Quoted By:
You set the glass down and cough a little. The amasec burns in your throat, an extravagance you rarely spring for but after the last few months, you needed a drink. You run the events over in your head. The “Zidorian Worker’s Front” paid well in bribes, enough to add twenty percent to your profit margins, and didn’t ask for much. Only that you delay your shipments to that rock by a couple of months. You had a good thing going, too, then one of their organizers was tortured by an enforcer and dropped your name somewhere in the screaming. The Planetary Governor, Vincenzo of the Bartlette family, didn’t have much clout but it was more than a smalltime cargo freighter. He was honest, you have to admit, but you didn’t have the thrones to pay him for the loss of prestige and so he passed it up the chain. It wasn’t long before a big name heard and scrawled some papers. Just like that your Letter of Marque was gone. The work of a lifetime, ruined, all because you got greedy.
You were told to turn yourself in for judgement but you’d rather not be burnt at the stake by a court that had already decided their verdict so here you are. Troth YV80: an asteroid colony too poor to turn a rogue merchant away and just rich enough to afford what you’re selling. A cargo hold full of grain that would’ve fed Zidorn V if their Planetary Governor wasn’t so smug. Calling in an order, arranging the shipment, and waiting for the sale takes time. Lots of precious, sensitive time. Maybe a year or two of rationing will make him rethink his choices. Maybe not. It isn’t your problem anymore. Right now, you’re operating a private, armed, Warpfaring vessel in Imperial space without a license. That makes you a pirate and the penalty for piracy- you take a drink- is death.
Sigh. You’ve dug yourself a deep grave this time. Less mercantile men might break under the pressure but you understand better than most that profits can be found in the wildest places. You jog your memory and start piecing together a plan.
>(1/4)
