"Do you plead guilty?" the judge demands as Yuta stands in the courtroom with his head bowed. But he doesn't answer.
"Silence will not save you, young man! Answer the court!"
Yuta slowly raises his head. "There's no denying that mistakes were made. But those were orders directly from company headquarters! I was just an employee doing my job, so why am I the one facing punishment?"
"You weren't just an employee—you were the CEO! You had full authority to reject illegal orders and do what was right!"
"A CEO?!" Yuta retorts. "What kind of CEO only has ten people under him? This was just a single branch office, making me nothing more than a branch worker. At the end of the day, even a CEO is just an employee!"
Despite his defense, the court sentenced Yuta and his entire family. On this planet, collective punishment applies: if one family member commits a major economic crime, the entire household bears the burden. Yuta was slapped with a one-million-Tox debt, plus a thirty-three thousand Tox fee per person to buy back their freedom. With three family members, earning roughly one hundred thousand Tox just for their buyouts—on top of the debt—was an impossible sum to clear in a single lifetime.
You probably find these laws absurd—and the slavery statutes even more so. But the galaxy is vast; with every sector, human logic and laws shift dramatically. Just because everything went wrong today doesn't mean tomorrow won't bring a turn of fate... though holding onto hope feels foolish when harsh reality is staring you right in the face.
My mother, my sister, and I were all taken into custody. To be honest, I wasn't as consumed by fear or anger over being framed as I was heartbroken that my sister might never speak to me again. What hurt even more was knowing her dream had been destroyed. She had wanted to become a Galactic Officer—an elite law enforcer.
Unlike local planetary police, Galactic Officers maintain order across entire star sectors. But with a criminal record attached to her family name, that dream was dead. Her career was over before it even began.
The galaxy is a chaotic mix of beauty and danger. The next morning, a spacecraft touched down on Planet Green—a world where most residents lived simple lives like old Earth dwellers, relying entirely on local resources. The landing vessel was a Galactic Police Range Craft, used specifically for prisoner transport.
The hatch opened, and a blue-skinned humanoid fish-man stepped out. He wore a special environmental helmet filled with a fluid medium that allowed him to breathe and survive outside his native atmosphere. The local police of Planet Green saluted him, to which the fish-man responded with a cold nod.
Two officers stepped up behind the fish-man to take custody of us. "We'll handle them from here."
Are we just cargo being passed around? was the only thought running through my head.
One officer grabbed my sister, Pihu, by the arm and dragged her toward the ship. My mother and I were handled the same way, shoved inside a heavy transport cage within the vessel.
My sister, who had been ignoring me for hours, finally looked up. In her eyes, I saw the reflection of a life spiraling into ruin. A single tear trickled down her cheek. "This is all your fault! What was the need to try something else? And if you had to do it, why couldn't you do it properly?!" Her wrists were locked in magnetic handcuffs, and she had no weapon on her—otherwise, that might very well have been my last day alive.
I glanced at my mother. She had been in a state of shock ever since the verdict was read. The only words she had uttered—her last words so far—were: "Our ancestors worked so hard for our freedom, yet time has dragged us right back to where we started."
Our home on Planet Green was sealed off and auctioned. The proceeds went toward compensating investors who lost money in the crash, but a massive debt still remained.
Our destination: Planet Noon. An artificial world designed as a penal slave colony, where inmates were subjected to forced labor or auctioned off based on their skills and debt value.
Honestly, slavery doesn't seem like the absolute worst fate when the alternative is immediate execution. Upon arrival, the three of us were assigned a modest shelter—which wasn't half bad, all things considered.
Normally, captives were separated, but being part of the same nuclear family worked to our advantage, keeping us together. Next came choosing our labor assignment. Planet Noon was originally a mining planet, but as its mineral resources dwindled and profits dropped, its owner converted it into a prison colony. Mining operations still continued, serving as the main work engine for slaves and criminals alike.
There were two types of captives sent here: hardened criminals who committed heinous atrocities and would likely never see freedom again, and debt-bonded offenders whose crimes made them slaves, but who held a chance at redemption if they could pay off their fixed buyout fee.
Slaves had three work choices: sanitation, agriculture, or mining. Hardened criminals were restricted to only sanitation and mining.
Since my family had been farming for two generations, I selected agriculture as my primary field, even though I knew very little about it myself. Farming offered the highest potential payout on Planet Noon, though earnings weren't immediate; workers were paid only after harvest, scaled strictly by crop quality.
Because harvest payouts took time, I was forced to take on a second job to make immediate income: heavy mining. That day marked the start of the hardest chapter of my life.
Will Yuta survive the grueling toll of the mines—a task far beyond his physical limits? Can he clear his family's massive debt and buy back their freedom?
Stay tuned for the next chapter of... The Unemployed CEO!