Page 14 of Mongrels United
“They seem to be more painful than normal, lately.” He lifted the mug. “Thanks.” He drank deeply. “What’s next?”
“Luus had some quick questions he wanted me to ask you, concerning a project of his.”
“Important project?”
“I don’t know yet. It has…possibilities.”
“If it’s anything to do with lifting this miasma of indifference that is choking the ship, I’ll answer his questions all day long.” Siran sighed. He’d read her carefully neutral report about the engagement rates for his last broadcast, then.
“The new projectmighthelp,” Grady said carefully. “That’s as high as I can put it right now.”
“Fire away, then.”
“It’s about the Leroux Raid,” Grady said.
Siran lowered the mug. “That’s…reaching back.”
“Eighteen years,” she confirmed. “Your first year in office.”
“Second,” Siran said. “But no one ever remembers the first. Neither do I. It was a blur, that first year. Everything shifted after that.”
“Yes, that’s what Luus honed in on,” Grady admitted. “It was a turning point, and you made it happen.”
Siran grunted as he took a mouthful of coffee, then hissed at the heat of it. “That’s what I’m going to be known as, isn’t it? The captain who directed the Leroux Raid.”
Grady shook her head. “We’re working to make sure that’s only the first thing they remember you for,” she said firmly.
The Leroux Raid had ended the supply and use of Bellish on theEndurance. The drug had circulated through hidden channels across the ship for nearly eighty years. Grady had read the report written by one of the original Skinwalkers, Peter Hannah, who had invented the flexible skin the Skinwalkers had recoated the ship with. Over seventy years of high risk work on the outside of the ship. Hannah had also been the accidental inventor of Bellish. His formula had been stolen and enhanced into the terrible drug that had plagued the ship for decades.
Grady could remember the horror that permeated his simple report about the drug, which had made the report stick in her memory. She had also re-read the report this morning,
The initial attraction to Bellish is how much energy it imparts. A user feels unconquerable, and is able to work days without rest. Physically, they’re stronger, quicker and feel smarter, although testing may prove that this is merely a perceptual illusion. Peaked metabolism enhances well-being. Endorphins rise. The subject is happier while doing more work than they ever thought possible, all without getting tired.
The problem is the gradual adjustment to the drug. An addict needs more of it to achieve the same feelings of well-being. Quickly, the quantities needed outgrow the addict’s financial resources, and the illusion they’ve maintained until then of a life well-lived begins to disintegrate. Friends and family grow aware of their hidden problems. The addict often loses their job around this time. Debt climbs, income disappears.
It is often at this point that the victim tries to halt their use of the drug. Which is when they learn that they can’t wean themselves off it. Bellish is highly addictive both physically and mentally.
Despite fifteen years of investigation and research by medical staff, not one addict has successfully recovered from Bellish use. The best medical teams could only manage to stabilize the addict’s usage for the rest of their lives, primarily because the withdrawal symptoms are invariably fatal.
When an addict attempts to reduce usage of the drug, or by financial reasons is forced to reduce their usage, the first casualty is their metabolism, which drops almost immediately. Hypothyroid-type symptoms out of medical history start to appear: weight gain, diabetes, hypertension, stroke. Severe inflammation leading to cancer. Just as quickly, severe migraines set in. Muscle aches and fatigue so advanced the addict can barely move.
The brain is also instantly affected, but the symptoms are slower to appear. Loss of memory, impaired judgement. Slowed reactions. Research has established that what is happening is, in fact, a breakdown of brain tissue, which cannot hold its neural patterns and structure once the drug is removed. Eventually, after a period of extreme pain, the addict’s brain will reach a point where it can no longer direct the body and death occurs.
There were pages more to the report, including chemical equations and formulas for the structure of the drug, giving scientific reasons for the infernal side effects of using it. Grady had passed over those, glad that theEnduranceand Captain Carpenter didn’t have to deal with them anymore.
The Leroux Raid had been the final event in a year-long mission by Siran Carpenter to stamp out the manufacture and use of Bellish. He had personally spear-headed the investigation. The raid itself was upon a group of slice apartments in the Wall District, where the last illegal Bellish laboratory was hidden. The lab had been dismantled and the two operators had been given two years of shunning. They had been the last people on theEnduranceto receive the awful punishment, which had sent people mad with loneliness in the past.
Everyone on the ship had watched the replays of the raid. The Forum had glowed white hot with traffic, as everyone vented their relief and pleasure that the scourge of the ship had gone for good. The victims—those Peter Hannah had tried to dispassionately call ‘users’ and ‘addicts’—had received support to find a way to stabilize their lives, but without the drug, those lives had been brutally shortened.
Watching the victims go through their painful endings had given everyone else on the ship even more reason to speak to the Civil Guards about anything they knew about the drug, its users and sellers, and a dozen more people had been arrested and charged. For the first time in its history, theEndurancehad required a prison facility.
The raid, and the removal of Bellish had brought about a period of peace and stability. All the crimes that the drug had generated as victims sought to acquire more of it in any way they could, which often included addicting their friends in service of their debt to the sellers of the drug, now halted.
And everyone on the ship who had lived through the horror was determined never to see it repeated. They lived quiet lives.
Somewhere in the eighteen years that had passed since the Leroux Raid, those quiet, industrious lives had morphed into apathetic, slug-like existences. Crime had risen. Oh, and Nash Hyson had been right on that score, too—for it wasn’t the major crimes that had flared up. It was the less dramatic ones. Theft of personal property. Minor assault, usually while a theft was in progress. Destruction of private and public property. Graffiti. Swearing. Spitting in public places. Rudeness and lack of manners. Littering.
None of the common crimes these days came close to murder or major assault. Add chronic unemployment on top of that, and it added up to a very unhappy ship.
