Star Kitten (3 page)

Greed replaced compassion or even any
semblance of justice; and everyone gave in just a little, if not
completely. The greater good became nothing more than just the
greater profit motive, and from bottom to top, no one wanted to
admit it. When the existing veins of minerals were expanded and dug
out further; even more workers were needed to fill all the
workload; as well as replacing the dying and ruined laborers below
Rijel 12’s forbidding surface.

New Australia Planetary Prison became a
death sentence to most all sent there, and within fifty earth
years, few expected to ever return when sentenced to work there in
the mines.

Of course they had to be fed too; and a
network of food depots was devised by the Engineers. Ten, then
twenty, then hundreds of these depots sprang up within this vast
network which coursed through the planet’s caverns. Food Depots
were located near worksites and barracks; and as worksites and
mineral veins developed further, those food depots had to be
expanded. When new ore discoveries were found, MORE food depots had
to be constructed. And the original domed food warehouse on the
planet surface was expanded with phase after phase of additions
until it was the size of a small city. But the quality of food was
quite different for the guards and administrators than it was for
the poor souls slaving away in the mines.

Prisoner processing and assignment to work
details were handled below the surface. Rijel 12’s original mining
operation was established on the site of a massive canyon formed
from the collapse of an ancient subterranean cavern. A surface
facility was built next to the canyon, then the canyon was
eventually converted into a massive loading bay for supply ships,
using a landing pad lift that elevated up to the surface to receive
arriving spacecraft. Once landed, the elevator lift descended
several hundred feet into the canyon below to be processed. Then a
retractable roof closed over the canyon to seal it off from the
forbidding elements of Rijel 12.

New prisoners would be unloaded and assigned
to some part of the mines that required more workers (randomly at
first, then gradually based on species). There were always new job
openings, and there were always more prisoner ships landing. When
transport ships were completely emptied of prisoners, the other
side of the subterranean bay would open, and massive transport
vehicles would haul in loads of mineral ore, and eventually
precious gems too, to be loaded onto the emptied craft. Upon
completion, the retractable roof would open, the elevator platform
would ascend back to the surface, and the craft could take off once
again.

By the fiftieth Earth year of operation,
there was a freighter landing every few days; and usually there was
another in orbit around Rijel 12 waiting their turn to land and
offload new prisoners!

Pilots and crew were never allowed to leave
their ships; and most didn’t wish to. This was a prison after all,
and security was nearly air tight at all times. But what these
pilots and crew DID see when they landed? It was enough to send the
message back to their home planets that this was a truly hellish
place. They didn’t even need to see what was going on below. The
construction workers finishing their projects below could shed even
more light on the realities of New Australia Planetary Prison, but
even they didn’t care—not about inmates in a prison. They just
wanted to leave Rijel 12 and get back home as quickly as
possible.

With all the financing of the Interplanetary
Authority, those enterprising Earthmen were brutally efficient in
devising a diabolical prison system that continued to feed the
hellish mining operation; and production goal-setting became
increasingly aggressive as the years passed. Government officials
began to “see dollar signs” as the Earthmen called it.
Profitability increased and the operation was a success within only
a few galactic years.

Everyone was thrilled with the results.

Well, most everyone was, anyway: Prisoners
in the early years arriving on Rijel 12 were immediately pressed
into service working in the mines until they completed their
sentences; and just like the Earthmen had promised, these prisoners
who’d completed paying their debt to society—those who’d survived
to complete serving their sentences that is—were able to crawl or
limp onto freighters and eventually returned to their home planets.
They’d be aged and broken down by then, but at least they could
finally go home (go home and die at a very young age and in
terribly poor health that is). It was hard to feel sorry for them…
after all they’d most certainly deserved to be sent there. Most
law-abiding citizens could rationalize it that way. But it was
nevertheless shameful treating other intelligent beings in such a
manner. And it was a reflection on the societies themselves who
allowed it to go on like that.

But it got even worse. Eventually the
planets even stopped going back to get their prisoners. It became
an embarrassment really… seeing a released prisoner returned to
their societies all haggard and crippled. Withered and squinting
from daylight which they hadn’t seen in many years; they’d return
to their home planets almost unrecognizable to their families and
loved ones.

The Slartigifijians were the first of the
seven planets to stop sending prisoners to New Australia Planetary
Prison, protesting that conditions there would have to improve
before they’d resume. After nine earth years, they ceased
transports of criminals completely; but not surprisingly they left
thousands behind to finish out their miserable lives; and just
chose to forget about the whole nasty social experiment.

Pumalar threatened to do the same, but
eventually relented. Pumalars were very strong and capable of
bearing up to the rigors of the workload. And the Pumalar
government couldn’t bear to miss out on their share of the profits
from the mine either. The other planets, by way of comparison, just
kept right on going. They all just began seeing it the way Earthmen
had portrayed it in the first place.

“Violent criminals and repeat offenders need
to be removed from a society for the greater good of their
communities; and once they’ve repaid their debt to society, only
then may they return to their home planets,” is how the Earthmen
put it each galactic year at the Convention. Yet this commitment to
“reforming” criminals gradually faded into a distant memory when
governments felt the backlash of social revulsion over the results
of even a three year sentence working in subterranean mines on a
hellish planet light years away. Frankly it was the lure of
incredible wealth and the expansion of their planetary economies
that caused them to temper their protests a bit.

Gradually they stopped protesting
completely.

Most just grew to look at
it the same way as the Earthmen. At the galactic conventions, the
Earth delegation would delight in reporting the profitability of
the mines; and exaggerate the collateral effects on societies back
on home planets who had seen a vast improvement in social order:
“We’re shipping out mineral ore, and shipping in our society’s bad
eggs to work the mines. It’s still a
win-win
!”

But this was indeed a farce—an illusion
portrayed by greedy politicians enjoying excellent approval ratings
at home and (as they saw it) happier law-abiding workers from the
lower classes on their home planets. The wealthy elite classes
loved the results, even if the lower working classes saw no direct
benefit. No one at the top wanted to face the truth of what they
were truly doing. Just like the Slartigifijians warned so many
years before, such poor application of morality and ethics could
and most certainly would lead to oppression and abuse of those who
were powerless.

Crime didn’t stop, nor did crime rates even
fall. Beings on all planets still murdered, stole, raped, or spoke
out against the government. Yet it didn’t matter. It only fed the
meat grinder with fresh prison labor for “New Australia Planetary
Prison.” The justice systems needn’t worry about prisoner reform or
incarceration at all any more. Murder another being on your planet,
and you got sent away for life. That made perfect sense at first.
But eventually, even repeat-offending burglars were being dragged
onto transport vessels headed for Rijel 12 to serve “minor
sentences”. Within fifty Earth years even they would never return.
No one went back to get them.

Initially, just like any poorly thought-out
social experiment, the “stated” intent turned out to be
unachievable. From the very start, the promise was to respect the
concept of a set prison sentence and to return the convict to
society upon its completion. Greed got in the way of that. But so
did the fear of political repercussions at home when freed
prisoners returned to tell of the conditions at New Australia
Planetary Prison. Earth and Zorgolong were the first two planets to
stop returning for their prisoners. Schpleefti actually never did
in the first place. In their world a Schpleeftian who’d severely
broken the law was banished from their community anyway. For them
it was just plain common sense. Threaten the peace and tranquility
of society, and you lose the privilege of living within it.

The Pumalars followed suit eventually as
well. Given time, they began to see how it fit in with the
philosophy of their culture: removing the capability of repeating
the crime (severing a hand, castrating the testicles, or removing a
tongue), meant that the example was set for all those tempted to
duplicate the act. But this was even easier! Just send them away to
Rijel 12, and the problem was still solved.

For Slartigifijians it was different though.
They simply couldn’t handle the conditions in New Australia and
perished within a few years. However, not all of them died. Their
intelligence became highly valuable to the other prisoners and some
lived on to serve vital roles in prison society. Besides,
Slartifigians had much longer life-spans than humans. This became
very important later on, for the sake of the other prisoners’
survival.

The hard life of mining killed off thousands
of prisoners every year, and there was really no predictable
pattern to it. Stronger prisoners died in the mines just as easily
as weaker prisoners. Determination to survive, or resentment at
having been sent to this subterranean hell could most certainly
sustain a being for a while, but accidents were quite common. Death
could come easily; and at most any time. The prison administration
simply didn’t care. In another galactic month (about 129 days),
there’d be another ship arriving from Earth or one of the other
planets with more prisoners, anyway.

It all deteriorated into a matter of brutal
survival for the desperate imprisoned beings on Rijel 12.

After half an earth century of dumping
hapless male prisoners on the planet, the place had become a death
sentence and everyone knew it. Inmates would tell newly arrived
prisoners of this, and even their own guards communicated the same
message. As one infamously cruel guard used to put it to arriving
prisoners as they were processed in the receiving bay, “You have
been sent here to die; and that is likely what you’ll do. Accept
it, and your miserable existence here may last for quite a while.
Who knows? You may die tomorrow. We don’t know; and we don’t care
either. Work… and you eat. Eat and you live. That’s all you need to
know for now….”

And yet fifty Earth years later—when faced
with such an impossible existence—amazingly some beings learned how
to survive. They adapted and they overcame by creating a society of
their own below the planet surface. Leaders arose, structure
developed, and the situation finally stabilized (partly driven by
necessity, and partly due to the sheer determination of desperate
intelligent beings seeking to exist, no matter what the
circumstances). They figured out ways to live on….

After many years, inmates
realized that no one from home was ever going to come back to get
them once they got sent to New Australia Planetary Prison. Besides
that, even new prisoners sentenced to this penal colony had already
noticed on their home planets that it had been years since anyone
had actually
returned
from Rijel 12.

Governments spun lies
about it publicly. In news conferences they denied a cover-up. And
privately they just ignored it or claimed feebly that they had no
knowledge of what had happened to prisoners. When family members
inquired as to the fate of their incarcerated loved ones, they got
nowhere. No information on their convicted relative was
forthcoming. There was no record-keeping at NAPP after a while,
either. Files on prisoners were created in the early days of course
but then in later years these files were simply
misplaced
.

Basically it was
impractical. Ships tended to travel right through the Rijel system
without stopping, or stopping merely to refuel and take on mineral
deposits to trade back at their home planets. The bigger the load
they brought home, the bigger the payout when they got back.
Minerals and gemstones were cheap to purchase in bulk on Rijel 12,
but very expensive when transported back to other planets for
resale, so why make room for prisoners on the return trip? It just
reduced the profitability of the voyage. The governments were
paying the captains a fee to take prisoners TO Rijel 12, but there
was no monetary incentive in bringing them back. Much more money
could be made from a full load of cargo, after all.
So why bother
?

Families of the inmates never fully grasped
this. Rijel 12 was simply too far away to have to pay a freighter
to transport home ONE, FIVE, or even TWENTY convicts who’d
completed their sentence and NAPP was not in the business of
tracking down a prisoner once they’d been sent into those hellish
mines!