CHAPTERS 1 THROUGH THREE of SPACE VIKING by H. B. Piper, read by Mark Nelson. They stood together at the parapet, their arms about each other's wastes, her head against his cheek. Behind, the broad-leaved shrubbery gossiped softly with the wind, and from the lower main terrace came music and laughing voices. The city of Wardshaven spread in front of them, white buildings rising from the wide spaces of green treetops, under a shimmer of sun-reflecting air-cars above. Far away, the mountains were violet in the afternoon haze, and the huge red sun hung in a sky as yellow as a ripe peach. His eye caught a twinkle ten miles to the southeast, and for an instant he was puzzled. Then he frowned. The sunlight on the two-thousand-foot globe of Duke Angus knew ship, the Enterprise, back at the Gorham shipyards after her final trial cruise. Instead he pressed the girl closer and whispered her name, Elaine, and then caressing every syllable, Lady Elaine Trask of Traskin. Oh no, Lucas! Her protest was half-joking and half-apprehensive. It's bad luck to be called by your married name before the wedding. I've been calling you that in my mind since the night of the Duke's ball, when you were just home from school on Excalibur. She looked up from the corner of her eye. That's when I started calling me that too, she confessed. There's a terrorist to the west at Traskin Newhouse, he told her. Tomorrow we'll have dinner there and watch the sunset together. I know. I thought that was to be our sunset-watching place. You've been peaking, he accused. Traskin Newhouse was to be your surprise. I always was a present peaker, new years and my birthdays, but I only saw it from the air. I'll be very surprised at everything inside, she promised, and very delighted. And when she'd seen everything and Traskin Newhouse wasn't a surprise anymore, they'd take a long space trip. He hadn't mentioned that to her yet. To some of the other sword worlds, Excalibur of course, and Morgue and Flambeirge, and Durendal. No, not Durendal, the war had started there again. But they'd have so much fun, and she would see clear blue skies again and stars at night. The cloud veil hid the stars from Graham and Delayne had missed them, since coming home from Excalibur. The shadow of an air-car fell briefly upon them, and they looked up and turned their heads, in time to see it sink with graceful dignity toward the landing stage of Carvel House, and he glimpsed its blazonry, sword and Adam's symbol, the badge of the Ducal House of Ward. He wondered if it were Duke Angus himself, or just some of his people come ahead of him. They should get back to their guests, he supposed. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her, and she responded ardently. It must have been all of five minutes since they'd done that before. A slight cough behind them brought them apart and their heads around. It was Cesar Carval, gray-haired and portly, the breast of his blue coat gleaming with orders and decorations, and the sapphire in the pommel of his dress-dagger twinkling. I thought I'd find you two here, Elaine's father smiled. You'll have to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow together, but need I remind you that today we have guests, and more coming every minute. Who came in the ward-car, Elaine asked? Rovard Groffis, and Otto Harkaman.  No, not by introduction. I'd like to, before he spaces out. He had nothing against Harkaman personally, only against what he represented. Is the duke coming? Oh, surely! Lionel of New Haven and the Lord of Northport are coming with him. They're at the palace now. Carval hesitated. His nephew's back in town. Elaine was distressed. She started to say, oh, dear, I hope he doesn't, has Dunnan been bothering Elaine again? Nothing to take notice of. He was here, yesterday, demanding to speak with her. We got him to leave without too much unpleasantness. It'll be something for me to take notice of, if he keeps it up after to-morrow. For his seconds, and André Dunnan's that was, he hoped it wouldn't come to that. He didn't want to have to shoot a kinsman to the house of Ward, and a crazy man to boot. I'm terribly sorry for him, Elaine was saying. Father, you should have let me talk to him. I might have made him understand. César Carval was shocked. Child, you couldn't have subjected yourself to that. The man is insane. Then he saw her bare shoulders and was even more shocked. Elaine, you're shawl! Her hands went up and couldn't find it. She looked about in confused embarrassment. Amused, Lucas picked it up from the shrub unto which she had tossed it and draped it over her shoulders, his hands lingering briefly. Then he gestured to the older man to proceed him, and they entered the arbor'd walk. At the other end, in an open circle, a fountain played. White marble girls and boys bathing in the jade-green basin. Another piece of loot from one of the old Federation planets. That was something he'd try to avoid in furnishing Traskin Newhouse. There'd be a lot of that coming to Gram after Otto Harkman took the Enterprise to space. I'll have to come back some time and visit them, Elaine whispered to him. They'll miss me. You'll find a lot of new friends at your new home, he whispered back. You wait till tomorrow. I'm going to put a word in the dukes here about that fellow, César Carval, still thinking of Dunnan was saying. If he speaks to him, maybe it'll do some good. I doubt it. I don't think Duke Angus has any influence over him at all. Dunnan's mother had been the duke's younger sister. From his father he had inherited what had originally been a prosperous barony. Now it was mortgage to the top of the Manor House aerial mast. The duke had once assumed Dunnan's debts and refused to do so again. Dunnan had gone to space a few times, as a junior officer on trade and raid voyages into the old Federation. He was supposed to be a fair astrogator.  Disappointed in that, he had recruited a mercenary company and was seeking military employment. It was suspected that he was in correspondence with his uncle's worst enemy, Duke Omfrey of Glaspeth. And he was obsessively in love with Elaine Carval, a passion which seemed to nourish itself on its own hopelessness. Maybe it would be a good idea to take that space trip right away. There ought to be a ship leaving Bigler Sport for one of the other sword worlds before long. They paused at the head of the escalators. The garden below was thronged with guests, the bright shawls of the ladies and the coats of the men making shifting color patterns among the flower beds and on the lawns and under the trees. Serving robots, flame yellow and black in the Carval colors, floated about playing soft music and offering refreshments. There was a continuous spiral of changing costume color around the circular robotable. Voices babbled happily like a mountain river. As they stood looking down, another air-car circled low. Green and gold-lettered Pan-Planet News Service. Cesar Carval swore in irritation. Didn't there used to be something they called privacy? He asked. It's a big story, Cesar. It was. More than the marriage of two people who happened to be in love with each other. It was the marriage of the farming and ranching barony of Traskin and the Carval steel mills. More, it was public announcement that the wealth and fighting men of both baronies were now aligned behind Duke Angus of Wardshaven. So it was a general holiday. Every industry had closed down at noon today and would be closed until morning after next, and there would be dancing in every park and feasting in every tavern. To sword-worlders, any excuse for a holiday was better than none. There are people, Cesar. They have a right to have a good time with us. I know everybody at Traskin is watching this by screen. He raised his hand and waved to the news-car, and when it swung its pickup around he waved again. Then they went down the long escalator. Lady Levina Carval was the center of a cluster of matrons and dowagers, around which, to-morrow's bridesmaids fluttered like many-colored butterflies. She took possession of her daughter and dragged her into the feminine circle. He saw Rovard Groffis, small in Saturnine, Duke Angus Henchman, and Bert Sandresen, Lady Levina's brother. They spoke, and then an upper-servant, his tabard blazoned with the yellow flame and black hammer of Carval Mills, approached his master with some tale of domestic crisis, and the two went away together. You haven't met Captain Harkaman Lucas, Rovard Groffis said. I wish you'd come over and say hello and have a drink with him. I know your attitude, but he's a good sort. Personally, I wish we had a few like him around here. That was his main objection. There were fewer and fewer men of that sort on any of the sword worlds. Two. A dozen men clustered around the bartending robot, his cousin and family lawyer, Nicolet Trask, Lothar Fail, the banker, Alex Gorham, the shipbuilder, and his son, Basil, Baron Rathmore, more of the Wardshaven nobles whom he knew only distantly, and Otto Harkaman. Harkaman was a space viking. That would have set him apart, even if he hadn't topped the tallest of them by a head.  The dagger on his belt was no mere dress ornament.  He had been fighting on Durendal, for one of the branches of the royal house contesting fratricidally for the throne. The wrong one. He had lost his ship and most of his men, and almost his own life. He had been a penniless refugee on Flambeirge, owning only the clothes he stood in and his personal weapons and the loyalty of half a dozen adventurers as penniless as himself, when Duke Angus had invited him to Graham to command the Enterprise. A pleasure, Lord Trask. I've met your lovely bride-to-be, and now that I meet you, let me congratulate both. Then, as they were having a drink together, he put his foot in it by asking, You're not an investor in the tanneth adventure, are you? He said he wasn't, and would have let it go at that. Young Basil Gorham had to get his foot in, too. Lord Trask does not approve of the tanneth adventure, he said scornfully. He thinks we should stay home and produce wealth, instead of exporting robbery and murder to the old federation for it. The smile remained on Otto Harkman's face, only the friendliness was gone. He unobtrusively shifted his drink to his left hand. Well, our operations are definable as robbery and murder, he agreed. Space Vikings are professional robbers and murderers. And you object? Perhaps you find me personally objectionable. I wouldn't have shaken your hand or had a drink with you if I did. I don't care how many planets you raid, or cities you sack, or how many innocents, if that's what they are, you massacre in the old federation. You couldn't possibly do anything worse than those people have been doing to one another for the past ten centuries. What I object to is the way you're raiding the sword worlds. You're crazy! Basil Gorham exploded. Young man! Harkman reproved. The conversation was between Lord Trask and myself, and when somebody makes a statement you don't understand, don't tell him he's crazy. Ask him what he means. What do you mean, Lord Trask? You should know. You've just raided Graham for eight hundred of our best men. You raided me for close to forty vaqueros, farm workers, lumbermen, machine operators, and I doubt I'll be able to replace them with as good. He turned to the elder Gorham. Alex, how many of you lost to Captain Harkman? Gorham tried to make it a dozen. Pressed, he admitted to a score and a half. Roboticians, machine supervisors, programmers, a couple of engineers, a foreman. There was grudging agreement from the others. Bert Sandreson's engine works had lost almost as many of the same kind. Even Lothar Fale admitted to losing a computer man and a guard sergeant. And after they were gone, the farms and ranches and factories would go on, almost, but not quite as before. Nothing on Graham, nothing on any of the sword worlds, was done as efficiently as three centuries ago. The whole level of sword-world life was sinking, like the east coastline of this continent, so slowly as to be evident only from the records and monuments of the past. He said as much and added, And the genetic loss. The best sword-world genes are literally escaping to space, like the atmosphere of a low-gravity planet, each generation begotten by fathers slightly inferior to the last. It wasn't so bad when the space Vikings raided directly from the sword worlds. They got home once in a while. Now they're conquering planets in the old federation for bases and staying there. Everybody had begun to relax. This wouldn't be a quarrel. Harkaman, who had shifted his drink back to his right hand, chuckled. That's right. I fathered my share of Bratz in the old federation, and I know space Vikings, whose fathers were born on old federation planets. He turned to Basil Gorham. You see, the gentleman isn't crazy at all. That's what happened to the Terran Federation, by the way. The good men all left to colonize, and the stuffed shirts and yes-men and heard followers and safety-firsters stayed on Terra and tried to govern the galaxy. Well, maybe this is all new to you, Captain, Rovard Groffis said sourly. But Lucas Trasque's dirge for the decline and fall of the sword-worlds is an old song to the rest of us. I have too much to do to stay here and argue. Lothar Fail evidently did intend to stay and argue. All you're saying, Lucas, is that we're expanding. You want us to sit here and build up population pressure, like Terra in the first century? With three and a half billion people spread out on twelve planets? They had that many on Terra alone, and it took us eight centuries to reach that. That had been since the ninth-century atomic era, at the end of the big war. Ten thousand men and women on Abigor, refusing to surrender, had taken the remnant of the System States Alliance Navy to space, seeking a world the Federation had never heard of and wouldn't find for a long time. That had been the world they had called Excalibur. From it their grandchildren had colonized Joyeuse and Durendal and Flambeirge. Holtecler had been colonized in the next generation from J.U.'s, and Graham from Holtecler. We're not expanding, Lothar. We're contracting. We stopped expanding three hundred and fifty years ago when that ship came back to Morglée from the old Federation and reported what had been happening out there since the big war. Before that, we were discovering new planets and colonizing them. Since then we've been picking the bones of the dead Terran Federation. Something was going on by the escalators to the landing stage. People were moving excitedly in that direction, and the news-cars were circling like vultures over a sick cow. Harkamon wondered, hopefully, if it might be a fight. Some drunk being bounced, Nicolet Lucas Cousin commented. Caesars let all wards haven in here today. But Lucas, this tanneth adventure, we're not making any hit-and-run raid. We're taking over a whole planet. It'll be another sword-world in forty or fifty years. Inside another century we'll conquer the whole Federation, Baron Rathmore declared. He was a politician and never let exaggeration worry him. What I don't understand, Harkamon said, is why you support Duke Angus, Lord Trask, if you think the tanneth adventure is doing Graham so much harm. If Angus didn't do it, somebody else would. But Angus is going to make himself king of Graham, and I don't think anybody else could do that. This planet needs a single sovereignty. I don't know how much you've seen of it outside this duchy, but don't take wards haven as typical. Some of these duchies, like Glasbeth or Diedrichsburg, are literal snake-pits. All the major barons are at each other's throats, and they can't even keep their own knights and petty barons in order. Why, there's a miserable little war down in South Main Continent that's been going on for over two centuries. That's probably where Dunnan's going to take that army of his, a robot manufacturing baron said. I hope it gets wiped out and Dunnan with it. You don't have to go to South Main, just go to Glasbeth, somebody else said. Well, if we don't get a planetary monarchy to keep order, this planet will de-civilize like anything in the old Federation. Oh, come, Lucas! Alex Gorham protested. That's pulling it out too far. Yes, for one thing, we don't have the Neo-barbarians, somebody said. And, if they ever came out here, we blow them to MC Square in nothing flat. Might be a good thing if they did, too. It would stop us squabbling among ourselves. Harkman looked at him in surprise. Just who do you think the Neo-barbarians are, anyhow, he asked. Some race of invading nomads, Attila's huns in spaceships? Well, isn't that who they are, Gorham asked? Niflheim, no. There aren't a dozen and a half planets in the old Federation that still have hyperdrive, and they're all civilized. That's if civilized is what Gilgamesh is, he added. These are homemade barbarians, workers and peasants who revolted to seize and divide the wealth, and then found they'd smashed the means of production and killed off all the technical brains. Survivors on planets hit during the interstellar wars, from the 11th to the 13th centuries, who lost the machinery of civilization. Followers of political leaders on local dictatorship planets. Companies of mercenaries thrown out of employment and living by pillage. Religious fanatics following self-anointed profits. You think we don't have plenty of Neo-barbarian material here on Graham, Trask demanded? If you do, take a look around. Glassbeth, somebody said. That collection of overripe gallows-fruit Andre Dunnans recruited, Rathmore mentioned. Alex Gorham was grumbling that his shipyard was full of them, agitators stirring up trouble, trying to organize a strike to get rid of the robots. Yes, Harkamon pounced on that last. I know of at least forty instances on a dozen and a half planets in the last eight centuries of anti-technological movements. They had the Monterra back as far as the second century pre-atomic, and after Venus acceded from the first federation before the second federation was organized. You're interested in history, Rathmore asked? A hobby. All spacemen have hobbies. There's very little work aboard ship in hyperspace. Boredom is the worst enemy. My guns and missiles officer, Van Larch, is a painter. Most of his work was lost with the Corsandi on Durandal, but he kept us from starving a few times on flambeirge by painting pictures and selling them. My hyperspatial astrogator, Guat Kirby, composes music. He tries to express the mathematics of hyperspatial theory in musical terms. I don't care much for it myself, he admitted. I study history. You know, it's odd. Practically everything that's happened on any of the inhabited planets happened on Terra before the first spaceship. The garden immediately around them was quiet now. Everybody was over by the landing stage escalators. Harkamon would have said more, but at that moment he saw half a dozen of Cesar Carval's uniformed guardsmen run past. They were helmeted and in bulletproofs. One of them had an auto rifle, and the rest carried knobbed plastic truncheons. The space viking sat down his drink. Let's go! he said. Our host is calling up his troops. I think the guests ought to find battle stations, too. 3. The gaily dressed crowd formed a semi-circle facing the landing stage escalators. Everybody was staring in embarrassed curiosity. Those behind, craning over the shoulders of those in front. The ladies had drawn up their shawls in frigid formality. Many had even covered their heads. There were four new service cars hovering above. Whatever was going on was getting a planet-wide screen showing. The Carval guardsmen were trying to get through. Their sergeant was saying over and over, Please, ladies and gentlemen, you're pardoned noble sir, and getting nowhere. Otto Harkamon swore disgustedly and shoved the sergeant aside. Make way here, he bellowed Let these guards pass! With that he almost hurled a gaily dressed gentleman aside on either hand. They both turned to glare angrily, then got hastily out of his way. Mediating briefly on the uses of bad manners in an emergency, Trask followed with the others. The big space viking plowed to the front, where Cesar Carval and Rovard Groffis and several others were standing. Four men in black cloaks stood with their backs to the escalators. Two were common folk retainers, hired gunmen to be precise. They were at pains to keep their hands plainly in sight, and seemed to be wishing themselves elsewhere. The men in front wore a diamond sunburst jewel on his beret, and his cloak was lined with pale blue silk.  His eyes showed white all around the irises, and now and then his mouth would twitch in an involuntary grimace. André Dunon. Trask wondered briefly how soon he would have to look at him from twenty-five meters over the sights of a pistol. The face of the slightly taller man who stood at his shoulder was paper-white, expressionless, with a black beard. His name was Neville Orm. Nobody was quite sure whence he had come, and he was Dunon's henchman and constant companion. You lie! Dunon was shouting.  You've intercepted every message she's tried to send me. My daughter has sent you no messages, Lord Dunon, Cesar Carval said, with forced patience. None but the one I just gave you, that she wants nothing whatever to do with you. You think I believe that? You're holding her a prisoner. Satan only knows how you've been torturing her to force her into this abominable marriage. There was a stir among the bystanders. That was more than well-mannered restraint could stand. Out of the murmur of incredulous voices one woman's was quite audible. Well, really, he actually is crazy. Dunon, like everybody else, heard it. Crazy, am I? he blazed. Because I can see through this hypocritical sham. Here's Lucas Trask. He wants an interest in Carval mills. And here sees our Carval. He wants access to iron deposits on tracks and land. And, my loving uncle, he wants the help of both of them in stealing omfrey of glasspits duchy. And here's this lone shark of a fail, trying to claw my lands away from me.  And this foreigner Harkaman, who swindled me out of command of the Enterprise, you're all plotting against me. Sir Neville, Groffis said, you can see that Lord Dunon's not himself. If you're a good friend to him, you'll get him out of here before Duke Angus arrives. Orm leaned forward and spoke urgently in Dunon's ear. Dunon pushed him angrily away. Great Satan! Are you against me too? he demanded. Orm caught his arm. You fool! Do you want to ruin everything? Now, he lowered his voice. The rest was inaudible. No, Curse you! I won't go till I've spoken to her. Face to face! There was another stir among the spectators. The crowd was parting and Elaine was coming through, followed by her mother and Lady Sandresan and five or six other matrons. They all had their shawls over their heads, right ends over left shoulders. They all stopped except Elaine, who took a few steps forward and confronted Andre Dunon. He had never seen her look more beautiful. But it was the icy beauty of a honed dagger. Lord Dunon, what do you wish to say to me? She asked. Say it quickly and then go. You are not welcome here. Elaine, Dunon cried, taking a step forward. Why do you cover your head? Why do you speak to me as a stranger? I am Andre, who loves you. Why are you letting them force you into this wicked marriage? No one is forcing me. I am marrying Lord Trask willingly and happily because I love him. Now please go and make no more trouble at my wedding. That's a lie. They're making you say that. You don't have to marry him. They can't make you. Come with me now.  I'll take you away from all these cruel, greedy people. You love me. You've always loved me. You've told me you loved me again and again. Yes, in his own private dream world, a world of fantasy that had now become Andre Dunon's reality, in which an Elaine Carval, whom his imagination had created, existed only to love him. Confronted by the real Elaine, he simply rejected the reality. I never loved you, Lord Dunon, and I never told you so. I never hated you either, but you were making it very hard for me not to. Now go, and never let me see you again. With that she turned and started back through the crowd, which parted in front of her. Her mother and her aunt and the other ladies followed. You lied to me, Dunon shrieked after her. You lied all the time. You're as bad as the rest of them, all scheming and plotting against me, betraying me. I know what it's about. You all want to cheat me of my rights and keep my usurping uncle on the dookal throne.  Sir Neville Orm caught his shoulder and spun him around, propelling him toward the escalators. Dunon struggled, screaming inarticulately like a wounded wolf. Orm was cursing furiously. You too, he shouted, help me here! Get hold of him! Dunon was still howling as they forced him onto the escalator. The backs of the two retainers' cloaks, badged with the Dunon crescent, light blue on black, hiding him. After a little, an air-car with the blue crescent blazonry lifted and sped away. Lucas, he's crazy! Cesar Carval was insisting. Elaine hasn't spoken fifty words to him since he came back from his last voyage. He laughed and put a hand on Carval's shoulder. I know that, Cesar. You don't think, do you, that I need assurance of it? Crazy! I'll say he's crazy! Roval'd Groff has put in. Did you hear what he said about his rights? Wait till his grace hears about that! Does he lay claim to the dookal throne, Sir Rovard? Otto Harkman asked, sharply and seriously. Oh, he claims that his mother was born a year and a half before Duke Angus, and the true date of her birth falsified to give Angus the succession. Why, his present grace was three years old when she was born. I was old Duke Fergus Esquire. I carried Angus on my shoulder when Andre Dunon's mother was presented to the lords and barons the day after she was born. Of course he's crazy! Alex Gorham agreed. I don't know why the dook doesn't have him put under psychiatric treatment. I'd put him under treatment, Harkman said, drawing a finger across under his beard.  We couldn't do that, Groff has said. After all, he's Duke Angus's nephew. I could do it, Harkman said. He only has three hundred men in this company of his.  I have eight hundred, five hundred ground fighters. I'd like to see how they shape up in combat before we space out. I can have them ready for action in two hours, and it'd be all over before midnight. No, Captain Harkman, his grace would never permit it, Groff has vetoed. You have no idea of the political harm that would do among the independent lords on whom we're counting for support. You weren't here on Gram when Duke Richard of Diedricksburg had his sister Sansia's second husband poisoned. End of Chapter 3 Chapters 4 through 6 of Space Viking by H. Beam Piper Read by Mark Nelson This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org Space Viking 4 They halted under the colonnade. Beyond, the lower main terrace was crowded, and a medley of old love songs was wafting from the sound outlets for the sixth or eighth time around. He looked at his watch. It was ninety seconds later than the last time he had done so. Give it fifteen more minutes to get started, and another fifteen to get away after the marriage toasts and the felicitations. And no marriage, however pompous, lasted more than half an hour. An hour, then, till he and Elaine would be in the air-car, bulleting toward Traskin. The love song stopped abruptly. After a momentary silence, a trumpet considerably amplified, blared the ducal salute. The crowd stopped shifting, the buzz of voices ceased. At the head of the landing-stage escalators, there was a glow of color, and the ducal party began moving down. A platoon of guards in red and yellow, with gilded helmets and tasseled halberds. An esquire bearing the sword of state. Duke Angus, with his counsel, Otto Harkaman among them, the duchess Flavia and her companion ladies. The household gentlemen and their ladies. More guardsmen. There was a great burst of cheering. The new service air-cars got into position above the procession. Cousin Nicolet and a few others stepped out from between the pillars and into the sunlight. There was a similar movement at the other end of the terrace. The ducal party reached the end of the central walkway, halted and deployed. All right, let's shove off, Cousin Nicolet said, stepping forward. Ten minutes since they had come outside, another five to get into position. Fifty minutes now till he and Elaine, Lady Elaine Trask of Traskin, for real and for always, would be going home. Sure the car's ready, he asked for the hundredth time.  Figures in Carval Black and Flame Yellow appeared across the terrace. The music began again, this time the stately noble's wedding march, arrogant and at the same time tender. Cesar Carval's gentleman secretary and the Carval lawyer, executives of the steel mills, the Carval Guard Captain. Cesar himself, with Elaine on his arm. She was wearing a shawl of black and yellow. He looked around in sudden fright. For the love of Satan wears our shawl, he demanded, and then relaxed when one of his gentlemen exhibited it, green and tawny in Traskin colors. The bridesmaids led by Lady Lavina Carval. Finally they halted, ten yards apart in front of the Duke. Who approaches us? Duke Angus asked of his guard, Captain. He had a thin, pointed face, almost femininely sensitive, and a small, pointed beard. He was bare-headed, except for the narrow gold circlet which he spent most of his waking time scheming to convert into a royal crown. The Guard Captain repeated the question. I am Sir Nicolet Trask. I bring my cousin and liege, Lord, Lucas, Lord Trask, Baron of Traskin. He comes to receive the lady, Demoiselle Elaine, daughter of Lord Cesar Carval, Baron of Carval Mills, and the sanction of your grace to the marriage between them. Sir Maximon Zorge, Cesar Carval's henchman, named himself and his Lord. They brought the lady, Demoiselle Elaine, to be wed to Lord Trask of Traskin. The Duke, satisfied that these were persons whom he could address directly, asked if the terms of the marriage agreement had been reached. Both parties affirmed this. Sir Maximon passed a scroll to the Duke. Duke Angus began to read the stiff and precise legal phraseology. Marriages between noble houses were not matters to be left open to dispute. A great deal of spilled blood and burned powder had resulted from ambiguity on some point of succession or inheritance or dour rites. Lucas bore it patiently. He didn't want his great-grandchildren and elanes shooting it out over a matter of a misplaced comma. And these persons here before us do enter into this marriage freely, the Duke asked, when the reading had ended.  Trask stepped forward. Cesar Carval brought Elaine up. The lawyers and henchmen obliqued off to the sides. "'How say you, Lord Trask,' he asked almost conversationally.  The Duke took the sword by the blade and extended it. They laid their hands on the jeweled pommel.  Not only he and Elaine, but all around them. In all the throng the gardens answered, the spectators in shouts. Very clearly, above it all, somebody with more enthusiasm than discretion was bawling. "'Long live Angus, the first of Graham!' "'And we, Angus, do confer upon you two and your houses the right to wear our badge as you see fit, and pledge ourselves to maintain your rights against any and all who may presume to invade them. "'And we declare that this marriage between you two and this agreement between your respective houses does please us, and we avow you two, Lucas and Elaine, to be lawfully wed, and whoso questions this marriage challenges us in our teeth and to our despite.'" That wasn't exactly the wording used by a Duke Lord on Graham. It was the formula employed by a planetary king, like Napoleon of Flambeirge or Rodolf of Excalibur. And, now that he thought of it, Angus had consistently used the royal first-person plural. Maybe that fellow who had shouted about Angus the first of Graham had only been doing what he'd been paid to do. This was being telecast, and Amphrey of Glasbeth and Ridgird of Diedricksburg would both be listening. As of now, they'd start hiring mercenaries. Maybe that would get rid of Dunnan for him. The Duke gave the two-hand sword back to his esquire. The young knight who was carrying the green and tawny shawl handed it to him, and Elaine dropped the black and yellow one from her shoulders. The only time a respectable woman ever did that in public, and her mother caught and folded it. He stepped forward and draped the trance colors over her shoulders, and then took her in his arms. The cheering broke out again, and some of Cesar Carval's guardsmen began firing a pom-pom somewhere. It took a little longer than he expected to finish with the toasts and shake hands with those who crowded around. Finally, the exit march started down the long walkway to the landing stage, and the Duke and his party moved away to the rear to prepare for the wedding feast at which everybody but the bride and groom would celebrate. One of the bridesmaids gave Elaine a huge sheaf of flowers, which she was to toss back from the escalator. She held it in the crook of one arm and clung to his with the other. Darling, we really made it! She was whispering, as though it were too wonderful to believe. Well, wasn't it? One of the news-cars, Orange and Blue, that was Westland's telecast and teleprint, had floated just ahead of them and was letting down toward the landing stage. For a moment he was angry. That went beyond the outer orbit limits of journalistic propriety, even for Westland's tea and tea. Then he laughed. Today he was too happy for anger about anything.  There was another pair in the car, he'd seen to that personally, and they stepped on to the escalator and turned about. The bridesmaids rushed forward and began struggling for the slippers, to the damage and disarray of their gowns. And when they were halfway up, Elaine heaved the bouquet and it burst apart among them, like a bomb of colored fragrance, and the girls below snatched at the flowers, shrieking deliriously. Elaine stood, blowing kisses to everybody, and he was shaking his clasped hands over his head, until they were at the top. When they turned and stepped off, the orange and blue air car had let down directly in front of them, blocking their way. Now he was really furious, and started forward with a curse. Then he saw who was in the car. André Dunnan, his thin face contorted, the narrow mustache writhing on his upper lip. He had a slit beside the window open and was tilting the barrel of a submachine gun up and out of it. He shouted, and at the same time tripped Elaine and flung her down. He was throwing himself forward to cover her when there was a blasting multiple report. Something sledged him in the chest, his right leg crumpled under him. He fell. He fell and fell and fell endlessly, through darkness, out of consciousness. Five. He was crucified and crowned with a crown of thorns. Who had they done that to? Somebody long ago, on Tara. His arms were drawn out stiffly and hurt. His feet and legs hurt too, and he couldn't move them, and there was this prickling at his brow. And he was blind. No, his eyes were just closed. He opened them, and there was a white wall in front of him, patterned with a blue snow-crystal design. And he realized that it was a ceiling and that he was lying on his back. He could move his head, but by shifting his eyes he saw that he was completely naked and surrounded by a tangle of tubes and wires, which puzzled him briefly. Then he knew that he was not on a bed, but on a robomedic, and the tubes would be for medication and wound drainage and intravenous feeding, and the wires would be to electrodes embedded in his body for diagnosis, and the crown of thorns thing would be more electrodes for an encephalograph. He'd been on one of those robomedics before, when he'd been gored by a bisonoid on the cattle range. That was what it was, but he was still under treatment. But that seemed so long ago. So many things, he must have dreamed them, seemed to have happened. Then he remembered, and struggled futilely to rise. Elaine, he called, Elaine, where are you? There was a stirrer, and somebody came into his limited view, his cousin Nicolet Trask. Nicolet, Andre Dunnan, he said, what happened to Elaine? Nicolet winced, as though something he had expected to hurt had hurt worse than he had expected. Lucas, he swallowed. Elaine, Elaine is dead. Elaine is dead. That didn't make sense. She was killed instantly, Lucas, hit six times. I don't think she even felt the first one. She didn't suffer at all. Somebody moaned, and then he realized that it had been himself. You were hit twice, Nicolet was telling him, one in the leg, smash the femur, and one in the chest. That one missed your heart by an inch. Pity did. He was beginning to remember clearly now. I threw her down, and tried to cover her. I must have thrown her straight into the burst, and only caught the last of it myself. There was something else. Oh yes. Dunnan, did they get him? Nicolet shook his head. He got away, stole the Enterprise, and took her off-planet. I want to get him myself. He started to rise again. Nicolet nodded to someone out of sight. A cool hand touched his chin, and he smelled a woman's perfume. Nothing at all like Elaine's. Something like a small insect bit him on the neck. The room grew dark. Elaine was dead. There was no more Elaine, no where at all. Why, that must mean there was no more world. So that was why it had gotten so dark. He woke again, fitfully, and it would be daylight, and he could see the yellow sky through an open window, or it would be night, and the wall lights would be on. There would always be somebody with him. Nicolet's wife, Dame Cecilia, Rovarde Groffis, Lady Lavina Carval, he must have slept a long time, for she was much older than he remembered, and her brother, Burt Sandreson, and a woman with dark hair, in a white smock with a gold caduceus on her breast. Once Duchess Flavia and once Duke Angus himself. He asked where he was, not much caring. They told him at the Ducal Palace. He wished they'd all go away and let him go wherever Elaine was. Then it would be dark, and he would be trying to find her, because there was something he wanted desperately to show her. Stars in the sky at night, that was it. But there were no stars, there was no Elaine, there was no anything, and he wished that there was no Lucas Trask either. But there was an André Dunnan. He could see him standing, black cloaked on the terrace, the diamonds in his beret jewel glittering evilly. He could see the mad face peering at him over the rising barrel of a submachine gun, and then he would hunt for him without finding him, through the cold darkness of space. The waking periods grew longer, and during them his mind was clear. They relieved him of his crown of electronic thorns. The feeding tubes came out, and they gave him cups of broth and fruit juice. He wanted to know why he had been brought to the palace. About the only thing we could do, Rovard Groffis told him, they had too much trouble at Carval house as it was. You know, Cesar got shot, too. No. So that was why Cesar hadn't come to see him. Was he killed? Wounded. He's in worse shape than you are. When the shooting started, he went charging up the escalator. Didn't have anything but his dress-dagger. Dunnan gave him a quick burst. I think that was why he didn't have time to finish you off. By that time the guards who had been shooting blanks from that rapid fire gun got in a clip of live rounds and fired at him. He got out of there as fast as he could. They have Cesar on a Robo-Medic like yours. He isn't in any danger. The drainage tubes and medication tubes came out. The tangle of wires around him was removed, and the electrodes with them. They bandaged his wounds and dressed him in a loose robe and lifted him from the Robo-Medic to a couch, where he could sit up when he wished. They began giving him solid food and wine to drink and allowed him to smoke. The woman doctor told him he'd had a bad time, as though he didn't know that. He wondered if she expected him to thank her for keeping him alive. You'll be up and around in a few weeks, his cousin added. I've seen to it that everything at Trask and Newhouse will be ready for you by then. I'll never enter that house as long as I live, and I wish that wouldn't be more than the next minute. That was to be Elaine's house. I won't go to it alone. The dreams troubled his sleep less and less as he grew stronger. Visitors came often, bringing amusing little gifts, and he found that he enjoyed their company. He wanted to know what had really happened and how Dunnan had gotten away. He pirated the Enterprise, Rovart Groffis told him. He had that company of mercenaries of his, and he'd bribed some of the people at Gorham shipyards. I thought Alex would kill his chief of security when he found out what had happened. We can't prove anything. We're trying hard enough to, but we're sure Humphrey of Glasbeth furnished the money. He's been denying it just a shade too emphatically. Then the whole thing was planned in advance. Taking the ship was. He must have been planning that for months before he started recruiting that company. I think he meant to do it the night before the wedding. Then he tried to persuade the Lady Demoiselle Elaine to elope with him. He seems to have actually thought that was possible.  He turned to Otto Harkaman, who had accompanied him. As long as I live, I'll regret not taking you at your word and accepting your offer then. How did he get hold of that Westland's telecast and teleprint car? Oh! The morning of the wedding he screened Westland's editorial office and told them he had an inside story on the marriage, and why the Duke was sponsoring it. Made it sound as though there was some scandal. Insisted that a reporter come to Dunnan House for a face-to-face interview. They sent a man, and that was the last they saw him alive. Our people found his body yet Dunnan House when we were searching the place afterward. We found the car at the shipyard. It had taken a couple of hits from the guns at Carval House, but you know what those press cars are built to stand. He went directly to the shipyard, where his men already had the Enterprise. As soon as he arrived, she lifted out. He stared at the cigarette between his fingers. It was almost short enough to burn him. With an effort he leaned forward to crush it out. Rovard, how soon will that second ship be finished? Groffis laughed bitterly. Building the Enterprise took everything we had. The duchies on the edge of bankruptcy now. We stopped work on the second ship six months ago because we didn't have enough money to keep on with her and still get the Enterprise finished. We were expecting the Enterprise to make enough in the old federation to finish the second one. Then, with two ships and a base on Tanneth, the money would begin coming in instead of going out. But now... It leaves me where I was on flambayage, Harkaman added. Worse! King Napoleon was going to help the Emersons, and I'd have gotten a command in that. It's too late for that now. He picked up his cane and used it to push himself to his feet. The broken leg had mended, but he was still weak. He took a few tottering steps, paused to lean on the cane, and then forced himself to open the window and stood for a moment staring out. Then he turned. Captain Harkaman, it might be that you could still get a command here on Gram. That's if you don't mind commanding under me as owner aboard. I'm going hunting for Andrei Dunnan. They both looked at him. After a moment, Harkaman said, I'd count it an honor, Lord Trask, but where will you get a ship? She's half finished now. You already have a crew for her. Duke Angus can finish her for me and pay for it by pledging his new bernie of Traskin. He had known Rovard Gruffus all his life. Until this moment, he had never seen Duke Angus Hinchman show surprise.  Finished, equipped, and ready for space, yes. Duke will agree to that, Gruffus said promptly. But, Lucas, Traskin is all you own. If I have a ship, I won't need them. I am turning space viking. That brought Harkaman to his feet with a roar of approval. Gruffus looked at him, his mouth slightly open. Lucas Trask, space viking, he said. Now I've heard everything. Well, why not? He had deplored the effects of viking rating on the sword-worlds, because Graham was a sword-world, and Traskin was on Graham, and Traskin was to have been the home where he and Elaine would live and where their children and children's children would be born and live. Now the little point on which all of it had rested was gone. That was another Lucas Trask, Rovard. He's dead now. Six. Gruffus excused himself to make a screen call, and then returned to excuse himself again. Evidently, Duke Angus had dropped whatever he was doing as soon as he heard what his henchmen had to tell him. Harkaman was silent until after he was out of the room, then said, Lord Trask, this is a wonderful thing for me. It's not been pleasant to be a shipless captain living on strangers' bounty. I'd hate, though, to have you think, some time, that I'd advance my own fortunes at the expense of yours. Don't worry about that, if anybody's being taken advantage of, you are. I need a space-captain, and your misfortune is my own good luck. Harkaman started to pack tobacco into his pipe. Have you ever been off-gram at all, he asked? A few years at the University of Camelot on Excalibur. Otherwise, no. Well, have you any conception of the sort of thing you're setting yourself to? The space viking snapped his lighter and puffed. You know, of course, how big the old federation is. You know the figures, that is, but do they mean anything to you? I know they don't to a good many spacemen, even. We talk glibly about ten to the hundredth power, but, emotionally, we still count one, two, three, many. A ship in hyperspace logs about a light year and hour. You can go from here to Excalibur in thirty hours. But you could send a radio message announcing the birth of a son, and he'd be a father before it was received. The old federation, where you're going to hunt Dunon, occupies a space volume of two hundred billion cubic light years, and you're hunting for one ship and one man in that. How are you going to do it, Lord Trask? I haven't started thinking about how. All I know is that I have to do it. There are planets in the old federation where space vikings come and go, raid and trade bases, like the one Duke Angus planned to establish on Tanneth. At one or another of them I'll pick up word of Dunon sooner or later. We'll hear where he was a year ago, and by the time we get there he'll be gone for a year and a half to two years. We've been raiding the old federation for over three hundred years, Lord Trask. At present, I'd say there are at least two hundred space viking ships in operation. Why haven't we raided it bare long ago? Well, that's the answer. Distance and voyage time. You know, Dunon could die of old age, which is not a usual cause of death among space vikings before you caught up with him. And your youngest ship's boy could die of old age before he found out about it. Well, I can go hunting for him till I die then. There's nothing else that means anything to me. I thought it was something like that. I won't be with you all your life. I want a ship of my own, like the Coruscanti, that I lost on Durandal. Someday I'll have one. But till you can command your own ship, I'll command her for you. That's a promise. Some note of ceremony seemed indicated. Summoning a robot, he had it pour wine for them, and they pledged each other. Rovart Groffis had recovered his aplomb by the time he returned accompanied by the Duke. If Angus had ever lost his, he gave no indication of it. The effect on everybody else was literally seismic. The general accepted view was that Lord Trask's reason had been unhinged by his tragic loss. There might, he conceded, be more than a crumb of truth in that. At first his cousin Nicolay raged at him for alienating the barony from the family, and then he learned that Duke Angus was appointing him Vicar Baron and giving him Trask a new house for his residence. Immediately he began acting like one at the deathbed of a rich grandmother. The wards haven financial and industrial barons, whom he had known only distantly on the other hand came flocking around him, offering assistance and hailing him as the saviour of the Duchy. Duke Angus' credit, almost obliterated by the loss of the enterprise, was firmly re-established, and there's with it. There were conferences at which lawyers and bankers argued interminably. He attended a few at first, found himself completely uninterested, and told everybody so. All he wanted was a ship, the best ship possible, as soon as possible. Alex Gorham had been the first to be notified. He had commenced work on the unfinished sister ship of the enterprise immediately. Until he was strong enough to go to the shipyard himself, he watched the work on the two thousand-foot globular skeleton by screen, and conferred, either in person or by screen, with engineers and shipyard executives. His rooms at the Ducal Palace were converted, almost overnight, from sick rooms to offices. The doctors, who had recently been urging him to find new interests and activities, were now warning of the dangers of overexertion. Harkaman finally added his voice to theirs. You take it easy, Lucas. They had dropped formality and were on a first-name basis now. You got hulled pretty badly. You let damage-control work on you, and don't strain the machinery till it's fixed. We have plenty of time. We're not going to get anywhere chasing Dunnan. The only way we can catch him is by interception. The longer he moves around in the old federation before he hears we're after him, the more of a trail he'll leave. Once we can establish a predictable pattern, we'll have a chance. Then, sometime, he'll come out of hyperspace somewhere and find us waiting for him. Do you think he went to Tanneth? Harkaman heaved himself out of his chair and prowled about the room for a few minutes. Then he came back and sat down again. No. That was Duke Angus' idea, not his. He couldn't put in a base on Tanneth anyhow. You know the kind of a crew he has. There had been an extensive inquiry into Dunnan's associates and accomplices. Duke Angus was still hoping for positive proof to implicate Amfrey of Glaspith in the piracy. Dunnan had with him a dozen and a half employees of the Gorham Shipyards, whom he had corrupted. There was some technical ability among them, but for the most part they were agitators and troublemakers and incompetent workmen. Even under the circumstances Alex Gorham was glad to see the last of them. As for Dunnan's own mercenary company, there were about a score of former spacemen among them. The rest graded down from bandits, through thugs and sneak thieves to bar room bums. Dunnan himself was an astrogator, not an engineer. That gang aren't even good enough for routine raiding, Harkaman said. They'd never under any circumstances be able to put a base on Tanneth, unless Dunnan's completely crazy, which I doubt he's gone to some regular Viking base-planet, like Hoth, or Nurgal, or Dagon, or Zoxchil, to recruit officers and engineers and able spacemen. All that machinery and robotic equipment and so on that was going to Tanneth was that aboard when he took the ship? Yes, and that's another reason why he'd go to some planet like Hoth or Nurgal or Zoxchil. On a Viking-occupied planet in the old federation, that stuff's almost worth its weight in gold. What's Tanneth like? Almost completely pterotype, third of a Class G sun, very much like Haltecler or Flambeirge. It was one of the last planets the federation colonized before the big war. Nobody knows what happened exactly. There wasn't any interstellar war, at least you don't find any big slag puddles where cities used to be. They probably did a lot of fighting among themselves after they got out of the federation. There's still some traces of combat damage around. Then they started to de-civilize, down to the pre-mechanical level, wind and water power and animal power. They have draft animals that look like introduced Terran caribows, and a few small sailboats and big canoes and bateau on the rivers. They have gunpowder, which seems to be the last thing any people lose. I was there five years ago. I'd liked Tanneth for a base. There's one moon, almost solid nickel iron, and fissionable ore deposits. Then, like a fool, I hired out to the Elmer Sands on Durendal and lost my ship. When I came here, your Duke was thinking about Zapodotec. I convinced him that Tanneth was a better planet for his purpose. Dunnan might go there at that. He might think he was scoring one on Duke Angus. After all, he has all that equipment. And nobody to use it. If I were Dunnan, I'd go to Nurgal or Zachittal. There are always a couple of thousand space Vikings on either, spending their loot and taking it easy between raids. He could sign on a full crew on either. I suggest we go to Zachittal first. We might pick up news of him, if nothing else. All right, they'd try Zachittal first. Harkman knew the planet and was friendly with the Haltaklear noble who ruled it. The work went on at the Gorham Shipyard. It had taken a year to build the Enterprise, but the steel mills and engine works were over the preparatory work of tooling up, and material and equipment was flowing in a steady stream. Lucas let him persuade him to take more rest, and day by day grew stronger. Soon he was spending most of his time at the shipyard, watching the engines go in, Abbott lift and drive for normal space, Dillingham Hyperdrive, Power Converters, Pseudograph, all at the center of the globular ship. Living quarters and workshops went in next, all armored in Calapsium-plated steel. Then the ship lifted out to an orbit a thousand miles off planet, followed by swarms of armored workcraft and cargo lighters. The rest of the work was more easily done in space. At the same time the four two hundred foot penises that would be carried aboard were being finished. Each of them had its own hyperdrive engines and could travel as far and as fast as the ship herself. Otto Harkman was beginning to be distressed because the ship still lacked a name. He didn't like having to speak of her as her, or the ship, and there were many things soon to go on that should be name-marked. Elaine Trask thought at once, and almost at once rejected it. He didn't want her name associated with the things that ship would do in the old federation. Revenge, Avenger, Retribution, Vendetta, none appealed to him. A news commentator, turgidly eloquent about the nemesis which the criminal Dunon had invoked against himself supplied it. Nemesis it was. Now he was studying his new profession of interstellar robbery and murder against which he had once invaded. Otto Harkman's handful of followers became his teachers. Van Larch, Guns and Missiles, who was also a painter. Guat Kirby, sour and pessimistic, the hyperspatial astrogator who tried to express his science in music. Charles Renner, the normal space astrogator. Alvin Carford, the exec, who had been with Harkman longest of all. And Sir Patrick Moreland, a local recruit, formerly guard captain to Count Lionel of New Haven, who commanded the ground fighters and the combat contragravity. They were using the farms and villages of Traskin for drill and practice, and he noticed that while the nemesis would carry only five hundred ground and air fighters, over a thousand were being trained. He commented to Rovard Groffis. Yes, don't mention it outside, the Dukes henchmen said. You and Sir Patrick and Captain Harkman will pick the five hundred best. The Duke will take the rest into his service. Some of these days, Omfrey of Glasbeth will find out what a space viking raid is really like. And Duke Angus would take his new subjects of Glasbeth to redeem the pledges on his new barony of Traskin. Some old pre-atomic writer, Harkman was fond of quoting, had said, Gold will not always get you good soldiers, but good soldiers can get you gold. The nemesis came back to the gorem yards and settled onto her curved landing legs like a monstrous spider. The Enterprise had borne the ward sword and atom symbol. The nemesis should bear his own badge. But the bisonoid head, tawny on green of Traskin, was no longer his. He chose a skull impaled on an upright sword, and it was blazoned on the ship when he and Harkman took her out for her shakedown cruise. When they landed again at the gorem yards, two hundred hours later, they learned that a tramp freighter from Morgle had come into bigular sport in their absence with news of Andre Dunnan. Her captain had come towards Haven at Duke Angus urgent invitation, and was waiting for them at the Ducal Palace. They sat a dozen of them around a table at the Duke's private apartments. The freighter captain, a small, precise man with a graying beard, alternately puffed at a cigarette and sipped from a beaker of Brandy. I spaced out from Morgle two hundred hours ago, he was saying. I'd been there twelve local days, three hundred galactic standard hours, and the run from Cortana was three hundred and twenty. This ship, the Enterprise, spaced out from there several days before I did. I'd say she's twelve hundred hours out of Windsor, or Cortana now. The room was still. The breeze fluttered curtains at the open windows. From the garden below, winged night things twittered. I never expected it, Harkamon said. I thought he'd take the ship out to the old federation at once. He poured wine for himself. Of course, Dunnan's crazy.  He does unexpected things. That wasn't such a crazy move, Rovard Groffis said. We have very little direct trade with Cortana. It's only an accident we heard about this when we did. The freighter captain's beaker was half empty. He filled it to the brim from the decanter. She was the first Gram ship there for years, he agreed. That attracted notice, of course, and his having the blazing rechanged from the sword and Adam symbol to the blue crescent, and the ill feeling on the part of other captains and planet-side employers about the men he'd lured away from them. How many men and what kind? The man with the gray beard shrugged. I was too busy getting a cargo together for Morgle to pay much attention, almost a full spaceship complement, officers and spacemen of every kind, and a lot of industrial engineers and technicians. Then he is going to use that equipment that was aboard and put in a base somewhere, somebody said. If he left Cortana twelve hundred hours ago, he's still in hyperspace, Gwatt Kirby said. It's over two thousand from Cortana to the nearest old Federation planet. How far to Tannath, Duke Angus asked. I'm sure that's where he's gone. He'd expect me to finish the other ship and equip her like the Enterprise and send her out. He'd want to get there first. I'd thought that Tannath would be the last place he'd go, Harkamon said. But this changes the whole outlook. He could have gone to Tannath. He's crazy, and you're trying to apply sane logic to him, Gwatt Kirby said. You're figuring what you'd do, and you aren't crazy. Of course, I've had my doubts at times, but... Yes, he's crazy, and Captain Harkamon's allowing for that, Rovart Groffis said. Dunon hates all of us. He hates his Grace here. He hates Lord Lucas and Cesar Carval. Of course, he may think he killed both of them. He hates Captain Harkamon. So how could he score all of us off at once, by taking Tannath? You say he was buying supplies and ammunition? That's right, gun ammunition, ship's missiles, and a lot of ground defense missiles. What was he buying them with, trading machinery? No, gold. Yes, Lothar Fail found out that a lot of gold was transferred to Dunon from banks in Glasbeth and Diedricksburg, Groffis said. He got that aboard when he took the ship, evidently. All right, Trask said. We can't be sure of anything, but we have some reasons for thinking he went to Tannath, and that's more than we have for any other planet in the Old Federation. I won't try to estimate the odds against our finding him there, but they're a good deal bigger anywhere else. We'll go there first. End of Chapter 6


Hello, and welcome to theCUBE's presentation of the AWS Startup Showcase. This is season two, episode four of the ongoing series, covering the exciting hot startups from the AWS ecosystem. Here we're talking about cybersecurity. In this episode, I'm your host, John Furrier. We're here with excited to have CUBE alumni who's back, Stahl Antony, who's the CEO and co-founder of horizon3.ai. Talking about exploitable weaknesses and vulnerabilities with autonomous pen testing. Stahl, great to see you. Thanks for coming back. Likewise, John, I think it's been about five years since you and I were on the stage together, and I've missed it, but I'm glad to see you again. Well, before we get into the showcase about your new startup, that's extremely successful, amazing margins, great product. You have a unique journey. We talked about this prior to you doing the journey, but you have a great story. You left the startup world to go into the startup-like world of self-defense, public defense. Yeah, it's- And I say, what group did you go to in the public sector that became my private partner? My background, I'm a software engineer by education and trade. I started my career at IBM. I was a CIO at GE Capital. I think we met once when I was there, and I became the CTO of Splunk, and we spent a lot of time together when I was at Splunk. And at the end of 2017, I decided to take a break from industry and really kind of solve problems that I cared deeply about and solve problems that mattered. So I left industry and joined the US Special Operations Community and spent about four years in US Special Operations where I grew more personally and professionally than in anything I'd ever done in my career. And I exited that time, met my co-founder in Special Ops, and then as he retired from the Air Force, we started Horizon 3. So there's really, I want to bring that up one because it's fascinating that not a lot of people in Silicon Valley and tech do that. So thanks for the service, and I know everyone who's out there in the public sector knows that this is a really important time for the tactical edge in our military. A lot of things going on around the world. So thanks for the service and a great journey. But there's a storyline with the company you're running now that you started. I noticed you get the jacket on there. I noticed a little military vibe to it. Cyber security, I mean, every company's on their own now. There's no, they have to build their own militia. There is no government supporting companies anymore. There's no militia. There's no one's on the shores of our country defending the citizens and the companies. They got to fend for themselves. So every company has to have their own military. Yeah, in many ways, you don't see anti-aircraft rocket launchers on top of the JP Morgan building in New York City because they rely on the government for air defense. But in cyber, it's very different. Every company is on their own to defend for themselves. And what's interesting is this blend, if you look at the Ukraine-Russia war as an example, 1,000 companies have decided to withdraw from the Russian economy. And those 1,000 companies we should expect to be in the ire of the Russian government and their proxies at some point. And so it's not just those companies, but their suppliers, their distributors. And it's no longer about cyber attacks for extortion through ransomware, but rather cyber attacks for punishment and retaliation for leaving. Those companies are on their own to defend themselves. There's no government that's going to, that is dedicated to supporting them. So yeah, the reality is that cyber security, it's the burden of the organization. And also your attack surface has expanded to not just be your footprint, but if an adversary wants to punish you for leaving their economy, they can get, if you're in agriculture, yeah, they could disrupt your ability to farm, or they could get all your fruit to spoil at the border because they disrupted your distributors and so on. So I think the entire world is gonna change over the next 18 to 24 months. And I think this idea of cyber security is gonna become truly a national problem and a problem that breaks down any corporate barriers that we've seen previously. What are some of the things that inspired you to start this company? Because I loved your approach of thinking about the customer, your customer, as defending themselves in context to threats. Really leaning into it, being ready and able to defend Horizon 3, has a lot of that kind of military thinking for the good of the company. What's the motivation? Why this company? Why now? What's the value proposition? Yeah, so there's two parts to why the company and why now. The first part was what my observation when I left industry remember, my military background is watching Jack Rine and Tropic Thunder. I didn't come from the military world and so when I entered the Special Operations Community, step one was to keep my mouth shut, learn, listen and really observe and understand what made that community so impressive. And obviously the people, and it's not about them being fast runners or great shooters or awesome swimmers, but rather they are learn-it-alls that can solve any problem as a team under pressure. Which is the exact culture you wanna have in any startup. Early stage companies are learn-it-alls that can solve any problem under pressure as a team. So I had this immediate advantage when we started Horizon 3, where a third of Horizon 3 employees came from that Special Operations Community. So one's this awesome talent. But the second part that, I remember this quote from a Special Operations Commander that said, we use live rounds in training because if we used fake rounds or rubber bullets, everyone would act like Medal of Honor winners. And the whole idea there is you train like you fight. You build that muscle memory for crisis and response and so on up front. So when you're in the thick of it, you already know how to react. And this is a lines to a pain I had in industry. I had no idea I was secure until the bad guys showed up. I had no idea if I was fixing the right vulnerabilities, logging the right data and Splunker if my CrowdStrike EDR platform was configured correctly. I had to wait for the bad guys to show up. I didn't know if my people knew how to respond to an incident. So what I wanted to do was proactively verify my security posture, proactively harden my systems. I needed to do that by continuously pen testing myself or continuously testing my security posture. And there just wasn't any way to do that where an IT admin or a network engineer could in three clicks have the power of a 20 year pen testing expert. And that was really what we set out to do. Not build a autonomous pen testing platform for security people, build it so that anybody can quickly test their security posture and then use the output to fix problems that truly matter. So the value approach if I get this right is there's a lot of companies out there doing pen tests.  So it makes sense to do autonomous pen testing. So congratulations on seeing that. That's obvious to that. But a lot of other companies have consulting tied to it. What seems like you need to train someone and you guys taking a different approach. Yeah, we actually as a company have zero consulting, zero professional services. And the whole idea is that build a true software as a service offering where an intern, in fact, we've got a video of a nine year old that in three clicks can run pen tests against themselves. And because of that, you can wire pen tests into your dev ops tool chain. You can run multiple pen tests a day. In fact, I've got customers running 40, 50 pen tests a month against their organization. And that, what that does is completely lowers the barrier of entry for being able to verify your posture. If you have consulting on average when I was a CIO, it was at least a three month lead time to schedule consultants to show up. And then they'd show up, they'd embarrass the security team, they'd make everyone look bad cause they're going to get in, leave behind a report. And that report was almost identical to what they found last year. Because the older that report, the one that the data itself gets stale, the context changes and so on. And then eventually you just don't even bother fixing it. Or if you fix a problem, you don't have the skills to verify that it's been fixed. So I think that consulting led model was acceptable when you viewed security as a compliance checkbox, where once a year was sufficient to meet your like PCI requirements. But if you're really operating with a wartime mindset and you actually need to harden and secure your environment, you've got to be running pen tests regularly against your organization from different perspectives, inside, outside, from the cloud, from work from home environments and everything in between. So for the CSOs out there, for the CSOs and the CXOs, what's the pitch to them? Because I see your jacket that says Horizon 3AI, trust but verify, but the trust is canceled out, it's just as verify. What's the product that you guys are offering, the service, describe what it is and why they should look at it? Yeah, sure. So one, back when I was at CIO, don't tell me we're secure in PowerPoint. Show me we're secure right now. Show me we're secure again tomorrow and then show me we're secure again next week. Because my environment is constantly changing and the adversary always has a vote and they're always evolving. And this whole idea of show me we're secure. Don't trust that your security tools are working. Verify that they can detect and respond and stifle and attack. And then verify tomorrow, verify next week. That's the big mind shift. Now what we do is- How do they respond to that by the way? Like, they don't believe you at first or what's the story? I think it's, there's actually a very bifurcated response. There are still a decent chunk of CIOs and CSOs that have a security as a compliance check box mindset. So my attitude with them is, I'm not going to convince you. You believe it's a check box. I'll just wait for you to get breached and sell to your replacement because you'll get fired. And in the meantime, I spend all my energy with those that actually care about proactively securing and hardening their environments. That's true, people do get fired. Can you give an example of what you're saying about this environment? Being ready, proving that you're secure. Today, tomorrow and a few weeks out. Give me an example of- Yeah, I'll give you actually a customer example. There was a healthcare organization and they had about 5,000 hosts in their environment. And they did everything right. They had Fortinet as their EDR platform. They had user behavior analytics in place that they had purchased and tuned. And when they ran a pen test self-service, our product node zero immediately started to discover every host on the network. It then fingerprinted all those hosts and found it was able to get code execution on three machines. So it got code execution, dumped credentials, laterally maneuvered and became a domain administrator, which in IT, if an attacker becomes a domain admin, they've got keys to the kingdom. So at first the question was, how did the node zero pen test become domain admin? How did they get code execution? Fortinet should have detected and stopped it. Well, it turned out Fortinet was misconfigured on three boxes out of 5,000. And these guys had no idea. And it's just automation that went wrong and so on. And now they would have only known they had misconfigured their EDR platform on three hosts if the attacker had showed up. The second question though was, why didn't they catch the lateral movement, which all their marketing brochures say they're supposed to catch? And it turned out that that customer purchased the wrong Fortinet modules. Once again, they had no idea. They thought they were doing the right thing. So don't trust that just installing your tools is good enough. You've got to exercise and verify them. We've got tons of stories from patches that didn't actually apply to being able to find the AWS admin credentials on a local file system and then using that to log in and take over the cloud. And in fact, I gave this talk at Black Hat on war stories from running 10,000 pen tests. And that's just the reality is you don't know that these tools and processes are working for you until the bad guys have shown up. The velocity is there. You can accelerate through logs. You know that from the days you've been there, this is now the threat. Being, I won't say lazy, but just not careful or just not thinking. Well, I'll give you an example. We have a lot of customers that are Horizon 3 customers and Splunk customers. And what you'll see their behavior is, is they'll have Horizon 3 up on one screen and every single attacker command executed with its timestamp is up on that screen. And then look at Splunk and say, hey, we were able to dump vCenter credentials from VMware products at this time on this host. What did Splunk see or what didn't they see? Why were no logs generated? And it turns out that they had some logging blind spots. So what they'll actually do is run us to almost like stimulate the defensive tools and then see what tools, what did the tools catch? What did they miss? What are those blind spots and how do they fix it? So your product's called Node Zero. Yep. You mentioned that. Is that specifically a suite, a platform? Yeah. How do people consume and engage with you guys? So the way that we work, the whole product is designed to be self-service. So once again, while we have a sales team, the whole intent is you don't need to have to talk to a sales rep to start using the product. You can log in right now, go to Horizon through to AI, you can run a trial, log in with your Google ID, your LinkedIn ID, start running pen tests against your home or against your network, against this organization right now without talking to anybody. The whole idea is self-service, run a pen test in three clicks and give you the power of that 20-year pen testing expert. And then what will happen is Node Zero will execute and then it'll provide to you a full report of, here are all of the different paths or attack paths or sequences where we were able to become an admin in your environment. And then for every attack path, here is the path or the kill chain, the proof of exploitation for every step along the way. Here's exactly what you've got to do to fix it. And then once you've fixed it, here's how you verify that you've truly fixed the problem. And this whole aha moment is run us to find problems, you fix them, re-run us to verify that the problem has been fixed. Talk about the company, how many people do you have and give some stats? Yeah, so we started writing code in January of 2020. Right before the pandemic hit. And then about 10 months later, at the end of 2020, we launched the first version of the product. We've been in the market for now about two and a half years total from start of the company until present. We've got 130 employees. We've got more customers than we do employees, which is really cool. And instead, our customers shift from running one pen test a year to 40, 50 pen tests. And it's full SaaS. The whole product is full SaaS. So no consulting, no pro-serve. You run as often as you want. Who's downloading, who's buying the product? You know what's amazing is we have customers in almost every section or sector now. So we're not overly rotated towards like healthcare or financial services. We've got state and local education or K through 12 education, state and local government, number of healthcare companies, financial services, manufacturing. We've got organizations that large enterprises. Security is diverse. It's very diverse.  I mean, is that something that you've seen a lot of? And the thing about ransomware is if you peel back the outcome of ransomware, which is extortion. At the end of the day, what ransomware organizations or criminals or APTs will do is they'll find out who all your employees are online. They will then figure out if you've got 7,000 employees, all it takes is one of them to have a bad password. And then attackers are gonna credential spray to find that one person with a bad password or whose Netflix password that's on the dark web is also their same password to log in here because most people reuse. And then from there, they're gonna, most likely in your organization, the domain user when you log in, like you probably have local admin on your laptop. If you're a Windows machine and I've got local admin on your laptop, I'm gonna be able to dump credentials, get the admin credentials and then start to laterally maneuver. Attackers don't have to hack in using zero days like you see in the movies. Often they're logging in with valid user IDs and passwords that they've found and collected from somewhere else. And then they make that, they maneuver by making a low plus a low equal a high. And the other thing in financial services, we spend all of our time fixing critical vulnerabilities. Attackers know that. So they've adapted to finding ways to chain together low priority vulnerabilities and misconfigurations and dangerous defaults to become admin. So while we've over rotated towards just fixing the highs and the criticals, attackers have adapted. And once again, they have a vote, they're always evolving their tactics. And how do you prevent that from happening? So we actually apply those same tactics. Rarely do we actually need a CVE to compromise your environment. We will harvest credentials just like an attacker. We will find misconfigurations and dangerous defaults just like an attacker. We will combine those together, we'll make use of exploitable vulnerabilities as appropriate and use that to compromise your environment. So the tactics that, in many ways, we've built a digital weapon and the tactics we apply are the exact same tactics that are applied by the adversary. So you guys basically simulate hacking. We actually do the hacking. Simulate means that there's a fakeness to it. Okay, so you guys do hack. We actually compromise. Like sneakers, the movie, the old sneakers movie for the old folks like me. And in fact, that was my inspiration. I've had this idea for over a decade now, which is I want to be able to look at anything, that laptop, this Wi-Fi network, gear in hospital or a truck driving by and know I can figure out how to gain initial access, rip that environment apart and be able to opponent. Okay, Chuck, he's not allowed in the studio anymore. No, seriously, some people are exposed. I mean, some companies don't have anything, but there's always passwords or, so most people have that argument. Well, there's nothing to protect here. Not a lot of sensitive data. How do you respond to that? Do you see that being kind of putting the head in the sand or? Yeah, it's actually, it's less there's not sensitive data, but more we've installed or applied multi-factor authentication. Attackers can't get in now. Well, MFA only applies or does not apply to lower level protocols. So I can find a user ID password, log in through SMB, which isn't protected by multi-factor authentication and still upon your environment. So unfortunately, I think as a security industry, we've become very good at giving a false sense of security to organizations. Compliance drives that. Compliance drives that. And what we need, but back to, don't tell me we're secure, show me. We've got to, I think, change that to a trust but verify, but get rid of the trust piece of it. Just a very- Okay, we got a lot of CISOs and CISOs watching this showcase, looking at the hot startups. What's the message to the executives there? Do they want to become more leaning in, more hawkish, if you will, to use the military term on security? I mean, I heard one CISO say, security first, then compliance, because compliance can make you complacent. And then you're insecure at that point. So what's the- I would actually say that, so I agree, one, definitely security is different and more important than being compliant. I think there's another emerging concept, which is I'd rather be defensible than secure. What I mean by that is, security is a point in time state. I am secure right now. I may not be secure tomorrow because something's changed. But if I'm defensible, then what I have is that muscle memory to detect, respond and stifle and attack. And that's what's more important. Can I detect you? How long did it take me to detect you? Can I stifle you from achieving your objective? How long did it take me to stifle you? What did you use to gain access? How long did that sit in my environment? How long did it take me to fix it, you know, so on and so forth? But I think it's being defensible and being able to rapidly adapt to changing tactics by the adversary is more important. Yeah, this is the evolution of how the red line never moved. You got the adversaries in our networks, in our banks. Now they hang out and they wait. So everyone thinks they're secure, but when they get, start getting hacked, they're not really in a position to defend. The alarms go off. Where's the playbook? Team springs into action. I mean, you kind of get the visual there, but this is really the issue. Being defensible means having your own, essentially military for your company. Or this, being defensible, I think has two pieces. One is you've got to have this culture and process in place of training like you fight because you want to build that incident response muscle memory ahead of time. You don't want to have to learn how to respond to an incident in the middle of the incident. So that is that proactively verifying your posture and continuous pen testing is critical there. The second part is the actual fundamentals in place so you can detect and stifle as appropriate. And also being able to do that.  You've got to assume that the bad guys are going to get in. Once they're in, what can they do? So don't just say that my perimeter is secure and I'm good to go. It's the soft, squishy center that attackers are going to get into. And from there, can you detect them and can you stop them? So now take me through the use case. You've got to be sold on this. I love this topic. All right, pen test, what am I buying? Just pen test is a service. You mentioned dark web, are you actually buying credentials online on behalf of the customer? What is the product? What am I buying if I'm the CISO from Horizon 3? What's the service? What's the product? Be specific. So very specifically, and one just principles. The first principle is when I was a buyer, I hated being nickled and dimed by vendors, which was I had to buy 15 different modules in order to achieve an objective. Just give me one line item, make it super easy to buy and don't nickle and dim me. Because I've spent time as a buyer that very much has permeated throughout the company. So there is a single skew from Horizon 3. It is an annual subscription based on how big your environment is. And it is inclusive of on-prem internal pen tests, external pen tests, cloud attacks, work from home attacks, our ability to harvest credentials from the dark web and from open source sources, being able to crack those credentials, compromise. All of that is included as a single skew. All you get as a CISO is a single skew, annual subscription, and you can run as many pen tests as you want. Some customers still stick to maybe one pen test a quarter, but most customers shift and they realize there's no limit. We don't nickel and dime. They can run 10, 20, 30, 40 a month. Well, it's not nickel and dimming in the sense that it's more like dollars and hundreds because they know what to expect. If it's classic cloud consumption, they kind of know what their environment is. Can people try it? Let's just say I have a huge environment. I have a cloud, I have an on-premise private cloud. Can I dabble and set parameters around pricing? Yes, you can. So one is you can dabble and set parameters around scope, which is like manufacturing does this. Do not touch the production line that's on at the moment. We've got a hospital that says every time they run a pen test, any machine that's actually connected to a patient must be excluded. So you can actually set the parameters for what's in scope and what's out of scope up front. Once again, we're designed to be safe to run against production. So you can set the parameters for scope. You can set the parameters for cost if you want, but our recommendation is I'd rather figure out what you can afford and let you test everything in your environment than try to squeeze every penny from you by only making you buy what you're looking for as a smaller. So the variable ratchet, if you will, is how much they spend is the size of their environment and usage. Just size of the environment. Okay, so it could be a big ticket item for a CISO then. It could if you're really large, but for the most. What's large?  What I heard is global 10 companies spend anywhere from 50 to a hundred million dollars a year on security testing. So they're already spending a ton of money, but they're spending it on consultants that show up maybe a couple of times a year. They don't have, humans can't scale to test a million hosts in your environment. And so you're already spending that money, spend a fraction of that and use us and run as much as you want. And that's really what it comes down to. All right, so what's the response from customers? What's really interesting is there are three use cases. The first is that SOC manager that is using us to verify that their security tools are actually working. So their Splunk environment is logging the right data. It's integrating properly with CrowdStrike. It's integrating properly with their active directory services and their password policies. So the SOC manager is using us to verify the effectiveness of their security controls. The second use case is the IT director that is using us to proactively harden their systems. Did they install VMware correctly? Did they install their Cisco gear correctly? Are they patching right? And then the third are for the companies that are lucky to have their own internal pen tests and red teams where they use us like a force multiplier. So if you've got 10 people on your red team and you still have a million IPs or hosts in your environment, you still don't have enough people for that coverage. So they'll use us to do recon at scale and attack at scale and let the humans focus on the really juicy hard stuff that humans are successful at. Okay, I love the product. How do, again, I'm trying to think about how I engage on the test. Is there pilots? Is there a demo version? Yeah, there's free trials. We do 30 day free trials. The output can actually be used to meet your SOC II requirements. So in many ways, you can just use us to get a free SOC II pen test report right now if you want. Go to the website, log in for a free trial. You can log into your Google ID or your LinkedIn ID, run a pen test against your organization and use that to answer your PCI segmentation test requirements, your SOC II requirements. But you will be hooked. You will want to run us more often and you will get a Horizon 3 tattoo. The first hit's free as they say in the drug business. Yeah, yeah, I mean, so you're seeing that kind of response then. The trial converts pretty well.  We have a 100% technical win rate when our customers hit a fine fixed verify cycle. Then it's about budget and urgency, but a 100% technical win rate because of that aha moment. Because people realize, holy crap, I don't have to wait six months to verify that my problems have actually been fixed. I can just come in, click, verify, rerun. The entire pen test will rerun a very specific part of it on what I just patched to my environment. Congratulations, great stuff. You're here part of the AWS startup showcase, so I have to ask, what's the relationship with AWS? You're on their cloud. What kind of actions going on there? Is there a secret sauce on there? Yeah, so what's going on? So one is we are AWS customers ourselves, our brains command and control infrastructure, all of our analytics are all running on AWS. It's amazing when we run a pen test, we're able to use AWS and we'll spin up a virtual private cloud just for that pen test. It's completely ephemeral. It's all Lambda functions and graph analytics and other techniques. When the pen test ends, you can delete, there's a single use Docker container that gets deleted from your environment so you have nothing on-prem to deal with. And the entire virtual private cloud tears itself down. So at any given moment, if we're running 50 pen tests or 100 pen tests self-service, there's a hundred virtual private clouds being managed in AWS that are spinning up, running and tearing down. It's an absolutely amazing underlying platform for us to make use of. Two is that many customers that have hybrid environments, so they've got a cloud infrastructure, an Office 365 infrastructure and an on-prem infrastructure. We're a single attack platform that can test all of that together. No one else can do it. And so the AWS customers that are especially AWS hybrid customers are the ones that we do really well targeting. Got it, and that's awesome. And that's the benefit of the cloud. Absolutely, and the AWS marketplace. What's absolutely amazing is the competitive advantage being part of the marketplace has for us. Because the simple thing is, my customers, if they already have dedicated cloud spend, they can use their approved cloud spend to pay for Horizon 3 through the marketplace. So you don't have to, if you already have that budget dedicated, you can use that through the marketplace. The other is you've already got the vendor processes in place. You can purchase through your existing AWS account. So what I love about the AWS company is, one, the infrastructure we use for our own pen tests. Two, the marketplace. And then three, the customers that span that hybrid cloud environment, that's right in our strike zone. Yeah, awesome. Well, congratulations. And thanks for being part of this showcase. And I'm sure your product's going to do very, very well. It's very built for what people want, self-service, get in and get the value quickly. No agents to install, no consultants to hire, safe to run against production. It's what I've wanted. Great to see you, and congratulations. And what a great story, and we're going to keep following you. Thanks for coming on. No, thank you, John. Okay, this is the AWS startup showcase. I'm John for your host. This is season two, episode four on cybersecurity. Thanks for watching.