There's a small spot on the viewing bay of Station QWB45 "Rooster", where you can throw a stone clear out, and watch it quickly drift, getting faster and faster, until it becomes smaller and smaller, and regardless of how many eyes you have, it eventually merges with the ink, far out of the atmospheric bubble surrounding you.

Now, you're not, in any circumstance, supposed to do this, for one thing, the decorative pebbles on the viewing bay eventually need to be replaced, and because of their origin as industrial byproducts, are generally able to survive intense heat, sometimes even to the point of being able to survive atmospheric entry, it is a known law of the universe that if a death is seemingly unexplained, someone, believing themselves incredibly clever for thinking of it propose a rogue "spaceshot" as such accidents came to be known.

Zaat and Telia knew this, however, they also knew that there was absolutely nothing to do on the station they called home that wasn't predicated on a screen, it is also a known law of the universe that any complex life that develops an adolescent stage of development, will inevitably see said adolescents shove sticks onto train lines, stick lighters at the end of aerosol cans, and, for Zaat and Telia in particular, chuck stones out the viewing bay.

All teenagers kill themselves, some through death, others through growth. - Ted Karzlik, Professor of Sociology, President James' University, Trom.

Telia was bound for the first of these fates, she lived to a ripe old, 32 years of age, still with the only man she had ever loved, Zaat rested next to her bed in Hospice for a month before she herself sailed into the ink.

Zaat knew it was going to end like this, from the day he fell for her, he lived to be 306, and died in Prison, he never loved another woman again.

Krez Tilo, was in a great number of ways, very similar to Zaat in a way he would've ardently, vigorously denied, a professor of astrophysics, he'd steadily grown to hate his work, none of it seemed to matter, and the end of the Automation War had meant that funding had dried up, he'd spent 10 years of his expected 80 year long life working on tracking systems for point defense, dreamed of saving planets from a hail of munitions from soulless machines, crude approximations of life, culled of biological concepts like pity, or empathy, this had been the rock he'd built his life upon.

Then, one day, seemingly as quickly as the war had begun with deactivation day, the Machines stopped firing, then Isowell Maffen, infamous idiot, had seemingly overnight taken that rock and set fifty sticks of dynamite to it, but they hadn't gone off, not yet.

Spaceshots weren't always used as explanations for unexplained deaths, not until Krez.

The Hotel Du Galaxie, pleasure planet, was exactly what Krez and his wife needed, his dedication to the war had been near total, he had nightmares of bombs ripping through the sky.

As it turned out, it wasn't a bomb, it was a stone, while they were sitting on a balcony taking in the glory of a Hotellier sunrise, Krez didn't like to relive the details of the event, he cradled her, and by the time the medics arrived, she was gone.

It took three days for Krez to stop crying.

It took thirteen years of tracking, mathematics, and detailed investigation to track the stone back to the Rooster, and it took 3 months of investigation of ship logs and interviews to hear about Zaat, and 3 days to find him, and forcibly stun him and bring him to the magistrate.

These were the Waning days of the council, James was dead, and his Empire was crumbling, Krez did not care, and physically dragged Zaat to the foot of the Tower of Justice in his cities centre, Krez was a well respected figure, and while for some of his contemporaries, his actions would've been seen as traitorous, implying that the Council could not enforce law, simply because they could not enforce law.

Had a normal citizen done it, they would've been clasped in irons, but not Krez, he was one of the people the council functioned for.

Two dead men entered the court room, one went to Prison, the other went to a bar, and never left.