Athena Romanoff stood at the very apex of the observation tower. From up high, the prisoners were ants, scurrying around. The ones walking along the balconies of the upper stories were easier to make out. A couple girls leaning over, just chatting, though Romanoff couldn’t imagine what these people had to talk about.
She turned from the window, sweeping her cape as she did. Her people worked at the monitors in concentric rings, with her own command chair on a raised platform in the centre. It was an uncomfortable seat and while it had pads and control panels on its arms, it was awkward to do any work from here. The noise of her colleagues also threw off her concentration. But whoever the damned architect of this place was failed to put her own office anywhere near this deck. So she went back to the elevator, and had to wait a full three minutes for it to arrive, before having to spend another thirty seconds to get the floor buttons to respond. Just another annoyance with her posting at Asphodel.
Eventually, she was down to the midsection where a covered walkway connected the spire to a staff-only entrance, leading to the inner Asphodel complex. It was among these sweltering iron passageways she came across Sheinberg, talking to ––most surprising of all–– a man.
“Ah, hello my lady,” Sheinberg gave a small curtsey before gesturing over to this person, “may I introduce, mister Danton Pygamile. He’s here on special assignment.”
“What?” Romanoff’s eyes flashed, “from who? From when?”
The man, strongly built and impeccably dressed in a long jacket, waistcoat and cravat, adjusted his glasses as he said, “aha, it’s my fault for not calling ahead. But these are sensitive times, warden. General Deniikin sent me.”
“Deniikin?” Romanoff said, throwing him an accusatory glance, though accusing of what even she wasn’t sure. “Ugh, leave it to general staff to leave us completely in the dark. What am I supposed to make of this?”
She looked at Sheinberg, who shrugged.
“He showed the right paperwork, I assumed you knew. Anyway, I’m not going to complain. A member of the sturdier sex gracing us is so unusual I can’t shy away.”
She flashed a small grin, which only prompted Romanoff to twist her mouth.
“Right…,” she whispered, “Alright. How can I treat you mister… Prigonil?”
“Pygamile,” he clarified. “My apologies for it’s not a Kratian name. And tea will suffice. I’ve been meaning to discuss your facility with you, lady Romanoff.”
Pygamile had a square face and roughly short brown hair, which looked like he trimmed it himself. He was wearing a smile, although his grey eyes were piercing, seeming to search the warden as she regarded him. He held a briefcase by his side, clutching it so tight in his hand to make his knuckles white.
But Sheinberg was correct about his papers, and Romanoff had no reason to send him away, so she led the visitor from the corridor, up some stairs and at last they made it to her office. It was a largely bare room with a grinding fan built into the concrete walls. But she had a mahogany desk and near it a small countertop where she promptly prepared the tea. Pygamile took a seat.
“I’m glad Ekaterina was there to greet me. This place is positively labyrinthine, I could have easily gotten lost.”
“Ekaterina?” Romanoff raised an eyebrow.
“Er, miss Sheinberg? Your Chief.”
“Yes, I know who you’re talking about. If you’ve met Ekaterina and are already on a first-name basis, I can only assume she’s invited you to be so familiar.”
Danton chuckled, adjusting his glasses again as he remarked, “she seemed to want me to feel welcome.”
“Ha.”
Romanoff brought over the tray, a respectable silver betrayed by the plainness of the mugs. She then sat down and the two drank their tea.
“I’m sorry for my attitude,” she said, admitting that, “this has been an unpleasant week. Well, an unpleasant year, to be truthful.”
The man nodded. “Deniikin forewarned that I could expect to find you in an irritable mood.”
“What has that man been saying? It’s his fault that I’m still here. Him and the Council”
“You’ve been meaning to leave?”
“My post was practically up,” she explained, before taking a sip. “Then your little war started. Told me Asphodel was too critical to accommodate a transition.”
“Ah, just to clarify, I’m not military. Let me just….”
He pulled his case onto his knees, flipped their locks and opened it up. As Romanoff narrowed her eyes, briefly imagining all sorts of things she would not want to see him pull from a mystery box, he retrieved a sheet of paper from inside and presented it to her.
“My CV. I am a mechanist, most recently employed as director of design and research at COMPTRIX.”
“Well you can put that away,” Romanoff said, glancing at the paper he was holding out to the air, “I’m not hiring, we can barely retain the staff we have.”
Danton chuckled. “You may find yourself overruled already. The General Council have appointed me here on a semi-permanent basis.”
“And what exactly is it you do, mister mechanist?”
“I’ve been involved in development of civil technology for 15 years. The components COMPTRIX made were almost entirely ones I designed, and my guess is your mining equipment is built out of my ideas and COMPTRIX labels. But, the war being the most pressing thing, we’ve mutually agreed to release me from any NDAs and non-competes. I have taken a look at the standards for Kratian weaponry and spacecraft, but admittedly none of those are my specialty. On the other hand is our space-wide infrastructure dependent on depholeum derivatives. So I am here to take a closer inspection on that piece of technology that is truly inspiring but which, regrettably, I’ve not had the chance to delve into.”
Romanoff blinked. “A piece of technology? You mean… Vio?”
“I’ve never been involved in the manufacture of the Vio-9x series. To see how it operates will be a great learning experience. Apart from a few remote regions, Asphodel is the only place to employ Vio mechs at scale.”
Athena Romanoff placed her cup down, so slowly as to not make a clunk of ceramic on metal. For a few seconds she continued to look down at her own hand, making small ministrations over the handle. Despite the drink, her throat was dry, and beneath it a hole was growing.
“Vio…. You mean the machine, not the chemical. Either way, what a nuisance.”
“You don’t approve?” Pygamile leant back in his seat, stroking his chin, “I think it’s an elegant thing. You use the V92 to crack open rock for depholeum. You utilise a simple refinery on-site to get both fuel and Vio, the former powers both the site and the machine, the latter goes into your prisoners. You can track over time the brute efficiency of Asphodel: each period you consume inputs, each period you replace your cost, sell your surplus depholeum, and use the extra to expand operations. Trust a mechanist on this, nothing is so beautiful as an energy efficiency.”
“There is no beauty in this place,” Romanoff said, looking off. “After a while, you’ll be itching for the first shuttle off. I mean hell it’s a prison strapped to a rock floating in space, it was never going to be a resort but… I think Vio fills this place with evil. Those women down there are all dripping with the stuff. It’s driving them wild. Any day they might lash out.”
“My suggestion is you put them to productive use. Occupied hands make still temperament.”
“You’ve never seen one of the wildcat strikes of Voroneya. Anyway, we work them to the bone, what more could they––”
“I believe there is something more active they could be doing than work,” Danton said, smiling ever so slightly over his cup. “I mean, you do know there’s a war on?”
Returning from Sister Ambrosia’s clinic, the guard Zoe Dee and prisoner Chione were returning to the cells. But Dee came to a stop about halfway through and turned to her left. She was faced with a door, no different from the thousand others, but Dee must have heard something because she peered through the window with a scowl.
“Damnit you insatiable… Alright!”
She as much as slammed her keycard in, and the heavy metal door swung open, cutting off Chione’s path along the narrow walkway, meaning she was forced to wait and watch. Inside were a pair of women at the far end of one of the bunks. They were enmeshed, arms around one another, legs around one another, even lips around one another. Dee gestured with her finger, while Chione stared gormlessly at the miraculous sight.
“I’ve told you before,” Dee said in a raised hiss, “I’m not telling you again! If I catch you in here during out hours I’m sending both of you down to the mines not just the boi. Now scram!”
“God, fuck,” one of the women said, practically ripping herself free from the other.
Of the two, she was the prettier although her features were quite plain aside from a few light freckles. Her brown hair was mid-length but flared at its base, although her hair line seemed to leave a little too much forehead. The other woman however, to Chione’s amazement, was completely bald, with a jaw so set she really had to strain not to mistake her for a man.
And once again, Chione had to blink and register what she had just seen. Were they… kissing? She was starting to wonder if she had misheard earlier and maybe Asphodel did have male prisoners. But that seemed even more absurd.
“Sh-she pulled me in here, I was locked!” The brown haired girl was sputtering, “I’m not even like that!”
“Yeah yeah,” Dee said, chuffing, “I don’t care what you do so long as I don’t see it. I’m not having my ass written up for dereliction. Break rules again and it won’t be her fucking you.”
“We heard you already,” the bald woman said, walking over with hunched shoulders and a grim face. “Bet you would like to fuck us, freak.”
Chione raised her brow, as she looked this butch, tanned and toned figure up and down. If anyone was going to be hurling the f-word around, it wouldn’t be her!
“On your way, Vil,” Dee said, keeping an utterly placid face despite the epithet. “You too, Tat.”
The two women scurried away, and Dee was able to shut the cell again. After slotting the card to lock it, and taking a moment to collect herself, Dee finally acknowledged Chione’s existence with a glance.
“Yeah… sometimes we leave the cells unlocked. Pen and paper isn’t the only thing a Commissary account is good for.”
Chione steadily looked back to the now closed cell, recalling what she had seen on that bed a few minutes ago.
“Girls sneak back in to…. Are there really such depraved people like that in Asphodel?”
Dee just stared at Chione, for a good five seconds. Then, quite uncharacteristically for the short time Chione had known her, the guard broke into a laugh. She tried holding her gloved hand up to restrain herself, but was unable to stifle her giggles.
“Oh man… heheh.”
“Wh-what?” Chione said, unnerved, “tell me what’s so funny!”
“It’s really nothing,” Dee said, “I mean, I shouldn’t have expected you to know. Civvie is one thing, but you’re just a pampered brat. But what Vil and Tat have, well, that’s pretty common here. I’d say… most women end up doing that kind of stuff.”
“…what?”
“You have the bois like Vil. They really get into it I think. Tatiana and girls like her are just ‘gay for the stay,’ although I think one or two really get into character. Some even like it. Those who really don’t like it get called whores.”
“Please tell me this is some sort of joke!”
Chione’s head was swimming, but then there was that red-headed girl Roxie who had said those perverted things to her. Could this hellhole really be such a den of filth as well?
Dee shrugged, “you do what you have to do to survive. Tatiana didn’t just decide to try pussy for a bit. Being someone’s girlfriend or even just letting them fool around with you can mean protection, it can mean food. It can even mean staying out of the mines.”
Chione looked up, mouth agape. Dee had really put a stress on that last point and was looking at her with intent. She swallowed, but then closed her mouth firm.
“I am not staying here any longer than I have to. I won’t be going down the mines, and I won’t be some criminal’s sick plaything. I am not playing your games!”
Dee just let out another sigh, before turning around, walking off, letting the gap between them widen.
“If you don’t play, you die.”
The gap widened, but then Chione started walking too. She returned to her cell.