The People of a Thousand Suns

Hana is a recently graduated diplomat, leaving on her first assignment. She must travel to a world she has never heard of and try to stop a war. The war may already have begun. It may never have happened. There is no way to know, until she arrives, because news can only travel as fast as a starship.

Hana has no authority, and no ability to compel the warring parties to make peace, and she cannot leave until the war is over. And if that takes more than a week - the length of time a starship remains in orbit around any planet - then the vessel she arrived on will leave without her, and she will have to wait for the next.

That wait could take her whole life.

It is a backwater planet, with neither strategic importance nor much of anything to trade. Exactly the kind of planet a recent-graduated diplomat is sent to. And on a forgotten, backwater planet, in a turbulent, seething galaxy, that next ship might be a very long time coming. It could be years, or even decades.

If Hana fails to make peace in a week, she may be stuck, and her career over before it has begun.

She may also be dead, if her peacemaking goes very badly wrong.

* * *

And to save people starting if it isn’t their thing, this is meant to be gritty, realistic space opera. So no aliens, no FTL, no neutrino communications, the technology is just there and who cares how it works, planets are sovereign polities and interplanetary war is almost impossible - and also pointless - but conflicts within a planet are common and this is what Hana wants to stop. So also, she isn’t saving the galaxy or anything important!