Guided by Starlight

by Matt Levin

  Tricia’s heart sympathized with the insurgents. Many were religious devotees and genuine freedom fighters, whereas Michael Azkon’s Junta was just as repressive as the dead king he replaced. But she wasn’t about to commit the military to aid some longshot rebellion well outside their sphere of influence, even if the Union fleets could overcome the Junta navy.

  And as much as she had little fondness for Michael Azkon, political realities demanded she engage with him. He was at least preferable to the Horde leadership, having the good graces not to attack her frontier settlements.

  She mustered up as much of a grin as she could today. “Michael,” she said, standing up and shaking his hand. She gestured toward a seat opposite her.

  “Tricia,” he said, returning the handshake. Soft as usual, she thought. She hated titles, especially when negotiating with another head of state. Tricia hadn’t particularly liked it when Isadora Satoro had called her “Madam Prime Minister” during their first meeting. If Michael Azkon called her by her title, she might even feel insulted.

  “To be honest, I’m a little surprised you came in person,” she said. “I would have prepared a more formal reception if I knew you wanted to meet.”

  A grin crept across Michael’s face, interrupting a sea of short grey whiskers and a deep scar. “I think we both know you hate those things even more than I do.”

  Point Michael, she thought, reaching for her coffee. It wasn’t so much the cynicism of the man or his lack of decorum she couldn’t stand—in fact, those were some of his redeeming qualities—but the ego.

  He picked up his own coffee and took a drink, wincing as soon as he took a sip. Tricia knew the general liked his coffee black, and she was pretty sure he knew that she knew that, but it tickled her to watch him try to ignore the issue.

  “But honestly, I don’t have an agenda, per se,” he said, in a voice that blended sonorousness and gruffness and was almost artificially deep. “In reality, my staff just informed me of a major development in the outer rim. It’s an emergency.”

  Tricia raised an eyebrow, the kind that she hoped conveyed curiosity, but that actually meant no, of course there was no actual fucking emergency, because I would have found out about it first, you absolute dipshit.

  “It’s those refugees,” Michael continued. “They just took over the biggest settlement on Calimor a few weeks ago. Now they’re flooding the planet with colonists.”

  Tricia was surprised to hear about the rate of the refugees’ progress, even though she knew they had been interested in Calimor ever since the failed settlement charter vote. But it sounded like the refugees were more than just interested. They had planted their flag on the planet.

  It was a testament to the weaknesses of Union surveillance in the outer rim: they could monitor the flow of space traffic, whereas specific developments on each planet occasionally eluded the Union’s eyes. Sure, they had satellites out there, but plenty had fallen into disrepair, or had even been destroyed. It was hard for Tricia to care while there were no active threats in the outer rim. And besides, it wasn’t like her warships couldn’t safely launch a strike anywhere beyond the asteroid belt from the safety of Obrigan’s orbit.

  Tricia the woman applauded the refugees for the maneuver. It wasn’t like her people had handed them any favors, either, meaning the refugees basically had three options if they wanted to settle planetside. And two were already under another faction’s control. That made Calimor the logical and only choice.

  But Tricia the prime minister understood the strategic weight of the refugees’ actions. Calimor was the last contested planet in the system, and both the Junta and the Horde knew the dormant economic power of Calimor with its lucrative spice-growing potential. The Junta wanted it because they were broke and crippled by almost a decade of civil war. The Horde wanted it for some goddamn reason unbeknownst to her. And both were willing to kill for it.

  The Junta had been slowly winning its skirmishes with Horde raiders, but now everything would be different after the refugees set up colonies. That gave more space to the Horde, which had already shown its willingness to come to blows with the Union. A number of possibilities and outcomes swirled through Tricia’s mind, each marinating in a general sense of unease and anxiety.

  Apparently, Tricia the prime minister seemed to have more in-depth, complex thoughts than Tricia the woman. The realization hollowed her out. “I understand that the arrival of the refugees is changing the political landscape of the outer rim. I don’t know if I would call this an emergency,” she said.

  Michael furrowed his brow. “The problem is that they allied with a Horde raiding party.”

  Tricia went still. So the refugees weren’t just staking their claim, they were actively seeking a partnership with the Union’s old enemy. The Horde may have been under new leadership ever since the war, but that didn’t mean Tricia’s trust extended much further than it used to.

  “Did they carry out any attacks on your forces?” she asked, hoping that Michael wouldn’t answer in the affirmative.

  “No,” he said. “At least, as far as we can tell. But it’s the principle of the matter.”

  It now became clear what the real issue was. Under Michael’s direction, the Junta had been gunning for Calimor for years now, but he didn’t have the resources to commit to a full-fledged colonization effort. And suddenly the refugees had whisked that all away. This was a case of a bruised ego, Tricia realized.

  “Calimor was ours by right,” Michael said, his jaw tightening.

  Tricia took a long gulp of coffee. Michael’s cup continued to go untouched after his initial sip. “I should remind you that we never passed a settlement charter authorizing your expansion.”

  “Formalities,” the general said with a wave of his hand. “And besides, with the charter referenda, you’ve ushered in a brave new world. Future settlements will be in the hands of the electorate, not Parliament.”

  Tricia glared at him over the rim of her coffee mug, but tilted the cup far back enough that he couldn’t see.

  “To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure what you want me to do about any of this,” she said, ignoring his comment. “The refugees didn’t do anything illegal. Your forces had no intrinsic right to Calimor.”

  “I’m not asking for you to commit your fleets or anything like that,” Michael said. “But just...be wary. These new arrivals may be more ruthless than you’ve pinged them to be. They’re working with the scourge of the outer rim to get what they want.”

  Because they have no choice, Tricia wanted to say. But she understood it was far from being that simple.

  “I’ll keep tabs on the situation. We’ll monitor the refugee settlements on Calimor, as well as their partnership with the Horde. Or whatever’s happening there. But I can’t hand Calimor back to your people.”

  “That isn’t why I came here. I just thought you might like to know that a decade’s worth of politicking in the outer rim just got upended overnight. And let the record show that I’m not happy about being the one who got screwed here.”

  “Noted,” Tricia said, and finished her coffee. “Was there anything else?”

  “Nothing the diplomats can’t handle,” Michael said gruffly, standing up.

  Tricia shook his hand and ushered him to the door. “I appreciate your visit. You’re always welcome,” she lied.

  Michael grinned and chuckled in a way that almost made her think he could see right through her facade. “I should get back to my embassy.”

  “Right. Feel free to grab anyone scurrying around if you can’t find your way out,” she said. He nodded, turned, and departed her office.

  She breathed a long sigh of relief after he left. Tricia had accepted the prime ministership thirteen years ago because she thought it represented the best chance to enact real, transformative change in Natonese society. And she had accomplished much of her agenda, but only at the cost of dealing with sleazy assholes like Michael Azkon while trying to do her best impression o
f giving a shit.

  There were days where it seemed like a worthy trade-off, and days where it didn’t. Today was shaping up to be the latter.

  She pushed herself up and retreated to the chair behind her desk. She spun around and stared out the glass pane walls, toward the balcony where she had been enjoying the cool morning air just half an hour ago.

  It was funny: she had just been thinking about how everything had gone back to normal after the drama of the refugees’ arrival. But things were already changing irrevocably.

  If the new arrivals had Calimor, they could feasibly be operating a real economy within a year. They’d have trade relationships with the other major powers, and they’d be able to bring millions out of cryo from their sleeper ship. On some level, Tricia was happy for them. She still hadn’t quite gotten over a feeling of gnawing guilt from her inability to secure the settlement charters.

  But had the failure of the referenda pushed them into the Horde’s embrace? The words of her security adviser, Owen Yorteb, once again echoed through her head: We have no idea whether they’re telling the truth about themselves. All the intel they provided was also written by them. What if they’re being completely dishonest? What if their pods are full of Hegemony soldiers, and they’re just masquerading as refugees?

  Faced with so much uncertainty, Tricia was sure of at least one thing: the political situation in the outer rim was about to get a lot more complicated.

  CHAPTER 16

  * * *

  Good news had been in short supply for Isadora. So when she had gotten a full field report from Nadia announcing a viable path toward the full-scale colonization of Calimor, she let the relief linger in her system for as long as it would stay. It made the final week of her long shuttle journey to the system’s capital world bearable.

  But despite the appearance of success, its limits were becoming all the clearer: a truly viable settlement might still be years out, they could only afford to bring about a hundred colonists out of cryo at the moment, and food needs would have to take priority over the more lucrative spice-growing for the foreseeable future.

  When Isadora had imagined what establishing their first colony would be like, she had pictured a self-sustaining flow of money and food that would feed on itself until the entire pod bays aboard the Preserver were empty. Calimor offered nothing like those dreams, not yet.

  Even still, the communication channel she shared with Russ, Nadia, and Vincent had exploded with energy. Russ, still in transit to Zoledo, peppered their group channel with advice about securing the new settlement and making sure it was defensible. Nadia continued to post status updates about the work she and Boyd were doing to bring the settlement up to working condition. Vincent flooded the channel with estimates of the total number of colonists they could bring out of cryo. Numbers that seemed to decrease every time he posted an update.

  But Isadora supposed she could stand to be less negative. After months of painstakingly cataloging their dwindling nutra reserves, Isadora and her team could finally think in terms of hundreds, not dozens. Progress.

  Isadora had to keep focusing on the positives, no matter how incremental they seemed. Otherwise, she’d wallow in her bitterness about leaving Meredith in cryo aboard the Preserver. A sacrifice of that magnitude felt like it should be worth more than a few hundred new colonists. During the journey to Obrigan, Isadora had spent plenty of time looking out the vessel’s window at the stars, wondering when, or if, the universe would let her have a breakthrough.

  To help overcome her disappointment at Arcena’s limited potential, she focused on what she could accomplish on Obrigan. She would have plenty to do coordinating the logistics of Calimor settlement, figuring out how to divide the crew they had tapped to bring out of cryo into waves, preparing the embassy for her executive cabinet, and coming up with plans to leverage their colonization efforts into an overall trade strategy. As her cabinet developed coherent agendas and strategies, she could oversee them and provide feedback in real-time.

  At the very least, it’d feel good to get out of the damn shuttle. She’d traveled with a skeleton crew of assistants: three aides, as well as two of Russ’ security staff. Along with the shuttle pilot, who the Union had graciously provided, it made for a cramped few weeks in transit from the Preserver.

  They passed straight through a security checkpoint station in orbit of the planet. Isadora joined the pilot in the cockpit, sitting down in the co-pilot’s chair. “I thought I’d enjoy the landing firsthand,” she said, strapping in.

  “First time?” the pilot grinned. He was a middle-aged man, thickset with his hairline fully receded from the top of his head.

  “In a way,” Isadora said. She had only been to space twice back in the Sol System, so this would only be her third time landing on a planet, and her first in the Natonus System. The Union pilot radioed back to the interior of the shuttle, asking them to strap in for their descent.

  She thought back to her teenage years. Before moving to Seattle, her parents had met and married across the Pacific in their native city of Busan. One time, when Isadora was only a little younger than Meredith was now, her parents took her back to Korea to visit her grandparents. Isadora reflected on that trip as their shuttle rocked violently from side to side.

  On Earth, even as mass urbanization continued throughout the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries, humanity was so spread out that nothing was ever totally concentrated into a single city.

  That had clearly not been the case in the Natonus System.

  The domineering height of Obrigan City’s skyscrapers were visible even from just below the cloudline, well before even the faint specks of pedestrians. The capital stretched out for miles in every direction, and its buildings were blocky and overwhelmingly functional. Isadora remembered liking the artistry of Busan’s urbanism: its petal-shaped skyscrapers, its sports stadiums, its oceanside green space.

  In Obrigan City, space was king, mostly thanks to archaic urban growth boundary laws from the earliest years of settlement back in the 2310s. At least, according to a half-remembered encyclopedia entry. Efficiency subsumed all other considerations, with half a dozen layers of pedestrian platforms anchored into the sides of the skyscrapers. Green space was an afterthought, hastily added in only wherever it wouldn’t obstruct the vertical growth of the city.

  A young Isadora had imagined Seattle and Busan to be puzzle pieces, each organized around a seaport that had grown obsolete long before Isadora had been born. From a plane, it looked like the city of her childhood and the city of her parents’ naturally locked into each other.

  Obrigan City, by contrast, simply was. Whatever geographic logics that had spawned its existence had long been rendered invisible beneath layers of concrete, steel, and glass. Isadora knew that the city was a testament to nearly a century of growth and progress, but the view reduced the city’s infinite complexities into a single, amorphous entity.

  Their pilot eased them into a lane of air traffic, finally giving Isadora a view of thousands of high-density airbuses, reducing congestion as traffic squirmed its way along the narrow paths between office parks.

  The Obrigan populace, or at least the present generation, had seemingly never had to operate under the kinds of resource calculus Isadora and her people faced. The planet beyond the capital city was teeming with arable land, plentiful waterways, and a rich abundance of metals. Anything the Obriganians couldn’t grow on their own, they could buy cheaply from a system-wide trade network operated by the government they dominated. Pretty ideal arrangement, Isadora thought.

  That was when the anxiety returned. It was always the same: a gentle gnawing pressure she felt in her back that suddenly made it difficult to breathe. Her skin turned both cool and sweaty in an instant. The Natonese people had taken nearly a century to work their way out of colonial-era scarcity into the present grandeur. She doubted she would be lucky enough to have a whole century to create the same opportunity for her own people.

&n
bsp; When there was no way to ease the fears of her titanic mission, all Isadora could do was to focus on the immediate step in front of her. That meant setting up shop in their new embassy. Making sure everything was prepared for her cabinet. Reviewing the expedition reports—she hoped to be able to call them settlement reports soon—from Calimor.

  The shuttle passed a security energy field pre-programmed to recognize their transponder frequency, and continued into the heart of the city. A giant mushroom-shaped dome towered over the rest of the buildings, likely the Government-General where Parliament and Tricia Favan’s executive office cohabitated. Their shuttle swerved to the right and circled a landing pad next to a strip of high-rise offices, each with a different flag atop.

  The shuttle’s engines stuttered, and they came to a full rest. She muttered a courteous thank-you to their pilot and passed through the crew chamber.

  Her five staff members looked equal parts tired and grateful for the opportunity to finally set foot on real ground. One of the two security personnel stood up. “Want us to scout the area out first?” she asked.

  Isadora gave the woman a warm grin. Obrigan City was the Union’s home base. Whatever attempts they made at securing themselves in the city would be futile. Or laughable. Still, she couldn’t help but admire the stubbornness behind the guard’s question. Russ had trained his people well.

  “For now, let’s assume this isn’t going to be a hot landing zone,” she said. “It’s important to me that we all walk out together.”

  “Yes ma’am,” the guard said.

  The honor of the first footfall on a Natonese planet had gone to Nadia, but that didn’t mean the present moment couldn’t be important in a personal sense. She tried to put her frustrations over the Calimor settlement project and the anxiety about what came next out of her head. But the door to the shuttle flapped open, and Tricia Favan standing right in front of them banished any other thoughts from her head.