PART I:

The Threat Emerges

The Zarathustra Company had operated successfully on the planet Zarathustra for twenty-five years under a Class-III colonial charter, which granted exclusive rights to exploit the planet's resources. The charter was predicated on one fundamental condition: Zarathustra must remain classified as an uninhabited world, devoid of any sapient native life forms. This classification was the legal foundation upon which the Company's entire operation rested—a multi-billion-sol enterprise encompassing mining operations, agricultural development, import-export monopolies, and the exclusive rights to the planet's lucrative sunstone trade.

The crisis began in mid-June of Colonial Year 654, when Bennett Rainsford, a xeno-naturalist employed by the Institute of Zeno-Sciences, transmitted a recording to Company scientist Juan Jimenez. The recording, made by independent prospector Jack Holloway, purported to show small, furry creatures exhibiting what Rainsford characterized as sapient behavior. These beings, which Holloway had dubbed "Fuzzies," were approximately two feet tall, covered in golden fur, and appeared to use simple tools.

Victor Grego, Chief of Operations for the Zarathustra Company, immediately recognized the existential threat this represented. If these Fuzzies were proven to be sapient beings, Zarathustra would be reclassified as a Class-IV planet—an inhabited world. Under Federation law, such a reclassification would automatically void the Company's charter. The Company would lose its exclusive rights to the planet's resources. What the Company had developed through massive capital investment and decades of work would be thrown open to the public domain. Squatters would rush in. The Company's carefully managed operations would descend into chaos.