20. Father.
At this rate, he was going to get hit by another scandal. The language within the communications raining down upon him from outer space indicated that the galactic community has marked him as an incompetent merchant who sells faulty goods. The trust among them was broken. He could not secure the sanctity of their product after all. Not only that, in his anger, he failed to secure the genius biohacker Dong Jun, who managed to break encryption on thousands of genetic products simultaneously.
They had sent strongly worded emails bordering on blatant insults. Most of them had sued Morif and his family, who ran the enterprise.
He had exhausted all his big guns. If he wanted to exert control over the surface of the Ashur-5, he was going to have to send down troops. Troops, which he scarcely has. Worse yet, since his family name has been besmirched through this ordeal, representatives from the family were coming too. Morif threw a pill into his mouth to calm his nerves. This was supposed to be a simple ordeal. He was supposed to be at the top of the world. Literally.
A ship docked at the habitat orbiting the planet Ashur-5. It bore the Salazar emblem. Several individuals disembarked from the ship and went to the docking bay. They removed their helmets and revealed their fancy new-generation bodies. These people arrived at the Ashur-5 faster by using a smaller and more advanced spacecraft. They had burned money on their bodies, burned money with their ships, and burned money by using an incredible amount of energy just to travel nearer to the speed of light. They did it just to have the first contact with Morif after the whole deciphered gene broadcast debacle.
They needed to do damage control first and deal with Morif later. Not to mention, they had a bone to pick with him in private. His father, Alexander Salazar, had invited himself to this excursion for that very reason. His son was losing his way. He disrobed his spacesuit and washed himself before stepping into the habitat. Shimmering artificial lights that kept the vegetation alive assaulted his eyes for a second before his system inevitably adjusted. He always admired the design of low-orbit habitats. It was supremely utilitarian and full of useful people and machines. He found that people who tended to live on planets had more free time to frolic and waste, forcing satellite folk to pick up the slack. Damn planeteers were both entitled and lazy. They had failed to meet the quarterly quota and forced Alexander's dear son to use drastic measures. Not only that, but they also had the audacity to retaliate against their just punishment. His dear son had truly suffered a tragedy.
Morif waited in the next room to meet his father. His father had to cleanse himself before stepping into the wider habitat. If one was not careful, they might suffer a virus attack on their whole bloodline. There were procedures to follow. The quarantine room had a giant window into the habitat on its ceiling. Alexander liked his white hair and old, wizened look. His old face was merely cosmetic. The body he was using was pretty young.
After quarantine was done, Morif smiled and rubbed his hands together in front of his father. He wanted to make a good first impression on his father, even though things were getting worse and worse. He wanted to win points with his demeanor, at least.
Alexander walked toward Morif. He could've hugged his son, but he pushed his hand out instead. He had opted to shake his son's hand like a business partner instead. Morif looked at his father's hand, a bit dispirited. He got over his disappointment pretty quickly and squeezed his father's hand. He applied a little bit of force to his hand to gain Alexander's respect with a firm handshake. Alexander didn't think much about this little exchange.
"Morif, I studied the files you sent me, but could you walk me through what happened? What are you planning to do from now on?"
Morif cleared his throat and pulled up a hologram. It was the hologram of the Biolab that he had bombed to bits.
"Many of the test subjects survived and created a community around this biolab. They created ways to combat post-experiment ecological disasters, so I wanted to let them be. That was partly because they had no indications of doing something like what they did in their databases. However, it turns out they had created a biocomputer just to break encryption on intellectual property. It was too late when she broadcast a staggering amount of data into the wormhole. Not only that, after I wiped them off the map, a hostile rainforest has appeared in their vicinity. Now, the planet is on the verge of becoming a death world. The land I sold is also under threat. Frankly, father, I don't know what to do. I've exhausted my arsenal, and tungsten rods wouldn't be able to fight against a whole biosphere anyway. The nuclear option creates radioactive zones; therefore, it is anathema to our purpose here."
Alexander listened attentively. It wasn't that his son did anything subpar. He just lost against Dong Jun. Alexander lamented. He would've loved to take her as his fifth wife. It was hard to find such high-quality people. That woman fucked over the entire universe. She had balls.
Alexander was going to beat his son to a bloody pulp. He was expecting the worst from him. Frankly, he was expecting him to be retarded. Alexander pulled up the pre-cleansing graphs. Morif had outdone most of the planets that were like his. He had danced the perfect dance of power. Data compiled by AI showed him that Morif was proficiently ruthless and capable.
Alexander understood that he had to open up his purse and prepare for a public relations war. He opened the galactic market and found a death world fortress blueprint. He had already purchased this blueprint four hundred years ago. He pulled up an asteroid miner blueprint and had the-low orbit habitat printed with a 3D printer. This asteroid miner was going to duplicate itself first and throw resources toward the Ashur-5. Next, a builder bot was going to use these resources to build the Death World Fortress. With that, the planet down there could be somewhat viable as real estate. The customers had thought they were going to inhabit an empty planet. They were going to be made to settle for a fortress life, which was significantly worse. It was a terrible loss of reputation for the Salazar family. It was better than feeding these settlers to monsters. For the gene economy, Alexander could bail his son out by buying the rights to the genes Dong Jun had made public. Doing so involved an amount of money no one else was willing to pay for their family members.
Alexander fancied himself as a fair man. He intended to be fair to his son. Morif was not at fault. He had properly genocided the people like he was supposed to, and he had properly applied the tests to the people like he was supposed to. The boy did nothing wrong.
"To be fair, Morif, if I were you, I too would be in the same position. What we'll have to do now is crush nature with industry. Since the hostile flora and fauna don't have a mind behind them, eventually, innovation will break the back of evolution. This is the best we could do. If we fail to recoup the losses we've suffered through the broadcast, it will be a huge blow to our family."
Down on the planet, Dwax scuttled toward the sea. He had accomplished a self-perpetuating ecosystem on the land near the water. The ocean was different. In the ocean, the bacteria and viruses were at constant war. The bioweapon was actually a drop in the ocean when it came to biological war. The oceans were alive and well. The bioweapon had been outcompeted.
Dwax metabolized the bombardier beetle organ and grew gills after cocooning. He dove down to make the entire sea a den of monsters. His eyes and fist had become those of a mantis shrimp. He needed the raw firepower and range it had offered. A mantis shrimp's fist was so fast that it created a bubble that collapsed and created a spot that burned at a thousand degrees. It was, frankly, one of the most awesome organs that nature had come up with.
He broke out of his cocoon and walked into the sea to create chaos.
There wasn't only wildlife in the sea. A remnant of civilization stood too.