The Warlord (2)
The surrender of Uko`Praknar was never going to end as the mere capitulation of a single nation.
"Treat those who surrender with generosity. That is the Warlord's command."
"Ooooh."
To surrender to the Warlord was, in effect, to step beneath his shadow as subordinate, comrade, and vassal. He had stripped them of resources and fleet strength on a staggering scale for the sake of his wars—yet in return he granted them considerable autonomy, and stationed defensive fleets at each vassal capital equal in power to what he had taken.
In a certain light, the arrangement was little different from tossing feed to a pack of monkeys. Even so—
"Warlord! Loyalty, loyalty...!"
The Kerzin Federation, which had strutted about with every pretension of greatness only to prove itself incompetent when the fighting actually began, and Mekt-Pux, which had come to suppress a rebellion in its own territory only to get stabbed in the back—both of them, along with every other useless power, now watched the Warlord deliver results they could actually see. Uko`Praknar's loyalty to him deepened without limit.
"Pathetic wretches. Look at them fawning over a pirate."
Yet Mekt-Pux itself, even as it sneered, was being driven into a corner by that very same "pirate."
"Scorched-earth tactics! Learn from the strategies of the past!"
"Didn't Kerzin try that last time and still lose—"
"Shut up!!!"
Just as Kerzin had once done—no, on an even vaster scale, exploiting territory far wider and more open—they began buying time with their own brand of scorched-earth warfare.
"If we hold out a little longer, Loyrakan's fleet will come to our aid!"
"Yeah!"
Even so, Mekt-Pux's situation was still the better of the two.
"Damn those troll bastards—what a mess this is."
Zeltec, which had meant to join Mekt-Pux in stopping the Warlord's rampage, now found itself fighting alone, without a single ally left nearby.
And on the far side of the galaxy, the Holy Sevelian Empire was in an uproar every single day over the state of affairs.
Of course the common folk—our ordinary civilian friends—struck cool, superior poses and muttered that losing to mere pirates was a disgrace for a spacefaring empire. But those of us who knew the truth felt a chill as we guessed why those pirates had spent so long taking mercenary contracts.
"Through their mercenary work, they must have mastered the military strategies and technologies of every nation."
"Perhaps the one calling himself the Warlord was once one of those mercenaries himself."
"...To accumulate experience over decades—he is clearly no ordinary man."
And the gazes of those who felt that chill always drifted, sooner or later, toward me, sitting quietly in my place.
"Minister Arto, do you have any countermeasures this time?"
"..."
"Indeed. Some foresight regarding the future, perhaps..."
"As I have stated before, I possess no such ability."
It had been the same with the Prosnark Coalition, and it was the same now with the Warlord. Because events kept unfolding with eerie precision exactly as I had predicted, the anxious councilors seemed to suspect I possessed some mighty psionic power that let me see the future. That suspicion was nothing but a burden and no help at all, so I denied it thoroughly and had no intention of ever accepting it.
After yet another exhausting video conference, I sank into the sofa in my office. As if she had been waiting for that exact moment, Riel came scurrying over and thrust a terminal in my face.
"Minister, the Galactic Federation is denouncing the Warlord every single day right now!"
"...Uh, yeah."
"What's with that? Why so lukewarm about it?"
I did not share whatever excitement Riel had been hoping for regarding the Federation's movements.
"Denunciations? Fine... but how exactly does that stop the Warlord?"
"Uh... that doesn't sound like something the top diplomatic official should be saying, yeah."
"Fair point."
I nodded at Riel's blunt truth, but I had no intention of taking the words back.
"It's obvious without looking. The point of the denunciations is to treat the Warlord as a galactic-level crisis that requires a coordinated response."
"Like the AI Rebellion back in the day, yeah."
She brought up the AI Rebellion with her own mouth and then immediately looked downcast because of it. I found the sight faintly absurd, yet I ruffled her hair with one hand and spoke with absolute certainty.
"Unlike the AI Rebellion, though, the Federation won't be able to muster any real power this time."
"Huh? Why not?"
Riel made a face as if she genuinely could not understand. She was by no means denser than I was, so the reaction felt oddly off. A faint sense of dissonance prickled at me—until I realized the cause.
Right. For them this isn't just another event. It's something they're living through for the first time.
From my perspective the present crisis was nothing more than a late-game event I had repeated countless times. To the people of this world, however, it was a sudden natural disaster that had dropped out of a clear sky. The only comparable response they had was the AI Rebellion, which had ended long before I ever transmigrated here. Naturally they remembered how the Federation had acted then and assumed the same pattern would play out now.
Ah. So that's why they looked so displeased in the council meeting...
Only then did I understand why my prediction of a negative outcome for the Federation's crisis agenda had drawn so many sour faces. Still, there was no reason for me to soften the opinion.
"Explaining in detail is a pain, so just watch how the Federation behaves for a while."
"The Federation?"
"Yeah. Just as I expect... the nations that aren't currently being tossed around by the Warlord will torpedo the crisis agenda before it ever gets tabled."
Even saying that much, most people simply dismissed my view as excessively pessimistic. Yet before long the Federation's situation unfolded exactly as I had foreseen.
"They're not going to pass this?!"
"What the hell is more important than a damn space-monster protection law!!!"
As always in situations of this kind, unless you yourself were the one in the fire, the crisis crawled forward at a glacial pace. Just as the Mekt-Pux ambassador's scream made clear, the crisis-designation bill never even saw the light of day; it simply vanished. The diplomats of Mekt-Pux—who had overnight become the front line against the Khan—collapsed in open weeping right there in the Federation headquarters building.
Even if my prediction had been wrong, the situation would hardly have changed in any dramatic way. The web of problems between the eastern nations and those of the west was simply too tangled.
Take the Prosnark Coalition, the power best positioned to intervene directly. Whether they saw the Warlord as a convenient way to weaken the prey they intended to conquer later, they neither supported nor opposed him—they simply sealed their borders and sat on their hands.
Zutrakpor, at least, was filled with its trademark civic righteousness and wanted to send a relief force east at once. But no matter how many troops you have, they are worthless if there is no hole to move them through. With no direct physical route to the east, Zutrakpor could offer the eastern powers no help at all.
Of course, if our own Rixi Republic—which shared a border with Zutrakpor—had shown a little flexibility, the story might have been different.
"We will never permit Zutrakpor's Grand Fleet—the very fleet that first defeated the Prosnark Coalition—to cross our territory."
"Not only the fleet. All movement of supplies is blocked at the source as well, on grounds of espionage risk."
With an attitude that called Kar-Du to mind, Zutrakpor's fleet continued its open-ended wait near the border.
As for Kar-Du itself and the countless minor powers below it—there was no need to pay them any mind.
Frankly, even if you scraped together every last fleet those minor states possess, the total would barely match a single regular fleet of our Empire.
Which meant that, in the present situation, the only place that actually had to reach a proper conclusion about this whole affair was right here—the Holy Sevelian Empire.