I am Paul Lancaster, human, and I was bored, as bored as you can be when you fly an old Earth cargo ship solo. I was a trader plying the Eastern Orion arm of the galaxy. My ship was held together with gaffer tape and prayers, but it still flew and still passed most of the rules and regulations. I had a consignment to pick up from Keppler 22B. The cargo I was to collect was a tonne of Blue. Blue was a spice that originated on Alpha Centauri; it was mildly hallucinogenic but also therapeutic for most species.

The more that you took, the more therapeutic it became; it acted against parasites, helped your body fight off viruses and bacterial infections, and wasn’t really addictive. You could stop taking it whenever you wanted to; you just didn’t tend to want to. It was legal on most worlds and so wasn’t hugely expensive. The tonne that I was to ferry wouldn’t make me a huge fortune; it would barely cover the costs of my fuel, but it was a cargo, and there was always a chance of picking up a return cargo after I had delivered.

I was still a few hours out, and as I sat in my command chair, I scanned through the items on the RB auction that was being held on 22B. RB was an auction company from years ago and had grown into one of the biggest in the galaxy. They had an auction every 3 months at each of their sites, and they were so prolific that there was one of their auctions on, somewhere, pretty much every day.

I looked at the items that had already sold; there were several consignments of Blue, but each had sold for more than the consignment I was collecting, plus, with an auction lot, you never really knew the provenance. At least what I was collecting was pure, direct from the farms on Alpha Centauri and had all the documentation of origin to prove it. Good.

In the unsold items there were a few other items that caught my interest. But I was short of credits, and until I had made a few more profitable cargo runs, I could only afford what I needed. What would be ‘nice to have’ would have to wait. I got up and headed to the galley and made myself a coffee. Earth coffee, strong and bitter, not like the fake stuff that most of the galaxy sold. I was down to my last kilo; I would have to get some more soon.

Back in the chair I called 22B traffic control, and after presenting my credentials and consignment number, I was directed to docking bay ES17. I fed the details into the ship’s computer and sat back and watched as my ship and the docking bay spoke to each other and docked me with hardly a jolt.

I left the ship and went and found K’Lor the load commander; he would be the one locating my cargo and putting it into my cargo bay. Once he had done that, it was my job to secure it after checking it was indeed the correct consignment. I left my cargo bay open; it was empty. The cargo bay would be shut after the consignment was loaded. The rest of the ship was secure, and so I wandered off to grab a drink and have a look at the RB unsold lots. There was sometimes a real bargain to be had, and a real bargain was pretty much all I could afford these days.

“Lancaster,” Je’Vok the auction guy said; we were on surname terms. He had remembered that I came to look at unsold lots every time I was on station. Je’Vok was a Kardavian, around 2 metres tall and grey skinned, with dark oval eyes that blinked upwards. Not human, certainly, but sort of humanoid if you squinted, and the light was poor. The light was not poor.

“Je’Vok,” I replied. “Anything interesting?”

“Nope, there are some inops that are unrepairable and are not even worth the parts, and I have a Mendaci off for scrap.”

“Mendaci?” I was intrigued. I knew that they often sold indentured aliens, but I had never heard of one described as scrap. “What the hell does ‘scrap’ mean?”

“Whoever buys it can harvest the organs and sell the rest as flesh for food.”

“Let me see.” I had never seen a Mendaci before. I knew that they had blue skin, a side effect of growing up on a world full of natural spice, but not a high-quality spice, not worth harvesting and selling, although some pirates did take it and put it on the black market. Living with spice in their environment since birth, generation after generation, had given their skin a blue tone and a natural immunity to most illnesses.

“This way.” He led me through the door from reception into the items hall. He stood in front of a tall, close-barred cage. Inside was a blue-skinned bipedal female in chains. She had bright auburn hair, antennae on her forehead and a control ring around her neck. She looked at me with venom in her eyes. The control ring was placed around the indentured’s neck, and the owner had a remote. Any misbehaviour meant that buttons were pressed and depending on which buttons, either pain or unconsciousness occurred.

“What’s her story? Why scrap?”

“According to the paperwork, the control ring doesn’t work, and so she won’t do what she is told and cannot be relied on not to kill her owners.”

“So, why is she still wearing the control ring?”

“I can’t sell an indenture without the control ring. It is the law.”

“What languages does she speak?” Not that it mattered; I could speak enough standard Galactic as well as my native English, but there was always the translator app for anything else.

“God knows, she has only snarled at me. No one bid on her, so she is off to scrap tomorrow.”

“Do they pay you then? You know, for all the organs and meat? As I spoke, I remembered that on Sirius, many moons ago, I had a stew in a restaurant that had blue meat. I hadn’t thought of it at the time, but, well, it does make you think. Where does meat come from in low-end restaurants, the sort that I can afford to eat in?

“Fuck off, Lancaster, I have to pay them for scrap disposal.”

I can’t say it sounds barbaric; it is what it is, and no one would thank me for raising Cain over it.

“How much for me to take her, rather than you paying for disposal?”

“Minimum I can accept is 1 credit. By the time all the paperwork and fees are done, and she is indentured to you, you are looking at 17 credits.”

“Can I take her without indenturing?”

“No, not unless you are registered for scrap disposal.”

“Oh.” God knows what I would do with her. An extra pair of hands would help, and she looked fit enough. Perhaps I could get her to help me, in exchange for saving her life, and encourage her to not try and kill me.

“Okay,” I had 17 credits. I had planned on spending that on a decent meal, but, well, saving a Mendari was just as good a spend, in my book.

It took over an hour to do all the paperwork, and then Je’Vok wanted to know where my ship was docked so that he could arrange delivery. I told him and then took another look at the Mendari. She was quite pretty; if you liked red-headed, blue-skinned girls, I would have put her at mid-twenties if she were a human, but, being a Mendaci, I honestly had no idea.