XVIII
Seshat, Obidicut, Lugaluru, Audhumla.
The young man elevated by his father's death in the Dunnan raid tothe post of hereditary President of the democratic Republic ofTetragrammaton had been sure that the Marduk ships which came tohis planet traded also on those. There had been some difficultyabout making contact, and the first face-to-face meeting had begunin an atmosphere of bitter distrust on his part. They had met outof doors; around them, spread wrecked and burned buildings, andhastily constructed huts and shelters, and wide spaces of charredand slagged rubble.
"They blew up the steel mill here, and the oil-refinery at Jannsboro.They bombed and strafed the little farm-towns and villages. Theyscattered radioactives that killed as many as the bombing. And afterthey had gone away, this other ship came."
"The _Damnthing_? She bore the head of a beast with three very big horns?"
"That's the one. They did a little damage, at first. When thecaptain found out what had happened to us, he left some food andmedicines for us." Roger-fan-Morvill Esthersan hadn't mentioned that.
"Well, we'd like to help you, if we can. Do you have nuclear power?We can give you a little equipment. Just remember it of us, whenyou're back on your feet; we'll be back to trade later. But don'tthink you owe us anything. The man who did this to you is my enemy.Now, I want to talk to every one of your people who can tell meanything at all...."
Seshat was the closest; they went there first. They were too late.Seshat had had it already, and on the evidence of the radioactivitycounters, not too long ago. Four hundred hours at most. There hadbeen two hellburners; the cities on which they had fallen werestill-smoking pits literally burned into the ground and the bedrockbelow, at the center of five hundred mile radii of slag and lava andscorched earth and burned forests. There had been a planetbuster; ithad started a major earthquake. And half a dozen thermonuclears.There were probably quite a few survivors--a human planetarypopulation is extremely hard to exterminate completely--but withina century they'd be back to the loincloth and the stone hatchet.
"We don't even know Dunnan did it, personally," Paytrik Morland said."For all we know, he's down in an air-tight cave city on some planetnobody ever heard of, sitting on a golden throne, surrounded by a harem."
He had begun to suspect that Dunnan was doing something of just thesort. The Greatest Space Viking of History would naturally found aSpace Viking empire.
"An emperor goes out to look his empire over, now and then; I don'tspend all my time on Tanith. Say we try Audhumla next. It's thefarthest away. We might get there while he's still shooting upObidicut and Lugaluru. Guatt, figure us a jump for it."
When the colored turbulence washed away and the screen cleared,Audhumla looked like Tanith or Khepera or Amaterasu or any otherTerra-type planet, a big disk brilliant with reflected sunlight andglowing with starlit and moonlit atmosphere on the other. There wasa single rather large moon, and, in the telescopic screen, the usualmarkings of seas and continents and rivers and mountain-ranges. Butthere was nothing to show....
Oh, yes; lights on the darkened side, and from the size they must bevast cities. All the available data for Audhumla was long out ofdate; a considerable civilization must have developed in the lasthalf dozen centuries.
Another light appeared, a hard blue-white spark that spread into alarger, less brilliant yellow light. At the same time, all thealarm-devices in the command-room went into a pandemonium of janglingand flashing and squawking and howling and shouting. Radiation.Energy-release. Contragravity distortion effects. Infra-red output. Awelter of indecipherable radio and communication-screen signals. Radarand scanner-ray beams from the planet.
Trask's fist began hurting; he found that he had been poundingthe desk in front of him with it. He stopped it.
"We caught him, we caught him!" he was yelling hoarsely. "Full speedin, continuous acceleration, as much as we can stand. We'll worryabout decelerating when we're in shooting distance."
The planet grew steadily larger; Karffard was taking him at his wordabout continuous acceleration. There'd be a Gehenna of a bill to paywhen they started decelerating. On the planet, more bombs were goingoff just outside atmosphere beyond the sunset line.
"Ship observed. Altitude about a hundred to five hundredmiles--hundreds, not thousands--35 deg. North Latitude, 15 deg. west ofthe sunset line. Ship is under fire, bomb explosions near her,"a voice whooped.
Somebody else was yelling that the city lights were really burningcities, or burning forests. The first voice, having stopped, brokein again:
"Ship is visible in telescopic screen, just at the sunset line. Andthere's another ship detected but not visible, somewhere around theequator, and a third one somewhere out of sight, we can just get thefringe of her contragravity field around the planet."
That meant there were two sides, and a fight. Unless Dunnan hadpicked up a third ship, somewhere. The telescopic view shifted;for a moment the planet was completely off-screen, and then itscurvature came into the screen against a star-scattered background.They were almost in to two thousand miles now; Karffard was yellingto stop acceleration and trying to put the ship into a spiral orbit.Suddenly they caught a glimpse of one of the ships.
"She's in trouble." That was Paul Koreff's voice. "She's leaking airand water vapor like crazy."
"Well, is she a good guy or a bad guy?" Morland was yelling back, asthough Koreff's spectroscopes could distinguish. Koreff ignored that.
"Another ship making signal," he said. "She's the one coming up overthe equator. Sword-World impulse code; her communication-screencombination, and an identify-yourself."
Karffard punched out the combination as Koreff furnished it. WhileTrask was desperately willing his face into immobility, the screenlighted. It wasn't Andray Dunnan; that was a disappointment. It wasalmost as good, though. His henchman, Sir Nevil Ormm.
"Well, Sir Nevil! A pleasant surprise," he heard himself saying."We last met on the terrace at Karvall House, did we not?"
For once, the paper-white face of Andray Dunnan's _ame damnee_showed expression, but whether it was fear, surprise, shock, hatred,anger, or what combination of them, Trask could no more than guess.
"Trask! Satan curse you...!"
Then the screen went blank. In the telescopic screen, the other shipcame on unfalteringly. Paul Koreff, who had gotten more data onmass, engine energy-output and dimensions, was identifying her asthe _Enterprise_.
"Well, go for her! Give her everything!"
* * * * *
They didn't need the order; Vann Larch was speaking rapidly into hishand-phone, and Alvyn Karffard was hurling his voice all over the_Nemesis_, warning of sudden deceleration and direction change, andwhile he was speaking, things in the command room began sliding. Inthe telescopic screen, the other ship was plainly visible; he couldsee the oval patch of black with the blue crescent, and in hisscreen Dunnan would be seeing the sword-impaled skull of the_Nemesis_.
If only he could be sure Dunnan was there to see it. If it had onlybeen Dunnan's face, instead of Ormm's, that he had seen in thescreen. As it was, he couldn't be sure, and if one of the missilesthat were already going out made a lucky hit, he might never besure. He didn't care who killed Dunnan, or how. All he wanted wasto know that Dunnan's death had set him free from a self-assumedobligation that was now meaningless to him.
The _Enterprise_ launched counter-missiles; so did the _Nemesis_.There were momentarily unbearable flashes of pure energy and fromthem globes of incandescence spread and vanished. Something musthave gotten through; red lights flashed on the damage board. It hadbeen something heavy enough even to jolt the huge mass of the_Nemesis_. At the same time, the other ship took a hit fromsomething that would have vaporized her had she not been armored incollapsium. Then, as they passed close together, guns hammered backand forth along with missiles, and then the _Enterprise_ was out ofsight around the horizon.
Another ship, the size of Otto Harkaman's _Corisande II_, wasapproach
ing; she bore a tapering, red-nailed feminine hand danglinga planet by a string. They rushed toward each other, planting agarden of evanescent fire-flowers between them; they pounded oneanother with guns, and then they sped apart. At the same time, PaulKoreff was picking up an impulse-code signal from the third,crippled, ship; a screen combination. Trask punched it out ashe received it.
A man in space armor was looking out of the screen. That was bad,if they had to suit up in the command room. They still had air;his helmet was off, but it was attached and hinged back. On hisbreastplate was a device of a dragonlike beast perched with its tailaround a planet, and a crown above. He had a thin, high-cheekedface, with a vertical wrinkle between his eyes, and a clipped blondmustache.
"Who are you, stranger. You're fighting my enemies; does that makeyou a friend."
"I'm a friend of anybody who owns Andray Dunnan his enemy.Sword-World ship _Nemesis_; I'm Prince Lucas Trask of Tanith,commanding."
"Royal Mardukan ship _Victrix_." The thin-faced man gave a wrylaugh. "Not been living up to her name so well. I'm Prince SimonBentrik, commanding."
"Are you still battle-worthy?"
"We can fire about half our guns; we still have a few missiles left.Seventy per cent of the ship's sealed off, and we've been holed in adozen places. We have power enough for lift and some steering-way.We can't make lateral way except at the expense of lift."
Which made the _Victrix_ practically a stationary target. He yelledover his shoulder at Karffard to cut speed all he could withouttearing things apart.
"When that cripple comes into view, start circling around her. Getinto a tight circle above her." He turned back to the man in thescreen. "If we can get ourselves slowed down enough, we'll do all wecan to cover you."
"All you can is all you can; thank you, Prince Trask."
"Here comes the _Enterprise_!" Karffard shouted, with obscenelyblasphemous embellishments. "She hairpinned on us."
"Well, do something about her!"
* * * * *
Vann Larch was already doing it. The _Enterprise_ had taken damagein the last exchange; Koreff's spectroscopes showed her halo-ed withair and water vapor. Her instruments would be getting the samestory from the _Nemesis_; wedge-shaped segments extending six toeight decks in were sealed off in several places. Then the onlything that could be seen with certainty was the blaze of mutuallydestroying missiles between. The short-range gun duel began andended as they passed.
In the screen, he had seen a fat round-nosed thing come up from the_Victrix_, curving far out ahead of the passing _Enterprise_. Shewas almost out of sight around the planet when she ran head-on intoit, and vanished in an awesome blaze. For a moment, he thought shehad been destroyed, then she lurched into sight and went around thecurvature of Audhumla.
Trask and the Mardukan were shaking hands with themselves at eachother in their screens; everybody in the _Nemesis_ command room wasscreaming: "Well shot, _Victrix_! Well shot!"
Then the _Yo-Yo_ was coming around again, and Vann Larch was saying,"Gehenna with this fooling around! I'll fix the expurgatedunprintability!"
He yelled orders--a jumble of code letters and numbers--and thingsbegan going out. Most of them blew up in space. Then the _Yo-Yo_blew up, very quietly, as things do where there is no air to carryshock- and sound-waves, but very brilliantly. There was briefdaylight all over the night side of the planet.
"That was our planetbuster," Larch said. "I don't know what we'lluse on Dunnan."
"I didn't know we had one," Trask admitted.
"Otto had a couple built on Beowulf. The Beowulfers are good nuclearweaponeers."
The _Enterprise_ came back, hastily, to see what had blown up. Larchput off another entertainment of small stuff, with a fifty megatonthermonuclear, viewscreen-piloted, among them. It had its ownarsenal of small missiles, and it got through. In the telescopicscreen, a jagged hole was visible just below the equator of the_Enterprise_, the edges curling outward. Something, possibly a heavymissile in an open tube, ready for launching, had gone off insideher. What the inside of the ship was like, or how many of hercompany were still alive, was hard to guess.
There were some, and her launchers were still spewing out missiles.They were intercepted and blew up. The hull of the _Enterprise_bulked huge in the guidance-screen of the missile and filled it; thejagged crater that had obliterated the bottom of Dunnan's bluecrescent blazon spread to fill the whole screen. The screen wentmilky white as the pickup went off.
All the other screens blazed briefly, until their filters went on.Even afterward, they glared like the cloud-veiled sun of Gram athigh noon. Finally, when the light-intensity had dropped and thefilters went off, there was nothing left of the _Enterprise_ but anorange haze.
Somebody--Paytrik, Baron Morland, he saw--was pounding him on theback and screaming inarticulately in his ear. A dozen space-armoredofficers with planet-perched dragons on their breasts were crowdingbeside Prince Bentrik in the screen from the _Victrix_, whoopinglike drunken bisonoid-herders on payday night.
"I wonder," he said, almost inaudibly, "if I'll ever know if AndrayDunnan was on that ship."