22 comments/ 43623 views/ 4 favorites Quality of Life? By: Colleen Thomas "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." Ali flipped over from her normal band, closing out the banter and touched a thruster, which sent her shooting down another forty levels to the very bottom of the station. Here was the radar dish, slowly spinning. On the upper edge of the cage, a micro meteor about the size of her fist was embedded in the cage. Ali extended a retraction tool and removed the rock. It took the better part of the next hour to weld the cage ends back together with her cutting arc. Once she repaired the damage, she spoke into her mic. "OOD, I got your meteor, copy?" Silence greeted her. "Two-two-five to X-sector. Officer of the Day, do you copy? Over." She wondered if perhaps her high gain antenna wasn't working and switched to the housekeeping channel. "Two-two-five to Mil-Spec control, no one is responding in X sector, do you copy?" Nothing. Not a sound. Her high gain had to be out. There was always activity on the main channel. Touching her key pad she shot up to the air lock. She was actually kind of pleased with the development. With her high gain out, she would have an excuse to fill out an equiptment malfunction report. And that would spare her Melbourne's wrath, as the big woman suspected every nut and bolt on the station of being faulty. When she reached the airlock, the nagging apprehension she had felt earlier blossomed into full blown horror. Her crew was all in there, their bodies floating in the lock. She frantically switched to her primary channel. "Genie??? Claire??? Oh god, somebody? Answer!" No one moved, the channel remained dead. The bodies floated gently, which told her the chamber had never pressurized. "God damnit, Blake! Open the fucking air lock!" she screamed. Ali hit the cycle button on her side, but nothing happened. She hit it again, viciously punching it again and again, but it depressed without catching. "What the fuck?" There was a tiny clicking sound as her secondary air chamber ran dry and she switched to her emergency supply. It hit her then. Even if they had been panicking, they should have all been fine. There was enough air to last the extra hour she had been out in each of their secondary tanks and even if they had been hyperventilating, they shouldn't have been through the emergency. Unless... Unless the fools hadn't run the checklists. She remembered her own empty tanks with fear that approached nausea. For just a moment, her mind blurred. She was in that air lock, with her crew. She could almost hear the banter and good natured bitching as they waited for Blake to arrive. And she could hear the screams and feel the panic when the primary air tanks began blinking and they each realized with horror the secondarys were empty. Had they called for her? Beseeching her to help? She would never know. She was shaking now, her body convulsing as she retched. It happened then. All her deep space emergency training kicked in. She keyed a stay dose without conscious thought. Ali felt her breathing slow, her heart rate fall as the otherworldly calm the drug induced pervaded her system. She checked her air, forty minutes. She considered her options. She could cut her way into the air lock, with her cutting tool, but that wouldn't help. To get through the inner door, she would end up depressurizing the whole module, and that would leave her no closer to safety as well as make her responsible for hundreds of deaths. If there's anyone left alive in there, she thought grimly. The flight deck was out, her thrusters weren't strong enough to beat the null field. Her mind went over the station. She hadn't seen much of it, confined to her module, maintenance and the G pods. She knew of several access hatches, but they were all to maintenance spaces and those were all depressurized. Something was wrong with that statement. The drug impaired her thinking to a certain degree and she found herself having to struggle to make her head work. Eventually, it came to her. There was a hatch on the station control pod. And it lead to a manual lock. She was thrusting towards it before she even thought about it. The hatch was locked of course, but it took her only a few minutes to cut through it. She pulled it open, entered the confined space and floated down the long steel corridor. At the end she could see the heavy hatch, with its huge wheel lock. If that was locked, she was sunk, because she couldn't damage that door. Ali caught it, and said a little prayer as she tried to turn it. It didn't budge and she felt panic rising, in spite of the drugs. With strength born of nearly hysterical fear she wrenched it and the wheel gave. It took a few minutes to roll it enough to undog the hatch and another burst of panic driven strength to pull it open. It wasn't locked, as she had feared. It must have been put on in a hurry she realized, because the hinges and gears hadn't been greased. That gave her some hope. If it hadn't been greased, then it hadn't been used. And if it hadn't been used, perhaps no one would think to have locked it. Once she pulled the hatch closed and dogged it down, she took a deep breath and hit the red cycle button. It glowed red, and she felt herself pulled to the deck as air was siphoned into the chamber. When the button glowed green, she checked her indicators. All green. There was breathable air surrounding her. It was only then that she exhaled. Sweat was dripping into her eyes and she was trembling again. She touched the hand pad on the door into the station and it cycled open with an audible hiss. Ali stepped inside, cycled the door shut and sat down. Her hands were shaking as she undid the collar and removed her helmet. She threw up again, as the smell of her earlier vomiting assaulted her senses. The suit had already contained it, absorbed it and was in the process of refining it. In an enviro suit, nothing went to waste. All finally found the strength of will to stand and moved shakily towards the big station ingress hatch. Ali opened the hatch and entered the corridor. She expected an alarm to sound and guards to surround her at any moment, but only the soft echos of her foot falls greeted her. Down empty corridors, past vacant security stations, through restricted areas, she moved slowly, as if she were having a dream. It wasn't until she reached her own section that she found her way blocked. The hatch simply wouldn't open. She was preparing to cut her way through when her numbed brain finally recognized the flashing red light above the hatch. She glanced at the control panel, touched a button and slowly sank to the deck. Ali wrapped her arms around her knees, hugged them to her chest and rocked softly as the tears fell. She didn't know how long she remained there or remember getting up. Her conscious mind had simply shut down in the face of such horror. She made her way towards the command center, her mind no longer functioning on a conscious level. Like a wounded animal, she was going on instinct and her instinct told her she had to find out who did this and why. And then, she would kill them. Quality of Life? "I didn't even ask her name," the girl at Four said after a long silence. "Yeah," Ali replied. "I'm Ariel, Ariel Vinson," she said quietly. Ali wanted to scream. To curse her for making herself more human. For making it hurt worse when she went. Instead she sighed and wiped the tears from her face. "Ali. Ali Smith," she said in a voice choked with emotion. "That's a lovely name. You sound really nice, almost like my girl. She was so wonderful. I wonder if..." The hot tears burned down Ali's cheeks. She could hear the girl's station groaning and breaking up in the back ground. And she could imagine the small, scared girl, talking about happier things while she waited for death. A death she didn't deserve. "I...I think I'm going now Ali. Good luck, I'm so...." Only static followed. Ali took the head set off and bit back on her own tears. The station didn't seem to be in as bad a shape as their's had. She wondered if maybe the guard she was tending had kept them from activating the destruction charges. "I tried," she whispered. Ali turned back to her. She had been pretty before they beat her. Even with her face swollen, she had a certain calm beauty. "Did you stop them from setting the charges?" "Yes. Killed the commander before he could put in his password, but it doesn't matter. They set the reactor core to overload. I'm sorry, I guess I only bought you a few more minutes of life." "Why?" "Why this? It was the plan, the plan from square one. These stations were built shoddy on purpose. When the Authority finally gets in here and asks what happened, they'll be told the stations were designed badly and it just happened. There won't be anyone left to dispute it and in a few years, no one will even remember." "No, I meant why did you try to stop them? You could have just left with them and lived." Those dark brown eyes showed a welter of emotion. She then smiled slightly. "Because it was wrong," she said simply. A klaxon sounded and Ali moved to the console and clicked it off. "Five minutes," she said, turning back to the guard. She nodded and tried to rise, but groaned. "They broke my back. Can't feel anything below my waist or move my legs." Ali helped her to a more comfortable position. She was leaning across her body when the guard locked her arms around Ali and hugged her tight. Ali couldn't even find the energy to struggle, she just let herself be held tightly. "My name's Sandra, and I really tried. I couldn't save you, but if you'll let me, I'd like to hold you, til the end. I'm not all that brave and...I'm afraid of what comes next." Ali nodded and snuggled up against her. Not all that brave? If there were more cowards like her in the world, it would be a better place, Ali thought. 'One minute to critical mass' the computer's pleasantly modulated feminine voice called. Ali closed her eyes, felt the softness of Sandra's skin, the sting of her own tears and the fierce strength in the wounded guard's arms. Ten, nine, eight...