The Meat Market (Jonathan Harkon Adventures Book 1)

by James Chalk

  One perk you get as a member of the royal family is military-grade wetware. My neurointerface includes a number of “special upgrades.” One of the upgrades is called a TCC - Tactical Control Cortex - and I actually hate it! The TCC takes complete control of my body. I give it a set of control parameters and a short term objective; the rest is up to it. Losing control of my body is a very disturbing experience that leaves me with a weeklong headache. Sometimes I go along for the ride, and other times I blank out, almost like some kind of psychotic killer. It really creeps me out, but I felt I had no choice.

  I activated my TCC, up-thinking the instructions, and trusting it to do the rest. My feet took off down the hall. I was running at full tilt towards the incinerator room. Time seemed to slow as I watched my arm swing up, pistol in hand, targeting and firing over and over, unaffected by my rapid, jolting pace. I saw head after head splatter like pierced tomatoes as my flechettes found their marks. As instructed, my TCC made sure that not a single doll-tender survived.

  I blanked out before entering the incinerator room, so I have no idea what happened in there! I found myself back in the corridor, leaning against a wall. Flames were lapping out from under and around the doors. Beautiful, naked women were milling about aimlessly in the hall. At their feet were dozens of dead men, each with a bloody, caved-in skull. I leaned over and retched up what little bile was left in my stomach.

  When I straightened up and staggered forward, the real Brenda was by my side, helping me. We had to get away before security arrived, or before the fire got to us. We had to get all the women away from there! Brenda was saying something, but I couldn’t quite focus on her words. My mind was still too addled by the TCC. I stumbled forward, heading down the hall, away from the fire. Like a bizarre scene from an adult sensostream (“The Zombie Pied Piper Does Sanctity”) all the women followed along behind me.

  By the time we reached the end of the corridor, I had regained myself completely. A high, piercing alarm was blaring, but only the real Brenda and I seemed to care. I handed her the flechette pistol and cleared my shotgun, dropping my now useless robe. We turned the corner and saw two security guards racing toward us. They didn’t stand a chance. Each got a shotgun shell in the chest and peppered with flechettes. Brenda took the lead as we rushed down halls and up stairs. Shooting the occasional guard as we barged on, we were an unstoppable herd of naked flesh.

  Soon we arrived at the bishop’s office, but not soon enough. It was empty. The bishop and his damn dog were nowhere to be found. As a matter of fact, the entire place had emptied out. We had either killed the last of the guards, or they had all escaped when the alarms went off.

  The fire suppression systems had done their job and there seemed to be no danger left. I turned to Brenda, quite pleased with myself and what we had accomplished, but she did not share my perspective. Abject misery and defeat emanated from her eyes. Her entire body projected despair as she collapsed onto the bishop’s couch. The clones seemed to take that as a cue. Almost at once, they all found seats on the furniture and floor. Disturbingly, many of them started to quietly masturbate. Others cuddled or held each other, sobbing.

  Trying to ignore the sapphic drama surrounding me, I focused on Brenda and asked, “What’s wrong? We did it! I think we saved most of the women!”

  She smiled weakly, but shook her head, “Without the dog, all is lost.”

  “Just call the inquisitors in and we can show them these women and what they’ve been doing to them. That should be enough, even without whatever you hid on the dog,” I responded.

  “In the dog,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I put the evidence inside the dog, not on him. All the data I need to shut down their operation was encoded into a virus. I couldn’t count on escaping, so since I know the bishop makes frequent off-colony trips with his dog, I infected the dog.”

  “But you don’t need that anymore! You have about fifty women here. They can testify against the bishop and the rest of them,” I exclaimed.

  “Jon, look around. Do these women look capable of testimony? Have you heard a single word spoken by any of them?” she asked.

  When I shook my head, she continued, “No? Do you know why? I’ll tell you why! THEY’RE GOD DAMN BABIES! That’s why! They clone the popular dancers, or whoever else strikes their fancy. Then they use accelerated growth techniques to go from zygote to adult in about three months.”

  Incredulous, I just stared at her while she explained about how they were mis-using biotech and how, in the process, they were violating numerous intercolonial laws and treaties covering human cloning. The tech had originally been developed for the ethical production of human transplant organs. Used properly, cloned organs can be rapidly grown without having to actually grow the rest of the body.

  She explained that, although the clones had adult bodies, they still had infantile brains. Further, the clones’ brain cells had still been undifferentiated when a flood of adult hormones associated with puberty had been applied. Add in the sadistic sexualized environment they were subjected to, and suddenly the inappropriate erotic reactions and behaviors I had witnessed made sense.

  If I thought I was no longer able to be shocked by the depth of these religioprick’s depravity, I was wrong. This was the sickest fucking thing I had ever heard! But I still didn’t understand why we needed the evidence in the dog. I said, “Okay, so they can’t testify. But they are evidence! The inquisitors can test them to verify your story, right?”

  “They won’t do that, Jon. My word isn’t worth anything here. Sanctity’s laws do not allow for the testimony of non-citizens, or as they put it, ‘the blasphemy of the un-anointed.’”

  “But you’re Intercol! Can’t you just arrest them yourself? Call in the cavalry! Where’s your backup?”

  “You’re my backup, Jon,” she sighed. “And I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way, I don’t have the authority and my hands are tied.”

  Then, in a sing-song voice, she recited, “At Intercol, we aim to facilitate intercolonial police cooperation, even where diplomatic relations do not exist between particular colonies. Action is taken within the limits of existing laws in different colonies, and in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Our Constitution prohibits any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious, or racial character.”

  “That’s crap, Brenda! You can’t seriously be telling me that Intercol can’t do anything about this! There must be some law you can prove these fuckers have broken?”

  “Not without that dog! And it gets worse, Jon. I’m sorry. The inquisitors will be here soon, and when they arrive, you and I are the ones who are going to be arrested.”

  Chapter 9

  Off To See The Bishop

  “We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.” - Gene Roddenberry

  “But Mousie, thou art no thy lane, in proving foresight may be vain: The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley, an’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, for promis’d joy!” - Robert Burns

  “You win battles by knowing the enemy’s timing, and using a timing which the enemy does not expect.” - Miyamoto Musashi

  *******

  Damn it, she was right! Despite the fact that she’s a fucking intercolonial law enforcement officer, those corrupt, hypocritical, little religiopricks arrested her. I would have been arrested too, if Brenda hadn’t convinced me to run.

  I made it back to the HMS Mary Rose just before the news broke. They were saying that the ‘mass-murderer’s accomplice’ had been arrested, but the ‘killer’ was still at large. They said that the ‘dancers’ who had been kidnapped and terrorized were recovering at Saint Mary’s, and the girls would soon be returning to the ‘dormitories’ at their ‘place of employment.’

  Brenda had warned me. She told me that the religiopricks would pin the deaths on me! Because she w
as Intercol and a woman, they would most likely only deport her. Unfortunately, my ‘brevet’ appointment would never hold water on Sanctity. They would execute me for mass-murder, but not until they put me to The Test. A special treat I had earned for killing the maggot, Pastor Pitcher.

  Brenda said that I should get off the colony before they identified me and she told me not to worry about her. The first part sounded like a fine idea to me. I’d had enough of these religiopricks with their whacked-out laws and perverted society. I just wanted to get the fuck out of there and never think about any of it again! But I just couldn’t do that. I wasn’t sure that they would only deport Brenda, and I wasn’t about to let them continue to abuse those babies in women’s bodies.

  The option of leaving before they identified me wasn’t really available anyway. Moments after I returned to my ship, several inquisitors were outside the Mary Rose demanding entry. I had run out of contemplation time and I had to go with my gut. I was going to rescue the babies! I even had a half-baked plan. The first step was getting rid of those inquisitors and any spy eyes that could be watching the ship. Mary was more than happy to oblige; the hard part was convincing her not to kill any of them! She doesn’t like people who damage her peripherals.

  The Mary Rose has a different perspective on life and death. She is very much her own being, with full consciousness! Whatever that is? But, not a human being. Her body is a spaceship. Her senses are components that can be added, subtracted, and upgraded. She has no sex drive, no inherent urge to reproduce. Certainly she has urges of her own, some clear and others known only to Mary, if anyone. Clearly she wants to survive, but it is less clear how important my, or anyone else’s, survival is to her. She has feelings of anger, joy, and sorrow. Does she feel love? I often wonder if she thinks I can be replaced like an obsolete, peripheral device? On the other hand, considering her eagerness to kill inquisitors and Democs, I believe she cares about me. Why else would she seek vengeance for an already reclaimed and repaired peripheral?

  I’m grateful the ship’s designers were able to include a predilection toward obeying the ship’s captain. I’ve heard of ships that have “gone rogue,” hijacking their captains and crews for unknown purposes. If Mary had her way, we would have blasted out of there right then, making sure to maximize the death and destruction.

  “They should respect my sovereign space and the sanctity of my components and peripherals,” she said.

  Mary wasn’t alone in her anger. You should have seen Baihu! She was stuck to me like glue. It was hard to think over all the growling and huffing and the three hundred pounds of fur rubbing against me. Every once in a while, she would leave my side long enough to approach the ship’s main exit. Then she would roar out a battle cry and return to my side. It was really starting to get annoying, but I was touched by her love.

  I ordered Mary to find a non-lethal way to deal with our audience and then hoped she would comply. I was relieved when she used targeted electromagnetic pulses at a very low amplification to disrupt all of the nearby sensors and the nervous system of each inquisitor on the dock. I didn’t fully approve, because there was some risk of death or permanent brain damage. But Mary assured me that she had gotten it right, and that they would recover consciousness in a few days with minimal memory loss.

  The next step in my plan was convincing the inquisitors and other authorities that I had left Sanctity. To accomplish this, Mary needed to leave port and head away from the colony. Once out of their territorial space, she and Baihu would be safe. They could return for me later, after I saved the babies. If I failed, they could try to find my sister, Abigail. The last resort would be an attempt to run the Democ blockade and reach my mother.

  Piloting in and out of a spaceport is often a very complicated maneuver involving cooperation between ship and port. Departing without port clearance can be extremely violent and destructive. With so many ways to build a space habitat, and so much variation in resources and knowledge between colonies, it is no wonder that the spaceports are all different. Still, it’s almost as if they like giving a first-time visitor a fucking heart attack while docking.

  Sanctity’s spaceport is embedded in a special outer layer of the first ring of the colony’s twenty ring, spiral torus design. The spiral torus is a variation on the design used for the very first space colony ever built - Island Zero. Island Zero was based on the classic Stanford Torus, which dates all the way back to the twentieth century. Island Zero is located at Lagrange 5, a gravitational balance point between Earth and its moon. It is now a historical monument and museum at the center of the El’Five City Colony. Island Zero had a population of thirty thousand settlers and, if you ask me, that must’ve been fucking crowded!

  Anyway, back to Sanctity’s bizarre spaceport and the damage I was about to do to it. Despite the obvious benefits that would have come from placing their spaceport at the weightless, center hub of the spiral rings, Sanctity’s designers opted to put their port on the exterior of a ring. This means that docking requires that the pilot perform a tricky maneuver, matching the rotational velocity of the ring, before landing in a designated berth. After landing, the entire berth rotates in place so that the ship ends up inside the ring and correctly oriented for the pseudo-gravity caused by centripetal force. Departure reverses the procedure. Stupid huh? Needless to say, Sanctity’s spaceport is plagued by mechanical dock failures and minor ship crashes.

  To rotate the berth for departure we needed the cooperation of port authority. I saw no other choice but to leave by blowing a big hole in the dock. Docking crashes happened so frequently that Sanctity had to install emergency sealing systems that keep the port from explosive decompression. I was counting on these systems to rescue me from becoming a real mass murderer!

  Fortunately, I was not planning alone. After I insisted that we not kill people, Mary Rose provided an alternative strategy. Apparently, she had been very unhappy about being “locked inside with nothing better to do.” So, while I was “negligently incurring damage,” Mary was hacking port security. She had established a private channel that allowed her direct access to and control of the docking mechanism. She could use it to clear and rotate our berth, without causing any harm to others or damage to the colony.

  All I had to do was slip off the ship and out of the spaceport without being seen. The trouble was, once beyond the docking berth, I would be detected by spy eyes and tracked by my face and biometrics. I needed a way to travel without being identified. Fortunately, I had just the right thing stored in the Mary Rose’s docking bay.

  She is a fully armored, amphibious transport with some atmospheric capabilities. She features the latest in stealth technology, enabling her to mimic the appearance and energy signature of most comparably sized vehicles. Her manufacturer, a Siemens subsidiary called BMW, is known throughout the solar system as one of the finest makers of inter and intra-colonial transports. Like Baihu, she was another diplomatic gift that never made it home. The Ambassador for Siemens Colony had her customized for my mother to travel incognito.

  I pet Baihu and gave her a hug. Lingering over her familiar musky scent, I wondered if I would ever see her again. With no time for regrets, I told her to stay with Mary Rose in the cockpit, and I rushed off. I headed for the BMW, but on the way I stopped in my cabin to change clothes and grab a few things. When I got to the docking bay, I found three hundred pounds of kitty cat sprawled across the BMW’s hood. The look on her face said, “I’m here and I’m coming! What are you going to do about it?”

  We drove out of the spaceport, disguised as a small cargo truck. As we navigated the traffic-choked transport lanes in and around the port, the Mary Rose overrode the electronic security flags that had been placed on her, and she filed a departure plan with the port traffic control system. She then disengaged the docking locks the inquisitors had placed, and rotated the berth. Finally outside and thrilled by the freedom of empty space, she rocketed away from Sanctity with joy in her bio-electronic heart, but
a fierce determination to return and reclaim her peripherals.

  Soon, we were in the urban streets near the bikini bar. The harsh daylight did little to hide the neighborhood’s filth and grime. Overwhelmed by the housekeeping demands of an overcrowded ring, Sanctity’s maintenance staff had clearly abandoned the local denizens to their own ends. Garbage was piled on the curbs and the open window let in its rotting odor, along with the acrid smell of urine and vomit.

  Sanctity is a “free” society, or at least that’s what any of the fucking religiopricks will tell you. Free if you’ve got money or power. Otherwise, not so much! They say it’s wrong for government to involve itself in people’s lives. They say that government must remain small and weak. They say that government is not a safety-net for the old and the infirm. They say their religion teaches to “love thy neighbor.” But what do they do? They enact draconian laws about morality and apostasy. They suppress, repress, and persecute. They moralize and preach while their poor go homeless and hungry.

  I felt a terrible despair as I stared out the window, watching people with nowhere to go and no way to improve their condition. I knew I could not help them any more than I could help my mother, or what was left of my family on Harkon. The homeless seemed to form groups, perhaps as much for spiritual support as for protection. They really did need protection. I saw plenty of predators working the sheep over.

  This was nothing new. I had seen it before. But somehow, things felt different. I had been through a lot, seen a lot. Yet now, watching the human squalor, the wretched waste and casual violence really disturbed me. I hadn’t taken the time, I guess, to think about the homeless as real people. It had all been like some kind of game, smuggling the condoms and working security at the bar. Walking to and from the spaceport every night, I had barely noticed the “bums.” The only ones worth my attention had been the violent ones, and that had been sport. A little entertainment to and from work. Suddenly the game was over. I felt deeply ashamed. A pathetic excuse for a Harkon.