Departure

America

Eden was sitting at the table silently doing his homework while I was having an existential crisis about Orion A. Should I really trust them? Their deal seems a little sketch to me however, they have been good to us. Then my tablet went off. It brought me back to reality and I scrambled out of my seat to go get it.

Eden looked over at me and then looked back to his homework. My existential crises are normal to Eden now. I didn't even look at my tablet before answering it. When I answered it was the Chancellor of Orion B.

"Chancellor, I didn't expect to hear from you." I put on my diplomatic smile.

"Enough with the formalities, this is important." The Chancellor said in a stern voice.

I nodded.

"What is so important Chancellor?"

"As you know, the Chancellor of Orion A and I don't get along."

"I do know that, why don't you get along?"

"It was a long time ago, back when we were new to the whole Chancellor thing however, he was better at it than me. America, are you familiar with the term Sharecropping?"

" I believe so, it's when the wealthy hire the poor to tend to their plantations. The plantation workers wouldn't get paid much and were often in debt to the plantation owners so they were stuck at that one plantation until they worked off their debts. It was similar to slavery and the term was usually used to describe the African American's jobs during the reconstruction era of the United States' history."

"You know your history. That's a good skill for a leader to have. But yes, the other Chancellor caught us in something similar to sharecropping. We were broke and the other Chancellor offered to pay off our debts in exchange for 75% of our oil profits."

"75%! That's insane. Only a madman would make a deal like that."

"Or a broke man. Just like Orion A promised, they paid off our debts. Little did I realize I had just promised my people a life of legal slavery." the Chancellor sighed.

"So now they milk all your money. Why does this involve me?"

"So I don't like this man so I have people trying to make a case against this guy and I think I know the reason why he is gaining support in the council."

"Yea so do I. He is a businessman and when he buys the whole galaxy he will get 99% of everything."

"So you do know what I am talking about."

"Of course. I'm not dumb you know."

"I think you might be the smartest person around. It took us years to see through the facade and here you are not even a decade later regretting ever meeting the guy. Extraordinary." The Chancellor marvels.

"Anyway then you should know that he is trying to do the same thing with every planet that has an Earth originated colony on it."

"How do we stop that?"

"We take away his strength."

"Which is?"

"The hundreds of planets backing him up in the council. If he gets every planet's support he can literally do anything he wants and no one will be able to stop him because they are legally obliged not to." The Chancellor explains.

"So what do I do about that?"

"You withdraw your support."

"What will that do? Like you said he has hundreds of planets backing him up in the Council room."