Before becoming a colonial governor, Katrina Polk had been an entrepreneur. A dime a dozen in the Republic, though unlike the many small business owners and self-employed that tried to make a living in the core worlds, her refining company had done well enough to enter the New Iridia Stock Exchange. And she accomplished that with just a handful of negotiations and a million-credit-loan.
Now, sitting at the dinner table with one of the most powerful men she’d ever met, she knew the upcoming negotiations could make or break her underdeveloped colony.
“Are you finished with your plate, madam Governor?”
The young female voice brought her back to the present. Looking up, she saw the steward standing next to her seat. Looking back down at her plate, which only held scraps of what had been the finest beef steak she’d ever eaten.
Looking to her two advisors left and right, she noted -with some amusement- that the hardy mining chief and bookish deputy chief engineer both looked more than ready to have second or third portions.
“I am.” She said, looking back at the steward and nodding in satisfaction. “That steak was excellent.”
“You are most welcome, madam.” The steward bowed lightly with a genuine smile.
The raven-haired woman quickly cleaned up the table, before serving them an emerald-colored brew in fine crystal glasses. It was warm, and aromatic. Smelled like mint yet…entirely different. Fascinating. Katrina stared at her glass apprehensively, wondering just what they’d been served.
The duke noticed their hesitation, and realization dawned on his face. “I suppose we’ve discovered another casualty of time. This is matcha tea. Tea is a beverage made by boiling the leaves of the tea plant in water. Matcha tea is made using powdered green tea leaves. The concoction is quite refreshing, and I can vouch for its energizing qualities.”
Katrina looked to her right at Paula Styles, her deputy chief engineer. The woman had already grasped her glass, looking mesmerized.
“This seems quite similar to chai, right Ms. Styles?”
“What?” The engineer asked, staring up in confusion. “Oh, y-yes ma’am. I’d wager its the same thing. Maybe the linguistics got mixed up along the way, but this sounds exactly like the recipe for chai.”
The duke nodded. “Quite. Chai and tea are —or were— two interchangeable words. It seems that somewhere along the past millennium the word ‘tea’ was lost.”
“Well then, your lordship, on behalf of modern humanity I thank you for bringing it back.” Katrina smiled. “Cheers.”
Despite their differences, the six of them drank their tea merrily. Katrina hadn’t come across chai many times in her life, instead preferring coffee, but this ‘matcha’ chai was truly refreshing.
“Say, your lordship, you wouldn’t happen to have some extra matcha tea to trade?”
The duke smiled at her question, and shook his head. “We barely have enough for eighty standard t-days. But, of course, we could always grow some more, among several other things. We just need a planet to farm.”
“I…uhm.” Katrina stammered. “I believe we could lease you some territory on Polaris, in return for a percentage of your crop.”
“I was thinking bigger.” The duke said, and for a moment Katrina thought her colony was about to be annexed. Then a hologram appeared over the table without warning, forming into Polaris’s star system, Pollux.
Unlike most systems, Pollux was rather old. Pollux I was a G-type main sequence star on its last legs; it barely had dozen million years to go before its hydrogen core was exhausted and it collapsed, turning the star into a red giant. Aside from the yellow dwarf, the system had several other planetary bodies.
The first two worlds were expectedly harsh, being so close to the star. Pollux II was a volcanic world, so hot that lava turned into gasses during the day. Pollux III was a tiny world barely worthy of the name planet that had a thick sulfuric atmosphere, rendering it useless for any purpose other than study.
Pollux IV…was Polaris. A rather cold world inside the system’s Goldilocks zone with a gravity of 9.87 meters per second squared, or about half a percentage above Ancient Terra’s own gravitic field, though quite smaller and denser. Even from high orbit, the Akrites Fleet had already located several untapped mineral deposits, from iron and copper to uranium and titanium. The perfect mining world.
The Duke’s finger landed not on Polaris, but on the planet symmetrically opposite to it from the star’s frame of reference. Pollux V shared some similarities with its orbital twin, though nobody could ever mix up the two. Polaris was cold, small, and resource rich, while Pollux V was temperate, large and devoid of obvious resource deposits.
“We’d like to buy this planet off you, please.”
+++
Katrina had expected much of this ‘dinner’.
Trade, for one. She had warehouses full of refined minerals, rare earths and even transuranics waiting for a merchant to trade for the goods and services that a colony thirsted for. Unfortunately, the latest bout of ‘disagreements’ between the major polities had left routes blocked or lacking in security. Maybe the duke had some of the items on the colony’s ‘shopping list’ to trade for her refined minerals.
Stolen novel; please report.
And of course, there was security. Piracy had almost claimed her colony once, and the duke’s fleet had proven to be an apt military unit. If the duke would accept some form of payment —short of annexation or servitude— she would accept. Maybe they coud even be charmed or bribed into leaving a few weapons or shield emitters to upgrade the station with.
What she hadn’t expected, however, was selling a piece of the star system.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t, legally speaking. By all rights, the Colonial State of Polaris was the sole and complete owner of the Praxis system.
‘But…why isn’t he just taking it?’ Katrina asked herself.
There was nothing stopping the duke from parking his fleet above Praxis V and proclaiming his own colonial state. Polaris had a couple of transorbital shuttles that could maybe make it to the Kuiper belt in three or four weeks, but no actual ships. Compared to that ‘fleet’, the Akrites Fleet was a titan of war. Katrina had no doubt in her mind that if the Duke wanted to, he could annex Polaris under the threat of orbital bombardment and crown himself dictator without a drop of blood spilled.
And yet here he was, in all his ducal grace, asking to purchase that dead, resourceless ball of dirt.
“Are you alright, Governor?” The duke’s voice interrupted her train of thought. With an involuntary shake she focused back on his face, which had adopted a concerned expression. “Would you like to rest?”
“N-No, your lordship, I’m fine.” Katrina shook her head, sneaking glances at her two advisors. The pair was just as confused as she was. “You said you wanted to…buy Praxis V?”
“Quite so. Is that a problem?” The young lord asked, sounding disappointed.
“No, no.” She refuted, blanching at his tone. “I’m just…surprised, that is all.”
Gathering her thoughts, she berated herself. The luxurious dinner and welcoming conversation had lulled her into complacency, and she had almost forgotten that she was treading on thin ice. Negotiations could easily turn into orders in situations where the balance of power was so skewed, and she had a colony to take care of.
“I suppose that makes sense.” Duke Akrites chuckled. “I doubt it’s every day that you get such offers.”
“Correct, though that’s not quite why I’m surprised.” Katrina said. “Frankly, I don’t understand why you would want to buy the planet. The returns on mining would be abysmal, to say the least.”
“So what.” He shrugged, a gesture that felt most strange for a man in uniform. “We only need enough to build housing and infrastructure. Everything else can be built in orbit, and I’d much rather mine asteroids than ship materials up to orbit, even if the planet was made entirely of ore. The shuttle maintenance alone would bankrupt my fleet.”
Katrina almost rebuked him. After all, space mining and orbital infrastructure are still far more expensive than their ground-side variants. People had to be paid more, maintenance cycles were shorter, machines were more expensive and the electricity bill was an order of magnitude fatter. The entire concept of a for-profit colony necessitated that exports brought in more than imports costed, and space mining’s low margins only made sense with large scale operations backed by local industry.
Thankfully, she stopped herself short of berating a man backed by a few hundred kilotons of warship. Not just because it would be unwise, but because his stance made sense, in a way. After all, he had a fleet.
Not just warships, but civilian spacecraft. Passenger craft, freighters —some enormous and others barely a few dozen meters long— and an entire mobile fucking refinery to boot.
He didn’t care about profit margins, because he might just be able to jurry-rig an internal economy. Colonies usually depended on profits to secure industrial goods and defenses, but if he could deal with that then his imports would be nill.
“I…see.” Katrina nodded weakly, feeling almost dizzy after such a realization. “Well then, may I and my advisors be allowed some time and privacy to confer? Say, ten or fifteen minutes?”
The duke nodded, abruptly standing up. “I and my staff will also confer, in the drawing room next door. You have this room all to yourselves; I assure you your privacy will not be breached. My steward will notify you when the time is up.”
+++
James sat at the table of his dining room, looking at the little green dot of a shuttle undocking from his flagship as projected from the table’s holo. In front of him lay a couple pages of paper, signed by both him and Governor Polk. Her excellency held an identical copy of them in her briefcase as she made her way back to Polaris to discuss with the rest of the colonial council.
“How do you feel about this, ladies and gentlemen?” He asked the gathered officers of his staff.
Outside of his quarters, these six officers all listened to his orders and stood by his decisions as if they were their own. James ran his fleet tight as a single ship, and there was no room for the poison of doubt. But inside here, inside the little box of utter privacy that were his personal quarters, these men and women would often be allowed to voice doubts, objections and even disagreements openly.
Commander Michael Smith, his tactical officer, was the first to raise his hand. James nodded, allowing him to speak.
“I believe we were too lenient, sir.” Smith plainly stated, his face cold. “We could have taken control of Polaris, bloodlessly so. The pirates defanged their orbital, and they’ve no other defenses to speak of against our ships. With how concentrated the population is —thanks to the harsh climate— merely raising a corps of collaborationists to enforce law and order would’ve sufficed to keep the colony in check.”
James shook his head. The commander was a savant in space combat, as many a victory had shown, but he was almost…clinical in the execution of his goals. Loyal to a fault, yes, but if let loose to conquer a fief for his lord he would paint the planets red.
“You fail to estimate the worth of loyalty, Michael. I completely agree that your proposed plan was actionable, and its short-term effects would bring us kilotons of raw materials with few costs. Yet long-term, pure use of force only breeds dissent.”
The commander nodded in understanding, though James doubted he’d turn the man into a humanitarian any time soon. Michael Smith was a fast learner, yes, but the way he thought was fundementally different to most people. Neurological profiles like his were common among the average civilian, but the circumstances of his orphaning, like many of those taken in by the Domus Pupilis, had irrevocably changed him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Commander Noriega raise her hand.
“Still, sir, we could’ve negotiated for a lower price tag. Industrial support was a given, antimatter fuel was acceptable…but warships?”
James shook his head. “You and I both know those aren’t real warships, Harriet. I’d rather give away a squadron of patrol boats than dedicate our escort ships to anti-piracy operations. Plus, you can’t use the ships as-is.”
His chief of staff raised one eyebrow in confusion, only for her face to come alive with realization. “They’ll need us to keep them running.”
“Precisely.” He nodded with some satisfaction. “They’ll need somebody to train the crews, technicians, officers…everybody. If they want to repair or upgrade their ships, they’ll come to us first. Their spacers will be partial to the dynasty, and their military industry will be geared to support Akrites-designed technology. Add in the industrial and energy agreement, and their economy will also be dependent on us. We will have control of them, without as much as a single threat.”