Planet of Pain (17 page)

‘Either they're coming or they're not,' Ruth muttered angrily. ‘Saying it doesn't make any damn difference.'

‘Someone's coming!' a voice hissed, and a dreadful silence descended on the group, as though it were the grim reaper himself who drew near. Jo stared at the floor, as apprehensive as the rest. Footsteps sounded in the corridor and again she heard muted voices.

Were they female? It was hard to tell. But whoever it was they were taking their time, moving slowly from gang to gang. God, Jo thought, let it not be the Harpies. She'd never touched a woman in her life, sexually, nor had one touch her. If it was them and they took her, she just didn't know how she would cope.

Footsteps again, going into gang three's room, right next door. And now her worst fears were confirmed, for the voices discussing the merits of this woman or that were female, no doubt about it. ‘Pick one of them,' Jo muttered under her breath. Gang three must have some pretty ones, surely?

But they didn't. They moved on, to gang four. Jo kept her head down as they came into the dayroom, and again prayed they would pick someone else. Anyone. Just not her. The thought was shameful but it persisted. They moved closer still, and to Jo's consternation stopped right next to her. She could see three pairs of feet out of the corner of her eye.

‘Well look who we got here,' one said, nudging Jo's ankle with the toe of her boot. ‘If it ain't blondie.'

Jo looked up; she couldn't stop herself. It was the woman from the escort detail, the one who'd swiped Jo's buttocks with her stick on the way from the cargo pod. That same stick was stuck in her belt now as she stood with her hands on her hips, staring down at Jo. And then Jo noticed the phalluses. Each woman wore one at her groin, tied in place. They stuck out obscenely, long and slender and starkly white; and it was the colour that gave away their origin. They had been carved from pieces of bone, Jo realised, and she just hoped to God it wasn't human.

‘Know her then, Trin?' asked one of the others, a redhead.

‘I know her,' Jo's guard said. ‘Not as intimately as I'd like, mind, but we can soon fix that.'

The redhead laughed and the third woman, who was tall and stocky, rocked her hips so that her phallus wagged up and down in an obscene fashion. ‘So then,' she said, looking around at the group, ‘any volunteers? Got me a boner here for some lucky lady, one that never goes limp. Satisfaction guaranteed.'

‘Wow!' the redhead said. ‘Haven't heard that line in quite a while, have we Trin? Not for a good three minutes, I reckon.'

‘No volunteers?' the tall one said, ignoring the sarcasm. ‘In that case I vote we take young Ruthie here. I just love the way she moans when you stick it in her ass.'

‘That's right,' the redhead chuckled. ‘Yeah, let's take her; she's fun.'

‘She surely is. Up you come, darlin'. You've a busy night ahead of you, and we don't want to waste a second of it, do we?'

Ruth climbed miserably to her feet as the redhead lifted her skirts and tucked them into her string belt, so that her buttocks were on display. Then the tall woman put her arm around Ruth's shoulder and led her away, while the redhead walked behind admiring the view. Jo's guard, Trin, hung back for a moment.

‘Seems I gotta wait a while to fuck you,' she said ruefully. ‘Still, neither of us are going anywhere, are we? Till next time, blondie.' She fondled the bone phallus, an unmistakable promise, then turned and hurried off after the others.

 

 

 

 

Jo was still trembling minutes after they'd gone, and it was a groan of pain and despair from Ben Vesely that finally helped her pull herself together. The rest of the gang were ignoring him, but she knew she couldn't do that. She dreaded to think what Bel would say if she saw her lieutenant lying on the floor shivering and feeling sorry for herself while someone nearby, someone who badly needed help, went unattended. Definitely she would not be impressed, and so Jo stirred herself and went over to him.

Ben Vesely had a cut on his cheek that was bleeding freely, and his left eye was swollen and closing fast. She had no cloth with which to clean his wound, so she tore a strip off the bottom of her trouser leg and used it to dab his cheek.

‘You shouldn't be seen with me,' he murmured, so softly she could barely hear. ‘It'll make you a target too.'

It was a worrying thought, but she stayed anyway and finished the task. Her med training was minimal and she had no equipment, so there wasn't a great deal she could do. But she did what she could, wiping his face clean and checking him for broken ribs, and so far as she could tell there weren't any.

‘The bleeding seems to be stopping,' she said, ‘but it's rather a deep cut. You might have a scar.'

‘A scar?' His tone suggested a scar was the least of his worries, and undoubtedly he was right. His wife had been taken away by perverted thugs. She might not come back. And even if she did they might well take her again tomorrow night, and the night after that, and there wasn't a thing Ben Vesely or anyone else could do to stop them. ‘Go,' he whispered, clearly concerned about her; concerned the ill will they bore him would be transferred to her simply by association, and he didn't want another abused female on his conscience.

 

The bell sounded again soon after, and everyone rose to their feet and went through into the dormitories. Jo helped Ben to his feet. He tried again to shoo her away, and again she took no notice. She grasped his elbow as he shuffled along to his bunk, holding his midriff and quite clearly in pain. Once he was settled Jo looked around. There were a dozen or more bunks and several were empty, so she had no idea which was Ruth's.

Someone hissed and she turned around, seeing an older man on one of the lower bunks pointing to the empty one alongside his.

‘Is this Ruth's bunk?' she asked, and he nodded, his eyes flickering warily to the door as if he feared someone might see them talking. ‘Thanks,' she said.

She lay on the lower bunk, the mattress thin and hard, and there was no pillow. No sheets or blankets either, but that was no loss. It was far too hot for bedclothes.

‘It's best not to get involved,' the man whispered. ‘The guards can be spiteful. You don't want to draw attention to yourself.'

Jo felt a sudden surge of anger. Not towards him especially, more towards the whole situation and what it did to people. ‘You're wrong,' she said, careful to keep her voice down. ‘We should help each other, even if we suffer for it.' She expected him to recoil from her, aghast at such heretical ideas, but he didn't. He regarded her thoughtfully, lying on his side facing her, then stretched out a hand.

‘My name's Nathaniel. Pleased to meet you.'

‘I'm Jo,' she said. ‘Likewise.'

They shook. He retrieved his hand and prodded the mattress above his head, which drew a faint squeak from the person in the top bunk. Jo saw a young woman lying there watching her, quiet and still as a mouse. At least, Jo assumed the creature in the voluminous, sack-like dress was female. All she could see was one solemn eye peeping out through a tangled mass of dark hair.

‘This is Eli,' Nathaniel murmured. ‘Her real name's Elina, but only angels call her that.'

‘Angels?'

‘Yes,' Nathaniel said, utterly serious. ‘They're all around us, everywhere. We can't see them because they're invisible. They're Eli's friends. They protect her when she's asleep.'

For a second Jo took him for a lunatic. Then she realised it was something he'd invented so the girl wouldn't be afraid of the dark. So it wasn't entirely unknown for one person to look out for another in this place. Jo just wished he could invent something to set her own mind at ease.

 

Later, after the lights had gone out, she heard someone moving in the next bunk. It wasn't pitch black; a solitary lamp in the toilet block spilled light into the corridor, and from there into the dorms, so there was just sufficient illumination for Jo to see a shadowy shape slide off the top bunk and into the bottom. Eli, getting in with Nathaniel. It could be innocent, of course – a young woman wanting strong arms around her for comfort – or it could be more intimate than that.

Jo realised the latter was true when Eli started to moan. The sound was that of a women in the throes of passion, muted yet unmistakable. Jo guessed Nathaniel was using his hands, for there was no creaking of bedsprings and no sound of male ardour. The noise continued unabated, rising in pitch as Eli approached orgasm. Her climax was brief but spectacular, to judge from her squeals; squeals that were heavily muffled as though she was biting down hard on a fold of her dress. She subsided and silence descended once more, broken only by a solitary cough that echoed along the corridor from one of the other dorms.

 

When the lights went on and the bell sounded to rouse them Eli was back in her own bunk.

‘Did we disturb you?' was the first thing Nathaniel said when Jo sat up and stretched. He seemed totally unabashed, even faintly amused, which dispelled any awkwardness Jo might have felt about eavesdropping on their lovemaking. For an answer, she just smiled and shook her head.

‘It's the only time Eli's free of fear,' he explained. ‘For a few minutes at least she can forget this terrible place.'

It was possible he was sincere; he had an honest face, certainly, and kindly eyes. But looks could deceive, and Jo had to wonder at his motives. Some men would take advantage of such a situation, relishing the opportunity to grope a young woman.

Malka reappeared, walking stiffly, just as the gangs were moving back into the dayrooms. She and Ben hugged, Ben wincing from his sore ribs. Of the two he seemed the more distraught, and Malka was the one doing most of the comforting.

Breakfast arrived: a bowl of pale brown slop, which proved no more appetising than the grey stuff, water, and another piece of biscuit. Jo found she had little appetite but made herself eat, knowing she needed to keep up her strength.

Ruth returned too, looking tired and drawn, and Jo asked how she was feeling.

‘I'm okay,' she said, in a voice that wasn't entirely steady. ‘Sore, but I'll get over it. What really matters is how you're doing. There's a lot for you to learn today.'

The first thing Jo learned after blue shift had made their way to limb six, was that they worked naked. ‘You can keep your pants on if you like,' Ruth said, as everyone stripped off, ‘but it's too hot to wear anything else down the mine.'

‘What, hotter even than this?'

‘Think this is hot, do you?' Ruth said, with a twisted smile.

They undressed, and Jo saw that Ruth's breasts were heavily bruised. ‘Tit-slap,' she said dismissively in response to Jo's gasp of dismay, ‘courtesy of the big dyke. A punishment for giving lousy head, she said. I was doing the best I could, but I guess it just wasn't good enough.'

She seemed resigned to her mistreatment, and was scornful when Jo suggested they report it to someone. No one cared, she explained – not the shift supervisor, who had no real authority, and certainly not Boss, who was worse than any of the guards.

‘We leave our things here in the corridor,' she said. ‘Don't worry, no one will touch them.'

Access to the mine was via an open elevator. Jo found herself crammed into a cage with thirty-odd others, their naked bodies pressing together, far too close for comfort. Ruth groaned as someone's elbow caught her breast; and then the cage was descending rapidly and sickeningly, to come finally to a juddering halt.

As they stepped out Jo reeled. The heat was appalling. It was hard to believe anyone could survive in it for eight hours, let alone work in it. But work they did, in tunnels six feet high, with roofs supported at intervals by hydraulic props and heavy steel cross beams. These tunnels, Ruth explained, followed veins of chalk-like stone in which were embedded crystals of Malavite, a semiprecious gemstone used in high energy lasers. Each prisoner was given a short metal tool with one end flattened into a chisel for scraping away the layers of stone, and a spike at the other end for prising out the crystals.

The veins of soft stone varied in width and so, consequently, did the tunnels. Some, called singles, were wide enough for one person only, whilst others – doubles, triples and quads – allowed a number of prisoners to work side by side. You didn't have any choice in this, Ruth said; you just went where you were sent and stayed there till told otherwise.

A guard, as naked as themselves, assigned Ruth to D21 in section two, whatever that meant, and Jo was told to stay with her and watch what she did. Tomorrow, he warned her sternly, she was on her own.

‘Not good,' Ruth muttered grimly as they made their way through the access tunnels. ‘Section two's an old working; the vein's pretty well exhausted. We'll be lucky to get more than a couple of crystals, and small ones at that.'

They passed more guards along the way, all carrying short, multi-thonged leather whips in place of the usual sticks. When Jo asked why Ruth explained they weren't guards at all. The real guards all stayed up top, she said, where it was cooler. These were trustees, prisoners put in charge of others, though some were as bad as the beasties, if not worse.