Deathstalker

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 between, often with exclusive contracts to one particular set of cloneleggers. So sometimes the bodysnatchers go out in disguise to walk among the living, looking for those who won't be missed too much. A shame, of course, but you can't make an omelet, and all that…

When Hazel joined the Shards crew four planets back, the Captain had assured her they were graverobbers only. Except when things got really bad. Get in quick, dig up enough merchandise to fill the body banks, and then get the hell out of there before someone sold them out for an Empire reward. There's always someone. Only this time it had all gone wrong. The Boneyard Boys had got in first and contaminated the merchandise with a really vicious virus that hadn't shown up on any of the usual tests. Now every organ they had was worthless, and they had contracts to fill with people who weren't known for their patience or understanding.

So Captain Markee had gone cap in hand to the Blood Runners out in the Obeah systems and begged a favor. Hazel still shuddered when she thought of what she and the rest of the crew had had to promise in return for the information the Blood Runners provided. Nothing could be allowed to go wrong with this deal. There were worse things than death.

So the Blood Runners had put them in touch with people on Virimonde, out on the Rim, and the Shard had come to play the old game one more time. One last throw of the dice.

Hazel wondered, not for the first time, how she'd come to this. It wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind for herself when she left her home planet ten minutes ahead of a restraining order and a lengthy stay in jail in search of excitement and adventure. Cloneleggers were the lowest of the low, the scum of the Empire. Even a beggar with leprosy would pause to spit on a clonelegger. People who walked in certain high circles liked to boast of their personal cloneleggers, as one might of an attack beast trained for the Arenas, but no one had a good word for them in open society. They were pariahs, outcasts, untouchables for daring to traffic in the trade that no one wanted to admit existed.

Ha/e sighed tiredly. She'd leave the Shard in a moment, if she had anywhere to go. Hazel d'Ark, twenty-three years old, tall, lithely muscular, with a sharp, pointed face and a mane of long ratty red hair. Green eyes that missed nothing, and a smile so quick people often missed it if they weren't looking for it. She'd worked in one dirty job after another since leaving home, and it showed in the wariness of her stance and the naked suspicion in her scowl. She'd been a mercenary on Loki, a bodyguard on Golgotha and, most recently, part of the security forces on Brahmin II, which was where Captain Markee found her, running for her life. A superior officer had decided his rank entitled him to certain rights to her body, and not for cloning, either. Hazel d'Ark had disagreed. She'd decided a long time ago that she wasn't giving away anything she could sell. It came to blows and ended in tears, and Hazel went on the run again with the bastard's blood still dripping from her knife.

At the time, a little discreet clonelegging had seemed like a definite career advancement. Low profile, low risk, the only hard work a little digging… perfect. Especially with so many people hot on her trail. Just lately, it seemed there was always someone looking for her with bad intentions. It was all her own fault; she knew that. She'd always had a tendency to wander into illegal deals in search of fast money, and only afterward discover what she'd let herself in for. But even though she'd done a lot of things in her time that she wasn't too proud of, kidnapping people and butchering them in cold blood for their organs had to be a new low, even for her.

She didn't know if she could do it. She had a feeling it might be a matter of principle, something she wasn't exactly familiar with. But everyone draws the line somewhere. She ran through the options open to her. It didn't take long. She couldn't just announce her newfound integrity to her fellow crew members. Not unless she wanted to see the inside of a body bank the hard way. She could always jump ship; ride one of the escape pods down to the planet below and lose herself in the crowds. But Virimonde was a primitive place by all accounts, based around hard work and damn all luxuries. Not a good place to be stranded on the run. Especially when there are people looking for you on both sides of the law.

Hazel d'Ark looked around her at the waiting body banks and shuddered, not entirely from the cold.

What am I going to do? What the hell am I going to do?

Lights flared around her as the ship's alarms went crazy. Hazel winced away from the sudden blare of sound, her hand dropping automatically to the gun at her side. Her first thought was a hull breach, but she quickly realized that if there'd been an explosive decompression in any part of the ship, she'd have felt its effects long before the sirens went off. She accessed the emergency channel through her comm implant, and a babble of voices filled her head. It only took her a moment to pick out the phrase battle stations, and then she was off and running. Someone had pierced the Shard's cloaking device, and that was supposed to be impossible for anything less than an Imperial starcruiser. And if the Empire had found them, there was a very real danger that Hazel d'Ark's career as a clonelegger was over before it had even begun.

Just my luck, thought Hazel bitterly as she ran out of the cargo bay and headed for the bridge. Just my luck to get picked up for one of the few crimes I haven't actually committed.

'Hannah, talk to me. How deep are we in it?'

'I'm afraid you couldn't get much deeper without crouching,' the AI said calmly through her implant. 'An Imperial starcruiser has dropped out of hyperspace and taken up orbit around Virimonde. Their sensors brushed aside our cloaking devices in well under a second, and it didn't take them much longer to issue a challenge. I'm currently lying through my electronic teeth, but there's a limit to how long I can hope to bluff them. And I have a strong suspicion it isn't going to be anywhere near long enough for us to raise enough power to escape into hyperspace.'

'Couldn't we make a run for it in normal space?'

'This is an Imperial starcruiser we're discussing. Hazel. They don't come much more powerful than this. They'd blast us into tiny glowing fragments before we even left orbit.'

'We've got shields.'

'They've got two hundred and fifty disrupter cannon and power to burn.'

'Can we fight them?'

'If you really want to annoy them.'

'Dammit, there must be something we can do! You're the one with the immense intellect; think of something!'

'You could always surrender.'

Hazel would have laughed sarcastically, but she was too short of breath. She pounded down the steel corridor, head I aching from the clamor of the alarm siren, and finally burst r onto the bridge and threw herself into her fire control seat. Whatever was going on, she was sure she'd feel a damn sight more secure plugged into the Shard's two disrupter . cannon. Theoretically, the AI was far more capable of aiming and firing the ship's disrupters, but what one AI could plan another could anticipate and match. Human unpredictability provided an edge no AI could deal with. Which is why there were always human gunners on every ship.

Hazel meshed her mind with the computers through her implant and spread out through the fire systems, running quickly through the warm-up routines. Computer displays sprang up all around her, and a steady stream of