"The slaver´s story." by James ´Jimbo Fett ´ Inwood

I’m sitting here in this grey box; this cell that I’ve been thrown in. I’ve been here for some time; half a year I think - I’ve lost track of time.

What am I in here for? Slavery. Good old fashioned slavery. I’m a slaver - or was a slaver.

I’m not any more though. How can I run anymore slave runs when I’m stuck in this godforsaken prison?

I look around my little room: its got a comfy bed which I’m on right now as I write this journal. I also have the basic hygiene facilities: toilet, sink etc…

But no windows. No windows for me to look out.

I don’t need windows; there’d be little point. Here I am within a massive prison complex on the edge of an asteroid belt, deep within some backwater system. I’m out of sight. No one wants to see me right?

Not even you want to read this.

I don’t blame you really - most people think I’m a monster. I’ve become something of a household name: Aaron Se’her the most notorious slaver to terrorize the outer rims of the galaxy - that’s me. I’m an ogre to scare your kids into behaving.

“If you don’t eat your greens Timmy, I’ll get Aaron Se’her to jump out from under your bed!”

My defence said I’d get life if I’d plead ignorance to the imperial laws; I wouldn’t have it; I was making a stand for what I believed in. Make it obvious to those old farts in their wigs and their gowns, that their hypocritical values mean jack to me.

For that I got the death penalty - death by lethal injection - so much for my blaze of glory: no blood, no mess; just a quiet slip into oblivion.

Boring.

I always thought that when I began my career as a slaver, I would die in some heroic gun fight: I’d be all tooled up with the best weapons in the galaxy, ready to take on the forces of evil - I’d die fighting for what I believed in.

It’s just a pity that I’m going to go out so quietly. No pain. Just a slow realisation that I’m going to die and perhaps a few flash-backs of my life.

My life. What a tale!

It began not so grand, forty seven years ago on the fringes of the galaxy.

Even as I write those last few words I smile. Where I was born in my day was considered the arse-end of the galaxy - a backwards planet of no-hopers. Now it’s all advanced, with no more of the rough lawlessness I grew up with. None of the crime and adventure that made me what I was.

I pity the people living on that planet now.

My great grand parents were from the second wave of settlers to colonise the planet - Icarus they named it. They named it after the guy that flew out of this prison that he and his father were thrown into. His dad made wings of wax and feathers and used them to fly out of their prison. Only Icarus wasn’t as bright as his old man; he flew far too close to the sun and it melted his wings, so he fell into the sea and died.

The planet was named after him because of the exceptionally bright star that orbited it; it gave Icarus a warm climate and beautiful surroundings - perfect for the settlers to colonise.

My grand parents grew up on the planet never knowing any other than Icarus and the stories that their parents told them of earth: it’s gentler climate, and of the great exodus before the star orbiting it went nova and annihilated the planet.

But I’m going off on a tangent: I was born the only child of a very young couple, so I guess I was something of a mistake - I tied them down. I often spent time round my grandparent’s house; they both owned a simple bar on the wrong side of town - where traders and all sorts gathered.

When I wasn’t playing in the streets with my friends I was helping out at the bar - occasionally coming back to my parents for meals and bed.

In those days the towns and small hamlets of Icarus had their own brand of laws, with law enforcement being in the hands of several local individuals that were elected into power. Of course, that’s not to say that the most popular person got into power; many an unpopular reign was ended through laser or otherwise.

As I reached puberty we all joined the galactic empire; the individual laws of the frontier colonies were to be forgotten in favour of the laws of the empire - in theory. However we were still on the far side of the galaxy at the time, so in practise it was impossible to maintain these laws; as we were light-years away from the central systems - right on the fringes.

The leaders of individual towns bribed officials and exploited loop holes, I suppose the shrinks among you would say I grew up to respect individuality and the power it gave you.

I suppose you’re right.

As the years rolled on I left the street games and went to work full time at my grandparents bar - they were long dead by the time I had fully owned it. I soon learned that it wasn’t the life for me, I wanted to see the world, or at least a small part of the universe.

I wasn’t the poorest kid on the street, but I wasn’t the richest either; if I wanted to get off the planet I had to work - which was what I hated from the very beginning.

Yet I had no choice. Even selling my grandparents bar only got me a meagre amount of credits; so I joined my local law enforcement personnel. The first month of experience was a harrowing one: lots of learning to follow orders and carry them out, but most grudgingly of all - to know your place in the hierarchy.

I did however learn to shoot and I became a skilled marksman.

In time I left the job of a law enforcer; I’d had enough of treading the straight and narrow and had made enough money to buy my own spaceship and leave Icarus for good. I became an interstellar merchant and travelled deep within the ever expanding galaxy. I traded exotic silks, spices and whatever I could lay my hands on. I did whatever I could to make a profit - whether it was legal, questionable or obviously illegal, I took advantage of it.

I don’t ask for anyone’s forgiveness. Why should I? I had to do what was necessary to survive.

As I earned more credits my personal wealth expanded and so did my business. I founded my own company and hired like-minded men and woman. We became well respected amongst other merchants; but we were still not as well-off as we would of liked.

I turned to trading on the outskirts of the empire, where I could deal in more illegal things, such as the “raw materials” needed to create the latest designer drug that had flooded the cities within the central systems. We had become smugglers: we sold these materials to distant narcotic factories on far away planets untouched by imperial law. We then shipped the newly created drugs back to the central systems, to crime lords that would give us a fat pay check.

We were also into weapons runs. The imperial empire of man wasn’t the only empire floating around the universe; several species had been discovered long before my parents were born. They of course had their own governments and laws to follow - but more importantly they had their own wars and conflicts. As neutral bystanders in this we took advantage of this business climate, we sold weapons to war-like aliens or to whoever placed the highest bid.

Money does talk after all.

It wasn’t without risks though - yet it was fun. It was also a highly profitable business that was worth more than anything I had ever done. If I did anything else - anything more “straight” I wouldn’t make half the credits I was making there and then.

But as I mentioned earlier: it wasn’t without any risks. Soon I was facing a lengthy prison sentence all because of some weasel who wanted out of this lifestyle - he sold me and my mates out to the law.

Looking back now, perhaps it was a godsend; prison taught me a lot of things: I learnt to be more sparing in my trust of others, but I also gained new contacts. So when my sentence was finally up I had somewhere to go. I had lost contact with my family for a long time and I had no desire to contact them again.

A friend I had made in prison told me to meet him out on some remote ball of rock in some system I had barely heard of. The planet in question was called Malebolge, named after one of the layers of hell - a fitting place for me to be I’m sure a lot of you are thinking.

I had barely enough money to afford the trip, which was half way across the empire; it was a hell of a risk as it could of been a wind-up, a trick, or maybe a trap set by someone I had upset long ago. But I took the risk - I’m a risk taker, and boy was it worth it!

Once landing on Malebolge I wasn’t very impressed: it was just another soulless chunk of rock given over to industry; the laws governing them seemed harsh even by imperial standards. It seemed that like Icarus, this planet was free to make up it’s own rules - it was just a shame that at the time it happened to have a dictator calling the shots.

I met my friend Jakarus within a tacky little diner within the planets grim capital. He brought me lunch which I guess was to sweeten the deal he was going to make with me After I finished it I followed him to the outskirts of the city, to one of the many barren wastelands that dotted the planet - Malbolgia was too close to the sun for anything green to grow and the government’s ruthless industry had taken its toll on the environment.

He took me to small factory that was producing munitions for the regime, it looked ordinary enough but as Jakarus explained, all the workers were obtained over the slave market. Jakarus was a slaver now, and I was to join his posse if I was to earn my fortune again.

At first I didn’t think much of it: we rounded up slaves and sold them off to fringe territories for credits. But as time went on I began to see the beauty of it: it wasn’t like the drug runs in which we had to do on the sly; most of the planets we sold our bounty to had legalised slavery.

Slavery was good for business. In most of the civilised societies we dealt with, it was seen as a good deal for the people living there and even the people we captured. In some areas they were given three square meals a day, a roof over their heads, and good solid work with a sense of purpose. If you want to rationalise what I did, you could say I was providing a service: giving you other people for you to force the dirty jobs onto that you don’t want to have to do.

Of course in some deals I knew the slaves we were selling would have a horrible life under their captors - being used as sex slaves for instance. But I can’t be there for everyone; it was nothing personal it was just business, pure and simple!

Time went on. I got older and more experienced in my new business. The only thing that bothered me was that I wasn’t in charge of this gang - I wanted to be on top! I did in the end, but through chance rather than trickery.

Even now I shudder at the memory of the day I became leader. What should have been a pleasant memory was tainted by cold blooded murder. It was a simple slave run on the desert planet of Xerris - another backwater far away from Imperial law. We targeted simple bands of nomads that roamed the deserts and rounded them up and sold them off.

Again we were providing a service to the settlers on that world: the settlers that lived on Xerris hated the nomads that attacked them. Seeing us kill a few of them and sell the captured ones to off-world buyers, only made us more respected amongst the settlers.

However a few do-gooders heard of our business and made no end of trouble for us. They attacked us during slave runs hoping to drive us off. Their attacks became more vicious as they found more like-minded people who were opposed to slavery.

At that time I just regarded them as a nuisance: hippies that were ruining a perfectly legitimate business - we were so very wrong.

During a night of celebration after a particularly plentiful run, we were attacked by these people - the “League of Freedom” I think they called themselves. We were surprised, as we were halfway through a party and in the middle of the desert. I killed several people that night with my ion pistol, but we lost several good slavers that day.

But the worst had yet to come.

These attackers had no intention of rescuing the slaves, they had no intention of killing us all; they wanted information - and there was nothing they wouldn’t do to get it.

Their mission it seemed was to capture our present leader. Jarkarus had got himself pretty drunk that night and our attackers must of known that, as their tactics were obviously aimed at getting him isolated so he could be easily captured. But by the time I had realised it, it was far too late - they were long gone and with Jarkarus with them.

The following morning we found his body. What this “League of Freedom” did to him was so repulsive, that after all these years I still can’t force myself to write what I saw had been done to him. Let it be known that afterwards, we gave his nude, mutilated body, a decent burial.

The survivors - including myself - wanted to make the “League of Freedom” pay for what they had done. But it was too late, their capture of Jarkarus not only shocked and disoriented us, but it also gave our enemies the location of our holding pens which they subsequently attacked. The worst blow of all was the loss of our clients; it seemed that after the death of Jarkarus no one wanted to associate with us anymore, never mind conduct business with us, through fear of what had happened to him.

It was time to move on to other parts of the galaxy.

We managed to settle in a particularly volatile area of the galaxy. It wasn’t too far from the central systems; but this area of the galaxy was near another civilization that was at war with the empire. This made it a perfect climate in which to do business.

With the death of Jarkarus came a few changes: I was in control of the gang through mutual trust and under my command we asked and gave no quarter, other than conduct business; we made sure the location of our holding pens were a closely guarded secret - preferring to sell our wares within cities.

We dealt with the most ruthless of warlords and some of the most evil people I had ever met in my life. The drug trade became more profitable in that system: combat drugs were just as sought out as the slaves they needed to test the new strains out on.

But sadly not all good things last. Eventually the war ended. The empire signed a treaty with its enemy. Thus came a crack down on all slavers in the area - an end to a good honest days work.

I’m called a monster because my ship was stuffed with slaves of all races and ages; all were for drug testing on one of the remaining illegal narcotic factories left in the system.

I’m disgusted by the hypocrisy of some people. Hypocrisy was just something I couldn’t stand as a kid - still can’t now in my late forties.

Here are these bastions of all that is good and decent calling me a “monster” , these law enforcers, these Imperial soldiers; when it was these very same men that brought my slaves and purchased the combat drugs when the war was at its heyday.

Who are you to call me a beast?

So ends my tale. Me and my business partners probably share the same fate: some will get death like me, while others will most likely see the “error of their ways” and get life - what weaklings they are to not make a stand for their beliefs!

I’ve made a stand, unlike them, and look where it got me. Death. Death for an honest businessman like me. What the hell is this galaxy coming to, when a person can’t make an honest living without the empire breathing down their necks?

My only regret is that I didn’t settle down with anyone, didn’t have any children, I didn’t have much time for romance; I was married to my profession I guess. I’m starting to wish I did now, then I’d have someone to hand this to when I’m gone.

I notice the clock is on it’s sixth hour, it will soon be time for me to leave this cell walk down the corridor and into the execution chamber: I’ll be strapped to the stretcher and pumped with toxins; all for the fascination of a few people who care to watch me die - and they call me a monster.

This is my story and I’m sticking to it.

I think I hear someone at the cell door - it’s time.