Star Force: Inception (SF1) Read online

  Adam’s glowrod was still a ways off, but the dot of light was beginning to elongate back into a line so Eric knew they were getting closer. It was still several meters up off the floor, at least, though guessing into the darkness was almost pointless. All the orange glows from the team’s rods showed was a wide expanse of flat, featureless floor…along with another skeleton off to the far right just at the edge of the shadows.

  “Now there’s something,” Sam pointed out ahead of them. The floor suddenly ended and a ridge appeared.

  “Spread out,” Eric ordered. “Let’s make better use of our light.”

  Liam and Sam veered off to the left while Kevin and Henry went right, leaving rod-less Adam with Cam, Davis, and Eric in the center.

  “Take a close look,” Cam said, tossing his rod to Adam while he adjusted his shoulder-mounted camera for a more panoramic view.

  “Thanks,” he said, catching the rod midair before walking up to the ridge. It stood about two meters tall with a smooth edge on top and, thanks to the light from the others, appeared to be vaguely curved, like the outside edge of a giant circle.

  “Adam, stay put,” Eric yelled eerily…there wasn’t even a trace of echo in the place, “Liam, Henry, scout the perimeter of that thing. See if it circles around to the other side.”

  The two pairs and their glowrods headed off, eventually disappearing around the curve of the ridge. Eric walked up beside Adam and set his glowrod against the wall, then cupped his hands together to create a makeshift step. “Up you go.”

  Adam slid his glowrod up over the edge of the ridge so the top would be lighted then stepped into Eric’s hands with his right foot while steadying himself against the ridge with his left hand. One solid heave on the guide’s part and his friend was chest-high up on the wall.

  Adam bent forward at the waist and crawled onto the top, feeling his arms sink in a bit on the soft material. He grabbed the glowrod and stood up, looking back down at Eric. “I don’t see anything, but the top is padded. Feels like a wrestling mat.”

  Eric poked the side of the ridge experimentally, feeling the slight give there as well.

  Suddenly his radio crackled to life. “We found another skeleton,” Liam’s voice reported. “This one is huge and its tail is hanging off the rise.”

  Eric pressed the call button.

  “Have you made it all the way around?”

  “No, not yet, but it does…hold on. Sam just found a set of stairs. Some sort of workstation on top too.”

  “Stay put, we’re coming to you.” He turned to face Davis who was standing a few meters behind him. “Did you get all that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s go,” Eric said, leading the trio off to the left. Adam followed on top.

  Just before they got to the stairs, the giant skeleton came into view, partially blocking out the light from Liam’s glowrod on the other side.

  “Holy shit that’s huge,” Adam said, seeing a bit more from his vantage point than the others. He paused when he reached the bones, then cautiously wiggled his way through the tail spines to get to the other side. The men on the floor had it easier and walked through the small opening underneath next to the wall. Not far after they saw the short staircase, with Liam waiting for them at the top, his glowrod illuminating the misplaced stepping stones beneath him.

  “Looks like this place was designed for both them and us,” Davis commented as he climbed up. Sam meanwhile had already activated another of the holograms…this time with a different, yet similar symbol. It was floating above another reflective circle on the ground, bracketed by several workbenches with beveled tops…at least that’s what they looked like. Their actual function was mere conjecture at this point.

  Davis recalled how the other hologram had been solid and reached out to confirm the fact on this one as well. As soon as his ungloved hand touched the burnt yellow symbol the workbenches lit up with glowing symbols and an array of floating holographic icons in a multitude of colors.

  “Alien computer station inside a dinosaur pen,” Sam said despite the harsh glare that Eric was giving him. “What the hell is this place…sir,” he added, looking at Davis.

  “For the first time in my life,” Davis had to admit, “I truly do not have a clue. It seems you are right, Mr. Shoball,” he added, still looking at the entrancing workstation icons. “We are going to need more men. A lot more.”

  5

  18 months later…

  Sean Davis stepped out of the elevator on the 45th floor of Pegasus Corporate headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona nervous but hiding that fact extremely well. His outward demeanor was tight and formal, as was usual, but the meeting he was about to step into was going to be the most important of his life to date…and would decide the course of events for both himself and his company for the next decade.

  He walked across the small foyer at the elevator hub and opened one of two massive doors a crack and slid through into the main conference room.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said casually as he closed, locked, and privacy sealed the door.

  “Thank you,” Mark Neville, CEO of Dynamics Corp and a longtime associate of Davis’s responded pithily. “You’ve been out of the country for more than a year now. Some of us were wondering if you’d retired and forgotten to inform your secretary.”

  Davis smiled. “My apologies. A high priority Pegasus project has been consuming my full attention, and will continue to do so in the near future. However, I felt it was time to make you all aware of a very lucrative business proposal I’m floating in concert with the project.”

  “You need investment capital,” Richard Blark guessed.

  “Indeed…though the word ‘need’ is variable. I’ve already devoted a third of Pegasus’s operating budget to the project, along with half of my own assets. That is sufficient to sustain the endeavor, but will now allow for fast implementation. The more capital investment outside of Pegasus I can acquire, the quicker the timetable will proceed.”

  “Alright, I’m curious,” Sarah Draken said with a knowing smile. “What have you got cooking this time?”

  “Something grand…and something not yet in the public’s eye, which fortunately leaves us with a window of opportunity to exploit. Thus I am coming to you for financial assistance to make sure we utilize that window as much as possible. As you all know, space technology is in its infancy and aside from a couple of moon bases and a handful of tourist facilities in orbit, the only commercial viability of such technology is tied to the launching, maintenance, and recovery of the growing satellite network in orbit. I am here to tell you that there is a much more lucrative angle.”

  Davis reached down to the tabletop that spread the length of the 33 seated potential investors and activated the wall mounted display screen.

  “I give you Star Force…a splinter company from Pegasus. Startup costs will be astronomically high, but the tradeoff is a virtual monopoly on the space industry that does not yet exist. Unlike other commercial endeavors, space is the hardest, because infrastructure is required. If you want to build a shoe factory in Ohio, you purchase the land, contract a builder, and get the ball rolling. In space, you have to build not only the facility, but the land as well, in the form of orbital habitats.”

  Davis adjusted the display to show several proposed schematics.

  “Not only that, you have to build the transportation infrastructure necessary to reach orbit…and the housing for the workers…entertainment facilities…waste disposal…education, and so on. Space is empty, and in order to work in it you must build EVERYTHING. This is why the market for space technology and exploration is limited, and the market for space colonization is nil. Until now.”

  “Star Force, thanks to several new technologies that my aforementioned project is already beginning to provide, will make it economically viable to take commerce, industry, and habitation to orbit and beyond. As I said, the startup costs are high, which will discourage competition. Once we get up and r
unning it will be far more economical for a nation, company, or individual to buy services or facilities from us rather than devote the time, personnel, and research necessary to build their own space program…thus giving us a monopoly until such a time that another organization can make the transition and close the technological gap.”

  Davis switched the prototype designs to a map of the Earth and its orbital tracks.

  “Now, many of you are probably thinking ‘what’s the point, there’s nothing in space of value beyond vacation potential.’ Some of you are also probably conceding that there are military concerns given the reliance on satellites for communication and navigation, but beyond that you don’t see any value. The rest of the planet agrees with you…and they are equally wrong. Space is more valuable, and potentially more lucrative, than all of the surface economies combined.”

  “How you say? Well, I’ll bottom line this for you. It’s new LAND.”

  Several of the assembled members laughed, but Davis waved off their amusement.

  “Consider this…what would happen if, by tomorrow morning, a new continent the size of the United States, or even half the Unites States, just appeared in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? Would anybody care?”

  He let that thought hang for a moment.

  “You’re damn right they would. And the fight to possess it could very well start World War III. Now, if someone were to ask you what was the point of possessing that land, what would you tell them? There’s nothing there at the moment. No markets to invest in, no new discoveries to exploit, just empty land.”

  No one was laughing now. In fact they all seemed to be in ‘think’ mode, so Davis pressed on.

  “Look back to history for what happened when new land was discovered. Columbus came to North America by accident, and no one cared. He came back again, four times in total, and died thinking he was a failure, but his discovery sparked a landgrab of never before seen proportions in which nation was pitted against nation to cross the Atlantis and claim lands, resources, and gold for themselves as well as to keep their rivals from attaining the same and gaining an advantage over them.”

  “In the beginning nobody cared…until somebody figured out there were riches and glory to be had in the empty nothingness across the ocean. Then everybody wanted in and it became a madhouse. Wars were fought, colonies were established only to wither and die. Native populations were looted and enslaved, if not totally eradicated. It was anarchy, with so much lost in the beginning years because nobody knew what they were doing…but everyone agreed that there was something of value to be had.”

  “This country in which we now stand didn’t exist, and wouldn’t have existed if Europe had said there’s nothing to be gained across the ocean. Could Columbus have foreseen all of this,” Davis said, spreading his arms wide as if to encompass the entire continent, “let alone have explained it to the Kings and Queens that subsidized the New World expeditions?”

  “Well, space dwarfs the landgrab that started in 1492. Space is everything. We are in space right now, though you don’t realize it. The Americans and Chinese outposts on the moon. The men there…are they in space? Many of you would say yes. If they are in space, then so are we. If the Earth were to suddenly become transparent, you could look down at your feet and see stars and distant galaxies beneath you, because we, on this planet, are in space.”

  “It’s the equivalent of some 90 year old guy living on an island in the Bahamas saying that the land under his feet is all that matters. The ocean around him is trivial. It’s just water and everything out there doesn’t matter. His home is all that there is of consequence.”

  “We would call that a delusional mindset, because the man is in the ocean. His home is a tiny part of the ocean, far from the coast of the real land that is the continents. But from his point of view he’s not in the ocean, it’s what is around him. Just the same is space. It’s not what is around us, it’s what we are in and to deny that point is folly.”

  “Another example from history is the prominence of naval warfare. The oceans were seen as meaningless. Very early on everything happened on the land, aside from some shoreline fishing. But over time power was seized by those who controlled the waterways, for they held in their grasp the bulk of transportation and resupply. Even today, most cargo shipping occurs through ships, not trucks or planes. Some of you know this…and you know that if a hostile nation developed a navy superior to that of the United States, then worldwide commerce could be held hostage. The same is true for space, only a hundred fold.”

  Davis paused a moment, bringing his hands together and touching his lips as if in thought. “We are at the point in history where everything changes. When the Wright brothers first developed their prototype airplane, it flew a few hundred meters at best. No one at the time could conceive of the future value in the technology. It took decades of improvements and a number of visionaries to see the potential. And yet, no one could have foreseen the types of airliners we have flying through our skies now back then.”

  “I can see the potential of space…enough at least to know it is more valuable than anything that has come before. And where there is value there is the potential to make money. The kicker is, space is an expensive startup. This isn’t like setting up a lemonade stand on the side of the street to begin your business empire. A huge amount of capital must be invested, with little or no gains to be had in the first few years. This is a 20 year+ investment, but potentially the most important endeavor you will ever have the privilege to come across.”

  “The purpose of Star Force is this…to provide the technology and infrastructure necessary to create and maintain an orbital economy, as well as provide a stabilizing rod for when the landgrab madness sweeps this planet. If we get there first, and establish ourselves and procedures by which to divvy up the ‘land’ that will become available, we can avert World War III and secure a virtual monopoly simultaneously. So you might say this endeavor is part capitalist, part philanthropist. Regardless, we only have a small window of opportunity before Columbus reports back and the wheels of history are set in motion. I am going to seize that opportunity. How well or fast I am able to do that depends on your cooperation.”

  Davis crossed his arms over his chest defiantly, but also to steady his hands that were microscopically beginning to shake with adrenaline and nerves.

  “I don’t expect you to understand the full implications instantly. Nor do I expect all of you will agree with me, but I am doing this, and you know from my history that I’m not one to take excessive risk in my investments. I foresee no risk in this endeavor…only the question of whether or not I’m able to pull it off in time. The market will emerge sooner or later. The quicker we can get Star Force up and running the more lucrative our slice of the pie in the sky will be.”

  “To all of you I’m offering non-controlling partnership. I and my people will run Star Force, with the philanthropic angle weighing heavily on our choices. But in order to accomplish those goals, we must have the resources to do so, thus our business approach will be aggressive. I mean to be the first and foremost provider of space technologies and to develop the transportation infrastructure needed to create an orbital economy…and that infrastructure will be toll roads, if you take the metaphor.”

  “The question before you today is whether you are willing to devote capital to a long term investment, which, in coming years could provide the most lucrative returns in recorded history.”

  With that, Davis finished his pitch and scanned the assembled faces for their reactions, belatedly realizing that he’d remained standing the entire time.

  The cream of the corporate world remained silent, exchanging a few glances here and there, but none of them wanted to be the first to speak. In truth, they couldn’t determine if Davis’ Star Force proposal was for real or a gigantic joke.

  Mark Neville finally leaned forward over the long, shiny black table and rested his elbows as he cradled his chin in his hands and looked to his
left at Davis.

  “I want to hear more.”

  6

  17 years later…

  Paul had a little over a lap to go with barely a 5 meter lead on Northridge when he launched into a half sprint, intent on keeping his team’s lead in the Distance Medley. As he crossed the finish line the 1-lap to go bell sounded and he dug his spikes into the track a bit more as his momentum swung him out slightly as he rounded the curve. He could now hear the footsteps of Northridge’s anchorman behind him, closing with every step.

  With 300 meters to go Paul still had the lead and accelerated a bit more, past what he thought his body could maintain. His quads began to protest halfway down the backstretch but his lead held into the final turn. If Northridge was going to pass him before the final straight, they were going to have to swing out into lane 2 to do it now.

  That didn’t seem to matter to the opposing runner, for when they hit the apex of the curve his lithe frame glided up next to Paul’s shoulder and inched by him. Paul responded with his full speed…an all out kick using what energy he had left.

  He resurged into the lead momentarily, but Northridge had another gear left in him as well, and sailed on past Paul when they hit the final straightaway. He finished less than a half second behind as they crossed the finish line, but the other runner had made up 13 seconds on him during the last leg of the race.

  Paul handed the baton to the Assistant Coach and collapsed onto the infield grass, waiting for his breathing to slow. He heard the coach’s voice telling him his split…4:36.8 for his four laps of the relay. His teammates had given him a monster lead, but he hadn’t been able to maintain it.

  “Way to go, Paul,” Barry said, knocking him in the shoulder.