XXVII
It was like finishing a word puzzle. You sit staring at it, lookingfor more spaces to print letters into, and suddenly you realizethat there are no more, that the puzzle is done. That was how thespace-battle of Marduk, the Battle _off_ Marduk, ended. Suddenlythere were no more colored fire-globes opening and fading, no moremissiles coming, no more enemy ships to throw missiles at. Now itwas time to take a count of his own ships, and then begin thinkingabout the Battle _on_ Marduk.
The _Black Star_ was gone. So was RMNS _Challenger_, and RMNS_Conquistador_. _Space Scourge_ was badly hammered; worse than afterthe Beowulf raid, Boake Valkanhayn said. The _Viking's Gift_ washeavily damaged, too, and so was the _Corisande_, and so, from thelooks of the damage board, was the _Nemesis_. And three ships weremissing--the three independent Space Vikings, _Harpy_, _Curse ofCagn_, and Roger-fan-Morvill Esthersan's _Damnthing_.
Prince Bentrik frowned over that. "I can't think that all threeof those ships would have been destroyed, without anybody seeingit happen."
"Neither can I. But I can think that all those ships broke out ofthe battle together and headed in for the planet. They didn't comehere to help liberate Marduk, they came here to fill their cargoholds. I only hope the people they're robbing all voted the Makannticket in the last election." A crumb of comfort occurred to him,and he passed it on. "The only people who are armed to resist themwill be Makann's storm-troops and Dunnan's pirates; they'll be theones to get killed."
"We don't want any more killing than...." Prince Simon broke offsuddenly. "I'm beginning to talk like his late Highness Crown PrinceEdvard," he said. "He didn't want bloodshed, either, and look whoseblood was shed. If they're doing what you think they are, I'm afraidwe'll have to kill a few of your Space Vikings, too."
"They aren't my Space Vikings." He was a little surprised to findthat, after almost eight years of bearing the name himself, he wasusing it as an other-people label. Well, why not? He was the rulerof the civilized planet of Tanith, wasn't he? "But let's not startfighting them till the main war's over. Those three shiploads areno worse than a bad cold; Makann and Dunnan are the plague."
It would still take four hours to get down, in a spiral ofdeceleration. They started the telecasts which had been filmed andtaped on the voyage from Gimli. The Prince-Protector Simon Bentrikspoke: The illegal rule of the traitor Makann was ended. His deludedfollowers were advised to return to their allegiance to the Crown.The People's Watchmen were ordered to surrender their arms anddisband; in localities where they refused, the loyal people werecalled upon to co-operate with the legitimate armed forces ofthe Crown in exterminating them, and would be furnished armsas 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 oldenough to rule in my own right, I accept Prince Simon as Regentand Protector of the Realm, and I call on all of you to obey himas I will."
"You didn't say anything about representative government, ordemocracy, or the constitution," Trask mentioned. "And I noticedthe use of the word 'rule,' instead of 'reign.'"
"That's right," the self-proclaimed Prince-Protector said. "There'ssomething wrong with democracy. If there weren't, it couldn't beoverthrown by people like Makann, attacking it from within bydemocratic procedures. I don't think it's fundamentally unworkable.I think it just has a few of what engineers call bugs. It's notsafe to run a defective machine till you learn the defects andremedy them."
"Well, I hope you don't think our Sword-World feudalism doesn't havebugs." He gave examples, and then quoted Otto Harkaman about barbarismspreading downward from the top instead of upward from the bottom.
"It may just be," he added, "that there is something fundamentallyunworkable about government itself. As long as _Homo sapiens terra_is a wild animal, which he has always been and always will be untilhe evolves into something different in a million or so years, maybea workable system of government is a political science impossibility,just as transmutation of elements was a physical-science impossibilityas 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 whenit breaks down, hope the next try will work a little better, for alittle longer," Bentrik said.
* * * * *
Malverton grew in the telescopic screens as they came down. The NavySpaceport, where Trask had landed almost two years before, was inwreckage, sprinkled with damaged ships that had been blasted on theground, and slagged by thermonuclear fires. There was fighting inthe air all over the city proper, on building-tops, on the ground,and in the air. That would be the _Damnthing_-_Harpy_-_Curse ofCagn_ Space Vikings. The Royal Palace was the center of one ofhalf a dozen swirls of battle that had condensed out of thegeneral skirmishing.
Paytrik Morland started for it with the first wave ofground-fighters from the _Nemesis_. The Gilgamesh freighter, likemost of her ilk, had huge cargo ports all around; these beganopening and disgorging a swarm of everything from landing-craftand hundred-foot airboats to one man air-cavalry single-mounts.The top landing-stages and terraces of the palace were almostobscured by the flashes of auto-cannon shells and the smoke anddust of projectiles. Then the first vehicles landed, the firingfrom the air stopped, and men fanned out as skirmishers,occasionally firing with small arms.
Trask and Bentrik were in the armory off the vehicle-bay, putting oncombat equipment, when the twelve-year-old Count of Ravary joinedthem and began rummaging for weapons and a helmet.
"You're not going," his father told him. "I'll have enough to worryabout taking care of myself...."
That was the wrong approach. Trask interrupted:
"You're to stay aboard, Count," he said. "As soon as thingsstabilize, Princess Myrna will have to come down. You'll act asher personal escort. And don't think you're being shoved into thebackground. She's Crown Princess, and if she isn't Queen now, shewill be in a few years. Escorting her now will be the foundation ofyour naval career. There isn't a young officer in the Royal Navy whowouldn't trade places with you."
"That was the right way to handle him, Lucas," Bentrik approved,after the boy had gone away, proud of his opportunity and hisresponsibility.
"It'll do just what I said for him." He stopped for a moment, toplay with an idea that had just struck him. "You know, the girl willbe Queen in a few years, if she isn't now. Queens need PrinceConsorts. Your son's a good boy; I liked him the first moment I sawhim, and I've liked him better ever since. He'd be a good man onthe 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 abusingthe Protectorship to marry my son onto the Throne."
"Simon, speaking as one sovereign prince to another, you have a lotto learn. You've learned one important lesson already, that a rulermust be willing to use force and shed blood to enforce his rule. Youhave to learn, too, that a ruler cannot afford to be guided by hisfears of what people will say about him. Not even what history willsay about him. A ruler's only judge is himself."
Bentrik slid the transpex visor of his helmet up and downexperimentally, checked the chambers of his pistol and carbine.
"All that matters to me is the peace and well-being of Marduk. I'llhave to talk it over with ... with my only judge. Well, let's go."
* * * * *
The top terraces were secure when their car landed. More vehicleswere coming down and discharging men; a swarm of landing craft weresinking past the building toward the ground two thousand feet below.Auto-weapons and small arms and light cannon banged, and bombs andrecoilless-rifle shells crashed, on the lower terraces. They put thecar down one of the shaftways until they ran into heavy fire frombelow, at the limit of the advance, and then turned into a broadhallway, 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 hehad been a guest there but it probably wasn't.
> They came to hastily constructed barricades of furniture andstatuary and furnishings, behind which Makann's People's Watchmenand Andray Dunnan's Space Vikings were making resistance. Theyentered rooms dusty with powdered plaster and acrid with powderfumes, littered with corpses. They passed lifter-skids being towedout with wounded. They went through rooms crowded with their ownmen--"_Keep your fingers off things; this isn't a lootingexpedition!_" "_You stupid cretin, how did you know there wasn't aman hiding behind that?_" In one huge room, ballroom or concert roomor something, there were prisoners herded, and men from the_Nemesis_ were setting up polyencephalographic veridicators, sturdychairs with wires and adjustable helmets and translucent globesmounted over them. A couple of Morland's men were hustling aPeople's Watchman to one and strapping him into a chair.
"You know what this is, don't you?" one of them was saying. "This isa veridicator. That globe'll light blue; the moment you try to lieto us, it'll turn red. And the moment it turns red, I'm going tohammer your teeth down your throat with the butt of this pistol."
"Have you found anything out about the King, yet?" Bentrik asked him.
He turned. "No. Nobody we've questioned so far knows anything laterthan a month ago about him. He just disappeared." He was going tosay something else, saw Bentrik's face, and changed his mind.
"He's dead," Bentrik said dully. "They tortured him and brainwashedhim and used him as a ventriloquist's dummy on the screen as long asthey could; when they couldn't let the people see him any more,they stuffed him into a converter."
They did find Zaspar Makann, hours later. Maybe he could have toldthem something, if he had been alive, but he and a few of hisfanatical followers had barricaded themselves in the Throne room anddied trying to defend it. They found Makann on the Throne, the topof his head blown away, a pistol death-gripped in his hand, and theGreat Crown lying on the floor, the velvet inner cap bullet-piercedand splattered with blood and brain tissue. Prince Bentrik picked itup and looked at it disgustedly.
"We'll have to have something done about that," he said. "I reallydidn't think he'd do just this. I thought he wanted to abolish theThrone, not sit on it."
Except for one chandelier smashed and several corpses that had to bedragged out, the Ministerial Council room was intact. They set upheadquarters there. Boake Valkanhayn and several other ship-captainsjoined them. There was fighting going on in several places insidethe Palace, and the city was still in a turmoil. Somebody managedto get in touch with the captains of the _Damnthing_, the _Harpy_and the _Curse of Cagn_ and bring them to the Palace. Trask attemptedto reason with them, to no avail.
"Prince Trask, you're my friend, and you've always dealt fairly withme," Roger-fan-Morvill Esthersan said. "But you know just how farany Space Viking captain can control his crew. These men didn't comehere to correct the political mistakes of Marduk. They came here forwhat they could haul away. I could get myself killed trying to stopthem now...."
"I wouldn't even try," the captain of the _Curse of Cagn_ 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 elsewhereon the planet. Harkaman had landed on one of the big cities to theeast, and the people had risen against Makann's local bosses andwere helping wipe out the People's Watchmen with arms they had beenfurnished. Valkanhayn's exec had landed on a large concentrationcamp where close to ten thousand of Makann's political enemies hadbeen penned; he had distributed all his available weapons and wascalling for more. Gompertz of the _Grendelsbane_ was at Drepplin;he reported just the reverse. The people there had risen in supportof the Makann regime, and he wanted authorization to use nuclearweapons against them.
"Could you talk your people into going to some other city?" Traskasked. "We have a city for you; big industrial center. It ought tobe fine looting. Drepplin."
"The people there are Mardukan subjects, too," Bentrik began. Thenhe shrugged. "It's not what we'd like to do, it's what we have to.By all means, gentlemen. Take your men to Drepplin, and nobody willobject to anything you do."
"And when you have that place looted out, try Abaddon. You wereaground there, Captain Esthersan. You know what all Dunnan left there."
* * * * *
A couple of Space Vikings--no, Royal Army of Tanith men--brought inthe old woman, dirty, in rags, almost exhausted.
"She wants to talk to Prince Bentrik; won't talk to anybody else.Says she knows where the King is."
Bentrik rose quickly, brought her to a chair, poured a glass of winefor her.
"He's still alive, Your Highness. The Crown Princess Melanie and I... I'm sorry, Your Highness; Dowager Crown Princess ... have beentaking care of him, the best way we could. If you'll only comequickly...."
Mikhyl VIII, Planetary King of Marduk, lay on a pallet of filthybedding on the floor of a narrow room behind a mass-energy converterwhich disposed of the rubbish and sewage and generated power forsome of the fixed equipment on one of the middle floors of the eastwing of the palace. There was a bucket of water, and on a roughwooden bench lay a cloth-wrapped bundle of food. A woman, haggardand disheveled, wearing a suit of greasy mechanic's coveralls andnothing else, squatted beside him. The Crown Princess Melanie, whomTrask remembered as the charming and gracious hostess of Cragdale.She tried to rise, and staggered.
"Prince Bentrik! And it's Prince Trask of Tanith!" she cried."Just hurry; get him out of here and to where he can be takencare of. Please." Then she sat down again on the floor and fellover, unconscious.
* * * * *
They couldn't get the story. The Princess Melanie had collapsedcompletely. Her companion, another noblewoman of the court, couldonly ramble disconnectedly. And the King merely lay, bathed andfed in a clean bed, and looked up at them wonderingly, as thoughnothing he saw or heard conveyed any meaning to him. The doctorscould do nothing.
"He has no mind, no more mind than a new-born baby. We can keep himalive, I don't know how long. That's our professional duty. But it'sno kindness to His Majesty."
* * * * *
The little pockets of resistance in the Palace were wiped out,through the next morning and afternoon. All but one, farunderground, below the main power plant. They tried sleep-gas; thedefenders 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 tothe barrel of a carbine ahead of him.
"Is Prince Lucas Trask of Tanith here?" he asked. "I won't speak toanybody else."
They brought Trask quickly. All that was visible of the other manwas the carbine-barrel and the white shirt. When Trask called tohim, he raised his head above the rubble behind which he was hiding.
"Prince Trask, we have Andray Dunnan here; he was leading us, butnow we've disarmed him and are holding him. If we turn him over toyou, will you let us go?"
"If you all come out unarmed, and bring Dunnan with you, I promiseyou, the rest of you will be let outside this building and allowedto go away unharmed."
"All right. We'll be coming out in a minute." The man raised hisvoice. "It's agreed!" he called. "Bring him out."
There were fewer than two score of them. Some wore the uniforms ofhigh officers of the People's Watchmen or of People's Welfare Partyfunctionaries; a few wore the heavily braided short jackets of SpaceViking officers. Among them, they propelled a thin-faced man with apointed beard, and Trask had to look twice at him before herecognized the face of Andray Dunnan. It looked more like the faceof Duke Angus of Wardshaven as he last remembered it. Dunnan lookedat him in incurious contempt.
"Your dotard king couldn't rule without Zaspar Makann, and Makanncouldn't rule without me, and neither can you," he said. "Shoot thisga
ng of turncoats, and I'll rule Marduk for you." He looked at Traskagain. "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. "Standaway from behind him, you people."
"Oh, yes; the poor fool who thought he was going to marry ElaineKarvall. Well, you won't, Lord Trask of Traskon. She loves me, notyou. She's waiting for me now, on Gram...."
Trask shot him through the head. Dunnan's eyes widened in momentaryincredulity; then his knees gave way, and he fell forward on hisface. Trask thumbed on the safety and holstered the pistol, andlooked at the body on the concrete.
It hadn't made the least difference. It had been like shooting asnake, or one of the nasty scorpion-things that infested the oldbuildings in Rivington. Just no more Andray Dunnan.
"Take that carrion and stuff it in a mass-energy converter," hesaid. "And I don't want anybody to mention the name of Andray Dunnanto me again."
He didn't look at them haul Dunnan's body away on a lifter-skid;he watched the fifty-odd leaders of the overthrown misgovernmentof Marduk shamble away to freedom, guarded by Paytrik Morland'sriflemen. Now there was something to reproach himself for; he'dcommitted a separate and distinct crime against Marduk by lettingeach one of them live. Unless recognized and killed by somebodyoutside, every one of them would be at some villainy before nextsunrise. Well, King Simon I could cope with that.
He started when he realized how he had thought of his friend. Well,why not? Mikhyl's mind was dead; his body would not survive it morethan a year. Then a child Queen, and a long regency, and longregencies were dangerous. Better a strong King, in name as well aspower. And the succession could be safeguarded by marrying Stevenand Myrna. Myrna had accepted, at eight, that she must some daymarry for reasons of state; why not her playmate Steven?
And Simon Bentrik would see the necessity. He was neither a fool nora moral coward; he only needed to take some time to adjust to ideas.The rabble who had bought their lives with their leader's had gone,now. Slowly, he followed them, thinking.
Don't press the idea on Simon too hard; just expose him to it andlet him adopt it. And there would be the treaty--Tanith, Marduk,Beowulf, Amaterasu; eventually, treaties with the other civilizedplanets. Nebulously, the idea of a League of Civilized Worlds beganto take shape in his mind.
Be a good idea if he adopted the title of King of Tanith forhimself. And cut loose from the Sword-Worlds; especially cut loosefrom Gram. Let Viktor of Xochitl have it. Or Garvan Spasso. Viktorwouldn't be the last Space Viking to take his ships back againstthe Sword-Worlds. Sooner or later, civilization in the Old Federationwould 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? Kingsusually did. He climbed into the little hall-car and started up along shaft. There was Valerie Alvarath. They'd enjoyed each other'ssociety on the _Nemesis_. He wondered if she would want to make itpermanent, even on a throne....
Elaine was with him. He felt her beside him, almost tangibly. Hervoice 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, andhe knew that she would never return.
Good-by, Elaine.
FIN]
Notes:Inconsistent hyphenation; the former forms were all changed to the latter: Space-Scourge (7) vs. Space Scourge (41) Sun-Goddess (3) vs. Sun Goddess (3)
Jaganath (2) vs. Jagannath (4) Amaterasun (1) vs. Amaterasuan[s] (1) handphone (1) vs. hand-phone (3) planetside (1) vs. planet-side (1) slagpile (1) vs. slag-pile (1) trade planets (3) vs. trade-planets (10) two hand (1) vs. two-hand (1) air cavalry (1) vs. air-cavalry (2) smallarms (1) vs. small arms (5)
Thinkos: Admiral of the Royal Mardukan Navy." [Chap. XIV]was changed to Admiral of the Royal Navy of Gram."
one of the Gram-Marduk freighters, [Chap. XXIII]was changed to one of the Gram-Tanith freighters,
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