Dorn Hetzel

Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent's head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are "threeps", robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden's Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real, and the crowds love it. Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.

Despite the best efforts of both the Republic of Aquitaine Navy (RAN) and the Freiburg Empire, pirates remain a problem for smaller communities, away from the main starlanes. Due to Jessica Keller's success on her previous mission to cause problems for the Freiburg Empire, the head of the senate requests Jessica's assistance on a very special assignment: pirate hunting. What sort of mischief can Jessica and her crew cause in a backwater system? Particularly when given the full backing of the senate?