Her feet still tingled with giddiness. Just a few years out of school, working her tail off to get out of her backward, festering city on Prosper and into a top-tier university, and now she’d been assigned a Dukedom!

“Who did you piss off to get this assignment?” Administrator Tonkin asked.

Farbind was fast closing on the shuttle’s viewscreens. The Prosper ship that had transported Natalya to the planet had already turned around, its opalescents leaving a sparkling wake that twinkled to nothing as the ship bounded across the galaxy.

The Administrator had come in a shuttle to bring Natalya to the surface. The newly-minted Duke found herself subduing a smile for all the pomp and glamour of the experience. She wondered if there would be a parade celebrating the arrival of Farbind’s new Duke. Similar celebrations had occurred on other colony planets.

But Tonkin did not seem in a celebratory mood, nor did he smile at the planet as they approached its atmosphere. He wore faded blue slacks and a brown shirt with a tattered collar. His hair was parted, but was too long to look professional. His tired expression matched the aged look of his dulled clothing.

“Excuse me?” Natalya asked.

“Who’d you piss off? Overseeing an evacuation is going to be tough if Prosper won’t send ships to get us out of this hole in space,” Tonkin grumbled.

Crimson red, continent-sized blocks of metal dotted the surface like an ancient suit of plate armor. There was no standing water, though the whirling clouds reminded Natalya that it did rain quite often. Bare soil ran like rivers through the planet, wide trenches of dirt marking the gaps between plates of ore.

Natalya spotted the defensive cannon built on the planet’s lone, potato-shaped moon, Tether. A ring of satellites also orbited the planet, cannon and missile platforms, some armed with neutron bombs.

Tarantula, the capital of Farbind, named for its spider-like shape where a dozen soil trenches met, shone in the distance. The planet’s distant sun, a greenish-yellow hue and slightly colder than Prosper’s golden star, was just beginning to peak over the horizon as the shuttle burned its way through the atmosphere.

“Chairman Qin himself gave me this assignment,” Natalya answered. “He wasn’t angry at me, he chose me.”

“The new Chairman has been doing a lot since that Prophet assassinated Chairwoman Xia,” Tonkin said.

“I suppose.”

“Must have been nobody else willing to take his offer.”

“Is there something I haven’t been told? I was informed a platinum deposit had been found, and that there were competing claims by the colonies.”

“The Changyu are sending a mining ship. It’s nearly here. The Gaozu are threatening to go to war over it, and that ship you showed up on was the only word we’ve gotten from Prosper about whether they’ll send a defense. Apparently, the word is no.”

“I wasn’t informed about this.”

“Your information is dated, it seems.”

“But this is Prosper’s planet. How can the colonies claim it?”

“Farbind started Prosper-forming about a hundred years ago, meant to be some glorious accomplishment or what-not. The civil war shook that up, and when the Changyu and Gaozu colonies formed their governments, those few still working on this planet got caught between. Prosper’s claims are just about as official as the other colonies.’”

“The colonies’ existence as independent entities is tenuous, Mr. Tonkin,” Natalya noted.

Tonkin chuckled. “Yeah, you think that. Prosper can claim it all it wants, but Changyu and Gaozu have a dozen other planets they want to take from each other. Farbind’s been close to neutral as anything, worthless enough no one cared about it. Now that it’s valuable, I haven’t been able to get any sleep over all the threats.”

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

The shuttle flew over the low buildings of Tarantula to the three skyscrapers built of shimmering crimson metal at the city’s center. They looked like the claws of an insect, spiking from the planet’s surface with long, thin farmland spreading from the spider’s legs. Buildings lined the edges of the soil like beachside homes, raised structures made from the red metal of the planet’s surface.

They landed on the round platform that jutted out from Tarantula’s central skyscraper. It resembled the arching claw of a praying mantis. As the shuttle doors opened, Natalya exited and breathed in the new air of this resource-rich, young planet.

“There’s another matter. A Khitan ship has been spotted not far from our system,” Tonkin said.

Khitans were nomads, space-faring people who held no allegiance to any world. They were born, lived, and died on their conflagration of ships, scavenging their way across the galaxy in tight-knit, lawless families.

“Khitans are no threat,” Natalya said.

“They think they’re getting asylum. Take a look at this,” Tonkin said, holding up a datasheet. He flicked through scrolling pieces of information, atmospheric statistics, along with mining and farming progress throughout Farbind, to a video.

An old woman stood on the bridge of a fern-decorated ship. A dozen smiling faces stood beside her as she said, “We thank you for your offer, wondrous Duke.”

Tonkin paused the video and said, “That’s Matriarch Uneu of the Liao. Along with her son, Pul, and the rest of her clan. Captain Tsara of the Liao asked for asylum on Farbind. Qin and the former Duke offered it to them.”

“How far away are they?” Natalya asked.

“A few days.”

“One thing at a time, then. The colonies are our concern, Tonkin, we will worry about the Khitan when they arrive.”

The prospect of allowing nomads on her planet unsettled Natalya. But she would honor the agreement. Khitan were harmless, for the most part, but no one wanted to offer them a planet to settle for fear of overcrowding. Natalya actually grew excited, the more she thought about it. Being the first planet to allow Khitan settlers would certainly cement her position as a woman of change and authority. And since the Zhou had apparently approved it, she could take credit without fighting any political battles.

“Changyu and Gaozu, yes,” Tonkin said, bringing Natalya’s thoughts back to the colonial dispute.

“Changyu and Gaozu are names they themselves use. They are colonies, and will be returned to Prosper rule,” Natalya said, knowing her position on this planet was just another step toward ensuring that fact.

She stood atop the skyscraper’s high platform, looking down on the planet she oversaw. She crossed her arms behind her back, smiling with surety that she herself would end the colonial separations.

Farbind was the beginning of her journey, the end of which she saw the Chair of Zhou, and all the planets in the galaxy united once more.

“You gonna tell that to the Gaozu Ambassador?” Tonkin asked as they approached the door that led inside the building.

“If they’re sending a representative—” Natalya began.

“Sending? He’s waiting in your office.”

Natalya stopped.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because no one wanted to stop him. Koji Montenegro is his name,” Tonkin explained.

“It seems I do have old information,” Natalya admitted, and pushed open the shuttle platform door.

Tonkin grabbed her by the shoulder and forced Natalya to face him, her hand pulled away from the door’s polished, red metal handle. “Then you need to know this. The Changyu mining ship will be here in three days. You can count on it not being alone. Changyu and Gaozu are probably sending entire fleets. Both say they’re just setting up a mining colony, but you and I know peace doesn’t happen when two fleets start orbiting the same planet. Gaozu knows they moved too slow and they’re at a disadvantage. Who knows when their fleet will—”

Natalya twisted out of Tonkin’s grasp. “I can handle the situation, Administrator Tonkin.”

They entered the building, the soft glow of lighting fixtures like candles on the wall. Natalya noted the architecture was that of gilded pragmatism. Shimmering beams of polished, red metal held up the square halls. They had the heady smell of a jeweler’s shop. No carpets or tiles, Natalya’s black, felt flats chimed in her walk on the metal floors as Tonkin led her to her office on muffled, rubber soles.

“Were you told that we can’t handle a fleet, not Gaozu or Changyu and certainly not both? Our defenses are powerful but dated. Good for pirates, not militaries,” Tonkin explained.

“Rebels, Tonkin. I’ll make sure it doesn’t come to that,” Natalya said.

“I had asked for an evacuation, or a fleet to defend us.”

“And you got me,” Natalya said with a smile as they stopped in front of a crimson door, the same red steel as the planet’s surface. It was already marked with her name, Natalya Frazier, Duke, and had a pair of actual candles lit on either side of the door, along with an empty, black receptionist’s desk a few meters away.

A fear welled up in her, but Natalya ignored it. She told herself she was ready for anything, even facing down a bullheaded rebel in her office when she was still lagging from her journey. Her outfit made her feel more confident. She’d been hoping for a parade, and wore her best suit for the occasion. The jacket was black, with a navy-blue blouse that flared almost skirt-like at the waist. She felt as strong as Xia in such attire.

“Like I said. Who’d you piss off? I’m betting you’re as much a write-off as I am,” Tonkin continued.

“Don’t bet against me, Tonkin,” Natalya said. She smiled, and pushed open the door.