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Green, Simon R. - Deathstalker 01 - Deathstalker (v1.0) (html)


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Deathstalker by Simon
R. Green
CHAPTER ONE
Clash by Night
It gets dark out on the Rim. Strange planets and stranger people can be found on
the edge of Empire, where habitable worlds are few and civilization grows thin.
Beyond the Rim lies uncharted darkness, where no stars shine and few ships go.
It's easy to get lost out there, far away from everything. Starcruisers patrol up to
the Rim, but there are never enough ships to cover the vast areas of open space.
The Empire is growing too large, too cumbersome, though no one will admit it, or
at least, no one who matters. Every year more worlds are brought into the Empire,
and the frontiers press hungrily outward. But not on the Rim. The Empire stops
cold there, dwarfed by the unplumbable depths of the Darkvoid.

It gets dark out there. Ships disappear sometimes, and are never seen again. No
one knows why. The colonized worlds make themselves as self-sufficient as they
can and turn their eyes away from the endless dark. 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 ever-
growing sciences. 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. Strange forces are at work on the Rim,
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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.

***

In high orbit around Virimonde, the pirate ship Shard sailed silently through the
long night, hiding itself from unfriendly eyes. Not a big ship, the Shard, built
more for speed than endurance, and passed from hand to hand through a dozen
owners and commands. Now she carried cloneleggers and body banks, and every
man's hand was turned against her. Deep in the bowels of the ship. Hazel d'Ark,
pirate, clonelegger and bon vivant, strode scowling through the dimly lit steel
corridors and wished she was somewhere else. Anywhere else. The Shard wasn't a