★ Martin ★

  Martin remained in that holding cell for two weeks before learning his fate.

  He didn’t know when he’d be leaving. They hadn’t told him. But when he awoke one morning to the sound of an armed guard unlocking the door, entering the room, and motioning for him to get up, he knew his stay was over.

  His only point of contact with the outside world thus far had been through a series of semi-regular visits from investigators and meetings with his lawyer. They’d asked him a long series of questions, all of which he’d declined to answer.

  “You’re protecting someone, aren’t you?” The lead investigator had said.

  He remained silent.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” His lawyer asked, looking him directly in the eye. And once again, Martin said nothing.

  “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me,” the lawyer replied. “But it’s your choice.”

  A few days later, one of the guards looked at him with a smug smile during their rounds. ”You didn’t think anyone would notice?” he asked offhandedly.

  Martin frowned, and the guard continued. ”I’ve read your file. You lived in a house—a large one—that was entirely paid for by your uncle. That's quite a lot of space for a single man in his thirties who makes a living doing odd jobs. You didn’t think that would arouse suspicion?”

  Martin simply shrugged, and the guard shook his head and laughed, although it sounded more like a cold, impersonal grunt. ”I don’t know what you were up to, but the free ride’s over.”

  And so it was.

  He gradually learned, over the course of those weeks, that the Consortium had done their due diligence. Among the items that had been seized from his uncle’s properties were stacks of classified documents containing experimental spacecraft diagrams, blueprints, and weapon schematics. Martin had never seen them before, but he was told that his uncle had obtained them obtained them illegally and planned to sell them to the highest bidder.

  He knew this was a lie, but once the seed of doubt had been planted, it chipped away at the back of his mind. He’d always been careful, serving as the voice of reason when he could, but his uncle hadn’t. It was possible, he guessed, that his uncle had decided to venture into uncharted criminal territory. However, this seemed beyond the scope of even their wildest aspirations. He pondered this at length as he lay there alone in that tiny holding cell, but came to the conclusion that none of it mattered now. Those documents were sitting in an evidence room somewhere, and that was enough to set him up for espionage, which was one of the few crimes that allowed the Global Armed Forces to bring charges against him in a private, closed-door tribunal.

  The Space Corps’ parent agency, as it turned out, had a provision allowing civilians to be prosecuted within their internal justice system. Since some of their personnel were private-sector contractors, the line between “enlisted” and “employee” had become blurred beyond recognition, so they’d eliminated some of the more common legal loopholes.

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  Martin didn’t contest the charges. Nobody would believe the evidence had been planted, nor would they listen if he talked about what he’d seen—the thing that appeared every time he closed his eyes. The waking nightmare that haunted his existence.

  His trial came and went, and his sentence was handed down.

  Five years without the possibility of parole.

  He’d wept silently in that holding cell that day, before being transferred to the Europa Station’s prison facility.

  He was to serve his sentence there, on the detention floor, where he slept in a room with a dozen other prisoners on cold metal bunk beds, and where he had a single locker to hold all of the possessions he’d been issued. Nothing from the outside was allowed, and any communication with anyone beyond this place had to go through his court-appointed lawyer.

  The one saving grace here, at least, was that the guard assigned to the prison’s communal room didn’t seem to give a flying crap about his job.

  Private Sanders was the laziest asshole Martin had ever met. He was far older and far more sedentary than a one-stripe private ever should’ve been, which, Martin guessed, was why they’d stuck him in here. His whole job description was to sit in a chair in the corner of the room and make sure the inmates didn’t beat each other unconscious. He made it abundantly clear, though, that he wouldn’t intervene even if that was to occur. He didn’t get up for anybody.

  Most of the time, they couldn’t tell if he was asleep or awake. The Space Corps didn’t issue hats with their uniforms, but Private Sanders wore one anyway, and he’d pull it down over his eyes, slouch down in his chair, and sit that way for hours at a time. When Martin first arrived he was tempted to check if the man was still breathing, but he learned very quickly not to bother. Private Sanders always moved eventually.

  The idea of spending five years on the Europa Station’s detention floor was enough to drive anyone insane, but it turned out there was no need to concern himself with that, because he wasn’t going to be sitting there indefinitely. They were putting him to work.

  Most of the Europa Station’s menial tasks were handled by prisoners. Anything that was beneath enlisted duties but which hadn’t yet been automated fell to them. Prisoners could opt out of the labor program, but at the cost of a longer sentence, which meant most of them didn’t. And so, shortly after his arrival, Martin was informed that he’d be working ten hour shifts, six days per week.

  For five years.

  And that’s where he found himself now. A few days after his sentencing, he began his first shift.

  Garbage collection.

  He walked up and down those halls, entering each room and emptying the bins into his trash cart. His white jumpsuit with black accents blended in against the white walls with their black details, and he almost couldn’t be seen unless he was moving. It was as if they wanted him to be invisible.

  He was to do this all day.

  His instructions were clear. He was not to speak to anyone stationed here unless they addressed him first, and especially so for officers. He was not to acknowledge any of the cadets. He was to report back to the detention floor at 19:00 hours, and if he was even a minute late, a security team would be sent to come get him. And they’d know exactly where he was because he was wearing an ankle monitor that tracked his location at all times, and which would sound a very loud alarm if he wandered somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, such as the shuttle bay or the armory.

  The blanket under which he slept had a tag sewn on it that said ‘Property of the Space Corps.’ The trays on which his meals were served had a stamp on the bottom that said ‘Property of the Space Corps.’ The jumpsuit he wore had words printed on the back in large black letters: “Property of the Space Corps.”

  He knew what he might as well have been.

  So that’s what Martin did on his first day.

  He pushed that cart around all those floors. He endured the stares of those who held him in as little regard as the trash he was hauling. He didn’t speak to anyone. He signed back in at 19:00. He ate his dinner from that tray, and he lay down that night beneath that flimsy blanket, staring at those words stenciled on the bottom of the bunk above as he drifted to sleep many floors below the stuffy affair which was taking place in the ballroom that evening.