 CHAPTERS XXV and XXVI Do you think I was afraid of Victor of Zachidl, he demanded? Half a dozen ships. We can make a new Van Allen belt around Tanneth of them, with what we have here. Our real enemy is on Marduk, not Zachidl. His names Zaspar McCann, Zaspar McCann, and Andrei Dunnan, the man I came out from Graham to hunt. They're in alliance, and I believe Dunnan is on Marduk himself now. The delegation who had come out from Graham in the yacht of the Duke of Biggersport were unimpressed. Marduk was only a name to them, one of the fabulous civilized old Federation planets no sword-worlder had ever seen. Zaspar McCann wasn't even that, and so much had happened on Graham since the murder of Elaine Carval and the piracy of the Enterprise that they had completely forgotten Andrei Dunnan. That put them at a disadvantage. All the people whom they were trying to convince, the half-hundred members of the new nobility of Tanneth, spoke a language they didn't understand. They didn't even understand the proposition and couldn't argue against it. Patrick Moreland, who was Graham-born and had been speaking for a return in force to fight against Amfrey of Glasbeth and his supporters, defected from them at once. He had been on Marduk and knew who Zaspar McCann was. He had made friends with the Royal Navy officers, and had been shocked to hear that they were now enemies. Manfred Ravallo and Boke Valkenhayn, among the more articulate of the Raids-a-Chiddle-Now Party, snatched up the idea and seemed convinced that they'd thought of it themselves all along. Valkenhayn, who had been on Gimli and talked to Marduk and naval officers, Ravallo had brought Princess Bintrick to Tanneth and heard her stories on the voyage. They began adducing arguments in support of Trask's thesis. Of course Dunnan and McCann were in collusion. Who tipped Dunnan off that the Victrix would be on Audholma? McCann, his spies in the Navy tipped him. What about the honest Taurus? Wasn't McCann blocking any investigation about her? Why was Admiral Schefter retired as soon as McCann got into power? Well, here we don't know anything about this Zaspar McCann, the confidential secretary and spokesman of the Duke of Bigdrasport began. No, you don't, Otto Harkhamen told him. I suggest you keep quiet and listen till you find out a little about him. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if Dunnan was on Marduk all the time we were hunting for him, Valkenhayn said. Trask began to wonder. What would Hitler have done if he told one of his big lies and then found it turning into the truth? Maybe McCann had been on Marduk. No, he couldn't have hidden half a dozen ships on a civilized planet, not even at the bottom of an ocean. I wouldn't be surprised, Alphen Carford was shouting, if Andre Dunnan was Zaspar McCann. I know he doesn't look like Dunnan, we all saw him on the screen, but there's such a thing as plastic surgery. That was making the big lie just a trifle too big. Zaspar McCann was six inches shorter than Dunnan. There are some things no plastic surgery could do. Patrick Morlin, who had known Dunnan and had seen McCann on screen, ought to have known that too, but he either didn't think of it or didn't want to weaken a case he had completely accepted. As far as I can find out, nobody even heard of McCann till about five years ago. That would be about the time Dunnan would have arrived on Marduk, he said. By this time the big room in which they were meeting had become a babble of voices, everybody trying to convince everybody else that they'd known it all along. Then the back-to-grand party received its coup de gras. Lothar Fail, to whom the emissaries of Duke Joris had looked for their strongest support, went over. You people want us to abandon a planet we've built up from nothing, and all the time and money we've invested in it, to go back to Graham and pull your chestnuts out of the fire? Gahena with you, we're staying here and defending our own planet. If you're smart you'll stay here with us. The Bigler's Port delegation was still on Tanneth, trying to recruit mercenaries from the King of Trade Town, and dickering with a Gilgamesher to transport them to Graham, when the big lie turned into something like the truth. The observation post on the moon of Tanneth picked up an emergence at twenty light-minutes due north of the planet. Half an hour later there was another one at five light-minutes, a very small one and then a third at two light-seconds, and this was detectable by radar and micro-ray as a ship's pinnace. He wondered if something had happened on Amaterasu or Beowulf. Somebody like Graetham or the Everards might have decided to take advantage of the defensive mobilization on Tanneth. Then they switched the call from the pinnace over to his screen and Prince Simon Bentrick was looking out of it. I'm glad to see you, your wife and son are here, worried about you, but safe and well. He returned to shout to somebody to find young Count Stephen of Ravery and tell him to tell his mother. How are you? I had a broken leg when I left Moonbase, but that's mended on the way, Bentrick said. I have little Princess Myrna aboard with me. For all I know, she's Queen of Marduk now. He gulped slightly. Prince Trask, we've come as beggars. We're begging help for our planet. You've come as honored guests, and you'll get all the help we can give you. He blessed the Zachiddle invasion scare and the big lie which was rapidly ceasing to be a lie. Tanneth had the ships and the men and the will to act. What happened? McCann deposed the king and took over? It came to that, Bentrick told him. It had started even before the election. The people's watchmen had possessed weapons that had been made openly and legally on Marduk, or trade to the Neo-Barbarian planets, and then clandestinely diverted to secret people's welfare arsenals. Some of the police had gone over to McCann. The rest had been terrorized into inaction. There had been riots fomented in working-class districts of all the cities as pretext for further terrorization. The election had been a farce of bribery and intimidation. Even so, McCann's party had failed of a complete majority in the Chamber of Representatives, and had been compelled to patch up a shady coalition in order to elect a favorable Chamber of Delegates. And of course they elected McCann Chancellor. That did it, Bentrick said. All the opposition leaders in the Chamber of Representatives have been arrested, on all kinds of ridiculous charges, sex crimes, receiving bribes, being in the pay of foreign powers, nothing too absurd. Then they rammed through a law, empowering the Chancellor, to fill vacancies in the Chamber of Representatives by appointment. Why did the Crown Prince lend himself to a thing like that? He hoped that he could exercise some control. The royal family is an almost holy symbol to the people. Even McCann was forced to pretend loyalty to the King and the Crown Prince. It didn't work. He played right into McCann's hands. What happened? The Crown Prince had been assassinated. The assassin, an unknown man believed to be a Gilgamesher, had been shot to death by People's Watchmen guarding Prince Edvard at once. Immediately McCann had seized the royal palace to protect the King, and immediately there had been massacres by People's Watchmen everywhere. The Mardukan planetary army had ceased to exist. McCann's story was that there had been a military plot against the King and the government. Scattered all over the planet in small detachments, the army had been wiped out in two nights and a day. Now McCann was recruiting it up again, exclusively from the People's Welfare Party. You weren't just sitting on your hands, were you? Oh, no, Bintrick replied. I was doing something I wouldn't have thought myself capable of a few years ago. Organizing a mutineering conspiracy in the Royal Mardukan Navy. After Admiral Schefter was forcibly retired and shut up in an insane asylum, I disappeared and turned into a civilian contra-gravity lifter operator at the Malverton Navy Yard. Finally, when I was suspected, one of the officers, he was arrested and tortured to death later, managed to smuggle me onto a lighter for the moon base. I was an orderly in the hospital there. The day the Crown Prince was murdered we had a mutiny of our own. We killed everybody we even suspected of being a mechanist. The moon base has been under attack from the planet ever since. There was a stir behind him. Turning, he saw Princess Bintrick and the boy into the room. He rose. We'll talk about this later. There are some people here. He motioned them forward and turned away, shooing everybody else out of the room. The news was all over Rivington and then all over Tanneth while the pinnace was still coming down. There was a crowd at the spaceport, staring as the little craft, with its blazin' of the crowned and planet-thrown dragon, settled onto its landing legs and reporters of the Tanneth News Service with their screen pickups. He met Prince Bintrick a little in advance of the others and managed to whisper to him hastily, while you're talking to anybody here, always remember that Andre Dunnan is working with Zaspar McCann and as soon as McCann consolidates his position he's sending an expedition against Tanneth. How in blazes did you find that out here, Bintrick demanded, from the Gilgameshers? Then Harkman and Rathmore and Valkenhayn and Lothar Fale and the others were crowding up behind, and more people were coming off the pinnace and Prince Bintrick was trying to embrace both his wife and his son at the same time. Prince Trask, he started at the voice and was looking into deep blue eyes under cold black hair. His pulse gave a sudden jump and he said, Valery, and then, Lady Elverath, I'm most happy to see you here. Then he saw who was beside her and squatted on his heels to bring himself down to a convenient size. And, Princess Myrna, welcome to Tanneth, your highness. The child flung her arms around his neck. Oh, Prince Lucas, I'm so glad to see you. There's been such awful things happened. There won't be anything awful happen here, Princess Myrna. You're among friends, friends, with whom you have a treaty, remember? The child began to cry bitterly. That was when I was just a play-queen, but now I know what they mean when they talked about when Grandpa and Papa would be through being king. Papa didn't even get to be king. Something big and warm and soft was trying to push between them, a dog with long blonde hair and floppy ears. In a year and a half puppies can grow surprisingly. Mobsie was trying to lick his face. He took the dog by the collar and straightened. Lady Valerie, will you come with us? he asked. I'm going to find quarters for Princess Myrna. Is it Princess Myrna or is it Queen Myrna? he asked. Prince Bintrick shook his head. We don't know. The king was alive when we left Moonbase, but that was five hundred hours ago. We don't know anything about her mother either. She was at the palace when Prince Edvard was murdered. We've heard absolutely nothing about her. The king made a few screen appearances, parroting things McCann wanted him to say, under hypnosis. That was probably the very least of what they did to him. They've turned him into a zombie. Well, how did Myrna get to Moonbase? That was Lady Valerie, as much as anybody else. She and Sir Thomas Cobbley and Captain Rainer. They armed the servants at Cragdale with hunting rifles and everything else they could scrape up. Captured Prince Edvard's space yacht and took off in her. Took a couple of hits from ground batteries getting off, and from ships around Moonbase getting in. Ships of the Royal Marduken Navy, he added furiously. The pinnace in which they had made the trip to Tannath had taken a few hits too, running the blockade. Not many, her captain had thrown her into hyperspace almost at once. They sent the yacht off to Gimli, Bintrick said. From there they'll try to rally as many of the Royal Navy units as haven't gone over to McCann. There to assemble on Gimli and await my return. If I don't return in fifteen hundred hours from the time I left Moonbase, they're to use their own judgment. I'd expect that they move in on Marduk and attack. That sixty odd days, Otto Harkman said. That's an awfully long time to expect that lunar base to hold out against a whole planet. It's a strong base. It was built four hundred years ago, when Marduk was fighting a combination of six other planets. It held out against continuous attack once for almost a year. It's been constantly strengthened ever since. And what have they thrown at it? Harkman persisted. When I left, six ships of the former Royal Navy that had gone over to McCann. Four fifteen hundred footers, same class as the Victrix, and two thousand footers. Then there were four of Andre Dunnens ships. You mean he really is on Marduk? I thought you knew that, and I was wondering how you'd found out. Yes, Fortuna, Bolide, and two armed merchantmen, a Balder-built ship called the Reliable, and your friend Honest Horace. You didn't really believe Dunnens was on Marduk, Bokevalk and Hain asked. Actually, I didn't. I had to have some kind of a story to talk those people out of that crusade against Amfrey of Glaspeth. He left, unmentioned, Valken Hain's own insistence on a plundering expedition against Zachidl. Now that it turns out to be true, I'm not surprised. We decided, long ago, that Dunnens was planning to raid Marduk. It appears that we underestimated him. Maybe he was reading about Hitler too. He wasn't planning any raid, he was planning conquest, in the only way a great civilization can be conquered, by subversion. Yes, Harkamon put in. Five years ago, when Dunnens started this program, who was this McCann anyhow? Nobody, Bintrick said, a crackpot agitator in Dreplen. He had a coven of fellow crackpots, who met in the back room of a saloon and had their office in a cigar-box. The next year he had a suite of offices and was buying time on a couple of telecasts. The year after that he had three telecast stations of his own, and was holding rallies and meetings of thousands of people, and so on upward. Yes, Dunnens financed him and moved in behind him, the same way McCann moved in behind the King. And Dunnens will have him shot the way he had Prince Edvard shot, and used the murder as a pretext to liquidate his personal followers. And then he'll own Marduk, and then we'll have the Marduk and Navy coming out of hyperspace on Tanneth, Valkenhayn added, so we go to Marduk and smash them now, while he's still little enough to smash. There had been a few who had wanted to do that about Hitler, and a great many, later, who had regretted that it hadn't been done. The Nemesis, the Coruscanti, and the Space Scourge for sure, he asked. Harkman and Valkenhayn agreed. Valkenhayn thought the Vikings' gift of Beowulf would go along, and Harkman was almost sure of the Black Star and Queen Flavia. He turned to Bintrick. Start that pinnass off for Gimli at once, within the hour if possible. We don't know how many ships will be gathered there, but we don't want them wasted in detail attacks. Tell whoever's in command there that ships from Tanneth are on the way, and to wait for them. Fifteen hundred hours, lest the five hundred Bintrick was in space from Marduk. He hadn't time to estimate voyage time to Gimli from the other Marduk and trade planets, and nobody could estimate how many ships would respond. It may take us a little time to get an effective fleet together, even after we get through arguing about it. Arguments, he told Bintrick, is not exclusively a feature of democracies. Actually there was very little argument, and most of that among the Mardukans. Prince Bintrick insisted that Crown Prince Myrna would have to be taken along. King MacKill would be either dead or brainwashed into imbecility by now, and they would have to have somebody to take the throne. Lady Valerie Alvarath, Sir Thomas Cobbley, the tutor and the nurse Margo refused to be separated from her. Prince Bintrick was equally firm, with less success on leaving his wife and son on Tanneth. In the end it was agreed that the entire Mardukan party would space out on the Nemesis. The leader of the Biglarsport delegation attempted an impassioned tirade about going to the aid of strangers while their own planet was being enslaved. He was booed down by everybody else and informed that Tanneth was being defended where a planet ought to be, on somebody else's real estate. When the Biglarsporters emerged from the meeting they found that their own space-yacht had been commandeered and sent off to Amaterasu and Beowulf for assistance, and the regiment of local infantry they had enlisted from the King of Trade Town had been taken over by the Rivington authorities, and that the Gilgamesh freighter they had chartered to transport them to Graham would now take them to Marduk. The problem broke into two halves. The purely naval action that would be fought to relieve the moon of Marduk, if it still held out, and to destroy the Dunnan and McCann ships, and the ground-fighting problem of wiping out McCann supporters and restoring the Mardukan monarchy. A great many of the people of Marduk would be glad of a chance to turn on McCann once they had arms and were properly supported. Combat weapons were almost unknown among the people, however, and even sporting arms uncommon. All the small arms and light artillery and auto weapons available were gathered up. The Grendelsbane came in from Beowulf and the Sun got us from Amaterasu. Three independent space Viking ships were still in orbit on Tanneth. They joined the expedition. There would be trouble with them on Marduk. They'd want to loot. They could charge it off as part of the price for letting Zaspar McCann get into power in the first place. There were twelve spacecraft in line outside the moon of Tanneth, counting the three independents and the forcibly chartered Gilgamesh or troop transport. That was the biggest fleet space Vikings had ever assembled in their history. Alvin Carford said as much while they were checking the formation by screen. It isn't a space Viking fleet, Prince Bintrick differed. There are only three space Vikings in it. The rest are the ships of three civilized planets, Tanneth, Beowulf, and Amaterasu. Carford was surprised. You mean weird civilized planets like Marduk or Balder or Odin or, well, aren't you? Trask smiled. He'd begun to suspect something of the sort a couple of years ago. He hadn't really been sure until now. His most junior staff officer, Count Stephen of Ravery, didn't seem to appreciate the compliment. We are space Vikings, he insisted, and we are going to battle with the Neo-Barbarians of Zaspar McCann. Well, I won't argue the last half of it, Stephen, his father told him. Are you people done yakking about who civilized and who isn't, go out Kirby asked, then give me the signal. All the other ships are ready to jump. Trask pressed the button on the desk in front of him. A light went on over Kirby's control panel, as one would on each of the other ships. He said, jumping around the stem of his pipe and twisted the red handle and shoved it in. Four hundred and fifty hours in the private universe that was the Nemesis. Outside nothing else existed, and inside there was nothing to do but wait, as each hour carried them six trillion miles nearer to Gimli. At first the ruthless and terrible space Viking, Stephen, Count of Ravery, was wildly excited, but before long he found that there was nothing exciting going on. It was just a spaceship, and he'd been on ships before. Her Highness, the crown princess, or maybe Her Majesty, the Queen of Marduk, stopped being excited about the same time, and she and Stephen and Mopsie played together. Of course, Myrna was only a girl and two years younger than Stephen, but she was, or at least might be, his sovereign. And besides, she had been in a space action, if you call what lies between a planet and its satellite space, and if you call being shot at without being able to shoot back an action. And relentless Ravery, the interstellar terror, had not. This rather made up for being a girl and a mere baby of going on ten. One thing there were no lessons. Sir Thomas Cobbley fancied himself as a landscape painter and spent most of his time arguing techniques with Van Larch. And Stephen's tutor, Captain Rainer, was a normal space astrogator and found a kindred spirit in Charle Renner. This left Lady Valery Alverath at a loose end. There were plenty of volunteers to help her fill in the time, but rank hath its privileges. Trask undertook to see it that she did not suffer excessively from shipboard on we. Charle Renner and Captain Rainer approached him during the cocktail hour before dinner, some hundred hours short of emergence. We think we figured out where Dunnans base is, Renner said. Oh, good! Everybody else had on a different planet. Where's yours? Abaddon, the Count of Raverie's tutor said. When he saw that the name meant nothing to Trask, he added, The ninth outer planet of the Marduk system. He said it disgustedly. Yes. Remember how you had Boke and Manfred out with their ships, checking our outside planets to see if Prince Victor might be hiding on one of them? Well, what with the time element, and the way the Honest Horus was shuttling back and forth from Marduk to some place that wasn't Gimli, and the way Dunnans was able to bring his ships in as soon as the shooting started on Marduk, we thought he must be on an uninhabited outer planet of the Marduk system. I don't know why we never thought of that ourselves, Renner put in. I suppose, because nobody ever thinks of Abaddon for any reason. It's only a small planet, about 4,000 miles in diameter, and it's three and a half billion miles from primary. It's frozen solid. It would take almost a year to get to it on Abaddon Drive, and if your ship has Dillingham's, why not take a little longer and go to a good planet? So nobody bothered with Abaddon. But for Dunnans' purpose it would be perfect. He called Prince Bintrick and Alvin Carford to him. They found the idea instantly convincing. They talked about it through dinner and held a general discussion afterward. Even Guat Kirby, the ship's pessimist, could find no objection to it. Trask and Bintrick began at once making battle plans. Carford wondered if they hadn't better wait till they got to Gimli and discuss it with the others. No, Trask told him. This is the flagship. Here's where the strategy is decided. Well, how about the Marduk and Navy? Captain Rainer asked. I think Fleet Admiral Bargams in command at Gimli. Prince Simon Bintrick was silent for a moment, as though he realized, with reluctance, that the big decision was no longer avoidable. He may be at present, but he won't be when I get there. I will be. But, Your Highness, he's a Fleet Admiral. You're just a Commodore. I am not just a Commodore. The King is a prisoner, and for all we know, dead. The Crown Prince is dead. The Prince Myrna is a child. I am assuming the position of regent and Prince Protector of the Realm. 26. There was a little difficulty on Gimli with Fleet Admiral Bargam. Commodores didn't give orders to Fleet Admirals. Well, maybe Regents did, but who gave Prince Bintrick authority to call himself regent? Regents were elected by the Chamber of Delegates, on nomination of the Chancellor. 26. That's Zaspar McCann and his Stooges you're talking about, Bintrick laughed. 27. Well, the Constitution, he thought better of that, before somebody asked him what Constitution. Well, a regent has to be chosen by election. Even members of the royal family can't just make themselves regent by saying they are. I can, I just have, and I don't think there are going to be any more elections, at least for the present, not till we make sure the people of Marduk can be trusted with the control of the government. 28. Well, the Pinnis from Moonbase reported that there were six Royal Navy battleships and four other craft attacking them. Bargam objected. 29. I only have four ships here. I sent for the ones on the other trade planets, but I haven't heard from any of them. We can't go there with only four ships. 30. Sixteen ships, Bintrick corrected. No. Fifteen and one Gilgamesher we're using for a troop ship. I think that's enough. You'll remain here on Gimli in any case, Admiral, as soon as the other ships come in you'll follow to Marduk with them. I am now holding a meeting aboard the Tanneth flagship Nemesis. I want your four ship commanders aboard immediately. I am not including you, because you're remaining here to bring up the latecomers, and as soon as this meeting is over we are spacing out. 31. Actually, they spaced out sooner. The meeting lasted the whole three hundred and fifty hours to Abaddon. A ship's captain, if he has a good exec, as all of them had, needs only sit at his command desk and look important while the ship is going into and emerging from a long jump. The rest of the time he can study ancient history or whatever his ship-board hobby is. Rather than waste three hundred and fifty hours of precious time each captain turned his ship over to his exec and remained aboard the Nemesis. Even on so spacious a craft, the officer's country north of the engine-rooms was crowded like a tourist hotel in mid-season. One of the four Mardukans was the Captain Garavay who had smuggled Bintrick's wife and son off Marduk, and the other three were just as pro-Bintrick, pro-Tanneth, and anti-McCan. They were, on general principles, also anti-Bargham. There must be something wrong with any fleet admiral who remained in his command after Zasbar McCann came to power. So, as soon as they spaced out there was a party. After that they settled down to planning the Battle of Abaddon. There was no Battle of Abaddon. It was a dead planet, one side at night and the other in dim twilight, from the little speck of a sun three and a half billion miles away, jagged mountains rising out of the snow that covered it from pole to pole. The snow on top would be frozen CO2. According to the thermocouples the surface temperature was well below minus one hundred centigrade. No ships on orbit circled it. There was a little faint radiation, which could have been from naturally radioactive minerals. There was no electrical discharge detectable. There was considerable bad language in the command room of the Nemesis. The captains of the other ships were screening in wanting to know what to do. Go on in, Tras told them, englobe the planet and go down to within a mile if necessary. They could be hiding somewhere on it. Well, they're not hiding at the bottom of any ocean, that's for sure, somebody said. It was one of those feeble jokes at which everybody laughs because nothing else is laughable about the situation. Finally they found it at the North Pole, which was no colder than anywhere else on the planet. First radiation leakage, the sort that would come from a closed down nuclear power plant. Then a modicum of electrical discharge. Finally the telescopic screens picked up the spaceport, a huge oval amphitheater excavated out of a valley between two jagged mountain ranges. The language in the command room was just as bad, but the tone had changed. It was surprising what a wide range of emotions could be expressed by a few simple blasphemies and obscenities. Everybody who had been to riding Charle Renner were now acclaiming him. But it was lifeless. The ships came crowding in. Air-locked landing craft full of space-armored ground fighters went down. Screens in the command room lit as they transmitted in views. Depressions in the carbon dioxide snow, where the hundred foot pad-feet of ships' landing legs had pressed down. Ranks of cargo lighters that had plied to and from other ships or orbit. And all around the cliff-walled perimeter air-locked doors to caverns and tunnels. A great many men, with a great deal of equipment, had been working here in the estimated five or six years since André Dunnan, or somebody, had constructed this base. André Dunnan. They found his badge, the crescent, blue on black, on things. They found equipment that Harkamen recognized as having been part of the original cargo stolen with the Enterprise. They even found, in his living quarters, a blown up photo-print picture of Neville Orm draped in black. But what they did not find was a single vehicle, small enough to be taken aboard a ship, or a single scrap of combat equipment, not even a pistol or a hand-grenade. Dunnan had gone, but they knew whither and where to find him. The conquest of Marduk had moved into his final phase. Marduk was on the other side of the sun from Abaddon, with ninety-five million miles, close, but not inconveniently so, Trask thought, to spare. Guat Kirby and the Marduken Astrogator who was helping him made it within a light minute. The Marduken thought that was fine, Kirby didn't. The last micro-jump was aimed at the moon of Marduk, which was plainly visible in the telescopic screen. They came out within a light second and a half, which Kirby admitted was reasonably close. As soon as the screens cleared they saw that they weren't too late. The moon of Marduk was under fire and firing back. They'd have detection, and he knew what they were detecting, a clump of sixteen rending distortions of the fabric of spacetime, as sixteen ships came into sudden existence in the normal continuum. Beside him Bintrick had a screen on. It was still milky white and he was speaking into a radio-handphone. Simon Bintrick, Prince Protector of Marduk, calling Moonbase. Then slowly he repeated his screen combination twice. Come in, Moonbase! This is Simon Bintrick, Prince Protector speaking. He waited ten seconds and was about to start again when the screen flickered. The man who appeared in it wore the insignia of a Mardukan Navy Commodore. He needed a shave, but he was grinning happily. Bintrick greeted him by name. Hello, Simon! Glad to see you. Your Highness, I mean. What is this Prince Protector thing? Somebody had to do it. Is the King still alive? The grin slid off the Commodore's face, starting with his eyes. We don't know. At first, McCann had him speaking by screen. You know what it was like, urging everybody to obey and cooperate with our trusted Chancellor. McCann always appeared on the screen with him. Bintrick nodded. I remember. Before you left, McCann kept quiet and let the King make the speech. After a while the King wasn't able to speak coherently. He'd stammer and repeat. So then McCann did all the talking. They couldn't even depend on him to parrot what they were giving him with an ear-plug phone. Then he stopped appearing entirely. I suppose there were physical symptoms they couldn't allow to be seen. Bintrick was cursing horribly under his breath. The officer at the moon base nodded. I hope for his sake that he is dead. Poor Goodman McHill. Bintrick was saying, so do I. Trask agreed mentally. The Commodore at moon base was still talking. We got two more Renegade R.M.N. ships within a hundred hours after you left. He named them. And we got one of the Dunnans ships, the Fortuna. We blew out the Malverton Navy Yard. They're still using the Antarctic naval base, but we've knocked out a good deal of that. We got the Honest Horus. They made two attempts to land on us and lost a couple of ships. Eight hundred hours ago they were joined by the rest of Dunnans fleet, five ships. They made a landing on Malverton while it was turned away from us. McCann announced that they were R.M.N. units from the trade planets that had joined him. I suppose the planet-side public swallowed that. He also announced that their commander, Admiral Dunn, was in command of the people's armed forces. Dunnans ground fighters would be in control of Malverton. By now the odds were that McCann was as much his prisoner as King McHill VIII had been McCann's. So Dunnans has conquered Marduk. All he has to do now is make it stick, he said. I see four ships off Moonbase. How many more have they? These are Bolide and Eclipse, Dunnans ships, and former Royal Mardukan Navy ships, Champion and Guardian. There are five orbiting off the planet. X, R.M.N.S. Paladin, and Dunnans ship Starhopper, Banshee, Reliable, and Exporter. The last two are listed as Merchantmen, but they're performing like Regulation Battlecraft. The four that had been circling Moonbase broke orbit and started toward the relieving fleet. One took a hit from a Moonbase missile which staggered her but did no evident damage. Two ships which had been orbiting the planet also changed course and started out. The command room was silent, except for a subdued chuckling from a computer which was estimating enemy intentions by observing data and game theory. Three more came hurrying out from the planet, and the two in the lead slowed to let them catch up. He wanted to be able to engage the four from off the satellite before the five from the planet joined them, but Carford's computers said it couldn't be done. All right, we'll have to take all our bad eggs in one basket, he said. Try to hit them as soon after they join as possible. The computers began chuckling again. The serving robots were doing a rush business in hot coffee. Prince Bintrick's son, sitting beside his father, had stopped being ruthless Ravery, the demon of the spaceways, and was a very young officer going into his first space battle, more scared and at the same time happier than he had ever been in his short life. Captain Garavay of the Vindex was making signal to the other ships from Gimli. Royal Navy, smash the traitors first. He could understand and sympathize, even if he couldn't approve of putting personal ahead of tactical considerations, and made a quick, sealed beam call to Harkamon to be prepared to plug any holes they left in formation if they broke away in search of vengeance. He also ordered the Black Star and the Sun Goddess to shepherd the lightly armed and troop-crammed Gilgamesh freighter out of danger. The two clumps of Dunnan McCann ships were converging rapidly, and Alvin Carford was screaming into a phone to somebody to get more speed. At a thousand miles the missile started going out, and the two groups of ships, four and five, were equidistant from each other and from the Allied Fleet, at the points of a triangle that was growing smaller by the second. The first fire-globes of intercepted missiles spread from their seeds of brief white light. A red light flashed on the damage board. An enemy ship took a hit. The captain of the Queen Flavia was on a screen, saying that his ship was heavily damaged. Three ships, bearing the Mardukan, Dragon, and Planet, circled madly around each other at what looks in the screen like just over pistol range, two of them firing into the third, which was replying desperately. The third one blew up, and somebody was yelling out of a screen-speaker, Scratch One Trader! Another ship blew up somewhere, and then another. He heard somebody say, There what one of ours! And wondered which one it was. Not the Corsandi he hoped. No, it wasn't. He could see her rushing after two other ships, which were, in turn, speeding toward the Black Star, the Sun Goddess, and the Gilgamesh freighter. Then the Nemesis and the Starhopper were within gun range, pounding each other savagely. The battle had tied itself into a ball of gyrating, fire-spitting ships that went rolling toward the planet, which was swinging in and out of the main view-screen and growing rapidly larger. By the time they were down to the inner edge of the exosphere, the ball had started to unwind, ship after ship dropping out of it and going into orbit, some badly damaged, and some going to attack damaged enemies. Some of them were completely around the planet, hidden by it. He saw three ships approaching Corsandi, Sun Goddess, and the Gilgamesh her. He got Harkamon on the screen. Where's the Black Star? he asked. Gone to MC Square, Harkamon replied. We got the two Dunnan McCanns, Bolide, and Reliable. Then young Stephen of Ravery, who had been monitoring one of the inner-ship screens, had a call from Captain Gom Perts of the Grendelsbane, and at the same moment somebody else was yelling, Here comes the Starhopper again! Tell him to wait a moment, we have troubles, he said. Nemesis and Starhopper sledge-hammered each other and parried with counter-missiles. And then, quite unexpectedly, the Starhopper went to MC Square. There was an awful lot of M being converted to E off Marduk today, including Manfred Ravallo, that grieved him. Manfred was a good man and a good friend. He had a girl in Rivington. Niflheim, there were eight hundred good men aboard the Black Star, and most of them had girls who'd wait in vain for them on Tanneth. Well, what had Otto Harkamon said so long ago on Gram? Something about old age not being a usual cause of death among space Vikings, isn't it? Then he remembered that Gom Perts of the Grendelsbane was trying to get him. He told young Count Stephen to switch him over. We just lost one of our Mardukans, Gom Perts told him, in his staccato beowulf accent. I think she was the challenger! The ship that got her looks like the Banshee! I am turning to engage her! Which way? West, around the planet? Be right with you, Captain! CHAPTER XXVII It's like finishing a word puzzle. You sit staring at it, looking for more spaces to print letters into, and suddenly you realize that there are no more, that the puzzle is done. That was how the space battle of Marduk, the battle off Marduk, ended. Suddenly there were no more colored fire globes opening and fading, no more missiles coming, no more enemy ships to throw missiles at. Now it was time to take account of his own ships and then begin thinking about the battle on Marduk. The black star was gone. So was R. M. N. S. Challenger and R. M. N. S. Conquistador. Space scourge was badly hammered. Worse than after the beowulf raid, Boke Valkenhayne said. The Viking's gift was heavily damaged, too, and so was the Corsandi. And so, from the looks of the damage board, was the Nemesis. And three ships were missing. The three independent space Vikings. Harpy, Curse of Coggin, and Roger Fan Morville Esther Sands, damn thing. Prince Bintrack frowned over that. I can't think that all three of those ships would have been destroyed without anybody seeing it happen. Neither can I. But I can think that all those ships broke out of the battle together and headed in for the planet. They didn't come here to help liberate Marduk. They came here to fill their cargo holds. I only hope the people they're robbing all voted the McCann ticket in the last election. A crumb of comfort occurred to him and he passed it on. The only people who are armed to resist them will be McCann's storm troops and Dunnans pirates. They'll be the ones to get killed. We don't want any more killing then. Prince Simon broke off suddenly. I'm beginning to talk like his late highness, Crown Prince Edvard, he said. He didn't want bloodshed either, and look whose blood was shed. If they're doing what you think they are, I'm afraid we'll have to kill a few of your space Vikings, too. They aren't my space Vikings. He was a little surprised to find that, after almost eight years of bearing the name himself, he was using it as an other people label. Well, why not? He was the ruler of the civilized planet of Tanneth, wasn't he? But let's not start fighting them till the main war is over. Those three shiploads are no worse than a bad cold. McCann and Dunnans are the plague. It would still take four hours to get down, in a spiral of deceleration. They started the telecasts which had been filmed and taped on the voyage from Gimli. The Prince Protector Simon Bentrick spoke. The illegal rule of the traitor McCann was ended. His deluded followers were advised to return to their allegiance to the crown. The people's watchmen were ordered to surrender their arms and disband. In localities where they refused, the loyal people were called upon to cooperate with the legitimate armed forces of the crown in exterminating them and would be furnished arms as soon as possible. Little Princess Myrna spoke. If my grandfather is still alive, he is your king. If he is not, I am your queen, and until I am old enough to rule in my own right, I accept Prince Simon as regent and protector of the realm, and I call on all of you to obey him as I will. You didn't say anything about representative governments, or democracy, or the Constitution, Trask mentioned, and I noticed the use of the word rule instead of reign. That's right, the self-proclaimed Prince Protector said. There's something wrong with democracy. If there weren't, it couldn't be overthrown by people like McCann, attacking it from within by democratic procedures. I don't think it's fundamentally unworkable. I think it just has a few of what engineers call bugs. It's not safe to run a defective machine till you learn the defects and remedy them. Well, I hope you don't think our sword-world feudalism doesn't have bugs. He gave examples, and then quoted Otto Harkman, about barbarism spreading downward from the top, instead of upward from the bottom. It may just be, he added, that there is something fundamentally unworkable about government itself, as long as Homo sapiens terra is a wild animal, which he has always been and always will be, until he evolves into something different in a million or so years. Maybe a workable system of government is a political science impossibility, just as transmutation of elements was a physical science impossibility as long as they tried to do it by chemical means. Then we'll just have to make it work the best way we can, and when it breaks down, hope the next try will work a little better for a little longer, Bintrick said. Malverton grew in the telescopic screens as they came down. The navy spaceport, where Trask had landed almost two years before, was in wreckage, sprinkled with damaged ships that had been blasted on the ground and slagged by thermonuclear fires. There was fighting in the air all over the city proper, on building tops, on the ground, and in the air. That would be the damn thing, harpy, curse of Coggan space vikings. The royal palace was the center of one, of half a dozen swirls of battle that had condensed out of the general skirmishing. Patrick Moreland started for it with the first wave of ground fighters from the Nemesis. The Gilgamesh freighter, like most of her ilk, had huge cargo ports all around. These began opening and disgorging a swarm of everything from landing craft and hundred foot airboats to one-man air cavalry single mounts. The top landing stages and terraces of the planet were almost obscured by the flashes of autocannon shells and the smoke and dust of projectiles. Then the first vehicles landed. The firing from the air stopped and men fanned out as skirmishers, occasionally firing with small arms. Trask and Bintrick were in the armory off the vehicle bay, putting on combat equipment when the twelve-year-old Count of Ravery joined them and began rummaging for weapons and a helmet. You're not going, his father told him. I'll have enough to worry about taking care of myself." That was the wrong approach. Trask interrupted. You're to stay aboard, Count, he said. As soon as things stabilize, Princess Myrna will have to come down. You'll act as her personal escort. And don't think you're being shoved into the background. She's Crown Princess, and if she isn't Queen now, she will be in a few years. Escorting her now will be the foundation of your naval career. There isn't a young officer in the Royal Navy who wouldn't trade places with you. That was the right way to handle him, Lucas. Bintrick approved, after the boy had gone away, proud of his opportunity and his responsibility. It'll do just what I said for him. He stopped for a moment to play with an idea that had just struck him. You know, the girl will be Queen in a few years, if she isn't now. Queens need Prince Concorts. Your son's a good boy. I'd liked him the first moment I saw him, and I've liked him better ever since. He'd be a good man on the throne beside Queen Myrna. Oh, that's out of the question. Not the matter of consanguinity, they're about a sixteenth cousin. But people would say I was abusing the protectorship to marry my son on to the throne. Simon, speaking as one sovereign Prince to another, you have a lot to learn. You've learned one important lesson already, that a ruler must be willing to use force and shed blood to enforce his rule. You have to learn, too, that a ruler cannot afford to be guided by his fears of what people will say about him. Not even what history will say about him. A ruler's only judge is himself. Bintrick slid the transpex visor of his helmet up and down experimentally, checked the chambers of his pistol and carbine. All that matters to me is the peace and well-being of Marduk. I'll have to talk it over with—with my only judge. Well, let's go. The top terraces were secure when their car landed. More vehicles were coming down and discharging men. A swarm of landing craft were sinking past the building toward the ground two thousand feet below. Auto-weapons and small arms and light cannon banged, and bombs and recoilless rifle shells crashed on the lower terraces. They put the car down one of the shaftways until they ran into heavy fire from below, at the limit of the advance and then turned into a broad hallway, floating high enough to clear the heads of the men on foot. It looked like the part of the palace where he had lodged when he had been a guest there, but it probably wasn't. They came to hastily constructed barricades of furniture and statuary and furnishings, behind which McCann's People's Watchmen and Andre Dunn and Space Vikings were making resistance. They entered rooms dusty with powdered plaster and acrid with powder fumes, littered with corpses. They passed lifter skids being towed out with wounded. They went through rooms crowded with their own men. Keep your fingers off things, this isn't a looting expedition. You stupid Cretan, how did you know there wasn't a man hiding behind that? In one huge room, ballroom or concert room or something, there were prisoners herded, and men from the Nemesis were setting up polyencephalographic veriticators, sturdy chairs with wires and adjustable helmets and translucent globes mounted over them. A couple of Morland's men were hustling a People's Watchmen to one and strapping him into a chair. You know what this is, don't you? One of them was saying, This is a veriticator. That global light blue. The moment you try to lie to us, it'll turn red. And the moment it turns red, I'm going to hammer your teeth down your throat with the butt of this pistol. Have you found out anything about the king yet? Ventric asked him. He turned. No. Nobody we've questioned so far knows anything later that a month ago about him. He just disappeared. He was going to say something else, saw Ventric's face and changed his mind. He's dead, Ventric said, dully. They tortured him and brainwashed him and used him as a ventriloquist dummy on the screen as long as they could. When they couldn't let the people see him anymore, they stuffed him into a converter. They did find Zaspar McCann hours later. Maybe he could have told them something if he had been alive, but he and a few of his fanatical followers had barricaded themselves in the throne room and died trying to defend it. They found McCann on the throne, the top of his head blown away, a pistol death-grypt in his hand, and the great crown lying on the floor, the velvet inner cap bullet pierced and splattered with blood and brain tissue. Prince Ventric picked it up and looked at it disgustedly. We'll have to do something about that, he said. I really didn't think he'd do just this. I thought he wanted to abolish the throne, not sit on it. Except for one chandelier smashed and several corpses that had to be dragged out, the ministerial council room was intact. They set up headquarters there. Boke Valkenhayn and several other ship-captains joined them. There was fighting going on in several places inside the palace, and the city was still in a turmoil. Somebody managed to get in touch with the captains of the damn thing, the harpy and the curse of Kagan, and bring them to the palace. Trask attempted to reason with them to no avail. Prince Trask, you're my friend, and you've always dealt fairly with me, Roger-Fan Morville Esther-San said. But you know just how far any space viking captain can control his crew. These men didn't come here to correct the political mistakes of Marduk. They came here for what they could haul away. I could get myself killed trying to stop them now. I wouldn't even try, the captain of the curse of Kagan put in. I came here for what I could make out of this planet myself. You can try to stop them, said the captain of the harpy. You'll find it even harder than what you're doing now. Trask looked at some of the reports that had come in from elsewhere on the planet. Harkamen had landed on one of the big cities to the east, and the people had risen against McCann's local bosses and were helping wipe out the people's watchmen with arms they had been furnished. Valkenhayn's exec had landed on a large concentration camp where close to ten thousand of McCann's political enemies had been penned. He had distributed all his available weapons and was calling for more. Gom Perz of the Grendelsbein was at Dreplen. He reported just the reverse. The people there had risen in support of the McCann regime, and he wanted authorization to use nuclear weapons against them. Could you talk your people into going to some other city? Trask asked. We have a city for you. Big industrial center. It ought to be fine looting. Dreplen. The people there are Marduken subjects too, Bintrick began. Then he shrugged. It's not what we'd like to do. It's what we have to do. By all means, gentlemen, take your men to Dreplen, and nobody will object to anything you do. And when you have that place looted out, try Abaddon. You were aground there, Captain Esther San. You know what all done and left there. A couple of space Vikings, no, royal army of tanneth men, brought in the old woman, dirty, in rags, almost exhausted. She wants to talk to Prince Bintrick, won't talk to anybody else, says she knows where the king is. Bintrick rose quickly, brought her to a chair, poured a glass of wine for her. He's still alive, Your Highness. The Crown Princess, Melanie and I, I'm sorry, Your Highness, Dowager Crown Princess, have been taking care of him the best way we could, if you'll only come quickly. McKill VIII, Planetary King of Marduk, lay on a pallet of filthy bedding on the floor of a narrow room, behind a mass energy converter which disposed of the rubbish and sewage and generated power for some of the fixed equipment on one of the middle floors of the east wing of the palace. There was a bucket of water and on a rough wooden bench lay a cloth-wrapped bundle of food. A woman, haggard and disheveled, wearing a suit of greasy mechanics coveralls and nothing else squatted beside him. The Crown Princess, Melanie, whom Trask remembered as the charming and gracious hostess of Cragdale. She tried to rise and staggered. Prince Bintrick, and it's Prince Trask of Tannoth, she cried. Just hurry, get him out of here to where he can be taken care of, please! Then she sat down again on the floor and fell over, unconscious. They couldn't get the story. The Princess Melanie had collapsed completely. Her companion, another noblewoman of the court, could only ramble disconnectedly. And the King merely lay, bathed and fed in a clean bed and looked up at them wonderingly as though nothing he saw or heard conveyed any meaning to him. The doctors could do nothing. He has no mind, no more mind than a newborn baby. We can keep him alive, I don't know how long. That's our professional duty, but it's no kindness to his Majesty. The little pockets of resistance in the palace were wiped out through the next morning and afternoon. All but one, far underground, below the main power plant. They tried sleep gas. The defenders had blowers and sent it back at them. They tried blasting. There was a limit to what the fabric of the building would stand. And nobody knew how long it would take to starve them out. On the third day a man crawled out, pushing a white shirt tied to the barrel of a carbine ahead of him. His Prince Lucas Trask of Tanneth here, he asked, I won't speak to anybody else. They brought Trask quickly. All that was visible of the other man was the carbine barrel and the white shirt. When Trask called to him, he raised his head above the rubble behind which he was hiding. Prince Trask, we have Andre Dunn in here. He was leading us, but now we've disarmed him and are holding him. If we turn him over to you, will you let us go? If you all come out unarmed and bring Dunn in with you, I promise you the rest of you will be led outside this building and allowed to go away unharmed. All right, we'll be coming out in a minute. The man raised his voice. It's agreed, he called. Bring him out! There were fewer than two score of them. Some were the uniforms of high officers of the People's Watchmen or of People's Welfare Party functionaries. A few wore the heavily braided short jackets of space viking officers. Among them they propelled a thin-faced man with a pointed beard, and Trask had to look twice at him before he recognized the face of Andre Dunn. It looked more like the face of Duke Angus of Wardshaven as he last remembered it. Dunn and looked at him in incurious contempt. Your dotered king couldn't rule without Zaspar McCann, and McCann couldn't rule without me. And neither can you, he said. Shoot this gang of turncoats and I'll rule Marduk for you! He looked at Trask again. Who are you? He demanded. I don't know you. Trask slipped the pistol from his holster, thumbing off the safety. I am Lucas Trask. You've heard that name before, he said. Stand away from behind him, you people. Oh, yes! The poor fool who thought he was going to marry Elaine Carval. Well, you won't, Lord Trask of Traskin. She loves me, not you. She's waiting for me now on Gram. Trask shot him through the head. Dunn's eyes widened in momentary incredulity. Then his knees gave way and he fell forward on his face. Trask thumbed on the safety and holstered the pistol and looked at the body on the concrete. It hadn't made the least difference. It had been like shooting a snake, or one of those nasty scorpion things that infested the old buildings in Rivington. Just no more, André Dunnan. Take that carrion and stuff it in a mass energy converter, he said. And I don't want anybody to mention the name of André Dunnan to me again. He didn't look at them haul Dunnan's body away on a lifterskid. He watched the fifty odd leaders of the overthrown misgovernment of Marduk shamble away to freedom, guarded by Patrick Morland's Rifleman. Now there was something to reproach himself for. He'd committed a separate and distinct crime against Marduk by letting each one of them live. Unless recognized and killed by somebody outside, every one of them would be at some villainy before next sunrise. Well, King Simon I could cope with that. He started when he realized how he had thought of his friend. Well, why not? Mikil's mind was dead, his body would not survive it more than a year. Then a child queen and a long regency. And long regencies were dangerous. Better a strong king in name as well as power. And the succession could be safeguarded by marrying Stephen and Myrna. Myrna had accepted, at eight, that she must someday marry for reasons of state. Why not her playmate Stephen? And Simon Bentrick would see the necessity. He was neither a fool nor a moral coward. He only needed to take some time to adjust to ideas. The rabble who had bought their lives with their leaders had gone now. Slowly he followed them, thinking. Don't press the idea on Simon too hard. Just expose him to it and let him adopt it. And there would be the treaty, Tannath, Marduk, Beowulf, Amaterasu. Eventually treaties with the other civilized planets. Nebulously the idea of a league of civilized worlds began to take shape in his mind. Be a good idea if he adopted the title of King of Tannath for himself. And cut loose from the sword worlds. Especially cut loose from Graham. Let Victor of Zachitl have it. Or Garvin Spasso. Victor wouldn't be the last space viking to take his ships back against the sword worlds. Sooner or later civilization and the old federation would drive them all home to loot the planets that had sent them out. Well, if he was going to be a king, shouldn't he have a queen? Kings usually did. He climbed into the little haul-car and started up a long shaft. There was Valerie Alvarath. They'd enjoyed each other society on the Nemesis. He wondered if she would want to make it permanent, even on a throne. Elaine was with him. He felt her beside him almost tangibly. Her voice was whispering to him, She loves you, Lucas. She'll say yes. Be good to her and she'll make you happy. Then she was gone, and he knew that she would never return. Goodbye, Elaine. THE END OF SPACE VIKING by H. BEAM PIPER