On Her Majesty's Behalf by Joseph Nassise

into the room as soon as the entryway was breached, their weapons out and pointed at the men in the room just beyond.
    Richthofen followed, with Corporal Manheim and Leutnant Adler at his heels.
    The room was large and lavishly decorated with the kind of ostentatious display of wealth that normally disgusted Richthofen, but he barely noticed, for his attention was elsewhere.
    The kaiser sat before a well-­laid table on the far side of the room, eating lunch with General Ludendorff, his quartermaster-­general, and Field Marshal Von Hindenburg, his chief of staff. All three men looked up in surprise as Richthofen’s men crossed the room toward them.
    â€œWhat’s the meaning of this?” the kaiser demanded with as much bravado as he was able to summon at the sight of a dozen men pointing guns in his direction, but the quavering in his voice gave him away. The other two men didn’t even do that much; they simply froze in place like deer trapped in a hunter’s light. Richthofen wasn’t sure which of the three he despised most.
    The kaiser was weak; there was no questioning that fact. He’d had the opportunity to seize decisive control of the battlefield in the first few months of the war, but he’d surrounded himself with sycophants like Ludendorff and Von Hindenburg instead; men who would say whatever the kaiser wanted to hear, and as a result their greatest chance to squash the resistance of the Allies had been lost. Seven years of trench warfare with the two armies locked in a stalemate had been the result, and if things were left to continue as they were, Richthofen had no doubt that they would still be in the exact same place seven years from now as well.
    Richthofen had hoped his bold attack on London and New York would provide the impetus needed to change the status quo. A strike at the heart of the Allied defense while they were still reeling with the destruction of those two great cities would have broken the back of the Allied line. Paris would have fallen and, with it, the rest of the Allied resistance on the Continent. Europe would have been theirs!
    Rather than seizing the moment and exploiting the opportunity Richthofen had provided, the kaiser had instead done nothing.
    It was time for a change.
    As Richthofen stepped into view, the kaiser’s eyes narrowed. “Richthofen! I should have known this was your doing.”
    There was no love lost between the two men.
    Richthofen ignored the kaiser’s outburst, speaking more for the others in the room than for the three condemned men at the table in front of him.
    â€œFriedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert,” Richthofen began, addressing himself directly to the kaiser and refusing to give his ludicrous reign any further legitimacy by using titles, “I hereby charge you with treason, specifically with crimes against the ­people of Germany and against the empire itself. How do you plead?”
    The look of confusion and abject fear that crossed Wilhelm’s face at the word treason was like sweet ambrosia to the German ace. Even the lowliest private knew the penalty for treason in the German armed forces.
    â€œCrimes against the empire? Treason?” Wilhelm blustered. “Have you lost your mind, Richthofen?”
    Richthofen ignored the kaiser’s response. “After due consideration of the facts before this tribunal, I find you guilty of treason and sentenced to execution by firing squad. Corporal Manheim?”
    As the younger man stepped forward, Wilhelm began shouting at them both.
    â€œTribunal? What tribunal? You can’t do this, Richthofen!” He turned to the soldiers standing around them and thrust a finger in Richthofen’s direction. “I am the kaiser and I demand that you shoot this villainous bastard where he stands! Shoot him, I say!”
    Richthofen’s undead troops stared back at the kaiser, unmoved. It was clear where their allegiance lay.
    Nervous sweat dotted