Judas

[Thunderer]

Although successful powertraders like boasting about how many billion credits they have, that is not what the situation really is like. They are only captains of their companies' ships -- the money is divided among the crew, the workers that load and unload the cargo, the engineers that maintain the ship, spent on ship maintenance itself, but it largely ends up in the slimy hands of the people who run the company. The captain gets the highest wage on his ship, of course, but that is certainly very far from billions. An admiral's salary was a few or a few dozen thousand credits a month. Corruption was more profitable for Hall, but it was never forty five million. He could buy an island for that, he thought. It came a bit as a surprise, as checking what it could actually be sold for could expose him. But, if Loyola could offer forty million for it, he thought, she needed it direly. Thus, she could certainly offer more. Hall's plan was to let Loyola name the price first, so he could then adjust it. He rose another layer of artificial emotion.

"This little object was freighted all the way from Kappa, through Nomads, Corsairs and Hessians. I had to withdraw some patrols so it would not be seen, and even fake a radar malfunction on the Norfolk so it could be unloaded. I was aiming at something closer to fifty five -- such a perfect arrangement of digits -- but I will renounce scrupulousness for your sake. Let's meet at fifty?"

As if he wasn't unscrupulous already.

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