A soldier of Westerlandian origin escaped Gaiesburg and defected to the Reinhard camp the day before the nuclear strike was to be carried out.
Upon hearing him out, Reinhard was about to dispatch a fleet to Westerland in an attempt to prevent the attack when his Chief of Staff von Oberstein convinced him otherwise.
“I say we let Duke von Braunschweig, mad as he is, carry out his atrocity,” he said coolly. “By recording him in the act, we prove the barbarism of the boyar nobles. No doubt, this will make the citizens and the common soldiers under their control defect. That would be far more efficient than getting in their way and stopping this.”
The golden youth knew nothing of fear, yet he recoiled all the same.
“You want me to stand by as two million people die, women and children among them?”
“If this civil war drags on any longer, even more people than that will die. And if the nobles should win, this kind of tragedy will occur many times. And so, by letting the entire empire know of their brutality, we’ll show they have no right to rule the universe …”
“So you’re suggesting I turn a blind eye?”
“Do it for the sake of the twenty-five billion citizens of the empire, Your Excellency. And furthermore, for the swift establishment of your hegemony.”
“… I understand.”
Reinhard nodded. His face had lost its characteristic glow. If only Kircheis had been at his side. He would never have advised such drastic measures.

There were more than fifty oases scattered across the surface of Westerland. Excluding those, only mountains of reddish-brown rock, pale-yellow deserts, and white salt lakes—terrain where no soul resided—stretched to and beyond the horizon.
This meant that hitting it with nuclear missiles could achieve the complete genocide of the planet’s two million inhabitants.
On that day, a meeting was taking place by one of those oases. Though they had driven out the nobles by their own strength, the insurgents had no plans in place for what to do next. Where should they go from here? How could they ensure the peace and happiness of their people? These were the main questions on their agenda. To those who had not engaged in independent debate for such a long time under noble rule, the meeting was an enormous undertaking and therefore something to celebrate.
“Is not Marquis von Lohengramm an ally of the people? Let’s ask him to protect us.”
When that opinion was offered, voices of approval arose from the crowd. It was their only hope. When the talk settled down, a small boy being held in his mother’s arms pointed up to the sky.
“Mommy, what’s that?”
The people looked up to see a beam of light running diagonally across the cobalt sky.
A pure-white flash bleached the entire scene.
Immediately thereafter, a red dome rose up above the horizon, expanding rapidly to a height of ten thousand meters before forming a mushroom-shaped cloud of superheated ash.
The shock wave came at them as a tsunami of intense heat, traveling at seventy meters per second and surpassing temperatures of 800 degrees celsius, scorching the topsoil, the scant vegetation, the buildings, and the people’s bodies. Clothing and hair burst into flames, and keloids formed on bubbling skin.
The screams of children burning alive hung in the searing air, then suddenly thinned out to silence. The voices of mothers calling out their children’s names, of fathers fearing for their families, were cut short soon after.
Massive amounts of dirt flew high into the air, becoming a cascade of sand that poured down on the earth, providing a burial for two million charred corpses.

The young officers watching the monitor stood up from their seats, their faces pale as they heaved over and began to vomit onto the floor. No one could blame them. Everyone was silent, their eyes glued to the images being sent back by the reconnaissance probe. Only now did they realize that there was nothing that sullied the laws of the universe more than the strong preying on the weak.
“We will beam these images throughout the empire. Even a child will understand that righteousness is on our side. The nobles have signed their own death warrant,” von Oberstein explained in his usual monotone, to which there was no immediate response. “What’s the matter, Your Excellency?”
Gloom hung heavily over Reinhard’s expression.
“You told me to avert my eyes. And this tragedy is the result. There’s nothing to be done about it now, but was there really no other way?”
“Perhaps there was, but it was beyond my means to come up with one. As you say, there’s nothing to be done about it now. We must make the most of this situation.”
Reinhard stared at his chief advisor. It was unclear whether the hatred swelling in his ice-blue eyes was directed at von Oberstein or at himself.