[TST] Chapter 1 - Business As Usual

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Note :

Heya ! Here is the first chapter of my new pass at The Starlight Trader. Note that ALL the information and lore regarding the MC has been remade since my previous attempt, that kind of collapsed due to the scale at which I was operating. This is more at a Rogue Trader level (which I refer to in a tongue and cheek way in the chapter).

I got side tracked from writing the next chapter of Manaforged Robotics into making this, and had a flashpoll on discord. People seemed interested in continuing the streak with this, so here we are ! Apologies for the slight lateness, I forgot to set it up.

Also, please note, that unlike with MFR, I probably won't go into like a ten chapter streak to kick off the story, since I badly need some backlog for my other stories.

Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy, and I'd really love to hear your opinions ! I've tried really hard to work on my openings (usually one of the weakest parts of my novels), and I tried to venture a bit further from the MCs I usually write into someone who's more...not arrogant perhaps, but a lot more used to power.

Chapter 1

Neutral Space, Kalizir System

Planet of Kalizir Prime

Katya sighed as she received the ping on her implants.

She acknowledged it, and sent back an authorization, before gesturing at the maitre d'hotel, who scurried over immediately.

"Yes your grace?" Asked the man, obsequiously.

Katya had to silence an internal sigh. On the one hand, she was forever grateful for her titles and what they enabled her to do. On the other, she hated all the bowing and scraping that came with them.

"Here." She handed over a small ingot, and the maitre d'hotel's eyes went wide as he recognized the money and its denomination. Solari, the currency of the Stardust Empire, came in many shapes and sizes, but ingots like this, made of precious metals and inlaid with an arcane gem, were among the highest denominations the Empire recognized. "For the cleanup."

"The cleanup?" He asked, his eyes only reluctantly leaving the small fortune she'd just given him. It probably wasn't -quite- worth the whole restaurant, at least not after she blessed it with her presence and thus the fame that would come with it, but it was close.

Before she could answer, the doors crashed open, as a team of heavily armed and somewhat discreetly armored people came running through.

Their frontliners had their blades out, immediately fanning out to prevent a rush attack against their mage, as he surrounded them in a protective energy shield.

They were well trained, she'd give them that.

Her people were better.

The shield didn't get the chance to fully coalesce, as three supersonic darts punched right through it and downed the mage. The riflemen accompanying the group whirled around towards the table the unexpected fire had come from, but it was too late.

Katya watched as one of her disguised bodyguard whipped their hand out, screaming out an incantation.

All four of the remaining attackers died in an instant, as a blade of energy the size of a car sliced through them, the entrance, and finished its course into the pavement, burrowing a meter deep before finally exhausting its energy.

"A little more restraint next time." She chided the mage, who had the good grace to blush.

"Apologies ma'am." The mage gestured, as three whole tables' worth of guests got up, their previously hidden weapons now clear in their hands as they formed a protective ring around her and swept the area.

"It's alright." She nodded at the maitre d', who was now clutching the ingot for dear life, their face having completely drained of color at the sight of the carnage. "I'm afraid I will need to cut my evening short. It appears some ruffians think me a valid target." Or rather, a hit squad trying to look like ruffians. She'd seen enough assassins trying to masquerade as robbers to last her ten lifetimes. "Please, do give the desert to the guards I will leave behind, they will bring it to me." One of her men was already bagging the rest of her meal for her to finish in a more secure location. She knew better than to argue with her bodyguards when it came to her safety, but they also knew not to keep her from her favorite meals. "And I trust the tip will be enough for the damage."

The maitre d' looked at her with panicked eyes, clearly not having processed a single word she'd said, and Katya sighed, shaking her head, before simply gesturing.

The mage nodded, and a few curt orders later her party started moving out, guards sweeping every corner and shadows for more assassins.

Just another day serving the Empire, through the ley lines and far away.

*****

"I distinctly remembered requesting a discrete meeting." Said the middle aged in the center of the room, as Katya was ushered in. He flicked at glance at the soldiers flanking her, and dismissed them with a gesture.

The heavily armed troopers hesitated, but complied, leaving them alone, save for her bodyguards. A sign of trust. Or, most likely, an acknowledgment of the soldiers' impotence.

The ducal guard were respectable troops, but most of her own protectors had more actual combat experience than all of them combined.

"There would not have been much point." She sat down on one of the sofas arranged around a small table, not waiting for any kind of permission. A breach of etiquette, but a statement in its own right. The man glared at her briefly, before sighing and following suit on the other side of the table. "There is only one person in this city worth my time."

"Well, I suppose that is flattering." He said, smiling in a way that completely failed to reach his eyes. "So. Lady Katya, what can a humble duke of a backwater world do for the Empire's anointed?"

She smiled.

"First of all, I am not the Empire's anointed. My Letter of Commerce gives me wide ranging discretion within and without the Empire, as well as many privileges, but I am not an Imperial official."

"Of course."

They both knew that was a lie. But a necessary one. A Sanctioned Trader's Letter of Commerce was a natural evolution of the corsairs' Letters of Marque, when it became clear that Imperial expansion would go through economic as well as military means. Besides which, spaceships were expensive, and the economy of many Imperial worlds, from the Core to the Outer Reach, relied on their construction and maintenance. Shooting them out of the skies was rather counterproductive on many levels.

In effect, it cleared all of her actions as being for the good of the Empire. Only the highest levels of the Empire's hierarchy could override that, and even if they did, it was usually simpler and far less expensive to cut a deal with a rogue Sanctioned Trader, than to track them down with the Imperial Navy.

There were exceptions. Some actions the Empire would never let slide, but by and large she could use her money, influence and military power to do as she wished without fear of the Navy's retribution.

"Nevertheless. You surely know why I am here. Your brother, the king, has died, with his heir barely old enough to talk, leaving his realm in chaos. You're in the middle of a succession crisis that isn't being called a civil war yet simply because all three sides have refused to attack each other in an official capacity."

"I have attacked no one. Officially or otherwise." Growled the duke, before sighing. "But yes. The other...candidates for the regency have taken action against one another, no matter how much they wish to pretend otherwise." He gazed at her. "I assume one of them took action against you as well."

"Probably both." The restaurant attack had been only the third attempt. The first had been a supremely stupid one involving a low altitude supersonic interceptor, probably from some idiotic black ops officer that didn't understand that evasion was meaningless when the other side had a starship in orbit and was perfectly willing to resort to orbital bombardment.

The second had been sneakier, with a bridge rigged to blow by a group of saboteurs, which she simply bypassed. No reason to let the other side know one of her forward teams had detected the trap after all, and she was sure there would be some very interesting tidbits of information once that group came home and led her people to their handler.

"Yes. I heard about your, ah, 'weapons test'. Regardless, what can I possibly offer you? Besides my family name, of course." He squinted at her. "That dog of a count's only claim to the regency is based on his political influence and industrial might, but my sister's is as solid as my own. Actually, given that she has the allegiance of most of the military, and holds the capital, I would say she has a much greater one."

Katya smiled.

"Oh, that's simple. You're right, I do need legitimacy, which is why I am talking to you. The reason why I am not talking to your sister is that she is a repulsive sociopath whose 'authority' thrives on death squads, disappearing people with her secret police, and the kind of atrocities that go in the history books."

The duke snorted.

"And you are coming to me because I hold the moral high ground?"

"No, I am coming to you because your sister's psychotic bloodbaths will end up causing an escalating cycle of uprisings that will eventually dethrone her, rendering any investments I made worthless. Besides which, that abomination you call a sibling would also stab me in the back the second she saw the opportunity. Which, I presume, is why you decided to stay far, far away when she made the offer to co-chair the regency with you."

The duke gazed at her, their eyes meeting for a solid few seconds, before he slowly nodded.

"Yes. She would. So, you came to me for...reliability?"

Katya leaned back into the sofa, gesturing at one of her guards, who immediately handed her an extravagantly wrapped box, which she promptly tore apart.

"Something like that." And the fact that she would be able to sleep at night after putting him in power. "There are other factors, of course. Your diplomatic missions, for example."

She finished unwrapping the box, and opened it, revealing a magnificent, fist sized cake topped with a kind of ice cream, a spoon right beside it, and she began digging in as the duke simply stared.

They were entering into the meaty part of the negotiations. And when that happened, it paid to have the other side off balance.

Also she really wanted to eat that desert. Damned assassins. Couldn't they have waited fifteen more minutes?

"My 'missions' as you call them, were simply visiting a few neighboring worlds and delivering platitudes."

Katya pointed her spoon at the man.

"And that gave you ten times the knowledge of interstellar commerce, how the galaxy actually works and familiarity with your neighbors than effectively any other candidate." Or actually basically anyone on the planet that wasn't a starship captain or the former minister of trade, who was in a coma he wasn't likely to wake up from, after throwing his support behind the third pretender, the count, and realizing too late the massive mistake that had been. Rule one, if your chosen candidate doesn't hold the capital, declare your support after you've left it. "Those count for a lot in my book, especially given my plans."

"Yes. I've heard of your little pocket empire. What is it, five worlds now?"

"Six." She corrected. "And three of those are colonies."

"Three worlds and three fledgling colonies then. All of which you have sunk an unfathomable amount of money into."

"It's called long term planning. Most people cannot see past the next quarter, or the next year. I plan in decades." Centuries, really, but he didn't need to know that. The extent to which she had been augmented was uncomfortable to most, and even in the Empire, life extension tech was almost taboo. "A few hundred billions invested in the short term, trillions of benefit in the long term."

That was grossly oversimplifying it of course. Hundreds of billions of Solari was a staggering amount of money, given the high value of the currency, but ninety percent of what she'd be bringing in wouldn't be money.

It would come in the form of teachers, academics, engineers. Machine tools, manuals and cargo ships. People and the means to build universities, factories and infrastructure, to lift a planet that was struggling with making even simple shard rifles into a fully industrialized world.

"I see. And what would be in it for me? I assume you have some form of incentive, given that you are effectively asking me to be your puppet."

Katya smiled.

"I'm not going to puppeteer you. Will I be the senior figure in the power dynamic? Yes. I'll have a stranglehold on your interstellar trade, your industry and most of the education system. And yes, push comes to shove, I will have my personal forces, naval or otherwise." Not to mention the support of her other worlds. Their 'navies', such as they were, consisted of a few obsolete patrol ships she bought for cheap from Imperial border worlds, but their ground forces were another thing entirely. "But I won't claim ownership of this planet or its throne."

"You will merely be the power behind it, you mean."

She nodded.

"Precisely." She shrugged at his gaze. "One cannot rule alone. You will always have to deal with power blocs. Furthermore, I would be more of a distant overlord. I care not to micromanage those I associate with, so long as my plans are fulfilled."

"How very nice of you."

"Well, I am Imperial."

"I suppose there would be more personal incentives as well."

"But of course. Besides helping you gain your brother's throne and surviving this mess to begin with, my plan would make your world a shining beacon of prosperity, and incidentally make you one of the richest men in the sector. You may argue with my vision but you cannot dispute the fact that the worlds I have under my umbrella haven't advanced by leaps and bounds both in terms of their own wealth and the livelihood of their citizenry." He nodded, and she continued. "And, as a bonus to a man who genuinely loved his older brother and departed wife, I'll stop your sister from sliding a knife in your nephew's back, which you know she will do, once he has outlived his usefulness to her."

The duke looked at her, and after a few silent seconds, held out his hand.

"I believe we have a deal."

She took it.

"Good. Then let's get to work."