The door hissed open, and she stepped through into the freezing cold of the cargo bay. Hazel glared at the closed door before her and kicked the frame hard. Its only contact with the Empire was a monthly cargo transporter and an occasional patrolling starcruiser, neither of which was expected for some weeks. Virimonde was a lowtech, agricultural world, with more livestock than people. Not that there was much the planet could do, even if it knew the pirates were there. The Shard might be old, but she had state-of-the-art cloaking devices, more than enough to fool anything the peasants had on Virimonde. Hazel wasn't expecting any trouble from the planet's security people. They couldn't afford to stay much longer, but they couldn't leave either. Six hours of waiting for some word from their contacts down below. Her mood was bad, bordering on foul, and had been ever since they dropped out of hyperspace six hours ago to take up orbit around Virimonde. Hazel d'Ark, last owner of a once noble name, came to the locked door that led to the cargo bay and stood waiting impatiently for the door's sensors to recognize her. The Shard wasn't a luxurious craft at the best of times, but with most of the ship's power diverted to maintaining the body banks, the old scut seemed even gloomier than usual. Hazel d'Ark, pirate, clonelegger and bon vivant, strode scowling through the dimly lit steel corridors and wished she was somewhere else. Now she carried cloneleggers and body banks, and every man's hand was turned against her. Not a big ship, the Shard, built more for speed than endurance, and passed from hand to hand through a dozen owners and commands. *** In high orbit around Virimonde, the pirate ship Shard sailed silently through the long night, hiding itself from unfriendly eyes. Patient and terrible, and all it will take to set them off is a simple clash between two starships off the backwater planet of Virimonde. Strange forces are at work on the Rim, file:///D|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Green.%201-6/Deathstalker%2001%20-%20Deathstalker.htm (1 of 541) For the moment the Empire's Starcruisers still keep a lid on things, dropping unannounced out of hyperspace to enforce the law with brutal efficiency, but they can't be everywhere. Crime flourishes on the Rim, unthinkable distances from the hub of the Empire's strict laws some transgressions as old as Humanity, others newly birthed by the Empire's evergrowing sciences. The colonized worlds make themselves as self-sufficient as they can and turn their eyes away from the endless dark. Ships disappear sometimes, and are never seen again. The Empire stops cold there, dwarfed by the unplumbable depths of the Darkvoid. Every year more worlds are brought into the Empire, and the frontiers press hungrily outward. The Empire is growing too large, too cumbersome, though no one will admit it, or at least, no one who matters. Starcruisers patrol up to the Rim, but there are never enough ships to cover the vast areas of open space. It's easy to get lost out there, far away from everything. Beyond the Rim lies uncharted darkness, where no stars shine and few ships go. Strange planets and stranger people can be found on the edge of Empire, where habitable worlds are few and civilization grows thin. Green CHAPTER ONE Clash by Night It gets dark out on the Rim. Made prettier by use of EBook Design Group Stylesheet.ĭeathstalker by Simon R. Deathstalker 01 - Deathstalker (v1.0) (html)
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