Quality of Life?

"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.

When the lift door cycled open Ali stepped out into the big control room. She had a length of lead pipe clutched in her small hands. There was no one there, or at least no one alive. With the let down came a vast sense of futility and she dropped the pipe. Two male guards and the station commander lay sprawled out on the deck. Each had been shot, at least twice with a laser. Sprawled across a command couch was a female guard. Her armor was lying in pieces around her and she had obviously been beaten and slashed.

Congeled blood covered her torso and her face was swollen, with blood caked on her lips and below her swollen nose.

Ali saw a blinking red light on the como console and sat down. She hesitated a moment before she pressed it, opening the channel.

"Oh god. Please, please, please, someone answer. This is Mil-Spec 4 calling anyone," a frightened voice called.

She gingerly put the headset on and calibrated it. The plaintive voice continued to call. Small, feminine and increasingly hysterical.

"This is Mil-Spec Seven, go ahead Four," Ali said into the mic.

"Oh thank god, you have to help us, something terrible has happened!"

"Ain't no help for ya, girlie. This is Nine, howdy Seven," a cynical, bitter voice called.

"Hello Nine," Ali said.

"You don't understand," the frightened voice called.

There was almost a minute of silence before Nine responded. Had to be way out for that kind of delay, Ali thought.

"Sure I do, girlie. Everyone's dead, the crew is gone and the station is starting to break up, right?"

"How did you know?"

Ali moved to the view port, but the station floated gently with no sign of breaking up.

"That's the plan darling. Round us all up, ship us to these festering sores, then have a convenient accident and voilà, no more problem with sexual degenerates corrupting the young," Nine said.

Her voice was so bitter, it shook Ali to the core.

"They wouldn't do that! It's murder! They're religious people!" the girl at Four whined.

"Yes, they would."

The voice was behind her and Ali spun on her heel to find herself staring into the dark brown eyes of the female guard.

Ali grabbed a first aid kit off the wall and moved to her side. The cuts were mostly superficial and she began swabbing the caked blood away with antibiotic soaked compresses.

"They already have, darling. Wish you were here, I could use a good bye fuck. You got a hot little pussy? Seven, you still there?" Nine called.

"I'm here," Ali said unsteadily.

Ali tossed the soaked compress to the deck and opened another. The guard weakly caught her hand.

"I tried to stop them," she whispered.

The effort seemed to take a lot out of her and her eyes closed, but they flared open again and she exhaled a ragged breath.

"Please, believe me," she pleaded.

Ali nodded and began to patch up the worst cut, she fought back the bile as she tried to patch up the mangled flesh that had once been a beautifully shaped breast. She was still working on it when the com crackled.

"They sent my girl to Seven. Bastards wouldn't even let us serve on the same station. I don't suppose you knew her? Her name was Consuela. She was beautiful, nice tits, big ass, saucy smile. Had long black hair, down to her ass, but I know that won't help," the bitter voice called, perhaps a tad less cynical.

Maybe even hopeful, Ali thought. Consuela. Names just didn't matter. They were all numbers. Even as she thought it, she remembered the girl. Dark eyes, a quick smile even in the worst of situations, like the guards gleefully shaving off her long, beautiful hair.

"Twenty-one, twenty, eight-six-four," Ali said in a choked whisper.

A minute passed before the response came through.

"Please tell me she died easy. She was a good girl. Sweet as the day is long. And..." the words faded in a sound that could have been a sob.

"She died fast, Nine. They decompressed the cell blocks. Not a slow leak, they just opened them up. I doubt they even knew what hit them," Ali lied.

The guard moaned softly. She was delirious and trying to fight Ali's hands. For a long moment she wondered why she was even bothering. They were both going to die soon, but she put that out of her mind.

"They sent my babe to Eight," the girl from Four said quietly.

"What about you, Seven?" she asked when no one responded.

"She was the daughter of high party members. They sent her for reprogramming."

"I'm sorry," Four said.

"That sucks, Seven. Worse than death." Nine responded.

Her voice was back. Hard, bitter, but there was genuine compassion in those words. Ali could feel it.

"They sent her out to see me when I was being shipped here. She spat on me. Her eyes were so dead. I guess it was meant to hurt me, but there was no one behind that mask. She was a sweetheart and her personality didn't survive. It didn't hurt, I knew she was gone so I didn't have to worry about her anymore."

"Damn," Nine responded after a minute.

Four was weeping. Ali shut out those feelings, shut out everything and worked on patching up the guard.

"Well, the life support just went here. Ventilators have died. Down to a couple more breaths. By the time you get this, I'll be gone. Take care, Four. I'd have loved to fuck you, you sound sweet. Best of luck, Seven, in whatever waits beyond."

Ali fought back tears. Tears for someone she never knew. Tears for all those she did know. Tears for them all.