Dawn (37 page)

All of the admirals save Reinhard and Kircheis drew in their breaths for an instant, shocked at how brazenly he had just dropped His Highness’s titles.

“Why so shocked?” the staff officer said as he looked around at all of them, artificial eyes flashing with inorganic light. “The only man to whom I swear loyalty is His Excellency, Imperial Marshal von Lohengramm. Emperor though he may have been, Friedrich wasn’t worthy of flowery titles.”

After this declaration, von Oberstein turned to face Reinhard.

“Excellency, Friedrich has died without naming his successor. Clearly, a struggle for succession will erupt among his three grandchildren. Whatever is decided in the short term will only be temporary. It may come early or it may come late, but this is not going to be settled without blood.”

“You have the right of it,” Reinhard said after a moment.

The young imperial marshal nodded toward him with the look of a fierce and intelligent schemer. “And my fate as well will be determined by which of the three I support. So tell me, then, which of those men who lurk behind the three grandchildren will come forward and extend his hand to me?”

“Marquis Lichtenlade, most likely. The other two have military forces of their own, but the marquis does not. He must be craving Your Excellency’s forces most earnestly.”

“I see.” Reinhard’s attractive features seemed to glow as he flashed a different kind of smile from the one reserved for Kircheis. “In that case, let’s see just how much we can lease them for.”

It was widely expected that the standing of Count Reinhard von Lohengramm would be not a little shaken by the sudden death of the emperor.

However, the outcome turned out to be just the opposite. This was because Erwin Josef, the emperor’s five-year-old grandson, had been made the next emperor by the hand of Minister of State Lichtenlade.

The child was a direct descendent of Friedrich IV, so there was nothing unusual about his succession in and of itself. Even so, he was far too young to rule, and above all had no backing from the powerful highborn nobles. For these reasons, he had been thought to be at a disadvantage.

In a case like this, it would not have been unusual for either Elisabeth, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the Duke and Duchess von Braunschweig, or Sabine, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Marquis and Marchioness von Littenheim, to become empress with the backing of her father’s family and power. There were a number of precedents. Were that to happen, the father of the all-too-young empress would likely assist her as regent.

Duke von Braunschweig and Marquis von Littenheim had both confidence and ambition, and so predicting such a situation initiated unofficial—but very energetic—maneuvers at court intended to make their predictions come true.

In particular, powerful aristocratic families with young unmarried children were courted by these machinations. “If you’ll support my daughter for accession to the throne,” they were saying, “I’ll consider making your son the husband of the new empress.”

If spoken promises were strictly honored, the emperor’s two granddaughters would have both been forced to marry dozens of husbands. Even if the girls had already had boyfriends, their wishes would have doubtless been ignored.

However, it was the Marquis Lichtenlade who administered both the imperial seal and the issuance of imperial decrees, and he had no intention of letting powerful maternal relatives turn the empire into their private property.

Lichtenlade was concerned about where the empire was headed, and more than that, he loved his own position and power. He made up his mind to put forward Erwin Josef, heir of the late emperor Friedrich’s heir, but the thought of the great power wielded by those who would be opposed to his plan left him feeling a pressing need to strengthen his own camp. His guard dog would need to be strong and, moreover, easy to manage.

After giving the matter much thought, Marquis Lichtenlade settled on one man, although it was hard to say this individual would be easy to manage. In fact, he was a rather dangerous man. But in terms of raw strength, he had no room for objection.

That was how Count Reinhard von Lohengramm was advanced to the rank of marquis by Lichtenlade, who himself became a duke. It was also how he came to occupy the seat of commander in chief of the Imperial Space Armada. When the accession of Erwin Josef was announced publicly, the highborn nobles—starting with Duke von Braunschweig—were at first aghast, then disappointed, then infuriated.

But the axis of power created by a handshake that had for mutually selfish reasons been exchanged between Duke
Lichtenlade and Marquis
von Lohengramm turned out to be a surprisingly firm one. This was because the former needed the latter’s military forces and popularity with the commoners, the latter desired the former’s authority in national governance and influence at court, and both of them needed to utilize the new emperor’s authority to its utmost to cement their respective positions and power.

When Erwin Josef II’s coronation ceremony was held, the two representatives of his chief vassals respectfully swore their allegiance to the child emperor, who was held sitting in his nurse’s lap. Representing the civil authorities was Duke Lichtenlade, who took up the job of regent, while the representative for the military authorities was Reinhard. Though it pained them to do so, the assembled aristocrats, bureaucrats, and military officers had no choice but to acknowledge the two of them as twin pillars of this new order.

The highborn nobles who had been excluded from the new order were quite literally grinding their teeth. Duke von Braunschweig and Marquis von Littenheim were bound together by their shared hatred toward it.

Duke Lichtenlade, they thought, was a worn-out old man who should have ended his role in national affairs and exited the stage with the death of Emperor Friedrich IV. On the other hand, who was this
Marquis
von Lohengramm? A shining service record he may have, but what was he really but an upstart whelp from a poor family of nobility in name only, who had used the emperor’s favor toward his sister in order to rise to prominence?
Should we just stand by and let people like that monopolize our national government?
The highborn nobles turned their private outrage into public outrage and longed for the overthrow of this new order.

So long as they shared such powerful, common enemies, the Lichtenlade-Lohengramm axis would likely remain firm as a steel fortress and strong as an iron wall. There was simply no other option.

Reinhard, now Marquis von Lohengramm, immediately promoted Siegfried Kircheis to the rank of senior admiral and named him vice commander in chief of the Imperial Space Armada.

Duke Lichtenlade actively supported this appointment as well, still not having given up on the idea of putting Kircheis in his debt.

The one who held misgivings about this was von Oberstein. He had been promoted to vice admiral and now doubled as Imperial Space Armada chief of staff and Lohengramm admiralität chief secretary, and one day he met with Reinhard to give him some candid advice.

“It’s well and good to have a childhood friend, and well and good to have a capable second-in-command. But having both in the same person is dangerous. First of all, there was no need to make him vice commander in chief. Don’t you think you should treat Admiral Kircheis the same as you do the others?”

“Know your place, von Oberstein, I’ve made up my mind already.”

The young commander in chief of the Imperial Space Armada put the staff officer with artificial eyes to silence with this single displeased remark. It was von Oberstein’s clever scheming that Reinhard was paying for; he did not regard the man with silver-streaked hair as a friend with whom he could share his heart. It did not put him in a pleasant mood to hear vaguely slanderous words spoken against the one who was his other self.

After the emperor’s death, Annerose, the Countess von Grünewald, had removed herself from court and moved into a mansion in Schwarzen that Reinhard had readied for them to share. When he welcomed his sister, Reinhard had spoken like an overeager boy.

“You’re never going to have hard times again, so please, be happy, always.”

Coming from Reinhard, this was a rather unimaginative line, but one suffused with sincere emotion.

However, Reinhard had another face—the face of a heartless, ambitious schemer—that he didn’t want Annerose to see.

He was aware of the alliance that had secretly been formed between Duke von Braunschweig and Marquis von Littenheim, and in his heart of hearts he welcomed it.

Let it explode. I’ll have them executed as rebels against the new emperor and in one fell swoop purge the highborn of their strength and influence.

If he could destroy both of Friedrich IV’s highborn sons-in-law, then all the rest of them would be able to do nothing save yield before Reinhard’s ambition. All of their lordships would bow to the ground and swear obedience to him. And when that happened, he would naturally be able to break his alliance with Duke Lichtenlade.
You sly old fox, at least for now, celebrate having risen as high as you can.

By the same token, Duke Lichtenlade was certainly not thinking of making his axial relationship with Reinhard a permanent one, although like Reinhard, he was counting on Duke von Braunschweig and Marquis von Littenheim’s scheming to eventually explode. Using Reinhard’s military might, he would crush them. And once that job was done, he would have no further use for a dangerous individual like Reinhard.

On Reinhard’s orders, Seigfried Kircheis was moving steadily ahead with military preparations against what was expected to be an armed uprising by a federation of highborn nobles, with Duke von Braunschweig and Marquis von Littenheim at its head.

Kircheis was aware of von Oberstein’s cold, dry gaze against his back, but as there seemed to be no cracks in his relationships with either Reinhard or Annerose, he had nothing to be ashamed of and decided to take no greater precautions than necessary.

Kircheis was working hard at performing his duties, while at the same time enjoying opportunities to meet with Annerose that had increased beyond compare with those of years prior. This made the passing of his days fulfilling and blissful.

If only such days could go on forever …

The room had no windows, and sealed tight behind walls of thick lead, the space itself was polarized.

He flipped a pink switch on his console, and a communications device activated. It was hard to pick out that device with the naked eye, the reason being that the room itself
was
the communications device, created to bridge several thousand light-years of interstellar space, changing Rubinsky’s brain waves into the distinctive wavelengths of FTL transmissions, and sending them to their destination.

“It’s me. Please respond.”

His thoughts would assume the structure of definite language during these periodic, top secret transmissions.

“Which me is ‘me?’ ”

The reply that came to him from beyond the reaches of space could not have been haughtier.

“Landesherr of Phezzan Rubinsky. How is your Holiness, Grand Bishop? Are you in good spirits?”

Rubinsky spoke with a humility that was hard to believe.

“I’ve no reason to be in good spirits … not when my beloved Earth has yet to reclaim its rightful position. Until the day that Earth is worshipped by all mankind, as in our distant past, my heart will not be unclouded.”

Rubinsky could sense in his thoughts the heaving of a great sigh that used the whole of the bishop’s rib cage.

Earth.

The shape of a planet floating in the void three thousand light-years away rose up in the back of Rubinsky’s mind to become a sharp, vivid image.

A backwater planet, abandoned after thorough subjection to humanity’s plunder and destruction. Decrepit and devastated, exhausted and poor. Ruins dotting its deserts, rocky mountains, and sparse forests. A small number of people just barely eking out a living, clinging to polluted soil that had forever lost its fertility. Dregs of glory, and precipitated grudges. A world so powerless that even Rudolf had left it alone. The third planet from its sun, which had no future and nothing but past …

However, it was this forgotten world that was Phezzan’s secret ruler. For it was from the supposedly impoverished Earth that Leopold Raap’s capital had come.

“For a long interval of eight hundred years, Earth has been looked down upon unfairly, but the day of her humiliation’s ending is at hand. It is Earth that is the cradle of humanity and the center from which all the universe is ruled, and sometime during the next two or three years, the day will finally come for those ingrates who abandoned the mother world to know it.”

“Will it be that soon?”

“You doubt me, Landesherr of Phezzan?”