e with thin-lipped mouth and a stumpy
nose. Cold, deep-embedded eyes constantly shifted
focus and direction. His small hands, fingers laden
with rings, appeared to drip from his sleeves.

##

Lumbering to his raised chair at the head of
the table, Narval laboriously stepped up and
sat, lifted his hand to his mouth and nibbled at
a fingernail. Finally, satisfied, he held the finger
up, examined it and redirected his attention to
his audience.

President Reen Narval had earned the fear and
respect that he enjoyed. A victor of scores
of battles for control of the planet's criminal
syndicates and political machinery, Narval had left
a trail of blood and broken bones behind him as a
warning to challengers. Challengers to his rule did
not survive.

A man of many talents, Narval had migrated to
Planet Pluto from an independent colony orbiting
Callisto. He had accepted expulsion from the
place of his birth as the alternative to the court's
sentence of labor in Callisto's encapsulated
subsurface mines.

Educated and trained to practice law in the Outer
Region's inter-satellite and interplanetary courts
he had, instead, become a serious liability to his
government and to his community.

At his disbarment, the investigating officer of
the Callisto Ethical Practices Board had presented
irrefutable evidence of Narval's numerous conflicts
of interests, extortions, frauds and other crimes
in the performance of his responsibilities as an
officer-of-the-court. Removed from the judicial
arena, he was proven to have also cheated in the
Callisto gambling halls, swindled citizens of sound
repute, and twice convicted of murder.

Callisto and its orbiting colonies were wide open,
but Reen Narval was too much for them. He was
told to quickly depart Callisto's jurisdiction or
take the consequences.

He left gracelessly, found a haven on Planet Pluto,
and applied his many talents with vigor. Organizing
Coldfield's fragmented criminal elements, he ruled
with an iron fist. Solidly entrenched, he imposed
tactics of terror on the population and encountered
little resistance. He rose to the top, balanced on
a mound of cracked skulls and crushed bodies.

Soon after INOR came into being, Narval proclaimed
Planet Pluto's independence, with himself as
President. Despite the UIPS urgent need for Planet
Pluto to support Slingshot, the newly formed,
but weakened government of the Inner Region
was unable to influence a populace unde