“If you want to hurt a man, do not target him. Target what he loves. Take that which he holds dear to his heart and twist it, corrupt it, or destroy it altogether. Then and only then will you hurt him in a way that he will feel in his soul. But take heed. When you hurt a man in this way, you twist him, corrupt him, drive him to heights of rage never before thought possible. You will have turned that man into a monster, and he will be coming for you.” -- Anon Guest
If you want to hurt a Human - DON'T. -- Galactic Saying
There is a philosophy known mostly to the Greater Deregulations - with enough finance, one can theoretically get away with anything. The trick, of course, is in defining "enough". There's always something that money cannot buy.
In this case, it was safety from Human Zol. To put it briefly, the Oligarch of Greater Deregulation Far Upper East had done her family a great wrong. There isn't a Greater Deregulation Far Upper East any more, and Human Zol is the reason why. Here's how...
To begin with, the Oligarch responsible took umbrage at a casual saying Human Zol had within her family. He decided to use his impressive resources to make Zol's family circumstances increasingly difficult. Since all Humans were in or beyond the Edge Territories at the time, there were few systems in place to prevent that happening.
Human Zol invented one. Or should we say - reinvented a system to prevent any further aggression. Left with little else they could do legally, she and her surviving family members scavenged a sargasso and made themselves a pirate vessel. Then they commenced to raid every single Oligarch's Trading Company vessel they could lay their sights on.
In the process, they found plenty of others of a similar mind who had managed to gather the Oligarch's ire. They banded together, shared knowledge and skills, and became stronger. They got more ships. They got more crew. They started liberating the "living assets" on Oligarch ships who never wanted to be a part of the "great man's" machine.
The expatriates of Greater Deregulation Far Upper East were the most scarily enthusiastic about destroying the Oligarch's supply chain. They were more frightening to what they did to the Oligarch's dedicated security force.
Put it this way, they had No Mercy For Bootlickers tattooed across their bodies so that they would be the last words the security people would ever read. Some added sigils for the benefit of the illiterate.
Horror stories still circulate about the expressions on those expatriate's faces.
For want of a soupçon of fortitude, a family was broken. For want of a whole family, a heart was broken. For want of a whole heart, a supply chain was lost. For want of a supply chain... an empire was lost.
All for the grain of internal fortitude necessary to ignore an accidental, and purely imagined, slight.
The trading empire fell. Those devoted to it fell. Those not devoted to it swept the old regime under and established the reforms that they had been yearning for for decades.
Stories differ about what happened to the Oligarch. Some say he was beheaded. Some insist he was hanged. Some say he died of starvation in his bunker, covered in his own filth, because no staff were there to care about his needs. Some say his own security people mistook him for a looter and shot him two hundred times in the back.
Some insist he fled on his last Trading Company ship, straight into crossfire from the automated planetary defences, which were constructed by the lowest possible bidder.
Either way it happened, he has no grave. No memorial. No memento of his existence. Nobody even remembers his name. Which is as it should be. Not even a blasted set of stone feet with the words, Look upon my works, Oh ye mighty, and despair etched into the weathered rock below.
There is no Greater Deregulation Far Upper East any more. They renamed it Target Demographic and have since taken on a far more humane outlook than the previous administration.
They do have a holiday marking the end of the Oligarch's regime. It involves a spit-roasted pig as part of the festivities and burning a rather overstuffed human effigy stuffed with paper simulations of the old monetary tokens.
Further, since it is a Human celebration, there are fireworks.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Esphirium]
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