Chapter 5
This was not how I died; that will be soon enough.
Instead, Corpsec stunned me, barrelled me into the back of a truck, sent me straight to trial in an emergency court held in a tent on the edge of the city.
Children always feel injustice keenly. The first time they are lied to; the first time they realise that words are not truths, but promises that can be broken. Now they are a little closer to being an adult, and it is a tragedy.
In the courts of Glastya Row, people who should have known better wept, begged, cried out against injustice. And because they were distraught, so was I; I have always tended to tag along with what other people feel.
They said I was being sent off-world, to a labour camp. I mumbled: “My parents…”
No one listened.
I blurted: “My parents, will they be informed, will they… It’s important, my parents, they have to…”
Someone hit me, which was a kind of answer.
I thought I might actually cry then, mostly because my mother and father would be worried sick, the only people who had ever hoped for me, ever dreamed for me, ever wanted me to be something more, and I had disappointed them, let them down, let them down, and there was nothing respectable about me after all.
Seventy-nine light years away, two stars are dancing around each other, spinning towards their final, thunderous end, and it is not that I do not care, rather that I have other things on my mind.