The H. Beam Piper Megapack

by H. Beam Piper

  The waking periods grew longer, and during them his mind was clear. They relieved him of his crown of electronic thorns. The feeding tubes came out, and they gave him cups of broth and fruit juice. He wanted to know why he had been brought to the Palace.

  “About the only thing we could do,” Rovard Grauffis told him. “They had too much trouble at Karvall House as it was. You know, Sesar got shot, too.”

  “No.” So that was why Sesar hadn’t come to see him. “Was he killed?”

  “Wounded; he’s in worse shape than you are. When the shooting started, he went charging up the escalator. Didn’t have anything but his dress-dagger. Dunnan gave him a quick burst; I think that was why he didn’t have time to finish you off. By that time, the guards who’d been shooting blanks from that rapid-fire gun got in a clip of live rounds and fired at him. He got out of there as fast as he could. They have Sesar on a robomedic like yours. He isn’t in any danger.”

  The drainage tubes and medication tubes came out; the tangle of wires around him was removed, and the electrodes with them. They bandaged his wounds and dressed him in a loose robe and lifted him from the robomedic to a couch, where he could sit up when he wished; they began giving him solid food, and wine to drink, and allowed him to smoke. The woman doctor told him he’d had a bad time, as though he didn’t know that. He wondered if she expected him to thank her for keeping him alive.

  “You’ll be up and around in a few weeks,” his cousin added. “I’ve seen to it that everything at Traskon New House will be ready for you by then.”

  “I’ll never enter that house as long as I live, and I wish that wouldn’t be more than the next minute. That was to be Elaine’s house. I won’t go to it alone.”

  * * * *

  The dreams troubled his sleep less and less as he grew stronger. Visitors came often, bringing amusing little gifts, and he found that he enjoyed their company. He wanted to know what had really happened, and how Dunnan had gotten away.

  “He pirated the Enterprise,” Rovard Grauffis told him. “He had that company of mercenaries of his, and he’d bribed some of the people at the Gorram shipyards. I thought Alex would kill his chief of security when he found out what had happened. We can’t prove anything—we’re trying hard enough to—but we’re sure Omfray of Glaspyth furnished the money. He’s been denying it just a shade too emphatically.”

  “Then the whole thing was planned in advance.”

  “Taking the ship was; he must have been planning that for months; before he started recruiting that company. I think he meant to do it the night before the wedding. Then he tried to persuade the Lady-Demoiselle Elaine to elope with him—he seems to have actually thought that was possible—and when she humiliated him, he decided to kill both of you first.” He turned to Otto Harkaman, who had accompanied him. “As long as I live, I’ll regret not taking you at your word and accepting your offer, then.”

  “How did he get hold of that Westlands Telecast and Teleprint car?”

  “Oh. The morning of the wedding, he screened Westlands editorial office and told them he had the inside story on the marriage and why the Duke was sponsoring it. Made it sound as though there was some scandal; insisted that a reporter come to Dunnan House for a face-to-face interview. They sent a man, and that was the last they saw him alive; our people found his body at Dunnan House when we were searching the place afterward. We found the car at the shipyard; it had taken a couple of hits from the guns at Karvall House, but you know what these press cars are built to stand. He went directly to the shipyard, where his men already had the Enterprise; as soon as he arrived, she lifted out.”

  He stared at the cigarette between his fingers. It was almost short enough to burn him. With an effort, he leaned forward to crush it out.

  “Rovard, how soon will that second ship be finished?”

  Grauffis laughed bitterly. “Building the Enterprise took everything we had. The duchy’s on the edge of bankruptcy now. We stopped work on the second ship six months ago because we didn’t have enough money to keep on with her and still get the Enterprise finished. We were expecting the Enterprise to make enough in the Old Federation to finish the second one. Then, with two ships and a base on Tanith, the money would begin coming in instead of going out. But now—”

  “It leaves me where I was on Flamberge,” Harkaman added. “Worse. King Napolyon was going to help the Elmersans, and I’d have gotten a command in that. It’s too late for that now.”

  He picked up his cane and used it to push himself to his feet. The broken leg had mended, but he was still weak. He took a few tottering steps, paused to lean on the cane, and then forced himself on to the open window and stood for a moment staring out. Then he turned.

  “Captain Harkaman, it might be that you could still get a command, here on Gram. That’s if you don’t mind commanding under me as owner-aboard. I am going hunting for Andray Dunnan.”

  They both looked at him. After a moment, Harkaman said:

  “I’d count it an honor, Lord Trask. But where will you get a ship?”

  “She’s half finished now. You already have a crew for her. Duke Angus can finish her for me, and pay for it by pledging his new barony of Traskon.”

  He had known Rovard Grauffis all his life; until this moment, he had never seen Duke Angus’ henchman show surprise.

  “You mean, you’ll trade Traskon for that ship?” he demanded.

  “Finished, equipped and ready for space, yes.”

  “The Duke will agree to that,” Grauffis said promptly. “But, Lucas; Traskon is all you own.”

  “If I have a ship, I won’t need them. I am turning Space Viking.”

  That brought Harkaman to his feet with a roar of approval. Grauffis looked at him, his mouth slightly open.

  “Lucas Trask—Space Viking,” he said. “Now I’ve heard everything.”

  Well, why not? He had deplored the effects of Viking raiding on the Sword-Worlds, because Gram was a Sword-World, and Traskon was on Gram, and Traskon was to have been the home where he and Elaine would live and where their children and children’s children would be born and live. Now the little point on which all of it had rested was gone.

  “That was another Lucas Trask, Rovard. He’s dead, now.”

  VI

  Grauffis excused himself to make a screen call and then returned to excuse himself again. Evidently Duke Angus had dropped whatever he was doing as soon as he heard what his henchman had to tell him. Harkaman was silent until after he was out of the room, then said:

  “Lord Trask, this is a wonderful thing for me. It’s not been pleasant to be a shipless captain living on strangers’ bounty. I’d hate, though, to have you think, some time, that I’d advanced my own fortunes at the expense of yours.”

  “Don’t worry about that. If anybody’s being taken advantage of, you are. I need a space-captain, and your misfortune is my own good luck.”

  Harkaman started to pack tobacco into his pipe. “Have you ever been off Gram, at all?” he asked.

  “A few years at the University of Camelot, on Excalibur. Otherwise, no.”

  “Well, have you any conception of the sort of thing you’re setting yourself to?” The Space Viking snapped his lighter and puffed. “You know, of course, how big the Old Federation is. You know the figures, that is, but do they mean anything to you? I know they don’t to a good many spacemen, even. We talk glibly about ten to the hundredth power, but emotionally we still count, ‘One, Two, Three, Many.’ A ship in hyperspace logs about a light-year an hour. You can go from here to Excalibur in thirty hours. But you could send a radio message announcing the birth of a son, and he’d be a father before it was received. The Old Federation, where you’re going to hunt Dunnan, occupies a space-volume of two hundred billion cubic light-years. And you’re hunting for one ship and one man in that. How are you going to do it, Lord Trask?”

  “I haven’t started thinking about how; all I know is that I have to do it. There are planets in the Old Federation w
here Space Vikings come and go; raid-and-trade bases, like the one Duke Angus planned to establish on Tanith. At one or another of them, I’ll pick up word of Dunnan, sooner or later.”

  “We’ll hear where he was a year ago, and by the time we get there, he’ll be gone for a year and a half to two years. We’ve been raiding the Old Federation for over three hundred years, Lord Trask. At present, I’d say there are at least two hundred Space Viking ships in operation. Why haven’t we raided it bare long ago? Well, that’s the answer: distance and voyage-time. You know, Dunnan could die of old age—which is not a usual cause of death among Space Vikings—before you caught up with him. And your youngest ship’s-boy could die of old age before he found out about it.”

  “Well, I can go on hunting for him till I die, then. There’s nothing else that means anything to me.”

  “I thought it was something like that. I won’t be with you, all your life. I want a ship of my own, like the Corisande, that I lost on Durendal. Some day, I’ll have one. But till you can command your own ship, I’ll command her for you. That’s a promise.”

  Some note of ceremony seemed indicated. Summoning a robot, he had it pour wine for them, and they pledged each other.

  Rovard Grauffis had recovered his aplomb by the time he returned accompanied by the Duke. If Angus had ever lost his, he gave no indication of it. The effect on everybody else was literally seismic. The generally accepted view was that Lord Trask’s reason had been unhinged by his tragic loss; there might, he conceded, be more than a crumb of truth in that. At first, his cousin Nikkolay raged at him for alienating the barony from the family, and then he learned that Duke Angus was appointing him vicar-baron and giving him Traskon New House for his residence. Immediately he began acting like one at the death-bed of a rich grandmother. The Wardshaven financial and industrial barons, whom he had known only distantly, on the other hand, came flocking around him, offering assistance and hailing him as the savior of the duchy. Duke Angus’ credit, almost obliterated by the loss of the Enterprise, was firmly re-established, and theirs with it.

  There were conferences at which lawyers and bankers argued interminably; he attended a few at first, found himself completely uninterested, and told everybody so. All he wanted was a ship; the best ship possible, as soon as possible. Alex Gorram had been the first to be notified; he had commenced work on the unfinished sister-ship of the Enterprise immediately. Until he was strong enough to go to the shipyard himself, he watched the work on the two-thousand-foot globular skeleton by screen, and conferred either in person or by screen with engineers and shipyard executives. His rooms at the ducal palace were converted, almost overnight, from sickrooms to offices. The doctors, who had recently been urging him to find new interests and activities, were now warning of the dangers of overexertion. Harkaman finally added his voice to theirs.

  “You take it easy, Lucas.” They had dropped formality and were on a first-name basis now. “You got hulled pretty badly; you let damage-control work on you, and don’t strain the machinery till it’s fixed. We have plenty of time. We’re not going to get anywhere chasing Dunnan. The only way we can catch him is by interception. The longer he moves around in the Old Federation before he hears we’re after him, the more of a trail he’ll leave. Once we can establish a predictable pattern, we’ll have a chance. Then, some time, he’ll come out of hyperspace somewhere and find us waiting for him.”

  “Do you think he went to Tanith?”

  Harkaman heaved himself out of his chair and prowled about the room for a few minutes, then came back and sat down again.

  “No. That was Duke Angus’ idea, not his. He couldn’t put in a base on Tanith, anyhow. You know the kind of a crew he has.”

  There had been an extensive inquiry into Dunnan’s associates and accomplices; Duke Angus was still hoping for positive proof to implicate Omfray of Glaspyth in the piracy. Dunnan had with him a dozen and a half employees of the Gorram shipyards whom he had corrupted. There was some technical ability among them, but for the most part they were agitators and trouble-makers and incompetent workmen. Even under the circumstances, Alex Gorram was glad to see the last of them. As for Dunnan’s own mercenary company, there were about a score of former spacemen among them; the rest graded down from bandits through thugs and sneak-thieves to barroom bums. Dunnan himself was an astrogator, not an engineer.

  “That gang aren’t even good enough for routine raiding,” Harkaman said. “They’d never under any circumstances be able to put in a base on Tanith. Unless Dunnan’s completely crazy, which I doubt, he’s gone to some regular Viking base planet, like Hoth or Nergal or Dagon or Xochitl, to recruit officers and engineers and able spacemen.”

  “All that machinery and robotic equipment and so on that was going to Tanith—was that aboard when he took the ship?”

  “Yes, and that’s another reason why he’d go to some planet like Hoth or Nergal or Xochitl. On a Viking-occupied planet in the Old Federation, that stuff’s almost worth its weight in gold.”

  “What’s Tanith like?”

  “Almost completely Terra-type, third of a Class-G sun. Very much like Haulteclere or Flamberge. It was one of the last planets the Federation colonized before the Big War. Nobody knows what happened, exactly. There wasn’t any interstellar war; at least, you don’t find any big slag-puddles where cities used to be. They probably did a lot of fighting among themselves, after they got out of the Federation. There’s still some traces of combat-damage around. Then they started to decivilize, down to the pre-mechanical level—wind and water power and animal power. They have draft-animals that look like introduced Terran carabaos, and a few small sailboats and big canoes and bateaux on the rivers. They have gunpowder, which seems to be the last thing any people lose.

  “I was there, five years ago. I liked Tanith for a base. There’s one moon, almost solid nickel iron, and fissionable-ore deposits. Then, like a fool, I hired out to the Elmersans on Durendal and lost my ship. When I came here, your Duke was thinking about Xipototec. I convinced him that Tanith was a better planet for his purpose.”

  “Dunnan might go there, at that. He might think he was scoring one on Duke Angus. After all, he has all that equipment.”

  “And nobody to use it. If I were Dunnan, I’d go to Nergal, or Xochitl. There are always a couple of thousand Space Vikings on either, spending their loot and taking it easy between raids. He could sign on a full crew on either. I suggest we go to Xochitl, first. We might pick up news of him, if nothing else.”

  All right, they’d try Xochitl first. Harkaman knew the planet, and was friendly with the Haulteclere noble who ruled it.

  The work went on at the Gorram shipyard; it had taken a year to build the Enterprise, but the steel-mills and engine-works were over the preparatory work of tooling up, and material and equipment was flowing in a steady stream. Lucas let them persuade him to take more rest, and day by day grew stronger. Soon he was spending most of his time at the shipyard, watching the engines go in—Abbot lift-and-drive for normal space, Dillingham hyperdrive, power-converters, pseudograv, all at the center of the globular ship. Living quarters and workshops went in next, all armored in collapsium-plated steel. Then the ship lifted out to an orbit a thousand miles off-planet, followed by swarms of armored work-craft and cargo-lighters; the rest of the work was more easily done in space. At the same time, the four two-hundred-foot pinnaces that would be carried aboard were being finished. Each of them had its own hyperdrive engines, and could travel as far and as fast as the ship herself.

  Otto Harkaman was beginning to be distressed because the ship still lacked a name. He didn’t like having to speak of her as “her,” or “the ship,” and there were many things soon to go on that should be name-marked. Elaine, Trask thought, at once, and almost at once rejected it. He didn’t want her name associated with the things that ship would do in the Old Federation. Revenge, Avenger, Retribution, Vendetta; none appealed to him. A news-commentator, turgidly eloquent about the nemesis which the
criminal Dunnan had invoked against himself, supplied it, Nemesis it was.

  Now he was studying his new profession of interstellar robbery and murder against which he had once inveighed. Otto Harkaman’s handful of followers became his teachers. Vann Larch, guns-and-missiles, who was also a painter; Guatt Kirbey, sour and pessimistic, the hyperspatial astrogator who tried to express his science in music; Sharll Renner, the normal-space astrogator. Alvyn Karffard, the exec, who had been with Harkaman longest of all. And Sir Paytrik Morland, a local recruit, formerly guard-captain to Count Lionel of Newhaven, who commanded the ground-fighters and the combat contragravity. They were using the farms and villages of Traskon for drill and practice, and he noticed that while the Nemesis would carry only five hundred ground and air fighters, over a thousand were being trained.

  He commented to Rovard Grauffis.

  “Yes. Don’t mention it outside,” the Duke’s henchman said. “You and Sir Paytrik and Captain Harkaman will pick the five hundred best. The Duke will take the rest into his service. Some of these days, Omfray of Glaspyth will find out what a Space Viking raid is really like.”

  And Duke Angus would tax his new subjects of Glaspyth to redeem the pledges on his new barony of Traskon. Some old Pre-Atomic writer Harkaman was fond of quoting had said, “Gold will not always get you good soldiers, but good soldiers can get you gold.”

  * * * *

  The Nemesis came back to the Gorram yards and settled onto her curved landing legs like a monstrous spider. The Enterprise had borne the Ward sword and atom-symbol; the Nemesis should bear his own badge, but the bisonoid head, tawny on green, of Traskon, was no longer his. He chose a skull impaled on an upright sword, and it was blazoned on the ship when he and Harkaman took her out for her shakedown cruise.

  When they landed again at the Gorram yards, two hundred hours later, they learned that a tramp freighter from Morglay had come into Bigglersport in their absence with news of Andray Dunnan. Her captain had come to Wardshaven at Duke Angus’ urgent invitation and was waiting for them at the Ducal Palace.