by Maren Smith
The only thing worse than hospital coffee was prison coffee. Combine the two and the result was bold enough, black enough, and acidic enough to strip-clean a forty-year-old combine engine. He’d be in the bathroom before noon, and Rowth knew it. Still, coffee was a thinking man’s drink. So, he sat in the visitors’ lounge across from a window overlooking the parking lot and two armed guard towers, his disposable cup in hand, and he thought. In fact, he was so deeply into it that it wasn’t until he was startled by approaching movement that he realized someone was talking to him.
“Magistrate?” She was a little brown woman—topped by a short, curly bush of brown hair, too-big brown eyes, and soft pale skin that only seemed to amplify the brownness of the penal uniform she wore. She was also behaving in a delightfully subservient manner. A manner that made him think of doing things no Magistrate should toward a woman in the workplace, especially not during working hours. He lifted his head to show he’d heard, and she edged a little further into his field of vision, holding her work tablet as if it were a shield. “We have them cuffed and ready in Interrogation Room Two.”
He lowered his coffee, sitting up a little straighter. “You allowed all three to assemble before I questioned them?”
She blinked before hesitantly offering, “They have been imprisoned together since their arrival. We aren’t equipped to handle beings of such… diminutive size and… well, frailty. We have no restraints to fit them, we can’t put them into general population, and if they are not watched and watched closely, they attempt escape. Your honor, if you wish us to separate them, we will, but what good would it do now?”
“What good, indeed.” So, they’d given the humans time to get their stories together. He tried not to grit his teeth, but didn’t quite manage it. That just made his job harder.
He got up, walking far enough to throw his coffee away, and fumed. As much as he would have loved to get the owner of that monumentally bad decision under his thumb, he was experienced enough to know if he asked one more question about it, the scramble to shift blame would begin. And then, everyone, from superintendent to janitor, whether responsible or not, would start covering their collective asses. The effort to deliver one sour rebuke would not be worth his wasted time. Especially since he could already see it starting on the face of this guard. The fear that she might be found guilty of something, the faint desperation to find some way to shift his attention from her to anyone else was already all too apparent, and all she manned was the visitors’ entry point. She wouldn’t have the clearance to see most high-security prisoners, much less determine their placement.
He sighed and let it go. “Lead on.”
As it turned out, she didn’t have the clearance even to cross the threshold from the entry wing into the actual prison. She passed him into the safe-keeping of two armed guards, who walked him through the labyrinthine halls. He was checked through two different security stations, and passed through three housing wings for criminals of far lesser import before finally arriving at the infamous, if not small, D-Unit, located at the absolute center of the circular high-security prison. Only the city-state’s most dangerous penal inmates were housed in this hall, which was little more than an ovular room. Cage after narrow, steel-walled cage lined the outer rim and an open-barred grate of a ceiling was walked by four burly guards. A fully armed security station in the center of the room was staffed with three more. All seven came to immediate boot-snapping attention the minute he entered the room.
“Magistrate on the floor!” boomed a guard from the grate above. The command brought the inmates to their feet, and just as immediately, into a proper subservient bow with hands as if shackled behind their backs and heads bent. Rowth kept his gaze locked on the door at the far end of the room and didn’t look at any of them. Not even when he heard another guard command, “Eyes on the floor, inmate!”
The rebuke was followed by the blue-white spark of a cell being electrified and the pained shout of a prisoner collapsing to the floor in jerking spasms.
Rowth kept walking. One escort hurried ahead to get the door and hold it for him. This small dead-end hallway was lined with four numbered rooms, two on each side. He stopped at the first door on the left, a little surprised to find only a single guard posted at the door. He paused expectantly to allow his escort to open it for him, only to pause all over again once he was inside and the less than dignified goings-on within unfolded before his startled eyes.
Four tiny female aliens were widely scattered around the interrogation table, strapped into restraint chairs using adjustable temporary plastic ties rather than the heavy-duty bonds meant to hold adult Pra’kirian prisoners. On second glance, that only made sense. The chairs were designed to hold the most uncooperative and dangerous felons. Even the smallest size adjustment on any of those restraints was still twice what was needed to effectively bind the tiny wrists or ankles of these human females.
All four were dressed in the bright yellow jumpsuits worn by juveniles taken into state wardship. That also made sense, once he considered it. This was an all-male facility. It was doubtful they had jumpsuits small enough to clothe even the pale, blonde-haired female, who was easily the tallest of the females (or, at least, she sat taller), albeit only by two or perhaps three finger-spans. Hers was a very sullen, antagonistic stare. One she kept locked on the first of the two guards that kept the aliens company in that small room. Seated on the corner of the table, he had positioned himself directly in front of her with his booted left foot propped up on the seat between her splayed thighs, with the press of his boot positioned as a reminder against her abdomen. She’d been gagged, but that indignity did not soften her glare. Neither did the zapper he brandished like a warning before her baleful eyes.
“Behave,” the guard cautioned, showing just how close his thumb was to the bright red button that crowned the top of that pen-sized disciplinary alternative. “I’ll do it. You know I will.”
Her already mutinous look grew even more so. She was breathing angrily and deeply, making the underdeveloped bumps of her breasts heave above the stacked rings of plastic ties that bound her torso to the chair. She did not sit back or modify her expression, but neither did she fight her bonds.
The stockiest of the three aliens sat in restraints to the right of the blonde, every bit as tightly bound and tensely poised as the first, but also muzzled. How they got the bit on that full-face mask between her jaws, Rowth didn’t know. Made for a much bigger male, the mask did not fit at all well, making the eyeholes even with her hairline instead of her eyes. Judging by the way she canted her head at the smallest of sounds, she couldn’t see anything beyond the brightness of the artificial lights shining in around the mask’s metal edges.
The third and smallest female seemed to be the most harshly treated. Not only had she been affixed to her chair using three times the number of restraints as either of her companions, but the second guard held her pinned in place using an electrified choke bar. Standing over her, he also braced his foot on the seat of her chair to keep it stable while he leaned his weight on the long handle of the curved bar that kept her neck trapped against the back of the chair. Beneath it, was the snug ring of a highly conductive choke collar. Like the taller of her companions, if she knew the disciplinary unpleasantness associated with the bright red button that lurked below her guard’s ready finger, it did not cow her.
The fourth and last female—blonde, blue-eyed, curvy in a way the standard ugliness of the jumpsuit seemed more inclined to amplify rather than hide—wasn’t in a chair at all. She was standing in the far corner, her nose pressed to the join of the walls, sulking. Added to what he knew of the injured one currently weaving between life and death in the prison infirmary, he was beginning to think ill-timed disobedience a characteristic of the species.
But then, defiance toward the established rules of the prison seemed to be the chief characteristic of every occupant of this facility today.
Rowth frowned at the uniform securit
y belts heaped on the floor just inside the door and then at the backs of the guards who should have been wearing them. “Why aren’t you wearing your arms?”
Neither guard moved.
“Because,” the one seated with his boot on the tall female’s stomach drawled, “if you get close enough, they will steal anything and everything in your pockets. Including weapons, cuffs, and the keys to their cell.”
All right. That was a good reason.
“Do they really?” Rowth ventured into the room, inspecting each female more closely. He approached the little one first. Apart from switching her angry glare from the guard to him, she didn’t move. “What reason have you for employing this security extreme?”
“She twitched, sir,” the officer replied, also not moving.
“Twitched?” Rowth echoed, frowning.
Without easing off on the stick, he switched the handle to one hand and carefully reached down to test the littlest female’s bonds. Although all looked secure, a gentle pluck soon revealed that she had somehow managed to cut all the ties on her left arm and had begun to work her way through the ties securing her legs to the chair.
“This one likes to escape,” the guard said, sitting back again.
“So I see.” Even knowing he shouldn’t be impressed, Rowth was anyway. “Have you found what she was using?”
“No, sir. As soon as you’ve finished with them, she’ll get the full strip search. I promise you, I’ll find it.” The way he said it made Rowth wonder to whom exactly he was making that promise.
Wariness flashed in that little female’s eyes as she returned her stare to her unforgiving guard.
“And that one?” Rowth gestured to the female in the corner.
“She threw food on the guard when he came to collect her.”
“I see. And the mask?” Rowth asked, circling the table towards the females restrained at the head.
“She bites,” the guard there replied, holding up his empty hand to show Rowth the bandage that circled his palm. “She’s got me six times.”
“And you haven’t bitten her back?”
Just starting to lower his hand, the guard paused. Turning, he looked at Rowth. He did not look amused. “Is that an option?”
Nobody ever could tell when he was joking.
“I wouldn’t recommend it, no.”
The guard grunted—it was hard to tell if he was disappointed or not—and turned back to face the females. “I think I’ve got this one figured out, though,” he said, pointing at the tall one. “She’s the mother, and these small ones are her whelps. That explains why she gets so upset when anyone fusses at them.”
To demonstrate, he reached over to the one blinded by the face mask and tapped her repeatedly on the head with his fingers. She ducked, jerked in her bonds to avoid the irritating blows, and when she squeaked, the taller of the females surged in her bonds, bellowing through her gag, “eeve ‘er a’on!”
Pressing his foot into the taller female’s stomach by way of warning, the guard sat back. He folded his arms across his chest. “See? Pure maternal devotion. Plus, that would explain why the other is so bitey. She hasn’t yet learned proper behavior.”
“So, their people—disliking the family unit, for whatever reason… perhaps political—launched them all into space,” Rowth guessed. “That doesn’t strike you as extreme?”
Half swiveling back to meet his inquiry, the guard held up his injured hand again. “She got me six times. If I knew how they did it and had a ship, I’d launch the lot of them back into space myself. It would be worth the jail time.”
Rowth almost cracked a smile. Almost.
Looking over all four women, he had serious reservations regarding the guard’s ‘family’ hypothesis. Not only was there no facial resemblance between them, but considering what the wounded one had told him—right before succumbing to his accidental overdose—he found it unlikely any species, alien or not, would launch an entire family. Rather, it made more sense to think they would launch equal operatives, all of whom might be possessed with similar or complementing skills. All he had to do now was determine how much, if any, of what Brinley Lawson had told him reflected the truth.
And that meant he needed to be able to glean some truth from these four—the gagged, the cornered, the masked and the mutinous choke-collared female.
“Here,” he told the two guards. “Bring them close together—in a row.” Pulling the heavy interrogation table close to one wall, he gestured to an open space of floor. “Line them up here before me.”
As the guards dutifully shoved the three occupied restraint chairs plus one into a half-moon in front of him, Rowth found an unoccupied seat. He sat down, his knees bare inches from theirs and looked at each in turn. He’d been told once he was the Judicial High Commander of icy stares. Certainly, he’d accumulated more than his fair statistical average of confessions using nothing but his eyes. For some reason, three or four (or forty) minutes of wordless staring tended to make guilty people nervous. Nervous people liked to talk. Since he’d made a career out of discovering exactly what people were guilty of doing and then of helping them alleviate that guilt through the proper application of judicial sentencing, Rowth did so like it when they self-provided all the braided rope required to build a proper flogger.
Sadly, his stare had little effect on the aliens. The masked female couldn’t see it, and with the choke collar to keep her in line, the shortest female seemed just angry enough to want to set him afire by the force of her returning gaze alone. The tallest female seemed made of sterner stuff than most of the lawbreakers he interrogated.
Rowth switched tracks. He started with her. “I’m going to remove your gag. I will ask you some questions and you will answer them. If you fail to answer when appropriate or with the proper respect, I am going to beat her.” He pointed to the masked female, but he never took his eyes off the taller one. “Nod if you understand.”
She did not nod, but her face darkened and her green eyes sparked. She absolutely understood him.
Rowth offered her the closest thing he had to a genuine smile, and then lashed out and smacked the masked female upside the head. He checked his strength, but unable to see it coming, she hadn’t braced herself, and so the blow looked far worse than he knew it to have been. She rocked back in her chair, bucking and recoiling and very nearly toppled her whole chair. Having taken up guard positions behind the row of little aliens, the first of the two officers reached out to stabilize her chair, but the damage was already done. All four were shrieking at him—two muffled by their mask and gag, and the other two bleating the most interesting litany of highly improbable sexual curses. Both snapped their mouths shut when he looked at them, however, and despite the taller woman’s flushed and furious stare, when he turned back to her and repeated, “Nod if you understand,” in tight jerks, she nodded.
He turned to the shortest, his heart quickening against his ribs as he drank in the sight of all that helpless anger. “I expect absolute obedience out of you. Speak out of turn, curse at me again, cut so much as one more tie, in short, misbehave in any way and it will be she—” He pointed to the female from the corner, still sulking, blue eyes blazing, even now being locked back into her restraint chair. “—she who bears your punishment. Nod if you understand.”
Her mouth flattened. Defiance as naked as a newborn babe burned in her eyes. But swallowing hard, the rebellious little alien nodded.
Someone somewhere would be responsible for teaching this tiny thing proper respect. His pulse quickened all over again at the thought, an echo of it settling low down in his belly. Each languid thump branched out into his cock. Sadly, that someone would not be him.
He still had a job to do.
Reaching for the masked female, cowering as flat as she could make herself against the cool back of the chair, he closed his hands over both her wrists and the metal arms they were bound to. Rising over her and bending low, he leaned in as close as a lover and let the heat of h
is whispering breath caress her ear. “I’m going to remove your mask, and you are going to be such a good, good girl, aren’t you? No more biting. No more naughtiness. Because if you do, you will leave me no choice but to hurt one of your companions. Not you, no. But I will make you watch as I continue to hurt her for as long as it takes you to decide to be good again. And I promise, it will never again be as gentle or as forgiving as the blow you last received.”
He paused, loving this part of the job, breathing in the faint musk of her strange scent and her fear, and finding the mingling of both not at all unpleasant. Her small breasts rose and swiftly fell again, fast and shallow. She was trembling; he resisted the urge to toy with the wisps of her red hair. He hoped no one looking at him right now could tell just how aroused this whole exchange had made him.
“Nod,” he murmured, his lips moving against the shell of her ear.
It was almost impossible to tell between her nod and her trembling, but he took that quivering for assent. He eased himself back onto his chair, waiting until the very last possible moment before letting go of her. Almost immediately, he missed the heat of her pale, unmarred skin within his grip.
All he had to do was look at the curvy blonde.
“I got it,” she snarled, checking her aggression. It was still there. Oh, yes, he could hear it in her voice and see it in her ocean-blue eyes. She was making no attempt to hide it either.
Nodding, he smiled at them, allowing his inner excitement to settle and the pulse in his cock to die away. The females stared warily back. Not speaking, not moving. He grunted. “Let’s proceed, shall we?”
Starting with the taller, he gently unfastened her gag. “Easy now,” he cautioned as he took it from her mouth. She winced, trying to work her jaw without cracking the cuts her struggles had made in the corners of her lips. “There, see? None of this would have been necessary if only you’d minded your manners.”
Her only response lay in the caustic glare she fixed on him. She licked her lips.