Dawn (6 page)

Yang didn’t argue. For him, this class was making up for his low marks in Mechanical Engineering, and with that, he was satisfied in full.

That satisfaction, however, was to be short-lived.

At the end of his second year, Yang was summoned by an instructor and ordered to switch his major to Military Strategy.

“It’s not just you,” the instructor had said, trying to be consoling. “They’re doing away with the whole military history department, so every student there has to change majors. You beat that Wideborn fellow in the simulation. That’s an achievement. You should change departments anyway, just to make the most of your talents.”

“I came to this school because I wanted to study military history,” Yang objected. “I don’t think it’s fair to recruit students and then scrap their department before they graduate.”

“Cadet Yang, you may not be on active duty yet, but from the moment you entered this school, you became a soldier. This is how petty officers get treated. And as a soldier, you have to follow your orders.”

Yang said nothing.

“But listen, there’s no way this is a bad deal for you. Military Strategy is a department that’s packed with top-level students. Students who try to get into Strategy but don’t make it flow into other departments. That’s the reality here. It’s a rare thing for someone to flow the other way.”

“I’m honored, sir, but … do I sound like a top-level student to you?”

“Watch it with the sarcasm. Anyway, if you don’t like it, you’ve got the right to quit, naturally. Of course, if you do that, you’ll have to pay back all the tuition and school fees you’ve accrued thus far. Only soldiers get to study for free.”

Yang was dumbstruck. He couldn’t help remembering what his late father had said about money. Truly, with people being people, you could never be free in this life.

At age twenty, Yang graduated from the military strategy department with average grades and received his commission as an ensign. A year later, he was promoted to sublieutenant, but that was normal for graduates of the Officer’s Academy. It didn’t mean that his service record was particularly outstanding.

He was assigned to an office at the Joint Operational Headquarters called the Office of Records and Statistics, and no one distinguished themselves in combat there. But for Yang, it was rather pleasant to have a job where he could be around old records.

However, simultaneous with his promotion to sublieutenant, Yang received orders for frontline duty. He departed for his new post as a staff officer for forces stationed in the territory of El Facil.

“When one thing goes crazy, everything goes crazy,” the young lieutenant junior grade grumbled.

Even though he had never once actively sought to become a soldier, here he was, wearing a black beret with a white five-pointed star mark, an ivory-white scarf tucked into the collar of his black jumper, black shoes, and slacks the same color as his scarf: an extremely functional military uniform.

That year, in SE 788, the Battle of El Facil greatly accelerated the course of Sublieutenant Yang Wen-li’s life.

The curtain rose on this battle with a scene of outrageous disgrace for the Free Planets Alliance’s navy. To the battle itself, both sides had dispatched in the neighborhood of a thousand vessels each, and after both sides had taken about 20 percent casualties, they had temporarily called it off. Yang did nothing during the engagement. All he did was sit in his station chair on the bridge of the flagship and watch the battle. He was not even asked for his opinion.

However, as the alliance ships were beginning their return to base, they were unexpectedly attacked from behind. The Imperial Navy, while pretending that they too were returning to base, had executed a rapid reversal of course and charged against the Alliance Navy, which had relaxed its guard and shown them its flank.

Spears of energy ripped through the blackness of space, and miniature novas flashed and vanished in an instant. The energies unleashed by destroyed vessels became a maelstrom, tossing other ships to and fro. Rear Admiral Lynch—the commander of the alliance fleet—must have panicked. Without trying to calm the confusion of his allies, his flagship fled back toward El Facil at full speed.

Upon learning that their commander had turned tail, the alliance fleet naturally lost its will to fight, and the ships that had been waging isolated battles with the enemies close at hand began to peel off and run from the field of battle, one after another. Some of them chose their routes of retreat independently and fled from the El Facil territory altogether, while others followed their flagship and escaped to the planet of El Facil itself. Ships that were late in retreating faced one of two fates: annihilation or surrender. Nearly all of them chose surrender.

Those surviving forces that had escaped to El Facil still numbered as many as two hundred vessels and fifty thousand soldiers, but the Imperial Navy afterward reinforced itself, building its forces up to three times that number, planning to leap at the chance to “liberate the El Facil territory from the clutches of the rebel forces” in one fell swoop. El Facil’s civilian population of three million cowered in the midst of this tense situation. It was already too late to stop El Facil from falling.

The civilians came to negotiate with the military, seeking the creation and implementation of a plan for planetwide evacuation. The officer in charge who appeared before them was Sublieutenant Yang Wen-li.

He was too young, and his rank was low. Was the military even taking them seriously? The civilians had their doubts, but Yang did a good job with everything he was supposed to do, even though he kept scratching his head in a way that didn’t inspire confidence. Amid the chaos of the impending imperial invasion, Yang procured civilian and military vessels and made preparations for the evacuation.

Even if Yang had not been there, any competent military officer could have done that much. Yang apparently calmed the impatient civilians while awaiting the chance to depart.

The next day, an urgent message came through that shocked everyone. Rear Admiral Lynch was in the process of fleeing from El Facil with his direct subordinates and the military provisions. He had abandoned the civilians and his other subordinates.

To the panicked civilians, Yang finally gave instructions to evacuate … in the direction opposite of Lynch’s course.

“There is no need for concern,” he told them. “The rear admiral is drawing away the Imperial Navy’s attention for us. We can escape now if we just ride the solar wind in a leisurely way and avoid using radar permeability devices or anything like that.”

With that casual decision, the young sublieutenant transformed his own fleet commander into a decoy.

And his prediction was dead-on. Rear Admiral Lynch and the others were spotted by the Imperial Navy, which had been sharpening its claws in anticipation of him trying just such a thing. After being run to and fro like hunted animals, the alliance vessels finally raised a white flag and were taken captive.

Meanwhile, the convoy of vessels led by Yang was leaving the El Facil system and making a beeline for territory to the rear. They were spotted on the Imperial Navy’s detection grid, but thanks to the preconceived notion that evacuation ships would be equipped with some kind of antidetection system—and the fact that they did show up on radar—the ships were thought to be not man-made objects, but a large swarm of meteors, and thereby they slipped out right under the enemy’s noses.

Later, when the officers of the imperial fleet learned about this, wineglasses that had been raised in victory toasts were smashed to the floor. Yang arrived in territory to the rear of El Facil with three million civilians, and cheers of welcome were waiting.

Like a meteor shower, words of praise for Yang’s composure and daring rained down from the high chiefs of the military. They had no choice. After all, their navy had lost the battle, fled from the enemy, and finally abandoned the very civilians that they were supposed to be protecting. In order to wipe out such a blot of disgrace and dishonor, the leadership needed a military hero. Hence: “Yang Wen-li: a paragon of the fighting men of the Free Planets Alliance.” “A warrior shining with the light of justice and humanity.” “Let all the soldiers of the alliance praise this young hero!”

That year, on June 12 of the standard calendar, at 0900, Yang was promoted to full lieutenant. On the same day at 1300, he was made a lieutenant commander. Military regulations stated that special double promotions were not permitted for living officers, but this unusual treatment was arranged by the upper echelons.

The man himself was far less excited than those around him. Shrugging his shoulders, he just muttered, “What in the world is all this?” and that was that. The only thing he was happy about was that he got a pay raise with the promotions, which meant he’d be able to fill his library with the history books he’d always wanted.

However, this was also the time when Yang first felt a real interest in military strategy.

Basically, the fundamental nature of combat hasn’t changed at all since three, four thousand years ago,
Yang thought, comparing his experiences to his knowledge of military history.
Before you get to the battlefield, resupply is what counts. And after you get there, it’s the quality of the commanders. Victory or defeat hinges on these two things
.

There were many ancient proverbs that emphasized the importance of commanders. “A fearless general has no cowardly soldiers,” for example, or “A hundred sheep led by a lion will triumph over a hundred lions led by a sheep.”

The twenty-one-year-old lieutenant commander knew better than anyone the reason for his success. It was because the imperial military—and that of the alliance as well—had a blind faith in scientific technology, and the result of it was preconceived notions such as, “If it shows up on radar, it must not be an enemy ship.”

Nothing was more dangerous than ossified wisdom. And when he thought about it, wasn’t that also the reason he’d been able to beat Wideborn in the simulator back in his academy days? He’d been able to surprise an opponent who had clung to the idea of a decisive frontal assault.

Know the psychology of your enemy. That was the most important point of military strategy. And after that was the point that on the battlefield, resupply is absolutely essential in order to make good use of your resources. Taken to extremes, you didn’t even need to strike the enemy’s main force at all—it was enough if you could just cut their supply lines. If the enemy couldn’t fight, they’d have no choice but to withdraw.

Yang’s father had emphasized the value of money in every aspect of his life. If you treated the entire military as a single individual, money would be the supply line. When he thought about it that way, his father’s words turned out to be pretty valuable after all.

After this, nearly every other time that Yang participated in combat operations, he would mark up an unexpected achievement of some kind. And with those achievements came promotions to commander, then captain, and by age twenty-nine, commodore. His old classmate Wideborn was a rear admiral, but that was because as a captain he had stuck to orthodox strategy, taken a surprise attack head-on, and thus received a special double promotion posthumously.

And now Yang Wen-li was in the Astarte Stellar Region.

Suddenly, a commotion broke out on the bridge. Not a pleasant one. It had been caused by an urgent message received from the surveillance craft.

“The imperial fleet is not in the area we predicted. They are accelerating rapidly and will intercept the Fourth Fleet.”

“What?!” Paetta cried. His voice was shrill and tinged with hysteria. “That’s insane … They wouldn’t!”

Yang reached over to his console and picked up the document lying almost shamefacedly there. A paper document. Four thousand years had passed since the ancient Chinese had invented the stuff, but humanity had still not come up with anything better for writing on. The document was the operations plan he had submitted earlier. He fanned through the pages. Lines of text written in the impersonal letters of his word processor jumped out at him.

… if the enemy wishes to take aggressive action, they may view these circumstances not as a threat of envelopment, but as a prime opportunity to attack our divided forces and destroy them individually. Should this happen, the enemy will first take the offensive against the Fourth Fleet, which is positioned directly ahead of them. The Fourth Fleet is numerically the smallest and therefore the easiest to attack and defeat. Furthermore, after defeating the Fourth Fleet, the enemy will then be able to target the Second Fleet or the Sixth Fleet at its discretion. One way to resist this strategy is as follows: After meeting their challenge, the Fourth Fleet should return mild resistance for a time, then begin a slow withdrawal. As the enemy pursues them, the Second and Sixth fleets will strike them from behind. When the enemy turns to engage, the Second and Sixth fleets will return mild resistance while withdrawing, and then this time, the Fourth Fleet will strike from behind. Repeat until the enemy is exhausted. Then surround and destroy. This strategy has a very high probability of success, but close attention to force concentration, communication, and flexibility in advance and pullback is essential.