The Star Cross by Raymond L. Weil Page A

third individual in the room.
    Kurt came to a
stop, as he stared open mouthed at his first alien. He was humanlike in that he
had two feet, coarse white hair on his head, but with larger eyes, and his skin
was a light blue color. He sat tall in the chair, which make Kurt think he’d be
taller than most humans when standing
    “This is
Grantz,” General Braid said, gesturing toward the alien.
    The alien
looked toward the three men and placed both his hands on the table he sat
behind. On the table were two bars of gold. He reached out and rubbed his hands
over the gold and smiled. “So you want to know about Kubitz?” he asked in a
guttural-sounding voice.
    “That’s our agreement,”
responded General Braid. “Two gold bars now and two more when the mission is
complete.”
    Grantz looked
down at the gold on the table, his hands still touching it. Kurt could almost
see the greed in the Profiteer’s eyes at the thought of what that much gold
could buy.
    “Four when the
mission is complete, and I promise not to betray you to my people. I will act as
a member of your ship’s company, until we agree that I have met my contract.”
    “Contract?”
asked Kurt, looking even more confused. Had they actually bribed one of the
aliens to betray his own people?
    “Yes,”
muttered Fleet Admiral Tomalson unhappily. “There will be a signed contract by
all parties. We will have a copy, and Grantz will have a copy. From what I
understand, if he violates the contract, and we file a complaint on Kubitz with
a Controller, he will be banned from doing any Profiteering for the rest of his
life.”
    “It is our
way,” Grantz explained.
    Kurt nodded;
he wondered how he would explain this latest addition to his human crew. He
felt a headache coming on, as he realized that his life had suddenly become
even more complicated.

Chapter Four
     
    High Profiteer
Creed gazed in aggravation at the main viewscreen, which showed a massive
cylinder-shaped ship with a flaring bow and a flared rear area that housed the
warship’s powerful engines. The ship belonged to the Dacroni, a mercenary clan
from the heavy-gravity world of Dacron Four. The ship was 1,100 hundred meters
in length and 220 meters in diameter, except for the two flared sections that
added another 100 meters in width at the fore and aft of the ship. It was
covered with energy projectors and hatches, which hid hypermissile tubes. The
imposing vessel was a battleship—one of the most powerful ships in the Gothan
Empire.
    “Clan Leader
Jarls will be aboard shortly,” Second Profiteer Lantz reported with a scowl on
his face. “To hire this Dacroni clan will cost a fortune!”
    Creed knew Lantz
didn’t like doing business with mercenaries; it was always very expensive.
Creed agreed on both accounts.
    “Fortunately
we have the credits, due to what we took from the human world,” responded Creed,
dismissing Lantz’s comment. “We lost a number of valuable ships and control of
Earth. We must rectify that situation immediately. We’ll hire this Dacroni clan
to clear the space in the humans’ system and to remain there on guard duty for
ninety days. During that time, we will plunder enough riches off the planet to
enrich every member of our crews. We also have some debts on Kubitz that need
to be paid off, before we’re branded as unwanted.”
    “The humans we
brought back to sell should satisfy those debts,” Lantz grunted out.
    The credits
they had borrowed on Kubitz had updated several of their warships, including
the Ascendant Destruction , and the charges had been outrageous. However,
the shipyards above Kubitz were the best in the empire.
    “Yes,” High
Profiteer Creed responded with a slight nod of his head. “The humans should
bring a good price, particularly the females. The pleasure houses will buy many
of them. But we also need to replace the warships and crews we lost, and that’ll
be a heavy cost.” Creed knew it would take a major portion of the