Deathstalker 01 - Deathstalker

Hannah—if I ever catch you snooping on my private moments, I'll perform a lobotomy on your main systems with a shrapnel grenade.
    Got it?"
    Hannah sniffed once, and broke off contact. Hazel smiled briefly. All the AIs the Captain could have chosen, and he had to buy a peeping torn. Somehow that was typical of the Shard and its luck. She looked about her at the long rows of body banks, huge and blocky, their dull metal sides smeared with frost and caked with ice. Ugly things, for an ugly business. The AI was quite right; she had no business in the cargo bay and no authority, either. Not that she gave a damn.

    Hazel d'Ark had a long history of not giving a damn, not to mention doing whatever she happened to feel was necessary and to hell with the consequences.
    Which was at least partly why she'd ended up an outlaw and a pirate.
    She moved slowly toward the nearest body bank, drawn by a curious mixture of revulsion and fascination. She'd had no illusions about what she was getting into when she'd signed on board the Shard as a clonelegger, but somehow it was different up close. The body banks were a source of life and longevity, but the spotless cargo bay still seemed to reek of death. Most of the lights were out, conserving energy. Never knew when you might need the extra power to make a run for it. Cloneleggers were not popular, either with the authorities or those who had a need for their services.
    Hazel walked slowly down the central aisle between the body banks. Visions of hearts and lungs and kidneys burned brightly in her mind's eye, pulsing with fresh crimson blood. She was sure they didn't actually look like that, preserved in the icy cold of the machines, but that was how she thought of them. Her fellow cloneleggers just referred to them as the merchandise, as casual as any butcher in a slaughterhouse. She stopped and looked around her, surrounded by hundreds upon hundreds of human organs and tissues, enough to fill a dozen battlegrounds, and every one of them worthless. Contaminated beyond saving by a smuggled virus. That was what you got for making enemies in the clonelegging business.
    Not too long before, the Captain had come out ahead in a business deal with the Boneyard Boys, through his usual mixture of high risk taking and low cunning.
    Contracts the Shard had lusted after for years had fallen into their hands as though by magic. Hazel smiled grimly. They should have known better.
    Clonelegging was a cutthroat business. Sometimes literally.

    Clonelegging was illegal, a crime punishable by death, but that did nothing to slow down the flood of people ready and willing to make a living out of death.
    Officially, the use of cloned human tissues for transplanting was only allowed to the highest of the high, those with breeding and position and a not too small fortune. Couldn't have the lower orders leading long and healthy lives; there were far too many of them as it was, even with the newly colonized worlds opening up vast new territories for settling. Besides, it might give the lower orders ideas above their station.
    But unofficially, if you had enough money and knew the right (or more strictly speaking wrong) people, you could get whatever part of you was failing replaced, either by cloning your own tissues, or by illegally obtained organs from body banks. There was never any risk of rejection with a person's own cloned tissues, but surprisingly often the original organs turned out to have built-in defects, or there were other problems that made direct cloning impossible. That was when the bodysnatchers came into their own. And then no one was safe, living or dead.
    Most planets cremated their dead, by order of the Empress, to ensure that donor organs would only be available to the right sort of people, but backwater planets often cultivated illegal secret graveyards and mausoleums. Never knew when the crops might fail, or business turn bad, and you might need a little cash in the bank, so to speak. So the cloneleggers made the rounds, and everyone made a little money. The cloneleggers made a lot. Demand was high. All they had to do was maintain a full stocklist and wait for someone to come knocking tentatively at their door.
    Only it isn't always that simple. Cloning is a delicate business with all sorts of things that can go wrong. Cloning wears out an organ fast, and then it has to
    be replaced in stock. The body banks have a voracious appetite. And the hidden cemeteries are few and far