Ambition (10 page)

That last comment was the kind of joke Bucock often like to make.

Bucock himself was in a kind of a funk lately that would have been unbearable if he didn’t crack a joke every now and then. Earlier that day, he had gone to pay his respects to the newly appointed acting director of Joint Operational Headquarters. Dawson, fourteen years Bucock’s junior, had blustered so much it was comical, telling Bucock in a voice louder than necessary things altogether unnecessary: “I expect even those with very long service records to respect order within the organization and to obey my commands.”

Bucock had almost gotten cranky with him. If the old admiral had started talking about the possibility of a coup d’état and what measures should be taken to prevent it, the timid acting director might well have started foaming at the mouth.

In the dim room, a conversation was being held in low voices.

“Commodore Fork nearly assassinated Director Cubresly. The director’s going to pull through, however.”

“Fork can talk a good game, but talk is all it is. He’s always been that way. Even during the fight at Amritsar …”

In that voice was a complex weave of ridicule and disappointment. Muttered words of agreement rose up from all quarters.

“But by seriously wounding the director, our goal of degrading Joint Operational HQ’s functionality has at least minimally been achieved. In that sense, Fork’s done rather well. Remember, abject failure was also very much a possibility.”

“Still, I trust there’s no danger that he’ll talk about us? Things being the way they are, even the MPs could turn a blind eye toward the illegality of torture or make use of truth serums.”

“They probably will. That’s no cause for alarm, though. He’s been subjected to very thorough deep-level suggestion treatment: Fork planned and executed the whole thing by himself. There were no orders or suggestions from anyone.”

Because this was gratifying to Fork’s own self-righteous image of himself, it had been child’s play to make the man himself believe it, and the roots of that belief had sunk deep. Barring the use of some imaginary device that could plumb the deepest depths of the human consciousness—that could analyze and re-create a representational construct of it—there was no way to unravel the truth behind his actions.

“Fork will live out the rest of his days as a madman in a mental hospital. It’s sad for him, but there are plenty of people worse off. We have a duty to save our homeland, to destroy the empire, and to execute justice throughout the universe. There’s no place here for sentiment.”

The voice resounded solemnly, speaking almost as if its owner were trying to convince himself.

“More important is what happens next. Although Director Cubresly lives, for the next two, three months, he may as well be dead as far as his life as a public official is concerned. As for his acting replacement, Dawson, it’s bizarre that a man like him would even make full admiral, and, clerical skills aside, the men have no confidence in him. For a while at least, Joint Operational Headquarters is going to be plagued with outbreaks of confusion … meaning that there’s no reason to delay execution. Make every preparation for D-day.”

That year, from the end of March through the middle of April, the thirteen billion citizens of the Free Planets Alliance did not lack for material to stir up fear and anxiety.

March 30: Attempted assassination of Joint Operational Headquarters director Cubresly.

April 3: Planet Neptis occupied by partial uprising of military forces stationed there.

April 5: Armed revolt on Planet Kaffar.

April 6: Large-scale civil war erupts in the Galactic Empire.

April 8: Planet Palmerend occupied by rebel forces.

April 10: Planet Shanpool placed under occupation by armed forces.

From a place far removed from the capital of Heinessen, Yang was carefully observing these incidents.

Although his predictions hadn’t encompassed the attempted assassination of Director Cubresly, everything else was unfolding pretty much as he had expected. Was it all right to congratulate himself for reading Marquis von Lohengramm’s hand this time?

And yet from Reinhard’s standpoint, this was ultimately nothing more than a kind of preventive action; even if it failed, there would still be plenty of opportunity for regaining lost ground. To Reinhard, the importance of this scheme was probably down at the level of “no harm in trying.”

And yet the whole Free Planets Alliance had been turned upside down because of it.

Was Marquis von Lohengramm—as some claimed—a “grand master at moving his soldiers around the board”? Yang shrugged. That blond-haired kid had thrown the whole alliance into chaos without mobilizing so much as one soldier, hadn’t he?

To say “I read your hand” after that would just feel hollow. Yang hadn’t been able to stop him, nor could he foresee how things would play out from here, aside from the likelihood of an attempted coup in the capital. Even Reinhard himself, author and director of this little drama, had probably not scripted the scenario any further than that point.

Which meant that what happened from here on out would all depend on the abilities of the primary and supporting cast.
In that case,
thought Yang, w
ho is it that’s playing the lead? Who’s the ringleader who’s going to pull the trigger on the coup? Guess we’ll know soon enough in any case, but I’m still awfully curious.

On April 13, an FTL arrived from Heinessen bearing orders from Admiral Dawson.

“Admiral Yang: Mobilize the Iserlohn Patrol Fleet, and with all possible haste quell the revolts on Neptis, Kaffar, Palmerend, and Shanpool,” he said.

“In all four places?”

Yang, unsurprisingly, was taken aback by this. He had expected a mobilization order to come down sooner or later but only for one site. He had been sure that the fleet at Heinessen would be mobilized to deal with the other three.

Yang pressed his concern: “That’s going to empty out Iserlohn Fortress for quite some time. Are you all right with that?”

“At present, the empire is in a state of full-scale civil war. The danger of them attacking Iserlohn with a large force is exceedingly small. What I ask of you, Commander Yang, is that you fulfill your duties as a soldier without worry or reservation.”

I see now,
Yang thought, impressed.
So there really are people in the world who think this way, too—who get the cause and effect, the action and reaction, just magnificently backward. True, they have no idea what’s really going on, but still …

This had gotten unexpectedly humorous. Admiral Dawson, acting director of Joint Operational Headquarters, had a reputation for mediocre tactical planning, and contrary to all expectation, that might mean he was just the sort of man who
wouldn’t
do exactly what Reinhard wanted.

If a large regiment were left sitting in the capital, that would throw a wrench into the plan and cause problems for the conspirators. Unable to make their move even if they wanted to, their plan might never be put into action. Of course, even if they were thus obstructed, they’d probably try something else, but at least for the time being, they wouldn’t be able to strike with the fleet away and do as they pleased with an undefended capital.

Of course, all of this had only just happened to turn out this way. Dawson’s intention was probably to work Yang and his subordinates to the bone. That much Yang had surmised, but what he couldn’t understand was the reason why Dawson was doing it. Though he had heard Dawson was not one to forget a personal grudge, Yang had never met the man in person; therefore, there was no way he could have possibly slighted him.

Yang’s question was answered by Julian. No one was tighter-lipped than that boy, so sometimes Yang would let him listen when he was thinking out loud, halfway talking to himself.

When Julian heard Yang wondering aloud about Dawson’s motivation, he chuckled and said it was easy to explain.

“How old is this Dawson fellow?”

“Midforties, probably.”

“And you’re thirty, Admiral, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, that finally happened.”

“Then that explains it. You’re both full admirals, even though you’re that far apart in age. Unless you’re as old as Admiral Bucock, he’s going to envy you.”

Yang scratched his head.

“Is that it? I see. How careless of me.”

Yang had no equal when it came to guessing the thoughts of an enemy on the battlefield, but Julian had just pointed out his blind spot.

Over the course of the past year, Yang had rocketed to prominence, rising three ranks from commodore to full admiral. To the man himself, this was nothing but headache and hassle, but to others—particularly the type to whom rank and position were everything—he was doubtless an object of envy and jealousy.

Those were the kinds of people who couldn’t recognize the existence of values that differed from their own, so there was no way they were going to believe that Yang’s wish was to retire from active duty as soon as possible, live off his pension, and write a book on history sometime before he died.

If you’re the man they call Miracle Yang, let’s see you put all four insurrections down by yourself. If you succeed, that’s fine and dandy; if you fail, I can deal with you however I like.
That was probably what Dawson was thinking.

If I do fail, maybe they’ll let me retire,
was Yang’s thought.

It was just as that outrageous thought was occurring to Yang that Julian spoke again.

“Attacking all four of those places one by one is going to take too long and be a major headache, isn’t it?”

“You said it,” Yang agreed with a strong nod. “Above all, it goes against my personal philosophy of winning with as little effort as possible. How would you settle this if it were up to you?”

Julian leaned forward. Lately, Julian’s interest in military tactics had been growing stronger.

“How about this: concentrate the enemies from all four sites in one location, and hit them there.”

Yang took off his black military beret and looked up at the ceiling.

“That’s a good idea, but there are two problems with it. One is the method: how do you get enemies from four different sites to move to the same place? The enemy’s caused multiple simultaneous uprisings for the express purpose of stretching the government’s forces thin, so I don’t see them throwing that advantage away voluntarily. After all, if they concentrate their forces, it only follows that we’ll concentrate ours as well.”

Lightly, he set the beret back on his head.

“And the other thing is that concentrating one’s enemies in one location goes against the fundamentals of strategy, which say you should knock out your opponent’s regiments one by one, without letting them link up.”

“So it’s a bad idea?”

Julian looked disappointed. The boy had thought his brain cells had been running at full speed.

Yang gave him a little smile.

“The idea’s fine. You just have to think about how to apply it. Okay, so for the time being, let’s leave aside the question of how to lure them out.”

He thought about it for a little while, then continued.

“We lure them away from their strongholds—that part’s fine. But nowhere is it written that we have to wait around for them to rendezvous. So instead, we predict the route by which the enemy will try to link up, then take them out individually along the way. If the enemy and allied forces are roughly the same size numerically, our side can split into two groups: the first can hit enemies A and B at staggered intervals, and the other can hit C and D. The likelihood of victory would be very high, since we’d be hitting each enemy formation with double its own force strength.”

Julian nodded with passionate intensity.

“There’s another way to do it, too, where the whole fleet moves together. First we strike enemy formations A and B separately, then head for the enemy’s rendezvous point to face formations C and D. At that point, it would give us a force multiplier if we could trick the enemy into mistaking friend and foe or if we could split the fleet in two to catch them in a pincer movement. With this method, you fight the enemy four-to-one at the outset, then two-to-one later on, so the odds of winning really are quite good.”