Chapter 65
Chapter 65
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 65
Chapter Title: The Chenqiao Mutiny
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The masterminds behind the Chenqiao Mutiny were Set Heinrich and Anders Aaron, with accomplices that included nearly all the high-ranking officers of the Radiant Legion stationed at Chenqiao Fortress at the time. These rebels had one unbeatable advantage: if they banded together, they could subdue Marshal Celia.
In fact, the mutiny's first step was to neutralize the marshal. They injected a massive dose of anesthetic into his medical pod. Once Celia was caught off guard and knocked out, they cuffed him and used his name and personal comms channel to broadcast a declaration to Parliament. At the same time, they cut off all other communications in Chenqiao Fortress, seized control of firepower and energy supplies, and with lightning speed subdued all the officers who refused to comply.
By the time Celia woke up, Chenqiao Fortress had become an isolated island adrift in space.
He was shackled to the head of a massive conference table, with two adjutants flanking him, guns trained on his head. Heinrich sat across from him, his left hand clutching the Phoenix mecha ring and his right pressing down on a copy of the Declaration of Autonomy.
"Please sign here, Marshal."
The sturdy guard with ice-blue eyes slid the declaration toward him and said gravely,
"The forty generals of the Radiant Legion have signed on jointly. Lead us forward."
At that moment, golden stellar wind streamed in from the window, casting Heinrich's profile in sharp, sculpture-like relief—profound and unyielding.
Celia stared at him for a moment, then suddenly smiled faintly.
"And if I refuse?"
"Marshal!"
One of the adjutants with a gun to his head couldn't hold back, but Heinrich silenced him with a glance.
"We won't kill you, Marshal. You mean the world to every one of us. But if you don't break free from that hopeless quagmire of an Alliance, one day you'll go down with them. The new hope and power are in your hands right now. If you'll just step forward, it won't be just us following you—there are millions of people oppressed and exploited under the Alliance's tyranny."
Heinrich stood, unlocked Celia's right handcuff, and placed a pen in front of him.
"—For that goal, even if you kill me afterward, I won't have a single regret."
Celia picked up the pen, seemingly lost in thought, his expression serene and utterly still. Everyone tensed, eyes locked on the hovering pen tip. The vast conference room was so silent not even a breath could be heard. After a long moment, Celia tossed the pen aside with a soft "clack."
The adjutants' faces drained of color in unison.
"Marshal!"
"I can't do it."
Celia said.
"Shoot me, then."
He spoke calmly and composedly, but his eyes held a faint mocking glint, as if he were simply waiting to see how they'd kill him. Tears welled up in one adjutant's eyes in an instant; his gun hand trembled so badly he couldn't aim. Seconds later, he hurled the gun away, staggered back half a step, dropped to his knees, and burst into uncontrollable sobs.
The other adjutant shook violently too.
"No... I can't... I..."
But Celia didn't spare them a glance. He fixed Heinrich with that same look, quietly. After a long while, Heinrich abruptly turned away, snatched up the declaration, and fled the room without looking back.
The mutiny dragged on for two days under Celia's nonviolent noncooperation—a flaw here exposing Heinrich's inexperience in commanding troops for the first time. He had extraordinary political talent, convincing a full forty senior generals to follow him, but he lacked the military acumen to orchestrate the coup properly.
If it had been Karyan in charge, he never would have let Chenqiao Fortress drift aimlessly through space. Even without the marshal's cooperation, he would have led the fleet out of the galaxy to claim a resource-rich planet in the outer stars and establish a base. Or, more ruthlessly, if it had been the marshal himself, he would have seized the Gemini System outright, absorbed the local garrison, set up a rebel stronghold, and then negotiated with Parliament from a position of strength.
But Heinrich squandered those precious two days.
Forty-eight cosmic hours after the mutiny began, Karyan arrived with a force of two hundred thousand, slipping through a temporary warp gate to surround the spaceborne island undetected. The battle was inevitable and one-sided. Celia remotely summoned his Phoenix mecha and, after two hours of fierce combat, recaptured Chenqiao Fortress intact. The ringleaders, Heinrich and the others, were all taken alive.
Though brief, the mutiny sent chills through the entire Parliament. On one hand, they finally realized their power and positions weren't unshakable. On the other, they deeply felt the terror of the military and the unwavering loyalty of the Radiant Legion.
Because of this, they reversed their near-break with the marshal. When Celia returned to Bluesnow Planet, he was virtually feted by the entire Parliament. At the same time, they vehemently demanded the execution of Heinrich, Aaron, and the rest, pleading repeatedly,
"Marshal, you must execute them personally—to set an example for any who might follow!"
Celia did not.
Heinrich later always believed Celia had spared them because he couldn't bear to execute Aaron, which was why he exiled them both to the outer stars. He was deeply grateful he'd dragged Aaron into it. At the same time, a faint bitterness tugged at him. For centuries to come, this emperor—who commanded the largest territory and greatest power in history—would lie awake night after night, unable to stop asking himself deep down: If there'd been no Aaron back then, would the marshal have killed me?
Like a thorn buried in his flesh, even after all those years, it still ached.
What Heinrich never knew was that after the mutiny's failure, Celia had negotiated extensively with Parliament over the aftermath. In the end, they conceded: only one of the two ringleaders needed to be executed; the other would be permanently exiled to the outer stars, forbidden from ever returning to the galaxy.
"This is the greatest leniency possible, esteemed Marshal... You know the Alliance hasn't used the death penalty in years, but for high treason, it hasn't been fully abolished..."
Celia stood at the end of a corridor, half his body swallowed by thick shadow. He was silent for a very, very long time.
At last, he let out a soft breath.
"...Send Heinrich away."
But the next day at the public trial, the marshal changed his mind. Despite immense pressure from Parliament, he announced that Heinrich and Aaron would both be exiled simultaneously and loaded them straight into stasis pods.
What price Celia paid for that decision, Heinrich would never know.
The shuttle landed on Far Star, tens of millions of light-years from the galaxy—a world with double gravity, brutal cold, and utterly harsh survival conditions. Less than a month after Heinrich and Aaron arrived, the other mutineers from Chenqiao Fortress began arriving in droves. Robotic wardens oversaw them as they mined and toiled until their dying breath.
Heinrich did indeed serve thirteen years of hard labor on Far Star. Until Galactic Era 3307, in an especially bitter winter, the prisoners huddled in a dilapidated shack and signed a second Declaration with frostbitten, bleeding hands.
Then they broke out their hoarded weapons, hacked down the robotic wardens, seized the supply shuttle, and rose up from Far Star System—igniting the blazing Gemini Empire War.
Thus began their glorious and arduous campaign.
Galactic Era 3307: Armed forces established in Far Star System, starting with a mere four thousand followers. The next year, the army swelled to eighty thousand with two hundred ships. In the third year, they seized the northernmost planet in Far Star, and the Alliance finally ordered a punitive expedition.
The First Galactic War at last commenced.
3340: The armed forces formally renamed themselves an empire, with Heinrich as supreme commander; the other thirty-nine from the Chenqiao Mutiny became its generals.
3342: The empire expanded to 9.3 million troops, 480,000 ships, and 60,000 capital warships.
3354: The empire claimed its first victory against the Alliance, securing its Far Star base. Major General Karyan returned empty-handed.
3387: The Battle of Venus Fortress erupted. The Alliance's Phoenix fell to a solar storm; two million Alliance troops annihilated by the empire. That same year, Parliament stripped Marshal Celia of command for the major defeat. Word reached Far Star, and the empire celebrated from top to bottom.
During Celia's period without military authority, the empire surged ahead, swallowing several Alliance border systems in one go. In spring 3392, the Alliance's Gemini System fell; the empire occupied White Heron Star and made it its capital.
From that year on, the empire's population, economy, and military rocketed forward. In the First Galactic War, the balance of power between Alliance and empire flipped completely.
Galactic Era 3399 spring: The Alliance's dire decline finally woke some parliamentarians to the risk of national extinction, splitting Parliament into war and peace factions. The next year, after brutal infighting, the war faction prevailed and reappointed Celia as Alliance supreme commander, sending him with four million troops to Ophiuchus for a final showdown with Heinrich's empire.
But no one knew that before departing, Celia left the Alliance alone to visit distant Nethervoid Star.
"Do you remember when you said you owed me one? Now's the time to repay it."
"Preserve my memories in thoughtwave form. If I die in battle, they'll use Nethervoid electromagnetics to resurrect my soul. If you detect their input thoughtwaves differ from the backup I leave today, do not refract my soul."
"One day, I'll return—as the true Gavin Celia. Until then, safeguard my most precious legacy. I entrust everything to you."
Celia's gaze lifted to the sky, where Ophiuchus gleamed above, Red Earth Star shining brightly.
It was now Galactic Era 3400. The final battle was about to ignite.
A century of war and tangled love-hate drew to a close that year.