Ben Bova - Empire Builders

EMPIRE

BUILDERS

TOR BOOKS BY BEN BOVA

As on a Darkling Plain

The Astral Mirror

Battle Station

The Best of the Nebulas (ed.)

Challenges

Colony

Cyberbooks

Escape Plus

Future Crime

Gremlins Go Home (with Gordon R. Dickson)

The Kinsman Saga

The Multiple Man

Orion

Orion in the Dying Time

Out of the Sun

Peacekeepers

Privateers

Prometheans

Star Peace: Assured Survival

The Starcrossed

Test of Fire

To Save the Sun (with A. J. Austin)

The Trikon Deception (with Bill Pogue)

Triumph

Vengeance of Orion

Voyagers

Voyagers Il: The Alien Within

Voyagers III: Star Brothers

The Winds of Altair

BEN BOVA

IVIPIRE

BUILDERS

A TORN DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

EMPIRE BUILDERS

Copyright 1993 by Ben Bova

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

A Tor Book

Published by Torn Doherty Associates, Inc.

Totis a registered trademark of Torn Doherty Associates, Inc.

Design by Lynn Newmark

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bova, Ben.

Empire builders / Ben Bova.

p. cm.

Sequel to: Privateers.

ISBN 0312851049

I. Title.

3552.O84E48 I993

813.54dc20

First edition: September 1993

Printed in the United States of America

To Robin and Mike Putira

EMPIRE

BUILDERS

I DONT WANT your crappy little company! said Clan Randolph.

The hell you dont! Willard Mitchell snapped. Clan gave a disgusted snort and leaned back in the stiff unpadded

chair. Mitchell glared across the table at him. The two lawyers, seated beside their clients, shifted uneasily in their chairs.

The room was windowless, deep underground, without even a video screen on the wall. Just bare lunar concrete lit by glareless fluorescents set behind the ceiling panels. Technically, the chamber was not a cell or even an interrogation chamber. It was a conference room where defendants could meet in private with their lawyers.

Clan Randolph fished a small oblong plastic box from his inside tunic pocket. About the size of his palm, it was a flat gray color with a single row of tiny winking lights set across its face. All the lights were green.

No bugs in here, he muttered, adding silently to himself, At least none that this little snooper can sniff out.

He slipped the detector back into his pocket and turned his gaze again to Mitchell, still glaring at him from across the wobbly conference table. Randolph was on the small side, but solidly built, a welterweight with sandy hair that was turning gray at the temples.

He had a pugilists face: strong square stubborn jaw, a nose that had been slightly flattened by someones fist a long time ago. But his light gray eyes glinted with a secret amusement, as if he were inwardly laughing at the foolishness of men, himself included.

Across the table from him Willard Mitchell was scowling grimly. Once he had been lean and athletic, a polo champion at Princeton, a well-known young yachtsman. But years of living in the Moons easy gravity had softened him. Now he appeared older than Randolph, bald pate gleaming with perspiration, badly overweight and overwrought. Like Randolph, he was wearing business clothes: a collarless waist-length tunic and matching slacks. But where Dans suit of sky blue looked trim and new, Mitchells pearl gray outfit was baggy, wrinkled, rumpled; stains of sweat darkened his armpits.

This is all your doing, Randolph, he snarled in a heavy grating voice. Dont think I dont know that you set me up.

Clan raised his eyes to the glowing ceiling panels. Lord spare me from my friends, he said to the air. I can protect myself from my enemies.

Mitchells lawyer, a sallow-skinned old man with the build and demeanor of a cadaver, dressed in a blue so deep it looked almost black, leaned toward his client and whispered something that Clan could not hear.

Mitchell scowled at his lawyer, but turned back to Clan and grumbled, All right, all right, as long as were stuck here whats your offer?

Mitchell was on trial before the Global Economic Councils lunar tribunal for illegally exceeding his allotted quota of lunar ores. He was guilty. He knew it, his lawyers knew it, and the tribunal had the evidence to prove it. The fine that the tribunal was about to assess would bankrupt him.

Clan Randolph leaned both elbows on the rickety table and hunched forward in his chair. First off, he said, his voice crisp with suppressed anger, I did not set you up.

The hell you say.

Goddammit to hell and back! The day I turn anybody over to the GEC will be two weeks after the end of the world. If I wanted to grab your pissant little outfit I wouldve done it myself. I dont need the doubledamned GEC to help me.

Mitchell fumed visibly, but held back from answering.

Randolphs lawyer, a strikingly red-haired young woman new to the Moon, was sitting attentively at her bosss left. She said mildly, Mr. Mitchell has asked to hear your offer, Clan.

He grinned at her. Yeah. Right.

So7 Mitchell growled.

Randolph spread his hands. Ill buy your stock at the current market price

Which is forty percent below par because of this lawsuit.

and pay the fine that the GECs going to sock you with. You continue to operate the company; you remain CEO and COO. You can buy back your shares at market value whenever you want to.

Mitchell sank back in his chair, the expression on his fleshy face somewhere between suspicion and hope. Now, wait a minute, he said. You buy my shares

All your shares, said Randolph. Sixty-three percent of the total outstanding, so Im told.

The other man nodded. You buy the shares. You pay the fine.

I stay in charge of the company. And then I can buy the shares backT

Randolph gave him a crooked grin. The harder you work, the more the sharesil be worth.

Suppose I let the company go to the dogs and leave you holding the bagT

Randolph shrugged. Thats the risk I take. But I dont see you shitting on your own baby.

Mitchell glanced at his lawyer, who remained deadpan, then turned back to Randolph. I dont get it. Whats in it for you7

Dans smile turned dazzling. A chance to shaft Malik and his doubledamned GEC. What elseT

DANIEL HAMILTON RANDOLPH was the richest human being living off-Earth. While there was no dearth of suspicious souls who were convinced that no one could get that filthy rich while staying entirely within the law, for the most part Clan Randolph had earned his wealth legally.

Once, briefly, he had been accused of piracy. By Vasily Malik, who had then been director of the Russian Federations space program. Clan had evaded the charges against him, married the Venezuelan

woman Malik was engaged to, and personally broken the Russians jaw, together with a knuckle of his own right hand.

Now, ten years later, Dans marriage had long since ended in divorce. The woman he had loved, the woman who had thought she loved him, was now Maliks wife. And Malik himself had survived the turmoil and treachery in the Kremlin to become the new Russian Federations representative on the Global Economic Council.

In the middle of the twenty-first century, space was becoming vitally important to the Earths global economy. Even the United States, which had abandoned its space program decades earlier, was now building factories in orbit and allowing its citizens to operate mining facilities on the Moon. Under GEC supervision, of course.