As expected the war began on Mars, where the first battle took place in the aptly named Solar Courts, where all solar exploration litigation was determined. At this point in history, Earth was cleansed of all nonessential industries, and the land, sea and air had returned to the ecological paradise it was before humanity's evolution. The planet was still home to millions but only those who followed the strict ecological code, for the earth, had become a sanctuary and millions have come to refer to it as a holy place, it was after all, the birthplace of the only known sentient species.

Long after most Earthers had migrated from their polluted and uninhabitable home planet, during the late 23rd Century's great solar expansion, the corporate powers which had taken control of space exploration and habitation had decided that Earth should serve as a monument to their creation. The planetary constraints were so rigorously enforced, that even though it was claimed that the Interstellar Orionids HQ was earth-based it was, in fact, a geostationary monolith in a fixed position, directly above what was the De Schmittenvere's 20th-century ancestral home.

But as time passed millions of space dwellers had come to acknowledge the idea of Old Earth being a holy place, a place of worship, a place to which like sheep to the slaughter its ever-growing number of followers would travel countless miles, making what was considered a pilgrimage purely to bath in its holy waters, where they were baptised in the name Mother Earth, the ancient name of Ghia was among the most popular used by the followers.

This pseudo-religious turn of events was not foreseen by the corporation's strategists who had urged the creation of an earthly sanctuary, purely as a means of removing the last vestiges of the ailing Earth government's dwindling control over space. But even though a sanctuary it had gained an alternative economy to that of free enterprise, which had been outlawed, which had made the Earth more viable, not impotent as planned by the strategists. During the chaotic situation, the largest and most powerful conglomerates would have preferred that no formal control was established in what they considered free space. By this, they meant it was free for them to exploit, luckily there were enough large and unaffiliated corporations to sway the vote in favour of an independent Centre of Corporation Control (CCC), which was to be based on Mars.

Even though CCC administered the Solar Courts, they were unable to prevent the case made by Interstellar Orionids (ISO) from being carried unanimously. They had successfully claimed that they had the right to prevent Zero Point Tech (ZPT) from using the space stations and any form of the outpost they had established between the earth and the intergalactic void, to develop their Quantum Jump technology. From the ISO Board's perspective, they had succeeded in their quest, however, the ZPT Board had long expected this outcome and had been busy making other more elaborate preparations in anticipation of a negative outcome. So, irrespective of the anticipated outcome they had deliberately fought the ISO Board as if their future depended upon them achieving a positive outcome, and they had gone as far as to raise an appeal on a minor technicality, just to gain time and maintain the appearance of desperation.

But even as the ISO Board were busy celebrating with glasses of champagne, Oscar Zillion saw it for what it was, the first tottering steps and was already planning his next move, for he knew his siblings were smart enough to develop another means of making their plans for Quantum-Link, point-to-point space travel a reality. A way had to be found by which he could derail or better still, take control of the program, what better way would there be to expand into and beyond the void?

Econtos and Salvenza Zillion had set to work as if they were playing, a game of interstellar chess, where the stakes were high and had a life-or-death impact, on them and anyone employed by ZPT. They had chosen to proceed using stealth, primarily because they believed it was the only way to make any viable progress. It was also obvious that their brother held all the cards, he had a well-equipped private army at his disposal, so if it came to open warfare they would be swiftly annihilated. Their planning began as soon as Oscar had usurped their sister and taken control of the board, they knew without a doubt that eventually, his ambitions would include seizing control of ZPT's baby.

ZPT covertly deployed their most trusted cohorts as sleepers deep inside the organisations of other corporations, and as loyal and trusted servants, they worked their way into trusted and often highly technical positions. Malinga Anglia was a prime example, she had been among the first cohorts to be deployed and had worked her way into one of the ISO Tech Labs' most senior technical positions, from where she could legitimately seek out further candidates for enrolment into ZPT's Equality Cause, as they like to call it.

Once embedded the cohort's top priority was to identify personnel within their respective corporations that could be trusted, and history had shown that these people often came from the minority who had been identified as having genetic defects. They were able to induce or influence these individuals to defect because soon after the initial detection of their so-called flaw they became the subject of unwarranted prejudice and ridicule and were pushed aside into what they would consider a menial task, not befitting of their intelligence.

This was even though the decades of experience gathered had shown, that their so-called defect rarely if ever affected their intellectual ability, it was simply because they had what was considered an undesirable trait, an emotional or moral concern for the welfare of those involved in the research programs, this failing prevented them from pursuing research programs without first ensuring due care and attention to the welfare of the subjects and this would often result in a delay and a failure to meet their respective department's objectives.

However, there was one ethical irony that should have stood out a mile, but somehow they were able to overlook what was a moral dilemma once the Cohorts had been conscripted into ZPT's Equality Cause. Under the guise that they had experienced a genetic epiphany during a period of statutory reprogramming, which enabled them to continue to work in their original roles, where they often found themselves having to turn a blind to the very things that had resulted in their original demise. It was a catch-twenty-two situation, you are done if you do and done if you do not, but then no one ever told them having faith that you were doing the right thing was going to be easy.

The harsh truth is that not all forms of genetically induced emotional control were an issue, for fearlessness, bravery, loyalty, and work ethic were of value in an employee. Control of these emotions was also a prerequisite for genetically enhanced soldiers, who needed to possess fearlessness and loyalty. And it had not gone unnoticed by Malinga that these two attributes were inherent in a Rock Workers genetic profile, and Rock Workers were in abundance throughout the Rock Zone. In the ISOs Mining Division, these genetically enhanced employees numbered in the millions, but their fearless attributes had been completely overlooked. The Rock Zone's Human Resources were simply deemed an off-the-shelf labour resource, their only concern was that the Rock Workers continued to meet their quota, upon which their bonuses were dependent.

Butt Malinga Anglia was no bonus-sucking limpet and looking at them from a unique perspective she had the foresight to see this as a potential Equality Cause issue, or in her case an opportunity. In her mind, she was busy formulating a long-term plan, but in the short term was encouraging the other cohorts to focus on this issue when recruiting from the working class and had even taken it upon herself to become their covert and silent advocate.

However, the cohorts had a major issue to overcome, the potential recruits, as has already been pointed out, had been genetically modified and were loyal and honest workers who would go to any lengths to ensure their work quotas were achieved. Without a wish to demean them, they were in effect remarkably like worker drones, who would die for their Queen, and consequently, it was strongly rumoured among the flawless Tech population that the worker's genes had been spliced with those of worker bees. This of course was simply a prejudicial rumour with no factual foundation which had evolved purely from their blind arrogance. The sad fact is that even with superior intelligence the witless Techies were incapable of detecting their emotional weakness, even though it was slapping them in the face, for they still needed to massage their self-esteem by creating unquantifiable fallacies.

All this helps explains why the conversion success rate of Rock Worker to the cause was incredibly low, just a mere handful had been recruited and these were mostly those who had been pensioned off after their work rate had fallen below an acceptable limit and found themselves with time to waste had become disillusioned and/or bored. This level of recruitment was never going to work so Malinga decided that a more effective alternative was required and after endless soul-searching, she finally convinced the movers and shakers at ZPT HQ that they had to find a way in which the best-kept secret in the solar system could be revealed without causing wholesale panic on the outer planets and in the Rock Zone.

It was Malinga's persistence that led ZPT to scale down their plans to use IOS outposts as the fixed points in space required to develop their Point-to-Point space travel ambitions and choose to develop a mobile technology that could be based on ships or objects with suitable energy sources. At face value, this was a great idea, but ZPT had no corporate ships, upon which they could locate their technology, so had no choice but to improvise. They chose to secretly fund the upgrade of selected privateer's ships who had no idea who their generous backers were, and whilst doing the ship's upgrades their Point-to-Point technology was secretly embedded, and hidden from detection by the ship's crews using their innovative in-built stealth tech.

The privateer plan was working perfectly, and their upgraded ships were becoming an increasing problem to the independent transporters, and in a brief time were able to successfully spread their activities into the Rock Zone and the more daring even ventured into Interstellar Space. To IOS the privateers were no more irritating than the fleas on a dog's back, but they were enough to distract them from discovering their true purpose. However, ZPT's most important requirement remained the same, they needed to build a capable and trusted army.

Tosupport what had become known as the best-kept secret plan, they were busyusing their stealth technology to transport Single Point Modems throughout whatthey jokingly called the IOS Empire and had been successful in completing theirfirst live trials, one on a privateer's ship and the other on two unsuspectingRock Workers.

Total Words: 1889

Rolling Total: 13555