SATURN FOR SALE

CRAIG A. FALCONER

Saturn For Sale

© 2024 Craig A. Falconer

This edition published February 2024.

The characters and events herein are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

At the author’s request, this book has been made available free of all DRM.

Contents

Books by Craig A. Falconer

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1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Author’s Notes

Books by Craig A. Falconer

* * *

THE EARTHBURST SAGA

Last Man Standing

Into The Fire

Operation Starshot

The Anomaly

Reason To Fear

The Last Horizon

Echoes Of Destiny

The Reckoning

All Or Nothing

Beyond The Limit: A Prequel Story

* * *

NOT ALONE SERIES

Not Alone: First Encounter (Prequel)

Not Alone

Not Alone: Second Contact

Not Alone: The Final Call

~ Contact Trilogy box set ~

Not Alone: Fractured Union

Not Alone: Leap of Destiny

Not Alone: Revelations

~ Discovery Trilogy box set ~

Not Alone: The Awakening

Not Alone: Hidden Wonder

Not Alone: Endgame

~ Evolution Trilogy box set ~

Not Alone: Origins

* * *

TERRADOX SERIES

Terradox Zero: Before The Crash (Prequel)

Terradox

The Fall of Terradox

Terradox Reborn

Terradox Beyond

~ Worlds Away collection ~

~ Terradox Quadrilogy box set ~

* * *

CYBER SEED SERIES

Sycamore

Sycamore 2

Sycamore X

Sycamore XL

~ Cyber Seed Compendium Box Set ~

* * *

SCI-FI SIZZLERS

Wanderlust

Bound For Glory

Sunset Stays

Arise With Us

Whence They Came

Replica

Megaton Murphy

A Scent Of Man

Yester Year

Too Good To Be True

Happy, Inc.

Pamela 2.0

Funscreen

Pumpkin Splice

When Santa Slays

~ Chasing Tomorrows 15-Book Box Set ~

Seedling

Empty Nesters

A Savage In The Future

Saturn For Sale

Oracle

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1

Without question, it was the biggest day of Dylan Kline’s life.

The forty-six-year-old billionaire had made some big swings in the field of space exploration before, but none like this.

In a matter of hours, Kline’s flagship DKX-1 rocket would blast off with a huge payload bound for Saturn. That planet’s largest moon, Titan, was the subject of the boldest and perhaps the most profitable swing anyone had ever even contemplated.

No one other than Kline could have done it. No one else would have dared to try.

Only his unique vision and unrivaled skills of persuasion could have led to this situation, wherein one man was effectively leasing mining rights to subdivided regions of a celestial body on which no human being had ever set foot.

The greatest sale of Kline’s life had come several years earlier when he somehow convinced the government to go along with his dream of monetizing — and commercially monopolizing — the distant but reachable moon, where valuable rare materials had recently been detected.

Kline’s core argument held that Titan’s resources were going to waste. It was far better for the country that a private entity should take all the risk of such a challenging project, he reasoned, rather than devoting massive public funds to it during times of widespread economic hardship.

Having long offered his corporation’s launch services and satellite maintenance expertise to public sector space projects at cost price, he had won some friends in high places. That alone wasn’t enough, though.

Fortunately for Kline, he excelled in seducing policy-makers with the promise of bounteous tax revenues from his company’s future profits.

To seal the deal, he added a compelling argument that if he didn’t take hold of Saturn’s moons, a rival nation might sweep in and do the same. This went down well in military circles, with the prospect of establishing some kind of presence in the further reaches of the solar system giving a high-ground advantage that could prove pivotal in the long-run.

Kline liked to frequently use the pun that reaching Titan was in every sense a titanic endeavor. And given the eye-watering cost of developing the rocket and spacecraft capable of reaching Saturn, let alone Kline’s stranglehold on the proprietary propulsion technology that underpinned the whole project, he truly presented the only ride in town to a destination the government very much wanted to reach.

For his part, Kline had funded the last few years of planning and development — by far the most expensive — using the colossal cash deposits he had already secured from the domestic business interests who wanted a piece of the pie. Huge mining and oil conglomerates dominated the balance sheet, with no self-respecting CEO willing to risk missing out on a potential gold rush at the edge of humanity’s newest frontier.

One CEO who had no interest in getting into the nitty gritty of space mining, however, was Dylan Kline himself.

Instead, the smooth-talking visionary used his sales and trading background to secure profit-sharing deals. Private entities were taking the risk of funding the project, but Kline’s corporation was not one of them.

If Kline was anything, he was the brains of it all. He was using other people’s money to fund the launch, after which those same people would create distant mining infrastructure and share their profits with the man who made it all possible.

The risk-free business model brought in revenue by leasing rights and selling space on the craft. Tonight’s launch would be unmanned. The huge craft was packed full of the crucial first equipment that would then await the brave overseers who would quickly follow in a smaller and slower-moving craft.

From there, a small team would orbit Titan in a control station from which they would operate robotic builders until a suitable biodome was constructed and they themselves could finally set foot on the icy world of so much promise.

At 8:51 A.M. on this most crucial of all days, Dylan Kline wasn’t at his perkiest.

It had been a difficult and sleepless night, with a few last-minute hurdles to overcome and some real worries about a potentially launch-disrupting storm. The storm concerns had fortunately abated, but Kline didn’t feel as awake as he would like to.

Given that he had a live press conference in nine minutes, which would likely draw a huge portion of the billion-strong viewership who were sure to tune in for the launch itself, this wasn’t an ideal situation.

“I’ll be a minute,” Kline said. He was addressing his long-serving assistant, Hunter, as they strode through the DKX headquarters towards the viewing platform where Kline would soon address the world.

He stopped outside a coffee shop and stepped towards the open door.

The store was a franchise branch of a major chain whose owners paid a significant monthly rent to operate in the building. Like his future mining partners on Titan, they also paid him a percentage of their profits. Kline drove a hard bargain, but he always drove it well.

“Since when do you drink coffee?” Hunter asked.

Kline glanced back without stopping. “I just need a little boost.”

In light of his imminent final pre-launch media appearance, this was certainly true.

But for all his wealth and commercial foresight, Dylan Kline had absolutely no idea what the rest of this fateful day would bring his way…

2

At what would typically be rush hour in many locales, the coffee shop was a ghost town. Kline’s workers had to clock in at 8:45 sharp on a normal day, meaning this place usually saw its rush a solid fifteen minutes earlier than the current time.

This was no normal day, however, and all staff who weren’t essential to the final launch preparations were already gathered to see his public address in person.

No one else was around.

In need of a morning pick-me-up, Kline thus strode right to the counter.

“Mr. Kline!” a lone young barista exclaimed from the other side. It took no other words to convey her shock at seeing the world’s richest and perhaps most famous man in the flesh.

On the relatively rare occasions when Kline showed up at the building, he tended to arrive on a rooftop helipad rather than the ground-floor entrance. Very few of the building’s vast workforce ever saw him.

“Good morning,” he smiled warmly. “I’ll have a large decaf, please.”

After staring dumbly for a moment, the girl shook herself out of it and nodded. “Sure thing, sir. Coming right up. That’ll be four dollars.”

“Actually, I’ll take it in one of those fancy branded cups,” he decided. “The metallic ones.”

The barista rang it up. “Of course. That brings us to twenty-four dollars. Whenever you’re ready,” she went on, gesturing to the contactless payment console after placing his cup on the coffee machine and starting the order.

Kline narrowed his eyes. “Oh. I meant that I would take one of the cups to help you guys out.”

Confused, the girl met his eyes.

“I’ll have it in my hand when I’m on TV in a few minutes,” Kline went on. “You know, in front of the whole world. This place has always been good to my staff. I figure if I can help out with some free promotion, I will. That’s certainly worth a lot more than twenty-four dollars, wouldn’t you say?”

The girl, no more than nineteen, looked at him uneasily. “Um, I guess so. And I would love to just give you this, Mr. Kline, but I would be worried for my job if the register doesn’t match the stock at the end of the day. My boss isn’t here right now to clear it. I’m really sorry, sir. This is embarrassing, but the register is telling me to ask you for twenty-four dollars so I don’t really have a choice.”

It was no exaggeration to say that Dylan Kline’s business interests made many times more than twenty-four dollars in profit every passing second. He certainly made far more than that in the time he had already spent talking about this.

For a multi-billionaire to be haggling with a young barista over such a trivial sum, something more than money had to be on the line.

It wasn’t even that Kline wanted the coffee or the cup. All he wanted was to persuade the girl to give it to him. All he wanted was to sell her on the idea.

All he wanted to do was seal a deal at the start of his day, to fuel himself in the best way he knew.

“The good thing about human beings is that we always have a choice, Elaine,” Kline said, still smiling warmly and now addressing the girl by the name on her badge. “We’re not like that cash register. It’s just plastic and metal. This shouldn’t be embarrassing. But believe me: a girl like you shouldn’t be listening to what some machine tells her to do.”

Clearly uncomfortable in this awkward situation, Elaine gulped. “It’s just… I don’t…”

“It’s okay,” Kline cut in. The smile he had been wearing all along remained etched on his face. His hands, though, remained exactly where they were. What they were decisively not doing was reaching for his wallet.

He didn’t want to pull any cheap tricks with a lie that he had forgotten his wallet or that his phone was out of battery. A conquest achieved through deceit was hollow; a victory without honor.

Similarly, he didn’t want to pull rank and tell Elaine not to worry about the coffee shop’s boss, or that he owned the building and could buy and sell her boss’s boss a thousand times over.

Instead, Kline wanted to earn a victory by fairly persuading Elaine to buy what he was selling — in this case, the idea of handing him a free coffee and premium cup. He wanted to rely on his skills of observation; of mirroring; of relating to an individual on whatever level it took to seal a deal.

“That’s a beautiful piece of jewelry,” he observed, noting the golden necklace that sat in front of Elaine’s collar.

Its single word — DREAM — gave him something to go on. The necklace’s visibility in the first place did, too, along with her bright pink nail polish.

“I always recognize a fellow dreamer,” Kline went on. “And do you know what I wish someone had told me when I was your age, Elaine? That our dreams don’t find us. We find them. We don’t find them by worrying about small things that we don’t want to happen, either, like your boss somehow not approving of this great promotional opportunity. We find them by being bold and taking actions other people don’t.”

Still, the girl hesitated.

“If you want to be seen by the world, you have to shake off your concern with people’s negative reactions,” he said.

The fact that Elaine had actively positioned her necklace on the outside of her uniform hinted to Kline that she was trying to exert some individuality in what was probably a soul-crushingly boring job. As he was well practiced in doing, he sought to use this supposition to further his attempts at persuasion.

“Elaine… if you want to be seen, stop worrying about every possible negative. Pursue the positive. Always… pursue the positive. Believe me, your boss will be thrilled to find out you’ve given me a prop like this to show off in front of so many eyeballs. Thrilled. You’ll be seen in the best way.”

Eventually, tipped across the line by the promise of being seen — one that worked well on young women of her age — Elaine grinned. Enthused rather than relenting, she handed Kline his filled cup.

“You’re right,” she said. “Thanks. I’ll run it through the register as a promotional discount and set it to one hundred per cent.”

At this, Kline’s eyes immediately lit up.

Promotional discount.

As ever, this one sale — this one victory — only whet his appetite for a follow-up. A freebie was all well and good. But now that he had her saying yes, he could get the money flowing the right way.

“Thank you, Elaine,” Kline replied. “And since one favor deserves another… I can go one better than a promotional discount. I don’t share this offer publicly. It’s only for people who wow me in person.”

As he spoke, Kline finally reached into his pocket. He lifted out his phone then pulled a small business card from a slot at the back of its case.

The card contained a QR code along with some text stating that the link would lead to a free one-week trial for his Dream Chasers Academy app. DCA was a relatively minor part of Kline’s business network, comprising video courses in sales training and personal finances along with goal-setting workshops and daily live streams from a roster of motivational gurus.

“We’re so confident in this free trial, it won't even auto-renew,” Kline boasted. “There’s no payment method required to take advantage of the trial, but you’ll be entering one by the end of the day to buy an annual pass. It’s that good.”

Elaine, clearly intrigued and feeling like she had nothing to lose, immediately pulled out her own phone and scanned the code.

Kline’s heart rate accelerated. He was almost there.

The scent of the sale filled the air.

“Wow… you were quick to get that phone out,” he chuckled. “I was right to see a dreamer in there, wasn’t I? That’s impressive drive for someone so young.”

The girl smiled.

Looking then at his own phone, Kline tapped several gestures on the screen as he went on. “You know? I’m beyond impressed. I give out three or four of these cards a month, but you’re different from everyone else. Someone like you deserves a faster leg up.”

A notification popped up on Kline’s screen, alerting him to a message from his assistant, Hunter, who was still standing in the doorway. It was short and to the point:

“4 minutes!”

Kline replied with a thumbs-up icon and got back to what he was doing. The global media briefing was only four minutes away, but he needed the boost of a real sale.

He wanted it. He lived for it.

“I’m my own boss, so I don’t have to worry about getting in trouble for this,” he grinned at Elaine, referencing her own earlier concern. “The only thing I’d worry about is if you were to tell anyone else that I gave you this deal, because then they would all want it. My three-hour starter seminar is the best thing I’ve ever created, hands down. It’s a $9.99 standalone purchase.”

The intrigue on Elaine’s face faded slightly. Kline wasn’t concerned, though. On the contrary, this was all part of the plan.

“But you’re not a standalone purchaser,” he added with a wink, winning her back around. “Even though this seminar would be a bargain at double the price, I can create a personal link for the maximum discount our system allows. Knocking off ninety percent brings this down to one dollar… so you can see why I don’t want anyone to know.”

Kline turned his phone around, showing Elaine the screen which now contained a new QR code above a discounted price of a dollar.

Without hesitation, Elaine scanned the code and quickly authorized the small payment.

“Thanks a lot,” she said, putting her phone away as soon as her order was complete and her direct link to the seminar appeared.

“Pleasure doing business,” Kline smiled.

He turned and saw the decidedly unsmiling face of Hunter, his long-serving and clearly uneasy assistant.

At the door, Hunter didn’t hold back his feelings.

“We’re going to have to power walk just to get there in time,” he groaned. “When you’re here to talk about a rocket launch, punctuality counts! You know that.”

Kline couldn’t disagree with this and gladly upped his pace. He wouldn’t be late to reach the nearby launch-site observation area where he would address the media, he just wouldn’t have a moment to spare.

His previous moments had been very well spent, however.

The coffee could have been rainwater for all he cared, let alone decaf, and the fancy cup could very well have been empty. It was a vessel for something much more important than caffeine, though, because Dylan Kline was fueled by the conquest of the sale.

“What took so long, anyway?” Hunter inquired as they hurried to their destination.

“First sale of the day… always the sweetest,” Kline replied with a blissful sigh. “And I wouldn’t say it took that long. She was a stone-cold lead. I had to start from the ground up and get her saying yes a few times before I could push for a payment. It was a textbook close, but I had to open first.”

Hunter didn’t say anything. He had known Kline for long enough to expect behavior like this. He was no longer particularly disturbed or impressed.

While Hunter might have seen his employer’s pathological need to sell and desperate hunger for the validation it provided as something close to a disease, he knew it was also the driving force behind the man’s success.

Kline’s obsession with selling was the reason this building existed, and it was the reason Hunter was paid so handsomely for his relatively basic assistant work.

Most pertinently of all, though, Kline’s obsession and aptitude for selling dreams was why a rocket would soon blast off to Saturn.

With the flawed genius now fueled by his drug of choice, he was ready for the crowd he could already hear on the other side of one last door.

The world was waiting.

The future was here.

The time was now.

3

Dylan Kline stood before a large crowd of media personnel and his own staff.

He was strategically positioned in front of an enormous window, which provided the closest view to the launch site and framed him perfectly against that awe-inspiring backdrop.

This was as close as any of the reporters had ever gotten to the colossal rocket that would soon take off for Saturn. Even before Kline’s just-on-time arrival, they had been excitedly marveling at the sight their priceless view provided.

A smile filled Kline’s face as he began speaking. With nothing but good news to report, it stayed the whole time.

Things would have been very different if the weather hadn’t been so cooperative. Kline addressed this point with a gleeful suggestion that even Mother Nature was on board with his project.

Kline recognized several of the reporters in the crowd. TV networks and newspapers had sent their highest-profile staff to cover the upcoming launch and this final interview before it. Although a few of them had been openly doubtful this day would ever come, or indeed unsure that it ever should, even the most cynical were now captivated by the sight of the rocket.

For once, Kline was selling nothing. The hard work was done, leaving this speech to serve as little more than a victory lap over the doubters and one last hype-building exercise for everyone else.

A huge round of applause marked the end of the short address.

All the way through it, Kline had ensured his coffee cup was prominently displayed on his podium. A sale built on a lie was no sale at all, he always told himself. And on that point — if not every other — he was as good as his word.

Smiling faces filled his vision, from his staff and the assembled reporters alike.

The only face that didn’t look excited by the day’s events belonged to Meg Belford, an experienced journalist who had clashed with Kline in online discussions about what she once called his “corporate annexation” of Saturn and its moons.

Her presence only came to Kline’s attention at the end of his speech, as the rest of the crowd began to disperse.

It would have been one thing if she looked bitter. Kline would have expected that, and quite likely would have enjoyed the sight. Instead, however, the usually immaculate woman looked exhausted and concerned.

As Meg’s heavy eyes met Kline’s, she pulled her phone from her pocket and typed in a quick message. Since he followed her on social media, he received a notification of the incoming private message right away.

It was short and to the point.

“You’re being played. This is bigger than you could imagine and you have to see what I’ve found — BEFORE the launch. No bullshit, Dylan. I need five minutes in private… ASAP.”

Kline looked up from the message and back out towards Meg, who was casting an increasingly lone figure as her colleagues departed the area.

He didn’t like her and never had, but she was a serious journalist and a woman of conviction. Meg Belford had a longstanding reputation for breaking real stories, usually by doing the kind of old-fashioned research that had largely gone out of fashion in this era of clickbait headlines and lowest common denominators.

Being played… there was nothing Kline hated more.

It crossed his mind that Meg would know this, too, and that she might be using it as a way of getting to him. He couldn’t see an angle, though, and even more so couldn’t see any way she could possibly be faking how concerned she looked.

After a brief deliberation, Kline texted his reply: “Five minutes. Go to Hunter and he’ll bring you to my office. I’ll go first. If this is real, we can’t be seen together.”

“This is too real,” Meg typed back immediately, before putting her phone away and looking for Hunter at the edge of the crowd.

Kline left his podium and walked briskly towards Hunter, whispering a firm instruction and adding that there was no time to question it. He then headed for the elevator to his top-floor office, which Hunter was the only other person in the building with the security credentials to reach.

As the elevator doors closed to leave Kline alone for the ascent, he caught sight of his expression on the highly reflective surface.

His smile was gone.

Whatever Meg had found, it clearly wasn’t good.

But whatever it was, he quite simply had to know.

4

From the full-length window of his top-floor, futuristically appointed office, Dylan Kline looked out at the huge DKX-1 rocket that would soon blast off from his launch site.

He was keen to hear whatever Meg Belford had to say, but he was even more determined that absolutely nothing would get in the way of the long-awaited launch.

In the few minutes until Meg arrived with Kline’s assistant, the loyal and diligent Hunter, the billionaire’s brain ran through various possibilities of what he was about to learn.

The two stepped out of the elevator and directly into the office, with Meg becoming in that moment one of very few people to have ever seen inside Kline’s inner sanctum.

Her eyes were drawn not to the impressive views of the launch site, but rather to the enormous LED screen on the other side of the room. It looked like a modern take on the age-old Mission Control setup she’d seen in so many sci-fi movies, only with one seat instead of many and one colossal curved screen instead of countless smaller ones.

“So what’s this all about?” Kline asked, his resonant tone immediately tearing Meg’s attention away from his control center.

The woman glanced between Kline and Hunter. “This is big,” she said uneasily.

“Hunter hears everything I hear,” Kline replied, dismissing her evident concern about this point with a wave of his hand. “So please… get to it.”

And get to it Meg did.

“The government is going to seize control of your whole project on national security grounds as soon as the spacecraft reaches Saturn, if not before,” she revealed. “They’ve been playing you all along, Dylan. They couldn’t fund the rocket and there was no appetite for the kind of investment a public program would have needed. That’s why they went along with your land-leasing and mining projects. They wanted you to do this. They needed you to do this. There aren’t going to be any commercial projects on Saturn’s moons. They just needed you to raise the money it would take to get them there. You’re the best salesman who ever lived… and that’s why they used you.”

“I am,” Kline mused, his egotistical mind seemingly having picked up only on the compliment.

Hunter, meanwhile, narrowed his eyes as he studied Meg’s expression. “I assume you have proof?”

She nodded. “I have proof of everything. I have a flash drive full of leaked documents — unredacted — that will end careers as soon as we release them. This goes all the way to the top and President Greene himself is neck-deep in it. But guys… this isn’t just about what they’re doing. The real problem is why they’re doing it. Dylan, if your systems in here have access to the satellite and surface observation data from Titan, I can show you. Forget unredacted documents. I’ve obtained an access key that will decrypt and illuminate direct image data that you didn’t even know has been modified.”

Kline gulped. For the first time, he seemed to be sensing the magnitude of what Meg was telling him.

“Seeing is believing,” the journalist went on. “And once you see this, you won’t even be thinking about the documents. You won’t even be thinking about how they’ve played you. If you let me on to your system here, I can call up the images and show you what I’m talking about.

Without a word, Kline walked to his huge screen and typed some commands into the keyboard below its central section. A live feed of the launch site then filled the screen in eye-poppingly vivid detail.

“I’ll be watching your every keystroke like a hawk,” he warned her. “And while you’re calling up the data, I need to know one thing. Why are you here?”

“Excuse me?” Meg asked, taking the sole seat and getting to work even as she spoke.

“Why are you here?” Kline repeated. “What’s in this for you? Why not make it public and get all of the credit? It’s not like we’re friends, so I’m not buying that you’re here to help me. Do you want hush money, to not tell the world I’ve been manipulated? Do you still want the credit but have concerns for your safety, without my help, if you take down Greene and his circle of liars?”

At this, Meg stopped for a moment and looked back at Kline. “Dylan… you’re really not getting how big this is. I don’t care about myself in any of this. I’m telling you because no one would believe me. Even with full documents and raw images, they’d say I was crazy. No one apart from you could convince people this is all true. You could sell ice in Antarctica. That’s why they used you to get this rocket off the ground and that’s why I’m counting on you to get the real truth out there. The world needs to know.”

“But what’s in it for you, though?” Kline pushed. This time, the compliments didn’t register higher than his evident confusion as to why someone would do something for no personal gain.

“We’re talking different languages on that,” Meg sighed in exasperation, turning back to the system. “Maybe you’ll get it when you see this. But either way, you’re the only one who can do anything about it before it’s too late.”

Kline kept his eyes on her rather than the screen as it changed to reveal several menus and options. “But why are you⁠—”

“Dylan,” Hunter interrupted. “Let’s leave that part, okay? Right now, the why isn’t the main thing.”

As Kline’s long-serving — and some might say long-suffering — assistant, Hunter knew very well that selflessness was a language his boss didn’t speak. And to his mind, the fact that Meg had come here with no personal angle wouldn’t be too hard to understand if her discoveries turned out to be as Earth-shattering as she was suggesting.

At this, Kline took the point. “I guess,” he said, paying heed to Hunter in a way he rarely did to anyone else. “The real question is how the hell there can be something in the observation data we haven’t already seen. How can the government know more than us? We’re leagues ahead of any public technology. That’s why they’re using our rocket! This data comes from our probes and satellites. It doesn’t make sense.”

How the government had discovered something of interest on Titan wasn’t nearly as important in Hunter’s mind as what that something was. Nevertheless, Kline’s raising of the point did make him wonder.

It was a very valid question.

“Some of the chip technology in your satellites and probes give backdoor access to the intelligence agencies,” Meg explained, rapidly navigating through menus as she spoke. “It’s all in the documents.”

“Impossible,” Kline denied instinctively. “Our systems are air tight. I have the best workers and the most secure infrastructure money can buy. Are you telling me there’s a rat in my team?”

“No,” Meg said flatly. “I’ve found no evidence of that. And believe me, in the three years I’ve been working on this, I’ve looked. The government hasn’t hacked your systems or anything like that, either. These exploits were physically built in to the components. There’s a delay on all the data you received — and they get it first. Like I said, they’ve modified some of the imagery so you can’t see the real picture of what’s up there. I have images on my flash drive, but it’s better to show you live images on your own system… before and after I apply the full decryption access key to lift the veil.”

Seconds later, a live image from Kline’s surface probe on Titan filled the screen. The data was delayed by the distance, of course, but revealed exactly what the camera was picking up.

Or so Kline thought.

“Can you call up the filter menu?” Meg asked. “I don’t know your full system controls, only the basics from some of the document logs I read. I know the access key I have to put in next, but there wasn’t a full instruction manual.”

Kline leaned over and typed a multi-key shortcut. Immediately, a new menu appeared.

From here, a user could apply any of several image filters.

But instead of selecting from the options, Meg pulled out her phone and typed in a sixteen-digit code she had saved in a notebook file.

The menu disappeared. The live view of Titan once again filled the wall, in incredible detail that made all three of the group feel like they were there.

A second later, however, the view changed.

Where a virgin icy surface ripe for exploitation stood just moments earlier, something else now appeared.

Something that didn’t only defy expectation, it defied belief.

“Holy shit,” Kline muttered.

And more than any other two-word combination, “holy shit” was right…

5

For once in his life, Dylan Kline was rendered truly and utterly speechless.

The immersive view provided by his enormous Ultra HD screen now showed something on the ice-covered surface of Titan — something that hadn’t been visible until Meg Belford disabled the filter that government scientists had put in place.

With his view now unencumbered, Kline found himself staring at something decidedly unnatural. It was something that most certainly should not have been there, and something that completely upended his understanding of why Meg was here.

This really did go to the top.

To Kline’s bitter disbelief, the biodome that was set to be built by remotely controlled robots would not be the first structure on Titan.

A gargantuan drilling rig dominated the screen, with some kind of dish-like object further behind it.

“They’ve already been to Titan?” Kline asked, trying to make sense of it. “And now what… they want to protect a monopoly on mining? Then why the hell do they need my rocket?”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Hunter commented. “But Meg… why should we believe this is the real, unedited view? Why should we believe this isn’t showing a filtered view of something that isn’t really there, and that we weren’t already looking at the real picture all along?”

Kline’s neck straightened at that, a point he hadn’t yet considered. “Yeah!” he boomed. “Why should we?”

Meg held an open hand towards the keyboard. “This is your system, Dylan. Now that I’ve entered the access key to decrypt the raw image feed, you can go into the logs and compare the filters. Have your best experts pore through every inch of it, if you want to. I’m here because this is real. And Hunter was right — your ideas are way off. We haven’t been to Titan before.”

Kline exhaled slowly. He wasn’t going to bring any more team members in on this, at least not right away, but he was completely sure Meg was telling the truth. A large part of being the best salesman in the world was being able to read people, and right now the respected journalist’s expression was an open book.

“So who has?” Kline asked. “The Soviets couldn’t have done anything like this. That only leaves China. Right?”

“Wrong,” Meg replied with a shake of her head. She moved her hands back to the controls and zoomed in on the bizarre-looking drill that pierced the thick ice.

As the view changed, Kline’s jaw dropped.

The details of the futuristic object were like nothing he had ever seen. He knew he wasn’t merely looking at something from another country, and he knew very well what Meg was about to spell out before she even said it.

“This isn't Earthly technology,” the woman explained, dropping the biggest bombshell of all. “Dylan, your partners’ mining setups weren’t going to be the first on Titan, but we weren't beaten by other humans. This thing is alien.”

6

“Alien?!” Hunter gasped, slower than Kline to have realized what they were looking at. “You’re telling us this is an alien structure… in our solar system?”

“Exactly,” Meg replied. “And our leaders have known about it for a long time. The documents I’ve accessed make that clear. An alien race seems to be harnessing some kind of energy from beneath the ice and beaming it away via that huge dish you can see in the background. Now, the government wants to take a closer look. They want to kill two birds with one stone: assert our ability and willingness to engage with whoever put this there, and to reverse-engineer the technology into an energy-beam weapons system for use against Earth-based enemies. It sounds crazy, but it’s true.”

To Kline and Hunter, who knew very well how totally the military industrial complex had consumed political decision making, this actually didn’t sound very crazy at all. They knew everything was always about weapons and war. Indeed, the building they were standing in owed its existence largely to lucrative contracts in the military sphere.

“So they really think they can just assume control of my project?” Kline asked, focusing on this rather than the core point that bona fide aliens not only existed, but had established an energy-harvesting drilling operation on Titan.

Meg nodded. “They’re not planning to tell anyone why, or at least not for a while. I have conversation logs from President Greene and military officials talking about this. Apparently there are already laws on the books that give them the right to take control of your whole project if they declare a national security emergency. You’re the only one who can stop this, Dylan. Engaging with aliens like this, in a project led by people who see bombs and bloodshed as the solution to every problem, could literally doom humanity.”

“It’ll kill my business,” Kline mused bitterly. “If they take over the project, my investors will never see a return. There’s no way I could recover from the blow to my reputation.”

Meg and Hunter shared a glance. On her side it was disbelieving. On Hunter’s, it was anything but.

“Well…” Meg sighed, astounded by Kline’s myopia, “either way, I came to you because you’re the only one who can stop this. The first thing you have to do is cancel the launch. The next steps are the next steps, but that one has to come first.”

Kline cleared his throat, which felt far drier than usual. “You did the right thing, Meg. I’ll make sure you’re safe in all of this. You must have taken some huge risks to get these documents and this access key. I’ll make sure you’re suitably rewarded, too.”

“It’s not about rewards,” Meg said.

As before, Kline simply couldn’t understand this line of thought. “Hunter, for the moment I’d like you to take our friend next door,” he said. “I need some privacy for a few minutes. I just have to make a quick call. You can come back to hear it, of course. Be quick, though. Because if President Greene thinks he can play me for a fool, he’s got another thing coming.”

7

“How exactly are you planning to handle this?” Meg asked. She stood up and moved away from the door, making it clear that she was in no mood to leave the room. “Dylan, there are aliens in our solar system! Our government is about to engage with them, with the best-case scenario being that they’ll start an arms race for energy-ray weaponry to be used on Earth. Worst-case scenario, these aliens could turn their technology on us as soon as they see us coming. You can’t just angrily call President Greene and think this will work out. If they have to cut you out today, they will. You’ve done all the work but they could take control of this place with a snap of their fingers. You have to publicly cancel the launch!”

Kline looked at her through narrow eyes. “Meg… I’m glad you brought this to me, but your part is done. Like I said, I’ll ensure you stay safe and well rewarded. Just name a price and⁠—”

“Enough!” Hunter boomed. In all his years working for Kline, this was the first time he had ever raised his voice. “Dylan, it really isn’t always about a price. She’s right, too. They really could cut you out. Have you thought about that?”

Kline took a moment to compose himself. “Emotions are high, so I’ll excuse that outburst just one time, Hunter. One time. I think what you really have to see, though, is that I’m holding all of the cards. They want the launch to go ahead, and they want this information to stay secret. I can name my price. I’ll call Greene right now and say there’s been an operational hitch. I could even say one of my team members has spotted something unusual in the imagery from Titan and that we have to investigate. Who knows, maybe I’ll say we need some more funds to continue in light of what we’ve discovered. The implication makes itself. If they’re going to seize control before I can fulfill my promises to our commercial mining partners, you better believe they’re going to be on the hook for the refunds and a sizable payment for the inconvenience and reputational harm I’ll suffer because of this.”

Hunter’s eyes widened in disbelief. He had known Kline a long time and wouldn’t have thought anything could surprise him.

But this?

“You’re going to extort the President?” Hunter asked. “You’re going to ask for money to stay quiet about this alien discovery, and let them take the insane risk Meg just laid out? Seriously? For money?”

Kline grinned. “Hunter, I sold Saturn. I think I can sell silence.”

For several seconds, while Kline pulled his phone from his pocket, silence was exactly what circled the office.

“No,” Hunter eventually said, stepping next to Meg.

“Excuse me?” Kline asked. “Hunter… I must be going insane, but it sounded like you just said no to me.”

“I won’t let you do this,” the emboldened assistant went on. “We have a responsibility to protect everyone on this planet by telling the world what⁠—”

Before Hunter could finish, his attention was taken by a see-through and bullet-proof security divider dropping rapidly from the ceiling. It trapped him and Meg on one side, away from the elevator — their lone hope of escape — and just as importantly trapped them away from Kline.

The avaricious billionaire tapped another button on his phone, like he had to engage the adaptive security system, which this time enabled his words to reach the duo:

“Don’t waste time trying to make any calls, either. You’re cut off from the world until I’ve taken care of this.”

With a grin on his face, he reactivated the volume cut-off control and watched as Hunter and Meg fruitlessly banged on the thick divider and screamed words he didn’t have to hear.

He had heard enough and seen enough from them to know a closed-off area was the best place for them.

But as Dylan Kline opened his contacts menu and navigated to President Greene’s name, what he didn’t know was that someone else had seen and heard enough.

That was why when Kline moved his finger for one final tap on the call button, no call began.

Instead, in that final moment, a blinding white light consumed him.

Greed had been good for Dylan Kline, bringing him a life of almost unimaginable wealth and materialistic comfort.

Now, however, none of that could do him any good.

And where Kline was going, President Greene and an army of disgruntled investors would be the least of his concerns…

8

Even on a day of incredible revelations, nothing came close to this.

The feeling of disorientation from the flash was one thing. The feeling of realization as to what was going on, however, was something else entirely.

Dylan Kline was no longer standing in his office looking at an immersive view of the alien drill on Titan.

Now, somehow, he was looking at that drill with his very own eyes — from the inside of a small box-like structure on the surface of Titan itself.

The space was pressurized with air he could just about breathe, albeit very uncomfortably. It was see-through on all sides and not entirely unlike the barrier he had used to contain Meg and Hunter in his office.

“What the hell?!” Kline croaked, struggling with the air.

A voice then called out from behind him.

“There’s the probe,” Meg gasped, pointing to the camera that had been providing their remote images.

She and Hunter, having been separated from Kline by a barrier of his creation only moments earlier, were now right alongside him — in a very different kind of containment.

All three now found themselves positioned between the probe and the drilling rig, which looked even more imposing and incredible from this vantage point.

A moment later, though, a new sight made even this seem unremarkable.

“Alien!” Hunter gasped. “Dylan… alien!”

When Kline shot his head around to look where Hunter was pointing, he saw a lone figure — at least eight feet tall — in a tightly fitted protective suit. An alien space suit, he realized, for an alien being.

The alien was standing extremely close to the humans, with only a slight deviation in light caused by the mysterious holding structure revealing that there was anything between them at all. A gray face with small, cold eyes was visible through a protective helmet.

As soon as the alien had their attention, it placed a large hand — gloved in the same material as its full-body suit — against the edge of the structure.

“You have a choice,” the being stated.

All three humans felt every hair on their bodies stand up.

The voice was robotic, but not in any familiar sense, and resonated powerfully within their bizarre enclosure.

The alien’s race had clearly been monitoring humanity for long enough to learn the dominant language, which made some kind of sense given that they had established an operational base within easy reach of Earth. This intelligent creature either had an inherent ability to communicate in an observed language or was using technology to facilitate instant translation. In reality, the mechanics didn’t matter.

“There is limited oxygen in your atmospheric capsule, and it will not replenish,” the alien voice continued. “It is the largest and best equipped cube I could create without more time. My hand was forced to make an intervention I did not want to make. My kind lives by the edict of non-intervention and your actions have forced me to break from that.”

“What do you want from us?” Kline asked, the only member of the group able to speak amid the shock of it all. The air remained uncomfortable to breathe. “We’re alive, so you must want something. And why are you even here? What do you want on Titan?”

“For generations, we have been utilizing this moon’s energy resources for our own home world,” the tall being explained. “Your people have been unable to access the materials beneath this ice, which meant we were breaking no galactic edicts in doing so. Now that you are on the verge of establishing a presence here, we are prepared to leave. If your launch succeeds, we will do so. We have avoided engagement with your planet’s leaders due to their conflict-driven thought processes. Knowing how they would try to use our technologies, we will leave nothing they could try to turn into weaponry.”

“So why are we here?” Hunter pushed, managing to blurt out a question of his own. “How is abducting us anything close to non-intervention?”

The alien paused for a moment before replying: “That edict became impossible to maintain when your friend chose to use his new knowledge of our existence for reckless self-enrichment. He poses an unusual risk. A man of his skills can convince others of anything, especially when it is true. Your world is a dangerous place, and learning of alien life in the context of political deceit would be extremely dangerous. Any problems arising from that would ultimately be our fault, and we must avoid that. Your friend’s intentions, and your knowledge of them, cannot go unresolved. He is unique among your kind. Even your deceitful political leaders behave predictably, in ways we can understand if not approve of. But the manifold ways he finds to pursue greed makes him a wildcard we cannot overlook.”

Bitterly, Hunter and Meg both turned to Kline.

“So you brought me here to kill me?” the billionaire snapped.

Kline didn’t know why the alien didn’t just do it on Earth instead of going through all this rigamarole — perhaps one more so-called galactic edict to cause no harm on an inhabited world — but he couldn’t see any other reason for the abduction.

“And what about us?” Hunter complained, understandably no longer as loyally deferent to Kline as he had been for so long. “We were trying to stop him from making this even worse!”

“I am aware of that,” the alien insisted. “No one will be killed. That is against our own ethical code as well as several galactic edicts. You all have a choice. You can return home safely before the oxygen in there runs out. Or you⁠—”

“Then let’s go!” Meg yelled in reply.

“Yeah. Send us back!” Hunter chimed in.

Kline, however, was still listening for the or. His eyes locked on the alien, he didn’t think he was going to like it.

“You say we have a choice, but it sounds more like a catch,” he said. “So tell me, Mr. Ethics… what is the catch?”

The alien looked directly at Kline. “To return home, you must first give me permission to wipe all of these memories from your mind.”

9

“Do it!” Hunter requested. “We’re running out of air in here.”

“Yeah!” Meg agreed. “Send us home!”

“You must first know what you are agreeing to,” the alien stated, looking directly at Meg. “You must volunteer with informed consent. If you agree, you will return to where you came from. You must leave the object you have with you now which contains the evidence you uncovered. All knowledge of security passwords needed to access your backups will be lost. No other areas of your memory will be affected. All recent logs from the system you were just operating will be erased, and I have already ensured that no footage being captured by any probes or satellites right now will reach Earth.”

Immediately, Meg took the flash drive from her pocket and dropped it on the floor of their bizarre containment cube. She had heard enough.

“And me?” Hunter asked. “I’ll just forget what I learned this morning? We’ll all forget everything that happened?”

“Correct,” the alien stated plainly. It then turned to Kline. “But you…”

Kline stepped forward, going face to face with the suited alien. “Me what? What’s the real catch?”

“Your memory wipe must also correct two imbalances in your brain,” the alien said. “First, it must correct the imbalance that has led you to seek self-enrichment to such a harmful extent. Second, it must correct the imbalance that both encourages and enables you to effortlessly persuade others to act for your own benefit, telling them whatever you need to say to get what you want. For the future safety of Earth and your fellow humans, I cannot in good conscience release you as you are. Now that an initial intervention has been made, the scales have tipped.”

“No,” Kline replied.

“You can’t be serious, Dylan?” Hunter groaned, his voice weakening as breathing became ever more difficult. “You’ll die up here!”

“What if we go home without him?” Meg asked, realizing there was no time to fall victim to any more of Kline’s egotistical nonsense.

The alien answered right away: “If he chooses not to live, I will return his body to the general vicinity of where you all were. The death will look like an accident. You and your other friend would know nothing about any of this, or what immediately led to it. I cannot guarantee exactly how things will play out for you in the immediate aftermath, or for Earth as a whole in the long run, which I know was a concern you voiced. I do not know what effect this will have on the very imminent launch that has been planned. But this man simply cannot be returned as he is. If you leave now and he chooses to return moments later, before time runs out, he will return out of sight. You will not see a mysterious apparition and none of you will realize anything out of the ordinary has occurred. Your minds will fill in the blanks to account for those minutes in a way they deem as plausible and as harmless as possible.”

This was all they had to hear.

“We’re both in,” Hunter said.

“All the way in,” Meg confirmed.

Immediately, another flash consumed Dylan and the others. When it subsided this time, however, he remained where he was while they disappeared.

“There is still time,” the alien told him. “You do not have to die here.”

Even now that he was alone, breathing only one-third as much air as the trio was moments earlier, Kline knew he didn’t have long left. The oxygen concentration was dropping with every breath, and from an uncomfortably low starting point was now positively painful.

His mind whirred at a mile a minute. He ran through the potential consequences of saying yes, trying to picture how things would go if he returned home as an unknowing schmuck and the launch went ahead. He loathed to think of the government still seizing control of the project, regardless of this alien’s promise of removing every trace of its race’s operational presence on Titan.

It didn’t ease Kline’s mind that no Earthly governments would be able to weaponize the alien technology. What did any of that matter when his own status was on the line?

Kline simply couldn’t say yes to the embarrassment and reputational ruin that could follow if his project was seized. Not when there was air in his lungs — however little — and not when another idea was in his mind.

One more time, Dylan Kline saw no better way forward than to bet on himself.

“I can help you,” Kline said, now needing more than a small effort to choke out the words.

Diving in to the ultimate act of attempted persuasion, a sudden idea encouraged him to sell himself as a valuable asset.

“You know I’m exceptional,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. But no one knows people better than I do. I can help you. I can work with you. We can make a deal. There’s always scope for a deal.”

The deal Kline sought now was by far the most important of his life. It was a deal for his life.

There was no way he could accept returning to Earth with a neutered brain that would prevent him from excelling as he always had. In his mind, that potential outcome would be a death as painful as the literal one he would face on the surface of Titan’s icy wilderness if he couldn’t seal a better deal within the next minute.

“We can work together in whatever way benefits you most,” the increasingly desperate man croaked. “You can take me to your world or you can have me as a point of contact on Earth. I know human psychology. I know how people will react to things. However you want me to help you, I can help you. I am loyal to my best offer and you’re in a position to give me one. What do you say?”

To Dylan Kline, who evidently had no qualms about working with an alien against humanity’s potentially conflicting interests, selling out was still selling.

“I could never trust a man like you,” the alien replied. “Even now, you are showing your true colors. Your best idea to get out of the mess those colors have gotten you into is to show them even more. A mind as conniving as yours has no place in our world, and I cannot responsibly return it to Earth, either. Your choice is clear: Accept the corrective memory wipe, or do not.”

Kline sucked in a shallow breath, knowing he had precious few left. “I’ll cancel the launch,” he said. “I’ll make up a problem. You can stay here and have Titan to yourselves. Have every moon. I’ll stop selling Saturn. Just don’t take my skills. Leave me what I need to keep selling.”

“I cannot,” the alien replied, clearly taking no pleasure from this. “This is your last chance. Do the right thing.”

With the rare stubbornness of a man so used to getting his way, Kline shook his head. “There’s a deal to be made,” he insisted. “There’s no… obstacle… a good… deal… can’t… overcome.”

“Please,” the alien said. “Say yes.”

Kline fell to his knees, clutching his chest. “Let me… have… Earth,” he gasped. “I’ll give… you… Saturn... Deal?”

Unfortunately for Kline, his admittedly unrivaled mastery of human psychology was of little use in dealing with an extraterrestrial being. This final attempt to reframe the situation as him giving Saturn to the alien, in a very different way than he had sold the dream of mining its moons to his Earthly investors, was his last big swing.

The bases were loaded.

Today, however, there would be no home run.

Today, he was striking out.

In a cruel twist of irony for a man who had lived for the opposite reaction, one final two-word response from the alien proved to be the last thing Kline would ever hear: “No deal.”

As Kline’s body fell limp on the barren surface of a distant moon, his eyes fell closed.

In the few seconds before flashing him back to Earth, a disbelieving alien looked down ruefully at the unfortunate sight of Dylan Kline...

A salesman to the dying breath.

Author’s Notes

Thank you for reading Saturn For Sale!

Our next Sci-Fi Sizzler will be Oracle, which you can order now.

For a epic space adventure, check out my ongoing series: The Earthburst Saga.

And if you enjoy alien-related stories, I think you’ll also love Not Alone.

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Saturn For Sale was an incredibly fun Sci-Fi Sizzler for me to write, and I hope you have enjoyed the story just as much!

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Reviews are an important way for readers to find books that might interest them and every kind word really does help.

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