Freedom's Ransom

In Freedom's Ransom, the fourth part of the Catteni sequence, Anne McCaffrey brings the massive saga of interplanetary looting and a desperate struggle for the survival of a race to a breathless conclusion. Earth has been ransacked by the greedy merchants of Barevi, who are demanding a ransom before they will return all they have looted. The resourceful Zainal (Catteni by race, but now leader of the multiracial domain of Botany) needs some of the spoils for his desperate people, and undertakes a dangerous strategy: to ransom the ransomers and snatch back the items so urgently needed.