The air was thick with the noise of the approval, and Valerie let it wash over her in one intoxicating wave after another. As it settled, she took a seat on her vacant throne, and waited for the cameras to catch up with her.
“Now, we are a deadly people, but we are not a numerous one. We cannot hope to fight Aton directly, as they would wish. Nor are we so proud as to think that we could prevail against them, gathered in their strength. So we shall prosecute this war carefully, with much deliberation. And we shall employ every ally we can. Since I cannot in good conscience send our fleet away from Tanith and leave her defenseless, we shall engage our friends to help us fight.
“To this end, the Princely Realm of Tanith will be henceforth offering Letters of Marque and Reprise to any and all Space Viking ships who wish them. Under these letters, these ships may act as privateers, raiding Atonian commerce, capturing Atonian merchant ships, disrupting Atonian trade. For every Atonian ship confirmed destroyed, a bounty of 50,000 stellars will be paid to the captain and crew. For ever Atonian ship captured as a prize, a bounty of 100,000 stellars will be paid, and the Realm will purchase the ship and cargo at fair price. And any ship bearing our Letter shall find safe haven at our port, their crews free to enjoy our hospitality, and their damage from those battles repaired at the expense of the Realm.
“I will prevail on Prince Simon of Marduk, my long-time friend and a friend to the Realm, to protest to the Atonian rabble in the strongest possible terms,” she continued. “I do not ask our Mardukan allies to go to war with us, as that would be imposing our debt on our good friends. But I now call on all of those Mardukans who are in sympathy with us today to agitate on our behalf. Let the people of Aton know that their despicable actions are not the mark of a civilized world. Prince Lucas has been a great friend to Marduk, despite the outrageous lies of the Atonians, and I call upon all good Mardukans of conscience to support us morally in this, our time of struggle.
“But that is not all, my people,” she continued. “I am ordering the Warlord to dispatch the Golden Hand, the Star of Tanith, and the Queen Flavia to haunt the systems of the Atonian trade worlds. Wherever their vile sunburst is found, our men will be there to shoot at it. We shall deprive them of their resources and force them to venture into the void to find us – but they will discover that the fury of Tanith is such that they will beg us to return our prince! Are you with me, my people?”
“WAR! WAR! WAR!” the chant continued.
“Then war it shall be,” she pronounced, with an air of finality. She waited again until the noise subsided, then looked directly into the camera. “Until he dances with the baroness at the sandcastle, until he holds his baby girl once again in his arms, until Prince Lucas is back ruling beside me, the galaxy shall run red with Atonian blood!”
“Dear God,” she heard Morland mutter to Harkaman behind her, “what have we gotten ourselves into?”
Chapter Eleven:
The Iron Crown
They’re really quite nice fellows, actually,” Max confided to Lucas as he and his men climbed down off of the makeshift air jeep. There were easily twenty men surrounding them, crossbows, bows, spears and knives pointed in their direction. “Easy, my friends! It’s me, your friend Max! And I have guests! Where’s the Sergeant-on-duty?” he demanded.
The neobarbarians seemed to relax when they heard Max’s voice, but they were never entirely off of their guard. Indeed, the little camp under the eaves of the spaceship’s landing legs boasted patrols, a watchtower, of sorts, on top of one of the legs and reached by rope; there were sentries at the perimeter peering intently into the darkness, and a brace of well-muscled savages guarding the entrance to the artificial cave which Max led them to.
An even larger man met them there. Shirtless, his well-tanned skin was bristling with muscles. He bore tattoos on his arms and chest, some familiar designs, some wholly novel, and his hair was cut down to the scalp, save for a lock in the back that grew so long it reached his shoulders. He grinned when he saw Max, and snapped a military salute as smart as any Royal Army of Tanith soldier
“Welcome, Max!” the man boomed, grinning broadly but hesitantly. “You bring guests, I hear?”
“Three, Captain Carundun. This is Luke Trask, Armand Delio, and Galen Sebastian. Friends of mine from camp who might be able to open this can,” he said, gesturing up to the ship above them. He paused, and then looked back at his new friends curiously. “It is a Sword World ship, isn’t it? Either that or a really well-preserved System States Alliance vessel. I mean, I just figured--”
“Oh, yes, definitely a Sword World design,” Delio assured him. “This is an older model, of course, based on the Joyeuse military designs of the early expansion period. Those designs were all System States Alliance originals, of course. The ancestor of this ship was the Werewolf-class destroyer.
“Built for heavy combat, but not a lot of cargo space, compared to some. And not terribly fast, either, if I recall, in normal space. On Tanith we use a slightly different design, preferring the Zombie-class battleship derivative. More cargo room, slightly lighter armor, and significantly more agile.”
“The man knows his ships,” Max said, reverently. “All right, smart-guy, now the million-sol question: how can you get past the security locks? Because when they dropped this poor thing off here, they sealed her up tight. I’m not exactly a novice when it comes to getting into places I’m not supposed to be,” he said, nonchalantly, “but I’ve tried every code and sequence I know, stuff going back to the third century, AE, and I’m flummoxed. Every old Federation code, the trading guild codes, the piece-of-crap stuff the Atonians use, and nothing,” he said, taking his spectacles off in exasperation. “The good Captain and his men were good enough to move a mountain of mud out of the way to get to the access hatch, but then there’s just this screen and I . . .” he trailed off in frustration.
“Let me take a look,” Lt. Delio volunteered. “I know a thing or two about Sword World codes. Mr. Sebastian and I will be happy to investigate, if someone will be good enough to lead the way?”
“Here, take this,” Max said, handing the Golden Hand officer one of his home-made electric torches. “It’s at the very nadir of the ship. It’s dark down there.” Delio nodded and followed one of the savages Captain Carundun detailed to lead the way. The Captain, a man in his fifties with a body of a man in his thirties and adorned like the legendary Sistine Chapel, was keen to stay and get to know his guest. And like so many neobarbarians, his culture had very specific guidance about the importance of hospitality. Lucas had encountered a similar primitive welcome frequently on Tanith, and occasionally on Khepra and other low-technology worlds. He knew how important tribal peoples took such things, and took more care with etiquette than he had at the Volund Conference. After all, at the meeting of civilized diplomats, it had been highly unlikely that one of his hosts would suddenly impale him on spear point for missing a cue.
But that didn’t stop him from asking the most obvious of questions.
“So what’s in the name of all that is holy is a Sword World ship doing here?” Lucas asked, curious. “Wherever ‘here’ might be?”
“The short answer? It came from Aton. This is where Aton puts stuff it wants to forget about,” Max shrugged. “Their own private gulag of inconvenient garbage. Did you know that there are members of the original Atonian royal family living here, in exile, after forty years? And about a thousand members of the old Atonian aristocracy and oligarchs who didn’t agree with the Party after they took power? No chance of some long-lost heir coming forth and claiming the ceremonial throne, now is there? Not when no one knows who he is. In another generation, he won’t even know who he is, if you understand me.”
“But that doesn’t explain about the Sword World ship,” Lucas pointed out.
“Bad memories?” he shrugged again, as he led Lucas to a small area under the ship’s filthy hull that had been outfitted as a kind of social area by the Sifians. “Their collection got
too large? It’s stuffed with the corpses of former Party officials and their concubines? I dunno. No idea. And don’t care. As long as she works. I mean, I’ve crawled around every bit of her outtards, and she seems intact apart from some minor combat damage. But there’s no telling what’s inside her collapsium hide. She’s sealed up tighter than a proctor’s daughter!”
Lucas had no idea what that meant, but assumed it was a superlative.
“I’m almost as curious about our hosts,” Lucas said, realizing he wasn’t going to learn anything new until Lt. Delio made his report. “Your men seem very alert in their duties,” he began, addressing Captain Carundun directly with a nod of his head. Praising the puissance of a tribe’s warriors was a fundamental bit of diplomacy. It worked on commanders of tribal savages and spacegoing generals alike.
“You honor me with your notice,” the savage nodded, enthusiastically. “Though they were not all originally under my command, we have set aside our regimental differences and agreed to cooperate against the Hated Atonians.” Lucas could hear the capital letters.
“You have fought against them long?” Lucas asked, surprised. He couldn’t imagine a tribal people holding out against a civilized military force with contragravity and automatic weapons.
“Let me tell you about the Sifians,” Max chuckled, as he led Lucas and the Captain over to the fire, where a number of unidentifiable things on sticks were roasting over a bead of coals. “Because if I let the Captain there try to do it, you’ll hear a month full of oral traditions that, while highly entertaining,” he assured Captain Carundun, hands outstretched, “are nonetheless not as instructive as they might be. Believe me, I sat through it, and I can summarize without all of the intriguing tales of ancestors and mythical beings and such. With your permission, Cap?”
The chieftain sighed, rolled his eyes, but nodded as he grabbed a skewer.
“Sifians. Tough people. Sif is a small world, way out past Odin’s backyard. Used to look to Odin, too, until Aton took it away from them a few wars back. It’s not much to look at -- better than this place by far, but not a huge amount of land, and much of it isn’t worth living on. But it’s near to a couple of other stars with habitable worlds, so the Old Federation went and put a military base there in the 400s to look after some of the other colonies in the neighborhood.
“When the System States War happened, Sif became a regional training center for the Federation Marines, as well as the Army. After the War ended, the Army base was given over to the civilians, but the Marines were left there, guarding a strategic reserve of uranium ore in one of the crappier parts of the planet. Rough territory, desert mountains, barely arable. Made a great training base, though.
“Then funny thing happens: Federation falls apart. Most of the Army combat troops are reassigned to more pressing duties than guarding a pile of rocks no one was interested in at the time, anyway. But the Marine training center is left intact. A couple of thousand Federation Marines, in a big empty Army barracks out in the middle of nowhere. Eventually the ships stop coming with supplies. And then they just stopped coming.
“So then the Marines start recruiting locally, keeping up the pretense that they’re a real military unit. Even help out the civvies on the other continent, every now and then, for a few decades. But even though they could have owned the joint if they wanted to, they stick to the Marine code and don’t interfere. They keep to their crappy lands and de-evolve into a tribal hunter-gatherer culture, as the rest of the planet de-evolves into a more agricultural culture.
“But the Marines persist in being Marines. They still train. They still drill. In fact, without any real foes or missions except guarding the uranium, that’s about all they do, from birth. They turn it into a big cultural thing, and before you know it they’re the deadliest warriors on the planet. Other Sifians leave them alone. All they demand is occasional tribute -- sorry, ‘recruits’ from the other villages. And they still help out the civvies from time to time, even when they’re at the Neolithic level.
“A couple of centuries pass, and then Odin re-establishes contact. They try to explain that there is no Federation out there any more, but the Marines don’t care. They have their sacred Orders, sent from on high by the holy Command, and until the proper codes are given, they won’t stand relieved. Of course, no one remembers what the codes were, even the savages, but that’s their religion now.
“Odin found them amusing and even recruited some of them for their armed forces -- they’re wicked good fighters,” Max assured him. “Don’t matter what, just like the legendary Federation Marines of old, they can kill a man with a toothpick and a smile. Odin mostly left ‘em alone to, outside of a couple of anthropologists.
“But then Aton got hold of Sif, and things started to go bad. The Atonians wanted the uranium, see, and that violated the sacred Orders. Atonians didn’t care about the sacred Orders, they had their sacred Party, and so they tried to push the Sifian Marines off of their land. Big mistake. Even with primitive weapons, the Marines had four hundred years to prepare defenses. Aton got its lunch eaten; one unit after another disappeared in Marineland, never to be seen again. See, the Atonians think it’s just another native insurgency. What they don’t understand is that these blokes have been waiting around for four centuries, just waiting for someone to come along and give them a good fight.”
“Sound like good men,” Lucas nodded.
“As soldiers go, they’re ideal. They’ve been fighting the Atonians for over twenty years now. They used primitive weapons at first, like the ones they have now, and the Atonians lost expedition after expedition in their lands. That was bad enough. But now they’re starting to get some advanced weapons. They have . . . benefactors who obviously don’t like Aton, who want to make sure the Sifians get a chance to fight for their planet. That’s where me and my former employer came in. He ran three, four trips a year to Sif, and it was usually a milk run. But not this time. And when they grabbed Carundun and his men at the rendezvous point, they got me, too. “
“I bear my friend Max no blame,” Carundun assured Lucas. “The Hated Atonians were constantly sending their machines into my camps to overhear our Orders.”
“It just as easily could have been the fault of Captain Hubert,” demurred Max. “Water under the bridge, old man.”
“You don’t look the type to give up without a fight,” Lucas observed. Indeed, the men around him moved like jungle predators, and their eyes seemed to see everything. They held their primitive arms with the ease of long practice, as if the spears and crossbows were extensions of their own limbs.
“Sleep gas,” Max nodded, chewing some of the . . . whatever it was. “As it was, they killed General Hadaiffala, Colonel Ansalada, and about a score of others when they swooped in and we were all staggering around because of the gas. If they hadn’t been betrayed, the Marines would be fighting until the end of time.”
“Intriguing,” Lucas nodded. “I bet if they learned how to use advanced weapons--”
“Oh, they know how,” Max chuckled as he offered Lucas a skewer. Whatever the slug-like knot was on the end of the stick, it glistened as the fat popped in the heat of the coals. The aroma was not unappetizing, and Lucas realized that the Atonian rations he’d eaten hours before were a distant memory.
“Captured weapons?” Lucas asked, grudgingly taking a skewer. It didn’t take a man long to teach himself how to fire a semi-automatic rifle or pistol. Keeping it maintained and loaded, however, took a little more sophistication. He’d run into that problem during the militia training on Tanith.
“Oh, no, they know it before they get their first knife,” Max explained, as Lucas took the first eventful bite of the white meat-like substance. “Before they lost microbooks and electricity completely, some Sifian Marine genius with some foresight engraved most of the drill manuals and technical manuals on sacred cavern walls. Diagrams and all. There’s miles of it. There are some Sifian marines who have never seen a B21 Infantry Rifle, but could
strip it and clean it without a problem, and consider it a sacred honor to have done so. You put a gun in their hands, they can use it. Guns, knives, wire, rocks, anything. They start training, boys and girls, from the time they’re four. They learn unarmed combat, stealth, pretty much the entire Old Federation Marine Corps training program, like you know nursery rhymes. And they know it cold before they reach maturity.”
“If they fight the Atonians, that makes them friends in my book,” Lucas decided.
“We fight them,” the Captain said with a wolfish grin. “They can take us to this . . . place, but we will return. No power can stop the Marines from achieving their objective,” he said, as if it were a fact of the universe.
“So how did they end up out here, under this thing?” Lucas asked as he chewed. It wasn’t too bad, actually, if you focused on the char from the fire and ignored the . . . well, call it flavor.
“When we got here, they didn’t get along with . . . well, with anyone, really,” Max explained. “But they were too dangerous to keep in camp because, well, eventually one of the gangs would have to slaughter them, and most of them are pretty decent cribbage players, believe it or not.
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