Zombie Road | Book 8 | Crossroads of Chaos Simpson, A. (new books to read .txt) 📖

“Just good ol’ Kentucky Burly leaf.” Jessie said. “If I had any seeds, I’d give you some. They’d probably grow fine here.”

“You could do that?” Larmeck asked “This isn’t a protected plant? No one owns it? The agro enforcers would allow this?”

Maddy understood immediately but it took a few minutes of explaining for Jessie to realize that all of the civilized systems had strict controls over their food and seeds. Everything was genetically enhanced and the corporations owned the patents. Seeds harvested from plants were useless, they wouldn’t grow and if anyone was caught illegally growing company owned crops, they would be confiscated. Only the backwards planets outside the authority of the Council grew their own food. Jessie immediately thought of the terminator seeds from the big corporations back home. He’d heard that Monsanto and others used the same technology and marveled again at how similar everything in the universe was. Greedy people doing greedy things.

They relaxed in the shade, Larmeck brought them a minty flavored drink and spoke with someone through an earpiece.

“The merchants will send someone shortly to take your requests.” He said.

They spent hours in easy conversation as the sellers brought samples of their wares and Maddy haggled with them over the prices then supervised the loading of the ship. They told him they needed to be in complete isolation for some experiments they were conducting so they were headed out into an asteroid field.

Larmeck explained how the religious cult came to be in possession of the planet. He said the mega corporations created the agro-worlds. The entire planet had a good ecosystem to begin with and an agricultural conglomerate had filled the lakes, leveled the rolling hills and terraformed the dry areas. They exterminated or relocated the native wildlife, eliminated any insects that could harm the crops and created a perfect planet sized garden. They installed irrigation systems, automatic planters and chemically fertilized the soil. The entire surface of the planet was organized, categorized then planted, watered, fertilized and harvested by machines. A hundred thousand machines were kept in operation by ten thousand droids and a thousand men and women were all that was needed to maintain them. When the crop yields fell below acceptable levels the planet was sold to the highest bidder and the conglomerate moved on to terraform more promising worlds.

The Jalamons produced a more natural crop without the grow enhancers and had enough patents on various fruits and vegetables to make a nice profit for themselves. They had used those profits to purchase the planet when it became available.

When Larmeck said he should probably finish up the repairs on the droid he was working on, Jessie and Maddy walked to the far end of the terminal where the few shops and the living quarters were. The population of the entire planet was strictly regulated and everyone lived in the sprawling structure. There wasn’t really a café but there were a handful of tables and chairs in a common area near the windows and a tall dark-haired woman offered them something to eat while the last of their purchases was packed and sent to their ship.

“It’ll be about an hour.” She said. “I’ll not have dinner finished until my husband gets back from the fields.”

“That would be great.” Jessie said. “Do you take credits?”

The woman tittered a laugh and waved him away. “We only charge the cargo ships when they come in and we have to open the stores.”

They wandered around, looked for doors to get outside the massive building and were surprised there weren’t any. The only exits were to the center where the landing pads were.

“Makes sense.” Maddy said when Jessie started to complain. “They have the perfect eco-system here. If we happened to have a tiny little insect on us from one of the other planets, it could wreak havoc. They don’t use pesticides because they have no harmful bugs. I’m sure they have a decontamination unit for those that go outside.”

They sat near the windows and watched the wind dance over the crops that went on for as far as the eye could see in every direction. Larmeck joined them as the food was brought out and more people filled the empty chairs. No one was in a hurry, dinner lasted hours and various others wandered over to join them for a time then move on to allow others to speak with the strangers if they wanted. They were a peaceful and tranquil people and waved goodbye when the pair finally left, nearly full to bursting from the plant based meal.

Maddy punched in the coordinates to a cluster of moon sized asteroids that were barren, remote and deemed worthless. It was their final destination. Jessie eased the ship skyward, waggled his wings to those watching below then blasted through the atmosphere into the vast emptiness of space. He circled around one of the smaller moons of the agro-planet and used the gravity to slingshot the ship up to its maximum speed. He set the autopilot and leaned back in the modified captains’ chair. They had a long way to go and a boring month of travel ahead of them.

The aching never went away. The need. The hunger for her. He could almost forget it when he was on world somewhere or if he got engrossed in working on a project but in the quiet moments it came back. He missed her. Sometimes when he slept the dreams were good. She would appear out of the darkness and they were happy. Most of the time not. Most of the time he started himself awake as some undead thing ripped at him or he felt the impact of a bullet slamming into his body. He usually didn’t even remember what jolted him awake.

They passed the time with training and games and Maddy would tell him stories of the empire she’d once been a part of. They spent hours in the kitchen learning how to