Peter Raeder became the Commonwealth's first ace pilot in the war against the secessionist Mollies. That battle cost him his hand -- and his right to fly the fighter ships that had been his first love. So he became Flight Engineer on the fast carrier Invincible, a crack new ship with a picked crew, ready to fight the Mollies who control the universe's richest anti-hydrogen mines, and the loathsome spider like aliens who have come to their aid. On his first mission, he faced pirate raiders, attacks by Mollies and a hidden saboteur on board the ship who came close to destroying the Invincible before Raeder unmasked him.Unfortunately for Raeder, his heroism didn't follow the rulebook, and his reward for saving the ship was a reprimand from a martinet admiral, and a deskbound assignment -- a fate worse than death for a born spacehound like Raeder. But then a less rule-bound Marine General offers Raeder an escape: command a hidden base deep in Mollie-controlled space from which he will harry Mollieshipping, like the seagoing privateers of Earth's past. And Raeder finds a dangerous mission preferable to exile to an office cubicle ... even if his chances of surviving this assignment are very nearly zero.
Description:
Peter Raeder became the Commonwealth's first ace pilot in the war against the secessionist Mollies. That battle cost him his hand -- and his right to fly the fighter ships that had been his first love. So he became Flight Engineer on the fast carrier Invincible, a crack new ship with a picked crew, ready to fight the Mollies who control the universe's richest anti-hydrogen mines, and the loathsome spider like aliens who have come to their aid. On his first mission, he faced pirate raiders, attacks by Mollies and a hidden saboteur on board the ship who came close to destroying the Invincible before Raeder unmasked him.Unfortunately for Raeder, his heroism didn't follow the rulebook, and his reward for saving the ship was a reprimand from a martinet admiral, and a deskbound assignment -- a fate worse than death for a born spacehound like Raeder. But then a less rule-bound Marine General offers Raeder an escape: command a hidden base deep in Mollie-controlled space from which he will harry Mollieshipping, like the seagoing privateers of Earth's past. And Raeder finds a dangerous mission preferable to exile to an office cubicle ... even if his chances of surviving this assignment are very nearly zero.