A Slave is a Slave | Page 3

of some obscure
and ancient polytheism. A century or so later, it had seceded from or
been abandoned by the Federation, then breaking up. That much they
had gleaned from old Federation records still existing on Baldur. After
that, darkness, lighted only by a brief flicker when more records had
turned up on Morglay.
Morglay was one of the Sword-Worlds, settled by refugee rebels from
the System States planets. Mostly they had been soldiers and spacemen;
there had been many women with them, and many were skilled
technicians, engineers, scientists. They had managed to carry off
considerable equipment with them, and for three centuries they had
lived in isolation, spreading over a dozen hitherto undiscovered planets.

Excalibur, Tizona, Gram, Morglay, Durendal, Flamberge, Curtana,
Quernbiter; the names were a roll-call of fabulous blades of Old Terran
legend.
Then they had erupted, suddenly and calamitously, into what was left
of the Terran Federation as the Space Vikings, carrying pillage and
destruction, until the newborn Empire rose to vanquish them. In the
sixth Century Pre-Empire, one of their fleets had come from Morglay
to Aditya.
The Adityans of that time had been near-barbarians; the descendants of
the original settlers had been serfs of other barbarians who had come as
mercenaries in the service of one or another of the local chieftains and
had remained to loot and rule. Subjugating them had been easy; the
Space Vikings had taken Aditya and made it their home. For several
centuries, there had been communication between them and their home
planet. Then Morglay had become involved in one of the interplanetary
dynastic wars that had begun the decadence of the Space Vikings, and
again Aditya dropped out of history.
Until this morning, when history returned in the black ships of the
Galactic Empire.
* * * * *
He stubbed out the cigarette and summoned the robot to give him
another. Shatrak was speaking:
"You see, Count Erskyll, we really had to do it this way, for their own
good." He wouldn't have credited the commodore with such guile;
anything was justified, according to Obray of Erskyll, if done for
somebody else's good. "What we did, we just landed suddenly, knocked
out their army, seized the center of government, before anybody could
do anything. If we'd landed the way you'd wanted us to, somebody
would have resisted, and the next thing, we'd have had to kill about five
or six thousand of them and blow down a couple of towns, and we'd
have lost a lot of our own people doing it. You might say, we had to do
it to save them from themselves."

Obray of Erskyll seemed to have doubts, but before he could articulate
them, Shatrak's communication-screen was calling attention to itself.
The commodore flicked the switch, and his executive officer, Captain
Patrique Morvill, appeared in it.
"We've just gotten reports, sir, that some of Ravney's people have
captured a half-dozen missile-launching sites around the city. His
air-reconn tells him that that's the lot of them. I have an officer of one
of the parties that participated. You ought to hear what he has to say,
sir."
"Well, good!" Vann Shatrak whooshed out his breath. "I don't mind
admitting, I was a little on edge about that."
"Wait till you hear what Lieutenant Carmath has to say." Morvill
seemed to be strangling a laugh. "Ready for him, Commodore?"
Shatrak nodded; Morvill made a hand-signal and vanished in a flicker
of rainbow colors; when the screen cleared, a young Landing-Troop
lieutenant in battle-dress was looking out of it. He saluted and gave his
name, rank and unit.
"This missile-launching site I'm occupying, sir; it's twenty miles
north-west of the city. We took it thirty minutes ago; no resistance
whatever. There are four hundred or so people here. Of them, twelve,
one dozen, are soldiers. The rest are civilians. Ten enlisted men, a
non-com of some sort, and something that appears to be an officer. The
officer had a pistol, fully loaded. The non-com had a submachine gun,
empty, with two loaded clips on his belt. The privates had rifles, empty,
and no ammunition. The officer did not know where the rifle
ammunition was stored."
Shatrak swore. The second lieutenant nodded. "Exactly my comment
when he told me, sir. But this place is beautifully kept up. Lawns all
mowed, trees neatly pruned, everything policed up like inspection
morning. And there is a headquarters office building here adequate for
an army division...."

"How about the armament, Lieutenant?" Shatrak asked with forced
patience.
"Ah, yes; the armament, sir. There are eight big launching cradles for
panplanetary or off-planet missiles. They are all polished up like the
Crown Jewels. But none, repeat none, of them is operative. And there is
not a single missile on the installation."
Shatrak's facial control didn't slip.