A court officer stepped through the doorway beside the raised judge’s dais. “All rise.” A ripple of motion moved through the courtroom as everyone followed his order. When I moved too slowly, my shirt collar was yanked up from behind.

“Up you go,” Jim said.

No witty retort came to me. All my energy was focused on not throwing up.

“The Thirteenth Court, Judge Parson, presiding,” the court officer said as the judge entered the room.

The judge’s black robes billowed behind him, a nod to times that had long since left Earth. Some traditions kept the people passive. This was one of them. The illusion that there was a justice system. That people were innocent until proven guilty, but that wasn’t true. Not anymore. Anyone who was arrested was guilty. SpaceTech had decided that long before anyone ever stepped foot inside the courtroom.

The judge sat, his chair groaning under his extreme girth. The company’s silver logo was backlit with a blue light behind him—the angular font “ST” for SpaceTech. It hung over the judge as a reminder in case anyone ever forgot who was really in charge.

The judge looked down at us from his high-up chair, making me feel mouse-size. He popped a hard candy into his mouth before tapping his gavel. “Case number 34532, SpaceTech versus Maité Martinez is called to order.” The candy rattled in his mouth as he spoke, garbling his words.

Everyone sat down, and I followed, thankful that I hadn’t fainted yet.

“Your Honor, the State charges that Ms. Martinez attacked Jason Murtagh, Head of Security for SpaceTech Corporation, breaking his nose and causing both extreme physical and mental trauma.”

Yup. I definitely beat the crap out of Jason. Not that anyone would know now. He’d probably shot up with nanos before he left the diner that night. He’d have been back to normal in a few hours or less.

The judge’s hand waved through the air, and I wondered if he was scanning my file through his lace. “The penalty requested is one year of service on Abaddon.”

I gripped the wooden chair, nails digging grooves into the wax layer.

Abaddon? That wasn’t a prison sentence. Murtagh was sending me off to do work detail? Why?

SpaceTech needed their powerful lucole mined and refined to keep their space fleet operational, and that took a whole base of people working on Abbadon to keep production up. It wasn’t just people working with the lucole, but also a large support staff—doctors, cooks, janitors. But who would want to scrub toilets on a volcano planet that could blow up any second when you could do it safely on Earth? So, SpaceTech filled the base with prisoners and called it a work camp.