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Updated: June 7, 2025
It would alienate the labor vote; they'd think increased imports would threaten employment in Mardukan industries. Some of the interstellar trading companies would like a chance at the Tanith planets; others would resent Tanith ships being given access to theirs. And Zaspar Makann's party were already shrieking protests about the Nemesis being repaired by the Royal Navy.
So he sent Harkaman in the Corisande and Ravallo in the Black Star to visit the planets Marduk traded with, looking for Dunnan ships and exchanging information and assistance with the Royal Mardukan Navy. Almost at once, he regretted it; the next Gilgamesher into orbit on Tanith brought a story that Prince Viktor was collecting a fleet on Xochitl.
Fo'c'sle hands on a Mardukan ship belonged definitely to the lower orders. "There's still too much free land and free opportunity on the Sword-Worlds," Trask explained. "Nobody does much bowing and scraping to the class above him; he's too busy trying to shove himself up into it. And the men who ship out as Space Vikings are the least class-conscious of the lot.
The people there had risen in support of the Makann regime, and he wanted authorization to use nuclear weapons against them. "Could you talk your people into going to some other city?" Trask asked. "We have a city for you; big industrial center. It ought to be fine looting. Drepplin." "The people there are Mardukan subjects, too," Bentrik began. Then he shrugged.
Dunnan had gone, but they knew whither, and where to find him. The conquest of Marduk had moved into its final phase. Marduk was on the other side of the sun from Abaddon with ninety-five million miles close, but not inconveniently so, Trask thought to spare. Guatt Kirbey and the Mardukan astrogator who was helping him made it within a light-minute.
You're fighting my enemies; does that make you 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 wry laugh. "Not been living up to her name so well. I'm Prince Simon Bentrik, commanding." "Are you still battle-worthy?"
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.
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?"
Manfred Ravallo and Boake Valkanhayn, among the more articulate of the Raid-Xochitl-Now party, snatched up the idea and seemed convinced that they'd thought of it themselves all along. Valkanhayn had been on Gimli and talked to Mardukan naval officers; Ravallo had brought Princess Bentrik to Tanith and heard her stories on the voyage. They began adducing arguments in support of Trask's thesis.
"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.
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