"Identify!" the thickset guard barked.
"Mil-Spec, twenty-three, twenty-one, two-two-five," the short girl in her orange jumper shouted.
"Okay, two-two-five. You're cleared for G section," he replied, depressing the button that raised the heavy steel grill across the access tunnel.
She moved quickly and crisply down the access corridor, her legs and arms working easily, despite the hobbles. At the next security check point, she saw a fat guard sitting back. A shaven head was bobbing in his lap.
Someone trying to get some extra privileges, she thought as he waved her through without so much as asking for her number.
At the lift, a big woman guard was waiting. She had a tight body, big tits, brawny arms and a buzz cut. She was the kind of woman most femmes on the station drooled over. Not Ali. She knew the physical beauty masked a sadist of the worst kind. Alone of the convicts on her work crew, Ali had no fear of the big woman. Not because she was immune to the casual abuse, but she was very lucky in that she reminded the big woman of her kid sister.
Apparently, that took the sexual charge out of it for the big guard, so Ali was never singled out for what Officer Melbourne called, "special treatment".
"You're late two-two-five" she said as she pulled a key on a chain from her belt and began to remove the wrist restraints.
"New guard at G section," she replied noncommittally.
It wasn't an excuse, just an observation. It never did to have an excuse for Melbourne. That was inviting a beating.
"Don't say?" she replied as she knelt and undid the leg manacles.
"Big man, almost as big as you. Still has the bark in his voice," she replied as she flexed her hands
"Black?"
"Yeah."
"Officer Stimson. Academy rookie," she said as she rose and used another key to unlock the grill that shielded the lift.
"G-pods today?" she responded, pointedly refusing to make a comment on the new officer.
There, too, was an invitation for a beating.
"Yeah. When you're done, send the rest back, but do me a favor and drift down to X-level and check in with the OOD. Their radar is on the fritz again and he thinks a micro might have hit the cage."
"I'll take care of it," she replied as she stepped into the lift and the big woman closed the door.
Dealing with Melbourne wasn't hard. You just had to know what her quirks were. The old hands rarely screwed up, it was usually the fresh meat that earned her attentions. You could warn them, but most of the girls preferred to let 'em learn the hard way. Ali occasionally clued one in, if she was particularly frail or sick. The frail ones often didn't last long enough to learn.
The rest of her crew were already there, two sporting shiners, one a busted lip. Some took a while to learn, some never did. Not her problem.
She slithered out of her coverall and into the enviro suit. She was just locking her gloves into the vac seals as her girls entered the air lock and cycled out. She shook her head as she began the complicated test series on her suit. She knew none of them had run them, she had been late, but not that late. Not her problem, she reminded herself. They ran their own risks.
Secretaries, a beautician, a florist, two file clerks. Only she had any training in this, and it was exceedingly dangerous to turn out amateurs for the work. But it was cheaper than hiring someone and if a few perished, so what? It wasn't like the Theocracy gave a damn.
She was thinking this when her suit HUD started flashing red lights. Ali checked and found her secondary and emergency tri-ox tanks were empty. She stepped over to the maintenance cage and tried to fill them, only to find the valves had failed. She probably wouldn't need the back up, and if she took the time to re thread a new valve on both, Melbourne would have kittens.
"Fuck it," she said, grabbing a tank tool and unthreading the valves.
Let the bitch be mad, she wasn't going to risk asphyxiation over a tongue lashing and a few slaps and kicks. She quickly threaded the new valve for each, and filled the tanks. She checked the repress on each before making her way to the air lock. It seemed to take forever to her, but in fact, it was only two minutes later when she entered and the inner door cycled shut. The guard who worked the lock, a decent enough fellow named Blake, gave her a strange look through the plexiglass viewport and then shook his head before cycling her out.
She touched the keypad in her left glove and a small thruster sent her down. Down ten levels to where the Gravity Pods were welded to the station frame. Mil-spec seven was a new station. So new it still had packing oil on several of the modules. It was thrown together in a haphazard way, seemingly by random chance. She suspected the company who put it together just assembled it as the pieces arrived, with no care to the problems it would create for the crew. Of course, it was a Mil-spec, so only the guards could complain.
Mil-spec, she thought as she extended a scrubber from her accessory pack and began to remove the thick dust that had accumulated on the pod. What a clean, antiseptic sounding name for something so awful. Military, Special Prisoner Evacuation Center. As part of a new "Quality of Life" program, the Authority had rounded up all the homosexuals and shipped them off to these hell holes. Well, not the Authority really. In Authority space, it didn't matter what your orientation was.
But here, in the territory that had been until recently the Balboa Confederacy, you offended the High-God if you were a sexual deviant. At least, that was what the new High Theocrat had decided after his coup replaced the monarchy. The Authority had already condemned the stations and for a while, the issue threatened the Conference of Conjoining. In the end, the lure of adding thirty five million parsecs and five hundred and fifty billion subjects without having to deploy the fleet and fight a war was too much to resist. The Authority tactfully protested and the powers that be politely ignored them. The tacit understanding seemed to be that nothing would be done about it.
So the round ups continued and the Mil-Specs went up. She was still working on the G-pod when she noticed a lot of activity on the hanger deck above. Ships were leaving, a lot of ships, and pretty rapidly. Normally, they got one or two shipments a week, but it had recently slowed to just one and it was often half full. Even the transports filled with military personnel to visit the brothel had tapered off sharply this past week or two.
She gathered from the more talkative guards the Thought Police were running out of prisoners. All who could, had fled to Authority space and those who couldn't were hunted down. A few remained in hiding, but their numbers were falling as the Thought Police spread fear. Decent people turned informer to keep themselves from becoming suspect.
Ali shrugged, maybe they needed the ships elsewhere, but something was nagging her and she kept glancing up as each ship rumbled off. She couldn't hear it of course, but she could feel the vibration in the G-pod she was scrubbing. An hour later, her tri-ox indicator started flashing.
"All right, head back up and cycle in," she said into her mic.
"Bout time."
"I hate this shit work."
"Yeah well, at least you aren't working on your back with the others down in B section."
