Star Kitten Read Free Page A

Scientists believed the water on Rijel
12 could eventually be made potable for prisoners to drink.
Earthmen devised an elaborate filtration system that extracted the
water into great reservoirs then filtered it into drinking water at
literally hundreds of water stations throughout the mining
network.
    Technically it was perfectly fine to drink;
but not surprisingly the Human engineers designed a system that
needed to be maintained at a rather hefty cost—a cost that later
less ethical prison operations managers didn’t exactly prefer to
continue paying. The systems deteriorated over time and needed
repair. Mine Operators looked the other way, and gradually
prisoners suffered from consuming bad drinking water. Yet they had
no choice….
    Besides, these prison operations managers -
they were making money for their superiors. Profitability was being
reviewed constantly, and no one wanted to speak out about the
deteriorating conditions for prisoners. Better water could be
imported for the guards and managers, after all. So why worry about
the hapless prisoners being slowly poisoned below. More prisoners
arrived all the time, to replace the ill and dying. It just didn’t
really matter that much to the cynical, profit-driven mining
operators.
    In only a few earth years, a prison complex
was constructed a mile below the treacherous planet surface, and
then… it was expanded over the decades to where it housed thousands
of prisoners in barracks in the caverns further below. Earth ships
arrived regularly; and construction workers (in the early years)
worked feverishly to construct more barracks below ground.
    New barracks were built by construction
workers to house the ever-expanding prison labor supply. When a new
cavern was opened up, these laborers would build a prefabricated
barracks and live in it while they built the infrastructure around
it. The air system would be connected to new parts of the mine, and
new water filtration systems would be installed then tapped into
the underground aquifers. When each new section was all complete,
the construction workers would leave; and then the barracks they
lived in would be occupied by new prisoners sent there to work the
newly opened section of the mine.
    However, these barracks would soon become
overcrowded as more and more prisoners would be sent to work there;
and over the years they became dilapidated or even collapsed from
lack of materials to repair them. As the decades passed, the
prisoners eventually resorted to just carving out homes inside
caves. Worse than that, maintenance which would have been necessary
on the air and water filtration systems within a few years would
never get scheduled. The mining operators just didn’t care and
workers suffered year after year because of the neglect.
    Additional mineral deposits were discovered.
Veins of gemstones were found, too! It just seemed the
opportunities for wealth being extracted from Rijel 12 were
boundless; and this only served to fuel the machine even more. Mine
expansion required additional labor; and every planet was soon
being urged to keep sending more convicts. It simply became all too
easy for abuses to occur within such a system as this. New
prisoners being brought in meant even more barracks and even more
supplies. Expanding the mines required more equipment, which led to
more expenses and even more aggressive production goals. This would
have been the case for any rapidly growing labor-intensive
industry, yes. But in the case of New Australia Planetary Prison,
the difference was that labor was essentially free.
    What’s more; this free labor was quite
plentiful. Not surprisingly, things eventually just got overlooked,
neglected, and downright ignored. Old barracks didn’t get repaired
or maintained and eventually collapsed. Water filtration systems
needed maintenance that never happened. The air system ducts needed
servicing which never occurred.
    Greed replaced compassion or even any
semblance of justice; and