EXILE

Sergeant Michaels led the men out into the hallway, where a set of unlocked double swinging doors was all that separated them from the armoured transit coach that was waiting outside. There was no rear entry to the coach. The single door was the driver’s door - open, the driver’s seat slid aside into the coach, allowing the convicts to file into the rear passenger space. Stein was the last man in, and as he sat on the bare metal bench, Michaels slid the chair back into place, pulling an armoured partition with it. The only way that they could now leave the coach was through that door, which could only be opened from the outside.

There were no windows, only a spinning ventilation disc in the roof that let through a small, shaded amount of light in an almost strobe-scopic fashion. Still in the CSA basement, the low-wattage lighting outside left those inside in near total darkness, heightening their other senses. They felt the suspension of the coach give slightly as Michaels heaved his bulky form into the cab, slamming his door firmly. Because of the mass of the coach, it was not powered by an electric motor as most vehicles now were, but by a modified form of diesel engine that was fuelled by compressed methane from the civil sewage treatment works. As the engine roared into life, the roof spinner pulled into the cab part of the cloud of watery carbon dioxide and unburnt methane, rich in a variety of additives. Through the partition and their coughs, the men could hear Michaels chuckling to himself, fully aware of what they were experiencing behind him.

The coach lurched forwards, and then settled into a smooth run. Stein felt the sways against and back from the cab wall behind him as the coach turned the corners and headed up the carpark ramps, out of the building that had been their home for longer than any of them cared for. Soon, the dull orange light was replaced by the bright white of the sun, and the coach levelled out, having reached the top of the last exit ramp. No-one spoke during the journey. Rocking and bumping in the gloom, occasional rays of light would flash onto one of their faces, lighting it up for the others to see. Sometimes, they would hear and feel the coach slowing down, only to pick up speed again. At no time did Michaels actually stop the coach, not for the duration of the trip. To begin with, they had tried to work out whereabouts they were from the corners that they turned, and how long they travelled before the next corner. The trouble was, except for Stein no-one knew exactly how to get to the spaceport, as many roads had been moved, installed or just removed during the port’s construction. The reasons for such extensive remodelling of the district were several, but principally it was to create a secure perimeter zone with limited access ways to the port. Added to this was the desire to have no residential areas near the installation.

The trip lasted a little over thirty-five minutes. Michaels had sometimes made it in less time, but, as always, he was at the mercy of the cross town traffic. Years of experience had taught him the fastest routes and where traffic was at its most intense for any general period of the day, but even then sometimes he was wrong. Looking ahead, Michaels saw the twin domes of the spaceport radar unit long before he saw the port itself. The road that he was now driving down was the new, six-lane highway that arrowed directly from the last factory complex towards the lake and the port. Looking to the sides, he saw with mild relief that the overhead light poles were still standing.

The highway, all six kilometres of it, served as an emergency runway. The shuttles typically landed vertically, using the last of their chemical jets to lower themselves into the mag-lev field that cushioned and guided their final approach. Should the re-entry cycle damage the shuttle’s vertical control, or if the mag-lev failed, the shuttle would use the highway to land on, with the lake to guide the final approach. If a shuttle needed to make such a landing, explosive charges at the base of each pole would detonate, causing the pre-weighted poles to fall away from the highway. If there was enough time, the highway would be closed to all traffic coming on - if not, too bad. In any tangles between ground traffic and the shuttles, the traffic never won. Michaels had seen it happen once at the old Swiss facility - messy, very messy indeed. And he intended to hang around long enough to draw the promised military pension. Even he needed to have something to look forward to. Job satisfaction didn’t always promise life satisfaction.

As he cruised towards the seemingly vast facility, Michaels radioed ahead to the gate guardhouse, to confirm his arrival. He didn’t talk for long - the duty officer was that silly woman Loretta. He had tried being nice to her once, despite his feelings about women doing what was rightfully a man’s job. It hadn’t worked - quite the opposite. She had only started spitting abuse about macho dickheads and crap like that. He had not had time for the woman after that. He had better things to do with his time. Like deporting society’s filth. Much more satisfying, really.

Presently his journey reached its end when he pulled up at the gatehouse at the main entrance. He didn’t even bother talking, just looked out through the window, so that she could get a good look at his face. Stonefaced herself, she waved him on, and signalled ahead to payloads that the CSA consignment had arrived. Michaels pulled out of the gate, turning to the left, away from the restricted corridor that was available to the public. Driving through the complex, he passed several groups of workmen who were still working on some parts of the port facilities. Enough of the port had been completed to ensure that it could operate continuously at its intended capacity - the finishing touches and details would take another few weeks to finish properly.

He trundled slowly through the complex, on the whole a collection of buildings that looked like oversized barns, the payload preparation units and maintenance hangers for the Union fleet of shuttle craft. The spaceport occupied approximately ten square kilometres of reclaimed lake-front. Distributed throughout the area were squat hexagonal buildings, the network of electromagnetic generators that created the mag-lev field that repelled the magnetic fields generated on board each descending shuttle. The site network was controlled in shape and local intensity by the central navigation command system. As each shuttle descended, they would enter the uniform field surface, which would then be distorted to create a well of lower intensity, enveloping the shuttle and gently guiding it down to a clear spot in the centre of the mag-lev network. Once landed, the shuttle’s field, of reverse polarity to the network, would be deactivated.

The fleet was much larger than it had been decades earlier. With the development of the mag-lev system and the space platforms, the shuttle concept was given a total workover from the original models. Most of the new shuttles were over twice the size of the first shuttles, and owed more in shape to the fanciful flying saucers of the twentieth century than to their own history. There were thirty shuttles in all, allowing for several to be available at any time for operational missions, the others in the base hangers for routine maintenance between flights. Michaels could see a few of the large discs as he drove, some in different states of disassembly, others being prepared for upcoming missions. Ahead of him, in the centre of the broad concrete expanse, he saw his next ride. Gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight, or what was left of it filtered through the ever-present yellowy-brown haze, was shuttle GU-17, commonly known as the Mudbucket. A scurry of small service vehicles surrounded the shuttle, which was already mounted on the detachable rocket engines and the mag-lev catapult sled, facing out over the lake, on the inclined launch ramp.

He drove across the concrete, veering around towards the space administration customs and payload centre. There was no real reason for them to go anywhere except direct to the waiting shuttle. Still, papers had to be shuffled, forms had to be rubber-stamped, and after the last several hours, his cargo, like all others, probably needed a toilet stop. He knew that he sure did, anyway. Besides, it was spacer policy to have no full bladders on board. The lift-off sequence often loosened those of the new boys, typically convicts on their first and only flight, and having numerous wavering globules of urine floating around the cabin space was one of the least savoury experiences that could be expected. Michaels guided the coach into a secure bay that was reserved for convict transport. Behind him rolling steel doors closed the parking bay. Michaels turned off the diesel engine, and sat in the silence briefly, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the yellow lights inside from the harsh sunlight outside. He could hear some slight shuffling from the cab behind him. Typical. The first and only stop in the journey, with the engine off, the cons in the rear always picked up the same signals and apprehension, and started to shift nervously in anticipation of what lay ahead. Sighing, Michaels opened the door and slid out of the cab onto the bare concrete floor. Waiting for him was a shuttle crewman, a paramedic that he knew only as Mel. With Mel was an unknown clerk form the base administration. The clerk had on his clipboard a transcript of the CSA convict deportment party, and was responsible for making sure that the identities of each person in the group were correct. It had always been a concern of the Space Unit Security Division that somewhere between the CSA building and the spaceport, the group could be substituted by terrorists intent on seizing control of, or even destroying, an orbital platform. Although it was extremely unlikely, it was considered to be possible.

The garage space was totally isolated from any other administrative or maintenance unit on the base. The only way out was through the sliding door. Michaels nodded at the clerk, and spoke to Mel.

“Yo, Mel!”

“Sarge,” Mel replied,

“Gonna be a good day for a lift-off.”

“Should be.” Michaels and Mel knew each other from the last mission that the sergeant had escorted. Mel had transferred in from permanent orbital duty, where he had been based on one of the platforms to monitor and supervise the health of the construction crews as they worked on a new platform, and assembling new permanent-space shuttle craft. He had volunteered for the permanent-orbital post for the cash, so that he could sooner pay off the mortgage on a modest farmlet south of Joliet. Now freehold, he and his fiance’ set a date for their wedding, and Mel had opted for the shuttle rota. This flight was to be his third, and he had squeezed in a mission rotating scientific staff to and from the solar observatory, Platform GUP-5. He was civil to Michaels, as he had to be. It never paid to be on the wrong side of any spacer staff, as you often had to spend a lot of time in each other’s company. He had quickly spotted Michaels for what he was, and he wasn’t too bothered. So long as you kept any conversation on a simple, facile level, remained non-committal but always agreed in principal, you would get along just fine.

“Another set of cons, then.”

“Yup. More filth from CSA,” Michaels replied, and then, half-jokingly, “Gotta help make the world a cleaner place.” He chuckled to himself.

“Okay, well, let’s see them. We’re boarding in two hours.”

Michaels grinned, and turned back to the cab, where he slid his seat aside, exposing the warm interior and its occupants to the chill, late afternoon air in the steel and concrete barn-space.

“All right, NOW!” he bellowed. If any of them had been asleep, they sure weren’t now. Blinking hard as they emerged from the dark, steel coach, the men climbed, doubled over, out of the vehicle, and lined up on the concrete floor. “Okay, all of you turn around. Identification check.”

As one, they turned to face the side of the coach, their chains rattling on the cold concrete. All was grey, except for the vivid orange of the convicts’ standard-issue prison overalls, and the gold-braid stripes on Michaels’ upper arms. Mel and the clerk were both wearing Space Unit launch fatigues, coloured a stylishly bland shade of pale grey. The same grey, as it happened, as the concrete, the walls, and the coach, but lighter than the convicts’ apparent future.

The clerk came over, clipboard in one hand and a hand-held scanner in his other. Working his way along the line-up, he held the scanner over the back of each man’s thighs, noting the scanner’s output against his CSA schedule as the information on each embedded chip was read by the scanner’s impulse unit. With confirmation of Stein’s i.d., he ticked the last box and signed the bottom of the sheet, before passing it to Michaels. The oversized woodentop looked at the schedule briefly, before countersigning, thereby accepting the responsibility for delivering the convicts to the orbital remand in good condition, shuttle forgiving. Turning to his group, he gestured towards a screened area of the garage.

“The latrine is over there. It is essential that you are all relieved before the launch. You may suffer otherwise, when we are launched. A ten-G push on the bladder and bowels is not pleasant. Move it!”

Sighing, not at their prospects but at having to put up with such an odious, egocentric bully, the men filed off across the garage to the screened latrine. Despite its makeshift appearance, it was a permanent, plumbed fixture that was in the design from the start. It was just that all expense had been spared. Entering the roofless partition, they found a row of toilet basins set into a common concrete block. No privacy except for the rear screen. It was then that they found that their handcuff chains were long enough to not require their freedom for certain operations.

Because they were still chained to each other, they all had to wait until the last man had closed up the velcro seam in the crutch of his overalls. Done, they left the latrine and headed back over to where Michaels was waiting with the paramedic and clerk. They left the latrine of their own accord, having the sense to know that staying longer than necessary would be considered suspicious. Reaching the coach, they stopped. Michaels faced them.

“I am required by Space Unit regulations to inform you of what is to happen. From here you will be taken by base transport to the waiting shuttle. Accompanying you will be myself, and the paramedic. Do not think that he is there solely for your benefit - the wellbeing of every person on board is his responsibility. The launch is scheduled for a little over two hours from now. The shuttle will take you directly to the orbital remand platform, where you will be held until suitable places become available in the lunar quadrants. During the flight you will remain restrained in your harnesses, until we have reached the platform. Until then, stay where you are. You can sit if you want to.”

That said, the sergeant, Mel and the clerk retreated to a small table and meal machine a few metres away. The clerk ate a biscuit while completing his paperwork, and then left to continue his payload inspections, leaving Michaels and Mel. The two men sat down at the table, putting the kettle on as they did so. Michaels dialled up a highly calorific meal from the dispenser, all more food to fuel his bulky frame. Mel contented himself with a salad sandwich that he had brought with him. He always ate sandwiches before flights, as it was practically impossible to keep them together in zero gravity. On the table was a small video player unit, and to pass the time the two men watched an old movie from the Space Unit staff entertainment archive. The Space Unit was the only Global Union division to have such an archive, mainly because it was necessary to provide some diversion for off and on duty staff during space travel, as the journey’s were often days long and in a tediously automated environment.

While Michaels and Mel watched the video, the four convicts sat down in a loose circle on the cold concrete floor, roughly half-way between the coach and the table by the wall. No-one spoke for the next hour or so. Hulce and Newman stretched out, dozing lightly. Stein sat straight up, and meditated. Morecamb just remained awake, straining to hear and see the video a few metres away. The time passed more quickly than anyone would have given credit for, considering that they were all waiting for the passenger van to arrive to take them all to the shuttle. For the convicts, these last few hours were the last that any of them were to spend on the planet, and they were all acutely aware of their impending exile. When the van did arrive, it was with no little relief, principally as it was a tangible confirmation of the promised departure, and served to relieve tension as much as it created it.

The silence was broken by the garage doors opening, the automatic opener triggered by the approaching van. Immediately, four heads turned to the widening opening. Barely had the doors stopped moving than the passenger van entered, pulling to a halt alongside the coach. The driver, a ruddy-cheeked man with short, red hair climbed out of the cab. Seeing Michaels, he smiled and called out “Yo, Jordan! Time to go!”

Michaels smiled as he recognised Jim Crocus, whom he had known since they had been eighteen-year-old recruits to the Union Space Cadet Corps. “Hey, Jim, good to see you. How long have you been on this detail?”

“Since the port opened. I slipped a disc last year, writing me out of the maintenance shop. Had the choice of medical discharge, or soft duties.”

“Yeah, well, this is my latest lot for the moon.”

“Good. You’d better get them loaded, then. There’s a rush on this flight.”

“Why? Platform run out of videos to watch?”

“Nah. Space Unit is under pressure to increase the turn-around on flights, now that the port is settling into some routine.”

“Yeah, right.” Michaels turned to the sitting convicts. “You heard the man. On your feet - NOW!” He bellowed the last, for an unnecessary effect. As the chain-gang stood up, not without some stiffness, Crocus retreated to the rear of the van, where he opened the back doors and pulled down a retractable step. Wearily, the convicts walked past Michaels to the van and climbed inside, sitting down on the bare steel bench. Michaels and Mel climbed in after them, Crocus closing the door when all four were seated.

In contrast to their last vehicle, this one was almost comfortable, and had windows along the side and in the wall that separated them from the driver’s cab. Through the toughened plexiglass they all had a clear view of what lay ahead. As they left the garage, all eyes turned to the front, and as they approached it all attention lay upon the waiting shuttle. Huge and spread out like a gigantic, elliptical frisbee that was aligned over the lake, the shuttle sat upon the detachable ramjet that would do much of the heavy work escaping from the atmosphere, before separating from the shuttle to glide back to Earth.

The whole craft was resting on a highly magnetic launch trolley. Ranging down the launch-way were the electrical units that housed the sequence of capacitors that would power the mag-lev launch unit. A few service vehicles remained around the shuttle, the staff around them performing last-minute engineering checks, and overseeing the last of the fuelling for the ramjet unit. As they got nearer, they were able to recognise the unit clerk at the ground-level entrance corridor with a security guard, checking the passenger and crew lists. All hard cargo had been stowed and secured, and the convict party were the last to board. The flight crew were already in the shuttle, completing their preflight schedules.

Crocus pulled up at the end of the roped corridor that led up a ramp to the ramjet unit. Getting out, he walked around to the rear of the coach and opened the door.

“All out, people. This is the end of the line.” Michaels lazily rolled out, grabbing the edge of the door as he did so. He pivoted around, and stood facing the convicts.

“Hop to it - out!” Not wanting a second invitation, Stein led the men out of the van, pausing when they were all out. “You know the clerk. Walk up the ramp to him.” As Stein set off, Michaels held back until Hulce, chained next to Stein, started, and then walked next to Hulce. The row of men walked up the ramp to where the clerk was waiting. Out of the sunlight, they could see a couple of uniformed crew waiting just inside the door. As the group entered, the clerk signed the bottom of his manifest, and called the bridge on his radio. Having confirmed that all cargo and passengers were on board, he stood back and watched as the crew inside closed the door, ensuring that the outside seal was complete. Satisfied, he walked down the ramp, signalling to some ground crew. He walked across to the van, and climbed in next to Crocus, who then turned and drove back to the main administration building, watching, as they left, the groundcrew pulling the ramp away and clearing the area of all other vehicles and people.

The group of four men entered the hatchway, leaving the last natural air of their lives behind them. Inside, they found themselves in a narrow passageway that led to the centre of the ramjet unit, and then up through a vertical hatch into the shuttle itself. Branching off from the corridor was the entrance to the cockpit of the ramjet, where the pilot was already starting the pre-ignition sequence. The ramjet pilot would monitor and control the fierce burn that would propel the craft into space, and when it had separated from the shuttle, he would pilot the dead ramjet, as it glided back to a landing at one of the old desert air force bases, much as the first generation of shuttles had been glided back to Earth.

Michaels was the last man through into the shuttle proper. Waiting to the side of the hatch was a crew member who Michaels recognised as a cadet from the green lapel stripes on his overalls. As Michaels stood up in the cabin space, the cadet closed the hatch, sealing it and locking it with a secure-key. Only a direct entry by the captain’s entry unit could now unlock it. Mel was already leading the convicts down the narrow corridor to the secure passenger cabin, behind the main cargo hold. The convicts were considered to be dangerous at all times, so they were separated as effectively as possible from the general passenger cabin, which had direct access to the shuttle cockpit. Both Mel and the Sergeant entered the secure cabin with the convicts. They did not mind too much, as their return journeys, always without prisoners, were always in the first-class lounge up front.

The cabin was a steel and plastic box, windowless, with only one entry. The men sat in form-fitting couches, all with minimum padding. Each couch had a cross-over belt of nylon canvass webbing to restrain body movement, not so much during the hard acceleration as for when gravity would be absent. The walls and ceiling were of moulded plastic panels, each housing emergency respirator gear that was supplied by tanks. A direct descendant of the old airliner systems, it had been developed for space, and depended upon the cabin door seal working against the pressure difference.

The convicts sat down in four of these couches along one side, and strapped themselves in. Mel moved along the row, methodically checking the harnesses. Satisfied, he sat down in the last seat, between the convicts and Michaels. He strapped himself in swiftly, with none of the awkward clumsiness of the convicts, all of whom were making their first, and last, flight into orbit. Michaels had closed the door, activating the pressure-drop door seal as he did so. At the slightest drop in outside pressure the door would lock tight, sealing the cabin from the possibly absent air outside, only unlocking when the air pressure had equalised on both sides of the hatch. All secure, the cabin’s occupants waited in silence for the launch. On the wall opposite was a small display panel, more for Mel’s benefit than for anyone else’s. On it was summarised information about the status of different parts of the craft, so that in an emergency he would be better able to cope with any casualties.

In the centre of the panel, in large characters, was the shuttle chronometer, measuring off in vivid red light the duration of the voyage. The display was no longer giving hours - their time left on Earth was now being measured in minutes. With no-one speaking, Stein became acutely aware of other, less-noticed sounds. His short meditation earlier that day had, as usual, heightened his senses. Turning his head slightly, he saw Michaels, apparently dozing, but Stein knew better. It was just the tedium of the routine. Next was Mel, who was studying the screen and its information. His three peers were obviously nervous. Hulce was sweating slightly, and although Newman would later be loath to admit it, he was gripping the couch armrests hard enough to have bruised his fingertips. Morecamb was relaxed, almost as if he had made the trip many times before. Although he was supposed to have remained Earthbound for all of his life, Stein suspected that this was definitely not his first trip. The ease with which he had strapped himself in, for example, and the nonchalance as he entered the shuttle, despite the apparent life sentence. Certain things didn’t feel right, just didn’t gel. Time will tell, Stein told himself. And I’ll be ready.

Stein looked ahead to the display. Time minus six minutes, and counting. A voice from nowhere, the First Officer on intercom. “Would all passengers and crew who are not secured for launch do so now.” Three minutes. Again, “Last call. Launch in three minutes, and counting.” Two minutes. A series of red lights on the display blink green. No red left, all clear for launch. Cut to relay from Spaceport Control ... “One minute to launch ...thirty seconds ... twenty ...” Blend into the second countdown, as time honoured a tradition as wiping your bum after a dump ... “Zero.”

And the world kicked Stein full-on in the chest, winding him, watering his eyes, stretching his face.