The next morning, the Sanctum looked the same as it had yesterday.

White stone, white sky, rows of ships on the landing fields. Everything the same - only there were millions of voices fewer. Only silence, and in that silence, the sound of the footsteps of several thousand people being lined up again.

We stood on the parade ground at six forty-five.

A new officer. Or maybe the same one - I didn't remember the face. They were all identical: straight, sharp, movements without excess.

• Yesterday, you were told why you exist, - he said. - Today, you will be told how.

  A pause.

• The Empire does not feed those who do not work. You underwent modification. You put on the armor. It is not a gift - it is a debt. Debts are paid back.

  We were silent.

• Sector ninety-one. Planet Millstones. Uranium ore extraction. Departure in four hours.

  He left.

  I looked at Iskhak.

  Iskhak was looking straight ahead - where the officer had just stood.

• Millstones, - I said.

• I heard.

• Does that name mean anything?

  He did not answer immediately. Then he said quietly, as if to himself:

• Millstones are stones. The ones that grind.

The ship was old.

Not like the old suits in the dome - those at least had been patched up. This one just lived with its breakdowns the way people live with chronic illnesses: they get used to it, they pay no mind. Every third light flickered in the hold. The ventilation hummed with interruptions - sometimes steady, sometimes in jerks, as if someone were struggling to breathe. One of the display screens showed static in the left corner - black and white snow over the stars.

I sat and looked at that snow.

• The tech is glitching, - I said.

• I see.

• On a ship taking us to a radioactive mine.

• I see, Kael.

  Iskhak sat nearby, straight, his hands on his knees. He was looking at the wall opposite. There was nothing on the wall - just metal.

• Don't you think this is a problem?

• I think it is the norm, - he said. - For a system that sends people to Millstones.

  I didn't answer.

  In the next row, some people were laughing - two from the cohort, I didn't know their names, only their numbers. Laughing about something of their own. Loudly. As if they were flying to a holiday.

  I couldn't tell if I envied them or not.

Millstones appeared on the display screen twenty hours later.

I sat and watched it approach - and the closer it got, the worse it looked.

Dark. Not gray - dark, almost brown, like dried blood on metal. The atmosphere was visible even from here: dense, opaque near the horizon, layered - as if the planet were wrapped in several layers of something heavy. It didn't look dead. It looked alive - just not for us.

Iskhak stood beside me.

• Gravity, - he said. - Based on the size and density - three times the standard. Maybe more.

• Do the suits hold?

• Rated for one and a half. - He was silent for a moment. - Three times is no longer a calculation. It is a matter of time.

• And the atmosphere.

• The atmosphere is worse. - He looked at the dark layers near the horizon. - The pressure there is like at the bottom of a deep ocean, only everywhere. Outside. Constantly. The suit keeps it normal inside, as long as the suit is intact.

  I understood what he meant before he finished speaking.

• And if it is not intact?

  He did not answer. He only looked at me - straight, without softening - and turned away from the screen.

• Ours are new, - he said. - The rest - we shall see.

The landing was hard.

Not an emergency landing - just hard, as if the ship wasn't landing but pushing itself down with its entire weight. When the hatches opened and we stepped out, I realized Iskhak was right - about both things.

Two steps. Just two steps on the surface.

It wasn't like fatigue. It was as if someone had taken my whole body and squeezed it - not sharply, not painfully, just constantly, evenly, without pause. With every step. With every breath. The suit was working - you could hear the servos humming, the system compensating - but underneath the compensation, there was still that pressure. Outside. Everywhere.

Millstones.

• Form up, - the speaker said.

  We formed up slower than usual.

  The officer was brief.

  Not in height - in words. Only what you need to know to survive.

• The planet has a dense toxic atmosphere with pressure eighty times higher than standard, - he said. - Gravity is three point two times above the norm. These two factors are the primary threat. Not radiation.

  He looked at the formation.

• The radiation background here is high. Very high. Without protection - a lethal dose in a few hours. But that is slow. The atmosphere - is immediate. Remember the difference.

  A pause.

• The suit holds the external pressure. As long as it is hermetic, you live. One crack along a seam - depressurization happens in a fraction of a second. Eighty atmospheres outside do not wait. You will not be torn apart. You will simply be compressed. Quickly. - He said this without intonation, like a multiplication table. - What remains inside the suit will not be fit for identification. Only the number on the chest plate.

  The formation was silent.

• Why not automated complexes, - he continued, as if someone had asked. - Because they have already been tried. Electronics do not hold up to the radiation background on Millstones - sensors burn out within a day, processors suffer irreversible glitches, navigation systems go blind. Machines do not work here for longer than a day. You work longer.

  He looked at us.

• As long as the suit is intact.

  Then he left.

  I looked at Iskhak.

• Machines burn out faster than people, - I said quietly.

• Yes.

• That is why we are here.

• Yes. - He was looking after the officer. - We are cheaper to replace than new electronics. We don't need to be brought from a factory. We come ourselves. We believe it is the right thing to do. We shout together on the square.

  I didn't answer.

  I remembered the ship from Sanctum. The food. The stars outside the porthole. How I didn't want to let his thoughts go there.

  It turned out, you can't just eat.

The mines went vertically down.

Huge ones - not tunnels, but fissures. As if the planet had been hit from below and cracked. The edges were dark red, almost black where the ore ran especially thick. The dosimeters on the suits were showing something - I looked at the numbers and already understood the scale. The officer had explained enough.

The gravity in the fissure was even heavier - closer to the core, someone nearby explained. I didn't check. I just felt it.

Iskhak worked nearby. Silently, methodically - he always worked as if he already knew every movement in advance. I looked at his hands in the armor and thought: six years in the dome, eighteen days in a new body, and here we were. At the bottom of a fissure, on a planet that pressed on the suit from the outside every second. And this was called proving we were part of the Empire.

At the third hour, Nilav fell.

He didn't stumble - he fell. Slowly, as if his legs just decided they wouldn't go anymore. He was from a different dome - tall, broad-shouldered, the kind who looks reliable.

Two others picked him up. He stood.

He went on.

At the fifth hour, he fell a second time and did not stand. He didn't die - he just couldn't. Gravity had taken its toll. He was carried away to the ship. I never saw him again.

• This is only the first day, - I said to Iskhak.

• Yes.

• If it's like this every day -

• Do not count, - he said quietly. - Work.

  I worked.

He checked the suits every morning.

Not just his own - mine too. His fingers over the seams, the joints, the side segments where the stress was especially uneven. Muttering to himself - not a prayer, a schematic. A stress map he kept in his head.

Sometimes he said: be careful here. Move softer. Do not raise your right arm above seventy degrees.

I did as he said.

Others did not.

On the fourth day, the first one died.

I didn't see it. I heard it - over the general channel, a short sound, not words, something clipped - and then silence where a person had been a second ago.

Then it was explained.

The suit cracked along a side seam. It didn't burst, it didn't tear - it just cracked. Gravity pressed on the armor every second, and the armor, even being new, gave way under it - by thousandths of a millimeter, imperceptibly - until at some point it was enough. The crack was less than two millimeters.

Eighty atmospheres outside did not wait.

It happened faster than consciousness works - faster than the body has time to realize anything is wrong. The pressure entered inside in a fraction of a second. Gravity added its part. What remained in the suit did not require identification - the officer had warned about this. Only the number on the chest plate.

The suit was almost intact.

I stood at formation and listened to the report - the same voice without intonation, the same words the officer had said at the briefing, only now with a specific number at the end - and I thought about Iskhak in the third corridor of the dome. About the three-millimeter play. About how he said: the instructor knows. He just doesn't say.

• Iskhak.

• I am looking, - he said.

On the eighth day, the new suit stopped being new.

It was felt, not seen: the suit started to press differently, slightly more unevenly in some points and slightly less in others. Gravity worked methodically - it didn't break you at once, it just pressed, every second, without pause, without mercy. The metal tires. Not immediately. But it tires - and when it tires enough, eighty atmospheres do the rest.

On the ninth day, another one fell.

On the tenth - two at once, in different sectors. One stood up. The second one did not. I watched them carry the second one away. Carrying him wasn't hard - the suit is light if inside there is only what remained after eighty atmospheres.

I didn't count the days anymore.

On the evening of the tenth day, we lay in the living quarters - those of us who returned from the shift - and were silent.

The ventilation jerked. The light flickered in a rhythm that matched nothing. The display screen in the corner showed only white noise - the electronics had given up before we did, the radiation had done its job in a couple of days. We lasted longer. The officer was right: we are cheaper to maintain.

• Iskhak, - I said.

• Mm.

• How much longer will the suit hold.

  He didn't answer for a long time. When he did, it was quietly, like a man who had already calculated and was now choosing whether to speak or not.

• Mine - another two weeks, if I work carefully. - A pause. - Yours about the same.

• And the others.

• I haven't looked at the others.

  I stared at the ceiling.

• Two weeks.

• About that.

• And how much ore have we mined of the quota.

  He was silent.

• Thirty percent.

  I didn't say anything.

  Thirty percent. Two weeks. The quota is one hundred. It didn't add up, no matter the math.

• Iskhak.

• I hear you.

• If we request evacuation -

• It was requested. The day before yesterday. By the sector commander. - He closed his eyes. - Denied.

  I turned my head.

• What.

• Quota not met. Evacuation is upon completion of the quota. Standard protocol, paragraph seven: personnel extraction upon completion of the task or total incapacitation. Thirty percent - is not total incapacitation.

  I looked at him.

• They knew. When they sent us. About the gravity, the pressure, the suits, about the electronics burning out and why people were needed - they knew it all beforehand.

• Yes.

• And they sent us anyway.

• Kael. - He opened his eyes and looked at me - straight, calmly. - Remember what I said about the pigs.

  I remembered.

• Machines burn out in a day, - he said quietly. - We hold on for a few weeks, until the suit tires from the gravity so much that the eighty atmospheres find a crack. We are cheaper. We don't need to be brought from a factory. We come ourselves and believe that dying here - is correct.

  The light flickered. The ventilation breathed with interruptions.

  Outside was a planet that had been named accurately. Millstones. It wasn't in a hurry - it just pressed, methodically, every second, on the metal and on those inside the metal. And waited until the metal tired first.

• We will survive, - I said.

  Not because I believed it. Because I needed to say it.

  Iskhak was silent for a long time.

• You need to check the suits every day, - he said finally. - Both. Yours and mine.

• I will.

• And move carefully. Always. Even when you are tired.

• I will.

• And don't think about the quota. Think about the next hour.

  I nodded.

  He closed his eyes again.

  Tomorrow, Millstones again. Again gravity, again seams, again that line - thinner than a thread - between the one going on shift and the one being carried back in a suit that is intact, but empty inside.

  Quota thirty percent.

  Evacuation upon completion.

  We were eighteen years and fifteen days old.