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convince him more easily than we might otherwise expect. For now, we should act according to plan, and once the seat of power is in our hands, the authority of our new order will be magnified.”
    “I’d like to make a proposal …” Just as before, the youthful yet gloomy voice drew all the eyes in the room. “We should send one of our comrades to Iserlohn and have him keep Yang under surveillance. If he starts to take any action that would put us at a disadvantage, he should be eliminated.”
    There was a moment of silence, after which voices of agreement rose up from several of the figures. Factors that endangered success should be eliminated.
    “Those opposed? Very well, then—proposal is adopted. Let’s expedite the selection of our agent.”
    However, there was reluctance in the voice of the leader.
    A man who was sitting in the corner, not saying a word, let out a heavy sigh. A sigh that reeked of alcohol. A bottle of Rotherham whiskey was in his hand, and its contents had decreased by about half since the meeting began.
    His name was Arthur Lynch.
    Malicious grumblings came to the surface of Lynch’s heart like bubbles in beer. Dance, dance, dance … everybody dance like crazy in the palm of fate’s hand. Whether you lose your footing and fall along the way, or keep on dancing till the day you die, it’s all up to every man’s skill.
    Whether he was hoping for the coup’s success or its failure was something even Lynch wasn’t entirely sure of. He had the feeling that ever since that day nine years ago, not even his own future could be of any interest to him.
    Until that day, Lynch’s life had never been particularly tragic. He had marked moderate successes in frontline duty and desk work alike, and had made rear admiral right at age forty. People had called him “Excellency.” But then he had made one little misstep. When he had fought the empire in the El Facil system, he had been seized with strange terrors, and after abandoning the civilians in an attempt to flee, he had become a prisoner of the empire. Still alive, he’d become the shame of the navy, and from that day forward had been branded a coward.
    Well now, how will things turn out?
    Lynch closed his eyes. Beyond a heavy curtain woven of alcohol and ennui, a single planet showed its vague outline.
    Back on Odin, capital of the Galactic Empire, separated from this place by ten thousand light-years of empty space, the man who had given him this mission—Reinhard, the young Marquis von Lohengramm—must be gazing into the vast sea of stars, with the keen light of ambition gleaming in his eyes.

It was in November of the prior year that Arthur Lynch had been summoned to appear before Reinhard von Lohengramm, supreme commander of the Galactic Imperial Navy. This was shortly after Reinhard had crushed the Free Planets Alliance’s invading military forces in the Amritsar Stellar Region.
    Lynch had been living in a correctional block on the empire’s frontier ever since his ignominious capture in the El Facil Stellar Region.
    POW internment camps as such did not exist within the Galactic Empire. Rather, captured members of “rebel forces” were—for malicious thoughtcrimes against imperial rule—remanded to facilities such as this one, which sought to instill “correct thinking and morals.”
    Within these vast facilities, the inmates somehow managed to grow just enough food to live on. The imperial military kept their borders under surveillance, and every four weeks delivered clothing and medical supplies. They interfered little in these POW colonies. This did not bespeak the generosity of the imperial military so much as it did its shortages of funding and manpower. Despite the fact that a conscription system was in place, human resources were not infinite, and it was a fact that the military’s reach did not extend into every corner of the frontier. The situation was such that whenever these “thought criminals” were kind enough to