
She’d heard horror stories-as everyone had-about people unjustly incarcerated and permanently caged up like animals. There were any number of prison planets in the Coalition now, and Riana had never given them a second thought. Genus 6 was hell, as far as Riana was concerned.

Even if a convict managed to get through the structural barriers and the guards, there was no way to survive the ocean. The prison hold was built beneath that ocean. The surface of Genus 6 was covered by a volatile ocean that was poison to human life.

So, instead of colonies, the Coalition had assigned otherwise uninhabitable planets as primitive and inescapable prisons. The Coalition had given up on those long ago, when too many exiles managed to escape and make it back to the civilized planets-sometimes even as far as Earth.

She knew they were intended as a kindness, and in her gut she knew they were true. Give yourself to him in return for protection.
