During the Zagvirth period, power in the Inter-Galactic Federation in the three known galaxies was split between the federation officials commonly known as feds, and the crime lords.
The feds controlled the governance of the Federation, the laws by which it operated, its military and security forces, and, most important of all, the money.
The crime lords controlled everything else.They ran the slavers that supplied cheap labor across the known worlds. They ran the supply chains that serviced the federation’s military. They controlled the drugs, the gambling rings, the smuggling of valuable artifacts, the extortion gangs; and, most important of all, the illegal money.
There was a third group. These were the pirates, who operated outside the areas controlled by the feds and the crime lords.They ran their ships, they took their loot where they could find it, quite often from the feds; and they usually stayed out of sight.
The feds hated the pirates, because they couldn’t control them.
The pirates hated the feds, who came after them every chance they got. They also hated the feds for allowing the crime lords to run the slavers, and for profiting from people’s misery and the crime lords’ corruption.
The crime lords simply killed anyone who got in their way.
Aktor Kadz is an inter-galactic best-selling author and virtscripter of classics including The Third Moon, Instaglius Burns, and Doomworlds. The Pirateers is his latest series. Coming soon to a virtscreen near you!
Aktor Kadz is Professor of Inter-Galactic
history and Culture at Vasgyeern University, Stoliz, in the Atakin Galaxy. A
person of many talents, Aktor is also an expert in several mainstream galactic
languages. His passion is studying what is known as the Zagvirth period, which
recorded a millennium of unprecedented exploration. During the Zagvirth period
travel, commerce and trade flourished between worlds and galaxies;
simultaneously there was an explosion of literature, art and music of
incredible richness and diversity.
The
Pirateers is one such example. This
manuscript is attributed to Kap, the son of the legendary Vanderbroost the
Heartless, a pirate of huge renown, who sailed the stars during the Zagvirth
period. A copy of the original manuscript of The Pirateers was rediscovered by Aktor Kadz in the library of the legendary scholar
Simnett. Kadz subsequently translated it into three mainstream
Galactic languages. The huge popularity of The Pirateers inspired Aktor to later translate it into
Octaranto, making it available across the length and breadth of thousands of
worlds.
The
Pirateers, as everybody knows, was first
found in the Xalapagian Crescent, during what is now called the Great
Regression. This was at the beginning of the period during which the Inter-Galactic
Federation was torn apart by wars. The story goes that a sailor bought the holoscroll, which was jumbled together with a heap of junk being sold as a
lot somewhere in a market on the world of Offir. He later sold the scroll on to the scholar
and writer Kamedine, who painstakingly translated it into his native Astonian.
Millennia later Kamedine’s translation was discovered by the inter-galactic
scholar Simnett, who managed to trace the now much-damaged original, and make
copies of it. These were later translated into several inter-galactic
languages.
Aktor Kadz's edition of The Pirateers has been
translated from the original text. It is now available in four parts.
Readers of earlier translations may find the
style and idiom used in this edition surprisingly contemporary. Kadz’s ‘new’ translation was made so as to appeal to as wide an audience as
possible.