The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) Read Free

considered it an honor to be stationed at the most infamous prison in the galaxy, the lowly guards did not share that sentiment. Instead, they considered their posting on Terror-Dhome to be punishment for something they had done, which it often was.

4

    Death was everywhere.
    Only a short distance away from Vere, bubbles of lava popped and splattered the ground. Not far from where she worked, a Gthothch had been assigned the task of moving boulders from one part of the prison grounds to a different area. Hour after hour the prisoner had bent over, lifted one giant stone after another up to his shoulder, and then lumbered across the rocky surface of the prison yard.
    If the Gthothch stopped moving and stayed perfectly still, his thick stone skin would actually have blended in perfectly with the rocky surface of the prison grounds. Of course, the guards ensured he never had the chance to rest. If the Gthothch did stop to gather his strength, the closest prison guard lashed him across the back with his vibro whip. The electric current that traveled through the whip brought every prisoner to their knees. On almost all prisoners, it took only one strike of the whip for them to know they never wanted to feel that searing pain a second time.
    Only a week earlier, a heavy-set alien with swamp green skin had been whipped once a minute for half an hour. The alien, who had killed people in seven different sectors before being sent to the Cauldrons, was begging and crying to be left alone. Given the choice of jumping into the lava and dying or receiving another lash every minute for yet another half an hour, the murderer jumped into the lava. None of the other inmates had ever learned what the alien had done to earn the guard’s wrath. Most times, the guards were just as miserable as the inmates and didn’t want to be there either. But because they held weapons, they had an outlet for their resentment and irritation.
    The Gthothch, like the other prisoners around him, did whatever he thought he could do to avoid a second lashing. Hour after hour, he had carried boulders across the prison yard. Eventually, though, his body simply gave out. In the middle of hauling another stone across the grounds, the thick alien with rock-like skin closed his eyes, groaned, then fell forward on top of the very stone he had been trying to carry. He had been so afraid of receiving another lash from the vibro whip that he had worked until he died.
    A group of four guards walked over to the Gthothch. Instead of striking him, though, each guard grabbed hold of one of the alien’s limbs and dragged him to the edge of the lava sea. There, one of the guards put a boot against the Gthothch’s hips and pushed forward as hard as he could. The stony alien toppled off the side and sank into the lava without the guards wasting time to see if he had actually been dead or just too exhausted to keep working that day.
    On the far side of the prison grounds, obscured by a haze of hot vapors wafting up from the ground, a short alien with six legs screamed for someone to kill him. Instead, he was kept tied to a giant rock while another guard lashed him over and over again with his whip. Each strike opened a gash on the alien’s skin. At the same time, each lashing sent waves of electrical charges bursting through the little creature’s body. The charges were painful everywhere, but especially deep in the bones and muscles of the area that the whip had opened up.
    After each lashing, the guard waited a few moments until the hysterical alien had his senses about him once more. There was no point in delivering the blows too quickly. The alien would just go into shock or die, and the guard would be sweating and wasting energy in the hot lava fields for nothing. The guard only concluded the punishment when the alien ceased his cries, because it was at that point that the prisoner had ceased to have value at the Cauldrons. The guard ordered two other prisoners to drag the