This story takes place in the Dystopian Era of the UniFed universe. Several thousand years after the fall of UniFed, Humanity now lives on the fringes of a cross-galactic alien alliance. Classed as a form of livestock and commodity, humanity has no legal legitimacy in the United Alliance. They scrape out a living salvaging scrap, pirating Alliance tech or engaging in any other profitable acts of crime. Any humans caught by Alliance forces are either killed or sold as slaves. This means that there is a robust slave trade in Alliance space. Humans can be seen fulfilling many different roles in alien society.
***
There's always a time in our lives where we wonder just how far we can fall. How far will we go for freedom? When our lives crumble away in our scarred hands, what will we do to get it back? Will we even try? Or will we succumb to the despair that lurks within us all?
I didn't have to wait long to find my answer. I pulled the pin on the grenade. I made a show of throwing it at the cartel guys shooting at us. The alien slavers managing my squad of mercenaries had no idea that I just dropped the stupid thing at their feet instead of throwing it.
They thought we were being rushed when I dove for cover behind them and hit the dirt. They dropped themselves and thought they were safe. A brilliant green flash tried to sear its way through my eyeballs as the plasma grenade detonated. I heard a pop and then the world drowned beneath the whine of the noise canceling units in my helmet. I felt the blast more than anything. It vibrated violently in my chest.
When my opened my eyes, all I could see was a plume of brown dust. Good. It would cover my escape. The collar around my neck chirped a warning. There was a transponder implanted in the lead slaver. I knew it had just sent the signal that the slaver was dead. I had 60 seconds to hack the thing before it executed its... execution command.
I scrabbled from behind the boulder where I'd flattened myself. I whipped out the hacked skin-jack I'd bought from the wet market on our last trip to the outpost. It didn't take long to find his body. It was little more than a mess of mangled green flesh and turquoise blood. I had no idea what species this alien was and frankly, I didn't care. I jabbed the sharp tines into its unresponsive flesh.
The unit chirped green and the collar ceased its threatening beeping only to be replaced with a confused chitter. I hissed out a word of gratitude. Thank God these aliens were lacking in scruples. I was fortunate that my vendor was good to the worth of his coin at least. My life was worth exactly seven thousand and forty two credits I guess. This nifty bit of restricted tech was used to alter biometric registries. Mine just happened to have a bit of extra features.
Several heartbeats thudded by and I forced myself to be patient. There was no doubt the cartel had seen our little "accident." They would be upon me in minutes. I couldn't leave until the trojan hacked the registry in the transponder.
I tried to force myself to slow my breathing. Panicking helped no one, certainly not me. My trigger finger was especially itchy when I was scared. The vast flood of dust left me no clues about how close the cartel might be. I could at least rely on my ears if everything wasn't drowned beneath the tumultuous roar of my frantic breath. Come on.... Come ON! I willed the damn thing to hurry up.
I thought I heard some gravel crunch off to my right. I crouched low behind my late slave master's boulder and hoped for the best. The cartel wouldn't exactly care whether this bitch had an owner or not. A ping brought my attention back. I looked down. The skin-jack was all green. Thank fucking Christ, I could go. I ripped the collar off and snapped it around my Master's corpse. With any luck, no one will notice a missing slave.
I rifled through the master's pockets and found a grimy credit chit. I slotted it into the skin-jack and a few moments later, it beeped green again. That meant the skin jack successfully cleared the biometric key. I pulled the jack loose and stuffed it, along with the credit chit, into my pocket and skulked away. I got lucky. I guess the cartel didn't quite know what to make of the blast. Maybe they thought it was some sort of trap. I had no trouble making my escape.
The days on Valeria II were ruthlessly hot. I made it barely more than a mile before a flash of doubt flitted through my thoughts. At least my outfit had water. Ugh no... what's wrong with me? I can handle a little thirst if it gets me home.
The two suns baked the landscape into a hellish scab of cracked clay and dust. The planet was barely more than a pit stop at the edge of Alliance space. Like all humans, I was born in The Fringe. It was a loose collection of spacer settlements that sprawled beyond the edge of Alliance space. Humans rarely set foot on a planet's surface. It had been that way for millennia.
The lore keepers told us that at one time, we had a civilization much like the Alliance but something happened. It was called UniFed. The scrappers that scuttled in the wreckage above would sometimes find hints of our distant past. No one really understood what happened to them. Every record just went dark after a certain date about six thousand years ago. It was like some malevolent force had just pulled the plug. We knew that our people were descended from those that escaped to space.
We never returned to the planets. Every single one of us was told that the planets promised only death for our kind. I sighed deeply. I might be able to breathe the air but that tired old phrase still held true enough. While we were absent from terrestrial life, other species had found their wings. From what I had seen, they were a lazy and hedonistic lot. Honestly, it was a bit of a miracle that they ever achieved space flight at all. Somehow thousands of different aliens managed to cobble a working cross galactic civilization from the smoldering remains of UniFed. They inherited the worlds that we rejected.
I had seen a lot of things after getting captured and sold as a slave. Aliens had their way with us. We were seen as vermin. We were exploited, bought, sold and culled on a whim. We made our lives siphoning whatever we could from the Alliance. We had no choice now. Piracy, smuggling and scavenging were the bread and butter of human life. We lived as parasites. Our isolation left us dependent on our neighbors. I may not have any status here but I might find a sympathetic soul. I trudged on.
Thin clouds slithered in from the west. It brought a brief reprieve as I caught a glimpse of civilization. I'm sure it had some name in a tongue I'd never be able to pronounce. All of the slaves simply called it The Outpost.
A ramshackle collection of houses, bars and markets lay nestled in a shallow valley. I stared down at it from the ridge line. Valeria II was originally a Kavlorian mining colony. The Kavlorians were a burly and crotchety species with far too much testosterone for their own good. They probably spent more time fighting and fucking than mining. To no one's surprise, the mining operation failed. It wasn't spectacular, though. it was more of a creeping death. Illicit trade slowly tightened its strangle hold on this place. Now, one could buy nearly anything they wanted in this God-forgotten hell.
With black money came wealth. The Outpost was a haphazard sprawl where the slums lay right at the feet of the towering resort in the center. A wall embraced the resort with comforting plasma. They had to keep the riff raff out after all. Slender spires of glass and steel housed the generators and marked the wall's path across the wastes. Crude structures of old corrugated steel piled together against the southern gate. I knew the northern side was where most of the honest business was done. I also knew that there was no honest recourse for a rogue slave like me. Even the sight of an unaccompanied human would draw attention. I had to be vigilant. Even the slightest mistake would cost me my life.
I remembered the chit and decided it might be wise to see what I was working with. I pulled it out and pressed my thumb against the biomarker. It lit up green and I let out a sigh of relief. The skin-jack was worth every stupid credit I had scraped together in my five years as a slave. My relief was short lived. The fucking asshole only had a measly three hundred credits! I screamed. My voice came back to me as if mocking me. What a cheap piece of shit! I had half a mind to throw the damn thing but my better judgment caught up with me.
You see, I had great plans of simply taking his chit and bribing one of the crews at the port to take me to a safe house off-world. Dissent, our council of sorts, knew that most of us would be killed or captured and had managed to secure a few sanctuaries in Alliance space. We weren't entirely without options after being sold. All of us had been coached on what to do. My stupid dream died with that cheapskate's shitty card. I needed tens of thousands of credits, not three fucking hundred! You'd think a damn mercenary commander would have a bit more to his name. I ran my hands through my hair. I needed a new plan.
I looked down at my uniform. We spent enough time here over the years that it would be too recognizable. I pulled a knife from my belt and stripped down to my underclothes. I stared at my name patch. It spelled out Sybil in curved scarlet letters. The uniform was streaked with pale dust. A pang of loss drove into me, right to my heart.
There were people that knew that name once. People that cared. A lump grew in my throat. I didn't just kill the slavers in my escape. There were friends too... Ugh. I grimaced and wiped at my eyes. Sybil was gone. Everyone who loved me was either dead or light years away. Maybe a new life needed a new identity.
I carefully cut the name patch away and tore fashionable holes in my clothing. I noticed that unless they needed the protection, aliens tended to wear torn or highly revealing clothes, if anything at all. If I went in dressed like a damned nun, I would attract unwanted scrutiny. I appraised my work with a critical eye. God what a mess, I snorted. My life literally depended on how slutty my clothes looked. I put the thing back on. It barely concealed my modesty. Man, was I glad that Valeria II was a hot and dirty dust ball. At least I wouldn't freeze my tits off.
I stepped down into the valley that embraced the city. There was no time like the present. I left most of my equipment in the dust with my abandoned name. It would only make me more of a target.
***
I felt their eyes upon me as I strode down the street. I was in the slums now. I held my chin high and met everyone's gaze. I needed to look like I belonged here. I stopped and turned after I felt fingers brush my ass.
"What are you looking at big guy? You want a piece of this?" I wiggled my ass and winked at him. A tall but slender alien blinked at me with his three strange eyes. It was like the colors had been reversed. The iris was black with a golden slit at the center where his pupil should be. His skin was a pale grey and his coarse hair matched the color of the beige dust a little too well. He was hairless except for the scruff on his head. Long pointed ears sprouted from his head. He was remarkably human-like right down to the facial features but there was an uncanny sharpness to him. He was too tall and too lean. The angles in his features were too acute. His eyes narrowed and he stepped closer to me.
