Dawn (24 page)

“The man knows no fear, and so he might not stop at wielding the power of a chief vassal—perhaps he’ll get carried away and plot to usurp the throne. Is that what you’re thinking?”

“It is only with the greatest of reservations that I even let it cross my lips.”

“So what if he does?”

“Majesty?!”

“It’s not as if the Goldenbaum Dynasty has been with humanity from its beginning. Just as there’s no such thing as an immortal man, there’s no such thing as an eternal state, either. There’s no reason the Galactic Empire mustn’t end in my generation.”

His low, parched laughter sent a shudder down the spine of the minister of state. The depths of the gaping void he had just glimpsed chilled his soul to its core.

“If it’s all going to be destroyed anyway, then its destruction should at least be spectacular …” The emperor’s voice trailed off like a comet’s ominous tail.

Regarding Reinhard having willingly declined the seat of a director general, opinion among the elite was split fifty-fifty between the favorable—“Surprisingly unselfish, isn’t he?”—and the negative—“He’s just trying to look good in front of people.”

Reinhard himself paid no mind to either evaluation. A directorship was his for the taking any time he liked. Until then, he was merely lending those positions out to feeble old men. Most importantly, that sort of position was nothing more than a stepping-stone as far as he was concerned.

On the day that Reinhard assumed that most noble of stations, there would be no satisfaction even in holding all three directorships at once.

“What is it, Kircheis? You look like you have something to say.”

“You’re not being very nice, are you? Pretending not to know what it is.”

“Don’t get upset. This is about von Oberstein, isn’t it? I was suspicious myself for a while that he might be a tool of the highborn. But he’s not the sort of man the aristocrats can handle. He’s got a sharp mind but too many peculiarities.”

“But can
you
handle him, Lord Reinhard?”

Reinhard tilted his head slightly. Whenever he did that, one lock of his brilliant, golden hair would slide to the other side.

“Hmm … I’m not expecting friendship or loyalty from that man. He’s only trying to use me in order to achieve his own goals.”

Reinhard stretched out his long, supple fingers and playfully tugged at his best friend’s hair, as red as if dyed with molten rubies. Reinhard would do this sort of thing from time to time when no one else was around. During his boyhood, he would describe Kircheis’s hair according to his whim: whenever they were quarreling—a state that never lasted very long—he would say mean things like, “What’s with that red hair? It looks like blood.” Then after they made up, he would praise it, calling it “really pretty, like a burning flame.”

“… So in the same way, I’m going to use him for his brain. His motives are irrelevant. If I can’t control a solitary man like that, I haven’t a prayer of holding sway over the entire universe. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Politics isn’t about processes or systems—it’s about the results,
Reinhard believed.

Taking over the USG and making himself emperor wasn’t what made Rudolf the Great so unforgivable; it was that he had used his vast, newfound powers for that most asinine of purposes—self-deification. That was the true face of Rudolf: a hunger for power masquerading as heroism. What a boon he might have been to the advancement of civilization if he had only used those vast powers in the right way! Instead of wasting its energy on conflicts arising from political differences, humanity could have been leaving its footprints all across the galaxy. Today, humanity ruled only a fifth of this vast realm of stars, even when taking the rebel power into account.

Responsibility for this roadblock in the path of human history lay solely at the feet of Rudolf’s monomania. A “living god”? The best thing you could call the man was a plague-spreading devil.

Immense authority and power were necessary to destroy the old system and carve out a new order. But Reinhard would not make the same mistakes Rudolf had. Emperor he would become. However, he would not hand that title to his descendants.

Rudolf had been a blind believer in bloodlines and the gene. But genes were not to be trusted. Reinhard’s father had been neither a genius nor a great man. Lacking in both the ability and the will to live according to his own efforts, he’d been a good-for-nothing who had sold off his lovely daughter to the powerful in order to lead a life of comfort and self-indulgence. Seven years ago, when excessive drinking and carousing had culminated in his father’s sudden death, Reinhard hadn’t had in himself the tears he should have cried. Though it had cut him to the heart to see pellucid drops running down and falling from his sister’s porcelain cheeks, his grief and pain had been exclusively for his sister.

For an example of untrustworthy genes, one need look no further than the present state of the Goldenbaum imperial family. Who would imagine that even a milliliter of that giant Rudolf’s blood was flowing in the decrepit body of Friedrich IV? The blood of House Goldenbaum was already clouded beyond recognition.

Every last one of Friedrich IV’s nine brothers and sisters were dead. Starting with his empress, Friedrich IV had impregnated six women for a total of twenty-eight times, but there had been six miscarriages and nine stillbirths, and of the thirteen who had been born, four had died before their first birthday, five had died before reaching adulthood, and two had died as adults. Only two daughters yet remained: Marqesse Amalie von Braunschweig and Duchess Christine von Littenheim. Both were wed to powerful aristocrats from old families, and to both of them, one child had also been born, both of them girls. Aside from her, Crown Prince Ludwig, who had died in adulthood, had left one child behind. This was Erwin Josef, who was presently the only male child in the imperial family. As he had only just turned five, however, he was not even crown prince yet.

Emperor Friedrich IV, who had seemingly absorbed the whole of the palace’s decadence into his person, was to Reinhard nothing but an object of bitter hatred and derision—yet on two points only, Reinhard was able to approve.

The first was that the emperor, having been through the deaths of many mistresses in difficult past childbirths, feared losing Annerose and had never made her pregnant. Another factor in that decision was pressure from aristocrats concerned about the succession struggle that might ensue if Annerose were to give birth. From Reinhard’s standpoint, the thought of his sister bearing that emperor’s child was too disgusting to even contemplate.

The other thing was that the number of claimants to the throne was so extremely small. There were only the emperor’s three grandchildren. All he had to do was eliminate those three. Or he could use the strategy of marrying one of the two granddaughters—albeit just for appearance’s sake.

Either way, von Oberstein would prove useful. With dark enthusiasm and tenacity, that man would envelop the aristocrats and imperial family with plots and schemes, and if it were necessary, would probably not hesitate to murder even a woman or child. It was likely because Kircheis had surmised this unconsciously that he loathed the man, but still, Reinhard had need of him.

He wondered if Annerose and Kircheis would look on him kindly now, having come to have need of a man like von Oberstein.

Yet still, this was something that he had to do.

“Universe Finance—a dummy corporation in the Free Planets Alliance that is operated by our government—has secured excavation rights for the solid natural gas on the seventh and eighth planets of the Bharatpur system,” an aide said. “The total amount of extractable reserves comes to forty-eight million cubic kilometers, and they expect to be profitable within two years.”

Watching as Rubinsky nodded, the aide continued with his report.

“Also, regarding Santa Cruz Line, one of the largest interstellar transport companies in the alliance, our percentage of acquired stock has reached 41.9 percent. Ownership is divided among more than twenty people, so they haven’t realized what’s happening. Still, we’ve already surpassed the state-run investment trust that’s at the top of its shareholders list.”

“Well done. But don’t slack off until you’ve reached more than half.”

“Certainly. Meanwhile, in the empire, our equity participation has been approved for the agricultural development project in the Seventh Frontier Stellar Region. That’s the one we spoke of earlier—they say they’re going to transport two hundred quadrillion tons of water from Eisenherz II to eight arid worlds and increase production of foodstuffs enough to support five billion people.”

“What’s the breakdown of equity participation?”

“Our government’s three dummy companies together hold 84 percent, so we have de facto sole ownership. Now, on to the subject of Ingolstadt’s metallic radium factory …”

After Rubinsky had listened to the rest of the report, he sent the aide away for a time and gazed up at the scenery beyond the wall, which showed off the beauty of a bleak and desolate landscape.

At present, all was smooth sailing. In the empire and the alliance alike, the leadership seemed to believe warfare was just battleships firing subluminal-velocity missiles at one another in space. That meant that while obstinate dogmatists were caught up in murdering one another, the foundations of both countries’ socioeconomic systems would fall into Phezzan’s hands. Even now, nearly half of the war bonds being issued by both countries were purchased directly or indirectly by Phezzan.

In every corner of the universe where humanity’s foot trod, Phezzan ruled economically. One day, the governments of both the empire and the alliance would do nothing but generate economic gain for Phezzan and execute policies on its behalf. It would still take a little more time to reach that point, but when it happened, only a half step would yet remain before the final stage of their goal …

However, the political and military situation was not, of course, something that could be taken lightly. In short, should the empire and the alliance achieve political unification of their vast hegemonies, Phezzan’s special position would lose all meaning. In ancient times, trading cities on both land and sea had yielded before the military and political power of newly arisen, unified dynasties, and that history could probably repeat itself.

If that happened, the road that led to the attainment of Phezzan’s goal would be shut off permanently. The birth of something like a new Galactic Empire had to be prevented by any means necessary.

A new Galactic Empire …

The thought gave Rubinsky a fresh feeling of tension. The present Goldenbaum-dynasty Galactic Empire was already creaking with the degeneration of age, and to reinvigorate it was nearly impossible. Even if it split apart and turned into a cluster of little kingdoms, and even if a new order were to be born out of that, how many centuries would it take for it to happen?

The Free Planets Alliance, on the other hand, had lost the ideals of its founding and was drifting along on inertia. The stagnation in its economy and the lack of development in its society had given rise to discontent among the masses, and there was no end of hostility over economic inequalities among the various planets that made up the alliance. Unless one incredibly charismatic leader were to appear and reconstruct a system of centralized power, things would continue as they were with no exit in sight.

Five centuries earlier, a young Rudolf von Goldenbaum, his hulking body brimming with a lust for power, had taken over the political organization of the USG to become the sacred and inviolable emperor. Through legal means, a dictator had arisen. Would the day of his return ever come? If he were to take over the already-existing power structure, change was possible in a short period of time. Even if it wasn’t legal …

A coup d’état. For those who were near to the crux of political and military power, there was this classical yet effective method. For that reason alone, the idea had its attraction.

Rubinsky pressed a button on his console and called up his aide.

“The odds of a coup d’état happening in both countries?”

The landesherr’s question had surprised him.

“If that is your order, I’ll see to the research immediately, but … have you received some sort of urgent communiqué suggesting such a thing?”