Space Viking, H. Beam Piper [best classic romance novels txt] 📗

Trask sat down again, saw that his cigarette had burned almost to the tip, and lit a fresh one from it, wishing he could be as calm about it as Harkaman. Three minutes later, the control tower picked up two emergences at a light-second and a half, a thousand or so miles apart. Then the screen flickered, and Boake Valkanhayn was looking out of it, from the desk in the newly refurbished command room of the Space Scourge.

He was a newly refurbished Boake Valkanhayn, too. His heavily braided captain’s jacket looked like the work of one of the better tailors on Gram, and on the breast was a large and ornate knight’s star, of unfamiliar design, bearing, among other things, the sword and atom-symbol of the house of Ward.

“Prince Trask; Count Harkaman,” he greeted. “Space Scourge, Tanith; thirty-two hundred hours out of Wardshaven on Gram, Baron Valkanhayn commanding, accompanied by chartered freighter Rozinante, Durendal, Captain Morbes. Requesting permission and instructions to orbit in.”

“Baron Valkanhayn?” Harkaman asked.

“That’s right,” Valkanhayn grinned. “And I have a vellum scroll the size of a blanket to prove it. I have a whole cargo of scrolls. One says you’re Otto, Count Harkaman, and another says you’re Admiral of the Royal Navy of Gram.”

“He did it!” Trask cried. “He made himself King of Gram!”

“That’s right. And you’re his trusty and well-loved Lucas, Prince Trask, and Viceroy of his Majesty’s Realm of Tanith.”

Harkaman bristled at that. “The Gehenna you say. This is our Realm of Tanith.”

“Is his Majesty making it worth while to accept his sovereignty?” Trask asked. “That is, beside vellum scrolls?”

Valkanhayn was still grinning. “Wait till we start sending cargo down. And wait till you see what’s crammed into the other ship.”

“Did Spasso come back with you?” Harkaman asked.

“Oh, no. Sir Garvan Spasso entered the service of his Majesty, King Angus. He is Chief of Police at Glaspyth, now, and nobody can call what he’s doing there chicken-stealing, either. Any chickens he steals, he steals the whole farm to get them.”

That didn’t sound good. Spasso could make King Angus’ name stink all over Glaspyth. Or maybe he’d allow Spasso to crush the adherents of Omfray, and then hang him for his oppression of the people. He’d read about somebody who’d done something like that, in one of Harkaman’s Old Terran history books.

Baron Rathmore had stayed on Gram; so had Rolve Hemmerding. The rest of the gentlemen-adventurers, all with shiny new titles of nobility, had returned. From them, as the two ships were getting into orbit, he learned what had happened on Gram since the Nemesis had spaced out.

Duke Angus had announced his intention of carrying on with the Tanith Adventure, and had started construction of a new ship at the Gorram yards. This had served plausibly to explain all the activities of preparation for the invasion of Glaspyth, and had deceived Duke Omfray completely. Omfray had already started a ship of his own; the entire resources of his duchy were thrown into an effort to get her finished and to space ahead of the one Angus was building. Work was going on frantically on her when the Wardshaven invaders hit Glaspyth; she was now nearing completion as a unit of the Royal Navy. Duke Omfray had managed to escape to Didreksburg; when Angus’ troops moved in on the latter duchy, he had escaped again, this time off-planet. He was now eating the bitter bread of exile at the court of his wife’s uncle, the King of Haulteclere.

The Count of Newhaven, the Duke of Bigglersport, and the Lord of Northport, all of whom had favored the establishment of a planetary monarchy, had immediately acknowledged Angus as their sovereign. So, with a knife at his throat, had the Duke of Didreksburg. Many other feudal magnates had refused to surrender their sovereignty. That might mean fighting, but Paytrik, now Baron, Morland, doubted it.

“The Space Scourge stopped that,” he said. “When they heard about the base here, and saw what we’d shipped to Gram, they started changing their minds. Only subjects of King Angus will be allowed to invest in the Tanith Adventure.”

As for accepting King Angus’ annexation of Tanith and accepting his sovereignty, that would also be advisable. They would need a Sword World outlet for the loot they took or obtained by barter from other Space Vikings, and until they had adequate industries of their own, they would be dependent on Gram for many things which could not be gotten by raiding.

“I suppose the King knows I’m not out here for my health, or his profit?” he asked Lord Valpry, during one of the screen conversations as the Space Scourge was getting into orbit. “My business out here is Andray Dunnan.”

“Oh, yes,” the Wardshaven noble replied. “In fact, he told me, in so many words, that he would be most happy if you sent him his nephew’s head in a block of lucite. What Dunnan did touched his honor, too. Sovereign princes never see any humor in things like that.”

“I suppose he knows that sooner or later Dunnan will try to attack Tanith?”

“If he doesn’t, it isn’t because I didn’t tell him often enough. When you see the defense armament we’re bringing, you’ll think he does.”

It was impressive, but nothing to the engineering and industrial equipment. Mining robots for use on the iron Moon of Tanith, and normal-space transports for the fifty thousand mile run between planet and satellite. A collapsed-matter producer; now they could collapsium-plate their own shielding. A small, fully robotic, steel mill that could be set up and operated on the satellite. Industrial robots, and machinery to make machinery. And, best of all, two hundred engineers and highly skilled technicians.

Quite a few industrial baronies on Gram would realize, before long, what they had lost in those men. He wondered what Lord Trask of Traskon would have thought about that.

The Prince of Tanith was no longer interested in what happened to Gram. Maybe, if things prospered