Rise of the Empire 1: Olympus (22 page)

Tomas didn’t want to leave anything behind, but Seo-yun still had hope for the people on Earth. So she went behind Tomas’s back, she left a ship in the asteroid belt
, the hyper capable scout ship that they sent to Alpha Centauri, she equipped it with an FTL comm, she also put an Ai she trusted inside the ships computer, and gave him instructions to release the information and control of the ship only if he thought that those who found him deserved it, she also gave him the coordinates of the Nebula they will be leaving for, and then she powered it down, perhaps by the time the ship was found they would have learned to work together.

***

November 2103 - three months later

Adrian sat in the command chair of the Athena, Bethany was sitting beside him,
and the rest of the command center was filled with the same people from seven months ago. The holo-desk showed the Athena leading the formation of seven other Olympus warships, in the middle of the formation were four enormous ships, 700 meters long, 50 tall and 350 wide, they were box shaped, slow and maneuvered poorly. They were made in haste and with only one purpose in mind, to get them to another world. They didn’t have any wasted space, the stasis pods took over most of the ships room, with a small bridge, hyperdrives and sub-light engines taking over the rest. Each ship carried a little under 2 million people, with all the resources they would need to start on another world, their fabricators, food processing plants, and other things. Most of the population was already in stasis, even though they haven’t yet left the Solar system, and were just now approaching Saturn. There were still people who were awake on the colony ships making sure that everything was in order, making some final adjustments. They like those on the warships would go to sleep when they entered hyperspace. After that few of them would be periodically awakened, just like Adrian and his crew, though those on warships would wake more often. They, alongside a few from the colony ships would be awoken prior to their arrival in the Nebula. The system wasn’t yet named, and would be only after they arrive. For now Adrian had to look forward to another four months of travel through the Solar system. It will be a long time before he and anyone else sets foot on a planet again.

Epilogue

February 2159 – 56 years later

The boy ran down the ruined streets of Berlin, it was once a great city, or so his father said
in his stories, before he died. The boy was just 13 years old, and the city has been in ruins for at least thirty years, it was destroyed in the Great War that followed the Treason, when the lawbreakers stole Earth’s technology and left them to starve. The Great War lasted for twenty years, and had decimated the Earth, The boy heard some stories, about how there were cities that survived, that still had technology, but Berlin was not one of those cities. Berlin was what was commonly referred to as a slum city. People who had no place to go came to those cities. They whored, stole, and killed to survive, but survive they did. Food was scarce, and there was no way for a 13 year old boy to survive in a slum city, other than by stealing.

The boy entered a building, it was abandoned
so long ago that no one remembered what it was before, an old man who lived there before the boy and his crew moved in said that it was an “apartment building” whatever that is, the boy didn’t know, nor did he care, it served them well now.

“It’s, Mathias!” A girl of fourteen yelled out as he entered the first room. Just as he taught them the others came out of hiding,
their weapons ready. They had few guns, but those were reserved for a real need, now they were armed with knives.

“Aileen.” The boy, Mathias greeted the girl that led the other kids, she and Mathias led this crew together.

“You got something?” She asked hopeful.

Mathias grinned. “Of course!”

He reached for the pack on his back and showed its contents to everyone. The others all exclaimed in surprise, Aileen reached in and took out a can of food.

“Where did you find this?” She asked in awe, Mathias knew that she never before saw so much food in one place.

“I found one cache, there is more there, we need to gather everyone we can and go back, before someone else finds it too.” Mathias said. Aileen nodded and started calling out to the others who were deeper inside the building when they were all startled by a powerful boom, followed by a sound unlike anything they have ever heard. Mathias and Aileen run outside and saw a cloud of dust rising in the distance, a long way from their city, then they noticed other such clouds rising from other directions as well. The noise kept growing stronger, and Mathias finally realized that it was coming from above them, he turned his eyes to the clear blue sky. There he saw something slowly coming down. A few minutes later it set itself down a few building blocks away. He and Aileen moved immediately to investigate, as they came closer they started hearing screams and other unidentifiable noises. When they were finally close enough, they froze, what they saw was something unthinkable. People were dead, lying on the streets in pieces, or with holes blown through them. Others were being taken back to the thing that came down from the sky. The things that did the taking and killing, and they were things, not human, looked as giant red metallic spiders, at least at the first glance. They had four spider like legs, and a torso that looked vaguely human, they had two hands with three digits that ended in sharp claws, and their heads were elongated and covered in metal. Mathias realized that they were wearing armor, each of them had weapons built into the armor itself, and didn’t carry any additional weapons. They were taking some people while killing the others. Mathias took Aileen’s hand and started running, she was following his pace and soon they were just one street away from their hideout, just as they rounded a corner Mathias’s vision was filled with red. A moment later he felt pain, and then nothing.

***

August 2169

Mathias
sat down hard on his cot, he was exhausted. He had spent the last 4 years moving from asteroid to asteroid, mining ore for the blasted aliens. They had enslaved humanity, and placed their bases and people on Earth, they found our planet quite suitable for their needs. They used humans for manual labor, they sent us to mine materials for them, we built their buildings, we cleaned their houses, we were slaves on our own world. Many had tried to fight back at first, until the aliens, the Ra’a’zani put down the resistance by executing a third of the population. Since then there were no more attacks on the Ra’a’zani, the resistance went underground, and they let their tendrils out, they waited and watched. Mathias was a part of the resistance, though he kept the fact mostly to himself and those few that already knew, there were humans who collaborated with the enemy, and you never knew if one of your own would betray you. Mathias’s job was to watch and listen for anything that might help them in their fight against the Ra’a’zani.

“Mathias.” He heard someone call him, he turned and saw Gloria, she was also in the resistance,
and she was twenty six years old, three years older than Mathias.

“Gloria.” Mathias greeted her.

“We got a message, there will be a distraction in an hour, and we are getting out.” She whispered excitedly. Mathias was shocked, the resistance rarely helped people escape. They were usually too useful in their positions as slaves. And Mathias knew that he wasn’t special, and that there had to be a good reason for them getting him out.

“Do you know why?” He asked.

“They got a tip about something deeper in the asteroid field, and want us to investigate. Apparently it is something interesting enough to warrant a look, but not enough for them to send a team. So they are sending us.” She said.

“How are we getting out?”

“Don’t know all the details, the message just said that we will be given orders to board a shuttle and take some machinery to the other mining station, when we take off they will shut down their sensors, and we are to disappear.” She said. Ra’a’zani rarely kept a close guard on those working on the asteroids, there really wasn’t a place that they could run to. And if you do escape you better hope you run out of food and die before they find you.

“Alright, how will we know where to go?” Mathias asked.

“The shuttle will have the coordinates already programed in.” She said.

Mathias thought for a moment. The resistance would need to have someone on the inside in order to pull this off. And since there wasn’t a chance in hell that a Ra’a’zani would betray their own, that meant a collaborator. It made sense, there were humans that had greater access than the other slaves. The resistance would have been stupid not to insert their own into them. Mathias just didn’t want to think about what that person had to do to prove himself to the Ra’a’zani. He shuddered as he remembered the stories.

“Ok.” He said. An hour later, they got the order from their Ra’a’zani overlord to take a spare part to the mining station a few hours away. They got into the shuttle, and got on their way as planned. They waited for any sign that they were safe to turn away from the course, and then they lost all communications with the station.

“I guess that means go.” Gloria said.

Mathias changed course and started towards the coordinates programed in the shuttle, after putting in the course, he deleted the coordinates. They spent the next few hours on going deeper into the asteroid field. The only thing they saw out of the cockpit were rocks. They were now deep enough that the interference was big enough so they couldn’t be detected. Mathias suddenly grinned, he was free. He looked at Gloria and saw the same expression on her face. He knew that they might die. The shuttle had food for only a few days, and if they don’t get picked up by resistance they would be forced to either starve or go back. But it didn’t matter to Mathias, he would never go back, he would rather die free.

“Look, is that it?
” Gloria pointed. Mathias followed the direction she was pointing at. At first he didn’t see anything and then he noticed it.

“Is that a ship?” He asked slowly.

Gloria only nodded, not taking her eyes from the ship they were now approaching, Mathias didn’t see her nod, as he also kept his eyes glued to the ship.

“That’s not Ra’a’zani.” Gloria said.

“No.”

They spent the next few minutes trying to find a way in, and then finally they found an access hatch. The Ra’a’zani shuttle had adaptive hatch tube, so they managed to dock with the ship. When they entered
, the first thing they noticed was that the air was stale, then as they stepped deeper inside, the lights came on. Immediately they noticed writing on the wall, it was a schematic of the ship, showing all the compartments and the routes to them.

“This is written in English!” Mathias exclaimed.

“Wait, it think that this is its name “Olympus Exploration Ship Star Gazer”.” Gloria read of the bottom. And then frowned. “What’s Olympus?”

“I have no idea.” Mathias said. “This says bridge, let’s go take a look.”

Two minutes later they entered the bridge, it was powered down like the most of the ship.

“Do you think that it still works?” Gloria asked.

Mathias opened his mouth to respond, when the light turned on, suddenly there was a figure standing in the corner on a small floorplate, it looked human, but for a second before the image sharpened, Mathias could swear he saw an alien with four hands.

“The ship is still operational.” The newcomer said.

Gloria jumped back. “What the hell!” She exclaimed.

“Relax Gloria, that’s a hologram, the Ra’a’zani have them as well.” Mathias said.

He then turned to the hologram. “Hi, mind telling me who you are.” He asked, he reasoned that it was an interactive program, probably modeled on another person.

“My designation is
Autonomous Survey Unit Mark 77321, but my friends gave me the name Asumy.”

***

May 2164

Tomas Klein was the first one to step foot on the new world, there was only around a thousand of them who were awake, there was no need to wake the others until they build the structures for them to live in. They chose a high plateau for their landing, and also for the spot of their first city, it had ample access to water, and was on the part of the planet with a mild climate. Tomas looked at the night sky, it was a lot different than Earth, there were no stars, and the night sky had a teal tint to it, with streaks of purple and red, it was the Nebula, and it completely surrounded the system. The few bright spots in the sky were the other planets in the system. The two small moons that orbited the planet were a lot smaller than the Earth’s Moon, but were a lot closer, and so appeared bigger. He looked around, it was dark with only the light from the transport illuminating the surroundings. He knew from the images they took earlier, that the plant life had a teal tint to it instead of green as on Earth, and that trees tended to grow much higher than those back home.
No, this is home now.
He corrected himself. The air was of the same composition as on Earth, but without the pollution, it had a sweet taste to it. He took a deep breath.
Yes, this will be a good home.
Seo-yun walked out of the transport to stand beside him. She looked around taking in as much as she could.

“Any thoughts on a name?” She asked.

“Yes.” Tomas said. “Let’s call it Sanctuary.”