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sort of background would be very useful. Another had been finally put in the brig for repeated racial statements directed against the Funks, the Hegemony’s master race. Joshua couldn't understand why he’d been punished when such sentiments were widespread until he looked at the specifics. The spacer had made them in front of the Galactic news networks.
    The Prison Warden’s android met him as he entered the airlock. For safety – and to make taking hostages impossible – all of the warders interacted with the prisoners through remote-controlled androids, each one almost impossible to destroy with nothing more than hand-powered tools. Joshua looked up at the towering android, shaped in an exaggerated parody of humanity, and shook his head. The androids would have little difficulty restoring order if the prisoners decided to riot – or, perhaps, they’d let the prisoners kill a few of their fellows before intervening. No one cared what happened to the prisoners in this complex. The civilians had been permanently removed from society and sent here to die.
    “I have had the prisoners you requested gathered,” the warden said. Even the android’s voice was inhuman, completely atonal. “They are waiting for you in the visitor’s room. I must warn you that if they attempt to take you prisoner, we will have no option, but to flood the room with capture gas.”
    “Understood,” Joshua said. He wouldn’t allow the prisoners to intimidate him. They were humans, after all, not aliens shaped like humanoid crocodiles with smiles to match. “Take me to the compartment.”
    The android bobbed its head and walked backwards without changing posture. It could move in almost any direction, twisting in ways no human could match. Perhaps there were AIs behind the androids rather than humans, although rumour suggested that most of the operators were actually cripples. Remote operations was a field that even a paralysed man could enter.
    Joshua smiled as the prisoners looked up when he entered. Some of them had clearly maintained military appearance while in custody, others had let themselves go, growing their beards and hair until it fell around their waists. Only one of them was female, a butch woman who had been charged with striking her commanding officer and refused to either apologise or accept guilt. Nearly all of the civilian prisoners were male. Female prisoners found themselves in a very unpleasant kind of hell.
    “My name is Joshua Wachter – yes,   that   Joshua Wachter,” he said, by way of introduction. “I’ll keep this brief. I require a number of experienced crewmen to carry out a very sensitive mission – a dirty dozen or two. Your superiors have agreed that those of you who volunteer for this mission and come back alive will have their sentences commuted. Those who wish to remain in the military will have their records wiped; I can offer jobs to those who want to serve in space or you can return to Earth without any further time in jail.”
    He smiled thinly. “I should warn you that the odds of survival are low and we may all be killed,” he added. “I don’t have any tolerance for military formality, but I’ll space anyone who imperils the ships or the mission. No drinking or drugs will be permitted” – he gave a hard look to a weasel-faced man who had been charged with smuggling cannabis onto a military base – “and bad behaviour will result in the culprit being thrown in the brig and then returned to this hellhole. Any questions?”
    It was the butch woman who spoke first. “What’s in it for us?”
    Joshua pretended to consider. “Well, you’ll be out of here for a start,” he said. “And then there’s the extra pay and the chance to live a normal life afterwards. I can even throw in a shitload of money if you want. Those who survive will be set up for life.”
    “I don’t know,” the weasel-faced man said. “I hated military discipline when I joined.”
    “So why did you