I’ve been to a lot of South American worlds. They’ve worked real hard to stay non-aligned to any of the big powers out there. Even in the middle of The War, they declared neutrality and kept their ships out of the way. After The War ended, they welcomed anybody into their systems again. Bring money, and they’ve got whole star systems where you can do what you want. They don’t care where you’re from, or where you’re going. True neutral as they say. Kinda fun.
Novaya Rodina really isn’t a world that most of us would colonize now. She’s larger than Earth, has a larger mass shadow than Earth, and heavier surface gravity than Earth. Most of her surface is frozen solid, and her air is far thicker than Earth. It takes massive equalization chambers in the spaceports to even allow visitors to walk onto the planet without instantly injuring themselves. The original colonists did not have it easy.
Governor Penn wanted his new colony to be a haven to anyone, a place where the persecuted could live in peace. My family was not one of them, but we thought it could be a good place to do business. We invested heavily in the infrastructure of Philadelphia, and worked with many others to build a grand series of docks. The merchants came by the thousands, second only to London herself. And so Philadelphia became the greatest city in the New World.
I enjoy visiting the Russian worlds. Oh sure, we fought during The War, but there’s a big difference between the government and the people. And honestly, we have a lot more in common with the Russians than many other nations. And they have minimal centralized control. Basically, you can do whatever you want on a Russian world, as long as you don’t break the law. Just remember not to break the law there. You do not want to spend a night in a Russian jail.
Sometimes I’m surprised that humans live on Novaya Rodina at all. Historically, it all makes sense of course. It is the fourth of five habitable worlds, assuming flexible definitions of the term, in the Alpha Centauri Trinary star system, so of course we went there. And the Russians do have a rather flexible definition of the term habitable compared to the rest of us. They actually claim to like the world. Of course, they also claim to like Siberia.