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Chapter 31 - The Broken Commonwealth[]
Somewhere z-axis 37 Light Years from Coventry
3147
"Feeling better, Pumpkin?" Patrick Ngo was in his eighties. "Did you sleep okay?"
Sharon stretched and unlocked her rigging strap from the sleep-pod. "Yes, Uncle, thank you for your hospitality."
"You got a taste of it, but not a taste for it, ayeh?" he asked.
"You could say I have seen the elephant and turned away." she told him. "You were right, they're hopeless."
"Maybe not entirely right. So what brought my Niece to the point she would resign her commission and spend eight months looking for me?" he inquired, it was the same question every time.
"What's the job today?" she deflected.
"We're prospecting on a colloid, looking for light elements and useful carbon compounds, unless you want another shift in the greenhouse?" he told her
"I'll do the mining." she asserted. "I need to break something."
"Still angry, huh?" her Uncle asked
She nodded. "Still angry. Still Disappointed."
"You know you need to go home." he told her. "To Kowloon, eventually."
"They're better off without me." she said, "I made a mess of things, Uncle. I tried to fix the mess Mom left, and I made it so much worse."
"It can't be that big a mistake." he told her.
"It's big enough. I sent my...the guy, you know? The one who fit me? I sent him off to fight a war, and took a job for the Archon, only she decided she didn't need to be the boss and bent the knee to the Wolves, and then, I couldn't even do my job."
"Politics? Mom was always pretty good at that, and your mother was too." he told her.
"I suck at it. Every call was just one more disaster. When I managed to get things to go right there it would pop up again, some order signed by one of the Archons, or from their staff, interfering, changing, making changes, and then, there's the corruption!" Sharon said
"Mom hated that too. I think it's why she stayed as far from the Throne as they would let her." He noted.
"I should've," she groaned, "but I didn't. I was losing my damned mind down there."
"Dad would be disappointed." he told her, "He was pissed off enough about me choosing this life over what he called my 'responsibilities'...but you need to go home. You resigned, you've spent an admittedly lovely six months out here with me, but you're The Duchess of Kowloon."
"This is leading up to something." she said
"Yeah. I know you won't go on your own, so I'm going to take you home." he told her, "And I guess we'll visit and try to lend a hand undoing the mess you've no doubt caused by storming off into the deep black instead of going back where you belong."