Read Star Risk - 01 Star Risk, Ltd for Free Online

taught, and practiced on a hundred covert missions for the Alliance before he "woke up"�his phrase�about who was the patsy and who was making the profit on his oh-so-elaborate and painful surgery, the so-called "besterization."
    After that realization, he'd had a wonderful two years as a cat burglar, until he got caught. He'd been stealing an Alliance ambassador's jewel chest, while she and her husband oversaw a grand masked ball downstairs in the mansion, and two thugs with badges came out of nowhere.
    At the courtmartial, his defense counsel, who he thought was lovely, even if she wouldn't bed him, but was also slightly thicker than dirt, asked him, "How could you?"
    "She had the best jewels on the post," he answered reasonably.
    "But� an ambassador's wife!"
    "She� or maybe her husband� could afford it," he pointed out. "Besides, she was probably insured."
    The woman looked sadly at the man. Just under two meters, sandy hair, brown eyes, an easy smile. She thought him as good looking as any livee star.
    But hopeless. Beyond morality.
    She accused him of that, and he got indignant, saying he'd never killed anybody while stealing, at least not yet, and the only people he had killed were at Alliance orders.
    That didn't seem to improve her attitude, or the quality of her defense.
    She argued that Goodnight had a perfect combat record. Combat, and in other classified areas the courtmartial board refused to hear in an open courtroom.
    It didn't matter.
    Goodnight was given the choice, after the guilty verdict: Ten years on a penal planet, which meant no survival, especially since he doubted they'd let him take any spare bester charges.
    Or�
    Or cooperate.
    Goodnight sang like an Earth nightingale, giving away his fences, where he'd stashed the money he'd made, and what his future scores were to be.
    He didn't reveal his accomplices, because he never had any, always having known, since the cr�e, when it was him and his brother against the universe, a man travels quicker when he picks his own company.
    Besides, he was never sure what the word "friendship" meant to other people. It meant one thing to him, the same to his little brother, Reg, but who knew what definitions others used? He'd had a pretty good idea what that meant to the others in his Special Operations Detachment, which is why he'd never considered stealing anything from them.
    But outsiders?
    He chose not to find out the hard way if they could be trusted.
    They gave him two years in a planetary prison.
    He was out and gone in a month, went to ground, then made two big scores which covered his new ID and passage offplanet in two more.
    Goodnight began to enjoy himself then, moving from world to world, system to system, seldom hitting more than once on a planet, well on his way before anyone thought to raise the hue and cry.
    He was generally very careful to investigate a target world's laws, making sure none of them had barbaric penalties for a simple, harmless thief, merely making his way through a hostile universe.
    And now he was on Tormal, making as big a score, perhaps bigger, if his handy-dandy pocket analyzer had told the truth about those jewels, than he'd ever made before.
    This was necessarily to be a fast in-and-out. He'd heard of these jewels and done his research on another world. He arrived on Tormal as a tourist, cased the museum on his second day, and this was his third. On the morrow, he'd be gone. That was the safest way to operate on a sparsely settled world, where strangers were always noted.
    Perhaps he ought to, after he cashed in the geetus, find some nice tropical world, somewhere like Trimalchio IV, which he'd seen on the vids, but never visited, lay back for a while, relax, and enjoy his million-plus hidden in an impenetrable bank account on a world he didn't even name in his thoughts.
    Perhaps.
    Maybe after one or two more jobs.
    In the meantime� he slithered on, never missing a step, or making a sound.
    Twice more he checked