Law's End Read Online Free Page A

self-envisioned swashbuckling rogue in her mind. She found that
she was annoyed with the individual before having ever met them and
rather than introduce herself Greene began organizing the cargo and
ignoring the ship's captain entirely.
For his part Kassad made no move to introduce
himself as he was captivated by the stark beauty of his vessel. It
never failed to make Kassad's heart leap when setting eyes on his
ship after a separation no matter how short. The pride and joy of
Kassad's life was the Sabha. Every line and surface about her spoke
to Kassad of opportunities and freedom.
The Sabha had started its life as a classic
Terran design long range patrol ship where it had served
unspectacularly for many years until finally retired. Sold at
auction she'd been converted to use as a speculative merchant and
passed through several hands in strokes of fortune both good and
bad. Finally she'd been rebuilt as a jack-of-all-trades
adventurer's ship.
At least that's what it said in the official
registries. Of course what some called adventuring other less
charitable sorts called smuggling, blockade running, and sometime
pirating. More often than not it was the legitimate work as
speculative merchant, long range survey freelancer, and contract
transport that kept the books in the black and the authorities from
labeling her a pirate vessel. Sabha did it all and she did it
well.
Sabha was a windowless sleek and sturdy craft
with many fine attributes inherited from her military design. The
glossy black flattened and conjoined tear drop hull was a
concession to atmospheric maneuvering that did much to minimize her
cross section to active scans. Inside the hull the graceful sloping
provided many small voids around the hull of which any number could
see service as concealed smuggler's holds.
The Sabha's combat grade hull was
compartmentalized, armored, and heavily shielded against radiation
and magnetic effects. Originally outfitted with a military
specification plasma shield, long since removed, this had allowed
her to lurk inside otherwise deadly zones of radiation. In private
service these features had allowed her to undertake dangerous and
lucrative missions to map the edges of Law's End without making the
task a suicide mission.
Military service and private Law's End mapping
missions were all part of Sabha's history before coming into
Kassad's possession. His relationship with the vessel that now
provided and consumed most of his livelihood had begun only a
decade prior. It had been a love at first sight which had only
intensified as he came to know her strengths more intimately.
It terms of her prowess there were few ships
faster or more maneuverable under slower than light conditions.
Sporting a conventional iron core reactionless drive ample to a
vessel of her mass Sabha could maintain one and a half gravity
acceleration as long as power was supplied to it. Reactionless
thrust was supplemented by a pair of fuel guzzling independently
vectored fusion drives that could briefly increase acceleration to
an excess of six gravities of acceleration.
In addition to her conventional propulsion
systems Sabha had been equipped with two separate drive systems for
faster than light travel both of which operated on different
principles. There was a fourth generation long range jump drive for
instantaneous travel, and then there was a more modest sixth
generation warp drive for both shorter distances and long duration
flights. Neither of these systems were original equipment as those
had been outdated even before her initial retirement. With shrewd
use of the drive systems the Sabha could travel anywhere within the
hundred thousand galaxies, no matter how isolated or remote, in
under a month.
As a civilian ship all of Sabha's weapons had
been removed for the sake of appearances, but those appearances
were only surface deep. While the authorities may look dimly upon
military weapons on a civilian craft they wouldn't look twice at a
mining survey