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them lay in entirely different directions.
    “This alone will be enough to empty Heinessen of military power. With a small number of troops, we’ll be able to take control of its vital points.”
    The High Council, the National Assembly, Joint Operational Headquarters, the Military Transmissions Trafficking Center, and other targets to be occupied were named, and the times for the assaults, the names of the commanders, and the numbers involved were all reiterated. However, these things had already been discussed in meetings more than ten times already, and the attendees were all fully aware of the whole plan and the roles they themselves would play in it.
    The attendees shared a common understanding and sense of crisis that if things kept going the way they were, the Free Planets Alliance would be destroyed. Setting aside the scale of the blow suffered last year at the Battle of Amritsar, the rapid advance of political corruption and the weakening of the economy and of society at large was spurring on this sense of crisis.
    These problems could under no circumstances be left to the current crop of politicians, who traded in political power like poker players laying down chips. That entire lot needed to be purged.
    The man at the head of the table looked around at all of those present. “With our own hands, we must purify our homeland of this mobocracy that has spat upon our ideals and reached the pinnacle of corruption. This is a just battle, and one we can’t avoid in order to renew our nation.”
    His voice was fully controlled, with something about it that drew a line, distinguishing the speaker from the kind of fanatic merely drunk on himself. To display their confidence in him, all present nodded with equal enthusiasm.
    “Now, at present, there’s an individual who is going to be a problem.”
    The man’s speech grew more formal, and the other men straightened their posture just a bit.
    “That man is Admiral Yang Wen-li, commander of Iselohn Fortress. It’s partly because he hasn’t been in the capital that I haven’t made him one of our compatriots, but if there are any opinions on the matter …”
    When the man finished speaking, an argument broke out.
    “Are we not in a position to win him over? His mind and popularity would prove extremely useful. We can’t ignore the strategic value of Iserlohn, either.”
    “If he did throw in with us, we could take control of all the territory from Heinessen to Iserlohn.”
    “It’s the end of March, and you think we can make time to try to convince him?”
    “We don’t need to lure a man like that into joining us.”
    The voice that spoke those words was the youngest of those present, but it was an oddly sullen voice—one lacking in spirit. There was a slight mismatch between the forcefully assertive tone and the voice’s quality. Seeing the mood of the other attendees dampened, the man at the head of the table opened his mouth to speak reprovingly.
    “It’s best not to let your feelings run away with you. However, it’s also true that we’ve no time for trying to win him over. Instead, I’d like to consider this again after the uprising. Taking the astrographical situation into account, it should be Yang who gets tasked with putting down the Shanpool uprising …”
    Even using pulse-warp navigation at maximum combat speed, it would take five days to reach Shanpool from Iserlohn. Even if he departed Shanpool immediately and raced to the capital the moment reports of the coup d’état there reached him, a minimum of twenty-five days would be necessary. Thirty days total. In that span of time, they could gain complete control of the capital, and most importantly, as long as they controlled Artemis’s Necklace—a fearsome space defense system consisting of twelve linked combat satellites—taking back Heinessen would be no easy task. Even “Miracle Yang” would be stymied.
    “If we can negotiate with Yang under those circumstances, we may be able to