Turning Point
The Khestari are human. They have no home world, but live in a huge artificial city which they built between the stars. The city has grown over many generations, from a few hundred people to over fifty thousand, but their population has begun to fail. No one knows why, or how to reverse the decline, and eventually they will all die.The city is in the center of the Cold Star Cluster, which is in the center the Great Cloud, which hides the city and the Cluster from the rest of the galaxy. The worlds out there have forgotten the Khestari, who they once were, and why they had fled.
Most Khestari provide everything that is needed in a prosperous town. Some of them mine the cold stars of the Cluster for strange molecules, from which they create bizarre materials, which they use, among other things, to build their flicker-drive starships. Others trade these materials, and other goods, with other worlds in the Cluster, or out in the limb of galaxy beyond the Cloud.
None of the peoples with whom the Khestari trade are human, though there are some who almost look like they might be. All of them think of the Khestari as the Star Lords, because of their wealth and advanced technology. Some of them, in the Cluster and out in the limb, have star flight of their own, much less powerful than the Khestari ships, and they too are traders. Others have not yet discovered the whole scope of their world, and traders, if they go to them, must treat them very carefully.
Most of the non-human peoples have unusual body types. Many of them have a different number of limbs or other appendages. Some of them have different biologies. And a few are almost incomprehensible. Every culture is unique, and can be very complex, which makes trading with them a challenge.
Vaereon, one of the Khestari, wants to become a master trader like his recently deceased triple-great-grandfather. This takes years of study beyond his normal education, intense training which includes visits to the worlds of other peoples in the Cluster, and hands-on experience with one of those traders who can be a mentor for beginners. But having earned his license to trade is not enough. He has to have an expert in extra-cultural relations, someone who has been highly trained in that field, who can advise him when he is bargaining with other peoples. It is his lifemate, who has earned her license, who will be his cultural advisor.
Vaereon, his lifemate, and their crew overcome challenges, if sometimes in unconventional ways. They succeed in difficult trades, to the benefit of both sides. They occasionally take on other tasks, because no one else can or will do them. They are, after a while, allowed to trade wherever they choose, rather than to just the worlds to which the Board of Trade might assign them.
They find a derelict, a link to the Khestari’s lost past. They become accepted by the most bizarre of the other peoples, and are changed by them. They learn the cause of the Khestari’s decline, and how to reverse it, so that the Khestari can survive into a new future.
Genre: Science Fiction
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