EXILE

Moshe came off his shift, same time as usual. The work had been hard over the last several days, the more so with his reduced crew. Having lost some to orbital confinement, read end of useful life, and another to suicide, the two borrowed men only brought the team up to twenty one, still short of the full twenty four. The two temporary men didn’t fit in well, and had no intention of trying to, as they knew that with the next shuttle load they would return to their own work mates in Henry’s crew. And with the pressure on to complete the main space shaft for the quadrant, they were typically exhausted at the end of a shift.

A few days before, two of the women had come over to assess the space for the upper, photic level of the hab-space system. Both bio-engineers, Moshe recognised one as having been over a few times in the past to help with maintenance of the male base’s hab-cycle. The other woman, he had never seen before, but that the base had two biogeers over pointed out how major this new, first public-works project was. The first self-contained, independent system to be established since the base was originally commissioned, the quality had to be ensured, as it was for a paying, civilian population that was not as expendable as the lives of Earth’s worst criminals. Work had almost finished on the upper space, and the tunnel-driver was being assembled to drive the circuit loop down into the lunar basalt, for the crew to begin excavating the next level down.

Moshe sat on the bench in the transition area, securing his grip-boots onto his freshly-scrubbed feet. He had had a busy shift, taking his fair share of the heavy work as well as directing the labour, liaising between the survey team, the design team and the crew. Not that there were any real distinctions in workloads, as everyone was capable of operating the machines and helping out where needed. He had spent the last several hours concentrating hard, tracking each man on his crew and what they were doing, and working hard himself. Most major muscle groups had had a good workout, and were screaming for rest. Which was why Moshe let out a groan of mixed emotions when he raised his head to see who owned the boots that parked themselves in front of his lowered face. Standard issue military spacer boots, they covered the feet of a person that Moshe knew well - Captain Lonny Dinsdale, the colony Human Logistics Officer.

“Captain Dinsdale. Hello.” Moshe wearily stood up, to attention.

“Convict Arons. Just the man.” He smiled. Barely. Just a flicker of the corners of his mouth. Moshe always felt as if he was looking at a crocodile. But then again, the last crocs had died out when he was a lad, and he had only memories of old video footage made by a posh-sounding Englishman with white hair late last century. Moshe looked him in the eye, refusing to be intimidated.

“The shuttle is due to arrive in thirty minutes. Some of the convicts are being assigned to your shift, the others to Convict Rawlinson’s crew. Come with me now.”

Dinsdale stepped aside, to let Moshe step forward. Behind the Captain was a squad soldier, referred to as a squaddie in time-honoured British tradition. As Moshe stepped forward, the squaddie stepped in behind, his peebee held up and across his chest. Dinsdale followed, his lean legs loping along casually beneath his steadily expanding paunch.

As the three men left the space towards the shuttle terminal, Moshe’s crew continued to dress for their rest-shift, somewhat heartened by Dinsdale’s appearance. The Captain was responsible for all work rosters and shift rotations, and for creating teams of workers who were suitably skilled for the work, and who would fit in to the company that they were to keep. Although the convicts were free labour, with no wages, the costs involved in transporting them and maintaining the bases were reason enough for the Corrections Unit of the Global Union to take an interest in the personality mixes, for it was ultimately more cost-effective to have a stable, balanced and co-operative work force, as opposed to a fractious group with a high personnel turn-over rate. A skilled team lowered base maintenance costs and increased the productivity, so the privileges and liberties allowed to the convicts and their lifestyle would appear to be unacceptably lax in comparison to older-style Earth prisons.

When they arrived at the shuttle terminal, Moshe saw that there was a second, smaller carriage parked on the siding next to the convicts’ main train. It was to this second carriage that they moved, taking their seats on the central pad. The guard who had accompanied Moshe and Dinsdale took the driver’s seat, and started the electric mag-lev repulse unit as soon as the Captain was seated in the rear. Squeezing the throttle lever on the motorcycle-style handlebar, the guard had the shuttle moving forward rapidly, faster than the base quadrant shuttles normally travelled. Moshe found himself leaning backwards as the shuttle swiftly accelerated to its maximum cruising speed, not used to the higher velocity. As they rushed through the tunnel, Moshe could feel the compression of the air ahead as they rammed forward like a perforated engine piston. After the first few seconds, he found that he could no longer look ahead comfortably, as the air pressure was causing his eyes to water. Instead, Moshe watched the wall of the tunnel flash by in a blur of alternating grey lunacrete and orange pilot lights.

Barely minutes after leaving the excavation, the shuttle arrived at the main ring junction, and joined the central line, following it without any reduction in speed for a couple of kilometres around the base perimeter before leaving the line for a major branch. Having curved away from the ring line, the shuttle followed a straight line as it arrowed its way to the lunar shuttle port and customs area. As the base had developed and grown to accommodate the expanding prison population, the original shuttle landing area had been reclassified as an emergency landing area only, and the new landing base was developed two kilometres away from the base towards the centre of the lunar plain known as Tranquility. Moshe knew the tunnel and new base intimately, as it had been his first major project when he had arrived several years before. Now, he rarely made the trip, as his crew was one of the most stable teams in the base, needing, on average, only two new men each year. The recent events surrounding Winters’ rape and suicide had blown his record low turnover. But hey, shit happens.

Travelling down the tunnel, Moshe was soon assailed by a rush of memories, harking back to when he was learning his trade as a younger man. He recognised marks in the lunacrete landing, certain line junction points and distance markers, recalling the people that he had worked with, shoulder to shoulder, and often watched die, unable to assist, helpless. Rock falls, depressurisations, badly maintained equipment wresting themselves free of control to turn on the men operating them. With the end of the line in sight, Moshe fancied that he could hear the voices of those men again, calling to him across time and death, asking him, warning him - he could almost hear the words, but could not understand. All over, the voices hushed suddenly as the shuttle finally slowed down to a stop on a siding near the customs hall.

Getting off from the shuttle carriage, Moshe followed the squaddie away from the platform by the siding, heading further into the small hall. There, waiting for them, was Henry Rawlinson, and Albert La Porte, a stocky, balding Frenchman who was the longest surviving member of the second mining crew. He was a regular feature at the shuttle arrivals, as the mining crews had the highest fatality rate. Moshe had half expected to see Henry, as his crew had since lost a man to the infirmary with dermatitis and an equilibrium disorder. It was likely that the worker would be out of commission for some time, and then only to be reassigned to the kitchen and ablutions areas, light work away from any real physical danger. Moshe took his place with the other convicts, each man nodding in acknowledgment, too cool to actually speak to each other. Two squaddies stood by, at ease, while Captain Dinsdale crossed to a small pedestal of rock that acted as a rostrum. Carved out of solid lunar basalt, it had on it a black clipboard. Dinsdale took the clipboard, and flicked through the few pages on it, each of which summarised the background of each of the convicts who were about to arrive at the base. He was already familiar with the details, and had already assigned each man to an appropriate crew.

After they had waited for about twenty minutes, Dinsdale answered the intercom that was set in the wall next to the elevator doors. Moshe strained his ears, and could barely hear the voice telling Dinsdale that the shuttle had landed, and would be unloading just as soon as the craft was secure. Dinsdale turned to the guards, and told them that he was heading up to supervise the convicts. Touching a wall button, the elevator doors slid open to reveal an industrial-quality interior that could hold up to twelve people in comfort. Stepping inside, the doors slid shut and the lift swept Dinsdale up to the surface level hall, made of blocks of rubble from the internal excavations, held together by lunacrete, lined and fitted as any other hab-space. Already in the hall were the two squaddies who handled shuttles and who were responsible for managing, maintaining and operating the docking facility. Tony Fogarty turned from his console, saw Dinsdale, and flicked off a quick salute before returning to his work, monitoring the progress that Carl Slight was making with the docking hardware.

“Afternoon, Sergeant. How’s progress?”

“Good, Sir. Carl’s secured the oxygen lines, and I’ve just started to pump the clear stuff into our tanks for the enviro-system. He’s just extending the docking port, and ...” Tony turned back to his console, studying the displayed information, “...Yup, it’s secure. The shuttle pay-com is opening the air-lock sequence.”

“Good.” Dinsdale folded his arms. “So, we have, what, five minutes before they come through.”

“All going well.” Carl entered the tunnel, Tony closely monitoring the pressure differences in the air-lock system. After a few minutes, Carl came out of the tunnel. Faint voices could be heard echoing from down the tunnel. The two guards stepped forward, taking their places at either side of the tunnel entrance. One by one, the convicts entered the hall, and were guided to a marked line on the floor, where they stood in a row, waiting for the last to come out.

Dinsdale studied each man as he came out of the air-lock, matching the faces with the photos that had been printed at the top of each convict profile sheet. Harrison, Flinders, Anderson, Stein, Newman, Hulce, Russell. A full complement, the convicts as promised, no last-minute swaps. He hated swaps. Sometimes a convict’s travel pass would be cancelled at the last moment before boarding, sometimes for health reasons, usually political. Hell, if someone was too ill to travel it should be picked up well before they needed to board. Last-minute cancellations shouldn’t be necessary, shouldn’t happen, and bugged the hell out of Dinsdale. How could he do his job properly, if the convicts that appeared out of that door were not the ones whose profiles he had been sent? Not to mind, though. This crew was just as promised, which was just as well, as these men just happened to have the skills that he wanted to fill the quadrant crews. Coincidences like this were less frequent than Dinsdale would have liked, as so often he had to make do with whoever he was sent.

Moshe had been waiting for a while in the silent company of his peers while he waited for the lift to do its work. It was no surprise, then, when, after disappearing with the captain, the lift had returned with the shuttle crew. Moshe had been here several times, and each time the crew returned first. Two of them he recognised, the other, the co-pilot, was a younger man, obviously fresh from the cadet force. As the crew passed the men on their way to the inner quadrant seven guest quarters where they would rest for the next day before returning to the platforms, the lift rushed back up to the entry hall. When it returned, all eyes were focussed on who was to come out of it. Dressed in prison fatigues, tall, short, pudgy, and the classic “medium build”. All had the tired, worn-out appearance that all newboys had when they first left the tedium of the shuttle flight. Moshe turned his head slightly, catching the gaze of Henry Rawlinson. Henry cocked an eyebrow in return to Moshe’s “Here we go again, more of the same” expression. Which was it in a nutshell.

As the lift door closed behind them, Moshe took a look at the new arrivals, studying them as Dinsdale made his traditional speech. Not much different from the last time he had given it. All of the new arrivals looked to be on edge, obviously apprehensive at their immediate future. He knew exactly how they felt, as, like every other man to have walked through that door, he had felt the same, a mixed bag of emotions and fears.

Walking slowly up the row of convicts, Dinsdale could hear the shuttle crew coming through into the hall, but chose to ignore it. They knew the base well enough and wouldn’t need him to hold their hand, as it were. The shuttle crew passed him, taking the elevator down to the base. The elevator returned, empty. As Tony closed the hatch to secure the unloaded shuttle, Captain Dinsdale and the guards loaded the convicts into the elevator, transporting them down into the colony proper, where Moshe, Henry and Albert were waiting. With the convicts out of the lift and again in line, Dinsdale began his welcome speech.

“In case you haven’t noticed, you have arrived at the Lunar male Prison Colony, where you will each remain for the term of your natural life. This is not a prison in the Earth sense, as here you do not spend all of your time rotting in a cell. No. Instead, you will work. Hard. Developing and maintaining a permanent lunar colony is hard work, and is highly dangerous. I’ve known people who would rather hunt and defuse landmines than work for pay up here. Very few skilled engineers, if at all, volunteer for the work, so you drew the short straw the minute that you each decided to break the law on Earth.

“Up here, we have a system of shifts. Each of you will be assigned to a work crew in one of our several quadrants. When on shift, you work as directed. We plan what is to be done, your crew must decide how to do it in the given time. Off-shift, you will be in either the quadrant canteen or confined, as a crew, to your dormitory cells. At no time under regular conditions are you shackled or cuffed, and compared to Earth you have considerable liberty of movement. This is not because we want to, but because we have to, for our mutual survival. That said, any variation, any attempt to challenge the prison authority will be met with standard response and discipline.

“Your new crew-mates will guide you through the prison routine, and work training. Remember, a slight mistake can have lethal consequences. That itself is why you are here, to replace those before you who, uh, slipped up, one way or another. Despite the comparatively relaxed lifestyle that we have here, it is a prison for hard labour. How long you each remain with us is largely up to you and your own behaviour, as the only way out is death. And no-one here has ever died from old-age.

“My name is Captain Dinsdale, and my job is to make sure that each crew has enough of the right people to do its job. As you may guess, mine is not an easy lot, as I have to make do with whoever I’m sent, irrespective of what they can do. You can make it easier all-round by settling in, learning fast, and by staying alive. Toe the line, you will. Stuff up, and you will have me on your case, never mind the warden. Your choice, life or the alternative. Over here are the leaders of the crews that you are being assigned to. Do as they say, listen to what they tell you - your, our lives may depend on it.”

The captain soon finished his little spiel, and then addressed Moshe, Henry and Albert. “Men, meet the latest additions to your crews. Convict Arons, your shift has been allocated four of these men. The two convicts that were transferred to your team will return to Convict Rawlinson’s shift after an extra half rest cycle. Rawlinson, your crew will receive one of the new men. The other two are to join La Porte’s crew on the mineral processing plant.”

He then stepped back, and motioned to one of the squaddies. “Convicts Russell, Stein, Harrison and Flanders, step forward.” The four men stepped forward. “You will join Convict Arons’ team in quadrant six. Your job is to excavate all new spaces for development as permanent environment habitation spaces. Your foreman is Moshe Arons.”

Moshe took this as his cue to step forward, to be met by a guard. Moshe continued walking, the guard at his side, back towards the siding where the shuttle cars waited.

Stein was second in the line, and did not need any prompting to follow the man identified as Moshe Arons. To him, Moshe appeared to be in his mid to late thirties, a bit hard to tell. Tall and muscular, his new foreman had the confidence and the gait of someone who had been on the moon, working hard but sensible enough to survive, for a long time, probably years. As they entered a featureless, grey corridor, Abe decided to stick closely to Arons and learn as much as he could about everything. After all, Arons could be important in the future.