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Ask your bookseller for the ones you have missed
STAR REBEL THE ALIEN DEBT REBELS QUEST ALL THESE EARTHS
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F. M. Busby
BANTAM BOOKS TORONTO е NEW YORK е LONDON е SYDNEY е AUCKLAND
For Karen J-C, who knows why
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A Bantam Spectra Book / August 1986
All rights reserved.
Copyright й 1986 by F.M. Busby.
Cover art copyright й 1986 by Alan Hashimoto.
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For information address: Bantam Books, Inc.
ISBN 0-553-26115-0 Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue. New }brk, New York 10103.
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I
From the personal journal of Captain Katmai Delaroo, commanding the starship March Hare, having arrived from Earth to the Shrakken outpost world Shaarbant. 4/18/2116.
So we got here a few days ago, close onto 120 lights in only three ship's-months with the second-generation Hoyfarul FTL Drive, and it seems that the big war against the new alien species, the Tsa, is over. Or rather, didn't get fully started. I've talked with Bran Tregare Moray (once known as "Tregare the pirate") and his wife Rissa Kerguelen. Both of them members of the Board of Trustees, no less, that governs Earth! Because they led the attack that destroyed the slave-owning government of UET, the United Energy and Transport conglomerate. It's all in the history texts the kids are taught today: how Tregare took one of UET's armed starships and Escaped to the Hidden Worlds, put together a fleet of ships, and brought them home "to tear UET out by the roots like a rotten tooth."
(I guess I remember that quote because I like it. I was fourteen, winding up my first year in UET's Space Academy, "the Slaughterhouse," when Tregare took over and civilized that damned place! In a very real sense the man saved my life; I couldn't possibly have survived the forced fights, to the death, that cadets had to undergo after the "snotty" year.)
Coming now to recent events here on Shaarbant, first some data on the two races of aliens, Shrakken and Tsa. The Shrakken, more than a century ago, landed a ship on Earth. Its crew was killed by UET's Committee Police; then UET copied its Drive and began to colonize other worlds. But a number of UET ships mutinied; unknown to UET, they established the colonies called Hidden Worlds.
Even before UET was overthrown, Rissa and Tregare
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