[u][b]Yerma Polvorienta Planet Nuevo Arauco[/b][/u] Dappled sunlight shone down on Sofia, filtering through a lush canopy of gargantuan trees as she walked slowly through a meadow of showy red flowers situated between the woods. Sofia tilted her head upward as her eyes went up to the treetops maybe 30 meters above her head where songbirds chittered cheerfully in the lacy, star-shaped foliage that she recognized instantly as cannabis leaves. Warblers and wrens fluttered about the moss-laden branches, skipping up and down the limbs and pecking at little insects creeping among the lacy leaves and resinous trichomes. Sofia's eyes followed a pair of warblers as they dove out of canopy and swooped just over the flowered meadow, bringing her gaze to the flowers she stood amidst. Surrounding Sofia were thousands of crimson red poppies rising up to her chest on swollen stems. She allowed her bony fingers to brush across the flowers as she stepped through the meadow; their red petals dislodged at the slightest touch and disappeared amid the poppy leaves and nascent flowerbuds hidden underneath the blanket of red flowers. As she approached the center of the meadow, a breeze blew through the forest and rustled the giant cannabis trees. The wind tousled Sofia's locks of scraggly, greasy hair and coursed through the poppies. With only the slightest disturbance, the poppies shed their red petals into the wind. A flurry of red coursed past Sofia as the flowers were dispersed, exposing the thousands of bulbous green opium pods hidden beneath the carpet of poppies. Out of curiosity, Sofia plucked one of the the opium pods off the stem with a satisfying pop. She examined the round green globe as she spun the pod in her fingers, and was surprised to find a a series of pits, bumps, and ridges on the pod's otherwise smooth surface that made it look exactly like a human face. [i]Sofia's[/i] face. Her likeness in the opium pod had its eye shut firmly, its lips twitched and trembled. Sofia looked down to the other pods and saw faces on the other opium pods as well. She saw the likeness of her Vidrio dealer in one pod, and the visage of her girlfriend that had first introduced her to heroin in another. Every single opium pod in the meadow bore a human face; each one locked in fitful, feverish sleep. Sofia looked down again to the pod in her hand bearing her own likeness, and noticed tears of reddish-brown opium resin dripping through her shut eyes. As Sofia gazed at the dripping opium pod, the warm, dappled sunlight transitioned to an infernal orange glow. Thick smoke filled the sky as the cannabis trees burned all around her like mammoth torches. Embers drifted from the ardent tree boughs down to the meadow, where they began to fall against the opium poppies and ignite. The faces on the opium pods woke in screaming terror as they were consumed by the fire. Birdsong had been replaced with agonized shrieks as thousands of faces in the opium pods were consumed in wildfire. She looked down at the opium pod and saw her face boiling away in bubbling opium resin. The flesh of the opium pod's face had melted away to reveal a skull that yawned open and gave a piercing scream. - Sofia bolted up out of her fever dream drenched in sweat. She could still hear agonized screaming, but the burning poppy meadow was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Sofia found herself surrounded by the hoodoos and mesas of the dusty badlands that surrounded Ciudad Capolicán, all moving past at a dizzying speed. She was laying in a small stowing platform mounted on the back of a large speederbike hovering a meter up above the dusty surface of the planet. Two other women - one of which was screaming from heroin withdrawal - lay beside her on the cramped platform. It seemed that their captors were not at all concerned with the possibility of escape, for the only kind of restraint on the stowing platform was a short rail crudely welded to the sides to keep any "cargo" from rolling out. Their arms were bound with zip ties, but their captors hadn't bothered with binding their legs together. Not that there was much opportunity for escape. The speederbike was cruising across the wasteland at every bit of 300 km per hour; attempting to jump out at such a speed would be suicidal. And even if escape were possible, no human would survive very long out in the [i]Yerma[/i] without provisions. Hot days, cold nights, dust storms, and polluted water in the stagnant pools of dried up arroyos that crisscrossed the badlands would cut life expectancy of a healthy straggler out in the wilderness down to perhaps two or three days; nowhere near enough time to hike the potentially-hundreds of kilometers back to Ciudad Capolicán, El Presidio, or whatever the nearest settlement out here was. "Aww, did the baby have a bad dream?" The kidnapper in the rear seat of the speederbike taunted over the howling of the wind, noticing that Sofia was awake. Sofia could see his fat, warty face through the glare of the wind visor of his helmet, and noted that he was not one of the emaciated addicts who had originally kidnapped her. "You missing the needle already, [i]zorra[/i]?" She was. It had been less than a day since she last shot up Vidrio, but already Sofia was starting to feel nausea and aching joints. Much longer without a fix, and she too would probably screaming in agony just like her fellow captive. "Well, ya better get used to it. Some rich bastard on Juralus is gonna be mad if his mail-order bride turns out to be a fucking junkie." Sofia was repulsed. She said nothing, but the disgust on her face was abundantly clear. "Don't be such a prude," the fat man said, rolling his eyes. "Nothing new for a whore like you. A girl as pretty as you has certainly sucked a dick or three in your day to score some Vidrio. Besides it could be worse: you're not being sold off to the Black Sun. Your homelier friend to the left... she probably won't be so lucky." Sofia took a glance down at the girl laying silently to her left, still knocked out or sedated. She was hardly homely but she had a mousier face and her nose bent ever so slightly to the left. Sofia would never consider her ugly, but she could not deny that she did not quite qualify as attractive. "What will they do with her, the Black Sun?" Sofia spoke up at last, concern for the stranger laying beside her written across her face "What do they want with her?" The fat captor shared none of Sofia's concern and gave an apathetic shrug. "I'unno. All I know is that the ladies that don't cut the mustard for offworld brides get sold off to Black Sun. They pay less, but I guess Saroyan's boys figure it's better to get something than nothing." "Saroyan's boys?" Sofia asked. "Offworlders. Pirates. The guys that actually run the show on this shitheap of a planet... aaand there they are." Directly ahead of the speederbike in the distance was a dropship idling on the valley floor between two mesas. Perched on three landing legs, the spacecraft vented compressed atmosphere in puffs of vapor while the vessel's crew loaded crates up a metal ramp into the hull with hoverjacks. Men armed with laser carbines standing guard around the dropship at once directed their attention to the approaching speederbike. As the speederbike drew near, one of the armed men pointed to a spot a few meters in front of him while his companions readied their weapons in case of trouble. Sofia's captors slowed the bike to a crawl once they had arrived and came to a stop directly where the armed man had gestured. Kickstands released from the undersides of the speederbike as the craft slowly hovered down and came to a rest on the ground before the driver killed the engine. As the two captors stepped over the seats of their bike, a balding man with wiry gray hair receding from the top of his head stepped down from the loading ramp of the dropship and approached the speederbike. Donning what appeared to be a bathrobe and a dirty tank top over a pot belly with grease-stained cargo pants, he was about the farthest thing from the stereotypical brutish-looking space pirate that Sofia could imagine. Unassuming as the pirate leader was, the giant laser pistol holstered on the side of his robe and his attache of brutish paramilitaries demonstrated that he was not to be trifled with. "What can I do for you fine gentlemen? Brought me something good, I hope." The pirate smuggler greeted over. It was an offworld accent - distinct from Nuevo Arauco's Spanglish dialect. Sofia had difficulty understanding him. "Girls," said the fat man, seizing Sofia by the wrist bindings and pulling her up to her feet to show the smuggler. "They'll make some lonely bastard on one of the core worlds very happy. 2,000 credits for the pretty one, 1,500 for the screamer, and 1,000 for the one that got hit with the ugly stick." The speederbike's driver grabbed the shouting woman suffering from withdrawals and brought her onto her feet. She groaned and wailed as her handler brought her over to the pirate smuggler, who studied her up and down as one might look over an item at auction. He gave a frown as she struggled against her captor. "Heroin withdrawals," the smuggler noted. "You really dug deep for these girls, didn't you?" "Half the goddamn planet's hooked on it," said the fat kidnapper. "Not just this one either. That shit's all over the frontier worlds. I'm starting to see more of it in the core worlds now too. In any case, nobody wants heroin junkies for brides. I can get them off of it, but it takes time and meds and obviously that eats into my bottom line." "Spare us the sob story and make a counter offer." "Well, let me just see what we're dealing with first of all," the smuggler said, producing a small plastic device the size of a thumbnail out of his robe pocket. He looked over Sofia before approaching and grabbing her by the wrist. "Hold still," the pirate smuggler snarled as Sofia drew away from him. Her captor held her still as he pressed the plastic device against her wrist. A tiny spring-loaded needle pricked her wrist and drew a infinitesimal amount of blood. SOfia winced and began sucking on the pinprick on her wrist as the smuggler produced a small tablet from his robe pocket and inserted the sampling lancet into the tablet. An hourglass icon flashed on the tablet's screen for a few moments as the blood sample processed. An auditory chime sounded as the results flashed onscreen. ANALYSIS COMPLETE... SPECIES: [i]H. sapiens[/i] - 100.0% match ETHNOTYPE: Caucasoid - 58.4% match BLOOD TYPE: AB RHESUS FACTOR: Positive SEX: Female BIOLOGICAL AGE: 28-31 PREGNANCY: Negative ANEMIA: [color=red]Positive[/color] BLOOD GLUCOSE: [color=red]3.9 mmol/L[/color] DIABETES: Negative LEUKOCYTE COUNT: [color=red]3328/L[/color] METASTATIC CANCER: Negative CONDITIONS DETECTED: Asthmatic bronchitis, [color=red]Hepatitis A, Hepatitis C, HIV, Kadirov's Syndrome, Narcotic Use - Opiates[/color] "Jesus, she's been around the block," the smuggler exclaimed, scrolling through the analysis readout before returning the tablet to his pocket. "Nothing I can't fix, but that takes time and money." "I'll break even on her at 2,000 credits," the smuggler said as he gestured to Sofia. "But even at a discount, I can't make money on the other girls. Black Sun will take 'em but not for anything close to what you're asking." "You're not giving me over to the Black Sun!" The woman suffering from withdrawals snarled. "500 credits each?" Countered the fat kidnapper, ignoring the addict's lamentation. "Heheh, try [i]300[/i] each." "Whatever, 300 for these two, 2,000 for the looker." "Deal." "Fuck you!" The woman suffering from withdrawals shouted. "You're not taking me to Black Sun!" The screaming addict broke away from her captor's grip and immediately began running away from the dropship. Her handler started to follow after her and the pirate paramilitaries looked to their leader for direction. The smuggler said nothing, but drew his laser pistol from the holster on his waist. He took a few seconds to adjust his aim before squeezing the trigger. The unmistakable report of a laser discharge - a thunderous, sizzling crack - resounded across the badlands as a single pulse of red-hot plasma was loosed at the fleeing woman. The beam ran just over the pursuing kidnapper's shoulder, singing the hair on his head as it impacted nigh-instantaneously on the shoulderblade of the escapee. Her chest exploded in a spectacular spray of vapor, blood, and viscera before she tumbled lifelessly into the gravely soil of the badlands. "Anyone else entertaining notions of escape?" Asked the smuggler as he lowered his pistol. Only the wind blowing though the valley and the hissing of the dropship could be heard. "Good. Now get these two girls tranqed and stowed and fetch 2,300 credits for these fine gentlemen. It's time we head back to Socordia. That planet's enough of a shithole; I don't want to spend anymore time than I have to on this one. The two kidnappers began to protest about not getting paid for the slain woman, but in the presence of the carbine-armed guards, their complaints quickly died out. Sofia exchanged a terrified glance with her fellow captive as she felt a needle of tranquilizer embed itself in her neck.