Meeting the Knight

[G. Graves]

With the hatch of his ship opening, Graves had long since seen the guards approaching. Fair enough, he felt. There were certain things people couldn't simply detect with a scan like that. He knew that all too well, since there were quantities of Cardamine on the ship that were simply too miniscule for the technology of the scanners to make out, even if it were a Spyglass. The special thing about the Spyglass wasn't necessarily its accuracy but the way it operated on a distrubuted basis that allowed sharing the metaphorical horsepower of the devices, thus increasing the computational power. A true stroke of genious. Still, Graves hoped that they wouldn't touch his balls to check whether he had hidden a gun behind his manpower.

Climbing down, he nodded at the guards request. They approached him and padded him down, fairly thoroughly at that, and — yes! — those were his balls. Goddamnit. He wondered if they'd ask him to empty his pockets if he had carried much with him, but the only things they would find on him were a pack of expensive cigars, a breather device to ingest small doses of Cardamine, and a handkerchief — because he'd be damned if something sullied his mantle. "There isn't a problem, gentlemen?" he asked, assuming proper poise now, since he wasn't toying with some poor sod on a Freeport anymore but with his hopefully future employers. He was able to keep it polite if he wanted to, after all. The guards either didn't know what the breather device was or didn't care. Still, they kept it for now, as they couldn't allow him to have unknown objects when speaking to the admiral. "I'll get that back later, though, right?" They just looked at him before nodding and telling him to follow. Doubledamnit.