Human's blood is a well-known weapon. Full of leucocytes ready to protect human body from disease and foreign invaders. While used on other forms of life it can act like acid; burning and destroying skin. Blood isn't a cheap thing, because selling it is forbidden everywhere. But black market found a way to produce enough blood to gain on it — blood farms. Cages where humans are drugged so they won't fight back.
Everything begins to fall apart when one of farm workers didn't drug their victims and humans finally started to realise what is happening around them. -- Anon Guest
[AN: It isn't just the acid and the leucocytes, Human blood is loaded with pathogens that breed once removed from the body and left in certain conditions. Look up forensic cleaning sometime if you really want to learn about the nasties that happen because of blood spatter. Offensensitivity warning for drug use in the story below.]
Humans are Deathworlders. This is known. Their very bodies are factories of pathogens in multiple forms. Their mouths are cesspools of bacteria. Their bodily fluids are acidic. As for their blood... it is truly a font of chemical warfare. Even a healthy Human's blood is loaded with pathogens, antibodies, enzymes and so forth. A biological cornucopia that's one crucial tilt away from attacking its own host in confusion. All of this is known.
If someone could find a way to create in abundance what a Human body does naturally, they could reign in terror over multiple Havenworlder, and even normal Galactic worlds. This, too, is known. There are unethical sorts who will sell Humans to interested parties... some of them are also Human. This, despite everything, is known. The CRC repeatedly attempt to stop them, but there are always more.
Given all this, it was no surprise that a facility like Rapture Farms would arise. Take one Greater Deregulation, rife with dissidents who do not like living in a world where even clean air is taxed. Add a pinch of knowledge, which is always a dangerous thing. Stir well with the Dunning-Kruger effect, and you inevitably get Rapture Farms.
As a facility inside Greater Deregulation space, the CRC can neither inspect it nor enforce their rules. All they can do is blockade trade in and out of the polity's space. It's registered as a penal facility and, in a way, that's exactly what it is.
This is where the dissidents go when they are captured by the Oligarch In Chief's secret police. They are taken away, tranquillized, and hooked up to various extraction devices. The bodies are kept alive, the minds are kept docile, and a constant stream of valuable raw material comes out.
There wouldn't have been trouble if the Oligarch hadn't decided to cut corners, but... evil has always sown the seeds of its own destruction.
File into this cauldron a few employees too incompetent to trust anywhere, yet too involved in hot secrets to trust anywhere. Pay them the minimum possible to keep them allegedly motivated to keep the 'cattle' docile and producing.
It doesn't really matter if a few dissidents die. There's always more dissidents.
Under such circumstances, it shouldn't be at all shocking that the administrative and maintenance staff start watering down the drugs for the 'cattle' so they can take a hit or two as well.
Humans can gain a tolerance for any drug. This is known, but in this case, this is ignored.
Lackluster care, uninterested staff doing the bare minimum necessary to avoid notice, and most of them on the hard stuff... They really should have seen this coming.
One empty cage in the rack was nothing new. Dead bodies were automatically removed and pulled apart for anything valuable. It was just another slot to fill with just another warm body in the fullness of time. Techie Lyal restocked the nutrient and tranq tanks, did a perfunctory wipe over the grating, and pocketed the undiluted drug surplus for later enjoyment.
He didn't bother counting how many empty cages there were. That wasn't a statistic the Uppers wanted. They wanted to know how much they were getting and Corpse Processing wasn't Lyal's area.
If anyone had been paying attention, they might have noticed...
Packets of Nutri-food were going missing. Nobody noticed, they just ordered more. Uniforms, blankets, and sheets were going missing. They didn't care. There was always more from Dispatch. Nobody cared about the plastic cutlery, or how much went through the on-site recycling system. The oxygen scrubbers could have told them that there were more than the registered population on board, but... nobody was told to look, so nobody cared to notice.
When the revolution came, it was a shock to everyone.
The rest of the dissidents were freed from their cages, those who had already escaped made quick use of their handmade weapons and armour before seeing to the medical needs of the rest. They now had an iron grip on the Oligarch In Chief's primary means of income, and the best armour and offensive weaponry meant to control such outbreaks.
This is how the empires fall,
Empires fall,
Empires fall...
Not with a shot but in fire.
The inevitable revolution swept the Oligarch and all their allies under a tide of former 'cattle'. Their own security teams grown complacent through years of standing by and only looking menacing. The secret police, kept battle-ready through constant repetition, were the first to fall in clouds of concentrated anaesthetic gas. With time, care, and effort, they might become rehabilitated members of Pax Humanis' enforcement arm.
As for the Oligarch and all those like them?
They died, and died horribly.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / queen21]
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