gorgenmast

Eden(Small-scale Space NRP)

Radak Station
Planet Socordia

Ifoise Mbuku scowled up at the early morning sky, staring intently at a very bright star situated directly overhead. Mbuku knew that the brightest object in the crepuscular sky - save for the planet's sun just now cresting over the mountain range to the east - was no star, but rather a starship. Rasvan Saroyan had parked the Bushwhacker - his destroyer and mobile heroin processing plant - in orbit directly above Mbuku's outpost on Socordia. Even now, the Bushwhacker had it's spinal-mounted laser cannon aimed directly at Mbuku and the Radak Station outpost. Although the facility was effectively a large bunker half buried into Socordia's southern salt desert, even the outpost's thick concrete walls would provide little protection against an armament powerful enough to effortlessly punch through starship armor and vaporize cities. The pirate lord's ultimatum to Mbuku was unambiguous: surrender himself and everything he had to Saroyan within two hours or become the center of a blackened crater a kilometer wide.

"I'll give you everything I got, liddle man," said Mbuku, staring up at the star above him with a malign smile. "Just you wait."

Mbuku stood atop the roof of the outpost's bunkerized compound. Equal parts militarized heroin warehouse, forward operating base, and starship hangar, Radak Station was well armed and more than equipped to launch an attack on the Bushwhacker if Mbuku so chose. Two anti-orbital cannons the size of large houses were mounted onto pillbox turrets on the corners of the building capable of launching hull-penetrating tungsten darts or high-explosive warheads into any orbiting target at relativistic speed. A surprise salvo from such artillery would easily cripple the Bushwhacker, but with Saroyan waiting in orbit directly above watching his every move, Mbuku would not have the element of surprise. He knew that if he wanted to survive this encounter alive, he would have to employ subterfuge.

Killing Saroyan would be easy enough for Mbuku, for he was no stranger to killing men. He killed his first man at 11, fighting against pirate invaders on his homeworld of Katanga. By the age of 15, Mbuku had joined the the pirates simply because they paid better. Over the course of his life, he had fought in brushfire conflicts on six worlds and killed over one hundred combatants, human or otherwise. Killing Saroyan would be easy enough, sure, but then what? Saroyan's franchise of pirates throughout the frontier worlds and beyond would never submit to Mbuku.

But if he could take the Bushwhacker, along with its onboard processing facility, what choice would Saroyan's pirates have?

Mbuku had been skimming off the top of his heroin shipments up to Saroyan since the beginning. But to neglect to send up half of the scheduled shipment, Saroyan would certainly notice that. Mbuku was counting on it. And just as Mbuku had planned, Saroyan had taken the bait.

Socordia's sun had now risen well above the peaks of the massif to the east, and Mbuku could already feel the temperature climbing rapidly. Shimmering mirages were starting to form on the low lying spots of the white desert that surrounded Radak Station. In just an hour or two, outdoor temperatures would rise to a lethal 60 C; the horrendous heat of Socordia's unterraformed salt deserts served as an added defense against maroon bandits and escaped slaves from the opium farming regions. Mbuku navigated the station's maze of rooftop air conditioning units before descending through the rooftop access to retreat back into air conditioned comfort.

The pirate warlord descended a ladder into an open, cavernous space. All along the walls, giant metal shelving held entire pallets full of black tar heroin compressed into huge tacky bricks, not a single one of which was being loaded onto either of the two freighter starships docked in the bunker's vertical hangar silos. One of the the starships was being loaded, but not with heroin. Teams of Mbuku's subordinates directed hoverjacks bearing pressurized metal crates into the hold of one of the freighters. He stepped down onto the concrete floor of the bunker and made his way over to the freighters.

"Shouldn't we be wearing some kind of hazardous material suit handling this shit?" Mbuku overhead one of the pirates steering a hoverjack remark as he approached. "If one of these crates busts open-"

"If one of these crates busts," one of the other porters interrupted, "then we're all dead even if we're wearing spacesuits. That's the thing about fusogenic acid. It fuses - or sticks - to any organic compound. That means it'll adhere and eat its way through any suits, even the rubber fittings under power armors and exosuits, and then it'll fuse to you. It'll eat through your skin and into your bloodstream. It volatilizes into vapor and gets breathed in, and if you get it in your lungs, then it melts your lungs from the inside out. Just a little inside a hazmat helmet will kill you painfully and slowly as it melts your eyes and turns the inside of your lungs into bloody mush. Completely exposed like we are now, if one of these crates were to spring a leak, then we'd be turned into pools of red sludge before you even felt anything. Trust me, you're better off without a suit."

"Jesus..." his companion shuddered.

"Back in my previous life as a merc, we used it regularly in brushfire wars on shitty frontier planets. Unlike a lot of chemical weapons, this stuff actually works better in low-pressure atmospheres like the kind you see on unterraformed rocks. The low atmospheric pressure lets the fusogenic acid volatilize and disperse easier, which means it gets on more people and scores more kills. The core worlds try to ban it, but unfortunately for them and fortunately for ne'er-do-wells like us, it's relatively easy to make. A good chemistry student following a recipe for it could probably whip up enough for a grenade using common lab equipment. It's scary stuff, even in small quantities. I don't even want to know what boss man is planning to do with several tons of it."

"Das enough chatter," Mbuku barked. "We got less den two hours to load dis ship. Keep wasting time, and I'll test dis acid out on you lot first."

"No worries boss man," said the more knowledgeable of the porters. "Only another two crates two go. Then all we gotta do is set up the remote detonators, put them on the crates, and they're good to go."

"Well den get to it. Finish up here, get your guns and report to de other freighter. I want you lot dere in an hour or I'm leaving you."

Mbuku left his porters to finish their work as he went over to the other freighter. The warlord looked inside the hull and did not see any of the pressurized crates bearing deadly fusogenic acid, though his subordinates had loaded an assortment of munitions from around the station: few cases of grenades, some ammunition for kinetic weapons. Few other supplies would be coming with. Mbuku had been asked by his subordinates why they would not be bringing any of the heroin. He replied telling them that they had been promoted and some other chump would get stuck with Radak Outpost; though he had failed to specify just how their "promotion" would be taking place.

The pirate warlord made his way to the freighter's cockpit and took his seat at the helm of the vessel. Through the windshield of the cockpit, only the metal bulkheads of the hangar silo could be seen. But in just a few short hours, this vessel's cockpit would provide a front-row seat to the mutiny that would end the generation-long lull in piracy and threaten billions of lives across the cluster.

Once seated at the helm of the vessel, Mbuku initiated a communications link and hailed the Bushwhacker.

"Mister Saroyan, my deepest apologies for de shortage of product and de delay. Loading of de product we do have on hand is nearly complete. In just a few short minutes I will be departing and I assure you, I am bringing wit me everyting I've got."

....

Suzumiyo,

Namaste. You are a beautiful child of Earth. Love is to be made. Breakfast is to be eaten. Know these thing and go with Gaia. When the path is difficult to follow, heed the wisdom of the Ones Before:

Be like the turtle that sinks to the bottom of the well yet does not drown.
Be as the fish that traps itself in the net, but slips from the fisherman's hand into the sea.
Walk with the horse, but follow not in the path of the ox.
Tread not on the beetle.
Tread not on the lizard.

Amen.

Eden(Small-scale Space NRP)

Yerma Polvorienta
Planet Nuevo Arauco

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. Sofia's 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 Yerma 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, zorra?" 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: H. sapiens - 100.0% match
ETHNOTYPE: Caucasoid - 58.4% match
BLOOD TYPE: AB
RHESUS FACTOR: Positive
SEX: Female
BIOLOGICAL AGE: 28-31

PREGNANCY: Negative
ANEMIA: Positive
BLOOD GLUCOSE: 3.9 mmol/L
DIABETES: Negative
LEUKOCYTE COUNT: 3328/L
METASTATIC CANCER: Negative

CONDITIONS DETECTED: Asthmatic bronchitis, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis C, HIV, Kadirov's Syndrome, Narcotic Use - Opiates

"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 300 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.

I am naught but a fugitive

Mods=cods

Excluding mah boothang. Lub u bby

Jorick

IN A WORLD WHERE CUM IS WORTH MORE THAN GOLD

The One Word Story

There it is, a juicy squelch sucking sound from the Denny's dumpster. The neighborhood was alerted to check the street. They felt that Chinese people had entered their cul-de-sac. The paparazzi wanted to steal photos implicating that Steve ate the Chinese food dogs paste with worms, communists, vagina hair, and other pubic squirrel fetus parts. Seventeen year old, George the chronic

Eden(Small-scale Space NRP)

Bushwhacker
Low orbit over planet Socordia

Floating languidly in zero-g at the head of the Bushwhacker's bridge was an aging, bald-headed man barely a meter and a half in height if he were to stand upright planetside. His was a kind and grandfatherly visage, with a thin, resting smile though deep wrinkles and crow's feet radiating from his eyes suggested something other than the passage of time had aged him beyond his years. First impression might suggest that he was merely the father of one of the vessel's crew; proudly touring the charge of his accomplished son or daughter. Difficult though it might be to conceive at first appearance, the kindly-seeming fellow at the fore of the bridge was perhaps the most wanted criminal in the entire Cluster.

Though Rasvan Saroyan's relaxed, calm demeanor was misleading, his authority was demonstrated by the deferential distance allowed by the bridge's guard attache and the nervous glances stolen by ensigns from behind their holographic terminal screens. Between checking core outputs and monitoring the starship's myriad systems, the bridge crew watched anxiously as Saroyan stared pensively into the horizon directly ahead of the orbiting starship, where Socordia's anemic gray-blue atmosphere faded into the pitch blackness of space. From several thousand kilometers up, Saroyan watched as Socordia's surface rolled past under his feet. Vast mountains capped with frosty glaciers rose up from dusty, sun-baked deserts. Even when surveying the planet from the comfort of an orbiting starship, Socordia seemed like a miserable hellworld. And it was. But ten years of terraforming at tremendous expense had made the atmosphere somewhat breathable, and enough liquid water now flowed on the planet's surface to support life as Man knew it. Socordia now was only barely habitable, and that was all that was needed. Saroyan did not need to replicate the garden world of Parravon, not for the crop he wanted to produce.

As the Bushwhacker's orbit took the heavily-armored destroyer over Socordia's subtropical doldrums, Saroyan was delighted to bear witness to his cherished crop. Ribbons of blue meltwater from the planet's high, jagged peaks irrigated the lower valleys and wadis and coaxed bands of lush green from the surrounding deserts. And mixed within those bands of green were blushes of pink and red: poppyflowers blooming in such great numbers that they could be seen plainly from low orbit.

Even now, Saroyan could see the the reaping of this great harvest. Small freighters could be seen approaching to rendezvous with the Bushwhacker, rocketing skyward from depot-fortresses positioned deep in Socordia's deserts protected by hundreds of miles of sterile desert as well as redoubtable anti-orbital batteries. The pirate warlord knew their hulls to be laden with dozens of two-ton pallets of black tar heroin. Once refined into purer derivatives in the Bushwhacker's onboard processing lab, Socordia's fruits would be ready to be disseminated across the Inner Cluster, where the street value of a freighterload of black tar surpassed the yearly output value of entire planets.

The fortunes to be had were vast, but there was also so much that could go wrong. Much of Socordia's harvest - maybe a full half - would be seized at some point between Socordia's orbit and the crack dens of Mendicant. And despite Saroyan's reputation, despite his capacity to cause immense suffering, the lord of the Outer World Pirates still suffered a measure of breakage.

"Two shipments en route from the Belka Depot, sir," one of the ensigns reported to Saroyan as he depressed the mute button of his earpiece with an index finger.

"How much?" Saroyan asked as he watched through the windshield as the freighter ships slowed down for their approach with the Bushwhacker.

"A shade under 42 tons, sir," the same ensign reported. Saroyan acknowledged hm with an approving nod.

"And the Radak Depot should be ready for shipment when we pass over the southern latitudes again, no?"

"Erm, I'm afraid not sir. Radak Depot's output is still low. They're reporting that the harvest in Mbuku's sector was hampered by a wind storm that damaged much of their crop. They sent a memo stating that they can either send up their 26 tons, or we can wait until they have a full load."

Everyone on board the bridge knew at that instant that there would be trouble because of this. Saroyan's reflection in the windshield gave proof that his calm, kindly smile had withered into a frown upon hearing that. The pirate lord spun himself around to face the ensign.

"Twenty-six tons? Did I hear that correctly?"

"Y-yes sir," the ensign stuttered. "Radak Depot reports only 26 tons. If you'd like, I can respond to that memo and ask if-"

"Ask what?" Saroyan interrupted, obviously irritated but still perfectly calm. "If you want to ask them anything, ask them if Mbuku thinks I am a moron."

"Mbuku thinks he can disrespect me: that's it. I don't need to ask them anything, because I think it's clear to all of us what is going on here. I never considered Mbuku to be a clever man. A savage fighter and a capable commander sure, but a clever man he is clearly not. Not if he thinks he can so blatantly disrespect me."

"I regret that all of you had to bear witness to this," Saroyan said as he pushed himself off the deck and floated away from the windshield to the middle of the bridge. "I'm a fair man. My salary to all those in my employ is more than ample. So when someone like Mbuku tries to skim off the top - or in this case, rather obviously gouge - into the product, I feel disrespected. And unfortunately for you all, you're going to have to see what happens when I'm disrespected."

"Put this ship in synchronous orbit over Radak Depot. Once we're above Radak Depot, point every armament this vessel has at the depot. Let them know Mbuku has two hours to submit himself and everything he has before I glass him from orbit."

---

Ciudad Capolicán
Planet Nuevo Arauco

Gray, polluted rain pattered upon a ratty tarp draped sloppily over a twisted piece of rebar. With gray rainwater dripping slowly through several pinholes onto a floor of street trash and filthy, worn-out clothes, it was a miserable place to call home. Sofia didn't give a shit, though. Nor did she care about the fact that she was going to spend the night on the street, sleeping on a bed of dirty clothes infested with alien bugs. She didn't even care that she had just been fucked by a disgusting stranger in a nearby alley for 40 credits. All that mattered that this moment was that she had her needle full of Vidrio.

Sofia held a hypodermic syringe to the bend in her arm and pressed the hair-thin needle against a pulsing vein in her arm. Scabs and healed-over scars all over the inside of her elbow gave proof that she had done this many, many times before. Sofia grimaced slightly with the familiar prick of the needle sliding into her vein. Once in, Sofia slowly pumped the tiny syringe full of clear-yellow liquid into her veins. She felt the Vidrio mix briefly with the blood in her arm before a rush a of ecstasy washed over her. Her arms, suddenly heavy, fell to her side as she gave a sigh of satisfaction. The spent needle fell from her fingers into the folds of an old sweater as she descended into her squalid nest of filth in blissful paralysis.

This was definitely Vidrio - the good stuff - Sofia decided at once as she stared up at the leaky tarp roof draped overhead. She had been short on money a while back, and tried the product from another dealer that only set her back ten credits. It was a waste of ten credits; a bullshit knockoff that wasn't half as potent as Vidrio. The good stuff had to be brought in from offworld; Sofia's dealer said it had to be smuggled in from an uncharted planet where poppies grew like grapes did on Parravon and cannabis grew in forests as tall as a starship is long. Sofia didn't much care where it came from, all she knew is that the bullshit that enterprising folks tried to cook up on Nuevo Arauco didn't cut it anymore and that she would have to come up with four to five times as much to get the good stuff from offworld.

Electric streetcars roared past on the road just outside Sofia's makeshift tent. Nuevo Arauco was a poor frontier world, and few people could afford the sort of flying personal vehicles that buzzed through the skylines of the cities on wealthier planets. Their plastic tires on the wet roadway kicked up a spray of filthy water that deposited itself in a fine spray over Sofia's nubile - if emaciated - body. Even in her atrophied state Sofia was quite attractive, but when she had just arrived on Nuevo Arauco she was gorgeous.

Three years ago, Sofia recalled as she torpidly brushed away at itching dustfleas - nigh-microscopic, soil-borne zooplankton that inhabited the soil of this miserable planet, things had not been so terrible. Even in her Vidrio-induced euphoria, Sofia was able to remember arriving on this planet as an ambitious and perhaps naive colonist from one the crowded core worlds, hoping to acquire a fortune in the fledgling mining industries on this frontier planet. The mining prospects on Nuevo Arauco were vastly overstated however, and colonist-entrepreneurs like Sofia were left stranded and duped with no resources to buy passage back home. Sofia, having spent everything to get to this planet, saw little recourse but to sell the one resource she still had that could earn her passage off of this rock. But as many in her profession do, Sofia fell into a bad crowd. Her new acquaintances had introduced Sofia to potent offworld heroin, and from that point on her life was ruined. There was no amount of Vidrio, not even in the fabled hashish and opium jungles described by her dealer, that would allow Sofia to forget the optimism and the dreams she had arrived on this planet with: her hopes of making a fortune, owning land, finding a suitor, and one day even raising children. Now her only hope was to score enough credits for the next high and wish that she did not wake up the next morning.

Over the patter of raindrops on the tarp and the passing of cars, Sofia could hear the footfalls of passersby walking around her crude tent pitched in the middle of the sidewalk. Not one of them stopped to check on the torpid woman laying listlessly on a pile of dirty rags. Addicts were so prevalent on the streets of Ciudad Capolicán that nobody could care less. Even the city's gendarmes - the corrupt and comically-incompetent rabble that passed for authorities on this planet - routinely walked past makeshift camps of homeless addicts without so much as batting an eye.

Sofia was aware of multiple people - maybe three - now standing around outside of her tent. She was too listless to even peer outside the tent and see who was out there, let alone yell at them to fuck off and be on their way. A part of her mind was screaming in alarm, trying to alert the rest of her brain that something bad was going to happen if she didn't react at once. But so long as she was feeling the high of the Vidrio, Sofia didn't give a shit. Maybe they would steal what few possessions she had left, maybe they would rape her, or maybe they would go easy and beat her around for fun. Whatever was fine; nothing mattered anymore now that she had her high. She was vaguely aware of mumbling chatter outside her tent over the drizzle now.

"For an adicta, she's pretty foxy," a gruff male said in the planet's Spanglish dialect.

"I've fucked a lot worse in my day," affirmed another male voice outside the tent.

"No shit. Honestly, boys, I think she might be worth something."

"Worth what? What do you want to do, try to rehabilitate her or some shit? Forget it, cabrón. Once they're on the needle, it's like they're zombies. Yeah, their body might be living still, but their mind, in their mind they're dead."

"I'm not trying to turn her into a respectable woman or something stupid like that. Look, I know a guy that has the hookup with some offworld types. I'm tellin' you guys, they'll pay like... maybe 2,000 credits for this bitch. Hell, I'll even give you idiots 200 credits a piece if you help me carry her to the car."

"What if the gendarmes see us?"

"Are you kidding me? I'll just slip them 100 Credits and tell them to take a hike like everyone else does. You lot gonna help me or what?"

The other two men tacitly agreed and tore the ratty tarp off of Sofia's makeshift shelter. Drizzling rain fell upon Sofia's face as she looked upon the kidnappers.

"Fuck off!!" Sofia snarled groggily as the men seized her.

She trashed anemically against her captors, but it was too little far too late. The kidnappers quickly tired of her trashing and shouting, pathetic as it was. Sofia had just enough to watch one of their fists coming down on her head and hope that it killed her just before the blow knocked her unconscious.