Once a decade, a titanium-nosed shuttle plows through the rings of the planet Tartarus with a new batch of prisoners destined for the Orpheus Factory. The debris that makes up the rings is so thick that it thunders like a hailstorm, deafening the passengers. As the orbiting debris bounces and scrapes against the hull, the prisoners squeeze their eyes closed and beg the pilot to be more careful. “Are you trying to hit all of them?” a prisoner snaps, covering his ears against the roaring onslaught.The pilot laughs through her nose. Ironic. Dismissive. “We always do. As many as we can.”She steers into the path of the debris, and the thundering increases.

Planetside, they hold a farce of a trial in the Sibylline Court, a decaying mansion of rotten marble. All traitors to the Sibyllines go to Tartarus to receive the only punishment for rebellion: eternal life.The prisoners stand at attention as the comms read out their names. A whirring ten-limbed auto-judge pronounces their sentences in turn, omitting no words from the traditional declaration of guilt, because the Sibylline Empire believes in ceremony.

One by one the prisoners file into a dark, square mouth cut from the earth: the Orpheus Factory. Machines shred their clothes and lather them in amber disinfectant that burns the skin and smells like tar and makes all their hair fall out. Tiny silver needles snake into their veins. Nanobots pump into their blood, flooding their organs, cleaning off plaques, lengthening telomeres, repairing neurons. The last injection severs their voluntary motor pathways so nothing moves but their eyes. Before the final step, the prisoners feel young again, for a moment.

The last gift of the planet Tartarus to its newborn residents is a brand-new spacesuit, bright white, top of the line, with solar-powered life support that can recycle respirated air and bodily wastes for up to two hundred years, should nothing breach the suit’s barrier. z their terrified eyes flickering behind their faceplates, their lips drawn back by spasticity into a tight, cramped grin.When the job is done, the pilot who flew the inbound shuttle loads them back into the cargo bay, stacking the bodies high and deep, like firewood.

On its way through the planetary belt, the shuttle dumps the new Orpheuses into the ring that loops round and round Tartarus like a dirge that will never end. That is when the prisoners will see all the frozen white spacesuits, billions in orbit, their eyes aware and flickering behind well-made helmets, their blood pumped full of machines that won’t let them die, their bodies spinning around the planet forever and ever. They will float eternally, unable to sleep. They will pray for a rogue asteroid to careen into their path and breach their suits. Ten years later, when they see the silver-tipped shuttle approach the weary planet, they will pray for the vessel to smash into their bodies as it enters orbit and descends to the surface. The pilots do always try to hit as many as they can.