Secret Pact (3)
After weathering every kind of smear campaign and surviving an extreme persuasion check…
"If Arto says so… then I'll take your word for it."
"That is the truth…"
At last I succeeded in driving the devil out of Artraia's head.
Only once that little storm had passed could we finally get down to a proper conversation.
"So then—what exactly did Rixi do that made you come running in such a panic?"
"Haa… The truth is, Rixi asked us to take them on as a vassal state."
"…Huh."
The moment the words left my mouth, a faint but fierce will flickered in Artraia's eyes—the same instinct that lives in the heart of every emperor of a great empire, and in everyone else's heart as well.
There you are, Mein Führer…
Lebensraum. Ambition for territorial expansion.
"Ahem. So, Arto—what did you tell them?"
Fortunately our Artraia came equipped with two separate pouches—one for personality, one for intellect. She shook off that wicked instinct and looked at me again with her usual clear eyes. I shrugged.
"Nothing special. I just said it wasn't my decision to make and bought us some time."
Somehow she found something hilarious in that answer.
"Hoo… uhu-hut. Not your decision to make, you say… fufu."
She looked like someone who had just heard the funniest joke in the galaxy. I leaned toward Riel and whispered—loudly enough for everyone to hear—
"Riel, I'm starting to think our Empress is suffering from mental instability brought on by overwork."
Even after that blatant dig, Artraia's laughter showed no sign of stopping for a good long while.
Minutes crawled by.
"Ahaha… sorry. I laughed too hard, didn't I?"
"I still don't know what was so funny, but can we continue?"
"Mm. Please do."
Only then could I begin a proper briefing for the real Artraia. First, though, there was one necessary step.
"Riel, go fetch a large monitor."
"…"
How was I supposed to explain an entire nation with words alone? Riel, of course, puffed out both cheeks in a sulky pout at being ordered to haul the thing.
A short while later—
"Hurry up and explain, Minister."
"Um… why am I…?"
"I second that. Why are you dragging poor Gaia out of her perfectly good rest?"
Riel returned carrying not so much a monitor as a giant touchscreen—and, for some reason, she had Gaia tucked under one arm as well.
"Whatever. It's not a problem. Just proceed like this."
In the face of the absolute highest authority in the room—the Empress—my mild scolding was instantly overruled.
"Hmm… fine. Let's begin."
After all the side chatter finally died down, I could at last launch into a proper explanation.
"First, regarding the Rixi Republic. Why would they want a vassal contract with our Holy Sevelian Empire—and in the form of a secret pact, no less?"
"Yes, why?"
Pure curiosity mixed with an emperor's sense of responsibility; Artraia was leaning forward with genuine interest.
"To answer that, we have to start with the enormous power bloc the Kerzin Federation once built."
"Hmm."
"I'll skip the fine details and summarize. You already know the old Kerzin sphere was essentially a coalition held together under the leadership of the Kerzin Federation itself, right?"
"Of course. I didn't serve as ambassador to the Galactic League in place of the Predecessor Emperor for nothing."
Satisfied, I nodded and continued.
"Exactly. More precisely, it was managed by Kerzin as the boss and Zeltech as the enforcer."
I brought up a rough chart on the touchscreen.
"This is the Kerzin sphere of influence my intelligence network mapped out just before the Prosnark upheaval."
—tick-tick, whirr—
At the same time I overlaid the territories of those nations onto the galactic map. Fully half the galaxy lit up in Kerzin colors.
"That's… really big…"
"It is. And that vast sphere has completely collapsed now, hasn't it?"
I manipulated the screen again. The northern half of the sphere on the map shrank dramatically.
"That would be the result of the Prosnark upheaval, yeah."
"Right. Prosnark effectively destroyed the Kerzin Federation—the overwhelming leader of the bloc, with five vassal states under its thumb."
"And Zeltech, the one that should have held the sphere together afterward, lost its entire western territories and took catastrophic damage as well."
I nodded at the sharp reply from the clever young woman—no, young lady—Artraia.
"Exactly as you said. Because of that, every nation that once made up Pax Kerzin is now scrambling for its own survival."
I tapped the Rixi Republic on the screen.
"And one of those nations is right here—the Rixi Republic."
I was just starting to feel a little proud of how cleanly the explanation had gone when—
—swish—
Riel, still glued to Gaia's side, raised one hand.
"Minister."
"Yeah, Riel. Go ahead."
"I've got a question, though. Looking at the map alone, Rixi is completely separated from the Kerzin sphere. So how come they were part of Pax Kerzin?"
"Beats me."
Riel's face said she could not believe I had just answered like that. Not that I was omniscient.
"Aren't you being a little too blunt about it?"
"Then give me one good reason why I should know enough about events from decades before I was even born to explain them off the cuff."
"…You only ever talk to me like that."
"Ugh."
Having successfully suppressed Riel's grumbling, I pressed on.
"Actually, I do know. The reason Rixi clung to Kerzin's hegemony was… their neighbor, the Loirakan Republic."
"…"
Riel's cheeks looked ready to inflate again, but I figured this was fair payback for all the teasing I usually put her through and simply continued.
"Back when Rixi was invading Kar-Du—right around the time we opened the Zaniradian theater…"
"Mmm."
"Loirakan launched a massive invasion of Rixi at the same time, which severely weakened Rixi's forces."
"And that let Kar-Du survive. Even now Kar-Du and Loirakan are on good terms, right?"
"Exactly. So Rixi went looking for any way to stay alive, and the answer they found was Pax Kerzin…"
"Only the lifeline they grabbed got cleanly severed by Prosnark."
"Right. Which is why Rixi is in absolute chaos right now."
I brought up a current power-comparison chart between Rixi and Loirakan.
"As you can see, Loirakan holds the edge in everything except technology."
"That feels a little too brief. Give me a bit more detail."
"Hmm… telling you everything would take forever, so just the highlights…"
I took a sip of water to wet my throat, then continued.
"Their territories are roughly the same size, but Rixi is losing to Loirakan in fleet strength, population, economy—even in the diplomatic arena—and they're also at a disadvantage when it comes to the conditions for opening a new theater of war."
"Huh?"
"The diplomatic arena, of all things?"
"Yeah. Remember what you asked earlier—why Rixi would latch onto Kerzin even though they weren't physically connected?"
I highlighted the territories of Kar-Du, Loirakan, and Ztrakfor near Rixi.
"See? Every single nation around Rixi is unfriendly toward them."
"Ohh."
In the original game, "befriend the distant and attack the near" had been a rare strategy. In reality, the Rixi Republic was using it with ruthless efficiency.
"Ztrakfor was their only real possibility, but Ztrakfor went and made Kar-Du a protectorate instead."
So Rixi had suddenly become a diplomatic outcast, and the lifeline that should have saved them was Kerzin.
Except Kerzin itself had been utterly crushed by space Nazis who turned aliens into soap.
"So now they're coming here to cling to us instead?"
"Exactly."
Artraia listened, fell silent for a moment of thought, then tilted her head with a puzzled look.
"But then why insist on a secret pact? Officially they're still a Kerzin vassal, aren't they?"