Chapter 1: Carnath

It’s been a long and dreary voyage for each of you as you eventually arrive at the small, high-pressure, methane-rich mining planet of Carnath, and the six relative-nearby XeroCorp prisons scattered about on various, and otherwise insignificant moons and asteroids orbiting it.
Once the pride of the XeroCorp empire and its largest facility, Prison Station Echo represented state-of-the-art rehabilitative strategies and inmate training. Those "lucky" enough to do a stint in PS Echo left with an education, networking contacts, and countless opportunities for employment once they returned to society that enabled any former inmate to find work, usually before their sentences had even been completed. The recidivism rate of PS Echo’s population was so low as to be nearly negligible.
Times have changed though, and newer, bigger, better, more progressive prisons in the space worlds have replaced XeroCorp’s crown jewel, and the facility finds itself in a nearly constant state of disrepair, short-staffing, and chaos. When its inmate population isn’t killing each other, rioting, and causing general mayhem, inmates toil round the clock collecting valuable minerals and materials from surrounding the asteroid belt that orbits Carnath, only to be sent back to the ugly planet in an effort to repay increasing incarceration debts.
And while the prison’s reputation for low retention and recidivism rates has gone down the toilet since its glory days, XeroCorp now seems prouder than ever, if not for its now-dismal human rights record, then at least for its new reputation as having a near 100% incarceration rate. One has heard rumors XeroCorp executives, behind corporate boardroom doors, speak fondly of the whispers on Carnath that a trip to PS Echo is one-way only. Inmates may not be sent to PS Echo with life sentences, but they typically find themselves with one before they ever leave, and those that do finish a sentence of incarceration at PS Echo May not be found hidden away on the prison anymore, but neither are they ever seen on Carnath proper, or on any other planet or space station located on the edge of rimspace.

Each of you, down on your luck, desperate for work, has found yourself lucky to have found employment, albeit likely of a temporary nature, as XeroCorp’s most recent hires. Not all of you arrived on the mining planet together, and some of you found yourselves waiting for a number of standard cycles, until the next XeroCorp prisoner transport shuttle departs again. In the meantime, those of you who arrived early were given compensation for room and board while you waited. Those that had hoped for compensation on the form of credits or other standard currency, perhaps intending to squirrel away as much of it as possible, while cutting corners on accommodations or calories, or perhaps see their fortunes grow in one of Carnath’s many and increasingly seedy gambling venues were disappointed, as XeroCorp immediately handed early arrivers compensation on the form of vouchers, to be traded in for an overnight stay in any of a number of Carnath’s tiny sleep-pod banks, small rectangular "bunks", providing little more than enough space to lay horizontally, with a few inches of above your noses, and bit of extra room for a small travel pack to store at your feet; frequently appearing unwashed after use by a previous tenant, reeking of urine and unwashed body odors, and covered in various crusts, films, and other dried fluids it’s probably best one not scrutinize too carefully. Food vouchers, as well, were provided on a daily basis through minimal communication by XeroCorp in your net-messages. Enough for three basic and uninspired synth-meals per day, at one of Carnath’s many synth-cal kitchens; the fare at these locations that prove willing to accept said vouchers little more than bland, watery gruel and tasting as depressing as one feels upon stepping foot on Carnath in the first place..

Eventually the last of you arrive on Carnath, and after checking your net-messages for the umpteenth time for the day, if only to stave off boredom, you’re each informed that a shuttle to Prison Station Echo is scheduled to depart at 0600 hrs the next morning. Each of you is provided one additional sleep-pod voucher, for this evening, but notably no further synth-cal vouchers… Miss your shuttle to Prison Station Echo tomorrow and not only is your employment opportunity likely rescinded, but you’ll be on the hook to provide for your own food and lodging on Carnath; an inadvisable situation to be in concerning the costs of food and lodging on this backwater planet.

The morning starts early with the five of you boarding the only transport shuttle that travels to and from Prison Station Echo. Each of you are glad to finally make your way off-planet, even if only for a change of equally drab scenery. While the bus arrived nearly on time (only a delay of about twenty minutes), the transport staff refused to let the new passengers board for more than an hour, and as patience began to run thin, the reason for the holdup suddenly became apparent as four burly guards, armed with stun batons and pulse rifles escort nearly a dozen new inmates aboard the shuttle first. From outside the transport as you wait for your turns to board, you hear the guards barking gruff orders at the inmates and the shuffling around of bodies, before finally exiting the ship and giving the five of you disdainful looks as they pass by, likely returning to some sort of temporary prisoner holding facility the next wave of inmates is collected on order of the Carnath judicial system.
After the guards leave, the shuttle pilots, in hardly any better disposition than the guards, orders you to board the shuttle, single file. The shuttle interior is little more than a standard bus, and normally would have contained enough seats to seat eighteen passengers, but the seventh and eighth seats from the back have been pulled out and replaced with a cage of heavy-duty steel mesh, acting as a cage around the last six seats. In this cage are nine inmates in orange coveralls, the largest or most dangerous-looking of them sitting in the seats, while three others stand or sit on the floor, worried looks on their faces at the realization that if they’re already ill-equipped to even fight for a seat on the shuttle to the prison, the likelihood they be constantly taken advantage of during the extent of their sentence is all but assured.

After boarding the shuttle and locking themselves into the cockpit, the two pilots inform the passengers that the shuttle takes thirty-six standard hours to reach their destination of Prison Station Echo. There will be synth-cal biscuits and hydration packets provided three times per standard day, and there’s a small waste evacuation pod directly behind the co-pilot’s seat for those that are recent new hires to use as needed. Inmates are to remain inside the cage at all times, and will be the last to be unloaded upon arrival. Nobody addresses what happens if an inmate needs to use the waste evacuation pod in the next thirty-six hours.

The other passengers seem preoccupied in their own thoughts as Dr. Mullins tries to focus on his book. Despite his best efforts, he struggles to keep focused on his reading. Something seems to gnaw at the back of his mind, and for a moment he can’t seem to shake it. After restarting the same paragraph for the third or fourth time, he can’t help but look behind him, taking a second glance back at the inmates secured within the steel mesh structure.
He’s startled to find the brutish one staring directly at the doctor now, a hungry, predatory, intense and unsettling look in the man’s eyes. He’s an intimidating large fellow, strong-looking but not necessarily "well built" in the traditional sense of muscularity. Rather, he carries the body shape of a rather sturdy tree trunk, standing around six and a half feet tall, and by James’s estimate, probably would tip a scale to well over the three hundred pound mark.
As the large brute glares terribly at the good doctor, a second inmate, one that was forced to take a seat on the floor, sits akimbo-style only a few inches from the brute’s feet. He’s small and wiry, with full of long hair that looks like it hasn’t seen a brush or comb, or even a washing in quite some time, and as Dr. Mullins manages to tear his eyes from the brutish man’s unsettling gaze, James notices the smaller one intently staring at a spot of absolutely nothing at all of interest on the bulkhead in front of him, his left hand obscured by a steel crossbeam near the floor which the mesh is welded to, his seeming wrist rotating back and forth and if his fingers are worrying at something near the base of one of the floor-to-ceiling struts the cage is affixed to. The brute glares at the doctor, almost as if giving Mullins some sort of unspoken challenge.