Four hours. Yes, it was around four hours. The day had started badly for him--the loss of his transport filled with counterfeit software. Destroyed by the Bretonian armed forces as it attempted todock Arranmore. No, not good news at all. Fortunately, none of his men had talked to the authorities... how could they talk while adrift in space without atmosphere suits? It was his last transport ship. The other had been ambushed in the Colorado System by Xenos just a few weeks before. Yet another fiasco.
On this morning, the Junker, Servus Lictor was aboard the Beaumont Station and looked broodingly from a docking platform at the bustle of activity surrounding two slaver transports that had come in to resupply. The filthy men and women crying for mercy when the holds were opened, their chains making a terrible noise, the scraping of metal dragging over steel decks. These men, these women...speaking and pleading tearfully with the docking crews as if they were still human beings.
It was at this precise moment in time that the idea came to him--the greatest thought of his career and the one that was to make him a wealthy man.
But it was also an idea that amused him at a level that transcended his very nature and when recalled, even today, distorts his already cruel mouth into a rictus immonde--hardly even comparable to a smile.
Already Servus had begun. He had formed a new crew. Calling in favors from all of his remaining contacts he began to acquire the assets he would need for his narcissistic ambition.
But one great need remained: he had to find a new transport ship...one that would be the epitome of his vision, a device equal to his grandiose idea...and then from the news vid he heard, "We interrupt our program for a special news flash: The Sovereign, the famous Bretonian royal luxury liner, will be auctioned Saturday after spending the past two years in the dry dock. According to the BPA spokesman, this vessel had been seized with no less than five tons of cardamine and hundreds of Dom Kavash artifacts when it returned from a cruise in the border worlds. According to our sources on the scene, the judge in charge of investigation could have sentenced the owner and captain of the vessel to twenty years imprisonment at the Newgate penal station in Manchester. We now ...."
Servus Lictor's macabre smile--the one that thousands would see over and over again in their nightmares--grew even larger. Now he had his plan. He snapped commands at his remaining personal attendant to pack their belongs and to prepare his personal ship for a trip to New London...he had an auction to attend.
"Os iusti meditabitur sapientiam et lingua eius loquetur indicium." The mouth of the Just annouce the Wisdom and his tongue proclaims the Justice.