IWBNAM Chapter 5 (Part 2)

If their revered commander were to rise with a great purpose in his heart…

A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity lay before them. If they just stayed calm, just a little bit, and acted, their fate could be completely rewritten.

Imperial Marshal? Impressive, yes. Not everyone rose to such a position. But in the end, it was still the position of someone’s subordinate. Oh, staying a loyal general forever wasn’t bad either, if the one receiving that loyalty was worthy of it.

The incubator emperor.

For several of them, that phrase lodged itself in their minds. An incubator emperor, what a ridiculous notion. A tiny creature who would die in minutes without a machine was supposed to be the master of a hundred billion people? Impossible to accept.

The more hot-blooded subordinates thought: if their commander sought the throne, they would shout his name and run with him without hesitation.

The moderate loyalists thought: they didn’t know whether such a path was right or wrong, but they would stand beneath the same banner and follow wherever he chose to go.

The most radical subordinates thought: this was a heaven-sent chance that must not be wasted. They should spur their commander on. In these situations, the subordinates needed to create the atmosphere themselves. Only then could the future accusations of usurpation be softened, even a little.

“We will follow the path you choose.”

A strange air filled the conference room. No one spoke aloud, but they could all see right through one another. They exchanged glances and nodded. Some were aggressive, some reserved, but there were no dissenters here.

“The Admiral is coming.”

A guard outside the room informed them. The aides straightened their posture and waited for their superior.

Soon the door opened, and Admiral Kranaha entered. His expressionless face revealed nothing of his thoughts, and his aides tensed as they awaited his words.

“Sit.”

“Yes, sir.”

They sat down with crisp military precision. Kranaha looked over them casually before speaking again.

“Prepare to return to the capital. Training is suspended. I will personally announce the situation in the capital to the troops.”

The aides exchanged subtle looks. The order was natural, expected, but was that all he had to say?

“In that case, we’ll reorganize around the high-speed battleships and prepare to depart. We can have the slower ships follow behind…”

“What for?”

Kranaha cut off the chief of staff.

“…Sir? To arrive in the capital even a day sooner, we should use the high-speed vessels…”

“What is the point of only some of us arriving early?”

Kranaha asked quietly. The chief of staff struggled to answer.

“His Majesty has passed. No matter how quickly we return now, nothing will change. Therefore, the entire fleet will move together. We will return to the capital in orderly formation.”

With deep, sunken eyes, Kranaha delivered only what was necessary. Anyone listening would find no fault in his words.

The aides tried desperately to read his true intentions. He said there was no need to hurry back. He said sending a small force ahead was meaningless. That seemed to hint at the future they had quietly imagined… didn’t it?

Their minds raced.

A standard fleet consisted of ten thousand to fifteen thousand ships. High generals commanded around twenty thousand. An Imperial Marshal commanded forty thousand.

Kranaha’s fleet was ten thousand more than the usual Marshal’s command. Marshal Valois, also an Imperial Marshal, served as Fleet Commander-in-Chief, and Marshal Zerodel was appointed Commander of the Rear Lines. In contrast, Kranaha held no other title beyond fleet commander. Instead, he had been granted the right to form a fleet of unprecedented scale. It was the emperor’s will, meant to allow Kranaha to act independently in the coming war of conquest against the Union.

At the time, the massive fleet had been created for that purpose…

The distance from their current position to the capital was roughly a five-day journey one way. High General Hoffmann, commander of the capital’s defenses, was dead. High General Johann Meyer the Younger, one of the field army commanders, was also dead. Marshal Valois had been gravely injured and could not act. A temporary gap had opened in the capital’s defenses.

The Minister of Military Affairs, Marshal Zerodel, and the remaining officials were surely scrambling to restore order, but the next few days would be chaotic. Four high generals stationed abroad were already returning, but there was a two- to three-week gap in their arrival times. If Kranaha intended to pursue a great ambition, this was the perfect moment.

“Yes. As you command, we will prepare the full fleet for return.”

The chief of staff replied respectfully. Kranaha simply nodded, still wearing the same unreadable expression.

* * *

“You didn’t come prepared for at least this much? If we fail, it’s treason. If we succeed, it’s a revolution, isn’t it?”

“…What? What does that mean, sir?”

Gilbert, the chief secretary who was in the office with him, asked with a puzzled face. His superior, who had been reviewing documents, suddenly muttered unfamiliar words in an unknown language.

“Ah… some historical events similar to our current situation came to mind, so I quoted a famous line.”

Nael set down the documents he was holding and rubbed his eyes with his right hand. After wrestling with papers all day, his head felt foggy. His focus had slipped, and he’d let nonsense slip out without noticing. It left him feeling a little embarrassed.

“It didn’t sound like Greek or Latin.”

Gilbert thought it over before speaking. The mention of a similar historical situation had made him think of the Diadochi immediately. However, he had learned a little Greek and Latin, and he could tell that the Chancellor’s muttering had been a completely unfamiliar foreign language.

“Mm. It was Korean. My mother’s side is of Korean descent, so I learned a bit.”

Nael mixed a bit of a lie into the explanation. His mother was Korean, yes, but he was far from fluent in the language.

Among the East Asians living on the capital planet Alpha, only a small number could fluently speak the ancestral language. Between the Empire’s common tongue, German, its second official language, French, and even English, the Union’s language, it was already overwhelming to study them all, why bother remembering an old tongue with little practical use? Unless one was a scholar of traditional cultures, most people only knew simple greetings and a handful of everyday words.

But since there was no other way to explain how suspiciously fluent he was in Korean, or how he knew so much about 20th- and 21st-century culture, Nael used his maternal lineage as an excuse. Most people simply accepted it and didn’t pry further.

“So it was Korean. I’ve served Your Excellency for years, but I’ve never heard you speak it before. If it isn’t rude, may I ask what it meant?”

“I’ll give you the rough background first.”

Nael decided to take the chance to rest a little and leaned back in his chair. What had reminded him of that line again? Ah, yes, he’d been reading the report about Kranaha’s fleet returning.

After receiving the call from Minister of Military Affairs Graim, Kranaha raised no objections. He halted training and began preparing to return. But contrary to some predictions that he would handpick an elite unit and rush back to the capital as fast as possible, he was moving the entire fleet, neither too fast nor too slow.

This was making many people uneasy. Why would the commander of the largest and most powerful single fleet in the Empire deliberately choose actions that might invite suspicion in a crisis like this? Was he showing off his strength? And if so, for what purpose?

“It happened in the East during Earth’s era, specifically, 20th-century Korea. A dictator who had ruled for a long time died suddenly, and the country fell into confusion. It seemed democracy would be restored, but within a few months, a new military dictator appeared. The words I muttered in Korean were something he said during his coup, to keep his anxious comrades in line. Translated, it means: ‘You didn’t come prepared for at least this much? If we fail, it’s treason. If we succeed, it’s a revolution, isn’t it?’ Something like that.”

“I had no idea. We learned about Earth’s history in school, but not in that level of detail.”

Nael nodded in understanding. The history of Earth taught in schools only covered the major trends one should know, and even then, it was centered on Europe. Asian history received only small coverage, and mostly China and India. Everything else was treated almost like it didn’t exist.

In this world, the general public associated Korea with kimchi, bulgogi, study mania, and General Lee. General Lee referred to Admiral Yi Sun-sin, whose naval battles were required study in the military academy, as well as Union Admiral Lee Daniel. Since both shared the surname Lee, ordinary people assumed they belonged to the same ethnic group. No one actually knew whether Daniel Lee was Korean or not. In the footage obtained, he appeared to be white.

“I just looked up books on the 20th and 21st centuries out of personal interest. It’s natural that ordinary people don’t know such details.”

The more he thought about it, the more he felt the current situation resembled that era. Of course, it was still too early to conclude whether Admiral Kranaha was truly harboring treasonous intent as he advanced toward the capital.

Nael tried to analyze Kranaha’s behavior patterns. He even ran simulations in his mind based on the database he had built up after knowing the man for several years. But no outcome felt certain. It would have been nice to know where Kranaha’s true intentions lay, but contrary to popular belief, the man was both deep-minded and, at the same time, straightforward. He was not a man who could be judged easily.

Should he have purged him when he had the chance?

Nael thought back. There had been opportunities. Kranaha had made mistakes, and he had been harshly reprimanded by his lord before. If Nael had really pushed the issue, he could have had him removed. But he never did, because Kranaha’s loyalty to the emperor had always been absolute.

“What happened to the man who said that line?”

Gilbert asked, curious.

“He lived out his natural life and passed away.”

Nael replied briefly. There was no need to explain the entirety of that person’s life. The historical figure whose pattern most resembled Kranaha’s was that Antigonos, so it was better to focus on him.

“There are many rumors, but in three days we’ll have our answer one way or another.”

Gilbert chose to focus on the present, not obscure history. Power vacuums had often tempted war heroes throughout history; some succeeded in rebellion, and some failed. He earnestly hoped that Admiral Antigonos Kranaha would not live up to his name and would choose wisely.

“Well, he can’t suddenly claim he deserves the throne more. He’ll demand some kind of political condition that benefits him. I can already imagine what he’ll complain about. He’ll definitely pick a fight about how he dislikes the Imperial Chancellor….”

But this position had been granted through the Empress’s final will. Protecting the young emperor as regent and safeguarding the Empire was his duty. If someone tried to force unreasonable terms, he had no intention of simply letting it slide.

“If only Marshal Valois hadn’t been injured.”

“Let’s stop with meaningless hypotheticals. It’s nothing but useless imagining. The others are all loyal and competent. Things will work out.”

Nael corrected his posture and ended the small talk. Seeing his superior return to the documents, Gilbert swallowed any remaining words and resumed his own work.

Several days had passed since the catastrophe of May 14th, the tragedy that would later be called the May Disaster. The imperial cabinet had been rapidly reorganized under Imperial Chancellor Azani.

The position of Prime Minister was filled by Baroness Sabine von Hensel, the former Minister of the Interior. At fifty-six, Hensel had passed the elite civil service exam with top marks during her university years and had served diligently in the Interior Ministry. After offending high nobles, she had been pushed aside to a minor post, only to be later recognized and appointed by Sirius.

The vacant position of Minister of the Interior was filled through internal promotion. The new minister was a thirty-eight-year-old commoner, Moritz Müller, who became the first commoner ever to serve as Interior Minister in the Empire’s history.

Other high-ranking positions remained unchanged. The new Imperial Chancellor had no need to replace anyone. Only those injured during the terror attack had their duties temporarily delegated.

When forming the Chancellor’s Office, Nael appointed a few of his trusted aides to key posts he needed filled, and arranged the rest with the existing palace bureaucrats. His goal was not to reshape the power structure to match his own taste, but to maintain stability. Until the next emperor came of age, he intended to rely on the people Sirius had trusted.

The civil administration posed no major problems. The real issue was the military. In an empire with such strong military influence, how the high-ranking officers were handled could determine the fate of the entire nation. If the high generals cooperated, there would be no issue, but if even one acted crookedly, it could become a serious problem.

“The Minister of Military Affairs is cooperative.”

The day before Kranaha’s fleet was due to arrive, Nael stared out the office window, deep in thought. There had been no reports of strange behavior from Kranaha’s fleet so far. But it was too early to relax; what mattered was how the fleet moved once it reached near the capital.

“Zerodel also said he would cooperate.”

Zerodel was a diligent and loyal soldier. There was no need to fear betrayal from him.

“Valois needs to return as soon as possible.”

Reports said that beyond his injuries, he was struggling to recover from psychological shock. He had always been the most reliable man, but watching his wife and son nearly die before his eyes had taken its toll.

“The high generals…”

Of the eleven high generals, two were dead. Among the remaining nine, four were returning from outer missions after receiving emergency orders, and would take two to three weeks to arrive.

“Among the five who are still in the capital, the ones I need to watch are…”

Chief of Staff Werner and the Military Police Commander Zimmermann were fine. Morel also seemed reliable enough.

Mikhail Baum was the worry. He was a warrior-type admiral and had a good relationship with Kranaha. While a good relationship only meant equality as colleagues, not a master-servant dynamic, the connection was still enough to be concerning.

“And Great Johann Meyer…”

Nael let out a weary sigh as he recalled the bleak expression on Great Johann Meyer’s face. He too was a hot-blooded warrior type. He had been extremely close to Little Johann Meyer, whom he’d met in the academy and treated like a brother. But Little Meyer had died in the attack. It was impossible not to worry whether grief would drive Great Meyer into a reckless decision.

And what about the four high generals currently away?

Alberto Bertuccio, the Empire’s first Black high general. Nael had discovered and recommended him years ago, paving his rise to the top. Although Bertuccio had never expressed any personal gratitude or formed a close relationship, Nael quietly hoped he would side with him if things went awry.

Ramon Lopez. A handsome admiral with a classic Spanish look. Cheerful and charming, always surrounded by women. His private life wasn’t very serious, but in military affairs he could focus with cold clarity. He had once clashed slightly with Kranaha.

Viktor Sergeyev. The only high general who kept a full beard, making him look much older than his actual age of thirty-four. When needed, he could be fiercer than anyone, but he was surprisingly calm and patient. Born a poor commoner, he loved rum and always asked for rum as his birthday gift.

Christian Renault. He had attended the same high school as High General Morel, so the two were close and had similar personalities. He still lacked experience and sometimes made mistakes, but he was widely considered someone with strong future potential.

All four had unquestionable loyalty to His Majesty Emperor Sirius. However…

“You can know the depths of rivers, but never the depths of a person.”

The man Nael had to watch most at this moment was undoubtedly Antigonos Kranaha himself. If Kranaha attempted anything foolish, Nael planned for Marshal Zerodel to defend the capital with the forces remaining there, while the four high generals arriving in two to three weeks would strike from the rear. But if even one of them betrayed the Empire, things would become extremely difficult.

“If even one of the four sides with Kranaha… or if someone in the capital responds to him…”

His worries only deepened. There was simply too little information to analyze Kranaha’s intentions.

“And that’s all because I irresponsibly retired.”

Nael smiled bitterly. The one organization that would have been extremely useful in a time like this no longer existed.

The Public Safety Preservation Bureau.

A secret police force that once existed in the Empire.

They had authority to investigate individuals or groups deemed a threat to the regime, and committed kidnapping, confinement, torture, and murder under the pretext of maintaining public order. Founded in the early days of the Empire, the notorious organization had terrorized society for hundreds of years. It was heavily downsized under Emperor Quintus, then forcibly dismantled under Emperor Sirius.

But back then, Azani had thought it wasteful to eliminate it completely. He had planned to revive it with a new name and some restructuring, but he retired before any real discussion could begin, and the plan was abandoned.

Nael let out a long sigh. Once the urgent issues were resolved, he intended to recreate a secret police force. People would definitely accuse him of dreaming of dictatorship, but there was no helping it. Clean governance existed only in fairy tales.

Even in this incident, look at what happened. Minister of Military Affairs Graim was not incompetent, and neither were the capital defense commander, the head of the military police, or the Minister of the Interior, who oversaw the police. Yet they still failed to prevent the terror attack. If the old Public Safety Bureau had still existed, the terrorists lurking in the shadows would never have succeeded.

“I wanted to retire because I wasn’t confident in dealing with conspiracies…”

Lee Juwon had been a normal middle-class college student in the democratic 21st century. He knew nothing about politics or intrigue and had never been interested. He just liked hanging out with friends and trying new restaurants, he had been nothing but an immature kid with a hobby.

“I was someone who only studied history to the level needed for school exams, someone who thought modern history was boring and complicated. And then I woke up one day possessed by the body of an Imperial Marshal… no wonder the country ended up like this.”

I’m the one at fault. How could I ever repay this sin?

So, he would restore what needed restoring. He would accept the criticism gladly. Before that, if Kranaha went berserk and decided on a suicidal charge to bomb the palace, everything would be over anyway.

What should the new organization be called? He could place it under the Ministry of the Interior and separate out a public security division… No. It would be safer as a direct agency under the Chancellor. Ministry of National Safety? Imperial Security Bureau? Office of State Protection?

Knock, knock.

While Nael was trying to come up with a name for the new intelligence agency, he heard a knock at the door.

“Come in.”

The door opened and a secretary entered to announce:

“The Minister of Finance and the Governor of the Imperial Bank have arrived.”

“Ah, it’s already that time? Show them in.”

Nael checked the time and moved to the sofa. A few minutes later, the guests arrived.

Kranaha might let ambition consume him and do something reckless, or he might not. Nael estimated the odds as fifty-fifty. There was a real chance everything might pass without incident.

However, the imperial economy looked almost certain to collapse. After the emperor’s death, widespread anxiety had taken over the market.

“…Then the stock market will reopen tomorrow starting with the futures market, as planned…”

The tragedy known later as the May Disaster had occurred on a Saturday. Appointed as Imperial Chancellor that evening, Azani urgently contacted the Governor of the Imperial Bank and decided to close the stock market for several days. Opening normally on Monday would have been impossible; a historic crash was guaranteed.

But they couldn’t keep the market closed forever. Nael discussed the future of the economy seriously with the two men. A market crash the moment it opened was inevitable. The real question was how to recover afterward.