Madness in a Cadenza

[Thunderer]

The Golden Gate was not opened. It was broken through. Capitulation was a fact. A sack hit the table and spilled the thirty silver coins out. What was to happen with the empire Hall had built over them was on the conqueror. He coughed out a bit of pain and misery, cleared his throat and, with his voice trembling like a river bed before a torrent, he spoke, wheezing:

"...R-M... Richard Mining... my grandmother's company, after that my eldest brother's. I didn't want to study, so I had to work, but I didn't want to work either... When my grandmother passed away, my brother was in charge, and we both discovered how crookedly it had actually been run... I didn't want to work, so I started discrediting it once a month to cause damage to my brother. He started paying me monthly so I wouldn't do it any more, and I stopped. The years that came were milk and honey. This is the first one I remember, after cheating an exam. Oh, the next years were milk and honey... I got myself a ship, flew around, danced around, f***** every half-adequate c*** I could take my hands on, while under the influence of all sorts of opiates..." He coughed a bit. But he seemed to be relaxing, and even to enjoy rolling in the mud of his own memories. "Not even sure they were truly half-adequate", he said through a grin. "Tried cardamine on a party to prove myself to a girl... Probably the only bad thing that happened to me during that time.... God, I must have sniffed more orange and produced more bastards than a f****** Lord of the Liberty Rogues... Never met any of them." He was, despite all his general selfishness, covering the only bastard son he knew. "Never wanted to... Is this what you want me to speak about? Or the more recent ones? Because I'll bleed the bleeding hell out if I tell you truly everything. God, my throat is so dry... Mind lending me a glass of t... water? And please don't make me another hole to drink through..." His thirst was more subjective than real. He harrumphed again, having turned his head away from his torturer, hoping not to offend her. What he really wanted, however, was Stabiline.

---

Bretonian Treaty Database Bretonian Armed Forces Recruitment Center
Bretonian Charter of Interstellar Law Bretonian Secrets Act