Tonight the Stars Revolt!

In the Black Pools he found the 50,000-year-lost wisdom of the Ancients. For a day Red Angus held victory in his sword-hand. But it was too short a glimpse, too elusive a thought to bolster the star-rabble against the Citadel's iron guard.
The pools were like the gaping mouth of space itself, dark and fathomless, extending into bottomless wells, the depths of which the people of Karr could only guess. Some said the god Stasor dwelt in the glistening black depths. Others claimed the emptiness was the hollow interior of the planet. None of them was right.
All men feared the pools. Only a man fifty thousand years old knew their incredible secret, and he lived in an invisible city....
Red Angus fled like a frightened hound through the twisted alleys of the Lower City. Dim lamplight from the towering white walls of the Citadel threw glowing brilliance across his naked chest, glinted on the metal studs of his broad leather belt, and on the rippling muscles of his long legs. He skidded on a patch of slops, righted himself and dove for the darkness of an arched doorway. He drew back in the shadows, barely feeling the burn of the new brand on his shoulder that stamped him as a pirate.
Faintly, he heard the shouts and drumming feet of the Diktor's police as they ravened in the streets, hunting him. His heart thudded swiftly under the high arch of his ribcase. Red Angus smiled wryly.
He was a hunted space pirate, just free of the cell blocks below the palace. But he was more than that to the Diktor of Karr. He was a Karrvan noble who had gone bad, who had fled into space and established an eyrie on a wandering asteroid, who had set himself up as a one-man crusade against Stal Tay, ruler of Karr by the grace of the god Stasor.
I'll find a way, the pirate swore in the shadows, listening to the shouts and running of the guards, the sharp, barking blasts of their heatguns.
There was a faint sound behind the thick oaken door. Angus moved his naked back, still welt and scarred, away from the damp wood. He clenched a big fist and stood silent, waiting.