Princess Valerie's War

by Terry Mancour

  Princess Valerie’s War

  A Space Viking Novel

  By Terry L. Mancour

  Based on the works of H. Beam Piper

  Copyright ©2011 Terry L. Mancour

  Cover Art by Neal Dillon

  Thanks to H. Beam Piper for a galaxy full of space-opera genius,

  the best legacy of all.

  .

  DEDICATION:

  This book was written for the Heirs to the Realm:

  Owen, Morrigan, and Hayden

  Escape From Planet X!

  When Prince Lucas Trask of Tanith and seventy of his crew were captured by the Atonians, one of the “civilized” worlds of the Old Federation, things seemed bleak: he was tried in a secret court, paraded before the cameras for propaganda, and sentenced to “re-education” at the dreary secret prison known only as Planet X for the crime of being a Space Viking. Using interstellar space ships, high-tech combat troops and nuclear weapons to extort planets of their wealth (the Space Viking’s stock-in-trade) is frowned upon by the corrupt dictatorial bureaucracy of Aton – and Trask is in the way of their imperial aspirations, to boot.

  Once on Planet X, however, it becomes clear that Aton is involved in something far more sinister – a conspiricy going all the way to the distant Sword Worlds, five thousand light-years away! Lucas and his men discover clues to plots and conspiracies over a century old inside an ancient wreck on Planet X – could they also lead to a way to escape the miserable prison world?

  Meanwhile, back on Tanith, Lucas’ beautiful wife Princess Valerie is on the trail of Garvan Spasso, an old adversary who has tried and failed to kill the Trasks in the past – and succeeded in kidnapping their infant daughter, Princess Elaine. The beleaguered Valerie has ordered every resource at her command to find her daughter and punish her kidnapper, but Spasso’s ransom for the infant Heir is no less than the throne of Tanith, itself!

  Princess Valerie has her allies: Admiral Harkaman, Count Valkanhayn, her fanatical Golden Hand guardsmen, and an embarrassing number of captured warships and enthusiastic Space Vikings. She also has the help of the mysterious Mr. Dawes, a very helpful emissary from the enigmatic figured known as the Wizard, whose reasons for helping Tanith are a mystery – and not necessarily a pleasant one.

  But she’ll need all the help she can get, with her charismatic husband lost among the stars. Tanith has plenty of enemies: the rival Space Viking world of Xochitl, the Sword Worlds of Gram and Haulteclere, and of course the despicable Space Viking turned would-be usurper Garvan Spasso. With her husband missing, her daughter gone, and her nobles grumbling about the state of the Realm, the former schoolteacher from civilized Marduk suddenly has to learn the difference between a reigning princess consort and a ruling monarch of a Space Viking planet in a time of war – Princess Valerie’s War!

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: The Capture of Prince Lucas

  Chapter Two: Winter in Rivington

  Chapter Three: The Trials Of Lucas Task

  Chapter Four: The Wizard’s Lackey

  Chapter Five: The Rescue Of Princess Elaine

  Chapter Six: Welcome To Planet X

  Chapter Seven: The Battle Of Mertha

  Chapter Eight: The Battle Of Tanith

  Chapter Nine: Verwoerd’s Pledge

  Chapter Ten: The Winter Ball

  Chapter Eleven: The Iron Crown

  Chapter Twelve: Jailbreak!

  Chapter Thirteen: Escape From Planet X!

  Chapter Fourteen: War And Roses

  Chapter Fifteen: The Marvels Of Mr. Dawes

  Chapter Sixteen: Uneasy Allies

  Chapter Seventeen: Tanith Goes To War!

  Chapter Eighteen: Baroness Cragsdale

  Chapter Nineteen: Assassin!

  Chapter Twenty: The Sacking Of Kumarbi

  EPILOGUE

  Chapter One:

  The Capture Of Prince Lucas

  The damage board of the Nemesis glowed red, bathing the bridge in an eerie, sanguine glow as Prince Lucas Trask hurriedly strapped into his combat spacesuit. Klaxons and alarms sounded all around him, smoke from burnt circuitry and smashed displays filled the air with an acrid smell, and the loud hiss of escaping gas didn’t bode well.

  All around him his men were also getting into space combat suits, armor-plated and pressurized. They’d keep a man alive for up to sixteen hours, if the suit’s power held and the skin remained unpunctured. The armored exterior could take a 10mm round at point-blank range, and the radiation shielding – made of the unique light-weight Joris Monster tallow – would allow him to exist in all but the most extreme extravehicular environments without fear of radiation poisoning. It was about as much protection as a man could ask for, in a damaged ship in the middle of a battle.

  Of course there wasn’t much actual battle going on at this point. The Nemesis had been climbing out of a planet called Shapash, where they’d just captured three enemy ships without firing a shot, when four massive ships of the Planetary Navy of Aton appeared, making their escape unlikely.

  The Nemesis was a tough ship – she’d been designed to handle heavy ship-to-ship combat – but four-against-one when you’re at the bottom of a gravity-well was suicide. When three of the four ships outsized you, it was a glorious suicide.

  Things couldn’t have been worse: casualties were low, because the Nemesis was operating with a skeleton crew. The majority of the seasoned officers and crewmen had been spread out amongst the three recently-captured ships to fly them home to Tanith – ships still lying vulnerable on the ground as the Atonians closed in. Ordinarily it took a crew of over three hundred to run a complicated warship the size of the Nemesis, but there were less than two hundred able-bodied spacemen aboard now, and virtually no gun crews available to target and load weapons. Not that there were many weapons left to fire, either – the Nemesis had just engaged in a prolonged space battle over Amateratsu, and had yet to resupply. Ammunition was critically low. What she had loaded in her tubes would nearly deplete the arsenal.

  Outnumbered. Outsized. Outgunned. Outmanned. Lucas had been in a tough spot. He’d had to get creative.

  He had stalled for time as long as he could as the Nemesis climbed fifty, sixty thousand miles away from the planet below. He’d had a message sent by Sword World impulse code to the three captured ships on the ground while he verbally fenced with the Atonian captain who claimed he had an Atonian warrant for Lucas’ arrest.

  “You know this is bound to strain relations between your world and Marduk,” Prince Trask said, reasonably, to the man in the viewscreen a few hours ago. “Prince-Regent Simon and I are friends. And the people of Marduk still look quite favorably on me and Tanith.” Marduk was one of the few worlds that had kept the old Terran Federation level of civilization uninterrupted, while the more than 300-planet alliance slowly disintegrated around it several centuries ago. Most worlds, deprived of interstellar contact, had lost any kind of advanced civilization, and had sunk into neobarbarism. Aton had nearly done that itself.

  Originally a colony of Marduk’s, it had developed an impressive civilization of its own. Eventually Aton had left Marduk’s sphere of influence, and almost had slipped into neobarbarism – until an off-world raid by Space Vikings had unified the Atonian factions and re-energized them. Now they had a trading empire greater than their mother-world’s. The difference was that Marduk was a planetary monarchy, while Aton was a brutal dictatorship wrapped in a guise of social progressiveness and democracy.

  “The People and Council of Aton don’t give a damn about which bandits the Mardukans want to invite to dinner,” Captain Hayes said, shaking his head. “You are guilty of crimes against the Atonian people, Lucas Trask, and I’m here to bring you to
justice. Close your gunports, heave to and prepare to be boarded. You will surrender your vessel at once.”

  “That is highly unlikely,” Lucas said, as he tapped out instructions on his console. “As a sitting head of state, I have diplomatic immunity,” he reminded the enemy commander.

  Theoretically, at least. Lucas’ planet, Tanith, was once also a Federation colony world, settled towards the very end of the Federation as an institution. It had decivilized quickly, and its people had enjoyed three or four centuries of brutal, medieval-level lifestyle before Lucas and his men showed up ten years ago. Lucas’ people were interstellar robbers and murderers, who roamed the Old Federation’s ruins and picked at its bones. The Space Vikings, from the Sword Worlds. Usually, a Space Viking raid meant misery and death for a world, in the short run, as the invaders used advanced technologies to suppress the defense of anything worthy hauling aboard a space ship.

  But on Tanith, Lucas and his Space Vikings didn’t come to the fallow world to plunder – they came to build. Tanith was originally an advanced raiding base, three thousand light-years from the far cluster of the Sword Worlds. And after his last liege lord went crazy and got deposed by one who was simply vile, Lucas had gone into business for himself and now ruled the pretty world, with his new wife, Valerie. Who would be very cross with him if he got blown up before he saw their baby daughter again.

  “Aton does not recognize Tanith, nor your overlordship, Trask,” the man said, gravely. “Come, now. Let’s not get that nice ship of yours all messed up.” Lucas didn’t know a lot about Atonian ships – they were based on Old Federation designs, whereas the Sword World ships of the Space Viking were based on old System States Alliance designs – but he could tell the kind of activity one sees in the background when battle is preparing to be engaged.

  “It wouldn’t be my ship I’d be worried about,” Lucas sneered. He was trying to goad the man into taking as long as possible. Every minute saw them further out of Shapash’s gravity well, and once they reached the 100,000 mile threshold, they could safely engage the hyperdrive that would take them out of the universe for a while, and towards someplace friendlier. “The Nemesis isn’t some Hathoran pirate scow, Captain. This is a ship of war. But that’s not saying I can’t be convinced. Tell me, what kind of trial would I have, on this world that refuses to acknowledge my sovereignty?” Lucas casually scribbled a note and passed it to Lt. Delio, his bodyguard, to had hand to his executive officer.

  “A fair one,” the other captain assured. “But since you’ve as much as admitted to blockading Shamash, and to terrorizing that world with the threat of nuclear weapons, I somehow don’t think the outcome is in doubt.”

  “A good point,” Lucas nodded. “Still, that’s hardly incentive for me to surrender, isn’t it?”

  “You’d be alive,” Hayes said, flatly. “Aton has a very high threshold for capital cases – with a good advocate, you could spend the rest of your life in a reasonably comfortable prison. And who knows how politics will evolve? There’s a possibility of your eventual release, after a proper re-education. You might consider that a worthwhile alternative. And your men – how many of their lives would you throw away, to satisfy some perverse sense of honor, Trask?”

  “It’s not a matter of my honor, you see,” Lucas admitted. “I’m just looking for my best deal. And I’m thinking that I could probably take you, once you tried to board.”

  That made the other captain laugh, genuinely. “I have two platoons of Republican Marines on board, Trask. They specialize in ship-board assaults. And they won’t be gentle.”

  “And you obviously are unfamiliar with just how many ground fighters a Space Viking ship carries,” Lucas boasted. “When we raid a world, it takes hundreds of men to conduct an assault and carry out the loot – under fire, usually. You want me?” he taunted. “You’ll have to get through my men, first.” He hoped Delio was looking properly sinister. His bodyguard was physically large, if well-featured, and had a sharp point to his chin and a bearing that could make him quite intimidating, when he tried. And he could deliver a deadly sneer like no one Lucas had ever seen.

  “If that’s the way you want it,” his counterpart shrugged. “Go load your guns and be damned. Prepare to be boarded.”

  Lucas told him in colorful detail just where Hayes and his men were welcome to board, and signed off.

  “His Highness does realize,” Delio pointed out, “that we have virtually no ground fighters on board at the moment? The few who remain are busy staring up at the missile launchers with a puzzled look on their faces.”

  “His Highness does, indeed, realize it,” Lucas chuckled. “I wasn’t lying. I just pointed out that the Atonians were unfamiliar with Space Viking ships. It made him want to board us and engage us hand-to-hand. Which means he’s getting much, much closer . . .”

  “Lead enemy ship in missile range in thirty seconds!” the young Signals-and-Detection officer, Ensign Guilford Roupe, called out. “We’ll still be thirty thousand miles too close to the planet to jump into hyperspace!” he added, anxiously.

  “All hands, prepare for violent maneuvers,” Lucas immediately announced over the shipboard intercom. “Guns-and-missiles – are we ready?”

  “All weapons set for auto fire, locked and ready!” a young ensign, not more than twenty years old, squeaked. Lucas’ regular ordinance officer was on the planet below, the prize captain of the captured fifteen-hundred foot cruiser City of Diedriksburg. But then Lucas hadn’t anticipated fighting anything more than a hangover for the next few days. There had been a lot of field promotions, trying to staff three ships enough crewmen to get them back home. This young man had finished only a year of the two-year astrogation course at the Naval Academy – ordinarily, he was a mess officer. Luckily, the kid’s job was pretty simple.

  “In range in five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .”

  “Hold fire!” Lucas commanded. “I want them closer . . .” He watched patiently as the four ships descended toward the two-thousand foot wide globe of the Nemesis on the screen, two of the battleships taking up flanking positions while the other two maneuvered to board the outnumbered ship.

  “NOW!” Lucas roared. In seconds lances of high-explosive death blasted silently out of their silos towards the Sol Invictus, far too close for the other ship to have a chance to launch counter-missiles. At least two of the missiles were nuclear, the last two small 15 kiloton devices left in the armory. Neither one – nor even both together – would be enough to destroy the Atonian ship, but they would cause extensive damage.

  No matter how well your collapsium shielding is built, atomic weaponry had a way of damaging a ship even if the blast didn’t penetrate the hull. The great guns nestled around the equator, designed just for such close-range battle, hammered away mindlessly into space, spewing the last of the Nemesis’ collapsium-plated shells at high velocities into the hull of the larger ship until their automatic feeds were empty. By the pause before the Atonian ship’s guns returned fire, Lucas saw just how off-guard he had caught the enemy commander.

  “Several direct hits!” Ensign Roupe, the Signals-and-Detection officer, howled. “All across her southern hemisphere, looks like we did some damage and – Highness! – missiles launching!”

  “That’s our cue to leave,” Lucas said, expectantly. “Distance to horizon?”

  “Still twenty thousand miles to safe hyperspace distance,” the young astrogator, Ensign Wilhelm Pierce called, doubtfully. He wasn’t happy with his orders – but then having more experience at the board would have only made him more unhappy with what Lucas planned to do.

  “Do it, Mr. Pierce! Everyone, brace yourselves!”

  “Yes, Highness!” the he said, resolutely, his hand hesitating on the large red lever for just a moment before he turned it and pushed it in.

  When a Dillingham hyperspatial drive was activated, it created a field of instability around itself in a perfect sphere and separated it from the rest of reali
ty, pulling it into a space in which the common rules of physics – such as the speed of light, or even quantum physics, for that matter – didn’t quite apply in the same way anymore.

  Since the effect was gravitational in its inception, proximity to a larger, denser gravity field could and did have a serious adverse effect on the ship, as the Dillingham field tried to unsuccessfully coalesce in the strong gravity well. The field collapsed, and the resulting gravitational shock usually propelled the ship enormous distances away from the center of the gravity well – like a cork held under water finally being allowed to shoot to the surface. That was why space ships approached their planetfalls carefully, making a series of microjumps that took them as close to the hyperspatial horizon of a planet as possible without risking “kick-back”. The effect was usually studiously avoided, due to the sometimes violent forces that resulted and the intense feedback that inevitably wore on the equipment. A good hyperspatial astrogator could plop you down within a few hundred meters of the horizon.