She would have expected the soldiers to be less tense as they moved away from the barnacles, yet a hush fell over them all as they walked out onto the open prairie. They kept scanning the tufts of grass, and Faust had them pause anytime anyone heard more than the slightest rustle.
There’s something out here more dangerous than the dominatrixes, Stacia thought. Good to know.
The soldiers relaxed again as they got to the city’s edge. There was a wall surrounding all of Hobbes, but Stacia failed to notice it until she tripped over it.
“Watch your step,” Faust said.
“…the hell?” Stacia asked. She looked down to get a closer inspection of the wall. It was only about ten centimeters tall, yet it very clearly ran the entire perimeter of the city. It appeared to be metal, probably also scavenged from drop pods, and was in much better repair than anything else she’d seen of the city so far. The people of Hobbes must have taken great care to keep it maintained. “Want to explain that?”
Faust waved dismissively at her. “Someone can tell you all the ins and outs of Hobbes later. There will be plenty of time once you’re officially sworn in as part of the Lord Commander’s army.”
Stacia raised an eyebrow at that, but didn’t ask anything more. Instead, as they left it behind them, she turned back to get one more look at the tiny peculiar wall. There was something about it she hadn’t noticed on first glance: the grass around it. On the inner city-side, the grass grew at its leisure. On the outer prairie-side, the ground was bare, like it had been denuded by some kind of weed-killer. She filed that particular piece of information away for later.
The city of Hobbes, as far as Stacia could see right now, was abandoned. There were plenty of shacks and lean-tos peppering the landscape, a small number of larger buildings, and one or two the size of closets that Stacia suspected might be outhouses. The closer they got to the center of Hobbes, however, the more she could hear the rowdy and raucous noises coming from one building in particular. It was definitely the largest of all the structures in the city, both in length and the fact that it was the only one with two stories. This building seemed to be in better general repair than everything else around it, and the attempts to decorate it in something resembling architectural aesthetics gave her the impression that it must be the seat of government.
That made it all the more surprising when Faust opened the door onto what appeared to be a strip club.
Chapter 5
Skin Trade
The soldiers all went in ahead of her, either eager to get out of the open of the eerily quiet streets or raring to join the festivities inside. Stacia, now forgotten by all except Faust by her side, stood outside the door for several seconds trying to make sense of this before cautiously going in.
The interior was poorly lit, so it took Stacia some time for her eyes to adjust after Faust closed the door behind her. The building, which appeared to be just a single room on this lower floor, was full almost shoulder to shoulder with former Galactic Marines in the same shoddy armor as her. That part made sense to her. What didn’t make sense were the people, outnumbered by the marines about three to one, that didn’t have armor.
“What is this?” Stacia asked Faust. She had to shout for him to hear her over the noise of the crowd.
“Pretty much what it looks like,” he said as he indicated several stages set up throughout the room. On each and every one of them, a naked person danced and shimmied to the hoots and hollers of the people in the crowd. The dancers were pretty evenly distributed between men and women, with each of their audiences roughly equal in gender distribution. A butt-naked man nearby, scrawny but clean, wiggled his groin in the direction of a man and woman in armor. Both of them made a move to grab at the dancer only for them to intercept and start pushing each other. The dancer, while he had a smile on his face, didn’t look like he was happy with the idea that the winner might want a piece of him.
The dancers weren’t the only ones without armor, though. Although they at least got to wear ragged, poorly sewn together clothes, all the people who appeared to be on the serving staff were also missing armor, making them look small and insignificant compared to the enormous bulk of the armored former marines. Waiters and waitresses weaved in and out of the crowd with trays in their hand, and along the far wall a bar had been set up, with a bartender and ramshackle distillery behind it. There was even one woman with what was probably supposed to be a mop as she tried to clean up some customer’s vomit.
There were people without armor among the customers, but they were definitely the minority. They also appeared to be divided into two distinct groups. The majority of these armor-less customers wore the same ragged clothing as the servers, and tended to huddle around tables in groups with as much distance as they could muster from everyone else. Then there were a few in much nicer, if still homemade, clothing. These didn’t seem to have the same problem mixing with the former marines. In fact, judging from their places at the tables and the way the others around them seemed to hang on their every word, these particular people were actually respected.
“I don’t understand,” Stacia said. “This shouldn’t be possible.”
For several seconds, Faust didn’t seem to understand, then he nodded. “I always forget that the new people to the planet have nothing but the Galactic Marines propaganda to go on. But you already strike me as being smart. Figure it out.”
Stacia looked around again, but she still didn’t understand. Leviathan was a prison planet, and one that was only used for former Galactic Marines. All of them needed armor. There plain and simple shouldn’t have been a single person on the planet that could be classified as a normal human being.
Unless, that was, all those rumors that got passed around among certain galactic activist groups were true. Stacia had never wanted to believe it, but here was the evidence right in front of her.
Taking her stunned silence for continued confusion, Faust explained as he led her in the direction of a staircase. “If you still don’t get it, think about this: before you were sentenced, did the Galactic Marines do anything to make you infertile?”
“No.”
“So you’re going to get just as horny as any other person, just like you have for your whole career.”
Stacia didn’t agree to that, but neither did she say anything against it. Her own personal sexual desires, or rather lack of them, were her own business. She understood what he was saying, though. Galactic Marines were given armor instead of skin on most of their bodies, but there were a few places where they were left untouched, namely the genitals. The Marines didn’t want to scare anyone away by taking away their ability to mate when their terms of service were up, after all.
So sex on Leviathan still happened. And where there was sex, there would inevitably be babies.
“Everyone without armor, they were born here?” Stacia asked.
“Not all of them. But don’t worry about that for now. Hey, which do you prefer? Man or woman?”
“Excuse me?”
“Doesn’t matter, I guess. I’ll just grab one for you to sample, and if you decide they’re not to your liking, you can come back down and get another one.” Faust stepped away from Stacia and pointed at the young woman on the nearest stage. The woman froze, a look of absolute terror on her face, which she quickly replaced with feigned pleasure as she stepped down from the stage, trying to avoid the trash on the floor with her bare feet. The former marines around her mumbled in disappointment before moving on to another stage.