Those Who Put Their Faith in Fire

April 489 I.C., Iserlohn Fortress

The official report from Odin was to be received by Braunschweig in one of the wardrooms off of Iserlohn’s control room. Yang stumbled into the room first, uncharacteristic for him. He had gotten out of bed early— also uncharacteristic— but he had gotten up out of frustration. He had laid in bed for hours, completely unable to sleep, and when the appointed morning meeting crept closer, he gave up and hauled himself out of bed like a lurching puppet.

It wasn’t that sleep troubles were unusual for him, but lately they had been getting so dire that he could only sleep half a night out of every two. He tried using a tank bed to solve his problem in the days immediately following Mittermeyer’s departure from Iserlohn, but spent the entire time until the timer ran out trapped in a nightmare so vivid and horrific that he woke up with a bloody nose and popped blood vessels in his eyes from the stress of the dream he physically couldn’t escape. He considered himself lucky that he didn’t bite through his own tongue. He didn’t mention this to anyone, even when Vering asked about what happened to his eyes. Tank beds weren’t supposed to let the sleeper dream; Yang thought there must be something wrong with him.

But it meant that it was a problem without a solution. The only thing that stopped him asking for a sleep aid, or drinking himself to sleep, was that supplies were short, and he felt like he would be taking it away from some grievously wounded who needed it more.

The last good night of sleep he had was weeks ago, the night before Mittermeyer returned to Odin. It hadn’t even been in bed: Yang had fallen asleep on the couch, his hand tangled in Mittermeyer’s hair. But he had slept that night for some eight or nine hours, and that rest had lasted him two days.

Yang’s walk through Iserlohn to get to the bridge felt like an extension of his nightmares, or the nightmares felt like an extension of being awake— neither of which were restful or comforting sensations.

Iserlohn felt like a patchwork now, more than anything else. There were places completely untouched by the fighting to claim the fortress— most of the meeting rooms and dormitories were like that— and there were places that were completely destroyed, like the gaping hole where the Thor Hammer had once been, or the agricultural floors where long rows of cornstalks now stood upright like charred bones. The strange, gravity-less atmosphere that the fire had burned in had meant that the plants hadn’t collapsed under their own weight as they burned, and instead stayed standing as they turned into charcoal. Yang had walked through the farms once, though just once, and had run his hand through the corn’s remains. It made a strange, hollow, tinkling, glass-like sound as he touched it— fragile pieces snapping off and falling to the floor— and his hands were stained with black soot that he found difficult to get off.

The formerly lush pleasure gardens were also burned, but this left them looking like a barren moonscape, with the falseness of the fortress’s architecture revealed beneath what had once been grass and trees. The sky display overhead was cracked and broken and stained with ash, and the few pieces that still lit up fritzed with digital noise, pure sparks of cyan and magenta lashing like lightning above. Yang had to carry a flashlight when he walked through there, but he avoided the place after his initial survey of the damage.

But most areas of Iserlohn were like the hallways, where fighting had left blastmarks on the ceiling, or doors torn from their hinges, or axe scratches gouged across the walls. Most of the debris, at least in the areas that Yang walked through, had been cleared away, but the marks remained.

And the air, everywhere, despite the fastidious filter-scrubbing, still smelled faintly of smoke and rotting flesh. It was a scent that Yang couldn’t get used to— it was always too multidimensional to let his nose become oversaturated with it and render it invisible to his senses. He would catch it just as he had a bite of food in his mouth, and it would make him suddenly so ill that he’d have to run to the toilet. Or when he was laying in bed, he’d start to smell the blood, and in the darkness of his bedroom he’d become overwhelmed with the sensation that there was a corpse in bed next to him.

He kept holding out hope that he would get used to it, or that it would go away as repair work to Iserlohn got underway, but all of that seemed to be a long time in coming. He was doing his best to cope with it, though he often wondered if it wasn’t just his exhausted mind playing tricks on him. Maybe there was no scent of rot.

Now, he sat in the wardroom, slumped over the shiny wooden table with his head resting on his arms, until the door opened. He straightened to see who it was, then slumped right back down when he saw it was Ansbach.

“Sleep well, My Lord?” Ansbach asked in his usual dry voice. Yang managed a smile at him, which made Ansbach shake his head.

“Did you?” Yang asked. From what he could tell, Ansbach mostly slept in the tank beds in stretches of a scant hour or two, which meant that he was almost always otherwise awake: a constant presence in Iserlohn’s control center.

Ansbach ignored the question, and went around fiddling with the computers in the room to prepare for the meeting. “Our latest patrol came back last night,” he said.

They almost didn’t need to have the conversation— both of them knew what Ansbach was referring to: a total lack of Alliance presence in the corridor, and how this felt like a sure prelude to a coming attack. Yang glanced at his watch, realized that everyone else would be arriving in a second, and decided to skip right to what they both wanted to discuss. “Is it too late to sue for peace?”

Ansbach glanced over at him. “Don’t ask Braunschweig about it.”

“I would like to prevent an invasion—”

“It’s too late.”

“It might not be.”

“Are you going to say something?”

Yang opened his mouth, but before he could say yes or no, Ansbach held up his hand and cut him off.

“It won’t go over well if you say anything. If you think it’s necessary— I’ll do the asking. Though I doubt it will accomplish—”

The door opened while Ansbach was in mid sentence. “Ask what?” Duke Braunschweig asked.

“If we can petition Phezzan for a loan to rebuild. I’m not sure if that would be amenable to Count Vering and his business interests,” Ansbach said, smoothly delivering the lie without the slightest hesitation. “Good morning, sir.”

Braunschweig nodded and waved him to sit down.

Everyone else trickled in after a minute, and so Yang was forced to sit up straight and pay attention. It was a small group who gathered to hear the news: Braunschweig, Ansbach, Yang, Hans von Vering, Captain Ferner, and a few others of Braunschweig’s top staff. This was the first time that most of the leadership had gathered in one place since taking Iserlohn— things had been too chaotic for everyone to sit down together— and it made Yang strangely aware of how diminished their group had become. Even Baron Flegel’s absence was keenly felt. Yang didn’t miss him, and he had rarely contributed anything of note to their strategy, but his presence had made Braunschweig feel like he was among kin and allies. Without him there to speak up, there seemed to be only Yang, and those associated with him. Braunschweig, looking around the table while waiting for the call to connect, let his gaze linger on every man in turn, looking lastly at Yang, sitting directly across from him at the table.

“Count Leigh,” Braunschweig said, causing Yang to look up at him with surprise. The use of his court title, rather than his rank, was unusual. “Now that we’ve taken the capital, we will have to rearrange our personnel assignments.”

Yang wasn’t shocked by the pronouncement, but it did seem odd for Braunschweig to say it so directly.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “If you would like my recommendations, I can put a list together.”

“I have some ideas of my own,” Braunschweig said. “We’ll need to assign Iserlohn a permanent commander. It seems as though almost all of us—” and he glanced around the table again “—will be returning to Odin with my daughter.”

“I suggest you leave Commodore Leigh in command of Iserlohn,” Ansbach said, which made Braunschweig drum his fingers on the table. Yang carefully avoided looking at him— that would only make things worse. Ansbach speaking up on his behalf, although he had done it many times over the past few months, had suddenly become dangerous. It seemed like only now did Ansbach realize just how dangerous it was, that there was a line that he had suddenly crossed— one that made Braunschweig see him as a person for the first time. Ansbach stared straight ahead of himself.

“I have my own ideas,” Braunschweig repeated. “I’m curious as to why you would suggest that, Ansbach.”

“Commodore Leigh has demonstrated that he understands Iserlohn better than anyone else. He would be the best choice to defend it.”

“Hmm,” Braunschweig said. “Do you want the post, Leigh?” This, too, was a dangerous question, and one to which Yang didn’t know the answer. He wanted to be in position to defend the country from invasion, but he wanted, on a gut level, to escape the fortress’s ruin.

“I—”

But before Yang could say anything else, the screen at the front of the room made a chiming sound as the connection went through, and Merkatz appeared, alone on the screen.

Yang was both surprised and disappointed when it was Merkatz who called to report their victory at the capital. Perhaps it wasn’t that strange that Merkatz chose to make the call, since he was in charge of the landing forces, and Baron Flegel was making himself either busy or useful elsewhere, but Yang had expected Mittermeyer— or Reuenthal. Both of them had made explicit promises to call him when possible, and so those promises being broken made him concerned. They had both sent written messages, but those had been sparse on detail. If Yang thought this was only because Reuenthal and Mittermeyer were concerned about their messages being read, Yang would have been less concerned. But if there was one thing that Reuenthal was adept at, it was making himself understood in the barest few words, and none of the messages that Yang received contained any hint of personal feelings, and could have come from anyone.

When the picture resolved, Yang recognized the backdrop: Merkatz was, at least temporarily, occupying Muckenburger’s former office within the palace. The portrait of Muckenburger’s father still hanging on the wall behind him made Yang feel very strange.

“I hear you have some good news for me,” Braunschweig said by way of greeting as Merkatz saluted.

“Yes, sir,” Merkatz said. “The capital has been fully brought under control, as has the space around it. We have confirmed that the Littenheim clan is no more.”

Braunschweig nodded, and Merkatz began giving a full description of the events in the capital, from everything that had happened since the battle between Braunschweig and Littenheim in the sky, to Reuenthal’s capture of Litchtenlade, to Merkatz’s ground invasion that had finally brought the capital under control. Even though almost all of this information had been communicated to the fortress already, in short snippets of text updates as the ground invasion progressed, hearing it all together, delivered in Merkatz’s serious, even tone had a sway. Everyone in the room listened silently until he had concluded his report.

“It’s a pity about Christine,” Braunschweig said. “Amarie will be unhappy.”

“Yes. But she committed suicide during the invasion of the capital, as did Littenheim— there was no way to prevent it.”

Yang wondered if this is true. He spoke up, “Were you able to find out what happened to Sabine?”

“She was killed in the capital riots before we arrived,” Merkatz said. “I believe Hildegarde von Mariendorf knows more about the situation in the palace.”

Yang’s face paled, and he wanted to ask about Martin Bufholtz, but Merkatz would have no idea who that was, and so it would have been pointless.

“You’re certain that you have control of all the forces still in the city?” Braunschweig asked.

“All of Littenheim’s forces have surrendered and been put under guard in temporary barracks, and Baron Flegel has taken direct command of the Military Police’s remaining forces.”

Braunschweig’s face twitched in momentary concern or displeasure. “Has he replaced or vetted all of the officers? I wouldn’t trust them.”

“Yes,” Merkatz said. “Rear Admiral Bronner, who I am willing to vouch for, has given him a list of who to keep and who to purge.”

“Can you send me a copy of that list?” Yang asked.

Merkatz nodded and gestured offscreen to his aide, Schneider.

“Bronner— this is someone you know?” Braunschweig asked.

“My former superior,” Yang said. “I trust him enough.”

“Who does he work for?” Braunschweig asked. He was understandably wary of yet another man associated with Yang.

“He was in naval intelligence,” Yang said, which didn’t answer Braunschweig’s question in the least, but the talk moved on.

“Is the situation on Odin stable enough to bring Elizabeth home?” Braunschweig asked. “I would like to crown her as quickly as possible.”

“On Odin, yes,” Merkatz said. “However, the route between Geiersburg and Odin may still be dangerous. The remaining forces in space have not been given an order to surrender. Litchtenlade wants to bargain with you before he makes an official acceptance of Elizabeth.”

Braunschweig laughed. “Bargain for what?”

“His life, I assume,” Merkatz said. “I can arrange for you to speak with him.”

Braunschweig waved his hand. “Find out what he wants. I really have no desire to entertain him.”

“How are things on Odin— for the civilian population, I mean?” Yang asked. Merkatz had covered the military situation in more than sufficient detail, but he had glossed over conditions on the ground for everyone else.

Merkatz was good at keeping his expression neutral. “Conditions are improving. We have reestablished power to some of the core areas. The major difficulty is with food— we have been supplying both our own soldiers and the civilian population in the city from our stores, but without immediate resupply, we will need to begin tighter rationing, and risk further unrest.”

“There’s nothing you can procure on the planet?” Braunschweig asked. “What about the southern farmlands? I wasn’t aware that those were impacted.”

“The issue is not with the farmlands themselves,” Merkatz said. “They may have produced a full harvest last season, but the issue became one of logistics: transportation of produce became dangerous, processing plants closed due to supply chain issues from the planet being cut off from the rest of the Empire.”

“Food rotted in the fields,” Yang murmured.

“The people in the farmlands were able to make good use of it,” Merkatz said. “We’re lucky for that— the starvation problem is confined to the north.”

“Have they planted for next year?” Yang asked.

“Probably a limited amount,” Merkatz said. “If they didn’t have seeds and fertilizer on hand— usually fertilizer is an import— I doubt it’s going to be a full-scale harvest. This problem is going to persist at least through next year.”

Yang looked at Ansbach. “We’ll need to start direct resupply from our allies’ territories to Odin. Can we dispatch transports to—”

“Westerland has its own processing facilities,” Braunschweig said. “I usually sell to Phezzan, but whatever they have on hand we can send to Odin. Will that be enough?”

“It will be a good first step,” Ansbach said.

“The issue is with the safety of the transports,” Merkatz said. “If the remaining forces do not surrender—”

Braunschweig scowled. “Fine. Get Litchtenlade on the ansible. I don’t care what he asks for— agree to it.”

“We should also reach out to Phezzan,” Hans von Vering said from the rear end of the table, unintentionally echoing Ansbach’s earlier lie. “They would likely be willing to give us a favorable loan of material— I’m sure that their economy has been suffering just as much as ours has. They’ll be very interested in us getting back on our feet.”

Yang glanced at Ansbach again, who just said, “The embassy on Phezzan is loyal to Litchtenlade. We need them to agree to even speak with us before we can start reestablishing a relationship with Phezzan.”

Yang slumped back in his seat. “Let’s focus on moving supplies from our allied territories for now. Do we have enough ships to spare to provide convoys for transports?” He glanced over at Ferner, who was in charge of their small fleet brought from Cahokia.

“Yes,” Ferner said. “The bulk of the Iserlohn fleet is gone, but we did capture enough ships, including those that never launched from Iserlohn, that we can send out destroyers to escort transports while maintaining a sufficient force here. The issue is less ships and more crews— we have a personnel shortage.”

The issue kept coming back to the surrender of the remaining Imperial forces. It felt like it should have been a foregone conclusion— with both other alternatives for the throne dead— but Braunschweig’s capture of Iserlohn, and the rumor that he had killed Prince Ludwig before that, had made too many people unwilling to trust him. Elizabeth had less baggage as a leader, but she was too young, and no one could see her as anything other than her father’s puppet.

“Have you been able to contact Count Mariendorf?” Yang asked.

“No,” Merkatz said. “I will try again to, but I don’t know where he was going, and as a single ship, his best chance at safety is to maintain complete communications silence.”

Yang nodded. “If we can get in contact with him, he’ll be very useful in getting supplies to Odin. For now, anything that was going to our forces at Geiersburg can be redirected.”

“Geiersburg—” Braunschweig said. “You are much closer to Geiersburg than we are. Can you dispatch an escort to bring Elizabeth back to Odin?”

Merkatz nodded. “We can arrange that.”

“Good. Good,” Braunschweig said.

The conversation moved on to details about the rebuilding of Odin and Iserlohn, . Yang paid attention, but half of his mind was elsewhere. What he wanted to think about was the Alliance invasion that he knew was coming. It was a matter of when, not if, and a matter of weeks or days, not months. The Alliance would lose their chance to strike if they didn’t move soon, and they would all be in trouble if the forces at Iserlohn were headed by an ineffective commander.

But although he wanted to turn that problem over and over in his head, his thoughts instead drifted to the people on Odin: Reuenthal and Mittermeyer, Hilde and Kircheis, Magdalena— and so many others.

All of them were alive— that much he knew— unless he was being lied to in the official reports. But a tightly-worded official communique was no substitute for seeing them all in person, and he desperately wanted to do so, though he had no way to. He was almost grateful for Braunschweig’s not-so-veiled threat to reassign him off Iserlohn. He thought Yang was a liability in this position, and while Yang thought that he could do most good in the fortress, he yearned to go home to Odin.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Even now, when he caught himself thinking of it as home, he managed to startle himself. But it was unambiguously true.

It was strange, the way that Yang’s circle of allies had shifted. He had tried not to take much note of the change, but as Braunschweig realized that it was a problem, Yang was forced to pay real attention to its consequences. He wondered if it was Flegel’s fault— if he had told Braunschweig about the moment where Ansbach had stepped in to protect Yang from Muckenburger’s gun. But it could have been Braunschweig’s own paranoia finding an enemy within his own camp, now that they had won the civil war. He supposed it didn’t really matter what the proximate cause was: the outcome was that Braunshweig was isolating himself, which was dangerous for everyone.

Braunschweig had taken Ansbach out of his confidences. Ansbach now was summoned less often. Braunschweig ate his dinners without him, and Ansbach didn’t spend his days at Braunschweig’s shoulder. The upshot of this was that Ansbach spent the evening with Yang. He hoped Braunschweig didn’t notice this, since it would reinforce the idea that Yang was the primary recipient of Ansbach’s loyalty.

They were in one of Iserlohn’s private officers’ lounges together. Ansbach had a preliminary report about the plan for rebuilding the Thor Hammer balanced on his lap. If Yang had been handed that kind of thing, he would have found Mittermeyer to burden with it. But Ansbach read over the thick binder with a red pen in his hand, and didn’t glance up from it except to reach for the tea on the table in front of his armchair. Yang sprawled on the leather couch across from him, his arm draped over his face.

“If you’re just going to lay there, you should go to bed, My Lord,” Ansbach said.

“I’m thinking,” Yang said.

“About?”

“Phezzan.”

“What about it?”

“I sent a message to Merkatz,” Yang said. “I asked him to send as large of a force as he could to Geiersburg. Thinking about if he’ll follow through on that. I think he will— but if he doesn’t—.”

Ansbach pursed his lips. “Someone might accuse you of having designs on the Kaiserin’s life.”

“Geiersburg is much closer to Phezzan than we are,” Yang said. “I don’t want any Alliance forces reaching the capital.”

“Someone might accuse you of leaving Odin under-defended.”

“I know,” Yang said, his voice thick with exhaustion. “I’ve been on a single-man, fourteen-year campaign to destroy this country from the inside. I’m the most effective spy the Alliance has ever had. Too bad they’re not paying me.”

“You’re lucky that you’re sure their plans are set to invade through Phezzan,” he said. “If they came through Iserlohn, you’d be a dead man. My Lord.” He tacked the title on.

Yang shook his head in the crook of his elbow, still draped across his face. “I’ve been living on borrowed time for a long time.”

His left hand idly ran over his thigh, where the old scar was perceptible through the fabric of his uniform pants. Ansbach watched the movement, then picked up his teacup and went back to reading.

“You need to get back into the duke’s good graces,” Yang said after a few minutes of silence.

“If he’s displeased with me, he’ll let me know,” Ansbach said. “He’s a straightforward man.”

“No,” Yang said. “You need to go back to being invisible.”

Ansbach knew what he meant. “I haven’t given him any reason to doubt me.”

“Paranoia doesn’t need a reason.”

“Then there’s nothing more I can do to prove my loyalty to him.”

“Stop trying to help me,” Yang said. “I can make my own suggestions to the duke, and I don’t need you to be caught up in whatever fall I take.”

“Are you planning to take one, My Lord?”

“Pride goeth before the fall,” he said. “I don’t think I’m proud.”

After a moment, Ansbach asked, “Has it ever saved anyone to not be?”

“No,” Yang said. He smiled, if grimly, his mouth the only part of his face not covered by his flung arm. “Maybe.”

Ansbach shook his head, and went back to his reading. Eventually, in the silence, Yang fell asleep.

When he woke, six dreamless hours later, it was to Ansbach shaking him awake on the couch. His legs were tangled in unfamiliar fabric, and he was disoriented for a moment. But it was harmless— at some point during the night, Ansbach had draped a blanket over him.

“Phezzan is being invaded,” he said, as soon as Yang opened his eyes.

By the time that Yang and Ansbach made it to Iserlohn’s bridge, it was almost too late for them to provide any strategic input. Braunschweig had already started ordering ships to prepare for launch— even before they made it into the command center, they could hear him yelling through the open doors.

Hans von Vering was standing outside the command center doors, and Ansbach gave him a curt nod as he passed. This was genuinely more warmth than Ansbach had ever given the young man, so Yang hung back for a second to let Ansbach go in. It served a dual purpose of giving Ansbach a visual separation from Yang in Braunschweig’s eyes, and letting Yang ask Vering what was going on.

Vering, too, had dark circles under his eyes— lately, even his youthful face had become sallow with exhaustion. Yang put his hand on Vering’s shoulder without saying anything for a second, composing his own thoughts.

“We got the news from Phezzan’s embassy,” Vering said. “It was addressed to you. Do you know why?”

Yang winced. “My spy,” he said. “He must be breaking their official policy against not contacting us to get me the message. But I assume that didn’t do me any favors in there.”

Vering shook his head.

“Well— it’s the least of our problems.” Yang glanced over towards the still-open bridge door. “Ansbach knows what mood he’s walking into? I assume you warned him.”

“I called you, but he was the one who answered your phone.”

Yang wondered how that had happened. He pictured Ansbach picking up the phone he had placed on the coffee table, and pressing his unconscious thumb to the fingerprint reader to open it and answer the call. He gave Vering something between a grimace and a smile. “You should have called him first, anyway.”

“I thought the duke would,” Vering said. When Yang had only a shrug and a knowing look as a response, Vering looked around to make sure they weren’t being watched, then said, “I didn’t think he was in trouble with—”

There was nervousness creeping into Vering’s voice, and Yang patted his shoulder again. “Don’t worry about it,” Yang said. “If there’s one thing Ansbach is good at, it’s solving the duke’s problems for him.”

But Vering frowned. “I don’t want to be in trouble because of you.”

It was a very funny and childish way of putting it, and it made Yang laugh, despite the situation. “Oh, you won’t be.” He tilted his head at Vering, studying him for a second. “I think—”

“What?”

“The duke is just having a moment where he sees people as they really are,” he said. “He’s known Ansbach since he was a kid, but I don’t think he’s ever once looked at him.”

Vering didn’t seem to understand what Yang was getting at.

“I think it’s for the best,” Yang said. “He’ll realize soon enough that what he sees— from me at least— is what he gets.”

“And what does that have to do with me?”

“The duke seeing you as who you are— or who he might think you are— would be dangerous to you for other reasons,” Yang said. “But I don’t think he’s going to do that, if he’s busy worrying about me.”

“What do you mean?” Vering asked, voice rising with alarm.

“You’re going to be the king-consort,” Yang pointed out. “He’ll be suspicious of you trying to take advantage of that position, not because of any association you have with me.”

“He picked me because I’m weak.” There was a resentful note in his voice.

“And because your father is powerful,” Yang said. Vering just scowled. “But if you’re worried— stay away from me.”

Yang turned away from Vering and headed inside. He didn’t like warning Ansbach and Vering away from him. In a way, it had been easier to be friendless when they had all been his enemies (or only reluctant allies). Steeling himself to be alone again was hard to contemplate— but getting them in trouble with his presence would be worse.

Inside Iserlohn’s control center, Braunschweig leaned on the foremost computer console on the mezzanine level, looking out over the huge screen at the fore end of the room, which was displaying a map of the galaxy, with Iserlohn, Geiersburg, and Odin highlighted, along with all the remaining imperial forces, and the projected locations of the Alliance forces. Ansbach was down on the lower level, speaking to the hastily summoned group captains of their fleet, each one in charge of a sub unit of a hundred ships. Not all of them had arrived, but all who were there gave his status report to Ansbach as he tried to determine how quickly the fleet could launch.

Yang went to the back of the room and leaned on the wall, looking over the map, though he already had internalized everything that it said. The fleet Merkatz had dispatched from Odin was already en route to Geiersburg, and would arrive there within the week. Even if the Alliance forces didn’t stop or slow down in the Phezzan corridor at all, their fleet would arrive at Geiersburg first.

But that didn’t mean they would fight at Geiersburg. The only reason that they would go there, heading for the well-defended and dangerous fortress, rather than charging directly for Odin, was if they knew that Elizabeth was there, and they decided that capturing her was vital to their strategy. They probably did know that Elizabeth was at Geiersburg— after all, Muller in the Imperial embassy on Phezzan knew that much, and the news probably would spread from there. But that didn’t mean they would go there first.

Yang closed his eyes. The Alliance had wanted Erwin Josef— they had his mother and were planning to use her as a puppet regent, as far as he could tell. But that plan was dead because Erwin Josef was dead, according to Reuenthal’s reports. As was Sabine, according to Merkatz. Even among Kaiser Friedrich’s children, only Amarie survived. The question was, would the Alliance decide capturing a monarch and using her as a puppet be better for their strategy, or would simply occupying the planet be enough? If he were the leader of the Alliance, he would try to take Odin, as long as he was confident that he could maintain his supply lines through space. Though the danger of avoiding the Geiersburg fleet also meant that any Alliance fleet that headed to Odin could be cornered and isolated there. He rolled the question over and over in his mind, almost to the exclusion of everything else. Ansbach’s voice calling out unit numbers down below didn’t really register for him.

Yang wanted to ask Muller— or even Bronner. Both of them kept a much closer watch on the Alliance high command than Yang did, and he was regretting the lack of attention he had paid to them over the past few years, after focusing all his energy and attention on internal Imperial politics.

But none of that was something that he could alter now. He cracked open his eyes, and saw Braunschweig moving pieces around the display overhead, taking their fleet and pushing it through the Imperial side of the corridor, to go join their forces at the exit of the Phezzan corridor.

Even though the display was high overhead, which meant that everyone could see it, no one had yet stopped Braunschweig from making the strategic blunder that he was walking into. Ansbach glanced up at the display, had no visible reaction, and then turned back to the group captains. He must have known what mistake Braunschweig was making as well as Yang did— but maybe it was time for Yang to intervene without Ansbach stepping in to help him.

He walked over to Braunschweig. “Sir,” he said, without any preamble whatsoever, “We should go through the rebel side of the galaxy, rather than our own.”

Braunschweig turned towards Yang sharply. “I don’t recall asking for your advice.”

Yang tilted his head, and tried to keep his voice as calm and even as possible, despite the redness of Braunschweig’s face. Some of his usually neat blonde hair was falling out of its queue and sticking to his forehead in sweaty curls. “I’m on your payroll for the purposes of giving you advice, sir.”

“If we go through the rebel side of the galaxy, we’ll be opening ourselves up to attack from every direction.”

Yang turned away from Braunschweig and looked at the huge map. “The way I see it, sir—”

“I don’t care about the way you see it.”

Yang just kept talking. “The rebel fleet is probably committing almost everything that they have to this invasion— maybe they’ve left a small force to guard Heinessen, and maybe they’ve left a small force at the exit of the Iserlohn corridor, but I bet that the vast majority of their ships are at Phezzan right now. We have seen so few of their patrols in the corridor that we’ve been speculating for a long time that they are gathering their forces and preparing elsewhere, and now we know where that elsewhere is. If we charge through their side of space, we won’t meet much opposition until we reach Phezzan.”

“And why would we do that, rather than meeting up with our allies?”

“Because their weakness is their supply line,” Yang said. “They’re going to be stretched extremely thin, especially as they make their way towards Odin. Because of our country’s own supply problem from the civil war, they won’t be able to procure food and other supplies en route, even if they capture planets and make bases out of them. They need to rely on what’s coming in through Phezzan. If we can cut that off, or at least threaten it, they’ll be forced to retreat.”

“We don’t have the forces for that, and neither does Merkatz’s fleet,” Braunschweig said. “We need to meet up with our allies and form a united front.”

Yang pointed up at the scattered Imperial fleets. “We’re being invaded,” he said. “And of the three claimants to the throne, only Elizabeth remains. I think— this will cement her place as ruler, especially if Litchtenlade bows to Elizabeth and tells the other fleets to cooperate. The fleet Merkatz is sending to Geiersburg can be reinforced by the former Iserlohn stationed fleet— we know it’s somewhere near there, even if we haven’t been able to contact it.”

Braunschweig was silent, so Yang just continued. He knew he was rambling, but he had to speak his mind.

“Whatever rear guard is being left at Phezzan, it’ll be smaller than the main rebel force, so we should be able to put pressure there.”

“We’d be able to do that just as well, and with support from our allies, if we went through our side.”

Yang shook his head. “If we go that way, we’re meeting them head on,” he said. “And even if our forces end up equally matched, if we meet up with the forces at Geiersburg, and the fleet from Iserlohn, that will be—” Bloodshed of a scale greater than any battle of the civil war. He could hear Muckenburger’s warning about what the destruction of Iserlohn’s Thor Hammer would cost ringing through his head.

“It would be a battle,” Braunschweig said. “I’m prepared to fight it.”

“We’d be using ships— lives— to build that wall,” Yang said finally. “We could do it at a much lesser cost, by putting pressure in the right place.”

Yang was right, and Braunschweig knew it, but he was inclined to ignore the advice because it was given by Yang.

“And you’ll stay here on Iserlohn?” Braunschweig asked, curling his lip. He distrusted Yang— thought he would turn against him and let the Alliance through, or attack him from behind. It was paranoia, and nothing but paranoia.

“No, sir,” Yang said. “I’ll come with you to the front.”

Braunschweig stared at him. “And who will you suggest stays at Iserlohn? Ansbach?”

Yang shook his head and held out his hands. “You said that you had your own ideas, sir.”

It was Vering who came to Yang’s rescue, though it wasn’t clear if he was doing it intentionally, or if he was just acting on his own confused instincts. He came up to Braunschweig.

“Let me have command of Iserlohn,” Vering said. “I can do it.”

Braunschweig looked at him with undisguised distaste. “You’re a lieutenant commander.”

“Promote me, then,” Vering said. That false confidence that he was so known for was thick in his voice, and it made Braunschweig sneer.

“You haven’t done anything that would make me consider that. And why do you want to stay on Iserlohn?” Braunschweig asked. “There won’t be any opportunities for proving yourself if you’re not at the front.” And when Vering’s face twitched with flustered shame, Braunschweig said, “Of course,” and smiled grimly at Vering’s expense.

“You don’t have anyone else to put in charge of it,” Vering said. “I can do a good job.”

This gave Yang the opportunity to slip away, Braunschweig continuing to argue with Vering. As Yang walked away, he glanced behind himself, and Vering met his eyes, and that told him all that he needed to know.

Despite Braunschweig not wanting to take Yang’s advice, he did eventually agree. They stopped receiving any further updates from the embassy on Phezzan, indicating that the embassy had fallen very quickly, and that the bulk of the Alliance forces would be steaming through the corridor. The Alliance fleet would be deep in Imperial territory long before Braunschweig could get close enough to meet them head on. So it forced his hand, and their fleet headed through the Alliance side. Vering and Ferner stayed on Iserlohn, as they had requested, splitting the small group that had started the civil war together even further. Ansbach and Yang accompanied Braunschweig through the corridor, both on board the Berlin .

There was no point in trying to be stealthy. They made it to the end of the corridor, steaming past Cahokia, in just a few days. At the corridor’s exit, they met their first real resistance, getting an alert that there were obstacles in their path. When they dropped down to subluminal speeds, they were all relieved to find that it was ships, rather than a minefield, waiting for them.

Braunschweig’s fleet was small, but the nominal Alliance fleet that had been left at the exit of the corridor was even smaller. It seemed to be made up of just a handful of their scattered patrol fleets which stuck together, recognizable by their makeup of mainly being cruisers, rather than destroyers, and the way that most of the ships were known in Iserlohn’s databases of enemy vessels.

All of this was very good for Yang. Despite Braunschweig’s distrust of him, which had only been growing more and more powerful as time went on, Braunschweig did call Ansbach into his office to ask for his strategic advice about the enemy fleet looming in front of them. Yang gave his ideas to Ansbach, who delivered them to Braunschweig as though the ideas had formed in the ether, and didn’t belong to either him or Yang. The important thing was that they shouldn’t get bogged down in fighting this detachment, and instead should do their best to break through and keep moving on towards Phezzan, while, if possible, disguising their destination. The ideal thing to do would be to make it look like they were headed for Heinessen or another one of the Alliance’s planets, like they wanted to provoke a response from the larger Alliance fleet and make them retreat through Phezzan. Perhaps this would have even been a good strategy to pursue, but when Yang looked at the name of the closest inhabited planets that they could try to attack— El Facil among them— a shiver ran down his spine, and he told Ansbach to suggest they just charge through in the direction of Heinessen, and then alter their course back towards Phezzan when they were out of detection range.

So, they met the small Alliance fleet at the exit of the corridor head on, Braunschweig forming his ships into a spindle to break directly through their center, like a ram. Another indication that the Alliance fleet was a hodgepodge was how they almost immediately scattered under this direct assault. Braunschweig’s fleet had been operating together as a cohesive unit for the entire length of the civil war, and had been under the tutelage of the exacting Merkatz for almost that entire time. Unlike the Alliance fleet, they moved as one body, not allowing a single opening in their line as they moved cleanly between formations.

When Braunschweig— competent enough at moment to moment fleet movements that Yang felt neither the inclination nor desire to intervene— ordered them to concentrate fire directly on the center point of the Alliance’s formation, it broke apart into several distinct and uncoordinated units, each one firing at arbitrary sections of Braunschweig’s fleet, or trying to turn to get out of the way. It was a chaotic scene.

The battle was over almost as quickly as it began. Although Braunschweig, standing from his command chair at the helm of the Berlin clenched his fists in annoyance, watching the Alliance fleet recede in the view of their rear scopes, clearly wanted to turn around and attack again to win conclusively rather than charging through and leaving an enemy alive, they had to keep moving. They leaped to faster than light speeds again, and headed briefly in the direction of Heinessen. After two days of travel in that direction, after which they were sure that the Alliance fleet was not chasing them but knew where they were headed, they altered course and turned back towards Phezzan.

The route now on the map was strangely familiar to Yang. He found himself looking at it in his spare time, tracing his fingers across the spiderweb threads between stars and planets, between the Alliance capital and Phezzan. He had traveled this exact route with his father a huge number of times when he was twelve. There had been a year, he remembered, where his father’s ship had been chartered to haul route after route of terraforming equipment to tiny new settlements out in this direction. His father hadn’t enjoyed the work, since he liked running routes between Phezzan and Heinessen, rather than tiny little colony planets. Not because the pay was better— in fact, hauling to remote destinations could command a real premium— but because at the end of every leg of a Phezzan-Heinessen trip, Tai-long and Wen-li would head down to the planet together, and wander through some new museum that they young Yang had never been to before. And then they’d get dinner, sitting in the booth of some diner while his father paged through whatever coffee table book he had picked up from the museum gift shop. One could fill up an entire lifetime with trips like that— Phezzan and Heinessen were both big enough for it.

He tried not to wonder what his father would think of him now, and tried equally not to wonder what would become of Phezzan’s museums under Alliance occupation.

Yang avoided the bridge whenever he could. He also avoided his own room, his difficulty sleeping chasing him across the galaxy, even though he had hoped that leaving Iserlohn would give him a little bit of a reprieve. He was exhausted, but only was able to drift off in unplanned and stolen moments. Usually, this was when he sat in the officer’s lounge, during some odd hour of the night, when everyone else except for Yang and Ansbach had gone to bed.

He had told himself to avoid Ansbach, for Ansbach’s sake, but they nevertheless found each other more often than not. Yang felt bad about this, but even when he was sitting in the lounge alone, Ansbach often made his way there, so it wasn’t exclusively Yang’s selfishness and desire for trusted company. It was strange, after so many years, that they had somehow become friends.

Yang made his way to the overly-warm officers’ lounge after dinner, and found Ansbach there, as he knew that he would. Under his arm, he was carrying a map of Phezzan itself, showing the long, equatorial continent made up primarily of a mountain range so ancient that it had been blunted down by the passage of time. That was where the capital city sat, and its space elevator. There were long stretches of farmland to the north, and the other, much emptier continents where the secondary industrial cities lay. He had the map mainly as an excuse to find Ansbach’s company— it would give them something to discuss, and he was murmuring to himself as he entered the room. “Wish I knew how things had gone on Odin,” he said. “It’d give us a very recent example of urban fighting…”

Ansbach, who was looking at their lists of supplies and calculating how long they could last on what they took out of Iserlohn’s stores, looked up at him with an annoyed expression. He had the supply tables up on the big projector display at the side of the room, along with his own calculations off to the side, and he clicked them closed as soon as Yang shut the door behind himself.

“What do you want?” he asked.

Yang spread his hands, dropped his maps on the table, and then left the table to go sit down in the plush armchair by the bookcase. Ansbach stood and picked up the maps as Yang said, “In case you wanted to talk about what we’re going to find on Phezzan,” he said.

Ansbach looked at the maps dismissively. “If I were the rebels, I wouldn’t bother with the planet,” he said. “Blockade them from the sky, control the corridor from both ends— it’s not like Phezzan has a fleet of their own to deal with. Why would you want to turn the citizens even more against you than you have to, by making it a ground invasion?”

Yang closed his eyes and nestled his head back into the overstuffed leather. “Because they have to,” he said. “They can only justify this battle to their own population if they’re doing it in order to take control of Phezzan itself. Ideology.”

“Ideology could wait until they’ve actually won.”

“It never waits. It’s the driving force of everything they do.”

“You’re lucky to live in a country where we can be ruled by pragmatism instead, My Lord,” Ansbach said, which made Yang laugh.

“Besides, they need to get information from Phezzan about how to navigate the corridor. It will slow them down too much if they have to map out the routes themselves. Phezzan controls all the detectors in the corridor that map out the safe routes. It’s hard to head through there without it.”

“Will we have that problem?”

“There will be a lot of traffic,” Yang said, and waved his hand. “People bringing supplies in. We’ll have to ambush a supply convoy at the mouth of the corridor, and get the data out of their computers.”

Ansbach nodded, then looked up from the maps Yang had dumped on the table. He turned to look at Yang, who was still sitting with his eyes closed.

“I see your pet conversation topic is already putting you to sleep,” Ansbach said.

“Don’t let me interrupt you from your work,” Yang said.

“I’m certain that My Lord has been given pleasant accommodations on board the ship,” Ansbach said with an annoyed tone. “But if My Lord’s bed is not up to his standards—”

“Please don’t call me that,” Yang said.

Ansbach turned around fully, and leaned half-sat on the table, looking at Yang. His gaze and silence were both heavy enough that they made Yang crack his eyes open and look at him.

“And what should I call you instead— Hank?”

“Only my wife calls me Hank,” Yang said, and closed his eyes again. “You don’t have to call me anything.”

“Count von Leigh.”

Yang sighed and waved his hand in defeat.

“Commodore.”

When Yang was silent, Ansbach gave up.

“Just ‘you’ then.”

“Why would you need to call someone anything else when you’re speaking to them directly?” Yang asked. “It’s all you need.” He yawned. “It makes things equal— in a way. Just you and me… Could be anyone.”

“Most people enjoy having a name for themselves.” Yang was silent, and Ansbach picked up his computer from where it sat on the table, and took up a seat on the couch across from Yang in the armchair. “But whatever you like.”

He still managed to pronounce the word like a sarcastic inversion of the royal we. But it made Yang smile.