Carl Obermeier, a cadet at the Time Corps Academy, discovers he has been admitted to his second year on Conditional status. This is due to his high “emotional liability.” He is advised to mediate and study the precepts and disciplines of the Corps. But on his first day back, his class is shown an example of Temporal Crime committed by the Time Pirates, enemy of the Ordered Society, and he is smitten by the pirate Armand’s beauty. Troubled, Carl remains true to the Corps when he is kidnapped by the pirates and meets Armand face to face.<br><br>Armand lives a free and easy life with the pirates ... until he sees Carl, and realizes the cadet has fallen for him.<br><br>As the pirates deprogram Carl from the rigid tenets of the Ordered Society, the two men fall in love. But a pirate’s life is never safe, and when Armand fails to return from an Action against the OS Marines, Carl steps up to save him. Unfortunately the men are caught on either side of the Time War. Can they find their way out?

Renegades from the Time War

“What makes you think we wantto take out the pirates, as you put it?”


“This is not generally known, but it is the policy. You see, the Time Pirates are useful—very useful.” He grinned. “It is an old philosophy, known to statesmen for thousands of years: a good enemy helps to organize a society, it supports any call for unified action, and thereby patriotism to the state.”


It struck Carl, then, that this speech sounded a lot like one he’d heard at the captain’s table among the pirates. It shook his world, made him feel uneasy.


“You know,” he said. “I think you have just started a new phase of growth. Things look well. You’ll have to be evaluated formally by Major Holmes, but if that is favorable—which I think it will be—then you can probably return to the Academy. You will have lost a year, of course. But you’ve gained invaluable field experience.


Chapter 32