The Money Star

by Jon Lymon

  “Open the fucking door or you’re dead,” she told him.

  Remnant’s shaking hand pulled the knife out of the wall and pointed it towards M Krugler.

  “Who’s got the keys?” he shouted. M Krugler dangled them in front of his face.

  “Unlock it.”

  M Krugler walked slowly over to the door and unlocked it and turned back to face them.

  “Open it,” said Remnant.

  The pilot looked down at the prone Haygue who was grimacing from the pain. “Do whatever they say,” he groaned.

  M Krugler slowly opened the door.

  The contents of the room sucked in the lights from the hallway, reflecting them back with a rhomboid brilliance that dazzled and dazed. Remnant stood open mouthed as three giant boulders of intense sparkle shot a thousand multi-coloured winks back at him. There were several other smaller lumps of diamond scattered about the floor, each worth several billions, Remnant presumed. Aurora was no less amazed by the sight, to the extent that she withdrew the barrel of her gun from Haygue’s temple a little. No one could speak, not even M Krugler and Haygue who were still captivated by their own payload.

  “You didn’t even think to give us some for saving your lives?” Remnant asked bitterly.

  “You’d have gotten a reward once we all got home,” Haygue told him.

  “We’re not waiting that long,” Remnant said.

  He ushered M Krugler back into the cockpit and into the pilot’s seat. He then punched a hole in the ceiling and, exactly where he expected, a hammock of wires fell down. Remnant ripped them out.

  “What are you doing?” M Krugler asked. “Those are important wires.”

  “You’re not wrong there, mate,” said Remnant. He separated the wires into two and used one half to tie M Krugler’s hands to the ship’s control stick.

  Aurora then ushered Haygue into the co-pilot’s seat, and with swift savagery Remnant wrapped the remaining cord of wire around Haygue’s neck.

  “What are you doing?” Aurora shouted at him.

  Remnant’s face was red, his whole body trembling with rage. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you,” he spat at Haygue. Aurora shouted at him to stop but he was deaf to her plea. “You think you’re too big? Too powerful?” Remnant continued. “You think little old me can’t touch you? That little old me has to let you walk over him? That little old me doesn’t deserve a reward for saving you?”

  “Let go, Sye. You’re strangling him.” Aurora tried to pull Remnant’s hands from Haygue’s neck.

  “I’ve fucking had enough, you hear? We’ve all had enough. I’m taking your fucking diamond.”

  Aurora managed to wrench Remnant’s hands away from Haygue who coughed and spluttered as he breathed again.

  “You try and follow us,” Remnant shouted, pointing at Haygue between the eyes, “and I’ll kill you. And that’s a promise.”

  “Enough, Sye,” said Aurora. “You’ve gone too far.”

  “He’s the one who’s gone too far, not me.”

  Aurora quickly tied Haygue’s hands behind his back.

  “Don’t take all the diamond, please,” said Haygue, despairingly.

  “We’re not greedy like you. We just want our fair share,” said Aurora.

  She and Remnant ran to the hold and stood in the doorway. After overcoming the awe the haul struck in both of them, Aurora pointed at one of the large slabs, about the size of two microwave ovens stacked on top of each other. She tried to lift it, but it was too heavy. Even with Remnant’s help, they couldn’t shift it.

  “Damn it. We’ll have to go for something smaller,” Remnant said.

  Together they dragged a smaller lump across the floor to the platform. Both then ran back to the hold and surveyed the remaining lumps of diamond.

  “There’s no way we’ll shift the bigger ones,” she told Remnant. He picked up the biggest smaller lump he could carry and Aurora did likewise.

  They stood gazing at the remaining diamond in the hold, but were distracted by the sound of Haygue and M Krugler wrestling to free themselves in the cockpit.

  “Come on, come on,” Haygue shouted.

  Aurora jumped on the big lump of diamond in the hallway.

  “Nearly there,” M Krugler strained.

  Remnant slapped the button on the wall, then joined Aurora as the platform lowered them through the floor of the ship.

  “That’s got it,” they heard Haygue shout. Heavy footsteps hurried across the floor above them. As they re-entered the Baton Uric they looked up to see Haygue’s face raging as he stared down at them. “I want my diamond back, you bastards. If you get back to Earth before I do, I’ll kill you. Do you hear me?”

  PART III

  45

  The Garfield was an extravagant yet oddly-shaped ship compared to the others roaming the solar system between Earth and Mars. Flying in the face of the fashion for long, tubular structures, it was a circular ship, distinguished still further by a brown, Arabian roof-shaped turret on its top which offered a 360 degree vista of space, and contained a small, but expensive boardroom table, cut from the finest maple.

  Robin ‘Zeut’ Haalange sat at the head of this table. Diamonds had permitted generations of his family to enjoy the good life on the expansive ancestral ranch in Limpopo Province, north east South Africa. Zeut was the latest in the line to enjoy excessive time reclining under the unrelenting African sun. As a result he looked older than his thirty-six years. Harsh solar rays had dried out his skin and cracked the flesh around his searing blue eyes that were invariably hidden behind ultra dark wraparounds. Expensive meals had expanded his midriff, enabling him to grab a handful of excess flab from his flanks every time he sat down – which was often.

  The experts who plundered the sparkling rock beneath his land, told him the mines over which his family ruled and reclined would yield for another fifteen years. He received the news with a dismissive wave of his tanned arm. Too frequent exposure to diamonds had dulled his emotions. He no longer saw beauty in them. The world’s most sought after treasures were to him like French fries to a fast food worker, keys to a locksmith, washers to a plumber.

  His younger brother, Alexis, was the real driving force behind the business, responsible for the regular raising of their wholesale price as other diamond mines across the world surrendered their last and shut for good.

  A year before the discovery of the diamond asteroid, the Haalange mines were the only commercially viable ones remaining on Earth. That didn’t stop the news of the asteroid being unwelcome. Too much diamond flooding the market would equal less massive profits.

  But fortune had already shone on the Haalanges yet again. Before the discovery, the second double dip of the century hit the world’s economies, forcing not just broken businessmen but bankrupt nations to turn to Zeut for help. Among them, amid the greatest secrecy imaginable, was the US government. They sent thickly disguised representatives to meet with his people to discuss a fiscal deal that would bail out a US economy drowning in bad debt.

  Zeut, Alexis and their team of expert, hardball negotiators played it cool throughout and struck a hard bargain, securing repayment interest rates that were long-term but potentially crippling to the US economy if they defaulted.

  After the deal was struck, Haalange kept a close eye on developments in the US, and enjoyed access to information normally stamped ‘top secret’. He was surprised to learn from the informants he had within the administration that a vast chunk of the money he’d loaned was being invested in space hardware bound for Mars.

  The US government made the task of finding out the exact purpose of this hardware as difficult as possible, but the truth emerged long before Onamoto broke the news to the world. Haalange’s mistrust and disdain for the United States was sealed, and a plan was hatched to make sure that the diamond asteroid the Americans so desperately wanted to bring home never made it back to Earth.

  To this dastardly end, Haalange signed off plans to build h
is own fleet of spacecraft, of which The Garfield was to be jewel in the crown. He invested in state-of-the-art tracking devices, sent out lucrative offers to every pilot who had ever ventured to Mars and hired the world’s pre-eminent explosives experts.

  Now, as Haalange surveyed the faces around the maple table aboard The Garfield, his army was ready. And better still, a pleasing side effect of the discovery of the asteroid diamond had come into play. American citizens, desperate to fuel their own missions to the asteroid had taken to stealing the fuel that powered their own nation’s nuclear weapons. Staff who worked at the silos were escaping with millions of gallons of liquid hydrogen, leaving the United States’ nuclear arsenal toothless, and the American nation vulnerable to attack from nations embittered at their selfishness over the diamond asteroid. With the President unwilling to share information about it, even with some of his closest allies, a third World War was brewing, with who was fighting who just as unclear as who would be the likely winner.

  Sitting next to Haalange at the boardroom table was the only man he could really trust, Alexis. Opposite him was Constantine, the head of his diamond mining operation back on Earth, a faithful servant to his late father and him since the mid-Eighties. Further down the table sitting opposite each other were Monika and Gert, the two spies he had installed within the highest echelons of the United States government.

  Haalange stood and the low murmuring around the table instantly silenced. “Lady and gentlemen,” Haalange began, “time is not on our side, so let me get straight down to business. Man has always feared an alien invasion. Green men from Mars with lasers for hands and brains far bigger and cleverer than our own. We have all seen such films on the television, I am sure.” No one around the table could think of a single film that featured aliens with lasers for hands, but all nodded. “But man never considered that it would be he who invited the aliens back to his planet, and he who let them destroy him from within. I speak, of course, of the diamond asteroid. And as I speak, thousands of fools are still on expeditions to discover it. As we know, they are all doomed to fail. We have already destroyed the asteroid, and the Martian colony that sprung up to fuel missions to it. But even the best defences are penetrable, and my sources inform me that a vessel escaped from the SEC facility before its destruction with alien diamond on board. This tiny vessel is currently heading towards Earth.” Haalange paused purely for effect. “Make no mistake, we are tracking this ship and we shall make an example of the crew to deter others from following in their path.”

  Spontaneous applause erupted around the table, but Haalange abruptly held up a palm to quell the celebrations. “We must not be premature,” he warned, “for more news has reached me, of a second vessel with alien diamond on board. We do not know, as yet, how well armed this vessel is, but we are expecting information on this in a short while. In the meantime, I am sanctioning the dispatch of two fighters to neutralise this second ship.” Haalange expected applause here but was surprised when none was forthcoming. “Alexis,” he continued. “I want you to travel on one of these fighters to observe the destruction of this second ship.”

  It was a request Haalange’s brother had not been expecting and did not welcome. Haalange could tell the prospect of being on the front line did not sit easily with Alexis, so he briefly suspended the meeting and took him to one side.

  “I need you there, bro. I can not trust anyone else. But do not worry, it is going to be a turkey shoot.”

  Alexis nodded nervously and Haalange placed a calming hand on his brother’s shoulder. “You know I’d never put you in any danger, bro.”

  His brother nodded even more nervously. “OK, OK.”

  The brothers shook hands and returned to the table.

  “So that is settled,” Haalange announced. “My brother will lead the attack on this second ship and those of us left aboard The Garfield will intercept the first, which we believe contains our friend Errol Haygue.”

  There were smirks around the table.

  “How do we know that others haven’t slipped through the net with diamond on board?” Constantine asked.

  “We don’t, but our tracking facilities are the most advanced available, and there is no reason to believe they have or will fail us. But in the unlikely event they do, we will have a nice little surprise awaiting them when they try and approach Earth.

  Haalange’s summation of the situation satisfied all around the table, and relish at finally being able to confront Haygue was expressed by Gert and Monika. Haalange nodded his approval. “I am sure we shall all take great delight in removing that particular thorn from our sides,” he said.

  46

  Remnant cracked open the third of his cans of Gates and shared its warm contents with his fellow crew. Unsurprisingly, the atmosphere aboard the Baton Uric had been euphoric ever since he and Aurora returned.

  Bettis was overawed by the sight of the diamonds and nodded appreciatively when Remnant told how he and Aurora stole the gems from under the eyes and nose of the head of SEC.

  DT took some convincing that they were serious about what they claimed to have deposited in the hold, but when he saw the three chunks he remained speechless for minutes, shaking his head as if in denial. After he’d asked the inevitable where and how questions, he demanded to be given time alone with the gems. “I need to assess their authenticity and street value,” he told the rest of the crew.

  “Can we trust you?” Remnant asked playfully.

  “Well, I can’t exactly run off with them, can I?” he said ushering them all out of the hold and gently closing and locking the door.

  “How much do you think it’s all worth?” Bettis asked when all three had settled in the cockpit.

  “I’ll leave that to the expert,” said Remnant. “All I’ll say is I’ve seen diamonds a lot smaller than the ones we’ve got, on sale in jeweller’s windows for hundreds of thousands of pounds.”

  Bettis exhaled.

  “How long before we get it all home?” Aurora asked Bettis.

  “A couple of months,” he said.

  All three stared at the ship’s floor, the same worry on their minds, which Aurora voiced, “That’s a long time to be carrying such valuable loot,” she said.

  “Do you think Haygue will try and steal it back?” Bettis asked.

  Remnant grimaced at the mere mention of the man. “Let him try,” said Remnant. “I’ll be ready and waiting.”

  “He also said he wasn’t responsible for blowing up Gasoline Alley and the SEC facility,” said Aurora.

  “And you believed him?” asked Bettis

  “I don’t know. But why would SEC want to draw attention to what they were doing on Mars?”

  “Who else would have bombed it?”

  “I think we’ll find out soon enough,” said Aurora.

  “What do you mean?” Remnant asked.

  “I think it’s safe to presume that whoever wanted the diamond destroyed will be pulling out all the stops to ensure none of it reaches Earth.”

  All three paused to consider the enormity of the forces that were lining up against them. “It was never going to be easy getting something that valuable back to Earth without attracting trouble,” added Bettis. “Did your engineer friend build any defence mechanisms into the ship? A shield, perhaps?”

  “We built this ship out of other crashed ships. None of those had shields,” Remnant told him.

  “That’s a shame. A real shame,” said Bettis.

  In the silence that followed, attention turned to DT.

  “Is he still in the hold?” Aurora asked.

  Remnant quickly checked the galley and cabin on his way to the hold which was locked. He knocked on the door. “DT? DT?” He pressed his ear against the cold plastic door, stolen from a portable workman’s cabin on Leather Lane, but could hear nothing save the hum and whirr of the engines. He rushed back to the cockpit. “He’s locked the door and he’s not answering.”

  “Maybe he’s asleep,” said Aurora. />
  “It’s been an emotional day for him,” said Bettis. “That’s the biggest diamond he’s ever seen in his career. It’s probably blown his mind.”

  “He should have seen the other bits Haygue had in his hold,” said Remnant. “It would have finished him off.”

  “Mitch? Mitch?”

  It was DT. Bettis walked to the cockpit door and saw DT beckoning him into the hold. He turned to face Remnant and Aurora. “Don’t touch anything. I won’t be long.”

  It was a couple of hours before Bettis emerged from the hold. During that time, Remnant’s thoughts returned to the conspirational discussion he’d overheard between the two earlier in the mission. Was this clandestine meeting in the hold a sign that they were adding the final touches to their plan to take out him and Aurora?

  “So, what did he say?” Remnant asked.

  “It’s not good news,” a solemn Bettis told them.

  “Is he all right?” Aurora asked.

  “He’s fine. But the diamond…”

  “It is a fake.” DT was standing in the doorway. “The diamond is a fake.”

  There was a moment when nothing was said or could be said. The enormity of the information disabled vocal chords. Each crew member looked at the others in turn.

  “How’s that possible?” asked Remnant. “Who’d go to all the trouble of putting a fucking fake diamond in space?”

  “I don’t know,” said DT. “But it is definitely man-made.”

  Remnant couldn’t stop shaking his head. He looked at Aurora, hoping she’d say something positive. “It must be worth something?” was all she could muster.

  “The lumps will fetch a few thousand for their novelty value, I suspect. But no more.”

  “I don’t believe you,” said Remnant. “You’re just saying that so you can trick us into giving them to you.”