In Fire Their Faith Shall Be Repaid

April 489 I.C., In the Phezzan Corridor

It was very late April when Braunschweig’s fleet finally crept through the last few light years of space to the Phezzan corridor. After their brief feint towards Heinessen, they had taken a circuitous route back to the edge of navigable space. This close to the boundaries of the Alliance territory, near the great void between galactic arms where superluminal travel was impossible, they had to travel far too slowly for comfort. The maps they were relying on— old ones charted by stealthy, single scout ships sent deep inside Alliance territory— were outdated. This meant that they had to move their fleet in fits and starts, sending out a quarter of their ships ahead at a time, the rest of the fleet catching up when word came back that the path was secure and continued on to the next waypoint.

In a way, their diversion deeper into Alliance territory had allowed them to cover ground much faster, since the merchant paths were well charted, and the routes were maintained with navigational beacons broadcasting on a public frequency. The Alliance, not being wracked with civil war, was still operating business-as-usual. Freighters still had to haul freight.

For Yang, the journey was nothing but misery and stress, but Braunschweig seemed to have recovered some of his verve at the prospect of facing a real enemy again. It was either that, or he was projecting a false bravado that wasn’t working to cheer Yang. Braunschweig spent long hours on the bridge of the Berlin . He either paced and barked fighting words to the junior officers manning the consoles, or sat with maps open in front of him, pushing around pictures of their fleet into different configurations. He didn’t ask Yang or Ansbach for advice as he played out these fleet battles against himself in the maps of the sky around Phezzan, and neither of them offered advice either. With nothing to do but look at achingly familiar territory on the maps they were passing through, Yang preferred to spend as little time on the bridge as he could. Braunschweig didn’t miss him.

It was impossible to know what kind of situation they would find on Phezzan. They knew that the Alliance must have left a fleet as a rear guard, but its size and who its commander was remained a mystery. Furthermore, while Yang doubted that there was any organized Phezzani resistance in the skies, the situation on the ground of the planet could have been anything. Even the succinct and dry reports they had received about Odin’s capital, and how Littenheim’s occupation had gone, made Yang’s skin crawl, and he hated thinking that a similar thing could be happening on Phezzan, in a city five or six times larger and far more densely populated than the Empire’s capital. It was a paradoxical feeling Yang held in his head: if the people of Phezzan were causing the Alliance problems, the occupying force’s attention would be split; but at the same time, Yang didn’t want to see that level of civilian suffering— not inflicted on a city he had lived in, by a country he had once called his own. 

Perhaps, he admitted to himself, he was worrying about this because it was not something he had any influence over. He could opine the Alliance’s actions, but thinking about his own contributions to the Empire’s civil war made him feel miserable beyond words. Like a dead man, living. He didn’t know what had happened in the capital, not exactly, but his imagination was quick to supply him with guilt for anything he pictured.

The slow creep towards Phezzan gave him too much time to think about it, especially since they were now cut off from communications with Iserlohn, and, with it, Odin. The brief few weeks when he had been able to receive updates from across the galaxy had shaken him out of the tranquility of silence— before they captured Iserlohn, he had grown used to the feeling of Braunschweig’s fleet operating alone, without any tethers to the rest of the universe. But that feeling had been lost, and now he sometimes found himself opening his computer to check for impossible missaves. It didn’t help that Braunschweig’s command staff had become claustrophobically small. Yang even missed hearing the wheedling voice of Hans von Vering, now back on Iserlohn, half-begging any of the junior officers to lose a game of cards to him.

Because Braunschweig had stopped asking for Yang and Ansbach’s advice, Yang wasn’t even aware when they reached the mouth of the Phezzan corridor, and stopped. He found out only by accident, when he overheard it mentioned by junior officers in the officers’ mess, who had just left their shifts on the Berlin ’s bridge. Yang immediately abandoned his dinner, and went to find Ansbach in his office. Yang knocked on the door, but didn’t wait for Ansbach to tell him to open it before he stepped inside.

“We’ve made it to the corridor,” Yang said.

“I’m aware,” Ansbach replied. When he  realized it was just Yang wandering into his office unannounced, he expressed his relief by simply doing nothing— looking back down at the supply lists in front of him. He might have expected Yang to sit down in the guest chair, and contort himself with his knees pressed against the edge of his desk, as was his usual posture in Ansbach’s office, but Yang didn’t sit. He instead stood by the doorway, stiff, with his hands in his pockets and a tension in his shoulders. Ansbach looked up at him at last.

“Did he tell you?” Yang asked. “Were you on the bridge?”

“Of course not,” Ansbach replied. He shut down his computer and folded his hands over it. “I watch our heading.”

“You should go to him.”

“Why?” Ansbach asked. “He knows exactly what he needs to do.”

Yang finally took a seat in the chair across from Ansbach. “For the moment.”

“I’m surprised you think it would be helpful for me to be there.”

Yang rested his elbows on his knees, his feet pulled up to the edge of the seat, squeezing himself into the chair as compactly as possible. “If he gets used to you being there again, when we have to do something more than waylay a merchant freighter, it will be easier for you to say something.”

That was what they were stopped outside the corridor for— Braunschweig needed to send a few ships as scouts to capture a vessel that had up-to-date navigational information about the Phezzan corridor. It wouldn’t be difficult to do this— there must be a large amount of supplies heading through the corridor— but the majority of the fleet needed to remain in wait outside detection distance.

“Oh, I thought you were just concerned for the safety of the merchant ships we’re going to be taking,” Ansbach said, his voice painfully dry. “You want me to be on the bridge to order they be treated with mercy.”

Yang’s posture slumped. “You have very little faith in him.”

“That he cares what happens to merchants?”

“Care? I thought he might have a sense of noble obligation.”

Ansbach laughed. 

Yang ran his fingers through his hair, which, having not been cut since well before the start of the civil war, now reached his shoulders. “Besides— the ships have to be boarded to get the data. If they’re completely destroyed, we can’t access their computers. And the Berlin isn’t going out to do it, anyway.”

Ansbach had succeeded in misdirecting the conversation, at least for a moment, but in the silence, he had to return to the subject at hand. “He doesn’t trust me.”

“No,” Yang agreed. “But he needs you.”

“He’s not stupid.”

“Neither are the rebel commanders.”

Ansbach looked at Yang for a second. “What is it that you’re worried about, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” Yang said. “A fatal blunder. If we can’t cut the supply lines off…” He trailed off, his hands hanging limply in the air in an aborted, helpless shrug. He lacked enough information to even express his fear coherently, but Ansbach seemed to understand him. 

“And what do you want me to say to him?”

“Just be there,” Yang said.

Ansbach studied Yang for a moment. “You should be there, too.”

He might have expected Yang to disagree, but Yang just nodded.

---

Capturing the merchant freighters went quickly. A few of Braunschweig’s ships watched the corridor mouth near the Alliance’s last navigational beacon, then attacked a convoy of five ships that passed by. They boarded the ships, scraped the data from the computers, and then destroyed the vessels, allowing (or forcing) the crew that had survived the boarding to await rescue near the beacon in escape shuttles. It would probably take long enough before they were discovered that Braunschweig’s fleet would already be engaged in the corridor. 

As they made their way through, Yang and Ansbach returned to the bridge. Ansbach hovered near Braunschweig, who ignored him, and Yang took up an unobtrusive seat down near the radioman’s console, hoping to be ignored. When he glanced up at the command dais behind himself, he could see Braunschweig through the faint, heat-like shimmer created by the modulated air of the sound privacy barrier. Braunschweig’s eyes stayed fixed ahead of himself, at the screen showing their position relative to the planet up above, and his lips never moved to speak to Ansbach at his shoulder.

They were picking up Alliance ansible transmissions, but the encryption they were using hadn’t been cracked by the Imperial Fleet before the civil war, and all military work of that nature had ceased since the Kaiser’s death, so whatever the Alliance was saying to themselves was indecipherable. The volume of transmissions at least revealed some sense of scale: small messages from individual ships could easily be segregated from the massive data dumps that came from fleet command, sent to Heinessen. 

What was very odd was that they did not pick up any transmissions from Phezzan itself, just messages from the fleet. In Yang’s experience, Phezzan was always broadcasting. Even if they were no longer sending out navigational information to ships, and ansible transmissions to the Empire were cut off, that still left Phezzan’s normal chatter: trade news, television broadcasts and publications meant to be shown in the Alliance, civilian messaging. To have this sudden silence around Phezzan made Yang uneasy. It seemed unlikely that even a planet under occupation would cease to broadcast entirely, unless they lacked the ability to. It reminded Yang far too much of Odin, and every time he reached across the radioman’s station, a muttered apology on his lips, to twirl the frequency dial and hope for some snippet of a familiar, snappy, Phezzani argot, he felt deeply uneasy.

As they sent scout ships further into the corridor, hoping to locate the Alliance fleets and get a sense of their scale before charging in to battle, it became clear what the problem was. The space elevator that had once strung out from Phezzan to its distant moon, a shining filament against the sky, was no longer there, and neither was the tiny moon. Somehow during the Alliance invasion of weeks previous, both had been completely destroyed. It wasn’t clear who had done it, or why— destroying the space elevator was a major blow to Phezzan’s economy, and it would make using the planet as a base much more difficult. 

It was almost difficult to see the extent of the destruction, since the entire region was clogged with dust and debris— the remains of the moon and elevator— that resisted their instruments’ ability to see through it. 

It seemed that whatever had destroyed the elevator had done so with such force that flakes of dust had traveled far outside of Phezzan’s own orbit, some going as far as the ring of asteroids near the system’s heliopause. 

At first, the blackness behind the star on their displays had looked like the darkness of a black hole, eating even the light of nearby stars. But there was none of the characteristic warping of light along the edges of the blackness. It was just nothing. Someone who lived in a light-polluted city might even look out the window at the space around Phezzan and figure that this was just what the darkness of space looked like— the stars too dim and far away to be visible. He remembered his childhood visits to Phezzan, and how the city lights choked out the stars. Maybe on the ground now, the night sky looked exactly like it always had for the people living there: a foggy gloom.

But Yang knew what he was looking at, and so he could examine the dust properly, and get a sense of what it was, and not just feel the absence of what it was covering.

On their screens, their cameras making false-color use of light outside the range of human vision, the system looked like it was wrapped in a cloud, which spread out to choke the corridor where all ships had to pass. The individual pieces of debris were perhaps only a few atoms wide, but the way they moved through space nevertheless was enough of a disruption that it was hard to see anything on their instruments but the largest objects around: Phezzan itself, a few asteroids that had been tugged out of the outer belt and in towards the planet, and a tiny fleet gathered towards the Alliance end of the corridor, looking like it was clustered around some kind of supply depot.

Occasionally, there were areas where the dust visibly swirled— the passage of a ship or something else heavy and invisible moving through its outer reaches, like a shark passing below a swimmer. All this revealed to Yang was the extent of what the dust could hide. 

With the space elevator destroyed, and with it the only permanent orbital base in the system, supplies headed towards the front would need to be gathered and coordinated in space— a miserable state of affairs that Yang didn’t envy. Probably a good number of the ships clustered around the outside edges of the dust cloud were stopped awaiting repair, or were gathering up into a convoy to return to the front.

Yang looked at the fleet carefully. It was shockingly small— fewer than a thousand ships, though it was hard to resolve enough detail to truly count. This stood out to him as very strange— the Alliance, whose country had neither been rocked by civil war, nor suffered recent major defeats at the hands of the Empire, had plenty of ships to deploy. It was possible, perhaps even likely, that the bulk of the Alliance’s rear fleet was at the opposite end of the corridor, anticipating reverse invasion through the Imperial end of the tunnel, with this small rear-most guard there as a support for the planet. But still, Yang felt a chill run down his spine as he glanced between Braunschweig and the map overhead. 

Had Braunschweig ever faced the Alliance head-on before? He didn’t think so. Yang, as well, had spent most of his career in naval intelligence of one kind or another, focused on the internal workings of the Imperial fleet. They were moving in blind against an enemy whose disposition Yang didn’t know. All he had to rely on was his own intuition about the situation, asking himself what he would do if he were in the Alliance, trying to hold on to Phezzan. And he didn’t like the answer that his mind was supplying him.

Although the destruction of the space elevator was definitely a blow to the planet, the dust cloud provided the encamped Alliance forces a distinct advantage. Aside from the ships that were sitting clustered together and far enough out of the cloud that Braunschweig’s scout ships could see them, the haze limited an attacker’s situational awareness. On the other side of the planet, there could be any number of ships waiting to engage, ones that Yang simply couldn’t see. And Braunschweig’s fleet had no such advantage— they would be seen as soon as their whole force began moving.

Yang leaned his head on his hands and closed his eyes, trying to think of ways to mitigate the asymmetry of information. They could— they could— they could—. There was very little that could be done. Their goal was to break the Alliance’s supply line at Phezzan, which meant they would need to drive the Alliance forces away from the planet somehow, or harry them enough to buy time for the remainder of the Imperial forces to repel the invasion. Make it so costly that the forward fleet would need to turn around and reinforce their rear line, rather than continuing forward into the Empire’s territory.

If Braunschweig had a larger force, a well supplied one, they could simply sit at the corridor mouth and halt the passage of supplies through. In fact, if they could do so and steal the supplies they stopped, this would enable them to keep fighting for much longer than they otherwise might. But this ran the risk of letting them become trapped between a reserve Alliance fleet coming with a resupply, and the fleet inside the Phezzan corridor. 

They were in a bad position. They needed to buy time, but they had nothing to spend . If they hadn’t spent down their entire supply of missiles taking Iserlohn, it might have been feasible to use a similar tactic and bombard the orbital supply depot from afar. But all their conventional munitions were long gone, and all they had were the Braunschweig family atomics and the ships’ onboard beam weapons, as well as a handful of Valkyries (which they didn’t even have enough pilots for— most of them had remained on Geiersburg months ago.) What else did they have? Some directional zephyr gas, enough food to get them back to Iserlohn if they ran, about fifteen hundred ships in good condition, and half that again in ships that were limping along. All were operating with skeleton crews— many of the ships that now filled out their numbers were spoils from the capture of Iserlohn, and they had divided up their existing personnel to crew them.

If the space elevator hadn’t already been destroyed, Yang might have suggested destroying it himself. It was a pity that the relatively easy target that would have given them an immediate advantage was already gone. But maybe it was a relief, to not be the one who had to give that order. He pushed the thought away.

Yang spent so much time thinking the situation over, and coming to no conclusion, that Braunschweig stood from his seat and dropped the privacy barrier around the command dais, to order his fleet forward and into the corridor. A frontal assault, gathering up their ships and rushing forward, was perhaps not the only thing that they could have done, but it was the most straightforward. Ansbach said nothing to contradict Braunschweig’s order, and neither did Yang.

The only thing Yang suggested was to push their wounded ships to the back of the line. He hated his own lack of input on other tactics, but he didn’t know what he could say to Braunschweig. He felt, as they grew closer and closer to the massed ships outside the dust cloud, that they were headed into a trap of some kind, or at least a mire that it would be difficult to escape, but he didn’t have a way of mitigating whatever that danger was, and it had been his idea to come here in the first place. The problem was that Braunschweig’s fleet was at the end of its endurance after months of civil war, and Yang felt like he had no tricks left to work with.

It was not a short journey between the edge of the corridor and Phezzan itself. The early part of the trip could be crossed at faster-than-light speeds, but the corridor narrowed to just the width of Phezzan’s circumstellar zone, and it made superluminal navigation difficult for a full fleet. They dropped to sub-light speeds about twenty light-minutes away from the supply depot and fleet that they had seen. Braunschweig wanted to come much closer, in order to have as much of an element of surprise as possible, but Ansbach cautioned him that not only was it likely that they had already been detected, they would need some space to ensure that their own lines were in order before the battle began.

Braunschweig took his advice, but scoffed when the image of the supply depot resolved itself on their sensors. Now, with a closer view, it was clear that it was ill-defended. It was a cluster of transports, including civilian ships, surrounded by military vessels taking on supplies. The shuttles that had been acting as tugs to move crates of munitions and food from one ship to the other swam back and forth in space without a goal, not sure where to go or what to do as they saw Braunschweig’s fleet arrive. 

As their fleet moved in, the cruisers and destroyers that were guarding the transports or taking on supplies of their own rushed towards Braunschweig’s fleet. The transports began retreating back towards Phezzan, into the dust cloud, as Braunschweig approached.

Although the two fleets were of unequal sizes— Braunschweig’s being larger by a few hundred ships— the pointed formations that both fleets took meant that the battle started out very small, with each side firing directly at only the head of the other. It seemed like the Alliance fleet remained bunched up in this way because they were trying to retreat— their fleet turning around in sections while the foremost force provided covering fire. It was a surprisingly well-coordinated maneuver, Yang noticed. Retreats, especially ones that came as a result of protecting ships that couldn’t defend themselves, tended to be messy affairs. These ships moved in neat little sections. It might have been just superior training on the part of the Alliance forces, but seeing how smooth it was made him worry that this retreat had been planned, that they had been seen long before they entered this section of the corridor, and that the Alliance was waiting for them.

Visibility being so reduced inside of the dust cloud surrounding the planet meant that it would be difficult to fight inside it, and Braunschweig knew that. He ordered his fleet, in a narrow line from traveling through the corridor, to spread out and chase down the retreating Alliance forces, trying to pin down the supply depot before they could escape into the haze. Braunschweig’s fleet was also well coordinated, and they spread out their line smoothly, aiming to encircle the retreating Alliance vessels.

It became a strange little dance. As the Alliance vessels retreated, Braunschweig’s fleet tried to circle around them, but one of the sections of the Alliance fleet turning around would swing out towards the flank of Braunschweig’s fleet and harry them, fraying Braunschweig’s line and giving space for the foremost section of the Alliance to fire at the center of Braunschweig’s fleet. They would surge forward, push Braunschweig’s fleet back, or at least halt their advance, and then retreat again, making Braunschweig order their fleet forward.

In this way, they were drawn inexorably into the cloud, despite Braunschweig’s earlier efforts to keep them out. Braunschweig was so focused on their quarry that he only seemed to notice how bad the dust was when it became clear that the flanks of their line, still spread out, were having difficulty communicating with them. Their messages over the radio fuzzed out into static, and the Valkyries they deployed quickly dropped out of sight of their own detectors.

Braunschweig, leaning forward in his chair on the command dais, scowled at each message that only partially came through, and tried to order the wings of their fleet to move back inwards. Ansbach, standing behind him, glanced towards Yang, who remained seated near the radio console. Their eyes met across the distance, and perhaps Ansbach read the exhausted fear on Yang’s face.

“Sir,” Ansbach said to Braunschweig. “I think we’re being drawn into a trap. We should retreat and form up outside the dust cloud.”

Braunschweig ignored him, leaning forward in his chair. “Bring our flanks in,” he ordered. “We’ll try again to push forward and encircle.”

But even as he tried to bring their own flanks back in, the dust prevented them from coordinating, and the ends of their lines grew fragmented and ragged. Yang sat with his fingernails digging into the flesh of his thighs, and Ansbach asked again, leaning towards Braunschweig, to get him to retreat.

But by this point, it was too late. Over the staticy, barely-intelligible radio, a cried out report came from both ends of their flanks at once. Swarming out of the dust cloud on either end of their line were hundreds of additional Alliance ships. They had been hidden in the dust far enough apart from each other that the already-overloaded sensors of Braunschweig’s fleet hadn’t been able to detect them, and they chewed apart the ragged edges of their line, moving with a coordination and intensity that Yang had not known was possible in this kind of environment. They must have synchronized their clocks before moving into the dust cloud, and planned carefully to attack the edges of the line at the same time, with the middle force working to position Braunschweig’s fleet exactly where the waiting ambush needed it.

Yang stood from his seat and looked towards Braunschweig with wide eyes. Braunschweig realized how wrong the situation was, but he was momentarily confused as to how to respond. “Group up and break through their forward line!” he cried, gathering his ability to speak once again.

This was the wrong choice— every second they delayed retreating was one more moment that the nimble Alliance fleets could spend encircling their flanks. Nevertheless, the center of their line pushed forward, like an expanding bubble, still trying to chase the central column of the Alliance. That column, whose retreat had been a clever feint to begin with, stopped and fired back on Braunschweig, holding their ground and allowing their allies to close in further and further.

Yang could do nothing but watch. He tried, several times, to approach the command dais and ask Braunschweig to retreat, but each time, Ansbach waved him back. It was only after their right flank completely collapsed, ships scattering upwards and downwards out of the plane of the battle as they grew completely lost and pushed apart in the dense dust, that Braunschweig finally turned towards Ansbach. 

“My Lord,” Ansbach said, “We should join up with our left flank and retreat along the edge of the corridor.”

And they did, as much as they could. It was a slightly unexpected move— turning around where they were, or trying to bring the left flank in towards the center to cover their retreat would have been more standard— and this gave them a little bit of relief. The Alliance fleet, suffering the same communication difficulties as they were, could only react in a coordinated way to things that they had planned for before they deployed. Braunschweig moving in an unexpected direction made the fleet attacking from their right hesitate, enough to give them room to escape. Although the central column of the Alliance fleet chased them out towards the heliopause of the system, they didn’t pursue further than that, leaving Braunschweig’s fleet to lick their wounds in the corridor.

The fight, although it had been a decided bruise to the fleet, did not leave them as damaged as it could have. Because of the way the edges of their line had been spread out, and the difficulties of getting clear shots inside the dust, they had only fully lost about a tenth of their number. It was a painful loss, but not a permanent defeat. The Alliance, although their methods had been very sound, had been conservative and not spent their own resources chasing them— which signaled to Yang that the ships they had encountered were the only ones that were in the Phezzan corridor at the moment, or at least the only ones who could come to defend the homeward-side. If there was another fleet waiting, it was at the Imperial end, and several-days journey away.

When the fleet had fully reorganized itself, and the command staff met in Braunschweig’s ready room, Yang brought this up, explaining that this gave them a window of time, if they could find a way to take advantage of it.

“That trick won’t work on us more than once,” Braunschweig said. “And if that’s all they have, then we’re still ahead by numbers. We’ll try again— don’t want to give them any time to rest.”

Yang, opened his mouth to object to trying the same failed strategy a second time, but Ansbach cut him off before he could say anything. “Of course, My Lord.”

Yang sighed and just closed his eyes, letting the talk in the room wash over him. They would try again— it would go badly. He could see exactly how it would play out. The cloud of dust was like the dangerous range of the Thor Hammer, where no one who didn’t control it could enter without risking destruction. The Alliance ships could be hiding anything inside there. It would be smart for them to lay a minefield, and once again try to draw in Braunschweig’s fleet. Or even corner them again with hidden ships. For all that he claimed that he wouldn’t fall for the same trick again a second time, Yang knew that it was the likeliest thing in the world that Braunschweig would. The temptation to chase down a running target was just too powerful in the moment, and the dust’s thickness crept up on the crews of the ships. And even if they stayed outside of the dangerous zone, they wouldn’t ever be able to accomplish their goals, at least not before they ran out of supplies.

Ansbach cornered Yang in a deserted hallway after he crept out of the meeting.

“What were you going to say to him?” Ansbach asked.

“I don’t know,” Yang said. “That we should do something other than try the same thing over and over.”

“Give me an alternative,” Ansbach said. “I’ll suggest it to him. If you think it’s worth spending my credibility on that.”

Yang shook his head. “Maybe there’s something we could do— we don’t actually have to cut them off or the planet— our real goal is to force their forward line back. Maybe we could spoof communications. Capture one of their ships, sneak it through the dust cloud, and then use it to send a distress call.” Then he shook his head. “But we’d need a way of cutting off their true communications, too, to make it look like—” He realized he was rambling, and cut himself off. “I don’t know— I don’t know.”

“You were the one who brought us here.”

Ansbach’s voice wasn’t gentle, but it wasn’t unkind either. Yang’s shoulders just slumped forward. “So you think I have a magical solution?”

“Not magical,” Ansbach said. “But there must be a better one.”

Yang looked at Ansbach for a moment, then shook his head. It wasn’t that there weren’t solutions, Yang thought. The problem was that he couldn’t say them aloud and invite them into being— they were too terrible to think of. He wondered if Ansbach understood that— if he could do the math on their remaining munitions and what that could win them.

“Maybe the rebels will slip up,” Ansbach said. 

“I’ll think of something,” Yang said. “They will be receiving more supplies eventually— maybe soon. We could do something with that. Capture them, like a Trojan horse—”

Ansbach cut him off with a flick of his sallow eyes down the hallway, where they heard footsteps approaching from. “Think about it,” Ansbach said.

---

They tried several more times to harass the Alliance’s fleet without being drawn deeply into the danger of the dust cloud. With Ansbach standing at Braunschweig’s shoulder, there was no one for Yang to turn to. In the course of these battles, there might have been minute-to-minute tactical suggestions that Yang could have made— that he wanted to make— that might have turned the tide and staunched some of the bleeding from their fleet, but it seemed like Ansbach wanted Braunschweig to realize that he needed Yang, to ask explicitly for his advice. Yang’s suggestions in the past had not been welcomed, but perhaps if Braunschweig sought it out and realized Yang’s necessity, it would be better for them all.

But this did not seem likely to happen. They tried again and again, and all that came of it was a mounting frustration from Braunschweig, and a slow wearing down of their fleet. In the fourth useless attempt, during which Yang was on the bridge, as he had to be, Braunschweig abruptly stood from his seat. 

Before them was the line of Alliance ships, at least those they could see, which popped out of the dust in small sections, batting back Braunchweig’s fleet wherever it attempted to move, and then retreating as soon as their small unit started taking heavy fire. 

For a second, Braunschweig said nothing, just stood and looked at the situation in front of them, and then he said, “Take a spindle formation. We know how many ships they have— we can reach the planet if we just run for it.”

This wasn’t inherently a terrible idea— a new position might open up new opportunities, and an unexpected move might even catch the fleet hiding in the dust off guard enough to let them by. Despite this, Yang felt a cold needle of fear sink through him, from his throat to his feet. He stood, headed to the dais, and faced Braunschweig, intending to ask a question. Ansbach saw him move, and almost got in the way, but Yang spoke up before Ansbach could interfere.

“Sir, what do you intend to do when we reach Phezzan? I’d like to know— we shouldn’t go in without a plan.”

Braunschweig was surprised to hear Yang speak, and some of his old disdain crawled onto his face. “Something that will make their forward forces need to respond,” he said.

Yang felt something like a noose begin to tighten around his neck.

“Sir, what is it that you intend to do?”

Ansbach, standing behind Braunschweig’s shoulder heard the tremble in Yang’s voice, and he stopped looking at Braunschweig and the map overhead, and instead locked eyes with him.

“I would caution against landing on Phezzan,” Ansbach said, voice dry. “Sir, we don’t have the forces to make an effective ground invasion, and we don’t know what the situation on the planet is.”

Braunschweig swept his gaze across the room. “We’re not going to land on the planet. We’ll fly through the corridor, back to Imperial territory, once we’re done.”

“What are you planning, sir?” Yang asked again.

“Ansbach, prepare our ships to make a nuclear assault on Phezzan.”

There was a moment of dead silence on the bridge. The noose was so tight around Yang’s throat that he couldn’t speak for a moment— perhaps that was what saved him. 

“My Lord,” Ansbach said, and stepped in front of Braunschweig. “Phezzan is a planet full of civilians.”

“It’s a planet occupied by the rebel fleet,” Braunschweig said. “As Her Majesty’s agent, I hold a responsibility for the Empire. We will do what it takes to force the rebels to retreat out of our territory. They’ll certainly have to when—”

“My Lord, you cannot fire nuclear weapons at a planet full of civilians,” Ansbach said. His voice was cold and clear and hard.

“Ansbach, I don’t remember asking for your advice. Move the fleet into a spindle formation.” He wasn’t even looking at Ansbach— he waved his complaints away with a flick of his hand, and looked at the map on the screen overhead.

“If you do this—”

“For Her Majesty.”

“There will not be a Goldenbaum dynasty any longer,” Ansbach said. “You will lose—”

Braunschweig, at last, seemed to hear what Ansbach was saying, and turned towards him. Ansbach was standing straight as a pole, his sallow face paler than Yang had ever seen it. He very carefully was not looking at Yang, but directly at Braunschweig, confrontationally into his eyes, the usual veneer of deference gone. 

“I will lose?” Braunschweig asked. “To whom?”

“History,” Ansbach said.

Braunschweig laughed, an edge of mania in it now that Yang could hear. “But not to the rebels.”

“My Lord,” Ansbach said— and from his holster withdrew his sidearm. “I will not allow it.”

Braunschweig took a flinching step back as Ansbach aimed the gun at him, but then recovered. “Ansbach— you— I never thought you were a fool.” He tried to laugh, clinging to old false bravado. “What do you hope to accomplish by threatening me?”

Ansbach didn’t fire, though with every twitch of Braunschweig’s face and body, his hand twitched on the gun in turn, keeping it aimed squarely at Braunschweig’s forehead. He was a good shot, Yang remembered, vaguely, watching the scene as if from a hundred thousand miles away.

Braunschweig kept talking, regaining his confidence even as Ansbach kept the gun on him. It didn’t seem like Ansbach wanted to fire— perhaps he wouldn’t. He was waiting for something, some kind of unspoken signal, but Yang didn’t know what it was, and he was frozen, unable to stop the scene from playing out.

“The rebels will be forced to come back here. They’ve conquered this territory; they will need to deal with the consequences of it. And perhaps— maybe we shouldn’t go back to Odin— we could go towards Heinessen! Yes— hah! Ansbach— you see it— you see how it has to be.”

“Do not make that order, My Lord,” Ansbach said, though he didn’t move. No one else on the bridge was moving a muscle either, afraid of being the one to set Ansbach off and have him fire on Braunschweig. 

“You wouldn’t kill me, Ansbach. Not after everything I’ve done for you.”

Yang suddenly understood the play that Ansbach was making— why he didn’t fire on Braunschweig, why he was stalling for time. They would all probably die if someone did kill Braunschweig— it would be difficult to survive an outright mutiny. He was a popular and well liked leader, and his daughter was the Kaiserin. But Ansbach knew that Yang would not stand by and allow Braunschweig to murder Phezzanis—  he was taking the fall preemptively, in the hopes that Yang could be a cooler, more tactical head later. It was playing out the reverse of whatever Flegel had told his uncle had happened when they were in Iserlohn’s command center, and Ansbach had tried to take a shot for Yang. He was giving Yang a chance to show his loyalty to Braunschweig. He perhaps fully expected to die— in Yang’s place. 

Yang shuffled over past the radioman’s console, watching Ansbach, who surely saw him out of the corner of his eye, and flipped up the plastic cover on the emergency panel on the wall, and hit the switch that would flood the room with zephyr gas.

“Ansbach—” Yang called, the resignation heavy in his voice. “Don’t fire. There’s zephyr gas. You’ll kill everyone.”

This reassurance of safety was enough for the security officer standing by the door to rush and tackle Ansbach to the ground, where he landed with a heavy exhale of breath and a sick thunk of his skull on the textured metal of the floor. He didn’t cry out, even as the security team brutally arrested him. His sidearm fell from his hand and skidded across the upper portion of the bridge, before falling down to land and continue its journey to Yang’s feet. Maybe Ansbach had even thrown it in that direction.

“Take him to the brig,” Braunschweig said, and sank down into his seat, suddenly looking exhausted. The little flyaway strands of hair from his usually neat queue were sticking to his forehead with his cold sweat. “I’ll decide what to do with him later. Is there anyone else who wants to be a traitor today?”

There was dead silence on the bridge. Yang picked up Ansbach’s gun by its muzzle, and walked over to Braunschweig, holding it out as an offering. Braunschweig took it, staring down at it.

“Ansbach,” he said, strange confusion and what sounded like almost regret in his voice. “I never thought.”

But he had, Yang thought. And that was the problem.

“My Lord,” Yang said, feeling the words thick on his tongue, “We should regroup the fleet before we go towards Phezzan,” he said. “We can’t form into a spindle properly when we’re in this cloud and can’t coordinate our whole fleet.”

He was buying time— that was all he was buying. But Braunschweig accepted it, and waved his hand. “Yes, yes— let’s retreat and regroup. Two— four hours, then we’ll try again. Don’t give them too much time.”

---

During the four hour respite, Yang didn’t wait long before he headed down to the brig to speak with Ansbach. He didn’t know exactly what he would find there, but he had no time to waste. Perhaps it was a mistake to speak to Ansbach, a sign of his own wavering loyalty, but Yang was compelled to go. It was funny: Ansbach had been at the prison the day he rescued Mittermeyer. Yang walked through the cold hallways of the Berlin in a strange daze.

It was as if all the clarity he usually possessed had abandoned him, and left him lost. Possibilities tangled in his head, and he almost regretted telling Ansbach not to fire after he filled the room with zephyr gas. Perhaps it would be easier if they had died in that one crucial moment. It would have saved Phezzan, certainly. Now it rested on Yang’s shoulders, a burden that he could neither put down nor carry.

With the ship so understaffed, there was just one soldier manning the brig, and he was confused and flustered enough by Yang’s presence to just step aside and let him in, after searching him down.

“You don’t have a sidearm?” the soldier, just an enlisted man, asked. “I thought all officers carried one.”

“I’m a teacher,” Yang said. “I couldn’t hit a destroyer at fifty paces. What would be the point?”

It was a joke he had made hundreds of times in his life, but now his voice felt faint and strange, and the soldier unlocked the door without another word.

“Knock when you want out.” 

Yang nodded and stepped inside.

The brig was too hot. Down in the lower aft of the ship, it was near the giant radiators that sent the whole ship’s excess heat off into space as much as possible. Not all of that heat escaped the ship, and so these lower reaches boiled.

Ansbach wasn’t chained down, and so he had taken his shirt off to cope with the heat. It revealed the bruises that bloomed across his skinny chest, and the way his breathing was shallow and rapid. Broken rib, maybe.

He looked up when the door opened.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“Neither should you.” Yang stood near the doorway, and made sure that the door was tightly shut. He couldn’t hear the guard redoing the lock, so it seemed like the room was relatively secure for them to talk privately.

Ansbach looked away from him. “Call it repaying a debt.”

“Ansbach—”

He just shook his head. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Yang admitted. “I have a little bit of time to think of something.”

“You will.”

“Why do you trust me so much?” Yang asked.

Ansbach said nothing, just looked at Yang steadily.

“I’ll go talk to him,” Yang said. “I might be able to convince him.” He looked down at his hands, then turned and leaned against the wall, pressing his face into the crook of his elbow. “I might.”

“You won’t,” Ansbach said. “You’ll have to find some other way.”

“Why couldn’t you?” Yang asked. But he had already seen the answer as clearly as ships revealing themselves through the dust, and Ansbach didn’t need to explain it to him. His voice was muffled enough in his elbow that he wasn’t sure if Ansbach had even heard the question.

For a moment, there was just the sound of their breathing, both of them struggling with the heat.

“Come here,” Ansbach said.

Yang looked up at him, saw Ansbach beckoning, and obeyed. When he went to sit on the bench next to him, Ansbach stopped him.

“Give me your hand,” Ansbach said.

Yang held out his right hand. 

“No, the other one.”

Yang hesitated, then looked at Ansbach’s face. His lips were pressed together in something approaching a scowl, and his brow was furrowed in concentration. When Yang didn’t move, Ansbach reached across the short distance and took Yang’s left hand, where it dangled at his side. Yang let him, confused, uncurling his fist when Ansbach pulled at his fingers.

Ansbach pulled the wedding ring off of Yang’s finger.

“Cartier—” Yang said.

“Let’s trade,” Ansbach said, his voice brutally dry. “A memento of me. And I’ll keep this safe for your wife.” He laughed unhappily. 

Yang watched in confusion as Ansbach traded rings with him, exchanging his simple gold wedding band for the heavy, masculine ruby ring that he wore. It had the Goldenbaum crest wrought into the gold, the eagle’s wings surrounding the gem. 

Ansbach put Yang’s wedding ring on, then held his hand up in the dim light to admire it. It didn’t fit particularly well, and Ansbach’s ring slipped loose on Yang’s finger. “Til death do us part,” he said bitterly as the ring glinted.

“Why?” Yang asked.

“Princess Amarie gave me that ring,” Ansbach said, voice dry again. “I never got a chance to put it to use. It’s a useful thing, though.” He nodded at Yang’s hand.

Yang touched the gem. 

“You don’t carry a sidearm— everyone knows that,” Ansbach continued. “Even the duke knows it. You won’t be searched. You’re harmless.”

“This is—”

“A laser pistol,” Ansbach said. “It’s a chemical battery.” Roughly, he reached out and took Yang’s hand again, touching parts of the ring to show what they did. “Twist the gem to break the seal— it’s also the focusing device. You point that where you’re shooting. You’ll know it’s ready because it will heat up with the chemical reaction. Break it just before you’re going to shoot. The reaction only lasts a minute or so. To fire, there’s a little switch in the carving here.” He turned Yang’s palm over, and showed him the mechanism on the palm-side of the ring, barely noticeable, in the eagle’s claws. “Don’t point it at anything you don’t want to kill.” He laughed again. “It’s probably too late to try to teach you trigger discipline.”

“I couldn’t hit a destroyer at fifty paces.” His voice was weak and breaking.

Ansbach scoffed. “How many people are on Phezzan?”

“Five billion,” Yang said. It was the most densely populated planet in the galaxy, by a wide margin.

“You’ll do what you have to do, My Lo—” But he cut himself off before he could finish the word, and the grim line of his mouth twitched in a strange smile.

Yang’s hand was still in Ansbach’s, but Yang, with strength that surprised himself, turned his hand around to clasp his. “And what about you?”

Ansbach didn’t say anything for a second, but nor did he try to remove his hand. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said again. “Go. Do what you need to do. Don’t think about me.”

This was harder than it had any right to be. Five billion people were abstract things, strangers Yang could never know. Ansbach was flesh and blood, and his hand was still in Yang’s, palm to palm, finger to finger. He could feel Ansbach’s sweat, and his pounding heartbeat beneath his skin, his own gold wedding band stuck high on Ansbach’s ring finger. It would have been easier if Yang had been alone; if he had been asked to die for five billion strangers, it would have been easy. This was not.

“I’ll figure out a way,” Yang said.

“Go.” And Ansbach pulled his hand from Yang’s. “You don’t owe me anything.”

Yang wanted to protest, but Ansbach stood and rapped on the door, and when it opened, he pushed Yang’s back so that he stumbled out, in a daze, twisting the ring around his finger, until the gem cut into his palm.

---

Yang didn’t have a good opportunity to speak with Braunschweig alone before their fleet set off again. Instead, he stood at his shoulder where Ansbach had stood just hours before, and repeated Braunschweig’s commands like a parrot, ordering their nuclear warheads to be armed, ordering their ships to charge forward into the dust cloud.

He barely felt like he was inside his own body. All his mind and attention was fixed on the ring on his finger. He feared that it was shining like a beacon, that everyone surely noticed exactly what was going on, and the danger that Yang presented.

But no one did. If anyone glanced at Yang, it was because his voice was more strained than it usually was, and had lost its reassuring calm tone that he usually murmured to the junior officers in. He spoke robotically, more machine than man, and he tried to excise his personal feelings about the commands he was giving, and the actions he was preparing to take from his mind.

They charged in a spindle formation towards the dust cloud. They first tried to make it look like any of their other charges towards the waiting Alliance ships, but when the first squadron of the Alliance fleet emerged from the mist to challenge them, they didn’t balk or stop at all. They charged directly through, heedless of any other lines of ships waiting behind.

The Alliance squadron scattered, and tried to reform behind them, but this would take time.

Each of these small groups of Alliance ships seemed to have their own remit in the dust, keeping watch over a small sector of space— just what their sensors could accurately map. This worked before, when Braunschweig had the goal of hunting down and defeating the Alliance fleet, but now that his target had changed to the planet itself, the ships were spread out far too thinly to mount a quick defense. It reminded Yang, of all things, of the battle-game he had fought during the entrance exam at the IOA— diving down through a too-thin line towards the planet. Only, he was the one carrying the annihilating weapon, this time. 

Once Braunschweig’s fleet was enveloped in the dust, their position, too, became harder to track. Yang suggested that they take a more circuitous path through the dust, to throw off pursuit— to buy time— and Braunschweig took the advice.

“Yes, fine, Leigh,” Braunschweig said. He was exhausted now. It had been more than a day since he last slept, and the strain was present in his voice. Yang hoped his decision was also weighing on him, but he couldn’t divine that through the tiredness in Braunschweig’s voice.

“Sir, are you alright?” Yang asked.

“How long will it take for us to get there?”

“We’re significantly below light speed,” Yang said. “Four hours, about.”

“Good— that’s good.”

“Do we expect any resistance between here and there?”

“Expect— no, sir. They’re chasing us, but we have a head start, and we’re deep in the dust now.”

“Good.” He paused for a very long moment, looked around the bridge, then stumbled to his feet. “I’ll be in the tank bed. Wake me up if there’s any changes.”

It left Yang in the strange and unenviable position of command. His faux display of loyalty didn’t give him any room to change their course, except to weave an increasingly convoluted route towards Phezzan. He didn’t know if he was hoping that the Alliance ships would catch them— maybe he was. In any event, Yang took Braunschweig’s seat on the command chair, watching as they moved forward.

He hadn’t slept in a long time either, but he was used to this kind of exhaustion. It calmed him, almost, too tired to feel the waking nightmare intimately. That was what he told himself, but when he rubbed his eyes and saw the glint of the ruby on his finger, he jumped every time, like he was waking back up.

Braunschweig spent a long time in the tank bed, so long that Yang became concerned. They were approaching Phezzan now. Distantly, on their instruments, they could see faint blips of the Alliance ships chasing them. Yang stood from the seat. “I’m going to find the duke,” Yang said. “He would want to be woken up.”

He didn’t know who he was announcing it to. He put the captain of the Berlin briefly in charge of the whole fleet— they really were painfully understaffed— and went to Braunschweig’s suite.

There was a guard at the door who stopped Yang.

“He asked to be woken up,” Yang said. “I’m here to report the situation to him.”

“Give me your sidearm,” the guard said.

“I don’t carry one,” Yang replied. “You can search me.” And he held out his arms.

The guard was probably no more than sixteen or seventeen years old, a fresh recruit with curly brown hair. He checked Yang over, and Yang watched him perform this duty like he was outside his own body. He wondered, for just a minute as the boy made him open the front of his jacket to see if he was hiding a weapon there, if this boy would live the rest of the day. If Yang could figure out a way that didn’t involve leading the entire ship and the entire fleet directly into the path of Alliance fire. He wasn’t sure. He didn’t know. 

The guard opened the door, uncomfortable under Yang’s gaze. Yang stepped inside.

Braunschweig’s personal quarters were quite nice. The Berlin had been his flagship for many years, and he had decorated it in the same style as he kept his home. They could have been on Odin, except for the lack of windows in the dark room. Yang entered into the sitting room, Braunschweig’s bedroom was off to the side, the tank bed disguised in a closet. But Braunschweig wasn’t in the tank bed— he was in his small office, sitting at his desk, and heard Yang come in. Yang was startled when Braunschweig addressed him. The room was dark, and just the green-shaded desk lamp was on in the office.

“Oh, Leigh, there you are,” Braunschweig said. “Have we arrived?”

“Nearly,” Yang said. “I came to get you. I thought you would still be sleeping.” Yang stood in the doorway.

Braunschweig got up from his desk and walked over to a cabinet on the wall of his office. From it, he took two glasses, poured drinks for both of them. He held one out for Yang, who stepped into the office to take it.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Braunschweig said. “Must be something wrong with the tank bed’s settings. It was giving me a nightmare.”

Yang’s hand shook on the heavy tumbler of whiskey that he had been handed. “They give me nightmares, too.”

“Hah,” Braunshchweig said. “Didn’t think there was anything we’d have in common.”

“Sir,” Yang said.

Braunschweig leaned against his desk, held his glass up and drank. “You’re not here to wake me up. Are you here to tell me to change my plan?”

“I’m here to beg you.”

“No.” It was a simple rebuttal, flatly delivered, and it left very little room for argument. No matter if Braunschweig had been having nightmares, he could carry on in the waking world.

“Why?” Yang asked. “Will you at least tell me that much?”

“You’re not a stupid man, Leigh,” Braunschweig said. “It’s the only way. You know that as well as I do. We don’t have enough leverage to force the rebels to turn back here, unless we inflict a devastating blow. We have a thousand ships left? Nine hundred?” Braunschweig shook his head. “And not enough supplies for us to wait and starve them. We have the ability to act quickly— we should take it.”

Yang put down his glass on the ledge of the bookcase that lined the wall near the door. He clasped his hands together, felt the ring on his finger.

“Sir, there are five billion people on that planet.”

“They won’t all die,” Braunschweig said. “This isn’t the Thirteen Day War.” He turned away slightly. “And humanity survived that, too.”

“How many will you kill?”

“I care about my daughter’s Empire far more,” Braunschweig said. “She rules over many more billions than that.” His tone shifted. “And Ansbach wants to talk about history.” He sniffed. “I’m more concerned with the future. She rules over everyone not yet born— isn’t that right? Whatever future we make now— she’s ruling that.”

“And would Elizabeth want you to do this for her?”

“I’m her father,” Braunschweig said, as if that was an answer to the question. Maybe it was enough of one. Yang bit his tongue, and remembered the expression on Elizabeth’s face, as they had watched the execution of prisoners of war together.

“You don’t worry that Ansbach is correct?”

“That it will turn people against us?” He actually seemed to think about it for a moment. “No.”

“There are some things that people can’t tolerate.”

“People learn to tolerate a lot, when they’re forced to. Fear makes people bow, Leigh. It breaks proud men,” Braunschweig said. He seemed to be half talking to himself.

“Not every man is proud,” Yang said.

Braunschweig laughed. “Oh, you came here to beg, didn’t you?” He paused, still turned away from Yang. “I always thought you were such a strange man. Were you afraid of my father-in-law?”

Kaiser Friedrich— Yang didn’t have an answer to that question. He had pitied him. Was that an emotion incongruous with fear? Certainly, the Kaiser had held Yang’s life in his hands. But that wasn’t a necessary condition of fear— not the kind that Braunschweig wanted. Yang hesitated so long before answering that Braunschweig spoke again.

“It seems to me— and please, Leigh, tell me if I’m wrong— that you only knelt for him when he was giving you a gift. You didn’t beg him for anything.”

“I asked.”

“It’s not the same, Leigh. It’s a matter of pride.”

“I’m begging you, My Lord,” Yang said. “I’m begging you now.”

“Then kneel.”

He knelt. It took no hesitation. There was no pride to relinquish. His knees pressed into the red carpet of the floor; he clasped his hands together.

“Call it off,” Yang said. “Please.”

Braunschweig turned around at last, hearing Yang from the floor. His smile was cruel now. Whatever strange camaraderie they had glimpsed for a moment in their shared nightmares was long gone. He wanted to see Yang kneel, but Yang could see that the satisfaction was not in making Yang kneel, but in finding what the breaking point of Yang’s pride was. What would Yang be forced to accept at Braunschweig’s feet?

The necessity of bombing Phezzan was no longer present in the room— all that remained was glee at the prospect of making Yang accept it.

Still, he tried again, looking into Braunschweig’s eyes. “Please,” Yang said. “I’m begging.”

Yang twisted the ring on his finger, turning the gem clockwise until it clicked softly beneath his finger. Almost immediately, it began to warm, and then the warmth turned to a searing heat, so hot that it burned like a brand, the heat traveling all around the metal band of the ring. He thought he could smell the charring of his flesh. 

“And what will you do if I don’t, Leigh? Turn us in to the rebels? Could you do that?” He laughed. “It would be funny if I had kept a spy around to win the throne for me.”

“Duke Braunschweig,” Yang said. “Please!”

His voice was pained and wild, and it made Braunschweig smile. “It’s my decision— it’s settled. And will you do, Lord Leigh?”

“That’s not my name,” Yang said. His hand was on fire, and when he raised it, with the strange chemical-light glow beneath the ruby, Duke Braunschweig’s face twisted in terrified recognition. He leapt forward towards Yang, and Yang, not knowing what else to do, pulled the tiny switch of a trigger on the ring with his thumb. The first shot went wide, over Braunschweig’s shoulder, but then Braunschweig crashed into Yang, wrestling him from his knees to the floor, and Yang’s hand ended up against Braunschweig’s temple, and his thumb moved again by instinct. 

The second, weaker, shot fired, straight through hair and skin and bone and brain, vaporizing what it passed through, and spraying hot blood out the hole in the side of Braunschweig’s head. It pooled on the ground, splashed on Yang’s hands, dusted a fine mist on his face. Braunschweig’s body, the last remnants of life in it, twitched in Yang’s arms, and Yang held the heavy weight to his chest, clutching the dead with both hands, unable to breathe.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry— I’m so sorry.”