"Taxes be damned! You're blackmailers and extortionists. I'd pay to be protected from the likes of you! Ah, you're just a bunch of brainwashed drones. Why the hell am I explaining it? Bottom line is I got nothin' here worth stealin' 'cept my ship, and that ain't worth all that much, even in spare parts and fuel rods. Cargo's empty. I was on my way out, not in. You take my ship I'm no better off than if I was dead, and you don't get much by takin' it. So just who or what are you protectin' me from 'cept maybe starvation?"

"We've heard all this before," the leader told him. "Just cut power and our mother ship will take you aboard. You can make your arguments there. I have nothing to do with the case, I just bring in who I'm told to bring in. Now, we know that there's more than just you aboard. Even if you wanted to commit suicide, is it fair to take others with you?"

The old man thought for a moment. "Maybe. If their choice is dyin' or joinin' the likes of you."

"We don't conscript. Don't need to."

"Then you don't know much about your own operations," the old captain responded, sounding weary and resigned. "You live in a hive like some ancient insects, but you got to renew the gene pool now and then." He paused a moment, then sighed. "Okay, pull me in. I don't like doin' it to the others, but at least I'll have the satisfaction of knowin' that at least I'm gonna be your problem for a while."

The destroyer monitoring the engagement now moved in as the old tramp ship cut power and just drifted, defenseless against all the naval might arrayed against it. Tractor beams fixed on the old ship like a spider spinning a web to ensure that the fly did not escape, and, when secure, the prey was reeled in by the tractor lines until it could be mechanically grappled by arms extending beneath the destroyer.

The old freighter held together well; whoever had fixed it up had known what they were doing, and it had clearly been expertly maintained as well. The fleet, of course, had its entire maintenance and dry-dock sections fully automated, but these people out here in the old colonies were lucky to keep anything running at all, let alone maintaining equipment to service the fruits of their scavenging.

The fighters waited until the target was safely secured and then went in for their own predetermined berths, landing automatically. The pilots sat and waited for pressurization, then their canopies slid back and they got out and jumped down to the deck below. The artificial gravity in the berths was kept low to facilitate their ingress and egress, as their trainers called it.

Each of the military figures wore what appeared to be a skintight blue-black body suit that showed them to be generally squat and muscular people, their muscles bulging as if they were about to burst through the suits. They kept the suits on, and would so long as they were officially on duty; the egg-shaped gold and black helmets were removed and placed on special holders near each fighter. On their mounts they would be recharged, benchmarked, tested and, if necessary, repaired, without ever leaving their perches. They could also be programmed with the specifics of any task the fighters might be asked to do, so that the information would be there right in front of each of them as needed. In an emergency, the crews could be at their fighters in less than a minute from anywhere they were likely to be, and in their ships and ready for takeoff with all that they required in no more than three minutes. They drilled on that constantly.

Only some of the pilots, however, were in that position or needed to drill. More than half the squadron never removed their helmets or suits at all, ever. They were machines.

A mixture of humans and machines had been found to be ideal from the earliest deep-space naval combat vessels. Nobody trusted machines alone to do the job; they could outwit and outfight everybody except a totally illogical human being who might do things they would never expect. The pilots were, however, both genetically and cybernetically enhanced. All were female, though that term had little real meaning for them except that they averaged perhaps twenty percent less mass than the men and had voices that were, on average, quite low but still a half octave removed from the men. Hairless, their breasts rock hard and their sexual organs removed and replaced with semiorganic hormonal regulators, they had no sense of sexuality at all, either to themselves or as regarded anyone else.

It was not any of the pilots who would approach and enter the captured vessel, though. That was a job for a marine squad, mostly huge muscle-bound males, also hairless, and with nothing evident in the groin to suggest sexuality, either. The naval nurseries harvested the eggs and all the sperm it needed, processed them, altered their DNA and designed what was required, far away from those who had been the donors. Like the pilots, adult marines and the other crewmen were basically asexual, and neither knew nor wondered what they were missing.

Not that they were without emotion; that was a requirement of being human. But it was the emotion of camaraderie, of friends and brothers and sisters, nothing beyond. Not that they were ignorant of sex; they simply could not imagine why it was so important or why others did such disgusting things. The marines and the pilots saw themselves not as men and women, but as specialists designed to best do their jobs. And none of them wanted to be or do anything more than what they were; only to advance in rank, authority, power, and respect.

The old captain had called them "drones," and in effect that was just what they were.

Now the marine squad went down the umbilical cylinder to the entry hatch on the old freighter.

"This is Sergeant Maslovic," their leader said using a transceiver essentially built into his thick rocklike jaw, although it was invisible to the naked eye and controlled by his own thoughts. "Open your hatch and prepare to be boarded."

There was a loud hiss and the hatch turned and then opened like the iris of a camera, allowing entry.

Although the marines were armed, they were not expecting a fight. What, after all, could these people do? The worst they could try was to blow up their ship in order to take the larger one with it, and there were energy shields all around to insure that that was not somthing that would be very profitable to do. It would kill the marines, certainly, as well as those aboard the captured vessel, but little else. The marines did worry about this, but their officers above had plenty more marines if they lost these.

The two lead men in the squad entered on either side, stun-type sidearms drawn, and flanked the sergeant as he walked confidently in, his own weapon holstered and not even unstrapped.

The marines wore suits quite like those of the fighters, but the color of dark mud, and while the squad had on light protective helmets the sergeant hadn't even bothered to put his on. Since he couldn't stop anyone from killing him nor would that thing protect him from a shot, he saw no purpose to it here, and once they'd secured the ship and prisoners and were marching their captives to Legal, the proper uniform would be no helmet anyway.

The captain of the tramp met him just inside the entranceway. He was not only old, he was perhaps the oldest man Maslovic had ever seen. Gray-haired, with a stringy, dirty gray beard, his skin had the look of ancient parchment and he stood slightly stooped in spite of a clear effort to look military himself. He wore a simple black flight jump suit that looked older and more wrinkled than he was, and some boots that had last been shined before the Great Silence.

"I'm Captain Murphy," the old man introduced himself.

"Sergeant Maslovic," the marine responded, looking around. "Sir, by authority of Combine Naval Code seventy-seven stroke six two I take command of your vessel. Where are your crew?"