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"Ignore the whole bloody thing; we get something like that before every general election. On this planet, you can always kick the Gilgameshers and the Armed Forces with impunity, neither have votes and neither can kick back. The whole thing'll be forgotten the day after the election. It always is." "That's if Makann doesn't win the election," Trask qualified.
It would still take four hours to get down, in a spiral of deceleration. They started the telecasts which had been filmed and taped on the voyage from Gimli. The Prince-Protector Simon Bentrik spoke: The illegal rule of the traitor Makann was ended. His deluded followers were advised to return to their allegiance to the Crown.
They made a landing on Malverton while it was turned away from us. Makann announced that they were RMN units from the trade-planets that had joined him. I suppose the planet-side public swallowed that. He also announced that their commander, Admiral Dunnan, was in command of the People's Armed Forces." Dunnan's ground-fighters would be in control of Malverton.
The next year, he had a suite of offices and was buying time on a couple of telecasts. The year after that, he had three telecast stations of his own, and was holding rallies and meetings of thousands of people. And so on, upward." "Yes. Dunnan financed him, and moved in behind him, the same way Makann moved in behind the King. "And then he'll own Marduk.
Three independent Space Viking ships were still in orbit on Tanith; they joined the expedition. There would be trouble with them on Marduk; they'd want to loot. Let the Mardukans worry about that. They could charge it off as part of the price for letting Zaspar Makann get into power in the first place.
"And I noticed the use of the word 'rule, instead of 'reign." "That's right," the self-proclaimed Prince-Protector said. "There's something wrong with democracy. If there weren't, it couldn't be overthrown by people like Makann, attacking it from within by democratic procedures. I don't think it's fundamentally unworkable. I think it just has a few of what engineers call bugs.
It was densely packed with people, most of them wearing clothes a farm tramp on Gram wouldn't be found dead in, but here and there among them were blocks of men in what was almost but not quite military uniform, each with a short and thick swagger-stick with a knobbed head. Across the park, in the distance, the head and shoulders of Zaspar Makann loomed a hundred feet high in a huge screen.
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.
The problem broke into two halves: the purely naval action that would be fought to relieve the Moon of Marduk, if it still held out, and to destroy the Dunnan and Makann ships, and the ground-fighting problem of wiping out Makann's supporters and restoring the Mardukan monarchy.
His most junior staff officer, Count Steven of Ravary, didn't seem to appreciate the compliment. "We are Space Vikings!" he insisted. "And we are going to battle with the Neobarbarians of Zaspar Makann." "Well, I won't argue the last half of it, Steven," his father told him. "Are you people done yakking about who's civilized and who isn't?" Guatt Kirbey asked. "Then give the signal.
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