head of state was Supreme Council Chairman Royal Sunford. An elderly politician who had risen out of political strife to play the role of moderator, he was in all things devoted to respect for precedent. Since he was somewhat lacking in vigor, the spotlight was beginning to shine on Trünicht as the leader of the next generation.

“But having to listen to that man’s tasteless rabble-rousing at length is worse than pulling an all-nighter,” Caselnes said disgustedly. Although he was in the military, he was in the minority opinion on this. A publicity hound Trünicht may have been, but he spoke passionately of providing ample facilities for the military and of crushing the empire, and among those whose affection he garnered, many were uniformed soldiers. Yang, too, was one of the minority.

Inside the auditorium, the two men were seated far apart. Caselnes sat behind Director Sitolet in the seats reserved for honored guests, while Yang was front and center, right beneath the podium.

The ceremony had begun in a conventional manner, and in a conventional manner it was proceeding. Chairman Sundford left the stage after an emotionless, monotone delivery of a script prepared by bureaucrats, then Defense Committee Chairman Trünicht stepped lightly onto the stage. At the mere appearance of the man, the air in the auditorium became charged, and a round of applause rose up, even louder than the one for Chairman Sundford.

Trünicht—who wasn’t holding a script—called out to the sixty thousand attendees in a rich and sonorous voice.

“Citizens and soldiers! What is the purpose for which we’ve all come rushing out to assemble in this place? It is to give comfort to the heroic spirits of those 1,500,000 who so valiantly gave their lives in the Astarte Stellar Region. For it was to protect the freedom and the peace of their country that they offered up their precious lives.”

He was only this far into the speech, and Yang was already wishing he could plug his ears. He wondered, had this situation—of listeners cringing at empty, flowery words, even as their speaker feels perfectly at ease rattling them off—been a part of humanity’s heritage since the days of ancient Greece?

“I just said, ‘their precious lives.’ And truly, life is something that must always be respected. But, friends, they died to show those of us left behind that there exist things more precious still than the life of the individual. What are these? They are country and freedom! Their deaths were beautiful, precisely because they set aside themselves and gave their lives for the sake of a great and noble cause. They were good husbands. They were good fathers, good sons, and good boyfriends. They had a right to lead long, fulfilling lives. Yet casting that right aside, they departed for the field of battle and there laid down their lives! Citizens, if I may be so bold as to ask … why did 1,500,000 soldiers die?”

“ ’Cause the leaders’ operational command sucked,” Yang muttered, his voice a little loud for a private commentary. Shocked expressions appeared on the faces of a few of the people around him, and a young black-haired officer shot a glance his way. Yang’s eyes met that glance head-on, and its owner, flustered, quickly looked back toward the podium.

And from where he was looking, the defense committee chair’s speech was still dragging on. Trünicht’s face was flushed red, a gleam of self-intoxication in his eyes.

“Yes, I have said the answer already. It was in the defense of country and of freedom that they gave up their lives! Is there any death more worthy than this of the word ‘noble’? Is there anything else that speaks to us so eloquently of what a petty thing it is to live for oneself only, and die for oneself only? You must all remember that the country is what makes the individual possible. That is the thing that exceeds even life in importance. Bear that truth in mind! And what I want to say most loudly is this: that country and freedom are worth protecting, even at the cost of human lives. That our battle is a just one! To those of you who are self-styled pacifists, demanding that we make peace with the empire … to those of you who are self-styled idealists, thinking that it’s possible to coexist with tyrannical absolutism, I say, awaken from your delusions! Whatever your motivation for what you do, it results in a sapping of the alliance’s strength, and it benefits the empire. In the empire, antiwar and pacifist ideologies are suppressed. It’s because our alliance is a free nation that opposition to national policy is even permitted. Don’t just take advantage of that! There’s nothing easier than advocating for peace with words.”

There is one thing,
thought Yang.
Hiding in a safe place and advocating for war.
Yang could feel the excitement of the surrounding crowd all over him, increasing by the moment like a rising river. He had had enough of it, but agitators, it seemed, were never wanting for support, no matter what the era or the times.

“If I may be so bold, all of those who oppose this righteous war to bring down the Galactic Empire’s tyrannical absolutism are undermining the country. They are unworthy of their citizenship in our proud alliance! Only those who fight fearlessly in the face of death to protect our free society and the national establishment that guarantees it are true citizens of the alliance. The cowards who lack that readiness shame these heroes’ spirits! This alliance was forged and built by our ancestors. We know the history. We know how our ancestors paid for their freedom in blood. Our homeland, with its grand history! Our free homeland! Will we not stand and fight to defend the one thing worth defending? Let us fight, now, for the homeland! Hail the alliance! Hail the republic! Down with the empire!”

With each shout of the defense committee chairman, the listeners’ reason was being blown away like chaff. Churning waves of exuberance lifted the bodies of sixty thousand people as they rose from their seats to join Trünicht in his hails, their mouths opened so wide he could probably see all the way back to their molars.

“Hail the alliance! Hail the republic! Down with the empire!”

A forest of arms beyond counting sent berets dancing high up into the air. There was a capriccio of applause and cheers.

In the midst of it, Yang remained silent, resolutely staying seated. His black eyes were fixed coldly on the warrior at the podium. Both of Trünicht’s arms were raised high in response to the excitement of the full auditorium, and then his gaze fell down to the front row of spectators.

For an instant, the gleam in his eye became hard, showing disgust, and the corners of his mouth drew tight. He had recognized that one young officer in his field of view who was still sitting. If Yang had been seated in the back, he probably wouldn’t have been noticed, but he was in the front row, a shameless rebel sitting right beneath the nose of sublime patriotism incarnate.

A jowly middle-aged officer shouted at Yang, “Officer, why aren’t you standing?!” He was wearing commodore’s insignia, same as Yang.

Shifting his gaze, Yang quietly answered. “This is a free country. I ought to be free to not stand up when I don’t want to. I’m just exercising that freedom.”

“Well then, why don’t you want to stand up?”

“Exercising my freedom not to answer.”

Yang knew that was a smart-aleck response, even for him. Caselnes would have probably laughed and said,
That was rather awkward, even as a show of resistance.
Yang, however, had no enthusiasm for behaving like a grown-up here. He didn’t want to stand up, he didn’t want to clap his hands, and he didn’t want to shout “Hail the alliance!” either. If not being moved by Trünicht’s speech was enough to merit criticism of his patriotism, what response could there be except, “Whatever you say”? The adults were never the ones to cry out that the emperor had no clothes; it was always a child.