A Shark Among KoiBook One of the History of Piracy in the 24th Century Two centuries have passed since the last flickering lights of the Sigma Draconis Transits era faded into the cold, silent void. Yet, even now, the echoes of that audacious age resonate through the minds of history and popular culture itself. It was a time when humanity, stretching its tendrils across the stars, found its expansion choked by the iron grip of monolithic corporations. And then, as if born from the very dust of the nebulae, came the pirates.They were an enigma, these buccaneers of the early 24th century. Unlike the romanticized raiders of Earth's ancient seas, these void-faring renegades seemed to materialize from nothing, challenging the established order with a ferocity that defied logic. The corporate stranglehold on every new world, every rich asteroid field, every vital transit lane, was absolute. Until it wasn't.Names like Thule Wang, whose cunning maneuvers became legend, and Goshawk, whose swift strikes were as unpredictable as a solar flare, are etched into the annals of spacefaring lore. But it is the enigmatic figure of "49" who truly captivates the imagination, a phantom of the void whose exploits remain shrouded in a mystique that time has only deepened.Perhaps the reader may be surprised to find out that 49 was born in an enigmatic creche, and her first adult world was in a factory for the giant corporation Vanguard Guide. Yet, many of the pirates that defined the 24th Century have equally odd origin stories, and it is only through those stories we can understand their later greatness.