A New Story

It has something to do with Silvia's story, so sorry if it doesn't fit. I can take out the part about the spies. I just wanted to do a short Howard Windstorm story, I'll continue Storm and Fire at the same time.

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Chapter 1:

Howard Windstorm stood at the gate of his Sierra Leone palace. Buying this place had been a real bargain. Promise to better the lives of the people of a poor, war-torn country and it doesn’t take much to buy it. With this many people working for free; it wouldn’t take much more until the next phase of Martian terraforming could be complete.
Howard walked back into his palace. The OPEC was meeting soon, and he needed to be there. If plans were to be completed, the spies had to be out of the way. With overpopulation a problem in third world countries, Mars needed to be terraformed now. Besides, he didn’t see the problem in buying countries. The US government had no right to eliminate communism.
He didn’t like the OPEC meetings. Windstorm Industries wasn’t well represented in them. They made him feel unimportant and useless, and that was something he really didn’t like one bit. At least they would help him defeat the US spy organization.
Now, Howard didn’t hold any grudge against the spies. They just got in the way of his plans too often. The US government was a broken system that needed reform. The spies were there to stop that from happening. The US’s Declaration of Independence told of people’s unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Well, over population was killing of hundreds of thousands each year, that many people couldn’t have liberty as work was cheap enough that if they didn’t do as they were told then others could replace them. Happiness? Happiness was a concept known only to the richest one percent of humans, maybe twenty percent in the US, and thirty in the European Union.
Howard had a plan to stop overpopulation. If he had control of all the third world countries, he could get their rapidly growing population to stabilize and decrease. It worked with Sierra Leone, making the country where only 0.96 percent of the population knew happiness to a point where forty percent did. That percentage was the highest in the world except for Jaeger Industries’ holdings in Southeast Asia. And the US government thought it was in violation of their rights.
Oh well, the spies would be gone soon enough and he could continue unhindered. No reason to worry! As he increased the amount of land he controlled, it would allow him to gain the wealth needed to complete his mission. It would allow him to have even more than the greedy US government. With it he could terraform Mars.
Good thing there were already 10,000 people on Mars. They should be able to complete it with these ten thousand to help. The more people brought there, the more help gained. Soon he would send the rest of the people needed to get the population below his goal: only one billion of the current twelve and a half.
It had been fourteen billion before his coalition with Jaeger Industries started bringing the population down. The problem was the US government had a stable population, even growing slightly. His was shrinking. If the US were to invade, it probably wouldn’t be enough to hold them off. Good thing the PRC would help.
Originally, the People’s Republic of China criticized his capitalist ways. They called him the very thing they were trying to avoid. He convinced them, though, that he was actually governing the countries with a communist rule. They soon withdrew the previous criticism and began encouraging this new super-capitalism. They offered their support and military power in case of invasion. With China’s technological advancement and their selective breeding programs’ 800 million superhumans, there was little fear of military invasion.
A servant ran up. “Sir,” they announced, “The next meeting is scheduled for tomorrow. Would you like your airship refueled?”
“Yes.”
The servant ran off. Howard sighed. He didn’t want to go to this meeting. The leaders of OPEC were always such violent people. What did these crazed fools want, World War Three? Actually, maybe so. He’d have to be careful not to end up on anyone’s enemy list.
He got a call on his graphing calculator. It was Jaeger Industries’ CEO, Isaac Jaeger. He was known to be one of the sneakiest businessmen alive, which explains how he managed to own as much land as the country of Mexico. He was an old acquaintance of Howard’s, and they had an alliance between the two corporations. He was anxious as to the content of this call.
“Howard,” the voice said, “It’s time to take over Mars. My army’s set up the bomb at NASA. You have a few minutes out of surveillance. It had better be enough time.”
The connection ended. “Well,” Howard said, “So much for no World War Three.”