The mining mogul, a Boaz Tibon story to Michael Mangual’s Shattered Citadel Universe

Shattered Citadel

Every crisis has them, every war, and every nightmare: Buccaneers in the 17-century, arms dealers during the Cold War, and mining moguls in the mid 21^st century. Revered; despised; controversial to the very end, the bitter end.

But Willie Wanka was in class of his own.

No one knew where he came from or what his real name was. Even those who did not recognize the origin of his name (from a 20th century satiricalnovel) knew it was a fake.

Everyone who met him understood very quickly that he could not be trusted, yet he got away with everything, everything!

   When he got started he wasn’t much different from many other youngsters. In the emerging mining industries of Mars of the early 2040’s he was just another drifter looking for a bigger buck. But by 2051 he had a small fleet of mining drones cruising the Asteroid Belt ahead of everybody else. Including those that have been there since the 30’s. And when hell broke-out on Earth he made a killing, over and over again. Before and after a major offensive, by either side, his line of credit skyrocketed. “All the way to Sedna and beyond” the saying went. By 2065 he was the biggest independent employer in the solar system, (In a business of 30 drones per person).

  

When the course of the conflict changed, the Chinese decided to shut down his business. They reinforced the Russian battle group in the Asteroids Belt with two more Russian battle groups, one from Mars and one from the moon. Backed by 2 Chinese cruisers, they patrolled the belt for 3 years with no results. Wink was in the Saturn system. Later it was found that 3 high ranking Russian space corps officers were on his payroll.

He had his charm, his foresights, his speed, and a mysterious edge from a past life shrouded in obscurity. Good guy or bad gay he was an ace.

His private life was the most annoying mystery. No one knew if he was a homosexual or did he had a girl in every colony. Most of the time he was alone, just himself and his “Twinkies,” as he affectionately called his drones and other Robots.

Like many other such individuals through out history, he was flamboyant and eccentric. And he had his weakness. A mysterious cocktail of gas he loved to inhale. When a disgruntled business associate tried to poison the container, the stuff got spoiled, but so did the poison. Wink survived unharmed.

And as for the business associate?

He vanished a year later while mining the atmosphere of Venus.

When the war on Earth ended, reconstruction was a reasonably good source of income. Then the dispute between Earth and the colonies exploded into a new war, and everybody expected the mining moguls to get even bigger. Instead they went bankrupt.

In that conflict the space engineering corps of both sides used IREDs, (Instant Resources Extraction Devices) across the Asteroids Belt and in other parts of the solar system. The colonists had the best devices; Earth had the biggest fleet. And the mining moguls were useless, obsolete.

One by one they faded away, retiring or choosing sides. Some became annoying pirates that were dealt with easily. But Willie Wanka, Wink, vanished as if he never existed.   

Later, decades later, bits of information gathered by government agencies and individuals with a fascination with this horrific era, produced a probable picture. He pulled a Lorntz. Slowly, even before WW3 ended, he built a space ship able to reach a speed of more than 60% the speed of light. And according to the Einstein Lorentz equation that means his personal time is moving a lot slower than the rest of universe. If he didn’t blew up somewhere outside the solar system he could be back in a hundred years or a million. Depending how long and how fast he is traveling. With this conclusion interest was lost and he was forgotten.

500 years later, in what was just another busy day at Earth’s space harbor an unidentified autopilot vessel docked unannounced. Scanned instantly by the A. I. it was classified and treated as a safety hazard. Identification of the lone passenger came later, much later. After all the safety hazards were dealt with, and he was slowly pulled out. Somewhere in the huge memory bank a rarely used record of other nutcases that tried to pull a Lorentz spelled out his name.

In search of an expert a lone historian was ushered from Earth on a quick notice. Teamed with the medical technician they looked at him through the scanners and viewers of the medical tube he was placed in.

“Anything else?” asked the med-tech.

“No.” The historian approached the local communication unit and activated it by touch. On the screen appeared the logo of Earth’s treasury department. “Anything?” a faceless voice of an impatient man asked.

“Maybe” the historian gave a reply people of power hate to receive. “You will have sent your people to Tyche to find out”

“Tyche?” the voice exclaimed, “there is nothing out there, it had been searched countless of times.”

“In the right coordinates, transmit the right message and it will come to you.”

“What?” the voice held back it’s impertinence, but it was felt strongly in his tone.

“Him. Probably,” the historian replied.

 “What?” this time it was a voice of a woman, younger then the other voice.

“He downloaded copies of his personality to his drones and robots. That was his secret, thousands of little him.”

“With 21^st century technology?” the man at the other end found it difficult to believe.

“They knew the basics” The historian gave a rationale explanation.

“In theory” the woman said in an unconvinced tone.

There was a brief pause of silence.

“What about capital, heirs, secrets, anything of substance?”

“Sir, I was lucky to find this much. As for offspring, we can delete that option.”

 “How come?” they both asked, “well…” the historian was stepping outside his field of expertise, “according to the A. I. here someone took care of that when he was very young, someone professional”.

“Was it medical,” the woman asked,” abuse?  The DNA must have told you something?” She was now as puzzled as him

 “Sorry.” He said. “All it told is that he is some kind of a union between a hi-tech dynasty and a showbiz dynasty. The exact distance hasn’t been determined.” For a moment he spoke as if he was from the early 21^st century. They new riddles reawaken his old fascination. Bureaucrats however hate riddles; even the good-looking ones. From their end the link was severed.

“If he’s that important,” asked the med-tech, ”I know some alien technologies that could revive him for a while.”

For a moment or two the historian pondered the suggestion.

“And then what? You’ve heard the A. I.; his body is full of trashed nanobots. The G force made a mass out of them and his internal organs.”

“The nanobots were supposed to help counter the effects of the G force, and hold his inner body parts together” the A. I. spoke softly and slowly.

“Yea, yea, I gather that, and they failed,”

“Not quite” the A. I. continued unmoved by his impatience, “the failure was in correlating the strength of the G force and the length of the journey with the endurance of the nanobots,”

“And now they are a part of one big mess of goo and metal.” The historian made a long story short.

“In a matter of speaking;” the A. I. sounded offended.

In the silence that followed the med-tech looked at him waiting for a reply. But all he did was to stare at the tube. In his mind he saw that era coming to life with all its horrors.

“No.” he concluded, “whatever demons are chasing him, they need as much a rest as he does.” And left.