The transparent cupola next to Hue’s bunk offered a panoramic view of the planet’s western hemisphere. The surface of Fahwan slid by 136.2 kilometres below, but when Hue pressed his face to the glass with hands cupped on either side of his eyes, it almost looked close enough to touch. Quicksilver cloud banks shifted and played above a vast emerald ocean before being swallowed by a blue-rimmed horizon.

 

Hue’s thoughts turned to his First Third Assessments at age 12. They tagged him as “one to watch”, a budding star. But he had lazed his way through the primary blocs, sure that he could flip a switch whenever he pleased. By the end of curricula, Hue had coasted to mid-tier, far short of his projected potential. After washing out of the boatswain’s program, he barely made the cut for this expedition. This despite the Company beating the bushes to fill out a crew of 100,000. Now, aboard the CCS Plassey, he was decidedly unspecial. Another die-cut cog in the unfathomable machine.

 

For weeks now, Hue found himself unable to sleep. He spent off hours at his glassed-in perch, a numb spectator to the efficient program of horror and calamity meted out on a world he would never visit.

 

To his left, immense plumes of fire blossomed amidst the expanse of red rock desert on the ocean’s far shore. This meant the sappers were doing their job, “torching” more of the native cities. Since first contact, the ship’s landing force had been busy, depopulating the planet by a third. Close to a billion souls, if indeed the natives had souls.

 

They may have prayed to a god before being turned to ash, but the Plassey alone determined their fate. The vessel was designated as a Company Class Superhauler, but it also filled the role of a wrathful and punishing heavenly father. A month ago, Plassey plucked Fahwan from orbit and began hauling it back to port. Along this return voyage, the ship’s power plant would provide rotational force and life-giving “sun”. From this false star, a quartet of spidery arms stretched out for a thousand kilometres and hovered above the surface, holding the small world captive in a web of artificial gravity. In four years, they would arrive at the Company station, where crews would process whatever life remained and strip Fahwan down to its core.

 

The great green ocean disappeared into the west. Hue wept silently. Below him, fallout clouds rippled across rust-coloured plains, bringing death to multitudes.

Hue reached into his breast pocket and fished out a half dozen blood-red capsules. “Here’s to the Company,” he said, then swallowed them all.

 

He half expected to wake up here again, in his small hell. Perhaps he should pray for deliverance, just in case. Hue yawned, then curled up against the glass. Sleep would be good. He closed his eyes, breathed deep once, and died.