Dawn (23 page)

Nevertheless, Kircheis was thinking,
You’re asking the impossible, telling me to devote myself to the emperor.
Had it not been Emperor Friedrich IV himself who had kidnapped the object of his true devotion from before his very eyes and even now kept her all to himself? It wasn’t the empire, the imperial household, or the emperor that Kircheis was fighting for.

Sigfried Kircheis, this tall redheaded youth, was quite popular with the women of the palace, from the daughters of dukes up above to the page girls running errands down below. He was completely unaware of this himself, though, and would have only found it a bother had he realized.

It was while Reinhard and Kircheis were in this way securing their respective footholds that there appeared before them Captain von Oberstein with his half-silvered hair.

But the sort of staff officers he was looking for were not necessarily specialists in military affairs. For that, Reinhard himself and Kircheis would suffice. Rather, he was looking for people with a strong aptitude for political maneuvering and plotting. Reinhard could foresee those sorts of struggles against the nobles at court—conspiracies and battles of wits, to put it bluntly—becoming ever more frequent from this point forward. Kircheis was unsuited to be Reinhard’s confidant in such matters. This was not a problem of intellect; it was a problem of character and thought processes.

Reinhard checked his mental name card of the man who had just left his blaster with the guard and stepped unarmed into his office. There was nothing about him written on it that said he should view the man favorably.

“Captain von Oberstein, is it? What business might you have with me?”

“First, I would like you to clear the room,” the uninvited guest requested, his attitude bordering on arrogance.

“There are only the three of us here.”

“True, Vice Admiral Kircheis is here as well. Which is why I’m asking you to clear the room.”

Both men stared at the visitor—Kircheis silently and Reinhard with a sharp gleam in his eye.

“Speaking with Vice Admiral Kircheis is the same as speaking with me. Did you not know that?”

“I am aware of that, sir.”

“So you have something to talk about that you absolutely don’t want him to hear. But when I tell him afterward, the end result will be the same.”

“Your Excellency is of course free to do that. The labors of a conqueror, however, are not achieved without talented people of all different types. I believe one should tell A what A needs to hear, give B duties suited to B, and so on …”

Kircheis glanced toward Reinhard, and reservedly said, “Your Excellency, perhaps it might be best if I waited in the next room …”

Reinhard nodded with a pensive expression. Kircheis took his leave, and von Oberstein finally delved into what he had come to talk about.

“To be honest, Your Excellency, I am in a bit of a awkward position at present. I believe you’re aware, but—”

“You’re the deserter from Iserlohn. It’s only natural that you be censured. This, despite word that Admiral von Seeckt died so heroically.”

Reinhard’s answer was cold. Von Oberstein, however, showed no sign of having been moved by it.

“To legions of commanding officers, I am a despicable deserter and nothing more. However, Excellency, I do have my own side of the story. I’d like you to hear it.”

“You’ve come to the wrong person. Make your case to the military tribunal, not to me.”

Von Oberstein, the sole survivor of the Iserlohn Fleet’s flagship, was facing a maximum sentence for a single count of having lived. He had failed to perform his duty to assist his commanding officer and keep him from committing errors, and furthermore had sought only his own safety—these were the grounds for the impeachment and the icy stares, though there was also the fact that the circumstances required the scapegoating of some suitable individual present at Iserlohn’s fall.

Upon hearing Reinhard’s indifferent reply, von Oberstein unexpectedly touched his hand to his right eye. When he finally lowered that hand, a small, eerie hollow had appeared in one part of his face. The man with the half-silvered hair held a small object out to the young marshal—a tiny, almost spherical crystal resting in the palm of his right hand.

“Look at this, please, Your Excellency.”

Reinhard looked but said nothing.

“You’ll probably have heard from Vice Admiral Kircheis, but both my eyes are bionic like this one. If I had been born during the reign of Rudolf the Great, I would have been killed as a baby in accordance with the Genetic Inferiority Elimination Act.”

After fitting his detached bionic eye back into its socket, the gleam in von Oberstein’s gaze was directed at Reinhard head-on, seeming to bore right into the admiral’s own line of sight. “Do you understand?” he said. “I hate them all. Rudolf the Great, his descendants, everything they’ve brought forth … the Goldenbaum Dynasty, the Galactic Empire itself.”

“Those are bold words.”

For just one instant, the young imperial marshal was seized with a claustrophobic tightness of breath. Illogical suspicions were even aroused in him, as he wondered if the functionality of von Oberstein’s bionic eyes included the power to overwhelm the will of others or if perhaps he had activated some component that applied psychological pressure.

Though von Oberstein’s voice was low and the entire room was furnished with soundproofing devices, his words carried like an out-of-season peal of spring thunder.

“The Galactic Empire—by which I mean the Goldenbaum Dynasty—must be destroyed. If it were possible, I would destroy it with my own hands. However, I lack the acumen, the power. What I can do is assist in the rise of a new conqueror, that’s all. I’m speaking of you, Your Excellency: Imperial Marshal Reinhard von Lohengramm.”

Reinhard could practically hear the crackling of the electrified air.

“Kircheis!”

As he rose from his seat, Reinhard called out for his friend and closest advisor. The wall opened up without a sound, and there appeared the tall figure of the redheaded youth. Reinhard’s finger was pointed at von Oberstein.

“Kircheis, arrest Captain von Oberstein. He’s spoken words of lawless rebellion against the empire. As a soldier of the empire, I cannot overlook it.”

Von Oberstein’s bionic eyes flashed intensely. The young redheaded officer had drawn his blaster faster than seemed humanly possible and taken aim at the center of von Oberstein’s chest. Since his days in military preparatory school, few had surpassed Kircheis in terms of shooting skill. Even if von Oberstein had been holding a pistol and had tried to resist, the effort would have been futile.

“So in the end, that’s your measure …” von Oberstein muttered. A bitter shadow of disappointment and self-reproach crept into a face that had had precious little color to begin with. “Very well, then—walk your narrow road with only Vice Admiral Kircheis to guide you.”

His words were partly performance and partly heartfelt. He shot a glance at Reinhard’s silent figure, then turned toward Kircheis.

“Vice Admiral Kircheis, can you shoot me? I’m unarmed, as you can see. Even so, can you fire?”

Though there was also the fact that Reinhard had issued no further orders, Kircheis—his aim still fixed on von Oberstein’s chest—had hesitated to put strength into his trigger finger.

“You can’t do it. That’s the sort of man you are. Deserving of respect, but you can’t claim that respect alone will see you through the work of conquest. Every light has a shadow that follows it … Does our young Count von Lohengramm still not see that?”

Still staring hard at von Oberstein, Reinhard motioned for Kircheis to put away his blaster. Ever so slightly, his expression was changing.

“You’re a man who speaks his mind.”

“I’m honored you should say so.”

“And Admiral von Seeckt … how he must have hated you! Am I wrong?”

“The admiral was not a man to inspire loyalty in his troops,” von Oberstein answered, not batting an eye. He knew in this moment that he had won his gamble.

Reinhard nodded.

“Very well, then. I’ll buy you from those nobles.”

Ottfried had been imperial prime minister as well, but since that time, the ministers of state had come to be named as acting prime ministers, with the office itself never being officially filled—the reason being that vassals tended to avoid emulating any precedent set by that particular emperor.

In his days as crown prince, Ottfried had been a capable and promising young man, but after succeeding to the throne to become Emperor Ottfried III, he had found himself in a whirlpool of repeated palace conspiracies that nourished nothing but his suspicions. Four times he replaced his empress and five times his named successor, until at last a fear of death by poisoning caused him to abstain from food much of the time, and he died, emaciated, while only in his midforties.

The three directors general of the Imperial Armed Forces—Minister of Military Affairs Ehrenberg, Secretary-General of Military Command Headquarters Steinhof, and Commander in Chief of the Imperial Space Armada Mückenberger—submitted their resignations to the acting imperial prime minister, Marquis Lichtenlade, the minister of state. This they did in order to take responsibility for the loss of Iserlohn Fortress.

“You seek neither to avoid responsibility nor cling to position. I think your gracefulness in this matter is praiseworthy. However, were the posts of the three directors general to be vacated temporarily, that would probably mean at least one of them going to Count von Lohengramm. Surely you wouldn’t trouble yourselves to pave his way for advancement? All of you are quite comfortable financially, so how about giving up your salaries for the next year or so, instead?”

When the minister of state had thus spoken, an anguished expression rose up on the face of Marshal Steinhof, and he replied:

“It’s not that we haven’t considered that, but we are also soldiers. The regret would be too great if it were said of us that we clung to our positions and erred in staying when we should have resigned … So, please, accept these letters.”

Reluctantly, Marquis Lichtenlade headed to court and got Emperor Friedrich IV started on the resignation letters of the three directors general.

The emperor, who had been listening to the minister of state with the same apathy as always, gave instructions to his chamberlain to have Reinhard summoned from his admiralität. Going to the trouble of a direct summons when a visiphone call would have finished the task within minutes was just one of the formalities that the emperor’s conspicuous showing of power required.

When Reinhard appeared at the imperial palace, the emperor showed the young imperial marshal the three letters of resignation, and with the same intonation used when letting a child choose a toy, asked him which job he wanted. After a brief glance toward the minister of state, who was standing by unmoving with an unhappy look on his face, Reinhard answered.

“I can’t rob someone of his seat when it’s not for any achievement of my own. The loss of Iserlohn was due to the mistakes of Admirals von Seeckt and von Stockhausen. Also, Admiral von Seeckt has paid for his sins already with his life, and the other is in an enemy prison even as we speak. I don’t believe there’s anyone else deserving of blame. I humbly beg Your Highness to please not blame the three directors general.”

“Hmm. How magnanimous.”

The emperor looked back at the minister of state, who was surprised at this unexpected turn of events.

“The count has spoken. What say you?”

“Your humble vassal is struck by the count’s keen insight, far beyond tender years. The three directors general have done great things for the nation, and for my part, I too would like to ask that you deal with them graciously.”

“If that’s what the both of you have to say, then I won’t hand down any harsh punishments. At the same time, however, it won’t be possible to avoid punishing them altogether …”

“In that case, Your Highness, I wonder what you would say to having them give up their salaries for the next year and forwarding those funds to the Families of Fallen Soldiers Relief Foundation.”

“Yes, something along those lines would be fine. I’ll leave the details to the minister of state. Is this all you need to talk about?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“In that case, the two of you may go. I have to get to the greenhouse to care for my roses.”

Both men withdrew.

Five minutes had not passed, however, before one of them secretly returned. Since the seventy-five year-old Marquis Lichtenlade had returned at a half run, he needed a moment to catch his breath, but by the time he was standing in the emperor’s rose garden, he had recovered his physical composure.

There, amid thick hedges of rose bushes that filled the greenhouse with wild, bounteous swirls of color and fragrance, the emperor stood unmoving, like a withered old tree. The aged aristocrat approached him and carefully eased himself down to his knees.

“If I may, Your Highness.”

“What is it?”

“I say this with awareness that it may earn me your displeasure, but …”

“Is it about Count von Lohengramm?”

The emperor’s voice was devoid of any edge, intensity, or passion. It was like the sound of windblown sand—the voice of a lifeless old man.

“You mean to say that I’m giving too much power and prestige to Annerose’s younger brother.”

“Your Highness knew that already?”

What also surprised the minister of state was how unexpectedly lucid the emperor’s delivery of those words had been.