Read Prison Ship for Free Online

checkpoint for the docking tube. After she showed the guard her identification card, the young man opened the gateway.
    Steiner followed her through it, onto a metallic walkway encased within a transparent cylinder. As they walked the length of it, Steiner surveyed the outside of the vessel. Pulse-cannon damage from ancient battles scarred its rough hull. One section appeared to have been recently repaired where, he imagined, the hull had been breached. Brand-new shield generators dotted the exterior, every five meters, connected by wires, which looked a bit sloppy but were a welcome addition. The eight rows of gunnery ports gave the vessel the advantage of firing at any angle, but each port had to be manually operated by an individual gunner, a severe disadvantage when facing ships with computer-synchronized weaponry.
    After following Suzanne through the open outer hatch into the extended gangway of the P.A.V.’s air lock, Steiner watched as she paused before unveiling the interior of the ship. “Welcome aboard, Captain.” She pressed a keypad, and the door slid open, giving Steiner his first view inside.
    A dimly lit landing area stood before him, with corridors running forward, to the right, and to the left, each leading to its own ramp, which elevated the walkways to meet darkened hallways five feet above the landing. Steiner peeked inside to see if anyone was hiding at the sides of the hatch. With a frustrated huff, Suzanne confidently stepped through the opening. Following her, he thought back to the last time he had been on one of these ships, almost ten years ago. He vaguely remembered its having three main decks and a command center sitting atop the outer hull. The air-lock landing area seemed to be situated between decks.
    “Why is it so dark in here?” Steiner asked.
    “The head engineer wanted to conserve as much power as he could until the launch.”
    The silence felt deafening. The metal walls and floors amplified his footsteps. The air tasted musty, probably because of the outdated ventilation system, but at least it contained the correct oxygen mixture.
    “Is anyone on board?” he asked.
    “All forty-eight men,” Suzanne answered.
    “Where are they?”
    “Does it matter? This will make your tour much easier.” As they walked, Steiner touched the deep scars in the metallic walls from handheld weapons, as if someone had done it for fun.
    Suzanne stopped at an adjoining passageway, which stretched the length of the ship in both directions. Loud voices came from the aft section.
    “What’s going on down there?” Steiner asked.
    “It’s the ship’s bar.”
    “A bar?” he repeated, unable to believe it. “Aboard a prison ship?”
    “It’s an incentive for convicts to join the program. I refitted the recreation hall.”
    “Wouldn’t it be wiser to keep them sober for battles?”
    “The beer has extremely low alcohol content. It would be next to impossible to become intoxicated.”
    Loud cheers erupted, followed by thunderous laughter.
    “Tell them that,” he said.
    Suzanne sighed. “Ignore them for now. Let’s get on with the tour.”
    She climbed a stairwell to their immediate right, which led to the upper-deck level. For the next fifteen minutes, she guided him through the vacant crew quarters, explaining how each door to all fifty cabins had been refitted so that the doors could be locked individually or locked in groups from the command center in case he wanted to secure the convicts during their off-hours to encourage them to sleep. Finally, she brought him to massive closed doors at the far end of a wide hallway. Accessing a computer panel embedded in the side of the frame, she entered a series of digits, then stood back as the entry split apart. On the opposite side, a stairway rose into a brightly lit chamber.
    “This is the command center,” Suzanne said. “Like most of the vital areas of the ship, it can only be opened with a password.”
    Together, they ascended the dozen