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  DESPOILERS OF THE GOLDEN EMPIRE

  BY DAVID GORDON

  _A handful of men, and an incredible adventure--a few super-men, led by a fanatic, seeking to conquer a new world!_

  Illustrated by Freas

  I

  In the seven centuries that had elapsed since the Second Empire had beenfounded on the shattered remnants of the First, the nobles of theImperium had come slowly to realize that the empire was not to be judgedby the examples of its predecessor. The First Empire had conquered mostof the known universe by political intrigue and sheer military strength;it had fallen because that same propensity for political intrigue hadgained over every other strength of the Empire, and the various branchesand sectors of the First Empire had begun to use it against one another.

  The Second Empire was politically unlike the First; it tried to balancea centralized government against the autonomic governments of thevarious sectors, and had almost succeeded in doing so.

  But, no matter how governed, there are certain essentials which areneeded by any governmental organization.

  Without power, neither Civilization nor the Empire could hold itselftogether, and His Universal Majesty, the Emperor Carl, well knew it. Andpower was linked solidly to one element, one metal, without whichCivilization would collapse as surely as if it had been blasted out ofexistence. Without the power metal, no ship could move or even be built;without it, industry would come to a standstill.

  In ancient times, even as far back as the early Greek and Romancivilizations, the metal had been known, but it had been used, for themost part, as decoration and in the manufacture of jewelry. Later, ithad been coined as money.

  It had always been relatively rare, but now, weight for weight, atom foratom, it was the most valuable element on Earth. Indeed, the mostvaluable in the known universe.

  The metal was Element Number Seventy-nine--gold.

  To the collective mind of the Empire, gold was the prime object in anykind of mining exploration. The idea of drilling for petroleum, even ifit had been readily available, or of mining coal or uranium would havebeen dismissed as impracticable and even worse than useless.

  Throughout the Empire, research laboratories worked tirelessly at theproblem of transmuting commoner elements into Gold-197, but thus farnone of the processes was commercially feasible. There was still, afterthousands of years, only one way to get the power metal: extract it fromthe ground.

  So it was that, across the great gulf between the worlds, ship aftership moved in search of the metal that would hold the far-flung coloniesof the Empire together. Every adventurer who could manage to get aboardwas glad to be cooped up on a ship during the long months it took tocross the empty expanses, was glad to endure the hardships on alienterrain, on the chance that his efforts might pay off a thousand or tenthousand fold.

  Of these men, a mere handful were successful, and of these one or twostand well above the rest. And for sheer determination, drive, andcourage, for the will to push on toward his goal, no matter what theodds, a certain Commander Frank had them all beat.

  II

  Before you can get a picture of the commander--that is, as far as hispersonality goes--you have to get a picture of the man physically.

  He was enough taller than the average man to make him stand out in acrowd, and he had broad shoulders and a narrow waist to match. He wasn'theavy; his was the hard, tough, wirelike strength of a steel cable. Theplanes of his tanned face showed that he feared neither exposure to theelements nor exposure to violence; it was seamed with fine wrinkles andthe thin white lines that betray scar tissue. His mouth washeavy-lipped, but firm, and the lines around it showed that it wasunused to smiling. The commander could laugh, and often did--a sort ofroaring explosion that burst forth suddenly whenever something struckhim as particularly uproarious. But he seldom just smiled; CommanderFrank rarely went halfway in anything.

  His eyes, like his hair, were a deep brown--almost black, and they wereset well back beneath heavy brows that tended to frown most of the time.

  Primarily, he was a military man. He had no particular flair forscience, and, although he had a firm and deep-seated grasp of theessential philosophy of the Universal Assembly, he had no inclinationtowards the kind of life necessarily led by those who would becomehigher officers of the Assembly. It was enough that the Assembly wasbehind him; it was enough to know that he was a member of the only racein the known universe which had a working knowledge of the essential,basic Truth of the Cosmos. With a weapon like that, even an ordinarysoldier had little to fear, and Commander Frank was far from being anordinary soldier.

  He had spent nearly forty of his sixty years of life as anexplorer-soldier for the Emperor, and during that time he'd kept hiseyes open for opportunity. Every time his ship had landed, he'd watchedand listened and collected data. And now he knew.

  If his data were correct--and he was certain that they were--he hadfound his strike. All he needed was the men to take it.

  III

  The expedition had been poorly outfitted and undermanned from thebeginning. The commander had been short of money at the outset, havingspent almost all he could raise on his own, plus nearly everything hecould beg or borrow, on his first two probing expeditions, neither ofwhich had shown any real profit.

  But they _had_ shown promise; the alien population of the target whichthe commander had selected as his personal claim wore gold as ornaments,but didn't seem to think it was much above copper in value, and hadn'teven progressed to the point of using it as coinage. From the secondprobing expedition, he had brought back two of the odd-looking aliensand enough gold to show that there must be more where that came from.

  The old, hopeful statement, "There's gold in them thar hills," shouldhave brought the commander more backing than he got, considering theEmpire's need of it and the commander's evidence that it was available;but people are always more ready to bet on a sure thing than to indulgein speculation. Ten years before, a strike had been made in a sectorquite distant from the commander's own find, and most of the richernobles of the Empire preferred to back an established source of themetal than to sink money into what might turn out to be the pursuit ofa wild goose.

  Commander Frank, therefore, could only recruit men who were willing totake a chance, who were willing to risk anything, even their lives,against tremendously long odds.

  And, even if they succeeded, the Imperial Government would take twentyper cent of the gross without so much as a by-your-leave. There was noother market for the metal except back home, so the tax could not beavoided; gold was no good whatsoever in the uncharted wilds of an alienworld.

  Because of his lack of funds, the commander's expedition was not onlydangerously undermanned, but illegally so. It was only by means ofout-and-out trickery that he managed to evade the official inspectionand leave port with too few men and too little equipment.

  There wasn't a scientist worthy of the name in the whole outfit, unlessyou call the navigator, Captain Bartholomew, an astronomer, which iscertainly begging the question. There was no anthropologist aboard tostudy the semibarbaric civilization of the natives; there was nobiologist to study the alien flora and fauna. The closest thing thecommander had to physicists were engineers who could take care of theship itself--specialist technicians, nothing more.

  There was no need for armament specialists; each and every man was asoldier, and, as far as his own weapons went, an ordnance expert. As faras Commander Frank was concerned, that was enough. It had to be.

  Mining equipment? He took nothing but the simplest testing apparatus.How, then
, did he intend to get the metal that the Empire was screamingfor?

  The commander had an answer for that, too, and it was as simple as itwas economical. The natives would get it for him.

  They used gold for ornaments, therefore, they knew where the gold couldbe found. And, therefore, they would bloody well dig it out forCommander Frank.

  IV

  Due to atmospheric disturbances, the ship's landing was several hundredmiles from the point the commander had originally picked for thedebarkation of his troops. That meant a long, forced march along thecoast and then inland, but there was no help for it; the ship simplywasn't built for atmospheric navigation.

  That didn't deter the commander any. The orders rang through the ship:"All troops and carriers prepare for landing!"

  Half an hour later, they were assembled outside the ship, fully armedand armored, and with full field gear. The sun, a yellow G-O star, hunghotly just above the towering mountains to the east. The alien airsmelled odd in the men's nostrils, and the weird foliage seemed torustle menacingly. In the distance, the shrieks of alien faunaoccasionally echoed through the air.

  A hundred and eighty-odd men and some thirty carriers stood under thetropic blaze for forty-five minutes while the commander checked overtheir equipment with minute precision. Nothing faulty or sloppy wasgoing into that jungle with him if he could prevent it.

  When his hard eyes had inspected every bit of equipment, when he hadeither passed or ordered changes in the manner of its carrying or itscondition, when he was fully satisfied that every weapon was inorder--then, and only then, did he turn his attention to the menthemselves.

  He climbed atop a little hillock and surveyed them carefully, lettinghis penetrating gaze pass over each man in turn. He stood there, hisfists on his hips, with the sunlight gleaming from his burnished armor,for nearly a full minute before he spoke.

  Then his powerful voice rang out over the assembled adventurers.

  "My comrades-at-arms! We have before us a world that is ours for thetaking! It contains more riches than any man on Earth ever dreamedexisted, and those riches, too, are ours for the taking. It isn't goingto be a picnic, and we all knew that when we came. There are dangers onevery side--from the natives, from the animals and plants, and from theclimate.

  "But there is not one of these that cannot be overcome by the onslaughtof brave, courageous, and determined men!

  "Ahead of us, we will find the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse arrayedagainst our coming--Famine, Pestilence, War, and Death. Each and all ofthese we must meet and conquer as brave men should, for at their end wewill find wealth and glory!"

  A cheer filled the air, startling the animals in the forest intomomentary silence.

  The commander stilled it instantly with a raised hand.

  "Some of you know this country from our previous expeditions together.Most of you will find it utterly strange. And not one of you knows it aswell as I do.

  "In order to survive, you must--and _will_--follow my orders to theletter--and beyond.

  "First, as to your weapons. We don't have an unlimited supply of chargesfor them, so there will be no firing of any power weapons unlessabsolutely necessary. You have your swords and your pikes--use them."

  Several of the men unconsciously gripped the hafts of the long steelblades at their sides as he spoke the words, but their eyes never leftthe commanding figure on the hummock.

  "As for food," he continued, "we'll live off the land. You'll find thatmost of the animals are edible, but stay away from the plants unless Igive the O.K.

  "We have a long way to go, but, by Heaven, I'm going to get us therealive! Are you with me?"

  A hearty cheer rang from the throats of the men. They shouted thecommander's name with enthusiasm.

  "All right!" he bellowed. "There is one more thing! Anyone who wants tostay with the ship can do so; anyone who feels too ill to make it shouldconsider it his duty to stay behind, because sick men will simply holdus up and weaken us more than if they'd been left behind. Remember,we're not going to turn back as a body, and an individual would nevermake it alone." He paused.

  "Well?"

  Not a man moved. The commander grinned--not with humor, but withsatisfaction. "All right, then: let's move out."

  V

  Of them all, only a handful, including the commander, had any realknowledge of what lay ahead of them, and that knowledge only pertainedto the periphery of the area the intrepid band of adventurers wereentering. They knew that the aliens possessed a rudimentarycivilization--they did not, at that time, realize they were entering theoutposts of a powerful barbaric empire--an empire almost aswell-organized and well-armed as that of First Century Rome, and, ifanything, even more savage and ruthless.

  It was an empire ruled by a single family who called themselves theGreat Nobles; at their head was the Greatest Noble--the Child of the SunHimself. It has since been conjectured that the Great Nobles weremutants in the true sense of the word; a race apart from their subjects.It is impossible to be absolutely sure at this late date, and thecommander's expedition, lacking any qualified geneticists or geneticengineers, had no way of determining--and, indeed, no real _interest_ indetermining--whether this was or was not true. None the less, historicalevidence seems to indicate the validity of the hypothesis.

  Never before--not even in ancient Egypt--had the historians ever seen aculture like it. It was an absolute monarchy that would have made anyMedieval king except the most saintly look upon it in awe and envy. TheRussians and the Germans never even approached it. The Japanese tried toapproximate it at one time in their history, but they failed.

  Secure in the knowledge that theirs was the only civilizing force on theface of the planet, the race of the Great Nobles spread over the lengthof a great continent, conquering the lesser races as they went.

  Physically, the Great Nobles and their lesser subjects were quitesimilar. They were, like the commander and his men, human in every senseof the word. That this argues some ancient, prehistoric migration acrossthe empty gulfs that separate the worlds cannot be denied, but when andhow that migration took place are data lost in the mists of time.However it may have happened, the fact remains that these people _were_human. As someone observed in one of the reports written up by one ofthe officers: "They could pass for Indians, except their skins are of adecidedly redder hue."

  The race of the Great Nobles held their conquered subjects in check bythe exercise of two powerful forces: religion and physical power ofarms. Like the feudal organizations of Medieval Europe, the Nobles hadthe power of life and death over their subjects, and to a much greaterextent than the European nobles had. Each family lived on an allottedparcel of land and did a given job. Travel was restricted to a radius ofa few miles. There was no money; there was no necessity for it, sincethe government of the Great Nobles took all produce and portioned it outagain according to need. It was communism on a vast and--incomprehensibleas it may seem to the modern mind--_workable_ scale. Their minds were asdifferent from ours as their bodies were similar; the concept "freedom"would have been totally incomprehensible to them.

  They were sun-worshipers, and the Greatest Noble was the Child of theSun, a godling subordinate only to the Sun Himself. Directly under himwere the lesser Great Nobles, also Children of the Sun, but to a lesserextent. They exercised absolute power over the conquered peoples, buteven they had no concept of freedom, since they were as tied to thepeople as the people were tied to them. It was a benevolentdictatorship of a kind never seen before or since.

  At the periphery of the Empire of the Sun-Child lived still unconqueredsavage tribes, which the Imperial forces were in the process of slowlytaking over. During the centuries, tribe after tribe had fallen beforethe brilliant leadership of the Great Nobles and the territory of theEmpire had slowly expanded until, at the time the invading Earthmencame, it covered almost as much territory as had the Roman Empire at itspeak.

  The Imperial Army, consisting of upwards of fifty thousand troops, wasextre
mely mobile in spite of the handicap of having no form oftransportation except their own legs. They had no cavalry; the onlybeast of burden known to them--the flame-beasts--were too small to carrymore than a hundred pounds, in spite of their endurance. But the wide,smooth roads that ran the length and breadth of the Empire enabled amarching army to make good time, and messages carried by runners inrelays could traverse the Empire in a matter of days, not weeks.

  And into this tight-knit, well-organized, powerful barbaric worldmarched Commander Frank with less than two hundred men and thirtycarriers.

  VI

  It didn't take long for the men to begin to chafe under the constantstrain of moving through treacherous and unfamiliar territory. And thefirst signs of chafing made themselves apparent beneath their armor.

  Even the best designed armor cannot be built to be worn for an unlimitedlength of time, and, at first, the men could see no reason for theorder. They soon found out.

  One evening, after camp had been made, one young officer decided that hehad spent his last night sleeping in full armor. It was bad enough tohave to march in it, but sleeping in it was too much. He took it off andstretched, enjoying the freedom from the heavy steel. His tent was along way from the center of camp, where a small fire flickered, and thesoft light from the planet's single moon filtered only dimly through thejungle foliage overhead. He didn't think anyone would see him from thecommander's tent.

  The commander's orders had been direct and to the point: "You will wearyour armor at all times; you will march in it, you will eat in it, youwill sleep in it. During such times as it is necessary to remove a partof it, the man doing so will make sure that he is surrounded by at leasttwo of his companions in full armor. There will be no exceptions to thisrule!"