California City, planet of El Dorado (Tau Boötis Ae) Tau Boötis System, 50.8 light years from Earth The 91-year-old man, who had been watching the latest news on his video entertainment unit, angrily threw down on the carpet of his lounge the fistful of cashew nuts he had been about to eat. Jacobus Stein was now utterly furious, and for good reasons. The company he had worked so hard to form over fifty years ago, Pallas Mining Industries, was now racked by a nasty corruption scandal following the tragedy of the EUROPA Station, in the Solar System, with the results that the public shares of the company were now crumbling on the financial markets. The operations of the company, in particular those of the hydrocarbons extraction and processing operations on Hibernia, in the Trappist-1 System, where now under official Spacers League criminal investigation for rampant fraud, corruption and influence trafficking with the European Union. While Jacobus Stein had nothing to do with all this, having retired as CEO of the Pallas Mining Industries over ten years ago, one of his sons was now directly implicated in this scandal, while the work of a lifetime for Jacobus was in the process of turning into dust. Smashing his fist repeatedly over the armrest of his easy chair while overtaken by rage, the old man suddenly felt a sharp, agonizing pain in his chest and froze, one hand going to his heart and his mouth left open but unable to speak. Overwhelmed by a massive stroke, Jacobus Stein then fell out of his chair and on the carpet, still unable to speak. None of his servants heard him or suspected anything as he died in seconds in his lounge, utterly alone in his last moments.
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CHAPTER 4 – PROTECTING ONE’S OWN WORLD
New Haven (Wolf 1061ca)
09:01 (Universal Time)
Friday, June 11, 2337
