Chapter 3(OB)
J3N looked around excitedly for her new husband as Z8C led her outside. The bare flat rock in the direction Z8C was walking stretched out for hundreds of meters before coming to a town on the shoreline of the bay the shuttles landed in, off to one side of the concrete ramp platforms. In other directions could be seen other distant towns, flanking the extreme edges of the vast space port area.
There was what looked like an industrial area on the opposite side of the giant sheltered bay the shuttles landed in, with what looked like a steel mill, a shipwright type facility for making boats, and other giant corrugated iron buildings that clearly did what passed for manufacturing on this extremely limited local level. Industrial grade plasma fusion generators could be seen in rows along part of the far shoreline, cooling pipes hissing in the seawater, obviously powering the local industrial centre.
There were no people anywhere near J3N and Z8C except for the space port workers, no sign of Mr Seth Renwick anywhere. This planet was scarily underpopulated to be honest. This was clearly what passed for the capital city of 1D8V-44 but it was little more than widely spaced small towns and a modest industrial area.
"Where is my new husband?" J3N asked excitedly.
"Seth Renwick isn't here, we have to travel to reach him. He couldn't leave his farm unattended to come and meet you in person. He said to tell you that he sends his personal apologies for being unable to meet you at the space port," Z8C explained.
"Oh, well that's ok, I will just have to go to him," J3N said, disappointed but still optimistic.
They made slow progress to the town, slowed down by J3N in the high gravity. Old Z8C had been sent to the planet 1D8V-44 as soon as it joined the Imperium like 40 years ago, as Wsuioo stationed sales representatives on every planet on a shipping lane that passed Wsuioo, and Z8C was used to the high gravity by now.
Z8C was old but didn't look it. Wsuioo did not like going to the expense of sending out new S41 line salesmen too often, so had bred the S41 for extreme natural lifespan. They were bred to be fanatically loyal to their homeland of Wsuioo, with a proven track record of being reliable long term sales agents in the wider galaxy. Z8C didn't look a day over 25, despite being at least 60, and had the muscles that this planet gave men.
J3N had no sexual interest in Z8C, her 679 line was bred to be sexually repelled by Wsuian men as a safeguard against losing their virginities to any of the men back on Wsuioo. The S41 line men like Z8C were specifically bred to be asexual anyway, as this caused less problems when stationed on distant worlds. Both J3N and Z8C were instinctively compelled to simply do everything in their power to complete this transaction for their creators back on Wsuioo.
Z8C did not help her with her gas bottle, instinctively repelled against any unnecessary physical contact with the merchandise, and J3N eventually had to stop for a while. Z8C reluctantly helped her carry the air bottle, and she staggered into the town on the shore of the shuttle landing bay.
Everything in the town seemed to be built out of the same corrugated metal as the space port, apparently produced from local iron in that local steel mill on the other side of the bay. The ground in the town wasn't perfectly flat like the space port, rocky and uneven but flat enough for pedestrians and local vehicles. The buildings were very widely spaced, weather beaten, and cheap looking. Overhead power cables connected to these buildings, and water tanks on the rooftops presumably collected and stored rainwater.
Local businesses advertised their wears, with vendors offering "one hour oxygen supply for one credit", "used farm tools - half price", "finest gin on 1D8V-44", and many other such products and services. Solar panels on every roof seemed to add to the grid strength, and every roof had a solar water heater for hot water.
In odd patches J3N spotted the first ever plant life, domesticated plants with extremely high tolerance for low oxygen conditions, growing in beds of human manure in little outdoor gardens. Now at last J3N understood how the farmers might produce food on this anoxic planet.
What really struck J3N was how few women and children there were. The town certainly had women, but not many, far too few younger women in particular. The women were few and mostly old. If this is what the capital towns were like, then it didn't bode well for the rest of the planet! It made sense really, this planet was a natural woman repellent, a lonely anoxic ball of rock that could be wiped off the map by xenos raiders at any time! Any woman with any sense would get the hell off this planet ASAP!
J3N was now really starting to understand why one of the local farmers would spend his entire life savings to buy a mail order bride. These frontier worlds tended to have very cheap land for sale that attracted young men from other planets to move here and build a life for themselves through honest toil. Then when they succeeded in making their fortune from the land, they had no women to share it with, no children to inherit their farms when they died.
Given the prospects available, a mail order bride made sense, it really did. J3N actually felt intensely proud, she would save some poor honest farmer from a life of loneliness! It was so rewarding.
"We need to stop by my place for a while to process your safe arrival in the paperwork. It won't take long. I already have all the oxygen and other supplies we will need waiting on my boat. We will depart soon." Z8C informed J3N
J3N nodded understanding and followed Z8C to a local building with a sign saying WSUIOO SLAVE DEALER. The outside walls were covered in weather damaged pealing posters of various lines of slave pedigrees. The business was clearly not doing very well, and the building had a substantial food garden at the back, and excessive solar panels to cut down on running costs.
They entered the building to find a neat but impoverished interior, clearly barely making ends meet. It was obvious from a small number of items advertised for sale in one side of the room that Z8C was moonlighting selling odds and ends just to survive.
"Is business bad?" J3N asked gently.
"Yes, very bad business. I'm lucky to sell 6 slaves a year this year." Z8C explained
"What sort of commission do you get on each sale?" J3N asked.
"0.1 percent commission on the sale price of each slave I sell for Wsuioo," Z8C said sadly.
"That's all!? That means you only earned 50 credits to live on from selling me to my husband?!" J3N exclaimed in horrified shock.
"Actually I am losing money on you. It costs me more to transport you to Mr Renwick than I make for myself out of it. I have to find other ways to pay my bills." Z8C said sadly.
The question "why do you keep selling slaves for Wsuioo" did not enter the minds of either J3N or Z8C, both were genetically and psychologically programmed to never even question their "duty" to Wsuioo. The fact is that Z8C was himself a slave to his own selective breeding, a slave despite being physically free, a slave in his mind.
"Was it always this bad?" J3N asked sympathetically.
"This year is actually the best year I have had in a long time. There are only a few brothels on this planet, and they have already bought a full quota of slaves from me years ago and aren't buying anymore. The farmers didn't want to buy the standard sterile lines for themselves because they can't bear them heirs for their farms. Now that you 679 line first few generations are finally making a debut promotional sale, I'm finally getting some orders from the local farmers," Z8C reassured her.
"I will get my new husband to send you some food to keep you going," J3N promised.
"I would really appreciate that J3N, I can't always afford to eat every day," Z8C thanked her warmly.
"I will be the best wife I can be for my new husband. Then other farmers will want to buy their own 679's and you will be able to make a proper living," J3N reassured poor Z8C
***...
J3N and Z8C set out into the bay in Z8C's cheap fibreglass sailboat. The boat was stuffed full of oxygen tanks and other supplies, clearly at great personal expense to Z8C, and moved sluggishly but steadily in the breeze.
With the planet being so high gravity, buoyancy was one of the few things that behaved the same way as in normal gravity. The gravity might make a boat weigh more, but it also made the water weigh more, increasing the water pressure and cancelling out the effect somewhat. By boat was by far the most practical method of transport on 1D8V-44 according to Z8C.
The bay around them was absolutely huge, with long peninsulas of bare rock sheltering it from the sea. A gap between the two enclosing peninsulas connected the bay to the sea, with widely spaced small villages dotting the inner sides of the peninsulas. The sea beyond the peninsulas looked quite rough.
Even as they sailed, more shuttles came hurtling down from the sky, engines at full power. The gravity was too strong for the shuttles to stay airborne with a full cargo, and they came down into the middle of the bay with a splash. The sailboat was keeping well clear of the splash down zone, keeping close to the coastline of the bay.
"The gravity here is too high for a safe ground landing. Few pilots can pull it off safely and it puts huge strain on the landing gears. They splash down in the bay instead, much much safer." Z8C explained conversationally.
"The booster rockets are needed just to get them back up to orbit again. They use plasma fusion of deuterium, with a compressed hydrogen reaction mass for thrust. Very cheap to fuel, the deuterium and hydrogen comes from the bay water in that factory building over there on the far side of the bay. The booster rockets then detach just before orbit, and fall back down into the ocean, big big ocean with lots of space, can't miss."
"Homing beacons on the booster rockets then let tugboats find them, the rockets float. Tugboats tug them back to the other bay on the south side of the space port, and they are used again. Very cheap methods, very affordable." Z8C explained.
"Does the space port run all the time?" J3N asked.
"No, mostly nothing is happening. It's only used when a merchant ship arrives in orbit, it happens, but not all that often. Unpredictable when they will show up, warp travel is very variable," Z8C explained.
"They export food?" J3N asked.
"Officially 1D8V-44 exports food. In reality the planet exports illicit drugs. Big drug farms hidden all over the planet, they hide the drug plants in among the crop plants, so can't be seen from orbital surveillance. Food is still a big export by bulk weight, but it's the drugs that really earn the money here." Z8C admitted honestly.
"They grow drugs?" J3N asked in surprise.
"Certainly do. How else did you think that Seth Renwick could save up 50 thousand credits on a place like this? Single man farms just don't turn a big profit growing food, it's not lucrative enough. The farmers all grow food for local consumption, and grow extra food for export as a front to look legit. It's all about the drugs," Z8C chuckled.
J3N gaped at him in astonishment.
"Don't look so shocked, all the frontier worlds do this. Pretty much the only perk of a frontier world is that they are unpoliced enough to get away with growing drugs. The more established agri worlds get regularly investigated by Imperium authorities to make sure what they are growing, out here no one goes looking, at least not looking out in the remote farms away from the space port." Z8C informed her.
"My new husband is a criminal?" J3N asked in terrible disappointment.
"Everyone on this planet is a criminal if you want to get technical. I am probably the only one who never breaks the law, and only because I am bred to obey the law. This planet was already growing drugs long before the Imperium conquered it, it was settled by drug smugglers for the express purpose of growing drugs," Z8C explained.
"Where is the Imperium presence on the planet? The space port doesn't look like Imperium workmanship. Where are the cathedrals and grand buildings, where are the military?" J3N asked after a pause.
"The space port was made by the local smugglers, before the Imperium conquered the planet. Pretty much everything here is local. Every settlement has a small church with an imperial preacher from the Ecclesiarchy, the captain of the single Imperial Guard company that was needed to conquer the planet is now the Planetary Governor. Those boys from that company are getting a bit old now, but they still form the planetary defence force, the ONLY military on the planet I might add. A few astropaths in the main towns, maybe a handful of other people, and that's about it for Imperium presence here." Z8C told her.
"That's all? For the entire population of the planet?" J3N exclaimed in shock.
"How big do you think the population even is out here? Trust me it's enough," Z8C chuckled.
"How big is the population?" J3N asked.
"Maybe a few tens of thousands in total. It's hard to keep accurate track of births and deaths. MAYBE 100 thousand as an absolute upper estimate, but that's pushing it. The original smuggler inhabitants numbered less than even ten thousand. Since joining the Imperium, a lot of young men from other places have migrated here to set up farms or find work, grew the population a lot," Z8C explained.
"Where are all the women?" J3N asked.
"There were already few enough to begin with. The original smugglers brought their wives with them, raised families. The female descendants are still around, but since joining the Imperium the daughters of the locals now have a way to escape the planet. They normally leave as soon as they grow up. Their fathers usually pay the daughter's expenses, wanting them to have a better life, and they leave for nicer planets in the Imperium. A few stay, but with all the new men migrating here there just aren't anything like enough women for everyone," Z8C answered.
"No other mail order brides? Like from other places than Wsuioo?" J3N inquired.
"Been a lot of scams, the women paid for but never showed up. Been some kidnapped women sold to the locals, but they usually divorce the locals and flee the planet. Some of the poverty stricken slum girls of Terra were human trafficked here, maybe a few hundred, and are still around, but they are really feral hive scum, not good wives. They stuck around, as they have a better life here, but they cause so much criminal behaviour and local disharmony that the local men are wary of getting any more hive scum for wives." Z8C told her.
"You are not the first 679 line sent to 1D8V-44, but you could still count them all on your fingers. The locals are not yet convinced enough to buy Wsuian wives, only a few will spend 50 thousand credits on an untested promotional line, the 679 line is still very new, it's a lot of money to spend, the hive scum women cost only about 10 thousand credits to buy from human traffickers," Z8C added.
"Why are they so wary of Wsuian wives?" J3N asked.
"They don't trust that you are fertile, you are the first ever export line that isn't sterile. They are also worried about what you will give birth to if you get pregnant, they are scared that their kids will be born with something wrong with them, that their daughters will grow up to be whores," Z8C explained gently.
"That's ridiculous! I'm a wife pedigree, not a whore pedigree! My daughters will grow up to be wives not whores! The earlier test prototypes 30 years ago all showed full fertility to semen samples from every major ethnic group in the Imperium! The children were all perfectly healthy and normal, the results are even published in peer reviewed journals throughout the Segmentum Solar!" J3N exclaimed passionately, feeling offended.
"You have the chance to prove them wrong, you can give your husband lots of healthy children and dispel the fears. Then I will get enough orders to make a living," Z8C told her.
"I will, I will do what I was bred to do, and be the best wife in the galaxy," J3N said with determined resolve.
The boat continued on, sailing a bit out from the shoreline of the bay, zigzagging with hard rudder angles to move against the wind. The boat was a cheap and battered looking thing, apparently built by Z8C himself from fibreglass and resin. It was very crude, it's homemade nature clearly visible, but it functioned well enough for its purpose.
The boat was 12 foot long, unpainted, with a single battered aluminium mast that must have cost all of about 20 credits to buy. The sail was a patchwork of various old bits of cheap synthetic canvas, crudely sewn together into an ugly but functional sail. The boat had a crude aluminium rudder bolted to the back of it, and a fibreglass fin thing that could be slid in and out of a raised hole thing in the middle of the boat.
Both J3N and Z8C wore very crude styrofoam life jackets, which were bulky and uncomfortable, and the bottom of the boat was filled with battered and ancient looking gas bottles, all filled with an oxygen mixture, enough for the journey and return journey. The boat also had food and other supplies, and a crude GPS device that used the crude positioning satellites of 1D8V-44 to give a very vague idea of where they were. The GPS system currently thought that they were sailing on the land a few hundred meters away, but an error margin of a few hundred meters was acceptable enough to know their general location.
J3N looked at the surroundings as Z8C operated the boat, gazing in wonder at everything around her. The bay had a large number of electric tugboats, with decks covered in waterproof batteries to power them. They each had a small crew, and were very crude looking, as everything around here was crude looking. The tugboats were clearly locally made, built from well worn metal, and were not pretty things to look at.
As well as tugboats, the bay contained cargo boats, not the huge container ships that plied the beautiful oceans of Wsuioo, but much smaller things. The biggest ones were maybe 30 meters in length and carried grain to the space port, but most were smaller than this.
Electric motors seemed to be the main form of propulsion on the local boats and ships, which made sense given the lack of oxygen to run a conventional motor, but some of the smaller vessels had sails. Given Z8C's state of poverty, completely free wind power would have to suffice for themselves, it might delay them a bit but it was all he could afford.
Some of the smaller cargo ships were already leaving the bay, laden with sacks of manure, and other ships were visibly being loaded with the stuff at crude piers off the coasts of the various small towns near the space port.
Boats honked horns at Z8C as his own boat got in the way, and Z8C had to work hard to stay out of the way as he zigzagged against the wind.
The sailboat eventually made it out of the bay, entering the choppy seas of the ocean proper. J3N felt dizzy and a little sick as the boat rose and fell in the waves. The high gravity made this especially unnerving, increasing the dizziness considerably as the up and down motion changed her feeling of weight on her body.
Z8C steered the boat south, and they made better progress with the wind now partially behind their sail. The boat traveled along the desolate rocky coastline. The coast outside of the sheltered bay was lashed by strong surf, with small sandy beaches hard against wave scourged low cliffs. The surf was clearly hazardous here, and no towns or buildings sat on these turbulent shores.
They zipped down the coast quite fast now, and soon approached the mouth of the southern bay. Tugboats were towing floating booster rockets into the bay, and Z8C gave them a wide berth, not wanting to hit one and damage the sailboat. They didn't get close enough for J3N to get a really good look at the booster rockets, the rockets were floating just below the waterline like torpedoes and difficult to see properly.
The mouth of the southern bay zipped past, giving a brief view of yet more tiny towns and villages hugging the coastline of the southern bay, before it was far behind them.
For hours the boat sailed south down the coast, with the wind partly behind them from the northeast, giving them some speed. All J3N saw was desolate bare rock and lifeless sand beaches, with the occasional bay or river mouth punctuating the endless stretch of coast. They passed the occasional boat, mostly cargo boats but also the occasional sailboat, but saw no other sign of life on the desolate planet.
It was vast and lonely, a gigantic dead ball of rock, with the primordial conditions for life, but no life except what humans brought with them. It had so much potential, but would take such a long time to reach it. The entire thing made J3N feel so small and insignificant.
She felt like a contaminant, a germ that was invading this sterile place. This place had no life, this place wanted no life. Humans did not belong here, in this place of such terrible vastness and deadness. This place belonged unto itself alone, a beautiful and desolate landscape of sterile glory.
J3N put these disquieting thoughts out of her mind, fighting her intense agoraphobia at the sheer empty vastness of her surroundings. She was painfully aware of the air mask over her mouth and nose, connected by a long tube to one of the gas bottles in the bottom of the boat. It made her life feel so fragile, knowing that she only kept breathing for as long as these bottles lasted.
The oxygen came from hydrolysis of water, something done in every home on the planet. Water plus electricity equals a steady harvest of both oxygen and hydrogen. As long as you had enough power and the right equipment, you had all the oxygen you needed. Most towns had at least one dedicated oxygen factory, and the industrial area on the north coast of the north bay the shuttle had landed in produced oxygen on an industrial scale very cheaply.
It was cheap and widely abundant, but on a small boat in the ocean, it was precious indeed.
***...