Pay Dirt: Dishonest Intentions

AGE OF SECESSION : A STANDALONE NOVEL

PAY DIRT: DISHONEST INTENTIONS

For when its time to try new things

AGE OF SECESSION : A STANDALONE NOVEL

PAY DIRT: DISHONEST INTENTIONS

First Edition

Published in Great Britain by Roger Ruffles, July 2018

www.ageofsecession.com

Copyright © Roger Ruffles, 2017

Front cover artwork on license courtesy of dreamstime

Front cover design © Roger Ruffles, 2018

First published by Roger Ruffles, July 2018, Smashwords Edition

The right of Roger Ruffles to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This ebook is subject to the Laws of England and Wales.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the author and publisher, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

All characters and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real events or to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Also By The Same Author

Age of Secession: Vindicator Trilogy

#1 : Dissolution

#2 : Rosicrux

#3 Shadow

#4 Vindicator – Full Trilogy

Age of Secession: Blood Money Trilogy

#1: Crying Moon

#2 : Blood Feud

#3: Cost of the Hunt

#4: Blood Money – Full Trilogy

Age of Secession: Ascent of Mars Trilogy

#1 : Oncoming Storm

#2 : Darkness of Mars

#3: Rise of the Diadochi

#4: Ascent of Mars – Full Trilogy

Age of Secession: Standalone books:

The Unchained

Pay Dirt: Dishonest Intentions

Coming 2018/2019:

Augmented Genocide

The Lost Kindred

Adare’s Legacy: Kingdom of Blood

Collective Misdirection

www.ageofsecession.com

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PART I – ACTING ON INTENT

Actions can only hold weight when honest intentions give them reason to be judged with favour; their dishonest intentions can only cause this action to be viewed unfavourably.

- attributed to Naoul Tibermann, CEO of Jovian Heavy Industries, in the lead-in to the Jovian Moon Uprising before the First Expansion (note by Keifer Letrands, Chief Imperial Historian of the True Emperor’s Clerks of Records: Naoul Tibermann’s descendants were eventually to form the great noble House of the same name in the Red Empire. He displayed all the political mastery coupled with brutality that characterises that House today, especially with the way in which he viciously led the murders of many of the rebellious workers led by the ill-fated labourer’s union leader, Chen Mi Thao).

Chapter I

Just after the emergence of the Vindicate Empire,

Six years after the collapse of the Red Empire of Mars

The restaurant was busy, the people at the various tables engaged in the insignificant microcosms of their lives. Real human waiters moved amidst the tables, signifying this as being quite an expensive locale if they did not rely upon drone servants. The ceiling in the main eating area was high, the building expansive, the walls decorated with genuine two-dimensional and three-dimensional antique art and some local, original work. There was the background hum of conversation, the low-level drone of the activated eating utensils. The high windows showed it was night-time outside, and the protective dome that covered this part of the city was open to the atmosphere, current toxicity forecasts showing it was fine for human consumption at present. The air was still hot though from the day, cooling only slowly, and the richly dressed people at their suspensor-tables had invested heavily in scents and aromas to disguise their sweat.

The man at the bar of the restaurant had finished his meal and had retired to this area for his usual drink. As per his cover story, the usual drink would turn into more than it should be. He had consumed a drug beforehand, an anti-toxicant to prevent inebriation, but for the look of it he would have to pretend to be drunk later as he left.

What fools, the man thought, as he looked at the local equivalent of the rich and the powerful. I have more wealth than any of you. We all pretend money means nothing in this day and age, but it is everything to those of us outside the system. And I have you all beat, hands down.

Whenever he and his two friends completed a con and took whatever it was they sought from their targets, they called it ‘hitting pay dirt’. It was an old term, not used often nowadays. Hitting pay dirt was what they lived for.

He was relaxed, as he sipped from his glass of synthesised ale. The jaws of their trap, their great confidence trick, would be snapping shut tomorrow. Tonight would be the last night he would visit this place, as he would disappear after they had tricked their targets out of what they wanted. He had been playing this sort of trick for years and had made a fortune out of it of such great value that he did not need to seek fools and victims any more. He and his two fellow confidence tricksters still did though, because they were addicted to the adrenalin, the sheer buzz and danger of turning a trick on a mark.

It was all the more surprising then that he fell for one of the oldest tricks in the book. The waiter crossing the bar to the kitchens barged into him from behind. Oh, sir, I am so sorry – the waiter began.

Keep in character, the trickster thought. He turned around in his chair and began to bellow at the poor unfortunate.

That was when the real bar man, crossing on the other side of the counter, passed his hand over the drink of the confidence trickster. The poison sunk into his drink, dispersing in an instant.

The confidence trickster turned back, his barrage of profanities completed. He faked putting an angry hand around the pint glass, jerking it towards his mouth, inwardly chuckling at the scene he had just caused. Keeping in character was important, and he and his two friends had considerable experience of playing different roles. You never knew who was watching, if you were under suspicion or not.

He continued to drink, the liquid falling across his tongue and down his throat, not suspecting at all that he had just fallen victim to such an old-fashioned, low-tech trap.

He had no idea of the danger he was in, and just how short his remaining life was going to be.

The night sky was technically not a sky at all, but a viscous layer of poisonous gas that sheathed the entire planet. Below it there was a layer of oxygen, where the human colonists had built their cities and then expanded them and joined them into one world-wide all-encompassing conurbation in which tens of billions lived. Mining ships ploughed the poisonous gas lanes above, harvesting the materials required for what had been the great Red Empire of Mars, and now went entirely to the emergent nation-state of Cervantia.

A view of a sky such as that would always have been disconcerting for any off-worlder, but for the confidence trickster staggering drunkenly along the sidewalk, it was more so than usual. The sky seemed to throb, the poisonous clouds swirling together in a way more sickening than was the standard. They were blurring together, running into each other. The lines of the tower blocks and the rounded contours of the nearly dome-high spires were all melding together, and the sidewalk and aircar pathway was veering off in impossible directions, everything blending into one blurred confusion.

Something was wrong. He felt drunk. He was not pretending to be drunk.

He was actually dangerously steaming drunk.

The confidence trickster, the con artist of millions of Imperial Crowns worth of money, struggled as he began to lose control of his legs. His right hand raced out and ran along a wall, touch telling him when it had come to an end. An alley of some description, a safe place away from the disconcerting riot of blurred lines and colours and horrible sky, was there.

He fell into the alley, one of his last coherent thoughts being, I am more than just drunk.

I have been poisoned.

Descending into panic, the thief and con-man activated his augments, using the Pharma Synthesis Dispensary to synthesise generic antidotes and pump them into his blood-stream. A very specialist poison detection system analyser searched for the invading culprit. Neither augments worked.

From where he had collapsed on the metacrete of the alleyway, he looked up and saw that the low-level light cast by the artificial illumination strips on the main street had been blocked out. Enforcers were striding down the alleyway to where he had crawled. He had never thought he would be happy to see the local law.

Help me, he tried to croak, but the words would not come. It was more of a dry death rattle.

As he brought his legs up to his chest where he curled on the floor in a ball, he passed out.

Moments later, his heart stopped beating.

The figures dressed as Enforcers blocked off the alleyway entrance, as a few more jogged past the figure prone on the floor. One of the Enforcers slowed as he reached the body of the con-man, standing still above him in an unusual stance, both feet planted firmly to either side. A hand brushed the con-artists skin at the neck, sampling his DNA.

The incredibly tall Cervantian Enforcer’s body began to change, the armour melting and running together, the form shortening and becoming slightly more compact. Bones cracked and creaked. The helmet re-moulded into a head, a face emerging from beyond. The cybernetic biomorph began to generate features, and in a few seconds it was all over. The black synth-skin of the biomorph had changed, metamorphosed into the form of the figure on the floor. The cybernetic biomorph’s body had physically changed, so that in every way it was now identical to the person they had poisoned and who now lay dead on the floor.

the biomorph reported.

the leader of their group said.

the biomorph responded. The biomorph did not think much of its targets, especially this dead one that was disintegrating into nothing at his feet, but he did admire their bravery in some ways. For three men to try and fool the Salchuzura Mara on their own was incredibly daring, especially considering the Mara’s propensity towards vengeance.

the cybernetic biomorph replied, tiring of the re-iteration of his orders. He wanted to start his mission. He uttered the words to salute their leader.

The biomorph’s leader repeated those words back to it on the datasphere, and then added,

The biomorph looked down at the light pile of dust on the floor, the ashes of the con-man he had just disintegrated. The implant the biomorph removed destroyed even the ashes, removing all physical traces of the con-man forever. It ran final checks, to ensure that the metamorphosis was complete and he had now assumed the con-man’s identity.

When he finally emerged from the alleyway on his own, the biomorphs pretending to be Cervantian Enforcers having already left the area, it was literally as a new man.

A con man, seeking pay-dirt in more ways than one.

*

The Sierra-294 System was named after the Sierra Nevavadar, a relatively small region of space that was almost exclusively within Cervantian space, and butted onto the Gulf of Medusa and the Eastern Segment. It was also empty, completely bereft of life and of no real value whatsoever, being difficult to reach because of its location. It was not mined, or on any major thoroughfare. It had an abandoned colony within it that had never been re-populated, the inhabitants fleeing centuries before when the Droid Intelligentia had rolled towards the core, exterminating all humanist and borgite life in their path. With so little value, away from any trade route and not used as a cut-through to anywhere, Sierra-294 was not worth defending and was largely forgotten about. If it had been another hundred or so light years to the galactic east, it would have been part of the Gulf of Medusa itself.

It made it the perfect place for the Salchuzura Mara to meet what they thought were a group of Calamarite Confederacy smugglers.

The sun at the centre of Sierra-294 was cold and dark, small and weak. The Sierra-294 System was indeed bereft of life, and the further out-system one travelled the harder it became to see. The planets were all devoid of any useful atmosphere, and the one gas giant in the system was a dark, angry red, a baleful eye staring malevolently and with hatred at the opportunity-bereft situation it found itself within. It emitted a fair amount of heat, radiation and interference, and in a different system and with a bit more material to feed upon, it could have turned itself into a second star.

That was why the ships pretending to be Calamarite Confederacy smugglers were nestled as close as they could be to the gigantic gas giant, but still just outside its jump-interfering gravity envelope. They had been recharging themselves using solar sails for most of the week, the gossamer-thin wing-like sails fully extended to catch the energy being emitted by the malevolent failed star.

Those solar sails were retracted and stowed now though, as the jump signatures of the incoming Salchuzura Mara ships began to be detected by the faux smuggler ships. The ships began to turn, lining up to face out-system, and ready for a jump. As they turned, their rears were bathed in the red light of the gas giant, their non-descript grey-painted hulls stained crimson.

Out of the five waiting ships, only one of them was armed. It was an ex-House frigate, but in a bad state of disrepair. It had not been maintained, and it showed. It still had the colourings of a House that had died some time ago during the first years of the Dissolution of the Red Empire, a House that had been conquered in the rush of the First Shadow War and the advance of the Third Empire. Two of the other ships were cargo-freighters, a Type-III and Type-IV class with their cargo-tanks hanging underneath their skeletal frames.

The prize was in the two tankers though. These still bore the logo of the Calamarite Confederacy on their hulls, although the symbols of a double-C and its field of stars had been partially burnt away in an act of vandalism. The two tankers were genuinely full of Amerimax, the vital life-blood and the single most precious commodity in the colonised galaxy. Without it, fabricators and moleculising synthesisers could not work, so nothing could be built and people would have to resort to old-fashioned methods of killing and growing to find food. Many populations were just too big for that to be viable, the farms in the colonised galaxy not being numerous enough to sustain the collective populations of people that House Lords and Ladies fought their Secession Wars over.

With blinding flashes of light, the darkness of System Sierra-294 and the reddish glow cast by that seventh planet, the angry gas giant, was suddenly illuminated. The flashes of light came one after the other, in a rapid sequence as the invading ships translated in with a lack of synchronicity, widely space to avoid crashing into each other. They emerged from their hyperspace jump, coasting forwards at half-speed in realspace, their speeds before the jump now being replicated here in Sierra-294 as if they had not just travelled thirty-two light years.

As their forms and lines snapped back into normal dimensions, solidifying as they emerged, the darkness returned. They coasted onwards, directly towards the gas giant. There were two Mara raiders in the front of the convoy, armed frigates, which were rapidly regaining power as their superior engines recovered from the jump. Behind them came two armed cargo-freighters, weapon ports open and teeth bared. Then like ducklings came the civilian ships; two interstellar ferry-ships, a space junk, a star rigger, and that most unusual of ships, a leviathan-sized and a very rare jewel, an interstellar super-constructorship.

The hulls of the civilian ships were painted a similarly drab grey or dirty white, but the criminal ships leading them were in the Cervantian colour of orange. As power returned post-translation, the running lights came up and the chromatic hulls changed on their prows and sides. A new symbol was displayed on top of the hull colouring.

Against a black hexagonal field, the stylised, behorned red devil appeared on the hulls of the incoming ships. It was the symbol of the Devil Clan of the Salchuzura Mara, once again the most powerful of the criminal clans in the entire network of the Salchuzura Mara.

Just the sight of it could send those who knew what it was into panicking fear.

Mara Ranger Captain and Sub-Chief Helenna Sirocco leaned forwards in her chair, eyes alive as she reviewed the holoprojected images before her. And there are no signs of anything abnormal in the system? she asked.

No, Captain, her scanners crewman answered. He was a riot of colour, his Mara electronic tattoos changing every couple of seconds. The picture displayed was always a variation of a devil. Long range scans are completed. Only those five ships that we expected are in this system. No signs of anything else.

Well, well, Helenna Sirocco leaned back in her captain’s chair. The lettering giving the name of the cargo-freighter was visible above the main forward viewer, which showed the red giant of System Sierra-294. That lettering read, ‘SS Nazareth’. The Nazareth was still on a watch-list, hunted for its involvement in the Rosicrux conspiracy, which was part of the reason why Sub-Chief Sirocco did not sail it outside of Cervantian territory any more. It looks like your Calamarite smugglers have stuck to their word, Mister Arnold.

The very well-spoken, upper-class Mitch Arnold looked at her, feigning surprise badly. Did you have any doubt at all, Sub-Chief Sirocco?

We of the Mara doubt everyone who does not wear our mark, she responded. Comms, hail the Calamarite smugglers. I want their captain to start moving those tankers forwards now. The less time we spend in this system, the better.

We must make the exchange first, the ships to be exchanged crossing each other, then both sides have half an hour to check the contents before we jump, Mitch Arnold reminded her. Don’t be tempted to double-cross them and make me look a liar, Sub-Chief. I have my reputation as a fixer to think about.

Ranger Captain Sirocco snorted. Reputation as a man taking too big a cut of both sides benefits from this deal, perhaps? Then she waved a hand. You had best leave, and prepare to follow the handover sequence you arranged for us. You realise if this is a double-cross on their part, I will order all my Mara raiders to fire indiscriminately?

As long as you fire at them and not those ships we are trading, Mitch Arnold replied. I’ll be aboard one of them!

I care not for your life, Sub-chief Sirocco shrugged. All I care about is the Amerimax that had better be in those tankers. With that Amerimax in our hands, the Devil Clan of the Mara will be rich again.

The man who they thought was called Mitch Arnold was still smiling as the turbolift doors closed, cutting off the Nazareth’s bridge from his view. He had liked the extremely attractive Helenna Sirocco, but ultimately she was a mark he was here to rip off as part of his own team’s con.

His real name was Iain Briggs, although he was known by many different names. Mitch Arnold was just his latest cover-name. He changed appearances often, although at the moment he had dyed black hair greying at the temples, a healthy tan above the fake wrinkle lines, and a few extra inches along his waist. One nice thing about this con coming to an end, he thought, was that the moment they left this system he would have that excess fat removed again.

The turbolift moved tremendously fast through the cargo-freighter, and brought him to the launch bays in seconds. As the doors opened, and he crossed towards the lander waiting to transfer him aboard the ships the Mara were trading for the Amerimax, Iain Briggs thought to himself that the Sub-chief’s comment about ‘be rich again’ was far too accurate.

The Devil Clan of the Mara had suffered ever since the Salchuzura Mara had essentially lost the Blood Feud against the Vanquistadorean criminals, and the Maraboss of the entire Salchuzura Mara had been murdered. The Devil Clan had provided the new Maraboss, but they were greatly weakened, and to add to their woes the Star Lord of Cervantia had declared that all Mara were to be hunted down and imprisoned, or preferably executed. The Devil Clan were suffering, despite being in control of the overall network of the Salchuzura Mara. They needed the Amerimax, as the sale of the contents of the two tankers would enable them to launder the assets they had stolen from House Cervantes’ allies. It was not as if they could ask the other Mara clans for help in laundering the money, as that would advertise their weakness, and their former relationship with the leading noble family of Cervantia was well and truly over so there was no chance of laundering it through government channels.

Their sudden prosecution by House Cervantes is a fact we are going to use to put the capstone on our con, thought Iain Briggs. Their fall from grace had made all the Mara desperate, and the tenuous grip the Devil Clan had on the Mara made them doubly so.

As Mitch Arnold, Iain Briggs entered the lander and took control of the ship himself, exulting in the feel of the ship under his command. The Salchuzura Mara thought he was a corewards fixer, here answering their call for help on the black back-channels of the data brokers, but Iain Briggs was no fixer.

He was a con man, who with his two co-conspirators targeted people who could not chase them afterwards, mainly because either they did not realise they had been taken victim or because what they had been up to in the first place was so illegal – for whatever particular brand of law applied locally.

Iain Briggs felt his tension increase slightly as he flew the lander out of the Nazareth’s hangar bay, although it was not because the riskier part of the whole plan was about to unfold. He preferred to be in control of what was happening. He was utterly reliant on the other two now; he had played his part.

They were about to double-cross the Mara; but he knew the Mara planned to do the same to both his character, and the Calamarite Confederacy smugglers. He had no conscience anyway, he considered, but it was easier to rob someone who planned to double-cross you too.

The con-man Dominic Gaiman had changed his appearance. There was no hiding the musculature, but his shaven head had been implanted with genuine hair, and organic pads under his skin had completely changed his facial features. The face that stared back at him from the holoprojected console was not the one he had grown used to.

Across the datasphere, he had complete control of the fake Calamarite Confederacy ships. The second of the three con-men, they had used this particular programme that Marin Todor had developed years ago numerous times. They were all slaved together, so that he could control their movements through this one console on the bridge of the lead tanker.

They had stolen the tankers of Amerimax in their previous con, a wonderful trick that had given them literally liquid assets that could be sold anywhere in the colonised galaxy. Rather than cutting and running with it though, and against his instincts, both Briggs and Todor had insisted on using it in the next trick they planned to play on the Mara. The best lie was based partially on the truth though, and Briggs pretending to be a fixer who had been contacted by a pirate wanting to shift some Amerimax quickly because he was being pursued was at least partially true. The con-men were being pursued, by the Calamarite’s they had stolen all but one of these ships from.

Dominic would have preferred to be playing the role of the policemen in this, but Marin Dmitry Todor had got that one. All Dominic had to do was play the part of the somewhat intellectually challenged borgite desperate to shift his stolen tankers and freighters.

Could you see a bonehead flying five ships at once? he said aloud, within the empty bridge. The drones around him that were managing the other consoles on the bridge did not react to his voice. I’m frikking under-valued, I am.

Dominic sighed. Across the datasphere he triggered the sub-routines in the drones, which made their fake holoprojected forms suddenly activate. All of a sudden, the bridge was full of a human-looking crew, instead of drones. He glanced at the tactical map to his left, which showed the positions of the ships. In two minutes, the tankers and cargo-freighters would be crossing towards the Mara, above the incoming construction ships from the Mara. That would be the point the Mara would probably double-cross them.

He accepted the incoming sub-light communication from the Mara ship. A holoprojected image of this Sub-Chief of the Mara, Helenna Sirocco appeared on his bridge.

Yes, woman? Dominic growled, having moved to the captain’s chair. He had left the helm on autopilot, but when they began their slaved jump in about two minutes’ time, he would have to be at the helm. What is it now?

Show some respect, fool, Helenna Sirocco snapped back in reply. You are coming in too slow, and that frigate you have is coming in too fast and too close. Tell it to fall back.

It guards these ships until we made the transfer, you got me? Dominic Gaiman rumbled.

Oh, I ‘got you’, Helenna Sirocco replied. I ‘get you’ very well, Captain Dorman. Push that frigate back. The message then cut off.

Dominic Gaiman stood, leaving the captain’s chair to return to the helm console. The fake imagery around the drones dropped, their robotic inhuman forms being revealed once more. He would let the frigate fall back a little, but he had to keep it in easy communication range of the four ships, or he would not be able to make them all jump at the same time when the double-cross the con-men were planning was triggered.

It almost show-time, Marin, he said, noticing from the scanners that Briggs had finally docked his lander to the interstellar super-constructorship. You had better be in place, man.

Marin Dmitry Todor sat in the captain’s chair of the lightcruiser, chameleonically fielded and otherwise powered down to escape detection. The lightcruiser and the two frigates also in hiding somewhere in the vicinity was more than a match for the Mara frigates, and their armed cargo-freighters.

Marin Todor wished he could display the outward calm of the smooth-talking Briggs, or the apparent unthinking lack of regard for his own life that Gaiman exuded. He was the worrier, the one who doubted everything. He was also the one who had a network of nefarious contacts, and had found some down-at-the-heels mercenaries that were desperate for some easy money. A con like this, playing a trick on the Salchuzura Mara, counted as easy money.

The real mercenary captain looked across at him, from the second-in-command’s chair.

Marin Dmitry Todor nodded, keeping in character. There was more than one person being double-crossed today. He was pretending to be someone else, who was pretending to be someone else. To the mercenaries he was ‘Darren Martin’, and they were all wearing the uniforms of the Cervantian Guardian Knights Order. The Order had been chasing down the Mara in real life for a while now, and the Mara would run as soon as the mercenary ships – in the colours of the Guardian Knights Order – suddenly unmasked themselves in their presence. Todor’s character of ‘Darren Martin’ was pretending to be a Knight Captain.

Todor replied.

the captain ordered.

As the red alert sounded throughout the mercenary lightcruiser, Marin Todor began to speak. All ships in System Sierra-294, come to a full stop and power down! This is the Guardian Knights Order, First Captain Marchess speaking, and you are all under arrest. Cease all movement and prepare to be boarded, or be destroyed!

Sub-Chief Helenna Sirocco paled as the words of this Guardian Knights Order Captain were relayed to her. She had been about to give the command to launch her own betrayal of the Calamarite smugglers, and seize their tankers and freighters and destroy their frigate, whilst also retaining control of her construction ships. Out here there were no rules.

No rules at all apart from those provided by the curse of the Mara, the Guardians Knight Order of Cervantia.

What have we got? she demanded.

Lightcruiser and frigate, their IFFs check out – they are GKO alright, he scanners crewman cried out. We’re outmatched.

Helenna Sirocco paused. She was tempted to fight anyway, knowing that nothing good would come of it. The Maraboss would have her hide if she took any greater loss than the Amerimax today.

All ships, prepare to jump, immediately! she ordered.

What in the name of the Star Lord is happening? the real Guardian Knights Order First Captain Dominguez demanded. The real Cervantian ships were in hiding, watching the exchange about to take place between the Mara and the smugglers.

A number of ships, wearing the colours of our Order, have just appeared, Sir, a scanners operator replied.

I can see that! But they are not ours! the First Captain Dominguez replied. His intelligence briefing had said that the Mara were going to be attending a rendezvous of some kind here, and he was to interrupt it and arrest all people concerned. The numbers of ships in play were far in excess of what he could control or had been prepared for though. Who are they?

They are broadcasting fake identities, and we can’t match them yet to anything in our database, a data-tactical officer responded.

The First Captain Dominguez fumed. Someone was pretending to be a member of his most exalted order. The famous Cervantian temper snapped.

Sound the alert, trigger the trap! he demanded. Signal all ships to reveal themselves, and arrest all of these people – whoever they are!

In space everything had all gone unexpectedly.

The supposed Calamarite Confederacy ships, the tankers in the lead and the cargo-freighters behind, were ploughing towards the rapidly approaching Salchuzura construction ships. They had been nearing each other, when all of a sudden the blackness of space rippled.

A lightcruiser in the colours of the Cervantian Guardian Knights Order had emerged, frigates fanned out behind it in the typical crescent shape of the Cervantian navy. They had begun to fire, not at the convoy but at the Mara ships they had appeared behind. They were using warning shots, turbolaser beams passing by above, beneath and all around the Mara raiders.

The Mara ships fired back directly, turbolaser and missiles hammering directly into the rising shields of the fake GKO ships. Shields flared, bubbles of protective energy appearing around the suddenly unmasked Cervantian Order knights. The response was instantaneous, torpedoes streaming away from the Order ships, directly targeted at the Mara ships that were breaking and running in separate directions.

The two meeting convoys of ships were also turning, and getting ready to jump. It was all chaos, and the angry red giant of the nearby planet looked on in amusement, seeing the destruction. Its darkness had been shattered, as ruby red laser light, pale blue energy shields and fiery orange-yellow explosions began to flare in space.

The gas giant began to flare, its surface boiling and roiling as it applauded what happened next.

At numerous locations, spread all around the scene of the fight and the ships that were hastily gearing up to jump away, real Guardian Knights Order ships-of-the-line began to appear. Two battlecruisers appeared either side of the fight, more lightcruisers and frigates spread in a big circle around the Mara they had planned to trap here.

Iain Briggs the con-man, aboard the super-constructorship, could feel his control of this trickery slipping. His eyes were wide, as he stared at the emergence of what he could only assume were real Guardians Knight Order ships.

He cursed