Chapter 19 - Arrival

As there was not even room to sit down in the cage, Martha fully expected to be most uncomfortable, especially during take off. The doors of the space ship hold closed and they were left in darkness. The space ship took off with the prisoners still in their cages, and was every bit as uncomfortable as Martha expected, not so much from the acceleration, but from the buffeting from side to side. Some time later, in the dark she couldn't really tell how long, she heard what sounded like air-conditioning switch on and there was a slow movement of the air in the hold. Then the cheap perfume smell of the Deep Sleep gas pervaded the hold and Martha began to feel very drowsy, and her last thought before falling asleep was the appalled realisation that they would spend six months on the journey standing up asleep in the tiny cages.

When Martha woke, she was not in pain anywhere in spite of her fears, although she was very hungry. When she tried to open her eyes, she realised that they were open, and a small movement convinced her that she was indeed still in her cage in a the space ship hold. Slowly the lights came on to reveal the inside of the space ship with many of the people in the cages waking up, though some appeared to be dead. There was a hubbub of talking among some of the prisoners, all of whom were absolutely racked with hunger and thirst. Cleansing sprays came on in the hold and Martha was grateful for the refreshing feeling of being clean again as six months accumulated grime and dried sweat, and other 'stuff', was sluiced from her body and from her clothes, which she was still wearing under her smock.

A policebot with a large box now entered the hold and started to give food and drink containers to the prisoners, who consumed then rapidly. The prisoners farthest from the door were naturally the last to get theirs and set up a clamour about how unfair this was.

Then Martha noticed that, although she had had a small but adequate ration, a few of the prisoners were not being given anything as the policebot passed their cages. She wondered if this was another set of rapes, by the space ship crew this time. Then several porterbots of some kind came in to the hold and started to move a few of the cages out into the corridor. Sure enough these seemed to be four of the younger and better looking female prisoners, including the three who were abused at the departure terminal, and Martha quickly realised that these were the same ones who had not been fed. Obviously food and drink were used to buy sex, or sex was used to buy food and drink, depending on your point of view.

She remembered the space man in the House of Joy saying that they did all right on the last day of an outward trip, but otherwise it was Earth brothels only for them. As time went by the lights dimmed and Martha slept again, uncomfortably because she was still upright, but at least her body was getting back to normal after the DeepSleep.

In the morning the four cages were brought back into the hold, with the girls showing varying signs of abuse. Suddenly the space ship lurched and the cages swayed perilously. Then there was a tremendous crash, another lurch and a second slightly less violent crash, followed by complete silence.

"We have landed in Captain Kangaroo's usual inimitable style," said a voice from the loudspeaker, "I am sure all our passengers will be pleased to know that we are now on Csadia and they will be unloaded in a matter of minutes. Captain Kangaroo and his crew thank you for choosing Prison Transport Spacelines and don't expect to see you again. Please form an orderly queue for customs and immigration formalities."

After a short wait the two doors of the hold opened to a scorchingly hot day with sunlight so bright that Martha was dazzled for some minutes. The porterbots from the space ship moved the cages out onto the tarmac and started to fill the hold with heavy looking boxes which were stacked there. There was no sign of any other activity around the space ship.

As her sight got back to normal, she looked at the terminal building and then turned her head to the left and almost fainted. Unlike the Earth, where everything was so crowded, she could see further than she had ever seen before and there seemed to be no other buildings anywhere near. Nor were there any people visible. All she could see was an endless vista of sand and small rocks, unrelieved by any vegetation, or hills. The horizon seemed unimaginably far away. There was no movement anywhere. It was really quite disorienting to Martha, who had never been able to see much more than a hundred yards away from her in any direction except up.

Soon the loading was complete, the porterbots all went inside, and the inner metal grid door closed, but the outer one stayed open. Suddenly, without any warning or fuss, the space ship lifted quietly from the landing pad and rose quickly so that in a matter of seconds it was a tiny dot in the sky and then vanished. Two porterbots now came out of the terminal building and started the task of moving the cages inside. The porterbots seemed old and battered, compared with the ones on the space ship, but Martha assumed that everything was fairly primitive because they were so far from civilisation. The process of getting the cages inside did not take long, as there were only about forty cages.

A badly scarred woman with her left eye almost closed, came into the room. She was wearing a pair of dingy overalls and Martha thought that a scruffy outfit like that would not have done for her girls in the House of Joy.

A welcoming speech obviously unchanged for some time was recited. "I am Kate, called 'One-Eye', but not by the likes of you, and not to my face by anyone. I have the unfortunate job of sorting you out and arranging assignments. We can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way. I have a persuader here which I will not hesitate to use."

Kate held up a thin rod about a foot long with a shiny tip. There was a gasp from one of the prisoners, who evidently knew what it was, and Martha recognised it as a neural whip, long since outlawed on Earth.

"I see that a lot of you don't recognise it; they are illegal on Earth but here on Csadia we are a long way from the Earth's policebots," said Kate, "so I will demonstrate its power for the benefit of the uninitiated."

She walked over to the nearest men's cages and stood in front of the cage holding a thin, crafty looking man.

"I like to see agility demonstrated. Stand on your hands in the cage."

The man just shook his head and said, "It can't be done."

Kate touched his hand with her 'persuader' and the man screamed in agony. The smell of shit and piss wafted from his cage as he lost control of his body through the shock.

"Now look what you did," sneered Kate, "Now I need to get this room cleaned before I can use it again. Stand on your hands, now!"

She motioned towards him with the 'persuader'. As the man contorted himself in a vain attempt to do as he was ordered, and became more and more agitated at the impossibility of the task, Martha thought that of all the pain she had inflicted on others, and suffered herself, nothing even began to compare with this. Kate looked round and, satisfied that she had made her point, left the room.

The porterbots started to take out the cages one at a time, starting with the little group which contained the corpses of the prisoners who had died from the effects of the Deep-Sleep gas.

Martha's was the first cage with a live prisoner in to be taken through to the next room, where the porterbot opened the door and pushed Martha out to stand in front of a desk behind which Kate was sitting. It looked old and was rather dirty and scratched, certainly not what Martha had imagined a government-run prison's conditions would be. She had expected it to be harsh for the prisoners, but she had expected the prison staff to have good conditions to work in, just as all government employees on Earth always had the best of everything.