Charter World

Ren Alvarez fixes reclaimers. Water in, water out, and don't let anyone tell you the belt isn't the whole machine.

Then his uncle dies on a planet nobody wanted and leaves him a charter: one cracked dome, a grounded colony ship, and two hundred and twelve people asleep in cold storage, bought at auction with their debts attached.

Ren has a toolbag, a deed, and a dome that talks.

What he doesn't have is water, a roof, or any idea who to call. Neither did his uncle. That's how his uncle died.

Then the colonists start waking up, and the first one down the ramp is a shipwright with a hammer, a dead man's chair to point at, and an opinion about his ribs.

She's not the last.

A doctor who does not say thank you. A pilot with a pistol under her coat and two children she guards like cargo. A farmer who has never seen the sky and would rather not. A grandmother who counts every vote on blanket squares. And at the fence at dusk, every night, something tall and patient that lays a long hand on the fortieth post and waits for him to put his beside it.

They were sold. Ren refuses to buy. Nobody works off a debt in his bed, and he says so in front of the whole hold.

So they ask him instead.

A hundred days to make a dead claim a colony, with a Division auditor on the way, a salvage crew counting pods through the hold door, and a valley dying one acre at a time.

Ren has never been anyone's first call.

He's about to be five women's.

A sci-fi harem colony builder with no game system and no stat screens: earned women, hard logistics, consistent heat, an alien at the fence, and a count read aloud every night at dusk. Book one of The Alvarez Charter.