Slave World (3 page)

“No, I think I’ll wait until we hit the jump point. If something happens…”

The cool touch of John’s articulated fingers stroked my shoulder length hair, with the intended perception of incapable love. “Margo, it is well within my ability to pilot the ship to our destination, and you need your rest. You know how I worry about you?”
God, I’m pathetic!
I’d even altered his programming and English lexicon, so that I had the false perception of a caring partner at my side.

“Maybe you’re right,” I sighed wearily, unclipping my flight harness, coming to my feet. “I’m about shot-out at the moment. Wake me if anything unexpected happens, okay?”

“Of course, Margo.” His hand slid downward, cupping the cushy firmness of my backside, and I closed my eyes with a soft purr. I liked it when he did that. It was all an illusion, I knew that, but that was all I had anymore.

“Should I wake you at a predetermined time? It has also been over fifteen hours since you have eaten anything.”

I dropped my helmet in the seat, before returning his unconditional affection, gently stroking the top of his smooth head that had originally been covered by a mop of sandy brown hair. Just like the Tramp, John may not be much, but he was mine.

“Sure, wake me when we reach the jump point if I’m not already up, I’ll grab something to eat then. Goodnight, John.”

“Goodnight, Margo, sleep well.”

My booted steps echoed mutely along the mid-ship corridor that had once been surfaced with a layer of sound damping and traction matting. Like most things in regards to my ship, it had been worn to unserviceability, and replacing it didn’t even grace the bottom of my long list of minor repairs. I rounded the corner, stepping through the door to my cabin that stood open, more often than not. I was by myself, more or less, making privacy an obsolete concern of mine long ago.

The Tramp had originally been designed for a crew of four, but with the modern marvels of automation software and an active AI to handle the tedious job of monitoring the ship’s systems now, I pretty much ran the whole show by myself. It could be a pain in the ass at times, especially when maintenance came into the picture, but at least I had plenty of room in what would otherwise be cramped living conditions. Besides a small galley that doubled as my dining area, I had three more cabins of equally small size for my own for personal use. One of them, I’d turned into a modest rec area with an interactive holo-projector and Galactic Net access; it was pretty much my only link to the outside world during a haul. Because of my lack of funds, the other two rooms stood empty. Needless to say, I got
really
bored during transit. That’s where John came into the picture.

I stopped in front of a full-length mirror, looking at myself for the first time in three days. The dark bags under my eyes were long enough to trip over, and my hair was a tangled rat’s nest. I needed a shower…bad. My shoulder holster went on a magnetic hook beside the bed, and my baggy flight suit slid off forming a pile of synthetic refuse at my feet. Standing at just less than 5’5, and weighing close to 165 pounds now, I was reminded by my reflection of how I’d let myself go over the years. My once slim and desirable figure had already begun the inevitable downfall of shapeless ambiguity, which comes with neglected middle age. I wasn’t very pretty to start with in my opinion either: average, tediously average was about the best I could pull off with my overabundance of teeth, and a light splattering of dark freckles dotting my cheeks. I could probably pass for a blonde Pippi Longstockings, if I put my hair up in pigtails.
No, I’m not much to look at anymore, am I?
I sighed despondently.

The Velcro strap of my wide-band bra ripped the air, releasing my clammy breasts with a tingling sigh. I wasn’t what you would call ‘well endowed’ up top either, and things really hadn’t changed much since puberty. As foolish as it sounds for someone of my age, I still felt self-conscious, if not inadequate, when comparing myself to most other women, but then again, I guess I always had.

I pushed in my shoulders, cupping my boobs to form a meager amount of make-believe cleavage in the mirror. A ruing sigh, and a smirk of disgust, followed shortly thereafter.
Strike three, you’re out!
Guys had a thing for big tits; they always have, and always will.
Why? What the hell was so damn special about having a massive rack, anyway?
There wasn’t a man alive that could keep their hands off them, even my pale excuse for womanhood. It was like they had…
That’s it,
a delirious, sleep deprived cackle crawled its way from my chest.
The mystery’s finally over
!
Men were born with boob magnets in their hands.

I could laugh about it now, but my sense of mammary-based insecurity had been especially bad when I was growing up. It didn’t help matters that I’d been a bit of a tomboy growing up: boy’s clothes, catching frogs down by the swamp, a rough and tumble game of full contact Football with the boys, followed by skinny dipping out at Hennington Lake. That kind of stuff was okay when I was a kid, but as I got older… Most times I felt like I wasn’t a girl at all, just a pretender that happened to have a vagina, by chance of fate.

I dropped heavily on my double bunk, unbuckling my boots, slowly being consumed by a dark and tired mood after belittling myself in the mirror. I knew what it was, yet was powerless to stop it as usual; the depression I’ve battled with, off and on throughout most of my life, had a nasty habit of unexpectedly rearing its ugly head.

My thoughts began to swirl, forming a bottomless vortex of lifelong regret and self-pity, as I thought about the only man that had ever truly given a damn about me. I could still remember the morning he died like it was yesterday, so sudden, so unexpected. My father had been the center of my universe when I was a little girl. We did everything together. It’s funny, because I still don’t see it as sexual abuse, even today, except in a technical sense. He was the only man that ever loved me, that made me feel needed and special, and that
was all I’ve ever wanted in my life.

My little sister Aurora and I were finishing breakfast before heading off to school, and dad was on his way out the door for another 16 hour double shift in the infernal hell of molten durasteel production, at the metallurgy plant in town. Daddy was a good man, and worked hard to provide for us, yet always made time for Aurora and I in his busy life. He stopped on his way out the door, to tell us one of his stupidly funny jokes.

“Daddy, that was really dumb.” He laughed of course.

“I know. See you tonight princess.” Then he was gone. The last thing I’d said to him when he was alive was how dumb his joke was. He was killed in a freak accident that morning, it shouldn’t have happened, but it did.

“A robotic arm at the plant gave way due to structural fatigue,”
the man had told my mother.
“The backup safety rigging had been improperly secured, your husband was killed instantly by the falling pallet of machinery, I’m sorry.”
The investigation later found that the operator had been drunk on the job. Of course he’d been fired afterwards, but it was a moot point by then.

Like most normal people, mom and dad didn’t have the money to keep a memory cube and brain pattern tape on file, in the event of an untimely death. The cost alone of keeping a clone on ice with one of the big cryo-firms, even if my parents hadn’t been purists, was astronomical in itself. Daddy was dead and would never be coming back, no matter how much I prayed for it. I was twelve years old at the time; that was when my life changed forever.

I looped my fingers around the string of my panties, and they slipped down my legs with an involuntarily sniff of neglected female hygiene; that was a bad idea on my part.
Ugh! God I stink.
It reminded me of tuna simmering garlic sauce.
The hell with it, I can always wash the sheets later,
I silently scowled,
crawling over the haphazard mountain of covers, reaching into the wall-drawer for my habitual dose of sleep tabs. I hadn’t been able to sleep soundly for years, without them.

Mom learned to cope with his loss by becoming an invert alcoholic, while I lashed out in any way I could: hanging out with the wrong crowd, drugs, and then sex, not the closeness and love like with daddy, made its way into the hell I called life. Even if it was only a twisted shadow of what I’d received from him, it temporarily eased my pain with a sense of false security, and imaginary self-worth. My grades continued to slip, and my behavior worsened. Mom couldn’t handle me any longer, and our relationship hit a low point. I was sent to Springdale, a group home for emotionally disturbed and troubled teens, not long after that.

I lived incognito on the streets for a few years after leaving Springdale. I couldn’t go back home, not after what I’d done to mom. The guilt of reality had finally set in; I’d only made the situation worse. No matter, there was always some guy willing to take me in for a guaranteed piece of ass every night, and because of it, my life corkscrewed into a haze of drug-induced nightmares, meaningless episodes of sex, and forgotten names. In many instances it turned into abuse, both physical and emotional, and I accepted it. It was a way of life for me now.

I nearly died after a massive overdose of Crystal Lace. Maybe in the back of my mind that was the sought after freedom I’d wanted all along, but instead, I finally woke up. I joined Fleet after I was released from the court mandated rehab clinic, another war had started and they needed bodies regardless of my past. Some of my test scores had been extremely high, freakishly so I was told which surprised the hell out of me. It seemed I had the reflexes, and the natural aptitude for piloting, which earned me a coveted spot at Fleet’s Officer Academy. Whatever- I hadn’t given a shit at the time what I did, so long as I didn’t have to pretend to like a guy any longer, so I had a place to crash at night.

Surprisingly, little changed during my ten-year haul with Fleet. I thought that maybe military service would be a turning point in my life, a chance to get cleaned up and settle down. With age comes wisdom, right? Bullshit. I was still ‘the party girl’ minus the drugs, now it was booze. I still whored around, and always ended up at the wild parties fucking guys I hardly even knew. When I was on a roll, I would have sex with four or five different guys in the span of a few hours, sometimes at the same time, it just depended on my mood, I guess.

I was a hopeless addict by now, and sex was my fix, a way of self-medicating. All I needed was the wonderful, all consuming sensation of another orgasm to make me forget about the horrors of the last mission, or when one of my friends had been killed. My endless quest for sexual release was the only thing that kept me sane, in an insane war of impending death and countless near misses. It helped me to forget about the past, to forget about everything, but the here and now.

I was at rock bottom after leaving Fleet, and I almost ended it all, but that’s when Tiffany Weber came into my life. We bought the Tramp together, and went into business for ourselves. She became my best friend and my partner, and eventually my lover. She saved me, and my life changed again. Then, like everything else good that had mistakenly fallen into my lap, she was taken away from me. A goddamn Star Marshal killed her. I should have known something was fishy about the whole set-up. It was too perfect and paid far more than what the going rate was, for hauling black market bio-drugs.

I hid beneath the imaginary protection
of the Videlli
sheets that she’d bought for our first and only anniversary together, gripping them with balled fists of vengeful wrath. I killed the son of a bitch, along with three other Marshals in a quick and bloody shootout, but it was too late for Tiff. She died in my arms, moments before I had to blast my way past a small blockade of law enforcement ships, to save my own skin. Then my fear turned to misery-born hate, and I stopped running from my pain. I didn’t care if I died or not, Tiff was gone and I had nothing worth living for anyway. I may have been piloting a broken down freighter, but I hadn’t earned the call sign of Venom by making supply runs during the war. And so I killed. I killed…and I cried for her loss…and I lived.

“John?” I croaked, pulling the covers up tightly around my neck. The voice activated intercom responded instantly.

“Yes Margo?”

“Would…would you come here, please?”

“Of course, Margo, initiating auto-pilot sequence.”

“Well it’s about time,” a smooth and very masculine sounding voice, oozed from the speaker of my room. I sat up, wide eyed, looking around. “I was beginning to wonder if that numbnut droid was ever going to take me off standby-lockout.”

“Who’s there?”

“The name’s Mark, sweet-cheeks. Why don’t you pull those covers back down, I haven’t seen a set of tits in almost three years, even if they aren’t much bigger than a couple of oranges. You know babe, you should really consider getting a boob-job. Probably wouldn’t hurt your chances to get some work done on your face, either.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood-on-end as my imperfections were dissected with an ease of condescending arrogance. I couldn’t even begin to count the number of times I’d heard comments like that, in the past.

“If it’s any consolation to ease your
delicate
feminine ego, I’d still hit it, but then again, I’ve never been picky, either.”
Please don’t tell me this is what my new AI’s going to be like?