Salvage Title by Kevin Steverson

Author:Kevin Steverson [Steverson, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Theogony Books
Published: 2018-09-10T06:00:00+00:00

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In the Nilta System, on board the Q-ship Awaken, Tachell rubbed her top two legs together. She looked over with her multifaceted eyes at her second in command, a young female Krift, while her antennae spread apart repeatedly. It was a sign of impatience among her race. Twill was standing over the weapons drone as he selected several missiles and relayed the information to the drones in the forward compartment. The missile tubes had been added to the converted freighter and had to be manually loaded. It was best to be ready.

If Tachell had to use missiles on the ship, she wanted to be sure that they would not cause too much damage. The missiles the drone selected would provide a large magnetic pulse when they struck the target, causing systems to temporarily go offline. With well-placed shots, her soldiers could board the powerless battlecruiser and take it quickly.

Her intention was to pull away from the space dock when the fool that she was meeting was close. If she waited until the battlecruiser was far enough from the gate, she could chase it down. She would destroy his transport ship and then take the battlecruiser. She had no intention of paying for it.

Tachell paid for nothing. Especially in this system. It was hers. The system paid her. She collected protection fees from the space port, any merchant ships that entered the system, and the planet itself. The docile beings were only too happy to pay after she threatened to drop a few meteors on their heads.

The system had hardly any space traffic before she and her small swarm descended on it, and her tactics hadn’t harmed its trade that much. The Nilt’s only export of note was the thick liquid sweetener used in cooking by several systems. They farmed it from huge flowering trees on the surface of Nilta, the fourth planet from the slightly orange-tinted star. It was actually a poor planet as far as systems within the galaxy went, but she still demanded payment.

There was another planet in the system with an atmosphere, but it was uninhabited. A world of sand and rock. She never bothered to learn its name.

The Nilts had built a small space port to service the haulers they used to ship the sweetener. It was her base of operations now. Its manager had been kicked out of her office and quarters. She had four ships docked there: her Q-ship, two small freighters that were Q-ships, and a small local hauler. The hauler had been converted to a modified dropship that would carry her soldiers to the battlecruiser to board it.

She still could not believe her luck in convincing the human she was willing to purchase the ship. She clacked her mandibles quietly together as she thought of descending upon the next system with a warship at her control. She could create an empire. The fool had even let her know it was coming with a skeleton crew when she had inquired about the number of beings needed to operate it.

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