The Pride of Parahumans Page 3

  "You think that was him?" Aniya walked up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder as she asked the obvious question that we were all thinking at that point.

  "Maybe," I replied, "what I don't get is why all the fuss over some guy who probably just ran off on his loan." Aniya shrugged and we continued on to the tunnels that would take us back home to our ship.

  We got our answer the next day as our new sensor pods were being installed by a team of monkeys and rams. As I was running one of the new pods through its paces with a hand tablet plugged into a socket on the base of the pod and looking at the ceiling in every spectrum the thing could handle, one of the rams doing heavy lifting came up to me. "Hey, you hear about that weasel who went missing?"

  "I saw some holo-posters." I stated as nonchalantly as I could manage.

  "Well, they say he was a clone of some Directorate bigwig and that he hadn't gone dark for two days before daddy had those posted along all the tunnels in the planet." I looked at him in disbelief. A clone? Those were rare luxuries, it cost hundreds of thousands of qcoins just to operate the bio-fabricators used to make them. It would explain though why he had been so foolish as to attack a Cerean vessel, not only did he have an influential relative who could conceivably cover his tracks he was most likely less than five years old, that being when we had managed to petition the United Nations of Earth for the right to replicate ourselves. And just because we came out of the vat fully grown didn't mean that we were born mature, at 28 I pretty much considered myself to have been a complete idiot before the age of eight. Yet the laws treated us all the same whether we were two or thirty-two years old because that had been how the corporations had treated us and the Directors had been lazy. I tried to smile at what I presumed to have been meant as a joke by the technician whose ass wasn't possibly at stake and hurried through the remaining checks. I did not bother to test the other pods but instead bounded back inside the ship to discuss the new situation with my crewmates.

  When I told them Denal and Aniya just stood there with a glassy look in their eyes and their mouths hanging wide open. Cole wasn't particularly surprised, "should have known it would be one of those fresh from the tank rich morons."

  "So what now?" I inquired. "If we did kill him and the Directorate finds out, I think forced labor until the days we die might be a light sentence."

  "We fly." Cole flapped his wings, knocking me and Denal off our feet in the low gravity. "We fill our helium-3 tanks and pick another asteroid that won't turn us over to our new corporate masters."

  "Sounds like a plan." I stated simply. "But which rock might that be?"

  Chapter 4

  We spent the next three hours going over the map of the surrounding asteroids and looking up the local wiki's entries on the inhabited planetoids within our ship's range of Ceres at this time. Juno was ruled out, they had an extradition treaty with the Directorate and a history of complying with their demands. Iris didn't but they operated under a government that seemed the closest to the human system known as “fascism” known to the Belt. Hygiea, with one of the largest direct democracies since ancient Greece, initially looked promising, but then we saw that the majority of the population were strident pacifists and not even point-defense guns were allowed, I couldn't imagine that they would like us very much.

  "What about this one?" I pointed at a large spherical planetoid, similar in size to Ceres. It was near the edge of our range.

  Cole looked where I was pointing. "That would be Vesta, either the second or the third largest asteroid in the entire belt, depending on who you ask." He ruffled his feathers a bit and looked away. "I don't think so."

  "Why, what is wrong with it?" Curious I started to call up the wiki's information on Vesta.

  Cole turned back towards me and stared. "I went there once, about six years ago. It was anarchy, I was almost assaulted a couple times, some guys tried to pounce on me and when I flew out of the way one pulled out some sort of jury-rigged gauss gun and told me to toss over my possessions. Fortunately for me it short-circuited when he tried to fire a warning shot."

  Seriously? I hadn't known there were places where the crime rate was so bad. What kind of government would allow such a thing. I read the information I'd pulled up on Vesta. Gravity: .025 g, orbit: 3.63 earth years, population: ~50,000, government:…

  "There's no government?" I asked, confused. How could a society even function without any sort of government. Apparently not well judging from Cole's testimonial. But then I thought I saw something right below the tab that read "Government: N/A", it stated: "danger level: low to moderate." I was confused.

  I opened a more detailed description and jumped to "crime and other hazards", I read on.

  …The ration exchanges created by the Repairman's in 2090 led to individual shortages of calories and needed nutrients. In desperation many residents turned to preying on their fellow parahumans, both figuratively in the form of stealing rations or other belongings to be traded for rations, or in rare cases literally in the form of cannibalism. The introduction of the Vestan qcoin later that year helped alleviate the starvation as the Guild began to accept them instead of food, but crime remained high until the formal establishment of the Protector's Guild in 2092. The Protectors would, in exchange for a modest monthly fee, do everything in their power to defend the person and possessions of their customers, and if their defenses and any personal ones carried by a customer were defeated they hunted down the aggressor and enacted restitution from them. In 2094 the Protector's Guild fractured into several competing organizations that still work to keep the peace in Vesta. Many of the most prominent Guilds offer "Guest plans" for visitors…

  I looked away from the article and back to Cole. "Judging from this article you got there just a year too early. They've got something called "Protector's Guilds" now that provide security and got their danger level downgraded to moderate-low."

  "And what's stopping these "Guilds" from turning us over to the Directorate?" Denal inquired of me.

  "Who says they can even do that? They're not a government or anything." Aniya interjected. "If they're like a business that just offers protection plans the worst they should be able to do is cancel our coverage. And the article mentions "personal defense" which seems to imply that they don't mind people defending themselves, which is all we did wasn't it?"

  "All right, fine. We'll put it to a vote." Cole stated. "Everyone who wants to take their chances on an uncivilized rock with no government to speak of raise a hand." Me and Aniya raised our hands immediately. "And all opposed?" We put our hands down and Cole raised a wing claw. We all turned to stare at Denal, whose paws were firmly gripping the handholds along the edge of the table.

  "Well I don't know." Denal protested, "it sounds like Vesta might be safe from the Directorate but the way you made it sound it seems like the Protector's Guilds or whatever are just barely holding things together."

  "Look, why don't you go over to the bank and pay them nine million qcoins towards our loan, think it over on the way there and back. I'll get us filled up with Helium and reaction mass so if we still haven't decided where to go we can at least reach someplace to refuel and set out again." Cole flapped away from the table and to his own pilot's perch.

  "Nine million is a lot." Denal started to inch towards the door. "What if they get suspicious as to why I'm paying that much at once."

  "Tell them that we don't want to be tempted into spending all that on something stupid." I suggested. He bounded out and closed the hatchway behind his ringed tail.

  ***

  Less than an hour later Cole was just finishing up the refueling procedures as Denal came hurtling up the docking tube. He panted, out of breath as he shut and locked the airlock doors tight. "What happened?" I asked, looking up from the wiki entry on some frontier asteroid that would need at least two fuel stops to reach.

  Denal righted himself and began to explain. "As I was coming back from the bank I noticed a security inspection team gathered
near one of the ships by the entrance to the port. I asked a nearby officer what that was all about and he said that they were checking all the ships that had been in the sector where that executive's clone had vanished. He said that they were only asking if anyone had an idea of what had happened to him but I didn't like the way some of them looked." He jumped into his chair and started strapping himself in. "I would definitely say that my vote is now "yes", let's go to Vesta. Like right this instant."

  I strapped myself down and signaled for Aniya, down in the equipment bay, to do the same. Cole resigned himself and signaled to traffic control his intent to depart. "We read you. The way out is clear, but why so quick to leave, you just got back in?"

  Cole improvised as he started to pull us out. "Oh you know." As if that ever convinced anyone. "Just made it big on our last trip. Thinking we might be able to afford a down payment on a better ship this time."

  "Really?" The traffic controller was still on the line. "And just where did you say you got all that aurum anyways?"

  Crap, maybe he was with security, in which case he could direct some of security's cutters to intercept us before we even got half a kilometer from dock if he suspected we were involved in the situation somehow. Cole spoke again, "Trade secret, if we told anyone the location our secret mine would be bled dry in a week."

  "You know, you can't keep other miners from jumping your claim unless you file it."

  "And since when has registering a claim stopped anyone?" I spoke up, before remembering that while the output was on speakers the input was restricted to Cole's headset. Cole repeated my statement after looking at me odd for a minute.

  "Well, suit yourself. Hope you strike big again." We were out. For now we were safe.

  Once we were ten kilometers out I unstrapped myself and walked over to Cole's station, the acceleration providing more "gravity" than Ceres had. "So how long until we reach Vesta?" I asked him as I leaned around his crash chair to look at him.

  He faced me and said simply "ten days."

  Ten days, a bit of a long trip by our standards. "Guess I'd better go and settle in then."

  ***

  The next day I started work on my hobby. While my training had been in dead rocks and minerals, I was interested in the far more complex chemistry of living things. A large portion of the section of the ship that had been allotted to my work space was taken up by a variety of different laboratory instruments that had nothing to do with my official job on the ship, and quite a bit of the stuff I actually needed could be used for my hobby too. Fortunately my lab is in one of the few parts of the ship that has something resembling gravity, the room rotates on an axis perpendicular to the ship's engines. When the ship is under burn the room stops moving so that the "floor" is oriented towards the drive so that the acceleration provides gravity, when the ship is coasting the room spins so that the samples within stay at the bottom of their containers. Sometimes I found it ironic that a place that contained at least four centrifuges was itself in a centrifuge. To get in or out the giant centrifuge had to be stopped temporarily, which upset the samples if prolonged for too long so I would jump in and trigger the motor to start back up again before I was even through the door all the way.

  The room was dominated by a large refrigerator, a glass door and several compartments inside that maintained their contents at different temperatures ranging from slightly above zero degrees Celsius to under 50 below. A set of cabinets held a spectrometer that could just as easily be used for living or non-living samples, a miniaturized Polymerase Chain Reaction thermocycler, a DNA sequencer, and a wide assortment of various micropipettes, pipettes, beakers, flasks, test tubes, and heating elements. Water unfortunately had to be carried in a large carton, no plumbing.

  This particular day I drew two sets of four petri dishes from the fridge, one set with several spots of white or blue bacteria, the others covered with a green algae. I carefully lifted two blue colonies from each of the bacterial plates and suspended each colony in a separate microfuge tube of solution, I separated the cells in each of these tubes from the DNA they held via microfilters and centrifugal force. I then transferred the fluid to new tubes and added a mixture of enzymes, salts, and fluorescent marked primers to the solutions. Then I placed the tubes into the rack in the thermocycler and set it to run a five hour cycle.

  While waiting I scooped a teaspoon of algae from each of those dishes, and placed them on a hot pad for ten minutes. Once they were dried out I tasted a bit of each sample. None of them tasted particularly good, my bacon-flavored nutrient algae apparently still had a long way to go.

  After I had finished the impromptu test of the algae I'd modified I decided to wait out the remainder of the PCR cycle reading some science-fiction novels from the 20th century on my tablet. It astonished me how humans dead for so long could be both so prophetic and so wrong. Naturally, there were five minutes left on the timer when someone decided to interrupt me. I felt a rather jarring vibration along my jaw signaling that someone was trying to contact me on my subvocal comm and I bit down on my right to answer.

  Who is this? I demanded feeling a bit annoyed.

  It's that "horny panda" as you call him. Came the reply. I swear, Denal's subvocal pickup is as obnoxious as his real voice. There's something I want you to see. Come up to my cabin.

  I've already seen your genitalia, several times. I remembered the lab coat, goggles, mask, gloves, and pants I had just put back on in anticipation of the continuation of the experiment. And I just got dressed again, I'm not taking this stuff off now.

  What? Oh, you're in the lab aren't you. Denal actually sounded surprised, almost like he had something different in mind this time.

  Yes, and I'm in the middle of something that could potentially shake the belt like nothing since the revolution. That wasn't completely true to be technical about it. The machine would hold the samples at a stable temperature until I came to retrieve them if I had to leave, but all the unsecured lab equipment I had lying around before I performed that last step of the analysis would go floating around once I shut down the centrifuge to step outside.

  I'm serious Argentum, I noticed something about our trajectory and I think we may be off course.

  He'd used my full name, that could mean he was serious. Or it could just as easily mean he was dedicated to this particular joke slash attempt to get into my pants. Since when do you know anything about astrogation. I cut off the call with a hard bite on the left and popped the lid to the thermocycler.

  I drew each sample into the sequencer, the fluorescent tags attached to the replicated DNA strands allowing the machine to determine almost the exact code of each based on the size of the strands and the different colored tags attached to different bases in the tagged primers. When the sequences were displayed on my tablet it confirmed my suspicions, when I was designed the geneticists deactivated several genes related to gonadal development. The result being that I could never develop testes or ovaries, it could have gone either way given how my cells were a mosaic of XX and XY karyotypes that were otherwise identical. Presumably another set of genes influencing the development of gonads was responsible for our universal sterility. The corporations never revealed the exact genes that they had manipulated to induce these changes, and I intended to find out. I had stored my own genome, plus those of my three crewmates, in the form of plasmid libraries. The human genome was public record so I was going over every gene known to be involved in reproduction and determine which genes made us unable to have babies. And possibly a way to make a set of junk for myself if I felt so inclined, there were plenty of organ printers available in Ceres so there should be some in Vesta.

  ***

  Denal was waiting for me when I exited the lab, he was holding a tablet out for me. "Look at this," he said, pulling up a map of the Belt, "we're following a trajectory that takes us far from Vesta." A line showing our course appeared and passed the tag marked VESTA by several thousand kilometers.

  "Have you as
ked Cole yet?" I inquired of him.

  "I called once and he shut off his intercom." Denal replied. "He said he was taking a nap and not to disturb him."

  That sounded a bit suspicious. "We should go wake him up." I suggested. The two of us floated over to Cole's cabin, the door was locked but Denal was able to easily bypass it.

  The damn crow was nestled in a cubbyhole when I found him, his head tucked under a wing like a stupid chicken. I grabbed him by the other wing and yanked him out, he awoke with a start. Now, Cole may have had sharp talons and a beak, but I had solid bones and they were almost 50% solid titanium, so I was strong enough to break all his limbs and wring his uplifted neck before he could give me more than a few gouges that were easy enough to patch in my lab.

  "Where are we Cole?!" I shouted in his bird brained face. "I've seen our trajectory, we're not going to Vesta."

  To his credit he didn't bother with lying this time. "We're on a course to an ice asteroid, about three thousand kilometers spinward of Vesta."

  "You know that raw ice is shitty reaction mass." I snarled, my vulpine genes making themselves known. "If we were lucky the contaminants wouldn't blow up our engines."

  "I'm not going back to Vesta." He insisted.

  "Either we go to Vesta, or this fox is having fresh poultry for breakfast." I wouldn't really eat him, though if we did try to extract reaction mass from a dirty snowball and it ended up leaving us stranded I couldn't make promises.

  He reached for the intercom with a wing claw and pressed down a button marked "voice control". "Autopilot, alter course and take us to Vesta, most direct path from current location."

  The ship's computer responded in seconds. "Calculating… warning, insufficient reaction mass. Along suggested course we will fail to reach Vesta by 147.2 kilometers."