William Zellmann - The Privateer

"As for what I can do for you…" He reached into his shirt pocket and removed a folded piece of velvet. Stretching, he put it on Alcar's desk and opened it. A seven-millimeter sunstone lay revealed. Alcar inhaled. "Well!" he pulled the gleaming stone across the desk, and avarice showed even through the body sculpting as he admired its amazing beauty. Sunstones are the rarest gems in the universe. A seven-millimeter sunstone could buy a small, brand new starship on the few worlds still producing them.

"This is my emergency fund," John continued. "I've kept it for more than five years. Get me everything I need and it's yours."

Alcar's eyes narrowed and the smile turned predatory. "So why don't I just take it from you — or your body?"

John swallowed noisily and produced a weak smile. "Because you don't work that way. I checked you out, sire Alcar. You got a rep for playin' it square with those who play square with you. And what I'm gonna ask for won't cost you a tenth the value of that rock."

Alcar reluctantly pulled his eyes from the stone and nodded. "Okay. Now we get to what I can do for you."

John bobbed his head submissively, an obviously fake smile plastered on his face. "Of course, sire Alcar." He took a deep breath. "I'll need a deep-level biosculpt. The whole package. DNA analysis and modification, as well as the usual hair and eye color, height and weight mods. I'll also need all the records of the procedures. The original records. I have to make sure there's nothing for the bounty hunters to find."

Alcar frowned. "The biosculpt's no problem, of course, though DNA mods can get expensive. But making the records disappear, now that could be a problem."

John's smile changed, became cynical. "I'm a small-timer, sire Alcar, but I'm not stupid. Biosculpt keeps Marchand on the star maps. It's one of, what, three? four? planets that still has the DNA analysis and modification capability. And you control Marchand, at least the not-so-legal side of it. Making records disappear is probably one of your standard services." He sighed. "Look, sire Alcar. You're already getting everything I have. I have to live aboard my clunker of a ship because I can't afford a hotel. Once I pay my port fees, I'll be running with empty pockets. I can't even try to pick up a small cargo because it might let them track me. I won't be back to Marchand, so the records won't do you any good for blackmail. And the third thing that stone has to buy me is your silence if the hounds track me this far." He firmed up his expression, and sat back. "If you can't help me, just let me know. I'll take my stone and keep running."

Alcar straightened. "I like you, kid. You've got brains. If you weren't hot, I could use a guy like you in my organization." He smiled, a genuine smile this time. "You got a deal. You'll get the whole package, including the original records. After that, I've never heard of you."

John put on a desperately grateful expression. "Thank you, sire Alcar. Keep the stone. I know you'll honor your word."

After giving Alcar his Yor-Tarken name and berth, John allowed himself to be ushered out. He hurried back to the Scorpion.

"I've made the contact, Tess," he told the ship's AI. "I expect they will want to check me out. We have already cleared customs, so we shouldn't be having any official visitors. If we do, verify their idents, but refuse to let them aboard without my permission. And I haven't ordered any repairs. So any "repairmen" that show up are fakes, no matter how good the signatures look on a work order."

"Understood, sir," Tess replied.

Within the hour, "Sire Yor-Tarken" received a vid call "reminding" him of his appointment at the DNA Scanning Center the next day.

Alcar was as good as his word. Within a week, Scorpion lifted. John was still confined to a float chair as the result of the surgeries that made him five cems shorter than John Smith, and racked by the pain of DNA restructuring.

After a month of discomfort and anguish, John Smith was gone. John Smith had been 178 cems tall; Cale Rankin was 173. John had weighed 90 kilos; Cale massed 80. Cale's darker brown skin, black hair, and brown eyes had replaced John's fair complexion, brown hair, and grey eyes. Scorpion 's papers showed that James Yor-Tarken had sold her to Cale Rankin, a native of Warden's World in the Sirius sector, some two years ago. Cale once again began growing a beard.

During the long hours in the regen booth, John, now Cale, had studied the various star atlases he had bought, searching for a refuge.

The Alliance of Free Systems would have been the perfect place to retire. It was the oldest and largest of the entities surviving the Fall. "Released" by the declining Empire some four hundred years ago, the thirty-one inhabited planets of the Alliance enjoyed the highest standard of living in man-settled space. The Alliance had foreseen the Fall, and prepared for it. Among other things, unfortunately, that meant they had very effective border controls, a strong anti-pirate bias, and a deep suspicion of armed ships. If Cale approached the Alliance in Scorpion, his papers would be scanned for the slightest inconsistencies, and he would be asked some very hard questions. Cale decided it would be safer to stay in the Old Empire, where fewer questions were asked and fewer documents demanded.

Perhaps one of the old "glory worlds." The 'Mission for the Greater Glory of God' was a repressive theocracy. At its height, it had ruled twelve systems, with seven inhabited planets. Finally, some 275 years ago, its brutal excesses triggered a response from both the Alliance and the declining Empire. Even the Glory's large fleet had been no match for the combined might of the Empire and the Alliance, and once that fleet was defeated, uprisings on all seven worlds overthrew the Glory in bloody revolutions. All seven inhabited worlds had considered themselves betrayed and abandoned by the Empire. Three had petitioned to become members of the Alliance. However, the other four all became fiercely independent. One had rejected all government, and had reputedly declined into total anarchy. For some reason, though, pirates seemed to avoid Liberty. It might be interesting to find out why.

Or perhaps Libertad, with nine systems and three inhabited worlds, all ruled by a hereditary king.

Even discounting the worlds that had reverted to barbarism and those that had lost space travel capability, Cale had plenty of choices.

His next stops, though, would not be to settle. He needed to convert some of his sunstones into more easily usable form. The fabulous value of even a small sunstone meant they were difficult to convert to local currencies, and even if the conversion were possible, it would certainly draw attention to the converter.

No, he needed an intermediate form of wealth. One still easily portable and one that had value on almost all worlds, regardless of their local currency. He had settled on diamonds. Diamonds are still the hardest natural substance known to man, still made spectacular jewelry, and were still rare enough to be worth more per carat than anything except sunstones. They could also be converted to any of a thousand local currencies without a lot of questions being asked, as long as one was careful. And Cale planned to be careful. Sunstones were so rare and valuable that his conversion of even one large one into diamonds would be known throughout the sector in less than a month. He was going to have to convert one stone on one planet, and then quickly head directly for another planet to convert another one before word of the first transaction got around. However, he could not afford to let Scorpion be identified as being on both planets at the critical time. Finesse was needed. Fortunately, he had been foresighted enough to allow Yan Carbow to present him with a remarkably sizable amount of another "universal" currency: gold bars.