Space Viking H. Beam Piper (life books to read .TXT) 📖

while their own planet was being enslaved. He was booed down by everybody else and informed that Tanith was being defended where a planet ought to be, on somebody else’s real estate. When the Bigglersporters emerged from the meeting, they found that their own space-yacht had been commandeered and sent off to Amaterasu and Beowulf for assistance, that the regiment of local infantry they had enlisted from the King of Tradetown had been taken over by the Rivington authorities, and that the Gilgamesh freighter they had chartered to transport them to Gram 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 Makann ships, and the ground-fighting problem of wiping out Makann’s supporters and restoring the Mardukan monarchy. A great many of the people of Marduk would be glad of a chance to turn on Makann, 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 Goddess from Amaterasu. Three independent Space Viking ships were still in orbit on Tanith; they joined the expedition. There would be trouble with them on Marduk; they’d want to loot. Let the Mardukans worry about that. They could charge it off as part of the price for letting Zaspar Makann get into power in the first place.

There were twelve spacecraft in line outside the Moon of Tanith, counting the three independents and the forcibly chartered Gilgamesher troop-transport; that was the biggest fleet Space Vikings had ever assembled in their history. Alvyn Karffard said as much while they were checking the formation by screen.

“It isn’t a Space Viking fleet,” Prince Bentrik differed. “There are only three Space Vikings in it. The rest are the ships of three civilized planets. Tanith, Beowulf and Amaterasu.”

Karffard was surprised. “You mean we’re civilized planets? Like Marduk, or Baldur 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 Steven of Ravary, didn’t seem to appreciate the compliment.

“We are Space Vikings!” he insisted. “And we are going to battle with the Neobarbarians of Zaspar Makann.”

“Well, I won’t argue the last half of it, Steven,” his father told him.

“Are you people done yakking about who’s civilized and who isn’t?” Guatt Kirbey asked. “Then give 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 Kirbey’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, Steven, Count of Ravary, 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 Steven and Mopsy played together. Of course, Myrna was only a girl, and two years younger than Steven, but she was, or at least might be, his sovereign, and beside, 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 Ravary, 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 Kobbly fancied himself as a landscape-painter and spent most of his time arguing techniques with Vann Larch, and Steven’s tutor, Captain Rainer was a normal-space astrogator and found a kindred spirit in Sharll Renner. This left Lady Valerie Alvarath 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 to it that she did not suffer excessively from shipboard ennui.

Sharll Renner and Captain Rainer approached him, during the cocktail hour before dinner, some hundred hours short of emergence.

“We think we’ve figured out where Dunnan’s base is,” Renner said.

“Oh, good!” Everybody else had, on a different planet. “Where’s yours?”

“Abaddon,” the Count of Ravary’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 Boake and Manfred out with their ships, checking our outside planets to see if Prince Viktor might be hiding on one of them? Well, what with the time element, and the way the Honest Horris was shuttling back and forth from Marduk to some place that wasn’t Gimli, and the way Dunnan 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,” Rainer put in. “I suppose because nobody ever thinks of Abaddon for any reason. It’s only a small planet, about four thousand 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 Abbot drive, and if your ship has Dillinghams, why not take a little longer and go to a good planet? So nobody bothered with Abaddon.”

But for Dunnan’s purpose, it would be