H Beam Piper The Space Viking

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with us, and you will specifically order your troops mobilized to assist us in
collecting the tribute we are levying on Eglonsby," Trask said. "In that way,
if any Stolgonian spies see your troops concentrated around our landing-craft,
they'll think it's to help us load our loot." ' _
"And we'll announce that a large part of the tribute will consist of military
equipment," Dagro added. "That will a explain why our guns and tanks are being
loaded on your contragravity vehicles."
When the Stolgonian embassy was seized by the Space Vikings, the ambassador
asked to be taken at once to their a leader. He had a proposition: If the
Space Vikings would completely disable the army of Eglonsby and admit
Stolgonian
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troops when they were ready to leave, the invaders would bring with them ten
thousand kilos of gold. Trask affected to be very hospitable to the offer.
Stolgoland lay across a narrow and shallow sea from the State of Eglonsby; it
was dotted with islands, and every one of them was in turn, dotted with
oil-wells. Petroleum was what kept the aircraft and ground-vebicles of
Amaterasu in operation; oil, rather than ideology, was at the root of the
enmity between the two nations. Apparently the Stolgonian espionage in
Eglonsby was completely deceived, and the reports Trask allowed the captive
ambassador to make confirmed the deception. Hourly the Eglonsby radio stations
poured out exhortations to the people to cooperate with the Space Vikings,
with an occasional lamentation about the masses of war-materials being taken.
Eglonsby espionage in Stolgoland was similarly active. The Stolgonian armies
were being massed at four seaports on the coast facing Eglonsby, and there was
a frantic gathering of every sort of ship available. By this time, any
sympathy that Trask might have felt for either party had evaporated.
The invasion of Stolgoland started the fifth morning after their arrival over
Eglonsby. Before dawn, the six pinnaces went in, making a wide sweep around
the curvature of the planet and coming in from the north, two to each of the
three gold-troves. They were detected by radar, eventually but too late for
any effective resistance to be organized. Two were even taken without a shot;
by mid-morning all three had been blown open and the ingots and specie were
being removed.
The four seaports from whence the Stolgonian invasion of Eglonsby was to have
been launched were neutralized by nuclear bombing. Neutralized was a nice
word, Trask ' thought; there was no echo in it of the screams of the still
living, maimed and burned and blinded, around the fringes of ground-zero.
The Nemesis and the Space-Scourge, from landing-craft and from the ships
themselves, landed Eglonsby troops on Stolgonopolis. While they were sacking
the city, with all the usual atrocities, the Space Vikings were loading the
gold, and anything else that was of more than ordinary value, aboard the
ships. -
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They were still at it the next morning when President Pedrosan arrived at the
newly conquered capital, announcing his intention of putting the Stolgonian
chief of state and his cabinet on trial as war-criminals. Before sunset, they
were back over Eglonsby. The loot might run as high as a half billion
Excalibur stellars. Boake Valkanhayn and Garvan Spasso were simply beyond
astonishment
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and beyond words.
The looting of Eglonsby then began.
They gathered up machinery, and stocks of steel and light-metal alloys. The
city was full of warehouses, and the warehouses were crammed with valuables.
In spite of the socialistic and egalitarian verbiage behind which the
government operated, there seemed to be a numerous elite class and if gold
were not a monetary metal it was not despised for purposes of ostentation.
There were several large art museums. Van Larch, their nearest approach to an
art specialist, took charge of culling the best from them.
And there was a vast public library. Into this Otto Harkaman vanished, with
half a dozen men and a contragravity scow. Its historical section would be
much poorer in the future.
President Pedro Pedrosan was on the radio from Stolgonopohs that night.
"Is this how you Space Vikings keep faith?" he demanded indignantly. "You've
abandoned me and my army here in Stolgoland, and you're sacking Eglonsby. You
promised to leave Eglonsby alone if I helped you get the gold of Stolgoland."
"I promised nothing of the kind. I promised to help you take Stolgoland.
You've taken it," Trask told him. "I promised to avoid unnecessary damage or
violence. I've already hanged a dozen of my own men for rape, murder and
wanton vandalism. Now, we expect to be out of here in twenty-four hours. You'd
better be back here before then. Your own people are starting to loot. We did
not promise to control them for you."
That was true. What few troops had been left behind, and the police, were
unable to cope with the mobs that were pillaging in the wake of the Space
Vikings. Everybody seemed to be trying to grab what he could and let the
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Vikings be blamed for it. He had been able to keep his own people in order.
There had been at least a dozen cases of rape and wanton murder, and the
offenders had been ` promptly hanged. None of their shipmates, not even the
Space Scourge company, seemed resentful. They felt the culprits had deserved
what they'd gotten; not for what they'd done to the locals, but for disobeying
orders.
A few troops had been flown in from Stolgoland by the time they had gotten
their vehicles stowed and were lifting out. They didn't seem to be making much
headway. Harkaman, who had gotten his load of microbooks stowed and was at the
command-desk, laughed heartily.
"I don't know what Pedrosan'll do. Gehenna, I don't even know what I'd do, if
I'd gotten myself into a mess like that. He'll probably bring half his army [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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