When they first left Earth, humanity worked together for the species’ survival. But the people who arrived in Nova Vita were several generations past the original emigrants. Over the long journey, people went lifetimes without seeing a world outside of their own metal walls, and each ship had already developed distinct cultures by the time they arrived here.

Settling on different planets further divided us. The colonists took apart their generation ships, using the materials to construct their first homes and more. By the time they discovered that Pax had such hostile wildlife and rampant radiation, or that Deva’s native plants were often deadly, or that Gaia’s population was far too large for the planet’s unfruitful soil to support, or any of the other endless problems, each was too busy dealing with their own share of troubles to help the others when they asked for aid.

Many people died in those early days, and by the time the planets managed to agree on treaties and trade routes, resentment had sprouted. Soon new differences popped up—like attitudes toward the alien artifacts they discovered on every planet but Pax. Some, like the statues, are useless relics. Others—weapons, mostly—turned out to be useful tech that people found ways to activate. Most were wary of the mysterious Primus tech, but Gaians were eager to embrace it, while Nibirans banned it entirely, insisting that such technological obsession and hubris was what led to the rapid depletion of Earth’s resources. Soon other sticking points arose as well, such as issues with the legality of Devan plants, and moral concerns over the genetic tinkering and dubiously safe tech implants that Paxians insist are necessary to survive on their world.

Now, it’s been almost two hundred years since humanity settled here, and it seems the planets can hardly find anything to agree on anymore. For Gaia, the Nibiran plague carried by a traveling family was the final straw. After that, Gaia shut its borders to all interplanetary travel except for drones and its own citizens. The rest of the planets swiftly followed suit. After the appointment of their latest and most extreme president, I suspect the only reason Gaia allows any trade at all is that they haven’t found a way to fix their notoriously poor agriculture.

I won’t pretend to understand much about interplanetary politics, but I’m familiar with their consequences: closed borders, tightly regulated imports and exports, and absolutely zero tolerance for rule-breakers. If they were arrested, my siblings could petition their home-planets for extraction, but that rarely works; no government is eager to claim responsibility for smugglers, especially not with tensions between planets as high as they are. I don’t even have that long shot of an option. If Gaian law enforcement decided to gun us down here and claim we pulled our weapons first, nobody would bat an eye.