Legend of Galactic Heroes, Vol. 05: Mobilization by Yoshiki Tanaka

Author:Yoshiki Tanaka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: VIZ Media, LLC (HAIKASORU)
Published: 1985-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

I

The “tyranny of distance” was a phrase used to indicate just how difficult unified rule of a human society that had grown by a third would be through military force alone. The one who’d pushed this policy was Münzer, who’d worked as Emperor Maximillian Josef II’s chief justice. Maximillian Josef accepted his loyalty, discarded his plans of invading the Free Planets Alliance, and over two decades of peaceful rule never once mounted a foreign campaign.

But it was Kim Hua Nguyen who coined the term “tyranny of distance” when he was chosen to be the Free Planets Alliance’s first ruler, an honor he staunchly refused due to his old age and blindness. He was a close friend of founding father Ahle Heinessen, who died en route during the Long March of 10,000 Light-Years. After establishing the nation, he didn’t take public office, assuming instead the role of honorary president of the Heinessen Anniversary Foundation. When asked by governmental leaders about future defense policies, he answered:

“The distance between the imperial mainland and our commonwealth will become our greatest protective barrier. And while someone possessed of enormous ambition and genius will likely break through this barrier in due time, we won’t have to worry about that for a century or more.”

Nguyen had died in SE 538, 238 years before Reinhard was born.

“In short, distance militarily controls transportation, supply, communication, and command networks. These difficulties exist in proportion to the magnitude of that distance.”

These conditions were common knowledge within the military, and in making light of them, both the empire and the alliance had experienced painful and shameful defeats.

In SE 799, year 490 of the imperial calendar, Reinhard von Lohengramm came along with enormous ambition and genius, forcing everyone to yield to his own tyranny of distance, and had seemingly broken through that protective barrier as Nguyen predicted. But when he considered supplies and communications with the imperial homeworld for a navy twenty million strong, he couldn’t be happy winning only one battle. And while it was a fact that they were in an overwhelmingly advantageous position, history was filled with examples of mighty expeditionary forces losing to weak defensive ones.

This tyranny of distance, so far as human resources were concerned, had made a lasting impression. Purveyors of insurrection and sabotage found their spirits dampened by homesickness and war-weariness.

To those conquerors who vowed to extend their power “to the ends of the world,” soldiers turned a blind eye.

“If you want to go so badly,” they said, “why not go yourself? We’d rather go back to our hometowns and die among loved ones.”

In ancient times, illnesses brought about by changes in physical terrain left their marks on the body, although no one could say that wasn’t still true today. Being confronted with constellations different from the night sky they were used to was difficult for soldiers to reconcile. To Reinhard, traveling fifteen thousand light-years away from the capital of Odin was a flash in the cosmic pan. Then again, his soldiers’ hearts had never flown so far as his.

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