Slave World (2 page)

Burke took a high velocity 12mm pistol from his palm activated weapon’s locker, strapping the holster about his waist.
I should take a rifle as well, better safe than sorry. Probably a good thing if I am there, because if just one of those damn things gets loose…
Why that dumbshit, Michael, wanted to take the chance of having a group of extremely dangerous M’ithincti around, better known as ‘squids,’ was beyond him. The large octopus-like creatures were mean as hell, and just one swat from their bulbous, tentacle-like appendages, could easily kill a man. They were nothing but trouble, until their neural inhibiting devices could be implanted, making them docilely brain-dead for the most part. Actually, Burke did know why Michael had them, and he shuddered at the thought of it.

It had become a growing fetish over the last hundred years, illegal on Federation worlds now, but not here, not on Slave World. Many of the high-class ‘ladies’ that Michael entertained on a regular basis at his parties, enjoyed being pleasured by those very same tentacles.
Disgusting…

Burke slung a standard Fleet issue MR9 laser rifle over his shoulder, securing the weapon’s locker, heading out the front door. His thoughts, and growing hard-on, drifted back to the diminutive Fleet pilot that went by the call sign Venom. He knew exactly what he’d be forced to do later tonight, because of it.

It seemed like she was always in such a good mood, with a natural bounce in her step that made Burke smile whenever he saw her, not to mention, she was one of the best pilots he’d ever known. Regretfully, she’d been transferred before he had ever worked up the courage to thank her for saving his life.
A quiet
dinner with her would have been nice, or maybe a Plasma-Light Symphony? I wonder what she’s up to these days.
With her brilliant military record, the sky’s the limit. Whatever it is, I’m sure she’s not bored out of her mind, stuck on a planet full of delinquent perverts.

Neutral Trade World Darien IV,

Johannesburg Port, docking bay 34

The blinding arc from the ion welder, made erratic shadows of superheated light in the cramped maintenance compartment. It felt like my face and neck had been under a sandblaster for the last several hours, despite the welding shield attachment. I squinted up through dark goggles, shutting off the welder, lifting the respirator from my grimy, sweat-drenched face. The lingering haze of chemically tainted smoke made my nose burn with ozone razors.
That’s just going to have to do for now. A possible death in space from a blown seam is better than a guaranteed one any day of the week.
If the bounty hunter I slagged in town this morning had friends…

Besides running into a bounty hunter, my ship’s artificial intelligence had decided to take a dump on me a few hours ago. I still couldn’t believe its brain had fried like that, those things were supposed to last forever. No, actually I could believe it, my luck was holding true to form, either bad or worse. It didn’t help my situation, that work had been
especially
slow lately. Everything I’d stashed away over the last year had been sucked up in the span of a week by a restock of supplies, parts and the equipment rental necessary to maintain the bottomless money pit I called home. I barely had enough cash on hand to purchase another AI, let alone make the repairs necessary to keep me flying, I hope. In addition to that, there was the exorbitant cost for the docking fees I had to pay, for a fraction of the time I actually needed. I really didn’t have a choice this time, I needed the relatively safe and modern dry-dock facility of a neutral trade world to overhaul the atmospheric drive of my ship, instead of half-assing it again on some backwater shit hole, like I tended to frequent, more often than not.
Which reminds me
,
my landing permit expires in
…

I pulled up the sleeve on my stained and grungy flight suit, to reveal an out of date wrist-com that had seen better days.
Less than an hour, shit!
The Johannesburg port authority didn’t play games when it came to dealing with independent pilots like myself: you either left when you were supposed to, paid an ungodly extension fee, or let them take your ship. The last two weren’t an option, as far as I was concerned.

“John, what’s the status on the AI, we’re almost out of time?” John was my decades old droid that I’d picked up cheap, a few years ago. I relied on him much more than I should, but I didn’t really have a choice. For the most part, he was nothing more than an highly advance automaton, following orders, acting within his strict programming guidelines, with only limited free thought or deductive reasoning, unlike his more advanced brothers, the AI. He was a decent enough co-pilot, and his electronics and astrogation programming were okay, but as much as I hated to admit it, I’d purchased him mainly to keep me company.

“I have just finished the AI’s final formatting and integration into the ship’s mainframe Captain,” his somewhat synthesized voice replied. “But I’m afraid-”

“Great! We’ll be lifting off in thirty-”

“We may have a problem. The AI-”

“What problem?” I painfully climbed out of the hole I’d been working in for the last two hours, trying to stretch away the stiffness. I pulled off my goggles with a huff, running a hand through my matted, butter-blonde hair in frustration.
What the hell’s wrong now? Why couldn’t anything go right, for a change?

“Captain, I was unable to purchase a new AI that would be satisfactory for your needs, with the money allotted. I found a used one, Mark, as it calls itself, but he has numerous personality quirks that you may find offensive. I’m sorry Captain; it was the best I could do.”

“What model is it?”

“A Pencore 3B.”

I winced, throwing my head back, closing my eyes.
Why me?
No wonder he got it so cheap. Pencore had discontinued that model years ago, and for good reason. It had a high-end brain core, more than adequate to handle the ship, but the 3Bs’ had an unexplained propensity to develop quirky, off the wall personalities no matter how many times you wiped their memory, and set their personality blocks to the lowest setting.

“We don’t ‘ave time to find another one, so we’ll just has to deal with him as best we can.” My life-long nemesis, in the form of a thick, grammar mutilating Southern accent, started to make its reemergence. That always seemed to happen whenever I got overly flustered, or was completely exhausted. I happened to be suffering from both of those conditions at the moment. “Why don’tcha start the pre-launch checks, while I get’s things closed up?”

“Yes, Captain.”

I can honestly say that the only good thing to come out of my maintenance layover on Darien IV was that I’d picked up an unexpected contract for the Mandolin Cartel. It was a big money slave and weapons haul this time, unlike the pithily ones I’d managed to scrounge up recently. The drawback was, I had to make the cargo pick up on Orvus Prime first, and I
loathed
making a pick up on any Federation planet. It was still considered a level-three colony world, but that didn’t mean it was even close to being safe for me. The Star Marshals were always on the prowl in hopes of catching one of the Cartels red-handed for a change, and since I happened to work for them more often than not, that made me a prime target on their hit list. The warrant currently out for my arrest meant a lifelong stay on a penal colony several times over, if not worse, for some of the crap I’ve pulled over the years.

A ground-based sting operation was only the start of my concerns, because I still had the gauntlet of Federation picket ships that circled Darien like a pack of wolves to consider, first. If that wasn’t bad enough, I was going to have to brave another picket line of satellite surveillance drones before landing on Orvus Prime, and then make it back out again undetected.
Who knows, maybe it’ll be a milk run this time?
Yeah right, nothing was ever easy for me. I’ve been living by the seat of my pants, hedging on borrowed time for most of my life already, so why should things be different for me now?

I paused after stowing my scattered array of tools in the recessed compartment beside the maintenance hatch, wiping my grubby hands on the rump of my flight suit, looking out over the massive expanse of my patchwork ship from above. She was a two-hundred-year-old,
mostly
reliable class-2 light-bulk freighter that was nearing the limit how many band-aids I could slap on, and still keep her going. The ‘Space Tramp’ was on her last leg, but then again, I’ve been saying that from the moment I’d first laid eyes on her. It didn’t matter if she was a piece of junk though, because she was
my
piece of junk.

“Just one more haul baby girl, and then maybe I can afford to get’cha ya fixed up the way you deserve,” I sighed lovingly, bending down to pat the scored and pot-marked metal of her hull. Maybe if I’d known this would be the last time I’d see the Tramp like this, I would have come up with something a little more meaningful to say.

***

The dim glow of Darien IV’s upper stratosphere began to fade from the cockpit view screen, giving way to the inky blackness of space. I felt a bump, almost like a hiccup, pass through the Tramp’s hull, when I transferred from atmospheric to standard star-drive.
Damn, I thought I fixed that.

John, in all his synthetic glory, sat next to me in the cramped two-seater cockpit. His vaguely life-like eyes, which never came into focus, were locked on the sensor display waiting for any sign that our planetary breakaway had been detected. Even in the dim red of post launch lighting, I swore I could see an intent ‘human’ stare of seriousness etched in his face. I knew he couldn’t be nervous, but I sure as hell was. This was the moment of truth; we were about to enter the Federation far orbit picket line.

Thus far everything had been golden. I’d taken a roundabout flight path after leaving Johannesburg, blending in with the commercial traffic as best I could, before engaging my jammers and making a run for it. Sometimes, the best way to hide was in plain sight. Fleet was no doubt watching all the usual backdoors and unauthorized flight corridors, like a hawk. I didn’t think the Trade Corporation would send word ahead of my launch; there was no love lost between them and the Feds, but all it would take is one greedy narc to get wind of my identity, and I was screwed.

I broke into a cold sweat, holding my breath, beginning to pray. Because of the Haley Accord of ‘30, Fleet wasn’t allowed to actively scan Darien or any ships still within its planetary boundary, but what if they’d gotten a visual on the Tramp at some point, and ran it through their database? What if the new, yet second hand countermeasure suit and cloaking upgrade I’d recently installed, wasn’t up to the challenge of defeating military grade hardware? So far it seemed to be doing the job, but if just one of those Fleet weenie’s noticed even a slight discrepancy in his sensor returns… With the current state my ship was in, I seriously doubted if I could outrun a patrol boat; let alone a modern System Corvette.

Fortunately for me, picket duty was about as boring as it got, and if I’d timed this correctly it should be close to shift change on board ship. The sensor techs would be anxious for their relief to show, lulled into a near comatose state from staring at their screens for the last twelve hours. My ace in the hole was that if Fleet personal still held true to form as when I was in, only one of three things would be buzzing around inside their heads at the moment: chow, sleep or a quick roll in the sack before their next duty shift. Who wanted to waste time on a slight sensor glitch that was probably nothing anyway, when they had a wet and wild piece of ass waiting for them in their bunk, right? I’d waited in plenty of bunks over the years, so you trust me on this one.

I smiled with a rare sense of personal satisfaction, so far so good. The Fed ships continued to move further away on their deep orbit station.
You can always count on Fleet to come through in a pinch
I scoffed, inputting the jump point data into the navigation computer. The Tramp diligently responded, beginning the lazy turn to a new heading, and hopefully the big score that I needed for a change.

I finally allowed myself to relax, closing my tired and sore eyes against the first twinge of a massive headache. The chaotic last minute rush to finish the overhaul, punctuated with apprehensive fear, had been nerve racking to say the least. Besides that, the stim tabs I’d taken were beginning to wear off, and it was really doing me in this time. It felt like I hadn’t slept in a week, but it had only been 36 hours. At some point, my helmeted head flopped wearily on the padded headrest of my seat. I don’t remember dozing off, but I must have. My eyes snapped open at the sound of John’s voice.

“Are you okay, Captain?”

“Yeah I’m fine, just a little tired is all,” I mumbled groggily from under my darkened visor that contained a heads up display on the Tramp’s status. “Have the picket ships changed course, at all?”

“Negative. Passive sensors indicate an unchanged and prescheduled course per standard Federation doctrine. It would appear the ECM upgrade is functioning adequately. At our current speed we will reach jump point 411 in twelve hours. Captain, if I may be so bold,” John asked as hesitantly as his artificial brain would allow. “This would be a good opportunity for you to get some sleep. Your vital signs are well below the norm, and your biorhythm indicates excessive sleep deprivation. This is an unhealthy state for you to be in.”

I glanced at John with a sorrowful, yet loving smile. I had removed his artificial flesh coating, not long after purchasing him; it’d been in a sorry state, to say the least. The muted, gray metal of his under structure poking out randomly through the numerous rips and tears of his skin, made him look more inhuman than just taking it off all together. To tell you the truth, his appearance had kind of given me the creeps at first; it made him look like some sort of classic horror show zombie, or something.

It was hard to believe I relied on a synthetic, a machine to look after me now. In a strange sort of way I cared for John, just as much as he was capable of doing for me, within the confines of his programming.
I used to laugh at women that developed relationships with droids. Mind you, some of the newer models were so life like you couldn’t tell the difference, but not my dearest John. I was constantly reminded of what he was, whenever the cold, lifeless metal of his body pressed against me. Most of the time, I felt nothing but shame afterwards, like I wasn’t good enough for a real person any longer. I don’t know, maybe I’m not.