Chapter 12: The Journey

Jacqui woke up suddenly, as though something, perhaps the lights being switched on, had startled her awake and suddenly felt extremely pangs of hunger and thirst. Everyone else seemed to be either awake or waking. Her more experienced neighbour in the cages explained that DeepSleep does that and that they must be about to arrive on the prison planet of Csadia.

"I don't know what it's like," he explained, "because I never met anyone who come back from there. It's probably pretty tough."

"I can't believe that we have arrived in only one night," said Jacqui, not really taking in what he had said.

"We've slept for maybe six months," he pointed out, "look how long your hair and fingernails have grown. I used to be a spaceman myself, and I've been in DeepSleep before, but only a month at a time so that the hunger and thirst were never this bad. Some people have died, look."

Jacqui followed his pointing hand and say one body slumped in a cage. The man was obviously dead and was, in fact, beginning to smell. Just then a sharp smelling cleaning mist came down from sprays in the roof of the hold and Jacqui was grateful that it made her and her clothes feel much better.

A policebot with a supply of food and drink containers was moving among the prisoners now giving them out to most people, 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.

Jacqui quickly noticed that some of the prisoners were not being given any food or drink by the policebot and she wondered if that meant anything. If it did it was bound to be bad, and with her luck she would suffer also. Sure enough, she was not given anything as the policebot passed; impossible though it seemed, her hunger and thirst felt even worse than before when she could see other people eating and drinking their meagre allowance.

Just as she realised that these were the younger and better-looking half a dozen female prisoners, some porterbots came into the hold and started to move the cages of the prisoners who had not been fed out into the corridor. When one of them collected her Jacqui was moved along the corridor and thought that this was probably another chance to "cooperate, or else". She did wonder for a fleeting moment how the pretty, very young girl who had so obviously been raped the night before would handle another 'session', when she saw her in the cage in front.

This time, Jacqui decided with rising hopes, she, herself, would 'cooperate' for all she was worth and explain that she should not be here. Then they would make arrangements to return her to Earth, probably on the same ship. After all, she reasoned, she had already served her sentence twice over.

She was taken into a small cabin, obviously crew quarters, where a table was laid with food and drink for two people which looked and smelled delicious, making her pangs of hunger and thirst even worse. She didn't know quite why, but it seemed the finest and most tempting food she had ever seen, far better than she had ever had on Earth.

A short, dark man, not much older than Jacqui, wearing a dirty set of overalls came into the cabin and said, "Good, I'm glad you're here, Jacqui. I looked up your details from your file during the voyage and they seem to have messed up badly. You shouldn't be on this ship at all. I'm Graham, the First Engineer on the ship. We land in less than twenty-four hours and I thought you would like a proper meal and a shower, not the rubbish the porterbots hand out in the hold. You might also like to spend one night sleeping in a comfortable bed."

"Can you arrange for me to be returned to Earth in this ship? I've already spent longer on it than the three months of my sentence," Jacqui asked.

"Well, I'll see what I can do in the morning..." his voice tailed off.

"But you want me to be nice to you tonight," Jacqui said, accepting the inevitable, "I'll do anything to get back to Earth. Anything at all, just ask."

"I'm glad we understand each other," Graham said, opening her cage, "Now have a small drink first; too much too fast will make you ill. Then have a shower and cut your nails and so on and we can eat. I can't do anything at the moment because all the crew will be busy."

Jacqui suddenly guessed where the other female prisoners had gone, and why the rest of the crew were "busy". She had a small drink of some very rich and sweet fruit juice and hastened to shower and make herself presentable. If she was going to 'cooperate' she had better do everything she could to please Graham and then he would help her.

Graham was a little surprised when she came out of the shower room and into the cabin stark naked, but she explained, "I thought you might like me like this, so that you can see what you are getting."

Her phrasing was deliberately an echo of that dreadful Guard on Earth as she was determined to make a really good impression. When they were safely on their way back to Earth she could stop being 'cooperative', but not before. Graham quickly stripped and showered himself, but Jacqui couldn't stop herself from eating before he returned.

"Not too fast," he warned in a friendly voice, "You don't want to be ill, do you?"

He too, was determined to be as nice as possible, because she was going to be mad as hell when he dumped her back in the hold in the morning. It would all go very well if she trusted him all night; he could really enjoy himself and only tell her at the last minute that she wasn't going back.

Sitting at the table, he asked her, "How did you end up on this ship, anyway?"

"The guards at the prison got me mixed up with another prisoner. It was just an accident," she lied, reasoning that if she was going to cooperate now there was no need for him to know that this was a change of attitude.

Graham wasn't that naïve; he knew fine well how the Guards worked on Earth and decided that she was here because somebody had wanted to fuck her and she wouldn't let them. That was the opening he wanted and he would use it later. For the moment he simply ate in silence. After the meal he followed the still-naked Jacqui to the bed and took off his own overalls. Jacqui played with his small and not very impressive prick for a while and when she kissed the end of it, she realised that personal hygiene was not Graham's strong point.

Graham decided to liven the action a little by asking Jacqui, "What do you think should happen to the Guard who made the mistake that put you here?"

"He should be punished," she replied and catching his drift added, "I could spank him myself, I am so angry."

"Should all naughty people be spanked then?" he queried.