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

Then they switched the call from the pinnace over to his screen, and Prince Simon Bentrik was looking out of it.

“I’m glad to see you! Your wife and son are here, worried about you, but safe and well.” He turned to shout to somebody to find young Count Steven of Ravary and tell him to tell his mother. “How are you?”

“I had a broken leg when I left Moonbase, but that’s mended on the way,” Bentrik said. “I have little Princess Myrna aboard with me. For all I know, she’s Queen of Marduk, now.” He gulped slightly. “Prince Trask, we’ve come as beggars. We’re begging help for our planet.”

“You’ve come as honored guests, and you’ll get all the help we can give you.” He blessed the Xochitl invasion scare, and the big lie which was rapidly ceasing to be a lie; Tanith had the ships and men and the will to act. “What happened? Makann deposed the King and took over?”

It came to that, Bentrik told him. It had started even before the election. The People’s Watchmen had possessed weapons that had been made openly and legally on Marduk for trade to the Neobarbarian planets and then clandestinely diverted to secret People’s Welfare arsenals. Some of the police had gone over to Makann; the rest had been terrorized into inaction. There had been riots fomented in working-class districts of all the cities as pretexts for further terrorization. The election had been a farce of bribery and intimidation. Even so, Makann’s party had failed of a complete majority in the Chamber of Representatives, and had been compelled to patch up a shady coalition in order to elect a favorable Chamber of Delegates.

“And, of course, they elected Makann Chancellor; that did it,” Bentrik said. “All the opposition leaders in the Chamber of Representatives have been arrested, on all kinds of ridiculous charges⁠—sex-crimes, receiving bribes, being in the pay of foreign powers, nothing too absurd. Then they rammed through a law empowering the Chancellor to fill vacancies in the Chamber of Representatives by appointment.”

“Why did the Crown Prince lend himself to a thing like that?”

“He hoped that he could exercise some control. The Royal Family is an almost holy symbol to the people. Even Makann was forced to pretend loyalty to the King and the Crown Prince.⁠ ⁠…”

“It didn’t work; he played right into Makann’s hands. What happened?”

The Crown Prince had been assassinated. The assassin, an unknown man believed to be a Gilgamesher, had been shot to death by People’s Watchmen guarding Prince Edvard at once. Immediately Makann had seized the Royal Palace to protect the King, and immediately there had been massacres by People’s Watchmen everywhere. The Mardukan Planetary Army had ceased to exist; Makann’s story was that there had been a military plot against the King and the government. Scattered over the planet in small detachments, the army had been wiped out in two nights and a day. Now Makann was recruiting it up again, exclusively from the People’s Welfare Party.

“You weren’t just sitting on your hands, were you?”

“Oh, no,” Bentrik replied. “I was doing something I wouldn’t have thought myself capable of, a few years ago. Organizing a mutineering conspiracy in the Royal Mardukan Navy. After Admiral Shefter was forcibly retired and shut up in an insane asylum, I disappeared and turned into a civilian contragravity-lifter operator at the Malverton Navy Yard. Finally, when I was suspected, one of the officers⁠—he was arrested and tortured to death later⁠—managed to smuggle me onto a lighter for the Moonbase. I was an orderly in the hospital there. The day the Crown Prince was murdered, we had a mutiny of our own. We killed everybody we even suspected of being a Makannist. The Moonbase has been under attack from the planet ever since.”

There was a stir behind him; turning, he saw Princess Bentrik and the boy enter the room. He rose.

“We’ll talk about this later. There are some people here.⁠ ⁠…”

He motioned them forward and turned away, shooing everybody else out of the room.

The news was all over Rivington, and then all over Tanith, while the pinnace was still coming down. There was a crowd at the spaceport, staring as the little craft, with its blazon of the crowned and planet-throned dragon, settled onto its landing legs, and reporters of the Tanith News Service with their screen pickups. He met Prince Bentrik, a little in advance of the others, and managed to whisper to him hastily:

“While you’re talking to anybody here, always remember that Andray Dunnan is working with Zaspar Makann, and as soon as Makann consolidates his position he’s sending an expedition against Tanith.”

“How in blazes did you find that out, here?” Bentrik demanded. “From the Gilgameshers?”

Then Harkaman and Rathmore and Valkanhayn and Lothar Ffayle and the others were crowding up behind, and more people were coming off the pinnace, and Prince Bentrik was trying to embrace both his wife and his son at the same time.

“Prince Trask.” He started at the voice, and was looking into deep blue eyes under coal-black hair. His pulse gave a sudden jump, and he said, “Valerie!” and then, “Lady Alvarath; I’m most happy to see you here.” Then he saw who was beside her, and squatted on his heels to bring himself down to a convenient size. “And Princess Myrna. Welcome to Tanith, Your Highness!”

The child flung her arms around his neck. “Oh, Prince Lucas! I’m so glad to see you. There’s been such awful things happened!”

“There won’t be anything awful happen here, Princess Myrna. You are among friends; friends with whom you have a treaty. Remember?”

The child began to cry, bitterly. “That was when I was just a play-Queen. And now I know what they meant when they talked about when Grandpa and Pappa would be through being King. Pappa didn’t even get to be King!”

Something big and warm and soft was trying to push between them; a dog with long blond hair and floppy ears. In a year and a half, puppies can grow surprisingly.