Holt made sure to acquire Intertech and use its rejuvenation techniques to love for over one hundred fifty years. He'd built up Space Mines Inc. into the biggest player in space development and exploration, United Mining Companies, in the span of one hundred ten years. Holt drove competitor Sagittarius Exploration into bankruptcy by exposing its directors' attempts to get around laws on chartering space companies. Holt took advantage of news of the Amnion, news acquired by Intertech, to establish a trade deal with that alien race. Holt betrayed partners and bribed politicians to gain more power for the UMC, and achieved a monopoly on dealings with the Amnion. Then he focused on increasing the power the United Mining Companies Police until all UMC enterprises were enabled by the UMCP.
Well, the role of the UMCP within the UMC can't be completely understood if Warden Dios is not understood. Warden had no known personal attachments, so it seemed he could just be a tool of Holt's. Some people who studied Warden said he was an idealist who believed in protecting society, though no one saw Holt as a similar idealist. Warden was considered to clean of Holt's shadier dealings. But Warden grew the UMCP to the point it defended humanity from piracy and the Amnion and imposed significant order in human space.In one sense, this was easily explained. The Amnion were a vast source of wealth: they also represented the most lethal external threat humankind had ever encountered. Vigilance and muscle were essential. A force effective enough to impose Amnion imperialism was required. Presumably if human space were capable of defending itself efficaciously that capability in itself would suffice to stave off overt aggression. So ran the rationale for developing the resources of the UMCP dramatically, as well as for granting it jurisdiction over every other form of human security. In a relatively few years, the UMCP became the most extensive and vital of all the UMC's enormous concerns. The UMCP may have grown out of the UMC originally, but eventually the Police grew to be the engine which drove all the United Ming Companies' enterprises.
Unfortunately this explanation ascribed to Holt Fasner an altruism which no one had ever observed in his character. As a matter of protocol, he always claimed for himself the best possible motives; but people who wither suffered or profited from their dealings with him dismissed those claims.
On the other hand, if his stated reasons for assigning so much of the UMC's energy and resources to the UMCP could be dismissed, what alternative explanation remained? What were Holt Fasner's true ambitions? Did he simply covet the power for its own sake? For the illusion it created that he and he alone stood between humankind and ruin? For the reassurance that his legacy to his species would never be forgotten?
Or was the whole question being asked backward? Was the real issue not, What did Holt Fasner want? but, What did Warden Dios want?Had Holt Fasner himself, the most dominant man in human space, fallen under the dominance of the director of the United Mining Companies Police?
This perspective did not make the question easier to answer.
