Drydock Number One, Avalon Space Yards
Low Earth Orbit, Solar System
While keeping an external appearance of calm, Tina felt a growing excitement as her bridge crew was preparing their ship to finally leave Drydock Number One after nearly four months of intensive repairs. Once out and back in Space, she would be free at last to resume the activity the NOSTROMO had been mostly built for: the carrying of people and things around the stars. If there was something the recent search and rescue mission her starfighters had conducted had plainly demonstrated, it was that Humanity still knew very little about the Universe, even within the tiny area of Space that it presently occupied. It had proved that life could be found everywhere, and this in a nearly infinite number of forms. It had also revealed another technological civilization, that of the Krells of HIP 78288d, which existed within a relatively small distance from Earth. Unfortunately, it had proved as well that the zone of activity in which the Space
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Predators operated was much wider than had been expected only recently. Humanity thus had to stay ever more vigilant in order to defend against that monstruous menace.
‘’All systems are green, Tina. We are ready to leave the drydock.’ said her navigator and unofficial executive officer, Dana Durning.
‘’Excellent! Frida, ask the drydock’s control center to release and withdraw their mooring clamps.’
‘’Aye!’ replied Frida Skarsgard, the 46-year-old redhead who was the pilot of the NOSTROMO. She spoke again to Tina after less than a minute. ‘’Mooring clamps released and retracting now.’
‘’Ask for them to open the doors of the drydock and for permission for us to leave the drydock.’
After another two minutes, Frida announced that the huge armored doors of the drydock were now opened, making Tina nod her head once.
‘’Start flying out of the drydock...and please don’t put a dent on our new front bumper while doing so, Frida.’
Frida, who had been piloting the NOSTROMO for nearly seven years now and had also piloted its predecessor, the KOSTROMA, during a period of thirteen years, twisted her head to grin to Tina, whose command chair was behind and slightly above her pilot’s station.
‘’Don’t we have a collision insurance for our ship, Tina?’
‘’Yes, but guess who is paying the premiums for that insurance, Frida.’
The rest of the bridge crew had a chuckle at that exchange before becoming serious again: moving around a mass of over twelve million tons was no inconsequential matter.
With Tina then watching like a hawk, Frida slowly and smoothly moved the NOSTROMO
out of the drydock stern first. Tina felt elation when her ship was completely out of the gigantic Space yards and into the void of Space.
‘’Haa! I love the smell of vacuum in the morning.’
Her bridge crew gave her funny looks then: Tina had the habit of making cheesy quotes from some obscure ancient films which most people had never heard about before. Tina then spoke again, giving more orders.
‘’Frida, fly us to a position some twenty kilometers off the exit airlocks of the spaceyards’ large craft hangars, so that our heavy starfighters, shuttles and cargo cranes can get back on our ship. Once they will be all in, we will go park in the nearest
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available spot near the Las Americas orbital terminal, where we will wait for our first customers to ask for our services. Dana, while Frida does that, let’s go to my day cabin: I want to discuss something in private with you.’
On hearing that, Dana Durning painted a faked horrified expression on her face and
‘whispered’ quite loudly to Frida Skarsgard.
‘’Shit! She probably wants to fire me.’
The other bridge crewmembers on duty had a chuckle on that as Dana rose from her seat to follow Tina down to a sub-level under the two top bridge platforms, where Tina’s day cabin was situated. Climbing down the steep stairs behind Tina, Dana then followed her inside the captain’s day cabin, which Tina used when she needed to be close to her bridge command chair while officially off duty. Once both were inside the small cabin, Tina closed the door and shook an index at her second-in-command while smiling to her.
‘’No, I don’t want to fire you, Dana: you are too precious to me as my executive officer for me to ever do that. What I want to talk with you is about a personnel matter.
Greta Bjornsson, the sole survivor from the crew of the GOLDEN NUGGET, has now worked for us as a sensors operator for a bit less than a month. How would you rate her performance to date?’
‘’She is a competent sensors operator, although she doesn’t have many years of experience in that specialty compared to our own long-serving operators.’
‘’And what about her psychological state? She after all lived through a rather horrifying experience, being captured, then tortured and held prisoner by the Space Predators and seeing her crew mates killed and eaten by those monsters.’
‘’She was indeed quite emotionally disturbed during her first weeks after being freed by us, which was quite understandable. However, she has since recovered fairly well with the help of our psychologists and trauma specialists. That we offered her a stable job on our ship has also helped her find back her balance. In truth, Captain Stanhouse didn’t have a very good reputation around the Space prospecting business and poor Greta was unfairly brushed away as an ex-crewmember of the GOLDEN
NUGGET when she tried to find another job on Providence, the home port of her old ship. I believe that she will be happy with us and I can vouch for her professional competence.’
‘’Good! There was something else concerning her that I believe in which we could help her and the families of her dead crewmates. As you know well, ship insurers in the Spacers’ League don’t cover losses caused by war acts. The same goes for life
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insurance companies. Thus, they all refused to pay the claims by the families of the GOLDEN NUGGET crewmembers and those families, along with Greta Bjornsson, now find themselves high and dry, with their only remaining incomes being whatever government pensions and social assistance programs they may qualify for. Greta and her crewmates had gambled big on the possible finds to be made during their prospecting expedition to fill their bank accounts, which were getting quite empty then. It appears that Stanhouse had been a rather poor commercial manager of his prospecting enterprise, on top of being a lousy ship captain, and, as a result, had accumulated some serious debts and was on the verge of having his ship repossessed by his creditors.
Those same creditors are now asking Captain Stanhouse’s family and that of his associate and ship pilot for reimbursement of the debts owed. Stanhouse may have been a greedy idiot but his family doesn’t deserve to be pursued into bankruptcy because of his failings. I have thus paid off Stanhouse’s debts two days ago and also offered to the families of his ship’s crew to come and live and work on the NOSTROMO.
To date, five out of six of the families of the married crewmembers have accepted my offer, while I am still waiting for an answer from the remaining family.’
‘’Tina, you are again proving to be the compassionate and generous woman I have known for years. I will make sure that suitable apartments are reserved for those families and will review the present list of job positions still available aboard our ship.’
‘’Excellent! The last point about Greta Bjornsson and the families of her dead crewmates concerns what they found during their expedition. Technically, because Stanhouse filled a nearly fraudulent and incomplete flight plan for his prospecting expedition and ignored the warnings from the Navy about the threat caused by the Space Predators, any claim of first finder by him concerning the systems he visited would have been denied by the Spacers League Space Registrar’s Office. As the Coronae Borealis Constellation is part of the quadrant of prime responsibility of my corporation, all those systems we surveyed during the course of our search and rescue operation will now most probably be considered officially as New Haven Corporation property, except for the HIP 78288 system, which has been declared off-limits to all outside exploitation or occupation, due to the presence of a local sentient race, in this case the Krells of the third planet of the system.’
‘’Wow! From what we now know about these systems, this would represent a staggering fortune in terms of resources exploitation and real estate value. You could easily become a multi-billionaire with these new systems, Tina.’
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‘’Which is the reason why Stanhouse took so many stupid risks: he could only see the fortune he could gain by finding some valuable star systems. Now, he and nearly all the members of his crew are dead and their families are stuck with the debts he left behind. For me to get obscenely rich by being awarded those new systems by the Space Registrar’s Office, while not giving a cent to the families and to the sole survivor of the GOLDEN NUGGET’s crew, is simply too unjust in my opinion. While I still don’t know what we will do with those newly surveyed star systems, I firmly intend to cut part of the future revenues from those systems and give it to Greta Bjornsson and to the families of the dead crewmembers.’
Dana Durning stared silently at Tina for a second before speaking softly.
‘’Tina, you have to be the most decent person I ever met in my life. In earlier centuries, you would have been called a saint.’
‘’Me, a saint? Some around the Spacers League and on Earth would disagree with your assessment of me.’
‘’Screw them!’ was the firm reply from Dana.
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CHAPTER 9 – SPACE POLITICS
09:07 (Universal Time)
Thursday, March 5, 2336
High Council of the Spacers League chamber
Government complex, city of New Dawn
Planet of Providence, Alpha Centauri B System
4.36 light-years from Earth
When Tina took the seat reserved for her at the conference table of the High Council’s chamber, she found that all of the 25 other members of the High Council were present, something fairly rare, as there were many legitimate reasons for members of the High Council to miss the monthly meeting of the governing body. She knew at once why everybody was here when all eyes went to her as she sat down. This was most probably due to the latest encounter with the Space Predators in the HIP 78288, where her heavy starfighters had done a superlative job. Once sitting, she pulled a thumb drive from a pocket of her female suit’s jacket and plugged it into the computer terminal of her table position, then downloaded a number of data files she meant to show to the other members during the meeting. The recently elected new chairperson of the High Council, Jeanne Mercier, who previously had been the Minister of Health and Social Affairs, banged her gavel three times once she saw that Tina was ready.
‘’This meeting of the High Council is now open. Thank you all for coming so diligently, as we indeed have much to discuss about. We will start with a presentation by CEO Tina Forster, of the New Haven Corporation, on the latest encounter with the Space Predator. Misses Forster...’
‘’Thank you, Madam Chairwoman! Two months ago, our Navy launched a search and rescue mission for a mining prospection ship, the GOLDEN NUGGET, which had gone missing in the general area of the Coronae Borealis Constellation. I said
‘general area’ because the captain and owner of the GOLDEN NUGGET had filed a vague and, as we found out later, misleading flight plan in order to prevent his competitors from following him and possibly ‘steal’ newly discovered systems from him.
Because of the continued threat from the Space Predators, the Navy used only armed
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ships to effect that search. My NOSTROMO, while still under repair then following the Battle for Nordling, was able to use four of its embarked heavy fighters as a contribution to the search for the GOLDEN NUGGET. One of those four heavy fighters, the SHOOTING STAR, ended up encountering a Space Predator invasion flotilla inside the HIP 78288 System, some 464 light-years from Earth. I am now projecting a map of that quadrant, with HIP 78288 designated by a red arrow.’
All the members looked at once to one of the wall display screens fixed to the four walls of the conference room, with Tina resuming her speaking after a couple of seconds.
‘’I must now remind you that this whole quadrant, past a depth of 200 light-years from Earth, had never been explored or even visited before. There are still so many star systems to explore around our actual occupied area and too few ships available to have done a thorough survey of the deep Space around us, something that the threat from the Space Predators only exacerbated. Now, to return to the SHOOTING STAR and HIP
78288. My starfighter crew detected a total of four Predator asteroid warships and six transport and support asteroid ships around the third planet, which we now know is called ‘Rhiss’, busy invading that planet and slaughtering its inhabitants, a race of giant sentient crabs who call themselves the Krells. Here is a picture of a Krell soldier, armed with an automatic cannon strapped to the top of its carapace. On this other picture, you can see Miss Greta Bjornsson, the last survivor from the crew of the GOLDEN
NUGGET, who had just been freed from a Space Predator’s prisoners compound by the Krells.’
Whispered exclamations and comments went around the conference table as the members of the High Council looked at the pictures spread on the wall display screens.
Vladimir Gasparov, the CEO of the Sverdlovsk Group and an ex-chairman of the High Council, nodded his head while detailing the Krell soldiers shown on the pictures.
‘’Those Krells look like serious customers indeed, Tina.’
‘’They are, Vladimir. Unfortunately for them, their technology is still at about the level of our own late Twentieth Century and, for a number of reasons, they have not yet ventured into Space or even adopted means to fly. The automatic cannons you see strapped to their backs were their heaviest individual weapons and, while able to defeat the individual force shields of Predator soldiers, could not shoot down Predator shuttles and craft. They were basically losing the fight against the Predators and had mostly to find refuge in the seas of Rhiss, since they are amphibious creatures. Only our arrival saved them from systematic extermination at the hands of the Space Predators.’
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‘’So, your starfighters were able to destroy that Predator fleet and rescue those Krells, right?’ asked Victor Grubov, the Spacers League’s science minister. Tina shook her head in reply.
‘’Not exactly, Minister Grubov. The SHOOTING STAR managed in a surprise attack to destroy all the Predator asteroid ships before being hit by laser fire and being seriously damaged. The rest of my squadron of heavy starfighters, alerted by a courier drone sent by the SHOOTING STAR, then arrived in the system and engaged the Predator troops who were ravaging the Krell civilization, landing at the same time 800 of my security androids in order to hunt down and kill any Predator survivor. That was a hard fight, as there had been initially over 140,000 Predator soldiers on the surface of the planet, with all of those refusing to surrender. After six days of fighting, and with the Krells fighting alongside my androids, we finally managed to kill the last Predators on the planet.’
‘’How many casualties did you suffer in that fight against the Predators, Tina?’
asked Agneta Braun, the governor of the planet Vinland and the CEO of the powerful Vesta Corporation. Tina was silent for a second while reminiscing on that subject.
‘’As I said, our heavy starfighter SHOOTING STAR was hit and heavily damaged, plus had one human crewmember killed and two androids heavily damaged. During the ground fighting on Rhiss, another 76 of my security androids were either completely destroyed or seriously damaged. The damaged ones were rebuilt, while the destroyed ones were not, with their memory now remembered in the Hall of Memories of the NOSTROMO.’
‘’But, couldn’t you build new replicas of them?’
‘’I could have but I didn’t, Agneta. My androids decided that it would mean more to them and their lost comrades to be remembered in our Hall of Memories than to be simply rebuilt as brand-new copies. The only exception they would accept would be if a married android had been an adoptive parent of a child, in which case it would be rebuild to its original image, for the sake of that child’s feelings towards his or her android parent.’
Her declaration seemingly had a significant impact on the other members of the High Council. Anti-android sentiment and propaganda had been widespread around the Spacers League only a few years ago, with that propaganda pushed by the then Chairman of the Spacers League, Paul Stein, a man Tina hated with a passion for his bigotry and hypocrisy. Even today, many still had negative opinions about her androids
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and few considered them as fully equal to Humans as sentient beings. That was when Jeanne Mercier decided to drop in on the exchange.
‘’After Tina reported to me what had happened in the HIP 78288 System, I agreed with her that the system would have to be declared off-limits to all exploitation or colonization, due to the presence of a sentient local race, the Krells, on the third planet.
Thus, the only ships allowed in the HIP 78288 from now on will be patrolling warships defending the system against any possible return by the Space Predators, plus any diplomatic ship we would decide to send to visit the Krells, who by the way were very thankful for our intervention, even though we still can’t understand each other.’
‘’Couldn’t we send a language specialist team there in order to record and translate the Krell language?’ asked Lars Nisstrom, the minister of external affairs.
‘’We are seriously thinking about doing just that, Lars.’ replied Mercier. ‘’In fact, would any of you oppose sending such a linguist team to Rhiss? No? Then I will have a team organized and sent out soon as part of a diplomatic mission. Next on the agenda is the status of the new worlds found by Tina’s search teams. Apart from the HIP 78288
System we just spoke about, four more systems of interest were found during that search and rescue mission. Two of those systems, Epsilon Coronae Borealis and XO-1, were found to contain planets with breathable atmospheres and temperate temperatures, while two other systems, ADS 9731 and HD 138525, have valuable and exploitable deposits of liquid or frozen hydrocarbons and deposits of mineral ores. While Epsilon Coronae Borealis and XO-1 harbor primitive types of lifeforms, there are no sentient lifeforms in the four systems. Tina, you may display the tables of basic data and finds concerning those four systems.’
The members of the High Council scrutinized at once the display screens, intense interest evident in their expressions. The exploitation and use of Space resources and estate had in fact been the main reasons for the creation of the Spacers League in 2315, during the war of independence against the then system-wide government of the Earth Federation. The first to comment on the data was the CEO of the Pallas Mining Industries corporation, Michael Kendrick.
‘’These four systems are all very interesting, each for their own reasons, but my corporation presently has its hands full with developing and exploiting the worlds it already has.’
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‘’The same here.’ added Carlos Dominguez, of the Saturn Corporation. ‘’Right now, all my resources are being used to rebuild Nordland and repair the damage the Space Predators did during their attempted invasion.’
It soon became evident to Jeanne Mercier that all the corporation heads were in pretty much the same boat, still developing the worlds they already had, which still had relatively small populations, thus having little need for more planets to be colonized or exploited. She then looked at Tina, who had been listening with a neutral expression to the responses by the other corporation heads.
‘’Do you have any plans of your own concerning those four systems, which you now legally own, Tina?’
‘’Not definitive ones, Madam Chairwoman. I wanted first to hear what my corporate colleagues had to say about those systems. My own corporation is a small one, with a population base of still less than 300,000 inhabitants and an economy based mostly on agriculture and food production. I myself couldn’t properly exploit those four new systems, due to my own limited resources. However, leaving those systems to go to waste, especially in the case of Epsilon Coronae Borealis Ad and XO-1c, would truly be a crying shame. I thus propose the following to this High Council: while I will keep ownership of all four systems, I am ready and willing to lease their use against very moderate fees to those interested in exploiting them. Since we of the Spacers League have at the moment plenty of livable prime estate for our still relatively small populations, I would like to offer the use on a leasing basis of XO-1, whose second planet is a prime colonization world, to the Earth’s ASEAN6 Federation. As you all well know, the countries of Asia have been suffering from overpopulation, rampant pollution levels and declining natural resources for centuries already. I believe that it is high time for us to help Earth relieve its problems of excess population and lack of resources, by helping those most in need to build a new homeworld for their citizens. In this, South Asia and South-East Asia are the most in need. I would appreciate very much if this council would allow me to offer to the ASEAN the use of at least XO-1c for colonization. As the owner of the system, I would be ready to help defend the system against the Space Predators and would also ensure that the kind of past excesses which ruined our old 6 ASEAN: Association of South-East Asian Nations.
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Earth would not be repeated. If some of you would be ready to help and support me, both financially and materially, in such a project, then I would be truly grateful for that.’
Her request left the other members of the High Council looking at each other and engaging in whispered conversations with their aides. Jeanne Mercier patiently waited as the members weighed and discussed at length Tina’s ideas. However, seeing after three minutes that nobody had yet taken a firm decision, she banged her gavel on the table.
‘’If the members of this council would now listen, I believe that this subject will need quite a lot of serious discussion in order to get at some concrete decisions. I do however approve personally of the generous offer made by Tina concerning those new worlds and would be ready, like her, to help our brethren on Earth. I thus suggest that we now continue with the other items on our agenda this morning and that we reconvene tomorrow morning to continue the discussion about those four new worlds. That would allow you to engage in private discussions with Tina and to possibly broker some kind of deal between yourselves before tomorrow. Does anyone objects to that? No? Good!
We will thus jump to the next item on our agenda: our Navy’s appropriation program.’
At a bit past noon, the meeting was adjourned for the day, having dealt with all the items on its agenda. As Tina got ready to go for lunch, Toru Tomonaga and Agneta Braun, respectively CEOs of the Ceres Consortium and of the Vesta Corporation, approached her, with Tomonaga smiling to Tina.
‘’Would you mind if we go lunch with you, Tina? We would like to discuss with you the use of those new star systems.’
‘’By all means, my friends. I know a nice little Indian restaurant nearby, where they have private boots for dinners. Would that do?’
‘’That sounds fine to me, Tina.’ replied Tomonaga. ‘’What about you, Agneta?’
‘’I like Indian cuisine. Let’s go!’
‘’Then, follow me. The ‘Taj Mahal’ restaurant is only a block away from the government tower.’
As they walked out of the secure conference room, Tomonaga noticed that a tall brunette dressed in a female business suit started following them from only a couple of meters behind their group. He discretely pointed her to Tina while whispering to her.
‘’Do you know that woman, Tina?’
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‘’Of course I do, Toru! She’s my designated bodyguard for this visit to Providence, Security Officer Stacy Keibler.’
‘’Uh, I don’t mean to be sexist but why a woman as your bodyguard instead of a man?’
‘’Because a male bodyguard wouldn’t be able to go inspect a female washroom before I could use it without creating a raucous, Toru.’ answered a smiling Tina, causing Tomonaga to make a face that drew a chuckle from Agneta.
‘’That’s a practical argument indeed, Tina. She does look quite strong and fit. Is she armed?’
‘’Stacy has a dual light disintegrator/stun pistol at her belt, under her opened jacket. However, even when unarmed, she would still be very dangerous to any attacker. She is an expert in martial arts and unarmed combat and is extremely fast and strong.’
Those last words made Tomonaga look critically at the brunette, who stood a good 180
centimeters and appeared very athletic.
‘’Wait! Is she an android?’
‘’Yes, she is, Toru.’ replied Tina in a low voice. ‘’As one of my security androids, she can do things that no human bodyguard could do for my protection: she can fly by herself and has an integrated protective force field, plus hides a few more surprises for any attacker. Unfortunately, there are still a few haters and nut cases around the Spacers League who are accusing me of a number of things, one of which is the allegation that I built an android force in order to eventually conduct a coup and take power in Providence.’
‘’And people really believe such nonsense, Tina?’ asked Agneta Braun, making Tina make a bitter smirk.
‘’To quote an old movie from the early 21st Century, ‘never underestimate the predictability of stupidity’. We may have advanced tremendously in terms of science and technology during the last few centuries but Humans are still the same beasts as 500
years ago.’
To that, Agneta could only agree with Tina as their group entered an elevator cabin to go down to street level.
Once out of the building and onto the plaza facing the government tower, Tina walked through the wide-open space and entered a pedestrian street lined with
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commerces of various ilk. Like most open-air Spacers League cities, which had all been built less than twenty years ago, New Dawn lacked the dense network of crisscrossing vehicular streets and their car parking spots which ate so much space in the old cities of Earth. Much of the inner-city traveling was done either via subterranean public commuting systems, like subways and underground passages and tunnels, or via air vehicles which circulated under a centralized automated traffic control system and landed and parked on rooftops. That in turn allowed for the grounds of those cities to be greener, with an abundance of parks and trees planted along pedestrian streets, and to save the space eaten in Earth cities by hundreds of square kilometers of asphalt roads and parking lots. A well-furnished network of automated flying taxis was more than sufficient to provide quick, on-demand individual or group transportation, both within and between the cities. The age-old bicycle had also made a massive comeback, being a non-polluting, non-invasive and practical mean of individual travel on short intra-city distances. The days of needing a private vehicle to go around had thus gone away for most of the citizens of the Spacers Leagues now living outside of the Solar System.
After walking for less than 300 meters, the trio arrived at a small restaurant with a terrace. Tina led Tomonaga and Braun inside a long, narrow dining room furnished with a dozen tables, where a waiter greeted them with a big smile.
‘’Good day, ladies and gentleman! Would you like a table or would you like to order some takeout food?’
‘’We will sit down for lunch, mister.’ answered Tina, making the waiter bow to her.
‘’Then, follow me, please.’
The trio was led to one of the tables and then given menus, along with a wine card. Tina let her two companions choose and place their orders, then placed her own order before speaking to them in a low voice, not wanting the other customers present in the dining room to overhear her.
‘’So, what did you want to propose to me, my friends?’
Tomonaga was the one to answer her first, while also keeping his voice low.
‘’As you may well know already, any new world intended to be colonized or exploited must first be inspected and certified to be free of harmful pathogens and also to not be overly vulnerable to microbes and viruses us Humans could import. That process is quite involved and normally takes a few months to complete to the
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satisfaction of the Spacers League Space Registrar’s Office. My corporation has a very competent and effective bio-safety department which has the stamp of approval from the Space Registrar’s Office and, since you stated your wish to let the countries of the ASEAN use at least one of your new worlds, I would be most happy to offer to you for free the use of my bio-safety inspection department. Once those new worlds will be officially certified as safe for Human occupation, then I would like to enter into a partnership with you in order to support and facilitate the eventual emigration of ASEAN
citizens to your new worlds. I already have extensive contacts and an excellent rapport with ASEAN governments, since most of the immigration to my own worlds of New Polynesia and Atlantis came from Asian countries.’
‘’On my side,’ added Agneta Braun, ‘’I would also like to help you by lending you the assistance of my geological survey teams in order to properly assess the mineral resources available in your new worlds. A detailed mineral survey could go a long way to attract to you potential mining tenants and to convince ASEAN governments that it would be economically worthwhile to let their citizens emigrate to your worlds. To be totally frank, my own corporation could use as well new sources of metal ore: right now, we have colonized two planets but their own mineral resources are rather limited. If I understood well the preliminary data you presented on your four new systems, HD
138525 is a very promising source of metal ores, while your ADS 9731 appears to be a treasure trove of hydrocarbons.’
‘’My consortium is also a bit limited in terms of minerals and hydrocarbons needed to supply my two colonization worlds.’ said Tomonaga, jumping back in. Tina, most happy at their offers of help, then took a quick decision.
‘’Thank you for your offers of support, my friends. I happily accept your help to survey and certify my four new worlds. In return, once the Spacers League will have approved those worlds for colonization and exploitation, I will grant to both of you the right to exploit under lease the mineral and hydrocarbon resources in those systems. I won’t ask for actual monthly or yearly rent payments from you and will only ask from you two percent of the profits you will make on product extraction and sale. That way, you will be able to install and equip your production facilities for free and then will have to pay rent only once you will have started the production and sale of those resources.’
Tomonaga and Braun exchanged happy grins on hearing Tina’s offer, as the costs of the initial installation phase of any industrial base were always quite heavy. To not having to pay rent on the estate at the same time would make it a lot easier financially for their
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corporations to finance such important projects. Tomonaga then extended his right hand across the table, offering it to Tina.
‘’Deal! Let’s shake on this!’
Agneta Braun also extended her hand, all smile.
‘’Thanks for your generosity, Tina. This may allow millions of people on Earth to soon emigrate to economically viable lives on pristine new home worlds.’
‘’And it may give a much-needed space to breathe easier to our poor Mother Earth.’
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CHAPTER 10 – TO SAVE AN ENEMY?
