February 5th 2145
He stood there on the balcony of his top floor office apartment. He enjoyed looking over his home city of London, one of the benefits of the Commonwealth was they had pulled together there national treasuries to build atmospheric converters and water purifiers to keep the skies and oceans clean and blue. Will smiled as he looked over the magnificent silver, green and ceramic blue city he proudly called home. Further out there the busy markets arranged in circles around the government and administration park where he resided. Other smaller secular green parks scattered across London surrounded by stainless steel houses with flat roof top gardens. Feeling the brisk wind rush threw his long blond hair and short well trimmed beard from the high up balcony, it was nearing dusk.
The Commonwealth had become more united over the past decade and a half since his grate grand father had led a revolution back in the mid twenty first century. It had levelled most of London and put a large dent in Britain's population but you couldn't argue with the results. Privet banking was a thing of the past now replaced with the unified Commonwealth bank run by the government to help avoid economic melt downs. Companies had limitations to prevent corruption, monopolies, to enforce quality over profit and to prevent them growing too big like the RDA.
There was in fact a boycott of all RDA products in the Commonwealth and breach of the boycott resulted in the abandonment of the offending country, one of such counties had been Canada and now they shared a plummeting ecology like the rest of the world. Despite the boycott they still communicated with the RDA agreeing to a media black out of the commonwealth, after all they didn't want a sudden jump in population disturbing the fragile balance of air reclamation, population expansion and other factors. In return the RDA's customers didn't know that they could get cheaper better quality merchandise else where.
William Highlander the Third ran Scorpio Industries, a scientific research institute that manufactured weapons and power reactors to keep the money coming in. Highlander had become a big name in the Commonwealth, his uncle Martin ran a salvage company and his cousin Sophie had Cobalt Chemicals a bioengineering firm. Scorpio Industries had just released a new plasma based reactor that could potentially rival the RDA's unobtanium reactors and as a bonus variants of the plasma could also serve as a replacement to jet fuel. If only he could get the plasmatic resin formula right, it was a constant juggling act between physics and chemistry. He sighed knowing it would need at least three more weeks to figure it out but that would be without any interruptions.
Heading back inside he thought he had better catch up with the news. The room served as a combination of office, personal work shop and living area with an attached bed room. It was rather depressing that he had to sleep in an administrative building but with three major contracts in progress he just did not have the time to commute from his families estate. Slumping down on a sofa he look for the BBC international news channel.
"...and in recent news a dragon gun ship has been brought down in California, main suspects are the West Coast Resistance group who are believed to be held up in the red wood international park using its protected status to prevent air strikes and heavy weapons from being brought against them..." The presenter stated.
Will chuckled at the situation, the Commonwealth was secretly backing the West Coast Resistance and there bid for independence from the rather corrupt American government and the RDA.
"...the dragon gun ship in service of the RDA security force was shot down on patrol while protecting an important Resource Development Allocation research station. The RDA has denied reports that the lab was raided later that day."
Scorpio Industries was contracted by the British government to supply them with various weapons including rockets and anti aircraft mounts. He took an interest and got to know their leader personally. She was a nice girl, her speeches of justice, freedom and equality for all under their wings reminded him of the old vids of his grate grandfather William Highlander the first, he could respect that.
"Moving on the Avatar program has been yielding further positive results. The RDA justifies the multimillion dollar project because of the unannounced scientific discoveries made on Pandora by the Avatar team. In addition they serve as diplomats to the native population the Na'vi and are reported to have formed a strong bond the Na'vi. Michel Harof interviews a recently accepted candidate, Tomas Sully..."
"Ha, bull shit." Will thought to himself.
To him the Avatar program was a bad joke. "How were you supposed to improve Human/Na'vi relations with something that's not Human?"
His logic was simple; The Avatar project was so expensive that they only took the most dedicated and devoted candidates. The only reason they had to work so hard at it was they wanted to get away from whichever cesspool they lived in. In short they wanted to run away instead of trying to make the world a better place, they should have sent humans to negotiate with the Na'vi instead.
However while he frowned upon the individual it was no skin off his nose that the RDA blundering into such a fundamental mistake, they already had a tight grip hold on the UN and most Earth governments, he didn't want the Na'vi to suffer that same fate.
"In fact if what my friend at the intelligence agency said was true those relations are about to plummet." Something about a new second in command, a commander called Falco and their current commander Colonel Quaritch. Will looked up their records and what he found was rather interesting. Falco; experienced commander and patriot recently retired from the military, not too smart though judging by his brutal, simplistic tactics. Quaritch on the other hand was a sleigh, capable bastard. Three tours in Nigeria and three years on Pandora was impressive but he relied to heavily on cytological warfare. Summed up; both proud patriots, prone to using overly violent solutions and potential xenophobes.
"...in other news Saudi Arabia has recently made accusations against Scorpio Industries of producing biological weapons in the United Nations senate earlier today."
"What?" Will exclaimed as his attention was wiped back to the TV.
"Saudi Arabia has presented evidence that their new plasma based technology also serve as biological weapons. A formal Inquiry has been authorised."
"Where on earth did this come from? Plasma a biological weapon? Sure it released harmful amounts of toxic gasses if mix irresponsibly with other chemicals but that alone wouldn't..." and then it sprang on him.
"Of course! If containment was breached it would be a rather violent fireworks display, the combination of the two would render it a biological weapon by definition even if it were highly infective." Will muttered to himself.
He was pacing now. This situation just provided him with another problem, plasma tech was just prototype technology it testing wasn't complete let alone on the shop shelves for any one to get their hands on.
"I've got a security leak," he thought. And with that he turned off the TV his face turning from shocked astonishment to deadly serious, his cool blue eyes focusing and freezing over. He went to the telephone and got an internal line to his secretary.
"Get my department executives and my lawyer on the horn, I want them in meating room seven in one hour. If they cant make it tell them to get a high security conference line."
"All of them sir?" the secretary inquired.
"Yes, all of them." His voice was using an icy tone he had not found himself using in years.
"Yes sir, I'll get on it right away."
"Oh and one more thing, for the last time stop calling me sir." with that he hung up and began preparations for the meting.
