make us harder to locate?'
'If we go to no boost, minimum power use, and minimum life support, we should be undetectable except to specialized instruments, sir. Normal ship's sensors detect inertial engine emissions. Estimated time to the jump point is now 46.86 hours'
'Good, Boost max, now.'
'Yes, sir, boost is max.' There was no sensation of movement. Azure Sky was the largest and most luxurious yacht John had ever seen. Even so, he had never been aboard a ship the size of the Sky that had gravity compensators.
John watched as the pirate fleet shrank in the rear screen. Revenge was the flagship of the pirate fleet, but it was not the best armed. That honor went to Hellraker, a 400-year-old frigate of the Old Empire. The pirates had found her drifting in space, her crew long dead. If any of the Terror's ragtag fleet could locate the fleeing yacht, it would be Hellraker, with her military-grade sensor suite. Luckily, pirates are not military-grade crews. Her captain was a drunken brute who did not trust his crew and was afraid to let them learn most of the ship's capabilities.
Captain Reg Townley of the Bastard's heart was another story. A renegade nobleman from Rackham, he was intelligent, urbane, witty, a true sadist, and a complete psychopath. John was sure Townley would eventually win the leadership struggle for command of the pirate fleet, if the fleet didn't simply disintegrate in the absence of John and Smiley. Like Revenge, Bastard's Heart was a DIN-class freighter with a few space weapons crudely installed on her. Since a DIN-class was the largest ship that could routinely ground, her usual mission was to transport the boarders in space and raiders on the ground that did the actual hand-to-hand combat.
Nomad, a tiny five-man fast courier, was his scout and spy. Her captain was John's youngest, at 24 years old standard. That did not mean he wasn't already a hardened killer, of course.
The other two ships of the fleet were fat freighters, used to haul booty from planetside raids. They were no threat to John.
Let's see, he thought. Things will be pretty confused aboard Revenge for several days, as the officers fight for the captaincy. They'll probably be too busy to chase me. Hellraker 's people can't handle her well enough to be effective.
Townley is the biggest threat. I expect he'll kill Franks of the Hellraker and take her over. Luckily, he won't have time to train his people in 47 hours!
If I were Townley, he considered, I'd take over Hellraker and use her to threaten my way to seizing control. Then I'd send Nomad to look for me.
Or would I? Could Townley trust young Turlow? He would want to make sure Turlow didn't just take off with Nomad. No, Townley couldn't trust anyone but himself to keep Turlow from running; and he'll be 'way too busy!
John grinned. He had a pretty good chance of getting away. For the moment, at least. Once he cemented control of the pirate fleet, Townley would see in John the same problem Smiley did; a threat to his solid control. He would put a bounty on John's head, and come searching himself. John would have to run fast and far.
John had planned his escape with the same care with which he had planned raids. He was heading for Ilocan, an Old Empire world, but he could not go directly there. He had several stops to make first.
Since the Empire had collapsed three hundred years ago, nearly all of its 1100 inhabited planets had begun a decline into barbarism, some slow, some not so slow. Interstellar trade was becoming sporadic, and pirates were becoming more common.
On Peltir IV, the decline had been almost a collapse. Peltir IV was a mining world with little manufacturing capability of its own. Once the mining machinery began to fail from lack of spare parts, the tyranny that had replaced the Empire government had instituted slavery to keep the mines operating.
After two horror-filled years, John and some two dozen other ragged, starving slaves had revolted and killed the overseers that worked them to death in the mine. They had then overpowered the crew and stolen the ore hauler that had arrived to load the ore. An old ex-free trader had sworn to John that he knew enough astrogation to get them to Outpost, an independent station circling a moon that had become a no-questions-asked trading center in the sector.
He did, but just barely. The ore hauler arrived full of germanium ore and ex-slaves that were starving and running out of air. Almost anything was available on Outpost for a price. John had initially planned to sell the ship and its cargo, split the proceeds among the escapees, and go their various ways. However, most of the ex-slaves were uneducated and unimaginative. They had no place to go, and no saleable skills. They begged John to keep the ship and keep them together under his command.
At first, John was reluctant, but he came to realize that he, too, had no place to go, and his skills as a lawyer under Peltir IV law would be useless elsewhere. Oh, he was sure he could survive, but the feelings of helplessness helped him understand the attitudes of the others. Then there was the seething hatred he had come to feel for Peltir IV and the people that had condemned him to a slow death in the mines. He had sworn to avenge the harm and injustice done him and the others.
Still, even after he had agreed, he'd intended only to use the old ore hauler for trade. They had used the proceeds of the old nameless ore hauler's cargo of germanium to buy a mixed cargo on Outpost, and set off on a trading voyage.
Unfortunately, John was no trader, and neither were the other ex-slaves. The old free trader had signed off on Outpost. Within a few months, they found themselves with an empty ship, no money for a new cargo, and port fees threatening to wipe out the little money they had left.
That was when they had voted to turn pirate, to attack ships from Peltir IV and steal their cargoes. They would simultaneously gain operating capital and revenge on their former owners.
They waited at a popular recalibration point not far from Peltir IV. Jump engines permit supralight travel, but they function in a straight line. Interstellar travel is therefore made in a series of jumps, with stops in between for recalibration and recalculation. These 'recal' stops can last from a few hours to several days, depending upon the location of jump points within the system. The system they staked out was uninhabited but was a common recal stop between a number of systems.
Within a few days, an ore carrier emerged. Heavily loaded, it was unable to flee John's empty ship. Men in suits used mining explosives to force the air lock. They were inexperienced, however. They used too much explosive, and the blown airlock decompressed the entire ship, killing the crew. They transferred the ship's cargo to John's still-unnamed ship and left the other ship a drifting hulk, after wiping the sensor logs and destroying the ship's AI.
The deaths weighed heavily on John's conscience, and he was not alone. Eight of the ex-slaves took their shares of the cargo and discharged on Outpost. However, he let himself be convinced that it was vengeance, retribution for the deaths of thousands of slaves in the mines.
Their second attempt to become traders also failed. Indeed, they were forced to flee Jurgen's World, swindled by a planet-wide trading consortium, and pursued by corrupt planetary authorities.
They limped back to Outpost, nearly broke and furious. His beautiful Mina, the woman he had come to love, and several of his friends from his slave days had died. Cold hatred overwhelmed his conscience. John now wanted vengeance on two planetary systems — indeed, on all mankind. A grieving John Smith, peaceful attorney, was transformed, and Emo Arror, pirate, thief, and murderer, soon to be known as The Terror declared war on the universe.
John traded the still-nameless ore hauler for a smaller, DIN-class combat cargo hauler that had had its original armament reproduced. She was perfect for a pirate, and they renamed her Vengeance.
He might have failed as a trader, but John was a very successful pirate. Over time, most of his ex-slaves were killed or moved on, replaced by brutes and thugs from the gutters of dozens of worlds. He was driven now by an all-consuming hate and vengeance. He ignored the atrocities being committed by his men, taking a perverse pride in the fact that he committed none personally. Oh, on some level he was aware of his own descent into barbarism. A tiny, nagging voice continually reminded him of his shame and guilt; that hatred and revenge could not be a long-term basis for a life.
Partly in response to that tiny voice, he'd had plans for the future, of a sort. Almost three years ago, as a surprise for his beloved Mina, he had begun sending money under an assumed name to a representative on Ilocan, a largely pastoral Old Empire world where the pace of decline was very slow. The representative was supposedly
