A Common Enemy
After a week of rest on the surface, the defeated remnants they had gathered came down to the planet briefly to resupply.
Having parted ways with Eirin, who had any number of matters to handle alone, Jincheon and his companions bought the personal luxuries they needed and were heading back to the docking berth when they caught sight of the defeated soldiers.
Their ships remained moored at the spaceport; only the people themselves had come down.
"Dead eyes. Heads hanging low. Conversations you can barely hear. Textbook defeated troops."
Heliane — who had once called herself a resistance fighter, though in essence she had been little different from a band of broken remnants herself — frowned at the sight of men so thoroughly drained of will. Their appearance dredged up her own past, and the memory soured her mood.
"There's no army more precarious than one that's lost its smile. Dragging those men into a fight would be the same as saying you want to die."
On the battlefield, soldiers joke and laugh as a kind of psychological armor — a way to blunt the revulsion of killing and bleed off the stress of war. But when a situation grows so hopeless that even that protective instinct fails to fire, the smiles vanish from their faces. Soldiers without smiles are soldiers at the absolute bottom of morale. And low morale has a further corrosive effect: it multiplies the frequency of broken discipline.
That was precisely why the nobles had opposed Eirin's plan to fight with an army of defeated remnants.
"Isn't this a little dangerous? Defeated or not, their numbers are still at the level of a divisional fleet. That means we'll have to fight enemies on that same scale…"
Calsira felt a spike of alarm at the troops' abysmal morale. If the rest of the remnants were in the same state, it meant their only real combat power was the Rastold Silverion and themselves.
"But one solid victory would bring them back to what they used to be."
"Haaah. So in the end, we're the ones who have to do the hard work."
Calsira let out a long sigh at Jincheon's words.
"Or a common enemy shows up."
"A common enemy?"
"??"
Both women tilted their heads at Jincheon's sudden, out-of-nowhere remark.
"There's a saying on Terra. Govern internal strife with external threat. When things are chaotic at home, you create an enemy outside so everyone unites. Get hit by an external enemy and everyone suffers the same damage."
"Ah — we have something similar."
"Now you know why I say people are the same wherever they live. Most intelligent beings end up thinking more or less the same things."
"But we already have an external enemy — the rebels. These men are demoralized because they lost to those rebels."
Calsira pressed him: they already had the rebels as a common foe, so what more was he proposing?
"Then we make them a new common enemy."
"A new enemy?"
"I need to talk this over with Eirin first. If I just go running wild on my own, I'll land myself in a court-martial."
Jincheon sketched the idea for them in broad strokes and set off to find Eirin, who was in the middle of reorganizing the remnants.
Once they boarded the Rastold Silverion, they found a crew whose morale stood in stark contrast to the defeated soldiers outside the berth. Until now they had been forced into one-sided flight for lack of supplies; now that those shortages had been filled, a hunger for proper revenge radiated from them.
Jincheon's party headed for the combat information center. The guards posted at the entrance blocked their path.
"What is your business?"
"I told Her Majesty the Empress Dowager I had a proposal. She said she was busy and told me to come find her myself."
Jincheon explained himself to the guards in a courteous tone. Of course, he and Eirin had never had any such conversation. He had only decided he needed to see her after witnessing how catastrophically low the remnants' morale truly was.
"Her Majesty said that?"
"We didn't hear anything about it."
"Didn't you? She must have been so busy she forgot. Would you mind checking inside for us?"
"Hmm… if it's just asking…"
The guards knew full well that they owed their present situation to Jincheon and his companions, and that when the Empress Dowager had half-forced a pile of credits into his hands, he had taken only that and declared he would earn a noble title through achievements everyone could acknowledge. Anyone else would have been thrown out for talking nonsense. But this was Jincheon — so one of the guards, on the off chance, opened a line through his Bio Device into the combat information center.
A moment later, clearance came back through the device.
"Go in."
The door — a solid wall no ordinary bullet or laser could pierce — opened, and every gaze in the combat information center swung toward Jincheon: the staff officers, Eirin, and the sisters Beatrix and Eirin herself.
"I was so busy I clean forgot about you. I ought to apologize."
"Not at all. With Her Majesty and everyone here working so hard, a brief lapse is only natural."
Jincheon smiled at Eirin — who wore a stern expression even as her eyes, the eyes of a female who wanted nothing more than to throw herself into his arms that instant, fixed on him.
"Very well. What is this proposal? Everyone is here, so we can discuss it together."
"Yes. As you all know, the crew of the Rastold Silverion has its morale up — but the situation outside the ship is another matter entirely."
"Raising their spirits is the single most important task in our present circumstances. We were just discussing that very point. Are you saying you have a solution to propose?"
Beatrix asked with a look that said, You? Really?
"The remnants have two problems. First, they are defeated soldiers who have lost their masters. Second, because each of them served a different master, they are difficult to bind into one."
"We already know that. You didn't come here just to state the obvious, I trust?"
"Beatrix. He hasn't even finished speaking. Why are you snapping at him like that?"
When Beatrix — who disliked Jincheon — threw up a roadblock, Eirin stepped in and reined her sister in.
"…My apologies."
"Continue."
With the floor restored to him, Jincheon spoke again.
"For men who have lost their masters and who have never even met one another to come together as one, they need a common enemy."
"And you mean to become that common enemy yourself?"
The middle-aged man serving as Deputy Captain — a man with a magnificent mustache — cut straight to the heart of it. A soldier thoroughly devoted to his role, he was an outstanding captain in his own right, merely overshadowed by the presence of the Empress Dowager; he had grasped Jincheon's point in an instant.
"Yes. If you gather them together for me in a suitable way, I will become their common enemy — sneering at them with all the arrogance I can muster."
"Then instead of despair from defeat, they would at least gain fighting spirit from rage directed at you."
"The problem is that doing this sort of thing in wartime tends to run afoul of military law and similar issues. So I wanted permission in advance."
When Jincheon finished, the Deputy Captain and the rest of the staff erupted into noisy discussion. The risk of the men collapsing into helpless demoralization was real enough that even a temporary measure like this, if it could raise their will to fight, was worth considering.
In the end, a few concerns still clung to the idea, but they judged it best to accept Jincheon's proposal. Had the Imperial Guard taken on the role, the hostility might have turned against the Guard itself. But with Jincheon — a mercenary — it would be easy to draw a clean line and insist the whole thing had nothing to do with their own intentions.
"There is a problem, however."
Eirin was Jincheon's devoted woman, but she could not simply ignore a flaw that stood out so clearly.
"There are knights among them. If you crush their pride too thoroughly, they may simply break — or refuse orders outright. Wouldn't you agree?"
"I'll have to handle that with improvisation, reading the situation as it develops."
No matter how one looked at it, Jincheon was the linchpin of the entire plan. He would have to absorb every insult thrown at him and make any future camaraderie with these men impossible — all while stoking their rage to just the right degree, neither too much nor too little.
"Why?"
In the end, Beatrix decided there was little real downside — and that very conclusion made her eye him with fresh suspicion.
"Why would you, who aren't even a citizen of the Empire, volunteer for that kind of hardship?"
Jincheon was from the Terra Federation, a republican state. And he was a mercenary. Why would a man like that willingly take on dirty work with nothing in it for him?
"Because our side has to win, of course. Looking for a reason beyond that is the strange part, isn't it?"
"……."
Beatrix could not hide her look of pure incredulity at the blithe way he said it. But the staff officers — who remembered the decisive role he had played in getting them this far, and who saw him volunteering for a job that would earn him nothing but abuse — nodded in agreement.
"I understand the Captain of the Guard's concerns, but if this man meant to betray us, he has had far easier and simpler opportunities."
"Even if it fails, we lose nothing. If it succeeds, the gains are enormous."
As the staff spoke with one voice in favor of Jincheon's proposal, Beatrix — still far from fond of him — turned her gaze on Eirin and the Deputy Captain. She expected the two people she was close to would lend weight to her doubts.
"It's a rough method, but if we need to wake these soldiers up right now, this is the only way."
"Not just anyone is prepared to wear a reputation like that. We will discuss this no further."
But the Deputy Captain and Eirin both endorsed the plan. Eirin's reasons for agreeing, of course, were different.
"Then please appoint someone in charge of this operation, and arrange a communications link so I can coordinate improvisations with them…"
Jincheon laid out what the plan required and then stepped outside. He only needed to appear at the critical moments; the higher-ups would handle all the groundwork.
Once they were alone, Heliane asked him why he was putting himself forward like this.
"Jincheon."
"Hm?"
"You usually hate this kind of hassle, don't you?"
"Right? I figured you'd just say, 'I'll just fight so damn well we win anyway!' "
As they said, his current behavior was unlike the usual Jincheon. But the reason he gave dissolved every question at once.
"If the remnants under Eirin take heavy losses, everyone's going to think, 'Well, of course they did.' I absolutely cannot stand watching my woman look pathetic in front of other people."
"Pfft. That is such a Jincheon reason."
"It really is."
Heliane and Calsira knew the answer was utterly predictable — and that it was completely sincere. They each took one of his arms and pulled close. The sight of a man launching a plan like this for no reason other than that he refused to see his woman humiliated filled them with affection.
Six straight days of nonstop coupling in a cramped underground tomb may have had something to do with it as well.
"By the way."
"Hm?"
"Is it all right to leave that sarcophagus as it is?"
Calsira fretted over whether the sarcophagus holding the late emperor should simply be left alone.
"Don't worry. Eirin said they're moving the whole sarcophagus as-is to the imperial mausoleum on the capital world. As long as it doesn't break, we're fine — and of course they'll prepare the transfer as carefully as possible to make sure nothing like that happens."
For the record, that particular matter had been settled by Eirin's firm insistence: because the late emperor had been assassinated rather than dying of natural causes, she wanted him buried quietly rather than put on public display.
Still — if anyone ever saw the semen that had spilled, and if the genetic material filling the interior identified Jincheon as the culprit, he might spend the rest of his life running from a Giranlek Empire bounty. Even so, Jincheon remained perfectly at ease.
"And I sealed the entrance with Crypters. Even if you turn the thing upside down, as long as the lid doesn't open, we're fine."
He had set the Crypters that had once carpeted the floor to perfectly seal the lid's seams from the inside. By now their lifespans would have run out and they would be dead — but they had already finished the job of sealing the joints, so it made no difference.
"Don't go feeling guilty over nothing. For a fool who never even properly enjoyed a woman like Eirin, that kind of emotion is a luxury."
With his preparations to become the common enemy complete, Jincheon killed time until everything was ready.
A few hours later.
Before the departure, a memorial gathering was held for the defeated soldiers — a service for the masters they had served. Adding every crew member would have put the numbers in the tens of thousands, so only the pilots attended in person. The rest ate and drank the consolation provisions Eirin had issued aboard their own ships, watching her appear at the gathering on the large monitors.
Eirin delivered several speeches, closed the memorial, told them to eat and rest for the day, and withdrew.
"Haa…"
"……."
Good food improved their mood a little, but the morale crushed by defeat showed no real sign of rising.
About time I stepped in.
Jincheon, who had waited for the speeches to end, set to work becoming the common enemy. The memorial meal was a buffet; he piled a few things on a plate and began searching for the men with the most volcanic temperaments. Starting trouble with that kind of person was how you made a scene big enough to matter.
That one.
Jincheon's target was a knight trained past the ordinary standards of a pilot — a man with a blazing temperament like Zhang Fei out of the Three Kingdoms, currently slumped under the grief of losing the master he had served and the pain of defeat.
Thud. Clatter!
"Ah — sorry, I—"
Jincheon walked up to the knight who was trying to lift his spirits even a little by eating something good, bumped his shoulder hard, and knocked the man's dishes free. The knight naturally started to apologize — but Jincheon's irritable voice cut in first.
"Ah, for fuck's sake. Of all the people to run into — a loser bastard. Last thing I need is loser stink rubbing off on me."
"……!"
Loser bastard. Loser stink. The combination of words that, for this man in this moment, were nothing less than a reverse scale to be struck.