"Prisoner 849!" shouted the guard.
Gina, giving up on pretending to be asleep, opened her eyes and sat up in the cot of her small cell.
"Cell check," the guard continued to shout. "Stand against the back of the cell, face the wall," he instructed.
With a sigh, Gina stood and stretched her muscles. She was wearing her standard issue dark blue prisoner coveralls. Her short blonde hair was matted and dirty, she hadn't had a proper shower in weeks. She walked to the back wall of her cell and placed her hands above her head against the wall.
"Don't move," the guard said menacingly.
She heard the plasma gate that kept her in her cell deactivate with a hum and two guards entered her cell. There wasn't much to search. Aside from the bunk iron cots and a crude toilet, the room was completely bare. She was fortunate that her cellmate had died a week ago, so she had a cell to herself. In a place like this, that was a very good thing.
They were on board the Vortex Rikers, the rankest prison transport ship in service this side of the Milky Way. Aside from terrible living quarters and roach-infested food, the occupants were just as bad for your health. Brutal prison guards regularly beat prisoners for sport and the prisoners spent their time starting prison riots and threatening each other. The ship was transporting convicts from Earth to a distant prison moon where they would be forced to work in the lunar mines.
Gina heard another set of footsteps approaching. "Hey boys," a familiar voice said cheerily. "Find anything interesting?"
Ash was the warden of this wing of the prison ship. He was callous and violent, both hated and feared by most of the prisoners and guards in his wing.
"No, sir. She's clean," one of the guards replied.
Ash tutted. "That's a shame."
Gina was glad to avoid a beating and breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, she breathed a little too loud.
"Did you just give me attitude 849?" she could hear the smile on his face.
"No!" she pleaded. "I wasn't..."
She was cut short as the baton stuck her across the lower back. She fell forwards against the wall in pain as the baton came down again, this time higher on her shoulder blades. She fell to her knees, crying out in pain. The prison coveralls were too thin to provide any protection against the raining blows from Ash's nightstick. All Gina could do was cower against the wall, trying not to do any more than whimper which would encourage Ash to beat her longer.
Without much reaction from her, Ash quickly became bored and stopped. Gina slumped over and curled into the foetal position.
"Hmph," Ash was frustrated. "Put her in lockdown for the day."
"Yes, sir," the guards said as they followed Ash out of the cell, reactivating the plasma barrier and locking Gina in her cell.
She lay on the floor for several minutes before crawling to her feet, leaning against the wall for support. Still reeling in pain, she walked along the wall until she reached her cot before almost falling in and curling up into a ball. It wasn't the first beating, nor the most severe, but it still took its toll on her. Who knew how many more weeks of this she would have to endure before arriving at her new hell on the prison moon?
She drifted into sleep, dreaming of riding roller coasters when she was a kid. Earth suddenly felt very far away.
A blip appeared on the long range scanner. The navigator shuffled lazily in his chair, making a slow attempt to lean over his console. The blip on the scanner became bigger and an audible tone began to sound. The alarm was blaring in the quiet control room and the navigator quickly sprung to life to silence it. It was too late, the captain had heard it and strolled over to the navigator's station.
"What have we got, Private?" Captain S. Kroon asked casually.
The navigator examined the data that began to flow on a secondary monitor. After a few seconds, the captain cleared his throat, waiting for an answer.
"It appears to be a gravitational anomaly, sir," the navigator replied carefully, double checking the data. "Some kind of magnetic mass directly on our route."
"We didn't encounter any such mass on any of our last trips," the captain said, leaning over his navigator to examine the data himself.
"That's correct, sir. From the logs, nobody has encountered an entity such as this before."
The captain was deep in thought for several seconds. "This hunk of junk isn't designed to cope with anything more than a stubbed toe, we'll have to alter our course. Navigator, plot a new course to avoid the mass by no more than one unit. I don't want this trip to be any longer than it has to be."
"Sir," he replied hesitantly. "That would put us into uncharted space."
"I gave you an order, Private!" Captain Kroon said as he walked away.
"Yes, sir," the navigator said quietly as he prepared a new course.