Into the Black

The Encyclopedia Galactica says the following about Hundeherstellar III:

A Type M planet in the Hundeherstellar System, known for its remarkably Earth-like atmosphere and similarly-sized land masses. The planet is governed by the Hundeherstellar Corporation, which was founded in 1983 on Earth, but then moved its operations to the Hundeherstellar system when it paid for a colony ship to take them there. Hundeherstellar III Is known for its fiercely patriarchal society, in which females are referred to as ‘domestic animals’ and are not considered citizens. Once a female reaches the age of majority, they are injected with mind and body altering nanites, turning them into obedient pets for their owners. Because of this, and other practices, trade with the Hundeherstellar system faces heavy sanctions, and many exports are illegal in most polities.

Basically, some jackasses from Earth decided the whole ‘equal rights’ thing wasn’t for them, and paid for a colony ship to take them somewhere that they could create their ideal society. And from all accounts, it is a pretty sick society, but it has been going on for so long that no one questions it. I don’t know where the idiots got these nanites, but they were contraband that made the nastiest street drugs look like toys in comparison.

And I didn’t want them in my possession for a second longer than I needed to. However, that left me with a couple problems. First, I couldn’t go to the authorities, for a ton of obvious reasons. Second, as a gamer simply throwing the stuff away was unthinkable. Which meant I needed to find someone to sell this shit to. Fortunately, we had just gotten off the tram in the seedy section of the station.

It only took a couple questions (and a bit of Mindread) to find a shop where we could sell off the trash gear and shit we didn’t want on the boat, and maybe find some cool additions to our current gear. That shop was located in a back alley in a run-down section of a deck that mostly seemed to house squatters and vagrants. But none of them troubled us as we entered the store.

The store was called Dark Net Connection. They offered a lot of legal, quasi-legal, illegal, and ‘oh fuck I can’t believe you did that’ items and services. Well, not them, exactly. From what I’d been able to gather, they were basically a front that provided people an introduction to the Dark Net, for a fee. Basically, all the same kinds of things you could find in the real world Dark Net, you could find here, if you knew where to look.

Selling the gear, drugs, and nanites cleared us a healthy 52000 credits, mainly from the nanites. Don’t know who the thugs killed to get their hands on them, but according to what I saw, those things sold at 100K, this far from the Hundeherstellar system. Getting 45K for them wasn’t bad, considering. After the split, the ship got 13K, Jaynie got 11700 (after the guild tax), and I got 23400 (again, after the tax). Not bad for short bit of work.

With a pile of coin in our pockets, metaphorically speaking, we looked at the items available, and considered what was both in our price range, and would actually be useful to us. I didn’t look over Jaynie’s shoulder to see what she was doing, instead concentrating on things that would be useful to myself, or my slaves. The first thing I came across was pretty cool.