Chapter 2

It was ten a.m. exactly when the airlock of the large shuttle finished equalizing atmospheric pressure with the Basilisk and opened. Through the airlock stepped a young Lieutenant Commander followed by a female Lieutenant.

When the Lieutenant Commander came to the airlock of the Basilisk he stopped and said, "Permission to come aboard, sir?"

Victor nodded his head and replied, "Granted."

The Lieutenant Commander stepped through, followed by the Lieutenant. He kept walking until he was in front of Victor, where he stopped and pulled out a sheet of paper to present to Victor.

Victor skimmed over what was written on the sheet of paper, nodded and handed it back to the Lieutenant Commander.

The Lieutenant Commander read his orders aloud from the sheet of paper. Basically, he was to take command of the Basilisk with the Lieutenant behind him as his Executive Officer; crew it with a skeleton crew, who were still on the shuttle; then take the ship to the shipyards orbiting Mars, where it would be decommissioned, disarmed, and sold at auction. After reading his orders, he put them away and said to Victor, "I relieve you, sir," before saluting.

Victor returned the salute, walked to the airlock, stepped through and walked down the corridor towards the shuttle, followed by Lieutenant Carla, Aimee, and his entire crew. Halfway down the corridor, they passed the new skeleton crew heading toward the Basilisk.

Victor sat in the office in his home on Caergwynt. He was waiting for Carla, who he had just summoned with his communicator.

Aimee was under Victor's desk fellating him leisurely. She was an expert at giving just enough pleasure to her Master to make fellatio worthwhile, but just shy of enough to break her Master's concentration or make him otherwise reveal to anyone in the room what was going on. This was a common technique among personal servants; many noblemen and business executives actually spent much of their day working at a desk with their cock in a girl's mouth. A woman who was assigned by her owner to an important managerial post might also be privileged with a personal servant who would be utilized similarly; though with the hair trigger of most females, the servant needs to be especially delicate and circumspect, often the servant would simply lay with her head between her mistress's legs, under her mistress's skirt, just gently breathing warm, moist air on her mistress's vulva and giving the occasional soft lick.

When Carla arrived she stood at attention in front of his desk, as was her custom.

Victor sat in silence for a few moments, idly staring at the engraved plate on Carla's collar. The plate proclaimed that the wearer was named Carla, and that she was the property of one Lord Victor Brandt; it also had a blank space that would have contained her occupation if Carla had one.

Since Victor was no longer on active duty, he was referred to and addressed with his civilian title. As a member of the nobility, but without a jurisdiction of his own, his title was Lord. His crew would also refer to Victor differently. In the military, women simply refer to those in authority over them as sir or ma'am, but in civilian life, women address those in authority over them as Master or Mistress; a woman addressing a man who was not in authority over her would be addressed either as sir or whatever their title was, while a woman who was not in authority over her would either have no honorific or where the woman was superior or assumed to be superior in status, but still not in authority over her, might be addressed as ma'am.

"How are those permits coming along?" Victor asked.

"The permits for all of the sailors should be in by tomorrow, but I don't know what Felicia has got for her Marines, Master," Carla replied.

Victor nodded, "She said pretty much the same thing," he said, "Are you free to come with me up to the shipyard today?"

"Of course, Master," Carla responded.

"After lunch then, and make sure Felicia knows that she's coming too," Victor said.

Victor, Aimee, Carla, and Felicia were touring a ship that was for sale. It was brand new; someone had apparently ordered it and been unable to accept delivery by the time it was finished, the company selling the ship had been vague on that point.

It was a cargo ship, one of the small, fast, and heavily armed varieties that were favored on the fringes of the Empire, where the law wasn't so certain. It wasn't really small relative to Victor's old ship, in fact it was easily more than six times the size of a light cruiser, but it was small for a cargo ship.