Sentenced to Tartarus

The dronish flexing of the spaceship's engine that rang around the hanger, coupled with the minor scratching and coughing of his fellow debtees, left Lukas gluing his thoughts together one by one.

'This was going to be my life,' He thought as the engine whined through the planet's atmosphere. 'Just some debtor's lowlife slave on a shitty mining planet.'

Lukas took a break from massaging his temples to glance upward, one of tens of glances in the last three hours since he woke up. Who knows how long they had him in stasis. After he lost his trial in court, they had him put his most valuables in a storage pod, put on a neon yellow jumpsuit, and took him straight into the ship's stasis chamber. Hardly enough time to even let him say goodbye to his inner circle.

He was reminded of one of the articles he read off his Neural-Head-Network or NHN for short. He read about how in ancient times up to the end of the new century, instead of growing meat, they'd have cattle and based on what he read, he sure felt like a "sheep" or "cow" or whatever the tabloid had called it. He felt especially less human since his NHN was only allowed to connect to the heavily controlled network that Briareus Brands censored.

'Briareus, what a cunt of a company. And sand! Fucking sand. Not only have I been reduced to a lowlife debtor on a backwater planet, but I'm here to mine sand.'

Of course, as a spacefaring race, he would be maintaining what were essentially giant vacuums. But he would operate and Repair, for what would feel like an eternity.

This time when Lukas looked around, he actually looked. His eyes passed each man who was stuck in the same ship as him, both proverbially and literally.

The first man to his left had clean skin; that was to say he had no prosthetics. That happened to be an odd occurrence in the current age, even Lukas had some work done on his body. 'embezzlement for sure, look at that hair it's practically screaming "I take money."'

Across from Lukas were three other people. The first two to the left appeared to be twins of some sort. Maybe even rogue clones. It wasn't evident if they were clean as they had their heads down like himself, but when the one of the right turned his head up, Lukas could see his entirely black eyes and a flat metal plate where the nose was supposed to be. 'Probably smugglers, let's be honest.'

The final man right of them was just sad. His beard and hair were both raggedy, he had a prosthetic arm, and the entire right half of his face had been replaced with indiscernible mods. 'Oh Fates, that's clearly some guppie self-made lawyer who tried to take on their shark team.'

For a final look, he took but a momentary glance at the man standing guard over everyone. He was from the private security company Briareus paid to keep their workers in order. Casually they're called PE's, which officially stands for, Protector:Enforcer, but everyone thinks that's stupid to say.

Lukas supposed that it was time to look at himself now. Why was he here? Well, he wasn't supposed to be, but was anyone? He'd missed a payment on some service. Missed the payment 78 something times actually. But he also never happened to get any emails or calls about said payment. The court seemed to gloss right over that detail, most likely just throwing down the hammer on him for a little bonus from big B.

Lukas crossed his Jade eyes inward, pretending to look at himself and thought, 'probably some dumb kid who got one pulled over him. Nah, he's definitely in here for killing someone, I bet he's so great he killed a CEO or some high title money cowboy. Can't be innocent, he's 35 years old he should know better, shouldn't he?'

He was reminded of another tabloid article he'd read. Supposedly, humans weren't able to live forever, only to around 80-100.

'By Fates hand, I'd be middle-aged by now.'

His thoughts were briefly interrupted by the ship shuddering itself through the atmosphere before he turned back to his ramping monologue.

'Turbulence on this premium flight? what a scam, I should sue oh wait I can't because my humanity's been contracted away and even if I did I-'

"You ok there, buddy?" Asked the definitely Embezzler in his on type charismatic voice.

Lukas realized he never stopped after crossing his eyes. He had been bopping his head to his inner argument, looking like a lunatic to the other men on board.

His face flushed with embarrassment, and he stumbled, "Oh um, yeah. sorry haha."

The Embezzler chimed in again, "You know if you plead insanity, it probably would've worked."

This got a chuckle out of the guppie, and some nose exhales out of both smugglers. Even the PE at the door leading to the rest of the skipper cracked a barely visible smile beneath their blue translucent holo-HUD.

The lightened mood didn't last long as the engines of the ship made their switch into planetary mode, meaning they were about to land. After enduring five minutes of more awkward silence while the engines diminished until the entire ship thudded against what Lukas guessed was a landing pad.

'All that money saved from these debt slaves and they can't even afford decent fliers. I bet even the cheap Parvunus AI chips the taxi xylophs back home use would be better than whatever they had.'

The ship's mag-locks activated, and the PE walked over to the hanger door at the same time it had clicked, giving the telltale sign it was about to open.