Rise of the Empire 1: Olympus (19 page)

“Throw those three in the brig. Keep them there until I tell you otherwise.” He told them.

“Understood, Ship Master.” Their leader said. All off them looked as young as anyone else in the CC, but Adrian knew that they were older, some even from the time before Olympus went into space. They moved professionally and subdued the struggling Cadets.

“Hey! What the hell do you think you are doing!?” One of them yelled. Adrian stood up and glared at him.

“Did you think I was joking? I told you that this wasn’t a drill! You have cost us precious time we need to accomplish our mission. You are a disgrace, you don’t deserve to be here. Even if this was a drill, your job is to FOLLOW MY ORDERS!” Adrian yelled at them. They grew silent at his outburst and the security took them out. As they were going out the three other crewmembers Adrian called to replace them entered the CC, one of them was Noah, they had heard his outburst and had a slightly frightened looks on their faces. He ordered them to their positions with Noah taking the weapons station. He looked at Bethany.

“High Prime, you have
two minutes to get me reports from all systems on my display.” He told her calmly.

Bethany finally snapped out of her trance and got to work.

Comms Handler Estevez turned to Adrian.

“I have Chief Engineer Martinez for you, Ship Master.” She said.

“Put her through.”

A moment later the image on Chief Engineer Martinez showed on the display above his armrest. She had a hard look on her young face, she had dark hair and brown
eyes, which narrowed as she looked at him.

“
I have been ordered to abandon the upgrades and come back inside the ship by Fleet. Do you happen to know why?”

“Chief Martinez.” Adrian started. “This ship has been ordered to get underway to a hostile situation. You and your people have ten minutes to abort any upgrades you were conducting, and get inside the ship. If you are not inside the ship in that period of time, you will be left behind.” He looked at the Chief with stony face.

“A hostile situation? But-” Adr
ian sent her his command codes. She was one of the ships original crew, and had much more experience than him, and he knew that she probably didn’t have the habit of questioning her orders and wouldn’t have done so if Athena’s “real” Ship Master was in command, and Adrian was not willing to burn any bridges with her.

Her eyes widened for a second as her implant authenticated the codes.

“Yes Ship Master.” She said, and closed the channel.

Bethany who was close enough to overhear all of their exchange looked at him with a fearful look.

“A hostile situation?” She asked.

“Yes.” Adrian
said simply.

“
Comms, put me through the ship wide speakers.” Estevez nodded and a minute later the icon appeared on his display indicating that the ship wide speakers were on.

“Attention crewmembers. Approximately two hours ago, a hostile war
ship was headed towards Cloud base, followed by two Concordis warships, it is expected to dock with the station any moment now. We have been ordered to intercept and take that warship under our custody. Or if that fails to destroy it. We are not to engage Concordis vessels unless given reason to. This is not a drill.” Adrian took a beat to take another breath. “I know that this is not what you imagined your first true mission to be, but this it is. Remember your training, but keep in mind that this is not a simulation, if you make a mistake people will die. Trust in yourselves, and we will accomplish our mission together. That is all.” He closed the channel.

Bethany turned to him, with a professional expression, she had managed to push her fear down.
Good, I will need her,
Adrian thought.
“Yes you will.”
Iris told him.

He didn’t have a chance to respond because Bethany sent him the reports on all systems. He looked them over, noticing that everything was good to go.

“The team doing the upgrades is back inside, the drives are operational. And there is a squad of army forces requesting permission to come aboard Ship Master.” Bethany said.

“
Allow them inside, put them in the cargo bay, Navigation, disconnect us from the dock as soon as they are onboard, and set a course for Cloud station, maximum speed.” Adrian said. He left his crew to do the rest, there was nothing else for him to do until they reach the station.

Chapter Twenty-one

“While we appreciate your offer ambassador, space around Cloud station is Olympus territory under international law, and we are not prepared to let you warships inside our territory.” Tomas said to the ambassador of Concordis, they were speaking over the comms, as usual the ambassador was on the surface of the Moon.

“
Surely you see that we only want to help? We want to prevent any loss of life, and since it is partially our fault, we would like to be of service, seeing as you have no assets that can intervene.” Ambassador said. Tomas was grinding his teeth with every word the ambassador said.

“We respectfully decline, we are well on our way to handle the situation, if your ships enter our territory,
we will take that as enormous breach of our trust.” Tomas said. “Inform your superiors of my decision.”

“Mr. Klein you must see th-” Tomas cut of the comm, not wanting to listen to the ambassador anymore.

“Laura, what’s the situation.” Tomas asked.

“We still don’t have contact with the station, nothing since they docked and sent their list of demands.
We have no satellites in earth orbit to relay a laser signal around the Earth, and Cloud station wasn’t yet equipped with the FTL comms.”

Tomas grimaced at the mention of the demands. The list was full of crazy demands that no sane person would ask for, only reinforcing their
belief that this is a Concordis plan.

“I want all of our warships recalled. They are to make top speed to the Moon.” He said. Laura nodded and opened
a channel from the comm device in front of her. They had moved to one of the briefing rooms, following the departure of Athena. Many other Olympus staff members were in the room, each doing their job, gathering information, or relaying orders.

Elias was in the process of recalling army forces from Mars, in case this gets out of the control, but they won’t be here for
a month or so. Seo-yun was in contact with all of their research facilities on the Moon, those facilities were in process of being reinforced, in case that they strike somewhere else also.

“How long until Athena arrives?” Tomas asked Laura.

“Another hour and thirty two minutes.” She said. Tomas looked at his screens, the estimated time of arrival for the Concordis ships based on the information they got from Cloud prior to the comms blackout was an hour and twenty nine minutes, Athena will arrive three minutes after the Concordis ships. The only good thing from this is that they will not be able to see her, as she would be coming from around the planet.

Tomas looked around the room, he never felt as powerless as he did now, there was nothing he could do that would help, other than believe in his people, he chose them, he gave them Olympus and now it was time for them to give back.

***

“He isn’t going to change his mind Mr. President.” T
urner, Concordis ambassador to Olympus said.

“He can’t believe that his people on the station can take care of this?” President asked no one in particular.

“He seems confident that they will have the situation under control, I don’t know how, but I have been working with the man for a long time, I know him, he has something up his sleeve, I would stake my life on it.” Ambassador Turner said.

“Do we have any idea what it could be?
” President Von Holt asked his advisers. They were sitting in the same room they were when they made the decision to go through with this plan.

“Our intelligence officers are confident that there is nothing they can do.” Admiral Weiss said.

“This is very suspicious, the plan is already going wrong, we planned on Tomas Klein being relieved when we offered our help. Maybe we shouldn’t have put this into motion.” Councilman Petrov said.

“There is no going back now, we are committed, there is no way they will be able to stop us, and our press
teams will spin it in our favor, they will not be able to contest our entering their territory.” Minister of Defense Ross said.

“He is right gentlemen, there is nothing we can do now.” President Von Holt said. He prayed that they have made the right choice, and that whatever Tomas Klein had
up his sleeve comes too late to make a difference.

***

Tucker Dawson, Captain of the Viking, kept his eyes locked on his display, the Admiralty had just confirmed that Olympus did not allow them to enter their territory, but his orders were to do so anyway, they already had scripted communications that will be sent to Bismarck when they enter Olympus territory. The communications were nothing more than a series of posturing and threats on their part, which would hopefully convince the public that Bismarck’s crew was intimidated and choose to leave the station alone, should the communications ever go public. Though there was a catch that only he as the officer in charge of the mission was aware of. The plan was more complicated than it seemed. The marine detachment on the station had a mission that most of the high brass wasn’t aware of. Not even Admiral Weiss was aware of it, the one who gave the order was the Minister of Defense. They can’t leave anything that might implicate them. The loss of the server from the station would make it clear that they took them. But if there was no station, they wouldn’t be able to confirm that anything was missing. Dawson understood, and agreed with the Minister completely. Olympus was a plague on humanity, they talked about equality, about unity, and yet they kept their technology out of the other nations hands. He hated them, and most of all that pompous jerk Klein. Dawson’s wife was working for a subsidiary of Olympus before they started expanding in space. She held a high position, had a big salary, Olympus always paid well. But when they started transferring their business to space, they closed down, sold, or transferred most of the subsidiaries on Earth to space. He and his wife declined Olympus offer to transfer to space, even though his wife wanted to, but one of the condition was that Dawson resigns from Concordis military and join Olympus security. And he wasn’t willing to trade a life in the military for a security job. His wife argued with him for days before finally relenting, she lost her job but got a recommendation from Olympus. It did her no good, the state of the economy in Concordis was such, that at the time she just couldn’t get a job. From then on everything went downhill, they struggled with money, his pay wasn’t enough to cover the lifestyle she was used to, and they argued all the time, until she finally left him for a wealthier man. A man who could offer her the lifestyle she was used to. And Dawson knew that Olympus was the cause. He hated Tomas Klein with a deep unyielding force, it was the only thing that kept him going. And now he had the chance to break Klein’s hold on Earth. Tomas Klein thought himself Earths protector, he treated them like children, keeping all the new toys out of their reach.
I’ll show him,
Dawson thought, as looked back to his screen. They were almost there, a few more minutes and they would enter Olympus space.

He looked to his first officer. “Contact Dauntless, they are to start transmitting as soon as we pass into Olympus territory.”

Dawson turned his eyes back to the screen that now showed the enhanced image of Cloud station.
Yes, soon.

***

“We are receiving communications from Dauntless Captain.” Comm officer said.

Captain Reginald Smith of Bismarck turned to him from his study of the screen in front of him.

“Start sending them prepared packages.” He said, and then turned to his first officer. “Are the marines safely aboard?” He asked.

“Yes, Captain.”

“Good, disconnect us from the station, and set a course away from our ships, we must appear as if we are trying to escape.” Captain Smith said. A minute later they were disconnected from the station, and heading away from the Earth, Viking and Dauntless following. So far everything was going according to plan.

“Captain, we are detecting another ship on an intercept course!” Sensor officer yelled.

“What? Where is it coming from?” Captain asked. The ships sensors looked for a heat signature that was given by spaceships drives, it worked in tandem with their visual sensors to then detect the ships trajectory.

“It just came from around the planet Captain. The sensor readings match that of an Olympus drive, but we can’t match the visual. And Captain, its coming fast, a lot faster than anything we
thought Olympus had.” The sensor officer said his voice wavering slightly. Captain Smith, checked the stats of the new ship and was amazed. The ship was traveling at least four times their max speed, and it was slowing down. They could go from the Earth to the moon in a hour or two if they wanted, then it dawned on Captain Smith that they must have come from there. He asked for a visual of the ship, and a few moments the big screen on the front wall showed the new ship, at first it was blurry but quickly the image focused and they could see the ship speed towards them. The ship had the same general shape as Bismarck, but it didn’t have any sharp angles, its corners were all rounded, soft. There were things mounted on top of the ship, it took Smith a moment to realize what they were.

“
Turrets?” Captain asked without noticing that he was talking out loud.

“Captain we are getting a
laser communication from that ship. Voice only.” Comms officer said.

“Patch it through.” Captain said.

“To Concordis vessel under the command of dissidents. This is Ship Master Adrian Farkas of Olympus warship Athena, shutdown your drives and prepare to be boarded. Any hostile action will result in destruction of your vessel.”

Everyone on the bridge turned towards Captain Smith
with their faces pale, and he looked back at them in the same manner.
A warship? Olympus isn’t supposed to have warships!
And yet, there one was, racing towards them at an unimaginable speeds. He was just about to try and contact his sister ships when his Comm officer yelled out.

“Captain. The Station!” Comm officer yelled, his voice terrified.

***

Major Taylor was sitting back in the cargo hold of Bismarck, a part of their mission accomplished, as proved by the evidence in the palm of his hand.

“It’s really small.” He said.

“Olympus has superior technology, that little thing has the capacity to store the entirety of data created on Earth since the start of the internet age.” The man who extracted the core, Hughes said.

“Really? That’s impressive.” Taylor said. He turned the core in his hand one more time, and then stored it away in a special container they brought with them. After securing the core, he turned to Novak.

“Are we away enough from the station?” He asked, there was no need to elaborate, they both knew the reason for the question.

“Yes Major.” Novak said.

Taylor looked around his men, he sighed. “Do it.”

Novak took out a small device from his belt, there were two switches, and a red light. As he pressed one of the switches the light turned blue. He then pressed the other switch, the light flashed twice and then turned green.

“It’s done.” Novak said.

Taylor nodded, there was no need for anything else, it was their job.

***

“We are receiving a voice only communication from the new ship Captain.” Viking’s Comm officer said.

Captain Tucker Dawson
, turned to his Comm officer.

“
Play it.”

A moment later the speakers around the bridge came to life and a commanding voice boomed out.

“To Concordis vessels. This is Ship Master Adrian Farkas of Olympus warship Athena, you are in direct violation of the international law. Turn your ships around and exit Olympus space, any other action will be treated as hostile, and will be responded to as such.”
The voice said.

Dawson slammed his hand on the armrest. He looked at the video of the approaching ship, provided by their visual sensors. Olympus had warships. How could have that gone unnoticed by everyone Dawson wondered. The arrogance, they weren’t even a real country. He was convinced that it was all part of Tomas Klein’s plan. He might have even goaded the politicians to attempt this move, so that he may turn out a hero. He thought that his one ship was enough to turn them away from their
goals. Well he was mistaken. Dawson turned to his Comm officer intending to send a message to the other Concordis ships.

“Captain! The Cloud station just blew up.” Viking’s sensor officer yelled out.

Dawson stopped, for a moment he had forgotten about that part of the mission, he shook his head and forced himself to think clearly. His mission was to retrieve the server core. Slowly he pushed his anger aside, and tried to think clearly, he still had a mission to accomplish.