Chapter Twenty-Six
One way to discover the prison’s location was to be taken there yourself. It wasn’t the way Tina had preferred, but she no longer had a choice in the matter.
The men marched her out of the room. She was taken down in the lift and along a dark corridor, where the rooms on either side appeared to be unoccupied or contained items for storage.
She imagined the map of the station in her mind while they walked. This area was the administrative area, possibly part of the high school.
Indeed, one room contained rows of seats and screens, as if it was a classroom. They also went past a courtyard with benches surrounding a planter box. She could imagine students sitting there on a break. The tree in the box was dead, the leaves brown and drooping from the branches.
Tina smelled the prison before she got there. A dank scent of human waste and sweat met them while they walked towards what she guessed to be the old hospital.
They entered the central atrium, a hall four floors high, with galleries on each level. As soon as the door thudded shut behind them, people started yelling. Most voices were muffled by walls and doors and it was impossible to hear what they said, but some prisoners shouted obscenities. All the voices were male, many of them foreign.
A couple of pirates milled around on the ground floor, ignoring the shouts from the prisoners. They spoke briefly in Sinolese with the men who brought Tina, so she didn’t understand what they said. They were rough types with mottled skin. One of them carried a security reader on his belt. Tina recognised the model, because she used to sell them in her shop. It wasn’t a terribly advanced model, in line with the other security equipment she had seen.
The men then took Tina up one level into a dark gallery, where the guard used the security reader to open a metal door. Pretty old-fashioned.
The men pushed Tina into the darkness of the room.
One of them said something and laughed.
Tina stumbled a few steps. The stench of sweat in the room was so strong that it almost made her gag. It brought back memories of sitting sardined in a transport ship where the air circulation was less than ideal, with people who were on their first trip and were nervous, motion sick, or both.
Smells were always so much stronger inside closed environments.
Tina sensed the presence of other people in the room before the men slammed the door shut behind her.
It was so dark that purple spots danced before her eyes.
After a while a little light went on. Tina squinted in that direction.
A woman said, “Don’t waste any power.”
“It’s a newcomer,” another woman said.
Their voices sounded educated.
Another light flicked on.
The same woman as before said, “What did I tell you about not wasting power?”
“We’re all going to be dead in a few days anyway,” another woman said.
Several female voices told her to stop saying things like that.
A woman closer to Tina said, “Where did you come from?”
“They caught me wandering in the station in a place I shouldn’t be.”
“You’re not Force?”
“I used to be, a long time ago.”
“Did you come in with any of the Federacy ships?”
A woman elsewhere in the darkness said, “We don’t even know that the Federacy has sent anyone to get us out.”
Tina asked, “Are you crew from the Star Fighter Manila?”
A brief silence.
Then a woman asked, “Do you know the ship?”
“I served in the Force. I saw it was brought in. I saw you being led away as prisoners.” Her heart was hammering. “Is there anyone here called Evelle Freeman?”
Another silence.
“Who wants to know?” a different voice said.
This was a younger woman. Her voice sounded strangely familiar to Tina. But they were still shining the light in her eyes and she couldn’t see the faces of all those in this cell.
“Evelle?”
One of the women came closer. Tina could see the uniform and boots and trousers of the wearer, but nothing above the waist.
After another silence in which Tina could imagine her studying Tina’s face, the young woman said, “Mum?”
“Evelle.”
The young woman touched Tina’s shoulder, and Tina pulled her into a hug. It felt as awkward as hell. This was not at all the way Tina had envisaged meeting up with her daughter.
She was so tall and so skinny. She smelled of dirty uniforms and sweat, as did everyone in this room.
“Mum, what are you doing here?”
“Aren’t you just a little bit glad to see me?”
“Well no, because we’re all going to die in here.”
“No we’re not,” Tina said. “Not if I can help it.” But she sounded a lot more confident than she felt. First she would have to find a way to get in contact with Rex and Thor.
Not only that, if she managed to get Evelle out, she would also have to free all these other women and the bigger the group, so the more chance of discovery.
Evelle wanted to know why Tina was at the station. She said she’d come “on business”, but said nothing about the ship, about Finn, Rex or Thor. These were old high-care hospital rooms. There was usually fairly advanced surveillance equipment in those places, especially if they also treated mental patients. The pirates might be listening in. She directed the conversation away from her, asking how the ship came to be in pirate hands, and was told they had become separated from the fleet because of an intersecting asteroid cloud, and that they were ambushed by a fleet of pirate ships on the other side.
It wasn’t easy to turn warships around quickly, so by the time the other ships in the fleet would have noticed the ship missing, it was too late.
Tina was familiar with the protocol. When one ship stopped communicating, you continued on to your destination and reported the matter at which time
