by Chris Hechtl
“Take the shot,” alerted her that something was about to happen contrary to her programmed objectives. She processed the threat and acted in milliseconds as Mister Lagroose stepped up to the podium as President Alazar stepped away.
Screens made to look like teleprompters snapped into place as her alert went out. Recorders picked up the discharge of the round, its bearing and altitude. The recorders were in different places all around the audience and podium so they could triangulate a threat. The computer counter fired a projectile at the bullet as well as a laser as air bags deployed in the podium to knock Jack out of the line of fire.
The bullets shattered in space above the crowd, frightening them and raining shrapnel down onto them.
Athena didn't stop there. Her contingency plans included a counter response so an armed Unmanned Aerial Vehicle locked onto the sniper's location and fired. The sniper was torn apart by her fire before Roman locked the drone down and called it off. Then all hell broke loose as the various security details acted to protect their principles.
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The radio chatter had been recorded; the voice dispassionately analyzed by Athena as well as several human forensic audio technicians from Lagroose as well as other security details. The Secret Service grimly took their copy. It was clear they weren't happy about the assassination attempt on their watch even though their own principle hadn't been the target.
“We have voice samples of everyone we know. The words are short and to the point, but we got a match,” Roman reported.
“Do I want to know?” Jack asked, rubbing the sides of his nose. He had a black eye, broken nose, and some sore muscles but he was alive.
“Yes. It is General Ziwandi, the local military commander,” Roman said quietly.
“You're serious??” Jack demanded, sitting up in shock. It was someone they had respected; someone he'd counted on to be on his side. Amelia was near; she gasped in surprise.
“You know what they are going to say. That we faked it. That we faked his voice and possibly the whole thing.”
“I know you're cynical, Roman, but please try to at least sound normal and not paranoid,” Amelia sighed.
He looked at her with a bit of pity. She shook her head. “I didn't say you were wrong; I just asked you not to be right,” she said. “Or at least not sound so … depressed about it.”
He snorted.
“Should we even bother to confront him? Them? You know he didn't do this alone,” Amelia stated.
“I know. We have to try,” Jack said. “Besides, if they know that we know …”
Amelia held a hand up in appeal. “Stop. My head hurts when you play that game. Okay, play it your way. Just hope it doesn't blow up in your face,” she said.
“It already did,” Jack said dryly, rubbing his face again.
|[{}]|
By bringing it to the attention of the authorities, they alerted them that they were aware that it was a government sanctioned assassination attempt. Mister Towolde merely smiled at the allegations and told Amelia and Roman that his government would “take it under advisement.”
Roman insisted Jack evacuate. Jack was reluctant but did so. He knew that as long as he was on sight he was a target as was everyone around him. A target and a potent hostage he thought.
The first elevators were already on their way up the beanstalk.
The shipments of cargo that had been destined to pass through Somalia and up the beanstalk didn't materialize. Warned of the fighting by Lagroose Industries, the customer base had stayed away.
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When Lagroose realized that the nationalization could not be blocked and that their contacts in the government couldn't or wouldn't stop it, they fired all nationals and pulled all of their personnel except security and the specialized construction people. That touched off a firestorm of riots and protests in the streets.
Anyone who attempted to rush the Lagroose facility were driven back by blinding lights, sound, fire hoses, and other nonlethal means. The teams worked quickly on the facility while the ship in the Somali port was rigged.
They couldn't get all of the equipment out. There was no way, not past the protestors. And it wasn't economical to lift it all in orbit, nor did they have time. Instead, each of the bases were rigged with explosives that the ship had brought in. A warning of a bomb in the airports and harbor closed them to civilian traffic, convenient for Roman's purposes.
General Ziwandi declared martial law and warned anyone who tried to leave would be shot down. He ordered the protestors to be cleared and warned that anyone on the roads would be shot by his troops after the sundown curfew.
“The Africans want hostages to run the tech they can't handle,” Roman warned, “a bargaining chip.”
“Are you all right in there, Roman?” Jack asked. He'd taken a shuttle up to orbit.
“I'm fine,” Roman drawled, flexing his armored bicep. “I've always wanted to try out this powered armor we got. I guess now is the time.”
“Think Ziwandi will test it for you?”
“He can try. I doubt he will, I showed him a live fire test of one of these bad boys a couple years ago. He's very much aware that we've got them and that they are on our perimeter. Anyone he sends in will get toasted.”
“Let's try to keep fatalities at zero if we can.”
“No promises,” Roman growled, signing off.
When they finished stripping the base of everything and everyone, it was all fed up the beanstalk. Roman was in the last group to leave. He let Jack know. “All clear,” Roman stated as the anchor detached. “This is so frigging weird,” he muttered.
“But cool,” Jack said. When the end of the space tether was a kilometer off the ground he pushed a button on his desk. A minute later the encrypted radio signal Athena sent and set the explosives they had rigged to blow everything to smithereens. A ten-second countdown was all the warning the locals had before it went off.
Roman had a sense of humor; he'd tied the explosives to the 1812 overture. Jack caught the broadcast and chuckled. The black humor was much appreciated. He was burning himself, but at least someone found some sort of humor in the situation.
One by one the structures on the farms, the empty fusion reactor facility, airports, and beanstalk base were blown. The explosions rocked the atmosphere a bit that caused the stalk to shudder. But it held due to the dampeners and AI built into the system. The asteroid reeled the cable back up into the air.
“And now, round two,” Jack said, keying another sequence in and then hitting the red button. After a moment the crew of the freighter abandoned ship in a dingy and the ship sailed out into the neck of the bay. After a moment scuttling charges went off, sinking it. The harbor was effectively blocked.
Not satisfied with that, Jack triggered the last part of the plan. The runways and empty stretches of highways were cratered by the company's security UAVs before they were shot down or deliberately crashed into the ground. The housing projects, schools, and hospital were left behind untouched. The African military units who warily moved into the area get mostly rubble.
“Scorched earth. Just be glad I'm in a slightly forgiving mood or I would have salted the earth too,” Jack muttered, angry eyes surveying the damage fiercely.
|[{}]|
Furious, Ethiopia and Somalia attorneys descended on Geneva. They sued Lagroose Industries in World Court as Lagroose realigned its plans to drop the cable to a platform in the Pacific Ocean. While the Africans argued that they were cheated, Amelia pointed out that they had violated the contract. “We attempted recourse through this and other courts but were rejected. We saw no other option than to remove our people from an … explosive situation,” she said with a wry twist of her lips.
“And the destruction of the property?”
She shrugged. “It was seized unfairly and unjustly. Prior to occupation it was destroyed to prevent it from falling into terrorist hands.”
“Are you calling us terrorists?” Mister
Towolde demanded.
“Extortionists possibly,” Amelia smiled. “Or I should say, attempted extortionists. Pirates?” She shrugged. “Then there is the matter of the attempted murder of Mister Lagroose.”
“We had nothing to do with that!”
“You are both to address all comments and concerns to the court not to each other,” the judge stated.
“My apologizes, Your Honor,” Amelia said with a slight bow to the judge.
Mister Towolde turned to the court. “Your Honor, we demand restitution and the arrest of these criminals. Warrants have been issued for those responsible. We demand extradition from whatever country they are hiding in.”
Jack snorted and shrugged the threat off. “I guess I'm not vacationing in your neck of the woods,” he murmured in an aside to the watching board. He had chosen to attend the conference virtually. He was glad he had moved his headquarters to orbit on the asteroid platform.
“You are a thief! Our people are suffering because of you!” Towolde snarled, turning to Jack's image.
Jack's eyes flashed. “Hey, asswipe, you got roads, schools, and farms out of this. Hospitals, medical equipment, the gear we gave your military that they tried to use against us, plus all the books and shit and some apartments and construction equipment. I think you made out well. I got nothing. I got burned. My stockholders and shareholders got burned.”
“So? They are rich! They can afford the loss!” Towolde said, throwing his hands up in the air.
“Besides, as the judges ruled in the earlier case, the precedent of your breach of contract was that this is a purely national affair. Lagroose Industries has withdrawn its assets with no loss of life and is now based in international waters out of your jurisdiction,” Amelia stated firmly.
“And our base in orbit and on the moon and Mars are also not a part of the World Court. They are after all, off world, and therefore out of your and their jurisdiction,” Jack pointed out
The judge nodded sagely. “It seems you have been hoisted up on your own petard,” he said mildly, turning to the African attorneys. “I rule that this is indeed a local matter. One outside the scope of this court.” He tapped his hand gavel onto the hard wood.
Mister Towolde gaped then scowled blackly.
Jack snorted. It was clear that the Ethiopians and Somalis were furious and not just them. Neighboring countries who had expected to benefit greatly from the trade were now in trouble. Many had borrowed against the expectation of the beanstalk, mortgaging to improve their own infrastructure. He was already getting warnings from Roman that Lagroose interests would be hampered in the region and that he and the company would be targeted by assassins and terrorists for years to come. So be it. He may have to give up ever returning to the Earth, which was unfortunate, but again, so be it. It was a small price to pay to make it clear he would not let his company get screwed.
“This isn't over,” Mister Towolde vowed to Amelia.
“Oh, but it is. You don't cross Lagroose,” she said with a shake of her head. She knew Towolde, Motombo, and others like them, those that had backed the whole fiasco had their own problems. They were already looking over their shoulders for those sharpening their knives. They couldn't get Jack, so they had to watch out for their own hides.
New elections had already been called by their political opponents. It was clear that the governments of Somalia and Ethiopia were in serious trouble. The loss of jobs and loss of face was enormous. Both countries had taken themselves from the forefront of technology and civilization back to poverty in hours.
“Your own greed did you in. I hope you someday realize that,” she said as she finished packing her gear. She smiled sweetly to the Africans, didn't bother to shake hands with them, and followed the ever helpful bailiff out her own exit.
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Jack just ignored the media fallout and watched as his new base was moved to the second phase of construction in the Pacific. A typhoon was on the watch list, but he was pretty sure his people were on top of the situation.
The evacuation of the base had proven the concept as viable. Sure it had taken each of the elevators a week to get to orbit, and having so many on the stalk had threatened to overload it and snap the cable, but it had held together. Seeing thousands of tons of people and machinery moved so efficiently was a great public statement to those interested in doing business in orbit. But Mars would end up being the real winner; the beanstalk there, they insisted on calling it a skyhook, had been completed. Of course the team that had constructed it had learned from Jack's beanstalk. It was all good he thought smugly. They were already beginning to recoup their outlay. If projections continued to exceed their forecasts, they could begin to turn a profit a quarter early. Possibly sooner.
A month after pulling the beanstalk up, he agreed to open negotiations with Rwanda and Uganda to lease them their own Beanstalk, but only with major strings attached. There was something to be said about once burned, thrice shy he thought.
Jack the Giant Slayer
2120
Once Lagroose Industries opened Earth's first beanstalk to commercial use, it became safe and extraordinarily cheap to get out of Earth's gravity well. Lagroose Industries had continued to grow but had rivals in space. Jack Lagroose, owner, founder, and CEO of the company enjoyed the competition with Planetary Resources and Deep Space Inc. But other rivals like Pavilion which had diversified into space to get away from the constraining laws on the ground were another matter; they were rather cutthroat and tended to bend the rules. They were well known for a source of corporate espionage. The Chinese had also set up shop in orbit with a series of space stations and cheap hotels to facilitate tourism.
It had taken a lot of time but he'd finally repaid the loan from the Irons brothers. A lot of it had been barter, he's worked his tail off with various infrastructure building assignments as well as some terraforming projects they had wanted to try.
The Irons brothers had gone on to take the money and invest in various Mars based companies like Little Green Men, Mars Tek, and the Mars University. They still owned shares in the company, but Luigi had signed off on them as the proxy vote. That had freed Luigi up to keep on trucking with his own family and concerns while managing the planet now that they had declared their independence from Earth.
Emerite Space Initiative, or ESI as it was more commonly known, was a newcomer on the scene and very aggressive. Too aggressive for Jack's taste, though he did business with them anyway. The best way to keep a potential rival under watch was to have them as a customer he thought with a twist of his lips.
But something was definitely up. Recently he'd had a blizzard of lawsuits, nuisance crap, everything from someone getting sick on a beanstalk flight to crap about keeping space pure. Then there were the inspections and the calls for the United Nations to seize the Beanstalk as a planetary resource. Since they knew what he had done the last time someone had tried that, it was a nonstarter.
Then there were some curious incidents of sabotage. The company's groundside efforts were a target for terrorism like any megacorporation, which was why they had a heavy security wing now. But no one was taking responsibility, which he found odd. His intelligence people were working with his legal department to see if it was in any way connected. His hackles were raised, so he had a hunch it was.
Jack was a legend; he knew that. Women swooned at his feet or so his mother continuously insisted. He knew she was dropping hints for Aurelia and him to cough up a grandchild, but he wasn't ready, nor was Aurelia. They had agreed to settle on taking some anti-aging treatments so they could focus on their career. She of all people should understand that. His seed was safely on ice should it be needed down the road. She kept insisting that it was easier getting through kids when you were young and fresh. She might have a point, he mused. He had to admit he was slowing down a bit. But he had no intention of stopping anytime soon. He had just turned seventy; he still had plenty of life left in him.
He had kept his pr
omise to his mother to diversify the company. It had been hard, but he'd managed it with a bit of creative bookkeeping and some arm wrestling. She didn't see it that way; she still thought of her portion of the company as starving for a budget. They weren't, far from it. She had her own station in L-5 orbit with another planned for Mars orbit when they were ready to expand. The company had diversified so much that they had a finger in a lot of pies and a lot of places in space to do it all. In fact, some said he was spread out a bit thin, and some also said his company was a monopoly. Whenever that touchy subject was brought up, he pointed with infinite courtesy to his competition and then left them to their own devices.
Lagroose Industries was growing steadily and had shown no signs of slowing down. Recently he'd gotten his R&D people into two projects, checking out Star Reach's hyperdrive physics while also working on modeling a world in the solar system. The first team had projected the drive was still decades away; the math was there but getting it into the real world was turning into an engineering nightmare of monumental proportions.
He'd put that project on the back burner and refocused his efforts on creating Bernall sphere habitats and terraforming. They still hadn't settled on a planet to terraform, but the sphere production line was churning along nicely.
The earlier method of building a space colony like Axial-1 and 2 had been to cut an asteroid up, feed the bits to a smelter, then churn out the shell pieces. Then a team of robots and workers would piece it all together.
Ten years ago he'd sicked his people on finding a better way. A cheaper way sure, but a better way. A faster method. They'd been lost for some time before one of their number, an avid sci-fi buff who loved ancient obscure books, had come up with the solution. Several writers had come up with the idea of hollowing out asteroids over the years, but two had thought out the methods involved in such processes.