Spots

Political survival requires understanding local power dynamics over distant…

Stephen Silk's anonymous essay on galactic imperialism earns him an assignment to New Texas, a frontier planet where previous Solar League ambassadors met ruin or violent deaths. The planet supplies meat to the galaxy while maintaining an aggressive culture of extreme independence. Appointed Ambassador after his predecessor's murder, Silk receives secret instructions to wear traditional Texan sidearms and navigate a complex geopolitical triangle between local ranchers, League imperialists, and the predatory alien z'Srauff.

CHAPTER I → CHAPTER IV

Planetary law reframes political assassination as a constitutional right of…

New Texas governs violence through a specialized court that acquits killers if their political victims passed intolerable laws. When Ambassador Silk witnesses a citizen freed for slaying a senator who proposed income taxes, he recognizes that foreign diplomats carry no automatic legal immunity on this frontier. After saving the Texan President from a knife attack, Silk investigates his predecessor's murder and discovers the local Bonney syndicate executed the hit using high-powered alien weaponry provided by z'Srauff conspirators.

CHAPTER V → CHAPTER VIII

Diplomatic immunity demands refusing local jurisdiction to deliver direct…

During the trial of the Bonney brothers, Ambassador Silk exposes alien payments made to local corrupt officials through z'Srauff dry-goods fronts. Rather than letting the local political court try the assassins, Silk formally denies the court's jurisdiction over League diplomats, preventing alien covert influence from establishing a precedent of legal political murder against ambassadors. Once the court releases the killers on jurisdictional grounds, Silk immediately draws his twin Krupp-Tatta automatics and executes all three gunmen in open court.

CHAPTER IX → CHAPTER XI

Book

Lone Star Planet

A sharp satirical space western where diplomatic survival depends on quick draws and local legal loopholes.

0:00
@spot #sci-fi #satire #mystery #diplomacy
Read Lone Star Planet in full
See more like this