Orbital

Sylvain Runberg and Serge Pellé's Orbital began at Dupuis in 2006. Human Caleb and Sandjarr Mézoké work together for an interstellar diplomatic organization centered on the immense Orbital station.

Their assignments take them into conflicts between cultures whose grievances do not vanish merely because a confederation exists. The partners' own histories give every negotiation a personal edge.

The series puts peacemaking in the action role usually occupied by conquest or combat. Its missions still have danger and spectacle, but the central achievement is often keeping people talking.

Making Caleb and Mézoké a cross-cultural pair prevents the politics from becoming a remote lecture. Their cooperation is itself one of the story's difficult political acts.

The confederation brings hundreds of alien peoples into shared institutions. That structure turns first contact into an ongoing problem of rights, borders, memory, and compromise.

The giant station is more than a travel hub. It is the place where an ideal of coexistence has to survive the pressures generated by the worlds it connects.

Pellé's crowded environments and varied alien designs make diplomacy look physically complicated. Different bodies must occupy the same chambers, streets, and ships.

The larger settings give the series its space-opera sweep. Close character work keeps the scale tied to the two agents tasked with navigating it.