Rise of the Empire 1: Olympus (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-four

“The Concordis ambassador came clean, they told us the truth, or rather a version of the truth.” Tomas said. He was still in the meeting room that was now converted to a command room, Elias, Seo-yun, Laura and Nadia were all still there as well. It has been two hours since the Concordis ship surrendered to Ship Master Farkas, and Athena was currently escorting the ship to the Moon, Ship Master Farkas has put two security teams on the ship to make sure that nothing happens, but for now they were cooperating. Concordis leadership on the other hand was trying to shift the blame. They blamed their Minister of Defense, as the man who arranged for everything. Tomas managed to keep his cool, even though he was burning up inside. He still hadn’t made any demands of Concordis, he didn’t even contact them, it was them who initiated every conversation. Tomas knew that his lack of response was what scared them the most.

Other countries from Earth had also learned of what happened. Their reactions varied, the League was condemning Concordis action, while the Coalition condemned Olympus for having armed ships in space.

“It doesn’t matter.” Tomas said.

“What doesn’t
matter?” Seo-yun asked. Everyone in the room was shocked, they had just lost three hundred people.

“This.” Tomas said gesturing around the room. “Them, us, everything. They will never change. And I can’t do this anymore.” Tomas said tiredly.

“Tomas, it’s going to be alright.” Elias said.

“No, it’s not.” Tomas closed his eyes.
No one spoke for a few minutes. Laura quietly instructed the staff members to leave the room, leaving only Tomas and his closest friends in the room.

“Tomas.” Laura started.

“I want you to call for a meeting. I want all the leaders of Earth to attend, we can hold it at Sedna.” Tomas said interrupting her, he said a bit unsurely.

The others looked at each other.

“A meeting? Tomas are you sure? Is that the right move?” Nadia asked.

“Hmm, yes, I have something to tell them all. But first I need to do something… I need to speak with Olympus. With every member of Olympus. I need to ask them something, and then we will see about the conference. Can you arrange that for me?” Tomas asked Nadia. She started to respond but thought better of it and just nodded firmly and said yes.

“Good, good. Seo-yun.” He said, turning his attention to her. “You said that you recovered charts, that the Alien ship made, scans of systems it visited on its journey?”

“Uhm, yes we have them.” She responded slowly.

“Good, I want you to do something for me.” Tomas said, conviction creeping back into his voice.

***

Three months later

Concordis President Lucas Von Holt sat in a comfortable chair in a large conference room in Sedna, The room was filled with leaders of every government in the world and their staff. Olympus limited them to four per party, and everyone agreed grudgingly, Tomas Klein and Olympus remained silent since the incident that took place three months ago. There was no retaliation, no prosecution, nothing, at least nothing on the political scene. On the other hand, every country from Earth that had the capability noticed an increase in Olympus activity. They have brought more ships to the Moon, more than anyone knew they had. At least five more warships were also confirmed orbiting the Moon, they started pulling people from their colony on the Moon
, and dismantling the colony facilities and the station they had in orbit, and not just that, there was increase traffic from Sedna. There were no more people living here, only a bare minimum staff, everyone was sent out towards Mars. They knew that Olympus had facilities there, and apparently they were big enough to sustain their entire population. The scariest part was that no one knew the reason. Most believed that they were preparing for war.

He was brought out of his thoughts by the door opening. Tomas Klein entered the room, he was alone, and he made his way towards the speaking platform without a single glance at the people gathered here
, when he reached the platform he looked around the room at all those gathered there. He spent a few minutes in silence, the other leaders and their advisors were discussing quietly among themselves. Russian president stood up and addressed Klein.

“Are we going to start this discussion or not? Why have you invited us here?” He asked, his voice was heard loudly and clearly through the speakers hidden throughout
the room.

The others voiced their agreement, though not so loudly.

Tomas Klein looked around the room one more time before finally turning his gaze to the Russian ambassador.

“I did not invite you here to discuss things, you are all here only as listeners, I will talk and you will listen.” He said.

Tomas took a deep breath, and suddenly a text file appeared above every table in the room, and then he started talking.

“These are written confession
s, one by Captain Reginald Smith of Concordis navy ship Bismarck, the other one is from Major Denis Taylor of Concordis army forces. These confirm that they were given orders by their superiors to execute a plan that resulted in the destruction of Cloud station, and deaths of three hundred Olympus citizens.” Tomas turned to the Concordis party and President Von Holt felt his mouth go dry. “The plan was for them to acquire data about Olympus technology. I have been keeping Olympus technology from your hands, and you all held it against us, even though you would have done the same thing if the roles were reversed, although, you would have done it for a different reason.” He looked around the room. “You resorted to violence and murder in order to obtain it. You did all that, when all you saw was technology that was barley a few years ahead of yours. And the sad thing is, that if you pooled your resources, if you set aside your differences, you would have been able to catch up to that technology in a few years at most. What you saw was only what we showed you, our technology is at least fifty years ahead of anything you have, and some even more. I never intended on keeping our advances from you, all I ever wanted was for humanity to become what I knew it could be. All you had to do, was learn to work together in peace, to care about your people and not your wallets. The moment you did that, I would have given you everything. But your actions have convinced me that you will not change any time soon, we went through a devastating war and still you couldn’t see that if we continue on this path we will doom our entire race. My people and I have reached a decision, we will not wait for you anymore, we will not watch as you kill each other nor will we allow you to kill us. We are removing ourselves from the equation. Olympus will leave the Solar system, we will start a new life on another planet, far away from you and your stupidity.” At that the room erupted. President Von Holt stared at Tomas Klein, he expected many things, but never this. Concordis has been preparing for war as the worst case option, they knew that there would be a response from Olympus. That is what they would do. And yet, leaving the Solar system? He knew that Olympus technology was better, but by that much? Perhaps if what Tomas was saying was the truth they could do it, and there was no reason for him to be lying about this. And then he realized what Olympus leaving would mean.

“What about our trade with Olympus? Earth
is dependent on it.” President Von Holt asked.

The rest of the room grew quiet and turned to look at him.

“I made a mistake all those years ago.” Tomas said regretfully. “I made you too dependent on Olympus, but the fault was not all mine, it was you who allowed it. It will be hard, but you will recover, if you work together. Our facilities on Earth are now yours to do with as you see fit. But we will not be leaving you our technology, we will dismantle or destroy anything that we can’t take with us.”

The League President stood up.

“You would throw the world into chaos and run away!?”

“I’m not running away. We are just tired of looking after you. Sometimes children need tough love. We showed you the way, it is up to you now to grow up.” With that he turned and left
, the room immediately exploded into arguments, Von Holt heard that the topic of most of the arguments was the distribution of the Olympus facilities, and territory. They didn’t care that Olympus was leaving.
My god, he is right. We are children.
President Von Holt thought, he looked around seeing his staff members joining the yelling matches. He turned from them disgusted, he walked out of the conference room. There was no one around, no security officers that were there before. He walked down the corridors, and then took the elevator up to the surface. As he stepped into the bright light of the day, he saw that Olympus transport ships were gone, and then up in the distance he saw small black dots that were gone the next moment.

***

Two months later

Seo-yun sat in her office on the station orbiting Jupiter, she looked at the screen mounted on the wall, it showed the image from outside the station. Most of the screen was taken up by Jupiter, but there in the distance she could see four massive ships, they were still under construction, but it will take them only one more month to finish them. Most of Olympus fabricators were now working full time on their construction, the others were working on fabricating things that they will need for the long trip, mainly stasis chambers. It will take them just over a month to reach the number of stasis units for everyone. The last count put Olympus population at 7 and a half million. And every one of them had chosen to come with them. Five months ago, just after the incident, Tomas addressed all of Olympus citizens, some watched him live via FTL comm devices. Other watched as the signal got to them. He revealed everything. He told them about the alien ship they found, he told them about his childhood dream, he told them all of his plans, and Olympus listened in awe of this one man. A man who changed their lives, who made them better, who wanted to do that for all of mankind, but couldn’t fight against the corruption of the world. The feed went on for hours, he told them all of his fears, and all of his hopes, and he told them about all the advances, all the technology that they have, or were working on. He told them about the strides in genetics that will allow humans to live forever. He told them about his struggles, how he didn’t know if he should give that technology to the Earth, how he feared that it would destroy them, because they were not mature enough to wield it. And then he told them how he didn’t want to see any one of them die for the greed of others. He told them his plan, he told them that he wanted to leave this Solar system, Earth behind, and start over somewhere else. He asked them to come with him. And then he waited. The people talked with their families, their friends and their acquaintances. They sent him their response, every single one of them chose to leave with him, with the person who gave them so much.

Olympus was always run by Tomas, but even when they became independent, they still operated as a company.
No more, the people have spoken, they made Tomas their ruler, their King, their President and their Emperor. They put their trust in him, knowing that it will be safe with him.

Olympus population moved to Mars, waiting there for the ships to be finished. The other ships that Olympus had were now retrofitted as
transports that will take the population to the colony ships in a few trips. None of those ships will go with them, some will be scraped for materials, others destroyed, only the 8 warships that they had, will be fitted with stasis units and a hyperdrive, and come with them. The stations and shipyards they had in the system were already mostly dismantled or striped of all technology, their mining operations likewise.

Tomas had given the order for the genetic treatment to be administered to anyone who wished
it, which was everyone, who didn’t want to live forever? Seo-yun herself already had the treatment, somehow it didn’t seem real yet, she looked the same, intellectually she knew that she would never change, and that she already had unlimited lifespan. But she didn’t feel it.

Seo-yun turned her gaze from the four ships to the report on her desk. It was a regular update on the stasis units, and their construction progress. In a month Tomas would arrive to Jupiter, and then people w
ould start arriving and be put into stasis, next time they woke up, they would be on an alien world, far away from Earth. She brought up the image of their future home. They found it in the alien charts. The aliens visited it. They classified it as an Earth like planet, with a gravity just a bit over Earth’s at 1.1G’s, orbiting one of the suns of the system, which was the same as our own Sol. The system itself was completely inside a Nebula, there were two stars, the second one was a red dwarf, and six planets, two of which could be inhabited by humans, though one was a lot colder than the other. They chose the one that was warmer as their destination, the files said that there was life on the planet, though no life with higher intelligence, the world had a bit more land than Earth did but nothing drastic, so the climate should be very close to that of the Earth. The system also had one gas giant, about the size of Jupiter, and three more planets that were basically just rocks. There were also a lot of moons orbiting the gas giant, some of which had atmosphere, though the records didn’t have any more information. The Nebula was 600 light years away, with their current hyperdrives moving at ten times the speed of light, it will take them around 60 years to get there. Most of them will spend the time in stasis, while others would be woken periodically to check on the stasis units and make sure that everything was alright.