ARC (New Earth #1) - Devon C. Ford Page 0,1

price that he could easily afford, and he always got what he wanted. Despite that privileged elitism, he was a likeable, charismatic young man.

The company was responsible for the first self-driving cars, for the automated drone delivery systems active in some major cities, for technological breakthroughs in ballistic body armor, as well as the armor-piercing munitions capable of defeating it. They sold indiscriminately to the entire world, albeit through a series of blind companies so no direct scandal could ever taint the company name.

When he turned twenty-four, he used his newly gained law degree to advise the best team of lawyers in the Netherlands in a case that was watched eagerly all over the world. The government was suing Icarus for millions in taxes for parts of the assets operating in their territory, and a win would reverberate over the globe and set a precedent for everyone to follow suit.

Amir’s father, Paul Weatherby, had taken steps to negate any losses and moved all of their European assets into a dozen other companies which would take years to follow, but Amir was confident of winning the case in court.

When they did win, the counter-suit he levelled at the federally collective twelve provinces of the Netherlands threatened to bankrupt the country. If not for the intervention of the European Union and a number of behind-closed-doors concessions made to company limitations, then they would have been finished.

Two years later, after losing Weatherby Senior to a sudden and unexpected heart attack, Amir calmly put on a ten-thousand-dollar suit and gave a heartfelt press release to the world on the sad passing of a great man. A visionary. Within six months, Amir had reassigned the majority of assets into research and development with an undisguised view toward commercial space travel. The privatization of government assets was an ongoing trend throughout the entire west, whereas the Russian and Chinese continents were becoming increasingly insular. Amir had acquired entire launch stations in former Soviet Union countries, had doubled the wages and conditions of anyone working at NASA or their sister organization of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL, and invested so heavily in the Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO, that he found himself in the unique position of being able to influence the country’s policy priorities if not directly dictate their mandates. He even managed to privatize the running of the ISS, International Space Station, after the Chinese and Russians withdrew their personnel and funding from the program, leaving a financial vacuum which begged to be filled.

One of his biggest gambles was the acquisition of the Hubble telescope program, which was suffering with the reduction in investment from all the space-capable nations. This gamble ultimately paid off as, when it was being repositioned for full-time Mars reconnaissance, the operators saw the asteroid.

2021QX84 was what they had called it and Amir thought that was stupid. The report came with a warning that the trajectory of the asteroid would take it past Earth, at least inside the solar system, but nothing more accurate could be said at that time. He knew that dozens of such warnings came each year, and each year world-devastating hunks of rock and mineral and ice passed through their solar system without causing the panic that such knowledge would inevitably bring.

Leaning back in his chair and frowning at the screen bearing the ambiguous report, he picked up his cell phone and dialed the number for the first rocket scientist he had ever met. It was picked up inside of three rings, and the person on the other end sounded sleepy.

“I’m sorry, Ian,” he said as he made the lightning-fast calculations in his head to tell him that he had just called someone at a little past four in the morning, their time, “I didn’t think before I dialed. I have ju—”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” came the voice from the other end. “I haven’t left work since yesterday.”

That made Amir sit up, as though he now saw the seriousness of the report that had been sat in his inbox. Ian Edwards was not a man prone to panic. Having spent much of his life working long hours for NASA at Two Independence Square in D.C. instead of at home with his wife and two sons, he had jumped at the chance for a better life in a warmer climate working for Amir. The fact that he was still at work spoke volumes.

“Is it this 2021QX thing?” Amir asked him, holding his breath for the three-second pause