Hello Austin, Basil Exposition here...

[Atragon9 0]

Charles Thasus sat in his office, in his mansion on Titan, looking out at his garden on the only home planet he'd ever known. Everything was on schedule, he was pleased and scared - and that pleased him even more. After all the time and effort to create his special sanctuary, will he be leaving it for good?

His compound would be called modest on Earth but, considering the premium for space inside the domed colony on Titan, it raised a few eyebrows locally. The established citizens of Titan did not know what Thasus did for a living or how he wrangled the Titan colonial commission into providing him such a living/working space. However, few questions were ever asked, as he was a frequent contributor to public works and charitable causes throughout the city state. Still, anyone who spent any time considering the man found him "odd," in ways they could not name. He wasn't a remarkable man, no matter how people tried to focus their attentions on him. He seemed to be constantly changing, shifting, reinventing himself. There was something covert about the man and the few people he let be around him didn't know the half of it.

After dismissing his household staff for the day, he slid aside a hidden wall panel in his office and stepped into a small turbolift that took him down 15 levels below the surface of the moon. Not a lot of people knew that the Titan dome was not simply an upside-down bowl, it was actually a spheroid with almost half of it buried in the surface of the planetoid. Thasus chose his property as close to the center of the colony as he could, so that he would have access to the greatest area of subtitanian space. After he moved in, he had broken through the "ground" below his home to gain access to an area filled with Titan dirt during colony construction - this was done to create a level surface for living spaces. He excavated 120 meters down and 2 kilometers in width. The finishing work was completed by a construction firm that had wondered how he got the special permission to use so much space and how he moved so much ground without heavy excavators that had never been brought to Titan. Like so many other questions surrounding Charles Thasus and his enterprises, they never seemed important enough to ask. No one put it all together to see a pattern.

Careful, Charles was always careful. That was a lesson he learned the hard way, after being committed to the institution as a teen along with his cohort Xian Yi Huan. She snapped completely after they were hospitalized, but he learned to be ... careful. Careful and patient. He didn't slip up and he was willing to be very, very patient. It took a long time, but he "got better," and got out. He used the same techniques to amass his influence, his power. His own natural powers helped along the way, but he was always careful to keep them from being noticed, from being discovered. He founded the Antares Group and was able to distance himself further from any personal scrutiny, all while building his power base. Antares invested in a number of worthwhile causes and even a few that were more on the fringe, like Keep Earth Natural. They cared about the Terran ecosystem, but were always a bit sketchy with their plans to achieve their goals. It was so easy to direct them where and how to focus; when he decided to go for a bigger play, they were the perfect cover.

Along the way, one of his contacts alerted him to one of his deep targets, one of his "long game" goals. He grabbed that golden ring just as the Terran weather game heated up. How interesting and fortuitous, he was so excited, he almost forgot to be careful. He couldn't know how successful the Earth project would be, how the Terran and Federation government would react and the resources they would put into play. When the Manticore came to Titan for the weather control center, he knew what he had been given, the perfect opportunity. Now he could dispose of his target in the worst way possible and he was giddy with fulfillment. Now the target is his, forever, and the Earth weather system is still vulnerable (with the control components on Milieu Station from an Antares subsidiary.) Everything is going his way. He tries not to gloat, but it's so hard not to, and why not, truly. He just has to see how his target will react to knowing who the hunter was, who the winner is, how the proper little martinet has fallen.

Stepping out of the lift on B15, he makes his way to the trophy room and finally steps inside to face his enemy. He stands in the doorway, the light spilling into the dungeon-dark room.

"Attie, you have been my guest for a long time, I suppose it's time we met face to face - or should I say, meet again. How many decades has it been, we're both getting so old..."