Dead Worlds (Necrospace Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

against a bullet-riddled flak board with his left arm in a pressure sleeve.
    “Yeah, we’re getting rotated to that FOB we built in the metro hub two levels up for a few days of R & R while command decides which pit of hell they want us to clean out next,” laughed Ben as he looked over Samuel’s various wounds, “But I’m thinking you’re probably going to sleep through most of that.”
    Samuel didn’t answer, the painkillers finally wrapping him in their warm embrace and ferrying him into a blank numbness, far from any tentacles or foul lakes.
     

FOB SPECTER
     
    District 12 was one of the many uniform hab-blocks that circled the outer ring of the Vorhold spire city, which provided housing for commuters who worked at the various industrial complexes that comprised the inner circle of the spire.
    Vorhold, like most other spire cities, was constructed like a giant teardrop, frozen upon impact with solid ground. The base of it was circular, made up of four concentric urban circles, with the buildings of each circle rising higher and higher towards the center. At the exact apex of the city was a gigantic spire, hence the name of the urban planning style across mapped space, where management and the elites worked and played. Most spire cities in mapped space were exceptionally old, and generally considered an archaic way of designing cities, as it created a physical and ever-present reminder for anyone in the city as to who held the power and who did not.
    Spire cities were relics of a more brutal age, when the mega-corporations were still struggling to dominate their citizenry in a somewhat overt manner.
    The general idea was that by witnessing the lavish lifestyles of the elites and living in the looming shadow of their mighty spires, the common citizenry would keep their heads down, keep their mouths shut, and work harder to achieve that distant dream.
    While there were plenty of corporate worlds that contained spire cities, most of them, like Vorhold, were shadows of what they once were. They had been allowed to slowly degrade as more and more elites simply moved off world to distant resort planets or paradise ships, allowing their spires to be bought up by what passed for the middle class in their respective corporate cultures.
    Most corporations in the modern age had realized that flaunting the wealth and power of the elites generated more resentment and dissent than it inspired compliance and increased productivity. The elites lived a life generally removed from the common citizenry, who now labored towards simpler goals.
    Vorhold had been one of the last true spire cities. The elites of Vorhold Ventures had gambled the majority of their vast fortunes on a number of faulty investments and speculations, rapidly finding themselves with tremendous debts. Vorhold corporate culture was no different, in one respect, from the rest of the mega-corps. Common citizens were prevented by regulation and taxation from owning much in the way of private property. Their homes, vehicles, devices, services, and medical devices were all leased from their feudal corporate masters. Everything, even the grimy depths of downspire and the abyss of deepspire, were owned, according to the documentation, by Vorhold Ventures.
    When the Vorhold elites began to fall behind on their debt repayments, many of the creditor corporations formed an alliance and waged a devastating economic war against Vorhold Ventures. Battle fleets created pickets to police the shipping lanes and enforce severe trade embargoes while they covertly encouraged and perhaps, even bribed Red List pirate ships to prey upon the handful of relief ships and smugglers who attempted to use the alternate routes.
    It did not take long for Vorhold Ventures to accept defeat and begin selling off assets to cover the debts. The grim truth behind corporate culture was revealed as the elites bailed themselves out at the expense of the common citizens upon whose shoulders they had risen