This article is about the Battle of the Imperial Capital from Space Battleship Yamato 2199. For the comparable battle from the original Space Battleship Yamato, see First Battle of Gamilas.
The Battle of the Imperial Capital,[4] also known as the Battle on the Great Garmillas Imperial Planet,[5] was the last battle of the Great Garmillas War to be fought between the forces of Earth and the official government of Garmillas. Making his final attempt to stop the space battleship Yamato from reaching the planet Iscandar, Supreme Leader Abelt Desler of the Great Garmillas Empire prepared to use all of the empire's available resources, including the planet Garmillas and his own people, against the Earth vessel. Instead, the battle brought an unexpected and sudden end to Desler's regime.
Prelude[]
For months, Yamato traveled across unknown space to reach the Large Magellanic Cloud and the planet Iscandar, in a desperate bid to save life on Earth from extinction caused by the long war. The Garmillas confronted the battleship with increasing strength and ingenuity, and although imperial forces came close to success on a number of occasions, Yamato and its crew were up to the challenge, destroying a large portion of the empire's military fleet and its interstellar transportation network in the process. They eventually came into contact with members of a Garmillan rebel movement, who provided additional guidance and intelligence. In the company of a rebel military liaison, Lower Storm Leader Merda Ditz, Yamato prepared for the final warp of its one hundred sixty-eight thousand light year voyage, ready to face one more barrier: the planet Garmillas itself, the center of the empire and Iscandar's twin planet.[6][7][8][9][10]
Supreme Leader Desler's rule was threatened by the existence of Yamato in a number of ways. Aside from the destruction directly caused by the battleship, it had become a source of inspiration for uprisings on a number of the Garmillas Empire's conquered subject worlds. [8] At the heart of Yamato was an engine based on wave motion energy, an immensely advanced and powerful technology that had secretly been given to an enemy of the empire by Queen Stasha Iscandar. By doing so, Queen Stasha demonstrated her lack of faith in Desler and his plans for unifying her empire with his own.[11][10] Desler sought to counter her by abducting Princess Yurisha Iscandar from Yamato for his own use. Despite the fact that his soldiers had mistakenly taken a human woman, Lieutenant Yuki Mori, he went ahead and presented her to the Garmillan public as the Third Princess of Iscandar, proof that the final unification had been ratified. Desler recognized that his political maneuver would not be enough, and Yamato would have to be removed.[9][10]
Desler meeting with his remaining senior military and civilian officers prior to the battle
At the same time, Desler's power was also challenged from within the empire, despite the Leader's success in crushing Marshall Zoellik's rebellion before it took momentum, the treacherous elements of the fallen garmillan nobility that had infiltrated the armed forces still thrived within his staff, rendering even his own seat of power hostile to Desler.[12][3]
He arranged for a fleet of Imperial Guard warships to protect the planet Garmillas, and after secretly sharing his strategy for victory with two Imperial Guard officers, director Hydom Gimleh and Colonel Harz Lecter, he waited for the Earth ship's arrival, with Mori at his side as an observer.[10]
The Battle[]
Charging Garmillas[]
Ships of the Imperial Guard wait for Yamato.
Members of the Yamato crew donned full spacesuits before warping to the Salezar system. The ship took position behind the fifth planet, the ringed gas giant Epidora, to hide its presence. The initial calm was quickly shattered by a wave motion gun firing from a position between Garmillas and Iscandar across interplanetary space toward Yamato.[10] The chief navigator had just enough time to react and the beam stroke past the ship, inflicting minimal damage on its port side, and hit Epidora, blasting part of the planet's mass into space and causing the rest to collapse. Admiral Juzo Okita realized that Yamato could not win so far away from their adversary, and ordered the ship to head for Garmillas at full sub-light speed to avoid another wave motion gun attack.[2]
After dismissing Mori and her guard, Corporal Norren Oshetto, Desler learned that Yamato survived. He ordered Defense Minister Welte Talan aboard the Baleras II space station to make quick repairs to the Desler Cannon, the Garmillan wave motion gun, which was damaged by its firing.[2]
The Yamato rams Desler's palace.
Yamato briefly slowed as it approached the planet to deploy its Cosmo Falcon fighter squadron and one of its Cosmo Zero fighters, which engaged the Imperial Guard's Pormelia class carriers and Melanca fighters. Director Gimleh ordered five battle cruisers to break away from their formation near Baleras II and pursue Yamato as it continued rocketing toward Garmillas. The battleship entered into the atmosphere, went through one of the massive gaps in the planetary crust and above the skyline of the capital city, Baleras. Four of the Imperial Guard pursuers were destroyed by Yamato's shock cannons, and another was rammed and crushed by the ship's wave motion shield. With its path now clear, Yamato charged towards the Leader's seat of power, Baleras Tower. Protected by its shield, it crashed through the walls and came to rest lodged in the palace's upper floors, at the very heart of the empire.[2]
Just a moment later, another vessel launched out of the palace and heads toward the safety of outer space: the core of the flagship Deusura II, leaving behind nearly all of Desler's high command and taking away Desler himself, along with Mori and Corporal Oshetto on a lower level of the ship.[2]
A Rite of Passage[]
Aiming for the descending Baleras II module.
Aboard the Yamato bridge, tactics department head Susumu Kodai prepared to lead a strike team into the palace to rescue Mori when Princess Yurisha senses Mori's presence on Desuler II. The plan was thus changed, and Okita ordered Kodai and Yurisha to launch in a fighter to retrieve her from the flagship. As the pair flied in a Cosmo Zero out of the atmosphere, they were pursued by DDG-110 Zedora II Astro Fighters and DMB87 Snuka dive bombers, and were saved by the Czvarke fighter, flown by Lower Storm Leader Ditz. She was soon joined by planes piloted by Yamato Lieutenant Saburo Kato and Ensign Akira Yamamoto after the Cosmo Falcon squadron had eliminated the Imperial Guard carriers and fighters. The trio escorted Kodai and Yurisha until their Zero was clear of the planet's orbit.[2]
Minister Talan and station technicians watched as the Desuler II core ship remotely took control of station functions and decoupled a sixty million ton industrial sector from Baleras II, sending it on a collision course with Garmillas. After the core ship docked with the main vessel birthed inside the station, Talan immediately went to the bridge and pleaded with his Supreme Leader for an explanation. Desler did not explain his full motives, instead he stated that with Yamato now cornered on the surface of the planet, he would use the station module to obliterate it. The palace, the city of Baleras, and the entire population would be destroyed along with the alien ship, but Desler called it a "rite of passage" into a new era in which Baleras II would become the capital of his unified Garmillan and Iscandarian empire. Aboard the Imperial Guard flagship Kilmenaim, Director Gimleh cheered the public broadcast of Desler's master plan, while in the palace, an enraged Vice Leader Redof Hiss assumed command and ordered an immediate evacuation.[2]
The Yamato crew determined that the incoming module would hit in minutes, and Admiral Okita ordered Yamato's wave motion gun to fire on it, since it was the only weapon that could counter such a massive object. The ship launched her rocket anchors into the palace for stability as the gun was targeted and fired. The blast vaporized the module.[2]
Defeat from Within[]
Mori and Oshetto take action.
Undeterred, Desler ordered the fully repaired Desler Cannon to be charged once again. However, he was unaware that Mori had already convinced Oshetto to find and sabotage the wave motion engine powering the weapon after Desler's previous attempt to cause mass destruction. Wearing stolen spacesuits, they located the engine controls, at which point Oshetto surprised Mori by holding her at gunpoint and forcing her into an airlock, claiming that he planned to reveal her treachery to Desler. However instead of trapping her in the airlock, he opened the outer door, causing an explosive decompression that sent Mori flying through one of Baleras II's docking bays and into space, tumbling ever further away from the station. Oshetto then proceeded to send the engine into overload by himself.[2]
Mori escapes Baleras II.
Before Desler could fire, alarms signaling major malfunctions all across the station went off. Talan yelled a desperate order to Colonel Lecter to warp the flagship away at the very instant before explosions filled the docking bay holding the flagship. The blasts consumed all of Baleras II, and wiped out most or all of the Imperial Guard warships that had been defending the station.[2]
Mori observed the explosions from a safe distance. Despite severe damage caused by the blast to their Cosmo Zero, Kodai and Yurisha were able to locate and retrieve her.[2]
Aftermath[]
Iscandar, at long last.
With the fight suddenly over, Yamato extricated itself from the imperial palace. Admiral Okita suffered a debilitating attack from his planet bomb syndrome, a chronic illness that was exacerbated by the stress of combat. Although he was able to continue issuing orders for the entirity of the battle, he never returned to full strength, and was forced to increasingly withdraw from his role as commanding officer.[2][13][14][15][16]
With no trace of Desler or his vessel found and no communication received from him, the empire was left to assume that he was killed in the explosion of Baleras II. Vice Leader Hiss quickly moved to fill the power vacuum, he declared himself prime minister to distance himself from the dictator and created a transitional government, the leaders of the rebellion against Desler's regime were eventually pardoned and became part of the new government. Hiss acted immediately in response to Yamato's defense of Garmillas from its own former ruler and declared an end to the war with the Terrans signing the Earth Iscandar Treaty of Amity and Garmillas-Earth Interim Agreement, which eventually allowed for the empire to establish formal diplomatic relations with the Earth Federation and to fight side-by-side with Earth forces against a common threat, the Gatlantis Empire.[13][14][17][18][19]
Yamato leaves Iscandar with the CRS
After Yamato finally reached Iscandar, Queen Stasha informed the crew that she now saw the earthlings as a grave danger for building and using a wave motion weapon, and refused to deliver the promised Cosmo Reverse System that could save the dying Earth. However, she was eventually convinced to see that the weapon was used to defend life and not out of aggression. Admiral Okita gave his approval for the Yamato's wave motion gun components to be removed and replaced with the Cosmo Reverser itself before the ship sets sailed for home. In exchange, Stasha proposed and then signed a provvision within the armistice that prohibited the construction of wave motion weaponry. The Garmillas Empire also becomes a signatory to the treaty. Despite the governments of Earth and Garmillas both recognising the treaty as valid, in the following years the Earth Federation broke the Okita's promise to Stasha and built a vast number of ships equipped with wave-motion weaponry, the federation's official stance on the matter, as stated by General Serizawa, was that the will of a mere battleship's captain did not correspond or rapresent that of the Earth.[13][14][17][18]
Goer's forces meet the exiled Desler
Despite everything Desler's flagship was able to warp away just in time to escape destruction. Desler worked in secret over the following months to make contact with Major General Gremdt Goer and gain the support of thirty Garmillas warships that refused to recognize the new government. He and his forces made their way to Balun and awaited the arrival of Yamato, in order to capture the battleship and use it to regain power.[15]
Gimleh was also able to escape the destruction of the station and and went into hiding, eventually he organised a group of political dissenters with the objective of establishing a new dictatorial regime over Garmillas that was to be headed by Abelt's nephew, Ranhardt.[3]
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ The Era of Space Battleship Yamato: Choice of 2202 states that Yamato's arrival at Salezar, and thus the beginning of the battle, happen on July 15, while the ship's arrival at Garmillas happens on July 16, indicating that the day switched while the ship was travelling at subluminal speed
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 2.20 2.21 2.22 2.23 2.24 2.25 2.26 2.27 2.28 2.29 2.30 2.31 2.32 2.33 2.34 2.35 2.36 2.37 2.38 2.39 2.40 2.41 2.42 2.43 2.44 2.45 2.46 2.47 2.48 2.49 2.50 2.51 2.52 2.53 2.54 2.55 2.56 2.57 2.58 2.59 2.60 2.61 2.62 2.63 2.64 2.65 2.66 2.67 2.68 2.69 2.70 2.71 "One Man's War"
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Farewell, Teresa! Flowers for Two Deslers"
- ↑ first named in the Yamato 2199 Secret Files
- ↑ A Voyage to Remember Blu-ray booklet p.6
- ↑ "Messenger of Iscandar"
- ↑ "The Sun Sets on Pluto"
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Point of No Return"
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Under a Rainbow Sun"
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 "The Planet That We Head For"
- ↑ "Toward a Sea of Stars"
- ↑ "O Teresa, Cry for Desler!"
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 "The Distant Promised Land"
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Odyssey of the Celestial Ark
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 "The Forever War"
- ↑ "Memories of the Blue Planet"
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 "AD 2202 - Revive, Space Battleship Yamato"
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 "Tension – Reach the Embassy on the Moon"
- ↑ Yamato 2199 Secret Files
Japanese language information[]
- 帝都攻防戰 Teito osamu kōbō (Battle of the Imperial Capital)
- 大ガミラス帝星での戦い Dai gamirasu tei-sei de notatakai (Battle on the Great Garmillas Imperial Planet)