The First Test

Lot Forty-Four

The auctioneer's gavel came down and Kai Mercer had forty seconds to decide whether to spend money he didn't have.

"Lot forty-four," the clerk droned, reading from a cracked tablet. "Voss-pattern combat frame, designation unknown, salvage condition. Opening bid, eight hundred colony scrip."

The frame hung from ceiling chains in the center of Dock Seven's repurposed cargo bay, and it looked like something that had lost a war. Left arm missing below the elbow. Chest plate caved in on one side. The neural-link port at the base of the skull housing was scorched black. Around Kai, a thin crowd of scavengers and low-rank pilots murmured and kept their hands down.

He raised his.

"Eight hundred to the gentleman in the back." The auctioneer sounded bored. "Do I hear nine?"

No one moved. The frame was junk. Everyone in the room knew it.

Kai knew something they didn't. He'd run his thumb along the left forearm stump twenty minutes ago while the lots were on display, and felt the seam of a secondary housing panel that had no business being on a standard Voss chassis. Someone had modified this frame before it died. Someone careful.

"Sold. Eight hundred scrip."

He paid with the last of his family's discretionary account. His sister Dara would see the deduction in about three minutes and call him in five. He had his answer ready: I know what I'm doing. He didn't, entirely, but the alternative was doing nothing while the colony court's seventy-two-hour clock ran.

The notice had arrived that morning. Printed on official red stock, which meant it was already past the warning stage. The Mercer family oxygen contract — tied to his father's old mining tenure — was flagged for non-performance review. If Kai couldn't demonstrate active colony contribution inside seventy-two hours, the contract lapsed. No contract meant rationed air at punitive pricing. Punitive pricing meant they couldn't afford to breathe inside of a month.

The court's suggested remedy, printed in smaller text at the bottom: Ranked duel participation qualifie

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