Pirates

THE MERCHANTMAN JABBED at the marauder with a spear of light—but the smaller ship leaped aside, almost seeming to disappear and reappear. The huge Terran vessel jabbed again, this time with its rear cannon, but the tiny marauder danced away, mocking them.

“By all that’s holy!” the navigator swore. “Only a quarter our size, and we can’t hit them! What’s the matter, Captain? Don’t your boys know how to aim?”

“I was top gunner at Target, Lieutenant,” the first officer snapped back. “But these aren’t exactly state-of-the-art lasers—and I only have two of them. Damn that mosquito!” He jammed the heel of his hand on the firing patch.

On the screen, light blossomed where the smaller ship had been a half second before.

“This is a liner and freighter, Lieutenant,” the captain said heavily. “We only carry minimal armament—not like that Navy ship you pushed until you signed on with us.”

“If I’d known . . .” the navigator muttered—but he broke off, because the Khalian destroyer was suddenly much larger in the screen, and swelling.

“He’s inside my guns!” the first officer yelled. “I can’t lock onto him, he’s too close! How the hell . . . ?”

A grinding crash jolted the whole ship. The captain was the first to recover enough to pull his webbing loose, crying, “Pass out small arms to every able-bodied passenger, and fight for your lives! That ship just grappled us! They’re going to be cutting through and boarding, any second!”

The crew scrambled to their feet, broke open the gun locker, and headed out into the passenger compartment, arms full of weapons.

They were barely into the cabin before a section of wall blew in. Passengers screamed as sinuous Weasel shapes materialized out of the cloud of smoke, ruby beams stabbing out at the crew.

The navigator howled and went down with a hole through his chest, exactly circular and neatly cauterized. The navigator and captain dodged aside, dropping the extra weapons and snapping shots at the invaders. One speared a Khalian through the shoulder; the creature screamed but caught the gun with its other hand and fired. The captain leaped back toward the bridge, and the Khalian’s beam scorched the wall. But the first was firing, enough to make a Weasel duck before he shot back. The beam reflected off the officer’s insignia and cut a furrow through a passenger’s arm, setting her sleeve ablaze. She screamed, and her husband shouted, batting out the flame. Then a slug thrower cracked, and a hole appeared in the wall right near the captain’s head. He returned the fire, and a Weasel shrieked—but so did the passengers as they felt the wind of atmosphere swooping toward the hole in the ship’s side and the vacuum beyond. Then the slug thrower cracked again, and the first dropped, blood spreading out from his shoulder.

But a large, bulky shape rose up behind the pirates, a civilian in a business ensemble, drawing out an old-fashioned blackjack and clubbing at a Khalian. He connected, and the Khalian tumbled just as it squeezed off a beam at the captain, a beam that scribbled across the hull and went out just before it reached another screaming passenger. The captain’s own beam speared the largest Khalian, sending up smoke from leather armor, but the Khalian howled and shot back, and the captain tumbled, his gun falling loose.

The big civilian swung at the armored Khalian.

Another Weasel swung his arm up, deflecting the blackjack with a yell, and the big Khalian swung around in time to see the sap swinging toward him again. He screamed and ducked down, hurtling forward, and knocked into the big human, jolting him back into the aisle and shredding his jacket with sharp claws. The human started to lift the blackjack again, but five needle-sharp talons poised over his face, and the Khalian shrilled, “The course of wisdom is to relinquish your weapon.”

The Terran dropped the blackjack, as much from astonishment as from fear, and the Khalian erupted into the squealing hiccups that served as the laughter of his race. “Yes, you are startled to see that I speak such excellent Terran, are you not? But then, warrior-in-disguise, I was a translator in our Khalian Intelligence during the war. And you? Surely the only one of these monkeys who dared fight must have been a warrior once. What is your name, what was your rank?”

“Sales,” the Terran ground out. “Lohengrin Sales. Lieutenant Commander.”

“Ah, yes! The quaint custom of your kind—to give name and rank only! But was there not something more? A number? Yes, you Terrans are numbers as much as names, are you not?” And the Weasel gave his shrill, piping giggle again.

“And you?” the Terran grunted. “Your name?”

The talons danced dangerously. “Be wary, Sales. I honor you for having fought, but not so highly as to give you the power of my name. You are vanquished, after all.”

“No.” Sales spat. “We conquered Khalia.”

The claws darted down, but halted a fraction of an inch from Sales’s eyes. He kept his face carefully immobile—and was shocked to see that the Khalian was doing the same. The Weasel had exercised self-control!

“You did not conquer,” the Weasel hissed. “Some few of my more tenderhearted countrymen were infuriated to discover that we had been deceived by our supposed allies of your kind, the Syndicate, and in their anger allied with you.” The talons danced again. “Is that not so?”

Sales ignored the glittering points. “If you know that, why have you attacked us? We are not of the Syndicate! We are your allies!”

“No, not mine,” the Khalian hissed. “Alliance with an enemy? Never! I, at least, would not accept such dishonor! See what comes of it—monkeys like these around us, thinking that Khalians did surrender! No, never will I be party to so disastrous an alliance! I will die fighting you, if I can, as I should have before the truce! And all of my crew wish to do so, too. But we will take as many of you as we can, first! We will slay you all, any of your race! We will punish all humans—the Fleet, and its Terran sheep—for killing Khalians.”

“It is wrong,” Sales gritted. “Deaths in war should not be avenged during peacetime.”

“Peace has not come for me! The war has never ended! Rightly or wrongly, the only safety for Khalians is punishing those who kill Khalians! And we will slay those of the Syndicate, for exploiting us—suborning and then betraying us. We will bring you all down to death, or dishonor.”

“Your own people have commanded all Khalians to lay down their arms! If you do not do so, you will be an outlaw.”

“An outlaw,” the Weasel agreed, “never to see my ancestral hold again, never to feel the earth of Khalia beneath my feet, never to scent its sweet breezes!” The talons danced, and one drew a line of pain down Sales’s cheek. “You are unwise to remind me of this!”

Sales ignored the pain, and the alarm that fed it. “The ways of wisdom do not always accord with the ways of honor.”

“Honor, yes. Honor demands signs of victory.” The Khalian’s gaze darted down to Sales’s chest, and his snout split with a grimace that was a Khalian smile. His other hand moved at Sales’s throat, and the Terran tensed, but the Khalian laughed. “Softly, Sales, softly! What is a strip of cloth, after all, against a life?”

Everything, Sales knew—to a Khalian. Any sort of trophy taken from one of them was dishonor. But he was a human, so he lay frozen as the Khalian whipped the brightly colored band from around his neck. “Is it not pretty?” the Weasel cried, then whistled the same phrase in his own language—and his crew laughed with him.

They sounded like a psychotic calliope, Sales thought. He knew what the big Khalian had said to his men, because he knew Khalian as well as the Weasel knew Terran.

The leader draped the tie around his own neck and bent it into a clumsy knot. “There! See, I too am a Terran businessman! This is my trophy! Do each of you also take one!”

With whistles of agreement, the Khalians turned to tear at the civilians’ neckties. With cries of dismay, the men untied their decorations quickly.

“Thus shall you know me, if ever we meet again,” the big Khalian told Sales.

The Terran smiled, without mirth. “Shall I? Or shall we all burn, when you are done looting this ship?”

“Oh, we shall take the whole ship for our loot! But you have a launch, have you not? A ‘lifeboat,’ that is your term for it. Yes, we shall set you adrift in that, those of you who are not foolish enough to fight, and not skilled enough to die fighting.”

Sales reddened.

The Khalian showed his teeth in a grin. “Be glad, Sales. Your clumsiness has saved your life. No, I will let all of you go, alive, to carry word back to your fellow Terrans of me and my crew—that they may know not to dare ply the space about Khalia again, lest we fall upon them!”

“Indeed,” said Sales, with the closest he could come to scorn. “And how shall we tell them of you, when we do not know your name—you who are so good of heart as to let us live?”

His sarcasm was lost on the Khalian. “Good of heart? Why, that will be a most excellent name! Yes, tell them I am Goodheart, and that they shall know me by these brightly colored strips of cloth my crew and I shall wear! Tell them of Goodheart, that they may tremble in fear!”

“Goodheart,” Sales agreed, with a sour smile. “Goodheart, the pirate.”

“Goodheart!” the Khalian shrilled to his crew in his own language. “Do you hear? He has given me my name, the name which shall make Terrans tremble! From this time forth, I am Captain Goodheart!”

The crew’s approval was a chorus of whistles that fairly drilled through the Terrans’ brains.

The launch was jammed full, and the Khalians were none too gentle about pushing the passengers aboard. The women screamed in fright, and some of the men, too. Then Captain Goodheart snapped, “Stand clear!” and two of his Weasels stepped in, brandishing rifles. The crowd screamed and pressed back away from them, jamming up against one another.

Then, while the two crewmen held them back with their rifles, two others brought in an improvised stretcher with the captain’s unconscious form on it. They went out, then returned with the first officer, again unconscious. Lastly, they brought in the draped body of the dead navigator. They stepped out, and the passengers were silent, awed. Then the two guards backed away, and Sales stepped in.

He turned to face the big Khalian in the hatchway. “I thank you for your courtesy to my fallen countrymen.”

“I honor them,” the pirate answered. “They fought, willingly if not well.” Then his lips writhed back in a grin. “Remember me, Sales—and remember my kindness.”

He hit the pressure patch, and the hatch swung closed. “Oh, don’t worry,” Sales murmured. “I’ll remember you, all right.”

“You damn fool!” a passenger cried. “You damn near got us all killed back there!”

The crowd, given a scapegoat, suddenly turned into a mob, all shouting blame and accusation at Sales.

He whirled about and, in his best quarterdeck voice, bellowed, “Grab hold!”

Cries of incredulity answered him, but some of the civilians had been in the Fleet, and grabbed for the nearest seat-back or rack, yelling to others to do the same. Sales himself just barely managed to grab hold of a tie-ring before a giant kicked their ship like a football, and it shot out into space.

People screamed, and the ones who had ignored Sales slammed down against one another, then ran stumbling backward to be plastered against the aft bulkhead. Sales felt sorry for the ones on the bottom of the pile, but he knew someone had to direct this launch, or they’d be off course before they even began.

Assuming, of course, that the Weasels weren’t planning to use them for target practice.

He didn’t think they were, Sales thought, as he struggled fore through the press of bodies. The Weasels wouldn’t have wasted a good ship that way. Goodheart had already shown that he cared a lot about public opinion; he wasn’t about to shoot down helpless refugees.

He elbowed the last passenger aside, ignoring his angry shout, and pulled himself into the cockpit. Just then, the acceleration eased off, and he almost fell against the forward port, but caught himself in time, pushed himself back into the pilot’s chair, and pulled the shock webbing across his body almost by reflex. Then he reached out and turned on the board. Lights winked across its surface, and the big screen next to the port glowed into life. Sales slapped at patches, activating the sensors, but not the beacon.

The merchantman was already moving. Goodheart wasn’t wasting time—he was getting out, before Sales could call for help.

Passengers jammed the hatch behind him, and a man called out, “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing!”

“Calling for help,” Sales answered. But he kept his eyes glued to the screen as he turned on the log recorder, watching and noting coordinates until the merchantman suddenly blurred and winked out, into hyperspace. Then, finally, Sales reached out and turned on the beacon.

He turned around and said to the men jamming the opening, “Tell everyone to find seats, if they can, and see if there’s a doctor or a nurse to keep an eye on the captain and the first.”

One of the men turned away to carry the message, but another glared in outrage. “Who the hell put you in charge?”

“Yeah!” said the other man. “Who do you think you are, anyway?”

”Lohengrin Sales,” he answered. “Lieutenant Commander, Fleet Intelligence.”

“Sit down, Commander,” the admiral said, not looking up from his desk screen. Sales relaxed a little and took the straight chair in front of the desk. The walls were almost invisible in the murk left by the single pool of light on the admiral’s desk. The glow of the screen was brighter, though, and lit the man’s face from below, giving him a supernatural look. Good, Sales thought. It takes something supernatural to fight demons.

The admiral looked up. “You acquitted yourself admirably, Commander. It’s just lucky for those civilians that you happened to be on a mission to Terran HQ.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“But why did you have nothing but a blackjack, may I ask?”

“Spaceport security, sir. Civilians aren’t allowed to carry weapons aboard, and blackjacks don’t show up on screens—if they don’t have any metal parts.”

The admiral nodded. “We’ve sent your courier pack on to Terra with another messenger. It was lucky those pirates didn’t think to search you—diplomatic documents with Khalian seals would never have gotten past them.”

”They would have used them for kindling, sir. Now that that mission’s out of my hands, may I request reassignment?”

The admiral smiled. “To what, Commander?”

“To pirate extermination, sir,” Sales answered.

The admiral nodded. “Good idea. I was just about to assign you to track down Captain Goodheart, as it happens. And, by the way, you’re promoted—to full commander.”

There was discussion among the crew about the captain’s taking of a Terran name, of course.

“I could understand his giving the humans a name to call him by,” said Pralit, one of the CPOs, “but abandoning his family name, his clan name? How can this be good?”

“There is a way,” Xlitspee, a crewman, assured, if somewhat desperately. “There must be—for our captain is the bravest of we orphans of Khalia. “

“What did you say?” Houpiel snapped.

“That the captain is the bravest,” Xlitspee answered, frowning.

“No—you said we are ‘orphans of Khalia’!”

They were silent, letting the implications of the term sink in.

“If that is so,” said Pralit, “perhaps his taking of a new name is fitting.”

“Even if it is only a human name, translated to the Khalian tongue?”

“Of course.” Pralit managed a grin. “We understand the meaning of it, in all its sarcasm.”

“Not that there is not something of truth in it,” Houpiel temporized, “though more of irony.”

“Far more of irony,” Xlitspee said, suiting his tone to the word.

They looked up as Saulpeen, the first officer, came in. “What says he?” asked the second. The officers had so far been silent.

“That we, too, should take new names,” Saulpeen answered. “More, he wishes you each to take a name that is an aspect of his.”

The wardroom filled with shrill cries of consternation.

“Be still!” the second cried. “You have seen sense in his change of name; hear his sense in changing ours!”

“Why,” said Saulpeen, “the sense is that your names will show your allegiance to him—as will be needed, if your clan names are forgot.”

“Forgot!”

“Forgot,” Saulpeen said, his tone hardening, “for the captain means to gather in your fellow exiles—all they who are Khalia’s new orphans—and he does not wish that age-old clan feuds should arise to divide we outcasts, who need each other most. “

The wardroom was quiet as the crew looked at one another, then looked away. They were all men of one clan, and the thought of alliance with enemies was detestable—but Khalian enemies were better than human.

“And,” said the second, finishing the train of thought, “if there are no clan names, there can be no clan feuds. It is very wise, Saulpeen.”

“Very,” the first agreed, “but from this time forth, I am Saulpeen no longer. I shall henceforth be Throb.”

They were silent, letting the impact sink in.

Then the second nodded and said, “I shall be Tender.”

And, slowly at first, then in a rush, they began to choose names.

It wasn’t just a matter of manning a ship and going out to track down the pirate, of course. Sales had to earn that ship, by figuring out where Captain Goodheart would appear next. He set up a computer scan, having every shipping report routed through his office, and set a program to search for key words, such as “raid,” “lifeboat,” and “necktie.”

Reports began to come in, of a Khalian pirate who outgunned and outmaneuvered a merchantman, then matched orbits, clung to the ship’s side with magnetic grapples, and blew a hole through the ship’s skin. Then Weasels boarded—and the biggest one always wore a loud, garish necktie. He was unfailingly polite while his crew killed off the pilot and navigator, then stuffed the passengers into a lifeboat.

Soon, Captain Goodheart was notorious for his lightning strikes, his ruthlessness, and his neckties.

The ship shuddered, the section of hull fell inward, and the half-dozen men and women of the crew started firing. But Weasel faces ducked out, snapping off shots, and the crew fell. A large Khalian bounded in, and the women shrieked. The men struggled to their feet, pale and determined to die well. . . .

The Khalians swarmed all over them, and they were down and out cold in an instant.

“My husband!” a woman screamed, but the large Khalian said, in surprisingly good Terran and with amazing politeness, “I doubt not your husband is well, madame, though unconscious—unless he is a much better fighter than I expect. My crew does not kill civilians.”

“Your crew?” the woman gasped. “But—who are you?”

“You may call me Captain Goodheart—for, see, I leave you your lives. But only your lives.” The big Khalian held out a hand. “Your jewelry is forfeit. Give it to me, please.”

With trembling hands, the woman unfastened her necklace and placed it into his hairy paw, then added her bracelet. Behind, the Khalians rose, taking the men’s wallets and watches with them. All but one still breathed; most were unwounded.

Two women screamed at the sight of the others, and fell weeping over their bodies.

”The safe,” Goodheart said to First Mate Throb, and the first turned away, with a whistle of assent.

The last of the women was surrendering her jewelry to the Khalians. Then half the crewmen fell to untying the men’s neckties.

“But . . .” the first woman swallowed, plucked up her nerve, and asked again, “why are they taking our husbands’ neckties?”

“Their neckties?” Captain Goodheart touched the garish strip of cloth around his own neck. “As mementoes, madame. Surely you would not begrudge us souvenirs?”

”And even our neckties!” the civilian shouted, purple with rage. “What kind of Navy do you think you’re running, if these Khalians can just pop up wherever they want and play pirate with us?”

“Neckties?” The naval officer seemed suddenly more intent on the civilian’s report of the piracy. “Just yours? Or everybody’s?”

“All our neckties, dammit!” the civilian shouted. “What am I paying my taxes for, anyway?”

But Commander Sales only nodded as he stood and said, “Thank you for your information, Mr. Bagger. You’ve been a great help.” He started to turn away, then stopped at a thought and turned back. “By the way—what were you coming to Khalia for, anyway?”

“Why, to buy some of that bargain real estate the Khalia are selling, of course! And set up a department store! There are fortunes to be made there, man!”

As Commander Sales turned away, he was almost ashamed to admit that he could understand at least part of what drove Captain Goodheart.

Sales set up a holotank with Khalia’s sun represented by a glowing ruby at the center, then plotted the pirate’s ambushes in yellow dots, connecting them with traceries of faint yellow lines. Slowly, the pattern grew. Goodheart seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, in a sphere about three AUs out from Khalia. That was the point at which ships had to drop out of hyperspace into normal space, because they were getting too close to the gravity well of Khalia’s sun—and sometimes Goodheart was there to meet them, and sometimes he wasn’t. It didn’t seem to matter which side of Khalia’s sun they dropped out on—Goodheart ambushed ships from every direction.

Sales couldn’t patrol every inch of a sphere that size, of course—but he could outfit a cruiser and wait in ambush near the breakout point from Target, that being the most frequent traffic from and to Khalia. A cruiser that was nonmetallic, and black, and far enough away so that it wouldn’t be visible to the naked eye—but close enough so it could rendezvous with any inbound ship within fifteen minutes.

All he needed was permission.

“Sorry, Sales. We can’t risk you in combat now. You’re the only one who knows that Weasel, his mania, his patterns of raiding.”

”I’ve left complete notes, sir,” Sales said. “The locations of his raids, the times, the pattern—everything’s there, in the computer.”

The admiral just sat, frowning at him. Sales could almost hear him weighing the greater chances of eliminating the pirate, against the chance of losing the only man who had any feel for how Goodheart thought. Sales held his breath.

The admiral decided, and nodded. “All right, Sales. You can have him.”

Sales’s heart was still soaring as he stretched his shock webbing across himself and leaned back, waiting for takeoff. To be in command of a ship again was wonderful enough—but to be in command of a ship that was chasing Captain Goodheart was sublime.

The ship waited near the breakout point, its black hull virtually invisible in the eternal night of space. It waited for a week and, during that time, watched a ship a day break out into normal space and shoot onward toward Khalia. It waited for two weeks, and the crew began to grumble. They were getting tired of backgammon and calisthenics. They wanted action—or shore leave.

Finally, after three weeks, the alarm beeped, and the sensor op called, “Khalian on scope.”

“Commander Sales to the bridge,” the captain snapped into the intercom. “All crew, combat stations!”

The klaxon hooted, and the ship filled with the thunder of pounding feet.

Sales burst into the control room and stilled, staring at the image on the telescope screen. Infrared-sensed and computer-enhanced, the silhouette of a Khalian cruiser seemed to float in space.

“We’ve got him!” Sales hissed. “Full acceleration, Captain!”

“Full acceleration,” the captain told his engineer. The alarm wailed, and reflex sent Sales into his acceleration couch. He was stretching the webbing as the boost hit and two gravities’ worth of acceleration slammed him back into the cushions.

A point of light shimmered on the screen, a new star.

“Widen coverage!” the captain snapped, but the sensor op was already increasing the field.

A new ship appeared on the screen, hurtling toward the Khalian—but it was ten times the size, and the silhouette was Terran.

“There’s what he’s after!” Sales snapped. “A freighter!”

“Torpedo,” the captain directed. There was no feeling of recoil, but after a second, a gunner called, “Away.”

“He’ll move before it gets there,” Sales warned, but the captain was already nodding. “We’ll launch as soon as we can tell vector and velocity.”

Then, suddenly, the Khalian jumped—but away from the freighter. It flipped over, bow facing toward Sales. Fire burst, and the torpedo exploded well away from the ship.

“He knows we’re here,” Sales grated. “Any more legs on this ship?”

“Range!” The gunner didn’t even finish the word before the captain was bawling, “Fire!”

It was fast, then—the head gunner keyed the computer for full fire, and the helms op keyed his for evasive action. The ship slammed them from side to side and back and forth, jumping about in its progress toward the Khalian—but the fire computer read each change in vector as soon as the helm computer generated it, and compensated in its aim. The ship’s full armament blazed, picking off the Khalian’s torpedoes and evading its lasers, while it probed and stabbed with its own cannon and missiles.

The Khalian, of course, had done the same, and its image jittered about the screen, its cannon blazing at the Terran, evading and returning fire.

Computer against computer, the pirate strove against the Fleet vessel—while, beyond them and all but unknowing, the freighter sped silently past and on toward Khalia.

But Sales had an advantage that the Khalian didn’t—a dozen PT ships, spawned at the sound of the klaxon and arcing high above the plane of the ecliptic. Now they fell, stabbing fire, guided by computers independent of the fire-control brain.

The Khalian rolled and jumped, trying to evade this new menace. Then an explosion lit it amidships. The screens darkened to compensate for the extra light, so Sales could only see a dim picture of the Khalian turning tail.

“Got him!” the captain shouted, clenching his fist. “Go get him, Helm!”

“Chasing, sir,” the helm op gloated, and the warning hooted just before the ship jumped into two g’s acceleration again.

On the screen, the pirate shrank as it sped away.

“He might be sucking us in,” Sales reminded.

“We’re watching,” the captain answered.

The pirate began to grow in the screen again.

“We’ll catch him,” the captain gloated. “We’ll blast him out of the night!”

Suddenly the pirate began to glitter.

“He’s jumping!” the sensor op yelled.

“He can’t!” Sales shouted. “He’s wounded! He could blow himself into oblivion!”

“If he stays, we’ll do it to him for sure,” the captain grated.

The glitter covered the ship completely, faded to a twinkle, and was gone. The screen was empty.

“Got away!” Sales slammed his fist against the arm of his couch. “He got away from us!”

“Maybe not!” The captain’s voice was leaden. “He was too close to another mass—us—and too close to a standard breakout point, where the curvature of space is kinked. Could be he’s blown himself to hell.”

“Not this weasel.” Sales glared at the screen. “Could be, but it’s not. He may be hurt, but he’s alive.”

He lay back in his couch, forcing himself to relax. “You fought damn well, Captain, and you gave him one hell of a chase. I couldn’t have asked for better.”

“Thank you, sir—but I could.” The captain’s face was grim. “We lost him—so it wasn’t good enough. The crew did a fine job—but there must be something we could have done better.”

“I can’t think what.” Sales suddenly felt very tired.

“You will, though, sir. You will.”

“We must know who commanded that ship, Throb! It was no chance encounter; he was waiting for us!” Goodheart paced the chamber, vibrant with anger.

“We must, indeed,” Throb agreed.

“We must have knowledge! Information! We must set spies to tell us of the slightest sign that some Terran seeks us out!”

Throb frowned. “But how can we know what the humans think, Captain? We cannot have agents among them.”

“Can we not?” Goodheart wheeled about, eyes glowing. “Have we no Khalians who dwell among humankind? Are there none on Target, none on Khalia, who would favor us?”

Throb stared, struck by the notion. “There must be many!”

“Make planetfall secretly!” Goodheart commanded. “Set each of our men to talk to old friends! Let them sound out those who are loyal to Khalia, not to the clan chiefs! Those few who are, give them transmitters and codes! Let them pass each word they hear that might have meaning back to us!”

“At once, my captain!” Throb sped away, leaving Goodheart to plan alone.

He paced the chamber, reviewing possibilities. Language—he must teach all his crew the human languages, those of the Fleet and the Syndicate, and set them to scanning the humans’ broadcasts. He must begin to collect news printouts from every vessel he boarded—he had chanced upon a copy of a shipping schedule on the last Syndicate ship he had taken. He needed knowledge.

Old friends talked to old friends, and they talked to new friends. No one could say who had asked whom, but half the Khalians on the home planet soon knew to which old friend they should mention anything interesting. Petty, perhaps irrelevant . . .

Or perhaps not.

“Commander Lohengrin Sales?” Goodheart stared at the picture on the screen, recorded from a newsfeed and transmitted to his ship, secretly. He frowned at the human face. “Why does that name itch at the comer of my brain?”

All the crew were silent, watching their captain out of the comers of their eyes.

But Goodheart scarcely saw them; he was concentrating on memory, reviewing all that had happened since he had decided to tum pirate. . . .

”Sales!” he cried. “The civilian who fought us, when we first captured a Terran ship! Have they set him to chasing me, then?”

“We shamed him, Captain,” murmured Throb. “He lusts for revenge.”

“Even as I do—now!” Goodheart bared his teeth in a grin. “Would he chase me, then? Well, let us seek more information about him, and more—for I will chase him!”

For some reason, the prospect filled Throb with foreboding.

And perhaps he was right—for, alone in his cabin, Goodheart paced the deck, claws emerging and retracting, simmering with anger and frustration—because he realized that, more than anything else, he needed human agents.

How could he recruit even one trustworthy human, when all were so loyal to their race—or so treacherous that they were willing to sell anything for their own wealth, even honor? He didn’t know—but he would find a way. “I must have a human!” he breathed. “I must!”

The other kids never liked Georgie Desrick when he was growing up. Long in the torso and short in the legs, he was never much of an athlete—and whether his clumsiness was inborn, or only the result of the other kids never wanting him on their teams, it was nonetheless extreme. Add to that a face with a receding chin, buck teeth, and huge, bulging eyes (from the distortion of the thick contact lenses he had to wear), and you had a person who didn’t exactly gather friends. Nonetheless, he was very religious, so he managed to put aside all thoughts of revenge and filled his time with books.

Storybooks, “How To” books, encyclopedias, dictionaries—he soaked up everything he could read. By fifth grade, he was already reading high school physics and chemistry; by seventh grade, he was soaking up cybernetics and electronics. Those clumsy hands managed to acquire a modicum of skill with a soldering iron and a chemistry set, and his mind developed compartments for listening to the teacher separately from working on his latest math problem. School lessons would have bored him stiff, if he’d actually had to pay attention to them—after all, they were several years behind his reading—so he became adept at tracking the classroom lectures, able to snap to full consciousness at the mention of his name, and answer the question that had just been asked, while the back of his mind went on planning his next electronic invention.

He got straight A’s, of course. Which made him even less popular.

By the time he graduated from high school, he had several patents to his name and a very good income from royalties—so a high-pressure Navy recruiter talked him into going into the Fleet, promising that he could attend the best colleges on old Earth at government expense for as long as he wanted—provided that, when he graduated, he would work on some problems the government wanted investigated.

And, the recruiter pledged, he’d have companionship.

The companionship turned out to mean that he was quartered with other officer candidates, that they all had to sleep in the same room and eat at the same table. It didn’t mean they had to talk with him.

So they didn’t—they talked past him, over him, and by him; and when they did look at him, their faces held anything but friendship. They were fine-looking, sociable, athletic young men, all of them, and they resented him fiercely.

Georgie threw himself into his studies more fervently than ever.

His roommates took it as snobbish aloofness and disliked him even more.

Georgie graduated in three years—with a doctorate in physics. He stayed another year, to pick up master’s degrees in chemistry and metallurgy. He was starting work on his third dissertation when the Navy told him it was time to collect.

But they had to take him to the planet where the problem lay, so he was signed on as supercargo aboard an FTL training cruiser.

Within a week, the crew resented him for not having to get his hands dirty.

A new midshipman, trying to build a personal power base, chose Georgie as the obvious scapegoat and unified the rest of the middies by building up a huge grudge against the oddball who just stayed in his cabin and read.

Rough hands woke him in the middle of the night, jabbing a gag in his mouth and shackling his hands and feet. Young men, snarling obscenities, rushed him through the darkness and locked him inside a space-going coffin labeled a lifeboat. A mule kicked him in the seat, and he blacked out.

They were caught, of course—but their midshipman leader managed to put it down to a sophomoric prank that had gone too far. The officers let the rest of the crew off with severe discipline, but the leader was cashiered. He turned his back on the Navy and started trying to figure out how to manipulate those around him into making him rich.

Georgie woke in the dark, with no light but the faint instruments on the control panel. He yanked the gag from his mouth, found the water bottle in the emergency rations—not easy, with handcuffs—took a couple of gulps, and remembered that he was marooned. He forced himself to cap the bottle and studied the control panel.

His heart sank.

When the middies had kicked him out of the ship, the lifeboat had dropped back into normal space. It was thirty light-years from the nearest sun.

He started the beacon, but with almost no hope. He started a strict rationing program, so his air regenerator gave out before his food and water did, two weeks after he’d been drifting alone in the darkness.

The loneliness, he was used to. His religious faith sustained him, until the end.

But, as the excess carbon dioxide muffled his thoughts and he began the slide down into unconsciousness, the despair he couldn’t quite contain opened the channel through which all the resentment, bitterness, and years of repressed anger tore loose into a river of hatred—hatred against all things human, who had been too snobbish to befriend him, had sneered at him all his life, and who could not, when last came to last, even leave him alone. The religious part of him cried in dismay, but finally had to admit that burning, tearing hatred that boiled up in a lust for revenge against all of humanity.

A shrilling pierced Georgie’s ears. He winced and forced his eyes open. He was astounded to realize he was still alive.

He was even more astounded to realize he was staring up into the face of a Khalian.

The snout split in a grin—Georgie was flabbergasted; he hadn’t known the creatures could smile—and a furry paw came up to pat his cheek. Then, even more incredibly, the Khalian spoke—in Terran. “Do not be afraid. We have rescued you from your lifeboat—and only just in time, too. Minutes longer, and you would have been dead. You are safe now, and among friends.”

Georgie could only stare.

Then sleep claimed him again.

When he woke a second time, the Khalian in attendance looked up, saw him, and shrilled something into a grille on the wall. Georgie was just trying to struggle up to a sitting position when the Khalian he’d seen before came in and pushed him gently back. “Please, not yet. Give your body time to recover.”

Georgie sank back, realizing that the Khalian was much bigger than most of his kind, and wondering why he was wearing a bright, gaudy necktie. “But—why would you save me? I’m . . . not even your kind. . . .”

Captain Goodheart grinned, all the more widely because that was the same question Throb had posed. “We cannot but admire the valor with which you strove to survive in that lifeboat, when all must have seemed hopeless. We Khalians understand valor. How long were you adrift? A week? Two?”

“Two,” Georgie agreed.

“And how did you come to be there? Shipwreck? Accident?”

“Exile.” Georgie’s jaw firmed. “My own kind threw me out.”

“Ahhhh.” Captain Goodheart lifted his head. “Then we are alike, you and we.”

Georgie frowned and asked, “How can that be?”

Goodheart began to explain.

“But, Captain! How can a human choose a Khalian name?”

“In the same fashion that you and I have, Throb. And for much the same reason—he renounces his kind. He says that we are his kind, now.”

It made sense, from Georgie’s viewpoint. He was dead to the human race, and by their own doing. Sure, only a few spiteful young men had actually thrown him out—but the Navy itself hadn’t shown much concern, surely not enough to come looking for him. As to the rest of the race, why, they scarcely knew he existed, even though most of them were already benefiting from the improved hyperspace communications link he had invented.

And the Khalians didn’t care what he looked like.

In fact, they seemed very friendly, treating him like one of their own. Which he was; he would willingly have done anything Captain Goodheart asked now, up to and including suicide. After all, he owed his life to the captain; surely it was his to call in, whenever he chose. Besides, there seemed to be neither Khalian nor human here—only pirates, together. True, he heard one or two now and then joking about “the captain’s pet human,” but Throb and the other officers were quick to punish the offender.

Georgie had never had a friend stick up for him before. The total lack of interest in athletics, though, they could not abide. They were, after all, medieval warriors, no matter what their technological skills. But Goodheart tutored Georgie himself, slowly and with immense patience and good cheer, gradually teaching him how to defend himself, then turning him over to Throb, who coached him with equal patience into learning to attack—until, after a year’s time, Georgie actually knew how to fight and was amazed to find he was physically fit. He had even learned to endure pain without flinching.

And if, between sessions, Throb stormed and ranted to the captain about what a worthless being Georgie was—why, Georgie had no need to know it. And the captain didn’t mind. He knew Georgie’s true worth—at least, to himself and his raiders. And if, in his most secret heart of hearts, he thought of Georgie as a traitor, he was quick to counter it with the charitable thought that this genius of a human was really only a poor, gullible fool.

Sales had almost had him. That slimy pirate had almost been in his grasp! He felt it as failure, of course—but he had saved the merchantman, damaged the raider, and at least proved he knew how to find Goodheart. So the admiral gave Sales a dozen ships, and Sales stationed them at the points Goodheart was most likely to raid.

Of course, the pirate never showed up—near any of Sales’s ships. He appeared in plenty of other places, gutted merchantmen and passenger liners by the score—but never where Sales expected him to be. He detected the cruisers in ambush, somehow, or maybe he had agents in the Fleet—now that they had Khalian allies, it was impossible to tell. Not that barring Weasels from the Fleet would have done any good—there had been traitors enough during the war, and Syndicate humans still didn’t look any different from Fleet humans.

Would a Syndicate agent work for Captain Goodheart?

Of course—since he was fouling up Terran-Khalian traffic. Any little bit that weakened the Fleet was in the Syndicate’s interest.

Sales considered the possibility that Goodheart might be a Syndicate agent, and decided against it. The Weasel simply had too much hatred for humans.

Then ships dropping out of hyperspace began to be boarded, light-years away from Khalia. There was either a research genius among the pirates, or the Syndicate saw a great deal of potential in Goodheart’s activities. They would have had to have spirited the gadget in to Goodheart by a secret agent, of course—but that wasn’t impossible.

Nor was the possibility of accident, Sales reminded himself. If the pirate had captured a ship with such a weapon aboard, he wouldn’t have hesitated to use it—or duplicate it. His value system might have been medieval, but his technicians were modem.

Sales increased the scale on his holotank exponentially; the three-AU sphere shrank to the size of a baseball. He began plotting Goodheart’s new strikes in red dots, then connecting them with very thin lines.

Gradually, a lacy red sphere grew around Khalia, about twelve light-years out.

He had to have a base, Sales knew—and it had to be inside that lacy sphere. It couldn’t be outside, or he’d have had double transit time to the ambush sites on the far side of Khalia from wherever he’d set up housekeeping—and the reports of attacks came too frequently for that.

He had to have a base—but where?

“There! It is perfect!”

Throb frowned at the image on the viewscreen. “It is bleak and pitted, Captain. What can be perfect about a huge asteroid?”

“What! Can you not see?” Goodheart spun about to Georgie. “Perhaps you, adopted one! Is not my asteroid perfect?”

“Perfect, yes, as an asteroid,” Georgie whistled. His Khalian was horribly accented, but comprehensible. It gave his shipmates much material for broad jokes—but at least he could understand the punch lines. “For a pirates base, it is large enough to house the warriors of the cruiser, and a dozen ships more.”

Throb and the other Khalians lifted their heads.

“Some of those pits may be tunnel mouths,” Georgie went on, “and the rest could become so. Caverns could become ammunition dumps and hydroponic gardens. Then it is a small matter to close those mouths with walls or locks, and you have your base.”

“You see?” Goodheart shrilled to his crew. “You see? Even the outlander sees what you could not!”

Georgie blushed, feeling the resentment rise around him. “By your leave, Captain . . .”

“Anything! To one who can see so clearly—anything. What would you say, Hemoglobin?”

The crew relaxed a little, smiling, and Georgie was glad he had chosen a foolish scientist’s name—it let the Khalians feel comfortably superior, in the ways they believed really mattered. So like humans . . . “Good Captain, would it not be better to have a planet? A base that cannot run out of oxygen or water?”

The ship became very quiet. Georgie twitched under the weight of their stares, but held his gaze even with the captain’s.

“Why, it would be so,” Goodheart said evenly, “but how would you defend it?”

“With the ships that form your current lair, the old merchant hulks, each mounted with many cannon and set in orbit.”

“Well thought,” Goodheart purred, “but where would we find these cannon?”

“On the small ships of the Fleet that we have never bothered with.”

An appreciative whistle passed through the crew.

Goodheart grinned. “Well thought, Globin! But to take off or land from such a world requires great stores of fuel! Where shall we find it?”

Georgie hid his irritation at the blindness of people. “Our engines are fueled by hydrogen, great Captain, and water is hydrogen bonded to oxygen. We can loose it easily with small amounts of electricity. Choose a water world—with seas, to provide your hydrogen, and rivers, to turn the turbines that will make your electricity.”

The surrounding whistle increased in shrillness, and even Goodheart seemed a little shaken as he laughed and said, “He does not dream small dreams, our Globin! But where are we to find such a world?”

“In Virgo,” Globin answered, “not far from Spica.”

And he gave them the coordinates. He did not tell them that this was his own world, the one that he had gleaned from the records of many, many exploration missions, sifted in the library in the long, lonely hours of college weekends. His own world, the one around which he had built his fantasy, his dream of escape from all the sarcastic people who belittled and insulted him, from the athletes who punched him around for fun, from the beautiful and condescending girls. He gave it to them without reluctance or hesitation, for he had found his escape—but with friends.

It grew in the viewscreens, a jewel of a world, a semiprecious stone polished to an oblate spheroid, a turquoise banded with white—too small, and too mineral-poor, to have been of interest for colonization, and too far from Terra.

But close enough to Khalia, and to the route from Khalia to Target.

The ship landed, the machines sampled atmosphere and water for chemical oddities and microorganisms, and pronounced the planet safe—as the records had said it was.

“Go and frolic!” Goodheart cried. “But stay close to the ship—we know not what monsters may lurk nearby!”

The hatches opened, and the crew boiled out in a manic tide.

“Some few must stay and guard, must they not?” Goodheart glanced from screen to screen. “You and I, Globin.”

It warmed the human’s heart immensely. “Will you show me how to fight on land?”

“Haw!” Goodheart swiped at the human. “He who had no love for the things of the body! Yes, Globin, I will fight you—without claws.” His eye gleamed as he watched the screens. “See them rejoice! Thank you for my world, Globin. “

“You are welcome, Captain.” Globin would have given his hero anything.

Goodheart’s eye was still on the screen. “What would you name it, Globin?”

“Name?” Globin looked up, surprised. “Why, New Khalia, of course!”

Goodheart shook his head. “The past is closed to us, Globin, and must be forgotten. Give me a new name, for a new world!”

“Why,” said Globin, “Barataria, of course!”

Globin was sweating. He had always been uncomfortable among his own kind, but had never realized it so thoroughly before. He missed his friends, his Khalian pirate comrades—but the captain wanted it done, so Globin would do it.

He stepped into the little town on Target, reminding himself that he could fight now, if he had to—but no one looked twice at him.

He could scarcely believe it. He bucked his spirits up and walked on down the street into the depot, feeling as though all eyes were on him, but seeing not a single glance, no matter where he looked. Perhaps, after all, the little, funny-looking man in the gray ensemble wasn’t worth looking at.

He bought a ticket for the hover to the capital, where he checked into a hotel room, then booked passage for Terra.

“He will betray you, Captain! He is among his own kind once again! He will tell the Fleet where we lair!”

“He dares not.”

“But he may be taken! He may be given drugs!”

“Ah, Throb! Have you no confidence in our own forgers? We duplicated exactly that passport we took from a human—except in changing the name and the holo.”

“Of course,” Throb grumped, “but I have no faith in the ‘merchant’ Globin goes to meet. He may be an agent of the fleet come to bait a trap!”

“If so, we will lose our dear Globin—but the humans will not be much the wiser, for Globin knows nothing of us but the inside of our ship and the coordinates of Barataria. That, I would begrudge—and I daresay I would truly regret Globin’s passing. But at least, it would not be a Khalian whose death I mourned.”

“We will steer our ship into a trap, when we come to take the weapons the merchant has promised you,” Throb grumbled.

“Perhaps—so there will be only two pirates who go to load the consignment.” Goodheart took out the pasteboard with the human’s name on it—“Seth Adamson, Expediter.” The gall of the human, to press a business card on him in the midst of a raid! I can be of service to you, Captain. We can be of service to each other. Again, Goodheart squeezed the corner and saw the surface of the card change, displaying weapon after weapon, up to cannon and tanks, while a mouse’s voice touted their virtues. “Is there no treachery too great for these humans,” Goodheart murmured, “so long as it enriches themselves?”

“Why should that be any less true of Globin, Captain?” Throb demanded.

“Because, good Throb, we are his enrichment.” Goodheart flipped the card into the air and watched it spin slowly down.

As Globin went through the whole process, the meeting in the Terran restaurant, the discussion under the privacy screen, the haggling over price, and the listing of the order, a part of him sat aside and marveled. He would never have had the nerve to do such a thing if Captain Goodheart had not asked it. He would never have had the confidence if Captain Goodheart and his crew had not given it to him.

The freighter dropped into normal space, shed velocity, and drifted, lights blinking in the prearranged signal, waiting. Goodheart’s crew scanned the vicinity, but saw no trace of ships.

“Wait,” said Globin. “Let me try my new detector.”

Goodheart whistled with respect. “How can you detect masses in hyperspace, Globin, when we are in normal space?”

“By the interaction of interference waves between the two continua, Captain. . . . No, so far as I can tell, there are no other ships except the freighter, and us.”

Goodheart pressed a patch. “Then go, Plasma and Saline!”

The small courier shot out from the pirate ship. It docked at the great ship’s port, and the crew settled down for the long wait while the two Khalians inspected the cargo with a life-detector.

Finally, a smaller ship shot away from the freighter. Sometime later, a twinkle in the distance announced its departure from normal space.

“Terran yacht in hyperspace,” Globin announced.

Goodheart hit the com patch. “Saline! Are you in possession of the ship?”

“I am, Captain. The merchant pronounced himself satisfied with the bonus.”

“Then guide the freighter toward the rendezvous asteroid and begin testing weapons.”

“How long until we are sure the whole ship will not blow up on us, Captain?”

“A day and a night should be enough. Enjoy your target practice.” Goodheart signed off and turned to Globin, catching him by the shoulders and shrilling with delight. “Mission accomplished, Globin! Well done!”

Whistles of acclaim pierced the air, and Globin stood with a silly smile on his face, very proud and very, very happy.

“You actually went through the records of every surplus dealer on all the human planets?”

“Computers are wonderful,” Lo assured the admiral. “Of course, the records of the munitions factories’ output are submitted to us regularly—but as far as we can tell, they haven’t been doctored.”

“Very good, Commander Sales.” The admiral studied the hard copy on his desk. “Small losses in shipment, from a dozen factories . . .”

“And a large number of sales of personal arms, to anonymous buyers, from a hundred surplus stores.” Lo nodded. “It all adds up to a very large shipment of human-made weapons.”

“Very good, Commander! And where did those weapons go?”

Sales laid the other hard copy down on the desk.

“The admiral nodded, his face grim. “Arrest Adamson.”

“We tried, sir. He disappeared.”

The whole tavern was filled with females. Throb should have been delighted to be surrounded by so many, some even beauties—and after more than a year without seeing anything feminine! But he had seen them stream out of the factory, saw the drab protective clothing they wore, and the signs of servitude sickened him.

Ri’isthin was easily the most beautiful of them all, and it should have been an almost intoxicating pleasure to share a drink with her, even if the brew had not been alcoholic. Still, he couldn’t hide his agitation.

“You are brave, to come into a place filled with bitter females,” Ri’isthin said sarcastically. “Yet I can see you are troubled by more than being so greatly outnumbered.”

Throb couldn’t hold it in any longer. “How can you labor for the conqueror! Like slaves!”

Ri’isthin winced, but shrugged with determined fatalism. “We choose to live—and so many males died in the war, so many more males than females, that we have no husbands. How else are we to find food and shelter?”

Throb took a deep breath, then took the plunge. “What is the depth of your courage?”

The first shuttle blasted the pad and settled down. The hatch opened, the gangway extruded—and the females filed down, looking around them at Barataria in wonder.

Goodheart’s crew shrilled with delight and shot out toward them.

Every crewman grabbed a female and whirled her away—but there were 180 males left unpartnered.

Not for long.

The second shuttle touched down, and the third—then the first blasted off to go back for its second load.

Goodheart stood watching them, controlling the raging tide of his own hormones with difficulty.” ‘You chose my world well, Globin—and Throb has brought us life for it.”

“It is wonderful to see them happy,” Globin murmured, eyes on the men.

Goodheart frowned at the new note in his henchman’s voice, and looked down at him. “Ah, poor lonely Globin! Shall we find you a female, too?”

But Globin shook his head with granite resolve. “The only ones who would want me, Captain, I would not choose. Even if they wished marriage, it would not be me they’d want; they would only accept me because they could do no better. No, let me take joy in my shipmates’ pleasure.”

That was when Goodheart began to think of Globin as a being in his own right.

”Are you certain there is no ship near, in hyperspace, Globin?”

“I am sure, Captain. My detector shows nothing.”

“But it must be bait for a trap!” Goodheart paced the deck, agitated. “What else could it be? A passenger liner, dropped into normal space with its distress beacon screaming—why would the humans make themselves such easy prey?”

“Then wave a flag to show us where they are?” Throb echoed.

Globin said, “It could be a genuine emergency . . .”

“If so, we shall pick them clean!” Goodheart turned with decision. “And if it is a trap, we shall pick their bones! But if the snare is set, I will trip it alone! Prepare my pinnace. “

“No, Captain!”

“You must not risk yourself!” “We would be lost without you!”

“I volunteer!”

“I volunteer!”

“And I!”

“And I!”

“And I!”

The pinnace shot away moments later, staffed with three valiant crewmen. Throb and the other officers eyed the captain as though they were ready to pounce.

The pinnace docked. Three spacesuited figures drifted into the airlock.

“Leucocyte?” Goodheart called. “Are you there?”

“The lock is cycling, Captain.” Leuco’s helmet-camera showed them the interior hatch. The green patch lit, and Leuco’s hand came out to haul the hatch open. “We are entering.” The edges of the hatch swam out of sight . . .

The screen was filled with Khalian faces.

Goodheart stood stunned. So did Leuco.

Then, as from a distance, Goodheart heard Leuco say, “Why have warriors come cold to the void?”

“We wish to enlist with Captain Goodheart,” one of the Khalians answered.

Then, suddenly, the air was filled with keening.

“Do not leave us to labor in the conqueror’s shadow!”

“Do not condemn us to fight for our enemies!”

“No clan will battle the humans! Give me a leader!”

“Take me!”

“Take me!”

“Take me!”

“Do not turn us away!”

“Volunteers,” Goodheart murmured, awed.

Globin nodded, eyes glowing. “I know how they feel.”

He looked up at Goodheart, beaming. “You have made a new beginning for us all, Captain.”

“A whole shipful of Khalians?”

“Yes, sir.” Sales’s face, beyond the shadow of the desk lamp, was filled with disgust. “Don’t ask me why the shipping company was willing to lease them a liner.”

“Or why Emigration let them all get on the same ship? They’re free beings, Commander, not slaves—we can’t stop them without very good reason.” The admiral scowled heavily at the list on the screen. “If they want to go, we can’t stop them!”

“Even if they’re going to kill humans?!?”

The admiral shrugged impatiently. “Prove they’re going to join Goodheart—ahead of time. But with this ship lost, I don’t think anyone’s going to be interested in a charter for a band of Khalians again. You can tell the spaceports to watch the small ships, though, Commander.”

Lo did—and they managed to prevent several yachts with “joyriding” Khalians from leaving port. The joyriders turned out to have an amazing amount of weaponry with them—but the warriors had not surrendered their personal arms, and they claimed they needed to be able to defend themselves in case of attack by pirates.

That they needed the weapons for the pirates, Sales didn’t doubt.

But he couldn’t prevent Khalians from booking passage on liners with human passengers. And if the pirates attacked, and some humans lived, but the Khalians failed to come back, who could be surprised?

Sales wondered how many Khalians were working only to save up enough money for another round trip on a liner, hoping against hope to be pirated.

“He calls himself Globin.” Sales held up the candid shot for the admiral to see. It showed Globin at a newscreen in a spaceport; he seemed to be staring right up into the camera set next to the screen.

“Ugly enough.” The admiral frowned at the picture. “He makes weapons deals for Goodheart?”

“We’re pretty sure he’s the one who made the three weapons buys, yes. But this time, he ordered metal.”

“Metal?” The admiral looked up, frowning.

“Yes, sir. A superfreighter of manganese, aluminum, nickel, iron, and a whole list of more exotic supplies.”

“That’s industrial bulk. Just how big is this Goodheart growing, anyway?”

”He’s got to have a base, sir,” Sales said, “a mighty big base.”

“Big enough to set up his own weapons factories! Shut him down, Sales—shut him down!” He tossed the holo back. “And if this Goblin ever sets foot on a human planet again, arrest him! I want him tied, tried, and fried.”

“Yes, sir, Admiral.” Sales didn’t correct his mistake—he used it. And fed it to the rumor mills, and the public opinionators.

Within the year, there wasn’t a human on Target or Khalia who didn’t believe the psychotic Goblin was the worst villain the race had ever spawned.

“Why don’t you ever attack Syndicate ships?” an aggrieved businessman wailed.

“Why do you think I do not?” Goodheart returned. “They are very profitable game, I assure you. Your valuables, please.”

Every few days, now, word came of another raid by a ship that grappled and cut through the side of a merchantman, and sometimes even a destroyer, disgorging a horde of shrilling Khalians whose captain wore a brightly colored necktie, each one more garish than the last. His crew cut down anybody who resisted, and weren’t terribly picky about innocent bystanders. Their last loot was always the men’s neckties.

But they always left at least a few alive and set them adrift in a lifeboat—almost as though the pirate was taunting Sales, making sure he knew that Goodheart was still striking with impunity.

Either that, or Goodheart was very much aware of the value of publicity.

But one route had more ambushes than any other—the hyperspace curve between Khalia and Target. There was no way of telling where the attack would occur, within the twelve-light-year approach to Khalia, so Sales couldn’t post sentry ships to cover every AU of it. But he could call for volunteers, order civilian suits for them, and start taking round trips on a ship that went from Khalia to Target and back. A very special ship. It looked ordinary, of course, like any other passenger ship—but Sales had ordered some very unique modifications.

The section of hull fell inward, and the Khalians leaped in among the passengers, guns leveled and ready.

“So, ladies and gentlemen.” Captain Goodheart shouldered his way in among his crewmen. “I am delighted to be your guest, no matter how brief my stay. Come, come! Have you no greater hospitality than that? Will you give no refreshment, no entertainment? Ah, but you must offer me something! Your wallets and jewelry, as a beginning.” He grinned down at the big, beefy man near him. “Come, will you not rise to greet your . . .” Then his eyes widened as he recognized the face he had seen in each of several news articles, that he remembered seeing last above this same civilian ensemble. “Sales!”

“Now!” Sales roared, a gun appearing in his hand. “He knows!”

Laser bolts seared the air. Weasels shrieked—then humans screamed. The stench of burning fur and flesh rose—for each “civilian” had concealed a pistol beside him in the seat, and the Khalians among them were caught in a murderous crossfire.

But they were quick, those Weasels. Even as barrels leveled, they dodged aside. A few were caught by bolts aimed at others, but most skipped back, wounded and furious, to the hole in the side.

“Back!” Goodheart shrilled. “So you do not smite your own! Then fight, as your fathers did at Target!”

The pirates pulled back in a knot around their hatch—but grenades hurled from among the Terrans. Weasels shot into the crowd, but their beams scorched upholstery, though here and there a man or woman cried out. One bomb came whirling back toward the humans, but two others blew. Pirates keened, and one cried, “They have disabled the lock!”

“The outer lock only!” Goodheart cried. “Back, back inside, so that we may close the inner hatch!”

The pirates disappeared like water down a drain—but Sales leaped forward, pulling a crowbar from under his jacket, jamming it in the hatch, whistling in execrable Khalian, “I hear you, Goodheart!”

”Then hear your death!” The big Khalian burst out, and the hatch slammed aside, knocking Sales back against the lock wall. He recovered-to see Goodheart towering before him, eyes glaring, claws out. Before the humans could shoot, he had grappled Sales to him.

The big human stomped on the Khalian’s foot.

Goodheart shrilled in anger and ran his claws into Sales’s arm. Then he pulled back with a howl, a slash of red across his abdomen, as Sales shrilled, “I have a claw, too!” Blood dripped from the slender dagger he’d pulled from his sleeve.

Goodheart sprang, claws reaching for Sales’s throat. Sales stumbled and fell, but drove a fist into the pirate’s belly, shoved stiffened fingers into the central nerve plexus above it, and brought a fist up to drive the big Khalian back. Goodheart stumbled away—and a fuming sphere hurtled from the opened lock. Goodheart dove back through it and the door clashed shut as the human ship filled with tear gas.

Coughing and gagging, Sales scrabbled at the fallen section of hull. One of his fighters realized what he was doing and leaped to join him. Eyes streaming, they raised the steel plate by feel alone . . .

Then the ship rocked, and Sales knew Goodheart’s ship had kicked off from his. Too late, the tear gas streamed out into the vacuum of space—but the damage was done; his fighters rolled in the aisles, eyes streaming. He and his helper threw their weight against the plate, holding it back as vacuum tore at it, trying to ease it up level with the side of the ship . . .

Then the door to the bridge burst open, and a crewman in a spacesuit hopped in, picking his way among bodies, lugging a tool chest. He dropped it by the hole and yanked out a wad of metallic cloth, shaking out into a huge, ten-foot square. He draped it between the alloy circle and the hole in the hull, pressing the adhesive edges against the metal all around it, stamping it against the floor. “Let it go now, sir!”

Sales and the agent eased the metal circle against the bellying tarp. The spacesuited man yanked another out of the tool kit, unfolded it, and pressed it into place over the huge disk. Then he pulled out a small welder and began to bond the edges of the patch to the metal of the hull.

Air pressure began to return.

Sales turned, and felt fingers dabbing at his eyes. Blessed coolness flowed from them, and he blinked away the last of the tears, managing to see a mottled image of his soldiers, pulling themselves to their feet, as the navigator and captain went on among them, smearing an antidote balm on their eyes.

The ship shuddered.

Sales lurched down the aisle, careful to avoid bumping soldiers, into the control room, staring at the viewscreen.

The image of the Khalian ship was just beginning to glitter. An explosion rocked its tail; then it was gone.

“How many times did you hit him?” Sales grated.

“Only that last, sir,” the gunner answered. “His fire-control picked off all my other torpedoes. I got a couple of laser bums in, but I don’t know if they did more than scar his armor.”

The man in the spacesuit loomed in the door. “Mission accomplished, sir.”

Sales turned with a grin. “We kept him busy long enough, huh?”

“Yes, sir,” the man confirmed. “I bonded the telltale to his ship’s skin.”

Sales nodded and turned away. “Into hyperspace, Captain.”

“That confounded human!” Goodheart snarled. He winced as the medic lowered him down to the acceleration couch.

“Sir, you really should be in your own berth. . . .”

“This is my berth, Doctor! I must see how my ship fares, how she moves! What damage was there, Throb?”

“His cannon deeply scored us in two places, Captain, but did not pierce. We will need to replace those plates at home. And his final torpedo removed a control surface; we will need great care if we seek to maneuver in atmosphere. In all other respects, we are whole.”

“That, at least, is good fortune.” Goodheart lay back and let himself relax for a few moments. He had actually thought his end had come when he realized Sales had ripped him open—the pain had been almost unbearable, until his rage had hidden it. “That treacherous human,” he growled again. “To mask a war party as a passenger liner! To camouflage weapons turrets as control blisters! It was skillfully done, so elegantly done! A worthy adversary, worthy!”

“If he had been any more worthy, we would have been dead,” Throb returned, miffed. For his part, he was glad Globin wasn’t aboard on this trip—the crew might have blamed it on him, for no other reason than that he was human.

“There is mass behind us,” the sensor op reported.

Throb and Goodheart were both still.

Then the captain snapped, “How much mass?”

“Enough for a ship, Captain—a cruiser.”

“It is Sales!” Goodheart snapped. “He has pursued me, he will hound me to my doom—or his!”

“But how?” Throb cried. “How can he track us through hyperspace?”

“It is enough to know that he does it! Senses, does he gain?”

“No, Captain. He holds his distance, at a million kilometers. He must not know our detectors have expanded range.”

“Holds his distance?” Throb frowned. “Why would he follow, instead of seeking to overhaul?”

“Because he wishes to trail us to Barataria!” Goodheart’s teeth showed in a grin. “Then he would flee and return with a fleet! No, we will lead him away, far away! Helm, set course away from Target, away from Khalia—away from any settled territory that we know!”

“But where shall we go, Captain?”

“Galactic Northeast, above the plain of the ecliptic by thirty degrees! There is nothing there, nothing! Let him follow us to nowhere! Then we shall lead him too near a star and let him be sucked in to fry! Northeast by thirty, Helm!”

“Even so, Captain.” The helm set his course, trying to smother his own doubts.

They cruised on through the void of a space measured in alien dimensions, lit by streaks of light that were segments of the lives of stars, to an almost-uniform grayness. It was as though they flew through fog, with here and there the lights of a passing city.

Then, suddenly, the sensor op called out, “Ship approaching on a nearly parallel vector, sir!”

“Sales?” Goodheart spun about. “Is he no longer behind? Has he realized our gambit?”

“It is not his signature, sir.” The sensor op pointed at the screen. “The wave form is typical of the reflected shape of a Syndicate merchantman.”

“Ah-h-h-h.” Goodheart turned to the screen, feeling the pain of his humiliation diminish. “If we have lost one prey, we have found another! Lay our course parallel to his, Helm! We will surprise him when he breaks out!”

Onward they fled, with Sales only an impulse behind, a minor irritation. All eyes fastened now on the merchantman; warriors checked their pistols, and the gunner checked his magazines.

“As ever, Captain?” Throb asked. “Wait till they break out into normal space, then overhaul and grapple them?”

“Even so,” Goodheart answered. “Senses, what of Sales?”

“He is lost, sir,” Senses reported. “I think he has fallen behind, beyond my range.”

”Then he shall not disturb us while we feed. Throb, sound battle stations!”

They fled on in near silence for an hour, a day, thirty hours. The tension stretched thin, among crew who slept in their battle stations, staving off hunger with hard rations and sips of water.

Then, suddenly, the wave form that showed the merchantman began to shimmer.

“He shifts!” Senses called.

“Shift with him!” Goodheart snapped. “Helm, now!”

The ship bucked and seemed to twist—a transition come too suddenly, with no time to prepare. Goodheart thrust away dizziness and focused on the screen. The merchantman lay square in the screen, and the scale showed he was only fifty kilometers distant.

Goodheart keyed the intercom. “Apologies for so rude a breakout—but yonder lies our prey! Action, imminently!” He released the patch. “Senses, expand scale! Let us see our field of battle!”

The merchantman shrank in the screen as the view increased. . . .

And the limb of a disk crept in at the edge.

“Expand by ten!” Goodheart snapped, and the disk was suddenly complete, a planet glowing across the full spectrum of visible radiation.

“What globe is that?” Throb breathed into the sudden hush.

“His destination!” Goodheart crowed. “We have found a Syndicate world! Come, pluck this fowl that lies before us, and let a few escape to bear the tale! Let the merchant traitors tremble to know that we flay their hides so close to home! Seize me that ship!” Then caution nudged his mind. “Com op, send a message torp. Let them know what we have found!”

Irritated, the communications operator slapped switches and trilled a brief message into the transmitter.

Even as he did, the helm op laid course and accelerated, and the pirate ship darted toward the merchantman.

Then, suddenly, the screen was filled with a dozen streaks of light, swarming in at the edges, two swelling into the forms of Syndicate destroyers.

“They keep close watch!” Goodheart shrieked. “Torpedoes away! Rake them with cannon!”

The pirate ship spat fire; its progeny swarmed away toward the destroyers.

But a blister opened in the side of the merchantman, and flame gouted from a huge cannon. The screen filled with fire, and Goodheart had just time enough to realize the irony of his prey turning on him, before the luminescence caught him up, and he passed into the excruciating light of death with the knowledge that the clan leaders had been right, after all, and the humans of the Fleet had not been his enemies.

“He’s gone, sir!”

“Break out!” Sales snapped. He settled back into his acceleration couch, savoring the revenge of knowing that it was Goodheart’s own invention that had doomed him—that Sales’s own spies had brought back word of Goblin’s hyperspace mass detector. Just knowing that the thing existed, and who had invented it, had been enough—his own engineers had checked the records of Desrick’s work, had found the concepts he’d been working with, and had duplicated his invention. Then they had gone on to transform the detector into a tracer.

They broke out within the range of that same tracer; Goodheart’s ship had been just on the fringe. They had followed, hopefully out of his range.

Could Barataria really be so far from all habitation?

Perhaps. What better protection, than being beyond consideration?

The moment of dizziness passed, and Sales scanned the big screen eagerly, looking for the pirate’s silhouette. He saw the rippling red circle of the detector’s signal first . . .

Then saw the great disk looming over all.

And the darts of light that emerged into the forms of Syndicate destroyers.

“They’re trying to fry my pirate!” Sales roared. “Blast ‘em, Fire Control! Punch them out of space!”

“Torpedoes away,” the chief gunner returned.

“Captain, get in there and fry those lice!”

“Aye,” the captain answered, lips stretched thin in a grin. “Full acceleration!”

Two G’s kicked them in the pants and stayed there.

Just then, fire erupted out of the merchantman, a huge spreading blossom that wrapped about the Khalian pirate, enveloping it, converting it into a ball of spreading luminescence.

“Those scum!” Sales shouted. “Those thieves, assassins! They can’t kill my pirate and get away with it! Captain, burn ‘em! A merchant ship that shoots is no longer immune!”

“Aye, sir,” the captain grunted over the weight of acceleration. The light ball filled the screen, then swam up to the upper left corner as the converted liner dove around it. The merchantman swelled in the screen, but the helm op swung around the expanding flower, too.

Two smaller blossoms erupted at the heads of the streaks of light that were destroyers.

“Two out,” the gunner chanted. “Port cannon raking two more—belly cannon raking three . . .”

Light exploded all about them.

Pain, unbearable, filled Sales’s whole being—then passed; and, in the moment of consciousness left to him as a part of that luminescence, Sales, too, realized that he had been chasing the wrong enemy.