Keep It Quiet

This was the Orange Master Project.

It was planned meticulously and announced throughout the world as a way of extracting untold wealth and riches from astral bodies such as comets and asteroids.

It seemed a perfectly sensible plan, nuclear bombs could be applied to bring asteroids into Earth's orbit and then mining crews could be flown up to extract the useful materials and bring them back.

This mission was advertised as bringing a metal-rich asteroid into a close Earth orbit so that it could be mined until an empty shell was left that would break up and then burn up as it fell into Earth's atmosphere, with no danger to the planet.

A team of experts was assembled and boarded the space shuttle that would take them to the asteroid. Half of them wore grey suits and the "senior" members wore orange suits.

People questioned why the "senior" members were designated as such as they seemed to be far less qualified than the other team members, but the explanation was that it was a presidential and senate decision and these would be the ideal ones to carry out the mission.

There had been questions about where the money was coming from to finance the mission but no matter how bad a country's economy is, the government can always find money by printing it if it needs to.

So they went off to make the world a richer place, that was the message behind the mission, despite the fact that eighty per cent of the country was now living in extreme poverty.

The mission was going to be a resounding success and the media on Earth reported that everything was going to be a huge success, some people were going to make huge fortunes and everyone would be much better off when the trickle-down economics took effect. There were some who thought something was not right, but they were silenced and disappeared from the streets.

The shuttle landed and half the team believed this would put their nation back on a sound financial footing. They started to take measurements and and put bombs in place to move the asteroid into an orbit closer to Earth which meant that the metals and other materials could be mined and shipped back to Earth.

The preparations took two days to get everything set up and start the countdown for the blast to bring the asteroid nearer to Earth. There were smiles on all the faces, they knew they had done a great job.

Then unexpectedly, an orange-suited guy stopped the countdown.

Then the five in orange suits took out their guns and shot the ones in the grey suits.

They then adjusted the bombs to direct the asteroid to hit the Earth, rather than take it into a closer orbit.

The work was done and the bombs were primed.

The Orange Master had already destroyed his country and when those nuclear bombs detonated this asteroid would fall into the Earth and destroy the planet.