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Updated: May 25, 2025
Prince Bentrik's ten-year-old son, Count Steven of Ravary, wore the uniform of an ensign of the Royal Navy; he was accompanied by his tutor, an elderly Navy captain. They both stopped in the doorway of Trask's suite, and the boy saluted smartly. "Permission to come aboard, sir?" he asked. "Welcome aboard, count; captain. Belay the ceremony and find seats; you're just in time for second breakfast."
Prince Bentrik's son, sitting beside his father, had stopped being Ruthless Ravary the Demon of the Spaceways and was a very young officer going into his first space battle, more scared and at the same time happier than he had ever been in his short life. Captain Garravay of the Vindex was making signal to the other ships from Gimli: "Royal Navy; smash the traitors first!"
Everybody, locals, Mardukans and Space Vikings, had been busy with the work of relief and reconstruction; this was the first meal the two commanders had been able to share in any leisure at all. Prince Bentrik's enjoyment of it was somewhat impaired by the fact that from where he sat he could see, in the distance, the sphere of his disabled ship.
He rose to clasp Prince Bentrik's hand, calling him "dear cousin," and congratulating him on his gallant fight and fortunate escape. That knocks any court-martial talk on the head, Trask thought. He remained standing to shake hands with Trask, calling him "valued friend to me and my house." First person singular; that must be causing some lifted eyebrows.
One of the four Mardukans was the Captain Garravay who had smuggled Bentrik's wife and son off Marduk, and the other three were just as pro-Bentrik, pro-Tanith, and anti-Makann. They were, on general principles, also anti-Bargham. There must be something wrong with any fleet admiral who remained in his command after Zaspar Makann came to power. So, as soon as they spaced out, there was a party.
Nobody we've questioned so far knows anything later than a month ago about him. He just disappeared." He was going to say something else, saw Bentrik's face, and changed his mind. "He's dead," Bentrik said dully.
"They're at Cragdale; they'll be safe there. I hope." Attempting to conceal the presence on Tanith of Prince Bentrik's wife and son was pushing caution beyond necessity. Admitted that the news would leak back to Marduk via Gilgamesh, it was over seven hundred light-years to the latter and almost a thousand from there to the former.
Not from the kind of instruments we have in the Royal Navy." "We have pretty fair detection ourselves," Trask reminded him. "There's one place where you can do it. At the bottom of an ocean, with a thousand or so feet of water over her. That's where I was going to hide the Nemesis, if I got here ahead of Dunnan." Prince Bentrik's fork stopped half way to his mouth.
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