Privateers

It is early in the next century. The Soviet Union controls the heavens, and holds the world hostage through superiority in space weapons. America is a nation in decline, retreating from its place as a leader of the world.

Dan Randolph, former astronaut and engineer, is one of the world’s richest men, as famed for his romantic conquests as for his vast fortune made through the mining of space. Driven from the U.S. by the collapse of its space program, shut out of the rich resources of the moon by the Russian-dominated International Astronautical Council, Randolph establishes a base in Venezuela to tap the untold wealth of the asteroid belt.

But the Russians are willing to take brutal measures, including treachery, sabotage and murder, to preserve their hegemony. Soon Randolph is pitted in a deadly cat-and-mouse game against Vasily Malik, the young and ruthless Commissar of Space—not only for mankind’s future but for a diplomat’s beautiful daughter they both desire. Forced to operate outside the law, Randolph becomes a latter-day buccaneer, striking back at the Russians to raise the stakes in this deadly game.

Privateers is a riveting tale of high adventure that sweeps from the plantations of South America to the boardrooms of Japan; from the Oval Office of America’s first woman president, to the stark reaches of the high frontier.