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find. He would vanish amid the population and marshal his own resources in the
time it took to track him down. His resources were not inconsiderable.
 Helga s World, sir.
 Ah! Wulf began to smile. He and the Colonel definitely had aces up their
sleeves.
Helmut said,  Communications are the problem. The control. There s a lot of
space out there.
 And?
 So it s time to call in old debts. See if there s a Starfisher who can relay
for us. They don t love Michael either.
Wulf turned to his instel operator.  Go on the thirty-seven band with a loop.
 Storm for Gales. 
 They ll answer if they re out there, Helmut said.
Wulf shrugged.  Maybe. People can be damned ungrateful. He told the tech,
 Let us know if there s a response.
Twenty-Eight: 3052 AD
I said my father had enemies of whom he was unaware. The same was true of
friends. He was a hard man, but had a strong sense of justice. It did not move
him as often as it might have, but when it did, it made him friends who
remained loyal forever. Such friends were the High Seiners, the Starfishers,
whom he saved from enslavement on Gales.
 Masato Igarashi Storm
Twenty-Nine: 2973 AD
It was pure one-in-a-quadrillion chance.Glowworm and her sister raiders had
jumped into the gulf and gone doggo, hoping they could lose Navy, which had
destroyed one of their band already. It had been a long, hard chase. The three
ship s commanders were scared and desperate. OnGlowworm the group leader
nearly panicked when detection picked up approaching ships.
Almost, but not quite. Powered-down vessels are hard to spot unless a hunter
gets close. He decided to see what Navy did.
His detection operator soon said,  That s not them, sir. Too big. I mean,
we re getting them from too far out, and they re moving too slow.
The group leader studied the patterns. He had seen nothing like this before.
In time, he murmured,  Holy Christ! There ain t nothing that big. Nothing
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but . . . 
Nothing but Starfisher harvestships.
Navy was forgotten.  Track. Get a fix on their course. And nobody does
anything to show them we re here. Understood? He took his own advice. Ship to
ship messages were hand carried by suited couriers till the harvestfleet left
detection.
Eight great vessels shouldering along at minuscule velocities . . . The group
leader was tempted to abandon his employer then and there. A man could name
his price for what he had found.
The Starfishers controlled production of an element critical to interstellar
communications systems. There was no other source, and the source was terribly
limited. He who won control of a harvest fleet won control of fabulous wealth
and power.
In the end, fear drove the group leader to his master.
Michael Dee did the obvious. He gathered ships and went after the
harvestfleet. The operation remained his secret alone. He saw not only the
obvious profit but a chance to make himself master of his own destiny.
He gambled on a surprise attack. His forces were insufficient for a plain
face-to-face showdown with eight harvestships. He gambled, and he lost. He
squandered his raiders and barely escaped with his life. In his fury at being
thwarted he left three harvestships broken, derelict and a nation which would
do him evil gleefully whenever the opportunity arose.
Poor Michael s life was a trail of bitter enemies made. And some day the
pigeons would come home to roost.
Thirty: 2878-3031 AD
The world wore the name Bronwen. It was far from the mainstream. Its claim to
fame was that it had been the first human world occupied by Ulant. It would be
the last reabsorbed by Confederation. In the interim it resembled one of those
gaudy, chaotic eighteenth-century pirate havens on the north coast of Africa.
Sangaree, McGraws, and free-lance pirates made planetfall and auctioned their
booty. The barons of commerce came looking for bargains in goods worth the
cost of interstellar shipment. Freehaulers came looking for cargo to fill
their tramp freighter holds. Lonely Starfishers came down from their rivers of
night for their rare intercourse with the worlds of men. Millions changed
hands daily. The state was not there to watchdog and steal a cut. Those were
brawling, violent days, but Bronwen s rulers were not displeased. Fortunes
stuck.
Michael Dee should not have visited the world. He should not have risked
having his name connected with the rogues he employed. Success had made him
overconfident. He did not believe anything could break his run of luck.
The Sangaree came to his flagship, the oldGlowworm , that Michael had
acquired through straw parties when war s end had thrown scores of obsolete
ships onto the salvage market. The man did not pretend to be anything but what
he was. Michael found him vaguely familiar. Where had he seen the man? In the
background in press rooms during the war, he thought. And, possibly, once when
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he was a child.
Dee did not like puzzles. He did not like not being able to remember clearly. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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