Elenore Anderson, a retired Colonel, now disheartened and jaded, is sentenced to a year of penal slavery. Will this ordeal break her, or will it rekindle something she long thought she had lost?
Chapter 1
Mother and Father would turn in their graves if they could see you like this. You did this to yourself, Ellen, you're a criminal now, and don't you dare look for excuses. Don't slouch; stand up straight, and walk, goddammit! The last thing you need is a shock prod on your ass.
She shuffled forward to keep up with her fellow prisoners -- several hundred, she estimated -- all being herded down the closed-off corridor from the space terminal to the prison ship. Like everyone on this particular walk of shame, she was naked, with a heavy slave collar welded around her neck and her hands cuffed tightly to a steel belt around her waist. For security reasons, allegedly, but if humiliation were the goal, they couldn't have done it any better.
Nobody spoke, save for the occasional order from a guard, just the sound of chains, rattling and scraping over the bare, cold metal of the deck. She grabbed the connecting chain running from her cuffs to the shackles, lifting it to make sure she wouldn't trip.
A fine mess you got yourself in. Fifty-five years old, and you act like a goddamn--
A clang and a thud tore her from her thoughts. Another prisoner, a young, full-figured blonde, had stumbled and fallen.
"No, no, no!" shouted the girl, her eyes wide open. when a guard rushed over. "Don't zap me, please. I'm going!"
He grabbed her by her upper arm. "Only trying to help. Come on, we have a launch window, you need to keep moving."
With some effort and help from him, she managed to get back on her shaky feet and leaned against the wall as some others were shuffling past her.
"Please!" She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. "I'm not feeling too great, okay? I'm dizzy, and I think I've got a fever."
The guard motioned with his prod. "You can lie down in your cell. I'll let you skip the line at the airlock, but you gotta pull yourself together and walk."
"I'm walking, I'm walking!"
As the blonde shuffled forward with newfound, desperate energy, Ellen caught a glimpse of the ship through a window. It was a corvette, a Hemingworth Forty-Seven, old and sturdy, the reliable workhorse of many navies across the sector. Half a dozen crew with space for a hundred prisoners, she guessed, but if everyone in this corridor were to board, it would get very tight indeed.
When it was her time at the airlock, a guard scanned the registration number on her collar and compared it to her pubic tattoo.
"Elenore Anderson," he announced, and like with the others ahead of her in line, his colleague wrote three numbers on her back with a red marker, right between her shoulder blades. "To the left, cell three fourteen."
The windowless cell on deck three was tiny, just two by two meters with narrow plastic mattresses on either side, and it reeked of a strong industrial disinfectant. There was a nozzle, embedded in the back wall at waist height, and a hole in the floor which served as the toilet. A familiar setup after spending a week in Zesta's central jail, with the small but important difference that this time, her restraints hadn't been removed.
The blonde she had seen earlier was already there, lying on the mattress to the right, curled up in a fetal position. She couldn't be much older than eighteen, maybe nineteen, a soft-featured girl with rounded hips, sweating and shaking like a leaf.
I can't believe they let a sick child on a prison transport,
thought Ellen and bit her lip.
Even healthy, a kid like that's gonna have a tough time at a labor camp.
She turned around and banged her right ankle cuff against the door. "Excuse me? Guard! This girl here needs medical attention! Hey! You can't just leave her here!"
It took a minute and a lot more banging on the door until a guard finally showed up.
"She's a junkie," he said after a glance at his data pad. "The doctor checked her out this morning and cleared her for transfer. I'm afraid she's gotta ride it out, there's nothing we can do."
"Can you at least uncuff me so I can help her? She looks like she's going to be sick any moment."
"This bucket is completely overcrowded, and that means full restraints for the flight. With the kind of people we're transporting, you should be glad that everyone is cuffed."
He took a pitying look at the girl who was lying curled up on the mattress, shrugged, and slammed the cell door shut.
Now that was helpful.
Ellen sighed and sat down next to her. "Hey, kid. I'm Ellen. What's your name?"
"Mary."
"What are you on, Mary?"
"Shine." She grimaced and squeezed her eyes shut when a cramp hit her. "I mean, I was. I would do anything for a fix right now."
"When was the last time you scored?"
"Yesterday before court. Gods, I'm coming down really hard. It feels like I'm dying."
Ellen leaned against the wall, trying to get comfortable. "You won't, but that's the price you pay for using. Another day or two until the fever and the shakes are gone, then you'll start to feel better."
Mary turned her head and squinted her eyes. "You did Shine, too?"
"One of my daughters did, back when she was a teenager. Spent a lot of time sitting by her bed when she was trying to get clean."
"Did she make it?"
Ellen sighed. "It's been almost twenty years, and we don't really talk. Her sister says she hasn't touched drugs in a very long time. It makes sense, she's stubborn enough."
"Maybe there's hope for me yet." Mary groaned. "Gods, and that's just the beginning. Penal slavery. I really messed up this time."
"We all did, that's why we're here. How long do you have?"
"Eighteen months. You?"
"A year."
The door opened, and another prisoner was led into the cell, an old woman with close-cut gray hair framing a weary face and numerous scars all over her body. Without saying a word she walked around, dragging the chain of her leg irons over the floor, before settling for a space near the entrance, all while Ellen watched her out of the corner of her eye.
The woman closed her eyes, ignoring her cellmates, and satisfied that she didn't pose a threat, Ellen decided to do the same. Still exhausted from her whipping less than an hour ago, she leaned back against the wall, and within moments, she dozed off.
*
Her rest was short though, and she woke up with a start when the door opened again. This time, a tiny redhead was shoved into the cell. The lower part of her face was covered by an orange plastic panel, and she sported a black eye.
"Do you want the gag removed?" asked the guard. "That means no spitting, no biting, and especially no more screaming. Do you think you can do that?"
When she nodded, he undid the strap of the gag and helped to get the large rubber bulb out of her mouth. She worked her jaw and glared back at him. "You should have zapped that other bitch and not me."
"Next time don't try to bite people. Now sit down and keep quiet. They don't pay me enough for this nonsense."
He shook his head, mumbled something under his breath, and closed the door.
"There was this rude bitch," said the redhead, after giving her new cellmates a once-over. "Tried to push her way to the front, as if we'd leave without her. The stuff you gotta put up with! Gods!" She blew a strand of hair out of her face. "I'm Trish, by the way."
Maybe that gag wasn't such a bad idea.
Ellen let a few moments pass. "I'm Ellen," she said when no one else answered. "The kid here is Mary."
"What's up with her?" she asked, nodding towards Mary who was facing the wall, still shivering and breathing heavily.
"Shine withdrawal."
"Oh shit, that's rough. One of my cousins has been trying to shake that for half his life." She smacked her lips and turned to the old woman. "And you are...?"
"Lucille."
Trish walked a couple of steps forward towards the toilet. "Cozy in here. As long as nobody's got to take a dump, I think we're gonna get along just fine."
She sat down in the last remaining spot, next to Lucille near the back wall, with her legs spread as wide as her leg irons permitted. Her view unobstructed, Ellen glanced at the slave registration number tattooed above Trish's pubic mound before averting her eyes.
Lucille grinned, revealing several missing front teeth. "What's with the eye? Who did you piss off?"
"It was at work. Some rich floozy made me show her dresses for three hours without buying anything. Three fucking hours, can you imagine? And then she insulted me, said she didn't like my attitude."
"She hit you?"
"Yeah. After I kneed her in the twat a couple of times and knocked out a few teeth. I'm telling you, people have no appreciation for us workers in the service industry."
Lucille's laugh turned into a cough. "Self-defense if you ask me."
"That's what I thought, but the judge said I have anger management issues. Sent me down for assault. Don't worry though," she tugged at her cuffs, "they chained me up good. You're all safe as long as you don't piss me off."
"Right."
"Sucks that we had to leave before lunch," said Trish, running the links of her connecting chain through her fingers. "I hope there's gonna be chow time soon. Say what you will about jail, at least the food's on time."
"They're not gonna feed us," said Lucille.
Trish turned her head. "What do you mean, they're not gonna feed us?"
"How would we eat?" Lucille raised her cuffed hands, and despite her best efforts, she wasn't able to reach her chin with her fingertips. "They put four of us into single person cells. If I were in charge, I wouldn't uncuff us either. Way too dangerous."
"You're kidding me! No food? For how long?"
Lucille shrugged. "Can't be more than a week on a ship like this."
"My daughter said we're going to Besha," said Ellen. "That's three days if we're lucky. Drink some water. As long as you hydrate, you'll be fine."
Trish crouched down in front of the nozzle in the wall, but when she tried to press the button with her cuffed hands, she lost balance and tipped forward, hitting her head against the wall.
Lucille seemed amused. "First time?"
"I never had to do it trussed up like this. Sucks that they're treating us like dangerous animals or something."
