Crime in the Empire

Crime has always been an issue in the Empire. It’s been an issue everywhere. In a lot of resects, crime there looks like it does now. People get killed, people kill, people steal, people do other bad things. Adultery is a major thing among the high class. Don’t muddy the genetic waters, because even if a baby is conceived, nobody will abort it. That’s another thing. They’re so desperate for babies, that they’ll keep them, even if ill-conceived. Natural conception is so rare that even a bastard born has a rank higher than a nehkeh (for example, which word MEANS bastard). So there’s a whole culture around illegal doctor’s offices fudging birth records. Hackers/Cracks who can get into the system and change the records, or paying off priests to make sure this or that bit of coding in the nanites is wiped out, inactivated. A lot can be gained by getting a blood sample and force cracking the programing, because a lot of times it’s still THERE, just not a lit up part of the maruste. On a larger scale, outside the higher ranks, there are street gangs in cities, mobs that span whole systems, or multiple systems, and large cartels that reach across political borders. The cartels have the biggest reach, and it’s not unheard of for them to have control over a customs trading post or a chain of them. Some of the people who are supposed to be in authority aren’t just dirty, they’re known gang members. These gangs do things like jack up prices for air and water in a station (great in customs, because very few people can avoid them.) By law a ship is supposed to stop and declare goods. If they don’t, there are ships/boats to go out and bring them in. Nonlethal methods mainly, but if a local gang leader (needs a better name)hears of cargo coming in, he can rip the ship apart with grav tethers or the like and pull the cargo out of vacuum.

This means that trading Captains carry extra to plan for the gang tax, such as it is. Or they carry extra to talk the customs officers into protecting them FROM the gangs. Some load up on extra water storage and O2 filters, so they don’t have to hook into the facilities at the docks. Others will keep smaller towing ships and bring cargo pods in to dock, leaving the main ship out of reach. In that case, they still need the extra water/air/food because if they’re using a small ship, or an unmanned drone to ferry stuff back and forth (such as with a LARRRRRRGE freighter that can’t maneuver in as close, then the people on the main ship itself will need to have something to live off.

There are also free roaming gangs. Not really linked in to one station or planets as such (sometimes sharing dock space, or a splinter group of one of the stationary groups). These might work like sort of space-biker gangs. Smaller ships hitting targets (other ships, small asteroid mining colonies, etc), getting in and out before authorities can get there. Or else just cracking things open. They take people, drugs, things, money. Bring it back to the main ship, travel on to the next sector, and take the next target. They put in to port when they need to refuel, get water, but they’re fairly self-sufficient. Might take one of the robo-transports ferrying power to the Barbican. Might have a ship fitted out to bring in ice. More 02 scrubbers than the average ship of its size. All waiting for the day they have to set down and hide somewhere.

In some cases, there are planets so full of crime it doesn’t matter who sets down because there’s no law except the strongest gang around. In some cases, they’ve got an unclaimed asteroid they’re squatting in. Sometimes criminals and people hiding move from system to system, not really interesting in dominating or clashing with the local powers. A Lord here or there might give them allowances to keep them in check. One thing everyone is aware of when it comes to living on the Kovavek planets and asteroids and even on the ships is the permeability of the hull. What’s between them and the outside? This makes for little tolerance of insubordination, many mutinies nipped in the bud (the blown skull, snapped spine), and general lack of firearms wandering around any particular Kovavek facility or ship. Just because it can’t penetrate the hull doesn’t mean it can’t hot some vital bit of electric stuff or water line and then BOOM, no fun.

On planets themselves, the gangs and cartels might have splinter groups or seed groups, but the worry is more about homegrown street gangs. Runaways, Savages, general bad elements are generally concentrated in the trade cities, which have the expected slums and blackout parts of town. If someone is an outlaw on an Ajiri planet and they REALLY don’t want trouble or to be found, there are plenty of places away from the cities that they can hide. The Ajiri planets aren’t nearly as populated as the world today is. Population {{is so spread out that people can hide in the hinterlands fairly easy.

As for specific types of crime, some things work in different ways. A drug derived from a plant that won’t grow on more than one planet will naturally be more expensive than one that can be derived from something grown for legitimate reasons (agricultural over many planets for example) or else something that can be grown on a ship or station or in a Kovavek city. People can track the growth of course, by looking for power surges or who does what with hydroponics components. Some things are slipped in with groceries. Some are made from chemical by products (come from Kovavek facilities more than Ajiri. More expensive in Ajiri and gravity wells than the chem plants). Some drugs are like what we have now with the prescription drug abuse. And of course, with stranger diseases they presumably have, come things that can heal and well as hurt like they do now. Cancer is a big killer of otherwise healthy people, and in some sectors, depending on the politics, the market for actual drugs that are NEEDED for medicinal purposes and not recreational is as big as the ‘fun’ drugs.

Some foods are smuggled, depending on the politics of one sector or planet or another. Some of it is hunting restrictions on Ajiri planets (wow, so much goes back to those little mini-Earths, doesn’t it). Some of it has to do with economics and trade laws. If something is a close match in use or type to something from another planet, there may be a law saying that local stuff needs to be bought first. Or it may just be that a particular Lord decides he doesn’t like anything from some other Lord and so he bans anything from that system.

People too, are traded back and forth. Not concubines as Jossa and Delfi. Those are traded among the highborn as ‘wives’ or ‘breeders’ for a bloodline. But slavery via sai is possible. And conditioning babies is too. A number of street children and lower class children are taken every month. Every day in fact. The lower classes have a somewhat easier time naturally conceiving, so they might have more kids than they can afford to keep. Some will get rid of their kids in adoption agencies, but higher class people don’t really want them. In many cases, they’ll sell their child to a higher class person (or someone who SAYS they’re high rank) and the kid goes into conditioning from a young age. Some kids really are adopted like this, and brought into a household as servants or errand runners or companions for a single child of the house etc. In these cases, things might not be so bad for the kid. In other though, the bad things happen. Having a child Conditioned from a young age, even if the kid themselves isn’t sai, can create loyal slaves, servants, sex partners, patsies in illegal dealings, etc. In some cases, especially with the sex, a ‘type’ might be aimed at. There’s a market for a dom, or a sub, or a sexual situation of this or that flavor. Some things can be done with the way a non-sai raises a child, some things can be done when a sai is in control of the process. Left unfinished, the kid can be broken, like a halfway finished doll.

There’s also straight up slave trade from the lower ranks who can’t afford to put in the time to condition a captive from childhood. Snatch a girl on the street, stuff her in a box (cryo if you’ve got some money/experience/want to risk it), and ship her off. Some Lords don’t want slaves in their systems, so they have law enforcement looking for it. Some don’t care, some profit off it. Officially, the Imperial Government, Military, and Custom’s People see it as illegal. The military dirties its hands with this in the case of Savages, because they’re non-people anyways and they can be taken in by the military itself for covert groups and cannon fodder. But if it runs across an operation using Imperial civilians, for example, then it’s supposed to find out where they’re from, free them, etc.

Going into Indenture isn’t supposed to be something any normal citizen has to do. Only nehkeh qualify for that. Indenture marks are only supposed to go on the back of a nehkeh. So if an average citizen is found with an indenture mark, tests will be done to make sure the percentage of nehkeh blood they may have. One way slave traders can muddy the waters if they know they’re about to get caught is to keep some Savage blood on hand and make sure it winds up in the bloodstream of their captives. Only a priest who really CARES is going to check to see if the person has two sets of DNA in the blood or if the nanites are from two different people (since pure nehkeh don’t get anything BUT a nehkeh nanite when/if they get caught-roving gangs of priests in some areas? Rounding up street children? Wait to get caught doing crime in others? - it’s a test that can be done, with the right equipment).