At a thousand miles, the missiles started going out, and the two groups of ships, four and five, were equidistant from each other and from the allied fleet, at the points of a triangle that was growing smaller by the second. The first fire-globes of intercepted missiles spread from their seeds of brief white light. A red light flashed on the damage-board. An enemy ship took a hit. The captain of the Queen Flavia was on a screen, saying that his ship was heavily damaged. Three ships bearing the Mardukan dragon-and-planet circled madly around each other at what looked, in the screen, like just over pistol-range, two of them firing into the third, which was replying desperately. The third one blew up, and somebody was yelling out of a screenspeaker, “Scratch one traitor!”
Another ship blew up somewhere, and then another. He heard somebody say, “There went one of ours,” and wondered which one it was. Not the Corisande, he hoped; no, it wasn’t, he could see her rushing after two other ships which were, in turn, speeding toward the Black Star, the Sun Goddess and the Gilgamesh freighter. Then the Nemesis and the Starhopper were within gun-range, pounding each other savagely.
The battle had tied itself into a ball of gyrating, fire-spitting ships that went rolling toward the planet, which was swinging in and out of the main viewscreen and growing rapidly larger. By the time they were down to the inner edge of the exosphere, the ball had started to unwind, ship after ship dropping out of it and going into orbit, some badly damaged and some going to attack damaged enemies. Some of them were completely around the planet, hidden by it. He saw three ships approaching Corisande, Sun Goddess, and the Gilgamesher. He got Harkaman on the screen.
“Where’s the Black Star?” he asked.
“Gone to Em-See-Square,” Harkaman replied. “We got the two Dunnan-Makanns. Bolide and Reliable.”
Then young Steven of Ravary, who had been monitoring one of the intership screens, had a call from Captain Gompertz of the Grendelsbane, and at the same moment somebody else was yelling, “Here comes the Starhopper again!”
“Tell him to wait a moment; we have troubles,” he said.
Nemesis and Starhopper sledgehammered each other and parried with counter-missiles, and then, quite unexpectedly, the Starhopper went to Em-See-Square.
There was an awful lot of Em being converted to Ee off Marduk, today. Including Manfred Ravallo; that grieved him. Manfred was a good man, and a good friend. He had a girl in Rivington. … Nifflheim, there were eight hundred good men aboard the Black Star, and most of them had girls who’d wait in vain for them on Tanith. Well, what had Otto Harkaman said, so long ago, on Gram? Something about old age not being a usual cause of death among Space Vikings, wasn’t it?
Then he remembered that Gompertz of the Grendelsbane was trying to get him. He told young Count Steven to switch him over.
“We just lost one of our Mardukans,” Gompertz told him, in his staccato Beowulf accent. “I think she was the Challenger. The ship that got her looks like the Banshee; I’m turning to engage her.”
“Which way; west around the planet? Be right with you, captain.”
XXVII
It was like finishing a word puzzle. You sit staring at it, looking for more spaces to print letters into, and suddenly you realize that there are no more, that the puzzle is done. That was how the space-battle of Marduk, the Battle off Marduk, ended. Suddenly there were no more colored fire-globes opening and fading, no more missiles coming, no more enemy ships to throw missiles at. Now it was time to take a count of his own ships, and then begin thinking about the Battle on Marduk.
The Black Star was gone. So was R.M.N.S. Challenger, and R.M.N.S. Conquistador. Space Scourge was badly hammered; worse than after the Beowulf raid, Boake Valkanhayn said. The Viking’s Gift was heavily damaged, too, and so was the Corisande, and so, from the looks of the damage board, was the Nemesis. And three ships were missing—the three independent Space Vikings, Harpy, Curse of Cagn, and Roger-fan-Morvill Esthersan’s Damnthing.
Prince Bentrik frowned over that. “I can’t think that all three of those ships would have been destroyed, without anybody seeing it happen.”
“Neither can I. But I can think that all those ships broke out of the battle together and headed in for the planet. They didn’t come here to help liberate Marduk, they came here to fill their cargo holds. I only hope the people they’re robbing all voted the Makann ticket in the last election.” A crumb of comfort occurred to him, and he passed it on. “The only people who are armed to resist them will be Makann’s storm-troops and Dunnan’s pirates; they’ll be the ones to get killed.”
“We don’t want any more killing than. …” Prince Simon broke off suddenly. “I’m beginning to talk like his late Highness Crown Prince Edvard,” he said. “He didn’t want bloodshed, either, and look whose blood was shed. If they’re doing what you think they are, I’m afraid we’ll have to kill a few of your Space Vikings, too.”
“They aren’t my Space Vikings.” He was a little surprised to find that, after almost eight years of bearing the name himself, he was using it as an other-people label. Well, why not? He was the ruler of the
