The Story

Under cover of darkness, diGriz picks the lock into Inskipp's private quarters uninvited, risking his superior's fury, because he has stumbled onto proof that someone, somewhere in the galaxy, is secretly building an outlawed battleship — and the Special Corps must learn the truth before it is too late.

DiGriz is no ordinary agent — once the galaxy's most notorious thief, he now works for the very lawmen who used to hunt him, turning his gift for disguise, forgery, and audacious bluffing into the Special Corps' sharpest weapon against crimes too clever for ordinary police to catch.

Startled awake, Inskipp grabs a heavy .75 caliber recoilless pistol and threatens to shoot the intruder outright — but diGriz stays perfectly calm, dangling a mystery far too tempting to ignore, and the old spymaster's curiosity quickly wins out over his itching trigger finger.

DiGriz produces a photograph of ordinary freighter blueprints — except the Corps' own computer has quietly matched their modifications to the exact specifications of an ancient Warlord-class battleship, a weapon of devastating power the civilized galaxy hasn't dared construct in centuries — proof enough to make even Inskipp's blood run cold.

Inskipp checks the modifications himself and goes pale — the match is undeniable. Therefore he orders diGriz to the planet Cittanuvo at once, to quietly discover who is building an outlawed battleship right under the Corps' nose, and why they would dare risk galactic war to do it.

DiGriz lands on Cittanuvo disguised as the flamboyant Grand Duke Sant'Angelo, reasoning that the boldest, most ridiculous lie draws the least suspicion of all. Customs waves the fake nobleman through without a second glance, and his quiet investigation of the planet's corruption begins at once.

Cittanuvo is ruled by President Ferraro, a leader whose reputation for petty corruption runs planet-wide — bribery, favors, and quiet graft everywhere diGriz looks. But therefore Ferraro's guilt in ordinary crimes makes him the obvious first suspect for a battleship built with forged official authorization.

For this mission diGriz brings M-3, a Corps-issue robot disguised as a bumbling, moronic servant unit — but hidden beneath its clumsy exterior sit a precision lie detector and concealed weapons, tools built for exactly the kind of quiet, deniable interrogation tonight's break-in will require.

That night, diGriz and the disguised M-3 robot infiltrate President Ferraro's mansion together, slipping past guards as a nobleman and his servant, because the private files hidden inside may finally reveal whether the planet's own leader authorized the stolen battleship's construction, or whether someone even bolder hides behind his signature.

Dropping the duke's disguise entirely, diGriz confronts a startled Ferraro as the stern Admiral Thar and places him under arrest on the spot, since shipyard documents clearly show Ferraro's own initials authorized the mysterious construction contract — now it falls to the robot at his side to learn how deep the lie runs.

The M-3 robot's hidden lie detector delivers its verdict: Ferraro is telling the truth about the battleship, though the same machine flags him lying on nearly three-quarters of everything else he claims. Therefore diGriz shifts his hunt away from the mansion, toward the shipyard itself, where real answers must be hiding.

At Cenerentola Spaceyards, diGriz turns the robot's lie detector on manager Rocca, the man responsible for final assembly of every vessel built there, because Rocca alone would know precisely what modifications were quietly added to an ordinary freighter hull, and why his own crew never asked questions.

Under the lie detector's unblinking gaze, Rocca reveals the truth: the 'meteor-repelling gear' he approved for installation was no such thing at all — it exactly matches heavy battleship turrets, and the ship is now nearly complete and ready to fly, a discovery that turns diGriz's blood cold.

Rising above the gantries, the half-finished Warlord-class battleship dwarfs every freighter in the yard — a grey mountain of armor and gun turrets built to fight wars the galaxy fought centuries ago, its sheer size alone explaining why so many people were needed to keep the lie hidden this long.

DiGriz races back to the shipyard the very next morning, but the berth stands empty — the battleship has already launched, because its true builder detected diGriz's arrival on Cittanuvo and panicked, choosing to flee rather than risk capture at the dock, leaving nothing behind but scorched launch marks.

Refusing to admit defeat, diGriz shuts himself in the shipyard's records office for seventy-two grueling hours, tracing forged signatures backward through requisitions, work orders, and falsified inspections, determined to find the single hand behind every fraudulent document in Cenerentola's file — sleep forgotten, patience the only weapon left.

Every forged trail ends at the very same desk: Assistant Engineering Designer Pepe Nero, and his clever secretary Angelina. Together, diGriz realizes with grudging admiration, they forged every order and diverted every shipment needed to build a battleship in plain sight while everyone else looked away.

Angelina is no mere secretary — diGriz's instincts tell him she is the true architect behind the scheme, sharper and colder than Pepe himself, the kind of brilliant, manipulative mind that could talk a shipyard into building a battleship unnoticed, a mind, he senses uneasily, disturbingly like his own.

DiGriz psigrams headquarters with his grim discovery, and Inskipp psigrams back without sympathy: capture that battleship, or die trying — the Corps cannot allow a stolen Warlord-class warship to roam free among peaceful, unsuspecting worlds, and the order leaves no room for retreat or excuse.

Knowing Pepe scours every periodical for word of prey worth robbing, diGriz plants a false story across an expanding sphere of star systems: a billionaire's gold-plated pleasure yacht, the Eldorado, touring the frontier — bait no pirate captain could resist, if only the lie proves tempting enough.

Days crawl by with no word, and even diGriz's legendary confidence begins to waver — but he trusts the plan, because a pirate bold enough to steal a battleship will never resist a target this rich for long. Somewhere out there, he tells himself, the trap is already working.

Then the bait works, faster and bloodier than expected: a Navy supply satellite is attacked and thirty-four crew are killed, but a passing store ship confirms the planted Eldorado articles were found aboard the wreckage — grim proof diGriz's lure has worked, at a cost he never wanted.

DiGriz travels to the naval yard at Udrydde, where engineers have secretly refitted the real Eldorado into a trap bristling with hidden weapons, and boards her himself as captain, waiting alone among the false luxury for the battleship to come hunting, nerves steady, gun close at hand.

Before long the battleship emerges from the dark, grapples the yacht's hull with magnetic claws, and demands immediate surrender — Pepe Nero has taken the bait exactly as planned, and now, at last, the trap diGriz built is closing around him. There is no more waiting, only what comes next.

Two men now stand face to face across the airlock: diGriz, the Corps agent who engineered this entire trap, and Pepe Nero, the pirate captain who wants nothing more than to protect the one woman he loves, Angelina, hidden somewhere deep within the battleship's hold.

Gun drawn, diGriz confronts Pepe aboard the captured battleship's bridge, demanding answers. Pepe, calm despite the weapon pointed at his chest, admits the plain truth without hesitation: he has already let Angelina go free, sending her away before the Navy could ever lay a hand on her.

A faint vibration hums through the deck plates beneath their feet — the unmistakable sound of a hidden fast scout ship, secretly stowed within the battleship's hold, launching at that very moment and carrying Angelina away into open space. By the time diGriz understands, it is already too late.

DiGriz insists aloud that the Navy will run her down within hours, voice steady and certain — but privately he doubts every word, because Angelina has already outwitted far cleverer men than him, and something tells him this time will be no different, a thought he keeps carefully off his face.

Pepe surrenders without a fight, calm and almost at peace with his fate, because he gave Angelina her one chance at freedom purely out of love, not calculation — a trade, he tells diGriz quietly, always worth more than his own capture. He asks for nothing in return.

Only now does the full picture settle: quiet, unremarkable Assistant Engineering Designer Pepe Nero and the battleship's ruthless pirate captain are one and the same man, a disguise diGriz never once suspected during his long investigation on Cittanuvo — the boldest lie is sometimes simply an honest job title.

Navy cruisers arrive at last, matching velocity with practiced precision and locking docking clamps against the captured battleship's hull, and armed boarding parties stream aboard to take formal custody of both the stolen Warlord-class warship and its now-defeated pirate captain. The long chase, officially, has come to its end.

With Pepe in custody and the Warlord-class battleship finally secured, the piracy that terrorized the shipping lanes for weeks comes to a complete end — on paper, a clean and total victory for the Special Corps, exactly the outcome Inskipp demanded. Reports will call it flawless; diGriz already knows better.

Yet diGriz feels only ashes where triumph should be, because the mission's true architect, Angelina, slipped away laughing into the dark aboard her stolen scout ship — and capturing an entire battleship means little when the person he wanted most has simply vanished. Victory, he realizes, tastes strangely like losing.

What it means

The chase teaches diGriz a harder lesson than any Corps manual ever could: cleverness alone wins battles but never people, and the galaxy's finest thief now understands that outsmarting a system is easy, while outsmarting someone you secretly admire is another matter entirely — one he vows to settle next time.

🎧 Read-along audio is being prepared — text-only for now.