Chapter 16: The Deal

~~ November/December - Weeks 48 to 50 ~~

Other members of the crew also had lovely holidays.

Lady Mary Nash took the other two Lieutenants’ home with her. She had been having fun screwing them both on alternate nights on the ships. Nads and Ace had a lovely time with Mary.

Both were surprised to find she was only a couple of years older than they were. The boys did have quick visits with their families but otherwise stayed with Mary.

They were fine with them both fucking Mary together but a bit more hesitant about getting friendly with each other. Mary got them both drunk, and the boys decided what the fuck and Ace let Nads fuck him, while he did Mary and then Nads reciprocated.

The boys laughed afterwards, and Ace said, “Well at least now they can keep each other entertained when Mary was down for maintenance.”

They moved into Gary’s old room on the ship with Mary when they re-boarded the ship. Mary had gotten a job in hydroponics as she loved gardening and specialised in herbs. She was also studying under Tahoora. Mary had told Tahoora she had done her a great favour in deflecting her interest away from Esky, as she was thrilled to be with Nads and Ace.

Mary had filed for divorce and liquefied her considerable assets while Nash was locked in isolation on the ship. She was still the owner of fifteen percent of GB & JK Corp., and she happily sold it to Troikas Incorporated. Nash had only married her for her money and the Company. He in fact owned bugger all.

He was not a happy man when he got back to Earth. First, he was served the divorce papers. He also found Mary had only left him the flat in town and his car. Everything else, including Mary, was gone.

He was even less happy to find his marching orders from the company. He was horrified when he got the court summons to answer to the charges of endangering the population of Earth and the Moon by bringing back a deadly disease when he could have prevented it.

What really pissed him off was that Mary had also emptied his offshore accounts, which he didn’t think she knew about. So, he couldn’t leave or even afford a decent attorney because he was broke.

Kyle had anonymously emailed Mary the account numbers and passwords. She had no compunction emptying them since it was her money anyway. Since Nash had sold off half of her company’s shares without her knowledge.

Nash also became persona-non-grata and was no longer invited or accepted in polite society. The thing that scared him the most was he had to report to his other boss and explain how he had failed to claim the Delta Pavonis system like he wanted. He was surprised when he was sent a message his Boss was out of town.

He was a broken man and did not live the rest of his short life a happy man.

Ex-Captain Nick Clark finally married Sung Ling.

They too liquefied their assets. His job was to train Esky on the trip back, and then take over running his little Empire with the help of Gary and Nicko.

He was looking forward to it, as Bentley had told him that he had a great fishing spot, jetty and a couple of bungalows on his island already for them. He was just waiting for his fishing buddies to visit.

Robby & Tina Breeder happily moved to the property in Queensland with their reptii and camla. Amusingly Customs in Australia didn’t give them too much of a hard a time. They only kept the animals in quarantine for two weeks after every test they did come back negative.

Robby had tried Lee’s immunisation on the animals, and surprisingly, they had all responded well to it. He made damn sure he replicated a good supply of it to take with him when he left the ship.

Nick had Larry & Lyn hold a large dinner party and invited a hundred top chefs and their bosses from all over the world. They served up their favourite reptii and camla dishes, and then Nick held an auction to sell off most of the meat in storage.

They would replace it with beef and other specialty meats to take back. The dinner and the auction were a roaring success, and Robby ended up with a lot of orders. Larry & Lyn also received a lot of job offers.

Nick had Robby sell him thirty fifteen-month-old Bramalow heifers, two bulls and several different lots of frozen sperm. He picked the Bramalows because they are small, sturdy animals that handle most conditions. They can produce quality milk, have long lives and provided excellent quality meat. He also purchased a milking machine.

Robby also found him a vet and two ringers and their families to look after them. He knew it would probably be a year before they were producing, but he was looking ahead. He’d already ordered a second herd for the next time Fortune came back.

Robert (Australia), Pete (America), Antonio (Italy) and Henry (UK), spent the three weeks discussing the charter with a very excitable bunch of UN delegates and their governments. There was a lot of back and forth about certain parts of the charter.

Most wanted to renegotiate just about every section, but Robert and Pete were adamant, “The deal was the deal.” There was no negotiation to be entered into. You accepted it or rejected it.

This had many of the delegates upset, as these people made their money screwing over one party to get the best deal for their self-interest groups. The fact Lee wouldn’t deal was foreign to them. More than half of the delegates walked out of the first meeting in protest.

However, they were back the next day, as too many governments wanted the deal. By the end of the first week, the dads were exhausted. Pete joked that he should have just recorded the word ‘No’ and saved his voice.

UNSEC for their part were perfectly happy with being the Police Force for Harmony and the Delta Pavonis Star System. Colonel Flag explained the deal and how the bulk of the nations, had to be represented on the crews. The Nations had to supply the people and pay them just as they did now.

Lee had guaranteed food and board when on the planet as their contribution. Lee would also like the UNSEC Nations to set up accounts on Harmony, so the men can exchange their money. They would also supply personnel in accordance with UNSEC guidelines and become signatures to the UN Agreement.

He told delegates that Clark County was a neutral Nation and UNSEC was going to be allocated a section of land to set up a Base near Clarksville. UNSEC couldn’t see a downside. Once the different nations had enough people on Harmony, they could pool the people from their new states as well. It was a win-win situation as far as they were concerned.

As predicted by Lee, Australasia (Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia and the surrounding Pacific Islands) had their contracts signed by the end of her week 52. The North Americans (including Canada, Greenland, Mexico and Alaska) took another two weeks but they all signed.

Robert and Pete were surprised by how much influence they had. They had argued it didn’t look good if the countries the new owners of the planet originated from, didn’t come on board early and show their support.

They got their blocks to agree that as long as the charter was signed, they could fight about who got what and how at their leisure. They could at least get their scientific teams organised and, on the planet, so they knew what they were going to fight about.

Lee had included the documents explaining the monetary and pricing systems, which would be employed. Many big businesses were not impressed with this document. There had been a lot of arguing at the meetings about fair trade and stifling of business.

Pete had got sick of the shit. He set up a slide he displayed on the wall that read, ‘NO’ in big red letters and ‘The Deal, is the Deal’, and ‘Take it OR Leave it’.

Many delegates were not happy that Pete’s sign featured in all the newscasts that night and that they were portrayed as petty money-grabbing whingers.

Huge debates raged over what was really meant by the wording of the documents. A lot of commentators and environmental advocates loved the, ‘As is, where is’, definition for environmentally friendly systems to be employed.

There was a huge discussion on what ‘Eviction’ meant. Nash got his fifteen minutes of fame and enough money to pay his attorneys by explaining what Lee does to people, who piss her off.

He didn’t come across really well as far as his behaviour went but his message of ‘Don’t fuck with wizards,’ definitely got out there. Even if a lot of people didn’t really believe they were that powerful.

But then they hadn’t met the wizards of Delta, yet.

Robert got a surprise or two the first weekend home.

He found the Bawface’s boys had been busy. He had a new building on the farm. The back of his farm had a small hill that he had planned to reforest. Sitting on top of it was a dome roof about 24m in diameter, and 12m high.

The front quarter of the hill had been cut back in an arc and then reshaped. A path led up to the top. It now had what appeared to be, double blast doors 3m squared embedded into a wall. They were under a 10m long by 4m wide and 4m high entrance with gates. The boys had several large thick tarps strapped down over the top of the dome.

The boys handed Robert a gas mask and led him inside. The front room was effectively a decontamination room with another set of blast doors. This led into a hall with a large changing room on the left and another room on the right that contained a recycling unit and replicator.

Iran explained there was a 2m square hopper on the outside for the recycler as well. At the end of the hall was the third set of blast doors.

The boys had him put the mask on. Then they entered the domed room. In the middle of the round domed building was a 15cm wide dark metal ring about 3m in diameter on a 40cm high platform that was 5m square. The boys had a tarp over it to protect it.

Different gasses were being pumped into the room. Fans were blowing the fumes around over the roof where the crystals were growing.

Robert was amazed, “What is this?”

Ivan grinned at him, “Well, your son thought that you might like to come and visit us occasionally.”

Robert looked at him, “Well, I was thinking of going on the next ship with Antonio and Pete, but what is this thing for?”

Iran said, “You don’t need a ship, this is a transportation ring. It will take you to Watson Island where Lee and Sean have the Wizards Retreat as they call it.”

“You just call Sean or Lee on that ring they gave you. Stand in the middle of the metal ring on the platform and wait until they transport you.”

Ivan then added, “You can’t pop back and forth too often as the crystals do need to recharge in-between. We reckon about another week, and the crystals should be big enough to charge up to the level required, but Sean said the longer you can let them grow the better.”

“Good lord, the governments, will have a fit if they know I have a direct portal to Harmony?” Robert said.

“Well personally, I wouldn’t go around advertising it,” Ivan said.

“But what if they try to take it away?” Robert said, worried about his family.

“Well they can try, but they wouldn’t have a lot of luck. See all those little canisters up there,” Iran said.

Robert nodded that he could, “Well they are tied in with special sensors Lee made. If anyone tries to disable this building or force entry into it, they will release a toxin.”

“It will kill the bugs that grow the crystals. It will also damage the crystals, so they don’t work then they will blow up. You do not want to be near this building if they go,” Iran informed him.

“But what if they try to force me to activate the transporter or hold the family to ransom?” Robert said with worry.

Ivan took him back to the entrance, “Did you notice that it wasn’t a standard decon-unit? It’s fitted with gas canisters too. The unit will allow anyone to enter the decon-unit.”

“But it may not let you out. If anyone enters this unit with any type of known weapon, they will be gassed.” Ivan decided not to scare him with what else happened.