Starcorp 1: Escape from Sol

“Hagerman has just announced that he will not be pursuing a revised version of his investment treaty,” Peter Carr reported a second after walking into the Prime Minister Eckhart’s Office.

“Of course he won’t,” George Wilkinson asserted forcefully. “He knows when he’s been beaten.”

It was a crisp spring morning in Edmonton when Edward Eckhart called his three most valued Ministers into a meeting. There was no vitally important subject on the agenda. The Prime Minister of the Alberta Alliance was using this time to get updates on the projects that were of concern to him. He allocated ten minutes once a week for this purpose. More often than not, he used the bulk of this time socializing with his Ministers or discussing things that were not on the agenda. The reason behind these off subject discussions was usually because of the need to fill in the unused time. What discourse there was on the status of the affairs of the Ministers was usually limited to brief reports. Anything of real importance that happened within their respective spheres was always brought to Eckhart’s attention at, or soon after, the time of its occurrence. The Thames/BX01 Investment treaty was not on the list of subjects to discuss at this meeting. However, the subject was of great interest to Eckhart.

“The agreement was never his,” Prime Minister Eckhart grumbled out from behind a frown and with a lecturing inflection. “The starcorps dreamed up that idea, and they will try again.”

“But no one is going to support it now,” Carr softly declared with a slight shake of his head.

There was a couple of seconds of silence after this during which Eckhart and Wilkinson mulled over this statement with looks of satisfaction. At the end of this time, Ronald Kaplan hesitantly annunciated the thought that came to his mind.

“Maybe not now, but eventually everyone will.”

From behind his desk, Eckhart gave Kaplan a look of displeasure from out the corner of his eyes. A second later he turned his attention back to his pondering, without the look of satisfaction.

Seated in front of Eckhart, on the far side of his desk, were three of his Ministers. In the chair to the far left was Peter Carr, his Minister of State. Standing close to five-feet-eight-inches tall, Carr was a thin, almost frail, looking man. In age he appeared to be in his mid-sixties. In actuality, he was forty-seven years old. His propensity for displays of intense concentration, coupled with his unflattering eyeglasses, and poor attention to his attire gave others the impression that he was an exceptionally intelligent man, which was not untrue. In the center chair was George Wilkinson, Minister of Defense. Standing five-feet-ten-inches tall, he was a mildly rotund man that looked to be in his mid-sixties. His health and vigor disguised the fact that he was seventy-two years old. His scarred face and menacing demeanor advertised the fact that he was someone with a violent past. Ronald Kaplan, Eckhart’s Minister of Public Works, was seated in the far-right chair. Forty-six years old, bland in countenance, and a stance of just under six-feet in height, he was physically the least distinctive of the three. There was nothing in his appearance to separate him from the average middle-aged man on the street.

“What does that mean?” Wilkinson queried after noting Eckhart’s failure to respond to Kaplan’s remark.

Kaplan was reluctant to expand on this statement. Speaking it in the first place was almost a slip of the tongue. He knew from experience that this was thinking that Eckhart was loathed to hear. But there were times when he felt it was needed to be said, and he decided this was one of those times.

“Sooner or later someone will set up a foreign investment treaty with the starcorps,” Kaplan explained in a nonchalant delivery. “And when it happens the other States will follow one after the other. This defeat is just delaying the inevitable.”

“Nothing is inevitable,” Eckhart quickly contradicted with an angry scowl.

Always quick to rally behind Eckhart, Wilkinson echoed this sentiment with a resolute, “that’s right.”

Kaplan immediately recognized that this was technically true. But he also saw the flaw in this thinking in this situation. It was his belief that the act of refusing to recognize the starcorps as independent States was the long way around to the same end. Kaplan was a pragmatist. He believed that the only thing that was keeping the Earth from out producing the starcorps on a scale of one-thousand to one was their dilapidated industrial infrastructure and their lack of a global economy. But he also knew that Eckhart was no stranger to this thinking and he chose not to belabor what he already knew.

“Yes, you’re right of course,” Kaplan confessed dismissively.

Kaplan’s relationship with Eckhart was one of necessity more than anything else. Wilkinson and Carr had a friendship with Eckhart that was built around a mutual hatred for the starcorps. Kaplan’s position within his ministry was based upon his adept management of the Ministry of Public Works. The importance of this position became exponentially greater at the end of the Global War. And it remained of high importance for the whole of the time that followed. Eckhart had no fondness for Kaplan or his politics. It was his need for his expertise that kept Kaplan in his job.

“That sounds to me like you don’t believe what you’re saying,” Carr pointed out with a studious stare.

“No, I agree,” Kaplan responded quickly. “Nothing is inevitable. But I do believe, one way or another, the Earth will recognize the starcorps as independent States.”

“The starcorps are the property of Earth,” Eckhart heatedly insisted with a glare towards Kaplan. “If we give in to what they want then we give away what is ours.”

Kaplan understood that ownership claims to the starcorps were a nightmare in the making. The simple solution, as he and most other moderates so it, was to concede ownership to the people living within them. But this was an argument that he felt was best kept unsaid for the moment.

“I mean no disrespect, Prime Minister,” Kaplan responded in an apologetic tone. “It’s just that who the starcorps belong to is irrelevant.”

“It is relevant,” Eckhart angrily argued back. “They owe us. We put them there.”

Edward Eckhart was the youngest of three children of Martin and Lisa Eckhart. Edward’s eldest sibling was Benjamin. He was five years Edward’s senior. His sister, Kathryn, was three years his senior. Their father was a Police Officer for the City of Edmonton, Alberta. Edward’s family had a history of working in this profession that went back nearly two-hundred years. At the end of the Third World War, the Eckhart family profession was a resource in high demand by Edmonton. This was due to the sudden influx of refugees. The city’s public services were quickly overwhelmed by their numbers, and the dramatic rise in crime that they brought with them took a heavy toll on the police.

On the day of his birth Edward had nine relatives working for the Edmonton Police Services. By the time he had reached thirteen years of age, three of their number had been killed in the line of duty. His father was the most recent addition to that count. The loss of Martin Eckhart’s income and his clout within the city had a devastating effect on the family’s fortunes. The most immediate demonstration of this was the loss of their home. The city requisitioned it for allocation to a high-value city resident. This was a designation that the Eckharts no longer had. Edward and his family were relocated to a small apartment in a far less desirable sector of the city.

At this time in Edward Eckhart’s life, the city of Edmonton was halfway through a recent political upheaval. Ex-Police Chief Terrence Hirsch had recently wrestled control of the city away from its former Mayor. In place of the Republic, he set up a military dictatorship that was separate from the State of Alberta. In response to this, the starcorps suspended all aid to Edmonton. Deaths due to illness and malnutrition went up tenfold over an eight-year period. Three years after his father’s death Lisa Eckhart became ill and died. Edward assigned most of the blame for his mother’s passing to the Spacers. His hatred for the starcorps could be traced back to this event, but his militant nature towards them began three years after that.

Edward’s brother, Benjamin, joined the Edmonton Police Services two years after the death of his father. Embittered towards the refugees, which he blamed for the misfortunes in his life, he became an avid supporter of Hirsch’s hardline dictatorship. He soon became recognized as a trusted lieutenant within the regime. Before the end of his fourth year as an Edmonton Police Officer, Benjamin, Hirsch and eight others, were killed in a bombardment by a starcorp space-plane. In Edward’s mind this was a death that the starcorps owned completely.

“Alienating the starcorps does nothing to help the Alberta Alliance,” Kaplan argued back with a flash of anger.

“I’ll alienate the starcorps if I damn well please,” Eckhart shouted back.

Shocked by the intensity of Eckhart’s retort, Kaplan paused before giving his response in a soft voice.

“Then maybe you should think about your Ministry.”

“And what does that mean?” A confused Wilkinson questioned after a two-second delay from Eckhart.

“It means,” Kaplan began with a look of incredulity and with his hands raised up off his lap. “If we don’t do something to improve the plight of the voters we’re going to lose in the next election. Gellenbeck is already calling you a mad man that is sacrificing the state to pander to your hatred for the starcorps.”

Kaplan gave Eckhart and Wilkinson a few seconds to ponder this. He could tell from Eckhart’s sour demeanor that he had already given thought to this. He suspected that Wilkinson was waiting for Eckhart to deny this. At the end of this time, Kaplan added to his statement a request he hoped would give added weight to his argument.

“If you don’t believe me ask Carr.”

Peter Carr was quiet and noncommittal through the whole of this debate. His dislike for the starcorps did not blind him to the realities of this situation. But he was reluctant to say anything that was supportive of Kaplan’s position. This sudden deference to his opinion forced him into the discussion. After the passage of a couple of seconds, he began his assessment of Eckhart’s political situation with an inflection of reluctance.

“The starcorps have made cutbacks in their aid to us. If this continues through to the next election, we could be looking at a much more difficult race than the one we just came out of.”

“We’ll do without,” Eckhart grumbled out.

“I thought we were going to build a coalition of trading partners?” Wilkinson questioned with a surprised expression.

“That’s been slow going,” Carr reported reluctantly.

This was information that Eckhart was fully aware of. Creating a coalition of trading partners was a major campaign promise of his. It was also something that he had given great importance to. He had hopes of building a coalition of partners that would be a force the starcorps had to reckon with. Eckhart had been keeping close tabs on Carr’s efforts at bringing this project to fruition. What he and Carr had learned since beginning this endeavor was that brokering a deal between the divided States of Earth was extremely difficult. The primary holdups to this project were the entrenched rivalries and biases the States had for each other and the more than one-hundred territorial disputes between the States they conversed with.

“How slow?” Wilkinson asked with a curious inflection.

“Slow? It’s nonexistent,” Kaplan declared with feigned shock.

“It’s going to take time,” Eckhart corrected unconvincingly as he looked away from his ministers.

All of Eckhart’s plans for the Alberta Alliance were based around his forming a league of militantly anti-starcorp states. His goal for this coalition was to forge them into an industrial power that stretched far out into the solar system. Ultimately, in his private thoughts, he saw this coalition seizing most, if not all, of the starcorp assets. This, in Eckhart’s mind, was not an unrealistic dream. He felt this way even though nearly all other politicians around the globe believed that a true trading block of ten or more States was a century away. Eckhart’s contrary belief was rooted in his Svengali-like control over masses of embittered and impoverished voters. His influence extended around the globe with varying degrees of effectiveness. Depending upon the State in question, his support for a politician could lift him or her into a powerful government office. At this time, there were half dozen politicians outside of the borders of the Alberta Alliance that were just so indebted to him. At the height of Eckhart’s climb to the position of Prime Minister of the Alberta Alliance he was drunk with power. However, the last couple of years were having a gradually sobering effect on him.

“Prime Minister,” Kaplan gushed with earnest enthusiasm, “that kind of time is something you don’t have. You need to chart a new course. The starcorps now know that they can’t push through an investment treaty without your approval. You have the clout. You can make the deal. The starcorps will pay dearly for you backing.”

Eckhart looked to be pondering Kaplan’s suggestion as he scrunched his face into a frown and glared at the top of his desk. After several seconds of this, he looked up at Kaplan and gave him his response in the most succinct intonation that he could manage.

“We will do business with the starcorps when hell freezes over.”